True Stories From History and Biography Read Free

the heat or
cold, and can keep their hearts firm against all difficulties and dangers.
But she is not one of these. Her gentle and timid spirit sinks within her;
and turning away from the window she sits down in the great chair, and
wonders thereabouts in the wilderness her friends will dig her grave.
    Mr. Johnson had gone, with Governor Winthrop and most of the other
passengers, to Boston, where he intended to build a house for Lady Arbella
and himself. Boston was then covered with wild woods, and had fewer
inhabitants even than Salem. During her husband's absence, poor Lady
Arbella felt herself growing ill, and was hardly able to stir from the
great chair. Whenever John Endicott noticed her despondency, he doubtless
addressed her with words of comfort. "Cheer up, my good lady!" he would
say. "In a little time, you will love this rude life of the wilderness as
I do." But Endicott's heart was as bold and resolute as iron, and he could
not understand why a woman's heart should not be of iron too.
    Still, however, he spoke kindly to the lady, and then hastened forth to
till his corn-field and set out fruit trees, or to bargain with the
Indians for furs, or perchance to oversee the building of a fort. Also
being a magistrate, he had often to punish some idler or evil-doer, by
ordering him to be set in the stocks or scourged at the whipping-post.
Often, too, as was the custom of the times, he and Mr. Higginson, the
minister of Salem, held long religious talks together. Thus John Endicott
was a man of multifarious business, and had no time to look back
regretfully to his native land. He felt himself fit for the new world, and
for the work that he had to do, and set himself resolutely to accomplish
it.
    What a contrast, my dear children, between this bold, rough, active man,
and the gentle Lady Arbella, who was fading away, like a pale English
flower, in the shadow of the forest! And now the great chair was often
empty, because Lady Arbella grew too weak to arise from bed.
    Meantime, her husband had pitched upon a spot for their new home. He
returned from Boston to Salem, travelling through the woods on foot, and
leaning on his pilgrim's staff. His heart yearned within him; for he was
eager to tell his wife of the new home which he had chosen. But when he
beheld her pale and hollow cheek, and found how her strength was wasted,
he must have known that her appointed home was in a better land. Happy for
him then,—happy both for him and her,—if they remembered that there was a
path to heaven, as well from this heathen wilderness as from the Christian
land whence they had come. And so, in one short month from her arrival,
the gentle Lady Arbella faded away and died. They dug a grave for her in
the new soil, where the roots of the pine trees impeded their spades; and
when her bones had rested there nearly two hundred years, and a city had
sprung up around them, a church of stone was built upon the spot.
    Charley, almost at the commencement of the foregoing narrative, had
galloped away with a prodigious clatter, upon Grandfather's stick, and was
not yet returned. So large a boy should have been ashamed to ride upon a
stick. But Laurence and Clara had listened attentively, and were affected
by this true story of the gentle lady, who had come so far to die so soon.
Grandfather had supposed that little Alice was asleep, but, towards the
close of the story, happening to look down upon her, he saw that her blue
eyes were wide open, and fixed earnestly upon his face. The tears had
gathered in them, like dew upon a delicate flower; but when Grandfather
ceased to speak, the sunshine of her smile broke forth again.
    "O, the lady must have been so glad to get to heaven!" exclaimed little
Alice.
    "Grandfather, what became of Mr. Johnson?" asked Clara.
    "His heart appears to have been quite broken," answered Grandfather; "for
he died at Boston within a month after the death of his wife. He was
buried in the very same tract of ground, where he had