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[260] of their humble dwelling. ‘This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill. The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when, in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. Very beautifully hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom.’ ‘Yea, John,’ answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; ‘the Lord is, indeed, no respecter of persons. He hath given the wild savages a more goodly show than any in Old England. Yet, John, I am sometimes very sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you and I used to sit of a Sunday evening. The Lord hath been very bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of Israel of old, “ How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!” But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not the God of our fathers.’ ‘Nay,’ answered her husband, ‘the heathen may be visited and redeemed, the spirit of the Lord may turn unto the Gentiles; but a more sure evil hath arisen among us. I tell thee, Alice, it shall be more tolerable in the day of the Lord, for the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the heathen, than for the schemers, the ranters, the Familists, and the Quakers, who, like Satan of old, are coming among the sons of God.’ ‘I thought,’ said Alice, ‘that our godly governor had banished these out of the colony.’ ‘Truly he hath,’ answered Mr. Ward, ‘but the evil seed they have sown here continues to ’
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
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