Customs and Fashions in Old New England

								


     either part. Hope God heard us."
Three months later still he makes this entry:



     "Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping, tells me she is

     afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweetness in reading

     the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is

     worn off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with

     her alone."
Poor little "wounded" Betty! She did not die in childhood as she feared,
but lived to pass through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and
of overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight
children; but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts,
which she despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from
comforting father; and at last she faced the dread foe Death at the age
of thirty-five. Judge Sewall wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope
God has delivered her now from all her fears;" every one reading of her
bewildered and depressed spiritual life must sincerely hope so with him.
In truth, the Puritan children were, as Judge Sewall said, "stirred up
dreadfully to seek God."
Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught his little
daughter when she was four years old:



     "I took my little daughter Katy into my Study and there I told my

     child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am Dead,

     Remember every Thing, that 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."
I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to his
children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little
blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and,
indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two
years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and
praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly
satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his
son Increase, or "Cressy."
No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable exhibitions of
religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when she
passed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of
religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could relate
many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was
set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion. "Before she
was four years old she could say the greater part of the Assembly's
Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent
remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions