Sometimes, as Grandfather gazed at their fair, unworldly countenances, a mist of tears bedimmed his spectacles.  He almost regretted that it was necessary for them to know any thing of the past, or to provide aught for the future.  He could have wished that they might be always the happy, youthful creatures, who had hitherto sported around his chair, without inquiring whether it had a history.  It grieved him to think that his little Alice, who was a flower-bud fresh from paradise, must open her leaves to the rough breezes of the world, or ever open them in any clime.  So sweet a child she was, that it seemed fit her infancy should be immortal!

But such repinings were merely flitting shadows across the old man’s heart.  He had faith enough to believe, and wisdom enough to know, that the bloom of the flower would be even holier and happier than its bud.  Even within himself,—­though Grandfather was now at that period of life, when the veil of mortality is apt to hang heavily over the soul,—­still, in his inmost being, he was conscious of something that he would not have exchanged for the best happiness of childhood.  It was a bliss to which every sort of earthly experience,—­all that he had enjoyed or suffered, or seen, or heard, or acted, with the broodings of his soul upon the whole,—­had contributed somewhat.  In the same manner must a bliss, of which now they could have no conception, grow up within these children, and form a part of their sustenance for immortality.

So Grandfather, with renewed cheerfulness, continued his history of the chair, trusting that a profounder wisdom than his own would extract, from these flowers and weeds of Time, a fragrance that might last beyond all time.

At this period of the story, Grandfather threw a glance backward, as far as the year 1660.  He spoke of the ill-concealed reluctance with which the Puritans in America had acknowledged the sway of Charles the Second, on his restoration to his father’s throne.  When death had stricken Oliver Cromwell, that mighty protector had no sincerer mourners than in New England.  The new king had been more than a year upon the throne before his accession was proclaimed in Boston; although the neglect to perform the ceremony might have subjected the rulers to the charge of treason.

During the reign of Charles the Second, however, the American colonies had but little reason to complain of harsh or tyrannical treatment.  But when Charles died, in 1685, and was succeeded by his brother James, the patriarchs of New England began to tremble.  King James was a bigoted Roman Catholic, and was known to be of an arbitrary temper.  It was feared by all Protestants, and chiefly by the Puritians, that he would assume despotic power, and attempt to establish Popery throughout his dominions.  Our forefathers felt that they had no security either for their religion or their liberties.