be entered but what we have reason to believe is true, repairing to the best fountains for our information. And when there appears any material mistakes in anything that is collected, it shall be corrected in the next.
"Moreover, the Publisher of these Occurances is willing to engage, that whereas there are many false reports, maliciously made and spread among us, if any wellminded person will be at the pains to trace any such false report, so far as I find out and convict the first raiser of it, he will in this paper (unless just advice be given to the contrary) expose the name of such person as a malicious raiser of false report. It is supposed that none will dislike this proposal, but such as intend to be guilty of so villainous a crime."
Then followed the news or "Occurances," which—considering that this was seventy years after the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, and two hundred years after the invention of printing—shows that our pioneer journalist was not lacking in what is now called news-sense. We are informed that the Christianized Indians in Plymouth had appointed a day of Thanksgiving, and their example is commended to other non-Indian neighbors in a line that seems sarcastic.
There is a brief mention of the fact that two children had been stolen by Indians from the settlement of Chelmsford, the correspondent and not the editor being responsible for the fact that names are not given.
From Watertown there is communicated the news that an old man (again the correspondent neglects to give the name) "having lost his wife, fell into a fit of melancholy during which the devil took possession of him with the result that one morning, early in the month he was found hanging in the cow-house." It is noted that the smallpox is abating in Boston, but that another disease—seem-
