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Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

"A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

" In 1660, according to Gookin, at a great feast
and dance, he made his farewell speech to his people, in which he
said, that as he was not likely to see them met together again,
he would leave them this word of advice, to take heed how they
quarrelled with their English neighbors, for though they might do
them much mischief at first, it would prove the means of their
own destruction. He himself, he said, had been as much an enemy
to the English at their first coming as any, and had used all his
arts to destroy them, or at least to prevent their settlement,
but could by no means effect it. Gookin thought that he
"possibly might have such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon
Balaam, who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said `Surely, there is no
enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination
against Israel.'" His son Wannalancet carefully followed his
advice, and when Philip's War broke out, he withdrew his
followers to Penacook, now Concord in New Hampshire, from the
scene of the war. On his return afterwards, he visited the
minister of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the history of that
town, "wished to know whether Chelmsford had suffered much during
the war; and being informed that it had not, and that God should
be thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, `Me next.


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