There was a soured, abusive, intolerant old fellow in New England in the year 1700, a “vituperative epithetizer,” ready to throw mud on everything around him (though not working—to my knowledge—in cleaning out any mud-holes). He was not abusive because he was a Puritan, but because “it was his nature to.” He styled himself a “Simple Cobbler,” and he announced himself “willing to Mend his Native Country, lamentably tattered both in the upper Leather and in the Sole, with all the Honest Stitches he can take,” but he took out his aid in loud hammering of his lapstone and noisy protesting against all other footwear than his own. I fancy he thought himself another Stubbes. I know of no whole soles he set, nor any holes he mended, and his “Simple” ideas are so involved in expression, in such twisted sentences, and with such “strange Ink-pot termes” and so many Latin quotations and derivatives, that I doubt if many sensible folk knew what he meant, even in his own day. His words have none of the directness, the force, the interest that have the writings of old Stubbes. Such words as nugiperous, perquisquilian, ill-shapen-shotten, nudistertian, futulous, overturcased, quaematry, surquedryes, prodromie, would seem to apply ill to woman’s attire; they really fall wide of the mark if intended as weapons, but it was to such vain dames as the governor’s wife that the Simple Cobbler applied them. Some of the ministers of the colony, terrified by the Indian outbreaks, gloomily held the vanity and extravagance of dames and goodwives as responsible for them all. Others, with broader minds, could discern that both the open and the subtle influence of good clothes was needed in the new community. They gave an air of cheerfulness, of substance, of stability, which is of importance in any new venture. For the governor’s wife to dress richly and in the best London modes added lustre to the governor’s office. And when the excitement had quieted and the sullen Indian sachem and his tawny braves stalked through the little town in their gay, barbaric trappings, they were sensible that Madam Symonds’s embroidered satin manteau was rich and costly, even if they did not know what we know, that it was the top of the mode. Governor Symonds’s home in Ipswich was on the ground where the old seminary building now stands; but the happy married pair spent much of the time at his farm-house on Argilla Farm, on Heart-Break Hill, by Labor-in-vain Creek, which was also in Ipswich County. This lonely farm, so sad in name, was the only dwelling-place in that region; it was so remote that when Indian assault was daily feared, the general court voted to station there a guard of soldiers at public expense because the governor was “so much in the country’s service.” He says distinctly, however, concerning the bargain in the purchase of Argilla Farm, that his wife was well content with it. Penelope Winslow. Penelope Winslow.