diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 02:12:35 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 02:12:35 -0700 |
| commit | 2c508c00e9cf2d5190c19cfe210092902cfc0baa (patch) | |
| tree | 00937f7a883848a766fd064a685240d23df9f55b | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 24159-8.txt | 10490 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 24159-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 246029 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 24159-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 256794 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 24159-h/24159-h.htm | 10771 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 24159.txt | 10490 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 24159.zip | bin | 0 -> 245945 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
9 files changed, 31767 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24159-8.txt b/24159-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d8095d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/24159-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10490 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, by +Alice Morse Earle + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Customs and Fashions in Old New England + +Author: Alice Morse Earle + +Release Date: January 4, 2008 [EBook #24159] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOMS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND *** + + + + +Produced by K. Nordquist, Annie McGuire and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + + CUSTOMS AND FASHIONS + IN + OLD NEW ENGLAND + + BY + + ALICE MORSE EARLE + + "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let + each successive generation thank him not less fervently, for + being one step further from them in the march of ages." + + NEW YORK + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + 1894 + + COPYRIGHT, 1893 BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + TROW DIRECTORY + PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY + NEW YORK + + + BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + + CHINA COLLECTING IN AMERICA. With + 75 Illustrations. Square 8vo, $3.00. + + THE SABBATH IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND. + 12mo, $1.25. + + + To the Memory of my Father + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + I. CHILD LIFE, 1 + + II. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS, 36 + + III. DOMESTIC SERVICE, 82 + + IV. HOME INTERIORS, 107 + + V. TABLE PLENISHINGS, 132 + + VI. SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER, 146 + + VII. OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS, 163 + + VIII. TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE, 184 + + IX. HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS, 214 + + X. SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS, 234 + + XI. BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS, 257 + + XII. ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS, 289 + + XIII. RAIMENT AND VESTURE, 314 + + XIV. DOCTORS AND PATIENTS, 331 + + XV. FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS, 364 + + + + +I + +CHILD LIFE + + +From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England +he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared +comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists +gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open +fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the +roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be +cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could +not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from +the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature +that would make a modern infant scream with indignant discomfort, or lie +stupefied with cold. + +Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay +peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he was +carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill +and gloom of those unheated, freezing churches, growing colder and +damper and deadlier with every wintry blast--we wonder that grown +persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that +tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it +is recorded that the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. In +villages and towns where the houses were all clustered around the +meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried far to be +baptized; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were widely +scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child: +"Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised +infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly +lost its life thereby. + +Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket--a +"bearing-cloth"--the unfortunate young Puritan was carried to church in +the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast importance and dignity +as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from +fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the +baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first cold +and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of +Judge Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite +or extended contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New +England, as for knowledge of England of that date we turn to the diaries +of Evelyn and Pepys, we find abundant proof that inclemency of weather +was little heeded when religious customs and duties were in question. +On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus records: + + "A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of + the Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A child named Alexander + was baptized in the afternoon." + +He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He writes thus of the +baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February 6th, 1656: + + "Between 3 & 4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named + Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child + shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the + Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up." + +And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but +six days old: + + "Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon + fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden + the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was + about half done in the Afternoon." + +Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy +water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded +up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so +coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived +him, a majority dying in infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend +Cotton Mather but two survived their father. + +This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of +selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in early New +England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the +natural result--the survival of the fittest--may account for the present +tough endurance of the New England people. + +Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the +meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict +church-goers, and all the members of the household were equally +church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go +also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house +to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit +upright. + +Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but little. Linen formed +the chilling substructure of their attire--little, thin, linen, +short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and +with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges +of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the +rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens +of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen +mittens have evidently been worn off by the active friction of baby +fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or +calico. The gowns are generally rather shapeless, large-necked sacks of +linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and +drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin. In summer and +winter the baby's head was always closely covered with a cap, or +"biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more comforting in winter than +comfortable in summer. + +The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his nineteenth century +descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled or carved +wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant drafts. +Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen +shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was +carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to +bring him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as +babies are carried upstairs by superstitious nurses nowadays, and he had +"scarlet laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with +various nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal +days, "Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence +the most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the +word) to be sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and +to have its disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits. +Advertisements of it frequently appear in the _Boston News Letter_ and +other New England newspapers of early date. + +The most common and largely dosed diseases of early infancy were, I +judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the times, +worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the +latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new +disease, scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered +whether it existed in the American plantations. In old medical books +which were used by the New England colonists I find manifold receipts +for the cure of these infantile diseases. Snails form the basis, or +rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I +should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near +vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed +medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or +snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones: + + "The admirable and most famous Snail water.--Take a peck of garden + Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them in an oven + till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe + them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them + shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, + scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from + their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in + the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two + handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of + Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of + Barberries, Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one + handful; then lay the Snails and Worms on top of the hearbs and + flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the Strongest Ale, and let + it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces of Cloves + beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six + ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it + with paste and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine + in all, the first is the strongest, whereof take in the morning two + spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small Beer, the like in the + Afternoon." + +Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured. Snails also were +used externally: + + "To anoint the Ricketed Childs Limbs and to recover it in a short + time, though the child be so lame as to go upon crutches: + + "Take a peck of Garden Snailes and bruse them, put them into a + course Canvass bagg, and hang it up, and set a dish under to + receive the liquor that droppeth from them, wherewith anoint the + Childe in every Joynt which you perceive to be weak before the fire + every morning and evening. This I have known make a Patient Childe + that was extream weak to go alone using it only a week time." + +There were also "unguents to anoynt the Ricketted Childs breast," and +various drinks to be given "to the patient childe fasting," as they +termed him in what appears to us a half-comic, though wholly truthful +appellation. + +For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of senna and rhubarb +and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and as for +"Collick" and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every respectable Puritan +patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and nauseous +compounds that were offered to him for his relief. + +Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments, "anodyne necklaces." I find +them advertised in the _Boston Evening Post_ as late as 1771--"Anodine +Necklaces for the Easy breeding of Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays +children wear strings of amber beads to avert croup. + +Another medicine "to make children's teeth come without paine" was this: +"Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the +braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes +gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the +child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's +fangs around his neck--an ugly necklace. + +The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby opened his sad +eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and "laid on a +pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen or serge were +hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of cheney or +calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses, and all +the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the +household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden +to a dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "_Les Caquets de +l'Accouchée_," the popular book of the time of Louis XIII., proves. + +Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the "groaning beer" was drunk, +though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning Beer" two months before the +child was born. By tradition, "groaning cake," to be used at the time of +the birth of the child, and given to visitors for a week or two later, +also was made; but I find no allusion to it under that name in any of +the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good substantial viands +were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd Pyes, good Cheese +and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old, +seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats, +"Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts." +Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and claret." A survival of +this custom existed for many years in the fashion of drinking caudle at +the bedside of the mother. + +As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in attending the +dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him into +spending a tidy sum--for him--on drinks and feeing "the maid;" and in +visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure +trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent his entire +day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms;--in the +house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the +entertainment or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led +solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who +formally gave them his blessing. He took them also to some of the +funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files +sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby +brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were +about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so +that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam +said he saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the +only tears that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death. +When Betty was a year older her father wrote: + + "It falls to my daughter Elizabeths Share to read the 24 of Isaiah + which she doth with many Tears not being very well, and the + Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me + also." + +Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years old, also showed +evidence of the dejection of soul around him. + + "Richard Dumer, a flourishing youth of 9 years old dies of the + Small Pocks. I tell Sam of it and what need he had to prepare for + Death, and therefore to endeavor really to pray, when he said over + the Lord's Prayer: He seemed not much to mind, eating an Aple; but + when he came to say Our Father he burst out into a bitter Cry and + said he was afraid he should die. I pray'd with him and read + Scriptures comforting against Death, as O death where is thy sting, + &c. All things yours. Life and Immortality brought to light by + Christ." + +In January, 1695, Judge Sewall writes: + + "When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and + told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the + Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some + signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she + burst out into an amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry + too; Her Mother ask'd the reason, she gave none; at last said she + was afraid she should goe to Hell, her Sins were not pardon'd. She + was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's Text, Ye + shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, + Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins ran in her mind and terrified + her greatly. And staying at home she read out of Mr. Cotton + Mather--Why hath Satan filled thy Heart, which increased her Fear. + Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered yes but + fear'd her prayers were not heard because her sins were not + pardon'd." + +A fortnight later he writes: + + "Betty comes into me as soon as I was up and tells me the disquiet + she had when wak'd; told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, + was like Spira, not Elected. Ask'd her what I should pray for, she + said that God would pardon her Sin and give her a new heart. I + answer'd her Fears as well as I could and pray'd with many Tears on + either part. Hope God heard us." + +Three months later still he makes this entry: + + "Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping, tells me she is + afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweetness in reading + the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is + worn off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with + her alone." + +Poor little "wounded" Betty! She did not die in childhood as she feared, +but lived to pass through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and +of overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight +children; but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts, +which she despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from +comforting father; and at last she faced the dread foe Death at the age +of thirty-five. Judge Sewall wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope +God has delivered her now from all her fears;" every one reading of her +bewildered and depressed spiritual life must sincerely hope so with him. +In truth, the Puritan children were, as Judge Sewall said, "stirred up +dreadfully to seek God." + +Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught his little +daughter when she was four years old: + + "I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and there I told my + child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am Dead, + Remember every Thing, that I now said unto her. I sett before her + the sinful condition of her Nature and I charged her to pray in + secret places every day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ + would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am + taken from her she must look to meet with more Humbling + Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide + for her." + +I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to his +children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little +blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and, +indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two +years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and +praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly +satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his +son Increase, or "Cressy." + +No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable exhibitions of +religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when she +passed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of +religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could relate +many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was +set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion. "Before she +was four years old she could say the greater part of the Assembly's +Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent +remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions +about divine mysteries." It is a truly comic anticlimax in her father's +stilted letters to her to have him end his pious instructions with this +advice: "And as you love me do not eat green apples." + +Of the demeanor of children to their parents naught can be said but +praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record shows +that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were +well for them to thus obey the law of God, for by the law of the land +high-handed disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not +find this penalty ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim +Calvin, a fact which redounds to the credit both of justice and youth in +colonial days. + +It was not strange that Judge Sewall, always finding in natural events +and appearances symbols of spiritual and religious signification, should +find in his children painful types of original sin. + + "Nov. 6, 1692.--Joseph threw a knop of Brass and hit his Sister + Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed; and upon which, and + for his playing at Prayer-time and eating when Return Thanks, I + whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his + Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind + the head of the Cradle; which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of + Adam's carriage." + +It was natural, too, that Judge Sewall's children should be timid; they +ran in terror to their father's chamber at the approach of a +thunderstorm; and, living in mysterious witchcraft days, they fled +screaming through the hall, and their mother with them, at the sudden +entrance of a neighbor with a rug over her head. + +All youthful Puritans were not as godly as the young Sewalls. Nathaniel +Mather wrote thus in his diary: + + "When very young I went astray from God and my mind was altogether + taken with vanities and follies: such as the remembrance of them + doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which + then I was guilty of, none so sticks upon me as that, being very + young, I was _whitling_ on the Sabbath-day; and for fear of being + seen, I did it behind the _door_. A great _reproach_ of God! a + specimen of that _atheism_ I brought into the world with me!" + +It is satisfactory to add that this young prig of a Mather died when +nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's "Narratives of +Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of the Puritanical +religious teaching of the young can be found than the account given in +the _Magnalia_ of various young souls in whom the love of God was +remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather. +His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in +detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and +directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a +day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but +wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He +fasted. He made long lists of sins, long catalogues of things forbidden, +"and then fell a-stoning them." He "chewed much on excellent sermons." +He not only read the Bible, but "obliged himself to fetch a note and +prayer out of each verse," as he read. In spite of all these +preparations for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest +despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of +God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said, +soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest +of businesses. + +That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close +to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left +an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new +world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest +reasons of all--the intense yearning for the true well-being of the +children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of +those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid +sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote +thus of the Pilgrims: + + "As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to + be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their + dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender + harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise + sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that + were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde + to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their + parents burden, were, often times so oppressed with their hevie + labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their + bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and become decreped in + their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very + budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all + sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children, + by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye + countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away + by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting + ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some + became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and + other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of + their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of + God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to + degenerate and be corrupted." + +Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power +waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking grandchildren, and +they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid Betty, lived +with his grandfather for a time, and on April 1st, 1719, the Judge +wrote: + + "In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindall Rawson from + playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the + greatest fools that did so. N. E. Men came hither to avoid + anniversary days, the keeping of them such as the 25th of Decr. How + displeasing must it be to God the giver of our Time to keep + anniversary days to play the fool with ourselves and others." + +Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston schoolmaster, +begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking +nature of such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April first. + +Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and more serious +matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote: + + "Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with + him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was + up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much + displeased." + +Two days later he writes thus peremptorily of his grandson: + + "Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could + not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere." + +Though Boston boys played "wicket" on Boston Common, I fancy the young +Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were allowed few amusements. +They apparently brought over some English pastimes with them, for in +1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston: + + "Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have + received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the + streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that + game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under + the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence." + +One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised toward boys by Puritan +lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the tithingman. He +was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do not doubt +that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his +charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they +wished. From the brother sport of winter, skating, they were not +debarred; and they went on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned, +just as country boys are nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th, +1696: + + "Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on Fresh Pond. Wm. + Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned." + +In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of January 15th, 1728, we read: + + "On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers, viz Mr. George + and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom of + the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;" + +and in the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of +another death by drowning. + + "A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from + Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He + was about 16 or 18 years of age." + +Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates" appear in the _Boston Gazette_, +of 1749, and the _Boston Evening Post_, of 1758. The February _News +Letter_, of 1769, has a notice of the sale of "Best Holland Scates of +Different Sizes." + +In the list of goods on board a prize taken by a privateersman in 1712 +were "Boxes of Toys." Higginson, writing to his brother in 1695, told +him that "toys would sell if in small quantity." In exceeding small +quantity one would fancy. In 1743 the _Boston News Letter_ advertised +"English and Dutch Toys for Children." Not until October, 1771, on the +lists of the Boston shop-keepers, who seemed to advertise and to sell +every known article of dry goods, hardware, house furnishing, ornament, +dress and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item "Boys +Marbles." "Battledores and Shuttles" appeared in 1761. I know that no +little maids could ever have lived without dolls, not even the +serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were +advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of +milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion +plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still +survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and +mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in the days of their +youth. + +As years rolled by and eighteenth century frivolity and worldliness took +the place of Puritan sobriety and religion, New England children shared +with their elders in that growing love of amusement, which found but few +and inadequate methods of expression in the lives of either old or +young. In the year 1771 there was sent from Nova Scotia a young miss of +New England parentage--Anna Green Winslow--to live with her aunt and +receive a "finishing" in Boston schools. For the edification of her +parents and her own practice in penmanship, this bright little maid kept +a diary, of which portions have been preserved, and which I do not +hesitate to say is the most sprightly record of the daily life of a girl +of her age that I have ever read. There is not a dull word in it, and +every page has some statement of historical value. She was twelve years +old shortly after the diary was begun, and she then had a "coming-out +party"--she became a "miss in her teens." To this rout only young ladies +of her own age and in the most elegant Boston society were invited--no +rough Boston boys. Miss Anna has written for us more than one prim and +quaint little picture of similar parties--here is one of her clear and +stiff little descriptions; and a graphic account also of the evening +dress of a young girl at that time. + + "I have now the pleasure to give you the result Viz; a very genteel + well regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soleys last evening, + Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Miss Soley desired me to + assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests which I did. + Sometime since I wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large + company assembled in a large handsome upper room in the new end of + the house. We had two fiddles and I had the honor to open the + diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley. Here follows + a list of the company as we form'd for country-dancing. Miss Soley + and Miss Anna Green Winslow; Miss Calif and Miss Scott; Miss + Williams and Miss McLarth; Miss Codman and Miss Winslow; Miss Ives + and Miss Coffin; Miss Scollay and Miss Bella Coffin; Miss Waldo and + Miss Quinsey; Miss Glover and Miss Draper; Miss Hubbard and Miss + Cregur (usually pronounced Kicker) and two Miss Sheafs were invited + but were sick or sorry and beg'd to be excused. + + "There was a little Miss Russel and little ones of the family + present who could not dance. As spectators there were Mr. & Mrs. + Deming, Mr. & Mrs. Sweetser, Mr. and Mrs. Soley, Mr. & Mrs. Claney, + Mrs. Draper, Miss Orice, Miss Hannah--our treat was nuts, raisins, + cakes, Wine, punch hot and cold all in great plenty. We had a very + agreeable evening from 5 to 10 o'clock. For variety we woo'd a + widow, hunted the whistle, threaded the needle, & while the company + was collecting we diverted ourselves with playing of pawns--_no + rudeness_ Mamma I assure you. Aunt Deming desires you would + particularly observe that the elderly part of the Company were + _Spectators only_, that they mixed not in either of the + above-described scenes. + + "I was dressed in my yelloe coat, black bib and apron, black + feathers on my head, my paste comb and all my paste garnet + marquasett & jet pins, together with my silver plume--my locket, + rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts and yards of blue + ribbon (black and blue is high tast) striped tucker & ruffles (not + my best) and my silk shoes completed my dress." + +How clear the picture: can you not see it--the low raftered chamber +softly alight with candles on mantel-tree and in sconces; the two +fiddles soberly squeaking: the rows of demure little Boston maids, all +of New England Brahmin blood, in high rolls, with nodding plumes and +sparkling combs, with ruffles and mitts, little miniatures of their +elegant mammas, soberly walking and curtseying through the stately +minuet "with no rudeness I can assure you;" and discreetly partaking of +hot and cold punch afterward. + +There came at this time to another lady in this Boston court circle a +grandchild eight years of age, from the Barbadoes, to also attend Boston +schools. Missy left her grandmother's house in high dudgeon because she +could not have wine at all her meals. And her parents upheld her, saying +she had been brought up a lady and must have wine when she wished it. +Evidently Cobbett's statement of the free drinking of wine, cider, and +beer by American children was true--as Anna Green Winslow's "treat" +would also show. + +Though Puritan children had few recreations and amusements, they must +have enjoyed a very cheerful, happy home life. Large families abounded. +Cotton Mather says: + + "One woman had not less than twenty-two children, and another had + no less than twenty-three children by one husband whereof nineteen + lived to mans estate, and a third who was mother to seven and + twenty children." + +Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same +mother. Printer Green had thirty children. The Rev. John Sherman, of +Watertown, had twenty-six children by two wives--twenty by his last +wife. The Rev. Samuel Willard, first minister to Groton, had twenty +children, and his father had seventeen children. Benjamin Franklin was +one of a family of seventeen. Charles Francis Adams has told us of the +fruitful vines of old Braintree. + +The little Puritans rejoiced in some very singular names, the offspring +of Roger Clap being good examples: Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, +Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply. + +Of the food given Puritan children we know but little. In an old almanac +of the eighteenth century I find a few sentences of advice as to the +"Easy Rearing of Children." The writer urges that boys as soon as they +can run alone go without hats to harden them, and if possible sleep +without night-caps, as soon as they have any hair. He advises always to +wet children's feet in cold water and thus make them (the feet) tough, +and also to have children wear thin-soled shoes "that the wet may come +freely in." He says young children should never be allowed to drink cold +drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated; that it is +"best to feed them on Milk, Pottage, Flummery, Bread, and Cheese, and +not let them drink their beer till they have first eaten a piece of +Brown Bread." Fancy a young child nowadays making a meal of brown bread +and cheese with warm beer! He suggests that they drink but little wine +or liquor, and sleep on quilts instead of feathers. In such ways were +reared our Revolutionary heroes. + +Of the dazzling and beautiful array in our modern confectioners' shops +little Priscilla and Hate-Evil could never have dreamed, even in +visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica Candy, +Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to +port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds," +and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine, +crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial +cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and +daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial +days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though +dearly loved by Salem lads and lasses, always bore--indeed, do still +bear--too strong a flavor of liquorice, too haunting a medicinal +suggestion to be loved by other children of the Puritans. As an +instance, on a large scale, of the retributive fate that always pursues +the candy-eating wight, I state that the good ship Ann and Hope brought +into Providence one hundred years ago, as part of her cargo, eight boxes +of sweetmeats and twenty tubs of sugar candy, and on the succeeding +voyage sternly fetched no sweets, but brought instead forty-eight boxes +of rhubarb. + +The children doubtless had prunes, figs, "courance," and I know they had +"Raisins of the Sun" and "Bloom Raisins" galore. Advertisements of all +these fruits appear in the earliest newspapers. Though "China Oranges" +were frequently given to and by Judge Sewall, I have not found them +advertised for sale till Revolutionary times, and I fancy few children +had then tasted them. The native and domestic fruits were plentiful, but +many of them were poor. The apples and pears and Kentish cherries were +better than the peaches and grapes. The children gathered the summer +berries in season, and the autumn's plentiful and spicy store of +boxberries, checkerberries, teaberries or gingerbread berries with +October's brown nuts. There were gingerbread and "cacks" even in the +earliest days; but they were not sold in unlimited numbers. The +omnipotent hand of Puritan law laid its firm hold on their manufacture. +Judge Sewall often speaks, however, of Banbury cakes and Meers cakes; +Meer was a celebrated Boston baker and confectioner. The colonists had +also egg cakes and marchepanes and maccaroons. + +There were children's books in those early days; not numerous, however, +nor varied was the assortment from which Puritan youth in New England +could choose. Here is the advertisement of one: + + "Small book in easey verse Very Suitable for children, entitled The + Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed: adorned with + curious cuts, Price Sixpence." + +Somehow, from the suggestion of the title we should hardly fancy this to +be an edifying book for children. John Cotton supplied them with + + "Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England: Drawn out of + the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls Nourishment. But + may be of like Use to Any Children." + +Another book was published in many editions and sold in large numbers, +and much extolled by contemporary ministers. It was entitled: + + "A Token for Children. Being the exact account of the Conversion & + Holy & Exemplary Lives of several Young Children by James Janeway." + +To it was added by Cotton Mather: + + "Some examples of Children in whom the fear of God was remarkably + Budding before they died; in several parts of New England." + +Cotton Mather also wrote: "Good Lessons for Children, in Verse." Other +books were, "A Looking Glasse for Children," "The life of Elizabeth +Butcher, in the Early Piety series;" "The life of Mary Paddock, who died +at the age of nine;" "The Childs new Plaything" (which was a primer); +"Divine Songs in Easy Language;" and "Praise out of the Mouth of Babes;" +"A Particular Account of some Extraordinary Pious Motions and devout +Exercises observed of late in many Children in Siberia." Also accounts +of pious motions of children in Silesia and of Jewish children in +Berlin. One oasis appeared in the desert waste--after the first quarter +of the eighteenth century Puritan children had Mother Goose. + +By 1787, in Isaiah Thomas' list of "books Suitable for Children of all +ages," we find less serious books. "Tom Jones Abridged," "Peregrine +Pickle Abridged," "Vice in its Proper Shape," "The Sugar Plumb," "Bag of +Nuts Ready Crack'd," "Jacky Dandy," "History of Billy and Polly +Friendly." Among the "Chapman's Books for the Edification and Amusement +of young Men and Women who are not able to Purchase those of a Higher +Price" are, "The Amours and Adventures of Two English Gentlemen in +Italy," "Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony," "The Lovers Secretary," and +"Laugh and be Fat." Another advertisement of about the same date +contained, among the books for misses, "The Masqued Wedding," "The +Elopement," "The Passionate Lovers," "Sketches of the History and +Importance of the Fair Sex," "Original Love Letters," and "Six Dialogues +of Young Misses Relating to Matrimony;" thus showing that love-stories +were not abhorred by the descendants of the Puritans. + +In such an exceptional plantation as New England, a colony peopled not +by the commonplace and average Englishmen of the day, but by men of +special intelligence, and almost universally of good education, it was +inevitable that early and profound attention should be paid to the +establishment of schools. Cotton Mather said in 1685, in his sermon +before the Governor and his Council, "the Youth in this country are +verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities." So quickly had New +England air developed the typical New England traits. And the early +schoolmasters, too, may be thanked for their scholars' early ripeness +and sharpness. + +At an early age both girls and boys were sent to dame-schools, where, if +girls were not taught much book-learning, they were carefully instructed +in all housewifely arts. They learned to cook; and to spin and weave and +knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children +could spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers. +Fine knitting was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the +knitter, and many curious and elaborate stitches were known; the +herring-bone and the fox- and geese-patterns being prime favorites. +Initials were knit into mittens and stockings; one clever young miss of +Shelburne, N. H., could knit the alphabet and a verse of poetry into a +single pair of mittens. Fine embroidery was to New England women and +girls a delight. The Indians at an early day called the English women +"lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of +digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716, +taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as +Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, +Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, +flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, +Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking +children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery +on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels, +embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers. +Many of the fruits of these careful lessons of colonial childhood +remain to us; quaint samplers, bed hangings, petticoats and pockets, and +frail lace veils and scarfs. Miss Susan Hayes Ward has resuscitated from +these old embroideries a curious stitch used to great effect on many of +them, and employed also on ancient Persian embroideries, and she points +out that the designs are Persian also. This stitch was not known in the +modern English needlework schools; but just as good old Elizabethan +words and phrases are still used in New England, though obsolete in +England, so this curious old stitch has lived in the colony when lost in +the mother country; or, it may be possible, since it is found so +frequently in the vicinity of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims obtained both +stitch and designs in Holland, whose greater commerce with the Orient +may have supplied to deft English fingers the Persian pattern. + +Other accomplishments were taught to girls; "cutting of Escutcheons" and +paper flowers--"Papyrotamia" it was ambitiously called--and painting on +velvet; and quilt-piecing in a hundred different and difficult designs. +They also learned to make bone lace with pillow and bobbins. + +The boys were thrust at once into that iron-handed but wholly wise +grasp--the Latin Grammar. The minds trained in earliest youth in that +study, as it was then taught, have made their deep and noble impress on +this nation. The study of mathematics was, until well into this century, +a hopeless maze to many youthful minds. Doubtless the Puritans learned +multiplication tables and may have found them, as did Marjorie Fleming, +"a horrible and wretched plaege," though no pious little New Englanders +would have dared to say as she did, "You cant conceive it the most +Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7, it is what nature itself +can't endure." + +Great attention was paid to penmanship. Spelling was nought if the +"wrighting" were only fair and flowing. I have never read any criticism +of teachers by either parents or town officers save on the one question +of writing. How deeply children were versed or grounded in the knowledge +of the proper use of "Simme colings nots of interiogations peorids and +commoes," I do not know. A boundless freedom apparently was given, as +was also in orthography--if we judge from the letters of the times, +where "horrid false spells," as Cotton Mather called them, abound. + +It is natural to dwell on the religious teaching of Puritan children, +because so much of their education had a religious element in it. They +must have felt, like Tony Lumpkin, "tired of having good dinged into +'em." Their primers taught religious rhymes; they read from the Bible, +the Catechism, the Psalm Book, and that lurid rhymed horror "The Day of +Doom;" they parsed, too, from these universal books. How did they parse +these lines from the Bay Psalm Book? + + "And sayd He would not them waste; had not + Moses stood (whom he chose) + 'fore him i' th' breach; to turn his wrath + lest that he should waste those." + +Their "horn books"-- + + "books of stature small + Which with pellucid horn secured are + To save from fingers wet the letters fair," + +those framed and behandled sheets of semi-transparent horn, which were +worn hanging at the side and were studied, as late certainly as the year +1715 by children of the Pilgrims, also managed to instil with the +alphabet some religious words or principles. Usually the Lord's Prayer +formed part of the printed text. Though horn-books are referred to in +Sewall's diary and in the letters of Wait Still Winthrop, and appear on +stationers' and booksellers' lists at the beginning of the eighteenth +century, I do not know of the preservation of a single specimen to our +own day. + +The schoolhouses were simple dwellings, often tumbling down and out of +repair. The Roxbury teacher wrote in 1681: + + "Of inconveniences [in the schoolhouse] I shall mention no other + but the confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is in, + not fitting for to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very + raw and cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle + fires, the hearth spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of + kilter, that one had well-nigh as goods keep school in a hog stie + as in it." + +This schoolhouse had been built and furnished with some care in 1652, +as this entry in the town records shows: + + "The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he provide convenient + benches with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a conveniente + seate for the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and + shelves to lay up bookes." + +The schoolmaster "promised and engaged to use his best endeavour both +by precept and example to instruct in all Scholasticall morall and +Theologicall discipline the children so far as they be capable, all +A. B. C. Darians excepted." He was paid in corn, barley or peas, the +value of £25 per annum, and each child, through his parents or +guardians, supplied half a cord of wood for the schoolhouse fire. If +this load of wood were not promptly furnished the child suffered, for +the master did not allow him the benefit of the fire; that is, to go +near enough the fireplace to feel the warmth. + +The children of wise parents like Cotton Mather, were also taught +"opificial and beneficial sciences," such as the mystery of medicine--a +mystery indeed in colonial times. + +Puritan schoolmasters believed, as did Puritan parents, that sparing the +rod spoiled the child, and great latitude was given in punishment; the +rod and ferule were fiercely and frequently plied "with lamming and with +whipping, and such benefits of nature" as in English schools of the same +date. When young men were publicly whipped in colleges, children were +sure to be well trained in smaller schools. Every gradation of +chastisement was known and every instrument from + + "A beesome of byrche for babes verye fit + To a long lastinge lybbet for lubbers as meete," + +from the "thimell-pie" of the dame's school--a smart tapping on the head +with a heavy thimble--to belaboring with a heavy walnut stick or oaken +ruler. Master Lovell, that tigerish Boston teacher, whipped the culprit +with birch rods and forced another scholar to hold the sufferer on his +back. Other schoolmasters whipped on the soles of the feet, and one +teacher roared out, "Oh the Caitiffs! it is good for them." Not only +were children whipped, but many ingenious instruments of torture were +invented. One instructor made his scholars sit on a "bark seat turned +upside down with his thumb on the knot of a floor." Another master of +the inquisition invented a unipod--a stool with one leg--sometimes +placed in the middle of the seat, sometimes on the edge, on which the +unfortunate scholar tiresomely balanced. Others sent out the suffering +pupil to cut a branch of a tree, and, making a split in the large end of +the branch, sprung it on the culprit's nose, and he stood painfully +pinched, an object of ridicule with his spreading branch of leaves. One +cruel master invented an instrument of torture which he called a +flapper. It was a heavy piece of leather six inches in diameter with a +hole in the middle, and was fastened at the edge to a pliable handle. +The blistering pain inflicted by this brutal instrument can well be +imagined. At another school, whipping of unlucky wights was done "upon a +peaked block with a tattling stick;" and this expression of colonial +severity seems to take on additional force and cruelty in our minds that +we do not at all know what a tattling stick was, nor understand what was +meant by a peaked block. + +I often fancy I should have enjoyed living in the good old times, but I +am glad I never was a child in colonial New England--to have been +baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to +learn the Assembly's Catechism and "explain all the Quaestions with +conferring Texts," to have been constantly threatened with fear of death +and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's "Day of +Doom" to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a tattling +stick. + + + + +II + +COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS + + +In the early days of the New England colonies no more embarrassing or +hampering condition, no greater temporal ill could befall any adult +Puritan than to be unmarried. What could he do, how could he live in +that new land without a wife? There were no housekeepers--and he would +scarcely have been allowed to have one if there were. What could a woman +do in that new settlement among unbroken forests, uncultivated lands, +without a husband? The colonists married early, and they married often. +Widowers and widows hastened to join their fortunes and sorrows. The +father and mother of Governor Winslow had been widow and widower seven +and twelve weeks, respectively, when they joined their families and +themselves in mutual benefit, if not in mutual love. At a later day the +impatient Governor of New Hampshire married a lady but ten days widowed. +Bachelors were rare indeed, and were regarded askance and with intense +disfavor by the entire community, were almost in the position of +suspected criminals. They were seldom permitted to live alone, or even +to choose their residence, but had to find a domicile wherever and with +whomsoever the Court assigned. In Hartford lone-men, as Shakespeare +called them, had to pay twenty shillings a week to the town for the +selfish luxury of solitary living. No colonial law seems to me more +arbitrary or more comic than this order issued in the town of Eastham, +Mass., in 1695, namely: + + "Every unmarried man in the township shall kill six blackbirds or + three crows while he remains single; as a penalty for not doing it, + shall not be married until he obey this order." + +Bachelors were under the special spying and tattling supervision of the +constable, the watchman, and the tithingman, who, like Pliable in +Pilgrim's Progress, sat sneaking among his neighbors and reported their +"scirscumstances and conuersation." In those days a man gained instead +of losing his freedom by marrying. "Incurridgement" to wedlock was given +bachelors in many towns by the assignment to them upon marriage of +home-lots to build upon. In Medfield there was a so-called Bachelor's +Row, which had been thus assigned. In the early days of Salem "maid +lotts" were also granted; but Endicott wrote in the town records that it +was best to abandon the custom and thus "avoid all presedents & evil +events of granting lotts vnto single maidens not disposed of." This line +he crossed out and wrote instead, "for avoiding of absurdities." He +kindly, but rather disappointingly, gave one maid a bushel of corn when +she came to ask for a house and lot, and told her it would be a "bad +president" for her to keep house alone. A maid had, indeed, a hard time +to live in colonial days, did she persevere in her singular choice of +remaining single. Perhaps the colonists "proverb'd with the grandsire +phrase," that women dying maids lead apes in hell. Maidens "withering on +the virgin thorn," in single blessedness, were hard to find. One +Mistress Poole lived unmarried to great old age, and helped to found the +town of Taunton under most discouraging rebuffs; and in the Plymouth +church record of March 19, 1667, is a record of a death which reads +thus:-- + + "Mary Carpenter sister of Mrs. Alice Bradford wife of Governor + Bradford being newly entered into the 91st year of her age. She was + a godly old maid never married." + +The state of old maidism was reached at a very early age in those early +days; Higginson wrote of an "antient maid" of twenty-five years. John +Dunton in his "Life and Errors" wrote eulogistically of one such ideal +"Virgin" who attracted his special attention. + + "It is true an _old_ (or superanuated) Maid in Boston is thought + such a curse, as nothing can exceed it (and looked on as a _dismal_ + spectacle) yet she by her good nature, gravity, and strict virtue + convinces all (so much as the fleering Beaus) that it is not her + necessity but her choice that keeps her a Virgin. She is now about + thirty years (the age which they call a _Thornback_) yet she never + disguises herself, and talks as little as she thinks, of Love. She + never reads any Plays or Romances, goes to no Balls or + Dancing-match (as they do who go to such Fairs) to meet with + Chapmen. Her looks, her speech, her whole behavior are so very + chaste, that but once (at Govenor's Island, where we went to be + merry at roasting a hog) going to kiss her, I thought she would + have blushed to death. + + "Our _Damsel_ knowing this, her conversation is generally amongst + the women (as there is least danger from that sex) so that I found + it no easy matter to enjoy her company, for most of her time (save + what was taken up in needle work and learning French &c.) was spent + in Religious Worship. She knew time was a dressing-room for + Eternity, and therefore reserves most of her hours for better uses + than those of the Comb, the Toilet and the Glass. + + "And as I am sure this is most agreeable to the Virgin modesty, + which should make Marriage an act rather of their obedience than + their choice. And they that think their Friends too slowpaced in + the matter give certain proof that lust is their sole motive. But + as the Damsel I have been describing would neither anticipate nor + contradict the will of her Parents, so do I assure you she is + against Forcing her own, by marrying where she cannot love; and + that is the reason she is still a Virgin." + +Hence it may be seen that though there was not in Boston the "glorious +phalanx of old maids" of Theodore Parker's description, yet the Boston +old maid was lovely even in colonial days, though she did bear the +odious name of thornback. + +An English traveller, Josselyn, gives a glimpse of Boston love-making in +the year 1663. + + "On the South there is a small but pleasant Common, where the + Gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their Marmalet-Madams + till the nine o'clock bell rings them home to their respective + habitations." + +This simple and quaint picture of youthful love in the soft summer +twilight, at that ever beautiful trysting-place, gives an unwonted touch +of sentiment to the austere daily life of colonial New England. The +omnipotent Puritan law-giver, who meddled and interfered in every +detail, small and great, of the public and private life of the citizen, +could not leave untouched, in fancy free, these soberly promenading +Puritan sweethearts. A Boston gallant must choose well his +marmalet-madam, must proceed cautiously in his love-making in the +gloaming, obtaining first the formal permission of parents or guardians +ere he take any step in courtship. Fines, imprisonment, or the +whipping-post awaited him, did he "inveigle the affections of any maide +or maide servant" by making love to her without proper authority. +Numberless examples might be given to prove that this law was no dead +letter. In 1647, in Stratford, Will Colefoxe was fined £5 for "laboring +to invegle the affection of Write his daughter." In 1672 Jonathan +Coventry, of Plymouth town, was indicted for "making a motion of +marriage" to Katharine Dudley without obtaining formal consent. The +sensible reason for these courtship regulations was "to prevent young +folk from intangling themselves by rash and inconsiderate contracts of +maridge." The Governor of Plymouth colony, Thomas Prence, did not +hesitate to drag his daughter's love affairs before the public, in 1660, +by prosecuting Arthur Howland for "disorderly and unrighteously +endeavouring to gain the affections of Mistress Elizabeth Prence." The +unrighteous lover was fined £5. Seven years later, patient Arthur, who +would not "refrain and desist," was again fined the same amount; but +love prevailed over law, and he triumphantly married his fair Elizabeth +a few months later. The marriage of a daughter with an unwelcome swain +was also often prohibited by will, "not to suffer her to be circumvented +and cast away upon a swaggering gentleman." + +On the other hand, an engagement of marriage once having been permitted, +the father could not recklessly or unreasonably interfere to break off +the contract. Many court records prove that colonial lovers promptly +resented by legal action any attempt of parents to bring to an end a +sanctioned love affair. Richard Taylor so sued, and for such cause, Ruth +Whieldon's father in Plymouth in 1661; while another ungallant swain is +said to have sued the maid's father for the loss of time spent in +courting. Breach of promise cases were brought against women by +disappointed men who had been "shabbed" (as jilting was called in some +parts of New England), as well as by deserted women against men. + +But sly Puritan maids found a way to circumvent and outwit Puritan law +makers, and to prevent their unsanctioned lovers from being punished, +too. Hear the craft of Sarah Tuttle. On May day in New Haven, in 1660, +she went to the house of a neighbor, Dame Murline, to get some thread. +Some very loud jokes were exchanged between Sarah and her friends Maria +and Susan Murline--so loud, in fact, that Dame Murline testified in +court that it "much distressed her and put her in a sore strait." In the +midst of all this doubtful fun Jacob Murline entered, and seizing +Sarah's gloves, demanded the centuries old forfeit of a kiss. +"Wherupon," writes the scandalized Puritan chronicler, "they sat down +together; his arm being about her; and her arm upon his shoulder or +about his neck; and hee kissed her, and shee kissed him, or they kissed +one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour, as Maria and +Susan testified." Goodman Tuttle, who was a man of dignity and +importance, angrily brought suit against Jacob for inveigling his +daughter's affections; "but Sarah being asked in court if Jacob +inveagled her, said No." This of course prevented any rendering of +judgment against the unauthorized kissing by Jacob, and he escaped the +severe punishment of his offence. But the outraged and baffled court +fined Sarah, and gave her a severe lecture, calling her with justice a +"Bould Virgin." She at the end, demurely and piously answered that "She +hoped God would help her to carry it Better for time to come." And +doubtless she did carry it better; for at the end of two years, this +bold virgin's fine for unruly behavior being still unpaid, half of it +was remitted. + +Of the etiquette, the pleasures, the exigencies of colonial "courtship +in high life," let one of the actors speak for himself through the pages +of his diary. Judge Sewall's first wife was Hannah Hull, the only +daughter of Captain Hull of Pine Tree Shilling fame. She received as her +dowry her weight in silver shillings. Of her wooing we know naught save +the charming imaginary story told us by Hawthorne. The Judge's only +record is this: + + "Mrs. Hannah Hull saw me when I took my Degree and set her + affection on me though I knew nothing of it till after our + Marriage." + +She lived with him forty-three years, bore him seven sons and seven +daughters, and died on the 19th day of October, 1717. + +Of course, though the Judge was sixty-six years old, he would marry +again. Like a true Puritan he despised an unmarried life, and on the 6th +day of February he made this naive entry in his diary: "Wandering in my +mind whether to live a Married or a Single Life." Ere that date he had +begun to take notice. He had called more than once on Widow Ruggles, and +had had Widow Gill to dine with him; had looked critically at Widow +Emery, and noted that Widow Tilley was absent from meeting; and he had +gazed admiringly at Widow Winthrop in "her sley," and he had visited +and counseled and consoled her ere his wife had been two months dead, +and had given her a few suitable tokens of his awakening affection such +as "Smoking Flax Inflamed," "The Jewish Children of Berlin," and "My +Small Vial of Tears;" so he had "wandered" in the flesh as well as in +the mind. + +Such an array of widows! Boston fairly blossomed with widows, the widows +of all the "true New England men" whose wills Sewall had drawn up, whose +dying bedsides he had blessed and harassed with his prayers, whose +bodies he had borne to the grave, whose funeral gloves and scarves and +rings he had received and apprized, and whose estates he had settled. +Over this sombre flower-bed of black garbed widows, these hardy +perennials, did this aged Puritan butterfly amorously hover, loth to +settle, tasting each solemn sweet, calculating the richness of the soil +in which each was planted, gauging the golden promise of fruit, and +perhaps longing for the whole garden of full-blown blossoms. "Antient +maides" were held in little esteem by him; not one thornback is on his +list. + +Not only did he look and wander, but all his friends and neighbors arose +and began to suggest and search for a suitable wife for him, with as +officious alacrity as if he needed help, which he certainly did not. In +March Madam Henchman strongly recommended to him "Madam Winthrop, the +Major General's widow." This recommendation was very sweet to the +widower, who had turned his eyes with such special approval on this +special widow, and further and warm encouragement came quickly. + + "Deacon Marion comes to me, sits with me a great while in the + evening; after a great deal of Discourse about his Courtship He + told me the Olivers said they wish'd I would court their Aunt. I + said little, but said 'twas not five Moneths since I buried my dear + Wife. Had said before 'twas hard to know whether to marry again or + no or whom to marry." + +The Olivers' aunt was Madam Winthrop. It would seem somewhat +presumptuous and officious for nieces and nephews to suggest courtship, +when there were grown up Winthrop children who might dislike the +marriage, but in those days everyone meddled in love affairs; to quote +Pope: "Marriage was the theme on which they all declaimed." The Judge +gossiped publicly about his intentions. He writes: "They had laid one +out for me, and Governor Dudley told me 'twas Madam Winthrop. I told him +I had been there but thrice and twice upon business. He said _cave +tertium_." Even solemn Cotton Mather proffered counsel in a letter on +"paying regards to the Widow." + +In spite of all these hints and commendations, and the Judge's evident +pleasure in receiving them, the Winthrop agitation all came to naught, +for about this time he was called to make a will for a Mr. Denison, of +Roxbury, who died on March 22d. Though the Judge was too upright and too +pious to let even his thoughts wander to a wife, the amazing rapidity +with which he turned his longing eyes on the newly-made widow (cruelly +forsaking Madam Winthrop) is only equalled by the act of the famous +Irish lover who proposed to a widow at the open grave of her husband. + +Judge Sewall went home with widow Denison from her husband's funeral and +"prayed God to keep house with her." The very next day he writes, "Mr. +Danforth gives the Widow Denison a high commendation for her Piety, +Goodness, Diligence and Humility." On April 7th she came to the widower +to prove her husband's will; and another match-making friend, Mr. Dow, +"took occasion to say in her absence that she was one of the most +Dutiful Wives in the World." A few days later the Judge made her a gift, +"a Widow's book having writ her name in it." + +At last, after talking the matter over with all his friends, he decided +positively to go a-courting. Widow Denison came to his house and he +says: + + "I took her up into my chamber and discoursed Thorowly with her: + told her I intended to visit her next Lecture Day. She said 'twould + be talk'd of, I answered: In such Cases persons must run the + Gantlet. Gave her an Oration." + +He visited her as he had promised and gave her "Dr. Mathers Sermons +neatly bound and told her in it we were invited to a wedding. She gave +me very good Curds." Other love gifts followed: "K. Georges Effigies in +Copper and an English Crown of K. Charles II. 1677." "A pound of +Reasons and Proportionate Almonds," "A Psalmbook elegantly bound in +Turkey leather," "A pair of Shoe Buckles cost five shillings three +pence." "Two Cases with a knife and fork in each; one Turtle Shell +Tackling; the other long with Ivory Handles squar'd cost four shillings +sixpence." + +In the meantime he read with Cousin Moodey the history of Rebekah's +courtship, and then prayed over it, and over his own wooing. Madam +Rogers and Madam Leverett much congratulated him, and his daughter +Judith visited her prospective stepmother. But alas! the lady was coy +and averse to a decision: + + "She mentions her Discouragement by reason of Discourse she had + heard. Ask't what I should allow her, she not speaking I told her I + was willing to allow her two hundred and fifty pounds per annum if + it should please God to take me out of the world before her. She + answered she had better keep as she was than give up a certainty + for an uncertainty. She would pay dear for her living in Boston. I + desired her to make Proposals but she made none. I had thought of + Publishment next Thursday. But I now seem far from it. My God who + has the pity of a Father Direct and help me." + +Mr. Denison's will left his widow a portion of his estate to dispose of +as she wished if she did not marry again. Judge Sewall was unwilling to +make equal provision for her, hence the stumbling block in their +courtship. + +After consulting with a friend, the Judge made a final visit to her on +November 28th. + + "She said she thought it was hard to part with all and having + nothing to bestow on her Kindred. I had ask'd her to give me + proposals in Writing and she upbraided me That I who had never + written her a Letter should ask her to write. She asked me if I + would drink, I told her yes. She gave me Cider Aples and a Glass of + Wine, gathered together the little things I had given her and + offered them to me, but I would none of them. Told her I wish'd her + well and should be glad of her welfare. She seem'd to say she + should not again take in hand a thing of this nature. Thank'd me + for what I had given her and Desir'd my Prayers. My bowels yern + towards Mrs. Denison but I think God directs me in his Providence + to desist." + +This love affair was not, however, quite ended, for the following Lord's +Day "after dark" Widow Denison came "very privat" to his house. This +Sunday visit betokened great anxiety on her part. She had walked in from +Roxbury in the cold, and when we remember how wolves and bears abounded +in the vicinity we comprehend still further her solicitude. + + "She ask'd pardon if she had affronted me.... Mr. Denison spake to + her after signing his will that he would not make her put all out + of her Hand and power but reserve something to bestow on her + friends that might want.... I could not observe that she made me + any offer all the while. She mentioned two Glass Bottles she had. + I told her they were hers and the other small things I had given + her only now they had not the same signification as before, I was + much concerned for her being in the cold, would fetch her a plate + of something warm; she refused. However I fetched a Tankard of + Cider and drank to her. She desired that nobody might know of her + being here. I told her they should not. She went away in the bitter + Cold, no moon being up, to my great pain. I Saluted her at + Parting." + +With that parting kiss on that dark cold night, in "great pain," ended +the Judge's second wooing. + +That he was sincerely in love with Widow Denison one cannot doubt, +though he loved his money more. Disappointed, he did not again turn to +courting until the following August--much longer than he had waited +after the death of his wife. He then proceeded in a matter-of-fact way +to visit Widow Tilley, whom he had early noted in meeting. He asked her, +at his third visit, to "come and live in his house." "She expressed her +unworthiness with much respect," and both agreed to consider it. He gave +her a little book called "Ornaments of Sion;" Mr. Pemberton applauded +his courtship; Mrs. Armitage said that Mrs. Tilley had been a great +blessing to them; the banns were published; and the Judge's third wooing +ended in a marriage on October 24th. + +But the bride was very ill on her wedding night, and after several +slight sicknesses through the winter, died on May 20th, to her husband's +"great amazement." Again he was a-seeking a "dear Yoke fellow," and on +September 30th, "Daughter Sewall acquainted Madam Winthrop that if she +pleased to be within at 3 P.M. I would wait on her." This was the same +Madam Winthrop whose attractions had been so completely obscured by the +bright halo which encircled the much-longed-for Widow Denison. + + "Madam Winthrop returning answer that she would be at home, I went + to her house and spake to her saying my loving wife died so soon + and suddenly 'twas hardly convenient for me to think of Marrying + again, however I came to this Resolution that I would not make my + Court to any person without first consulting with her. Had a + pleasant Discourse about Seven Single persons sitting in the + Fore-Seat. She propounded one after another to me but none would + do." + +Now, I think the Judge was very graceful in approaching a proposal to +this widow, for on his next visit he asked to see her alone, and he +resumed the pleasant discourse about the seven widows on the fore seat, +and said: + + "At last I pray'd Katharine might be the person assigned for me. + She evidently took it up in the way of denyal as if she had catched + at an opportunity to do it, saying she could not do it, could not + leave her children." + +The Judge begged her not to be so speedy in decision, and brought her +gifts, "pieces of Mr. Belchar's cake and gingerbread wrapped in a clean +sheet of paper;" China oranges; the _News Letter_; Preston's "Church +Marriage;" sugared almonds (of which she inquired the price). He wrote +her a stilted letter with an allusion in it to Christopher Columbus, +and he had to explain it to her afterward. He gave money to her servants +and "penys" to her grandchildren, and heard them "say their catechise;" +and he had interviews and consultations with her relatives--her +children, her sister--who agreed not to oppose the marriage. + +Still the progress of the courtship was not encouraging. Katharine went +to her neighbors' houses when she knew her suitor was coming to visit +her, and left him to read "Dr. Sibbs Bowels" for scant comfort. She +"look'd dark and lowering" at him and coldly placed tables or her +grandchild's cradle between her chair and his as they sat together. She +avoided seeing him alone. She "let the fire come to one short Brand +beside the Block and fall in pieces and make no recruit"--a broad hint +to leave. She "would not help him on with his coat"--a cutting blow. She +would not let her servant accompany him home with a lantern, but +heartlessly permitted her elderly lover to stumble home alone in the +dark. She spoke to him of his luckless courtship of Widow Denison (a +most unpleasant topic), thus giving a clue to the whole situation, in +showing that Madam Winthrop resented his desertion of her in his first +widowerhood, and like Falstaff, would not "undergo a sneap without +reply." He said, in apologetic answer: + + "If after a first and second Vagary she would Accept of me + returning her Victorious Kindness and Good Will would be very + Obliging." + +Undeterred by these many rebuffs, as she grew cold he waxed warm, and a +most lover-like and gallant scene ensued which would have done credit to +a younger man than the Judge. Here it is in his own words: + + "I asked her to Acquit me of Rudeness if I drew off her Glove. + Enquiring the reason I told her 'twas great odds between handling a + dead Goat and a Living Lady. Got it off.... Told her the reason why + I came every other night was lest I should drink too Deep draughts + of Pleasure. She had talked of Canary, her Kisses were to me better + than the best Canary." + +Naturally these warm words had a marked effect; she relaxed, drank a +glass of wine with him, and I trust gave him a Canary-sweet kiss, and +sent a servant home with him with a lantern. + +The next visit the wind blew cold again. He had had one experience with +a short-lived wife, and he had determined that should his next wife die +he would still have some positive benefit from having married her. Hence +he kept pressing Madam Winthrop in a most unpleasant and ghoulish manner +to know what she would give him in case she died. He would allow her but +one hundred pounds per annum. She in turn persisted in questioning him +about the property he had given to his children; and she wished him to +agree to keep a coach (which he could well afford to do), and she wanted +it set on springs too. He said he could not do it while he paid his +debts. She also suggested that he should wear a wig. This annoyed him +beyond measure, for he hated with extreme Puritan intenseness those +"horrid Bushes of Vanity," and the suggestion from his would-be bride +was irritating in the extreme. He answered her with much self-control: + + "As to a Periwigg my best and Greatest Friend begun to find me with + Hair before I was born and has continued to do so ever since and I + could not find it in my heart to go to another." + +Still, when nearly all the men of dignity and position in the colony +wore imposing stately wigs, no woman would be pleased to have a lover +come a-courting in a _hood_. + +So, though she gave him "drams of Black Cherry Brandy" and Canary to +drink and comfits and lump sugar to eat, while he so pressed her to name +her settlement on him, and while the wig and coach questions were so +adversely met, she would not answer yes, and he regretted making more +haste than good speed. At last the lover of the "kisses sweeter than +Canary" critically notes that his mistress has not on "Clean Linen;" and +the next day he writes rather sourly, "I did not bid her draw off her +Glove as sometime I had done. Her dress was not so clean as sometime it +had been;" the beginning of the end was plainly come. That week he +forbade her being invited to a family dinner, and she in turn gave a +"treat" from which he was excluded. Thus ended his fourth wooing. + +The next widow on whom he called was Widow Belknap, but eftsoons he +transferred his attention to Widow Ruggles and wrote thus sentimentally +to her brother: + + "I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have + sometime met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves coming + home from their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure + of speaking to them. And I could find it in my heart to speak to + Mrs. Martha again, now I myself am reduc'd to my Hanging Sleeves. + The truth is, I have little occasion for a Wife but for the sake of + Modesty, and to lay my Weary Head in Her Lap, if it might be + brought to pass upon Honest Conditions. You know your sisters Age + and Disposition and Circumstances. I should like your advice in my + Fluctuations." + +The Judge called on Mrs. Martha, probably after learning with precision +her circumstances. "I showed my willingness to renew my old +acquaintance. She expressed her inability to be serviceable." Even after +the Denison and Winthrop fluctuations he was not abashed by refusal, and +he must have been (to quote Mrs. Peachum's words) "a bitter bad judge 'o +women," for he called again and again. + + "She seemed resolved not to move out of the house; made some + Difficulties to accept an Election Sermon lest it should be an + obligation to her. The coach staying long, I made some excuse for + my stay. She said she would be glad to wait on me till midnight + provided I should solicit her no more to that effect." + +This decision he accepted. + +Poor old wife-seeking Judge, with your hanging sleeves, your broken and +drooping wings, feebly did you still flutter around for a resting-place +to "lay your Weary Head in modesty." You fluctuated to a new widow, +Madam Harris, and she gave you "a nutmeg as it grew," ever a true +lover's gift in Shakespeare's day. On January 11th, 1722, this letter +was sent to "Mrs. Mary Gibbs, widow, at Newton." + + "Madam, your removal out of town and the Severity of the Weather + are the Reason of my making you this Epistolary Visit. In times + past (as I remember) you were minded that I should marry you by + giving you to your desirable Bridegroom. Some sense of this + intended Respect abides with me still and puts me upon enquiring + whether you be willing I should marry you now by becoming your + Husband. Aged feeble and exhausted as I am your favourable Answer + to this Enquiry in a few lines, the Candour of it will much oblige, + Madam, your humble serv't Samuel Sewall." + +This not-too-alluring love-letter brought a favorable answer, for the +Judge assured her she "writ incomparably well," and he accompanied this +praise with a suitable and useful gift, "A Quire of Paper, a good +Leathern Ink Horn, a stick of Sealing Wax and 200 Wafers in a little +Box." + +He was even sharper in bargaining with Widow Gibbs than he had been with +other matrimonial candidates. She had no property to leave him by will, +but he astutely stipulated that her children sign a contract that, +should she die before him, they would pay him £100. She thought him +"hard," and so did her sons and her son-in-law, and so he was--hard even +for those times of hard bargains and hard marriage contracts in hard New +England. He would agree to give her but £50 a year in case of his death. +The value of wives had depreciated in his eyes since the £250 a year +Widow Denison. His gifts too were not as rich as those bestowed on that +yearned-for widow. He had seen too many tokens go for naught. Glazed +almonds, Meers cakes, an orange, were good enough for so cheap a +sweetheart. He remained very stiff and peremptory about the marriage +contract, the £100, and wrote her one very unpleasant letter about it; +and he feared lest she being so attached to her children might not be +tender to him "when there soon would be an end of the old man." At last +she yielded to his sharp bargain and they were married. He lived eight +years, so I doubt not Mary was tender to him and mourned him when he +died, hard though he was and wigless withal. + +We gather from the pages of Judge Sewall's diary many hints about the +method of conducting other courtships. We discover the Judge craftily +and slyly inquiring whether his daughter Mary's lover-apparent had +previously courted another Boston maid; we see him conferring with lover +Gerrish's father; and after a letter from the latter we see the lover +"at Super and drank to Mary in the third place." He called again when it +was too cold to sit downstairs, and was told he would be "wellcomm to +come Friday night." We read on Saturday: + + "In the evening Sam Gerrish comes not; we expected him; Mary + dress'd herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapointment." + +A month later the recreant lover reappeared and finally married poor +disappointed Mary, who died very complaisantly in a short time and left +him free to marry his first love, which he quickly did. We find the +Judge after his daughter's death higgling over her marriage portion with +Mr. Gerrish, Sr., and see that grief for her did not prevent him from +showing as much shrewdness in that matter as he had displayed in his own +courtships. + +Timid Betty Sewall was as much harassed in love as in religion. We find +her father, when she was but seventeen years old, making frequent +investigation about the estate of one Captain Tuthill, a prospective +suitor who had visited Betty and "wished to speak with her." The Judge +had his hesitating daughter read aloud to him of the mating of Adam and +Eve, as a soothing and alluring preparation for the thought of +matrimony, with, however, this most unexpected result: + + "At night Capt. Tuthill comes to speak with Betty, who hid herself + all alone in the coach for several hours till he was gone, so that + we sought her at several houses, till at last came in of herself + and look'd very wild." + +This action of pure maidenly terror elicited sympathy even in the +Judge's match-making heart, and he told the lover he was willing to know +his daughter's mind better. This was on January 10th, 1698. Ten days +later we find wild-eyed Betty going out of her way to avoid drinking +wine with one Captain Turner, much to her father's annoyance. By +September she had refused another suitor. + +Her father wrote thus: + + "Got home [from Rhode Island] by seven, in good health, though the + day was hot, find my family in health, only disturbed at Betty's + denying Mr. Hirst, and my wife hath a cold. The Lord sanctify + Mercyes and Afflictions." + +And again, a month later: + + "Mr. Wm. Hirst comes and thanks my wife and me for our kindness to + his Son, in giving him the liberty of our house. Seems to do it in + the way of taking leave. I thank'd him, and for his countenance to + Hannah at the Wedding. Told him that the well wisher's of my + daughter and his son had persuaded him to go to Brantry and visit + her there, &c.; and said if there were hopes would readily do it. + But as things were twould make persons think he was so involved + that he was not fit to go any wether else. He has I suppose taken + his final leave. I gave him Mr. Oakes Sermon, and my Father Hulls + Funeral Sermon." + +Two days later, Judge Sewall writes to Betty, who has gone to "Brantry" +on a visit. + + BOSTON, October 26, 1699. + + "ELIZABETH: Mr. Hirst waits on you once more to see if you can bid + him welcome. It ought to be seriously considered, that your drawing + back from him after all that has passed between you, will be to + your Prejudice; and will tend to discourage persons of worth from + making their Court to you. And you had need well consider whether + you will be able to bear his final leaving of you, howsoever it may + seem grateful to you at present. When persons come toward us we are + apt to look upon their undesirable Circumstances mostly: and + thereupon to shun them. But when persons retire from us for good + and all, we are in danger of looking only on that which is + desirable in them, to our wofull disquiet. Whereas 'tis the + property of a good Ballance to turn where the most weight is, + though there be some also in the other Scale. I do not see but the + match is well liked by judicious persons, and such as are your + Cordial friends, and mine also. + + "Yet notwithstanding, if you find in yourself an unmovable, + incurable Aversion from him and cannot love and honor and obey him, + I shall say no more, nor give you any further trouble in this + matter. It had better off than on. So praying God to pardon us and + pitty our Undeserving, and to direct and strengthen and settle you + in making a right judgment, and giving a right Answer, I take + leave, who am, Dear Child, Your loving father. + + "Your mother remembers to you." + +Even this very proper and fatherly advice did not have an immediate +effect upon the shy and vacillating young girl, for not until a year +later did she become the wife of persistent Grove Hirst. + +One of the most typical stories of colonial methods of "matching" among +fine gentlefolk is found in the worry of Emanuel Downing, a man of +dignity in the commonwealth, and of his wife, Lucy (who was Gov. +Winthrop's sister), in regard to the settlement of their children. +Downing begins with anxious overtures to Endicott in regard to "matching +his sonne" to an orphan maid living in Endicott's family, a maid who it +is needless to state had a very pretty fortune. Downing states that he +has been blamed for not marrying off his children earlier, "that none +are disposed of," and deplores his ill-luck in having them so long on +his hands, and he recounts pathetically his own and his son's good +points. He also got Governor Winthrop to write to Endicott pleading the +match. Endicott answered both letters in a most dignified manner, +stating his objections to furthering Downing's wishes, giving a +succession of reasons, such as the maid's unwillingness to marry, being +but fifteen years of age, his own awkward position in seeming to crowd +marriage upon her when she was so rich, etc., etc. The Downings had +hoped to have thriftily two marriages in the family in one day, but the +daughter Luce's affairs also halted. She had been enamoured of a Mr. +Eyer, an unsuitable match. He had put out to sea, to the Downings' +delight, but had returned at an unlucky time when she was on with a +fresh suitor. Her mother was much distressed because, though Luce +declared she much liked Mr. Norton, she still showed to all around her +that "she hath not yet forgotten Mr. Eyer his fresh Red." + +But Mistress Luce, by a telling statement of pecuniary benefits, was +brought to a proper mind and became "verie sensible of loseing fair +opportunities," and consented speedily to wed Norton, to her father's +abounding joy, who wrote, "shee may stay long ere she meet with a better +vnless I had more monie for her than I now can spare." The betrothal was +formally announced, when shortly a distressed letter from Madam Downing +shows foul weather ahead. Luce had been talking among her friends, +giving to them "unjust suspicions of the enforcement to her of Mr. +Norton," and while she had seemed to love Mr. Eyer, and her family had +eagerly striven to win her regard from him, "we now suspect by her late +words her affections to be now inclininge at Jhon Harrold." It was found +that Jhon had "practised upon her and disturbed her," and that while she +was "free and cheerful" with Lover Norton, "passing conversation" with +him, she was really conspiring to jilt him. The mother wrote sadly: "I +am sorrie my daughter Luce hath caryed things thus vnwisely and +vnreputably both to herselfe and our friends;" and the whole family were +evidently sorely afraid that the "perverse Puritan jade" would be left +on their hands, when suddenly came the news of her marriage to Norton, +owing perhaps to a very decided and sharp letter from Norton's brother +to the Governor about Mistress Luce's vagaries, and also to some more +satisfactory and liberal marriage settlements. She probably made as +devoted a wife to him as if she had never longed for Eyer his fresh red, +nor Jhon his disturbments. + +Nor were these upright and pious Puritan magistrates and these +gentlewomen of Boston and Salem the only colonists who displayed such +sordid and mercenary bargaining and stipulating in matrimonial ventures: +numberless letters and records throughout New England prove the +unvarying spirit of calculation that pervaded fashionable courtship. A +bride's portion was openly discussed, her marriage settlement carefully +decided upon, and even agreements for bequests were arranged as +"incurredgment to marriage." Nor did happy husbands hesitate to sue for +settlement too tardy or too remiss fathers-in-law who failed to keep +their word about the bride's portion: Edward Palmes for years harassed +the Winthrops about their sister's (his first wife's) portion, long +after he had married a second partner. + +Though the tender passion walked thus ceremoniously and coldly in narrow +and carefully selected paths in town, in the country it regarded little +the bounds of reserve or regard for appearances. Much comparative +grossness prevailed. The mode of courting, known as "bundling" or +"tarrying" was too prevalent in colonial times to be ignored. A full +description of its extent, and an attempt to trace its origin, have been +given in a book on the subject prepared by Dr. H. R. Stiles, and with +much fairness in a pamphlet by Charles Francis Adams on "Some Phases of +Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England." + +Its existence has been a standing taunt for years against New England, +and its prevalence has been held up as a proof of a low state of +morality in early New England society. Indeed, it was strange it could +so long exist in so austere and virtuous a colony; that it did, to a +startling extent, must be conceded; much proof is found in the books of +contemporary writers. Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who travelled in New England +in 1759-1760, says that though it may "at first appear to be the effects +of grossness of character, it will upon deeper research be found to +proceed from simplicity and innocence." To this assertion, after some +research, I can give--to use Sir Thomas Browne's words--"a staggering +assent to the affirmative, not without some fear of the negative." Rev. +Samuel Peters, in his General History of Connecticut, speaks at length +upon the custom, and apparently endeavors to prove that it was a very +prudent and Christian fashion. Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful +voice against it. It prevailed apparently to its fullest extent on Cape +Cod, and longest in the Connecticut valley, where many Dutch customs +were introduced and much intercourse with the Dutch was carried on. In +Pennsylvania, among the Dutch and German settlers and their descendants, +it lingered long; it was a matter of Court record as late as 1845. Yet +the custom of bundling has never been held to be a result of copying the +similar Dutch "queesting," which in Holland met with the sanction of +the most circumspect Dutch parents; and tergiversating Diedrich +Knickerbocker even asserted the contrary assumption, that the Dutch +learned of it from the Yankees. In Holland, as now in Wales and then in +New England, the custom arose not from a low state of morals, nor from a +disregard of moral appearances, but from the social and industrial +conditions under which such courting was done. The small size and +crowded occupancy of the houses, the alternative waste of lights and +fuel, the hours at which the hurried courtship must be carried on, all +led to the recognition and endurance of the custom; and in its open +recognition lay its redeeming feature. There was no secrecy, no thought +of concealment; the bundling was done under the supervision of mother +and sisters. + +As a contrast to all this laxity of behaviour, let me state that in the +very locality where it obtained--the Connecticut Valley--other +sweethearts are said to have been forced to a most ceremonious +courtship, to whisper their tender nothings through a "courting-stick," +a hollow stick about an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long, +fitted with mouth- and ear-pieces. In the presence of the entire family, +lovers, seated formally on either side of the great fireplace, carried +on this chilly telephonic love-making. One of these bâtons of propriety +still is preserved in Longmeadow, Mass. + +Of this primitive colony with primitive manners some very extraordinary +cases of bucolic love at first sight are recorded--love that did not +follow the law of pounds, shillings, and pence. At an ordination in +Hopkinton, New Hampshire, a country bumpkin forgot the place, the +preacher, and the preaching, in the ravishing sight of an unknown damsel +whom he saw for the first time within the meeting-house. He sat +entranced through the long sermon, the tedious psalm-singings, the +endless prayers, until at last the services were over. In an ecstasy of +uncouth and unreasoning passion he rushed out of church, forced his way +through the departing congregation, seized the unknown fair one in his +arms crying out, "Now I have got ye, you jade, I have! I have!" And from +so startling and unalluring a beginning, a marriage followed. In a +neighboring community a dignified officer of the law went to "warn out +of town" a strange "transient woman" who might become a pauper, and +would then have to be kept at the town's expense, were this ceremony +omitted. Terrified at the majesty of the law and its grand though +incomprehensible wording, the young warned one burst into tears, which +so worked upon the tender-hearted officer that he (being conveniently a +widower) proposed to her offhand, was called in meeting, married her, +and thus took her under his own and the town's protection. More than one +case of "marriage at first sight" is recounted, of bold Puritan wooers +riding up to the door of a fair one whom they had never seen, telling +their story of a lonely home, forlorn housekeeping, and desired +marriage, giving their credentials, obtaining a hasty consent, and +sending in their "publishings" to the town clerk, all within a day's +time. + +The "matrimonial" advertisement did not appear till 1759. In the _Boston +Evening Post_ of February 23d of that year, this notice, for its novelty +and boldness, must have caused quite a heart-fluttering among Boston +"thornbacks" who would try to pass for the desired age: + + "To the Ladies. Any young Lady between the Age of Eighteen and + twenty three of a Midling Stature; brown Hair, regular Features and + a Lively Brisk Eye: Of Good Morals & not Tinctured with anything + that may Sully so Distinguishable a Form possessed of 3 or 400£ + entirely her own Disposal and where there will be no necessity of + going Through the tiresome Talk of addressing Parents or Guardians + for their consent: Such a one by leaving a Line directed for A. W. + at the British Coffee House in King Street appointing where an + Interview may be had will meet with a Person who flatters himself + he shall not be thought Disagreeable by any Lady answering the + above description. N. B. Profound Secrecy will be observ'd. No + Trifling Answers will be regarded." + +Hawthorne says: "Now this was great condescension towards the ladies of +Massachusetts Bay in a threadbare lieutenant of foot." + +Other matrimonial advertisements, those of recreant and disobedient +wives, appear in considerable number, especially in Connecticut papers. +They were sometimes prefaced by the solemn warning: "Cursed be he that +parteth man & wife & all the people shall say Amen." Some very +disagreeable allegations were made against these Connecticut wives--that +they were rude, gay, light-carriaged girls, poor and lazy housewives, +ill cooks, fond of dancing, and talking balderdash talk, and far from +being loving consorts. The wives had something to say from their point +of view. One, owing to her spouse's stinginess, had to use "Indian +branne for Jonne bred," and never tasted good food; another stated that +her loving husband "cruelly pulled my hair, pinched my flesh, kicked me +out of bed, drag'd me by my arms & heels, flung ashes upon me to smother +me, flung water from the well till I had not a dry thread on me." All +these notices were apparently printed in the advertiser's own language +and individual manner of spelling, some even in rhyme. "Timothy hubbard" +thus ventilated his domestic infelicities and his spelling in the +_Connecticut Courant_ of January 30th, 1776: + + "Whearis my Wife Abigiel hes under Rote me by saying it is veri + Disagria bell to Hur to Expose to the World the miseris & Calamatis + of a Distractid famely, and I think as much for hur Father & mother + to Witt Stephen deming & his wife acts very much like Distractid or + BeWicht & I believe both, for the truth of this I will apell to the + Nabors. When I first Married I had land of my one and lived at my + one hous but Stephen deming & his Wife cept coming down & hanting + of me til they got me up to thare house but presently I was + deceived by them as Bad as Adam & Eve was by the Divel though not + in the Same Shape for they got a bill of Sail of a most all by + thare Sutilly & still hold the Same. perhaps the Jentlemen will say + it is to pay my debt. Queri. Wherino a man that ows one pound to my + shiling. I dont want it to pay his one, I believe he dos. My wife + pretends to say I abus'd her for the truth of this I will apiel to + all thare nabors." + +Anenst this I am glad to add that I have found repentant sequels to the +mortifying story, in the form of humble retractions of the husband's +allegations. Wives were, on the whole, marvellously well protected by +early laws. A husband could not keep his consort on outlying and +danger-filled plantations, but must "bring her in, else the town will +pull his house down." Nor could a man leave his wife for any length of +time, nor "marrie too wifes which were both alive for anything that can +appear otherwise at one time," nor beat his wife (as he could to his +heart's content in old England); he could not even use "hard words" to +her. Nor could she raise her hand or use "a curst and shrewish tongue" +to him without fear of public punishment in the stocks or pillory. + +In the first years of the colonies there existed a formal ceremony of +betrothal called in Plymouth a pre-contract. This semi-binding ceremony +had hardly a favorable influence upon the morals of the times. Cotton +Mather states: + + "There was maintained a Solemnity called a Contraction a little + before the Consummation of a marriage was allowed of. A Pastor was + usually employed and a sermon also preached on this occasion." + +If the prospective marriage were an important or a genteel one, an +applicable sermon was often preached in church at the time of the +"contraction." One minister took the text, Ephesians vi. 10, 11, in +order "to teach that marriage is a state of warfaring condition." It was +also the custom to allow the bride to choose the text for the sermon to +be delivered on the Sunday when she "came out bride." Much ingenuity was +exercised by these Puritan brides in finding appropriate and interesting +texts for these wedding sermons. Here are some of the verses selected: + +2 Chronicles xiv. 2: "And Asa did that which was good and right in the +eyes of the Lord"--Asa and his bride Hepzibah sitting up proudly in the +congregation to listen. + +Proverbs xxiv. 23: "Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth +among the elders of the land." + +Ecclesiastes iv. 9, 10: "Two are better than one; because they have a +good reward for their labour. For if they fall the one will lift up his +fellow." + +I can imagine the staid New England lover and his shy sweetheart +anxiously and solemnly searching for many hours through the great +leather-bound family Bible for a specially appropriate text, turning +over the leaves and slowing scanning the pages, skipping over tedious +Leviticus and Numbers, and finding always in the Song of Solomon "in +almost every verse" a sentiment appealing to all lovers, and worthy a +selection for a wedding sermon. + +The "coming out," or, as it was called in Newburyport, "walking out" of +the bride was an important event in the little community. Cotton Mather +wrote in 1713 that he thought it expedient for the bridal couple to +appear as such publicly, with some dignity. We see in the pages of +Sewall's diary one of his daughters with her new-made husband leading +the orderly bridal procession of six couples on the way to church, +observed of all in the narrow Boston street and in the Puritan +meeting-house. In some communities the bride and groom took a prominent +seat in the gallery, and in the midst of the sermon rose to their feet +and turned around several times slowly, in order to show from every +point of view their bridal finery to the admiring eyes of their +assembled friends and neighbors in the congregation. + +Throughout New England, except in New Hampshire, the law was enforced +for nearly two centuries, of publishing the wedding banns three times in +the meeting-house, at either town meeting, lecture, or Sunday service. +Intention of marriage and the names of the contracting parties were read +by the town clerk, the deacon, or the minister, at any of these +forgatherings, and a notice of the same placed on the church door, or on +a "publishing post"--in short, they were "valled." Yet in the early days +of the colonies the all-powerful minister could not perform the marriage +ceremony--a magistrate, a captain, any man of dignity in the community +could be authorized to marry Puritan lovers, save the parson. Not till +the beginning of the eighteenth century did the Puritan minister assume +the function of solemnizing marriages. Gov. Bellingham married himself +to Penelope Pelham when he was a short time a widower and forty-nine +years old, and his bride but twenty-two. When he was "brought up" for +this irregularity he arrogantly and monopolizingly persisted in +remaining on the bench to try his own case. "Disorderly marriages" were +punished in many towns; doubtless many of them were between Quakers. +Some couples were fined every month until they were properly married. A +very trying and unregenerate reprobate in New London persisted that he +would "take up" with a woman in the town and make her his wife without +any legal or religious ceremony. This was a great scandal to the whole +community. A pious magistrate met the ungodly couple on the street and +sternly reproved them thus: "John Rogers, do you persist in calling this +woman, a servant, so much younger than yourself, your wife?" + +"Yes, I do," violently answered John. + +"And do you, Mary, wish such an old man as this to be your husband?" + +"Indeed I do," she answered. + +"Then," said the governor, coldly, "by the laws of God and this +commonwealth, I as a magistrate pronounce you man and wife." + +"Ah! Gurdon, Gurdon," said the groom, married legally in spite of +himself, "thee's a cunning fellow." + +There is one peculiarity of the marriages of the first century and a +half of colonial and provincial life which should be noted--the vast +number of unions between the members of the families of Puritan +ministers. It seemed to be a law of social ethics that the sons of +ministers should marry the daughters of ministers. The new pastor +frequently married the daughter of his predecessor in the parish, +sometimes the widow--a most thrifty settling of pastoral affairs. A +study of the Cotton, Stoddard, Eliot, Williams, Edwards, Chauncey, +Bulkeley, and Wigglesworth families, and, above all, of the Mather +family, will show mutual kinship among the ministers, as well as mutual +religious thought. + +Richard Mather took for his second wife the widow of John Cotton. Their +children, Increase Mather and Mary Cotton, grew up as brother and +sister, but were married and became the parents of Cotton Mather. The +sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of Richard Mather were ministers. +His daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters became the wives +of ministers. Thus was the name of "Mather Dynasty" well given. The +Mather blood and the Mather traits of character were felt in the most +remote parishes of New England. The Mather expressions of religious +thought were long heard from the pulpit, and long taught in ministerial +homes; and to that Mather blood and that upright Mather character and +God-fearing Mather faith and teaching, we of New England owe more +gratitude than can ever find expression. + +We have several meagre pictures of weddings in early days. One runs +thus: + + "There was a pretty deal of company present.... Many young + gentlemen and gentlewomen. Mr. Noyes made a speech, said love was + the sugar to sweeten every condition in the marriage state. Prayed + once. Did all very well. After the Sack-posset sung 45th Psalm from + 8th verse to end, five staves. I set it to Windsor tune. I had a + very good Turkey Leather Psalm book which I looked in while Mr. + Noyes read; then I gave it to the bridegroom saying I give you this + Psalm book in order to your perpetuating this song and I would have + you pray that it may be an introduction to our singing with the + quire above." + +For many years sack-posset was drunk at weddings, sometimes within the +bridal chamber; but not with noisy revelry, as in old England. A psalm +preceding and a prayer following a Puritan posset-pot made a +satisfactorily solemn wassail. Bride-cake and bride-gloves were sent as +gifts to the friends and relatives of the contracting parties. Other and +ruder English fashions obtained. The garter of the bride was sometimes +scrambled for to bring luck and speedy marriage to the garter-winner. In +Marblehead the bridesmaids and groomsmen put the wedded couple to bed. + +It is said that along the New Hampshire and upper Massachusetts coast, +the groom was led to the bridal chamber clad in a brocaded night-gown. +This may have occasionally taken place among the gentry, but I fancy +brocaded night-gowns were not common wear among New England country +folk. I have also seen it stated that the bridal chamber was invaded, +and healths there were drunk and prayers offered. The only proof of this +custom which I have found is the negative one which Judge Sewall gives +when he states of his own wedding that "none came to us," after he and +his elderly bride had retired. When the weddings of English noblemen of +that period were attended by most indecorous observances, there is no +reason to suppose that provincial and colonial weddings were entirely +free from similar rude customs. + +It was found necessary in 1651 to forbid all "mixt and unmixt" dancing +at taverns on the occasion of weddings, abuses and disorders having +arisen. But I fancy a people who would give an "ordination ball" would +not long sit still at a wedding; and by the year 1769, at a wedding in +New London, ninety-two jigs, fifty contra-dances, forty-three minuets, +and seventeen hornpipes were danced, and the party broke up at quarter +of one in the morning--at what time could it have begun? + +Isolated communities retained for many years marriage customs derived or +copied from similar customs in the "old country." Thus the settlers of +Londonderry, New Hampshire--Scotch-Irish Presbyterians--celebrated a +marriage with much noisy firing of guns, just as their ancestors in +Ireland, when the Catholics had been forbidden the use of firearms, had +ostentatiously paraded their privileged Protestant condition by firing +off their guns and muskets at every celebration. A Londonderry wedding +made a big noise in the world. After the formal publishing of the banns, +guests were invited with much punctiliousness. The wedding day was +suitably welcomed at daybreak by a discharge of musketry at both the +bride's and the groom's house. At a given hour the bridegroom, +accompanied by his male friends, started for the bride's home. Salutes +were fired at every house passed on the road, and from each house +pistols and guns gave an answering "God speed." Half way on the journey +the noisy bridal party was met by the male friends of the bride, and +another discharge of firearms rent the air. Each group of men then named +a champion to "run for the bottle"--a direct survival of the ancient +wedding sport known among the Scotch as "running for the bride-door," or +"riding for the kail" or "for the broose"--a pot of spiced broth. The +two New Hampshire champions ran at full speed or rode a dare-devil race +over dangerous roads to the bride's house, the winner seized the +beribboned bottle of rum provided for the contest, returned to the +advancing bridal group, drank the bride's health, and passed the bottle. +On reaching the bride's house an extra salute was fired, and the +bridegroom with his party entered a room set aside for them. It was a +matter of strict etiquette that none of the bride's friends should enter +this room until the bride, led by the best man, advanced and stationed +herself with her bridesmaid before the minister, while the best man +stood behind the groom. When the time arrived for the marrying pair to +join hands, each put the right hand behind the back, and the bridesmaid +and the best man pulled off the wedding-gloves, taking care to finish +their duty at precisely the same moment. At the end of the ceremony +everyone kissed the bride, and more noisy firing of guns and drinking of +New England rum ended the day. + +In some communities still rougher horse-play than unexpected volleys of +musketry was shown to the bridal party or to wedding guests. Great trees +were felled across the bridle-paths, or grapevines were stretched across +to hinder the free passage, and thus delay the bridal festivities. + +Occasionally the wedding-bells did not ring smoothly. One Scotch-Irish +lassie seized the convenient opportunity, when the rollicking company of +her male friends had set out to meet the bridegroom, to mount a-pillion +behind a young New Hampshire Lochinvar, and ride boldly off to a +neighboring parson and marry the man of her choice. Such an unpublished +marriage was known in New Hampshire as a "Flagg marriage," from one +Parson Flagg, of some notoriety, of Chester, Vermont, whose house was a +sort of Yankee Gretna Green; and such a marriage was made possible by +the action of the government of New Hampshire in issuing marriage +licenses at the price of two guineas each, as a means of increasing its +income. Sometimes easy-going parsons kept a stock of these licenses on +hand, ready for issue to eloping couples at a slightly advanced price. +Such a marriage, without proper "publishing" in meeting, was not, +however, deemed very reputable. + +Madam Knight, travelling through Connecticut in 1704, wrote thus in her +diary of Connecticut youth: + + "They generally marry very young; the males oftener as I am told + under twenty years than above; they generally make public weddings + and have a way something singular in some of them; viz. just before + joining hands the bridegroom quits the place, who is soon followed + by the Bridesmen and, as it were, dragged back to duty, being the + reverse to the former practice among us to steal Mistress Bride." + +Poor-spirited creatures Connecticut maids must have been to endure +meekly such an ungallant custom and such ungallant lovers. + +The sport of stealing "Mistress Bride," a curious survival of the old +savage bridals of many peoples, lingered long in the Connecticut valley. +A company of young men, usually composed of slighted ones who had not +been invited to the wedding, rushed in after the marriage ceremony, +seized the bride, carried her to a waiting carriage, or lifted her up on +a pillion, and rode to the country tavern. The groom with his friends +followed, and usually redeemed the bride by furnishing a supper to the +stealers. The last bride stolen in Hadley was Mrs. Job Marsh, in the +year 1783. To this day, however, in certain localities in Rhode Island, +the young men of the neighborhood invade the bridal chamber and pull the +bride downstairs, and even out-of-doors, thus forcing the husband to +follow to her rescue. If the room or house-door be locked against their +invasion, the rough visitors break the lock. + +In England throughout the eighteenth century the grotesque belief +prevailed that if a widow were "married in Her Smock without any Clothes +or Head Gier on," the husband would be exempt from paying any of his +new wife's ante-nuptial debts; and many records of such debt-evading +marriages appear. In New England, it was thought if the bride were +married "in her shift on the king's highway," a creditor could follow +her person no farther in pursuit of his debt. Many such eccentric +"smock-marriages" took place, generally (with some regard for modesty) +occurring in the evening. Later the bride was permitted to stand in a +closet. + +Mr. William C. Prime, in his delightful book, "Along New England Roads," +gives an account of such a marriage. In Newfane, Vt., in February, 1789, +Major Moses Joy married Widow Hannah Ward; the bride stood, with no +clothing on, within a closet, and held out her hand to the major through +a diamond-shaped hole in the door, and the ceremony was thus performed. +She then appeared resplendent in wedding attire, which the gallant major +had thoughtfully deposited in the closet for her assumption. Mr. Prime +tells also of a marriage in which the bride, entirely unclad, left her +room by a window at night, and standing on the top round of a high +ladder donned her wedding garments, and thus put off the obligations of +the old life. + +In Hall's "History of Eastern Vermont," we read of a marriage in +Westminster, Vt., in which the Widow Lovejoy, while nude and hidden in a +chimney recess behind a curtain, wedded Asa Averill. Smock-marriages on +the public highway are recorded in York, Me., in 1774, as shown in the +History of Wells and Kennebunkport. It is said that in one case the +pitying minister threw his coat over the shivering bride, Widow Mary +Bradley, who in February, clad only in a shift, met the bridegroom half +way from her home to his. + +The traveller Kalm, writing in 1748, says that one Pennsylvania +bridegroom saved appearances by meeting the scantily-clad widow-bride +half way from her house to his, and announcing formally, in the presence +of witnesses, that the wedding clothes which he then put on her were +only lent to her for the occasion. This is curiously suggestive of the +marriage investiture of Eastern Hindostan. + +In Westerly, R. I., in 1724, other smock-marriages were recorded, and in +Lincoln County, Me., in 1767, between John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman, +showing that the belief in this vulgar error was wide-spread. The most +curious variation of this custom is told in the "Life of Gustavus +Vassa," wherein that traveller records that a smock-marriage took place +in New York in 1784 on a gallows. A malefactor condemned to death, and +about to undergo his execution, was reprieved and liberated through his +marriage to a woman clad only in a shift. + +In spite of the hardness and narrowness of their daily life, and the +cold calculation, the lack of sentiment displayed in wooing, I think +Puritan husbands and wives were happy in their marriages, though their +love was shy, almost sombre, and "flowered out of sight like the fern." +A few love-letters still remain to prove their affection: letters of +sweethearts and letters of married lovers, such as Governor Winthrop +and his wife Margaret; letters like the words of another Margaret--a +queen--to her "alderliefest;" letters so simple and tender that truth +and love shine round them like a halo: + + "MY OWN DEAR HUSBAND: How dearly welcome thy kind letter was to me, + I am not able to express. The sweetness of it did much refresh me. + What can be more pleasing to a wife than to hear of the welfare of + her best beloved and how he is pleased with her poor endeavors! I + blush to hear myself commended, knowing my own wants. But it is + your love that conceives the best and makes all things seem better + than they are. I wish that I may always be pleasing to thee, and + that these comforts we have in each other may be daily increased so + far as they be pleasing to God. I will use that speech to thee that + Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of my + lord; I will do any service wherein I may please my good husband. I + confess I cannot do enough for thee; but thou art pleased to accept + the will for the deed and rest contented. I have many reasons to + make me love thee, whereof I shall name two: First, because thou + lovest God, and secondly, because thou lovest me. If these two were + wanting all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave this + discourse and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife + to be so long from them; but I must needs borrow a little time to + talk with thee, my sweetheart. It will be but two or three weeks + before I see thee, though they be long ones. God will bring us + together in good time, for which time I shall pray. And thus with + my mother's and my own best love to yourself I shall leave + scribbling. Farewell my good husband, the Lord keep thee. + + "Your obedient wife, + "MARGARET WINTHROP." + +Who can read the beautiful words without feeling for that sweet +Margaret, who died two centuries ago, a thrill of the affection that +must have glowed for her in John Winthrop's heart, when, far away from +her, he first opened and read this tender letter. + +Warm eulogies did many a staid New Englander write of his loving +consort, eulogies in rhyme, and epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, +epicediums, anagrams, acrostics, and pindarics, all speaking loudly of +loving, "painful" care, if not of a spirit of poesy. And the even, +virtuous tenor of the life in New England proved too a happiness and +contentment equal to the marital results of more emotional and romantic +love-making. There were some divorces. Madam Knight found that they were +plentiful in Connecticut in 1704, as they are in that State nowadays. +She writes: + + "These uncomely Stand-aways are too much in vogue among the English + in this indulgent colony, as their records plentifully prove; and + that on very trivial matters of which some have been told me, but + are not Proper to be Related by a Female Pen." + +In town records we find that divorces, though infrequent, still were +occasionally given in other New England States; but the causes assigned +therefor, to follow Madam Knight's example, need not be "Related by a +Female Pen." + + + + +III + +DOMESTIC SERVICE + + +It is plainly evident that in a country where land was to be had for the +asking, fuel for the cutting, corn for the planting and harvesting, and +game and fish for the least expenditure of labor, no man would long +serve for another, and any system of reliable service indoors or afield +must fail. Whether the colonists came to work or not, they had to in +order to live, for domestic service was soon in the most chaotic state. +Women were forced to be notable housekeepers; men were compelled to +attend to every detail of masculine labor in their households and on +their farms, thus acquiring and developing a "handiness" at all trades, +which has become a Yankee trait. + +The question of adequate and proper household service soon became a +question of importance and of painful consideration in the new land. +Rev. Ezekiel Rogers wrote most feelingly in 1656 on this subject: + + "Much ado have I with my own family, hard to get a servant glad of + catechizing or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in + Yorkshire, and those I brought over were a blessing, but the young + brood doth much afflict me." + +The Massachusetts colonists had attempted even before starting, to meet +and simplify the servant question by rigidly excluding any corrupt +element. They even sent back to England boys who had been unruly on +shipboard. But the number of penalties imposed on servants during the +early years are a lasting record of the affliction caused by the young +brood. + +All the early travellers speak of the lack of good servants in the new +land. The "Diary of a French Refugee in Boston," in 1687, says: "There +is an absolute Need of Hired help;" and that savages were employed in +the fields at eighteen-pence a day. This latter form of service was +naturally the first way of solving the vexed question. The captives in +war were divided in lots and assigned to housekeepers. We find even +gentle Roger Williams asking for "one of the drove of Adam's degenerate +seed" as a slave. Hugh Peters, of Salem, wrote to a Boston friend: "Wee +haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would bee +glad of a share viz.: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke +good." Two years later he wrote: "My wife desires my daughter to send to +Hanna that was her maid now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell +with us, for truly wee are now so destitute (having now but an Indian) +that wee know not what to do." Lowell thus comments on such savage +ministrations: + + "Let any housewife of our day who does not find the Keltic element + in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, + imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with + by signs, for its maid-of-all-work, and take courage. Those were + serious times indeed when your cook might give warning by taking + your scalp or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it + into the woods." + +We frequently glean from diaries of the times hints of the pleasures of +having a wild Nipmuck or Narragansett Indian as "help." Rev. Peter +Thatcher, of Milton, Mass., bought an Indian in 1674 for £5 down and £5 +more at the end of the year--a high-priced servant for the times. One of +her duties was, apparently, the care of a young Thatcher infant. Shortly +after the purchase, the reverend gentleman makes this entry in his +diary: "Came home and found my Indian girl had liked to have knocked my +Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good +walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so +no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good +Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his +firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut stick as a +civilizing influence. + +When we reach newspaper days we find Indian servants frequently among +the runaways; as Mather said, they could not endure the yoke; and, +indeed, it would seem natural enough that any such wild child of the +forests should flee away from the cramped atmosphere of a Puritan +household and house. We read pathetic accounts of the desertion of aged +colonists by their Indian servants. One writes that he took his "Pecod +girle" as a "chilld of death" when but two years old, had reared her +kindly, nursed her in sickness, and now she had run away from him when +he sorely needed her, and he wished to buy a blackamoor in her place. +Sometimes the description of the costumes in which these savages took +their flitting, is extremely picturesque. This is from the _Boston News +Letter_ of October, 1707: + + "Run away from her master Baker. A tall Lusty Carolina Indian woman + named Keziah Wampum, having long straight Black Hair tyed up with a + red Hair Lace, very much marked in the hands and face. Had on a + strip'd red blue & white Homespun Jacket & a Red one. A Black & + White Silk Crape Petticoat, A White Shift, as Also a blue one with + her, and a mixt Blue and White Linsey Woolsey Apron." + +A reward of four pounds was offered for this barbaric creature. + +Another Indian runaway in 1728 was thus bedizened, showing a startling +progress in adornment from the apron of skins and blanket of her +wildwood home. + + "She wore off a Narrow Stript pinck Cherredary Goun turn'd up with + a little flour'd red & white Callico. A Stript Homespun Quilted + Petticoat, a plain muslin Apron, a suit of plain Pinners & a red & + white flower'd knot, also a pair of green Stone Earrings with White + Cotton Stockings & Leather heel'd Wooden Shoes." + +Indian men often left their masters dishonestly dressed in their +masters' fine apparel, and even wearing beribboned flaxen wigs, which +must have been comic to a degree over their harsh, saturnine +countenances--"as brown as any bun." + +A limited substitute for Indian housemaids was found at an early day in +"help," as it was called even then. Roger Williams, writing of his +daughter, said: "She desires to spend some time in service & liked much +Mrs. Brenton who wanted." John Tinker, who himself was help, wrote thus +to John Winthrop; "Help is scarce, hard to get, difficult to please, +uncertain, &c. Means runneth out and wages on & I cannot make choice of +my help." Children of well-to-do citizens thus worked in domestic +service. Members of the family of the rich Judge Sewall lived out as +help. The sons of Downing and of Hooke went with their kinsman, Governor +Winthrop, as servants. Sir Robert Crane also sent his cousin to the +governor as a farm-servant. In Andover an Abbott maiden lived as help +for years in the house of a Phillips. Children were bound out when but +eight years old. These neighborly forms of domestic assistance were +necessarily slow of growth and limited in extent, and negro slavery +appeared to the colonists a much more effectual and speedy way of +solving the difficulty; and the Indian war-prisoners, who proved such +poor and dangerous house-servants, seemed a convenient, cheap, and +God-sent means of exchange for "Moores," as they were called, who were +far better servants. Emanuel Downing wrote in 1645 that he thought it +"synne in us having power in our hand to suffer them (the Indians) to +mayntayne the worship of the devill," that they should be removed from +their pow-wows, and suggests the exchange for negroes, saying: "I doe +not see how wee can thrive vntill wee into gett a stock of slaves +sufficient to doe all our business." + +Downing had a personal interest in the gaining of Moors; for he had had +almost as much trouble in obtaining servants as he did in marrying off +his children. We find him and his wife writing to Winthrop for help, +buying Indians, sending home more than once to England for "godlye +skylful paynstakeing girles," beseeching their neighbors to send them +servants "of good caridg and godly conuersation;" and at last buying +negroes, to try in every way to solve the vexed question. + +Though the early planters came to New England to obtain and maintain +liberty, and "bond slaverie, villinage," and other feudal servitudes +were prohibited under the ninety-first article of the Body of Liberties, +still they needed but this suggestion of Downing's to adopt quickly what +was then the universal and unquestioned practice of all Christian +nations--slavery. Josselyn found slaves on Noddle's Island in Boston +Harbor at his first visit, though they were not held in a Puritan +family. By 1687 a French refugee wrote home: + + "You may also here own Negroes and Negresses, there is not a house + in Boston however small may be its means, that has not one or + two.... Negroes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles." + +In Connecticut the crime of man-stealing was made punishable by death; +and in 1646 the Massachusetts General Court awoke to the growing +condition of affairs and bore witness "by the first Optunity, ag't the +hainous & crying sinn of man-stealing," and undertook to send back to +"Gynny" negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver and brought to New +England, and to send a letter of explanation and apology with them. + +Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers, +the Massachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the +savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to +the West Indies. King Philip's wife and child were thus sold and there +died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In +1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian +male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these +transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed +against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in +New England as in Virginia, Newport being the New England centre of the +Guinea Trade. From 1707 to 1732 a tax of three guineas a head was +imposed in Rhode Island on each negro imported--on "Guinea blackbirds." +It would be idle to dwell now on the cruelty of that horrid traffic, the +sufferings on board the slavers from lack of room, of food, of water, +of air. But three feet three, inches was allowed between decks for the +poor negro, who, accustomed to a free, out-of-door life, thus crouched +and sat through the passage. No wonder the loss of life was great. It +was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold, +heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to +the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern +newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness +and viciousness the advertisements of our New England newspapers of the +eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in +Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel +Pewter advertised in the _Weekly Rehearsal_ in 1737 that he would sell +horses for ten shillings pay if the horse sale were accomplished, and +five shillings if he endeavored to sell and could not; and for negroes +"_sixpence a pound_ on all he sells, and a reasonable price if he does +not sell." + +Many letters still exist of advices from ship-owners to ship-captains, +advice as to the purchase, care, and choice of captives, "to get one old +man for a Lingister; to worter ye Rum & sell by short mesuer &c. &c." +Negro-stealing by Americans continued till 1864, when a brig sailing +westward from Africa on that iniquitous errand, was lost at sea--a grim +ending to three centuries of incredible and unchristian cruelty. + +The first anti-slavery tract published in America was written by Judge +Sewall in the year 1700--"The Selling of Joseph." His timid protest but +little availed, though he persevered in his belief and his opposition to +the day of his death. Other colonists who were opposed to the traffic +were willing to buy slaves, that the poor heathen might be brought up in +a Christian land, be led away from their idols--Abraham and the +patriarchs were given as authorities in justification of thus doing. One +respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the +Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the +Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling +Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another +cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel +dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his +congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and +decency in the specious words that framed a lie in every clause. Many +ministers were slave owners; Daille--the French Huguenot, Dr. Hopkins, +Dr. Williams, Ezra Stiles, and Jonathan Edwards being noted examples. +The ministers from Eliot down were kind to the blacks, preaching special +sermons to them, and forming religious associations for them. A negro +school for reading, writing, and catechizing was established in Boston +in 1728. + +Cotton Mather had a negro worth fifty pounds given him by his +congregation, and that "most notorious benefactor," with his +never-ceasing "essay to doe good," at once, in gratitude for the gift, +devoted the negro to God's service, and made many a noble resolve to +save, through God's grace, his bondsman's soul. It is painful to read at +a later date that he found his unregenerate slave "horribly arrested by +spirits," by which he did not mean captured by the dreaded emissaries of +the devil who pervaded the air of Boston and Salem at that time, but +simply very drunk. + +Slaves were more plentiful in Connecticut and Rhode Island than in +Massachusetts. Madam Knight gives a glimpse of Connecticut slave life in +1704, and of awkward table traits in both master and slave as well, when +she says that the negroes were too familiar, were permitted to sit at +the table with the master, and "into the Dish goes the black Hoof as +freely as the white Hand." Hawthorne says of New England slaves: + + "They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in families + of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the + circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their + dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's + children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot, + that they saw white men and women imported from Europe as they had + been from Africa, and sold, though only for a term of years, yet as + actual slaves to the highest bidder." + +In the main, New England slaves were not unhappy, for they were well +treated; and the race has the gift to be merry in the worst of +circumstances. Occasionally one would be brought to the northern land, +one of higher sensibilities, more sensitive affections, greater pride; +one who could not live a slave. Such a one was the haughty Congo Pomp, +who escaped to a swamp near Truro on Cape Cod--a swamp now called by his +name--and placing at the foot of a tree a jug of water and loaf of bread +to sustain him on his last long journey, hanged himself from the +low-hanging limbs, and thus obtained freedom. Such also was Parson +Williams's slave Cato in Longmeadow, Mass. He bore repeated whippings +for his high-spirited disobedience, "for speaking out loud in meeting, +drinking too much cider, going on a rampage," and finally drowned +himself in a well. + +Waitstill Winthrop wrote thus of one suicidal Moor to Fitz John Winthrop +in 1682. + + "I fear Black Tom will do but little seruis. He usued to make a + show of hangeing himselfe before folkes, but I believe he is not + very nimble about it when he is alone. Tis good to have an eye to + him & you think it not worth while to keep him eyether sell him or + send him to Virginia or the Barbadoes." + +William Pyncheon had also a slave who was "assiduous in hangeing." To be +sold to Virginia was a standard threat to New England slaves, as work in +Southern tobacco-fields was thought much more severe than in northern +cornfields. + +Slavery lingered in New England until after Revolutionary days. It is +said that its death blow was dealt in Worcester, Mass., in 1783, when a +citizen was tried for assaulting and beating his negro servant. The +defence was that the black man was a slave, and the beating was but +necessary restraint and correction. The master was found guilty in the +Worcester County Court and fined forty shillings. + +Though there were few slaves who were willing to leave life in order to +be free, many were willing to try to leave their masters. The early New +England newspapers abound in advertisements of runaway blacks--in gay +attire, with fiddles and guns, bewigged and silk-stockinged, well +dressed if not well treated. + +I know no records that show more fully, though wholly unconsciously, the +vast simplicity of our ancestors than these advertisements of runaway +servants. Fancy giving as a possible means of identification of any +human being such an item of descriptions as this: "When he gets drunk or +drinks much he is red in the face"--as if that were an extraordinary or +peculiar trait in any drunken man! Another runaway is said to have had +"sometimes a sly look in his eye and wears the button of his hat in +front;" another to have been a liar; another to have been "somewhat +impudent if crossed, and has a leering look under his eyes." Others were +"awkward in manners," "somewhat morose in countenance," "had long +finger-nails," "had one or two pimples on the face," "is too fond of +talking." It seems almost incredible that intelligent persons should +have given such childish and easily obliterated or varied particulars of +description. + +Diverse names were applied to these runaways: "Sirrinam Indianman +Slave," "Mustee-fellow," "Molatto," "Moor," "Maddagerscar-boy," +"Guinyman," "Congoman," "Coast-fellow," "Tawny," "Black-a-moor"--all +apparently conveying some distinction of description universally +comprehended at the time. + +We have a few records of worthy black servants who remind us of the +faithful, loving house-servants of old Southern families. Such a one was +Judge Sewall's man, Boston--a freeman--to a master who deserved faithful +service, if ever master did. The entries in the Judge's diary, meagre as +they are, somehow show fully to us that faithful life of service. We see +Boston taking the Sewall children out sledding; we see him carrying one +of the little daughters out of town in his arms when the neighbors were +suddenly smitten with that colonial plague, the small-pox. We find him, +in later years, a tender nurse, sleeping by the fire in languishing +Hannah Sewall's sick-chamber; and, after her death, we hear him +protesting against the removal of her dead form from her chamber; and we +can see him weeping as he sat through the lonely nights with his dead +and dearly loved mistress, till she was hidden from his view. It is +pleasing to know that though he lived a servant, he was buried like a +gentleman; he received that token of final respect so highly prized in +Boston--a ceremonious funeral, with a good fire, and chairs set in rows, +and plenty of wine and cake, and a notice in the _News Letter_, and +doubtless gloves in decent numbers. + +Other black men led noble lives in service, if we can trust the records +on their tombstones. + +This elegant epitaph is upon a gravestone in Concord, Mass.: + + "GOD WILLS US FREE; MAN WILLS US SLAVES + I WILL AS GOD WILLS, GODS WILL BE DONE. + HERE LIES THE BODY OF + + JOHN JACK + + A NATIVE OF AFRICA, WHO DIED + MARCH 1773 AGED ABOUT SIXTY YEARS. + THOUGH BORN IN A LAND OF SLAVERY + HE WAS BORN FREE + THOUGH HE LIVED IN A LAND OF LIBERTY + HE LIVED A SLAVE. + TILL BY HIS HONEST (THOUGH STOLEN) LABORS + HE ACQUIRED THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY + WHICH GAVE HIM FREEDOM + THOUGH NOT LONG BEFORE + DEATH, THE GRAND TYRANT + GAVE HIM HIS FINAL EMANCIPATION + AND PUT HIM ON A FOOTING WITH KINGS. + THOUGH A SLAVE TO VICE + HE PRACTISED THOSE VIRTUES + WITHOUT WHICH KINGS ARE BUT SLAVES." + +At Attleborough, Mass., near the old Hatch Tavern, may be seen this +epitaph: + + "HERE LIES THE BEST OF SLAVES + NOW TURNING INTO DUST, + CÆSAR THE AETHIOPIAN CLAIMS + A PLACE AMONG THE JUST. + + HIS FAITHFUL SOUL HAS FLED + TO REALMS OF HEAVENLY LIGHT, + AND BY THE BLOOD THAT JESUS SHED + IS CHANGED FROM BLACK TO WHITE. + + JAN. 15TH HE QUITTED THE STAGE + IN THE 77TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. + + 1781." + +Besides slaves, Indians, and help, a species of nexal servitude also +existed in all the colonies. At the beginning of colonization bound or +indentured white servants were sent in large numbers to the new land. +Thirty came to the Bay Colony as early as 1625. Some of the terms of +service were very long, even for ten years. These indentured servants +were in three classes: "free-willers," or "redemptioners," or voluntary +emigrants; "kids," who had been seduced through ignorance or duplicity +on board ships that carried them off to America; and convicts +transported for crime. The latter expatriated vagabonds were sent +chiefly to Virginia. The "kids" were trapanned, by the fair promises of +crimps or "spirits," in Scotland, Ireland, and England, where kidnapping +formed an extensive and incredibly bold business. The Scots were brought +over and sold at the time of English wars. At one time "Scots, Indians, +and Negars" were not allowed to train in the militia in Massachusetts. +Many curious and romantic stories are told of these kidnapped servants. +One day, in 1730, a number of Boston gentlemen went to the Long Wharf to +examine a cargo of Irish transports then offered for sale. Among the +lads who ran up and down the wharf to show his strength and condition +was one who had gone to sea on another ship. The captain, his uncle, +died at sea, and the crew sold the boy to this transport-ship, which +chanced to pass them. The boy faithfully served out his time to his +purchaser, and became a gallant officer in the wars with the Indians. + +These indentured servants were just as trying as the Indians and the +negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters' +property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a +lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender +fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to +Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The +Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory +bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several +things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, etc., and breaking +open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial, +affirmed that he had really a very small appetite, but the food +furnished by that colonial blue-stocking, Anne Bradstreet, was not fit +to eat, the bread being black and heavy and sour, and he only took an +occasional surreptitious bite to keep himself from starvation. But it +was proved that he had feasted not only himself, but comrades, and that +a neighbor, who had a "great fat Turkey against his daughter's marriage" +hung up in a locked room, was relieved of it by the hungry and agile +John, who got some of his fellows to let him down the chimney to steal +the turkey and good store of beer, with which they all caroused; and he +was fitly punished. + +The laws were strict enough at first as to the behavior of servants, and +occasionally a topping young maid felt their force. In Hartford, "Susan +Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to +the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to +be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publicquely corrected and so +to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary." + +In York, Me., in 1645, "Alexander Maxwell for his grosse offence in his +exorbitant and abusive carriages towards his master Mr. George Leader +shall be publicly brought forth to the Whipping Post, where he shall be +fastened till 30 lashes be given him upon his bare skin." Maxwell was +ordered to satisfy his master for the money paid for his board in +prison, and, if he further misbehaved, Mr. Leader could sell him to +Virginia. + +In later days New England housewives must have longed for the good old +times of the whipping-post and coarse diet and hard work for disorderly +and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured +with one of her maids. She had written many pathetic entreaties to her +mother, Madam Winthrop, to send her a "good girle, a strong lusty +servant," one "vsed to all kind of work who would refuse none," and we +learn what she got, from a letter written a few months later, with a +new-born babe by her side: + + "A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now + I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first + coming me she carried her selfe dutifully as became a servant; but + since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for + small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent + that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If + I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she + sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will + not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my + life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to + you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed + towards me I should but grieve you. My husband hath vsed all meanes + for to reforme her, reasons and perswasions, but shee doth profess + that her heart and her nature will not suffer her to confesse her + faults. If I tell my husband of her behavior towards me, vpon + examination she will denie all she hath done or spoken, so that we + know not how to proceed against her." + +We must not forget that the Winthrops had the best opportunity of any in +the land to have good servants; for not only were help placed in their +families, but the best of English servants were consigned to them; yet +neither the Governor's sister, Madam Downing, nor his daughter, Madam +Dudley, could be "suited." And hear the plaint of John Winthrop to his +father in 1717: + + "It is not convenient now to write the trouble and plague we have + had with this Irish creature the year past. Lying and unfaithfull; + w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her + mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th + fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out + of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent, as when we have taken + her to task for her wickedness she has gone away to complain of + cruell usage. I can truly say we have used this base creature w'th + a great deal of kindness and lenity. She w'd frequently take her + mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dresse herselfe + and away without leave among her companions. I may have said some + time or other when she has been in fault that she was fitt to live + nowhere but in Virginia, and if she w'd not mend her ways I should + send her thither tho I am sure nobody w'd give her passage thither + to have her service for twenty yeares she is such a high-spirited + pirnicious jade. Robin has been run away neare ten dayes as you + will see by the inclosed and this creature know of his going and of + his carrying out 4 dozen bottles of cyder, metheglin and palme wine + out of the cellar among the servants of the town and meat and I + know not w't. The bottles they broke and threw away after they had + drunk up the liquor, and they got up o'r sheep anight, killed a + fatt one, roasted and made merry w'th it before morning." + +This wild Irish girl was indentured to the unfortunate Winthrop and his +more unfortunate wife for four years, and was to have fifty shillings +and some other start in the world when her time was up. + +Out-of-the-way plantations fared no better in the question of service. +John Wynter, the head agent of the settlement at Richmonds Island in +Maine, wrote thus resentfully in 1639, to Mr. Trelawny, of the London +company, of his maid, one Priscilla Beckford: + + "You write of some yll reports is given of my Wyfe for beatinge the + maide: yf a faire waye will not doe yt, beatinge must sometimes + vppon such Idlle girrels as she is. Yf you think yt fitte for my + Wyfe to do all the work, and the maide sitt still, and she must + forbear her hands to strike, then the work will ly vndonn. She hath + bin now 2-1/2 yeares in the house & I do not thinke she hath risen + 20 tymes before my Wyfe hath bin vp to Call her, and many tymes + light the fire before she comes out of her bed. She hath twice gone + a mechinge in the woodes which we have bin fain to send all our + Company to seek her. We can hardly keep her within doors after we + are gonn to bed except we carry the kay of the door to bed with vs. + She coulde never milke Cow nor Goate since she came hither. Our men + do not desire to have her boyl the kittle for them she is so + sluttish. She cannot be trusted to serve a few piggs but my Wyfe + must commonly be with her. She hath written home I heare that she + was fain to ly vppon goates skinns. She might take some goates + skinns to ly in her bedd but not given to her for her lodginge. For + a yeare & quarter or more she lay with my daughter vppon a good + feather bed; before my daughter being lacke 3 or 4 days to Sacco + the maid goes into bed with her cloths & stockins & would not take + the paines to pluck off her Cloths; her bed after was a doust bedd + & shee had 2 Coverletts to ly on her, but Sheets she had none, + after that tyme she was found to be so sluttish. Her beatinge that + she hath had hath never hurt her body nor limes. She is so fatt & + soggy she can hardly do any worke. Yf this maide at her lazy tymes + when she hath bin found in her yll accyons do not deserve 2 or 3 + blowes I pray you who hath the most reason to complain my Wyfe or + maide. My Wyfe hath an Vnthankefull office. Yt does not please me + well, being she hath taken so much paines and care to order things + as well as she could, and ryse in the morning rath & go to bed soe + latte, and have hard speeches for yt." + +We can well imagine his exhausted patience, and that of poor overworked +Mistress Wynter, at that fat soggy thing, that lag-last, so shiftless +and useless about the house, lazing from rath to latte, and then to +complete their exasperation, miching off into the woods to shirk her +work so that the whole company had to turn out with a mort of trouble to +hunt for the leg-trape. We cannot marvel at the beating, but simply +wonder at its being remarked in those days of many and hard beatings, +when scholars, servants, soldiers, and college students were well +whipped, and, in Old England, wives also. + +Wynter had no better fortune without doors with his men-servants and +workmen; they proved kittle cattle. He found them not "plyable" or +"condishionabell," that they "spoke Fair to the Face and Colloged behind +the back." Of one malcontent he wrote, + + "He is verry vnwilling to do vs servize, he is alwaies too hard + labored, he cares not what Spoyle he makes, and will not be + commanded but when he list. He is such a talkinge Fellow as makes + our company worse than would be." + +He says his bound servants ran away at their pleasure, worked when they +pleased, and led others off to their lure, and should be punished if +they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and +promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a +knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among +New England historical collections no other such well of good old +English words and phrases. + +The Declaration of Independence did not better the aspect of the servant +question. The _Providence Gazette_ advertised in 1796 that a reward of +five hundred dollars and the "warmest blessings of abused householders" +would be given to any restoring the conditions of the good old times, or +rather what they fancied was + + "The constant service of the antique world + When service sweat for duty not for meed." + +The notice opens thus: + + "Was mislaid or taken away by mistake, soon after the formation of + the abolition society, from the servant girls in this town all + inclination to do any kind of work, and left in lieu thereof an + independent appearance, a strong and continued thirst for high + wages, a gossiping disposition for every sort of amusement, a + leering and hankering after persons of the other sex, a desire of + finery and fashion, a never-ceasing trot after new places, more + advantageous for stealing, with a number of contingent + accomplishments that do not suit the wearers." + +President Dwight wrote that the servants of that day were "distinguished +for vice and profligacy;" so the nineteenth century opened no more +promisingly than the eighteenth. + +The pious colonists felt that great spiritual, as well as temporal +responsibility rested upon them in regard to their bond-servants. We +find in contemporary letters frequent reference to the souls of the +indentured ones; Englishmen at the old home wrote to the settlers to +remember well their religious, their proselyting duties; and they +faithfully reminded each other of their accountability for souls. For +instance, when a smart young Irishman came over with some Irish hounds, +his consigner besought the New Englanders to remember that it was as +godly to "winne this fellowes soule out of the subtillest snare of +Sathan, Romes pollitick religion, as to winne an Indian soule out of the +Dieuells clawes;" and he urged them to watch the Papist narrowly as to +his carriage in Puritandom, his attitude toward Protestantism. This was +the same religious zeal that led the Boston elders to send missionaries +from New England to convert the heathen of the Established Church in +Virginia. + +The moral and religious condition of these servants was truly of great +importance in the preservation of such a theocracy as was New England, +since few of them returned to England, but after serving out their time +became freemen with homes and land and votes of their own; and the +commonwealth could not live as a religious organization unless it +thrived through the religious spirit of its citizens. + +One other form of domestic service existed until this century. A limited +amount of assistance was given in some households by those unhappy +wights, the town-poor. These wretched paupers were sold to the lowest +bidder. Sometimes the buyer received but a few shillings a year from the +town for the "keep" of one of these helpless souls. We may be sure that +he got some work out of the pauper to pay for his board. We read of one +old Dimbledee, of Widow Bump and Widow Bumpus, degenerate successors in +name as well as in estate of the Pilgrim Bompasse, who were sold from +year to year from one farm to another and given a grudged existence, +till at last we find the town paying for their welcome coffins and +winding sheets. Two curious facts are to be noted in the poor accounts: +that the women paupers were almost invariably "very comfortable on it +for clothes," as were other women of that dress-loving day; and that +liquor was frequently supplied to both male and female paupers by the +town. Sometimes ten gallons apiece, a very consoling amount, was given +in a year. I have also noted the frequent presence on the poor-list of +what are termed "French Neuterls." These were Acadians--the neighbors +and compatriots of Evangeline--feeble folk, who, void of romance, +succumbed in despair to exile and home-sickness, a new language and a +new manner of living, and yielded weakly to work as servants when they +had no courage to maintain homes. New England paupers lived to a good +old age. I have been told that the unhappy fate of one of these +town-poor--an Acadian--was traced for over thirty years in the town +records of her sale. In 1767 there were twenty-one paupers in Danvers, +Mass., and their average age was eighty-four years, thus apparently +offering proof of good rum and good usage from the town. There was also +an hereditary pauperism. In Salem a certain family always had some of +its members on the list of town-poor from the year 1721 to 1848; and +perhaps they found better homes through "living around" than in trying +to support themselves. + +Criminals were also sold into service to work out their sentences. Thus +did the practical settlers attempt to carry out one of Sir Thomas More's +Utopian notions. Upon the whole, I think I should rather have a Nipmuck +squaw cooking in my kitchen, or a Pequot warrior digging in my garden, +than to have a white burglar or ruffian in either situation. + +It is well to observe in passing that no gingerly nicety of regard in +calling those who served by any other name than servant, was shown or +heeded in olden times. They believed with St. Paul, "Art thou called +being a servant? Care not for it." All hired workers in the house, hired +laborers in the field, those contracting to work under a master at any +trade for a period of time, apprentices, and many whom we should now +term agents or stewards, were then called servants, and signed contracts +as servants, and did not appear at all insulted by being termed +servants. + + + + +IV + +HOME INTERIORS + + +It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial +houses from a contemporary and reliable source--the inventories of the +estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court +records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much +minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room, +instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a +clear picture of the household belongings of that day. + +The first room beyond the threshold of the door that one finds named in +the houses "of the richer sort," is the entry. This was apparently +always bare of furniture, and indeed well it might be, for it was seldom +aught but a vestibule to the rest of the house, containing, save the +staircase, but room enough to swing the front door in opening. Dr. Lyon +gives the inventory of John Salmon of Boston in the year 1750 as the +earliest record which he has found of the use of the word hall instead +of entry, as we now employ it. In the _Boston News Letter_, thirty one +years earlier, on August 24th, 1719, I find this advertisement: "Fine +Glass Lamps & Lanthorns well gilt and painted both Convex and Plain. +Being suitable for Halls, staircases, or other Passage ways, at the +Glass Shop in Queen Street." This advertisement is, however, +exceptional. The hall in Puritan houses was not a passageway, it was the +living-room, the keeping-room, the dwelling-room, the sitting-room; in +it the family sat and ate their meals--in, it they lived. Let us see +what was the furniture of a Puritan home-room in early days, and what +its value. The inventory of the possessions of Theophilus Eaton, +Governor of the New Haven colony, is often quoted. At the time of his +death, in 1657, he had in his hall, + + "A drawing Table & a round table, £1.18s. + A cubberd & 2 long formes, 14s. + A cubberd cloth & cushions, 13s.; 4 setwork cushions, + 12s. £1.5. + 6 greene cushions, 12s; a greate chaire with needleworke, + 13s. £1.5. + 2 high chaires set work, 20s; 4 high stooles set worke, + 26s 8d £6.6.8. + 4 low chaires set worke, 6s 8d, £1.6.8. + 2 low stooles set worke, 10s. + 2 Turkey Carpette, £2; 6 high joyne stooles, 6s. £2.6. + A pewter cistern & candlestick, 4s. + A pr of great brass Andirons, 12s. + A pr of small Andirons, 6s 8d. + A pr of doggs, 2s 6d. + A pr of tongues fire pan & bellowes, 7s." + +Now, this was a very liberally furnished living-room. There were plenty +of seats for diners and loungers, if Puritans ever lounged; two long +forms and a dozen stools of various heights, with green or embroidered +cushions, upon which to sit while at the Governor's board; and seven +chairs, gay with needlework covers, to draw around his fireplace with +its shining paraphernalia of various sized andirons, tongs, and bellows. +The low, heavy-raftered room with these plentiful seats, the tables with +their Turkey covers, the picturesque cupboard with its rich cloth, and +its display of the Governor's silver plate, all aglow with the light of +a great wood fire, make a pretty picture of comfortable simplicity, +pleasant of contemplation in our bric-a-brac filled days, a fit setting +for the figures of the Governor, "New England's glory full of warmth and +light," and his dearest, greatest, best of temporal enjoyments, his +"vertuous, prudent and prayerful wife." + +Contemporary inventories make more clear and more positive still this +picture of a planter's home-room, for similar furniture is found in all. +All the halls had cisterns for water or for wine (and I fancy they stood +on the small table usually mentioned); all had a table for serving +meals; a majority had the cupboard; a few had "picktures" or "lookeing +glasses;" very rarely a couch or "day-bed" was seen; some had +"lanthorns" as well as candlesticks; others a spinning-wheel for the +good wife, when she "keepit close the house and birlit at the wheel." + +Chairs were a comparatively rare form of furniture in New England in +early colonial days, nor were they frequently seen in humble English +homes of that date. Stools and forms were the common seats. Turned, +wainscot, and covered chairs are the three distinct types mentioned in +the seventeenth century. Turned chairs are shown in good examples in +what are known as the Carver and Brewster chairs, now preserved in +Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. The president's chair at Harvard College is +another ancient turned chair. + +The seats of many of these chairs were of flags and rushes. The bark of +the elm and bass trees was also used for bottoming chairs. + +The wainscot chairs were all of wood, seats as well as backs, usually of +oak. They were frequently carved or panelled. One now in Pilgrim Hall is +known as the Winslow chair. Another fine specimen in carved oak is in +the Essex Institute in Salem. Carved chairs were owned only by persons +of wealth or high standing, and were frequently covered with "redd +lether" or "Rusha lether." Sometimes the leather was stamped and +different rich fabrics were employed to cover the seats. "Turkey +wrought" chairs are frequently mentioned. Velvet "Irish stitch," red +cloth, and needlework covers are named. Green appeared to be, however, +the favorite color. + +Cane chairs appeared in the last quarter of the century. It is said that +the use of cane was introduced into furniture with the marriage of +Charles II. to Catharine of Braganza. + +The bow-legged chair, often with claw and ball foot, came into use in +the beginning of the eighteenth century. "Crowfoot" and "eaglesfoot" +were named in inventories. These are copies of Dutch shapes. + +Easy-chairs also appeared at that date, usually as part of the bedroom +furniture, and were covered with the stuffs of which the bed-hangings +and window-curtains were made, such as "China," "callico," "camblet," +"harrateen." + +The three-cornered chair, now known as an "As you like it" chair, +appeared in the middle of the century under the names of triangle, +round-about, and half-round chair. + +The chairs known now as Chippendale may date back to the middle of the +century; Windsor chairs, also known and manufactured in Philadelphia at +that date, were not common in New England till a score of years later, +when they were made and sold in vast numbers, being much more +comfortable than the old bannister or slat-backed chairs then in common +use. + +Another piece of hall furniture deserves special mention. Dr. Lyon gives +these names of cupboards found in New England: Cupboard, small cupboard, +great cupboard, court cupboard, livery cupboard, side cupboard, hanging +cupboard, sideboard cupboard, and cupboard with drawers. To this list +might be added corner cupboard. The word court cupboard is found from +the years 1647 to 1704. It was a high piece of furniture with an +enclosed closet or drawers, originally intended to display plate, and +was the highest-priced cupboard found. Upon it were set, in New England, +both glass and plate. The livery cupboard, similar in its uses, seldom +had an enclosed portion. "Turn pillar cuberds," painted and carved +cupboards, were found. The item of cupboard in any inventory was usually +accompanied by that of a cupboard cloth. This latter seemed to be the +most elegant and luxurious article in the whole house. Cupboard cloths +of holland, "laced," "pantado," "cambrick," "kalliko," "green wrought +with silk fringe"--all are named. Cushions also, "to set upon a cubberds +head," are frequently named. They were made of damask, needlework, +velvet or cloth. A corner cupboard was apparently a small affair; a +japanned one is named. What we now call a corner cupboard was then known +as a beaufet. + +The hall was naturally on one side of the entry and opening into it. On +the other side, in large houses, was the parlor; this room was sometimes +used as a dining-room, sometimes as a state bedroom. It frequently held, +in addition to furniture like that of the hall, a chest or chests of +drawers to hold the family linen, and also that family idol--the best +bed. + +Of the exact shape and height of the bedsteads used by the early +colonists, I find no accurate nor very suggestive descriptions. The +terms used in wills, inventories, and letters seem too vague and curt to +give us a correct picture. What was the "half-headed bedstead" left with +"Curtaince & Valance of Dornix" by will by Simon Eire in Boston in 1658? +Or, to give a fuller description of a similar one in the sale of +furniture of the King's Arms in Boston, in 1651, "one half-headed +Bedsted with Blew Pillars." I fancy they were bedsteads with moderately +high headboards. It is easy enough to obtain full items of the bed +itself and the bed-furniture, its coverings and hangings. We read of +"ffether beds," "flocke beds," "downe bedds," "wool beds," and even +"charf beds," the latter worth but three shillings apiece, all of +importance enough to be named in wills and left with as much dignity of +bequest as Shakespeare's famous "second-best bed." Even so influential a +man as Thomas Dudley did not disdain to leave by specification to his +daughter Pacy a "ffeather beed & boulster." In 1666 Nicholas Upsall, of +Boston, left a "Bedstead fitted with a Rope Matt & Curtains to it." In +March, 1687, Sewall wrote to London for "White Fustian Drawn enough for +curtains, vallen counterpaine for a bed & half a duz chaires with four +threeded green worsted to work it." In 1691 we find him writing for +"Fringe for the Fustian bed & half a duz Chairs. Six yards and a half +for the vallons, fifteen yards for 6 chairs two Inches deep; 12 yards +half inch deep." This wrought fustian bed was certainly handsome. + +By revolutionary times we read such items as these: "Neet sette bed," +"Very genteel red and white copperplate Cottonbed with Squab and Window +Curtains Fring'd and made in the Newest Taste," "Sacken' & Corded Beds +and a Pallat Bed," "Very Handsome Flower'd Crimson worsted damask carv'd +and rais'd Teaster Bed & Curtains compleat," "A Four Post Bedstead of +Mahogany on Casters with Carved Foot Posts, Callico Curtains to Ditto & +Window Curtains to Match, and a Green Harrateen Cornish Bed." Harrateen, +a strong, stiff woollen material, formed the most universal bed hanging. +Trundle-beds or truckle-beds were used from the earliest days. So there +was variety in plenty. + +A form of bedstead called a slawbank was common enough in New York, New +Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania until this century. They were more +rarely found in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and as I do not know what +they were called in New England, we will give them the Dutch name +slawbank, from _sloap-bancke_, a sleeping-bench. A slawbank was the +prototype of our modern folding-bed. It was an oblong frame with a +network of rope. This frame was fastened at one end to the wall with +heavy hinges, and at night it was lowered to a horizontal position, and +the unhinged end was supported on heavy wooden turned legs which fitted +into sockets in the frame. When not in use the bed was hooked up against +the wall, and doors like closet doors were closed over it, or curtains +were drawn over it to conceal it. It was usually placed in the kitchen, +and upon it slept goodman and goodwife. I know of several slawbanks +still in old Narragansett, and one in a colonial house in Shrewsbury, +Mass. A similar one may be seen at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It is hung +around with blue serge curtains. I have seen no advertisements of +slawbanks under any name in New England newspapers, unless the "bedstead +in a painted press" in the _Boston Gazette_ of November, 1750, may be +one. + +The bed furniture was of much importance in olden days, and the coverlet +was frequently mentioned separately. Margaret Lake, of Ipswich, in 1662, +so named a "Tapestry coverlet" worth £4. Susannah Compton had at about +the same date a "Yearne Courlead." "Strieked couerlids" appear, and Adam +Hunt, of Ipswich, had in 1671 "an embroadured couerled." +"Happgings"--coarse common coverlets--are also named. In 1716, on +September 24th, in the _Boston News Letter_, the word counterpane first +appears. "India counterpins" often were advertised, and cheney, +harrataen, and camlet coverlets or counterpanes were made to match the +bed-hangings. + +A pair of sheets was furnished in 1628 to each Massachusetts Bay +colonist. This was a small allowance, but quite as full as the average +possession of sheets by other colonists. Cotton sheets were not +plentiful; flaxen or "fleishen" sheets, "canvas" sheets, "noggan" +sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his +note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and +may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially +explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy +citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning +became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun +sheets were made in large quantities, and owned by all respectable +householders. "Twenty and one pair" was no unusual number to appear in +an inventory. + +There were plenty of "ffether boulsters," "shafe boulsters," "wool +bolsters;" and John Walker had in 1659 a "Thurlinge Boulster," and each +household had many pillows. The word bear was universally used to denote +a pillow-case. It was spelled ber, beer, beir, beare and berr. In 1689 +the value of a "peler-beare" in an inventory was given at three +shillings. In 1664 Susannah Compton had linen "pillow coates." Pillow +covers also were named, and pillow clothes, but pillow bear was the term +most commonly applied. + +The following list of varieties of chests is given by Dr. Lyon: Joined +chests, wainscot chests, board chests, spruce chests, oak chests, carved +chests, chests with one or two drawers, cypress chests. Joined and +wainscot chests were framed chests with panels, distinguished clearly +from the board chests, made of plain boards. The latter were often +called plain chests, the former panel chests. Carved chests were much +rarer. William Bradford, of Plymouth, had one in 1657 worth £1. Dr. Lyon +also gives as possibly being carved these items: "wrought chest," +"ingraved," "settworke," and "inlayed chests." Chests were also painted, +usually on the parts in relief on the carving, the colors being +generally black and red. Chests with drawers were not rare in New +England. A good specimen may be seen in the rooms of the Connecticut +Historical Society. They were distinct in shape from what we now call +chests of drawers. Nearly all the oak chests were quartered to show the +grain, and "drop ornaments" and "egg ornaments" of various woods were +applied. Cypress and cedar chests were used then, as now, to protect +garments from moths. Governor Bellingham had one of the former worth £5. +Ship chests or sea chests were, of course, plentiful enough. Cristowell +Gallup had in 1655 a "sea chest and a great white chest." These sea +chests being made of cheap materials, have seldom been preserved. There +would appear to be in addition to the various chests already named, a +hanging chest. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell wrote to England for "4 +dozen pair Snipe bills to hang small chissts." This may possibly refer +to snipe-bill hinges to be placed on chests. + +It is safe to infer that almost every emigrant brought to America among +his household belongings at least one chest. It was of use as a +travelling trunk, a packing-box, and a piece of furniture. Many +colonists had several. Jane Humphreys had and named in her will "my +little chest, my great old chest, my great new chest, my lesser small +box, my biggest small box"--and she needed them all to hold her finery. + +Chests also were made in New England. Pine was used in the backs and +drawers of chests of New England make. English chests were wholly of +oak. + +In the Memorial Hall at Deerfield may be seen many fine specimens of old +chests, forming, indeed, a complete series, showing the various shapes +and ornamentations. + +Another furnishing of the parlor was the scrutoire. Under the spellings +scritoire, scredoar, screetor, scrittore, scriptore, scrutoir, scritory, +scrutore, escrutor, scriptoree, this useful piece of furniture appears +constantly in the inventories of men of wealth in the colonies from the +year 1669 till a century later. Judge Sewall tells of losing the key of +his "scrittoir." The definition of the word in Phillips's "New World of +Words," 1696, was "Scrutoire, a sort of large Cabinet with several +Boxes, and a place for Pen, Ink and Paper, the door of which opening +downward and resting upon Frames that are to be drawn out and put back, +serves for a Table to write on." This description would appear to +identify the "scrutoire" with what we now call a writing-desk; and it +was called interchangeably by these two names in wills. They were made +with double bow fronts and box fronts, of oak, pine, mahogany, cherry; +and some had cases of shelves for books on the top, forming what we now +call a secretary--our modern rendering of the word scrutoire. These book +scrutoires frequently had glass doors. + +When Judith Sewall was about to be married, in 1720, her father was much +pleased with his prospective son-in-law and evidently determined to give +the pair a truly elegant wedding outfit. The list of the +house-furnishings which he ordered from England has been preserved, and +may be quoted as showing part of the "setting-off" in furniture of a +rich bride of the day. It reads thus: + + "Curtains & Vallens for a Bed with Counterpane Head Cloth and + Tester made of good yellow waterd worsted camlet with Triming well + made and Bases if it be the Fashion. Send also of the Same Camlet & + Triming as may be enough to make Cushions for the Chamber Chairs. + + "A good fine large Chintz Quilt well made. + + "A true Looking Glass of Black Walnut Frame of the Newest Fashion + if the Fashion be good, as good as can be bought for five or six + pounds. + + "A second Looking Glass as good as can be bought for four or five + pounds, same kind of frame. + + "A Duzen of good Black Walnut Chairs fine Cane with a Couch. + + "A Duzen of Cane Chairs of a Different Figure and a great Chair for + a Chamber; all black Walnut. + + "One bell-metal Skillet of two Quarts, one ditto one Quart. + + "One good large Warming Pan bottom and cover fit for an Iron + handle. + + "Four pair of strong Iron Dogs with Brass heads about 5 or 6 + shillings a pair. + + "A Brass Hearth for a Chamber with Dogs Shovel Tongs & Fender of + the newest Fashion (the Fire is to ly upon Iron). + + "A strong Brass Mortar That will hold about a Quart with a Pestle. + + "Two pair of large Brass sliding Candlesticks about 4 shillings a + Pair. + + "Two pair of large Brass Candlesticks not sliding of the newest + Fashion about 5 or 6 shillings a pair. + + "Four Brass Snuffers with stands. + + "Six small strong Brass Chafing dishes about 4 shillings apiece. + + "One Brass basting Ladle; one larger Brass Ladle. + + "One pair of Chamber Bellows with Brass Noses. + + "One small hair Broom sutable to the Bellows. + + "One Duzen of large hard-mettal Pewter Plates new fashion, weighing + about fourteen pounds. + + "One Duzen hard-mettal Pewter Porringers. + + "Four Duzen of Small glass Salt Cellars of white glass; Smooth not + wrought, and without a foot. + + "A Duzen of good Ivory-hafted Knives and Forks." + +The floors of colonial houses were sometimes sanded, but were not +carpeted, for a carpet in early days was not a floor covering, but the +covering of a table or cupboard. In 1646 an inquiry was made into some +losses on the wreck of the "Angel Gabriel." A servant took oath that Mr. +John Coggeswell "had a Turkywork'd Carpet in old England which he +commonly used to lay on his Parlour Table; and this Carpet was put +aboard among my Maisters goods and came safe ashore to the best of my +Remembrance." Another man testified that he did "frequentlie see a +Turkey-work Carpet & heard them say it used to lay upon their Parlour +Table." Dornix, arras, cloth, calico, and broadcloth carpets are named. +Sewall tells of an "Irish stitch't hanging made a carpet of." Samuel +Danforth gave, in 1661, a "Convenient Carpet for the table of the +meeting house." In 1735, in the advertisement of the estate of Jonathan +Barnard, "one handsome Large Carpet 9 Foot 0 inches by 6 foot 6 inches" +was named. This was, I fancy, a floor covering. In the _Boston Gazette_ +of November, 1748, "two large Matts for floors" were advertised--an +exceptional instance in the use of the word mat. Large floor-carpets +were advertised the following year, and in 1755 a "Variety of List +Carpets wide & Narrow," and "Scotch Carpets for Stairs." In 1769 came +"Persia Carpets 3 yards Wide." In 1772, in the _Boston Evening Post_, "A +very Rich Wilton Carpet 18 ft by 13" was named. The following year +"Painted Canvass Floor Cloth" was named. This was doubtless the "Oyl +Cloth for Floors and Tables" of the year 1762. Oilcloth had been known +in England a century previously. What the "False Carpets" advertised on +June 7, 1762, were I do not know. + +The walls of the rooms were wainscoted and painted. Gurdon Saltonstall +had on the walls of some of his state-rooms leathern hangings or +tapestries. We find wealthy Sir William Pepperel sending to England, in +1737, the draught of a chamber he was furnishing, and writing, "Geet +mock Tapestry or paint'd Canvass lay'd in Oyls for ye same and send me." +In 1734 "Paper for Rooms," and a little later "Rolled Paper for Hanging +of Rooms" were advertised in the _Boston News Letter_. "Statues on +Paper" were soon sold, and "Architraves on Roll Paper" and "Landscape +Paper." These old paper-hangings were of very heavy and strong +materials, close-grained, firm and durable. The rooms of a few wealthy +men were hung with heavy tapestries. The ceilings usually exposed to +view the great summer-tree and cross rafters, sometimes rough-hewn and +still showing the marks of the woodman's axe. But little decoration was +seen overhead, even in the form of chandeliers; sometimes a candle beam +bore a score of candles, or in some fine houses, such as the Storer +mansion in Boston, great ornamental globes of glass hung from the +summer-tree. + +In the first log cabins oiled paper was placed in windows. We find more +than one colonist writing to England for that semi-opaque +window-setting. Soon glass windows, framed in lead, were sent from +London and Liverpool and Bristol, ready for insertion in the walls of +houses; and at an early day sheets of glass came to Winthrop. We find, +by Sewall's time, that the houses of well-to-do folk all had "quarrels +of glass" set in windows. + +The flight of time in New England houses was marked without doors by +sun-dials; within, by noon-marks, hour-glasses, and rarely by +clepsydras, or water-clocks. + +The first mention, in New England records, of a clock is in Lechford's +note-book. He states that in 1628 Joseph Stratton had of his brother a +clock and watch, and that Joseph acknowledged this, but refused to pay +for them and was sued for payment. Hence Lawyer Lechford's interest in +the articles and mention of them. In 1640 Henry Parks, of Hartford, left +a clock by will to the church. In the inventory of Thomas Coteymore, +made in Charleston, in 1645, his clock is apprized at £1. In 1657 there +was a town-clock in Boston and a man appointed to take care of it. In +1677 E. Needham, of Lynn, left a "striking clock, a Larum that does not +strike and a watch," valued at £5--this in an estate of £1,117 total. +Judge Sewall wrote, in 1687, "Got home rather before 12 Both by my Clock +and Dial." + +Clocks must have become rather plentiful in the early part of the +following century, for in 1707 this advertisement appeared in the +_Boston News Letter_: + + "To all gentlemen and others: There is lately arrived in Boston by + way of Pennsylvania a Clock maker. If any person or persons hath + any occasions for new Clocks or to have Old Ones turn'd into + Pendulums, or any other thing either in making or mending, they can + go to the Sign of the Clock and Dial on the South Side of the Town + House." + +In 1712, in November, appeared in the _News Letter_ the advertisement of +a man who "performed all sorts of New Clocks and Watch works, viz: 30 +hour Clocks, Week Clocks, Month Clocks, Spring Table Clocks, Chime +Clocks, quarter Clocks, quarter Chime Clocks, Church Clocks, Terret +Clocks;" and on April 16, 1716, this notice appeared: "Lately come from +London. A Parcel of very Fine Clocks. They go a week and repeat the hour +when Pull'd. In Japan Cases or Wall Nutt." + +By this time, in the inventory or "enroulment" of the estate of any +person of note, we always find a clock mentioned. Increase Mather left +to his son Cotton "one Pendilum Clock." Soon appear Japann'd clocks and +Pullup Clocks. In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of October, 1732, the +fourth prize in the Newport lottery was announced to be a clock worth +£65. "A Handsome new Eight day Clock which shows the Moons Age, Strikes +the Quarters on Six very Tunable Bells & is in a Good Japann'd Case in +Imitation of Tortoise Shell & Gold." + +This advertisement of Edmund Entwisle, in the _Boston News Letter_ of +November 18, 1742, proves, I think, that they had some very handsome +clocks in those days: + + "A Fine Clock. It goes 8 or 9 days with once winding up. And + repeats the Hour it struck last when you pull it. The Dial is 13 + inches on the Square & Arched with a SemiCircle on the Top round + which is a strong Plate with this Motto (Time shews the Way of + Lifes Decay) well engraved & silver'd, within the Motto Ring it + shews from behind two Semispheres the Moons Increase & Decrease by + two curious Painted Faces ornamented with Golden Stars between on a + Blue Ground, and a white Circle on the Outside divided into Days + figured at every Third, in which Divisions is shewn the Age by a + fix't Index from the Top, as they pass by the great Circle is + divided into three Concentrick Collums on the outmost of which it + shews the Minute of each Hour and the Middlemost the Hours &c. the + innermost is divided into 31 equal parts figur'd at every other on + which is shewn the Day of the Month by a Hand from the Dial Plate + as the Hour & Minute is, it also shews the Seconds as common & is + ornamented with curious Engravings in a Most Fashionable Manner. + The case is made of very Good Mohogony with Quarter Collums in the + Body, broke in the Surface with Raised Pannels with Quarter Rounds + burs Bands & Strings. The head is ornamented with Gilded Capitalls + Bases & Frise with New fashion'd Balls compos'd of Mohogony with + Gilt Leaves & Flowers." + +I do not quite understand this description, and I know I could never +have told the correct time by this clock, but surely it must have been +very elegant and costly. + +The earliest and most natural, as well as most plentiful, illuminating +medium for the colonists was found in pine-knots. Wood says: + + "Out of these Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is so much spoke + of which may serve as a shift among poore folks but I cannot + commend it for Singular good because it is something sluttish + dropping a pitchy kind of substance where it stands." + +Higginson wrote in 1630, "Though New England has no tallow to make +candles of yet by abundance of fish thereof it can afford oil for +lamps." + +Though lamps and "lamp yearne," or wicks, appear in many an early +invoice, I cannot think that they were extensively used. Betty lamps +were the earliest form. They were a shallow receptacle, usually of +pewter, iron, or brass, circular or oval in shape, and occasionally +triangular, and about two or three inches in diameter, with a projecting +nose an inch or two long. When in use they were filled with tallow or +grease, and a wick or piece of twisted rag was placed so that the +lighted end could hang on the nose. Specimens can be seen at Deerfield +Memorial Hall. I have one with a hook and chain by which to hang it up, +and a handled hook attached with which to clean out the grease. These +lamps were sometimes called "brown-bettys," or "kials," or "cruiseys." A +ph[oe]be lamp resembled a betty lamp, but had a shallow cup underneath +to catch the dripping grease. + +Soon candles were made by being run in moulds, or by a tedious process +of dipping. The fragrant bayberry furnished a pale green wax, which +Robert Beverly thus described in 1705: + + "A pale brittle wax of a curious green color, which by refining + becomes almost transparent. Of this they make candles which are + never greasy to the touch, nor melt with lying in the hottest + weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, + like that of a tallow candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, + if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to + all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them + out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff." + +The Abbé Robin and other travellers gave similar testimony. Bayberry wax +was a standard farm production wherever bayberries grew, and was +advertised in New England papers until this century. I entered within a +year a single-storied house a few miles from Plymouth Rock, where an +aged descendant of the Pilgrims earns her scanty spending-money by +making "bayberry taller," and bought a cake and candles of the wax, made +in precisely the method of her ancestors; and I too can add my evidence +as to the pure, spicy perfume of this New England incense. + +The growth of the whaling trade, and consequent use of spermaceti, of +course increased the facilities for, and the possibilities of, house +illumination. In 1686 Governor Andros petitioned for a commission for a +voyage after "Sperma-Coeti Whales," but not till the middle of the +following century did spermaceti become of common enough use to bring +forth such notices as this, in the _Boston Independent Advertiser_ of +January, 1749: + + "Sperma-Ceti Candles, exceeding all others for Beauty Sweetness of + Scent when Extinguished. Duration being more than Double with + Tallow Candles of Equal Size. Dimensions of Flame near 4 Times + more. Emitting a Soft easy Expanding Light, bringing the object + close to the Sight, rather than causing the Eye to trace after + them, as all Tallow Candles do, from a Constant Dimnes which they + produce. One of these Candles serves the use and purpose of 3 + Tallow Candles, and upon the Whole are much pleasanter and + cheaper." + +These candles were placed in candle-beams--rude chandeliers of crossed +sticks of wood or strips of metal with sockets; in sliding stands, in +sconces, which were also called prongs or candle-arms. The latter +appeared in the inventories of all genteel folk, and decorated the walls +of all genteel parlors. + +Candlesticks and snuffers were found in every house; the latter were +called by various names, the word snit or snite being the most curious. +It is from the old English snyten, to blow, and was originally a +verb--to snite the candle, or put it out. In the inventory of property +of John Gager, of Norwich, in 1703, appears "One Snit." + +Snuffer-boats or slices were snuffer-trays. Another curious illuminating +appurtenance was called a save-all or candle-wedge. It was a little +frame of rings or cups with pins, by which our frugal ancestors held up +the last dying bit of burning candle. They were sometimes of pewter with +iron pins, sometimes wholly of brass or iron. They have nearly all +disappeared since new and more extravagant methods of illumination +prevail. + +The argand lamps of Jefferson's invention and the various illuminating +and heating contrivances of Count Rumford must have been welcome to the +colonists. + +The discomfort of a colonial house in winter-time has been ably set +forth by Charles Francis Adams in his "Three Episodes of Massachusetts +History." Down the great chimneys blew the icy blasts so fiercely that +Cotton Mather noted on a January Sabbath, in 1697, as he shivered before +"a great Fire, that the Juices forced out at the end of short billets of +wood by the heat of the flame on which they were laid, yett froze into +Ice on their coming out." Judge Sewall wrote, twenty years later, "An +Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Bread was frozen at Lords +Table.... Though 'twas so Cold yet John Tuckerman was baptized. At six +oclock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my +Wives Chamber"--and the pious man adds (we hope with truth) "Yet was +very Comfortable at Meeting." Cotton Mather tells, in his pompous +fashion, of a cold winter's day four years later. "Tis Dreadful cold, my +ink glass in my standish is froze and splitt in my very stove. My ink in +my pen suffers a congelation." If sitting-rooms were such refrigerators, +we cannot wonder that the chilled colonists wished to sleep in beds +close curtained with heavy woollen stuffs, or in slaw-bank beds by the +kitchen fire. + +The settlers builded as well as they knew to keep their houses warm; and +while the vast and virgin forests supplied abundant and accessible wood +for fuel, Governor Eaton's nineteen great fireplaces and Parson +Davenport's thirteen, could be well filled; but by 1744 Franklin could +write of these big chimneys as the "fireplace of our fathers;" for the +forests had all disappeared in the vicinity of the towns, and the +chimneys had shrunk in size. Sadly did the early settlers need warmer +houses, for, as all antiquarian students have noted, in olden days the +cold was more piercing, began to nip and pinch earlier in November, and +lingered further into spring; winter rushed upon the settlers with +heavier blasts and fiercer storms than we now have to endure. And, above +all, they felt with sadder force "the dreary monotony of a New England +winter, which leaves so large a blank, so melancholy a death-spot, in +lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." Even John Adams +in his day so dreaded the tedious bitter New England winter that he +longed to hibernate like a dormouse from autumn to spring. + +As the forests disappeared, sea-coal was brought over in small +quantities, and stoves appeared for town use. By 1695 and 1700 we find +Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall speaking of stoves and stove-rooms, and +of chambers warmed by stoves. Ere that one John Clark had patented an +invention for "saving and warming rooms," but we know nothing definite +of its shape. + +Dutch stoves and china stoves were the first to be advertised in New +England papers; then "Philadelphia Fire Stoves"--what we now term +Franklin grates. Wood was burned in these grates. We find clergymen, +until after Revolutionary times, having sixty or eighty cords of +hardwood given to them annually by the parish. + +Around the great glowing fireplace in an old New England kitchen centred +all of homeliness and comfort that could be found in a New England home. +The very aspect of the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have +had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as +it was called in England, the back-bar, stretched from ledge to ledge, +or lug to lug, high up the yawning chimney, and held a motley collection +of pot-hooks and trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which in +turn suspended at various heights over the fire, pots, and kettles and +other cooking utensils. In the hearth-corners were displayed skillets +and trivets, peels and slices, and on either side were chimney-seats and +settles. Above--on the clavel-piece--were festooned strings of dried +apples, pumpkins, and peppers. + +The lug-pole, though made of green wood, sometimes became brittle or +charred by too long use over the fire and careless neglect of +replacement, and broke under its weighty burden of food and metal; hence +accidents became so frequent, to the detriment of precious cooking +utensils, and even to the destruction of human safety and life, that a +Yankee invention of an iron crane brought convenience and simplicity, +and added a new grace to the kitchen hearth. + +The andirons added to the fireplace their homely charm. Fire-dogs +appear in the earliest inventories under many names of various spelling, +and were of many metals--copper, steel, iron, and brass. Sometimes a +fireplace had three sets of andirons of different sizes, to hold logs at +different heights. Cob irons had hooks to hold a spit and dripping-pan. +Sometimes the "Handirons" also had brackets. Creepers were low irons +placed between the great fire-dogs. They are mentioned in many early +wills and lists of possessions among items of fireplace furnishings, as, +for instance, the list of Captain Tyng's furniture, made in Boston in +1653. The andirons were sometimes very elaborate, with claw feet, or +cast in the figure of a negro, a soldier, or a dog. + +In the Deerfield Memorial Hall there lives in perfection of detail one +of these old fireplaces--a delight to the soul of the antiquary. Every +homely utensil and piece of furniture, every domestic convenience and +inconvenience, every home-made makeshift, every cumbrous and clumsy +contrivance of the old-time kitchen here may be found, and they show to +us, as in a living photograph, the home life of those olden days. + + + + +V + +TABLE PLENISHINGS + + +In the early days of the colonies doubtless the old Anglo-Saxon board +laid on trestles was used for a dining-table instead of a table with a +stationary top. "Table bords" appear in early New England wills, and +"trestles" also. "Long tables" and "drawing tables" were next named. A +"long table" was used as a dining-table, and, from the frequent +appearance of two forms with it, was evidently used from both sides, and +not in the ancient fashion of the diners sitting at one side only. A +drawing-table was an extension-table; it could by an arrangement of drop +leaves be doubled in length. A fine one can be seen in the rooms of the +Connecticut Historical Society. Chair tables were the earliest example, +in fact the prototype, of some of our modern extraordinary "combination" +furniture. The tops were usually round, and occasionally large enough to +be used as a dining-table, and when turned over by a hinge arrangement +formed the back of the chair. "Hundred legged" tables had flaps at +either end which turned down or were held up in place by a bracket +composed of a number of turned perpendicular supports which gave to it +the name of "hundred legs." These tables were frequently very large; a +portion of the top of one in the Connecticut Historical Society is seven +feet four inches wide. Tea-tables came with tea; they were advertised in +the _Boston News Letter_ in 1712. Occasionally we find mention of a +curious and unusual table, such as the one named in the effects of Sir +Francis Bernard, which were sold September 11, 1770: "Three tables +forming a horseshoe for the benefit of the Fire." + +As a table was in early days a board, so a tablecloth was a board-cloth; +and ere it was a tablecloth it was table-clothes. Cristowell Gallup, in +1655, had "1 Holland board-cloth;" and William Metcalf, in 1644, had a +"diaper board-cloth." Another Boston citizen had "broad-clothes." Henry +Webb, of Boston, named in his will, in 1660, his "beste Suite of Damask +Table-cloath, Napkins & cupboard-cloath." Others had holland tablecloths +and holland square cloths with lace on them. Arras tablecloths are also +named in 1654, and cloths enriched with embroidery in colors. The witch +Ann Hibbins had "1 Holland table cloth edged with blewe," worth twelve +shillings; and a Hartford gentleman had, in 1689, a "table Cloth wrought +with red." In 1728 "Hukkbuk Tabling" was advertised in the _New England +Weekly Journal_, but the older materials--damask, holland, and +diaper--were universally used then, as now. + +The colonists had plenty of napkins, as had all well-to-do and well-bred +Englishmen at that date. Napkins appear in all the early inventories. In +1668 the opulent Jane Humphreys, of Dorchester, left "two wrought +Napkins with no lace around it," "half a duzzen of napkins," and +"napkins wrought about and laced." In 1680 Robert Adams had six "diaper +knapkins." Captain Tyng had in 1653 four dozen and a half of napkins, of +which two dozen were of "layd worke." It has been said that these +napkins were handkerchiefs, not table napkins; but I think the way they +are classed in inventories does not so indicate. For instance, in the +estate of Captain Corwin, a wealthy man, who died in Salem in 1685, was +a "suit of Damask 1 Table cloth, 18 napkins, 1 Towel," valued at £8. +Occasionally, however, they are specially designated as "pocket +napkins," as in the estate of Elizabeth Cutter in 1663, where four are +valued at one shilling. + +Early English books on table manners, such as "The Babees Boke" and "The +Boke of Nurture," though minute in detail, yet name no other +table-furniture than cups, chafing-dishes, chargers, trenchers, +salt-cellars, knives, and spoons. The table plenishings of the planters +were somewhat more varied, but still simple; when our Pilgrim fathers +landed at Plymouth, the collection of table-ware owned by the entire +band was very meagre. With the exception of a few plate-silver tankards +and drinking-cups, it was also very inexpensive. The silver was handsome +and heavy, but items of silver in the earliest inventories are rare. By +the beginning of the eighteenth century silver became plentiful, and the +wills even of humble folk contain frequent mentions of it. Ministers, +doctors, and magistrates had many handsome pieces. By the middle of the +century a climax was reached, as in the possessions of Peter Faneuil, +when pieces of furniture were of solid silver. + +The salt-cellar was the focus of the old-time board. In earlier days, in +England, to be seated above or below the salt plainly spoke the social +standing of a guest. The "standing salt" was often the handsomest +furnishing of the table, the richest piece of family plate. Comfort +Starr, of Boston, had, in 1659, a "greate Siluer-gilt double +Saltceller." Isaac Addington bequeathed by will his "Bigges Siluer Sewer +& Salt." A sewer was a salver. As we note by the list of Judith Sewall's +wedding furniture in 1720, standing salts were out of date, and +"trencher salt-cellars" were in fashion. Four dozen was a goodly number, +and evinced an intent of bounteous hospitality. These trencher-salts +were of various shapes and materials: "round and oval pillar-cut Salts, +Bonnet Salts, 3 Leg'd Salts," were all of glass; others were of pewter, +china, hard metal, and silver. + +The greater number of spoons owned by the colonists were of pewter or of +alchymy--or alcamyne, ocamy, ocany, orkanie, alcamy, or occonie--a metal +composed of pan-brass and arsenicum. The reference in inventories, +enrolments, and wills, to spoons of these materials are so frequent, so +ever-present, as to make citation superfluous. An evil reputation of +poisonous unhealthfulness hung around the vari-spelled alchymy (perhaps +it is only a gross libel of succeeding generations); but, harmful or +harmless, alchymy, no matter how spelt, disappears from use before +Revolutionary times. Wooden spoons also are named. Silver spoons were +not very plentiful. John Oxenbridge bequeathed thirteen spoons in 1673, +and "one sweetmeat spoon," and "1 childs spoon which was mine in my +infancy." Other pap-spoons and caudle-spoons are named in wills; +marrow-spoons also, long and slender of bowl. The value of a dozen +silver spoons was given in 1689 as £5 13_s._ 6_d._ In succeeding years +each genteel family owned silver spoons, frequently in large number; +while one Boston physician, Dr. Cutter, had, in 1761, half a dozen gold +teaspoons. + +Forks, or "tines," for cooking purposes, and "prongs" or "grains" or +"evils" for agricultural purposes, were imported at early dates; but I +think Governor Winthrop had the first table-fork ever brought to +America. In 1633, when forks were rare in England, he received a letter +from E. Howes, saying that the latter had sent to him a "case contain +containing an Irish skeayne or knife, a bodekyn & a forke for the useful +applycation of which I leave to your discretion." I am strongly +suspicious that Winthrop's discretion may not have been educated up to +usefully applying the fork for feeding purposes at the table. In the +inventory of the possessions of Antipas Boyes (made in 1669) a silver +spoon, fork, and knife are mentioned. Dr. Lyon gives the names of seven +New Englanders whose inventories date from 1671 to 1693, and who owned +forks. In 1673 Parson Oxenbridge had "one forked spoon," and his widow +had two silver forks. Iron forks were used in the kitchen, as is shown +in the inventory of Zerubbabel Endicott in 1683. And three-tined iron +forks were stuck into poor witch-ridden souls in Salem by William +Morse--his Dæmon. + +In 1718 Judge Sewall gave Widow Denison two cases with a knife and fork +in each, "one Turtleshell tackling the other long with Ivory handles +squar'd cost 4_s._ 6_d._" In 1738 Peter Fanueil ordered one dozen silver +forks from England, "with three prongs, with my arms cut upon them, made +very neat and handsome." One Boston citizen had in 1719 six four-pronged +forks, an early example of that fashion. In 1737 shagreen cases with +ivory-handled forks were advertised; bone, japanned metal, wood, and +horn handles also appeared--all, of course, with metal prongs. Sir +Francis Bernard had in 1770 three cases of china-handled knives and +forks, "with spoons to each," which must have formed a pretty table +furnishing. + +In many New England inventories of the seventeenth century, among +personal belongings, appears the word taster. Thus in 1659 Richard Webb, +of Boston, left by will "1 Silver Wine Taster;" and in 1673 John +Oxenbridge had "1 Siluer Taster with a funnel." A taster was apparently +a small cup. Larger drinking-cups of silver were called beakers, or +tankards, beer-bowls, or wine-bowls. These latter vessels were made also +of humbler metal. A sneaker was a small drinking-glass, used by moderate +drinkers--sneak-cups they were called. + +The Pilgrims may have had a few mugs and jugs of coarse earthen ware. A +large invoice of Portuguese "road ware" was sent to the Maine settlers +in 1634, and proved thoroughly unsuitable and undurable; but probably no +china--not even Delft ware--came over on the Mayflower. For when the +Pilgrims made their night trip through the Delft-producing cities, no +such wares were seen on the tables of plebeian persons. Early mentions +of china are in the estate of President John Davenport in 1648--"Cheney +£5," and of Martha Coteymore in 1647. + +Earthen ware, Green ware, Lisbon ware, Spanish platters, are mentioned +in early inventories; but I am sure neither china ware nor earthen ware +was plentiful in early days; nor was china much known till Revolutionary +times. + +The table furnishings of the New England planters consisted largely of +wooden trenchers, and these trenchers were employed for many years. +Sometimes they were simply square blocks of wood whittled out by hand. +From a single trencher two persons--two children, or a man and wife--ate +their meals. It was a really elegant household that furnished a trencher +apiece for each diner. Trenchers were of quite enough account to be left +by name in early wills, even in those of wealthy colonists. In 1689 "2 +Spoons and 2 Trenchers" were appraised at six shillings. Miles Standish +left twelve wooden trenchers when he died. Many gross of them were +purchased for use at Harvard College. As late as May, 1775, I find +"Wooden Trenchers" advertised among table furnishings, in the +_Connecticut Courant_. + +It was the same in Old England. J. Ward, writing in 1828 of the +"Potter's Art," spoke thus of the humble boards of his youth: + + "And there the trencher commonly was seen + With its attendant ample platter treen." + +Until almost our own time trenchers were made in Vermont of the white, +clean, hard wood of the poplar-tree, and were sold and used in country +homes. Old wooden trenchers may be seen in Deerfield Memorial Hall. +Bottles, noggins, cups, and lossets (flat dishes) of wood were also used +at colonial boards. + +The time when America was settled was the era when pewter ware had begun +to take the place of wooden ware, just as the time of the Revolutionary +War may be assigned to mark the victory of porcelain over pewter. + +A set of pewter platters, or chargers and dishes, made what was called a +"garnish" of pewter, and were a source of great pride to every colonial +housewife, and much time and labor were devoted to polishing them until +they shone like silver. Dingy pewter was fairly accounted a disgrace. +The most accomplished Virginian gentleman of his day gave as a positive +rule, in 1728, that "Pewter Bright" was the sign of a good housekeeper. + +The trade of pewterer was a very influential and respectable one in New +England as well as Old England. One of Boston's richest merchants, Henry +Shrimpton, made large quantities of pewter ware for the Massachusetts +colonists. So proud was he of his business that in his later years of +opulence he had a great kettle atop of his house, to indicate his past +trade and means of wealth. Pewter and pewterers abounded until the vast +increase of Oriental commerce brought the influx of Chinese porcelain to +drive out the dull metal. Advertisements of pewter table utensils did +not disappear, however, in New England newspapers until this century. + +A universal table furnishing was-- + + "The porringers that in a row + Hung high and made a glittering show." + +When not in use porringers were hung by their pierced handles on hooks +on the edge of the dresser-shelf, and, being usually of polished pewter +or silver, indeed made a glittering show. Pewter porringers were highly +prized. One family, in 1660, had seven, and another housewife boasted of +nine. They were bequeathed in nearly all the early colonial wills. In +1673 John Oxenbridge left three silver porringers and his wife one +silver pottinger; but pewter was the favorite metal. I do not find +porringers ever advertised under that name in New England papers, though +many were made as late as this century by New Haven, Providence, and +Boston pewterers. Many bearing the stamps of these manufacturers have +been preserved until the present day, seeming to have escaped the +sentence of destruction apparently passed on other pewter utensils and +articles of table-ware. Perhaps they have been saved because the +little, shallow, graceful dishes, with flat pierced handle on one side, +are really so pretty. The fish-tail handles are found on Dutch pewter. +Silver porringers were made by all the silversmiths. Many still exist +bearing the stamp of one honored maker, Paul Revere. Little earthen +porringers of red pottery and tortoise-shell ware are also found, but +are not plentiful. + +A similar vessel, frequently handleless, was what was spelt, in various +colonial documents, posned, possnet, posnett, porsnet, pocneit, posnert, +possenette, postnett, and parsnett. It is derived from the Welsh +_posned_, a porringer or little dish. In 1641 Edward Skinner left a +"Postnett" by will; this was apparently of pewter. In 1653 Governor +Haynes, of Hartford, left an "Iron Posnet" by will. In the inventory of +the estate of Robert Daniel, of Cambridge, in 1655, we learn that "a +Little Porsenett" of his was worth five shillings. In 1693 Governor +Caleb Carr, of Providence, bequeathed to his wife a "silver possnet & +the cover belonging to it." By these records we see that posnets were of +various metals, and sometimes had covers. I have found no advertisements +of them in early American newspapers, even with all their varied array +of utensils and vessels. I fancy the name fell quickly into disuse in +this country. In Steele's time, in the _Tatler_, he speaks of "a silver +Posnet to butter eggs." I have heard the tiny little shallow pewter +porringers, about two or three inches in diameter, with pierced handles, +which are still found in New England, called posnets. They were in +olden times used to heat medicine and to serve pap to infants. I have +also been told that these little porringers were not posnets, but simply +the samples of work made by apprentices in the pewterer's trade to show +their skill and proficiency. + +Tin vessels were exceedingly rare in the seventeenth century, either for +table furnishings or for cooking utensils, and far from common in the +succeeding one. John Wynter, of Richmond's Island, Maine, had a +"tinninge basson & a tinninge platter" in 1638. In 1662 Isaac Willey, of +New London, had "Tynen Pans & 1 Tynen Quart Pott;" and Zerubbabel +Endicott, of Salem, had a "great tyn candlestick." By 1729, when +Governor Burnet's effects were sold, we read of kitchen utensils of tin. + +I do not think iron was in high favor among the colonists as a material +for household utensils. It was not an iron age. They had iron pans, +candlesticks, dishes, fire-dogs, and pots: the latter vessels were +traded for vast and valuable tracts of land with the simple red men; but +iron was not vastly in use. At an early date iron-foundries were +established throughout New England, with, however, varying success. + +Latten ware, which was largely composed of brass, appeared in various +useful forms for table and culinary appointments. Hard-metal was a +superior sort of pewter. Prince's metal (so called from Prince Rupert), +a fine brass alloyed with copper and arsenicum, is occasionally named. + +Leather, strangely enough, was also used on the table in the form of +bottles and drinking cups and jacks, which were pitchers or jugs of +waxed leather, much used in ale-houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth +century, and whose employment gave rise to the belief of the French that +Englishmen drank their ale out of their boots. Endicott received of +Winthrop one leathern jack worth one shilling and sixpence. I find +leathern jacks, bottles, and cups named among the property of +Connecticut colonists. + +Nearly all the glass ware of the eighteenth century was of inferior +quality, full of bubbles and defects. It was frequently fluted. Many +pieces have been preserved that have been painted in vitrifiable colors, +the designs are crude, the colors red, yellow, blue, and occasionally +black or green. The transparent glass thus painted is said to be of +Dutch manufacture. The opalized glass similarly decorated is Spanish. +Drinking-glasses or flip-mugs seem to have been most common, or, at any +rate, most largely preserved. The tradition attached to all the pieces +of Spanish glass which I have found in New England homes is that they +came from the Barbadoes. Bristol glass also was painted in colors, and +came to this country, being advertised in the _Boston News-Letter_. + +Glass bottles were frequently left by will in early days, being rare and +valuable; but by newspaper days glass was imported in various shapes, +and soon was plentiful enough. In 1773 we find this advertisement: + + "Very rich Cut Glass Candlesticks, cut Glass sugar Boxes & Cream + Potts, Wine, Wine & Water, and Beer Glasses with cut shanks, Jelly + & Syllabub Glasses, Glass Salvers, also Cyder Glasses, Free Mason + Glasses, Orange & Top Glasses, Glass Cans, Glass Cream Buckets and + Crewits, Royal Arch Mason Glasses, Glass Pyramids with Jelly + Glasses, Globe & Barrel Lamps, Double Flynt Wyn Glasses," &c. + +The most curious glass relics that are preserved are the flip-glasses or +bumper-glasses; they are tumbler-shaped, and are frequently engraved or +fluted. Some hold over a gallon. + +The names of table furnishings varied somewhat in the eighteenth +century. There were milk-pots, milk-ewers, milk-jugs, ere there were +milk-pitchers; sugar-boxes, sugar-pots, sugar-basins, ere there were +sugar-bowls; spoon-boats and spoon-basins ere there were spoon-holders. +Terrines were imported about 1750. There were pickle-dishes and +pickle-boats, twifflers, mint-stands and vegetable-basins. + +One other appurtenance of a dining-room is found in all early +inventories--a voider. Pewter voiders abounded and were advertised in +newspapers, as were wicker and china voiders in 1740. The functions of a +voider were somewhat those of a crumb-tray. They are thus given in Hugh +Rhodes's "Boke of Nurture" in 1577: + + "Wyth bones & voyd morsels fyll not thy trenchour, my friend, full + Avoyd them into a Voyder, no man will it anull. + When meate is taken quyte awaye and Voyders in presence + Put you your trenchour in the same and all your resydence. + Take you with your napkin & knyfe the croms that are fore thee + In the Voyder your Napkin leave for it is curtesye." + + + + +VI + +SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER + + +There is a tradition of short commons, usually extending even to stories +of starvation, in the accounts of all early settlements in new lands, +and the records of the Pilgrims show no exception to the rule. These +early planters went through a fiery furnace of affliction. The beef and +pork brought with them became tainted, "their butter and cheese +corrupted, their fish rotten." A scarcity of food lasted for three +years, and there was little variety of fare, yet they were cheerful. +Brewster, when he had naught to eat but clams, gave thanks that he was +"permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in +the sands." Cotton Mather says that Governor Winthrop, of the Bay +settlement, was giving to a poor neighbor the last meal from his chest, +when it was announced that the food-bearing Lion had arrived. The +General Court thereat changed an appointed Fast Day to a Thanksgiving +Day. By tradition--still commemorated at Forefathers' Dinner--the ration +of Indian corn supplied to each person was at one time but five kernels. + +Still there was always plenty of fish--the favorite food of the +English--and Squanto taught the colonists various Indian methods of +catching the "treasures of the sea." With oysters and lobsters they were +far from starvation. Higginson said of the latter shellfish, in 1630, +"the least boy in the Plantation may both catch and eat what he will of +them." He says that lobsters were caught weighing twenty-five pounds +each, and that the abundance of other fish was beyond believing. +Josselyn, in his "New England Rarities," enumerated two hundred and +three varieties of fish; yet Tuckerman calls his list "a poor +makeshift." The planters had plenty of implements with which to catch +fish--"vtensils of the sea"--"quoils of rope and cable, rondes of twine, +herring nets, seans, cod-lines and cod hookes, mackrill-lines, drails, +spiller hooks, mussel-hooks, mackrill hooks, barbels, splitting knives, +sharks hookes, basse-nettes, pues and gaffs, squid lines, yeele pots," +&c. Josselyn also tells some very pretty ways of cooking fish, +especially eels with herbs, showing that, like Poins, the colonists +loved conger and fennel. Eels were roasted, fried, and boiled. Boiled +"eals" were thus prepared: + +"Boil them in half water half wine with the bottom of a manchet, a fagot +of Parsly and a little Winter Savory, when they are boiled they take +them out and break the bread in the broth and put in two or three +spoonfuls of yest and a piece of sweet butter, pour to the eals laid +upon sippets." Another way beloved by him was to stuff the eels with +nutmeg and cloves, stick them with cloves, cook in wine, place on a +chafing-dish, and garnish with lemons. This rich dish is somewhat +overclouded by his suggestion that the eels be arranged in a wreath. + +The frequent references to eels in early accounts prove that they were +regarded, as Izaak Walton said, "a very dainty fish, the queen of +palate-pleasure." + +Next to fish, the early colonists found in Indian corn, or "Guinny +wheat"--"Turkie wheat" one traveller called it--their most unfailing +food-supply. Our first native poet wrote, in 1675, of what he called +early days: + + "The dainty Indian maize, + Was eat with clamp-shells out of wooden trays." + +Its abundance and adaptability did much to change the nature of their +diet as well as to save them from starvation. The colonists learned from +the Indians how to plant, nourish, harvest, grind, and cook it in many +Indian ways, and in each way it formed a palatable food. The Indian +pudding which they ate so constantly was made in Indian fashion and +boiled in a bag. To the mush of Indian meal they gave the English name +of hasty-pudding. Many of the foods made from maize retained the names +given in the aboriginal tongues, such as hominy, suppawn, pone, samp, +succotash; and doubtless the manner of cooking is wholly Indian. +Hoe-cakes and ash-cakes were made by the squaws long before the landing +of the Pilgrims. Roasting ears of green corn were made the foundation of +a solemn Indian feast and also of a planters' frolic. It is curious to +read Winthrop's careful explanation, that when corn is parched it turns +entirely inside out, and is "white and floury within;" and to think that +there ever was a time when pop-corn was a novelty to white children in +New England. + +Wood said that _sukquttahhash_ was "seethed like beanes." Roger Williams +said that "_nassaump_, which the English call Samp, is Indian corne +beaten & boil'd and eaten hot or cold with milke or butter and is a diet +exceeding wholesome for English bodies." _Nocake_, or _nokick_, Wood, in +his "New England Prospects," thus defines: "Indian corn parched in the +hot ashes, the ashes being sifted from it, it is afterward beaten to +powder and put into a long leatherne bag trussed at their back like a +knapsacke, out of which they take thrice three spoonsfulls a day." It +was held to be wonderfully sustaining food in most condensed form. It +was carried in a pouch, on long journeys, and mixed before eating with +snow in winter and water in summer. Jonne-cake, or journey-cake, was +also made from maize. For years the colonists pounded the corn in stone +mortars, as did the Indians; then in wooden mortars with pestles. Then +rude hand-mills were made--"quernes"--with upright shafts fixed +immovably at the upper end, and fastened at the lower end near the +outside edge of a flat, circular stone, which was made to revolve in a +mortar. By turning the shaft with one hand, the corn could be supplied +to the grinding-stone with the other. These hand-mills are sometimes +still found in use as "samp-mills." Wind-mills and water-mills followed +naturally in the train of the hand-mills. + +Wheat but little availed for food in early days, being frequently +blighted. Oats were raised in considerable quantity, a pill-corn or +peel-corn or sil-pee variety. Josselyn, writing in 1671, gives a New +England dish, which he says is as good as whitpot, made of oatmeal, +sugar, spice, and a "pottle of milk;" a pottle was two quarts. At a +somewhat later date the New Hampshire settlers had a popular oatmeal +porridge, in which the oatmeal was sifted, left in water, and allowed to +sour, then boiled to a jelly, and was called "sowens." It is still eaten +in Northumberland. + +By the strict laws made to govern bakers and the number of bake-shops +that were licensed, and the sharp punishments for baking short weight, +etc., it seems plain that New England housewives did little home baking +in early days. The bread was doubtless of many kinds, as in +England--simnels, cracknels, jannacks, cheat loaves, cocket-bread, +wastel-bread, manchet, and buns. Pure wheaten loaves were not largely +used as food--bread from corn meal dried quickly; hence rye meal was +mixed with the corn, and "rye 'n' Injun" bread was everywhere eaten. + +To the other bountiful companion food of corn, pumpkins, the colonists +never turned very readily. Pompions they called them in "the times +wherein old Pompion was a saint." Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working +Providence," reproved them for making a jest of pumpkins, since they +were so good and unfailing a food--"a fruit which the Lord fed his +people with till corn and cattle increased." + + "We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, + If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone." + +Pompions, and what Higginson called squantersquashes, Josselyn +squontersquoshes, Roger Williams askutasquashes, Wood isquoukersquashes, +and we clip to squashes, grew in vast plenty. The Indians dried the +pompions on strings for winter use, as is still done in New England farm +communities. Madam Knight had them frequently offered to her on her +journey--"pumpkin sause" and "pumpkin bred." "We would have eat a morsel +ourselves, but the Pumpkin & Indian-mixt bread had such an Aspect." +Pumpkin bread is made in Connecticut to this day. For pumpkin "sause" we +have a two-centuries-old receipt, which was given by Josselyn, in 1671, +in his "New England Rarities," and called by him even at that day "an +Ancient New England Standing-dish." + + "The Housewives manner is to slice them when ripe and cut them into + Dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or three Gallons and stew + them upon a gentle fire the whole day. And as they sink they fill + again with fresh Pompions not putting any liquor to them and when + it is stir'd enough it will look like bak'd Apples, this Dish + putting Butter to it and a little Vinegar with some Spice as Ginger + which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten + with fish or flesh." + +This must be a very good "sause," and a very good receipt when once it +is clear to your mind which of them--the housewives or the +pompions--sink and are to fill and be filled in a pot, and stirred and +stewed and put liquor to. + +In an old book which I own, which was used by many generations of New +England cooks, I find this "singular good" rule to make a "Pumpion Pye:" + + "Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and slice it, a handful of + Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and Sweet Marjoram slipped off the + stalkes, and chop them smal, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and + six Cloves and beat them, take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix + them, and beat them altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you + think fit, then fry them like a froiz, after it is fryed, let it + stand til it be cold, then fill your Pye, take sliced Apples thinne + rounde-wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz and layer of Apples with + Currans betwixt the layer while your Pye is fitted, and put in a + good deal of sweet butter before you close it, when the pye is + baked take six yelks of Eggs, some White-wine or Vergis, and make a + Caudle of this, but not too thicke, cut up the Lid and put it in, + stir them wel together whilst the Eggs and Pompions be not + perceived and so serve it up." + +I am sure there would be no trouble about the pompions being perceived, +and I can fancy the modest half-pound of country vegetable blushing a +deeper orange to find its name given to this ambitious and +compound-sentenced concoction which helped to form part of the "simple +diet of the good old times." I have found no modern cook bold enough to +"prove" (as the book says) this pumpion pie; but hope, if any one +understands it, she will attempt it. + +Potatoes were on the list of seeds, fruits, and vegetables that were +furnished to the Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1628, and fifteen tons +(which were probably sweet potatoes) were imported from Bermuda in 1636 +and sold in Boston at twopence a pound. Winthrop wrote of "potatose" in +1683. Their cultivation was rare. There is a tradition that the Irish +settlers at Londonderry, N. H., began the first systematic planting of +potatoes. At the Harvard Commencement dinner, in 1708, potatoes were on +the list of supplies. A crop of eight bushels, which one Hadley farmer +had in 1763, was large--too large, since "if a man ate them every day he +could not live beyond seven years." Indeed, the "gallant root of +potatoes" was regarded as a sort of forbidden fruit--a root more than +suspected of being an over-active aphrodisiac, and withal so wholly +abandoned as not to have been mentioned in the Bible; and when Parson +Jonathan Hubbard, of Sheffield, raised twenty bushels in one year, it is +said he came very near being dealt with by his church for his wicked +hardihood. In more than one town the settlers fancied the balls were the +edible portion, and "did not much desire them." Nor were fashionable +methods of cooking them much more to be desired. In "The Accomplisht +Cook," used about the year 1700, potatoes were ordered to be boiled and +blanched; seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper; mixed with eringo +roots, dates, lemon, and whole mace; covered with butter, sugar, and +grape verjuice, made with pastry; then iced with rose-water and sugar, +and yclept a "Secret Pye." Alas, poor, ill-used, be-sugared, secreted +potato, fit but for kissing-comfits! we can well understand your +unpopularity. + +Other vegetables were produced in New England in abundance. Higginson +speaks of green peas, turnips, parsnips, carrots, and cucumbers, and a +dozen fruits and berries. Cranberries were plentiful and soon were +exported to England. Josselyn gives a very full list of fruits and +vegetables and pot-herbs, including beans, which were baked by the +Indians in earthen pots as they are now in Boston bake-shops. + +There was a goodly supply of game. Bradford wrote of the year 1621, +"beside waterfoule ther was great store of wild Turkies." Wood said +these turkeys sometimes weighed forty pounds apiece, and sold for four +shillings each. Josselyn assigned to them the enormous weight of sixty +pounds. All agreed that they were far superior to the English domestic +turkeys. Morton said they came in flocks of a hundred; yet the Winthrops +had great difficulty in getting two to breed from in 1683, and by 1690 +it was rare to see a wild turkey in New England. The beautiful great +bronze birds had flown away from the white man's civilization and guns. + +Flocks of thousands of geese took their noisy, graceful V-shaped flight +over New England, and were shot in large numbers. Dudley wrote home +that doves were so plentiful that they obscured the light. Josselyn said +he had bought in Boston a dozen pigeons all dressed for threepence. It +is said they were sometimes sold as low as a penny a dozen. Roger Clap +said it would have been counted a strange thing in early days to see a +piece of roast veal, beef, or mutton, though it was not long ere there +was roast goat. By 1684 a French refugee said beef, mutton, and pork +were but twopence a pound in Boston. Clap says he ate his samp, or +hominy, without butter or milk, but Higginson wrote in 1630, and Morton +in 1624, that they had a quart of milk for a penny. John Cotton said +ministers and milk were the only things cheap in New England. + +By Johnson's time New Englanders had "Apple, Pear and Quince Tarts +instead of their former Pumpkin Pies." They had besides apple-tarts, +apple mose, apple slump, mess apple-pies, buttered apple-pies, apple +crowdy and puff apple-pies--all differing. + +Josselyn said the "Quinces, Cherries, & Damsins set the Dames a-work. +Marmalet & Preserved Damsins is to be met with in every house." Skill in +preserving was ever an English-woman's pride, and New-English women did +not forget the lessons learned in their "faire English homes." They made +preserves and conserves, marmalets and quiddonies, hypocras and +household wines, usquebarbs and cordials. They candied fruits and made +syrups. They preserved everything that would bear preserving. I have +seen old-time receipts for preserving quinces, "respasse," pippins, +"apricocks," plums, "damsins," peaches, oranges, lemons, artichokes, +green walnuts, elecampane roots, eringo roots, grapes, barberries, +cherries; receipts for syrup of clove gillyflower, wormwood, mint, +aniseed, clove, elder, lemons, marigolds, citron, hyssop, liquorice; +receipts for conserves of roses, violets, borage flowers, rosemary, +betony, sage, mint, lavender, marjoram, and "piony;" rules for candying +fruit, berries, and flowers, for poppy water, cordial, cherry water, +lemon water, thyme water, Angelica water, Aqua Mirabilis, Aqua +C[oe]lestis, clary water, mint water. + +No wonder a profession of preserving sprung up. By 1731 we find +advertised in June in the _Boston News Letter_, "At Widow Bonyots All +Sorts of Fruits in Preserves Jellys and Surrups. Egg Cakes, All sorts of +Macaroons, Marchepane Crisp Almonds. All sorts Conserves, Also Meat +Jellys for the sick." + +We can see plainly by these statements that New England was no +Nidderland. Even in Josselyn's day he wrote, "they have not forgotten +the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with variety of +cooking their food." The pages of Judge Sewall's diary give many hints +of his daily fare. He speaks of "boil'd Pork, boil'd Pigeons, boil'd +Bacon and boil'd Venison; rost Beef, rost Lamb, rost Fowls, rost Turkey, +pork and beans;" "Frigusee of Fowls," "Joll of Salmon," "Oysters, Fish +and Oyl, conners, Legg of Pork, hogs Cheek and souett; pasty, bread and +butter; Minc'd Pye, Aplepy, tarts, gingerbread, sugar'd almonds, glaz'd +almonds;" honey, curds and cream, sage cheese, green pease, barley, +"Yokhegg in milk, chockolett, figgs," oranges, shattucks, apples, +quinces, strawberries, cherries, and raspberries; a very fair list of +viands. + +"Yokhegg" is probably "yeokheag," a name for Indian corn, parched and +pounded into meal, a name by which it was known for many years in +Eastern Connecticut. + +Sewall was a very valiant trencher-man. He records with much zest going +down the Bay to an island, or riding to Roxbury for an outing and +dinner, and coming home in "brave moonshine." And, like his neighbor, +Cotton Mather, he drew many a spiritual lesson from the food set before +him; especially, however, at a scambling meal, or at any repast which he +ate alone, and hence had naught and no one to divert therefrom his +ever-religious thoughts. + +From a curious account of Boston, written by a traveller named Bennet, +in the year 1740, we take the following statements of the cost of food +there: + + "Their poultry of all sorts are as fine as can be desired, and they + have plenty of fine fish of various kinds, all of which are very + cheap. Take the butchers' meat all together, in every season of the + year, I believe it is about twopence per pound sterling; the best + beef and mutton, lamb and veal are often sold for sixpence per + pound of New England money, which is some small matter more than + one penny sterling. + + "Poultry in their season are exceeding cheap. As good a turkey may + be bought for about two shillings sterling as we can buy in London + for six or seven, and as fine a goose for tenpence as would cost + three shillings and sixpence or four shillings in London. The + cheapest of all the several kinds of poultry are a sort of wild + pigeon, which are in season the latter end of June, and so continue + until September. They are large, and finer than those we have in + London, and are sold here for eighteenpence a dozen, and sometimes + for half of that. + + "Fish, too, is exceeding cheap. They sell a fine fresh cod that + will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea, for + about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as + cheap as sprats are in London. Salmon, too, they have in great + plenty, and those they sell for about a shilling apiece, which will + weigh fourteen or fifteen pounds. + + "They have venison very plenty. They will sell as fine a haunch for + half a crown as would cost full thirty shillings in England. Bread + is much cheaper than we have in England, but is not near so good. + Butter is very fine and cheaper than ever I bought any in London; + the best is sold all summer for threepence a pound. But as for + cheese, it is neither cheap nor good." + +I am somewhat surprised at Bennet's dictum with regard to cheese, and +can only feel that he had special ill fortune in choosing his +cheesemonger. For certainly the Rhode Island cheese, made from the rich +milk of the great herds of choice cows that dotted the fertile and sunny +fields of old Narragansett, was sent to England and the Barbadoes in +great quantity, and commanded special prices there. Brissot said it was +equal to the "best Cheshire of England or Rocfort of France." This +cheese was made from a receipt for Cheshire cheese which was brought to +Narragansett by Richard Smith's wife in the seventeenth century: and her +home is still standing, though built around, at Cocumcussett, where her +husband and Roger Williams founded a colony. + +We have a very distinct rendering of the items of family expense, +chiefly of food, at about that time, given us by a contemporary +authority, and bequeathed to us in a letter to the _Boston News Letter_ +of November 28, 1728. The writer refers to other "scheams of expence" +for a household which have been made public, one apparently being at the +rate of £250 a year for the entire outlay. This sum he thinks inadequate +and "disproves in a moment." He gives his own careful estimate of the +cost of keeping a family of eight persons. It is computed for "Families +of Midling Figure who bear the Character of being Genteel," and reads +thus: + + "For Diet. For one Person a Day. + + 1 Breakfast 1_d._ a Pint of Milk 2d .03 + + 2 Dinner. Pudding Bread Meat Roots Pickles Vinegar + Salt & Cheese .09 + + N.B. In this article of the Dinner I would include + all the Raisins Currants Suet Flour Eggs Cranberries + Apples & where there are children all their Intermeal + Eatings throughout the whole Year. And I think a Gentleman + cannot well Dine his family at a lower Rate than this. + + 3 Supper As the Breakfast .03 + + 4 Small Beer for the Whole Day Winter & Summer. 1-1/2 + + N.B. In this article of the Beer I would likewise + include all the Molasses used in the Family not + only in Brewing but on other Occasions. + + For one Person a Day in all 1_s._ 4-1/2_d._ + + For Whole Family 11_s._ + + For the Whole Family 365 days £200 15_s._ + + For Butter, 2 Firkins at 68 lb. apiece, 16_d._ £ 9 1_s._ + a lb. + + For Sugar. Cannot be less than 10_s._ a Month or + 4 weeks especially when there are children. £ 6 10_s._ + + For Candles but 3 a Night Summer & Winter + for Ordinary & Extraordinary occasions at + 15_d._ for 9 in the lb. £ 7 12_s._ .01 + + For Sand 20_s._ Soap 40_s._ Washing Once in 4 + weeks at 3_s._ a time with 3 Meals a Day at + 2_s._more £ 6 5_s._ + + For One Maids Wages £ 10 + + For Shoes after the Rate of each 3 Pair in a + year at 9_s._ a Pair for 7 Persons, the Maid + finding her own £ 9 09_s._ + ----------------- + In all £249 12_s._ 5_d._ + + No House Rents Mentioned Nor Buying Carting Pyling or Sawing Firewood + No Coffee Tea nor Chocolate + No Wine nor Cyder nor any other Spirituous Liquor + No Pipes Tobacco Spice nor Sweetmeats + No Hospitality or Occasional Entertaining either Gentlemen Strangers + Relatives or Friends + No Acts of Charity nor Contributions for Pious Uses + No Pocket Expenses either for Horse Hire Travelling or Convenient + Recreations + No Postage for Letters or Numberless other Occasions + No Charges of Nursing + No Schooling for Children + No Buying of Books of any Sort or Pens Ink & Paper + No Lyings In + No Sickness, Nothing to Apothecary or Doctor + No Buying Mending or Repairing Household Stuff or Utensils + Nothing to the Simstress nor to the Taylor nor to the Barber, + nor to the Hatter nor to the Shopkeeper & Therefore no Cloaths." + +Certainly we gain from this "scheam" a very clear notion of the style of +living of this genteel Boston family. + +There is, of course, no possibility of exactly picturing the serving of +a meal in early days; but one peculiarity is known of the dinner--the +pudding came first. Hence the old saying, "I came in season--in +pudding-time." In an account of a Sunday dinner given at the house of +John Adams, as late as 1817, the first course was a pudding of Indian +corn, molasses, and butter; the second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, and +vegetables. + +For many years the colonists "dined exact at noon," and on farms even +half an hour earlier. On Saturday all ate fish for dinner. Judge Sewall +frequently speaks of his Saturday dinner of fish. Fish days had been +prescribed by the King in England, in order that the fisheries might not +fail of support, as was feared on account of the increased consumption +of meat induced by the reformation in religion. New Englanders loyally +followed the mandate, but ate cod-fish on Saturdays, since the Papists +ate fish on Fridays. + +One very pleasant and friendly custom that existed among these kindly +New England neighbors must be spoken of in passing. It is thus indicated +by Judge Sewall when he writes, in 1723, of Mr. and Mrs. Belcher, "my +wife sent them a taste of her Diner." It appeared to be a recompensing +fashion, if invited guests were unable to partake of the dinner +festivities, or if neighbors were ill, for the hostess to send a +"taste" of all her viands to console them for their deprivation. This +truly homely and neighborly custom lingered long in old New England +families under the very descriptive title of "cold party;" indeed it +lingers still in old-fashioned towns and in old-fashioned families. + +In earlier days when a noble dinner seemed to be the form of domestic +pleasure next in enjoyment to a funeral, a "taste of the dinner" was +truly a most honorable attention, and a most pleasing one. + + + + +VII + +OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS + + +The English settlers who peopled our colonies were a beer-drinking and +ale-drinking race--as Shakespeare said, they were "potent in potting." +None of the hardships they had to endure in the first bitter years of +their new life caused them more annoyance than their deprivation of +their beloved malt liquors. This deprivation began even at the very +landing. They were forced to depend on the charity of the ship-masters +for a draught of beer on board ship, drinking nothing but water ashore. +Bradford, the Pilgrim Governor, complained loudly and frequently of his +distress, while Higginson, the Salem minister, accommodated himself more +readily and cheerfully to his changed circumstances, and boasted +quaintly in 1629, "Whereas my stomach could only digest and did require +such drink as was both strong and stale, I can and ofttimes do drink New +England water very well." As Higginson died in a short time, his boast +of his improved health and praise of the unwonted beverage does not +carry the force intended. Another early chronicler, Roger Clap, writes +that it was "not accounted a strange thing in those days to drink +water," and it was stated that Winthrop drank it ordinarily. Wood, in +his "New England Prospects," says of New England water, "I dare not +preferre it before good Beere as some have done, but any man would +choose it before Bad Beere, Wheay or Buttermilk." It was also praised as +being "farr different from the water of England, being not so sharp, but +of a fatter substance, and of a more jettie colour; it is thought there +can be no better water in the world." + +But their beerless state did not long continue, for the first luxury to +be brought to the new country was beer, and the colonists soon imported +malt and learned to make beer from the despised Indian corn, and +established breweries and made laws governing and controlling the +manufacture of ale and beer; for the pious Puritans quickly learned to +cheat in their brewing, using molasses and coarse sugar. Molasses beer +is frequently mentioned by Josselyn. + +By 1634, when sixpence was the legal charge for a meal, an ale-quart of +beer could be bought for a penny, and a landlord was liable to ten +shillings fine if he made a greater charge, or his liquor fell below a +certain standard of quality. Perhaps this low price was established by +the crafty Puritan magistrates in order to prevent the possibility of +profit by beer-selling, and thereby reduce the number of sellers. It was +also ordered that not more than an ale-quart of beer should be drunk out +of meal-times. This was to prevent "bye-drinking." Josselyn complained +of the petty interference of the law in drinking, saying: + + "At the houses of entertainment called ordinaries into which a + stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that + office who would thrust himself into his company uninvited, and if + he called for more drink than the officer thought, in his judgment, + he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and + appoint the proportion beyond which he could not get one drop." + +The ministers, also, who chanced to live within sight of the tavern, had +a very virtuous custom of watching the tavern door and all who entered +therein, and going over and "chiding them" if they remained too long +within the cheerful portals. With constables, deacons, the parson, and +that lab-o'-the-tongue--the tithing-man--each on the alert to keep every +one from drinking but himself, the Puritan had little chance to be a +toper an he would. + +The colonists were fiercely intolerant of intemperance among the +Indians. Laws were made as early as 1633 prohibiting the sale of strong +waters to the "inflamed devilish bloudy salvages," and persons selling +liquor to them were sharply prosecuted and punished. New Yorkers thought +these laws over-severe, saying, deprecatingly, "to prohibit all strong +liquor to them seems very hard and very turkish, rumm doth as little +hurt as the ffrenchmans Brandie, and in the whole is much more +wholesome." But the Puritans knew of the horrors to be dreaded from +drunken Indians. + +So plentiful had the sale of ale and beer become in 1675 that Cotton +Mather said every other house in Boston was an ale-house, and a century +later Governor Pownall made the same assertion. The Puritan magistrates +in New England made at a very early date a decided stand not only +against excessive drinking by strangers, but against the habit of +drunkenness in their citizens. Drunkards were in 1636, in Massachusetts, +subject to fine and imprisonment in the stocks, and sellers were +forbidden to furnish the tippler with any liquor thereafter. An habitual +drunkard was punished by having a great D made of "Redd Cloth" hung +around his neck, or sewed on his clothing, and he was disfranchised. In +1630 Governor Winthrop abolished the "Vain Custom" of drinking healths +at his table, and in 1639 the Court publicly ordered the cessation of +the practice because "it was a thing of no use, it induced drunkenness +and quarrelling, it wasted wine and beer and it was troublesome to many, +forcing them to drink more than they wished." A fine of twelve shillings +was imposed on each health-drinker. Cotton Mather, however, thought +health-drinking a usage of common politeness. In Connecticut no man +could drink over half a pint of wine at a time, or tipple over half an +hour, or drink at all at an ordinary after nine o'clock at night. + +All these rigid laws had their effect, and New Englanders throughout the +seventeenth century were sober and law-abiding save in a few +communities, such as that at Merrymount, where "good chear went forward +and strong liquors walked." Boston was an especially orderly town. +Several visiting and resident clergymen testified that they had not seen +a drunken man in the Massachusetts Colony in many years. The following +quotation will show how rare was drunkenness and how abhorred. Judge +Sewall wrote in 1686: + + "Mr. Shrimpton and others came in a coach from Roxbury about nine + o'clock or past, singing as they came, being inflamed with drink. + At Justice Morgans they stop and drink healths and curse and swear + to the great disturbance of the town and grief of good people. Such + high handed wickedness has hardly before been heard of in Boston." + +It is well to compare the orderly, decorous, well-protected existence in +Boston, with the conditions of town life in Old England at that same +date, where drunken young men of fashion under the name of Mohocks, +Scourers, Hectors, Muns, or Tityriti, prowled the streets abusing and +beating every man and woman they met--"sons of Belial flown with +insolence and wine;" where turbulent apprentices set upon those the +Mohocks chanced to spare; where duels and intrigues and gaming were the +order of the day; where foot-pads, highwaymen, and street ruffians +robbed unceasingly and with impunity. Life in New England may have been +dull and monotonous, but women could go through the streets in safety, +and Judge Sewall could stumble home alone in the dark from his +love-making without fear of molestation; and when he found a party of +young men singing and making too much noise in a tavern, he could go +among them uninsulted, and could get them to meekly write down their own +names with his "Pensil" for him to bring them up and fine them the next +day. + +Still, the Judge, though he hated noisy revellers, was no total +abstainer. He speaks of "grace cups" and "treating the Deputies," and +sent gifts of wine to his friends. I find in his diary references to +these drinks: Ale, beer, mead, metheglin, tea, chocolate, sage tea, +cider, wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack-posset, and +black cherry brandy. + +Sack, the drink of Shakespeare's day, beloved and praised of Falstaff, +was passing out of date in Sewall's time. Winthrop tells of four ships +coming into port in 1646 with eight hundred butts of sack on board. In +1634 ordinaries were forbidden to sell it, hence the sack found but a +poor market. Sack-posset was made of ale and sack, thickened with eggs +and cream, seasoned with nutmeg, mace, and sugar, then boiled on the +fire for hours, and made a "very pretty drink" for weddings and feasts. + +Canary wine was imported at that time in large quantities. In the first +year's issue of the _News Letter_ were advertised "Fyall wine sold by +the Pipe; Passados & Right Canary." The Winthrops in their letters make +frequent mention of Canary, as also of "Vendredi" and "Palme Wine." Wait +Winthrop said the latter was better than Canary. Tent wine also was sent +to the colonists. + +It is interesting to find that the sanguine settlers aspired, even in +bleak New England, to the home production of wine. "Vine planters" were +asked for the colony in 1629. The use of Governor's Island in +Massachusetts Bay was granted to Governor Winthrop in 1634 for a +vineyard, for an annual rental of a hogshead of wine, which at a later +date was changed to a yearly payment of two barrels of apples. The +French settlers also planted vineyards in Rhode Island. + +Claret was not much loved by the planters, who had a taste for the sweet +sack. Morton tells that for his revellers he "broched a hogshead, caused +them to fill the Can with Lusty liquor--Claret sparklinge neat--which +was not suffered to grow pale & flat but tipled off with quick +dexterity." Mumm, a fat ale made of oat-malt and wheat-malt, appears +frequently in early importations and accounts. The sillabub of which +Sewall speaks was made with cider and was not boiled: + + "Fill your Sillabub Pot with Syder (for that is best for a + Sillabub) and good store of Sugar and a little Nutmeg, stir it wel + together, put in as much thick Cream by two or three spoonfuls at a + time, as hard as you can as though you milke it in, then stir it + together exceeding softly once about and let it stand two hours at + least." + +Other mild fermented drinks than beer were made and drunk in colonial +days in large quantities. Mead and metheglin, wherewith the Druids and +old English bards were wont to carouse, were made from water, honey, and +yeast. Here is an old receipt for the latter drink, which some colonists +pronounced as good as Malaga sack. + + "Take all sorts of Hearbs that are good and wholesome as Balme, + Mint, Fennel, Rosemary, Angelica, wilde Tyme, Isop, Burnet, + Egrimony, and such other as you think fit; some Field Hearbs, but + you must not put in too many, but especially Rosemary or any Strong + Hearb, lesse than halfe a handfull will serve of every sorte, you + must boyl your Hearbs & strain them, and let the liquor stand till + to Morrow and settle them, take off the clearest Liquor, two + Gallons & a halfe to one Gallon of Honey, and that proportion as + much as you will make, and let it boyle an houre, and in the + boyling skim it very clear, then set it a cooling as you doe Beere, + when it is cold take some very good Ale Barme and put into the + bottome of the Tubb a little and a little as they do Beere, keeping + back the thicke Setling that lyeth in the bottome of the Vessel + that it is cooled in, and when it is all put together cover it with + a Cloth and let it worke very neere three dayes, and when you mean + to put it up, skim off all the Barme clean, put it up into the + Vessel, but you must not stop your Vessel very close in three or + four dayes but let it have all the vent, for it will worke and when + it is close stopped you must looke very often to it and have a peg + in the top to give it vent, when you heare it make a noise as it + will do, or else it will breake the Vessell; sometime I make a bag + and put in good store of Ginger sliced, some Cloves and Cinnamon + and boyl it in, and other time I put it into the Barrel and never + boyl it, it is both good, but Nutmeg & Mace do not well to my + Tast." + +In the list of values fixed by the Piscataqua planters in 1633, "6 +Gallons Mathaglin were equal to 2 lb. Beauer." In the middle of the +century metheglin was worth ten shillings a barrel in the Connecticut +Valley. + +Though mild, these drinks were intoxicating. One could "get fox'd e'en +with foolish matheglin." Old James Howel says, "metheglin does stupefy +more than any other liquor if taken immoderately and keeps a humming in +the brain which made one say he loved not metheglin because he was wont +to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive." + +Bradford tells of backsliders from Merrymount who "abased themselves +disorderly with drinking too much stronge drinke aboard the +Freindshipp." This strong drink was metheglin, of which two hogsheads +were to be delivered at Plymouth. But after it was transferred to wooden +"flackets" in Boston, these Friendship merrymakers contrived to "drinke +it up under the name leackage" till but six gallons of the metheglin +arrived at Plymouth. + +"Cyder famed" was made at an early date from the fruitful apple-trees so +faithfully planted by Endicott, Blackstone, and other settlers. Cider +was cheap enough; Josselyn wrote, "I have had at the tap houses of +Boston an ale-quart of cyder spiced and sweetened with sugar, for a +groat." + +This was not the New England nectar or Passada which he praised so +highly and which was thus made-- + + "Take of Malligo Raisins, stamp them and put milk to them and put + them to a Hippocras Bag and let it drain out of itself and put a + quantity of this with a spoonful or two of Syrup of Clove + Gilly-flowers into every bottle when you bottle your Syder, and + your Planter will have a liquor that exceeds Passada, the Nectar of + the Country." + +Cider was made at first by pounding the apples by hand in wooden +mortars; sometimes the pomace was pressed in baskets. Rude mills were +then formed with a hollowed log, and a heavy weight or maul on a +spring-board. Cider soon became the common drink of the people, and it +was made in vast quantities. In 1671 five hundred hogsheads were made of +one orchard's produce. One village of forty families made three thousand +barrels in 1721. Bennet wrote in 1740, "Cider being cheap and the people +used to it they do not encourage malt liquors. They pay about three +shillings a barrel for cider." It was freely used even by the children +at breakfast, as well as at dinner, up to the end of the first quarter +of the present century, when many zealous followers so eagerly embraced +the new temperance reform that they cut down whole orchards of thriving +apple-trees, conceiving no possibility of the general use of the fruit +for food instead of drink. + +Charles Francis Adams says that "to the end of John Adams's life a large +tankard of hard cider was his morning draught before breakfast." + +Cider was supplied in large amounts to students at college at dinner and +"bever," being passed in two two-quart tankards from hand to hand down +the commons table. It was given liberally to all travellers and +wanderers who chanced to stop at the farmer's door; to all workmen and +farm laborers; and an "Indian barrel," whose contents were for free gift +to every tramp Indian or squaw, was found in many a farmer's cellar. + +A traveller in Maine just after the Revolution said that their cider was +purified by the frost, colored with corn, and looked and tasted like +Madeira. + +Beverige also was drunk by the colonists. This name was applied to +various mild and watery drinks. In the West Indies the juice of the +sugar-cane mixed with water was so called. In Devonshire, water which +had been pressed through the lees of a cider-mill was called beverige. +In other parts of England water, cider, and spices formed beverige. In +New England the concoction varied, but was uniformly innocuous and +weak--the colonial prototype of our modern "temperance drinks." In many +country houses a summer drink of water flavored with molasses and ginger +was called beverige. The advertisement in the _Boston News Letter_, +August 16th, 1711, of the sale of the captured Neptune with her lading, +at the warehouse of Andrew Fanueil, had "Wine, Vinegar and Beveridge" on +the list. This must have been stronger stuff than molasses and water, to +have been worth barrelling and sending across the water. + +Switchel was a drink similar to beverige, but when served out to sailors +was strengthened by a little vinegar and rum. The name was commonly used +in New Hampshire and central Massachusetts. Ebulum was made of the +juices of the elder and juniper berries mixed with ale and spices. + +Perry was made to some extent from pears, and was advertised for sale in +the _Boston News Letter_, and one traveller told of "peachy" made from +peaches. Spruce and birch beer were brewed by mixing a decoction of +sassafras, birch, or spruce bark with molasses and water, or by boiling +the twigs in maple sap, or by boiling together pumpkin and +apple-parings, water, malt, and roots. Many curious makeshifts were +resorted to in the early days. One old song boasted + + "Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips + Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips." + +Fiercer liquors were not lacking. Aqua-vitæ, a general name for strong +waters, was brought over in large quantities during the seventeenth +century, and sold for about three shillings a gallon. Cider was +distilled into cider brandy, or apple-jack; and when, by 1670, molasses +had come into port in considerable quantity through the West India +trade, the forests of New England supplied plentiful and cheap fuel to +convert it into "rhum, a strong water drawn from the sugar cane." In a +manuscript description of Barbadoes, written in 1651, we read: "The +chief fudling they make in this island is Rumbullion alias Kill Divil--a +hot hellish and terrible liquor." It was called in some localities +Barbadoes liquor, and by the Indians "ahcoobee" or "ockuby," a word of +the Norridgewock tongue. John Eliot spelled it "rumb," and Josselyn +called it plainly "that cussed liquor, Rhum, rumbullion, or kill-devil." +It went by the latter name and rumbooze everywhere, and was soon cheap +enough. Increase Mather said, in 1686, "It is an unhappy thing that in +later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They +that are poor, and wicked too, can for a penny or twopence make +themselves drunk." Burke said, at a later date, "The quantity of spirits +which they distil in Boston from the molasses they import is as +surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two +shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quantity and +cheapness than for the excellency of their rum." In 1719, and fifty +years later, New England rum was worth but three shillings a gallon, +while West India rum was worth but twopence more. New England +distilleries quickly found a more lucrative way of disposing of their +"kill-devil" than by selling it at such cheap rates. Ships laden with +barrels of rum were sent to the African coast, and from thence they +returned with a most valuable lading--negro slaves. Along the coast of +Africa New England rum quite drove out French brandy. + +The Irish and Scotch settlers knew how to make whiskey from rye and +wheat, and they soon learned to manufacture it from barley and potatoes, +and even from the despised Indian corn. + +Not content with their own manufactured liquors, the thirsty colonists +imported strong waters, gin and aniseseed cordial from Holland, and wine +from Spain, Portugal, and the Canaries. Of these, fiery Madeiras were +the favorite of all fashionable folk and often each glass of wine was +strengthened by a liberal dash of brandy. Bennet wrote, in 1740, of +Boston society, "Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink +in common." Though "spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaffed" in 1665, +I do not know of the Oriental mixed drink in New England till 1682, when +John Winthrop writes of the sale of a punch-bowl. In 1686 John Dunton +had more than one "noble bowl of punch," during his visit to New +England. The word punch was from the East Indian word _pauch_, meaning +five. S. M. (who was probably Samuel Mather) sent these lines to Sir +Harry Frankland in 1757, with the gift of a box of lemons: + + "You know from Eastern India came + The skill of making punch as did the name. + And as the name consists of letters five, + By five ingredients is it kept alive. + To purest water sugar must be joined, + With these the grateful acid is combined. + Some any sours they get contented use, + But men of taste do that from Tagus choose. + When now these three are mixed with care + Then added be of spirit a small share. + And that you may the drink quite perfect see + Atop the musky nut must grated be." + +Every buffet of people of fashion contained a punch-bowl, every dinner +was prefaced by a bowl of punch, which was passed from hand to hand and +drunk from without intervening glasses. J. Crosby, at the Box of Lemons, +in Boston, sold for thirty years lime juice and shrub and lemons, and +sour oranges and orange juice (which some punch tasters preferred to +lemon juice), to flavor Boston punches. + +Double and "thribble" bowls of punch were commonly served, holding +respectively two and three quarts each, and many existing bills show +what large amounts were drunk. Governor Hancock gave a dinner to the +Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners +were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred +and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and +a large quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner +to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred +diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of +Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter, +fifteen double bowls of punch and a quantity of cider. The clergy were +not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the +ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Mass., in 1785, these +items are found in the tavern-keeper's bill: + + 30 Bowles of Punch before the People went to meeting 3 + 80 people eating in the morning at 16d 6 + 10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10 + 68 dinners at 3s 10 4 + 44 bowles of punch while at dinner 4 8 + 18 bottles of wine 2 14 + 8 bowles of Brandy 1 2 + Cherry Rum 1 10 + 6 people drank tea 9_d_ + +The six mild tea-drinkers and their economical beverage seem to put a +finishing and fairly comic touch to this ordination bill. When we read +such renderings of accounts we think it natural that Baron Reidesel +wrote of New England inhabitants, "most of the males have a strong +passion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages." +John Adams said, "if the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and +cider it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils." + +The cost of these various drinks was thus given about Revolutionary +times in Bristol, R. I.: + + "Nip of Grog 6_d_ + Dubel bole of Tod 2_s_ 9_d_ + Dubel bole of punch 8_s_ + Nip of punch 1_s_ + Brandi Sling 8_d_" + +Flip was a vastly popular drink, and continued to be so for a century +and a half. I find it spoken of as early as 1690. It was made of +home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, and +flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or +pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the +liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor. + +Landlord May, of Canton, Mass., made a famous brew thus: he mixed four +pounds of sugar, four eggs, and one pint of cream and let it stand for +two days. When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug +two-thirds full of beer, placed in it four great spoonfuls of the +compound, then thrust in the seething loggerhead, and added a gill of +rum to the creamy mixture. If a fresh egg were beaten into the flip the +drink was called "bellows-top," and the froth rose over the top of the +mug. "Stone-wall" was a most intoxicating mixture of cider and rum. +"Calibogus," or "bogus," was cold rum and beer unsweetened. +"Black-strap" was a mixture of rum and molasses. Casks of it stood in +every country store, a salted and dried codfish slyly hung alongside--a +free lunch to be stripped off and eaten, and thus tempt, through thirst, +the purchase of another draught of black-strap. + +A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem--a drink with a +terrible name--whistle-belly-vengeance. It consisted of sour household +beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with +brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot. + +Of course many protests, though chiefly on the ground of wasteful +expense, were made, even in ante-temperance days, against the drinking +which grew so prevalent with the opening of the eighteenth century. Rev. +Andrew Eliot wrote in 1735, "'Tis surprising what prodigious sums are +expended for spirituous liquors in this one poor Province--more than a +million of our old currency in a year." Dr. Tenney lamented that the +taverns of Exeter, N. H., were thronged with people who seldom retired +sober. Strenuous but ineffectual efforts were made to "prevent tippling +in the forenoon," and between meals; but with little avail. The +temperance-reform of our own century came none too soon. + +Tea was too high priced in the first half-century of its Occidental use +to have been frequently seen in New England. Judge Sewall mentioned it +but once in his diary. He drank it at Madam Winthrop's house in 1709 at +a Thursday lecture, but he does not note it as a rarity. In 1690, +however, when not over-plentiful in old England, Benjamin Harris and +Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell it "in publique" in Boston. In 1712 +"green and ordinary teas" were advertised in the apothecary's list of +Zabdiel Boylston. Bohea tea came in 1713, and in 1715 tea was sold in +the coffee-houses. Some queer mistakes were made through the employment +of the herb as food. In Salem it was boiled for a long time till bitter, +and drunk without milk or sugar; and the tea-leaves were buttered, +salted, and eaten. In more than one town the liquid tea was thrown away +and the carefully cooked leaves were eaten. + +The new China drink did not have a wholly savory reputation. It was +called a "damned weed," a "detestable weed," a "base exotick," a "rank +poison far-fetched and dear bought," a "base and unworthy Indian drink," +and various ill effects were attributed to it--the decay of the teeth, +and even the loss of the mental faculties. But the Abbé Robin thought +the ability of the Revolutionary soldiers to endure military flogging +came from the use of tea. And others thought it cured the spleen and +indigestion. + +As the day drew near when tea-drinking was to become the great +turning-point of our national liberty, the spirit of noble revolt led +many dames to join in bands to abandon the use of the unjustly taxed +herb, and societies were formed of members pledged to drink no tea. Five +hundred women so banded together in Boston. Various substitutes were +employed in the place of the much-loved but rigidly abjured herb, +Liberty Tea being the most esteemed. It was thus made: the four-leaved +loose-strife was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the +leaves and boiled; the leaves were put in an iron kettle and basted with +the liquor from the stalks. Then the leaves were put in an oven and +dried. Liberty Tea sold for sixpence a pound. It was drunk at every +spinning-bee, quilting, or other gathering of women. Ribwort was also +used to make a so-called tea--strawberry and currant leaves, sage, and +even strong medicinal herbs likewise. Hyperion tea was made from +raspberry leaves. An advertisement of the day thus reads: + + "The use of Hyperion or Labrador tea is every day coming into vogue + among people of all ranks. The virtues of the plant or shrub from + which this delicate Tea is gathered were first discovered by the + Aborigines, and from them the Canadians learned them. Before the + cession of Canada to Great Britain we knew little or nothing of + this most excellent herb, but since that we have been taught to + find it growing all over hill and dale between the Lat. 40 and 60. + It is found all over New England in great plenty and that of best + quality particularly on the banks of the Penobscot, Kennebec, + Nichewannock, and Merrimac." + +The proportion of tea used in America is now less than in England, and +the proportion of coffee much larger. This is wholly the result of +national habits formed through patriotic abstinence from tea-drinking in +those glorious "Liberty Days." + +The first mention of coffee, as given by Dr. Lyon, is in the record of +the license of Dorothy Jones, of Boston, in 1670, to sell "Coffe and +chuchaletto." At intervals of a few years other innkeepers were licensed +to sell it, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century coffee-houses +were established. Coffee dishes, coffee-pots, and coffee-mugs appear in +inventories, and show how quickly and eagerly the fragrant berry was +sought for in private families. As with tea, its method of preparation +as a beverage seemed somewhat uncertain in some minds; and it is said +that the whole beans were frequently boiled for some hours with not +wholly pleasing results in forming either food or drink. After a few +years "coffee-powder" was offered for sale. + +Chocolate became equally popular. Sewall often drank it, once certainly +as early as 1697, at the Lieutenant-Governor's, with a breakfast of +venison. Winthrop says it was scarce in 1698. Madam Knight took it with +her on her journey in 1704. "I told her I had some chocolate if she +would prepare it, which, with the help of some milk and a little clean +brass kettle, she soon effected to my satisfaction." Mills to grind +cocoa were quickly established in Boston, and were advertised in the +_News Letter_. + +Even in the early days of our Republic there were reformers who wished +to establish the use of temperance drinks, which were not, however, +exactly the same liquids now so called. A writer in the _Boston Evening +Post_ wrote forcibly on the subject, and a Philadelphia paper published +this statement on July 23d, 1788: + + "A correspondent wishes that a monument could be erected in Union + Green with the following inscription. + + In Honour of + American Beer and Cyder. + + It is hereby recorded for the information of strangers and + posterity that 17,000 Assembled in this Green on the 4th of July + 1788 to celebrate the establishment of the Constitution of the + United States, and that they departed at an early hour without + intoxication or a single quarrel. They drank nothing but Beer and + Cyder. Learn Reader to prize these invaluable liquors and to + consider them as the companions of those virtues which can alone + render our country free and reputable. + + Learn likewise to Despise + Spirituous Liquors as Anti Federal + + and to consider them as the companions of all those vices which are + calculated to dishonor and enslave our country." + + + + +VIII + +TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE + + +When New England was colonized, the European emigrants were forced to +content themselves with the rude means of transportation which were +employed by the aborigines. The favorite way back and forth from +Plymouth to Boston and Cape Ann was by water, by skirting the shore in +birchen pinnaces or dugouts--hollowed pine logs about twenty feet long +and two and a half feet wide--in which Johnson said the savages ventured +two leagues out at sea. There were few horses, and the few were too +valuable for domestic work to be spared for travel, hence the journeyer +must go by water, or on foot. When Bradstreet was sent to Dover as Royal +Commissioner, he walked the entire distance there, and back to Boston, +by narrow Indian paths. + +The many estuaries and river-mouths that intersected the coast also made +travel on horseback difficult. Foot-passengers, however, could cross the +narrow streams by natural ford-ways, or on fallen trees, which were +ordered to be put in proper place by the colonial government; and the +broader rivers by canoe ferries. We see, through the record of one +journey, the dignified Governor of Massachusetts carried across the +ford-ways pick-a-pack on the shoulders of his stalwart Indian guide. + +But soon the settlers, true to their English instincts and habits, +turned their attention to the breeding of horses. They imported many +fine animals, and the magistrates framed laws intended to improve the +imported stock. The history of horse-raising in New England is akin to +that of any other country, save in one respect. In Rhode Island the +breeding of horses resulted in that famous and first distinctively +American breed--the Narragansett Pacers. + +The first suggestion of horse-raising in Narragansett was, without +doubt, given by Sewall's father-in-law, Captain John Hull, of Pine Tree +Shilling fame, who was one of the original purchasers of the +Petaquamscut Tract, or Narragansett, from the Indians. He wrote, in +April, 1677: + + "I have often thought if we, the partners of Point Judith Neck did + fence with a good stone wall at the north end thereof, that no kind + of horses or cattle might get thereon, and also what other parts + thereof westerly were needful, and procure a very good breed of + large and fair mares and horses, and that no mongrel breed might + come among them, we might have a very choice breed for coach + horses, some for the saddle and some for draught; and in a few + years might draw off considerable numbers and ship them for + Barbadoes Nevis or such parts of the Indies where they would vend." + +This scheme was doubtless carried into effect, for in 1686 Dudley and +his associates ordered thirty horses to be seized in Narragansett and +sold to pay for building a jail. + +In a later letter Hull accuses William Heiffernan of horse-stealing, and +shows that a different and more gentle method than Western lynch-law was +pursued by the Eastern settlers. He writes: + + "I am informed that you were so shameless that you offered to sell + some of my horses. I would have you know that they are by Gods good + Providence, mine. Do you bring me some good security for my money + that is justly owing and I shall be willing to give you some horses + that you shall not need to offer to steal any." + +Whatever the means may have been that tended to the establishment of a +distinct breed of horses, the result was soon evident; by the early +years of the eighteenth century the Narragansett Pacers were known +throughout the colonies as a desirable breed of saddle-horses. + +The local conditions for raising this breed were favorable. The soil of +Narragansett was rich, the crops large, the natural formation of the +land made it possible to fence it easily and with little expense--a +thing of much importance in a new land. The bay, the ocean, and the +chain of half salt lakes surrounding the three sides, left but a short +northern length for stone wall, as Hull suggested. + +It is said that the progenitor or most important sire of this race was +imported from Andalusia by Governor Robinson. Another tradition is that +this horse, while swimming off the coast of Spain, was picked up by a +Narragansett sloop and brought to America. Thomas Hazard contributed to +the quality of endurance in the breed by introducing into it the blood +of "Old Snip." So celebrated did the qualities of this horse become that +the "Snip breed" was not only spoken of with regard to the horses, but +of the owners as well, and Hazards who did not possess the +distinguishing race-characteristic of self-will were said not to be +"true Snips." Old Snip was said to have been imported from Tripoli; +others assert (and it is generally believed) that he was a wild horse +running at large in the tract near Point Judith. + +In the year 1711 Rip Van Dam, a prominent citizen of New York, and at a +later date Governor of the State, wrote to Jonathan Dickinson, an early +mayor of Philadelphia, a very amusing account of his ownership of a +Narragansett Pacer. The horse was shipped from Rhode Island in a sloop, +from which he managed to jump overboard, swim ashore, and return home. +He was, however, again placed on board ship, and arrived in New York +after a fourteen-days' passage, naturally much reduced in flesh and +spirits. From New York he was sent to Philadelphia by post--that is, +ridden by the post-rider. The horse cost £32, and his freight cost fifty +shillings. He was said to be "no beauty though so high priced, save in +his legs." "He always plays and acts and never will stand still, he will +take a glass of wine, beer or cyder, and probably would drink a dram on +a cold morning." The last extraordinary accomplishment doubtless showed +contamination from the bad human company around him, while the swimming +feat evinced his direct descent from the Andalusian swimmer. + +Dr. McSparran, rector of the Narragansett church from 1721 to 1759, +wrote a little book called "America Dissected," in which he speaks thus +of the Narragansett Pacers: + + "The produce of this country is principally butter, cheese, fat + cattle, wool and fine horses that are exported to all parts of + English America. They are remarkable for fleetness and swift pacing + and I have seen some of them pace a mile in a little more than two + minutes and a good deal less than three minutes. I have often upon + the larger pacing horses rode fifty, nay sixty miles a day even in + New England where the roads are rough, stony and uneven." + +In the realm of fiction we find testimony to the qualities of the +Narragansett Pacers. Cooper, in the "Last of the Mohicans," represents +his heroines as mounted on these horses, and explains their +characteristics in a footnote, and also in the dialogue of the story. He +says that they were commonly sorrel-colored, and that horses of other +breeds were trained to their gait. It is true that horses were trained +to pace. Rev. Mr. Thatcher wrote in 1690 of teaching a mare to amble by +cross-spanning, and again by trammelling. Logs of wood were placed +across a road at certain intervals to induce a pacing gait. As late as +the year 1770 men in Ipswich followed the profession of pace-trainer; +but I doubt whether any other breed could ever acquire the peculiar gait +of the Narragansetts, of which Isaac Hazard thus wrote: "My father +described the motion of this horse as differing from others in that its +backbone moved through the air in a straight line without inclining the +rider from side to side, as does a rocker or pacer of the present day." +That motion could scarcely be taught. + +Many traits joined to make the Narragansett Pacers so eagerly sought +for. Not only was their ease of motion an absolute necessity, but +sureness of foot was also indispensable; this quality they also +possessed. They were also tough and enduring, and could travel long +distances. The stories told of them seem incredible. It was said that +they could travel one hundred miles in a day, over rough roads, without +tiring the rider or injury to themselves, provided they were properly +cared for at the end of the journey. + +There was not only in America a steady demand for these horses, but in +the West Indies, as Hull predicted, they found a ready market. One +farmer sent annually a hundred pacers to Cuba, and agents were sent to +Narragansett from Cuba with orders to buy pacers, especially +full-blooded mares, at any prices. Agents from Virginia also purchased +pacers for Virginian horse-raisers. The newspapers of the latter part of +the eighteenth century--especially of the Connecticut press--abound in +advertisements of horses of the "true Narragansett breed," yet it is +said that in the year 1800 but one full-blooded Narragansett Pacer was +known to be living. In the War of 1812 the British man-of-war Orpheus +cruised the waters of Narragansett Bay, and her captain endeavored +through agents to obtain a Narragansett Pacer as a gift for his wife, +but in vain--not a horse of the true breed could be found. + +It has been said that the reckless exportation to the West Indies caused +this extermination, but it is difficult to believe that so shrewd a race +as were the Narragansett planters ever would have committed such a +killing of a goose of golden eggs. The decay of the race was the action +of a simple law--cause and effect. The conditions which rendered the +pacer so desirable did not exist after the Revolution. Roads were +improved, carriages became common, the saddle less used, and the +American trotter was evolved, who was a better carriage horse, and a +more useful one, as he could be employed for both light and heavy work, +while heavy draughting stiffened the joints of the pacer, and destroyed +the very qualities for which he was most valued. Thus, being no longer +needed, the Narragansett Pacer ceased to exist. + +There died in Wickford, R. I., a few years ago, a Narragansett Pacer that +was nearly full blooded. She was a villainously ugly animal of faded, +sunburnt sorrel color. She was so abnormally broad-backed and +broad-bodied that a male rider who sat astride her was forced to stick +his legs out at a most awkward and ridiculous angle. That broad back +carried, however, most comfortably a side-saddle or a pillion. Being +extremely short-legged this treasured relic was unprecedentedly slow, +and altogether I found the Narragansett Pacer, though an object of great +pride and even veneration to her owner, not all my fancy had painted +her. + +From the earliest days when horses were imported, women rode on pillions +behind the men. Lechford in his note-book refers to a "womans pillion" +lost on the Hopewell. A pillion was a cushion strapped on behind a man's +saddle, and from it sometimes hung a small platform or double stirrup on +which a woman rider could rest her feet. One horse was sometimes made +also to carry two men riding astride. Horseflesh was also economized by +the ride-and-tie system: two persons would start on horseback, ride a +mile or two, dismount, tie the animal by the road-side, leaving him for +another couple (who had started afoot) to mount, ride on past the first +couple, and dismount and tie in their turn. + +Coaches were not a wholly popular means of conveyance in the first half +of the seventeenth century, even among Englishmen on English roads, and +they would have been wholly useless in New England. John Winthrop had +one in 1685. Sir Edmund and Lady Andros rode in a coach in Boston in +1687, and there were then a few other carriages in town. Their purchase +and use were deplored and discouraged by Puritan authorities, as were +other luxurious fashions. Outside of the town wheeled vehicles were of +little use as they had to be lashed clumsily in two canoes and +laboriously ferried across the rivers, while the horses were similarly +transferred to the opposite shore, or allowed to swim over. The early +carriages were calashes and chariots. Henry Sharp of Salem had a calash +in 1701. William Cutler's "collash with ye furniture" was worth £10 in +1723. Chairs--two-wheeled gigs without a top--and chaises, a vehicle +with similar body and a top, were early forms of carriages. The sulky +had in early days, as now, seating room but for one person. All these +were hung on thorough braces instead of springs. + +In an account of the funeral of Lieutenant Governor Tailor, in 1732, it +is mentioned that a "great number of the gentry attended in their +coaches and chaises;" but even by that date coaches were of little avail +for long journeys. The anxious letters of Waitstill Winthrop to his son +in 1717, at the latter's proposal of bringing a coach overland from +Boston to New London, show the obstacles of travel. He warns that there +are no bridges in Narragansett; he urges him to bring a mounted servant +with an axe to "cut bows in the way," "to bring a good pilate that knows +the cart ways," to be sure to keep the coachman sober, to have axle and +hubs prepared for rough usage--and in every way discourages so rash an +endeavor. + +Though I have seen a New England inventory of the year 1690 in which a +"sley" appears, I do not find that they were frequently used until the +second or third decade of the succeeding century, though a few +Bostonians had them in the year 1700. They were largely used by the +Dutch in New York, and Connecticut folk occasionally followed Dutch +fashions. + +When sedan-chairs were so fashionable and plentiful in England, they +were sure to be used to some extent in New England towns. Governor +Winthrop had a very elegant Spanish sedan-chair, which was given him in +1646 by Captain Cromwell, who captured it from a Spanish galleon. This +fine chair was worth £50 and was an intended gift of the Viceroy of +Mexico to his sister. When Parson Oxenbridge was striken with apoplexy +in the pulpit of the First Church in Boston, he was "carried home in a +Cedan." On August 3, 1687, Judge Sewall wrote in his diary: "Capt. +Gerrish is carried in a Sedan to the Wharf and so takes boat for Salem." +Again he writes on May 31, 1715: "The Gov'r comes first to Town, was +carried from Mr. Dudleys to the Town-House in Cous. Dumers Sedan; but +'twas too tall for the Stairs, so was fain to be taken out near the top +of them." The Governor had had a bad attack of gout. + +On September 11, 1706, Sewall writes: "Five Indians carried Mr. +Bromfield in a chair." And though I have never seen the sale of a sedan +mentioned, several times I have fancied that the reference to the sale +of a chair meant a sedan-chair. In the memoirs of Eliza Quincey she +speaks of riding in a sedan, and of seeing Dr. Franklin in one in 1789. + +At a surprisingly early date, when we consider the limited opportunities +for travel, the colonial authorities licensed taverns or ordinaries, and +also made strict laws governing them. The landlords could not sell sack +or strong water; nor permit games to be played in their precincts; nor +allow dancing or singing; nor could tobacco be used within their walls; +nor could they sell cakes or buns indiscriminately. Samuel Cole, the +Boston comfit-maker, received his license in 1634, though one can hardly +understand, with such manifold rules of narrow limit, how he could wish +it. Previously other freemen had obtained permission "to draw wine and +beer" to sell at retail to their neighbors and to travellers. In New +Haven the tavern-keeper had been given twenty acres of land in 1645, in +which travellers' horses could be pastured. In Hartford and other river +towns the establishment of taverns was compulsory. The ordinaries +quickly multiplied in number and increased in pretension. In Boston, in +1651, the King's Arms and its furniture were held to be worth £600. +Board was cheap enough. In 1634 the Court set the price of a single meal +at sixpence, and an ale quart of beer at a penny. At the Ship Tavern a +man had "fire and bed, dyet, wyne and beere betweene meals" for three +shillings a day. The wine was limited to "a cupp each man at dynner & +supp & no more." Following the English fashion of Shakespeare's time, +the inn chambers were each named: The Exchange Chamber, Rose and Sun +Chamber, Star Chamber, Court Chamber, Jerusalem Chamber, etc. The names +of the inns also followed English nomenclature: The Bunch of Grapes, Dog +& Pot, Turk's Head, Green Dragon, Blue Anchor, King's Head, etc. The +Good Woman bore on its painted sign the figure of a headless woman. The +Ship in Distress had these lines: + + "With sorrows I am compassed round, + Pray lend a hand--my ship's aground." + +Another Boston tavern had this rhyme: + + "This is the bird that never flew, + This is the tree that never grew, + This is the ship that never sails, + This is the can that never fails." + +The Sun Tavern bore these words: + + "The Best Ale and Beer under the Sun." + +This tavern was removed to Moon Street, and was kept by Mrs. Milk. Her +neighbors' names were Waters, Beer, and Legg. The Salutation Inn, with +its sign-board bearing the picture of two men shaking hands, was +commonly known as the Two Palaverers. + +I know no more attractive picture of olden-time hospitality, nothing +better "under the notion of a tavern," than the old Palaverer tavern at +Medford. On either side of its front door grew a great tree, and in the +spreading branches of each tree was built a platform or balcony. The two +were connected by a hanging bridge or scaffolding, and also connected by +a similar foot-bridge with the tavern itself. In these leafy +tree-arbors, through the sunny summer months, from dawn till twilight, +whilom travellers rested and drank their drams, or, perchance, their +cups of tea, and watched the arrival and departure of coaches and +horsemen at "mine inn." + +John Adams wrote frequently of the inns of the time. He said of the +Ipswich innkeeper in 1771: "Landlord and Landlady are some of the +grandest people alive. Landlady is the great granddaughter of Governor +Endicott, and has all the notions of greatest family. As to Landlord, he +is as happy, and as big, as proud, as conceited as any nobleman in +England, always calm and good-natured and lazy." + +Of the Enfield landlord he wrote: "Oated and drank tea at Peases--a +smart house and landlord truly; well dressed with his ruffles &c. and +upon inquiry I found he was the great man of the town, their +representative as well as tavern-keeper." In a paper which he wrote upon +licensed houses, Adams stated that "retailers and taverners are +generally, in the country, assessors, selectmen, representatives, or +esquires." + +Members of our best and most respected families throughout New England +were innkeepers. The landlord was frequently a local magistrate, a +justice of the peace, or a sheriff. Notices of town-meetings, of +elections, of new laws and ordinances of administration were posted at +the tavern, just as legal notices are printed in the newspapers +nowadays. Bills of sales, of auctions, records of transfers were +naturally posted therein; the taverns were the original business +exchanges. No wonder all the men in the township flocked to the +tavern--they had to to know anything of town affairs, to say nothing of +local scandals. Distances were given in almanacs of the day, not from +town to town, but from tavern to tavern. + +Of the good quality of New England inns many travellers testify. +Lafayette wrote to his wife in 1777: "Host and hostess sit at the table +with you and do the honors of a comfortable meal, and on going away you +pay your fare without higgling." Dr. Dwight said the best old-fashioned +New England inns were superior to any of the modern ones. Brissot said: +"You meet with neatness, dignity and decency, the chambers neat, the +beds good, the sheets clean, supper passable, cyder tea punch and all +for fourteen pence a head." Alackaday! the good old times. + +Next in importance to the landlord came the stage-driver. He was so +popular and such a kindly fellow that he had to be prohibited by law +from carrying any parcels or letters for persons along the route, else +he were overburdened with troublesome and hindering business, +detrimental to the postal and carriage income of the government. He was +so importuned to drink at each stopping-place that he might have lain +drunk the whole year round. He was of so much consequence and so looked +up to, that little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, hardly +exaggerated his position when he roared out angrily to a hungry +passenger who urged him to drive faster: "While I drive this coach I am +the whole United States of America." Stage-driving was an hereditary +gift; it went in families. Four Potters, three Ackermans, three Annables +drove in Salem. Patch and Peach. Tozzer and Blumpy, Canney and Camp, +were well-known stage-driving names. + +The stage-agent also, that obsolete functionary, was a man of much local +consequence and of many affairs; he was established in many a tavern as +a necessary and almost immovable piece of bar-room furniture. + +To show the importance of tavern, tavern-keeper, stage-agent, and +stage-driver in early Federal days, let me give a single instance. +Haverhill was the great staging centre of New Hampshire; six or eight +lines of coaches left there each day. There were lines direct to Boston, +New York, and Stanstead, Canada. Of course there was a vast bustle and +commotion on the arrival and departure of each coach, and a goodly +number of passengers were deposited at the tavern that formed the coach +office--sometimes one hundred and fifty a day. It can readily be seen +what a news centre such a tavern must have been, how much knowledge of +the world must have been gathered by its occupants. It must be +remembered that our universal modern source of information, the +newspaper, did not then exist; there were a few journals, of course, of +scant circulation, but of what we now deem news they contained nothing. +Information of current events came through hearing and talking, not +through reading. Hence it came to be that an innkeeper was not only +influential in local affairs, but was universally known as the +best-informed man in the place; reporters, so to speak, rendered their +accounts to him; items of foreign and local news were sent to him; he +was in himself an entire Associated Press. + +The earliest roads for travel throughout New England followed the Indian +trails or paths, and were but two or three feet wide. The Old Plymouth +or Coast Road, of much importance because connecting Boston and +Plymouth, the capitals of separate colonies, was provided for by action +of the General Court in 1639. It ran through old Braintree. The Old +Connecticut Road or Path started from Cambridge, ran to Marlborough, +thence to Grafton, Oxford, and Woodstock, and on to Springfield and +Albany. It was intersected at Woodstock by the Providence Path, which +ran through Narragansett and Providence plantations, and also by the +Nipmuck Path which came from Norwich. + +The New Connecticut Road ran as did the old road, from Boston to Albany. +It was known at a later date as the Post Road. From Boston it ran to +Marlborough, thence to Worcester, thence to Brookfield, and so on to +Springfield and Albany. + +The famous Bay Path, laid out in 1673, left the Old Connecticut Path at +Happy Hollow, now Wayland, and ran through Marlborough to Worcester, +Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, when it separated in two paths, +one--the Hadley Path--running to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley, and the +other returning to the Old Connecticut Path and on to Springfield. + +An inexplicable charm still attaches itself to these old Indian paths, a +delight in attempting to trace their unused and overgrown roadways, as +they leave the main road in devious twists and turns till they again +join its beaten way. And the halo of early romance and adventure +surrounds them. Holland felt the charm when he wrote thus of the Bay +Path: + + "It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight + clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was + bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through + woods which bore the mark of centuries, over barren hills that had + been licked by the Indian hounds of fire, and along the banks of + streams that the seine had never dragged. A powerful interest was + attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws + were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, + and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That + rough thread of soil chopped by the blades of a hundred streams was + a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of + love and interest and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed + over by friends on the journey and friends at home." + +Hawthorne felt it also and said: + + "The forest-track trodden by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy + and ponderous Englishmen has now a distinctness which it never + could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many + moccasins. It goes onward from one clearing to another, here + plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, + but everywhere showing a decided line along which human interests + have begun to hold their career.... And the Indians coming from + their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement marvel at + the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a + flitting presentiment that this heavy tread will find its way over + all the land, and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild + Indian will alike be trampled beneath it." + +For many years these paths were travelled, gradually widening from +foot-paths to bridle-ways, to cart-tracks, to carriage-roads, until they +became the post-roads, set thick with cheerful country homes. In some +portions of New England they still are travelled and form the general +thoroughfare, but in many lonely townships the old paths are deserted, +and traffic and passage over the post or county road is gone forever. +Bushes flourish and meet gloomily across the grass-grown track; forest +trees droop heavily over it in summer and fall unheeded across it in +winter. On either side moss-grown, winter-killed apple-trees and ancient +stunted currant-bushes struggle for life against sturdy young pine and +spruce and birch. Many a rod of heavy tumble-down stone wall--New +England Stonehenges--may be seen, not as of old dividing cleared and +fertile fields, but in the midst of a forest of trees or underbrush: + + "Far up on these abandoned mountain farms + Now drifting back to forests wild again, + The long gray walls extend their clasping arms + Pathetic monuments of vanished men." + +Or more pathetic monuments still of hard and wasted work. On either side +of the way, at too sadly frequent intervals, ruined wells or desolate +yawning cellar-holes, with tumbling chimneys standing like Druid ruins, +show that fair New England homes once there were found. Flaming orange +tiger-lilies, most homely and cheerful bloom of country gardens, have +spread from the deserted dooryards, across the untrodden foot-paths, in +weedy thickets a-down the hill, and shed their rank odor unheeded on the +air. + +Some of the old provincial mile-stones, however, remain, and put us +closely in touch with the past. In the southern part of New London +County, and at Stratford, Conn., on the old post-road--the King's +Highway--between Boston and Philadelphia, there are mossgrown stones +that were set under the supervision of Benjamin Franklin when he was +colonial Postmaster-General. After that highway was laid out, the +placing and setting of the mile-stones were entrusted to Franklin, and +he transacted the business, as he did everything else, in a thoroughly +original way. He drove over the road in a comfortable chaise, followed +by a gang of men and heavy teams loaded with the mile-stones. He +attached to his chaise a machine which registered by the revolution of +the chaise-wheels the number of miles travelled, and he had the +mile-stones set by that record, and marked with the distance to the +nearest large town. Thus the Stratford stone says: "20 Mls to N. H."--New +Haven. + +By provincial enactment in Governor Hutchinson's time, mile-stones were +set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Some of these stones +are still standing. There is one in the middle of the city of Worcester, +on Lincoln Street--the "New Connecticut Path;" it is of red sandstone, +and is marked, "42 Mls to Boston, 50 Mls to Springfield, 1771." + +In Sutton, on the "Old Connecticut Path," stands still the king of all +these 1771 mile-stones. It is of red sandstone, is five feet high, and +nearly three feet wide. It is marked, "48 Mls to Boston 1771 B. W." The +letters B. W. stand for Bartholomew Woodbury, a jovial and liberal old +Sutton tavern-keeper who died in 1775. When the mile-stones were set out +by the provincial government, the place for this Sutton stone fell a few +rods from Landlord Woodbury's house; but he obtained permission and set +up this handsome stone at his own expense, beside his great horse-block +under his swinging sign at his open, welcoming door. He fancied, +perhaps, that it would attract the attention, and thus cause the halting +of travellers. Tavern-keeper and tavern are gone; no vestiges even of +cobblestone chimneys or cellar walls remain. The old post-road is now +but little travelled, but the great mile-stone and its neighbor, the +worn stepping-block, still stand, lonely monuments of past days and past +pleasures. On warm summer nights perhaps the silent old mile-stone +awakes and sadly tells his companion of the gay coaches that rattled by, +and the rollicking bucks and blades, the gallant soldiers that galloped +past him in the days of his youth, a century ago. And the +stepping-block may tell in turn of the good old days when her broad +sunny face was pressed by the feet of fair colonial dames who, with +faces hidden in riding-hoods and masks, stepped lightly from saddle or +pillion to "board and bait" at Bartholomew Woodbury's cheerful inn. + +In Roxbury, Mass., there still stands at the corner of Centre and +Washington Streets the famous Roxbury Parting Stone. It is a great +square stone, bearing on one face the words: "The Parting Stone 1744. P. +Dudley;" on another face the words: "Dedham--Rhode Island," and on a +third "Cambridge--Watertown." It has had set on it recently an iron +frame or fixture for a gas-lamp. This stone, with many others in Norfolk +County, was placed by Paul Dudley at his own expense in the middle of +the last century. It has seen the separation or "parting" of many a +brave company that had ridden out to it from Boston. Many a +distinguished traveller has passed it and glanced at its carved words. +Lord Percy's soldiers took counsel of it one hot April morning to find +the road to Lexington. + +Governor Belcher set out a row of mile-stones from Boston Town House to +his home in Milton. Some of them are still standing, the seventh and +eighth in Milton, one marked "8 miles to B. Town House. The Lower Way, +1734." The ninth and twelfth stand as historical landmarks in Quincy, on +the old Plymouth Road, and bear the dates 1720 and 1727. + +In Wenham another mile-stone near the graveyard bears the date 1710, +shows the distance to Ipswich and Boston, and gives these words of +timely warning: "I know that Thou wilt Bring me to Death and to the +house appointed for all Living." + +A marked improvement in facilities for travel came in turnpike days. +These well laid out and well kept roads fairly changed the face of the +country. They sometimes shortened by half the distance to be travelled +between two towns. Stock companies were formed to build bridges and +grade these turnpikes, and the stock formed a good investment and was +also vastly used in speculation. The story of the turnpike is as +interesting as that of the Indian path, but cannot be told at length +here. They, too, have had their day; in some counties the turnpike is as +deserted as the path and seems equally ancient. + +New England roads and turnpikes have seen many a gay sight, for the +custom of speeding the parting guest "agatewards" for some miles, with +an accompanying escort on foot or on horseback, to some ford or natural +turning-point or bourn, was a universal mark of interest and affection, +and of courtesy as well. Judge Sewall records, on one occasion, with +much indignation, that "not one soul rode with us to the ferry." Ere the +days of turnpikes, the old Indian paths witnessed many a sad and +pathetic parting in the wilderness, such as was recorded in simple +language in Parson Thatcher's diary in 1680, when he left Barnstable to +go to a new parish: + + "A great company of horsemen 7 & 50 horse & 12 of them double, went + with us to Sandwich & there got me to go to prayer with them, and + I think none of them parted with me with dry eyes." + +This is indeed a strong picture for the brush of a painter, the golden +September light, nowhere more radiantly beautiful than on + + "the narrowing Cape + That stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds, + And the relentless smiting of the waves," + +and the sad-faced band in Puritan garb, armed and mounted, gathered +around their departing leader in reverent prayer. + +Perhaps the turnpike saw no more characteristic scene than the winter +ride to market. Though summer and fall were the New England farmer's +time of increase, winter was his time of trade and his time of +recreation as well. When wintry blasts grew chill, and snow and ice +covered deep the desolate fields and country roads, then he prepared +with zest and with delight for his gelid time of outing, his Arctic +red-letter day, his greatest social pleasure of the entire year. The +friendly word was circulated by a kind of estafet from farm to farm, was +carried by neighbor or passing traveller, or was discussed and planned +and agreed upon in the noon-house, or at the tavern chimney-side on +Sunday during the nooning, that on a certain date--unless there set in +the tantalizing and swamping January thaw, a thaw which might be pushing +and unseasonable enough to rush in in December and quite as often hung +off and dawdled into February--that on the appointed date, at break of +day, the annual ride to market would begin. Often fifty or sixty +neighbors would respond to the call, would start together on the road. +For farmers in western Vermont and Massachusetts the market town was +Troy or other Hudson valley towns. In Maine, from Bath and Hallowell and +neighboring towns, the winter procession rode to Portland. In central +Massachusetts some drove to Northampton, Springfield, or Hartford; but +the greatest number of farmers and the largest amount of farm produce +went to the towns of the Massachusetts coast, to Salem, to Newburyport, +and, above all, to Boston. + +The two-horse pung or the single-horse pod, shod with steel shoes an +inch thick, was closely packed with the accumulated farm wealth--whole +pigs, perhaps a deer or two, firkins of butter, casks of cheese, four +cheeses in each cask, bags of beans, pease or corn, skins of mink, fox, +and fisher-cat that the boys had trapped, birch brooms that the boys had +made, yarn that their sisters had spun, and stockings and mittens that +they had knitted--in short, anything that a New England farm could +produce that would sell to any profit in a New England town. So closely +was the sleigh packed, in fact, that the driver could not be seated. The +sturdy and hardy farmer stood on a little semicircular step in the rear +of the sleigh, his body protected by the high sleigh back against the +sharp icy blasts. At times he ran alongside or behind his vehicle to +keep his blood in brisk circulation. + +Though every inch of the sleigh was packed to its fullest extent, there +was always found room in some corner for plenty of food to last the +thrifty traveller through his journey; often enough to liberally supply +him even on his return trip--cold roasted spare ribs of pork, doughnuts, +loaves of "rye an' Injun" bread, and invariably a bountiful mass of +frozen bean porridge. This latter was made and frozen in a tub, and when +space was hard to find in the crowded vehicle, the solid mass was +furnished with a loop of twine by which to hang it to the side of the +pung. A small hatchet with which to chop off a chunk of porridge formed +the accompaniment of this unalluring Arctic provender. Oats and hay to +feed his horses did the farmer also carry. + +There were plenty of taverns in which he could obtain food if he needed +it, in which, indeed, he did obtain liquid sustenance to warm his bones +and stir his tongue, and make palatable the half-thawed porridge which +he ate in front of the cheerful tavern fire. But it was the invariable +custom, no matter what the wealth of the farmer, to carry a supply of +food for the journey. This kind of itinerant picnic was called +"tuck-a-nuck "--a word of Indian origin, or "mitchin," while the box or +hamper or bucket that held the provisions was called a "mitchin-box." I +can fancy that no thrifty or loving housewife allowed the man of her +household to go to market with too meanly filled a mitchin-box, but took +an honest pride in sending him off with a full stock of rich doughnuts, +well-baked bread, well-filled pies, and at least well-cooked porridge, +which he could devour without shame before the eyes of his neighbors. + +The traveller did not carry his meals from home because the tavern fare +was expensive; at the inn where he paid ten cents a night for his +lodging, he was uniformly charged but twelve and a half cents for a +"cold bite," and but twenty-five cents for a regular meal; but it was +not the fashion to purchase meals at the tavern; the host made his +profits from the liquor he sold and from the sleeping-room he gave. +Sometimes the latter was simple enough. A great fire was built in the +fireplace of either front room--the bar-room and parlor--and round it, +in a semicircle, feet to the fire and heads on their rolled-up buffalo +robes, slept the tired travellers. A few sybaritic or rheumatic tillers +of the soil paid for half a bed in one of the double-bedded rooms which +all taverns then contained, and got a full bed's worth, in deep hollows +and high billows of live-geese feathers, warm homespun blankets, and +patchwork quilts. + +It was certainly a gay winter's scene as sleigh after sleigh dashed into +the tavern barn or shed and the stiffened driver, after "putting up" his +steed, walked quickly to the bar-room, where sat the host behind his +cage-like counter, where ranged the inspiring barrels of old Medford or +Jamaica rum and hard cider, and + + "Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred + Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, + And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip, + Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip." + +Many a rough joke was laughed at, many a story told ere the tired circle +slept around the fire; but four o'clock saw them all bestirring, making +a fresh start on their city-ward journey. + +In town the traveller was busy enough; he not only had his farm products +to sell, but since he sometimes got the enormous sum of fifty dollars +for his sleigh load, and it was estimated that two dollars was a liberal +allowance for a week's travelling expenses, he had much to spend and +many purchases to make--spices and raisins for the home table, +fish-hooks and powder and shot, pewter plates, or a few pieces of +English crockery, a calico gown or two, a shawl, or a scarf, or a beaver +hat; and thus brought to dreary New England farms their sole taste of +town life in winter. + +For many years travel, especially to New York and other seaport towns, +was largely by water, on sloop or pink or snow; and many stories of the +discomforts of such trips have come down to us. + +The first passenger steamboat which ran between New York and Providence +made its trial trip in 1822. The boats made the passage from town to +town in twenty-three hours, which was monstrous fast time. On one of the +first trips the boat lay by near Point Judith to repair a slight damage +to machinery, and all the simple country-folk who came down to the shore +expecting to find a wreck, were amazed to see the boat--apparently +burning up--go quickly sliding away without sails over the water until +out of sight. Many whispered that the devil had a hand in it, and +perhaps was on board in person. The new means of conveyance proved at +once to be the favored one for all genteel persons wishing to travel +between Boston and New York. The forty-mile journey between Boston and +Providence was made in fine stage-coaches, which were always crowded. +Often eighteen or twenty full coach-loads were carried each way each +day. The editor of the _Providence Gazette_ wrote at that time: "We were +rattled from Providence to Boston in four hours and fifty minutes--if +any one wants to go faster he may send to Kentucky and charter a streak +of lightning!" + +The fare on these coaches was three dollars for the trip between +Providence and Boston. This exorbitant sum was a sore annoyance to all +thrifty men, and indignantly did they rail and protest against it. At +last a union was formed, and a line of rival coaches was established, on +which the fare was to be two dollars and a half a trip. This caused +great dismay to the regular coach company, who at once reduced their +fare to two dollars. The rival line, not to be outdone, announced their +reduction to a dollar and a half. The regulars then widely advertised +that their fare would thenceforth be only one dollar. The rivals then +sold seats for the trip for fifty cents apiece; and in despair, after +jealously watching for weeks the crowded coaches of the new line, the +conquered old line mournfully announced that they would make trips every +day with their vehicle filled with the first applicants who chanced to +be on time at the starting-place, and that these lucky dogs would be +carried for nothing. + +The new stage-coaches were now in their turn deserted, and the +proprietors pondered for a week trying to invent some way to still +further cut down the entirely vanished rates. They at last placarded the +taverns with announcements that they would not only carry their patrons +free of expense, but would give each traveller on their coaches a good +dinner at the end of his journey. The old coach-line was rich and at +once counter-advertised a free dinner and a good bottle of wine too, to +its patrons and there, for a time, the fierce controversy came to a +standstill, both lines having crowded trips each day. + +Mr. Shaffer, who was a fashionable teacher of dancing and deportment in +Boston, and a well-known "man about town," a jolly good fellow, got upon +the Providence coach one Monday morning in Boston, had a gay ride to +Providence and a good dinner and bottle of wine at the end of the +journey, all at the expense of the coach company. On Tuesday he rode +more gayly still back to Boston, had his dinner and his wine, and was up +on Wednesday morning to mount the Providence coach for the third ride +and dinner and bottle. He returned to Boston on Thursday in the same +manner. On Friday the fame of his cheap fun was thoroughly noised all +over Boston, and he collected a crowd of gay young sparks who much +enjoyed their frolicking ride and the fine Providence dinners and wine. +All returned in high spirits with Shaffer to Boston on Saturday to meet +the sad, sad news that the rival coach lines had made a compromise and +had both signed a contract to carry passengers thereafter for two +dollars a trip. + +Upon Tremont Street, near Winter Street, in Boston, there stood at that +time in a garden a fine old house which was kept as a restaurant, and +was a pleasant summer lounging-place for all gay cits. One day a very +portly, aldermanic man presented himself at the entrance of the +restaurant and asked the price of a dinner. Shaffer, who was present, +immediately assumed all the obsequious airs of a waiter, and calling for +a tape-measure, proceeded to measure the distance around the protuberant +waist of the astonished and insulted inquirer, who could hardly believe +his sense of hearing when the impudent Shaffer very politely answered, +"Price of dinner, sir!--about four dollars, sir!--for that size, sir!" +Such were the practical jokes of stage and tavern life in olden days. + + + + +IX + +HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS + + +The first century of colonial life saw few set times and days for +pleasures. The holy days of the English Church were as a stench to the +Puritan nostrils, and their public celebration was at once rigidly +forbidden by the laws of New England. New holidays were not quickly +evolved, and the sober gatherings for matters of Church and State for a +time took their place. The hatred of "wanton Bacchanallian Christmasses" +spent throughout England, as Cotton said, in "revelling, dicing, +carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in +excess of wine, in mad mirth," was the natural reaction of intelligent +and thoughtful minds against the excesses of a festival which had ceased +to be a Christian holiday, but was dominated by a lord of misrule who +did not hesitate to invade the churches in time of service, in his noisy +revels and sports. English Churchmen long ago revolted also against such +Christmas observance. + +Of the first Pilgrim Christmas we know but little, save that it was +spent, as was many a later one, in work. Bradford said: "Ye 25 day +begane to erect y^e first house for comone use to receive them and +their goods." On the following Christmas the governor records with grim +humor a "passage rather of mirth than of waight." Some new company +excused themselves from work on that day, saying it went against their +consciences. The governor answered that he would spare them until they +were better informed. But returning at mid-day and finding them playing +pitch-the-bar and stool-ball in the streets, he told them that it was +against _his_ conscience that they should play and others work, and so +made them cease their games. + +By 1659 the Puritans had grown to hate Christmas more and more; it was, +to use Shakespeare's words, "the bug that feared them all." The very +name smacked to them of incense, stole, and monkish jargon; any person +who observed it as a holiday by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any +other way was to pay five shillings fine, so desirous were they to +"beate down every sprout of Episcopacie." Judge Sewall watched jealously +the feeling of the people with regard to Christmas, and noted with +pleasure on each succeeding year the continuance of common traffic +throughout the day. Such entries as this show his attitude: "Dec. 25, +1685. Carts come to town and shops open as usual. Some somehow observe +the day, but are vexed I believe that the Body of people profane it, and +blessed be God no authority yet to compel them to keep it." When the +Church of England established Christmas services in Boston a few years +later, we find the Judge waging hopeless war against Governor Belcher +over it, and hear him praising his son for not going with other boy +friends to hear the novel and attractive services. He says: "I dehort +mine from Christmas keeping and charge them to forbear." + +Christmas could not be regarded till this century as a New England +holiday, though in certain localities, such as old Narragansett--an +opulent community which was settled by Episcopalians--two weeks of +Christmas visiting and feasting were entered into with zest by both +planters and slaves for many years previous to the Revolution. + +Thanksgiving, commonly regarded as being from its earliest beginning a +distinctive New England festival, and an equally characteristic Puritan +holiday, was originally neither. + +The first New England Thanksgiving was not observed by either Plymouth +Pilgrim or Boston Puritan. "Gyving God thanks" for safe arrival and many +other liberal blessings was first heard on New England shores from the +lips of the Popham colonists at Monhegan, in the Thanksgiving service of +the Church of England. + +Days set apart for thanksgiving were known in Europe before the +Reformation, and were in frequent use by Protestants afterward, +especially in the Church of England, where they were a fixed custom long +before they were in New England. One wonders that the Puritans, hating +so fiercely the customs and set days and holy days of the Established +Church, should so quickly have appointed a Thanksgiving Day. But the +first New England Thanksgiving was not a day of religious observance, it +was a day of recreation. Those who fancy all Puritans, and especially +all Pilgrims, to have been sour, morose, and gloomy men should read this +account of the first Thanksgiving week (not day) in Plymouth. It was +written on December 11, 1621, by Edward Winslow to a friend in England: + + "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling + that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we + had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four killed as much + fowl as with a little help beside served the company about a week. + At which times among other recreations we exercised our arms, many + of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest + king Massasoyt with some ninety men, whom for three days we + entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer + which they brought and bestow'd on our governor, and upon the + captains and others." + +As Governor Bradford specified that during that autumn "beside +waterfoule ther was great store of wild turkies," we can have the +satisfaction of feeling sure that at that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving our +forefathers and foremothers had turkeys. + +Thus fared the Pilgrims better at their Thanksgiving than did their +English brothers, for turkeys were far from plentiful in England at that +date. + +Though there were but fifty-five English to eat the Pilgrim Thanksgiving +feast, there were "partakers in plenty," and the ninety sociable Indian +visitors did not come empty-handed, but joined fraternally in provision +for the feast, and probably also in the games. + +These recreations were, without doubt, competitions in running, leaping, +jumping, and perhaps stool-ball, a popular game played by both sexes, in +which a ball was driven from stool to stool or wicket to wicket. + +During that chilly November week in Plymouth, Priscilla Mullins and John +Alden may have "recreated" themselves with this ancient form of +croquet--if any recreation were possible for the four women of the +colony, who, with the help of one servant and a few young girls or +maidekins, had to prepare and cook food for three days for one hundred +and twenty hungry men, ninety-one of them being Indians, with an +unbounded capacity for gluttonous gorging unsurpassed by any other race. +Doubtless the deer, and possibly the great turkeys, were roasted in the +open air. The picture of that Thanksgiving Day, the block-house with its +few cannon, the Pilgrim men in buff breeches, red waistcoats, and green +or sad-colored mandillions; the great company of Indians, gay in holiday +paint and feathers and furs; the few sad, overworked, homesick women, in +worn and simple gowns, with plain coifs and kerchiefs, and the pathetic +handful of little children, forms a keen contrast to the prosperous, +cheerful Thanksgivings of a century later. + +There is no record of any special religious service during this week of +feasting. + +The Pilgrims had good courage, stanch faith, to thus celebrate and give +thanks, for they apparently had but little cause to rejoice. They had +been lost in the woods, where they had wandered surbated, and had been +terrified by the roar of "Lyons," and had met wolves that "sat on thier +tayles and grinned" at them; they had been half frozen in their poorly +built houses; had been famished, or sickened with unwonted and +unpalatable food; their common house had burned down, half their company +was dead--they had borne sore sorrows, and equal trials were to come. +They were in dire distress for the next two years. In the spring of 1623 +a drought scorched the corn and stunted the beans, and in July a fast +day of nine hours of prayer was followed by a rain that revived their +"withered corn and their drooping affections." In testimony of their +gratitude for the rain, which would not have been vouchsafed for private +prayer, and thinking they would "show great ingratitude if they +smothered up the same," the second Pilgrim Thanksgiving was ordered and +observed. + +In 1630, on February 22d, the first public thanksgiving was held in +Boston by the Bay Colony, in gratitude for the safe arrival of +food-bearing and friend-bringing ships. On November 4, 1631, Winthrop +wrote again: "We kept thanksgiving day in Boston." From that time till +1684 there were at least twenty-two public thanksgiving days appointed +in Massachusetts--about one in two years; but it was not a regular +biennial festival. In 1675, a time of deep gloom through the many and +widely separated attacks from the fierce savages, there was no public +thanksgiving celebrated in either Massachusetts or Connecticut. It is +difficult to state when the feast became a fixed annual observance in +New England. In the year 1742 were two Thanksgiving Days. + +Rhode Islanders paid little heed in early days to Thanksgiving--at any +rate, to days set by the Massachusetts authorities. Governor Andros +savagely prosecuted more than one Rhode Islander who calmly worked all +day long on the day appointed for giving thanks. In Boston, William +Veazie was set in the pillory in the market-place for ploughing on the +Thanksgiving Day of June 18, 1696. He said his king had granted liberty +of conscience, and that the reigning king, William, was not his ruler; +that King James was his royal prince, and since he did not believe in +setting apart days for thanksgiving he should not observe them. + +Connecticut people, though just as pious and as prosperous as the Bay +colonists, do not appear to have been as grateful, and had considerable +trouble at times to "pick vppon a day" for thanksgiving; and the +festival was not regularly observed there till 1716. + +Thanksgiving was not always appointed in early days for the same token +of God's beneficence. Days of thanks were set in gratitude for and +observance of great political and military events, for victories over +the Indians or in the Palatinate, for the accession of kings, for the +prospect of royal heirs to the throne, for the discovery of conspiracy +for the "healing of breaches," the "dissipation of the Pirates," the +abatement of diseases, for the safe arrival of "psons of spetiall use +and quality," as well as in gratitude for plentiful harvests--that "God +had not given them cleannes of teeth and wante of bread." + +The early Thanksgivings were not always set, upon Thursday. It is said +that that day was chosen on account of its reflected glory as lecture +day. Judge Sewall told the governor and his council, in 1697, that he +"desir'd the same day of the week might be for Thanksgiving and Fasts," +and that "Boston and Ipswitch Lectures led us to Thorsday." The feast of +thanks was for many years appointed with equal frequency upon "Tusday +com seuen-night," or "vppon Wensday com fort-nit." Nor was any special +season of the year chosen: in 1716 it was appointed in August; in 1713, +in January; in 1718, in December; in 1719, in October. The frequent +appointments in gratitude for bountiful harvests finally made the autumn +the customary time. + +The God of the Puritans was a jealous God, and many fasts were appointed +to avert his wrath, as shown in blasted wheat; moulded beans, wormy +pease, and mildewed corn; in drought and grasshoppers; in Indian +invasions; in caterpillars and other woes of New England; in children +dying by the chincough; in the "excessive raigns from the botles of +Heaven"--all these evils being sent for the crying sins of wig-wearing, +sheltering Quakers, not paying the ministers, etc. A fast and a feast +kept close company in Puritan calendars. A fast frequently preceded +Thanksgiving Day, and was sometimes appointed for the day succeeding +the feast--a clever plan which had its good hygienic points. Days of +private as well as of public fast and thanksgiving were also observed by +individuals. Judge Sewall took the greatest satisfaction in his +fastings, and carefully outlined his plan of prayer throughout the fast +day, which he spent in his chamber--a plan which included and specified +ministers, rulers and magistrates, his family, and every person whom he +said "had a smell of relation" to him; and also every nation and people +in the known world. He does not note Thanksgiving Day as a holiday of +any importance. + +Though in the mind of the Puritan, Christmas smelled to heaven of +idolatry, when his own festival, Thanksgiving, became annual, it assumed +many of the features of the old English Christmas; it was simply a day +of family reunion in November instead of December, on which Puritans ate +turkey and Indian pudding and pumpkin-pie, instead of "superstitious +meats" such as a baron of beef, boar's head, and plum-pudding. + +Many funny stories are told of the early Thanksgiving Days, such as the +town of Colchester calmly ignoring the governor's appointed day and +observing their own festival a week later in order to allow time for the +arrival, by sloop from New York, of a hogshead of molasses for pies. +Another is recounted of a farmer losing his cask of Thanksgiving +molasses out of his cart as he reached the top of a steep hill, and of +its rolling swiftly down till split in twain by its fall. His helpless +discomfiture and his wife's acidity of temper and diet are comically +told. + +There is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society a +broadside announcing a thanksgiving for victory in King Philip's War; +and during the following year, 1677, the first regular Thanksgiving +proclamation was printed. + +But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward, +writing in 1699, does not name it, saying of New Englanders: "Election, +Commencement and Training Days are their only Holy Days." + +It was natural in New England, a state planted by men of exceptional +intelligence, that all should think as one minister said, "If the +college die, the church cannot long live;" and in the Commencement Day +of their colleges they found matter of deep interest, of pride, of +recreation. Judge Sewall always notes the day at Harvard, its exercises, +its dinner, its plentiful wine, and the Commencement cake, which he +carried to his friends. The meagre entries in the diaries and almanacs +of many an old New England minister show that Commencement Day was one +of their proudest holidays. After 1730, Commencement Day was usually set +for Friday, in order that there might be, as President Wadsworth said in +his diary, "less remaining time in the week to be spent in frolicking." + +Training Day may be called the first New England holiday, though +Hawthorne thought the day of too serious importance in early warlike +times to be classed under the head of festivals. At the first Pilgrim +Thanksgiving they "exercised their arms," and for some years they had +six trainings a year; no wonder they were said to be "diligent in +traynings." The all-powerful Church Militant held sway even over these +gatherings of New England warriors. The military reviews and exercises +were made properly religious by an opening exercise of prayer and +psalm-singing, the latter sometimes at such inordinate length as to +provoke criticism and remarks from the rank and file, remonstrance which +was at once pleasantly rebuked by pious Judge Sewall. Religious notices +were also given before the company broke line. A noble dinner somewhat +redeemed the sobriety of the opening exercises, a dinner given in Boston +to gentlemen and gentlewomen in tents on the Common; and the frequent +firing of guns and cannon further enlivened the day. + +Boston mustered a very fair military force at trainings, even in early +days. Winthrop writes that at the May training in 1639 one thousand men +exercised, and in the autumn twelve hundred bore arms, and not an oath +or quarrel was heard and no drunkenness seen. The training field was +Boston Common. At these trainings prizes were frequently offered for the +best marksmanship; in Connecticut, a silk handkerchief or some such +trinket. Judge Sewall offered a silver cup, and again a silver-headed +pike; since he was an uncommonly poor shot himself, his generosity shows +out all the more plainly. With barbaric openness of cruel intent, a +figure stuffed to represent a human form was often the target, and it +was a matter of grave decision whether a shot in the head or bowels were +the fatal one. Sometimes the day was enlivened by a form of amusement +ever beloved of the colonists--by public punishments. For instance, at +the training day at Kittery, Me., in 1690, two men "road the woodin +Horse for dangerous and churtonous carig and mallplying of oaths." + +The training days of colony times developed into Muster Days, the +crowning pinnacle of gayety, dissipation, and noise in a country boy's +life in New England for over a century. + +We owe much to these trainings and these trials of marksmanship. In +conjunction with the universal skill in woodcraft and in hunting, they +made our ancestors more than a match for the Indian and the Frenchman, +and in Revolutionary times gave them their ascendency over the English. + +Election Day was naturally a time of much excitement to New Englanders +in olden times, as nowadays. In fact, the entire week partook of the +flavor of a holiday. This did not please the ministers. Urian Oakes +wrote sadly that Election Day had become a time "to meet, to smoke, +carouse and swagger and dishonor God with the greater bravery." Various +local customs obtained. "'Lection cake," a sort of rusk rich with fruit +and wine, was made in many localities; indeed, is still made in some +families that I know; and sometimes "'lection beer" was brewed. In early +May the herb gatherers (many of them old squaws) brought to town various +barks and roots for this beer, and they also vended it on the streets +during Election week. An Election sermon was also preached. + +Boston had two Election Days. "Nigger 'Lection" was so called in +distinction from Artillery Election. On the former anniversary day the +election of the governor was formally announced, and the black +population was allowed to throng the Common, to buy gingerbread and +drink beer like their white betters. On the second holiday the Ancient +and Honorable Artillery had a formal parade, and chose its new officers, +who received with much ceremony, out-of-doors, their new commissions +from the new governor. Woe, then, to the black face that dared be seen +on that grave and martial occasion! In 1817 a negro boy named William +Read, enraged at being refused the high privileges and pleasures of +Artillery Day, blew up in Boston Harbor a ship called the Canton Packet. +For years it was a standing taunt of white boys in Boston to negroes: + + "Who blew up the ship? + Nigger, why for? + 'Cause he couldn't go to 'lection + An' shake paw-paw." + +Paw-paw was a gambling game which was played on the Common with four +sea-shells of the _Cypr[oe]a Moneta_. + +The 14th of July was observed by Boston negroes for many years to +commemorate the introduction of measures to abolish the slave trade. It +was derisively called Bobalition Day, and the orderly convention of +black men was greeted with a fusillade of rotten fruit and eggs and much +jesting abuse. It was at one of these Bobalition-Day celebrations that +this complimentary toast was seriously given and recorded in honor of +the newly elected governor: "Governor Brooks--May the mantelpiece of +Caleb Strong fall on the hed of his distinguished Predecessor." + +In other localities, notably on the Massachusetts coast, in Connecticut, +and in Narragansett, the term "Nigger 'Lection" was applied to the +election of a black governor, who held his sway over the black +population. Wherever there was a large number of negroes the black +governor was a man of much dignity and importance, and his election was +a scene of much gayety and considerable feasting, which the governor's +master had to pay for. As he had much control over his black +constituents, it is plain that the black governor might be made useful +in many petty ways to his white neighbors. Occasionally the "Nigger +'Lection" had a deep political signification and influence. "Scaeva," in +his "Hartford in the Olden Times," and Hinman, in the "American +Revolution," give detailed and interesting accounts of "Nigger +'Lection." + +A few rather sickly and benumbed attempts were made in bleak New England +to celebrate in old English fashion the first of May. A May-pole was +erected in Charlestown in 1687, and was promptly cut down. The most +unbounded observance of the day was held at Merry Mount (now the town of +Quincy) in 1628 by roystering Morton and his gay crew. Bradford says: +"They set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days +togeather, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and +frisking togeather like so many fairies or furies rather." This May-pole +was a stately pine-tree eighty feet high, with a pair of buck's horns +nailed at the top, and with "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern +Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, and at once cut the +"idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of +their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a +woful mount." + +To eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was held by the Puritans to be a +heathenish vanity; and yet, apparently with the purpose of annoying good +Boston folk, some attempts were made to observe the day. One year a +young man went through the town "carrying a cock on his back with a bell +in 's hand." Several of his fellows followed him blindfolded, and, under +pretence of striking him with heavy cart-whips, managed to do +considerable havoc in the surrounding crowd. We can well imagine how +odious this horse-play was to the Puritans, aggravated by the fact that +it was done to note a holy day. On Shrove Tuesday, in 1685, there was +"great disorder in town by reason of Cock-skailing." This was the +barbarous game of cock-steling, or cock-throwing, or cock-squoiling--a +game as old as Chaucer's time, a universal pastime on Shrove Tuesday in +England, where scholars also had cock-fights in the school-rooms. + +The observance, or even notice, of the first day of the year as a +"gaudy-day"--of New-Year's tides in any way--was thought by Urian Oakes +to savor strongly of superstitious reverence for the heathen god Janus; +the Pilgrims made no note of their first New-Year's Day in the New +World, save by this very prosaic record, "We went to work betimes." Yet +Judge Sewall, as rigid and stern a Puritan as any of the earliest days, +records with some pride his being greeted with a levet, or blast of +trumpets, under his window, early on the morning of January 1, 1697; +while he himself celebrated the opening of the new century with a very +poor poem of his own making, which he caused to be cried or recited +throughout the town of Boston by the town bellman. + +Guy Fawkes' Day, or "Pope's Day," was observed with much noise +throughout New England for many years by burning of bonfires, preceded +by parades of young men and boys dressed in fantastic costumes and +carrying "guys" or "popes" of straw. Fires are still lighted on the 5th +of November in New England towns by boys, who know not what they +commemorate. In Newburyport, Mass., and Portsmouth, N. H., Guy Fawkes' +Day is still celebrated. In Newcastle, N. H., it is called "Pork Night." +In New York and Brooklyn, the bonfires on the night of election, and the +importunate begging on Thanksgiving Day of ragged fantastics, usually +children of Roman Catholic parents, are both direct survivals of the +ancient celebration of "Pope's Day." + +In Governor Belcher's time, in Massachusetts, the stopping of +pedestrians on the street, by "loose and dissolute people," who were +wont to levy contributions for paying for their bonfires, became so +universally annoying that the governor made proclamation against them in +the newspapers. Tudor, in his "Life of Otis," gives an account of the +observance of the day and its disagreeable features. He says the +intruders paraded the streets with grotesque images, forcibly entered +houses, ringing bells, demanding money, and singing rhymes similar to +those sung all over England: + + "Don't you remember + The Fifth of November, + The Gunpowder Treason and plot, + I see no reason + Why Gunpowder Treason + Should ever be forgot. + + From Rome to Rome + The Pope is come, + Amid ten thousand fears, + With fiery serpents to be seen + At eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. + Don't you hear my little bell + Go chink, chink, chink, + Please give me a little money + To buy my Pope some drink." + +The figure of the Pretender was added to that of the pope and devil in +1702; and on Pope's Day, in 1763, American politics took a share. I read +in a diary of that date, "Pope, Devil, and Stampman were hung together." +After the Revolution the effigy of Benedict Arnold was burnt alongside +that of Guy Fawkes. + +Though we retained Pope's Day until Federal times, the Declaration of +Independence struck one holiday off our calendar. The king's birthday +was, until then, celebrated with a training, a salute of cannon, a +dinner, and an illumination. + +Other holidays were evolved by circumstances. Anniversary Day was a +special festival for the ministers, who gathered together in the larger +towns for spiritual intercourse and the material refreshment of a good +dinner. It was originally held in Massachusetts at the May meeting of +the General Court. Forefathers' Day, the anniversary of the landing at +Plymouth, was celebrated by dinners, prayer, and praise. + +Many other annual scenes of gayety were developed by the various food +harvests. Thus the time when the salmon and shad came up the rivers had +been a great merry-making and season of feasting for the Indian, and +became equally so for the white man. As years passed on it became also a +time of much drunkenness and revelry. Men rode a hundred miles for these +gay holidays, and went home with horses laden down with fish. Shad were +so plentiful that they were thrown away, would sell for but a penny +apiece, and no persons of social importance or of good taste would eat +them except in secret. Salmon, too, were so plentiful and so cheap that +farm-servants on the banks of the Connecticut stipulated that they +should have salmon for dinner but thrice a week, as the rich fish soon +proved cloying. + +In many localities, in Narragansett in particular, the autumnal +corn-huskings almost reached the dignity of holidays, being conducted in +a liberal fashion and with unbounded hospitality, which included and +entertained whole retinues of black servants from neighboring farms, as +well as the planters and their families. Apple-parings, maple-sugar +makings, and timber-rollings were merry gatherings. + +In Vermont and down the Connecticut valley the annual sheep-shearing was +a lively scene. On Nantucket there took place annually a like +sheep-shearing, which, though a characteristic New England festival, was +like the scene in the "Winter's Tale." The broad plains outside the town +were used as a common sheep-pasture throughout the year; sometimes +fifteen or sixteen thousand sheep were kept thereon. About two miles +from the town was a sheep-fold, near the margin of a pond, where the +sheep could be washed. It was built of four or five concentric fences, +which thus formed a sort of labyrinth, into which and through which the +sheep and lambs were driven at shearing-time, and in it they were sorted +out and placed in cotes or pens erected for each sheep-owner. The +existence of carefully registered ear-marks, with which each lamb was +branded, formed a means of identifying each owner's sheep and lambs. Of +course, this gathering brought together all the sheep drivers and +herders, the sheep washers and shearers. Vast preparations of food and +drink were made for their entertainment, and tents were reared for their +occupancy, and, of course, fiddlers and peddlers, like Autolycus, +flocked there also, and much amusement and frolicking accompanied the +shearing. Even the sheep, panting with their heavy wool when within the +folds, and the shorn and shivering creatures running around outside and +bleating for their old long-wooled companions, added to the excitement +of the scene. Perhaps the maritime occupation of the Islanders made them +enjoy with the zest of unwontedness this rural "shore-holiday." But it +exists no longer; the island is not now one vast sheep-pasture, and +there are no longer any sheep-shearings. + + + + +X + +SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS + + +The Puritans of the first century of colonial life--the "true New +England men," not only of Winthrop and Bradford's time, but of the +slowly degenerating days of Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall--thought +little and cared little for any form of amusement; + + "Not knowing this, that Heaven decrees + Some mirth t'adulce man's miseries." + +Of them it may be said, as Froissart said of their ancestors, "They took +their pleasures sadly--after their fashion." "'Twas no time for New +England to dance," said Judge Sewall, sternly; and indeed it was not. +The struggle of planting colonies in the new, bleak land left little +time for dancing. + +The sole mid-week gathering, the only regular diversion of early +colonial life, took naturally a religious and sombre cast, and was found +in the "great and Thursday lecture." "Truly the times were dull when +these things happened," for so eager were the colonists for this sober +diversion that it soon became a pious dissipation. Cotton said, in his +"Way of the Churches," in 1639, that so many lectures did damage to the +people; and the largeness of the assemblies alarmed the magistrates, who +saw persons who could ill afford the time from their work, gadding to +mid-day lectures in three or four different towns the same week. Young +people, not having acquired that safety-valve, the New England +singing-school, gladly seized these religious meetings as a pretext and +a means for enjoyable communion, and attended in such numbers that the +hospitality shown in providing food for the visiting lecture-lovers +seemed to be in danger of becoming a burdensome expense. In 1633 the +magistrates set the lecture hour at one o'clock, that lecture-goers +might eat their dinner at noon at home; and they attempted to have each +minister give but one lecture in two weeks, and planned that contiguous +towns should offer but two temptations a week. But the law-makers +overstepped the mark, and the lecture and the ministers resumed weekly +sway, which they held for a century. + +Hawthorne thus described the opening hours of the colonial Lecture-day: + + "The breakfast hour being passed, the inhabitants do not as usual + go to their fields or work-shops, but remain within doors or + perhaps walk the street with a grave sobriety yet a disengaged and + unburdened aspect that belongs neither to a holiday nor the + Sabbath. And indeed the passing day is neither, nor is it a common + week day, although partaking of all three. It is the Thursday + Lecture; an institution which New England has long ago + relinquished, and almost forgotten, yet which it would have been + better to retain, as bearing relations both to the spiritual and + ordinary life. The tokens of its observance, however, which here + meet our eyes are of a rather questionable cast. It is in one sense + a day of public shame; the day on which transgressors who have made + themselves liable to the minor severities of the Puritan law + receive their reward of ignominy. At this very moment the constable + has bound an idle fellow to the whipping-post and is giving him his + deserts with a cat-o-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise Daniel + Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the meeting-house, with + a halter about his neck, which he is condemned to wear visibly + throughout his lifetime; Dorothy Talby is chained to a post at the + corner of Prison Lane with the hot sun blazing on her matronly + face, and all for no other offence than lifting her hand against + her husband; while through the bars of that great wooden cage, in + the centre of the scene, we discern either a human being or a wild + beast, or both in one. Such are the profitable sights that serve + the good people to while away the earlier part of the day." + +Not only were criminals punished at this weekly gathering, but seditious +books were burned just after the lecture, intentions of marriage were +published, notices were posted, and at one time elections were held, on +Lecture-day. The religious exercises of the day resembled those of the +Sabbath and were sometimes five hours in length. + +In primitive amusements, the sports of the woods and waters, even a +Puritan could find occasional and proper diversion without entering into +frivolous and sinful amusement. The wolf, most hated and most +destructive of all the beasts of the woods, a "ravening runnagadore," +was a proper prey. Wolves were caught in pits, in log pens, in traps; +they were also hooked on mackerel hooks bound in an ugly bunch and +dipped in tallow, to which they were toled by dead carcasses. The swamps +were "beat up" in a wolf-drive or wolf-rout, similar to the English +"drift of the forest." A ring of men surrounded a wooded tract and drew +inward toward the centre, driving the wolves before them. The excitement +of such a wolf-rout, constantly increasing to the end, can well be +imagined. The wolves were not always killed outright. Josselyn tells +that the inhuman sport of wolf-baiting was popular in New England, and +he describes it thus: "A great mastiff held the Wolf.... Tying him to a +stake we bated him with smaller doggs and had excellent sport, but his +hinder legg being broken we soon knocked his brains out." Wolves also +were dragged alive at a horse's tail, a sport equally cruel to both +animals. These fierce and barbarous traits had been nourished in England +by the many bear and bull baitings, and even horse-baitings, and the +colonists but carried out here their English training. Wood wrote in his +"New England's Prospects:" "No ducking ponds can afford more sport than +a lame cormorant and two or three lusty doggs." Though we do not hear of +cock-fights, I doubt not the wealthy and sportsmanlike Narragansett +planters, who resembled in habits and occupations the Virginian +planters, had many a cock-fight, as they had horse-races. + +Bears were "hunted with doggs; they take to a tree where they shoot +them." Nothing was "more sportfull than bearbayting." Killing foxes was +also the "best sport in depth of winter." On a moonlight night the +hunters placed a sledge-load of codfish heads on the bright side of a +fence or wall, and hiding in the shadow "as long as the moon shineth" +could sometimes kill ten of the wary creatures in a night. Squirrel +hunts were also prime sport. + +Shooting at a mark or at prizes became a popular form of amusement. We +read in the _Boston Evening Post_ of January 11, 1773: "This is to give +Notice That there will be a Bear and a Number of Turkeys set up as a +Mark next Thursday Beforenoon at the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline." + +The "Sports of the Inn yards" found few participants in New England. In +1692 the Andover innkeeper was ordered not to allow the playing of +"Dice, Cards, Tables, Quoits, Loggits, Bowles, Ninepins or any other +Unlawful Game in his house yard Garden or Backside after Saturday P.M." +Henry Cabot Lodge says the shovelboard of Shakespeare's time was almost +the only game not expressly prohibited. A Puritan minister, Rev. Peter +Thatcher, of Milton, bought in 1679 a "pack of ninepins and bowle," for +which he paid five shillings and sixpence, and enjoyed playing with them +too; but I fancy few ministers played either that or like games. On the +second Christmas, at Plymouth, we find some of the Pilgrims playing +pitch-the-bar and stool-ball. Pitch-the-bar was a trial of strength +rather than of skill, and was popular with sturdy Nantucket whalers +till into this century, though deemed hopelessly plebeian in old +England. + +We hear of foot-ball being played by Boston boys in Boston streets and +lanes; of the Rowley Indians playing it in 1686 on the broad sandy +shore, where it was "more easie," since they played barefooted. Dunton +adds of their sport: "Neither were they so apt to trip up one anothers +feet and quarrel as I have often seen 'em in England"--and I may add, as +I have often seen 'em in New England. + +Playing-cards--the devil's picture-books--were hated by the Puritans +like the very devil; and, as ever with forbidden pleasures, were a +constant temptation to Puritan youth. Their importation, use, and sale +were forbidden. As late as 1784 a fine of $7 was ordered to be paid for +every pack of cards sold; and yet in 1740 we find Peter Fanueil ordering +six gross of best King Henry's cards from England. Jolley Allen had +cards constantly for sale--"Best Merry Andrew, King Harry and Highland +Cards a Dollar per Doz." and also "Blanchards Great Mogul Playing +Cards." The fine for selling these cards must have been a dead letter, +for we find in the newspapers proof of the prevalence of card-playing. + +One use for playing-cards other than their intended one was found in +their employment to inscribe invitations upon. Ball invitations were +frequently written upon the backs of playing-cards, and dinner +invitations also. + +In the _Salem Gazette_, in 1784, appeared "New In Laid Cribbage Boxes, +Leather Gammon Tables, and Quadrille Pools." In the _Evening Post_, in +1772, may be seen "Quadrille Boxes and Pearl Fishes;" and I do not doubt +that many a gay Boston belle or beau (as well as Mrs. Knox) gambled all +night at quadrille and ombre, as did their cousins in London. Captain +Goelet had many a game of cards in his travels through New England, in +1750. + +On April 30, 1722, the _New England Courant_ advertised that any +gentleman that "had a Mind to Recreate themselves with a Game of +Billiards" could do so at a public house in Charlestown. + +It is curious to find how eagerly the staid colonists turned to dancing. +Mr. Eggleston says: + + "The savages themselves were not more fond of dancing than were the + colonists who came after them. Dancing schools were forbidden in + New England by the authorities but dancing could not be repressed + in an age in which the range of conversation was necessarily narrow + and the appetite for physical activity and excitement almost + insatiable." + +Dancing was forbidden in Massachusetts taverns and at weddings, but it +was encouraged at Connecticut ordinations. In a letter written by John +Cotton, that good man specifies that his condemnation is not of dancing +"even mixt" as a whole, but of "lascivious dancing to wanton ditties +with amorous gestures and wanton dalliances;" an objection in which I +hope he is not singular, an we be not Puritan ministers; and an +objection which makes us suspect, an he were a Puritan minister, that he +had been in some very singular company. + +In 1713 a ball was given by the governor in Boston, at which +light-heeled and light-minded Bostonians of the governor's set danced +till three in the morning. As balls and routs began at six in the +afternoon, this gave long dancing-hours. On the other hand, we find +sober folk reading "An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing +Drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures By the Ministers of Christ at +Boston." And though one dancing-master was forbidden room to set up his +school, we find that "Abigaill Hutchinson was entered to lern to dance" +somewhere in Boston in 1717, probably at the school of Mr. George +Brownell. By Revolutionary times old and young danced with zest at +balls, at "turtle-frolicks," at weddings. President Washington and Mrs. +General Greene "danced upwards of three hours without once sitting +down," and General Greene called this diversion of the august Father of +his Country "a pretty little frisk." By 1791 we find Rev. John Bennett, +in his "Letters to a Young Lady," recommending dancing as a proper and +healthful exercise. Queer names did early contra-dances bear: Old Father +George, Cape Breton, High Betty Martin, Rolling Hornpipe, Constancy, +Orange Tree, Springfield, Assembly, The President, Miss Foster's +Delight, Pettycoatee, Priest's House, The Lady's Choice, and Leather the +Strap. By Federal times came Federal dances. + +Such care was paid by New Englanders to the raising and improving of +horses that I presume horse-races did not seem so wicked as card-playing +or dancing, for I find hint of a horse-race in the _Boston News Letter_ +of August 29, 1715, for Jonathan Turner therein challenged the whole +country to match his black gelding in a race for a hundred pounds, to +take place on Metonomy Common or Chelsea Beach. Many pace-races took +place in Narragansett on Little Neck Beach, at which the prizes were +silver tankards. And if we can believe Dr. MacSparran, or, rather, since +we would not appear to doubt the word of a clergyman, especially upon +the speed of a horse, if he took the time of "a little over two minutes" +with any care and had a good watch, there must have been some very good +sport on Little Neck Beach. + +Though the Puritan magistrates denounced shows as a great "mispense of +time," yet after a century's existence in the New World, the people was +so amusement hungry that all turned avidly to any kind of exhibition, +and but little was necessary to make an exhibition. A "Lyon of Barbary" +was in Boston in 1716; and I believe the "lyons hair," which was "cut by +the keeper" and sent by Wait Winthrop to be placed as a strengthening +tonic under the armpits of his sickly little grandchild, was abstracted +from this very lion. In 1728 another lonely king of the beasts made the +round of all the provinces on a cart drawn by four oxen, with as much +eclat as if he had been a whole menagerie. He lodged in New London in +Madam Winthrop's barn, and "put up" elsewhere at the very best taverns, +as became a royal visitor, yet seems a semi-pathetic figure--a tropical +king in slavery and alone in a strange, cold land. + +In December, 1733, and in 1734, rivals appeared at a Boston tavern, and +were advertised in the _Weekly Rehearsal_. + + "A Fine Large White Bear brought from Greenland, the like never + been seen before in these Paris of the World. A Sight far + preferable to the Lion in the Judgment of all Persons who have seen + them both. N.B. He is certainly going to London in about 3 Weeks & + his Farewel Speech will be publish'd in a day or two." + + * * * * * + + "To be seen at the Shop of Mr. Benjamin Runker Tinman near the + Market House on Dock Square a very Strange & Wonderful Creature + called a Sea Lion lately taken at Monument Pond near Plimouth The + like of which never seen in these Paris before. He is Nine Feet + long from His Rump to his Head & near 4 feet wide over his back + with Four Large Feet & Five Strong Claws on Each. Also Two Large + Strong Teeth as white as Ivory sticking out of his mouth five or + six Inches long with many other Curiosities too Tedious to mention + here. Price Sixpence for a Man or Woman & 2 Pence for a child." + +The _Boston Gazette_ of April 20, 1741, thus advertised: + + "To be seen at the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury a wild creature + which was caught in the woods about 80 miles to the Westward of + this place called a Cattamount. It has a tail like a Lyon, its legs + are like Bears, its Claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a Tyger. He + is exceedingly ravenous and devours all sorts of Creatures that he + can come near. Its agility is surprising. It will leap 30 feet at + one jump notwithstanding it is but 3 months old. Whoever wishes to + see this creature may come to the place aforesaid paying one + shilling each shall be welcome for their money." + +Salem had the pleasure of viewing a "Sapient Dog" who could light lamps, +spell, read print or writing, tell the time of day, or day of the month. +He could distinguish colors, was a good arithmetician, could discharge a +loaded cannon, tell a hidden card in a pack, and jump through a hoop, +all for twenty-five cents. About the same time Mr. Pinchbeck exhibited +in the same town a "Pig of Knowledge" who had precisely the same +accomplishments. + +In 1789 a pair of camels went the rounds--"19 hands high, with 4 joints +in their hind legs." A mermaid also was exhibited--defunct, I +presume--and a living cassowary five feet high, that swallowed stones as +large as an egg. A white sea bear appeared in the port of Pollard's +Tavern and could be seen for half a pistareen. A forlorn moose was held +in bondage at Major King's tavern and shown for nine pence, while to +view the "leapord strongly chayned" cost a quarter. The big hog, being a +home production, could be seen cheaply--for four pence. It is indeed +curious to find a rabbit among "curious wild beasts." The Winthrops had +tried to breed rabbits in 1633 and again in 1683, and if they had not +succeeded were the only souls known to fail in that facile endeavor. To +their shame be it told, Salem folk announced in 1809 a bull-fight at the +Half-Way House on the new turnpike, and after the bull-fight a +fox-chase. In 1735 John Burlesson had some strange animals to show, and +was not always allowed to exhibit them either: "the Lyon, the Black and +Whight bare and the Lanechtskipt were shown by me that had their limbs +as long as they pleased." + +There were also exhibitions of legerdemain--a "Posture Master Boy who +performed most surprizing Postures, Transforming Himself into Various +Shapes;" performers on the "tort rope;" solar microscopes; "Italian +Matcheans or Moving Pictures wherein are to be seen Windmills and +Watermills moving around Ships sayling in the Seas, and various curious +figures;" electrical machines; "prospects of London" or of "Royall +Pallaces;" but, to their credit and good taste be it recorded, I find no +notices of monstrosities either in shape of man or beast. Exhibitions of +wax figures were given and museums were formed. Gentlemen sailing for +foreign ports were begged to collect for museums and collections of +curiosities, and did so in a thoroughly public-spirited manner. + +Shortly after the invention of balloons came their advent as popular +shows into New England towns. In Hartford they appeared under the +pompous title of "Archimedial Phaetons, Vertical Aerial Coaches, or +Patent F[oe]deral Balloons," and the public was notified that "persons +of timid nature might enter with full assurance of safety." These +f[oe]deral balloons not only served to amuse New Englanders, but were +strongly recommended to "Invaletudinarians" as hygienic and medicinal +factors, in that through their employment as carriers they caused +"sudden revulsion of the blood and humours" to the benefit of the +aeronautic travellers. + +The first stepping-in of theatrical performances was to the lively-tunes +of jigs and corams on a stage. In 1713 permission was asked to act a +play in the Council House in Boston. Judge Sewall's grief and amazement +at this suggestion of "Dances and Scenical Divertessiments" within those +solemn walls can well be imagined. Ere long little plays called drolls +were exhibited; puppet shows such as "Pickle Herring," or the "Taylor +ryding to Brentford," or "Harlequinn and Scaramouch." About 1750 two +young English strollers produced Otway's "Orphans" in a Boston +coffee-house. Prompt and strict measures by Boston magistrates nipped in +the bud this feeble dramatic plant, and Boston had no more plays for +many years. + +Many ingenious ruses were invented to avoid the legal obstructions +placed in the way of play-acting. "Histrionic academies" tried to sneak +in on the stage; and in 1762 a clever manager gave an entertainment +whose playbill I present as the most amusing example of specious and +sanctimonious truckling extant. + + KINGS ARMS TAVERN--NEWPORT RHODE ISLAND. + + On Monday, June 10th, at the Public Room of the above Inn will be + delivered a series of + + MORAL DIALOGUES + _in Five Parts_ + + Depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions and + Proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of Virtue. + + _Mr Douglass_--Will represent a noble and magnanimous Moor called + Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he + marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion + of jealousy. + + _Of jealousy, our beings bane, + Mark the small cause, and the most dreadful pain._ + + _Mr Allyn_--Will depict the character of a specious villain, in the + regiment of Othello, who is so base as to hate his commander on + mere suspicion, and to impose on his best friend. Of such + characters, it is to be feared, there are thousands in the world, + and the one in question may present to us a salutary warning. + + _The man that wrongs his master and his friend, + What can he come to but a shameful end?_ + + _Mr Hallam_--Will delineate a young and thoughtless officer who is + traduced by Mr. Allyn, and, getting drunk, loses his situation and + his generals esteem. All young men whatsoever, take example from + Cassio. + + _The ill effects of drinking would you see + Be warned and fly from evil company._ + + _Mr Morris_--Will represent an old gentleman, the father of + Desdemona, who is not cruel or covetous, but is foolish enough to + dislike the noble Moor, his son-in-law, because his face is not + white, forgetting that we all spring from one root. Such prejudices + are very numerous and very wrong. + + _Fathers, beware what sense and love ye lack, + 'Tis crime, not colour, makes the being black._ + + _Mr Quelch_--Will depict a fool who wishes to become a knave, and + trusting to one, gets killed by one. Such is the friendship of + rogues. Take heed! + + _Where fools would knaves become, how often you'll + Perceive the knave not wiser than the fool._ + + _Mrs Morris_--Will represent a young and virtuous wife, who, being + wrongfully suspected, gets smothered (in an Adjoining room) by her + husband. + + _Reader, attend, and ere thou goest hence, + Let fall a tear to hapless innocence._ + + _Mrs Douglass_--Will be her faithful attendant, who will hold out a + good example to all servants, male and female, and to all people in + subjection. + + _Obedience and gratitude, + Are things as rare as they are good._ + + Various other Dialogues, too numerous to mention here, will be + delivered at night, all adapted to the improvement of the mind and + manners. The whole will be repeated on Wednesday and on Saturday. + Tickets, six shillings each; to be had within. Commencement at 7. + Conclusion at half past 10; in order that every spectator may go + home at a sober hour, and reflect upon what he has seen, before he + retires to rest. + + God save the King, + And long may he sway, + East, north and south + And fair America. + +The Continental Congress of 1774 sought to pledge the colonists to +discountenance "all exhibitions of shews, plays, and other expensive +diversions and entertainments," and such exhibitions languished +naturally in war times; but with peace came new life to shows and +theatres. + +We catch a glimpse at Hartford of the "New Theatre" in 1795. The play +began at half after six. Following the English fashion, servants were +sent in advance to keep seats for their masters and mistresses. They +were instructed to be there "by Five at the Farthest." If ladies "chused +to sit in the Pit" a place was partitioned off for them. The admission +price was a dollar. There was variety in the entertainment furnished. +One actor gave a character recitation entitled "The New Bow Wow." In +this he played the "Sly Dog, the Sulky Dog, the Hearty Dog, and many +other dogs in his character of Odd Dog." + +In 1788 the "Junior Sophister Class" of Yale College gave a theatrical +performance, during Election week, of "Tancred and Sigismunda," and +followed it with a farce of the students' own composing, relating to +events in the Revolutionary War. A letter of Rev. Andrew Eliot is still +in existence referring to this presentation, and severely did he +reprehend it. Of the farce he wrote, "To keep up the character of these +Generals, especially Prescot, they were obliged (I believe not to their +sorrow) to indulge in very indecent and profane language." He states +that many in the audience were much offended thereat, and says: "What +adds to the illegality is that the actors not only were dressed +agreeable to the characters they assumed as Men, but female apparell and +ornaments were put on some contrary to an express statute. Besides it +cost the lads £60." What this reverend complainer would have thought of +the multitudinous exhibitions of masculine collegiate skirt-dancing of +the present day is impossible to fathom. + +There were circuses also in Connecticut. "Mr. Pool The first American +Equestrian has erected a Menage at considerable Expence with seats +Convenient. Mr. Pool beseeches the Ladies and Gentlemen who honour him +with their Presence to bring no Dogs with them." As late as 1828 a bill +prohibiting circus exhibitions passed both houses of the Connecticut +Legislature, but was all in vain, for that State became the home of +circuses and circus-makers. + +During the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth +century there was little in New England that could properly receive the +name of music. Musical instruments and books of musical instruction were +rare. I have told the deplorable condition of church music in "The +Sabbath in Puritan New England." A feeling of revolt rose in ministers +and congregation. In 1712 Rev. Mr. Tuft's music-book appeared. The first +organ came to Boston about 1711. The first concert of which I have read +was advertised thus in the _New England Weekly Journal_ of December 15, +1732: + + "This is to inform the Publick That there will be a Consort of + Music Perform'd by Sundry Instruments at the Court Room in Wings + Lane near the Town Dock on the 28th of this Instant December; + Tickets will be deliver'd at the Place of Performance at Five + Shillings each Ticket. N.B. No Person will be admitted after Six." + +In 1744 a concert was given in Faneuil Hall fol the benefit of the poor, +and after 1760 concerts were frequent. The universal time for beginning +was six o'clock, and the highest price of admission half a dollar, +until after 1790. + +Singing-schools, too, were formed, and the bands of trained singers gave +concerts. The story of the progress of New England concert-giving has +been most fully given by Henry M. Brooks, esq., in his delightful book, +"Olden Time Music." + +Lectures on pneumatics, electricity, and philosophy were given in Boston +as early as 1740, and soon acquired a popularity which they have +retained to the present day. + +A very doubtful form of diversion was furnished to New Englanders at the +public expense and in the performance of public duties. Not only were +offenders whipped, set in the stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory on +Lecture-day, but criminals were hung with much parade before the eyes of +the people, as a visible token of the punishment of evil living. In all +the civil and religious exercises previous to the execution of the +sentence, publicity was given to the offender; petty and great +malefactors were preached at when sentenced, and after condemnation were +made public examples--were brought into church and made the subject of +discourse and even of objurgation from the pulpit. Judge Sewall +frequently refers to this meretricious custom. Under date March 11, +1685, he says: "Persons crowd much into the old Meeting House by reason +of James Morgan (who was a condemned murderer) and a very exciting and +riotous scene took place." This was at a Thursday lecture, and in the +gloomy winter twilight of the same day the murderer was +executed--"turn'd off" as Sewall said--after a parting prayer by Cotton +Mather, who had preached over him in the morning. Cotton Mather's sermon +and others on Morgan and his crimes, which were preached by Increase +Mather and Joshua Moodey, were printed and sold in vast numbers, passing +through several editions. Morgan's dying words and confessions were also +printed and sold throughout New England by chapmen. + +Captain Quelch and six other pirates were captured on June 11, 1704; +were brought to Boston on the 17th, sentenced on the 19th, and, "the +silver oar being carried before them to the place of execution," were +hung on the 30th. An "extra" of the _News Letter_ says that "Sermons +were preached in their Hearing Every Day, And Prayers made daily with +them. And they were Catechized and they had many Occasional +exhortations;" but the paper also states, "yet as they led a wicked and +vitious life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently +hardened in their sin." Sewall gives this painfully particular account +of the execution: + + "After Dinner about 3 P.M. I went to see the Execution. Many were + the people that saw upon Broughtons Hill But when I came to see + how the River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there + were 100 boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He + Told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others + for Execution from the Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in + Boat to the place of Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a + due height the seven Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for + them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows + save King who was Reprieved. When the Scaffold was let to sink + there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting + in our Entry next the Orchard and was much surprised at it, yet the + wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place." + +In another entry Sewall tells of brazen women jumping up on the cart +with a condemned man. + +A note was appended by Dr. Ephraim Eliot to the last page of a sermon +delivered by his father, Dr. Andrew Eliot, on the Sunday before the +execution of Levi Ames, who was hung for burglary October 21, 1773. Ames +was present in church, and the sermon was preached at his request. The +note runs thus: + + "Levi Ames was a noted offender--though a young man, he had gone + through all the routine of punishment, and there was now another + indictment against him where there was positive proof, in addition + to his own confession. He was tried and condemned. His condemnation + excited extraordinary sympathy. He was every Sabbath carried + through the streets with chains about his ankles, and handcuffed, + in custody of the Sheriff officers and constables, to some public + meeting, attended by an innumerable number of boys, women and men. + Nothing was talked of but Levi Ames. The ministers were + successively employed in delivering occasional discourses. Stillman + improved the opportunity several times and absolutely persuaded the + fellow that he was to step from the cart into Heaven." + +One Worcester County murderess was hanged on Boston Common, and to the +delight of beholders appeared in a beautiful white satin gown to be +"turn'd off." + +I think, in reading of the past, that next to executions the most vivid +excitement, the most absorbing interest--indeed, the greatest amusement +of New Englanders of the half century preceding and that succeeding the +Revolutionary War--was found in the lottery. An act of Legislature in +1719 speaks of them as just introduced; but this licensed and highly +approved form of gambling quickly had the sanction and participation of +the entire community. The most esteemed citizens not only bought +tickets, but sold them. Every scheme of public benefit, the raising of +every fund for every purpose, was conducted and assisted through a +lottery. Harvard, Rhode Island (now Brown University), and Dartmouth +College thus increased their endowments. Towns and States thus raised +money to pay the public debt. Congregational, Baptist, and Episcopal +churches had lotteries "for promoting public worship and the advancement +of religion." Canals, turnpikes, bridges, excavations, public buildings +were brought to perfection by lotteries. Schools and academies were thus +endowed; for instance, the Leicester Academy and the Williamstown Free +School. In short, "the interests of literature were supported, the arts +encouraged, the wastes of wars repaired, inundations prevented, the +burthen of the taxes lessened" by lotteries. Private lotteries were also +carried on in great number, as frequent advertisements show; pieces of +furniture, wearing apparel, real estate, jewelry, and books being given +as prizes. Much deception was practised in those private lotteries. + +Though many lotteries were ostensibly for charitable, educational, or +other beneficial purposes, the proportion of profit applied to such +purposes was small. The Newbury Bridge Lottery sold ten thousand +dollars' worth of tickets to raise one thousand dollars. The lottery to +assist in rebuilding Faneuil Hall was to secure one-tenth of the value +of tickets. Harvard College hoped to have twelve and a half per cent. +The glowing advertisements of "Rich Wheels," "Real & Truly Fortunate +Offices," "Lucky Numbers," "Full Drawings," appealed to every class; the +poorest could buy a quarter of a ticket as a speculation. New England +clergymen seemed specially to delight in this gambling excitement. + +The evil of the system could not fail to be discovered by intelligent +citizens. Judge Sewall, ever thoughtful, wrote his protest to friends +when he found advertisements of four lotteries in one issue of the +_Boston News Letter_. Though I have seen lottery tickets signed by John +Hancock, he publicly expressed his aversion to the system, and Joel +Barker and others wrote in condemnation. By 1830 the whole community +seemed to have wakened to a sense of their pernicious and unprofitable +effect, and laws were passed prohibiting them. + +The sports and diversions herein named, of the first century of the +Puritan commonwealth, were, after all, joined in by but a scanty +handful of junketers. We see in our picture of the olden times no +revellers, but a "crowd of sad-visaged people moving duskily through a +dull gray atmosphere," who found, as Carlyle said, that work was +enjoyment enough. The Pilgrim Fathers had been saddened with war and +pestilence, with superstition, with exile, still they had as a contrast +the keen novelty of life in the picturesque new land. The sons had lost +all the romance and were more narrow, more intolerant. But we must not +think them unhappy because they thought it no time for New England to +dance. There be those nowadays who care not for dancing, nor for the +playing of games, yet are not unhappy. There be, also, I trow, those who +fare not at fairs, and show not at shows, and would fain read sober +books or study their Bible as did the Puritans, and yet are cheerful. +And perhaps also there is a singular little band of those who love not +the play--a few such I wot of Puritan blood yet are not sorrowful. +Hawthorne said: "Happiness may walk soberly in dark attire as well as +dance lightsomely in a gala-dress." And I cannot doubt that good Judge +Sewall found as true and deep a pleasure--albeit a melancholy one--in +slowly leading, sable-gloved and sable-cloaked, the funeral procession +of one of the honored deputies through narrow Boston streets, as did +roystering Morton in marshalling his drunken revellers at noisy +Merrymount. + + + + +XI + +BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS + + +There was no calling, no profession more reputable, more profitable in +early colonial days than the trade of book-selling. President Dunster, +of Harvard College, in his pursuance of that business, gave it the +highest and best endorsement; and it must be remembered that all the +book-sellers were publishers as well, books being printed for them at +their expense. John Dunton, in his "Life and Errors," has given us a +very distinct picture of Boston book-sellers and their trade toward the +end of the seventeenth century. He landed at that port in 1686 with a +large and expensive venture of books "suited to the genius of New +England," and he says he was about as welcome to the resident +book-sellers as "Sowr ale in Summer." Nevertheless they received him +cordially and hospitably, and he in turn was an equally generous rival; +for he drew eulogistically the picture of the four book-dealers which +that city then boasted. Mr. Phillips was "very just, very thriving, +young, witty, and the most Beautiful man in the town of Boston." Mr. +Brunning, or Browning, was a "complete book-seller, generous and +trustworthy." Dunton says: + + "There are some men will run down the most elaborate peices only + because they had none of their Midwifery to bring them into public + View and yet shall give the greatest encomiums to the most Nauseous + trash when they had the hap to be concerned in it." + +But Browning would promote a good book whoever printed it. Mr. Campbell, +the third book-dealer, was "very industrious, dresses All-a-mode and I +am told a young lady of Great Fortune is fallen in love with him." Of +Mr. Usher, the remaining book-trader, Dunton asserts: + + "He makes the best figure in Boston. He is very rich, adventures + much to sea, but has got his Estate by Book selling." + +Usher was a book-maker, undertaker, and adventurer, doubtfully +attractive or desirable appellations nowadays; but what higher praise +could have been given in colonial tongue? He would have angrily resented +being dubbed a publisher; that name was assigned to and monopolized by +the town-crier. Usher died worth £20,000, a tidy sum for those days. + +Happy, indeed, were all the Boston book-sellers; blessed of the gods! +rich, witty, modish, beloved, beautiful! The colony was sixty years old, +opulent, prosperous, and fashionable; but a book-seller cut the best +figure. Surely the book trade had in Boston a glorious ushering in, a +golden promise which has not yet deserted it. + +Book-printing, too, was a highly honored calling. The first machine for +the craft and mystery of printing was set up at Cambridge in 1639, and +for twenty-three years the president of Harvard College was responsible +for its performances. Then official licensers were appointed to control +its productions, and not till a decade of years before the Declaration +of Independence were legal restraints removed from the colonial press. + +The first printer in the colony, Steeven Daye, was about as bad a +printer as ever lived, as his work in the Bay Psalm-Book proves; and he +spent a term in Cambridge jail, and was altogether rather trying in his +relations with the godly ministers who were associated with him in his +printery. The second printer had to sleep in a cask after he landed, but +he died with a fortune, a true forerunner of the self-made men of +America. The third printer, Johnson, having a wife in England, was +"brought up" and bound over before the court not to seduce the +affections of the daughter of printer No. 2. The next Bostonians who +tried their hands at the mechanical part of book-making--the printing +and binding--were two of the most prominent citizens; Captain Green, a +worthy man, the father of nineteen children by one wife and eleven by +another, and rich, too, in spite of the thirty Green olive-branches; and +Judge Sewall, also, as Cotton Mather said, "edified and beautified with +many children"--fourteen in all. Truly, book-making did prosper a man +mightily both at home and abroad in colonial days. + +In a book-printer's wife, the mother of the nineteen children, did +Dunton find his ideal New England wife; in a book-printer did he find +his most agreeable companion. + + "To name his trade will convince the world he was a man of good + sense and understanding. He was so facetious and obliging and his + conversation such that I took a great delight in his company." + +So it may be seen that the book-sellers were rivalled by the +book-printers--equally rich and witty though not so beautiful. To the +credit of both callings, then and for a century to follow, redounds the +fact that almost to a man they were deacons in the church. Mayhap their +worldly and family prosperity was the reward of their piety. As +nine-tenths of the authors were ministers, and the publishers all +deacons, the church had at that time what might be called a monopoly of +the book trade. + +Dunton had a vast interest in the fair sex, owning plainly that he had a +"heart of Wax, Soft, and Soon mellowing," though he was careful on every +page to make everything seem perfectly straight and proper for the +suspicious perusal of his English wife; but any nineteenth-century +reader can read between the lines. His famous long-winded eulogies of +the Boston virgin, the wife, the widow, "Madam Brick the flower of +Boston," and the half widow "Parte per Pale, Madam Toy," whose husband +was at sea; and his long rides with one or the other of them +a-pillion-back behind him, and his tedious conversations with them on +platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the chief causes of love, show +plainly that he had a "wandering eye." He had a deal to say also of his +lady customers (who were much the same in olden times as nowadays)--one +simple soul who turned over his books rather vacantly till he asked her +"in Joque" whether she wanted "Tom Thumb" (a penny chapbook). To his +surprise she answered, "Yes;" and he said, still guying, "in Folio and +with marginal notes?" and the dull creature replied, "Oh the best." +Another hectored him by constantly changing her mind: + + "Reach me that book, yet--let it alone; but let me see it however, + and yet its no great matter either." + +Another sedate Boston dame wished "The School of Venus," to which he +reprovingly answered that he had best give her instead "The School of +Virtue." Another, to whom he gave a sad setting off (more than hinting +at a painted face, though she were a Puritan), wanted plays and romances +and "Books of Gallantry." He adds: + + "But she was a good Customer to me. Whilst I took her money I + humoured her pride, and paid her (I blush to say it) a mighty + observance." + +He speaks plainly too of the men book-buyers. One Mr. Gouge, who was +also "a Secret Friend to the Fair Sex," bought to give away two hundred +copies of a book written by Parson Gouge, his father. Another "young +beau who boasts more Villany than he ever committed bought a many of +books;" hence Dunton tolerated the "Young Spark's" demoralizing +acquaintance. Mr. Thorncomb, another book-dealer from London, also +bought of him, and, with the ever prevailing luck was "Acceptable to the +Fair Sex, so extremely charming as makes 'em fond of being in his +Company. However he is a virtuous person and deserved all the Respect +they shewed him." Nor can I doubt, from the pervasive spirit of his +books, that Dunton too found favor with the fair. + +Though he spoke so warmly of individual purchasers and so positively of +the wealth of his ilk in Boston, his own venture was not vastly +prosperous. He took back to England but £400. He gave the Boston +Yankees, too, rather a bad name in commercial transactions, saying: + + "There is no trading for a stranger with them but with a Grecian + Faith which is not to part with your own ware without ready Money; + for they are generally very backward in their payments; great + censors about other Mens manner but Extremely Careless about their + own. When you are dealing with 'em you must look upon 'em as at + cross purposes and read 'em like Hebrew backward; for they seldom + speak & mean the same thing but like the Watermen Look one way & + row another." + +Josselyn gave them no better name, saying: + + "Their leading men are damnable rich, inexplicably covetous and + proud; like Ethiopians, white in the teeth only; full of + ludification and injurious dealing." + +Of Dunton's patrons the majority were ministers, and I hope all the +reverend gentlemen were as prompt payers as they were liberal +purchasers. Since Dunton called ministers "the greatest benefactors to +Booksellers," I think they were not included in his black list. Surely +Cotton Mather was not, for he gave away one thousand books in one year, +and I know he paid for them too. One Boston schoolmaster, however, +bought £200 worth of books, and when we consider the excessively small +pay of members of that calling at that time, we feel that he showed a +liberal interest in promoting in every manner the spread of learning, +and only trust that he paid the bill promptly. + +In 1719 there was but one book-shop in New York, but of cultured Boston +Neal wrote at that date: "The Exchange is surrounded with booksellers' +shops which have a good trade. There are five Printing Presses." +Succeeding years did not change the luck of the craft in Boston, nor dim +its honors, still wealth and love poured in on its members. The names of +Henchman and Hancock show the opulence; while Knox, in war and love +alike prospered, winning the wealthy "belle of Massachusetts" for his +bride, and winning equal glory with his sword in the Revolution. In +other New England towns did book-publishing succeed, though Boston's +earlier start, its leading position, and its more carefully preserved +history give it place as a type of the whole province. + +And now, what was the fruit of all this fairly garnished and richly +nourished tree? What did these prosperous New England book-merchants +bring forth in the first century of book-printing in the province? What +return did they make for all the romantic and material support given +them? No love-poems or mild tales of gallantry, as you might expect from +their alleged fascinating traits, but, instead, an almost unvaried +production of dreary and dull funeral, execution, wedding, election, and +baptismal sermons, and of psalm-books, with here and there a "two penny +jeering gigge," or perhaps an anagram or acrostic or "pindarick," on +some virtuous citizen or industrious dame, recently deceased. In +business relations the deacon prevailed powerfully over the gallant. If, +as Tyler says, the New England theocracy was a social structure resting +on a book, that corner-stone was the Bay Psalm-Book and the walls above +it were built of sermons. These sermons seem to us technical, sapless, +and jejune, "as soporific as a bed of poppies," but they show the +intelligence, energy, and assiduity of the writers just as plainly as +they show the gloomy theology and sad earnestness of the time. And +though no one now reads them, we profoundly respect them, for they have +been conned by our honored forefathers with more studious and loving +attention than falls to the lot of most modern books, no matter what +their subject or who their author. + +I have told at length the story of the publication of the Bay Psalm-Book +and of other psalm-books printed and used in New England, in "The +Sabbath in Puritan New England" and I need not dwell upon it here. + +The first book or tract printed in Boston was in 1675--an execution +sermon, by Increase Mather, "The Wicked Man's Portion." The first book +printed in Connecticut was the "Saybrook Confession and Platform," in +1710. The first book of any considerable size printed in Rhode Island +was "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity," issued in 1729. + +There were a number of books for the Indians in the Indian tongue which +no one but Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull could now read an he would; also a +few histories of the Indian wars; and Thomas Prince published by +subscription an exceedingly dull chronological History of New England. +As he began his history with year 1, first month and sixth day--and +Adam, he had tired out even pious Bostonians by the time he reached New +England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died +unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple +Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There +were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne +Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and +evidently believed what he said too) that if Virgil could have read them +he would have condemned his own work to the flames. Michael +Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," that epic of hell-fire and damnation which +fairly chokes us with its sulphurous fumes, was widely read and deeply +venerated; in fact it was a great popular success. Fifteen hundred +copies were sold in the first year, one copy to each thirty-five +inhabitants of New England--a proportion showing a commercial success +unsurpassed in modern times. It was printed also on broadsides, in a +cheap form, and hawked over the country by chapmen in order to further +spread its lurid and baleful shadow. The dull but sympathetic "Meat out +of the Eater" by the same author quickly went through five editions. +"New England's Crisis," "A Posie from Old Mr. Dods Garden," "A Looking +Glasse for New England," and "The Origin of the Whalebone Petticoat--a +Satyr," end the monotonous list of poetry. Fully three-quarters of the +entire number of publications proceeded from the prolific Mather stock, +and of course bore the pompous, verbose, Mather traits of authorship. +Cotton Mather had the felicity of having published as his share of "New +England's First Fruits" a list to make a modern author green with +envy--three hundred and eighty-two different works; three hundred of +these may be seen in the library of the American Antiquarian Society: +not all were brought out in America, however. His "Magnalia" was printed +in England, and the exigences and vicissitudes of publication at that +time are fully told in his diary; also the exalted and idealized view +which he took of authorship. At the first definite plan which he +formulated in his mind of his history of New England, he "cried mightily +to God;" and he went through a series of fasts and vigils at intervals +until the book was completed, when he held extended exercises of secret +thanksgiving. Prostrate on his study floor, in the dust, he joyfully +received full assurance in his heart from God that his work would be +successful. But writing the book is not all the work, as any author +knows; and he then had much distress and many troubled fasts over the +best way of printing it, of transporting it to England; and when at last +he placed his "elaborate composures" on shipboard, he prayed an entire +day. No ascetic Papist ever observed fast days more vigorously than did +Cotton Mather while his book was on its long sea-voyage and in England. +He sent it in June in the year 1700, and did not hear from it till +December. What a thrill of sympathy one feels for him! Then he learned +that the printers were cold; the expense of publication would be £600, a +goodly sum to venture; it was "clogged by the dispositions" of the man +to whom it was sent; it was delayed and obstructed; he was left +strangely in the dark about it; months passed without any news. Still +his faith in God supported him. At last a sainted Christian came forward +in London, a stranger, and offered to print the book at his own expense +and give the author as many copies as he wished. That was in what +Carlyle called "the Day of Dedications and Patrons, not of Bargains with +Booksellers." In October, 1702, after two and a half long years of +waiting, one copy of the wished-for volume arrived, and the author and +his dearest friend, Mr. Bromfield, piously greeted it with a day of +solemn fasting and praise. + +Can the contrast of that day with the present, can the character of +Cotton Mather be more plainly shown than by this story of the +publication of the "Magnalia?" Many anxious days did he pass over other +manuscripts. Some were lost in London for seven years. One book +disappeared entirely from his ken, but was recovered by his heirs. His +most important and largest work, the six folio volumes of his "Biblia +Americana," pursued by "Strange Frowns of Heaven" could not find a +publisher and still is unprinted. Cotton Mather survived his own era, +his congenial atmosphere, and, whether he was conscious of it or not, +was indeed, as Dexter called him, a literary dodo, an isolated relic of +early fantastic methods of composition. His work was not, as Prince +said, "agreeable to the Gust of his Age." Even the name of Mather, +all-powerful in New England, could not place the "Biblia Americana" in +the press. + +There were no American novels in those early days. The first book +deserving the appellation that was printed in New England was +"intituled" "The Power of Sympathy, or the Triumph of Nature--A Novel +founded on truth and dedicated to the Young Ladies of America." It +appeared in 1789. Four years later came "The Helpless Orphan, or The +Innocent Victim of Revenge," and then "The Coquette, or the History of +Eliza Wharton." + +The only book that was written by a woman and published in New England +during the first century of New England printing, was a collection of +the poems of Anne Bradstreet. A few--very few--pamphlets by women +authors of that date are also known: "The Confession of Faith--A Summary +of Divinity drawn up by a young Gentlewoman in the 25th year of her +Age;" Mrs. Elizabeth Cotton's "Peculiar Treasure of the Almighty King +Opened;" Elizabeth White's "Experience;" Mary Rowlandson's pathetic +account of her captivity--these are all. Hannah Adams was the first New +England woman to adopt literature as a profession. + +Doubtless many Puritans shared Governor Winthrop's opinion of literary +women, which that tolerant and gentle man expressed thus: + + "The Governor of Hartford upon Connecticut came to Boston, and + brought his wife with him (a godly young woman and of special + parts) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her + understanding and reason which had been growing upon her divers + years by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and + writing, and had written many books. Her husband being very loving + and tender of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error + when it was too late. For if she had attended her household + affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of + her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, + whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might + have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set + her." + +I know of no illustrated books printed New England in the seventeenth +century, nor any with frontispieces or portraits. In 1723 a portrait of +Increase Mather appeared in his Life, which was written by monopolizing +Cotton Mather. It was a poor thing, being engraved in London by John +Sturt. When Peter Pelham came to Boston about 1725 and started as a +portrait engraver, and married the Widow Copley with her thriving +tobacco shop, he engraved and published many likenesses of authors and +ministers, some of which were bound with their books, others sold singly +by subscription. The mezzotint of Cotton Mather, made in 1727, sold for +two shillings. Hubbard's Narrative had a map in 1677; and in 1713 the +lives of Dr. Faustus, Friar Bacon, Conjurors Bungay and Vanderwart were +printed conjointly in a volume "with cuts"--perhaps the earliest +illustrated New England book, unless we except the New England Primer. +"The Prodigal Daughter, or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed" had "curious +cuts;" so also did the "Parents Gift" in 1741, and "A Present for a +Servant Maid." "Pilgrim's Progress" was printed in Boston in an +illustrated edition in 1744. But for any handsomely illustrated books +American readers sent, until Revolutionary times, to England. + +There were, however, at a later date, some few books printed with +special elegance, with broad margins. The "Discourse on the United +Submission to Higher Powers" had some copies that were printed on pages +ten inches by seven and a quarter inches in size, while the regular +edition was only six by six and a half inches. A letter is in existence +of Governor Trumbull's ordering that some copies of the funeral sermon +preached at his wife's death be printed on heavy writing paper. Copies +of the first edition of the "Magnalia" also were issued on large paper +and owned in New England, but of course that work was done in London. + +The printing of the earliest books was generally poor, showing the work +of inexperienced and unaccustomed hands; but the paper was good, +sometimes of fine quality, and always strong. The type was fairly good +and clear until Revolutionary times, when paper, ink, and type, being +made by new workmen out of the poorest materials, were bad beyond +belief, producing, in fact, an almost unreadable page. Throughout the +first half of the eighteenth century the books printed in New England +compared favorably with the ones imported from England at that date, and +in the special case of the "Poetical Oblation"--a fine quarto, offered +by Harvard College to George III. on his accession to the throne, the +typography is exquisite. For the early binding but one word can be +said--that of praise. All these old books had Charles Lamb's desideratum +of a volume, were "strong backed and neat bound." Well dressed was the +morocco, the leather, the vellum, parchment, or basil, firmly was it +glued in place, well-sewed were the leaves--loudly can we sing the +goodness and true worth of colonial bookbinding. + +In many New England libraries and collections may be seen specimens of +colonial printing and binding; the library of the American Antiquarian +Society is particularly rich in such ancient treasures. Some of the +books from Cotton Mather's library may there be found, that library +which Dunton called the glory of New England, and which he said was the +largest privately owned collection of books that he had ever seen; but +many of them were burned in the sacking of Boston by the British. It +consisted of over seven thousand printed volumes and many manuscripts, +and its estimated value was £8,000. The majority of these volumes was +naturally upon divinity. + +We can also form an idea of a New England library at a somewhat earlier +date, for the list of books in Elder Brewster's library has been +preserved. They numbered four hundred. Of these books, sixty-two were in +Latin and three hundred in English. There were forty-eight folios and +one hundred and twenty-one octavos. This was quite a bulky and heavy +library for transportation to and through that new country. All were not +imported at one time, as the succession of dates shows. Brewster +purchased from time to time the best books brought out in England on +subjects which interested him, until it was really a rich exegetical +collection, and may possibly have been used as a circulating one. Nearly +all the number were religious, theological, or historical books; +fourteen were in rhyme. Among the poems were "A Turncoat of the Times," +Spenser's "Prosopopeia," "The Scyrge of Drunkenness," a "Description of +a Good Wife," the ballad of "The Maunding Soldier," and Wither's works. +One might have been a tragedy, "Messalina," but there were no other +dramatic works. + +Other benefactors of booksellers had good libraries. Parson Hooker left +behind him £300 worth of books in an estate of £1,336. Parson Wareham +had £82 worth in an estate of £1,200. Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton left, in +1717, books which made one thousand lots in an auction, for which the +first book catalogue ever compiled in New England was printed. Even by +1723 the library of Harvard College contained none of the works of +Addison, Bolingbroke, Young, Swift, Prior, Steele, Dryden, or Pope. In +1734, the catalogue of T. Cox, a prominent Boston bookseller, did not +contain the "Spectator" nor the works of Shakespeare or Milton. The +literary revival of the time of Queen Anne was evidently but little felt +in New England during its inception. The facile and constant quotation +from the ancient classics show how constantly and thoroughly the latter +were studied. + +Among early New England publications we must not fail to speak of the +omnipresent almanac. Ere there was a New England Psalm-Book there was a +New England Almanac, and succeeding years brought new ones forth in +flocks. Though Charles Lamb included almanacs in his catalogue of "books +which are no books," and the founder of the Bodleian Library would not +admit that they were books and excluded them from the shelves of his +library, when New England philomaths and philodespots numbered such +honored names as Mather, Dudley, Sewall, Chauncey, Brattle, Ames, and +Holyoke, New England Puritans must have deemed almanacs to be books, and +so do we. In many a colonial household where the Bible and psalm-book +formed the sole standing library, the almanac was the only annual +book-comer that crossed the threshold and lodged under the roof-tree. On +a nail by the side of the great fireplace hung proudly and prominently +the Family Almanac, the Ephemeris. This Family Almanac was a guide, +counsellor, and friend; a magazine, cyclopædia, and jest-book; was even +a spelling-book. It was consulted by every member of the household on +every subject, save possibly religion--for that they had the best of all +books. The planters learned from it meteorological, astronomical, +thaumaturgical, botanical, and agricultural facts--or rather what the +editor stated as facts. Social customs and peculiarities and ethics were +also touched upon in a manner suited to the requirements and capacity of +the reader; medical and hygienic advice were given for man and beast, +ending with the quaint warning to use before and after taking that +unfashionable medicine, prayer. Wit, history, romance, poetry, all +contributed to the almanac. The printer turned an extra penny by +advertising various articles that he had for sale, from negro slaves to +garden seeds. So, in addition to what the original readers learned, we +now find an almanac a most suggestive record of the olden times. + +As with many colonial books, the most attractive part of an almanac is +not always the printed contents, but the interlined comments of the +original owner. He kept frequently an account of his scanty and sparse +purchases; from them we gain a knowledge of the price of commodities in +his time. We learn also upon how little a New England planter could +live, how little money he spent. He kept a record of the births, +weights, and measures of his family; he entered the purchase and number +of his lottery tickets (but I never found the proud and happy statement +of a lottery prize). He wrote therein Greek verse, as did John Cotton. +He entered wig-making and hair-dressing accounts, as did Thomas Prince. +He kept the amount of beer and cider he made and drank, and the sad +statement of deaths in the neighborhood; such grim entries are seen as +these made by old Ezra Stiles: "This day Ethan Allen died and went to +Hell." "This day died Joseph Bellamy and went to Heaven, where he can +dictate and domineer no longer." President Stiles did not foresee that +his great-grandson would be Joseph Bellamy's also, and would plan a +social reform more vast in its changes than the really sensible scheme +he thought out, of "uniting and cementing his offspring by transfusing +to distant generations certain influential principles," and of +benefiting the growing population of the New World by carefully planned +and wide-spread marriages with virtuous and pious Stileses. + +Of course the almanac-owner kept account of the weather--a brave record +through January and February and March; then, lessening his zeal as +spring-planting began, the hard-working summer months have clean pages; +while a remorseful energy in November and December ofttimes made him +renew in the smoke-dried almanac his crabbed entries. Hence from +contemporary evidence does old New England life seem all winter, all +bitter cold and fierce rains and harsh winds; yet there were surely some +warm summer days and cheerful sunshine, so smoothly serene as to gain no +record. + +The relations between book-publishers and authors, between +book-publishers and the public, were from earliest days most friendly. +There was much polite exchange of compliments; the intelligence of the +public was always mightily flattered and shown up in a very civil +fashion in such manner as this: + + "A New Edition of the really beautiful & sentimental Novel Armine + and Elvira Is this day published price 9d sewed in blue paper. To + the Ladies in particular and others the lovers of Sentiment and + Poetick Numbers this Novel is recommended, to them it will afford a + delightful Repast. To others it is not an object." + + "For the pleasing entertainment of the Polite Part of Mankind I + have printed the most beautiful Poems of Mr. Stephen Duck the + famous Wiltshire Poet. It is a full Demonstration to me that the + People of New England have a fine Taste for good Sense and polite + Learning having already sold 1200 of these Poems." + +Though Stephen Duck appealed to polite and literate New Englanders just +as he became the rage in old England, his name is now almost forgotten. + +It must have inclined the public most favorably to a book to be told +that the volume is "intended only for the highly virtuous;" that "the +glowing pen of the author brought this token into life solely from +Admiration of a community fitted by amazing Intelligence to receive it:" +that + + "'Tis said with truth by a secret but ingenious New England + minister that no town is so worthy the vendue of this pleasing book + as these polite gentlemen and gentlewomen to whom it will be on + Friday offered." + +Authors, if not authoresses, were treated with much respect and +encouragement. Indeed, they were urged to write. Books printed by +subscription were the rule, and, as an inducement, the names of +subscribers were printed in a list at the end of the book, and an extra +copy was given for every six numbers subscribed for. The "undertakers" +did not always trouble themselves to deliver the book when printed. A +notice was posted, or printed in a newspaper, advising subscribers +pretty sharply that their copies (which had apparently been paid for in +advance) must be sent for within a certain time or the books would be +"sold to others desiring." One American poet, the author of "War--An +Heroic Poem," a work which has been lost to us, threatened to prosecute +his patrons for not taking his book. Sometimes the printer of the book +also seized the opportunity of the large circulation to drum up +delinquent citizens who had not paid him at previous dates for news +letters, sermons, funeral verses, etc. One of the first books printed in +Hartford was paid for largely by a man who ran a woollen mill in the +vicinity. He took the convenient occasion to thriftily forward his own +trade by having printed and bound with the poems, and thus distributing +to sheep-farmers and farm-wives in the surrounding towns, full +instructions about preparing the wool to be sent to him. + +Frequently the notices in the newspapers bore, in quaint wording, warm +testimony to the popularity of a book. "The above book is advertised by +the desire of numbers who have read and admired it." "If to raise the +soul to heights of honourable pride is not unworthy so great a mind, +praise of this book may be given, though needless, since many request +it." "Many curious gentlemen formerly buying their books in London now +wish to buy only in New England where so acute a manner of composure is +found." "For the polite and inquisitive part of Mankind in New England +these poetick fancies are highly conformed as many residents testify by +their frequent perusal and approval." + +Public encouragement to aspiring authors was not lacking; this +advertisement in the _New England Weekly Journal_ of March, 1728, is +indeed delightful: + + "There is now preparing for the Press, and may upon Suitable + Encouragement be communicated to the Publick, a Miscellany of Poems + of Severall Hands and upon severall occasions some of which have + already been Published and received the Approbation of the best + Judges with many more very late performances of equal if not + superior Beauty which have never yet seen the Light; if therefore + any Ingenious Gentlemen are disposed to contribute towards the + erecting of a Poetickal Monument for the Honour of This Country + Either by their Generous Subscriptions or Composures, they are + desired to convey them to Mr. Daniel Henchman or the Publisher of + this Paper by whom they will be received with Candour and + Thankfulness." + +Just fancy the effect of a similar advertisement in a prominent +newspaper of to-day! How composures would flow in from the ingenious +gentlemen who love to see themselves in print! What a poetical monument +could be reared--to the very sky! I have never seen in any colonial +newspaper any subsequent references to this proposed collection or +miscellany of composures, and I know of no book that was published at +that time which could answer the description, so I suspect the well-laid +plan came to naught. The specimens of local and ephemeral poetry that +were printed in the colonial press in succeeding years make it easy to +comprehend the failure of the project: the villanously rhymed effusions +fairly imposthumate all the ribald vulgarity of the times; coarseness +and dulness of subject and thought being rivalled only by the +super-coarseness of the verbiage. I do not say that the newspapers +provoked these stupid rhymes, which are about as much poetry as is a +game of crambo; but I do not find them until "newspaper-time," and fear +the extra circulation through the weekly press may be held partly +responsible. + +A book called "A Collection of Poems by Several Hands" apparently was +gathered by methods similar to the one shown by the advertisement just +quoted. It was printed in 1744, and was a puerile and banal collection +containing but few good verses, and was apparently made expressly to +show off the literary accomplishments of Mather Byles, who was what +Carlyle would call an intellectual dapperling. + +Book-auctions, held first in England in 1676, formed one of the rare +diversions in the provinces, and were apparently largely attended by +"sentimentalists," as one book-dealer called book-buyers. The business +of book-auctioneering was called, in the bombastic language of the +times, "the sublimest Auxiliary which Science Commerce and Arts either +has or perhaps ever will possess," while the bookseller was called +"Provedore to the Sentimentalists and Professor of Book Auctioneering." +These sales or vendues were frequently held at taverns. + +At a very early day intelligent and progressive Bostonians established a +public library. By the year 1673 bequests had been made to such an +institution, and consignments deemed suitable for it had been sent to +Boston by London booksellers. All these books were properly sober and +pious. The Prince library, that first large American book collection, +which was conceived and started by Thomas Prince in 1703, was nobly +planned and nobly carried out, and deserved more gratitude and more care +than it received at modern hands. + +But many towns had no public library, hence much friendly exchange and +lending of books took place between book-owners and neighbors, sometimes +apparently without the owner's consent or knowledge. The newspapers, +among their sparse advertisements, have many such as this simply naïve +one in the _Boston News Letter_ of July 7, 1712: + + "A certain Person having lent two Books viz; Rushworths Collections + & Fullers Holy War & forgotten unto whom; These are desiring the + Borrower to be so kind as to return said Books unto Owner." + +Or this sarcastic request in the _Connecticut Courant_. + + "The gentleman who took the second volume of Bacons Abridgment from + Mr. David Balls bedroom on the 18th of November would do well to + return it to the owner whose name he will find on the 15th Page. If + he choose rather to keep it the owner wishes him to call and take + the rest of the set." + +Another Connecticut man is meekly asked to "return the 3rd Vol of Don +Quixote & take the 4th instead if he chuse." + +Connecticut folk seemed to be particularly given to this slipshod +fashion of promiscuous and unlicensed book-borrowing, if we can trust +the apparent proof given by Connecticut newspapers in their many +advertisements of lost books. In some notices it is darkly hinted that +"specifications of books long lent have been given" (to the sheriff +perhaps); and again, a meek suggestion that the owner wishes to read a +long missing volume and would be grateful for an opportunity to do so. +One ungallant soul advertised for "the she-person that borrowed Mr. +Thos. Browns Works from a gentleman she is well acquainted with." + +There was not the redeeming excuse for non-return sometimes given by +like "desuming deadheads" nowadays, that the owner's name had been +forgotten, for the inscription "Perley Morse, His Book," or "Catey +Bradford, Her Book," or whatever the name might be, was quickly and +repeatedly written by each colonial owner as soon as the book was +acquired. + +Frequently also the dates and places of residence appear. Even the very +dates of ownership and the quaint old names are interesting. Bathsheba +Spalding, Noca Emmons, Elam Noyes, Titherming Layton, Engrossed Bump, +Sally Box, Tilly Minching, Zerushaddi Key, Comfort Vine--these are a few +of the odd signatures I have found in old books. + +Readers also had a pleasant habit of leaving a sign-manual on the last +page of a book, thus: "Timothy Pitkin perlegit A.D. 1765," "Cotton Smith +perlegit 1740." A clear-speaking lesson are such records to this +generation--a lesson of patience and diligence. How we venerate, with +what awe we regard the name of Timothy Pitkin, and know that he lived to +read through that vast folio--the first ever printed in America--the +"Complete Body of Divinity," a folio of over nine hundred +double-columned, compactly printed pages! And yet, why should not +Timothy Pitkin live through reading it when Samuel Willard lived through +writing it? Entries of dates in old Bibles frequently show that those +sainted old Christians had read entirely through that holy book ten +times in regular order. + +The handwriting in all these ancient books is very different from our +modern penmanship, invariably bearing an appearance not exactly of much +labor, but of much care, as if the writer did not use a pen every +day--did not become too familiar with that weighty implement, and hence +had a vast respect for it when he did take it in hand. Every _t_ is +crossed, every _i_ is dotted, every _a_ and _o_ perfectly rounded, every +tail of every _g_ and _y_ and _z_ is precisely twisted in colonial +script. I think the very trouble and preparation incident to writing +conduced to the finish and elegance of the penmanship. No stylographic +pens were used in those days, but instead, a carefully prepared quill; +and the ink was made of ink-cake or ink-powder dissolved in water; or, +more troublesome still, home-made ink, tediously prepared with nutgalls, +walnut or swamp maple bark, or iron filings steeped in vinegar and +water, or copperas. + +Special pains were taken in writing a name in a book. Penmanship was +almost a fine art in colonial days, the one indispensable accomplishment +of a school teacher; and he was often hired to exercise it in writing a +name "perspicuously" in a book. Sometimes the owner's name is seen drawn +with much care in a little wreath or circle of ornamentation. This may +be what Judge Sewall refers to with so much pride when he speaks of +"writing a name" in a gift-book, or it may be what was known as +"conceits" or "fine knotting." + +The colonists had a very reprehensible habit, which (save for the pains +taken in writing) might be called book-scribbling. Rude rhymes and +sentiments are often found with the past owner's name, and form a +title-page lore which, ill-spelt and simple as the verses are, have an +interest to the antiquary of which the writer never dreamed. They +consist chiefly of adjurations to honesty, specially with regard to the +special volume thus inscribed: + + "Steal not this book my honest friend, + For fear the gallows will be your End." + + "If you dare to steal this Book + The Devil will catch you on his Hook." + +This was accompanied by the outline of a very spirited "personal devil" +with a pitchfork and an enormous gridiron. + +Still another appealed to terrors: + + "This is Hanah Moxon Her book + You may just within it Look + You had better not do more + For old black Satan's at the Door + And will snatch at stealing hands + Look behind you! There He Stands." + +This had a tail-piece of an open door with a very black forked tail +thrust out of it. + +In a leather-bound Bible was seen this rhyme: + + "Evert Jonson His book + God Give him Grase thair in to look + not only to looke but to understand + that Larning is better than Hous or Land + When Land is Gon & Gold is spent + then larning is most Axelant + When I am dead & Rotton + If this you see Remember me + Though others is forgotton." + +Different portions of this script have been seen in many books. + +Four rhymes seem to be specially the property of schoolboys, being found +in Accidences, Spellers, "Logick" Primers, and other school-books, down +even to the present day. + + "This book is one thing, My fist's another, + If you touch the one thing, You'll feel the other." + + "Hic liber eat meus + And that I will show + Si aliquis capit + I'll give him a blow." + + "This book is mine + By Law Divine + And if it runs astray + I'll call you kind + My desk to find + And put it safe away." + + "Hic liber est meus Deny it who can + Zenas Graves Junior An honest man." + +There also appears a practical warning which may be read with attention +and profit by the public now a days: + + "If thou art borrowed by a friend + Right welcome shall he be + To read, to study, _not_ to lend + But to _return_ to me. + + "Not that imparted knowledge doth + Diminish Learnings Store + But books I find if often lent + Return to me no more." + + "Read _Slowly_--Pause _Frequently_--Think _Seriously_--Finger + _Lightly_--Keep _Cleanly_--Return _Duly_--with the _Corners_ of the + Leaves NOT TURNED DOWN." + +The fashion of using book-plates was by no means so general among New +England Puritans as among rich Virginians and New Yorkers and +Pennsylvanian Quakers. Mr. Lichtenstein, writing in the New England +Historical and Genealogical Register in 1886, says he has seen no New +England book-plates of earlier date than 1735. At later dates the +Holyokes, Dudleys, Boylstons, and Phillips, all used book-plates. The +plates most familiar to students in old libraries in New England are +those of the Vaughans and of Isaiah Thomas. + +Another, a living interest is found in these old, dusty, leather-bound +volumes, which is not in the inscriptions and not, alas, in the printed +words. They are the chosen home of a race of pigmy spiderlings who love +musty theology with an affection found in no one else nowadays. In these +dingy homes they live and rear their hideous little progeny: for in the +cold light of a microscope these tiny brown book-dwellers are not +beautiful; they are flat, crab-like, goggle-eyed, hairy; and they zigzag +across the page on their ugly crooked legs in a sprawling, drunken +fashion. They do not eat the books; they live apparently on air; yet if +you crush them between the pages they leave a stain of vivid scarlet to +reproach you in future readings for your needless cruelty. I cannot kill +them; though flaming is their blood's rebuke, it is aristocratically as +well as theologically blue. In their veins runs the ichor--arachnidian +though it be--that came over in the Mayflower; yes, doubly honored, came +over in the special stateroom of an Ainsworth's Psalm-Book or a Genevan +Bible. No degrading alliances, no admixtures through foreign emigration, +have crossed that pure inbred strain; my book-spiders are of real +Pilgrim stock--they are true New England Brahmins. + +Any one who turns over with attention the books of an old New England +library must be struck with a sense of the affection with which these +books have been treasured, the care with which they have been read, and, +in case of accident, with which they have been repaired. One psalm-book, +nibbled by mice, has had every page neatly mended by the insertion of +thin sheets of paper to replace the lost bits; and some painstaking and +pious New Englander, with a pen and skill worthy the illuminating monks +of another faith, has minutely printed the missing letters on both sides +of the inserted slip in a text no larger than the surrounding print. +Another book, a Bible, burnt in round holes by a slow-burning coal from +the pipe of a sleepy reader, has been mended in the same careful manner. +I have seen Bibles that have been read and turned over till the margins +of the pages at the lower corner and outer edge were worn off down to +the print by loving daily use. In one such the margins had been neatly +replaced by pasted slips of paper. In more than one book I have found a +minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the +volume, showing a personal interest and love for a book which can +hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show a +patient and appreciative perusal. + +Though books were so closely cherished, so seemly bekept in colonial +days, they were subject to one indignity with which now they are +unmenaced and undegraded--they were sometimes sentenced to be burned by +the public hangman. In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick +Muggleton, who set up to be prophets, were burned by that abhorred +public functionary in Boston market-place; and two years later Quaker +books were similarly destroyed. William Pyncheon's book was burned, in +1650, in Boston Market. In 1707 a "libel on the Governor" was hanged by +the hangman. In 1754 a pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters," a +sharp political criticism on the Massachusetts Court, was thus burned in +King Street, Boston. From the _Connecticut Gazette_ of November 29th, +1755, we learn that another offending publication was sentenced to be +"publickly whipt according to Moses Law with 40 stripes save one, then +Burnt." How a true book-lover winces at the thought of the public +hangman placing his blood-stained hand on any book, no matter how much a +"monster." + + + + +XII + +"ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS" + + +From the earliest days the Puritan colonists fought stoutly, for the +sake of St. Paul, against long hair. They proved themselves worthy the +opprobrious name of Roundhead. Endicott's first act was to institute a +solemn and insistent association against long hair. This wearing of long +locks was one of the existing evils, a wile of the devil, which bade +fair to creep into New England, and in its incipiency was proceeded +against by the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair +like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly +against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson +Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched +burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the +long-growing locks--"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or +Russianly--whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long +nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence +for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off +their long hair into a civil frame." Exact rules were given from the +pulpit as to the properly Puritan length--that the hair should not lie +over the neck, the band, or the doublet collar; in the winter it might +be suffered to grow a little below the ear for warmth. Personal pride +and dignity were appealed to, that no Christian gentleman would wish to +look like "every Ruffian, every wild-Irish, every hangman, every varlet +and vagabond." By Sewall's time, however, Puritan though he were, we see +his white locks flowing long over his doublet collar, and forming a +fitting frame to his serene, benignant countenance. + +Puritan women also were not above reproach in regard to the fashion of +extravagant hair-dressing; they also "showed the vile note of +impudency." One parson thus severely addressed them from the pulpit: +"The special sin of woman is pride and haughtiness, and that because +they are generally more ignorant and worthless," and he added that this +feminine pride vented itself in gesture, hair, behavior, and apparel. I +fear all this was true, for the Court also complained of my ignorant and +worthless sex for "cutting and curling and laying out of the hair, +especially among the younger sort." Increase Mather gave them this +thrust in his sermon on the comet, in 1683: "Will not the haughty +daughters of Zion refrain their pride in apparell? Will they lay out +their hair, and wear their false locks, their borders, and towers like +comets about their heads?" And they were called "Apes of Fancy, +friziling and curlying of their hayr." + +I think the sober and decorous women settlers must have worn their hair +cut straight across the forehead, like our modern "bangs;" for +Higginson, writing of the Indians in 1692, says: "Their hair is +generally black and cut before like our gentlewomen." The false locks +denounced by Mather were doubtless "a pair of Perukes which are pretty" +of Pepys's time, about 1656; or the "heart breakers" worn in 1670, which +set out like butterfly-wings over the ears, and which were described +thus: "False locks set on wyers to make them stand at a distance from +the head." + +From a letter written by Knollys to Cecil we learn that Mary Queen of +Scots wore these perukes. He says: + + "Mary Seaton among other pretty devices yesterday and this day, she + did set such a curled hair upon the Queen that was said to be a + Peruke, that showed very delicately, and every other day she hath a + new device of head dressing without any cost, and yet setteth forth + a woman gaylie well." + +The "towers like comets" were doubtless commodes, which were in high +fashion in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century until about +the year 1711, though I have never found that the word commode was used +in America. These commodes were enormously high frames of wire covered +with thin silk, or plaitings of muslin or lace, or frills of ribbon--and +sadly belied their name. + +A simpler form of hair-dressing succeeded the commode; portraits painted +during the following half-century, such as those of Copley, Smibert, and +Blackburn, show an elegant and graceful form of coiffure, the hair +brushed back and raised slightly from the forehead, and sometimes curled +loosely behind the ears. At a later date the curls were almost +universally surmounted by a lace cap. Pomatum began to be used by the +middle of the century. In the _Boston News Letter_ of 1768, we read of +"Black White and Yellow Pomatum from six Coppers to Two Shillings per +Roll." The hair was frequently powdered. Hair-dressers sold powdering +puffs and powdering bags and powdering machines, and a dozen different +varieties of hair-powder--brown, maréchal, scented, plain, and blue. By +Revolutionary times a new tower, or "talematongue," had arisen; the +front hair was pulled up over a stuffed cushion or roll, and mixed with +powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short +curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes, +jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a +yard in height. This fashion was much admired by some; a young lover of +the day wrote thus sentimentally of a fair Hartford girl: "Her hair +covered her cushion as a plate of the most beautiful enamel frosted with +silver." A Revolutionary soldier wrote a poem, however, which regarded +from a different point of view this elaborate headgear in such a time of +national depression. His rhymes began thus: + + "Ladies you had better leave off your high rolls + Lest by extravagance you lose your poor souls + Then haul out the wool, and likewise the tow + 'Twill clothe our whole army we very well know." + +The "Dress-à-la-Independance" was a style of hair-dressing with thirteen +curls at the neck, thus to honor the thirteen new States. + +In the year 1771 Anna Green Winslow wrote in her diary an account of one +of these elaborate hair-dressings which she then saw. She ends her +description thus: + + "How long she was under his opperation I know not. I saw him twist + & tug & pick & cut off whole locks of gray hair at a slice, the + lady telling him he would have no hair to dress next time, for a + space of an hour and a half, when I left them he seeming not to be + near done." + +She also gives a most sprightly account of the manufacture of a roll for +her own hair: + + "I had my HEDDUS roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made + less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my + head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is + not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that & + horsehair very coarse & a little human hair of a yellow hue that I + suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. (the + barber) made it, all carded together and twisted up. When it first + came home, Aunt put it on, and my new cap upon it; she then took up + her apron and measured me & from the roots of my hair on my + forehead to the top of my notions I measured above an inch longer + than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my + chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than Virtue and + Modesty without the help of fals hair, Red-Cow tail or D. the + barber." + +The _Boston Gazette_ had, in 1771, a ludicrous description of an +accident to a young woman in the streets of that town. In an infaust +moment she was thrown down by a runaway, and her tower received serious +damage. It burst its thin outer wall of natural hair, and disgorged +cotton and wool and tow stuffing, false hair, loops of ribbon and gauze. +Ill-bred boys kicked off portions of the various excrescences, and the +tower-wearer was jeered at until she was glad to escape with her own few +natural locks. + +A New England clergyman--Manasseh Cutler--wrote thus of the head-dress +of Mrs. General Knox in 1787: + + "Her hair in front is craped at least a foot high much in the form + of a churn bottom upward and topped off with a wire skeleton in the + same form covered with black gauze which hangs in streamers down + her back. Her hair behind is in a large braid turned up and + confined with a monstrous large crooked comb. She reminded me of + the monstrous cap worn by the Marquis of La Fayettes valet, + commonly called on this account the Marquises devil." + +Hair so elaborately arranged could not be dressed daily. Once a week was +frequently thought sufficient; and some very disgusting accounts are +given of methods to dress the hair so it would "keep safely" for a +month. The Abbé Robin wrote of New England women in 1781: + + "The hair of the head is raised and supported upon cushions to an + extravagant height somewhat resembling the manner in which the + French ladies wore their hair some years ago. Instead of powdering + they often wash the head, which answers the purpose well enough as + their own hair is commonly of an agreeable light color, but the + more fashionable among them begin to adopt the European fashion of + setting off the head to the best advantage." + +The fashion of the roll was of much importance, and various shaped rolls +were advertised; we find one of "a modish new roll weighing but 8 ounces +when others weigh fourteen ounces." We can well believe that such a +heavy roll made poor Anna Winslow's head "ach and itch like anything." A +Salem hair-dresser, who employed twelve barbers, advertised thus in +1773: "Ladies shall be attended to in the polite constructions of rolls +such as may tend to raise their heads to any pitch they desire." + +The grotesqueness of such adornment found frequent ridicule in prose and +verse. One poet sang: + + "Give Chloe a bushel of horsehair and wool, + Of paste and pomatum a pound, + Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull + And gauze to encompass it round. + + "Of all the gay colours the rainbow displays + Be those ribbons which hang on her head, + Be her flowers adapted to make the folks gaze, + And about the whole work be they spread. + + "Let her flaps fly behind for a yard at the least, + Let her curls meet just under her chin, + Let those curls be supported to keep up the list, + With an hundred instead of one pin." + +We can easily see that after such rough treatment the hair needed +restoring waters; and indeed from earliest times hair-restorers and +hair-dyes did these "vain ancients" use. "Women with juice of herbs gray +locks disguised." In these days of manifold mysterious nostrums that +gild the head of declining age and make glad the waste places on bald +young masculine pates, let us read the simple receipts of the good old +times: + + "Take half a pound of Aqua Mellis in the Springtime of the Year, + warm a little of it every morning when you rise in a Sawcer, and + tie a little Spunge to a fine Box combe, and dip it in the water + and therewith moisten the roots of the hair in Combing it, and it + will grow long and thick and curled in a very short time." + + "Take three spoonfuls of Honey and a good handful of Vine Twigs + that twist like Wire, and beat them wel, and strain their Juyce + into the Honey and anoynt the Bald Places therewith." + +Here is what Captain Sam Ingersoll of Salem used, or at any rate had the +formula of, in 1685: + + "A Metson to make a mans heare groe when he is bald. Take sume fier + flies & sum Redd wormes & black snayls and sum hume bees and dri + them and pound them & mixt them in milk or water." + +These washes were not so expensive as Hirsutus or Tricopherous, but +quite as effective perhaps. There were hair-dyes, too, "to make hair +grow black though any other color," and the leaf that holds this +precious instruction is sadly worn and spotted with various tinted +inks, as though the words had been often read and copied: + + "Take a little Aqua Fortis, put therein a groat or sixpence, as to + the quantity of the aforesaid water, then set both to dissolve + before the fire, then dip a small Spunge in the said water, and wet + your beard or hair therewith, but touch not the skin." + +Hair-dressers also improved on nature. William Warden, a wig maker in +King Street, Boston, respectfully informed the ladies of that town that +he would "colour the hair on the head from a Red or any other +Disagreable Colour to a Dark Brown or Black." + +It did not matter long to our forefathers whether these hair-dyes dyed, +or hair-restorers restored, for a fashion hated by some of the early +Puritans as a choice device of Satan--the fashion of wig-wearing--was to +revolutionize the matter of masculine hair. The question of wigs was a +difficult one to settle, since the ministers themselves could not agree. +John Wilson and Cotton Mather wore them, but Rev. Mr. Noyes launched +denunciations at them from the pulpit and the Apostle Eliot delivered +many a blast against "prolix locks with boiling zeal," and he +stigmatized them as a "luxurious feminine protexity," but yielded sadly +later in life to the fact that the "lust for wigs is become +insuperable." The legislature of Massachusetts also denounced periwigs +in 1675, but all in vain. + +They were termed by one author "artificial deformed Maypowles fit to +furnish her that in a Stage play should represent some Hagge of Hell," +and other choice epithets were applied. To learn how these "Horrid +Bushes of Vanity" could be hated, let us hear the pages of Judge +Sewall's diary: + + "1701. Having last night heard that Joshua Willard had cut off his + hair (a very full head of hair) and put on a Wigg, I went to him + this morning. Told his mother what I came about and she call'd him. + I enquired of him what Extremity had forced him to put off his own + Hair and put on a Wigg? He answered none at all. But said that his + Hair was streight and that it parted behinde. Seem'd to argue that + men might as well shave their hair off their head, as off their + face. I answered men were men before they had any hair on their + faces (half of man-kind never have any). God seems to have ordain'd + our Hair as a Test, to see whether we can bring out to be content + at his finding: or whether we would be our own Carvers, Lords, and + come no more at Him. If we disliked our Skin or Nails; tis no + Thanks to us for all that we cut them not off.... He seem'd to say + would leave off his Wigg when his hair was grown. I spake to his + Father of it a day or two after. He thank'd me that had discoursed + his Son, and told me when his Hair was grown to cover his ears he + promised to leave off his Wigg. If he had known it would have + forbidden him." + +At a later day, though it was "gravaminous," Sewall would not go to hear +the bewigged Joshua preach, but attended another meeting. The Judge +frequently states his annoyance at the universally wigged condition of +New England. + +I never read of these wig-wearing times without fresh amaze at the +manner in which our sensible ancestors disfigured themselves. We read +such advertisements of mountebank head-gear as this, from the _Boston +News Letter_ of August 14, 1729: + + "Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott Barber, a light Flaxen + Naturall Wigg Parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow + Ribband is of a Red Pinck Colour. The Caul is in Rows of Red Green + & White." + +Twenty shillings reward was offered for this gay wig, and "if it be +offered for sale to any it is desired they wont stop it." Grafton +Fevergrure, the peruke-maker at the sign of the Black Wigg, lost a +"Light Flaxen Natural Wigg with a Peach-Blossom-coloured Ribband." In +1755 the house of barber Coes, of Marblehead, was broken into, and eight +brown and three grizzle wigs were stolen; some of these had "feathered +tops," some were bordered with red ribbon, some with purple. In 1754 +James Mitchel had white wigs and "grizzels." He asked £20 O. T. for the +best. "Light Grizzels are £15, dark Grizzels are £12 10s." Under date of +1731 we read of the loss of "a horsehair bobwig," and another with crown +hair, each with gray ribbon, an Indian hair bobwig with a light ribbon, +and a goat's hair natural wig with red and white ribbons. + +The "London Magazine" gave in 1753 a list of curious names of wigs: "The +pigeons wing, the comet, the cauliflower, the royal bird, the +staircase, the ladder, the brush, the wild boars back, the temple, the +rhinoceros, the crutch, the negligent, the chancellor, the out-bob, the +long-bob, the half-natural, the chain-buckle, the corded buckle, the +detached buckle, the Jasenist bob, the drop wigg, the snail back, the +spinage-seed, the artichoke." + +Hawthorne's list of New England wigs was shorter: "The tie, the +brigadier, the spencer, the albemarle, the major, the ramillies, the +grave full-bottom, and the giddy feather-top." To these let me add the +campaign, the neck-lock, the bob, the lavant, the vallaney, the +drop-wig, the buckle-wig, the bag-wig, the Grecian fly, the peruke, the +beau-peruke, the long-tail, the bob-tail, the fox-tail, the cut-wig, the +tuck-wig, the twist-wig, the scratch. Sydney says the name campaign was +applied to a wig which was imported from France in 1702, and was made +very full and curled eighteen inches to the front. This date cannot be +correct, when we find John Winthrop writing in 1695 for "two wiggs one a +campane, the other short." The Ramillies wig had a long plaited tail, +with a big bow at the top of the braid and a small one at the bottom. It +would be idle to attempt to describe all these wigs, how they swelled at +the sides, and turned under in rolls, and rose in puffs, and then shrank +to a small close wig that vanished at Revolutionary times in powdered +natural hair and a queue of ribbon, a bag, or an eel-skin, and finally +gave way to cropped hair "à-la-Brutus or à-la-Titus," as a Boston +hair-dresser advertised in the year 1800. + +Not only did gentlemen wear wigs, but children, servants, prisoners, +sailors, and soldiers also; as early certainly as 1716 the fashion was +universal. So great was the demand for this false head-gear, that wigs +were made of goat-hair and horse-hair, as well as human hair. The cost +of dressing and caring for wigs became a heavy item of expense to the +wearer, and income to the barber; often eight or ten pounds a year were +paid for the care of a single wig. Wigmakers' materials were expensive +also--"wig ribans, cauls, curling pipes, sprigg wyers, and wigg steels;" +and were advertised in vast numbers that show the universal prevalence +of the fashion. + +By the beginning of this century, women--having powdered and greased and +pulled their hair almost off their heads--were glad to wear their +remaining locks à-la-Flora or à-la-Virginia, or to wear wigs to simulate +these styles. We find Eliza Southgate Bowne writing thus to her mother +from Boston in the year 1800: + + "... Now Mamma what do you think I am going to ask for? A WIG. + Eleanor Coffin has got a new one just like my hair and only 5 + dollars. I must either cut my hair or have one. I cannot dress it + at all _stylish_. Mrs. Coffin bought Eleanor's and says that she + will write to Mrs. Sumner to get me one just like it. How much time + it will save--in one year! We could save it in pins and paper, + besides the _trouble_. At the Assembly I was quite ashamed of my + head, for nobody had long hair. If you will consent to my having + one do send me over a 5 dollar bill by the post immediately after + you receive this, for I am in hopes to have it for the next + Assembly--do send me word immediately if you can let me have one." + +This persuasive appeal was successful, for frequent references to the +wig appear in later letters. + +Though false teeth and the fashion of filling the teeth were known even +by the ancient Egyptians, the science of dentistry is a modern one. But +little care of the teeth was taken in early colonial days, and the +advice given for their preservation was very simple: + + "If you will keep your teeth from rot, plug, or aking, wash the + mouth continually with Juyce of Lemons, and afterwards rub your + teeth with a Sage Leaf and Wash your teeth after meat with faire + water. To cure Tooth Ach. 1. Take Mastick and chew it in your mouth + until it is as soft as Wax, then stop your teeth with it, if + hollow, there remaining till it's consumed, and it wil certainly + cure you. 2. The tooth of a dead man carried about a man presently + suppresses the pains of the Teeth." + +I suppose this latter ghoulish cure would not affect the teeth of a +woman; if, however, a seventeenth or eighteenth century dame could cure +the toothache simply with a plug of mastic, she was much to be envied by +her degenerate nineteenth-century sister with her long dentist's bill. + +If we can believe Josselyn, writing in 1684, New England women, then as +now, lost their teeth at an early age. He speaks of them as "pitifully +Tooth shaken." He recommended to relieve their misery a compound of +brimstone, gunpowder, and butter, to be "rubbed on the mandible." This +colonial remedy is still employed on New England farms. Burnaby, writing +in 1759, said that New England dames had universally and even +proverbially very indifferent teeth. The Abbé Robin says they were +toothless at eighteen or twenty years of age, and attributes this +premature disfigurement to tea-drinking and the eating of warm bread. + +When we read the composition of the tooth-powders and dentifrices used +in early colonial days, we wonder that they had any teeth left to scour. +Here is Mr. Ferene's "rare Dentifrice:" + + "First take eight ounces of Irios roots, also four ounces of + Pomistone, and eight ounces of Cutel Bone, also eight ounces of + Mother of Pearl, and eight ounces of Coral, and a pound of Brown + Sugar Candy, and a pound of Brick if you desire to make them red; + but he did oftener make them white, and then instead of the Brick + did take a pound of fine Alabaster; all this being thoroughly + beaten and sifted through a fine searse the powder is then ready + prepar'd to make up in a past which must be done as follows: + + To make the Said Powders into a past. + + Take a little Gum Dragant and lay it in steep twelve hours, in + Orange flower water or Damask Rose Water; and when it is dissolved + take the sweet Gum and grind it on a Marble Stone with the + aforesaid Powder, and mixing some crums of white bread it will come + into a past, the which you may make Dentifrices, of what shape or + fashion you please, but long rowles is the most commodious for your + use." + +Just fancy scouring your teeth with a commodious roll of cuttle-bone, +brick-dust, and pumice-stone! + +Another tooth-powder was composed of coral, Portugal snuff, Armenian +bole, "ashes of good tobacco which has been burnt," and gum myrrh; and +ground up "broken pans"--coarse earthenware might be substituted for the +coral. + +A very popular and much advertised tooth-wash was called "Dentium +Conservator." It was made and sold in New England by the manufacturer +and vendor of Bryson's Famous Bug Liquid--not an alluring companionship. +This person also "removed Stumps and unsound Teeth with a dexterity +peculiar to Himself at the Sign on the Leapord." There were also rival +Essences of Pearl advertised, each equally eulogized and disparaged; +"Infallible Sivit rendering the teeth white as alabaster tho' they be +black as Coal;" and "Very Neat Hawksbill and Key Draught Teeth Pullers." +These key-draught teeth-pullers were one of the cruellest instruments of +torture of the day, often breaking the jaw-bone, and always causing +unutterable anguish. Old Zabdiel Boylston advertised in the _News +Letter_, in 1712, "Powder to refresh the Gums & whiten the Teeth." There +were also sold "tooth-sopes, tooth-blanchs, tooth-rakes." + +I cannot find any notice of the sale of "teeth brushes" till nearly +Revolutionary times. Perhaps the colonists used, as in old England, +little brushes made of "dentissick root" or mallow, chewed into a +fibrous swab. + +I have seen no advertisements that strike a greater chill than the +scanty notices of early dentists and dentistry that appear at the latter +part of the past century. The glory of having a Revolutionary patriot +for a workman cannot soften the hard plainness of speech of this +advertisement in the _Boston Evening Post_ of September 26, 1768: + + "Whereas many Persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore + Teeth by Accident or Otherways to their great Detriment not only in + looks but in speaking both in public and private. This is to inform + all such that they may have them replaced with Artificial Ones that + look as well as the Natural and answer the End of Speaking by Paul + Revere Goldsmith near the head of Dr. Clarkes wharf. All Persons + who have had false Teeth Fixed by Mr. Jos Baker Surgeon Dentist and + They have got loose as they will in Time may have them fastened by + above said Revere who learnt the method of fixing them from Mr. + Baker." + +It will be remarked that these teeth were only to display and talk with, +and were but sorry helps in eating. This very appalling advertisement +from the _Massachusetts Centinel_ gives a clue to the way in which +missing teeth were replaced: "Live Teeth. Those Persons inclined to +dispose of Live Teeth may apply to Templeman." Or this from the +_Connecticut Courant_ of August 17, 1795: "A generous price paid for +Human Front Teeth perfectly sound, by Dr. Skinner." These "live teeth" +were inserted in other and vainer, if not more squeamish persons' +mouths, by a process of "in-grafting" which was much in vogue. There +were few New England dentists _eo nomine_ until well into this +century--but three in Boston in 1816. As silversmith and engraver Revere +also set teeth, so Isaac Greenwood, who waited at their houses on all +who required his dental services, also made umbrellas, sold cane for +hoop petticoats, and made dice and chessmen. Wm. Greenwood pulled teeth +and sold pianos; and Dr. Flagg, a surgeon dentist, advertised in 1797 +that he would get hand-organs in Europe suitable for church use. John +Templeman, the live-teeth purchaser, was a broker as well as a dentist; +and Whitlock, the actor, did a thriving dental business, and doubtless +carried his "neat hawksbill or key-draught tooth-wrench" to the +play-house, and used it, to his own profit and his fellow-townsmen's +misery, between the acts. + +Though the Pilgrim women were doubtless as simple at their toilet as +they were in their dress, the sudden growth of the colony in wealth +brought to their daughters, besides variety and richness of dress, a +love of cosmetics. Dunton tells positively of one painted face in Boston +in 1686. He said, "to hide her age she paints, and to hide her painting +dares hardly laugh." One New England minister thus reproved and warned +the women of his congregation: "At the resurrection of the Just there +will no such sight be met as the Angels carrying Painted Ladies in their +arms." + +In the inventory of one of the early Cambridge settlers, Robert Daniel, +is found the item "two Ceruse Jugs." Ceruse was a preparation of white +lead with which women then painted their faces, and I think these ceruse +jugs were part of the paraphernalia of my Lady Daniel's toilet-table. + +With the advent of newspapers came various advertisements that showed +the vanity of our forbears, the "collusions of women, their oyntments +and potticary drugs, and all their slibber sawces." + + "An Excellent Wash for the Skin which entirely taketh out all + Freckles Moath & Sunburn from the Face Neck & Hands, which with + Frequent Use adds a most Agreeable Lustre to the Complexion, + softens & beautifies the Skin to Admiration And is generally used + and approved of by most of the Gentry in London _of both Sexes_." + + "Best Face Powder which gives a fine Bloom to the Face which + answers all the intents of White Paint without that Pernicious + effect that attends Paint. Also a Composition to take off + Superficious Hair." + +The latter clause shows that our great-grandmothers were quite _au fait_ +with the nostrums of the present day, with "pargetting, painting, +slicking, glazing, and renewing old rivelled faces." + +Many pretty rules may be found in old books and diaries, that are of New +England, rules "to make the face fair" and to "make sweet the mouth." + + "Take the flowers of Rosemary and seeth them in VVhite VVine, with + which wash your face, and if you drink thereof it wil make you have + a sweet breath." + +Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the +early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's +milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were +to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a +"faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew. +Could this have been but a sly trick to get the lasses from their beds +betimes? We know the early hour at which Madam Pepys had to bathe her +mighty handsome face in the beautifying spring dew. + +Patches were worn as eagerly, apparently, by Boston as by London belles. +Whitefield complained of the jewels, patches, and gay apparel donned in +New England. In scores of old newspapers after 1760 appear notices of +the sale of "Face Patches," "Patch for Ladies," "Gum Patches," etc., and +the frequency of advertisement would indicate a popular and ready sale. + +With regard to the bathing habits of our ancestors but little can be +said, and but little had best be said. Charles Francis Adams writes, +with witty plainness, "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed +that which ranks next to godliness, then judged by the nineteenth +century standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth +century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they +lacked of the former." He says there was not a bath-room in the town of +Quincy prior to the year 1820. And of what use would pitchers or tubs of +water have been in bed-rooms in the winter time, when if exposed over +night solid ice would be found therein in the morning? The washing of +linen in New England homes was done monthly; it is to be hoped the +personal baths were more frequent, even under the apparent difficulties +of accomplishment. I must state, in truth, though with deep +mortification, that I cannot find in inventories even of Revolutionary +times the slightest sign of the presence of balneary appurtenances in +bed-rooms; not even of ewers, lavers, and basins, nor of pails and tubs. +As petty pieces of furniture, such as stools, besoms, framed pictures, +and looking-glasses are enumerated, this conspicuous absence of what we +deem an absolute necessity for decency speaks with a persistent and +exceedingly disagreeable voice of the unwashed condition of our +ancestors, a condition all the more mortifying when we consider their +exceeding external elegance in dress. This total absence of toilet +appliances does not of course render impossible a special lavatory or +bath-room in the house, or the daily importation to the bed-rooms of +hot-water cans, twiggen bottles, bath-tubs, and basins from other +portions of the house; but even that equipment would show a lack of +adequate bathing facilities. Nor do the tiny toilet jugs and basins of +Staffordshire ware that date from the first part of this century point +to any very elaborate ablutions. + +But these be parlous words an we wish to honor the memory of our New +England grandsires; and let us remember that these negative toilet +traits were not peculiar to them, but dated from the fatherland. A +century ago the English were said to be the only European people that +had the unenviable distinction of going to the dinner-table without +previously washing or "dressing" the hands. + +One very unpleasant cosmetic, or rather detergent, was in constant use, +however, throughout colonial times--wash-balls. They were imported as +early as 1693 in company with scented and plain hair-powder. In 1771, +"Gentlemen's Fine Washballs" were advertised in Boston, and "Scented +Marbled Washballs." Other varieties of these substitutes for soap were +Chemical, Greek, Venice, Marseilles, camphor, ambergris, and Bologna +wash-balls. This is a rule given in olden times for the "Composition for +Best Wash Balls:" + + "Take forty pounds of Rice in fine powder, twenty eight pounds of + fine flour, twenty eight pounds of starch powder, twelve pounds of + White Lead, and four pounds of Orris Root in fine powder but no + Whitening. Mix the whole well together and pass it through a fine + sieve, then place it in a dry place and keep it for use. Great care + must be taken that the Flour be not musty, in which case the Balls + will in time crack and fall to pieces. To this composition may be + added Dutch pink or brown fine damask powder according to the + colour required when the Wash Balls are quite dry." + +The effect of so large an amount of white lead must have been felt and +shown most deleteriously upon the complexion of the user of this +disagreeable compound. + +"Ipswitch balls"--also the mode--were more pleasing: + + "Take a pound of fine White Castill Sope; shave it thin in a pinte + of Rose water, and let it stand two or three dayes, then pour all + the water from it, and put to it a halfe a pinte of fresh water, + and so let it stand one whole day, then pour out that, and put to + it halfe a pinte more and let it stand a night more, then put to it + halfe an ounce of powder called sweet Marjoram, a quarter of an + ounce of Winter Savory, two or three drops of the Oil of Spike and + the Oil of Cloves, three grains of musk, and as much Ambergreese, + work all these together in a fair Mortar with the powder of an + Almond Cake dryed and beaten as small as fine flowre, so rowl it + round in your hands in Rose water." + +The favorite soap, if one can judge from importations, was "Brown or +Gray Bristol Sope," but this was not used by many in the community. The +manufacture of home-made soap, of soft soap, was one of the universal, +most important, and most trying of all the household industries. The +refuse grease of the family cooking was stowed away in an unsavory mass +till early spring, and the wood ashes from the fireplaces were also +stored. When the soap-making took place, the ashes were placed in a +leach tub out of doors. This tub was sometimes made from the section of +the bark of a birch tree; it was set loosely in a circular groove in a +base of wood, or preferably of stone. Water was poured on the ashes, and +the lye trickled from an outlet cut in the groove. The boiling of the +lye and grease was an ill-smelling process, which was also carried on +out of doors, and required an enormous amount of labor and patience. It +was judged that when the compound was strong enough to hold up an egg, +the soap was done. This strong soft soap was kept in a wooden "soap box" +in the kitchen, and used for toilet as well as household purposes. + +Dearly did the English and the New English love perfumes. They made +little rolls of sweet-scented powders and gums and oils, "as large as +pease," that they placed between rose-leaves and burned on coals in +skillets or in little perfume-holders to scent the room. They burned on +their open hearths mint and rose-leaves with sugar. They took the "maste +of sweet Apple trees gathered betwixt two Lady days," and with gums and +perfumes made bracelets and pomanders, "to keep to one a sweet smell." +They made cakes of damask rose-leaves and pulvilio, civit, and musk, of +"linet and ambergreese," to perfume their linen chests, for lavender +thrived not in New England. The duties of the still-room were the most +luxury-bearing of all the old household industries. Its very name brings +to us sweet scents of Araby, as it brought to our forbears the most +charming and nice of all their domestic occupations. But these duties +were not easy nor expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the +still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, +from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and +limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great +susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and +distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown +through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In +many an old garret now bare of such stores "mints still perfume the +air;" the very walls exhale "the homesick smell of dry forgotten herbs." + +From these old stills, these retorts and mills, came not only perfumes +and oils and beauty-waters, but half the medicines and diet-drinks, all +the "kitchen-physicke" of the domestic and even the professional +pharmacopæia. + +Perfumes were also imported; we frequently find advertised "Royal Honey +Water, an Excellent Perfume, good against Deafness, and to make the hair +grow as the directions Sets forth. 1s 6d per bottle and proportionate by +Ounce." Old Zabdiel Boylston had it in 1712. Spirit of Benjamin was also +for toilet uses. This was the base of the well-known scent known as +Queen Elizabeth's Perfume. It was combined with sweet marjoram. Lavender +water was apparently a great favorite for importation, and we find +notices of lavender bottles with shagreen cases. + +We find in newspaper days many advertisements of other toilet articles +such as nail-knippers, pick-tooth cases, silk and worsted powder-puffs, +deerskin powder bags, lip-salve, ivory scratch-backs, flesh brushes, +curling and pinching tongs, all showing a strongly crescent vanity and +love of luxury. + + + + +XIII + +RAIMENT AND VESTURE + + +We know definitely the dress of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, for +the inventory of the "Apparell for 100 men" furnished by the +Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628 is still in existence. From it we +learn that enough clothing was provided to supply to each emigrant four +"peare of shewes," four "peare of stockings," a "peare Norwich garters," +four shirts, two "sutes dublet and hose of leather lynd with oil'd skyn +leather, ye hose & dublett with hookes & eyes," a "sute of Norden +dussens or hampshire kersies lynd, the hose with skins, dublets with +lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys," four bands, two handkerchiefs, a +"wastcoate of greene cotton bound about with red tape," a leather +girdle, a Monmouth cap, a "black hatt lyned in the browes with lether," +five "Red knit capps mill'd about 5d a piece," two pair of gloves, a +mandillion "lyned with cotton," one pair of breeches and waistcoat, and +a "lether sute of Dublett & breeches of oyled lether," and one pair of +leather breeches and "drawers to serve to weare with both their other +sutes." + +This surely was a liberal outfit save perhaps in the matter of shirts +and handkerchiefs, and doubtless intended to last many years. Though +simple it was far from being a sombre one. Scarlet caps and green +waistcoats bound with red made cheerful bits of color alongside the +leather breeches and buff doublets on Salem shore. + +The apparel of the Piscataquay planters, furnished in 1635, varied +somewhat from that just enumerated. Their waistcoats were scarlet, and +they had cassocks of cloth and canvas, instead of doublets. Though +scarce more than a lustrum had passed since the settlement on the shores +of the Bay, long hose like the Florentine hose had become entirely +old-fashioned and breeches were the wear. Coats--"lynd coats, papous +coats, and moose coats"--had also been invented, or at any rate dubbed +with that name and assumed. Cassocks, doublets, and jerkins varied +little in shape, and the names seem to have been interchangeable. +Mandillions, said by some authorities to be cloaks, were in fact much +like the doublets, and were worn apparently as an over-garment or +great-coat. The name appears not in inventories after the earliest +years. + +Though simplicity of dress was one of the cornerstones of the Puritan +Church, the individual members did not yield their personal vanity +without many struggles. As soon as the colonies rallied from the first +years of poverty and, above all, of comparative isolation, and a sequent +tide of prosperity and wealth came rolling in, the settlers began to +pick up in dress, to bedeck themselves, to send eagerly to the mother +country for new petticoats and doublets that, when proudly donned, did +not seem simple and grave enough for the critical eyes of the omnipotent +New England magistrates and ministers. Hence restraining and simplifying +sumptuary laws were passed. In 1634, in view of some new fashions which +were deemed by these autocrats to be immodest and extravagant, this +order was sent forth by the General Court: + + "That no person either man or woman shall hereafter make or buy any + apparel, either woolen or silk or linen with any lace on it, + silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said + clothes. Also that no person either man or woman shall make or buy + any slashed clothes other than one slash in each sleeve and another + in the back; also all cut-works, embroideries, or needlework cap, + bands, and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn under + the aforesaid penalty; also all gold or silver girdles, hatbands, + belts, ruffs, beaverhats are prohibited to be bought and worn + hereafter." + +Liberty was thriftily given the planters, however, to "wear out such +apparel as they are now provided of except the immoderate great sleeves, +slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings," which latter +were apparently beyond Puritanical endurance. + +In 1639 "immoderate great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands +and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and capes" were added to the list +of tabooed garments. + +In 1651 the General Court again expressed its "utter detestation and +dislike that men or women of meane condition, education and callings +should take uppon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of gold or +silver lace or buttons or poynts at their knees, to walke in great +boots, or women of the same rank to wear silke or tiffany hoodes or +scarfes." + +Many persons were "presented" under this law; Puritan men were just as +fond of finery as were Puritan women. Walking in great boots proved +alluring to an illegal degree, just as did wearing silk and tiffany +hoods. But Puritan women fought hard and fought well for their fine +garments. In Northampton thirty-eight women were brought up at one time +before the court in 1676 for their "wicked apparell." One young miss, +Hannah Lyman, of Northampton, was prosecuted for "wearing silk in a +fflaunting manner, in an offensive way and garb, not only before but +when she stood presented, not only in Ordinary but Extraordinary times." + +We can easily picture sixteen-year-old Hannah, in silk bedight, inwardly +rejoicing at the unusual opportunity to fully and publicly display her +rich attire, and we can easily read in her offensive flaunting in court +a presage of the waning of magisterial power which proved a truthful +omen, for in six years similar prosecutions in Northampton, for +assumption of gay and expensive garments, were quashed. The ministers of +the day note sadly the overwhelming love of fashion that was crescent +throughout New England; a love of dress which neither the ban of +religion, philosophy, nor law could expel; what Rev. Solomon Stoddard +called, in 1675, "intolerable pride in clothes and hair." They were +never weary of preaching about dress, of comparing the poor Puritan +women to the haughty daughters of Judah and Jerusalem; saying +threateningly to their parishioners, as did Isaiah to the daughters of +Zion: + + "The Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments + about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the + moon. + + "The chains and the bracelets and the mufflers. + + "The bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the head-bands and + the tablets and the earrings. + + "The rings and nose jewels. + + "The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles and the wimples + and the crisping pins. + + "The glasses and the fine linen and the hoods and the vails." + +Every evil predicted by the prophet was laid at the door of these Boston +and Plymouth dames; fire and war and poor harvests and caterpillars, and +even baldness--but still they arrayed themselves in fine raiment, "drew +iniquity with a cord of vanity and sin with a cart-rope," and "walked +with outstretched necks and wanton eyes mincing as they go." + +As an exposition of the possibilities, or rather the actual +extensiveness, of a Puritanical feminine wardrobe at this date, let me +name the articles of clothing bequeathed by the will of Jane Humphrey, +who died in Dorchester, Mass., in 1668. I give them as they appear on +the list, but with the names of her heirs omitted. + + "Ye Jump. Best Red Kersey Petticoate, Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My + blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian + Wascote. A black Silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Apron. A + plain black Quoife without any lace. A white Holland Appron with a + small lace at the bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish + Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hood & muffe. My Green + Linsey Woolsey petticoate. My Whittle that is fringed & my Jump & + my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Apron. My best Quife + with a Lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A White Holland apron with + two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A greene Vnder Coate. + Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake & my blew + Wascote. My best White Apron, my best Shifts. One of my best + Neck-Cloaths, & one of my plain Quieus. One Callico Vnder Neck + Cloath. My fine thine Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A + square Cloath with a little lace on it. My greene Apron." + +It is pleasing to note in this list that not only the garments and +stuffs, but the very colors named, have an antique sound; and we read in +other inventories of such tints as philomot (feuillemort), gridolin +(gris-de-lin or flax blossom), puce color, grain color (which was +scarlet), foulding color, Kendal green, Lincoln green, watchet blue, +barry, milly, tuly, stammel red, Bristol red, sad color--and a score of +other and more fanciful names whose signification and identification +were lost with the death of the century. In later days Congress brown, +Federal blue, and Independence green show our new nation. + +This wardrobe of Jane Humphrey's was certainly a very pretty and a very +liberal outfit for a woman of no other fortune. But to have all one's +possessions in the shape of raiment did not in her day bear quite the +same aspect as it would at the present day. Many persons, men and women, +preferred to keep their property in the form of what they quaintly +called "duds." The fashion did not, in New England, wear out more +apparel than the man, for clothing, no matter what its cut, was worn as +long as it lasted, doing service frequently through three generations. +For instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, when she was over fifty +years old, receiving this bequest by will: "If she desire to have the +suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother, let her have +it upon appraisement." Hence we cannot wonder at clothing forming so +large a proportion of the articles bequeathed by will and named in +inventories; for all the colonists + + "... studied after nyce array, + And made greet cost in clothing." + +Nor can we help feeling that any woman should have been permitted to +have plenty of gowns in those days without being thought extravagant, +since a mantua-maker's charge for making a gown was but eight +shillings. + +Though the shops were full of rich stuffs, there was no ready-made +clothing for women for sale either in outside garments or in +under-linen. Occasionally, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, +we read the advertisement of a "vandoo" of "full-made gowns, petticoats +and sacs of a genteel lady of highest fashion"--a notice which reads +uncommonly like the "forced sales" of the present day of mock-outfits of +various kinds. + +About the middle of the century there began to appear "ready-made +clothes for men." Jolley Allen advertised such, and under that name, in +1768, "Coats, Silk Jackets, Shapes and Cloth Ditto; Stocking Breeches of +all sizes & most colours. Velvet Cotton Thickset Duroy Everlasting & +Plush Breeches. Sailors Great Coats, outside & inside Jackets, Check +Shirts, Frocks, long and wide Trowzers, Scotch bonnets & Blue mill'd +Shirts." But women's clothes were made to order in the town by mantua +makers, and in the country by travelling tailoresses and sempstresses, +or by the deft-fingered wearers. + +New England dames had no mode-books nor fashion-plates to tell to them +the varying modes. Some sent to the fatherland for "fire-new fashions in +sleeves and slops," for garments and head-gear made in the prevailing +court style; and the lucky possessors, lent these new-fashioned caps and +gowns and cloaks as models to their poorer or less fortunate neighbors. +A very taking way of introducing new styles and shapes to the new land +was through the importation by milliners and mantua-makers of dressed +dolls, or "babys" as they were called, that displayed in careful +miniature the fashions and follies of the English court. In the _New +England Weekly Journal_ of July 2, 1733, appears this notice: + + "To be seen at Mrs. Hannah Teatts Mantua Maker at the Head of + Summer Street Boston a Baby drest after the Newest Fashion of + Mantues and Night Gowns & everything belonging to a dress. Latilly + arrived on Capt. White from London, any Ladies that desire to see + it may either come or send, she will be ready to wait on 'em, if + they come to the House it is Five Shilling & if she waits on 'em it + is Seven Shilling." + +We can fancy the group of modish Boston belles and dames each paying +Hannah Teatts her five shillings, and like overgrown children eagerly +dressing and undressing the London doll and carefully examining and +noting her various diminutive garments. + +These fashion models in miniature effigy obtained until after +Revolutionary times. Sally McKean wrote to the sister of Dolly Madison, +in June, 1796: "I went yesterday to see a doll which has come from +England dressed to show the fashion"--and she then proceeds to describe +the modes thus introduced. + +We can gain some notion of the general shape of the dress of our +forbears at various periods from the portraits of the times. Those of +Madam Shrimpton and of Rebecca Rawson are among the earliest. They were +painted during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The dress is +not very graceful, but far from plain, showing no trace of Puritanical +simplicity; in fact, it is precisely that seen in portraits of English +well-to-do folk of the same date. Both have strings of beads around the +neck and no other jewels; both wear loosely tied and rather shapeless +flat hoods concealing the hair, Madam Shrimpton's having an embroidered +edge about two inches wide. Similar hoods are shown in Romain de Rooge's +prints of the landing of King William, on the women in the coronation +procession. They were like the Nithesdale hoods of Hogarth's prints, but +smaller. Both New English dames have also broad collars, stiff and ugly, +with uncurved horizontal lower edge, apparently trimmed with embroidery +or cut-work. Both show the wooden contour of figure, which was either +the fault of the artist's brush or of the iron busk of the wearer's +stays. The bodies are stiffly pointed, and the most noticeable feature +of the gown is the sleeve, consisting of a double puff drawn in just +above the elbow and confined by knots of ribbon; in one case with very +narrow ribbon loops. Randle Holme says that a sleeve thus tied in at the +elbow was called a virago sleeve. Madam Shrimpton's sleeve has also a +falling frill of embroidery and lace and a ruffle around the armsize. +The question of sleeves sorely vexed the colonial magistrates. Men and +women were forbidden to have but one slash or opening in each sleeve. +Then the inordinate width of sleeves became equally trying, and all were +ordered to restrain themselves to sleeves half an ell wide. Worse modes +were to come; "short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arm may be +discovered" had to be prohibited; and if any such ill-fashioned gowns +came over from London, the owners were enjoined to wear thick linen to +cover the arms to the wrist. Existing portraits show how futile were +these precautions, how inoperative these laws; arms were bared with +impunity, with complacency, and the presentment of Governor Wentworth +shows three slashes in his sleeve. + +Not only were the arms of New England women bared to an immodest degree, +but their necks also, calling forth many a "just and seasonable +reprehension of naked breasts." Though gowns thus cut in the pink of the +English mode proved too scanty to suit Puritan ministers, the fair +wearers wore them as long as they were in vogue. + +It is curious to note in the oldest gowns I have seen, that the method +of cutting and shaping the waist or body is precisely the same as at the +present day. The outlines of the shoulder and back-seams, of the bust +forms, are the same, though not so gracefully curved; and the number of +pieces is usually the same. Very good examples to study are the gorgeous +brocaded gowns of Peter Faneuil's sister, perfectly preserved and now +exhibited in the Boston Art Museum. + +Nor have we to-day any richer or more beautiful stuffs for gowns than +had our far-away grandmothers. The silks, satins, velvets, and brocades +which wealthy colonists imported for the adornment of their wives and +daughters, and for themselves, cannot be excelled by the work of modern +looms; and the laces were equally beautiful. Whitefield complained +justly and more than once of the "foolish virgins of New England covered +all over with the Pride of Life;" especially of their gaudy dress in +church, which the Abbé Robin also remarked, saying it was the only +theatre New England women had for the display of their finery. Other +clergymen, as Manasseh Cutler, noted with satisfaction that "the +congregation was dressed in a very tasty manner." + +In old New England families many scraps of these rich stuffs of colonial +days are preserved; some still possess ancient gowns, or coats, or +waistcoats of velvet and brocade. In old work-bags, bed-quilts, and +cushions rich pieces may be found. When we see their quality, color, and +design we fully believe Hawthorne's statement that the "gaudiest dress +permissible by modern taste fades into a Quakerlike sobriety when +compared with the rich glowing splendor of our ancestors." + +The royal governor and his attendants formed in each capital town a +small but very dignified circle, glittering with a carefully studied +reflection of the fashionable life of the English Court, and closely +aping English richness of dress. The large landed proprietors, such as +the opulent Narragansett planters, and the rich merchants of Newport, +Salem, and Boston, spent large sums annually in rich attire. In every +newspaper printed a century or a century and a quarter ago, we find +proof of this luxury and magnificence in dress; in the lists of the +property of deceased persons, in the long advertisements of milliners +and mercers, in the many notices of "vandoos." And the impression must +be given to every reader of letters and diaries of the times, of the +vast vanity not only of our grandmothers, but of our grandfathers. They +did indeed "walk in brave aguise." The pains these good, serious +gentlemen took with their garments, the long minute lists they sent to +European tailors, their loudly expressed discontent over petty +disappointments as to the fashion and color of their attire, their +evident satisfaction at becoming and rich clothing, all point to their +wonderful love of ostentation and their vanity--a vanity which fairly +shines with smirking radiance out of some of the masculine faces in the +"bedizened and brocaded" portraits of dignified Bostonians in Harvard +Memorial Hall, and from many of the portraits of Copley, Smibert, and +Blackburn. + +Here is a portion of a letter written by Governor Belcher to a London +tailor in 1733: + + "I have desired my brother, Mr. Partridge to get me some cloaths + made, and that you should make them, and have sent him the yellow + grogram suit you made me at London; but those you make now must be + two or three inches longer and as much bigger. Let 'em be workt + strong, as well as neat and curious. I believe Mr. Harris in + Spittlefields (of whom I had the last) will let you have the + grogram as good and cheap as anybody. The other suit to be of a + very good silk, such as may be the Queens birthday fashion, but I + don't like padisway. It must be a substantial silk, because you'll + see I have ordered it to be trimm'd rich, and I think a very good + white shagrine will be the best lining. I say let it be a handsome + compleat suit, and two pair of breeches to each suit." + +Picture to yourself the garb in which the patriot John Hancock appeared +one noonday in 1782: + + "He wore a red velvet cap within which was one of fine linen, the + last turned up two or three inches over the lower edge of the + velvet. He also wore a blue damask gown lined with velvet, a white + stock, a white satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin + small-clothes, white silk stockings and red morocco slippers." + +What gay peacock was this strutting all point-device in scarlet slippers +and satin and damask, spreading his gaudy feathers at high noon in sober +Boston streets!--was this our boasted Republican simplicity? And what +"fop-tackle" did the dignified Judge of the Supreme Court wear in Boston +at that date? He walked home from the bench in the winter time clad in a +magnificent white corduroy surtout lined with fur, with his judicial +hands thrust in a great fur muff. + +Fancy a Boston publisher going about his business tricked up in this +dandified dress--a true New England jessamy. + + He wore a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small-clothes, white + silk stockings and pumps fastened with silver buckles which covered + at least half the foot from instep to toe. His small-clothes were + tied at the knees with riband of the same color in double bows the + ends reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well loaded + with pomatum, frizzled or creped, and powdered; the ear locks had + undergone the same process. Behind his natural hair was augmented + by the addition of a large queue, called vulgarly the false tail, + which, enrolled in some yards of black riband, hung halfway down + his back. + +We must believe that the richest brocades, the finest lawn, the choicest +laces, the heaviest gold and silver buckles, did not adorn the persons +of New England dames and belles only; the gaudiest inflorescence of +color and stuffs shone resplendent on the manly figures of their +husbands and brothers. And yet these men were no "lisping hawthorn +buds," their souls were not in their clothes, or we had not the signers +of the Declaration of Independence and the heroes of the Revolution. + +The domination of French ideas in America after the Revolution found one +form of expression in French fashions of dress; and where New England +women had formerly followed English models and English reproductions of +French fashions, they now copied the French fashions direct, to the +improvement, I fancy, of their modes. Too many accounts and +representations exist of these comparatively recent styles to make it of +value to enter into any detail of them here. But another influence on +the dress of the times should be recorded. + +The sudden and vast development of the Oriental trade by New England +ship-owners is plainly marked by many changes in the stuffs imported and +in the dress of both men and women. Nankeens became at once one of the +chief articles of sale in drygoods shops. Though Fairholt says they were +not exported to America till 1825, I find them advertised in the _Boston +Evening Post_ of 1761. Shawls appeared in shopkeepers' lists. The first +notice that I have seen is in the _Salem Gazette_ of 1784--"a rich +sortment of shawls." This was at the very time when Elias Haskett +Derby--the father of the East India trade--was building and launching +his stout ships for Canton. We have a vast variety of stuffs nowadays, +but the list seems narrow and small when compared with the record of +Indian stuffs that came in such numbers a hundred years ago to Boston +and Salem markets. The names of these Oriental materials are nearly all +obsolete, and where the material is still manufactured it bears a +different appellation. A list of them will preserve their names and show +their number. Some may prove not to have been Indian, but were so called +in the days of their importation. + + Alrabads. Chowtahs. Neganepauts. + Anjungoes. Culgees. Nenapees. + Allejars. Chaffelaes. Nagurapaux. + Atlasses. Corottas. Oringals. + Addaties. Doreas. Paunchees. + Allibanies. Deribands. Patnas. + Anbraeahs. Doorguzzees. Pallampores. + Arradahs. Doodanies. Ponabaguzzies. + Budoys. Dorsatees. Persias. + Boglipores. Danadars. Peniascoes. + Bengals. Elatchies. Pagnas. + Briampaux. Emertees. Poppolis. + Bagatapaux. Gurrahs. Photaes. + Bumrums. Guzzinahs. Pelongs. + Bulschauls. Goaconcheleras. Quilts. + Brawls. Gurraes. Romalls. + Bafraes. Gelongs. Rehings. + Bejauraupauts. Ginghams. Seersuckers. + Bafts. Gunieas. Sallampores. + Baguzzees. Humhums. Soraguzzes. + Betelles. Humadies. Soofeys. + Byrampauts. Izzarees. Seerbettees. + Cushlas. Jollopours. Sannoes. + Coffies. Jandannies. Seerindams. + Chinachurry Januwars. Shalbafts. + Cherrydarry. Luckhouris. Seerbands. + Chilloes. Lemmones. Succatums. + Chints. Lungees. Starrets. + Cutthees. Mamoodies. Terindams. + Cossas. Mahmudihiaties. Tapseils. + Chenarize. Mugga-Mamoochis. Tanjeebs. + Chittabullus. Mickbannies. Tepoys. + Coopees. Masaicks. Tainsooks. + Callowaypoose. Moorees. Taffatties. + Cuttanees. Mowsannas. Tapis. + Carradaries. Mulmouls. Tarnatams. + Cheaconies. Mulye-Gungee. Taundah-Khassah. + Chucklaes. Nicanees. Tandarees. + Cadies. Nillaes. + + + + +XIV + +DOCTORS AND PATIENTS + + +There lies before me a leather-bound, time-stained, dingy little quarto +of four hundred and fifty pages that was printed in the year 1656. Its +contents comprise three parts or books. First, "The Queens Closet +Opened, or The Pearl of Practise: Accurate, Physical, and Chirurgical +Receipts." Second, "A Queens Delight, or The Art of Preserving, +Conserving, and Candying, as also a Right Knowledge of Making Perfumes +and Distilling the most Excellent Waters." Third, "The Compleat Cook, +Expertly Prescribing the most ready wayes, whether Italian, Spanish, or +French, For Dressing of Flesh and Fish, Ordering of Sauces, or Making of +PASTRY"--pastry in capitals, as is due so distinguished an article and +art. + +This conjunction of leechcraft and cooking was in early days far from +being considered demeaning to the healing art. A great number of the +cook-books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were written by +physicians. Dr. Lister, physician to Queen Anne, wrote plainly, "I do +not consider myself as hazarding anything when I say no man can be a +good physician who has not a competent knowledge of cookery." + +The book contains a long, pompous preface, in which it is asserted that +these receipts were collected originally for her "distress'd Soveraigne +Majesty the Queen"--Henrietta Maria; that they had been "laid at her +feet by Persons of Honour and Quality;" and that since false and poor +copies had been circulated during her banishment, and the compiler, who +fell with the court, was not able to render his beloved queen any +further service, he felt that he could at least "prevent all +disservices" by giving in print to her friends these true rules. Thus +could he keep the absent queen in their minds; and also he could give a +fair copy to her, since she had lost her receipts in her flight. + +Though Agnes Strickland stated that copies of this Queens Closet Opened +are exceedingly rare in England, several are preserved in old New +England families, some of them the descendants of colonial physicians; +and the book may be shown as a fair example of the methods of practice +and composition of prescriptions in colonial and provincial days. + +This volume of mine was one of those which were not fated to dwell among +"Persons of Honour and Quality" in old England; it crossed the waters to +the new land with simpler folk, and was for many years the +pocket-companion of an old New England doctor. Two names are carefully +written on the inside of the cover of my book, names of past owners: +"Edward Talbot, His Book," is in the most faded ink, and "William +Morse, His Book, in the y'r 1710, Boston." A musty, leathery smell +pervades and exhales from the pages, and is mingled with whiffs of an +equally ancient and more penetrating odor, that of old drugs and +medicines; for many a journey over bleak hills and lonely dales has the +book made, safely reposing at the bottom of its owner's pocket, or lying +cheek by jowl with the box of drugs and medicines, and case of lancets +in his ample saddlebags. + +This country doctor, like others of his profession at the same date, had +not studied deeply in college and hospital; nor had he taken any long +course of instruction in foreign schools and universities. When he had +decided to become a doctor, he had simply ridden with an old, +established physician--ridden literally--in a half-menial, half-medical +capacity. He had cared for the doctor's horse, swept the doctor's +office, run the doctor's errands, pounded drugs, gathered herbs, and +mixed plasters, until he was fitted to ride for himself. Then he had +applied to the court and received a license to practise--that was all. I +doubt not that this book of mine, and perhaps a manuscript collection of +recipes and prescriptions, and a few Latin treatises that he could +hardly decipher, formed his entire pharmacop[oe]ia. As he had chanced to +inherit a small fortune from a relative, he became a physician of some +note; for in colonial days wealth and position were as essential as were +learning and experience, to enable one to become a good doctor. + +I like to think of the rich and pompous old doctor a-riding out to see +his patients, clad in his suit of sober brown or claret color with +shining buttons made of silver coins. The full-skirted coat had great +pockets and flaps, as had the long waistcoat that reached well over the +hips. Knee-breeches dressed his shapely legs, while fine silk stockings +and buckled shoes displayed his well-turned calves and ankles. On his +head he wore a cocked hat and wig. He owned and wore in turn wigs of +different sizes and dignity--ties, periwigs, bags, and bobs. His +portrait was painted in a full-bottomed wig that rivalled the Lord +Chancellor's in size; but his every-day riding-wig was a rather +commonplace horsehair affair with a stiff eel-skin cue. One wig he lost +by a mysterious accident while attending a patient who was lying ill of +a fever, of which the crisis seemed at hand. The doctor decided to +remain all night, and sat down by a table in the sick man's room. The +hours passed slowly away. Physician and nurse and goodwife talked and +droned on; the sick man moaned and tossed in his bed, and begged +fruitlessly for water. At last the room grew silent, the tired watchers +dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his +eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the +table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and +when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room +collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the +valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking +around for his wig; while the sick man, who had jumped out of bed in +the confusion and captured a pitcher of water, drunk half the contents, +and thrown the remainder over the doctor's head, was lying behind the +bed curtains laughing hysterically at the ridiculous appearance of the +man of medicine. Instant death was predicted for the invalid, who, +strange to say, either from the laughter or the water, began to recover +from that moment. The terrified physician was uncertain whether he ought +to attribute the conflagration of his wig to a violent demonstration of +the devil in his effort to obtain possession of the sick man's soul, or +to the powerful influence of some conjunction of the planets, or to the +new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered +and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with +in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved +of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it +was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as +to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one +of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running +thence up through his wig, thus warding off further alarming +demonstration. Ere this was done the mystery of the explosion was +solved. When the doctor's new wig arrived from Boston, he ordered his +newly purchased negro servant to powder it well ere it was worn. He was +horrified to see Pompey give the wig a liberal sprinkling of gunpowder +from the powder-horn, instead of starch from the dredging-box; and the +explosion of the old wig was no longer assigned to diabolical, +thaumaturgical, or meteorological influences. + +Let us turn from the doctor and the wig to the book; let us see what he +did when he singed his head and burnt his face. He whipped my little +book out of his pocket and turned to page 77; there he was told to make +"Oyl of Eggs. Take twelve yolks of eggs and put them in a pot over the +fire, and let them stand until you perceive them to turn black; then put +them in a press and press out the Oyl." Or he could make "Oyl of Fennel" +if he preferred it. But probably the New England goodwife had on hand +one of the dozen astounding salves described in the book, that the +doctor had ere this instructed her to make, and in which I trust he +found due relief. + +One cannot wonder that the sick man craved water, when we read what he +had had to drink. He had been given, a spoonful at a time, this +"Comfortable Juleb for a Feaver," made of "Barley Water & White Wine +each one pint, Whey one quart, two ounces of Conserves of Barberries, +and the Juyces of two limmons and 2 Oranges." The doctor had also taken +(if he had followed his Pearl of Practice) "two Salt white herrings & +slit them down the back and bound them to the soles of the feet" of his +patient; and I doubt not he had bled the sufferer at once, for he always +bled and purged on every possible occasion. + +The Water of Life was also given for fevers, a few drops at a time, and +also as a tonic in health. + + "Take Balm leaves and stalks, Betony leaves and flowers, Rosemary, + red sage, Taragon, Tormentil leaves, Rossolis and Roses, Carnation, + Hyssop, Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves + and root, red Mints, of each a handful; bruise these hearbs and put + them in a great earthern pot, & pour on them enough White Wine as + will cover them, stop them close, and let them steep for eight or + nine days; then put to it Cinnamon, Ginger, Angelica-seeds, Cloves, + and Nuttmegs, of each an ounce, a little Saffron, Sugar one pound, + Raysins solis stoned one pound, the loyns and legs of an old Coney, + a fleshy running Capon, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of + Mutton, four young Chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve + Eggs, a loaf of White-bread cut in sops, and two or three ounces of + Mithridate or Treacle, & as much Muscadine as will cover them all. + Distil al with a moderate fire, and keep the first and second + waters by themselves; and when there comes no more by Distilling + put more Wine into the pot upon the same stuffe and distil it + again, and you shal have another good water. This water + strengtheneth the Spirit, Brain, Heart, Liver, and Stomack. Take + when need is by itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with + Sugar." + +Who could doubt that it strengthened the spirit, especially when taken +with ale or wine? Plainly here do we see the need of a doctor being a +good cook. But what pot would hold all that flesh and fowl, that +blooming flower-garden of herbs and posies, that assorted lot of fruits +and spices, to say nothing of the muscadine? + +Our ancestors spared no pains in preparing these medicines. They did +not, shifting all responsibility, run to a chemist or apothecary with a +little slip of paper; with their own hands they picked, pulled, pounded, +stamped, shredded, dropped, powdered, and distilled, regardless of +expense, or trouble, or hard work. Truly they deserved to be cured. They +did not measure the drugs with precision in preparing their medicines, +as do our chemists nowadays, nor were their prescriptions written in +Latin nor with cabalistic marks--the asbestos stomachs and colossal +minds of our forefathers were much above such petty minuteness; nor did +they administer the doses with exactness. "The bigth of a walnut," +"enough to lie on a pen knifes point," "the weight of a shilling," +"enough to cover a French crown," "as bigg as a haslenut," "as great as +a charger," "the bigth of a Turkeys Egg," "a pretty draught," "a pretty +bunch of herbs," "take a little handful," "take a pretty quantity as +often as you please"--such are the lax directions that accompany these +old prescriptions. + +Of course, the remedies given in this book were largely for the diseases +of the day. Physicians and parsons, lords and ladies, combined to +furnish complex and elaborate prescriptions and perfumes to cure and +avert the plague; and the list includes one plague-cure that the Lord +Mayor had from the Queen, and I may add that it is a particularly +unpleasant and revolting one. A plague swept through New England and +decimated the Indian tribes; and though it was not at all like the great +plague that devastated London, I doubt not red man and white man took +confidingly and faithfully medicines such as are given in this little +book of mine: the king's feeble and much-vaunted dose of "White Wine, +Ginger, Treacle, and Sage;" Dr. Atkinson's excellent perfume against the +Plague, of "Angelica roots and Wine Vinegar, that if taken fasting, your +breath would kill the Plague" (it must have been a fearful dose); "Mr. +Fenton's the Chirurgeon's Posset and his Sedour Root." + +Cures for small-pox and for gout are many. Varied are the lotions for +the "pin and web in the eye;" so many are there of these that it makes +me suspect that our forefathers were sadly sore-eyed. + +One very prevalent ail that our ancestors had to endure (if we can judge +from the number of prescriptions for its relief) was a "cold stomack;" +literally cold, one might think, since most of the cures were by +external application. Lady Spencer used a plebeian "greene turfe of +grasse" to warm her stomach, with the green side, not the dirt side, +placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she +was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon +her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities" +that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure +pain and coldness of the stomach. Thus did like cure like. A +"Restorative Bag" of herbs and spices heated in "boyl'd Vinegar" is +asserted to be "comfortable." "It must be as hot as can be endured, and +keep yourself from studying and musing and it will comfort you much." So +it seems you ought not to study nor to muse if your stomach be cold. + +Many and manifold are the remedies to "chear the heart," to "drive +melancholy," to "cure one pensive," "for the megrums," "for a grief;" +and without doubt the lonely colonists often needed them. We know, too, +that "things ill for the heart were beans, pease, sadness, onions, +anger, evil tidings, and loss of friends,"--a very arbitrary and unjust +classification. Melancholy was evidently regarded as a disease, and a +much-to-be-lamented one. External applications were made to "drive the +worms out of the Brain as well as Dross out of the Stomack." Here is "A +pretious water to revive the Spirits:" + + "Take four gallons of strong Ale, five ounces of Aniseeds, + Liquorish scraped half a pound, Sweet Mints, Angelica, Eccony, + Cowslip flowers, Sage & Rosemary Flowers, sweet Marjoram, of each + three handfuls, Palitory of the VVal one handful. After it is + fermented two or three dayes, distil it in a Limbeck, and in the + water infuse one handful of the flowers aforesaid, Cinnamon and + Fennel-seed of each half an ounce, Juniper berries bruised one + dram, red Rosebuds, roasted Apples & dates sliced and stoned, of + each half a pound; distil it again and sweeten it with some + Sugarcandy, and take of Ambergreese, Pearl, Red Coral, Hartshorn + pounded, and leaf Gold, of each half a Dram, put them in a fine + Linnen bag, and hang them by a thread in a Glasse." + +Think of taking all that trouble to make something to cheer the spirits, +when the four gallons of strong ale with spices would have fully +answered the purpose, without bothering with the herbs and fruits. I +suppose the gold and jewels were particularly cheering ingredients, and +perhaps entitled the drink to its name of precious water. Indeed, it +would be cheering to the spirits nowadays to have the precious metals +and gems that were so lavishly used in these ancient medicines. + +Full jewelled were the works of English persons of quality in the time +of the Merry Monarch and his sire. The gold and gems were not always +hung in bags in the medicines; frequently they were powdered and +dissolved, and formed a large portion of the dose. Like Chaucer's +Doctour, they believed that "gold in phisike is a cordial." Dr. +Gifford's "Amber Pils for Consumption" contained a large quantity of +pearls, white amber, and coral, as did also Lady Kent's powder. Sir +Edward Spencer's eye-salve was rich in powdered pearls. The Bishop of +Worcester's "admirable curing powder" was composed largely of "ten skins +of snakes or adders or Slow worms" mixed with "Magistery of Pearls." The +latter was a common ingredient, and under the head of "Choice Secrets +Made Known" we are told how to manufacture it: + + "Dissolve two or three ounces of fine seed Pearl in distill'd + Vinegar, and when it's perfectly dissolved and all taken up, pour + the Vinegar into a clean glasse Bason; then drop some few drops of + oyl of Tartar upon it, and it will call down the Pearl into the + powder; then pour the Vinegar clean off softly; then put to the + Pearl clear Conduit or Spring water; pour that off, and do so + often until the taste of the Vinegar and Tartar be clean gone; then + dry the powder of Pearl upon warm embers and keep for your use." + +Gold and precious stones were specially necessary "to ease the passion +of the Heart," as indeed they are nowadays. In that century, however, +they applied the mercenary cure inwardly, and prepared it thus: + + "Take Damask Roses half-blown, cut off thier whites, and stamp them + very fine, and straine out the Juyce very strong; moisten it in the + stamping with a little Damask Rose water; then put thereto fine + powder Sugar, and boyl it gently to a fine Syrup; then take the + Powders of Amber, Pearl, Rubies, of each half a dram, Ambergreese + one scruple, and mingle them with the said syrup till it be + somewhat thick, and take a little thereof on a knifes point morning + and evening." + +I can now understand the reason for the unceasing, the incurable +melancholy that hung like a heavy black shadow over so many Puritan +divines in the early days of New England, as their gloomy sermons, their +sad diaries and letters, plainly show. Those poor ministers had no +chance to use these receipts and thus get cured of "worms in the brain," +with annual salaries of only £60, which they had to take in corn, wheat, +codfish, or bearskins, in any kind of "country pay," or even in wampum, +in order to get it at all. Rubies and pearls and gold and coral were +scarce drugs in clerical circles in Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth +plantations. Even amber and ivory were far from plentiful. We find John +Winthrop writing in 1682, "I am straitened, having no ivory beaten, +neither any pearle nor corall." Cleopatra drinks were out of fashion in +the New World. So Mather and Hooker and Warham were condemned to die +with uncheered spirits and unjewelled stomachs. + +Another ingredient, unicorns' horns, which were ground and used in +powders, must have been difficult to obtain in New England, although I +believe Governor Winthrop had one sent to him as a gift from England; +and John Endicott, writing to him in 1634, said: "I have sent you Mrs +Beggarly her Vnicorns horne & beza stone." Both the unicorn's horn and +the bezoar stone were sovereign antidotes against poison. At another +time Winthrop had sent to him "bezoar stone, mugwort, orgaine, and +galingall root." Ambergris was also too rare and costly for American +Puritans to use, though we find Hull writing for golden ambergroose. + +Insomnia is not a bane of our modern civilization alone. This little +book shows that our ancestors craved and sought sleep just as we do. +Here is a prescription to cure sleeplessness, which might be tried by +any wakeful soul of modern times, since it requires neither rubies, +pearls, nor gold for its manufacture: + + "Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water, + & make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill, + and it will cause sleep." + +So aniseed bags were used in earlier days for a purpose very different +from our modern one; if your nineteenth century nose should refuse to +accustom itself to having bags hung on it, you can "Chop Chammomile & +crumbs of Brown Bread smal and boyl them with White Wine Vinegar, stir +it wel and spred it on a cloth & binde it to the soles of the feet as +hot as you can suffer it." And if that should not make you sleepy, there +are frankincense-perfumed paper bags for your head, and some very +pleasant things made of rose-leaves for your temples, and hard-boiled +eggs for the nape of your neck--you can choose from all of these. + +They had abounding faith in those days. Several of the prescriptions in +"The Queen's Closet" are to cure people at a remote distance, by +applying the nostrums to a linen cloth previously wet with the patient's +blood. They had plasters of power to put on the back of the head to draw +the palate into place; and wonderful elixirs that would keep a dying man +alive five years; and herb-juices to make a dumb man speak. The +following suggestion shows plainly their confiding spirit: + + "To Cure Deafnesse. Take the Garden Dasie roots and make juyce + thereof, and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster & + drop three or four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three + or four dayes together." + +"Simpatheticall" medicines had a special charm for all the Winthrops, +and that delightful but gullible old English alchemist, Sir Kenelm +Digby, kept them well posted in all the newest nonsense. + +In a medical dispensatory of the times the different varieties of +medicines used in New England are enumerated. They are leaves, herbs, +roots, barks, seeds, flowers, juices, distilled waters, syrups, juleps, +decoctions, oils, electuaries, conserves, preserves, lohocks, ointments, +plasters, poultices, troches, and pills. These words and articles are +all used nowadays, except the lohock, which was to be _licked up_, and +in consistency stood in the intermediate ground between an electuary and +a syrup. These terms, of course, were in the Galenic practice. In "The +Queen's Closet" all the physic was found afield, with the exception of +the precious metals and one compound, rubila, which was made of antimony +and nitre, and which was in special favor in the Winthrop family--as +many of their letters show. They sent it and recommended it to their +friends--and better still, they took it faithfully themselves, and with +most satisfactory results. + +There was also one mineral "oyntment" made of quicksilver, verdigris, +and brimstone mixed with "barrows grease," which was good for "horse, +man, or other beast." Alum and copperas were once recommended for +external use. The powerful "plaister of Paracelsus," also beloved of the +Winthrops, was not composed of mineral drugs, as might be supposed, but +was made of herbs, and from the ingredients named must have been +particularly nasty smelling as well as powerful. + +The medicine mithridate forms a part of many of these prescriptions; it +does not seem to be regarded as an alexipharmic, but as a soporific. It +is said to have been the cure-all of King Mithridates. I will not give +an account of the process of its manufacture; it would fill about three +pages of this book, and I should think it would take about six weeks to +compound a good dose of it. There are forty-five different articles +used, each to be prepared by slow degrees and introduced with great +care; some of them (such as the rape of storax, camel's hay, and bellies +of skinks) must have been inconvenient to procure in New England. +Mithridates would hardly recognize his own medicine in this +conglomeration, for when Pompey found his precious receipt it was simple +enough: "Pound with care two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of +rice, and a grain of salt." I think we might take this _cum grano +salis_. + +Queer were the names of some of the herbs; alehoof, which was +ground-ivy, or gill-go-by-ground, or haymaids, or twinhoof, or +gill-creep-by-ground, and was an herb of Venus, and thus in special use +for "passions of the heart," for "amorous cups," which few Puritans +dared to meddle with. The blessed thistle, of which one scandalized old +writer says, "I suppose the name was put upon it by them that had little +holiness themselves." Clary, or clear-eye, or Christ's-eye, which latter +name makes the same writer indignantly say, "I could wish from my soul +that blasphemy and ignorance were ceased among physicians"--as if the +poor doctors gave these folk-names! The crab-claws so often mentioned +was also an herb, otherwise known as knight's-pond water and +freshwater-soldier. The mints to flavor were horsemint, spearmint, +peppermint, catmint, and heartmint. + +The earliest New England colonists did not discover in the new country +all the herbs and simples of their native land, but the Indian powwows +knew of others that answered every purpose--very healing herbs too, as +Wood in his "New England's Prospects" unwillingly acknowledges and thus +explains: "Sometimes the devill for requitall of their worship recovers +the partie to nuzzle them up inn thier devilish Religion." The planters +sent to England for herbs and drugs, as existing inventories show; and +they planted seeds and soon had plenty of home herbs that grew apace in +every dooryard. The New Haven colony passed a law at an early date to +force the destruction of a "great stinking poisonous weed," which is +said to have been the _Datura stramonium_, a medicinal herb. It had been +brought over by the Jamestown colonists, and had spread miraculously, +and was known as "Jimson" or Jamestown weed. + +Josselyn gives in his "New England's Rarities" an interesting list of +the herbs known and used by the colonists. Cotton Mather said the most +useful and favorite medicinal plants were alehoof, garlick, elder, sage, +rue, and saffron. Saffron has never lost its popularity. To this day +"saffern tea" is a standing country dose in New England, especially for +the "jarnders." Elder, rue, and saffron were English herbs that were +made settlers here and carefully cultivated; so also were sage, hyssop, +tansy, wormwood, celandine, comfrey, mallows, mayweed, yarrow, +chamomile, dandelion, shepherd's-purse, bloody dock, elecampane, +motherwort, burdock, plantain, catnip, mint, fennel, and dill--all now +flaunting weeds. Dunton wrote, with praise of a Dr. Bullivant, in +Boston, in 1686, "He does not direct his patients to the East Indies to +look for drugs when they may have far better out of their gardens." + +There is a charm in these medical rules in my old book, in spite of the +earth-worms and wood-lice and adders and vipers in which some of them +abound (to say nothing of other and more shocking ingredients). In +surprising and unpleasant compounds they do not excel the prescriptions +in a serious medical book published in Exeter, New Hampshire, as late as +1835. Nor is Cotton Mather's favorite and much-vaunted ingredient +_millepedes_, or sowbugs, once mentioned within. All are not vile +in my Queen's Closet--far from it. Medicines composed of Canary wine +or sack, with rose-water, juice of oranges and lemons, syrup of +clove-gillyflower, loaf sugar, "Mallago raisins," nutmegs, cloves, +cinnamon, mace, remind me strongly of Josselyn's New England Nectar, and +render me quite dissatisfied with our modern innovations of quinine, +antipyrine, and phenacetin, and even make only passively welcome the +innocuous and uninteresting homo[eo]pathic pellet and drop. + +Many other dispensatories, guides, collections, and records of medical +customs and concoctions, remain to us even of the earliest days. We have +the private receipt-book of John Winthrop, a gathering of choice +receipts given to him in manuscript by one Stafford, of England. These +receipts have been printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts +Historical Society for the year 1862, with delightful notes by Dr. +Oliver Wendell Holmes, and are of the same nature as those in the +Queen's Closet. Here is one, which was venomous, yet harmless enough: + + "My black powder against ye plague, small-pox, purples, all sorts + of feavers, Poyson; either by way of prevention or after Infection. + In the Moneth of March take Toades, as many as you will, alive; + putt them into an Earthen pott, so yt it be halfe full; Cover it + with a broad tyle or Iron plate, then overwhelme the pott, so yt ye + bottome may be uppermost; putt charcoals round about it and over it + and in the open ayre not in an house; sett it on fire and lett it + burne out and extinguish of itself; when it is cold take out the + toades; and in an Iron morter pound them very well; and searce + them; then in a Crucible calcine them; So againe; pound them & + searce them again. The first time they will be a brown powder, the + next time blacke. Of this you may give a dragme in a Vehiculum or + drinke Inwardly in any Infection taken: and let them sweat upon it + in their bedds: but let them not cover their heads; especially in + the Small-Pox. For prevention half a dragme will suffice." + +I do not know what meteorological influence was assigned to the month of +March; perhaps it was chosen because toads would be uncommonly hard to +get in New England during that month. + +All the medicines in Dr. Stafford's little collection were not, +however, so unalluring, and were, on the whole, very healing and +respectable. He prescribed nitre, antimony, rhubarb, jalap, and +spermaceti, "the sovereignest thing on earth--for an inward bruise;" and +he also culled herbs and simples in vast variety. He gave some very good +advice regarding the conduct of a physician, the latter clause of which +might well be heeded to-day. + + "Nota bene. No man can with a good Conscience take a fee or Reward + before ye partie receive benefit apparent and then he is not to + demand anything but what God shall putt it into the heart of the + partie to give him. A man is not to neglect that partie to whom he + had once administered but to visit him at least once a day & to + medle with no more than he can well attend." + +The account books of other old New England physicians, and other medical +books such as "A Treatise of Choice Spagyrical Preparations," show to us +that the seventeenth and eighteenth century medicines, though +disgusting, were not deadly. We know what medicines were given the +colonists on their sea journey hither: "Oil of Cloves, Origanum, Purging +Pills, and Ressin of Jalap" for the toothache; a Diaphoretic Bolus for +an "Extream Cold;" Spirits of Castor and Oil of Amber for "Histericall +Fitts;" "Seaurell Emplaisters for a broken Shin;" and for other +afflictions, "Gascons Powder, Liquorish, Carminative Seeds, Syrup of +Saffron, Pectoral Syrups and Somniferous Boluses." + +Cod livers were given then as cod-liver oil is given now, "to restore +them that have melted their Grease." A favorite prescription was +"Rulandus, his Balsam which tho' it smel not wel" was properly powerful, +and could be gotten down if carefully hidden in "poudered shuger." + +Cotton Mather, who tried his skilful hand at writing upon almost every +grave and weighty subject, composed a book of medical advice called the +"Angel of Bethesda." It was written when he was sixty years of age, but +was never printed; the manuscript is preserved in the library of the +American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It begins characteristically +with a sermon, and is fantastically peppered with pompous scriptural and +classical quotations, as was the Mather wont. The ingredients of the +prescriptions are vile beyond belief, though, as Mather said in one of +his letters, they are "powerful and parable physicks," which are two +desirable qualities or attributes of any physic. The book gives an +interesting account of Mather's share in that great colonial revolution +in medicine--the introduction of the custom of inoculation for the +small-pox. His friend, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, of Boston, was the first +physician to inaugurate this great step by inoculating his own son--a +child six years old. Deep was the horror and aversion felt by the +colonial public toward both the practice and practitioners of this +daring innovation, and fiercely and malignantly was it opposed; but its +success soon conquered opposition, and also that fell disease, which six +times within a hundred years had devastated New England, bringing +death, disfigurement, and business misfortunes to the colonists. So +universal was the branding produced by this scourge that scarcely an +advertisement containing any personal description appears in any +colonial print, without containing the words, pock-fretten, pock-marked, +pock-pitted, or pock-broken. + +Through the possibility of having the small-pox to order, arose the +necessity of small-pox hospitals, to which whole families or parties +resorted to pass through the ordeal in concert. Small-pox parties were +made the occasion of much friendly intercourse; they were called +classes. Thus in the _Salem Gazette_ of April 22, 1784, after Point +Shirley was set aside as a small-pox retreat, it was advertised that +"Classes will be admitted for Small pox." These classes were real +country outings, having an additional zest of novelty since one could +fully participate in the pleasures, profits, and pains of a small-pox +party but once in a lifetime. Much etiquette and deference was shown +over these "physical gatherings," formal invitations were sometimes sent +to join the function at a private house. Here is an extract from a +letter written July 8, 1775, by Joseph Barrell, a Boston merchant, to +Colonel Wentworth: "Mr. Storer has invited Mrs. Martin to take the +small-pox in her house; if Mrs. Wentworth desires to get rid of her +fears in the same way we will accommodate her in the best way we can. +I've several friends that I've invited, and none of them will be more +welcome than Mrs. Wentworth." These brave classes took their various +purifying and sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, were "grafted" +together, "broke out" together, were feverish together, sweat together, +scaled off together, and convalesced together. Not a very prepossessing +conjoining medium would inoculation appear to have been, but many a +pretty and sentimental love affair sprang up between mutually +"pock-fretten" New Englanders. + +The small-pox hospitals were of various degrees of elegance and comfort, +and were widely advertised. I have found four separate announcements in +one of the small sheets of a Federal newspaper. From the luxurious +high-priced retreat "without Mercury" were grades descending to the +Suttonian, Brunonian, Pincherian, Dimsdalian, and other plebeian +establishments, in which the patient paid from fifteen to as low as +three dollars per week for lodging, food, medicine, care, and +inoculation. At the latter cheap establishment each person was +obliged to furnish for his individual use one sheet and one +pillow-case--apparently a meagre outfit for sickness, but possibly +merely a supplemental one. + +This is a fair example of the prevailing advertisement of small-pox +hospitals, from the _Connecticut Courant_ of November 30, 1767: + + "Dr. Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fairfield takes this + method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous + of taking the Small Pox by way of Inoculation, that having had + Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on + the same the last season with great Success; has lately erected a + convenient Hospital for that purpose just within the Jurisdiction + Line of the Province of New York about nine miles distant from N. Y. + Harbour, where he intends to carry said Branch of Practice from the + first of October next to the first of May next. And that all such + as are disposed to favour him with their Custom may depend upon + being well provided with all necessary accomodations, Provisions & + the best Attendance at the moderate Expence of Four Pounds Lawful + Money to Each Patient. That after the first Sett or Class he + purposes to give no Occasion for waiting to go in Particular Setts + but to admit Parties singly, just as it suits them. As he has + another Good House provided near Said Hospital where his family are + to live, and where all that come after the first Sett that go into + the Hospital are to remain with his Family until they are + sufficiently Prepared & Inoculated & Until it is apparent that they + haven taken the infection." + +Of all the advertisements of small-pox hospitals, inoculation, etc., +which appear in the newspapers through the eighteenth century, none is +more curious, more comic than this from a Boston paper of 1772: + + "Ibrahim Mustapha Inoculator to his Sublime Highness & the + Janissaries: original Inventor and sole Proprietor of that + Inestimable Instrument, the Circassian Needle, begs leave to + acquaint the Nobility & Gentry of this City and its Environs that + he is just arrived from Constantinople where he has inoculated + about 50,000 Persons without losing a Single Patient. He requires + not the least Preparation Regimen or Confinement. Ladies and + Gentlemen who wish to be inoculated only acquaint him with how many + Pimples they choose and he makes the exact number of Punctures with + his Needle which Produces the Eruptions in the very Picquers. + Ladies who fancy a favorite Pitt may have it put in any Spot they + please, and of any size: not the Slightest Fever or Pain attends + the Eruption; much less any of those frightful Convulsions so usual + in all the vulgar methods of Inoculation, even in the famous Peter + Puffs. This amazing Needle more truly astonishing and not less + useful than the Magnetic one, has this property in common with the + latter, that by touching the point of a common needle it + communicates its wonderful Virtues to it in the same manner that + Loadstone does to Iron. And that no part of this extensive + Continent may want the Benefit of this Superlatively excellent + Method, Ibrahim Mustapha proposes to touch several Needles in order + to have them distributed to different Colonies by which means the + Small Pocks may be entirely eradicated as it has been in the + Turkish Empire." + +Generous Ibrahim Mustapha! despite the testimony of the Janissaries and +the entire Turkish Empire, I cannot doubt that in your early youth you +frequently kissed the Blarney Stone, hence your fluent tongue and your +gallant proposition to becomingly decorate with pits the ladies. + +Besides the scourge of small-pox, the colonists were afflicted +grievously with other malignant distempers,--fatal throat diseases, +epidemic influenzas, putrid fevers, terrible fluxes; and as the art of +sanitation was absolutely disregarded and almost unknown, as drainage +there was none, and the notion of disinfection was in feeble infancy, we +cannot wonder that the death-rates were high. Well might the New +Englander say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Considering the thousand doors +that lead to death, I do thank my God that we can die but once." + +Cotton Mather was not the only kind-hearted New England minister who set +up to heal the body as well as the soul of the entire town. All the +early parsons seem to have turned eagerly to medicine. The Wigglesworths +were famous doctors. President Hoar, of Harvard College, President +Rogers, President Chauncey, all practised medicine. The latter's six +sons were all ministers, and all good doctors, too. It was a parson, +Thomas Thatcher, who wrote the first medical treatise published in +America, a set of "Brief Rules for the Care of the Small Pocks," printed +as a broadside in 1677. Many of the early parsons played also the part +of apothecary, buying drugs at wholesale and compounding and selling +medicines to their parishioners. Small wonder that Cotton Mather called +the union of physic and piety an "Angelical Conjunction." + +Other professions and callings joined hands with chirurgy and medicine. +Innkeepers, magistrates, grocers, and schoolmasters were doctors. One +surgeon was a butcher--sadly similar callings in those days. This +butcher-surgeon was not Mr. Pighogg, the Plymouth "churregein," whose +unpleasant name was, I trust, only the cacographical rendering of the +good old English name Peacock. + +With all these amateur and semi-professional rivals, it is no wonder +that Giles Firmin, who knew how to pull teeth and bleed and sweat in a +truly professional manner, complained that he found physic but a "meene +helpe" in the new land. + +So vast was the confidence of the community in some or any kind of a +doctor, and in self-doctoring, that as late as the year 1721 there was +but one regularly graduated physician in Boston--Dr. Samuel Douglas; and +it may be noted that he was one of the most decided opponents of +inoculation for small-pox. + +Colonial dames also boldly tried their hand at the healing art; the +first two, Anne Hutchinson and Margaret Jones, did not thrive very well +at the trade. The banishment of the former has oft been told. The latter +was hung as a witch, and the worst evidence against her character, the +positive proof of her diabolical power was, that her medicines being so +simple, they worked such wonderful cures. At the close of King Philip's +War the Council of Connecticut paid Mrs. Allyn £20 for her services to +the sick, and Mistress Sarah Sands doctored on Block Island. Sarah +Alcock, the wife of a chirurgeon, was also "active in physick;" and +Mistress Whitman, the Marlborough midwife, visited her patients on +snow-shoes, and lived to be seventy-eight years old, too. In the Phipps +Street Burying Ground in Charlestown is the tombstone of a Boston +midwife who died in 1761, aged seventy-six years, and who, could we +believe the record on the gravestone, "by ye blessing of God has brought +into this world above 130,000 children." But a close examination shows +that the number on the ancient headstone, through the mischievous +manipulation of modern hands, has received a figure at either end, and +the good old lady can only be charged with three thousand additions to +wretched humanity. + +Negroes, and illiterate persons of all complexions, set up as doctors. +Old Joe Pye and Sabbatus were famous Indian healers. Indian squaws, such +as Molly Orcutt, sold many a decoction of leaves and barks to the +planters, and, like Hiawatha, + + "Wandered eastward, wandered westward, + Teaching men the use of simples, + And the antidotes for poisons, + And the cure of all diseases." + +A good old Connecticut doctor had a negro servant, Primus, who rode with +him and helped him in his surgery and shop. When the master died, Doctor +Primus started in to practise medicine himself, and proved +extraordinarily successful throughout the county; even his master's +patients did not disdain to employ the black successor, wishing no doubt +their wonted bolus and draught. + +In spite of the fact that everyone and anyone seemed to be permitted, +and was considered fitted to prescribe medicine, the colonists were +sharp enough on the venders of quack medicines--or, perhaps I should +say, of powerless medicines--on "runnagate chyrurgeons and +physickemongers, saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, and all +impostourous empiricks." As early as 1631, one Nicholas Knapp was fined +and whipped for pretending "to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth +nor value which he sold att a very deare rate." The planters were +terribly prostrated by scurvy, and doubtless were specially indignant at +this heartless cheat. + +Tides of absurd attempts at medicine, or rather at healing, swept over +the scantily settled New England villages in colonial days, just as we +have seen in our own day, in our great cities, the abounding +success--financially--of the blue-glass cure, the faith cure, and of +science healing. The Rain Water Doctor worked wondrous miracles, and did +a vast and lucrative business until he was unluckily drowned in a +hogshead of his own medicine at his own door. Bishop Berkeley, in his +pamphlet Siris, started a flourishing tar-water craze, which lived long +and died slowly. This cure-all, like the preceding aquatic physic, had +the merit of being cheap. A quart of tar steeped for forty-eight hours +in a gallon of water, tainted the water enough to make it fit for +dosing. Perhaps the most expansive swindle was that of Dr. Perkins, with +his Metallic Tractors. He was born in Norwich, Conn., in 1740, and found +fortune and fame in his native land. Still he was expelled from the +association of physicians in his own country, but managed to establish a +Perkinean Institution in London with a fine, imposing list of officers +and managers, of whom Benjamin Franklin's son was one. He had poems and +essays and eulogies and books written about him, and it was claimed by +his followers that he cured one million and a half of sufferers. At any +rate, he managed to carry off £10,000 of good English money to New +England. His wonderful Metallic Tractors were little slips of iron and +brass three inches long, blunt at one end, and pointed at the other, and +said to be of opposite electrical conditions. They cost five guineas a +pair. When drawn or trailed for several minutes over a painful or +diseased spot on the human frame, they positively removed and cured all +ache, smart, or soreness. I have never doubted they worked wonderful +cures; so did bits of wood, of lead, of stone, of earthenware, in the +hands of scoffers, when the tractorated patients did not see the bits, +and fancied that the manipulator held Metallic Tractors. + +As years passed on various useful medicines became too much the vogue, +and were used to too vast and too deleterious an extent, particularly +mercury. Many a poor salivated patient sacrificed his teeth to his +doctor's mercurial doses. One such toothless sufferer, a carpenter, +having little ready money, offered to pay his physician in hay-rakes; +and he took a revengeful delight in manufacturing the rakes of green, +unseasoned wood. After a few days' use in the sunny fields, the doctor's +rakes were as toothless as their maker. + +Physicians' fees were "meene" enough in olden times; but sixpence a +visit in Hadley and Northampton in 1730, and only eightpence in +Revolutionary times. A blood-letting, or a jaw-splitting tooth-drawing +cost the sufferer eightpence extra. No wonder the doctor cupped and bled +on every occasion. In extravagant Hartford the opulent doctor got a +shilling a visit. Naturally all the chirurgeons eked out and augmented +their scanty fees by compounding and selling their own medicines, and +dosed often and dosed deeply, since by their doses they lived. In many +communities a bone-setter had to be paid a salary by the town in order +to keep him, so few and slight were his private emoluments, even as a +physic-monger. + +The science of nursing the sick was, in early days, unknown; there were +but few who made a profession of nursing, and those few were deeply to +be dreaded. In taking care of the sick, as in other kindnesses, the +neighborly instinct, ever so keen, so living in New England, showed no +lagging part. For it is plain to any student of early colonial days +that, if the chief foundation of the New England commonwealth was +religion, the second certainly was neighborliness. There was a constant +exchange of kindly and loving attentions between families and +individuals. It showed itself in all the petty details of daily life, in +assistance in housework and in the field, in house-raising. Did a man +build a barn, his neighbors flocked to drive a pin, to lay a stone, to +stand forever in the edifice as token of their friendly goodwill. The +most eminent, as well as the poorest neighbors, thus assisted. In +nothing was this neighborly feeling more constantly shown than in the +friendly custom of visiting and watching with the sick; and it was the +only available assistance. Men and women in this care and attention took +equal part. As in all other neighborly duties, good Judge Sewall was +never remiss in the sick-room. He was generous with his gifts and +generous with his time, even to those humble in the community. Such +entries as this abound in his diary: "Oct. 26th 1702. Visited +languishing Mr. Sam Whiting. I gave him 2 Balls of Chockalett and a +pound of Figgs." And when Mr. Bayley lay ill of a fever, he prayed with +him and took care of him through many a long night, and wrote: + + "When I came away call'd his wife into the Next Chamber and gave + her Two Five Shilling Bits. She very modestly and kindly accepted + them and said I had done too much already. I told her if the State + of my family would have born it I ought to have watched with Mr. + Bayley as much as that came to." + +To others he gave China oranges, dishes of marmalet, Meers Cakes, +Banberry Cakes; and even to well-to-do people gave gifts of money, +sometimes specifying for what purpose he wished the gift to be applied. + +The universal custom of praying at inordinate length and frequency with +sick persons was of more doubtful benefit, though of equally kind +intent. One cannot but be amazed to find how many persons--ministers, +elders, deacons, and laymen were allowed to enter the sick-room and pray +by the bedside of the invalid, thus indeed giving him, as Sewall said, +"a lift Heavenward." Sometimes a succession of prayers filled the entire +day. + +Judge Sewall's friendly prayers and visits were not always welcome. +After visiting sick Mr. Brattle the Judge writes, but without any +resentment, "he plainly told me that frequent visits were prejudicial +to him, it provok'd him to speak more than his strength would bear, +would have me come seldom." And on September 20, 1690, he met with this +reception: + + "Mr. Moody and I went before the others came to neighbor Hurd who + lay dying where also Mr. Allen came in. Nurse Hurd told her husband + who was there and what he had to say; whether he desir'd them to + pray with him; He said with some earnestness, Hold your tongue, + which was repeated three times to his wives repeated entreaties; + once he said Let me alone or Be quiet (whether that made a fourth + or was one of the three do not remember) and, My Spirits are gon. + At last Mr. Moody took him up pretty roundly and told him he might + with some labour have given a pertinent answer. When we were ready + to come away Mr. Moody bid him put forth a little Breath to ask + prayer, and said twas the last time had to speak to him; At last + ask'd him, doe you desire prayer, shall I pray with you. He + answered, Ay for Gods sake and thank'd Mr. Moody when had done. His + former carriage was very startling and amazing to us. About one at + night he died. About 11 o'clock I supposed to hear neighbor Mason + at prayer with him just as my wife and I were going to bed." + +One cannot but feel a thrill of sympathy for poor, dying Hurd on that +hot September night, fairly hectored by pious, loud-voiced neighbors +into eternity; and can well believe that many a colonial invalid who +lived through mithridate and rubila, through sweating and blood-letting, +died of the kindly and godly-intentioned praying of his neighbors. + + + + +XV + +FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS + + +The earliest New Englanders had no religious services at a funeral. Not +wishing to "confirm the popish error that prayer is to be used for the +dead or over the dead," they said no words, either of grief, +resignation, or faith, but followed the coffin and filled the grave in +silence. Lechford has given us a picture of a funeral in New England in +the seventeenth century, which is full of simple dignity, if not of +sympathy: + + "At Burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made, but all + the neighborhood or a goodly company of them come together by + tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and + then stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most + commonly present." + +As was the fashion in England at that date, laudatory verses and +sentences were fastened to the bier or herse. The name herse was then +applied to the draped catafalque or platform upon which the candles +stood and the coffin rested, not as now the word hearse to a carriage +for the conveyance of the dead. Sewall says of the funeral of the Rev. +Thomas Shepherd: "There were some verses, but none pinned on the Herse." +These verses were often printed after the funeral. The publication of +mourning broadsides and pamphlets, black-bordered and dismal, was a +large duty of the early colonial press. They were often decorated +gruesomely with skull and crossbones, scythes, coffins, and +hour-glasses, all-seeing eyes with rakish squints, bow-legged skeletons, +and miserable little rosetted winding-sheets. + +A writer in the _New England Courant_ of November 12, 1722, says: + + Of all the different species of poetry now in use I find the + Funeral Elegy to be most universally admired and used in New + England. There is scarce a plough jogger or country cobler that has + read our Psalms and can make two lines jingle, who has not once in + his life at least exercised his talent in this way. Nor is there + one country house in fifty which has not its walls garnished with + half a Score of these sort of Poems which praise the Dead to the + Life. + +When a Puritan died his friends conspired in mournful concert, or +labored individually and painfully, to bring forth as tributes of grief +and respect, rhymed elegies, anagrams, epitaphs, acrostics, epicediums, +and threnodies; and singularly enough, seemed to reserve for these +gloomy tributes their sole attempt at facetiousness. Ingenious quirks +and puns, painful and complicate jokes (printed in italics that you may +not escape nor mistake them) bestrew these funeral verses. If a man +chanced to have a name of any possible twist of signification, such as +Green, Stone, Blackman, in doleful puns did he posthumously suffer; and +his friends and relatives endured vicariously also, for to them these +grinning death's-heads of rhymes were widely distributed. + +It was with a keen sense of that humor which comes, as Sydney Smith +says, from sudden and unexpected contrast, that I read a heavily +bordered sheet entitled in large letters, "A Grammarian's Funeral." It +was printed at the death of Schoolmaster Woodmancey, and was so much +admired that it was brought forth again at the demise of Ezekiel +Cheever, who died in 1708 after no less than seventy years of +school-teaching. I think we may truly say of him, teaching at +ninety-three years of age, + + "With throttling hands of death at strife, + Ground he at grammar." + +For the consideration and investigation of Browning Societies, I give a +few lines from this New England conception of a Grammarian's Funeral. + + "Eight parts of Speech This Day wear Mourning Gowns, + _Declin'd_ Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, and Nouns. + The Substantive seeming the limbed best + Would set an hand to bear him to his _Rest_ + The Adjective with very grief did say + Hold me by Strength or I shall faint away. + Great Honour was conferred on _Conjugations_ + They were to follow next to the _Relations_ + + * * * * * + + But Lego said, by me his got his Skill + And therefore next the Herse I follow will + A Doleful Day for _Verbs_ they look so _Moody_ + They drove Spectators to a mournful Study." + +I have a strong suspicion that this funeral poem may have been learned +by heart by succeeding generations of Boston scholars, as a sort of +grammatical memory-rhyme--a mournful study, indeed. + +Funeral sermons were also printed, with trappings of sombreness, +black-bordered, with death's-heads and crossbones on the covers. These +sermons were not, however, preached at the time of the funeral, save in +exceptional cases. It is said that one was delivered at the funeral of +President Chauncey in 1671. Cotton Mather preached one at the funeral of +Fitz-John Winthrop in 1707, and another at the funeral of Waitstill +Winthrop in 1717. Gradually there crept in the custom of having suitable +prayers at the house before the burial procession formed, the first +instance being probably at the funeral of Pastor Adams, of Roxbury, in +1683. Sometimes a short address was given at the grave, as when Jonathan +Alden was buried at Duxbury, in 1697. The _Boston News Letter_ of +December 31, 1730, notes a prayer at a funeral, and says: "Tho' a custom +in the Country-Towns 'tis a Singular instance in this Place, but it's +wish'd may prove a Leading Example to the General Practice of so +Christian and Decent a Custom." Whitefield wrote disparagingly of the +custom of not speaking at the grave. + +We see Judge Sewall mastering his grief at his mother's burial, delaying +for a few moments the filling of the grave, and speaking some very +proper words of eulogy "with passion and tears." He jealously notes, +however, when the Episcopal burial service is given in Boston, saying: +"The Office for the dead is a Lying bad office, makes no difference +between the precious and the Vile." + +There were, as a rule, two sets of bearers appointed; under-bearers, +usually young men, who carried the coffin on a bier; and pall-bearers, +men of age, dignity, or consanguinity, who held the corners of the pall +which was spread over the coffin and hung down over the heads and bodies +of the under-bearers. As the coffin was sometimes carried for a long +distance, there were frequently appointed a double set of under-bearers, +to share the burden. I have been told that mort-stones were set by the +wayside in some towns, upon which the bearers could rest the heavy +coffin for a short time on their way to the burial-place; but I find no +record or proof of this statement. The pall, or bier-cloth, or +mort-cloth, as it was called, was usually bought and owned by the town, +and was of heavy purple, or black broadcloth, or velvet. It often was +kept with the bier in the porch of the meeting-house; but in some +communities the bier, a simple shelf or table of wood on four legs about +a foot and a half long, was placed over the freshly filled-in grave and +left sombrely waiting till it was needed to carry another coffin to the +burial-place. In many towns there were no gravediggers; sympathizing +friends made the simple coffin and dug the grave. + +In Londonderry, N. H., and neighboring towns that had been settled by +Scotch-Irish planters, the announcement of a death was a signal for +cessation of daily work throughout the neighborhood. Kindly assistance +was at once given at the house of mourning. Women flocked to do the +household work and to prepare the funeral feast. Men brought gifts of +food, or household necessities, and rendered all the advice and help +that was needed. A gathering was held the night before the funeral, +which in feasting and drinking partook somewhat of the nature of an +Irish wake. Much New England rum was consumed at this gathering, and +also before the procession to the grave, and after the interment the +whole party returned to the house for an "arval," and drank again. The +funeral rum-bill was often an embarrassing and hampering expense to a +bereaved family for years. + +This liberal serving of intoxicating liquor at a funeral was not +peculiar to these New Hampshire towns, nor to the Scotch-Irish, but +prevailed in every settlement in the colonies until the +temperance-awakening days of this century. Throughout New England bills +for funeral baked meats were large in items of rum, cider, whiskey, +lemons, sugar, spices. + +To show how universally liquor was served to all who had to do with a +funeral, let me give the bill for the mortuary expenses of David +Porter, of Hartford, who was drowned in 1678. + + "By a pint of liquor for those who dived for him. 1_s._ + By a quart of liquor for those who bro't him home. 2_s._ + By two quarts of wine & 1 gallon of cyder to jury + of inquest. 5_s._ + By 8 gallons & 3 qts. wine for funeral. £1 15_s._ + By Barrel cyder for funeral. 16_s._ + 1 Coffin. 12_s._ + Windeing sheet. 18_s._" + +Even town paupers had two or three gallons of rum or a barrel of cider +given by the town to serve as speeding libations at their unmourned +funerals. The liquor at the funeral of a minister was usually paid for +by the church or town--often interchangeable terms for the same body. +The parish frequently gave, also, as in the case of the death of Rev. +Job Strong, of Portsmouth, in 1751, "the widow of our deceased pasture a +full suit of mourning." + +A careful, and above all an experienced committee was appointed to +superintend the mixing of the funeral grog or punch, and to attend to +the liberal and frequent dispensing thereof. + +Hawthorne was so impressed with the enjoyable reunion New Englanders +found in funerals that he wrote of them: + + "They were the only class of scenes, so far as my investigation has + taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough + old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of + grisly jollity. Look back through all the social customs of New + England in the first century of her existence and read all her + traits of character, and find one occasion other than a funeral + feast where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice.... Well, + old friends! Pass on with your burden of mortality and lay it in + the tomb with jolly hearts. People should be permitted to enjoy + themselves in their own fashion; every man to his taste--but New + England must have been a dismal abode for the man of pleasure when + the only boon-companion was Death." + +This picture has been given by Sargent of country funerals in the days +of his youth: + + "When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country, everybody + went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was + small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited + remark, and the boys were dismissed for the funeral. A table with + liquors was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his + hat with his left hand, smoothed down his hair with his right, + walked up to the coffin, gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked + face, passed on to the table, took a glass of his favorite liquor, + went forth upon the plat before the house and talked politics, or + of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped heifers or horses + until it was time to _lift_. A clergyman told me that when settled + at Concord, N. H., he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The + body was borne in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, + the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before + they left the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the + table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and sugar for each." + +It was a hard struggle against established customs and ideas of +hospitality, and even of health, when the use of liquor at funerals was +abolished. Old people sadly deplored the present and regretted the past. +One worthy old gentleman said, with much bitterness: "Temperance has +done for funerals." + +As soon as the larger cities began to accrue wealth, the parentations of +men and women of high station were celebrated with much pomp and +dignity, if not with religious exercises. Volleys were fired over the +freshly made grave--even of a woman. A barrel and a half of powder was +consumed to do proper honor to Winthrop, the chief founder of +Massachusetts. At the funeral of Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby +eleven companies of militia were in attendance, and "with the doleful +noise of trumpets and drums, in their mourning posture, three thundering +volleys of shot were discharged, answered with the loud roarings of +great guns rending the heavens with noise at the loss of so great a +man." When Governor Leverett died, in 1679, the bearers carried banners. +The principal men of the town bore the armor of the deceased, from +helmet to spur, and the Governor's horse was led with banners. The +funeral-recording Sewall has left us many a picture of the pomp of +burial. Colonel Samuel Shrimpton was buried "with Arms" in 1697, "Ten +Companies, No Herse nor Trumpet but a horse Led. Mourning Coach also & +Horses in Mourning, Scutcheons on their sides and Deaths Heads on their +foreheads." Fancy those coach-horses with gloomy death's-heads on their +foreheads. At the funeral of Lady Andros, which was held in church, six +"mourning women" sat in front of the draped pulpit, and the hearse was +drawn by six horses. This English fashion of paid mourners was not +common among sincere New Englanders; Lady Andros was a Church of England +woman, not a Puritan. The cloth from the pulpit was usually given, after +the burial, to the minister. In 1736 the _Boston News Letter_ tells of +the pulpit and the pew of the deceased being richly draped and adorned +with escutcheons at a funeral. Thus were New England men, to quote Sir +Thomas Browne, "splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." + +Many local customs prevailed. In Hartford and neighboring towns all +ornaments, mirrors, and pictures were muffled with napkins and cloths at +the time of the funerals, and sometimes the window-shutters were kept +closed in the front of the house and tied together with black for a +year, as was the fashion in Philadelphia. + +Hawthorne tells us that at the death of Sir William Pepperell the entire +house was hung with black, and all the family portraits were covered +with black crape. + +The order of procession to the grave was a matter of much etiquette. +High respect and equally deep slights might be rendered to mourners in +the place assigned. Usually some magistrate or person of dignity walked +with the widow. Judge Sewall often speaks of "leading the widow in a +mourning cloak." + +One great expense of a funeral was the gloves. In some communities +these were sent as an approved and elegant form of invitation to +relatives and friends and dignitaries, whose presence was desired. +Occasionally, a printed "invitation to follow the corps" was also sent. +One for the funeral of Sir William Phipps is still in existence--a +fantastically gloomy document. In the case of a funeral of any person +prominent in State, Church, or society, vast numbers of gloves were +disbursed; "none of 'em of any figure but what had gloves sent to 'em." +At the funeral of the wife of Governor Belcher, in 1736, over one +thousand pairs of gloves were given away; at the funeral of Andrew +Faneuil three thousand pairs; the number frequently ran up to several +hundred. Different qualities of gloves were presented at the same +funeral to persons of different social circles, or of varied degrees of +consanguinity or acquaintance. Frequently the orders for these _vales_ +were given in wills. As early as 1633 Samuel Fuller, of Plymouth, +directed in his will that his sister was to have gloves worth twelve +shillings; Governor Winthrop and his children each "a paire of gloves of +five shilling;" while plebeian Rebecca Prime had to be contented with a +cheap pair worth two shillings and sixpence. The under-bearers who +carried the coffin were usually given different and cheaper gloves from +the pall-bearers. We find seven pairs of gloves given at a pauper's +funeral, and not under the head of "Extrodny Chearges" either. + +Of course the minister was always given gloves. They were showered on +him at weddings, christenings, funerals. Andrew Eliot, of the North +Church, in Boston, kept a record of the gloves and rings which he +received; and, incredible as it may seem, in thirty-two years he was +given two thousand nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves. Though he had +eleven children, he and his family could scarcely wear them all, so he +sold them through kindly Boston milliners, and kept a careful account of +the transaction, of the lamb's-wool gloves, the kid gloves, the long +gloves--which were probably Madam Eliot's. He received between six and +seven hundred dollars for the gloves, and a goodly sum also for funeral +rings. + +Various kinds of gloves are specified as suitable for mourning; for +instance, in the _Boston Independent Advertiser_ in 1749, "Black Shammy +Gloves and White Glazed Lambs Wool Gloves suitable for Funerals." White +gloves were as often given as black, and purple gloves also. Good +specimens of old mourning gloves have been preserved in the cabinets of +the Worcester Society of Antiquity. + +At the funeral of Thomas Thornhill "17 pair of White Gloves at £1 15_s._ +6_d._, 31-1/2 yard Corle for Scarfs £3 10_s._ 10-1/2_d._, and Black and +White Ribbin" were paid for. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell sent to +England for "4 pieces Hat mourning and 2 pieces of Cyprus or Hood +mourning." This hat mourning took the form of long weepers, which were +worn on the hat at the funeral, and as a token of respect afterward by +persons who were not relatives of the deceased. Judge Sewall was always +punctilious in thus honoring the dead in his community. On May 2, 1709, +he writes thus: + + "Being artillery day and Mr. Higginson dead I put on my mourning + Rapier and put a mourning ribbon in my little Cane." + +Rings were given at funerals, especially in wealthy families, to near +relatives and persons of note in the community. Sewall records in his +diary, in the years from 1687 to 1725, the receiving of no less than +fifty-seven mourning rings. We can well believe the story told of Doctor +Samuel Buxton, of Salem, who died in 1758, aged eighty-one years, that +he left to his heirs a quart tankard full of mourning rings which he had +received at funerals; and that Rev. Andrew Eliot had a mugful. At one +Boston funeral, in 1738, over two hundred rings were given away. At +Waitstill Winthrop's funeral sixty rings, worth over a pound apiece, +were given to friends. The entire expense of the latter-named +funeral--scutcheons, hatchments, scarves, gloves, rings, bell-tolling, +tailor's bills, etc., was over six hundred pounds. This amounted to +one-fifth of the entire estate of the deceased gentleman. + +These mourning rings were of gold, usually enamelled in black, or black +and white. They were frequently decorated with a death's-head, or with a +coffin with a full-length skeleton lying in it, or with a winged skull. +Sometimes they held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. +Sometimes the ring was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his +mouth. Many bore a posy. In the _Boston News Letter_ of October 30, +1742, was advertised: "Mourning Ring lost with the Posy Virtue & Love is +From Above." Here is another advertisement from the _Boston Evening +Post_: + + "Escaped unluckily from me + A Large Gold Ring, a Little Key; + The Ring had Death engraved upon it; + The Owners Name inscribed within it; + Who finds and brings the same to me + Shall generously rewarded be." + +A favorite motto for these rings was: "Death parts United Hearts." +Another was the legend: "Death conquers all;" another, "Prepare for +Death;" still another, "Prepared be To follow me." Other funeral rings +bore a family crest in black enamel. + +Goldsmiths kept these mourning rings constantly on hand. "Deaths Heads +Rings" and "Burying Rings" appear in many newspaper advertisements. When +bought for use the name or initials of the dead person, and the date of +his death, were engraved upon the ring. This was called fashioning. It +is also evident from existing letters and bills that orders were sent by +bereaved ones to friends residing at a distance to purchase and wear +mourning rings in memory of the dead, and send the bills to the heirs or +the principals of the mourning family. Thus, after the death of Andrew, +son of Sir William Pepperell, Mr. Kilby, of London, wrote to the father +that he accepted "that melancholy token of y'r regard to Mrs. K. and +myself at the expense of four guineas in the whole. But, as is not +unusual here on such occasions, Mrs. K. has, at her own expense, added +some sparks of diamonds to some other mournful ornaments to the ring, +which she intends to wear." + +It is very evident that old New Englanders looked with much eagerness to +receiving a funeral ring at the death of a friend, and in old diaries, +almanacs, and note-books such entries as this are often seen: "Made a +ring at the funeral," "A death's-head ring made at the funeral of so and +so;" or, as Judge Sewall wrote, "Lost a ring" by not attending the +funeral. The will of Abigail Ropes, in 1775, gives to her grandson "a +gold ring I made at his father's death;" and again, "a gold ring made +when my bro. died." + +As with gloves, rings of different values were given to relatives of +different degrees of consanguinity, and to friends of different stations +in life; much tact had to be shown, else much offence might be taken. + +I do not know how long the custom of giving mourning rings obtained in +New England. Some are in existence dated 1812, but were given at the +funeral of aged persons who may have left orders to their descendants to +cling to the fashion of their youth. + +A very good collection of mourning rings may be seen at the rooms of the +Essex Institute in Salem, and that society has also published a pamphlet +giving a list of such rings known to be in existence in Salem. + +As years passed on a strong feeling sprang up against these gifts and +against the excessive wearing of mourning garments because burdensome in +expense. Judge Sewall notes, in 1721, the first public funeral "without +scarfs." In 1741 it was ordered by Massachusetts Provincial Enactment +that "no Scarves, Gloves (except six pair to the bearers and one pair to +each minister of the church or congregation where any deceased person +belongs), Wine, Rum, or rings be allowed to be given at any funeral upon +the penalty of fifty pounds." The _Connecticut Courant_ of October 24, +1764, has a letter from a Boston correspondent which says, "It is now +out of fashion to put on mourning for nearest relatives, which will make +a saving to this town of £20,000 per annum." It also states that a +funeral had been held at Charlestown at which no mourning had been worn. +At that of Ellis Callender in the same year, the chief mourner wore in +black only bonnet, gloves, ribbons, and handkerchief. Letters are in +existence from Boston merchants to English agents rebuking the latter +for sending mourning goods, such as crapes, "which are not worn." A +newly born and fast-growing spirit of patriotic revolt gave added force +to the reform. Boston voted, in October, 1767, "not to use any mourning +gloves but what are manufactured here," and other towns passed similar +resolutions. It was also suggested that American mourning gloves be +stamped with a patriotic emblem. In 1788 a fine of twenty shillings was +imposed on any person who gave scarfs, gloves, rings, wine, or rum at a +funeral; who bought any new mourning apparel to wear at or after a +funeral, save a crape arm-band if a masculine mourner, or black bonnet, +fan, gloves, and ribbons if a woman. This law could never have been +rigidly enforced, for much gloomy and ostentatious pomp obtained in the +larger towns even to our own day. "From the tombs a mournful sound" +seemed to be fairly a popular sound, and the long funeral processions, +always taking care to pass the Town House, churches, and other public +buildings, obstructed travel, and men were appointed in each town by the +selectmen to see that "free passage in the streets be kept open." +Funerals were forbidden to be held on the Lord's Day, because it +profaned the sacred day, through the vast concourse of children and +servants that followed the coffin through the streets. + +Some attempt was made to regulate funeral expenses. In Salem a tolling +of the bell could cost but eightpence, and "the sextons are desired to +toll the bells but four strokes in a minute." The undertakers could +charge but eight shillings for borrowing chairs, waiting on the +pall-holders, and notifying relatives to attend. + +The early graves were frequently clustered, were even crowded in +irregular groups in the churchyard; and in larger towns, the +dead--especially persons of dignity--were buried, as in England, under +the church. Sargent, in his "Dealings with the Dead," speaks at length +of the latter custom, which prevailed to an inordinate extent in Boston. +In smaller settlements some out-of-the-way spot was chosen for a common +burial-place, in barren pasture or on lonely hillside, thus forcibly +proving the well-known lines of Whittier, + + "Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, + Our hills are maple crowned, + But not from them our fathers chose + The village burial ground. + + "The dreariest spot in all the land + To Death they set apart; + With scanty grace from Nature's hand + And none from that of Art." + +To the natural loneliness of the country burial-place and to its +inevitable sadness, is now too frequently added the gloomy and +depressing evidence of human neglect. Briers and weeds grow in tangled +thickets over the forgotten graves; birch-trees and barberry bushes +spring up unchecked. In one a thriving grove of lilac bushes spreads its +dusty shade from wall to wall. Winter-killed shrubs of flowering almond +or snowballs, planted in tender memory, stand now withered and unheeded, +and the few straggling garden flowers--crimson phlox or single +hollyhocks--that still live only painfully accent the loneliness by +showing that this now forgotten spot was once loved, visited, and cared +for. + +In many cases the worn gravestone lies forlornly face downward; +sometimes, + + "The slab has sunk; the head declined, + And left the rails a wreck behind. + No names; you trace a '6'--a '7,' + Part of 'affliction' and of 'Heaven.' + And then in letters sharp and clear, + You read.--O Irony austere!-- + 'Tho' lost to Sight, to Memory dear.'" + +"Truly our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly +show us how we may be buried in our survivors.'" Still, this neglect and +oblivion is just as satisfactory as was the officious "deed without a +name" done in orderly Boston, where, in the first half of this century, +a precise Superintendent of Graveyards and his army of assistants--what +Charles Lamb called "sapient trouble-tombs"--straightened out +mathematically all the old burial-places, levelled the earth, and set in +trim military rows the old slate headstones, regardless of the irregular +clusters of graves and their occupants. + +And there in Boston the falsifying old headstones still stand, fixed in +new places, but marking no coffins or honored bones beneath; the only +true words of their inscriptions being the opening ones "Here lies," and +the motto that they repeat derisively to each other--"As you are now so +once was I." + +In many communities each family had its own burying-place in some corner +of the home farm, sometimes at the foot of garden or orchard. Such is +noticeably the case throughout Narragansett; almost every farm has a +grave-yard, now generally unused and deserted. Sometimes the +burying-place is enclosed by a high mossy stone wall, often it is +overgrown with dense sombre firs or hemlocks, or half shaded with airy +locust-trees. Beautifully ideal and touching is the thought of these +old Narragansett planters resting with their wives and children in the +ground they so dearly loved and so faithfully worked for. + +A vast similarity of design existed in the early gravestones. +Originality of inscription, carving, size, or material was evidently +frowned upon as frivolous, undignified, and eccentric--even +disrespectful. A few of the early settlers used freestone or sienite, or +a native porphyritic green stone called beech-bowlder. Sandstone was +rarely employed, for though easily carved, it as easily yielded to New +England frosts and storms. A hard, dark, flinty slate-stone from North +Wales was commonly used, a stone so hard and so enduring that when our +modern granite and marble monuments are crumbled in the dust I believe +these old slate headstones still will speak their warning words of many +centuries. + + "As I am now so you shall be, + Prepare for Death & follow me." + +These stones were imported from England ready carved. A high duty was +placed on them, and a Boston sea captain endeavored and was caught in +the attempt to bring into port, free of duty, for one of his friends, +one of these carved slate gravestones, by entering it as a +winding-sheet. It is one of the curiosities of New England commercial +enterprises, that for many years gravestones should have been imported +to New England, a land that fairly bristles with stone and rock +thrusting itself through the earth and waiting to be carved. + +The Welsh stones were made of a universal pattern--a carved top with a +space enclosing a miserable death's or winged cherub's head as a +heading, a border of scrolls down either side of the inscription, and +rarely a design at the base. Weeping willows and urns did not appear in +the carving at the top until the middle of the eighteenth century, and +fought hard with the grinning cherub's head until this century, when +both were supplanted by a variety of designs--a clock-face, hour-glass, +etc. Capital letters were used wholly in the inscriptions until +Revolutionary times, and even after were mixed with Roman text with so +little regard for any printer's law that, at a little distance, many a +New England tombstone of the latter part of the past century seems to be +carven in hieroglyphics. + +Special families in New England seem to have appropriated special verses +as epitaphs, evidently because of the rhyme with the surname. Thus the +Jones family were properly proud of this family rhyme: + + "Beneath this Ston's + Int'r'd the Bon's + Ah Frail Remains + Of Lieut Noah Jones"-- + +or Mary Jones or William Jones, as the case might be. + +The Noyes family delighted in these lines: + + "You children of the name of Noyes + Make Jesus Christ yo'r only choyse." + +The Tutes and Shutes and Roots began their epitaphs thus: + + "Here lies cut down like unripe fruit + The wife of Deacon Amos Shute." + +Gershom Root was "cut down like unripe fruit" at the fully mellowed age +of seventy-three. + +A curiously incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me +afresh, upon each perusal, as a sort of mortuary conundrum: + + "O! Happy Probationer! + Accepted without being Exercised." + +Sometimes an old epitaph will be found of such impressive though simple +language that it clings long in the memory. Such is this verse of gentle +quaintness over the grave of a tender Puritan blossom, the child of an +early settler: + + "Submit Submitted to her heavenly Kinge + Being a flower of that Aeternal Spring + Neare 3 years old shee dyed in Heaven to waite + The Yeare was sixteen hundred 48." + +Another of unusual beauty and sentiment is this: + + "I came in the morning--it was Spring + And I smiled. + I walked out at noon--it was Summer + And I was glad. + I sat me down at even--it was Autumn + And I was sad. + I laid me down at night--it was Winter + And I slept." + +Collections of curious old epitaphs have been made and printed, but seem +dull and colorless on the printed page, and the warning words seem to +lose their power unless seen in the sad graveyard, where, "silently +expressing old mortality," the hackneyed rhymes and tender words are +touching from their very simplicity and the loneliness which surrounds +them, and for their calm repetition, on stone after stone, of an undying +faith in a future life. + +One cannot help being impressed, when studying the almanacs, diaries, +and letters of the time, with the strange exaltation of spirit with +which the New England Puritan regarded death. To him thoughts of +mortality were indeed cordial to the soul. Death was the event, the +condition, which brought him near to God and that unknown world, that +"life elysian" of which he constantly spoke, dreamed and thought; and he +rejoiced mightily in that close approach, in that sense of touch with +the spiritual world. With unaffected cheerfulness he yielded himself to +his own fate, with unforced resignation he bore the loss of dearly loved +ones, and with eagerness and almost affection he regarded all the gloomy +attributes and surroundings of death. Sewall could find in a visit to +his family tomb, and in the heart-rending sight of the coffins therein, +an "awfull yet pleasing Treat;" while Mr. Joseph Eliot said "that the +two days wherein he buried his wife and son were the best he ever had in +the world." The accounts of the wondrous and almost inspired calm which +settled on those afflicted hearts, bearing steadfastly the Christian +belief as taught by the Puritan church, make us long for the simplicity +of faith, and the certainty of heaven and happy reunion with loved ones +which they felt so triumphantly, so gloriously. + + +-----------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note | + |Spelling, punctuation and inconcistencies| + |in the original book have been retained. | + |The oe ligature has been shown as [oe]. | + +-----------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, by +Alice Morse Earle + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOMS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND *** + +***** This file should be named 24159-8.txt or 24159-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/5/24159/ + +Produced by K. Nordquist, Annie McGuire and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/24159-8.zip b/24159-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ae2df7 --- /dev/null +++ b/24159-8.zip diff --git a/24159-h.zip b/24159-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..12999b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/24159-h.zip diff --git a/24159-h/24159-h.htm b/24159-h/24159-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f5e5166 --- /dev/null +++ b/24159-h/24159-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10771 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Customs And Fashions in Old New England, by Alice Morse Earle + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + li {list-style-type: none;} + + dl { + clear:both; + width:728px; + height:50em; + margin:2em auto; + list-style-type: none;} + + dd { + width:33%; + float:left; + margin:0;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 8pt;} + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: 10px; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + font-style: normal; + letter-spacing: normal; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0; + } /* page numbers */ + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .blockquot2{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 6%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + .box {border: solid 1px; + width: 25em; + margin: 3em auto 3em auto; + text-align: center; + padding: 1em;} + .ws {white-space: nowrap;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, by +Alice Morse Earle + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Customs and Fashions in Old New England + +Author: Alice Morse Earle + +Release Date: January 4, 2008 [EBook #24159] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOMS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND *** + + + + +Produced by K. Nordquist, Annie McGuire and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1><span class="smcap">Customs and Fashions</span></h1> + +<h3>IN</h3> + +<h2>OLD NEW ENGLAND</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2>ALICE MORSE EARLE</h2> + +<p><br /></p> + +<h5>"Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and</h5> +<h5>let each successive generation thank him not less fervently,</h5> +<h5>for being one step further from them in the march of ages."</h5> + +<p><br /></p> + +<h4>NEW YORK</h4> +<h4>CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</h4> +<h4>1894</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>BY THE SAME AUTHOR.<br /></h2> + +<h4>CHINA COLLECTING IN AMERICA. With</h4> +<h5>75 Illustrations. Square 8vo, $3.00.</h5> + +<p><br /></p> + +<h4>THE SABBATH IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND.</h4> +<h5>12mo, $1.25.</h5> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>To the Memory of my Father</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + +<ul class="TOC" style="list-style-type:upper-roman;margin-left:16em;"> + <li><a href="#I"><span class="smcap">Child Life</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#II"><span class="smcap">Courtship and Marriage Customs</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#III"><span class="smcap">Domestic Service</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#IV"><span class="smcap">Home Interiors</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#V"><span class="smcap">Table Plenishings</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#VI"><span class="smcap">Supplies of the Larder</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#VII"><span class="smcap">Old Colonial Drinks and Drinkers</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#VIII"><span class="smcap">Travel, Tavern, and Turnpike</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#IX"><span class="smcap">Holidays and Festivals</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#X"><span class="smcap">Sports and Diversions</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#XI"><span class="smcap">Books and Book-Makers</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#XII"><span class="smcap">"Artifices of Handsomeness"</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#XIII"><span class="smcap">Raiment and Vesture</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#XIV"><span class="smcap">Doctors and Patients</span></a></li> + <li><a href="#XV"><span class="smcap">Funeral and Burial Customs</span></a></li> +</ul> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + +<h3>CHILD LIFE</h3> + +<p>From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England +he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared +comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists +gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open +fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the +roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be +cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could +not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from +the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature +that would make a modern infant scream with indignant discomfort, or lie +stupefied with cold.</p> + +<p>Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay +peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he was +carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill +and gloom of those unheated, freezing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> churches, growing colder and +damper and deadlier with every wintry blast—we wonder that grown +persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that +tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it +is recorded that the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. In +villages and towns where the houses were all clustered around the +meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried far to be +baptized; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were widely +scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child: +"Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised +infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly +lost its life thereby.</p> + +<p>Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket—a +"bearing-cloth"—the unfortunate young Puritan was carried to church in +the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast importance and dignity +as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from +fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the +baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first cold +and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of +Judge Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite +or extended contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New +England, as for knowledge of England of that date we turn to the diaries +of Evelyn and Pepys, we find abundant proof that inclemency of weather +was little heeded when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> religious customs and duties were in question. +On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus records:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of +the Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A child named Alexander +was baptized in the afternoon."</p></div> + +<p>He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He writes thus of the +baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February 6th, 1656:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Between 3 & 4 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named +Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child +shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the +Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up."</p></div> + +<p>And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but +six days old:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon +fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden +the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was +about half done in the Afternoon."</p></div> + +<p>Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy +water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded +up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so +coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived +him, a majority dying in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend +Cotton Mather but two survived their father.</p> + +<p>This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of +selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in early New +England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the +natural result—the survival of the fittest—may account for the present +tough endurance of the New England people.</p> + +<p>Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the +meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict +church-goers, and all the members of the household were equally +church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go +also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house +to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit +upright.</p> + +<p>Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but little. Linen formed +the chilling substructure of their attire—little, thin, linen, +short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and +with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges +of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the +rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens +of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen +mittens have evidently been worn off by the active friction of baby +fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or +calico. The gowns are generally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> rather shapeless, large-necked sacks of +linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and +drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin. In summer and +winter the baby's head was always closely covered with a cap, or +"biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more comforting in winter than +comfortable in summer.</p> + +<p>The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his nineteenth century +descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled or carved +wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant drafts. +Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen +shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was +carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to +bring him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as +babies are carried upstairs by superstitious nurses nowadays, and he had +"scarlet laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with +various nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal +days, "Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence +the most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the +word) to be sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and +to have its disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits. +Advertisements of it frequently appear in the <i>Boston News Letter</i> and +other New England newspapers of early date.</p> + +<p>The most common and largely dosed diseases of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> early infancy were, I +judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the times, +worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the +latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new +disease, scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered +whether it existed in the American plantations. In old medical books +which were used by the New England colonists I find manifold receipts +for the cure of these infantile diseases. Snails form the basis, or +rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I +should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near +vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed +medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or +snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The admirable and most famous Snail water.—Take a peck of garden +Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them in an oven +till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe +them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them +shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, +scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from +their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in +the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two +handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of +Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of +Barberries, Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one +handful; then lay the Snails and Worms on top of the hearbs and +flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the Strongest Ale,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> and let +it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces of Cloves +beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six +ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it +with paste and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine +in all, the first is the strongest, whereof take in the morning two +spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small Beer, the like in the +Afternoon."</p></div> + +<p>Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured. Snails also were +used externally:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To anoint the Ricketed Childs Limbs and to recover it in a short +time, though the child be so lame as to go upon crutches:</p> + +<p>"Take a peck of Garden Snailes and bruse them, put them into a +course Canvass bagg, and hang it up, and set a dish under to +receive the liquor that droppeth from them, wherewith anoint the +Childe in every Joynt which you perceive to be weak before the fire +every morning and evening. This I have known make a Patient Childe +that was extream weak to go alone using it only a week time."</p></div> + +<p>There were also "unguents to anoynt the Ricketted Childs breast," and +various drinks to be given "to the patient childe fasting," as they +termed him in what appears to us a half-comic, though wholly truthful +appellation.</p> + +<p>For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of senna and rhubarb +and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and as for +"Collick"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every respectable Puritan +patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and nauseous +compounds that were offered to him for his relief.</p> + +<p>Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments, "anodyne necklaces." I find +them advertised in the <i>Boston Evening Post</i> as late as 1771—"Anodine +Necklaces for the Easy breeding of Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays +children wear strings of amber beads to avert croup.</p> + +<p>Another medicine "to make children's teeth come without paine" was this: +"Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the +braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes +gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the +child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's +fangs around his neck—an ugly necklace.</p> + +<p>The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby opened his sad +eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and "laid on a +pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen or serge were +hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of cheney or +calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses, and all +the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the +household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden +to a dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "<i>Les Caquets de +l'Accouchée</i>," the popular book of the time of Louis XIII., proves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> + +<p>Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the "groaning beer" was drunk, +though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning Beer" two months before the +child was born. By tradition, "groaning cake," to be used at the time of +the birth of the child, and given to visitors for a week or two later, +also was made; but I find no allusion to it under that name in any of +the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good substantial viands +were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd Pyes, good Cheese +and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old, +seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats, +"Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts." +Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and claret." A survival of +this custom existed for many years in the fashion of drinking caudle at +the bedside of the mother.</p> + +<p>As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in attending the +dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him into +spending a tidy sum—for him—on drinks and feeing "the maid;" and in +visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure +trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent his entire +day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms;—in the +house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the +entertainment or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led +solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who +formally gave them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> his blessing. He took them also to some of the +funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files +sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby +brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were +about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so +that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam +said he saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the +only tears that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death. +When Betty was a year older her father wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It falls to my daughter Elizabeths Share to read the 24 of Isaiah +which she doth with many Tears not being very well, and the +Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me +also."</p></div> + +<p>Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years old, also showed +evidence of the dejection of soul around him.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Richard Dumer, a flourishing youth of 9 years old dies of the +Small Pocks. I tell Sam of it and what need he had to prepare for +Death, and therefore to endeavor really to pray, when he said over +the Lord's Prayer: He seemed not much to mind, eating an Aple; but +when he came to say Our Father he burst out into a bitter Cry and +said he was afraid he should die. I pray'd with him and read +Scriptures comforting against Death, as O death where is thy sting, +&c. All things yours. Life and Immortality brought to light by +Christ."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> + +<p>In January, 1695, Judge Sewall writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and +told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the +Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some +signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she +burst out into an amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry +too; Her Mother ask'd the reason, she gave none; at last said she +was afraid she should goe to Hell, her Sins were not pardon'd. She +was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's Text, Ye +shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, +Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins ran in her mind and terrified +her greatly. And staying at home she read out of Mr. Cotton +Mather—Why hath Satan filled thy Heart, which increased her Fear. +Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered yes but +fear'd her prayers were not heard because her sins were not +pardon'd."</p></div> + +<p>A fortnight later he writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Betty comes into me as soon as I was up and tells me the disquiet +she had when wak'd; told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, +was like Spira, not Elected. Ask'd her what I should pray for, she +said that God would pardon her Sin and give her a new heart. I +answer'd her Fears as well as I could and pray'd with many Tears on +either part. Hope God heard us."</p></div> + +<p>Three months later still he makes this entry:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping, tells me she is +afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>ness in reading +the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is +worn off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with +her alone."</p></div> + +<p>Poor little "wounded" Betty! She did not die in childhood as she feared, +but lived to pass through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and +of overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight +children; but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts, +which she despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from +comforting father; and at last she faced the dread foe Death at the age +of thirty-five. Judge Sewall wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope +God has delivered her now from all her fears;" every one reading of her +bewildered and depressed spiritual life must sincerely hope so with him. +In truth, the Puritan children were, as Judge Sewall said, "stirred up +dreadfully to seek God."</p> + +<p>Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught his little +daughter when she was four years old:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and there I told my +child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am Dead, +Remember every Thing, that I now said unto her. I sett before her +the sinful condition of her Nature and I charged her to pray in +secret places every day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ +would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am +taken from her she must look to meet with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> more Humbling +Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide +for her."</p></div> + +<p>I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to his +children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little +blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and, +indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two +years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and +praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly +satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his +son Increase, or "Cressy."</p> + +<p>No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable exhibitions of +religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when she +passed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of +religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could relate +many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was +set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion. "Before she +was four years old she could say the greater part of the Assembly's +Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent +remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions +about divine mysteries." It is a truly comic anticlimax in her father's +stilted letters to her to have him end his pious instructions with this +advice: "And as you love me do not eat green apples."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> + +<p>Of the demeanor of children to their parents naught can be said but +praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record shows +that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were +well for them to thus obey the law of God, for by the law of the land +high-handed disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not +find this penalty ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim +Calvin, a fact which redounds to the credit both of justice and youth in +colonial days.</p> + +<p>It was not strange that Judge Sewall, always finding in natural events +and appearances symbols of spiritual and religious signification, should +find in his children painful types of original sin.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nov. 6, 1692.—Joseph threw a knop of Brass and hit his Sister +Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed; and upon which, and +for his playing at Prayer-time and eating when Return Thanks, I +whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his +Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind +the head of the Cradle; which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of +Adam's carriage."</p></div> + +<p>It was natural, too, that Judge Sewall's children should be timid; they +ran in terror to their father's chamber at the approach of a +thunderstorm; and, living in mysterious witchcraft days, they fled +screaming through the hall, and their mother with them, at the sudden +entrance of a neighbor with a rug over her head.</p> + +<p>All youthful Puritans were not as godly as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> young Sewalls. Nathaniel +Mather wrote thus in his diary:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"When very young I went astray from God and my mind was altogether +taken with vanities and follies: such as the remembrance of them +doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which +then I was guilty of, none so sticks upon me as that, being very +young, I was <i>whitling</i> on the Sabbath-day; and for fear of being +seen, I did it behind the <i>door</i>. A great <i>reproach</i> of God! a +specimen of that <i>atheism</i> I brought into the world with me!"</p></div> + +<p>It is satisfactory to add that this young prig of a Mather died when +nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's "Narratives of +Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of the Puritanical +religious teaching of the young can be found than the account given in +the <i>Magnalia</i> of various young souls in whom the love of God was +remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather. +His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in +detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and +directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a +day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but +wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He +fasted. He made long lists of sins, long catalogues of things forbidden, +"and then fell a-stoning them." He "chewed much on excellent sermons." +He not only read the Bible, but "obliged himself to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> fetch a note and +prayer out of each verse," as he read. In spite of all these +preparations for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest +despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of +God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said, +soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest +of businesses.</p> + +<p>That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close +to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left +an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new +world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest +reasons of all—the intense yearning for the true well-being of the +children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of +those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid +sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote +thus of the Pilgrims:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to +be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their +dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender +harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise +sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that +were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde +to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their +parents burden, were, often times so oppressed with their hevie +labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their +bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and become decreped in +their early youth;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very +budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all +sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children, +by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye +countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away +by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting +ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some +became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and +other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of +their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of +God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to +degenerate and be corrupted."</p></div> + +<p>Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power +waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking grandchildren, and +they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid Betty, lived +with his grandfather for a time, and on April 1st, 1719, the Judge +wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindall Rawson from +playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the +greatest fools that did so. N. E. Men came hither to avoid +anniversary days, the keeping of them such as the 25th of Decr. How +displeasing must it be to God the giver of our Time to keep +anniversary days to play the fool with ourselves and others."</p></div> + +<p>Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston schoolmaster, +begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking +nature of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April first.</p> + +<p>Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and more serious +matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with +him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was +up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much +displeased."</p></div> + +<p>Two days later he writes thus peremptorily of his grandson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could +not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere."</p></div> + +<p>Though Boston boys played "wicket" on Boston Common, I fancy the young +Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were allowed few amusements. +They apparently brought over some English pastimes with them, for in +1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have +received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the +streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that +game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under +the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<p>One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised toward boys by Puritan +lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the tithingman. He +was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do not doubt +that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his +charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they +wished. From the brother sport of winter, skating, they were not +debarred; and they went on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned, +just as country boys are nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th, +1696:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on Fresh Pond. Wm. +Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned."</p></div> + +<p>In the <i>New England Weekly Journal</i> of January 15th, 1728, we read:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers, viz Mr. George +and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom of +the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;"</p></div> + +<p>and in the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of +another death by drowning.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from +Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He +was about 16 or 18 years of age."</p></div> + +<p>Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates" appear in the <i>Boston Gazette</i>, +of 1749, and the <i>Boston<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Evening Post</i>, of 1758. The February <i>News +Letter</i>, of 1769, has a notice of the sale of "Best Holland Scates of +Different Sizes."</p> + +<p>In the list of goods on board a prize taken by a privateersman in 1712 +were "Boxes of Toys." Higginson, writing to his brother in 1695, told +him that "toys would sell if in small quantity." In exceeding small +quantity one would fancy. In 1743 the <i>Boston News Letter</i> advertised +"English and Dutch Toys for Children." Not until October, 1771, on the +lists of the Boston shop-keepers, who seemed to advertise and to sell +every known article of dry goods, hardware, house furnishing, ornament, +dress and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item "Boys +Marbles." "Battledores and Shuttles" appeared in 1761. I know that no +little maids could ever have lived without dolls, not even the +serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were +advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of +milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion +plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still +survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and +mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in the days of their +youth.</p> + +<p>As years rolled by and eighteenth century frivolity and worldliness took +the place of Puritan sobriety and religion, New England children shared +with their elders in that growing love of amusement, which found but few +and inadequate methods of expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> in the lives of either old or +young. In the year 1771 there was sent from Nova Scotia a young miss of +New England parentage—Anna Green Winslow—to live with her aunt and +receive a "finishing" in Boston schools. For the edification of her +parents and her own practice in penmanship, this bright little maid kept +a diary, of which portions have been preserved, and which I do not +hesitate to say is the most sprightly record of the daily life of a girl +of her age that I have ever read. There is not a dull word in it, and +every page has some statement of historical value. She was twelve years +old shortly after the diary was begun, and she then had a "coming-out +party"—she became a "miss in her teens." To this rout only young ladies +of her own age and in the most elegant Boston society were invited—no +rough Boston boys. Miss Anna has written for us more than one prim and +quaint little picture of similar parties—here is one of her clear and +stiff little descriptions; and a graphic account also of the evening +dress of a young girl at that time.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have now the pleasure to give you the result Viz; a very genteel +well regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soleys last evening, +Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Miss Soley desired me to +assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests which I did. +Sometime since I wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large +company assembled in a large handsome upper room in the new end of +the house. We had two fiddles and I had the honor to open the +diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley. Here follows +a list<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> of the company as we form'd for country-dancing. Miss Soley +and Miss Anna Green Winslow; Miss Calif and Miss Scott; Miss +Williams and Miss McLarth; Miss Codman and Miss Winslow; Miss Ives +and Miss Coffin; Miss Scollay and Miss Bella Coffin; Miss Waldo and +Miss Quinsey; Miss Glover and Miss Draper; Miss Hubbard and Miss +Cregur (usually pronounced Kicker) and two Miss Sheafs were invited +but were sick or sorry and beg'd to be excused.</p> + +<p>"There was a little Miss Russel and little ones of the family +present who could not dance. As spectators there were Mr. & Mrs. +Deming, Mr. & Mrs. Sweetser, Mr. and Mrs. Soley, Mr. & Mrs. Claney, +Mrs. Draper, Miss Orice, Miss Hannah—our treat was nuts, raisins, +cakes, Wine, punch hot and cold all in great plenty. We had a very +agreeable evening from 5 to 10 o'clock. For variety we woo'd a +widow, hunted the whistle, threaded the needle, & while the company +was collecting we diverted ourselves with playing of pawns—<i>no +rudeness</i> Mamma I assure you. Aunt Deming desires you would +particularly observe that the elderly part of the Company were +<i>Spectators only</i>, that they mixed not in either of the +above-described scenes.</p> + +<p>"I was dressed in my yelloe coat, black bib and apron, black +feathers on my head, my paste comb and all my paste garnet +marquasett & jet pins, together with my silver plume—my locket, +rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts and yards of blue +ribbon (black and blue is high tast) striped tucker & ruffles (not +my best) and my silk shoes completed my dress."</p></div> + +<p>How clear the picture: can you not see it—the low raftered chamber +softly alight with candles on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> mantel-tree and in sconces; the two +fiddles soberly squeaking: the rows of demure little Boston maids, all +of New England Brahmin blood, in high rolls, with nodding plumes and +sparkling combs, with ruffles and mitts, little miniatures of their +elegant mammas, soberly walking and curtseying through the stately +minuet "with no rudeness I can assure you;" and discreetly partaking of +hot and cold punch afterward.</p> + +<p>There came at this time to another lady in this Boston court circle a +grandchild eight years of age, from the Barbadoes, to also attend Boston +schools. Missy left her grandmother's house in high dudgeon because she +could not have wine at all her meals. And her parents upheld her, saying +she had been brought up a lady and must have wine when she wished it. +Evidently Cobbett's statement of the free drinking of wine, cider, and +beer by American children was true—as Anna Green Winslow's "treat" +would also show.</p> + +<p>Though Puritan children had few recreations and amusements, they must +have enjoyed a very cheerful, happy home life. Large families abounded. +Cotton Mather says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"One woman had not less than twenty-two children, and another had +no less than twenty-three children by one husband whereof nineteen +lived to mans estate, and a third who was mother to seven and +twenty children."</p></div> + +<p>Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same +mother. Printer Green had thirty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> children. The Rev. John Sherman, of +Watertown, had twenty-six children by two wives—twenty by his last +wife. The Rev. Samuel Willard, first minister to Groton, had twenty +children, and his father had seventeen children. Benjamin Franklin was +one of a family of seventeen. Charles Francis Adams has told us of the +fruitful vines of old Braintree.</p> + +<p>The little Puritans rejoiced in some very singular names, the offspring +of Roger Clap being good examples: Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, +Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply.</p> + +<p>Of the food given Puritan children we know but little. In an old almanac +of the eighteenth century I find a few sentences of advice as to the +"Easy Rearing of Children." The writer urges that boys as soon as they +can run alone go without hats to harden them, and if possible sleep +without night-caps, as soon as they have any hair. He advises always to +wet children's feet in cold water and thus make them (the feet) tough, +and also to have children wear thin-soled shoes "that the wet may come +freely in." He says young children should never be allowed to drink cold +drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated; that it is +"best to feed them on Milk, Pottage, Flummery, Bread, and Cheese, and +not let them drink their beer till they have first eaten a piece of +Brown Bread." Fancy a young child nowadays making a meal of brown bread +and cheese with warm beer! He suggests that they drink but little wine +or liquor, and sleep on quilts instead of feathers. In such ways were +reared our Revolutionary heroes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>Of the dazzling and beautiful array in our modern confectioners' shops +little Priscilla and Hate-Evil could never have dreamed, even in +visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica Candy, +Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to +port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds," +and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine, +crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial +cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and +daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial +days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though +dearly loved by Salem lads and lasses, always bore—indeed, do still +bear—too strong a flavor of liquorice, too haunting a medicinal +suggestion to be loved by other children of the Puritans. As an +instance, on a large scale, of the retributive fate that always pursues +the candy-eating wight, I state that the good ship Ann and Hope brought +into Providence one hundred years ago, as part of her cargo, eight boxes +of sweetmeats and twenty tubs of sugar candy, and on the succeeding +voyage sternly fetched no sweets, but brought instead forty-eight boxes +of rhubarb.</p> + +<p>The children doubtless had prunes, figs, "courance," and I know they had +"Raisins of the Sun" and "Bloom Raisins" galore. Advertisements of all +these fruits appear in the earliest newspapers. Though "China Oranges" +were frequently given to and by Judge Sewall, I have not found them +adver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>tised for sale till Revolutionary times, and I fancy few children +had then tasted them. The native and domestic fruits were plentiful, but +many of them were poor. The apples and pears and Kentish cherries were +better than the peaches and grapes. The children gathered the summer +berries in season, and the autumn's plentiful and spicy store of +boxberries, checkerberries, teaberries or gingerbread berries with +October's brown nuts. There were gingerbread and "cacks" even in the +earliest days; but they were not sold in unlimited numbers. The +omnipotent hand of Puritan law laid its firm hold on their manufacture. +Judge Sewall often speaks, however, of Banbury cakes and Meers cakes; +Meer was a celebrated Boston baker and confectioner. The colonists had +also egg cakes and marchepanes and maccaroons.</p> + +<p>There were children's books in those early days; not numerous, however, +nor varied was the assortment from which Puritan youth in New England +could choose. Here is the advertisement of one:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Small book in easey verse Very Suitable for children, entitled The +Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed: adorned with +curious cuts, Price Sixpence."</p></div> + +<p>Somehow, from the suggestion of the title we should hardly fancy this to +be an edifying book for children. John Cotton supplied them with</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England: Drawn out of +the Breasts of both Testaments for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Souls Nourishment. But +may be of like Use to Any Children."</p></div> + +<p>Another book was published in many editions and sold in large numbers, +and much extolled by contemporary ministers. It was entitled:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A Token for Children. Being the exact account of the Conversion & +Holy & Exemplary Lives of several Young Children by James Janeway."</p></div> + +<p>To it was added by Cotton Mather:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Some examples of Children in whom the fear of God was remarkably +Budding before they died; in several parts of New England."</p></div> + +<p>Cotton Mather also wrote: "Good Lessons for Children, in Verse." Other +books were, "A Looking Glasse for Children," "The life of Elizabeth +Butcher, in the Early Piety series;" "The life of Mary Paddock, who died +at the age of nine;" "The Childs new Plaything" (which was a primer); +"Divine Songs in Easy Language;" and "Praise out of the Mouth of Babes;" +"A Particular Account of some Extraordinary Pious Motions and devout +Exercises observed of late in many Children in Siberia." Also accounts +of pious motions of children in Silesia and of Jewish children in +Berlin. One oasis appeared in the desert waste—after the first quarter +of the eighteenth century Puritan children had Mother Goose.</p> + +<p>By 1787, in Isaiah Thomas' list of "books Suitable for Children of all +ages," we find less serious books.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> "Tom Jones Abridged," "Peregrine +Pickle Abridged," "Vice in its Proper Shape," "The Sugar Plumb," "Bag of +Nuts Ready Crack'd," "Jacky Dandy," "History of Billy and Polly +Friendly." Among the "Chapman's Books for the Edification and Amusement +of young Men and Women who are not able to Purchase those of a Higher +Price" are, "The Amours and Adventures of Two English Gentlemen in +Italy," "Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony," "The Lovers Secretary," and +"Laugh and be Fat." Another advertisement of about the same date +contained, among the books for misses, "The Masqued Wedding," "The +Elopement," "The Passionate Lovers," "Sketches of the History and +Importance of the Fair Sex," "Original Love Letters," and "Six Dialogues +of Young Misses Relating to Matrimony;" thus showing that love-stories +were not abhorred by the descendants of the Puritans.</p> + +<p>In such an exceptional plantation as New England, a colony peopled not +by the commonplace and average Englishmen of the day, but by men of +special intelligence, and almost universally of good education, it was +inevitable that early and profound attention should be paid to the +establishment of schools. Cotton Mather said in 1685, in his sermon +before the Governor and his Council, "the Youth in this country are +verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities." So quickly had New +England air developed the typical New England traits. And the early +schoolmasters, too, may be thanked for their scholars' early ripeness +and sharpness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + +<p>At an early age both girls and boys were sent to dame-schools, where, if +girls were not taught much book-learning, they were carefully instructed +in all housewifely arts. They learned to cook; and to spin and weave and +knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children +could spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers. +Fine knitting was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the +knitter, and many curious and elaborate stitches were known; the +herring-bone and the <span class="ws">fox- and</span> geese-patterns being prime favorites. +Initials were knit into mittens and stockings; one clever young miss of +Shelburne, N. H., could knit the alphabet and a verse of poetry into a +single pair of mittens. Fine embroidery was to New England women and +girls a delight. The Indians at an early day called the English women +"lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of +digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716, +taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as +Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, +Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, +flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, +Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking +children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery +on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels, +embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers. +Many of the fruits of these care<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>ful lessons of colonial childhood +remain to us; quaint samplers, bed hangings, petticoats and pockets, and +frail lace veils and scarfs. Miss Susan Hayes Ward has resuscitated from +these old embroideries a curious stitch used to great effect on many of +them, and employed also on ancient Persian embroideries, and she points +out that the designs are Persian also. This stitch was not known in the +modern English needlework schools; but just as good old Elizabethan +words and phrases are still used in New England, though obsolete in +England, so this curious old stitch has lived in the colony when lost in +the mother country; or, it may be possible, since it is found so +frequently in the vicinity of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims obtained both +stitch and designs in Holland, whose greater commerce with the Orient +may have supplied to deft English fingers the Persian pattern.</p> + +<p>Other accomplishments were taught to girls; "cutting of Escutcheons" and +paper flowers—"Papyrotamia" it was ambitiously called—and painting on +velvet; and quilt-piecing in a hundred different and difficult designs. +They also learned to make bone lace with pillow and bobbins.</p> + +<p>The boys were thrust at once into that iron-handed but wholly wise +grasp—the Latin Grammar. The minds trained in earliest youth in that +study, as it was then taught, have made their deep and noble impress on +this nation. The study of mathematics was, until well into this century, +a hopeless maze to many youthful minds. Doubtless the Puritans learned +mul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>tiplication tables and may have found them, as did Marjorie Fleming, +"a horrible and wretched plaege," though no pious little New Englanders +would have dared to say as she did, "You cant conceive it the most +Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7, it is what nature itself +can't endure."</p> + +<p>Great attention was paid to penmanship. Spelling was nought if the +"wrighting" were only fair and flowing. I have never read any criticism +of teachers by either parents or town officers save on the one question +of writing. How deeply children were versed or grounded in the knowledge +of the proper use of "Simme colings nots of interiogations peorids and +commoes," I do not know. A boundless freedom apparently was given, as +was also in orthography—if we judge from the letters of the times, +where "horrid false spells," as Cotton Mather called them, abound.</p> + +<p>It is natural to dwell on the religious teaching of Puritan children, +because so much of their education had a religious element in it. They +must have felt, like Tony Lumpkin, "tired of having good dinged into +'em." Their primers taught religious rhymes; they read from the Bible, +the Catechism, the Psalm Book, and that lurid rhymed horror "The Day of +Doom;" they parsed, too, from these universal books. How did they parse +these lines from the Bay Psalm Book?</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"And sayd He would not them waste; had not</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">Moses stood (whom he chose)</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">'fore him i' th' breach; to turn his wrath</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">lest that he should waste those."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + +<p>Their "horn books"—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">"books of stature small</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Which with pellucid horn secured are</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">To save from fingers wet the letters fair,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>those framed and behandled sheets of semi-transparent horn, which were +worn hanging at the side and were studied, as late certainly as the year +1715 by children of the Pilgrims, also managed to instil with the +alphabet some religious words or principles. Usually the Lord's Prayer +formed part of the printed text. Though horn-books are referred to in +Sewall's diary and in the letters of Wait Still Winthrop, and appear on +stationers' and booksellers' lists at the beginning of the eighteenth +century, I do not know of the preservation of a single specimen to our +own day.</p> + +<p>The schoolhouses were simple dwellings, often tumbling down and out of +repair. The Roxbury teacher wrote in 1681:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Of inconveniences [in the schoolhouse] I shall mention no other +but the confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is in, +not fitting for to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very +raw and cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle +fires, the hearth spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of +kilter, that one had well-nigh as goods keep school in a hog stie +as in it."</p></div> + +<p>This schoolhouse had been built and furnished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> with some care in 1652, +as this entry in the town records shows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he provide convenient +benches with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a conveniente +seate for the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and +shelves to lay up bookes."</p></div> + +<p>The schoolmaster "promised and engaged to use his best endeavour both by +precept and example to instruct in all Scholasticall morall and +Theologicall discipline the children so far as they be capable, all +A. B. C. Darians excepted." He was paid in corn, barley or peas, the value +of £25 per annum, and each child, through his parents or guardians, +supplied half a cord of wood for the schoolhouse fire. If this load of +wood were not promptly furnished the child suffered, for the master did +not allow him the benefit of the fire; that is, to go near enough the +fireplace to feel the warmth.</p> + +<p>The children of wise parents like Cotton Mather, were also taught +"opificial and beneficial sciences," such as the mystery of medicine—a +mystery indeed in colonial times.</p> + +<p>Puritan schoolmasters believed, as did Puritan parents, that sparing the +rod spoiled the child, and great latitude was given in punishment; the +rod and ferule were fiercely and frequently plied "with lamming and with +whipping, and such benefits of nature" as in English schools of the same +date. When young men were publicly whipped in colleges, children were +sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> to be well trained in smaller schools. Every gradation of +chastisement was known and every instrument from</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"A beesome of byrche for babes verye fit</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">To a long lastinge lybbet for lubbers as meete,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>from the "thimell-pie" of the dame's school—a smart tapping on the head +with a heavy thimble—to belaboring with a heavy walnut stick or oaken +ruler. Master Lovell, that tigerish Boston teacher, whipped the culprit +with birch rods and forced another scholar to hold the sufferer on his +back. Other schoolmasters whipped on the soles of the feet, and one +teacher roared out, "Oh the Caitiffs! it is good for them." Not only +were children whipped, but many ingenious instruments of torture were +invented. One instructor made his scholars sit on a "bark seat turned +upside down with his thumb on the knot of a floor." Another master of +the inquisition invented a unipod—a stool with one leg—sometimes +placed in the middle of the seat, sometimes on the edge, on which the +unfortunate scholar tiresomely balanced. Others sent out the suffering +pupil to cut a branch of a tree, and, making a split in the large end of +the branch, sprung it on the culprit's nose, and he stood painfully +pinched, an object of ridicule with his spreading branch of leaves. One +cruel master invented an instrument of torture which he called a +flapper. It was a heavy piece of leather six inches in diameter with a +hole in the middle, and was fastened at the edge to a pliable handle. +The blistering pain inflicted by this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> brutal instrument can well be +imagined. At another school, whipping of unlucky wights was done "upon a +peaked block with a tattling stick;" and this expression of colonial +severity seems to take on additional force and cruelty in our minds that +we do not at all know what a tattling stick was, nor understand what was +meant by a peaked block.</p> + +<p>I often fancy I should have enjoyed living in the good old times, but I +am glad I never was a child in colonial New England—to have been +baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to +learn the Assembly's Catechism and "explain all the Quaestions with +conferring Texts," to have been constantly threatened with fear of death +and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's "Day of +Doom" to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a tattling +stick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + +<h3>COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS</h3> + +<p>In the early days of the New England colonies no more embarrassing or +hampering condition, no greater temporal ill could befall any adult +Puritan than to be unmarried. What could he do, how could he live in +that new land without a wife? There were no housekeepers—and he would +scarcely have been allowed to have one if there were. What could a woman +do in that new settlement among unbroken forests, uncultivated lands, +without a husband? The colonists married early, and they married often. +Widowers and widows hastened to join their fortunes and sorrows. The +father and mother of Governor Winslow had been widow and widower seven +and twelve weeks, respectively, when they joined their families and +themselves in mutual benefit, if not in mutual love. At a later day the +impatient Governor of New Hampshire married a lady but ten days widowed. +Bachelors were rare indeed, and were regarded askance and with intense +disfavor by the entire community, were almost in the position of +suspected criminals. They were seldom permitted to live alone, or even +to choose their residence, but had to find a domicile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> wherever and with +whomsoever the Court assigned. In Hartford lone-men, as Shakespeare +called them, had to pay twenty shillings a week to the town for the +selfish luxury of solitary living. No colonial law seems to me more +arbitrary or more comic than this order issued in the town of Eastham, +Mass., in 1695, namely:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Every unmarried man in the township shall kill six blackbirds or +three crows while he remains single; as a penalty for not doing it, +shall not be married until he obey this order."</p></div> + +<p>Bachelors were under the special spying and tattling supervision of the +constable, the watchman, and the tithingman, who, like Pliable in +Pilgrim's Progress, sat sneaking among his neighbors and reported their +"scirscumstances and conuersation." In those days a man gained instead +of losing his freedom by marrying. "Incurridgement" to wedlock was given +bachelors in many towns by the assignment to them upon marriage of +home-lots to build upon. In Medfield there was a so-called Bachelor's +Row, which had been thus assigned. In the early days of Salem "maid +lotts" were also granted; but Endicott wrote in the town records that it +was best to abandon the custom and thus "avoid all presedents & evil +events of granting lotts vnto single maidens not disposed of." This line +he crossed out and wrote instead, "for avoiding of absurdities." He +kindly, but rather disappointingly, gave one maid a bushel of corn when +she came to ask for a house and lot, and told her it would be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> "bad +president" for her to keep house alone. A maid had, indeed, a hard time +to live in colonial days, did she persevere in her singular choice of +remaining single. Perhaps the colonists "proverb'd with the grandsire +phrase," that women dying maids lead apes in hell. Maidens "withering on +the virgin thorn," in single blessedness, were hard to find. One +Mistress Poole lived unmarried to great old age, and helped to found the +town of Taunton under most discouraging rebuffs; and in the Plymouth +church record of March 19, 1667, is a record of a death which reads +thus:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mary Carpenter sister of Mrs. Alice Bradford wife of Governor +Bradford being newly entered into the 91st year of her age. She was +a godly old maid never married."</p></div> + +<p>The state of old maidism was reached at a very early age in those early +days; Higginson wrote of an "antient maid" of twenty-five years. John +Dunton in his "Life and Errors" wrote eulogistically of one such ideal +"Virgin" who attracted his special attention.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is true an <i>old</i> (or superanuated) Maid in Boston is thought +such a curse, as nothing can exceed it (and looked on as a <i>dismal</i> +spectacle) yet she by her good nature, gravity, and strict virtue +convinces all (so much as the fleering Beaus) that it is not her +necessity but her choice that keeps her a Virgin. She is now about +thirty years (the age which they call a <i>Thornback</i>) yet she never +dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>guises herself, and talks as little as she thinks, of Love. She +never reads any Plays or Romances, goes to no Balls or +Dancing-match (as they do who go to such Fairs) to meet with +Chapmen. Her looks, her speech, her whole behavior are so very +chaste, that but once (at Govenor's Island, where we went to be +merry at roasting a hog) going to kiss her, I thought she would +have blushed to death.</p> + +<p>"Our <i>Damsel</i> knowing this, her conversation is generally amongst +the women (as there is least danger from that sex) so that I found +it no easy matter to enjoy her company, for most of her time (save +what was taken up in needle work and learning French &c.) was spent +in Religious Worship. She knew time was a dressing-room for +Eternity, and therefore reserves most of her hours for better uses +than those of the Comb, the Toilet and the Glass.</p> + +<p>"And as I am sure this is most agreeable to the Virgin modesty, +which should make Marriage an act rather of their obedience than +their choice. And they that think their Friends too slowpaced in +the matter give certain proof that lust is their sole motive. But +as the Damsel I have been describing would neither anticipate nor +contradict the will of her Parents, so do I assure you she is +against Forcing her own, by marrying where she cannot love; and +that is the reason she is still a Virgin."</p></div> + +<p>Hence it may be seen that though there was not in Boston the "glorious +phalanx of old maids" of Theodore Parker's description, yet the Boston +old maid was lovely even in colonial days, though she did bear the +odious name of thornback.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + +<p>An English traveller, Josselyn, gives a glimpse of Boston love-making in +the year 1663.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"On the South there is a small but pleasant Common, where the +Gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their Marmalet-Madams +till the nine o'clock bell rings them home to their respective +habitations."</p></div> + +<p>This simple and quaint picture of youthful love in the soft summer +twilight, at that ever beautiful trysting-place, gives an unwonted touch +of sentiment to the austere daily life of colonial New England. The +omnipotent Puritan law-giver, who meddled and interfered in every +detail, small and great, of the public and private life of the citizen, +could not leave untouched, in fancy free, these soberly promenading +Puritan sweethearts. A Boston gallant must choose well his +marmalet-madam, must proceed cautiously in his love-making in the +gloaming, obtaining first the formal permission of parents or guardians +ere he take any step in courtship. Fines, imprisonment, or the +whipping-post awaited him, did he "inveigle the affections of any maide +or maide servant" by making love to her without proper authority. +Numberless examples might be given to prove that this law was no dead +letter. In 1647, in Stratford, Will Colefoxe was fined £5 for "laboring +to invegle the affection of Write his daughter." In 1672 Jonathan +Coventry, of Plymouth town, was indicted for "making a motion of +marriage" to Katharine Dudley without obtaining formal consent. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +sensible reason for these courtship regulations was "to prevent young +folk from intangling themselves by rash and inconsiderate contracts of +maridge." The Governor of Plymouth colony, Thomas Prence, did not +hesitate to drag his daughter's love affairs before the public, in 1660, +by prosecuting Arthur Howland for "disorderly and unrighteously +endeavouring to gain the affections of Mistress Elizabeth Prence." The +unrighteous lover was fined £5. Seven years later, patient Arthur, who +would not "refrain and desist," was again fined the same amount; but +love prevailed over law, and he triumphantly married his fair Elizabeth +a few months later. The marriage of a daughter with an unwelcome swain +was also often prohibited by will, "not to suffer her to be circumvented +and cast away upon a swaggering gentleman."</p> + +<p>On the other hand, an engagement of marriage once having been permitted, +the father could not recklessly or unreasonably interfere to break off +the contract. Many court records prove that colonial lovers promptly +resented by legal action any attempt of parents to bring to an end a +sanctioned love affair. Richard Taylor so sued, and for such cause, Ruth +Whieldon's father in Plymouth in 1661; while another ungallant swain is +said to have sued the maid's father for the loss of time spent in +courting. Breach of promise cases were brought against women by +disappointed men who had been "shabbed" (as jilting was called in some +parts of New England), as well as by deserted women against men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p> + +<p>But sly Puritan maids found a way to circumvent and outwit Puritan law +makers, and to prevent their unsanctioned lovers from being punished, +too. Hear the craft of Sarah Tuttle. On May day in New Haven, in 1660, +she went to the house of a neighbor, Dame Murline, to get some thread. +Some very loud jokes were exchanged between Sarah and her friends Maria +and Susan Murline—so loud, in fact, that Dame Murline testified in +court that it "much distressed her and put her in a sore strait." In the +midst of all this doubtful fun Jacob Murline entered, and seizing +Sarah's gloves, demanded the centuries old forfeit of a kiss. +"Wherupon," writes the scandalized Puritan chronicler, "they sat down +together; his arm being about her; and her arm upon his shoulder or +about his neck; and hee kissed her, and shee kissed him, or they kissed +one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour, as Maria and +Susan testified." Goodman Tuttle, who was a man of dignity and +importance, angrily brought suit against Jacob for inveigling his +daughter's affections; "but Sarah being asked in court if Jacob +inveagled her, said No." This of course prevented any rendering of +judgment against the unauthorized kissing by Jacob, and he escaped the +severe punishment of his offence. But the outraged and baffled court +fined Sarah, and gave her a severe lecture, calling her with justice a +"Bould Virgin." She at the end, demurely and piously answered that "She +hoped God would help her to carry it Better for time to come." And +doubtless she did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> carry it better; for at the end of two years, this +bold virgin's fine for unruly behavior being still unpaid, half of it +was remitted.</p> + +<p>Of the etiquette, the pleasures, the exigencies of colonial "courtship +in high life," let one of the actors speak for himself through the pages +of his diary. Judge Sewall's first wife was Hannah Hull, the only +daughter of Captain Hull of Pine Tree Shilling fame. She received as her +dowry her weight in silver shillings. Of her wooing we know naught save +the charming imaginary story told us by Hawthorne. The Judge's only +record is this:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mrs. Hannah Hull saw me when I took my Degree and set her +affection on me though I knew nothing of it till after our +Marriage."</p></div> + +<p>She lived with him forty-three years, bore him seven sons and seven +daughters, and died on the 19th day of October, 1717.</p> + +<p>Of course, though the Judge was sixty-six years old, he would marry +again. Like a true Puritan he despised an unmarried life, and on the 6th +day of February he made this naive entry in his diary: "Wandering in my +mind whether to live a Married or a Single Life." Ere that date he had +begun to take notice. He had called more than once on Widow Ruggles, and +had had Widow Gill to dine with him; had looked critically at Widow +Emery, and noted that Widow Tilley was absent from meeting; and he had +gazed admiringly at Widow Winthrop in "her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> sley," and he had visited +and counseled and consoled her ere his wife had been two months dead, +and had given her a few suitable tokens of his awakening affection such +as "Smoking Flax Inflamed," "The Jewish Children of Berlin," and "My +Small Vial of Tears;" so he had "wandered" in the flesh as well as in +the mind.</p> + +<p>Such an array of widows! Boston fairly blossomed with widows, the widows +of all the "true New England men" whose wills Sewall had drawn up, whose +dying bedsides he had blessed and harassed with his prayers, whose +bodies he had borne to the grave, whose funeral gloves and scarves and +rings he had received and apprized, and whose estates he had settled. +Over this sombre flower-bed of black garbed widows, these hardy +perennials, did this aged Puritan butterfly amorously hover, loth to +settle, tasting each solemn sweet, calculating the richness of the soil +in which each was planted, gauging the golden promise of fruit, and +perhaps longing for the whole garden of full-blown blossoms. "Antient +maides" were held in little esteem by him; not one thornback is on his +list.</p> + +<p>Not only did he look and wander, but all his friends and neighbors arose +and began to suggest and search for a suitable wife for him, with as +officious alacrity as if he needed help, which he certainly did not. In +March Madam Henchman strongly recommended to him "Madam Winthrop, the +Major General's widow." This recommendation was very sweet to the +widower, who had turned his eyes with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> such special approval on this +special widow, and further and warm encouragement came quickly.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Deacon Marion comes to me, sits with me a great while in the +evening; after a great deal of Discourse about his Courtship He +told me the Olivers said they wish'd I would court their Aunt. I +said little, but said 'twas not five Moneths since I buried my dear +Wife. Had said before 'twas hard to know whether to marry again or +no or whom to marry."</p></div> + +<p>The Olivers' aunt was Madam Winthrop. It would seem somewhat +presumptuous and officious for nieces and nephews to suggest courtship, +when there were grown up Winthrop children who might dislike the +marriage, but in those days everyone meddled in love affairs; to quote +Pope: "Marriage was the theme on which they all declaimed." The Judge +gossiped publicly about his intentions. He writes: "They had laid one +out for me, and Governor Dudley told me 'twas Madam Winthrop. I told him +I had been there but thrice and twice upon business. He said <i>cave +tertium</i>." Even solemn Cotton Mather proffered counsel in a letter on +"paying regards to the Widow."</p> + +<p>In spite of all these hints and commendations, and the Judge's evident +pleasure in receiving them, the Winthrop agitation all came to naught, +for about this time he was called to make a will for a Mr. Denison, of +Roxbury, who died on March 22d. Though the Judge was too upright and too +pious to let even his thoughts wander to a wife, the amazing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> rapidity +with which he turned his longing eyes on the newly-made widow (cruelly +forsaking Madam Winthrop) is only equalled by the act of the famous +Irish lover who proposed to a widow at the open grave of her husband.</p> + +<p>Judge Sewall went home with widow Denison from her husband's funeral and +"prayed God to keep house with her." The very next day he writes, "Mr. +Danforth gives the Widow Denison a high commendation for her Piety, +Goodness, Diligence and Humility." On April 7th she came to the widower +to prove her husband's will; and another match-making friend, Mr. Dow, +"took occasion to say in her absence that she was one of the most +Dutiful Wives in the World." A few days later the Judge made her a gift, +"a Widow's book having writ her name in it."</p> + +<p>At last, after talking the matter over with all his friends, he decided +positively to go a-courting. Widow Denison came to his house and he +says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I took her up into my chamber and discoursed Thorowly with her: +told her I intended to visit her next Lecture Day. She said 'twould +be talk'd of, I answered: In such Cases persons must run the +Gantlet. Gave her an Oration."</p></div> + +<p>He visited her as he had promised and gave her "Dr. Mathers Sermons +neatly bound and told her in it we were invited to a wedding. She gave +me very good Curds." Other love gifts followed: "K. Georges Effigies in +Copper and an English Crown of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> K. Charles II. 1677." "A pound of +Reasons and Proportionate Almonds," "A Psalmbook elegantly bound in +Turkey leather," "A pair of Shoe Buckles cost five shillings three +pence." "Two Cases with a knife and fork in each; one Turtle Shell +Tackling; the other long with Ivory Handles squar'd cost four shillings +sixpence."</p> + +<p>In the meantime he read with Cousin Moodey the history of Rebekah's +courtship, and then prayed over it, and over his own wooing. Madam +Rogers and Madam Leverett much congratulated him, and his daughter +Judith visited her prospective stepmother. But alas! the lady was coy +and averse to a decision:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"She mentions her Discouragement by reason of Discourse she had +heard. Ask't what I should allow her, she not speaking I told her I +was willing to allow her two hundred and fifty pounds per annum if +it should please God to take me out of the world before her. She +answered she had better keep as she was than give up a certainty +for an uncertainty. She would pay dear for her living in Boston. I +desired her to make Proposals but she made none. I had thought of +Publishment next Thursday. But I now seem far from it. My God who +has the pity of a Father Direct and help me."</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Denison's will left his widow a portion of his estate to dispose of +as she wished if she did not marry again. Judge Sewall was unwilling to +make equal provision for her, hence the stumbling block in their +courtship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> + +<p>After consulting with a friend, the Judge made a final visit to her on +November 28th.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"She said she thought it was hard to part with all and having +nothing to bestow on her Kindred. I had ask'd her to give me +proposals in Writing and she upbraided me That I who had never +written her a Letter should ask her to write. She asked me if I +would drink, I told her yes. She gave me Cider Aples and a Glass of +Wine, gathered together the little things I had given her and +offered them to me, but I would none of them. Told her I wish'd her +well and should be glad of her welfare. She seem'd to say she +should not again take in hand a thing of this nature. Thank'd me +for what I had given her and Desir'd my Prayers. My bowels yern +towards Mrs. Denison but I think God directs me in his Providence +to desist."</p></div> + +<p>This love affair was not, however, quite ended, for the following Lord's +Day "after dark" Widow Denison came "very privat" to his house. This +Sunday visit betokened great anxiety on her part. She had walked in from +Roxbury in the cold, and when we remember how wolves and bears abounded +in the vicinity we comprehend still further her solicitude.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"She ask'd pardon if she had affronted me.... Mr. Denison spake to +her after signing his will that he would not make her put all out +of her Hand and power but reserve something to bestow on her +friends that might want.... I could not observe that she made me +any offer all the while. She mentioned two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> Glass Bottles she had. +I told her they were hers and the other small things I had given +her only now they had not the same signification as before, I was +much concerned for her being in the cold, would fetch her a plate +of something warm; she refused. However I fetched a Tankard of +Cider and drank to her. She desired that nobody might know of her +being here. I told her they should not. She went away in the bitter +Cold, no moon being up, to my great pain. I Saluted her at +Parting."</p></div> + +<p>With that parting kiss on that dark cold night, in "great pain," ended +the Judge's second wooing.</p> + +<p>That he was sincerely in love with Widow Denison one cannot doubt, +though he loved his money more. Disappointed, he did not again turn to +courting until the following August—much longer than he had waited +after the death of his wife. He then proceeded in a matter-of-fact way +to visit Widow Tilley, whom he had early noted in meeting. He asked her, +at his third visit, to "come and live in his house." "She expressed her +unworthiness with much respect," and both agreed to consider it. He gave +her a little book called "Ornaments of Sion;" Mr. Pemberton applauded +his courtship; Mrs. Armitage said that Mrs. Tilley had been a great +blessing to them; the banns were published; and the Judge's third wooing +ended in a marriage on October 24th.</p> + +<p>But the bride was very ill on her wedding night, and after several +slight sicknesses through the winter, died on May 20th, to her husband's +"great amazement." Again he was a-seeking a "dear Yoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> fellow," and on +September 30th, "Daughter Sewall acquainted Madam Winthrop that if she +pleased to be within at 3 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> I would wait on her." This was the same +Madam Winthrop whose attractions had been so completely obscured by the +bright halo which encircled the much-longed-for Widow Denison.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Madam Winthrop returning answer that she would be at home, I went +to her house and spake to her saying my loving wife died so soon +and suddenly 'twas hardly convenient for me to think of Marrying +again, however I came to this Resolution that I would not make my +Court to any person without first consulting with her. Had a +pleasant Discourse about Seven Single persons sitting in the +Fore-Seat. She propounded one after another to me but none would +do."</p></div> + +<p>Now, I think the Judge was very graceful in approaching a proposal to +this widow, for on his next visit he asked to see her alone, and he +resumed the pleasant discourse about the seven widows on the fore seat, +and said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"At last I pray'd Katharine might be the person assigned for me. +She evidently took it up in the way of denyal as if she had catched +at an opportunity to do it, saying she could not do it, could not +leave her children."</p></div> + +<p>The Judge begged her not to be so speedy in decision, and brought her +gifts, "pieces of Mr. Belchar's cake and gingerbread wrapped in a clean +sheet of paper;" China oranges; the <i>News Letter</i>; Preston's "Church +Marriage;" sugared almonds (of which she inquired the price). He wrote +her a stilted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> letter with an allusion in it to Christopher Columbus, +and he had to explain it to her afterward. He gave money to her servants +and "penys" to her grandchildren, and heard them "say their catechise;" +and he had interviews and consultations with her relatives—her +children, her sister—who agreed not to oppose the marriage.</p> + +<p>Still the progress of the courtship was not encouraging. Katharine went +to her neighbors' houses when she knew her suitor was coming to visit +her, and left him to read "Dr. Sibbs Bowels" for scant comfort. She +"look'd dark and lowering" at him and coldly placed tables or her +grandchild's cradle between her chair and his as they sat together. She +avoided seeing him alone. She "let the fire come to one short Brand +beside the Block and fall in pieces and make no recruit"—a broad hint +to leave. She "would not help him on with his coat"—a cutting blow. She +would not let her servant accompany him home with a lantern, but +heartlessly permitted her elderly lover to stumble home alone in the +dark. She spoke to him of his luckless courtship of Widow Denison (a +most unpleasant topic), thus giving a clue to the whole situation, in +showing that Madam Winthrop resented his desertion of her in his first +widowerhood, and like Falstaff, would not "undergo a sneap without +reply." He said, in apologetic answer:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"If after a first and second Vagary she would Accept of me +returning her Victorious Kindness and Good Will would be very +Obliging."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> + +<p>Undeterred by these many rebuffs, as she grew cold he waxed warm, and a +most lover-like and gallant scene ensued which would have done credit to +a younger man than the Judge. Here it is in his own words:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I asked her to Acquit me of Rudeness if I drew off her Glove. +Enquiring the reason I told her 'twas great odds between handling a +dead Goat and a Living Lady. Got it off.... Told her the reason why +I came every other night was lest I should drink too Deep draughts +of Pleasure. She had talked of Canary, her Kisses were to me better +than the best Canary."</p></div> + +<p>Naturally these warm words had a marked effect; she relaxed, drank a +glass of wine with him, and I trust gave him a Canary-sweet kiss, and +sent a servant home with him with a lantern.</p> + +<p>The next visit the wind blew cold again. He had had one experience with +a short-lived wife, and he had determined that should his next wife die +he would still have some positive benefit from having married her. Hence +he kept pressing Madam Winthrop in a most unpleasant and ghoulish manner +to know what she would give him in case she died. He would allow her but +one hundred pounds per annum. She in turn persisted in questioning him +about the property he had given to his children; and she wished him to +agree to keep a coach (which he could well afford to do), and she wanted +it set on springs too. He said he could not do it while he paid his +debts. She also suggested that he should wear a wig. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> annoyed him +beyond measure, for he hated with extreme Puritan intenseness those +"horrid Bushes of Vanity," and the suggestion from his would-be bride +was irritating in the extreme. He answered her with much self-control:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"As to a Periwigg my best and Greatest Friend begun to find me with +Hair before I was born and has continued to do so ever since and I +could not find it in my heart to go to another."</p></div> + +<p>Still, when nearly all the men of dignity and position in the colony +wore imposing stately wigs, no woman would be pleased to have a lover +come a-courting in a <i>hood</i>.</p> + +<p>So, though she gave him "drams of Black Cherry Brandy" and Canary to +drink and comfits and lump sugar to eat, while he so pressed her to name +her settlement on him, and while the wig and coach questions were so +adversely met, she would not answer yes, and he regretted making more +haste than good speed. At last the lover of the "kisses sweeter than +Canary" critically notes that his mistress has not on "Clean Linen;" and +the next day he writes rather sourly, "I did not bid her draw off her +Glove as sometime I had done. Her dress was not so clean as sometime it +had been;" the beginning of the end was plainly come. That week he +forbade her being invited to a family dinner, and she in turn gave a +"treat" from which he was excluded. Thus ended his fourth wooing.</p> + +<p>The next widow on whom he called was Widow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Belknap, but eftsoons he +transferred his attention to Widow Ruggles and wrote thus sentimentally +to her brother:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have +sometime met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves coming +home from their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure +of speaking to them. And I could find it in my heart to speak to +Mrs. Martha again, now I myself am reduc'd to my Hanging Sleeves. +The truth is, I have little occasion for a Wife but for the sake of +Modesty, and to lay my Weary Head in Her Lap, if it might be +brought to pass upon Honest Conditions. You know your sisters Age +and Disposition and Circumstances. I should like your advice in my +Fluctuations."</p></div> + +<p>The Judge called on Mrs. Martha, probably after learning with precision +her circumstances. "I showed my willingness to renew my old +acquaintance. She expressed her inability to be serviceable." Even after +the Denison and Winthrop fluctuations he was not abashed by refusal, and +he must have been (to quote Mrs. Peachum's words) "a bitter bad judge 'o +women," for he called again and again.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"She seemed resolved not to move out of the house; made some +Difficulties to accept an Election Sermon lest it should be an +obligation to her. The coach staying long, I made some excuse for +my stay. She said she would be glad to wait on me till midnight +provided I should solicit her no more to that effect."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p> + +<p>This decision he accepted.</p> + +<p>Poor old wife-seeking Judge, with your hanging sleeves, your broken and +drooping wings, feebly did you still flutter around for a resting-place +to "lay your Weary Head in modesty." You fluctuated to a new widow, +Madam Harris, and she gave you "a nutmeg as it grew," ever a true +lover's gift in Shakespeare's day. On January 11th, 1722, this letter +was sent to "Mrs. Mary Gibbs, widow, at Newton."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Madam, your removal out of town and the Severity of the Weather +are the Reason of my making you this Epistolary Visit. In times +past (as I remember) you were minded that I should marry you by +giving you to your desirable Bridegroom. Some sense of this +intended Respect abides with me still and puts me upon enquiring +whether you be willing I should marry you now by becoming your +Husband. Aged feeble and exhausted as I am your favourable Answer +to this Enquiry in a few lines, the Candour of it will much oblige, +Madam, your humble serv't Samuel Sewall."</p></div> + +<p>This not-too-alluring love-letter brought a favorable answer, for the +Judge assured her she "writ incomparably well," and he accompanied this +praise with a suitable and useful gift, "A Quire of Paper, a good +Leathern Ink Horn, a stick of Sealing Wax and 200 Wafers in a little +Box."</p> + +<p>He was even sharper in bargaining with Widow Gibbs than he had been with +other matrimonial candidates. She had no property to leave him by will,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +but he astutely stipulated that her children sign a contract that, +should she die before him, they would pay him £100. She thought him +"hard," and so did her sons and her son-in-law, and so he was—hard even +for those times of hard bargains and hard marriage contracts in hard New +England. He would agree to give her but £50 a year in case of his death. +The value of wives had depreciated in his eyes since the £250 a year +Widow Denison. His gifts too were not as rich as those bestowed on that +yearned-for widow. He had seen too many tokens go for naught. Glazed +almonds, Meers cakes, an orange, were good enough for so cheap a +sweetheart. He remained very stiff and peremptory about the marriage +contract, the £100, and wrote her one very unpleasant letter about it; +and he feared lest she being so attached to her children might not be +tender to him "when there soon would be an end of the old man." At last +she yielded to his sharp bargain and they were married. He lived eight +years, so I doubt not Mary was tender to him and mourned him when he +died, hard though he was and wigless withal.</p> + +<p>We gather from the pages of Judge Sewall's diary many hints about the +method of conducting other courtships. We discover the Judge craftily +and slyly inquiring whether his daughter Mary's lover-apparent had +previously courted another Boston maid; we see him conferring with lover +Gerrish's father; and after a letter from the latter we see the lover +"at Super and drank to Mary in the third place." He called again when it +was too cold to sit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> downstairs, and was told he would be "wellcomm to +come Friday night." We read on Saturday:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the evening Sam Gerrish comes not; we expected him; Mary +dress'd herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapointment."</p></div> + +<p>A month later the recreant lover reappeared and finally married poor +disappointed Mary, who died very complaisantly in a short time and left +him free to marry his first love, which he quickly did. We find the +Judge after his daughter's death higgling over her marriage portion with +Mr. Gerrish, Sr., and see that grief for her did not prevent him from +showing as much shrewdness in that matter as he had displayed in his own +courtships.</p> + +<p>Timid Betty Sewall was as much harassed in love as in religion. We find +her father, when she was but seventeen years old, making frequent +investigation about the estate of one Captain Tuthill, a prospective +suitor who had visited Betty and "wished to speak with her." The Judge +had his hesitating daughter read aloud to him of the mating of Adam and +Eve, as a soothing and alluring preparation for the thought of +matrimony, with, however, this most unexpected result:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"At night Capt. Tuthill comes to speak with Betty, who hid herself +all alone in the coach for several hours till he was gone, so that +we sought her at several houses, till at last came in of herself +and look'd very wild."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> + +<p>This action of pure maidenly terror elicited sympathy even in the +Judge's match-making heart, and he told the lover he was willing to know +his daughter's mind better. This was on January 10th, 1698. Ten days +later we find wild-eyed Betty going out of her way to avoid drinking +wine with one Captain Turner, much to her father's annoyance. By +September she had refused another suitor.</p> + +<p>Her father wrote thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Got home [from Rhode Island] by seven, in good health, though the +day was hot, find my family in health, only disturbed at Betty's +denying Mr. Hirst, and my wife hath a cold. The Lord sanctify +Mercyes and Afflictions."</p></div> + +<p>And again, a month later:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Wm. Hirst comes and thanks my wife and me for our kindness to +his Son, in giving him the liberty of our house. Seems to do it in +the way of taking leave. I thank'd him, and for his countenance to +Hannah at the Wedding. Told him that the well wisher's of my +daughter and his son had persuaded him to go to Brantry and visit +her there, &c.; and said if there were hopes would readily do it. +But as things were twould make persons think he was so involved +that he was not fit to go any wether else. He has I suppose taken +his final leave. I gave him Mr. Oakes Sermon, and my Father Hulls +Funeral Sermon."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> + +<p>Two days later, Judge Sewall writes to Betty, who has gone to "Brantry" +on a visit.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 30em;"><span class="smcap">Boston</span>, October 26, 1699.</span><br /> +</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Elizabeth</span>: Mr. Hirst waits on you once more to see if you can bid +him welcome. It ought to be seriously considered, that your drawing +back from him after all that has passed between you, will be to +your Prejudice; and will tend to discourage persons of worth from +making their Court to you. And you had need well consider whether +you will be able to bear his final leaving of you, howsoever it may +seem grateful to you at present. When persons come toward us we are +apt to look upon their undesirable Circumstances mostly: and +thereupon to shun them. But when persons retire from us for good +and all, we are in danger of looking only on that which is +desirable in them, to our wofull disquiet. Whereas 'tis the +property of a good Ballance to turn where the most weight is, +though there be some also in the other Scale. I do not see but the +match is well liked by judicious persons, and such as are your +Cordial friends, and mine also.</p> + +<p>"Yet notwithstanding, if you find in yourself an unmovable, +incurable Aversion from him and cannot love and honor and obey him, +I shall say no more, nor give you any further trouble in this +matter. It had better off than on. So praying God to pardon us and +pitty our Undeserving, and to direct and strengthen and settle you +in making a right judgment, and giving a right Answer, I take +leave, who am, Dear Child, Your loving father.</p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Your mother remembers to you."</p></div> + +<p>Even this very proper and fatherly advice did not have an immediate +effect upon the shy and vacillat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>ing young girl, for not until a year +later did she become the wife of persistent Grove Hirst.</p> + +<p>One of the most typical stories of colonial methods of "matching" among +fine gentlefolk is found in the worry of Emanuel Downing, a man of +dignity in the commonwealth, and of his wife, Lucy (who was Gov. +Winthrop's sister), in regard to the settlement of their children. +Downing begins with anxious overtures to Endicott in regard to "matching +his sonne" to an orphan maid living in Endicott's family, a maid who it +is needless to state had a very pretty fortune. Downing states that he +has been blamed for not marrying off his children earlier, "that none +are disposed of," and deplores his ill-luck in having them so long on +his hands, and he recounts pathetically his own and his son's good +points. He also got Governor Winthrop to write to Endicott pleading the +match. Endicott answered both letters in a most dignified manner, +stating his objections to furthering Downing's wishes, giving a +succession of reasons, such as the maid's unwillingness to marry, being +but fifteen years of age, his own awkward position in seeming to crowd +marriage upon her when she was so rich, etc., etc. The Downings had +hoped to have thriftily two marriages in the family in one day, but the +daughter Luce's affairs also halted. She had been enamoured of a Mr. +Eyer, an unsuitable match. He had put out to sea, to the Downings' +delight, but had returned at an unlucky time when she was on with a +fresh suitor. Her mother was much distressed because, though Luce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> +declared she much liked Mr. Norton, she still showed to all around her +that "she hath not yet forgotten Mr. Eyer his fresh Red."</p> + +<p>But Mistress Luce, by a telling statement of pecuniary benefits, was +brought to a proper mind and became "verie sensible of loseing fair +opportunities," and consented speedily to wed Norton, to her father's +abounding joy, who wrote, "shee may stay long ere she meet with a better +vnless I had more monie for her than I now can spare." The betrothal was +formally announced, when shortly a distressed letter from Madam Downing +shows foul weather ahead. Luce had been talking among her friends, +giving to them "unjust suspicions of the enforcement to her of Mr. +Norton," and while she had seemed to love Mr. Eyer, and her family had +eagerly striven to win her regard from him, "we now suspect by her late +words her affections to be now inclininge at Jhon Harrold." It was found +that Jhon had "practised upon her and disturbed her," and that while she +was "free and cheerful" with Lover Norton, "passing conversation" with +him, she was really conspiring to jilt him. The mother wrote sadly: "I +am sorrie my daughter Luce hath caryed things thus vnwisely and +vnreputably both to herselfe and our friends;" and the whole family were +evidently sorely afraid that the "perverse Puritan jade" would be left +on their hands, when suddenly came the news of her marriage to Norton, +owing perhaps to a very decided and sharp letter from Norton's brother +to the Governor about Mistress Luce's vagaries, and also to some more +satisfactory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> and liberal marriage settlements. She probably made as +devoted a wife to him as if she had never longed for Eyer his fresh red, +nor Jhon his disturbments.</p> + +<p>Nor were these upright and pious Puritan magistrates and these +gentlewomen of Boston and Salem the only colonists who displayed such +sordid and mercenary bargaining and stipulating in matrimonial ventures: +numberless letters and records throughout New England prove the +unvarying spirit of calculation that pervaded fashionable courtship. A +bride's portion was openly discussed, her marriage settlement carefully +decided upon, and even agreements for bequests were arranged as +"incurredgment to marriage." Nor did happy husbands hesitate to sue for +settlement too tardy or too remiss fathers-in-law who failed to keep +their word about the bride's portion: Edward Palmes for years harassed +the Winthrops about their sister's (his first wife's) portion, long +after he had married a second partner.</p> + +<p>Though the tender passion walked thus ceremoniously and coldly in narrow +and carefully selected paths in town, in the country it regarded little +the bounds of reserve or regard for appearances. Much comparative +grossness prevailed. The mode of courting, known as "bundling" or +"tarrying" was too prevalent in colonial times to be ignored. A full +description of its extent, and an attempt to trace its origin, have been +given in a book on the subject prepared by Dr. H. R. Stiles, and with +much fairness in a pamphlet by Charles Francis Adams on "Some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> Phases of +Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England."</p> + +<p>Its existence has been a standing taunt for years against New England, +and its prevalence has been held up as a proof of a low state of +morality in early New England society. Indeed, it was strange it could +so long exist in so austere and virtuous a colony; that it did, to a +startling extent, must be conceded; much proof is found in the books of +contemporary writers. Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who travelled in New England +in 1759-1760, says that though it may "at first appear to be the effects +of grossness of character, it will upon deeper research be found to +proceed from simplicity and innocence." To this assertion, after some +research, I can give—to use Sir Thomas Browne's words—"a staggering +assent to the affirmative, not without some fear of the negative." Rev. +Samuel Peters, in his General History of Connecticut, speaks at length +upon the custom, and apparently endeavors to prove that it was a very +prudent and Christian fashion. Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful +voice against it. It prevailed apparently to its fullest extent on Cape +Cod, and longest in the Connecticut valley, where many Dutch customs +were introduced and much intercourse with the Dutch was carried on. In +Pennsylvania, among the Dutch and German settlers and their descendants, +it lingered long; it was a matter of Court record as late as 1845. Yet +the custom of bundling has never been held to be a result of copying the +similar Dutch "queesting," which in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Holland met with the sanction of +the most circumspect Dutch parents; and tergiversating Diedrich +Knickerbocker even asserted the contrary assumption, that the Dutch +learned of it from the Yankees. In Holland, as now in Wales and then in +New England, the custom arose not from a low state of morals, nor from a +disregard of moral appearances, but from the social and industrial +conditions under which such courting was done. The small size and +crowded occupancy of the houses, the alternative waste of lights and +fuel, the hours at which the hurried courtship must be carried on, all +led to the recognition and endurance of the custom; and in its open +recognition lay its redeeming feature. There was no secrecy, no thought +of concealment; the bundling was done under the supervision of mother +and sisters.</p> + +<p>As a contrast to all this laxity of behaviour, let me state that in the +very locality where it obtained—the Connecticut Valley—other +sweethearts are said to have been forced to a most ceremonious +courtship, to whisper their tender nothings through a "courting-stick," +a hollow stick about an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long, +fitted with mouth- and ear-pieces. In the presence of the entire family, +lovers, seated formally on either side of the great fireplace, carried +on this chilly telephonic love-making. One of these bâtons of propriety +still is preserved in Longmeadow, Mass.</p> + +<p>Of this primitive colony with primitive manners some very extraordinary +cases of bucolic love at first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> sight are recorded—love that did not +follow the law of pounds, shillings, and pence. At an ordination in +Hopkinton, New Hampshire, a country bumpkin forgot the place, the +preacher, and the preaching, in the ravishing sight of an unknown damsel +whom he saw for the first time within the meeting-house. He sat +entranced through the long sermon, the tedious psalm-singings, the +endless prayers, until at last the services were over. In an ecstasy of +uncouth and unreasoning passion he rushed out of church, forced his way +through the departing congregation, seized the unknown fair one in his +arms crying out, "Now I have got ye, you jade, I have! I have!" And from +so startling and unalluring a beginning, a marriage followed. In a +neighboring community a dignified officer of the law went to "warn out +of town" a strange "transient woman" who might become a pauper, and +would then have to be kept at the town's expense, were this ceremony +omitted. Terrified at the majesty of the law and its grand though +incomprehensible wording, the young warned one burst into tears, which +so worked upon the tender-hearted officer that he (being conveniently a +widower) proposed to her offhand, was called in meeting, married her, +and thus took her under his own and the town's protection. More than one +case of "marriage at first sight" is recounted, of bold Puritan wooers +riding up to the door of a fair one whom they had never seen, telling +their story of a lonely home, forlorn housekeeping, and desired +marriage, giving their credentials, obtaining a hasty con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>sent, and +sending in their "publishings" to the town clerk, all within a day's +time.</p> + +<p>The "matrimonial" advertisement did not appear till 1759. In the <i>Boston +Evening Post</i> of February 23d of that year, this notice, for its novelty +and boldness, must have caused quite a heart-fluttering among Boston +"thornbacks" who would try to pass for the desired age:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To the Ladies. Any young Lady between the Age of Eighteen and +twenty three of a Midling Stature; brown Hair, regular Features and +a Lively Brisk Eye: Of Good Morals & not Tinctured with anything +that may Sully so Distinguishable a Form possessed of 3 or 400£ +entirely her own Disposal and where there will be no necessity of +going Through the tiresome Talk of addressing Parents or Guardians +for their consent: Such a one by leaving a Line directed for A. W. +at the British Coffee House in King Street appointing where an +Interview may be had will meet with a Person who flatters himself +he shall not be thought Disagreeable by any Lady answering the +above description. N. B. Profound Secrecy will be observ'd. No +Trifling Answers will be regarded."</p></div> + +<p>Hawthorne says: "Now this was great condescension towards the ladies of +Massachusetts Bay in a threadbare lieutenant of foot."</p> + +<p>Other matrimonial advertisements, those of recreant and disobedient +wives, appear in considerable number, especially in Connecticut papers. +They were sometimes prefaced by the solemn warning: "Cursed be he that +parteth man & wife & all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> people shall say Amen." Some very +disagreeable allegations were made against these Connecticut wives—that +they were rude, gay, light-carriaged girls, poor and lazy housewives, +ill cooks, fond of dancing, and talking balderdash talk, and far from +being loving consorts. The wives had something to say from their point +of view. One, owing to her spouse's stinginess, had to use "Indian +branne for Jonne bred," and never tasted good food; another stated that +her loving husband "cruelly pulled my hair, pinched my flesh, kicked me +out of bed, drag'd me by my arms & heels, flung ashes upon me to smother +me, flung water from the well till I had not a dry thread on me." All +these notices were apparently printed in the advertiser's own language +and individual manner of spelling, some even in rhyme. "Timothy hubbard" +thus ventilated his domestic infelicities and his spelling in the +<i>Connecticut Courant</i> of January 30th, 1776:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Whearis my Wife Abigiel hes under Rote me by saying it is veri +Disagria bell to Hur to Expose to the World the miseris & Calamatis +of a Distractid famely, and I think as much for hur Father & mother +to Witt Stephen deming & his wife acts very much like Distractid or +BeWicht & I believe both, for the truth of this I will apell to the +Nabors. When I first Married I had land of my one and lived at my +one hous but Stephen deming & his Wife cept coming down & hanting +of me til they got me up to thare house but presently I was +deceived by them as Bad as Adam & Eve was by the Divel though not +in the Same Shape for they got a bill of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> Sail of a most all by +thare Sutilly & still hold the Same. perhaps the Jentlemen will say +it is to pay my debt. Queri. Wherino a man that ows one pound to my +shiling. I dont want it to pay his one, I believe he dos. My wife +pretends to say I abus'd her for the truth of this I will apiel to +all thare nabors."</p></div> + +<p>Anenst this I am glad to add that I have found repentant sequels to the +mortifying story, in the form of humble retractions of the husband's +allegations. Wives were, on the whole, marvellously well protected by +early laws. A husband could not keep his consort on outlying and +danger-filled plantations, but must "bring her in, else the town will +pull his house down." Nor could a man leave his wife for any length of +time, nor "marrie too wifes which were both alive for anything that can +appear otherwise at one time," nor beat his wife (as he could to his +heart's content in old England); he could not even use "hard words" to +her. Nor could she raise her hand or use "a curst and shrewish tongue" +to him without fear of public punishment in the stocks or pillory.</p> + +<p>In the first years of the colonies there existed a formal ceremony of +betrothal called in Plymouth a pre-contract. This semi-binding ceremony +had hardly a favorable influence upon the morals of the times. Cotton +Mather states:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There was maintained a Solemnity called a Contraction a little +before the Consummation of a marriage was allowed of. A Pastor was +usually employed and a sermon also preached on this occasion."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + +<p>If the prospective marriage were an important or a genteel one, an +applicable sermon was often preached in church at the time of the +"contraction." One minister took the text, Ephesians vi. 10, 11, in +order "to teach that marriage is a state of warfaring condition." It was +also the custom to allow the bride to choose the text for the sermon to +be delivered on the Sunday when she "came out bride." Much ingenuity was +exercised by these Puritan brides in finding appropriate and interesting +texts for these wedding sermons. Here are some of the verses selected:</p> + +<p>2 Chronicles xiv. 2: "And Asa did that which was good and right in the +eyes of the Lord"—Asa and his bride Hepzibah sitting up proudly in the +congregation to listen.</p> + +<p>Proverbs xxiv. 23: "Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth +among the elders of the land."</p> + +<p>Ecclesiastes iv. 9, 10: "Two are better than one; because they have a +good reward for their labour. For if they fall the one will lift up his +fellow."</p> + +<p>I can imagine the staid New England lover and his shy sweetheart +anxiously and solemnly searching for many hours through the great +leather-bound family Bible for a specially appropriate text, turning +over the leaves and slowing scanning the pages, skipping over tedious +Leviticus and Numbers, and finding always in the Song of Solomon "in +almost every verse" a sentiment appealing to all lovers, and worthy a +selection for a wedding sermon.</p> + +<p>The "coming out," or, as it was called in Newburyport, "walking out" of +the bride was an important<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> event in the little community. Cotton Mather +wrote in 1713 that he thought it expedient for the bridal couple to +appear as such publicly, with some dignity. We see in the pages of +Sewall's diary one of his daughters with her new-made husband leading +the orderly bridal procession of six couples on the way to church, +observed of all in the narrow Boston street and in the Puritan +meeting-house. In some communities the bride and groom took a prominent +seat in the gallery, and in the midst of the sermon rose to their feet +and turned around several times slowly, in order to show from every +point of view their bridal finery to the admiring eyes of their +assembled friends and neighbors in the congregation.</p> + +<p>Throughout New England, except in New Hampshire, the law was enforced +for nearly two centuries, of publishing the wedding banns three times in +the meeting-house, at either town meeting, lecture, or Sunday service. +Intention of marriage and the names of the contracting parties were read +by the town clerk, the deacon, or the minister, at any of these +forgatherings, and a notice of the same placed on the church door, or on +a "publishing post"—in short, they were "valled." Yet in the early days +of the colonies the all-powerful minister could not perform the marriage +ceremony—a magistrate, a captain, any man of dignity in the community +could be authorized to marry Puritan lovers, save the parson. Not till +the beginning of the eighteenth century did the Puritan minister assume +the function of solemnizing marriages. Gov. Bel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>lingham married himself +to Penelope Pelham when he was a short time a widower and forty-nine +years old, and his bride but twenty-two. When he was "brought up" for +this irregularity he arrogantly and monopolizingly persisted in +remaining on the bench to try his own case. "Disorderly marriages" were +punished in many towns; doubtless many of them were between Quakers. +Some couples were fined every month until they were properly married. A +very trying and unregenerate reprobate in New London persisted that he +would "take up" with a woman in the town and make her his wife without +any legal or religious ceremony. This was a great scandal to the whole +community. A pious magistrate met the ungodly couple on the street and +sternly reproved them thus: "John Rogers, do you persist in calling this +woman, a servant, so much younger than yourself, your wife?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do," violently answered John.</p> + +<p>"And do you, Mary, wish such an old man as this to be your husband?"</p> + +<p>"Indeed I do," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Then," said the governor, coldly, "by the laws of God and this +commonwealth, I as a magistrate pronounce you man and wife."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Gurdon, Gurdon," said the groom, married legally in spite of +himself, "thee's a cunning fellow."</p> + +<p>There is one peculiarity of the marriages of the first century and a +half of colonial and provincial life which should be noted—the vast +number of unions between the members of the families of Puritan +min<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>isters. It seemed to be a law of social ethics that the sons of +ministers should marry the daughters of ministers. The new pastor +frequently married the daughter of his predecessor in the parish, +sometimes the widow—a most thrifty settling of pastoral affairs. A +study of the Cotton, Stoddard, Eliot, Williams, Edwards, Chauncey, +Bulkeley, and Wigglesworth families, and, above all, of the Mather +family, will show mutual kinship among the ministers, as well as mutual +religious thought.</p> + +<p>Richard Mather took for his second wife the widow of John Cotton. Their +children, Increase Mather and Mary Cotton, grew up as brother and +sister, but were married and became the parents of Cotton Mather. The +sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of Richard Mather were ministers. +His daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters became the wives +of ministers. Thus was the name of "Mather Dynasty" well given. The +Mather blood and the Mather traits of character were felt in the most +remote parishes of New England. The Mather expressions of religious +thought were long heard from the pulpit, and long taught in ministerial +homes; and to that Mather blood and that upright Mather character and +God-fearing Mather faith and teaching, we of New England owe more +gratitude than can ever find expression.</p> + +<p>We have several meagre pictures of weddings in early days. One runs +thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There was a pretty deal of company present.... Many young +gentlemen and gentlewomen. Mr. Noyes made a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> speech, said love was +the sugar to sweeten every condition in the marriage state. Prayed +once. Did all very well. After the Sack-posset sung 45th Psalm from +8th verse to end, five staves. I set it to Windsor tune. I had a +very good Turkey Leather Psalm book which I looked in while Mr. +Noyes read; then I gave it to the bridegroom saying I give you this +Psalm book in order to your perpetuating this song and I would have +you pray that it may be an introduction to our singing with the +quire above."</p></div> + +<p>For many years sack-posset was drunk at weddings, sometimes within the +bridal chamber; but not with noisy revelry, as in old England. A psalm +preceding and a prayer following a Puritan posset-pot made a +satisfactorily solemn wassail. Bride-cake and bride-gloves were sent as +gifts to the friends and relatives of the contracting parties. Other and +ruder English fashions obtained. The garter of the bride was sometimes +scrambled for to bring luck and speedy marriage to the garter-winner. In +Marblehead the bridesmaids and groomsmen put the wedded couple to bed.</p> + +<p>It is said that along the New Hampshire and upper Massachusetts coast, +the groom was led to the bridal chamber clad in a brocaded night-gown. +This may have occasionally taken place among the gentry, but I fancy +brocaded night-gowns were not common wear among New England country +folk. I have also seen it stated that the bridal chamber was invaded, +and healths there were drunk and prayers offered. The only proof of this +custom which I have found is the negative one which Judge Sewall gives +when he states<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> of his own wedding that "none came to us," after he and +his elderly bride had retired. When the weddings of English noblemen of +that period were attended by most indecorous observances, there is no +reason to suppose that provincial and colonial weddings were entirely +free from similar rude customs.</p> + +<p>It was found necessary in 1651 to forbid all "mixt and unmixt" dancing +at taverns on the occasion of weddings, abuses and disorders having +arisen. But I fancy a people who would give an "ordination ball" would +not long sit still at a wedding; and by the year 1769, at a wedding in +New London, ninety-two jigs, fifty contra-dances, forty-three minuets, +and seventeen hornpipes were danced, and the party broke up at quarter +of one in the morning—at what time could it have begun?</p> + +<p>Isolated communities retained for many years marriage customs derived or +copied from similar customs in the "old country." Thus the settlers of +Londonderry, New Hampshire—Scotch-Irish Presbyterians—celebrated a +marriage with much noisy firing of guns, just as their ancestors in +Ireland, when the Catholics had been forbidden the use of firearms, had +ostentatiously paraded their privileged Protestant condition by firing +off their guns and muskets at every celebration. A Londonderry wedding +made a big noise in the world. After the formal publishing of the banns, +guests were invited with much punctiliousness. The wedding day was +suitably welcomed at daybreak by a discharge of musketry at both the +bride's and the groom's house. At a given hour the bridegroom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> +accompanied by his male friends, started for the bride's home. Salutes +were fired at every house passed on the road, and from each house +pistols and guns gave an answering "God speed." Half way on the journey +the noisy bridal party was met by the male friends of the bride, and +another discharge of firearms rent the air. Each group of men then named +a champion to "run for the bottle"—a direct survival of the ancient +wedding sport known among the Scotch as "running for the bride-door," or +"riding for the kail" or "for the broose"—a pot of spiced broth. The +two New Hampshire champions ran at full speed or rode a dare-devil race +over dangerous roads to the bride's house, the winner seized the +beribboned bottle of rum provided for the contest, returned to the +advancing bridal group, drank the bride's health, and passed the bottle. +On reaching the bride's house an extra salute was fired, and the +bridegroom with his party entered a room set aside for them. It was a +matter of strict etiquette that none of the bride's friends should enter +this room until the bride, led by the best man, advanced and stationed +herself with her bridesmaid before the minister, while the best man +stood behind the groom. When the time arrived for the marrying pair to +join hands, each put the right hand behind the back, and the bridesmaid +and the best man pulled off the wedding-gloves, taking care to finish +their duty at precisely the same moment. At the end of the ceremony +everyone kissed the bride, and more noisy firing of guns and drinking of +New England rum ended the day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p> + +<p>In some communities still rougher horse-play than unexpected volleys of +musketry was shown to the bridal party or to wedding guests. Great trees +were felled across the bridle-paths, or grapevines were stretched across +to hinder the free passage, and thus delay the bridal festivities.</p> + +<p>Occasionally the wedding-bells did not ring smoothly. One Scotch-Irish +lassie seized the convenient opportunity, when the rollicking company of +her male friends had set out to meet the bridegroom, to mount a-pillion +behind a young New Hampshire Lochinvar, and ride boldly off to a +neighboring parson and marry the man of her choice. Such an unpublished +marriage was known in New Hampshire as a "Flagg marriage," from one +Parson Flagg, of some notoriety, of Chester, Vermont, whose house was a +sort of Yankee Gretna Green; and such a marriage was made possible by +the action of the government of New Hampshire in issuing marriage +licenses at the price of two guineas each, as a means of increasing its +income. Sometimes easy-going parsons kept a stock of these licenses on +hand, ready for issue to eloping couples at a slightly advanced price. +Such a marriage, without proper "publishing" in meeting, was not, +however, deemed very reputable.</p> + +<p>Madam Knight, travelling through Connecticut in 1704, wrote thus in her +diary of Connecticut youth:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"They generally marry very young; the males oftener as I am told +under twenty years than above; they gener<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>ally make public weddings +and have a way something singular in some of them; viz. just before +joining hands the bridegroom quits the place, who is soon followed +by the Bridesmen and, as it were, dragged back to duty, being the +reverse to the former practice among us to steal Mistress Bride."</p></div> + +<p>Poor-spirited creatures Connecticut maids must have been to endure +meekly such an ungallant custom and such ungallant lovers.</p> + +<p>The sport of stealing "Mistress Bride," a curious survival of the old +savage bridals of many peoples, lingered long in the Connecticut valley. +A company of young men, usually composed of slighted ones who had not +been invited to the wedding, rushed in after the marriage ceremony, +seized the bride, carried her to a waiting carriage, or lifted her up on +a pillion, and rode to the country tavern. The groom with his friends +followed, and usually redeemed the bride by furnishing a supper to the +stealers. The last bride stolen in Hadley was Mrs. Job Marsh, in the +year 1783. To this day, however, in certain localities in Rhode Island, +the young men of the neighborhood invade the bridal chamber and pull the +bride downstairs, and even out-of-doors, thus forcing the husband to +follow to her rescue. If the room or house-door be locked against their +invasion, the rough visitors break the lock.</p> + +<p>In England throughout the eighteenth century the grotesque belief +prevailed that if a widow were "married in Her Smock without any Clothes +or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> Head Gier on," the husband would be exempt from paying any of his +new wife's ante-nuptial debts; and many records of such debt-evading +marriages appear. In New England, it was thought if the bride were +married "in her shift on the king's highway," a creditor could follow +her person no farther in pursuit of his debt. Many such eccentric +"smock-marriages" took place, generally (with some regard for modesty) +occurring in the evening. Later the bride was permitted to stand in a +closet.</p> + +<p>Mr. William C. Prime, in his delightful book, "Along New England Roads," +gives an account of such a marriage. In Newfane, Vt., in February, 1789, +Major Moses Joy married Widow Hannah Ward; the bride stood, with no +clothing on, within a closet, and held out her hand to the major through +a diamond-shaped hole in the door, and the ceremony was thus performed. +She then appeared resplendent in wedding attire, which the gallant major +had thoughtfully deposited in the closet for her assumption. Mr. Prime +tells also of a marriage in which the bride, entirely unclad, left her +room by a window at night, and standing on the top round of a high +ladder donned her wedding garments, and thus put off the obligations of +the old life.</p> + +<p>In Hall's "History of Eastern Vermont," we read of a marriage in +Westminster, Vt., in which the Widow Lovejoy, while nude and hidden in a +chimney recess behind a curtain, wedded Asa Averill. Smock-marriages on +the public highway are recorded in York, Me., in 1774, as shown in the +History of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> Wells and Kennebunkport. It is said that in one case the +pitying minister threw his coat over the shivering bride, Widow Mary +Bradley, who in February, clad only in a shift, met the bridegroom half +way from her home to his.</p> + +<p>The traveller Kalm, writing in 1748, says that one Pennsylvania +bridegroom saved appearances by meeting the scantily-clad widow-bride +half way from her house to his, and announcing formally, in the presence +of witnesses, that the wedding clothes which he then put on her were +only lent to her for the occasion. This is curiously suggestive of the +marriage investiture of Eastern Hindostan.</p> + +<p>In Westerly, R. I., in 1724, other smock-marriages were recorded, and in +Lincoln County, Me., in 1767, between John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman, +showing that the belief in this vulgar error was wide-spread. The most +curious variation of this custom is told in the "Life of Gustavus +Vassa," wherein that traveller records that a smock-marriage took place +in New York in 1784 on a gallows. A malefactor condemned to death, and +about to undergo his execution, was reprieved and liberated through his +marriage to a woman clad only in a shift.</p> + +<p>In spite of the hardness and narrowness of their daily life, and the +cold calculation, the lack of sentiment displayed in wooing, I think +Puritan husbands and wives were happy in their marriages, though their +love was shy, almost sombre, and "flowered out of sight like the fern." +A few love-letters still remain to prove their affection: letters of +sweethearts and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> letters of married lovers, such as Governor Winthrop +and his wife Margaret; letters like the words of another Margaret—a +queen—to her "alderliefest;" letters so simple and tender that truth +and love shine round them like a halo:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My own dear Husband</span>: How dearly welcome thy kind letter was to me, +I am not able to express. The sweetness of it did much refresh me. +What can be more pleasing to a wife than to hear of the welfare of +her best beloved and how he is pleased with her poor endeavors! I +blush to hear myself commended, knowing my own wants. But it is +your love that conceives the best and makes all things seem better +than they are. I wish that I may always be pleasing to thee, and +that these comforts we have in each other may be daily increased so +far as they be pleasing to God. I will use that speech to thee that +Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of my +lord; I will do any service wherein I may please my good husband. I +confess I cannot do enough for thee; but thou art pleased to accept +the will for the deed and rest contented. I have many reasons to +make me love thee, whereof I shall name two: First, because thou +lovest God, and secondly, because thou lovest me. If these two were +wanting all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave this +discourse and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife +to be so long from them; but I must needs borrow a little time to +talk with thee, my sweetheart. It will be but two or three weeks +before I see thee, though they be long ones. God will bring us +together in good time, for which time I shall pray. And thus with +my mother's and my own best love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> to yourself I shall leave +scribbling. Farewell my good husband, the Lord keep thee.</p></div> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 23em;">"Your obedient wife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 28em;">"<span class="smcap">Margaret Winthrop</span>."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Who can read the beautiful words without feeling for that sweet +Margaret, who died two centuries ago, a thrill of the affection that +must have glowed for her in John Winthrop's heart, when, far away from +her, he first opened and read this tender letter.</p> + +<p>Warm eulogies did many a staid New Englander write of his loving +consort, eulogies in rhyme, and epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, +epicediums, anagrams, acrostics, and pindarics, all speaking loudly of +loving, "painful" care, if not of a spirit of poesy. And the even, +virtuous tenor of the life in New England proved too a happiness and +contentment equal to the marital results of more emotional and romantic +love-making. There were some divorces. Madam Knight found that they were +plentiful in Connecticut in 1704, as they are in that State nowadays. +She writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"These uncomely Stand-aways are too much in vogue among the English +in this indulgent colony, as their records plentifully prove; and +that on very trivial matters of which some have been told me, but +are not Proper to be Related by a Female Pen."</p></div> + +<p>In town records we find that divorces, though infrequent, still were +occasionally given in other New England States; but the causes assigned +therefor, to follow Madam Knight's example, need not be "Related by a +Female Pen."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + +<h3>DOMESTIC SERVICE</h3> + +<p>It is plainly evident that in a country where land was to be had for the +asking, fuel for the cutting, corn for the planting and harvesting, and +game and fish for the least expenditure of labor, no man would long +serve for another, and any system of reliable service indoors or afield +must fail. Whether the colonists came to work or not, they had to in +order to live, for domestic service was soon in the most chaotic state. +Women were forced to be notable housekeepers; men were compelled to +attend to every detail of masculine labor in their households and on +their farms, thus acquiring and developing a "handiness" at all trades, +which has become a Yankee trait.</p> + +<p>The question of adequate and proper household service soon became a +question of importance and of painful consideration in the new land. +Rev. Ezekiel Rogers wrote most feelingly in 1656 on this subject:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Much ado have I with my own family, hard to get a servant glad of +catechizing or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in +Yorkshire, and those I brought over were a blessing, but the young +brood doth much afflict me."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Massachusetts colonists had attempted even before starting, to meet +and simplify the servant question by rigidly excluding any corrupt +element. They even sent back to England boys who had been unruly on +shipboard. But the number of penalties imposed on servants during the +early years are a lasting record of the affliction caused by the young +brood.</p> + +<p>All the early travellers speak of the lack of good servants in the new +land. The "Diary of a French Refugee in Boston," in 1687, says: "There +is an absolute Need of Hired help;" and that savages were employed in +the fields at eighteen-pence a day. This latter form of service was +naturally the first way of solving the vexed question. The captives in +war were divided in lots and assigned to housekeepers. We find even +gentle Roger Williams asking for "one of the drove of Adam's degenerate +seed" as a slave. Hugh Peters, of Salem, wrote to a Boston friend: "Wee +haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would bee +glad of a share viz.: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke +good." Two years later he wrote: "My wife desires my daughter to send to +Hanna that was her maid now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell +with us, for truly wee are now so destitute (having now but an Indian) +that wee know not what to do." Lowell thus comments on such savage +ministrations:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Let any housewife of our day who does not find the Keltic element +in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> Arnold in literature, +imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with +by signs, for its maid-of-all-work, and take courage. Those were +serious times indeed when your cook might give warning by taking +your scalp or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it +into the woods."</p></div> + +<p>We frequently glean from diaries of the times hints of the pleasures of +having a wild Nipmuck or Narragansett Indian as "help." Rev. Peter +Thatcher, of Milton, Mass., bought an Indian in 1674 for £5 down and £5 +more at the end of the year—a high-priced servant for the times. One of +her duties was, apparently, the care of a young Thatcher infant. Shortly +after the purchase, the reverend gentleman makes this entry in his +diary: "Came home and found my Indian girl had liked to have knocked my +Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good +walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so +no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good +Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his +firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut stick as a +civilizing influence.</p> + +<p>When we reach newspaper days we find Indian servants frequently among +the runaways; as Mather said, they could not endure the yoke; and, +indeed, it would seem natural enough that any such wild child of the +forests should flee away from the cramped atmosphere of a Puritan +household and house. We read pathetic accounts of the desertion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> of aged +colonists by their Indian servants. One writes that he took his "Pecod +girle" as a "chilld of death" when but two years old, had reared her +kindly, nursed her in sickness, and now she had run away from him when +he sorely needed her, and he wished to buy a blackamoor in her place. +Sometimes the description of the costumes in which these savages took +their flitting, is extremely picturesque. This is from the <i>Boston News +Letter</i> of October, 1707:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Run away from her master Baker. A tall Lusty Carolina Indian woman +named Keziah Wampum, having long straight Black Hair tyed up with a +red Hair Lace, very much marked in the hands and face. Had on a +strip'd red blue & white Homespun Jacket & a Red one. A Black & +White Silk Crape Petticoat, A White Shift, as Also a blue one with +her, and a mixt Blue and White Linsey Woolsey Apron."</p></div> + +<p>A reward of four pounds was offered for this barbaric creature.</p> + +<p>Another Indian runaway in 1728 was thus bedizened, showing a startling +progress in adornment from the apron of skins and blanket of her +wildwood home.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"She wore off a Narrow Stript pinck Cherredary Goun turn'd up with +a little flour'd red & white Callico. A Stript Homespun Quilted +Petticoat, a plain muslin Apron, a suit of plain Pinners & a red & +white flower'd knot, also a pair of green Stone Earrings with White +Cotton Stockings & Leather heel'd Wooden Shoes."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<p>Indian men often left their masters dishonestly dressed in their +masters' fine apparel, and even wearing beribboned flaxen wigs, which +must have been comic to a degree over their harsh, saturnine +countenances—"as brown as any bun."</p> + +<p>A limited substitute for Indian housemaids was found at an early day in +"help," as it was called even then. Roger Williams, writing of his +daughter, said: "She desires to spend some time in service & liked much +Mrs. Brenton who wanted." John Tinker, who himself was help, wrote thus +to John Winthrop; "Help is scarce, hard to get, difficult to please, +uncertain, &c. Means runneth out and wages on & I cannot make choice of +my help." Children of well-to-do citizens thus worked in domestic +service. Members of the family of the rich Judge Sewall lived out as +help. The sons of Downing and of Hooke went with their kinsman, Governor +Winthrop, as servants. Sir Robert Crane also sent his cousin to the +governor as a farm-servant. In Andover an Abbott maiden lived as help +for years in the house of a Phillips. Children were bound out when but +eight years old. These neighborly forms of domestic assistance were +necessarily slow of growth and limited in extent, and negro slavery +appeared to the colonists a much more effectual and speedy way of +solving the difficulty; and the Indian war-prisoners, who proved such +poor and dangerous house-servants, seemed a convenient, cheap, and +God-sent means of exchange for "Moores," as they were called, who were +far better servants. Emanuel Downing wrote in 1645<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> that he thought it +"synne in us having power in our hand to suffer them (the Indians) to +mayntayne the worship of the devill," that they should be removed from +their pow-wows, and suggests the exchange for negroes, saying: "I doe +not see how wee can thrive vntill wee into gett a stock of slaves +sufficient to doe all our business."</p> + +<p>Downing had a personal interest in the gaining of Moors; for he had had +almost as much trouble in obtaining servants as he did in marrying off +his children. We find him and his wife writing to Winthrop for help, +buying Indians, sending home more than once to England for "godlye +skylful paynstakeing girles," beseeching their neighbors to send them +servants "of good caridg and godly conuersation;" and at last buying +negroes, to try in every way to solve the vexed question.</p> + +<p>Though the early planters came to New England to obtain and maintain +liberty, and "bond slaverie, villinage," and other feudal servitudes +were prohibited under the ninety-first article of the Body of Liberties, +still they needed but this suggestion of Downing's to adopt quickly what +was then the universal and unquestioned practice of all Christian +nations—slavery. Josselyn found slaves on Noddle's Island in Boston +Harbor at his first visit, though they were not held in a Puritan +family. By 1687 a French refugee wrote home:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You may also here own Negroes and Negresses, there is not a house +in Boston however small may be its means,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> that has not one or +two.... Negroes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles."</p></div> + +<p>In Connecticut the crime of man-stealing was made punishable by death; +and in 1646 the Massachusetts General Court awoke to the growing +condition of affairs and bore witness "by the first Optunity, ag't the +hainous & crying sinn of man-stealing," and undertook to send back to +"Gynny" negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver and brought to New +England, and to send a letter of explanation and apology with them.</p> + +<p>Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers, +the Massachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the +savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to +the West Indies. King Philip's wife and child were thus sold and there +died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In +1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian +male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these +transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed +against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in +New England as in Virginia, Newport being the New England centre of the +Guinea Trade. From 1707 to 1732 a tax of three guineas a head was +imposed in Rhode Island on each negro imported—on "Guinea blackbirds." +It would be idle to dwell now on the cruelty of that horrid traffic, the +sufferings on board the slavers from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> lack of room, of food, of water, +of air. But three feet three, inches was allowed between decks for the +poor negro, who, accustomed to a free, out-of-door life, thus crouched +and sat through the passage. No wonder the loss of life was great. It +was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold, +heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to +the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern +newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness +and viciousness the advertisements of our New England newspapers of the +eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in +Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel +Pewter advertised in the <i>Weekly Rehearsal</i> in 1737 that he would sell +horses for ten shillings pay if the horse sale were accomplished, and +five shillings if he endeavored to sell and could not; and for negroes +"<i>sixpence a pound</i> on all he sells, and a reasonable price if he does +not sell."</p> + +<p>Many letters still exist of advices from ship-owners to ship-captains, +advice as to the purchase, care, and choice of captives, "to get one old +man for a Lingister; to worter ye Rum & sell by short mesuer &c. &c." +Negro-stealing by Americans continued till 1864, when a brig sailing +westward from Africa on that iniquitous errand, was lost at sea—a grim +ending to three centuries of incredible and unchristian cruelty.</p> + +<p>The first anti-slavery tract published in America was written by Judge +Sewall in the year 1700—"The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> Selling of Joseph." His timid protest but +little availed, though he persevered in his belief and his opposition to +the day of his death. Other colonists who were opposed to the traffic +were willing to buy slaves, that the poor heathen might be brought up in +a Christian land, be led away from their idols—Abraham and the +patriarchs were given as authorities in justification of thus doing. One +respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the +Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the +Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling +Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another +cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel +dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his +congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and +decency in the specious words that framed a lie in every clause. Many +ministers were slave owners; Daille—the French Huguenot, Dr. Hopkins, +Dr. Williams, Ezra Stiles, and Jonathan Edwards being noted examples. +The ministers from Eliot down were kind to the blacks, preaching special +sermons to them, and forming religious associations for them. A negro +school for reading, writing, and catechizing was established in Boston +in 1728.</p> + +<p>Cotton Mather had a negro worth fifty pounds given him by his +congregation, and that "most notorious benefactor," with his +never-ceasing "essay to doe good," at once, in gratitude for the gift, +devoted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the negro to God's service, and made many a noble resolve to +save, through God's grace, his bondsman's soul. It is painful to read at +a later date that he found his unregenerate slave "horribly arrested by +spirits," by which he did not mean captured by the dreaded emissaries of +the devil who pervaded the air of Boston and Salem at that time, but +simply very drunk.</p> + +<p>Slaves were more plentiful in Connecticut and Rhode Island than in +Massachusetts. Madam Knight gives a glimpse of Connecticut slave life in +1704, and of awkward table traits in both master and slave as well, when +she says that the negroes were too familiar, were permitted to sit at +the table with the master, and "into the Dish goes the black Hoof as +freely as the white Hand." Hawthorne says of New England slaves:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in families +of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the +circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their +dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's +children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot, +that they saw white men and women imported from Europe as they had +been from Africa, and sold, though only for a term of years, yet as +actual slaves to the highest bidder."</p></div> + +<p>In the main, New England slaves were not unhappy, for they were well +treated; and the race has the gift to be merry in the worst of +circumstances. Occasionally one would be brought to the northern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> land, +one of higher sensibilities, more sensitive affections, greater pride; +one who could not live a slave. Such a one was the haughty Congo Pomp, +who escaped to a swamp near Truro on Cape Cod—a swamp now called by his +name—and placing at the foot of a tree a jug of water and loaf of bread +to sustain him on his last long journey, hanged himself from the +low-hanging limbs, and thus obtained freedom. Such also was Parson +Williams's slave Cato in Longmeadow, Mass. He bore repeated whippings +for his high-spirited disobedience, "for speaking out loud in meeting, +drinking too much cider, going on a rampage," and finally drowned +himself in a well.</p> + +<p>Waitstill Winthrop wrote thus of one suicidal Moor to Fitz John Winthrop +in 1682.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I fear Black Tom will do but little seruis. He usued to make a +show of hangeing himselfe before folkes, but I believe he is not +very nimble about it when he is alone. Tis good to have an eye to +him & you think it not worth while to keep him eyether sell him or +send him to Virginia or the Barbadoes."</p></div> + +<p>William Pyncheon had also a slave who was "assiduous in hangeing." To be +sold to Virginia was a standard threat to New England slaves, as work in +Southern tobacco-fields was thought much more severe than in northern +cornfields.</p> + +<p>Slavery lingered in New England until after Revolutionary days. It is +said that its death blow was dealt in Worcester, Mass., in 1783, when a +citizen was tried for assaulting and beating his negro ser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>vant. The +defence was that the black man was a slave, and the beating was but +necessary restraint and correction. The master was found guilty in the +Worcester County Court and fined forty shillings.</p> + +<p>Though there were few slaves who were willing to leave life in order to +be free, many were willing to try to leave their masters. The early New +England newspapers abound in advertisements of runaway blacks—in gay +attire, with fiddles and guns, bewigged and silk-stockinged, well +dressed if not well treated.</p> + +<p>I know no records that show more fully, though wholly unconsciously, the +vast simplicity of our ancestors than these advertisements of runaway +servants. Fancy giving as a possible means of identification of any +human being such an item of descriptions as this: "When he gets drunk or +drinks much he is red in the face"—as if that were an extraordinary or +peculiar trait in any drunken man! Another runaway is said to have had +"sometimes a sly look in his eye and wears the button of his hat in +front;" another to have been a liar; another to have been "somewhat +impudent if crossed, and has a leering look under his eyes." Others were +"awkward in manners," "somewhat morose in countenance," "had long +finger-nails," "had one or two pimples on the face," "is too fond of +talking." It seems almost incredible that intelligent persons should +have given such childish and easily obliterated or varied particulars of +description.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p> + +<p>Diverse names were applied to these runaways: "Sirrinam Indianman +Slave," "Mustee-fellow," "Molatto," "Moor," "Maddagerscar-boy," +"Guinyman," "Congoman," "Coast-fellow," "Tawny," "Black-a-moor"—all +apparently conveying some distinction of description universally +comprehended at the time.</p> + +<p>We have a few records of worthy black servants who remind us of the +faithful, loving house-servants of old Southern families. Such a one was +Judge Sewall's man, Boston—a freeman—to a master who deserved faithful +service, if ever master did. The entries in the Judge's diary, meagre as +they are, somehow show fully to us that faithful life of service. We see +Boston taking the Sewall children out sledding; we see him carrying one +of the little daughters out of town in his arms when the neighbors were +suddenly smitten with that colonial plague, the small-pox. We find him, +in later years, a tender nurse, sleeping by the fire in languishing +Hannah Sewall's sick-chamber; and, after her death, we hear him +protesting against the removal of her dead form from her chamber; and we +can see him weeping as he sat through the lonely nights with his dead +and dearly loved mistress, till she was hidden from his view. It is +pleasing to know that though he lived a servant, he was buried like a +gentleman; he received that token of final respect so highly prized in +Boston—a ceremonious funeral, with a good fire, and chairs set in rows, +and plenty of wine and cake, and a notice in the <i>News Letter</i>, and +doubtless gloves in decent numbers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p> + +<p>Other black men led noble lives in service, if we can trust the records +on their tombstones.</p> + +<p>This elegant epitaph is upon a gravestone in Concord, Mass.:</p> + +<p class="center"> +"GOD WILLS US FREE; MAN WILLS US SLAVES<br /> +I WILL AS GOD WILLS, GODS WILL BE DONE.<br /> +HERE LIES THE BODY OF<br /> +<br /> +JOHN JACK<br /> +<br /> +A NATIVE OF AFRICA, WHO DIED<br /> +MARCH 1773 AGED ABOUT SIXTY YEARS.<br /> +THOUGH BORN IN A LAND OF SLAVERY<br /> +HE WAS BORN FREE<br /> +THOUGH HE LIVED IN A LAND OF LIBERTY<br /> +HE LIVED A SLAVE.<br /> +TILL BY HIS HONEST (THOUGH STOLEN) LABORS<br /> +HE ACQUIRED THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY<br /> +WHICH GAVE HIM FREEDOM<br /> +THOUGH NOT LONG BEFORE<br /> +DEATH, THE GRAND TYRANT<br /> +GAVE HIM HIS FINAL EMANCIPATION<br /> +AND PUT HIM ON A FOOTING WITH KINGS.<br /> +THOUGH A SLAVE TO VICE<br /> +HE PRACTISED THOSE VIRTUES<br /> +WITHOUT WHICH KINGS ARE BUT SLAVES."<br /> +</p> + +<p>At Attleborough, Mass., near the old Hatch Tavern, may be seen this +epitaph:</p> + +<p class="center"> +"HERE LIES THE BEST OF SLAVES<br /> +NOW TURNING INTO DUST,<br /> +CÆSAR THE AETHIOPIAN CLAIMS<br /> +A PLACE AMONG THE JUST.<br /> +<br /> +HIS FAITHFUL SOUL HAS FLED<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>TO REALMS OF HEAVENLY LIGHT,<br /> +AND BY THE BLOOD THAT JESUS SHED<br /> +IS CHANGED FROM BLACK TO WHITE.<br /> +<br /> +JAN. 15TH HE QUITTED THE STAGE<br /> +IN THE 77TH YEAR OF HIS AGE.<br /> +<br /> +1781."<br /> +</p> + +<p>Besides slaves, Indians, and help, a species of nexal servitude also +existed in all the colonies. At the beginning of colonization bound or +indentured white servants were sent in large numbers to the new land. +Thirty came to the Bay Colony as early as 1625. Some of the terms of +service were very long, even for ten years. These indentured servants +were in three classes: "free-willers," or "redemptioners," or voluntary +emigrants; "kids," who had been seduced through ignorance or duplicity +on board ships that carried them off to America; and convicts +transported for crime. The latter expatriated vagabonds were sent +chiefly to Virginia. The "kids" were trapanned, by the fair promises of +crimps or "spirits," in Scotland, Ireland, and England, where kidnapping +formed an extensive and incredibly bold business. The Scots were brought +over and sold at the time of English wars. At one time "Scots, Indians, +and Negars" were not allowed to train in the militia in Massachusetts. +Many curious and romantic stories are told of these kidnapped servants. +One day, in 1730, a number of Boston gentlemen went to the Long Wharf to +examine a cargo of Irish transports then offered for sale. Among the +lads who ran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> up and down the wharf to show his strength and condition +was one who had gone to sea on another ship. The captain, his uncle, +died at sea, and the crew sold the boy to this transport-ship, which +chanced to pass them. The boy faithfully served out his time to his +purchaser, and became a gallant officer in the wars with the Indians.</p> + +<p>These indentured servants were just as trying as the Indians and the +negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters' +property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a +lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender +fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to +Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The +Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory +bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several +things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, etc., and breaking +open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial, +affirmed that he had really a very small appetite, but the food +furnished by that colonial blue-stocking, Anne Bradstreet, was not fit +to eat, the bread being black and heavy and sour, and he only took an +occasional surreptitious bite to keep himself from starvation. But it +was proved that he had feasted not only himself, but comrades, and that +a neighbor, who had a "great fat Turkey against his daughter's marriage" +hung up in a locked room, was relieved of it by the hungry and agile +John, who got some of his fellows to let him down the chimney<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> to steal +the turkey and good store of beer, with which they all caroused; and he +was fitly punished.</p> + +<p>The laws were strict enough at first as to the behavior of servants, and +occasionally a topping young maid felt their force. In Hartford, "Susan +Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to +the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to +be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publicquely corrected and so +to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary."</p> + +<p>In York, Me., in 1645, "Alexander Maxwell for his grosse offence in his +exorbitant and abusive carriages towards his master Mr. George Leader +shall be publicly brought forth to the Whipping Post, where he shall be +fastened till 30 lashes be given him upon his bare skin." Maxwell was +ordered to satisfy his master for the money paid for his board in +prison, and, if he further misbehaved, Mr. Leader could sell him to +Virginia.</p> + +<p>In later days New England housewives must have longed for the good old +times of the whipping-post and coarse diet and hard work for disorderly +and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured +with one of her maids. She had written many pathetic entreaties to her +mother, Madam Winthrop, to send her a "good girle, a strong lusty +servant," one "vsed to all kind of work who would refuse none," and we +learn what she got, from a letter written a few months later, with a +new-born babe by her side:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>"A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now +I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first +coming me she carried her selfe dutifully as became a servant; but +since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for +small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent +that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If +I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she +sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will +not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my +life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to +you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed +towards me I should but grieve you. My husband hath vsed all meanes +for to reforme her, reasons and perswasions, but shee doth profess +that her heart and her nature will not suffer her to confesse her +faults. If I tell my husband of her behavior towards me, vpon +examination she will denie all she hath done or spoken, so that we +know not how to proceed against her."</p></div> + +<p>We must not forget that the Winthrops had the best opportunity of any in +the land to have good servants; for not only were help placed in their +families, but the best of English servants were consigned to them; yet +neither the Governor's sister, Madam Downing, nor his daughter, Madam +Dudley, could be "suited." And hear the plaint of John Winthrop to his +father in 1717:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is not convenient now to write the trouble and plague we have +had with this Irish creature the year past. Lying and unfaithfull; +w'd doe things on purpose in con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>tradiction and vexation to her +mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th +fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out +of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent, as when we have taken +her to task for her wickedness she has gone away to complain of +cruell usage. I can truly say we have used this base creature w'th +a great deal of kindness and lenity. She w'd frequently take her +mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dresse herselfe +and away without leave among her companions. I may have said some +time or other when she has been in fault that she was fitt to live +nowhere but in Virginia, and if she w'd not mend her ways I should +send her thither tho I am sure nobody w'd give her passage thither +to have her service for twenty yeares she is such a high-spirited +pirnicious jade. Robin has been run away neare ten dayes as you +will see by the inclosed and this creature know of his going and of +his carrying out 4 dozen bottles of cyder, metheglin and palme wine +out of the cellar among the servants of the town and meat and I +know not w't. The bottles they broke and threw away after they had +drunk up the liquor, and they got up o'r sheep anight, killed a +fatt one, roasted and made merry w'th it before morning."</p></div> + +<p>This wild Irish girl was indentured to the unfortunate Winthrop and his +more unfortunate wife for four years, and was to have fifty shillings +and some other start in the world when her time was up.</p> + +<p>Out-of-the-way plantations fared no better in the question of service. +John Wynter, the head agent of the settlement at Richmonds Island in +Maine, wrote thus resentfully in 1639, to Mr. Trelawny, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> the London +company, of his maid, one Priscilla Beckford:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You write of some yll reports is given of my Wyfe for beatinge the +maide: yf a faire waye will not doe yt, beatinge must sometimes +vppon such Idlle girrels as she is. Yf you think yt fitte for my +Wyfe to do all the work, and the maide sitt still, and she must +forbear her hands to strike, then the work will ly vndonn. She hath +bin now 2½ yeares in the house & I do not thinke she hath risen +20 tymes before my Wyfe hath bin vp to Call her, and many tymes +light the fire before she comes out of her bed. She hath twice gone +a mechinge in the woodes which we have bin fain to send all our +Company to seek her. We can hardly keep her within doors after we +are gonn to bed except we carry the kay of the door to bed with vs. +She coulde never milke Cow nor Goate since she came hither. Our men +do not desire to have her boyl the kittle for them she is so +sluttish. She cannot be trusted to serve a few piggs but my Wyfe +must commonly be with her. She hath written home I heare that she +was fain to ly vppon goates skinns. She might take some goates +skinns to ly in her bedd but not given to her for her lodginge. For +a yeare & quarter or more she lay with my daughter vppon a good +feather bed; before my daughter being lacke 3 or 4 days to Sacco +the maid goes into bed with her cloths & stockins & would not take +the paines to pluck off her Cloths; her bed after was a doust bedd +& shee had 2 Coverletts to ly on her, but Sheets she had none, +after that tyme she was found to be so sluttish. Her beatinge that +she hath had hath never hurt her body nor limes. She is so fatt & +soggy she can hardly do any worke. Yf this maide at her lazy tymes +when she hath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> bin found in her yll accyons do not deserve 2 or 3 +blowes I pray you who hath the most reason to complain my Wyfe or +maide. My Wyfe hath an Vnthankefull office. Yt does not please me +well, being she hath taken so much paines and care to order things +as well as she could, and ryse in the morning rath & go to bed soe +latte, and have hard speeches for yt."</p></div> + +<p>We can well imagine his exhausted patience, and that of poor overworked +Mistress Wynter, at that fat soggy thing, that lag-last, so shiftless +and useless about the house, lazing from rath to latte, and then to +complete their exasperation, miching off into the woods to shirk her +work so that the whole company had to turn out with a mort of trouble to +hunt for the leg-trape. We cannot marvel at the beating, but simply +wonder at its being remarked in those days of many and hard beatings, +when scholars, servants, soldiers, and college students were well +whipped, and, in Old England, wives also.</p> + +<p>Wynter had no better fortune without doors with his men-servants and +workmen; they proved kittle cattle. He found them not "plyable" or +"condishionabell," that they "spoke Fair to the Face and Colloged behind +the back." Of one malcontent he wrote,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He is verry vnwilling to do vs servize, he is alwaies too hard +labored, he cares not what Spoyle he makes, and will not be +commanded but when he list. He is such a talkinge Fellow as makes +our company worse than would be."</p></div> + +<p>He says his bound servants ran away at their pleasure, worked when they +pleased, and led others off to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> their lure, and should be punished if +they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and +promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a +knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among +New England historical collections no other such well of good old +English words and phrases.</p> + +<p>The Declaration of Independence did not better the aspect of the servant +question. The <i>Providence Gazette</i> advertised in 1796 that a reward of +five hundred dollars and the "warmest blessings of abused householders" +would be given to any restoring the conditions of the good old times, or +rather what they fancied was</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"The constant service of the antique world</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">When service sweat for duty not for meed."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The notice opens thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Was mislaid or taken away by mistake, soon after the formation of +the abolition society, from the servant girls in this town all +inclination to do any kind of work, and left in lieu thereof an +independent appearance, a strong and continued thirst for high +wages, a gossiping disposition for every sort of amusement, a +leering and hankering after persons of the other sex, a desire of +finery and fashion, a never-ceasing trot after new places, more +advantageous for stealing, with a number of contingent +accomplishments that do not suit the wearers."</p></div> + +<p>President Dwight wrote that the servants of that day were "distinguished +for vice and profligacy;" so the nineteenth century opened no more +promisingly than the eighteenth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p> + +<p>The pious colonists felt that great spiritual, as well as temporal +responsibility rested upon them in regard to their bond-servants. We +find in contemporary letters frequent reference to the souls of the +indentured ones; Englishmen at the old home wrote to the settlers to +remember well their religious, their proselyting duties; and they +faithfully reminded each other of their accountability for souls. For +instance, when a smart young Irishman came over with some Irish hounds, +his consigner besought the New Englanders to remember that it was as +godly to "winne this fellowes soule out of the subtillest snare of +Sathan, Romes pollitick religion, as to winne an Indian soule out of the +Dieuells clawes;" and he urged them to watch the Papist narrowly as to +his carriage in Puritandom, his attitude toward Protestantism. This was +the same religious zeal that led the Boston elders to send missionaries +from New England to convert the heathen of the Established Church in +Virginia.</p> + +<p>The moral and religious condition of these servants was truly of great +importance in the preservation of such a theocracy as was New England, +since few of them returned to England, but after serving out their time +became freemen with homes and land and votes of their own; and the +commonwealth could not live as a religious organization unless it +thrived through the religious spirit of its citizens.</p> + +<p>One other form of domestic service existed until this century. A limited +amount of assistance was given in some households by those unhappy +wights,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> the town-poor. These wretched paupers were sold to the lowest +bidder. Sometimes the buyer received but a few shillings a year from the +town for the "keep" of one of these helpless souls. We may be sure that +he got some work out of the pauper to pay for his board. We read of one +old Dimbledee, of Widow Bump and Widow Bumpus, degenerate successors in +name as well as in estate of the Pilgrim Bompasse, who were sold from +year to year from one farm to another and given a grudged existence, +till at last we find the town paying for their welcome coffins and +winding sheets. Two curious facts are to be noted in the poor accounts: +that the women paupers were almost invariably "very comfortable on it +for clothes," as were other women of that dress-loving day; and that +liquor was frequently supplied to both male and female paupers by the +town. Sometimes ten gallons apiece, a very consoling amount, was given +in a year. I have also noted the frequent presence on the poor-list of +what are termed "French Neuterls." These were Acadians—the neighbors +and compatriots of Evangeline—feeble folk, who, void of romance, +succumbed in despair to exile and home-sickness, a new language and a +new manner of living, and yielded weakly to work as servants when they +had no courage to maintain homes. New England paupers lived to a good +old age. I have been told that the unhappy fate of one of these +town-poor—an Acadian—was traced for over thirty years in the town +records of her sale. In 1767 there were twenty-one paupers in Danvers, +Mass., and their average age was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> eighty-four years, thus apparently +offering proof of good rum and good usage from the town. There was also +an hereditary pauperism. In Salem a certain family always had some of +its members on the list of town-poor from the year 1721 to 1848; and +perhaps they found better homes through "living around" than in trying +to support themselves.</p> + +<p>Criminals were also sold into service to work out their sentences. Thus +did the practical settlers attempt to carry out one of Sir Thomas More's +Utopian notions. Upon the whole, I think I should rather have a Nipmuck +squaw cooking in my kitchen, or a Pequot warrior digging in my garden, +than to have a white burglar or ruffian in either situation.</p> + +<p>It is well to observe in passing that no gingerly nicety of regard in +calling those who served by any other name than servant, was shown or +heeded in olden times. They believed with St. Paul, "Art thou called +being a servant? Care not for it." All hired workers in the house, hired +laborers in the field, those contracting to work under a master at any +trade for a period of time, apprentices, and many whom we should now +term agents or stewards, were then called servants, and signed contracts +as servants, and did not appear at all insulted by being termed +servants.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + +<h3>HOME INTERIORS</h3> + +<p>It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial +houses from a contemporary and reliable source—the inventories of the +estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court +records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much +minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room, +instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a +clear picture of the household belongings of that day.</p> + +<p>The first room beyond the threshold of the door that one finds named in +the houses "of the richer sort," is the entry. This was apparently +always bare of furniture, and indeed well it might be, for it was seldom +aught but a vestibule to the rest of the house, containing, save the +staircase, but room enough to swing the front door in opening. Dr. Lyon +gives the inventory of John Salmon of Boston in the year 1750 as the +earliest record which he has found of the use of the word hall instead +of entry, as we now employ it. In the <i>Boston News Letter</i>, thirty one +years earlier, on August 24th, 1719, I find this advertisement:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> "Fine +Glass Lamps & Lanthorns well gilt and painted both Convex and Plain. +Being suitable for Halls, staircases, or other Passage ways, at the +Glass Shop in Queen Street." This advertisement is, however, +exceptional. The hall in Puritan houses was not a passageway, it was the +living-room, the keeping-room, the dwelling-room, the sitting-room; in +it the family sat and ate their meals—in, it they lived. Let us see +what was the furniture of a Puritan home-room in early days, and what +its value. The inventory of the possessions of Theophilus Eaton, +Governor of the New Haven colony, is often quoted. At the time of his +death, in 1657, he had in his hall,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">"A drawing Table & a round table, £1.18s.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A cubberd & 2 long formes, 14s.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A cubberd cloth & cushions, 13s.; 4 setwork cushions, 12s. £1.5.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">6 greene cushions, 12s; a greate chaire with needleworke, 13s. £1.5.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">2 high chaires set work, 20s; 4 high stooles set worke, 26s 8d £6.6.8.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">4 low chaires set worke, 6s 8d, £1.6.8.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">2 low stooles set worke, 10s.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">2 Turkey Carpette, £2; 6 high joyne stooles, 6s. £2.6.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A pewter cistern & candlestick, 4s.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A pr of great brass Andirons, 12s.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A pr of small Andirons, 6s 8d.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A pr of doggs, 2s 6d.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A pr of tongues fire pan & bellowes, 7s."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Now, this was a very liberally furnished living-room. There were plenty +of seats for diners and loungers, if Puritans ever lounged; two long +forms and a dozen stools of various heights, with green or embroidered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> +cushions, upon which to sit while at the Governor's board; and seven +chairs, gay with needlework covers, to draw around his fireplace with +its shining paraphernalia of various sized andirons, tongs, and bellows. +The low, heavy-raftered room with these plentiful seats, the tables with +their Turkey covers, the picturesque cupboard with its rich cloth, and +its display of the Governor's silver plate, all aglow with the light of +a great wood fire, make a pretty picture of comfortable simplicity, +pleasant of contemplation in our bric-a-brac filled days, a fit setting +for the figures of the Governor, "New England's glory full of warmth and +light," and his dearest, greatest, best of temporal enjoyments, his +"vertuous, prudent and prayerful wife."</p> + +<p>Contemporary inventories make more clear and more positive still this +picture of a planter's home-room, for similar furniture is found in all. +All the halls had cisterns for water or for wine (and I fancy they stood +on the small table usually mentioned); all had a table for serving +meals; a majority had the cupboard; a few had "picktures" or "lookeing +glasses;" very rarely a couch or "day-bed" was seen; some had +"lanthorns" as well as candlesticks; others a spinning-wheel for the +good wife, when she "keepit close the house and birlit at the wheel."</p> + +<p>Chairs were a comparatively rare form of furniture in New England in +early colonial days, nor were they frequently seen in humble English +homes of that date. Stools and forms were the common seats. Turned, +wainscot, and covered chairs are the three distinct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> types mentioned in +the seventeenth century. Turned chairs are shown in good examples in +what are known as the Carver and Brewster chairs, now preserved in +Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. The president's chair at Harvard College is +another ancient turned chair.</p> + +<p>The seats of many of these chairs were of flags and rushes. The bark of +the elm and bass trees was also used for bottoming chairs.</p> + +<p>The wainscot chairs were all of wood, seats as well as backs, usually of +oak. They were frequently carved or panelled. One now in Pilgrim Hall is +known as the Winslow chair. Another fine specimen in carved oak is in +the Essex Institute in Salem. Carved chairs were owned only by persons +of wealth or high standing, and were frequently covered with "redd +lether" or "Rusha lether." Sometimes the leather was stamped and +different rich fabrics were employed to cover the seats. "Turkey +wrought" chairs are frequently mentioned. Velvet "Irish stitch," red +cloth, and needlework covers are named. Green appeared to be, however, +the favorite color.</p> + +<p>Cane chairs appeared in the last quarter of the century. It is said that +the use of cane was introduced into furniture with the marriage of +Charles II. to Catharine of Braganza.</p> + +<p>The bow-legged chair, often with claw and ball foot, came into use in +the beginning of the eighteenth century. "Crowfoot" and "eaglesfoot" +were named in inventories. These are copies of Dutch shapes.</p> + +<p>Easy-chairs also appeared at that date, usually as part of the bedroom +furniture, and were covered with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> the stuffs of which the bed-hangings +and window-curtains were made, such as "China," "callico," "camblet," +"harrateen."</p> + +<p>The three-cornered chair, now known as an "As you like it" chair, +appeared in the middle of the century under the names of triangle, +round-about, and half-round chair.</p> + +<p>The chairs known now as Chippendale may date back to the middle of the +century; Windsor chairs, also known and manufactured in Philadelphia at +that date, were not common in New England till a score of years later, +when they were made and sold in vast numbers, being much more +comfortable than the old bannister or slat-backed chairs then in common +use.</p> + +<p>Another piece of hall furniture deserves special mention. Dr. Lyon gives +these names of cupboards found in New England: Cupboard, small cupboard, +great cupboard, court cupboard, livery cupboard, side cupboard, hanging +cupboard, sideboard cupboard, and cupboard with drawers. To this list +might be added corner cupboard. The word court cupboard is found from +the years 1647 to 1704. It was a high piece of furniture with an +enclosed closet or drawers, originally intended to display plate, and +was the highest-priced cupboard found. Upon it were set, in New England, +both glass and plate. The livery cupboard, similar in its uses, seldom +had an enclosed portion. "Turn pillar cuberds," painted and carved +cupboards, were found. The item of cupboard in any inventory was usually +accompanied by that of a cupboard cloth. This latter seemed to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> the +most elegant and luxurious article in the whole house. Cupboard cloths +of holland, "laced," "pantado," "cambrick," "kalliko," "green wrought +with silk fringe"—all are named. Cushions also, "to set upon a cubberds +head," are frequently named. They were made of damask, needlework, +velvet or cloth. A corner cupboard was apparently a small affair; a +japanned one is named. What we now call a corner cupboard was then known +as a beaufet.</p> + +<p>The hall was naturally on one side of the entry and opening into it. On +the other side, in large houses, was the parlor; this room was sometimes +used as a dining-room, sometimes as a state bedroom. It frequently held, +in addition to furniture like that of the hall, a chest or chests of +drawers to hold the family linen, and also that family idol—the best +bed.</p> + +<p>Of the exact shape and height of the bedsteads used by the early +colonists, I find no accurate nor very suggestive descriptions. The +terms used in wills, inventories, and letters seem too vague and curt to +give us a correct picture. What was the "half-headed bedstead" left with +"Curtaince & Valance of Dornix" by will by Simon Eire in Boston in 1658? +Or, to give a fuller description of a similar one in the sale of +furniture of the King's Arms in Boston, in 1651, "one half-headed +Bedsted with Blew Pillars." I fancy they were bedsteads with moderately +high headboards. It is easy enough to obtain full items of the bed +itself and the bed-furniture, its coverings and hangings. We read of +"ffether beds," "flocke beds," "downe bedds," "wool beds," and even "charf +beds,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> the latter worth but three shillings apiece, all of importance +enough to be named in wills and left with as much dignity of bequest as +Shakespeare's famous "second-best bed." Even so influential a man as +Thomas Dudley did not disdain to leave by specification to his daughter +Pacy a "ffeather beed & boulster." In 1666 Nicholas Upsall, of Boston, +left a "Bedstead fitted with a Rope Matt & Curtains to it." In March, +1687, Sewall wrote to London for "White Fustian Drawn enough for +curtains, vallen counterpaine for a bed & half a duz chaires with four +threeded green worsted to work it." In 1691 we find him writing for +"Fringe for the Fustian bed & half a duz Chairs. Six yards and a half +for the vallons, fifteen yards for 6 chairs two Inches deep; 12 yards +half inch deep." This wrought fustian bed was certainly handsome.</p> + +<p>By revolutionary times we read such items as these: "Neet sette bed," +"Very genteel red and white copperplate Cottonbed with Squab and Window +Curtains Fring'd and made in the Newest Taste," "Sacken' & Corded Beds +and a Pallat Bed," "Very Handsome Flower'd Crimson worsted damask carv'd +and rais'd Teaster Bed & Curtains compleat," "A Four Post Bedstead of +Mahogany on Casters with Carved Foot Posts, Callico Curtains to Ditto & +Window Curtains to Match, and a Green Harrateen Cornish Bed." Harrateen, +a strong, stiff woollen material, formed the most universal bed hanging. +Trundle-beds or truckle-beds were used from the earliest days. So there +was variety in plenty.</p> + +<p>A form of bedstead called a slawbank was common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> enough in New York, New +Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania until this century. They were more +rarely found in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and as I do not know what +they were called in New England, we will give them the Dutch name +slawbank, from <i>sloap-bancke</i>, a sleeping-bench. A slawbank was the +prototype of our modern folding-bed. It was an oblong frame with a +network of rope. This frame was fastened at one end to the wall with +heavy hinges, and at night it was lowered to a horizontal position, and +the unhinged end was supported on heavy wooden turned legs which fitted +into sockets in the frame. When not in use the bed was hooked up against +the wall, and doors like closet doors were closed over it, or curtains +were drawn over it to conceal it. It was usually placed in the kitchen, +and upon it slept goodman and goodwife. I know of several slawbanks +still in old Narragansett, and one in a colonial house in Shrewsbury, +Mass. A similar one may be seen at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It is hung +around with blue serge curtains. I have seen no advertisements of +slawbanks under any name in New England newspapers, unless the "bedstead +in a painted press" in the <i>Boston Gazette</i> of November, 1750, may be +one.</p> + +<p>The bed furniture was of much importance in olden days, and the coverlet +was frequently mentioned separately. Margaret Lake, of Ipswich, in 1662, +so named a "Tapestry coverlet" worth £4. Susannah Compton had at about +the same date a "Yearne Courlead." "Strieked couerlids" appear, and Adam +Hunt, of Ipswich, had in 1671 "an embroadured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> couerled." +"Happgings"—coarse common coverlets—are also named. In 1716, on +September 24th, in the <i>Boston News Letter</i>, the word counterpane first +appears. "India counterpins" often were advertised, and cheney, +harrataen, and camlet coverlets or counterpanes were made to match the +bed-hangings.</p> + +<p>A pair of sheets was furnished in 1628 to each Massachusetts Bay +colonist. This was a small allowance, but quite as full as the average +possession of sheets by other colonists. Cotton sheets were not +plentiful; flaxen or "fleishen" sheets, "canvas" sheets, "noggan" +sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his +note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and +may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially +explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy +citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning +became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun +sheets were made in large quantities, and owned by all respectable +householders. "Twenty and one pair" was no unusual number to appear in +an inventory.</p> + +<p>There were plenty of "ffether boulsters," "shafe boulsters," "wool +bolsters;" and John Walker had in 1659 a "Thurlinge Boulster," and each +household had many pillows. The word bear was universally used to denote +a pillow-case. It was spelled ber, beer, beir, beare and berr. In 1689 +the value of a "peler-beare" in an inventory was given at three +shillings. In 1664 Susannah Compton had linen "pillow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> coates." Pillow +covers also were named, and pillow clothes, but pillow bear was the term +most commonly applied.</p> + +<p>The following list of varieties of chests is given by Dr. Lyon: Joined +chests, wainscot chests, board chests, spruce chests, oak chests, carved +chests, chests with one or two drawers, cypress chests. Joined and +wainscot chests were framed chests with panels, distinguished clearly +from the board chests, made of plain boards. The latter were often +called plain chests, the former panel chests. Carved chests were much +rarer. William Bradford, of Plymouth, had one in 1657 worth £1. Dr. Lyon +also gives as possibly being carved these items: "wrought chest," +"ingraved," "settworke," and "inlayed chests." Chests were also painted, +usually on the parts in relief on the carving, the colors being +generally black and red. Chests with drawers were not rare in New +England. A good specimen may be seen in the rooms of the Connecticut +Historical Society. They were distinct in shape from what we now call +chests of drawers. Nearly all the oak chests were quartered to show the +grain, and "drop ornaments" and "egg ornaments" of various woods were +applied. Cypress and cedar chests were used then, as now, to protect +garments from moths. Governor Bellingham had one of the former worth £5. +Ship chests or sea chests were, of course, plentiful enough. Cristowell +Gallup had in 1655 a "sea chest and a great white chest." These sea +chests being made of cheap materials, have seldom been preserved. There +would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> appear to be in addition to the various chests already named, a +hanging chest. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell wrote to England for "4 +dozen pair Snipe bills to hang small chissts." This may possibly refer +to snipe-bill hinges to be placed on chests.</p> + +<p>It is safe to infer that almost every emigrant brought to America among +his household belongings at least one chest. It was of use as a +travelling trunk, a packing-box, and a piece of furniture. Many +colonists had several. Jane Humphreys had and named in her will "my +little chest, my great old chest, my great new chest, my lesser small +box, my biggest small box"—and she needed them all to hold her finery.</p> + +<p>Chests also were made in New England. Pine was used in the backs and +drawers of chests of New England make. English chests were wholly of +oak.</p> + +<p>In the Memorial Hall at Deerfield may be seen many fine specimens of old +chests, forming, indeed, a complete series, showing the various shapes +and ornamentations.</p> + +<p>Another furnishing of the parlor was the scrutoire. Under the spellings +scritoire, scredoar, screetor, scrittore, scriptore, scrutoir, scritory, +scrutore, escrutor, scriptoree, this useful piece of furniture appears +constantly in the inventories of men of wealth in the colonies from the +year 1669 till a century later. Judge Sewall tells of losing the key of +his "scrittoir." The definition of the word in Phillips's "New World of +Words," 1696, was "Scrutoire, a sort of large Cabinet with several +Boxes, and a place for Pen, Ink<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> and Paper, the door of which opening +downward and resting upon Frames that are to be drawn out and put back, +serves for a Table to write on." This description would appear to +identify the "scrutoire" with what we now call a writing-desk; and it +was called interchangeably by these two names in wills. They were made +with double bow fronts and box fronts, of oak, pine, mahogany, cherry; +and some had cases of shelves for books on the top, forming what we now +call a secretary—our modern rendering of the word scrutoire. These book +scrutoires frequently had glass doors.</p> + +<p>When Judith Sewall was about to be married, in 1720, her father was much +pleased with his prospective son-in-law and evidently determined to give +the pair a truly elegant wedding outfit. The list of the +house-furnishings which he ordered from England has been preserved, and +may be quoted as showing part of the "setting-off" in furniture of a +rich bride of the day. It reads thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Curtains & Vallens for a Bed with Counterpane Head Cloth and +Tester made of good yellow waterd worsted camlet with Triming well +made and Bases if it be the Fashion. Send also of the Same Camlet & +Triming as may be enough to make Cushions for the Chamber Chairs.</p> + +<p>"A good fine large Chintz Quilt well made.</p> + +<p>"A true Looking Glass of Black Walnut Frame of the Newest Fashion +if the Fashion be good, as good as can be bought for five or six +pounds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p> + +<p>"A second Looking Glass as good as can be bought for four or five +pounds, same kind of frame.</p> + +<p>"A Duzen of good Black Walnut Chairs fine Cane with a Couch.</p> + +<p>"A Duzen of Cane Chairs of a Different Figure and a great Chair for +a Chamber; all black Walnut.</p> + +<p>"One bell-metal Skillet of two Quarts, one ditto one Quart.</p> + +<p>"One good large Warming Pan bottom and cover fit for an Iron +handle.</p> + +<p>"Four pair of strong Iron Dogs with Brass heads about 5 or 6 +shillings a pair.</p> + +<p>"A Brass Hearth for a Chamber with Dogs Shovel Tongs & Fender of +the newest Fashion (the Fire is to ly upon Iron).</p> + +<p>"A strong Brass Mortar That will hold about a Quart with a Pestle.</p> + +<p>"Two pair of large Brass sliding Candlesticks about 4 shillings a +Pair.</p> + +<p>"Two pair of large Brass Candlesticks not sliding of the newest +Fashion about 5 or 6 shillings a pair.</p> + +<p>"Four Brass Snuffers with stands.</p> + +<p>"Six small strong Brass Chafing dishes about 4 shillings apiece.</p> + +<p>"One Brass basting Ladle; one larger Brass Ladle.</p> + +<p>"One pair of Chamber Bellows with Brass Noses.</p> + +<p>"One small hair Broom sutable to the Bellows.</p> + +<p>"One Duzen of large hard-mettal Pewter Plates new fashion, weighing +about fourteen pounds.</p> + +<p>"One Duzen hard-mettal Pewter Porringers.</p> + +<p>"Four Duzen of Small glass Salt Cellars of white glass; Smooth not +wrought, and without a foot.</p> + +<p>"A Duzen of good Ivory-hafted Knives and Forks."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> + +<p>The floors of colonial houses were sometimes sanded, but were not +carpeted, for a carpet in early days was not a floor covering, but the +covering of a table or cupboard. In 1646 an inquiry was made into some +losses on the wreck of the "Angel Gabriel." A servant took oath that Mr. +John Coggeswell "had a Turkywork'd Carpet in old England which he +commonly used to lay on his Parlour Table; and this Carpet was put +aboard among my Maisters goods and came safe ashore to the best of my +Remembrance." Another man testified that he did "frequentlie see a +Turkey-work Carpet & heard them say it used to lay upon their Parlour +Table." Dornix, arras, cloth, calico, and broadcloth carpets are named. +Sewall tells of an "Irish stitch't hanging made a carpet of." Samuel +Danforth gave, in 1661, a "Convenient Carpet for the table of the +meeting house." In 1735, in the advertisement of the estate of Jonathan +Barnard, "one handsome Large Carpet 9 Foot 0 inches by 6 foot 6 inches" +was named. This was, I fancy, a floor covering. In the <i>Boston Gazette</i> +of November, 1748, "two large Matts for floors" were advertised—an +exceptional instance in the use of the word mat. Large floor-carpets +were advertised the following year, and in 1755 a "Variety of List +Carpets wide & Narrow," and "Scotch Carpets for Stairs." In 1769 came +"Persia Carpets 3 yards Wide." In 1772, in the <i>Boston Evening Post</i>, "A +very Rich Wilton Carpet 18 ft by 13" was named. The following year +"Painted Canvass Floor Cloth" was named. This was doubtless the "Oyl +Cloth for Floors and Tables" of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> year 1762. Oilcloth had been known +in England a century previously. What the "False Carpets" advertised on +June 7, 1762, were I do not know.</p> + +<p>The walls of the rooms were wainscoted and painted. Gurdon Saltonstall +had on the walls of some of his state-rooms leathern hangings or +tapestries. We find wealthy Sir William Pepperel sending to England, in +1737, the draught of a chamber he was furnishing, and writing, "Geet +mock Tapestry or paint'd Canvass lay'd in Oyls for ye same and send me." +In 1734 "Paper for Rooms," and a little later "Rolled Paper for Hanging +of Rooms" were advertised in the <i>Boston News Letter</i>. "Statues on +Paper" were soon sold, and "Architraves on Roll Paper" and "Landscape +Paper." These old paper-hangings were of very heavy and strong +materials, close-grained, firm and durable. The rooms of a few wealthy +men were hung with heavy tapestries. The ceilings usually exposed to +view the great summer-tree and cross rafters, sometimes rough-hewn and +still showing the marks of the woodman's axe. But little decoration was +seen overhead, even in the form of chandeliers; sometimes a candle beam +bore a score of candles, or in some fine houses, such as the Storer +mansion in Boston, great ornamental globes of glass hung from the +summer-tree.</p> + +<p>In the first log cabins oiled paper was placed in windows. We find more +than one colonist writing to England for that semi-opaque +window-setting. Soon glass windows, framed in lead, were sent from +London and Liverpool and Bristol, ready for insertion in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> the walls of +houses; and at an early day sheets of glass came to Winthrop. We find, +by Sewall's time, that the houses of well-to-do folk all had "quarrels +of glass" set in windows.</p> + +<p>The flight of time in New England houses was marked without doors by +sun-dials; within, by noon-marks, hour-glasses, and rarely by +clepsydras, or water-clocks.</p> + +<p>The first mention, in New England records, of a clock is in Lechford's +note-book. He states that in 1628 Joseph Stratton had of his brother a +clock and watch, and that Joseph acknowledged this, but refused to pay +for them and was sued for payment. Hence Lawyer Lechford's interest in +the articles and mention of them. In 1640 Henry Parks, of Hartford, left +a clock by will to the church. In the inventory of Thomas Coteymore, +made in Charleston, in 1645, his clock is apprized at £1. In 1657 there +was a town-clock in Boston and a man appointed to take care of it. In +1677 E. Needham, of Lynn, left a "striking clock, a Larum that does not +strike and a watch," valued at £5—this in an estate of £1,117 total. +Judge Sewall wrote, in 1687, "Got home rather before 12 Both by my Clock +and Dial."</p> + +<p>Clocks must have become rather plentiful in the early part of the +following century, for in 1707 this advertisement appeared in the +<i>Boston News Letter</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To all gentlemen and others: There is lately arrived in Boston by +way of Pennsylvania a Clock maker. If any person or persons hath +any occasions for new Clocks or to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> have Old Ones turn'd into +Pendulums, or any other thing either in making or mending, they can +go to the Sign of the Clock and Dial on the South Side of the Town +House."</p></div> + +<p>In 1712, in November, appeared in the <i>News Letter</i> the advertisement of +a man who "performed all sorts of New Clocks and Watch works, viz: 30 +hour Clocks, Week Clocks, Month Clocks, Spring Table Clocks, Chime +Clocks, quarter Clocks, quarter Chime Clocks, Church Clocks, Terret +Clocks;" and on April 16, 1716, this notice appeared: "Lately come from +London. A Parcel of very Fine Clocks. They go a week and repeat the hour +when Pull'd. In Japan Cases or Wall Nutt."</p> + +<p>By this time, in the inventory or "enroulment" of the estate of any +person of note, we always find a clock mentioned. Increase Mather left +to his son Cotton "one Pendilum Clock." Soon appear Japann'd clocks and +Pullup Clocks. In the <i>New England Weekly Journal</i> of October, 1732, the +fourth prize in the Newport lottery was announced to be a clock worth +£65. "A Handsome new Eight day Clock which shows the Moons Age, Strikes +the Quarters on Six very Tunable Bells & is in a Good Japann'd Case in +Imitation of Tortoise Shell & Gold."</p> + +<p>This advertisement of Edmund Entwisle, in the <i>Boston News Letter</i> of +November 18, 1742, proves, I think, that they had some very handsome +clocks in those days:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A Fine Clock. It goes 8 or 9 days with once winding up. And +repeats the Hour it struck last when you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> pull it. The Dial is 13 +inches on the Square & Arched with a SemiCircle on the Top round +which is a strong Plate with this Motto (Time shews the Way of +Lifes Decay) well engraved & silver'd, within the Motto Ring it +shews from behind two Semispheres the Moons Increase & Decrease by +two curious Painted Faces ornamented with Golden Stars between on a +Blue Ground, and a white Circle on the Outside divided into Days +figured at every Third, in which Divisions is shewn the Age by a +fix't Index from the Top, as they pass by the great Circle is +divided into three Concentrick Collums on the outmost of which it +shews the Minute of each Hour and the Middlemost the Hours &c. the +innermost is divided into 31 equal parts figur'd at every other on +which is shewn the Day of the Month by a Hand from the Dial Plate +as the Hour & Minute is, it also shews the Seconds as common & is +ornamented with curious Engravings in a Most Fashionable Manner. +The case is made of very Good Mohogony with Quarter Collums in the +Body, broke in the Surface with Raised Pannels with Quarter Rounds +burs Bands & Strings. The head is ornamented with Gilded Capitalls +Bases & Frise with New fashion'd Balls compos'd of Mohogony with +Gilt Leaves & Flowers."</p></div> + +<p>I do not quite understand this description, and I know I could never +have told the correct time by this clock, but surely it must have been +very elegant and costly.</p> + +<p>The earliest and most natural, as well as most plentiful, illuminating +medium for the colonists was found in pine-knots. Wood says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Out of these Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is so much spoke +of which may serve as a shift among poore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> folks but I cannot +commend it for Singular good because it is something sluttish +dropping a pitchy kind of substance where it stands."</p></div> + +<p>Higginson wrote in 1630, "Though New England has no tallow to make +candles of yet by abundance of fish thereof it can afford oil for +lamps."</p> + +<p>Though lamps and "lamp yearne," or wicks, appear in many an early +invoice, I cannot think that they were extensively used. Betty lamps +were the earliest form. They were a shallow receptacle, usually of +pewter, iron, or brass, circular or oval in shape, and occasionally +triangular, and about two or three inches in diameter, with a projecting +nose an inch or two long. When in use they were filled with tallow or +grease, and a wick or piece of twisted rag was placed so that the +lighted end could hang on the nose. Specimens can be seen at Deerfield +Memorial Hall. I have one with a hook and chain by which to hang it up, +and a handled hook attached with which to clean out the grease. These +lamps were sometimes called "brown-bettys," or "kials," or "cruiseys." A +phœbe lamp resembled a betty lamp, but had a shallow cup underneath +to catch the dripping grease.</p> + +<p>Soon candles were made by being run in moulds, or by a tedious process +of dipping. The fragrant bayberry furnished a pale green wax, which +Robert Beverly thus described in 1705:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A pale brittle wax of a curious green color, which by refining +becomes almost transparent. Of this they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> make candles which are +never greasy to the touch, nor melt with lying in the hottest +weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, +like that of a tallow candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, +if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to +all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them +out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff."</p></div> + +<p>The Abbé Robin and other travellers gave similar testimony. Bayberry wax +was a standard farm production wherever bayberries grew, and was +advertised in New England papers until this century. I entered within a +year a single-storied house a few miles from Plymouth Rock, where an +aged descendant of the Pilgrims earns her scanty spending-money by +making "bayberry taller," and bought a cake and candles of the wax, made +in precisely the method of her ancestors; and I too can add my evidence +as to the pure, spicy perfume of this New England incense.</p> + +<p>The growth of the whaling trade, and consequent use of spermaceti, of +course increased the facilities for, and the possibilities of, house +illumination. In 1686 Governor Andros petitioned for a commission for a +voyage after "Sperma-Coeti Whales," but not till the middle of the +following century did spermaceti become of common enough use to bring +forth such notices as this, in the <i>Boston Independent Advertiser</i> of +January, 1749:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Sperma-Ceti Candles, exceeding all others for Beauty Sweetness of +Scent when Extinguished. Duration being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> more than Double with +Tallow Candles of Equal Size. Dimensions of Flame near 4 Times +more. Emitting a Soft easy Expanding Light, bringing the object +close to the Sight, rather than causing the Eye to trace after +them, as all Tallow Candles do, from a Constant Dimnes which they +produce. One of these Candles serves the use and purpose of 3 +Tallow Candles, and upon the Whole are much pleasanter and +cheaper."</p></div> + +<p>These candles were placed in candle-beams—rude chandeliers of crossed +sticks of wood or strips of metal with sockets; in sliding stands, in +sconces, which were also called prongs or candle-arms. The latter +appeared in the inventories of all genteel folk, and decorated the walls +of all genteel parlors.</p> + +<p>Candlesticks and snuffers were found in every house; the latter were +called by various names, the word snit or snite being the most curious. +It is from the old English snyten, to blow, and was originally a +verb—to snite the candle, or put it out. In the inventory of property +of John Gager, of Norwich, in 1703, appears "One Snit."</p> + +<p>Snuffer-boats or slices were snuffer-trays. Another curious illuminating +appurtenance was called a save-all or candle-wedge. It was a little +frame of rings or cups with pins, by which our frugal ancestors held up +the last dying bit of burning candle. They were sometimes of pewter with +iron pins, sometimes wholly of brass or iron. They have nearly all +disappeared since new and more extravagant methods of illumination +prevail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> + +<p>The argand lamps of Jefferson's invention and the various illuminating +and heating contrivances of Count Rumford must have been welcome to the +colonists.</p> + +<p>The discomfort of a colonial house in winter-time has been ably set +forth by Charles Francis Adams in his "Three Episodes of Massachusetts +History." Down the great chimneys blew the icy blasts so fiercely that +Cotton Mather noted on a January Sabbath, in 1697, as he shivered before +"a great Fire, that the Juices forced out at the end of short billets of +wood by the heat of the flame on which they were laid, yett froze into +Ice on their coming out." Judge Sewall wrote, twenty years later, "An +Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Bread was frozen at Lords +Table.... Though 'twas so Cold yet John Tuckerman was baptized. At six +oclock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my +Wives Chamber"—and the pious man adds (we hope with truth) "Yet was +very Comfortable at Meeting." Cotton Mather tells, in his pompous +fashion, of a cold winter's day four years later. "Tis Dreadful cold, my +ink glass in my standish is froze and splitt in my very stove. My ink in +my pen suffers a congelation." If sitting-rooms were such refrigerators, +we cannot wonder that the chilled colonists wished to sleep in beds +close curtained with heavy woollen stuffs, or in slaw-bank beds by the +kitchen fire.</p> + +<p>The settlers builded as well as they knew to keep their houses warm; and +while the vast and virgin forests supplied abundant and accessible wood +for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> fuel, Governor Eaton's nineteen great fireplaces and Parson +Davenport's thirteen, could be well filled; but by 1744 Franklin could +write of these big chimneys as the "fireplace of our fathers;" for the +forests had all disappeared in the vicinity of the towns, and the +chimneys had shrunk in size. Sadly did the early settlers need warmer +houses, for, as all antiquarian students have noted, in olden days the +cold was more piercing, began to nip and pinch earlier in November, and +lingered further into spring; winter rushed upon the settlers with +heavier blasts and fiercer storms than we now have to endure. And, above +all, they felt with sadder force "the dreary monotony of a New England +winter, which leaves so large a blank, so melancholy a death-spot, in +lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." Even John Adams +in his day so dreaded the tedious bitter New England winter that he +longed to hibernate like a dormouse from autumn to spring.</p> + +<p>As the forests disappeared, sea-coal was brought over in small +quantities, and stoves appeared for town use. By 1695 and 1700 we find +Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall speaking of stoves and stove-rooms, and +of chambers warmed by stoves. Ere that one John Clark had patented an +invention for "saving and warming rooms," but we know nothing definite +of its shape.</p> + +<p>Dutch stoves and china stoves were the first to be advertised in New +England papers; then "Philadelphia Fire Stoves"—what we now term +Franklin grates. Wood was burned in these grates. We find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> clergymen, +until after Revolutionary times, having sixty or eighty cords of +hardwood given to them annually by the parish.</p> + +<p>Around the great glowing fireplace in an old New England kitchen centred +all of homeliness and comfort that could be found in a New England home. +The very aspect of the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have +had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as +it was called in England, the back-bar, stretched from ledge to ledge, +or lug to lug, high up the yawning chimney, and held a motley collection +of pot-hooks and trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which in +turn suspended at various heights over the fire, pots, and kettles and +other cooking utensils. In the hearth-corners were displayed skillets +and trivets, peels and slices, and on either side were chimney-seats and +settles. Above—on the clavel-piece—were festooned strings of dried +apples, pumpkins, and peppers.</p> + +<p>The lug-pole, though made of green wood, sometimes became brittle or +charred by too long use over the fire and careless neglect of +replacement, and broke under its weighty burden of food and metal; hence +accidents became so frequent, to the detriment of precious cooking +utensils, and even to the destruction of human safety and life, that a +Yankee invention of an iron crane brought convenience and simplicity, +and added a new grace to the kitchen hearth.</p> + +<p>The andirons added to the fireplace their homely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> charm. Fire-dogs +appear in the earliest inventories under many names of various spelling, +and were of many metals—copper, steel, iron, and brass. Sometimes a +fireplace had three sets of andirons of different sizes, to hold logs at +different heights. Cob irons had hooks to hold a spit and dripping-pan. +Sometimes the "Handirons" also had brackets. Creepers were low irons +placed between the great fire-dogs. They are mentioned in many early +wills and lists of possessions among items of fireplace furnishings, as, +for instance, the list of Captain Tyng's furniture, made in Boston in +1653. The andirons were sometimes very elaborate, with claw feet, or +cast in the figure of a negro, a soldier, or a dog.</p> + +<p>In the Deerfield Memorial Hall there lives in perfection of detail one +of these old fireplaces—a delight to the soul of the antiquary. Every +homely utensil and piece of furniture, every domestic convenience and +inconvenience, every home-made makeshift, every cumbrous and clumsy +contrivance of the old-time kitchen here may be found, and they show to +us, as in a living photograph, the home life of those olden days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + +<h3>TABLE PLENISHINGS</h3> + +<p>In the early days of the colonies doubtless the old Anglo-Saxon board +laid on trestles was used for a dining-table instead of a table with a +stationary top. "Table bords" appear in early New England wills, and +"trestles" also. "Long tables" and "drawing tables" were next named. A +"long table" was used as a dining-table, and, from the frequent +appearance of two forms with it, was evidently used from both sides, and +not in the ancient fashion of the diners sitting at one side only. A +drawing-table was an extension-table; it could by an arrangement of drop +leaves be doubled in length. A fine one can be seen in the rooms of the +Connecticut Historical Society. Chair tables were the earliest example, +in fact the prototype, of some of our modern extraordinary "combination" +furniture. The tops were usually round, and occasionally large enough to +be used as a dining-table, and when turned over by a hinge arrangement +formed the back of the chair. "Hundred legged" tables had flaps at +either end which turned down or were held up in place by a bracket +composed of a number of turned perpendicular supports which gave to it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> +the name of "hundred legs." These tables were frequently very large; a +portion of the top of one in the Connecticut Historical Society is seven +feet four inches wide. Tea-tables came with tea; they were advertised in +the <i>Boston News Letter</i> in 1712. Occasionally we find mention of a +curious and unusual table, such as the one named in the effects of Sir +Francis Bernard, which were sold September 11, 1770: "Three tables +forming a horseshoe for the benefit of the Fire."</p> + +<p>As a table was in early days a board, so a tablecloth was a board-cloth; +and ere it was a tablecloth it was table-clothes. Cristowell Gallup, in +1655, had "1 Holland board-cloth;" and William Metcalf, in 1644, had a +"diaper board-cloth." Another Boston citizen had "broad-clothes." Henry +Webb, of Boston, named in his will, in 1660, his "beste Suite of Damask +Table-cloath, Napkins & cupboard-cloath." Others had holland tablecloths +and holland square cloths with lace on them. Arras tablecloths are also +named in 1654, and cloths enriched with embroidery in colors. The witch +Ann Hibbins had "1 Holland table cloth edged with blewe," worth twelve +shillings; and a Hartford gentleman had, in 1689, a "table Cloth wrought +with red." In 1728 "Hukkbuk Tabling" was advertised in the <i>New England +Weekly Journal</i>, but the older materials—damask, holland, and +diaper—were universally used then, as now.</p> + +<p>The colonists had plenty of napkins, as had all well-to-do and well-bred +Englishmen at that date. Napkins appear in all the early inventories. In +1668<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> the opulent Jane Humphreys, of Dorchester, left "two wrought +Napkins with no lace around it," "half a duzzen of napkins," and +"napkins wrought about and laced." In 1680 Robert Adams had six "diaper +knapkins." Captain Tyng had in 1653 four dozen and a half of napkins, of +which two dozen were of "layd worke." It has been said that these +napkins were handkerchiefs, not table napkins; but I think the way they +are classed in inventories does not so indicate. For instance, in the +estate of Captain Corwin, a wealthy man, who died in Salem in 1685, was +a "suit of Damask 1 Table cloth, 18 napkins, 1 Towel," valued at £8. +Occasionally, however, they are specially designated as "pocket +napkins," as in the estate of Elizabeth Cutter in 1663, where four are +valued at one shilling.</p> + +<p>Early English books on table manners, such as "The Babees Boke" and "The +Boke of Nurture," though minute in detail, yet name no other +table-furniture than cups, chafing-dishes, chargers, trenchers, +salt-cellars, knives, and spoons. The table plenishings of the planters +were somewhat more varied, but still simple; when our Pilgrim fathers +landed at Plymouth, the collection of table-ware owned by the entire +band was very meagre. With the exception of a few plate-silver tankards +and drinking-cups, it was also very inexpensive. The silver was handsome +and heavy, but items of silver in the earliest inventories are rare. By +the beginning of the eighteenth century silver became plentiful, and the +wills even of humble folk contain frequent mentions of it. Min<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>isters, +doctors, and magistrates had many handsome pieces. By the middle of the +century a climax was reached, as in the possessions of Peter Faneuil, +when pieces of furniture were of solid silver.</p> + +<p>The salt-cellar was the focus of the old-time board. In earlier days, in +England, to be seated above or below the salt plainly spoke the social +standing of a guest. The "standing salt" was often the handsomest +furnishing of the table, the richest piece of family plate. Comfort +Starr, of Boston, had, in 1659, a "greate Siluer-gilt double +Saltceller." Isaac Addington bequeathed by will his "Bigges Siluer Sewer +& Salt." A sewer was a salver. As we note by the list of Judith Sewall's +wedding furniture in 1720, standing salts were out of date, and +"trencher salt-cellars" were in fashion. Four dozen was a goodly number, +and evinced an intent of bounteous hospitality. These trencher-salts +were of various shapes and materials: "round and oval pillar-cut Salts, +Bonnet Salts, 3 Leg'd Salts," were all of glass; others were of pewter, +china, hard metal, and silver.</p> + +<p>The greater number of spoons owned by the colonists were of pewter or of +alchymy—or alcamyne, ocamy, ocany, orkanie, alcamy, or occonie—a metal +composed of pan-brass and arsenicum. The reference in inventories, +enrolments, and wills, to spoons of these materials are so frequent, so +ever-present, as to make citation superfluous. An evil reputation of +poisonous unhealthfulness hung around the vari-spelled alchymy (perhaps +it is only a gross libel of succeeding generations); but, harmful or +harmless, alchymy, no matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> how spelt, disappears from use before +Revolutionary times. Wooden spoons also are named. Silver spoons were +not very plentiful. John Oxenbridge bequeathed thirteen spoons in 1673, +and "one sweetmeat spoon," and "1 childs spoon which was mine in my +infancy." Other pap-spoons and caudle-spoons are named in wills; +marrow-spoons also, long and slender of bowl. The value of a dozen +silver spoons was given in 1689 as £5 13<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> In succeeding years +each genteel family owned silver spoons, frequently in large number; +while one Boston physician, Dr. Cutter, had, in 1761, half a dozen gold +teaspoons.</p> + +<p>Forks, or "tines," for cooking purposes, and "prongs" or "grains" or +"evils" for agricultural purposes, were imported at early dates; but I +think Governor Winthrop had the first table-fork ever brought to +America. In 1633, when forks were rare in England, he received a letter +from E. Howes, saying that the latter had sent to him a "case contain +containing an Irish skeayne or knife, a bodekyn & a forke for the useful +applycation of which I leave to your discretion." I am strongly +suspicious that Winthrop's discretion may not have been educated up to +usefully applying the fork for feeding purposes at the table. In the +inventory of the possessions of Antipas Boyes (made in 1669) a silver +spoon, fork, and knife are mentioned. Dr. Lyon gives the names of seven +New Englanders whose inventories date from 1671 to 1693, and who owned +forks. In 1673 Parson Oxenbridge had "one forked spoon," and his widow +had two silver forks. Iron forks were used in the kitchen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> as is shown +in the inventory of Zerubbabel Endicott in 1683. And three-tined iron +forks were stuck into poor witch-ridden souls in Salem by William +Morse—his Dæmon.</p> + +<p>In 1718 Judge Sewall gave Widow Denison two cases with a knife and fork +in each, "one Turtleshell tackling the other long with Ivory handles +squar'd cost 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>" In 1738 Peter Fanueil ordered one dozen silver +forks from England, "with three prongs, with my arms cut upon them, made +very neat and handsome." One Boston citizen had in 1719 six four-pronged +forks, an early example of that fashion. In 1737 shagreen cases with +ivory-handled forks were advertised; bone, japanned metal, wood, and +horn handles also appeared—all, of course, with metal prongs. Sir +Francis Bernard had in 1770 three cases of china-handled knives and +forks, "with spoons to each," which must have formed a pretty table +furnishing.</p> + +<p>In many New England inventories of the seventeenth century, among +personal belongings, appears the word taster. Thus in 1659 Richard Webb, +of Boston, left by will "1 Silver Wine Taster;" and in 1673 John +Oxenbridge had "1 Siluer Taster with a funnel." A taster was apparently +a small cup. Larger drinking-cups of silver were called beakers, or +tankards, beer-bowls, or wine-bowls. These latter vessels were made also +of humbler metal. A sneaker was a small drinking-glass, used by moderate +drinkers—sneak-cups they were called.</p> + +<p>The Pilgrims may have had a few mugs and jugs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> of coarse earthen ware. A +large invoice of Portuguese "road ware" was sent to the Maine settlers +in 1634, and proved thoroughly unsuitable and undurable; but probably no +china—not even Delft ware—came over on the Mayflower. For when the +Pilgrims made their night trip through the Delft-producing cities, no +such wares were seen on the tables of plebeian persons. Early mentions +of china are in the estate of President John Davenport in 1648—"Cheney +£5," and of Martha Coteymore in 1647.</p> + +<p>Earthen ware, Green ware, Lisbon ware, Spanish platters, are mentioned +in early inventories; but I am sure neither china ware nor earthen ware +was plentiful in early days; nor was china much known till Revolutionary +times.</p> + +<p>The table furnishings of the New England planters consisted largely of +wooden trenchers, and these trenchers were employed for many years. +Sometimes they were simply square blocks of wood whittled out by hand. +From a single trencher two persons—two children, or a man and wife—ate +their meals. It was a really elegant household that furnished a trencher +apiece for each diner. Trenchers were of quite enough account to be left +by name in early wills, even in those of wealthy colonists. In 1689 "2 +Spoons and 2 Trenchers" were appraised at six shillings. Miles Standish +left twelve wooden trenchers when he died. Many gross of them were +purchased for use at Harvard College. As late as May, 1775, I find +"Wooden Trenchers" advertised among table furnishings, in the +<i>Connecticut Courant</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was the same in Old England. J. Ward, writing in 1828 of the +"Potter's Art," spoke thus of the humble boards of his youth:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"And there the trencher commonly was seen</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">With its attendant ample platter treen."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Until almost our own time trenchers were made in Vermont of the white, +clean, hard wood of the poplar-tree, and were sold and used in country +homes. Old wooden trenchers may be seen in Deerfield Memorial Hall. +Bottles, noggins, cups, and lossets (flat dishes) of wood were also used +at colonial boards.</p> + +<p>The time when America was settled was the era when pewter ware had begun +to take the place of wooden ware, just as the time of the Revolutionary +War may be assigned to mark the victory of porcelain over pewter.</p> + +<p>A set of pewter platters, or chargers and dishes, made what was called a +"garnish" of pewter, and were a source of great pride to every colonial +housewife, and much time and labor were devoted to polishing them until +they shone like silver. Dingy pewter was fairly accounted a disgrace. +The most accomplished Virginian gentleman of his day gave as a positive +rule, in 1728, that "Pewter Bright" was the sign of a good housekeeper.</p> + +<p>The trade of pewterer was a very influential and respectable one in New +England as well as Old England. One of Boston's richest merchants, Henry +Shrimpton, made large quantities of pewter ware for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> the Massachusetts +colonists. So proud was he of his business that in his later years of +opulence he had a great kettle atop of his house, to indicate his past +trade and means of wealth. Pewter and pewterers abounded until the vast +increase of Oriental commerce brought the influx of Chinese porcelain to +drive out the dull metal. Advertisements of pewter table utensils did +not disappear, however, in New England newspapers until this century.</p> + +<p>A universal table furnishing was—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"The porringers that in a row</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Hung high and made a glittering show."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>When not in use porringers were hung by their pierced handles on hooks +on the edge of the dresser-shelf, and, being usually of polished pewter +or silver, indeed made a glittering show. Pewter porringers were highly +prized. One family, in 1660, had seven, and another housewife boasted of +nine. They were bequeathed in nearly all the early colonial wills. In +1673 John Oxenbridge left three silver porringers and his wife one +silver pottinger; but pewter was the favorite metal. I do not find +porringers ever advertised under that name in New England papers, though +many were made as late as this century by New Haven, Providence, and +Boston pewterers. Many bearing the stamps of these manufacturers have +been preserved until the present day, seeming to have escaped the +sentence of destruction apparently passed on other pewter utensils and +articles of table-ware.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> Perhaps they have been saved because the +little, shallow, graceful dishes, with flat pierced handle on one side, +are really so pretty. The fish-tail handles are found on Dutch pewter. +Silver porringers were made by all the silversmiths. Many still exist +bearing the stamp of one honored maker, Paul Revere. Little earthen +porringers of red pottery and tortoise-shell ware are also found, but +are not plentiful.</p> + +<p>A similar vessel, frequently handleless, was what was spelt, in various +colonial documents, posned, possnet, posnett, porsnet, pocneit, posnert, +possenette, postnett, and parsnett. It is derived from the Welsh +<i>posned</i>, a porringer or little dish. In 1641 Edward Skinner left a +"Postnett" by will; this was apparently of pewter. In 1653 Governor +Haynes, of Hartford, left an "Iron Posnet" by will. In the inventory of +the estate of Robert Daniel, of Cambridge, in 1655, we learn that "a +Little Porsenett" of his was worth five shillings. In 1693 Governor +Caleb Carr, of Providence, bequeathed to his wife a "silver possnet & +the cover belonging to it." By these records we see that posnets were of +various metals, and sometimes had covers. I have found no advertisements +of them in early American newspapers, even with all their varied array +of utensils and vessels. I fancy the name fell quickly into disuse in +this country. In Steele's time, in the <i>Tatler</i>, he speaks of "a silver +Posnet to butter eggs." I have heard the tiny little shallow pewter +porringers, about two or three inches in diameter, with pierced handles, +which are still found in New England, called posnets. They were in +olden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> times used to heat medicine and to serve pap to infants. I have +also been told that these little porringers were not posnets, but simply +the samples of work made by apprentices in the pewterer's trade to show +their skill and proficiency.</p> + +<p>Tin vessels were exceedingly rare in the seventeenth century, either for +table furnishings or for cooking utensils, and far from common in the +succeeding one. John Wynter, of Richmond's Island, Maine, had a +"tinninge basson & a tinninge platter" in 1638. In 1662 Isaac Willey, of +New London, had "Tynen Pans & 1 Tynen Quart Pott;" and Zerubbabel +Endicott, of Salem, had a "great tyn candlestick." By 1729, when +Governor Burnet's effects were sold, we read of kitchen utensils of tin.</p> + +<p>I do not think iron was in high favor among the colonists as a material +for household utensils. It was not an iron age. They had iron pans, +candlesticks, dishes, fire-dogs, and pots: the latter vessels were +traded for vast and valuable tracts of land with the simple red men; but +iron was not vastly in use. At an early date iron-foundries were +established throughout New England, with, however, varying success.</p> + +<p>Latten ware, which was largely composed of brass, appeared in various +useful forms for table and culinary appointments. Hard-metal was a +superior sort of pewter. Prince's metal (so called from Prince Rupert), +a fine brass alloyed with copper and arsenicum, is occasionally named.</p> + +<p>Leather, strangely enough, was also used on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> table in the form of +bottles and drinking cups and jacks, which were pitchers or jugs of +waxed leather, much used in ale-houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth +century, and whose employment gave rise to the belief of the French that +Englishmen drank their ale out of their boots. Endicott received of +Winthrop one leathern jack worth one shilling and sixpence. I find +leathern jacks, bottles, and cups named among the property of +Connecticut colonists.</p> + +<p>Nearly all the glass ware of the eighteenth century was of inferior +quality, full of bubbles and defects. It was frequently fluted. Many +pieces have been preserved that have been painted in vitrifiable colors, +the designs are crude, the colors red, yellow, blue, and occasionally +black or green. The transparent glass thus painted is said to be of +Dutch manufacture. The opalized glass similarly decorated is Spanish. +Drinking-glasses or flip-mugs seem to have been most common, or, at any +rate, most largely preserved. The tradition attached to all the pieces +of Spanish glass which I have found in New England homes is that they +came from the Barbadoes. Bristol glass also was painted in colors, and +came to this country, being advertised in the <i>Boston News-Letter</i>.</p> + +<p>Glass bottles were frequently left by will in early days, being rare and +valuable; but by newspaper days glass was imported in various shapes, +and soon was plentiful enough. In 1773 we find this advertisement:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Very rich Cut Glass Candlesticks, cut Glass sugar Boxes & Cream +Potts, Wine, Wine & Water, and Beer Glasses with cut shanks, Jelly +& Syllabub Glasses, Glass Salvers, also Cyder Glasses, Free Mason +Glasses, Orange & Top Glasses, Glass Cans, Glass Cream Buckets and +Crewits, Royal Arch Mason Glasses, Glass Pyramids with Jelly +Glasses, Globe & Barrel Lamps, Double Flynt Wyn Glasses," &c.</p></div> + +<p>The most curious glass relics that are preserved are the flip-glasses or +bumper-glasses; they are tumbler-shaped, and are frequently engraved or +fluted. Some hold over a gallon.</p> + +<p>The names of table furnishings varied somewhat in the eighteenth +century. There were milk-pots, milk-ewers, milk-jugs, ere there were +milk-pitchers; sugar-boxes, sugar-pots, sugar-basins, ere there were +sugar-bowls; spoon-boats and spoon-basins ere there were spoon-holders. +Terrines were imported about 1750. There were pickle-dishes and +pickle-boats, twifflers, mint-stands and vegetable-basins.</p> + +<p>One other appurtenance of a dining-room is found in all early +inventories—a voider. Pewter voiders abounded and were advertised in +newspapers, as were wicker and china voiders in 1740. The functions of a +voider were somewhat those of a crumb-tray. They are thus given in Hugh +Rhodes's "Boke of Nurture" in 1577:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Wyth bones & voyd morsels fyll not thy trenchour, my friend, full</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Avoyd them into a Voyder, no man will it anull.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> +When meate is taken quyte awaye and Voyders in presence</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Put you your trenchour in the same and all your resydence.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Take you with your napkin & knyfe the croms that are fore thee</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">In the Voyder your Napkin leave for it is curtesye."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2> + +<h3>SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER</h3> + +<p>There is a tradition of short commons, usually extending even to stories +of starvation, in the accounts of all early settlements in new lands, +and the records of the Pilgrims show no exception to the rule. These +early planters went through a fiery furnace of affliction. The beef and +pork brought with them became tainted, "their butter and cheese +corrupted, their fish rotten." A scarcity of food lasted for three +years, and there was little variety of fare, yet they were cheerful. +Brewster, when he had naught to eat but clams, gave thanks that he was +"permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in +the sands." Cotton Mather says that Governor Winthrop, of the Bay +settlement, was giving to a poor neighbor the last meal from his chest, +when it was announced that the food-bearing Lion had arrived. The +General Court thereat changed an appointed Fast Day to a Thanksgiving +Day. By tradition—still commemorated at Forefathers' Dinner—the ration +of Indian corn supplied to each person was at one time but five kernels.</p> + +<p>Still there was always plenty of fish—the favorite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> food of the +English—and Squanto taught the colonists various Indian methods of +catching the "treasures of the sea." With oysters and lobsters they were +far from starvation. Higginson said of the latter shellfish, in 1630, +"the least boy in the Plantation may both catch and eat what he will of +them." He says that lobsters were caught weighing twenty-five pounds +each, and that the abundance of other fish was beyond believing. +Josselyn, in his "New England Rarities," enumerated two hundred and +three varieties of fish; yet Tuckerman calls his list "a poor +makeshift." The planters had plenty of implements with which to catch +fish—"vtensils of the sea"—"quoils of rope and cable, rondes of twine, +herring nets, seans, cod-lines and cod hookes, mackrill-lines, drails, +spiller hooks, mussel-hooks, mackrill hooks, barbels, splitting knives, +sharks hookes, basse-nettes, pues and gaffs, squid lines, yeele pots," +&c. Josselyn also tells some very pretty ways of cooking fish, +especially eels with herbs, showing that, like Poins, the colonists +loved conger and fennel. Eels were roasted, fried, and boiled. Boiled +"eals" were thus prepared:</p> + +<p>"Boil them in half water half wine with the bottom of a manchet, a fagot +of Parsly and a little Winter Savory, when they are boiled they take +them out and break the bread in the broth and put in two or three +spoonfuls of yest and a piece of sweet butter, pour to the eals laid +upon sippets." Another way beloved by him was to stuff the eels with +nutmeg and cloves, stick them with cloves, cook in wine, place on a +chafing-dish, and garnish with lemons. This rich dish is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> somewhat +overclouded by his suggestion that the eels be arranged in a wreath.</p> + +<p>The frequent references to eels in early accounts prove that they were +regarded, as Izaak Walton said, "a very dainty fish, the queen of +palate-pleasure."</p> + +<p>Next to fish, the early colonists found in Indian corn, or "Guinny +wheat"—"Turkie wheat" one traveller called it—their most unfailing +food-supply. Our first native poet wrote, in 1675, of what he called +early days:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"The dainty Indian maize,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Was eat with clamp-shells out of wooden trays."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Its abundance and adaptability did much to change the nature of their +diet as well as to save them from starvation. The colonists learned from +the Indians how to plant, nourish, harvest, grind, and cook it in many +Indian ways, and in each way it formed a palatable food. The Indian +pudding which they ate so constantly was made in Indian fashion and +boiled in a bag. To the mush of Indian meal they gave the English name +of hasty-pudding. Many of the foods made from maize retained the names +given in the aboriginal tongues, such as hominy, suppawn, pone, samp, +succotash; and doubtless the manner of cooking is wholly Indian. +Hoe-cakes and ash-cakes were made by the squaws long before the landing +of the Pilgrims. Roasting ears of green corn were made the foundation of +a solemn Indian feast and also of a planters' frolic. It is curious to +read Winthrop's careful explanation, that when corn is parched it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> turns +entirely inside out, and is "white and floury within;" and to think that +there ever was a time when pop-corn was a novelty to white children in +New England.</p> + +<p>Wood said that <i>sukquttahhash</i> was "seethed like beanes." Roger Williams +said that "<i>nassaump</i>, which the English call Samp, is Indian corne +beaten & boil'd and eaten hot or cold with milke or butter and is a diet +exceeding wholesome for English bodies." <i>Nocake</i>, or <i>nokick</i>, Wood, in +his "New England Prospects," thus defines: "Indian corn parched in the +hot ashes, the ashes being sifted from it, it is afterward beaten to +powder and put into a long leatherne bag trussed at their back like a +knapsacke, out of which they take thrice three spoonsfulls a day." It +was held to be wonderfully sustaining food in most condensed form. It +was carried in a pouch, on long journeys, and mixed before eating with +snow in winter and water in summer. Jonne-cake, or journey-cake, was +also made from maize. For years the colonists pounded the corn in stone +mortars, as did the Indians; then in wooden mortars with pestles. Then +rude hand-mills were made—"quernes"—with upright shafts fixed +immovably at the upper end, and fastened at the lower end near the +outside edge of a flat, circular stone, which was made to revolve in a +mortar. By turning the shaft with one hand, the corn could be supplied +to the grinding-stone with the other. These hand-mills are sometimes +still found in use as "samp-mills." Wind-mills and water-mills followed +naturally in the train of the hand-mills.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> + +<p>Wheat but little availed for food in early days, being frequently +blighted. Oats were raised in considerable quantity, a pill-corn or +peel-corn or sil-pee variety. Josselyn, writing in 1671, gives a New +England dish, which he says is as good as whitpot, made of oatmeal, +sugar, spice, and a "pottle of milk;" a pottle was two quarts. At a +somewhat later date the New Hampshire settlers had a popular oatmeal +porridge, in which the oatmeal was sifted, left in water, and allowed to +sour, then boiled to a jelly, and was called "sowens." It is still eaten +in Northumberland.</p> + +<p>By the strict laws made to govern bakers and the number of bake-shops +that were licensed, and the sharp punishments for baking short weight, +etc., it seems plain that New England housewives did little home baking +in early days. The bread was doubtless of many kinds, as in +England—simnels, cracknels, jannacks, cheat loaves, cocket-bread, +wastel-bread, manchet, and buns. Pure wheaten loaves were not largely +used as food—bread from corn meal dried quickly; hence rye meal was +mixed with the corn, and "rye 'n' Injun" bread was everywhere eaten.</p> + +<p>To the other bountiful companion food of corn, pumpkins, the colonists +never turned very readily. Pompions they called them in "the times +wherein old Pompion was a saint." Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working +Providence," reproved them for making a jest of pumpkins, since they +were so good and unfailing a food—"a fruit which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> Lord fed his +people with till corn and cattle increased."</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Pompions, and what Higginson called squantersquashes, Josselyn +squontersquoshes, Roger Williams askutasquashes, Wood isquoukersquashes, +and we clip to squashes, grew in vast plenty. The Indians dried the +pompions on strings for winter use, as is still done in New England farm +communities. Madam Knight had them frequently offered to her on her +journey—"pumpkin sause" and "pumpkin bred." "We would have eat a morsel +ourselves, but the Pumpkin & Indian-mixt bread had such an Aspect." +Pumpkin bread is made in Connecticut to this day. For pumpkin "sause" we +have a two-centuries-old receipt, which was given by Josselyn, in 1671, +in his "New England Rarities," and called by him even at that day "an +Ancient New England Standing-dish."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Housewives manner is to slice them when ripe and cut them into +Dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or three Gallons and stew +them upon a gentle fire the whole day. And as they sink they fill +again with fresh Pompions not putting any liquor to them and when +it is stir'd enough it will look like bak'd Apples, this Dish +putting Butter to it and a little Vinegar with some Spice as Ginger +which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten +with fish or flesh."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> + +<p>This must be a very good "sause," and a very good receipt when once it +is clear to your mind which of them—the housewives or the +pompions—sink and are to fill and be filled in a pot, and stirred and +stewed and put liquor to.</p> + +<p>In an old book which I own, which was used by many generations of New +England cooks, I find this "singular good" rule to make a "Pumpion Pye:"</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and slice it, a handful of +Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and Sweet Marjoram slipped off the +stalkes, and chop them smal, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and +six Cloves and beat them, take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix +them, and beat them altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you +think fit, then fry them like a froiz, after it is fryed, let it +stand til it be cold, then fill your Pye, take sliced Apples thinne +rounde-wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz and layer of Apples with +Currans betwixt the layer while your Pye is fitted, and put in a +good deal of sweet butter before you close it, when the pye is +baked take six yelks of Eggs, some White-wine or Vergis, and make a +Caudle of this, but not too thicke, cut up the Lid and put it in, +stir them wel together whilst the Eggs and Pompions be not +perceived and so serve it up."</p></div> + +<p>I am sure there would be no trouble about the pompions being perceived, +and I can fancy the modest half-pound of country vegetable blushing a +deeper orange to find its name given to this ambitious and +compound-sentenced concoction which helped to form part of the "simple +diet of the good old times." I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> have found no modern cook bold enough to +"prove" (as the book says) this pumpion pie; but hope, if any one +understands it, she will attempt it.</p> + +<p>Potatoes were on the list of seeds, fruits, and vegetables that were +furnished to the Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1628, and fifteen tons +(which were probably sweet potatoes) were imported from Bermuda in 1636 +and sold in Boston at twopence a pound. Winthrop wrote of "potatose" in +1683. Their cultivation was rare. There is a tradition that the Irish +settlers at Londonderry, N. H., began the first systematic planting of +potatoes. At the Harvard Commencement dinner, in 1708, potatoes were on +the list of supplies. A crop of eight bushels, which one Hadley farmer +had in 1763, was large—too large, since "if a man ate them every day he +could not live beyond seven years." Indeed, the "gallant root of +potatoes" was regarded as a sort of forbidden fruit—a root more than +suspected of being an over-active aphrodisiac, and withal so wholly +abandoned as not to have been mentioned in the Bible; and when Parson +Jonathan Hubbard, of Sheffield, raised twenty bushels in one year, it is +said he came very near being dealt with by his church for his wicked +hardihood. In more than one town the settlers fancied the balls were the +edible portion, and "did not much desire them." Nor were fashionable +methods of cooking them much more to be desired. In "The Accomplisht +Cook," used about the year 1700, potatoes were ordered to be boiled and +blanched; seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> pepper; mixed with eringo +roots, dates, lemon, and whole mace; covered with butter, sugar, and +grape verjuice, made with pastry; then iced with rose-water and sugar, +and yclept a "Secret Pye." Alas, poor, ill-used, be-sugared, secreted +potato, fit but for kissing-comfits! we can well understand your +unpopularity.</p> + +<p>Other vegetables were produced in New England in abundance. Higginson +speaks of green peas, turnips, parsnips, carrots, and cucumbers, and a +dozen fruits and berries. Cranberries were plentiful and soon were +exported to England. Josselyn gives a very full list of fruits and +vegetables and pot-herbs, including beans, which were baked by the +Indians in earthen pots as they are now in Boston bake-shops.</p> + +<p>There was a goodly supply of game. Bradford wrote of the year 1621, +"beside waterfoule ther was great store of wild Turkies." Wood said +these turkeys sometimes weighed forty pounds apiece, and sold for four +shillings each. Josselyn assigned to them the enormous weight of sixty +pounds. All agreed that they were far superior to the English domestic +turkeys. Morton said they came in flocks of a hundred; yet the Winthrops +had great difficulty in getting two to breed from in 1683, and by 1690 +it was rare to see a wild turkey in New England. The beautiful great +bronze birds had flown away from the white man's civilization and guns.</p> + +<p>Flocks of thousands of geese took their noisy, graceful V-shaped flight +over New England, and were shot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> in large numbers. Dudley wrote home +that doves were so plentiful that they obscured the light. Josselyn said +he had bought in Boston a dozen pigeons all dressed for threepence. It +is said they were sometimes sold as low as a penny a dozen. Roger Clap +said it would have been counted a strange thing in early days to see a +piece of roast veal, beef, or mutton, though it was not long ere there +was roast goat. By 1684 a French refugee said beef, mutton, and pork +were but twopence a pound in Boston. Clap says he ate his samp, or +hominy, without butter or milk, but Higginson wrote in 1630, and Morton +in 1624, that they had a quart of milk for a penny. John Cotton said +ministers and milk were the only things cheap in New England.</p> + +<p>By Johnson's time New Englanders had "Apple, Pear and Quince Tarts +instead of their former Pumpkin Pies." They had besides apple-tarts, +apple mose, apple slump, mess apple-pies, buttered apple-pies, apple +crowdy and puff apple-pies—all differing.</p> + +<p>Josselyn said the "Quinces, Cherries, & Damsins set the Dames a-work. +Marmalet & Preserved Damsins is to be met with in every house." Skill in +preserving was ever an English-woman's pride, and New-English women did +not forget the lessons learned in their "faire English homes." They made +preserves and conserves, marmalets and quiddonies, hypocras and +household wines, usquebarbs and cordials. They candied fruits and made +syrups. They preserved everything that would bear preserving. I have +seen old-time receipts for preserving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> quinces, "respasse," pippins, +"apricocks," plums, "damsins," peaches, oranges, lemons, artichokes, +green walnuts, elecampane roots, eringo roots, grapes, barberries, +cherries; receipts for syrup of clove gillyflower, wormwood, mint, +aniseed, clove, elder, lemons, marigolds, citron, hyssop, liquorice; +receipts for conserves of roses, violets, borage flowers, rosemary, +betony, sage, mint, lavender, marjoram, and "piony;" rules for candying +fruit, berries, and flowers, for poppy water, cordial, cherry water, +lemon water, thyme water, Angelica water, Aqua Mirabilis, Aqua +Cœlestis, clary water, mint water.</p> + +<p>No wonder a profession of preserving sprung up. By 1731 we find +advertised in June in the <i>Boston News Letter</i>, "At Widow Bonyots All +Sorts of Fruits in Preserves Jellys and Surrups. Egg Cakes, All sorts of +Macaroons, Marchepane Crisp Almonds. All sorts Conserves, Also Meat +Jellys for the sick."</p> + +<p>We can see plainly by these statements that New England was no +Nidderland. Even in Josselyn's day he wrote, "they have not forgotten +the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with variety of +cooking their food." The pages of Judge Sewall's diary give many hints +of his daily fare. He speaks of "boil'd Pork, boil'd Pigeons, boil'd +Bacon and boil'd Venison; rost Beef, rost Lamb, rost Fowls, rost Turkey, +pork and beans;" "Frigusee of Fowls," "Joll of Salmon," "Oysters, Fish +and Oyl, conners, Legg of Pork, hogs Cheek and souett; pasty, bread and +butter; Minc'd Pye, Aplepy, tarts, gingerbread, sugar'd almonds, glaz'd +almonds;" honey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> curds and cream, sage cheese, green pease, barley, +"Yokhegg in milk, chockolett, figgs," oranges, shattucks, apples, +quinces, strawberries, cherries, and raspberries; a very fair list of +viands.</p> + +<p>"Yokhegg" is probably "yeokheag," a name for Indian corn, parched and +pounded into meal, a name by which it was known for many years in +Eastern Connecticut.</p> + +<p>Sewall was a very valiant trencher-man. He records with much zest going +down the Bay to an island, or riding to Roxbury for an outing and +dinner, and coming home in "brave moonshine." And, like his neighbor, +Cotton Mather, he drew many a spiritual lesson from the food set before +him; especially, however, at a scambling meal, or at any repast which he +ate alone, and hence had naught and no one to divert therefrom his +ever-religious thoughts.</p> + +<p>From a curious account of Boston, written by a traveller named Bennet, +in the year 1740, we take the following statements of the cost of food +there:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Their poultry of all sorts are as fine as can be desired, and they +have plenty of fine fish of various kinds, all of which are very +cheap. Take the butchers' meat all together, in every season of the +year, I believe it is about twopence per pound sterling; the best +beef and mutton, lamb and veal are often sold for sixpence per +pound of New England money, which is some small matter more than +one penny sterling.</p> + +<p>"Poultry in their season are exceeding cheap. As good a turkey may +be bought for about two shillings sterling as we can buy in London +for six or seven, and as fine a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> goose for tenpence as would cost +three shillings and sixpence or four shillings in London. The +cheapest of all the several kinds of poultry are a sort of wild +pigeon, which are in season the latter end of June, and so continue +until September. They are large, and finer than those we have in +London, and are sold here for eighteenpence a dozen, and sometimes +for half of that.</p> + +<p>"Fish, too, is exceeding cheap. They sell a fine fresh cod that +will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea, for +about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as +cheap as sprats are in London. Salmon, too, they have in great +plenty, and those they sell for about a shilling apiece, which will +weigh fourteen or fifteen pounds.</p> + +<p>"They have venison very plenty. They will sell as fine a haunch for +half a crown as would cost full thirty shillings in England. Bread +is much cheaper than we have in England, but is not near so good. +Butter is very fine and cheaper than ever I bought any in London; +the best is sold all summer for threepence a pound. But as for +cheese, it is neither cheap nor good."</p></div> + +<p>I am somewhat surprised at Bennet's dictum with regard to cheese, and +can only feel that he had special ill fortune in choosing his +cheesemonger. For certainly the Rhode Island cheese, made from the rich +milk of the great herds of choice cows that dotted the fertile and sunny +fields of old Narragansett, was sent to England and the Barbadoes in +great quantity, and commanded special prices there. Brissot said it was +equal to the "best Cheshire of England or Rocfort of France." This +cheese was made from a receipt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> for Cheshire cheese which was brought to +Narragansett by Richard Smith's wife in the seventeenth century: and her +home is still standing, though built around, at Cocumcussett, where her +husband and Roger Williams founded a colony.</p> + +<p>We have a very distinct rendering of the items of family expense, +chiefly of food, at about that time, given us by a contemporary +authority, and bequeathed to us in a letter to the <i>Boston News Letter</i> +of November 28, 1728. The writer refers to other "scheams of expence" +for a household which have been made public, one apparently being at the +rate of £250 a year for the entire outlay. This sum he thinks inadequate +and "disproves in a moment." He gives his own careful estimate of the +cost of keeping a family of eight persons. It is computed for "Families +of Midling Figure who bear the Character of being Genteel," and reads +thus:</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>"For Diet. For one Person a Day.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> 1 Breakfast 1<i>d.</i> a Pint of Milk 2d</td><td align='right'>.03</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> 2 Dinner. Pudding Bread Meat Roots Pickles Vinegar</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Salt & Cheese</td><td align='right'>.09</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>N.B. In this article of the Dinner I would include all</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> the Raisins Currants Suet Flour Eggs Cranberries</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Apples & where there are children all their Intermeal</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Eatings throughout the whole Year. And I think a</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Gentleman cannot well Dine his family at a lower Rate</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> than this.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> 3 Supper As the Breakfast</td><td align='right'>.03</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> 4 Small Beer for the Whole Day Winter & Summer.</td><td align='right'>1½</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>N.B. In this article of the Beer I would likewise</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> include all the Molasses used in the Family not</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> only in Brewing but on other Occasions.</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p><br /></p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For one Person a Day in all</span></td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1<i>s.</i></td><td align='right'>4½<i>d.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Whole Family</span></td><td align='right'></td><td align='left'>11<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the Whole Family 365 days</span></td><td align='left'>£200</td><td align='right'>15<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Butter, 2 Firkins at 68 lb. apiece, 16<i>d.</i> a lb.</span></td><td align='left'>£ 9</td><td align='right'>1<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Sugar. Cannot be less than 10<i>s.</i> a Month or</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">4 weeks especially when there are children.</span></td><td align='left'>£ 6</td><td align='left'>10<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Candles but 3 a Night Summer & Winter</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">for Ordinary & Extraordinary occasions at</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">15<i>d.</i> for 9 in the lb.</span></td><td align='left'>£ 7</td><td align='left'>12<i>s.</i></td><td align='left'>.01</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Sand 20<i>s.</i> Soap 40<i>s.</i> Washing Once in 4</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">weeks at 3<i>s.</i> a time with 3 Meals a Day at 2<i>s.</i></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">more</span></td><td align='left'>£ 6</td><td align='left'>5<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For One Maids Wages</span></td><td align='left'>£ 10</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">For Shoes after the Rate of each 3 Pair in a year</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">at 9<i>s.</i> a Pair for 7 Persons, the Maid finding</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">her own</span></td><td align='left'>£ 9</td><td align='left'>09<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 29.5em;"> </span></td><td align='left'>——</td><td align='left'>——</td><td align='left'>——</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">In all</span></td><td align='left'>£249</td><td align='left'>12<i>s.</i></td><td align='left'>5<i>d.</i></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No House Rents Mentioned Nor Buying Carting Pyling or Sawing Firewood</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Coffee Tea nor Chocolate</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Wine nor Cyder nor any other Spirituous Liquor</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Pipes Tobacco Spice nor Sweetmeats</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Hospitality or Occasional Entertaining either Gentlemen Strangers</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Relatives or Friends</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Acts of Charity nor Contributions for Pious Uses</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Pocket Expenses either for Horse Hire Travelling or Convenient</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Recreations</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Postage for Letters or Numberless other Occasions</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Charges of Nursing</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Schooling for Children</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Buying of Books of any Sort or Pens Ink & Paper</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Lyings In</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Sickness, Nothing to Apothecary or Doctor</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No Buying Mending or Repairing Household Stuff or Utensils</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nothing to the Simstress nor to the Taylor nor to the Barber,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">nor to the Hatter nor to the Shopkeeper & Therefore no Cloaths."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> + +<p>Certainly we gain from this "scheam" a very clear notion of the style of +living of this genteel Boston family.</p> + +<p>There is, of course, no possibility of exactly picturing the serving of +a meal in early days; but one peculiarity is known of the dinner—the +pudding came first. Hence the old saying, "I came in season—in +pudding-time." In an account of a Sunday dinner given at the house of +John Adams, as late as 1817, the first course was a pudding of Indian +corn, molasses, and butter; the second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, and +vegetables.</p> + +<p>For many years the colonists "dined exact at noon," and on farms even +half an hour earlier. On Saturday all ate fish for dinner. Judge Sewall +frequently speaks of his Saturday dinner of fish. Fish days had been +prescribed by the King in England, in order that the fisheries might not +fail of support, as was feared on account of the increased consumption +of meat induced by the reformation in religion. New Englanders loyally +followed the mandate, but ate cod-fish on Saturdays, since the Papists +ate fish on Fridays.</p> + +<p>One very pleasant and friendly custom that existed among these kindly +New England neighbors must be spoken of in passing. It is thus indicated +by Judge Sewall when he writes, in 1723, of Mr. and Mrs. Belcher, "my +wife sent them a taste of her Diner." It appeared to be a recompensing +fashion, if invited guests were unable to partake of the dinner +festivities, or if neighbors were ill, for the hostess to send<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> a +"taste" of all her viands to console them for their deprivation. This +truly homely and neighborly custom lingered long in old New England +families under the very descriptive title of "cold party;" indeed it +lingers still in old-fashioned towns and in old-fashioned families.</p> + +<p>In earlier days when a noble dinner seemed to be the form of domestic +pleasure next in enjoyment to a funeral, a "taste of the dinner" was +truly a most honorable attention, and a most pleasing one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2> + +<h3>OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS</h3> + +<p>The English settlers who peopled our colonies were a beer-drinking and +ale-drinking race—as Shakespeare said, they were "potent in potting." +None of the hardships they had to endure in the first bitter years of +their new life caused them more annoyance than their deprivation of +their beloved malt liquors. This deprivation began even at the very +landing. They were forced to depend on the charity of the ship-masters +for a draught of beer on board ship, drinking nothing but water ashore. +Bradford, the Pilgrim Governor, complained loudly and frequently of his +distress, while Higginson, the Salem minister, accommodated himself more +readily and cheerfully to his changed circumstances, and boasted +quaintly in 1629, "Whereas my stomach could only digest and did require +such drink as was both strong and stale, I can and ofttimes do drink New +England water very well." As Higginson died in a short time, his boast +of his improved health and praise of the unwonted beverage does not +carry the force intended. Another early chronicler, Roger Clap, writes +that it was "not accounted a strange thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> in those days to drink +water," and it was stated that Winthrop drank it ordinarily. Wood, in +his "New England Prospects," says of New England water, "I dare not +preferre it before good Beere as some have done, but any man would +choose it before Bad Beere, Wheay or Buttermilk." It was also praised as +being "farr different from the water of England, being not so sharp, but +of a fatter substance, and of a more jettie colour; it is thought there +can be no better water in the world."</p> + +<p>But their beerless state did not long continue, for the first luxury to +be brought to the new country was beer, and the colonists soon imported +malt and learned to make beer from the despised Indian corn, and +established breweries and made laws governing and controlling the +manufacture of ale and beer; for the pious Puritans quickly learned to +cheat in their brewing, using molasses and coarse sugar. Molasses beer +is frequently mentioned by Josselyn.</p> + +<p>By 1634, when sixpence was the legal charge for a meal, an ale-quart of +beer could be bought for a penny, and a landlord was liable to ten +shillings fine if he made a greater charge, or his liquor fell below a +certain standard of quality. Perhaps this low price was established by +the crafty Puritan magistrates in order to prevent the possibility of +profit by beer-selling, and thereby reduce the number of sellers. It was +also ordered that not more than an ale-quart of beer should be drunk out +of meal-times. This was to prevent "bye-drinking." Josselyn complained +of the petty interference of the law in drinking, saying:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"At the houses of entertainment called ordinaries into which a +stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that +office who would thrust himself into his company uninvited, and if +he called for more drink than the officer thought, in his judgment, +he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and +appoint the proportion beyond which he could not get one drop."</p></div> + +<p>The ministers, also, who chanced to live within sight of the tavern, had +a very virtuous custom of watching the tavern door and all who entered +therein, and going over and "chiding them" if they remained too long +within the cheerful portals. With constables, deacons, the parson, and +that lab-o'-the-tongue—the tithing-man—each on the alert to keep every +one from drinking but himself, the Puritan had little chance to be a +toper an he would.</p> + +<p>The colonists were fiercely intolerant of intemperance among the +Indians. Laws were made as early as 1633 prohibiting the sale of strong +waters to the "inflamed devilish bloudy salvages," and persons selling +liquor to them were sharply prosecuted and punished. New Yorkers thought +these laws over-severe, saying, deprecatingly, "to prohibit all strong +liquor to them seems very hard and very turkish, rumm doth as little +hurt as the ffrenchmans Brandie, and in the whole is much more +wholesome." But the Puritans knew of the horrors to be dreaded from +drunken Indians.</p> + +<p>So plentiful had the sale of ale and beer become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> in 1675 that Cotton +Mather said every other house in Boston was an ale-house, and a century +later Governor Pownall made the same assertion. The Puritan magistrates +in New England made at a very early date a decided stand not only +against excessive drinking by strangers, but against the habit of +drunkenness in their citizens. Drunkards were in 1636, in Massachusetts, +subject to fine and imprisonment in the stocks, and sellers were +forbidden to furnish the tippler with any liquor thereafter. An habitual +drunkard was punished by having a great D made of "Redd Cloth" hung +around his neck, or sewed on his clothing, and he was disfranchised. In +1630 Governor Winthrop abolished the "Vain Custom" of drinking healths +at his table, and in 1639 the Court publicly ordered the cessation of +the practice because "it was a thing of no use, it induced drunkenness +and quarrelling, it wasted wine and beer and it was troublesome to many, +forcing them to drink more than they wished." A fine of twelve shillings +was imposed on each health-drinker. Cotton Mather, however, thought +health-drinking a usage of common politeness. In Connecticut no man +could drink over half a pint of wine at a time, or tipple over half an +hour, or drink at all at an ordinary after nine o'clock at night.</p> + +<p>All these rigid laws had their effect, and New Englanders throughout the +seventeenth century were sober and law-abiding save in a few +communities, such as that at Merrymount, where "good chear went forward +and strong liquors walked." Boston was an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> especially orderly town. +Several visiting and resident clergymen testified that they had not seen +a drunken man in the Massachusetts Colony in many years. The following +quotation will show how rare was drunkenness and how abhorred. Judge +Sewall wrote in 1686:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Shrimpton and others came in a coach from Roxbury about nine +o'clock or past, singing as they came, being inflamed with drink. +At Justice Morgans they stop and drink healths and curse and swear +to the great disturbance of the town and grief of good people. Such +high handed wickedness has hardly before been heard of in Boston."</p></div> + +<p>It is well to compare the orderly, decorous, well-protected existence in +Boston, with the conditions of town life in Old England at that same +date, where drunken young men of fashion under the name of Mohocks, +Scourers, Hectors, Muns, or Tityriti, prowled the streets abusing and +beating every man and woman they met—"sons of Belial flown with +insolence and wine;" where turbulent apprentices set upon those the +Mohocks chanced to spare; where duels and intrigues and gaming were the +order of the day; where foot-pads, highwaymen, and street ruffians +robbed unceasingly and with impunity. Life in New England may have been +dull and monotonous, but women could go through the streets in safety, +and Judge Sewall could stumble home alone in the dark from his +love-making without fear of molestation; and when he found a party of +young men singing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> making too much noise in a tavern, he could go +among them uninsulted, and could get them to meekly write down their own +names with his "Pensil" for him to bring them up and fine them the next +day.</p> + +<p>Still, the Judge, though he hated noisy revellers, was no total +abstainer. He speaks of "grace cups" and "treating the Deputies," and +sent gifts of wine to his friends. I find in his diary references to +these drinks: Ale, beer, mead, metheglin, tea, chocolate, sage tea, +cider, wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack-posset, and +black cherry brandy.</p> + +<p>Sack, the drink of Shakespeare's day, beloved and praised of Falstaff, +was passing out of date in Sewall's time. Winthrop tells of four ships +coming into port in 1646 with eight hundred butts of sack on board. In +1634 ordinaries were forbidden to sell it, hence the sack found but a +poor market. Sack-posset was made of ale and sack, thickened with eggs +and cream, seasoned with nutmeg, mace, and sugar, then boiled on the +fire for hours, and made a "very pretty drink" for weddings and feasts.</p> + +<p>Canary wine was imported at that time in large quantities. In the first +year's issue of the <i>News Letter</i> were advertised "Fyall wine sold by +the Pipe; Passados & Right Canary." The Winthrops in their letters make +frequent mention of Canary, as also of "Vendredi" and "Palme Wine." Wait +Winthrop said the latter was better than Canary. Tent wine also was sent +to the colonists.</p> + +<p>It is interesting to find that the sanguine settlers aspired, even in +bleak New England, to the home pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>duction of wine. "Vine planters" were +asked for the colony in 1629. The use of Governor's Island in +Massachusetts Bay was granted to Governor Winthrop in 1634 for a +vineyard, for an annual rental of a hogshead of wine, which at a later +date was changed to a yearly payment of two barrels of apples. The +French settlers also planted vineyards in Rhode Island.</p> + +<p>Claret was not much loved by the planters, who had a taste for the sweet +sack. Morton tells that for his revellers he "broched a hogshead, caused +them to fill the Can with Lusty liquor—Claret sparklinge neat—which +was not suffered to grow pale & flat but tipled off with quick +dexterity." Mumm, a fat ale made of oat-malt and wheat-malt, appears +frequently in early importations and accounts. The sillabub of which +Sewall speaks was made with cider and was not boiled:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Fill your Sillabub Pot with Syder (for that is best for a +Sillabub) and good store of Sugar and a little Nutmeg, stir it wel +together, put in as much thick Cream by two or three spoonfuls at a +time, as hard as you can as though you milke it in, then stir it +together exceeding softly once about and let it stand two hours at +least."</p></div> + +<p>Other mild fermented drinks than beer were made and drunk in colonial +days in large quantities. Mead and metheglin, wherewith the Druids and +old English bards were wont to carouse, were made from water, honey, and +yeast. Here is an old receipt for the latter drink, which some colonists +pronounced as good as Malaga sack.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take all sorts of Hearbs that are good and wholesome as Balme, +Mint, Fennel, Rosemary, Angelica, wilde Tyme, Isop, Burnet, +Egrimony, and such other as you think fit; some Field Hearbs, but +you must not put in too many, but especially Rosemary or any Strong +Hearb, lesse than halfe a handfull will serve of every sorte, you +must boyl your Hearbs & strain them, and let the liquor stand till +to Morrow and settle them, take off the clearest Liquor, two +Gallons & a halfe to one Gallon of Honey, and that proportion as +much as you will make, and let it boyle an houre, and in the +boyling skim it very clear, then set it a cooling as you doe Beere, +when it is cold take some very good Ale Barme and put into the +bottome of the Tubb a little and a little as they do Beere, keeping +back the thicke Setling that lyeth in the bottome of the Vessel +that it is cooled in, and when it is all put together cover it with +a Cloth and let it worke very neere three dayes, and when you mean +to put it up, skim off all the Barme clean, put it up into the +Vessel, but you must not stop your Vessel very close in three or +four dayes but let it have all the vent, for it will worke and when +it is close stopped you must looke very often to it and have a peg +in the top to give it vent, when you heare it make a noise as it +will do, or else it will breake the Vessell; sometime I make a bag +and put in good store of Ginger sliced, some Cloves and Cinnamon +and boyl it in, and other time I put it into the Barrel and never +boyl it, it is both good, but Nutmeg & Mace do not well to my +Tast."</p></div> + +<p>In the list of values fixed by the Piscataqua planters in 1633, "6 +Gallons Mathaglin were equal to 2 lb. Beauer." In the middle of the +century metheglin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> was worth ten shillings a barrel in the Connecticut +Valley.</p> + +<p>Though mild, these drinks were intoxicating. One could "get fox'd e'en +with foolish matheglin." Old James Howel says, "metheglin does stupefy +more than any other liquor if taken immoderately and keeps a humming in +the brain which made one say he loved not metheglin because he was wont +to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive."</p> + +<p>Bradford tells of backsliders from Merrymount who "abased themselves +disorderly with drinking too much stronge drinke aboard the +Freindshipp." This strong drink was metheglin, of which two hogsheads +were to be delivered at Plymouth. But after it was transferred to wooden +"flackets" in Boston, these Friendship merrymakers contrived to "drinke +it up under the name leackage" till but six gallons of the metheglin +arrived at Plymouth.</p> + +<p>"Cyder famed" was made at an early date from the fruitful apple-trees so +faithfully planted by Endicott, Blackstone, and other settlers. Cider +was cheap enough; Josselyn wrote, "I have had at the tap houses of +Boston an ale-quart of cyder spiced and sweetened with sugar, for a +groat."</p> + +<p>This was not the New England nectar or Passada which he praised so +highly and which was thus made—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take of Malligo Raisins, stamp them and put milk to them and put +them to a Hippocras Bag and let it drain out of itself and put a +quantity of this with a spoonful or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> two of Syrup of Clove +Gilly-flowers into every bottle when you bottle your Syder, and +your Planter will have a liquor that exceeds Passada, the Nectar of +the Country."</p></div> + +<p>Cider was made at first by pounding the apples by hand in wooden +mortars; sometimes the pomace was pressed in baskets. Rude mills were +then formed with a hollowed log, and a heavy weight or maul on a +spring-board. Cider soon became the common drink of the people, and it +was made in vast quantities. In 1671 five hundred hogsheads were made of +one orchard's produce. One village of forty families made three thousand +barrels in 1721. Bennet wrote in 1740, "Cider being cheap and the people +used to it they do not encourage malt liquors. They pay about three +shillings a barrel for cider." It was freely used even by the children +at breakfast, as well as at dinner, up to the end of the first quarter +of the present century, when many zealous followers so eagerly embraced +the new temperance reform that they cut down whole orchards of thriving +apple-trees, conceiving no possibility of the general use of the fruit +for food instead of drink.</p> + +<p>Charles Francis Adams says that "to the end of John Adams's life a large +tankard of hard cider was his morning draught before breakfast."</p> + +<p>Cider was supplied in large amounts to students at college at dinner and +"bever," being passed in two two-quart tankards from hand to hand down +the commons table. It was given liberally to all travellers and +wanderers who chanced to stop at the farmer's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> door; to all workmen and +farm laborers; and an "Indian barrel," whose contents were for free gift +to every tramp Indian or squaw, was found in many a farmer's cellar.</p> + +<p>A traveller in Maine just after the Revolution said that their cider was +purified by the frost, colored with corn, and looked and tasted like +Madeira.</p> + +<p>Beverige also was drunk by the colonists. This name was applied to +various mild and watery drinks. In the West Indies the juice of the +sugar-cane mixed with water was so called. In Devonshire, water which +had been pressed through the lees of a cider-mill was called beverige. +In other parts of England water, cider, and spices formed beverige. In +New England the concoction varied, but was uniformly innocuous and +weak—the colonial prototype of our modern "temperance drinks." In many +country houses a summer drink of water flavored with molasses and ginger +was called beverige. The advertisement in the <i>Boston News Letter</i>, +August 16th, 1711, of the sale of the captured Neptune with her lading, +at the warehouse of Andrew Fanueil, had "Wine, Vinegar and Beveridge" on +the list. This must have been stronger stuff than molasses and water, to +have been worth barrelling and sending across the water.</p> + +<p>Switchel was a drink similar to beverige, but when served out to sailors +was strengthened by a little vinegar and rum. The name was commonly used +in New Hampshire and central Massachusetts. Ebulum was made of the +juices of the elder and juniper berries mixed with ale and spices.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> + +<p>Perry was made to some extent from pears, and was advertised for sale in +the <i>Boston News Letter</i>, and one traveller told of "peachy" made from +peaches. Spruce and birch beer were brewed by mixing a decoction of +sassafras, birch, or spruce bark with molasses and water, or by boiling +the twigs in maple sap, or by boiling together pumpkin and +apple-parings, water, malt, and roots. Many curious makeshifts were +resorted to in the early days. One old song boasted</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Fiercer liquors were not lacking. Aqua-vitæ, a general name for strong +waters, was brought over in large quantities during the seventeenth +century, and sold for about three shillings a gallon. Cider was +distilled into cider brandy, or apple-jack; and when, by 1670, molasses +had come into port in considerable quantity through the West India +trade, the forests of New England supplied plentiful and cheap fuel to +convert it into "rhum, a strong water drawn from the sugar cane." In a +manuscript description of Barbadoes, written in 1651, we read: "The +chief fudling they make in this island is Rumbullion alias Kill Divil—a +hot hellish and terrible liquor." It was called in some localities +Barbadoes liquor, and by the Indians "ahcoobee" or "ockuby," a word of +the Norridgewock tongue. John Eliot spelled it "rumb," and Josselyn +called it plainly "that cussed liquor, Rhum, rumbullion, or kill-devil." +It went by the latter name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> and rumbooze everywhere, and was soon cheap +enough. Increase Mather said, in 1686, "It is an unhappy thing that in +later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They +that are poor, and wicked too, can for a penny or twopence make +themselves drunk." Burke said, at a later date, "The quantity of spirits +which they distil in Boston from the molasses they import is as +surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two +shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quantity and +cheapness than for the excellency of their rum." In 1719, and fifty +years later, New England rum was worth but three shillings a gallon, +while West India rum was worth but twopence more. New England +distilleries quickly found a more lucrative way of disposing of their +"kill-devil" than by selling it at such cheap rates. Ships laden with +barrels of rum were sent to the African coast, and from thence they +returned with a most valuable lading—negro slaves. Along the coast of +Africa New England rum quite drove out French brandy.</p> + +<p>The Irish and Scotch settlers knew how to make whiskey from rye and +wheat, and they soon learned to manufacture it from barley and potatoes, +and even from the despised Indian corn.</p> + +<p>Not content with their own manufactured liquors, the thirsty colonists +imported strong waters, gin and aniseseed cordial from Holland, and wine +from Spain, Portugal, and the Canaries. Of these, fiery Madeiras were +the favorite of all fashionable folk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> and often each glass of wine was +strengthened by a liberal dash of brandy. Bennet wrote, in 1740, of +Boston society, "Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink +in common." Though "spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaffed" in 1665, +I do not know of the Oriental mixed drink in New England till 1682, when +John Winthrop writes of the sale of a punch-bowl. In 1686 John Dunton +had more than one "noble bowl of punch," during his visit to New +England. The word punch was from the East Indian word <i>pauch</i>, meaning +five. S. M. (who was probably Samuel Mather) sent these lines to Sir +Harry Frankland in 1757, with the gift of a box of lemons:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">"You know from Eastern India came</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">The skill of making punch as did the name.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And as the name consists of letters five,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">By five ingredients is it kept alive.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">To purest water sugar must be joined,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">With these the grateful acid is combined.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Some any sours they get contented use,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">But men of taste do that from Tagus choose.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">When now these three are mixed with care</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Then added be of spirit a small share.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And that you may the drink quite perfect see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Atop the musky nut must grated be."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Every buffet of people of fashion contained a punch-bowl, every dinner +was prefaced by a bowl of punch, which was passed from hand to hand and +drunk from without intervening glasses. J. Crosby, at the Box of Lemons, +in Boston, sold for thirty years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> lime juice and shrub and lemons, and +sour oranges and orange juice (which some punch tasters preferred to +lemon juice), to flavor Boston punches.</p> + +<p>Double and "thribble" bowls of punch were commonly served, holding +respectively two and three quarts each, and many existing bills show +what large amounts were drunk. Governor Hancock gave a dinner to the +Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners +were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred +and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and +a large quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner +to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred +diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of +Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter, +fifteen double bowls of punch and a quantity of cider. The clergy were +not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the +ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Mass., in 1785, these +items are found in the tavern-keeper's bill:</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='right'>30</td><td align='left'>Bowles of Punch before the People went to meeting</td><td align='right'>3</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>80</td><td align='left'>people eating in the morning at 16d</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>10</td><td align='left'>bottles of wine before they went to meeting</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='left'>10</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>68</td><td align='left'>dinners at 3s</td><td align='right'>10</td><td align='right'>4</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>44</td><td align='left'>bowles of punch while at dinner</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='right'>8</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>18</td><td align='left'>bottles of wine</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='right'>14</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>8</td><td align='left'>bowles of Brandy</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='right'>2</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'>Cherry Rum</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='right'>10</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>6</td><td align='left'>people drank tea</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>9<i>d</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p>The six mild tea-drinkers and their economical beverage seem to put a +finishing and fairly comic touch to this ordination bill. When we read +such renderings of accounts we think it natural that Baron Reidesel +wrote of New England inhabitants, "most of the males have a strong +passion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages." +John Adams said, "if the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and +cider it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils."</p> + +<p>The cost of these various drinks was thus given about Revolutionary +times in Bristol, R.I.:</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>"Nip of Grog</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>6<i>d</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Dubel bole of Tod</td><td align='right'>2<i>s</i></td><td align='right'>9<i>d</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Dubel bole of punch </td><td align='right'>8<i>s</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Nip of punch</td><td align='right'>1<i>s</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Brandi Sling</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>8<i>d</i>"</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p>Flip was a vastly popular drink, and continued to be so for a century +and a half. I find it spoken of as early as 1690. It was made of +home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, and +flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or +pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the +liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor.</p> + +<p>Landlord May, of Canton, Mass., made a famous brew thus: he mixed four +pounds of sugar, four eggs, and one pint of cream and let it stand for +two days. When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug +two-thirds full of beer, placed in it four great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> spoonfuls of the +compound, then thrust in the seething loggerhead, and added a gill of +rum to the creamy mixture. If a fresh egg were beaten into the flip the +drink was called "bellows-top," and the froth rose over the top of the +mug. "Stone-wall" was a most intoxicating mixture of cider and rum. +"Calibogus," or "bogus," was cold rum and beer unsweetened. +"Black-strap" was a mixture of rum and molasses. Casks of it stood in +every country store, a salted and dried codfish slyly hung alongside—a +free lunch to be stripped off and eaten, and thus tempt, through thirst, +the purchase of another draught of black-strap.</p> + +<p>A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem—a drink with a +terrible name—whistle-belly-vengeance. It consisted of sour household +beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with +brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot.</p> + +<p>Of course many protests, though chiefly on the ground of wasteful +expense, were made, even in ante-temperance days, against the drinking +which grew so prevalent with the opening of the eighteenth century. Rev. +Andrew Eliot wrote in 1735, "'Tis surprising what prodigious sums are +expended for spirituous liquors in this one poor Province—more than a +million of our old currency in a year." Dr. Tenney lamented that the +taverns of Exeter, N. H., were thronged with people who seldom retired +sober. Strenuous but ineffectual efforts were made to "prevent tippling +in the forenoon," and between meals; but with little avail. The +temperance-reform of our own century came none too soon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>Tea was too high priced in the first half-century of its Occidental use +to have been frequently seen in New England. Judge Sewall mentioned it +but once in his diary. He drank it at Madam Winthrop's house in 1709 at +a Thursday lecture, but he does not note it as a rarity. In 1690, +however, when not over-plentiful in old England, Benjamin Harris and +Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell it "in publique" in Boston. In 1712 +"green and ordinary teas" were advertised in the apothecary's list of +Zabdiel Boylston. Bohea tea came in 1713, and in 1715 tea was sold in +the coffee-houses. Some queer mistakes were made through the employment +of the herb as food. In Salem it was boiled for a long time till bitter, +and drunk without milk or sugar; and the tea-leaves were buttered, +salted, and eaten. In more than one town the liquid tea was thrown away +and the carefully cooked leaves were eaten.</p> + +<p>The new China drink did not have a wholly savory reputation. It was +called a "damned weed," a "detestable weed," a "base exotick," a "rank +poison far-fetched and dear bought," a "base and unworthy Indian drink," +and various ill effects were attributed to it—the decay of the teeth, +and even the loss of the mental faculties. But the Abbé Robin thought +the ability of the Revolutionary soldiers to endure military flogging +came from the use of tea. And others thought it cured the spleen and +indigestion.</p> + +<p>As the day drew near when tea-drinking was to become the great +turning-point of our national liberty, the spirit of noble revolt led +many dames to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> join in bands to abandon the use of the unjustly taxed +herb, and societies were formed of members pledged to drink no tea. Five +hundred women so banded together in Boston. Various substitutes were +employed in the place of the much-loved but rigidly abjured herb, +Liberty Tea being the most esteemed. It was thus made: the four-leaved +loose-strife was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the +leaves and boiled; the leaves were put in an iron kettle and basted with +the liquor from the stalks. Then the leaves were put in an oven and +dried. Liberty Tea sold for sixpence a pound. It was drunk at every +spinning-bee, quilting, or other gathering of women. Ribwort was also +used to make a so-called tea—strawberry and currant leaves, sage, and +even strong medicinal herbs likewise. Hyperion tea was made from +raspberry leaves. An advertisement of the day thus reads:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The use of Hyperion or Labrador tea is every day coming into vogue +among people of all ranks. The virtues of the plant or shrub from +which this delicate Tea is gathered were first discovered by the +Aborigines, and from them the Canadians learned them. Before the +cession of Canada to Great Britain we knew little or nothing of +this most excellent herb, but since that we have been taught to +find it growing all over hill and dale between the Lat. 40 and 60. +It is found all over New England in great plenty and that of best +quality particularly on the banks of the Penobscot, Kennebec, +Nichewannock, and Merrimac."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> + +<p>The proportion of tea used in America is now less than in England, and +the proportion of coffee much larger. This is wholly the result of +national habits formed through patriotic abstinence from tea-drinking in +those glorious "Liberty Days."</p> + +<p>The first mention of coffee, as given by Dr. Lyon, is in the record of +the license of Dorothy Jones, of Boston, in 1670, to sell "Coffe and +chuchaletto." At intervals of a few years other innkeepers were licensed +to sell it, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century coffee-houses +were established. Coffee dishes, coffee-pots, and coffee-mugs appear in +inventories, and show how quickly and eagerly the fragrant berry was +sought for in private families. As with tea, its method of preparation +as a beverage seemed somewhat uncertain in some minds; and it is said +that the whole beans were frequently boiled for some hours with not +wholly pleasing results in forming either food or drink. After a few +years "coffee-powder" was offered for sale.</p> + +<p>Chocolate became equally popular. Sewall often drank it, once certainly +as early as 1697, at the Lieutenant-Governor's, with a breakfast of +venison. Winthrop says it was scarce in 1698. Madam Knight took it with +her on her journey in 1704. "I told her I had some chocolate if she +would prepare it, which, with the help of some milk and a little clean +brass kettle, she soon effected to my satisfaction." Mills to grind +cocoa were quickly established in Boston, and were advertised in the +<i>News Letter</i>.</p> + +<p>Even in the early days of our Republic there were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> reformers who wished +to establish the use of temperance drinks, which were not, however, +exactly the same liquids now so called. A writer in the <i>Boston Evening +Post</i> wrote forcibly on the subject, and a Philadelphia paper published +this statement on July 23d, 1788:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A correspondent wishes that a monument could be erected in Union +Green with the following inscription.</p> + +<p class="center"> +In Honour of<br /> +American Beer and Cyder.<br /> +</p> + +<p>It is hereby recorded for the information of strangers and +posterity that 17,000 Assembled in this Green on the 4th of July +1788 to celebrate the establishment of the Constitution of the +United States, and that they departed at an early hour without +intoxication or a single quarrel. They drank nothing but Beer and +Cyder. Learn Reader to prize these invaluable liquors and to +consider them as the companions of those virtues which can alone +render our country free and reputable.</p> + +<p class="center"> +Learn likewise to Despise<br /> +Spirituous Liquors as Anti Federal<br /> +</p> + +<p>and to consider them as the companions of all those vices which are +calculated to dishonor and enslave our country."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2> + +<h3>TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE</h3> + +<p>When New England was colonized, the European emigrants were forced to +content themselves with the rude means of transportation which were +employed by the aborigines. The favorite way back and forth from +Plymouth to Boston and Cape Ann was by water, by skirting the shore in +birchen pinnaces or dugouts—hollowed pine logs about twenty feet long +and two and a half feet wide—in which Johnson said the savages ventured +two leagues out at sea. There were few horses, and the few were too +valuable for domestic work to be spared for travel, hence the journeyer +must go by water, or on foot. When Bradstreet was sent to Dover as Royal +Commissioner, he walked the entire distance there, and back to Boston, +by narrow Indian paths.</p> + +<p>The many estuaries and river-mouths that intersected the coast also made +travel on horseback difficult. Foot-passengers, however, could cross the +narrow streams by natural ford-ways, or on fallen trees, which were +ordered to be put in proper place by the colonial government; and the +broader rivers by canoe ferries. We see, through the record of one +journey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> the dignified Governor of Massachusetts carried across the +ford-ways pick-a-pack on the shoulders of his stalwart Indian guide.</p> + +<p>But soon the settlers, true to their English instincts and habits, +turned their attention to the breeding of horses. They imported many +fine animals, and the magistrates framed laws intended to improve the +imported stock. The history of horse-raising in New England is akin to +that of any other country, save in one respect. In Rhode Island the +breeding of horses resulted in that famous and first distinctively +American breed—the Narragansett Pacers.</p> + +<p>The first suggestion of horse-raising in Narragansett was, without +doubt, given by Sewall's father-in-law, Captain John Hull, of Pine Tree +Shilling fame, who was one of the original purchasers of the +Petaquamscut Tract, or Narragansett, from the Indians. He wrote, in +April, 1677:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have often thought if we, the partners of Point Judith Neck did +fence with a good stone wall at the north end thereof, that no kind +of horses or cattle might get thereon, and also what other parts +thereof westerly were needful, and procure a very good breed of +large and fair mares and horses, and that no mongrel breed might +come among them, we might have a very choice breed for coach +horses, some for the saddle and some for draught; and in a few +years might draw off considerable numbers and ship them for +Barbadoes Nevis or such parts of the Indies where they would vend."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p> + +<p>This scheme was doubtless carried into effect, for in 1686 Dudley and +his associates ordered thirty horses to be seized in Narragansett and +sold to pay for building a jail.</p> + +<p>In a later letter Hull accuses William Heiffernan of horse-stealing, and +shows that a different and more gentle method than Western lynch-law was +pursued by the Eastern settlers. He writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am informed that you were so shameless that you offered to sell +some of my horses. I would have you know that they are by Gods good +Providence, mine. Do you bring me some good security for my money +that is justly owing and I shall be willing to give you some horses +that you shall not need to offer to steal any."</p></div> + +<p>Whatever the means may have been that tended to the establishment of a +distinct breed of horses, the result was soon evident; by the early +years of the eighteenth century the Narragansett Pacers were known +throughout the colonies as a desirable breed of saddle-horses.</p> + +<p>The local conditions for raising this breed were favorable. The soil of +Narragansett was rich, the crops large, the natural formation of the +land made it possible to fence it easily and with little expense—a +thing of much importance in a new land. The bay, the ocean, and the +chain of half salt lakes surrounding the three sides, left but a short +northern length for stone wall, as Hull suggested.</p> + +<p>It is said that the progenitor or most important<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> sire of this race was +imported from Andalusia by Governor Robinson. Another tradition is that +this horse, while swimming off the coast of Spain, was picked up by a +Narragansett sloop and brought to America. Thomas Hazard contributed to +the quality of endurance in the breed by introducing into it the blood +of "Old Snip." So celebrated did the qualities of this horse become that +the "Snip breed" was not only spoken of with regard to the horses, but +of the owners as well, and Hazards who did not possess the +distinguishing race-characteristic of self-will were said not to be +"true Snips." Old Snip was said to have been imported from Tripoli; +others assert (and it is generally believed) that he was a wild horse +running at large in the tract near Point Judith.</p> + +<p>In the year 1711 Rip Van Dam, a prominent citizen of New York, and at a +later date Governor of the State, wrote to Jonathan Dickinson, an early +mayor of Philadelphia, a very amusing account of his ownership of a +Narragansett Pacer. The horse was shipped from Rhode Island in a sloop, +from which he managed to jump overboard, swim ashore, and return home. +He was, however, again placed on board ship, and arrived in New York +after a fourteen-days' passage, naturally much reduced in flesh and +spirits. From New York he was sent to Philadelphia by post—that is, +ridden by the post-rider. The horse cost £32, and his freight cost fifty +shillings. He was said to be "no beauty though so high priced, save in +his legs." "He always plays and acts and never will stand still, he will +take a glass of wine, beer or cyder,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> and probably would drink a dram on +a cold morning." The last extraordinary accomplishment doubtless showed +contamination from the bad human company around him, while the swimming +feat evinced his direct descent from the Andalusian swimmer.</p> + +<p>Dr. McSparran, rector of the Narragansett church from 1721 to 1759, +wrote a little book called "America Dissected," in which he speaks thus +of the Narragansett Pacers:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The produce of this country is principally butter, cheese, fat +cattle, wool and fine horses that are exported to all parts of +English America. They are remarkable for fleetness and swift pacing +and I have seen some of them pace a mile in a little more than two +minutes and a good deal less than three minutes. I have often upon +the larger pacing horses rode fifty, nay sixty miles a day even in +New England where the roads are rough, stony and uneven."</p></div> + +<p>In the realm of fiction we find testimony to the qualities of the +Narragansett Pacers. Cooper, in the "Last of the Mohicans," represents +his heroines as mounted on these horses, and explains their +characteristics in a footnote, and also in the dialogue of the story. He +says that they were commonly sorrel-colored, and that horses of other +breeds were trained to their gait. It is true that horses were trained +to pace. Rev. Mr. Thatcher wrote in 1690 of teaching a mare to amble by +cross-spanning, and again by trammelling. Logs of wood were placed +across a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> road at certain intervals to induce a pacing gait. As late as +the year 1770 men in Ipswich followed the profession of pace-trainer; +but I doubt whether any other breed could ever acquire the peculiar gait +of the Narragansetts, of which Isaac Hazard thus wrote: "My father +described the motion of this horse as differing from others in that its +backbone moved through the air in a straight line without inclining the +rider from side to side, as does a rocker or pacer of the present day." +That motion could scarcely be taught.</p> + +<p>Many traits joined to make the Narragansett Pacers so eagerly sought +for. Not only was their ease of motion an absolute necessity, but +sureness of foot was also indispensable; this quality they also +possessed. They were also tough and enduring, and could travel long +distances. The stories told of them seem incredible. It was said that +they could travel one hundred miles in a day, over rough roads, without +tiring the rider or injury to themselves, provided they were properly +cared for at the end of the journey.</p> + +<p>There was not only in America a steady demand for these horses, but in +the West Indies, as Hull predicted, they found a ready market. One +farmer sent annually a hundred pacers to Cuba, and agents were sent to +Narragansett from Cuba with orders to buy pacers, especially +full-blooded mares, at any prices. Agents from Virginia also purchased +pacers for Virginian horse-raisers. The newspapers of the latter part of +the eighteenth century—especially of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> Connecticut press—abound in +advertisements of horses of the "true Narragansett breed," yet it is +said that in the year 1800 but one full-blooded Narragansett Pacer was +known to be living. In the War of 1812 the British man-of-war Orpheus +cruised the waters of Narragansett Bay, and her captain endeavored +through agents to obtain a Narragansett Pacer as a gift for his wife, +but in vain—not a horse of the true breed could be found.</p> + +<p>It has been said that the reckless exportation to the West Indies caused +this extermination, but it is difficult to believe that so shrewd a race +as were the Narragansett planters ever would have committed such a +killing of a goose of golden eggs. The decay of the race was the action +of a simple law—cause and effect. The conditions which rendered the +pacer so desirable did not exist after the Revolution. Roads were +improved, carriages became common, the saddle less used, and the +American trotter was evolved, who was a better carriage horse, and a +more useful one, as he could be employed for both light and heavy work, +while heavy draughting stiffened the joints of the pacer, and destroyed +the very qualities for which he was most valued. Thus, being no longer +needed, the Narragansett Pacer ceased to exist.</p> + +<p>There died in Wickford, R. I., a few years ago, a Narragansett Pacer that +was nearly full blooded. She was a villainously ugly animal of faded, +sunburnt sorrel color. She was so abnormally broad-backed and +broad-bodied that a male rider who sat astride her was forced to stick +his legs out at a most awkward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> and ridiculous angle. That broad back +carried, however, most comfortably a side-saddle or a pillion. Being +extremely short-legged this treasured relic was unprecedentedly slow, +and altogether I found the Narragansett Pacer, though an object of great +pride and even veneration to her owner, not all my fancy had painted +her.</p> + +<p>From the earliest days when horses were imported, women rode on pillions +behind the men. Lechford in his note-book refers to a "womans pillion" +lost on the Hopewell. A pillion was a cushion strapped on behind a man's +saddle, and from it sometimes hung a small platform or double stirrup on +which a woman rider could rest her feet. One horse was sometimes made +also to carry two men riding astride. Horseflesh was also economized by +the ride-and-tie system: two persons would start on horseback, ride a +mile or two, dismount, tie the animal by the road-side, leaving him for +another couple (who had started afoot) to mount, ride on past the first +couple, and dismount and tie in their turn.</p> + +<p>Coaches were not a wholly popular means of conveyance in the first half +of the seventeenth century, even among Englishmen on English roads, and +they would have been wholly useless in New England. John Winthrop had +one in 1685. Sir Edmund and Lady Andros rode in a coach in Boston in +1687, and there were then a few other carriages in town. Their purchase +and use were deplored and discouraged by Puritan authorities, as were +other luxurious fashions. Outside of the town wheeled vehicles were of +little use<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> as they had to be lashed clumsily in two canoes and +laboriously ferried across the rivers, while the horses were similarly +transferred to the opposite shore, or allowed to swim over. The early +carriages were calashes and chariots. Henry Sharp of Salem had a calash +in 1701. William Cutler's "collash with ye furniture" was worth £10 in +1723. Chairs—two-wheeled gigs without a top—and chaises, a vehicle +with similar body and a top, were early forms of carriages. The sulky +had in early days, as now, seating room but for one person. All these +were hung on thorough braces instead of springs.</p> + +<p>In an account of the funeral of Lieutenant Governor Tailor, in 1732, it +is mentioned that a "great number of the gentry attended in their +coaches and chaises;" but even by that date coaches were of little avail +for long journeys. The anxious letters of Waitstill Winthrop to his son +in 1717, at the latter's proposal of bringing a coach overland from +Boston to New London, show the obstacles of travel. He warns that there +are no bridges in Narragansett; he urges him to bring a mounted servant +with an axe to "cut bows in the way," "to bring a good pilate that knows +the cart ways," to be sure to keep the coachman sober, to have axle and +hubs prepared for rough usage—and in every way discourages so rash an +endeavor.</p> + +<p>Though I have seen a New England inventory of the year 1690 in which a +"sley" appears, I do not find that they were frequently used until the +second or third decade of the succeeding century, though a few +Bostonians had them in the year 1700. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> were largely used by the +Dutch in New York, and Connecticut folk occasionally followed Dutch +fashions.</p> + +<p>When sedan-chairs were so fashionable and plentiful in England, they +were sure to be used to some extent in New England towns. Governor +Winthrop had a very elegant Spanish sedan-chair, which was given him in +1646 by Captain Cromwell, who captured it from a Spanish galleon. This +fine chair was worth £50 and was an intended gift of the Viceroy of +Mexico to his sister. When Parson Oxenbridge was striken with apoplexy +in the pulpit of the First Church in Boston, he was "carried home in a +Cedan." On August 3, 1687, Judge Sewall wrote in his diary: "Capt. +Gerrish is carried in a Sedan to the Wharf and so takes boat for Salem." +Again he writes on May 31, 1715: "The Gov'r comes first to Town, was +carried from Mr. Dudleys to the Town-House in Cous. Dumers Sedan; but +'twas too tall for the Stairs, so was fain to be taken out near the top +of them." The Governor had had a bad attack of gout.</p> + +<p>On September 11, 1706, Sewall writes: "Five Indians carried Mr. +Bromfield in a chair." And though I have never seen the sale of a sedan +mentioned, several times I have fancied that the reference to the sale +of a chair meant a sedan-chair. In the memoirs of Eliza Quincey she +speaks of riding in a sedan, and of seeing Dr. Franklin in one in 1789.</p> + +<p>At a surprisingly early date, when we consider the limited opportunities +for travel, the colonial authorities licensed taverns or ordinaries, and +also made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> strict laws governing them. The landlords could not sell sack +or strong water; nor permit games to be played in their precincts; nor +allow dancing or singing; nor could tobacco be used within their walls; +nor could they sell cakes or buns indiscriminately. Samuel Cole, the +Boston comfit-maker, received his license in 1634, though one can hardly +understand, with such manifold rules of narrow limit, how he could wish +it. Previously other freemen had obtained permission "to draw wine and +beer" to sell at retail to their neighbors and to travellers. In New +Haven the tavern-keeper had been given twenty acres of land in 1645, in +which travellers' horses could be pastured. In Hartford and other river +towns the establishment of taverns was compulsory. The ordinaries +quickly multiplied in number and increased in pretension. In Boston, in +1651, the King's Arms and its furniture were held to be worth £600. +Board was cheap enough. In 1634 the Court set the price of a single meal +at sixpence, and an ale quart of beer at a penny. At the Ship Tavern a +man had "fire and bed, dyet, wyne and beere betweene meals" for three +shillings a day. The wine was limited to "a cupp each man at dynner & +supp & no more." Following the English fashion of Shakespeare's time, +the inn chambers were each named: The Exchange Chamber, Rose and Sun +Chamber, Star Chamber, Court Chamber, Jerusalem Chamber, etc. The names +of the inns also followed English nomenclature: The Bunch of Grapes, Dog +& Pot, Turk's Head, Green Dragon, Blue Anchor, King's Head, etc. The +Good Woman bore on its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> painted sign the figure of a headless woman. The +Ship in Distress had these lines:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">"With sorrows I am compassed round,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Pray lend a hand—my ship's aground."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Another Boston tavern had this rhyme:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"This is the bird that never flew,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">This is the tree that never grew,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">This is the ship that never sails,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">This is the can that never fails."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The Sun Tavern bore these words:</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 11em;"> +"The Best Ale and Beer under the Sun."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This tavern was removed to Moon Street, and was kept by Mrs. Milk. Her +neighbors' names were Waters, Beer, and Legg. The Salutation Inn, with +its sign-board bearing the picture of two men shaking hands, was +commonly known as the Two Palaverers.</p> + +<p>I know no more attractive picture of olden-time hospitality, nothing +better "under the notion of a tavern," than the old Palaverer tavern at +Medford. On either side of its front door grew a great tree, and in the +spreading branches of each tree was built a platform or balcony. The two +were connected by a hanging bridge or scaffolding, and also connected by +a similar foot-bridge with the tavern itself. In these leafy +tree-arbors, through the sunny summer months, from dawn till twilight, +whilom travellers rested and drank their drams, or, perchance, their +cups of tea,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> and watched the arrival and departure of coaches and +horsemen at "mine inn."</p> + +<p>John Adams wrote frequently of the inns of the time. He said of the +Ipswich innkeeper in 1771: "Landlord and Landlady are some of the +grandest people alive. Landlady is the great granddaughter of Governor +Endicott, and has all the notions of greatest family. As to Landlord, he +is as happy, and as big, as proud, as conceited as any nobleman in +England, always calm and good-natured and lazy."</p> + +<p>Of the Enfield landlord he wrote: "Oated and drank tea at Peases—a +smart house and landlord truly; well dressed with his ruffles &c. and +upon inquiry I found he was the great man of the town, their +representative as well as tavern-keeper." In a paper which he wrote upon +licensed houses, Adams stated that "retailers and taverners are +generally, in the country, assessors, selectmen, representatives, or +esquires."</p> + +<p>Members of our best and most respected families throughout New England +were innkeepers. The landlord was frequently a local magistrate, a +justice of the peace, or a sheriff. Notices of town-meetings, of +elections, of new laws and ordinances of administration were posted at +the tavern, just as legal notices are printed in the newspapers +nowadays. Bills of sales, of auctions, records of transfers were +naturally posted therein; the taverns were the original business +exchanges. No wonder all the men in the township flocked to the +tavern—they had to to know anything of town affairs, to say nothing of +local scandals. Dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>tances were given in almanacs of the day, not from +town to town, but from tavern to tavern.</p> + +<p>Of the good quality of New England inns many travellers testify. +Lafayette wrote to his wife in 1777: "Host and hostess sit at the table +with you and do the honors of a comfortable meal, and on going away you +pay your fare without higgling." Dr. Dwight said the best old-fashioned +New England inns were superior to any of the modern ones. Brissot said: +"You meet with neatness, dignity and decency, the chambers neat, the +beds good, the sheets clean, supper passable, cyder tea punch and all +for fourteen pence a head." Alackaday! the good old times.</p> + +<p>Next in importance to the landlord came the stage-driver. He was so +popular and such a kindly fellow that he had to be prohibited by law +from carrying any parcels or letters for persons along the route, else +he were overburdened with troublesome and hindering business, +detrimental to the postal and carriage income of the government. He was +so importuned to drink at each stopping-place that he might have lain +drunk the whole year round. He was of so much consequence and so looked +up to, that little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, hardly +exaggerated his position when he roared out angrily to a hungry +passenger who urged him to drive faster: "While I drive this coach I am +the whole United States of America." Stage-driving was an hereditary +gift; it went in families. Four Potters, three Ackermans, three Annables +drove in Salem. Patch and Peach.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> Tozzer and Blumpy, Canney and Camp, +were well-known stage-driving names.</p> + +<p>The stage-agent also, that obsolete functionary, was a man of much local +consequence and of many affairs; he was established in many a tavern as +a necessary and almost immovable piece of bar-room furniture.</p> + +<p>To show the importance of tavern, tavern-keeper, stage-agent, and +stage-driver in early Federal days, let me give a single instance. +Haverhill was the great staging centre of New Hampshire; six or eight +lines of coaches left there each day. There were lines direct to Boston, +New York, and Stanstead, Canada. Of course there was a vast bustle and +commotion on the arrival and departure of each coach, and a goodly +number of passengers were deposited at the tavern that formed the coach +office—sometimes one hundred and fifty a day. It can readily be seen +what a news centre such a tavern must have been, how much knowledge of +the world must have been gathered by its occupants. It must be +remembered that our universal modern source of information, the +newspaper, did not then exist; there were a few journals, of course, of +scant circulation, but of what we now deem news they contained nothing. +Information of current events came through hearing and talking, not +through reading. Hence it came to be that an innkeeper was not only +influential in local affairs, but was universally known as the +best-informed man in the place; reporters, so to speak, rendered their +accounts to him; items of foreign and local news<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> were sent to him; he +was in himself an entire Associated Press.</p> + +<p>The earliest roads for travel throughout New England followed the Indian +trails or paths, and were but two or three feet wide. The Old Plymouth +or Coast Road, of much importance because connecting Boston and +Plymouth, the capitals of separate colonies, was provided for by action +of the General Court in 1639. It ran through old Braintree. The Old +Connecticut Road or Path started from Cambridge, ran to Marlborough, +thence to Grafton, Oxford, and Woodstock, and on to Springfield and +Albany. It was intersected at Woodstock by the Providence Path, which +ran through Narragansett and Providence plantations, and also by the +Nipmuck Path which came from Norwich.</p> + +<p>The New Connecticut Road ran as did the old road, from Boston to Albany. +It was known at a later date as the Post Road. From Boston it ran to +Marlborough, thence to Worcester, thence to Brookfield, and so on to +Springfield and Albany.</p> + +<p>The famous Bay Path, laid out in 1673, left the Old Connecticut Path at +Happy Hollow, now Wayland, and ran through Marlborough to Worcester, +Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, when it separated in two paths, +one—the Hadley Path—running to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley, and the +other returning to the Old Connecticut Path and on to Springfield.</p> + +<p>An inexplicable charm still attaches itself to these old Indian paths, a +delight in attempting to trace their unused and overgrown roadways, as +they leave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> the main road in devious twists and turns till they again +join its beaten way. And the halo of early romance and adventure +surrounds them. Holland felt the charm when he wrote thus of the Bay +Path:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight +clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was +bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through +woods which bore the mark of centuries, over barren hills that had +been licked by the Indian hounds of fire, and along the banks of +streams that the seine had never dragged. A powerful interest was +attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws +were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, +and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That +rough thread of soil chopped by the blades of a hundred streams was +a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of +love and interest and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed +over by friends on the journey and friends at home."</p></div> + +<p>Hawthorne felt it also and said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The forest-track trodden by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy +and ponderous Englishmen has now a distinctness which it never +could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many +moccasins. It goes onward from one clearing to another, here +plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, +but everywhere showing a decided line along which human interests +have begun to hold their career.... And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the Indians coming from +their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement marvel at +the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a +flitting presentiment that this heavy tread will find its way over +all the land, and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild +Indian will alike be trampled beneath it."</p></div> + +<p>For many years these paths were travelled, gradually widening from +foot-paths to bridle-ways, to cart-tracks, to carriage-roads, until they +became the post-roads, set thick with cheerful country homes. In some +portions of New England they still are travelled and form the general +thoroughfare, but in many lonely townships the old paths are deserted, +and traffic and passage over the post or county road is gone forever. +Bushes flourish and meet gloomily across the grass-grown track; forest +trees droop heavily over it in summer and fall unheeded across it in +winter. On either side moss-grown, winter-killed apple-trees and ancient +stunted currant-bushes struggle for life against sturdy young pine and +spruce and birch. Many a rod of heavy tumble-down stone wall—New +England Stonehenges—may be seen, not as of old dividing cleared and +fertile fields, but in the midst of a forest of trees or underbrush:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"Far up on these abandoned mountain farms</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Now drifting back to forests wild again,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">The long gray walls extend their clasping arms</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Pathetic monuments of vanished men."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> + +<p>Or more pathetic monuments still of hard and wasted work. On either side +of the way, at too sadly frequent intervals, ruined wells or desolate +yawning cellar-holes, with tumbling chimneys standing like Druid ruins, +show that fair New England homes once there were found. Flaming orange +tiger-lilies, most homely and cheerful bloom of country gardens, have +spread from the deserted dooryards, across the untrodden foot-paths, in +weedy thickets a-down the hill, and shed their rank odor unheeded on the +air.</p> + +<p>Some of the old provincial mile-stones, however, remain, and put us +closely in touch with the past. In the southern part of New London +County, and at Stratford, Conn., on the old post-road—the King's +Highway—between Boston and Philadelphia, there are mossgrown stones +that were set under the supervision of Benjamin Franklin when he was +colonial Postmaster-General. After that highway was laid out, the +placing and setting of the mile-stones were entrusted to Franklin, and +he transacted the business, as he did everything else, in a thoroughly +original way. He drove over the road in a comfortable chaise, followed +by a gang of men and heavy teams loaded with the mile-stones. He +attached to his chaise a machine which registered by the revolution of +the chaise-wheels the number of miles travelled, and he had the +mile-stones set by that record, and marked with the distance to the +nearest large town. Thus the Stratford stone says: "20 Mls to N. H."—New +Haven.</p> + +<p>By provincial enactment in Governor Hutchin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>son's time, mile-stones were +set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Some of these stones +are still standing. There is one in the middle of the city of Worcester, +on Lincoln Street—the "New Connecticut Path;" it is of red sandstone, +and is marked, "42 Mls to Boston, 50 Mls to Springfield, 1771."</p> + +<p>In Sutton, on the "Old Connecticut Path," stands still the king of all +these 1771 mile-stones. It is of red sandstone, is five feet high, and +nearly three feet wide. It is marked, "48 Mls to Boston 1771 B. W." The +letters B. W. stand for Bartholomew Woodbury, a jovial and liberal old +Sutton tavern-keeper who died in 1775. When the mile-stones were set out +by the provincial government, the place for this Sutton stone fell a few +rods from Landlord Woodbury's house; but he obtained permission and set +up this handsome stone at his own expense, beside his great horse-block +under his swinging sign at his open, welcoming door. He fancied, +perhaps, that it would attract the attention, and thus cause the halting +of travellers. Tavern-keeper and tavern are gone; no vestiges even of +cobblestone chimneys or cellar walls remain. The old post-road is now +but little travelled, but the great mile-stone and its neighbor, the +worn stepping-block, still stand, lonely monuments of past days and past +pleasures. On warm summer nights perhaps the silent old mile-stone +awakes and sadly tells his companion of the gay coaches that rattled by, +and the rollicking bucks and blades, the gallant soldiers that galloped +past him in the days of his youth, a century ago. And the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> +stepping-block may tell in turn of the good old days when her broad +sunny face was pressed by the feet of fair colonial dames who, with +faces hidden in riding-hoods and masks, stepped lightly from saddle or +pillion to "board and bait" at Bartholomew Woodbury's cheerful inn.</p> + +<p>In Roxbury, Mass., there still stands at the corner of Centre and +Washington Streets the famous Roxbury Parting Stone. It is a great +square stone, bearing on one face the words: "The Parting Stone 1744. P. +Dudley;" on another face the words: "Dedham—Rhode Island," and on a +third "Cambridge—Watertown." It has had set on it recently an iron +frame or fixture for a gas-lamp. This stone, with many others in Norfolk +County, was placed by Paul Dudley at his own expense in the middle of +the last century. It has seen the separation or "parting" of many a +brave company that had ridden out to it from Boston. Many a +distinguished traveller has passed it and glanced at its carved words. +Lord Percy's soldiers took counsel of it one hot April morning to find +the road to Lexington.</p> + +<p>Governor Belcher set out a row of mile-stones from Boston Town House to +his home in Milton. Some of them are still standing, the seventh and +eighth in Milton, one marked "8 miles to B. Town House. The Lower Way, +1734." The ninth and twelfth stand as historical landmarks in Quincy, on +the old Plymouth Road, and bear the dates 1720 and 1727.</p> + +<p>In Wenham another mile-stone near the graveyard bears the date 1710, +shows the distance to Ipswich<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> and Boston, and gives these words of +timely warning: "I know that Thou wilt Bring me to Death and to the +house appointed for all Living."</p> + +<p>A marked improvement in facilities for travel came in turnpike days. +These well laid out and well kept roads fairly changed the face of the +country. They sometimes shortened by half the distance to be travelled +between two towns. Stock companies were formed to build bridges and +grade these turnpikes, and the stock formed a good investment and was +also vastly used in speculation. The story of the turnpike is as +interesting as that of the Indian path, but cannot be told at length +here. They, too, have had their day; in some counties the turnpike is as +deserted as the path and seems equally ancient.</p> + +<p>New England roads and turnpikes have seen many a gay sight, for the +custom of speeding the parting guest "agatewards" for some miles, with +an accompanying escort on foot or on horseback, to some ford or natural +turning-point or bourn, was a universal mark of interest and affection, +and of courtesy as well. Judge Sewall records, on one occasion, with +much indignation, that "not one soul rode with us to the ferry." Ere the +days of turnpikes, the old Indian paths witnessed many a sad and +pathetic parting in the wilderness, such as was recorded in simple +language in Parson Thatcher's diary in 1680, when he left Barnstable to +go to a new parish:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A great company of horsemen 7 & 50 horse & 12 of them double, went +with us to Sandwich & there got me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> to go to prayer with them, and +I think none of them parted with me with dry eyes."</p></div> + +<p>This is indeed a strong picture for the brush of a painter, the golden +September light, nowhere more radiantly beautiful than on</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">"the narrowing Cape</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">That stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">And the relentless smiting of the waves,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and the sad-faced band in Puritan garb, armed and mounted, gathered +around their departing leader in reverent prayer.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the turnpike saw no more characteristic scene than the winter +ride to market. Though summer and fall were the New England farmer's +time of increase, winter was his time of trade and his time of +recreation as well. When wintry blasts grew chill, and snow and ice +covered deep the desolate fields and country roads, then he prepared +with zest and with delight for his gelid time of outing, his Arctic +red-letter day, his greatest social pleasure of the entire year. The +friendly word was circulated by a kind of estafet from farm to farm, was +carried by neighbor or passing traveller, or was discussed and planned +and agreed upon in the noon-house, or at the tavern chimney-side on +Sunday during the nooning, that on a certain date—unless there set in +the tantalizing and swamping January thaw, a thaw which might be pushing +and unseasonable enough to rush in in December and quite as often hung +off and dawdled into February—that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> on the appointed date, at break of +day, the annual ride to market would begin. Often fifty or sixty +neighbors would respond to the call, would start together on the road. +For farmers in western Vermont and Massachusetts the market town was +Troy or other Hudson valley towns. In Maine, from Bath and Hallowell and +neighboring towns, the winter procession rode to Portland. In central +Massachusetts some drove to Northampton, Springfield, or Hartford; but +the greatest number of farmers and the largest amount of farm produce +went to the towns of the Massachusetts coast, to Salem, to Newburyport, +and, above all, to Boston.</p> + +<p>The two-horse pung or the single-horse pod, shod with steel shoes an +inch thick, was closely packed with the accumulated farm wealth—whole +pigs, perhaps a deer or two, firkins of butter, casks of cheese, four +cheeses in each cask, bags of beans, pease or corn, skins of mink, fox, +and fisher-cat that the boys had trapped, birch brooms that the boys had +made, yarn that their sisters had spun, and stockings and mittens that +they had knitted—in short, anything that a New England farm could +produce that would sell to any profit in a New England town. So closely +was the sleigh packed, in fact, that the driver could not be seated. The +sturdy and hardy farmer stood on a little semicircular step in the rear +of the sleigh, his body protected by the high sleigh back against the +sharp icy blasts. At times he ran alongside or behind his vehicle to +keep his blood in brisk circulation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> + +<p>Though every inch of the sleigh +was packed to its fullest extent, there was always found room in some +corner for plenty of food to last the thrifty traveller through his +journey; often enough to liberally supply him even on his return +trip—cold roasted spare ribs of pork, doughnuts, loaves of "rye an' +Injun" bread, and invariably a bountiful mass of frozen bean porridge. +This latter was made and frozen in a tub, and when space was hard to +find in the crowded vehicle, the solid mass was furnished with a loop of +twine by which to hang it to the side of the pung. A small hatchet with +which to chop off a chunk of porridge formed the accompaniment of this +unalluring Arctic provender. Oats and hay to feed his horses did the +farmer also carry.</p> + +<p>There were plenty of taverns in which he could obtain food if he needed +it, in which, indeed, he did obtain liquid sustenance to warm his bones +and stir his tongue, and make palatable the half-thawed porridge which +he ate in front of the cheerful tavern fire. But it was the invariable +custom, no matter what the wealth of the farmer, to carry a supply of +food for the journey. This kind of itinerant picnic was called +"tuck-a-nuck "—a word of Indian origin, or "mitchin," while the box or +hamper or bucket that held the provisions was called a "mitchin-box." I +can fancy that no thrifty or loving housewife allowed the man of her +household to go to market with too meanly filled a mitchin-box, but took +an honest pride in sending him off with a full stock of rich doughnuts, +well-baked bread, well-filled pies, and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> least well-cooked porridge, +which he could devour without shame before the eyes of his neighbors.</p> + +<p>The traveller did not carry his meals from home because the tavern fare +was expensive; at the inn where he paid ten cents a night for his +lodging, he was uniformly charged but twelve and a half cents for a +"cold bite," and but twenty-five cents for a regular meal; but it was +not the fashion to purchase meals at the tavern; the host made his +profits from the liquor he sold and from the sleeping-room he gave. +Sometimes the latter was simple enough. A great fire was built in the +fireplace of either front room—the bar-room and parlor—and round it, +in a semicircle, feet to the fire and heads on their rolled-up buffalo +robes, slept the tired travellers. A few sybaritic or rheumatic tillers +of the soil paid for half a bed in one of the double-bedded rooms which +all taverns then contained, and got a full bed's worth, in deep hollows +and high billows of live-geese feathers, warm homespun blankets, and +patchwork quilts.</p> + +<p>It was certainly a gay winter's scene as sleigh after sleigh dashed into +the tavern barn or shed and the stiffened driver, after "putting up" his +steed, walked quickly to the bar-room, where sat the host behind his +cage-like counter, where ranged the inspiring barrels of old Medford or +Jamaica rum and hard cider, and</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">"Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>Many a rough joke was laughed at, many a story told ere the tired circle +slept around the fire; but four o'clock saw them all bestirring, making +a fresh start on their city-ward journey.</p> + +<p>In town the traveller was busy enough; he not only had his farm products +to sell, but since he sometimes got the enormous sum of fifty dollars +for his sleigh load, and it was estimated that two dollars was a liberal +allowance for a week's travelling expenses, he had much to spend and +many purchases to make—spices and raisins for the home table, +fish-hooks and powder and shot, pewter plates, or a few pieces of +English crockery, a calico gown or two, a shawl, or a scarf, or a beaver +hat; and thus brought to dreary New England farms their sole taste of +town life in winter.</p> + +<p>For many years travel, especially to New York and other seaport towns, +was largely by water, on sloop or pink or snow; and many stories of the +discomforts of such trips have come down to us.</p> + +<p>The first passenger steamboat which ran between New York and Providence +made its trial trip in 1822. The boats made the passage from town to +town in twenty-three hours, which was monstrous fast time. On one of the +first trips the boat lay by near Point Judith to repair a slight damage +to machinery, and all the simple country-folk who came down to the shore +expecting to find a wreck, were amazed to see the boat—apparently +burning up—go quickly sliding away without sails over the water until +out of sight. Many whispered that the devil had a hand in it, and +perhaps was on board in person. The new means of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> conveyance proved at +once to be the favored one for all genteel persons wishing to travel +between Boston and New York. The forty-mile journey between Boston and +Providence was made in fine stage-coaches, which were always crowded. +Often eighteen or twenty full coach-loads were carried each way each +day. The editor of the <i>Providence Gazette</i> wrote at that time: "We were +rattled from Providence to Boston in four hours and fifty minutes—if +any one wants to go faster he may send to Kentucky and charter a streak +of lightning!"</p> + +<p>The fare on these coaches was three dollars for the trip between +Providence and Boston. This exorbitant sum was a sore annoyance to all +thrifty men, and indignantly did they rail and protest against it. At +last a union was formed, and a line of rival coaches was established, on +which the fare was to be two dollars and a half a trip. This caused +great dismay to the regular coach company, who at once reduced their +fare to two dollars. The rival line, not to be outdone, announced their +reduction to a dollar and a half. The regulars then widely advertised +that their fare would thenceforth be only one dollar. The rivals then +sold seats for the trip for fifty cents apiece; and in despair, after +jealously watching for weeks the crowded coaches of the new line, the +conquered old line mournfully announced that they would make trips every +day with their vehicle filled with the first applicants who chanced to +be on time at the starting-place, and that these lucky dogs would be +carried for nothing.</p> + +<p>The new stage-coaches were now in their turn de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>serted, and the +proprietors pondered for a week trying to invent some way to still +further cut down the entirely vanished rates. They at last placarded the +taverns with announcements that they would not only carry their patrons +free of expense, but would give each traveller on their coaches a good +dinner at the end of his journey. The old coach-line was rich and at +once counter-advertised a free dinner and a good bottle of wine too, to +its patrons and there, for a time, the fierce controversy came to a +standstill, both lines having crowded trips each day.</p> + +<p>Mr. Shaffer, who was a fashionable teacher of dancing and deportment in +Boston, and a well-known "man about town," a jolly good fellow, got upon +the Providence coach one Monday morning in Boston, had a gay ride to +Providence and a good dinner and bottle of wine at the end of the +journey, all at the expense of the coach company. On Tuesday he rode +more gayly still back to Boston, had his dinner and his wine, and was up +on Wednesday morning to mount the Providence coach for the third ride +and dinner and bottle. He returned to Boston on Thursday in the same +manner. On Friday the fame of his cheap fun was thoroughly noised all +over Boston, and he collected a crowd of gay young sparks who much +enjoyed their frolicking ride and the fine Providence dinners and wine. +All returned in high spirits with Shaffer to Boston on Saturday to meet +the sad, sad news that the rival coach lines had made a compromise and +had both signed a contract to carry passengers thereafter for two +dollars a trip.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + +<p>Upon Tremont Street, near Winter Street, in Boston, there stood at that +time in a garden a fine old house which was kept as a restaurant, and +was a pleasant summer lounging-place for all gay cits. One day a very +portly, aldermanic man presented himself at the entrance of the +restaurant and asked the price of a dinner. Shaffer, who was present, +immediately assumed all the obsequious airs of a waiter, and calling for +a tape-measure, proceeded to measure the distance around the protuberant +waist of the astonished and insulted inquirer, who could hardly believe +his sense of hearing when the impudent Shaffer very politely answered, +"Price of dinner, sir!—about four dollars, sir!—for that size, sir!" +Such were the practical jokes of stage and tavern life in olden days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2> + +<h3>HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS</h3> + +<p>The first century of colonial life saw few set times and days for +pleasures. The holy days of the English Church were as a stench to the +Puritan nostrils, and their public celebration was at once rigidly +forbidden by the laws of New England. New holidays were not quickly +evolved, and the sober gatherings for matters of Church and State for a +time took their place. The hatred of "wanton Bacchanallian Christmasses" +spent throughout England, as Cotton said, in "revelling, dicing, +carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in +excess of wine, in mad mirth," was the natural reaction of intelligent +and thoughtful minds against the excesses of a festival which had ceased +to be a Christian holiday, but was dominated by a lord of misrule who +did not hesitate to invade the churches in time of service, in his noisy +revels and sports. English Churchmen long ago revolted also against such +Christmas observance.</p> + +<p>Of the first Pilgrim Christmas we know but little, save that it was +spent, as was many a later one, in work. Bradford said: "Ye 25 day +begane to erect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> y<sup>e</sup> first house for comone use to receive them and +their goods." On the following Christmas the governor records with grim +humor a "passage rather of mirth than of waight." Some new company +excused themselves from work on that day, saying it went against their +consciences. The governor answered that he would spare them until they +were better informed. But returning at mid-day and finding them playing +pitch-the-bar and stool-ball in the streets, he told them that it was +against <i>his</i> conscience that they should play and others work, and so +made them cease their games.</p> + +<p>By 1659 the Puritans had grown to hate Christmas more and more; it was, +to use Shakespeare's words, "the bug that feared them all." The very +name smacked to them of incense, stole, and monkish jargon; any person +who observed it as a holiday by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any +other way was to pay five shillings fine, so desirous were they to +"beate down every sprout of Episcopacie." Judge Sewall watched jealously +the feeling of the people with regard to Christmas, and noted with +pleasure on each succeeding year the continuance of common traffic +throughout the day. Such entries as this show his attitude: "Dec. 25, +1685. Carts come to town and shops open as usual. Some somehow observe +the day, but are vexed I believe that the Body of people profane it, and +blessed be God no authority yet to compel them to keep it." When the +Church of England established Christmas services in Boston a few years +later, we find the Judge waging hopeless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> war against Governor Belcher +over it, and hear him praising his son for not going with other boy +friends to hear the novel and attractive services. He says: "I dehort +mine from Christmas keeping and charge them to forbear."</p> + +<p>Christmas could not be regarded till this century as a New England +holiday, though in certain localities, such as old Narragansett—an +opulent community which was settled by Episcopalians—two weeks of +Christmas visiting and feasting were entered into with zest by both +planters and slaves for many years previous to the Revolution.</p> + +<p>Thanksgiving, commonly regarded as being from its earliest beginning a +distinctive New England festival, and an equally characteristic Puritan +holiday, was originally neither.</p> + +<p>The first New England Thanksgiving was not observed by either Plymouth +Pilgrim or Boston Puritan. "Gyving God thanks" for safe arrival and many +other liberal blessings was first heard on New England shores from the +lips of the Popham colonists at Monhegan, in the Thanksgiving service of +the Church of England.</p> + +<p>Days set apart for thanksgiving were known in Europe before the +Reformation, and were in frequent use by Protestants afterward, +especially in the Church of England, where they were a fixed custom long +before they were in New England. One wonders that the Puritans, hating +so fiercely the customs and set days and holy days of the Established +Church, should so quickly have appointed a Thanksgiving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> Day. But the +first New England Thanksgiving was not a day of religious observance, it +was a day of recreation. Those who fancy all Puritans, and especially +all Pilgrims, to have been sour, morose, and gloomy men should read this +account of the first Thanksgiving week (not day) in Plymouth. It was +written on December 11, 1621, by Edward Winslow to a friend in England:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling +that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we +had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four killed as much +fowl as with a little help beside served the company about a week. +At which times among other recreations we exercised our arms, many +of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest +king Massasoyt with some ninety men, whom for three days we +entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer +which they brought and bestow'd on our governor, and upon the +captains and others."</p></div> + +<p>As Governor Bradford specified that during that autumn "beside +waterfoule ther was great store of wild turkies," we can have the +satisfaction of feeling sure that at that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving our +forefathers and foremothers had turkeys.</p> + +<p>Thus fared the Pilgrims better at their Thanksgiving than did their +English brothers, for turkeys were far from plentiful in England at that +date.</p> + +<p>Though there were but fifty-five English to eat the Pilgrim Thanksgiving +feast, there were "partakers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> in plenty," and the ninety sociable Indian +visitors did not come empty-handed, but joined fraternally in provision +for the feast, and probably also in the games.</p> + +<p>These recreations were, without doubt, competitions in running, leaping, +jumping, and perhaps stool-ball, a popular game played by both sexes, in +which a ball was driven from stool to stool or wicket to wicket.</p> + +<p>During that chilly November week in Plymouth, Priscilla Mullins and John +Alden may have "recreated" themselves with this ancient form of +croquet—if any recreation were possible for the four women of the +colony, who, with the help of one servant and a few young girls or +maidekins, had to prepare and cook food for three days for one hundred +and twenty hungry men, ninety-one of them being Indians, with an +unbounded capacity for gluttonous gorging unsurpassed by any other race. +Doubtless the deer, and possibly the great turkeys, were roasted in the +open air. The picture of that Thanksgiving Day, the block-house with its +few cannon, the Pilgrim men in buff breeches, red waistcoats, and green +or sad-colored mandillions; the great company of Indians, gay in holiday +paint and feathers and furs; the few sad, overworked, homesick women, in +worn and simple gowns, with plain coifs and kerchiefs, and the pathetic +handful of little children, forms a keen contrast to the prosperous, +cheerful Thanksgivings of a century later.</p> + +<p>There is no record of any special religious service during this week of +feasting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Pilgrims had good courage, stanch faith, to thus celebrate and give +thanks, for they apparently had but little cause to rejoice. They had +been lost in the woods, where they had wandered surbated, and had been +terrified by the roar of "Lyons," and had met wolves that "sat on thier +tayles and grinned" at them; they had been half frozen in their poorly +built houses; had been famished, or sickened with unwonted and +unpalatable food; their common house had burned down, half their company +was dead—they had borne sore sorrows, and equal trials were to come. +They were in dire distress for the next two years. In the spring of 1623 +a drought scorched the corn and stunted the beans, and in July a fast +day of nine hours of prayer was followed by a rain that revived their +"withered corn and their drooping affections." In testimony of their +gratitude for the rain, which would not have been vouchsafed for private +prayer, and thinking they would "show great ingratitude if they +smothered up the same," the second Pilgrim Thanksgiving was ordered and +observed.</p> + +<p>In 1630, on February 22d, the first public thanksgiving was held in +Boston by the Bay Colony, in gratitude for the safe arrival of +food-bearing and friend-bringing ships. On November 4, 1631, Winthrop +wrote again: "We kept thanksgiving day in Boston." From that time till +1684 there were at least twenty-two public thanksgiving days appointed +in Massachusetts—about one in two years; but it was not a regular +biennial festival. In 1675, a time of deep gloom through the many and +widely separated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> attacks from the fierce savages, there was no public +thanksgiving celebrated in either Massachusetts or Connecticut. It is +difficult to state when the feast became a fixed annual observance in +New England. In the year 1742 were two Thanksgiving Days.</p> + +<p>Rhode Islanders paid little heed in early days to Thanksgiving—at any +rate, to days set by the Massachusetts authorities. Governor Andros +savagely prosecuted more than one Rhode Islander who calmly worked all +day long on the day appointed for giving thanks. In Boston, William +Veazie was set in the pillory in the market-place for ploughing on the +Thanksgiving Day of June 18, 1696. He said his king had granted liberty +of conscience, and that the reigning king, William, was not his ruler; +that King James was his royal prince, and since he did not believe in +setting apart days for thanksgiving he should not observe them.</p> + +<p>Connecticut people, though just as pious and as prosperous as the Bay +colonists, do not appear to have been as grateful, and had considerable +trouble at times to "pick vppon a day" for thanksgiving; and the +festival was not regularly observed there till 1716.</p> + +<p>Thanksgiving was not always appointed in early days for the same token +of God's beneficence. Days of thanks were set in gratitude for and +observance of great political and military events, for victories over +the Indians or in the Palatinate, for the accession of kings, for the +prospect of royal heirs to the throne, for the discovery of conspiracy +for the "healing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> breaches," the "dissipation of the Pirates," the +abatement of diseases, for the safe arrival of "psons of spetiall use +and quality," as well as in gratitude for plentiful harvests—that "God +had not given them cleannes of teeth and wante of bread."</p> + +<p>The early Thanksgivings were not always set, upon Thursday. It is said +that that day was chosen on account of its reflected glory as lecture +day. Judge Sewall told the governor and his council, in 1697, that he +"desir'd the same day of the week might be for Thanksgiving and Fasts," +and that "Boston and Ipswitch Lectures led us to Thorsday." The feast of +thanks was for many years appointed with equal frequency upon "Tusday +com seuen-night," or "vppon Wensday com fort-nit." Nor was any special +season of the year chosen: in 1716 it was appointed in August; in 1713, +in January; in 1718, in December; in 1719, in October. The frequent +appointments in gratitude for bountiful harvests finally made the autumn +the customary time.</p> + +<p>The God of the Puritans was a jealous God, and many fasts were appointed +to avert his wrath, as shown in blasted wheat; moulded beans, wormy +pease, and mildewed corn; in drought and grasshoppers; in Indian +invasions; in caterpillars and other woes of New England; in children +dying by the chincough; in the "excessive raigns from the botles of +Heaven"—all these evils being sent for the crying sins of wig-wearing, +sheltering Quakers, not paying the ministers, etc. A fast and a feast +kept close company in Puritan calendars. A fast frequently preceded +Thanksgiving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> Day, and was sometimes appointed for the day succeeding +the feast—a clever plan which had its good hygienic points. Days of +private as well as of public fast and thanksgiving were also observed by +individuals. Judge Sewall took the greatest satisfaction in his +fastings, and carefully outlined his plan of prayer throughout the fast +day, which he spent in his chamber—a plan which included and specified +ministers, rulers and magistrates, his family, and every person whom he +said "had a smell of relation" to him; and also every nation and people +in the known world. He does not note Thanksgiving Day as a holiday of +any importance.</p> + +<p>Though in the mind of the Puritan, Christmas smelled to heaven of +idolatry, when his own festival, Thanksgiving, became annual, it assumed +many of the features of the old English Christmas; it was simply a day +of family reunion in November instead of December, on which Puritans ate +turkey and Indian pudding and pumpkin-pie, instead of "superstitious +meats" such as a baron of beef, boar's head, and plum-pudding.</p> + +<p>Many funny stories are told of the early Thanksgiving Days, such as the +town of Colchester calmly ignoring the governor's appointed day and +observing their own festival a week later in order to allow time for the +arrival, by sloop from New York, of a hogshead of molasses for pies. +Another is recounted of a farmer losing his cask of Thanksgiving +molasses out of his cart as he reached the top of a steep hill, and of +its rolling swiftly down till split in twain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> by its fall. His helpless +discomfiture and his wife's acidity of temper and diet are comically +told.</p> + +<p>There is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society a +broadside announcing a thanksgiving for victory in King Philip's War; +and during the following year, 1677, the first regular Thanksgiving +proclamation was printed.</p> + +<p>But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward, +writing in 1699, does not name it, saying of New Englanders: "Election, +Commencement and Training Days are their only Holy Days."</p> + +<p>It was natural in New England, a state planted by men of exceptional +intelligence, that all should think as one minister said, "If the +college die, the church cannot long live;" and in the Commencement Day +of their colleges they found matter of deep interest, of pride, of +recreation. Judge Sewall always notes the day at Harvard, its exercises, +its dinner, its plentiful wine, and the Commencement cake, which he +carried to his friends. The meagre entries in the diaries and almanacs +of many an old New England minister show that Commencement Day was one +of their proudest holidays. After 1730, Commencement Day was usually set +for Friday, in order that there might be, as President Wadsworth said in +his diary, "less remaining time in the week to be spent in frolicking."</p> + +<p>Training Day may be called the first New England holiday, though +Hawthorne thought the day of too serious importance in early warlike +times to be classed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> under the head of festivals. At the first Pilgrim +Thanksgiving they "exercised their arms," and for some years they had +six trainings a year; no wonder they were said to be "diligent in +traynings." The all-powerful Church Militant held sway even over these +gatherings of New England warriors. The military reviews and exercises +were made properly religious by an opening exercise of prayer and +psalm-singing, the latter sometimes at such inordinate length as to +provoke criticism and remarks from the rank and file, remonstrance which +was at once pleasantly rebuked by pious Judge Sewall. Religious notices +were also given before the company broke line. A noble dinner somewhat +redeemed the sobriety of the opening exercises, a dinner given in Boston +to gentlemen and gentlewomen in tents on the Common; and the frequent +firing of guns and cannon further enlivened the day.</p> + +<p>Boston mustered a very fair military force at trainings, even in early +days. Winthrop writes that at the May training in 1639 one thousand men +exercised, and in the autumn twelve hundred bore arms, and not an oath +or quarrel was heard and no drunkenness seen. The training field was +Boston Common. At these trainings prizes were frequently offered for the +best marksmanship; in Connecticut, a silk handkerchief or some such +trinket. Judge Sewall offered a silver cup, and again a silver-headed +pike; since he was an uncommonly poor shot himself, his generosity shows +out all the more plainly. With barbaric openness of cruel intent, a +figure stuffed to represent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> a human form was often the target, and it +was a matter of grave decision whether a shot in the head or bowels were +the fatal one. Sometimes the day was enlivened by a form of amusement +ever beloved of the colonists—by public punishments. For instance, at +the training day at Kittery, Me., in 1690, two men "road the woodin +Horse for dangerous and churtonous carig and mallplying of oaths."</p> + +<p>The training days of colony times developed into Muster Days, the +crowning pinnacle of gayety, dissipation, and noise in a country boy's +life in New England for over a century.</p> + +<p>We owe much to these trainings and these trials of marksmanship. In +conjunction with the universal skill in woodcraft and in hunting, they +made our ancestors more than a match for the Indian and the Frenchman, +and in Revolutionary times gave them their ascendency over the English.</p> + +<p>Election Day was naturally a time of much excitement to New Englanders +in olden times, as nowadays. In fact, the entire week partook of the +flavor of a holiday. This did not please the ministers. Urian Oakes +wrote sadly that Election Day had become a time "to meet, to smoke, +carouse and swagger and dishonor God with the greater bravery." Various +local customs obtained. "'Lection cake," a sort of rusk rich with fruit +and wine, was made in many localities; indeed, is still made in some +families that I know; and sometimes "'lection beer" was brewed. In early +May the herb gatherers (many of them old squaws) brought to town various +barks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> and roots for this beer, and they also vended it on the streets +during Election week. An Election sermon was also preached.</p> + +<p>Boston had two Election Days. "Nigger 'Lection" was so called in +distinction from Artillery Election. On the former anniversary day the +election of the governor was formally announced, and the black +population was allowed to throng the Common, to buy gingerbread and +drink beer like their white betters. On the second holiday the Ancient +and Honorable Artillery had a formal parade, and chose its new officers, +who received with much ceremony, out-of-doors, their new commissions +from the new governor. Woe, then, to the black face that dared be seen +on that grave and martial occasion! In 1817 a negro boy named William +Read, enraged at being refused the high privileges and pleasures of +Artillery Day, blew up in Boston Harbor a ship called the Canton Packet. +For years it was a standing taunt of white boys in Boston to negroes:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">"Who blew up the ship?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Nigger, why for?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">'Cause he couldn't go to 'lection</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">An' shake paw-paw."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Paw-paw was a gambling game which was played on the Common with four +sea-shells of the <i>Cyprœa Moneta</i>.</p> + +<p>The 14th of July was observed by Boston negroes for many years to +commemorate the introduction of measures to abolish the slave trade. It +was deri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>sively called Bobalition Day, and the orderly convention of +black men was greeted with a fusillade of rotten fruit and eggs and much +jesting abuse. It was at one of these Bobalition-Day celebrations that +this complimentary toast was seriously given and recorded in honor of +the newly elected governor: "Governor Brooks—May the mantelpiece of +Caleb Strong fall on the hed of his distinguished Predecessor."</p> + +<p>In other localities, notably on the Massachusetts coast, in Connecticut, +and in Narragansett, the term "Nigger 'Lection" was applied to the +election of a black governor, who held his sway over the black +population. Wherever there was a large number of negroes the black +governor was a man of much dignity and importance, and his election was +a scene of much gayety and considerable feasting, which the governor's +master had to pay for. As he had much control over his black +constituents, it is plain that the black governor might be made useful +in many petty ways to his white neighbors. Occasionally the "Nigger +'Lection" had a deep political signification and influence. "Scaeva," in +his "Hartford in the Olden Times," and Hinman, in the "American +Revolution," give detailed and interesting accounts of "Nigger +'Lection."</p> + +<p>A few rather sickly and benumbed attempts were made in bleak New England +to celebrate in old English fashion the first of May. A May-pole was +erected in Charlestown in 1687, and was promptly cut down. The most +unbounded observance of the day was held at Merry Mount (now the town of +Quincy) in 1628 by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> roystering Morton and his gay crew. Bradford says: +"They set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days +togeather, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and +frisking togeather like so many fairies or furies rather." This May-pole +was a stately pine-tree eighty feet high, with a pair of buck's horns +nailed at the top, and with "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern +Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, and at once cut the +"idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of +their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a +woful mount."</p> + +<p>To eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was held by the Puritans to be a +heathenish vanity; and yet, apparently with the purpose of annoying good +Boston folk, some attempts were made to observe the day. One year a +young man went through the town "carrying a cock on his back with a bell +in 's hand." Several of his fellows followed him blindfolded, and, under +pretence of striking him with heavy cart-whips, managed to do +considerable havoc in the surrounding crowd. We can well imagine how +odious this horse-play was to the Puritans, aggravated by the fact that +it was done to note a holy day. On Shrove Tuesday, in 1685, there was +"great disorder in town by reason of Cock-skailing." This was the +barbarous game of cock-steling, or cock-throwing, or cock-squoiling—a +game as old as Chaucer's time, a universal pastime on Shrove Tuesday in +England, where scholars also had cock-fights in the school-rooms.</p> + +<p>The observance, or even notice, of the first day of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> the year as a +"gaudy-day"—of New-Year's tides in any way—was thought by Urian Oakes +to savor strongly of superstitious reverence for the heathen god Janus; +the Pilgrims made no note of their first New-Year's Day in the New +World, save by this very prosaic record, "We went to work betimes." Yet +Judge Sewall, as rigid and stern a Puritan as any of the earliest days, +records with some pride his being greeted with a levet, or blast of +trumpets, under his window, early on the morning of January 1, 1697; +while he himself celebrated the opening of the new century with a very +poor poem of his own making, which he caused to be cried or recited +throughout the town of Boston by the town bellman.</p> + +<p>Guy Fawkes' Day, or "Pope's Day," was observed with much noise +throughout New England for many years by burning of bonfires, preceded +by parades of young men and boys dressed in fantastic costumes and +carrying "guys" or "popes" of straw. Fires are still lighted on the 5th +of November in New England towns by boys, who know not what they +commemorate. In Newburyport, Mass., and Portsmouth, N. H., Guy Fawkes' +Day is still celebrated. In Newcastle, N. H., it is called "Pork Night." +In New York and Brooklyn, the bonfires on the night of election, and the +importunate begging on Thanksgiving Day of ragged fantastics, usually +children of Roman Catholic parents, are both direct survivals of the +ancient celebration of "Pope's Day."</p> + +<p>In Governor Belcher's time, in Massachusetts, the stopping of +pedestrians on the street, by "loose and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> dissolute people," who were +wont to levy contributions for paying for their bonfires, became so +universally annoying that the governor made proclamation against them in +the newspapers. Tudor, in his "Life of Otis," gives an account of the +observance of the day and its disagreeable features. He says the +intruders paraded the streets with grotesque images, forcibly entered +houses, ringing bells, demanding money, and singing rhymes similar to +those sung all over England:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Don't you remember</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Fifth of November,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Gunpowder Treason and plot,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">I see no reason</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Why Gunpowder Treason</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Should ever be forgot.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">From Rome to Rome</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Pope is come,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Amid ten thousand fears,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">With fiery serpents to be seen</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">At eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Don't you hear my little bell</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Go chink, chink, chink,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Please give me a little money</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">To buy my Pope some drink."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The figure of the Pretender was added to that of the pope and devil in +1702; and on Pope's Day, in 1763, American politics took a share. I read +in a diary of that date, "Pope, Devil, and Stampman were hung together." +After the Revolution the effigy of Benedict Arnold was burnt alongside +that of Guy Fawkes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> + +<p>Though we retained Pope's Day until Federal times, the Declaration of +Independence struck one holiday off our calendar. The king's birthday +was, until then, celebrated with a training, a salute of cannon, a +dinner, and an illumination.</p> + +<p>Other holidays were evolved by circumstances. Anniversary Day was a +special festival for the ministers, who gathered together in the larger +towns for spiritual intercourse and the material refreshment of a good +dinner. It was originally held in Massachusetts at the May meeting of +the General Court. Forefathers' Day, the anniversary of the landing at +Plymouth, was celebrated by dinners, prayer, and praise.</p> + +<p>Many other annual scenes of gayety were developed by the various food +harvests. Thus the time when the salmon and shad came up the rivers had +been a great merry-making and season of feasting for the Indian, and +became equally so for the white man. As years passed on it became also a +time of much drunkenness and revelry. Men rode a hundred miles for these +gay holidays, and went home with horses laden down with fish. Shad were +so plentiful that they were thrown away, would sell for but a penny +apiece, and no persons of social importance or of good taste would eat +them except in secret. Salmon, too, were so plentiful and so cheap that +farm-servants on the banks of the Connecticut stipulated that they +should have salmon for dinner but thrice a week, as the rich fish soon +proved cloying.</p> + +<p>In many localities, in Narragansett in particular,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> the autumnal +corn-huskings almost reached the dignity of holidays, being conducted in +a liberal fashion and with unbounded hospitality, which included and +entertained whole retinues of black servants from neighboring farms, as +well as the planters and their families. Apple-parings, maple-sugar +makings, and timber-rollings were merry gatherings.</p> + +<p>In Vermont and down the Connecticut valley the annual sheep-shearing was +a lively scene. On Nantucket there took place annually a like +sheep-shearing, which, though a characteristic New England festival, was +like the scene in the "Winter's Tale." The broad plains outside the town +were used as a common sheep-pasture throughout the year; sometimes +fifteen or sixteen thousand sheep were kept thereon. About two miles +from the town was a sheep-fold, near the margin of a pond, where the +sheep could be washed. It was built of four or five concentric fences, +which thus formed a sort of labyrinth, into which and through which the +sheep and lambs were driven at shearing-time, and in it they were sorted +out and placed in cotes or pens erected for each sheep-owner. The +existence of carefully registered ear-marks, with which each lamb was +branded, formed a means of identifying each owner's sheep and lambs. Of +course, this gathering brought together all the sheep drivers and +herders, the sheep washers and shearers. Vast preparations of food and +drink were made for their entertainment, and tents were reared for their +occupancy, and, of course, fiddlers and peddlers, like Autolycus, +flocked there also, and much amusement and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> frolicking accompanied the +shearing. Even the sheep, panting with their heavy wool when within the +folds, and the shorn and shivering creatures running around outside and +bleating for their old long-wooled companions, added to the excitement +of the scene. Perhaps the maritime occupation of the Islanders made them +enjoy with the zest of unwontedness this rural "shore-holiday." But it +exists no longer; the island is not now one vast sheep-pasture, and +there are no longer any sheep-shearings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2> + +<h3>SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS</h3> + +<p>The Puritans of the first century of colonial life—the "true New +England men," not only of Winthrop and Bradford's time, but of the +slowly degenerating days of Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall—thought +little and cared little for any form of amusement;</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Not knowing this, that Heaven decrees</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Some mirth t'adulce man's miseries."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Of them it may be said, as Froissart said of their ancestors, "They took +their pleasures sadly—after their fashion." "'Twas no time for New +England to dance," said Judge Sewall, sternly; and indeed it was not. +The struggle of planting colonies in the new, bleak land left little +time for dancing.</p> + +<p>The sole mid-week gathering, the only regular diversion of early +colonial life, took naturally a religious and sombre cast, and was found +in the "great and Thursday lecture." "Truly the times were dull when +these things happened," for so eager were the colonists for this sober +diversion that it soon became a pious dissipation. Cotton said, in his +"Way of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> Churches," in 1639, that so many lectures did damage to the +people; and the largeness of the assemblies alarmed the magistrates, who +saw persons who could ill afford the time from their work, gadding to +mid-day lectures in three or four different towns the same week. Young +people, not having acquired that safety-valve, the New England +singing-school, gladly seized these religious meetings as a pretext and +a means for enjoyable communion, and attended in such numbers that the +hospitality shown in providing food for the visiting lecture-lovers +seemed to be in danger of becoming a burdensome expense. In 1633 the +magistrates set the lecture hour at one o'clock, that lecture-goers +might eat their dinner at noon at home; and they attempted to have each +minister give but one lecture in two weeks, and planned that contiguous +towns should offer but two temptations a week. But the law-makers +overstepped the mark, and the lecture and the ministers resumed weekly +sway, which they held for a century.</p> + +<p>Hawthorne thus described the opening hours of the colonial Lecture-day:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The breakfast hour being passed, the inhabitants do not as usual +go to their fields or work-shops, but remain within doors or +perhaps walk the street with a grave sobriety yet a disengaged and +unburdened aspect that belongs neither to a holiday nor the +Sabbath. And indeed the passing day is neither, nor is it a common +week day, although partaking of all three. It is the Thursday +Lecture; an institution which New England has long ago +relinquished, and almost forgotten, yet which it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> have been +better to retain, as bearing relations both to the spiritual and +ordinary life. The tokens of its observance, however, which here +meet our eyes are of a rather questionable cast. It is in one sense +a day of public shame; the day on which transgressors who have made +themselves liable to the minor severities of the Puritan law +receive their reward of ignominy. At this very moment the constable +has bound an idle fellow to the whipping-post and is giving him his +deserts with a cat-o-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise Daniel +Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the meeting-house, with +a halter about his neck, which he is condemned to wear visibly +throughout his lifetime; Dorothy Talby is chained to a post at the +corner of Prison Lane with the hot sun blazing on her matronly +face, and all for no other offence than lifting her hand against +her husband; while through the bars of that great wooden cage, in +the centre of the scene, we discern either a human being or a wild +beast, or both in one. Such are the profitable sights that serve +the good people to while away the earlier part of the day."</p></div> + +<p>Not only were criminals punished at this weekly gathering, but seditious +books were burned just after the lecture, intentions of marriage were +published, notices were posted, and at one time elections were held, on +Lecture-day. The religious exercises of the day resembled those of the +Sabbath and were sometimes five hours in length.</p> + +<p>In primitive amusements, the sports of the woods and waters, even a +Puritan could find occasional and proper diversion without entering into +frivolous and sinful amusement. The wolf, most hated and most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> +destructive of all the beasts of the woods, a "ravening runnagadore," +was a proper prey. Wolves were caught in pits, in log pens, in traps; +they were also hooked on mackerel hooks bound in an ugly bunch and +dipped in tallow, to which they were toled by dead carcasses. The swamps +were "beat up" in a wolf-drive or wolf-rout, similar to the English +"drift of the forest." A ring of men surrounded a wooded tract and drew +inward toward the centre, driving the wolves before them. The excitement +of such a wolf-rout, constantly increasing to the end, can well be +imagined. The wolves were not always killed outright. Josselyn tells +that the inhuman sport of wolf-baiting was popular in New England, and +he describes it thus: "A great mastiff held the Wolf.... Tying him to a +stake we bated him with smaller doggs and had excellent sport, but his +hinder legg being broken we soon knocked his brains out." Wolves also +were dragged alive at a horse's tail, a sport equally cruel to both +animals. These fierce and barbarous traits had been nourished in England +by the many bear and bull baitings, and even horse-baitings, and the +colonists but carried out here their English training. Wood wrote in his +"New England's Prospects:" "No ducking ponds can afford more sport than +a lame cormorant and two or three lusty doggs." Though we do not hear of +cock-fights, I doubt not the wealthy and sportsmanlike Narragansett +planters, who resembled in habits and occupations the Virginian +planters, had many a cock-fight, as they had horse-races.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bears were "hunted with doggs; they take to a tree where they shoot +them." Nothing was "more sportfull than bearbayting." Killing foxes was +also the "best sport in depth of winter." On a moonlight night the +hunters placed a sledge-load of codfish heads on the bright side of a +fence or wall, and hiding in the shadow "as long as the moon shineth" +could sometimes kill ten of the wary creatures in a night. Squirrel +hunts were also prime sport.</p> + +<p>Shooting at a mark or at prizes became a popular form of amusement. We +read in the <i>Boston Evening Post</i> of January 11, 1773: "This is to give +Notice That there will be a Bear and a Number of Turkeys set up as a +Mark next Thursday Beforenoon at the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline."</p> + +<p>The "Sports of the Inn yards" found few participants in New England. In +1692 the Andover innkeeper was ordered not to allow the playing of +"Dice, Cards, Tables, Quoits, Loggits, Bowles, Ninepins or any other +Unlawful Game in his house yard Garden or Backside after Saturday P.M." +Henry Cabot Lodge says the shovelboard of Shakespeare's time was almost +the only game not expressly prohibited. A Puritan minister, Rev. Peter +Thatcher, of Milton, bought in 1679 a "pack of ninepins and bowle," for +which he paid five shillings and sixpence, and enjoyed playing with them +too; but I fancy few ministers played either that or like games. On the +second Christmas, at Plymouth, we find some of the Pilgrims playing +pitch-the-bar and stool-ball. Pitch-the-bar was a trial of strength +rather than of skill, and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> popular with sturdy Nantucket whalers +till into this century, though deemed hopelessly plebeian in old +England.</p> + +<p>We hear of foot-ball being played by Boston boys in Boston streets and +lanes; of the Rowley Indians playing it in 1686 on the broad sandy +shore, where it was "more easie," since they played barefooted. Dunton +adds of their sport: "Neither were they so apt to trip up one anothers +feet and quarrel as I have often seen 'em in England"—and I may add, as +I have often seen 'em in New England.</p> + +<p>Playing-cards—the devil's picture-books—were hated by the Puritans +like the very devil; and, as ever with forbidden pleasures, were a +constant temptation to Puritan youth. Their importation, use, and sale +were forbidden. As late as 1784 a fine of $7 was ordered to be paid for +every pack of cards sold; and yet in 1740 we find Peter Fanueil ordering +six gross of best King Henry's cards from England. Jolley Allen had +cards constantly for sale—"Best Merry Andrew, King Harry and Highland +Cards a Dollar per Doz." and also "Blanchards Great Mogul Playing +Cards." The fine for selling these cards must have been a dead letter, +for we find in the newspapers proof of the prevalence of card-playing.</p> + +<p>One use for playing-cards other than their intended one was found in +their employment to inscribe invitations upon. Ball invitations were +frequently written upon the backs of playing-cards, and dinner +invitations also.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the <i>Salem Gazette</i>, in 1784, appeared "New In Laid Cribbage Boxes, +Leather Gammon Tables, and Quadrille Pools." In the <i>Evening Post</i>, in +1772, may be seen "Quadrille Boxes and Pearl Fishes;" and I do not doubt +that many a gay Boston belle or beau (as well as Mrs. Knox) gambled all +night at quadrille and ombre, as did their cousins in London. Captain +Goelet had many a game of cards in his travels through New England, in +1750.</p> + +<p>On April 30, 1722, the <i>New England Courant</i> advertised that any +gentleman that "had a Mind to Recreate themselves with a Game of +Billiards" could do so at a public house in Charlestown.</p> + +<p>It is curious to find how eagerly the staid colonists turned to dancing. +Mr. Eggleston says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The savages themselves were not more fond of dancing than were the +colonists who came after them. Dancing schools were forbidden in +New England by the authorities but dancing could not be repressed +in an age in which the range of conversation was necessarily narrow +and the appetite for physical activity and excitement almost +insatiable."</p></div> + +<p>Dancing was forbidden in Massachusetts taverns and at weddings, but it +was encouraged at Connecticut ordinations. In a letter written by John +Cotton, that good man specifies that his condemnation is not of dancing +"even mixt" as a whole, but of "lascivious dancing to wanton ditties +with amorous gestures and wanton dalliances;" an objection in which I +hope he is not singular, an we be not Puritan minis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>ters; and an +objection which makes us suspect, an he were a Puritan minister, that he +had been in some very singular company.</p> + +<p>In 1713 a ball was given by the governor in Boston, at which +light-heeled and light-minded Bostonians of the governor's set danced +till three in the morning. As balls and routs began at six in the +afternoon, this gave long dancing-hours. On the other hand, we find +sober folk reading "An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing +Drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures By the Ministers of Christ at +Boston." And though one dancing-master was forbidden room to set up his +school, we find that "Abigaill Hutchinson was entered to lern to dance" +somewhere in Boston in 1717, probably at the school of Mr. George +Brownell. By Revolutionary times old and young danced with zest at +balls, at "turtle-frolicks," at weddings. President Washington and Mrs. +General Greene "danced upwards of three hours without once sitting +down," and General Greene called this diversion of the august Father of +his Country "a pretty little frisk." By 1791 we find Rev. John Bennett, +in his "Letters to a Young Lady," recommending dancing as a proper and +healthful exercise. Queer names did early contra-dances bear: Old Father +George, Cape Breton, High Betty Martin, Rolling Hornpipe, Constancy, +Orange Tree, Springfield, Assembly, The President, Miss Foster's +Delight, Pettycoatee, Priest's House, The Lady's Choice, and Leather the +Strap. By Federal times came Federal dances.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> + +<p>Such care was paid by New Englanders to the raising and improving of +horses that I presume horse-races did not seem so wicked as card-playing +or dancing, for I find hint of a horse-race in the <i>Boston News Letter</i> +of August 29, 1715, for Jonathan Turner therein challenged the whole +country to match his black gelding in a race for a hundred pounds, to +take place on Metonomy Common or Chelsea Beach. Many pace-races took +place in Narragansett on Little Neck Beach, at which the prizes were +silver tankards. And if we can believe Dr. MacSparran, or, rather, since +we would not appear to doubt the word of a clergyman, especially upon +the speed of a horse, if he took the time of "a little over two minutes" +with any care and had a good watch, there must have been some very good +sport on Little Neck Beach.</p> + +<p>Though the Puritan magistrates denounced shows as a great "mispense of +time," yet after a century's existence in the New World, the people was +so amusement hungry that all turned avidly to any kind of exhibition, +and but little was necessary to make an exhibition. A "Lyon of Barbary" +was in Boston in 1716; and I believe the "lyons hair," which was "cut by +the keeper" and sent by Wait Winthrop to be placed as a strengthening +tonic under the armpits of his sickly little grandchild, was abstracted +from this very lion. In 1728 another lonely king of the beasts made the +round of all the provinces on a cart drawn by four oxen, with as much +eclat as if he had been a whole menagerie. He lodged in New London in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> +Madam Winthrop's barn, and "put up" elsewhere at the very best taverns, +as became a royal visitor, yet seems a semi-pathetic figure—a tropical +king in slavery and alone in a strange, cold land.</p> + +<p>In December, 1733, and in 1734, rivals appeared at a Boston tavern, and +were advertised in the <i>Weekly Rehearsal</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A Fine Large White Bear brought from Greenland, the like never +been seen before in these Paris of the World. A Sight far +preferable to the Lion in the Judgment of all Persons who have seen +them both. N.B. He is certainly going to London in about 3 Weeks & +his Farewel Speech will be publish'd in a day or two."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"To be seen at the Shop of Mr. Benjamin Runker Tinman near the +Market House on Dock Square a very Strange & Wonderful Creature +called a Sea Lion lately taken at Monument Pond near Plimouth The +like of which never seen in these Paris before. He is Nine Feet +long from His Rump to his Head & near 4 feet wide over his back +with Four Large Feet & Five Strong Claws on Each. Also Two Large +Strong Teeth as white as Ivory sticking out of his mouth five or +six Inches long with many other Curiosities too Tedious to mention +here. Price Sixpence for a Man or Woman & 2 Pence for a child."</p></div> + +<p>The <i>Boston Gazette</i> of April 20, 1741, thus advertised:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To be seen at the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury a wild creature +which was caught in the woods about 80<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> miles to the Westward of +this place called a Cattamount. It has a tail like a Lyon, its legs +are like Bears, its Claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a Tyger. He +is exceedingly ravenous and devours all sorts of Creatures that he +can come near. Its agility is surprising. It will leap 30 feet at +one jump notwithstanding it is but 3 months old. Whoever wishes to +see this creature may come to the place aforesaid paying one +shilling each shall be welcome for their money."</p></div> + +<p>Salem had the pleasure of viewing a "Sapient Dog" who could light lamps, +spell, read print or writing, tell the time of day, or day of the month. +He could distinguish colors, was a good arithmetician, could discharge a +loaded cannon, tell a hidden card in a pack, and jump through a hoop, +all for twenty-five cents. About the same time Mr. Pinchbeck exhibited +in the same town a "Pig of Knowledge" who had precisely the same +accomplishments.</p> + +<p>In 1789 a pair of camels went the rounds—"19 hands high, with 4 joints +in their hind legs." A mermaid also was exhibited—defunct, I +presume—and a living cassowary five feet high, that swallowed stones as +large as an egg. A white sea bear appeared in the port of Pollard's +Tavern and could be seen for half a pistareen. A forlorn moose was held +in bondage at Major King's tavern and shown for nine pence, while to +view the "leapord strongly chayned" cost a quarter. The big hog, being a +home production, could be seen cheaply—for four pence. It is indeed +curious to find a rabbit among "curious wild beasts." The Win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>throps had +tried to breed rabbits in 1633 and again in 1683, and if they had not +succeeded were the only souls known to fail in that facile endeavor. To +their shame be it told, Salem folk announced in 1809 a bull-fight at the +Half-Way House on the new turnpike, and after the bull-fight a +fox-chase. In 1735 John Burlesson had some strange animals to show, and +was not always allowed to exhibit them either: "the Lyon, the Black and +Whight bare and the Lanechtskipt were shown by me that had their limbs +as long as they pleased."</p> + +<p>There were also exhibitions of legerdemain—a "Posture Master Boy who +performed most surprizing Postures, Transforming Himself into Various +Shapes;" performers on the "tort rope;" solar microscopes; "Italian +Matcheans or Moving Pictures wherein are to be seen Windmills and +Watermills moving around Ships sayling in the Seas, and various curious +figures;" electrical machines; "prospects of London" or of "Royall +Pallaces;" but, to their credit and good taste be it recorded, I find no +notices of monstrosities either in shape of man or beast. Exhibitions of +wax figures were given and museums were formed. Gentlemen sailing for +foreign ports were begged to collect for museums and collections of +curiosities, and did so in a thoroughly public-spirited manner.</p> + +<p>Shortly after the invention of balloons came their advent as popular +shows into New England towns. In Hartford they appeared under the +pompous title of "Archimedial Phaetons, Vertical Aerial Coaches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> or +Patent Fœderal Balloons," and the public was notified that "persons +of timid nature might enter with full assurance of safety." These +fœderal balloons not only served to amuse New Englanders, but were +strongly recommended to "Invaletudinarians" as hygienic and medicinal +factors, in that through their employment as carriers they caused +"sudden revulsion of the blood and humours" to the benefit of the +aeronautic travellers.</p> + +<p>The first stepping-in of theatrical performances was to the lively-tunes +of jigs and corams on a stage. In 1713 permission was asked to act a +play in the Council House in Boston. Judge Sewall's grief and amazement +at this suggestion of "Dances and Scenical Divertessiments" within those +solemn walls can well be imagined. Ere long little plays called drolls +were exhibited; puppet shows such as "Pickle Herring," or the "Taylor +ryding to Brentford," or "Harlequinn and Scaramouch." About 1750 two +young English strollers produced Otway's "Orphans" in a Boston +coffee-house. Prompt and strict measures by Boston magistrates nipped in +the bud this feeble dramatic plant, and Boston had no more plays for +many years.</p> + +<p>Many ingenious ruses were invented to avoid the legal obstructions +placed in the way of play-acting. "Histrionic academies" tried to sneak +in on the stage; and in 1762 a clever manager gave an entertainment +whose playbill I present as the most amusing example of specious and +sanctimonious truckling extant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Kings Arms Tavern—Newport Rhode Island</span>.</p></div> + +<p>On Monday, June 10th, at the Public Room of the above Inn will be +delivered a series of</p> + +<p class="center"> +<span class="smcap">Moral Dialogues</span><br /> +<i>in Five Parts</i><br /> +</p> + +<p>Depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions and +Proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of Virtue.</p> + +<p><i>Mr Douglass</i>—Will represent a noble and magnanimous Moor called +Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he +marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion +of jealousy.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Of jealousy, our beings bane,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Mark the small cause, and the most dreadful pain.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>Mr Allyn</i>—Will depict the character of a specious villain, in the +regiment of Othello, who is so base as to hate his commander on +mere suspicion, and to impose on his best friend. Of such +characters, it is to be feared, there are thousands in the world, +and the one in question may present to us a salutary warning.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>The man that wrongs his master and his friend,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>What can he come to but a shameful end?</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>Mr Hallam</i>—Will delineate a young and thoughtless officer who is +traduced by Mr. Allyn, and, getting drunk, loses his situation and +his generals esteem. All young men whatsoever, take example from +Cassio.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>The ill effects of drinking would you see</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Be warned and fly from evil company.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>Mr Morris</i>—Will represent an old gentleman, the father of +Desdemona, who is not cruel or covetous, but is foolish enough to +dislike the noble Moor, his son-in-law, because his face is not +white, forgetting that we all spring from one root. Such prejudices +are very numerous and very wrong.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Fathers, beware what sense and love ye lack,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>'Tis crime, not colour, makes the being black.</i></span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Mr Quelch</i>—Will depict a fool who wishes to become a knave, and +trusting to one, gets killed by one. Such is the friendship of +rogues. Take heed!</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Where fools would knaves become, how often you'll</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Perceive the knave not wiser than the fool.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>Mrs Morris</i>—Will represent a young and virtuous wife, who, being +wrongfully suspected, gets smothered (in an Adjoining room) by her +husband.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Reader, attend, and ere thou goest hence,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Let fall a tear to hapless innocence.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p><i>Mrs Douglass</i>—Will be her faithful attendant, who will hold out a +good example to all servants, male and female, and to all people in +subjection.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Obedience and gratitude,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>Are things as rare as they are good.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Various other Dialogues, too numerous to mention here, will be +delivered at night, all adapted to the improvement of the mind and +manners. The whole will be repeated on Wednesday and on Saturday. +Tickets, six shillings each; to be had within. Commencement at 7. +Conclusion at half past 10; in order that every spectator may go +home at a sober hour, and reflect upon what he has seen, before he +retires to rest.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">God save the King,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And long may he sway,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">East, north and south</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And fair America.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The Continental Congress of 1774 sought to pledge the colonists to +discountenance "all exhibitions of shews, plays, and other expensive +diversions and entertainments," and such exhibitions languished +naturally in war times; but with peace came new life to shows and +theatres.</p> + +<p>We catch a glimpse at Hartford of the "New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> Theatre" in 1795. The play +began at half after six. Following the English fashion, servants were +sent in advance to keep seats for their masters and mistresses. They +were instructed to be there "by Five at the Farthest." If ladies "chused +to sit in the Pit" a place was partitioned off for them. The admission +price was a dollar. There was variety in the entertainment furnished. +One actor gave a character recitation entitled "The New Bow Wow." In +this he played the "Sly Dog, the Sulky Dog, the Hearty Dog, and many +other dogs in his character of Odd Dog."</p> + +<p>In 1788 the "Junior Sophister Class" of Yale College gave a theatrical +performance, during Election week, of "Tancred and Sigismunda," and +followed it with a farce of the students' own composing, relating to +events in the Revolutionary War. A letter of Rev. Andrew Eliot is still +in existence referring to this presentation, and severely did he +reprehend it. Of the farce he wrote, "To keep up the character of these +Generals, especially Prescot, they were obliged (I believe not to their +sorrow) to indulge in very indecent and profane language." He states +that many in the audience were much offended thereat, and says: "What +adds to the illegality is that the actors not only were dressed +agreeable to the characters they assumed as Men, but female apparell and +ornaments were put on some contrary to an express statute. Besides it +cost the lads £60." What this reverend complainer would have thought of +the multitudinous exhibitions of masculine collegiate skirt-dancing of +the present day is impossible to fathom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p> + +<p>There were circuses also in Connecticut. "Mr. Pool The first American +Equestrian has erected a Menage at considerable Expence with seats +Convenient. Mr. Pool beseeches the Ladies and Gentlemen who honour him +with their Presence to bring no Dogs with them." As late as 1828 a bill +prohibiting circus exhibitions passed both houses of the Connecticut +Legislature, but was all in vain, for that State became the home of +circuses and circus-makers.</p> + +<p>During the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth +century there was little in New England that could properly receive the +name of music. Musical instruments and books of musical instruction were +rare. I have told the deplorable condition of church music in "The +Sabbath in Puritan New England." A feeling of revolt rose in ministers +and congregation. In 1712 Rev. Mr. Tuft's music-book appeared. The first +organ came to Boston about 1711. The first concert of which I have read +was advertised thus in the <i>New England Weekly Journal</i> of December 15, +1732:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"This is to inform the Publick That there will be a Consort of +Music Perform'd by Sundry Instruments at the Court Room in Wings +Lane near the Town Dock on the 28th of this Instant December; +Tickets will be deliver'd at the Place of Performance at Five +Shillings each Ticket. N.B. No Person will be admitted after Six."</p></div> + +<p>In 1744 a concert was given in Faneuil Hall fol the benefit of the poor, +and after 1760 concerts were frequent. The universal time for beginning +was six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> o'clock, and the highest price of admission half a dollar, +until after 1790.</p> + +<p>Singing-schools, too, were formed, and the bands of trained singers gave +concerts. The story of the progress of New England concert-giving has +been most fully given by Henry M. Brooks, esq., in his delightful book, +"Olden Time Music."</p> + +<p>Lectures on pneumatics, electricity, and philosophy were given in Boston +as early as 1740, and soon acquired a popularity which they have +retained to the present day.</p> + +<p>A very doubtful form of diversion was furnished to New Englanders at the +public expense and in the performance of public duties. Not only were +offenders whipped, set in the stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory on +Lecture-day, but criminals were hung with much parade before the eyes of +the people, as a visible token of the punishment of evil living. In all +the civil and religious exercises previous to the execution of the +sentence, publicity was given to the offender; petty and great +malefactors were preached at when sentenced, and after condemnation were +made public examples—were brought into church and made the subject of +discourse and even of objurgation from the pulpit. Judge Sewall +frequently refers to this meretricious custom. Under date March 11, +1685, he says: "Persons crowd much into the old Meeting House by reason +of James Morgan (who was a condemned murderer) and a very exciting and +riotous scene took place." This was at a Thursday lecture, and in the +gloomy winter twilight of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> same day the murderer was +executed—"turn'd off" as Sewall said—after a parting prayer by Cotton +Mather, who had preached over him in the morning. Cotton Mather's sermon +and others on Morgan and his crimes, which were preached by Increase +Mather and Joshua Moodey, were printed and sold in vast numbers, passing +through several editions. Morgan's dying words and confessions were also +printed and sold throughout New England by chapmen.</p> + +<p>Captain Quelch and six other pirates were captured on June 11, 1704; +were brought to Boston on the 17th, sentenced on the 19th, and, "the +silver oar being carried before them to the place of execution," were +hung on the 30th. An "extra" of the <i>News Letter</i> says that "Sermons +were preached in their Hearing Every Day, And Prayers made daily with +them. And they were Catechized and they had many Occasional +exhortations;" but the paper also states, "yet as they led a wicked and +vitious life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently +hardened in their sin." Sewall gives this painfully particular account +of the execution:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"After Dinner about 3 P.M. I went to see the Execution. Many were +the people that saw upon Broughtons Hill But when I came to see +how the River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there +were 100 boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He +Told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others +for Execution from the Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in +Boat to the place of Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a +due height<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> the seven Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for +them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows +save King who was Reprieved. When the Scaffold was let to sink +there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting +in our Entry next the Orchard and was much surprised at it, yet the +wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place."</p></div> + +<p>In another entry Sewall tells of brazen women jumping up on the cart +with a condemned man.</p> + +<p>A note was appended by Dr. Ephraim Eliot to the last page of a sermon +delivered by his father, Dr. Andrew Eliot, on the Sunday before the +execution of Levi Ames, who was hung for burglary October 21, 1773. Ames +was present in church, and the sermon was preached at his request. The +note runs thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Levi Ames was a noted offender—though a young man, he had gone +through all the routine of punishment, and there was now another +indictment against him where there was positive proof, in addition +to his own confession. He was tried and condemned. His condemnation +excited extraordinary sympathy. He was every Sabbath carried +through the streets with chains about his ankles, and handcuffed, +in custody of the Sheriff officers and constables, to some public +meeting, attended by an innumerable number of boys, women and men. +Nothing was talked of but Levi Ames. The ministers were +successively employed in delivering occasional discourses. Stillman +improved the opportunity several times and absolutely persuaded the +fellow that he was to step from the cart into Heaven."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> + +<p>One Worcester County murderess was hanged on Boston Common, and to the +delight of beholders appeared in a beautiful white satin gown to be +"turn'd off."</p> + +<p>I think, in reading of the past, that next to executions the most vivid +excitement, the most absorbing interest—indeed, the greatest amusement +of New Englanders of the half century preceding and that succeeding the +Revolutionary War—was found in the lottery. An act of Legislature in +1719 speaks of them as just introduced; but this licensed and highly +approved form of gambling quickly had the sanction and participation of +the entire community. The most esteemed citizens not only bought +tickets, but sold them. Every scheme of public benefit, the raising of +every fund for every purpose, was conducted and assisted through a +lottery. Harvard, Rhode Island (now Brown University), and Dartmouth +College thus increased their endowments. Towns and States thus raised +money to pay the public debt. Congregational, Baptist, and Episcopal +churches had lotteries "for promoting public worship and the advancement +of religion." Canals, turnpikes, bridges, excavations, public buildings +were brought to perfection by lotteries. Schools and academies were thus +endowed; for instance, the Leicester Academy and the Williamstown Free +School. In short, "the interests of literature were supported, the arts +encouraged, the wastes of wars repaired, inundations prevented, the +burthen of the taxes lessened" by lotteries. Private lotteries were also +carried on in great number, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> frequent advertisements show; pieces of +furniture, wearing apparel, real estate, jewelry, and books being given +as prizes. Much deception was practised in those private lotteries.</p> + +<p>Though many lotteries were ostensibly for charitable, educational, or +other beneficial purposes, the proportion of profit applied to such +purposes was small. The Newbury Bridge Lottery sold ten thousand +dollars' worth of tickets to raise one thousand dollars. The lottery to +assist in rebuilding Faneuil Hall was to secure one-tenth of the value +of tickets. Harvard College hoped to have twelve and a half per cent. +The glowing advertisements of "Rich Wheels," "Real & Truly Fortunate +Offices," "Lucky Numbers," "Full Drawings," appealed to every class; the +poorest could buy a quarter of a ticket as a speculation. New England +clergymen seemed specially to delight in this gambling excitement.</p> + +<p>The evil of the system could not fail to be discovered by intelligent +citizens. Judge Sewall, ever thoughtful, wrote his protest to friends +when he found advertisements of four lotteries in one issue of the +<i>Boston News Letter</i>. Though I have seen lottery tickets signed by John +Hancock, he publicly expressed his aversion to the system, and Joel +Barker and others wrote in condemnation. By 1830 the whole community +seemed to have wakened to a sense of their pernicious and unprofitable +effect, and laws were passed prohibiting them.</p> + +<p>The sports and diversions herein named, of the first century of the +Puritan commonwealth, were, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> all, joined in by but a scanty +handful of junketers. We see in our picture of the olden times no +revellers, but a "crowd of sad-visaged people moving duskily through a +dull gray atmosphere," who found, as Carlyle said, that work was +enjoyment enough. The Pilgrim Fathers had been saddened with war and +pestilence, with superstition, with exile, still they had as a contrast +the keen novelty of life in the picturesque new land. The sons had lost +all the romance and were more narrow, more intolerant. But we must not +think them unhappy because they thought it no time for New England to +dance. There be those nowadays who care not for dancing, nor for the +playing of games, yet are not unhappy. There be, also, I trow, those who +fare not at fairs, and show not at shows, and would fain read sober +books or study their Bible as did the Puritans, and yet are cheerful. +And perhaps also there is a singular little band of those who love not +the play—a few such I wot of Puritan blood yet are not sorrowful. +Hawthorne said: "Happiness may walk soberly in dark attire as well as +dance lightsomely in a gala-dress." And I cannot doubt that good Judge +Sewall found as true and deep a pleasure—albeit a melancholy one—in +slowly leading, sable-gloved and sable-cloaked, the funeral procession +of one of the honored deputies through narrow Boston streets, as did +roystering Morton in marshalling his drunken revellers at noisy +Merrymount.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2> + +<h3>BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS</h3> + +<p>There was no calling, no profession more reputable, more profitable in +early colonial days than the trade of book-selling. President Dunster, +of Harvard College, in his pursuance of that business, gave it the +highest and best endorsement; and it must be remembered that all the +book-sellers were publishers as well, books being printed for them at +their expense. John Dunton, in his "Life and Errors," has given us a +very distinct picture of Boston book-sellers and their trade toward the +end of the seventeenth century. He landed at that port in 1686 with a +large and expensive venture of books "suited to the genius of New +England," and he says he was about as welcome to the resident +book-sellers as "Sowr ale in Summer." Nevertheless they received him +cordially and hospitably, and he in turn was an equally generous rival; +for he drew eulogistically the picture of the four book-dealers which +that city then boasted. Mr. Phillips was "very just, very thriving, +young, witty, and the most Beautiful man in the town of Boston." Mr. +Brunning, or Browning, was a "complete book-seller, generous and +trustworthy." Dunton says:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There are some men will run down the most elaborate peices only +because they had none of their Midwifery to bring them into public +View and yet shall give the greatest encomiums to the most Nauseous +trash when they had the hap to be concerned in it."</p></div> + +<p>But Browning would promote a good book whoever printed it. Mr. Campbell, +the third book-dealer, was "very industrious, dresses All-a-mode and I +am told a young lady of Great Fortune is fallen in love with him." Of +Mr. Usher, the remaining book-trader, Dunton asserts:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He makes the best figure in Boston. He is very rich, adventures +much to sea, but has got his Estate by Book selling."</p></div> + +<p>Usher was a book-maker, undertaker, and adventurer, doubtfully +attractive or desirable appellations nowadays; but what higher praise +could have been given in colonial tongue? He would have angrily resented +being dubbed a publisher; that name was assigned to and monopolized by +the town-crier. Usher died worth £20,000, a tidy sum for those days.</p> + +<p>Happy, indeed, were all the Boston book-sellers; blessed of the gods! +rich, witty, modish, beloved, beautiful! The colony was sixty years old, +opulent, prosperous, and fashionable; but a book-seller cut the best +figure. Surely the book trade had in Boston a glorious ushering in, a +golden promise which has not yet deserted it.</p> + +<p>Book-printing, too, was a highly honored calling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> The first machine for +the craft and mystery of printing was set up at Cambridge in 1639, and +for twenty-three years the president of Harvard College was responsible +for its performances. Then official licensers were appointed to control +its productions, and not till a decade of years before the Declaration +of Independence were legal restraints removed from the colonial press.</p> + +<p>The first printer in the colony, Steeven Daye, was about as bad a +printer as ever lived, as his work in the Bay Psalm-Book proves; and he +spent a term in Cambridge jail, and was altogether rather trying in his +relations with the godly ministers who were associated with him in his +printery. The second printer had to sleep in a cask after he landed, but +he died with a fortune, a true forerunner of the self-made men of +America. The third printer, Johnson, having a wife in England, was +"brought up" and bound over before the court not to seduce the +affections of the daughter of printer No. 2. The next Bostonians who +tried their hands at the mechanical part of book-making—the printing +and binding—were two of the most prominent citizens; Captain Green, a +worthy man, the father of nineteen children by one wife and eleven by +another, and rich, too, in spite of the thirty Green olive-branches; and +Judge Sewall, also, as Cotton Mather said, "edified and beautified with +many children"—fourteen in all. Truly, book-making did prosper a man +mightily both at home and abroad in colonial days.</p> + +<p>In a book-printer's wife, the mother of the nine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>teen children, did +Dunton find his ideal New England wife; in a book-printer did he find +his most agreeable companion.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To name his trade will convince the world he was a man of good +sense and understanding. He was so facetious and obliging and his +conversation such that I took a great delight in his company."</p></div> + +<p>So it may be seen that the book-sellers were rivalled by the +book-printers—equally rich and witty though not so beautiful. To the +credit of both callings, then and for a century to follow, redounds the +fact that almost to a man they were deacons in the church. Mayhap their +worldly and family prosperity was the reward of their piety. As +nine-tenths of the authors were ministers, and the publishers all +deacons, the church had at that time what might be called a monopoly of +the book trade.</p> + +<p>Dunton had a vast interest in the fair sex, owning plainly that he had a +"heart of Wax, Soft, and Soon mellowing," though he was careful on every +page to make everything seem perfectly straight and proper for the +suspicious perusal of his English wife; but any nineteenth-century +reader can read between the lines. His famous long-winded eulogies of +the Boston virgin, the wife, the widow, "Madam Brick the flower of +Boston," and the half widow "Parte per Pale, Madam Toy," whose husband +was at sea; and his long rides with one or the other of them +a-pillion-back behind him, and his tedious conversations with them on +platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> chief causes of love, show +plainly that he had a "wandering eye." He had a deal to say also of his +lady customers (who were much the same in olden times as nowadays)—one +simple soul who turned over his books rather vacantly till he asked her +"in Joque" whether she wanted "Tom Thumb" (a penny chapbook). To his +surprise she answered, "Yes;" and he said, still guying, "in Folio and +with marginal notes?" and the dull creature replied, "Oh the best." +Another hectored him by constantly changing her mind:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Reach me that book, yet—let it alone; but let me see it however, +and yet its no great matter either."</p></div> + +<p>Another sedate Boston dame wished "The School of Venus," to which he +reprovingly answered that he had best give her instead "The School of +Virtue." Another, to whom he gave a sad setting off (more than hinting +at a painted face, though she were a Puritan), wanted plays and romances +and "Books of Gallantry." He adds:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"But she was a good Customer to me. Whilst I took her money I +humoured her pride, and paid her (I blush to say it) a mighty +observance."</p></div> + +<p>He speaks plainly too of the men book-buyers. One Mr. Gouge, who was +also "a Secret Friend to the Fair Sex," bought to give away two hundred +copies of a book written by Parson Gouge, his father. Another "young +beau who boasts more Villany than he ever committed bought a many of +books;" hence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Dunton tolerated the "Young Spark's" demoralizing +acquaintance. Mr. Thorncomb, another book-dealer from London, also +bought of him, and, with the ever prevailing luck was "Acceptable to the +Fair Sex, so extremely charming as makes 'em fond of being in his +Company. However he is a virtuous person and deserved all the Respect +they shewed him." Nor can I doubt, from the pervasive spirit of his +books, that Dunton too found favor with the fair.</p> + +<p>Though he spoke so warmly of individual purchasers and so positively of +the wealth of his ilk in Boston, his own venture was not vastly +prosperous. He took back to England but £400. He gave the Boston +Yankees, too, rather a bad name in commercial transactions, saying:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is no trading for a stranger with them but with a Grecian +Faith which is not to part with your own ware without ready Money; +for they are generally very backward in their payments; great +censors about other Mens manner but Extremely Careless about their +own. When you are dealing with 'em you must look upon 'em as at +cross purposes and read 'em like Hebrew backward; for they seldom +speak & mean the same thing but like the Watermen Look one way & +row another."</p></div> + +<p>Josselyn gave them no better name, saying:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Their leading men are damnable rich, inexplicably covetous and +proud; like Ethiopians, white in the teeth only; full of +ludification and injurious dealing."</p></div> + +<p>Of Dunton's patrons the majority were ministers, and I hope all the +reverend gentlemen were as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> prompt payers as they were liberal +purchasers. Since Dunton called ministers "the greatest benefactors to +Booksellers," I think they were not included in his black list. Surely +Cotton Mather was not, for he gave away one thousand books in one year, +and I know he paid for them too. One Boston schoolmaster, however, +bought £200 worth of books, and when we consider the excessively small +pay of members of that calling at that time, we feel that he showed a +liberal interest in promoting in every manner the spread of learning, +and only trust that he paid the bill promptly.</p> + +<p>In 1719 there was but one book-shop in New York, but of cultured Boston +Neal wrote at that date: "The Exchange is surrounded with booksellers' +shops which have a good trade. There are five Printing Presses." +Succeeding years did not change the luck of the craft in Boston, nor dim +its honors, still wealth and love poured in on its members. The names of +Henchman and Hancock show the opulence; while Knox, in war and love +alike prospered, winning the wealthy "belle of Massachusetts" for his +bride, and winning equal glory with his sword in the Revolution. In +other New England towns did book-publishing succeed, though Boston's +earlier start, its leading position, and its more carefully preserved +history give it place as a type of the whole province.</p> + +<p>And now, what was the fruit of all this fairly garnished and richly +nourished tree? What did these prosperous New England book-merchants +bring forth in the first century of book-printing in the province?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> What +return did they make for all the romantic and material support given +them? No love-poems or mild tales of gallantry, as you might expect from +their alleged fascinating traits, but, instead, an almost unvaried +production of dreary and dull funeral, execution, wedding, election, and +baptismal sermons, and of psalm-books, with here and there a "two penny +jeering gigge," or perhaps an anagram or acrostic or "pindarick," on +some virtuous citizen or industrious dame, recently deceased. In +business relations the deacon prevailed powerfully over the gallant. If, +as Tyler says, the New England theocracy was a social structure resting +on a book, that corner-stone was the Bay Psalm-Book and the walls above +it were built of sermons. These sermons seem to us technical, sapless, +and jejune, "as soporific as a bed of poppies," but they show the +intelligence, energy, and assiduity of the writers just as plainly as +they show the gloomy theology and sad earnestness of the time. And +though no one now reads them, we profoundly respect them, for they have +been conned by our honored forefathers with more studious and loving +attention than falls to the lot of most modern books, no matter what +their subject or who their author.</p> + +<p>I have told at length the story of the publication of the Bay Psalm-Book +and of other psalm-books printed and used in New England, in "The +Sabbath in Puritan New England" and I need not dwell upon it here.</p> + +<p>The first book or tract printed in Boston was in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> 1675—an execution +sermon, by Increase Mather, "The Wicked Man's Portion." The first book +printed in Connecticut was the "Saybrook Confession and Platform," in +1710. The first book of any considerable size printed in Rhode Island +was "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity," issued in 1729.</p> + +<p>There were a number of books for the Indians in the Indian tongue which +no one but Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull could now read an he would; also a +few histories of the Indian wars; and Thomas Prince published by +subscription an exceedingly dull chronological History of New England. +As he began his history with year 1, first month and sixth day—and +Adam, he had tired out even pious Bostonians by the time he reached New +England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died +unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple +Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There +were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne +Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and +evidently believed what he said too) that if Virgil could have read them +he would have condemned his own work to the flames. Michael +Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," that epic of hell-fire and damnation which +fairly chokes us with its sulphurous fumes, was widely read and deeply +venerated; in fact it was a great popular success. Fifteen hundred +copies were sold in the first year, one copy to each thirty-five +inhabitants of New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> England—a proportion showing a commercial success +unsurpassed in modern times. It was printed also on broadsides, in a +cheap form, and hawked over the country by chapmen in order to further +spread its lurid and baleful shadow. The dull but sympathetic "Meat out +of the Eater" by the same author quickly went through five editions. +"New England's Crisis," "A Posie from Old Mr. Dods Garden," "A Looking +Glasse for New England," and "The Origin of the Whalebone Petticoat—a +Satyr," end the monotonous list of poetry. Fully three-quarters of the +entire number of publications proceeded from the prolific Mather stock, +and of course bore the pompous, verbose, Mather traits of authorship. +Cotton Mather had the felicity of having published as his share of "New +England's First Fruits" a list to make a modern author green with +envy—three hundred and eighty-two different works; three hundred of +these may be seen in the library of the American Antiquarian Society: +not all were brought out in America, however. His "Magnalia" was printed +in England, and the exigences and vicissitudes of publication at that +time are fully told in his diary; also the exalted and idealized view +which he took of authorship. At the first definite plan which he +formulated in his mind of his history of New England, he "cried mightily +to God;" and he went through a series of fasts and vigils at intervals +until the book was completed, when he held extended exercises of secret +thanksgiving. Prostrate on his study floor, in the dust, he joyfully +received full assurance in his heart from God that his work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> would be +successful. But writing the book is not all the work, as any author +knows; and he then had much distress and many troubled fasts over the +best way of printing it, of transporting it to England; and when at last +he placed his "elaborate composures" on shipboard, he prayed an entire +day. No ascetic Papist ever observed fast days more vigorously than did +Cotton Mather while his book was on its long sea-voyage and in England. +He sent it in June in the year 1700, and did not hear from it till +December. What a thrill of sympathy one feels for him! Then he learned +that the printers were cold; the expense of publication would be £600, a +goodly sum to venture; it was "clogged by the dispositions" of the man +to whom it was sent; it was delayed and obstructed; he was left +strangely in the dark about it; months passed without any news. Still +his faith in God supported him. At last a sainted Christian came forward +in London, a stranger, and offered to print the book at his own expense +and give the author as many copies as he wished. That was in what +Carlyle called "the Day of Dedications and Patrons, not of Bargains with +Booksellers." In October, 1702, after two and a half long years of +waiting, one copy of the wished-for volume arrived, and the author and +his dearest friend, Mr. Bromfield, piously greeted it with a day of +solemn fasting and praise.</p> + +<p>Can the contrast of that day with the present, can the character of +Cotton Mather be more plainly shown than by this story of the +publication of the "Magnalia?" Many anxious days did he pass over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> other +manuscripts. Some were lost in London for seven years. One book +disappeared entirely from his ken, but was recovered by his heirs. His +most important and largest work, the six folio volumes of his "Biblia +Americana," pursued by "Strange Frowns of Heaven" could not find a +publisher and still is unprinted. Cotton Mather survived his own era, +his congenial atmosphere, and, whether he was conscious of it or not, +was indeed, as Dexter called him, a literary dodo, an isolated relic of +early fantastic methods of composition. His work was not, as Prince +said, "agreeable to the Gust of his Age." Even the name of Mather, +all-powerful in New England, could not place the "Biblia Americana" in +the press.</p> + +<p>There were no American novels in those early days. The first book +deserving the appellation that was printed in New England was +"intituled" "The Power of Sympathy, or the Triumph of Nature—A Novel +founded on truth and dedicated to the Young Ladies of America." It +appeared in 1789. Four years later came "The Helpless Orphan, or The +Innocent Victim of Revenge," and then "The Coquette, or the History of +Eliza Wharton."</p> + +<p>The only book that was written by a woman and published in New England +during the first century of New England printing, was a collection of +the poems of Anne Bradstreet. A few—very few—pamphlets by women +authors of that date are also known: "The Confession of Faith—A Summary +of Divinity drawn up by a young Gentlewoman in the 25th year of her +Age;" Mrs. Elizabeth Cotton's "Peculiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> Treasure of the Almighty King +Opened;" Elizabeth White's "Experience;" Mary Rowlandson's pathetic +account of her captivity—these are all. Hannah Adams was the first New +England woman to adopt literature as a profession.</p> + +<p>Doubtless many Puritans shared Governor Winthrop's opinion of literary +women, which that tolerant and gentle man expressed thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Governor of Hartford upon Connecticut came to Boston, and +brought his wife with him (a godly young woman and of special +parts) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her +understanding and reason which had been growing upon her divers +years by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and +writing, and had written many books. Her husband being very loving +and tender of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error +when it was too late. For if she had attended her household +affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of +her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, +whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might +have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set +her."</p></div> + +<p>I know of no illustrated books printed New England in the seventeenth +century, nor any with frontispieces or portraits. In 1723 a portrait of +Increase Mather appeared in his Life, which was written by monopolizing +Cotton Mather. It was a poor thing, being engraved in London by John +Sturt. When Peter Pelham came to Boston about 1725 and started<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> as a +portrait engraver, and married the Widow Copley with her thriving +tobacco shop, he engraved and published many likenesses of authors and +ministers, some of which were bound with their books, others sold singly +by subscription. The mezzotint of Cotton Mather, made in 1727, sold for +two shillings. Hubbard's Narrative had a map in 1677; and in 1713 the +lives of Dr. Faustus, Friar Bacon, Conjurors Bungay and Vanderwart were +printed conjointly in a volume "with cuts"—perhaps the earliest +illustrated New England book, unless we except the New England Primer. +"The Prodigal Daughter, or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed" had "curious +cuts;" so also did the "Parents Gift" in 1741, and "A Present for a +Servant Maid." "Pilgrim's Progress" was printed in Boston in an +illustrated edition in 1744. But for any handsomely illustrated books +American readers sent, until Revolutionary times, to England.</p> + +<p>There were, however, at a later date, some few books printed with +special elegance, with broad margins. The "Discourse on the United +Submission to Higher Powers" had some copies that were printed on pages +ten inches by seven and a quarter inches in size, while the regular +edition was only six by six and a half inches. A letter is in existence +of Governor Trumbull's ordering that some copies of the funeral sermon +preached at his wife's death be printed on heavy writing paper. Copies +of the first edition of the "Magnalia" also were issued on large paper +and owned in New England, but of course that work was done in London.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p> + +<p>The printing of the earliest books was generally poor, showing the work +of inexperienced and unaccustomed hands; but the paper was good, +sometimes of fine quality, and always strong. The type was fairly good +and clear until Revolutionary times, when paper, ink, and type, being +made by new workmen out of the poorest materials, were bad beyond +belief, producing, in fact, an almost unreadable page. Throughout the +first half of the eighteenth century the books printed in New England +compared favorably with the ones imported from England at that date, and +in the special case of the "Poetical Oblation"—a fine quarto, offered +by Harvard College to George III. on his accession to the throne, the +typography is exquisite. For the early binding but one word can be +said—that of praise. All these old books had Charles Lamb's desideratum +of a volume, were "strong backed and neat bound." Well dressed was the +morocco, the leather, the vellum, parchment, or basil, firmly was it +glued in place, well-sewed were the leaves—loudly can we sing the +goodness and true worth of colonial bookbinding.</p> + +<p>In many New England libraries and collections may be seen specimens of +colonial printing and binding; the library of the American Antiquarian +Society is particularly rich in such ancient treasures. Some of the +books from Cotton Mather's library may there be found, that library +which Dunton called the glory of New England, and which he said was the +largest privately owned collection of books that he had ever seen; but +many of them were burned in the sacking of Bos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>ton by the British. It +consisted of over seven thousand printed volumes and many manuscripts, +and its estimated value was £8,000. The majority of these volumes was +naturally upon divinity.</p> + +<p>We can also form an idea of a New England library at a somewhat earlier +date, for the list of books in Elder Brewster's library has been +preserved. They numbered four hundred. Of these books, sixty-two were in +Latin and three hundred in English. There were forty-eight folios and +one hundred and twenty-one octavos. This was quite a bulky and heavy +library for transportation to and through that new country. All were not +imported at one time, as the succession of dates shows. Brewster +purchased from time to time the best books brought out in England on +subjects which interested him, until it was really a rich exegetical +collection, and may possibly have been used as a circulating one. Nearly +all the number were religious, theological, or historical books; +fourteen were in rhyme. Among the poems were "A Turncoat of the Times," +Spenser's "Prosopopeia," "The Scyrge of Drunkenness," a "Description of +a Good Wife," the ballad of "The Maunding Soldier," and Wither's works. +One might have been a tragedy, "Messalina," but there were no other +dramatic works.</p> + +<p>Other benefactors of booksellers had good libraries. Parson Hooker left +behind him £300 worth of books in an estate of £1,336. Parson Wareham +had £82 worth in an estate of £1,200. Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton left, in +1717, books which made one thousand lots in an auction, for which the +first book catalogue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> ever compiled in New England was printed. Even by +1723 the library of Harvard College contained none of the works of +Addison, Bolingbroke, Young, Swift, Prior, Steele, Dryden, or Pope. In +1734, the catalogue of T. Cox, a prominent Boston bookseller, did not +contain the "Spectator" nor the works of Shakespeare or Milton. The +literary revival of the time of Queen Anne was evidently but little felt +in New England during its inception. The facile and constant quotation +from the ancient classics show how constantly and thoroughly the latter +were studied.</p> + +<p>Among early New England publications we must not fail to speak of the +omnipresent almanac. Ere there was a New England Psalm-Book there was a +New England Almanac, and succeeding years brought new ones forth in +flocks. Though Charles Lamb included almanacs in his catalogue of "books +which are no books," and the founder of the Bodleian Library would not +admit that they were books and excluded them from the shelves of his +library, when New England philomaths and philodespots numbered such +honored names as Mather, Dudley, Sewall, Chauncey, Brattle, Ames, and +Holyoke, New England Puritans must have deemed almanacs to be books, and +so do we. In many a colonial household where the Bible and psalm-book +formed the sole standing library, the almanac was the only annual +book-comer that crossed the threshold and lodged under the roof-tree. On +a nail by the side of the great fireplace hung proudly and prominently +the Family Almanac, the Ephemeris.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> This Family Almanac was a guide, +counsellor, and friend; a magazine, cyclopædia, and jest-book; was even +a spelling-book. It was consulted by every member of the household on +every subject, save possibly religion—for that they had the best of all +books. The planters learned from it meteorological, astronomical, +thaumaturgical, botanical, and agricultural facts—or rather what the +editor stated as facts. Social customs and peculiarities and ethics were +also touched upon in a manner suited to the requirements and capacity of +the reader; medical and hygienic advice were given for man and beast, +ending with the quaint warning to use before and after taking that +unfashionable medicine, prayer. Wit, history, romance, poetry, all +contributed to the almanac. The printer turned an extra penny by +advertising various articles that he had for sale, from negro slaves to +garden seeds. So, in addition to what the original readers learned, we +now find an almanac a most suggestive record of the olden times.</p> + +<p>As with many colonial books, the most attractive part of an almanac is +not always the printed contents, but the interlined comments of the +original owner. He kept frequently an account of his scanty and sparse +purchases; from them we gain a knowledge of the price of commodities in +his time. We learn also upon how little a New England planter could +live, how little money he spent. He kept a record of the births, +weights, and measures of his family; he entered the purchase and number +of his lottery tickets (but I never found the proud and happy statement +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> a lottery prize). He wrote therein Greek verse, as did John Cotton. +He entered wig-making and hair-dressing accounts, as did Thomas Prince. +He kept the amount of beer and cider he made and drank, and the sad +statement of deaths in the neighborhood; such grim entries are seen as +these made by old Ezra Stiles: "This day Ethan Allen died and went to +Hell." "This day died Joseph Bellamy and went to Heaven, where he can +dictate and domineer no longer." President Stiles did not foresee that +his great-grandson would be Joseph Bellamy's also, and would plan a +social reform more vast in its changes than the really sensible scheme +he thought out, of "uniting and cementing his offspring by transfusing +to distant generations certain influential principles," and of +benefiting the growing population of the New World by carefully planned +and wide-spread marriages with virtuous and pious Stileses.</p> + +<p>Of course the almanac-owner kept account of the weather—a brave record +through January and February and March; then, lessening his zeal as +spring-planting began, the hard-working summer months have clean pages; +while a remorseful energy in November and December ofttimes made him +renew in the smoke-dried almanac his crabbed entries. Hence from +contemporary evidence does old New England life seem all winter, all +bitter cold and fierce rains and harsh winds; yet there were surely some +warm summer days and cheerful sunshine, so smoothly serene as to gain no +record.</p> + +<p>The relations between book-publishers and authors,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> between +book-publishers and the public, were from earliest days most friendly. +There was much polite exchange of compliments; the intelligence of the +public was always mightily flattered and shown up in a very civil +fashion in such manner as this:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A New Edition of the really beautiful & sentimental Novel Armine +and Elvira Is this day published price 9d sewed in blue paper. To +the Ladies in particular and others the lovers of Sentiment and +Poetick Numbers this Novel is recommended, to them it will afford a +delightful Repast. To others it is not an object."</p> + +<p>"For the pleasing entertainment of the Polite Part of Mankind I +have printed the most beautiful Poems of Mr. Stephen Duck the +famous Wiltshire Poet. It is a full Demonstration to me that the +People of New England have a fine Taste for good Sense and polite +Learning having already sold 1200 of these Poems."</p></div> + +<p>Though Stephen Duck appealed to polite and literate New Englanders just +as he became the rage in old England, his name is now almost forgotten.</p> + +<p>It must have inclined the public most favorably to a book to be told +that the volume is "intended only for the highly virtuous;" that "the +glowing pen of the author brought this token into life solely from +Admiration of a community fitted by amazing Intelligence to receive it:" +that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Tis said with truth by a secret but ingenious New England +minister that no town is so worthy the vendue of this pleasing book +as these polite gentlemen and gentlewomen to whom it will be on +Friday offered."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p> + +<p>Authors, if not authoresses, were treated with much respect and +encouragement. Indeed, they were urged to write. Books printed by +subscription were the rule, and, as an inducement, the names of +subscribers were printed in a list at the end of the book, and an extra +copy was given for every six numbers subscribed for. The "undertakers" +did not always trouble themselves to deliver the book when printed. A +notice was posted, or printed in a newspaper, advising subscribers +pretty sharply that their copies (which had apparently been paid for in +advance) must be sent for within a certain time or the books would be +"sold to others desiring." One American poet, the author of "War—An +Heroic Poem," a work which has been lost to us, threatened to prosecute +his patrons for not taking his book. Sometimes the printer of the book +also seized the opportunity of the large circulation to drum up +delinquent citizens who had not paid him at previous dates for news +letters, sermons, funeral verses, etc. One of the first books printed in +Hartford was paid for largely by a man who ran a woollen mill in the +vicinity. He took the convenient occasion to thriftily forward his own +trade by having printed and bound with the poems, and thus distributing +to sheep-farmers and farm-wives in the surrounding towns, full +instructions about preparing the wool to be sent to him.</p> + +<p>Frequently the notices in the newspapers bore, in quaint wording, warm +testimony to the popularity of a book. "The above book is advertised by +the desire of numbers who have read and admired it." "If to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> raise the +soul to heights of honourable pride is not unworthy so great a mind, +praise of this book may be given, though needless, since many request +it." "Many curious gentlemen formerly buying their books in London now +wish to buy only in New England where so acute a manner of composure is +found." "For the polite and inquisitive part of Mankind in New England +these poetick fancies are highly conformed as many residents testify by +their frequent perusal and approval."</p> + +<p>Public encouragement to aspiring authors was not lacking; this +advertisement in the <i>New England Weekly Journal</i> of March, 1728, is +indeed delightful:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is now preparing for the Press, and may upon Suitable +Encouragement be communicated to the Publick, a Miscellany of Poems +of Severall Hands and upon severall occasions some of which have +already been Published and received the Approbation of the best +Judges with many more very late performances of equal if not +superior Beauty which have never yet seen the Light; if therefore +any Ingenious Gentlemen are disposed to contribute towards the +erecting of a Poetickal Monument for the Honour of This Country +Either by their Generous Subscriptions or Composures, they are +desired to convey them to Mr. Daniel Henchman or the Publisher of +this Paper by whom they will be received with Candour and +Thankfulness."</p></div> + +<p>Just fancy the effect of a similar advertisement in a prominent +newspaper of to-day! How composures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> would flow in from the ingenious +gentlemen who love to see themselves in print! What a poetical monument +could be reared—to the very sky! I have never seen in any colonial +newspaper any subsequent references to this proposed collection or +miscellany of composures, and I know of no book that was published at +that time which could answer the description, so I suspect the well-laid +plan came to naught. The specimens of local and ephemeral poetry that +were printed in the colonial press in succeeding years make it easy to +comprehend the failure of the project: the villanously rhymed effusions +fairly imposthumate all the ribald vulgarity of the times; coarseness +and dulness of subject and thought being rivalled only by the +super-coarseness of the verbiage. I do not say that the newspapers +provoked these stupid rhymes, which are about as much poetry as is a +game of crambo; but I do not find them until "newspaper-time," and fear +the extra circulation through the weekly press may be held partly +responsible.</p> + +<p>A book called "A Collection of Poems by Several Hands" apparently was +gathered by methods similar to the one shown by the advertisement just +quoted. It was printed in 1744, and was a puerile and banal collection +containing but few good verses, and was apparently made expressly to +show off the literary accomplishments of Mather Byles, who was what +Carlyle would call an intellectual dapperling.</p> + +<p>Book-auctions, held first in England in 1676, formed one of the rare +diversions in the provinces,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> and were apparently largely attended by +"sentimentalists," as one book-dealer called book-buyers. The business +of book-auctioneering was called, in the bombastic language of the +times, "the sublimest Auxiliary which Science Commerce and Arts either +has or perhaps ever will possess," while the bookseller was called +"Provedore to the Sentimentalists and Professor of Book Auctioneering." +These sales or vendues were frequently held at taverns.</p> + +<p>At a very early day intelligent and progressive Bostonians established a +public library. By the year 1673 bequests had been made to such an +institution, and consignments deemed suitable for it had been sent to +Boston by London booksellers. All these books were properly sober and +pious. The Prince library, that first large American book collection, +which was conceived and started by Thomas Prince in 1703, was nobly +planned and nobly carried out, and deserved more gratitude and more care +than it received at modern hands.</p> + +<p>But many towns had no public library, hence much friendly exchange and +lending of books took place between book-owners and neighbors, sometimes +apparently without the owner's consent or knowledge. The newspapers, +among their sparse advertisements, have many such as this simply naïve +one in the <i>Boston News Letter</i> of July 7, 1712:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A certain Person having lent two Books viz; Rushworths Collections +& Fullers Holy War & forgotten unto whom; These are desiring the +Borrower to be so kind as to return said Books unto Owner."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<p>Or this sarcastic request in the <i>Connecticut Courant</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The gentleman who took the second volume of Bacons Abridgment from +Mr. David Balls bedroom on the 18th of November would do well to +return it to the owner whose name he will find on the 15th Page. If +he choose rather to keep it the owner wishes him to call and take +the rest of the set."</p></div> + +<p>Another Connecticut man is meekly asked to "return the 3rd Vol of Don +Quixote & take the 4th instead if he chuse."</p> + +<p>Connecticut folk seemed to be particularly given to this slipshod +fashion of promiscuous and unlicensed book-borrowing, if we can trust +the apparent proof given by Connecticut newspapers in their many +advertisements of lost books. In some notices it is darkly hinted that +"specifications of books long lent have been given" (to the sheriff +perhaps); and again, a meek suggestion that the owner wishes to read a +long missing volume and would be grateful for an opportunity to do so. +One ungallant soul advertised for "the she-person that borrowed Mr. +Thos. Browns Works from a gentleman she is well acquainted with."</p> + +<p>There was not the redeeming excuse for non-return sometimes given by +like "desuming deadheads" nowadays, that the owner's name had been +forgotten, for the inscription "Perley Morse, His Book," or "Catey +Bradford, Her Book," or whatever the name might be, was quickly and +repeatedly written by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> each colonial owner as soon as the book was +acquired.</p> + +<p>Frequently also the dates and places of residence appear. Even the very +dates of ownership and the quaint old names are interesting. Bathsheba +Spalding, Noca Emmons, Elam Noyes, Titherming Layton, Engrossed Bump, +Sally Box, Tilly Minching, Zerushaddi Key, Comfort Vine—these are a few +of the odd signatures I have found in old books.</p> + +<p>Readers also had a pleasant habit of leaving a sign-manual on the last +page of a book, thus: "Timothy Pitkin perlegit A.D. 1765," "Cotton Smith +perlegit 1740." A clear-speaking lesson are such records to this +generation—a lesson of patience and diligence. How we venerate, with +what awe we regard the name of Timothy Pitkin, and know that he lived to +read through that vast folio—the first ever printed in America—the +"Complete Body of Divinity," a folio of over nine hundred +double-columned, compactly printed pages! And yet, why should not +Timothy Pitkin live through reading it when Samuel Willard lived through +writing it? Entries of dates in old Bibles frequently show that those +sainted old Christians had read entirely through that holy book ten +times in regular order.</p> + +<p>The handwriting in all these ancient books is very different from our +modern penmanship, invariably bearing an appearance not exactly of much +labor, but of much care, as if the writer did not use a pen every +day—did not become too familiar with that weighty implement, and hence +had a vast respect for it when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> he did take it in hand. Every <i>t</i> is +crossed, every <i>i</i> is dotted, every <i>a</i> and <i>o</i> perfectly rounded, every +tail of every <i>g</i> and <i>y</i> and <i>z</i> is precisely twisted in colonial +script. I think the very trouble and preparation incident to writing +conduced to the finish and elegance of the penmanship. No stylographic +pens were used in those days, but instead, a carefully prepared quill; +and the ink was made of ink-cake or ink-powder dissolved in water; or, +more troublesome still, home-made ink, tediously prepared with nutgalls, +walnut or swamp maple bark, or iron filings steeped in vinegar and +water, or copperas.</p> + +<p>Special pains were taken in writing a name in a book. Penmanship was +almost a fine art in colonial days, the one indispensable accomplishment +of a school teacher; and he was often hired to exercise it in writing a +name "perspicuously" in a book. Sometimes the owner's name is seen drawn +with much care in a little wreath or circle of ornamentation. This may +be what Judge Sewall refers to with so much pride when he speaks of +"writing a name" in a gift-book, or it may be what was known as +"conceits" or "fine knotting."</p> + +<p>The colonists had a very reprehensible habit, which (save for the pains +taken in writing) might be called book-scribbling. Rude rhymes and +sentiments are often found with the past owner's name, and form a +title-page lore which, ill-spelt and simple as the verses are, have an +interest to the antiquary of which the writer never dreamed. They +consist chiefly of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> adjurations to honesty, specially with regard to the +special volume thus inscribed:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Steal not this book my honest friend,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">For fear the gallows will be your End."</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"If you dare to steal this Book</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Devil will catch you on his Hook."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This was accompanied by the outline of a very spirited "personal devil" +with a pitchfork and an enormous gridiron.</p> + +<p>Still another appealed to terrors:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"This is Hanah Moxon Her book</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">You may just within it Look</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">You had better not do more</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">For old black Satan's at the Door</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And will snatch at stealing hands</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Look behind you! There He Stands."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>This had a tail-piece of an open door with a very black forked tail +thrust out of it.</p> + +<p>In a leather-bound Bible was seen this rhyme:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Evert Jonson His book</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">God Give him Grase thair in to look</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">not only to looke but to understand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">that Larning is better than Hous or Land</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">When Land is Gon & Gold is spent</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">then larning is most Axelant</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">When I am dead & Rotton</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">If this you see Remember me</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Though others is forgotton."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Different portions of this script have been seen in many books.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> + +<p>Four rhymes seem to be specially the property of schoolboys, being found +in Accidences, Spellers, "Logick" Primers, and other school-books, down +even to the present day.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"This book is one thing, My fist's another,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">If you touch the one thing, You'll feel the other."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">"Hic liber eat meus</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14em;">And that I will show</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">Si aliquis capit</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14em;">I'll give him a blow."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">"This book is mine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">By Law Divine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14em;">And if it runs astray</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">I'll call you kind</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">My desk to find</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14em;">And put it safe away."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Hic liber est meus Deny it who can</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Zenas Graves Junior An honest man."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>There also appears a practical warning which may be read with attention +and profit by the public now a days:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"If thou art borrowed by a friend</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Right welcome shall he be</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">To read, to study, <i>not</i> to lend</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">But to <i>return</i> to me.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Not that imparted knowledge doth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Diminish Learnings Store</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">But books I find if often lent</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Return to me no more."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot2"><p>"Read <i>Slowly</i>—Pause <i>Frequently</i>—Think <i>Seriously</i>—Finger +<i>Lightly</i>—Keep <i>Cleanly</i>—Return <i>Duly</i>—with the <i>Corners</i> of the +Leaves <span class="smcap">Not Turned Down</span>."</p></div> + +<p>The fashion of using book-plates was by no means so general among New +England Puritans as among rich Virginians and New Yorkers and +Pennsylvanian Quakers. Mr. Lichtenstein, writing in the New England +Historical and Genealogical Register in 1886, says he has seen no New +England book-plates of earlier date than 1735. At later dates the +Holyokes, Dudleys, Boylstons, and Phillips, all used book-plates. The +plates most familiar to students in old libraries in New England are +those of the Vaughans and of Isaiah Thomas.</p> + +<p>Another, a living interest is found in these old, dusty, leather-bound +volumes, which is not in the inscriptions and not, alas, in the printed +words. They are the chosen home of a race of pigmy spiderlings who love +musty theology with an affection found in no one else nowadays. In these +dingy homes they live and rear their hideous little progeny: for in the +cold light of a microscope these tiny brown book-dwellers are not +beautiful; they are flat, crab-like, goggle-eyed, hairy; and they zigzag +across the page on their ugly crooked legs in a sprawling, drunken +fashion. They do not eat the books; they live apparently on air; yet if +you crush them between the pages they leave a stain of vivid scarlet to +reproach you in future readings for your needless cruelty. I cannot kill +them; though flaming is their blood's rebuke, it is aristocratically as +well as theologically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> blue. In their veins runs the ichor—arachnidian +though it be—that came over in the Mayflower; yes, doubly honored, came +over in the special stateroom of an Ainsworth's Psalm-Book or a Genevan +Bible. No degrading alliances, no admixtures through foreign emigration, +have crossed that pure inbred strain; my book-spiders are of real +Pilgrim stock—they are true New England Brahmins.</p> + +<p>Any one who turns over with attention the books of an old New England +library must be struck with a sense of the affection with which these +books have been treasured, the care with which they have been read, and, +in case of accident, with which they have been repaired. One psalm-book, +nibbled by mice, has had every page neatly mended by the insertion of +thin sheets of paper to replace the lost bits; and some painstaking and +pious New Englander, with a pen and skill worthy the illuminating monks +of another faith, has minutely printed the missing letters on both sides +of the inserted slip in a text no larger than the surrounding print. +Another book, a Bible, burnt in round holes by a slow-burning coal from +the pipe of a sleepy reader, has been mended in the same careful manner. +I have seen Bibles that have been read and turned over till the margins +of the pages at the lower corner and outer edge were worn off down to +the print by loving daily use. In one such the margins had been neatly +replaced by pasted slips of paper. In more than one book I have found a +minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the +volume, showing a personal interest and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> love for a book which can +hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show a +patient and appreciative perusal.</p> + +<p>Though books were so closely cherished, so seemly bekept in colonial +days, they were subject to one indignity with which now they are +unmenaced and undegraded—they were sometimes sentenced to be burned by +the public hangman. In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick +Muggleton, who set up to be prophets, were burned by that abhorred +public functionary in Boston market-place; and two years later Quaker +books were similarly destroyed. William Pyncheon's book was burned, in +1650, in Boston Market. In 1707 a "libel on the Governor" was hanged by +the hangman. In 1754 a pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters," a +sharp political criticism on the Massachusetts Court, was thus burned in +King Street, Boston. From the <i>Connecticut Gazette</i> of November 29th, +1755, we learn that another offending publication was sentenced to be +"publickly whipt according to Moses Law with 40 stripes save one, then +Burnt." How a true book-lover winces at the thought of the public +hangman placing his blood-stained hand on any book, no matter how much a +"monster."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2> + +<h3>"ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS"</h3> + + +<p>From the earliest days the Puritan colonists fought stoutly, for the +sake of St. Paul, against long hair. They proved themselves worthy the +opprobrious name of Roundhead. Endicott's first act was to institute a +solemn and insistent association against long hair. This wearing of long +locks was one of the existing evils, a wile of the devil, which bade +fair to creep into New England, and in its incipiency was proceeded +against by the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair +like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly +against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson +Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched +burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the +long-growing locks—"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or +Russianly—whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long +nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence +for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off +their long hair into a civil frame." Exact rules were given from the +pulpit as to the prop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>erly Puritan length—that the hair should not lie +over the neck, the band, or the doublet collar; in the winter it might +be suffered to grow a little below the ear for warmth. Personal pride +and dignity were appealed to, that no Christian gentleman would wish to +look like "every Ruffian, every wild-Irish, every hangman, every varlet +and vagabond." By Sewall's time, however, Puritan though he were, we see +his white locks flowing long over his doublet collar, and forming a +fitting frame to his serene, benignant countenance.</p> + +<p>Puritan women also were not above reproach in regard to the fashion of +extravagant hair-dressing; they also "showed the vile note of +impudency." One parson thus severely addressed them from the pulpit: +"The special sin of woman is pride and haughtiness, and that because +they are generally more ignorant and worthless," and he added that this +feminine pride vented itself in gesture, hair, behavior, and apparel. I +fear all this was true, for the Court also complained of my ignorant and +worthless sex for "cutting and curling and laying out of the hair, +especially among the younger sort." Increase Mather gave them this +thrust in his sermon on the comet, in 1683: "Will not the haughty +daughters of Zion refrain their pride in apparell? Will they lay out +their hair, and wear their false locks, their borders, and towers like +comets about their heads?" And they were called "Apes of Fancy, +friziling and curlying of their hayr."</p> + +<p>I think the sober and decorous women settlers must have worn their hair +cut straight across the forehead,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> like our modern "bangs;" for +Higginson, writing of the Indians in 1692, says: "Their hair is +generally black and cut before like our gentlewomen." The false locks +denounced by Mather were doubtless "a pair of Perukes which are pretty" +of Pepys's time, about 1656; or the "heart breakers" worn in 1670, which +set out like butterfly-wings over the ears, and which were described +thus: "False locks set on wyers to make them stand at a distance from +the head."</p> + +<p>From a letter written by Knollys to Cecil we learn that Mary Queen of +Scots wore these perukes. He says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mary Seaton among other pretty devices yesterday and this day, she +did set such a curled hair upon the Queen that was said to be a +Peruke, that showed very delicately, and every other day she hath a +new device of head dressing without any cost, and yet setteth forth +a woman gaylie well."</p></div> + +<p>The "towers like comets" were doubtless commodes, which were in high +fashion in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century until about +the year 1711, though I have never found that the word commode was used +in America. These commodes were enormously high frames of wire covered +with thin silk, or plaitings of muslin or lace, or frills of ribbon—and +sadly belied their name.</p> + +<p>A simpler form of hair-dressing succeeded the commode; portraits painted +during the following half-century, such as those of Copley, Smibert, and +Blackburn, show an elegant and graceful form of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> coiffure, the hair +brushed back and raised slightly from the forehead, and sometimes curled +loosely behind the ears. At a later date the curls were almost +universally surmounted by a lace cap. Pomatum began to be used by the +middle of the century. In the <i>Boston News Letter</i> of 1768, we read of +"Black White and Yellow Pomatum from six Coppers to Two Shillings per +Roll." The hair was frequently powdered. Hair-dressers sold powdering +puffs and powdering bags and powdering machines, and a dozen different +varieties of hair-powder—brown, maréchal, scented, plain, and blue. By +Revolutionary times a new tower, or "talematongue," had arisen; the +front hair was pulled up over a stuffed cushion or roll, and mixed with +powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short +curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes, +jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a +yard in height. This fashion was much admired by some; a young lover of +the day wrote thus sentimentally of a fair Hartford girl: "Her hair +covered her cushion as a plate of the most beautiful enamel frosted with +silver." A Revolutionary soldier wrote a poem, however, which regarded +from a different point of view this elaborate headgear in such a time of +national depression. His rhymes began thus:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">"Ladies you had better leave off your high rolls</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Lest by extravagance you lose your poor souls</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Then haul out the wool, and likewise the tow</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 9em;">'Twill clothe our whole army we very well know."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> + +<p>The "Dress-à-la-Independance" was a style of hair-dressing with thirteen +curls at the neck, thus to honor the thirteen new States.</p> + +<p>In the year 1771 Anna Green Winslow wrote in her diary an account of one +of these elaborate hair-dressings which she then saw. She ends her +description thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"How long she was under his opperation I know not. I saw him twist +& tug & pick & cut off whole locks of gray hair at a slice, the +lady telling him he would have no hair to dress next time, for a +space of an hour and a half, when I left them he seeming not to be +near done."</p></div> + +<p>She also gives a most sprightly account of the manufacture of a roll for +her own hair:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I had my <span class="smcap">Heddus</span> roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made +less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my +head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is +not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that & +horsehair very coarse & a little human hair of a yellow hue that I +suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. (the +barber) made it, all carded together and twisted up. When it first +came home, Aunt put it on, and my new cap upon it; she then took up +her apron and measured me & from the roots of my hair on my +forehead to the top of my notions I measured above an inch longer +than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my +chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than Virtue and +Modesty without the help of fals hair, Red-Cow tail or D. the +barber."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p> + +<p>The <i>Boston Gazette</i> had, in 1771, a ludicrous description of an +accident to a young woman in the streets of that town. In an infaust +moment she was thrown down by a runaway, and her tower received serious +damage. It burst its thin outer wall of natural hair, and disgorged +cotton and wool and tow stuffing, false hair, loops of ribbon and gauze. +Ill-bred boys kicked off portions of the various excrescences, and the +tower-wearer was jeered at until she was glad to escape with her own few +natural locks.</p> + +<p>A New England clergyman—Manasseh Cutler—wrote thus of the head-dress +of Mrs. General Knox in 1787:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Her hair in front is craped at least a foot high much in the form +of a churn bottom upward and topped off with a wire skeleton in the +same form covered with black gauze which hangs in streamers down +her back. Her hair behind is in a large braid turned up and +confined with a monstrous large crooked comb. She reminded me of +the monstrous cap worn by the Marquis of La Fayettes valet, +commonly called on this account the Marquises devil."</p></div> + +<p>Hair so elaborately arranged could not be dressed daily. Once a week was +frequently thought sufficient; and some very disgusting accounts are +given of methods to dress the hair so it would "keep safely" for a +month. The Abbé Robin wrote of New England women in 1781:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The hair of the head is raised and supported upon cushions to an +extravagant height somewhat resembling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> the manner in which the +French ladies wore their hair some years ago. Instead of powdering +they often wash the head, which answers the purpose well enough as +their own hair is commonly of an agreeable light color, but the +more fashionable among them begin to adopt the European fashion of +setting off the head to the best advantage."</p></div> + +<p>The fashion of the roll was of much importance, and various shaped rolls +were advertised; we find one of "a modish new roll weighing but 8 ounces +when others weigh fourteen ounces." We can well believe that such a +heavy roll made poor Anna Winslow's head "ach and itch like anything." A +Salem hair-dresser, who employed twelve barbers, advertised thus in +1773: "Ladies shall be attended to in the polite constructions of rolls +such as may tend to raise their heads to any pitch they desire."</p> + +<p>The grotesqueness of such adornment found frequent ridicule in prose and +verse. One poet sang:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Give Chloe a bushel of horsehair and wool,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Of paste and pomatum a pound,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">And gauze to encompass it round.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Of all the gay colours the rainbow displays</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Be those ribbons which hang on her head,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Be her flowers adapted to make the folks gaze,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">And about the whole work be they spread.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Let her flaps fly behind for a yard at the least,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Let her curls meet just under her chin,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Let those curls be supported to keep up the list,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">With an hundred instead of one pin."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p> + +<p>We can easily see that after such rough treatment the hair needed +restoring waters; and indeed from earliest times hair-restorers and +hair-dyes did these "vain ancients" use. "Women with juice of herbs gray +locks disguised." In these days of manifold mysterious nostrums that +gild the head of declining age and make glad the waste places on bald +young masculine pates, let us read the simple receipts of the good old +times:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take half a pound of Aqua Mellis in the Springtime of the Year, +warm a little of it every morning when you rise in a Sawcer, and +tie a little Spunge to a fine Box combe, and dip it in the water +and therewith moisten the roots of the hair in Combing it, and it +will grow long and thick and curled in a very short time."</p> + +<p>"Take three spoonfuls of Honey and a good handful of Vine Twigs +that twist like Wire, and beat them wel, and strain their Juyce +into the Honey and anoynt the Bald Places therewith."</p></div> + +<p>Here is what Captain Sam Ingersoll of Salem used, or at any rate had the +formula of, in 1685:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A Metson to make a mans heare groe when he is bald. Take sume fier +flies & sum Redd wormes & black snayls and sum hume bees and dri +them and pound them & mixt them in milk or water."</p></div> + +<p>These washes were not so expensive as Hirsutus or Tricopherous, but +quite as effective perhaps. There were hair-dyes, too, "to make hair +grow black though any other color," and the leaf that holds this +precious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> instruction is sadly worn and spotted with various tinted +inks, as though the words had been often read and copied:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take a little Aqua Fortis, put therein a groat or sixpence, as to +the quantity of the aforesaid water, then set both to dissolve +before the fire, then dip a small Spunge in the said water, and wet +your beard or hair therewith, but touch not the skin."</p></div> + +<p>Hair-dressers also improved on nature. William Warden, a wig maker in +King Street, Boston, respectfully informed the ladies of that town that +he would "colour the hair on the head from a Red or any other +Disagreable Colour to a Dark Brown or Black."</p> + +<p>It did not matter long to our forefathers whether these hair-dyes dyed, +or hair-restorers restored, for a fashion hated by some of the early +Puritans as a choice device of Satan—the fashion of wig-wearing—was to +revolutionize the matter of masculine hair. The question of wigs was a +difficult one to settle, since the ministers themselves could not agree. +John Wilson and Cotton Mather wore them, but Rev. Mr. Noyes launched +denunciations at them from the pulpit and the Apostle Eliot delivered +many a blast against "prolix locks with boiling zeal," and he +stigmatized them as a "luxurious feminine protexity," but yielded sadly +later in life to the fact that the "lust for wigs is become +insuperable." The legislature of Massachusetts also denounced periwigs +in 1675, but all in vain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p> + +<p>They were termed by one author "artificial deformed Maypowles fit to +furnish her that in a Stage play should represent some Hagge of Hell," +and other choice epithets were applied. To learn how these "Horrid +Bushes of Vanity" could be hated, let us hear the pages of Judge +Sewall's diary:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"1701. Having last night heard that Joshua Willard had cut off his +hair (a very full head of hair) and put on a Wigg, I went to him +this morning. Told his mother what I came about and she call'd him. +I enquired of him what Extremity had forced him to put off his own +Hair and put on a Wigg? He answered none at all. But said that his +Hair was streight and that it parted behinde. Seem'd to argue that +men might as well shave their hair off their head, as off their +face. I answered men were men before they had any hair on their +faces (half of man-kind never have any). God seems to have ordain'd +our Hair as a Test, to see whether we can bring out to be content +at his finding: or whether we would be our own Carvers, Lords, and +come no more at Him. If we disliked our Skin or Nails; tis no +Thanks to us for all that we cut them not off.... He seem'd to say +would leave off his Wigg when his hair was grown. I spake to his +Father of it a day or two after. He thank'd me that had discoursed +his Son, and told me when his Hair was grown to cover his ears he +promised to leave off his Wigg. If he had known it would have +forbidden him."</p></div> + +<p>At a later day, though it was "gravaminous," Sewall would not go to hear +the bewigged Joshua preach, but attended another meeting. The Judge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> +frequently states his annoyance at the universally wigged condition of +New England.</p> + +<p>I never read of these wig-wearing times without fresh amaze at the +manner in which our sensible ancestors disfigured themselves. We read +such advertisements of mountebank head-gear as this, from the <i>Boston +News Letter</i> of August 14, 1729:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott Barber, a light Flaxen +Naturall Wigg Parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow +Ribband is of a Red Pinck Colour. The Caul is in Rows of Red Green +& White."</p></div> + +<p>Twenty shillings reward was offered for this gay wig, and "if it be +offered for sale to any it is desired they wont stop it." Grafton +Fevergrure, the peruke-maker at the sign of the Black Wigg, lost a +"Light Flaxen Natural Wigg with a Peach-Blossom-coloured Ribband." In +1755 the house of barber Coes, of Marblehead, was broken into, and eight +brown and three grizzle wigs were stolen; some of these had "feathered +tops," some were bordered with red ribbon, some with purple. In 1754 +James Mitchel had white wigs and "grizzels." He asked £20 O. T. for the +best. "Light Grizzels are £15, dark Grizzels are £12 10s." Under date of +1731 we read of the loss of "a horsehair bobwig," and another with crown +hair, each with gray ribbon, an Indian hair bobwig with a light ribbon, +and a goat's hair natural wig with red and white ribbons.</p> + +<p>The "London Magazine" gave in 1753 a list of curious names of wigs: "The +pigeons wing, the comet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> the cauliflower, the royal bird, the +staircase, the ladder, the brush, the wild boars back, the temple, the +rhinoceros, the crutch, the negligent, the chancellor, the out-bob, the +long-bob, the half-natural, the chain-buckle, the corded buckle, the +detached buckle, the Jasenist bob, the drop wigg, the snail back, the +spinage-seed, the artichoke."</p> + +<p>Hawthorne's list of New England wigs was shorter: "The tie, the +brigadier, the spencer, the albemarle, the major, the ramillies, the +grave full-bottom, and the giddy feather-top." To these let me add the +campaign, the neck-lock, the bob, the lavant, the vallaney, the +drop-wig, the buckle-wig, the bag-wig, the Grecian fly, the peruke, the +beau-peruke, the long-tail, the bob-tail, the fox-tail, the cut-wig, the +tuck-wig, the twist-wig, the scratch. Sydney says the name campaign was +applied to a wig which was imported from France in 1702, and was made +very full and curled eighteen inches to the front. This date cannot be +correct, when we find John Winthrop writing in 1695 for "two wiggs one a +campane, the other short." The Ramillies wig had a long plaited tail, +with a big bow at the top of the braid and a small one at the bottom. It +would be idle to attempt to describe all these wigs, how they swelled at +the sides, and turned under in rolls, and rose in puffs, and then shrank +to a small close wig that vanished at Revolutionary times in powdered +natural hair and a queue of ribbon, a bag, or an eel-skin, and finally +gave way to cropped hair "à-la-Bru<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>tus or à-la-Titus," as a Boston +hair-dresser advertised in the year 1800.</p> + +<p>Not only did gentlemen wear wigs, but children, servants, prisoners, +sailors, and soldiers also; as early certainly as 1716 the fashion was +universal. So great was the demand for this false head-gear, that wigs +were made of goat-hair and horse-hair, as well as human hair. The cost +of dressing and caring for wigs became a heavy item of expense to the +wearer, and income to the barber; often eight or ten pounds a year were +paid for the care of a single wig. Wigmakers' materials were expensive +also—"wig ribans, cauls, curling pipes, sprigg wyers, and wigg steels;" +and were advertised in vast numbers that show the universal prevalence +of the fashion.</p> + +<p>By the beginning of this century, women—having powdered and greased and +pulled their hair almost off their heads—were glad to wear their +remaining locks à-la-Flora or à-la-Virginia, or to wear wigs to simulate +these styles. We find Eliza Southgate Bowne writing thus to her mother +from Boston in the year 1800:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"... Now Mamma what do you think I am going to ask for? A WIG. +Eleanor Coffin has got a new one just like my hair and only 5 +dollars. I must either cut my hair or have one. I cannot dress it +at all <i>stylish</i>. Mrs. Coffin bought Eleanor's and says that she +will write to Mrs. Sumner to get me one just like it. How much time +it will save—in one year! We could save it in pins and paper, +besides the <i>trouble</i>. At the Assembly I was quite ashamed of my +head, for nobody had long hair. If you will consent to my having +one do send me over a 5 dollar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> bill by the post immediately after +you receive this, for I am in hopes to have it for the next +Assembly—do send me word immediately if you can let me have one."</p></div> + +<p>This persuasive appeal was successful, for frequent references to the +wig appear in later letters.</p> + +<p>Though false teeth and the fashion of filling the teeth were known even +by the ancient Egyptians, the science of dentistry is a modern one. But +little care of the teeth was taken in early colonial days, and the +advice given for their preservation was very simple:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"If you will keep your teeth from rot, plug, or aking, wash the +mouth continually with Juyce of Lemons, and afterwards rub your +teeth with a Sage Leaf and Wash your teeth after meat with faire +water. To cure Tooth Ach. 1. Take Mastick and chew it in your mouth +until it is as soft as Wax, then stop your teeth with it, if +hollow, there remaining till it's consumed, and it wil certainly +cure you. 2. The tooth of a dead man carried about a man presently +suppresses the pains of the Teeth."</p></div> + +<p>I suppose this latter ghoulish cure would not affect the teeth of a +woman; if, however, a seventeenth or eighteenth century dame could cure +the toothache simply with a plug of mastic, she was much to be envied by +her degenerate nineteenth-century sister with her long dentist's bill.</p> + +<p>If we can believe Josselyn, writing in 1684, New England women, then as +now, lost their teeth at an early age. He speaks of them as "pitifully +Tooth shaken." He recommended to relieve their misery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> a compound of +brimstone, gunpowder, and butter, to be "rubbed on the mandible." This +colonial remedy is still employed on New England farms. Burnaby, writing +in 1759, said that New England dames had universally and even +proverbially very indifferent teeth. The Abbé Robin says they were +toothless at eighteen or twenty years of age, and attributes this +premature disfigurement to tea-drinking and the eating of warm bread.</p> + +<p>When we read the composition of the tooth-powders and dentifrices used +in early colonial days, we wonder that they had any teeth left to scour. +Here is Mr. Ferene's "rare Dentifrice:"</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"First take eight ounces of Irios roots, also four ounces of +Pomistone, and eight ounces of Cutel Bone, also eight ounces of +Mother of Pearl, and eight ounces of Coral, and a pound of Brown +Sugar Candy, and a pound of Brick if you desire to make them red; +but he did oftener make them white, and then instead of the Brick +did take a pound of fine Alabaster; all this being thoroughly +beaten and sifted through a fine searse the powder is then ready +prepar'd to make up in a past which must be done as follows:</p> + +<p class="center">To make the Said Powders into a past.</p> + +<p>Take a little Gum Dragant and lay it in steep twelve hours, in +Orange flower water or Damask Rose Water; and when it is dissolved +take the sweet Gum and grind it on a Marble Stone with the +aforesaid Powder, and mixing some crums of white bread it will come +into a past, the which you may make Dentifrices, of what shape<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> or +fashion you please, but long rowles is the most commodious for your +use."</p></div> + +<p>Just fancy scouring your teeth with a commodious roll of cuttle-bone, +brick-dust, and pumice-stone!</p> + +<p>Another tooth-powder was composed of coral, Portugal snuff, Armenian +bole, "ashes of good tobacco which has been burnt," and gum myrrh; and +ground up "broken pans"—coarse earthenware might be substituted for the +coral.</p> + +<p>A very popular and much advertised tooth-wash was called "Dentium +Conservator." It was made and sold in New England by the manufacturer +and vendor of Bryson's Famous Bug Liquid—not an alluring companionship. +This person also "removed Stumps and unsound Teeth with a dexterity +peculiar to Himself at the Sign on the Leapord." There were also rival +Essences of Pearl advertised, each equally eulogized and disparaged; +"Infallible Sivit rendering the teeth white as alabaster tho' they be +black as Coal;" and "Very Neat Hawksbill and Key Draught Teeth Pullers." +These key-draught teeth-pullers were one of the cruellest instruments of +torture of the day, often breaking the jaw-bone, and always causing +unutterable anguish. Old Zabdiel Boylston advertised in the <i>News +Letter</i>, in 1712, "Powder to refresh the Gums & whiten the Teeth." There +were also sold "tooth-sopes, tooth-blanchs, tooth-rakes."</p> + +<p>I cannot find any notice of the sale of "teeth brushes" till nearly +Revolutionary times. Perhaps the colonists used, as in old England, +little brushes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> made of "dentissick root" or mallow, chewed into a +fibrous swab.</p> + +<p>I have seen no advertisements that strike a greater chill than the +scanty notices of early dentists and dentistry that appear at the latter +part of the past century. The glory of having a Revolutionary patriot +for a workman cannot soften the hard plainness of speech of this +advertisement in the <i>Boston Evening Post</i> of September 26, 1768:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Whereas many Persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore +Teeth by Accident or Otherways to their great Detriment not only in +looks but in speaking both in public and private. This is to inform +all such that they may have them replaced with Artificial Ones that +look as well as the Natural and answer the End of Speaking by Paul +Revere Goldsmith near the head of Dr. Clarkes wharf. All Persons +who have had false Teeth Fixed by Mr. Jos Baker Surgeon Dentist and +They have got loose as they will in Time may have them fastened by +above said Revere who learnt the method of fixing them from Mr. +Baker."</p></div> + +<p>It will be remarked that these teeth were only to display and talk with, +and were but sorry helps in eating. This very appalling advertisement +from the <i>Massachusetts Centinel</i> gives a clue to the way in which +missing teeth were replaced: "Live Teeth. Those Persons inclined to +dispose of Live Teeth may apply to Templeman." Or this from the +<i>Connecticut Courant</i> of August 17, 1795: "A generous price paid for +Human Front Teeth perfectly sound, by Dr. Skinner." These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> "live teeth" +were inserted in other and vainer, if not more squeamish persons' +mouths, by a process of "in-grafting" which was much in vogue. There +were few New England dentists <i>eo nomine</i> until well into this +century—but three in Boston in 1816. As silversmith and engraver Revere +also set teeth, so Isaac Greenwood, who waited at their houses on all +who required his dental services, also made umbrellas, sold cane for +hoop petticoats, and made dice and chessmen. Wm. Greenwood pulled teeth +and sold pianos; and Dr. Flagg, a surgeon dentist, advertised in 1797 +that he would get hand-organs in Europe suitable for church use. John +Templeman, the live-teeth purchaser, was a broker as well as a dentist; +and Whitlock, the actor, did a thriving dental business, and doubtless +carried his "neat hawksbill or key-draught tooth-wrench" to the +play-house, and used it, to his own profit and his fellow-townsmen's +misery, between the acts.</p> + +<p>Though the Pilgrim women were doubtless as simple at their toilet as +they were in their dress, the sudden growth of the colony in wealth +brought to their daughters, besides variety and richness of dress, a +love of cosmetics. Dunton tells positively of one painted face in Boston +in 1686. He said, "to hide her age she paints, and to hide her painting +dares hardly laugh." One New England minister thus reproved and warned +the women of his congregation: "At the resurrection of the Just there +will no such sight be met as the Angels carrying Painted Ladies in their +arms."</p> + +<p>In the inventory of one of the early Cambridge set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>tlers, Robert Daniel, +is found the item "two Ceruse Jugs." Ceruse was a preparation of white +lead with which women then painted their faces, and I think these ceruse +jugs were part of the paraphernalia of my Lady Daniel's toilet-table.</p> + +<p>With the advent of newspapers came various advertisements that showed +the vanity of our forbears, the "collusions of women, their oyntments +and potticary drugs, and all their slibber sawces."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"An Excellent Wash for the Skin which entirely taketh out all +Freckles Moath & Sunburn from the Face Neck & Hands, which with +Frequent Use adds a most Agreeable Lustre to the Complexion, +softens & beautifies the Skin to Admiration And is generally used +and approved of by most of the Gentry in London <i>of both Sexes</i>."</p> + +<p>"Best Face Powder which gives a fine Bloom to the Face which +answers all the intents of White Paint without that Pernicious +effect that attends Paint. Also a Composition to take off +Superficious Hair."</p></div> + +<p>The latter clause shows that our great-grandmothers were quite <i>au fait</i> +with the nostrums of the present day, with "pargetting, painting, +slicking, glazing, and renewing old rivelled faces."</p> + +<p>Many pretty rules may be found in old books and diaries, that are of New +England, rules "to make the face fair" and to "make sweet the mouth."</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take the flowers of Rosemary and seeth them in VVhite VVine, with +which wash your face, and if you drink thereof it wil make you have +a sweet breath."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> + +<p>Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the +early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's +milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were +to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a +"faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew. +Could this have been but a sly trick to get the lasses from their beds +betimes? We know the early hour at which Madam Pepys had to bathe her +mighty handsome face in the beautifying spring dew.</p> + +<p>Patches were worn as eagerly, apparently, by Boston as by London belles. +Whitefield complained of the jewels, patches, and gay apparel donned in +New England. In scores of old newspapers after 1760 appear notices of +the sale of "Face Patches," "Patch for Ladies," "Gum Patches," etc., and +the frequency of advertisement would indicate a popular and ready sale.</p> + +<p>With regard to the bathing habits of our ancestors but little can be +said, and but little had best be said. Charles Francis Adams writes, +with witty plainness, "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed +that which ranks next to godliness, then judged by the nineteenth +century standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth +century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they +lacked of the former." He says there was not a bath-room in the town of +Quincy prior to the year 1820. And of what use would pitchers or tubs of +water have been in bed-rooms in the winter time, when if exposed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> over +night solid ice would be found therein in the morning? The washing of +linen in New England homes was done monthly; it is to be hoped the +personal baths were more frequent, even under the apparent difficulties +of accomplishment. I must state, in truth, though with deep +mortification, that I cannot find in inventories even of Revolutionary +times the slightest sign of the presence of balneary appurtenances in +bed-rooms; not even of ewers, lavers, and basins, nor of pails and tubs. +As petty pieces of furniture, such as stools, besoms, framed pictures, +and looking-glasses are enumerated, this conspicuous absence of what we +deem an absolute necessity for decency speaks with a persistent and +exceedingly disagreeable voice of the unwashed condition of our +ancestors, a condition all the more mortifying when we consider their +exceeding external elegance in dress. This total absence of toilet +appliances does not of course render impossible a special lavatory or +bath-room in the house, or the daily importation to the bed-rooms of +hot-water cans, twiggen bottles, bath-tubs, and basins from other +portions of the house; but even that equipment would show a lack of +adequate bathing facilities. Nor do the tiny toilet jugs and basins of +Staffordshire ware that date from the first part of this century point +to any very elaborate ablutions.</p> + +<p>But these be parlous words an we wish to honor the memory of our New +England grandsires; and let us remember that these negative toilet +traits were not peculiar to them, but dated from the fatherland.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> A +century ago the English were said to be the only European people that +had the unenviable distinction of going to the dinner-table without +previously washing or "dressing" the hands.</p> + +<p>One very unpleasant cosmetic, or rather detergent, was in constant use, +however, throughout colonial times—wash-balls. They were imported as +early as 1693 in company with scented and plain hair-powder. In 1771, +"Gentlemen's Fine Washballs" were advertised in Boston, and "Scented +Marbled Washballs." Other varieties of these substitutes for soap were +Chemical, Greek, Venice, Marseilles, camphor, ambergris, and Bologna +wash-balls. This is a rule given in olden times for the "Composition for +Best Wash Balls:"</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take forty pounds of Rice in fine powder, twenty eight pounds of +fine flour, twenty eight pounds of starch powder, twelve pounds of +White Lead, and four pounds of Orris Root in fine powder but no +Whitening. Mix the whole well together and pass it through a fine +sieve, then place it in a dry place and keep it for use. Great care +must be taken that the Flour be not musty, in which case the Balls +will in time crack and fall to pieces. To this composition may be +added Dutch pink or brown fine damask powder according to the +colour required when the Wash Balls are quite dry."</p></div> + +<p>The effect of so large an amount of white lead must have been felt and +shown most deleteriously upon the complexion of the user of this +disagreeable compound.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Ipswitch balls"—also the mode—were more pleasing:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take a pound of fine White Castill Sope; shave it thin in a pinte +of Rose water, and let it stand two or three dayes, then pour all +the water from it, and put to it a halfe a pinte of fresh water, +and so let it stand one whole day, then pour out that, and put to +it halfe a pinte more and let it stand a night more, then put to it +halfe an ounce of powder called sweet Marjoram, a quarter of an +ounce of Winter Savory, two or three drops of the Oil of Spike and +the Oil of Cloves, three grains of musk, and as much Ambergreese, +work all these together in a fair Mortar with the powder of an +Almond Cake dryed and beaten as small as fine flowre, so rowl it +round in your hands in Rose water."</p></div> + +<p>The favorite soap, if one can judge from importations, was "Brown or +Gray Bristol Sope," but this was not used by many in the community. The +manufacture of home-made soap, of soft soap, was one of the universal, +most important, and most trying of all the household industries. The +refuse grease of the family cooking was stowed away in an unsavory mass +till early spring, and the wood ashes from the fireplaces were also +stored. When the soap-making took place, the ashes were placed in a +leach tub out of doors. This tub was sometimes made from the section of +the bark of a birch tree; it was set loosely in a circular groove in a +base of wood, or preferably of stone. Water was poured on the ashes, and +the lye trickled from an outlet cut in the groove. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> boiling of the +lye and grease was an ill-smelling process, which was also carried on +out of doors, and required an enormous amount of labor and patience. It +was judged that when the compound was strong enough to hold up an egg, +the soap was done. This strong soft soap was kept in a wooden "soap box" +in the kitchen, and used for toilet as well as household purposes.</p> + +<p>Dearly did the English and the New English love perfumes. They made +little rolls of sweet-scented powders and gums and oils, "as large as +pease," that they placed between rose-leaves and burned on coals in +skillets or in little perfume-holders to scent the room. They burned on +their open hearths mint and rose-leaves with sugar. They took the "maste +of sweet Apple trees gathered betwixt two Lady days," and with gums and +perfumes made bracelets and pomanders, "to keep to one a sweet smell." +They made cakes of damask rose-leaves and pulvilio, civit, and musk, of +"linet and ambergreese," to perfume their linen chests, for lavender +thrived not in New England. The duties of the still-room were the most +luxury-bearing of all the old household industries. Its very name brings +to us sweet scents of Araby, as it brought to our forbears the most +charming and nice of all their domestic occupations. But these duties +were not easy nor expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the +still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, +from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and +limbecks. In every garret, from every raf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>ter, slowly swayed great +susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and +distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown +through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In +many an old garret now bare of such stores "mints still perfume the +air;" the very walls exhale "the homesick smell of dry forgotten herbs."</p> + +<p>From these old stills, these retorts and mills, came not only perfumes +and oils and beauty-waters, but half the medicines and diet-drinks, all +the "kitchen-physicke" of the domestic and even the professional +pharmacopæia.</p> + +<p>Perfumes were also imported; we frequently find advertised "Royal Honey +Water, an Excellent Perfume, good against Deafness, and to make the hair +grow as the directions Sets forth. 1s 6d per bottle and proportionate by +Ounce." Old Zabdiel Boylston had it in 1712. Spirit of Benjamin was also +for toilet uses. This was the base of the well-known scent known as +Queen Elizabeth's Perfume. It was combined with sweet marjoram. Lavender +water was apparently a great favorite for importation, and we find +notices of lavender bottles with shagreen cases.</p> + +<p>We find in newspaper days many advertisements of other toilet articles +such as nail-knippers, pick-tooth cases, silk and worsted powder-puffs, +deerskin powder bags, lip-salve, ivory scratch-backs, flesh brushes, +curling and pinching tongs, all showing a strongly crescent vanity and +love of luxury.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2> + +<h3>RAIMENT AND VESTURE</h3> + +<p>We know definitely the dress of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, for +the inventory of the "Apparell for 100 men" furnished by the +Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628 is still in existence. From it we +learn that enough clothing was provided to supply to each emigrant four +"peare of shewes," four "peare of stockings," a "peare Norwich garters," +four shirts, two "sutes dublet and hose of leather lynd with oil'd skyn +leather, ye hose & dublett with hookes & eyes," a "sute of Norden +dussens or hampshire kersies lynd, the hose with skins, dublets with +lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys," four bands, two handkerchiefs, a +"wastcoate of greene cotton bound about with red tape," a leather +girdle, a Monmouth cap, a "black hatt lyned in the browes with lether," +five "Red knit capps mill'd about 5d a piece," two pair of gloves, a +mandillion "lyned with cotton," one pair of breeches and waistcoat, and +a "lether sute of Dublett & breeches of oyled lether," and one pair of +leather breeches and "drawers to serve to weare with both their other +sutes."</p> + +<p>This surely was a liberal outfit save perhaps in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> matter of shirts +and handkerchiefs, and doubtless intended to last many years. Though +simple it was far from being a sombre one. Scarlet caps and green +waistcoats bound with red made cheerful bits of color alongside the +leather breeches and buff doublets on Salem shore.</p> + +<p>The apparel of the Piscataquay planters, furnished in 1635, varied +somewhat from that just enumerated. Their waistcoats were scarlet, and +they had cassocks of cloth and canvas, instead of doublets. Though +scarce more than a lustrum had passed since the settlement on the shores +of the Bay, long hose like the Florentine hose had become entirely +old-fashioned and breeches were the wear. Coats—"lynd coats, papous +coats, and moose coats"—had also been invented, or at any rate dubbed +with that name and assumed. Cassocks, doublets, and jerkins varied +little in shape, and the names seem to have been interchangeable. +Mandillions, said by some authorities to be cloaks, were in fact much +like the doublets, and were worn apparently as an over-garment or +great-coat. The name appears not in inventories after the earliest +years.</p> + +<p>Though simplicity of dress was one of the cornerstones of the Puritan +Church, the individual members did not yield their personal vanity +without many struggles. As soon as the colonies rallied from the first +years of poverty and, above all, of comparative isolation, and a sequent +tide of prosperity and wealth came rolling in, the settlers began to +pick up in dress, to bedeck themselves, to send eagerly to the mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> +country for new petticoats and doublets that, when proudly donned, did +not seem simple and grave enough for the critical eyes of the omnipotent +New England magistrates and ministers. Hence restraining and simplifying +sumptuary laws were passed. In 1634, in view of some new fashions which +were deemed by these autocrats to be immodest and extravagant, this +order was sent forth by the General Court:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"That no person either man or woman shall hereafter make or buy any +apparel, either woolen or silk or linen with any lace on it, +silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said +clothes. Also that no person either man or woman shall make or buy +any slashed clothes other than one slash in each sleeve and another +in the back; also all cut-works, embroideries, or needlework cap, +bands, and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn under +the aforesaid penalty; also all gold or silver girdles, hatbands, +belts, ruffs, beaverhats are prohibited to be bought and worn +hereafter."</p></div> + +<p>Liberty was thriftily given the planters, however, to "wear out such +apparel as they are now provided of except the immoderate great sleeves, +slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings," which latter +were apparently beyond Puritanical endurance.</p> + +<p>In 1639 "immoderate great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands +and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and capes" were added to the list +of tabooed garments.</p> + +<p>In 1651 the General Court again expressed its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> "utter detestation and +dislike that men or women of meane condition, education and callings +should take uppon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of gold or +silver lace or buttons or poynts at their knees, to walke in great +boots, or women of the same rank to wear silke or tiffany hoodes or +scarfes."</p> + +<p>Many persons were "presented" under this law; Puritan men were just as +fond of finery as were Puritan women. Walking in great boots proved +alluring to an illegal degree, just as did wearing silk and tiffany +hoods. But Puritan women fought hard and fought well for their fine +garments. In Northampton thirty-eight women were brought up at one time +before the court in 1676 for their "wicked apparell." One young miss, +Hannah Lyman, of Northampton, was prosecuted for "wearing silk in a +fflaunting manner, in an offensive way and garb, not only before but +when she stood presented, not only in Ordinary but Extraordinary times."</p> + +<p>We can easily picture sixteen-year-old Hannah, in silk bedight, inwardly +rejoicing at the unusual opportunity to fully and publicly display her +rich attire, and we can easily read in her offensive flaunting in court +a presage of the waning of magisterial power which proved a truthful +omen, for in six years similar prosecutions in Northampton, for +assumption of gay and expensive garments, were quashed. The ministers of +the day note sadly the overwhelming love of fashion that was crescent +throughout New England; a love of dress which neither the ban of +religion, philosophy, nor law could expel; what Rev. Solo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>mon Stoddard +called, in 1675, "intolerable pride in clothes and hair." They were +never weary of preaching about dress, of comparing the poor Puritan +women to the haughty daughters of Judah and Jerusalem; saying +threateningly to their parishioners, as did Isaiah to the daughters of +Zion:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments +about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the +moon.</p> + +<p>"The chains and the bracelets and the mufflers.</p> + +<p>"The bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the head-bands and +the tablets and the earrings.</p> + +<p>"The rings and nose jewels.</p> + +<p>"The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles and the wimples +and the crisping pins.</p> + +<p>"The glasses and the fine linen and the hoods and the vails."</p></div> + +<p>Every evil predicted by the prophet was laid at the door of these Boston +and Plymouth dames; fire and war and poor harvests and caterpillars, and +even baldness—but still they arrayed themselves in fine raiment, "drew +iniquity with a cord of vanity and sin with a cart-rope," and "walked +with outstretched necks and wanton eyes mincing as they go."</p> + +<p>As an exposition of the possibilities, or rather the actual +extensiveness, of a Puritanical feminine wardrobe at this date, let me +name the articles of clothing bequeathed by the will of Jane Humphrey, +who died in Dorchester, Mass., in 1668. I give them as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> appear on +the list, but with the names of her heirs omitted.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ye Jump. Best Red Kersey Petticoate, Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My +blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian +Wascote. A black Silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Apron. A +plain black Quoife without any lace. A white Holland Appron with a +small lace at the bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish +Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hood & muffe. My Green +Linsey Woolsey petticoate. My Whittle that is fringed & my Jump & +my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Apron. My best Quife +with a Lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A White Holland apron with +two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A greene Vnder Coate. +Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake & my blew +Wascote. My best White Apron, my best Shifts. One of my best +Neck-Cloaths, & one of my plain Quieus. One Callico Vnder Neck +Cloath. My fine thine Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A +square Cloath with a little lace on it. My greene Apron."</p></div> + +<p>It is pleasing to note in this list that not only the garments and +stuffs, but the very colors named, have an antique sound; and we read in +other inventories of such tints as philomot (feuillemort), gridolin +(gris-de-lin or flax blossom), puce color, grain color (which was +scarlet), foulding color, Kendal green, Lincoln green, watchet blue, +barry, milly, tuly, stammel red, Bristol red, sad color—and a score of +other and more fanciful names whose signification and identification<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> +were lost with the death of the century. In later days Congress brown, +Federal blue, and Independence green show our new nation.</p> + +<p>This wardrobe of Jane Humphrey's was certainly a very pretty and a very +liberal outfit for a woman of no other fortune. But to have all one's +possessions in the shape of raiment did not in her day bear quite the +same aspect as it would at the present day. Many persons, men and women, +preferred to keep their property in the form of what they quaintly +called "duds." The fashion did not, in New England, wear out more +apparel than the man, for clothing, no matter what its cut, was worn as +long as it lasted, doing service frequently through three generations. +For instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, when she was over fifty +years old, receiving this bequest by will: "If she desire to have the +suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother, let her have +it upon appraisement." Hence we cannot wonder at clothing forming so +large a proportion of the articles bequeathed by will and named in +inventories; for all the colonists</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"... studied after nyce array,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And made greet cost in clothing."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Nor can we help feeling that any woman should have been permitted to +have plenty of gowns in those days without being thought extravagant, +since a mantua-maker's charge for making a gown was but eight +shillings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> + +<p>Though the shops were full of rich stuffs, there was no ready-made +clothing for women for sale either in outside garments or in +under-linen. Occasionally, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, +we read the advertisement of a "vandoo" of "full-made gowns, petticoats +and sacs of a genteel lady of highest fashion"—a notice which reads +uncommonly like the "forced sales" of the present day of mock-outfits of +various kinds.</p> + +<p>About the middle of the century there began to appear "ready-made +clothes for men." Jolley Allen advertised such, and under that name, in +1768, "Coats, Silk Jackets, Shapes and Cloth Ditto; Stocking Breeches of +all sizes & most colours. Velvet Cotton Thickset Duroy Everlasting & +Plush Breeches. Sailors Great Coats, outside & inside Jackets, Check +Shirts, Frocks, long and wide Trowzers, Scotch bonnets & Blue mill'd +Shirts." But women's clothes were made to order in the town by mantua +makers, and in the country by travelling tailoresses and sempstresses, +or by the deft-fingered wearers.</p> + +<p>New England dames had no mode-books nor fashion-plates to tell to them +the varying modes. Some sent to the fatherland for "fire-new fashions in +sleeves and slops," for garments and head-gear made in the prevailing +court style; and the lucky possessors, lent these new-fashioned caps and +gowns and cloaks as models to their poorer or less fortunate neighbors. +A very taking way of introducing new styles and shapes to the new land +was through the importation by milliners and mantua-makers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> dressed +dolls, or "babys" as they were called, that displayed in careful +miniature the fashions and follies of the English court. In the <i>New +England Weekly Journal</i> of July 2, 1733, appears this notice:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To be seen at Mrs. Hannah Teatts Mantua Maker at the Head of +Summer Street Boston a Baby drest after the Newest Fashion of +Mantues and Night Gowns & everything belonging to a dress. Latilly +arrived on Capt. White from London, any Ladies that desire to see +it may either come or send, she will be ready to wait on 'em, if +they come to the House it is Five Shilling & if she waits on 'em it +is Seven Shilling."</p></div> + +<p>We can fancy the group of modish Boston belles and dames each paying +Hannah Teatts her five shillings, and like overgrown children eagerly +dressing and undressing the London doll and carefully examining and +noting her various diminutive garments.</p> + +<p>These fashion models in miniature effigy obtained until after +Revolutionary times. Sally McKean wrote to the sister of Dolly Madison, +in June, 1796: "I went yesterday to see a doll which has come from +England dressed to show the fashion"—and she then proceeds to describe +the modes thus introduced.</p> + +<p>We can gain some notion of the general shape of the dress of our +forbears at various periods from the portraits of the times. Those of +Madam Shrimpton and of Rebecca Rawson are among the earliest. They were +painted during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The dress is +not very graceful,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> but far from plain, showing no trace of Puritanical +simplicity; in fact, it is precisely that seen in portraits of English +well-to-do folk of the same date. Both have strings of beads around the +neck and no other jewels; both wear loosely tied and rather shapeless +flat hoods concealing the hair, Madam Shrimpton's having an embroidered +edge about two inches wide. Similar hoods are shown in Romain de Rooge's +prints of the landing of King William, on the women in the coronation +procession. They were like the Nithesdale hoods of Hogarth's prints, but +smaller. Both New English dames have also broad collars, stiff and ugly, +with uncurved horizontal lower edge, apparently trimmed with embroidery +or cut-work. Both show the wooden contour of figure, which was either +the fault of the artist's brush or of the iron busk of the wearer's +stays. The bodies are stiffly pointed, and the most noticeable feature +of the gown is the sleeve, consisting of a double puff drawn in just +above the elbow and confined by knots of ribbon; in one case with very +narrow ribbon loops. Randle Holme says that a sleeve thus tied in at the +elbow was called a virago sleeve. Madam Shrimpton's sleeve has also a +falling frill of embroidery and lace and a ruffle around the armsize. +The question of sleeves sorely vexed the colonial magistrates. Men and +women were forbidden to have but one slash or opening in each sleeve. +Then the inordinate width of sleeves became equally trying, and all were +ordered to restrain themselves to sleeves half an ell wide. Worse modes +were to come; "short sleeves whereby<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> the nakedness of the arm may be +discovered" had to be prohibited; and if any such ill-fashioned gowns +came over from London, the owners were enjoined to wear thick linen to +cover the arms to the wrist. Existing portraits show how futile were +these precautions, how inoperative these laws; arms were bared with +impunity, with complacency, and the presentment of Governor Wentworth +shows three slashes in his sleeve.</p> + +<p>Not only were the arms of New England women bared to an immodest degree, +but their necks also, calling forth many a "just and seasonable +reprehension of naked breasts." Though gowns thus cut in the pink of the +English mode proved too scanty to suit Puritan ministers, the fair +wearers wore them as long as they were in vogue.</p> + +<p>It is curious to note in the oldest gowns I have seen, that the method +of cutting and shaping the waist or body is precisely the same as at the +present day. The outlines of the shoulder and back-seams, of the bust +forms, are the same, though not so gracefully curved; and the number of +pieces is usually the same. Very good examples to study are the gorgeous +brocaded gowns of Peter Faneuil's sister, perfectly preserved and now +exhibited in the Boston Art Museum.</p> + +<p>Nor have we to-day any richer or more beautiful stuffs for gowns than +had our far-away grandmothers. The silks, satins, velvets, and brocades +which wealthy colonists imported for the adornment of their wives and +daughters, and for themselves, cannot be excelled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> by the work of modern +looms; and the laces were equally beautiful. Whitefield complained +justly and more than once of the "foolish virgins of New England covered +all over with the Pride of Life;" especially of their gaudy dress in +church, which the Abbé Robin also remarked, saying it was the only +theatre New England women had for the display of their finery. Other +clergymen, as Manasseh Cutler, noted with satisfaction that "the +congregation was dressed in a very tasty manner."</p> + +<p>In old New England families many scraps of these rich stuffs of colonial +days are preserved; some still possess ancient gowns, or coats, or +waistcoats of velvet and brocade. In old work-bags, bed-quilts, and +cushions rich pieces may be found. When we see their quality, color, and +design we fully believe Hawthorne's statement that the "gaudiest dress +permissible by modern taste fades into a Quakerlike sobriety when +compared with the rich glowing splendor of our ancestors."</p> + +<p>The royal governor and his attendants formed in each capital town a +small but very dignified circle, glittering with a carefully studied +reflection of the fashionable life of the English Court, and closely +aping English richness of dress. The large landed proprietors, such as +the opulent Narragansett planters, and the rich merchants of Newport, +Salem, and Boston, spent large sums annually in rich attire. In every +newspaper printed a century or a century and a quarter ago, we find +proof of this luxury and magnificence in dress; in the lists of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> +property of deceased persons, in the long advertisements of milliners +and mercers, in the many notices of "vandoos." And the impression must +be given to every reader of letters and diaries of the times, of the +vast vanity not only of our grandmothers, but of our grandfathers. They +did indeed "walk in brave aguise." The pains these good, serious +gentlemen took with their garments, the long minute lists they sent to +European tailors, their loudly expressed discontent over petty +disappointments as to the fashion and color of their attire, their +evident satisfaction at becoming and rich clothing, all point to their +wonderful love of ostentation and their vanity—a vanity which fairly +shines with smirking radiance out of some of the masculine faces in the +"bedizened and brocaded" portraits of dignified Bostonians in Harvard +Memorial Hall, and from many of the portraits of Copley, Smibert, and +Blackburn.</p> + +<p>Here is a portion of a letter written by Governor Belcher to a London +tailor in 1733:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have desired my brother, Mr. Partridge to get me some cloaths +made, and that you should make them, and have sent him the yellow +grogram suit you made me at London; but those you make now must be +two or three inches longer and as much bigger. Let 'em be workt +strong, as well as neat and curious. I believe Mr. Harris in +Spittlefields (of whom I had the last) will let you have the +grogram as good and cheap as anybody. The other suit to be of a +very good silk, such as may be the Queens birthday fashion, but I +don't like padisway. It must be a substantial silk, because you'll +see I have ordered it to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> be trimm'd rich, and I think a very good +white shagrine will be the best lining. I say let it be a handsome +compleat suit, and two pair of breeches to each suit."</p></div> + +<p>Picture to yourself the garb in which the patriot John Hancock appeared +one noonday in 1782:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"He wore a red velvet cap within which was one of fine linen, the +last turned up two or three inches over the lower edge of the +velvet. He also wore a blue damask gown lined with velvet, a white +stock, a white satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin +small-clothes, white silk stockings and red morocco slippers."</p></div> + +<p>What gay peacock was this strutting all point-device in scarlet slippers +and satin and damask, spreading his gaudy feathers at high noon in sober +Boston streets!—was this our boasted Republican simplicity? And what +"fop-tackle" did the dignified Judge of the Supreme Court wear in Boston +at that date? He walked home from the bench in the winter time clad in a +magnificent white corduroy surtout lined with fur, with his judicial +hands thrust in a great fur muff.</p> + +<p>Fancy a Boston publisher going about his business tricked up in this +dandified dress—a true New England jessamy.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>He wore a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small-clothes, white +silk stockings and pumps fastened with silver buckles which covered +at least half the foot from instep to toe. His small-clothes were +tied at the knees with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> riband of the same color in double bows the +ends reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well loaded +with pomatum, frizzled or creped, and powdered; the ear locks had +undergone the same process. Behind his natural hair was augmented +by the addition of a large queue, called vulgarly the false tail, +which, enrolled in some yards of black riband, hung halfway down +his back.</p></div> + +<p>We must believe that the richest brocades, the finest lawn, the choicest +laces, the heaviest gold and silver buckles, did not adorn the persons +of New England dames and belles only; the gaudiest inflorescence of +color and stuffs shone resplendent on the manly figures of their +husbands and brothers. And yet these men were no "lisping hawthorn +buds," their souls were not in their clothes, or we had not the signers +of the Declaration of Independence and the heroes of the Revolution.</p> + +<p>The domination of French ideas in America after the Revolution found one +form of expression in French fashions of dress; and where New England +women had formerly followed English models and English reproductions of +French fashions, they now copied the French fashions direct, to the +improvement, I fancy, of their modes. Too many accounts and +representations exist of these comparatively recent styles to make it of +value to enter into any detail of them here. But another influence on +the dress of the times should be recorded.</p> + +<p>The sudden and vast development of the Oriental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> trade by New England +ship-owners is plainly marked by many changes in the stuffs imported and +in the dress of both men and women. Nankeens became at once one of the +chief articles of sale in drygoods shops. Though Fairholt says they were +not exported to America till 1825, I find them advertised in the <i>Boston +Evening Post</i> of 1761. Shawls appeared in shopkeepers' lists. The first +notice that I have seen is in the <i>Salem Gazette</i> of 1784—"a rich +sortment of shawls." This was at the very time when Elias Haskett +Derby—the father of the East India trade—was building and launching +his stout ships for Canton. We have a vast variety of stuffs nowadays, +but the list seems narrow and small when compared with the record of +Indian stuffs that came in such numbers a hundred years ago to Boston +and Salem markets. The names of these Oriental materials are nearly all +obsolete, and where the material is still manufactured it bears a +different appellation. A list of them will preserve their names and show +their number. Some may prove not to have been Indian, but were so called +in the days of their importation.</p> + +<dl> +<dd> +<ul class="first"> +<li>Alrabads.</li> +<li>Anjungoes.</li> +<li>Allejars.</li> +<li>Atlasses.</li> +<li>Addaties.</li> +<li>Allibanies.</li> +<li>Anbraeahs.</li> +<li>Arradahs.</li> +<li>Budoys.</li> +<li>Boglipores.</li> +<li>Bengals.</li> +<li>Briampaux.</li> +<li>Bagatapaux.</li> +<li>Bumrums.</li> +<li>Bulschauls.</li> +<li>Brawls.</li> +<li>Bafraes.</li> +<li>Bejauraupauts.</li> +<li>Bafts.</li> +<li>Baguzzees.</li> +<li>Betelles.</li> +<li>Byrampauts.</li> +<li>Cushlas.</li> +<li>Coffies.</li> +<li>Chinachurry</li> +<li>Cherrydarry.</li> +<li>Chilloes.</li> +<li>Chints.</li> +<li>Cutthees.</li> +<li>Cossas.</li> +<li>Chenarize.</li> +<li>Chittabullus.</li> +<li>Coopees.</li> +<li>Callowaypoose.</li> +<li>Cuttanees.</li> +<li>Carradaries.</li> +<li>Cheaconies.</li> +<li>Chucklaes.</li> +<li>Cadies.</li> +</ul> +</dd> +<dd> +<ul class="second"> +<li>Chowtahs.</li> +<li>Culgees.</li> +<li>Chaffelaes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></li> +<li>Corottas.</li> +<li>Doreas.</li> +<li>Deribands.</li> +<li>Doorguzzees.</li> +<li>Doodanies.</li> +<li>Dorsatees.</li> +<li>Danadars.</li> +<li>Elatchies.</li> +<li>Emertees.</li> +<li>Gurrahs.</li> +<li>Guzzinahs.</li> +<li>Goaconcheleras.</li> +<li>Gurraes.</li> +<li>Gelongs.</li> +<li>Ginghams.</li> +<li>Gunieas.</li> +<li>Humhums.</li> +<li>Humadies.</li> +<li>Izzarees.</li> +<li>Jollopours.</li> +<li>Jandannies.</li> +<li>Januwars.</li> +<li>Luckhouris.</li> +<li>Lemmones.</li> +<li>Lungees.</li> +<li>Mamoodies.</li> +<li>Mahmudihiaties.</li> +<li>Mugga-Mamoochis.</li> +<li>Mickbannies.</li> +<li>Masaicks.</li> +<li>Moorees.</li> +<li>Mowsannas.</li> +<li>Mulmouls.</li> +<li>Mulye-Gungee.</li> +<li>Nicanees.</li> +<li>Nillaes.</li> +</ul> +</dd> +<dd> +<ul class="third"> +<li>Neganepauts.</li> +<li>Nenapees.</li> +<li>Nagurapaux.</li> +<li>Oringals.</li> +<li>Paunchees.</li> +<li>Patnas.</li> +<li>Pallampores.</li> +<li>Ponabaguzzies.</li> +<li>Persias.</li> +<li>Peniascoes.</li> +<li>Pagnas.</li> +<li>Poppolis.</li> +<li>Photaes.</li> +<li>Pelongs.</li> +<li>Quilts.</li> +<li>Romalls.</li> +<li>Rehings.</li> +<li>Seersuckers.</li> +<li>Sallampores.</li> +<li>Soraguzzes.</li> +<li>Soofeys.</li> +<li>Seerbettees.</li> +<li>Sannoes.</li> +<li>Seerindams.</li> +<li>Shalbafts.</li> +<li>Seerbands.</li> +<li>Succatums.</li> +<li>Starrets.</li> +<li>Terindams.</li> +<li>Tapseils.</li> +<li>Tanjeebs.</li> +<li>Tepoys.</li> +<li>Tainsooks.</li> +<li>Taffatties.</li> +<li>Tapis.</li> +<li>Tarnatams.</li> +<li>Taundah-Khassah.</li> +<li>Tandarees.<br /><br /></li> +<li> </li> +<li> </li> +</ul> +</dd> +</dl> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2> + +<h3>DOCTORS AND PATIENTS</h3> + +<p>There lies before me a leather-bound, time-stained, dingy little quarto +of four hundred and fifty pages that was printed in the year 1656. Its +contents comprise three parts or books. First, "The Queens Closet +Opened, or The Pearl of Practise: Accurate, Physical, and Chirurgical +Receipts." Second, "A Queens Delight, or The Art of Preserving, +Conserving, and Candying, as also a Right Knowledge of Making Perfumes +and Distilling the most Excellent Waters." Third, "The Compleat Cook, +Expertly Prescribing the most ready wayes, whether Italian, Spanish, or +French, For Dressing of Flesh and Fish, Ordering of Sauces, or Making of +PASTRY"—pastry in capitals, as is due so distinguished an article and +art.</p> + +<p>This conjunction of leechcraft and cooking was in early days far from +being considered demeaning to the healing art. A great number of the +cook-books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were written by +physicians. Dr. Lister, physician to Queen Anne, wrote plainly, "I do +not consider myself as hazarding anything when I say no man can be a +good phy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>sician who has not a competent knowledge of cookery."</p> + +<p>The book contains a long, pompous preface, in which it is asserted that +these receipts were collected originally for her "distress'd Soveraigne +Majesty the Queen"—Henrietta Maria; that they had been "laid at her +feet by Persons of Honour and Quality;" and that since false and poor +copies had been circulated during her banishment, and the compiler, who +fell with the court, was not able to render his beloved queen any +further service, he felt that he could at least "prevent all +disservices" by giving in print to her friends these true rules. Thus +could he keep the absent queen in their minds; and also he could give a +fair copy to her, since she had lost her receipts in her flight.</p> + +<p>Though Agnes Strickland stated that copies of this Queens Closet Opened +are exceedingly rare in England, several are preserved in old New +England families, some of them the descendants of colonial physicians; +and the book may be shown as a fair example of the methods of practice +and composition of prescriptions in colonial and provincial days.</p> + +<p>This volume of mine was one of those which were not fated to dwell among +"Persons of Honour and Quality" in old England; it crossed the waters to +the new land with simpler folk, and was for many years the +pocket-companion of an old New England doctor. Two names are carefully +written on the inside of the cover of my book, names of past owners: +"Edward Talbot, His Book," is in the most faded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> ink, and "William +Morse, His Book, in the y'r 1710, Boston." A musty, leathery smell +pervades and exhales from the pages, and is mingled with whiffs of an +equally ancient and more penetrating odor, that of old drugs and +medicines; for many a journey over bleak hills and lonely dales has the +book made, safely reposing at the bottom of its owner's pocket, or lying +cheek by jowl with the box of drugs and medicines, and case of lancets +in his ample saddlebags.</p> + +<p>This country doctor, like others of his profession at the same date, had +not studied deeply in college and hospital; nor had he taken any long +course of instruction in foreign schools and universities. When he had +decided to become a doctor, he had simply ridden with an old, +established physician—ridden literally—in a half-menial, half-medical +capacity. He had cared for the doctor's horse, swept the doctor's +office, run the doctor's errands, pounded drugs, gathered herbs, and +mixed plasters, until he was fitted to ride for himself. Then he had +applied to the court and received a license to practise—that was all. I +doubt not that this book of mine, and perhaps a manuscript collection of +recipes and prescriptions, and a few Latin treatises that he could +hardly decipher, formed his entire pharmacopœia. As he had chanced to +inherit a small fortune from a relative, he became a physician of some +note; for in colonial days wealth and position were as essential as were +learning and experience, to enable one to become a good doctor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> + +<p>I like to think of the rich and pompous old doctor a-riding out to see +his patients, clad in his suit of sober brown or claret color with +shining buttons made of silver coins. The full-skirted coat had great +pockets and flaps, as had the long waistcoat that reached well over the +hips. Knee-breeches dressed his shapely legs, while fine silk stockings +and buckled shoes displayed his well-turned calves and ankles. On his +head he wore a cocked hat and wig. He owned and wore in turn wigs of +different sizes and dignity—ties, periwigs, bags, and bobs. His +portrait was painted in a full-bottomed wig that rivalled the Lord +Chancellor's in size; but his every-day riding-wig was a rather +commonplace horsehair affair with a stiff eel-skin cue. One wig he lost +by a mysterious accident while attending a patient who was lying ill of +a fever, of which the crisis seemed at hand. The doctor decided to +remain all night, and sat down by a table in the sick man's room. The +hours passed slowly away. Physician and nurse and goodwife talked and +droned on; the sick man moaned and tossed in his bed, and begged +fruitlessly for water. At last the room grew silent, the tired watchers +dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his +eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the +table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and +when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room +collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the +valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking +around for his wig; while the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> sick man, who had jumped out of bed in +the confusion and captured a pitcher of water, drunk half the contents, +and thrown the remainder over the doctor's head, was lying behind the +bed curtains laughing hysterically at the ridiculous appearance of the +man of medicine. Instant death was predicted for the invalid, who, +strange to say, either from the laughter or the water, began to recover +from that moment. The terrified physician was uncertain whether he ought +to attribute the conflagration of his wig to a violent demonstration of +the devil in his effort to obtain possession of the sick man's soul, or +to the powerful influence of some conjunction of the planets, or to the +new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered +and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with +in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved +of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it +was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as +to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one +of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running +thence up through his wig, thus warding off further alarming +demonstration. Ere this was done the mystery of the explosion was +solved. When the doctor's new wig arrived from Boston, he ordered his +newly purchased negro servant to powder it well ere it was worn. He was +horrified to see Pompey give the wig a liberal sprinkling of gunpowder +from the powder-horn, instead of starch from the dredging-box; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> the +explosion of the old wig was no longer assigned to diabolical, +thaumaturgical, or meteorological influences.</p> + +<p>Let us turn from the doctor and the wig to the book; let us see what he +did when he singed his head and burnt his face. He whipped my little +book out of his pocket and turned to page 77; there he was told to make +"Oyl of Eggs. Take twelve yolks of eggs and put them in a pot over the +fire, and let them stand until you perceive them to turn black; then put +them in a press and press out the Oyl." Or he could make "Oyl of Fennel" +if he preferred it. But probably the New England goodwife had on hand +one of the dozen astounding salves described in the book, that the +doctor had ere this instructed her to make, and in which I trust he +found due relief.</p> + +<p>One cannot wonder that the sick man craved water, when we read what he +had had to drink. He had been given, a spoonful at a time, this +"Comfortable Juleb for a Feaver," made of "Barley Water & White Wine +each one pint, Whey one quart, two ounces of Conserves of Barberries, +and the Juyces of two limmons and 2 Oranges." The doctor had also taken +(if he had followed his Pearl of Practice) "two Salt white herrings & +slit them down the back and bound them to the soles of the feet" of his +patient; and I doubt not he had bled the sufferer at once, for he always +bled and purged on every possible occasion.</p> + +<p>The Water of Life was also given for fevers, a few drops at a time, and +also as a tonic in health.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take Balm leaves and stalks, Betony leaves and flowers, Rosemary, +red sage, Taragon, Tormentil leaves, Rossolis and Roses, Carnation, +Hyssop, Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves +and root, red Mints, of each a handful; bruise these hearbs and put +them in a great earthern pot, & pour on them enough White Wine as +will cover them, stop them close, and let them steep for eight or +nine days; then put to it Cinnamon, Ginger, Angelica-seeds, Cloves, +and Nuttmegs, of each an ounce, a little Saffron, Sugar one pound, +Raysins solis stoned one pound, the loyns and legs of an old Coney, +a fleshy running Capon, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of +Mutton, four young Chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve +Eggs, a loaf of White-bread cut in sops, and two or three ounces of +Mithridate or Treacle, & as much Muscadine as will cover them all. +Distil al with a moderate fire, and keep the first and second +waters by themselves; and when there comes no more by Distilling +put more Wine into the pot upon the same stuffe and distil it +again, and you shal have another good water. This water +strengtheneth the Spirit, Brain, Heart, Liver, and Stomack. Take +when need is by itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with +Sugar."</p></div> + +<p>Who could doubt that it strengthened the spirit, especially when taken +with ale or wine? Plainly here do we see the need of a doctor being a +good cook. But what pot would hold all that flesh and fowl, that +blooming flower-garden of herbs and posies, that assorted lot of fruits +and spices, to say nothing of the muscadine?</p> + +<p>Our ancestors spared no pains in preparing these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> medicines. They did +not, shifting all responsibility, run to a chemist or apothecary with a +little slip of paper; with their own hands they picked, pulled, pounded, +stamped, shredded, dropped, powdered, and distilled, regardless of +expense, or trouble, or hard work. Truly they deserved to be cured. They +did not measure the drugs with precision in preparing their medicines, +as do our chemists nowadays, nor were their prescriptions written in +Latin nor with cabalistic marks—the asbestos stomachs and colossal +minds of our forefathers were much above such petty minuteness; nor did +they administer the doses with exactness. "The bigth of a walnut," +"enough to lie on a pen knifes point," "the weight of a shilling," +"enough to cover a French crown," "as bigg as a haslenut," "as great as +a charger," "the bigth of a Turkeys Egg," "a pretty draught," "a pretty +bunch of herbs," "take a little handful," "take a pretty quantity as +often as you please"—such are the lax directions that accompany these +old prescriptions.</p> + +<p>Of course, the remedies given in this book were largely for the diseases +of the day. Physicians and parsons, lords and ladies, combined to +furnish complex and elaborate prescriptions and perfumes to cure and +avert the plague; and the list includes one plague-cure that the Lord +Mayor had from the Queen, and I may add that it is a particularly +unpleasant and revolting one. A plague swept through New England and +decimated the Indian tribes; and though it was not at all like the great +plague that devastated London, I doubt not red man and white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> man took +confidingly and faithfully medicines such as are given in this little +book of mine: the king's feeble and much-vaunted dose of "White Wine, +Ginger, Treacle, and Sage;" Dr. Atkinson's excellent perfume against the +Plague, of "Angelica roots and Wine Vinegar, that if taken fasting, your +breath would kill the Plague" (it must have been a fearful dose); "Mr. +Fenton's the Chirurgeon's Posset and his Sedour Root."</p> + +<p>Cures for small-pox and for gout are many. Varied are the lotions for +the "pin and web in the eye;" so many are there of these that it makes +me suspect that our forefathers were sadly sore-eyed.</p> + +<p>One very prevalent ail that our ancestors had to endure (if we can judge +from the number of prescriptions for its relief) was a "cold stomack;" +literally cold, one might think, since most of the cures were by +external application. Lady Spencer used a plebeian "greene turfe of +grasse" to warm her stomach, with the green side, not the dirt side, +placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she +was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon +her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities" +that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure +pain and coldness of the stomach. Thus did like cure like. A +"Restorative Bag" of herbs and spices heated in "boyl'd Vinegar" is +asserted to be "comfortable." "It must be as hot as can be endured, and +keep yourself from studying and musing and it will comfort you much." So +it seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> you ought not to study nor to muse if your stomach be cold.</p> + +<p>Many and manifold are the remedies to "chear the heart," to "drive +melancholy," to "cure one pensive," "for the megrums," "for a grief;" +and without doubt the lonely colonists often needed them. We know, too, +that "things ill for the heart were beans, pease, sadness, onions, +anger, evil tidings, and loss of friends,"—a very arbitrary and unjust +classification. Melancholy was evidently regarded as a disease, and a +much-to-be-lamented one. External applications were made to "drive the +worms out of the Brain as well as Dross out of the Stomack." Here is "A +pretious water to revive the Spirits:"</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take four gallons of strong Ale, five ounces of Aniseeds, +Liquorish scraped half a pound, Sweet Mints, Angelica, Eccony, +Cowslip flowers, Sage & Rosemary Flowers, sweet Marjoram, of each +three handfuls, Palitory of the VVal one handful. After it is +fermented two or three dayes, distil it in a Limbeck, and in the +water infuse one handful of the flowers aforesaid, Cinnamon and +Fennel-seed of each half an ounce, Juniper berries bruised one +dram, red Rosebuds, roasted Apples & dates sliced and stoned, of +each half a pound; distil it again and sweeten it with some +Sugarcandy, and take of Ambergreese, Pearl, Red Coral, Hartshorn +pounded, and leaf Gold, of each half a Dram, put them in a fine +Linnen bag, and hang them by a thread in a Glasse."</p></div> + +<p>Think of taking all that trouble to make something to cheer the spirits, +when the four gallons of strong ale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> with spices would have fully +answered the purpose, without bothering with the herbs and fruits. I +suppose the gold and jewels were particularly cheering ingredients, and +perhaps entitled the drink to its name of precious water. Indeed, it +would be cheering to the spirits nowadays to have the precious metals +and gems that were so lavishly used in these ancient medicines.</p> + +<p>Full jewelled were the works of English persons of quality in the time +of the Merry Monarch and his sire. The gold and gems were not always +hung in bags in the medicines; frequently they were powdered and +dissolved, and formed a large portion of the dose. Like Chaucer's +Doctour, they believed that "gold in phisike is a cordial." Dr. +Gifford's "Amber Pils for Consumption" contained a large quantity of +pearls, white amber, and coral, as did also Lady Kent's powder. Sir +Edward Spencer's eye-salve was rich in powdered pearls. The Bishop of +Worcester's "admirable curing powder" was composed largely of "ten skins +of snakes or adders or Slow worms" mixed with "Magistery of Pearls." The +latter was a common ingredient, and under the head of "Choice Secrets +Made Known" we are told how to manufacture it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dissolve two or three ounces of fine seed Pearl in distill'd +Vinegar, and when it's perfectly dissolved and all taken up, pour +the Vinegar into a clean glasse Bason; then drop some few drops of +oyl of Tartar upon it, and it will call down the Pearl into the +powder; then pour the Vinegar clean off softly; then put to the +Pearl clear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>Conduit or Spring water; pour that off, and do so +often until the taste of the Vinegar and Tartar be clean gone; then +dry the powder of Pearl upon warm embers and keep for your use."</p></div> + +<p>Gold and precious stones were specially necessary "to ease the passion +of the Heart," as indeed they are nowadays. In that century, however, +they applied the mercenary cure inwardly, and prepared it thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Take Damask Roses half-blown, cut off thier whites, and stamp them +very fine, and straine out the Juyce very strong; moisten it in the +stamping with a little Damask Rose water; then put thereto fine +powder Sugar, and boyl it gently to a fine Syrup; then take the +Powders of Amber, Pearl, Rubies, of each half a dram, Ambergreese +one scruple, and mingle them with the said syrup till it be +somewhat thick, and take a little thereof on a knifes point morning +and evening."</p></div> + +<p>I can now understand the reason for the unceasing, the incurable +melancholy that hung like a heavy black shadow over so many Puritan +divines in the early days of New England, as their gloomy sermons, their +sad diaries and letters, plainly show. Those poor ministers had no +chance to use these receipts and thus get cured of "worms in the brain," +with annual salaries of only £60, which they had to take in corn, wheat, +codfish, or bearskins, in any kind of "country pay," or even in wampum, +in order to get it at all. Rubies and pearls and gold and coral were +scarce drugs in clerical circles in Massachusetts Bay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> and Plymouth +plantations. Even amber and ivory were far from plentiful. We find John +Winthrop writing in 1682, "I am straitened, having no ivory beaten, +neither any pearle nor corall." Cleopatra drinks were out of fashion in +the New World. So Mather and Hooker and Warham were condemned to die +with uncheered spirits and unjewelled stomachs.</p> + +<p>Another ingredient, unicorns' horns, which were ground and used in +powders, must have been difficult to obtain in New England, although I +believe Governor Winthrop had one sent to him as a gift from England; +and John Endicott, writing to him in 1634, said: "I have sent you Mrs +Beggarly her Vnicorns horne & beza stone." Both the unicorn's horn and +the bezoar stone were sovereign antidotes against poison. At another +time Winthrop had sent to him "bezoar stone, mugwort, orgaine, and +galingall root." Ambergris was also too rare and costly for American +Puritans to use, though we find Hull writing for golden ambergroose.</p> + +<p>Insomnia is not a bane of our modern civilization alone. This little +book shows that our ancestors craved and sought sleep just as we do. +Here is a prescription to cure sleeplessness, which might be tried by +any wakeful soul of modern times, since it requires neither rubies, +pearls, nor gold for its manufacture:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water, +& make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill, +and it will cause sleep."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p> + +<p>So aniseed bags were used in earlier days for a purpose very different +from our modern one; if your nineteenth century nose should refuse to +accustom itself to having bags hung on it, you can "Chop Chammomile & +crumbs of Brown Bread smal and boyl them with White Wine Vinegar, stir +it wel and spred it on a cloth & binde it to the soles of the feet as +hot as you can suffer it." And if that should not make you sleepy, there +are frankincense-perfumed paper bags for your head, and some very +pleasant things made of rose-leaves for your temples, and hard-boiled +eggs for the nape of your neck—you can choose from all of these.</p> + +<p>They had abounding faith in those days. Several of the prescriptions in +"The Queen's Closet" are to cure people at a remote distance, by +applying the nostrums to a linen cloth previously wet with the patient's +blood. They had plasters of power to put on the back of the head to draw +the palate into place; and wonderful elixirs that would keep a dying man +alive five years; and herb-juices to make a dumb man speak. The +following suggestion shows plainly their confiding spirit:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To Cure Deafnesse. Take the Garden Dasie roots and make juyce +thereof, and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster & +drop three or four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three +or four dayes together."</p></div> + +<p>"Simpatheticall" medicines had a special charm for all the Winthrops, +and that delightful but gulli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>ble old English alchemist, Sir Kenelm +Digby, kept them well posted in all the newest nonsense.</p> + +<p>In a medical dispensatory of the times the different varieties of +medicines used in New England are enumerated. They are leaves, herbs, +roots, barks, seeds, flowers, juices, distilled waters, syrups, juleps, +decoctions, oils, electuaries, conserves, preserves, lohocks, ointments, +plasters, poultices, troches, and pills. These words and articles are +all used nowadays, except the lohock, which was to be <i>licked up</i>, and +in consistency stood in the intermediate ground between an electuary and +a syrup. These terms, of course, were in the Galenic practice. In "The +Queen's Closet" all the physic was found afield, with the exception of +the precious metals and one compound, rubila, which was made of antimony +and nitre, and which was in special favor in the Winthrop family—as +many of their letters show. They sent it and recommended it to their +friends—and better still, they took it faithfully themselves, and with +most satisfactory results.</p> + +<p>There was also one mineral "oyntment" made of quicksilver, verdigris, +and brimstone mixed with "barrows grease," which was good for "horse, +man, or other beast." Alum and copperas were once recommended for +external use. The powerful "plaister of Paracelsus," also beloved of the +Winthrops, was not composed of mineral drugs, as might be supposed, but +was made of herbs, and from the ingredients named must have been +particularly nasty smelling as well as powerful.</p> + +<p>The medicine mithridate forms a part of many of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> these prescriptions; it +does not seem to be regarded as an alexipharmic, but as a soporific. It +is said to have been the cure-all of King Mithridates. I will not give +an account of the process of its manufacture; it would fill about three +pages of this book, and I should think it would take about six weeks to +compound a good dose of it. There are forty-five different articles +used, each to be prepared by slow degrees and introduced with great +care; some of them (such as the rape of storax, camel's hay, and bellies +of skinks) must have been inconvenient to procure in New England. +Mithridates would hardly recognize his own medicine in this +conglomeration, for when Pompey found his precious receipt it was simple +enough: "Pound with care two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of +rice, and a grain of salt." I think we might take this <i>cum grano +salis</i>.</p> + +<p>Queer were the names of some of the herbs; alehoof, which was +ground-ivy, or gill-go-by-ground, or haymaids, or twinhoof, or +gill-creep-by-ground, and was an herb of Venus, and thus in special use +for "passions of the heart," for "amorous cups," which few Puritans +dared to meddle with. The blessed thistle, of which one scandalized old +writer says, "I suppose the name was put upon it by them that had little +holiness themselves." Clary, or clear-eye, or Christ's-eye, which latter +name makes the same writer indignantly say, "I could wish from my soul +that blasphemy and ignorance were ceased among physicians"—as if the +poor doctors gave these folk-names! The crab-claws so often mentioned +was also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> an herb, otherwise known as knight's-pond water and +freshwater-soldier. The mints to flavor were horsemint, spearmint, +peppermint, catmint, and heartmint.</p> + +<p>The earliest New England colonists did not discover in the new country +all the herbs and simples of their native land, but the Indian powwows +knew of others that answered every purpose—very healing herbs too, as +Wood in his "New England's Prospects" unwillingly acknowledges and thus +explains: "Sometimes the devill for requitall of their worship recovers +the partie to nuzzle them up inn thier devilish Religion." The planters +sent to England for herbs and drugs, as existing inventories show; and +they planted seeds and soon had plenty of home herbs that grew apace in +every dooryard. The New Haven colony passed a law at an early date to +force the destruction of a "great stinking poisonous weed," which is +said to have been the <i>Datura stramonium</i>, a medicinal herb. It had been +brought over by the Jamestown colonists, and had spread miraculously, +and was known as "Jimson" or Jamestown weed.</p> + +<p>Josselyn gives in his "New England's Rarities" an interesting list of +the herbs known and used by the colonists. Cotton Mather said the most +useful and favorite medicinal plants were alehoof, garlick, elder, sage, +rue, and saffron. Saffron has never lost its popularity. To this day +"saffern tea" is a standing country dose in New England, especially for +the "jarnders." Elder, rue, and saffron were English herbs that were +made settlers here and carefully cultivated; so also were sage, hyssop, +tansy, wormwood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> celandine, comfrey, mallows, mayweed, yarrow, +chamomile, dandelion, shepherd's-purse, bloody dock, elecampane, +motherwort, burdock, plantain, catnip, mint, fennel, and dill—all now +flaunting weeds. Dunton wrote, with praise of a Dr. Bullivant, in +Boston, in 1686, "He does not direct his patients to the East Indies to +look for drugs when they may have far better out of their gardens."</p> + +<p>There is a charm in these medical rules in my old book, in spite of the +earth-worms and wood-lice and adders and vipers in which some of them +abound (to say nothing of other and more shocking ingredients). In +surprising and unpleasant compounds they do not excel the prescriptions +in a serious medical book published in Exeter, New Hampshire, as late as +1835. Nor is Cotton Mather's favorite and much-vaunted ingredient +<i>millepedes</i>, or sowbugs, once mentioned within. All are not vile +in my Queen's Closet—far from it. Medicines composed of Canary wine +or sack, with rose-water, juice of oranges and lemons, syrup of +clove-gillyflower, loaf sugar, "Mallago raisins," nutmegs, cloves, +cinnamon, mace, remind me strongly of Josselyn's New England Nectar, and +render me quite dissatisfied with our modern innovations of quinine, +antipyrine, and phenacetin, and even make only passively welcome the +innocuous and uninteresting homœopathic pellet and drop.</p> + +<p>Many other dispensatories, guides, collections, and records of medical +customs and concoctions, remain to us even of the earliest days. We have +the private receipt-book of John Winthrop, a gathering of choice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> +receipts given to him in manuscript by one Stafford, of England. These +receipts have been printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts +Historical Society for the year 1862, with delightful notes by Dr. +Oliver Wendell Holmes, and are of the same nature as those in the +Queen's Closet. Here is one, which was venomous, yet harmless enough:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"My black powder against ye plague, small-pox, purples, all sorts +of feavers, Poyson; either by way of prevention or after Infection. +In the Moneth of March take Toades, as many as you will, alive; +putt them into an Earthen pott, so yt it be halfe full; Cover it +with a broad tyle or Iron plate, then overwhelme the pott, so yt ye +bottome may be uppermost; putt charcoals round about it and over it +and in the open ayre not in an house; sett it on fire and lett it +burne out and extinguish of itself; when it is cold take out the +toades; and in an Iron morter pound them very well; and searce +them; then in a Crucible calcine them; So againe; pound them & +searce them again. The first time they will be a brown powder, the +next time blacke. Of this you may give a dragme in a Vehiculum or +drinke Inwardly in any Infection taken: and let them sweat upon it +in their bedds: but let them not cover their heads; especially in +the Small-Pox. For prevention half a dragme will suffice."</p></div> + +<p>I do not know what meteorological influence was assigned to the month of +March; perhaps it was chosen because toads would be uncommonly hard to +get in New England during that month.</p> + +<p>All the medicines in Dr. Stafford's little collection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> were not, +however, so unalluring, and were, on the whole, very healing and +respectable. He prescribed nitre, antimony, rhubarb, jalap, and +spermaceti, "the sovereignest thing on earth—for an inward bruise;" and +he also culled herbs and simples in vast variety. He gave some very good +advice regarding the conduct of a physician, the latter clause of which +might well be heeded to-day.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Nota bene. No man can with a good Conscience take a fee or Reward +before ye partie receive benefit apparent and then he is not to +demand anything but what God shall putt it into the heart of the +partie to give him. A man is not to neglect that partie to whom he +had once administered but to visit him at least once a day & to +medle with no more than he can well attend."</p></div> + +<p>The account books of other old New England physicians, and other medical +books such as "A Treatise of Choice Spagyrical Preparations," show to us +that the seventeenth and eighteenth century medicines, though +disgusting, were not deadly. We know what medicines were given the +colonists on their sea journey hither: "Oil of Cloves, Origanum, Purging +Pills, and Ressin of Jalap" for the toothache; a Diaphoretic Bolus for +an "Extream Cold;" Spirits of Castor and Oil of Amber for "Histericall +Fitts;" "Seaurell Emplaisters for a broken Shin;" and for other +afflictions, "Gascons Powder, Liquorish, Carminative Seeds, Syrup of +Saffron, Pectoral Syrups and Somniferous Boluses."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p> + +<p>Cod livers were given then as cod-liver oil is given now, "to restore +them that have melted their Grease." A favorite prescription was +"Rulandus, his Balsam which tho' it smel not wel" was properly powerful, +and could be gotten down if carefully hidden in "poudered shuger."</p> + +<p>Cotton Mather, who tried his skilful hand at writing upon almost every +grave and weighty subject, composed a book of medical advice called the +"Angel of Bethesda." It was written when he was sixty years of age, but +was never printed; the manuscript is preserved in the library of the +American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It begins characteristically +with a sermon, and is fantastically peppered with pompous scriptural and +classical quotations, as was the Mather wont. The ingredients of the +prescriptions are vile beyond belief, though, as Mather said in one of +his letters, they are "powerful and parable physicks," which are two +desirable qualities or attributes of any physic. The book gives an +interesting account of Mather's share in that great colonial revolution +in medicine—the introduction of the custom of inoculation for the +small-pox. His friend, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, of Boston, was the first +physician to inaugurate this great step by inoculating his own son—a +child six years old. Deep was the horror and aversion felt by the +colonial public toward both the practice and practitioners of this +daring innovation, and fiercely and malignantly was it opposed; but its +success soon conquered opposition, and also that fell disease, which six +times within a hundred years had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> devastated New England, bringing +death, disfigurement, and business misfortunes to the colonists. So +universal was the branding produced by this scourge that scarcely an +advertisement containing any personal description appears in any +colonial print, without containing the words, pock-fretten, pock-marked, +pock-pitted, or pock-broken.</p> + +<p>Through the possibility of having the small-pox to order, arose the +necessity of small-pox hospitals, to which whole families or parties +resorted to pass through the ordeal in concert. Small-pox parties were +made the occasion of much friendly intercourse; they were called +classes. Thus in the <i>Salem Gazette</i> of April 22, 1784, after Point +Shirley was set aside as a small-pox retreat, it was advertised that +"Classes will be admitted for Small pox." These classes were real +country outings, having an additional zest of novelty since one could +fully participate in the pleasures, profits, and pains of a small-pox +party but once in a lifetime. Much etiquette and deference was shown +over these "physical gatherings," formal invitations were sometimes sent +to join the function at a private house. Here is an extract from a +letter written July 8, 1775, by Joseph Barrell, a Boston merchant, to +Colonel Wentworth: "Mr. Storer has invited Mrs. Martin to take the +small-pox in her house; if Mrs. Wentworth desires to get rid of her +fears in the same way we will accommodate her in the best way we can. +I've several friends that I've invited, and none of them will be more +welcome than Mrs. Wentworth." These brave classes took their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> various +purifying and sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, were "grafted" +together, "broke out" together, were feverish together, sweat together, +scaled off together, and convalesced together. Not a very prepossessing +conjoining medium would inoculation appear to have been, but many a +pretty and sentimental love affair sprang up between mutually +"pock-fretten" New Englanders.</p> + +<p>The small-pox hospitals were of various degrees of elegance and comfort, +and were widely advertised. I have found four separate announcements in +one of the small sheets of a Federal newspaper. From the luxurious +high-priced retreat "without Mercury" were grades descending to the +Suttonian, Brunonian, Pincherian, Dimsdalian, and other plebeian +establishments, in which the patient paid from fifteen to as low as +three dollars per week for lodging, food, medicine, care, and +inoculation. At the latter cheap establishment each person was +obliged to furnish for his individual use one sheet and one +pillow-case—apparently a meagre outfit for sickness, but possibly +merely a supplemental one.</p> + +<p>This is a fair example of the prevailing advertisement of small-pox +hospitals, from the <i>Connecticut Courant</i> of November 30, 1767:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dr. Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fairfield takes this +method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous +of taking the Small Pox by way of Inoculation, that having had +Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on +the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> the last season with great Success; has lately erected a +convenient Hospital for that purpose just within the Jurisdiction +Line of the Province of New York about nine miles distant from N. Y. +Harbour, where he intends to carry said Branch of Practice from the +first of October next to the first of May next. And that all such +as are disposed to favour him with their Custom may depend upon +being well provided with all necessary accomodations, Provisions & +the best Attendance at the moderate Expence of Four Pounds Lawful +Money to Each Patient. That after the first Sett or Class he +purposes to give no Occasion for waiting to go in Particular Setts +but to admit Parties singly, just as it suits them. As he has +another Good House provided near Said Hospital where his family are +to live, and where all that come after the first Sett that go into +the Hospital are to remain with his Family until they are +sufficiently Prepared & Inoculated & Until it is apparent that they +haven taken the infection."</p></div> + +<p>Of all the advertisements of small-pox hospitals, inoculation, etc., +which appear in the newspapers through the eighteenth century, none is +more curious, more comic than this from a Boston paper of 1772:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ibrahim Mustapha Inoculator to his Sublime Highness & the +Janissaries: original Inventor and sole Proprietor of that +Inestimable Instrument, the Circassian Needle, begs leave to +acquaint the Nobility & Gentry of this City and its Environs that +he is just arrived from Constantinople where he has inoculated +about 50,000 Persons without losing a Single Patient. He requires +not the least Preparation Regimen or Confinement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> Ladies and +Gentlemen who wish to be inoculated only acquaint him with how many +Pimples they choose and he makes the exact number of Punctures with +his Needle which Produces the Eruptions in the very Picquers. +Ladies who fancy a favorite Pitt may have it put in any Spot they +please, and of any size: not the Slightest Fever or Pain attends +the Eruption; much less any of those frightful Convulsions so usual +in all the vulgar methods of Inoculation, even in the famous Peter +Puffs. This amazing Needle more truly astonishing and not less +useful than the Magnetic one, has this property in common with the +latter, that by touching the point of a common needle it +communicates its wonderful Virtues to it in the same manner that +Loadstone does to Iron. And that no part of this extensive +Continent may want the Benefit of this Superlatively excellent +Method, Ibrahim Mustapha proposes to touch several Needles in order +to have them distributed to different Colonies by which means the +Small Pocks may be entirely eradicated as it has been in the +Turkish Empire."</p></div> + +<p>Generous Ibrahim Mustapha! despite the testimony of the Janissaries and +the entire Turkish Empire, I cannot doubt that in your early youth you +frequently kissed the Blarney Stone, hence your fluent tongue and your +gallant proposition to becomingly decorate with pits the ladies.</p> + +<p>Besides the scourge of small-pox, the colonists were afflicted +grievously with other malignant distempers,—fatal throat diseases, +epidemic influenzas, putrid fevers, terrible fluxes; and as the art of +sanitation was absolutely disregarded and almost unknown, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> drainage +there was none, and the notion of disinfection was in feeble infancy, we +cannot wonder that the death-rates were high. Well might the New +Englander say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Considering the thousand doors +that lead to death, I do thank my God that we can die but once."</p> + +<p>Cotton Mather was not the only kind-hearted New England minister who set +up to heal the body as well as the soul of the entire town. All the +early parsons seem to have turned eagerly to medicine. The Wigglesworths +were famous doctors. President Hoar, of Harvard College, President +Rogers, President Chauncey, all practised medicine. The latter's six +sons were all ministers, and all good doctors, too. It was a parson, +Thomas Thatcher, who wrote the first medical treatise published in +America, a set of "Brief Rules for the Care of the Small Pocks," printed +as a broadside in 1677. Many of the early parsons played also the part +of apothecary, buying drugs at wholesale and compounding and selling +medicines to their parishioners. Small wonder that Cotton Mather called +the union of physic and piety an "Angelical Conjunction."</p> + +<p>Other professions and callings joined hands with chirurgy and medicine. +Innkeepers, magistrates, grocers, and schoolmasters were doctors. One +surgeon was a butcher—sadly similar callings in those days. This +butcher-surgeon was not Mr. Pighogg, the Plymouth "churregein," whose +unpleasant name was, I trust, only the cacographical rendering of the +good old English name Peacock.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p> + +<p>With all these amateur and semi-professional rivals, it is no wonder +that Giles Firmin, who knew how to pull teeth and bleed and sweat in a +truly professional manner, complained that he found physic but a "meene +helpe" in the new land.</p> + +<p>So vast was the confidence of the community in some or any kind of a +doctor, and in self-doctoring, that as late as the year 1721 there was +but one regularly graduated physician in Boston—Dr. Samuel Douglas; and +it may be noted that he was one of the most decided opponents of +inoculation for small-pox.</p> + +<p>Colonial dames also boldly tried their hand at the healing art; the +first two, Anne Hutchinson and Margaret Jones, did not thrive very well +at the trade. The banishment of the former has oft been told. The latter +was hung as a witch, and the worst evidence against her character, the +positive proof of her diabolical power was, that her medicines being so +simple, they worked such wonderful cures. At the close of King Philip's +War the Council of Connecticut paid Mrs. Allyn £20 for her services to +the sick, and Mistress Sarah Sands doctored on Block Island. Sarah +Alcock, the wife of a chirurgeon, was also "active in physick;" and +Mistress Whitman, the Marlborough midwife, visited her patients on +snow-shoes, and lived to be seventy-eight years old, too. In the Phipps +Street Burying Ground in Charlestown is the tombstone of a Boston +midwife who died in 1761, aged seventy-six years, and who, could we +believe the record on the gravestone, "by ye blessing of God has brought +into this world above 130,000 children." But a close<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> examination shows +that the number on the ancient headstone, through the mischievous +manipulation of modern hands, has received a figure at either end, and +the good old lady can only be charged with three thousand additions to +wretched humanity.</p> + +<p>Negroes, and illiterate persons of all complexions, set up as doctors. +Old Joe Pye and Sabbatus were famous Indian healers. Indian squaws, such +as Molly Orcutt, sold many a decoction of leaves and barks to the +planters, and, like Hiawatha,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Wandered eastward, wandered westward,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Teaching men the use of simples,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And the antidotes for poisons,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And the cure of all diseases."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A good old Connecticut doctor had a negro servant, Primus, who rode with +him and helped him in his surgery and shop. When the master died, Doctor +Primus started in to practise medicine himself, and proved +extraordinarily successful throughout the county; even his master's +patients did not disdain to employ the black successor, wishing no doubt +their wonted bolus and draught.</p> + +<p>In spite of the fact that everyone and anyone seemed to be permitted, +and was considered fitted to prescribe medicine, the colonists were +sharp enough on the venders of quack medicines—or, perhaps I should +say, of powerless medicines—on "runnagate chyrurgeons and +physickemongers, saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, and all +impostourous empiricks." As early as 1631, one Nicholas Knapp was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> fined +and whipped for pretending "to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth +nor value which he sold att a very deare rate." The planters were +terribly prostrated by scurvy, and doubtless were specially indignant at +this heartless cheat.</p> + +<p>Tides of absurd attempts at medicine, or rather at healing, swept over +the scantily settled New England villages in colonial days, just as we +have seen in our own day, in our great cities, the abounding +success—financially—of the blue-glass cure, the faith cure, and of +science healing. The Rain Water Doctor worked wondrous miracles, and did +a vast and lucrative business until he was unluckily drowned in a +hogshead of his own medicine at his own door. Bishop Berkeley, in his +pamphlet Siris, started a flourishing tar-water craze, which lived long +and died slowly. This cure-all, like the preceding aquatic physic, had +the merit of being cheap. A quart of tar steeped for forty-eight hours +in a gallon of water, tainted the water enough to make it fit for +dosing. Perhaps the most expansive swindle was that of Dr. Perkins, with +his Metallic Tractors. He was born in Norwich, Conn., in 1740, and found +fortune and fame in his native land. Still he was expelled from the +association of physicians in his own country, but managed to establish a +Perkinean Institution in London with a fine, imposing list of officers +and managers, of whom Benjamin Franklin's son was one. He had poems and +essays and eulogies and books written about him, and it was claimed by +his followers that he cured one million and a half of sufferers. At any +rate, he managed to carry off £10,000<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> of good English money to New +England. His wonderful Metallic Tractors were little slips of iron and +brass three inches long, blunt at one end, and pointed at the other, and +said to be of opposite electrical conditions. They cost five guineas a +pair. When drawn or trailed for several minutes over a painful or +diseased spot on the human frame, they positively removed and cured all +ache, smart, or soreness. I have never doubted they worked wonderful +cures; so did bits of wood, of lead, of stone, of earthenware, in the +hands of scoffers, when the tractorated patients did not see the bits, +and fancied that the manipulator held Metallic Tractors.</p> + +<p>As years passed on various useful medicines became too much the vogue, +and were used to too vast and too deleterious an extent, particularly +mercury. Many a poor salivated patient sacrificed his teeth to his +doctor's mercurial doses. One such toothless sufferer, a carpenter, +having little ready money, offered to pay his physician in hay-rakes; +and he took a revengeful delight in manufacturing the rakes of green, +unseasoned wood. After a few days' use in the sunny fields, the doctor's +rakes were as toothless as their maker.</p> + +<p>Physicians' fees were "meene" enough in olden times; but sixpence a +visit in Hadley and Northampton in 1730, and only eightpence in +Revolutionary times. A blood-letting, or a jaw-splitting tooth-drawing +cost the sufferer eightpence extra. No wonder the doctor cupped and bled +on every occasion. In extravagant Hartford the opulent doctor got a +shilling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> a visit. Naturally all the chirurgeons eked out and augmented +their scanty fees by compounding and selling their own medicines, and +dosed often and dosed deeply, since by their doses they lived. In many +communities a bone-setter had to be paid a salary by the town in order +to keep him, so few and slight were his private emoluments, even as a +physic-monger.</p> + +<p>The science of nursing the sick was, in early days, unknown; there were +but few who made a profession of nursing, and those few were deeply to +be dreaded. In taking care of the sick, as in other kindnesses, the +neighborly instinct, ever so keen, so living in New England, showed no +lagging part. For it is plain to any student of early colonial days +that, if the chief foundation of the New England commonwealth was +religion, the second certainly was neighborliness. There was a constant +exchange of kindly and loving attentions between families and +individuals. It showed itself in all the petty details of daily life, in +assistance in housework and in the field, in house-raising. Did a man +build a barn, his neighbors flocked to drive a pin, to lay a stone, to +stand forever in the edifice as token of their friendly goodwill. The +most eminent, as well as the poorest neighbors, thus assisted. In +nothing was this neighborly feeling more constantly shown than in the +friendly custom of visiting and watching with the sick; and it was the +only available assistance. Men and women in this care and attention took +equal part. As in all other neighborly duties, good Judge Sewall was +never remiss in the sick-room. He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> generous with his gifts and +generous with his time, even to those humble in the community. Such +entries as this abound in his diary: "Oct. 26th 1702. Visited +languishing Mr. Sam Whiting. I gave him 2 Balls of Chockalett and a +pound of Figgs." And when Mr. Bayley lay ill of a fever, he prayed with +him and took care of him through many a long night, and wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"When I came away call'd his wife into the Next Chamber and gave +her Two Five Shilling Bits. She very modestly and kindly accepted +them and said I had done too much already. I told her if the State +of my family would have born it I ought to have watched with Mr. +Bayley as much as that came to."</p></div> + +<p>To others he gave China oranges, dishes of marmalet, Meers Cakes, +Banberry Cakes; and even to well-to-do people gave gifts of money, +sometimes specifying for what purpose he wished the gift to be applied.</p> + +<p>The universal custom of praying at inordinate length and frequency with +sick persons was of more doubtful benefit, though of equally kind +intent. One cannot but be amazed to find how many persons—ministers, +elders, deacons, and laymen were allowed to enter the sick-room and pray +by the bedside of the invalid, thus indeed giving him, as Sewall said, +"a lift Heavenward." Sometimes a succession of prayers filled the entire +day.</p> + +<p>Judge Sewall's friendly prayers and visits were not always welcome. +After visiting sick Mr. Brattle the Judge writes, but without any +resentment, "he plainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> told me that frequent visits were prejudicial +to him, it provok'd him to speak more than his strength would bear, +would have me come seldom." And on September 20, 1690, he met with this +reception:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Moody and I went before the others came to neighbor Hurd who +lay dying where also Mr. Allen came in. Nurse Hurd told her husband +who was there and what he had to say; whether he desir'd them to +pray with him; He said with some earnestness, Hold your tongue, +which was repeated three times to his wives repeated entreaties; +once he said Let me alone or Be quiet (whether that made a fourth +or was one of the three do not remember) and, My Spirits are gon. +At last Mr. Moody took him up pretty roundly and told him he might +with some labour have given a pertinent answer. When we were ready +to come away Mr. Moody bid him put forth a little Breath to ask +prayer, and said twas the last time had to speak to him; At last +ask'd him, doe you desire prayer, shall I pray with you. He +answered, Ay for Gods sake and thank'd Mr. Moody when had done. His +former carriage was very startling and amazing to us. About one at +night he died. About 11 o'clock I supposed to hear neighbor Mason +at prayer with him just as my wife and I were going to bed."</p></div> + +<p>One cannot but feel a thrill of sympathy for poor, dying Hurd on that +hot September night, fairly hectored by pious, loud-voiced neighbors +into eternity; and can well believe that many a colonial invalid who +lived through mithridate and rubila, through sweating and blood-letting, +died of the kindly and godly-intentioned praying of his neighbors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2> + +<h3>FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS</h3> + +<p>The earliest New Englanders had no religious services at a funeral. Not +wishing to "confirm the popish error that prayer is to be used for the +dead or over the dead," they said no words, either of grief, +resignation, or faith, but followed the coffin and filled the grave in +silence. Lechford has given us a picture of a funeral in New England in +the seventeenth century, which is full of simple dignity, if not of +sympathy:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"At Burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made, but all +the neighborhood or a goodly company of them come together by +tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and +then stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most +commonly present."</p></div> + +<p>As was the fashion in England at that date, laudatory verses and +sentences were fastened to the bier or herse. The name herse was then +applied to the draped catafalque or platform upon which the candles +stood and the coffin rested, not as now the word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> hearse to a carriage +for the conveyance of the dead. Sewall says of the funeral of the Rev. +Thomas Shepherd: "There were some verses, but none pinned on the Herse." +These verses were often printed after the funeral. The publication of +mourning broadsides and pamphlets, black-bordered and dismal, was a +large duty of the early colonial press. They were often decorated +gruesomely with skull and crossbones, scythes, coffins, and +hour-glasses, all-seeing eyes with rakish squints, bow-legged skeletons, +and miserable little rosetted winding-sheets.</p> + +<p>A writer in the <i>New England Courant</i> of November 12, 1722, says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Of all the different species of poetry now in use I find the +Funeral Elegy to be most universally admired and used in New +England. There is scarce a plough jogger or country cobler that has +read our Psalms and can make two lines jingle, who has not once in +his life at least exercised his talent in this way. Nor is there +one country house in fifty which has not its walls garnished with +half a Score of these sort of Poems which praise the Dead to the +Life.</p></div> + +<p>When a Puritan died his friends conspired in mournful concert, or +labored individually and painfully, to bring forth as tributes of grief +and respect, rhymed elegies, anagrams, epitaphs, acrostics, epicediums, +and threnodies; and singularly enough, seemed to reserve for these +gloomy tributes their sole attempt at facetiousness. Ingenious quirks +and puns, painful and complicate jokes (printed in italics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> that you may +not escape nor mistake them) bestrew these funeral verses. If a man +chanced to have a name of any possible twist of signification, such as +Green, Stone, Blackman, in doleful puns did he posthumously suffer; and +his friends and relatives endured vicariously also, for to them these +grinning death's-heads of rhymes were widely distributed.</p> + +<p>It was with a keen sense of that humor which comes, as Sydney Smith +says, from sudden and unexpected contrast, that I read a heavily +bordered sheet entitled in large letters, "A Grammarian's Funeral." It +was printed at the death of Schoolmaster Woodmancey, and was so much +admired that it was brought forth again at the demise of Ezekiel +Cheever, who died in 1708 after no less than seventy years of +school-teaching. I think we may truly say of him, teaching at +ninety-three years of age,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"With throttling hands of death at strife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Ground he at grammar."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>For the consideration and investigation of Browning Societies, I give a +few lines from this New England conception of a Grammarian's Funeral.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Eight parts of Speech This Day wear Mourning Gowns,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;"><i>Declin'd</i> Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, and Nouns.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Substantive seeming the limbed best</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Would set an hand to bear him to his <i>Rest</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Adjective with very grief did say</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 11em;">Hold me by Strength or I shall faint away.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Great Honour was conferred on <i>Conjugations</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">They were to follow next to the <i>Relations</i></span> +</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">But Lego said, by me his got his Skill</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And therefore next the Herse I follow will</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">A Doleful Day for <i>Verbs</i> they look so <i>Moody</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">They drove Spectators to a mournful Study."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I have a strong suspicion that this funeral poem may have been learned +by heart by succeeding generations of Boston scholars, as a sort of +grammatical memory-rhyme—a mournful study, indeed.</p> + +<p>Funeral sermons were also printed, with trappings of sombreness, +black-bordered, with death's-heads and crossbones on the covers. These +sermons were not, however, preached at the time of the funeral, save in +exceptional cases. It is said that one was delivered at the funeral of +President Chauncey in 1671. Cotton Mather preached one at the funeral of +Fitz-John Winthrop in 1707, and another at the funeral of Waitstill +Winthrop in 1717. Gradually there crept in the custom of having suitable +prayers at the house before the burial procession formed, the first +instance being probably at the funeral of Pastor Adams, of Roxbury, in +1683. Sometimes a short address was given at the grave, as when Jonathan +Alden was buried at Duxbury, in 1697. The <i>Boston News Letter</i> of +December 31, 1730, notes a prayer at a funeral, and says: "Tho' a custom +in the Country-Towns 'tis a Singular instance in this Place, but it's +wish'd may prove a Leading Example to the General Practice of so +Christian and Decent a Custom." Whitefield wrote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> disparagingly of the +custom of not speaking at the grave.</p> + +<p>We see Judge Sewall mastering his grief at his mother's burial, delaying +for a few moments the filling of the grave, and speaking some very +proper words of eulogy "with passion and tears." He jealously notes, +however, when the Episcopal burial service is given in Boston, saying: +"The Office for the dead is a Lying bad office, makes no difference +between the precious and the Vile."</p> + +<p>There were, as a rule, two sets of bearers appointed; under-bearers, +usually young men, who carried the coffin on a bier; and pall-bearers, +men of age, dignity, or consanguinity, who held the corners of the pall +which was spread over the coffin and hung down over the heads and bodies +of the under-bearers. As the coffin was sometimes carried for a long +distance, there were frequently appointed a double set of under-bearers, +to share the burden. I have been told that mort-stones were set by the +wayside in some towns, upon which the bearers could rest the heavy +coffin for a short time on their way to the burial-place; but I find no +record or proof of this statement. The pall, or bier-cloth, or +mort-cloth, as it was called, was usually bought and owned by the town, +and was of heavy purple, or black broadcloth, or velvet. It often was +kept with the bier in the porch of the meeting-house; but in some +communities the bier, a simple shelf or table of wood on four legs about +a foot and a half long, was placed over the freshly filled-in grave and +left sombrely waiting till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> it was needed to carry another coffin to the +burial-place. In many towns there were no gravediggers; sympathizing +friends made the simple coffin and dug the grave.</p> + +<p>In Londonderry, N. H., and neighboring towns that had been settled by +Scotch-Irish planters, the announcement of a death was a signal for +cessation of daily work throughout the neighborhood. Kindly assistance +was at once given at the house of mourning. Women flocked to do the +household work and to prepare the funeral feast. Men brought gifts of +food, or household necessities, and rendered all the advice and help +that was needed. A gathering was held the night before the funeral, +which in feasting and drinking partook somewhat of the nature of an +Irish wake. Much New England rum was consumed at this gathering, and +also before the procession to the grave, and after the interment the +whole party returned to the house for an "arval," and drank again. The +funeral rum-bill was often an embarrassing and hampering expense to a +bereaved family for years.</p> + +<p>This liberal serving of intoxicating liquor at a funeral was not +peculiar to these New Hampshire towns, nor to the Scotch-Irish, but +prevailed in every settlement in the colonies until the +temperance-awakening days of this century. Throughout New England bills +for funeral baked meats were large in items of rum, cider, whiskey, +lemons, sugar, spices.</p> + +<p>To show how universally liquor was served to all who had to do with a +funeral, let me give the bill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> for the mortuary expenses of David +Porter, of Hartford, who was drowned in 1678.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>"By a pint of liquor for those who dived for him.</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>1<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>By a quart of liquor for those who bro't him home.</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>2<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>By two quarts of wine & 1 gallon of cyder to jury</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> of inquest.</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>5<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>By 8 gallons & 3 qts. wine for funeral.</td><td align='right'>£1</td><td align='right'>15<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>By Barrel cyder for funeral.</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>16<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>1 Coffin.</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>12<i>s.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Windeing sheet.</td><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>18<i>s.</i>"</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p>Even town paupers had two or three gallons of rum or a barrel of cider +given by the town to serve as speeding libations at their unmourned +funerals. The liquor at the funeral of a minister was usually paid for +by the church or town—often interchangeable terms for the same body. +The parish frequently gave, also, as in the case of the death of Rev. +Job Strong, of Portsmouth, in 1751, "the widow of our deceased pasture a +full suit of mourning."</p> + +<p>A careful, and above all an experienced committee was appointed to +superintend the mixing of the funeral grog or punch, and to attend to +the liberal and frequent dispensing thereof.</p> + +<p>Hawthorne was so impressed with the enjoyable reunion New Englanders +found in funerals that he wrote of them:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"They were the only class of scenes, so far as my investigation has +taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough +old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of +grisly jollity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> Look back through all the social customs of New +England in the first century of her existence and read all her +traits of character, and find one occasion other than a funeral +feast where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice.... Well, +old friends! Pass on with your burden of mortality and lay it in +the tomb with jolly hearts. People should be permitted to enjoy +themselves in their own fashion; every man to his taste—but New +England must have been a dismal abode for the man of pleasure when +the only boon-companion was Death."</p></div> + +<p>This picture has been given by Sargent of country funerals in the days +of his youth:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country, everybody +went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was +small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited +remark, and the boys were dismissed for the funeral. A table with +liquors was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his +hat with his left hand, smoothed down his hair with his right, +walked up to the coffin, gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked +face, passed on to the table, took a glass of his favorite liquor, +went forth upon the plat before the house and talked politics, or +of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped heifers or horses +until it was time to <i>lift</i>. A clergyman told me that when settled +at Concord, N. H., he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The +body was borne in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, +the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before +they left the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the +table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and sugar for each."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was a hard struggle against established customs and ideas of +hospitality, and even of health, when the use of liquor at funerals was +abolished. Old people sadly deplored the present and regretted the past. +One worthy old gentleman said, with much bitterness: "Temperance has +done for funerals."</p> + +<p>As soon as the larger cities began to accrue wealth, the parentations of +men and women of high station were celebrated with much pomp and +dignity, if not with religious exercises. Volleys were fired over the +freshly made grave—even of a woman. A barrel and a half of powder was +consumed to do proper honor to Winthrop, the chief founder of +Massachusetts. At the funeral of Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby +eleven companies of militia were in attendance, and "with the doleful +noise of trumpets and drums, in their mourning posture, three thundering +volleys of shot were discharged, answered with the loud roarings of +great guns rending the heavens with noise at the loss of so great a +man." When Governor Leverett died, in 1679, the bearers carried banners. +The principal men of the town bore the armor of the deceased, from +helmet to spur, and the Governor's horse was led with banners. The +funeral-recording Sewall has left us many a picture of the pomp of +burial. Colonel Samuel Shrimpton was buried "with Arms" in 1697, "Ten +Companies, No Herse nor Trumpet but a horse Led. Mourning Coach also & +Horses in Mourning, Scutcheons on their sides and Deaths Heads on their +foreheads." Fancy those coach-horses with gloomy death's-heads on their +fore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>heads. At the funeral of Lady Andros, which was held in church, six +"mourning women" sat in front of the draped pulpit, and the hearse was +drawn by six horses. This English fashion of paid mourners was not +common among sincere New Englanders; Lady Andros was a Church of England +woman, not a Puritan. The cloth from the pulpit was usually given, after +the burial, to the minister. In 1736 the <i>Boston News Letter</i> tells of +the pulpit and the pew of the deceased being richly draped and adorned +with escutcheons at a funeral. Thus were New England men, to quote Sir +Thomas Browne, "splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave."</p> + +<p>Many local customs prevailed. In Hartford and neighboring towns all +ornaments, mirrors, and pictures were muffled with napkins and cloths at +the time of the funerals, and sometimes the window-shutters were kept +closed in the front of the house and tied together with black for a +year, as was the fashion in Philadelphia.</p> + +<p>Hawthorne tells us that at the death of Sir William Pepperell the entire +house was hung with black, and all the family portraits were covered +with black crape.</p> + +<p>The order of procession to the grave was a matter of much etiquette. +High respect and equally deep slights might be rendered to mourners in +the place assigned. Usually some magistrate or person of dignity walked +with the widow. Judge Sewall often speaks of "leading the widow in a +mourning cloak."</p> + +<p>One great expense of a funeral was the gloves. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> some communities +these were sent as an approved and elegant form of invitation to +relatives and friends and dignitaries, whose presence was desired. +Occasionally, a printed "invitation to follow the corps" was also sent. +One for the funeral of Sir William Phipps is still in existence—a +fantastically gloomy document. In the case of a funeral of any person +prominent in State, Church, or society, vast numbers of gloves were +disbursed; "none of 'em of any figure but what had gloves sent to 'em." +At the funeral of the wife of Governor Belcher, in 1736, over one +thousand pairs of gloves were given away; at the funeral of Andrew +Faneuil three thousand pairs; the number frequently ran up to several +hundred. Different qualities of gloves were presented at the same +funeral to persons of different social circles, or of varied degrees of +consanguinity or acquaintance. Frequently the orders for these <i>vales</i> +were given in wills. As early as 1633 Samuel Fuller, of Plymouth, +directed in his will that his sister was to have gloves worth twelve +shillings; Governor Winthrop and his children each "a paire of gloves of +five shilling;" while plebeian Rebecca Prime had to be contented with a +cheap pair worth two shillings and sixpence. The under-bearers who +carried the coffin were usually given different and cheaper gloves from +the pall-bearers. We find seven pairs of gloves given at a pauper's +funeral, and not under the head of "Extrodny Chearges" either.</p> + +<p>Of course the minister was always given gloves. They were showered on +him at weddings, christen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>ings, funerals. Andrew Eliot, of the North +Church, in Boston, kept a record of the gloves and rings which he +received; and, incredible as it may seem, in thirty-two years he was +given two thousand nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves. Though he had +eleven children, he and his family could scarcely wear them all, so he +sold them through kindly Boston milliners, and kept a careful account of +the transaction, of the lamb's-wool gloves, the kid gloves, the long +gloves—which were probably Madam Eliot's. He received between six and +seven hundred dollars for the gloves, and a goodly sum also for funeral +rings.</p> + +<p>Various kinds of gloves are specified as suitable for mourning; for +instance, in the <i>Boston Independent Advertiser</i> in 1749, "Black Shammy +Gloves and White Glazed Lambs Wool Gloves suitable for Funerals." White +gloves were as often given as black, and purple gloves also. Good +specimens of old mourning gloves have been preserved in the cabinets of +the Worcester Society of Antiquity.</p> + +<p>At the funeral of Thomas Thornhill "17 pair of White Gloves at £1 15<i>s.</i> +6<i>d.</i>, 31½ yard Corle for Scarfs £3 10<i>s.</i> 10½<i>d.</i>, and Black and +White Ribbin" were paid for. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell sent to +England for "4 pieces Hat mourning and 2 pieces of Cyprus or Hood +mourning." This hat mourning took the form of long weepers, which were +worn on the hat at the funeral, and as a token of respect afterward by +persons who were not relatives of the deceased. Judge Sewall was always +punctilious in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> thus honoring the dead in his community. On May 2, 1709, +he writes thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Being artillery day and Mr. Higginson dead I put on my mourning +Rapier and put a mourning ribbon in my little Cane."</p></div> + +<p>Rings were given at funerals, especially in wealthy families, to near +relatives and persons of note in the community. Sewall records in his +diary, in the years from 1687 to 1725, the receiving of no less than +fifty-seven mourning rings. We can well believe the story told of Doctor +Samuel Buxton, of Salem, who died in 1758, aged eighty-one years, that +he left to his heirs a quart tankard full of mourning rings which he had +received at funerals; and that Rev. Andrew Eliot had a mugful. At one +Boston funeral, in 1738, over two hundred rings were given away. At +Waitstill Winthrop's funeral sixty rings, worth over a pound apiece, +were given to friends. The entire expense of the latter-named +funeral—scutcheons, hatchments, scarves, gloves, rings, bell-tolling, +tailor's bills, etc., was over six hundred pounds. This amounted to +one-fifth of the entire estate of the deceased gentleman.</p> + +<p>These mourning rings were of gold, usually enamelled in black, or black +and white. They were frequently decorated with a death's-head, or with a +coffin with a full-length skeleton lying in it, or with a winged skull. +Sometimes they held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. +Sometimes the ring was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his +mouth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> Many bore a posy. In the <i>Boston News Letter</i> of October 30, +1742, was advertised: "Mourning Ring lost with the Posy Virtue & Love is +From Above." Here is another advertisement from the <i>Boston Evening +Post</i>:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Escaped unluckily from me</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">A Large Gold Ring, a Little Key;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Ring had Death engraved upon it;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Owners Name inscribed within it;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Who finds and brings the same to me</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Shall generously rewarded be."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A favorite motto for these rings was: "Death parts United Hearts." +Another was the legend: "Death conquers all;" another, "Prepare for +Death;" still another, "Prepared be To follow me." Other funeral rings +bore a family crest in black enamel.</p> + +<p>Goldsmiths kept these mourning rings constantly on hand. "Deaths Heads +Rings" and "Burying Rings" appear in many newspaper advertisements. When +bought for use the name or initials of the dead person, and the date of +his death, were engraved upon the ring. This was called fashioning. It +is also evident from existing letters and bills that orders were sent by +bereaved ones to friends residing at a distance to purchase and wear +mourning rings in memory of the dead, and send the bills to the heirs or +the principals of the mourning family. Thus, after the death of Andrew, +son of Sir William Pepperell, Mr. Kilby, of London, wrote to the father +that he accepted "that melancholy token of y'r regard to Mrs. K. and +myself at the expense of four guineas in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> the whole. But, as is not +unusual here on such occasions, Mrs. K. has, at her own expense, added +some sparks of diamonds to some other mournful ornaments to the ring, +which she intends to wear."</p> + +<p>It is very evident that old New Englanders looked with much eagerness to +receiving a funeral ring at the death of a friend, and in old diaries, +almanacs, and note-books such entries as this are often seen: "Made a +ring at the funeral," "A death's-head ring made at the funeral of so and +so;" or, as Judge Sewall wrote, "Lost a ring" by not attending the +funeral. The will of Abigail Ropes, in 1775, gives to her grandson "a +gold ring I made at his father's death;" and again, "a gold ring made +when my bro. died."</p> + +<p>As with gloves, rings of different values were given to relatives of +different degrees of consanguinity, and to friends of different stations +in life; much tact had to be shown, else much offence might be taken.</p> + +<p>I do not know how long the custom of giving mourning rings obtained in +New England. Some are in existence dated 1812, but were given at the +funeral of aged persons who may have left orders to their descendants to +cling to the fashion of their youth.</p> + +<p>A very good collection of mourning rings may be seen at the rooms of the +Essex Institute in Salem, and that society has also published a pamphlet +giving a list of such rings known to be in existence in Salem.</p> + +<p>As years passed on a strong feeling sprang up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> against these gifts and +against the excessive wearing of mourning garments because burdensome in +expense. Judge Sewall notes, in 1721, the first public funeral "without +scarfs." In 1741 it was ordered by Massachusetts Provincial Enactment +that "no Scarves, Gloves (except six pair to the bearers and one pair to +each minister of the church or congregation where any deceased person +belongs), Wine, Rum, or rings be allowed to be given at any funeral upon +the penalty of fifty pounds." The <i>Connecticut Courant</i> of October 24, +1764, has a letter from a Boston correspondent which says, "It is now +out of fashion to put on mourning for nearest relatives, which will make +a saving to this town of £20,000 per annum." It also states that a +funeral had been held at Charlestown at which no mourning had been worn. +At that of Ellis Callender in the same year, the chief mourner wore in +black only bonnet, gloves, ribbons, and handkerchief. Letters are in +existence from Boston merchants to English agents rebuking the latter +for sending mourning goods, such as crapes, "which are not worn." A +newly born and fast-growing spirit of patriotic revolt gave added force +to the reform. Boston voted, in October, 1767, "not to use any mourning +gloves but what are manufactured here," and other towns passed similar +resolutions. It was also suggested that American mourning gloves be +stamped with a patriotic emblem. In 1788 a fine of twenty shillings was +imposed on any person who gave scarfs, gloves, rings, wine, or rum at a +funeral; who bought any new mourning apparel to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> wear at or after a +funeral, save a crape arm-band if a masculine mourner, or black bonnet, +fan, gloves, and ribbons if a woman. This law could never have been +rigidly enforced, for much gloomy and ostentatious pomp obtained in the +larger towns even to our own day. "From the tombs a mournful sound" +seemed to be fairly a popular sound, and the long funeral processions, +always taking care to pass the Town House, churches, and other public +buildings, obstructed travel, and men were appointed in each town by the +selectmen to see that "free passage in the streets be kept open." +Funerals were forbidden to be held on the Lord's Day, because it +profaned the sacred day, through the vast concourse of children and +servants that followed the coffin through the streets.</p> + +<p>Some attempt was made to regulate funeral expenses. In Salem a tolling +of the bell could cost but eightpence, and "the sextons are desired to +toll the bells but four strokes in a minute." The undertakers could +charge but eight shillings for borrowing chairs, waiting on the +pall-holders, and notifying relatives to attend.</p> + +<p>The early graves were frequently clustered, were even crowded in +irregular groups in the churchyard; and in larger towns, the +dead—especially persons of dignity—were buried, as in England, under +the church. Sargent, in his "Dealings with the Dead," speaks at length +of the latter custom, which prevailed to an inordinate extent in Boston. +In smaller settlements some out-of-the-way spot was chosen for a common +burial-place, in barren pasture or on lonely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> hillside, thus forcibly +proving the well-known lines of Whittier,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Our hills are maple crowned,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">But not from them our fathers chose</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The village burial ground.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"The dreariest spot in all the land</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">To Death they set apart;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">With scanty grace from Nature's hand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">And none from that of Art."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>To the natural loneliness of the country burial-place and to its +inevitable sadness, is now too frequently added the gloomy and +depressing evidence of human neglect. Briers and weeds grow in tangled +thickets over the forgotten graves; birch-trees and barberry bushes +spring up unchecked. In one a thriving grove of lilac bushes spreads its +dusty shade from wall to wall. Winter-killed shrubs of flowering almond +or snowballs, planted in tender memory, stand now withered and unheeded, +and the few straggling garden flowers—crimson phlox or single +hollyhocks—that still live only painfully accent the loneliness by +showing that this now forgotten spot was once loved, visited, and cared +for.</p> + +<p>In many cases the worn gravestone lies forlornly face downward; +sometimes,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"The slab has sunk; the head declined,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And left the rails a wreck behind.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">No names; you trace a '6'—a '7,'</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 11em;">Part of 'affliction' and of 'Heaven.'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And then in letters sharp and clear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">You read.—O Irony austere!—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">'Tho' lost to Sight, to Memory dear.'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"Truly our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly +show us how we may be buried in our survivors.'" Still, this neglect and +oblivion is just as satisfactory as was the officious "deed without a +name" done in orderly Boston, where, in the first half of this century, +a precise Superintendent of Graveyards and his army of assistants—what +Charles Lamb called "sapient trouble-tombs"—straightened out +mathematically all the old burial-places, levelled the earth, and set in +trim military rows the old slate headstones, regardless of the irregular +clusters of graves and their occupants.</p> + +<p>And there in Boston the falsifying old headstones still stand, fixed in +new places, but marking no coffins or honored bones beneath; the only +true words of their inscriptions being the opening ones "Here lies," and +the motto that they repeat derisively to each other—"As you are now so +once was I."</p> + +<p>In many communities each family had its own burying-place in some corner +of the home farm, sometimes at the foot of garden or orchard. Such is +noticeably the case throughout Narragansett; almost every farm has a +grave-yard, now generally unused and deserted. Sometimes the +burying-place is enclosed by a high mossy stone wall, often it is +overgrown with dense sombre firs or hemlocks, or half shaded with airy +locust-trees. Beautifully ideal and touching is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> the thought of these +old Narragansett planters resting with their wives and children in the +ground they so dearly loved and so faithfully worked for.</p> + +<p>A vast similarity of design existed in the early gravestones. +Originality of inscription, carving, size, or material was evidently +frowned upon as frivolous, undignified, and eccentric—even +disrespectful. A few of the early settlers used freestone or sienite, or +a native porphyritic green stone called beech-bowlder. Sandstone was +rarely employed, for though easily carved, it as easily yielded to New +England frosts and storms. A hard, dark, flinty slate-stone from North +Wales was commonly used, a stone so hard and so enduring that when our +modern granite and marble monuments are crumbled in the dust I believe +these old slate headstones still will speak their warning words of many +centuries.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"As I am now so you shall be,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Prepare for Death & follow me."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>These stones were imported from England ready carved. A high duty was +placed on them, and a Boston sea captain endeavored and was caught in +the attempt to bring into port, free of duty, for one of his friends, +one of these carved slate gravestones, by entering it as a +winding-sheet. It is one of the curiosities of New England commercial +enterprises, that for many years gravestones should have been imported +to New England, a land that fairly bristles with stone and rock +thrusting itself through the earth and waiting to be carved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Welsh stones were made of a universal pattern—a carved top with a +space enclosing a miserable death's or winged cherub's head as a +heading, a border of scrolls down either side of the inscription, and +rarely a design at the base. Weeping willows and urns did not appear in +the carving at the top until the middle of the eighteenth century, and +fought hard with the grinning cherub's head until this century, when +both were supplanted by a variety of designs—a clock-face, hour-glass, +etc. Capital letters were used wholly in the inscriptions until +Revolutionary times, and even after were mixed with Roman text with so +little regard for any printer's law that, at a little distance, many a +New England tombstone of the latter part of the past century seems to be +carven in hieroglyphics.</p> + +<p>Special families in New England seem to have appropriated special verses +as epitaphs, evidently because of the rhyme with the surname. Thus the +Jones family were properly proud of this family rhyme:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">"Beneath this Ston's</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">Int'r'd the Bon's</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">Ah Frail Remains</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">Of Lieut Noah Jones"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>or Mary Jones or William Jones, as the case might be.</p> + +<p>The Noyes family delighted in these lines:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"You children of the name of Noyes</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Make Jesus Christ yo'r only choyse."</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Tutes and Shutes and Roots began their epitaphs thus:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Here lies cut down like unripe fruit</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The wife of Deacon Amos Shute."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Gershom Root was "cut down like unripe fruit" at the fully mellowed age +of seventy-three.</p> + +<p>A curiously incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me +afresh, upon each perusal, as a sort of mortuary conundrum:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 13em;">"O! Happy Probationer!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Accepted without being Exercised."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Sometimes an old epitaph will be found of such impressive though simple +language that it clings long in the memory. Such is this verse of gentle +quaintness over the grave of a tender Puritan blossom, the child of an +early settler:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"Submit Submitted to her heavenly Kinge</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Being a flower of that Aeternal Spring</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Neare 3 years old shee dyed in Heaven to waite</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The Yeare was sixteen hundred 48."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Another of unusual beauty and sentiment is this:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">"I came in the morning—it was Spring</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 22em;">And I smiled.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">I walked out at noon—it was Summer</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 22em;">And I was glad.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">I sat me down at even—it was Autumn</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 22em;">And I was sad.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">I laid me down at night—it was Winter</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 22em;">And I slept."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Collections of curious old epitaphs have been made and printed, but seem +dull and colorless on the printed page, and the warning words seem to +lose their power unless seen in the sad graveyard, where, "silently +expressing old mortality," the hackneyed rhymes and tender words are +touching from their very simplicity and the loneliness which surrounds +them, and for their calm repetition, on stone after stone, of an undying +faith in a future life.</p> + +<p>One cannot help being impressed, when studying the almanacs, diaries, +and letters of the time, with the strange exaltation of spirit with +which the New England Puritan regarded death. To him thoughts of +mortality were indeed cordial to the soul. Death was the event, the +condition, which brought him near to God and that unknown world, that +"life elysian" of which he constantly spoke, dreamed and thought; and he +rejoiced mightily in that close approach, in that sense of touch with +the spiritual world. With unaffected cheerfulness he yielded himself to +his own fate, with unforced resignation he bore the loss of dearly loved +ones, and with eagerness and almost affection he regarded all the gloomy +attributes and surroundings of death. Sewall could find in a visit to +his family tomb, and in the heart-rending sight of the coffins therein, +an "awfull yet pleasing Treat;" while Mr. Joseph<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> Eliot said "that the +two days wherein he buried his wife and son were the best he ever had in +the world." The accounts of the wondrous and almost inspired calm which +settled on those afflicted hearts, bearing steadfastly the Christian +belief as taught by the Puritan church, make us long for the simplicity +of faith, and the certainty of heaven and happy reunion with loved ones +which they felt so triumphantly, so gloriously.</p> + +<div class="box"> +<p class="center">Transcriber's Note</p> + +<p>Spelling, punctuation and inconcistencies +in the original book have been retained.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, by +Alice Morse Earle + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOMS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND *** + +***** This file should be named 24159-h.htm or 24159-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/5/24159/ + +Produced by K. Nordquist, Annie McGuire and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> + + diff --git a/24159.txt b/24159.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f093af9 --- /dev/null +++ b/24159.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10490 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, by +Alice Morse Earle + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Customs and Fashions in Old New England + +Author: Alice Morse Earle + +Release Date: January 4, 2008 [EBook #24159] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOMS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND *** + + + + +Produced by K. Nordquist, Annie McGuire and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + + + + + CUSTOMS AND FASHIONS + IN + OLD NEW ENGLAND + + BY + + ALICE MORSE EARLE + + "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let + each successive generation thank him not less fervently, for + being one step further from them in the march of ages." + + NEW YORK + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + 1894 + + COPYRIGHT, 1893 BY + CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + TROW DIRECTORY + PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY + NEW YORK + + + BY THE SAME AUTHOR. + + CHINA COLLECTING IN AMERICA. With + 75 Illustrations. Square 8vo, $3.00. + + THE SABBATH IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND. + 12mo, $1.25. + + + To the Memory of my Father + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + I. CHILD LIFE, 1 + + II. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS, 36 + + III. DOMESTIC SERVICE, 82 + + IV. HOME INTERIORS, 107 + + V. TABLE PLENISHINGS, 132 + + VI. SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER, 146 + + VII. OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS, 163 + + VIII. TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE, 184 + + IX. HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS, 214 + + X. SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS, 234 + + XI. BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS, 257 + + XII. ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS, 289 + + XIII. RAIMENT AND VESTURE, 314 + + XIV. DOCTORS AND PATIENTS, 331 + + XV. FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS, 364 + + + + +I + +CHILD LIFE + + +From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England +he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared +comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists +gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open +fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the +roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be +cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could +not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from +the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature +that would make a modern infant scream with indignant discomfort, or lie +stupefied with cold. + +Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay +peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he was +carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill +and gloom of those unheated, freezing churches, growing colder and +damper and deadlier with every wintry blast--we wonder that grown +persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that +tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it +is recorded that the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. In +villages and towns where the houses were all clustered around the +meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried far to be +baptized; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were widely +scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child: +"Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised +infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly +lost its life thereby. + +Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket--a +"bearing-cloth"--the unfortunate young Puritan was carried to church in +the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast importance and dignity +as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from +fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the +baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first cold +and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of +Judge Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite +or extended contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New +England, as for knowledge of England of that date we turn to the diaries +of Evelyn and Pepys, we find abundant proof that inclemency of weather +was little heeded when religious customs and duties were in question. +On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus records: + + "A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of + the Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A child named Alexander + was baptized in the afternoon." + +He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He writes thus of the +baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February 6th, 1656: + + "Between 3 & 4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son whom I named + Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing. Child + shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the + Midwife who carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up." + +And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his children when but +six days old: + + "Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning but in the afternoon + fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz. Weeden + the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was + about half done in the Afternoon." + +Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking away from the icy +water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they quickly yielded +up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily and so +coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived +him, a majority dying in infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend +Cotton Mather but two survived their father. + +This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the rigid system of +selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in early New +England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the +natural result--the survival of the fittest--may account for the present +tough endurance of the New England people. + +Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when the baby graced the +meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and strict +church-goers, and all the members of the household were equally +church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go +also. I have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house +to hold Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit +upright. + +Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but little. Linen formed +the chilling substructure of their attire--little, thin, linen, +short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and +with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges +of thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the +rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens +of Governor Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen +mittens have evidently been worn off by the active friction of baby +fingers and then been replaced by patches of red and white cheney or +calico. The gowns are generally rather shapeless, large-necked sacks of +linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of course, entirely by hand, and +drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or linen bobbin. In summer and +winter the baby's head was always closely covered with a cap, or +"biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more comforting in winter than +comfortable in summer. + +The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his nineteenth century +descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled or carved +wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant drafts. +Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen +shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was +carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to +bring him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as +babies are carried upstairs by superstitious nurses nowadays, and he had +"scarlet laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with +various nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal +days, "Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence +the most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the +word) to be sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and +to have its disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits. +Advertisements of it frequently appear in the _Boston News Letter_ and +other New England newspapers of early date. + +The most common and largely dosed diseases of early infancy were, I +judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the times, +worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the +latter part of the seventeenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new +disease, scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered +whether it existed in the American plantations. In old medical books +which were used by the New England colonists I find manifold receipts +for the cure of these infantile diseases. Snails form the basis, or +rather the chief ingredient, of many of these medicines. Indeed, I +should fancy that snails must have been almost exterminated in the near +vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and employed +medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or +snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones: + + "The admirable and most famous Snail water.--Take a peck of garden + Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them in an oven + till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe + them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them + shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, + scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from + their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in + the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two + handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of + Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of + Barberries, Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one + handful; then lay the Snails and Worms on top of the hearbs and + flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the Strongest Ale, and let + it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces of Cloves + beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six + ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it + with paste and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine + in all, the first is the strongest, whereof take in the morning two + spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small Beer, the like in the + Afternoon." + +Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured. Snails also were +used externally: + + "To anoint the Ricketed Childs Limbs and to recover it in a short + time, though the child be so lame as to go upon crutches: + + "Take a peck of Garden Snailes and bruse them, put them into a + course Canvass bagg, and hang it up, and set a dish under to + receive the liquor that droppeth from them, wherewith anoint the + Childe in every Joynt which you perceive to be weak before the fire + every morning and evening. This I have known make a Patient Childe + that was extream weak to go alone using it only a week time." + +There were also "unguents to anoynt the Ricketted Childs breast," and +various drinks to be given "to the patient childe fasting," as they +termed him in what appears to us a half-comic, though wholly truthful +appellation. + +For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of senna and rhubarb +and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and as for +"Collick" and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every respectable Puritan +patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and nauseous +compounds that were offered to him for his relief. + +Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments, "anodyne necklaces." I find +them advertised in the _Boston Evening Post_ as late as 1771--"Anodine +Necklaces for the Easy breeding of Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays +children wear strings of amber beads to avert croup. + +Another medicine "to make children's teeth come without paine" was this: +"Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the +braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes +gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the +child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's +fangs around his neck--an ugly necklace. + +The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby opened his sad +eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and "laid on a +pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen or serge were +hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of cheney or +calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses, and all +the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the +household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden +to a dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "_Les Caquets de +l'Accouchee_," the popular book of the time of Louis XIII., proves. + +Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the "groaning beer" was drunk, +though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning Beer" two months before the +child was born. By tradition, "groaning cake," to be used at the time of +the birth of the child, and given to visitors for a week or two later, +also was made; but I find no allusion to it under that name in any of +the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good substantial viands +were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd Pyes, good Cheese +and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old, +seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats, +"Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and Tarts." +Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and claret." A survival of +this custom existed for many years in the fashion of drinking caudle at +the bedside of the mother. + +As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in attending the +dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him into +spending a tidy sum--for him--on drinks and feeing "the maid;" and in +visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure +trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent his entire +day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms;--in the +house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the +entertainment or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led +solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, who +formally gave them his blessing. He took them also to some of the +funerals of the endless procession of dead Bostonians that files +sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral of their baby +brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters (who were +about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so +that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam +said he saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the +only tears that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death. +When Betty was a year older her father wrote: + + "It falls to my daughter Elizabeths Share to read the 24 of Isaiah + which she doth with many Tears not being very well, and the + Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me + also." + +Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years old, also showed +evidence of the dejection of soul around him. + + "Richard Dumer, a flourishing youth of 9 years old dies of the + Small Pocks. I tell Sam of it and what need he had to prepare for + Death, and therefore to endeavor really to pray, when he said over + the Lord's Prayer: He seemed not much to mind, eating an Aple; but + when he came to say Our Father he burst out into a bitter Cry and + said he was afraid he should die. I pray'd with him and read + Scriptures comforting against Death, as O death where is thy sting, + &c. All things yours. Life and Immortality brought to light by + Christ." + +In January, 1695, Judge Sewall writes: + + "When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and + told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the + Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some + signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she + burst out into an amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry + too; Her Mother ask'd the reason, she gave none; at last said she + was afraid she should goe to Hell, her Sins were not pardon'd. She + was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's Text, Ye + shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, + Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins ran in her mind and terrified + her greatly. And staying at home she read out of Mr. Cotton + Mather--Why hath Satan filled thy Heart, which increased her Fear. + Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered yes but + fear'd her prayers were not heard because her sins were not + pardon'd." + +A fortnight later he writes: + + "Betty comes into me as soon as I was up and tells me the disquiet + she had when wak'd; told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, + was like Spira, not Elected. Ask'd her what I should pray for, she + said that God would pardon her Sin and give her a new heart. I + answer'd her Fears as well as I could and pray'd with many Tears on + either part. Hope God heard us." + +Three months later still he makes this entry: + + "Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping, tells me she is + afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweetness in reading + the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is + worn off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with + her alone." + +Poor little "wounded" Betty! She did not die in childhood as she feared, +but lived to pass through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and +of overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight +children; but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts, +which she despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from +comforting father; and at last she faced the dread foe Death at the age +of thirty-five. Judge Sewall wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope +God has delivered her now from all her fears;" every one reading of her +bewildered and depressed spiritual life must sincerely hope so with him. +In truth, the Puritan children were, as Judge Sewall said, "stirred up +dreadfully to seek God." + +Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught his little +daughter when she was four years old: + + "I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and there I told my + child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am Dead, + Remember every Thing, that I now said unto her. I sett before her + the sinful condition of her Nature and I charged her to pray in + secret places every day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ + would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am + taken from her she must look to meet with more Humbling + Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide + for her." + +I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to his +children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little +blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and, +indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two +years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and +praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly +satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his +son Increase, or "Cressy." + +No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable exhibitions of +religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when she +passed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of +religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could relate +many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was +set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion. "Before she +was four years old she could say the greater part of the Assembly's +Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent +remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions +about divine mysteries." It is a truly comic anticlimax in her father's +stilted letters to her to have him end his pious instructions with this +advice: "And as you love me do not eat green apples." + +Of the demeanor of children to their parents naught can be said but +praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record shows +that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were +well for them to thus obey the law of God, for by the law of the land +high-handed disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not +find this penalty ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim +Calvin, a fact which redounds to the credit both of justice and youth in +colonial days. + +It was not strange that Judge Sewall, always finding in natural events +and appearances symbols of spiritual and religious signification, should +find in his children painful types of original sin. + + "Nov. 6, 1692.--Joseph threw a knop of Brass and hit his Sister + Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed; and upon which, and + for his playing at Prayer-time and eating when Return Thanks, I + whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his + Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind + the head of the Cradle; which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of + Adam's carriage." + +It was natural, too, that Judge Sewall's children should be timid; they +ran in terror to their father's chamber at the approach of a +thunderstorm; and, living in mysterious witchcraft days, they fled +screaming through the hall, and their mother with them, at the sudden +entrance of a neighbor with a rug over her head. + +All youthful Puritans were not as godly as the young Sewalls. Nathaniel +Mather wrote thus in his diary: + + "When very young I went astray from God and my mind was altogether + taken with vanities and follies: such as the remembrance of them + doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which + then I was guilty of, none so sticks upon me as that, being very + young, I was _whitling_ on the Sabbath-day; and for fear of being + seen, I did it behind the _door_. A great _reproach_ of God! a + specimen of that _atheism_ I brought into the world with me!" + +It is satisfactory to add that this young prig of a Mather died when +nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's "Narratives of +Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of the Puritanical +religious teaching of the young can be found than the account given in +the _Magnalia_ of various young souls in whom the love of God was +remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather. +His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in +detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and +directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a +day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but +wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He +fasted. He made long lists of sins, long catalogues of things forbidden, +"and then fell a-stoning them." He "chewed much on excellent sermons." +He not only read the Bible, but "obliged himself to fetch a note and +prayer out of each verse," as he read. In spite of all these +preparations for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest +despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of +God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said, +soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest +of businesses. + +That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close +to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left +an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new +world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest +reasons of all--the intense yearning for the true well-being of the +children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of +those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid +sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote +thus of the Pilgrims: + + "As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to + be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their + dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender + harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise + sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that + were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde + to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their + parents burden, were, often times so oppressed with their hevie + labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their + bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and become decreped in + their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very + budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all + sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children, + by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye + countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away + by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting + ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some + became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and + other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of + their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of + God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to + degenerate and be corrupted." + +Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power +waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking grandchildren, and +they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid Betty, lived +with his grandfather for a time, and on April 1st, 1719, the Judge +wrote: + + "In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindall Rawson from + playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the + greatest fools that did so. N. E. Men came hither to avoid + anniversary days, the keeping of them such as the 25th of Decr. How + displeasing must it be to God the giver of our Time to keep + anniversary days to play the fool with ourselves and others." + +Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston schoolmaster, +begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking +nature of such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April first. + +Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and more serious +matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote: + + "Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with + him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was + up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much + displeased." + +Two days later he writes thus peremptorily of his grandson: + + "Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could + not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere." + +Though Boston boys played "wicket" on Boston Common, I fancy the young +Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were allowed few amusements. +They apparently brought over some English pastimes with them, for in +1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston: + + "Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have + received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the + streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that + game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under + the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence." + +One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised toward boys by Puritan +lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the tithingman. He +was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do not doubt +that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his +charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they +wished. From the brother sport of winter, skating, they were not +debarred; and they went on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned, +just as country boys are nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th, +1696: + + "Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on Fresh Pond. Wm. + Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned." + +In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of January 15th, 1728, we read: + + "On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers, viz Mr. George + and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom of + the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;" + +and in the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of +another death by drowning. + + "A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from + Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He + was about 16 or 18 years of age." + +Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates" appear in the _Boston Gazette_, +of 1749, and the _Boston Evening Post_, of 1758. The February _News +Letter_, of 1769, has a notice of the sale of "Best Holland Scates of +Different Sizes." + +In the list of goods on board a prize taken by a privateersman in 1712 +were "Boxes of Toys." Higginson, writing to his brother in 1695, told +him that "toys would sell if in small quantity." In exceeding small +quantity one would fancy. In 1743 the _Boston News Letter_ advertised +"English and Dutch Toys for Children." Not until October, 1771, on the +lists of the Boston shop-keepers, who seemed to advertise and to sell +every known article of dry goods, hardware, house furnishing, ornament, +dress and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item "Boys +Marbles." "Battledores and Shuttles" appeared in 1761. I know that no +little maids could ever have lived without dolls, not even the +serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were +advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of +milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion +plates for modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still +survive Revolutionary times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and +mean, but doubtless well-beloved and cherished in the days of their +youth. + +As years rolled by and eighteenth century frivolity and worldliness took +the place of Puritan sobriety and religion, New England children shared +with their elders in that growing love of amusement, which found but few +and inadequate methods of expression in the lives of either old or +young. In the year 1771 there was sent from Nova Scotia a young miss of +New England parentage--Anna Green Winslow--to live with her aunt and +receive a "finishing" in Boston schools. For the edification of her +parents and her own practice in penmanship, this bright little maid kept +a diary, of which portions have been preserved, and which I do not +hesitate to say is the most sprightly record of the daily life of a girl +of her age that I have ever read. There is not a dull word in it, and +every page has some statement of historical value. She was twelve years +old shortly after the diary was begun, and she then had a "coming-out +party"--she became a "miss in her teens." To this rout only young ladies +of her own age and in the most elegant Boston society were invited--no +rough Boston boys. Miss Anna has written for us more than one prim and +quaint little picture of similar parties--here is one of her clear and +stiff little descriptions; and a graphic account also of the evening +dress of a young girl at that time. + + "I have now the pleasure to give you the result Viz; a very genteel + well regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soleys last evening, + Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Miss Soley desired me to + assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests which I did. + Sometime since I wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large + company assembled in a large handsome upper room in the new end of + the house. We had two fiddles and I had the honor to open the + diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley. Here follows + a list of the company as we form'd for country-dancing. Miss Soley + and Miss Anna Green Winslow; Miss Calif and Miss Scott; Miss + Williams and Miss McLarth; Miss Codman and Miss Winslow; Miss Ives + and Miss Coffin; Miss Scollay and Miss Bella Coffin; Miss Waldo and + Miss Quinsey; Miss Glover and Miss Draper; Miss Hubbard and Miss + Cregur (usually pronounced Kicker) and two Miss Sheafs were invited + but were sick or sorry and beg'd to be excused. + + "There was a little Miss Russel and little ones of the family + present who could not dance. As spectators there were Mr. & Mrs. + Deming, Mr. & Mrs. Sweetser, Mr. and Mrs. Soley, Mr. & Mrs. Claney, + Mrs. Draper, Miss Orice, Miss Hannah--our treat was nuts, raisins, + cakes, Wine, punch hot and cold all in great plenty. We had a very + agreeable evening from 5 to 10 o'clock. For variety we woo'd a + widow, hunted the whistle, threaded the needle, & while the company + was collecting we diverted ourselves with playing of pawns--_no + rudeness_ Mamma I assure you. Aunt Deming desires you would + particularly observe that the elderly part of the Company were + _Spectators only_, that they mixed not in either of the + above-described scenes. + + "I was dressed in my yelloe coat, black bib and apron, black + feathers on my head, my paste comb and all my paste garnet + marquasett & jet pins, together with my silver plume--my locket, + rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts and yards of blue + ribbon (black and blue is high tast) striped tucker & ruffles (not + my best) and my silk shoes completed my dress." + +How clear the picture: can you not see it--the low raftered chamber +softly alight with candles on mantel-tree and in sconces; the two +fiddles soberly squeaking: the rows of demure little Boston maids, all +of New England Brahmin blood, in high rolls, with nodding plumes and +sparkling combs, with ruffles and mitts, little miniatures of their +elegant mammas, soberly walking and curtseying through the stately +minuet "with no rudeness I can assure you;" and discreetly partaking of +hot and cold punch afterward. + +There came at this time to another lady in this Boston court circle a +grandchild eight years of age, from the Barbadoes, to also attend Boston +schools. Missy left her grandmother's house in high dudgeon because she +could not have wine at all her meals. And her parents upheld her, saying +she had been brought up a lady and must have wine when she wished it. +Evidently Cobbett's statement of the free drinking of wine, cider, and +beer by American children was true--as Anna Green Winslow's "treat" +would also show. + +Though Puritan children had few recreations and amusements, they must +have enjoyed a very cheerful, happy home life. Large families abounded. +Cotton Mather says: + + "One woman had not less than twenty-two children, and another had + no less than twenty-three children by one husband whereof nineteen + lived to mans estate, and a third who was mother to seven and + twenty children." + +Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same +mother. Printer Green had thirty children. The Rev. John Sherman, of +Watertown, had twenty-six children by two wives--twenty by his last +wife. The Rev. Samuel Willard, first minister to Groton, had twenty +children, and his father had seventeen children. Benjamin Franklin was +one of a family of seventeen. Charles Francis Adams has told us of the +fruitful vines of old Braintree. + +The little Puritans rejoiced in some very singular names, the offspring +of Roger Clap being good examples: Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, +Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply. + +Of the food given Puritan children we know but little. In an old almanac +of the eighteenth century I find a few sentences of advice as to the +"Easy Rearing of Children." The writer urges that boys as soon as they +can run alone go without hats to harden them, and if possible sleep +without night-caps, as soon as they have any hair. He advises always to +wet children's feet in cold water and thus make them (the feet) tough, +and also to have children wear thin-soled shoes "that the wet may come +freely in." He says young children should never be allowed to drink cold +drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated; that it is +"best to feed them on Milk, Pottage, Flummery, Bread, and Cheese, and +not let them drink their beer till they have first eaten a piece of +Brown Bread." Fancy a young child nowadays making a meal of brown bread +and cheese with warm beer! He suggests that they drink but little wine +or liquor, and sleep on quilts instead of feathers. In such ways were +reared our Revolutionary heroes. + +Of the dazzling and beautiful array in our modern confectioners' shops +little Priscilla and Hate-Evil could never have dreamed, even in +visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica Candy, +Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to +port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds," +and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine, +crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial +cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and +daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial +days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though +dearly loved by Salem lads and lasses, always bore--indeed, do still +bear--too strong a flavor of liquorice, too haunting a medicinal +suggestion to be loved by other children of the Puritans. As an +instance, on a large scale, of the retributive fate that always pursues +the candy-eating wight, I state that the good ship Ann and Hope brought +into Providence one hundred years ago, as part of her cargo, eight boxes +of sweetmeats and twenty tubs of sugar candy, and on the succeeding +voyage sternly fetched no sweets, but brought instead forty-eight boxes +of rhubarb. + +The children doubtless had prunes, figs, "courance," and I know they had +"Raisins of the Sun" and "Bloom Raisins" galore. Advertisements of all +these fruits appear in the earliest newspapers. Though "China Oranges" +were frequently given to and by Judge Sewall, I have not found them +advertised for sale till Revolutionary times, and I fancy few children +had then tasted them. The native and domestic fruits were plentiful, but +many of them were poor. The apples and pears and Kentish cherries were +better than the peaches and grapes. The children gathered the summer +berries in season, and the autumn's plentiful and spicy store of +boxberries, checkerberries, teaberries or gingerbread berries with +October's brown nuts. There were gingerbread and "cacks" even in the +earliest days; but they were not sold in unlimited numbers. The +omnipotent hand of Puritan law laid its firm hold on their manufacture. +Judge Sewall often speaks, however, of Banbury cakes and Meers cakes; +Meer was a celebrated Boston baker and confectioner. The colonists had +also egg cakes and marchepanes and maccaroons. + +There were children's books in those early days; not numerous, however, +nor varied was the assortment from which Puritan youth in New England +could choose. Here is the advertisement of one: + + "Small book in easey verse Very Suitable for children, entitled The + Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed: adorned with + curious cuts, Price Sixpence." + +Somehow, from the suggestion of the title we should hardly fancy this to +be an edifying book for children. John Cotton supplied them with + + "Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England: Drawn out of + the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls Nourishment. But + may be of like Use to Any Children." + +Another book was published in many editions and sold in large numbers, +and much extolled by contemporary ministers. It was entitled: + + "A Token for Children. Being the exact account of the Conversion & + Holy & Exemplary Lives of several Young Children by James Janeway." + +To it was added by Cotton Mather: + + "Some examples of Children in whom the fear of God was remarkably + Budding before they died; in several parts of New England." + +Cotton Mather also wrote: "Good Lessons for Children, in Verse." Other +books were, "A Looking Glasse for Children," "The life of Elizabeth +Butcher, in the Early Piety series;" "The life of Mary Paddock, who died +at the age of nine;" "The Childs new Plaything" (which was a primer); +"Divine Songs in Easy Language;" and "Praise out of the Mouth of Babes;" +"A Particular Account of some Extraordinary Pious Motions and devout +Exercises observed of late in many Children in Siberia." Also accounts +of pious motions of children in Silesia and of Jewish children in +Berlin. One oasis appeared in the desert waste--after the first quarter +of the eighteenth century Puritan children had Mother Goose. + +By 1787, in Isaiah Thomas' list of "books Suitable for Children of all +ages," we find less serious books. "Tom Jones Abridged," "Peregrine +Pickle Abridged," "Vice in its Proper Shape," "The Sugar Plumb," "Bag of +Nuts Ready Crack'd," "Jacky Dandy," "History of Billy and Polly +Friendly." Among the "Chapman's Books for the Edification and Amusement +of young Men and Women who are not able to Purchase those of a Higher +Price" are, "The Amours and Adventures of Two English Gentlemen in +Italy," "Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony," "The Lovers Secretary," and +"Laugh and be Fat." Another advertisement of about the same date +contained, among the books for misses, "The Masqued Wedding," "The +Elopement," "The Passionate Lovers," "Sketches of the History and +Importance of the Fair Sex," "Original Love Letters," and "Six Dialogues +of Young Misses Relating to Matrimony;" thus showing that love-stories +were not abhorred by the descendants of the Puritans. + +In such an exceptional plantation as New England, a colony peopled not +by the commonplace and average Englishmen of the day, but by men of +special intelligence, and almost universally of good education, it was +inevitable that early and profound attention should be paid to the +establishment of schools. Cotton Mather said in 1685, in his sermon +before the Governor and his Council, "the Youth in this country are +verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities." So quickly had New +England air developed the typical New England traits. And the early +schoolmasters, too, may be thanked for their scholars' early ripeness +and sharpness. + +At an early age both girls and boys were sent to dame-schools, where, if +girls were not taught much book-learning, they were carefully instructed +in all housewifely arts. They learned to cook; and to spin and weave and +knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children +could spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers. +Fine knitting was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the +knitter, and many curious and elaborate stitches were known; the +herring-bone and the fox- and geese-patterns being prime favorites. +Initials were knit into mittens and stockings; one clever young miss of +Shelburne, N. H., could knit the alphabet and a verse of poetry into a +single pair of mittens. Fine embroidery was to New England women and +girls a delight. The Indians at an early day called the English women +"lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter embroidering coifs instead of +digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster in 1716, +taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as +Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, +Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, +flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, +Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking +children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery +on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels, +embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers. +Many of the fruits of these careful lessons of colonial childhood +remain to us; quaint samplers, bed hangings, petticoats and pockets, and +frail lace veils and scarfs. Miss Susan Hayes Ward has resuscitated from +these old embroideries a curious stitch used to great effect on many of +them, and employed also on ancient Persian embroideries, and she points +out that the designs are Persian also. This stitch was not known in the +modern English needlework schools; but just as good old Elizabethan +words and phrases are still used in New England, though obsolete in +England, so this curious old stitch has lived in the colony when lost in +the mother country; or, it may be possible, since it is found so +frequently in the vicinity of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims obtained both +stitch and designs in Holland, whose greater commerce with the Orient +may have supplied to deft English fingers the Persian pattern. + +Other accomplishments were taught to girls; "cutting of Escutcheons" and +paper flowers--"Papyrotamia" it was ambitiously called--and painting on +velvet; and quilt-piecing in a hundred different and difficult designs. +They also learned to make bone lace with pillow and bobbins. + +The boys were thrust at once into that iron-handed but wholly wise +grasp--the Latin Grammar. The minds trained in earliest youth in that +study, as it was then taught, have made their deep and noble impress on +this nation. The study of mathematics was, until well into this century, +a hopeless maze to many youthful minds. Doubtless the Puritans learned +multiplication tables and may have found them, as did Marjorie Fleming, +"a horrible and wretched plaege," though no pious little New Englanders +would have dared to say as she did, "You cant conceive it the most +Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7, it is what nature itself +can't endure." + +Great attention was paid to penmanship. Spelling was nought if the +"wrighting" were only fair and flowing. I have never read any criticism +of teachers by either parents or town officers save on the one question +of writing. How deeply children were versed or grounded in the knowledge +of the proper use of "Simme colings nots of interiogations peorids and +commoes," I do not know. A boundless freedom apparently was given, as +was also in orthography--if we judge from the letters of the times, +where "horrid false spells," as Cotton Mather called them, abound. + +It is natural to dwell on the religious teaching of Puritan children, +because so much of their education had a religious element in it. They +must have felt, like Tony Lumpkin, "tired of having good dinged into +'em." Their primers taught religious rhymes; they read from the Bible, +the Catechism, the Psalm Book, and that lurid rhymed horror "The Day of +Doom;" they parsed, too, from these universal books. How did they parse +these lines from the Bay Psalm Book? + + "And sayd He would not them waste; had not + Moses stood (whom he chose) + 'fore him i' th' breach; to turn his wrath + lest that he should waste those." + +Their "horn books"-- + + "books of stature small + Which with pellucid horn secured are + To save from fingers wet the letters fair," + +those framed and behandled sheets of semi-transparent horn, which were +worn hanging at the side and were studied, as late certainly as the year +1715 by children of the Pilgrims, also managed to instil with the +alphabet some religious words or principles. Usually the Lord's Prayer +formed part of the printed text. Though horn-books are referred to in +Sewall's diary and in the letters of Wait Still Winthrop, and appear on +stationers' and booksellers' lists at the beginning of the eighteenth +century, I do not know of the preservation of a single specimen to our +own day. + +The schoolhouses were simple dwellings, often tumbling down and out of +repair. The Roxbury teacher wrote in 1681: + + "Of inconveniences [in the schoolhouse] I shall mention no other + but the confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is in, + not fitting for to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very + raw and cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle + fires, the hearth spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of + kilter, that one had well-nigh as goods keep school in a hog stie + as in it." + +This schoolhouse had been built and furnished with some care in 1652, +as this entry in the town records shows: + + "The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he provide convenient + benches with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a conveniente + seate for the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and + shelves to lay up bookes." + +The schoolmaster "promised and engaged to use his best endeavour both +by precept and example to instruct in all Scholasticall morall and +Theologicall discipline the children so far as they be capable, all +A. B. C. Darians excepted." He was paid in corn, barley or peas, the +value of L25 per annum, and each child, through his parents or +guardians, supplied half a cord of wood for the schoolhouse fire. If +this load of wood were not promptly furnished the child suffered, for +the master did not allow him the benefit of the fire; that is, to go +near enough the fireplace to feel the warmth. + +The children of wise parents like Cotton Mather, were also taught +"opificial and beneficial sciences," such as the mystery of medicine--a +mystery indeed in colonial times. + +Puritan schoolmasters believed, as did Puritan parents, that sparing the +rod spoiled the child, and great latitude was given in punishment; the +rod and ferule were fiercely and frequently plied "with lamming and with +whipping, and such benefits of nature" as in English schools of the same +date. When young men were publicly whipped in colleges, children were +sure to be well trained in smaller schools. Every gradation of +chastisement was known and every instrument from + + "A beesome of byrche for babes verye fit + To a long lastinge lybbet for lubbers as meete," + +from the "thimell-pie" of the dame's school--a smart tapping on the head +with a heavy thimble--to belaboring with a heavy walnut stick or oaken +ruler. Master Lovell, that tigerish Boston teacher, whipped the culprit +with birch rods and forced another scholar to hold the sufferer on his +back. Other schoolmasters whipped on the soles of the feet, and one +teacher roared out, "Oh the Caitiffs! it is good for them." Not only +were children whipped, but many ingenious instruments of torture were +invented. One instructor made his scholars sit on a "bark seat turned +upside down with his thumb on the knot of a floor." Another master of +the inquisition invented a unipod--a stool with one leg--sometimes +placed in the middle of the seat, sometimes on the edge, on which the +unfortunate scholar tiresomely balanced. Others sent out the suffering +pupil to cut a branch of a tree, and, making a split in the large end of +the branch, sprung it on the culprit's nose, and he stood painfully +pinched, an object of ridicule with his spreading branch of leaves. One +cruel master invented an instrument of torture which he called a +flapper. It was a heavy piece of leather six inches in diameter with a +hole in the middle, and was fastened at the edge to a pliable handle. +The blistering pain inflicted by this brutal instrument can well be +imagined. At another school, whipping of unlucky wights was done "upon a +peaked block with a tattling stick;" and this expression of colonial +severity seems to take on additional force and cruelty in our minds that +we do not at all know what a tattling stick was, nor understand what was +meant by a peaked block. + +I often fancy I should have enjoyed living in the good old times, but I +am glad I never was a child in colonial New England--to have been +baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to +learn the Assembly's Catechism and "explain all the Quaestions with +conferring Texts," to have been constantly threatened with fear of death +and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's "Day of +Doom" to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a tattling +stick. + + + + +II + +COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS + + +In the early days of the New England colonies no more embarrassing or +hampering condition, no greater temporal ill could befall any adult +Puritan than to be unmarried. What could he do, how could he live in +that new land without a wife? There were no housekeepers--and he would +scarcely have been allowed to have one if there were. What could a woman +do in that new settlement among unbroken forests, uncultivated lands, +without a husband? The colonists married early, and they married often. +Widowers and widows hastened to join their fortunes and sorrows. The +father and mother of Governor Winslow had been widow and widower seven +and twelve weeks, respectively, when they joined their families and +themselves in mutual benefit, if not in mutual love. At a later day the +impatient Governor of New Hampshire married a lady but ten days widowed. +Bachelors were rare indeed, and were regarded askance and with intense +disfavor by the entire community, were almost in the position of +suspected criminals. They were seldom permitted to live alone, or even +to choose their residence, but had to find a domicile wherever and with +whomsoever the Court assigned. In Hartford lone-men, as Shakespeare +called them, had to pay twenty shillings a week to the town for the +selfish luxury of solitary living. No colonial law seems to me more +arbitrary or more comic than this order issued in the town of Eastham, +Mass., in 1695, namely: + + "Every unmarried man in the township shall kill six blackbirds or + three crows while he remains single; as a penalty for not doing it, + shall not be married until he obey this order." + +Bachelors were under the special spying and tattling supervision of the +constable, the watchman, and the tithingman, who, like Pliable in +Pilgrim's Progress, sat sneaking among his neighbors and reported their +"scirscumstances and conuersation." In those days a man gained instead +of losing his freedom by marrying. "Incurridgement" to wedlock was given +bachelors in many towns by the assignment to them upon marriage of +home-lots to build upon. In Medfield there was a so-called Bachelor's +Row, which had been thus assigned. In the early days of Salem "maid +lotts" were also granted; but Endicott wrote in the town records that it +was best to abandon the custom and thus "avoid all presedents & evil +events of granting lotts vnto single maidens not disposed of." This line +he crossed out and wrote instead, "for avoiding of absurdities." He +kindly, but rather disappointingly, gave one maid a bushel of corn when +she came to ask for a house and lot, and told her it would be a "bad +president" for her to keep house alone. A maid had, indeed, a hard time +to live in colonial days, did she persevere in her singular choice of +remaining single. Perhaps the colonists "proverb'd with the grandsire +phrase," that women dying maids lead apes in hell. Maidens "withering on +the virgin thorn," in single blessedness, were hard to find. One +Mistress Poole lived unmarried to great old age, and helped to found the +town of Taunton under most discouraging rebuffs; and in the Plymouth +church record of March 19, 1667, is a record of a death which reads +thus:-- + + "Mary Carpenter sister of Mrs. Alice Bradford wife of Governor + Bradford being newly entered into the 91st year of her age. She was + a godly old maid never married." + +The state of old maidism was reached at a very early age in those early +days; Higginson wrote of an "antient maid" of twenty-five years. John +Dunton in his "Life and Errors" wrote eulogistically of one such ideal +"Virgin" who attracted his special attention. + + "It is true an _old_ (or superanuated) Maid in Boston is thought + such a curse, as nothing can exceed it (and looked on as a _dismal_ + spectacle) yet she by her good nature, gravity, and strict virtue + convinces all (so much as the fleering Beaus) that it is not her + necessity but her choice that keeps her a Virgin. She is now about + thirty years (the age which they call a _Thornback_) yet she never + disguises herself, and talks as little as she thinks, of Love. She + never reads any Plays or Romances, goes to no Balls or + Dancing-match (as they do who go to such Fairs) to meet with + Chapmen. Her looks, her speech, her whole behavior are so very + chaste, that but once (at Govenor's Island, where we went to be + merry at roasting a hog) going to kiss her, I thought she would + have blushed to death. + + "Our _Damsel_ knowing this, her conversation is generally amongst + the women (as there is least danger from that sex) so that I found + it no easy matter to enjoy her company, for most of her time (save + what was taken up in needle work and learning French &c.) was spent + in Religious Worship. She knew time was a dressing-room for + Eternity, and therefore reserves most of her hours for better uses + than those of the Comb, the Toilet and the Glass. + + "And as I am sure this is most agreeable to the Virgin modesty, + which should make Marriage an act rather of their obedience than + their choice. And they that think their Friends too slowpaced in + the matter give certain proof that lust is their sole motive. But + as the Damsel I have been describing would neither anticipate nor + contradict the will of her Parents, so do I assure you she is + against Forcing her own, by marrying where she cannot love; and + that is the reason she is still a Virgin." + +Hence it may be seen that though there was not in Boston the "glorious +phalanx of old maids" of Theodore Parker's description, yet the Boston +old maid was lovely even in colonial days, though she did bear the +odious name of thornback. + +An English traveller, Josselyn, gives a glimpse of Boston love-making in +the year 1663. + + "On the South there is a small but pleasant Common, where the + Gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their Marmalet-Madams + till the nine o'clock bell rings them home to their respective + habitations." + +This simple and quaint picture of youthful love in the soft summer +twilight, at that ever beautiful trysting-place, gives an unwonted touch +of sentiment to the austere daily life of colonial New England. The +omnipotent Puritan law-giver, who meddled and interfered in every +detail, small and great, of the public and private life of the citizen, +could not leave untouched, in fancy free, these soberly promenading +Puritan sweethearts. A Boston gallant must choose well his +marmalet-madam, must proceed cautiously in his love-making in the +gloaming, obtaining first the formal permission of parents or guardians +ere he take any step in courtship. Fines, imprisonment, or the +whipping-post awaited him, did he "inveigle the affections of any maide +or maide servant" by making love to her without proper authority. +Numberless examples might be given to prove that this law was no dead +letter. In 1647, in Stratford, Will Colefoxe was fined L5 for "laboring +to invegle the affection of Write his daughter." In 1672 Jonathan +Coventry, of Plymouth town, was indicted for "making a motion of +marriage" to Katharine Dudley without obtaining formal consent. The +sensible reason for these courtship regulations was "to prevent young +folk from intangling themselves by rash and inconsiderate contracts of +maridge." The Governor of Plymouth colony, Thomas Prence, did not +hesitate to drag his daughter's love affairs before the public, in 1660, +by prosecuting Arthur Howland for "disorderly and unrighteously +endeavouring to gain the affections of Mistress Elizabeth Prence." The +unrighteous lover was fined L5. Seven years later, patient Arthur, who +would not "refrain and desist," was again fined the same amount; but +love prevailed over law, and he triumphantly married his fair Elizabeth +a few months later. The marriage of a daughter with an unwelcome swain +was also often prohibited by will, "not to suffer her to be circumvented +and cast away upon a swaggering gentleman." + +On the other hand, an engagement of marriage once having been permitted, +the father could not recklessly or unreasonably interfere to break off +the contract. Many court records prove that colonial lovers promptly +resented by legal action any attempt of parents to bring to an end a +sanctioned love affair. Richard Taylor so sued, and for such cause, Ruth +Whieldon's father in Plymouth in 1661; while another ungallant swain is +said to have sued the maid's father for the loss of time spent in +courting. Breach of promise cases were brought against women by +disappointed men who had been "shabbed" (as jilting was called in some +parts of New England), as well as by deserted women against men. + +But sly Puritan maids found a way to circumvent and outwit Puritan law +makers, and to prevent their unsanctioned lovers from being punished, +too. Hear the craft of Sarah Tuttle. On May day in New Haven, in 1660, +she went to the house of a neighbor, Dame Murline, to get some thread. +Some very loud jokes were exchanged between Sarah and her friends Maria +and Susan Murline--so loud, in fact, that Dame Murline testified in +court that it "much distressed her and put her in a sore strait." In the +midst of all this doubtful fun Jacob Murline entered, and seizing +Sarah's gloves, demanded the centuries old forfeit of a kiss. +"Wherupon," writes the scandalized Puritan chronicler, "they sat down +together; his arm being about her; and her arm upon his shoulder or +about his neck; and hee kissed her, and shee kissed him, or they kissed +one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour, as Maria and +Susan testified." Goodman Tuttle, who was a man of dignity and +importance, angrily brought suit against Jacob for inveigling his +daughter's affections; "but Sarah being asked in court if Jacob +inveagled her, said No." This of course prevented any rendering of +judgment against the unauthorized kissing by Jacob, and he escaped the +severe punishment of his offence. But the outraged and baffled court +fined Sarah, and gave her a severe lecture, calling her with justice a +"Bould Virgin." She at the end, demurely and piously answered that "She +hoped God would help her to carry it Better for time to come." And +doubtless she did carry it better; for at the end of two years, this +bold virgin's fine for unruly behavior being still unpaid, half of it +was remitted. + +Of the etiquette, the pleasures, the exigencies of colonial "courtship +in high life," let one of the actors speak for himself through the pages +of his diary. Judge Sewall's first wife was Hannah Hull, the only +daughter of Captain Hull of Pine Tree Shilling fame. She received as her +dowry her weight in silver shillings. Of her wooing we know naught save +the charming imaginary story told us by Hawthorne. The Judge's only +record is this: + + "Mrs. Hannah Hull saw me when I took my Degree and set her + affection on me though I knew nothing of it till after our + Marriage." + +She lived with him forty-three years, bore him seven sons and seven +daughters, and died on the 19th day of October, 1717. + +Of course, though the Judge was sixty-six years old, he would marry +again. Like a true Puritan he despised an unmarried life, and on the 6th +day of February he made this naive entry in his diary: "Wandering in my +mind whether to live a Married or a Single Life." Ere that date he had +begun to take notice. He had called more than once on Widow Ruggles, and +had had Widow Gill to dine with him; had looked critically at Widow +Emery, and noted that Widow Tilley was absent from meeting; and he had +gazed admiringly at Widow Winthrop in "her sley," and he had visited +and counseled and consoled her ere his wife had been two months dead, +and had given her a few suitable tokens of his awakening affection such +as "Smoking Flax Inflamed," "The Jewish Children of Berlin," and "My +Small Vial of Tears;" so he had "wandered" in the flesh as well as in +the mind. + +Such an array of widows! Boston fairly blossomed with widows, the widows +of all the "true New England men" whose wills Sewall had drawn up, whose +dying bedsides he had blessed and harassed with his prayers, whose +bodies he had borne to the grave, whose funeral gloves and scarves and +rings he had received and apprized, and whose estates he had settled. +Over this sombre flower-bed of black garbed widows, these hardy +perennials, did this aged Puritan butterfly amorously hover, loth to +settle, tasting each solemn sweet, calculating the richness of the soil +in which each was planted, gauging the golden promise of fruit, and +perhaps longing for the whole garden of full-blown blossoms. "Antient +maides" were held in little esteem by him; not one thornback is on his +list. + +Not only did he look and wander, but all his friends and neighbors arose +and began to suggest and search for a suitable wife for him, with as +officious alacrity as if he needed help, which he certainly did not. In +March Madam Henchman strongly recommended to him "Madam Winthrop, the +Major General's widow." This recommendation was very sweet to the +widower, who had turned his eyes with such special approval on this +special widow, and further and warm encouragement came quickly. + + "Deacon Marion comes to me, sits with me a great while in the + evening; after a great deal of Discourse about his Courtship He + told me the Olivers said they wish'd I would court their Aunt. I + said little, but said 'twas not five Moneths since I buried my dear + Wife. Had said before 'twas hard to know whether to marry again or + no or whom to marry." + +The Olivers' aunt was Madam Winthrop. It would seem somewhat +presumptuous and officious for nieces and nephews to suggest courtship, +when there were grown up Winthrop children who might dislike the +marriage, but in those days everyone meddled in love affairs; to quote +Pope: "Marriage was the theme on which they all declaimed." The Judge +gossiped publicly about his intentions. He writes: "They had laid one +out for me, and Governor Dudley told me 'twas Madam Winthrop. I told him +I had been there but thrice and twice upon business. He said _cave +tertium_." Even solemn Cotton Mather proffered counsel in a letter on +"paying regards to the Widow." + +In spite of all these hints and commendations, and the Judge's evident +pleasure in receiving them, the Winthrop agitation all came to naught, +for about this time he was called to make a will for a Mr. Denison, of +Roxbury, who died on March 22d. Though the Judge was too upright and too +pious to let even his thoughts wander to a wife, the amazing rapidity +with which he turned his longing eyes on the newly-made widow (cruelly +forsaking Madam Winthrop) is only equalled by the act of the famous +Irish lover who proposed to a widow at the open grave of her husband. + +Judge Sewall went home with widow Denison from her husband's funeral and +"prayed God to keep house with her." The very next day he writes, "Mr. +Danforth gives the Widow Denison a high commendation for her Piety, +Goodness, Diligence and Humility." On April 7th she came to the widower +to prove her husband's will; and another match-making friend, Mr. Dow, +"took occasion to say in her absence that she was one of the most +Dutiful Wives in the World." A few days later the Judge made her a gift, +"a Widow's book having writ her name in it." + +At last, after talking the matter over with all his friends, he decided +positively to go a-courting. Widow Denison came to his house and he +says: + + "I took her up into my chamber and discoursed Thorowly with her: + told her I intended to visit her next Lecture Day. She said 'twould + be talk'd of, I answered: In such Cases persons must run the + Gantlet. Gave her an Oration." + +He visited her as he had promised and gave her "Dr. Mathers Sermons +neatly bound and told her in it we were invited to a wedding. She gave +me very good Curds." Other love gifts followed: "K. Georges Effigies in +Copper and an English Crown of K. Charles II. 1677." "A pound of +Reasons and Proportionate Almonds," "A Psalmbook elegantly bound in +Turkey leather," "A pair of Shoe Buckles cost five shillings three +pence." "Two Cases with a knife and fork in each; one Turtle Shell +Tackling; the other long with Ivory Handles squar'd cost four shillings +sixpence." + +In the meantime he read with Cousin Moodey the history of Rebekah's +courtship, and then prayed over it, and over his own wooing. Madam +Rogers and Madam Leverett much congratulated him, and his daughter +Judith visited her prospective stepmother. But alas! the lady was coy +and averse to a decision: + + "She mentions her Discouragement by reason of Discourse she had + heard. Ask't what I should allow her, she not speaking I told her I + was willing to allow her two hundred and fifty pounds per annum if + it should please God to take me out of the world before her. She + answered she had better keep as she was than give up a certainty + for an uncertainty. She would pay dear for her living in Boston. I + desired her to make Proposals but she made none. I had thought of + Publishment next Thursday. But I now seem far from it. My God who + has the pity of a Father Direct and help me." + +Mr. Denison's will left his widow a portion of his estate to dispose of +as she wished if she did not marry again. Judge Sewall was unwilling to +make equal provision for her, hence the stumbling block in their +courtship. + +After consulting with a friend, the Judge made a final visit to her on +November 28th. + + "She said she thought it was hard to part with all and having + nothing to bestow on her Kindred. I had ask'd her to give me + proposals in Writing and she upbraided me That I who had never + written her a Letter should ask her to write. She asked me if I + would drink, I told her yes. She gave me Cider Aples and a Glass of + Wine, gathered together the little things I had given her and + offered them to me, but I would none of them. Told her I wish'd her + well and should be glad of her welfare. She seem'd to say she + should not again take in hand a thing of this nature. Thank'd me + for what I had given her and Desir'd my Prayers. My bowels yern + towards Mrs. Denison but I think God directs me in his Providence + to desist." + +This love affair was not, however, quite ended, for the following Lord's +Day "after dark" Widow Denison came "very privat" to his house. This +Sunday visit betokened great anxiety on her part. She had walked in from +Roxbury in the cold, and when we remember how wolves and bears abounded +in the vicinity we comprehend still further her solicitude. + + "She ask'd pardon if she had affronted me.... Mr. Denison spake to + her after signing his will that he would not make her put all out + of her Hand and power but reserve something to bestow on her + friends that might want.... I could not observe that she made me + any offer all the while. She mentioned two Glass Bottles she had. + I told her they were hers and the other small things I had given + her only now they had not the same signification as before, I was + much concerned for her being in the cold, would fetch her a plate + of something warm; she refused. However I fetched a Tankard of + Cider and drank to her. She desired that nobody might know of her + being here. I told her they should not. She went away in the bitter + Cold, no moon being up, to my great pain. I Saluted her at + Parting." + +With that parting kiss on that dark cold night, in "great pain," ended +the Judge's second wooing. + +That he was sincerely in love with Widow Denison one cannot doubt, +though he loved his money more. Disappointed, he did not again turn to +courting until the following August--much longer than he had waited +after the death of his wife. He then proceeded in a matter-of-fact way +to visit Widow Tilley, whom he had early noted in meeting. He asked her, +at his third visit, to "come and live in his house." "She expressed her +unworthiness with much respect," and both agreed to consider it. He gave +her a little book called "Ornaments of Sion;" Mr. Pemberton applauded +his courtship; Mrs. Armitage said that Mrs. Tilley had been a great +blessing to them; the banns were published; and the Judge's third wooing +ended in a marriage on October 24th. + +But the bride was very ill on her wedding night, and after several +slight sicknesses through the winter, died on May 20th, to her husband's +"great amazement." Again he was a-seeking a "dear Yoke fellow," and on +September 30th, "Daughter Sewall acquainted Madam Winthrop that if she +pleased to be within at 3 P.M. I would wait on her." This was the same +Madam Winthrop whose attractions had been so completely obscured by the +bright halo which encircled the much-longed-for Widow Denison. + + "Madam Winthrop returning answer that she would be at home, I went + to her house and spake to her saying my loving wife died so soon + and suddenly 'twas hardly convenient for me to think of Marrying + again, however I came to this Resolution that I would not make my + Court to any person without first consulting with her. Had a + pleasant Discourse about Seven Single persons sitting in the + Fore-Seat. She propounded one after another to me but none would + do." + +Now, I think the Judge was very graceful in approaching a proposal to +this widow, for on his next visit he asked to see her alone, and he +resumed the pleasant discourse about the seven widows on the fore seat, +and said: + + "At last I pray'd Katharine might be the person assigned for me. + She evidently took it up in the way of denyal as if she had catched + at an opportunity to do it, saying she could not do it, could not + leave her children." + +The Judge begged her not to be so speedy in decision, and brought her +gifts, "pieces of Mr. Belchar's cake and gingerbread wrapped in a clean +sheet of paper;" China oranges; the _News Letter_; Preston's "Church +Marriage;" sugared almonds (of which she inquired the price). He wrote +her a stilted letter with an allusion in it to Christopher Columbus, +and he had to explain it to her afterward. He gave money to her servants +and "penys" to her grandchildren, and heard them "say their catechise;" +and he had interviews and consultations with her relatives--her +children, her sister--who agreed not to oppose the marriage. + +Still the progress of the courtship was not encouraging. Katharine went +to her neighbors' houses when she knew her suitor was coming to visit +her, and left him to read "Dr. Sibbs Bowels" for scant comfort. She +"look'd dark and lowering" at him and coldly placed tables or her +grandchild's cradle between her chair and his as they sat together. She +avoided seeing him alone. She "let the fire come to one short Brand +beside the Block and fall in pieces and make no recruit"--a broad hint +to leave. She "would not help him on with his coat"--a cutting blow. She +would not let her servant accompany him home with a lantern, but +heartlessly permitted her elderly lover to stumble home alone in the +dark. She spoke to him of his luckless courtship of Widow Denison (a +most unpleasant topic), thus giving a clue to the whole situation, in +showing that Madam Winthrop resented his desertion of her in his first +widowerhood, and like Falstaff, would not "undergo a sneap without +reply." He said, in apologetic answer: + + "If after a first and second Vagary she would Accept of me + returning her Victorious Kindness and Good Will would be very + Obliging." + +Undeterred by these many rebuffs, as she grew cold he waxed warm, and a +most lover-like and gallant scene ensued which would have done credit to +a younger man than the Judge. Here it is in his own words: + + "I asked her to Acquit me of Rudeness if I drew off her Glove. + Enquiring the reason I told her 'twas great odds between handling a + dead Goat and a Living Lady. Got it off.... Told her the reason why + I came every other night was lest I should drink too Deep draughts + of Pleasure. She had talked of Canary, her Kisses were to me better + than the best Canary." + +Naturally these warm words had a marked effect; she relaxed, drank a +glass of wine with him, and I trust gave him a Canary-sweet kiss, and +sent a servant home with him with a lantern. + +The next visit the wind blew cold again. He had had one experience with +a short-lived wife, and he had determined that should his next wife die +he would still have some positive benefit from having married her. Hence +he kept pressing Madam Winthrop in a most unpleasant and ghoulish manner +to know what she would give him in case she died. He would allow her but +one hundred pounds per annum. She in turn persisted in questioning him +about the property he had given to his children; and she wished him to +agree to keep a coach (which he could well afford to do), and she wanted +it set on springs too. He said he could not do it while he paid his +debts. She also suggested that he should wear a wig. This annoyed him +beyond measure, for he hated with extreme Puritan intenseness those +"horrid Bushes of Vanity," and the suggestion from his would-be bride +was irritating in the extreme. He answered her with much self-control: + + "As to a Periwigg my best and Greatest Friend begun to find me with + Hair before I was born and has continued to do so ever since and I + could not find it in my heart to go to another." + +Still, when nearly all the men of dignity and position in the colony +wore imposing stately wigs, no woman would be pleased to have a lover +come a-courting in a _hood_. + +So, though she gave him "drams of Black Cherry Brandy" and Canary to +drink and comfits and lump sugar to eat, while he so pressed her to name +her settlement on him, and while the wig and coach questions were so +adversely met, she would not answer yes, and he regretted making more +haste than good speed. At last the lover of the "kisses sweeter than +Canary" critically notes that his mistress has not on "Clean Linen;" and +the next day he writes rather sourly, "I did not bid her draw off her +Glove as sometime I had done. Her dress was not so clean as sometime it +had been;" the beginning of the end was plainly come. That week he +forbade her being invited to a family dinner, and she in turn gave a +"treat" from which he was excluded. Thus ended his fourth wooing. + +The next widow on whom he called was Widow Belknap, but eftsoons he +transferred his attention to Widow Ruggles and wrote thus sentimentally +to her brother: + + "I remember when I was going from school at Newbury to have + sometime met your sisters Martha and Mary in Hanging Sleeves coming + home from their school in Chandlers Lane, and have had the pleasure + of speaking to them. And I could find it in my heart to speak to + Mrs. Martha again, now I myself am reduc'd to my Hanging Sleeves. + The truth is, I have little occasion for a Wife but for the sake of + Modesty, and to lay my Weary Head in Her Lap, if it might be + brought to pass upon Honest Conditions. You know your sisters Age + and Disposition and Circumstances. I should like your advice in my + Fluctuations." + +The Judge called on Mrs. Martha, probably after learning with precision +her circumstances. "I showed my willingness to renew my old +acquaintance. She expressed her inability to be serviceable." Even after +the Denison and Winthrop fluctuations he was not abashed by refusal, and +he must have been (to quote Mrs. Peachum's words) "a bitter bad judge 'o +women," for he called again and again. + + "She seemed resolved not to move out of the house; made some + Difficulties to accept an Election Sermon lest it should be an + obligation to her. The coach staying long, I made some excuse for + my stay. She said she would be glad to wait on me till midnight + provided I should solicit her no more to that effect." + +This decision he accepted. + +Poor old wife-seeking Judge, with your hanging sleeves, your broken and +drooping wings, feebly did you still flutter around for a resting-place +to "lay your Weary Head in modesty." You fluctuated to a new widow, +Madam Harris, and she gave you "a nutmeg as it grew," ever a true +lover's gift in Shakespeare's day. On January 11th, 1722, this letter +was sent to "Mrs. Mary Gibbs, widow, at Newton." + + "Madam, your removal out of town and the Severity of the Weather + are the Reason of my making you this Epistolary Visit. In times + past (as I remember) you were minded that I should marry you by + giving you to your desirable Bridegroom. Some sense of this + intended Respect abides with me still and puts me upon enquiring + whether you be willing I should marry you now by becoming your + Husband. Aged feeble and exhausted as I am your favourable Answer + to this Enquiry in a few lines, the Candour of it will much oblige, + Madam, your humble serv't Samuel Sewall." + +This not-too-alluring love-letter brought a favorable answer, for the +Judge assured her she "writ incomparably well," and he accompanied this +praise with a suitable and useful gift, "A Quire of Paper, a good +Leathern Ink Horn, a stick of Sealing Wax and 200 Wafers in a little +Box." + +He was even sharper in bargaining with Widow Gibbs than he had been with +other matrimonial candidates. She had no property to leave him by will, +but he astutely stipulated that her children sign a contract that, +should she die before him, they would pay him L100. She thought him +"hard," and so did her sons and her son-in-law, and so he was--hard even +for those times of hard bargains and hard marriage contracts in hard New +England. He would agree to give her but L50 a year in case of his death. +The value of wives had depreciated in his eyes since the L250 a year +Widow Denison. His gifts too were not as rich as those bestowed on that +yearned-for widow. He had seen too many tokens go for naught. Glazed +almonds, Meers cakes, an orange, were good enough for so cheap a +sweetheart. He remained very stiff and peremptory about the marriage +contract, the L100, and wrote her one very unpleasant letter about it; +and he feared lest she being so attached to her children might not be +tender to him "when there soon would be an end of the old man." At last +she yielded to his sharp bargain and they were married. He lived eight +years, so I doubt not Mary was tender to him and mourned him when he +died, hard though he was and wigless withal. + +We gather from the pages of Judge Sewall's diary many hints about the +method of conducting other courtships. We discover the Judge craftily +and slyly inquiring whether his daughter Mary's lover-apparent had +previously courted another Boston maid; we see him conferring with lover +Gerrish's father; and after a letter from the latter we see the lover +"at Super and drank to Mary in the third place." He called again when it +was too cold to sit downstairs, and was told he would be "wellcomm to +come Friday night." We read on Saturday: + + "In the evening Sam Gerrish comes not; we expected him; Mary + dress'd herself; it was a painfull disgracefull disapointment." + +A month later the recreant lover reappeared and finally married poor +disappointed Mary, who died very complaisantly in a short time and left +him free to marry his first love, which he quickly did. We find the +Judge after his daughter's death higgling over her marriage portion with +Mr. Gerrish, Sr., and see that grief for her did not prevent him from +showing as much shrewdness in that matter as he had displayed in his own +courtships. + +Timid Betty Sewall was as much harassed in love as in religion. We find +her father, when she was but seventeen years old, making frequent +investigation about the estate of one Captain Tuthill, a prospective +suitor who had visited Betty and "wished to speak with her." The Judge +had his hesitating daughter read aloud to him of the mating of Adam and +Eve, as a soothing and alluring preparation for the thought of +matrimony, with, however, this most unexpected result: + + "At night Capt. Tuthill comes to speak with Betty, who hid herself + all alone in the coach for several hours till he was gone, so that + we sought her at several houses, till at last came in of herself + and look'd very wild." + +This action of pure maidenly terror elicited sympathy even in the +Judge's match-making heart, and he told the lover he was willing to know +his daughter's mind better. This was on January 10th, 1698. Ten days +later we find wild-eyed Betty going out of her way to avoid drinking +wine with one Captain Turner, much to her father's annoyance. By +September she had refused another suitor. + +Her father wrote thus: + + "Got home [from Rhode Island] by seven, in good health, though the + day was hot, find my family in health, only disturbed at Betty's + denying Mr. Hirst, and my wife hath a cold. The Lord sanctify + Mercyes and Afflictions." + +And again, a month later: + + "Mr. Wm. Hirst comes and thanks my wife and me for our kindness to + his Son, in giving him the liberty of our house. Seems to do it in + the way of taking leave. I thank'd him, and for his countenance to + Hannah at the Wedding. Told him that the well wisher's of my + daughter and his son had persuaded him to go to Brantry and visit + her there, &c.; and said if there were hopes would readily do it. + But as things were twould make persons think he was so involved + that he was not fit to go any wether else. He has I suppose taken + his final leave. I gave him Mr. Oakes Sermon, and my Father Hulls + Funeral Sermon." + +Two days later, Judge Sewall writes to Betty, who has gone to "Brantry" +on a visit. + + BOSTON, October 26, 1699. + + "ELIZABETH: Mr. Hirst waits on you once more to see if you can bid + him welcome. It ought to be seriously considered, that your drawing + back from him after all that has passed between you, will be to + your Prejudice; and will tend to discourage persons of worth from + making their Court to you. And you had need well consider whether + you will be able to bear his final leaving of you, howsoever it may + seem grateful to you at present. When persons come toward us we are + apt to look upon their undesirable Circumstances mostly: and + thereupon to shun them. But when persons retire from us for good + and all, we are in danger of looking only on that which is + desirable in them, to our wofull disquiet. Whereas 'tis the + property of a good Ballance to turn where the most weight is, + though there be some also in the other Scale. I do not see but the + match is well liked by judicious persons, and such as are your + Cordial friends, and mine also. + + "Yet notwithstanding, if you find in yourself an unmovable, + incurable Aversion from him and cannot love and honor and obey him, + I shall say no more, nor give you any further trouble in this + matter. It had better off than on. So praying God to pardon us and + pitty our Undeserving, and to direct and strengthen and settle you + in making a right judgment, and giving a right Answer, I take + leave, who am, Dear Child, Your loving father. + + "Your mother remembers to you." + +Even this very proper and fatherly advice did not have an immediate +effect upon the shy and vacillating young girl, for not until a year +later did she become the wife of persistent Grove Hirst. + +One of the most typical stories of colonial methods of "matching" among +fine gentlefolk is found in the worry of Emanuel Downing, a man of +dignity in the commonwealth, and of his wife, Lucy (who was Gov. +Winthrop's sister), in regard to the settlement of their children. +Downing begins with anxious overtures to Endicott in regard to "matching +his sonne" to an orphan maid living in Endicott's family, a maid who it +is needless to state had a very pretty fortune. Downing states that he +has been blamed for not marrying off his children earlier, "that none +are disposed of," and deplores his ill-luck in having them so long on +his hands, and he recounts pathetically his own and his son's good +points. He also got Governor Winthrop to write to Endicott pleading the +match. Endicott answered both letters in a most dignified manner, +stating his objections to furthering Downing's wishes, giving a +succession of reasons, such as the maid's unwillingness to marry, being +but fifteen years of age, his own awkward position in seeming to crowd +marriage upon her when she was so rich, etc., etc. The Downings had +hoped to have thriftily two marriages in the family in one day, but the +daughter Luce's affairs also halted. She had been enamoured of a Mr. +Eyer, an unsuitable match. He had put out to sea, to the Downings' +delight, but had returned at an unlucky time when she was on with a +fresh suitor. Her mother was much distressed because, though Luce +declared she much liked Mr. Norton, she still showed to all around her +that "she hath not yet forgotten Mr. Eyer his fresh Red." + +But Mistress Luce, by a telling statement of pecuniary benefits, was +brought to a proper mind and became "verie sensible of loseing fair +opportunities," and consented speedily to wed Norton, to her father's +abounding joy, who wrote, "shee may stay long ere she meet with a better +vnless I had more monie for her than I now can spare." The betrothal was +formally announced, when shortly a distressed letter from Madam Downing +shows foul weather ahead. Luce had been talking among her friends, +giving to them "unjust suspicions of the enforcement to her of Mr. +Norton," and while she had seemed to love Mr. Eyer, and her family had +eagerly striven to win her regard from him, "we now suspect by her late +words her affections to be now inclininge at Jhon Harrold." It was found +that Jhon had "practised upon her and disturbed her," and that while she +was "free and cheerful" with Lover Norton, "passing conversation" with +him, she was really conspiring to jilt him. The mother wrote sadly: "I +am sorrie my daughter Luce hath caryed things thus vnwisely and +vnreputably both to herselfe and our friends;" and the whole family were +evidently sorely afraid that the "perverse Puritan jade" would be left +on their hands, when suddenly came the news of her marriage to Norton, +owing perhaps to a very decided and sharp letter from Norton's brother +to the Governor about Mistress Luce's vagaries, and also to some more +satisfactory and liberal marriage settlements. She probably made as +devoted a wife to him as if she had never longed for Eyer his fresh red, +nor Jhon his disturbments. + +Nor were these upright and pious Puritan magistrates and these +gentlewomen of Boston and Salem the only colonists who displayed such +sordid and mercenary bargaining and stipulating in matrimonial ventures: +numberless letters and records throughout New England prove the +unvarying spirit of calculation that pervaded fashionable courtship. A +bride's portion was openly discussed, her marriage settlement carefully +decided upon, and even agreements for bequests were arranged as +"incurredgment to marriage." Nor did happy husbands hesitate to sue for +settlement too tardy or too remiss fathers-in-law who failed to keep +their word about the bride's portion: Edward Palmes for years harassed +the Winthrops about their sister's (his first wife's) portion, long +after he had married a second partner. + +Though the tender passion walked thus ceremoniously and coldly in narrow +and carefully selected paths in town, in the country it regarded little +the bounds of reserve or regard for appearances. Much comparative +grossness prevailed. The mode of courting, known as "bundling" or +"tarrying" was too prevalent in colonial times to be ignored. A full +description of its extent, and an attempt to trace its origin, have been +given in a book on the subject prepared by Dr. H. R. Stiles, and with +much fairness in a pamphlet by Charles Francis Adams on "Some Phases of +Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England." + +Its existence has been a standing taunt for years against New England, +and its prevalence has been held up as a proof of a low state of +morality in early New England society. Indeed, it was strange it could +so long exist in so austere and virtuous a colony; that it did, to a +startling extent, must be conceded; much proof is found in the books of +contemporary writers. Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who travelled in New England +in 1759-1760, says that though it may "at first appear to be the effects +of grossness of character, it will upon deeper research be found to +proceed from simplicity and innocence." To this assertion, after some +research, I can give--to use Sir Thomas Browne's words--"a staggering +assent to the affirmative, not without some fear of the negative." Rev. +Samuel Peters, in his General History of Connecticut, speaks at length +upon the custom, and apparently endeavors to prove that it was a very +prudent and Christian fashion. Jonathan Edwards raised his powerful +voice against it. It prevailed apparently to its fullest extent on Cape +Cod, and longest in the Connecticut valley, where many Dutch customs +were introduced and much intercourse with the Dutch was carried on. In +Pennsylvania, among the Dutch and German settlers and their descendants, +it lingered long; it was a matter of Court record as late as 1845. Yet +the custom of bundling has never been held to be a result of copying the +similar Dutch "queesting," which in Holland met with the sanction of +the most circumspect Dutch parents; and tergiversating Diedrich +Knickerbocker even asserted the contrary assumption, that the Dutch +learned of it from the Yankees. In Holland, as now in Wales and then in +New England, the custom arose not from a low state of morals, nor from a +disregard of moral appearances, but from the social and industrial +conditions under which such courting was done. The small size and +crowded occupancy of the houses, the alternative waste of lights and +fuel, the hours at which the hurried courtship must be carried on, all +led to the recognition and endurance of the custom; and in its open +recognition lay its redeeming feature. There was no secrecy, no thought +of concealment; the bundling was done under the supervision of mother +and sisters. + +As a contrast to all this laxity of behaviour, let me state that in the +very locality where it obtained--the Connecticut Valley--other +sweethearts are said to have been forced to a most ceremonious +courtship, to whisper their tender nothings through a "courting-stick," +a hollow stick about an inch in diameter and six or eight feet long, +fitted with mouth- and ear-pieces. In the presence of the entire family, +lovers, seated formally on either side of the great fireplace, carried +on this chilly telephonic love-making. One of these batons of propriety +still is preserved in Longmeadow, Mass. + +Of this primitive colony with primitive manners some very extraordinary +cases of bucolic love at first sight are recorded--love that did not +follow the law of pounds, shillings, and pence. At an ordination in +Hopkinton, New Hampshire, a country bumpkin forgot the place, the +preacher, and the preaching, in the ravishing sight of an unknown damsel +whom he saw for the first time within the meeting-house. He sat +entranced through the long sermon, the tedious psalm-singings, the +endless prayers, until at last the services were over. In an ecstasy of +uncouth and unreasoning passion he rushed out of church, forced his way +through the departing congregation, seized the unknown fair one in his +arms crying out, "Now I have got ye, you jade, I have! I have!" And from +so startling and unalluring a beginning, a marriage followed. In a +neighboring community a dignified officer of the law went to "warn out +of town" a strange "transient woman" who might become a pauper, and +would then have to be kept at the town's expense, were this ceremony +omitted. Terrified at the majesty of the law and its grand though +incomprehensible wording, the young warned one burst into tears, which +so worked upon the tender-hearted officer that he (being conveniently a +widower) proposed to her offhand, was called in meeting, married her, +and thus took her under his own and the town's protection. More than one +case of "marriage at first sight" is recounted, of bold Puritan wooers +riding up to the door of a fair one whom they had never seen, telling +their story of a lonely home, forlorn housekeeping, and desired +marriage, giving their credentials, obtaining a hasty consent, and +sending in their "publishings" to the town clerk, all within a day's +time. + +The "matrimonial" advertisement did not appear till 1759. In the _Boston +Evening Post_ of February 23d of that year, this notice, for its novelty +and boldness, must have caused quite a heart-fluttering among Boston +"thornbacks" who would try to pass for the desired age: + + "To the Ladies. Any young Lady between the Age of Eighteen and + twenty three of a Midling Stature; brown Hair, regular Features and + a Lively Brisk Eye: Of Good Morals & not Tinctured with anything + that may Sully so Distinguishable a Form possessed of 3 or 400L + entirely her own Disposal and where there will be no necessity of + going Through the tiresome Talk of addressing Parents or Guardians + for their consent: Such a one by leaving a Line directed for A. W. + at the British Coffee House in King Street appointing where an + Interview may be had will meet with a Person who flatters himself + he shall not be thought Disagreeable by any Lady answering the + above description. N. B. Profound Secrecy will be observ'd. No + Trifling Answers will be regarded." + +Hawthorne says: "Now this was great condescension towards the ladies of +Massachusetts Bay in a threadbare lieutenant of foot." + +Other matrimonial advertisements, those of recreant and disobedient +wives, appear in considerable number, especially in Connecticut papers. +They were sometimes prefaced by the solemn warning: "Cursed be he that +parteth man & wife & all the people shall say Amen." Some very +disagreeable allegations were made against these Connecticut wives--that +they were rude, gay, light-carriaged girls, poor and lazy housewives, +ill cooks, fond of dancing, and talking balderdash talk, and far from +being loving consorts. The wives had something to say from their point +of view. One, owing to her spouse's stinginess, had to use "Indian +branne for Jonne bred," and never tasted good food; another stated that +her loving husband "cruelly pulled my hair, pinched my flesh, kicked me +out of bed, drag'd me by my arms & heels, flung ashes upon me to smother +me, flung water from the well till I had not a dry thread on me." All +these notices were apparently printed in the advertiser's own language +and individual manner of spelling, some even in rhyme. "Timothy hubbard" +thus ventilated his domestic infelicities and his spelling in the +_Connecticut Courant_ of January 30th, 1776: + + "Whearis my Wife Abigiel hes under Rote me by saying it is veri + Disagria bell to Hur to Expose to the World the miseris & Calamatis + of a Distractid famely, and I think as much for hur Father & mother + to Witt Stephen deming & his wife acts very much like Distractid or + BeWicht & I believe both, for the truth of this I will apell to the + Nabors. When I first Married I had land of my one and lived at my + one hous but Stephen deming & his Wife cept coming down & hanting + of me til they got me up to thare house but presently I was + deceived by them as Bad as Adam & Eve was by the Divel though not + in the Same Shape for they got a bill of Sail of a most all by + thare Sutilly & still hold the Same. perhaps the Jentlemen will say + it is to pay my debt. Queri. Wherino a man that ows one pound to my + shiling. I dont want it to pay his one, I believe he dos. My wife + pretends to say I abus'd her for the truth of this I will apiel to + all thare nabors." + +Anenst this I am glad to add that I have found repentant sequels to the +mortifying story, in the form of humble retractions of the husband's +allegations. Wives were, on the whole, marvellously well protected by +early laws. A husband could not keep his consort on outlying and +danger-filled plantations, but must "bring her in, else the town will +pull his house down." Nor could a man leave his wife for any length of +time, nor "marrie too wifes which were both alive for anything that can +appear otherwise at one time," nor beat his wife (as he could to his +heart's content in old England); he could not even use "hard words" to +her. Nor could she raise her hand or use "a curst and shrewish tongue" +to him without fear of public punishment in the stocks or pillory. + +In the first years of the colonies there existed a formal ceremony of +betrothal called in Plymouth a pre-contract. This semi-binding ceremony +had hardly a favorable influence upon the morals of the times. Cotton +Mather states: + + "There was maintained a Solemnity called a Contraction a little + before the Consummation of a marriage was allowed of. A Pastor was + usually employed and a sermon also preached on this occasion." + +If the prospective marriage were an important or a genteel one, an +applicable sermon was often preached in church at the time of the +"contraction." One minister took the text, Ephesians vi. 10, 11, in +order "to teach that marriage is a state of warfaring condition." It was +also the custom to allow the bride to choose the text for the sermon to +be delivered on the Sunday when she "came out bride." Much ingenuity was +exercised by these Puritan brides in finding appropriate and interesting +texts for these wedding sermons. Here are some of the verses selected: + +2 Chronicles xiv. 2: "And Asa did that which was good and right in the +eyes of the Lord"--Asa and his bride Hepzibah sitting up proudly in the +congregation to listen. + +Proverbs xxiv. 23: "Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth +among the elders of the land." + +Ecclesiastes iv. 9, 10: "Two are better than one; because they have a +good reward for their labour. For if they fall the one will lift up his +fellow." + +I can imagine the staid New England lover and his shy sweetheart +anxiously and solemnly searching for many hours through the great +leather-bound family Bible for a specially appropriate text, turning +over the leaves and slowing scanning the pages, skipping over tedious +Leviticus and Numbers, and finding always in the Song of Solomon "in +almost every verse" a sentiment appealing to all lovers, and worthy a +selection for a wedding sermon. + +The "coming out," or, as it was called in Newburyport, "walking out" of +the bride was an important event in the little community. Cotton Mather +wrote in 1713 that he thought it expedient for the bridal couple to +appear as such publicly, with some dignity. We see in the pages of +Sewall's diary one of his daughters with her new-made husband leading +the orderly bridal procession of six couples on the way to church, +observed of all in the narrow Boston street and in the Puritan +meeting-house. In some communities the bride and groom took a prominent +seat in the gallery, and in the midst of the sermon rose to their feet +and turned around several times slowly, in order to show from every +point of view their bridal finery to the admiring eyes of their +assembled friends and neighbors in the congregation. + +Throughout New England, except in New Hampshire, the law was enforced +for nearly two centuries, of publishing the wedding banns three times in +the meeting-house, at either town meeting, lecture, or Sunday service. +Intention of marriage and the names of the contracting parties were read +by the town clerk, the deacon, or the minister, at any of these +forgatherings, and a notice of the same placed on the church door, or on +a "publishing post"--in short, they were "valled." Yet in the early days +of the colonies the all-powerful minister could not perform the marriage +ceremony--a magistrate, a captain, any man of dignity in the community +could be authorized to marry Puritan lovers, save the parson. Not till +the beginning of the eighteenth century did the Puritan minister assume +the function of solemnizing marriages. Gov. Bellingham married himself +to Penelope Pelham when he was a short time a widower and forty-nine +years old, and his bride but twenty-two. When he was "brought up" for +this irregularity he arrogantly and monopolizingly persisted in +remaining on the bench to try his own case. "Disorderly marriages" were +punished in many towns; doubtless many of them were between Quakers. +Some couples were fined every month until they were properly married. A +very trying and unregenerate reprobate in New London persisted that he +would "take up" with a woman in the town and make her his wife without +any legal or religious ceremony. This was a great scandal to the whole +community. A pious magistrate met the ungodly couple on the street and +sternly reproved them thus: "John Rogers, do you persist in calling this +woman, a servant, so much younger than yourself, your wife?" + +"Yes, I do," violently answered John. + +"And do you, Mary, wish such an old man as this to be your husband?" + +"Indeed I do," she answered. + +"Then," said the governor, coldly, "by the laws of God and this +commonwealth, I as a magistrate pronounce you man and wife." + +"Ah! Gurdon, Gurdon," said the groom, married legally in spite of +himself, "thee's a cunning fellow." + +There is one peculiarity of the marriages of the first century and a +half of colonial and provincial life which should be noted--the vast +number of unions between the members of the families of Puritan +ministers. It seemed to be a law of social ethics that the sons of +ministers should marry the daughters of ministers. The new pastor +frequently married the daughter of his predecessor in the parish, +sometimes the widow--a most thrifty settling of pastoral affairs. A +study of the Cotton, Stoddard, Eliot, Williams, Edwards, Chauncey, +Bulkeley, and Wigglesworth families, and, above all, of the Mather +family, will show mutual kinship among the ministers, as well as mutual +religious thought. + +Richard Mather took for his second wife the widow of John Cotton. Their +children, Increase Mather and Mary Cotton, grew up as brother and +sister, but were married and became the parents of Cotton Mather. The +sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of Richard Mather were ministers. +His daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters became the wives +of ministers. Thus was the name of "Mather Dynasty" well given. The +Mather blood and the Mather traits of character were felt in the most +remote parishes of New England. The Mather expressions of religious +thought were long heard from the pulpit, and long taught in ministerial +homes; and to that Mather blood and that upright Mather character and +God-fearing Mather faith and teaching, we of New England owe more +gratitude than can ever find expression. + +We have several meagre pictures of weddings in early days. One runs +thus: + + "There was a pretty deal of company present.... Many young + gentlemen and gentlewomen. Mr. Noyes made a speech, said love was + the sugar to sweeten every condition in the marriage state. Prayed + once. Did all very well. After the Sack-posset sung 45th Psalm from + 8th verse to end, five staves. I set it to Windsor tune. I had a + very good Turkey Leather Psalm book which I looked in while Mr. + Noyes read; then I gave it to the bridegroom saying I give you this + Psalm book in order to your perpetuating this song and I would have + you pray that it may be an introduction to our singing with the + quire above." + +For many years sack-posset was drunk at weddings, sometimes within the +bridal chamber; but not with noisy revelry, as in old England. A psalm +preceding and a prayer following a Puritan posset-pot made a +satisfactorily solemn wassail. Bride-cake and bride-gloves were sent as +gifts to the friends and relatives of the contracting parties. Other and +ruder English fashions obtained. The garter of the bride was sometimes +scrambled for to bring luck and speedy marriage to the garter-winner. In +Marblehead the bridesmaids and groomsmen put the wedded couple to bed. + +It is said that along the New Hampshire and upper Massachusetts coast, +the groom was led to the bridal chamber clad in a brocaded night-gown. +This may have occasionally taken place among the gentry, but I fancy +brocaded night-gowns were not common wear among New England country +folk. I have also seen it stated that the bridal chamber was invaded, +and healths there were drunk and prayers offered. The only proof of this +custom which I have found is the negative one which Judge Sewall gives +when he states of his own wedding that "none came to us," after he and +his elderly bride had retired. When the weddings of English noblemen of +that period were attended by most indecorous observances, there is no +reason to suppose that provincial and colonial weddings were entirely +free from similar rude customs. + +It was found necessary in 1651 to forbid all "mixt and unmixt" dancing +at taverns on the occasion of weddings, abuses and disorders having +arisen. But I fancy a people who would give an "ordination ball" would +not long sit still at a wedding; and by the year 1769, at a wedding in +New London, ninety-two jigs, fifty contra-dances, forty-three minuets, +and seventeen hornpipes were danced, and the party broke up at quarter +of one in the morning--at what time could it have begun? + +Isolated communities retained for many years marriage customs derived or +copied from similar customs in the "old country." Thus the settlers of +Londonderry, New Hampshire--Scotch-Irish Presbyterians--celebrated a +marriage with much noisy firing of guns, just as their ancestors in +Ireland, when the Catholics had been forbidden the use of firearms, had +ostentatiously paraded their privileged Protestant condition by firing +off their guns and muskets at every celebration. A Londonderry wedding +made a big noise in the world. After the formal publishing of the banns, +guests were invited with much punctiliousness. The wedding day was +suitably welcomed at daybreak by a discharge of musketry at both the +bride's and the groom's house. At a given hour the bridegroom, +accompanied by his male friends, started for the bride's home. Salutes +were fired at every house passed on the road, and from each house +pistols and guns gave an answering "God speed." Half way on the journey +the noisy bridal party was met by the male friends of the bride, and +another discharge of firearms rent the air. Each group of men then named +a champion to "run for the bottle"--a direct survival of the ancient +wedding sport known among the Scotch as "running for the bride-door," or +"riding for the kail" or "for the broose"--a pot of spiced broth. The +two New Hampshire champions ran at full speed or rode a dare-devil race +over dangerous roads to the bride's house, the winner seized the +beribboned bottle of rum provided for the contest, returned to the +advancing bridal group, drank the bride's health, and passed the bottle. +On reaching the bride's house an extra salute was fired, and the +bridegroom with his party entered a room set aside for them. It was a +matter of strict etiquette that none of the bride's friends should enter +this room until the bride, led by the best man, advanced and stationed +herself with her bridesmaid before the minister, while the best man +stood behind the groom. When the time arrived for the marrying pair to +join hands, each put the right hand behind the back, and the bridesmaid +and the best man pulled off the wedding-gloves, taking care to finish +their duty at precisely the same moment. At the end of the ceremony +everyone kissed the bride, and more noisy firing of guns and drinking of +New England rum ended the day. + +In some communities still rougher horse-play than unexpected volleys of +musketry was shown to the bridal party or to wedding guests. Great trees +were felled across the bridle-paths, or grapevines were stretched across +to hinder the free passage, and thus delay the bridal festivities. + +Occasionally the wedding-bells did not ring smoothly. One Scotch-Irish +lassie seized the convenient opportunity, when the rollicking company of +her male friends had set out to meet the bridegroom, to mount a-pillion +behind a young New Hampshire Lochinvar, and ride boldly off to a +neighboring parson and marry the man of her choice. Such an unpublished +marriage was known in New Hampshire as a "Flagg marriage," from one +Parson Flagg, of some notoriety, of Chester, Vermont, whose house was a +sort of Yankee Gretna Green; and such a marriage was made possible by +the action of the government of New Hampshire in issuing marriage +licenses at the price of two guineas each, as a means of increasing its +income. Sometimes easy-going parsons kept a stock of these licenses on +hand, ready for issue to eloping couples at a slightly advanced price. +Such a marriage, without proper "publishing" in meeting, was not, +however, deemed very reputable. + +Madam Knight, travelling through Connecticut in 1704, wrote thus in her +diary of Connecticut youth: + + "They generally marry very young; the males oftener as I am told + under twenty years than above; they generally make public weddings + and have a way something singular in some of them; viz. just before + joining hands the bridegroom quits the place, who is soon followed + by the Bridesmen and, as it were, dragged back to duty, being the + reverse to the former practice among us to steal Mistress Bride." + +Poor-spirited creatures Connecticut maids must have been to endure +meekly such an ungallant custom and such ungallant lovers. + +The sport of stealing "Mistress Bride," a curious survival of the old +savage bridals of many peoples, lingered long in the Connecticut valley. +A company of young men, usually composed of slighted ones who had not +been invited to the wedding, rushed in after the marriage ceremony, +seized the bride, carried her to a waiting carriage, or lifted her up on +a pillion, and rode to the country tavern. The groom with his friends +followed, and usually redeemed the bride by furnishing a supper to the +stealers. The last bride stolen in Hadley was Mrs. Job Marsh, in the +year 1783. To this day, however, in certain localities in Rhode Island, +the young men of the neighborhood invade the bridal chamber and pull the +bride downstairs, and even out-of-doors, thus forcing the husband to +follow to her rescue. If the room or house-door be locked against their +invasion, the rough visitors break the lock. + +In England throughout the eighteenth century the grotesque belief +prevailed that if a widow were "married in Her Smock without any Clothes +or Head Gier on," the husband would be exempt from paying any of his +new wife's ante-nuptial debts; and many records of such debt-evading +marriages appear. In New England, it was thought if the bride were +married "in her shift on the king's highway," a creditor could follow +her person no farther in pursuit of his debt. Many such eccentric +"smock-marriages" took place, generally (with some regard for modesty) +occurring in the evening. Later the bride was permitted to stand in a +closet. + +Mr. William C. Prime, in his delightful book, "Along New England Roads," +gives an account of such a marriage. In Newfane, Vt., in February, 1789, +Major Moses Joy married Widow Hannah Ward; the bride stood, with no +clothing on, within a closet, and held out her hand to the major through +a diamond-shaped hole in the door, and the ceremony was thus performed. +She then appeared resplendent in wedding attire, which the gallant major +had thoughtfully deposited in the closet for her assumption. Mr. Prime +tells also of a marriage in which the bride, entirely unclad, left her +room by a window at night, and standing on the top round of a high +ladder donned her wedding garments, and thus put off the obligations of +the old life. + +In Hall's "History of Eastern Vermont," we read of a marriage in +Westminster, Vt., in which the Widow Lovejoy, while nude and hidden in a +chimney recess behind a curtain, wedded Asa Averill. Smock-marriages on +the public highway are recorded in York, Me., in 1774, as shown in the +History of Wells and Kennebunkport. It is said that in one case the +pitying minister threw his coat over the shivering bride, Widow Mary +Bradley, who in February, clad only in a shift, met the bridegroom half +way from her home to his. + +The traveller Kalm, writing in 1748, says that one Pennsylvania +bridegroom saved appearances by meeting the scantily-clad widow-bride +half way from her house to his, and announcing formally, in the presence +of witnesses, that the wedding clothes which he then put on her were +only lent to her for the occasion. This is curiously suggestive of the +marriage investiture of Eastern Hindostan. + +In Westerly, R. I., in 1724, other smock-marriages were recorded, and in +Lincoln County, Me., in 1767, between John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman, +showing that the belief in this vulgar error was wide-spread. The most +curious variation of this custom is told in the "Life of Gustavus +Vassa," wherein that traveller records that a smock-marriage took place +in New York in 1784 on a gallows. A malefactor condemned to death, and +about to undergo his execution, was reprieved and liberated through his +marriage to a woman clad only in a shift. + +In spite of the hardness and narrowness of their daily life, and the +cold calculation, the lack of sentiment displayed in wooing, I think +Puritan husbands and wives were happy in their marriages, though their +love was shy, almost sombre, and "flowered out of sight like the fern." +A few love-letters still remain to prove their affection: letters of +sweethearts and letters of married lovers, such as Governor Winthrop +and his wife Margaret; letters like the words of another Margaret--a +queen--to her "alderliefest;" letters so simple and tender that truth +and love shine round them like a halo: + + "MY OWN DEAR HUSBAND: How dearly welcome thy kind letter was to me, + I am not able to express. The sweetness of it did much refresh me. + What can be more pleasing to a wife than to hear of the welfare of + her best beloved and how he is pleased with her poor endeavors! I + blush to hear myself commended, knowing my own wants. But it is + your love that conceives the best and makes all things seem better + than they are. I wish that I may always be pleasing to thee, and + that these comforts we have in each other may be daily increased so + far as they be pleasing to God. I will use that speech to thee that + Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of my + lord; I will do any service wherein I may please my good husband. I + confess I cannot do enough for thee; but thou art pleased to accept + the will for the deed and rest contented. I have many reasons to + make me love thee, whereof I shall name two: First, because thou + lovest God, and secondly, because thou lovest me. If these two were + wanting all the rest would be eclipsed. But I must leave this + discourse and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife + to be so long from them; but I must needs borrow a little time to + talk with thee, my sweetheart. It will be but two or three weeks + before I see thee, though they be long ones. God will bring us + together in good time, for which time I shall pray. And thus with + my mother's and my own best love to yourself I shall leave + scribbling. Farewell my good husband, the Lord keep thee. + + "Your obedient wife, + "MARGARET WINTHROP." + +Who can read the beautiful words without feeling for that sweet +Margaret, who died two centuries ago, a thrill of the affection that +must have glowed for her in John Winthrop's heart, when, far away from +her, he first opened and read this tender letter. + +Warm eulogies did many a staid New Englander write of his loving +consort, eulogies in rhyme, and epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, +epicediums, anagrams, acrostics, and pindarics, all speaking loudly of +loving, "painful" care, if not of a spirit of poesy. And the even, +virtuous tenor of the life in New England proved too a happiness and +contentment equal to the marital results of more emotional and romantic +love-making. There were some divorces. Madam Knight found that they were +plentiful in Connecticut in 1704, as they are in that State nowadays. +She writes: + + "These uncomely Stand-aways are too much in vogue among the English + in this indulgent colony, as their records plentifully prove; and + that on very trivial matters of which some have been told me, but + are not Proper to be Related by a Female Pen." + +In town records we find that divorces, though infrequent, still were +occasionally given in other New England States; but the causes assigned +therefor, to follow Madam Knight's example, need not be "Related by a +Female Pen." + + + + +III + +DOMESTIC SERVICE + + +It is plainly evident that in a country where land was to be had for the +asking, fuel for the cutting, corn for the planting and harvesting, and +game and fish for the least expenditure of labor, no man would long +serve for another, and any system of reliable service indoors or afield +must fail. Whether the colonists came to work or not, they had to in +order to live, for domestic service was soon in the most chaotic state. +Women were forced to be notable housekeepers; men were compelled to +attend to every detail of masculine labor in their households and on +their farms, thus acquiring and developing a "handiness" at all trades, +which has become a Yankee trait. + +The question of adequate and proper household service soon became a +question of importance and of painful consideration in the new land. +Rev. Ezekiel Rogers wrote most feelingly in 1656 on this subject: + + "Much ado have I with my own family, hard to get a servant glad of + catechizing or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in + Yorkshire, and those I brought over were a blessing, but the young + brood doth much afflict me." + +The Massachusetts colonists had attempted even before starting, to meet +and simplify the servant question by rigidly excluding any corrupt +element. They even sent back to England boys who had been unruly on +shipboard. But the number of penalties imposed on servants during the +early years are a lasting record of the affliction caused by the young +brood. + +All the early travellers speak of the lack of good servants in the new +land. The "Diary of a French Refugee in Boston," in 1687, says: "There +is an absolute Need of Hired help;" and that savages were employed in +the fields at eighteen-pence a day. This latter form of service was +naturally the first way of solving the vexed question. The captives in +war were divided in lots and assigned to housekeepers. We find even +gentle Roger Williams asking for "one of the drove of Adam's degenerate +seed" as a slave. Hugh Peters, of Salem, wrote to a Boston friend: "Wee +haue heard of a diuidence of women & children in the baye & would bee +glad of a share viz.: a young woman or girle & a boy if you thinke +good." Two years later he wrote: "My wife desires my daughter to send to +Hanna that was her maid now at Charlestowne to know if she would dwell +with us, for truly wee are now so destitute (having now but an Indian) +that wee know not what to do." Lowell thus comments on such savage +ministrations: + + "Let any housewife of our day who does not find the Keltic element + in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, + imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with + by signs, for its maid-of-all-work, and take courage. Those were + serious times indeed when your cook might give warning by taking + your scalp or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it + into the woods." + +We frequently glean from diaries of the times hints of the pleasures of +having a wild Nipmuck or Narragansett Indian as "help." Rev. Peter +Thatcher, of Milton, Mass., bought an Indian in 1674 for L5 down and L5 +more at the end of the year--a high-priced servant for the times. One of +her duties was, apparently, the care of a young Thatcher infant. Shortly +after the purchase, the reverend gentleman makes this entry in his +diary: "Came home and found my Indian girl had liked to have knocked my +Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good +walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so +no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good +Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his +firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut stick as a +civilizing influence. + +When we reach newspaper days we find Indian servants frequently among +the runaways; as Mather said, they could not endure the yoke; and, +indeed, it would seem natural enough that any such wild child of the +forests should flee away from the cramped atmosphere of a Puritan +household and house. We read pathetic accounts of the desertion of aged +colonists by their Indian servants. One writes that he took his "Pecod +girle" as a "chilld of death" when but two years old, had reared her +kindly, nursed her in sickness, and now she had run away from him when +he sorely needed her, and he wished to buy a blackamoor in her place. +Sometimes the description of the costumes in which these savages took +their flitting, is extremely picturesque. This is from the _Boston News +Letter_ of October, 1707: + + "Run away from her master Baker. A tall Lusty Carolina Indian woman + named Keziah Wampum, having long straight Black Hair tyed up with a + red Hair Lace, very much marked in the hands and face. Had on a + strip'd red blue & white Homespun Jacket & a Red one. A Black & + White Silk Crape Petticoat, A White Shift, as Also a blue one with + her, and a mixt Blue and White Linsey Woolsey Apron." + +A reward of four pounds was offered for this barbaric creature. + +Another Indian runaway in 1728 was thus bedizened, showing a startling +progress in adornment from the apron of skins and blanket of her +wildwood home. + + "She wore off a Narrow Stript pinck Cherredary Goun turn'd up with + a little flour'd red & white Callico. A Stript Homespun Quilted + Petticoat, a plain muslin Apron, a suit of plain Pinners & a red & + white flower'd knot, also a pair of green Stone Earrings with White + Cotton Stockings & Leather heel'd Wooden Shoes." + +Indian men often left their masters dishonestly dressed in their +masters' fine apparel, and even wearing beribboned flaxen wigs, which +must have been comic to a degree over their harsh, saturnine +countenances--"as brown as any bun." + +A limited substitute for Indian housemaids was found at an early day in +"help," as it was called even then. Roger Williams, writing of his +daughter, said: "She desires to spend some time in service & liked much +Mrs. Brenton who wanted." John Tinker, who himself was help, wrote thus +to John Winthrop; "Help is scarce, hard to get, difficult to please, +uncertain, &c. Means runneth out and wages on & I cannot make choice of +my help." Children of well-to-do citizens thus worked in domestic +service. Members of the family of the rich Judge Sewall lived out as +help. The sons of Downing and of Hooke went with their kinsman, Governor +Winthrop, as servants. Sir Robert Crane also sent his cousin to the +governor as a farm-servant. In Andover an Abbott maiden lived as help +for years in the house of a Phillips. Children were bound out when but +eight years old. These neighborly forms of domestic assistance were +necessarily slow of growth and limited in extent, and negro slavery +appeared to the colonists a much more effectual and speedy way of +solving the difficulty; and the Indian war-prisoners, who proved such +poor and dangerous house-servants, seemed a convenient, cheap, and +God-sent means of exchange for "Moores," as they were called, who were +far better servants. Emanuel Downing wrote in 1645 that he thought it +"synne in us having power in our hand to suffer them (the Indians) to +mayntayne the worship of the devill," that they should be removed from +their pow-wows, and suggests the exchange for negroes, saying: "I doe +not see how wee can thrive vntill wee into gett a stock of slaves +sufficient to doe all our business." + +Downing had a personal interest in the gaining of Moors; for he had had +almost as much trouble in obtaining servants as he did in marrying off +his children. We find him and his wife writing to Winthrop for help, +buying Indians, sending home more than once to England for "godlye +skylful paynstakeing girles," beseeching their neighbors to send them +servants "of good caridg and godly conuersation;" and at last buying +negroes, to try in every way to solve the vexed question. + +Though the early planters came to New England to obtain and maintain +liberty, and "bond slaverie, villinage," and other feudal servitudes +were prohibited under the ninety-first article of the Body of Liberties, +still they needed but this suggestion of Downing's to adopt quickly what +was then the universal and unquestioned practice of all Christian +nations--slavery. Josselyn found slaves on Noddle's Island in Boston +Harbor at his first visit, though they were not held in a Puritan +family. By 1687 a French refugee wrote home: + + "You may also here own Negroes and Negresses, there is not a house + in Boston however small may be its means, that has not one or + two.... Negroes cost from twenty to forty Pistoles." + +In Connecticut the crime of man-stealing was made punishable by death; +and in 1646 the Massachusetts General Court awoke to the growing +condition of affairs and bore witness "by the first Optunity, ag't the +hainous & crying sinn of man-stealing," and undertook to send back to +"Gynny" negroes who had been kidnapped by a slaver and brought to New +England, and to send a letter of explanation and apology with them. + +Though in the beginning he refused to harbor or tolerate negro-stealers, +the Massachusetts Puritan of that day, enraged at the cruelty of the +savage red men, did not hesitate to sell Indian captives as slaves to +the West Indies. King Philip's wife and child were thus sold and there +died. Their story was told in scathing language by Edward Everett. In +1703 it was made legal to transport and sell in the Barbadoes all Indian +male captives under ten, and Indian women captives. Perhaps these +transactions quickly blunted whatever early feeling may have existed +against negro slavery, for soon the African slave-trade flourished in +New England as in Virginia, Newport being the New England centre of the +Guinea Trade. From 1707 to 1732 a tax of three guineas a head was +imposed in Rhode Island on each negro imported--on "Guinea blackbirds." +It would be idle to dwell now on the cruelty of that horrid traffic, the +sufferings on board the slavers from lack of room, of food, of water, +of air. But three feet three, inches was allowed between decks for the +poor negro, who, accustomed to a free, out-of-door life, thus crouched +and sat through the passage. No wonder the loss of life was great. It +was chronicled in the newspapers and letters of the day in cold, +heartless language that plainly spoke the indifference of the public to +the trade and its awful consequences. I have never seen in any Southern +newspapers advertisements of negro sales that surpass in heartlessness +and viciousness the advertisements of our New England newspapers of the +eighteenth century. Negro children were advertised to be given away in +Boston, and were sold by the pound as was other merchandise. Samuel +Pewter advertised in the _Weekly Rehearsal_ in 1737 that he would sell +horses for ten shillings pay if the horse sale were accomplished, and +five shillings if he endeavored to sell and could not; and for negroes +"_sixpence a pound_ on all he sells, and a reasonable price if he does +not sell." + +Many letters still exist of advices from ship-owners to ship-captains, +advice as to the purchase, care, and choice of captives, "to get one old +man for a Lingister; to worter ye Rum & sell by short mesuer &c. &c." +Negro-stealing by Americans continued till 1864, when a brig sailing +westward from Africa on that iniquitous errand, was lost at sea--a grim +ending to three centuries of incredible and unchristian cruelty. + +The first anti-slavery tract published in America was written by Judge +Sewall in the year 1700--"The Selling of Joseph." His timid protest but +little availed, though he persevered in his belief and his opposition to +the day of his death. Other colonists who were opposed to the traffic +were willing to buy slaves, that the poor heathen might be brought up in +a Christian land, be led away from their idols--Abraham and the +patriarchs were given as authorities in justification of thus doing. One +respectable Newport elder, who sent many a profitable venture to the +Gold Coast for "black ivory," always gave pious thanks in meeting on the +Sunday after the safe arrival of a slaver, "that a gracious overruling +Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of Freedom another +cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessing of a Gospel +dispensation," and I suppose he fancied he had cheated his Maker, his +congregation, and himself into believing that there was some truth and +decency in the specious words that framed a lie in every clause. Many +ministers were slave owners; Daille--the French Huguenot, Dr. Hopkins, +Dr. Williams, Ezra Stiles, and Jonathan Edwards being noted examples. +The ministers from Eliot down were kind to the blacks, preaching special +sermons to them, and forming religious associations for them. A negro +school for reading, writing, and catechizing was established in Boston +in 1728. + +Cotton Mather had a negro worth fifty pounds given him by his +congregation, and that "most notorious benefactor," with his +never-ceasing "essay to doe good," at once, in gratitude for the gift, +devoted the negro to God's service, and made many a noble resolve to +save, through God's grace, his bondsman's soul. It is painful to read at +a later date that he found his unregenerate slave "horribly arrested by +spirits," by which he did not mean captured by the dreaded emissaries of +the devil who pervaded the air of Boston and Salem at that time, but +simply very drunk. + +Slaves were more plentiful in Connecticut and Rhode Island than in +Massachusetts. Madam Knight gives a glimpse of Connecticut slave life in +1704, and of awkward table traits in both master and slave as well, when +she says that the negroes were too familiar, were permitted to sit at +the table with the master, and "into the Dish goes the black Hoof as +freely as the white Hand." Hawthorne says of New England slaves: + + "They were not excluded from the domestic affections; in families + of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the + circle closed around the evening hearth its blaze glowed on their + dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's + children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot, + that they saw white men and women imported from Europe as they had + been from Africa, and sold, though only for a term of years, yet as + actual slaves to the highest bidder." + +In the main, New England slaves were not unhappy, for they were well +treated; and the race has the gift to be merry in the worst of +circumstances. Occasionally one would be brought to the northern land, +one of higher sensibilities, more sensitive affections, greater pride; +one who could not live a slave. Such a one was the haughty Congo Pomp, +who escaped to a swamp near Truro on Cape Cod--a swamp now called by his +name--and placing at the foot of a tree a jug of water and loaf of bread +to sustain him on his last long journey, hanged himself from the +low-hanging limbs, and thus obtained freedom. Such also was Parson +Williams's slave Cato in Longmeadow, Mass. He bore repeated whippings +for his high-spirited disobedience, "for speaking out loud in meeting, +drinking too much cider, going on a rampage," and finally drowned +himself in a well. + +Waitstill Winthrop wrote thus of one suicidal Moor to Fitz John Winthrop +in 1682. + + "I fear Black Tom will do but little seruis. He usued to make a + show of hangeing himselfe before folkes, but I believe he is not + very nimble about it when he is alone. Tis good to have an eye to + him & you think it not worth while to keep him eyether sell him or + send him to Virginia or the Barbadoes." + +William Pyncheon had also a slave who was "assiduous in hangeing." To be +sold to Virginia was a standard threat to New England slaves, as work in +Southern tobacco-fields was thought much more severe than in northern +cornfields. + +Slavery lingered in New England until after Revolutionary days. It is +said that its death blow was dealt in Worcester, Mass., in 1783, when a +citizen was tried for assaulting and beating his negro servant. The +defence was that the black man was a slave, and the beating was but +necessary restraint and correction. The master was found guilty in the +Worcester County Court and fined forty shillings. + +Though there were few slaves who were willing to leave life in order to +be free, many were willing to try to leave their masters. The early New +England newspapers abound in advertisements of runaway blacks--in gay +attire, with fiddles and guns, bewigged and silk-stockinged, well +dressed if not well treated. + +I know no records that show more fully, though wholly unconsciously, the +vast simplicity of our ancestors than these advertisements of runaway +servants. Fancy giving as a possible means of identification of any +human being such an item of descriptions as this: "When he gets drunk or +drinks much he is red in the face"--as if that were an extraordinary or +peculiar trait in any drunken man! Another runaway is said to have had +"sometimes a sly look in his eye and wears the button of his hat in +front;" another to have been a liar; another to have been "somewhat +impudent if crossed, and has a leering look under his eyes." Others were +"awkward in manners," "somewhat morose in countenance," "had long +finger-nails," "had one or two pimples on the face," "is too fond of +talking." It seems almost incredible that intelligent persons should +have given such childish and easily obliterated or varied particulars of +description. + +Diverse names were applied to these runaways: "Sirrinam Indianman +Slave," "Mustee-fellow," "Molatto," "Moor," "Maddagerscar-boy," +"Guinyman," "Congoman," "Coast-fellow," "Tawny," "Black-a-moor"--all +apparently conveying some distinction of description universally +comprehended at the time. + +We have a few records of worthy black servants who remind us of the +faithful, loving house-servants of old Southern families. Such a one was +Judge Sewall's man, Boston--a freeman--to a master who deserved faithful +service, if ever master did. The entries in the Judge's diary, meagre as +they are, somehow show fully to us that faithful life of service. We see +Boston taking the Sewall children out sledding; we see him carrying one +of the little daughters out of town in his arms when the neighbors were +suddenly smitten with that colonial plague, the small-pox. We find him, +in later years, a tender nurse, sleeping by the fire in languishing +Hannah Sewall's sick-chamber; and, after her death, we hear him +protesting against the removal of her dead form from her chamber; and we +can see him weeping as he sat through the lonely nights with his dead +and dearly loved mistress, till she was hidden from his view. It is +pleasing to know that though he lived a servant, he was buried like a +gentleman; he received that token of final respect so highly prized in +Boston--a ceremonious funeral, with a good fire, and chairs set in rows, +and plenty of wine and cake, and a notice in the _News Letter_, and +doubtless gloves in decent numbers. + +Other black men led noble lives in service, if we can trust the records +on their tombstones. + +This elegant epitaph is upon a gravestone in Concord, Mass.: + + "GOD WILLS US FREE; MAN WILLS US SLAVES + I WILL AS GOD WILLS, GODS WILL BE DONE. + HERE LIES THE BODY OF + + JOHN JACK + + A NATIVE OF AFRICA, WHO DIED + MARCH 1773 AGED ABOUT SIXTY YEARS. + THOUGH BORN IN A LAND OF SLAVERY + HE WAS BORN FREE + THOUGH HE LIVED IN A LAND OF LIBERTY + HE LIVED A SLAVE. + TILL BY HIS HONEST (THOUGH STOLEN) LABORS + HE ACQUIRED THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY + WHICH GAVE HIM FREEDOM + THOUGH NOT LONG BEFORE + DEATH, THE GRAND TYRANT + GAVE HIM HIS FINAL EMANCIPATION + AND PUT HIM ON A FOOTING WITH KINGS. + THOUGH A SLAVE TO VICE + HE PRACTISED THOSE VIRTUES + WITHOUT WHICH KINGS ARE BUT SLAVES." + +At Attleborough, Mass., near the old Hatch Tavern, may be seen this +epitaph: + + "HERE LIES THE BEST OF SLAVES + NOW TURNING INTO DUST, + CAESAR THE AETHIOPIAN CLAIMS + A PLACE AMONG THE JUST. + + HIS FAITHFUL SOUL HAS FLED + TO REALMS OF HEAVENLY LIGHT, + AND BY THE BLOOD THAT JESUS SHED + IS CHANGED FROM BLACK TO WHITE. + + JAN. 15TH HE QUITTED THE STAGE + IN THE 77TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. + + 1781." + +Besides slaves, Indians, and help, a species of nexal servitude also +existed in all the colonies. At the beginning of colonization bound or +indentured white servants were sent in large numbers to the new land. +Thirty came to the Bay Colony as early as 1625. Some of the terms of +service were very long, even for ten years. These indentured servants +were in three classes: "free-willers," or "redemptioners," or voluntary +emigrants; "kids," who had been seduced through ignorance or duplicity +on board ships that carried them off to America; and convicts +transported for crime. The latter expatriated vagabonds were sent +chiefly to Virginia. The "kids" were trapanned, by the fair promises of +crimps or "spirits," in Scotland, Ireland, and England, where kidnapping +formed an extensive and incredibly bold business. The Scots were brought +over and sold at the time of English wars. At one time "Scots, Indians, +and Negars" were not allowed to train in the militia in Massachusetts. +Many curious and romantic stories are told of these kidnapped servants. +One day, in 1730, a number of Boston gentlemen went to the Long Wharf to +examine a cargo of Irish transports then offered for sale. Among the +lads who ran up and down the wharf to show his strength and condition +was one who had gone to sea on another ship. The captain, his uncle, +died at sea, and the crew sold the boy to this transport-ship, which +chanced to pass them. The boy faithfully served out his time to his +purchaser, and became a gallant officer in the wars with the Indians. + +These indentured servants were just as trying as the Indians and the +negroes, and in particular showed a lawless disregard for their masters' +property, an indifference to the authority of the weal-public, and a +lazy disinclination to work; one writer describes them as "tender +fingered in cold weather." The Mt. Wollaston lot that followed Morton to +Merry Mount were but the forerunners of hundreds of others. The +Bradstreets' servant, John, may be taken as a type of many refractory +bound servants. He was brought to trial in 1661, for "stealing several +things as pigges, capons, mault, bacon, butter, eggs, etc., and breaking +open a seller door several times." John, when pulled up for trial, +affirmed that he had really a very small appetite, but the food +furnished by that colonial blue-stocking, Anne Bradstreet, was not fit +to eat, the bread being black and heavy and sour, and he only took an +occasional surreptitious bite to keep himself from starvation. But it +was proved that he had feasted not only himself, but comrades, and that +a neighbor, who had a "great fat Turkey against his daughter's marriage" +hung up in a locked room, was relieved of it by the hungry and agile +John, who got some of his fellows to let him down the chimney to steal +the turkey and good store of beer, with which they all caroused; and he +was fitly punished. + +The laws were strict enough at first as to the behavior of servants, and +occasionally a topping young maid felt their force. In Hartford, "Susan +Coles for her rebellious cariedge towards her mistris is to be sent to +the house of correction and be kept to hard labour and course dyet, to +be brought forth the next Lecture Day to be publicquely corrected and so +to be corrected weekly until Order be given to the contrary." + +In York, Me., in 1645, "Alexander Maxwell for his grosse offence in his +exorbitant and abusive carriages towards his master Mr. George Leader +shall be publicly brought forth to the Whipping Post, where he shall be +fastened till 30 lashes be given him upon his bare skin." Maxwell was +ordered to satisfy his master for the money paid for his board in +prison, and, if he further misbehaved, Mr. Leader could sell him to +Virginia. + +In later days New England housewives must have longed for the good old +times of the whipping-post and coarse diet and hard work for disorderly +and insubordinate redemptioners. Hear what gentle Mary Dudley endured +with one of her maids. She had written many pathetic entreaties to her +mother, Madam Winthrop, to send her a "good girle, a strong lusty +servant," one "vsed to all kind of work who would refuse none," and we +learn what she got, from a letter written a few months later, with a +new-born babe by her side: + + "A great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant and now + I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it; at her first + coming me she carried her selfe dutifully as became a servant; but + since through mine and my husbands forbearance towards her for + small faults, she hath got such a head and is growen so insolent + that her carriage towards vs especialle myselfe is unsufferable. If + I bid her doe a thinge she will bid me to doe it myselfe, and she + sayes how she can give content as wel as any servant but shee will + not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my + life for she would make mee have enough of it. If I should write to + you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language she hath vsed + towards me I should but grieve you. My husband hath vsed all meanes + for to reforme her, reasons and perswasions, but shee doth profess + that her heart and her nature will not suffer her to confesse her + faults. If I tell my husband of her behavior towards me, vpon + examination she will denie all she hath done or spoken, so that we + know not how to proceed against her." + +We must not forget that the Winthrops had the best opportunity of any in +the land to have good servants; for not only were help placed in their +families, but the best of English servants were consigned to them; yet +neither the Governor's sister, Madam Downing, nor his daughter, Madam +Dudley, could be "suited." And hear the plaint of John Winthrop to his +father in 1717: + + "It is not convenient now to write the trouble and plague we have + had with this Irish creature the year past. Lying and unfaithfull; + w'd doe things on purpose in contradiction and vexation to her + mistress; lye out of the house anights and have contrivances w'th + fellows that have been stealing from o'r estate and gett drink out + of ye cellar for them; saucy and impudent, as when we have taken + her to task for her wickedness she has gone away to complain of + cruell usage. I can truly say we have used this base creature w'th + a great deal of kindness and lenity. She w'd frequently take her + mistresses capps and stockins, hankerchers etc., to dresse herselfe + and away without leave among her companions. I may have said some + time or other when she has been in fault that she was fitt to live + nowhere but in Virginia, and if she w'd not mend her ways I should + send her thither tho I am sure nobody w'd give her passage thither + to have her service for twenty yeares she is such a high-spirited + pirnicious jade. Robin has been run away neare ten dayes as you + will see by the inclosed and this creature know of his going and of + his carrying out 4 dozen bottles of cyder, metheglin and palme wine + out of the cellar among the servants of the town and meat and I + know not w't. The bottles they broke and threw away after they had + drunk up the liquor, and they got up o'r sheep anight, killed a + fatt one, roasted and made merry w'th it before morning." + +This wild Irish girl was indentured to the unfortunate Winthrop and his +more unfortunate wife for four years, and was to have fifty shillings +and some other start in the world when her time was up. + +Out-of-the-way plantations fared no better in the question of service. +John Wynter, the head agent of the settlement at Richmonds Island in +Maine, wrote thus resentfully in 1639, to Mr. Trelawny, of the London +company, of his maid, one Priscilla Beckford: + + "You write of some yll reports is given of my Wyfe for beatinge the + maide: yf a faire waye will not doe yt, beatinge must sometimes + vppon such Idlle girrels as she is. Yf you think yt fitte for my + Wyfe to do all the work, and the maide sitt still, and she must + forbear her hands to strike, then the work will ly vndonn. She hath + bin now 2-1/2 yeares in the house & I do not thinke she hath risen + 20 tymes before my Wyfe hath bin vp to Call her, and many tymes + light the fire before she comes out of her bed. She hath twice gone + a mechinge in the woodes which we have bin fain to send all our + Company to seek her. We can hardly keep her within doors after we + are gonn to bed except we carry the kay of the door to bed with vs. + She coulde never milke Cow nor Goate since she came hither. Our men + do not desire to have her boyl the kittle for them she is so + sluttish. She cannot be trusted to serve a few piggs but my Wyfe + must commonly be with her. She hath written home I heare that she + was fain to ly vppon goates skinns. She might take some goates + skinns to ly in her bedd but not given to her for her lodginge. For + a yeare & quarter or more she lay with my daughter vppon a good + feather bed; before my daughter being lacke 3 or 4 days to Sacco + the maid goes into bed with her cloths & stockins & would not take + the paines to pluck off her Cloths; her bed after was a doust bedd + & shee had 2 Coverletts to ly on her, but Sheets she had none, + after that tyme she was found to be so sluttish. Her beatinge that + she hath had hath never hurt her body nor limes. She is so fatt & + soggy she can hardly do any worke. Yf this maide at her lazy tymes + when she hath bin found in her yll accyons do not deserve 2 or 3 + blowes I pray you who hath the most reason to complain my Wyfe or + maide. My Wyfe hath an Vnthankefull office. Yt does not please me + well, being she hath taken so much paines and care to order things + as well as she could, and ryse in the morning rath & go to bed soe + latte, and have hard speeches for yt." + +We can well imagine his exhausted patience, and that of poor overworked +Mistress Wynter, at that fat soggy thing, that lag-last, so shiftless +and useless about the house, lazing from rath to latte, and then to +complete their exasperation, miching off into the woods to shirk her +work so that the whole company had to turn out with a mort of trouble to +hunt for the leg-trape. We cannot marvel at the beating, but simply +wonder at its being remarked in those days of many and hard beatings, +when scholars, servants, soldiers, and college students were well +whipped, and, in Old England, wives also. + +Wynter had no better fortune without doors with his men-servants and +workmen; they proved kittle cattle. He found them not "plyable" or +"condishionabell," that they "spoke Fair to the Face and Colloged behind +the back." Of one malcontent he wrote, + + "He is verry vnwilling to do vs servize, he is alwaies too hard + labored, he cares not what Spoyle he makes, and will not be + commanded but when he list. He is such a talkinge Fellow as makes + our company worse than would be." + +He says his bound servants ran away at their pleasure, worked when they +pleased, and led others off to their lure, and should be punished if +they had returned to England. One only was "frace" of his ways and +promised to do better. Not only do we gain from Wynter's letters a +knowledge of the pains of colonial domestic service, but I know among +New England historical collections no other such well of good old +English words and phrases. + +The Declaration of Independence did not better the aspect of the servant +question. The _Providence Gazette_ advertised in 1796 that a reward of +five hundred dollars and the "warmest blessings of abused householders" +would be given to any restoring the conditions of the good old times, or +rather what they fancied was + + "The constant service of the antique world + When service sweat for duty not for meed." + +The notice opens thus: + + "Was mislaid or taken away by mistake, soon after the formation of + the abolition society, from the servant girls in this town all + inclination to do any kind of work, and left in lieu thereof an + independent appearance, a strong and continued thirst for high + wages, a gossiping disposition for every sort of amusement, a + leering and hankering after persons of the other sex, a desire of + finery and fashion, a never-ceasing trot after new places, more + advantageous for stealing, with a number of contingent + accomplishments that do not suit the wearers." + +President Dwight wrote that the servants of that day were "distinguished +for vice and profligacy;" so the nineteenth century opened no more +promisingly than the eighteenth. + +The pious colonists felt that great spiritual, as well as temporal +responsibility rested upon them in regard to their bond-servants. We +find in contemporary letters frequent reference to the souls of the +indentured ones; Englishmen at the old home wrote to the settlers to +remember well their religious, their proselyting duties; and they +faithfully reminded each other of their accountability for souls. For +instance, when a smart young Irishman came over with some Irish hounds, +his consigner besought the New Englanders to remember that it was as +godly to "winne this fellowes soule out of the subtillest snare of +Sathan, Romes pollitick religion, as to winne an Indian soule out of the +Dieuells clawes;" and he urged them to watch the Papist narrowly as to +his carriage in Puritandom, his attitude toward Protestantism. This was +the same religious zeal that led the Boston elders to send missionaries +from New England to convert the heathen of the Established Church in +Virginia. + +The moral and religious condition of these servants was truly of great +importance in the preservation of such a theocracy as was New England, +since few of them returned to England, but after serving out their time +became freemen with homes and land and votes of their own; and the +commonwealth could not live as a religious organization unless it +thrived through the religious spirit of its citizens. + +One other form of domestic service existed until this century. A limited +amount of assistance was given in some households by those unhappy +wights, the town-poor. These wretched paupers were sold to the lowest +bidder. Sometimes the buyer received but a few shillings a year from the +town for the "keep" of one of these helpless souls. We may be sure that +he got some work out of the pauper to pay for his board. We read of one +old Dimbledee, of Widow Bump and Widow Bumpus, degenerate successors in +name as well as in estate of the Pilgrim Bompasse, who were sold from +year to year from one farm to another and given a grudged existence, +till at last we find the town paying for their welcome coffins and +winding sheets. Two curious facts are to be noted in the poor accounts: +that the women paupers were almost invariably "very comfortable on it +for clothes," as were other women of that dress-loving day; and that +liquor was frequently supplied to both male and female paupers by the +town. Sometimes ten gallons apiece, a very consoling amount, was given +in a year. I have also noted the frequent presence on the poor-list of +what are termed "French Neuterls." These were Acadians--the neighbors +and compatriots of Evangeline--feeble folk, who, void of romance, +succumbed in despair to exile and home-sickness, a new language and a +new manner of living, and yielded weakly to work as servants when they +had no courage to maintain homes. New England paupers lived to a good +old age. I have been told that the unhappy fate of one of these +town-poor--an Acadian--was traced for over thirty years in the town +records of her sale. In 1767 there were twenty-one paupers in Danvers, +Mass., and their average age was eighty-four years, thus apparently +offering proof of good rum and good usage from the town. There was also +an hereditary pauperism. In Salem a certain family always had some of +its members on the list of town-poor from the year 1721 to 1848; and +perhaps they found better homes through "living around" than in trying +to support themselves. + +Criminals were also sold into service to work out their sentences. Thus +did the practical settlers attempt to carry out one of Sir Thomas More's +Utopian notions. Upon the whole, I think I should rather have a Nipmuck +squaw cooking in my kitchen, or a Pequot warrior digging in my garden, +than to have a white burglar or ruffian in either situation. + +It is well to observe in passing that no gingerly nicety of regard in +calling those who served by any other name than servant, was shown or +heeded in olden times. They believed with St. Paul, "Art thou called +being a servant? Care not for it." All hired workers in the house, hired +laborers in the field, those contracting to work under a master at any +trade for a period of time, apprentices, and many whom we should now +term agents or stewards, were then called servants, and signed contracts +as servants, and did not appear at all insulted by being termed +servants. + + + + +IV + +HOME INTERIORS + + +It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial +houses from a contemporary and reliable source--the inventories of the +estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court +records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much +minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room, +instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a +clear picture of the household belongings of that day. + +The first room beyond the threshold of the door that one finds named in +the houses "of the richer sort," is the entry. This was apparently +always bare of furniture, and indeed well it might be, for it was seldom +aught but a vestibule to the rest of the house, containing, save the +staircase, but room enough to swing the front door in opening. Dr. Lyon +gives the inventory of John Salmon of Boston in the year 1750 as the +earliest record which he has found of the use of the word hall instead +of entry, as we now employ it. In the _Boston News Letter_, thirty one +years earlier, on August 24th, 1719, I find this advertisement: "Fine +Glass Lamps & Lanthorns well gilt and painted both Convex and Plain. +Being suitable for Halls, staircases, or other Passage ways, at the +Glass Shop in Queen Street." This advertisement is, however, +exceptional. The hall in Puritan houses was not a passageway, it was the +living-room, the keeping-room, the dwelling-room, the sitting-room; in +it the family sat and ate their meals--in, it they lived. Let us see +what was the furniture of a Puritan home-room in early days, and what +its value. The inventory of the possessions of Theophilus Eaton, +Governor of the New Haven colony, is often quoted. At the time of his +death, in 1657, he had in his hall, + + "A drawing Table & a round table, L1.18s. + A cubberd & 2 long formes, 14s. + A cubberd cloth & cushions, 13s.; 4 setwork cushions, + 12s. L1.5. + 6 greene cushions, 12s; a greate chaire with needleworke, + 13s. L1.5. + 2 high chaires set work, 20s; 4 high stooles set worke, + 26s 8d L6.6.8. + 4 low chaires set worke, 6s 8d, L1.6.8. + 2 low stooles set worke, 10s. + 2 Turkey Carpette, L2; 6 high joyne stooles, 6s. L2.6. + A pewter cistern & candlestick, 4s. + A pr of great brass Andirons, 12s. + A pr of small Andirons, 6s 8d. + A pr of doggs, 2s 6d. + A pr of tongues fire pan & bellowes, 7s." + +Now, this was a very liberally furnished living-room. There were plenty +of seats for diners and loungers, if Puritans ever lounged; two long +forms and a dozen stools of various heights, with green or embroidered +cushions, upon which to sit while at the Governor's board; and seven +chairs, gay with needlework covers, to draw around his fireplace with +its shining paraphernalia of various sized andirons, tongs, and bellows. +The low, heavy-raftered room with these plentiful seats, the tables with +their Turkey covers, the picturesque cupboard with its rich cloth, and +its display of the Governor's silver plate, all aglow with the light of +a great wood fire, make a pretty picture of comfortable simplicity, +pleasant of contemplation in our bric-a-brac filled days, a fit setting +for the figures of the Governor, "New England's glory full of warmth and +light," and his dearest, greatest, best of temporal enjoyments, his +"vertuous, prudent and prayerful wife." + +Contemporary inventories make more clear and more positive still this +picture of a planter's home-room, for similar furniture is found in all. +All the halls had cisterns for water or for wine (and I fancy they stood +on the small table usually mentioned); all had a table for serving +meals; a majority had the cupboard; a few had "picktures" or "lookeing +glasses;" very rarely a couch or "day-bed" was seen; some had +"lanthorns" as well as candlesticks; others a spinning-wheel for the +good wife, when she "keepit close the house and birlit at the wheel." + +Chairs were a comparatively rare form of furniture in New England in +early colonial days, nor were they frequently seen in humble English +homes of that date. Stools and forms were the common seats. Turned, +wainscot, and covered chairs are the three distinct types mentioned in +the seventeenth century. Turned chairs are shown in good examples in +what are known as the Carver and Brewster chairs, now preserved in +Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. The president's chair at Harvard College is +another ancient turned chair. + +The seats of many of these chairs were of flags and rushes. The bark of +the elm and bass trees was also used for bottoming chairs. + +The wainscot chairs were all of wood, seats as well as backs, usually of +oak. They were frequently carved or panelled. One now in Pilgrim Hall is +known as the Winslow chair. Another fine specimen in carved oak is in +the Essex Institute in Salem. Carved chairs were owned only by persons +of wealth or high standing, and were frequently covered with "redd +lether" or "Rusha lether." Sometimes the leather was stamped and +different rich fabrics were employed to cover the seats. "Turkey +wrought" chairs are frequently mentioned. Velvet "Irish stitch," red +cloth, and needlework covers are named. Green appeared to be, however, +the favorite color. + +Cane chairs appeared in the last quarter of the century. It is said that +the use of cane was introduced into furniture with the marriage of +Charles II. to Catharine of Braganza. + +The bow-legged chair, often with claw and ball foot, came into use in +the beginning of the eighteenth century. "Crowfoot" and "eaglesfoot" +were named in inventories. These are copies of Dutch shapes. + +Easy-chairs also appeared at that date, usually as part of the bedroom +furniture, and were covered with the stuffs of which the bed-hangings +and window-curtains were made, such as "China," "callico," "camblet," +"harrateen." + +The three-cornered chair, now known as an "As you like it" chair, +appeared in the middle of the century under the names of triangle, +round-about, and half-round chair. + +The chairs known now as Chippendale may date back to the middle of the +century; Windsor chairs, also known and manufactured in Philadelphia at +that date, were not common in New England till a score of years later, +when they were made and sold in vast numbers, being much more +comfortable than the old bannister or slat-backed chairs then in common +use. + +Another piece of hall furniture deserves special mention. Dr. Lyon gives +these names of cupboards found in New England: Cupboard, small cupboard, +great cupboard, court cupboard, livery cupboard, side cupboard, hanging +cupboard, sideboard cupboard, and cupboard with drawers. To this list +might be added corner cupboard. The word court cupboard is found from +the years 1647 to 1704. It was a high piece of furniture with an +enclosed closet or drawers, originally intended to display plate, and +was the highest-priced cupboard found. Upon it were set, in New England, +both glass and plate. The livery cupboard, similar in its uses, seldom +had an enclosed portion. "Turn pillar cuberds," painted and carved +cupboards, were found. The item of cupboard in any inventory was usually +accompanied by that of a cupboard cloth. This latter seemed to be the +most elegant and luxurious article in the whole house. Cupboard cloths +of holland, "laced," "pantado," "cambrick," "kalliko," "green wrought +with silk fringe"--all are named. Cushions also, "to set upon a cubberds +head," are frequently named. They were made of damask, needlework, +velvet or cloth. A corner cupboard was apparently a small affair; a +japanned one is named. What we now call a corner cupboard was then known +as a beaufet. + +The hall was naturally on one side of the entry and opening into it. On +the other side, in large houses, was the parlor; this room was sometimes +used as a dining-room, sometimes as a state bedroom. It frequently held, +in addition to furniture like that of the hall, a chest or chests of +drawers to hold the family linen, and also that family idol--the best +bed. + +Of the exact shape and height of the bedsteads used by the early +colonists, I find no accurate nor very suggestive descriptions. The +terms used in wills, inventories, and letters seem too vague and curt to +give us a correct picture. What was the "half-headed bedstead" left with +"Curtaince & Valance of Dornix" by will by Simon Eire in Boston in 1658? +Or, to give a fuller description of a similar one in the sale of +furniture of the King's Arms in Boston, in 1651, "one half-headed +Bedsted with Blew Pillars." I fancy they were bedsteads with moderately +high headboards. It is easy enough to obtain full items of the bed +itself and the bed-furniture, its coverings and hangings. We read of +"ffether beds," "flocke beds," "downe bedds," "wool beds," and even +"charf beds," the latter worth but three shillings apiece, all of +importance enough to be named in wills and left with as much dignity of +bequest as Shakespeare's famous "second-best bed." Even so influential a +man as Thomas Dudley did not disdain to leave by specification to his +daughter Pacy a "ffeather beed & boulster." In 1666 Nicholas Upsall, of +Boston, left a "Bedstead fitted with a Rope Matt & Curtains to it." In +March, 1687, Sewall wrote to London for "White Fustian Drawn enough for +curtains, vallen counterpaine for a bed & half a duz chaires with four +threeded green worsted to work it." In 1691 we find him writing for +"Fringe for the Fustian bed & half a duz Chairs. Six yards and a half +for the vallons, fifteen yards for 6 chairs two Inches deep; 12 yards +half inch deep." This wrought fustian bed was certainly handsome. + +By revolutionary times we read such items as these: "Neet sette bed," +"Very genteel red and white copperplate Cottonbed with Squab and Window +Curtains Fring'd and made in the Newest Taste," "Sacken' & Corded Beds +and a Pallat Bed," "Very Handsome Flower'd Crimson worsted damask carv'd +and rais'd Teaster Bed & Curtains compleat," "A Four Post Bedstead of +Mahogany on Casters with Carved Foot Posts, Callico Curtains to Ditto & +Window Curtains to Match, and a Green Harrateen Cornish Bed." Harrateen, +a strong, stiff woollen material, formed the most universal bed hanging. +Trundle-beds or truckle-beds were used from the earliest days. So there +was variety in plenty. + +A form of bedstead called a slawbank was common enough in New York, New +Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania until this century. They were more +rarely found in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and as I do not know what +they were called in New England, we will give them the Dutch name +slawbank, from _sloap-bancke_, a sleeping-bench. A slawbank was the +prototype of our modern folding-bed. It was an oblong frame with a +network of rope. This frame was fastened at one end to the wall with +heavy hinges, and at night it was lowered to a horizontal position, and +the unhinged end was supported on heavy wooden turned legs which fitted +into sockets in the frame. When not in use the bed was hooked up against +the wall, and doors like closet doors were closed over it, or curtains +were drawn over it to conceal it. It was usually placed in the kitchen, +and upon it slept goodman and goodwife. I know of several slawbanks +still in old Narragansett, and one in a colonial house in Shrewsbury, +Mass. A similar one may be seen at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It is hung +around with blue serge curtains. I have seen no advertisements of +slawbanks under any name in New England newspapers, unless the "bedstead +in a painted press" in the _Boston Gazette_ of November, 1750, may be +one. + +The bed furniture was of much importance in olden days, and the coverlet +was frequently mentioned separately. Margaret Lake, of Ipswich, in 1662, +so named a "Tapestry coverlet" worth L4. Susannah Compton had at about +the same date a "Yearne Courlead." "Strieked couerlids" appear, and Adam +Hunt, of Ipswich, had in 1671 "an embroadured couerled." +"Happgings"--coarse common coverlets--are also named. In 1716, on +September 24th, in the _Boston News Letter_, the word counterpane first +appears. "India counterpins" often were advertised, and cheney, +harrataen, and camlet coverlets or counterpanes were made to match the +bed-hangings. + +A pair of sheets was furnished in 1628 to each Massachusetts Bay +colonist. This was a small allowance, but quite as full as the average +possession of sheets by other colonists. Cotton sheets were not +plentiful; flaxen or "fleishen" sheets, "canvas" sheets, "noggan" +sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his +note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and +may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially +explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy +citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning +became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun +sheets were made in large quantities, and owned by all respectable +householders. "Twenty and one pair" was no unusual number to appear in +an inventory. + +There were plenty of "ffether boulsters," "shafe boulsters," "wool +bolsters;" and John Walker had in 1659 a "Thurlinge Boulster," and each +household had many pillows. The word bear was universally used to denote +a pillow-case. It was spelled ber, beer, beir, beare and berr. In 1689 +the value of a "peler-beare" in an inventory was given at three +shillings. In 1664 Susannah Compton had linen "pillow coates." Pillow +covers also were named, and pillow clothes, but pillow bear was the term +most commonly applied. + +The following list of varieties of chests is given by Dr. Lyon: Joined +chests, wainscot chests, board chests, spruce chests, oak chests, carved +chests, chests with one or two drawers, cypress chests. Joined and +wainscot chests were framed chests with panels, distinguished clearly +from the board chests, made of plain boards. The latter were often +called plain chests, the former panel chests. Carved chests were much +rarer. William Bradford, of Plymouth, had one in 1657 worth L1. Dr. Lyon +also gives as possibly being carved these items: "wrought chest," +"ingraved," "settworke," and "inlayed chests." Chests were also painted, +usually on the parts in relief on the carving, the colors being +generally black and red. Chests with drawers were not rare in New +England. A good specimen may be seen in the rooms of the Connecticut +Historical Society. They were distinct in shape from what we now call +chests of drawers. Nearly all the oak chests were quartered to show the +grain, and "drop ornaments" and "egg ornaments" of various woods were +applied. Cypress and cedar chests were used then, as now, to protect +garments from moths. Governor Bellingham had one of the former worth L5. +Ship chests or sea chests were, of course, plentiful enough. Cristowell +Gallup had in 1655 a "sea chest and a great white chest." These sea +chests being made of cheap materials, have seldom been preserved. There +would appear to be in addition to the various chests already named, a +hanging chest. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell wrote to England for "4 +dozen pair Snipe bills to hang small chissts." This may possibly refer +to snipe-bill hinges to be placed on chests. + +It is safe to infer that almost every emigrant brought to America among +his household belongings at least one chest. It was of use as a +travelling trunk, a packing-box, and a piece of furniture. Many +colonists had several. Jane Humphreys had and named in her will "my +little chest, my great old chest, my great new chest, my lesser small +box, my biggest small box"--and she needed them all to hold her finery. + +Chests also were made in New England. Pine was used in the backs and +drawers of chests of New England make. English chests were wholly of +oak. + +In the Memorial Hall at Deerfield may be seen many fine specimens of old +chests, forming, indeed, a complete series, showing the various shapes +and ornamentations. + +Another furnishing of the parlor was the scrutoire. Under the spellings +scritoire, scredoar, screetor, scrittore, scriptore, scrutoir, scritory, +scrutore, escrutor, scriptoree, this useful piece of furniture appears +constantly in the inventories of men of wealth in the colonies from the +year 1669 till a century later. Judge Sewall tells of losing the key of +his "scrittoir." The definition of the word in Phillips's "New World of +Words," 1696, was "Scrutoire, a sort of large Cabinet with several +Boxes, and a place for Pen, Ink and Paper, the door of which opening +downward and resting upon Frames that are to be drawn out and put back, +serves for a Table to write on." This description would appear to +identify the "scrutoire" with what we now call a writing-desk; and it +was called interchangeably by these two names in wills. They were made +with double bow fronts and box fronts, of oak, pine, mahogany, cherry; +and some had cases of shelves for books on the top, forming what we now +call a secretary--our modern rendering of the word scrutoire. These book +scrutoires frequently had glass doors. + +When Judith Sewall was about to be married, in 1720, her father was much +pleased with his prospective son-in-law and evidently determined to give +the pair a truly elegant wedding outfit. The list of the +house-furnishings which he ordered from England has been preserved, and +may be quoted as showing part of the "setting-off" in furniture of a +rich bride of the day. It reads thus: + + "Curtains & Vallens for a Bed with Counterpane Head Cloth and + Tester made of good yellow waterd worsted camlet with Triming well + made and Bases if it be the Fashion. Send also of the Same Camlet & + Triming as may be enough to make Cushions for the Chamber Chairs. + + "A good fine large Chintz Quilt well made. + + "A true Looking Glass of Black Walnut Frame of the Newest Fashion + if the Fashion be good, as good as can be bought for five or six + pounds. + + "A second Looking Glass as good as can be bought for four or five + pounds, same kind of frame. + + "A Duzen of good Black Walnut Chairs fine Cane with a Couch. + + "A Duzen of Cane Chairs of a Different Figure and a great Chair for + a Chamber; all black Walnut. + + "One bell-metal Skillet of two Quarts, one ditto one Quart. + + "One good large Warming Pan bottom and cover fit for an Iron + handle. + + "Four pair of strong Iron Dogs with Brass heads about 5 or 6 + shillings a pair. + + "A Brass Hearth for a Chamber with Dogs Shovel Tongs & Fender of + the newest Fashion (the Fire is to ly upon Iron). + + "A strong Brass Mortar That will hold about a Quart with a Pestle. + + "Two pair of large Brass sliding Candlesticks about 4 shillings a + Pair. + + "Two pair of large Brass Candlesticks not sliding of the newest + Fashion about 5 or 6 shillings a pair. + + "Four Brass Snuffers with stands. + + "Six small strong Brass Chafing dishes about 4 shillings apiece. + + "One Brass basting Ladle; one larger Brass Ladle. + + "One pair of Chamber Bellows with Brass Noses. + + "One small hair Broom sutable to the Bellows. + + "One Duzen of large hard-mettal Pewter Plates new fashion, weighing + about fourteen pounds. + + "One Duzen hard-mettal Pewter Porringers. + + "Four Duzen of Small glass Salt Cellars of white glass; Smooth not + wrought, and without a foot. + + "A Duzen of good Ivory-hafted Knives and Forks." + +The floors of colonial houses were sometimes sanded, but were not +carpeted, for a carpet in early days was not a floor covering, but the +covering of a table or cupboard. In 1646 an inquiry was made into some +losses on the wreck of the "Angel Gabriel." A servant took oath that Mr. +John Coggeswell "had a Turkywork'd Carpet in old England which he +commonly used to lay on his Parlour Table; and this Carpet was put +aboard among my Maisters goods and came safe ashore to the best of my +Remembrance." Another man testified that he did "frequentlie see a +Turkey-work Carpet & heard them say it used to lay upon their Parlour +Table." Dornix, arras, cloth, calico, and broadcloth carpets are named. +Sewall tells of an "Irish stitch't hanging made a carpet of." Samuel +Danforth gave, in 1661, a "Convenient Carpet for the table of the +meeting house." In 1735, in the advertisement of the estate of Jonathan +Barnard, "one handsome Large Carpet 9 Foot 0 inches by 6 foot 6 inches" +was named. This was, I fancy, a floor covering. In the _Boston Gazette_ +of November, 1748, "two large Matts for floors" were advertised--an +exceptional instance in the use of the word mat. Large floor-carpets +were advertised the following year, and in 1755 a "Variety of List +Carpets wide & Narrow," and "Scotch Carpets for Stairs." In 1769 came +"Persia Carpets 3 yards Wide." In 1772, in the _Boston Evening Post_, "A +very Rich Wilton Carpet 18 ft by 13" was named. The following year +"Painted Canvass Floor Cloth" was named. This was doubtless the "Oyl +Cloth for Floors and Tables" of the year 1762. Oilcloth had been known +in England a century previously. What the "False Carpets" advertised on +June 7, 1762, were I do not know. + +The walls of the rooms were wainscoted and painted. Gurdon Saltonstall +had on the walls of some of his state-rooms leathern hangings or +tapestries. We find wealthy Sir William Pepperel sending to England, in +1737, the draught of a chamber he was furnishing, and writing, "Geet +mock Tapestry or paint'd Canvass lay'd in Oyls for ye same and send me." +In 1734 "Paper for Rooms," and a little later "Rolled Paper for Hanging +of Rooms" were advertised in the _Boston News Letter_. "Statues on +Paper" were soon sold, and "Architraves on Roll Paper" and "Landscape +Paper." These old paper-hangings were of very heavy and strong +materials, close-grained, firm and durable. The rooms of a few wealthy +men were hung with heavy tapestries. The ceilings usually exposed to +view the great summer-tree and cross rafters, sometimes rough-hewn and +still showing the marks of the woodman's axe. But little decoration was +seen overhead, even in the form of chandeliers; sometimes a candle beam +bore a score of candles, or in some fine houses, such as the Storer +mansion in Boston, great ornamental globes of glass hung from the +summer-tree. + +In the first log cabins oiled paper was placed in windows. We find more +than one colonist writing to England for that semi-opaque +window-setting. Soon glass windows, framed in lead, were sent from +London and Liverpool and Bristol, ready for insertion in the walls of +houses; and at an early day sheets of glass came to Winthrop. We find, +by Sewall's time, that the houses of well-to-do folk all had "quarrels +of glass" set in windows. + +The flight of time in New England houses was marked without doors by +sun-dials; within, by noon-marks, hour-glasses, and rarely by +clepsydras, or water-clocks. + +The first mention, in New England records, of a clock is in Lechford's +note-book. He states that in 1628 Joseph Stratton had of his brother a +clock and watch, and that Joseph acknowledged this, but refused to pay +for them and was sued for payment. Hence Lawyer Lechford's interest in +the articles and mention of them. In 1640 Henry Parks, of Hartford, left +a clock by will to the church. In the inventory of Thomas Coteymore, +made in Charleston, in 1645, his clock is apprized at L1. In 1657 there +was a town-clock in Boston and a man appointed to take care of it. In +1677 E. Needham, of Lynn, left a "striking clock, a Larum that does not +strike and a watch," valued at L5--this in an estate of L1,117 total. +Judge Sewall wrote, in 1687, "Got home rather before 12 Both by my Clock +and Dial." + +Clocks must have become rather plentiful in the early part of the +following century, for in 1707 this advertisement appeared in the +_Boston News Letter_: + + "To all gentlemen and others: There is lately arrived in Boston by + way of Pennsylvania a Clock maker. If any person or persons hath + any occasions for new Clocks or to have Old Ones turn'd into + Pendulums, or any other thing either in making or mending, they can + go to the Sign of the Clock and Dial on the South Side of the Town + House." + +In 1712, in November, appeared in the _News Letter_ the advertisement of +a man who "performed all sorts of New Clocks and Watch works, viz: 30 +hour Clocks, Week Clocks, Month Clocks, Spring Table Clocks, Chime +Clocks, quarter Clocks, quarter Chime Clocks, Church Clocks, Terret +Clocks;" and on April 16, 1716, this notice appeared: "Lately come from +London. A Parcel of very Fine Clocks. They go a week and repeat the hour +when Pull'd. In Japan Cases or Wall Nutt." + +By this time, in the inventory or "enroulment" of the estate of any +person of note, we always find a clock mentioned. Increase Mather left +to his son Cotton "one Pendilum Clock." Soon appear Japann'd clocks and +Pullup Clocks. In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of October, 1732, the +fourth prize in the Newport lottery was announced to be a clock worth +L65. "A Handsome new Eight day Clock which shows the Moons Age, Strikes +the Quarters on Six very Tunable Bells & is in a Good Japann'd Case in +Imitation of Tortoise Shell & Gold." + +This advertisement of Edmund Entwisle, in the _Boston News Letter_ of +November 18, 1742, proves, I think, that they had some very handsome +clocks in those days: + + "A Fine Clock. It goes 8 or 9 days with once winding up. And + repeats the Hour it struck last when you pull it. The Dial is 13 + inches on the Square & Arched with a SemiCircle on the Top round + which is a strong Plate with this Motto (Time shews the Way of + Lifes Decay) well engraved & silver'd, within the Motto Ring it + shews from behind two Semispheres the Moons Increase & Decrease by + two curious Painted Faces ornamented with Golden Stars between on a + Blue Ground, and a white Circle on the Outside divided into Days + figured at every Third, in which Divisions is shewn the Age by a + fix't Index from the Top, as they pass by the great Circle is + divided into three Concentrick Collums on the outmost of which it + shews the Minute of each Hour and the Middlemost the Hours &c. the + innermost is divided into 31 equal parts figur'd at every other on + which is shewn the Day of the Month by a Hand from the Dial Plate + as the Hour & Minute is, it also shews the Seconds as common & is + ornamented with curious Engravings in a Most Fashionable Manner. + The case is made of very Good Mohogony with Quarter Collums in the + Body, broke in the Surface with Raised Pannels with Quarter Rounds + burs Bands & Strings. The head is ornamented with Gilded Capitalls + Bases & Frise with New fashion'd Balls compos'd of Mohogony with + Gilt Leaves & Flowers." + +I do not quite understand this description, and I know I could never +have told the correct time by this clock, but surely it must have been +very elegant and costly. + +The earliest and most natural, as well as most plentiful, illuminating +medium for the colonists was found in pine-knots. Wood says: + + "Out of these Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is so much spoke + of which may serve as a shift among poore folks but I cannot + commend it for Singular good because it is something sluttish + dropping a pitchy kind of substance where it stands." + +Higginson wrote in 1630, "Though New England has no tallow to make +candles of yet by abundance of fish thereof it can afford oil for +lamps." + +Though lamps and "lamp yearne," or wicks, appear in many an early +invoice, I cannot think that they were extensively used. Betty lamps +were the earliest form. They were a shallow receptacle, usually of +pewter, iron, or brass, circular or oval in shape, and occasionally +triangular, and about two or three inches in diameter, with a projecting +nose an inch or two long. When in use they were filled with tallow or +grease, and a wick or piece of twisted rag was placed so that the +lighted end could hang on the nose. Specimens can be seen at Deerfield +Memorial Hall. I have one with a hook and chain by which to hang it up, +and a handled hook attached with which to clean out the grease. These +lamps were sometimes called "brown-bettys," or "kials," or "cruiseys." A +ph[oe]be lamp resembled a betty lamp, but had a shallow cup underneath +to catch the dripping grease. + +Soon candles were made by being run in moulds, or by a tedious process +of dipping. The fragrant bayberry furnished a pale green wax, which +Robert Beverly thus described in 1705: + + "A pale brittle wax of a curious green color, which by refining + becomes almost transparent. Of this they make candles which are + never greasy to the touch, nor melt with lying in the hottest + weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, + like that of a tallow candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, + if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to + all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them + out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff." + +The Abbe Robin and other travellers gave similar testimony. Bayberry wax +was a standard farm production wherever bayberries grew, and was +advertised in New England papers until this century. I entered within a +year a single-storied house a few miles from Plymouth Rock, where an +aged descendant of the Pilgrims earns her scanty spending-money by +making "bayberry taller," and bought a cake and candles of the wax, made +in precisely the method of her ancestors; and I too can add my evidence +as to the pure, spicy perfume of this New England incense. + +The growth of the whaling trade, and consequent use of spermaceti, of +course increased the facilities for, and the possibilities of, house +illumination. In 1686 Governor Andros petitioned for a commission for a +voyage after "Sperma-Coeti Whales," but not till the middle of the +following century did spermaceti become of common enough use to bring +forth such notices as this, in the _Boston Independent Advertiser_ of +January, 1749: + + "Sperma-Ceti Candles, exceeding all others for Beauty Sweetness of + Scent when Extinguished. Duration being more than Double with + Tallow Candles of Equal Size. Dimensions of Flame near 4 Times + more. Emitting a Soft easy Expanding Light, bringing the object + close to the Sight, rather than causing the Eye to trace after + them, as all Tallow Candles do, from a Constant Dimnes which they + produce. One of these Candles serves the use and purpose of 3 + Tallow Candles, and upon the Whole are much pleasanter and + cheaper." + +These candles were placed in candle-beams--rude chandeliers of crossed +sticks of wood or strips of metal with sockets; in sliding stands, in +sconces, which were also called prongs or candle-arms. The latter +appeared in the inventories of all genteel folk, and decorated the walls +of all genteel parlors. + +Candlesticks and snuffers were found in every house; the latter were +called by various names, the word snit or snite being the most curious. +It is from the old English snyten, to blow, and was originally a +verb--to snite the candle, or put it out. In the inventory of property +of John Gager, of Norwich, in 1703, appears "One Snit." + +Snuffer-boats or slices were snuffer-trays. Another curious illuminating +appurtenance was called a save-all or candle-wedge. It was a little +frame of rings or cups with pins, by which our frugal ancestors held up +the last dying bit of burning candle. They were sometimes of pewter with +iron pins, sometimes wholly of brass or iron. They have nearly all +disappeared since new and more extravagant methods of illumination +prevail. + +The argand lamps of Jefferson's invention and the various illuminating +and heating contrivances of Count Rumford must have been welcome to the +colonists. + +The discomfort of a colonial house in winter-time has been ably set +forth by Charles Francis Adams in his "Three Episodes of Massachusetts +History." Down the great chimneys blew the icy blasts so fiercely that +Cotton Mather noted on a January Sabbath, in 1697, as he shivered before +"a great Fire, that the Juices forced out at the end of short billets of +wood by the heat of the flame on which they were laid, yett froze into +Ice on their coming out." Judge Sewall wrote, twenty years later, "An +Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Bread was frozen at Lords +Table.... Though 'twas so Cold yet John Tuckerman was baptized. At six +oclock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my +Wives Chamber"--and the pious man adds (we hope with truth) "Yet was +very Comfortable at Meeting." Cotton Mather tells, in his pompous +fashion, of a cold winter's day four years later. "Tis Dreadful cold, my +ink glass in my standish is froze and splitt in my very stove. My ink in +my pen suffers a congelation." If sitting-rooms were such refrigerators, +we cannot wonder that the chilled colonists wished to sleep in beds +close curtained with heavy woollen stuffs, or in slaw-bank beds by the +kitchen fire. + +The settlers builded as well as they knew to keep their houses warm; and +while the vast and virgin forests supplied abundant and accessible wood +for fuel, Governor Eaton's nineteen great fireplaces and Parson +Davenport's thirteen, could be well filled; but by 1744 Franklin could +write of these big chimneys as the "fireplace of our fathers;" for the +forests had all disappeared in the vicinity of the towns, and the +chimneys had shrunk in size. Sadly did the early settlers need warmer +houses, for, as all antiquarian students have noted, in olden days the +cold was more piercing, began to nip and pinch earlier in November, and +lingered further into spring; winter rushed upon the settlers with +heavier blasts and fiercer storms than we now have to endure. And, above +all, they felt with sadder force "the dreary monotony of a New England +winter, which leaves so large a blank, so melancholy a death-spot, in +lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." Even John Adams +in his day so dreaded the tedious bitter New England winter that he +longed to hibernate like a dormouse from autumn to spring. + +As the forests disappeared, sea-coal was brought over in small +quantities, and stoves appeared for town use. By 1695 and 1700 we find +Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall speaking of stoves and stove-rooms, and +of chambers warmed by stoves. Ere that one John Clark had patented an +invention for "saving and warming rooms," but we know nothing definite +of its shape. + +Dutch stoves and china stoves were the first to be advertised in New +England papers; then "Philadelphia Fire Stoves"--what we now term +Franklin grates. Wood was burned in these grates. We find clergymen, +until after Revolutionary times, having sixty or eighty cords of +hardwood given to them annually by the parish. + +Around the great glowing fireplace in an old New England kitchen centred +all of homeliness and comfort that could be found in a New England home. +The very aspect of the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have +had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as +it was called in England, the back-bar, stretched from ledge to ledge, +or lug to lug, high up the yawning chimney, and held a motley collection +of pot-hooks and trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which in +turn suspended at various heights over the fire, pots, and kettles and +other cooking utensils. In the hearth-corners were displayed skillets +and trivets, peels and slices, and on either side were chimney-seats and +settles. Above--on the clavel-piece--were festooned strings of dried +apples, pumpkins, and peppers. + +The lug-pole, though made of green wood, sometimes became brittle or +charred by too long use over the fire and careless neglect of +replacement, and broke under its weighty burden of food and metal; hence +accidents became so frequent, to the detriment of precious cooking +utensils, and even to the destruction of human safety and life, that a +Yankee invention of an iron crane brought convenience and simplicity, +and added a new grace to the kitchen hearth. + +The andirons added to the fireplace their homely charm. Fire-dogs +appear in the earliest inventories under many names of various spelling, +and were of many metals--copper, steel, iron, and brass. Sometimes a +fireplace had three sets of andirons of different sizes, to hold logs at +different heights. Cob irons had hooks to hold a spit and dripping-pan. +Sometimes the "Handirons" also had brackets. Creepers were low irons +placed between the great fire-dogs. They are mentioned in many early +wills and lists of possessions among items of fireplace furnishings, as, +for instance, the list of Captain Tyng's furniture, made in Boston in +1653. The andirons were sometimes very elaborate, with claw feet, or +cast in the figure of a negro, a soldier, or a dog. + +In the Deerfield Memorial Hall there lives in perfection of detail one +of these old fireplaces--a delight to the soul of the antiquary. Every +homely utensil and piece of furniture, every domestic convenience and +inconvenience, every home-made makeshift, every cumbrous and clumsy +contrivance of the old-time kitchen here may be found, and they show to +us, as in a living photograph, the home life of those olden days. + + + + +V + +TABLE PLENISHINGS + + +In the early days of the colonies doubtless the old Anglo-Saxon board +laid on trestles was used for a dining-table instead of a table with a +stationary top. "Table bords" appear in early New England wills, and +"trestles" also. "Long tables" and "drawing tables" were next named. A +"long table" was used as a dining-table, and, from the frequent +appearance of two forms with it, was evidently used from both sides, and +not in the ancient fashion of the diners sitting at one side only. A +drawing-table was an extension-table; it could by an arrangement of drop +leaves be doubled in length. A fine one can be seen in the rooms of the +Connecticut Historical Society. Chair tables were the earliest example, +in fact the prototype, of some of our modern extraordinary "combination" +furniture. The tops were usually round, and occasionally large enough to +be used as a dining-table, and when turned over by a hinge arrangement +formed the back of the chair. "Hundred legged" tables had flaps at +either end which turned down or were held up in place by a bracket +composed of a number of turned perpendicular supports which gave to it +the name of "hundred legs." These tables were frequently very large; a +portion of the top of one in the Connecticut Historical Society is seven +feet four inches wide. Tea-tables came with tea; they were advertised in +the _Boston News Letter_ in 1712. Occasionally we find mention of a +curious and unusual table, such as the one named in the effects of Sir +Francis Bernard, which were sold September 11, 1770: "Three tables +forming a horseshoe for the benefit of the Fire." + +As a table was in early days a board, so a tablecloth was a board-cloth; +and ere it was a tablecloth it was table-clothes. Cristowell Gallup, in +1655, had "1 Holland board-cloth;" and William Metcalf, in 1644, had a +"diaper board-cloth." Another Boston citizen had "broad-clothes." Henry +Webb, of Boston, named in his will, in 1660, his "beste Suite of Damask +Table-cloath, Napkins & cupboard-cloath." Others had holland tablecloths +and holland square cloths with lace on them. Arras tablecloths are also +named in 1654, and cloths enriched with embroidery in colors. The witch +Ann Hibbins had "1 Holland table cloth edged with blewe," worth twelve +shillings; and a Hartford gentleman had, in 1689, a "table Cloth wrought +with red." In 1728 "Hukkbuk Tabling" was advertised in the _New England +Weekly Journal_, but the older materials--damask, holland, and +diaper--were universally used then, as now. + +The colonists had plenty of napkins, as had all well-to-do and well-bred +Englishmen at that date. Napkins appear in all the early inventories. In +1668 the opulent Jane Humphreys, of Dorchester, left "two wrought +Napkins with no lace around it," "half a duzzen of napkins," and +"napkins wrought about and laced." In 1680 Robert Adams had six "diaper +knapkins." Captain Tyng had in 1653 four dozen and a half of napkins, of +which two dozen were of "layd worke." It has been said that these +napkins were handkerchiefs, not table napkins; but I think the way they +are classed in inventories does not so indicate. For instance, in the +estate of Captain Corwin, a wealthy man, who died in Salem in 1685, was +a "suit of Damask 1 Table cloth, 18 napkins, 1 Towel," valued at L8. +Occasionally, however, they are specially designated as "pocket +napkins," as in the estate of Elizabeth Cutter in 1663, where four are +valued at one shilling. + +Early English books on table manners, such as "The Babees Boke" and "The +Boke of Nurture," though minute in detail, yet name no other +table-furniture than cups, chafing-dishes, chargers, trenchers, +salt-cellars, knives, and spoons. The table plenishings of the planters +were somewhat more varied, but still simple; when our Pilgrim fathers +landed at Plymouth, the collection of table-ware owned by the entire +band was very meagre. With the exception of a few plate-silver tankards +and drinking-cups, it was also very inexpensive. The silver was handsome +and heavy, but items of silver in the earliest inventories are rare. By +the beginning of the eighteenth century silver became plentiful, and the +wills even of humble folk contain frequent mentions of it. Ministers, +doctors, and magistrates had many handsome pieces. By the middle of the +century a climax was reached, as in the possessions of Peter Faneuil, +when pieces of furniture were of solid silver. + +The salt-cellar was the focus of the old-time board. In earlier days, in +England, to be seated above or below the salt plainly spoke the social +standing of a guest. The "standing salt" was often the handsomest +furnishing of the table, the richest piece of family plate. Comfort +Starr, of Boston, had, in 1659, a "greate Siluer-gilt double +Saltceller." Isaac Addington bequeathed by will his "Bigges Siluer Sewer +& Salt." A sewer was a salver. As we note by the list of Judith Sewall's +wedding furniture in 1720, standing salts were out of date, and +"trencher salt-cellars" were in fashion. Four dozen was a goodly number, +and evinced an intent of bounteous hospitality. These trencher-salts +were of various shapes and materials: "round and oval pillar-cut Salts, +Bonnet Salts, 3 Leg'd Salts," were all of glass; others were of pewter, +china, hard metal, and silver. + +The greater number of spoons owned by the colonists were of pewter or of +alchymy--or alcamyne, ocamy, ocany, orkanie, alcamy, or occonie--a metal +composed of pan-brass and arsenicum. The reference in inventories, +enrolments, and wills, to spoons of these materials are so frequent, so +ever-present, as to make citation superfluous. An evil reputation of +poisonous unhealthfulness hung around the vari-spelled alchymy (perhaps +it is only a gross libel of succeeding generations); but, harmful or +harmless, alchymy, no matter how spelt, disappears from use before +Revolutionary times. Wooden spoons also are named. Silver spoons were +not very plentiful. John Oxenbridge bequeathed thirteen spoons in 1673, +and "one sweetmeat spoon," and "1 childs spoon which was mine in my +infancy." Other pap-spoons and caudle-spoons are named in wills; +marrow-spoons also, long and slender of bowl. The value of a dozen +silver spoons was given in 1689 as L5 13_s._ 6_d._ In succeeding years +each genteel family owned silver spoons, frequently in large number; +while one Boston physician, Dr. Cutter, had, in 1761, half a dozen gold +teaspoons. + +Forks, or "tines," for cooking purposes, and "prongs" or "grains" or +"evils" for agricultural purposes, were imported at early dates; but I +think Governor Winthrop had the first table-fork ever brought to +America. In 1633, when forks were rare in England, he received a letter +from E. Howes, saying that the latter had sent to him a "case contain +containing an Irish skeayne or knife, a bodekyn & a forke for the useful +applycation of which I leave to your discretion." I am strongly +suspicious that Winthrop's discretion may not have been educated up to +usefully applying the fork for feeding purposes at the table. In the +inventory of the possessions of Antipas Boyes (made in 1669) a silver +spoon, fork, and knife are mentioned. Dr. Lyon gives the names of seven +New Englanders whose inventories date from 1671 to 1693, and who owned +forks. In 1673 Parson Oxenbridge had "one forked spoon," and his widow +had two silver forks. Iron forks were used in the kitchen, as is shown +in the inventory of Zerubbabel Endicott in 1683. And three-tined iron +forks were stuck into poor witch-ridden souls in Salem by William +Morse--his Daemon. + +In 1718 Judge Sewall gave Widow Denison two cases with a knife and fork +in each, "one Turtleshell tackling the other long with Ivory handles +squar'd cost 4_s._ 6_d._" In 1738 Peter Fanueil ordered one dozen silver +forks from England, "with three prongs, with my arms cut upon them, made +very neat and handsome." One Boston citizen had in 1719 six four-pronged +forks, an early example of that fashion. In 1737 shagreen cases with +ivory-handled forks were advertised; bone, japanned metal, wood, and +horn handles also appeared--all, of course, with metal prongs. Sir +Francis Bernard had in 1770 three cases of china-handled knives and +forks, "with spoons to each," which must have formed a pretty table +furnishing. + +In many New England inventories of the seventeenth century, among +personal belongings, appears the word taster. Thus in 1659 Richard Webb, +of Boston, left by will "1 Silver Wine Taster;" and in 1673 John +Oxenbridge had "1 Siluer Taster with a funnel." A taster was apparently +a small cup. Larger drinking-cups of silver were called beakers, or +tankards, beer-bowls, or wine-bowls. These latter vessels were made also +of humbler metal. A sneaker was a small drinking-glass, used by moderate +drinkers--sneak-cups they were called. + +The Pilgrims may have had a few mugs and jugs of coarse earthen ware. A +large invoice of Portuguese "road ware" was sent to the Maine settlers +in 1634, and proved thoroughly unsuitable and undurable; but probably no +china--not even Delft ware--came over on the Mayflower. For when the +Pilgrims made their night trip through the Delft-producing cities, no +such wares were seen on the tables of plebeian persons. Early mentions +of china are in the estate of President John Davenport in 1648--"Cheney +L5," and of Martha Coteymore in 1647. + +Earthen ware, Green ware, Lisbon ware, Spanish platters, are mentioned +in early inventories; but I am sure neither china ware nor earthen ware +was plentiful in early days; nor was china much known till Revolutionary +times. + +The table furnishings of the New England planters consisted largely of +wooden trenchers, and these trenchers were employed for many years. +Sometimes they were simply square blocks of wood whittled out by hand. +From a single trencher two persons--two children, or a man and wife--ate +their meals. It was a really elegant household that furnished a trencher +apiece for each diner. Trenchers were of quite enough account to be left +by name in early wills, even in those of wealthy colonists. In 1689 "2 +Spoons and 2 Trenchers" were appraised at six shillings. Miles Standish +left twelve wooden trenchers when he died. Many gross of them were +purchased for use at Harvard College. As late as May, 1775, I find +"Wooden Trenchers" advertised among table furnishings, in the +_Connecticut Courant_. + +It was the same in Old England. J. Ward, writing in 1828 of the +"Potter's Art," spoke thus of the humble boards of his youth: + + "And there the trencher commonly was seen + With its attendant ample platter treen." + +Until almost our own time trenchers were made in Vermont of the white, +clean, hard wood of the poplar-tree, and were sold and used in country +homes. Old wooden trenchers may be seen in Deerfield Memorial Hall. +Bottles, noggins, cups, and lossets (flat dishes) of wood were also used +at colonial boards. + +The time when America was settled was the era when pewter ware had begun +to take the place of wooden ware, just as the time of the Revolutionary +War may be assigned to mark the victory of porcelain over pewter. + +A set of pewter platters, or chargers and dishes, made what was called a +"garnish" of pewter, and were a source of great pride to every colonial +housewife, and much time and labor were devoted to polishing them until +they shone like silver. Dingy pewter was fairly accounted a disgrace. +The most accomplished Virginian gentleman of his day gave as a positive +rule, in 1728, that "Pewter Bright" was the sign of a good housekeeper. + +The trade of pewterer was a very influential and respectable one in New +England as well as Old England. One of Boston's richest merchants, Henry +Shrimpton, made large quantities of pewter ware for the Massachusetts +colonists. So proud was he of his business that in his later years of +opulence he had a great kettle atop of his house, to indicate his past +trade and means of wealth. Pewter and pewterers abounded until the vast +increase of Oriental commerce brought the influx of Chinese porcelain to +drive out the dull metal. Advertisements of pewter table utensils did +not disappear, however, in New England newspapers until this century. + +A universal table furnishing was-- + + "The porringers that in a row + Hung high and made a glittering show." + +When not in use porringers were hung by their pierced handles on hooks +on the edge of the dresser-shelf, and, being usually of polished pewter +or silver, indeed made a glittering show. Pewter porringers were highly +prized. One family, in 1660, had seven, and another housewife boasted of +nine. They were bequeathed in nearly all the early colonial wills. In +1673 John Oxenbridge left three silver porringers and his wife one +silver pottinger; but pewter was the favorite metal. I do not find +porringers ever advertised under that name in New England papers, though +many were made as late as this century by New Haven, Providence, and +Boston pewterers. Many bearing the stamps of these manufacturers have +been preserved until the present day, seeming to have escaped the +sentence of destruction apparently passed on other pewter utensils and +articles of table-ware. Perhaps they have been saved because the +little, shallow, graceful dishes, with flat pierced handle on one side, +are really so pretty. The fish-tail handles are found on Dutch pewter. +Silver porringers were made by all the silversmiths. Many still exist +bearing the stamp of one honored maker, Paul Revere. Little earthen +porringers of red pottery and tortoise-shell ware are also found, but +are not plentiful. + +A similar vessel, frequently handleless, was what was spelt, in various +colonial documents, posned, possnet, posnett, porsnet, pocneit, posnert, +possenette, postnett, and parsnett. It is derived from the Welsh +_posned_, a porringer or little dish. In 1641 Edward Skinner left a +"Postnett" by will; this was apparently of pewter. In 1653 Governor +Haynes, of Hartford, left an "Iron Posnet" by will. In the inventory of +the estate of Robert Daniel, of Cambridge, in 1655, we learn that "a +Little Porsenett" of his was worth five shillings. In 1693 Governor +Caleb Carr, of Providence, bequeathed to his wife a "silver possnet & +the cover belonging to it." By these records we see that posnets were of +various metals, and sometimes had covers. I have found no advertisements +of them in early American newspapers, even with all their varied array +of utensils and vessels. I fancy the name fell quickly into disuse in +this country. In Steele's time, in the _Tatler_, he speaks of "a silver +Posnet to butter eggs." I have heard the tiny little shallow pewter +porringers, about two or three inches in diameter, with pierced handles, +which are still found in New England, called posnets. They were in +olden times used to heat medicine and to serve pap to infants. I have +also been told that these little porringers were not posnets, but simply +the samples of work made by apprentices in the pewterer's trade to show +their skill and proficiency. + +Tin vessels were exceedingly rare in the seventeenth century, either for +table furnishings or for cooking utensils, and far from common in the +succeeding one. John Wynter, of Richmond's Island, Maine, had a +"tinninge basson & a tinninge platter" in 1638. In 1662 Isaac Willey, of +New London, had "Tynen Pans & 1 Tynen Quart Pott;" and Zerubbabel +Endicott, of Salem, had a "great tyn candlestick." By 1729, when +Governor Burnet's effects were sold, we read of kitchen utensils of tin. + +I do not think iron was in high favor among the colonists as a material +for household utensils. It was not an iron age. They had iron pans, +candlesticks, dishes, fire-dogs, and pots: the latter vessels were +traded for vast and valuable tracts of land with the simple red men; but +iron was not vastly in use. At an early date iron-foundries were +established throughout New England, with, however, varying success. + +Latten ware, which was largely composed of brass, appeared in various +useful forms for table and culinary appointments. Hard-metal was a +superior sort of pewter. Prince's metal (so called from Prince Rupert), +a fine brass alloyed with copper and arsenicum, is occasionally named. + +Leather, strangely enough, was also used on the table in the form of +bottles and drinking cups and jacks, which were pitchers or jugs of +waxed leather, much used in ale-houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth +century, and whose employment gave rise to the belief of the French that +Englishmen drank their ale out of their boots. Endicott received of +Winthrop one leathern jack worth one shilling and sixpence. I find +leathern jacks, bottles, and cups named among the property of +Connecticut colonists. + +Nearly all the glass ware of the eighteenth century was of inferior +quality, full of bubbles and defects. It was frequently fluted. Many +pieces have been preserved that have been painted in vitrifiable colors, +the designs are crude, the colors red, yellow, blue, and occasionally +black or green. The transparent glass thus painted is said to be of +Dutch manufacture. The opalized glass similarly decorated is Spanish. +Drinking-glasses or flip-mugs seem to have been most common, or, at any +rate, most largely preserved. The tradition attached to all the pieces +of Spanish glass which I have found in New England homes is that they +came from the Barbadoes. Bristol glass also was painted in colors, and +came to this country, being advertised in the _Boston News-Letter_. + +Glass bottles were frequently left by will in early days, being rare and +valuable; but by newspaper days glass was imported in various shapes, +and soon was plentiful enough. In 1773 we find this advertisement: + + "Very rich Cut Glass Candlesticks, cut Glass sugar Boxes & Cream + Potts, Wine, Wine & Water, and Beer Glasses with cut shanks, Jelly + & Syllabub Glasses, Glass Salvers, also Cyder Glasses, Free Mason + Glasses, Orange & Top Glasses, Glass Cans, Glass Cream Buckets and + Crewits, Royal Arch Mason Glasses, Glass Pyramids with Jelly + Glasses, Globe & Barrel Lamps, Double Flynt Wyn Glasses," &c. + +The most curious glass relics that are preserved are the flip-glasses or +bumper-glasses; they are tumbler-shaped, and are frequently engraved or +fluted. Some hold over a gallon. + +The names of table furnishings varied somewhat in the eighteenth +century. There were milk-pots, milk-ewers, milk-jugs, ere there were +milk-pitchers; sugar-boxes, sugar-pots, sugar-basins, ere there were +sugar-bowls; spoon-boats and spoon-basins ere there were spoon-holders. +Terrines were imported about 1750. There were pickle-dishes and +pickle-boats, twifflers, mint-stands and vegetable-basins. + +One other appurtenance of a dining-room is found in all early +inventories--a voider. Pewter voiders abounded and were advertised in +newspapers, as were wicker and china voiders in 1740. The functions of a +voider were somewhat those of a crumb-tray. They are thus given in Hugh +Rhodes's "Boke of Nurture" in 1577: + + "Wyth bones & voyd morsels fyll not thy trenchour, my friend, full + Avoyd them into a Voyder, no man will it anull. + When meate is taken quyte awaye and Voyders in presence + Put you your trenchour in the same and all your resydence. + Take you with your napkin & knyfe the croms that are fore thee + In the Voyder your Napkin leave for it is curtesye." + + + + +VI + +SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER + + +There is a tradition of short commons, usually extending even to stories +of starvation, in the accounts of all early settlements in new lands, +and the records of the Pilgrims show no exception to the rule. These +early planters went through a fiery furnace of affliction. The beef and +pork brought with them became tainted, "their butter and cheese +corrupted, their fish rotten." A scarcity of food lasted for three +years, and there was little variety of fare, yet they were cheerful. +Brewster, when he had naught to eat but clams, gave thanks that he was +"permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in +the sands." Cotton Mather says that Governor Winthrop, of the Bay +settlement, was giving to a poor neighbor the last meal from his chest, +when it was announced that the food-bearing Lion had arrived. The +General Court thereat changed an appointed Fast Day to a Thanksgiving +Day. By tradition--still commemorated at Forefathers' Dinner--the ration +of Indian corn supplied to each person was at one time but five kernels. + +Still there was always plenty of fish--the favorite food of the +English--and Squanto taught the colonists various Indian methods of +catching the "treasures of the sea." With oysters and lobsters they were +far from starvation. Higginson said of the latter shellfish, in 1630, +"the least boy in the Plantation may both catch and eat what he will of +them." He says that lobsters were caught weighing twenty-five pounds +each, and that the abundance of other fish was beyond believing. +Josselyn, in his "New England Rarities," enumerated two hundred and +three varieties of fish; yet Tuckerman calls his list "a poor +makeshift." The planters had plenty of implements with which to catch +fish--"vtensils of the sea"--"quoils of rope and cable, rondes of twine, +herring nets, seans, cod-lines and cod hookes, mackrill-lines, drails, +spiller hooks, mussel-hooks, mackrill hooks, barbels, splitting knives, +sharks hookes, basse-nettes, pues and gaffs, squid lines, yeele pots," +&c. Josselyn also tells some very pretty ways of cooking fish, +especially eels with herbs, showing that, like Poins, the colonists +loved conger and fennel. Eels were roasted, fried, and boiled. Boiled +"eals" were thus prepared: + +"Boil them in half water half wine with the bottom of a manchet, a fagot +of Parsly and a little Winter Savory, when they are boiled they take +them out and break the bread in the broth and put in two or three +spoonfuls of yest and a piece of sweet butter, pour to the eals laid +upon sippets." Another way beloved by him was to stuff the eels with +nutmeg and cloves, stick them with cloves, cook in wine, place on a +chafing-dish, and garnish with lemons. This rich dish is somewhat +overclouded by his suggestion that the eels be arranged in a wreath. + +The frequent references to eels in early accounts prove that they were +regarded, as Izaak Walton said, "a very dainty fish, the queen of +palate-pleasure." + +Next to fish, the early colonists found in Indian corn, or "Guinny +wheat"--"Turkie wheat" one traveller called it--their most unfailing +food-supply. Our first native poet wrote, in 1675, of what he called +early days: + + "The dainty Indian maize, + Was eat with clamp-shells out of wooden trays." + +Its abundance and adaptability did much to change the nature of their +diet as well as to save them from starvation. The colonists learned from +the Indians how to plant, nourish, harvest, grind, and cook it in many +Indian ways, and in each way it formed a palatable food. The Indian +pudding which they ate so constantly was made in Indian fashion and +boiled in a bag. To the mush of Indian meal they gave the English name +of hasty-pudding. Many of the foods made from maize retained the names +given in the aboriginal tongues, such as hominy, suppawn, pone, samp, +succotash; and doubtless the manner of cooking is wholly Indian. +Hoe-cakes and ash-cakes were made by the squaws long before the landing +of the Pilgrims. Roasting ears of green corn were made the foundation of +a solemn Indian feast and also of a planters' frolic. It is curious to +read Winthrop's careful explanation, that when corn is parched it turns +entirely inside out, and is "white and floury within;" and to think that +there ever was a time when pop-corn was a novelty to white children in +New England. + +Wood said that _sukquttahhash_ was "seethed like beanes." Roger Williams +said that "_nassaump_, which the English call Samp, is Indian corne +beaten & boil'd and eaten hot or cold with milke or butter and is a diet +exceeding wholesome for English bodies." _Nocake_, or _nokick_, Wood, in +his "New England Prospects," thus defines: "Indian corn parched in the +hot ashes, the ashes being sifted from it, it is afterward beaten to +powder and put into a long leatherne bag trussed at their back like a +knapsacke, out of which they take thrice three spoonsfulls a day." It +was held to be wonderfully sustaining food in most condensed form. It +was carried in a pouch, on long journeys, and mixed before eating with +snow in winter and water in summer. Jonne-cake, or journey-cake, was +also made from maize. For years the colonists pounded the corn in stone +mortars, as did the Indians; then in wooden mortars with pestles. Then +rude hand-mills were made--"quernes"--with upright shafts fixed +immovably at the upper end, and fastened at the lower end near the +outside edge of a flat, circular stone, which was made to revolve in a +mortar. By turning the shaft with one hand, the corn could be supplied +to the grinding-stone with the other. These hand-mills are sometimes +still found in use as "samp-mills." Wind-mills and water-mills followed +naturally in the train of the hand-mills. + +Wheat but little availed for food in early days, being frequently +blighted. Oats were raised in considerable quantity, a pill-corn or +peel-corn or sil-pee variety. Josselyn, writing in 1671, gives a New +England dish, which he says is as good as whitpot, made of oatmeal, +sugar, spice, and a "pottle of milk;" a pottle was two quarts. At a +somewhat later date the New Hampshire settlers had a popular oatmeal +porridge, in which the oatmeal was sifted, left in water, and allowed to +sour, then boiled to a jelly, and was called "sowens." It is still eaten +in Northumberland. + +By the strict laws made to govern bakers and the number of bake-shops +that were licensed, and the sharp punishments for baking short weight, +etc., it seems plain that New England housewives did little home baking +in early days. The bread was doubtless of many kinds, as in +England--simnels, cracknels, jannacks, cheat loaves, cocket-bread, +wastel-bread, manchet, and buns. Pure wheaten loaves were not largely +used as food--bread from corn meal dried quickly; hence rye meal was +mixed with the corn, and "rye 'n' Injun" bread was everywhere eaten. + +To the other bountiful companion food of corn, pumpkins, the colonists +never turned very readily. Pompions they called them in "the times +wherein old Pompion was a saint." Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working +Providence," reproved them for making a jest of pumpkins, since they +were so good and unfailing a food--"a fruit which the Lord fed his +people with till corn and cattle increased." + + "We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, + If it were not for pumpkins we should be undone." + +Pompions, and what Higginson called squantersquashes, Josselyn +squontersquoshes, Roger Williams askutasquashes, Wood isquoukersquashes, +and we clip to squashes, grew in vast plenty. The Indians dried the +pompions on strings for winter use, as is still done in New England farm +communities. Madam Knight had them frequently offered to her on her +journey--"pumpkin sause" and "pumpkin bred." "We would have eat a morsel +ourselves, but the Pumpkin & Indian-mixt bread had such an Aspect." +Pumpkin bread is made in Connecticut to this day. For pumpkin "sause" we +have a two-centuries-old receipt, which was given by Josselyn, in 1671, +in his "New England Rarities," and called by him even at that day "an +Ancient New England Standing-dish." + + "The Housewives manner is to slice them when ripe and cut them into + Dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or three Gallons and stew + them upon a gentle fire the whole day. And as they sink they fill + again with fresh Pompions not putting any liquor to them and when + it is stir'd enough it will look like bak'd Apples, this Dish + putting Butter to it and a little Vinegar with some Spice as Ginger + which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten + with fish or flesh." + +This must be a very good "sause," and a very good receipt when once it +is clear to your mind which of them--the housewives or the +pompions--sink and are to fill and be filled in a pot, and stirred and +stewed and put liquor to. + +In an old book which I own, which was used by many generations of New +England cooks, I find this "singular good" rule to make a "Pumpion Pye:" + + "Take about halfe a pound of Pumpion and slice it, a handful of + Tyme, a little Rosemary, Parsley and Sweet Marjoram slipped off the + stalkes, and chop them smal, then take Cinamon, Nutmeg, Pepper, and + six Cloves and beat them, take ten Eggs and beat them, then mix + them, and beat them altogether, and put in as much Sugar as you + think fit, then fry them like a froiz, after it is fryed, let it + stand til it be cold, then fill your Pye, take sliced Apples thinne + rounde-wayes, and lay a row of the Froiz and layer of Apples with + Currans betwixt the layer while your Pye is fitted, and put in a + good deal of sweet butter before you close it, when the pye is + baked take six yelks of Eggs, some White-wine or Vergis, and make a + Caudle of this, but not too thicke, cut up the Lid and put it in, + stir them wel together whilst the Eggs and Pompions be not + perceived and so serve it up." + +I am sure there would be no trouble about the pompions being perceived, +and I can fancy the modest half-pound of country vegetable blushing a +deeper orange to find its name given to this ambitious and +compound-sentenced concoction which helped to form part of the "simple +diet of the good old times." I have found no modern cook bold enough to +"prove" (as the book says) this pumpion pie; but hope, if any one +understands it, she will attempt it. + +Potatoes were on the list of seeds, fruits, and vegetables that were +furnished to the Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1628, and fifteen tons +(which were probably sweet potatoes) were imported from Bermuda in 1636 +and sold in Boston at twopence a pound. Winthrop wrote of "potatose" in +1683. Their cultivation was rare. There is a tradition that the Irish +settlers at Londonderry, N. H., began the first systematic planting of +potatoes. At the Harvard Commencement dinner, in 1708, potatoes were on +the list of supplies. A crop of eight bushels, which one Hadley farmer +had in 1763, was large--too large, since "if a man ate them every day he +could not live beyond seven years." Indeed, the "gallant root of +potatoes" was regarded as a sort of forbidden fruit--a root more than +suspected of being an over-active aphrodisiac, and withal so wholly +abandoned as not to have been mentioned in the Bible; and when Parson +Jonathan Hubbard, of Sheffield, raised twenty bushels in one year, it is +said he came very near being dealt with by his church for his wicked +hardihood. In more than one town the settlers fancied the balls were the +edible portion, and "did not much desire them." Nor were fashionable +methods of cooking them much more to be desired. In "The Accomplisht +Cook," used about the year 1700, potatoes were ordered to be boiled and +blanched; seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper; mixed with eringo +roots, dates, lemon, and whole mace; covered with butter, sugar, and +grape verjuice, made with pastry; then iced with rose-water and sugar, +and yclept a "Secret Pye." Alas, poor, ill-used, be-sugared, secreted +potato, fit but for kissing-comfits! we can well understand your +unpopularity. + +Other vegetables were produced in New England in abundance. Higginson +speaks of green peas, turnips, parsnips, carrots, and cucumbers, and a +dozen fruits and berries. Cranberries were plentiful and soon were +exported to England. Josselyn gives a very full list of fruits and +vegetables and pot-herbs, including beans, which were baked by the +Indians in earthen pots as they are now in Boston bake-shops. + +There was a goodly supply of game. Bradford wrote of the year 1621, +"beside waterfoule ther was great store of wild Turkies." Wood said +these turkeys sometimes weighed forty pounds apiece, and sold for four +shillings each. Josselyn assigned to them the enormous weight of sixty +pounds. All agreed that they were far superior to the English domestic +turkeys. Morton said they came in flocks of a hundred; yet the Winthrops +had great difficulty in getting two to breed from in 1683, and by 1690 +it was rare to see a wild turkey in New England. The beautiful great +bronze birds had flown away from the white man's civilization and guns. + +Flocks of thousands of geese took their noisy, graceful V-shaped flight +over New England, and were shot in large numbers. Dudley wrote home +that doves were so plentiful that they obscured the light. Josselyn said +he had bought in Boston a dozen pigeons all dressed for threepence. It +is said they were sometimes sold as low as a penny a dozen. Roger Clap +said it would have been counted a strange thing in early days to see a +piece of roast veal, beef, or mutton, though it was not long ere there +was roast goat. By 1684 a French refugee said beef, mutton, and pork +were but twopence a pound in Boston. Clap says he ate his samp, or +hominy, without butter or milk, but Higginson wrote in 1630, and Morton +in 1624, that they had a quart of milk for a penny. John Cotton said +ministers and milk were the only things cheap in New England. + +By Johnson's time New Englanders had "Apple, Pear and Quince Tarts +instead of their former Pumpkin Pies." They had besides apple-tarts, +apple mose, apple slump, mess apple-pies, buttered apple-pies, apple +crowdy and puff apple-pies--all differing. + +Josselyn said the "Quinces, Cherries, & Damsins set the Dames a-work. +Marmalet & Preserved Damsins is to be met with in every house." Skill in +preserving was ever an English-woman's pride, and New-English women did +not forget the lessons learned in their "faire English homes." They made +preserves and conserves, marmalets and quiddonies, hypocras and +household wines, usquebarbs and cordials. They candied fruits and made +syrups. They preserved everything that would bear preserving. I have +seen old-time receipts for preserving quinces, "respasse," pippins, +"apricocks," plums, "damsins," peaches, oranges, lemons, artichokes, +green walnuts, elecampane roots, eringo roots, grapes, barberries, +cherries; receipts for syrup of clove gillyflower, wormwood, mint, +aniseed, clove, elder, lemons, marigolds, citron, hyssop, liquorice; +receipts for conserves of roses, violets, borage flowers, rosemary, +betony, sage, mint, lavender, marjoram, and "piony;" rules for candying +fruit, berries, and flowers, for poppy water, cordial, cherry water, +lemon water, thyme water, Angelica water, Aqua Mirabilis, Aqua +C[oe]lestis, clary water, mint water. + +No wonder a profession of preserving sprung up. By 1731 we find +advertised in June in the _Boston News Letter_, "At Widow Bonyots All +Sorts of Fruits in Preserves Jellys and Surrups. Egg Cakes, All sorts of +Macaroons, Marchepane Crisp Almonds. All sorts Conserves, Also Meat +Jellys for the sick." + +We can see plainly by these statements that New England was no +Nidderland. Even in Josselyn's day he wrote, "they have not forgotten +the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with variety of +cooking their food." The pages of Judge Sewall's diary give many hints +of his daily fare. He speaks of "boil'd Pork, boil'd Pigeons, boil'd +Bacon and boil'd Venison; rost Beef, rost Lamb, rost Fowls, rost Turkey, +pork and beans;" "Frigusee of Fowls," "Joll of Salmon," "Oysters, Fish +and Oyl, conners, Legg of Pork, hogs Cheek and souett; pasty, bread and +butter; Minc'd Pye, Aplepy, tarts, gingerbread, sugar'd almonds, glaz'd +almonds;" honey, curds and cream, sage cheese, green pease, barley, +"Yokhegg in milk, chockolett, figgs," oranges, shattucks, apples, +quinces, strawberries, cherries, and raspberries; a very fair list of +viands. + +"Yokhegg" is probably "yeokheag," a name for Indian corn, parched and +pounded into meal, a name by which it was known for many years in +Eastern Connecticut. + +Sewall was a very valiant trencher-man. He records with much zest going +down the Bay to an island, or riding to Roxbury for an outing and +dinner, and coming home in "brave moonshine." And, like his neighbor, +Cotton Mather, he drew many a spiritual lesson from the food set before +him; especially, however, at a scambling meal, or at any repast which he +ate alone, and hence had naught and no one to divert therefrom his +ever-religious thoughts. + +From a curious account of Boston, written by a traveller named Bennet, +in the year 1740, we take the following statements of the cost of food +there: + + "Their poultry of all sorts are as fine as can be desired, and they + have plenty of fine fish of various kinds, all of which are very + cheap. Take the butchers' meat all together, in every season of the + year, I believe it is about twopence per pound sterling; the best + beef and mutton, lamb and veal are often sold for sixpence per + pound of New England money, which is some small matter more than + one penny sterling. + + "Poultry in their season are exceeding cheap. As good a turkey may + be bought for about two shillings sterling as we can buy in London + for six or seven, and as fine a goose for tenpence as would cost + three shillings and sixpence or four shillings in London. The + cheapest of all the several kinds of poultry are a sort of wild + pigeon, which are in season the latter end of June, and so continue + until September. They are large, and finer than those we have in + London, and are sold here for eighteenpence a dozen, and sometimes + for half of that. + + "Fish, too, is exceeding cheap. They sell a fine fresh cod that + will weigh a dozen pounds or more, just taken out of the sea, for + about twopence sterling. They have smelts, too, which they sell as + cheap as sprats are in London. Salmon, too, they have in great + plenty, and those they sell for about a shilling apiece, which will + weigh fourteen or fifteen pounds. + + "They have venison very plenty. They will sell as fine a haunch for + half a crown as would cost full thirty shillings in England. Bread + is much cheaper than we have in England, but is not near so good. + Butter is very fine and cheaper than ever I bought any in London; + the best is sold all summer for threepence a pound. But as for + cheese, it is neither cheap nor good." + +I am somewhat surprised at Bennet's dictum with regard to cheese, and +can only feel that he had special ill fortune in choosing his +cheesemonger. For certainly the Rhode Island cheese, made from the rich +milk of the great herds of choice cows that dotted the fertile and sunny +fields of old Narragansett, was sent to England and the Barbadoes in +great quantity, and commanded special prices there. Brissot said it was +equal to the "best Cheshire of England or Rocfort of France." This +cheese was made from a receipt for Cheshire cheese which was brought to +Narragansett by Richard Smith's wife in the seventeenth century: and her +home is still standing, though built around, at Cocumcussett, where her +husband and Roger Williams founded a colony. + +We have a very distinct rendering of the items of family expense, +chiefly of food, at about that time, given us by a contemporary +authority, and bequeathed to us in a letter to the _Boston News Letter_ +of November 28, 1728. The writer refers to other "scheams of expence" +for a household which have been made public, one apparently being at the +rate of L250 a year for the entire outlay. This sum he thinks inadequate +and "disproves in a moment." He gives his own careful estimate of the +cost of keeping a family of eight persons. It is computed for "Families +of Midling Figure who bear the Character of being Genteel," and reads +thus: + + "For Diet. For one Person a Day. + + 1 Breakfast 1_d._ a Pint of Milk 2d .03 + + 2 Dinner. Pudding Bread Meat Roots Pickles Vinegar + Salt & Cheese .09 + + N.B. In this article of the Dinner I would include + all the Raisins Currants Suet Flour Eggs Cranberries + Apples & where there are children all their Intermeal + Eatings throughout the whole Year. And I think a Gentleman + cannot well Dine his family at a lower Rate than this. + + 3 Supper As the Breakfast .03 + + 4 Small Beer for the Whole Day Winter & Summer. 1-1/2 + + N.B. In this article of the Beer I would likewise + include all the Molasses used in the Family not + only in Brewing but on other Occasions. + + For one Person a Day in all 1_s._ 4-1/2_d._ + + For Whole Family 11_s._ + + For the Whole Family 365 days L200 15_s._ + + For Butter, 2 Firkins at 68 lb. apiece, 16_d._ L 9 1_s._ + a lb. + + For Sugar. Cannot be less than 10_s._ a Month or + 4 weeks especially when there are children. L 6 10_s._ + + For Candles but 3 a Night Summer & Winter + for Ordinary & Extraordinary occasions at + 15_d._ for 9 in the lb. L 7 12_s._ .01 + + For Sand 20_s._ Soap 40_s._ Washing Once in 4 + weeks at 3_s._ a time with 3 Meals a Day at + 2_s._more L 6 5_s._ + + For One Maids Wages L 10 + + For Shoes after the Rate of each 3 Pair in a + year at 9_s._ a Pair for 7 Persons, the Maid + finding her own L 9 09_s._ + ----------------- + In all L249 12_s._ 5_d._ + + No House Rents Mentioned Nor Buying Carting Pyling or Sawing Firewood + No Coffee Tea nor Chocolate + No Wine nor Cyder nor any other Spirituous Liquor + No Pipes Tobacco Spice nor Sweetmeats + No Hospitality or Occasional Entertaining either Gentlemen Strangers + Relatives or Friends + No Acts of Charity nor Contributions for Pious Uses + No Pocket Expenses either for Horse Hire Travelling or Convenient + Recreations + No Postage for Letters or Numberless other Occasions + No Charges of Nursing + No Schooling for Children + No Buying of Books of any Sort or Pens Ink & Paper + No Lyings In + No Sickness, Nothing to Apothecary or Doctor + No Buying Mending or Repairing Household Stuff or Utensils + Nothing to the Simstress nor to the Taylor nor to the Barber, + nor to the Hatter nor to the Shopkeeper & Therefore no Cloaths." + +Certainly we gain from this "scheam" a very clear notion of the style of +living of this genteel Boston family. + +There is, of course, no possibility of exactly picturing the serving of +a meal in early days; but one peculiarity is known of the dinner--the +pudding came first. Hence the old saying, "I came in season--in +pudding-time." In an account of a Sunday dinner given at the house of +John Adams, as late as 1817, the first course was a pudding of Indian +corn, molasses, and butter; the second, veal, bacon, neck of mutton, and +vegetables. + +For many years the colonists "dined exact at noon," and on farms even +half an hour earlier. On Saturday all ate fish for dinner. Judge Sewall +frequently speaks of his Saturday dinner of fish. Fish days had been +prescribed by the King in England, in order that the fisheries might not +fail of support, as was feared on account of the increased consumption +of meat induced by the reformation in religion. New Englanders loyally +followed the mandate, but ate cod-fish on Saturdays, since the Papists +ate fish on Fridays. + +One very pleasant and friendly custom that existed among these kindly +New England neighbors must be spoken of in passing. It is thus indicated +by Judge Sewall when he writes, in 1723, of Mr. and Mrs. Belcher, "my +wife sent them a taste of her Diner." It appeared to be a recompensing +fashion, if invited guests were unable to partake of the dinner +festivities, or if neighbors were ill, for the hostess to send a +"taste" of all her viands to console them for their deprivation. This +truly homely and neighborly custom lingered long in old New England +families under the very descriptive title of "cold party;" indeed it +lingers still in old-fashioned towns and in old-fashioned families. + +In earlier days when a noble dinner seemed to be the form of domestic +pleasure next in enjoyment to a funeral, a "taste of the dinner" was +truly a most honorable attention, and a most pleasing one. + + + + +VII + +OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS + + +The English settlers who peopled our colonies were a beer-drinking and +ale-drinking race--as Shakespeare said, they were "potent in potting." +None of the hardships they had to endure in the first bitter years of +their new life caused them more annoyance than their deprivation of +their beloved malt liquors. This deprivation began even at the very +landing. They were forced to depend on the charity of the ship-masters +for a draught of beer on board ship, drinking nothing but water ashore. +Bradford, the Pilgrim Governor, complained loudly and frequently of his +distress, while Higginson, the Salem minister, accommodated himself more +readily and cheerfully to his changed circumstances, and boasted +quaintly in 1629, "Whereas my stomach could only digest and did require +such drink as was both strong and stale, I can and ofttimes do drink New +England water very well." As Higginson died in a short time, his boast +of his improved health and praise of the unwonted beverage does not +carry the force intended. Another early chronicler, Roger Clap, writes +that it was "not accounted a strange thing in those days to drink +water," and it was stated that Winthrop drank it ordinarily. Wood, in +his "New England Prospects," says of New England water, "I dare not +preferre it before good Beere as some have done, but any man would +choose it before Bad Beere, Wheay or Buttermilk." It was also praised as +being "farr different from the water of England, being not so sharp, but +of a fatter substance, and of a more jettie colour; it is thought there +can be no better water in the world." + +But their beerless state did not long continue, for the first luxury to +be brought to the new country was beer, and the colonists soon imported +malt and learned to make beer from the despised Indian corn, and +established breweries and made laws governing and controlling the +manufacture of ale and beer; for the pious Puritans quickly learned to +cheat in their brewing, using molasses and coarse sugar. Molasses beer +is frequently mentioned by Josselyn. + +By 1634, when sixpence was the legal charge for a meal, an ale-quart of +beer could be bought for a penny, and a landlord was liable to ten +shillings fine if he made a greater charge, or his liquor fell below a +certain standard of quality. Perhaps this low price was established by +the crafty Puritan magistrates in order to prevent the possibility of +profit by beer-selling, and thereby reduce the number of sellers. It was +also ordered that not more than an ale-quart of beer should be drunk out +of meal-times. This was to prevent "bye-drinking." Josselyn complained +of the petty interference of the law in drinking, saying: + + "At the houses of entertainment called ordinaries into which a + stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that + office who would thrust himself into his company uninvited, and if + he called for more drink than the officer thought, in his judgment, + he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and + appoint the proportion beyond which he could not get one drop." + +The ministers, also, who chanced to live within sight of the tavern, had +a very virtuous custom of watching the tavern door and all who entered +therein, and going over and "chiding them" if they remained too long +within the cheerful portals. With constables, deacons, the parson, and +that lab-o'-the-tongue--the tithing-man--each on the alert to keep every +one from drinking but himself, the Puritan had little chance to be a +toper an he would. + +The colonists were fiercely intolerant of intemperance among the +Indians. Laws were made as early as 1633 prohibiting the sale of strong +waters to the "inflamed devilish bloudy salvages," and persons selling +liquor to them were sharply prosecuted and punished. New Yorkers thought +these laws over-severe, saying, deprecatingly, "to prohibit all strong +liquor to them seems very hard and very turkish, rumm doth as little +hurt as the ffrenchmans Brandie, and in the whole is much more +wholesome." But the Puritans knew of the horrors to be dreaded from +drunken Indians. + +So plentiful had the sale of ale and beer become in 1675 that Cotton +Mather said every other house in Boston was an ale-house, and a century +later Governor Pownall made the same assertion. The Puritan magistrates +in New England made at a very early date a decided stand not only +against excessive drinking by strangers, but against the habit of +drunkenness in their citizens. Drunkards were in 1636, in Massachusetts, +subject to fine and imprisonment in the stocks, and sellers were +forbidden to furnish the tippler with any liquor thereafter. An habitual +drunkard was punished by having a great D made of "Redd Cloth" hung +around his neck, or sewed on his clothing, and he was disfranchised. In +1630 Governor Winthrop abolished the "Vain Custom" of drinking healths +at his table, and in 1639 the Court publicly ordered the cessation of +the practice because "it was a thing of no use, it induced drunkenness +and quarrelling, it wasted wine and beer and it was troublesome to many, +forcing them to drink more than they wished." A fine of twelve shillings +was imposed on each health-drinker. Cotton Mather, however, thought +health-drinking a usage of common politeness. In Connecticut no man +could drink over half a pint of wine at a time, or tipple over half an +hour, or drink at all at an ordinary after nine o'clock at night. + +All these rigid laws had their effect, and New Englanders throughout the +seventeenth century were sober and law-abiding save in a few +communities, such as that at Merrymount, where "good chear went forward +and strong liquors walked." Boston was an especially orderly town. +Several visiting and resident clergymen testified that they had not seen +a drunken man in the Massachusetts Colony in many years. The following +quotation will show how rare was drunkenness and how abhorred. Judge +Sewall wrote in 1686: + + "Mr. Shrimpton and others came in a coach from Roxbury about nine + o'clock or past, singing as they came, being inflamed with drink. + At Justice Morgans they stop and drink healths and curse and swear + to the great disturbance of the town and grief of good people. Such + high handed wickedness has hardly before been heard of in Boston." + +It is well to compare the orderly, decorous, well-protected existence in +Boston, with the conditions of town life in Old England at that same +date, where drunken young men of fashion under the name of Mohocks, +Scourers, Hectors, Muns, or Tityriti, prowled the streets abusing and +beating every man and woman they met--"sons of Belial flown with +insolence and wine;" where turbulent apprentices set upon those the +Mohocks chanced to spare; where duels and intrigues and gaming were the +order of the day; where foot-pads, highwaymen, and street ruffians +robbed unceasingly and with impunity. Life in New England may have been +dull and monotonous, but women could go through the streets in safety, +and Judge Sewall could stumble home alone in the dark from his +love-making without fear of molestation; and when he found a party of +young men singing and making too much noise in a tavern, he could go +among them uninsulted, and could get them to meekly write down their own +names with his "Pensil" for him to bring them up and fine them the next +day. + +Still, the Judge, though he hated noisy revellers, was no total +abstainer. He speaks of "grace cups" and "treating the Deputies," and +sent gifts of wine to his friends. I find in his diary references to +these drinks: Ale, beer, mead, metheglin, tea, chocolate, sage tea, +cider, wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack-posset, and +black cherry brandy. + +Sack, the drink of Shakespeare's day, beloved and praised of Falstaff, +was passing out of date in Sewall's time. Winthrop tells of four ships +coming into port in 1646 with eight hundred butts of sack on board. In +1634 ordinaries were forbidden to sell it, hence the sack found but a +poor market. Sack-posset was made of ale and sack, thickened with eggs +and cream, seasoned with nutmeg, mace, and sugar, then boiled on the +fire for hours, and made a "very pretty drink" for weddings and feasts. + +Canary wine was imported at that time in large quantities. In the first +year's issue of the _News Letter_ were advertised "Fyall wine sold by +the Pipe; Passados & Right Canary." The Winthrops in their letters make +frequent mention of Canary, as also of "Vendredi" and "Palme Wine." Wait +Winthrop said the latter was better than Canary. Tent wine also was sent +to the colonists. + +It is interesting to find that the sanguine settlers aspired, even in +bleak New England, to the home production of wine. "Vine planters" were +asked for the colony in 1629. The use of Governor's Island in +Massachusetts Bay was granted to Governor Winthrop in 1634 for a +vineyard, for an annual rental of a hogshead of wine, which at a later +date was changed to a yearly payment of two barrels of apples. The +French settlers also planted vineyards in Rhode Island. + +Claret was not much loved by the planters, who had a taste for the sweet +sack. Morton tells that for his revellers he "broched a hogshead, caused +them to fill the Can with Lusty liquor--Claret sparklinge neat--which +was not suffered to grow pale & flat but tipled off with quick +dexterity." Mumm, a fat ale made of oat-malt and wheat-malt, appears +frequently in early importations and accounts. The sillabub of which +Sewall speaks was made with cider and was not boiled: + + "Fill your Sillabub Pot with Syder (for that is best for a + Sillabub) and good store of Sugar and a little Nutmeg, stir it wel + together, put in as much thick Cream by two or three spoonfuls at a + time, as hard as you can as though you milke it in, then stir it + together exceeding softly once about and let it stand two hours at + least." + +Other mild fermented drinks than beer were made and drunk in colonial +days in large quantities. Mead and metheglin, wherewith the Druids and +old English bards were wont to carouse, were made from water, honey, and +yeast. Here is an old receipt for the latter drink, which some colonists +pronounced as good as Malaga sack. + + "Take all sorts of Hearbs that are good and wholesome as Balme, + Mint, Fennel, Rosemary, Angelica, wilde Tyme, Isop, Burnet, + Egrimony, and such other as you think fit; some Field Hearbs, but + you must not put in too many, but especially Rosemary or any Strong + Hearb, lesse than halfe a handfull will serve of every sorte, you + must boyl your Hearbs & strain them, and let the liquor stand till + to Morrow and settle them, take off the clearest Liquor, two + Gallons & a halfe to one Gallon of Honey, and that proportion as + much as you will make, and let it boyle an houre, and in the + boyling skim it very clear, then set it a cooling as you doe Beere, + when it is cold take some very good Ale Barme and put into the + bottome of the Tubb a little and a little as they do Beere, keeping + back the thicke Setling that lyeth in the bottome of the Vessel + that it is cooled in, and when it is all put together cover it with + a Cloth and let it worke very neere three dayes, and when you mean + to put it up, skim off all the Barme clean, put it up into the + Vessel, but you must not stop your Vessel very close in three or + four dayes but let it have all the vent, for it will worke and when + it is close stopped you must looke very often to it and have a peg + in the top to give it vent, when you heare it make a noise as it + will do, or else it will breake the Vessell; sometime I make a bag + and put in good store of Ginger sliced, some Cloves and Cinnamon + and boyl it in, and other time I put it into the Barrel and never + boyl it, it is both good, but Nutmeg & Mace do not well to my + Tast." + +In the list of values fixed by the Piscataqua planters in 1633, "6 +Gallons Mathaglin were equal to 2 lb. Beauer." In the middle of the +century metheglin was worth ten shillings a barrel in the Connecticut +Valley. + +Though mild, these drinks were intoxicating. One could "get fox'd e'en +with foolish matheglin." Old James Howel says, "metheglin does stupefy +more than any other liquor if taken immoderately and keeps a humming in +the brain which made one say he loved not metheglin because he was wont +to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive." + +Bradford tells of backsliders from Merrymount who "abased themselves +disorderly with drinking too much stronge drinke aboard the +Freindshipp." This strong drink was metheglin, of which two hogsheads +were to be delivered at Plymouth. But after it was transferred to wooden +"flackets" in Boston, these Friendship merrymakers contrived to "drinke +it up under the name leackage" till but six gallons of the metheglin +arrived at Plymouth. + +"Cyder famed" was made at an early date from the fruitful apple-trees so +faithfully planted by Endicott, Blackstone, and other settlers. Cider +was cheap enough; Josselyn wrote, "I have had at the tap houses of +Boston an ale-quart of cyder spiced and sweetened with sugar, for a +groat." + +This was not the New England nectar or Passada which he praised so +highly and which was thus made-- + + "Take of Malligo Raisins, stamp them and put milk to them and put + them to a Hippocras Bag and let it drain out of itself and put a + quantity of this with a spoonful or two of Syrup of Clove + Gilly-flowers into every bottle when you bottle your Syder, and + your Planter will have a liquor that exceeds Passada, the Nectar of + the Country." + +Cider was made at first by pounding the apples by hand in wooden +mortars; sometimes the pomace was pressed in baskets. Rude mills were +then formed with a hollowed log, and a heavy weight or maul on a +spring-board. Cider soon became the common drink of the people, and it +was made in vast quantities. In 1671 five hundred hogsheads were made of +one orchard's produce. One village of forty families made three thousand +barrels in 1721. Bennet wrote in 1740, "Cider being cheap and the people +used to it they do not encourage malt liquors. They pay about three +shillings a barrel for cider." It was freely used even by the children +at breakfast, as well as at dinner, up to the end of the first quarter +of the present century, when many zealous followers so eagerly embraced +the new temperance reform that they cut down whole orchards of thriving +apple-trees, conceiving no possibility of the general use of the fruit +for food instead of drink. + +Charles Francis Adams says that "to the end of John Adams's life a large +tankard of hard cider was his morning draught before breakfast." + +Cider was supplied in large amounts to students at college at dinner and +"bever," being passed in two two-quart tankards from hand to hand down +the commons table. It was given liberally to all travellers and +wanderers who chanced to stop at the farmer's door; to all workmen and +farm laborers; and an "Indian barrel," whose contents were for free gift +to every tramp Indian or squaw, was found in many a farmer's cellar. + +A traveller in Maine just after the Revolution said that their cider was +purified by the frost, colored with corn, and looked and tasted like +Madeira. + +Beverige also was drunk by the colonists. This name was applied to +various mild and watery drinks. In the West Indies the juice of the +sugar-cane mixed with water was so called. In Devonshire, water which +had been pressed through the lees of a cider-mill was called beverige. +In other parts of England water, cider, and spices formed beverige. In +New England the concoction varied, but was uniformly innocuous and +weak--the colonial prototype of our modern "temperance drinks." In many +country houses a summer drink of water flavored with molasses and ginger +was called beverige. The advertisement in the _Boston News Letter_, +August 16th, 1711, of the sale of the captured Neptune with her lading, +at the warehouse of Andrew Fanueil, had "Wine, Vinegar and Beveridge" on +the list. This must have been stronger stuff than molasses and water, to +have been worth barrelling and sending across the water. + +Switchel was a drink similar to beverige, but when served out to sailors +was strengthened by a little vinegar and rum. The name was commonly used +in New Hampshire and central Massachusetts. Ebulum was made of the +juices of the elder and juniper berries mixed with ale and spices. + +Perry was made to some extent from pears, and was advertised for sale in +the _Boston News Letter_, and one traveller told of "peachy" made from +peaches. Spruce and birch beer were brewed by mixing a decoction of +sassafras, birch, or spruce bark with molasses and water, or by boiling +the twigs in maple sap, or by boiling together pumpkin and +apple-parings, water, malt, and roots. Many curious makeshifts were +resorted to in the early days. One old song boasted + + "Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips + Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree chips." + +Fiercer liquors were not lacking. Aqua-vitae, a general name for strong +waters, was brought over in large quantities during the seventeenth +century, and sold for about three shillings a gallon. Cider was +distilled into cider brandy, or apple-jack; and when, by 1670, molasses +had come into port in considerable quantity through the West India +trade, the forests of New England supplied plentiful and cheap fuel to +convert it into "rhum, a strong water drawn from the sugar cane." In a +manuscript description of Barbadoes, written in 1651, we read: "The +chief fudling they make in this island is Rumbullion alias Kill Divil--a +hot hellish and terrible liquor." It was called in some localities +Barbadoes liquor, and by the Indians "ahcoobee" or "ockuby," a word of +the Norridgewock tongue. John Eliot spelled it "rumb," and Josselyn +called it plainly "that cussed liquor, Rhum, rumbullion, or kill-devil." +It went by the latter name and rumbooze everywhere, and was soon cheap +enough. Increase Mather said, in 1686, "It is an unhappy thing that in +later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They +that are poor, and wicked too, can for a penny or twopence make +themselves drunk." Burke said, at a later date, "The quantity of spirits +which they distil in Boston from the molasses they import is as +surprising as the cheapness at which they sell it, which is under two +shillings a gallon; but they are more famous for the quantity and +cheapness than for the excellency of their rum." In 1719, and fifty +years later, New England rum was worth but three shillings a gallon, +while West India rum was worth but twopence more. New England +distilleries quickly found a more lucrative way of disposing of their +"kill-devil" than by selling it at such cheap rates. Ships laden with +barrels of rum were sent to the African coast, and from thence they +returned with a most valuable lading--negro slaves. Along the coast of +Africa New England rum quite drove out French brandy. + +The Irish and Scotch settlers knew how to make whiskey from rye and +wheat, and they soon learned to manufacture it from barley and potatoes, +and even from the despised Indian corn. + +Not content with their own manufactured liquors, the thirsty colonists +imported strong waters, gin and aniseseed cordial from Holland, and wine +from Spain, Portugal, and the Canaries. Of these, fiery Madeiras were +the favorite of all fashionable folk and often each glass of wine was +strengthened by a liberal dash of brandy. Bennet wrote, in 1740, of +Boston society, "Madeira wine and rum punch are the liquors they drink +in common." Though "spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaffed" in 1665, +I do not know of the Oriental mixed drink in New England till 1682, when +John Winthrop writes of the sale of a punch-bowl. In 1686 John Dunton +had more than one "noble bowl of punch," during his visit to New +England. The word punch was from the East Indian word _pauch_, meaning +five. S. M. (who was probably Samuel Mather) sent these lines to Sir +Harry Frankland in 1757, with the gift of a box of lemons: + + "You know from Eastern India came + The skill of making punch as did the name. + And as the name consists of letters five, + By five ingredients is it kept alive. + To purest water sugar must be joined, + With these the grateful acid is combined. + Some any sours they get contented use, + But men of taste do that from Tagus choose. + When now these three are mixed with care + Then added be of spirit a small share. + And that you may the drink quite perfect see + Atop the musky nut must grated be." + +Every buffet of people of fashion contained a punch-bowl, every dinner +was prefaced by a bowl of punch, which was passed from hand to hand and +drunk from without intervening glasses. J. Crosby, at the Box of Lemons, +in Boston, sold for thirty years lime juice and shrub and lemons, and +sour oranges and orange juice (which some punch tasters preferred to +lemon juice), to flavor Boston punches. + +Double and "thribble" bowls of punch were commonly served, holding +respectively two and three quarts each, and many existing bills show +what large amounts were drunk. Governor Hancock gave a dinner to the +Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners +were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred +and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and +a large quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner +to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred +diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of +Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter, +fifteen double bowls of punch and a quantity of cider. The clergy were +not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the +ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Mass., in 1785, these +items are found in the tavern-keeper's bill: + + 30 Bowles of Punch before the People went to meeting 3 + 80 people eating in the morning at 16d 6 + 10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10 + 68 dinners at 3s 10 4 + 44 bowles of punch while at dinner 4 8 + 18 bottles of wine 2 14 + 8 bowles of Brandy 1 2 + Cherry Rum 1 10 + 6 people drank tea 9_d_ + +The six mild tea-drinkers and their economical beverage seem to put a +finishing and fairly comic touch to this ordination bill. When we read +such renderings of accounts we think it natural that Baron Reidesel +wrote of New England inhabitants, "most of the males have a strong +passion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages." +John Adams said, "if the ancients drank wine as our people drink rum and +cider it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils." + +The cost of these various drinks was thus given about Revolutionary +times in Bristol, R. I.: + + "Nip of Grog 6_d_ + Dubel bole of Tod 2_s_ 9_d_ + Dubel bole of punch 8_s_ + Nip of punch 1_s_ + Brandi Sling 8_d_" + +Flip was a vastly popular drink, and continued to be so for a century +and a half. I find it spoken of as early as 1690. It was made of +home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, and +flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or +pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the +liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor. + +Landlord May, of Canton, Mass., made a famous brew thus: he mixed four +pounds of sugar, four eggs, and one pint of cream and let it stand for +two days. When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug +two-thirds full of beer, placed in it four great spoonfuls of the +compound, then thrust in the seething loggerhead, and added a gill of +rum to the creamy mixture. If a fresh egg were beaten into the flip the +drink was called "bellows-top," and the froth rose over the top of the +mug. "Stone-wall" was a most intoxicating mixture of cider and rum. +"Calibogus," or "bogus," was cold rum and beer unsweetened. +"Black-strap" was a mixture of rum and molasses. Casks of it stood in +every country store, a salted and dried codfish slyly hung alongside--a +free lunch to be stripped off and eaten, and thus tempt, through thirst, +the purchase of another draught of black-strap. + +A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem--a drink with a +terrible name--whistle-belly-vengeance. It consisted of sour household +beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with +brown-bread crumbs and drunk piping hot. + +Of course many protests, though chiefly on the ground of wasteful +expense, were made, even in ante-temperance days, against the drinking +which grew so prevalent with the opening of the eighteenth century. Rev. +Andrew Eliot wrote in 1735, "'Tis surprising what prodigious sums are +expended for spirituous liquors in this one poor Province--more than a +million of our old currency in a year." Dr. Tenney lamented that the +taverns of Exeter, N. H., were thronged with people who seldom retired +sober. Strenuous but ineffectual efforts were made to "prevent tippling +in the forenoon," and between meals; but with little avail. The +temperance-reform of our own century came none too soon. + +Tea was too high priced in the first half-century of its Occidental use +to have been frequently seen in New England. Judge Sewall mentioned it +but once in his diary. He drank it at Madam Winthrop's house in 1709 at +a Thursday lecture, but he does not note it as a rarity. In 1690, +however, when not over-plentiful in old England, Benjamin Harris and +Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell it "in publique" in Boston. In 1712 +"green and ordinary teas" were advertised in the apothecary's list of +Zabdiel Boylston. Bohea tea came in 1713, and in 1715 tea was sold in +the coffee-houses. Some queer mistakes were made through the employment +of the herb as food. In Salem it was boiled for a long time till bitter, +and drunk without milk or sugar; and the tea-leaves were buttered, +salted, and eaten. In more than one town the liquid tea was thrown away +and the carefully cooked leaves were eaten. + +The new China drink did not have a wholly savory reputation. It was +called a "damned weed," a "detestable weed," a "base exotick," a "rank +poison far-fetched and dear bought," a "base and unworthy Indian drink," +and various ill effects were attributed to it--the decay of the teeth, +and even the loss of the mental faculties. But the Abbe Robin thought +the ability of the Revolutionary soldiers to endure military flogging +came from the use of tea. And others thought it cured the spleen and +indigestion. + +As the day drew near when tea-drinking was to become the great +turning-point of our national liberty, the spirit of noble revolt led +many dames to join in bands to abandon the use of the unjustly taxed +herb, and societies were formed of members pledged to drink no tea. Five +hundred women so banded together in Boston. Various substitutes were +employed in the place of the much-loved but rigidly abjured herb, +Liberty Tea being the most esteemed. It was thus made: the four-leaved +loose-strife was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the +leaves and boiled; the leaves were put in an iron kettle and basted with +the liquor from the stalks. Then the leaves were put in an oven and +dried. Liberty Tea sold for sixpence a pound. It was drunk at every +spinning-bee, quilting, or other gathering of women. Ribwort was also +used to make a so-called tea--strawberry and currant leaves, sage, and +even strong medicinal herbs likewise. Hyperion tea was made from +raspberry leaves. An advertisement of the day thus reads: + + "The use of Hyperion or Labrador tea is every day coming into vogue + among people of all ranks. The virtues of the plant or shrub from + which this delicate Tea is gathered were first discovered by the + Aborigines, and from them the Canadians learned them. Before the + cession of Canada to Great Britain we knew little or nothing of + this most excellent herb, but since that we have been taught to + find it growing all over hill and dale between the Lat. 40 and 60. + It is found all over New England in great plenty and that of best + quality particularly on the banks of the Penobscot, Kennebec, + Nichewannock, and Merrimac." + +The proportion of tea used in America is now less than in England, and +the proportion of coffee much larger. This is wholly the result of +national habits formed through patriotic abstinence from tea-drinking in +those glorious "Liberty Days." + +The first mention of coffee, as given by Dr. Lyon, is in the record of +the license of Dorothy Jones, of Boston, in 1670, to sell "Coffe and +chuchaletto." At intervals of a few years other innkeepers were licensed +to sell it, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century coffee-houses +were established. Coffee dishes, coffee-pots, and coffee-mugs appear in +inventories, and show how quickly and eagerly the fragrant berry was +sought for in private families. As with tea, its method of preparation +as a beverage seemed somewhat uncertain in some minds; and it is said +that the whole beans were frequently boiled for some hours with not +wholly pleasing results in forming either food or drink. After a few +years "coffee-powder" was offered for sale. + +Chocolate became equally popular. Sewall often drank it, once certainly +as early as 1697, at the Lieutenant-Governor's, with a breakfast of +venison. Winthrop says it was scarce in 1698. Madam Knight took it with +her on her journey in 1704. "I told her I had some chocolate if she +would prepare it, which, with the help of some milk and a little clean +brass kettle, she soon effected to my satisfaction." Mills to grind +cocoa were quickly established in Boston, and were advertised in the +_News Letter_. + +Even in the early days of our Republic there were reformers who wished +to establish the use of temperance drinks, which were not, however, +exactly the same liquids now so called. A writer in the _Boston Evening +Post_ wrote forcibly on the subject, and a Philadelphia paper published +this statement on July 23d, 1788: + + "A correspondent wishes that a monument could be erected in Union + Green with the following inscription. + + In Honour of + American Beer and Cyder. + + It is hereby recorded for the information of strangers and + posterity that 17,000 Assembled in this Green on the 4th of July + 1788 to celebrate the establishment of the Constitution of the + United States, and that they departed at an early hour without + intoxication or a single quarrel. They drank nothing but Beer and + Cyder. Learn Reader to prize these invaluable liquors and to + consider them as the companions of those virtues which can alone + render our country free and reputable. + + Learn likewise to Despise + Spirituous Liquors as Anti Federal + + and to consider them as the companions of all those vices which are + calculated to dishonor and enslave our country." + + + + +VIII + +TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE + + +When New England was colonized, the European emigrants were forced to +content themselves with the rude means of transportation which were +employed by the aborigines. The favorite way back and forth from +Plymouth to Boston and Cape Ann was by water, by skirting the shore in +birchen pinnaces or dugouts--hollowed pine logs about twenty feet long +and two and a half feet wide--in which Johnson said the savages ventured +two leagues out at sea. There were few horses, and the few were too +valuable for domestic work to be spared for travel, hence the journeyer +must go by water, or on foot. When Bradstreet was sent to Dover as Royal +Commissioner, he walked the entire distance there, and back to Boston, +by narrow Indian paths. + +The many estuaries and river-mouths that intersected the coast also made +travel on horseback difficult. Foot-passengers, however, could cross the +narrow streams by natural ford-ways, or on fallen trees, which were +ordered to be put in proper place by the colonial government; and the +broader rivers by canoe ferries. We see, through the record of one +journey, the dignified Governor of Massachusetts carried across the +ford-ways pick-a-pack on the shoulders of his stalwart Indian guide. + +But soon the settlers, true to their English instincts and habits, +turned their attention to the breeding of horses. They imported many +fine animals, and the magistrates framed laws intended to improve the +imported stock. The history of horse-raising in New England is akin to +that of any other country, save in one respect. In Rhode Island the +breeding of horses resulted in that famous and first distinctively +American breed--the Narragansett Pacers. + +The first suggestion of horse-raising in Narragansett was, without +doubt, given by Sewall's father-in-law, Captain John Hull, of Pine Tree +Shilling fame, who was one of the original purchasers of the +Petaquamscut Tract, or Narragansett, from the Indians. He wrote, in +April, 1677: + + "I have often thought if we, the partners of Point Judith Neck did + fence with a good stone wall at the north end thereof, that no kind + of horses or cattle might get thereon, and also what other parts + thereof westerly were needful, and procure a very good breed of + large and fair mares and horses, and that no mongrel breed might + come among them, we might have a very choice breed for coach + horses, some for the saddle and some for draught; and in a few + years might draw off considerable numbers and ship them for + Barbadoes Nevis or such parts of the Indies where they would vend." + +This scheme was doubtless carried into effect, for in 1686 Dudley and +his associates ordered thirty horses to be seized in Narragansett and +sold to pay for building a jail. + +In a later letter Hull accuses William Heiffernan of horse-stealing, and +shows that a different and more gentle method than Western lynch-law was +pursued by the Eastern settlers. He writes: + + "I am informed that you were so shameless that you offered to sell + some of my horses. I would have you know that they are by Gods good + Providence, mine. Do you bring me some good security for my money + that is justly owing and I shall be willing to give you some horses + that you shall not need to offer to steal any." + +Whatever the means may have been that tended to the establishment of a +distinct breed of horses, the result was soon evident; by the early +years of the eighteenth century the Narragansett Pacers were known +throughout the colonies as a desirable breed of saddle-horses. + +The local conditions for raising this breed were favorable. The soil of +Narragansett was rich, the crops large, the natural formation of the +land made it possible to fence it easily and with little expense--a +thing of much importance in a new land. The bay, the ocean, and the +chain of half salt lakes surrounding the three sides, left but a short +northern length for stone wall, as Hull suggested. + +It is said that the progenitor or most important sire of this race was +imported from Andalusia by Governor Robinson. Another tradition is that +this horse, while swimming off the coast of Spain, was picked up by a +Narragansett sloop and brought to America. Thomas Hazard contributed to +the quality of endurance in the breed by introducing into it the blood +of "Old Snip." So celebrated did the qualities of this horse become that +the "Snip breed" was not only spoken of with regard to the horses, but +of the owners as well, and Hazards who did not possess the +distinguishing race-characteristic of self-will were said not to be +"true Snips." Old Snip was said to have been imported from Tripoli; +others assert (and it is generally believed) that he was a wild horse +running at large in the tract near Point Judith. + +In the year 1711 Rip Van Dam, a prominent citizen of New York, and at a +later date Governor of the State, wrote to Jonathan Dickinson, an early +mayor of Philadelphia, a very amusing account of his ownership of a +Narragansett Pacer. The horse was shipped from Rhode Island in a sloop, +from which he managed to jump overboard, swim ashore, and return home. +He was, however, again placed on board ship, and arrived in New York +after a fourteen-days' passage, naturally much reduced in flesh and +spirits. From New York he was sent to Philadelphia by post--that is, +ridden by the post-rider. The horse cost L32, and his freight cost fifty +shillings. He was said to be "no beauty though so high priced, save in +his legs." "He always plays and acts and never will stand still, he will +take a glass of wine, beer or cyder, and probably would drink a dram on +a cold morning." The last extraordinary accomplishment doubtless showed +contamination from the bad human company around him, while the swimming +feat evinced his direct descent from the Andalusian swimmer. + +Dr. McSparran, rector of the Narragansett church from 1721 to 1759, +wrote a little book called "America Dissected," in which he speaks thus +of the Narragansett Pacers: + + "The produce of this country is principally butter, cheese, fat + cattle, wool and fine horses that are exported to all parts of + English America. They are remarkable for fleetness and swift pacing + and I have seen some of them pace a mile in a little more than two + minutes and a good deal less than three minutes. I have often upon + the larger pacing horses rode fifty, nay sixty miles a day even in + New England where the roads are rough, stony and uneven." + +In the realm of fiction we find testimony to the qualities of the +Narragansett Pacers. Cooper, in the "Last of the Mohicans," represents +his heroines as mounted on these horses, and explains their +characteristics in a footnote, and also in the dialogue of the story. He +says that they were commonly sorrel-colored, and that horses of other +breeds were trained to their gait. It is true that horses were trained +to pace. Rev. Mr. Thatcher wrote in 1690 of teaching a mare to amble by +cross-spanning, and again by trammelling. Logs of wood were placed +across a road at certain intervals to induce a pacing gait. As late as +the year 1770 men in Ipswich followed the profession of pace-trainer; +but I doubt whether any other breed could ever acquire the peculiar gait +of the Narragansetts, of which Isaac Hazard thus wrote: "My father +described the motion of this horse as differing from others in that its +backbone moved through the air in a straight line without inclining the +rider from side to side, as does a rocker or pacer of the present day." +That motion could scarcely be taught. + +Many traits joined to make the Narragansett Pacers so eagerly sought +for. Not only was their ease of motion an absolute necessity, but +sureness of foot was also indispensable; this quality they also +possessed. They were also tough and enduring, and could travel long +distances. The stories told of them seem incredible. It was said that +they could travel one hundred miles in a day, over rough roads, without +tiring the rider or injury to themselves, provided they were properly +cared for at the end of the journey. + +There was not only in America a steady demand for these horses, but in +the West Indies, as Hull predicted, they found a ready market. One +farmer sent annually a hundred pacers to Cuba, and agents were sent to +Narragansett from Cuba with orders to buy pacers, especially +full-blooded mares, at any prices. Agents from Virginia also purchased +pacers for Virginian horse-raisers. The newspapers of the latter part of +the eighteenth century--especially of the Connecticut press--abound in +advertisements of horses of the "true Narragansett breed," yet it is +said that in the year 1800 but one full-blooded Narragansett Pacer was +known to be living. In the War of 1812 the British man-of-war Orpheus +cruised the waters of Narragansett Bay, and her captain endeavored +through agents to obtain a Narragansett Pacer as a gift for his wife, +but in vain--not a horse of the true breed could be found. + +It has been said that the reckless exportation to the West Indies caused +this extermination, but it is difficult to believe that so shrewd a race +as were the Narragansett planters ever would have committed such a +killing of a goose of golden eggs. The decay of the race was the action +of a simple law--cause and effect. The conditions which rendered the +pacer so desirable did not exist after the Revolution. Roads were +improved, carriages became common, the saddle less used, and the +American trotter was evolved, who was a better carriage horse, and a +more useful one, as he could be employed for both light and heavy work, +while heavy draughting stiffened the joints of the pacer, and destroyed +the very qualities for which he was most valued. Thus, being no longer +needed, the Narragansett Pacer ceased to exist. + +There died in Wickford, R. I., a few years ago, a Narragansett Pacer that +was nearly full blooded. She was a villainously ugly animal of faded, +sunburnt sorrel color. She was so abnormally broad-backed and +broad-bodied that a male rider who sat astride her was forced to stick +his legs out at a most awkward and ridiculous angle. That broad back +carried, however, most comfortably a side-saddle or a pillion. Being +extremely short-legged this treasured relic was unprecedentedly slow, +and altogether I found the Narragansett Pacer, though an object of great +pride and even veneration to her owner, not all my fancy had painted +her. + +From the earliest days when horses were imported, women rode on pillions +behind the men. Lechford in his note-book refers to a "womans pillion" +lost on the Hopewell. A pillion was a cushion strapped on behind a man's +saddle, and from it sometimes hung a small platform or double stirrup on +which a woman rider could rest her feet. One horse was sometimes made +also to carry two men riding astride. Horseflesh was also economized by +the ride-and-tie system: two persons would start on horseback, ride a +mile or two, dismount, tie the animal by the road-side, leaving him for +another couple (who had started afoot) to mount, ride on past the first +couple, and dismount and tie in their turn. + +Coaches were not a wholly popular means of conveyance in the first half +of the seventeenth century, even among Englishmen on English roads, and +they would have been wholly useless in New England. John Winthrop had +one in 1685. Sir Edmund and Lady Andros rode in a coach in Boston in +1687, and there were then a few other carriages in town. Their purchase +and use were deplored and discouraged by Puritan authorities, as were +other luxurious fashions. Outside of the town wheeled vehicles were of +little use as they had to be lashed clumsily in two canoes and +laboriously ferried across the rivers, while the horses were similarly +transferred to the opposite shore, or allowed to swim over. The early +carriages were calashes and chariots. Henry Sharp of Salem had a calash +in 1701. William Cutler's "collash with ye furniture" was worth L10 in +1723. Chairs--two-wheeled gigs without a top--and chaises, a vehicle +with similar body and a top, were early forms of carriages. The sulky +had in early days, as now, seating room but for one person. All these +were hung on thorough braces instead of springs. + +In an account of the funeral of Lieutenant Governor Tailor, in 1732, it +is mentioned that a "great number of the gentry attended in their +coaches and chaises;" but even by that date coaches were of little avail +for long journeys. The anxious letters of Waitstill Winthrop to his son +in 1717, at the latter's proposal of bringing a coach overland from +Boston to New London, show the obstacles of travel. He warns that there +are no bridges in Narragansett; he urges him to bring a mounted servant +with an axe to "cut bows in the way," "to bring a good pilate that knows +the cart ways," to be sure to keep the coachman sober, to have axle and +hubs prepared for rough usage--and in every way discourages so rash an +endeavor. + +Though I have seen a New England inventory of the year 1690 in which a +"sley" appears, I do not find that they were frequently used until the +second or third decade of the succeeding century, though a few +Bostonians had them in the year 1700. They were largely used by the +Dutch in New York, and Connecticut folk occasionally followed Dutch +fashions. + +When sedan-chairs were so fashionable and plentiful in England, they +were sure to be used to some extent in New England towns. Governor +Winthrop had a very elegant Spanish sedan-chair, which was given him in +1646 by Captain Cromwell, who captured it from a Spanish galleon. This +fine chair was worth L50 and was an intended gift of the Viceroy of +Mexico to his sister. When Parson Oxenbridge was striken with apoplexy +in the pulpit of the First Church in Boston, he was "carried home in a +Cedan." On August 3, 1687, Judge Sewall wrote in his diary: "Capt. +Gerrish is carried in a Sedan to the Wharf and so takes boat for Salem." +Again he writes on May 31, 1715: "The Gov'r comes first to Town, was +carried from Mr. Dudleys to the Town-House in Cous. Dumers Sedan; but +'twas too tall for the Stairs, so was fain to be taken out near the top +of them." The Governor had had a bad attack of gout. + +On September 11, 1706, Sewall writes: "Five Indians carried Mr. +Bromfield in a chair." And though I have never seen the sale of a sedan +mentioned, several times I have fancied that the reference to the sale +of a chair meant a sedan-chair. In the memoirs of Eliza Quincey she +speaks of riding in a sedan, and of seeing Dr. Franklin in one in 1789. + +At a surprisingly early date, when we consider the limited opportunities +for travel, the colonial authorities licensed taverns or ordinaries, and +also made strict laws governing them. The landlords could not sell sack +or strong water; nor permit games to be played in their precincts; nor +allow dancing or singing; nor could tobacco be used within their walls; +nor could they sell cakes or buns indiscriminately. Samuel Cole, the +Boston comfit-maker, received his license in 1634, though one can hardly +understand, with such manifold rules of narrow limit, how he could wish +it. Previously other freemen had obtained permission "to draw wine and +beer" to sell at retail to their neighbors and to travellers. In New +Haven the tavern-keeper had been given twenty acres of land in 1645, in +which travellers' horses could be pastured. In Hartford and other river +towns the establishment of taverns was compulsory. The ordinaries +quickly multiplied in number and increased in pretension. In Boston, in +1651, the King's Arms and its furniture were held to be worth L600. +Board was cheap enough. In 1634 the Court set the price of a single meal +at sixpence, and an ale quart of beer at a penny. At the Ship Tavern a +man had "fire and bed, dyet, wyne and beere betweene meals" for three +shillings a day. The wine was limited to "a cupp each man at dynner & +supp & no more." Following the English fashion of Shakespeare's time, +the inn chambers were each named: The Exchange Chamber, Rose and Sun +Chamber, Star Chamber, Court Chamber, Jerusalem Chamber, etc. The names +of the inns also followed English nomenclature: The Bunch of Grapes, Dog +& Pot, Turk's Head, Green Dragon, Blue Anchor, King's Head, etc. The +Good Woman bore on its painted sign the figure of a headless woman. The +Ship in Distress had these lines: + + "With sorrows I am compassed round, + Pray lend a hand--my ship's aground." + +Another Boston tavern had this rhyme: + + "This is the bird that never flew, + This is the tree that never grew, + This is the ship that never sails, + This is the can that never fails." + +The Sun Tavern bore these words: + + "The Best Ale and Beer under the Sun." + +This tavern was removed to Moon Street, and was kept by Mrs. Milk. Her +neighbors' names were Waters, Beer, and Legg. The Salutation Inn, with +its sign-board bearing the picture of two men shaking hands, was +commonly known as the Two Palaverers. + +I know no more attractive picture of olden-time hospitality, nothing +better "under the notion of a tavern," than the old Palaverer tavern at +Medford. On either side of its front door grew a great tree, and in the +spreading branches of each tree was built a platform or balcony. The two +were connected by a hanging bridge or scaffolding, and also connected by +a similar foot-bridge with the tavern itself. In these leafy +tree-arbors, through the sunny summer months, from dawn till twilight, +whilom travellers rested and drank their drams, or, perchance, their +cups of tea, and watched the arrival and departure of coaches and +horsemen at "mine inn." + +John Adams wrote frequently of the inns of the time. He said of the +Ipswich innkeeper in 1771: "Landlord and Landlady are some of the +grandest people alive. Landlady is the great granddaughter of Governor +Endicott, and has all the notions of greatest family. As to Landlord, he +is as happy, and as big, as proud, as conceited as any nobleman in +England, always calm and good-natured and lazy." + +Of the Enfield landlord he wrote: "Oated and drank tea at Peases--a +smart house and landlord truly; well dressed with his ruffles &c. and +upon inquiry I found he was the great man of the town, their +representative as well as tavern-keeper." In a paper which he wrote upon +licensed houses, Adams stated that "retailers and taverners are +generally, in the country, assessors, selectmen, representatives, or +esquires." + +Members of our best and most respected families throughout New England +were innkeepers. The landlord was frequently a local magistrate, a +justice of the peace, or a sheriff. Notices of town-meetings, of +elections, of new laws and ordinances of administration were posted at +the tavern, just as legal notices are printed in the newspapers +nowadays. Bills of sales, of auctions, records of transfers were +naturally posted therein; the taverns were the original business +exchanges. No wonder all the men in the township flocked to the +tavern--they had to to know anything of town affairs, to say nothing of +local scandals. Distances were given in almanacs of the day, not from +town to town, but from tavern to tavern. + +Of the good quality of New England inns many travellers testify. +Lafayette wrote to his wife in 1777: "Host and hostess sit at the table +with you and do the honors of a comfortable meal, and on going away you +pay your fare without higgling." Dr. Dwight said the best old-fashioned +New England inns were superior to any of the modern ones. Brissot said: +"You meet with neatness, dignity and decency, the chambers neat, the +beds good, the sheets clean, supper passable, cyder tea punch and all +for fourteen pence a head." Alackaday! the good old times. + +Next in importance to the landlord came the stage-driver. He was so +popular and such a kindly fellow that he had to be prohibited by law +from carrying any parcels or letters for persons along the route, else +he were overburdened with troublesome and hindering business, +detrimental to the postal and carriage income of the government. He was +so importuned to drink at each stopping-place that he might have lain +drunk the whole year round. He was of so much consequence and so looked +up to, that little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, hardly +exaggerated his position when he roared out angrily to a hungry +passenger who urged him to drive faster: "While I drive this coach I am +the whole United States of America." Stage-driving was an hereditary +gift; it went in families. Four Potters, three Ackermans, three Annables +drove in Salem. Patch and Peach. Tozzer and Blumpy, Canney and Camp, +were well-known stage-driving names. + +The stage-agent also, that obsolete functionary, was a man of much local +consequence and of many affairs; he was established in many a tavern as +a necessary and almost immovable piece of bar-room furniture. + +To show the importance of tavern, tavern-keeper, stage-agent, and +stage-driver in early Federal days, let me give a single instance. +Haverhill was the great staging centre of New Hampshire; six or eight +lines of coaches left there each day. There were lines direct to Boston, +New York, and Stanstead, Canada. Of course there was a vast bustle and +commotion on the arrival and departure of each coach, and a goodly +number of passengers were deposited at the tavern that formed the coach +office--sometimes one hundred and fifty a day. It can readily be seen +what a news centre such a tavern must have been, how much knowledge of +the world must have been gathered by its occupants. It must be +remembered that our universal modern source of information, the +newspaper, did not then exist; there were a few journals, of course, of +scant circulation, but of what we now deem news they contained nothing. +Information of current events came through hearing and talking, not +through reading. Hence it came to be that an innkeeper was not only +influential in local affairs, but was universally known as the +best-informed man in the place; reporters, so to speak, rendered their +accounts to him; items of foreign and local news were sent to him; he +was in himself an entire Associated Press. + +The earliest roads for travel throughout New England followed the Indian +trails or paths, and were but two or three feet wide. The Old Plymouth +or Coast Road, of much importance because connecting Boston and +Plymouth, the capitals of separate colonies, was provided for by action +of the General Court in 1639. It ran through old Braintree. The Old +Connecticut Road or Path started from Cambridge, ran to Marlborough, +thence to Grafton, Oxford, and Woodstock, and on to Springfield and +Albany. It was intersected at Woodstock by the Providence Path, which +ran through Narragansett and Providence plantations, and also by the +Nipmuck Path which came from Norwich. + +The New Connecticut Road ran as did the old road, from Boston to Albany. +It was known at a later date as the Post Road. From Boston it ran to +Marlborough, thence to Worcester, thence to Brookfield, and so on to +Springfield and Albany. + +The famous Bay Path, laid out in 1673, left the Old Connecticut Path at +Happy Hollow, now Wayland, and ran through Marlborough to Worcester, +Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield, when it separated in two paths, +one--the Hadley Path--running to Ware, Belchertown, and Hadley, and the +other returning to the Old Connecticut Path and on to Springfield. + +An inexplicable charm still attaches itself to these old Indian paths, a +delight in attempting to trace their unused and overgrown roadways, as +they leave the main road in devious twists and turns till they again +join its beaten way. And the halo of early romance and adventure +surrounds them. Holland felt the charm when he wrote thus of the Bay +Path: + + "It was marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight + clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was + bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through + woods which bore the mark of centuries, over barren hills that had + been licked by the Indian hounds of fire, and along the banks of + streams that the seine had never dragged. A powerful interest was + attached to the Bay Path. It was the channel through which laws + were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, + and through which came long, loving letters and messages. That + rough thread of soil chopped by the blades of a hundred streams was + a bond that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of + love and interest and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed + over by friends on the journey and friends at home." + +Hawthorne felt it also and said: + + "The forest-track trodden by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy + and ponderous Englishmen has now a distinctness which it never + could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many + moccasins. It goes onward from one clearing to another, here + plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, + but everywhere showing a decided line along which human interests + have begun to hold their career.... And the Indians coming from + their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement marvel at + the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a + flitting presentiment that this heavy tread will find its way over + all the land, and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild + Indian will alike be trampled beneath it." + +For many years these paths were travelled, gradually widening from +foot-paths to bridle-ways, to cart-tracks, to carriage-roads, until they +became the post-roads, set thick with cheerful country homes. In some +portions of New England they still are travelled and form the general +thoroughfare, but in many lonely townships the old paths are deserted, +and traffic and passage over the post or county road is gone forever. +Bushes flourish and meet gloomily across the grass-grown track; forest +trees droop heavily over it in summer and fall unheeded across it in +winter. On either side moss-grown, winter-killed apple-trees and ancient +stunted currant-bushes struggle for life against sturdy young pine and +spruce and birch. Many a rod of heavy tumble-down stone wall--New +England Stonehenges--may be seen, not as of old dividing cleared and +fertile fields, but in the midst of a forest of trees or underbrush: + + "Far up on these abandoned mountain farms + Now drifting back to forests wild again, + The long gray walls extend their clasping arms + Pathetic monuments of vanished men." + +Or more pathetic monuments still of hard and wasted work. On either side +of the way, at too sadly frequent intervals, ruined wells or desolate +yawning cellar-holes, with tumbling chimneys standing like Druid ruins, +show that fair New England homes once there were found. Flaming orange +tiger-lilies, most homely and cheerful bloom of country gardens, have +spread from the deserted dooryards, across the untrodden foot-paths, in +weedy thickets a-down the hill, and shed their rank odor unheeded on the +air. + +Some of the old provincial mile-stones, however, remain, and put us +closely in touch with the past. In the southern part of New London +County, and at Stratford, Conn., on the old post-road--the King's +Highway--between Boston and Philadelphia, there are mossgrown stones +that were set under the supervision of Benjamin Franklin when he was +colonial Postmaster-General. After that highway was laid out, the +placing and setting of the mile-stones were entrusted to Franklin, and +he transacted the business, as he did everything else, in a thoroughly +original way. He drove over the road in a comfortable chaise, followed +by a gang of men and heavy teams loaded with the mile-stones. He +attached to his chaise a machine which registered by the revolution of +the chaise-wheels the number of miles travelled, and he had the +mile-stones set by that record, and marked with the distance to the +nearest large town. Thus the Stratford stone says: "20 Mls to N. H."--New +Haven. + +By provincial enactment in Governor Hutchinson's time, mile-stones were +set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Some of these stones +are still standing. There is one in the middle of the city of Worcester, +on Lincoln Street--the "New Connecticut Path;" it is of red sandstone, +and is marked, "42 Mls to Boston, 50 Mls to Springfield, 1771." + +In Sutton, on the "Old Connecticut Path," stands still the king of all +these 1771 mile-stones. It is of red sandstone, is five feet high, and +nearly three feet wide. It is marked, "48 Mls to Boston 1771 B. W." The +letters B. W. stand for Bartholomew Woodbury, a jovial and liberal old +Sutton tavern-keeper who died in 1775. When the mile-stones were set out +by the provincial government, the place for this Sutton stone fell a few +rods from Landlord Woodbury's house; but he obtained permission and set +up this handsome stone at his own expense, beside his great horse-block +under his swinging sign at his open, welcoming door. He fancied, +perhaps, that it would attract the attention, and thus cause the halting +of travellers. Tavern-keeper and tavern are gone; no vestiges even of +cobblestone chimneys or cellar walls remain. The old post-road is now +but little travelled, but the great mile-stone and its neighbor, the +worn stepping-block, still stand, lonely monuments of past days and past +pleasures. On warm summer nights perhaps the silent old mile-stone +awakes and sadly tells his companion of the gay coaches that rattled by, +and the rollicking bucks and blades, the gallant soldiers that galloped +past him in the days of his youth, a century ago. And the +stepping-block may tell in turn of the good old days when her broad +sunny face was pressed by the feet of fair colonial dames who, with +faces hidden in riding-hoods and masks, stepped lightly from saddle or +pillion to "board and bait" at Bartholomew Woodbury's cheerful inn. + +In Roxbury, Mass., there still stands at the corner of Centre and +Washington Streets the famous Roxbury Parting Stone. It is a great +square stone, bearing on one face the words: "The Parting Stone 1744. P. +Dudley;" on another face the words: "Dedham--Rhode Island," and on a +third "Cambridge--Watertown." It has had set on it recently an iron +frame or fixture for a gas-lamp. This stone, with many others in Norfolk +County, was placed by Paul Dudley at his own expense in the middle of +the last century. It has seen the separation or "parting" of many a +brave company that had ridden out to it from Boston. Many a +distinguished traveller has passed it and glanced at its carved words. +Lord Percy's soldiers took counsel of it one hot April morning to find +the road to Lexington. + +Governor Belcher set out a row of mile-stones from Boston Town House to +his home in Milton. Some of them are still standing, the seventh and +eighth in Milton, one marked "8 miles to B. Town House. The Lower Way, +1734." The ninth and twelfth stand as historical landmarks in Quincy, on +the old Plymouth Road, and bear the dates 1720 and 1727. + +In Wenham another mile-stone near the graveyard bears the date 1710, +shows the distance to Ipswich and Boston, and gives these words of +timely warning: "I know that Thou wilt Bring me to Death and to the +house appointed for all Living." + +A marked improvement in facilities for travel came in turnpike days. +These well laid out and well kept roads fairly changed the face of the +country. They sometimes shortened by half the distance to be travelled +between two towns. Stock companies were formed to build bridges and +grade these turnpikes, and the stock formed a good investment and was +also vastly used in speculation. The story of the turnpike is as +interesting as that of the Indian path, but cannot be told at length +here. They, too, have had their day; in some counties the turnpike is as +deserted as the path and seems equally ancient. + +New England roads and turnpikes have seen many a gay sight, for the +custom of speeding the parting guest "agatewards" for some miles, with +an accompanying escort on foot or on horseback, to some ford or natural +turning-point or bourn, was a universal mark of interest and affection, +and of courtesy as well. Judge Sewall records, on one occasion, with +much indignation, that "not one soul rode with us to the ferry." Ere the +days of turnpikes, the old Indian paths witnessed many a sad and +pathetic parting in the wilderness, such as was recorded in simple +language in Parson Thatcher's diary in 1680, when he left Barnstable to +go to a new parish: + + "A great company of horsemen 7 & 50 horse & 12 of them double, went + with us to Sandwich & there got me to go to prayer with them, and + I think none of them parted with me with dry eyes." + +This is indeed a strong picture for the brush of a painter, the golden +September light, nowhere more radiantly beautiful than on + + "the narrowing Cape + That stretches its shrunk arm out to all the winds, + And the relentless smiting of the waves," + +and the sad-faced band in Puritan garb, armed and mounted, gathered +around their departing leader in reverent prayer. + +Perhaps the turnpike saw no more characteristic scene than the winter +ride to market. Though summer and fall were the New England farmer's +time of increase, winter was his time of trade and his time of +recreation as well. When wintry blasts grew chill, and snow and ice +covered deep the desolate fields and country roads, then he prepared +with zest and with delight for his gelid time of outing, his Arctic +red-letter day, his greatest social pleasure of the entire year. The +friendly word was circulated by a kind of estafet from farm to farm, was +carried by neighbor or passing traveller, or was discussed and planned +and agreed upon in the noon-house, or at the tavern chimney-side on +Sunday during the nooning, that on a certain date--unless there set in +the tantalizing and swamping January thaw, a thaw which might be pushing +and unseasonable enough to rush in in December and quite as often hung +off and dawdled into February--that on the appointed date, at break of +day, the annual ride to market would begin. Often fifty or sixty +neighbors would respond to the call, would start together on the road. +For farmers in western Vermont and Massachusetts the market town was +Troy or other Hudson valley towns. In Maine, from Bath and Hallowell and +neighboring towns, the winter procession rode to Portland. In central +Massachusetts some drove to Northampton, Springfield, or Hartford; but +the greatest number of farmers and the largest amount of farm produce +went to the towns of the Massachusetts coast, to Salem, to Newburyport, +and, above all, to Boston. + +The two-horse pung or the single-horse pod, shod with steel shoes an +inch thick, was closely packed with the accumulated farm wealth--whole +pigs, perhaps a deer or two, firkins of butter, casks of cheese, four +cheeses in each cask, bags of beans, pease or corn, skins of mink, fox, +and fisher-cat that the boys had trapped, birch brooms that the boys had +made, yarn that their sisters had spun, and stockings and mittens that +they had knitted--in short, anything that a New England farm could +produce that would sell to any profit in a New England town. So closely +was the sleigh packed, in fact, that the driver could not be seated. The +sturdy and hardy farmer stood on a little semicircular step in the rear +of the sleigh, his body protected by the high sleigh back against the +sharp icy blasts. At times he ran alongside or behind his vehicle to +keep his blood in brisk circulation. + +Though every inch of the sleigh was packed to its fullest extent, there +was always found room in some corner for plenty of food to last the +thrifty traveller through his journey; often enough to liberally supply +him even on his return trip--cold roasted spare ribs of pork, doughnuts, +loaves of "rye an' Injun" bread, and invariably a bountiful mass of +frozen bean porridge. This latter was made and frozen in a tub, and when +space was hard to find in the crowded vehicle, the solid mass was +furnished with a loop of twine by which to hang it to the side of the +pung. A small hatchet with which to chop off a chunk of porridge formed +the accompaniment of this unalluring Arctic provender. Oats and hay to +feed his horses did the farmer also carry. + +There were plenty of taverns in which he could obtain food if he needed +it, in which, indeed, he did obtain liquid sustenance to warm his bones +and stir his tongue, and make palatable the half-thawed porridge which +he ate in front of the cheerful tavern fire. But it was the invariable +custom, no matter what the wealth of the farmer, to carry a supply of +food for the journey. This kind of itinerant picnic was called +"tuck-a-nuck "--a word of Indian origin, or "mitchin," while the box or +hamper or bucket that held the provisions was called a "mitchin-box." I +can fancy that no thrifty or loving housewife allowed the man of her +household to go to market with too meanly filled a mitchin-box, but took +an honest pride in sending him off with a full stock of rich doughnuts, +well-baked bread, well-filled pies, and at least well-cooked porridge, +which he could devour without shame before the eyes of his neighbors. + +The traveller did not carry his meals from home because the tavern fare +was expensive; at the inn where he paid ten cents a night for his +lodging, he was uniformly charged but twelve and a half cents for a +"cold bite," and but twenty-five cents for a regular meal; but it was +not the fashion to purchase meals at the tavern; the host made his +profits from the liquor he sold and from the sleeping-room he gave. +Sometimes the latter was simple enough. A great fire was built in the +fireplace of either front room--the bar-room and parlor--and round it, +in a semicircle, feet to the fire and heads on their rolled-up buffalo +robes, slept the tired travellers. A few sybaritic or rheumatic tillers +of the soil paid for half a bed in one of the double-bedded rooms which +all taverns then contained, and got a full bed's worth, in deep hollows +and high billows of live-geese feathers, warm homespun blankets, and +patchwork quilts. + +It was certainly a gay winter's scene as sleigh after sleigh dashed into +the tavern barn or shed and the stiffened driver, after "putting up" his +steed, walked quickly to the bar-room, where sat the host behind his +cage-like counter, where ranged the inspiring barrels of old Medford or +Jamaica rum and hard cider, and + + "Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred + Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, + And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip, + Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip." + +Many a rough joke was laughed at, many a story told ere the tired circle +slept around the fire; but four o'clock saw them all bestirring, making +a fresh start on their city-ward journey. + +In town the traveller was busy enough; he not only had his farm products +to sell, but since he sometimes got the enormous sum of fifty dollars +for his sleigh load, and it was estimated that two dollars was a liberal +allowance for a week's travelling expenses, he had much to spend and +many purchases to make--spices and raisins for the home table, +fish-hooks and powder and shot, pewter plates, or a few pieces of +English crockery, a calico gown or two, a shawl, or a scarf, or a beaver +hat; and thus brought to dreary New England farms their sole taste of +town life in winter. + +For many years travel, especially to New York and other seaport towns, +was largely by water, on sloop or pink or snow; and many stories of the +discomforts of such trips have come down to us. + +The first passenger steamboat which ran between New York and Providence +made its trial trip in 1822. The boats made the passage from town to +town in twenty-three hours, which was monstrous fast time. On one of the +first trips the boat lay by near Point Judith to repair a slight damage +to machinery, and all the simple country-folk who came down to the shore +expecting to find a wreck, were amazed to see the boat--apparently +burning up--go quickly sliding away without sails over the water until +out of sight. Many whispered that the devil had a hand in it, and +perhaps was on board in person. The new means of conveyance proved at +once to be the favored one for all genteel persons wishing to travel +between Boston and New York. The forty-mile journey between Boston and +Providence was made in fine stage-coaches, which were always crowded. +Often eighteen or twenty full coach-loads were carried each way each +day. The editor of the _Providence Gazette_ wrote at that time: "We were +rattled from Providence to Boston in four hours and fifty minutes--if +any one wants to go faster he may send to Kentucky and charter a streak +of lightning!" + +The fare on these coaches was three dollars for the trip between +Providence and Boston. This exorbitant sum was a sore annoyance to all +thrifty men, and indignantly did they rail and protest against it. At +last a union was formed, and a line of rival coaches was established, on +which the fare was to be two dollars and a half a trip. This caused +great dismay to the regular coach company, who at once reduced their +fare to two dollars. The rival line, not to be outdone, announced their +reduction to a dollar and a half. The regulars then widely advertised +that their fare would thenceforth be only one dollar. The rivals then +sold seats for the trip for fifty cents apiece; and in despair, after +jealously watching for weeks the crowded coaches of the new line, the +conquered old line mournfully announced that they would make trips every +day with their vehicle filled with the first applicants who chanced to +be on time at the starting-place, and that these lucky dogs would be +carried for nothing. + +The new stage-coaches were now in their turn deserted, and the +proprietors pondered for a week trying to invent some way to still +further cut down the entirely vanished rates. They at last placarded the +taverns with announcements that they would not only carry their patrons +free of expense, but would give each traveller on their coaches a good +dinner at the end of his journey. The old coach-line was rich and at +once counter-advertised a free dinner and a good bottle of wine too, to +its patrons and there, for a time, the fierce controversy came to a +standstill, both lines having crowded trips each day. + +Mr. Shaffer, who was a fashionable teacher of dancing and deportment in +Boston, and a well-known "man about town," a jolly good fellow, got upon +the Providence coach one Monday morning in Boston, had a gay ride to +Providence and a good dinner and bottle of wine at the end of the +journey, all at the expense of the coach company. On Tuesday he rode +more gayly still back to Boston, had his dinner and his wine, and was up +on Wednesday morning to mount the Providence coach for the third ride +and dinner and bottle. He returned to Boston on Thursday in the same +manner. On Friday the fame of his cheap fun was thoroughly noised all +over Boston, and he collected a crowd of gay young sparks who much +enjoyed their frolicking ride and the fine Providence dinners and wine. +All returned in high spirits with Shaffer to Boston on Saturday to meet +the sad, sad news that the rival coach lines had made a compromise and +had both signed a contract to carry passengers thereafter for two +dollars a trip. + +Upon Tremont Street, near Winter Street, in Boston, there stood at that +time in a garden a fine old house which was kept as a restaurant, and +was a pleasant summer lounging-place for all gay cits. One day a very +portly, aldermanic man presented himself at the entrance of the +restaurant and asked the price of a dinner. Shaffer, who was present, +immediately assumed all the obsequious airs of a waiter, and calling for +a tape-measure, proceeded to measure the distance around the protuberant +waist of the astonished and insulted inquirer, who could hardly believe +his sense of hearing when the impudent Shaffer very politely answered, +"Price of dinner, sir!--about four dollars, sir!--for that size, sir!" +Such were the practical jokes of stage and tavern life in olden days. + + + + +IX + +HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS + + +The first century of colonial life saw few set times and days for +pleasures. The holy days of the English Church were as a stench to the +Puritan nostrils, and their public celebration was at once rigidly +forbidden by the laws of New England. New holidays were not quickly +evolved, and the sober gatherings for matters of Church and State for a +time took their place. The hatred of "wanton Bacchanallian Christmasses" +spent throughout England, as Cotton said, in "revelling, dicing, +carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in +excess of wine, in mad mirth," was the natural reaction of intelligent +and thoughtful minds against the excesses of a festival which had ceased +to be a Christian holiday, but was dominated by a lord of misrule who +did not hesitate to invade the churches in time of service, in his noisy +revels and sports. English Churchmen long ago revolted also against such +Christmas observance. + +Of the first Pilgrim Christmas we know but little, save that it was +spent, as was many a later one, in work. Bradford said: "Ye 25 day +begane to erect y^e first house for comone use to receive them and +their goods." On the following Christmas the governor records with grim +humor a "passage rather of mirth than of waight." Some new company +excused themselves from work on that day, saying it went against their +consciences. The governor answered that he would spare them until they +were better informed. But returning at mid-day and finding them playing +pitch-the-bar and stool-ball in the streets, he told them that it was +against _his_ conscience that they should play and others work, and so +made them cease their games. + +By 1659 the Puritans had grown to hate Christmas more and more; it was, +to use Shakespeare's words, "the bug that feared them all." The very +name smacked to them of incense, stole, and monkish jargon; any person +who observed it as a holiday by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any +other way was to pay five shillings fine, so desirous were they to +"beate down every sprout of Episcopacie." Judge Sewall watched jealously +the feeling of the people with regard to Christmas, and noted with +pleasure on each succeeding year the continuance of common traffic +throughout the day. Such entries as this show his attitude: "Dec. 25, +1685. Carts come to town and shops open as usual. Some somehow observe +the day, but are vexed I believe that the Body of people profane it, and +blessed be God no authority yet to compel them to keep it." When the +Church of England established Christmas services in Boston a few years +later, we find the Judge waging hopeless war against Governor Belcher +over it, and hear him praising his son for not going with other boy +friends to hear the novel and attractive services. He says: "I dehort +mine from Christmas keeping and charge them to forbear." + +Christmas could not be regarded till this century as a New England +holiday, though in certain localities, such as old Narragansett--an +opulent community which was settled by Episcopalians--two weeks of +Christmas visiting and feasting were entered into with zest by both +planters and slaves for many years previous to the Revolution. + +Thanksgiving, commonly regarded as being from its earliest beginning a +distinctive New England festival, and an equally characteristic Puritan +holiday, was originally neither. + +The first New England Thanksgiving was not observed by either Plymouth +Pilgrim or Boston Puritan. "Gyving God thanks" for safe arrival and many +other liberal blessings was first heard on New England shores from the +lips of the Popham colonists at Monhegan, in the Thanksgiving service of +the Church of England. + +Days set apart for thanksgiving were known in Europe before the +Reformation, and were in frequent use by Protestants afterward, +especially in the Church of England, where they were a fixed custom long +before they were in New England. One wonders that the Puritans, hating +so fiercely the customs and set days and holy days of the Established +Church, should so quickly have appointed a Thanksgiving Day. But the +first New England Thanksgiving was not a day of religious observance, it +was a day of recreation. Those who fancy all Puritans, and especially +all Pilgrims, to have been sour, morose, and gloomy men should read this +account of the first Thanksgiving week (not day) in Plymouth. It was +written on December 11, 1621, by Edward Winslow to a friend in England: + + "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling + that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we + had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four killed as much + fowl as with a little help beside served the company about a week. + At which times among other recreations we exercised our arms, many + of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest + king Massasoyt with some ninety men, whom for three days we + entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer + which they brought and bestow'd on our governor, and upon the + captains and others." + +As Governor Bradford specified that during that autumn "beside +waterfoule ther was great store of wild turkies," we can have the +satisfaction of feeling sure that at that first Pilgrim Thanksgiving our +forefathers and foremothers had turkeys. + +Thus fared the Pilgrims better at their Thanksgiving than did their +English brothers, for turkeys were far from plentiful in England at that +date. + +Though there were but fifty-five English to eat the Pilgrim Thanksgiving +feast, there were "partakers in plenty," and the ninety sociable Indian +visitors did not come empty-handed, but joined fraternally in provision +for the feast, and probably also in the games. + +These recreations were, without doubt, competitions in running, leaping, +jumping, and perhaps stool-ball, a popular game played by both sexes, in +which a ball was driven from stool to stool or wicket to wicket. + +During that chilly November week in Plymouth, Priscilla Mullins and John +Alden may have "recreated" themselves with this ancient form of +croquet--if any recreation were possible for the four women of the +colony, who, with the help of one servant and a few young girls or +maidekins, had to prepare and cook food for three days for one hundred +and twenty hungry men, ninety-one of them being Indians, with an +unbounded capacity for gluttonous gorging unsurpassed by any other race. +Doubtless the deer, and possibly the great turkeys, were roasted in the +open air. The picture of that Thanksgiving Day, the block-house with its +few cannon, the Pilgrim men in buff breeches, red waistcoats, and green +or sad-colored mandillions; the great company of Indians, gay in holiday +paint and feathers and furs; the few sad, overworked, homesick women, in +worn and simple gowns, with plain coifs and kerchiefs, and the pathetic +handful of little children, forms a keen contrast to the prosperous, +cheerful Thanksgivings of a century later. + +There is no record of any special religious service during this week of +feasting. + +The Pilgrims had good courage, stanch faith, to thus celebrate and give +thanks, for they apparently had but little cause to rejoice. They had +been lost in the woods, where they had wandered surbated, and had been +terrified by the roar of "Lyons," and had met wolves that "sat on thier +tayles and grinned" at them; they had been half frozen in their poorly +built houses; had been famished, or sickened with unwonted and +unpalatable food; their common house had burned down, half their company +was dead--they had borne sore sorrows, and equal trials were to come. +They were in dire distress for the next two years. In the spring of 1623 +a drought scorched the corn and stunted the beans, and in July a fast +day of nine hours of prayer was followed by a rain that revived their +"withered corn and their drooping affections." In testimony of their +gratitude for the rain, which would not have been vouchsafed for private +prayer, and thinking they would "show great ingratitude if they +smothered up the same," the second Pilgrim Thanksgiving was ordered and +observed. + +In 1630, on February 22d, the first public thanksgiving was held in +Boston by the Bay Colony, in gratitude for the safe arrival of +food-bearing and friend-bringing ships. On November 4, 1631, Winthrop +wrote again: "We kept thanksgiving day in Boston." From that time till +1684 there were at least twenty-two public thanksgiving days appointed +in Massachusetts--about one in two years; but it was not a regular +biennial festival. In 1675, a time of deep gloom through the many and +widely separated attacks from the fierce savages, there was no public +thanksgiving celebrated in either Massachusetts or Connecticut. It is +difficult to state when the feast became a fixed annual observance in +New England. In the year 1742 were two Thanksgiving Days. + +Rhode Islanders paid little heed in early days to Thanksgiving--at any +rate, to days set by the Massachusetts authorities. Governor Andros +savagely prosecuted more than one Rhode Islander who calmly worked all +day long on the day appointed for giving thanks. In Boston, William +Veazie was set in the pillory in the market-place for ploughing on the +Thanksgiving Day of June 18, 1696. He said his king had granted liberty +of conscience, and that the reigning king, William, was not his ruler; +that King James was his royal prince, and since he did not believe in +setting apart days for thanksgiving he should not observe them. + +Connecticut people, though just as pious and as prosperous as the Bay +colonists, do not appear to have been as grateful, and had considerable +trouble at times to "pick vppon a day" for thanksgiving; and the +festival was not regularly observed there till 1716. + +Thanksgiving was not always appointed in early days for the same token +of God's beneficence. Days of thanks were set in gratitude for and +observance of great political and military events, for victories over +the Indians or in the Palatinate, for the accession of kings, for the +prospect of royal heirs to the throne, for the discovery of conspiracy +for the "healing of breaches," the "dissipation of the Pirates," the +abatement of diseases, for the safe arrival of "psons of spetiall use +and quality," as well as in gratitude for plentiful harvests--that "God +had not given them cleannes of teeth and wante of bread." + +The early Thanksgivings were not always set, upon Thursday. It is said +that that day was chosen on account of its reflected glory as lecture +day. Judge Sewall told the governor and his council, in 1697, that he +"desir'd the same day of the week might be for Thanksgiving and Fasts," +and that "Boston and Ipswitch Lectures led us to Thorsday." The feast of +thanks was for many years appointed with equal frequency upon "Tusday +com seuen-night," or "vppon Wensday com fort-nit." Nor was any special +season of the year chosen: in 1716 it was appointed in August; in 1713, +in January; in 1718, in December; in 1719, in October. The frequent +appointments in gratitude for bountiful harvests finally made the autumn +the customary time. + +The God of the Puritans was a jealous God, and many fasts were appointed +to avert his wrath, as shown in blasted wheat; moulded beans, wormy +pease, and mildewed corn; in drought and grasshoppers; in Indian +invasions; in caterpillars and other woes of New England; in children +dying by the chincough; in the "excessive raigns from the botles of +Heaven"--all these evils being sent for the crying sins of wig-wearing, +sheltering Quakers, not paying the ministers, etc. A fast and a feast +kept close company in Puritan calendars. A fast frequently preceded +Thanksgiving Day, and was sometimes appointed for the day succeeding +the feast--a clever plan which had its good hygienic points. Days of +private as well as of public fast and thanksgiving were also observed by +individuals. Judge Sewall took the greatest satisfaction in his +fastings, and carefully outlined his plan of prayer throughout the fast +day, which he spent in his chamber--a plan which included and specified +ministers, rulers and magistrates, his family, and every person whom he +said "had a smell of relation" to him; and also every nation and people +in the known world. He does not note Thanksgiving Day as a holiday of +any importance. + +Though in the mind of the Puritan, Christmas smelled to heaven of +idolatry, when his own festival, Thanksgiving, became annual, it assumed +many of the features of the old English Christmas; it was simply a day +of family reunion in November instead of December, on which Puritans ate +turkey and Indian pudding and pumpkin-pie, instead of "superstitious +meats" such as a baron of beef, boar's head, and plum-pudding. + +Many funny stories are told of the early Thanksgiving Days, such as the +town of Colchester calmly ignoring the governor's appointed day and +observing their own festival a week later in order to allow time for the +arrival, by sloop from New York, of a hogshead of molasses for pies. +Another is recounted of a farmer losing his cask of Thanksgiving +molasses out of his cart as he reached the top of a steep hill, and of +its rolling swiftly down till split in twain by its fall. His helpless +discomfiture and his wife's acidity of temper and diet are comically +told. + +There is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society a +broadside announcing a thanksgiving for victory in King Philip's War; +and during the following year, 1677, the first regular Thanksgiving +proclamation was printed. + +But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward, +writing in 1699, does not name it, saying of New Englanders: "Election, +Commencement and Training Days are their only Holy Days." + +It was natural in New England, a state planted by men of exceptional +intelligence, that all should think as one minister said, "If the +college die, the church cannot long live;" and in the Commencement Day +of their colleges they found matter of deep interest, of pride, of +recreation. Judge Sewall always notes the day at Harvard, its exercises, +its dinner, its plentiful wine, and the Commencement cake, which he +carried to his friends. The meagre entries in the diaries and almanacs +of many an old New England minister show that Commencement Day was one +of their proudest holidays. After 1730, Commencement Day was usually set +for Friday, in order that there might be, as President Wadsworth said in +his diary, "less remaining time in the week to be spent in frolicking." + +Training Day may be called the first New England holiday, though +Hawthorne thought the day of too serious importance in early warlike +times to be classed under the head of festivals. At the first Pilgrim +Thanksgiving they "exercised their arms," and for some years they had +six trainings a year; no wonder they were said to be "diligent in +traynings." The all-powerful Church Militant held sway even over these +gatherings of New England warriors. The military reviews and exercises +were made properly religious by an opening exercise of prayer and +psalm-singing, the latter sometimes at such inordinate length as to +provoke criticism and remarks from the rank and file, remonstrance which +was at once pleasantly rebuked by pious Judge Sewall. Religious notices +were also given before the company broke line. A noble dinner somewhat +redeemed the sobriety of the opening exercises, a dinner given in Boston +to gentlemen and gentlewomen in tents on the Common; and the frequent +firing of guns and cannon further enlivened the day. + +Boston mustered a very fair military force at trainings, even in early +days. Winthrop writes that at the May training in 1639 one thousand men +exercised, and in the autumn twelve hundred bore arms, and not an oath +or quarrel was heard and no drunkenness seen. The training field was +Boston Common. At these trainings prizes were frequently offered for the +best marksmanship; in Connecticut, a silk handkerchief or some such +trinket. Judge Sewall offered a silver cup, and again a silver-headed +pike; since he was an uncommonly poor shot himself, his generosity shows +out all the more plainly. With barbaric openness of cruel intent, a +figure stuffed to represent a human form was often the target, and it +was a matter of grave decision whether a shot in the head or bowels were +the fatal one. Sometimes the day was enlivened by a form of amusement +ever beloved of the colonists--by public punishments. For instance, at +the training day at Kittery, Me., in 1690, two men "road the woodin +Horse for dangerous and churtonous carig and mallplying of oaths." + +The training days of colony times developed into Muster Days, the +crowning pinnacle of gayety, dissipation, and noise in a country boy's +life in New England for over a century. + +We owe much to these trainings and these trials of marksmanship. In +conjunction with the universal skill in woodcraft and in hunting, they +made our ancestors more than a match for the Indian and the Frenchman, +and in Revolutionary times gave them their ascendency over the English. + +Election Day was naturally a time of much excitement to New Englanders +in olden times, as nowadays. In fact, the entire week partook of the +flavor of a holiday. This did not please the ministers. Urian Oakes +wrote sadly that Election Day had become a time "to meet, to smoke, +carouse and swagger and dishonor God with the greater bravery." Various +local customs obtained. "'Lection cake," a sort of rusk rich with fruit +and wine, was made in many localities; indeed, is still made in some +families that I know; and sometimes "'lection beer" was brewed. In early +May the herb gatherers (many of them old squaws) brought to town various +barks and roots for this beer, and they also vended it on the streets +during Election week. An Election sermon was also preached. + +Boston had two Election Days. "Nigger 'Lection" was so called in +distinction from Artillery Election. On the former anniversary day the +election of the governor was formally announced, and the black +population was allowed to throng the Common, to buy gingerbread and +drink beer like their white betters. On the second holiday the Ancient +and Honorable Artillery had a formal parade, and chose its new officers, +who received with much ceremony, out-of-doors, their new commissions +from the new governor. Woe, then, to the black face that dared be seen +on that grave and martial occasion! In 1817 a negro boy named William +Read, enraged at being refused the high privileges and pleasures of +Artillery Day, blew up in Boston Harbor a ship called the Canton Packet. +For years it was a standing taunt of white boys in Boston to negroes: + + "Who blew up the ship? + Nigger, why for? + 'Cause he couldn't go to 'lection + An' shake paw-paw." + +Paw-paw was a gambling game which was played on the Common with four +sea-shells of the _Cypr[oe]a Moneta_. + +The 14th of July was observed by Boston negroes for many years to +commemorate the introduction of measures to abolish the slave trade. It +was derisively called Bobalition Day, and the orderly convention of +black men was greeted with a fusillade of rotten fruit and eggs and much +jesting abuse. It was at one of these Bobalition-Day celebrations that +this complimentary toast was seriously given and recorded in honor of +the newly elected governor: "Governor Brooks--May the mantelpiece of +Caleb Strong fall on the hed of his distinguished Predecessor." + +In other localities, notably on the Massachusetts coast, in Connecticut, +and in Narragansett, the term "Nigger 'Lection" was applied to the +election of a black governor, who held his sway over the black +population. Wherever there was a large number of negroes the black +governor was a man of much dignity and importance, and his election was +a scene of much gayety and considerable feasting, which the governor's +master had to pay for. As he had much control over his black +constituents, it is plain that the black governor might be made useful +in many petty ways to his white neighbors. Occasionally the "Nigger +'Lection" had a deep political signification and influence. "Scaeva," in +his "Hartford in the Olden Times," and Hinman, in the "American +Revolution," give detailed and interesting accounts of "Nigger +'Lection." + +A few rather sickly and benumbed attempts were made in bleak New England +to celebrate in old English fashion the first of May. A May-pole was +erected in Charlestown in 1687, and was promptly cut down. The most +unbounded observance of the day was held at Merry Mount (now the town of +Quincy) in 1628 by roystering Morton and his gay crew. Bradford says: +"They set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days +togeather, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and +frisking togeather like so many fairies or furies rather." This May-pole +was a stately pine-tree eighty feet high, with a pair of buck's horns +nailed at the top, and with "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern +Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, and at once cut the +"idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of +their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a +woful mount." + +To eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday was held by the Puritans to be a +heathenish vanity; and yet, apparently with the purpose of annoying good +Boston folk, some attempts were made to observe the day. One year a +young man went through the town "carrying a cock on his back with a bell +in 's hand." Several of his fellows followed him blindfolded, and, under +pretence of striking him with heavy cart-whips, managed to do +considerable havoc in the surrounding crowd. We can well imagine how +odious this horse-play was to the Puritans, aggravated by the fact that +it was done to note a holy day. On Shrove Tuesday, in 1685, there was +"great disorder in town by reason of Cock-skailing." This was the +barbarous game of cock-steling, or cock-throwing, or cock-squoiling--a +game as old as Chaucer's time, a universal pastime on Shrove Tuesday in +England, where scholars also had cock-fights in the school-rooms. + +The observance, or even notice, of the first day of the year as a +"gaudy-day"--of New-Year's tides in any way--was thought by Urian Oakes +to savor strongly of superstitious reverence for the heathen god Janus; +the Pilgrims made no note of their first New-Year's Day in the New +World, save by this very prosaic record, "We went to work betimes." Yet +Judge Sewall, as rigid and stern a Puritan as any of the earliest days, +records with some pride his being greeted with a levet, or blast of +trumpets, under his window, early on the morning of January 1, 1697; +while he himself celebrated the opening of the new century with a very +poor poem of his own making, which he caused to be cried or recited +throughout the town of Boston by the town bellman. + +Guy Fawkes' Day, or "Pope's Day," was observed with much noise +throughout New England for many years by burning of bonfires, preceded +by parades of young men and boys dressed in fantastic costumes and +carrying "guys" or "popes" of straw. Fires are still lighted on the 5th +of November in New England towns by boys, who know not what they +commemorate. In Newburyport, Mass., and Portsmouth, N. H., Guy Fawkes' +Day is still celebrated. In Newcastle, N. H., it is called "Pork Night." +In New York and Brooklyn, the bonfires on the night of election, and the +importunate begging on Thanksgiving Day of ragged fantastics, usually +children of Roman Catholic parents, are both direct survivals of the +ancient celebration of "Pope's Day." + +In Governor Belcher's time, in Massachusetts, the stopping of +pedestrians on the street, by "loose and dissolute people," who were +wont to levy contributions for paying for their bonfires, became so +universally annoying that the governor made proclamation against them in +the newspapers. Tudor, in his "Life of Otis," gives an account of the +observance of the day and its disagreeable features. He says the +intruders paraded the streets with grotesque images, forcibly entered +houses, ringing bells, demanding money, and singing rhymes similar to +those sung all over England: + + "Don't you remember + The Fifth of November, + The Gunpowder Treason and plot, + I see no reason + Why Gunpowder Treason + Should ever be forgot. + + From Rome to Rome + The Pope is come, + Amid ten thousand fears, + With fiery serpents to be seen + At eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. + Don't you hear my little bell + Go chink, chink, chink, + Please give me a little money + To buy my Pope some drink." + +The figure of the Pretender was added to that of the pope and devil in +1702; and on Pope's Day, in 1763, American politics took a share. I read +in a diary of that date, "Pope, Devil, and Stampman were hung together." +After the Revolution the effigy of Benedict Arnold was burnt alongside +that of Guy Fawkes. + +Though we retained Pope's Day until Federal times, the Declaration of +Independence struck one holiday off our calendar. The king's birthday +was, until then, celebrated with a training, a salute of cannon, a +dinner, and an illumination. + +Other holidays were evolved by circumstances. Anniversary Day was a +special festival for the ministers, who gathered together in the larger +towns for spiritual intercourse and the material refreshment of a good +dinner. It was originally held in Massachusetts at the May meeting of +the General Court. Forefathers' Day, the anniversary of the landing at +Plymouth, was celebrated by dinners, prayer, and praise. + +Many other annual scenes of gayety were developed by the various food +harvests. Thus the time when the salmon and shad came up the rivers had +been a great merry-making and season of feasting for the Indian, and +became equally so for the white man. As years passed on it became also a +time of much drunkenness and revelry. Men rode a hundred miles for these +gay holidays, and went home with horses laden down with fish. Shad were +so plentiful that they were thrown away, would sell for but a penny +apiece, and no persons of social importance or of good taste would eat +them except in secret. Salmon, too, were so plentiful and so cheap that +farm-servants on the banks of the Connecticut stipulated that they +should have salmon for dinner but thrice a week, as the rich fish soon +proved cloying. + +In many localities, in Narragansett in particular, the autumnal +corn-huskings almost reached the dignity of holidays, being conducted in +a liberal fashion and with unbounded hospitality, which included and +entertained whole retinues of black servants from neighboring farms, as +well as the planters and their families. Apple-parings, maple-sugar +makings, and timber-rollings were merry gatherings. + +In Vermont and down the Connecticut valley the annual sheep-shearing was +a lively scene. On Nantucket there took place annually a like +sheep-shearing, which, though a characteristic New England festival, was +like the scene in the "Winter's Tale." The broad plains outside the town +were used as a common sheep-pasture throughout the year; sometimes +fifteen or sixteen thousand sheep were kept thereon. About two miles +from the town was a sheep-fold, near the margin of a pond, where the +sheep could be washed. It was built of four or five concentric fences, +which thus formed a sort of labyrinth, into which and through which the +sheep and lambs were driven at shearing-time, and in it they were sorted +out and placed in cotes or pens erected for each sheep-owner. The +existence of carefully registered ear-marks, with which each lamb was +branded, formed a means of identifying each owner's sheep and lambs. Of +course, this gathering brought together all the sheep drivers and +herders, the sheep washers and shearers. Vast preparations of food and +drink were made for their entertainment, and tents were reared for their +occupancy, and, of course, fiddlers and peddlers, like Autolycus, +flocked there also, and much amusement and frolicking accompanied the +shearing. Even the sheep, panting with their heavy wool when within the +folds, and the shorn and shivering creatures running around outside and +bleating for their old long-wooled companions, added to the excitement +of the scene. Perhaps the maritime occupation of the Islanders made them +enjoy with the zest of unwontedness this rural "shore-holiday." But it +exists no longer; the island is not now one vast sheep-pasture, and +there are no longer any sheep-shearings. + + + + +X + +SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS + + +The Puritans of the first century of colonial life--the "true New +England men," not only of Winthrop and Bradford's time, but of the +slowly degenerating days of Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall--thought +little and cared little for any form of amusement; + + "Not knowing this, that Heaven decrees + Some mirth t'adulce man's miseries." + +Of them it may be said, as Froissart said of their ancestors, "They took +their pleasures sadly--after their fashion." "'Twas no time for New +England to dance," said Judge Sewall, sternly; and indeed it was not. +The struggle of planting colonies in the new, bleak land left little +time for dancing. + +The sole mid-week gathering, the only regular diversion of early +colonial life, took naturally a religious and sombre cast, and was found +in the "great and Thursday lecture." "Truly the times were dull when +these things happened," for so eager were the colonists for this sober +diversion that it soon became a pious dissipation. Cotton said, in his +"Way of the Churches," in 1639, that so many lectures did damage to the +people; and the largeness of the assemblies alarmed the magistrates, who +saw persons who could ill afford the time from their work, gadding to +mid-day lectures in three or four different towns the same week. Young +people, not having acquired that safety-valve, the New England +singing-school, gladly seized these religious meetings as a pretext and +a means for enjoyable communion, and attended in such numbers that the +hospitality shown in providing food for the visiting lecture-lovers +seemed to be in danger of becoming a burdensome expense. In 1633 the +magistrates set the lecture hour at one o'clock, that lecture-goers +might eat their dinner at noon at home; and they attempted to have each +minister give but one lecture in two weeks, and planned that contiguous +towns should offer but two temptations a week. But the law-makers +overstepped the mark, and the lecture and the ministers resumed weekly +sway, which they held for a century. + +Hawthorne thus described the opening hours of the colonial Lecture-day: + + "The breakfast hour being passed, the inhabitants do not as usual + go to their fields or work-shops, but remain within doors or + perhaps walk the street with a grave sobriety yet a disengaged and + unburdened aspect that belongs neither to a holiday nor the + Sabbath. And indeed the passing day is neither, nor is it a common + week day, although partaking of all three. It is the Thursday + Lecture; an institution which New England has long ago + relinquished, and almost forgotten, yet which it would have been + better to retain, as bearing relations both to the spiritual and + ordinary life. The tokens of its observance, however, which here + meet our eyes are of a rather questionable cast. It is in one sense + a day of public shame; the day on which transgressors who have made + themselves liable to the minor severities of the Puritan law + receive their reward of ignominy. At this very moment the constable + has bound an idle fellow to the whipping-post and is giving him his + deserts with a cat-o-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise Daniel + Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the meeting-house, with + a halter about his neck, which he is condemned to wear visibly + throughout his lifetime; Dorothy Talby is chained to a post at the + corner of Prison Lane with the hot sun blazing on her matronly + face, and all for no other offence than lifting her hand against + her husband; while through the bars of that great wooden cage, in + the centre of the scene, we discern either a human being or a wild + beast, or both in one. Such are the profitable sights that serve + the good people to while away the earlier part of the day." + +Not only were criminals punished at this weekly gathering, but seditious +books were burned just after the lecture, intentions of marriage were +published, notices were posted, and at one time elections were held, on +Lecture-day. The religious exercises of the day resembled those of the +Sabbath and were sometimes five hours in length. + +In primitive amusements, the sports of the woods and waters, even a +Puritan could find occasional and proper diversion without entering into +frivolous and sinful amusement. The wolf, most hated and most +destructive of all the beasts of the woods, a "ravening runnagadore," +was a proper prey. Wolves were caught in pits, in log pens, in traps; +they were also hooked on mackerel hooks bound in an ugly bunch and +dipped in tallow, to which they were toled by dead carcasses. The swamps +were "beat up" in a wolf-drive or wolf-rout, similar to the English +"drift of the forest." A ring of men surrounded a wooded tract and drew +inward toward the centre, driving the wolves before them. The excitement +of such a wolf-rout, constantly increasing to the end, can well be +imagined. The wolves were not always killed outright. Josselyn tells +that the inhuman sport of wolf-baiting was popular in New England, and +he describes it thus: "A great mastiff held the Wolf.... Tying him to a +stake we bated him with smaller doggs and had excellent sport, but his +hinder legg being broken we soon knocked his brains out." Wolves also +were dragged alive at a horse's tail, a sport equally cruel to both +animals. These fierce and barbarous traits had been nourished in England +by the many bear and bull baitings, and even horse-baitings, and the +colonists but carried out here their English training. Wood wrote in his +"New England's Prospects:" "No ducking ponds can afford more sport than +a lame cormorant and two or three lusty doggs." Though we do not hear of +cock-fights, I doubt not the wealthy and sportsmanlike Narragansett +planters, who resembled in habits and occupations the Virginian +planters, had many a cock-fight, as they had horse-races. + +Bears were "hunted with doggs; they take to a tree where they shoot +them." Nothing was "more sportfull than bearbayting." Killing foxes was +also the "best sport in depth of winter." On a moonlight night the +hunters placed a sledge-load of codfish heads on the bright side of a +fence or wall, and hiding in the shadow "as long as the moon shineth" +could sometimes kill ten of the wary creatures in a night. Squirrel +hunts were also prime sport. + +Shooting at a mark or at prizes became a popular form of amusement. We +read in the _Boston Evening Post_ of January 11, 1773: "This is to give +Notice That there will be a Bear and a Number of Turkeys set up as a +Mark next Thursday Beforenoon at the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline." + +The "Sports of the Inn yards" found few participants in New England. In +1692 the Andover innkeeper was ordered not to allow the playing of +"Dice, Cards, Tables, Quoits, Loggits, Bowles, Ninepins or any other +Unlawful Game in his house yard Garden or Backside after Saturday P.M." +Henry Cabot Lodge says the shovelboard of Shakespeare's time was almost +the only game not expressly prohibited. A Puritan minister, Rev. Peter +Thatcher, of Milton, bought in 1679 a "pack of ninepins and bowle," for +which he paid five shillings and sixpence, and enjoyed playing with them +too; but I fancy few ministers played either that or like games. On the +second Christmas, at Plymouth, we find some of the Pilgrims playing +pitch-the-bar and stool-ball. Pitch-the-bar was a trial of strength +rather than of skill, and was popular with sturdy Nantucket whalers +till into this century, though deemed hopelessly plebeian in old +England. + +We hear of foot-ball being played by Boston boys in Boston streets and +lanes; of the Rowley Indians playing it in 1686 on the broad sandy +shore, where it was "more easie," since they played barefooted. Dunton +adds of their sport: "Neither were they so apt to trip up one anothers +feet and quarrel as I have often seen 'em in England"--and I may add, as +I have often seen 'em in New England. + +Playing-cards--the devil's picture-books--were hated by the Puritans +like the very devil; and, as ever with forbidden pleasures, were a +constant temptation to Puritan youth. Their importation, use, and sale +were forbidden. As late as 1784 a fine of $7 was ordered to be paid for +every pack of cards sold; and yet in 1740 we find Peter Fanueil ordering +six gross of best King Henry's cards from England. Jolley Allen had +cards constantly for sale--"Best Merry Andrew, King Harry and Highland +Cards a Dollar per Doz." and also "Blanchards Great Mogul Playing +Cards." The fine for selling these cards must have been a dead letter, +for we find in the newspapers proof of the prevalence of card-playing. + +One use for playing-cards other than their intended one was found in +their employment to inscribe invitations upon. Ball invitations were +frequently written upon the backs of playing-cards, and dinner +invitations also. + +In the _Salem Gazette_, in 1784, appeared "New In Laid Cribbage Boxes, +Leather Gammon Tables, and Quadrille Pools." In the _Evening Post_, in +1772, may be seen "Quadrille Boxes and Pearl Fishes;" and I do not doubt +that many a gay Boston belle or beau (as well as Mrs. Knox) gambled all +night at quadrille and ombre, as did their cousins in London. Captain +Goelet had many a game of cards in his travels through New England, in +1750. + +On April 30, 1722, the _New England Courant_ advertised that any +gentleman that "had a Mind to Recreate themselves with a Game of +Billiards" could do so at a public house in Charlestown. + +It is curious to find how eagerly the staid colonists turned to dancing. +Mr. Eggleston says: + + "The savages themselves were not more fond of dancing than were the + colonists who came after them. Dancing schools were forbidden in + New England by the authorities but dancing could not be repressed + in an age in which the range of conversation was necessarily narrow + and the appetite for physical activity and excitement almost + insatiable." + +Dancing was forbidden in Massachusetts taverns and at weddings, but it +was encouraged at Connecticut ordinations. In a letter written by John +Cotton, that good man specifies that his condemnation is not of dancing +"even mixt" as a whole, but of "lascivious dancing to wanton ditties +with amorous gestures and wanton dalliances;" an objection in which I +hope he is not singular, an we be not Puritan ministers; and an +objection which makes us suspect, an he were a Puritan minister, that he +had been in some very singular company. + +In 1713 a ball was given by the governor in Boston, at which +light-heeled and light-minded Bostonians of the governor's set danced +till three in the morning. As balls and routs began at six in the +afternoon, this gave long dancing-hours. On the other hand, we find +sober folk reading "An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing +Drawn out of the Quiver of the Scriptures By the Ministers of Christ at +Boston." And though one dancing-master was forbidden room to set up his +school, we find that "Abigaill Hutchinson was entered to lern to dance" +somewhere in Boston in 1717, probably at the school of Mr. George +Brownell. By Revolutionary times old and young danced with zest at +balls, at "turtle-frolicks," at weddings. President Washington and Mrs. +General Greene "danced upwards of three hours without once sitting +down," and General Greene called this diversion of the august Father of +his Country "a pretty little frisk." By 1791 we find Rev. John Bennett, +in his "Letters to a Young Lady," recommending dancing as a proper and +healthful exercise. Queer names did early contra-dances bear: Old Father +George, Cape Breton, High Betty Martin, Rolling Hornpipe, Constancy, +Orange Tree, Springfield, Assembly, The President, Miss Foster's +Delight, Pettycoatee, Priest's House, The Lady's Choice, and Leather the +Strap. By Federal times came Federal dances. + +Such care was paid by New Englanders to the raising and improving of +horses that I presume horse-races did not seem so wicked as card-playing +or dancing, for I find hint of a horse-race in the _Boston News Letter_ +of August 29, 1715, for Jonathan Turner therein challenged the whole +country to match his black gelding in a race for a hundred pounds, to +take place on Metonomy Common or Chelsea Beach. Many pace-races took +place in Narragansett on Little Neck Beach, at which the prizes were +silver tankards. And if we can believe Dr. MacSparran, or, rather, since +we would not appear to doubt the word of a clergyman, especially upon +the speed of a horse, if he took the time of "a little over two minutes" +with any care and had a good watch, there must have been some very good +sport on Little Neck Beach. + +Though the Puritan magistrates denounced shows as a great "mispense of +time," yet after a century's existence in the New World, the people was +so amusement hungry that all turned avidly to any kind of exhibition, +and but little was necessary to make an exhibition. A "Lyon of Barbary" +was in Boston in 1716; and I believe the "lyons hair," which was "cut by +the keeper" and sent by Wait Winthrop to be placed as a strengthening +tonic under the armpits of his sickly little grandchild, was abstracted +from this very lion. In 1728 another lonely king of the beasts made the +round of all the provinces on a cart drawn by four oxen, with as much +eclat as if he had been a whole menagerie. He lodged in New London in +Madam Winthrop's barn, and "put up" elsewhere at the very best taverns, +as became a royal visitor, yet seems a semi-pathetic figure--a tropical +king in slavery and alone in a strange, cold land. + +In December, 1733, and in 1734, rivals appeared at a Boston tavern, and +were advertised in the _Weekly Rehearsal_. + + "A Fine Large White Bear brought from Greenland, the like never + been seen before in these Paris of the World. A Sight far + preferable to the Lion in the Judgment of all Persons who have seen + them both. N.B. He is certainly going to London in about 3 Weeks & + his Farewel Speech will be publish'd in a day or two." + + * * * * * + + "To be seen at the Shop of Mr. Benjamin Runker Tinman near the + Market House on Dock Square a very Strange & Wonderful Creature + called a Sea Lion lately taken at Monument Pond near Plimouth The + like of which never seen in these Paris before. He is Nine Feet + long from His Rump to his Head & near 4 feet wide over his back + with Four Large Feet & Five Strong Claws on Each. Also Two Large + Strong Teeth as white as Ivory sticking out of his mouth five or + six Inches long with many other Curiosities too Tedious to mention + here. Price Sixpence for a Man or Woman & 2 Pence for a child." + +The _Boston Gazette_ of April 20, 1741, thus advertised: + + "To be seen at the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury a wild creature + which was caught in the woods about 80 miles to the Westward of + this place called a Cattamount. It has a tail like a Lyon, its legs + are like Bears, its Claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a Tyger. He + is exceedingly ravenous and devours all sorts of Creatures that he + can come near. Its agility is surprising. It will leap 30 feet at + one jump notwithstanding it is but 3 months old. Whoever wishes to + see this creature may come to the place aforesaid paying one + shilling each shall be welcome for their money." + +Salem had the pleasure of viewing a "Sapient Dog" who could light lamps, +spell, read print or writing, tell the time of day, or day of the month. +He could distinguish colors, was a good arithmetician, could discharge a +loaded cannon, tell a hidden card in a pack, and jump through a hoop, +all for twenty-five cents. About the same time Mr. Pinchbeck exhibited +in the same town a "Pig of Knowledge" who had precisely the same +accomplishments. + +In 1789 a pair of camels went the rounds--"19 hands high, with 4 joints +in their hind legs." A mermaid also was exhibited--defunct, I +presume--and a living cassowary five feet high, that swallowed stones as +large as an egg. A white sea bear appeared in the port of Pollard's +Tavern and could be seen for half a pistareen. A forlorn moose was held +in bondage at Major King's tavern and shown for nine pence, while to +view the "leapord strongly chayned" cost a quarter. The big hog, being a +home production, could be seen cheaply--for four pence. It is indeed +curious to find a rabbit among "curious wild beasts." The Winthrops had +tried to breed rabbits in 1633 and again in 1683, and if they had not +succeeded were the only souls known to fail in that facile endeavor. To +their shame be it told, Salem folk announced in 1809 a bull-fight at the +Half-Way House on the new turnpike, and after the bull-fight a +fox-chase. In 1735 John Burlesson had some strange animals to show, and +was not always allowed to exhibit them either: "the Lyon, the Black and +Whight bare and the Lanechtskipt were shown by me that had their limbs +as long as they pleased." + +There were also exhibitions of legerdemain--a "Posture Master Boy who +performed most surprizing Postures, Transforming Himself into Various +Shapes;" performers on the "tort rope;" solar microscopes; "Italian +Matcheans or Moving Pictures wherein are to be seen Windmills and +Watermills moving around Ships sayling in the Seas, and various curious +figures;" electrical machines; "prospects of London" or of "Royall +Pallaces;" but, to their credit and good taste be it recorded, I find no +notices of monstrosities either in shape of man or beast. Exhibitions of +wax figures were given and museums were formed. Gentlemen sailing for +foreign ports were begged to collect for museums and collections of +curiosities, and did so in a thoroughly public-spirited manner. + +Shortly after the invention of balloons came their advent as popular +shows into New England towns. In Hartford they appeared under the +pompous title of "Archimedial Phaetons, Vertical Aerial Coaches, or +Patent F[oe]deral Balloons," and the public was notified that "persons +of timid nature might enter with full assurance of safety." These +f[oe]deral balloons not only served to amuse New Englanders, but were +strongly recommended to "Invaletudinarians" as hygienic and medicinal +factors, in that through their employment as carriers they caused +"sudden revulsion of the blood and humours" to the benefit of the +aeronautic travellers. + +The first stepping-in of theatrical performances was to the lively-tunes +of jigs and corams on a stage. In 1713 permission was asked to act a +play in the Council House in Boston. Judge Sewall's grief and amazement +at this suggestion of "Dances and Scenical Divertessiments" within those +solemn walls can well be imagined. Ere long little plays called drolls +were exhibited; puppet shows such as "Pickle Herring," or the "Taylor +ryding to Brentford," or "Harlequinn and Scaramouch." About 1750 two +young English strollers produced Otway's "Orphans" in a Boston +coffee-house. Prompt and strict measures by Boston magistrates nipped in +the bud this feeble dramatic plant, and Boston had no more plays for +many years. + +Many ingenious ruses were invented to avoid the legal obstructions +placed in the way of play-acting. "Histrionic academies" tried to sneak +in on the stage; and in 1762 a clever manager gave an entertainment +whose playbill I present as the most amusing example of specious and +sanctimonious truckling extant. + + KINGS ARMS TAVERN--NEWPORT RHODE ISLAND. + + On Monday, June 10th, at the Public Room of the above Inn will be + delivered a series of + + MORAL DIALOGUES + _in Five Parts_ + + Depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions and + Proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of Virtue. + + _Mr Douglass_--Will represent a noble and magnanimous Moor called + Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and after he + marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion + of jealousy. + + _Of jealousy, our beings bane, + Mark the small cause, and the most dreadful pain._ + + _Mr Allyn_--Will depict the character of a specious villain, in the + regiment of Othello, who is so base as to hate his commander on + mere suspicion, and to impose on his best friend. Of such + characters, it is to be feared, there are thousands in the world, + and the one in question may present to us a salutary warning. + + _The man that wrongs his master and his friend, + What can he come to but a shameful end?_ + + _Mr Hallam_--Will delineate a young and thoughtless officer who is + traduced by Mr. Allyn, and, getting drunk, loses his situation and + his generals esteem. All young men whatsoever, take example from + Cassio. + + _The ill effects of drinking would you see + Be warned and fly from evil company._ + + _Mr Morris_--Will represent an old gentleman, the father of + Desdemona, who is not cruel or covetous, but is foolish enough to + dislike the noble Moor, his son-in-law, because his face is not + white, forgetting that we all spring from one root. Such prejudices + are very numerous and very wrong. + + _Fathers, beware what sense and love ye lack, + 'Tis crime, not colour, makes the being black._ + + _Mr Quelch_--Will depict a fool who wishes to become a knave, and + trusting to one, gets killed by one. Such is the friendship of + rogues. Take heed! + + _Where fools would knaves become, how often you'll + Perceive the knave not wiser than the fool._ + + _Mrs Morris_--Will represent a young and virtuous wife, who, being + wrongfully suspected, gets smothered (in an Adjoining room) by her + husband. + + _Reader, attend, and ere thou goest hence, + Let fall a tear to hapless innocence._ + + _Mrs Douglass_--Will be her faithful attendant, who will hold out a + good example to all servants, male and female, and to all people in + subjection. + + _Obedience and gratitude, + Are things as rare as they are good._ + + Various other Dialogues, too numerous to mention here, will be + delivered at night, all adapted to the improvement of the mind and + manners. The whole will be repeated on Wednesday and on Saturday. + Tickets, six shillings each; to be had within. Commencement at 7. + Conclusion at half past 10; in order that every spectator may go + home at a sober hour, and reflect upon what he has seen, before he + retires to rest. + + God save the King, + And long may he sway, + East, north and south + And fair America. + +The Continental Congress of 1774 sought to pledge the colonists to +discountenance "all exhibitions of shews, plays, and other expensive +diversions and entertainments," and such exhibitions languished +naturally in war times; but with peace came new life to shows and +theatres. + +We catch a glimpse at Hartford of the "New Theatre" in 1795. The play +began at half after six. Following the English fashion, servants were +sent in advance to keep seats for their masters and mistresses. They +were instructed to be there "by Five at the Farthest." If ladies "chused +to sit in the Pit" a place was partitioned off for them. The admission +price was a dollar. There was variety in the entertainment furnished. +One actor gave a character recitation entitled "The New Bow Wow." In +this he played the "Sly Dog, the Sulky Dog, the Hearty Dog, and many +other dogs in his character of Odd Dog." + +In 1788 the "Junior Sophister Class" of Yale College gave a theatrical +performance, during Election week, of "Tancred and Sigismunda," and +followed it with a farce of the students' own composing, relating to +events in the Revolutionary War. A letter of Rev. Andrew Eliot is still +in existence referring to this presentation, and severely did he +reprehend it. Of the farce he wrote, "To keep up the character of these +Generals, especially Prescot, they were obliged (I believe not to their +sorrow) to indulge in very indecent and profane language." He states +that many in the audience were much offended thereat, and says: "What +adds to the illegality is that the actors not only were dressed +agreeable to the characters they assumed as Men, but female apparell and +ornaments were put on some contrary to an express statute. Besides it +cost the lads L60." What this reverend complainer would have thought of +the multitudinous exhibitions of masculine collegiate skirt-dancing of +the present day is impossible to fathom. + +There were circuses also in Connecticut. "Mr. Pool The first American +Equestrian has erected a Menage at considerable Expence with seats +Convenient. Mr. Pool beseeches the Ladies and Gentlemen who honour him +with their Presence to bring no Dogs with them." As late as 1828 a bill +prohibiting circus exhibitions passed both houses of the Connecticut +Legislature, but was all in vain, for that State became the home of +circuses and circus-makers. + +During the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth +century there was little in New England that could properly receive the +name of music. Musical instruments and books of musical instruction were +rare. I have told the deplorable condition of church music in "The +Sabbath in Puritan New England." A feeling of revolt rose in ministers +and congregation. In 1712 Rev. Mr. Tuft's music-book appeared. The first +organ came to Boston about 1711. The first concert of which I have read +was advertised thus in the _New England Weekly Journal_ of December 15, +1732: + + "This is to inform the Publick That there will be a Consort of + Music Perform'd by Sundry Instruments at the Court Room in Wings + Lane near the Town Dock on the 28th of this Instant December; + Tickets will be deliver'd at the Place of Performance at Five + Shillings each Ticket. N.B. No Person will be admitted after Six." + +In 1744 a concert was given in Faneuil Hall fol the benefit of the poor, +and after 1760 concerts were frequent. The universal time for beginning +was six o'clock, and the highest price of admission half a dollar, +until after 1790. + +Singing-schools, too, were formed, and the bands of trained singers gave +concerts. The story of the progress of New England concert-giving has +been most fully given by Henry M. Brooks, esq., in his delightful book, +"Olden Time Music." + +Lectures on pneumatics, electricity, and philosophy were given in Boston +as early as 1740, and soon acquired a popularity which they have +retained to the present day. + +A very doubtful form of diversion was furnished to New Englanders at the +public expense and in the performance of public duties. Not only were +offenders whipped, set in the stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory on +Lecture-day, but criminals were hung with much parade before the eyes of +the people, as a visible token of the punishment of evil living. In all +the civil and religious exercises previous to the execution of the +sentence, publicity was given to the offender; petty and great +malefactors were preached at when sentenced, and after condemnation were +made public examples--were brought into church and made the subject of +discourse and even of objurgation from the pulpit. Judge Sewall +frequently refers to this meretricious custom. Under date March 11, +1685, he says: "Persons crowd much into the old Meeting House by reason +of James Morgan (who was a condemned murderer) and a very exciting and +riotous scene took place." This was at a Thursday lecture, and in the +gloomy winter twilight of the same day the murderer was +executed--"turn'd off" as Sewall said--after a parting prayer by Cotton +Mather, who had preached over him in the morning. Cotton Mather's sermon +and others on Morgan and his crimes, which were preached by Increase +Mather and Joshua Moodey, were printed and sold in vast numbers, passing +through several editions. Morgan's dying words and confessions were also +printed and sold throughout New England by chapmen. + +Captain Quelch and six other pirates were captured on June 11, 1704; +were brought to Boston on the 17th, sentenced on the 19th, and, "the +silver oar being carried before them to the place of execution," were +hung on the 30th. An "extra" of the _News Letter_ says that "Sermons +were preached in their Hearing Every Day, And Prayers made daily with +them. And they were Catechized and they had many Occasional +exhortations;" but the paper also states, "yet as they led a wicked and +vitious life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently +hardened in their sin." Sewall gives this painfully particular account +of the execution: + + "After Dinner about 3 P.M. I went to see the Execution. Many were + the people that saw upon Broughtons Hill But when I came to see + how the River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there + were 100 boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He + Told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others + for Execution from the Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in + Boat to the place of Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a + due height the seven Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for + them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows + save King who was Reprieved. When the Scaffold was let to sink + there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting + in our Entry next the Orchard and was much surprised at it, yet the + wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place." + +In another entry Sewall tells of brazen women jumping up on the cart +with a condemned man. + +A note was appended by Dr. Ephraim Eliot to the last page of a sermon +delivered by his father, Dr. Andrew Eliot, on the Sunday before the +execution of Levi Ames, who was hung for burglary October 21, 1773. Ames +was present in church, and the sermon was preached at his request. The +note runs thus: + + "Levi Ames was a noted offender--though a young man, he had gone + through all the routine of punishment, and there was now another + indictment against him where there was positive proof, in addition + to his own confession. He was tried and condemned. His condemnation + excited extraordinary sympathy. He was every Sabbath carried + through the streets with chains about his ankles, and handcuffed, + in custody of the Sheriff officers and constables, to some public + meeting, attended by an innumerable number of boys, women and men. + Nothing was talked of but Levi Ames. The ministers were + successively employed in delivering occasional discourses. Stillman + improved the opportunity several times and absolutely persuaded the + fellow that he was to step from the cart into Heaven." + +One Worcester County murderess was hanged on Boston Common, and to the +delight of beholders appeared in a beautiful white satin gown to be +"turn'd off." + +I think, in reading of the past, that next to executions the most vivid +excitement, the most absorbing interest--indeed, the greatest amusement +of New Englanders of the half century preceding and that succeeding the +Revolutionary War--was found in the lottery. An act of Legislature in +1719 speaks of them as just introduced; but this licensed and highly +approved form of gambling quickly had the sanction and participation of +the entire community. The most esteemed citizens not only bought +tickets, but sold them. Every scheme of public benefit, the raising of +every fund for every purpose, was conducted and assisted through a +lottery. Harvard, Rhode Island (now Brown University), and Dartmouth +College thus increased their endowments. Towns and States thus raised +money to pay the public debt. Congregational, Baptist, and Episcopal +churches had lotteries "for promoting public worship and the advancement +of religion." Canals, turnpikes, bridges, excavations, public buildings +were brought to perfection by lotteries. Schools and academies were thus +endowed; for instance, the Leicester Academy and the Williamstown Free +School. In short, "the interests of literature were supported, the arts +encouraged, the wastes of wars repaired, inundations prevented, the +burthen of the taxes lessened" by lotteries. Private lotteries were also +carried on in great number, as frequent advertisements show; pieces of +furniture, wearing apparel, real estate, jewelry, and books being given +as prizes. Much deception was practised in those private lotteries. + +Though many lotteries were ostensibly for charitable, educational, or +other beneficial purposes, the proportion of profit applied to such +purposes was small. The Newbury Bridge Lottery sold ten thousand +dollars' worth of tickets to raise one thousand dollars. The lottery to +assist in rebuilding Faneuil Hall was to secure one-tenth of the value +of tickets. Harvard College hoped to have twelve and a half per cent. +The glowing advertisements of "Rich Wheels," "Real & Truly Fortunate +Offices," "Lucky Numbers," "Full Drawings," appealed to every class; the +poorest could buy a quarter of a ticket as a speculation. New England +clergymen seemed specially to delight in this gambling excitement. + +The evil of the system could not fail to be discovered by intelligent +citizens. Judge Sewall, ever thoughtful, wrote his protest to friends +when he found advertisements of four lotteries in one issue of the +_Boston News Letter_. Though I have seen lottery tickets signed by John +Hancock, he publicly expressed his aversion to the system, and Joel +Barker and others wrote in condemnation. By 1830 the whole community +seemed to have wakened to a sense of their pernicious and unprofitable +effect, and laws were passed prohibiting them. + +The sports and diversions herein named, of the first century of the +Puritan commonwealth, were, after all, joined in by but a scanty +handful of junketers. We see in our picture of the olden times no +revellers, but a "crowd of sad-visaged people moving duskily through a +dull gray atmosphere," who found, as Carlyle said, that work was +enjoyment enough. The Pilgrim Fathers had been saddened with war and +pestilence, with superstition, with exile, still they had as a contrast +the keen novelty of life in the picturesque new land. The sons had lost +all the romance and were more narrow, more intolerant. But we must not +think them unhappy because they thought it no time for New England to +dance. There be those nowadays who care not for dancing, nor for the +playing of games, yet are not unhappy. There be, also, I trow, those who +fare not at fairs, and show not at shows, and would fain read sober +books or study their Bible as did the Puritans, and yet are cheerful. +And perhaps also there is a singular little band of those who love not +the play--a few such I wot of Puritan blood yet are not sorrowful. +Hawthorne said: "Happiness may walk soberly in dark attire as well as +dance lightsomely in a gala-dress." And I cannot doubt that good Judge +Sewall found as true and deep a pleasure--albeit a melancholy one--in +slowly leading, sable-gloved and sable-cloaked, the funeral procession +of one of the honored deputies through narrow Boston streets, as did +roystering Morton in marshalling his drunken revellers at noisy +Merrymount. + + + + +XI + +BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS + + +There was no calling, no profession more reputable, more profitable in +early colonial days than the trade of book-selling. President Dunster, +of Harvard College, in his pursuance of that business, gave it the +highest and best endorsement; and it must be remembered that all the +book-sellers were publishers as well, books being printed for them at +their expense. John Dunton, in his "Life and Errors," has given us a +very distinct picture of Boston book-sellers and their trade toward the +end of the seventeenth century. He landed at that port in 1686 with a +large and expensive venture of books "suited to the genius of New +England," and he says he was about as welcome to the resident +book-sellers as "Sowr ale in Summer." Nevertheless they received him +cordially and hospitably, and he in turn was an equally generous rival; +for he drew eulogistically the picture of the four book-dealers which +that city then boasted. Mr. Phillips was "very just, very thriving, +young, witty, and the most Beautiful man in the town of Boston." Mr. +Brunning, or Browning, was a "complete book-seller, generous and +trustworthy." Dunton says: + + "There are some men will run down the most elaborate peices only + because they had none of their Midwifery to bring them into public + View and yet shall give the greatest encomiums to the most Nauseous + trash when they had the hap to be concerned in it." + +But Browning would promote a good book whoever printed it. Mr. Campbell, +the third book-dealer, was "very industrious, dresses All-a-mode and I +am told a young lady of Great Fortune is fallen in love with him." Of +Mr. Usher, the remaining book-trader, Dunton asserts: + + "He makes the best figure in Boston. He is very rich, adventures + much to sea, but has got his Estate by Book selling." + +Usher was a book-maker, undertaker, and adventurer, doubtfully +attractive or desirable appellations nowadays; but what higher praise +could have been given in colonial tongue? He would have angrily resented +being dubbed a publisher; that name was assigned to and monopolized by +the town-crier. Usher died worth L20,000, a tidy sum for those days. + +Happy, indeed, were all the Boston book-sellers; blessed of the gods! +rich, witty, modish, beloved, beautiful! The colony was sixty years old, +opulent, prosperous, and fashionable; but a book-seller cut the best +figure. Surely the book trade had in Boston a glorious ushering in, a +golden promise which has not yet deserted it. + +Book-printing, too, was a highly honored calling. The first machine for +the craft and mystery of printing was set up at Cambridge in 1639, and +for twenty-three years the president of Harvard College was responsible +for its performances. Then official licensers were appointed to control +its productions, and not till a decade of years before the Declaration +of Independence were legal restraints removed from the colonial press. + +The first printer in the colony, Steeven Daye, was about as bad a +printer as ever lived, as his work in the Bay Psalm-Book proves; and he +spent a term in Cambridge jail, and was altogether rather trying in his +relations with the godly ministers who were associated with him in his +printery. The second printer had to sleep in a cask after he landed, but +he died with a fortune, a true forerunner of the self-made men of +America. The third printer, Johnson, having a wife in England, was +"brought up" and bound over before the court not to seduce the +affections of the daughter of printer No. 2. The next Bostonians who +tried their hands at the mechanical part of book-making--the printing +and binding--were two of the most prominent citizens; Captain Green, a +worthy man, the father of nineteen children by one wife and eleven by +another, and rich, too, in spite of the thirty Green olive-branches; and +Judge Sewall, also, as Cotton Mather said, "edified and beautified with +many children"--fourteen in all. Truly, book-making did prosper a man +mightily both at home and abroad in colonial days. + +In a book-printer's wife, the mother of the nineteen children, did +Dunton find his ideal New England wife; in a book-printer did he find +his most agreeable companion. + + "To name his trade will convince the world he was a man of good + sense and understanding. He was so facetious and obliging and his + conversation such that I took a great delight in his company." + +So it may be seen that the book-sellers were rivalled by the +book-printers--equally rich and witty though not so beautiful. To the +credit of both callings, then and for a century to follow, redounds the +fact that almost to a man they were deacons in the church. Mayhap their +worldly and family prosperity was the reward of their piety. As +nine-tenths of the authors were ministers, and the publishers all +deacons, the church had at that time what might be called a monopoly of +the book trade. + +Dunton had a vast interest in the fair sex, owning plainly that he had a +"heart of Wax, Soft, and Soon mellowing," though he was careful on every +page to make everything seem perfectly straight and proper for the +suspicious perusal of his English wife; but any nineteenth-century +reader can read between the lines. His famous long-winded eulogies of +the Boston virgin, the wife, the widow, "Madam Brick the flower of +Boston," and the half widow "Parte per Pale, Madam Toy," whose husband +was at sea; and his long rides with one or the other of them +a-pillion-back behind him, and his tedious conversations with them on +platonics, the blisses of matrimony, and the chief causes of love, show +plainly that he had a "wandering eye." He had a deal to say also of his +lady customers (who were much the same in olden times as nowadays)--one +simple soul who turned over his books rather vacantly till he asked her +"in Joque" whether she wanted "Tom Thumb" (a penny chapbook). To his +surprise she answered, "Yes;" and he said, still guying, "in Folio and +with marginal notes?" and the dull creature replied, "Oh the best." +Another hectored him by constantly changing her mind: + + "Reach me that book, yet--let it alone; but let me see it however, + and yet its no great matter either." + +Another sedate Boston dame wished "The School of Venus," to which he +reprovingly answered that he had best give her instead "The School of +Virtue." Another, to whom he gave a sad setting off (more than hinting +at a painted face, though she were a Puritan), wanted plays and romances +and "Books of Gallantry." He adds: + + "But she was a good Customer to me. Whilst I took her money I + humoured her pride, and paid her (I blush to say it) a mighty + observance." + +He speaks plainly too of the men book-buyers. One Mr. Gouge, who was +also "a Secret Friend to the Fair Sex," bought to give away two hundred +copies of a book written by Parson Gouge, his father. Another "young +beau who boasts more Villany than he ever committed bought a many of +books;" hence Dunton tolerated the "Young Spark's" demoralizing +acquaintance. Mr. Thorncomb, another book-dealer from London, also +bought of him, and, with the ever prevailing luck was "Acceptable to the +Fair Sex, so extremely charming as makes 'em fond of being in his +Company. However he is a virtuous person and deserved all the Respect +they shewed him." Nor can I doubt, from the pervasive spirit of his +books, that Dunton too found favor with the fair. + +Though he spoke so warmly of individual purchasers and so positively of +the wealth of his ilk in Boston, his own venture was not vastly +prosperous. He took back to England but L400. He gave the Boston +Yankees, too, rather a bad name in commercial transactions, saying: + + "There is no trading for a stranger with them but with a Grecian + Faith which is not to part with your own ware without ready Money; + for they are generally very backward in their payments; great + censors about other Mens manner but Extremely Careless about their + own. When you are dealing with 'em you must look upon 'em as at + cross purposes and read 'em like Hebrew backward; for they seldom + speak & mean the same thing but like the Watermen Look one way & + row another." + +Josselyn gave them no better name, saying: + + "Their leading men are damnable rich, inexplicably covetous and + proud; like Ethiopians, white in the teeth only; full of + ludification and injurious dealing." + +Of Dunton's patrons the majority were ministers, and I hope all the +reverend gentlemen were as prompt payers as they were liberal +purchasers. Since Dunton called ministers "the greatest benefactors to +Booksellers," I think they were not included in his black list. Surely +Cotton Mather was not, for he gave away one thousand books in one year, +and I know he paid for them too. One Boston schoolmaster, however, +bought L200 worth of books, and when we consider the excessively small +pay of members of that calling at that time, we feel that he showed a +liberal interest in promoting in every manner the spread of learning, +and only trust that he paid the bill promptly. + +In 1719 there was but one book-shop in New York, but of cultured Boston +Neal wrote at that date: "The Exchange is surrounded with booksellers' +shops which have a good trade. There are five Printing Presses." +Succeeding years did not change the luck of the craft in Boston, nor dim +its honors, still wealth and love poured in on its members. The names of +Henchman and Hancock show the opulence; while Knox, in war and love +alike prospered, winning the wealthy "belle of Massachusetts" for his +bride, and winning equal glory with his sword in the Revolution. In +other New England towns did book-publishing succeed, though Boston's +earlier start, its leading position, and its more carefully preserved +history give it place as a type of the whole province. + +And now, what was the fruit of all this fairly garnished and richly +nourished tree? What did these prosperous New England book-merchants +bring forth in the first century of book-printing in the province? What +return did they make for all the romantic and material support given +them? No love-poems or mild tales of gallantry, as you might expect from +their alleged fascinating traits, but, instead, an almost unvaried +production of dreary and dull funeral, execution, wedding, election, and +baptismal sermons, and of psalm-books, with here and there a "two penny +jeering gigge," or perhaps an anagram or acrostic or "pindarick," on +some virtuous citizen or industrious dame, recently deceased. In +business relations the deacon prevailed powerfully over the gallant. If, +as Tyler says, the New England theocracy was a social structure resting +on a book, that corner-stone was the Bay Psalm-Book and the walls above +it were built of sermons. These sermons seem to us technical, sapless, +and jejune, "as soporific as a bed of poppies," but they show the +intelligence, energy, and assiduity of the writers just as plainly as +they show the gloomy theology and sad earnestness of the time. And +though no one now reads them, we profoundly respect them, for they have +been conned by our honored forefathers with more studious and loving +attention than falls to the lot of most modern books, no matter what +their subject or who their author. + +I have told at length the story of the publication of the Bay Psalm-Book +and of other psalm-books printed and used in New England, in "The +Sabbath in Puritan New England" and I need not dwell upon it here. + +The first book or tract printed in Boston was in 1675--an execution +sermon, by Increase Mather, "The Wicked Man's Portion." The first book +printed in Connecticut was the "Saybrook Confession and Platform," in +1710. The first book of any considerable size printed in Rhode Island +was "An Apology for the True Christian Divinity," issued in 1729. + +There were a number of books for the Indians in the Indian tongue which +no one but Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull could now read an he would; also a +few histories of the Indian wars; and Thomas Prince published by +subscription an exceedingly dull chronological History of New England. +As he began his history with year 1, first month and sixth day--and +Adam, he had tired out even pious Bostonians by the time he reached New +England; and subscriptions and subscribers languished till the book died +unmourned just when the year 1633 had been caught up with. The "Simple +Cobler of Agawam" made a vast sensation with his scurrilous bombs. There +were a few volumes of poems printed; one by "the Tenth Muse," Anne +Bradstreet, of whose songs pious and cautious John Norton said (and +evidently believed what he said too) that if Virgil could have read them +he would have condemned his own work to the flames. Michael +Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," that epic of hell-fire and damnation which +fairly chokes us with its sulphurous fumes, was widely read and deeply +venerated; in fact it was a great popular success. Fifteen hundred +copies were sold in the first year, one copy to each thirty-five +inhabitants of New England--a proportion showing a commercial success +unsurpassed in modern times. It was printed also on broadsides, in a +cheap form, and hawked over the country by chapmen in order to further +spread its lurid and baleful shadow. The dull but sympathetic "Meat out +of the Eater" by the same author quickly went through five editions. +"New England's Crisis," "A Posie from Old Mr. Dods Garden," "A Looking +Glasse for New England," and "The Origin of the Whalebone Petticoat--a +Satyr," end the monotonous list of poetry. Fully three-quarters of the +entire number of publications proceeded from the prolific Mather stock, +and of course bore the pompous, verbose, Mather traits of authorship. +Cotton Mather had the felicity of having published as his share of "New +England's First Fruits" a list to make a modern author green with +envy--three hundred and eighty-two different works; three hundred of +these may be seen in the library of the American Antiquarian Society: +not all were brought out in America, however. His "Magnalia" was printed +in England, and the exigences and vicissitudes of publication at that +time are fully told in his diary; also the exalted and idealized view +which he took of authorship. At the first definite plan which he +formulated in his mind of his history of New England, he "cried mightily +to God;" and he went through a series of fasts and vigils at intervals +until the book was completed, when he held extended exercises of secret +thanksgiving. Prostrate on his study floor, in the dust, he joyfully +received full assurance in his heart from God that his work would be +successful. But writing the book is not all the work, as any author +knows; and he then had much distress and many troubled fasts over the +best way of printing it, of transporting it to England; and when at last +he placed his "elaborate composures" on shipboard, he prayed an entire +day. No ascetic Papist ever observed fast days more vigorously than did +Cotton Mather while his book was on its long sea-voyage and in England. +He sent it in June in the year 1700, and did not hear from it till +December. What a thrill of sympathy one feels for him! Then he learned +that the printers were cold; the expense of publication would be L600, a +goodly sum to venture; it was "clogged by the dispositions" of the man +to whom it was sent; it was delayed and obstructed; he was left +strangely in the dark about it; months passed without any news. Still +his faith in God supported him. At last a sainted Christian came forward +in London, a stranger, and offered to print the book at his own expense +and give the author as many copies as he wished. That was in what +Carlyle called "the Day of Dedications and Patrons, not of Bargains with +Booksellers." In October, 1702, after two and a half long years of +waiting, one copy of the wished-for volume arrived, and the author and +his dearest friend, Mr. Bromfield, piously greeted it with a day of +solemn fasting and praise. + +Can the contrast of that day with the present, can the character of +Cotton Mather be more plainly shown than by this story of the +publication of the "Magnalia?" Many anxious days did he pass over other +manuscripts. Some were lost in London for seven years. One book +disappeared entirely from his ken, but was recovered by his heirs. His +most important and largest work, the six folio volumes of his "Biblia +Americana," pursued by "Strange Frowns of Heaven" could not find a +publisher and still is unprinted. Cotton Mather survived his own era, +his congenial atmosphere, and, whether he was conscious of it or not, +was indeed, as Dexter called him, a literary dodo, an isolated relic of +early fantastic methods of composition. His work was not, as Prince +said, "agreeable to the Gust of his Age." Even the name of Mather, +all-powerful in New England, could not place the "Biblia Americana" in +the press. + +There were no American novels in those early days. The first book +deserving the appellation that was printed in New England was +"intituled" "The Power of Sympathy, or the Triumph of Nature--A Novel +founded on truth and dedicated to the Young Ladies of America." It +appeared in 1789. Four years later came "The Helpless Orphan, or The +Innocent Victim of Revenge," and then "The Coquette, or the History of +Eliza Wharton." + +The only book that was written by a woman and published in New England +during the first century of New England printing, was a collection of +the poems of Anne Bradstreet. A few--very few--pamphlets by women +authors of that date are also known: "The Confession of Faith--A Summary +of Divinity drawn up by a young Gentlewoman in the 25th year of her +Age;" Mrs. Elizabeth Cotton's "Peculiar Treasure of the Almighty King +Opened;" Elizabeth White's "Experience;" Mary Rowlandson's pathetic +account of her captivity--these are all. Hannah Adams was the first New +England woman to adopt literature as a profession. + +Doubtless many Puritans shared Governor Winthrop's opinion of literary +women, which that tolerant and gentle man expressed thus: + + "The Governor of Hartford upon Connecticut came to Boston, and + brought his wife with him (a godly young woman and of special + parts) who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her + understanding and reason which had been growing upon her divers + years by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and + writing, and had written many books. Her husband being very loving + and tender of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error + when it was too late. For if she had attended her household + affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of + her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, + whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might + have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set + her." + +I know of no illustrated books printed New England in the seventeenth +century, nor any with frontispieces or portraits. In 1723 a portrait of +Increase Mather appeared in his Life, which was written by monopolizing +Cotton Mather. It was a poor thing, being engraved in London by John +Sturt. When Peter Pelham came to Boston about 1725 and started as a +portrait engraver, and married the Widow Copley with her thriving +tobacco shop, he engraved and published many likenesses of authors and +ministers, some of which were bound with their books, others sold singly +by subscription. The mezzotint of Cotton Mather, made in 1727, sold for +two shillings. Hubbard's Narrative had a map in 1677; and in 1713 the +lives of Dr. Faustus, Friar Bacon, Conjurors Bungay and Vanderwart were +printed conjointly in a volume "with cuts"--perhaps the earliest +illustrated New England book, unless we except the New England Primer. +"The Prodigal Daughter, or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed" had "curious +cuts;" so also did the "Parents Gift" in 1741, and "A Present for a +Servant Maid." "Pilgrim's Progress" was printed in Boston in an +illustrated edition in 1744. But for any handsomely illustrated books +American readers sent, until Revolutionary times, to England. + +There were, however, at a later date, some few books printed with +special elegance, with broad margins. The "Discourse on the United +Submission to Higher Powers" had some copies that were printed on pages +ten inches by seven and a quarter inches in size, while the regular +edition was only six by six and a half inches. A letter is in existence +of Governor Trumbull's ordering that some copies of the funeral sermon +preached at his wife's death be printed on heavy writing paper. Copies +of the first edition of the "Magnalia" also were issued on large paper +and owned in New England, but of course that work was done in London. + +The printing of the earliest books was generally poor, showing the work +of inexperienced and unaccustomed hands; but the paper was good, +sometimes of fine quality, and always strong. The type was fairly good +and clear until Revolutionary times, when paper, ink, and type, being +made by new workmen out of the poorest materials, were bad beyond +belief, producing, in fact, an almost unreadable page. Throughout the +first half of the eighteenth century the books printed in New England +compared favorably with the ones imported from England at that date, and +in the special case of the "Poetical Oblation"--a fine quarto, offered +by Harvard College to George III. on his accession to the throne, the +typography is exquisite. For the early binding but one word can be +said--that of praise. All these old books had Charles Lamb's desideratum +of a volume, were "strong backed and neat bound." Well dressed was the +morocco, the leather, the vellum, parchment, or basil, firmly was it +glued in place, well-sewed were the leaves--loudly can we sing the +goodness and true worth of colonial bookbinding. + +In many New England libraries and collections may be seen specimens of +colonial printing and binding; the library of the American Antiquarian +Society is particularly rich in such ancient treasures. Some of the +books from Cotton Mather's library may there be found, that library +which Dunton called the glory of New England, and which he said was the +largest privately owned collection of books that he had ever seen; but +many of them were burned in the sacking of Boston by the British. It +consisted of over seven thousand printed volumes and many manuscripts, +and its estimated value was L8,000. The majority of these volumes was +naturally upon divinity. + +We can also form an idea of a New England library at a somewhat earlier +date, for the list of books in Elder Brewster's library has been +preserved. They numbered four hundred. Of these books, sixty-two were in +Latin and three hundred in English. There were forty-eight folios and +one hundred and twenty-one octavos. This was quite a bulky and heavy +library for transportation to and through that new country. All were not +imported at one time, as the succession of dates shows. Brewster +purchased from time to time the best books brought out in England on +subjects which interested him, until it was really a rich exegetical +collection, and may possibly have been used as a circulating one. Nearly +all the number were religious, theological, or historical books; +fourteen were in rhyme. Among the poems were "A Turncoat of the Times," +Spenser's "Prosopopeia," "The Scyrge of Drunkenness," a "Description of +a Good Wife," the ballad of "The Maunding Soldier," and Wither's works. +One might have been a tragedy, "Messalina," but there were no other +dramatic works. + +Other benefactors of booksellers had good libraries. Parson Hooker left +behind him L300 worth of books in an estate of L1,336. Parson Wareham +had L82 worth in an estate of L1,200. Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton left, in +1717, books which made one thousand lots in an auction, for which the +first book catalogue ever compiled in New England was printed. Even by +1723 the library of Harvard College contained none of the works of +Addison, Bolingbroke, Young, Swift, Prior, Steele, Dryden, or Pope. In +1734, the catalogue of T. Cox, a prominent Boston bookseller, did not +contain the "Spectator" nor the works of Shakespeare or Milton. The +literary revival of the time of Queen Anne was evidently but little felt +in New England during its inception. The facile and constant quotation +from the ancient classics show how constantly and thoroughly the latter +were studied. + +Among early New England publications we must not fail to speak of the +omnipresent almanac. Ere there was a New England Psalm-Book there was a +New England Almanac, and succeeding years brought new ones forth in +flocks. Though Charles Lamb included almanacs in his catalogue of "books +which are no books," and the founder of the Bodleian Library would not +admit that they were books and excluded them from the shelves of his +library, when New England philomaths and philodespots numbered such +honored names as Mather, Dudley, Sewall, Chauncey, Brattle, Ames, and +Holyoke, New England Puritans must have deemed almanacs to be books, and +so do we. In many a colonial household where the Bible and psalm-book +formed the sole standing library, the almanac was the only annual +book-comer that crossed the threshold and lodged under the roof-tree. On +a nail by the side of the great fireplace hung proudly and prominently +the Family Almanac, the Ephemeris. This Family Almanac was a guide, +counsellor, and friend; a magazine, cyclopaedia, and jest-book; was even +a spelling-book. It was consulted by every member of the household on +every subject, save possibly religion--for that they had the best of all +books. The planters learned from it meteorological, astronomical, +thaumaturgical, botanical, and agricultural facts--or rather what the +editor stated as facts. Social customs and peculiarities and ethics were +also touched upon in a manner suited to the requirements and capacity of +the reader; medical and hygienic advice were given for man and beast, +ending with the quaint warning to use before and after taking that +unfashionable medicine, prayer. Wit, history, romance, poetry, all +contributed to the almanac. The printer turned an extra penny by +advertising various articles that he had for sale, from negro slaves to +garden seeds. So, in addition to what the original readers learned, we +now find an almanac a most suggestive record of the olden times. + +As with many colonial books, the most attractive part of an almanac is +not always the printed contents, but the interlined comments of the +original owner. He kept frequently an account of his scanty and sparse +purchases; from them we gain a knowledge of the price of commodities in +his time. We learn also upon how little a New England planter could +live, how little money he spent. He kept a record of the births, +weights, and measures of his family; he entered the purchase and number +of his lottery tickets (but I never found the proud and happy statement +of a lottery prize). He wrote therein Greek verse, as did John Cotton. +He entered wig-making and hair-dressing accounts, as did Thomas Prince. +He kept the amount of beer and cider he made and drank, and the sad +statement of deaths in the neighborhood; such grim entries are seen as +these made by old Ezra Stiles: "This day Ethan Allen died and went to +Hell." "This day died Joseph Bellamy and went to Heaven, where he can +dictate and domineer no longer." President Stiles did not foresee that +his great-grandson would be Joseph Bellamy's also, and would plan a +social reform more vast in its changes than the really sensible scheme +he thought out, of "uniting and cementing his offspring by transfusing +to distant generations certain influential principles," and of +benefiting the growing population of the New World by carefully planned +and wide-spread marriages with virtuous and pious Stileses. + +Of course the almanac-owner kept account of the weather--a brave record +through January and February and March; then, lessening his zeal as +spring-planting began, the hard-working summer months have clean pages; +while a remorseful energy in November and December ofttimes made him +renew in the smoke-dried almanac his crabbed entries. Hence from +contemporary evidence does old New England life seem all winter, all +bitter cold and fierce rains and harsh winds; yet there were surely some +warm summer days and cheerful sunshine, so smoothly serene as to gain no +record. + +The relations between book-publishers and authors, between +book-publishers and the public, were from earliest days most friendly. +There was much polite exchange of compliments; the intelligence of the +public was always mightily flattered and shown up in a very civil +fashion in such manner as this: + + "A New Edition of the really beautiful & sentimental Novel Armine + and Elvira Is this day published price 9d sewed in blue paper. To + the Ladies in particular and others the lovers of Sentiment and + Poetick Numbers this Novel is recommended, to them it will afford a + delightful Repast. To others it is not an object." + + "For the pleasing entertainment of the Polite Part of Mankind I + have printed the most beautiful Poems of Mr. Stephen Duck the + famous Wiltshire Poet. It is a full Demonstration to me that the + People of New England have a fine Taste for good Sense and polite + Learning having already sold 1200 of these Poems." + +Though Stephen Duck appealed to polite and literate New Englanders just +as he became the rage in old England, his name is now almost forgotten. + +It must have inclined the public most favorably to a book to be told +that the volume is "intended only for the highly virtuous;" that "the +glowing pen of the author brought this token into life solely from +Admiration of a community fitted by amazing Intelligence to receive it:" +that + + "'Tis said with truth by a secret but ingenious New England + minister that no town is so worthy the vendue of this pleasing book + as these polite gentlemen and gentlewomen to whom it will be on + Friday offered." + +Authors, if not authoresses, were treated with much respect and +encouragement. Indeed, they were urged to write. Books printed by +subscription were the rule, and, as an inducement, the names of +subscribers were printed in a list at the end of the book, and an extra +copy was given for every six numbers subscribed for. The "undertakers" +did not always trouble themselves to deliver the book when printed. A +notice was posted, or printed in a newspaper, advising subscribers +pretty sharply that their copies (which had apparently been paid for in +advance) must be sent for within a certain time or the books would be +"sold to others desiring." One American poet, the author of "War--An +Heroic Poem," a work which has been lost to us, threatened to prosecute +his patrons for not taking his book. Sometimes the printer of the book +also seized the opportunity of the large circulation to drum up +delinquent citizens who had not paid him at previous dates for news +letters, sermons, funeral verses, etc. One of the first books printed in +Hartford was paid for largely by a man who ran a woollen mill in the +vicinity. He took the convenient occasion to thriftily forward his own +trade by having printed and bound with the poems, and thus distributing +to sheep-farmers and farm-wives in the surrounding towns, full +instructions about preparing the wool to be sent to him. + +Frequently the notices in the newspapers bore, in quaint wording, warm +testimony to the popularity of a book. "The above book is advertised by +the desire of numbers who have read and admired it." "If to raise the +soul to heights of honourable pride is not unworthy so great a mind, +praise of this book may be given, though needless, since many request +it." "Many curious gentlemen formerly buying their books in London now +wish to buy only in New England where so acute a manner of composure is +found." "For the polite and inquisitive part of Mankind in New England +these poetick fancies are highly conformed as many residents testify by +their frequent perusal and approval." + +Public encouragement to aspiring authors was not lacking; this +advertisement in the _New England Weekly Journal_ of March, 1728, is +indeed delightful: + + "There is now preparing for the Press, and may upon Suitable + Encouragement be communicated to the Publick, a Miscellany of Poems + of Severall Hands and upon severall occasions some of which have + already been Published and received the Approbation of the best + Judges with many more very late performances of equal if not + superior Beauty which have never yet seen the Light; if therefore + any Ingenious Gentlemen are disposed to contribute towards the + erecting of a Poetickal Monument for the Honour of This Country + Either by their Generous Subscriptions or Composures, they are + desired to convey them to Mr. Daniel Henchman or the Publisher of + this Paper by whom they will be received with Candour and + Thankfulness." + +Just fancy the effect of a similar advertisement in a prominent +newspaper of to-day! How composures would flow in from the ingenious +gentlemen who love to see themselves in print! What a poetical monument +could be reared--to the very sky! I have never seen in any colonial +newspaper any subsequent references to this proposed collection or +miscellany of composures, and I know of no book that was published at +that time which could answer the description, so I suspect the well-laid +plan came to naught. The specimens of local and ephemeral poetry that +were printed in the colonial press in succeeding years make it easy to +comprehend the failure of the project: the villanously rhymed effusions +fairly imposthumate all the ribald vulgarity of the times; coarseness +and dulness of subject and thought being rivalled only by the +super-coarseness of the verbiage. I do not say that the newspapers +provoked these stupid rhymes, which are about as much poetry as is a +game of crambo; but I do not find them until "newspaper-time," and fear +the extra circulation through the weekly press may be held partly +responsible. + +A book called "A Collection of Poems by Several Hands" apparently was +gathered by methods similar to the one shown by the advertisement just +quoted. It was printed in 1744, and was a puerile and banal collection +containing but few good verses, and was apparently made expressly to +show off the literary accomplishments of Mather Byles, who was what +Carlyle would call an intellectual dapperling. + +Book-auctions, held first in England in 1676, formed one of the rare +diversions in the provinces, and were apparently largely attended by +"sentimentalists," as one book-dealer called book-buyers. The business +of book-auctioneering was called, in the bombastic language of the +times, "the sublimest Auxiliary which Science Commerce and Arts either +has or perhaps ever will possess," while the bookseller was called +"Provedore to the Sentimentalists and Professor of Book Auctioneering." +These sales or vendues were frequently held at taverns. + +At a very early day intelligent and progressive Bostonians established a +public library. By the year 1673 bequests had been made to such an +institution, and consignments deemed suitable for it had been sent to +Boston by London booksellers. All these books were properly sober and +pious. The Prince library, that first large American book collection, +which was conceived and started by Thomas Prince in 1703, was nobly +planned and nobly carried out, and deserved more gratitude and more care +than it received at modern hands. + +But many towns had no public library, hence much friendly exchange and +lending of books took place between book-owners and neighbors, sometimes +apparently without the owner's consent or knowledge. The newspapers, +among their sparse advertisements, have many such as this simply naive +one in the _Boston News Letter_ of July 7, 1712: + + "A certain Person having lent two Books viz; Rushworths Collections + & Fullers Holy War & forgotten unto whom; These are desiring the + Borrower to be so kind as to return said Books unto Owner." + +Or this sarcastic request in the _Connecticut Courant_. + + "The gentleman who took the second volume of Bacons Abridgment from + Mr. David Balls bedroom on the 18th of November would do well to + return it to the owner whose name he will find on the 15th Page. If + he choose rather to keep it the owner wishes him to call and take + the rest of the set." + +Another Connecticut man is meekly asked to "return the 3rd Vol of Don +Quixote & take the 4th instead if he chuse." + +Connecticut folk seemed to be particularly given to this slipshod +fashion of promiscuous and unlicensed book-borrowing, if we can trust +the apparent proof given by Connecticut newspapers in their many +advertisements of lost books. In some notices it is darkly hinted that +"specifications of books long lent have been given" (to the sheriff +perhaps); and again, a meek suggestion that the owner wishes to read a +long missing volume and would be grateful for an opportunity to do so. +One ungallant soul advertised for "the she-person that borrowed Mr. +Thos. Browns Works from a gentleman she is well acquainted with." + +There was not the redeeming excuse for non-return sometimes given by +like "desuming deadheads" nowadays, that the owner's name had been +forgotten, for the inscription "Perley Morse, His Book," or "Catey +Bradford, Her Book," or whatever the name might be, was quickly and +repeatedly written by each colonial owner as soon as the book was +acquired. + +Frequently also the dates and places of residence appear. Even the very +dates of ownership and the quaint old names are interesting. Bathsheba +Spalding, Noca Emmons, Elam Noyes, Titherming Layton, Engrossed Bump, +Sally Box, Tilly Minching, Zerushaddi Key, Comfort Vine--these are a few +of the odd signatures I have found in old books. + +Readers also had a pleasant habit of leaving a sign-manual on the last +page of a book, thus: "Timothy Pitkin perlegit A.D. 1765," "Cotton Smith +perlegit 1740." A clear-speaking lesson are such records to this +generation--a lesson of patience and diligence. How we venerate, with +what awe we regard the name of Timothy Pitkin, and know that he lived to +read through that vast folio--the first ever printed in America--the +"Complete Body of Divinity," a folio of over nine hundred +double-columned, compactly printed pages! And yet, why should not +Timothy Pitkin live through reading it when Samuel Willard lived through +writing it? Entries of dates in old Bibles frequently show that those +sainted old Christians had read entirely through that holy book ten +times in regular order. + +The handwriting in all these ancient books is very different from our +modern penmanship, invariably bearing an appearance not exactly of much +labor, but of much care, as if the writer did not use a pen every +day--did not become too familiar with that weighty implement, and hence +had a vast respect for it when he did take it in hand. Every _t_ is +crossed, every _i_ is dotted, every _a_ and _o_ perfectly rounded, every +tail of every _g_ and _y_ and _z_ is precisely twisted in colonial +script. I think the very trouble and preparation incident to writing +conduced to the finish and elegance of the penmanship. No stylographic +pens were used in those days, but instead, a carefully prepared quill; +and the ink was made of ink-cake or ink-powder dissolved in water; or, +more troublesome still, home-made ink, tediously prepared with nutgalls, +walnut or swamp maple bark, or iron filings steeped in vinegar and +water, or copperas. + +Special pains were taken in writing a name in a book. Penmanship was +almost a fine art in colonial days, the one indispensable accomplishment +of a school teacher; and he was often hired to exercise it in writing a +name "perspicuously" in a book. Sometimes the owner's name is seen drawn +with much care in a little wreath or circle of ornamentation. This may +be what Judge Sewall refers to with so much pride when he speaks of +"writing a name" in a gift-book, or it may be what was known as +"conceits" or "fine knotting." + +The colonists had a very reprehensible habit, which (save for the pains +taken in writing) might be called book-scribbling. Rude rhymes and +sentiments are often found with the past owner's name, and form a +title-page lore which, ill-spelt and simple as the verses are, have an +interest to the antiquary of which the writer never dreamed. They +consist chiefly of adjurations to honesty, specially with regard to the +special volume thus inscribed: + + "Steal not this book my honest friend, + For fear the gallows will be your End." + + "If you dare to steal this Book + The Devil will catch you on his Hook." + +This was accompanied by the outline of a very spirited "personal devil" +with a pitchfork and an enormous gridiron. + +Still another appealed to terrors: + + "This is Hanah Moxon Her book + You may just within it Look + You had better not do more + For old black Satan's at the Door + And will snatch at stealing hands + Look behind you! There He Stands." + +This had a tail-piece of an open door with a very black forked tail +thrust out of it. + +In a leather-bound Bible was seen this rhyme: + + "Evert Jonson His book + God Give him Grase thair in to look + not only to looke but to understand + that Larning is better than Hous or Land + When Land is Gon & Gold is spent + then larning is most Axelant + When I am dead & Rotton + If this you see Remember me + Though others is forgotton." + +Different portions of this script have been seen in many books. + +Four rhymes seem to be specially the property of schoolboys, being found +in Accidences, Spellers, "Logick" Primers, and other school-books, down +even to the present day. + + "This book is one thing, My fist's another, + If you touch the one thing, You'll feel the other." + + "Hic liber eat meus + And that I will show + Si aliquis capit + I'll give him a blow." + + "This book is mine + By Law Divine + And if it runs astray + I'll call you kind + My desk to find + And put it safe away." + + "Hic liber est meus Deny it who can + Zenas Graves Junior An honest man." + +There also appears a practical warning which may be read with attention +and profit by the public now a days: + + "If thou art borrowed by a friend + Right welcome shall he be + To read, to study, _not_ to lend + But to _return_ to me. + + "Not that imparted knowledge doth + Diminish Learnings Store + But books I find if often lent + Return to me no more." + + "Read _Slowly_--Pause _Frequently_--Think _Seriously_--Finger + _Lightly_--Keep _Cleanly_--Return _Duly_--with the _Corners_ of the + Leaves NOT TURNED DOWN." + +The fashion of using book-plates was by no means so general among New +England Puritans as among rich Virginians and New Yorkers and +Pennsylvanian Quakers. Mr. Lichtenstein, writing in the New England +Historical and Genealogical Register in 1886, says he has seen no New +England book-plates of earlier date than 1735. At later dates the +Holyokes, Dudleys, Boylstons, and Phillips, all used book-plates. The +plates most familiar to students in old libraries in New England are +those of the Vaughans and of Isaiah Thomas. + +Another, a living interest is found in these old, dusty, leather-bound +volumes, which is not in the inscriptions and not, alas, in the printed +words. They are the chosen home of a race of pigmy spiderlings who love +musty theology with an affection found in no one else nowadays. In these +dingy homes they live and rear their hideous little progeny: for in the +cold light of a microscope these tiny brown book-dwellers are not +beautiful; they are flat, crab-like, goggle-eyed, hairy; and they zigzag +across the page on their ugly crooked legs in a sprawling, drunken +fashion. They do not eat the books; they live apparently on air; yet if +you crush them between the pages they leave a stain of vivid scarlet to +reproach you in future readings for your needless cruelty. I cannot kill +them; though flaming is their blood's rebuke, it is aristocratically as +well as theologically blue. In their veins runs the ichor--arachnidian +though it be--that came over in the Mayflower; yes, doubly honored, came +over in the special stateroom of an Ainsworth's Psalm-Book or a Genevan +Bible. No degrading alliances, no admixtures through foreign emigration, +have crossed that pure inbred strain; my book-spiders are of real +Pilgrim stock--they are true New England Brahmins. + +Any one who turns over with attention the books of an old New England +library must be struck with a sense of the affection with which these +books have been treasured, the care with which they have been read, and, +in case of accident, with which they have been repaired. One psalm-book, +nibbled by mice, has had every page neatly mended by the insertion of +thin sheets of paper to replace the lost bits; and some painstaking and +pious New Englander, with a pen and skill worthy the illuminating monks +of another faith, has minutely printed the missing letters on both sides +of the inserted slip in a text no larger than the surrounding print. +Another book, a Bible, burnt in round holes by a slow-burning coal from +the pipe of a sleepy reader, has been mended in the same careful manner. +I have seen Bibles that have been read and turned over till the margins +of the pages at the lower corner and outer edge were worn off down to +the print by loving daily use. In one such the margins had been neatly +replaced by pasted slips of paper. In more than one book I have found a +minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the +volume, showing a personal interest and love for a book which can +hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show a +patient and appreciative perusal. + +Though books were so closely cherished, so seemly bekept in colonial +days, they were subject to one indignity with which now they are +unmenaced and undegraded--they were sometimes sentenced to be burned by +the public hangman. In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick +Muggleton, who set up to be prophets, were burned by that abhorred +public functionary in Boston market-place; and two years later Quaker +books were similarly destroyed. William Pyncheon's book was burned, in +1650, in Boston Market. In 1707 a "libel on the Governor" was hanged by +the hangman. In 1754 a pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters," a +sharp political criticism on the Massachusetts Court, was thus burned in +King Street, Boston. From the _Connecticut Gazette_ of November 29th, +1755, we learn that another offending publication was sentenced to be +"publickly whipt according to Moses Law with 40 stripes save one, then +Burnt." How a true book-lover winces at the thought of the public +hangman placing his blood-stained hand on any book, no matter how much a +"monster." + + + + +XII + +"ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS" + + +From the earliest days the Puritan colonists fought stoutly, for the +sake of St. Paul, against long hair. They proved themselves worthy the +opprobrious name of Roundhead. Endicott's first act was to institute a +solemn and insistent association against long hair. This wearing of long +locks was one of the existing evils, a wile of the devil, which bade +fair to creep into New England, and in its incipiency was proceeded +against by the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair +like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly +against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson +Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched +burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the +long-growing locks--"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or +Russianly--whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long +nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence +for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off +their long hair into a civil frame." Exact rules were given from the +pulpit as to the properly Puritan length--that the hair should not lie +over the neck, the band, or the doublet collar; in the winter it might +be suffered to grow a little below the ear for warmth. Personal pride +and dignity were appealed to, that no Christian gentleman would wish to +look like "every Ruffian, every wild-Irish, every hangman, every varlet +and vagabond." By Sewall's time, however, Puritan though he were, we see +his white locks flowing long over his doublet collar, and forming a +fitting frame to his serene, benignant countenance. + +Puritan women also were not above reproach in regard to the fashion of +extravagant hair-dressing; they also "showed the vile note of +impudency." One parson thus severely addressed them from the pulpit: +"The special sin of woman is pride and haughtiness, and that because +they are generally more ignorant and worthless," and he added that this +feminine pride vented itself in gesture, hair, behavior, and apparel. I +fear all this was true, for the Court also complained of my ignorant and +worthless sex for "cutting and curling and laying out of the hair, +especially among the younger sort." Increase Mather gave them this +thrust in his sermon on the comet, in 1683: "Will not the haughty +daughters of Zion refrain their pride in apparell? Will they lay out +their hair, and wear their false locks, their borders, and towers like +comets about their heads?" And they were called "Apes of Fancy, +friziling and curlying of their hayr." + +I think the sober and decorous women settlers must have worn their hair +cut straight across the forehead, like our modern "bangs;" for +Higginson, writing of the Indians in 1692, says: "Their hair is +generally black and cut before like our gentlewomen." The false locks +denounced by Mather were doubtless "a pair of Perukes which are pretty" +of Pepys's time, about 1656; or the "heart breakers" worn in 1670, which +set out like butterfly-wings over the ears, and which were described +thus: "False locks set on wyers to make them stand at a distance from +the head." + +From a letter written by Knollys to Cecil we learn that Mary Queen of +Scots wore these perukes. He says: + + "Mary Seaton among other pretty devices yesterday and this day, she + did set such a curled hair upon the Queen that was said to be a + Peruke, that showed very delicately, and every other day she hath a + new device of head dressing without any cost, and yet setteth forth + a woman gaylie well." + +The "towers like comets" were doubtless commodes, which were in high +fashion in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century until about +the year 1711, though I have never found that the word commode was used +in America. These commodes were enormously high frames of wire covered +with thin silk, or plaitings of muslin or lace, or frills of ribbon--and +sadly belied their name. + +A simpler form of hair-dressing succeeded the commode; portraits painted +during the following half-century, such as those of Copley, Smibert, and +Blackburn, show an elegant and graceful form of coiffure, the hair +brushed back and raised slightly from the forehead, and sometimes curled +loosely behind the ears. At a later date the curls were almost +universally surmounted by a lace cap. Pomatum began to be used by the +middle of the century. In the _Boston News Letter_ of 1768, we read of +"Black White and Yellow Pomatum from six Coppers to Two Shillings per +Roll." The hair was frequently powdered. Hair-dressers sold powdering +puffs and powdering bags and powdering machines, and a dozen different +varieties of hair-powder--brown, marechal, scented, plain, and blue. By +Revolutionary times a new tower, or "talematongue," had arisen; the +front hair was pulled up over a stuffed cushion or roll, and mixed with +powder and grease; the back hair was strained up in loops or short +curls, surrounded and surmounted with ribbons, pompons, aigrettes, +jewels, gauze, and flowers and feathers, till the structure was half a +yard in height. This fashion was much admired by some; a young lover of +the day wrote thus sentimentally of a fair Hartford girl: "Her hair +covered her cushion as a plate of the most beautiful enamel frosted with +silver." A Revolutionary soldier wrote a poem, however, which regarded +from a different point of view this elaborate headgear in such a time of +national depression. His rhymes began thus: + + "Ladies you had better leave off your high rolls + Lest by extravagance you lose your poor souls + Then haul out the wool, and likewise the tow + 'Twill clothe our whole army we very well know." + +The "Dress-a-la-Independance" was a style of hair-dressing with thirteen +curls at the neck, thus to honor the thirteen new States. + +In the year 1771 Anna Green Winslow wrote in her diary an account of one +of these elaborate hair-dressings which she then saw. She ends her +description thus: + + "How long she was under his opperation I know not. I saw him twist + & tug & pick & cut off whole locks of gray hair at a slice, the + lady telling him he would have no hair to dress next time, for a + space of an hour and a half, when I left them he seeming not to be + near done." + +She also gives a most sprightly account of the manufacture of a roll for +her own hair: + + "I had my HEDDUS roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made + less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my + head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is + not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that & + horsehair very coarse & a little human hair of a yellow hue that I + suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. (the + barber) made it, all carded together and twisted up. When it first + came home, Aunt put it on, and my new cap upon it; she then took up + her apron and measured me & from the roots of my hair on my + forehead to the top of my notions I measured above an inch longer + than I did downward from the roots of my hair to the end of my + chin. Nothing renders a young person more amiable than Virtue and + Modesty without the help of fals hair, Red-Cow tail or D. the + barber." + +The _Boston Gazette_ had, in 1771, a ludicrous description of an +accident to a young woman in the streets of that town. In an infaust +moment she was thrown down by a runaway, and her tower received serious +damage. It burst its thin outer wall of natural hair, and disgorged +cotton and wool and tow stuffing, false hair, loops of ribbon and gauze. +Ill-bred boys kicked off portions of the various excrescences, and the +tower-wearer was jeered at until she was glad to escape with her own few +natural locks. + +A New England clergyman--Manasseh Cutler--wrote thus of the head-dress +of Mrs. General Knox in 1787: + + "Her hair in front is craped at least a foot high much in the form + of a churn bottom upward and topped off with a wire skeleton in the + same form covered with black gauze which hangs in streamers down + her back. Her hair behind is in a large braid turned up and + confined with a monstrous large crooked comb. She reminded me of + the monstrous cap worn by the Marquis of La Fayettes valet, + commonly called on this account the Marquises devil." + +Hair so elaborately arranged could not be dressed daily. Once a week was +frequently thought sufficient; and some very disgusting accounts are +given of methods to dress the hair so it would "keep safely" for a +month. The Abbe Robin wrote of New England women in 1781: + + "The hair of the head is raised and supported upon cushions to an + extravagant height somewhat resembling the manner in which the + French ladies wore their hair some years ago. Instead of powdering + they often wash the head, which answers the purpose well enough as + their own hair is commonly of an agreeable light color, but the + more fashionable among them begin to adopt the European fashion of + setting off the head to the best advantage." + +The fashion of the roll was of much importance, and various shaped rolls +were advertised; we find one of "a modish new roll weighing but 8 ounces +when others weigh fourteen ounces." We can well believe that such a +heavy roll made poor Anna Winslow's head "ach and itch like anything." A +Salem hair-dresser, who employed twelve barbers, advertised thus in +1773: "Ladies shall be attended to in the polite constructions of rolls +such as may tend to raise their heads to any pitch they desire." + +The grotesqueness of such adornment found frequent ridicule in prose and +verse. One poet sang: + + "Give Chloe a bushel of horsehair and wool, + Of paste and pomatum a pound, + Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull + And gauze to encompass it round. + + "Of all the gay colours the rainbow displays + Be those ribbons which hang on her head, + Be her flowers adapted to make the folks gaze, + And about the whole work be they spread. + + "Let her flaps fly behind for a yard at the least, + Let her curls meet just under her chin, + Let those curls be supported to keep up the list, + With an hundred instead of one pin." + +We can easily see that after such rough treatment the hair needed +restoring waters; and indeed from earliest times hair-restorers and +hair-dyes did these "vain ancients" use. "Women with juice of herbs gray +locks disguised." In these days of manifold mysterious nostrums that +gild the head of declining age and make glad the waste places on bald +young masculine pates, let us read the simple receipts of the good old +times: + + "Take half a pound of Aqua Mellis in the Springtime of the Year, + warm a little of it every morning when you rise in a Sawcer, and + tie a little Spunge to a fine Box combe, and dip it in the water + and therewith moisten the roots of the hair in Combing it, and it + will grow long and thick and curled in a very short time." + + "Take three spoonfuls of Honey and a good handful of Vine Twigs + that twist like Wire, and beat them wel, and strain their Juyce + into the Honey and anoynt the Bald Places therewith." + +Here is what Captain Sam Ingersoll of Salem used, or at any rate had the +formula of, in 1685: + + "A Metson to make a mans heare groe when he is bald. Take sume fier + flies & sum Redd wormes & black snayls and sum hume bees and dri + them and pound them & mixt them in milk or water." + +These washes were not so expensive as Hirsutus or Tricopherous, but +quite as effective perhaps. There were hair-dyes, too, "to make hair +grow black though any other color," and the leaf that holds this +precious instruction is sadly worn and spotted with various tinted +inks, as though the words had been often read and copied: + + "Take a little Aqua Fortis, put therein a groat or sixpence, as to + the quantity of the aforesaid water, then set both to dissolve + before the fire, then dip a small Spunge in the said water, and wet + your beard or hair therewith, but touch not the skin." + +Hair-dressers also improved on nature. William Warden, a wig maker in +King Street, Boston, respectfully informed the ladies of that town that +he would "colour the hair on the head from a Red or any other +Disagreable Colour to a Dark Brown or Black." + +It did not matter long to our forefathers whether these hair-dyes dyed, +or hair-restorers restored, for a fashion hated by some of the early +Puritans as a choice device of Satan--the fashion of wig-wearing--was to +revolutionize the matter of masculine hair. The question of wigs was a +difficult one to settle, since the ministers themselves could not agree. +John Wilson and Cotton Mather wore them, but Rev. Mr. Noyes launched +denunciations at them from the pulpit and the Apostle Eliot delivered +many a blast against "prolix locks with boiling zeal," and he +stigmatized them as a "luxurious feminine protexity," but yielded sadly +later in life to the fact that the "lust for wigs is become +insuperable." The legislature of Massachusetts also denounced periwigs +in 1675, but all in vain. + +They were termed by one author "artificial deformed Maypowles fit to +furnish her that in a Stage play should represent some Hagge of Hell," +and other choice epithets were applied. To learn how these "Horrid +Bushes of Vanity" could be hated, let us hear the pages of Judge +Sewall's diary: + + "1701. Having last night heard that Joshua Willard had cut off his + hair (a very full head of hair) and put on a Wigg, I went to him + this morning. Told his mother what I came about and she call'd him. + I enquired of him what Extremity had forced him to put off his own + Hair and put on a Wigg? He answered none at all. But said that his + Hair was streight and that it parted behinde. Seem'd to argue that + men might as well shave their hair off their head, as off their + face. I answered men were men before they had any hair on their + faces (half of man-kind never have any). God seems to have ordain'd + our Hair as a Test, to see whether we can bring out to be content + at his finding: or whether we would be our own Carvers, Lords, and + come no more at Him. If we disliked our Skin or Nails; tis no + Thanks to us for all that we cut them not off.... He seem'd to say + would leave off his Wigg when his hair was grown. I spake to his + Father of it a day or two after. He thank'd me that had discoursed + his Son, and told me when his Hair was grown to cover his ears he + promised to leave off his Wigg. If he had known it would have + forbidden him." + +At a later day, though it was "gravaminous," Sewall would not go to hear +the bewigged Joshua preach, but attended another meeting. The Judge +frequently states his annoyance at the universally wigged condition of +New England. + +I never read of these wig-wearing times without fresh amaze at the +manner in which our sensible ancestors disfigured themselves. We read +such advertisements of mountebank head-gear as this, from the _Boston +News Letter_ of August 14, 1729: + + "Taken from the shop of Powers Mariott Barber, a light Flaxen + Naturall Wigg Parted from the forehead to the Crown. The Narrow + Ribband is of a Red Pinck Colour. The Caul is in Rows of Red Green + & White." + +Twenty shillings reward was offered for this gay wig, and "if it be +offered for sale to any it is desired they wont stop it." Grafton +Fevergrure, the peruke-maker at the sign of the Black Wigg, lost a +"Light Flaxen Natural Wigg with a Peach-Blossom-coloured Ribband." In +1755 the house of barber Coes, of Marblehead, was broken into, and eight +brown and three grizzle wigs were stolen; some of these had "feathered +tops," some were bordered with red ribbon, some with purple. In 1754 +James Mitchel had white wigs and "grizzels." He asked L20 O. T. for the +best. "Light Grizzels are L15, dark Grizzels are L12 10s." Under date of +1731 we read of the loss of "a horsehair bobwig," and another with crown +hair, each with gray ribbon, an Indian hair bobwig with a light ribbon, +and a goat's hair natural wig with red and white ribbons. + +The "London Magazine" gave in 1753 a list of curious names of wigs: "The +pigeons wing, the comet, the cauliflower, the royal bird, the +staircase, the ladder, the brush, the wild boars back, the temple, the +rhinoceros, the crutch, the negligent, the chancellor, the out-bob, the +long-bob, the half-natural, the chain-buckle, the corded buckle, the +detached buckle, the Jasenist bob, the drop wigg, the snail back, the +spinage-seed, the artichoke." + +Hawthorne's list of New England wigs was shorter: "The tie, the +brigadier, the spencer, the albemarle, the major, the ramillies, the +grave full-bottom, and the giddy feather-top." To these let me add the +campaign, the neck-lock, the bob, the lavant, the vallaney, the +drop-wig, the buckle-wig, the bag-wig, the Grecian fly, the peruke, the +beau-peruke, the long-tail, the bob-tail, the fox-tail, the cut-wig, the +tuck-wig, the twist-wig, the scratch. Sydney says the name campaign was +applied to a wig which was imported from France in 1702, and was made +very full and curled eighteen inches to the front. This date cannot be +correct, when we find John Winthrop writing in 1695 for "two wiggs one a +campane, the other short." The Ramillies wig had a long plaited tail, +with a big bow at the top of the braid and a small one at the bottom. It +would be idle to attempt to describe all these wigs, how they swelled at +the sides, and turned under in rolls, and rose in puffs, and then shrank +to a small close wig that vanished at Revolutionary times in powdered +natural hair and a queue of ribbon, a bag, or an eel-skin, and finally +gave way to cropped hair "a-la-Brutus or a-la-Titus," as a Boston +hair-dresser advertised in the year 1800. + +Not only did gentlemen wear wigs, but children, servants, prisoners, +sailors, and soldiers also; as early certainly as 1716 the fashion was +universal. So great was the demand for this false head-gear, that wigs +were made of goat-hair and horse-hair, as well as human hair. The cost +of dressing and caring for wigs became a heavy item of expense to the +wearer, and income to the barber; often eight or ten pounds a year were +paid for the care of a single wig. Wigmakers' materials were expensive +also--"wig ribans, cauls, curling pipes, sprigg wyers, and wigg steels;" +and were advertised in vast numbers that show the universal prevalence +of the fashion. + +By the beginning of this century, women--having powdered and greased and +pulled their hair almost off their heads--were glad to wear their +remaining locks a-la-Flora or a-la-Virginia, or to wear wigs to simulate +these styles. We find Eliza Southgate Bowne writing thus to her mother +from Boston in the year 1800: + + "... Now Mamma what do you think I am going to ask for? A WIG. + Eleanor Coffin has got a new one just like my hair and only 5 + dollars. I must either cut my hair or have one. I cannot dress it + at all _stylish_. Mrs. Coffin bought Eleanor's and says that she + will write to Mrs. Sumner to get me one just like it. How much time + it will save--in one year! We could save it in pins and paper, + besides the _trouble_. At the Assembly I was quite ashamed of my + head, for nobody had long hair. If you will consent to my having + one do send me over a 5 dollar bill by the post immediately after + you receive this, for I am in hopes to have it for the next + Assembly--do send me word immediately if you can let me have one." + +This persuasive appeal was successful, for frequent references to the +wig appear in later letters. + +Though false teeth and the fashion of filling the teeth were known even +by the ancient Egyptians, the science of dentistry is a modern one. But +little care of the teeth was taken in early colonial days, and the +advice given for their preservation was very simple: + + "If you will keep your teeth from rot, plug, or aking, wash the + mouth continually with Juyce of Lemons, and afterwards rub your + teeth with a Sage Leaf and Wash your teeth after meat with faire + water. To cure Tooth Ach. 1. Take Mastick and chew it in your mouth + until it is as soft as Wax, then stop your teeth with it, if + hollow, there remaining till it's consumed, and it wil certainly + cure you. 2. The tooth of a dead man carried about a man presently + suppresses the pains of the Teeth." + +I suppose this latter ghoulish cure would not affect the teeth of a +woman; if, however, a seventeenth or eighteenth century dame could cure +the toothache simply with a plug of mastic, she was much to be envied by +her degenerate nineteenth-century sister with her long dentist's bill. + +If we can believe Josselyn, writing in 1684, New England women, then as +now, lost their teeth at an early age. He speaks of them as "pitifully +Tooth shaken." He recommended to relieve their misery a compound of +brimstone, gunpowder, and butter, to be "rubbed on the mandible." This +colonial remedy is still employed on New England farms. Burnaby, writing +in 1759, said that New England dames had universally and even +proverbially very indifferent teeth. The Abbe Robin says they were +toothless at eighteen or twenty years of age, and attributes this +premature disfigurement to tea-drinking and the eating of warm bread. + +When we read the composition of the tooth-powders and dentifrices used +in early colonial days, we wonder that they had any teeth left to scour. +Here is Mr. Ferene's "rare Dentifrice:" + + "First take eight ounces of Irios roots, also four ounces of + Pomistone, and eight ounces of Cutel Bone, also eight ounces of + Mother of Pearl, and eight ounces of Coral, and a pound of Brown + Sugar Candy, and a pound of Brick if you desire to make them red; + but he did oftener make them white, and then instead of the Brick + did take a pound of fine Alabaster; all this being thoroughly + beaten and sifted through a fine searse the powder is then ready + prepar'd to make up in a past which must be done as follows: + + To make the Said Powders into a past. + + Take a little Gum Dragant and lay it in steep twelve hours, in + Orange flower water or Damask Rose Water; and when it is dissolved + take the sweet Gum and grind it on a Marble Stone with the + aforesaid Powder, and mixing some crums of white bread it will come + into a past, the which you may make Dentifrices, of what shape or + fashion you please, but long rowles is the most commodious for your + use." + +Just fancy scouring your teeth with a commodious roll of cuttle-bone, +brick-dust, and pumice-stone! + +Another tooth-powder was composed of coral, Portugal snuff, Armenian +bole, "ashes of good tobacco which has been burnt," and gum myrrh; and +ground up "broken pans"--coarse earthenware might be substituted for the +coral. + +A very popular and much advertised tooth-wash was called "Dentium +Conservator." It was made and sold in New England by the manufacturer +and vendor of Bryson's Famous Bug Liquid--not an alluring companionship. +This person also "removed Stumps and unsound Teeth with a dexterity +peculiar to Himself at the Sign on the Leapord." There were also rival +Essences of Pearl advertised, each equally eulogized and disparaged; +"Infallible Sivit rendering the teeth white as alabaster tho' they be +black as Coal;" and "Very Neat Hawksbill and Key Draught Teeth Pullers." +These key-draught teeth-pullers were one of the cruellest instruments of +torture of the day, often breaking the jaw-bone, and always causing +unutterable anguish. Old Zabdiel Boylston advertised in the _News +Letter_, in 1712, "Powder to refresh the Gums & whiten the Teeth." There +were also sold "tooth-sopes, tooth-blanchs, tooth-rakes." + +I cannot find any notice of the sale of "teeth brushes" till nearly +Revolutionary times. Perhaps the colonists used, as in old England, +little brushes made of "dentissick root" or mallow, chewed into a +fibrous swab. + +I have seen no advertisements that strike a greater chill than the +scanty notices of early dentists and dentistry that appear at the latter +part of the past century. The glory of having a Revolutionary patriot +for a workman cannot soften the hard plainness of speech of this +advertisement in the _Boston Evening Post_ of September 26, 1768: + + "Whereas many Persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore + Teeth by Accident or Otherways to their great Detriment not only in + looks but in speaking both in public and private. This is to inform + all such that they may have them replaced with Artificial Ones that + look as well as the Natural and answer the End of Speaking by Paul + Revere Goldsmith near the head of Dr. Clarkes wharf. All Persons + who have had false Teeth Fixed by Mr. Jos Baker Surgeon Dentist and + They have got loose as they will in Time may have them fastened by + above said Revere who learnt the method of fixing them from Mr. + Baker." + +It will be remarked that these teeth were only to display and talk with, +and were but sorry helps in eating. This very appalling advertisement +from the _Massachusetts Centinel_ gives a clue to the way in which +missing teeth were replaced: "Live Teeth. Those Persons inclined to +dispose of Live Teeth may apply to Templeman." Or this from the +_Connecticut Courant_ of August 17, 1795: "A generous price paid for +Human Front Teeth perfectly sound, by Dr. Skinner." These "live teeth" +were inserted in other and vainer, if not more squeamish persons' +mouths, by a process of "in-grafting" which was much in vogue. There +were few New England dentists _eo nomine_ until well into this +century--but three in Boston in 1816. As silversmith and engraver Revere +also set teeth, so Isaac Greenwood, who waited at their houses on all +who required his dental services, also made umbrellas, sold cane for +hoop petticoats, and made dice and chessmen. Wm. Greenwood pulled teeth +and sold pianos; and Dr. Flagg, a surgeon dentist, advertised in 1797 +that he would get hand-organs in Europe suitable for church use. John +Templeman, the live-teeth purchaser, was a broker as well as a dentist; +and Whitlock, the actor, did a thriving dental business, and doubtless +carried his "neat hawksbill or key-draught tooth-wrench" to the +play-house, and used it, to his own profit and his fellow-townsmen's +misery, between the acts. + +Though the Pilgrim women were doubtless as simple at their toilet as +they were in their dress, the sudden growth of the colony in wealth +brought to their daughters, besides variety and richness of dress, a +love of cosmetics. Dunton tells positively of one painted face in Boston +in 1686. He said, "to hide her age she paints, and to hide her painting +dares hardly laugh." One New England minister thus reproved and warned +the women of his congregation: "At the resurrection of the Just there +will no such sight be met as the Angels carrying Painted Ladies in their +arms." + +In the inventory of one of the early Cambridge settlers, Robert Daniel, +is found the item "two Ceruse Jugs." Ceruse was a preparation of white +lead with which women then painted their faces, and I think these ceruse +jugs were part of the paraphernalia of my Lady Daniel's toilet-table. + +With the advent of newspapers came various advertisements that showed +the vanity of our forbears, the "collusions of women, their oyntments +and potticary drugs, and all their slibber sawces." + + "An Excellent Wash for the Skin which entirely taketh out all + Freckles Moath & Sunburn from the Face Neck & Hands, which with + Frequent Use adds a most Agreeable Lustre to the Complexion, + softens & beautifies the Skin to Admiration And is generally used + and approved of by most of the Gentry in London _of both Sexes_." + + "Best Face Powder which gives a fine Bloom to the Face which + answers all the intents of White Paint without that Pernicious + effect that attends Paint. Also a Composition to take off + Superficious Hair." + +The latter clause shows that our great-grandmothers were quite _au fait_ +with the nostrums of the present day, with "pargetting, painting, +slicking, glazing, and renewing old rivelled faces." + +Many pretty rules may be found in old books and diaries, that are of New +England, rules "to make the face fair" and to "make sweet the mouth." + + "Take the flowers of Rosemary and seeth them in VVhite VVine, with + which wash your face, and if you drink thereof it wil make you have + a sweet breath." + +Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the +early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's +milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were +to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a +"faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew. +Could this have been but a sly trick to get the lasses from their beds +betimes? We know the early hour at which Madam Pepys had to bathe her +mighty handsome face in the beautifying spring dew. + +Patches were worn as eagerly, apparently, by Boston as by London belles. +Whitefield complained of the jewels, patches, and gay apparel donned in +New England. In scores of old newspapers after 1760 appear notices of +the sale of "Face Patches," "Patch for Ladies," "Gum Patches," etc., and +the frequency of advertisement would indicate a popular and ready sale. + +With regard to the bathing habits of our ancestors but little can be +said, and but little had best be said. Charles Francis Adams writes, +with witty plainness, "If among personal virtues cleanliness be indeed +that which ranks next to godliness, then judged by the nineteenth +century standards, it is well if those who lived in the eighteenth +century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they +lacked of the former." He says there was not a bath-room in the town of +Quincy prior to the year 1820. And of what use would pitchers or tubs of +water have been in bed-rooms in the winter time, when if exposed over +night solid ice would be found therein in the morning? The washing of +linen in New England homes was done monthly; it is to be hoped the +personal baths were more frequent, even under the apparent difficulties +of accomplishment. I must state, in truth, though with deep +mortification, that I cannot find in inventories even of Revolutionary +times the slightest sign of the presence of balneary appurtenances in +bed-rooms; not even of ewers, lavers, and basins, nor of pails and tubs. +As petty pieces of furniture, such as stools, besoms, framed pictures, +and looking-glasses are enumerated, this conspicuous absence of what we +deem an absolute necessity for decency speaks with a persistent and +exceedingly disagreeable voice of the unwashed condition of our +ancestors, a condition all the more mortifying when we consider their +exceeding external elegance in dress. This total absence of toilet +appliances does not of course render impossible a special lavatory or +bath-room in the house, or the daily importation to the bed-rooms of +hot-water cans, twiggen bottles, bath-tubs, and basins from other +portions of the house; but even that equipment would show a lack of +adequate bathing facilities. Nor do the tiny toilet jugs and basins of +Staffordshire ware that date from the first part of this century point +to any very elaborate ablutions. + +But these be parlous words an we wish to honor the memory of our New +England grandsires; and let us remember that these negative toilet +traits were not peculiar to them, but dated from the fatherland. A +century ago the English were said to be the only European people that +had the unenviable distinction of going to the dinner-table without +previously washing or "dressing" the hands. + +One very unpleasant cosmetic, or rather detergent, was in constant use, +however, throughout colonial times--wash-balls. They were imported as +early as 1693 in company with scented and plain hair-powder. In 1771, +"Gentlemen's Fine Washballs" were advertised in Boston, and "Scented +Marbled Washballs." Other varieties of these substitutes for soap were +Chemical, Greek, Venice, Marseilles, camphor, ambergris, and Bologna +wash-balls. This is a rule given in olden times for the "Composition for +Best Wash Balls:" + + "Take forty pounds of Rice in fine powder, twenty eight pounds of + fine flour, twenty eight pounds of starch powder, twelve pounds of + White Lead, and four pounds of Orris Root in fine powder but no + Whitening. Mix the whole well together and pass it through a fine + sieve, then place it in a dry place and keep it for use. Great care + must be taken that the Flour be not musty, in which case the Balls + will in time crack and fall to pieces. To this composition may be + added Dutch pink or brown fine damask powder according to the + colour required when the Wash Balls are quite dry." + +The effect of so large an amount of white lead must have been felt and +shown most deleteriously upon the complexion of the user of this +disagreeable compound. + +"Ipswitch balls"--also the mode--were more pleasing: + + "Take a pound of fine White Castill Sope; shave it thin in a pinte + of Rose water, and let it stand two or three dayes, then pour all + the water from it, and put to it a halfe a pinte of fresh water, + and so let it stand one whole day, then pour out that, and put to + it halfe a pinte more and let it stand a night more, then put to it + halfe an ounce of powder called sweet Marjoram, a quarter of an + ounce of Winter Savory, two or three drops of the Oil of Spike and + the Oil of Cloves, three grains of musk, and as much Ambergreese, + work all these together in a fair Mortar with the powder of an + Almond Cake dryed and beaten as small as fine flowre, so rowl it + round in your hands in Rose water." + +The favorite soap, if one can judge from importations, was "Brown or +Gray Bristol Sope," but this was not used by many in the community. The +manufacture of home-made soap, of soft soap, was one of the universal, +most important, and most trying of all the household industries. The +refuse grease of the family cooking was stowed away in an unsavory mass +till early spring, and the wood ashes from the fireplaces were also +stored. When the soap-making took place, the ashes were placed in a +leach tub out of doors. This tub was sometimes made from the section of +the bark of a birch tree; it was set loosely in a circular groove in a +base of wood, or preferably of stone. Water was poured on the ashes, and +the lye trickled from an outlet cut in the groove. The boiling of the +lye and grease was an ill-smelling process, which was also carried on +out of doors, and required an enormous amount of labor and patience. It +was judged that when the compound was strong enough to hold up an egg, +the soap was done. This strong soft soap was kept in a wooden "soap box" +in the kitchen, and used for toilet as well as household purposes. + +Dearly did the English and the New English love perfumes. They made +little rolls of sweet-scented powders and gums and oils, "as large as +pease," that they placed between rose-leaves and burned on coals in +skillets or in little perfume-holders to scent the room. They burned on +their open hearths mint and rose-leaves with sugar. They took the "maste +of sweet Apple trees gathered betwixt two Lady days," and with gums and +perfumes made bracelets and pomanders, "to keep to one a sweet smell." +They made cakes of damask rose-leaves and pulvilio, civit, and musk, of +"linet and ambergreese," to perfume their linen chests, for lavender +thrived not in New England. The duties of the still-room were the most +luxury-bearing of all the old household industries. Its very name brings +to us sweet scents of Araby, as it brought to our forbears the most +charming and nice of all their domestic occupations. But these duties +were not easy nor expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the +still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, +from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and +limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great +susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and +distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown +through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In +many an old garret now bare of such stores "mints still perfume the +air;" the very walls exhale "the homesick smell of dry forgotten herbs." + +From these old stills, these retorts and mills, came not only perfumes +and oils and beauty-waters, but half the medicines and diet-drinks, all +the "kitchen-physicke" of the domestic and even the professional +pharmacopaeia. + +Perfumes were also imported; we frequently find advertised "Royal Honey +Water, an Excellent Perfume, good against Deafness, and to make the hair +grow as the directions Sets forth. 1s 6d per bottle and proportionate by +Ounce." Old Zabdiel Boylston had it in 1712. Spirit of Benjamin was also +for toilet uses. This was the base of the well-known scent known as +Queen Elizabeth's Perfume. It was combined with sweet marjoram. Lavender +water was apparently a great favorite for importation, and we find +notices of lavender bottles with shagreen cases. + +We find in newspaper days many advertisements of other toilet articles +such as nail-knippers, pick-tooth cases, silk and worsted powder-puffs, +deerskin powder bags, lip-salve, ivory scratch-backs, flesh brushes, +curling and pinching tongs, all showing a strongly crescent vanity and +love of luxury. + + + + +XIII + +RAIMENT AND VESTURE + + +We know definitely the dress of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, for +the inventory of the "Apparell for 100 men" furnished by the +Massachusetts Bay Company in 1628 is still in existence. From it we +learn that enough clothing was provided to supply to each emigrant four +"peare of shewes," four "peare of stockings," a "peare Norwich garters," +four shirts, two "sutes dublet and hose of leather lynd with oil'd skyn +leather, ye hose & dublett with hookes & eyes," a "sute of Norden +dussens or hampshire kersies lynd, the hose with skins, dublets with +lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys," four bands, two handkerchiefs, a +"wastcoate of greene cotton bound about with red tape," a leather +girdle, a Monmouth cap, a "black hatt lyned in the browes with lether," +five "Red knit capps mill'd about 5d a piece," two pair of gloves, a +mandillion "lyned with cotton," one pair of breeches and waistcoat, and +a "lether sute of Dublett & breeches of oyled lether," and one pair of +leather breeches and "drawers to serve to weare with both their other +sutes." + +This surely was a liberal outfit save perhaps in the matter of shirts +and handkerchiefs, and doubtless intended to last many years. Though +simple it was far from being a sombre one. Scarlet caps and green +waistcoats bound with red made cheerful bits of color alongside the +leather breeches and buff doublets on Salem shore. + +The apparel of the Piscataquay planters, furnished in 1635, varied +somewhat from that just enumerated. Their waistcoats were scarlet, and +they had cassocks of cloth and canvas, instead of doublets. Though +scarce more than a lustrum had passed since the settlement on the shores +of the Bay, long hose like the Florentine hose had become entirely +old-fashioned and breeches were the wear. Coats--"lynd coats, papous +coats, and moose coats"--had also been invented, or at any rate dubbed +with that name and assumed. Cassocks, doublets, and jerkins varied +little in shape, and the names seem to have been interchangeable. +Mandillions, said by some authorities to be cloaks, were in fact much +like the doublets, and were worn apparently as an over-garment or +great-coat. The name appears not in inventories after the earliest +years. + +Though simplicity of dress was one of the cornerstones of the Puritan +Church, the individual members did not yield their personal vanity +without many struggles. As soon as the colonies rallied from the first +years of poverty and, above all, of comparative isolation, and a sequent +tide of prosperity and wealth came rolling in, the settlers began to +pick up in dress, to bedeck themselves, to send eagerly to the mother +country for new petticoats and doublets that, when proudly donned, did +not seem simple and grave enough for the critical eyes of the omnipotent +New England magistrates and ministers. Hence restraining and simplifying +sumptuary laws were passed. In 1634, in view of some new fashions which +were deemed by these autocrats to be immodest and extravagant, this +order was sent forth by the General Court: + + "That no person either man or woman shall hereafter make or buy any + apparel, either woolen or silk or linen with any lace on it, + silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said + clothes. Also that no person either man or woman shall make or buy + any slashed clothes other than one slash in each sleeve and another + in the back; also all cut-works, embroideries, or needlework cap, + bands, and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn under + the aforesaid penalty; also all gold or silver girdles, hatbands, + belts, ruffs, beaverhats are prohibited to be bought and worn + hereafter." + +Liberty was thriftily given the planters, however, to "wear out such +apparel as they are now provided of except the immoderate great sleeves, +slashed apparel, immoderate great rails and long wings," which latter +were apparently beyond Puritanical endurance. + +In 1639 "immoderate great breeches, knots of ryban, broad shoulder bands +and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and capes" were added to the list +of tabooed garments. + +In 1651 the General Court again expressed its "utter detestation and +dislike that men or women of meane condition, education and callings +should take uppon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of gold or +silver lace or buttons or poynts at their knees, to walke in great +boots, or women of the same rank to wear silke or tiffany hoodes or +scarfes." + +Many persons were "presented" under this law; Puritan men were just as +fond of finery as were Puritan women. Walking in great boots proved +alluring to an illegal degree, just as did wearing silk and tiffany +hoods. But Puritan women fought hard and fought well for their fine +garments. In Northampton thirty-eight women were brought up at one time +before the court in 1676 for their "wicked apparell." One young miss, +Hannah Lyman, of Northampton, was prosecuted for "wearing silk in a +fflaunting manner, in an offensive way and garb, not only before but +when she stood presented, not only in Ordinary but Extraordinary times." + +We can easily picture sixteen-year-old Hannah, in silk bedight, inwardly +rejoicing at the unusual opportunity to fully and publicly display her +rich attire, and we can easily read in her offensive flaunting in court +a presage of the waning of magisterial power which proved a truthful +omen, for in six years similar prosecutions in Northampton, for +assumption of gay and expensive garments, were quashed. The ministers of +the day note sadly the overwhelming love of fashion that was crescent +throughout New England; a love of dress which neither the ban of +religion, philosophy, nor law could expel; what Rev. Solomon Stoddard +called, in 1675, "intolerable pride in clothes and hair." They were +never weary of preaching about dress, of comparing the poor Puritan +women to the haughty daughters of Judah and Jerusalem; saying +threateningly to their parishioners, as did Isaiah to the daughters of +Zion: + + "The Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments + about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the + moon. + + "The chains and the bracelets and the mufflers. + + "The bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the head-bands and + the tablets and the earrings. + + "The rings and nose jewels. + + "The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles and the wimples + and the crisping pins. + + "The glasses and the fine linen and the hoods and the vails." + +Every evil predicted by the prophet was laid at the door of these Boston +and Plymouth dames; fire and war and poor harvests and caterpillars, and +even baldness--but still they arrayed themselves in fine raiment, "drew +iniquity with a cord of vanity and sin with a cart-rope," and "walked +with outstretched necks and wanton eyes mincing as they go." + +As an exposition of the possibilities, or rather the actual +extensiveness, of a Puritanical feminine wardrobe at this date, let me +name the articles of clothing bequeathed by the will of Jane Humphrey, +who died in Dorchester, Mass., in 1668. I give them as they appear on +the list, but with the names of her heirs omitted. + + "Ye Jump. Best Red Kersey Petticoate, Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My + blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian + Wascote. A black Silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Apron. A + plain black Quoife without any lace. A white Holland Appron with a + small lace at the bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish + Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hood & muffe. My Green + Linsey Woolsey petticoate. My Whittle that is fringed & my Jump & + my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Apron. My best Quife + with a Lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A White Holland apron with + two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A greene Vnder Coate. + Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake & my blew + Wascote. My best White Apron, my best Shifts. One of my best + Neck-Cloaths, & one of my plain Quieus. One Callico Vnder Neck + Cloath. My fine thine Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A + square Cloath with a little lace on it. My greene Apron." + +It is pleasing to note in this list that not only the garments and +stuffs, but the very colors named, have an antique sound; and we read in +other inventories of such tints as philomot (feuillemort), gridolin +(gris-de-lin or flax blossom), puce color, grain color (which was +scarlet), foulding color, Kendal green, Lincoln green, watchet blue, +barry, milly, tuly, stammel red, Bristol red, sad color--and a score of +other and more fanciful names whose signification and identification +were lost with the death of the century. In later days Congress brown, +Federal blue, and Independence green show our new nation. + +This wardrobe of Jane Humphrey's was certainly a very pretty and a very +liberal outfit for a woman of no other fortune. But to have all one's +possessions in the shape of raiment did not in her day bear quite the +same aspect as it would at the present day. Many persons, men and women, +preferred to keep their property in the form of what they quaintly +called "duds." The fashion did not, in New England, wear out more +apparel than the man, for clothing, no matter what its cut, was worn as +long as it lasted, doing service frequently through three generations. +For instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, when she was over fifty +years old, receiving this bequest by will: "If she desire to have the +suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother, let her have +it upon appraisement." Hence we cannot wonder at clothing forming so +large a proportion of the articles bequeathed by will and named in +inventories; for all the colonists + + "... studied after nyce array, + And made greet cost in clothing." + +Nor can we help feeling that any woman should have been permitted to +have plenty of gowns in those days without being thought extravagant, +since a mantua-maker's charge for making a gown was but eight +shillings. + +Though the shops were full of rich stuffs, there was no ready-made +clothing for women for sale either in outside garments or in +under-linen. Occasionally, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, +we read the advertisement of a "vandoo" of "full-made gowns, petticoats +and sacs of a genteel lady of highest fashion"--a notice which reads +uncommonly like the "forced sales" of the present day of mock-outfits of +various kinds. + +About the middle of the century there began to appear "ready-made +clothes for men." Jolley Allen advertised such, and under that name, in +1768, "Coats, Silk Jackets, Shapes and Cloth Ditto; Stocking Breeches of +all sizes & most colours. Velvet Cotton Thickset Duroy Everlasting & +Plush Breeches. Sailors Great Coats, outside & inside Jackets, Check +Shirts, Frocks, long and wide Trowzers, Scotch bonnets & Blue mill'd +Shirts." But women's clothes were made to order in the town by mantua +makers, and in the country by travelling tailoresses and sempstresses, +or by the deft-fingered wearers. + +New England dames had no mode-books nor fashion-plates to tell to them +the varying modes. Some sent to the fatherland for "fire-new fashions in +sleeves and slops," for garments and head-gear made in the prevailing +court style; and the lucky possessors, lent these new-fashioned caps and +gowns and cloaks as models to their poorer or less fortunate neighbors. +A very taking way of introducing new styles and shapes to the new land +was through the importation by milliners and mantua-makers of dressed +dolls, or "babys" as they were called, that displayed in careful +miniature the fashions and follies of the English court. In the _New +England Weekly Journal_ of July 2, 1733, appears this notice: + + "To be seen at Mrs. Hannah Teatts Mantua Maker at the Head of + Summer Street Boston a Baby drest after the Newest Fashion of + Mantues and Night Gowns & everything belonging to a dress. Latilly + arrived on Capt. White from London, any Ladies that desire to see + it may either come or send, she will be ready to wait on 'em, if + they come to the House it is Five Shilling & if she waits on 'em it + is Seven Shilling." + +We can fancy the group of modish Boston belles and dames each paying +Hannah Teatts her five shillings, and like overgrown children eagerly +dressing and undressing the London doll and carefully examining and +noting her various diminutive garments. + +These fashion models in miniature effigy obtained until after +Revolutionary times. Sally McKean wrote to the sister of Dolly Madison, +in June, 1796: "I went yesterday to see a doll which has come from +England dressed to show the fashion"--and she then proceeds to describe +the modes thus introduced. + +We can gain some notion of the general shape of the dress of our +forbears at various periods from the portraits of the times. Those of +Madam Shrimpton and of Rebecca Rawson are among the earliest. They were +painted during the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The dress is +not very graceful, but far from plain, showing no trace of Puritanical +simplicity; in fact, it is precisely that seen in portraits of English +well-to-do folk of the same date. Both have strings of beads around the +neck and no other jewels; both wear loosely tied and rather shapeless +flat hoods concealing the hair, Madam Shrimpton's having an embroidered +edge about two inches wide. Similar hoods are shown in Romain de Rooge's +prints of the landing of King William, on the women in the coronation +procession. They were like the Nithesdale hoods of Hogarth's prints, but +smaller. Both New English dames have also broad collars, stiff and ugly, +with uncurved horizontal lower edge, apparently trimmed with embroidery +or cut-work. Both show the wooden contour of figure, which was either +the fault of the artist's brush or of the iron busk of the wearer's +stays. The bodies are stiffly pointed, and the most noticeable feature +of the gown is the sleeve, consisting of a double puff drawn in just +above the elbow and confined by knots of ribbon; in one case with very +narrow ribbon loops. Randle Holme says that a sleeve thus tied in at the +elbow was called a virago sleeve. Madam Shrimpton's sleeve has also a +falling frill of embroidery and lace and a ruffle around the armsize. +The question of sleeves sorely vexed the colonial magistrates. Men and +women were forbidden to have but one slash or opening in each sleeve. +Then the inordinate width of sleeves became equally trying, and all were +ordered to restrain themselves to sleeves half an ell wide. Worse modes +were to come; "short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arm may be +discovered" had to be prohibited; and if any such ill-fashioned gowns +came over from London, the owners were enjoined to wear thick linen to +cover the arms to the wrist. Existing portraits show how futile were +these precautions, how inoperative these laws; arms were bared with +impunity, with complacency, and the presentment of Governor Wentworth +shows three slashes in his sleeve. + +Not only were the arms of New England women bared to an immodest degree, +but their necks also, calling forth many a "just and seasonable +reprehension of naked breasts." Though gowns thus cut in the pink of the +English mode proved too scanty to suit Puritan ministers, the fair +wearers wore them as long as they were in vogue. + +It is curious to note in the oldest gowns I have seen, that the method +of cutting and shaping the waist or body is precisely the same as at the +present day. The outlines of the shoulder and back-seams, of the bust +forms, are the same, though not so gracefully curved; and the number of +pieces is usually the same. Very good examples to study are the gorgeous +brocaded gowns of Peter Faneuil's sister, perfectly preserved and now +exhibited in the Boston Art Museum. + +Nor have we to-day any richer or more beautiful stuffs for gowns than +had our far-away grandmothers. The silks, satins, velvets, and brocades +which wealthy colonists imported for the adornment of their wives and +daughters, and for themselves, cannot be excelled by the work of modern +looms; and the laces were equally beautiful. Whitefield complained +justly and more than once of the "foolish virgins of New England covered +all over with the Pride of Life;" especially of their gaudy dress in +church, which the Abbe Robin also remarked, saying it was the only +theatre New England women had for the display of their finery. Other +clergymen, as Manasseh Cutler, noted with satisfaction that "the +congregation was dressed in a very tasty manner." + +In old New England families many scraps of these rich stuffs of colonial +days are preserved; some still possess ancient gowns, or coats, or +waistcoats of velvet and brocade. In old work-bags, bed-quilts, and +cushions rich pieces may be found. When we see their quality, color, and +design we fully believe Hawthorne's statement that the "gaudiest dress +permissible by modern taste fades into a Quakerlike sobriety when +compared with the rich glowing splendor of our ancestors." + +The royal governor and his attendants formed in each capital town a +small but very dignified circle, glittering with a carefully studied +reflection of the fashionable life of the English Court, and closely +aping English richness of dress. The large landed proprietors, such as +the opulent Narragansett planters, and the rich merchants of Newport, +Salem, and Boston, spent large sums annually in rich attire. In every +newspaper printed a century or a century and a quarter ago, we find +proof of this luxury and magnificence in dress; in the lists of the +property of deceased persons, in the long advertisements of milliners +and mercers, in the many notices of "vandoos." And the impression must +be given to every reader of letters and diaries of the times, of the +vast vanity not only of our grandmothers, but of our grandfathers. They +did indeed "walk in brave aguise." The pains these good, serious +gentlemen took with their garments, the long minute lists they sent to +European tailors, their loudly expressed discontent over petty +disappointments as to the fashion and color of their attire, their +evident satisfaction at becoming and rich clothing, all point to their +wonderful love of ostentation and their vanity--a vanity which fairly +shines with smirking radiance out of some of the masculine faces in the +"bedizened and brocaded" portraits of dignified Bostonians in Harvard +Memorial Hall, and from many of the portraits of Copley, Smibert, and +Blackburn. + +Here is a portion of a letter written by Governor Belcher to a London +tailor in 1733: + + "I have desired my brother, Mr. Partridge to get me some cloaths + made, and that you should make them, and have sent him the yellow + grogram suit you made me at London; but those you make now must be + two or three inches longer and as much bigger. Let 'em be workt + strong, as well as neat and curious. I believe Mr. Harris in + Spittlefields (of whom I had the last) will let you have the + grogram as good and cheap as anybody. The other suit to be of a + very good silk, such as may be the Queens birthday fashion, but I + don't like padisway. It must be a substantial silk, because you'll + see I have ordered it to be trimm'd rich, and I think a very good + white shagrine will be the best lining. I say let it be a handsome + compleat suit, and two pair of breeches to each suit." + +Picture to yourself the garb in which the patriot John Hancock appeared +one noonday in 1782: + + "He wore a red velvet cap within which was one of fine linen, the + last turned up two or three inches over the lower edge of the + velvet. He also wore a blue damask gown lined with velvet, a white + stock, a white satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin + small-clothes, white silk stockings and red morocco slippers." + +What gay peacock was this strutting all point-device in scarlet slippers +and satin and damask, spreading his gaudy feathers at high noon in sober +Boston streets!--was this our boasted Republican simplicity? And what +"fop-tackle" did the dignified Judge of the Supreme Court wear in Boston +at that date? He walked home from the bench in the winter time clad in a +magnificent white corduroy surtout lined with fur, with his judicial +hands thrust in a great fur muff. + +Fancy a Boston publisher going about his business tricked up in this +dandified dress--a true New England jessamy. + + He wore a pea-green coat, white vest, nankeen small-clothes, white + silk stockings and pumps fastened with silver buckles which covered + at least half the foot from instep to toe. His small-clothes were + tied at the knees with riband of the same color in double bows the + ends reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well loaded + with pomatum, frizzled or creped, and powdered; the ear locks had + undergone the same process. Behind his natural hair was augmented + by the addition of a large queue, called vulgarly the false tail, + which, enrolled in some yards of black riband, hung halfway down + his back. + +We must believe that the richest brocades, the finest lawn, the choicest +laces, the heaviest gold and silver buckles, did not adorn the persons +of New England dames and belles only; the gaudiest inflorescence of +color and stuffs shone resplendent on the manly figures of their +husbands and brothers. And yet these men were no "lisping hawthorn +buds," their souls were not in their clothes, or we had not the signers +of the Declaration of Independence and the heroes of the Revolution. + +The domination of French ideas in America after the Revolution found one +form of expression in French fashions of dress; and where New England +women had formerly followed English models and English reproductions of +French fashions, they now copied the French fashions direct, to the +improvement, I fancy, of their modes. Too many accounts and +representations exist of these comparatively recent styles to make it of +value to enter into any detail of them here. But another influence on +the dress of the times should be recorded. + +The sudden and vast development of the Oriental trade by New England +ship-owners is plainly marked by many changes in the stuffs imported and +in the dress of both men and women. Nankeens became at once one of the +chief articles of sale in drygoods shops. Though Fairholt says they were +not exported to America till 1825, I find them advertised in the _Boston +Evening Post_ of 1761. Shawls appeared in shopkeepers' lists. The first +notice that I have seen is in the _Salem Gazette_ of 1784--"a rich +sortment of shawls." This was at the very time when Elias Haskett +Derby--the father of the East India trade--was building and launching +his stout ships for Canton. We have a vast variety of stuffs nowadays, +but the list seems narrow and small when compared with the record of +Indian stuffs that came in such numbers a hundred years ago to Boston +and Salem markets. The names of these Oriental materials are nearly all +obsolete, and where the material is still manufactured it bears a +different appellation. A list of them will preserve their names and show +their number. Some may prove not to have been Indian, but were so called +in the days of their importation. + + Alrabads. Chowtahs. Neganepauts. + Anjungoes. Culgees. Nenapees. + Allejars. Chaffelaes. Nagurapaux. + Atlasses. Corottas. Oringals. + Addaties. Doreas. Paunchees. + Allibanies. Deribands. Patnas. + Anbraeahs. Doorguzzees. Pallampores. + Arradahs. Doodanies. Ponabaguzzies. + Budoys. Dorsatees. Persias. + Boglipores. Danadars. Peniascoes. + Bengals. Elatchies. Pagnas. + Briampaux. Emertees. Poppolis. + Bagatapaux. Gurrahs. Photaes. + Bumrums. Guzzinahs. Pelongs. + Bulschauls. Goaconcheleras. Quilts. + Brawls. Gurraes. Romalls. + Bafraes. Gelongs. Rehings. + Bejauraupauts. Ginghams. Seersuckers. + Bafts. Gunieas. Sallampores. + Baguzzees. Humhums. Soraguzzes. + Betelles. Humadies. Soofeys. + Byrampauts. Izzarees. Seerbettees. + Cushlas. Jollopours. Sannoes. + Coffies. Jandannies. Seerindams. + Chinachurry Januwars. Shalbafts. + Cherrydarry. Luckhouris. Seerbands. + Chilloes. Lemmones. Succatums. + Chints. Lungees. Starrets. + Cutthees. Mamoodies. Terindams. + Cossas. Mahmudihiaties. Tapseils. + Chenarize. Mugga-Mamoochis. Tanjeebs. + Chittabullus. Mickbannies. Tepoys. + Coopees. Masaicks. Tainsooks. + Callowaypoose. Moorees. Taffatties. + Cuttanees. Mowsannas. Tapis. + Carradaries. Mulmouls. Tarnatams. + Cheaconies. Mulye-Gungee. Taundah-Khassah. + Chucklaes. Nicanees. Tandarees. + Cadies. Nillaes. + + + + +XIV + +DOCTORS AND PATIENTS + + +There lies before me a leather-bound, time-stained, dingy little quarto +of four hundred and fifty pages that was printed in the year 1656. Its +contents comprise three parts or books. First, "The Queens Closet +Opened, or The Pearl of Practise: Accurate, Physical, and Chirurgical +Receipts." Second, "A Queens Delight, or The Art of Preserving, +Conserving, and Candying, as also a Right Knowledge of Making Perfumes +and Distilling the most Excellent Waters." Third, "The Compleat Cook, +Expertly Prescribing the most ready wayes, whether Italian, Spanish, or +French, For Dressing of Flesh and Fish, Ordering of Sauces, or Making of +PASTRY"--pastry in capitals, as is due so distinguished an article and +art. + +This conjunction of leechcraft and cooking was in early days far from +being considered demeaning to the healing art. A great number of the +cook-books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were written by +physicians. Dr. Lister, physician to Queen Anne, wrote plainly, "I do +not consider myself as hazarding anything when I say no man can be a +good physician who has not a competent knowledge of cookery." + +The book contains a long, pompous preface, in which it is asserted that +these receipts were collected originally for her "distress'd Soveraigne +Majesty the Queen"--Henrietta Maria; that they had been "laid at her +feet by Persons of Honour and Quality;" and that since false and poor +copies had been circulated during her banishment, and the compiler, who +fell with the court, was not able to render his beloved queen any +further service, he felt that he could at least "prevent all +disservices" by giving in print to her friends these true rules. Thus +could he keep the absent queen in their minds; and also he could give a +fair copy to her, since she had lost her receipts in her flight. + +Though Agnes Strickland stated that copies of this Queens Closet Opened +are exceedingly rare in England, several are preserved in old New +England families, some of them the descendants of colonial physicians; +and the book may be shown as a fair example of the methods of practice +and composition of prescriptions in colonial and provincial days. + +This volume of mine was one of those which were not fated to dwell among +"Persons of Honour and Quality" in old England; it crossed the waters to +the new land with simpler folk, and was for many years the +pocket-companion of an old New England doctor. Two names are carefully +written on the inside of the cover of my book, names of past owners: +"Edward Talbot, His Book," is in the most faded ink, and "William +Morse, His Book, in the y'r 1710, Boston." A musty, leathery smell +pervades and exhales from the pages, and is mingled with whiffs of an +equally ancient and more penetrating odor, that of old drugs and +medicines; for many a journey over bleak hills and lonely dales has the +book made, safely reposing at the bottom of its owner's pocket, or lying +cheek by jowl with the box of drugs and medicines, and case of lancets +in his ample saddlebags. + +This country doctor, like others of his profession at the same date, had +not studied deeply in college and hospital; nor had he taken any long +course of instruction in foreign schools and universities. When he had +decided to become a doctor, he had simply ridden with an old, +established physician--ridden literally--in a half-menial, half-medical +capacity. He had cared for the doctor's horse, swept the doctor's +office, run the doctor's errands, pounded drugs, gathered herbs, and +mixed plasters, until he was fitted to ride for himself. Then he had +applied to the court and received a license to practise--that was all. I +doubt not that this book of mine, and perhaps a manuscript collection of +recipes and prescriptions, and a few Latin treatises that he could +hardly decipher, formed his entire pharmacop[oe]ia. As he had chanced to +inherit a small fortune from a relative, he became a physician of some +note; for in colonial days wealth and position were as essential as were +learning and experience, to enable one to become a good doctor. + +I like to think of the rich and pompous old doctor a-riding out to see +his patients, clad in his suit of sober brown or claret color with +shining buttons made of silver coins. The full-skirted coat had great +pockets and flaps, as had the long waistcoat that reached well over the +hips. Knee-breeches dressed his shapely legs, while fine silk stockings +and buckled shoes displayed his well-turned calves and ankles. On his +head he wore a cocked hat and wig. He owned and wore in turn wigs of +different sizes and dignity--ties, periwigs, bags, and bobs. His +portrait was painted in a full-bottomed wig that rivalled the Lord +Chancellor's in size; but his every-day riding-wig was a rather +commonplace horsehair affair with a stiff eel-skin cue. One wig he lost +by a mysterious accident while attending a patient who was lying ill of +a fever, of which the crisis seemed at hand. The doctor decided to +remain all night, and sat down by a table in the sick man's room. The +hours passed slowly away. Physician and nurse and goodwife talked and +droned on; the sick man moaned and tossed in his bed, and begged +fruitlessly for water. At last the room grew silent, the tired watchers +dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his +eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the +table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and +when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room +collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the +valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking +around for his wig; while the sick man, who had jumped out of bed in +the confusion and captured a pitcher of water, drunk half the contents, +and thrown the remainder over the doctor's head, was lying behind the +bed curtains laughing hysterically at the ridiculous appearance of the +man of medicine. Instant death was predicted for the invalid, who, +strange to say, either from the laughter or the water, began to recover +from that moment. The terrified physician was uncertain whether he ought +to attribute the conflagration of his wig to a violent demonstration of +the devil in his effort to obtain possession of the sick man's soul, or +to the powerful influence of some conjunction of the planets, or to the +new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered +and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with +in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved +of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it +was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as +to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one +of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running +thence up through his wig, thus warding off further alarming +demonstration. Ere this was done the mystery of the explosion was +solved. When the doctor's new wig arrived from Boston, he ordered his +newly purchased negro servant to powder it well ere it was worn. He was +horrified to see Pompey give the wig a liberal sprinkling of gunpowder +from the powder-horn, instead of starch from the dredging-box; and the +explosion of the old wig was no longer assigned to diabolical, +thaumaturgical, or meteorological influences. + +Let us turn from the doctor and the wig to the book; let us see what he +did when he singed his head and burnt his face. He whipped my little +book out of his pocket and turned to page 77; there he was told to make +"Oyl of Eggs. Take twelve yolks of eggs and put them in a pot over the +fire, and let them stand until you perceive them to turn black; then put +them in a press and press out the Oyl." Or he could make "Oyl of Fennel" +if he preferred it. But probably the New England goodwife had on hand +one of the dozen astounding salves described in the book, that the +doctor had ere this instructed her to make, and in which I trust he +found due relief. + +One cannot wonder that the sick man craved water, when we read what he +had had to drink. He had been given, a spoonful at a time, this +"Comfortable Juleb for a Feaver," made of "Barley Water & White Wine +each one pint, Whey one quart, two ounces of Conserves of Barberries, +and the Juyces of two limmons and 2 Oranges." The doctor had also taken +(if he had followed his Pearl of Practice) "two Salt white herrings & +slit them down the back and bound them to the soles of the feet" of his +patient; and I doubt not he had bled the sufferer at once, for he always +bled and purged on every possible occasion. + +The Water of Life was also given for fevers, a few drops at a time, and +also as a tonic in health. + + "Take Balm leaves and stalks, Betony leaves and flowers, Rosemary, + red sage, Taragon, Tormentil leaves, Rossolis and Roses, Carnation, + Hyssop, Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves + and root, red Mints, of each a handful; bruise these hearbs and put + them in a great earthern pot, & pour on them enough White Wine as + will cover them, stop them close, and let them steep for eight or + nine days; then put to it Cinnamon, Ginger, Angelica-seeds, Cloves, + and Nuttmegs, of each an ounce, a little Saffron, Sugar one pound, + Raysins solis stoned one pound, the loyns and legs of an old Coney, + a fleshy running Capon, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of + Mutton, four young Chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve + Eggs, a loaf of White-bread cut in sops, and two or three ounces of + Mithridate or Treacle, & as much Muscadine as will cover them all. + Distil al with a moderate fire, and keep the first and second + waters by themselves; and when there comes no more by Distilling + put more Wine into the pot upon the same stuffe and distil it + again, and you shal have another good water. This water + strengtheneth the Spirit, Brain, Heart, Liver, and Stomack. Take + when need is by itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with + Sugar." + +Who could doubt that it strengthened the spirit, especially when taken +with ale or wine? Plainly here do we see the need of a doctor being a +good cook. But what pot would hold all that flesh and fowl, that +blooming flower-garden of herbs and posies, that assorted lot of fruits +and spices, to say nothing of the muscadine? + +Our ancestors spared no pains in preparing these medicines. They did +not, shifting all responsibility, run to a chemist or apothecary with a +little slip of paper; with their own hands they picked, pulled, pounded, +stamped, shredded, dropped, powdered, and distilled, regardless of +expense, or trouble, or hard work. Truly they deserved to be cured. They +did not measure the drugs with precision in preparing their medicines, +as do our chemists nowadays, nor were their prescriptions written in +Latin nor with cabalistic marks--the asbestos stomachs and colossal +minds of our forefathers were much above such petty minuteness; nor did +they administer the doses with exactness. "The bigth of a walnut," +"enough to lie on a pen knifes point," "the weight of a shilling," +"enough to cover a French crown," "as bigg as a haslenut," "as great as +a charger," "the bigth of a Turkeys Egg," "a pretty draught," "a pretty +bunch of herbs," "take a little handful," "take a pretty quantity as +often as you please"--such are the lax directions that accompany these +old prescriptions. + +Of course, the remedies given in this book were largely for the diseases +of the day. Physicians and parsons, lords and ladies, combined to +furnish complex and elaborate prescriptions and perfumes to cure and +avert the plague; and the list includes one plague-cure that the Lord +Mayor had from the Queen, and I may add that it is a particularly +unpleasant and revolting one. A plague swept through New England and +decimated the Indian tribes; and though it was not at all like the great +plague that devastated London, I doubt not red man and white man took +confidingly and faithfully medicines such as are given in this little +book of mine: the king's feeble and much-vaunted dose of "White Wine, +Ginger, Treacle, and Sage;" Dr. Atkinson's excellent perfume against the +Plague, of "Angelica roots and Wine Vinegar, that if taken fasting, your +breath would kill the Plague" (it must have been a fearful dose); "Mr. +Fenton's the Chirurgeon's Posset and his Sedour Root." + +Cures for small-pox and for gout are many. Varied are the lotions for +the "pin and web in the eye;" so many are there of these that it makes +me suspect that our forefathers were sadly sore-eyed. + +One very prevalent ail that our ancestors had to endure (if we can judge +from the number of prescriptions for its relief) was a "cold stomack;" +literally cold, one might think, since most of the cures were by +external application. Lady Spencer used a plebeian "greene turfe of +grasse" to warm her stomach, with the green side, not the dirt side, +placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she +was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon +her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities" +that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure +pain and coldness of the stomach. Thus did like cure like. A +"Restorative Bag" of herbs and spices heated in "boyl'd Vinegar" is +asserted to be "comfortable." "It must be as hot as can be endured, and +keep yourself from studying and musing and it will comfort you much." So +it seems you ought not to study nor to muse if your stomach be cold. + +Many and manifold are the remedies to "chear the heart," to "drive +melancholy," to "cure one pensive," "for the megrums," "for a grief;" +and without doubt the lonely colonists often needed them. We know, too, +that "things ill for the heart were beans, pease, sadness, onions, +anger, evil tidings, and loss of friends,"--a very arbitrary and unjust +classification. Melancholy was evidently regarded as a disease, and a +much-to-be-lamented one. External applications were made to "drive the +worms out of the Brain as well as Dross out of the Stomack." Here is "A +pretious water to revive the Spirits:" + + "Take four gallons of strong Ale, five ounces of Aniseeds, + Liquorish scraped half a pound, Sweet Mints, Angelica, Eccony, + Cowslip flowers, Sage & Rosemary Flowers, sweet Marjoram, of each + three handfuls, Palitory of the VVal one handful. After it is + fermented two or three dayes, distil it in a Limbeck, and in the + water infuse one handful of the flowers aforesaid, Cinnamon and + Fennel-seed of each half an ounce, Juniper berries bruised one + dram, red Rosebuds, roasted Apples & dates sliced and stoned, of + each half a pound; distil it again and sweeten it with some + Sugarcandy, and take of Ambergreese, Pearl, Red Coral, Hartshorn + pounded, and leaf Gold, of each half a Dram, put them in a fine + Linnen bag, and hang them by a thread in a Glasse." + +Think of taking all that trouble to make something to cheer the spirits, +when the four gallons of strong ale with spices would have fully +answered the purpose, without bothering with the herbs and fruits. I +suppose the gold and jewels were particularly cheering ingredients, and +perhaps entitled the drink to its name of precious water. Indeed, it +would be cheering to the spirits nowadays to have the precious metals +and gems that were so lavishly used in these ancient medicines. + +Full jewelled were the works of English persons of quality in the time +of the Merry Monarch and his sire. The gold and gems were not always +hung in bags in the medicines; frequently they were powdered and +dissolved, and formed a large portion of the dose. Like Chaucer's +Doctour, they believed that "gold in phisike is a cordial." Dr. +Gifford's "Amber Pils for Consumption" contained a large quantity of +pearls, white amber, and coral, as did also Lady Kent's powder. Sir +Edward Spencer's eye-salve was rich in powdered pearls. The Bishop of +Worcester's "admirable curing powder" was composed largely of "ten skins +of snakes or adders or Slow worms" mixed with "Magistery of Pearls." The +latter was a common ingredient, and under the head of "Choice Secrets +Made Known" we are told how to manufacture it: + + "Dissolve two or three ounces of fine seed Pearl in distill'd + Vinegar, and when it's perfectly dissolved and all taken up, pour + the Vinegar into a clean glasse Bason; then drop some few drops of + oyl of Tartar upon it, and it will call down the Pearl into the + powder; then pour the Vinegar clean off softly; then put to the + Pearl clear Conduit or Spring water; pour that off, and do so + often until the taste of the Vinegar and Tartar be clean gone; then + dry the powder of Pearl upon warm embers and keep for your use." + +Gold and precious stones were specially necessary "to ease the passion +of the Heart," as indeed they are nowadays. In that century, however, +they applied the mercenary cure inwardly, and prepared it thus: + + "Take Damask Roses half-blown, cut off thier whites, and stamp them + very fine, and straine out the Juyce very strong; moisten it in the + stamping with a little Damask Rose water; then put thereto fine + powder Sugar, and boyl it gently to a fine Syrup; then take the + Powders of Amber, Pearl, Rubies, of each half a dram, Ambergreese + one scruple, and mingle them with the said syrup till it be + somewhat thick, and take a little thereof on a knifes point morning + and evening." + +I can now understand the reason for the unceasing, the incurable +melancholy that hung like a heavy black shadow over so many Puritan +divines in the early days of New England, as their gloomy sermons, their +sad diaries and letters, plainly show. Those poor ministers had no +chance to use these receipts and thus get cured of "worms in the brain," +with annual salaries of only L60, which they had to take in corn, wheat, +codfish, or bearskins, in any kind of "country pay," or even in wampum, +in order to get it at all. Rubies and pearls and gold and coral were +scarce drugs in clerical circles in Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth +plantations. Even amber and ivory were far from plentiful. We find John +Winthrop writing in 1682, "I am straitened, having no ivory beaten, +neither any pearle nor corall." Cleopatra drinks were out of fashion in +the New World. So Mather and Hooker and Warham were condemned to die +with uncheered spirits and unjewelled stomachs. + +Another ingredient, unicorns' horns, which were ground and used in +powders, must have been difficult to obtain in New England, although I +believe Governor Winthrop had one sent to him as a gift from England; +and John Endicott, writing to him in 1634, said: "I have sent you Mrs +Beggarly her Vnicorns horne & beza stone." Both the unicorn's horn and +the bezoar stone were sovereign antidotes against poison. At another +time Winthrop had sent to him "bezoar stone, mugwort, orgaine, and +galingall root." Ambergris was also too rare and costly for American +Puritans to use, though we find Hull writing for golden ambergroose. + +Insomnia is not a bane of our modern civilization alone. This little +book shows that our ancestors craved and sought sleep just as we do. +Here is a prescription to cure sleeplessness, which might be tried by +any wakeful soul of modern times, since it requires neither rubies, +pearls, nor gold for its manufacture: + + "Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water, + & make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill, + and it will cause sleep." + +So aniseed bags were used in earlier days for a purpose very different +from our modern one; if your nineteenth century nose should refuse to +accustom itself to having bags hung on it, you can "Chop Chammomile & +crumbs of Brown Bread smal and boyl them with White Wine Vinegar, stir +it wel and spred it on a cloth & binde it to the soles of the feet as +hot as you can suffer it." And if that should not make you sleepy, there +are frankincense-perfumed paper bags for your head, and some very +pleasant things made of rose-leaves for your temples, and hard-boiled +eggs for the nape of your neck--you can choose from all of these. + +They had abounding faith in those days. Several of the prescriptions in +"The Queen's Closet" are to cure people at a remote distance, by +applying the nostrums to a linen cloth previously wet with the patient's +blood. They had plasters of power to put on the back of the head to draw +the palate into place; and wonderful elixirs that would keep a dying man +alive five years; and herb-juices to make a dumb man speak. The +following suggestion shows plainly their confiding spirit: + + "To Cure Deafnesse. Take the Garden Dasie roots and make juyce + thereof, and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster & + drop three or four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three + or four dayes together." + +"Simpatheticall" medicines had a special charm for all the Winthrops, +and that delightful but gullible old English alchemist, Sir Kenelm +Digby, kept them well posted in all the newest nonsense. + +In a medical dispensatory of the times the different varieties of +medicines used in New England are enumerated. They are leaves, herbs, +roots, barks, seeds, flowers, juices, distilled waters, syrups, juleps, +decoctions, oils, electuaries, conserves, preserves, lohocks, ointments, +plasters, poultices, troches, and pills. These words and articles are +all used nowadays, except the lohock, which was to be _licked up_, and +in consistency stood in the intermediate ground between an electuary and +a syrup. These terms, of course, were in the Galenic practice. In "The +Queen's Closet" all the physic was found afield, with the exception of +the precious metals and one compound, rubila, which was made of antimony +and nitre, and which was in special favor in the Winthrop family--as +many of their letters show. They sent it and recommended it to their +friends--and better still, they took it faithfully themselves, and with +most satisfactory results. + +There was also one mineral "oyntment" made of quicksilver, verdigris, +and brimstone mixed with "barrows grease," which was good for "horse, +man, or other beast." Alum and copperas were once recommended for +external use. The powerful "plaister of Paracelsus," also beloved of the +Winthrops, was not composed of mineral drugs, as might be supposed, but +was made of herbs, and from the ingredients named must have been +particularly nasty smelling as well as powerful. + +The medicine mithridate forms a part of many of these prescriptions; it +does not seem to be regarded as an alexipharmic, but as a soporific. It +is said to have been the cure-all of King Mithridates. I will not give +an account of the process of its manufacture; it would fill about three +pages of this book, and I should think it would take about six weeks to +compound a good dose of it. There are forty-five different articles +used, each to be prepared by slow degrees and introduced with great +care; some of them (such as the rape of storax, camel's hay, and bellies +of skinks) must have been inconvenient to procure in New England. +Mithridates would hardly recognize his own medicine in this +conglomeration, for when Pompey found his precious receipt it was simple +enough: "Pound with care two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of +rice, and a grain of salt." I think we might take this _cum grano +salis_. + +Queer were the names of some of the herbs; alehoof, which was +ground-ivy, or gill-go-by-ground, or haymaids, or twinhoof, or +gill-creep-by-ground, and was an herb of Venus, and thus in special use +for "passions of the heart," for "amorous cups," which few Puritans +dared to meddle with. The blessed thistle, of which one scandalized old +writer says, "I suppose the name was put upon it by them that had little +holiness themselves." Clary, or clear-eye, or Christ's-eye, which latter +name makes the same writer indignantly say, "I could wish from my soul +that blasphemy and ignorance were ceased among physicians"--as if the +poor doctors gave these folk-names! The crab-claws so often mentioned +was also an herb, otherwise known as knight's-pond water and +freshwater-soldier. The mints to flavor were horsemint, spearmint, +peppermint, catmint, and heartmint. + +The earliest New England colonists did not discover in the new country +all the herbs and simples of their native land, but the Indian powwows +knew of others that answered every purpose--very healing herbs too, as +Wood in his "New England's Prospects" unwillingly acknowledges and thus +explains: "Sometimes the devill for requitall of their worship recovers +the partie to nuzzle them up inn thier devilish Religion." The planters +sent to England for herbs and drugs, as existing inventories show; and +they planted seeds and soon had plenty of home herbs that grew apace in +every dooryard. The New Haven colony passed a law at an early date to +force the destruction of a "great stinking poisonous weed," which is +said to have been the _Datura stramonium_, a medicinal herb. It had been +brought over by the Jamestown colonists, and had spread miraculously, +and was known as "Jimson" or Jamestown weed. + +Josselyn gives in his "New England's Rarities" an interesting list of +the herbs known and used by the colonists. Cotton Mather said the most +useful and favorite medicinal plants were alehoof, garlick, elder, sage, +rue, and saffron. Saffron has never lost its popularity. To this day +"saffern tea" is a standing country dose in New England, especially for +the "jarnders." Elder, rue, and saffron were English herbs that were +made settlers here and carefully cultivated; so also were sage, hyssop, +tansy, wormwood, celandine, comfrey, mallows, mayweed, yarrow, +chamomile, dandelion, shepherd's-purse, bloody dock, elecampane, +motherwort, burdock, plantain, catnip, mint, fennel, and dill--all now +flaunting weeds. Dunton wrote, with praise of a Dr. Bullivant, in +Boston, in 1686, "He does not direct his patients to the East Indies to +look for drugs when they may have far better out of their gardens." + +There is a charm in these medical rules in my old book, in spite of the +earth-worms and wood-lice and adders and vipers in which some of them +abound (to say nothing of other and more shocking ingredients). In +surprising and unpleasant compounds they do not excel the prescriptions +in a serious medical book published in Exeter, New Hampshire, as late as +1835. Nor is Cotton Mather's favorite and much-vaunted ingredient +_millepedes_, or sowbugs, once mentioned within. All are not vile +in my Queen's Closet--far from it. Medicines composed of Canary wine +or sack, with rose-water, juice of oranges and lemons, syrup of +clove-gillyflower, loaf sugar, "Mallago raisins," nutmegs, cloves, +cinnamon, mace, remind me strongly of Josselyn's New England Nectar, and +render me quite dissatisfied with our modern innovations of quinine, +antipyrine, and phenacetin, and even make only passively welcome the +innocuous and uninteresting homo[eo]pathic pellet and drop. + +Many other dispensatories, guides, collections, and records of medical +customs and concoctions, remain to us even of the earliest days. We have +the private receipt-book of John Winthrop, a gathering of choice +receipts given to him in manuscript by one Stafford, of England. These +receipts have been printed in the Collections of the Massachusetts +Historical Society for the year 1862, with delightful notes by Dr. +Oliver Wendell Holmes, and are of the same nature as those in the +Queen's Closet. Here is one, which was venomous, yet harmless enough: + + "My black powder against ye plague, small-pox, purples, all sorts + of feavers, Poyson; either by way of prevention or after Infection. + In the Moneth of March take Toades, as many as you will, alive; + putt them into an Earthen pott, so yt it be halfe full; Cover it + with a broad tyle or Iron plate, then overwhelme the pott, so yt ye + bottome may be uppermost; putt charcoals round about it and over it + and in the open ayre not in an house; sett it on fire and lett it + burne out and extinguish of itself; when it is cold take out the + toades; and in an Iron morter pound them very well; and searce + them; then in a Crucible calcine them; So againe; pound them & + searce them again. The first time they will be a brown powder, the + next time blacke. Of this you may give a dragme in a Vehiculum or + drinke Inwardly in any Infection taken: and let them sweat upon it + in their bedds: but let them not cover their heads; especially in + the Small-Pox. For prevention half a dragme will suffice." + +I do not know what meteorological influence was assigned to the month of +March; perhaps it was chosen because toads would be uncommonly hard to +get in New England during that month. + +All the medicines in Dr. Stafford's little collection were not, +however, so unalluring, and were, on the whole, very healing and +respectable. He prescribed nitre, antimony, rhubarb, jalap, and +spermaceti, "the sovereignest thing on earth--for an inward bruise;" and +he also culled herbs and simples in vast variety. He gave some very good +advice regarding the conduct of a physician, the latter clause of which +might well be heeded to-day. + + "Nota bene. No man can with a good Conscience take a fee or Reward + before ye partie receive benefit apparent and then he is not to + demand anything but what God shall putt it into the heart of the + partie to give him. A man is not to neglect that partie to whom he + had once administered but to visit him at least once a day & to + medle with no more than he can well attend." + +The account books of other old New England physicians, and other medical +books such as "A Treatise of Choice Spagyrical Preparations," show to us +that the seventeenth and eighteenth century medicines, though +disgusting, were not deadly. We know what medicines were given the +colonists on their sea journey hither: "Oil of Cloves, Origanum, Purging +Pills, and Ressin of Jalap" for the toothache; a Diaphoretic Bolus for +an "Extream Cold;" Spirits of Castor and Oil of Amber for "Histericall +Fitts;" "Seaurell Emplaisters for a broken Shin;" and for other +afflictions, "Gascons Powder, Liquorish, Carminative Seeds, Syrup of +Saffron, Pectoral Syrups and Somniferous Boluses." + +Cod livers were given then as cod-liver oil is given now, "to restore +them that have melted their Grease." A favorite prescription was +"Rulandus, his Balsam which tho' it smel not wel" was properly powerful, +and could be gotten down if carefully hidden in "poudered shuger." + +Cotton Mather, who tried his skilful hand at writing upon almost every +grave and weighty subject, composed a book of medical advice called the +"Angel of Bethesda." It was written when he was sixty years of age, but +was never printed; the manuscript is preserved in the library of the +American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It begins characteristically +with a sermon, and is fantastically peppered with pompous scriptural and +classical quotations, as was the Mather wont. The ingredients of the +prescriptions are vile beyond belief, though, as Mather said in one of +his letters, they are "powerful and parable physicks," which are two +desirable qualities or attributes of any physic. The book gives an +interesting account of Mather's share in that great colonial revolution +in medicine--the introduction of the custom of inoculation for the +small-pox. His friend, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, of Boston, was the first +physician to inaugurate this great step by inoculating his own son--a +child six years old. Deep was the horror and aversion felt by the +colonial public toward both the practice and practitioners of this +daring innovation, and fiercely and malignantly was it opposed; but its +success soon conquered opposition, and also that fell disease, which six +times within a hundred years had devastated New England, bringing +death, disfigurement, and business misfortunes to the colonists. So +universal was the branding produced by this scourge that scarcely an +advertisement containing any personal description appears in any +colonial print, without containing the words, pock-fretten, pock-marked, +pock-pitted, or pock-broken. + +Through the possibility of having the small-pox to order, arose the +necessity of small-pox hospitals, to which whole families or parties +resorted to pass through the ordeal in concert. Small-pox parties were +made the occasion of much friendly intercourse; they were called +classes. Thus in the _Salem Gazette_ of April 22, 1784, after Point +Shirley was set aside as a small-pox retreat, it was advertised that +"Classes will be admitted for Small pox." These classes were real +country outings, having an additional zest of novelty since one could +fully participate in the pleasures, profits, and pains of a small-pox +party but once in a lifetime. Much etiquette and deference was shown +over these "physical gatherings," formal invitations were sometimes sent +to join the function at a private house. Here is an extract from a +letter written July 8, 1775, by Joseph Barrell, a Boston merchant, to +Colonel Wentworth: "Mr. Storer has invited Mrs. Martin to take the +small-pox in her house; if Mrs. Wentworth desires to get rid of her +fears in the same way we will accommodate her in the best way we can. +I've several friends that I've invited, and none of them will be more +welcome than Mrs. Wentworth." These brave classes took their various +purifying and sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, were "grafted" +together, "broke out" together, were feverish together, sweat together, +scaled off together, and convalesced together. Not a very prepossessing +conjoining medium would inoculation appear to have been, but many a +pretty and sentimental love affair sprang up between mutually +"pock-fretten" New Englanders. + +The small-pox hospitals were of various degrees of elegance and comfort, +and were widely advertised. I have found four separate announcements in +one of the small sheets of a Federal newspaper. From the luxurious +high-priced retreat "without Mercury" were grades descending to the +Suttonian, Brunonian, Pincherian, Dimsdalian, and other plebeian +establishments, in which the patient paid from fifteen to as low as +three dollars per week for lodging, food, medicine, care, and +inoculation. At the latter cheap establishment each person was +obliged to furnish for his individual use one sheet and one +pillow-case--apparently a meagre outfit for sickness, but possibly +merely a supplemental one. + +This is a fair example of the prevailing advertisement of small-pox +hospitals, from the _Connecticut Courant_ of November 30, 1767: + + "Dr. Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fairfield takes this + method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous + of taking the Small Pox by way of Inoculation, that having had + Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on + the same the last season with great Success; has lately erected a + convenient Hospital for that purpose just within the Jurisdiction + Line of the Province of New York about nine miles distant from N. Y. + Harbour, where he intends to carry said Branch of Practice from the + first of October next to the first of May next. And that all such + as are disposed to favour him with their Custom may depend upon + being well provided with all necessary accomodations, Provisions & + the best Attendance at the moderate Expence of Four Pounds Lawful + Money to Each Patient. That after the first Sett or Class he + purposes to give no Occasion for waiting to go in Particular Setts + but to admit Parties singly, just as it suits them. As he has + another Good House provided near Said Hospital where his family are + to live, and where all that come after the first Sett that go into + the Hospital are to remain with his Family until they are + sufficiently Prepared & Inoculated & Until it is apparent that they + haven taken the infection." + +Of all the advertisements of small-pox hospitals, inoculation, etc., +which appear in the newspapers through the eighteenth century, none is +more curious, more comic than this from a Boston paper of 1772: + + "Ibrahim Mustapha Inoculator to his Sublime Highness & the + Janissaries: original Inventor and sole Proprietor of that + Inestimable Instrument, the Circassian Needle, begs leave to + acquaint the Nobility & Gentry of this City and its Environs that + he is just arrived from Constantinople where he has inoculated + about 50,000 Persons without losing a Single Patient. He requires + not the least Preparation Regimen or Confinement. Ladies and + Gentlemen who wish to be inoculated only acquaint him with how many + Pimples they choose and he makes the exact number of Punctures with + his Needle which Produces the Eruptions in the very Picquers. + Ladies who fancy a favorite Pitt may have it put in any Spot they + please, and of any size: not the Slightest Fever or Pain attends + the Eruption; much less any of those frightful Convulsions so usual + in all the vulgar methods of Inoculation, even in the famous Peter + Puffs. This amazing Needle more truly astonishing and not less + useful than the Magnetic one, has this property in common with the + latter, that by touching the point of a common needle it + communicates its wonderful Virtues to it in the same manner that + Loadstone does to Iron. And that no part of this extensive + Continent may want the Benefit of this Superlatively excellent + Method, Ibrahim Mustapha proposes to touch several Needles in order + to have them distributed to different Colonies by which means the + Small Pocks may be entirely eradicated as it has been in the + Turkish Empire." + +Generous Ibrahim Mustapha! despite the testimony of the Janissaries and +the entire Turkish Empire, I cannot doubt that in your early youth you +frequently kissed the Blarney Stone, hence your fluent tongue and your +gallant proposition to becomingly decorate with pits the ladies. + +Besides the scourge of small-pox, the colonists were afflicted +grievously with other malignant distempers,--fatal throat diseases, +epidemic influenzas, putrid fevers, terrible fluxes; and as the art of +sanitation was absolutely disregarded and almost unknown, as drainage +there was none, and the notion of disinfection was in feeble infancy, we +cannot wonder that the death-rates were high. Well might the New +Englander say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Considering the thousand doors +that lead to death, I do thank my God that we can die but once." + +Cotton Mather was not the only kind-hearted New England minister who set +up to heal the body as well as the soul of the entire town. All the +early parsons seem to have turned eagerly to medicine. The Wigglesworths +were famous doctors. President Hoar, of Harvard College, President +Rogers, President Chauncey, all practised medicine. The latter's six +sons were all ministers, and all good doctors, too. It was a parson, +Thomas Thatcher, who wrote the first medical treatise published in +America, a set of "Brief Rules for the Care of the Small Pocks," printed +as a broadside in 1677. Many of the early parsons played also the part +of apothecary, buying drugs at wholesale and compounding and selling +medicines to their parishioners. Small wonder that Cotton Mather called +the union of physic and piety an "Angelical Conjunction." + +Other professions and callings joined hands with chirurgy and medicine. +Innkeepers, magistrates, grocers, and schoolmasters were doctors. One +surgeon was a butcher--sadly similar callings in those days. This +butcher-surgeon was not Mr. Pighogg, the Plymouth "churregein," whose +unpleasant name was, I trust, only the cacographical rendering of the +good old English name Peacock. + +With all these amateur and semi-professional rivals, it is no wonder +that Giles Firmin, who knew how to pull teeth and bleed and sweat in a +truly professional manner, complained that he found physic but a "meene +helpe" in the new land. + +So vast was the confidence of the community in some or any kind of a +doctor, and in self-doctoring, that as late as the year 1721 there was +but one regularly graduated physician in Boston--Dr. Samuel Douglas; and +it may be noted that he was one of the most decided opponents of +inoculation for small-pox. + +Colonial dames also boldly tried their hand at the healing art; the +first two, Anne Hutchinson and Margaret Jones, did not thrive very well +at the trade. The banishment of the former has oft been told. The latter +was hung as a witch, and the worst evidence against her character, the +positive proof of her diabolical power was, that her medicines being so +simple, they worked such wonderful cures. At the close of King Philip's +War the Council of Connecticut paid Mrs. Allyn L20 for her services to +the sick, and Mistress Sarah Sands doctored on Block Island. Sarah +Alcock, the wife of a chirurgeon, was also "active in physick;" and +Mistress Whitman, the Marlborough midwife, visited her patients on +snow-shoes, and lived to be seventy-eight years old, too. In the Phipps +Street Burying Ground in Charlestown is the tombstone of a Boston +midwife who died in 1761, aged seventy-six years, and who, could we +believe the record on the gravestone, "by ye blessing of God has brought +into this world above 130,000 children." But a close examination shows +that the number on the ancient headstone, through the mischievous +manipulation of modern hands, has received a figure at either end, and +the good old lady can only be charged with three thousand additions to +wretched humanity. + +Negroes, and illiterate persons of all complexions, set up as doctors. +Old Joe Pye and Sabbatus were famous Indian healers. Indian squaws, such +as Molly Orcutt, sold many a decoction of leaves and barks to the +planters, and, like Hiawatha, + + "Wandered eastward, wandered westward, + Teaching men the use of simples, + And the antidotes for poisons, + And the cure of all diseases." + +A good old Connecticut doctor had a negro servant, Primus, who rode with +him and helped him in his surgery and shop. When the master died, Doctor +Primus started in to practise medicine himself, and proved +extraordinarily successful throughout the county; even his master's +patients did not disdain to employ the black successor, wishing no doubt +their wonted bolus and draught. + +In spite of the fact that everyone and anyone seemed to be permitted, +and was considered fitted to prescribe medicine, the colonists were +sharp enough on the venders of quack medicines--or, perhaps I should +say, of powerless medicines--on "runnagate chyrurgeons and +physickemongers, saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, and all +impostourous empiricks." As early as 1631, one Nicholas Knapp was fined +and whipped for pretending "to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth +nor value which he sold att a very deare rate." The planters were +terribly prostrated by scurvy, and doubtless were specially indignant at +this heartless cheat. + +Tides of absurd attempts at medicine, or rather at healing, swept over +the scantily settled New England villages in colonial days, just as we +have seen in our own day, in our great cities, the abounding +success--financially--of the blue-glass cure, the faith cure, and of +science healing. The Rain Water Doctor worked wondrous miracles, and did +a vast and lucrative business until he was unluckily drowned in a +hogshead of his own medicine at his own door. Bishop Berkeley, in his +pamphlet Siris, started a flourishing tar-water craze, which lived long +and died slowly. This cure-all, like the preceding aquatic physic, had +the merit of being cheap. A quart of tar steeped for forty-eight hours +in a gallon of water, tainted the water enough to make it fit for +dosing. Perhaps the most expansive swindle was that of Dr. Perkins, with +his Metallic Tractors. He was born in Norwich, Conn., in 1740, and found +fortune and fame in his native land. Still he was expelled from the +association of physicians in his own country, but managed to establish a +Perkinean Institution in London with a fine, imposing list of officers +and managers, of whom Benjamin Franklin's son was one. He had poems and +essays and eulogies and books written about him, and it was claimed by +his followers that he cured one million and a half of sufferers. At any +rate, he managed to carry off L10,000 of good English money to New +England. His wonderful Metallic Tractors were little slips of iron and +brass three inches long, blunt at one end, and pointed at the other, and +said to be of opposite electrical conditions. They cost five guineas a +pair. When drawn or trailed for several minutes over a painful or +diseased spot on the human frame, they positively removed and cured all +ache, smart, or soreness. I have never doubted they worked wonderful +cures; so did bits of wood, of lead, of stone, of earthenware, in the +hands of scoffers, when the tractorated patients did not see the bits, +and fancied that the manipulator held Metallic Tractors. + +As years passed on various useful medicines became too much the vogue, +and were used to too vast and too deleterious an extent, particularly +mercury. Many a poor salivated patient sacrificed his teeth to his +doctor's mercurial doses. One such toothless sufferer, a carpenter, +having little ready money, offered to pay his physician in hay-rakes; +and he took a revengeful delight in manufacturing the rakes of green, +unseasoned wood. After a few days' use in the sunny fields, the doctor's +rakes were as toothless as their maker. + +Physicians' fees were "meene" enough in olden times; but sixpence a +visit in Hadley and Northampton in 1730, and only eightpence in +Revolutionary times. A blood-letting, or a jaw-splitting tooth-drawing +cost the sufferer eightpence extra. No wonder the doctor cupped and bled +on every occasion. In extravagant Hartford the opulent doctor got a +shilling a visit. Naturally all the chirurgeons eked out and augmented +their scanty fees by compounding and selling their own medicines, and +dosed often and dosed deeply, since by their doses they lived. In many +communities a bone-setter had to be paid a salary by the town in order +to keep him, so few and slight were his private emoluments, even as a +physic-monger. + +The science of nursing the sick was, in early days, unknown; there were +but few who made a profession of nursing, and those few were deeply to +be dreaded. In taking care of the sick, as in other kindnesses, the +neighborly instinct, ever so keen, so living in New England, showed no +lagging part. For it is plain to any student of early colonial days +that, if the chief foundation of the New England commonwealth was +religion, the second certainly was neighborliness. There was a constant +exchange of kindly and loving attentions between families and +individuals. It showed itself in all the petty details of daily life, in +assistance in housework and in the field, in house-raising. Did a man +build a barn, his neighbors flocked to drive a pin, to lay a stone, to +stand forever in the edifice as token of their friendly goodwill. The +most eminent, as well as the poorest neighbors, thus assisted. In +nothing was this neighborly feeling more constantly shown than in the +friendly custom of visiting and watching with the sick; and it was the +only available assistance. Men and women in this care and attention took +equal part. As in all other neighborly duties, good Judge Sewall was +never remiss in the sick-room. He was generous with his gifts and +generous with his time, even to those humble in the community. Such +entries as this abound in his diary: "Oct. 26th 1702. Visited +languishing Mr. Sam Whiting. I gave him 2 Balls of Chockalett and a +pound of Figgs." And when Mr. Bayley lay ill of a fever, he prayed with +him and took care of him through many a long night, and wrote: + + "When I came away call'd his wife into the Next Chamber and gave + her Two Five Shilling Bits. She very modestly and kindly accepted + them and said I had done too much already. I told her if the State + of my family would have born it I ought to have watched with Mr. + Bayley as much as that came to." + +To others he gave China oranges, dishes of marmalet, Meers Cakes, +Banberry Cakes; and even to well-to-do people gave gifts of money, +sometimes specifying for what purpose he wished the gift to be applied. + +The universal custom of praying at inordinate length and frequency with +sick persons was of more doubtful benefit, though of equally kind +intent. One cannot but be amazed to find how many persons--ministers, +elders, deacons, and laymen were allowed to enter the sick-room and pray +by the bedside of the invalid, thus indeed giving him, as Sewall said, +"a lift Heavenward." Sometimes a succession of prayers filled the entire +day. + +Judge Sewall's friendly prayers and visits were not always welcome. +After visiting sick Mr. Brattle the Judge writes, but without any +resentment, "he plainly told me that frequent visits were prejudicial +to him, it provok'd him to speak more than his strength would bear, +would have me come seldom." And on September 20, 1690, he met with this +reception: + + "Mr. Moody and I went before the others came to neighbor Hurd who + lay dying where also Mr. Allen came in. Nurse Hurd told her husband + who was there and what he had to say; whether he desir'd them to + pray with him; He said with some earnestness, Hold your tongue, + which was repeated three times to his wives repeated entreaties; + once he said Let me alone or Be quiet (whether that made a fourth + or was one of the three do not remember) and, My Spirits are gon. + At last Mr. Moody took him up pretty roundly and told him he might + with some labour have given a pertinent answer. When we were ready + to come away Mr. Moody bid him put forth a little Breath to ask + prayer, and said twas the last time had to speak to him; At last + ask'd him, doe you desire prayer, shall I pray with you. He + answered, Ay for Gods sake and thank'd Mr. Moody when had done. His + former carriage was very startling and amazing to us. About one at + night he died. About 11 o'clock I supposed to hear neighbor Mason + at prayer with him just as my wife and I were going to bed." + +One cannot but feel a thrill of sympathy for poor, dying Hurd on that +hot September night, fairly hectored by pious, loud-voiced neighbors +into eternity; and can well believe that many a colonial invalid who +lived through mithridate and rubila, through sweating and blood-letting, +died of the kindly and godly-intentioned praying of his neighbors. + + + + +XV + +FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS + + +The earliest New Englanders had no religious services at a funeral. Not +wishing to "confirm the popish error that prayer is to be used for the +dead or over the dead," they said no words, either of grief, +resignation, or faith, but followed the coffin and filled the grave in +silence. Lechford has given us a picture of a funeral in New England in +the seventeenth century, which is full of simple dignity, if not of +sympathy: + + "At Burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made, but all + the neighborhood or a goodly company of them come together by + tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and + then stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most + commonly present." + +As was the fashion in England at that date, laudatory verses and +sentences were fastened to the bier or herse. The name herse was then +applied to the draped catafalque or platform upon which the candles +stood and the coffin rested, not as now the word hearse to a carriage +for the conveyance of the dead. Sewall says of the funeral of the Rev. +Thomas Shepherd: "There were some verses, but none pinned on the Herse." +These verses were often printed after the funeral. The publication of +mourning broadsides and pamphlets, black-bordered and dismal, was a +large duty of the early colonial press. They were often decorated +gruesomely with skull and crossbones, scythes, coffins, and +hour-glasses, all-seeing eyes with rakish squints, bow-legged skeletons, +and miserable little rosetted winding-sheets. + +A writer in the _New England Courant_ of November 12, 1722, says: + + Of all the different species of poetry now in use I find the + Funeral Elegy to be most universally admired and used in New + England. There is scarce a plough jogger or country cobler that has + read our Psalms and can make two lines jingle, who has not once in + his life at least exercised his talent in this way. Nor is there + one country house in fifty which has not its walls garnished with + half a Score of these sort of Poems which praise the Dead to the + Life. + +When a Puritan died his friends conspired in mournful concert, or +labored individually and painfully, to bring forth as tributes of grief +and respect, rhymed elegies, anagrams, epitaphs, acrostics, epicediums, +and threnodies; and singularly enough, seemed to reserve for these +gloomy tributes their sole attempt at facetiousness. Ingenious quirks +and puns, painful and complicate jokes (printed in italics that you may +not escape nor mistake them) bestrew these funeral verses. If a man +chanced to have a name of any possible twist of signification, such as +Green, Stone, Blackman, in doleful puns did he posthumously suffer; and +his friends and relatives endured vicariously also, for to them these +grinning death's-heads of rhymes were widely distributed. + +It was with a keen sense of that humor which comes, as Sydney Smith +says, from sudden and unexpected contrast, that I read a heavily +bordered sheet entitled in large letters, "A Grammarian's Funeral." It +was printed at the death of Schoolmaster Woodmancey, and was so much +admired that it was brought forth again at the demise of Ezekiel +Cheever, who died in 1708 after no less than seventy years of +school-teaching. I think we may truly say of him, teaching at +ninety-three years of age, + + "With throttling hands of death at strife, + Ground he at grammar." + +For the consideration and investigation of Browning Societies, I give a +few lines from this New England conception of a Grammarian's Funeral. + + "Eight parts of Speech This Day wear Mourning Gowns, + _Declin'd_ Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, and Nouns. + The Substantive seeming the limbed best + Would set an hand to bear him to his _Rest_ + The Adjective with very grief did say + Hold me by Strength or I shall faint away. + Great Honour was conferred on _Conjugations_ + They were to follow next to the _Relations_ + + * * * * * + + But Lego said, by me his got his Skill + And therefore next the Herse I follow will + A Doleful Day for _Verbs_ they look so _Moody_ + They drove Spectators to a mournful Study." + +I have a strong suspicion that this funeral poem may have been learned +by heart by succeeding generations of Boston scholars, as a sort of +grammatical memory-rhyme--a mournful study, indeed. + +Funeral sermons were also printed, with trappings of sombreness, +black-bordered, with death's-heads and crossbones on the covers. These +sermons were not, however, preached at the time of the funeral, save in +exceptional cases. It is said that one was delivered at the funeral of +President Chauncey in 1671. Cotton Mather preached one at the funeral of +Fitz-John Winthrop in 1707, and another at the funeral of Waitstill +Winthrop in 1717. Gradually there crept in the custom of having suitable +prayers at the house before the burial procession formed, the first +instance being probably at the funeral of Pastor Adams, of Roxbury, in +1683. Sometimes a short address was given at the grave, as when Jonathan +Alden was buried at Duxbury, in 1697. The _Boston News Letter_ of +December 31, 1730, notes a prayer at a funeral, and says: "Tho' a custom +in the Country-Towns 'tis a Singular instance in this Place, but it's +wish'd may prove a Leading Example to the General Practice of so +Christian and Decent a Custom." Whitefield wrote disparagingly of the +custom of not speaking at the grave. + +We see Judge Sewall mastering his grief at his mother's burial, delaying +for a few moments the filling of the grave, and speaking some very +proper words of eulogy "with passion and tears." He jealously notes, +however, when the Episcopal burial service is given in Boston, saying: +"The Office for the dead is a Lying bad office, makes no difference +between the precious and the Vile." + +There were, as a rule, two sets of bearers appointed; under-bearers, +usually young men, who carried the coffin on a bier; and pall-bearers, +men of age, dignity, or consanguinity, who held the corners of the pall +which was spread over the coffin and hung down over the heads and bodies +of the under-bearers. As the coffin was sometimes carried for a long +distance, there were frequently appointed a double set of under-bearers, +to share the burden. I have been told that mort-stones were set by the +wayside in some towns, upon which the bearers could rest the heavy +coffin for a short time on their way to the burial-place; but I find no +record or proof of this statement. The pall, or bier-cloth, or +mort-cloth, as it was called, was usually bought and owned by the town, +and was of heavy purple, or black broadcloth, or velvet. It often was +kept with the bier in the porch of the meeting-house; but in some +communities the bier, a simple shelf or table of wood on four legs about +a foot and a half long, was placed over the freshly filled-in grave and +left sombrely waiting till it was needed to carry another coffin to the +burial-place. In many towns there were no gravediggers; sympathizing +friends made the simple coffin and dug the grave. + +In Londonderry, N. H., and neighboring towns that had been settled by +Scotch-Irish planters, the announcement of a death was a signal for +cessation of daily work throughout the neighborhood. Kindly assistance +was at once given at the house of mourning. Women flocked to do the +household work and to prepare the funeral feast. Men brought gifts of +food, or household necessities, and rendered all the advice and help +that was needed. A gathering was held the night before the funeral, +which in feasting and drinking partook somewhat of the nature of an +Irish wake. Much New England rum was consumed at this gathering, and +also before the procession to the grave, and after the interment the +whole party returned to the house for an "arval," and drank again. The +funeral rum-bill was often an embarrassing and hampering expense to a +bereaved family for years. + +This liberal serving of intoxicating liquor at a funeral was not +peculiar to these New Hampshire towns, nor to the Scotch-Irish, but +prevailed in every settlement in the colonies until the +temperance-awakening days of this century. Throughout New England bills +for funeral baked meats were large in items of rum, cider, whiskey, +lemons, sugar, spices. + +To show how universally liquor was served to all who had to do with a +funeral, let me give the bill for the mortuary expenses of David +Porter, of Hartford, who was drowned in 1678. + + "By a pint of liquor for those who dived for him. 1_s._ + By a quart of liquor for those who bro't him home. 2_s._ + By two quarts of wine & 1 gallon of cyder to jury + of inquest. 5_s._ + By 8 gallons & 3 qts. wine for funeral. L1 15_s._ + By Barrel cyder for funeral. 16_s._ + 1 Coffin. 12_s._ + Windeing sheet. 18_s._" + +Even town paupers had two or three gallons of rum or a barrel of cider +given by the town to serve as speeding libations at their unmourned +funerals. The liquor at the funeral of a minister was usually paid for +by the church or town--often interchangeable terms for the same body. +The parish frequently gave, also, as in the case of the death of Rev. +Job Strong, of Portsmouth, in 1751, "the widow of our deceased pasture a +full suit of mourning." + +A careful, and above all an experienced committee was appointed to +superintend the mixing of the funeral grog or punch, and to attend to +the liberal and frequent dispensing thereof. + +Hawthorne was so impressed with the enjoyable reunion New Englanders +found in funerals that he wrote of them: + + "They were the only class of scenes, so far as my investigation has + taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough + old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of + grisly jollity. Look back through all the social customs of New + England in the first century of her existence and read all her + traits of character, and find one occasion other than a funeral + feast where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice.... Well, + old friends! Pass on with your burden of mortality and lay it in + the tomb with jolly hearts. People should be permitted to enjoy + themselves in their own fashion; every man to his taste--but New + England must have been a dismal abode for the man of pleasure when + the only boon-companion was Death." + +This picture has been given by Sargent of country funerals in the days +of his youth: + + "When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country, everybody + went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was + small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited + remark, and the boys were dismissed for the funeral. A table with + liquors was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his + hat with his left hand, smoothed down his hair with his right, + walked up to the coffin, gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked + face, passed on to the table, took a glass of his favorite liquor, + went forth upon the plat before the house and talked politics, or + of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped heifers or horses + until it was time to _lift_. A clergyman told me that when settled + at Concord, N. H., he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The + body was borne in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, + the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before + they left the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the + table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and sugar for each." + +It was a hard struggle against established customs and ideas of +hospitality, and even of health, when the use of liquor at funerals was +abolished. Old people sadly deplored the present and regretted the past. +One worthy old gentleman said, with much bitterness: "Temperance has +done for funerals." + +As soon as the larger cities began to accrue wealth, the parentations of +men and women of high station were celebrated with much pomp and +dignity, if not with religious exercises. Volleys were fired over the +freshly made grave--even of a woman. A barrel and a half of powder was +consumed to do proper honor to Winthrop, the chief founder of +Massachusetts. At the funeral of Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby +eleven companies of militia were in attendance, and "with the doleful +noise of trumpets and drums, in their mourning posture, three thundering +volleys of shot were discharged, answered with the loud roarings of +great guns rending the heavens with noise at the loss of so great a +man." When Governor Leverett died, in 1679, the bearers carried banners. +The principal men of the town bore the armor of the deceased, from +helmet to spur, and the Governor's horse was led with banners. The +funeral-recording Sewall has left us many a picture of the pomp of +burial. Colonel Samuel Shrimpton was buried "with Arms" in 1697, "Ten +Companies, No Herse nor Trumpet but a horse Led. Mourning Coach also & +Horses in Mourning, Scutcheons on their sides and Deaths Heads on their +foreheads." Fancy those coach-horses with gloomy death's-heads on their +foreheads. At the funeral of Lady Andros, which was held in church, six +"mourning women" sat in front of the draped pulpit, and the hearse was +drawn by six horses. This English fashion of paid mourners was not +common among sincere New Englanders; Lady Andros was a Church of England +woman, not a Puritan. The cloth from the pulpit was usually given, after +the burial, to the minister. In 1736 the _Boston News Letter_ tells of +the pulpit and the pew of the deceased being richly draped and adorned +with escutcheons at a funeral. Thus were New England men, to quote Sir +Thomas Browne, "splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." + +Many local customs prevailed. In Hartford and neighboring towns all +ornaments, mirrors, and pictures were muffled with napkins and cloths at +the time of the funerals, and sometimes the window-shutters were kept +closed in the front of the house and tied together with black for a +year, as was the fashion in Philadelphia. + +Hawthorne tells us that at the death of Sir William Pepperell the entire +house was hung with black, and all the family portraits were covered +with black crape. + +The order of procession to the grave was a matter of much etiquette. +High respect and equally deep slights might be rendered to mourners in +the place assigned. Usually some magistrate or person of dignity walked +with the widow. Judge Sewall often speaks of "leading the widow in a +mourning cloak." + +One great expense of a funeral was the gloves. In some communities +these were sent as an approved and elegant form of invitation to +relatives and friends and dignitaries, whose presence was desired. +Occasionally, a printed "invitation to follow the corps" was also sent. +One for the funeral of Sir William Phipps is still in existence--a +fantastically gloomy document. In the case of a funeral of any person +prominent in State, Church, or society, vast numbers of gloves were +disbursed; "none of 'em of any figure but what had gloves sent to 'em." +At the funeral of the wife of Governor Belcher, in 1736, over one +thousand pairs of gloves were given away; at the funeral of Andrew +Faneuil three thousand pairs; the number frequently ran up to several +hundred. Different qualities of gloves were presented at the same +funeral to persons of different social circles, or of varied degrees of +consanguinity or acquaintance. Frequently the orders for these _vales_ +were given in wills. As early as 1633 Samuel Fuller, of Plymouth, +directed in his will that his sister was to have gloves worth twelve +shillings; Governor Winthrop and his children each "a paire of gloves of +five shilling;" while plebeian Rebecca Prime had to be contented with a +cheap pair worth two shillings and sixpence. The under-bearers who +carried the coffin were usually given different and cheaper gloves from +the pall-bearers. We find seven pairs of gloves given at a pauper's +funeral, and not under the head of "Extrodny Chearges" either. + +Of course the minister was always given gloves. They were showered on +him at weddings, christenings, funerals. Andrew Eliot, of the North +Church, in Boston, kept a record of the gloves and rings which he +received; and, incredible as it may seem, in thirty-two years he was +given two thousand nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves. Though he had +eleven children, he and his family could scarcely wear them all, so he +sold them through kindly Boston milliners, and kept a careful account of +the transaction, of the lamb's-wool gloves, the kid gloves, the long +gloves--which were probably Madam Eliot's. He received between six and +seven hundred dollars for the gloves, and a goodly sum also for funeral +rings. + +Various kinds of gloves are specified as suitable for mourning; for +instance, in the _Boston Independent Advertiser_ in 1749, "Black Shammy +Gloves and White Glazed Lambs Wool Gloves suitable for Funerals." White +gloves were as often given as black, and purple gloves also. Good +specimens of old mourning gloves have been preserved in the cabinets of +the Worcester Society of Antiquity. + +At the funeral of Thomas Thornhill "17 pair of White Gloves at L1 15_s._ +6_d._, 31-1/2 yard Corle for Scarfs L3 10_s._ 10-1/2_d._, and Black and +White Ribbin" were paid for. In 1737 Sir William Pepperell sent to +England for "4 pieces Hat mourning and 2 pieces of Cyprus or Hood +mourning." This hat mourning took the form of long weepers, which were +worn on the hat at the funeral, and as a token of respect afterward by +persons who were not relatives of the deceased. Judge Sewall was always +punctilious in thus honoring the dead in his community. On May 2, 1709, +he writes thus: + + "Being artillery day and Mr. Higginson dead I put on my mourning + Rapier and put a mourning ribbon in my little Cane." + +Rings were given at funerals, especially in wealthy families, to near +relatives and persons of note in the community. Sewall records in his +diary, in the years from 1687 to 1725, the receiving of no less than +fifty-seven mourning rings. We can well believe the story told of Doctor +Samuel Buxton, of Salem, who died in 1758, aged eighty-one years, that +he left to his heirs a quart tankard full of mourning rings which he had +received at funerals; and that Rev. Andrew Eliot had a mugful. At one +Boston funeral, in 1738, over two hundred rings were given away. At +Waitstill Winthrop's funeral sixty rings, worth over a pound apiece, +were given to friends. The entire expense of the latter-named +funeral--scutcheons, hatchments, scarves, gloves, rings, bell-tolling, +tailor's bills, etc., was over six hundred pounds. This amounted to +one-fifth of the entire estate of the deceased gentleman. + +These mourning rings were of gold, usually enamelled in black, or black +and white. They were frequently decorated with a death's-head, or with a +coffin with a full-length skeleton lying in it, or with a winged skull. +Sometimes they held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. +Sometimes the ring was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his +mouth. Many bore a posy. In the _Boston News Letter_ of October 30, +1742, was advertised: "Mourning Ring lost with the Posy Virtue & Love is +From Above." Here is another advertisement from the _Boston Evening +Post_: + + "Escaped unluckily from me + A Large Gold Ring, a Little Key; + The Ring had Death engraved upon it; + The Owners Name inscribed within it; + Who finds and brings the same to me + Shall generously rewarded be." + +A favorite motto for these rings was: "Death parts United Hearts." +Another was the legend: "Death conquers all;" another, "Prepare for +Death;" still another, "Prepared be To follow me." Other funeral rings +bore a family crest in black enamel. + +Goldsmiths kept these mourning rings constantly on hand. "Deaths Heads +Rings" and "Burying Rings" appear in many newspaper advertisements. When +bought for use the name or initials of the dead person, and the date of +his death, were engraved upon the ring. This was called fashioning. It +is also evident from existing letters and bills that orders were sent by +bereaved ones to friends residing at a distance to purchase and wear +mourning rings in memory of the dead, and send the bills to the heirs or +the principals of the mourning family. Thus, after the death of Andrew, +son of Sir William Pepperell, Mr. Kilby, of London, wrote to the father +that he accepted "that melancholy token of y'r regard to Mrs. K. and +myself at the expense of four guineas in the whole. But, as is not +unusual here on such occasions, Mrs. K. has, at her own expense, added +some sparks of diamonds to some other mournful ornaments to the ring, +which she intends to wear." + +It is very evident that old New Englanders looked with much eagerness to +receiving a funeral ring at the death of a friend, and in old diaries, +almanacs, and note-books such entries as this are often seen: "Made a +ring at the funeral," "A death's-head ring made at the funeral of so and +so;" or, as Judge Sewall wrote, "Lost a ring" by not attending the +funeral. The will of Abigail Ropes, in 1775, gives to her grandson "a +gold ring I made at his father's death;" and again, "a gold ring made +when my bro. died." + +As with gloves, rings of different values were given to relatives of +different degrees of consanguinity, and to friends of different stations +in life; much tact had to be shown, else much offence might be taken. + +I do not know how long the custom of giving mourning rings obtained in +New England. Some are in existence dated 1812, but were given at the +funeral of aged persons who may have left orders to their descendants to +cling to the fashion of their youth. + +A very good collection of mourning rings may be seen at the rooms of the +Essex Institute in Salem, and that society has also published a pamphlet +giving a list of such rings known to be in existence in Salem. + +As years passed on a strong feeling sprang up against these gifts and +against the excessive wearing of mourning garments because burdensome in +expense. Judge Sewall notes, in 1721, the first public funeral "without +scarfs." In 1741 it was ordered by Massachusetts Provincial Enactment +that "no Scarves, Gloves (except six pair to the bearers and one pair to +each minister of the church or congregation where any deceased person +belongs), Wine, Rum, or rings be allowed to be given at any funeral upon +the penalty of fifty pounds." The _Connecticut Courant_ of October 24, +1764, has a letter from a Boston correspondent which says, "It is now +out of fashion to put on mourning for nearest relatives, which will make +a saving to this town of L20,000 per annum." It also states that a +funeral had been held at Charlestown at which no mourning had been worn. +At that of Ellis Callender in the same year, the chief mourner wore in +black only bonnet, gloves, ribbons, and handkerchief. Letters are in +existence from Boston merchants to English agents rebuking the latter +for sending mourning goods, such as crapes, "which are not worn." A +newly born and fast-growing spirit of patriotic revolt gave added force +to the reform. Boston voted, in October, 1767, "not to use any mourning +gloves but what are manufactured here," and other towns passed similar +resolutions. It was also suggested that American mourning gloves be +stamped with a patriotic emblem. In 1788 a fine of twenty shillings was +imposed on any person who gave scarfs, gloves, rings, wine, or rum at a +funeral; who bought any new mourning apparel to wear at or after a +funeral, save a crape arm-band if a masculine mourner, or black bonnet, +fan, gloves, and ribbons if a woman. This law could never have been +rigidly enforced, for much gloomy and ostentatious pomp obtained in the +larger towns even to our own day. "From the tombs a mournful sound" +seemed to be fairly a popular sound, and the long funeral processions, +always taking care to pass the Town House, churches, and other public +buildings, obstructed travel, and men were appointed in each town by the +selectmen to see that "free passage in the streets be kept open." +Funerals were forbidden to be held on the Lord's Day, because it +profaned the sacred day, through the vast concourse of children and +servants that followed the coffin through the streets. + +Some attempt was made to regulate funeral expenses. In Salem a tolling +of the bell could cost but eightpence, and "the sextons are desired to +toll the bells but four strokes in a minute." The undertakers could +charge but eight shillings for borrowing chairs, waiting on the +pall-holders, and notifying relatives to attend. + +The early graves were frequently clustered, were even crowded in +irregular groups in the churchyard; and in larger towns, the +dead--especially persons of dignity--were buried, as in England, under +the church. Sargent, in his "Dealings with the Dead," speaks at length +of the latter custom, which prevailed to an inordinate extent in Boston. +In smaller settlements some out-of-the-way spot was chosen for a common +burial-place, in barren pasture or on lonely hillside, thus forcibly +proving the well-known lines of Whittier, + + "Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, + Our hills are maple crowned, + But not from them our fathers chose + The village burial ground. + + "The dreariest spot in all the land + To Death they set apart; + With scanty grace from Nature's hand + And none from that of Art." + +To the natural loneliness of the country burial-place and to its +inevitable sadness, is now too frequently added the gloomy and +depressing evidence of human neglect. Briers and weeds grow in tangled +thickets over the forgotten graves; birch-trees and barberry bushes +spring up unchecked. In one a thriving grove of lilac bushes spreads its +dusty shade from wall to wall. Winter-killed shrubs of flowering almond +or snowballs, planted in tender memory, stand now withered and unheeded, +and the few straggling garden flowers--crimson phlox or single +hollyhocks--that still live only painfully accent the loneliness by +showing that this now forgotten spot was once loved, visited, and cared +for. + +In many cases the worn gravestone lies forlornly face downward; +sometimes, + + "The slab has sunk; the head declined, + And left the rails a wreck behind. + No names; you trace a '6'--a '7,' + Part of 'affliction' and of 'Heaven.' + And then in letters sharp and clear, + You read.--O Irony austere!-- + 'Tho' lost to Sight, to Memory dear.'" + +"Truly our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly +show us how we may be buried in our survivors.'" Still, this neglect and +oblivion is just as satisfactory as was the officious "deed without a +name" done in orderly Boston, where, in the first half of this century, +a precise Superintendent of Graveyards and his army of assistants--what +Charles Lamb called "sapient trouble-tombs"--straightened out +mathematically all the old burial-places, levelled the earth, and set in +trim military rows the old slate headstones, regardless of the irregular +clusters of graves and their occupants. + +And there in Boston the falsifying old headstones still stand, fixed in +new places, but marking no coffins or honored bones beneath; the only +true words of their inscriptions being the opening ones "Here lies," and +the motto that they repeat derisively to each other--"As you are now so +once was I." + +In many communities each family had its own burying-place in some corner +of the home farm, sometimes at the foot of garden or orchard. Such is +noticeably the case throughout Narragansett; almost every farm has a +grave-yard, now generally unused and deserted. Sometimes the +burying-place is enclosed by a high mossy stone wall, often it is +overgrown with dense sombre firs or hemlocks, or half shaded with airy +locust-trees. Beautifully ideal and touching is the thought of these +old Narragansett planters resting with their wives and children in the +ground they so dearly loved and so faithfully worked for. + +A vast similarity of design existed in the early gravestones. +Originality of inscription, carving, size, or material was evidently +frowned upon as frivolous, undignified, and eccentric--even +disrespectful. A few of the early settlers used freestone or sienite, or +a native porphyritic green stone called beech-bowlder. Sandstone was +rarely employed, for though easily carved, it as easily yielded to New +England frosts and storms. A hard, dark, flinty slate-stone from North +Wales was commonly used, a stone so hard and so enduring that when our +modern granite and marble monuments are crumbled in the dust I believe +these old slate headstones still will speak their warning words of many +centuries. + + "As I am now so you shall be, + Prepare for Death & follow me." + +These stones were imported from England ready carved. A high duty was +placed on them, and a Boston sea captain endeavored and was caught in +the attempt to bring into port, free of duty, for one of his friends, +one of these carved slate gravestones, by entering it as a +winding-sheet. It is one of the curiosities of New England commercial +enterprises, that for many years gravestones should have been imported +to New England, a land that fairly bristles with stone and rock +thrusting itself through the earth and waiting to be carved. + +The Welsh stones were made of a universal pattern--a carved top with a +space enclosing a miserable death's or winged cherub's head as a +heading, a border of scrolls down either side of the inscription, and +rarely a design at the base. Weeping willows and urns did not appear in +the carving at the top until the middle of the eighteenth century, and +fought hard with the grinning cherub's head until this century, when +both were supplanted by a variety of designs--a clock-face, hour-glass, +etc. Capital letters were used wholly in the inscriptions until +Revolutionary times, and even after were mixed with Roman text with so +little regard for any printer's law that, at a little distance, many a +New England tombstone of the latter part of the past century seems to be +carven in hieroglyphics. + +Special families in New England seem to have appropriated special verses +as epitaphs, evidently because of the rhyme with the surname. Thus the +Jones family were properly proud of this family rhyme: + + "Beneath this Ston's + Int'r'd the Bon's + Ah Frail Remains + Of Lieut Noah Jones"-- + +or Mary Jones or William Jones, as the case might be. + +The Noyes family delighted in these lines: + + "You children of the name of Noyes + Make Jesus Christ yo'r only choyse." + +The Tutes and Shutes and Roots began their epitaphs thus: + + "Here lies cut down like unripe fruit + The wife of Deacon Amos Shute." + +Gershom Root was "cut down like unripe fruit" at the fully mellowed age +of seventy-three. + +A curiously incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me +afresh, upon each perusal, as a sort of mortuary conundrum: + + "O! Happy Probationer! + Accepted without being Exercised." + +Sometimes an old epitaph will be found of such impressive though simple +language that it clings long in the memory. Such is this verse of gentle +quaintness over the grave of a tender Puritan blossom, the child of an +early settler: + + "Submit Submitted to her heavenly Kinge + Being a flower of that Aeternal Spring + Neare 3 years old shee dyed in Heaven to waite + The Yeare was sixteen hundred 48." + +Another of unusual beauty and sentiment is this: + + "I came in the morning--it was Spring + And I smiled. + I walked out at noon--it was Summer + And I was glad. + I sat me down at even--it was Autumn + And I was sad. + I laid me down at night--it was Winter + And I slept." + +Collections of curious old epitaphs have been made and printed, but seem +dull and colorless on the printed page, and the warning words seem to +lose their power unless seen in the sad graveyard, where, "silently +expressing old mortality," the hackneyed rhymes and tender words are +touching from their very simplicity and the loneliness which surrounds +them, and for their calm repetition, on stone after stone, of an undying +faith in a future life. + +One cannot help being impressed, when studying the almanacs, diaries, +and letters of the time, with the strange exaltation of spirit with +which the New England Puritan regarded death. To him thoughts of +mortality were indeed cordial to the soul. Death was the event, the +condition, which brought him near to God and that unknown world, that +"life elysian" of which he constantly spoke, dreamed and thought; and he +rejoiced mightily in that close approach, in that sense of touch with +the spiritual world. With unaffected cheerfulness he yielded himself to +his own fate, with unforced resignation he bore the loss of dearly loved +ones, and with eagerness and almost affection he regarded all the gloomy +attributes and surroundings of death. Sewall could find in a visit to +his family tomb, and in the heart-rending sight of the coffins therein, +an "awfull yet pleasing Treat;" while Mr. Joseph Eliot said "that the +two days wherein he buried his wife and son were the best he ever had in +the world." The accounts of the wondrous and almost inspired calm which +settled on those afflicted hearts, bearing steadfastly the Christian +belief as taught by the Puritan church, make us long for the simplicity +of faith, and the certainty of heaven and happy reunion with loved ones +which they felt so triumphantly, so gloriously. + + +-----------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note | + |Spelling, punctuation and inconcistencies| + |in the original book have been retained. | + |The oe ligature has been shown as [oe]. | + +-----------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, by +Alice Morse Earle + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUSTOMS IN OLD NEW ENGLAND *** + +***** This file should be named 24159.txt or 24159.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/1/5/24159/ + +Produced by K. Nordquist, Annie McGuire and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/24159.zip b/24159.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7bad3fd --- /dev/null +++ b/24159.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..27664a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #24159 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24159) |