Eleven children--six sons and five daughters--blessed the union of Comfort and Faithful Makepeace, and the expressive appellations which they received, denoted well the vocabulary from which the names were selected. Comfort, junior, Ezekiel, Hezekiah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Preserved, told the males of the family, and those of the other sex were distinguished by names of equal import; Patience, Hope, Faith, Peace, and Charity. One after another, in regular succession, they grew up, and with the labor of older days sought to repay the care expended in their training. Their parents had entailed upon them no feeble constitutions, and the rigid rules by which they were reared, permitted of no such fashion of dress as should endanger the proper harmony of the system. Though a connoisseur might have applied to the features of the girls some more expressive epithet than that of mere plainness, they boasted of ruddy cheeks, and sparkling eyes, and healthful forms, that many a pale-looking belle might have envied. Comfort had little faith in the teachings of later sages, who waged war with the precepts of Solomon, and he felt no inclination to spoil the child by spare use of the correcting rod. Many a puritanical principle, that illy accorded with the free spirit of childhood, was drummed into the characters of his progeny; and the same effective engine was often put in requisition to check them from the commission of some worldly action. One could not look upon that staid household, from the iron-framed father down to the little tottering urchin who, ex-officio, as youngest, claimed all the privileges of pet, without comprehending at a glance the grave and rigid creed by which its concerns were regulated.
The puritanism of Comfort Makepeace was not confined to the mere matters of household regulations, or religious worship. It extended to all his business transactions, and marked all the social relations into which he was led. In the former, the most scrupulous honesty was at all times professed, though there were those, such as had little respect for the severity of his creed, who were ready to assert that he had a conscience so nice as to distinguish between telling a truth with intent to deceive, and absolute falsehood. A notorious stickler for what he termed the right, he was always found ready to drive a good bargain; and if report spoke truly, to overreach his neighbor, where it might be done without a palpable infringement of the rules of trade. In his neighborly intercourse, he ever preserved the same sober demeanor, using no unnecessary language, rarely indulging in a smile, and never in a decided laugh. Comfort could not be called unneighborly, nor did he ever acquire the credit of liberality. The poor went not away empty-handed, if copious meeds of advice and exhortation counted or availed aught; and sometimes they might rejoice in the gift of more substantial worldly aid. All may have heard of the person who excused dry eyes at an affecting charity discourse, by professing to belong to another parish; and it might not have unfrequently happened, that those who appealed to the benevolence of Comfort Makepeace, found him in a situation not widely dissimilar. Certainly, the rigidity of his principles did not permit him to associate with those who were denominated unsaintly, any farther than was necessary in the transaction of his worldly affairs. Yet Comfort lived too late in the world, to be wholly devoid of generous feeling. Apparent distress seldom failed to moisten his cheek with the tear of sympathy, or to touch him in that generally less sensitive spot--the purse.