almost as powerful as the sword, in those days of early home-making. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, in his charming retrospective study of Virginia life, tells us how, when her husband complained of the gate being broken, the industrious mistress of the household promptly replied, "Well, my dear, if I could sew it with my needle and thread, I would mend it for you."

The olden-time girl, except in the home of the Puritan and the Quaker, was taught to dance as well as to use her needle, and in the Southern Colonies the former accomplishment was considered so important a part of the education of a young lady that Mr. Jefferson insisted that his daughter Martha should dance three days in the week, from eleven until one. Dr. Franklin also expressed great interest in Sally's dancing and playing upon the harpsichord, although he stipulated that she should improve her mind by reading "The Whole Duty of Man" and "The Young Lady's Library." That less instructive literature than this sometimes fell into the hands of the Colonial maiden,

we learn from the diaries of Lucinda of Virginia and Sarah Eve. The former takes herself to task for being so fond of novel-reading, while Miss Eve pronounces "The Fashionable Lover" a prodigious fine comedy.

In addition to her lighter accomplishments the Colonial lady was an excellent housekeeper, in days when housekeeping meant having everything prepared under the supervision of the mistress of the home, from the cutting up of the pork and beef until the culminating moment when the sausages and mince pies appeared upon the table. There were in many of the old houses retinues of servants, and in the Middle and Southern Colonies slaves to do the bidding of the mistress, but everything had to be superintended by her; consequently in some of the old letters that come to us we find numerous homely domestic details, and great rejoicing over any small luxury or labor-saving device that found its way into the hands of the busy châtelaine. When travellers wrote of sumptuous dinners in hospitable South

ern homes, or when Mr. William Black told how he was feasted in Annapolis, or when Silas Deane described an elaborate dinner at the house of Miers Fisher in Philadelphia, they little knew what the preparation and arrangement of such a menu meant to the mistress of the household, in days when she could not send around the corner for the latest device in confectionery with which to grace her board, and when the syllabubs and custards were often prepared by the same dainty hands that served them to her guests.

A pleasant story is told of Mrs. Clement Biddle, a worthy descendant of pioneer women of Rhode Island. Mrs. Biddle was with her husband in the Valley Forge encampment, and when an order was issued that the officers' wives should leave the camp, she, with ready tact and skill, prepared so delectable a dinner for General Washington and his staff that the order was not carried out in her case, showing that the heroes of the Revolution were not insensible to the seductions of such good

cheer as a notable Philadelphia housewife knew how to set before the masculine devourer. The story runs that as Mrs. Biddle rose from the table, she airily remarked that she had heard of the order, but felt sure that the General would not apply it to her, to which charmingly feminine speech the Commander-in-Chief, bowing low, replied, "Certainly not to Mrs. Biddle."

AMONG the early settlers of the Colonies there was, occasionally, a woman of more than ordinary intelligence, and now and again a ready writer or a verse-maker. Perhaps in all the settlements, North and South, there was no woman equal in mind and spirit to Anne Hutchinson, whom even her enemies acknowledged to be "a masterpiece of woman's wit."

Enthusiasm, unrestrained by tact or worldly considerations, a strain of headstrongness in her religious fervor, and a power of carrying with her the minds and hearts of her hearers, were apparently the leading characteristics of this devoted young woman, the latter trait being perhaps the most difficult for her persecutors to overlook. From the grim travesty of