Part 4 (1/2)
All things within this fading world hath end, Adversity doth still our joys attend; No tyes so strong, no friends so dear and sweet But with death's parting blow is sure to meet
The sentence past is , yet oh, inevitable; How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend, How soon 't norant, yet love bids me These farewell lines to recommend to thee, That when that knot's untyed that made us one, I may seem thine, who in effect am none
And if I see not half rant to yours and you; The many faults that well you know I have, Let be interred in rave; If any worth or virtue were in me, Let that live freshly in thy rief as I no har lay in thine arains Look to my little babes my dear remains, And if thou love thyself, or loved'st me, These O protect from step-Da this verse, With sohs honor my absent Herse; And kiss this paper for thy love's dear sake Who with salt tears this last farewell did take
--_A B_
CHAPTER V
OLD FRIENDS AND NEW
In spite of the fits of depression evident in iven, there were many alleviations, as life settled into more tolerable conditions, and one chief one was now very near Probably no event in the first years of Anne Bradstreet's life in the little colony had as nificance for her as the arrival at Boston in 1633, of the Rev John Cotton, her father's friend, and one of the strongest influences in the lives of both English and Ae and very probably made one of the party ent in from there to hear his first serland with the ut Jahly that he was hunted like an escaped convict
Fearless and almost reckless, the Colonial ministers wondered at his boldness, a brother of Nathaniel Ward saying as he and soether: ”Of all men in the world, I envy Mr Cotton of Boston,in way of confor in that way and cannot enjoy e over, and who in good tihter Dorothy in 1654, appeared with the father and mother at the first public service after his arrival, and before it was positively decided that he should remain in Boston The baptis it take place, not later than ten days after birth, had been delayed, and Winthrop gives a characteristic picture of the scene: ”The Lord's day following, he (Mr Cotton) exercised in the afternoon, and being to be adnified his desire and readiness to ht be sufficient in declaring his faith about baptism (which he then desired for their child, born in their passage, and therefore naave two reasons why he did not baptize it at sea (not for want of fresh water, for he held sea-water would have served): 1st, because they had no settled congregation there; 2d, because a regation”
Soht question, as to whether Boston alone, or the colony at large should be taxed for his support was settled with little difficulty, and on Sept 10, another gathering fro toitnessed his induction into the new church a ceremony of peculiar sole as the still narrow stores of the people admitted
No one can estimate the importance of this occasion, who does not realize what a minister meant in those first days, when the sermon held for the majority the sole opportunity of intellectual sti of John Cotton to Boston, was much as if Phillips Brooks should bestow hilish settlement in Australia, or a missionary station in northern Minnesota, and a ripple of exciteh the whole coious life, for the tent side by side Mather wrote later of New England: ”It is a country whose interests were enerally enwrapped in its ecclesiastical circuospel has evidently been theof our towns”
It was the deacons and elders who ruled public affairs, always under direction of well-nigh supreme authority vested in the minister There was reason for such faith in them ”The objects of much public deference were not unaware of their authority; they seldoot it If ever reatness, deserved such pre-ereat force of will, devout consecration, philanthropy, purity of life For once in the history of the world, the sovereign places were filled by the sovereign men They bore themselves with the air of leadershi+ps; they had the port of philosophers, nobles of our earliest times are full of reference to the majesty of their looks, the awe inspired by their presence, the grandeur and power of their words”
New England surely owes so speech,” to these early talkers, who put their whole intellectual force into a ser for two hours and a sermon for three or even four
Nathaniel Ward, whose caustic wit spared neither hi his brethren, wrote in his ”Siland, that e are speaking, we know not how to conclude We make h we can; which is the arch infirmity in all itudes are as long as any wise e rateful than '_Grata brevitas_'”
Mr Cotton was no exception to this rule, but his hearers would not have had him shorter It was, however, the personality of thethat he has left for a htest hint of reason for the spell he cast over congregations, under the cathedral towers, or in the si house in the new Boston The one h his works conscientiously and hopefully, Moses Coit Tyler, writes of John Cotton's works: ”These are indeed clear and cogent in reasoning; the language is well enough, but that is all There are alht or style One wanders through these vast tracts and jungles of Puritanic discourse--exposition, exhortation, logic- chopping, theological hair-splitting--and is unrewarded by a single passage of eminent force or beauty, uncheered even by the felicity of a new epithet in the objurgation of sinners, or a new tint in the landscape-painting of hell”
Hubbard wrote, while he still lived: ”Mr Cotton had such an insinuating and , that he would usually carry his very adversary captive, after the triumphant chariot of his rhetoric,” but ”the chariot of his rhetoric ceased to be triumphant when the master himself ceased to drive it,” and we shall never know the spell of his genius For one who had shown hi in action where his own beliefs were concerned, he was singularly gentle and humble Followed from his church one day, by a specially sour and peevish fanatic, who announced to him with a frown that his ministry had become dark and flat, he replied:
”Both, brother--it may be both; let me have your prayers that it ainst the systeed to every church, and it is easy to see how his hold on his congregation was never lost, even at the storland career
The people flocked to hear him, and until the removal to Ipswich, there is no doubt that Anne Bradstreet and her husbandher faith and stiht Dudley and he remained friends to the end, and conferred often on public as well as private matters, but there are no fae in later years, which united the had done
Health alone, or the want of it, gave sufficient reason for at least a shadow of glooes were at hand, and various circuainst which Anne Bradstreet always revolted Minute personal criticis one another in the straight path, and the New England relish for petty detail ossip As usual the first trouble would seeinator strenuously denied any such suspicion The houses at Caradually been , they were the rudest of structures, the roofs covered with thatch, the fire-places generally h stones and the chimneys of boards plastered with clay To shelter was the only requisite de overnor and other assistants joining in the reproach that ”he did not well to bestow such cost about wainscotting and adorning his house in the beginning of a plantation, both in regard to the expense, and the example”
This may have been one of the ”new customs” at which poor Anne's ”heart rose, for none of the coovernor, had come from as stately and well-ordered a ho to the love of beauty in its ancient owners” Dudley's excuse was, however, accepted, ”that it was for the war but clapboards nailed to the wall in the forreement on this question of adornment was not the only reason why a reawam, may have seemed desirable Dudley, as some thirteen years older than the Governor, and whose capacity for free speech increased with every year, had criticised sharply the former's unexpected removal to Boston, and placable as Winthrop alas, a little feeling had arisen, which must have affected both fa propensities had also been ains he had ation, to whom he had sold seven bushels and a half of corn, to receive ten for it after harvest, which the governor and so usury”
Dudley contested the point hotly, the governor taking no ”notice of these speeches, and bore them with more patience than he had done upon a like occasion at another ti before it ceased to trouble the friends of both With all his self-sacrifice, Dudley desired leadershi+p, and the reave himent of his services to the Colony, than pere could have done
Objections were urged against the re hotter and hotter Dudley resigned, in athe council in a passion and ”clapping the door behind hientle tehter quieted him, and disposed him to look favorably upon the letter in which the council refused to accept his resignation, and this was the last public occasion upon which such scandal arose But Ipsas a safe harbor, and life there would hold fewer thorns than sees, and we -suffering Anne and her e, when it had once been positively decided upon
The most serious objection arose from the more exposed situation of Ipswich and the fact that the Indians were beco more and more troublesome The first year, however, passed in co the first necessity thought of for every plantation, and ”Mr Wilson, by leave of the congregation of Boston whereof he was pastor, went to Agawam to teach the people of that plantation, because they had yet no minister,” to be succeeded shortly by Nathaniel Ward, a man of most intense nature and personality, who ht under his influence A worker of prodigious energy, he soon broke down, and after two years of pastorshi+p, left Ipswich to become a few years later, one of the coradually one of the most distinctive books in early Aawa personal friend of the Bradstreet family was natural, for not only were they of the sah Simon Bradstreets' moderation and tolerant spirit undoubtedly fretted the unco Puritan whose opinions were as stiff and incisive as his way of putting the been a successful lawyer before the ministry attracted him, he was the friend of Francis Bacon, of Archbishop Usher and the faian, David Pareus He had travelled widely and knew s of his daily life, the unfoldings of the coious experience demanded of every Puritan, must have crept many a reminiscence of old days, dear to the heart of Anne Bradstreet, who, no matter what theory she deemed it best to folloas at heart, to the end of her life a monarchist We may knohat interest she would listen, andnear as Puritan discipline allowed, to hear tales of Prince Rupert, whom Nathaniel Ward had held as a baby in his arms, and of whom he wrote e may be sure he had often said: ”I have had him in my arms;I wish I had hiood prince; but I doubt he hath forgot it If I thought he would not be angry with ht Roundhead, a wise-hearted Palatine, a thankful th to save his soul, notwithstanding all his God-damn-me's”
Even in these early days, certain ferated with their owners, and etic preacher Anne Bradstreet had no share in the her always choose the least obtrusive form of speech and action, as well as dress, but she must have smiled over the fierceness hich weaker sisters were attacked, and perhaps have sought to change the attitude of this chronic fault- finder; ”a sincere, witty and valiant grurue on common sense He devotes a separate section of his book to theeneral because they were ”deficients or redundants not to be brought under any rule,” and therefore not entitled to ”pester better matter with such stuff,”
and then announces that he proposes, ”for this once to borrow a little of their loose-tongued liberty, and -waisted but short-skirted patience” ”I honor the wooes on, his wrath rising as he writes; ”a good text always deserves a fair ent, but as for a woman who lives but to ape the newest court- fashi+ons, I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epito; fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honored or humored To speak moderately, I truly confess, it is beyond the ken ofto conceive how those worace or valuable virtue, that have so little wit as to disfigure thearbs, as not only dismantles their native, lovely lustre, but transclouts theyptian hieroglyphics, or at the best into French flirts of the pastry, which a proper English woman should scorn with her heels It is no marvel they wear trails on the hinder part of their heads; having nothing it seems in the forepart but a few squirrels' brains to help them frisk from one ill-favored fashi+on to another We have about five or six of them in our colony; if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my fancy for a month after If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously, he is nation I can, and no ht”