“As for my parents I am obliged By the Law of god; to Honour them, & thus I say in short (first) they are of no mean Family; (secondly) they are of no mean Learning, & (thirdly) they are of no mean account and note in the World: tho they are not of ye world But the truth & certainty of this I Leave to be proved; By Severall of no mean note in this Province and the next.” Mr. Keach evidently refers to the Provinces of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. After several lines that it is impossible to decipher, we extract the following hope: “That the Silver Streams of my Dearest Affections and faithfull Love will be willingly received into the Mill Pond of your tender Virgin Heart; by your halling up the flood gate of your virtuous Love and Affections; which will completely turn the Wheeles of your Gracious will and Understanding to receive the golden graines or Effects of my Steadfast Love and unerring Affection which will be in Loyall respective and Obliging Service so Long as Life Shall Last and such a thrice Happy Conjunction; may induce Many to bring bags of Golden graines of Rejoycing to our Mill and River of joy and contentment and we ourselves will sing ye Epithalmy; this is the Earnest (yet Languishing) Desire of his Soul who hath sent his heart with his Letter:”[33] The foregoing epistle is connected with a curious chapter in the religious life of the Lower Counties of Pennsylvania.[34] The writer, a son of the celebrated controversialist and Baptist divine of London, Benjamin Keach, made himself notorious in the early days of the Colony by passing himself off as a minister of the Baptist Church. “A very wild spark,” one historian calls him, while even in Baptist annals Elias Keach is spoken of as “an ungodly young man, who, to make himself appear to be a clergyman, wore black clothing and bands.” He carried his imposture so far as to undertake to conduct a service, in the midst of which he broke down, and when the congregation gathered about him, thinking that he was attacked by some sudden indisposition, Mr. Keach confessed, “with tears and much trembling,” that he was no minister, nor a Christian. Whether this shady episode, which occurred in 1686, the same year that the love-letter was written to Miss Helm, prevented the mistress of his “Amorous and Virtuous Affections” from favoring his suit, contemporaneous history does not reveal. It does, however, establish the fact that Miss More, daughter of Chief Justice Nicholas More, of Pennsylvania, and not Miss Helm, became the wife of the polite letter-writer. It would be interesting to know with what sort of a declaratory effusion this second love was favored. On this point history is again silent. It states, however, what it is only just to repeat with regard to the subsequent career of Elias Keach,--namely, that he repented of his sins before he created further scandal in clerical circles. Having confessed, and having received absolution and