The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin by Robert J. Begiebing Page B

souls. Every day there is talk of greater limitations on newcomers. And it seems as if our three magistrates are constantly placing some new ordinance for theadministration of town affairs before our Convocations for approval. Last week it was an ordinance to keep the road open to the width of three rods.
    It is in this second year of our residence in America, as I say, that Mr. C. and I have begun to apprehend the true nature of one another. He is a man of even greater ability than I had foreseen. But it is as if he pays for his ability, especially his capacity for close study and feats of memory, with humors and distractions, with fluctuations through the full range of his person. Gradually, I have become more and more impressed with the idea that Mr. C. will not lead a common life—that he will be uncommonly bad or uncommonly good.
    At first each of us endeavored to adapt our ways and habits to accommodate the needs of the other. Yet as time passes we grow less accommodating. He is never idle. He contributes his share to the town’s common work. He labors, as I do, to the function and fruition of our household. Much private time, however, he consumes with study; so much is thus consumed that as we approach the third year of our marriage we grow isolated from one another, even as we have only begun to know one another.
    We are not without our understandings and passions. Our passions correspond and remain the single living thread of our marriage. But there is too little of that love and gentleness left, too little of those sentiments and rewards upon which marriages endure happily. Brick by brick, we have begun the wall that disjoins us.
    August 22, 1645
    Persons of credit, aboard London ships freed by Parliament from custom, report the sighting of two suns setting over Cape Ann on August 20. Near the horizon lay a sun more bright than the true sun, seen above it, and a small cloud between thetwo suns. New England abounds in prodigies and providences, the meanings of which may eventually be made known to us, but the sources and meanings of which Mr. C. would fathom as they appear or as he hears of them (for the tales of such marvels and doings pass over the countryside as quickly as sunlight shifting through wind and clouds).
    September 17, 1645
    This day I resolved anew for my part to enrich our marriage by gentleness and care toward my husband. I think if Mr. C. is sometimes unreasonable, I will be reasonable, and would rather suffer wrong than do wrong. Just as I hope he will kindly overlook my infirmities and failings, with which I am conscious I abound, so I feel a forgiving spirit towards him. Some caution in our every intercourse is called for, so I determined we should best live together if we might be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” I long to obey this direction. At this moment we live in a close balance of privacy and passion, reason and unreason.
    Having borne no children in two marriages, I believe myself barren. No physic has provided remedy, even Goody Warner’s oils of mandrake, potion of beaver cods and wine, and divers simples. Considering the isolations and delicacy of my relations with Mr. C., perhaps the absence of children may be counted a blessing. He blames me, justly, for our childlessness, but it is not within a woman’s will—fruitfulness or barrenness coming from God alone. “Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?” Even as Mr. C. retreats more into the isolation of his study, so do I become more active in our domestic and civil responsibilities. And as to the economies of barter and trade, I have begun to take on the whole of those matters myself. Therein I seem to excel, and Mr. C. is satisfied to have it so.
    I have nourished a small trade in cheese and sage, and have goodwives at my door these late mornings. Some pay in spinning for me, others in pine boards, a few in tobacco or skillets or cotton wool. I have