the bare
colonial life pressed heavily upon the writer; who, having no companions
of the intellect, turned to this record of her own mind as a prisoner
might talk to his reflection in a mirror rather than go mad from sheer
silence. Discontent and restlessness beat through the lines like
fluttering wings. She wrote of her own beauty with a cool appraisal
oddly removed from vanity, almost with resentment of a possession she
could not use.

"Like a man who finds treasure in a desert isle, I am rich in coin that
I may not spend," she wrote. "I stand before my mirror and take a tress
of my hair in either hand; I spread wide my arms full reach, yet I
cannot touch the end of those tresses. Nor can my two hands clasp the
bulk of them. There have been other women who had such hair, who were of
body straight and white, and had the eyes--but I cannot read that they
stayed poor and obscure."

There followed some quotations from the classics of which I was able to
give but vague translations when Vere passed the book to me, both
because my knowledge was scanty and because of their daring
unconventionality. There were allusions, too, to ladies of later history
who had found fairness a broad staircase for ambition to mount. Of the
writer's learning, there could be no question; a learning amazing in one
so young and so situated. The source of this became apparent. Her father
was consumed with the passion of scholarship, and the girl's hungry mind
fed in the pastures where he led the way.

Here crept into view an anomaly of character. The austere Puritan
divine, whose life was open and blank, bare and cold as a winter field,
cherished a secret dissipation of the mind. He labored upon a book on
the errors of magic. So laboring, he became snared by the thing he
denounced. He believed in the hidden lore while he condemned it. Deeper
and deeper into forbidden knowledge his eagerness for research led him.
Unsanctioned by any church were the books Dr. Michell starved his body
to buy from Jews or other furtive dealers in unusual wares. The titles
in his library comprehended the names of more charlatans than bishops.
He could define the distinctions between necromancy, sorcery, and magic.
The marvelous calculations of the Pythagoreans engaged him, and the lost
mysteries of the Cabiri.

From such studies he would arise on the Sabbath to preach sermons that
held his dull flock agape. Bitter draughts of salvation he poured for
their spiritual