“When the child’s mother was dead, my husband being with me at my cousin’s burial, and seeing our friends in so sad a condition, the poor babe having lost its mother, and the woman that nursed it being fallen sick, I then did say to some of my friends, that, if my husband would give me leave, I could be very willing to take my cousin’s little one for a while, till he could better dispose of it; whereupon the child’s father did move it to my husband.  My dear husband, considering my weakness, and the incumbrance I had in the family, was pleased to return this answer,—­that he did not see how it was possible for his wife to undergo such a burden.  The next day there came a friend to our house, a woman which gave suck, and she understanding how the poor babe was left, being intreated, was willing to take it to nurse, and forthwith it was brought to her:  but it had not been with her three weeks before it pleased the Lord to visit that nurse with sickness also; and the nurse’s mother came to me desiring I would take the child from her daughter, and then my dear husband, observing the providence of God, was freely willing to receive her into his house.”

At the time when this addition was made to his family, there was certainly already in it another of his wife’s connections, who had been brought there when an infant in a manner perhaps equally singular, and who had grown up to maturity.  The particular “incumbrance,” however, spoken of by her, related to another matter.  She was an only daughter.  Her father had died many years before, at quite an advanced age.  Her mother, who was sickly and infirm as well as aged, was taken immediately into her family, and remained under her roof until her death.  In her weak and helpless condition, much care and exertion were thrown upon her daughter.  The only objection the captain seemed to have to increasing the burden of the household, by receiving into it this additional child with its nurse, resulted from conjugal tenderness and considerateness.  It must be confessed that there are some indications of well-arranged management in the foregoing account.  The friend who happened to call at the house the “next day,” and who was able to supply what the “poor babe” needed, certainly came very opportunely; and there was altogether a remarkable concurrence and sequence of circumstances.  But all that he saw was a case of suffering, helpless innocence, and an opportunity for benevolence and charity; and in these, with a true theology, he read “a providence of God.”  That child continued, to the hour when he took his last farewell of his family, beneath his roof, and was an object of affectionate care, and in her amiable qualities a source of happiness to him and his good wife.  It is stated that the children, thus from time to time domesticated in the family, called him father, and that he addressed them as his children.  While they were infants, he was “a tender nursing father” to them.  When fondling them in his arms, in the presence of his wife, he would solemnly take notice of the providence of God that had “disposed of them from one place to another” until they had been brought to him; and “would present them in his desires to God, and implore a blessing upon them.”