On the wedding day we may suppose that honest John Hull dressed himself in a plum-colored coat, all the buttons of which were made of pine-tree shillings. The buttons of his waistcoat were sixpences, and the knees of his small clothes were buttoned with silver threepences. Thus attired, he sat with dignity in the huge armchair which had been brought from old England expressly for his comfort. On the other side of the room sat Miss Betsey. She was blushing with all her might, and looked like a full-blown peony or a great red apple.
There, too, was the bridegroom, dressed in a fine purple coat and gold-laced waistcoat. His hair was cropped close to his head, because Governor Endicott had forbidden any man to wear it below the ears. But he was a very personable young man; and so thought the bridesmaids and Miss Betsey herself.
When the marriage ceremony was over, Captain Hull whispered a word to two of his men servants, who immediately went out, and soon returned lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a pair as wholesale merchants use for weighing bulky commodities; and quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them.
“Daughter Betsey,” said the mint-master, “get into one side of these scales.” Miss Betsey—or Mrs. Sewell, as we must now call her—did as she was bid, like a dutiful child, without any question of why and wherefore. But what her father could mean, unless to make her husband pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear bargain), she had not the least idea.
“Now,” said honest John Hull to the servants, “bring that box hither.” The box to which the mint-master pointed was a huge, square, iron-bound, oaken chest; it was big enough, my children, for three or four of you to play at hide and seek in. The servants tugged with might and main, but could not lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to drag it across the floor. Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid.
Behold! it was full to the brim of bright pine-tree shillings fresh from the mint; and Samuel Sewell began to think that his father-in-law had got possession of all the money in the Massachusetts treasury. But it was only the mint-master’s honest share of the coinage.
Then the servants, at Captain Hull’s command, heaped double handfuls of shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the other. Jingle, jingle went the shillings, as handful after handful was thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the young lady from the floor.
“There, son Sewell!” cried the honest mint-master, “take these shillings for my daughter’s portion. It is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.”
—Adapted from “Grandfather’s Chair” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.