Nor were the pious and godly Puritan divines above the follies and frailties of other men in other places and in other times. It can be said of them, as of the Jew, had they not "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?"--were they not as other men? It is recorded of Rev. Samuel Whiting, of Lynn, that "once coming among a gay partie of yong people he kist all ye maides and said yt he felt all ye better for it." And who can doubt it? Even that extreme type, that highest pinnacle of American Puritanical bigotry,--solemn and learned Cotton Mather,--had, when he was a mourning widower, a most amusing amorous episode with a rather doubtful, a decidedly shady, young Boston woman, whom he styled an "Ingenious Child," but who was far from being an ingenuous child. "She," as he proudly stated, "became charmed with my person to such a degree that she could not but break in upon me with her most importunate requests." And a very handsome and thoroughly attractive person does his portrait show even to modern eyes. Poor Cotton resisted the wiles of the devil in this alluring form, though he had to fast and pray three consecutive nights ere the strong Puritan spirit conquered the weak flesh, and he could consent and resolve to give up the thought of marrying the siren. His self-denial and firmness deserved a better reward than the very trying matrimonial "venture" that he afterwards made. Many another Puritan parson has left record of his wooings that are warm to read. And well did the parsons' wives deserve their ardent wooings and their tender love-letters. Hard as was the minister's life, over-filled as was his time, highly taxed as were his resources, all these hardships were felt in double proportion by the minister's wife. The old Hebrew standard of praise quoted by Cotton Mather, "A woman worthy to be the wife of a priest," was keenly epigrammatic; and ample proof of the wise insight of the standard of comparison may be found in the lives of "the pious, prudent, and prayerful" wives of New England ministers. What wonder that their praises were sung in many loving though halting threnodies, in long-winded but tender eulogies, in labored anagrams, in quaintly spelled epitaphs?--for the ministers' wives were the saints of the Puritan calendar. XXI. The Ministers' Pay.