their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity
towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to
be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these
were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and
made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches,
that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon
him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the
Charter-street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have
not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these ancestors
of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven
for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the
heavy consequences of them in another state of being. At all
events, I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby
take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse
incurred by them--as I have heard, and as the dreary and
unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back,
would argue to exist--may be now and henceforth removed.

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed
Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution
for his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk
of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should
have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim
that I have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no
success of mine--if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever
been brightened by success--would they deem otherwise than
worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs
one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A writer of
story books! What kind of business in life--what mode of
glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and