that he used to listen with scarcely concealed pride to the sermons of " son Joseph," of which his famous diary says so much. It was likewise here that as an old man he cast sheep's eyes at the women "in the Fore Seat" eligible to gladden his desolate hearth. And while walking home from worship in this place it was that he weighed, as we shall see, the comparative merits of the ladies in question. In Hawthorne's fascinating account of Samuel Sewall's first courtship occurs this important sentence: "The mintmaster was especially pleased with his new son-in-law because he had courted Miss Betsy out of pure love and had said nothing at all about her portion." It is good for us to remember that passage when we read the stories of Judge Sewall's later courtships. For the fact that the first marriage was one of purely romantic love even if Sewall - did get his wife's weight in pine-tree shil lings when he got her rather takes the taint of the sordid from the later episodes. There is no need to tell at length the pretty story of Betsy Hull, for it has become a part of American tradition. John Hull, we all remember, had been made mintmaster of the colony and had grown very rich. Then one day a fine young man, Samuel Sewall by name, came courting his daughter, and, meeting the requirements of the situation as to character and education, was readily given the consent of the fair one's fond father. This father had replied to the ardent youth's suit, as a bluff parent of the period well enough might, "Take her, but you'll find her a heavy enough burden." "Yet when the wedding ceremony was over," according to the tale of the Great American Romancer, "the bridegroom was given a surprise which made him rejoice indeed that the new Mrs. Sewall was a plump young woman. 66 Captain Hull whispered a word or two to his men servants, who immediately went out and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a pair as wholesale merchants use for weighing bulky commodities; and quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them. "Daughter Betsy,' said the mintmaster, get into one side of these scales.' "Miss Betsy or Mrs. Sewall, as we must now call her did as she was bid like a dutiful daughter without any question of the why and wherefore. But what her father could mean unless to make her husband pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear bargain), she had not the least idea. "And now,' said honest John Hull to the servants, bring that box hither.' "The box to which the mintmaster pointed was a huge square iron-bound oaken chest; . . . The servants tugged with might and main, but could not lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to drag it across the floor. Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid. Behold! it was full to the brim of bright pine-tree shillings fresh from the mint; . . . Then the servants, at Captain Hull's command, heaped double handfuls of shillings into one side of the scales while Betsy remained in the other. 666 There, son Sewall!' cried the honest mintmaster, when the weights balanced, 'take those shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.'" Well might Father Hull give to young |