hundred of them.  And yet I have had more books written against me, more pamphlets to traduce and reproach me and belie me, than any man I know in the world.

“12.  What has a gracious Lord given me to do in a variety of services?  For many lustres of years, not a day has passed me, without some devices, even written devices, to be serviceable.  And yet my sufferings!  They seem to be (as in reason they should be) more than my services.  Everybody points at me, and speaks of me as by far the most afflicted minister in all New England.  And many look on me as the greatest sinner, because the greatest sufferer; and are pretty arbitrary in their conjectures upon my punished miscarriages.”

“Diary, May 7, 1724.—­The sudden death of the unhappy man who sustained the place of President in our College will open a door for my doing singular services in the best of interests.  I do not know that the care of the College will now be cast upon me, though I am told that it is what is most generally wished for.  If it should be, I shall be in abundance of distress about it; but, if it should not, yet I may do many things for the good of the College more quietly and more hopefully than formerly.

     “June 5.—­The College is in great hazard of dissipation
     and grievous destruction and confusion.  My advice to some
     that have some influence on the public may be seasonable.

“July 1, 1724.—­This day being our insipid, ill-contrived anniversary, which we call the Commencement, I chose to spend it at home in supplications, partly on the behalf of the College that it may not be foolishly thrown away, but that God may bestow such a President upon it as may prove a rich blessing unto it and unto all our churches.”

On the 18th of November, 1724, the corporation of Harvard College elected the Rev. Benjamin Colman, pastor of the Brattle-street Church in Boston, to the vacant presidential chair.  He declined the appointment.  The question hung in suspense another six months.  In June, 1725, the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, pastor of the First Church in Boston, was elected, accepted the office, and held it to his death, on the 16th of March, 1737.  It may easily be imagined how keenly these repeated slights were felt by Cotton Mather.  He died on the 13th of February, 1728.

From the early part of the spring of 1695, when the abortive attempt to settle the difficulty between Mr. Parris and the people of the village, by the umpirage of Major Gedney, was made, it evidently became the settled purpose of the leading men, on both sides, to restore harmony to the place.  On all committees, persons who had been prominent in opposition to each other were joined together, that, thus co-operating, they might become reconciled.  This is strikingly illustrated in the “seating of the meeting-house,” as it was called.  In 1699, in a seat accommodating