These men were stern even to cruelty against all that they held
evil,--Satan and his supposed emissaries, witches, Quakers, Indians,
negligent parishioners, disobedient offspring, men with periwigs, and
women in slash apparel. Yet the tenderest private gentleness often lay
behind this gloomy rigor of the conscience. Some of them would never
chastise a son or daughter, in spite of Solomon; others would write in
Greek characters in their old almanacs quaint little English verses on
the death of some beloved child. That identical "Priest Wilson" who made
the ballad at Mary Dyer's execution attended a military muster one day.
"Sir," said some one, "I'll tell you a great thing: here's a mighty body
of people, and there's not seven of them all but loves Mr. Wilson."
"Sir," it was replied, "I'll tell you as good a thing: here's a mighty
body of people, and there's not one of them all but Mr. Wilson loves
him." Mr. Cotton was a terror to evil-doers, yet, when a company of men
came along from a tavern and said, "Let us put a trick upon Old Cotton,"
and one came and cried in his ear, "Cotton, thou art an old fool,"--"I
know it, I know it," retorted cheerily the venerable man, and pungently
added, "The Lord make both me and thee wiser!" Mr. Hooker was once
reproving a boy in the street, who boldly replied, "I see you are in a
passion; I will not answer you," and so ran away. It contradicts all
one's notions of Puritan propriety, and yet it seems that the good man,
finding afterwards that the boy was not really guilty, sent for him to
apologize, and owned himself to have been wrong.

What need to speak of the strength and courage, the disinterestedness
and zeal, with which they bore up the fortunes of the colony on their
shoulders, and put that iron into the New-England blood which has since
supplied the tonic for a continent? It was said of Mr. Hooker, that he
was "a person who, while doing his Master's work, would put a king in