cross out of the English flag because, to his mind, it savored of popery, it was restored to its place, and we find Samuel Sewall, fifty years later, still in doubt about this emblem in the colors, wondering whether it might not hinder his "Entrance into the Holy Land." Still greater and more grievous changes was he to behold. whom Mr. Lodge signalizes as the "Last of the Puritans," when, under Governor Andros, the service of the English Church was permitted in Boston, and was heard within the walls of the venerated Old South. With the admission of the English Church, which meant an outward toleration for other religious bodies, there came into the very strongholds of Puritanism a wider liberty in manners, customs, and habits of life.

Tradition tells of a spirited Colonial lady, wife of a squire in Hadley, Massachusetts, who was formally excommunicated by the parson and elders of the meeting for the sin of being present at the Christmas celebration of two poor Germans living upon her husband's estate.

Slowly and steadily, however, the new wine was working in the old bottles, and although Samuel Sewall records with satisfaction, as late as Christmas, 1697, "Shops are open and Carts and Sleds come to Town with Wood and Fagots as formerly, save what abatement may be allowed on account of the wether," he is forced to conclude his characteristic entry with the discouraging statement that Joseph, his son, told him that "most of the Boys went to the Church," adding, "yet he went not." The old barriers were giving way, new customs and observances were coming in. In Puritan New England, as well as in Quaker Pennsylvania, the joyous holiday of Christian hope was being kept. In New Amsterdam the New-Year festival was a period of greater rejoicing, but in Virginia and the Southern Colonies an old-time English Christmas, with yule-log, mistletoe bough, and church services, early marked the season. In Pennsylvania there were many who held aloof from the observance of the day, but with less severity than the Puritan, the Quaker's inward light being apparently in

tended more for his own guidance than for that of his neighbor, and Watson speaks of May-Day and Christmas celebrations in Philadelphia as of long-established usage. Of the latter he records,

"The Belsh Nichel' and St. Nicholas has been a time of Christmas amusement from time immemorial among us; brought in, it is supposed, among the sportive frolics of the Germans. It is the same also observed in New York, under the Dutch name of St. Claes. Belsh Nichel,' in high German, expresses 'Nicholas in his fur' or sheep-skin clothing. He is always supposed to bring good things at night to good children, and a rod for those who are bad."

The first signs of Christmas-keeping in New England seem to picture the dawn of a brighter day for the Puritan child, whose natural and spontaneous development must have been sadly checked and hampered by the straitness of the life surrounding it, even in homes where there was full and plenty, by the dismal Sabbaths which weighed heavily upon the exuberant energy of the healthy young creature, with their sermons of such length that Nathaniel Ward himself confesses," we have a strong weakness

in New England that when we are speaking, we know not how to conclude, we make ends before we make an end."

many

In letters and diaries of the time we find small mention of the children, except to record their birth and death, or, perchance, to note when they had the small-pox, or when they were inoculated to prevent their having it, as when Judge Lynde writes,

"Daughter Lydia went to Boston, and was inoculated by Dr. Charles Pynchon; thro' God's goodness had it so favourably as every day to be about, and in 14 days went out visiting, and on 5th May returned well to Salem, Laus Deo!"

Sometimes an entry records the number of olive-branches upon the family vine, with a certain pride of possession, or tells of some spiritual experience marking the turning of the page from childhood to manhood or womanhood. Scant space was found in those days to dwell upon childish joys, and when sorrows are mentioned they seem strangely akin to those of the grown folks, as when little Anne Dudley, at six or seven, relates her grief, not over a fractured doll or toy, but because of her "neglect of

Private Duteys" in which she is too often tardy; while at sixteen, finding herself

carnall and sitting loose from God," she accepts the small-pox that then "smott" her as a "proper rebuke to her pride and vanity." Reared in such an atmosphere of morbid conscientiousness and theological disputation, the children in the streets caught the current phrases, and during the Hutchinson trial jeered one another as believers in the "Covenant of Grace" or in the "Covenant of Works." We can only hope that certain pleasures inseparable from country living belonged to the children of New England. Even the larger towns were but small settlements in those days, surrounded by forests or bounded on one side or the other by the sea. Hence we may believe that the boys spent their recreation hours in the woods or by the water, and that the girls were sometimes permitted to leave their tasks and stretch their limbs by entering into their brothers' sports,-fishing, boating, nutting in the autumn woods, and, rare diversion of the New England winter,