Connecticut western news., 1897-11-25

sort or people they were who gave America Thanksgiving day should read Alice Morse Earle's book, Gus toms and Fashions In old New Eng land"
 The reader will surely wonder how it came about that these people were responsible for an anniversary day when they so bitterly opposed letting their poor, little, half frozen, skinny children celebrate April Fools day.
 The young ones of those days were beautifully clad in linon-goose fieshy thought-little, thin linen, short sleev- ed. low necked shirts and baglike dress es of linen, drawn in around the neck with puckering strings
 Then the Sunday after they were born they were carried off to the meeting house to be baptized There was no fire In those meeting houses, and they often had to break the foe in the christening bowl. But the Puritans had no monop- oly of such cruelty to children. The ru- brio of the Episcopalian prayer book says that parents must not defer baptism longer than the first or second Sunday after birth.
 One of these New England parsons believed in infant immersion and prao- ticed 1t, too, till his own child nearly lost it's life by 1t After that he learned some sense ..a
 Judge Sewall writes Jan. ga, 1894: "A very extraordinary storm by reason of the falling and driving of the snow. Few women could get to meeting. A child named Alexander was baptized in the afternoon
 It is not surprising that consumption struck so deep into New England or that infant mortality was so great Re member, too, that in the books on the rearing of children 1t was advised that their feet be often dipped in cold water and that they wear thin soled shoes, "that the wet may come freely to them.
 One doesn't wonder, either, at the size of the families. Sir William Phips was one of 28 children by the same mother; Printer Green had 80 children; the Rev. John Sherman of Watertown had 26 children by two wives-2o by his last. With death making so many n little multiplication. It must have taken a good deal of scuffiing with the clements to provide bread and meat and clothes for family like a small Sunday school. They didn' ( get enough to eat, 1t Is plain, for the children were almost all rickety, and all had to take elaborate compounds of baked snails, mashed earthworms, herbs, hartshorn and strong ale to cure them. But the children were smart children. Phebe Bartlett was powerfully convert ed when she was years old. Jane Tur- ell could tell Scripture stories before she was 9 years old, and before she was { she could say the greater part of her oatechism, many of the Psalms. read distinctly and make pertinent remarks on many things she read She asked many astonishing questions about divine mysteries
 Cotton Mather took his little daugh. ter Katy, aged {, into his study and told her that he was to die shortly and that she must remember all he said. He set before her the sinful condition of her nature and charged her to pray in secret places every day, and so on. with much more lugubrious matter of the same sort He lived 30 years after he scared poor little Katy so.
 That's the lively sort of time the Puritan children had.
 The poor little Puritan boys were not allowed to go swimming at all, and every tithingman was strictly enjoined to keep them from 1t Each tithingman had ten families under his charge, and If one may estimate thnt there were ten boys In each family the chances are that on . hot August day some one of those 100 young oncs de6ed the law, its dread executor and the chances of going to a place where 1t is more than August all the year around. and no good swim. ming holes either.
 But the young ones danced, and they had punch to drink One little girl 8 years old wouldn't stay at her grand have wine to drink at every meal, and her parents upheld her in her conduct. They had candy and gingerbread and oranges and pictured story books; but, alas, they were stories of the "Conver- sion and Holy and Exemplary Lives of Several Young Children, "The Life of Mary Paddock, Who Died at the Age of Nine, Praise Out of the Mouths of Babes" and the likes of themi
 They went to school and froze thore when they weren't warmed up with "lamming and with whipping and such benefits of nature. Besides, the teach. CT had devilish devices, such as split branch, into whose cleft the bad child s nose was pat and pinched They had leather paddles, and the whole oommu- nity didn't rise up in horror at it, though little children were blistered, not grown up young men.
 Bachelors and "lone men" had the worst of 1t very decidedly, The tthing- man kept his eye on them all the time. In Hartford they had to pay 20 shil- lings a week to the town for living without wife. Widowers hardly wait ed till their wives were good and cold before they married again The father and mother of Governor Winslow had been widower and widow and l2 weeks respectively when they were married. The governor of New Hhmp. shire married woman whose first hus- band was put in the grave just ten days before the vtdding. A single woman was "an antient maid" at 26 years, and spinster of 80 years was . "thorn- back.
 Judge Sewall wrote in his diary quite loug story of his various attempts to .emarry when his first wife died, leav- Ing him 6 widower 60 years old. He had dreadful timo of it, for he was close listed in the matter of settlements, but finally he drove a bargain.
 In the early days of New England almost everybody of dignity performed the marriage except the parson, and the whole company of guests used to invade the bridal chamber and make long pray CTS there Young fellows who were not invited to the wedding had the pleasing | custorn of stealing the bride after the