yes since the L250 a year
Widow Denison. His gifts too were not as rich as those bestowed on that
yearned-for widow. He had seen too many tokens go for naught. Glazed
almonds, Meers cakes, an orange, were good enough for so cheap a
sweetheart. He remained very stiff and peremptory about the marriage
contract, the L100, and wrote her one very unpleasant letter about it;
and he feared lest she being so attached to her children might not be
tender to him "when there soon would be an end of the old man." At last
she yielded to his sharp bargain and they were married. He lived eight
years, so I doubt not Mary was tender to him and mourned him when he
died, hard though he was and wigless withal.

We gather from the pages of Judge Sewall's diary many hints about the
method of conducting other courtships. We discover the Judge craftily
and slyly inquiring whether his daughter Mary's lover-apparent had
previously courted another Boston maid; we see him conferring with lover
Gerrish's father; and after a letter from the latter we see the lover
"at Super and drank to Mary in the third place." He called again when it
was too cold to sit downstairs, and was told he would be "wellcomm to
come Friday night." We read on Saturday:

"In the evening Sam Gerrish comes not; we expected him; Mary
dress'd herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapointment."

A month later the recreant lover reappeared and finally married poor
disappointed Mary, who died very complaisantly in a short time and left
him free to marry his first love, which he quickly did. We find the
Judge after his daughter's death higgling over her marriage portion with
Mr. Gerrish, Sr., and see that grief for her did not prevent him from
showing as much shrewdness in that matter as he had displayed in his own
courtships.

Timid Betty Sewall was as much harassed in love as in religion. We find
her father, when she was but seventeen years old, making frequent
investigation about the estate of one Captain Tuthill, a prospective
suitor who had visited Betty and "wished to speak with her." The Judge
had his hesitating daughter read aloud to him of the mating of Adam and
Eve, as a soothing and alluring preparation for the thought of
matrimony, with, however, this most unexpected result:

"At night Capt. Tuthill comes to speak with Betty, who hid herself
all alone in the coach for several hours till he was gone, so that
we sought her at several houses