Chapter XII · THE CHILD IN EARLIER UNITED STATES (continued 3)

Among a people who feared to use water as a constant drink, as given under "Drink" in a foregoing part of this chapter, it is not to be wondered at that water was denied the patient tormented with fever, and clam-juice in small quantities given instead. Bleeding and purging were resorted to on every possible occasion. Salve was one of the leading remedies and there were many different kinds used. But the great remedies were those compounded and concocted from the plants and the minerals and the animals that went into the medical preparations of those times. They tried about every weed and flower and most everything else to find remedies and it did not seem to matter what the preparation or the mixture was for they often went in as a jumble regardless of the effect of one upon another. Earth-worms, snails, toads, fishes, sowbugs, wood-lice, spiders, vipers, and adders among the animal life were used; there was a great array of plants, such as plantain, dandelion, dock, catnip, jimson-weed, horehound, mint, garlic, elder, sage, saffron, tansy, and wormwood; and of the mineral substances were quicksilver, verdigris, brimstone, alum, and copperas. It did not seem to matter greatly about the doses as there was no close exactness as the quantity was given as "the bigth of a walnut," "enough to lie on a pen knifes point," "the weight of a shilling," "enough to cover a French crown," "as bigg as a haselnut," "take a little handful," "take a pretty quantity as often as you please," and other similar lax directions.

There was scarcely an affliction for which there were not several remedies. Here is a cure for insomnia:

"Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water, & make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill, and it will cause sleep."317

For defective hearing is given the following:

"To Cure Deafness.—Take the Garden Daisie roots and make juyce thereof, and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster & drop three or four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three or four dayes together."318

For melancholy the following is "A pretious water to revive the Spirits:"

"Take four gallons of strong Ale, five ounces of Aniseeds, Liquorish scraped half a pound, Sweet Mints, Angelica, Eccony, Cowslip flowers, Sage & Rosemary Flowers, sweet Marjoram, of each three handfuls, Palitory of the VVal one handful. After it is fermented two or three dayes, distil it in a Limbeck, and in the water infuse one handful of the flowers aforesaid, Cinnamon and Fennel-seed of each half an ounce, Juniper berries bruised one dram, red Rosebuds, roasted Apples & dates sliced and stoned, of each half a pound; distil it again and sweeten it with some Sugarcandy, and take of Amber-greese, Pearl, Red Coral, Hartshorn pounded, and leaf Gold, of each half a Dram, put them in a fine Linnen bag, and hang them by a thread in a Glasse."319

Perhaps next to the wonderful Snail-Water for rickets, given on page 497 of this chapter, the Water of Life was the great remedy, used for fevers and also as a tonic in health:

"Take Balm leaves and stalks, Betony leaves and flowers, Rosemary, red sage, Taragon, Tormentil leaves, Rossolis and Roses, Carnation, Hyssop, Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves and root, red Mints, of each a handful; bruise these hearbs and put them in a great earthen pot, & pour on them enough White Wine as will cover them, stop them close, and let them steep for eight or nine days; then put to it Cinnamon, Ginger, Angelica-seeds, Cloves, and Nuttmegs, of each an ounce, a little Saffron, Sugar one pound, Raysins solis stoned one pound, the loyns and legs of an old Coney, a fleshy running Capon, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of Mutton, four young Chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve Eggs, a loaf of White-bread cut in sops, and two or three ounces of Mithradate or Treacle, & as much Muscadine as will cover them all. Distil al with a moderate fire, and keep the first and second waters by themselves; and when there comes no more by distilling put more Wine into the pot upon the same stuffe and distil it again, and you shal have another good water. This water strengtheneth the Spirit, Brain, Heart, Liver, and Stomack. Take when need is by itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with Sugar."320

Small-pox was such a dreadful scourge to the colonists, causing death, disfigurement, and misfortune, that after inoculation was introduced and accepted as reliable, small-pox hospitals arose and it became quite the fashion for entire families and even parties made up of friends and acquaintances to resort to them together and be inoculated all at the same time, these parties being called classes. Sometimes these gatherings were held at private homes and special invitations were sent out to friends. "These brave classes took their various purifying and sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, were 'grafted' together, 'broke out' together, were feverish together, sweat together, scaled off together, and convalesced together. Not a very prepossessing conjoining medium would inoculation appear to have been, but many a pretty and sentimental love affair sprang up between mutually 'pock-fretten' New Englanders."321

The small-pox hospitals were of various kinds and prices, ranging as low as three dollars per week for lodging, food, medicine, care, and inoculation. The following advertisement of one such hospital appeared in the Connecticut Courant of November 30, 1767:

"Dr. Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fairfield takes this method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous of taking the Small Pox by way of Inoculation, that having had Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on the same the last season with great Success; has lately erected a convenient Hospital for that purpose just within the Jurisdiction Line of the Province of New York about nine miles distant from N. Y. Harbour, where he intends to carry said Branch of Practice from the first of October next to the first of May next. And that all such as are disposed to favour him with their Custom may depend upon being well provided with all necessary accommodations, Provisions & the best Attendance at the moderate Expense of Four Pounds Lawful Money to Each Patient. That after the first Sett or Class he purposes to give no Occasion for waiting to go in Particular setts but to admit Parties singly, just as it suits them. As he has another Good House provided near Said Hospital where his family are to live, and where all that come after the first Sett that go into the Hospital are to remain with his Family until they are sufficiently Prepared & Inoculated & Until it is apparent that they have taken the infection."322

Upon a death in a town in New York state in colonial times, notice was given by the ringing or tolling of the church-bell and the funeral inviter was sent out, a man paid for his services, who was dressed in gloomy black with long streamers of crape hanging from his hat. The ones to be invited were visited by him and notified of the day and hour of the funeral. The funeral-inviter usually combined in himself along with this office those of schoolmaster, bell-ringer, chorister, and grave-digger. Later the funeral-inviter was made a public officer and the fees were regulated by law. The corpse while lying at the home was watched over through the night by intimate friends of the family and these watchers were well supplied with drinks and cakes and tobacco and pipes. The body lay in state in a large room which was rarely used for other occasions than this.

There were rare occurrences of night-burials in the colonies, confined to people belonging to the English Church, the funeral procession and burial taking place by torch-light. In the earlier times in New England there were no religious services of any kind at a funeral, neither at the house nor at the grave, but later there were prayers at the house and a short speech at the grave, and then funeral sermons began to be preached but not at the time of the burial. In New York there were funeral services but always held at the home. The coffin was made of well-seasoned boards and covered with a pall of fringed black cloth, which was replaced with a white sheet where the death took place in childbirth. As a mark of mourning, in some places all ornaments and mirrors and pictures were covered with cloths from the time of death till after the funeral and even sometimes the window-shutters at the front of the house were tied together with black cloth and kept closed for a year. There were usually two sets of pall-bearers, one set of strong young men who bore the coffin on a bier and another set of older men of dignity, who walked alongside the bearers and held the corners of the pall. Much etiquette was displayed in arranging the order of the procession to the grave, each mourner being carefully assigned to his place, the widow usually being placed with a magistrate or some other person of dignity.

Funerals became to be very expensive affairs and this brought about legislative enactments trying to regulate and curtail the expenses. When the cities began to grow and wealth to increase much pomp and dignity were used in the burial of men and women of high station, trumpets and drums being used and volleys fired over the grave—even of a woman. In properly putting away Governor Winthrop, the chief founder of Massachusetts, a barrel and a half of powder was consumed. In the middle and southern colonies, the funeral became to be a time of feasting and drinking. At a single funeral there might have been several barrels of wine and several hogsheads of beer consumed, beside great quantities of food eaten and tobacco used. Sometimes in Pennsylvania as many as five hundred guests at a funeral were served with punch and cake. At a funeral in Virginia the cost of the wine used amounted to more than four thousand pounds of tobacco. New England was not so far behind, as bills are found for much baked meats, rum, cider, whiskey, lemons, sugar, spices, and cakes used at funerals.

It was a custom in colonial times for the family of the deceased to give certain kinds of gifts to those who were invited to the funeral. Books were among the gifts, being serious books suitable as a memorial of the occasion, but probably book gifts occurred only in New England. Scarfs, often of silk, were among the presents and also handkerchief, the scarfs sometimes being worn quite awhile after the funeral as a token of mourning, thereby showing respect for the dead. Sometimes black ribbons were given, to be worn on the hat as long streamers. Spoons also were given in New York, called monkey-spoons, being made of silver with the figure or head of an ape on the handle. The two most common and most important gifts were gloves and rings. The gloves were white or black or purple and were of different quality, given according to rank or closeness of blood to the deceased. Hundreds of these gloves were often given out at a single funeral, at one funeral over a thousand were given and still at another three thousand pairs. A Boston clergyman kept account of the number he had received and in thirty-two years he had been given two thousand, nine hundred, and forty pairs of mourning gloves. In 1738 at a funeral in Boston over two hundred rings were given away. A judge received 57 mourning rings between 1687-1725, a minister had a mugful, and a physician who died in 1758 at the age of eighty-one left a quart tankard full of the rings. "These mourning rings were of gold, usually enameled in black, or black and white. They were frequently decorated with a death's-head, or with a coffin with a full-length skeleton lying in it, or with a winged skull. Sometimes they held a framed lock of hair of the deceased friend. Sometimes the ring was shaped like a serpent with his tail in his mouth. Many bore a posy."323 These gloves and rings usually were sold. The Boston minister noted above received between six and seven hundred dollars through the sale of the gloves he had received at funerals and likewise quite a good sum from the sale of the funeral rings he had received.

There finally came a reaction against such great expense at funerals and the giving of gifts so that by the middle of the eighteenth century funerals were being held at which there was little or no feasting and drinking and but little mourning worn, and even some funerals were held at which no mourning at all had been worn. In the latter part of the century laws arose wherein fines were to be imposed on any person who gave scarfs, gloves, rings, wine, or rum at a funeral, or who bought any new mourning apparel except crape for an armband if a man or a black bonnet, fan, gloves, and ribbon if a woman. But such laws were difficult of being rigidly enforced and so, perhaps, had but little effect, public opinion and custom after all causing whatever changes that may have come about.

It was a custom to fasten to the bier or platform supporting the coffin verses and sentences laudatory to the deceased and such often were printed after the funeral and distributed among the relatives and friends. These prints were not only deeply bordered with black but "they were often decorated gruesomely with skull and cross-bones, scythes, coffins, and hour-glasses, all-seeing eyes with rakish squints, bow-legged skeletons, and miserable little rosetted winding-sheets."324 When newspapers were established in the colonies it became the practice to insert long and fulsome death-notices. Perhaps the greatest display in writing about the dead was that of the epitaph. They were of all kinds and quality many quite amusing in both rhyme and thought, and yet there were some epitaphs of beauty and sentiment that make us glad for the efforts. The following is truly such a one:

In New York interment was made under the church and by special payment burial could be made under the very seat the deceased was wont to occupy during life while upon attendance at church. In New England the burial was in the churchyard or it might, too, be made under the church and this was true in the large places and of dignitaries. In the smaller places the graveyard might have been located in a barren pasture or on an out-of-the-way hillside. In the country often each family had its own burying-place, sometimes in a corner of the home farm and again at the foot of the garden or orchard. The early gravestones were quite similar in design. Freestone was used for these and rarely sandstone on account of its being readily disintegrated by frosts and storms. The best stone was a flinty slate-stone from North Wales, which was imported from England ready carved, and these stones also were alike, having at the top a winged cherub's head. This remained the only emblem on stones till near the middle of the eighteenth century when there began to be used the weeping willow and urn.

The Illness of Children.

As was given under Infancy, the baby had to be baptized in the meeting-house on the first Sunday following its birth, no matter what the conditions of the weather. This was surely as severe a test of the child's endurance as that ever devised by any people, not excepting the Spartans. Those that survived this baptism had to undergo many malignant diseases, so that the mortality among children was frightful and there was rarely if ever found a family that could not count a number of deaths of the children, often more died than reached maturity. The diseases and climatic conditions were severe enough on the children and the lack of sanitary caution added many children to the death list, yet these were not all for the poor things had tried out on them all kinds of nostrums and no doubt many died from the dosings.

Among the medicines for children was Venice treacle, made of vipers, white wine, opium, spices, licorice, red roses, tops of germander, and St. John's-wort, with about twenty other herbs, juice of rough sloes, and mixed with honey. Another medicine for children contained forty-two ingredients. As was given in another part of this chapter, rickets was one of the greatest afflictions of children and as was noted, Snail Water was one of the great remedies, for which see page 377. Here is another remedy for rickets, and the child that survived both the rickets and this treatment surely deserved to live:

"In ye Rickets the best Corrective I have ever found is a Syrup made of Black Cherrys. Thus. Take of Cherrys (dry'd ones are as good as any) & put them into a vessel with water. Set ye vessel near ye fire and let ye water be Scalding hot. Then take ye Cherrys into a thin Cloth and squeeze them into ye Vessell, & sweeten ye Liquor with Melosses. Give 2 spoonfuls of this 2 or 3 times a day. If you Dip your Child, Do it in this manner: viz: naked, in ye morning, head foremost in Cold Water, don't dress it Immediately, but let it be made warm in ye Cradle & sweat at least half an Hour moderately. Do this 3 mornings going & if one or both feet are Cold while other Parts sweat (which is sometimes ye Case) Let a little blood be taken out of ye feet ye 2nd Morning and yt will cause them to sweat afterwards. Before ye dips of ye Child give it some Snakeroot and Saffern Steep'd in Rum & Water, give this Immediately before Dipping and after you have dipt ye Child 3 Mornings Give it several times a Day ye following Syrup made of Comfry, Hartshorn, Red Roses, Hogbrake roots, knot-grass, petty-moral roots, sweeten ye Syrup with Melosses. Physicians are generally fearful about diping when ye Fever is hard, but oftentimes all attemps to lower it without diping are vain. Experience has taught me that these fears are groundless, yt many have about diping in Rickety Fevers; I have found in a multitude of Instances of diping is most effectual means to break a Rickety Fever. These Directions are agreeable to what I have practiced for many years."326

At the funeral of a boy there would sometimes be boys of about the same age as the deceased to act as nominal pallbearers to walk alongside the coffin borne by stronger young men. When a young child or girl was buried, sometimes the pall-bearers were girls, all dressed in white and wearing long white veils.

Amusements.

Many of the amusements of the old country were brought into use by the colonists and there were some that grew up in the surroundings of the new country. There was a wide distinction between the New England colonies and the other colonies in regard to such, as the Puritans were much more sober in their bearing and really often counted amusements as things to be avoided and even ungodly and those of a hilarious nature were indulged in only by a few of the less staid and solid citizens.

The really only regular diversion of the early colonists in New England was the lecture-day, which usually occurred weekly on Thursdays. These days were the occasion of a lecture, usually religious, by the minister, and also there were other doings, as, burning seditious books, publishing notices of marriages, the holding of elections, the whipping of transgressors at the whipping-post, the placing of offenders in the stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory, and criminals, too, were hanged on these days. Another great day in the colonies was muster-day when the militia came together for drill. This became a time of merry-making as well as of military drilling and amusements of various kinds were entered into. Another time of gathering was at the fairs held in some of the middle and southern colonies, at which were foot-races, sack-races, wrestling, climbing greased poles, catching greased pigs, and the like.

As the cities grew, the people would strive to get out for a time in the country, so that inns and gardens grew up in the suburbs and were much frequented. These gardens were sometimes small and of a private nature and again they were large and not only furnished the guests with food and drink but also with concerts and other entertainments. Clubs were quite numerous in those days, usually consisting of a number of men who had a weekly meeting at a tavern. These clubs often consisted of people of the same nationality, as, the Irish Club, the French Club, and so on. They had their patron saints on whose birthdays they would hold great festivals, the English having St. George, the Welsh St. David, the Irish St. Patrick, and the young Americans of New York, not to be outdone, "canonized, by their own authority, King Tammany, a Delaware chief long dead, and celebrated his feast on the old English May-day, which they ushered in with bell-ringings, as though it were a veritable saint's day."327 There grew up in the cities gatherings of men and women, called "Assemblies," for the purpose of dancing, card-playing, and other social amusements. These were brilliant affairs, wherein both men and women were richly dressed, and where there was eating and drinking, great quantities of wine often being consumed.

The colonists were very fond of dancing. "From the most eastern forest settlements of Maine to the southern frontier of Georgia, people in town, village, and country were everywhere indefatigably fond of dancing ... the launching of a ship, the raising of a house, the assembling of a county court, and the ordination of a minister were good occasions for dancing."328 They usually danced to the tune of a fiddle but if there was no fiddle that would not keep them from it as they would dance to some one's humming the tune. Dancing-schools arose and although they were forbidden in New England the young people learned to dance anyway. Dances sometimes began at six o'clock in the evening and lasted till three in the morning. "President Washington and Mrs. General Greene 'danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down,' and General Greene called this diversion of the august Father of His Country, 'a pretty little frisk.'"329 This may be accounted for from the fact that the lady was usually assigned to her partner for the entire evening, with whom she did the greater part of her dancing.

Music was loved by the colonists throughout the entire colonial period. Yet in early New England there was really little that could properly be called music, for in the church there was only the droning out of the Psalms and often these were not sung by all the congregation in the same tune at the same time, making a most inharmonious medley. The first music-book appeared in 1712. The early instruments for accompanying the voice were the spinet and the harpsichord, the first organ in Boston was about 1711.

Mrs. Earle states that though after 1760 concerts were frequent yet the earliest advertisement she had found of a concert was in the New England Weekly Journal of December 15, 1732:

"This is to inform the Publick That there will be a Consort of Music Perform'd by Sundry Instruments at the Court Room in Wings Lane near the Town Dock on the 28th of this Instant December; Tickets will be deliver'd at the Place of Performance at Five Shillings each Ticket. N. B. No Person will be admitted after Six."330

Because of the need of better music, there arose the "singing-school," a most happy form of amusement for the young people of the colonial days in New England where there was often but little chance for such. The singing-school teacher was a great man and when he made his appearance that other notable, the village school-master, had to take a back-seat for the time being, for this man was a "professional," who was to be paid and who paid his own bills and did not have to "board round." The singing-school gave agreeable occasion for the young people to spend a few of the long winter evenings together and for sleighing-parties to be made up to go to them, and where every girl, no matter how she got there, was sure of an escort home.

Card-playing and gambling were almost universal. Ladies gambled as well as gentlemen. Stakes often were high, sometimes large estates were lost in a short time by reckless betting at cards. "The ladies of New York were considered virtuous above many others of their sex because of the moderation of their gambling."331 Although the New Englanders were very much opposed to cards and tried to stop their sale and use, yet they highly approved another form of gambling, the lottery. For a half century and longer the lottery was the greatest amusement of New England, it was sanctioned and participated in by all, the most esteemed citizens bought and sold tickets, and it was used as a scheme for raising funds for every purpose—colleges increased their endowments, towns and states raised money to pay their debts, and churches had lotteries "for promoting public worship and the advancement of religion." Not only were lotteries used to raise funds for public affairs but there were also private lotteries in great number and all kinds of prizes given, among such being furniture, clothing, real estate, jewelry, and books. "New England clergymen seemed specially to delight in this gambling excitement."332

As there was an abundance of wild game and fish, hunting and fishing were great sports among the colonists.

Deer were hunted in various ways. Sometimes the hunter, as learned from the Indians, covered himself in a deer skin and was thus enabled to get near the deer to shoot them; again a tree was felled and the hunter hid in the branches and shot the deer while browsing upon the twigs; at night the deer was approached by some one bearing a lighted torch and the hunter would shoot the dazed animal looking into the light, or the hunter would have a blazing fire in his canoe and float toward the deer and shoot it; also deer were run down by dogs and men on horseback. Wolves were caught on mackerel hooks bound together in a bunch and dipped in tallow; they were caught in iron traps; and they were caught in pits in the earth hidden by light coverings to let them fall through. Bears were caught in traps and pits and also hunted with dogs trained for the purpose. There was fox-chasing on horseback; sometimes on a moonlight night a sledge-load of cod-fish heads was left by a fence or wall where the moon shone brightly on it, and the foxes were shot as they came up to get the heads of the fishes. Squirrels were killed for sport and also because they consumed so much of the grain; sometimes two groups of hunters matched one another and then counted squirrel-scalps at night to see which party had killed the most squirrels during the day. Wild turkeys were trapped and killed with guns; sometimes fires would be built near their roosting-places and then they could be shot while bewildered from the light. Wild pigeons were taken in nets, by shooting with guns, and while on their roosts at night, they were knocked off with clubs, being so thickly together and thus unable to get away. Also other wild game was hunted, as, geese, ducks, grouse, partridges, and others.

One way of taking wild game was by a "drive." A ring of men would encircle a large tract of country and draw inward toward a center, and thus drive in deer, bears, wolves, turkeys, and other game, and as the animals made effort to escape the men would shoot them. Another way of hunting was by a fire-ring. A body of men would encircle a tract of land and then set fire to the leaves, which would burn in toward the center and then the men would shoot the animals as they would try to break through the fire-ring and would thus be brought to view.

Fishing was carried on in various ways. One of the most common ways was with nets, which were of various kinds. Weirs were also used, probably learned from the Indians and improved upon by the colonists. Long lines were staked out in a river and on it were placed short lines with hooks for catching the fish. Fish were speared with a harping-iron or gig. Where the fish were very plentiful men could ride into the water at night and spear the fish with gigs by torch light. They also went to the falls of the rivers and caught the shad and salmon as they were ascending the river to spawn. Fish also were caught with hook and line, but in the earlier times when they were so abundant this was considered too slow a process.

In winter the favorite amusement in New York was riding in sleighs and this was true also in Philadelphia. In the bitter climate of New England sleighing as a pastime was not entered into by the colonists in the early days. The Dutch in New York also indulged a great deal in skating, the ponds, marshes, and watered meadows on Manhattan Island offering plenty of ice for the sport. Sometimes provisions were carried into New York on the back of marketmen on skates.

In a new country full of wild animals and wild men, it becomes necessary for the settler to learn to use the gun as a means of livelihood and of defense and so the settlers became fine marksmen. Because of their learning to shoot well there arose contests in marksmanship. This consisted often in shooting at a mark for a prize, a silk handkerchief or such like. Also there were matches where a turkey was put up as a prize to be shot at, it might be a holiday was spent in a shooting-match. Sometimes a beef was divided among competitors, when a target would be put up and the one hitting the center or nearest to the center would receive the best cut of the beef and it would thus be distributed according to the shots ranging from the center.

A leading amusement of the colonists was horse-racing. It is possible that horse-racing began in Virginia as soon as there were horses in the colony to race. In 1665 the Governor of New York announced a horse-race to encourage the bettering of the breed of horses. The sport came late into New England and yet there were races and notices of challenges to race horses. The main centers of horse-racing were in the vicinity of New York, Annapolis, Williamsburg, and Charleston, and, later, at Philadelphia, also. There were two kinds of races. The first was a great, formal affair, drawing a large crowd, where the horses ran on a circular mile track, four rounds to a heat, best two out of three to win. This race required great endurance of the horses. The second kind of race was a more informal affair, where the race was for a quarter of a mile, for which race horses were bred to run for a short distance at a very high rate of speed. Before the expiration of the colonial period, there, too, arose the special forms of the trotting-match and the pacing-match.

Cock-fighting was another sport of the colonists, which was most popular in New York and the colonies south of it, its chief centers being in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Men would go fifty miles to see a main, and choice gamecocks were imported from England. There was, too, bull-baiting and sometimes wolves and bears were captured alive and used for baiting with dogs. Sometimes a live wolf was tied to a horse's tail and dragged to death.

There were contests in running, leaping, wrestling, cudgeling, stool-ball, nine-pins, quoits, fencing, and back-sword or single-stick.

The people of the colonies did not have great opportunities for amusement in the way of shows and so they turned readily to any kind of exhibit and it did not require much display to attract them. This being true, there came to be displays of various kinds in plenty.

There were sleight-of-hand performances, acrobatic and contortionistic displays, tight and slack rope performances, and a kind of sword-dancing. Museums were founded in which there were shown wax figures and other curiosities; a mermaid was put on display; there were exhibits at various times of a solar microscope, camera obscuras, moving pictures showing windmills and water-mills in motion and ships sailing, electrical machines, a musical clock, puppets representing Joseph's dream, and prospects of London and of royal palaces. Among animals displayed, there were a lion drawn about on a cart by four oxen, a wonderful creature called a Sea Lion, a leopard "strongly chayned," a moose, a white sea bear, a camel, a cassowary "five feet high that swallows stones as large as an egg," and even a rabbit was advertised among "curious wild beasts." There was a big hog on display for four pence a person, and a cat with "one head, eight legs, and two tails."

The most remarkable animal of all exhibited must have been the one described in an advertisement in the Boston Gazette of April 20, 1741:

"To be seen at the Greyhound Tavern in Roxbury a wild creature which was caught in the woods about 80 miles to the Westward of this place called a Cattamount. It has a tail like a Lyon, its legs are like Bears, its Claws like an Eagle, its Eyes like a Tyger. He is exceedingly ravenous and devours all sorts of Creatures that he can come near. Its agility is surprising. It will leap 30 feet at one jump notwithstanding it is but 3 months old. Whoever wishes to see this creature may come to the place aforesaid paying one shilling each shall be welcome for their money."333

"Salem had the pleasure of viewing a 'Sapient Dog' who could light lamps, spell, read print or writing, tell the time of day, or day of the month. He could distinguish colors, was a good arithmetician, could discharge a loaded cannon, tell a hidden card in a pack, and jump through a hoop. About the same time was exhibited in the same town a 'Pig of Knowledge' who had precisely the same accomplishments."334

The first approach toward a theatrical entertainment seems to have been at Philadelphia in 1724, where was given acrobatic displays, rope-walking feats, and the like, which ended up with a half-acrobatic, half-dramatic performance of a comical character. Such entertainments must have followed in other cities. There was a theatrical troupe, a sorry lot, in Philadelphia in 1749, which went to New York in 1750, and probably was the same that produced a play in a Boston coffee-house that caused such a stir as to bring about legislation that kept the drama out of Boston for the remainder of the colonial period. Although at this time there may not have been any dramatic plays given, there was a custom in Virginia at country houses to have the reading aloud of plays, romances, and operas on rainy days, Sunday afternoons, and when there might not have been dancing of an evening because no fiddler could be secured for the music, and, later, after the introduction of the drama into the colonies amateur companies were organized to give plays.

The first real theatrical company in the colonies was in 1752, which troupe, twelve in number, came over from England. Their opening play was given at Williamsburg, at that time the capital of Virginia. This place was probably chosen for the beginning of the theatrical work in the colonies "because the inhabitants of Virginia were known to be rich, leisurely, and society-loving people, with enough of refinement to enjoy plays, and with few religious scruples against anything that tended to make life pleasant to the upper classes."335

"Twenty-four plays had been selected and cast before Lewis Hallam and his company left London on the 'Charming Sally,' no doubt a tobacco-ship returning light for a cargo. On her unsteady deck, day after day, during the long voyage, the actors diligently rehearsed the plays with which they proposed to cheer the hearts of people in the New World. Williamsburg must have proved a disappointment to them. There were not more than a thousand people, white and black, in the village. The buildings, except the capitol, the college, and the so-called 'palace' of the governor, were insignificant, and there were only about a dozen 'gentlemen's' families resident in the place. In the outskirts of the town a warehouse was fitted up for a theater. The woods were all about it, and the actors could shoot squirrels from the windows. When the time arrived for the opening of the theater, the company were much disheartened. It seemed during the long still hours of the day that they had come on a fool's errand to act dramas in the woods. But as evening drew on, the whole scene changed like a work of magic. The roads leading into Williamsburg were thronged with out-of-date vehicles of every sort, driven by negroes and filled with gayly dressed ladies, whose gallants rode on horseback alongside. The treasury was replenished, the theater was crowded, and Shakspere was acted on the continent probably for the first time by a trained and competent company. The 'Merchant of Venice' and Garrick's farce of 'Lethe' were played; and at the close the actors found themselves surrounded by groups of planters congratulating them, and after the Virginia fashion offering them the hospitality of their houses."336

This troupe finished the season at Williamsburg and then went to Annapolis and throughout Maryland and reached New York in 1753 and later went to Philadelphia. They made a trip to the West Indies and on their return to New York in 1758 they had difficulty in getting permission to play as a great religious wave had swept over the country and there was a strong feeling against such amusements. The troupe managed to overcome this opposition and continued in the colonies till the Revolutionary troubles arose. In 1774 the Continental Congress voiced the sentiment of the people in asking that there be a discontinuance of such sports and entertainments as would tend to distract thought and feeling from the getting ready of the colonies to defend their rights, and when the head of the American company, as the troupe was called, received this resolution from the president of the Congress, the work of the company was stopped and the actors sailed for the West Indies and that ended the drama in the colonies.

At the opening play by the English company at Williamsburg in 1752, the music was that of the harpsichord and furnished by the local music-master, and when they reached New York they procured a violinist. The theaters built at this time were little more than enclosed sheds and they were usually painted red. The scenery was quite indifferent. The seats were classified into boxes, pit, and gallery. The people in the pit were allowed to use liquors and smoking was permitted anywhere in the theater. Plays began at six o'clock in the evening and servants and slaves were sent early beforetimes to hold seats for their masters and mistresses. "Gentlemen made free to go behind the scenes, and to loiter in full view on the stage, showing their gallantry by disturbing attentions to the actresses."337 which "proved so deleterious to any good representation of the play, that the manager advertised in 'Gaines' Mercury,' in 1762, that no spectators would be permitted to stand or sit on the stage during the performance. And also a reproof was printed to 'the person so very rude as to throw Eggs from the Gallery upon the stage, to the injury of Cloaths.'"338

Games and Sports of Children and Young People.

Children played games and engaged in sports during the colonial times in the United States and many of these games were the same as were played in the home countries from whence their ancestors came and they are played today by their descendants. They were tormented, too, in their play, just as children always are, by adults in power, as shown by the following order issued in New York in 1673. "If any children be caught on the street playing, racing, and shouting previous to the termination of the last preaching, the officers of justice may take their hat or upper garment, which shall not be restored to the parents until they have paid a fine of two guilders."

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The Puritan boys, too, had laws passed against one of their games that cannot be played without somebody getting hurt and hence the foolishness of such a law as was made in Boston in 1657. "Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence."

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But such laws as given above did not altogether crush the spirits of the boys for, as stated before, one man whose duties were to patrol New Amsterdam at night found they were active enough, for he complained that the boys set dogs on him, hid behind trees and fences and shouted out as he came by "Indians!" and played other tricks on him. Even as much as the Puritans tried to depress the spirits of their children, yet we find one of them noting in his diary of his grandson: "In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindall Rawson from playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the greatest fools that did so."341 And this same boy was so wrought up with play when he was six years older as to cause his grandfather to write: "Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much displeased."342

These children played the old historic game of cat's-cradle and passed it on to the children of today, a game that is found in many lands and among both civilized and uncivilized peoples.343 They played hop scotch and tag of various kinds and London Bridge and honey-pots, and many, many others, as given in the paragraph below. They enjoyed singing games, of which they had quite a number.

"In a quaint little book called The Pretty Little Pocket Book, published in America at Revolutionary times, is a list of boys' games with dingy pictures showing how the games were played; the names given were chuck-farthing; kite-flying; dancing round May-pole; marbles; hoop and hide; thread the needle; fishing; blindman's buff; shuttlecock; king and I; peg-farthing; knock out and span; hop, skip, and jump; boys and girls come out to play; I sent a letter to my love; cricket; stool-ball; base-ball; trap-ball; swimming; tip-cat; train-banding; fives; leap-frog; bird-nesting; hop-hat; shooting; hop-scotch; squares; riding; rosemary tree. The descriptions of the games are given in rhyme, and to each attached a moral lesson in verse."344 The following is a good illustration:

A lady writing of a custom that prevailed at Albany about the middle of the eighteenth century, during her childhood there, writes as follows:

"The children of the town were divided into companies, as they called them, from five to six years of age, until they became marriageable. How those companies first originated, or what were their exact regulations, I cannot say; though I, belonging to none, occasionally mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence among the rest, were called heads of the company, and as such were obeyed by the others.... Children of different ages in the same family belonged to different companies. Each company at a certain time of the year went in a body to gather a particular kind of berries to the hill. It was a sort of annual festival attended with religious punctuality. Every company had a uniform for this purpose; that is to say, very pretty light baskets made by the Indians, with lids and handles, which hung over one arm, and were adorned with various colors. Every child was permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once besides, during winter and spring. The master and mistress of the family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider or a syllabub; for these young friends met at four and amused themselves with the utmost gayety and freedom in any way their fancy dictated."346

"In spring, eight or ten of the young people of one company, or related to each other, young men and maidens, would set out together in a canoe on a kind of rural excursion, of which amusement was the object. Yet so fixed were their habits of industry that they never failed to carry their work-baskets with them, not as a form, but as an ingredient necessarily mixed with their pleasures. They had no attendants, and steered a devious course of four, five, or perhaps more miles, till they arrived at some of the beautiful islands with which this fine river abounded, or at some sequestered spot on its banks, where delicious wild fruits, or particular conveniences for fishing afforded some attraction. There they generally arrived by nine or ten o'clock, having set out in the cool and early hour of sunrise.... A basket with tea, sugar, and the other usual provisions for breakfast, with the apparatus for cooking it; a little rum and fruit for making cool weak punch, the usual beverage in the middle of the day, and now and then some cold pastry, was the sole provision; for the great affair was to depend on the sole exertions of the boys in procuring fish, wild ducks, etc., for the dinner. They were all, like Indians, ready and dexterous with the axe, gun, etc. Whenever they arrived at their destination, they sought out a dry and beautiful spot opposite to the river, and in an instant with their axes cleared so much superfluous shade or shrubbery as left a semi-circular opening, above which they bent and twined the boughs, so as to form a pleasant bower, while the girls gathered dried branches, to which one of the youths soon set fire with gunpowder, and the breakfast, a very regular and cheerful one, occupied an hour or two. The young men then set out to fish, or perhaps to shoot birds, and the maidens sat busily down to their work. After the sultry hours had been thus employed, the boys brought their tribute from the river or the wood, and found a rural meal prepared by their fair companions, among whom were generally their sisters and the chosen of their hearts. After dinner they all set out together to gather wild strawberries, or whatever other fruit was in season; for it was accounted a reflection to come home empty-handed. When wearied of this amusement, they either drank tea in their bower, or, returning, landed at some friend's on the way, to partake of that refreshment."347

When we come to water sports there is found more hectoring of the boys by the lawmakers. The Puritan lawgivers passed laws against swimming and each tithing-man had ten families under his charge to keep the boys from swimming in the water, but it is guessed that the boys swam all the same. Strange to say the boys were not debarred from the opposite winter sport—that of skating, nevertheless there were many deaths from breaking through the ice and drowning.

"Skating is an ancient pastime. As early as the thirteenth century Fitzstephen tells of young Londoners fastening the leg-bones of animals to the soles of the feet, and then pushing themselves on the ice by means of poles shod with sharp iron points.... Wooden skates shod with iron runners were invented in the Low Countries. Dutch children in New Netherlands all skated, just as their grandfathers had in old Batavia. The first skates that William Livingstone (born in 1723) had on the frozen Hudson were made of beef bones, as were those of medieval children."348

There might be some excuse made for the Puritans trying to keep their boys from swimming because of their great fear of the use of water, both internally and externally, but how can the legislators of Albany be excused for the following cruel law!

"Whereas y^e children of y^e s^d city do very unorderly to y^e shame and scandall of their parents ryde down y^e hills in y^e streets of the s^d city with small and great slees on the Lord day and in the week by which many accidents may come, now for pventing y^e same it is hereby published and declared y^e shall be and may be lawful for any Constable in this City or any other person or persons to take any slee or slees from all and every such boys and girls rydeing or offering to ryde down any hill within y^e s^d city and breake any slee or slees in pieces. Given under our hands and seals in Albany y^e 22th of December in 12th year of Her Maj's reign Anno Domini 1713."349

By 1765 it would seem that legislation in Albany against coasting had been abandoned or else the coasting was done at night-time when travel had ceased. This passage below is by the same woman, writing of about the year 1765, who is quoted above in regard to the companies of children and young people of Albany.

"In town all the boys were extravagantly fond of a diversion that to us would appear a very odd and childish one. The great street of the town sloped down from the hill on which the fort stood, towards the river; between the buildings was an unpaved carriage-road, the foot-path beside the houses being the only part of the street which was paved. In winter the sloping descent, continued for more than a quarter of a mile, acquired firmness from the frost, and became very slippery. Then the amusement commenced. Every boy and youth in town, from eight to eighteen, had a little low sledge, made with a rope like a bridle to the front, by which it could be dragged after one by the hand. On this one or two at most could sit, and this sloping descent being made as smooth as a looking-glass, by sliders' sledges, etc., perhaps a hundred at once set out from the top of this street, each seated in his little sledge with the rope in his hand, which, drawn to the right or left, served to guide him. He pushed it off with a little stick, as one would launch a boat; and then, with the most astonishing velocity, precipitated by the weight of the owner, the little machine glided past, and was at the lower end of the street in an instant. What could be so delightful in this rapid and smooth descent I could never discover; though in a more retired place, and on a smaller scale, I have tried the amusement; but to a young Albanian, sleighing, as he called it, was one of the first joys of life, though attended by the drawback of walking to the top of the declivity, dragging his sledge every time he renewed his flight, for such it might well be called. In the managing this little machine some dexterity was necessary; an unskilful Phaeton was sure to fall. The conveyance was so low that a fall was attended with little danger, yet with much disgrace, for an universal laugh from all sides assailed the fallen charioteer. This laugh was from a very full chorus, for the constant and rapid succession of this procession, where every one had a brother, lover, or kinsman, brought all the young people in town to the porticos, where they used to sit wrapt in furs till ten or eleven at night, engrossed by this delectable spectacle. I have known an Albanian, after residing some years in Britain, and becoming a polished fine gentleman, join the sport and slide down with the rest."350

Children's Toys and Story Books.

Toys must have been quite scarce in the earlier colonial days, probably very few beyond what the children or parents made, and rather crude. Even as late as 1695 a man in Massachusetts wrote to his brother in England that if toys in small quantities were sent to the colonies they would sell. Some years later toys increased in number and toy-shops arose, there being one in Boston in 1743. It is certainly hard to understand why marbles should not have been advertised for sale at an earlier time than the date given in the following: "Not until October, 1771, on the lists of the Boston shopkeepers, who seemed to advertise and to sell every known article of dry goods, hardware, house furnishing, ornament, dress, and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item 'Boys Marbles.'"

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There were not a great variety of toys used in the colonies. Tin toys were quite scarce as tin was not much in use at that time for such purposes. There were kites, hoops, balls, battledore and shuttles, tops, marbles, skates and sleds. There were home-made hobby-horses, coaches, and chariots. The boys had jack-knives and knew how to use them in making pop-guns, whistles, windmills, water-wheels, traps, and the like. Boys also made their own weapons, as, clubs, slings, bows, and arrows. The girls had dolls, of course, but they were home-made affairs for the greater part. The only dolls advertised in the colonial papers were those told about under dress, which were the models that were dressed in Europe and sent over to mantua-makers to give the styles. It is true that after serving this purpose the dolls were sold for children's use and thought much of by them. The furniture was much of it home-made, birch bark being especially adaptable for the purpose. Wicker cradles and chaises were made for the dolls, copied from those of infants.

It would seem that there were absolutely no books specially written for the pleasure of the children in the early years of the colonial times, nor for that matter were there any such written in England during the same period. There were, however, to teach some truths, three books written that were taken up by the children and who greatly loved to read them, which were The Pilgrim's Progress in 1688, Robinson Crusoe in 1714, and Gulliver's Travels in 1726. The beginning of story books for children in England and America was in 1744, when John Newberry began publishing such books in London. His books were at once exported to America and advertisements of them are found in the colonial newspapers. One of these books, probably published in 1744, was "The Pretty Little Pocket Book," one story in which was "Jack the Giant Killer." Another book published by Newberry about 1760 was "Mother Goose's Melodies." After the Revolution, story books for children became more common and they have kept increasing through the years to the present.

Holidays and Festivals.

The old English festivals were not greatly observed by the colonists. In Puritan New England there were few set times and days for pleasure. The holy days of the English Church were not only disregarded by the Puritans, but even laws were made forbidding their public celebration, for while in England they had turned away from the state church and they had learned to hate the excesses of the festivals. In the other colonies the demands of the early years and the getting away from religious influences may have brought about the decline of the celebration of the church festivals, for even in Virginia, which clung to the old church, the clergy complained that the people only observed Christmas and Good Friday as they did not want to stop work for other holidays.

Although Christmas was observed in the colonies outside of New England, it was not with the old English fervor and never with the great excesses, as stated by one of the old Puritan divines as spent throughout England in "revelling, dicing, carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in excess of wine, in mad mirth."352

New Year's Day was a great day for the Dutch in New York and its observance was continued by the English when they came into control. The Dutch inaugurated the custom of New Year's calling, wherein the ladies kept open house and were called upon by their gentleman friends. Food and drink were served in generous quantities and before the end of the day the gentlemen would often get quite hilarious. The streets of the city would be filled with vehicles loaded with callers going from house to house, a general gala occasion. In the country towns of New York colony the New Year was often ushered in by men with fire-arms going from house to house and firing salutes. This was kept up until a crowd was collected and then they would end the day by firing at a mark.

If the Dutch of New York originated New Year's callings the Puritans of New England originated Thanksgiving Day. Just when each custom first began cannot be determined for each must have arisen gradually and continued till the practice became fixed. The thanksgiving days were not always at first for giving thanks for God's beneficence, but for various reasons, as, political events, the success of the Protestant cause, victories over Indians, the safe arrival of ships with friends and provisions, and so on. Nor were they set for any special season or day, probably Thursday became fixed because of its being the lecture day and autumn because of the time of harvests thus making the days of thanksgiving come more often at this season.

The first Thanksgiving was not a religious event nor a single day, but a time of recreation as shown from the following written by one of the Puritans in Plymouth on December 11, 1621:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labors. They four killed as much fowl as with a little help beside served the company about a week. At which times among other recreations we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoyt with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer which they brought and bestow'd on our governor, and upon the captains and others."353

The first public thanksgiving was held in Boston in 1630 to express thanks for the safe arrival of ships bringing friends and food. From this on there were public thanksgivings, but not every year, until it became a fixed annual affair, but at just what time this occurred it would be impossible to state. As it became a fixed custom, there grew into it many of the features of the old English Christmas, notwithstanding the attitude of the Puritans toward that day, and it became a day of family reunions and of feasting on turkey and Indian pudding and pumpkin pie.

"But Thanksgiving Day was not the chief New England holiday. Ward, writing in 1699, does not name it, saying of New Englanders: 'Election, Commencement, and Training Days are their only Holy Days.'"354

Election Day was a kind of holiday and indeed sometimes the whole week was included in the holiday. As was stated before, Training Day was a day of coming together of the people at which there was not only military drill but also amusements of various kinds and sometimes the occasion for a display of public punishment. Commencement Day at the college was a proud day for the people whose sons graduated and a kind of general holiday for all. There was a dinner and plenty of wine. It would seem that this was an occasion for which more than a day would be used, as after 1730 Commencement Day was usually set for Friday as there would not be so much of the week left for jollifying.

Shrove Tuesday was observed in New York by the middle of the eighteenth century as a holiday given over to cocking-mains, as it was in England. Saint Valentine's Day was observed by the Dutch in New Amsterdam as Women's Day and it was celebrated by the young women, each of whom armed herself with a heavy cord having a knot on the end with which she struck every young man whom she would meet. Guy Fawkes' Day was celebrated at least in New England and New York, being the occasion for bonfires and fantastic parades and burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes, which often was only a straw carried by each one to cast into the fire. In some of the colonies, May Day was celebrated and a May-pole erected and some attempts were made to celebrate it in New England but it did not get much encouragement and it was but a feeble holiday there. Pinkster Day, the name being derived from the Dutch word for Pentecost, was a great holiday in New York for the negro slaves. They gathered in great numbers on that day and had singing and dancing and feasting and drinking—a general good time. The spring sheep-shearing and the autumnal corn-husking were a time of great gatherings and merry-makings, and there were also apple-bees, maple-sugar stirrings, and log-rollings.

Public Punishments.

Another subject that could have well been placed under amusements is that of public punishments, for such did afford a means of amusement in the form of ridiculing and reviling the ones exposed and of throwing things at them, and, too, exposure was often on a holiday, thus affording more time and opportunity for the people to amuse themselves. Not only was the offender or criminal exposed to the public view but this was made all the worse by placing him in some kind of instrument that would cause him to be in an attitude that would emphasize the grotesqueness of the exposure and make the punishment all the more insulting and painful. This public form of punishment was not confined wholly to men for women, too, were sometimes placed thus before the public.

The exposure of the culprit was not enough for the people of those days and particularly in New England for the parson must be given a chance to display his powers and so the offender was often set in a public place in the church that he might be prayed and preached over and which were too often in the form of objurgations, and, further, this sermon was sometimes printed and sold for it was among the parson's greatest efforts.

This was a time of cruelty toward all living creatures whether beasts or men both in the old country and the new, probably somewhat the effect of the heavy and habitual indulgence in alcoholic drinks by all the people, thus deadening to an extent the higher sensibilities. These public displays must have hardened the people and in particular to have accustomed the young to such and to view crime as meriting open punishment without regard to the feelings of the one exposed. Yet some of the young people must have been affected in an opposite manner for there was a growing away from this form of punishment and of cruelty and which has continued down to the present time where the welfare and individuality of the offender is being more and more considered.

These people of the olden times very greatly feared ridicule, especially of being called names, and hence the ways of punishment were so devised as to place the culprit in a ridiculous position and so that he could not resist the insults inflicted upon him by his fellow-men. The colonists were forever resisting insults by bringing suits in petty slander and libel cases. Men in public positions were in particular jealous of their power and official honor and resented and punished affronts against themselves or their offices or their public doings. Although all classes of people were greatly affected by ridicule and slander, it would seem that schoolmasters and parsons were the most active against such, as is shown from the old court records.

One of the earliest of these instruments of punishment was the bilboes. This consisted of shackles attached to a heavy iron bolt or bar into which shackles the legs were thrust and then locked in with a padlock. Sometimes there was a chain on the end of the bar which was fastened to the floor or it might have been to the wall or a post so that the offender's legs were pulled up high to make his position the more ridiculous and painful. The bilboes were not greatly in use in the colonies and they were soon superseded by the stocks and the pillory. The stocks were made of two heavy timbers, one coming down on the other, with circular openings in them for holding the legs of the culprit, and sometimes also smaller openings for the arms. The upper timber was raised, the legs of the culprit placed in the openings and then kept tight by closing down the upper piece and fastening it. The one in the stocks usually sat on a low bench. The pillory consisted of two pieces of timbers as with the stocks and attached to two upright pieces at either end at about the height of a man's shoulders. There were three circular openings in the timbers, one for the neck and two small ones for the wrists. The neck and arms were placed in these openings and confined as the legs were in the stocks, leaving the head and hands hanging out exposed, the culprit standing.

The ducking stool was specially designed for scolding women, though also used for other offenses. There were different forms. The following description of one of these instruments and its use is said to be from a letter giving an account of a ducking in Virginia in 1634:

"The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon I saw this punishment given to one Betsy wife of John Tucker who by ye violence of her tongue has made his house and ye neighborhood uncomfortable. She was taken to ye pond near where I am sojourning by ye officer who was joined by ye Magistrate and ye Minister Mr. Cotton who had frequently admonished her and a large number of People. They had a machine for ye purpose yt belongs to ye parish, and which I was so told had been so used three times this Summer. It is a platform with 4 small rollers or wheels and two upright posts between which works a Lever by a Rope fastened to its shorter or heavier end. At ye end of ye longer arm is fixed a stool upon which sd Betsey was fastened by cords, her gown tied fast around her feete. The Machine was then moved up to ye edge of ye pond, ye Rope was slackened by ye officer and ye woman was allowed to go down under ye water for ye space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout stomach, and would not yield until she had allowed herself to be ducked 5 several times. At length she cried piteously, Let me go Let me go, by God's help I'll sin no more. Then they drew back ye Machine, untied ye Ropes and let her walk home in her wetted clothes a hopefully penitent woman."355

The pillory itself was not sufficient punishment, for too often the ears of the offender were nailed back to the wood by his head and when the head was removed from the pillory sometimes the nails were not pulled and the ears thus released but the ears were split out of the nails. The cutting off the ears of the offender was of rather frequent occurrence. The brank or scold's bridle, a kind of head-piece with a spiked plate or flat tongue of iron to be placed in the mouth, was a cruel instrument that seems not to have been used in the colonies, as they used a cleft stick into which the tongue was inserted. Another form of punishment was the placing of a letter or inscription on the offender, sometimes the letter was of a conspicuous color and sewed on to the garment in a conspicuous place. The ears were not the only part to be maimed, for the nostrils were slit and the cheeks and forehead were gashed and the tongue was bored through with an awl, or even with a hot iron. Branding with a hot iron was a common enough form of punishment and to make it the more striking it was often done on the forehead or the cheek or on the hands.

Whipping became a common and frequent punishment and it was used for a number of different kinds of offenses. In New York in the time of Dutch control two of the most common causes for whipping was drunkenness and theft. In New England whipping was used as a punishment for lying, swearing, taking false toll, perjury, selling rum to the Indians, drunkenness, slander, name-calling, making false love to a young woman in which a pretense of marriage was used, and for other crimes. One of the greatest crimes in New England was idleness and "transients" as they were called, people who would not settle down and keep at steady work, were often whipped from town to town, for they were not allowed to remain anywhere very long. "So common were whippings in the southern colonies at the date of settlement of the country, that in Virginia even 'launderers and launderesses' who 'dare to wash any uncleane Linen, drive bucks, or throw out the open water or suds of fowle clothes in the open streetes,' or who took pay for washing for a soldier or laborer, or who gave old torn linen for good linen, were severely whipped. Many other offenses were punished by whipping in Virginia, such as slitting the ears of hogs, or cutting off the ends of hog's ears—thereby removing ear-marks and destroying claim to perambulatory property—stealing tobacco, running away from home, drunkenness, destruction of land-marks."356

Sometimes the offender was tied to the tail of a cart and whipped through the streets, sometimes he was whipped at the pillory, but most often the whipping-post was used. "There was a whipping-post on Queen Street in Boston, another on the Common, another on State Street, and they were constantly in use in Boston in Revolutionary times. Samuel Breck wrote of the year 1771:

"'The large whipping-post painted red stood conspicuously and prominently in the most public street in the town. It was placed in State Street directly under the window of a great writing school which I frequented, and from there the scholars were indulged in the spectacle of all kinds of punishment suited to harden their hearts and brutalize their feelings.'"357

Women as well as men were whipped. Sometimes the whipping was done in the jail-yard, sometimes at the whipping-post, and sometimes even at the tail of a cart, this last was a common enough form used on the Quaker women in Massachusetts. The following would imply that sex did not greatly appeal to the colonists. "In the 'Pticuler' Court of Connecticut this entry appears: May 12, 1668.... Mary Wilton, the wife of Nicholas Wilton, for contemptuous and reproachful terms by her put on one of the Assistants are adjudged she to be whipt 6 stripes upon the naked body next training day at Windsor."358 "From a New York newspaper, dated 1712, I learn that one woman at the whipping-post 'created much amusement by her resistance.'"359 Quoting further from Samuel Breck about the whipping-post in Boston in 1771: "Here women were taken in a huge cage in which they were dragged on wheels from prison, and tied to the post with bare backs on which thirty or forty lashes were bestowed among the screams of the culprit and the uproar of the mob."360 "In Virginia in 1664 Major Robbins brought suit against one Mary Powell for 'scandalous speaches' against Rev. Mr. Teackle, for which she was ordered to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders and to be banished the country."361

This gruesome story of public punishments may well be ended with the most gruesome part of all, that of public hangings. Far greater than the amusement afforded our old colonial ancestors by witnessing the whipping or maiming or branding of offenders or even the getting to rail at them set in stocks, bilboes, cage, or pillory, was the thrilling spectacle of a public execution and which became all the greater gala day if several persons were hanged together at the one occasion. One of the greatest of these exhibitions occurred at Boston on June 30, 1704, when seven pirates were executed. "Sermons were preached in their Hearing Every Day, And Prayers made daily with them. And they were Catechized and they had many Occasional exhortations. Yet as they led a wicked and vitious life so to appearance they died very obdurately and impenitently hardened in their sin."362 So ran the account in the News Letter in an "extra" for the event. Of course such a noted happening could not have escaped so good a chronicler as Judge Sewall for he gave the following account of this hanging in his diary:

"After dinner about 3 p. m. I went to see the Execution. Many were the people that saw upon Broughtons Hill. But when I came to see how the River was covered with People I was amazed; Some say there were 100 boats. 150 Boats & Canoes saith Cousin Moody of York. He Told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Captain Quelch & 6 others for Execution from the Prison to Scarletts Wharf and from thence in Boat to the place of Execution. When the Scaffold was hoisted to a due height the seven Malefactors went up. Mr. Mather pray'd for them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fastened to the Gallows save King who was Reprieved. When the Scaffold was let to sink there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard and was much surprised at it, yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place."363

Manufactures.

The colonists were very busy people. This was particularly true of the earlier times when nature had to be conquered. They had to make a great many of their own implements and to learn to use in a skillful manner the few tools they had. They had to learn to adapt the materials that nature furnished and to shape them into forms best fitted for their work. They learned to select the natural forms of things that could serve various purposes. They had two tools, the ax and the knife, that were readily and skillfully used in home manufacturing.

The colonists cut and shaped the logs for their houses and made stanchions and clapboards and shingles and laths. They selected pieces of timber and trimmed them for snaths for their scythes and flails, sled-runners and thills for carts, hames and ox-yokes, stakes and poles for various uses, whip-stalks and ax-handles, and handles for spades. They made salt-mortars, hog troughs, maple-sap troughs, and similar articles by burning and scraping out logs cut to the lengths wanted. They made wooden hinges and door-latches and buttons for fastening doors. They made spinning-wheels and reels and looms and the things used with them. They made various kinds of wooden bowls and trays and spoons for household use. They learned from the Indians how to make brooms by taking the length of a small birch tree and slitting the lower end into a brush and shaping the upper end into a handle; they also learned to make a broom by tying about a handle hemlock branches together for the brush. They made spoons from clam-shells set in split sticks. They used gourd-shells for bowls and skimmers and dipper and bottles and pumpkin-shells for seed and grain holders. Turkey-wings were used for hearth-brushes. There was one implement that the colonist in his frontier life spent much time on and that was the powder-horn. "Months of the patient work of every spare moment was spent in beautifying them, and their quaintness, variety, and individuality are a never-ceasing delight to the antiquary. Maps, plans, legends, verses, portraits, landscapes, family history, crests, dates of births, marriages and deaths, lists of battles, patriotic and religious sentiments, all may be found on powder-horns. They have in many cases proved valuable historical records, and have sometimes been the only records of events."364

Boys' Work and Manufactures.

It is not to be wondered at that great men arose in the early history of our country, for the young were so trained to work that the whole physical being of the boy was cultivated, and so when a great brain came there was a sound body in which to keep it and help it. A boy's life on a farm is thus described by one who went through it:

"The boy was taught that laziness was the worst form of original sin. Hence he must rise early and make himself useful before he went to school, must be diligent there in study, and promptly home to do 'chores' at evening. His whole time out of school must be filled up with some service, such as bringing in fuel for the day, cutting potatoes for the sheep, feeding the swine, watering the horses, picking the berries, gathering the vegetables, spooling the yarn. He was expected never to be reluctant and not often tired."365

Not only did the boy have to work hard, but also, at least in New England, he had to provide his own spending money, and various were the ways he devised to obtain it. The boy's jack-knife was a great instrument and highly prized, for with it he not only made things for his own use but also to sell to procure spending money. With knives and mallets the boys split out shoe-pegs from maple sticks. They made and set teeth in wool-cards. They made traps and caught wild animals. They made birch splinter brooms. One man stated in London during the middle of the eighteenth century that when a boy in New Hampshire his only spending money was earned by making these brooms and carrying them on his back ten miles to town to sell them. The boys whittled cheese-ladders and cheese-hoops and butter-paddles for their mothers' use. They collected the bristles from the hogs at hog-killing time and sold them for brush-making. They gathered nuts and berries and wild cherries, the cherries being used in making cherry-rum and cherry-bounce. Tying onions was another means of money-making. The older boys sometimes made staves and shingles. Where a boy could turn a hand for making a little money for himself he did it.

Girls' and Women's Work.

In the colonial days everybody worked and the girls and women did their share of it. The following quotations well show this. In the last half of the eighteenth century the qualifications of a housekeeper were such as asked for in the following advertisement:

"Wanted at a Seat about half a day's journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to such a character."366

"There is, in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society, a diary written by a young girl of Colchester, Connecticut, in the year 1775. Her name was Abigail Foote. She set down her daily work, and the entries run like this:

'Fix'd gown for Prude,—Mend Mother's Riding-hood,—Spun short thread,—Fix'd two gowns for Welsh's girls,—Carded tow,—Spun linen,—Worked on Cheese-basket,—Hatchel'd flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs. apiece,—Pleated and ironed,—Read a Sermon of Doddridge's,—Spooled a piece,—Milked the cows,—Spun linen, did 50 knots,—Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw,—Spun thread to whiten,—Set a Red dye,—Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor's,—I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly,—Spun harness twine,—Scoured the pewter.'

"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.