said to have loved, proved well that she too had
come of no unworthy stock.

It has been given few women to be so worthily
loved as was Alice Adams, from the time we catch
our first glimpse of her till the last, in her eighty-ninth
year. She was born in June, 1757. Her
mother married Deacon Hale when Alice was in
her thirteenth year. We do not know when Alice
first met Nathan Hale; but we do know that while
both were very young they found out that they
loved each other, and proceeded to engage themselves
without consulting their elders. Nathan
had several years of work preparatory to his profession
still before him, and, acting as they supposed
in the best interests of both the boy and the
girl, the mother and elder sister Sarah promptly
discouraged the engagement and it was broken.

In February, 1773, while Nathan was still at
Yale and before she was sixteen, Alice was married
to Elijah Ripley, a prosperous merchant at Coventry.
Within two years Mr. Ripley died, aged
twenty-eight, leaving behind him a little son, also
named Elijah, who died in his second year.

After Mr. Ripley's death, Mrs. Ripley with her
baby boy returned to Deacon Hale's home almost
as an adopted daughter, comfortably provided for
by the estate of her late husband. A member of

[[119]]

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v?