These lines were a part of the epitaph said to be composed by Governor Thomas Dudley, who died at Andover, Mass., in 1653. They were found after his death and preserved in Morton's New England's Memorial. They run thus:—
Dim eyes, deaf ears, cold stomach show
My dissolution is in view;
Eleven times seven near lived have I,
And now God calls, I willing die;
My shuttle's shot, my race is run,
My sun is set, my deed is done;
My span is measur'd, tale is told,
My flower is faded and grown old,
My dream is vanish'd, shadow's fled,
My soul with Christ, my body dead;
Farewell dear wife, children and friends,
Hate heresy, make blessed ends;
Bear poverty, live with good men,
So shall we meet with joy again.
Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch;
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice,
To prison all with heresy and vice.
If men be left, and other wise combine
My epitaph's, I dy'd no libertine.
Miss Polly Vans was Mary Vans, daughter of Hugh and Mary Pemberton Vans, and aunt of Caty Vans. She was born in 1733. We have some scattered glimpses of her life. She joined the Old South
in 1755. In the Boston Gazette, of April 9, 1770, we read, "Fan Mounts mounted by Mary Vans at the house of Deacon Williams, in Cornhill." We hear of her at Attleborough with Samuel Whitwell's wife when the gates of Boston were closed, and we know she married Deacon Jonathan Mason on Sunday evening, December 20, 1778. She was his second wife. His first wife was Miriam Clark, and was probably the Mrs. Mason who was present at Mrs. Whitwell's, and died June 5, 1774. Mary Vans Mason lived till 1820, having witnessed the termination of eight of the pastorates of the Old South Church. Well might Anna term her "a Sister of the Old South." She was in 1817 the President of the Old South Charity School, and is described as a "disinterested friend, a judicious adviser, an affectionate counsellor, a mild but faithful reprover, a humble, self-denying, fervent, active, cheerful Christian." Jonathan Mason was not only a deacon, but a prosperous merchant and citizen. He helped to found the first bank in New England. His son was United States Senator. Two other daughters of Hugh Vans were a Mrs. Langdon, of Wiscasset, Maine, and Mrs. John Coburn.
St. Valentine's Day was one of the few English holidays observed in New England. We find even Governor Winthrop writing to his wife about "challenging a valentine." In England at that date, and for a century previous, the first person of the opposite
sex seen in the morning was the observer's valentine. We find Madam Pepys lying in bed for a long time one St. Valentine's morning with eyes tightly closed, lest she see one of the painters who was gilding her new mantelpiece, and be forced to have him for her valentine. Anna means, doubtless, that the first person she chanced to see that morning was "an old country plow-joger."
Boston was at that date pervaded by the spirit of Liberty. Sons of Liberty held meetings every day and every night. Daughters of Liberty held spinning and weaving bees, and gathered in bands pledging themselves to drink no tea till the obnoxious revenue act was repealed. Young unmarried girls joined in an association with the proud declaration, "We, the daughters of those Patriots who have appeared for the public interest, do now with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea." Even the children felt the thrill of revolt and joined in patriotic demonstrations—and a year or two later the entire graduating class at Harvard, to encourage home manufactures, took their degrees in homespun.