The Newtown bee., 1908-04-10

cheese, wait upon the men to their
 Sunday fixings, besides doing the ordi-
 nary homework aid getting herself
 ready for church and stopping all to
 reyerently attend the family deyotions,
 when the good man was ready for 1t,
 then riding horseback to church and
 sitting through two long services and
 returning home to prepare the four
 o'clock dinner and at night attending
 to the dairy again, thus spending
 the day of rest and l suppose obeying
 the command in it "Thou shalt not do
 any work" However such women
 found time to read the Bible and could
 tell us how many times they had read
 it through. The children were rigidly
 taught to keep the Sabbath, there
 must be no playing or laughing and talking or making noise till sundown but they must "sit still for it is Sun day."
 Boys had to walk to church, some- times going barefoot till they were
 almost there and then putting on their shoes, but they were admonished not to talk or laugh by the way, which seems more than human nature could bear and no wonder that one old gen. tleman says that his grandfather died.
 when he was a boy, and they had his coffin draped in black and all was made horrible to his young mind; he won- dered if his grandfather wouldn't have rather had it Sunday all the time than to have died, so great was his hatred of our blessed Sabbath day. It seems not only absurd but almost cruel to subject active children full of life and spirits to so much repression with so little reading of any kind at hand ex- cept the Bible and no pictures. If God made the Sabbath, He also gave the young people their lively natures. The training of children was also differ ent when they were taught to be seen and not heard and if one showed evil dence of being possessed of a decided character that one must have its will broken. If there was anything un- usually distasteful that thing they must be made to do. Trained to work when young the boys did not attend school in summer after they were ten or twelve. One boy plowed barefooted when he was not too old to sit down and cry when the stones hurt his feet. He had no way of knowing the time of day but by watching the sun which he did all day. thinking "when will the sun be down when can stop."
 The parents were conscientious no doubt for doesn't the Bible say some- thing about. .sparing the rod and spoil ing the child? But the parents prac- ced self-denial for themselves. One father of a family had not worked all day for it was such a cold day in the spring till he remembered that 'The sluggard will not work by reason of the cold therefore shall he beg in har- Vest, etc." So he got up his oxen and went to blowing at five o'clock in the afternoon. But to look at some of the places in which these people lived and toiled, trained their children and kept the Sabbath we will begin as you come from Nettleton Hollow the "north way" The first house now occupied n summer by Walter Bronson, was quilt for Mansfield Smith but soon sold 70 William Bronson, who married Lucy A. Whittlesey and they spent all their married life there. Walter, their son, las recently remodeled and beautified 1 he house and the family make It their summer home.