especially the Assembly's Catechism, five hundred copies of which he gave away to the children of his relations. Sewall had now gone to live at Cotton Hill, on Tremont street, almost opposite King's Chapel burying ground, on property which once belonged to Sir Harry Vane. In the colony records we find (1684): "In answer of the petition of Sam' Sewall Esq, humbly showing that his house of wood in Boston, at the hill where the Revd John Cotton former dwelt, which house is considerably distant from other building and standeth very bleak, he humbly desiring the favour of this court to grant him liberty to build a small porch of wood, about seven foot square, to break off the wind from the fore door of said house, the court grants his request." A pleasant glimpse of the social life of the period is gained from an entry made in the Diary the spring following the building of this porch: "June 20, Carried my wife to Dorchester to eat Cherries and Raspberries, chiefly to ride and take the air; the time my wife and Mrs. Flint spent in the orchard I spent in Mr. Flint's study reading Calvin on the Psalms.” The following January he tells us that the cold was so extreme that the " harbour is frozen up and to the Castle, so cold that the sacramental bread is frozen pretty bad and rattles sadly as broken into the plates." From November, 1688, to November, 1689, Sewall was abroad combining with the business of helping Increase Mather make terms with the King's government the pleasure of renewing family friendships in the land of his birth. There was naturally a good deal of sermonhearing mingled with these occupations and we find one excellent description of the fashion in which the Lord's supper was administered in England at the church of that Dr. Annesley of whom we have already heard as Dunton's father-in-law. "The Dr. went all over the meeting first, to see who was there, then spake something of the sermon, then read the words of institution, then prayed and eat and drunk himself, then gave to every one with his own hand, dropping pertinent expressions. In our pew said, Now our Spikenard should give its smell;' and said to me' Remember the death of Christ.' The wine was in quart glass bottles. The deacon followed the Doctor and when his cup was empty filled it again; as at our pew all had drunk but I, he filled the cup and then gave it to me; said as he gave it must be ready in new obedience and stick at nothing for Christ." To Cambridge and to Oxford, the colleges where many of the Puritan preachers had been educated, Sewall made pious pilgrimages with Mather and between whiles he ate and drank with his numerous relatives. At Cousin Jane Holt's" he had "good bacon, veal and parsnips, very good shoulder of mutton and a fowl roasted, good currant suet pudding and the fairest dish of apples I have eat in England." But he was very glad to get back to Boston for that city was now his dear home and he was one of its most useful citizens. In 1683 he is a deputy to the General Court from Westfield, as his father-in-law, John Hull, had been before him it being then possible for a man to be elected from a town other than that in which he lived - and he belonged to the Boston Fire Department and to the Police and Watch. In business he was prospering mightily and so was able May 23, 1693, to lay the corner-stone of his new house, next Cotton Hill, " with stones gotten out of the Common." Two years later we find the house completed and Governor Bradstreet" drinking a glass or two of wine, eating some fruit and taking a pipe or two of tobacco " under its substantial |