1634, where our heroine gently ruled in a house long since vanished. This Ipswich decade, from 1634 to 1644, was full of life for Mrs. Bradstreet, "and that more abundantly." She was now remote from the parental domicil, and had endured sore trials and joys, though only twenty-two when this period began. Their pastor was a son of Rev. Nathaniel Rogers; the father being one of the nine small children, and one at the breast," gazing upon the martyrdom of their father, in the ancient New England Primer illustration. In Ipswich, Anne wrote her longer poems, and three more children were added to her quiver in 1636 or 1638, Sarah, who became successively Mrs. Richard Hubbard and Mrs. Major Samuel Ward; Rev. Simon, who has written of his own birth as occurring in 1640, September 28; Hannah, 1642-1707, who, on June 3, 1659, when barely eighteen, was married to Andrew Wiggin, and lived to be sixty-five.

The grandparents meanwhile, in 1639, had removed from Cambridge to Roxbury, and lived on a spot at the angle of Dudley Street, recently made desolate by the conflagration of the old-fashioned Universalist Church, so long a Roxbury landmark. Mrs. Dorothy Dudley died in 1643, four years after the removal; and soon the stalwart Governor found her successor, who became the mother of perhaps the most distinguished of his many children, Governor Joseph Dudley.

Stage Four. A change had been long considered, but did not reach its climax till 1644, when the Bradstreets removed to Cochitchewick, now known as North Andover. At first they lived in a temporary loghouse, where were born two more children: In 1646, Mercy, who married Nathaniel Wade in 1672, and died in 1714; in 1648, Captain Dudley Bradstreet, who became a very prominent citizen of Andover. Presently arose the new big house, opposite the meeting-house, whence the little Bradstreets could run home for their lunch on Sunday noon. Therein was born the last of Anne Bradstreet's children, John, in 1652, about the time of Grandfather Dudley's death, and the Harvard graduation of baby's big elder brother, Samuel. In this house there were domestic troubles with Indian and negro servants; for the family lived in state, and

Mr. Bradstreet was not only Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but sent to the Mother Country on a mission connected with the Charter, which he did so much to save for this Commonwealth

In Andover also the girls were married, their father assisting in the ceremony, as a magistrate, which Puritan custom would not sanction in the reverend minister. Nor was this all; for in 1650 Mistress Bradstreet's poems were published in London, rousing the greatest enthusiasm in the Puritan world, even Cotton Mather referring to her in his famous Magnalia. She frankly took for her pattern Guillaume du Bartas, a French Protestant poet of the preceding century, whose works were translated into English, German, and Latin; but her own poems mark an epoch, for they manifest a humane element, in strong contrast to those of Michael Wigglesworth, who draws a horrible picture of infants pleading for mercy before Jehovah, who replies that he doth save "only mine own elect;" but pititully adds:

But unto you I will assign

The easiest room in hell.

In 1666 the big house was burned, with its mistress's manuscripts, and its library of eight hundred volumes; leaving her son Simon to lament his loss of books and clothes in this quaint Biblical fashion: The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

This brings us to the last period, that of the New House, which soon replaced the old, and is still standing, as portrayed on our menu. Mrs. Bradstreet only lived there about five years, however; for in 1672 she died, after much despondent suffering from ill-health, a trifle under sixty years of age. Four years her widower lamented her loss, an unwonted length of widowerhood in those days; but in 1676, a century before the Revolution, he was married to the widow of Captain Joseph Gardner, of Salem, who had been recently killed in an Indian attack.

Among the Bradstreet poems are lines appropriate to this lovely season, which I have asked one of our formost members and workers to read.

Mr. Sanford H. Dudley then read the following verses:

Or Autumn months September is the prime;
Now day and night are equal in each clime.
The twelfth of this, Sol riseth in the line,
And doth in poising Libra this month shine.
The vintage now is ripe; the grapes are prest,
Whose lively liquor oft is curst and blest;
For naught so good, but it may be abused,

October is my next; we hear in this

The northern winter blasts begin to hiss.

In Scorpio resideth now the Sun,

And his declining heat is almost done.

The fruitless trees all withered now do stand,

Whose sapless yellow leaves by winds are fanned;

Which notes, when youth and strength have passed their prime,
Decrepit age must also have its time.

CHAIRMAN:

You see these lines are neither so stiff or Puritanic as we may have supposed all the Bradstreet poems must be.

At this point I should call for music, but for a reason appealing to every parental heart. In the reception-room Mr. Sanford Dudley hinted to me that he must leave us by eight o'clock, on pressing businesss. What, without hearing your daughter?" I said. "Well, I should like to hear her paper! was the natural reply. "And so you shall!" I rejoined. We will therefore now listen to the young lady already alluded to as graduated this summer from Radcliffe, whom we have asked to treat one period in Anne Bradstreet's career.