age was a fortunate one--is the fact that the
Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion, which stood
directly opposite my grandfather's house on Court Street and was torn
down in my childhood, to my great consternation. The building had been
unoccupied for a quarter of a century, and was fast falling into decay
with all its rich wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not
full of ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather's
house just across the way? Where else could they bestow themselves so
conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in process of destruction, I
used to peep round the corner of our barn at the workmen, and watch the
indignant phantoms go soaring upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.

A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary
Atkinson (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to the lot
of the Rev. William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church between 1733
and 1747. From the worldly standpoint, it was a fine match for the
Newcastle clergyman--beauty, of the eagle-beaked kind; wealth, her share
of the family plate; high birth, a sister to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson.
But if the exemplary man had cast his eyes lower, peradventure he had
found more happiness, though ill-bred persons without family plate are
not necessarily amiable. Like Socrates, this long-suffering divine had
always with him an object on which to cultivate heavenly patience, and
patience, says the Eastern proverb, is the key to content. The spirit
of Xantippe seems to have taken possession of Mrs. Shurtleff immediately
after her marriage. The freakish disrespect with which she used her
meek consort was a heavy cross to bear at a period in New England when
clerical dignity was at its highest sensitive point. Her devices for
torturing the poor gentleman were inexhaustible. Now she lets his
Sabbath ruffs go unstarched; now she scandalizes him by some unseemly
and frivolous color in her attire; now she leaves him to cook his own
dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she locks him in his study, whither
he has retired for a moment or two of prayer, previous to setting forth
to perform the morning service. The congregation has assembled; the
sexton has tolled the bell twice as long as is custom, and is beginning
a third carillon, full of wonder that his reverence does not appear;
and there sits Mistress Sh