"Yes; a family chair must have a deeper history than a Chair of State." "O, yes!" cried Clara, expressing a woman's feeling on the point in question, "The history of a country is not nearly so interesting as that of a single family would be." "But the history of a country is more easily told," said Grandfather.

"So, if we proceed with our narrative of the chair, I shall still confine myself to its connection with public events." Good old Grandfather now rose and quitted the room, while the children remained gazing at the chair.

Laurence, so vivid was his conception of past times, would hardly have deemed it strange, if its former occupants, one after another, had resumed the seat which they had each left vacant, such a dim length of years ago.
First, the gentle and lovely lady Arbella would have been seen in the old chair, almost sinking out of its arms, for very weakness; then Roger Williams, in his cloak and band, earnest, energetic, and benevolent; then the figure of Anne Hutchinson, with the like gesture as when she presided at the assemblages of women; then the dark, intellectual face of Vane, "young in years, but in sage counsel old." Next would have appeared the successive governors, Winthrop, Dudley, Bellingham, and Endicott, who sat in the chair, while it was a Chair of State.

Then its ample seat would have been pressed by the comfortable, rotund corporation of the honest mint-master.

Then the half-frenzied shape of Mary Dyer, the persecuted Quaker woman, clad in sackcloth and ashes, would have rested in it for a moment.