Such an array of widows! Boston fairly blossomed with widows, the widows of all the "true New England men" whose wills Sewall had drawn up, whose dying bedsides he had blessed and harassed with his prayers, whose bodies he had borne to the grave, whose funeral gloves and scarves and rings he had received and apprized, and whose estates he had settled. Over this sombre flower-bed of black garbed widows, these hardy perennials, did this aged Puritan butterfly amorously hover, loth to settle, tasting each solemn sweet, calculating the richness of the soil in which each was planted, gauging the golden promise of fruit, and perhaps longing for the whole garden of full-blown blossoms. "Antient maides" were held in little esteem by him; not one thornback is on his list.

Not only did he look and wander, but all his friends and neighbors arose and began to suggest and search for a suitable wife for him, with as officious alacrity as if he needed help, which he certainly did not. In March Madam Henchman strongly recommended to him Madam Winthrop, the Major General's widow." This recommendation was very sweet to the widower, who had turned his eyes with such special approval on this special widow, and further and warm encouragement came quickly.

The Olivers' aunt was Madam Winthrop. It would seem somewhat presumptuous and officious for nieces and nephews to suggest courtship, when there were grown up Winthrop children who might dislike the marriage, but in those days everyone meddled in love affairs; to quote Pope: "Marriage was the theme on which they all declaimed." The Judge gossiped publicly about his intentions. He writes: "They had laid one out for me, and Governor Dudley told me 'twas Madam Winthrop. I told him I had been there but thrice and twice upon business. He said cave tertium." Even solemn Cotton Mather proffered counsel in a letter on "paying regards to the Widow."

In spite of all these hints and commendations, and the Judge's evident pleasure in receiving them, the Winthrop agitation all came to naught, for about this time he was called to make a will for a Mr. Denison, of Roxbury, who died on March 22d. Though the Judge was too upright and too pious to let even his thoughts wander to a wife, the amazing