always be pleasing to thee, and
that these comforts we have in each other may be daily increased so
far as they be pleasing to God. I will use that speech to thee that
Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of my
lord; I will do any service wherein I may please my good husband. I
confess I cannot do enough for thee; but thou art pleased to accept
the will for the deed and rest contented. I have many reasons to
make me love thee, whereof I shall name two: First, because thou
lovest God, and secondly, because thou lovest me. If these two were
wanting all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave this
discourse and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife
to be so long from them; but I must needs borrow a little time to
talk with thee, my sweetheart. It will be but two or three weeks
before I see thee, though they be long ones. God will bring us
together in good time, for which time I shall pray. And thus with
my mother's and my own best love to yourself I shall leave
scribbling. Farewell my good husband, the Lord keep thee.

"Your obedient wife,
"MARGARET WINTHROP."

Who can read the beautiful words without feeling for that sweet
Margaret, who died two centuries ago, a thrill of the affection that
must have glowed for her in John Winthrop's heart, when, far away from
her, he first opened and read this tender letter.

Warm eulogies did many a staid New Englander write of his loving
consort, eulogies in rhyme, and epitaphs, elegies, threnodies,
epicediums, anagrams, acrostics, and pindarics, all speaking loudly of
loving, "painful" care, if not of a spirit of poesy. And the even,
virtuous tenor of the life in New England proved too a happiness and
contentment equal to the marital results of more emotional and romantic
love-making. There were some divorces. Madam Knight found that they were
plentiful in Connecticut in 1704, as they are in that State nowadays.
She writes:

"These uncomely Stand-aways are too much in vogue among the English
in this indulgent colony, as their records plentifully prove; and
that on very trivial matters of which some have been told me, but
are not Proper to be Related by a Female Pen."

In town records we find that divorces, though infrequent, still were
occasionally given in other New Eng