an this,--
They promise me a modest spouse,
To light my hearth and keep my house.
I ask no more than, free from strife,
To hold these blessings all my life!"

Tam exceedingly pleased, I must say, with the prospect of my cousin
Polly. Her suitor is altogether a worthy young man; and, making
allowances for the uncertainty of all human things, she may well look
forward to a happy life with him. I shall leave behind on the morrow
dear friends, who were strangers unto me a few short weeks ago, but in
whose joys and sorrows I shall henceforth always partake, so far as I do
come to the knowledge of them, whether or no I behold their faces any
more in this life.

HAMPTON, October 24, 1678.

I took leave of my good friends at Agamenticus, or York, as it is now
called, on the morning after the last date in my journal, going in a
boat with my uncle to Piscataqua and Strawberry Bank. It was a cloudy
day, and I was chilled through before we got to the mouth of the river;
but, as the high wind was much in our favor, we were enabled to make the
voyage in a shorter time than is common. We stopped a little at the
house of a Mr. Cutts, a man of some note in these parts; but he being
from home, and one of the children sick with a quinsy, we went up the
river to Strawberry Bank, where we tarried over night. The woman who
entertained us had lost her husband in the war, and having to see to the
ordering of matters out of doors in this busy season of harvest, it was
no marvel that she did neglect those within. I made a comfortable
supper of baked pumpkin and milk, and for lodgings I had a straw bed on
the floor, in the dark loft, which was piled wellnigh full with corn-
ears, pumpkins, and beans, besides a great deal of old household
trumpery, wool, and flax, and the skins of animals. Although tired of
my journey, it was some little time before I could get asleep; and it so
fell out, that after the folks of the house were all abed, and still, it
being, as I judge, nigh midnight, I chanced to touch with my foot a
pumpkin lying near the bed, which set it a-rolling down the stairs,
bumping hard on every stair as it went. Thereupon I heard a great stir
below, the woman and her three daughters crying out that the house was
haunted. Presently she called to me from the foot of the stairs, and
asked me if I did hear anything. I laughed so at all this, that it was
some time