There were two classes of Conestoga wagons and wagoners. The "Regulars," or men who made it their constant and only business; and "Militia." A local poet thus describes these outfits:—

They were farmers or common teamsters who made occasional trips, usually in winter time, and did some carriage for others, and drove but four horses with their wagons. The "Regulars" had broad tires, carried no feed for horses nor food for themselves, but both classes of teamsters carried coarse mattresses and blankets, which they spread side by side, and row after row, on the bar-room floor of the tavern at which they "put up." Their horses when unharnessed fed from long troughs hitched to the wagon-pole. The wagons that plied between the Delaware and the small city of Pittsburgh were called Pitt-teams.

The life of the Conestoga wagon did not end even with the establishment of railroads in the Eastern states; farther and farther west it penetrated, ever chosen by emigrants and travellers to the frontiers; and at last in its old age it had an equal career of usefulness as the "prairie-schooner," in which vast numbers of families safely crossed the prairies of our far West. The white tilts of the wagons thus passed and repassed till our own day.

Four-wheeled wagons were but little used in New England till after the War of 1812. Two-wheeled carts and sleds carried inland freight, which was chiefly transported over the snow in the winter.

The Conestoga wagon of the past century was far ahead of anything in England at that date; indeed Mr. C. W. Ernst, the best authority I know on the subject, says we had in every way far better traffic facilities at that time than England. In other ways we excelled. Though Finlay found many defects in the postal service in 1773, he also found the Stavers mail-coach plying between Boston and Portsmouth long before England had such a thing. Mr. Ernst says: "The Stavers mail-coach was stunning; used six horses when roads were bad, and never was late. They had no mail-coaches in England till after the Revolution, and I believe Massachusetts men introduced the idea in England."

We are apt to grow retrospectively sentimental over the delights, æsthetic and physical, of ancient stage-coach days. Those days are not so ancient as many fancy. The first stage-coach which ran directly from Philadelphia to New York in 1766—and primitive enough it was—was called "the flying-machine, a good stage-wagon set on springs." Its swift trip occupied two days in good weather. It was but a year later than the original stage-coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow. At that time, in favorable weather, the coach between London and Edinburgh made the trip in thirteen days. The London mail-coach in its palmiest days could make this trip in forty-three hours and a half. As early as 1718 Jonathan Wardwell advertised that he would run a stage to Rhode Island. In 1767 a stage-coach was run during the summer months between Boston and Providence; in 1770 a stage-chaise started between Salem and Boston and a post-chaise between Boston and Portsmouth the following year. As early as 1732 some common-carrier lines had wagons which would carry a few passengers. Let us hear the testimony of some travellers as to the glorious pleasure of stage-coach travelling. Describing a trip between Boston and New York towards the end of the last century President Quincy of Harvard College said:—

The Columbia Centinel of April 24, 1793, advertised a new line of "small genteel and easy stage-carriages" from Boston to New York with four inside passengers, and smart horses. Many of the announcements of the day have pictures of the coaches. They usually resemble market wagons with round, canvas-covered tops, and the driver is seated outside the body of the wagon with his feet on the foot-board. Trunks were small, covered with deerskin or pigskin, studded with brass nails; and each traveller took his trunk under his seat and feet.

The poet, Moore, gives in rhyme his testimony of Virginia roads in 1800:—

The traveller Weld, in 1795, gave testimony that the bridges were so poor that the driver had always to stop and arrange the loose planks ere he dared cross, and he adds:—

The coach in which this pleasure trip was taken is shown in the illustration entitled "American Stage-wagon." It is copied from a first edition of Weld's Travels.

Ann Warder, in her journey from Philadelphia to New York in 1759, notes two overturned and abandoned stage-wagons at Perth Amboy; and many other travellers give similar testimony. In 1796 the trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore took five days.

The growth in stage-coaches and travel came with the turnpike at the beginning of this century. In transportation and travel, improvement of roadways is ever associated with improvement of vehicles. The first extensive turnpike was the one between Philadelphia and Lancaster, built in 1792. The growth and the cost of these roads may be briefly mentioned by quoting a statement from the annual message of the governor of Pennsylvania in 1838, that that commonwealth then had two thousand five hundred miles of turnpikes which had cost $37,000,000.

Many of these turnpikes were beautiful and splendid roads; for instance, the "Mohawk and Hudson Turnpike," which ran in a straight line from Albany to Schenectady, was ornamented and shaded with two rows of the quickly growing and fashionable poplar-trees and thickly punctuated with taverns. On one turnpike there were sixty-five taverns in sixty miles. The dashing stage-coach accorded well with this fine thoroughfare.

With the splendid turnpikes came the glorious coaching days. In 1827 the Traveller's Register reported eight hundred stage-coaches arriving, and as many leaving Boston each week. The forty-mile road from Boston to Providence sometimes saw twenty coaches going each way. The editor of the Providence Gazette wrote: "We were rattled from Boston to Providence in four hours and fifty minutes—if any one wants to go faster he may go to Kentucky and charter a streak of lightning." There were four rival lines on the Cumberland road,—the National, Good Intent, Pioneer, and June Bug. Some spirited races the old stage-road witnessed between the rival lines. The distance from Wheeling to Cumberland, one hundred and thirty-two miles, was regularly accomplished in twenty-four hours. No heavy luggage was carried and but nine passengers; fourteen coaches rolled off together—one was a mail-coach with a horn. Relays were every ten miles; teams were changed before the coach ceased rocking; one driver boasted of changing and harnessing his four horses in four minutes. Lady travellers were quickly thrust in the open door and their bandboxes after them. Scant time was there for refreshment, save by uncorking of bottles. The keen test and acute rivalry between drivers came in the delivery of the President's Message. Dan Gordon carried the message thirty-two miles in two hours and thirty minutes, changing horses three times. Bill Noble carried the message from Wheeling to Hagerstown, a hundred and eighty-five miles, in fifteen and a half hours.

In 1818 the Eastern Stage Company was chartered in the state of New Hampshire. The route was this: a stage started from Portsmouth at 9 A.M.; passengers dined at Topsfield; thence through Danvers and Salem; back the following day, dining at Newburyport. The capital stock was four hundred and twenty-five shares at a hundred dollars par. In 1834 the stock was worth two hundred dollars a share. The company owned several hundred horses. It was on a coach of this line that Henry Clay rode from Pleasant Street, Salem, to Tremont House, Boston, in exactly an hour; and on the route extended to Portland, Daniel Webster was carried at the rate of sixteen English miles an hour from Boston to Portland to sign the Ashburton Treaty.

The middle of the century saw the beginning of the end of coaching in all the states that had been colonies. Further west the old stage-coach had to trundle in order to exist at all: Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, across the plains, and then over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake. The road from Carson to Plainville gave the crack ride, and the driver wore yellow kid gloves. The coach known as the Concord wagon, drawn by six horses, still makes cheerful the out-of-the-way roads of our Western states, and recalls the life of olden times. The story of spirited and gay life still exists in the Wells Fargo Express. The usefulness of the Concord coach is not limited to the western nor the northern portion of our continent; in South America it flourishes, banishing all rivals.

Canal travel and transportation were proposed at the close of provincial days, and a few short canals were built. Benjamin Franklin was early awake to their practicability and value. Among the stock-owners of the Dismal Swamp Canal was George Washington, and he was equally interested in the Potomac Canal.

The Erie Canal, first proposed to the New York legislature in 1768, was completed in 1825. There was considerable passenger travel on this canal at "a cent and a half a mile, a mile and a half an hour." Horace Greeley has given an excellent picture of this leisurely travel; it was asserted by some that stage-coaches were doomed by the canal-boat, but they continued to exist till they encountered a more formidable rival.

Until turnpike days all small carriages were two-wheeled; chaises, chairs, and sulkies were those generally used. The chaise and harness used by Jonathan Trumbull—"Brother Jonathan"—are here shown. With regard to private conveyances, whether coaches, chaises, or chairs, the colonies kept close step from earliest days with the mother-countries. Randolph noted with envy the Boston coaches of the seventeenth century. Parson Thatcher was accused and reprehended in 1675 for making visits with a coach and four. Coaches were taxed both in England and America; so we know exactly how plentiful they were. There were as many in Massachusetts in 1750 in proportion to the number of inhabitants as there were in England in 1830. Judge Sewall's diary often refers to private coaches; and one of the most amusing scenes it depicts is his continued and ingenious argument when wooing Madam Winthrop for his third wife, when she stipulated that he should keep a coach, and his frugal mind disposed him not to do it.

Coach-building prospered in the colonies; Lucas and Paddock in Boston, Ross in New York, made beautiful and rich coaches. Materials were ample and varied in the New World for carriage-building; horseflesh—not over-choice, to be sure—became over-plentiful; it was said that no man ever walked in America save a vagabond or a fool. A coach made for Madam Angelica Campbell of Schenectady, New York, by coach-builder Ross, in 1790, is here shown. It is now owned by Mr. John D. Campbell of Rotterdam, New York.

Sleighs were common in New York a half-century before they were in Boston. Madam Knights noted the fast racing in sleighs in New York when she was there in 1704.

One other curious conveyance of colonial days should be spoken of,—a sedan-chair. This was a strong covered chair fastened on two bars with handles like a litter, and might be carried by two or four persons. When sedan-chairs were so much used in England, they were sure to be somewhat used in cities in America. One was presented to Governor Winthrop as early as 1646, portion of a capture from a Spanish galleon. Judge Sewall wrote in 1706, "Five Indians carried Mr. Bromfield in a chair." This was in the country, down on Cape Cod, and doubtless four Indians carried him while one rested. As late as 1789 Eliza Quincy saw Dr. Franklin riding in a sedan-chair in Philadelphia.

The establishment and building of roads, bridges, and opening of inns show that mutual interest which marks civilization, and separates us from the lonely, selfish life of a savage. Soon inns were found everywhere in the Northern colonies. In New England, New York, and Pennsylvania an inn was called an ordinary, a victualling, a cook-shop, or a tavern before we had our modern word hotel.

Board was not very high at early inns; the prices were regulated by the different towns. In 1633 the Salem innkeeper could only have sixpence for a meal. This was at the famous Anchor Tavern, which was kept as a hostelry for nearly two centuries. At the Ship Tavern, board, lodging, wine at dinner, and beer between meals cost three shillings a day. Great care was taken by the magistrates to choose responsible men and women to keep taverns, and they would not permit too many taverns in one town. At first the tavern-keeper could not sell sack (which was sherry), nor stronger intoxicating liquor to travellers, but he could sell beer, provided it was good, for a penny a quart. Nor could he sell cakes or buns except at a wedding or funeral. He could not allow games to be played, nor singing or dancing to take place.

We know from Shakespeare's plays that the different rooms in English inns had names. This was also the custom in New England. The Star Chamber, Rose and Sun Chamber, Blue Chamber, Jerusalem Chamber, were some of them. Many of the taverns of Revolutionary days and some of colonial times are still standing. A few have even been taverns since first built; others have served many other uses. A well-preserved old house, built in 1690 in Sudbury, Massachusetts, was originally known as the Red Horse Tavern, but has acquired greater fame as the Wayside Inn of Longfellow's Tales. Its tap-room with raftered ceiling and cage-like bar with swinging gate is a picturesque room, and is one of the few old tap-rooms left unaltered in New England.

Every inn had a name, usually painted on its swinging sign-board, with some significant emblem. These names were simply repetitions of old English tavern-signs until Revolutionary days, when patriotic landlords eagerly invented and adopted names significant of the new nation. The scarlet coat of King George became the blue and buff of George Washington; and the eagle of the United States took the place of the British lion.

The sign-board was an interesting survival of feudal times, and with its old-time carved and forged companions, such as vanes and weathercocks, doorknockers and figureheads, formed a picturesque element of decoration and symbolism. Many chapters might be written on historic, commemorative, emblematic, heraldic, biblical, humorous, or significant signs, nearly all of which have vanished from public gaze, as has disappeared also the general incapacity to read, which made pictorial devices a necessity. Gilders, painter-stainers, smiths, and joiners all helped to make the tavern-sign a thing of varied workmanship if not of art. It is said that Philadelphia excelled in the quantity and quality of her sign-boards. With fair roads for colonial days, the best and amplest system of transportation, and the splendid Conestoga wagons, great inns multiplied throughout Pennsylvania. In Baltimore both taverns and signs were many and varied, from the Three Loggerheads to the Indian Queen with its "two hundred guest-rooms with a bell in every room," and the Fountain Inn built around a shady court, with galleries on every story, like the Tabard Inn at Southwark.

The swinging sign-board of John Nash's Tavern at Amherst, Massachusetts, is here reproduced from the History of Amherst. It is a good type of the ordinary sign-board which was found hanging in front of every tavern a century ago.

In Virginia and the Carolinas taverns were not so plentiful nor so necessary; for a traveller might ride from Maryland to Georgia, and be sure of a welcome at every private house on the way. Some planters, eager for company and news, stationed negroes at the gate to invite passers-by on the post-road to come into the house and be entertained. Berkeley, in his History of Virginia, wrote:—

So universal was this custom of free entertainment that it was a law in Virginia that unless there had been a distinct agreement to pay for board and shelter, no pay could be claimed from any guest, no matter how long he remained. In the few taverns that existed prices were low, about a shilling a dinner; and it was ordered that the meal must be wholesome and good.

The governor of New Netherlands at first entertained all visitors to New Amsterdam at his house in the fort. But as commerce increased he found this hospitality burdensome, and a Harberg or tavern was built; it was later used as a city hall.

In England throughout the seventeenth century, and indeed much later, traversing the great cities by night was a matter of some danger. The streets were ill-lighted, were full of holes and mud and filth, and were infested with thieves. Worse still, groups of drunken and dissipated young men of wealth, calling themselves Mohocks, Scourers, and other names, roamed the dark streets armed with swords and bludgeons, assaulting, tormenting, and injuring every one whom they met, who had the ill fortune to be abroad at night.

There was nothing of that sort known in American cities; there was little noise or roistering, no highway robbery, comparatively little petty stealing. The streets were ill-paved and dirty, but not foul with the accumulated dirt of centuries as in London. The streets in nearly all cities were unlighted. In 1697 New Yorkers were ordered to have a lantern and candle hung out on a pole from every seventh house. And as the watchman walked around he called out, "Lanthorn, and a whole candell-light. Hang out your lights." The watchman was called a rattle-watch, and carried a long staff and a lantern and a large rattle or klopper, which he struck to frighten away thieves. And all night long he called out each hour, and told the weather. For instance, he called out, "Past midnight, and all's well"; "One o'clock and fair winds," or "Five o'clock and cloudy skies." Thus one could lie safe in bed and if he chanced to waken could know that the friendly rattle-watch was near at hand, and what was the weather and the time of night. In 1658 New York had in all ten watchmen, who were like our modern police; to-day it has many thousands.

In New England the constables and watch were all carefully appointed by law. They carried black staves six feet long, tipped with brass, and hence were called tipstaves. The night watch was called a bell-man. He looked out for fire and thieves and other disorders, and called the time of the night, and the weather. The pay was small, often but a shilling a night, and occasionally a "coat of kersey." In large towns, as Boston and Salem, thirteen "sober, honest men and householders" were the night watch. The highest in the community, even the magistrates, took their turn at the watch, and were ordered to walk two together, a young man with "one of the soberer sort."

CHAPTER XV
SUNDAY IN THE COLONIES

The first building used as a church at the Plymouth colony was the fort, and to it the Pilgrim fathers and mothers and children walked on Sunday reverently and gravely, three in a row, the men fully armed with swords and guns, till they built a meeting-house in 1648. In other New England settlements, the first services were held in tents, under trees, or under any shelter. The settler who had a roomy house often had also the meeting. The first Boston meeting-house had mud walls, a thatched roof, and earthen floor. It was used till 1640, and some very thrilling and inspiring scenes were enacted within its humble walls. Usually the earliest meeting-houses were log houses, with clay-filled chinks, and roofs thatched with reeds and long grass, like the dwelling-houses. At Salem is still preserved one of the early churches. The second and more dignified form of New England meeting-house was usually a square wooden building with a truncated pyramidal roof, surmounted often with a belfry, which served as a lookout station and held a bell, from which the bell-rope hung down to the floor in the centre of the church aisle. The old church at Hingham, Massachusetts, still standing and still used, is a good specimen of this shape. It was built in 1681, and is known as the "Old Ship," and is a comely and dignified building. As more elegant and costly dwelling-houses were built, so were better meeting-houses; and the third form with lofty wooden steeple at one end, in the style of architecture invented by Sir Christopher Wren, after the great fire of London, multiplied and increased until every town was graced with an example. In all these the main body of the edifice remained as bare, prosaic, and undecorated as were the preceding churches, while all the ambition of both builders and congregation spent itself in the steeple. These were so varied and at times so beautiful that a chapter might be written on New England steeples. The Old South Church of Boston is a good example of this school of ecclesiastical architecture, and is a well-known historic building as well.

The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in the windows, and when glass came it was not set with putty, but was nailed in. The windows had what were termed "heavy current side-shutters." The outside of the meeting-house was not "colored," or "stained" as it was then termed, but was left to turn gray and weather-stained, and sometimes moss-covered with the dampness of the great shadowing hemlock and fir trees which were usually planted around New England churches. The first meeting-houses were often decorated in a very singular and grotesque manner. Rewards were paid by all the early towns for killing wolves; and any person who killed a wolf brought the head to the meeting-house and nailed it to the outer wall; the fierce grinning heads and splashes of blood made a grim and horrible decoration. All kinds of notices were also nailed to the meeting-house door where all of the congregation might readily see them,—notices of town-meetings, of sales of cattle or farms, lists of town-officers, prohibitions from selling guns to the Indians, notices of intended marriages, vendues, etc. It was the only meeting-place, the only method of advertisement. In front of the church was usually a row of stepping-stones or horse-blocks, for nearly all came on horseback; and often on the meeting-house green stood the stocks, pillory, and whipping-post.

A verse from an old-fashioned hymn reads thus:

The first church at Jamestown, Virginia, gathered the congregation by beat of drum; but while attendants of the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Dutch Reformed churches in the New World were in general being summoned to divine service by the ringing of a bell hung either over the church or in the branches of a tree by its side, New England Puritans were summoned, as the hymn relates, by drum, or horn, or shell. The shell was a great conch-shell, and a man was hired to blow it—a mournful sound—at the proper time, which was usually nine o'clock in the morning. In Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the church-shell was afterwards used for many years as a signal to begin and stop work in the haying field. In Windsor, Connecticut, a man walked up and down on a platform on the top of the meeting-house and blew a trumpet to summon worshippers. Many churches had a church drummer, who stood on the roof or in the belfry and drummed; a few raised a flag as a summons, or fired a gun.

Within the meeting-house all was simple enough: raftered walls, puncheon and sanded or earthen floors, rows of benches, a few pews, all of unpainted wood, and a pulpit which was usually a high desk overhung by a heavy sounding-board, which was fastened to the roof by a slender metal rod. The pulpit was sometimes called a scaffold. When pews were built they were square, with high partition walls, and had narrow, uncomfortable seats round three sides. The word was always spelled "pue"; and they were sometimes called "pits." A little girl in the middle of this century attended a service in an old church which still retained the old-fashioned square pews; she exclaimed, in a loud voice, "What! must I be shut in a closet and sit on a shelf?" These narrow, shelf-like seats were usually hung on hinges and could be turned up against the pew-walls during the long psalm-tunes and prayers; so the members of the congregation could lean against the pew-walls for support as they stood. When the seats were let down, they fell with a heavy slam that could be heard half a mile away in the summer time, when the windows of the meeting-house were open. Lines from an old poem read:—

A few of the old-time meeting-houses, with high pulpit, square pews, and deacons' seats, still remain in New England. The interior of the Rocky Hill meeting-house at Salisbury, Massachusetts, is here shown. It fully illustrates the words of the poet:—

The seats were carefully and thoughtfully assigned by a church committee called the Seating Committee, the best seats being given to older persons of wealth and dignity who attended the church. Whittier wrote of this custom:—

Many of the plans for "seating the meeting-house" have been preserved; the pews and their assigned occupants are clearly designated. A copy is shown of one now in Deerfield Memorial Hall.

In the early meeting-houses men and women sat on separate sides of the meeting-house, as in Quaker meetings till our own time. Sometimes a group of young women or of young men were permitted to sit in the gallery together. Little girls sat beside their mothers or on footstools at their feet, or sometimes on the gallery stairs; and I have heard of a little cage or frame to hold Puritan babies in meeting. Boys did not sit with their families, but were in groups by themselves, usually on the pulpit and gallery stairs, where tithing-men watched over them. In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered by the town that "all ye boyes of ye towne are appointed to sitt upon ye three paire of stairs in ye meeting-house, and Wm. Lord is appointed to look after ye boys upon ye pulpitt stairs."

In Stratford the tithing-man was ordered to "watch over youths of disorderly carriage, and see they behave themselves comelie, and use such raps and blows as is in his discretion meet." In Durham any misbehaving boy was punished publicly after the service was over. We would nowadays scarcely seat twenty or thirty active boys together in church if we wished them to be models of attention and dignified behavior; but after the boys' seats were removed from the pulpit stairs they were all turned in together in a "boys' pew" in the gallery. There was a boys' pew in Windsor, Connecticut, as late as 1845, and pretty noisy it usually was. A certain small boy in Connecticut misbehaved himself on Sunday, and his wickedness was specified by the justice of peace as follows:—

I can picture well the wicked scene; poor, meek little Benoni Simpkins trying to behave well in meeting, and not cry out when the young "wanton gospeller" pulled her hair, and unfortunate Sister Perkins tripped up on the ice by the young rascal.

Another vain youth in Andover, Massachusetts, was brought up before the magistrate, and it was charged that he "sported and played, and by Indecent gestures and wry faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the beholders." The girls were just as wicked; they slammed down the pew-seats. Tabatha Morgus of Norwich "prophaned the Lord's daye" by her "rude and indecent behavior in Laughing and playing in ye tyme of service." On Long Island godless boys "ran raesses" on the Sabbath and "talked of vane things," and as for Albany children, they played hookey and coasted down hill on Sunday to the scandal of every one evidently, except their parents. When the boys were separated and families sat in pews together, all became orderly in meeting.

The deacons sat in a "Deacons' Pue" just in front of the pulpit; sometimes also there was a "Deaf Pue" in front for those who were hard of hearing. After choirs were established the singers' seats were usually in the gallery; and high up under the beams in a loft sat the negroes and Indians.

If any person seated himself in any place which was not assigned to him, he had to pay a fine, usually of several shillings, for each offence. But in old Newbury men were fined as high as twenty-seven pounds each for persistent and unruly sitting in seats belonging to other members.

The churches were all unheated. Few had stoves until the middle of this century. The chill of the damp buildings, never heated from autumn to spring, and closed and dark throughout the week, was hard for every one to bear. In some of the early log-built meeting-houses, fur bags made of wolfskins were nailed to the seats; and in winter church attendants thrust their feet into them. Dogs, too, were permitted to enter the meeting-house and lie on their masters' feet. Dog-whippers or dog-pelters were appointed to control and expel them when they became unruly or unbearable. Women and children usually carried foot-stoves, which were little pierced metal boxes that stood on wooden legs, and held hot coals. During the noon intermission the half-frozen church attendants went to a neighboring house or tavern, or to a noon-house to get warm. A noon-house or "Sabba-day house," as it was often called, was a long low building built near the meeting-house, with horse-stalls at one end and a chimney at the other. In it the farmers kept, says one church record, "their duds and horses." A great fire of logs was built there each Sunday, and before its cheerful blaze noonday luncheons of brown bread, doughnuts, or gingerbread were eaten, and foot-stoves were filled. Boys and girls were not permitted to indulge in idle talk in those noon-houses, much less to play. Often two or three families built a noon-house together, or the church built a "Society-house," and there the children had a sermon read to them by a deacon during the "nooning"; sometimes the children had to explain aloud the notes they had taken during the sermon in the morning. Thus they throve, as a minister wrote, on the "Good Fare of brown Bread and the Gospel." There was no nearer approach to a Sunday-school until this century.

The services were not shortened because the churches were uncomfortable. By the side of the pulpit stood a brass-bound hour-glass which was turned by the tithing-man or clerk, but it did not hasten the closing of the sermon. Sermons two or three hours long were customary, and prayers from one to two hours in length. When the first church in Woburn was dedicated, the minister preached a sermon nearly five hours long. A Dutch traveller recorded a prayer four hours long on a Fast Day. Many prayers were two hours long. The doors were closed and watched by the tithing-man, and none could leave even if tired or restless unless with good excuse. The singing of the psalms was tedious and unmusical, just as it was in churches of all denominations both in America and England at that date. Singing was by ear and very uncertain, and the congregation had no notes, and many had no psalm-books, and hence no words. So the psalms were "lined" or "deaconed"; that is, a line was read by the deacon, and then sung by the congregation. Some psalms when lined and sung occupied half an hour, during which the congregation stood. There were but eight or nine tunes in general use, and even these were often sung incorrectly. There were no church organs to help keep the singers together, but sometimes pitch-pipes were used to set the key. Bass-viols, clarionets, and flutes were played upon at a later date in meeting to help the singing. Violins were too associated with dance music to be thought decorous for church music. Still the New England churches clung to and loved their poor confused psalm-singing as one of their few delights, and whenever a Puritan, even in road or field, heard the distant sound of a psalm-tune he removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer.

Contributions at first were not collected by the deacons, but the entire congregation, one after another, walked up to the deacons' seat and placed gifts of money, goods, wampum, or promissory notes in a box. When the services were ended, all remained in the pews until the minister and his wife had walked up the aisle and out of the church.

The strict observance of Sunday as a holy day was one of the characteristics of the Puritans. Any profanation of the day was severely punished by fine or whipping. Citizens were forbidden to fish, shoot, sail, row, dance, jump, or ride, save to and from church, or to perform any work on the farm. An infinite number of examples might be given to show how rigidly the laws were enforced. The use of tobacco was forbidden near the meeting-house. These laws were held to extend from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday; for in the first instructions given to Governor Endicott by the company in England, it was ordered that all in the colony cease work at three o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday. The Puritans found support of this belief in the Scriptural words, "The evening and the morning were the first day."

A Sabbath day in the family of Rev. John Cotton was thus described by one of his fellow-ministers:—

The Virginia Cavaliers were strict Church of England men and the first who came to the colony were strict Sunday-keepers. Rules were laid down to enforce Sunday observance. Journeys were forbidden, boat-lading was prohibited, also all profanation of the day by sports, such as shooting, fishing, game-playing, etc. The offender who broke the Sabbath laws had to pay a fine and be set in the stocks. When that sturdy watch-dog of religion and government—Sir Thomas Dale—came over, he declared absence from church should be punishable by death; but this severity never was executed. The captain of the watch was made to play the same part as the New England tithing-man. Every Sunday, half an hour before service-time, at the last tolling of the bell, the captain stationed sentinels, then searched all the houses and commanded and forced all (except the sick) to go to church. Then, when all were driven churchwards before him, he went with his guards to church himself.

Captain John Smith, in his Pathway to erect a Plantation, thus vividly described the first places of divine worship in Virginia:—

A timber church sixty feet long took the place of this mud and clay chapel, and this was in turn replaced by the brick one whose ruined arches are still standing. The wooden church saw the most pompous ceremony of the day when the governor, De La Warre, or Delaware as we now call it, in full dress, attended by all his councillors and officers and fifty halbert-bearers in scarlet cloaks, filed within its flower-decked walls.

This decoration of flowers was significant of the difference between the church edifices of the Puritans and of the Cavaliers. The churches of the Southern colonies were, as a rule, much more richly furnished. Many were modelled in shape after the old English churches and were built of stone, though Jonathan Boucher, the colonial clergyman, could write that the greater number of the Southern churches were, at the time of the Revolution, "composed of wood, without spires, or towers or steeples or bells, placed in retired and solitary spots and contiguous to springs or wells." Many of the churches and the chapels-of-ease stood by the waterside, and to the services came the church attendants in canoes, periaugers, dugouts, etc. It made an animated scene upon the water, as the boats came rowing in and as they departed after the service.

Sometimes the seats were comfortably cushioned, and they were carefully assigned as in the Puritan meetings. In some Virginia churches seats in the galleries were deemed the most dignified. There was a pew for the magistrates, another for the magistrates' ladies; pews for the representatives and church-wardens, vestrymen, etc. Persons crowded into pews above their stations, just as in New England, and were promptly displaced. Groups of men built pews together, and there were schoolboys' galleries and pews.

The first clergyman in Virginia, Robert Hunt, a true man of God, came as a missionary, and he and others were men of marked intellect and religion, but in the eighteenth century the pay was too small and uncertain to attract any great men from the Church of England, and church attendance dwindled and became irregular. For in Virginia the parish was expected to receive any clergyman sent them from England, a rule which often proved unsatisfactory; and deservedly so, since some very disreputable offshoots of English families were thrust upon the Virginia churches. In the Carolinas, where the church chose its own clergyman, harmony and affection prevailed in the parishes as it did among the New England Puritans. Though the Virginians did not always love their clergymen, still they were ever steadfast in their affection to their church, and regarded it as the only church.

Sunday was not observed with as much rigidity in New Netherland as in New England, but strict rules and laws were made for enforcing quiet during service-time. Fishing, gathering berries or nuts, playing in the streets, working, going on pleasure trips, all were forbidden. On Long Island shooting of wild fowl, carting of grain, travelling for pleasure, all were punished. In Revolutionary times a cage was set up in City Hall Park, near the present New York Post-office, in which boys were confined who did not properly regard the Sabbath.

Before the Dutch settlers had any churches or domines, as they called their ministers, they had krankbesoeckers, or visitors of the sick, who read sermons to an assembled congregation every Sunday. The first church at Albany was much like the Plymouth fort, simply a blockhouse with loop-holes through which guns could be fired. The roof was mounted with three cannon. It had a seat for the magistrates and one for the deacons, and a handsome octagonal pulpit which had been sent from Holland, and which still exists. The edifice had a chandelier and candle sconces and two low galleries. The first church in New Amsterdam was of stone, and was seventy-two feet long.

A favorite form of the Dutch churches was six or eight sided, with a high pyramidal roof, topped with a belfry and a weather-vane. Usually the windows were so small and of glass so opaque that the church was very dark. A few of the churches were poorly heated with high stoves perched up on pillars, the Albany and Schenectady churches among them, but all the women carried foot-stoves, and some of the men carried muffs.

Almost as important as the domine was the voorleezer or chorister, who was also generally the bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, funeral inviter, schoolmaster, and sometimes town clerk. He "tuned the psalm"; turned the hour-glass; gave out the psalms on a hanging board to the congregation; read the Bible; gave up notices to the domine by sticking the papers in the end of a cleft stick and holding it up to the high pulpit.

The deacons had control of all the church money. In the middle of the sermon they collected contributions by passing sacjes. These were small cloth or velvet bags hung on the end of a pole six or eight feet long. A French traveller told that the Dutch deacons passed round "the old square hat of the preacher" on the end of a stick for the contributions. Usually there was a little bell on the sacje which rung when a coin was dropped in.

In many Dutch churches the men sat in a row of pews around the wall while the women were seated on chairs in the centre of the church. There were also a few benches or pews for persons of special dignity, or for the minister's wife.

There were many other colonists of other religious faiths: the Roman Catholics in Maryland and the extreme Southern colonies; the Quakers in Pennsylvania; the Baptists in Rhode Island; the Huguenots, Lutherans, Moravians; but all enjoined an orderly observance of the Sabbath day. And it may be counted as one of the great blessings of the settlement of America, one of the most ennobling conditions of its colonization, that it was made at a time when the deepest religious feeling prevailed throughout Europe, when devotion to some religion was found in every one, when the Bible was a newly found and deeply loved treasure; when the very differences of religious belief and the formation of new sects made each cling more lovingly and more earnestly to his own faith.

CHAPTER XVI
COLONIAL NEIGHBORLINESS

If the first foundation of New England's strength and growth was godliness, its next was neighborliness, and a firm rock it proved to build upon. It may seem anomalous to assert that while there was in olden times infinitely greater independence in each household than at present, yet there was also greater interdependence with surrounding households.

It is curious to see how completely social ethics and relations have changed since olden days. Aid in our families in times of stress and need is not given to us now by kindly neighbors as of yore; we have well-arranged systems by which we can buy all that assistance, and pay for it, not with affectionate regard, but with current coin. The colonist turned to any and all who lived around him, and never turned in vain for help in sickness, or at the time of death of members of his household; for friendly advice; for culinary aids to a halting appetite; for the preparation for feasting an exceptional number of persons; in short, in any unusual emergency, as well as in frequent every-day coöperation in log-rolling, stone-piling, stump-pulling, wall-building, house-raising, etc.,—all the hard and exhausting labor on the farm.

The word "coöperation" is modern, but the thing itself is as old as civilization. In a new country where there was much work to be done which one man or one family could not do, under the mechanical conditions which then existed, a working together, or union of labor was necessary for progress, indeed, almost for obtaining a foothold.

The term "log-rolling" is frequently employed in its metaphorical sense in politics, both by English and American writers who have vague knowledge of the original meaning of the word. A log-rolling in early pioneer days, in the Northern colonies and in western Virginia and the central states, was a noble example of generous coöperation, where each gave of his best—his time, strength, and good will; and where all worked to clear the ground in the forest for a home-farm for a neighbor who might be newly come and an entire stranger, but who in turn would just as cheerfully and energetically give his work for others when it was needed.

With the vanishing of the log-rolling, and a score of similar kindly usages and customs, has gone from our communities all traces of the old-time exalted type of neighborliness. We nowadays have generalized our sentiments; we have more philanthropy and less neighborliness; we have more love for mankind and less for men. We are independent of our neighbors, but infinitely more dependent on the world at large. The personal element has been removed to a large extent from our social ethics. We buy nursing and catering just as we hire our houses built and buy our corn ready ground. Doubtless everything we buy is infinitely better; nevertheless, our loss in affectionate zeal is great.

The plantation was the unit in Virginia; in New England it was the town. The neighborly helpfulness of the New England settlers extended from small to great matters; it formed communal privileges and entered into every department of town life. For instance, the town of Gloucester in 1663 granted a right to a citizen for running a small sawmill for twenty-one years. In return for this right the grantee was to sell boards to Gloucester men at "one shilling per hundred better cheape than to strangers"—and was to receive pay "raised in the towne." Saco and Biddeford, in Maine, ordered that fellow-townsmen should have preference in every employment. Other towns ordered certain persons to buy provisions "of the towns-men in preference." Reading would not sell any of its felled timber out of the town. Thus the social compact called a town extended itself also into all the small doings of daily life, and the mutual helpfulness made mutual interests that proved no small element of the force which bound all together in 1776 in a successful struggle for independence.

In outlying settlements and districts this feeling of mutual dependence and assistance was strong enough to give a name which sometimes lingered long. "The Loomis Neighborhood," "The Mason Neighborhood," "The Robinson Neighborhood" were names distinctive for half a century, and far more distinguishing and individual than the Greenville, Masontown, and Longwood that succeeded them.

There was one curious and contradictory aspect of this neighborliness, this kindliness, this thought for mutual welfare, and that was its narrowness, especially in New England, as regards the limitations of space and locality. It is impossible to judge what caused this restraint of vision, but it is certain that in generality and almost in universality, just as soon as any group of settlers could call themselves a town, these colonists' notions of kindliness and thoughtfulness for others became distinctly and rigidly limited to their own townspeople. The town was their whole world. Without doubt this was partly the result of the lack of travelling facilities and ample communication, which made townships far more separated and remote from each other than states are to-day, and made difficult the possibility of speedy or full knowledge of strangers.

This caused a constant suspicion of all newcomers, especially those who chanced to enter with scant introduction, and made universal a custom of "warning out" all strangers who arrived in any town. This formality was gone through with by the sheriff or tithing-man. Thereafter should the warned ones prove incapable or unsuccessful or vicious, they could not become a charge upon the town, but could be returned whence they came with despatch and violence if necessary. By this means, and by various attempts to restrict the powers of citizens to sell property to newcomers, the town kept a jealous watch over the right of entry into the corporation.

Dorchester in 1634 enacted that "no man within the Plantation shall sell his house or lott to any man without the Plantation whome they shall dislike off." Providence would not permit a proprietor to sell to any "but to an Inhabitant" without consent of the town. New Haven would neither sell nor let ground to a stranger. Hadley would sell no land to any until after three years' occupation, and then only with approval of the "Town's Mind." In 1637 the General Court very reasonably questioned whether towns could legally restrain individuals from disposal of their own property, but the custom was so established, so in touch with the narrow exclusiveness of the colonists, that it still prevailed. The expression of the town of Watertown when it would sell lots only to freemen of the congregation, because it wished no strange neighbors, but only "to sitt down there close togither," was the sentiment of all the towns. One John Stebbins, who had twice served as a soldier of Watertown and lived there seven years, could not get a town lot.

The legal process of warning out of town had an element of the absurd in it, and in one case that of mystery, namely: a sheriff appeared before the woebegone intruder, and said, half laughing, "I warn you off the face of the earth." "Let me get my hat before I go," stammered the terrified wanderer, who ran into the house for his hat and was never seen by any mortal eye in that town afterwards. It has become a tradition of local folk-lore that he literally vanished from the earth at the command of the officer of the law.

The harboring of strangers, even of relatives who were not local residents, was a frequent source of bickering between citizens and magistrates, as well as a constant cause of arbitration between towns. A widow in Dorchester was not permitted to entertain her own son-in-law from another town, and her neighbor was fined in 1671 "under distress" for housing his own daughter. She was a married woman, and alleged she could not return to her husband on account of the inclement weather.

As time passed on and immigration continued, freemen clung closely to their right to keep out strangers and outsiders. From the Boston Town Records of 1714 we find citizens still prohibited from entertaining a stranger without giving notice to the town authorities, and a description of the stranger and his circumstances. Boston required that all coming from Ireland should be registered "lest they become chargeable." Warnings and whippings out of town still continued. All this was so contrary to the methods of colonies in other countries, such as the Barbadoes, Honduras, etc., where extraordinary privileges were offered settlers, free and large grants of land, absolvment from past debts, etc., that it makes an early example of the curious absorbing and assimilating power of American nationality, which ever grew and grew even against such clogs and hampering restrictions.

In the Southern colonies the same kindliness existed as in the North, but the conditions differed. John Hammond, of Virginia, wrote in 1656, in his Leah and Rachel:—