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ANNE BRADSTREET.

CHAPTER XIII.

chances and changes.


WITH the appearance of the little volume and the passing of the flutter of interest and excitement it had aroused, the Andover life subsided into the channel through which, save for one or two breaks, it was destined to run for many years. Until 1653, nothing of note had taken place, but this year brought two events, one full of the proud but quiet satisfaction the Puritan mother felt in a son who had ended his college course with distinction, and come home to renew the associations somewhat broken in his four years absence; the other, a sorrow though hardly an unexpected one. Samuel Bradstreet, who became a physician, living for many years in Boston, which he finally left for the West Indies, was about twenty at the time of his graduation from Harvard, the success of which was very near Anne Bradstreet's heart and the pride of his grandfather, Governor Dudley, who barely lived to see the fruition of his wishes for this first child of his favorite daughter. His death in July, 1653, softened the feeling that seems slowly to have arisen against him in the minds of many who had been his friends, not without reason, though many of them had showed quite as thorough intolerance as