Mr. Bradstreet were concerned; as also the minister, Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, in a dispute about town affairs; when Mr. Dudley, becoming angry, "in a Puritan fit of temper," used this speech to the minister: "Do you think to come here with your eldership to carry matters? Mr. Dudley was somewhat hard to be convinced that such language was indecorous, but at last confessed it was so, and peace followed.

Before I commenced my readings and study of the life of Anne Bradstreet, she was to me a myth, without form or comeliness, only a name; now she is a living reality, one of my nearest and dearest friends, with whom I am well acquainted, and the more I learn of her and her noble Christian character, the more I cherish and admire this extraordinary woman. Some one says, "An undevout astronomer is mad," but an atheistic, unbelieving, prayerless woman, however well advanced in literature and the sciences, is devoid of one thing needful, the most graceful and important, and lacking in a womanly quality, needed more than all else.

In comparison with such a godless woman, however much she may be sought and petted by society, I prefer even the devotee, who counts her beads, and with prayers uncountable in her lonely cell, leads a pious, praying, believing life. When the women of Paris became the followers of Voltaire, and his infidel notions, then came the bloody revolution against society with the horrid work of the guillotine. France has never recovered from the slaughter of the Huguenots, the Puritans of that nation, and the guillotine of the French Revolution was taught and assured by the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

Anne Bradstreet was a devout, religious woman of the most advanced Puritan faith and practice, and had no place in her heart for the modern fashion of being a wife and not a mother; of being proud of a husband, and ashamed of bearing children.

She says, "It pleased God to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me, and cost me many prayers and tears before I obtained one, and after him gave me many more." Again she writes, "I have had great experience of God's hearing my prayers and returning comfortable answers to me, either in granting the thing prayed for, or else in satisfying my mind without it."

It is the object of this little volume to make the Puritan mother and poetess, the beloved and loving wife, and the Christian woman better known to the people of Ipswich at home or abroad. It is published as a work of love, and not for profit or gain. A small edition not to exceed five hundred will be printed, and then the type distributed; and those readers who wish to learn further of Mrs. Bradstreet or her writings, must seek it in more pretentious volumes.

Anne Bradstreet is not the only woman of Ipswich who has honored this ancient town by a residence and home therein. The names of Zilpah P. Grant, Mary Lyons and Eunice C. Cowles as educators and devoted Christian women, as principals at the head of the Ipswich Female Seminary, are well and widely known; and Gail Hamilton, a writer on social, political and reformatory topics, has a national fame, and as a grandchild, Ipswich claims some right and title to her well-earned reputation.

The Editor gives credit as follows: First, to Mr. John Harvard Ellis for extracts of prose and verse, as also of much information contained in his copious and elegant edition of Anne Bradstreet's works, and begs to recommend that valuable book to every New England Public Library that may be so fortunate as to find a copy. Also to Helen Campbell for valuable aid derived from a perusal of her book, "Anne Bradstreet and Her Time." The "Cyclopedia of Colonial History," "Bancroft's History," "Palfrey's History of New England," and "Felt's History of

Mr. Bradstreet were concerned; as also the minister, Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, in a dispute about town affairs; when Mr. Dudley, becoming angry, “in a Puritan fit of temper," used this speech to the minister: "Do you think to come here with your eldership to carry matters? Mr. Dudley was somewhat hard to be convinced that such language was indecorous, but at last confessed it was so, and peace followed.

Before I commenced my readings and study of the life of Anne Bradstreet, she was to me a myth, without form or comeliness, only a name; now she is a living reality, one of my nearest and dearest friends, with whom I am well acquainted, and the more I learn of her and her noble Christian character, the more I cherish and admire this extraordinary woman. Some one says, "An undevout astronomer is mad," but an atheistic, unbelieving, prayerless woman, however well advanced in literature and the sciences, is devoid of one thing needful, the most graceful and important, and lacking in a womanly quality, needed more than all else.

In comparison with such a godless woman, however much she may be sought and petted by society, I prefer even the devotee, who counts her beads, and with prayers uncountable in her lonely cell, leads a pious, praying, believing life. When the women of Paris became the followers of Voltaire, and his infidel notions, then came the bloody revolution against society with the horrid work of the guillotine. France has never recovered from the slaughter of the Huguenots, the Puritans of that nation, and the guillotine of the French Revolution was taught and assured by the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

Anne Bradstreet was a devout, religious woman of the most advanced Puritan faith and practice, and had no place in her heart for the modern fashion of being a wife and not a mother; of being proud of a husband, and ashamed of bearing children.

She says, "It pleased God to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me, and cost me many prayers and tears before I obtained one, and after him gave me many more." Again she writes, "I have had great experience of God's hearing my prayers and returning comfortable answers to me, either in granting the thing prayed for, or else in satisfying my mind without it."

It is the object of this little volume to make the Puritan mother and poetess, the beloved and loving wife, and the Christian woman better known to the people of Ipswich at home or abroad. It is published as a work of love, and not for profit or gain. A small edition not to exceed five hundred will be printed, and then the type distributed; and those readers who wish to learn further of Mrs. Bradstreet or her writings, must seek it in more pretentious volumes.

Anne Bradstreet is not the only woman of Ipswich who has honored this ancient town by a residence and home therein. The names of Zilpah P. Grant, Mary Lyons and Eunice C. Cowles as educators and devoted Christian women, as principals at the head of the Ipswich Female Seminary, are well and widely known; and Gail Hamilton, a writer on social, political and reformatory topics, has a national fame, and as a grandchild, Ipswich claims some right and title to her well-earned reputation.

The Editor gives credit as follows: First, to Mr. John Harvard Ellis for extracts of prose and verse, as also of much information contained in his copious and elegant edition of Anne Bradstreet's works, and begs to recommend that valuable book to every New England Public Library that may be so fortunate as to find a copy. Also to Helen Campbell for valuable aid derived from a perusal of her book, "Anne Bradstreet and Her Time.” The "Cyclopedia of Colonial History," "Bancroft's History," "Palfrey's History of New England," and "Felt's History of

Ipswich," have all contributed to assist the Editor of this book in its preparation. As only two hundred and fifty copies of Ellis's book were printed, a copy of it is hard to obtain; Helen Campbell's is more suitable for general circulation, but the great mass of readers need something smaller yet as to price, as well as a saving of time in its reading.

As Anne Bradstreet spent ten years of her active life in Ipswich, as five of her eight children were born there, as she was related by marriage to the General Dennison and the Wade families of that town, and further, as all writers agree, that the most of her literary work was done in Ipswich, I therefore have felt a pleasure to put on record in a compact form, but briefly, something to show to future generations these facts.

One more thought and I'll close this chapter. It has been suggested that a suitable monument ought to be erected to Anne Bradstreet. She was the earliest New England woman who, in an age and among people where the great majority did not approve of woman taking any public position as either speaker or writer, this woman dared to do the opposite, and live up to her convictions and opportunities. Mrs. Bradstreet said that she

"Was obnoxious to each carping tongue

Who says my hand a needle better fits."

The women, the Colonial Dames of Massachusetts, could do no more fitting and graceful act, than thus to honor the pioneer of their sex, who blazed a path to literary fame amid much reproach and distrust. No more appropriate locality for such a mural monument to Anne Bradstreet could be named than Ipswich, where the most of her poetical and literary labor was performed.