CHAPTER X.
village life in 1650.
OF the eight children that came to Simon and Anne Bradstreet, but one was born in the "great house" at Andover, making his appearance in 1652, when life had settled into the routine that thereafter knew little change, save in the one disastrous experience of 1666. This son, John, who like all the rest, lived to marry and leave behind him a plenteous family of children, was a baby of one year old, when the first son, Samuel, "stayed for many years," was graduated at Harvard College, taking high honor in his class, and presently settling as a physician in Boston, sufficiently near to be called upon in any emergency in the Andover home, and visited often by the younger brothers, each of whom became a Harvard graduate. Samuel probably had no share in the removal, but Dorothy and Sarah, Simon and Hannah, were all old enough to rejoice in the upheaval, and regard the whole episode as a prolonged picnic made for their especial benefit. Simon was then six years old, quite ready for Latin grammar and other responsibilities of life, and according to the Puritan standard, an accountable being from whom too much trifling could by no means be
