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Page 12
There, too, was the bridegroom, dressed in a fine purple coat, and gold
lace waistcoat, with as much other finery as the Puritan laws and
customs would allow him to put on. His hair was cropped close to his
head, because Governor Endicott had forbidden any man to wear it below
the ears. But he was a very personable young man; and so thought the
bride-maids and Miss Betsey herself.
The mint-master also was pleased with his new son-in-law; especially as
he had courted Miss Betsey out of pure love, and had said nothing at all
about her portion. So when the marriage ceremony was over, Captain Hull
whispered a word to two of his men-servants, who immediately went out,
and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a
pair as wholesale merchants use, for weighing bulky commodities; and
quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them.
"Daughter Betsey," said the mint-master, "get into one side of these
scales."
Miss Betsey,--or Mrs. Sewell, as we must now call her,--did as she was
bid, like a dutiful child, without any question of the why and
wherefore. But what her father could mean, unless to make her husband
pay for her by the pound, (in which case she would have been a dear
bargain,) she had not the least idea.
"And now," said honest John Hull to the servants, "bring that box
hither."
The box, to which the mint-master pointed, was a huge, square, iron
bound, oaken chest; it was big enough, my children, for all four of you
to play at hide-and-seek in. The servants tugged with might and main,
but could not lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to
drag it across the floor. Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle,
unlocked the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid. Behold! it was full to
the brim of bright pine-tree shillings, fresh from the mint; and Samuel
Sewell began to think that his father-in-law had got possession of all
the money in the Massachusetts treasury. But it was only the
mint-master's honest share of the coinage.
Then the servants, at Captain Hull's command, heaped double handfulls of
shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the
other. Jingle, jingle, went the shillings, as handful after handful was
thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the
young lady from the floor.
"There, son Sewell!" cried the honest mint-master, resuming his seat in
Grandfather's chair. "Take these shillings for my daughter's portion.
Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that's
worth her weight in silver!"
* * * * *
The children laughed heartily at this legend, and would hardly be
convinced but that Grandfather had made it out of his own head. He
assured them faithfully, however, that he had found it in the pages of
a grave historian, and had merely tried to tell it in a somewhat funnier
style. As for Samuel Sewell, he afterwards became Chief Justice of
Massachusetts.
"Well, Grandfather," remarked Clara, "if wedding portions now-a-days
were paid as Miss Betsey's was, young ladies would not pride themselves
upon an airy figure as many of them do."
CHAPTER VII.
When his little audience next assembled round the chair, Grandfather
gave them a doleful history of the Quaker persecution, which began in
1656, and raged for about three years in Massachusetts.
He told them how, in the first place, twelve of the converts of George
Fox, the first Quaker in the world, had come over from England. They
seemed to be impelled by an earnest love for the souls of men, and a
pure desire to make known what they considered a revelation from Heaven.
But the rulers looked upon them as plotting the downfall of all
government and religion. They were banished from the colony. In a little
while, however, not only the first twelve had returned, but a multitude
of other Quakers had come to rebuke the rulers, and to preach against
the priests and steeple-houses.
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