to the truth of the above written | Sept. 21th, 1683, before | Samll Nowell, Assist.
"The interlines [as aforesaid], line 19th, and [as they informed me] line 22th, were before | the Oath was made."
The brackets are in the original and were used as quotations marks. Governor Bradstreet's name and all above it are in his handwriting; all below it is in Mr. Nowell's.
Another Mercy Bradstreet, niece of the Mercy whose name figures in the foregoing statement, and the daughter of the oldest son, married Dr. James Oliver, from whom are descended Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Wendell Phillips, while Lucy, the daughter of Simon, the second son, became the ancestress of Dr. Channing and of Richard N. Dana, the poet and his distinguished son. Many of the grandchildren died in infancy, and the pages of the second edition of their grandmother's poems are sprinkled with elegies long and short, upon the babies almost as well loved as her own, though none of them have any poetical merit. But her thoughts dwelt chiefly in the world for which she longed, and there are constant reminders of what careless hold she kept upon the life which had come to be simply a burden to be borne with such patience as might be given her.
