In fact it may plainly be seen that widows were life-saving stations in colonial social economy; one colonist expressed his attitude towards widows and their Providential function as economic aids, thus:-- Our uncle is not at present able to pay you or any other he owes money to. If he was able to pay he would; they must have patience till God enable him. As his wife died in mercy near twelve months since, it may be he may light of some rich widow that may make him capable to pay; except God in this way raise him he cannot pay you or any one else. It certainly must have been some satisfaction to every woman to feel within herself the possibility of becoming such a celestial agent of material salvation. I wish to state, in passing, that it is sometimes difficult to judge as to the marital estate of some dames, to know whether they were widows at the time of the second marriage or not, for the prefixed Mrs. was used indifferently for married and single women, and even for young girls. Cotton Mather wrote of “Mrs. Sarah Gerrish, a very beautiful and ingenious damsel seven years of age.” Rev. Mr. Tompson wrote a funeral tribute to a little girl of six, which is entitled and begins thus:-- A Neighbors Tears dropt on ye grave of an Amiable Virgin, a pleasant Plant cut down in the blooming of her Spring viz; Mrs Rebecka Sewall Anno Aetatis 6, August ye 4ᵗʰ 1710. I saw this Pritty Lamb but t’other day With a small flock of Doves just in my way Ah pitty tis Such Prittiness should die With rare alliances on every side. Had Old Physitians liv’d she ne’er had died. The pious old minister did not really mean by this tribute to the old-school doctors, that Mrs. Rebecka would have achieved earthly immortality. He modestly ends his poetic tribute thus:-- Had you given warning ere you pleased to Die You might have had a Neater Elegy. These consorts and relicts are now but shadows of the past:-- their bones are dust, Their souls are with the saints, I trust. The honest and kindly gentlemen who were their husbands, sounded their virtues in diaries and letters; godly ministers preached their piety in labored and dry-as-dust sermons. Their charms were sung by colonial poets in elegies, anagrams, epicediums, acrostics, threnodies, and other decorous verse. It was reserved for a man of war, and not a very godly man of war either, to pæan their good sense. Cervantes says that “womans counsel is not worth much, yet he who despises it is no wiser than he should be.” With John Underhill’s more gallant tribute to the counsel of a consort, we may fitly end this chapter.