"She tells also of washing, cooking, knitting, weeding the garden,

picking geese, etc., and many visits to her friends. She dipped candles

in the spring, and made soap in the autumn."[367]

Knitting was an accomplishment of every girl in New England and among

the Dutch in New York and probably with every other girl in all the

colonies. Little girls were taught to knit as soon as they could hold

the needles, and at four years of age they could knit stockings and

mittens. They knit in wool and silk, doing fine knitting with many

intricate and elaborate stitches. "A beautiful pair of long silk

stockings of open-work design has initials knit on the instep, which

were the wedding hose of a bride of the year 1760; and the silk for them

was raised, wound, and spun by the bride's sister, a girl of fourteen,

who also did the exquisite knitting."[368]

These colonial women were thrifty and saving, being well prepared to

care for the garments needing repair, as is shown from an advertisement

in the _New York Gazette_ of April 1, 1751:

"Elizabeth Boyd gives notice that she will as usual graft Pieces in knit

Jackets and Breeches not to be discern'd, also to graft and foot

Stockings, and Gentlemen's Gloves, mittens or Muffatees made out of old

Stockings, or runs them in the Heels. She likewise makes Children's

Stockings out of Old Ones."[369]

The one kind of work that all the colonial women reveled in and which

allowed them to display their love of color, their skill in

needle-craft, and their thrift in using up odds and ends, was that of

quilt-making. In the early days cotton goods were scarce and so the

quilts were made from woolen garments and pieces, and all kinds of

garments and remnants were used, as, the old discarded militia uniforms,

worn-out flannel sheets, old petticoats, coat and cloak linings, and any

other things that could not be further worn. These were thoroughly

washed and where needed dyed with home-dyes and then pressed out and cut

into quilting pieces. Later, cottons and linens were more readily

procured and often the very best stuffs were used, for they prided

themselves on the beauty of the pieces and their arrangement and the

careful stitching. Not only did the making of quilts afford a chance to

use up the material that could not be used otherwise and thus make

coverings of value and warmth, it also gave to the women the opportunity

for coming together and enjoying themselves, and so quilting-bees became

one of the most social and enjoyable occasions.

One of the great industries of the women was that of soap-making. The

refuse grease from cooking, butcherings, and the like, was stored up

through the winter as was also the wood-ashes from the fire-place for

the spring soap-making. From the ashes they obtained lye by pouring

water over the ashes in barrels set on boards with grooves in them and

letting it filter out at the bottom to be caught in vessels set under

the ends of the boards. The lye thus obtained was poured over the grease

in a great pot and boiled over a fire out of doors. The soft soap thus

made was used for household purposes, especially in the washing of

clothing, which was done usually once a month and in some households

once in three months, the soiled clothing having been allowed to

accumulate and be stored away to be washed together on one great

wash-day. Another kind of labor in which the women engaged was the

picking of the domestic geese, which were raised for the feathers rather

than for food. The feathers were greatly desired for pillows and beds

and the quills for pens.

Among the industries in which women engaged were those of flax-culture

and spinning, wool-culture and spinning, and hand-weaving. The women and

children aided in the culture of the flax and did quite a good deal of

the work in its preparation and almost all the spinning. Women and

children, too, did a great deal in helping in the wool-culture and

spinning and weaving. In those early days all in the family could help

and a family at work is well portrayed in the following.

"The wool industry easily furnished home occupation to an entire family.

Often by the bright fire-light in the early evening every member of the

household might be seen at work on the various stages of wool

manufacture or some of its necessary adjuncts, and varied and cheerful

industrial sounds fill the room. The old grandmother, at light and easy

work, is carding the wool into fleecy rolls, seated next the fire; for,

as the ballad says 'she was old and saw right dimly.' The mother,

stepping as lightly as one of her girls, spins the rolls into woolen

yarn on the great wheel. The oldest daughter sits at the clock-reel,

whose continuous buzz and occasional click mingles with the humming rise

and fall of the wool-wheel, and the irritating scratch, scratch, of the

cards. A little girl at a small wheel is filling quills with woolen yarn

for the loom, not a skilled work; the irregular sound shows her

intermittent industry. The father is setting fresh teeth in a wool-card,

while the boys are whittling hand-reels and loom-spools."[370]

After the first years in the new country, when all time and labor would

be consumed in carrying on the plain necessaries of life, women began to

enter more into fancy lines of work, and during later colonial times the

women and girls did quite a lot of fine work in sewing, knitting,

embroidering, and other kinds of decorative work. There arose schools

for teaching girls and young women feather-work, fancy knitting,

painting on glass, embroidery, netting, fine sewing, wax-work, the

making of artificial fruits and flowers, paper-cutting, and many other

things.

They made most beautiful embroidery. Articles of clothing had vines,

trees, fruits, flowers, and other designs worked on them and also words

and mottoes and texts from the Bible. Some of the christening caps and

robes of the babies had beautiful embroidered work on them. Among the

embroidered goods of those days were the mourning pieces. They had

worked on them weeping willows and urns, tombs and mourning figures,

epitaphs, and names of deceased members of the family or friends with

dates of their deaths.

One piece of embroidering which was done by every little girl in

families of standing was the making of a sampler, which consisted of a

long and narrow, or nearly square, piece of linen canvas with designs

worked in colored silks and wools. These were among the works of

children in early colonial times, as there is one still preserved made

by a daughter of a Pilgrim Father and another bearing on it the date of

1654. In the older samplers there was little bother with realism in

using the colors as a green horse might be alongside a blue tree and the

green horse might have his legs worked in red. On them were worked crude

or strangely represented trees and fruits and flowers and animals. There

were verses embroidered and portions of hymns and sometimes pictures

portraying family or public events. Some were quite pretentious, one

such sampler shows the Old South Church with a coach passing by it and

ladies and gentlemen on horses and afoot in the costumes of the time,

and even a negro lad holding a horse, and birds flying in the air above

them.

Laces were made for using on pillows and made on net for veils and

collars and caps. "Girls spent years working on a single collar or

tucker. Sometimes medallions of this net lace were embroidered down upon

fine linen lawn. I have infants' caps of this beautiful work, finer than

any needlework of to-day."[371]

Netting was another of their arts, the net being used on coverlets and

curtains and valances, this kind being made of cotton thread or twine,

while a finer kind was made of silk or fine cotton for trimming sacks

and petticoats; also netted purses and work-bags as well as knitted ones

were made. On small looms they made tapes and braids and ribbons for use

as glove-ties, shoe-strings, hair-laces, stay-laces, garters, hatbands,

belts, etc.

They did painting on glass, representing fruits and flowers, and an

especial subject was coats of arms. They made feather-work, which

consisted in pasting small feathers or portions of feathers together to

form flowers for use on head-dresses and bonnets. Another form of

decorative work indulged in by colonial women was the cutting of designs

out of stiff paper with scissors. They cut out coats of arms,

valentines, wreaths of flowers, marine views, religious symbols,

animals, landscapes, and other designs. They were sometimes mounted on

black paper, framed and glazed, and given as presents to friends.

=Religion.= The first colonists of all parts were religiously inclined.

Captain John Smith tells of the first colonists in Virginia: "We had

daily Common Prayer morning and evening; every Sunday two sermons; and

every three months a holy Communion till our Minister died; but our

Prayers daily with an Homily on Sundays we continued two or three years

after, till more Preachers came."[372] They held to the Church of

England and believed in strict observance of Sunday. This day was kept

for religious services and all were compelled to go to church except the

sick and journeys were forbidden and all work not strictly necessary and

all sports, such as shooting, fishing, game-playing, etc. In New

Netherlands there was likewise strict observance of Sunday by the Dutch

and working, playing in the streets, fishing, hunting, going on pleasure

trips, and such like, were strictly forbidden. With the Puritans in New

England the strictest observance of Sunday as a holy day was rigidly

enforced. No work on the farm was permitted on that day nor any

pleasures whatsoever in the way of fishing, shooting, sailing, dancing,

jumping, and the like, nor riding except going to or from church. The

laws for this day were rigidly enforced as is shown from their writings

on the subject and court records. Beside the three faiths as represented

above, there were the Roman Catholics in Maryland, the Quakers in

Pennsylvania, the Baptists in Rhode Island, and Huguenots, Lutherans,

Moravians, Waldenses, Walloons, Jews, and others, in the different

colonies. There was room for any and all of them and although there were

persecutions yet it did not destroy any faith but caused the people to

move out into new fields where they would be unmolested.

The first places of worship in Virginia were thus described by Captain

John Smith:

"Wee did hang an awning, which is an old saile, to three of foure trees

to shadow us from the Sunne; our walls were railes of wood; our seats

unhewed trees till we cut plankes; our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to

two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten

tent; this came by way of adventure for new. This was our Church till

we built a homely thing like a barne set upon Cratchets, covered with

rafts, sedge, and earth; so also was the walls; the best of our houses

were of like curiosity, that could neither well defend from wind nor

rain."[373]

In a short time a timber church sixty feet long was built and some years

afterward this church was replaced by a brick one. Some of the churches

in the Southern colonies were modeled in shape after the old English

churches and were built of stone, but most of them were wooden buildings

without "spires or towers or steeples."

In 1646 the Dutch built a little wooden church in Fort Orange. The first

church at Albany was built in 1657 and it was simply a blockhouse with

loopholes for permitting guns to be fired through in case of an Indian

attack and three small cannon were placed on the roof. The first church

in New Amsterdam was built of stone and it was seventy-two feet long.

The first church in Brooklyn was built in 1666 and it had thick stone

walls with a steep peaked roof with an open belfry on top. Many of the

old Dutch churches were six-sided or eight-sided with a high, steep,

pyramidal roof, topped with a belfry on which was a weather-vane.

Not long after landing at Plymouth the Puritans built a fort, which was

used as a Lord's Day meeting-place till a meeting-house was built in

1648. As other settlements were made, religious services were at first

held in tents or under trees and where a settler had a roomy house this

often was used. The first meeting-house at Boston had mud walls, a

thatched roof, and earthen floor, which was used till 1640.

The first meeting-houses in New England were square and made of logs

with the spaces between the logs filled with clay and with steep roofs

which were thatched with reeds and long grass and with a beaten earth

for a floor. These buildings were often quite small, one having been

thirty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high, and

another was but twenty-six feet long and twenty feet wide. Later these

were replaced by larger and better buildings and these early rude

structures were used for granaries and storehouses.

The second form of meeting-houses was a square wooden building having a

truncated pyramidal roof with a belfry or turret. One of this type,

built at Hingham in 1681, known as the "Old Ship," is still in

existence. The largest and finest of this second type was the First

Church at Boston, a large square brick building, built in 1713, and

which was used till 1808.

The third type of New England colonial meeting-houses had a lofty wooden

steeple at one end, of which the old South Church at Boston, a

well-known historic building, is a good example.

In the South the churches were often placed by the waterside and people

came to them over the water in various kinds of vessels. In New England

the first meeting-houses were often built in the valleys, or the

meadow-lands and the houses of the settlers were built about them. As

the population increased there could no longer be land available for all

in the valleys and the houses were built out near watering places and

pasturage for convenience and so the meeting-houses began to be placed

on hill-tops. This was done so as to be a lookout for danger from

Indians and also so it could be seen from all parts of the country as

the people had to journey through narrow roads and bridle-paths obscured

by trees and brush. Too, there was a pride in such a location, to show

off a fine meeting-house, which would thus be visible for many miles

around.

The old New England meeting-houses were used for various purposes, one

of the strangest being for the nailing of the heads of wolves to the

logs on the outside. Wolves were so numerous and so destructive and so

feared that rewards were paid for their killing and to show this the

heads were nailed to the outer walls of the meeting-house. This was all

the decoration that the outer walls of the building had for near a

century as during the seventeenth century it was considered vain and

extravagant to paint them but by the middle of the eighteenth century

paint became cheaper and more plentiful and the meeting-houses began not

only to be painted but also in conspicuous colors and towns began to vie

with one another in the most striking displays. One new meeting-house

was painted a bright yellow and soon others were likewise adorned.

"Brooklyn church, then, in 1762, ordered that the outside of its

meeting-house be 'culered' in the approved fashion. The body of the

house was painted a bright orange; the doors and 'bottom boards' a warm

chocolate color; the 'window-jets,' corner-boards, and weather-boards

white. What a bright nosegay of color! As a crowning glory Brooklyn

people put up an 'Eleclarick Rod' on the gorgeous edifice, and proudly

boasted that Brooklyn meeting-house was the 'newest, biggest and

yallowest' in the county."[374]

There was no shade about the early meeting-houses in New England as the

trees were cut down around it for fear of forest fires. There were no

curtains nor window-blinds, so that the heat and blazing light in summer

would make it bad for all in the church. They did often have heavy

outside shutters but they could not be closed during services as the

room would then be made too dark for the minister to see to read his

sermon. Later the forests grew again and they were not cut away nor

cleared up and the meeting-house would thus become dark and gloomy.

Oiled paper was used in the windows of these early meeting-houses and

later when glass came into use it was nailed in instead of being

puttied.

The early meeting-house of the Puritans in New England were of a very

simple interior with raftered walls and sanded puncheon floors or

earthen floors. The early Dutch churches in New Netherlands also were

plain and they were kept in the greatest cleanliness, scrubbed often and

floors sanded with fine beach-sand. The churches of the Southern

colonies were usually better furnished and flowers were used for

decorations, which was never the case with the Puritans. The pulpits in

all the churches were rather pretentious affairs, being elevated above

the floor, enclosed, with a narrow flight of stairs leading up to them.

At least in the early Puritan churches there was a sounding-board placed

above the pulpit, which was a board supported from the roof by a slender

iron rod.

In the earliest meeting-houses in New England the seats were made of

rough hand-riven boards placed on legs and without backs. Later there

were pews with narrow seats around the sides and high partition walls

between. In the early Dutch churches the men had places in pews around

the walls while chairs were placed in the center of the church for the

women to occupy. In some of the Virginia churches the seats were

comfortably cushioned. In later times in all the churches the pews were

carefully assigned and persons who crowded into pews above their station

were unceremoniously put out by those in charge.

The meeting-houses in New England were wholly without means of heating

until the middle of the eighteenth century. Throughout the long and

tedious services during the coldest weather of a bitter climate,

attendants at the meetings had to get along as best they could. The men

wore their heaviest clothing during the services. The minister, too,

would keep himself wrapped up while in the pulpit just as on his way to

the meeting-house. The women in the earlier times dressed to suit the

temperature, but as wealth came fashion also entered in and thin silk

hose, cloth or kid or silk slippers, linen underclothing, dresses with

elbow sleeves and round low necks, and a thin cloth cape or mantle for

the shoulders was too often in midwinter the Sunday apparel. The women

did protect their heads with caps and mufflers and veils and their hands

with gloves and muffs.

The officials must be given credit for trying to keep the meeting-house

free from the winds as well as possible, as in some places it was

ordered that during the cold weather "no doors be opened to the windward

and only one door to the leeward." In 1725 in one place it was ordered

that the "several doors of the meeting-house be taken care of and kept

shut in very cold and windy seasons according to the lying of the wind

from time to time; and that people in such windy weather come in at the

leeward doors only, and take care that they are easily shut both to

prevent the breaking of the doors and the making of a noise."[375]

In some of the early log meeting-houses the skins of wolves and other

fur-bearing animals were made into bags which were nailed or tied to the

benches in such a way as to let the people thrust their feet into them

for warmth. In the bitterest weather foot-stoves were taken to the

meeting-houses for the use of the women and children. During the middle

of the eighteenth century stoves began to appear in the meeting-houses

in New England, perhaps the first stove used having been at Hadley in

1734. But there was a hard fight to introduce stoves and it was near

another century later before they came into general use.

If the meeting-house should have been situated in a town, at noon the

people went to their homes or to the tavern or to neighbors' houses in

that vicinity to eat their dinners and to warm themselves. If the

meeting-house in the country was near the home of a hospitable farmer

the congregation would go there at noon. But too often the

meeting-house was away off at the top of a hill or in an out-of-the-way

place and so there would be built near it a rough-like structure, known

as the "noon-house." Sometimes it was called the "Sabba-day house" and

again a "horse-hows," this last name because in some of the houses the

horses were placed at one end. At the other end was built a large rough

stone chimney. Of severe Sundays some one, a servant or an older son,

would usually be sent at an early hour to start a good fire in this

fireplace for warming the family after their cold ride. At noon all

would repair to this house for warmth and for eating their dinner.

Before starting for home a warming was again taken. Too, during the long

sermons in forenoon and afternoon a servant or some member of the family

would replenish the coals in the foot-stoves from the coals in the

fireplace of this noon-house.

In front of the meeting-house there were usually horse-blocks, or

stepping-stones, or hewn logs, for mounting their horses as usually all

rode. All kinds of notices were posted on the meeting-house, notices of

town-meetings, prohibitions from selling guns and powder to the Indians,

notices of sales of cattle or farms, lists of town officers, copies of

the laws against Sabbath-breaking, notices of intended marriages, and

sometimes even scandalous and insulting libels. Often on the

meeting-house green stood the stocks, pillory, cage, and whipping-post.

The meeting-house was not only used for religious services, but also for

town meetings and likewise as a store-house. Never having fire in it nor

about it, it was the safest place for a powder-magazine and some place

in it was fitted up for such purpose. Also grain was stored in its loft

and in particular that which might have been given to the minister as

pay for his services.

"In one church in the Connecticut valley, in a township where it was

forbidden that tobacco be smoked upon the public streets, the church

loft was used to dry and store the freshly cut tobacco-leaves which the

inhabitants sold to the 'ungodly Dutch.' Thus did greed for gain lead

even blue Connecticut Christians to profane the house of God."[376]

There were various ways in colonial times of calling the people to the

religious services of Sunday morning. In the early times and

particularly so in New England, they did not always have bells on the

churches and various devices were used to let people know when it was

time to go to church. The time of morning service was usually about

nine o'clock and this was announced sometimes by the tooting of a horn

or the blowing of a conch-shell or the sounding of a trumpet. The

beating of a drum was a very common signal and some also used the firing

of guns, in this latter the number of times firing was different from

that signifying danger, so as not to frighten the people. Sometimes a

flag was used to notify the people of meeting time, having been put out

when time of notice arrived and left hanging out till time for the

beginning of the service, when the flag was taken down. Some

meeting-houses were supplied with belfries from which the conch or horn

or trumpet was sounded, or whatever signal was used, and in other places

a platform was made upon top of the meeting-houses for this purpose.

When bells were used, in the early churches there were often no towers

in which to place them and they were hung on trees near the

meeting-house.

At the first signal from conch or trumpet or horn or drum, the people

would be seen starting out from their homes. With some communities it

was the custom for the congregation to stop at the church door and wait

until the minister and his wife arrived and passed into the house and

then all followed, of course the boys hanging back and coming in at the

very last moment, shuffling and scraping and clattering with their heavy

boots as they went up the stairs to their place in the loft. Other

congregations entered the church as they came and then all arose as the

minister entered and remained standing till he went into the pulpit and

then sat down as he did. It was also the custom for the congregation to

remain standing in the pews at the close of the service till the

minister had come down from the pulpit, joined his wife, and passed out

to the church-porch, there to greet the people as they would come out of

the church.

It would seem that the most important officer in church and public life

in New England was the tithing-man. "He was in a degree a constable, a

selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a sexton, a

home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble, whose motto was _Hic et

ubique_."[377] Among his duties were the seeing that the children

learned the church catechism, looking out that people went to church,

inspecting the taverns to note that they were kept in an orderly manner

and did not sell liquors to disorderly persons, and watching that boys

and other persons should not go swimming in the water on week days. His

most important duty, perhaps, was that of keeping order and proper

decorum in the meeting-house by beating out the dogs, prodding the noisy

boys, and awakening the sleeping adults. For this latter he had a long

staff with a knob on one end to tap the sleeping men while on the other

end was a fox-tail to dangle in the face of the sleeping women. The

following from a journal of those early days tells how well he performed

his duties and some of the effects thereof.

"June 3, 1646.--Allen Bridges hath bin chose to wake ye sleepers in

meeting. And being much proude of his place, must needs have a fox taile

fixed to ye ende of a long staff wherewith he may brush ye faces of them

yt will have napps in time of discourse, likewise a sharpe thorne

whereby he may pricke such as be most sound. On ye last Lord his day, as

hee strutted about ye meeting-house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins sleeping

with much comfort, hys head kept steadie by being in ye corner, and his

hand grasping ye rail. And soe spying, Allen did quickly thrust his

staff behind Dame Ballard and give him a grievous prick upon ye hand.

Whereupon Mr. Tomlins did spring vpp mch above ye floore and with

terrible force strike hys hand against ye wall; and also, to ye great

wonder of all, prophanlie exclaim in a loud voice, curse ye wood-chuck,

he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had seized and bit his hand.

But on coming to know where he was, and ye greate scandall he had

committed, he seemed much abashed, but did not speak. And I think he

will not soon again goe to sleepe in meeting."[378]

Among the Dutch in New Amsterdam there was a somewhat similar officer,

"the _voorleezer_, or chorister, who was also generally the bell-ringer,

sexton, grave-digger, funeral inviter, schoolmaster, and sometimes town

clerk. He 'tuned the psalm'; turned the hour-glass; gave out the psalms

on a hanging-board to the congregation; read the Bible; gave up notices

to the dominie by sticking the papers in the end of a cleft stick and

holding it up to the high pulpit."[379]

The ministers among the Puritans in New England were very greatly

considered. The laity who were bold enough to criticize or disparage the

minister or his teachings were severely punished. A woman who spoke

harshly of her minister had her tongue placed in a cleft stick and made

to stand thus in a public place. A man for declaring that he received no

profit from his minister's sermons was fined and severely whipped. Worse

than bodily punishment was excommunication, for if a minister pronounced

such upon a member of his congregation he was excluded from partaking of

the sacrament and the people of the church refrained from all communion

with him in civil affairs, even from eating and drinking with him. Yet

with all this great power of the ministers in early Puritan times, they

were not permitted to perform the marriage-service, which was wholly a

civil affair, nor could they pray or exhort at a funeral. The ordination

of so important an officer as the minister was a very important event.

This was celebrated by a great gathering of people and ministers for

many miles around. It was a deeply serious affair and yet a great

festival occasion, for frequently there was an ordination ball and

always an ordination supper, where there was a plenty and a variety of

things to eat and to drink.

Although the minister's calling was one of trust and honor it was not

also one of profit. The salary was small and paid in different ways, not

a large part of it in cash. It was the universal custom to provide a

house for the minister and often this was among the very first houses

built in a new town and at its laying out some of the best lots were set

aside for his use. He was also provided with free pasturage for his

horse, the village burial-ground having been placed at his disposal for

pasture land. In the early days a large part of the salary was paid in

corn and labor and the amount for each church member to give was fixed

by the authorities. Cord-wood was another common contribution, and each

male church-member was expected to give a load of wood delivered at the

door of the parsonage. Any money contributed by strangers who chanced to

attend the services was usually given to the minister. A spinning bee, a

forerunner of the donation party of later times, was often held at the

home of the minister, wherein each woman would take her spinning-wheel

and flax and all would spend the day in spinning and give the outcome to

the minister's family. Also the women would meet and make patchwork

bed-quilts and give them to the minister's family. Some ministers would

go out among the members of their congregations and beg supplies for

themselves and families. Many of the ministers found it necessary to do

outside work to make a living, such as farming on week days, taking

young men to teach and to fit for college, compounding and selling drugs

and medicines; while some were coopers, carpenters, rope-makers,

millers, and cobblers. It took great thrift and economy on the part of

the minister and his family to get along. The wife not only had to be

zealous in religious practices but also in domestic practices and often

she was the thriftiest wife of the community. Every kind of denial had

to be made and yet with this poverty the minister's children were quite

often well kept and trained and many ministers were enabled to help

their sons to obtain a college education.

Fear of the Indians did not keep the Puritans away from the

meeting-house, but it did cause them to go there armed. At first each

man carried arms to church and then later a certain number were detailed

to arm themselves. In 1642 in Massachusetts the law provided for six men

to be at the meeting-house with muskets and powder and shot. The armed

men were placed near the door so as to be ready to protect the

congregation or to rush out in case of need. When the services were

ended, the armed guards went out of the meeting-house first and then the

other men and the women and children were last, thus to be protected.

Too, it was the custom for the men always to sit at the door of the pew,

next to the aisle, so they could be ready to get their arms and rush out

in case of a fight. Also being at the door of the pew the father could

better protect the other members of the family, and a man who would not

have occupied this place would have been considered a poor kind of

husband and father.

In the early colonial days in New England there were two services in the

meeting-house on Sunday, in the forenoon and in the afternoon. The

sermons were long, two or three hours not being uncommon and some even

ran up to five hours in length. Added to these long sermons were long

prayers, frequently an hour in length and sometimes even continuing for

three hours. At a desk near the pulpit there was an hour-glass and

sitting near it was an officer of the church whose duty it was to turn

it at the end of the hour. During the prayer the congregation stood,

about its middle the minister would make a long pause to let the infirm

and those ill sit down, but all the others remained standing till its

close. It was the duty of the tithing-man to see that no one left the

house before the close of the services without there was a real good

reason and also he was to keep the congregation awake. These long

prayers and sermons were not disliked by the congregation, but on the

contrary they considered it a great gift for the minister to be able to

continue long in prayer and a short sermon would have been looked upon

as irreligious and lacking in reverence, and beside that was for what

the minister was paid. "In every record and journal which I have read,

throughout which ministers and laymen recorded all the annoyances and

opposition which the preachers encountered, I have never seen one entry

of any complaint or ill-criticism of too long praying or

preaching."[380]

The music of the Puritan meeting-house is well summarized in the

following: "The singing of the psalms was tedious and unmusical, just as

it was in churches of all denominations both in America and England at

that date. Singing was by ear and very uncertain, and the congregation

had no notes, and many had no psalm-books, and hence no words. So the

psalms were 'lined' or 'deaconed'; that is, a line was read by the

deacon, and then sung by the congregation. Some psalms when lined and

sung occupied half an hour, during which the congregation stood. There

were but eight or nine tunes in general use, and even these were often

sung incorrectly. There were no church organs to help keep the singers

together, but sometimes pitch-pipes were used to set the key.

Bass-viols, clarionets, and flutes were played upon at a later date in

meeting to help the singing. Violins were too much associated with dance

music to be thought decorous for church music. Still the New England

churches clung to and loved their poor confused psalm-singing as one of

their few delights, and whenever a Puritan, even in road or field, heard

the distant sound of a psalm-tune he removed his hat and bowed his head

in prayer."[381]

=The Child and Religion.= The children in the other colonies were not so

strictly reared as those in Puritan New England. The people in New York

enjoined that the constable attend church to look after such children as

profaned the Sabbath. In Albany complaint was made that boys and girls

coasted down hills on Sunday and in some other places that the young

people violated the Sabbath by discoursing on vain things and the

running of races. In the eighteenth century a cage was placed in City

Hall Park in New York for the confining of boys who profaned the

Sabbath.

In the meeting-house in New England in colonial times the young men sat

together on one side and the young women sat in a corresponding place on

the other side. The little girls sat on stools or low seats in the pews

with their mothers or, if too many of them for place in the pew, they

would sit out in the aisle, and sometimes there would be a row of little

girls on a row of little stools extending the full length of the aisle.

In some of the meeting-houses the boys were seated together on the

pulpit and gallery stairs, while in other houses a place was made for

them in the gallery, but wherever the place they were all herded

together.

The boys among the Puritans were as other boys in all times and among

all peoples, and the huddling them together in meeting-houses only

helped to bring out their growing physical activities, as the taking

them away from the watchfulness of the parents gave them better

opportunities for expression of their repressed powers. One way of doing

this was by slamming the pew-seats at the close of prayer and sermon and

the vigor with which they did this called for an order from one church

at least that "The boys are not to wickedly noise down there pew-seats."

Another pastime was the twisting of the balustrades of the gallery

railing in order to make them squeak. Whittling and cutting the woodwork

and benches where they sat gave opportunity to put in time and also to

try out their jack-knives. They passed the time in other ways, for there

are court records showing that youths were taken before magistrates and

fined for playing and laughing in church and doing things to make others

laugh and play.

The best evidence left us to show that boys kept themselves busy in the

meeting-houses is that they kept other people busy attending to them.

There are plenty of records left to show that the tithing-man was

continually being ordered to look after the behavior of the boys and

also of the appointing of extra men to look after these unruly beings,

in one church as many as six men had to be appointed at one time to keep

them in order. These men had power to inflict punishment on the boys,

and they did not hesitate to rap them soundly with their sticks and,

too, sometimes a boy was taken out of the meeting-house and given a

severe whipping. The tithing-man also used other means, for sometimes he

took a boy from his place with the other boys and paraded him across the

house and put him by side his mother on the women's side. If a young man

would not behave himself, sometimes he was taken away from his place

among the men and led to where the boys sat and forced to sit with them.

Even during the noon hour the boys were watched over. While in the

noon-house they had to listen to Bible teachings and interpretations.

This was done to keep them quiet during this time so they might not

"sporte and playe."

It is not wondered at that under such training much early religion

developed. The Bible was read through many times by the young and much

precocity in religious things was developed. A father gives in his diary

the following in reference to a little girl of eight: "A little while

after dinner she burst out into an amazing cry, which caused all the

family to cry, too. Her mother asked the reason; she gave none. At last

said she was afraid she would goe to Hell; her sins were not pardoned.

She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's, Text, ye

shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the sermon, ye

shall seek me and die in your sins ran in her mind and terrified her

greatly ... told me she was afraid she should go to Hell, was like Spira

not elected."[382]

Another father makes this entry in his diary about his four-year-old

daughter: "I took my little daughter Katy into my study and then I told

my child I am to dye shortly and shee must, when I am dead, remember

Everything I now said to unto her. I sett before her the sinful

Condition of her nature, and I charged her to pray in Secret Places

every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a New

Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her she must

look to meet with more humbling Afflictions than she does now she has a

Tender Father to provide for her."[383]

These two quotations are from the diaries of educated men, the first

being from Judge Sewall and the second from Cotton Mather. It is hard

for us now to see any reason for such a talk as Cotton Mather gave a

child of four, especially as he lived for thirty years afterward and

died long after this little girl died.

The religious books of Puritan New England children were of a remarkable

character. Mrs. Earle gives the following in reference to one of the

most popular and widely read books:

"Young babes chide their parents for too infrequent praying, and have

ecstacies of delight when they can pray _ad infitum_. One child two

years old was able 'savingly to understand the mysteries of Redemption';

another of the same age was a 'dear lover of faithful ministers.' Anne

Greenwich, who died when five years old, 'discoursed most astonishingly

of great mysteries'; Daniel Bradley, who had an 'Impression and

inquisitiveness of the State of Souls after Death,' when three years

old; Elizabeth Butcher, who, 'when two and a half years old, as she lay

in the Cradle would ask herself the Question What is my corrupt Nature:

and would answer herself It is empty of Grace, bent unto Sin, and only

to Sin, and that Continually,' were among the distressing

examples."[384]

The following is an extract from a letter written about 1638 by a

Puritan boy of twelve years of age and well displays the tendency toward

religious fears as found in the young people of that period:

"Though I am thus well in body yet I question whether my soul doth

prosper as my body doth, for I perceive yet to this very day, little

_growth_ in grace; and this makes me question whether grace be in my

heart or no. I feel also daily great unwillingness to good duties, and

the great ruling of sin in my heart; and that God is angry with me and

gives me no answers to my prayers; but many times he even throws them

down as dust in my face; and he does not grant my continued request for

the _spiritual blessing of the softening of my hard heart_. And in all

this I could yet take some comfort but that it makes me to wonder what

God's _secret decree_ concerning me may be: for I doubt whether even God

is wont to deny grace and mercy to his chosen (though _uncalled_) when

they seek unto him by prayer for it; and, therefore, seeing he doth thus

deny it to me, I think that the reason of it is most like to be because

I belong not unto _the election of grace_. I desire that you would let

me have your prayers as I doubt not but I have them, and rest

"Your Son, SAMUEL MATHER."[385]

As was given under the discussion of infancy, the Puritan babe had to be

taken to the meeting-house on the Sunday following its birth to be

baptized, even in the most bitter weather. One record is given of the

baptism of an infant but four days old and this during the first part of

February. In one diary there is given about a day in January so bad that

but few women could get out to meeting, and yet a babe was taken to the

meeting-house and baptized. It must be considered, too, that this

occurred in a building that never had had a fire in it nor was there

fire on that day. It is difficult for us at this day to hold even in

imagination the carrying of the young babe by the midwife through the

snow and the wind, and the cold of a New England January, the taking him

to the altar and placing him in the arms of his father, the throwing the

icy cold water over the child, and the shuddering of the child; yet

worse, for this baptism might have been an immersion in the cold water

after the ice had been broken, for at least one minister did practice

infant immersion.

=Education.= There arose during colonial times in the United States

three chief systems of education. These forms came about through the

ideas of the people settling the different parts of the country and

through conditions arising from industrial occupations. In the southern

colonies, in particular in Virginia, where the pursuits that arose

produced plantation life with houses scattered and no town or village

life, there was followed the educational ideas of England and education

took upon itself the form of higher and secondary training for the

ruling classes with but little provision for elementary education. There

was no free public education, the nearest approach to a common

elementary school was what was designated the "field school," which was

originated by a neighborhood and supported by tuition fees, and often

held in a shabby building on an old exhausted tobacco field. There did

arise, however, secondary schools which were chartered and endowed,

resembling the endowed Latin schools of England.

The second form of schools was the parochial organization of the middle

colonies of New Netherlands and Pennsylvania. In these colonies there

arose a school in connection with a church and, unlike the education of

the South, which was along secondary training, the work of this

parochial school was chiefly in elementary education. In New

Netherlands, as in Holland, the church was connected with the state and

there was but one church, the Dutch Reformed, and the civil and

religious authorities jointly controlled and directed the education. In

Pennsylvania, however, religious and civil freedom had been granted from

the very first and there had come into the colony people of different

nationalities and of different religions, and education came to be

established with the different religious bodies and each religious sect

had its own distinctive parochial school alongside its own church. There

also were some attempts at higher and secondary education. Among the

schools started was the Penn Charter School, which was originally

organized by the Friends in 1689, and there were higher schools of other

denominations. When New Netherlands fell into the hands of the English,

there came about in New York conditions somewhat similar to those in

Virginia and a number of secondary schools were organized.

The third type of schools in colonial times was that formed by

governmental action in the New England colonies of Massachusetts and

Connecticut. In these colonies there was no such class distinctions as

in Virginia, and, unlike Pennsylvania, there was but one nationality and

one religion, and, unlike the Dutch of New Netherlands, they had cut

themselves away from the ruling classes of their native land, and thus

they were free to develop along their own ideas. Their religious belief

and training called for the education of each of the members of the

colony, as the Bible was held to be the infallible rule of faith and

practice, and so every one should at least have enough schooling to

enable him to read the Bible for himself. Hence schools arose in a short

time after settlement. In 1644 Salem taxed all who had children and were

able to pay and procured in this way means for paying for the schooling

of children whose parents were too poor to pay for them. In 1647

Massachusetts passed a law that in every town of fifty families a school

for the teaching of reading and writing should be provided and that in a

town of one hundred families a grammar school should be provided.

Connecticut in 1659 provided for its children in the same way. But all

such schools were not free as we term free schools now, and it was not

till near the time of the Revolution that general taxes were levied for

school purposes and free schools were thereby established.

The early schoolhouses in Pennsylvania and New York were made of logs

and the top covered with bark. Holes were cut in the sides for windows,

which sometimes were covered with greased paper that let in a dim light.

Some had a rough puncheon floor and others a dirt floor. A distance up

from the floor around the walls pegs were placed between the logs and

boards laid on them for desks and by them were boards set on stakes for

seats for the older children, while the younger children sat on blocks

or benches of logs. At one end or in the middle was a catted chimney. At

least some of the schoolhouses in New England were better furnished, as

is shown by the following entry in the town records of Roxbury in 1652:

"The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he provide convenient benches

with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a conveniente seate for

the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and shelves to lay up

bookes."[386]

This schoolhouse was not kept in proper repairs, as the teacher in

Roxbury in 1681 wrote:

"Of inconveniences (in the schoolhouse) I shall mention no other but the

confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is in, not fitting for

to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very raw and cold; the

floor very much broken and torn up to kindle fires, the hearth spoiled,

the seats some burned and others out of kilter, that one had as

well-nigh as goods keep school in a hog stie as in it."[387]

Supplies for school purposes were quite scarce in colonial times. There

were no blackboards nor maps. Paper was quite scarce and very carefully

used. Birch bark was used to cipher on. Slates also were used and those

of the earlier times had no frames and had a hole in one side in which a

string could be tied for holding a pencil or for hanging around the

neck. If lead pencils were used at all during colonial times it was in

the latest part of the period. Instead of lead pencils they used

plummets made of lead melted and cast into wooden molds and cut into

shape by a jack-knife. Pens were cut from goose-quills and it required

quite a little skill to make good pens and keep them in order. Ink was

made by dissolving ink-powder, each child furnishing his own ink-bottle

or ink-horn and ink. Sometimes the ink was wholly home-made: "In remote

districts of Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts, home-made ink, feeble

and pale, was made by steeping the bark of the swamp-maple in water,

boiling the decoction till thick, and diluting it with copperas."[388]

There were not a great number or variety of books for use in these early

schools. The two most noted books were the Hornbook and the New England

Primer. The hornbook was the first book used by the child. This

consisted of a thin piece of wood about five inches long and two inches

wide. A sheet of paper was placed upon this. At the top of this paper

came the alphabet in small letters; then the alphabet in capital letters

followed; then the vowels; then syllables, as, ab, eb, ib, etc.; next

"In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,

_Amen_;" and last came the Lord's prayer. Over this paper went a sheet

of horn, through which the printed matter could be read. The paper and

the horn were fastened to the wood by strips of brass or other metal,

going around the sides and ends, and all held fast by tacks driven

through the metal strips. At the lower end of the hornbook was usually a

handle, which sometimes had a hole through it for a string to carry it

by or to hang it around the neck.

"The New England Primer is a poorly printed little book about five

inches long and three wide, of about eighty pages. It contains the

alphabet, and a short table of easy syllables, such as a-b, ab, e-b, eb,

and words up to those of six syllables. This was called a syllabarium.

There were twelve five-syllable words; of these five were _abomination_,

_edification_, _humiliation_, _mortification_, and _purification_. There

were a morning and evening prayer for children, and a grace to be said

before meat. Then followed a set of little rhymes which have become

known everywhere, and are frequently quoted. Each letter of the alphabet

is illustrated with a blurred little picture. Of these, two-thirds

represent Biblical incidents. They begin:

'In Adam's fall

We sinned all,'

and ended with Z:

'Zaccheus he

Did climb a tree

His Lord to see.'

"In the early days of the Primer, all the colonies were true to the

English king, and the rhyme for the letter K reads:

'King Charles the Good

No man of blood.'

"But by Revolutionary years the verse for K was changed to:

'Queens and Kings

Are Gaudy Things.'

"Later verses tell the praise of George Washington. Then comes a series

of Bible questions and answers; then an 'alphabet of lessons for youth,'

consisting of verses of the Bible beginning successively with A, B, C,

and so on. X was a difficult initial letter, and had to be contented

with 'Xhort one another daily, etc.' After the Lord's prayer and

Apostle's Creed appeared sometimes a list of names for men and women, to

teach children to spell their own names. The largest and most

interesting picture was that of the burning at the stake of John Rogers;

and after this a six page set of pious rhymes which the martyr left at

his death for his family of small children. After the year 1750, a few

very short stories were added to its pages, and were probably all the

children's stories that many of the scholars of that day ever saw."[389]

In the establishing of the elementary schools in New England there was

but little more required of the teacher than to instruct the children in

reading and writing, especially were they to be taught sufficiently that

they could read the Bible. Also they were to be taught enough arithmetic

for their every-day needs. This is well shown in the records of the town

of Plymouth, where in 1671 they had built a schoolhouse and employed a

schoolmaster "to teach the children and youth to read the Bible, to

write, and to cast accounts."[390] In the secondary schools the emphasis

was laid upon Latin and such other subjects were taught as would fit

the scholars for college. Penmanship was made a great deal of while

orthography was not, the results of which are shown by the writing and

spelling of the diaries and other writings of that period that remain.

The work of the district school, of the academy, and of the college is

well portrayed by McMaster. "The daily labors of the schoolmaster who

taught in the district school-house three generations since were

confined to teaching his scholars to read with a moderate degree of

fluency, to write legibly, to spell with some regard for the rules of

orthography, and to know as much of arithmetic as would enable them to

calculate the interest on a debt, to keep the family accounts, and to

make change in a shop.... To sit eight hours a day on the hardest of

benches poring over Cheever's Accidence; to puzzle over long words in

Dilworth's speller; to commit to memory pages of words in Webster's

American Institute; to read long chapters in the Bible; to learn by

heart Dr. Watt's hymns for children; to be drilled in the Assembly

Catechism; to go to bed at sundown, to get up at sunrise, and to live on

brown bread and pork, porridge and beans, made up, with morning and

evening prayers, the every-day life of the lads at most of the academies

and schools of New England.... The four years of residence at college

were spent in the acquisition of Latin and Greek, a smattering of

mathematics, enough of logic to distinguish barbara from celarent,

enough of rhetoric to know climax from metonomy, and as much of

metaphysics as would enable one to talk learnedly about a subject he did

not understand."[391]

The teachers of the elementary schools of those early days were too

often not educated nor cultured men. These men in many cases were

drunken, cruel, ignorant, and lazy. Drunkenness seems to have been quite

prevalent among the teachers of early New York, and yet there were some

most excellent men among them. In the middle and southern colonies among

the teachers were redemptioners and exported criminals. It was not

uncommon on the arrival of a ship for schoolmasters to be advertised for

sale along with men of other callings and usually the teachers did not

fetch as good prices as weavers, tailors, and the like. The teachers in

the secondary schools, on the contrary, often were men of good

scholarship and of high standing in the community, occupying a place of

honor among their fellow men. Such teachers were Christopher Dock in

Pennsylvania and Ezekiel Cheever in New England.

"Among the New England teachers there were men of both learning and

ability. Not a more cultured body of men ever formed a colony than

settled about Boston, Salem, New Haven, and Hartford. They coveted the

best advantages for their children, frequently making the best men their

teachers. It is on record that of the twenty-two masters of Plymouth

from 1671 to the Revolution, twenty were graduates of Harvard. The like

was true of Roxbury. Such men, next to the functionaries of church and

state, commanded the highest respect. In the churches they had special

pews provided for their use beside those of magistrates and the deacon's

family. In every community was usually one who was the teacher

professionally, so considered as much as was the minister or

physician."[392]

There were women teachers in the colonial times. They taught what was

known as dame-schools, which were attended by small boys and girls.

Women teachers and dame-schools were probably confined to New England

and parts of New York adjacent to New England and settled by emigrants

from there. There grew up the custom in some rural districts of having

one term of school in the summer for the younger pupils and taught by a

woman and another term in the winter for the older pupils and taught by

a man. This arrangement arose because it was difficult for the younger

children to attend school during the bitter weather of the winter, while

the older pupils could attend well only during the cold time of the year

when there was not much work to do on the farm.

There is in existence a contract between a Dutch schoolmaster and the

authorities of Flatbush, New York, of the date of October 8, 1682. This

is a full paper and quite well shows the duties of a teacher of that

time in that colony. The school day was to be from eight o'clock to

eleven and from one to four. Each forenoon and afternoon session was to

open and close with prayer. On every Wednesday and Saturday the

schoolmaster was to instruct the children in the common prayers and in

the catechism and to be present at the church meeting when the children

were catechized before the congregation. He was to keep school nine

months in succession, from September to June of each year. Beside his

school duties he had church duties. He was to keep the church clean,

ring the bell, lead in the singing, and sometimes he was to read the

sermon. He was to provide water for baptism and to furnish the minister

with the name of the child to be baptized and also the names of the

parents or witnesses. He was to provide bread and wine for the

communion. He was to serve as messenger for the consistory. He was to

give out the funeral invitations, dig the grave, and toll the bell.[393]

It can scarcely be believed that the schoolmasters of the early period

of our country could have been so cruel as is told of them. It would

appear as if a great deal more time was put upon devising means of

punishment than upon learning ways of instruction. It was a time of

cruelty and of belief in the general depravity of humanity. It was

deemed that there was a natural wilfulness in children that needed stern

repression and harsh correction. The parents and teachers in New England

were especially repressive of child nature and their guide and rule of

action, the Bible, gave them constant proof of the need of corrective

punishment for children. "John Robinson, the Pilgrim preacher, said in

his essay on _Children and Their Education_: 'Surely there is in all

children (though not alike) a stubbornes and stoutnes of minde arising

from naturall pride which must in the first place be broken and beaten

down that so the foundation of their education being layd in humilitie

and tractablenes other virtues may in their time be built

thereon.'"[394]

The rod was very greatly in use by the schoolmasters of colonial times

and too often the rod became the cudgel. Some teachers had the boy mount

the back of another boy and with arms and legs held tight he was given a

beating. The ferule was applied to the hands, the face, and the feet,

and sometimes this ferule was a heavy oaken ruler. One instrument used

was a hickory club with leather thongs attached at one end and similar

to it was the tattling stick, a cat-o'-nine-tails with heavy leather

straps. Another instrument used was termed a flapper, which was a piece

of leather about six inches wide with a hole in the middle and fastened

to a handle. Every stroke with this flapper on a boy's bared back would

raise a blister the size of the hole in the leather. A branch of a tree

was split and placed over a child's nose and he had to then stand before

the school. For whispering a whispering-stick was used, which was a kind

of wooden gag tied in the mouth with strings, somewhat as a horse's bit.

Another punishment was to put two boys together in a yoke devised for

that purpose, similar to an ox-yoke, and to make the punishment all the

more disgraceful would be to yoke a boy and girl together. A unipod, a

one-legged stool, was used, and the child occupying it found it very

hard and tiresome to balance himself on it. The dames in their schools

used quite freely a heavy iron thimble, which by being snapped quite

vigorously against a boy's head would make for him "thimell-pie." The

dunce-block was freely used and the culprit appropriately labelled, as,

"Tell-Tale," "Bite-Finger-Baby," "Lying Ananias," "Idle-Boy," and

"Pert-Miss-Prat-a-Pace." There were some teachers who did not use such

cruel punishments, although they must have been very few in number, one

being Samuel Dock, a German schoolmaster of Pennsylvania, who was

intelligent enough to be kind to his children, but there were plenty of

the drunken, dirty, careless, and cruel teachers in that colony. Mrs.

Earle states: "I may say here that I have not found that New York

schoolmasters were ever as cruel as were those of New England."[395]

"I often fancy that I should have enjoyed living in the good old times,

but I am glad I never was a child in colonial New England--to have been

baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to

learn the Assembly's Catechism and 'explain all the Quaestions with

conferring Texts,' to have been constantly threatened with fear of death

and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's 'Day of

Doom' to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a

tattling-stick."[396]

The colonial period was an age of child precocity. In that time

overzealous parents pushed children forward till they displayed a

remarkable precocious learning, to end, in most cases, in an early death

either physically or mentally, and yet some of these children did

survive the process to become noted and honored men. One such parent

wrote to her sister asking to have sent to her a set of toys now known

as alphabet blocks and stating that the child's father was contriving a

set of toys to teach the child his letters by the time he could speak,

he being not yet four months old at the time of the letter. In a later

letter the mother wrote to the child's aunt that at twenty-two months of

age he could tell his letters in any book and he was beginning to spell.

This boy grew up to be the Revolutionary General Charles Cotesworth

Pinckney. One boy born in 1752 learned his alphabet in a single lesson

and he could read the Bible before he was four years old. At the age of

six he was sent to a grammar school, and, as his father would not let

him study Latin, he borrowed a Latin grammar and studied through it

twice without a teacher. This boy afterward was known as President

Timothy Dwight of Yale College.

This precociousness was not confined to boys, for one little girl, born

in Boston in 1708, daughter of the President of Harvard College, before

her second year was finished could speak distinctly, knew her letters,

could relate many stories out of the Scriptures, and when three years

old she could recite the greater part of the _Assembly's Cathechism_ and

also she could recite many of the psalms and many lines of poetry and

read distinctly. The Governor of the colony and other distinguished

guests at her home sometimes would place this little girl on a table to

show off her acquirements. Another little girl, born in Charleston,

South Carolina, in 1759, in her third year could "read any book," so the

story ran, and, too, this she could do holding the book upside down.

Boys entered the Boston Latin School as young as six and a half years of

age and often parents had them begin Latin at an earlier age, some

parents teaching their little ones to read Latin words when but three

years old along with the English. Young Timothy Dwight would have been

prepared to enter college at eight years of age had not his grammar

school been discontinued because of having no teacher. A boy in 1686

entered Harvard College at eleven years of age and another boy in 1799

graduated from Rhode Island College (now Brown University) at barely

fourteen years of age.

The most remarkable case of childish precocity given by Mrs. Earle was

that of Richard Evelyn, who died in 1658 at the early age of five years

and three days. The father in his diary recounted in the following

quoted passage the wonderful acquirements of the little boy before his

death:

"He had learned all his catechism at two years and a half old; he could

perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters,

pronouncing the first three languages exactly. He had, before the fifth

year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to

decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the

irregular; learned out of Puerelis, got by heart almost the entire

vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make

congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and

prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs,

substances, ellipses and many figures and tropes, and made a

considerable progress in Comenius' Janua; begun himself to write legibly

and had a strong passion for Greek. The number of verses he could recite

was prodigious, and what he remembered of the parts of plays which he

would also act; and, when seeing a Plautus in one's hand, he asked what

book it was, and being told it was comedy and too difficult for him, he

wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables

and morals, for he had read Æsop; he had a wonderful disposition to

mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were

read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. He

had learned by heart divers sentences in Latin and Greek which on

occasion he would produce even to wonder. He was all life, all

prettiness, far from morose, sullen, or childish in anything he said or

did."[397]

The girls of colonial times did not receive much education, as it was

not considered necessary for women to have learning beyond that

necessary for household duties. All that was considered really needed by

a girl in the way of book learning was to know how to read and write and

cipher a little. Most of the girls received nothing further than

elementary training in reading and writing and many of them did not even

have that much of education. This was true in all the colonies, New

England, New York, and the others.

A lady writing of the education of girls of her time in New York, in the

first quarter of the eighteenth century stated:

"It was at that time very difficult to procure the means of instruction

in those island districts; female education was, of consequence,

conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned needlework (in which

they were indeed both skilful and ingenious) from their mothers and

aunts; they were taught, too, at that period to read, in Dutch, the

Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the devotional kind. But in the

infancy of the settlement few girls read English; when they did, they

were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly,

and few were taught writing."[398]

A historian of New York, writing of his fellow townswomen during the

year 1756, said that "there is nothing they (New York women) so

generally neglect as Reading, and indeed all the Arts for the

improvement of the Mind, in which I confess we have set them the

Example."[399]

The attitude of the people of the period toward the admission of girls

into boys' grammar schools is shown by the following extract from the

rules for governing such a school in New Haven in 1684:

"... and all girls be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a

grammar school as ye law injoines and as is the Designe of this

settlement."[400]

But it must not be considered that the education of the girls was wholly

neglected among the colonists, for, though they were scarcely ever

admitted to boys' schools, yet they did go to the dame-schools and also

they received training at home. The girls were all taught household

duties and the fancy needlework that went with it. Reading, writing, a

little arithmetic, dancing, needlework, music, deportment, and elegance

of carriage composed the curriculum for girls. Sometimes a girl would

get some help from a brother and thus gain an education beyond that

ordinarily obtained by girls. Occasionally an educated father would

teach his daughter, one such case being that of President Colman of

Harvard College, who gave what was called a profound education to his

daughter Jane. Withal this meager education, nevertheless we are not at

all ashamed of the bearing of our foremothers of the colonial and

Revolutionary times.

As academies grew up during the latter half of the eighteenth century,

most of which were for boys, a few were made co-educational and a few

others were established for girls:

"For a hundred years the Penn Charter School, Philadelphia, had admitted

both sexes on equal terms. The Moravians had established a school for

girls at Bethlehem, Pa., as early as 1745, while the Philadelphia Female

Academy dates from the Revolution. Among the earliest in New England

were Dr. Dwight's Young Ladies' Academy, at Greenfield, Conn. (1785),

and the Medford School, near Boston (1789)."[401]

Of the colleges in the United States today, two of them were founded

during the first century of the colonial period, the seventeenth

century, ten others in the next century before the Revolution, and by

the close of the eighteenth century the list had increased to

twenty-six, eleven of the original colonies being represented in the

list and also Kentucky and Tennessee. Arranging the twelve colleges of

the colonial period in the order of the year of first opening and with

the names and locations as now, they run as follows:[402]

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1636; College of William

and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1693; Yale University, New Haven,

Connecticut, 1701; Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, 1723;

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1740; Moravian

Seminary and College for Women, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1742; Princeton

University, Princetown, New Jersey, 1746; Washington and Lee University,

Lexington, Virginia, 1749; Columbia University, New York City, New York,

1754; Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 1765; Rutgers College,

New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1766; Dartmouth College, Hanover, New

Hampshire, 1769.

With dame-schools for the younger children, district schools for the

older ones, academies for the yet more advanced, and colleges for

completing the education, the early period of the United States gave

such an education to its young people as well to prepare them to become

the noble men and women, who, by books, papers, addresses, and general

bearing, were able to stand alongside the people of the world in the

great period of the American Revolution, and furnished thinkers and

doers such as have not been surpassed by our own time.

LITERATURE

1. Boone, Richard G., Education in the United States.

2. Calhoun, Arthur W., A social history of the American family.

3. Claxton, Philander Priestley, Report of the Commissioner of Education

of the United States, 1914.

4. Dexter, Edwin Grant, History of education in the United States.

5. Earle, Alice Morse, Child life in Colonial days.

6. Earle, Alice Morse, Colonial days in old New York.

7. Earle, Alice Morse, Costume of colonial times.

8. Earle, Alice Morse, Curious punishments of bygone days.

9. Earle, Alice Morse, Customs and fashions in old New England.

10. Earle, Alice Morse, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston

school-girl of 1771.

11. Earle, Alice Morse, Home life in colonial days.

12. Earle, Alice Morse, The Sabbath in Puritan New England.

13. Eggleston, Edward, Social conditions in the colonies, _The Century

Magazine_, VI., 853.

14. Eggleston, Edward, The colonists at home, _The Century Magazine_,

VII., 873.

15. Eggleston, Edward, Social life in the colonies, _The Century

Magazine_, VIII., 387.

16. Fisher, Sydney George, Men, women and manners in colonial times.

17. Haddon, Kathleen, Cat's cradles from many lands.

18. Howard, George Elliott, A history of matrimonial institutions.

19. Low, A. Maurice, The American people.

20. Mather, Frederic G., Early New England choirs and singing-schools,

_The American Magazine_, VIII., 310.

21. McMaster, John Bach, A history of the people of the United States.

22. Salmon, Lucy Maynard, Domestic service.

23. Stiles, Henry Reed, Bundling: Its origin, progress and decline in

the United States.

24. Welsh, Charles, The early history of children's books in New

England, _New England Magazine_, XX., 147.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The _ai_ in paidology is pronounced as in _aisle_, as _i_ in pine.

[2] Bancroft, Native races of Pacific states, II, 267.

[3] Barnes, _Studies in education_, I, 75. ("The History of Mexico. By

Francesco S. Clavigero. Translated by Chas. Cullen, London, 1787, vol.

I., pp. 335 _et seq._")

[4] Barnes, Studies in education I, 76-78.

[5] Bancroft, Native races of Pacific states, II, 372.

[6] _Ibid._, II, 356.

[7] Joyce, Mexican archæology, 156.

[8] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, I, 81.

[9] Joyce, Mexican archæology, 98.

[10] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, I, 78-79.

[11] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, I, 149.

[12] Bancroft, Native races of Pacific states, II, 482.

[13] Joyce, Mexican archæology, 184.

[14] Joyce, Mexican archæology, 129.

[15] Bancroft, Native races of Pacific states, II, 286.

[16] Bancroft, Native races of Pacific states, II, 297-299.

[17] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, I, 65.

[18] Joyce, South American archæology, 104.

[19] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, I, 142.

[20] Joyce, South American archæology, 121.

[21] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, I, 140.

[22] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, I, 22-25.

[23] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, I, 120.

[24] Rawlinson, History of ancient Egypt, I, 103.

[25] Wilkinson, Popular account of ancient Egyptians, II, 199.

[26] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians, I, 459.

[27] Exodus I, 8.

[28] Wilkinson, _op. cit._, I, 346.

[29] Wilkinson, The Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs, 40.

[30] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians, II, 333.

[31] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of ancient Egyptians, II, 331.

[32] _Ibid._, II, 22.

[33] Wilkinson, Popular account of ancient Egyptians, I, 186.

[34] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of ancient Egyptians, II, 50.

[35] Wilkinson, Egyptians in time of Pharaoh, 14.

[36] Wilkinson, Popular account of ancient Egyptians I, 54.

[37] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians, II, 334.

[38] Petrie, Arts and crafts of ancient Egypt, 140.

[39] Wilkinson, Popular account of the ancient Egyptians, II, 194.

[40] Rawlinson, History of ancient Egypt, I, 496.

[41] Petrie, Arts and crafts of ancient Egypt, 6.

[42] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of ancient Egypt, II, 306.

[43] Petrie, _op. cit._, 26.

[44] Rawlinson, History of ancient Egypt, I, 204.

[45] Dean, History of civilization, I, 381.

[46] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of ancient Egyptians, III, 243.

[47] _Ibid._, II, 455.

[48] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of ancient Egyptians, I, 438.

[49] Laurie, Historical survey of pre-Christian education, 47.

[50] Wilkinson, Manners and customs of ancient Egyptians, II, 489.

[51] Dubois, Hindu manners, customs, and ceremonies, 339.

[52] Dubois, Hindu manners, 205.

[53] Mills, British India, I, 308.

[54] Dutt, Civilization in ancient India, I, 69.

[55] Dubois, Hindu manners, 214, _et seq._

[56] Ramabai, The high-caste Hindu woman, 47.

[57] Dutt, Civilization in ancient India, I, 172.

[58] Ramabai, High-caste Hindu woman, 34.

[59] Allen, India, 459.

[60] Dutt, _op. cit._, II, 308.

[61] Dubois, Hindu manners, 39.

[62] Allen, India, 417.

[63] Dubois, Hindu manners, 361, _et seq._

[64] Ramabai, High-caste Hindu woman, 12.

[65] Dubois, Hindu manners, 307.

[66] Dubois, Hindu manners, 369.

[67] Dutt, Civilization in ancient India, II, 148.

[68] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 176.

[69] Graves, A history of education, Before the Middle Ages, 86.

[70] Davis, The Chinese, I, 264.

[71] Smith, Chinese characteristics, 205.

[72] Davis, The Chinese, I, 269.

[73] Douglass, History of China, 130, _et seq._

[74] Carus, Chinese life and customs, 81.

[75] Douglass, History of China, 115.

[76] Williams, The Middle kingdom, II, 54.

[77] Davis, The Chinese, I, 270.

[78] Smith, Chinese characteristics, 198.

[79] Headland, Chinese boy and girl, 33.

[80] Headland, Chinese boy and girl, 35.

[81] _Ibid._, 9 _et seq._

[82] Williams, The middle kingdom, II, 261.

[83] Smith, Village life in China, 259.

[84] Lee, When I was a boy in China, 43.

[85] Smith, Village life in China, 237.

[86] Smith, Chinese characteristics, 175.

[87] Doolittle, Sketches of social life in China, Harper's Magazine,

XXXI (1865), 442.

[88] Lee, When I was a boy in China, 47.

[89] _Ibid._, 34.

[90] Williams, The Middle kingdom, II, 89.

[91] Headland, Chinese boy and girl, 51.

[92] Lee, When I was a boy in China, 40.

[93] Headland, Chinese boys and girls, 80.

[94] Williams, Middle kingdom, II, 89.

[95] Williams, Middle kingdom, II, 41.

[96] Lee, When I was a boy in China, 70.

[97] Martin, The Chinese, 71.

[98] Martin, The Chinese, 62.

[99] Smith, Village life in China, 73.

[100] Smith, Village life in China, 80.

[101] Davis, The Chinese, I, 276.

[102] Lee, When I was a boy in China, 54.

[103] Smith, Village life in China, 79.

[104] _Ibid._, 93.

[105] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 150.

[106] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 553.

[107] Kikuchi, Japanese education, 261.

[108] Bacon, Japanese girls and women, 96.

[109] Nitobe, The Japanese nation, 96.

[110] Nitobe, The Japanese nation, 165.

[111] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 555.

[112] Bacon, Japanese girls and women, 121.

[113] ----, Manners and customs of the Japanese, 127.

[114] Taylor, Japan in our day, 148.

[115] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 557.

[116] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, I, 169.

[117] Knapp, Feudal and modern Japan, I, 109-115.

[118] Lloyd, Every-day Japan, 324.

[119] Scherer, Young Japan, 48.

[120] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 356.

[121] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 460.

[122] Taylor, Japan in our day, 163.

[123] Bacon, Japanese girls and women, 31.

[124] Taylor, Japan in our day, 156.

[125] Hearn, Glimpses of unfamiliar Japan, I, 266.

[126] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II. 464.

[127] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 468.

[128] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 491.

[129] Griffis, Japan in history, 75.

[130] Hearn, Glimpses of unfamiliar Japan, I, 286.

[131] Scherer, Young Japan, 149.

[132] Murray, Japan, 112.

[133] ----, Manners and customs of the Japanese, 126.

[134] Nitobé, The Japanese nation, 166.

[135] Griffis, The Mikado's empire, II, 558.

[136] Rawlinson, Seven great monarchies, II, 319.

[137] Fraser, History of Persia, 289.

[138] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 183.

[139] Letourneau, Evolution of marriage, 332.

[140] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 190.

[141] Graves, History of education, Before the middle ages, 100.

[142] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 191.

[143] Edersheim, History of the Jewish nation, 309.

[144] McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of biblical literature, V, 774.

[145] McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of biblical literature, V, 774.

[146] Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish social life in the days of Christ,

157.

[147] Thwing, The family, 42.

[148] Dean, History of civilization, I, 597.

[149] Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish life, 99.

[150] Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish life, 218.

[151] Lees, Village life in Palestine, 203.

[152] McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of biblical literature, III,

730.

[153] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 76-77.

[154] Graves, History of education, Before the middle ages, 124.

[155] Dean, History of civilization, II, 176.

[156] Tucker, Life in ancient Athens, 122.

[157] Donaldson, Woman, Her position and influence in ancient Greece and

Rome and among the early Christians, 56.

[158] Donaldson, Woman, 71-72.

[159] _Ibid._, 58.

[160] _Ibid._, 71.

[161] Dean, History of civilization II, 179.

[162] Dean, History of civilization, II, 167-168.

[163] Dean, History of civilization, II, 173.

[164] Dean, History of civilization, II, 174.

[165] Dean, The history of civilization, II, 183.

[166] Gulick, The life of the ancient Greeks, 75.

[167] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 251.

[168] Dean, History of civilization, II, 185.

[169] Mahaffy, Old Greek education, 20.

[170] Felton, Greece, I, 426.

[171] Mahaffy, Old Greek education, 18-19.

[172] Gardiner, Greek athletic sports and festivals, 47.

[173] Tucker, Life in ancient Athens, 273.

[174] Tucker, Life in ancient Athens, 206.

[175] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 248.

[176] Friedländer, Roman life and manners under the early empire, I, 19.

[177] Fowler, Social life at Rome, 213.

[178] Fowler, Social life at Rome, 240.

[179] Dean, History of civilization, III, 221.

[180] Donaldson, Woman, Her position and influence in ancient Greece and

Rome, 120-123.

[181] Friedländer, Roman life and manners, I, 253.

[182] Abbott, Society and politics in ancient Rome, 95.

[183] _Ibid._, 98-99.

[184] Friedländer, Roman life and manners, I, 247.

[185] Duruy, History of Rome, V, 254.

[186] Fowler, Social life at Rome, 143-144.

[187] Friedländer, Roman life and manners, I, 243.

[188] Dean, History of civilization, III, 214.

[189] Preston and Dodge, The private life of the Romans, 99.

[190] Preston and Dodge, The private life of the Romans, 104.

[191] Guhl and Koner, The life of the Greeks and Romans, 500.

[192] Friedländer, Roman life and manners, I, 228.

[193] Duruy, History of Rome, V, 242.

[194] Dean, History of civilization, III, 250.

[195] Duruy, History of Rome, V, 285.

[196] Preston and Dodge, The private life of the Romans, 132-134.

[197] Dean, History of civilization, III, 240.

[198] Laurie, Pre-Christian education, 342.

[199] Clarke, Children at Rome, 67.

[200] Adams, Civilization during the middle ages, 9-10.

[201] Adams, Civilization during the middle ages, 197.

[202] Emerton, Medieval Europe, 518.

[203] Garnier, Annals of the British peasantry, 141.

[204] Abram, English life and manners in the later middle ages, 30.

[205] Thwing, The family, 56-57.

[206] Hallam, Middle Ages, II, 179, quotes from Palgrave the following,

coming under Norman times: "By the declaration of the husband at the

church door, the wife was endowed in the presence of the assembled

relations, and before all the merry attendants of the bridal train."

[207] Traill, Social England, I, 215-216.

[208] Abram, English life and manners in the later middle ages, 119.

[209] Dean, History of civilization, VI, 203.

[210] Abram, English life and manners in the late middle ages, 167.

[211] Garnier, Annals of the British peasantry, 196.

[212] _Ibid._, 201.

[213] Traill, Social England, I, 106-108.

[214] Donaldson, Woman, 180.

[215] Froude, History of England, I, 70.

[216] Froude, History of England, I, 76-77.

[217] Compayré, History of pedagogy, 65-66.

[218] _Ibid._, 67.

[219] Gray, The children's crusade, 78-80.

[220] Hecker, Epidemics of the middle ages, 353.

[221] Eggleston, Social conditions in the colonies, Century magazine,

VI, 852.

[222] Eggleston, Social conditions in the colonies, Century magazine,

VI, 863.

[223] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 88-89.

[224] Eggleston, Social conditions in the colonies, Century magazine,

VI, 856.

[225] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 877.

[226] Earle, Colonial days in Old New York, 102-103.

[227] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 877.

[228] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 879.

[229] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 68.

[230] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 128-129.

[231] Eggleston, Social life in the colonies, Century magazine, VIII,

403.

[232] Calhoun, Social history of the American family, I, 276.

[233] Calhoun, Social history of the American family, I, 278.

[234] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 164-166.

[235] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 42.

[236] Stiles, Bundling: Its origin, progress, and decline in America,

13.

[237] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 64.

[238] Eggleston, Social life in the colonies, Century magazine, VIII,

390.

[239] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 66.

[240] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 74-75.

[241] Howard, History of matrimonial institutions, II, 331.

[242] Calhoun, Social history of the American family, I, 92.

[243] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 79-80.

[244] _Ibid._, 36.

[245] Calhoun, Social history of the American family, I, 70.

[246] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 43.

[247] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 54.

[248] _Ibid._, 54.

[249] Calhoun, Social history of the American family, I, 247-248.

[250] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 38-39.

[251] _Ibid._, 37.

[252] Calhoun, Social history of the American family, I, 165.

[253] Eggleston, The colonists at home. Century magazine, VII, 887.

[254] Earle, Costume of colonial times, 31-32.

[255] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 316.

[256] _Ibid._, 316.

[257] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 286.

[258] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 891.

[259] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 327.

[260] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 319.

[261] Earle, Costume of colonial times, 28-29.

[262] Earle, Costume of colonial times, 26-27.

[263] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 322.

[264] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 300.

[265] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 888.

[266] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 290.

[267] Earle, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, 19.

[268] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 889.

[269] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 294.

[270] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 182.

[271] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 296.

[272] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 302.

[273] _Ibid._, 304.

[274] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 308-309.

[275] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 37.

[276] Earle, Costume of colonial times, 13.

[277] Earle, Costume of colonial times, 12.

[278] _Ibid._, 13.

[279] Earle, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, 17.

[280] Earle, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, 71.

[281] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 290.

[282] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 58.

[283] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 183-184.

[284] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 136.

[285] _Ibid._, 120.

[286] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 122.

[287] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 110.

[288] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 883.

[289] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 155.

[290] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 886.

[291] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 111.

[292] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 154.

[293] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 163.

[294] Eggleston, The colonists at home, Century magazine, VII, 885.

[295] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 163.

[296] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 164.

[297] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 179.

[298] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 181.

[299] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 165.

[300] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 371.

[301] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 4.

[302] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 6.

[303] _Ibid._, 5.

[304] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 23.

[305] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 12.

[306] _Ibid._, 16.

[307] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 16.

[308] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 215, 216, 217.

[309] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 16.

[310] Earle, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, 8.

[311] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 226.

[312] Earle, Diary of Anna Green Winslow, A Boston School Girl of 1771.

[313] Eggleston, Social conditions in the colonies, Century magazine,

VI, 853.

[314] McMaster, History of the people of the United States, I, 27.

[315] _Ibid._, I, 29.

[316] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 361.

[317] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 343.

[318] _Ibid._, 344.

[319] _Ibid._, 340.

[320] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 337.

[321] _Ibid._, 353.

[322] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 353.

[323] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 376.

[324] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 365.

[325] _Ibid._, 385.

[326] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 8.

[327] Eggleston, Social life in the colonies, Century magazine, VIII,

401.

[328] _Ibid._

[329] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 241.

[330] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 250.

[331] Eggleston, Social life in the colonies, Century magazine, VIII,

402.

[332] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 255.

[333] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 243.

[334] _Ibid._, 244.

[335] Eggleston, Social life in the colonies, Century magazine, VIII,

404.

[336] Eggleston, Social life in the colonies, Century magazine, VIII,

405.

[337] _Ibid._, 406.

[338] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 212.

[339] _Ibid._, 18.

[340] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 18.

[341] _Ibid._, 17.

[342] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 18.

[343] Haddon, Cat's cradles from many lands.

[344] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 346.

[345] _Ibid._, 375.

[346] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 22-23.

[347] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 205.

[348] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 371-372.

[349] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 19.

[350] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 20-22.

[351] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 20.

[352] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 214.

[353] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 217.

[354] _Ibid._, 223.

[355] Earle, Curious punishments of bygone days, 19.

[356] Earle, Curious punishments of bygone days, 83.

[357] Earle, Curious punishments of bygone days, 81.

[358] _Ibid._, 78.

[359] _Ibid._, 79.

[360] _Ibid._, 82.

[361] _Ibid._, 83.

[362] Earle, Customs and fashions of old New England, 252.

[363] _Ibid._, 252.

[364] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 321.

[365] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 307.

[366] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 252.

[367] _Ibid._, 253.

[368] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 339.

[369] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 169.

[370] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 203.

[371] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 341.

[372] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 381.

[373] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 381.

[374] Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 15.

[375] Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 95.

[376] Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 14.

[377] Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 76.

[378] Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 68.

[379] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 386.

[380] Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, 81.

[381] Earle, Home life in colonial days, 377.

[382] Fisher, Men, women, and manners in colonial times, I, 141.

[383] Earle, Child life in Colonial days, 236.

[384] Earle, Child life in colonial times, 250.

[385] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 239.

[386] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 33.

[387] _Ibid._, 32.

[388] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 154.

[389] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 128-131.

[390] Dexter, History of education in the United States, 39.

[391] McMaster, History of the people of the United States, I, 21 _et

seq._

[392] Boone, Education in the United States, 50.

[393] Dexter, History of education in the United States, Appendix A,

581-583.

[394] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 191.

[395] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 29.

[396] Earle, Customs and fashions in old New England, 35.

[397] Earle, Child life in colonial days, 177.

[398] Earle, Colonial days in old New York, 39.

[399] _Ibid._, 40.

[400] Dexter, History of education in the United States, 426.

[401] Boone, Education in the United States, 69.

[402] Report U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1914, II, 224-246.

INDEX

"Above the salt," seating of guests, in United States, 328.

Acrobatic feats in China, 120;

Egypt, 79;

Europe, 294;

Greece, 200;

India, 98;

Japan, 147;

Mexico, 34;

Rome, 253;

United States, 403.

Admonitions of father to a son, in Mexico, 20;

of a mother to a daughter, in Mexico, 21.

Adoption, in Greece, 194;

India, 99;

Japan, 145;

Rome, 242.

Adrogation at Rome, 242.

Adultery, in China, 104;

Egypt, 58;

India, 92.

African slave trade in United States, 317.

Agriculture, in Egypt, 65;

Mexico, 30;

Peru, 45;

Rome, 246.

Amphitheater, the, at Rome, 250.

Amusements, in China, 118;

Egypt, 76;

Europe, 292;

India, 98;

Japan, 146;

Judea, 173;

Mexico, 33;

Persia, 164;

Rome, 249;

United States, 398.

Animal exhibits in United States, 404.

Animals, domestic, of Egypt, 66.

Animals, trained, in Europe, 294;

Japan, 147.

Animals used for food, in Egypt, 61;

Europe, 428;

Rome, 238;

United States, 369.

Anklets worn in Egypt, 61;

Judea, 172.

Apprenticeship in Europe, 290;

Japan, 156.

Aqueducts of Peru, 46.

Architecture in Egypt, 72.

Aristocracy of Europe, 275.

Armed men at church in New England, 437.

Artificial teeth at Rome, 237.

Artisans of Europe, 273.

"Assemblies" in United States, 399.

Athletic contests at Rome, 252.

Atrium of a Roman house, 216.