Part 9 (1/2)

Some crimes were punished by making the offender stand up on a stool in some public place, while fastened to his breast was a large placard on which his crime was printed in coa.r.s.e letters, as LIAR or THIEF. There were in some colonies public whipping-posts for the special benefit of hardened offenders. In other cases the stocks were used, the culprit being seated on a bench in a public place, his feet projecting through holes in a plank; or the pillory, where he had to stand up with his neck and wrists painfully confined in a similar way. These last two modes of punishment were a source of no small amus.e.m.e.nt to the throng that gathered around, whose jeers and scorn must have been hard to bear. Once a couple of men in Plymouth county had a brisk little quarrel, and they were punished by being bound together for twenty-four hours, head to head and foot to foot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CULPRITS IN THE PILLORY AND STOCKS.]

=122. How Sunday was kept.=--Sunday was rigidly observed in New England.

In olden times, and almost to our own day, the Lord's Day was made to begin at sunset on Sat.u.r.day evening. Sunday schools were not then known.

But every person was compelled to attend religious service or be punished. If a man stayed away from church for a month without a good excuse, he might be put in the stocks or into a wooden cage. No word could be spoken with impunity against the church or the rulers. He who used his tongue too freely was placed in the pillory or stocks, or was fined, and in some extreme cases he lost his ears.

The minister was the great man of the village. He was looked up to and consulted about nearly everything, and he generally decided what punishment should be inflicted on evil-doers. In earliest times the people were called to meeting by drumbeat or by the blowing of a horn.

The log meeting-house had oiled paper windows, or, if of gla.s.s, small diamond-shaped panes set in leaden frames made in England.

Inside there was no fire and there were no cus.h.i.+ons. Families did not sit together as now; but old men, young men, and women all sat by themselves. Boys occupied the pulpit steps or the gallery. On a bench just below the preacher sat the row of deacons, facing the congregation.

If aged, they wore bright-colored flannel caps to protect their heads from numerous drafts. It was the business of the deacons to ”line off”

the Psalms as the people sang them. Books being very scarce, most of the congregation did not have any: accordingly the deacon would read aloud two lines, and when these were sung, read the next two, and so on. Every one sang. There was no choir, no organ, no instrumental music of any kind, and no hymns such as we have now. They sang the Psalms, which were arranged in metre for convenience in singing.

=123. The Discomforts of attending Church in Colonial Days.=--As the meeting-house was bitter cold in midwinter, women often carried foot-stoves, small sheet-iron boxes containing a few hot coals, which were a source of great comfort. The sermons were tedious, lasting two hours or even more; for those patient people valued a sermon very much according to its length. On the pulpit stood an hour-gla.s.s, which a deacon would reverse when the sands of the hour had fallen through.

Since the seats were hard, and the sermons long, and the men and women had worked early and late through the week, it was no wonder that some of the hearers were sleepy. It was, however, a serious offense to sleep in meeting. The watchful t.i.thing-man, as he was called, was always on the lookout for drowsy people. It was his duty to see that the Lord's Day was respected by every person. He was armed with a long rod, one end tipped with a hare's foot and the other with a hare's tail. If the slumberer was a woman, he used to touch, possibly to tickle, her face with the soft fur. But if a youngster nodded, his head got a sharp rap from the rabbit's foot.

People in those days had to be thrifty. To save wear and tear, boys and girls walked barefoot to church in summer, with their shoes and stockings under their arms. They put them on as they entered the meeting-house, taking them off again as they started for home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW ENGLAND FIRESIDE IN COLONIAL TIMES.]

=124. The Food in Olden Times; what it was, and how it was served.=--In old colonial times our wheat bread was comparatively unknown. Loaves were made of mixed Indian meal and rye, not unlike the brown bread of our time. Baked pumpkin with milk was a favorite dish. Bean porridge was always a common article of food, and in some parts of the country it is still popular. It was made by boiling beans with the liquor in which corned beef had been cooked. It was very convenient for wood-choppers in winter to carry a frozen piece of porridge in their pockets and thaw it out for dinner in the woods. The longer it was kept, the better it tasted. Hence the common rhyme, ”Bean porridge hot, bean porridge cold; bean porridge in the pot; nine days old.”

In well-to-do families the cupboard or dresser shone with well-scoured pewter plates, platters, and porringers. Square wooden plates were often used; but with some poorer families there was one common dish used, from which the whole family helped themselves with their fingers.

Instead of forks, which were not known, they had thick and clumsy pewter spoons. These were easily broken, and they often had to be melted up and run over again into moulds by men who traveled from house to house for this purpose. In fact shoemakers, tailors, dressmakers, butchers, and other highly useful artisans traveled about from one family to another in pursuit of work.

=125. Schools in Olden Times; the Schoolmaster; Schoolhouses and how they were furnished.=--In most of the colonies the settlers were hardly located in their new homes before they began to provide schools for their children. In 1635 the town of Boston ”voted to entreat brother Philemon Pormont to become schoolmaster,” and, in 1647, the law was pa.s.sed which is the foundation of the splendid educational system of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Only six years after Boston was founded, the sum of two thousand dollars was set apart to found ”a seminary at Cambridge,” which has now become Harvard University. For years afterwards, every family gave annually one peck of corn, or one s.h.i.+lling in money, to support the young college.

Besides the usual branches, the early schools were required to teach religion and morals and the laws. They taught little enough of what we call school studies.

The schoolhouses were rough and crude. They usually had but one room.

Within the room, the door and the big fireplace were on one side, while against the other three walls was a long, rough shelf, in front of which was a seat made of a split log with legs driven beneath. The pupils faced the wall with their backs to the teacher. In front was another lower bench filled by the younger pupils. The teacher sat near the middle of the room, and there the cla.s.ses stood to recite. The sessions were long, seven or eight hours a day. The boys had to furnish the firewood, and if any unlucky fellow failed to bring in his share, he had to sit in a cold corner for that day. When the fire was brisk, the scholars were almost roasted on one side and nearly frozen on the other.

The teachers were often incompetent, either broken-down men or needy widows. The children brought each a few pennies a week for tuition.

There were not many text-books, and the supplies were very scanty. The scholars often learned to write and ”cast accounts” on pieces of white birchbark.

=126. Newspapers, Traveling, and the Night Watchman.=--The first printing press was set up at Cambridge in 1639. It was used chiefly to print sermons and small pamphlets. The first newspaper published in America was the _Boston News-Letter_ in 1704. It was a weekly, a brown sheet hardly more than a foot square. News traveled slowly, for there was little communication between city and city. Travelers were few, and conveyances were slow. A stage-coach that made forty miles a day between New York and Philadelphia was called, on account of its great speed, the ”flying machine.”

In the cities, news was announced in the daytime by the public crier, who walked the streets ringing a large hand-bell, and pausing at the corners, where he recited his message of child lost, or reward offered, or the happening of any important event. In the night the town watchman, with rattle and lantern, paced the streets, stopping every person he met after nine o'clock to demand his name and business. He also called aloud the hours of the night in a sing-song tone: ”Twelve-o'clock-and-all-'s-well.”

Sometimes his night cry was intensely interesting. At Philadelphia in October, 1781, evening after evening every one went to bed anxious about our army at Yorktown, and hoping every hour to hear tidings of victory.