Customs and Fashions in Old New England

								

wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He
fasted. He made long lists of sins, long catalogues of things forbidden,
"and then fell a-stoning them." He "chewed much on excellent sermons."
He not only read the Bible, but "obliged himself to fetch a note and
prayer out of each verse," as he read. In spite of all these
preparations for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest
despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of
God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said,
soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest
of businesses.
That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close
to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left
an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new
world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest
reasons of all--the intense yearning for the true well-being of the
children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of
those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid
sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote
thus of the Pilgrims:



     "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 their children, that

     were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde

     to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear 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 become decreped 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

     sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children,

     by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye

     countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away

     by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting

     ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some

     became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and

     other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of

     their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of

     God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to

     degenerate and be corrupted."
Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power
waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking grandchildren, and
they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid Betty, lived