Chapter III: Part 3

Although in the first half of the eighteenth century religious fanaticism was on the decline in Europe it held sway still, in a measure, in the colonies. There had been many instances of intolerance and tyranny on the part of the clergy in the past. Cotton Mather's implacable spirit found vent in the superstition and cruelty that characterized the Salem Witchcraft, while other ministerial leaders were prominent in the persecution of the Quakers. Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince were educated under the Cottons and Mathers, but their lives presented a striking contrast to these fiery expounders of the Christian faith. Tolerance, benevolence, and humility shone conspicuously in their united careers. The serious character of the books collected and read by young Prince from his tenth year shows not only his daily training, but the inherent tendency of his mind toward that profession which he afterwards adorned. Mr. Sewall, his colleague, says of him, "That his crowning glory was that he was pious from his youth." He entered Harvard College at sixteen, and, after graduating, devoted two years to the study of divinity in Cambridge. His acquirements in theology, science, and history were marvellous, and, with his diligence and love of research, he turned with great energy to Europe as a wider field, where he could add indefinitely to his already fine attainments, and where the ease and grace of an older civilization left their stamp on his future deportment and endeared him to his people and the whole community. In 1709 he sailed for England by the way of Barbadoes, thence to Madeira, and, after another trip to Barbadoes, he finally settled in England in October, 1710, making his home there seven years. There is one volume of his journal covering this period, bound in vellum, at the Massachusetts Historical rooms, presented by the Rev. Chandler Robbins. It is a miracle of neatness and precision, but in such fine penmanship that it is difficult to decipher. His love of detail is manifest in the most accurate information in regard to the ship's progress in her various voyages; and in his account of the small-pox and measles, both of which diseases assailed him at this time, the daily symptoms were chronicled in the most vivid manner. He attended theological lectures in London and at various universities, becoming in 1711 pastor of a church in Combs, Suffolk County, England. For six years this young American pursued his profession with enthusiasm, in the midst of a population who were devoted to him. Before returning to America he formed a church at Battisford, next parish to Combs, and when he returned to his native land many of his congregation came with him.

The chapel was then closed; one part of the flock settled at Needham Market, the other at Stowmarket,--these churches still existing. In Combs began the romantic period of his life. He became interested in Deborah Denny, a child of twelve when he came to the village, who grew up under his ministrations. Her family for centuries was famed for its piety and was thoroughly devoted to the interests of the church. Her training had been as strict in religious matters as Mr. Prince's. In her eighteenth year Deborah sailed for America, with her brother Samuel, to join another brother, who had settled here previously. Mr. Prince took passage on the same vessel, and two years later they were married at the house of her brother, Daniel Denny, at Leicester, by Rev. Joseph Sewall, Mr. Prince being ten years older than his bride. He had been urged to continue his residence abroad; but his longings for home were too powerful for their inducements, and later in life he was known to have regretted spending so many years away from what he then had learned to consider his true sphere of usefulness.

He landed in Boston on a July Sunday, 1717. He notes it thus in his journal: "The captain sent his pinnace to carry me up. I landed at Long Wharf about three quarters of an hour before the meeting began, and by that means escaped the crowds of people, five hundred it was said, who came down on the wharf at noon, inquiring for me. But now, the streets being clear, I silently went up to the Old South Meeting House, where no one knew me but Mr. Sewall, in the pulpit." The churches of Hingham, Bristol, and the Old South gave him urgent calls to become their pastor. His choice fell upon the Old South, whose pastor, Mr. Sewall, was a cherished friend and classmate.

Mrs. Grace Denny, Mrs. Prince's mother, in her letters to "daughter Prince," regretted that she was to be subject to the temptations of a city life, fearing it would be a snare and hindrance to her growth in grace, and advocated the choice of Hingham as a residence. In 1719 Boston was a goodly town of only twelve thousand inhabitants, governed with strict Puritan laws, some of which were even oppressive, giving small opportunity to indulge in the frivolities of life, even if one desired, and least of all to a pastoress of the Old South Church.

The church in which Mr. Prince was ordained by Increase and Cotton Mather, and Mr. Sewall, and where he delivered his own ordination sermon to admiring crowds, was not the historical structure of the present day, although it occupied the same site. The street in front was lined with beautiful mulberry trees, and bore the name of 'Marlboro', from the great Duke and General. The parsonage was next door north, and opposite, on Milk street, was the home of Josiah Franklin, where Benjamin was born. There were handsome residences in the vicinity, and the streets even then were paved with cobble-stones.

Rev. Mr. Wisner, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the erection of the present Old South, gave a pleasing account of the lives and work of Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince. He said, "Forty years these excellent men associated and labored for this congregation, in firm friendship, in perfect unity, which few can emulate. Their journals show never a shadow of difference. They had remarkable tempers. Mr. Sewall notes in his journal that he and Mr. Prince always prayed together before their different church services, and occasionally spent portions of a day mutually devoted to private humiliation in united prayer."

The present meeting-house was erected in 1729. A day was set apart "to humble themselves before God, for all their unfruitfulness under the means of grace enjoyed in the old meeting-house, and to bless the building of another one."

Mr. Sewall prayed with the workmen before they began to take down the house. It is curious to note the remarkable faith in direct answer to prayer in those days. President Dwight lays emphasis upon the fact, and gives the following instance in the life of Mr. Prince as evidence: "It was the destruction of the French fleet, under Duke D'Anville, in 1746. Forty ships of war, destined for the destruction of New England, were fitted out at Brest for the purpose. Our pious fathers, apprised of the danger, called a meeting for fasting and prayer. While Mr. Prince was officiating and praying most devoutly to God to avert the calamity, a sudden gust of wind arose (the day had been perfectly calm and clear), so violent as to cause a loud clattering of the windows. The reverend pastor paused in his prayer, and, looking around upon the congregation with a countenance of hope, he again commenced, and with great devotional ardor supplicated the Almighty to cause that wind to frustrate the object of our enemies, and save the country from conquest and popery. A tempest ensued, in which a greater part of the French fleet was wrecked on the coast of Nova Scotia. The Duke D'Anville committed suicide. Many died with disease, and thousands were consigned to a watery grave. The small number who survived returned to France, broken in health and spirits,--the enterprise was abandoned, and never renewed." Many who were present have left accounts of Mr. Prince's earnestness on this occasion.

Probably no two men could be more devoted to the religious interests of their church and the community at large than these, yet Mr. Prince records, eighteen years after the beginning of his pastorate, that the ministers of Boston made an extraordinary effort to arrest the decay of godliness, but with no abiding results, and this was particularly noticeable in his own congregation. There seemed to be no change in this respect until the coming of Whitfield, in 1740, when he preached "to breathless thousands in the old South Church." Mr. Prince welcomed this apostle with enthusiasm. His own sermons were full of vigor, and a brilliant imagination embellished them with abundant illustrations, but depth of thought and zealous research made the majority of his writings far above the comprehension of the multitude. His printed funeral sermons are quaint in their deep, black borders, with drawings of death's heads similar to those that adorned the tombstones. His sermon after the death of George I. may have embodied the feeling prevalent at that time; but, in view of the more critical light thrown upon the character and reigns of the Georges by historians and satirists of our day, this eulogy is a curiosity, with its almost childish enthusiasm and simple-hearted loyalty. The following are passages from his sermon:--

For my part, I shall never forget the joy that swelled my heart
when in the Splendid Procession, at his Coronation, preceded by all
the nobles of the kingdom and his son and heir-apparent, one other
hope, with their Ermine Robes and Coronets, that Royal face at
length appeared, which Heaven had in that moment sent to save these
Great Nations from the Brink of Ruin. Nor do I speak of it as my
case alone, but as what appeared to be the equal transport of the
multitudes around me. The tears of joy seemed to rise and swell in
every eye, and we were hardly able to give a shout thro' the
laboring passions that were swelling in us. He was in some respects
a Father to the Kings of the earth, or at least a powerful and
decisive mediator and umpire among them. The eyes of the greatest
princes were turned to him. In these distant parts of his Dominion
we have felt the happy influences of his happy reign. He was the
darling and protection of his people, the great support of the
reformed interest and the arbiter of Europe. George II. is a Prince
of winning countenance and manly aspect, had considerable treasure
of useful learning, and with him a most amiable Princess, the
reigning glory of her sex for beauty, knowledge, wit, discretion,
the sweetest temper, the most cheerful, affable and engaging
countenance and carriage, with every charming virtue; in the bloom
of her youth preferred her chaste religion to all the glories of
the Imperial family, and became the love and admiration of every
protestant.

President Cheney says of Mr. Prince "he may be justly characterized as one of our great men;" but he deplored that he sometimes devoted so much attention to minute and trifling circumstances of things, and gave too great credit to surprising stories. This, no doubt, may at times have been unnecessary, and would certainly be a failing at the present time, when writing on all subjects is so universal; but in Mr. Prince's case it took the form of an advantage to posterity, as this love of detail caused him to hand down to all generations the most life-like descriptions of daily life and conversation of his own and remote times. Although he saw a particular providence in every act, every word, every wind that blew, and every storm that arose, yet Mr. Sewall said of him, "that the great truths and doctrines of the Gospel were his chosen subjects. He spake as the oracles of God, as one that felt the Divine Excellence. Some of his discourses even have received impressions in England."

The great tenderness of his nature was particularly prominent in his family relations. He trained his children in the paths of knowledge, his well-disciplined mind making him a safe and wise teacher; while, like him, they were pious from their youth. His only son graduated with honor from his own college, and had just started on a literary career with flattering success, when consumption caused his death, in his twenty-fourth year. Two daughters, also, at the early ages of twenty and twenty-two, were taken from the household, and in their old age one daughter only was left to these parents. Mr. Prince's contemporaries speak of his wonderful resignation at these repeated afflictions. His sermon on the death of his daughter Deborah gives the religious experience of a young girl who, in those rigorous Calvinistic days, had her sweet young life overshadowed by the terror of God's wrath for what she considered her unbelief. A few extracts will give a good idea of Mr. Prince's impassioned, pathetic, and even dramatic style, and his apparently "trifling details" add vividness to the picture. His son besought him to dispense with the custom of a funeral oration in his case; but the feelings of the father were sacrificed to what he considered his duty to the youth of his congregation on the occasion of his daughter's death.

He said: "You have known her character; I need not give it to this assembly, and I am more especially restrained, not only by my near relation, but by what she said to me, with all the emotions of a grieved heart, three or four days before her death. 'Dear father, I have been told you speak to people in my commendation. I beg you would not. I am a poor, miserable sinner; you cannot think how it grieves me.' On these accounts I must forbear her character; but because God's dealings with her, both before and in her sickness, have been remarkable, I cannot but think it will be for his glory and your advantage to present some of them to you. As she grew up, God was pleased to refrain her from vanities, move her to study her Bible and best of authors, both of history and divinity. Dr. Watts and Mrs. Rowe's writings were familiar to her. The spirit of God worked upon her at fourteen, but she did not join the church until two years later, when she narrowly escaped drowning, in her father's bosom. For, as I had just received her in my arms, in a boat, in order to go on board a vessel in the harbor, bound to her Uncle Denny's, at Georgetown, on the Kennebec river, the boat steered off, and I fell back with her into the salt water, ten feet deep, with which she was almost filled, and we both continued under it, out of sight of her brother and sister looking on, for about a minute. If a couple of strangers from Connecticut had not been near at hand to reach her quickly, in a minute or more she had been past recovery....

"In all weathers she sought the house of God, and she was afraid of being deceived. Though her jealousies and fears were troublesome, I think they were useful. Sometimes she had light and comfort; oftener otherwise. In her twentieth year she had a fever, and from the first she thought she should not live, complained of her stupidity of mind, impenitence and unbelief. I came home from afternoon exercise, found her so ill that her mother thought herself obliged to tell her, upon which she thanked her for her kindness, but quickly fell into great distress on being unprepared for eternity. It would break a heart of stone to hear her: 'Oh! dear sir, what shall I do?' ... Oh! the horrors of that night. It was one of the most distressing I ever knew. She wouldn't close her eyes for fear of dying. In the morning was a little more resigned, fell asleep, awoke refreshed, but still in darkness. 'Oh! dear father,' she would say, 'I have dreadfully apostatized from Christ.' Mr. Sewall and I labored with her for days, but we found nobody but the Almighty could do it.

"Dr. Sewall said, 'If she died in darkness, we should have good ground to hope that she would awake in glory.' To everything he would say she would reply, 'I cannot believe.' You must be sensible of a distressed father's heart, putting his soul in her soul's place for many weeks.

"Incessant prayers were offered for her in public and private, by relations and friends who loved her, but until the last half hour of her life were unanswered. She was in agonies of death all the while Mr. Sewall was praying. When he and the physician left, I told her they could do nothing more. She was calm and composed, but did not speak.... It was so dismal to see her depart in darkness. Oh! the distress in that room. I held her in my arms, she opened her eyes and spoke a new language: 'Oh! I love the Lord with all my heart. I see such an amiableness in him, I prize him above a thousand worlds.' I said, 'Dear child, what have you to say to me?'--'Oh! sir, that you may be more fervent in your ministry, in exhorting and expostulating with sinners.' I never saw such a change in a sick room, from distress to joy when I reported her words. I could scarcely have thought a father, mother, brother and sister could have been so transported in the expiring moments of one so dear to them."

This discourse was published in Edinboro' after his death. His daughter Sarah, afterwards wife of Lieut.-Gov. Gill, survived her parents a few years, but died, without children in 1771. She was also deeply religious, and some of her writings were published in Edinboro' after her death.

Mr. Prince's life, aside from his domestic afflictions, seems to have flowed on in peaceful paths, that ran their quiet course between the hardships of the early years of the colonies and the rising passions and frequent strifes that reigned, particularly in New England, for years before the Revolutionary war. His whole nature, tuned to harmony and peaceful avocations, developed in its proper channel. The comparative quiet of the first half of the eighteenth century permitted a thorough devotion to his allotted pursuits. His forty years' pastorate in Boston left their trace of love and good-will in seed which can never be destroyed, and his indefatigable industry and painstaking perseverance are lessons that could be of benefit to all generations.

He inherited a large property from his father. Beside other lands, acquired and inherited, he owned the tract which is covered by the town of Princeton, including Wachusett mountain, the town deriving its name from him. In the Boylston Mansion at Princeton, there is a beautiful crayon portrait of Mrs. Sarah Gill, his daughter, executed by Copley. There is also a fine tall clock, which belonged to Mr. Prince, in the possession of Mrs. Addison Denny, at Leicester. Mr. Prince brought it with him from England in 1717; the whole case is in raised Japanese work, and the face decorations very elaborate. It was made by Thomas Wagstaffe, of London, and his descendants still make clocks at the same shop, by hand and under the same name.

Mr. Prince died in 1757, after a year's illness, at seventy-two years of age. The _Weekly Gazette_ said, in announcing his death: "His performances in pulpit evidence a vast compass of thought, a sublime imagination, a great faith and zeal. In printed composures there is a fertility of invention, correctness of sentiment, sprightliness of expression, that must delight every reader, and transmit his name to posterity in the most advantageous light. His private life was amiable and exemplary, adorned with grace and virtues. A useful member of civil society. His consort has lost an affectionate husband; his only surviving daughter, a tender father; his servants, an indulgent master; his acquaintances, a kind, condescending friend; his church, an enlightened and vigilant pastor; his country, a zealous advocate of civil and religious liberty. Took farewell to this world with humble resignation to the will of God, and entire dependence on our Lord Jesus Christ, and a good hope of Immortality."

NEW ENGLAND MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN THE TIME OF BRYANT'S EARLY LIFE.

BY MRS. H. G. ROWE.

Ninety-one years ago, in the little town of Cummington, Mass., was born a child, who was destined, in after years, to be the first of a grand line of American poets, who have made this, the second century of our Republic, famous by their genius and originality.

Not long since, in looking over an old magazine, published in Philadelphia in 1809, I came across quite an extended review of Campbell's, then just issued, poem, "Gertrude of Wyoming," and was not a little amused at the closing comments.

After a little mild praise, and a good deal of equally mild criticism, of the Scotch poet, the editor goes on to say:--

"But, after all, although lesser poets are constantly rising above the literary horizon, challenging the admiration of the reading world for a few short months,--possibly years,--and then sinking into the obscurity of a forgotten past, the sun of English poetry has set forever. With Pope, Milton, and Dryden, England lost her last true poets. Henceforth all who claim that title must be more or less skilful _imitators_ merely of the great masters who have gone before them.

"As for America," he continues, with the most unpatriotic candor, "there is not the smallest chance of her ever producing a real poet. Ingenious scribblers she may have, without doubt, but the typical American never had or will have one grain of poetry in his hard, shrewd, matter-of-fact nature."

This was the verdict of a Philadelphia editor seventy-six years ago. To-day the bust of our own Longfellow stands in Westminster Abbey, side by side with a Chaucer and a Shakspere, while not only the English-speaking world on both sides of the ocean, but the dwellers in sunny Italy, upon the frozen steppes of Russia, and in far-off Japan and India, sing and repeat, each in his own tongue, the stirring battle-hymns and sweet home-songs of the gifted singers of our Western World.

We are often reminded that a writer's environments have much to do with the character of his writings, and in Bryant's case this fact is particularly noticeable.

His earliest poems, and especially that great masterpiece, "Thanatopsis," written at the early age of eighteen, show unmistakably that the boy had grown up in the closest familiarity with the theological tenets of the New England of his day, and that the bent of his young mind was, even then, toward graver subjects than would naturally occupy the thoughts of a boy of that age.

His biographers assert that he drew his inspiration for this grand poem from the pages of Kirke White and Southey. But whatever his acquaintance with these poets may have done for him, there is a striking similarity of imagery and sentiment between his own and the writings of the sacred bards, whose utterances were as familiar to the children of a Christian household in those days as their own childish nursery songs and hymns.

For instance, compare these lines from "Thanatopsis" with a well-known passage in the Book of Job:--

"... Yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep,--the dead reign there alone."

The sacred poet says:--

"Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb.
The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw
after him as there are innumerable before him."

Then, again, in "The Old Man's Funeral":--

"Then rose another hoary man, and said,
In faltering accents, to that weeping train:
'Why mourn ye that our aged friend is dead?
Ye are not sad to see the gathered grain.'"

Compare this with:

"Thou shall come to the grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn
cometh in his season."

Examples similar to these occur in many of Bryant's poems, and tend to show the result of the early religious training, that, as the son of a thoughtful, God-fearing New England gentleman of that day, he most certainly did receive.

That he was intensely, grandly, sometimes fiercely patriotic, is also due, in a great measure, to the surrounding influences of his young life.

The struggle for American independence was at last over, and the lusty young Republic, springing, Minerva-like, from the mighty brain of a no longer imperilled freedom, was ready to throw down the gauntlet of defiance to all the world, and assert her rights as queen regnant of the great Western World.

The armies had been disbanded, and the war-scarred veterans had joyfully returned to their farms and workshops, ready to put their willing hands again to the plough and the plane, and help to restore, by patient toil and honest legislation, prosperity and peace to the land so long distracted by the commotions and uncertainties of war.

Later, his days of toil over, the old soldier sat him down, in restful content, by his own peaceful fireside, while, with the old musket in its honored place above the tall wooden mantle, he fought over again, in memory, his old-time battles, and to sons and grandsons taught, in thrilling, patriotic words, the great lesson to love and revere their country next to their God.

As a boy, no doubt, young Bryant had listened to many of the tales of these honored veterans, and had drank in, with the air of his own native village, long draughts of their fervid patriotism, that animated his writings down to the latest years of his life.

That he had seen with his own eyes some of the leading spirits in that great national struggle, who still lived to honor and be honored by the nation that they had fought so bravely to free from a foreign yoke, is shown by an extract from one of his few humorous poems, in which he says:--

"I pause to state
That I, too, have seen greatness--even I--
Shook hands with Adams, stared at Lafayette,
When, barehead, in the hot noon of July,
He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,
For which three cheers burst from the mob before him."

Patriotic, religious, philosophical, and a true lover of nature, yet Bryant cannot, in any mood, be styled one of our fireside poets, like Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell.

Perhaps he failed to see in the then bare loneliness of the typical New England home a beauty worth the attention of his fastidious and lofty-minded muse. And that New England homes, at that time, were bare of what we, to-day, deem the absolute necessities of life, no student of the past pretends to deny.

The long war had drained and impoverished the country; our manufactures and commerce were then in their infancy; the whole machinery of our recently organized government was new, and the hands that worked it, however wise and brave they might be, were untried, and had much to learn before the ponderous works could be brought into perfect running order.

Worst of all, President Jefferson, in 1807, laid an embargo upon American shipping, thus unwittingly striking a terrible blow at our foreign commerce, in his endeavor to force England into an amicable settlement of certain difficulties that had arisen between her and the young Republic. This, and the two years' war with England, that broke out in 1812, made hard times for everybody, and taxed the magnanimity and skill of our foremothers to their utmost to make their homes and families present a decent and respectable appearance.

The very poor then, as now, were forced to content themselves with the barest decencies of life. But the respectable middle classes,--the farmers, mechanics, and small merchants,--were put to the greatest straits to keep up an appearance of respectability and comfort, with scant conveniences, and few or none of even the simplest elegancies of life, in dwelling, dress, or furniture.

The principal room of a New England farm-house was the kitchen, which was usually large enough to serve for a cooking, dining, and sitting room, all in one.

The enormous fireplace, with its long, soot-blackened crane, hung with hooks of various sizes, the massive iron andirons, strong enough to hold the great birch and birchen logs, that often taxed the strength of a full-grown man to lift and adjust in their places, occupied a large part of one side of the room, and served as a kind of family altar, about which the family, with their guests and friends, always assembled, in quiet chat or friendly gossip.

And a cheery spot it was, especially in those long, dark evenings in midwinter, when the ruddy, dancing flames went laughing up the great throat of the chimney, chasing the venturesome, wayward sparks, as they hurried out into the untried darkness of the winter's night. With what a genial glow they lighted up the bare, unplastered walls, the sanded floor, the rough rafters overhead, and the scant, clumsily-fashioned furniture, until

"The rude, bare-raftered room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."

Nor must we forget that seldom wanting, always interesting, piece of furniture, to which was sure to be accorded the warmest, coziest spot in the wide chimney-corner,--the inevitable wooden cradle,--clumsily fashioned by loving, but unskilled hands, and always large enough to hold, besides the reigning baby, two, and, at a pinch, three, of the younger members of the household.

How the favored youngsters delighted in a ride in that clumsy old vehicle, nor dreamed that its halting, uncertain gait was other than the very poetry of motion! Even mother's own wooden rocking-chair, a bit of boughten elegance, with its gay patchwork cushion, and dull, contented "creak! creak!" as its dear occupant swayed meditatively to and fro, knitting in hand, in the quiet, restful gloaming, was not quite equal to that dear, delightful old cradle, for a good brisk canter to "Banbury Cross," or to the famous hunting grounds, where "Baby Bunting's rabbit skin" was waiting for him.

Many a man, and woman too, whose names are, to-day, blessed and honored by thousands of grateful hearts all over the land, dreamed then their first misty, childish dreams of a grand and helpful manhood and womanhood, and felt swelling up within their young souls inexpressible longings to help right the wrongs of the down-trodden and oppressed, which they heard their elders talk of, and deplore as past remedy.

The light of other days was simply a home-made tallow candle, and as matches were not then invented, careful housewives never suffered the kitchen-fire, even in the hottest days of summer, to die out entirely. The frequent sight of a child running to the nearest neighbor's, with a long-handled iron fire-shovel in hand, to "borry a few coals ter start the fire up," was looked upon as a sure sign of slack housewifery; and no woman might lay claim to the distinction of a good housekeeper who failed to renew her cedar broom as often as every other week.

Equal simplicity in dress prevailed, and a gown of bombazette--a very narrow, all-wool goods, worth from seventy-five cents to a dollar a yard,--was often worn for best during the owner's lifetime, and at her death bequeathed, with the fondly-cherished string of gold beads, to the favorite granddaughter, as a precious legacy.

For common wear, pressed home-made and home-dyed flannel in winter; and cotton and linen, woven in colored stripes or plaids, for summer, was considered plenty good enough, even for the doctor's and minister's wives. Under flannels were an unheard-of luxury. And one ceases to wonder at the frequency of hereditary consumption, in our own day, when he reads that fashionable city ladies, in the very depths of a Northern winter, walked the icy streets in thin cotton or silk stockings and low, pointed, high-heeled morocco shoes. Rubbers being then unknown, and the shoes of stout calf-skin, that their country cousins were only too glad to get, were disdained by these dainty dames as coarse and unlady-like.

A girl carded, spun, wove, bleached, and made her one white linen gown, lavishing upon it all her simple art of needlecraft, every seam and hem stitched by the old-time rule, "take up one thread and skip two," and, perhaps, embroidering a pattern of tiny sprays and eyelets upon the bosom and sleeves, to give it an air of special gentility.

Finished at last, this choice bit of girlish finery probably served its owner for a wedding-dress, and afterwards was cut up into slips for the babies.

Matrons, young as well as old, wore caps of plain white muslin, made after the same fashion as the round, sweeping caps that tidy housekeepers wear at the present day. The younger and gayer ones, who had no scruples of conscience on the subject, wore their caps adorned with bright ribbons, while the elderly and more sedate contented themselves with a plain band of black, across the front, and pinned primly at the back, without bow or knot.

After the death of Washington, in 1799, besides the band of crape that every citizen of the United States, by the desire of Congress, wore upon his left arm for thirty days, many of the loyal matrons provided themselves with mourning-cap ribbons, upon which was stamped, in white letters, upon a black ground:

"General George Washington,
Departed this life on the 14th of December,
1799, AE. 68,"

--a fac-simile of the inscription upon the coffin-plate of that illustrious and well-beloved chief. The wool and flax were home productions, but the cotton was brought, in a raw state, from the West Indies.

It was first picked over very carefully, to remove the seeds and stray bits of foreign rubbish, then "batted," that is, made into small pats, each large enough to be carded into a roll, which was spun into thread upon either a wool or linnen wheel. This "batting" usually fell to the lot of the children of the family, who probably found the monotonous task as little to their taste as their grandchildren do, when required to wash the dishes or saw wood for the cooking-stove.

Woven plain, by the skilful hands of the housemother, and bleached upon the young grass under the blossoming apple boughs, the cloth served for the underwear of the family, and was regarded as one of the few luxuries of the frugal household,--the raw cotton costing over fifty cents a pound, to say nothing of the time and labor required to convert it into cloth.

On account of the scarcity of cotton, our modern "comfortables" were a thing unheard of, and, for a substitute, woollen quilts, stuffed with wool, and closely quilted, often in the most elaborate patterns, were used in all New England households. These quilts were often few and thin in many a poor home, where the elders had hard work to shield their flock of little ones from the bitter cold of winter, in spite of the immense fires that even the poorest were able to provide where any amount of fuel could be had for the cutting.

I have heard a story of a good lady who lived at that time in a town not a hundred miles from Boston, which gives one some idea of the straits to which our grandparents were often reduced in those days:--

Watching one bitterly cold night with a sick neighbor, she heard, at midnight, the little children crying with cold in the loft overhead, and leaving her sleeping patient, she went upstairs, and tried to find an extra quilt or blanket to spread over them. But in vain, for in that poor home there was not so much as a shoulder-blanket that could be spared. At last, in utter desperation, she spread over the shivering little ones a _side of leather_, that she found rolled up under the eaves.

"It kept out the cold, anyhow," she said, as she told the story years afterwards. "And the poor little things stopped their cryin', and cuddled down as contented an' comfortable as a nestful o' kittens."

If there was little of poetry or romance in the lives of those hard-working, hard farming men and women of a past generation, there was no lack of the patient diligence and simple, unquestioning faith, that give strength to weakness, and sweeten toil with the steadfast belief that, to the faithful heart and willing hand God's blessing never fails.

One of the favorite proverbs at that time is significant, as proverbs usually are, of the character of the people:--

"Begin your web, and God will supply you with thread."

While still another suggests that well-known element in the New England character that the Scotch aptly call "canny":--

"A wise man will bend a little rather than be torn up by the roots."

Extravagance was more than a fault, it was an actual sin, in the eyes of these prudent, simple-living folk, and you may have heard before the story of the ingenious housewife, who, tired of the blank bareness of her yellow-painted floors, conceived the bold idea of manufacturing a carpet for it herself:

A large square of sail-cloth served her for a canvas, and upon this she painted, with the few colors that she could procure, a pattern of flowers of every kind that she was familiar with,--blue roses and green lilies having the preference, as making more show than their humbler sisters. This, when finished, she covered with a thick coat of varnish, thus making a very good substitute for the more modern oil-cloth.

Of course everybody, from far and near, came to look, and wonder, and admire; and among them a good old deacon, who, after critically surveying the wonderful work, turned to the proud artist, and, with a look half of amazement, half of pitying reproach, upon his honest, weather-beaten face, asked solemnly:--

"Sister ----, do you expect to have _all this_ and _heaven_ too?"

To-day, Boston is sometimes jestingly styled the "Hub of the Universe," but at the beginning of the present century it was, soberly speaking, the Hub of New England, for from it spokes projected into every part, however distant, of that region.

As in past ages all roads led to Rome, so seventy-five or eighty years ago all roads led to or from Boston. In an old Farmer's Almanac, printed in 1817, I find, among other things quaint and curious, four closely-printed pages devoted to "Roads to the Principal Towns of the Continent from Boston, with the distances and names of Innkeepers." Beginning with: "From Boston to Newport, over Seekonk, through Rehoboth, 69 miles," and ending with "Down the Ohio, to the mouth of the Muskinqum, 524 miles,"--a tolerably long ride in those days of the old-fashioned stage coach.

Naturally, this Umbilicus of the Western World set the fashions in theology, literature, dress, and manners for all New England, and any one who had made a trip to Boston was venerated as a kind of travelled wonder, and forever after regarded as an authority upon all mooted points of general interest.

It has been said, on what authority I am unable to state, that "all good Americans go to Paris when they die." But in those days of Boston's supremacy an aspiring dame in one of our Maine villages, finding herself upon her death bed, expressed as her one last wish, that she "might be permitted to go to heaven by the way o' Boston."

Evidently the poor soul had pined in vain all her life for a sight of its splendors, and could think of nothing so near akin to heaven as a peep at this earthly Paradise on her way there.

I might go on indefinitely to call up pictures, heroic, quaint, or pathetic, of these earnest-hearted men and women, who toiled, suffered, and planned, for the future, that we, their children, have entered into the fulness of. But time forbids, and I can only say, in closing this paper, that it will be well for us, if, in these days of national prosperity and power, when Liberty, proudly triumphant, stands like

"A bearded man
Armed to the teeth,"

ready to hold his own alike against traitors at home and envious despotisms abroad, we do not forget with what a world of self-sacrifice and patient toil our forbears laid the foundations of this great, free government; nor should we deem it a light thing to have been born citizens of a Republic a thousand times grander, nobler, and, God grant! far more enduring, than those of heathen Greece and Rome, that have long since fallen to decay, and now lie buried beneath the melancholy dust of centuries.

Let the words of the great poet whose name stands at the head of this paper speak like a word of warning to every heart within their reach:--

"And they who founded in our land
The power that rules from sea to sea,
Bled they in vain, or vainly planned,
To leave their country great and free?
Their sleeping ashes from below
Send up the thrilling murmur, No!"

TRUST.

BY ARTHUR ELWELL JENKS.

Once let us feel the trust a child bestows
Upon the guardian of its life, each day
Would set serenely on our troubled souls!
To help but one of these, or bring again
To lip and eye the smile so full of peace,--
Reflection of some tender mother's love,--

Ah, such were service, that, in future years,
Shall shine upon our devious pathway, as
The evening star lights up the western sky!
O ye who labor for the children's sake,--
Setting these jewels for immortal life,--
The "Well-done!" of the Master shall be yours!

NEW ENGLAND CHARACTERISTICS.

BY LIZZIE M. WHITTLESEY.

"We constantly," as Ruskin affirms, "recognize things by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of these. We recognize our books by their bindings, our friends by the mere accidents of the body, the sport of climate, and food, and time."

Applying this principle to New England, we unconsciously recognize her first by her mere outward, incidental properties.

By the waving of her hair in the "Pine-Tree State," by the frown of her massive brows in the "Granite" and "Green Mountain," by the glancing brightness of her smile in the "Old Bay," by her lithe grace of limb in "Little Rhoda," and her firm step and erect carriage in the "Land of Steady Habits;" while to all alike belong--

"Her clear, warm heaven at noon, the mist that shrouds
Her twilight hills, her cool and starry eves,
The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds,
The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves."

Next to the physical traits of a friend we are attracted by those of a social nature; and, still keeping the analogy, the same is true of a people, and preeminently so of New England.

The characteristics of our four Northern cities have been thus distinctively classified and labelled:--

Washington stops between the polka and the waltz to ask, "Can you dance?" New York shows us her silks and laces, and politely whispers, "What are you worth?"

Philadelphia traces back our genealogy, and questions, "Who was your grandfather?" While Boston lifts her eye-glass, and, surveying our mental cranium, inquires, "What do you know?"

The social traits of New England proper are so combined with her business character that they are with difficulty separated, and both are best defined by foreign visitors.

It was an Englishman who said, "Go ahead is the grand doctrine of New England;" and we see that this principle, plainly enforced and practically carried out, builds her cities, founds her public libraries, carries on her immense commerce, and increases public traffic.

Without this quality, coupled with her independence and disregard for romantic associations, the Yankee would never make pilgrimages to the Old World for the sole and evident purpose of placarding the pyramids, and introducing his invention for removing stains at some half-ruined cathedral whose famous "spot of blood" is cherished with reverent care.

"New England excels," according to an English cousin, "in an openness to ideas, an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush," which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, politician, historian, and minister, Barlow.

It is this quiet independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to "get on," which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective "capable." Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or "keeps house," considering no honest work degrading, and proving herself equally efficient in each.

Here is found that shrewd, stirring common-sense which is New England's strong point. Here is hinted, also, that philosophic humor which is the one ray lightening her intense realism.

As indefinable as it is delightful, it comes with a lightning flash of wit into the dry, theological conversation of the preacher, relieves with its sharp hits the spread-eagle speech of the country orator, brightens with its apt allusions the more refined periods of the lecturer, flits charmingly in and out of the sympathetic essays of Holmes, keeps us in a perpetual chuckle over the mirthful pages of Irving, and embodies itself in the quaint good-nature of an indolent, contemplative Sam Lawson.

For nowhere is this genial quality found in such purity as among the true, rustic Yankees, whose clear-cut, homely phrases and sharp localisms are not as entirely extinct as is supposed. Country life has a way all its own of preserving the best traits of a people, and in more than one old-fashioned farm-house, and among the haymakers in more than one sunny meadow, may be heard the witty expressions and strong metaphors which led Dickens to say, "In shrewdness of remark and a certain cast-iron quaintness the Yankee people unquestionably take the lead."

In the country, too, as if growing and blossoming under the influence of the warm, unobstructed sunshine, is the sturdy growth of genuineness, hearty, cooperative sympathy, and cheery hospitality, the latter having its highest exponent in New England's distinctive festival, Thanksgiving. The dear old holiday may well be called the cradle of New England graces, for it bears much the same relation to the development of her social traits that the old Greek and Roman games bore in developing characteristics of strength and bravery.

To return to the criticism of foreigners. The absence of historic records and relics in New England has often been a matter of contempt, and an amusing story is told by J. T. Fields of a stiff, conventional Englishman who called on the poet Longfellow at one of his busiest hours, and scanning him closely, gravely remarked: "We were doing the sights, sir, and as there are no ruins in New England, we decided to come and see you!"

We smile at the strange idea, but is there not in it a tacit admission that New England's men and women of letters are her best characteristics? Is it not to her glory that hers is _not_ a country of ruins but one of noble, earnest, _living_ men and women?--men like Dr. Hale, instilling by the quiet weapon of the pen strong, true lessons of benevolence and truth; men like Longfellow, singing, pure, earnest songs of high endeavor and noble attainment; men like Whittier, whose simple, touching strains move so grandly on the side of right and justice.

Women like Mrs. Stowe, who, in her great strength of mind and character, wrote that wonderful book, which, inspired by zeal, and fired by a terrible earnestness, filled New England once with something of her own noble enthusiasm. She could do the grand work then, because her country needed it, thus illustrating that strong New England trait, latent power, a power of which we know nothing till it is called out by some mighty need. There have been earnest purpose, determined will, pure motive, and unselfish heroism in New England; but their depth and strength have never been "guessed" till manifested in some great crisis.

Her contests are those of heart and intellect; and her weapons, hard study and earnest thought.

In spite of popular philippics her traits do not change much from the summary of them made fifty years ago, "Impatience with wrong, quarrel with precedent, love of education, and faith in God."

Ah! now we touch the true characteristics of New England, lying in the deep ocean of her history, unmoved by the lighter traits sparkling upon the surface.

That is a true boast of Jonathan to John:--

"We aint so weak and poor, John,
With twenty million people,
And close to every door, John,
A school-house and a steeple."

And this is but the outgrowth of that short formula of the brave founders of school and church: "Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work;" so that New England's present traits are directly traceable to Puritan influence.

Our educational institutions had substantial foundation-stones of self-sacrifice and far-seeing purpose, nobly laid by that score of sturdy men, dedicating, for the first academy, a peck of corn, or a shilling in cash, or a few treasured volumes.

The Sabbath has been called the "poem of New England," and it is that always, whether rung out by the city's chiming bells or whispered in the sacred repose of the country church. But it was never so truly a poem as on that first New England Sabbath, when the church was a weather-beaten ship, its support the lashing waves, and the worshippers "a handful of sad, stern men and women kneeling in their spray-stiffened garments to thank God for freedom to worship him."

New England's best traits, then, are but her rightful inheritance; traits "lineally descended" from her founders, softened and purified in the transmitting many times, as in the case of their sectional loyalty. "They seemed to shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other road than that which their fathers travelled, lest they should miss them at their journey's end."

And in these days, thank God! religious toleration is creeping over the forbidding rock of New England theology, much as the delicate vines of the May-flower crept over and beautified the hard, unyielding soil.

Thus New England stands, in her freedom, love of education, and all those homely domestic traits which make her the comfortable, clever, strong, and tender mother she is, while under and through and over all her traits runs, like a strain of restful music, her great, all powerful, far-reaching faith.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A great stride of advancement has been taken in the cultivation of that rarest of supernal graces, Christian charity, since the ancient patriarchs of New England fell asleep. Occasionally opportunity is given us of measuring "with the eye" the distance which has been travelled. More than a hundred and fifty years ago Dr. Cotton Mather spoke of Rhode Island as "the Gerizzim of New England, the common receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land." The island itself, as a portion of God's creation, he was willing to think worthy of all praise. He seems to have felt regarding it as Bishop Heber felt about India when he wrote his immortal missionary hymn:--

"And every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile."

"The island is, indeed, for the fertility of its soil, the temperateness of its air, etc., the best garden of all the colony, and were it free from serpents I would call it the Paradise of New England." As things were, however, the good old man could only say regretfully, "_Bona terra, mala gens_." He evidently fancied that the serpent was not a native of the original home of human innocence, or else his special affection for the people of Rhode Island led him to wish for them an exemption from exposures which God had not thought necessary to the safety and happiness of Adam. The serpent was an honorable member of the animal community in Paradise before Ithuriel's "spear of heaven-tempered steel" discovered Satan, in the shape of a toad, breathing into the ear of the sleeping "Mother of Mankind" deadly insinuations of disobedience and rebellion, just as freedom in religion--the serpent so unworthily abhorred by New England Puritanism--was a divinely chartered and precious privilege of mankind long before the founding of Rhode Island colonies or the birth of Roger Williams. The vagaries and fantasies of freedom, its excesses, outrages, and crimes, are something fearful to contemplate, but freedom is, has been, and must ever continue to be, the essential condition of human power and excellence. It has ever been the madness of men--and madness that could not claim the poor excuse of method--to think of cutting down the tree of liberty, and still hope to retain the benefits and blessings of its shade.