To be a housewife in colonial days evidently required the strength of Hercules, the skill of Tubal Cain, and the patience of Job. Such an advertisement as that appearing in the Pennsylvania Packet of September 23, 1780, was not an exceptional challenge to female ingenuity and perseverance:

"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 affiable, 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."

It is apparent that besides the work now commonly carried on in the household, colonial women performed many a duty now abrogated to the factory. In fact, so far are we removed from the industrial customs of the era that many of the terms then common in every home have lost all meaning for the average modern housewife. For nearly two centuries the greater part of the preparation of material for clothing was done by the family; the spinning, the weaving, the dyeing, the making of thread, these and many similar domestic activities preceded the fashion of a garment. When we remember that the sewing machine was unknown we may comprehend to some extent the immense amount of labor performed by women and girls of those early days. The possession of many slaves or servants offered but little if any relief; for such ownership involved, of course, the manufacture of additional clothing. Humphreys in her Catherine Schuyler presents this quotation commenting upon a skilled housewife: "Notwithstanding they have so large a family to regulate (from 50 to 60 blacks) Mrs. Schuyler seeth to the Manufacturing of suitable Cloathing for all her family, all of which is the produce of her plantation in which she is helped by her Mama & Miss Polly and the whole is done with less Combustion & noise than in many Families who have not more than 4 or 5 Persons in the whole Family."

IV. Domestic Pride

Of course the well-to-do Americans of the eighteenth century at length adopted the custom of importing the finer cloth, silk, satin and brocade; but after the middle of the century the anti-British sentiment impelled even the wealthiest either to make or to buy the coarser American cloth. Indeed, it became a matter of genuine pride to many a patriotic dame that she could thus use the spinning wheel in behalf of her country. Daughters of Liberty, having agreed to drink no tea and to wear no garments of foreign make, had spinning circles similar to the quilting bees of later days, and it was no uncommon sight between 1770 and 1785 to see groups of women, carrying spinning wheels through the streets, going to such assemblies. See this bit of description of such a meeting held at Rowley, Massachusetts: "A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of the town met at sunrise with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Rev'd Jedekiah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies there appearing neatly dressed, principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment...."[87]

If the modern woman had to labor for clothing as did her great-great-grandmother, styles in dress would become astonishingly simple. After the spinning and weaving, the cloth was dyed or bleached, and this in itself was a task to try the fortitude of a strong soul. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the importation of silks and finer materials somewhat lessened this form of work; but even through the first decade of the nineteenth century spinning and weaving continued to be a part of the work of many a household. The Revolution, as we have seen, gave a new impetus to this art, and the first ladies of the land proudly exhibited their skill. As Wharton remarks in her Martha Washington: "Mrs. Washington, who would not have the heart to starve her direst foe within her own gates, heartily co-operated with her husband and his colleagues. The spinning wheels and carding and weaving machines were set to work with fresh spirit at Mt. Vernon.... Some years later, in New Jersey, Mrs. Washington told a friend that she often kept sixteen spinning wheels in constant operation, and at one time Lund Washington spoke of a larger number. Two of her own dresses of cotton striped with silk Mrs. Washington showed with great pride, explaining that the silk stripes in the fabrics were made from the ravellings of brown silk stockings and old crimson damask chair covers. Her coachman, footman, and maid were all attired in domestic cloth, except the coachman's scarlet cuffs, which she took care to state had been imported before the war.... The welfare of the slaves, of whom one hundred and fifty had been part of her dower, their clothing, much of which was woven and made upon the estate, their comfort, especially when ill; and their instruction in sewing, knitting and other housewifely arts, engaged much of Mrs. Washington's time and thought."[88]

V. Special Domestic Tasks

In a sense, however, the very nature of such work provided some phases of that social life which authorities consider so lacking in colonial existence. For those arduous tasks frequently required neighborly co-operation, and social functions thus became mingled with industrial activities. Quilting bees, spinning bees, knitting bees, sewing bees, paring bees, and a dozen other types of "bees" served to lighten the drudgery of such work and developed a spirit of neighborliness that is perhaps a little lacking under modern social conditions. Ignoring the crude methods of labor, and the other forms of hardship, we may look back from the vantage point of two hundred years of progress and perhaps admire and envy something of the quietness, orderliness, and simplicity of those colonial homes. After all, however, doubtless many a colonial mother now and then grew sick at heart over the conditions and problems facing her. Confronted with the unsettled condition of a new country, with society on a most insecure foundation, with privations, hardships, and genuine toil always in view, and with the prospect of the terrible strain of bearing and rearing an inexcusable number of children, the wife of that era may not have been able to see all the romance which modern novelists have perceived in the days that are no more.

VI. The Size of the Family

And this brings us once more to what was doubtless the most terrific burden placed upon the colonial woman—the incessant bearing of offspring. In those days large families were not a liability, but a positive asset. With a vast wilderness teeming with potential wealth, waiting only for a supply of workers, the only economic pressure on the birth rate was the pressure to make it larger to meet the demand for laborers. Every child born in the colonies was assured, through moderate industry, of the comforts of life, and, through patience and shrewd investments, of some degree of wealth. Boys and girls meant workers—producers of wealth—the boys on farm or sea or in the shop, the girls in the home. Since their wants were simple, since the educational demands were not large, since much of the food or clothing was produced directly by those who used it, children were not unwelcome—at least to the fathers.

Yet, who can say what rebellion unconsciously arose sometimes in the hearts of the women? Doubtless they strove to make themselves believe that all the little ones were a blessing and welcome—the religion of the day taught that any other thought was sinful—but still there must have been many a woman, distant from medical aid, living amidst new, raw environments, mothers already of many a child, who longed for liberty from the inevitable return of the trial. Women bore many children—and buried many. And mothers followed their children to the grave too often—to rest with them. Cotton Mather, married twice, was father of fifteen children; the two wives of Benjamin Franklin's father bore seventeen; Roger Clap of Dorchester, Massachusetts, "begat" fourteen children by one wife; William Phipps, a governor of Massachusetts, had twenty-five brothers and sisters all by one mother. Catherine Schuyler, a woman of superior intellect, gave birth to fourteen children. Judge Sewall piously tells us in his Diary: "Jan. 6, 1701. This is the Thirteenth child that I have offered up to God in Baptisme; my wife having borne me Seven Sons and Seven Daughters." One of the children had been born dead, and therefore had not received baptism. Ben Franklin often boasted of the strong constitution of his mother and of the fact that she nursed all of her own ten babes; but he does not tell us of the constitution of the children or of the ages to which they lived. Five of Sewall's children died in infancy, and only four lived beyond the age of thirty. It seems never to have occurred to the pious colonial fathers that it would be better to rear five to maturity and bury none, than to rear five and bury five. The strain on the womanhood of the period cannot be doubted; innumerable men were married twice or three times and no small number four times.

Industry was the law of the day, and every child soon became a producer. The burdens placed upon children naturally lightened as the colonies progressed; but as late as 1775, if we may judge by the following record, not many moments of childhood were wasted. This is an account of her day's work jotted down by a young girl in that year: "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 Dodridge'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 Nationaly,—Spun harness twine,—Scoured the pewter,—Ague in my face,—Ellen was spark'd last night,—spun thread to whiten—Went to Mr. Otis's and made them a swinging visit—Israel said I might ride his jade [horse]—Prude stayed at home and learned Eve's Dream by heart."[89]

VII. Indian Attacks

The children whose comment has just been quoted were probably safe from all dangers except ague and sparking; but in the previous century women and children daily faced possibilities that apparently should have kept them in a continuous state of fright. Time after time mothers and babes were stolen by the Indians, and the tales of their sufferings fill many an interesting page in the diaries, records, and letters of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth. Hear these words from an early pamphlet, A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England, inserted in Sewall's Diary:

The account of Mary Rowlandson's captivity, long known to every New England family, and perhaps secretly read by many a boy in lieu of the present Wild West series, may serve as another vivid example of the dangers and sufferings faced by every woman who took unto herself a husband and went forth from the coast settlements to found a new home in the wilderness. The narrative, as written by Mrs. Rowlandson herself, tells of the attack by the Indians, the massacre of her relations, and the capture of herself and her babe:

And here is the brief story of the return of her daughter: "She was travelling one day with the Indians, with her basket on her back; the company of Indians were got before her and gone out of sight, all except one squaw. She followed the squaw till night, and then both of them lay down, having nothing over them but the heavens, nor under them but the earth. Thus she traveled three days together, having nothing to eat or drink but water and green whortle-berries. At last they came into Providence, where she was kindly entertained by several of that town.... The Lord make us a blessing indeed to each other. Thus hath the Lord brought me and mine out of the horrible pit, and hath set us in the midst of tender-hearted and compassionate Christians. 'Tis the desire of my soul that we may walk worthy of the mercies received, and which we are receiving."

Such distress caused by Indian raids did not, of course, cease with the seventeenth century. During the entire period of the next century the settlers on the western frontier lived under constant dread of such calamities. It has been one of the chief elements in American history—this ceaseless expectation of warfare with primitive savages. In the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, in the establishment of the great states of the Plains, in the founding of civilization on the Pacific slope, even down to the twentieth century, the price of progress has been paid in this form of savage torture of women and children. Even in the long settled communities of the eighteenth century such dangers did not entirely disappear. As late as 1782, when an attempt was made by Burgoyne to capture General Schuyler, the ancient contest between mother and Indian warrior once more occurred. "Their guns were stacked in the hall, the guards being outside and the relief asleep. Lest the small Philip (grandson of General Schuyler) be tempted to play with the guns, his mother had them removed. The guards rushed for their guns, but they were gone. The family fled up stairs, but Margaret, remembering the baby in the cradle below, ran back, seized the baby, and when she was half way up the flight, an Indian flung his tomahawk at her head, which, missing her, buried itself in the wood, and left its historic mark to the present time."[92]

VIII. Parental Training

We sometimes hear the complaint that the training of the modern child is left almost entirely to the mother or to the woman school teacher, and that as a result the boy is becoming effeminate. The indications are that this could not have been said of the colonial child; for, according to the records of that day, there was admirable co-operation between man and wife in the training of their little ones. Kindly Judge Sewall, who so indiscriminately mingled his accounts of courtships, weddings, funerals, visits to neighbors, notices of hangings, duties as a magistrate, what not, often spared time from his activities among the grown-ups to record such incidents as: "Sabbath-day, Febr. 14, 1685. Little Hull speaks Apple plainly in the hearing of his grandmother and Eliza Jane; this the first word."[93]

And hear what Samuel Mather in his Life of Cotton Mather tells of the famous divine's interest in the children of the household: "He began betimes to entertain them with delightful stories, especially scriptural ones; and he would ever conclude with some lesson of piety, giving them to learn that lesson from the story.... And thus every day at the table he used himself to tell some entertaining tale before he rose; and endeavored to make it useful to the olive plants about the table. When his children accidentally, at any time, came in his way, it was his custom to let fall some sentence or other that might be monitory or profitable to them.... As soon as possible he would make the children learn to write; and, when they had the use of the pen, he would employ then in writing out the most instructive, and profitable things he could invent for them.... The first chastisement which he would inflict for any ordinary fault was to let the child see and hear him in an astonishment, and hardly able to believe that the child could do so base a thing; but believing they would never do it again. He would never come to give a child a blow excepting in case of obstinacy or something very criminal. To be chased for a while out of his presence he would make to be looked upon as the sorest punishment in his family. He would not say much to them of the evil angels; because he would not have them entertain any frightful fancies about the apparitions of devils. But yet he would briefly let them know that there are devils to tempt to wickedness."

Beside this tender picture we may place one of juvenile warfare in the godly home of Judge Sewall, and of the effect such a rise of the Old Adam had upon the soul of the conscientious magistrate: "Nov. 6, 1692. Joseph threw a knob of Brass and hit his sister Betty on the forhead so as to make it bleed and swell, upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle: which gave me the sorrowfull remembrance of Adam's carriage."[94]

Such turmoil was, of course, unusual in the Sewall or any other Puritan home; but the spiritual paroxysms of his daughter Betty, as noted in previous pages, were more characteristic, and probably not half so alarming to the deeply religious father. There seems to be little "sorrowfull remembrance" in the following note by the Judge; what would have caused genuine alarm to a modern parent seemed to be almost a source of secret satisfaction to him: "Sabbath, May 3, 1696. Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping; tells me she is afraid she is gone back, does not taste that sweetness in reading the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is worn off. I said what I could to her, and in the evening pray'd with her alone."[95]

Though more mention is made in the early records about the endeavors of the father than of the efforts of the mother to lead the children aright, we may, of course, take it for granted that the maternal care and watchfulness were at least as strong as in our own day. Eliza Pinckney, who had read widely and studied much, did not consider it beneath her dignity to give her closest attention to the awakening intellect of her babe. "Shall I give you the trouble, my dear madam," she wrote to a friend, "to buy my son a new toy (a description of which I enclose) to teach him according to Mr. Locke's method (which I have carefully studied) to play himself into learning. Mr. Pinckney, himself, has been contriving a sett of toys to teach him his letters by the time he can speak. You perceive we begin betimes, for he is not yet four months old." Her consciousness of her responsibility toward her children is also set forth in this statement: "I am resolved to be a good Mother to my children, to pray for them, to set them good examples, to give them good advice, to be careful both in their souls and bodys, to watch over their tender minds, to carefully root out the first appearing and budings of vice, and to instill piety.... To spair no paines or trouble to do them good.... And never omit to encourage every Virtue I may see dawning in them."[96] That her care brought forth good fruit is indicated when she spoke, years later, of her boy as "a son who has lived to near twenty-three years of age without once offending me."

Here and there we thus have directed testimony as to the part taken by mothers in the mental and spiritual training of children. For instance, in New York, according to Mrs. Grant, such instruction was left entirely to the women. "Indeed, it was on the females that the task of religious instruction generally devolved; and in all cases where the heart is interested, whoever teaches at the same time learns.... Not only the training of children, but of plants, such as needed peculiar care or skill to rear them, was the female province."[97]

In New England, as we have seen, the parental love and care for the little ones was at least as much a part of the father's domestic activities as of the mother's; unfortunately the men were in the majority as writers, and they generally wrote of what they themselves did for their children. Abigail Adams was one of the exceptional women, and her letters have many a reference to the training of her famous son. Writing to him while he was with his father in Europe in 1778, she said: "My dear Son.... Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render many things unnecessary for me to write ... but the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth require line upon line and precept upon precept, and, when enforced by the joint efforts of both parents, will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for, dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed, or that an untimely death crop you in your infant years, than see you an immoral profligate, or graceless child...."[98]

Such quotations should prove that home life in colonial days was no one-sided affair. The father and the mother were on a par in matters of child training, and the influence of both entered into that strong race of men who, through long years of struggle and warfare, wrested civilization from savagery, and a new nation from an old one. What a modern writer has written about Mrs. Adams might possibly be applicable to many a colonial mother who kept no record of her daily effort to lead her children in the path of righteousness and noble service: "Mrs. Adams's influence on her children was strong, inspiring, vital. Something of the Spartan mother's spirit breathed in her. She taught her sons and daughter to be brave and patient, in spite of danger and privation. She made them feel no terror at the thought of death or hardships suffered for one's country. She read and talked to them of the world's history.... Every night, when the Lord's prayer had been repeated, she heard him [John Quincey] say the ode of Collins beginning,

IX. Tributes to Colonial Mothers

With such wives and mothers so common in the New World, it is but natural that many a high tribute to them should be found in the old records. Not for any particular or exactly named trait are these women praised, but rather for that general, indescribable quality of womanliness—that quality which men have ever praised and ever will praise. Those noble words of Judge Sewall at the open grave of his mother are an epitome of the patience, the love, the sacrifice, and the nobility of motherhood: "Jany. 4th, 1700-1.... Nathan Bricket taking in hand to fill the grave, I said, Forbear a little, and suffer me to say that amidst our bereaving sorrows we have the comfort of beholding this saint put into the rightful possession of that happiness of living desir'd and dying lamented. She liv'd commendably four and fifty years with her dear husband, and my dear father: and she could not well brook the being divided from him at her death; which is the cause of our taking leave of her in this place. She was a true and constant lover of God's Word, worship and saints: and she always with a patient cheerfulness, submitted to the divine decree of providing bread for her self and others in the sweat of her brows. And now ... my honored and beloved Friends and Neighbors! My dear mother never thought much of doing the most frequent and homely offices of love for me: and lavished away many thousands of words upon me, before I could return one word in answer: And therefore I ask and hope that none will be offended that I have now ventured to speak one word in her behalf; when she herself has now become speechless."[100]

How many are the tributes to those "mothers in Israel"! Hear this unusual one to Jane Turell: "As a wife she was dutiful, prudent and diligent, not only content but joyful in her circumstances. She submitted as is fit in the Lord, looked well to the ways of her household.... She respected all her friends and relatives, and spake of them with honor, and never forgot either their counsels or their kindnesses.... I may not forget to mention the strong and constant guard she placed on the door of her lips. Whoever heard her call an ill name? or detract from anybody?"[101]

And, again, note the tone of this message to Alexander Hamilton from his father-in-law, General Philip Schuyler, after the death of Mrs. Schuyler: "My trial has been severe.... But after giving and receiving for nearly half a century a series of mutual evidences of affection and friendship which increased as we advanced in life, the shock was great and sensibly felt, to be thus suddenly deprived of a beloved wife, the mother of my children, and the soothing companion of my declining years."

The words of President Dirkland of Harvard upon the death of Mrs. Adams, show how deeply women had come to influence the life of New England by the time of the Revolution. His address was a sincere tribute not only to this remarkable mother but to the thousands of unknown mothers who reared their families through those days of distress and death: "Ye will cease to mourn bereaved friends.... You do then bless the Giver of life, that the course of your endeared and honored friend was so long and so bright; that she entered so fully into the spirit of those injunctions which we have explained, and was a minister of blessings to all within her influence. You are soothed to reflect, that she was sensible of the many tokens of divine goodness which marked her lot; that she received the good of her existence with a cheerful and grateful heart; that, when called to weep, she bore adversity with an equal mind; that she used the world as not abusing it to excess, improving well her time, talents, and opportunities, and, though desired longer in this world, was fitted for a better happiness than this world can give."[102]

It is apparent that men were not so neglectful of praise nor so cautious of good words for womankind in colonial days as the average run of books on American history would have us believe. As noted above, womanliness is the characteristic most commonly pictured in these records of good women; but now and then some special quality, such as good judgment, or business ability, or willingness to aid in a time of crisis is brought to light. Thus Ben Franklin writes:

"We have an English proverb that says, 'He that would thrive must ask his wife.' It was lucky for me that I had one as much dispos'd to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me chearfully in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the paper makers, etc. We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest.... One morning being call'd to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl with a spoon of silver! They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife.... She thought her husband deserv'd a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and China in our house, which afterwards in a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value."[103]

Again, he notes on going to England: "April 5, 1757. I leave Home and undertake this long Voyage more chearful, as I can rely on your Prudence in the Management of my Affairs, and education of my dear Child; and yet I cannot forbear once more recommending her to you with a Father's tenderest concern. My Love to all."[104]

Whether North or South the praise of woman's industry in those days is much the same. John Lawson who made a survey journey through North Carolina in 1760, wrote in his History of North Carolina that the women were the more industrious sex in this section, and made a great deal of cloth of their own cotton, wool, and flax. In spite of the fact that their families were exceedingly large, he noted that all went "very decently appareled both with linens and woolens," and that because of the labor of the wives there was no occasion to run into the merchant's debt or lay out money on stores of clothing. And hundreds of miles north old Judge Sewall had expressed in his Diary his utmost confidence in his wife's financial ability when he wrote: "1703-4 ... Took 24s in my pocket, and gave my Wife the rest of my cash £4, 3-8 and tell her she shall now keep the Cash; if I want I will borrow of her. She has a better faculty than I at managing Affairs: I will assist her; and will endeavour to live upon my salary; will see what it will doe. The Lord give his blessing."[105]

And nearly seventy years later John Adams, in writing to Benjamin Rush, declares a similar confidence in his help-meet and expresses in his quiet way genuine pride in her willingness to meet all ordeals with him. "May 1770. When I went home to my family in May, 1770 from the Town Meeting in Boston ... I said to my wife, 'I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.' She burst into tears, but instantly cried in a transport of magnanimity, 'Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined.' These were times, my friend, in Boston which tried women's souls as well as men's."

Surely men were not unmindful in those stern days of the strength and devotion of those women who bore them valiant sons and daughters that were to set a nation free. And, furthermore, from such tributes we may justly infer that women of the type of Jane Turell, Eliza Pinckney, Abigail Adams, Margaret Winthrop, and Martha Washington were wives and mothers who, above all else, possessed womanly dignity, loved their homes, yet sacrificed much of the happiness of this beloved home life for the welfare of the public, were "virtuous, pious, modest, and womanly," built homes wherein were peace, gentleness, and love, havens indeed for their famous husbands, who in times of great national woes could cast aside the burdens of public life, and retire to the rest so well deserved. As the author of Catherine Schuyler has so fittingly said of the home life of her and her daughter, the wife of Hamilton: "Their homes were centers of peace; their material considerations guarded. Whatever strength they had was for the fray. No men were ever better entrenched for political conflict than Schuyler and Hamilton.... The affectionate intercourse between children, parents, and grand-parents reflected in all the correspondence accessible makes an effective contrast to the feverish state of public opinion and the controversies then raging. Nowhere would one find a more ideal illustration of the place home and family ties should supply as an alleviation for the turmoils and disappointments of public life."[106]

There are scores of others—Mercy Warren, Mrs. Knox, and women of their type—whose benign influence in the colonial home could be cited. One could scarcely overestimate the value of the loving care, forethought, and sympathy of those wives and mothers of long ago; for if all were known,—and we should be happy that in those days some phases of home life were considered too sacred to be revealed—perhaps we should conclude that the achievements of those famous founders of this nation were due as much to their wives as to their own native powers. The charming mingling of simplicity and dignity is a trait of those women that has often been noted; they lived such heroic lives with such unconscious patience and valor. For instance, hear the description of Mrs. Washington as given by one of the ladies at the camp of Morristown;—with what simplicity of manner the first lady of the land aided in a time of distress:

X. Interest in the Home

Many indeed are the hints of gentle, loving home life presented in the letters and records of the eighteenth century colonists. Domestic life may have been rather severe in seventeenth century New England—our histories make more of it than the original sources warrant—but the little touches of courtesy, the considerate deeds of love, the words of sympathy and confidence show that those early husbands and wives were lovers even as many modern folk are lovers, and that in the century of the Revolution they courted and married and laughed and sorrowed much as we of the twentieth century do. Sometimes the hint is in a letter from brother to sister, sometimes in the message from patriot to wife, sometimes in the secret diary of mother or father; but, wherever found, the words with their subtle meaning make us realize almost with a shock that here were human hearts as much alive to joy and anguish as any that now beat. Hear a message from the practical Franklin to his sister in 1772: "I have been thinking what would be a suitable present for me to make and for you to receive, as I hear you are grown a celebrated beauty. I had almost determined on a tea table, but when I considered that the character of a good housewife was far preferable to that of being only a gentle woman, I concluded to send you a spinning wheel."[108]

And see in these notes from him in London to his wife the interest of the philosopher and statesman in his home—his human longing that it should be comfortable and beautiful. "In the great Case ... is contain'd some carpeting for a best Room Floor. There is enough for one large or two small ones; it is to be sow'd together, the Edges being first fell'd down, and Care taken to make the Figures meet exactly: there is Bordering for the same. This was my Fancy. Also two large fine Flanders Bed Ticks, and two pair large superfine Blankets, 2 fine Damask Table Cloths and Napkins, and 43 Ells of Ghentish Sheeting Holland.... There is also 56 Yards of Cotton, printed curiously from Copper Plates, a new Invention, to make Bed and Window Curtains; and 7 yards Chair Bottoms...."[109]

"The same box contains 4 Silver Salt Ladles, newest, but ugliest Fashion; a little Instrument to core Apples; another to make little Turnips out of great ones; six coarse diaper Breakfast Cloths, they are to spread on the Tea Table, for nobody Breakfasts here on the naked Table; but on the cloth set a large Tea Board with the Cups...." "London, Feb. 14, 1765. Mrs. Stevenson has sent you ... Blankets, Bedticks.... The blue Mohair Stuff is for the Curtains of the Blue Chamber. The Fashion is to make one Curtain only for each Window. Hooks are sent to fix the Rails by at the Top so that they might be taken down on Occasion...."[110]

It does the soul good and warms the heart toward old Benjamin to see him stopping in the midst of his labors for America to write his wife: "I send you some curious Beans for your Garden," and "The apples are extreamly welcome, ... the minced pies are not yet come to hand.... As to our lodging [she had evidently inquired] it is on deal featherbeds, in warm blankets, and much more comfortable than when we lodged at our inn...."[111]

Surely, too, the home touch is in this message of Thomas Jefferson at Paris to Mrs. Adams in London. After telling her how happy he was to order shoes for her in the French capital, he continues: "To show you how willingly I shall ever receive and execute your commissions, I venture to impose one upon you. From what I recollect of the diaper and damask we used to import from England, I think they were better and cheaper than here.... If you are of the same opinion I would trouble you to send me two sets of table cloths & napkins for twenty covers each."[112] And again he turns aside from his heavy duties in France to write his sister that he has sent her "two pieces of linen, three gowns, and some ribbon. They are done in paper, sealed and packed in a trunk."[113]

And what of old Judge Sewall of the previous century—he of a number of wives and innumerable children? Even in his day, when Puritanism was at its worst, or as he would say, at its best, acts of thoughtfulness and mutual love between man and wife were apparently not forgotten. The wonderful Diary offers the proof: "June 20, 1685: Carried my Wife to Dorchester to eat Cherries, Raspberries, chiefly to ride and take the Air. The time my Wife and Mrs. Flint spent in the Orchard, I spent in Mr. Flint's Study, reading Calvin on the Psalms...."[114] "July 8, 1687. Carried my wife to Cambridge to visit my little Cousin Margaret...."[115] "I carry my two sons and three daughters in the Coach to Danford, the Turks head at Dorchester; eat sage Cheese, drunk Beer and Cider and came homeward...."[116]

Thus human were those grave fathers of the nation. History and fiction often conspire to portray them as always walking with solemnity, talking with deep seriousness, and looking upon all mortals and all things with chilling gloom; but, after all, they seem, in domestic life at least, to have gone about their daily round of duties and pleasures in much the same spirit as we, their descendants, work and play. As Wharton in her Through Colonial Doorways says: "The dignified Washington becomes to us a more approachable personality when, in a letter written by Mrs. John M. Bowers, we read that when she was a child of six he dandled her on his knee and sang to her about 'the old, old man and the old, old woman who lived in the vinegar bottle together,' ... or again, when General Greene writes from Middlebrook, 'We had a little dance at my quarters. His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down. Upon the whole we had a pretty little frisk."

Brooke in Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days furnishes another example of the kindly consideration so common among colonial husbands and wives. Mrs. John Adams, who was afflicted with headaches, believed that green tea brought relief, and wrote her husband to send her a canister. Some time afterwards she visited Mrs. Samuel Adams, who refreshed her with this very drink: