unaided by machinery, he was compelled to hew out his dwelling-place, and he built it firmly and well. The house and the man were built up together, and each was strong and true. The housewife spun and wove the very cloth in which the family was clad."1 (See Invention of cotton-gin, p. 187.) Fisheries. 7. Several of the coast towns of New England had been engaged for many years in the whale fishery. The business was for a long period a source of great profit, and it proved to be a school for the training of men whereby they became accomplished seamen. The cod and other fisheries employed very many persons. the profits of the mackerel, bass, and herring fisheries at Cape Cod, were granted to found a free public school, which was opened in 1671." 66 66 About 1670, 8. Our ancestors were plainly resolved that the new world should be a land of printers." Only eighteen years after the landing of the Pil a paper in New York. Benjamin Franklin, as an apprentice, aided his brother to print one in Boston. The newspapers 1 Edward Atkinson, in "The First Century of the Republic." soon increased in number, and, in the course of time, became as necessary to the people as their daily food. The first magazine was published by Franklin at Philadelphia in 1741. To Franklin, when in England twenty years later, Hume, the historian, wrote: "America has sent us many good things,— gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, and so forth, but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man of letters, for whom we are beholden to her." 9. The early settlers of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and other colonies saw that the good reputation and happiness of the whole country could only be promoted and Education maintained by the proper education of their chiland schools. dren, and their children's children for all time. The school-house, like the church, was soon found in every New England town. Common schools were established by law. Hawthorne gives a description of a school, one famous in Boston for many years, in which he presents us with the following picture: "It is a large, dingy room, with a sanded floor, and is lighted by windows that turn on hinges, and have little diamond-shaped panes of glass. The scholars sit on long benches, with desks before them. At one end of the room is a great fireplace, so very spacious that there is room enough for three or four boys to stand in each of the chimney corners. This was the good old fashion of fireplaces when there was wood enough in the forests to keep people warm without their digging into the bowels of the earth for coal.” 10. New York had a school at an early day when the Dutch were in possession of the country, over which a schoolmaster from Holland presided; and a school was established in Pennsylvania the very next year after the arrival of Penn. The oldest college is at Cambridge. In 1636, "the Massachusetts court agreed to give £400 towards a school or college, but the project lay in abeyance until 1638, when, by the will of the Rev. John Harvard, about £700 were secured, and the first class was formed." In 1700 ten clergymen came together, and each one laying some books on a table, said: "I Manners and Customs. 117 give these books for the founding of a college in this colony. This was afterward called Yale College, in honor of Elihu Yale, of England, who gave it a large sum of money. In Virginia, the College of William and Mary had been founded with great liberality by the two sovereigns whose names it bore; the College of New Jersey (at Princeton) flourished; and King's College, now Columbia College, established by royal authority in New York, and the university of Pennsylvania, began the useful careers in which they still continue. 11. Domestic life, except among the wealthy planters, was marked by great simplicity. The houses were plainly furnished. In a few there were relics from the old world, such as richly-carved mahogany side-boards, mirrors, and tall Dutch or English clocks. Every house except Manners in the far south, had its great fireplace, which was and customs. inclosed in wide wooden mantels. This was sufficiently spacious to receive logs of three or four feet in diameter. It had an oven in the back, and "a flue large enough to permit the ascent of a good-sized balloon." Tallow candles, in brass or iron candlesticks, were in common use, but, for grand occasions, sperm or wax candles were used. High, four-post bedsteads, and window curtains graced the best chamber, which was kept closed most of the time and reserved "for company." 66 12. The New England Church, or, as it was always called, the meeting-house, was a great square building standing in the middle of the common." It had nothing of what nowadays we call lecture rooms or vestries. Neither had it any conveniences for holding evening meetings. When these were to be held, and they could only be held in the later colonial times when there was no longer any fear of Indian attack, the minister would give notice in this way: "There will be preaching on Wednesday night in the school-house at early candle light. The brethren are requested to bring their own candles with them." The old-fashioned two-tined fork was the candlestick for the occasion. It was stuck throug the lower end of the candle and then into a block of wood nailed against the wall. 13. There were no carpets, except such as were made of rags and had been woven by the family. The many floors were sprinkled with sand. This was particularly the custom among the Dutch, who, also, ornamented their front doorsusually in two parts, upper and lower-with large brass knockers, which had to be burnished every day. Pewter plates were in ordinary use, and also plain crockery instead of china. Ladies, belonging to the wealthy classes, had each her silk gown, but they did not wear them every day, or change them with every puff of fashion. Home-made woolen garments were the common wear of men; calico and blue check of women. In New Hampshire "it was ordered that the sleeves of the women should reach down to their wrists, and their gowns be closed round their necks. Men were obliged to cut short their hair, that they might not resemble women." 14. In New York many of the customs were such as had been introduced by its Dutch founders. Some of them still remain; such as the "May-day moving," the visit of Santa Claus "the night before Christmas," the coloring of "Easter eggs," and the general visiting on New Year's day. In the houses of the wealthy planters of the south the "people sat on carved chairs at quaint tables, amid piles of ancestral silver ware, and drank punch out of costly bowls from Japan." In that early period, long before railroads were even thought of, the facilities for traveling were small indeed. Stage coaches were few, and horseback riding was common. of Maryland and Virginia the ladies made visits in sedanchairs borne by lackeys in livery. from New York to Philadelphia. was a week's journey. 15. The Indians had a kind which was made of clam shells. In the towns A coach ran in two days From Boston to New York of money called wampum, Gold and silver were of no value to them. For the furs and skins which they brought to the whites, they would only receive their pay in strings of Strange to Money. wampum, or in powder, shot, muskets, or rum. say, the whites adopted this kind of money, not only in transactions between themselves and the Indians, but it was taken in payment of debts due by one settler to another. But wampum, in the course of time, became so abundant that custom and law abolished it. The gold and silver money of England, Spain and Portugal, then came into general use; "but these coins being scarce, the people were often forced to barter their commodities instead of seiling them. If a man wanted to buy a coat, he perhaps exchanged a bear skin for it. If he wished for a barrel of molasses, he might purchase it with a pile of pine boards. Musket balls were used instead of farthings. There was not money enough in any part of the country to pay the salaries of the ministers, so that they sometimes had to take quintals of fish, bushels of corn, or cords of wood, instead of silver or gold." 66 "The 16. As the people grew more numerous, and their trade one with another increased, the want of current money was still more sensibly felt. To supply the demand in Massachusetts, a mint was established in Boston (1652), which coined "pine-tree shillings" for more than thirty years. battered silver cans and tankards, silver buckles and broken spoons, silver buttons of worn-out coats, and silver hilts of swords that had fig ured at court, -all such curious old arti HV SE T GL AND 1652 N PINE-TREE SHILLING. cles were doubtless thrown into the melting-pot together. But by far the greater part of the silver consisted of bullion from the mines of South America, which the English buccaneers had taken from the Spaniards. Each coin had the date (1652) on the one side and the figure of a pine tree on the other. Hence they were called pine-tree shillings. |