Alice Morse Earle

Puritanism is not of the Nineteenth Century, but of the Seventeenth, the grand unintelligibility for us lies there. The Fast Day Sermons, in spite of printers, are all grown dumb. In long rows of dumpy little quartos they indeed stand here bodily before us; by human volition they can be read, but not by any human memory remembered. The Age of the Puritans is not extinct only and gone away from us, but it is as if fallen beyond the capabilities of memory itself; it is grown what we may call incredible. Its earnest Purport awakens now no resonance in our frivolous hearts, ... the sound of it has become tedious as a tale of past stupidities.

—Oliver Cromwell's Life and Letters. Thomas Carlyle, 1845.

The religious aspect of the life of children, especially in early colonial days, and most particularly in New England, bore a far deeper relation to the round of daily life than can be accorded to it in these pages. The spirit of the Lord, perhaps I should say the fear of the Lord, truly filled their days. Born into a religious atmosphere, reared in religious ways, surrounded on every side by religious influences, they could not escape the impress of deep religious feeling; they certainly had a profound familiarity with the Bible. The historian Green says that the Englishman of that day was a man of one book, and that book the Bible. It might with equal truth be said that the universal child's book of that day was the Bible. There were few American children until after the Revolution who had ever read from any book save the Bible, a primer, or catechism, and perhaps a hymn book or an almanac.

The usual method at that time of reading the Bible through was in the regular succession of every chapter from beginning to end, not leaving out even Leviticus and Numbers. This naturally detracted from the interest which would have been awakened by a wise selection of parts suited to the liking of children; and many portions doubtless frightened young children, as we have abundant record in the writings of Sewall and Mather. J. T. Buckingham stated in his Memoirs that he read the Bible through at least a dozen times before he was sixteen years old. Some portions, especially the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John, filled him with unspeakable terror, and he called the enforced reading of them "a piece of gratuitous and unprofitable cruelty." He was careful, however, to pay due tribute to the influence of the Bible upon his literary composition and phraseology. The constant reading of the beautiful English wording of the Bible influenced not only the style of writing of that day, but controlled the everyday speech of the people, keeping it pure and simple.

There was one important reason for the unfailing desire of English folk for the Bible and the employment of its words and terms; it was not only the sole book with which most English readers were familiar,—the book which supplied to them sacred hymns and warlike songs, the great voices of the prophets, the parables of the Evangelists, stories of peril and adventure, logic, legends, history, visions,—but it was also a new book. The family of the seventeenth century that read the words of the small Geneva Bibles in the home circle, or poorer folk who listened to the outdoor reading thereof, heard a voice that they had longed for and waited for and suffered for, and that their fathers had died for, and a treasure thus acquired is never lightly heeded. The Pilgrim Fathers left England for Holland before King James' Bible, our Authorized Version, had been published. The Puritans of the Boston and Salem settlements had seen the importation of Geneva Bibles forbidden in England by Laud in 1633, and the reading prohibited at their meetings. They revelled in it in their new homes, for custom had not deadened their delight, and they were filled with it; it satisfied them; they needed no other literature.

Though Puritanism in its anxious and restricted religionism denied freedom to childhood, yet the spirit of Puritanism was deeply observant and conservative of family relations. The meagre records of domestic life in Puritan households are full of a pure affection, if not of grace or good cheer. The welfare, if not the pleasure of their children, lay close to the heart of the Pilgrims. Their love was seldom expressed, but their rigid sense of duty extended to duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted.

Governor Bradford wrote in his now world-famous Log-book, in his lucid and beautiful English, an account of the motives of the emigration from Holland, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the most profound reasons of all, their intense yearning for the true welfare of their children:—

"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their servants but in a sorte, to their dearest children; the which as it did not a little wound ye tender harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of theier children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, having lernde to bear the yoake in their youth and willing to beare parte of their parents burden, were often times so oppressed with their hevie labours, that though their minds were free and willing yet their bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and became decrepid in their early youth, the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all sorrows most heavie to be borne was that many of their children, were drawne away by evill examples into extravagant and dangerous coarses, getting ye raines off their necks, and departing from their parents."

This country was settled at a time when all English people were religious. The Puritan child was full of religious thoughts and exercises, so also was the child of Roman Catholic parents, or one reared in the Established Church. The diarist Evelyn was a stanch Church of England man, no lover of Puritan ways, but he could write thus of his little child:—

"As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion and his sense of God. He had learned all his Catechism early, and understood all the historical part of the Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeem mankind, and how comprehending those messages himself, his godfathers were discharged of his promises.

"He would of himself select the most pathetic psalms and chapters out of Job, to read to his maid during his sickness, telling her, when she pitied him, that all God's children must suffer affliction. He declaimed against the vanities of the world before he had seen any. Often he would desire those who came to see him to pray by him, and a year before he fell sick to kneel and pray with him alone in some corner."

It was not of a Puritan dame that this was written:—

"Her Maids came into her Chamber early every morning, and ordinarily shee passed about an howr with them; In praying, and catechizing, and instructing them: To these secret and private Praiers, the publick Morning and Evening praiers of the Church, before dinner and supper, and another form, together with reading Scriptures, and singing Psalms, before bed-time, were daily and constantly added."

This zealous Christian was Letice, Lady Falkland, a devoted Church of England woman; so strict was she that if she missed any from the religious services, she "presently sent for them and consecrated another howr of praier there purposely for them." A strenuous insistence showed itself in all sects in the new world. The "Articles Lawes and Orders Divine Politique and Martiall for the colony of Virginea" were unrivalled in their mingling of barbarity and Christianity by any other code of laws issued in America. No Puritan dared go farther than did the good Episcopalian Sir Thomas Dale. For irreverence to "any Preacher or Minister of Gods Holy Word" the offender was to be whipped three times and thrice to ask public forgiveness. Any one who persistently refused to be instructed and catechized could be whipped every day. Rigidly were all forced to attend the Sunday exercises.

There is one name which must appear constantly on the pages of any history of New England of the half century from 1680 to 1728,—that of Cotton Mather. This reference is due him not only because he was prominent in the history of those years, but because he is the preserver of that history for us. From his multitudinous pages—full though they be of extraordinary religious sentiments, strained metaphors, and unmistakable slang—we also gain much to show us the life of his day. The man himself was not only a Puritan of the Puritans, but the personification of a passionate desire to do good. This constant thought for others and wish to benefit them frequently led him to perform deeds which were certainly officious, ill-timed, and unwelcome, though inspired by noble motives.

His son Samuel wrote a life of him, which has justly been characterized by Professor Barrett Wendell as the most colorless book in the English language; but even from those bleached and dried pages we learn of Cotton Mather's love of his children, and his earnest desire for their education and salvation. His son's words may be given as evidently truthful:—

"He began betimes to entertain them with delightful stories, especially Scriptural ones; and he would ever conclude with some lesson of piety bidding them to learn that lesson from the story. Thus every day at the table he used himself to tell some entertaining tale before he rose; and endeavor 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.

"He betimes tried to engage his children in exercises of piety, and especially secret prayer.... He would often call upon them, 'Child, don't you forget every day to go alone and pray as I have directed you.' He betimes endeavoured to form in his children a temper of kindness. He would put them upon doing services and kindnesses for one another and other children. He would applaud them when he saw them delight in it. He would upbraid all aversion to it. He would caution them exquisitely against all revenges of injuries and would instruct them to return good offices for evil ones.... He would let them discover he was not satisfied, except when they had a sweetness of temper shining in them."

His thought for the young did not cease with those of his own family; he never failed to instil good lessons everywhere; and a special habit of his on visiting any town was to beg a holiday for the school children, asking them to perform some religious task in return.

Another Puritan preacher, Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, was so laden with the fruit of the tree of knowledge that "he stoopt for the very children to pick off the apple ready to drop into their mouths." When they came to his study, he would examine them, "How they walked with God? How they spent their time, what good books they read? Whether they prayed without ceasing?" He wrote to a brother minister in 1657:—

"Do your children and family grow more godly? I find greatest trouble and grief about the rising generation. Young people are little stirred here; but they strengthen one another in evil by example and by counsel. Much ado have I with my own family; hard to get a servant that is glad of catechizing or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in Yorkshire, and those that I brought over were a blessing, but the young brood doth much afflict me. Even the children of the godly here, and elsewhere make a woful proof."

These ministers lived at a time when New England Puritanism in its extreme type was coming to a close; but parents and households thus reared clung more rigidly and exactly to it and instilled in it a fervent hope of giving permanency to what seemed to their sad eyes in danger of being wholly thrust aside and lost. Such religionists were both Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, "true New-English Christians" they called and deemed themselves. They were very gentle with their children; but a profound anxiety for the welfare of those young souls made them most cruel in the intensity of their teaching and warning; especially displeasing to modern modes of thought are their constant reminders of death.

When Cotton Mather's little daughter was but four years old he made this entry in his diary:—

"I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and then I told my child I am to dye Shortly and shee must, when I am Dead, remember Everything I now said unto her. I sett before her the sinful Condition of her Nature, and I charged her to pray in Secret Places every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her she must look to meet with more humbling Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide for her."

The vanity of all such painful instruction, harrowing to the father and terrifying to the child, is shown in the sequel. Cotton Mather did not die till thirty years afterward, and long survived the tender little blossom that he loved yet blighted with the chill and dread of death.

The pages of Judge Sewall's diary sadly prove his performance of what he believed to be his duty to his children, just as the entries show the bewilderment and terror of his children under his teachings. Elizabeth Sewall was the most timid and fearful of them all; a frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children; but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her father sadly wrote, "God has delivered her now from all her fears."

The process which developed this unhappy nature is plainly shown by many entries in the diary. This was when she was about five years old:—

"It falls to my daughter Elizabeth's Share to read the 24 of Isaiah which she doth with many Tears not being very well and the Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me also."

The terrible verses telling of God's judgment on the land, of fear, of the pit, of the snare, of emptiness and waste, of destruction and desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child, and produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few years older:—

"When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst into an amazing cry which caus'd all the family to cry too. Her Mother ask'd the Reason, she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should go to Hell, her Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr. Norton's; Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And these words in the Sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins, ran in her Mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home, she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather—Why hath Satan filled thy Heart? which increas'd her Fear. Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered Yes, but fear'd her prayers were not heard, because her sins were not pardoned."

Poor little wounded Betty! her fear that she should go to hell because she, like Spira, was not elected, was answered by her father who, having led her into this sad state, was but ill-fitted to comfort her. Both prayed with bitter tears, and he says mournfully, "I hope God heard us." Hell, Satan, eternal damnation, everlasting torments, were ever held up before these Puritan children. We could truthfully paraphrase Wordsworth's beautiful line "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," and say of these Boston children, "Hell lay about them in their infancy." The lists in their books of the proper names in the Bible had an accompanying list—that of names of the devil.

A most painfully explicit account of one of the ultra-sensitive natures developed by these methods is given by Cotton Mather in his most offensive style in a short religious biography of Nathaniel Mather. The boy died when he was nineteen years old, but unhappily he kept a diary of his religious sentiments and fears. He fasted often and prayed constantly even in his sleep. He wrote out in detail his covenant with God, and I cannot doubt that he more than lived up to his promises, as he did to the minute rules he laid out for his various religious duties. Still this young Christian was full of self-loathing, horrible conceptions of God, unbounded dread of death, and all the horrors of a morbid soul.

A letter written by an older Mather (about 1638), when he was twelve years old, shows an ancestral tendency to religious fears:—

"Though I am thus well in body yet I question whether my soul doth prosper as my body doth, for I perceive yet to this very day, little growth in grace; and this makes me question whether grace be in my heart or no. I feel also daily great unwillingness to good duties, and the great ruling of sin in my heart; and that God is angry with me and gives me no answers to my prayers; but many times he even throws them down as dust in my face; and he does not grant my continued request for the spiritual blessing of the softening of my hard heart. And in all this I could yet take some comfort but that it makes me to wonder what God's secret decree concerning me may be: for I doubt whether even God is wont to deny grace and mercy to his chosen (though uncalled) when they seek unto him by prayer for it; and therefore, seeing he doth thus deny it to me, I think that the reason of it is most like to be because I belong not unto the election of grace. I desire that you would let me have your prayers as I doubt not but I have them, and rest

"Your Son, Samuel Mather."

A strong characteristic of English folk at the time of the settlement of the American colonies was superstition. This showed not only in scores of petty observances but in serious beliefs, such as those about comets and thunder-storms. It controlled medical practice, and was displayed in the religious significance attributed to trifling natural events. It was evinced in the dependence on dreams, and the dread of portents. Naturally children were imbued with the beliefs and fears of their parents, and multiplied the importance and the terror of these notions. It can readily be seen that religious training and thought, such as was shown in the families of Samuel Sewall and Cotton Mather, joined to hereditary traits and race superstitions, could naturally produce a condition of mind and judgment which would permit such an episode as that known as the Salem Witchcraft. Nor is it anything but natural to find that those two prominent Bostonians took such important parts in the progress of that tragedy.

It was my intent to devote a chapter of this book to the results of the study of the part borne by children in that sad tale of psychological phenomena and religious fanaticism. The study proved most fascinating, and research was faithfully made; but a stronger desire was that children might find some pleasure in these pages in reading of the child life of their forbears. Such a chapter could neither be profitable to the child nor comprehended by him, nor would it be to the taste of parents of the present day. It was a sad tale, but was not peculiar to Salem nor to New England. The Salem and Boston settlers came largely from the English counties of Suffolk and Essex, where witches and witch-hunters and witch-finders abounded, and Salem children and parents had seen in their English homes or heard the tales of hundreds of similar obsessions and possessions.

New England children were instilled with a familiarity with death in still another way than through talking and reading of it. Their presence at funerals was universal. A funeral in those days had an entirely different status as a ceremony from to-day. It was a social function as well as a solemn one; it was a reunion of friends and kinsfolk, a ceremonial of much expense and pomp, a scene of much feasting and drinking.

Judge Sewall tells of the attendance of his little children when five and six years old at funerals. When Rev. Thomas Shepherd was buried "scholars went before the Herse" at the funeral. Sargent, in his Dealings with the Dead, tells of country funerals in the days of his youth:—

"When I was a boy and at an academy in the country everybody went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited remark and the boys were dismissed for the funeral.... A clergyman told me that when he was settled at Concord, N.H., he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The body was borne in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before they left the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the table and mixed a tumbler of gin, sugar and water for each."

A crisis was reached in Boston when funerals had to be prohibited on Sundays because the vast concourse of children and servants that followed the coffin through the streets became a noisy rabble that profaned the sacred day.

Little girls were pall-bearers also at the funerals of their childish mates, and young unmarried girls at those of their companions. Dressed in white with uncovered heads, or veiled in white, these little girls made a touching sight.

Religious expression naturally found its highest point in Puritan communities in the strict and decorous observance of Sunday. Stern were the laws in ordering this observance. Fines, imprisonment, and stripes on the naked back were dealt out rigorously for Sabbath-breaking. The New Haven Code of Laws with still greater severity enjoined that profanation of the Lord's Day, if done "proudly and with a high hand against the authority of God," should be punished with death. This rigid observance fell with special force and restriction on children. A loved poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote of the day:—

There were many public offices in colonial times which we do not have to-day, for we do not need them. One of these is that of tithing-man; he was a town officer, and had several neighboring families under his charge, usually ten, as the word "tithing" would signify. He enforced the learning of the church catechism in these ten homes, visited the houses, and heard the children recite their catechism. These ten families he watched specially on Sundays to see whether they attended church, and did not loiter on the way. In some Massachusetts towns he watched on week days to keep "boys and all persons from swimming in the water." Ten families with many boys must have kept him busy on hot August days. He inspected taverns, reported disorderly persons, and forbade the sale of intoxicating liquor to them. He administered the "oath of fidelity" to new citizens, and warned undesirable visitors and wanderers to leave the town. He could arrest persons who ran or rode at too fast a pace when going to meeting on Sunday, or who took unnecessary rides on Sunday, or otherwise broke the Sunday laws.

Within the meeting-house he kept order by beating out dogs, correcting unruly and noisy boys, and waking those who slept. He sometimes walked up and down the church aisles, carrying a stick which had a knob on one end, and a dangling foxtail on the other, tapping the boys on the head with the knob end of the stick, and tickling the face of sleeping church attendants with the foxtail. Some churches had tithing-men until this century.

A Puritanical regard of the Sabbath still lingers in our New England towns. There are many Christian old gentlemen still living of whom such an anecdote as this of old Deacon Davis of Westborough might be told. A grandson walked to church with him one Sabbath morning and a gray squirrel ran across the road. The child, delighted, pointed out the beautiful little creature to his grandfather. A sharp twist of the ear was the old Puritan's rejoinder, and the caustic words that "squirrels were not to be spoken of on the Lord's Day."

With all the religious restriction, and all the religious instruction, with the everyday repression of youth and the special Sabbath-day rigidity of laws, it is somewhat a surprise to the reader of the original sources of history to find that girls sometimes laughed, and boys behaved very badly in meeting. The latter condition would be more surprising to us did we not see so plainly that the method of "seating the meeting" in colonial days was not calculated to produce or maintain order. Boys were not separated from each other into various pews in the company of their parents as to-day; they were all huddled together in any undignified or uncomfortable seats. In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered that all the boys of the town "sitt upon ye three paire of stairs in ye meeting-house"; and two citizens were deputed to assist the tithing-man in controlling them and watching them, and if any proved unruly "to psent their names as the law directs." Sometimes they were seated on the pulpit stairs, under the eyes of the entire audience; more frequently in a "boys pue" in a high gallery remote from all other Christians, the "wretched boys" were set off as though they were religious lepers.

In Dorchester the boys could not keep still in meeting; the selectmen had to appoint some "meet person to inspect the boys in the meeting house in time of divine service." These guardians had to tarry at noon and "prevent disorder" then. By 1776 the boys were so turbulent, the spirit of independence was so rife and riotous, that six men had to be appointed to keep order, and they had authority to "give proper discipline" if necessary.

It is not necessary to multiply examples of the badness of the boys, nor of the unsophisticated artlessness of their parents. Scores of old town and church records give ample proof of the traits of both fathers and sons. These accounts are often as amusing as they are surprising in their hopelessness. The natural remedy of the isolation of the inventors of mischief, and separation of conspirators and quarrellers, did not enter the brains of our simple old forefathers for over a century. Indeed, these "Devil's play-houses," as Dr. Porter called them, were not entirely abolished until fifty years ago. The town of Windsor, Connecticut, suffered and suffered from "boys pews" until the year 1845.