Child Life in Colonial Days

John Quincy

Frontispiece

CHILD LIFE
IN COLONIAL DAYS

Written by ALICE MORSE EARLE

author of Home Life in Colonial Days
and other Domestic and Social
Histories of Olden Times
With many Illustrations
from Photographs
MDCCCXCIX

New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1915

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1899,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped November, 1899. Reprinted December,
1899; March, 1904; February, 1909; March, 1915.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

THIS BOOK
HAS BEEN WRITTEN
IN TENDER MEMORY
OF A
DEARLY LOVED AND LOVING CHILD
HENRY EARLE, JUNIOR
MDCCCLXXX-MDCCCXCII

Foreword

When we regard the large share which child study has in the interest of the reader and thinker of to-day, it is indeed curious to see how little is told of child life in history. The ancients made no record of the life of young children; classic Rome furnishes no data for child study; the Greeks left no child forms in art. The student of original sources of history learns little about children in his searches; few in number and comparatively meagre in quality are the literary remains that even refer to them.

We know little of the childhood days of our forbears, and have scant opportunity to make comparisons or note progress. The child of colonial days was emphatically "to be seen, not to be heard"—nor was he even to be much in evidence to the eye. He was of as little importance in domestic, social, or ethical relations as his childish successor is of great importance to-day; it was deemed neither courteous, decorous, nor wise to make him appear of value or note in his own eyes or in the eyes of his seniors. Hence there was none of that exhaustive study of the motives, thoughts, and acts of a child which is now rife.

The accounts of oldtime child life gathered for this book are wholly unconscious and full of honesty and simplicity, not only from the attitude of the child, but from that of his parents, guardians, and friends. The records have been made from affectionate interest, not from scientific interest; no profound search has been made for motives or significance, but the proof they give of tenderness and affection in the family are beautiful to read and to know.

The quotations from manuscript letters, records, diaries, and accounts which are here given could only have been acquired by precisely the method which has been followed,—a constant and distinct search for many years, combined with an alert watchfulness for items or even hints relating to the subject, during as many years of extended historical reading. Many private collections and many single-treasured relics have been freely offered for use, and nearly all the sentences and pages selected from these sources now appear in print for the first time. The portraits of children form a group as rare as it is beautiful. They are specially valuable as a study of costume. Nearly all of these also are as true emblems of the generous friendship of the present owners as they are of the life of the past. The rich stores of our many historical associations, of the Essex Institute, the American Antiquarian Society, the Long Island Historical Society, the Deerfield Memorial Hall, the Lenox Library, have been generously opened, carefully gleaned, and freely used. The expression of gratitude so often tendered to these helpful kinsfolk and friends and to these bountiful societies and libraries can scarcely be emphasized by any public thanks, yet it would seem that for such assistance thanks could never be offered too frequently, nor too publicly.

Nor have I, in gathering for this,—as for my other books,—failed to exercise what Emerson calls "the catlike love of garrets, presses, and cornchambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping." Many long-kept homes have I searched, many an old garret and press has yielded conveniences for this book.

Though this is a record of the life of children in the American colonies, I have freely compared the conditions in this country with similar ones in England at the same date, both for the sake of fuller elucidation, and also to attempt to put on a proper basis the civilization which the colonists left behind them. Many statements of conditions in America do not convey correct ideas of our past comfort and present and liberal progress unless we compare them with facts in English life. We must not overrate seventeenth and eighteenth century life in England, either in private or public. England was not a first-class power among nations till the time of the Treaty of Paris, in 1763. When our colonies were settled it was third-rate. Life among the nobility was magnificent, but the life of the peasantry was wretched, and middle-class social life was very bleak and monotonous in both city and country. From early days life was much better in many ways in America than in England for the family of moderate means, and children shared the benefits of these better conditions. A child's life was more valuable here. The colonial laws plainly show this increased valuation, and the child responded to this regard of him by a growing sense of his own importance, which in time has produced "Young America."

It is my hope that children as well as grown folk will find in these pages much to interest them in the accounts of the life of children of olden times. I have had this end constantly in my mind, though I have made no attempt, nor had I any intent, to write in a style for the perusal of children; for I have not found that intelligent children care much or long for such books, except in the very rare cases of the few great books that have been written for children, and which are loved and read as much by the old as by the young.

As our tired century has grown gray it has developed an interest in things youthful,—in the beginnings of things. Its attitude is akin to that of an old man, still in health and clear-headed, but weary; who has lived through his scores of crowded years of action, toil, and strife, and seeks in the last days of his life a serene and peaceful harbor,—the companionship of little children. There is something of mystery, too, in "the turn of the century" something which then makes our gaze retrospective and comparative rather than inquisitive into the future. Hence this year of our Lord MDCCCXCIX has been the allotted day and hour for the writing of this book. There has been a trend of destiny which has brought not only a book on oldtime child life, and that book at this century end, but has included the fate that it should be written by Alice Morse Earle. Kismet!

Contents

List of Illustrations

Child Life in Colonial Days

CHAPTER I

BABYHOOD

Some things are of that nature as to make
One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache.

—The Author's Way of Sending Forth His Second Part of the Pilgrim. John Bunyan, 1684.

There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world. It was hard for grown folk to live; conditions and surroundings offered even to strong men constant and many obstacles to the continuance of existence; how difficult was it then to rear children!

In the southern colonies the planters found a climate and enforced modes of life widely varying from home life in England; it took several generations to accustom infants to thrive under those conditions. The first years of life at Plymouth are the records of a bitter struggle, not for comfort but for existence. Scarcely less sad are the pages of Governor Winthrop's journal, which tell of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay. On the journey across seas not a child "had shown fear or dismayedness." Those brave children were welcomed to the shore with good cheer, says the old chronicler, Joshua Scottow; "with external flavor and sweet odor; fragrant was the land, such was the plenty of sweet fern, laurel, and other fragrant simples; such was the scent of our aromatic and balsam-bearing pines, spruces and larch trees, with our tall cedars." They landed on a beautiful day in June, "with a smell on the shore like the smell of a garden," and these happy children had gathered sweet wild strawberries and single wild roses. It is easy to picture the merry faces and cheerful laughter.

Scant, alas! were the succeeding days of either sweetness or light. The summer wore on in weary work, in which the children had to join; in constant fears, which the children multiplied and magnified; and winter came, and death. "There is not a house where there is not one dead," wrote Dudley. One little earth-weary traveller, a child whose "family and kindred had dyed so many," was, like the prophets in the Bible, given exalted vision through sorrow, and had "extraordinary evidence concerning the things of another world." Fierce east winds searched the settlers through and through, and frosts and snows chilled them. The dreary ocean, the gloomy forests, were their bounds. Scant was their fare, and mean their roof-trees; yet amid all the want and cold little children were born and welcomed with that ideality of affection which seems as immortal as the souls of the loved ones.

Hunger and privation did not last long in the Massachusetts colony, for it was a rich community—for its day—and soon the various settlements grew in numbers and commerce and wealth, and an exultant note runs through their records. Prosperous peoples will not be morose; thanksgiving proclamations reflect the rosy hues of successful years. Child life was in harmony with its surroundings; it was more cheerful, but there was still fearful menace to the life and health of an infant. From the moment when the baby opened his eyes on the bleak world around him, he had a Spartan struggle for life; half the Puritan children had scarce drawn breath in this vale of tears ere they had to endure an ordeal which might well have given rise to the expression "the survival of the fittest." I say half the babies, presuming that half were born in warm weather, half in cold. All had to be baptized within a few days of birth, and baptized in the meeting-house; fortunate, indeed, was the child of midsummer. We can imagine the January babe carried through the narrow streets or lanes to the freezing meeting-house, which had grown damper and deadlier with every wintry blast; there to be christened, when sometimes the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. On January 22, 1694, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, records in his diary:—

"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A Child named Alexander was baptized in the afternoon."

The Judge tells of his own children—four days old—shrinking from the icy water, but crying not. It was a cold and disheartening reception these children had into the Puritan church; many lingered but a short time therein. The mortality among infants was appallingly great; they died singly, and in little groups, and in vast companies. Putrid fevers, epidemic influenzas, malignant sore throats, "bladders in the windpipe," raging small pox, carried off hundreds of the children who survived baptism. The laws of sanitation were absolutely disregarded—because unknown; drainage there was none—nor deemed necessary; disinfection was feebly desired—but the scanty sprinkling of vinegar was the only expression of that desire; isolation of contagious diseases was proclaimed—but the measures were as futile when the disease was known to be contagious as they were lacking in the diseases which our fathers did not know were communicable. It is appalling to think what must have been the unbounded production and nurture of disease germs; and we can paraphrase with truth the words of Sir Thomas Browne, and say of our grandfathers and their children, "Considering the thousand roads that lead to death, I do thank my God they could die but once."

Edward Winslow

It is heartrending to read the entries in many an old family Bible—the records of suffering, distress, and blasted hopes. Until this century these sad stories may be found. There lies open before me an old leather-bound Bible with the record of my great-grandfather's family. He had sixteen children. When the first child was a year and a half old the second child was born. The baby was but four days old when the older child died. Five times did that mother's heart bear a similar cruel loss when she had a baby in her arms; therefore when she had been nine years married she had one living child, and five little graves bore record of her sorrow.

In the seventeenth century the science of medicine had not wholly cut asunder from astrology and necromancy; and the trusting Christian still believed in some occult influences, chiefly planetary, which governed not only his crops but his health and life. Hence the entries of births in the Bible usually gave the hour and minute, as well as the day, month, and year. Thus could be accurately calculated what favoring or mischief-bearing planets were in ascendency at the time of the child's birth; what influences he would have to encounter in life.

The belief that meteorological and astrological conditions affected medicines was strong in all minds. The best physicians gravely noted the condition of the moon when gathering herbs and simples and concocting medicines; and certain drugs were held to be powerless at certain times of the year, owing to planetary influences. "Sympathetical" medicines were confidingly trusted, and tried to a surprising extent upon children; apparently these were as beneficial as our modern method of healing by the insinuation of improved health.

We cannot wonder that children died when we know the nostrums with which they were dosed. There were quack medicines which held sway for a century—among them, a valuable property, Daffy's Elixir. These patented—or rather secret—medicines had a formidable rival in snail-water, which was used as a tonic and also a lotion. Many of the ingredients and extracts used in domestic medicines were incredibly revolting.

Venice treacle was a nasty and popular compound, traditionally invented by Nero's physician; it was made of vipers, white wine, opium, "spices from both the Indies," licorice, red roses, tops of germander and St.-John's-wort, and some twenty other herbs, juice of rough sloes, mixed with honey "triple the weight of all the dry spices." The recipe is published in dispensatories till within this century. The vipers had to be put, "twelve of 'em," into white wine alone. Mithridate, the ancient cure-all of King Mithridates, was another dose for children. There were forty-five ingredients in this, each prepared and introduced with care. Rubila, made chiefly of antimony and nitre, was beloved of the Winthrops, and frequently dispensed by them—and with benefit.

Children were grievously afflicted with rickets, though curiously enough it was a new disease, not old enough to have received adequate observation in England, wrote Sir Thomas Browne in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Snails furnished many doses for the rickets.

Exact instruction of treatment for the rickets is given in a manuscript letter written to Rev. Joseph Perry of Windsor, Connecticut, in 1769:—

"Rev'D Sir:

"In ye Rickets the best Corrective I have ever found is a Syrup made of Black Cherrys. Thus. Take of Cherrys (dry'd ones are as good as any) & put them into a vessel with water. Set ye vessel near ye fire and let ye water be Scalding hot. Then take ye Cherrys into a thin Cloth and squeeze them into ye Vessell, & sweeten ye Liquor with Melosses. Give 2 Spoonfuls of this 2 or 3 times in a day. If you Dip your Child, Do it in this manner: viz: naked, in ye morning, head foremost in Cold Water, don't dress it Immediately, but let it be made warm in ye Cradle & sweat at least half an Hour moderately. Do this 3 mornings going & if one or both feet are Cold while other Parts sweat (which is sometimes ye Case) Let a little blood be taken out of ye feet ye 2nd Morning and yt will cause them to sweat afterwards. Before ye dips of ye Child give it some Snakeroot and Saffern Steep'd in Rum & Water, give this Immediately before Diping and after you have dipt ye Child 3 Mornings Give it several times a Day ye following Syrup made of Comfry, Hartshorn, Red Roses, Hog-brake roots, knot-grass, petty-moral roots, sweeten ye Syrup with Melosses. Physicians are generally fearful about diping when ye Fever is hard, but oftentimes all attemps to lower it without diping are vain. Experience has taught me that these fears are groundless, yt many have about diping in Rickety Fevers; I have found in a multitude of Instances of diping is most effectual means to break a Rickety Fever. These Directions are agreable to what I have practiced for many years."

Among other English notions thrust upon American children was one thus advertised in ante-Revolutionary newspapers:—

"The Famous Anodyne Necklace
"price 20 shillings

"For children's teeth, recommended in England by Dr. Chamberlen, with a remedy to open and ease the foregums of teething children and bring their teeth safely out. Children on the very brink of the Grave and thought past recovery with their teeth, fits, fevers, convulsions, hooping and other violent coughs, gripes, looseness, and all proceeding from their teeth who cannot tell what they suffer nor make known their pains any other way but by crying and moans, have almost miraculously recovered after having worn the famous Anodyne Necklace but one night's time. A mother then would never forgive herself whose child should die for want of so very easy a remedy for its teeth. And what is particularly remarkable of this necklace is, that of those vast numbers who have had this necklace for their children, none have made any complaints but express how glad they have been that their children have worn it whereas if they had not had it, they believed their children would have been in the grave, all means having been used in vain until they had the necklace."

These anodyne necklaces were akin to the medicated belts of our own day, and were worn as children still wear amber beads to avert the croup.

Various native berries had restorative and preventive properties when strung as a necklace. Uglier decorations were those recommended by Josselyn to New England parents, strings of fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs, a sure promoter of easy teething. He also advised scratching the child's gums with an osprey bone. Children died, however, in spite of these varied charms and doses, in vast numbers while teething.

Mayflower Cradle, owned by the Pilgrim William White

There were some feeble expressions of revolt against the horrible doses of the day. In 1647 we hear of the publication of "a Most Desperate Booke written against taking of Phissick," but it was promptly ordered to be burnt; and the doses were continued until well into this century. The shadow of their power lingers yet in country homes.

Many alluring baits were written back to England by the first emigrants to tempt others to follow to the new world. Among other considerations Gabriel Thomas made this statement:—

"The Christian children born here are generally well-favored and beautiful to behold. I never knew any to come into the world with the least blemish on any part of the body; being in the general observed to be better-natured, milder, and more tender-hearted than those born in England."

John Hammond lavished equal praise on the children in Virginia. It was also asserted that the average number of children in a family was larger, which is always true in a pioneer settlement in a new country. The promise of the Lord is ever fulfilled that he will "make the families of his servants in the wilderness like a flock."

A cheerful home life was insured by these large families when they lived. Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same mother. Green, the Boston printer, had thirty children. Another printer, Benjamin Franklin, was one of a family of seventeen. William Rawson had twenty children by one wife. Rev. Cotton Mather tells us:—

"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 man's estate, and a third was mother to seven and twenty children."

He himself had fifteen children, though but two survived him. Other ministers had larger families. Rev. John Sherman, of Watertown, Massachusetts, had twenty-six children by two wives. Rev. Samuel Willard, the first minister of Groton, Massachusetts, had twenty children, and was himself one of seventeen children. It is to the honor of these poorly paid ministers that they brought up these large families well. Rev. Abijah Weld, of Attleboro, Massachusetts, had an annual salary of about two hundred and twenty dollars. He had a small farm and a decent house; he lived in generous hospitality, entertaining many visitors and contributing to the wants of the poor. He had fifteen children and reared a grandchild. In his fifty-five years of service as a minister he was never detained from his duties nor failed to perform them.

Rev. Moses Fiske had sixteen children; he sent three sons to college and married off all his daughters; his salary was never over ninety pounds, and usually but sixty pounds a year, paid chiefly in corn and wood. One verse of a memorial poem to Mrs. Sarah Thayer reads:—

"And one thing more remarkable
Which here I shall record;
She'd fourteen children with her
At the table of her Lord."

These large families were eagerly welcomed. Children were a blessing. The Danish proverb says, "Children are the poor man's wealth." To the farmer, especially the frontiersman, every child in the home is an extra producer. No town in New England had less land to distribute than Boston, but on all allotments women and children received their full proportion; the early allotments of land in Brookline (then part of Boston) were made by "heads," that is, according to the number of people in the family.

It is an interesting study to trace the underlying reason for naming children many of the curious names which were given to the offspring of the first colonists. Parents searched for names of deep significance, for names appropriate to conditions, for those of profound influence—presumably on the child's life. Glory to God and zealous ambition for the child's future were equally influential in deciding selection.

Townes Cradle

Rev. Richard Buck, one of the early parsons in Virginia, in days of deep depression named his first child Mara. This text indicates the reason for his choice: "Call me Mara for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full and the Lord hath brought me home empty." His second child was christened Gershom; for Moses' wife "bare him a son and called his name Gershom, for he said I have been in a strange land." Eber, the Hebrew patriarch, called his son Peleg, "for his days were divided." Mr. Buck celebrated the Pelegging, or dividing of Virginia, into legislative districts by naming his third child Peleg. Many names have a pathos and sadness which can be felt down through the centuries. Dame Dinely, widow of a doctor or barber-surgeon who had died in the snow while striving to visit a distant patient, named her poor babe Fathergone. A little Goodman child, born after the death of her father, was sadly but trustingly named Abiel—God is my father. Seaborn was the name indicative of the introduction into life of one of my own ancestors.

In the old Ropes Bible in Salem is given the reason for an unusual name which often appears in that family; it is Seeth. One of the family was supposed to be dead, having disappeared. On his sudden reappearance a pious Ropes exclaimed in joy, "The Lord seeth not as man seeth, and my child shall be named Seeth." An early example of the name is Seeth Grafton, who became the wife of Thomas Gardner in 1636.

Judge Sewall named one son Joseph,

"In hopes of the accomplishment of the Prophecy of Ezekiel xxxvii. and such; and not out of respect to any Relation or any other Person except the first Joseph."

Judge Sewall again made an entry in his diary after a christening.

"I named my little Daughter Sarah. Mr. Torrey said call her Sarah and make a Madam of her. I was struggling whether to call her Mehetable or Sarah. But when I saw Sarah's standing in the Scripture, viz: Peter, Galatians, Hebrews, Romans, I resolv'd on that suddenly."

Abigail, meaning father's joy, was also frequently given, and Hannah, meaning grace; the history of these two Hebrew women made their names honored of New England Puritans. Zurishaddai, the Almighty is my rock, was bestowed on more than one boy. Comfort, Deliverance, Temperance, Peace, Hope, Patience, Charity, Faith, Love, Submit, Endurance, Silence, Joy, Rejoice, Hoped for, and similar names indicative of a trait of character, a virtue, or an aspiration of goodness, were common. The children of Roger Clap were named Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply. Madam Austin, an early settler of old Narragansett, had sixteen children. Their names were Parvis, Picus, Piersus, Prisemus, Polybius, Lois, Lettice, Avis, Anstice, Eunice, Mary, John, Elizabeth, Ruth, Freelove. All lived to be threescore and ten, one to be a hundred and two years old.

Edward Bendall's children were named Truegrace, Reform, Hoped for, More mercy, and Restore. Richard Gridley's offspring were Return, Believe, and Tremble.

With the exception of Puritanical names, double Christian names were very rare until after the Revolution, as may be seen by examining any document with many signatures; such, for instance, as the Declaration of Independence, or the lists of officers and men in the Continental Army. Return Jonathan Meigs was a notable exception.

There exists in New England a tradition of "groaning-cakes" being made and baked at the birth of a child, to give to visitors. I have found no record of it. The Frenchman, Misson, in his Travels in England, says, "At the birth of their children they (visitors) drink a glass of wine and eat a bit of a certain cake, which is seldom made but upon these occasions." Anna Green Winslow, a Boston schoolgirl, tells of making what she calls "a setting up visit" to a relative who had a baby about four weeks old. She wore her best and most formal attire and says, "It cost me a pistareen to Nurse Eaton for two cakes which I took care to eat before I paid for them." There certainly was a custom of giving money, clothing, or petty trinkets to the nurse at such visits. Judge Sewall frequently writes of these "vails" which he made at the house of his friends. He writes in one case of brewing "groaning-beer," and in his household were held two New England amphidromia. The midwife, nurses, and all the neighboring women who had helped with work or advice during the early days of the child's life were bidden to a dinner. One Sewall baby was scarcely two weeks old when seventeen women dined at the Judge's house, on boiled pork, beef, and fowls; roast beef and turkey; pies and tarts. At another time "minc'd Pyes and cheese" were added. Judge Winthrop's sister, Madam Downing, furnished sack and claret also. A survival of this custom lasted till this century in the drinking of caudle by the bedside of the mother.

A pincushion was for many years and indeed is still in some parts of New England a highly conventional gift to a mother with a young babe.

Poor Robin's Almanack for the year 1676 says:—

"Pincushions and such other knacks
A childbed woman always lacks."

pincushion

I have seen in different families five of precisely the same pattern and size, all made about the time of the Revolution. One given to a Boston baby, while his new home was in state of siege, bore the inscription, "Welcome little Stranger, tho' the Port is closed." These words were formed by the heads of pins. Another, about five inches long and three inches wide, is of green figured silk with a flowered vine stuck in pins and the words, "John Winslow, March, 1783, Welcome, Little Stranger." Anna Green Winslow tells of her aunts making one with "a planthorn of flowers" and the name. I have seen one with similar inscription knitted of fine silk and with the name sewed on in steel beads, among which pins were stuck in a graceful pattern.

Indian Cradle

The seventeenth-century baby slept, as his nineteenth-century descendant does, in a cradle. Nothing could be prettier than the old cradles that have survived successive years of use with many generations of babies. In Pilgrim Hall still may be seen the quaint and finely wrought wicker cradle of Peregrine White, the first white child born in Plymouth. This cradle is of Dutch manufacture; and is one of the few authentic articles still surviving that came over on the Mayflower. It was brought over by William White, whose widow married Governor Edward Winslow. A similar wicker cradle may be seen at the Essex Institute in Salem, together with a heavy wooden cradle in which many members of the Townes family of Topsfield, Massachusetts, were rocked to sleep two centuries ago. Judge Sewall bought a wicker cradle for one of his many children and paid sixteen shillings for it. A graceful variant of the swinging cradle is shown in the Indian basket hung at either end from a wooden standard or frame. In this strong basket, fashioned by an Indian mother, many a white child has been swung and sung to sleep. A still more picturesque cradle was made of birch bark, that plentiful material so widely adaptive to household uses, and so deftly manipulated and shaped by the patient squaws.

In these cradles the colonial baby slept, warmly wrapped in a homespun blanket or pressed quilt.

Poor Robin's Almanack for the year 1676 enumerates among a baby's outfit:—

"Blanckets of a several scantling
Therein for to wrap a bantling."

Of these wraps, of the thinner sort, may be named the thin, close-woven, homespun "flannel sheet," spun of the whitest wool into a fine twisted worsted, and woven with a close sley into an even web as enduring as the true Oriental cashmere. The baby's initials were often marked on these sheets, and fortunate was the child who had the light, warm wrappings. My own children had "flannel sheets" that had seen a century or more of use with generations of forbears.

Governor Bradford's Christening Blanket, 1590

A finer coverlet, one of state, the christening blanket, was usually made of silk, richly embroidered, sometimes with a text of Scripture. These were often lace-bordered or edged with a narrow home-woven silk fringe. The christening blanket of Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony still exists, whole of fabric and unfaded of dye. It is a rich crimson silk, soft of texture, like a heavy sarcenet silk, and is powdered at regular distances about six inches apart with conventional sprays of flowers embroidered chiefly in pink and yellow, in minute and beautiful cross-stitch. It is distinctly Oriental in appearance, far more so than is indicated by its black and white representation here. Another beautiful silk christening blanket was quilted in an intricate flower pattern in almost imperceptible stitches. These formal wrappings of state were sometimes called bearing-cloths or clothes, and served through many generations. Shakespeare speaks in Henry VI. of a child's bearing-cloth.

A go-cart or standing-stool was a favorite instrument to teach a child to walk. A standing-stool a century old in which Newburyport babies stood and toddled is a rather crude frame of wood with a ledge or narrow table for toys. The method of using a go-cart is shown in this old print taken from a child's book called, Little Prattle over a Book of Prints, published for sixpence in 1801. In the writers of Queen Anne's day frequent references are made to go-carts.

Standing Stool

I find strong evidence that Locke's Thoughts on Education, published in England in 1690, found many readers and ardent followers in the new world. The book is in many old-time library lists in New England, and among the scant volumes of those who had but a single book-shelf or book-box. I have seen abstracts and transpositions of his precepts on the pages of almanacs, the most universally circulated and studied of all eighteenth-century books save the Bible. In contemporary letters evidence is found of the influence of Locke's principles. In the prefaces of Thomas' reprints he is quoted and eulogized. The notions of the English philosopher appealed to American parents because they were, as the author said, "the consideration not what a physician ought to do with a sick or crazy child, but what parents without the help of physic should do for the preservation of an healthy constitution." Crazy here is used in the old-time sense of feeble bodily health, not mental. In these days of hundreds of books on child-study, education, child-culture, and kindred topics, it is a distinct pleasure to read Locke's sturdy sentences; to see how wise, and kindly, and logical he was in nearly all his advices, especially on moral or ethical questions. Even those on physical conditions that seem laughably obsolete to-day were so in advance of the general practices of his day that they are farther removed from the notions of his time than from those of ours. In judging them let us remember Dr. Holmes' lines:—

"Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both looking and feeling queer."

Certainly an existence of two centuries may make us pardon a little queerness in advice.

One of Locke's instructions much thought on in the years his book was so widely read was the advice to wash the child's feet daily in cold water, and "to have his shoes so thin that they might leak and let in water." Josiah Quincy was the suffering subject of some of this instruction; when only three years old he was taken from his warm bed in winter as well as summer (and this in Eastern Massachusetts), carried downstairs to a cellar kitchen and dipped three times in a tub of cold water fresh from the pump. He was also brought up with utter indifference to wet feet; he said that in his boyhood he sat more than half the time with his feet wet and cold, but with no ill results.

Locke also strongly counselled learning dancing, swimming, and playing in the open air. In his diet "flesh should be forborn as long as the boy is in coats, or at least till he is two or three years old"; for breakfast and supper he advises milk, milk-pottage, water-gruel, flummery, and similar "spoon-meat," or brown bread with cheese. If the boy called for victuals between meals, he should have dry bread. His only extra drink should be small-beer, which should be warm; and seldom he should taste wine or strong drink. Locke would not have children eat melons, peaches, plums, or grapes; while berries and ripe pears and apples, the latter especially after October, he deems healthful. The bed should be hard, of quilts rather than of feathers. Under these rigid rules were reared many of our Revolutionary heroes and statesmen.

De Peyster Twins

The adoption of Locke's ideas about the use of cold water, or indeed of any frequent bathing, was perhaps the most radical innovation in modes of living. The English never bathed, in our sense of the word, a complete immersion, nor, I suppose, did our Puritan, Cavalier, or Quaker ancestors. Sewall makes not one reference to anything of the kind, but that is not strange; nor is his omission any proof, negative or positive, for he refers to no personal habits, and very shortly and infrequently to dress. Pepys, the courtier and dandy, tells of rare monumental occasions when he cleaned himself—far too rare, we may judge from side-lights thrown by other of his statements. The Youth's Behavior, an old-time book of etiquette, lays down an assertion that it is a point of wholesomeness to wash one's face and hands as soon as one is up and dressed, and "to comb one's head in time and season, yet not too curiously." Bathing the person in unaccustomed spots was a ticklish proceeding—a water ordeal, to be gravely considered. Mistress Alice Thornton, a Yorkshire dame, records in her account of her life one occasion when she washed her feet, but she was overbold. "Which my mother did believe it was the cause of that dangerous fitt the next day." In the Verney volumes we find that forlorn Verney boy, poor sickly "Mun," wearing a harness for his crooked back till his shirt was black, when the famous surgeon changed the harness, and Mun his shirt, with no thought on the part of either of a bath being a necessity.

Go-Cart

In 1630 a ship was sent from England to Massachusetts which was provisioned for three months. Among the stores for the passengers' use were two casks of Malaga and Canary; twenty gallons of aqua-vitæ; forty-five tuns of beer; and for drinking, washing, cooking, bathing, etc., but six tuns of water. The ships sent out to Georgia by Oglethorpe were so scantily supplied with water that it is positive no fresh water could have been used for bathing even in minute amount. The reputation of hidden malevolence which hung around water as a beverage seems to have extended to its use in any form. It was believed to be permeated with minute noxious particles, which in those ante-bacteriological days could not be explained, but which were distinctly appreciated and dreaded.

But these be parlous words. Let us rather show some sympathy for our ancestors. We bathe in well-warmed rooms, often in cold water, but with steaming hot water in ample command at a turn of the hand. Had we to carry all the water for our bathing use from a well whence we laboriously raised it in small amounts, and were we forced to bathe in an icy atmosphere, with cutting draughts striking us on every side, with the basins of water freezing on the hearth in front of a blazing fire, and the juices of the wood freezing at the ends of burning logs, we might not deem our daily bath such an indispensable necessity.

We have heard an advanced thinker like Locke suggest brown bread, cheese, and warm beer as food for young children. What, then, must have been the notions of less thoughtful folk? Doubtless in England such food would have been simple; but in the new world less beer was drank and more milk, which must have proved the salvation of American children. And the plentiful and varied cereal foods, many of them from Indian corn, were a suitable diet for young children. Samp, hominy, suppawn, pone, succotash,—all Indian foods and cooked in Indian ways,—were found in every home in every colony. Baked beans, another Indian dish, were also good food for children. Native and domestic fruits were plentiful, but, with the exception of apples and pears, were not very attractive. The succession of summer's and autumn's berries must have been eagerly welcomed. They were in the rich and spicy plenty offered by a virgin soil.

A curious, rare, and quaintly named English book is owned by Earl Spencer. Its title runs thus:—

"Dyves Pragmaticus. A booke in English metre of the great marchuant man called Dyves Pragmaticus, very pretye for chyldren to rede, whereby they may be the better and more readyer rede and wryte Wares and Implements in this World contayned.... When thou sellest aught unto thy neighbour or byest anything of him deceave not nor oppress him, etc. Imprinted at London in Aldersgate strete by Alexander Lacy dwellynge beside the Wall. The XXV of Aprill, 1563."

It contains a list of sweetmeats for the enticement of children which may be confidently relied on as a full one if we can judge by the exhaustiveness of the lists of other commodities found in the poem:—

"I have Sucket, Surrip, Grene Ginger, and Marmalade,
Bisket, Cumfet, and Carraways as fine as can be made."

A sucket was a dried sweetmeat such as candied orange peel. A caraway was a sweet cake with caraway-seeds.

Apples and caraways were a favorite dish, still served at some of the anniversary feasts of English universities. Comfits were highly flavored, often scented with strong perfumes like musk and bergamot.

Sweetmeats appear to have been plentiful in the colonies from early days. The first native poet of New England wrote complainingly as early as 1675 that—

"From western isles now fruits and delicacies
Do rot maids' teeth and spoil their handsome faces."

Ships in the "Indian trade" brought to the colonies abundance of sugar, molasses, chocolate, ginger, and other dried fruits. These were apparently far more common here than in England; Mr. Ernst says these constant relays of sweets "produced the American sweet-tooth—a wonder." Candied eringo-root, candied lemon-peel, angelica candy, as well as caraway comfits and sugared coriander-seed and dried ginger, were advertised for sale in Boston, and show the taste of the day. In 1731 Widow Bonyet had a notice of her specialties in the Boston News Letter. It has quite the modern ring in its meat jellies for the sick, and home-made preserves, jellies, and sirups. She also made those ancient sweets, macaroons, marchpanes, and crisp almonds. These latter do not appear to be the glazed and burnt almonds of the confectioner, and may have been salted almonds. The only candy Sewall refers to is sugared almonds. He frequently speaks of gifts of oranges, figs, and "raisins of the sun." Raisins were brought into all the colonial ports in vast amounts, and were until this century regarded by children as a great dainty.

Each large city seems to have had some special confectioner or baker who was renowned for special cakes. Boston had Meer's cakes. New York children probably had the greatest variety of cookies, crullers, and various small cakes, as these were distinctly Dutch, and the Dutch vrouws excelled in cake-making.

Strings of rock-candy came from China, but were rivalled by a distinctly native sweet—maple sugar. Equally American appear to us those Salem sweets, namely, Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. Base imitations appeared elsewhere, but never equalled the original delights in Salem. Children who were fortunate enough to live in coast towns reaped the sweet fruits of their fathers' foreign ventures. When a ship came into port with eighty boxes of sugar candy on board and sixty tubs of rock-candy, poor indeed was the child who was not surfeited with sweets. There was a sequel, however, to the toothsome feast, a bitter dessert. The ship that brought eighty boxes of sugar candy also fetched a hundred boxes of rhubarb and ten of senna.

CHAPTER II

CHILDREN'S DRESS

Man's earthly Interests are all hooked and buttoned together and held up by Clothes.

—Sartor Resartus. Thomas Carlyle, 1833.

Of the dress of infants of colonial times we can judge from the articles of clothing which have been preserved till this day. Perhaps I should say that we can judge of the better garments worn by babies, not their everyday dress; for it is not their simpler attire that has survived, but their christening robes, their finer shirts and petticoats and caps.

Linen formed the chilling substructure of their dress, thin linen, low-necked, short-sleeved shirts; and linen even formed the underwear of infants until the middle of this century. These little linen shirts are daintier than the warmest silk or fine woollen underwear that have succeeded them; they are edged with fine narrow thread lace, hemstitched with tiny rows of stitches, and sometimes embroidered by hand. I have seen a little shirt and a cap embroidered with the coat of arms of the Lux and Johnson families and the motto, "God bless the Babe;" these delicate garments were worn in infancy by the Revolutionary soldier, Governor Johnson of Virginia.

Baptismal Shirt and Mittens of Governor Bradford, 1590

In the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the baptismal shirt and mittens of the Pilgrim Father, William Bradford, second governor of the Plymouth Colony, who was born in 1590. All are of firm, close-woven, homespun linen, but the little mittens have been worn at the ends by the active friction of baby hands, and are patched with colored "chiney" or calico. A similar colored material frills the sleeves and neck. A pair of baby's mitts of fine lace also may be seen at the Essex Institute. These were wrought in the sixteenth century, and the stitches and work are those of the antique Flanders laces. I have seen many tiny mitts knit of silk and mittens of fine linen, hemstitched, worked in drawn work or embroidered, and edged with thread-lace, and also a few mitts of yellow nankeen which must have proved specially irritating to the tiny little hands that wore them.

I have never seen a woollen petticoat that was worn by an infant of pre-Revolutionary days. It may be argued that woollen garments, being liable to ruin by moths, would naturally not be treasured. This argument scarcely is one of force, because I have been shown infants' cloaks of wool as well as woollen garments for older folk, that have been successfully preserved; also beautifully embroidered long cloaks of chamois skin. I think infants wore no woollen petticoats; their shirts, petticoats, and gowns were of linen or some cotton stuff like dimity. Warmth of clothing was given by tiny shawls pinned round the shoulders, and heavier blankets and quilts and shawls in which baby and petticoats were wholly enveloped.

Robert Gibbs, Four and a Half Years Old, 1670

The baby dresses of olden times are either rather shapeless sacques drawn in at the neck with narrow cotton ferret or linen bobbin, or little straight-waisted gowns of state. All were exquisitely made by hand, and usually of fine stuff. But the babies in pioneer settlements a century ago had to share in wearing homespun. It is told of one in a log cabin in a New Hampshire clearing that when the grandmother rode out eighty miles on horseback to see her son's first baby, she shed bitter tears at beholding the child, but a few months old, clad in a gray woollen homespun slip with an apron or tier of blue and white checked linen. The mother, a frontier lass, dressed the infant according to the fashions she was accustomed to.

Nothing could show so fully the costume of children in olden times as their portraits, and a series of such portraits of successive dates will be given in these pages. Many of them are asserted to be by the three well-known artists of colonial days,—Blackburn, Smibert, and Copley; a few are by Peale, Trumbull, and Stuart. I have accepted all family traditions as true, and in many cases believe them to be true, especially since there were few painters of any rank in the community, and no others who could paint portraits such as those which have been preserved. The Gilbert Stuarts and Trumbulls usually have some authentic pedigree. Many of these pictures have no artist's signature and are absolutely valueless as works of art, and probably meritless as likenesses; but as records of costume they are always of interest and historical worth.

There is a certain sweetness in some of these old-time portraits; they are stiff and flat, but some of them have a quaintness that reminds me of the angels of the early Florentine painters. They have little grace of figure, but the details of costume make them pleasing even if they are not beautiful.

The first child's portrait in this series is one of extraordinary interest. It is opposite page 4, and has never before been given to the public. It is the reputed miniature of the Pilgrim Father, Governor Edward Winslow, when a boy about six years of age, which would be in 1602; it is the only miniature in existence of any of the Pilgrims at any age. I have, in deference to the wishes of the Rev. Dr. William Copley Winslow of Boston (to whom I am indebted for it), entitled it the reputed miniature of the child Edward Winslow, though the term expresses neither his belief nor mine; and seems scarcely just to a portrait whose claims to authenticity are far more definite than those of many of the family portraits that have descended to us.

Infant's Mitts, 16th Century

The miniature came to Dr. Winslow from Mrs. Hersey of Pembroke, Massachusetts. She died at the age of eighty-six. Her grandfather assured her that his father (the famous General John Winslow) received the likeness from his father (the grandson of Edward the Pilgrim), and that it was the Pilgrim's likeness as a child. This—through long-lived Winslows—is a record of few retellings; and these were told by folk to be trusted. The Winslows were gentlefolk of ample means, such as were likely to have miniatures painted; and the portrait of Governor Winslow when fifty-six years of age, now in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, is the sole one (save this miniature) of any of the Pilgrims. Other strong evidence is the extraordinary resemblance of the child's picture to the "grown-up" portrait, the same brow, contour of face, and other similarity.

There is something in the child's portrait that is singularly suggestive to any one with any historical imagination. The simplicity of the dress and arrangement of the hair show the influence of Puritanism. As I look at it I can fancy, yes, I can plainly see, some little English children, twenty years later standing on that crowded historic ship, looking back with childish serenity at the home they were leaving, and then greeting as cheerfully and trustingly the "sad Plymouth" where they disembarked; and the faces that I see have the broad brow, the flowing hair, the bared neck, and simple dress shown in this miniature.

The next portrait, which faces the title page, shows the costume worn in 1690 by a boy a year or two old; it is a charming and quaint picture of the first John Quincy, who was born in 1689, and who when dying, in 1767, gave his name to his great-grandson, John Quincy Adams, who had just been born. Some have thought the picture that of a sister, Esther Quincy; but to me it has a hard little boy's face, not the features of a delicate girl, and also a boy's hands, and a boy's toy.

Children in America, if gentlefolk, dressed just as children did in England at that date; and boys wore "coats" in England till they were six or seven. One of the most charming of all grandmothers' letters was written by a doting English grandmother to her son, Lord Chief Justice North, telling of the "leaving off of coats" of his motherless little son, Francis Guildford, then six years old. The letter is dated October 10, 1679:—

"Dear Son:

"You cannot beleeve the great concerne that was in the whole family here last Wednesday, it being the day that the taylor was to helpe to dress little ffrank in his breeches in order to the making an everyday suit by it. Never had any bride that was to be drest upon her weding night more handes about her, some the legs, some the armes, the taylor butt'ning, and others putting on the sword, and so many lookers on that had I not a ffinger amongst I could not have seen him. When he was quite drest he acted his part as well as any of them for he desired he might goe downe to inquire for the little gentleman that was there the day before in a black coat, and speak to the man to tell the gentleman when he came from school that there was a gallant with very fine clothes and a sword to have waited upon him and would come again upon Sunday next. But this was not all, there was great contrivings while he was dressing who should have the first salute; but he sayd if old Joan had been here, she should, but he gave it to me to quiett them all. They were very fitt, everything, and he looks taller and prettyer than in his coats. Little Charles rejoyced as much as he did for he jumpt all the while about him and took notice of everything. I went to Bury, and bo^t everything for another suitt which will be finisht on Saturday so the coats are to be quite left off on Sunday. I consider it is not yett terme time and since you could not have the pleasure of the first sight, I resolved you should have a full relation from

"Yo^r most aff^nate Mother
"A North.

When he was drest he asked Buckle whether muffs were out of fashion because they had not sent him one."

This affectionate letter, written to a great and busy statesman, the Lord Keeper of the Seals, shows how pure and delightful domestic life in England could be; but the writer was not a commonplace woman—she was the mother of fourteen children, and had had years of experience with a father-in-law before whom an army of traditional mothers-in-law would pale. She lived through this ordeal and a trying marital experience, and her children rose up and called her blessed. Among her virtues her son Roger dilated at length upon her delightful letter-writing, her "freedom of style and matter," and declared that her letters were among the comforts of her children's lives.

Jane Bonner, Eight Years Old, 1700

To return to the dress of John Quincy: with the exception of the neck of the body of the frock it is much like the dress of grown women of that day. We have existing portraits of Madam Shimpton and Rebecca Rawson of the same date. In both of these, as in this little boy's portrait, the sleeve is the most noticeable feature, with its single slash, double puff drawn in below the elbow and confined with pretty ribbon knots. This sleeve was known as the virago sleeve, and John Quincy's are darker colored than his frock. All three wear loosely tied rather shapeless hoods, such as are seen on the women in the prints of the coronation procession of King William. The boy has a close cap under his hood. His dress is certainly picturesque and distinctive.

A portrait, facing page 36, of another Massachusetts boy, contemporary with John Quincy, is that of Robert Gibbs, the rich Boston merchant. This is plainly marked as being painted when he was four and a half years old, and with the date 1670. He wears the same stiff cuirass as John Quincy, the same odd truncated shoes of buff leather, and has the same masculine swing of the petticoats. Both figures stand on a checker-board floor, four squares deep, with their toes at the same point on the board. Robert Gibbs wears a more boyish collar, or band, as befits a bigger boy. The sleeves are an important feature of his dress, having a pair of long hanging sleeves bordered with fur, which do not show in the print in this book, but are plainly visible in the original portrait. Hanging sleeves were so distinctively the dress of a little child that the term had at that time a symbolic significance, implying childishness both of youth and second childhood. Pepys thus figuratively employs the term. Judge Sewall wrote in old age to a brother whose widowed sister he desired to marry:—

"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 now to speak to Mrs Martha again, now I myself am reduc'd to Hanging Sleeves."

This roundabout wooing came to naught. The Judge married Widow Mary Gibbs, relict of this very Robert Gibbs whose childish portrait we have here. The artist who painted this picture may have been Tom Child, who is named by Judge Sewall as the portrait-painter of that day.

A demure and quaint portrait, opposite page 42, is that of Jane Bonner. She was born in 1691, the daughter of Captain John Bonner of Boston, and was married in 1710 to John Ellery. She was about eight or ten years old when the portrait was painted. Crude as is the painting, it gives evident proof that the lace of the stomacher and sleeve frills is of the nature of what is now called rose point.

In the early settlements of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia, sumptuary laws were passed to restrain and attempt to prohibit extravagance in dress. The New England magistrates were curiously minute in description of overluxurious attire, and many offenders were tried and fined. But vain daughters and sons "psisted in fflonting," though ministers joined the lawmakers in solemn warnings and reprehensions. Young girls were fined for silk hoods and immoderate great sleeves, and boldly appeared in court in still richer attire. The Dutch never attempted or wished to simplify the dress of either men or women. In New York dress was ample, substantial, varied in texture, and variegated in color. It ever formed a considerable item in personal property. The children of the Dutch settlers had plentiful and warm clothing, and sometimes very rich clothing, as may be seen in the quaint and interesting picture facing page 26, of twin girls, the two daughters of Abraham De Peyster of New York, and his wife, Margaret Van Cortlandt. They are dressed in red velvet trained gowns, but are barefooted. They were born December 3, 1724, and Eva died in 1729, a month after the portrait was painted. Catherine was married on her eighteenth birthday to John Livingstone, son of the second lord of the manor. Their son had a daughter Catherine, who became the wife of Don Mariano Velasquez de la Cadenas. To their daughters, Mrs. Azoy and Miss Mariana Velasquez, this interesting portrait now belongs.

Infant's Robe, Cap and Christening Blanket

The mother of these twins was the daughter of Jacobus Van Cortlandt and Eva De Vries Philipse. The names of Eva and Catherine have ever been given to the little daughters of these allied families, and are borne to-day by many of their descendants.

Another little girl of Dutch blood was Cathalina Post, who married Zegor Van Santvoord. Her portrait was painted in 1750 when she was fourteen years old, and is now owned by Dr. Van Santvoord of Kingston-on-Hudson, New York. A copy of this quaint old picture faces page 204. It is most interesting in costume; the head-gear showing distinct Dutch influence.

There is a suggestion of earrings in this portrait, and Katherine Ten Broeck, another child of Dutch blood, but three years old, wears earrings. The reproduction of her portrait, given opposite page 192, shows these jewels but dimly, but they are visible in the original oil-painting. She was born in Albany in 1715. The portrait is marked Ætat^s Sua, 3 Years, 1719. She was married to John Livingstone, and lived to become a stately old dame, receiving formally on New Year's Day her grandchildren, who always greeted her in Dutch learned for the special occasion.

The devastations of two wars (and in some localities three)—destruction by fire and earthquake—have sadly destroyed the cherished relics of many southern homes. From Mrs. St. Julian Ravenel of Charleston, South Carolina, the delightful biographer of that delightful colonial dame, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, come two portraits of children of the Huguenot settlers. The picture facing page 48 of Ellinor Cordes of St. John's, Berkeley County, South Carolina, painted about 1740, shows a lovely little child of French features, and French daintiness of dress, albeit a bright yellow brocaded satin would seem rather gorgeous attire for a girl but two years old. Opposite page 50 is a picture of Daniel Ravenel of Wantoot, St. John's, Berkeley County, South Carolina, who was born in 1760, and was about five years old when this portrait was painted; though he still wears what might be termed a frock with petticoats, there is a decided boyishness in the waistcoat with its silver buttons and lace, and the befrogged overcoat with broad cuffs and wrist ruffles, and a turned-over revers, and narrow linen inner collar. It is an exceptionally pleasing boy's dress for a little child.

Two portraits of Flagg children painted, it is said, by Smibert, must be among his latest portraits, for the baby, Polly Flagg, was born in Boston in 1750, and Smibert died in 1751. The portrait facing page 184 shows, as may be seen, a dear little baby not a year old, in baby dress and cap, clasping a toy. It is marked on the back Mrs. Polly Hurd; for the little girl lived to be the wife and widow of Dr. Wilder of Lancaster, Massachusetts, and of Dr. Hurd of Concord, Massachusetts. Of equal interest is the severely beautiful face of James Flagg, her brother, shown opposite page 188. He was born in 1739, and was still "coats" when this portrait was painted. These portraits are owned by Mrs. Albert Thorndike of Boston, Massachusetts, the great-granddaughter of Griselda Apthorpe Flagg, the sister of these two children.

Ellinor Cordes, Two Years Old, 1740

The portrait of Jonathan Mountfort, given opposite page 58, has a special interest to the art student, since it is a specimen of Copley's early work. The boy was born December 6, 1746, and was seven years old when the portrait was painted. He married Mary Bole, a Newfoundland girl, whose father sent her to a school in Halifax, under the charge of Captain Shepherd of Medford, Massachusetts. Finding Halifax in a state of blockade, the captain took the little girl to Boston. He and his wife were childless and became deeply attached to her and finally adopted her. She became engaged to Dr. Mountfort, and went to visit her parents in Ireland, whither they had removed. On her return, bringing with her the gifts, wardrobe, and household furnishings of a bride of that period, she came into Boston harbor only to be wrecked in sight of the town. The ship's mate swam with her to the lighthouse, and the two were the only ones saved. Captain Shepherd gave her a house and fresh outfit, and she married Dr. Mountfort. They had seven children, but the name of Mountfort is now extinct. Their daughter Elizabeth married Major Thomas Pitts, whose daughter is now Mrs. Farlin of Detroit, Michigan, the present owner of this interesting portrait.

Daniel Ravenel, Five Years Old, 1765

An altogether charming group of children, facing page 54, two sisters and two brothers of Governor Christopher Gore (seventh governor of Massachusetts), was painted about the year 1754, by Copley. The mature little girl of this picture, Frances, married Thomas Crafts, colonel of the regiment of which Paul Revere was lieutenant-colonel in the Revolution. Colonel and Mrs. Crafts were the great-grandparents of the present owners, Miss Julia G. Robins and Miss Susan P. B. Robins. This picture was for a time in the Boston Museum of Art, and on returning it General Loring wrote, "I shall miss the little grown-ups—were there no children in those days?" This look of maturity seems universal to all these portraits. I have photographs of several other groups of children, one of the most charming, that of the Grymes children, now in the Capitol at Richmond, Virginia; but they are all too darkened with age to admit of proper or adequate reproduction, and must be left out of these pages. The baby in the Grymes group is truly a baby, not a "grown-up."

Child's Shoes

The handsomest of all the boy-portraits of colonial days is that of Samuel Pemberton, by Blackburn; it is perfect in feature and expression; though he is but twelve years old he wears a wig. It was painted in 1736, and boys of good family then wore costly wigs. Mr. Freeman of Portland, Maine, had in his book of expenses of the year 1750, such items as these:—

The three sons—Samuel, James, and William—were aged eleven, nine, and seven years. The shaving was of their heads. Slaves of fashion were parents of that day to bedeck their boys with such rich wigs.

A more exquisite portrait than that of Thomas Aston Coffin, opposite page 222, can scarcely be found. It is painted in Copley's best manner (shown in the highest perfection in the portrait of his daughter Elizabeth). A light-hued satin petticoat-front shows under a rich full-skirted satin over-dress which brushes the ground. The pretty satin sleeves have white under-sleeves and wrist ruffles, but the neck is cut very low and round. The child holds two pigeons by a leash, and a feathered hat is by his side. This portrait was much loved by its late owner, Miss Anne S. Robbins of Boston.

This charming picture of the Pepperell children, facing page 214, was believed to be by Copley, and included in Mr. Perkins' list. At present this authorship is doubted. It is owned by Miss Alice Longfellow of Cambridge, having been bought by her father, the poet, from the owner of the Portsmouth Museum, who had in some singular way acquired it. The children are William, son of the second Sir William Pepperell, and his sister Elizabeth Royal Pepperell, who married Rev. Henry Hutton.

A bright-eyed little girl, Mary Lord, has her portrait, given opposite page 66, hanging in the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society. She was born in 1702, in Hartford, Connecticut, and married, in 1724, Colonel Joseph Pitkin of Hartford. By her side hangs the picture of Colonel Wadsworth and his son, shown opposite page 316. It is the one which the artist Trumbull took to Sir Joshua Reynolds for advice and comment. He was snubbed with the snappish criticism that "the coat looked like bent tin." Other criticism might be made on the anatomical proportions of the subjects.

Copley's genius is shown in the fine portrait of William Verstile, facing page 210, painted in 1769. There is one little glimpse of this boy's boyhood which has so human an element, is so fully in touch with modern life, that I give it. It is from an old letter written by his mother, during a visit in Boston, where possibly this very portrait was painted. It shows the beginning of tastes which found ample scope in his services in the war of the Revolution.

"Boston, June 11, 1766.

My Dear these leaves me and my friends as I hope they will find you for health. I was obliged to stay a fortnight as I didn't set out till the middle of the week from Weathersfield, was obliged to tarry here a fortnight on account of coming with the Post. We got down safe we got into Boston Wednesday afternoon at four o Clock. The Horse seem'd to enter Boston as free & fresh as when he first set out from home. Mr. Lowder says he is a prime horse. He wasn't galled or fretted in the least but would have come right back again. I was a good deal worried as Billey didn't fill the chaise no more, the horse might have brought three as well as two & not have felt it. I have had but very little Comfort since I have bin here on account of Billey as there's so much powderwork going on among the Children since the Illumination Billey has bin very forward of firing iron guns. Since we've bin here its not only the powder amongst the Children but the wharfes being so neare he's down there continually. Johnny Bradford & Ned & Dan Warner and Billey was down the wharfe together when a boy push'd Dan over & lik'd to bin drown'd & might bin Billey so I can't take much comfort on leaving of him but shall bring him, you needn't be Concern'd about threes coming up as Mr. Hide tells me Billey may ride behind him if he's a mind to."

Billey became a portrait painter himself, and got four guineas apiece for his miniatures. He early showed artistic predilections, and these tastes were well supplied. Interspersed with pumps and hose and hats for Billey are found in his father's purchases "brass deviders," scales, "books for limning," two dozen "hair pencils," and "1 box painter's collurs on glass," which cost twelve shillings.

Gore Children, 1754

I don't know who taught Billey limning. There was a funny book in circulation among students in that day. It was written in serious intent, but its rules read as though they were dictated by Oliver Herford. It was entitled Every Young Man's Companion in Drawing. Here are a few of its instructions to young artists:—

"Make your outlines, which may be mended occasionally.

"From the Elbow to the Root of the Little Finger is Two Noses.

"The Thumb contains a Nose.

"The Inside of Arm to Middle of Arm is Four Noses."

The crowning glory of the Copley portraits is the charming family group opposite page 180, depicting Copley himself, his beautiful wife, his dignified father-in-law, and his lovely children. It is now exhibited in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This group seems perfect, and the quaint figure of the child Elizabeth Copley, in the foreground, is worthy the brush of Van Dyck.

Colonel John Lewis, one of the old Virginia gentlemen, had two child wards. As befitted young gentlefolk of that day of opulence and extravagance, they had their dress from England. In 1736, when Robert Carter, the younger child, was about nine years old, suits of fine holland, laced, and of red worsted and of green German serge came across seas for him, with laced hats with loops and buttons. When he was twelve years old part of his "winter cloathes" were six pair of shoes and two of pumps, four pair of worked hose and four of thread hose, gloves, hats, and shoe buckles. His sister Betty had a truly fashionable wardrobe, and the stiff, restrictive dress of the times was indicated by the items of stays, hoops, masks, and fans. When "Miss Custis" was but four years old George Washington ordered for her from England packthread stays, stiffened coats, a large number of gloves and masks.

An order for purchases sent to a London agent by Washington in 1761 contains a full list of garments for both his step-children. "Miss Custis" was then six years old. These are some of the items:—

"1 Coat made of Fashionable Silk.

A Fashionable Cap or fillet with Bib apron.

Ruffles and Tuckers, to be laced.

4 Fashionable Dresses made of Long Lawn.

2 Fine Cambrick Frocks.

A Satin Capuchin, hat, and neckatees.

A Persian Quilted Coat.

1 p. Pack Thread Stays.

4 p. Callimanco Shoes.

6 p. Leather Shoes.

2 p. Satin Shoes with flat ties.

6 p. Fine Cotton Stockings.

4 p. White Worsted Stockings.

12 p. Mitts.

6 p. White Kid Gloves.

1 p. Silver Shoe Buckles.

1 p. Neat Sleeve Buttons.

6 Handsome Egrettes Different Sorts.

6 Yards Ribbon for Egrettes.

12 Yards Coarse Green Callimanco."

There is a large-headed portrait of the Custis children which was painted at about this time. A copy of it is shown opposite page 250. While the dress of both children is mature, it is not so elegant as might be expected from the rich garments which were imported for them.

Sir William Pepperell ordered, in 1737, equally costly and formal clothing from England for his little daughter to disport at Piscataquay. Stays and masks are ever on the lists of little gentlewomen. A letter of the day tells of seeing the youthful daughter of Governor Tryon sitting stiffly in a chair, in broad lace collar, with heavy dress, never playing, running, or even walking.

Delicacy of figure and whiteness of complexion were equal fetiches with colonial mammas. Little Dolly Payne, afterward Dolly Madison, wore long gloves, a linen mask, and had a sunbonnet sewed on her head every morning by her devoted mother. Very thin shoes of silk, morocco, or light stuff unfitted little girls for any very active exercise; these were high-heeled. A tiny pair of shoes for a little girl of three are shown on page 51. I have seen children's stays, made of heavy strips of board and steel, tightly wrought with heavy buckram or canvas into an iron frame like an instrument of torture. These had been worn by a little girl five years old. Staymakers advertised stays, jumps, gazzets, costrells, and caushets (which were doubtless corsets) for ladies and children, "to make them appear strait." And I have been told of tin corsets for little girls, but I have never seen any such abominations. One pair of stays was labelled as having been worn by a boy when five years old. There certainly is a suspicious suggestion in some of these little fellows' portraits of whalebone and buckram.

In the sprightly descriptions given by Anna Green Winslow of her own dress we see with much distinctness the little girl of twelve of the year 1771:—

"I was dress'd in my yellow coat, my black bib & apron, my pompedore shoes, the cap my aunt Storer sometime since presented me with blue ribbins on it, a very handsome loket in the shape of a hart, the paste pin my Hon'^d Papa presented me with in my cap, my new cloak & bonnet on, my pompedore gloves, and I would tell you they all lik'd my dress very much."... "I was dress'd in my yellow coat, black bib and apron, black feathers on my head, my paste comb, all my paste, garnet, marquasett, and jet pins, together with my silver plume,—my loket rings, black coller round my neck, black mitts, 2 or 3 yards of blue ribbin, striped tucker & ruffels & my silk shoes compleated my dress."

Jonathan Mountfort, Seven Years Old, 1753

It would seem somewhat puzzling to fancy how, with a little girl's soft hair, the astonishing and varied head-gear named above could be attached. Little Anna gives a full description of the way her hair was dressed over a high roll, so heavy and hot that it made her head "itch & ach & burn like anything." She tells of the height of her head-gear:—

"When it first came home, Aunt put it on & my new cap on it; she then took up her apron & measur'd me, & from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I measur'd above an inch longer than I did downwards from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin."

Her picture, shown facing page 164, is taken from a miniature painted when she was a few years older. The roll is more modest in size, and the decorations are fewer in number. Each year the "head-equipage" diminished, till cropped heads were seen, with a shock of tight curls on the forehead—an incredibly disfiguring mode.

In the chapter upon the school life of girls a letter is given describing the dress of two young girls who were boarding in Boston while they were being taught. There is no doubt that very rich dress was desired, and possibly required of these young scholar-boarders. The oft-quoted letter in regard to Miss Huntington's wardrobe shows the elegance of dress of those schoolgirls. She had twelve silk gowns; but word was sent home to Norwich that a recently imported rich fabric was most suitable for her rank and station; and in answer to the teacher's request the parents ordered the purchase of this elegant dress.

When cotton fabrics from Oriental countries became everywhere and every time worn, children's dress, as likewise that of grown folk, was much reduced in elegance as it was in warmth. Hoops disappeared and heavy petticoats also; the soft slimsy clinging stuffs, suitable only for summer wear, were not discarded in winter. Boys wore nankeen suits the entire year. Calico and chintz were fashioned into trousers and jackets. A little suit is shown, facing page 60, made of figured calico of high colors, which it is stated was worn in 1784. The labels are very exact and the labellers very cautious of the Deerfield Memorial Hall collection, else I should assign this suit to a ten or even twenty years' later date. Children must have suffered sadly with the cold in this age of cotton. Girls' dresses were half low-necked, and were filled in with a thin tucker; separate sleeves were tied in at the arm size, and often long-armed mitts of nankeen or linen took the place of the sleeves.

Boy's Suit of Clothing, 1784

A family of Cary children had several charming portraits painted in London. Two of them are given opposite pages 240 and 246. They note the transitions of costume which came at the approach of the close of the century. The portrait of the boy is interesting in a special point of costume; it shows the abandonment of the cocked hat and adoption of the simpler modern form of head-covering. The little girl, Margaret, has a most roguish expression, which is suggestive of Sir Joshua Reynolds' Girl with the Mouse Trap. The resemblance is even more marked in the portrait of the same child at the age of six, wherein the eyes and half-smile are charmingly engaging; unfortunately the photograph from that portrait is not clear enough for satisfactory reproduction.

A demure little brother and sister were the children of General Stephen Rowe Bradley of Westminster, Vermont, whose portraits face pages 356 and 378. These were painted soon after the Revolution, and show the definite changes in dress which set in with other Republican institutions. At this date there began to be worn a special dress for both boys and girls. Until then, as soon as a boy put on breeches he dressed precisely like his father—in miniature. By tradition Marie Antoinette was the first who had a special dress made for her young son. And sadly was she reviled for dressing her poor little Dauphin in jacket and trousers instead of flapped coat, waistcoat, and knee-breeches.

CHAPTER III

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE

First mark whereof scholes were erected,
And what the founders did intend.
And then doe thou thy study directe
For to obtain unto that end.

Doubtless this was all their meaning,
To have their countrie founded
With all poyntes of honest lernynge
Whereof the public weal had nede.

—The Last Trumpet. R. Crowley, 1550.

No greater contrast of conditions could exist than between the school life of what we love to call the "good old times," and that of the far better times of to-day. Poor, small, and uncomfortable schoolhouses, scant furnishings, few and uninteresting books, tiresome and indifferent methods of teaching, great severity of discipline, were the accompaniments of school days until this century. Yet with all these disadvantages children obtained an education, for an education was warmly desired; no difficulties could chill that deep-lying longing for learning. "Child," said one noble New England mother of the olden days, "if God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, 'tis all thy mother ever asked for thee."

Not only did parents strive for the education of their children, but the colonies assisted by commanding the building and maintaining of a school in each town where there was a sufficient number of families and scholars. Rhode Island was the only New England colony that did not compel the building of schoolhouses and the education of children.

So determined was Massachusetts to have schools that in 1636, only six years after the settlement of Boston, the General Court, which was composed of representatives from every settlement in the Bay Colony, and which was the same as our House of Representatives to-day, gave over half the annual income of the entire colony to establish the school which two years later became Harvard College. This event should be remembered; it is distinguished in history as the first time any body of people in any country ever gave through its representatives its own money to found a place of education.

In Virginia schoolhouses were few for over a century. Governor Berkeley, an obstinate and narrow-minded Englishman, wrote home to England in 1670,

"I thank God there are in Virginia no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, for learning hath brought disobedience and heresy into the world." Some Virginia gentlemen did not agree with him, however, and gave money to try to establish free schools for poor children. A far greater hindrance to the establishment of schools than the governor's stupid opposition, was the fact that there was no town or village life in Virginia; the houses and plantations were scattered; previous to the year 1700 Jamestown was the only Virginia town, and it was but a petty settlement. Williamsburg was not even laid out; a few seaports had been planned, but had not been built. Hence the children of wealthy planters were taught by private tutors at home, or were sent to school in England.

Occasionally, as years passed on, there might be found in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, what was called an old-field school, the uniting of a few neighbors to hire a teacher, too often a poor one, like the "hedge-teachers" of Europe, for a short term of teaching, in a shabby building placed on an old exhausted tobacco field.

In one of these old-field schools kept by Hobby—sexton, pedagogue, and "the most conceited man in three parishes"—George Washington obtained most of his education. A daily ride on horseback for a year to a similar school ten miles away, and for another year a row morning and night even in roughest weather across the river to a Fredericksburg teacher, ended his school career when he was thirteen; but he had then made a big pile of neatly written manuscript school books, which may now be seen in the Library at Washington; and he had acquired a passionate longing to be educated, which accompanied him through life.

An "advisive narrative" sent from America to the Bishop of London, toward the end of the seventeenth century, says:—

"This lack of schools in Virginia is a consequence of their scattered planting. It renders a very numerous generation of Christian's Children born in Virginia, who naturally are of beautiful and comely Persons, and generally of more ingenious Spirits than those in England, unserviceable for any great Employment in Church or State."

Mary Lord, 1710 circa

This statement was not wholly correct; for though Virginians were not usually fitted to be parsons, they certainly proved suited to state and government. When the war of the Revolution broke out, the noblest number of great statesmen, orators, and generals, who certainly were men of genius if not of conventional school education, came from the southern provinces. These brilliant Virginians were strong evidence and proof of what the great orator, Patrick Henry, called, in his singular pronunciation, "naiteral pairts"; which he declared was of more account than "all the book-lairnin' on the airth." Different climates and surroundings soon bring out different traits in the same race of people. The warm climate and fruitful soil in the southern colonies developed from English stock an easy-living race who needed the great stimulus and noble excitement of the Revolution to exhibit the highest qualities of brain. The Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, said in 1685, in a sermon before the Governor and Council in Massachusetts, "The Youth in this Country are verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities." Thus speedily had keen New England air and hard New England life developed these characteristic New England traits.

New England at that time was controlled, both in public and private life, by the Puritan ministers, who felt, as one of them said, that "unless school and college flourish, church and state cannot live." The ministers were accredited guardians of the schools; and when Boston chose five school inspectors to visit the Latin School with the ministers, many of the latter were highly incensed, and Increase Mather refused to go with these lay visitors.

By a law of Massachusetts, passed in 1647, it was ordered that every town of fifty families should provide a school where children could be taught to read and write; while every town of one hundred householders was required to have a grammar school. In the Connecticut Code of Laws of 1650 were the same orders. These schools were public, but were not free; they were supported at the expense of the parents.

In 1644 the town of Salem ordered "that a note be published the next lecture day, that such as have children to be kept at school, would bring in their names, and what they will give for a whole year; and also that if any poor body hath children or a child to be put to school, and not able to pay for their schooling, that the town will pay it by a rate." Lists of children were made out in towns, and if the parents were well-to-do, they had to pay whether their children attended school or not.

Land was sometimes set aside to support partly the school; it was called the "school-meadows," or "school-fields," and was let out for an income to help to pay the teacher. This was a grant made on the same principle that grants were made to physicians, tanners, and other useful persons, not to establish free education. At a later date lotteries were a favorite method of raising money for schools.

It was not until about the time of the Revolution that the modern signification of the word "free"—a school paid for entirely by general town taxes—could be applied to the public schools of most Massachusetts towns, and when the schools of Boston were made free, that community stood alone for its liberality not only in America, but in the world.

The pay was given in any of the inconvenient exchanges which had to pass as money at that time,—in wampum, beaver skins, Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, or any country product known as "truck." It is told of a Salem school, that one scholar was always seated at the window to study and also to hail passers-by, and endeavor to sell to them the accumulation of corn, vegetables, etc., which had been given in payment to the teacher.

The logs for the great fireplace were furnished by the parents or guardians of the scholars as a part of the pay for schooling; and an important part it was in the northern colonies, in the bitter winter, in the poorly built schoolhouses. Some schoolmasters, indignant at the carelessness of parents who failed to send the expected load of wood early in the winter, banished the unfortunate child of the tardy parent to the coldest corner of the schoolroom. The town of Windsor, Connecticut, voted "that the committee be empowered to exclude any scholar that shall not carry his share of wood for the use of the said school." In 1736 West Hartford ordered every child "barred from the fire" whose parents had not sent wood.

"Erudition" Schoolhouse, Bath, Maine, 1797

The school laws of the State of Massachusetts, framed in 1789, crystallized all the principles, practice, and hopes that had been developed by a hundred and fifty years of school life. The standard set by these laws was decidedly lower than those of colonial days. Where a permanent English school had been imperative, six months schooling a year might be permitted to take its place; where every town of a hundred families had had a grammar school in which boys could be fitted for the university, only towns of two hundred families were compelled to have such schools. Thus the open path to the university was closed in a hundred and twenty Massachusetts towns.

Judge Thomas Holme composed in grammarless rhyme, in 1696, a True Relation of the Flourishing State of Philadelphia. In it he says:—

"Here are schools of divers sorts
To which our youth daily resorts,
Good women, who do very well
Bring little ones to read and spell,
Which fits them for writing; and then
Here's men to bring them to their pen,
And to instruct and make them quick
In all sorts of Arithmetick."

These statements were scarcely carried out in fact; in Pennsylvania educational advantages were few, and among some classes education was sorely hampered. The Quakers did not encourage absolute illiteracy, but they thought knowledge of the "three R's" was enough; they distinctly disapproved of any extended scholarship, as it fostered undue pride and provoked idleness. The Germans were worse; their own historians, the Calvinist and Lutheran preachers, Schlatter and Muhlenberg, are authority; there were among them a few schools of low grade; but the introduction of the public school system among the Germans was resisted by indignation meetings and litigation. The Tunkers degenerated so that they did not desire a membership of educated persons, and would have liked to destroy all books but religious ones. It was said by these German settlers that schooling made boys lazy and dissatisfied on the farms, and that religion would suffer by too much learning. As Bayard Taylor puts it in his Pennsylvania Farmer:—

"Book learning gets the upper hand and work is slow and slack,
And they that come long after us will find things gone to wrack."

School-teachers in the middle and southern colonies were frequently found in degraded circumstances; many of them were redemptioners and exported convicts. I have frequently noted such newspaper advertisements as this from the Maryland Gazette:—

"Ran away: A Servant man who followed the occupation of a Schoolmaster, much given to drinking and gambling."

So universal was drunkenness among schoolmasters that a chorus of colonial "gerund-grinders" might sing in Goldsmith's words:—

"Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar and nonsense and learning,
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genius a better discerning."

Scotland furnished the best and the largest number of schoolmasters to the colonies.

The first pedagogue of New Amsterdam was one Adam Roelantsen, and he had a checkered career. His name appears with frequency on the court records of the little town both as plaintiff and defendant. He was as active in slandering his neighbors as they were in slandering him; though, as Miss Van Vechten observes, "It is hard to see what fiction worse than truth could have been invented about him." In spite of the fact that "people did not speak well of him," he married well. But his misdemeanors continued and he was finally sentenced to be flogged. We may contrast the legal records of this gentleman's shortcomings with his duties as set forth in his commission, one of which was "to set others a good example as becometh a devout, pious, and worthy consoler of the sick, church clerk, precentor, and schoolmaster."

Some of the contracts under which teachers were hired still exist. One for the teacher at the Dutch settlement of Flatbush, Long Island, in 1682, is very full in detail, and we learn much of the old-time school from it. A bell was rung to call the scholars together at eight o'clock in the morning, the school closed for a recess at eleven, opened again at one, closed at four; all sessions began and closed with prayer. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the children were taught the questions and answers in the catechism and the common prayers. The master was paid (usually in wheat or corn) for "a speller or reader" three guilders a quarter, for "a writer" four guilders. He had many other duties to perform besides teaching the children. He rung the church bell on Sunday, read the Bible at service in church, and led in the singing; sometimes he read the sermon. He provided water for baptisms, bread and wine for communion, and in fact performed all the duties now done by a sexton, including sweeping out the church. He delivered invitations to funerals and carried messages. Sometimes he dug the graves, and often he visited and comforted the sick.

Full descriptions exist of the first country schoolhouses in Pennsylvania and New York. They were universally made of logs. Some had a rough puncheon floor, others a dirt floor which readily ground into dust two or three inches thick, that unruly pupils would purposely stir up in clouds to annoy the masters and disturb the school. The bark roof was a little higher at one side that the rain might drain off. Usually the teacher sat in the middle of the room, and pegs were thrust between the logs around the walls, three or four feet from the ground; boards were laid on these pegs; at these rude desks sat the older scholars with their backs to the teacher. Younger scholars sat on blocks or benches of logs. Until this century many schoolhouses did not have glass set in the small windows, but newspapers or white papers greased with lard were fastened in the rude sashes, or in holes cut in the wall, and let in a dim light. At one end, or in the middle, a "cat and clay" chimney furnished a fireplace. When the first rough log cabin was replaced by a better schoolhouse the hexagonal shape, so beloved in those states for meeting-houses, was chosen, and occasionally built in stone. A picture of one still standing and still used as a schoolhouse, in Raritan, New Jersey, is here shown. It retained its old shelf desks till a few years ago.

"Old Harmony" Schoolhouse, Raritan Township, Hunterdon Co., New Jersey

In a halting way schools in America followed the customs of English schools. The "potation-penny," or "the drinking," was collected in schools in the colonies. In England a considerable sum was often gathered for this treat at the end of the term; but the pennies were doled out more slowly in American schools. Young Joseph Lloyd (of the family of Lloyds Neck on Long Island), in the year 1693, paid out a shilling and sixpence "to the Mistris for feast and wine." A century later, in a school in New Hampshire, the children diligently saved the wood-ashes in the big fireplace and sold them to a neighboring potash works for their treat. They had ample funds to buy rum, raisins, and gingerbread for all who came to the treat, including the ministers and deacons. It was of this school, doubtless attended largely by Scotch-Irish children, that the teacher recorded that the boys, even the youngest, wore leather aprons, while many of the girls took snuff. Another old English custom, the barring-out, occasionally was known here, especially in Pennsylvania.

The furnishing of the schoolrooms was meagre; there were no blackboards, no maps, seldom was there a pair of globes. Though Mr. MacMaster asserts that pencils were never used even in the early years of our Federal life, his statement is certainly a mistake. Faber's pencils were made as early as 1761. Peter Goelet advertised lead pencils for sale in New York in 1786, with india rubbers, and as early as 1740 they were offered among booksellers' wares in Boston for threepence apiece, both black and red lead. Judge Sewall had one; perhaps it was not our common lead pencil of to-day.

In 1771 we find the patriot Henry Laurens writing thus to his daughter Martha, "his dearest Patsey," when she was about twelve years old.