ions for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest
despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of
God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said,
soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest
of businesses.

That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close
to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left
an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new
world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest
reasons of all--the intense yearning for the true well-being of the
children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of
those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid
sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote
thus of the Pilgrims:

"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to
be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their
dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender
harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise
sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that
were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde
to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their
parents burden, were, often times so oppressed with their hevie
labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their
bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and become decreped in
their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very
budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all
sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children,
by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye
countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away
by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting
ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some
became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and
other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of
their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of
God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to
degenerate and be corrupted."

Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power
waxed