Child Life in Colonial Days

The records of childish flower lore contained in this chapter are those of my own childhood; but they are equally the records of the customs of colonial children, for these game...

_If we are to consider that the condition of the human mind at any particular juncture is worth studying, it is certainly of importance to know on what food its infancy is fed.

There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infa...

_A godly young Woman of special parts, who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years by occasion of...

Of the dress of infants of colonial times we can judge from the articles of clothing which have been preserved till this day. Perhaps I should say that we can judge of the bette...

No greater contrast of conditions could exist than between the school life of what we love to call the "good old times," and that of the far better times of to-day. Poor, small,...

_Puritanism is not of the Nineteenth Century, but of the Seventeenth, the grand unintelligibility for us lies there. The Fast Day Sermons, in spite of printers, are all grown du...

_The most worthless book of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation. Like a telescopic star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes, but it serves in...

The manner of oldtime children differed as much from the carriage of children to-day as the severe and arbitrary modes of discipline of colonial days differed from the persuasiv...

There are no more striking survivals of antiquity than the games and pastimes of children. We have no historians of old-time child life to tell us of these games, but we can get...

The seventeenth century was in Europe a period of eager development and hasty harvesting; English boys were made serious-minded by the conditions they saw around them, as well a...

Colonial children did not spend much time in play. "The old deluder Sathan" was not permitted to find many idle hands ready for his mischievous work. It was ordered by the magis...

_She wrought all Needleworks that Women exercise, With Pin Frame or Stoole all Pictures Artificiall, Curious Knots or Traits that Fancy could devise, Beasts, Birds, or Flowers e...

In ancient days in England, manners and courtesy, manly exercises, music and singing, knowledge of precedency and rank, heraldry and ability to carve, were much more important e...

It was inevitable, since the colonization of America was in the day of Puritanism, that the first modern literature known by American children should be the distinctive literatu...

_Ink alwais good store on right hand to stand Brown paper for great haste or else box of sand. Dip pen and shake pen and touch pen for haire Wax, quills and penknife see alwais...

_And such his judgment, so exact his text As what was best in bookes as what bookes best, That had he join'd those notes his labours tooke From each most praised and praise-dese...

_To those who are in years but Babes I bow My Pen to teach them what the Letters be, And how they may improve their A. B. C. Nor let my pretty Children them despise. All needs m...

In the year 1695 Mr. Higginson wrote from Massachusetts to his brother in England, that if toys were imported in small quantity to America they would sell. In very small quantit...