among them, still persisted in their labours for these people. Cotton Mather sets down the fact that Judge Sewall built a meeting-house at his own charge for one of the Indian congregations and "gave those Indians cause to pray for him because he loveth our nation for he hath built us a synagogue. 999 This meeting-house was in Sandwich, Barnstable County, Cape Cod. Already Sewall had written as to ways of dealing with the race: "The best thing we can do for our Indians is to Anglicize them in all agreeable instances; in that of language as well as others. They can scarce retain their language without a tincture of other savage inclinations. . . . I should think it requisite that convenient tracts of land should be set out to them; and that by plain and natural boundaries as much as may be; as lakes, rivers, mountains, rocks; upon which for any man to encroach should be accounted a crime. Except this be done, I fear their own jealousies and the French Friars will persuade them, that the English as they increase and think they want more room will never leave till they have crowded them quite out of all their lands. And it will be a vain attempt for us to offer heaven to them, if they take up

prejudices against us as if we did grudge them a living upon their own earth.”

To the negro also Sewall was a constant friend. He wrote a remarkable anti-slavery tract "On the Selling of Joseph," and he ranks first among those who strove to give the black man a chance at decent and respectable married life. The Diary of June 22, 1716, records "I essayed to prevent Indians and negroes being rated with horses and hogs but could not prevail." As a justice he gave some highly important decisions in cases where negroes had been wronged, one of them setting forth in truly stirring language that "the poorest boys and girls within this province, such as are of the lowest condition, whether they be English or Indians or Ethiopians, they have the same right to religion and life that the richest heirs have. And they who go about to deprive them of this right, they attempt the bombarding of Heaven; and the shells they throw shall fall down upon their own heads."

Sewall experienced, of course, that very thrilling thing, the birth of a new century. The Diary of January 2, 1701, records that "just about break of day Jacob Amsden and 3 other trumpeters gave a blast with the trum

pets on the Common near Mr. Alford's. Then went to the Green Chamber and sounded there till about sunrise. Bell man said these verses a little before break-a day which I printed and gave them. The trumpeters cost me five pieces of 8." These verses were from Sewall's own pen; they were fittingly reread on Beacon Hill by the Reverend Edward Everett Hale at midnight on the eve of our present century's dawn. The first two are:

"Once more! Our God vouchsafe to shine:
Tame thou the rigor of our clime.
Make haste with thy impartial light
And terminate this long dark night.

"Let the transplanted English vine
Spread further still; still call it thine;
Prune it with skill: for yield it can
More fruit to thee the husbandman."

Nothing about the Diary is more significant than some of its omissions. When "news is brought to us" (September 17, 1714) of Queen Anne's death the only comment Sewall makes upon the sad countenance of him who bore the tidings is, "I was afraid Boston had burnt again." Anne was a High Churchwoman and had given aid and succour to the Church of England to which Sewall had refused to sell