NEW ENGLAND had her spurts of human nature in old times, whenever she was not taken up with the witches and the Tories, and could afford a nine-days’ wonder over so simple a thing as a marriage between high and low. For we had not got then to a professional denial of difference between high and low; not as yet had the bell of Philadelphia cracked its heart, like the philosopher Chilo, with public joy, and proclaimed the crooked ways straight, and the rough places plain. When some sweet scrub of an Agnes Surriage captured a Sir Harry, at the end of a moving third act, there was a thrill of awe and satisfaction: and forthwith the story went into our folk-lore, and very properly; since it had incidents and character. Sly damsels in Puritan caps made the most of a shifting society, full of waifs and strays from the foreign world. Royal commissioners were yet to be seen, and gold-laced Parisian barons at Newport and Norwich, and pirate Blackbeards tacking from the Shoals, and leaving sweethearts to wring ghostly hands there to this day. So that no lass had too dull an outlook upon life, nor need link herself with the neighboring yokel whom Providence had assigned her, while such splendid fish were in the seas. Let her but wed “above her,” and she shall be a fountainhead of precedent and distinction, and the sister ideal of King Cophetua’s beggar-bride. [Illustration: Gold laced dandies at Newport] [Illustration: Nor need link herself with the neighbouring yokel whom Providence had assigned her] [Illustration] [Illustration: Where Governor Wentworth was Born] [Illustration: “A fishmonger in London”] [Illustration: He had the mortification to see her prefer one Shortridge, a mechanic] [Illustration]