The dress of the generality of the people must needs have been plain. They could have had no superfluity of offerings to lay on the altar of the pride of Dress. life. But such laws as have been referred to, aimed in almost the earliest times against "the ordinary wearing of silver, gold, and silk laces," and against the wearing at all of "embroidered and needle-work caps," "gold and silver girdles," "immoderate great sleeves," and "slashed apparel," 2 point unequivocally to one form ers, at least, near to the beginning of things. Most articles of table furniture were made of pewter. Governor Bradford left, of that material, fourteen dishes, thirteen platters, three large and two small plates, a candlestick, and a bottle. He had "four large silver spoons," and nine of smaller size. Peter Palfrey, one of the three "honest and prudent men" who were with Conant at Salem in 1627, and afterwards a Deputy in the General Court and otherwise employed by the public, was a man of comfortable substance, though not of the quality of the time. In his testamentary distribution of his property, in 1662, he gave to his daughter Mary, besides a bequest in money, "two pewter platters and likewise an iron pot," a little fact which may indicate the value then set upon serviceable domestic utensils; unless it were that to these homely articles-the former of which were inscribed with the letters "M. P." - was attached in the testator's mind some adventitious value, due to some special association of interesting domestic experience. In the early inventories of furniture no forks appear. They were hardly known in England before 1650. As a fact correlative to this, there was a great affluence of napkins. E. Howes wrote to Winthrop, in 1633, that he had sent him a case, containing "an Irish skeyne or knife," two or three delicate tools, "and a fork." (Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIX. 255.) Silver forks scarcely appeared in Boston till after the war of 1812, except on the tables of two or three gentlemen who had been in the diplomatic service of the country. As to the personal effects of the Plymouth people, we have plenty of information in palpable shape, could we only be sure of its authenticity. But the articles of household gear purporting to have come over in the Mayflower alone are so numerous, that one doubts whether they would not have filled the moderate capacity of that highly-fated vessel, - cabin, hold, steerage, forecastle, and deck, — without leaving the sparest accommodation for any of those venerable forms that have made her winter voyage so famous. 1 "1; Linnen fustian dimittees we are making already. 2; sheep are coming on for woollen cloth. 3; in mean time, we may be supplied by way of trade to other parts. 4; cordevant, deer, seal, and moose skins ..... are there to be had plentifully, which will help this way, especially for servants' clothing." (New-England's First Fruits, 24.) 2 See Vol. I. 552.- Ward, the au of the indulgence of the taste and ambition of that period.1 Diet. In the early days of New England, wheaten bread was not so uncommon as it afterwards became ; but its place was largely supplied by preparations of Indian corn. A mixture of two parts of the meal of this grain with one part of rye has continued, until far into the present century, to furnish the bread of the great body of the people. In the beginning, there was but a sparing consumption of butcher's meat. The multiplication of flocks, for their wool, and of herds for draught and for milk, was an important care, and they generally bore a high money value. Game and fish to a considerable extent supplied the want of animal food. thor of the Body of Liberties, attacks exotick garbes, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant bar-geese, illshapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks, or at the best into French flurts of the pastery, which a proper English woman should scorne with her heels it is no marvell they weare drailes on the hinder part of their heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore part, but a few Squirrils brains to help them frisk from one illfavored fashion to another." (Simple Cobler of Aggawam, 26, 27.) There is much more to the same purpose. 1 Even the streets of humble Plymouth, in 1638, witnessed the splendor of a pedestrian in "red silk stockings." (Plym. Rec., I. 93.) This bravery, however, attracted notice as something extraordinary, and led to an investigation, in the sequel of which it appeared that the gorgeous habiliments were stolen in Boston. It is interesting to get a hint respecting Elder Brewster's costume. It seems he did not affect the clerical garb. In his inventory we read of "one blue cloth coat," "one violet-color cloth coat," and "one green waistcoat." Next to these, swine and poultry fowls, ducks, geese, and turkeyswere in common use earlier than other kinds of flesh-meat. The New-Englander of the present time, who, in whatever rank of life, would be at a loss without his tea or coffee twice at least in every day, pities the hardship of his ancestors, who, almost universally, for a century and a half, made their morning and evening repast on boiled Indian meal and milk, or on porridge or broth made of pease or beans and flavored by being boiled with salted beef or pork.2 Beer, however, which 1 "Apples, pears, and quince tarts, instead of their former pumpkin-pies. Poultry they have plenty and great rarity, and in their feasts have not forgotten the English fashion of stirring up their appetites with variety of cooking their food." (Wonder-Working Providence, Book II. Chap. XXI.) — Hasty-pudding, consisting of the boiled meal of maize or rye, and eaten with molasses and butter or milk, was a common article of diet. Succotash, composed of beans boiled with Indian corn in the milk, was a dish adopted from the natives, as were other preparations of corn, named samp and hominy. Tea was scarcely in use before 1750, or coffee before 1770. A memorandum of the expenses, in 1745, of William Palfrey, my great-great-grandfather, contains entries of one pound eight shillings, and one pound ten shillings, paid for a pound of tea. I think it must have been for sickness; for, though in easy circumstances, he was frugal. The old local customs of baked beans, baked Indian pudding, and newly-baked rye and Indian bread on Wednesday, after the washing and ironing agonies of Monday and Tuesday; of" salt-fish" regularly on Saturdays; and boiled Indian pudding (with roasted sirloin of beef, for those who could get it) on Sundays,—have somewhat faded out, but must be distinctly in the remembrance of many of my readers. These dishes are historical. The practice of successive generations has improved them; but baked beans point to the time when it was desirable to make the most of the commonest vegetable by flavoring it with the flesh of the commonest animal. Ground Indian corn, sweetened with molasses as soon as molasses began to come from the West Indies to Boston, was Indian pudding in its primitive condition. In my youth I used to hear it said, that all over the country, and all over the world, New-England men kept up the ancient custom of eating salt-fish (cod-fish) on Saturday; not on Friday, which would have been Popish. Forty years ago I was so situated as to know uncommonly well the habits of different classes of people in different parts of the country, and my observation accorded with this statement. Till a later period than this, the most ceremonious Boston feast was never set out on Saturday (then the common dinnerparty day) without the dun-fish at one end of the table; abundance, variety, pomp of other things, but that unfailingly. It was a sort of New-England point of honor; and luxurious livers pleased themselves, over their nuts and wine, with the thought that, while suiting their palates, they had been doing their part in a wide combination to maintain the fisheries, and create a naval strength. was brewed in families, was accounted a necessary of life; and the orchards soon yielded a bountiful provision of cider. Wine and rum found a ready market, as soon as they were brought from abroad; and tobacco and legislation had a long conflict, in which the latter at last gave way. Amusements. Some accessories of social intercourse, elsewhere thought to add to its attractiveness, were here abjured. The sad experience of his native country had taught the fugitive Puritan a lesson which in its main import he laid religiously to heart, if he misconceived or exaggerated it in some particulars. All persons were forbidden so much as to possess cards, dice, or other instruments of gaming.1 Dancing was prohibited, not only as inconsistent with dignity of character, but because it was thought to be attended with provocatives to licentiousness.2 The absence of instruments of music from the inventories must be taken to indicate, either that the art was not much relished, or that the practice of it was not approved. Titles. The application of both official and conventional titles was a matter of careful observance. Only a small number of persons of the best condition had the designation Mr. or Mrs. prefixed to their names; this respect was always shown to ministers and their wives. Most of the Deputies are designated in the records by their names only, without a prefix, unless they were officers of the church or of the militia; in the latter case they received their appropriate title, through all the ranks from General to Corporal. Goodman and Goodwife were the appropriate addresses of persons above the condition of servitude and below that of gentility. The language written and spoken by the early colonists could be no other than the form of speech which they had been accustomed to hear and use; 1 Conn. Rec., I. 289, 527; Mass. Rec., I. 84. Speech. 2 Mass. Rec., I. 233. and that was the common English of the realm, with such provincial peculiarities as belonged to the locality of their English homes, and with the distinctive phraseology of their religious sect. In recent times, collections have been made of words and phrases called Americanisms, and to many of them has been ascribed a NewEngland origin. Without doubt that representation is correct; for always and everywhere language is changing, and especially do the new circumstances of various kinds the new objects, devices, and experiences of a new country, produce a multiplication of new forms of speech. But as to many forms which have been supposed to be of New-England invention, because, when the comparison came to be made, they were not current in the mother country, it is certain that at the time of the emigration they belonged to the staple of the English tongue, and have simply been preserved in New England, while they have gone into disuse on the other side of the water. The vocal utterance of the New-Englander of the present day is criticised for an ungraceful nasal peculiarity. Probably this is one of his Puritan heirlooms. Perhaps it is an effect of climate. |