to attest the resources and taste of their proprietors. Nor were the furniture and other appointments of rich doors. The double dotted lines represent windows. In the recesses of the windows are broad seats. Within the memory of some of the residents of the town, the panes of glass were of diamond shape. The height of the first story is seven feet and two thirds. The height of the second is six feet and three quarters. At the southerly corner in the second story there was originally an embrasure, about a foot wide, with a stone flooring, which remains. The exterior walls are now closed up, but not the walls within. The walls of the front and back of Attic of Whitefield's House. the house terminate at the floor of the attic, and the rafters lie upon them. The angle of the roof is 60°, making the base and sides equal. At the end of the wing, by the chimney, is a recess, which must have been intended as a place of concealment. The interior wall has the appearance of touching the chimney, like the wall at the northwest end. But the removal of a board discovers two closets which project beyond the lower part of the building. I learn from Mr. Smith that at least three other stone houses were built at the first settlement of Guilford. Whitefield was a man of good property; but it may be doubted whether his house is a specimen of the best that were erected at an early period. When Gorton and his company were conducted to Boston, in 1643, "the Governor [Winthrop] caused the prisoners to be brought before him in his hall, where was a great assembly." (Winthrop, II. 142.) Gov. Coddington's house in Newport, believed to have been built about the year 1650, was standing till 1835. From a sketch made of it in that year, a photographic representation was taken, of which men's convenient dwellings deficient in a corresponding luxury. To the marriage settlement of John Winthrop the elder, when he wedded a third time, there is attached an inventory of the property of his bride, which indicates a somewhat sumptuous domestic establishment. At Governor Eaton's death, when money was worth three times But houses of such pretension as these belonged only to the richer sort. The dwellings of the generality of the people were not of materials sufficiently durable to admit of their being known at this day through actual specimens. At the very earliest period, it was necessary for the great body of the emigrants to be content with any sort of shelter from the weather. After a while, when saw-mills furnished timber and boards, and shipments of salable articles brought plenty of iron from abroad, the villages began to consist of frame-houses. In the interval between these two periods, the settlers, it is probable, made themselves comfortable in log-houses, of a construction similar to those which are still seen in new settlements, wherever made in the United States. Josselyn says (Account of Two Voyages, &c., 20) that there were "not above twenty or thirty houses" at Boston, at the time of his visit in 1638. He was not an accurate witness, but he could not possibly have intended to say that Boston had only thirty dwellings at that time. By "houses" he must have meant such as had timber frames, or walls of stone or brick. Johnson (Wonder-Working Providence, 174), in or about 1650, as much as now, his wearing-apparel was inventoried at fifty pounds sterling, and his plate at a hundred and fifty pounds; and "Turkey carpet," "tapestry coverings," and "cushions of Turkey work," were among the articles of show which helped him to maintain "a port in some measure answerable to his place." 1 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," point unequivocally to one form 66 sanna." (Conn. Rec., I. 574, 575.) Such household luxury, however, must have been far enough from being common, or from being known to many who were esteemed decent livers, 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 66 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. of the indulgence of the taste and ambition of that period.1 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. Diet. 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 the female foppery which met his eye, in his characteristic manner: "It is known more then enough, that I am neither nigard, nor cinick, to the due bravery of the true Gentry: . . . . . I honour the woman that can honour herselfe with her attire: a good Text alwayes deserves a fair margent: I am not much offended if I see a trimme, far trimmer than she that wears it: in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility will allow, I can afford with London measure but when I heare a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dresse the Queen is in this week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the court; I meane the very newest: with egge to be in it in all haste, whatever it be; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a kickable substance, than either honour'd or humour'd. To speak moderately, I truly confesse, it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how those women should have any true grace, or valuable vertue, that have so little wit as to disfigure themselves with such 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." |