Child Life in Colonial Days

"Mrs. Williams when I first became acquainted with her was a Widow Gentlewoman who kept a little College in a Country Town for the Instruction of Young Gentlemen and Ladies in the Science of A, B, C. The Books she put into the hands of her Pupils were, 1st, The Christmas Box. 2nd, The Father's Gift. 3rd, Mr. Perry's Excellent Spelling Book. 4th, The Brother's Gift. 5th, The Sister's Gift. 6th, The Infant Tutor. 7th, The Pretty Little Pocket Book. 8th, The Pretty Plaything. 9th, Tommy Trip's History of Birds and Beasts. And when their minds were so enlarged as to be capable of other entertainments she recommended to Them the Lilliputian Magazine and other Books that are sold by Mr. Isaiah Thomas at his Book Store near the Court House in Worcester, &c., &c."

It will be noted that the word college is employed in its old-time meaning of school; but I am not sure that Thomas used it innocently. For in the following pages the text compares Mrs. Williams to "any other old Lady in the European Universities." The Christmas Box referred to has a decided American flavor. It was printed in 1789 and is entitled Nurse True Love's Christmas Box or a Golden Plaything for Children. It gives the history of one Master Friendly, and is specially forced in style. Here are two sentences:—

"He learned so fast, Dear me! it did my heart good to hear him talk and read. Why! he got all the little books by rote that are sold by Mr. Thomas in Worcester, when he was but a very little boy. Then he never missed church. Ah! he was a charming boy.

"He is chosen Congressman already and yet he is not puffed up. Well, I saw him seated in a Chair when he was chosen Congressman, and he looked—he looked—I do not know what he looked like, but everybody was in love with him."

This latter sentence is accompanied by a cut of Congressman Friendly, imbecile in countenance, seated in a chair fixed on two handles, and borne aloft by four footmen in full livery. This picture had evidently seen service as "a chairing" in some English book. When we think what the Congressmen of that day were,—earnest, simple-hearted patriots, and that Thomas knew them well,—it seems strange that he could have given such stuff to American children. On the inside of the cover are printed these lines:—

It may interest children to read a short story from one of these little volumes to see the sort of thing children had to amuse them a hundred years ago. This is from a book called The Father's Gift, or How to be Wise and Happy.

"There were two little Boys and Girls, the Children of a fine Lady and Gentleman who loved them dearly. They were all so good and loved one another so well that every Body who saw them talked of them with Admiration far and near. They would part with any Thing to each other, loved the Poor, spoke kindly to Servants, did every Thing they were bid to do, were not proud, knew no Strife, but who should learn their Books best, and be the prettiest Scholar. The Servants loved them, and would do any Thing they desired. They were not proud of fine Clothes, their Heads never ran on their Playthings when they should mind their Books. They said Grace before they ate, and Prayer before going to bed and as soon as they rose. They were always clean and neat, would not tell a Fib for the World, and were above doing any Thing that required one. God blessed them more and more, and their Papa, Mama, Uncles, Aunts and Cousins for their Sakes. They were a happy Family, no one idle; all prettily employed, the little Masters at their Books, the little Misses at their Needles. At their Play hours they were never noisy, mischievous or quarrelsome. No such word was ever heard from their Mouths as "Why mayn't I have this or that as well as Betty or Bobby." Or "Why should Sally have this or that any more than I;" but it was always "as Mama pleases, she knows best," with a Bow and a Smile, without Surliness to be seen on their Brow. They grew up, the Masters became fine Scholars and fine Gentlemen and were honoured; the Misses fine Ladies and fine Housewives. This Gentleman sought to Marry one of the Misses, and that Gentleman the Other. Happy was he that could be admitted into their Company. They had nothing to do but to pick and choose the best Matches in the Country, while the greatest Ladies for Birth and most remarkable for Virtue thought themselves honoured by the Addresses of the two Brothers. They all married and made good Papas and Mamas, and so the blessing goes round."

The Brother's Gift, or the Naughty Girl Reformed, of which the third Worcester edition was printed in 1791, bore these lines as a motto:—

Though useful arts were inculcated by this book, the reward of virtue to the reformed girl was a fine new pair of stays, which are duly pictured.

Another of Newbery's beloved books was The History of Tommy Careless, or the Misfortunes of a Week. On Monday Tommy fell in the water, spoiled his coat, and was sent to bed. On Tuesday he lost his kite and ended the day in bed. On Wednesday he fell from the apple tree, and again was put in bed. Thursday the maid gave him two old pewter spoons; he made some dump-moulds, and in casting his dumps scalded his fingers, and as ever was put in retirement. On Friday he killed the canary bird—and to bed again. On Saturday he managed to incite Dobbin to kick the house dog and kill him; then he caught his own fingers in a trap, and ended the week in bed as he began it.

When we think of the vast number of these books, it seems strange that so few have survived. The penny books were too valueless to be saved. Sometimes we find one among abandoned or discarded piles or bundles of books. It has been the fate, however, of most children's books to be destroyed by children. With coarse, time-browned paper, poor type, and torn, worn leaves, they are not very attractive. Open one at random. Ten to one you have before you the page upon which centres the interest of the book, its climax, its adventure, or its high wit. That page was a favorite. Many times you will find crude attempts at amateur coloring of the prints.

In these books is found an entirely different code from that inculcated by modern books or taught by earlier books. The first books for children simply exhorted goodness, giving no reasons, but commanding obedience and virtue. The books of the Puritan epoch taught children to be good for fear of hell. This succeeding school instructed them to be good because it was profitable. All the advice is frankly politic; much is of mercenary mould. Children are instructed to do aright, not because they should, but because they will benefit thereby—and profit is given the most worldly guise, such as riding in a coach, having a purse full of gold, wearing silks and satins, becoming Lord Mayor, or most exalted station of all, "a proud Sheriff." As chief officer of the Crown, the old-time sheriff of each English county was superior in rank to every nobleman in the county. The diarist Evelyn tells that his father when sheriff had a hundred and fifty servants in livery, and many gentleman attendants. Punishment, the abhorrence of parents, and evil results fall upon children not so fiercely for lying, stealing, treachery, or cruelty as they do for soiling their clothes, falling into the water, tumbling off walls, breaking windows or china, and a score of other actions which are the result of carelessness, clumsiness, or indifference, rather than of viciousness. These books would educate (had they been forcible enough to be of profound influence) generations of trucklers, time servers, and money lovers. The natural inclination and the diversity of inclination of children made them rise above these instructions.

It was the constant effort of the artists, authors, and teachers of olden times to imbue youth with the notion that no harm could possibly come to the good—unless early death could be counted an evil. Children were taught that virtue and each good action was ever, immediately, and conspicuously rewarded. The pictures repeated and emphasized the didactic teachings; and morality, industry, and good intentions were made to triumph over things animate and inanimate. That the old illustrations were a delight to children cannot be doubted; they were so easily comprehended. The bad boys of the story always bore a miserable countenance and figure, and the good boys were smugly prosperous. The prim girls are shown the beloved of all, and the tomboys equally the misery and embarrassment. All this is lacking in modern picture books, which so truly represent real life and things that the naughty boy is not blazoned at first glance as a different being from the pious delight.

I am inclined to believe that the old-time grotesqueness was more amusing and impressive to children than modern realism; that there was a stronger association of ideas with the emphasis of disproportion; the absurdities and anachronisms of scenery and costume were unnoted by the juvenile reader because he knew no better.

In the children's books which I have examined, the colored illustrations are all of dates later than 1800 (when dated at all). Mr. Andrew W. Tuer, in the preface to his most interesting collection entitled Pages and Pictures from Forgotten Children's Books, says that the coloring was done by children in their teens who worked with great celerity. Each child had a single pan of water-color, a brush, a properly colored guide, and a pile of printed sheets. One child painted in all the red required by the copy, another the green, another the blue, and so on till the coloring was finished.

There was one book which children loved, that every little child loves to-day—Mother Goose's Melodies. Attempts have been made to show that the name and collection were both American; that the former referred to one Mrs. Goose or Vergoose, a Boston goodwife. The name Mother Goose is believed by most folk to be of French, not of English or American origin. A collection of nursery rhymes was printed for John Newbery about 1760, under the popular name Mother Goose's Melodies; about 1785 Isaiah Thomas issued at Worcester, Massachusetts, an edition of Mother Goose's Melodies with the songs from Shakespeare, and certainly this must have been an oasis in the desert of dull books for New England children.

There is no pretence in this edition of Thomas' that the book had any American origin; it is said to be a collection of rhymes by "old British nurses"; and such it really was. Halliwell says many of these nursery rhymes are fragments of old ballads. Mr. Whitmore deems the great popularity of "Mother Goose" due to the Boston editions issued in large numbers from 1824 to 1860.

The preface to the Worcester edition of 1785 circa is said to be written by a very great writer of very little books. Could this have been Oliver Goldsmith? Irving, in his Life of Goldsmith, refers to the poet's love of catches and simple melodies, and tells of his singing "his favorite song about An old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as the moon." A Miss Hawkins boasted late in life that Goldsmith taught her to play Jack and Jill with bits of paper on his fingers just as we show the trick to children to-day. Included in these melodies are the verses "Three children sliding on the ice," which we know were written by Goldsmith. Here is an example of one of the melodies and its note:—

"Trip upon Trenchers
Dance upon Dishes
My mother sent me for some Barm, some Barm.
She bade me tread Lightly
And leave again Quickly,
For fear the Young Men should do me some Harm.
Yet! don't you see?
What naughty tricks they put upon me!
They broke my Pitcher
And spilt my Water
And huffed my Mother
And chid her Daughter,
And kiss'd my Sister instead of me.

"What a Succession of Misfortunes befell this poor Girl? But the last Circumstance was the most affecting and might have proved fatal."

—Winslow's View of Britain.

According to the notion of humor of the day, the notion of Goldsmith, or some other book-hack-wag, these notes were all ascribed as quotations from some profound author, just as the cuts in Goody Two Shoes were said to be by Michael Angelo, and the text from the Vatican. Thus after the rhymes, "See-saw, Margery Daw," etc., is the sober comment, "It is a mean and Scandalous Practice in an author to put Notes to a Thing that deserves no Notice. Grotius." After the "Three Wise Men of Gotham," which ends with the lines—

is the sententious note "It's long enough. Never lament the Loss of what is not worth having. Boyle." Puffendorf, Coke on Littleton, Pliny, Bentley on the Sublime and Beautiful, Mapes' Geography of the Mind, are other authors and books that are soberly cited.

A distinctly American book for children was printed in Philadelphia in 1793, a History of the Revolution. It was in Biblical phraseology. This sort of writing had been made popular by Franklin
in his famous Parable against Persecution which he wrote, committed to memory, and pretended to read as the last chapter in Genesis.

Exceeding plainness and even coarseness of speech was presented in the pages of these old-time story-books. It was simply the speech of the times shown in the plays, tales, and essays of the day, and reflected to some degree even in the literature for children. As an example of what was deemed wit may be given a portion of the prologue to "Who Killed Cock Robin." The book is entitled Death and Burial of Cock Robin.

"We were all enjoying ourselves very agreeably after dinner, when on a sudden, Sir Peter's Lady gave so loud a sneeze as threw the whole company into disorder. Master Danvers instead of cracking a nut gave his fingers a tolerable squeeze in the nut-crackers. Miss Friendly who had carried with intent to put a fine cherry in her mouth missed the mark and bit her finger. Sir Peter himself, who was filling a glass of wine, spilled the bottle on the table. Miss Comely and Miss Danvers who were talking with each other with their heads very close to each other very politely knocked them together to see which was the hardest. I myself had twelve of my ten toes handsomely trod on by one of the young ladies jumping off a chair in a fright. But this is not all, no nor half what I was an eye witness of; for just at the time her Ladyship sneezed, I was busy contemplating the beauty and song of Miss Prudence's Cock Robin that was singing and as noisy as a grig when my Lady sneezed which so frightened him he fell to the bottom of the Cage as dead as a Stone."

A widely read little book was somewhat pompously entitled The Looking Glass for the Mind. It was chiefly translated from that much-admired work, L'Ami des Enfans. Those terse and entertaining tales of Berquin had perennial youth in their English form and were reprinted till our own day. The illustrations of Bewick have a distinct value as showing the dress of children. A few are here shown. The first is from William and Amelia; both children are not eight years old. The long trained gowns, bare necks, elbow sleeves, and tall feathered hats are precisely the dress of grown women of that day, as William's coat and knee-breeches are the garb of a man. The two "ladies" were "walking arm in arm humming a pretty song then fashionable in the village collection of Ballads." When they glanced at the apples in the tree William, "the politest and prettiest little fellow in the village," dropped his shepherd's pipe, climbed the tree, and threw down apples in the ladies' aprons. As Charlotte got more and bigger apples Amelia abandoned her "usual pleasing prattle," sulked and at last ordered William to fall down "on his knees on this instant" to apologize. As he refused Amelia pouted at dinner, would not touch her wine nor say "Your good health, William," and at last was ordered by her mother from the table. William, after many attempts, sneaked out with some peaches for her, and thus an affectionate and generous friendship was restored.

Another illustration is for the tale, Caroline, or a Lesson to Cure Vanity. Caroline's dress is further described in the text as of pea-green taffety with fine pink trimmings, elegantly worked shoes, hair a clod of powder and pomatum. Her "fine silk slip was nicely soused in the rain"; her hoop and flounces and train caught in the furzes, her gauze hat blew in a pond of filthy water, etc.; all these made her glad to return to a more modest dress. The illustration for the Worthy Tenant shows Farmer Harris speaking to polite Sophia, while "Robert was so shamefully impertinent as to walk round the farmer, holding his nose, and asking his brother if he did not perceive something of the smell of a dung heap. He then lighted some paper at the fire, and carried it around the room in order to disperse, as he said, the unpleasant smell," etc. Clarissa, or the Grateful Orphan, who was so good that the king relinquished a large fortune to her, complete the quartette of illustrations.

A group of books was published just after the end of the colonial period, which had a vast influence on the children of our young Republic. These books were English; the most important of them were: The History of the Fairchild Family, 1788 circa, by Mrs. Sherwood; Sanford and Merton, 1783, by Thomas Day; The Parents' Assistant, 1796, by Maria Edgeworth; Evenings at Home, 1792, by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld.

The painfully religious tales of James Janeway were not the only ones to familiarize death to the reading child. The Fairchild Family was once deemed a most charming, as it was certainly a most earnest book, and it has ever had popularity, for within a few years it has been reprinted in a large edition. I wonder how many death-bed scenes and references there are in that book! Nor are ordinary death-beds the saddest or most grewsome scenes. The little Fairchilds having lost their little tempers and pommelled each other somewhat, their father takes them as a shocking object-lesson to see the body of a man hung in chains on a gibbet. The horror of the progress through the gloomy wood to this revolting sight, the father's unsparing comments, the hideous account of the thing, rattling, swinging, turning its horrible countenance while Mr. Fairchild described and explained and gloated over it, and finally kneeled and prayed,—all this through several pages no carefully reared child to-day would be permitted to read. Mr. Fairchild's reason for taking them to this gibbeted corpse should not be omitted from this account; it was "to show them something which I think they will remember as long as they live, that they may love each other with perfect and heavenly love."

A painful and ever present lesson found on every page is the sinfulness of the world. The children recite verses and quote Bible texts to prove that all mankind have bad hearts, and Lucy commits to memory a prayer, a portion of which runs thus:—

"My heart is so exceedingly wicked, so vile, so full of sin, that even when I appear to be tolerably good, even then I am sinning. When I am praying, or reading the Bible, or hearing other people read the Bible, even then I sin. When I speak, I sin; when I am silent, I sin."

Sandford and Merton is most insincerely recommended by many folk to children to-day. I cannot believe any one who has recently read the book would ever expect a modern child to care for it. It is haloed in the memory of people who read it in their youth and fancy they still like it, but won't take the trouble to read it and see that they don't.

Jane and Ann Taylor should be added to this class of authors. The poem, My Mother, by Ann Taylor, was published in book form, and had many imitations. My Father, My Sister, My Brother, My Grandmother, My Playmate, My Pony, My Fido, and lastly, My Governess,—all, says the advertisement, "in the same stile,"—a style so easily imitated as to seem almost like parody:—

We have the contemporary opinion of Charles Lamb of this new school of juvenile literature. In 1802 he wrote thus to Coleridge:—

"Goody Two Shoes is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery, and the shopman at Newbery's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge as insignificant and vapid, as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems must come to a child in the shape of knowledge; his empty noddle must be turned with the conceit of his own powers when he has learned that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such-like, instead of the beautiful interest in mild tales which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child.... Hang them!—I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in man and child."

It may be seen by the last-named books on this list that another series of books for children were abridgments of Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, Pamela, and other great novels of the day. Rabelais said no abridgment of a book could be a good abridgment; these are worse than none. The childish reader is notified that if he likes the little books, his good friend, Mr. Thomas, has the larger books for sale.

The engraving of the great Mr. Richardson sitting in his grotto, in 1751, in turban, banyan, and slippers, reading Sir Charles Grandison to a group of friends, chiefly admiring young ladies in great hats and padusoy sacques, is typical of his life. He lived in a flower garden of girls, one intimate circle around his feet, and swelling circles extending even to America,—all facing inward and worshipping him and his works. They wept and smiled in a vast chorus at the dull pages of Pamela, at the surprising ones of Clarissa, and the thousands of interesting ones of Sir Charles Grandison. These seven volumes of letters exchanged between sixteen women, twenty men, all lovers, and fourteen Italians who are enumerated as of another sex, and are likewise chiefly lovers, are too prolix to be read to-day, but were a record of love-making which touched every girl's heart a century and more ago.

Little Anna Green Winslow speaks occasionally in her diary of story-books. She had for a New Year's gift the "History of Joseph Andrews abbreviated in guilt and flowered covers." She read the Pilgrim's Progress, the Mother's Gift, Gulliver's Travels, The Puzzling Cap, The French Orators, and Gaffer Two Shoes—this may have been our own Goody, not Gaffer.

The "flowery and gilt" binding of these books, so often spoken of in the notices, is wholly a thing of the past. It was made in Holland and Germany; but recent inquiry about it discovered that the stamps and presses used in its manufacture had all been destroyed. An enthusiastic lover of these little books wrote:—

They were cheap enough, but a penny apiece, some of them, others sixpence. It is doubtful whether they were ever sold in America in vast numbers. Children lent them to each other. Anna Green Winslow borrowed them, and letters of her day show other children doing likewise. It was a day of book-lending; for circulating libraries were slow of formation. The minister's library was often the largest one in each town, and he lent his precious books to his flock. In the sparse advertisements of colonial newspapers are many advertisements of book owners who have lent books, forgotten to whom, and wish them returned. The only way country children had of reading many books was by borrowing.

American boys and girls felt till our own day both bewilderment and impatience at forever reading stories whose local color was wholly strange to them. Dr. Holmes thus expresses this condition of things:—

"Books where James was called Jem not Jim as we heard it; where naughty schoolboys got through a gap in the hedge to steal Farmer Giles's red-streaks, instead of shinning over the fence to hook old Daddy Jones's baldwins; where Hodge used to go to the ale-house for his mug of beer, while we used to see old Joe steering for the grocery to get his glass of rum; where there were larks and nightingales instead of yellow-birds and bobolinks; where the robin was a little domestic bird that fed at table instead of a great, fidgety, jerky, whooping thrush."

The debt of amusement which American children owed to Newbery was paid in this century by the supply to English children of a vast number of little books of profit and pleasure, all written by a single author, "Peter Parley," or Samuel G. Goodrich. In the middle of the century this gentleman stated that he had written one hundred and twenty books that were professedly juvenile. Of these and his books for older minds about seven million copies had been sold, and about three hundred thousand were still sold annually. They were sent to England in vast numbers, and were reprinted there both with and without the author's permission. And when the original books were not pirated, the name Peter Parley was calmly attached to the compositions of English authors, as a vastly salable trade-mark.

Scores of American authors, by the middle of this century, were writing little books for children. These were a class by themselves—Sunday-school books. They do not come within the very elastic time limit set for this chapter. They are not old enough in years, though they are rapidly becoming as obsolete as any children's books of the last century.

Books written avowedly for Sunday-schools are in decreasing demand. Those with sectarian teachings, especially, find fewer and fewer purchasers.

CHAPTER XV

CHILDREN'S DILIGENCE

Colonial children did not spend much time in play. "The old deluder Sathan" was not permitted to find many idle hands ready for his mischievous work. It was ordered by the magistrates that children tending sheep or cattle in the field should be "set to some other employment withal, such as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weaving tape," etc. These were all simple industries requiring slight paraphernalia. The rock was the hand distaff. It was simple of manipulation, but required a certain knack of dexterity to produce even well-twisted thread. Good spinners could spin on the rock as they walked. Tape-weaving was done on a simple appliance, the heddle-frame of primitive weavers, known as a tape-loom, garter-loom, belt-loom, or "gallus-frame." On these small looms girls wove scores of braids and tapes for use as glove-ties, shoe-strings, hair-laces, stay-laces, garters, hatbands, belts, etc., and boys wove garters and breeches-suspenders.

There was plenty of work on a farm even for little children; they sowed various seeds in early spring; they weeded flax fields, walking barefoot among the tender plants; they hetchelled flax and combed wool.

All the work on the flax after the breaking was done in olden times by women and children. It is said there are in all twenty different occupations in flax manufacture, of which half can be easily done by children. Much of the work in domestic wool spinning and weaving was done by little girls. They could spin on "the great wheel" when they were so small that they had to stand on a foot-stool to reach up. They skeined the yarn on a clock-reel. They easily filled the "quills" with the woollen yarn used in weaving bedspreads and set the quills in the middle of the great pointed wooden shuttles. They wound the white warp on the spools, and set the spools on the scarne. They might, if very deft and attentive, help "set the piece," that is, wind the warp threads on the great yarn-beam, pass them through the eyes of the heddles or harness, and the spans of the reed. Girls of six could spin flax. Anna Green Winslow, when twelve years old, speaks often in her diary of spinning; and when disabled from sewing by a painful whitlow on her finger, wrote that "it is a nice opportunity if I do but improve it, to perfect myself in learning to spin flax."

"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."

This constant employment of a farm boy's time lasted till our own day; but now conditions have changed in Eastern farm life. The work still is hard and incessant, but not so varied as of yore. Many crops are obsolete; no flax is raised, and but little wool, and that sold as soon as sheared. Little grain is raised and no threshing is done by the flail. Vast itinerant threshing machines go from farm to farm. Few farmers make cider, which gave so much work to the boys in autumn. There is no potash or soap boiling. One of the most delightful chronicles of obsolete farm industry is written by Hon. George Sheldon and entitled The Passing of the Stall-Fed Ox and the Farmer's Boy.

The sawing and chopping of wood was a never diminishing incubus; this outdoor work on wood was continued within doors in the series of articles fashioned for farm and domestic use by the boy's jack-knife and the few heavy carpenter's tools at his command; some gave to the farm boy the rare pennies of his spending money. The making of birch splinter brooms was the best paying work. For these the boy got six cents apiece. The splitting of shoe-pegs was another. Setting card-teeth was for many years the universal income furnisher for New England children. Gathering nuts was a scantily paid-for harvest; tying onions a less pleasing one, and chiefly followed in the Connecticut Valley. The crop of wild cherries known as chokecherries was one of the most lucrative of the boy's resources. They were much desired for making cherry-rum or cherry-bounce, and would fetch readily a dollar a bushel. A good-sized tree would yield about six bushels. J. T. Buckingham tells of his first spending money being ninepence received from a brush-maker for hog-bristles saved from slaughtered swine.

The story of various silk fevers which raged in America cannot be given here, romantic as they are. From the first venture the care of silkworms was held to be a specially suitable work for children. It was said two boys, "if their hands be not sleeping in their pockets," could care for six ounces of seed from hatching till within fourteen days of spinning, when "three or four more helps, women and children being as proper as men," had to assist in feeding, cleansing, airing, drying, and perfuming them.

The Reformed Virginia Silk Worm asserted:—