Child Life in Colonial Days

								

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Child Life in Colonial Days

CHILD LIFE


IN COLONIAL DAYS


Written by ALICE MORSE EARLE


author of Home Life in Colonial Days


and other Domestic and Social


Histories of Olden Times


With many Illustrations


from Photographs


MDCCCXCIX

  New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1915


All rights reserved

  COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.


Set up and electrotyped November, 1899. Reprinted December,
1899; March, 1904; February, 1909; March, 1915.


Norwood Press


J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

  THIS BOOK


HAS BEEN WRITTEN


IN TENDER MEMORY


OF A


DEARLY LOVED AND LOVING CHILD


HENRY EARLE, JUNIOR


MDCCCLXXX-MDCCCXCII

Foreword

When we regard the large share which child study has in the
interest of the reader and thinker of to-day, it is indeed curious
to see how little is told of child life in history. The ancients
made no record of the life of young children; classic Rome furnishes
no data for child study; the Greeks left no child forms in art. The
student of original sources of history learns little about children
in his searches; few in number and comparatively meagre in quality
are the literary remains that even refer to them.
We know little of the childhood days of our forbears, and have
scant opportunity to make comparisons or note progress. The child of
colonial days was emphatically "to be seen, not to be heard"--nor
was he even to be much in evidence to the eye. He was of as little
importance in domestic, social, or ethical relations as his childish
successor is of great importance to-day; it was deemed neither
courteous, decorous, nor wise to make him appear of value or note in
his own eyes or in the eyes of his seniors. Hence there was none of
that exhaustive study of the motives, thoughts, and acts of a child
which is now rife.
The accounts of oldtime child life gathered for this book are
wholly unconscious and full of honesty and simplicity, not only from
the attitude of the child, but from that of his parents, guardians,
and friends. The records have been made from affectionate interest,
not from scientific interest; no profound search has been made for
motives or significance, but the proof they give of tenderness and
affection in the family are beautiful to read and to know.
_The quotations from manuscript letters, records, diaries, and