Note 146 — Chapter III · DOMESTIC SERVICE DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD

Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Fourth Series, vol. VI., p. 101.

James Russell Lowell commenting on this letter says, “Let any housewife of our day, who does not find the Keltic element in domestic life so refreshing as to Mr. Arnold in literature, imagine a household with one wild Pequot woman, communicated with by signs, for its maid of all work, and take courage. Those were serious times indeed, when your cook might give warning by taking your scalp, or chignon, as the case might be, and making off with it into the woods.”—“New England Two Centuries Ago,” in Among My Books, I., 263.