In the earlier days of the New England colonies the gift of scarfs, gloves, and rings for such services was almost demanded by social etiquette; but before Judge Sewall's death the custom was passing. The following passages from his Diary illustrate the change:

The Puritans were not the only colonists to celebrate death with pomp and ceremony; but no doubt the custom was far more nearly universal among them than among the New Yorkers or Southerners. Still, in New Amsterdam a funeral was by no means a simple or dreary affair; feasting, exchange of gifts, and display were conspicuous elements at the burial of the wealthy or aristocratic. The funeral of William Lovelace in 1689 may serve as an illustration:

"The room was draped with mourning and adorned with the escutcheons of the family. At the head of the body was a pall of death's heads, and above and about the hearse was a canopy richly embroidered, from the centre of which hung a garland and an hour-glass. At the foot was a gilded coat of arms, four feet square, and near by were candles and fumes which were kept continually burning. At one side was placed a cupboard containing plate to the value of £200. The funeral procession was led by the captain of the company to which deceased belonged, followed by the 'preaching minister,' two others of the clergy, and a squire bearing the shield. Before the body, which was borne by six 'gentlemen bachelors,' walked two maidens in white silk, wearing gloves and 'Cyprus scarves,' and behind were six others similarly attired, bearing the pall.... Until ten o'clock at night wines, sweet-meats, and biscuits were served to the mourners."[190]

VI. Trials and Executions

Whenever normal pleasures are withdrawn from a community that community will undoubtedly indulge in abnormal ones. We should not be surprised, therefore, to find that the Puritans had an itching for the details of the morbid and the sensational. The nature of revelations seldom, if ever, grew too repulsive for their hearing, and if the case were one of adultery or incest, it was sure to be well aired. There was a possibility that if an offender made a thorough-going confession before the entire congregation or community, he might escape punishment, and on such occasions it would seem that the congregation sat listening closely and drinking in all the hideous facts and minutiæ. The good fathers in their diaries and chronicles not only have mentioned the crimes and the criminals, but have enumerated and described such details as fill a modern reader with disgust. In fact, Winthrop in his History of New England has cited examples and circumstances so revolting that it is impossible to quote them in a modern book intended for the general public, and yet Winthrop himself seemed to see nothing wrong in offering cold-bloodedly the exact data. Such indulgence in the morbid or risque was not, however, limited to the New England colonists; it was entirely too common in other sections; but among the Puritan writers it seemed to offer an outlet for emotions that could not be dissipated otherwise in legitimate social activities.

To-day the spectacle or even the very thought of a legal execution is so horrible to many citizens that the state hedges such occasions about with the utmost privacy and absence of publicity; but in the seventeenth century the Puritan seems to have found considerable secret pleasure in seeing how the victim faced eternity. Condemned criminals were taken to church on the day of execution, and there the clergyman, dispensing with the regular order of service, frequently consumed several hours thundering anathema at the wretch and describing to him his awful crime and the yawning pit of hell in which even then Satan and his imps were preparing tortures. If the doomed man was able to face all this without flinching, the audience went away disappointed, feeling that he was hard-hearted, stubborn, "predestined to be damned"; but if with loud lamentation and wails of terror he confessed his sin and his fear of God's vengeance, his hearers were pleased and edified at the fall of one more of the devil's agents. Often times a similar scene was enacted at the gallows, where a host of men, women, and even children crowded close to see and hear all. Judge Sewall has recorded for us just such an event:

"Feria Sexta, June 30, 1704.... After Diner, about 3 P.M. I went to see the Execution.... Many were the people that saw upon Bloughton's Hill. But when I came to see how the River was cover'd with People, I was amazed! Some say there were 100 Boats, 150 Boats and Canoes, saith Cousin Moody of York. He told them. Mr. Cotton Mather came with Capt. Quelch and six others for Execution from the Prison to Scarlet's Wharf, and from thence.... When the scaffold was hoisted to a due height, the seven Malefactors went up; Mr. Mather pray'd for them standing upon the Boat. Ropes were all fasten'd to the Gallows (save King, who was Repriev'd). When the Scaffold was let to sink, there was such a Schreech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard, and was much surprised at it; yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place."[191]

This also from the kindly judge indicates the interest in the last service for the condemned one:

"Thursday, March 11, 1685-6. Persons crowd much into the Old Meeting-House by reason of James Morgan ... and before I got thither a crazed woman cryed the Gallery of Meetinghouse broke, which made the people rush out, with great Consternation, a great part of them, but were seated again.... Morgan was turned off about 1/2 hour past five. The day very comfortable, but now 9 o'clock rains and has done a good while.... Mr. Cotton Mather accompanied James Morgan to the place of Execution, and prayed with him there."[192]

It would seem that the Puritan woman might have used her influence by refusing to attend such assemblies. Let us not, however, be too severe on her; perhaps, if such a confession were scheduled for a day in our twentieth century the confessor might not face empty seats, or simply seats occupied by men only. In our day, moreover, with its multitude of amusements, there would be far less excuse; for the monotony of life in the old days must have set nerves tingling for something just a little unusual, and such barbarous occasions were among the few opportunities.

Gradually amusements of a more normal type began to creep into the New England fold. Judge Sewall makes the following comment: "Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1719. The Govr has a ball at his own House that lasts to 3 in the Morn;"[193] but he does not make an additional note of his attending—sure proof that he did not go. Doubtless the hour of closing seemed to him scandalous. Then, too, early in the eighteenth century the dancing master invaded Boston, and doubtless many of the older members of the Puritan families were shocked at the alacrity with which the younger folk took to this sinful art. It must have been a genuine satisfaction to Sewall to note in 1685 that "Francis Stepney, the Dancing Master, runs away for Debt. Several Attachments out after him."[194] But scowl at it as the older people did, they had to recognize the fact that by 1720 large numbers of New England children were learning the graceful, old-fashioned dances of the day, and that, too, with the consent of the parents.

VII. Special "Social" Days

"Lecture Day," generally on Thursday, was another means of breaking the monotony of New England colonial existence. It resembled the Sabbath in that there was a meeting and a sermon at the church, and very little work done either on farm or in town. Commonly banns were published then, and condemned prisoners preached to or at. For instance, Sewall notes: "Feb. 23, 1719-20. Mr. Cooper comes in, and sits with me, and asks that he may be published; Next Thorsday was talk'd of, at last, the first Thorsday in March was consented to."[195] On Lecture Day, as well as on the Sabbath, the beautiful custom was followed of posting a note or bill in the house of God, requesting the prayers of friends for the sick or afflicted, and many a fervent petition arose to God on such occasions. Several times Sewall refers to such requests, and frequently indeed he felt the need of such prayers for himself and his.

"Satterday, Augt. 15. Hambleton and my Sister Watch (his eldest daughter was ill). I get up before 2 in the Morning of the L(ecture) Day, and hearing an earnest expostulation of my daughter, I went down and finding her restless, call'd up my wife.... I put up this Note at the Old (First Church) and South, 'Prayers are desired for Hanah Sewall as drawing Near her end.'"[196]

And when his wife was ill, he wrote: "Oct. 17, 1717. Thursday, I asked my wife whether 'twere best for me to go to Lecture: She said, I can't tell: so I staid at home. Put up a Note.... It being my Son's Lecture, and I absent, twas taken much notice of."[197]

As the editor of the famous Diary comments: "Judge Sewall very seldom allowed any private trouble or sorrow, and he never allowed any matter of private business, to prevent his attendance upon 'Meeting,' either on the Lord's Day, or the Thursday Lecture. On this day, on account of the alarming illness of his wife—which proved to be fatal—he remains with her, furnishing his son, who was to preach, with a 'Note' to be 'put up,' asking the sympathetic prayers of the congregation in behalf of the family. He is touched and gratified on learning how much feeling was manifested on the occasion. The incident is suggestive of one of the beautiful customs once recognized in all the New England churches, in town and country, where all the members of a congregation, knit together by ties and sympathies of a common interest, had a share in each other's private and domestic experiences of joy and sorrow."

Such customs added to the social solidarity of the people, and gave each New England community a neighborliness not excelled in the far more vari-colored life of the South. Fast days and days of prayer, observed for thanks, for deliverance from some danger or affliction, petitions for aid in an hour of impending disaster, or even simply as a means of bringing the soul nearer to God, were also agencies in the social welfare of the early colonists and did much to keep alive community spirit and co-operation. Turning again to Sewall, we find him recording a number of such special days:

In New England Thanksgiving and Christmas were observed at first only to a very slight extent, and not at all with the regularity and ceremony common to-day. In the South, Christmas was celebrated without fail with much the same customs as those known in "Merrie Old England"; but among the earlier Puritans a large number frowned upon such special days as inclining toward Episcopal and Popish ceremonials, and many a Christmas passed with scarcely a notice. Bradford in his so-called Log-Book gives us this description of such lack of observance of the day:

Nearly a century later all that Judge Pynchon records is:

All that Sewall has to say about Thanksgiving is: "Thorsday, Novr. 25. Public Thanksgiving,"[207] and again: "1714. Novr. 25. Thanks-giving day; very cold, but not so sharp as yesterday. My wife was sick, fain to keep the Chamber and not be at Diner."

VIII. Social Restrictions

Many of the restraints imposed by Puritan lawmakers upon the ordinary hospitality and cordial overtures of citizens seem ridiculous to a modern reader; but perhaps the "fathers in Israel" considered such strictness essential for the preservation of the saints. Josselyn travelling in New England in 1638, observed in his New England's Rareties their customs rather keenly, criticized rather severely some of their views, and commended just as heartily some of their virtues. "They that are members of their churches have the sacraments administered to them, the rest that are out of the pale as they phrase it are denied it. Many hundred souls there be amongst them grown up to men and women's estate that were never christened.... There are many strange women too, (in Solomon's sense), more the pity; when a woman hath lost her chastity she hath no more to lose. There are many sincere and religious people amongst them.... They have store of children and are well accommodated with servants; many hands make light work, many hands make a full fraught, but many mouths eat up all, as some old planters have experienced."

In Massachusetts for many years in the seventeenth century a wife, in the absence of her husband, was not allowed to lodge men even if they were close relatives. Naturally such an absurd law was the source of much bickering on the part of magistrates, and many were the amusing tilts when a wife was not permitted to remain with her father, but had to be sent home to her husband, or a brother was compelled to leave his own sister's house. Of course, we may turn successfully to Sewall's Diary for an example: "Mid-week, May 12, 1714. Went to Brewster's. The Anchor in the Plain; ... took Joseph Brewster for our guide, and went to Town. Essay'd to be quarter'd at Mr. Knight's, but he not being at home, his wife refused us."[208] When a judge, himself, was refused ordinary hospitality, we may surmise that the law was rather strictly followed. But many other rules of the day seem just as ridiculous to a modern reader. As Weeden in his Economic and Social History of New England says of restrictions in 1650:

We must not, however, reach the conclusion that life in old New England was a dreary void as far as pleasures were concerned. Under the discussion of home life we have seen that there were barn-raisings, log-rolling contests, quilting and paring bees, and numerous other forms of community efforts in which considerable levity was countenanced. Earle's Home Life in Colonial Days copies an account written in 1757, picturing another form of entertainment yet popular in the rural districts:

"Made a husking Entertainm't. Possibly this leafe may last a Century and fall into the hands of some inquisitive Person for whose Entertainm't I will inform him that now there is a Custom amongst us of making an Entertainm't at husking of Indian Corn where to all the neighboring Swains are invited and after the Corn is finished they like the Hottentots give three Cheers or huzza's, but cannot carry in the husks without a Rhum bottle; they feign great Exertion but do nothing till Rhum enlivens them, when all is done in a trice, then after a hearty Meal about 10 at Night they go to their pastimes."[210]

IX. Dutch Social Life

"Every house had its garden, well, and a little green behind; before every door a tree was planted, rendered interesting by being co-eval with some beloved member of the family; many of their trees were of a prodigious size and extraordinary beauty, but without regularity, every one planting the kind that best pleased with him, or which he thought would afford the most agreeable shade to the open portion at his door, which was surrounded by seats, and ascended by a few steps. It was in these that each domestic group was seated in summer evenings to enjoy the balmy twilight or the serenely clear moon light. Each family had a cow, fed in a common pasture at the end of the town. In the evening the herd returned all together ... with their tinkling bells ... along the wide and grassy street to their wonted sheltering trees, to be milked at their master's doors. Nothing could be more pleasing to a simple and benevolent mind than to see thus, at one view, all the inhabitants of the town, which contained not one very rich or very poor, very knowing, or very ignorant, very rude, or very polished, individual; to see all these children of nature enjoying in easy indolence or social intercourse,

clothed in the plainest habits, and with minds as undisguised and artless.... At one door were young matrons, at another the elders of the people, at a third the youths and maidens, gaily chatting or singing together while the children played round the trees."[211]

With little learning save the knowledge of how to enjoy life, under no necessity of pretending to enjoy a false culture, conforming to no false values and artificialities, these simple-hearted people went their quiet round of daily duties, took a normal amount of pleasure, and in their old-fashioned way, probably lived more than any modern devotee of the Wall Street they knew so well. Madam Knight in her Journal comments upon them in this fashion: "Their diversion in the winter is riding sleighs about three or four miles out of town, where they have houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, and some go to friends' houses, who handsomely treat them. Mr. Burroughs carried his spouse and daughter and myself out to one Madam Dowes, a gentlewoman that lived at a farm house, who gave us a handsome entertainment of five or six dishes, and choice beer and metheglin cider, etc., all of which she said was the produce of her farm. I believe we met fifty or sixty sleighs; they fly with great swiftness, and some are so furious that they will turn out of the path for none except a loaded cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, their tables being as free to their neighbors as to themselves."

And Mrs. Grant has this to say of their love of children and flowers—probably the most normal loves in the human soul: "Not only the training of children, but of plants, such as needed peculiar care or skill to rear them, was the female province.... I have so often beheld, both in town and country, a respectable mistress of a family going out to her garden, in an April morning, with her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds, and her rake over her shoulder to her garden labors.... A woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in form and manner would sow and plant and rake incessantly. These fair gardners were also great florists."[212]

Doubtless the whole world has heard of that other Dutch love—for good things on the table. This epicurean trait perhaps has been exaggerated; Mrs. Grant herself had her doubts at first; but she, like most visitors, soon realized that a Dutchman's "tea" was a fair banquet. Hear again her own words:

To the Puritan this manner of living evidently seemed ungodly, and perhaps the citizens of New Amsterdam were a trifle lax not only in their appetite for the things of this world, but also in their indifference toward the Sabbath. As Madam Knight observes in her Journal: "There are also Dutch and divers conventicles, as they call them, viz., Baptist, Quaker, etc. They are not strict in keeping the Sabbath, as in Boston and other places where I had been, but seemed to deal with exactness as far as I see or deal with."

But the kindly sociableness of these Dutch prevented any decidedly vicious tendency among them, and went far toward making amends for any real or supposed laxity in religious principles. Even as children, this social nature was consciously trained among them, and so closely did the little ones become attached to one another that marriage meant not at all the abrupt change and departure from former ways that it is rather commonly considered to mean to-day. Says Mrs. Grant:

"The children of the town were all divided into companies, as they called them, from five or six years of age, till they became marriageable. How these companies first originated or what were their exact regulations, I cannot say; though I belonging to nine occasionally mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called heads of the company, and, as such, were obeyed by the others.... Each company, at a certain time of the year, went in a body to gather a particular kind of berries, to the hill. It was a sort of annual festival, attended with religious punctuality.... Every child was permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once besides, during the winter and spring. The master and mistress of the family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider, or a syllabub.... The consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was that, grown up, it was reckoned a sort of apostacy to marry out of one's company, and indeed it did not often happen. The girls, from the example of their mothers, rather than any compulsion, very early became notable and industrious, being constantly employed in knitting stockings and making clothes for the family and slaves; they even made all the boys' clothes."[214]

Childhood in New England meant, as we have seen, a good deal of down-right hard toil; in Virginia, for the better class child, it meant much dressing in dainty clothes, and much care about manners and etiquette; but the Dutch childhood and even young manhood and womanhood meant an unusual amount of carefree, whole-hearted, simple pleasure. There were picnics in the summer, nut gatherings in the Autumn, and skating and sleighing in the winter.

All this meant so much more for the growth of normal children and the creation of a cheerful people than did the Puritan attendance at executions and funerals. Those quaint old-time Dutch probably did not love children any more dearly than did the New Englanders; but they undoubtedly made more display of it than did the Puritans. "Orphans were never neglected.... You never entered a house without meeting children. Maidens, bachelors, and childless married people all adopted orphans, and all treated them as if they were their own."[216]

Since we have mentioned such subjects as funerals and orphans, perhaps it would not be out of place to notice the peculiar funeral customs among the Dutch. Even a burial was not so dreary an affair with them. The following bill of 1763, found among the Schuyler papers, gives a hint of the manner in which the service was conducted, and perhaps explains why the women scarcely ever attended the funeral in the "dead room," as it was called, but remained in an upper room, where they could at least hear what was said, if they could not "partake" of the occasion.

Certainly the custom of making the funeral as pleasant as possible for the visitors had not passed away even as late as the days of the Revolution; for during that war Tench Tilghman wrote the following description of a burial service attended by him in New York City: "This morning I attended the funeral of old Mr. Doer.... This was something in a stile new to me. The Corpse was carried to the Grave and interred with out any funeral Ceremony, the Clergy attended. We then returned to the home of the Deceased where we found many tables set out with Bottles, cool Tankards, Candles, Pipes & Tobacco. The Company sat themselves down and lighted their Pipes and handed the Bottles & Tankards pretty briskly. Some of them I think rather too much so. I fancy the undertakers had borrowed all the silver plate of the neighborhood. Tankards and Candle Sticks were all silver plated."[217b]

X. British Social Influences

But before 1760, as indicated above, the English element in New York was making itself felt, and a curious mingling of gaiety and economy began to be noticeable. William Smith, writing in his History of the Province of New York, in 1757, points this out:

With the coming of the Revolution, and the consequent invasion of the city by the British, New York became far more gay than ever before; but even then the native Dutch conservativeness so restrained social affairs that Philadelphia was more brilliant. When, however, the capital of the national government was located in New York then indeed did the city shine. Foreigners spoke with astonishment at the display of luxury and down-right extravagance. Brissot de Warville, for example, writing in 1788, declared: "If there is a town on the American continent where English luxury displays its follies, it is New York." And James Pintard, after attending a New Year levee, given by Mrs. Washington, wrote his sister: "You will see no such formal bows at the Court of St. James." If we may judge by the dress of ladies attending such gatherings, as one described in the New York Gazette of May 15, 1789, we may safely conclude that expense was not spared in the upper classes of society. Hear some descriptions:

We cannot say that the society of the new capital was notable for its intellect or for the intellectual turn of its activities. John Adams' daughter declared that it was "quite enough dissipated," and indeed costly dress, card playing, and dancing seem to have received an undue amount of society's attention. The Philadelphia belle, Miss Franks, wrote home: "Here you enter a room with a formal set courtesy, and after the 'How-dos' things are finished, all a dead calm until cards are introduced when you see pleasure dancing in the eyes of all the matrons, and they seem to gain new life; the maidens decline for the pleasure of making love. Here it is always leap year. For my part I am used to another style of behavior." And, continues Miss Franks: "They (the Philadelphia girls) have more cleverness in the turn of the eye than those of New York in their whole composition." But blunt, old Governor Livingston, on the other hand, wrote his daughter Kitty that "the Philadelphia flirts are equally famous for their want of modesty and want of patriotism in their over-complacence to red coats, who would not conquer the men of the country, but everywhere they have taken the women almost without a trial—damm them."[219]

But there can be no doubt that the whirl of life was a little too giddy in New York, during the last years of the eighteenth century; and that, as a visiting Frenchman declared: "Luxury is already forming in this city, a very dangerous class of men, namely, the bachelors, the extravagance of the women makes them dread marriage."[220] As mentioned above, there was much card playing among the women, and on the then fashionable John Street married women sometimes lost as high as $400 in a single evening of gambling. To some of the older men who had suffered the hardships of war that the new nation might be born, such frivolity and extravagance seemed almost a crime, and doubtless these veterans would have agreed with Governor Livingston when he complained: "My principal Secretary of State, who is one of my daughters, has gone to New York to shake her heels at the balls and assemblies of a metropolis which might be better employed, more studious of taxes than of instituting expensive diversions."[221]

XI. Causes of Display and Frivolity

"The night before the famous white chargers were to be used they were covered with a white paste, swathed in body clothes, and put to sleep on clean straw. In the morning this paste was rubbed in, and the horses brushed until their coats shone. The hoofs were then blacked and polished, the mouths washed, and their teeth picked. It is related that after this grooming the master of the stables was accustomed to flick over their coats a clean muslin handkerchief, and if this revealed a speck of dust the stable man was punished."[222]

Perhaps Washington himself rather enjoyed the stateliness and a certain aloofness in his position; but to Martha Washington, used to the freedom of social mingling on the Virginia plantation, the conditions were undoubtedly irksome. "I lead," she wrote, "a very dull life and know nothing that passes in the town. I never go to any public place—indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is a certain bound set for me which I must not depart from and as I cannot doe as I like I am obstinate and stay home a great deal." To some of the more democratic patriots all this dignity and formality and display were rather disgusting, and some did not hesitate to express themselves in rather sarcastic language about the customs. For instance, gruff old Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania, who was not a lover of Washington anyway, recorded in his Journal his impressions of one of the President's decidedly formal dinners: