gantic elm kept watch and ward. The house in
which we lived was also part of the chapel estate, and, if it was a
little way off, it was, at any rate, adapted to the wants of a family of
quiet habits and simple tastes. On one side of the house was a
water-butt, and I can well remember my first sad experience of the
wickedness of the world when, getting up one morning to look after my
rabbits and other live stock, I found that water-butt had gone, and that
there were thieves in a village so rural and renowned for piety as ours.
I say renowned, and not without reason. Years and years back there was a
pious clergyman of the name of Steffe, who had a son in Dr. Doddridge's
Academy, at Daventry, and it is a fact that the great Doctor himself, at
some time or other, had been a guest in the village.

In 1741 the Doctor thus records his East Anglian recollections, in a
letter to his wife: 'You have great reason to confide in that very kind
Providence which has hitherto watched over us, and has, since the date of
my last, brought us about sixty miles nearer London. From Yarmouth we
went on Friday morning to Wrentham, where good Mrs. Steffe lives, and
from thence to a gentleman's seat, near Walpole, where I was most
respectfully entertained. As I had twenty miles to ride yesterday
morning, he, though I had never seen him before last Tuesday, brought me
almost half-way in his chaise, to make the journey easier. I reached
Woodbridge before two, and rode better in the cool of the evening, and
had the happiness to be entertained in a very elegant and friendly
family, though perfectly a stranger; and, indeed, I have been escorted
from one place to another in every mile of my journey by one, and
sometimes by two or three, of my brethren in a most respectful and
agreeable manner.' Dr. Doddridge's East Anglian recollections seem to
have been uncommonly agreeable, owing quite as much, I must candidly
confess, to the presence of the sisters as of the brethren. Writing to
his wife an account of a little trip on the river, he adds: 'It was a
very pleasant day, and I concluded it in the company of one of the finest
women I ever beheld, who, though she had seven children grown up to
marriageable years, or very near it, is still herself almost a beauty,
and a person of sense, good breeding, and piety, which might astonish one
who had not the happiness of being intimately acquainted with you.' What
a sly rogue was Dr. Doddridge! How coul