Customs and Fashions in Old New England

								

as "Smoking Flax Inflamed," "The Jewish Children of Berlin," and "My
Small Vial of Tears;" so he had "wandered" in the flesh as well as in
the mind.
Such an array of widows! Boston fairly blossomed with widows, the widows
of all the "true New England men" whose wills Sewall had drawn up, whose
dying bedsides he had blessed and harassed with his prayers, whose
bodies he had borne to the grave, whose funeral gloves and scarves and
rings he had received and apprized, and whose estates he had settled.
Over this sombre flower-bed of black garbed widows, these hardy
perennials, did this aged Puritan butterfly amorously hover, loth to
settle, tasting each solemn sweet, calculating the richness of the soil
in which each was planted, gauging the golden promise of fruit, and
perhaps longing for the whole garden of full-blown blossoms. "Antient
maides" were held in little esteem by him; not one thornback is on his
list.
Not only did he look and wander, but all his friends and neighbors arose
and began to suggest and search for a suitable wife for him, with as
officious alacrity as if he needed help, which he certainly did not. In
March Madam Henchman strongly recommended to him "Madam Winthrop, the
Major General's widow." This recommendation was very sweet to the
widower, who had turned his eyes with such special approval on this
special widow, and further and warm encouragement came quickly.



     "Deacon Marion comes to me, sits with me a great while in the

     evening; after a great deal of Discourse about his Courtship He

     told me the Olivers said they wish'd I would court their Aunt. I

     said little, but said 'twas not five Moneths since I buried my dear

     Wife. Had said before 'twas hard to know whether to marry again or

     no or whom to marry."
The Olivers' aunt was Madam Winthrop. It would seem somewhat
presumptuous and officious for nieces and nephews to suggest courtship,
when there were grown up Winthrop children who might dislike the
marriage, but in those days everyone meddled in love affairs; to quote
Pope: "Marriage was the theme on which they all declaimed." The Judge
gossiped publicly about his intentions. He writes: "They had laid one
out for me, and Governor Dudley told me 'twas Madam Winthrop. I told him
I had been there but thrice and twice upon business. He said cave
tertium." Even solemn Cotton Mather proffered counsel in a letter on
"paying regards to the Widow."
In spite of all these hints and commendations, and the Judge's evident
pleasure in receiving them, the Winthrop agitation all came to naught,
for about this time he was called to make a will for a Mr. Denison, of
Roxbury, who died on March 22d. Though the Judge was too upright and too
pious to let even his thoughts wander to a wife, the amazing rapidity
with which he turned his longing eyes on the newly-made widow (cruelly
forsaking Madam Winthrop) is only equalled by the act of the famous