your age, you have applied yourself to the acquiring of useful
knowledge as well as of elegant accomplishments, none but a parent can
know. Accept what I have written, my darling, as a tribute to a love
which makes the happiness of my life.

J.T.A.




INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.


He cast, (of which we rather boast,)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast,
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
O let our voice His praise exalt
Till it arrive at Heaven's vault,
Which there perhaps rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexic bay.
Thus sang they, in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time.

_Andrew Marvell's "Emigrants in the Bermudas."_


The beginning of the 17th century is an interesting epoch in American