voiceless poetry in the heart of the most prosaic Puritan swain.
There is little of aristocratic sound in Mary Loker's name, but her
parents sat on Sunday at the meeting house in a "dignified" pew, and
were rich in fields and cattle. Whether pushed by pride of land or pride
of birth, in their plans and aspirations, this daughter was
predestinated to enhance the family dignity by an aristocratic alliance.
In Colonial days a maiden who added a handsome prospective dowry to her
personal witchery was rare indeed, and Mary Loker had, coming from far
and near, inflammable suitors perpetually burning at her shrine. From
among these the father and mother soon made their choice upon strictly
business principles, and shortly announced to Mary that a certain
ambitious gentleman of the legal profession had furnished the most
satisfactory credentials, and that nothing remained but for her to name
the day. Now the fourth commandment was very far from being the dead
letter in 1670 that it is in 1885, and it was matter for grave surprise
to the elders that their usually obedient daughter, when the lawyer
proceeded to plead, refused to hear, and peremptorily adjourned his
cause without day. Maternal expostulation and paternal threats availed
nothing. The because of Mary's contumacy was not far to seek. A stalwart
Vulcan in the guise of an Antinous, known as Jonas Prescott, had
wandered from his father's forge in Lancaster down the Bay Path to
Sudbury. Mary and he had met, and the lingering of their parting boded
ill for any predestination not stamped with their joint seal of consent.
With that lack of astuteness proverbially exhibited by parents
disappointed in match-making designs upon their children, the vexed
father and mother began a course of vigorous repression, and thereby
riveted more firmly than ever the chains which the errant young
blacksmith and his apprentice Cupid had forged. In due time, they
perforce learned that love's flame burns the brighter fed upon a bread
and water diet; and that confinement to an attic may be quite endurable
when Cupid's messages fly in and out of its lattice at pleasure.

Finally Mary was secretly sent to an out-of-the-way neighborhood in the
vain hope that the chill of absence might hinder what home rule had only
served to help. But one day Jonas on a hunting excursion made the
acquaintance of some youth, who, among other chitchat, happened to break
into ecstatic praise of the graces of a certai