Free A Private History of Happiness by George Myerson Page B

used to lead. Here and now this particular gate mattered because it was his. Here his wife and children, as well as these sparrows, had their home.
    Now he could look back over the “level plain” where he had traveled to be with his family once again. He could still feel the hardships of his journey. He had had his share of bad fortune, but now luck had favored him in the best way possible. He could feel how much this reunion also meant to his wife and their children, seeing him suddenly emerge from the perilous world beyond. Their tears, barely suppressed, contained the intensity of their joyful relief.
    He continued the poem with another glimpse of this peaceful local world: “The garden wall with neighbours’ heads is lined. / Each breast surcharging breaks in sighings kind.”

Deep Gratitude for Health
    John Hull, silversmith and businessman, writing in his diary
    BOSTON • SUMMER OF 1658
    7th of 7th [July]. My cousin Daniel Quincy was also cast upon his sick-bed, within a week after the other [Robert Sanderson’s son, John], and had also the fever, and was brought very low, but, through God’s favour, well recovered by the 17th of 8th [August]. My wife was ill when these [two] first began to be sick: but it pleased God, as they sickened, she strengthened; and He kept her, and my little daughter Hannah, that then sucked upon her, from any spice of the fever, though continually necessitated to be in the same chamber. The Lord make me sensible of his hand, and of the mixtures of his mercy to me therein, though most unworthy.

    John Hull came to Boston from England with his parents in 1635, when he was about ten years old. He became a successful member of the Massachusetts colony, training as a silversmith and then being appointed mintmaster. In partnership with Robert Sanderson, he devised and made the first coinage for the Massachusetts mint. In 1647, he married Judith Quincy, from one of the leading families in Boston.
    They had already lost children in infancy before “the fever” (probably the measles) came to the colony in 1658. He had watched the sickness getting closer to his own family: “My cousin Daniel Quincy was also cast upon his sick-bed, within a week after the other, and had also the fever.”His wife became ill around the same time. It was a time of desperate fear.
    Hull’s wife, Judith, might have caught the illness from the others (although infection was not understood at that time). If the sickness did pass between people in that way, then he had also reason to worry about their child, “my little daughter Hannah.” The baby could not be moved away from the mother since she was still being breast-fed. He was worried that some “spice of the fever” might pass to the baby. She was small and frail; how could she possibly survive when adultsdid sicken and die? His fear was vividly caught by the word “spice,” which suggested that the merest little grain of the disease could be too much.
    But his fear was proven groundless. Instead of disaster, there came recovery. His wife regained her health as “she strengthened,” and their baby daughter had been kept safe from the scourge. He expressed the sudden happy relief as thanks to God: “The Lord make me sensible of his hand.” For some time past, he must have been tormented by a fear of malign fate. Now he was able to feel thankful again for God’s “mixtures of his mercy to me therein.”
    He felt that he had done nothing to deserve such blessings. That was part of the unspeakable joy that came to him, “though most unworthy.”
    Eighteen years later his daughter, Hannah, married the judge and writer Samuel Sewall. On her wedding day, John Hull is said to have given her an unusual dowry: her weight measured in his pine-tree coins, some of the first American colonial coinage.
    Such deliverance from the ominous shadow of loss remains a profound part of all family love. The seventeenth-century father expressed his joy with careful