with regard to it, that, "many times hath Satan troubled me concerning the verity of the Scriptures, many times by atheism, how I could know whether there was a God. I never saw any miracles to confirm me, and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned. That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see, the vast frame of the heaven and the earth, the order of all things, night and day, summer and winter, spring and autumn, the daily providing for this great household upon the earth, the preserving and directing of all to its proper end. The consideration of these things would with amazement constantly resolve me that there is an eternal being." This is unusual thinking and unusual writing for a New England woman of the first generation.

Her life must have been occupied mainly with household cares, for she became the mother of eight children, all of whom lived to grow up. But of the special incidents of that life there are few indications either in her poems or in the remains of her prose. One event affected her greatly. In the year 1666, in July, not quite two months before the Great Fire of London, her own house in the pleasant township

of Andover, which had been her home for some twenty years, was burned. There are touches of natural feeling in the verses which she wrote on the occasion, and one sympathizes with her when, looking at the ruins, she reflects:

"Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,

There all that store I counted best;

My pleasant things in ashes lie,

And them behold no more shall I.

Under thy roof no guest shall sit,
Nor at thy table eat a bit.

"No pleasant tale shall e'er be told,
Nor things recounted done of old,

No candle e'er shall shine in thee,

Nor bridgroom's voice e'er heard shall be ;
In silence ever shalt thou lie,

Adieu, adieu, all 's vanity."

Among the things which perished in the burning, and which she perhaps regretted more than others of more worth, was the conclusion of her poem on the Four Monarchies. It remained unfinished at her death.

But little as we know of her daily occupations and interests, and difficult as it is to follow even in fancy.

the daily life of a housewife in New England in that early time, there is enough in the pieces addressed to her husband and to her children to indicate that in her home was much affection and much happiness. Her husband, according to such report as has come down to us regarding him, was an intelligent and wellintentioned man, a conscientious Puritan, trustworthy in affairs, and of a kindly disposition. He does not seem to have been distinguished by superior talents, but he had a character which secured the respect and confidence of his associates. His wife writes to him in terms such as she could not have used if she had not found in him all that was needed to make her content with life. He long survived her, living to be ninetyfour years old, thus acquiring and deserving the appellation of the Nestor of the Colony. She begins a poem, "To my dear and loving Husband," with the words:

"If ever two were one, then surely we,

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if ye can."

Other poems addressed to him are less simple in expression than this, and in them she indulges in the

From a photograph, 1896.