■ The Three Secretaries 209 



thoroughly, Indeed, that Montagu held him in high regard 

 ever after. ^ 



Among those who were close of kin to Mr. Langley's 

 forefathers were Michael Wigglesworth, author of that stern 

 Calvinistic poem, "The Day of Doom," and the Reverend 

 Nathaniel Ward, the earliest of political satirists in America, 

 whose pamphlet, "The Simple Cobler of Aggawam," is one 

 of the classics of our literature. There were also Doctor 

 Zabdiel Boylston, of Boston, the successful pioneer of small- 

 pox inoculation in America, elected to the Royal Society in 

 1785, in recognition of his achievements as a naturalist, and 

 his son John Boylston, founder of the Boylston Fund ; the 

 Reverend John Cotton, who revised and edited Eliot's Indian 

 Bible, and his brother Josiah, missionary, and author of the 

 first vocabulary of the language of the Indians of Massa- 

 chusetts ; and all the Mathers, — a wonderful group of men. 

 A little further removed were John Adams and John Quincy 

 Adams, Presidents of the United States, and John Cotton 

 Smith, Governor of Connecticut. 



These facts, however interesting in themselves, are men- 

 tioned here solely because of their bearing upon the 

 question of heredity. Traits and tendencies transmitted 

 from parent to child cannot be measured and summed up 

 in a statistical manner. The character of these can only 

 be suggested by an enumeration like the one which has 

 just been attempted, following in some degree the method 

 of Galton. 



It is interesting to note, in passing, that Mr. Langley, 

 though a Yankee of the Yankees, descended on all sides from 

 families resident in New England from two hundred to two 

 hundred and sixty years, has none of the traits, physical or 

 mental, which are popularly, though erroneously, supposed to 



1 Drake, Francis Samuel, " The Town of Roxbury," Boston, 1878, page 326. 



