Customs and Fashions in Old New England

								


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    CUSTOMS AND FASHIONS

    IN

    OLD NEW ENGLAND



    BY



    ALICE MORSE EARLE



    "Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let

    each successive generation thank him not less fervently, for

    being one step further from them in the march of ages."



    NEW YORK

    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    1894



    COPYRIGHT, 1893 BY

    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS



    TROW DIRECTORY

    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY

    NEW YORK

    BY THE SAME AUTHOR.



    CHINA COLLECTING IN AMERICA. With

    75 Illustrations. Square 8vo, $3.00.



    THE SABBATH IN PURITAN NEW ENGLAND.

    12mo, $1.25.

    To the Memory of my Father

CONTENTS



                                              PAGE



     I. CHILD LIFE,                              1



    II. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS,         36



   III. DOMESTIC SERVICE,                       82



    IV. HOME INTERIORS,                        107



     V. TABLE PLENISHINGS,                     132



    VI. SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER,                146



   VII. OLD COLONIAL DRINKS AND DRINKERS,      163


VIII. TRAVEL, TAVERN, AND TURNPIKE,          184



    IX. HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS,                214



     X. SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS,                 234



    XI. BOOKS AND BOOK-MAKERS,                 257



   XII. ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS,             289


XIII. RAIMENT AND VESTURE,                   314



   XIV. DOCTORS AND PATIENTS,                  331



    XV. FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS,            364

I
CHILD LIFE

From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England
he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he fared
comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists
gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open
fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the
roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be
cuddled and nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could
not be spent in the ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from
the chimney on a raw winter's day he found in his new home a temperature
that would make a modern infant scream with indignant discomfort, or lie
stupefied with cold.
Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of his life to stay
peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he was
carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill
and gloom of those unheated, freezing churches, growing colder and
damper and deadlier with every wintry blast--we wonder that grown
persons even could bear the exposure. Still more do we marvel that
tender babes ever lived through their cruel winter christenings when it