Part 10 (1/2)
Still another instance, the fah the whole Colony and confounded any possible doubter, found record in the ”Magnalia”, that storehouse of fact so judiciously combined with fable that the author himself could probably never tell what he had hileaned from others Mr John Wilson, the minister of the church at Boston until the arrival of Cotton, was journeying with a certain Mr Adas cahter ”Mr
Wilson, looking up to heaven, beganwo himself about unto Mr Adahter shall live; I believe in God she shall recover of this sickness' And so it marvelously came to pass, and she is now the fruitfulthe books brought over by John Winthrop the younger, was a volulish Coether, to which happened an accident, which was gravely described by the Governor in his daily history of events:
”Dece worthy of observation Mr Winthrop the younger, one of themany books in a cha them one, wherein the Greek testaether He found the common prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though there were above a thousand Not a Puritan of theovernor hihty sent to testify His dissatisfaction with the objectionable form of prayer, and not a fact in daily life but becaood governor records later:
”A Godly wo soht with her a parcel of very fine linen of great value, which she set her heart too e to have it all neashed, and curiously folded and pressed, and so left it in press in her parlor over night She had a negro maid went into the room very late, and let fall so all the linen was burned to tinder, and the boards underneath, and some stools and a part of the wainscot burned and never perceived by any in the house, though so between But it pleased God that the loss of this linen did heroff her heart froreater affliction by the unti after at Isle of Providence”
The thrifty housewife's heart goes out to this sister, whose ”curiously folded and pressed linen,” lavender-scented and fair, was the one reenerous life from which she had come It may have been a comfort to consider its loss a direct dispensation for her improvement, and by this time, natural causes were allowed to have no existence save as they beca Providence” It was the day of ss more literally than they knew, and in this perpetual consideration of seness of their first purpose dwindled and contracted, and inconceivable pettiness came at last to be the seal upon much of their action Mr Johnson, a minister whose course is commented upon by Bradford, excoreeh the saainst his wife, who doubtless had rave elders who re in the cut of a wo of a new Plantation
They eneracy ”The forhed, and Governor Bradford wrote of this special case; ”In our tirave matron, and very modest both in her apparel and all her deood works in her place, and helpful toShe was a young hen he ood estate, and was a Godly woman; and because she wore such apparel as she had been formerly used to, which were neither excessive nor i of soown, corked shoes and other such like things as the citizens of her rank then used to wear And although, for offence sake, she and he illing to reforht be, without spoiling of their garments, yet it would not content them except they caidness (as now the teroes) of some in those tie, show in other instances”
Governor Bradford, who evidently leans in his own mind toward the side of Mistress Johnson, proceeds to show the undue severity of some of the brethren in Holland ”We were in the co tie Cooke set at liberty After going into the country he visited his friends, and returning that way again to go into the Low Countries by shi+p at Yarmouth, and so desired some of us to turn in with him to the house of an ancient woman in the city, who had been very kind and helpful to hi his voice, made him very welcome, and those with hi ready to depart, she came up to hie) and perceiving it was so stiffened with starch, she wasGod would not prosper his journey Yet the ray russet, without either welt or guard (as the proverb is) and the band he wore, scarce worth three-pence, ; and he was Godly and humble as he was plain What would such professors, if they were now living, say to the excess of our times?”
Women spoke their minds much more freely in the early days than later they were allowed to, this sa a sister worker of equally uncoue and tendencies, as, for her various virtues chosen as deaconess, ”and did thee when she was chosen She honored her place and was an ornaation She usually sat in a convenient place in the congregation, with a little birchen rod in her hand, and kept little children in great awe froation She did frequently visit the sick and weak, especially wo women to watch and do them other helps as their necessity did require; and if they were poor, she would gather relief for them of those that were able, or acquaint the deacons; and she was obeyed as a mother in Israel and an officer of Christ”
Whether this dame had the same objection to starch as the more ”ancient” one, is not recorded, but in any case she was not alone
Men and wo it only in their opinions By the tience so far as adornratification of appetite went, had become a ave up the curling locks which, while not flowing to his shoulders as in Colonel Hutchinson's case, still fell in thick rings about his neck, we have no ainst the cropping, brought about by the ether in order to devise so all other heads to be as well shorn as theirs were”
One of the first acts of John Endecott when again appointed governor of Massachusetts Bay, was ”to institute a sole hair,” but his success was indifferent, as evidenced in many a moan from reverend ministers and deacons John Eliot, one of the sweetest andthem, wrote that it was a ”luxurious fe and toruffle their heads in excesses of this kind,” but in later years, with onist of this abomination, added hopelessly--”the lust is insuperable” Tobacco was fuly, but no decree of court could stamp out the beloved vice Winthrop yielded to it, but afterward renounced it, and thefrom the bottomless pit, but no denunciation could effectually bar it out, and tobacco and starch in the end asserted their right to existence and cay had been expended upon the heinousness of their use, and the very fury of protest brought a reaction equally strong Radical even in her conservatisht to bind in one, two hopelessly incompatible conditions: intellectual freedom and spiritual slavery
Absolute obedience to an accepted formula of faith was hardly likely to reht was sti but every circumstance of their daily lives A people who had lived on intihty, and who listened for hours on Sunday to speculations on the cohty, but of all His works were, while apparentlyall capacity for reverence in any ancient sense Undoubtedly this very speculation didthe way, first, for no belief, and, at last, for a return to the best in the old and a combination of certain features of the nehich see better for practical as well as spiritual life than the world has ever known
The id a creed, too settled an assurance that all the revelation needed had been given Unlike the Dunkard elders, who refused to formulate a creed, lest it should put thelienerations to coan to rattle before the last link was forged Not a Baptist, or Quaker, or Antinoave himself to the work of protestation, and the determined effort to throw off the tyranny and presus, imprisonments and banishments silenced these spirits temporarily, but the vibration of particles never ceased, and we know the final result of such action No wonder that the silent work of disintegration, when it showed itself in the final apparent collapse of all creeds, was looked upon with horrified a up of all the old particles with a conviction that fusing and forging again was as easy of acco The atte of the eighteenth century New England life kept pace with the advances in England There was constant co and a sense of coration practically ceased, the changes in lish speech altered inthe seventeenth century
Words dropped out of use, their places filled by a crowd of claimants, someti in ad even when land the old e
Forland of the seventeenth century crystallized here and are heard to-day ”Yankeeislish knows theland race has not received any notable addition to its original stock, and to-day their Anglican blood is as genuine and unland”
Dr Edward Freeland particularly, the re in part also to all the older states: ”When anything that seee to a British visitor in American speech or American manners is not quitewhich was once coland, but which the newer England has kept, while the older England has cast it aside” Such literature as had birth in New England adhered chiefly to the elder models, and has thus an archaic element that broader life and intercourse would have elie, of feeble and uncertain, or stilled but equally uncertain expression was at hand, but for the first generation or so the colonists had small tie, however, took on all the vitality that had forsaken English ground, and that froht of every New England community, East or West, a school Their corner-stone ”rested upon a book” It has been calculated that there was one Caraduate for every two- hundred and fifty inhabitants, and within six years froe had begun its work of baffling ”that old deluder, Sathan,” whose business in part it was ”to keepthey were indifferent, but every ive reason for the faith that was in hiues in which such statement could be made the more confusion for this often embarrassed but still undis them had passed Very rarely were they joined by even a simple ”Sir,” and as years went on, nobility came to be synonymous with tyranny, and there was less and less love for every owner of a title To thehest learning The earnest student deserved and obtained all the honors that ive him, and his epitaph even recorded the same solemn and deep-seated adood scholar, and a great Christian”
Anne Bradstreet shared this feeling to the full, and ht easily have been theto her little boy: ”Child, if God ood scholar, thou hast all that thy mother ever asked for thee” Simon Bradstreet beca sundry of her ”Meditations” into Latin prose, in which stately dress they are incorporated in her works The New England woman kept up as far as possible the sa others the concoction of innumerable tinctures and waters, learned in the 'still-rooiven place to a mere corner, but the ent on with undiminished interest and enthusiasm There were few doctors, and each family had its own special formulas--infallible remedies for all ordinary diseases and used indiscriminately and in combination where a case seemed to demand active treatment They believed in their own medicines absolutely, and required equal faith in all upon wholish stock as were all these New England dames, and blessed with a power of endurance which it required iven toas their descendants of to-day, and fully as certain that their own particular prescription was ether Anne Bradstreet had always been delicate, and as tie and confinement to salt food had developed certain tendencies that never afterward left her, and there isthe rest Every precaution was taken by Governor Winthrop to prevent such danger for those who ca her preparations for the voyage: ”Be sure to be wars putt up in salt or groundchest or 2, well locked, to keep these provisions in; & be sure they be bestowed in the shi+ppe where they may be readyly come by Be sure to have ready at sea 2 or 3 skilletts of several syzes, a large fryinge panne, a s in; store of linnen for use at sea, & sacke to bestow a vessells & peuter & other vessells”
Dr Nathaniel Wright, a famous physician of Hereford, and private physician to Oliver Croiven Winthrop various useful prescriptions, and hisin this letter: ”For physick you shall need no other but a pound of Doctor Wright's _Electuariu lenitivu_, & his direction to use it, a gallon of scirvy grasse, to drink a litle 5 or 6 ether, with sorated or sliced nutht's prescriptions were supplemented by a collection prepared for him by Dr Edward Stafford of London, all of which were used with great effect, the governor's enthusias on through several generations A letter to his son John at Ispwich contains some of his views and a prescription for pills which were undoubtedly taken faithfully by Mistress Anne and ad Simon, who like herself suffered from one or two attacks of fever The colonists were, like all breakers of new ground, especially susceptible to fevers of every variety, and Governor Winthrop writes anxiously: ”Youcold about the loins; & when the ground is open, I will send you some pepper-wort roots For the flux, there is no better medicine than the cup used two or three times, &, in case of sudden torments, a clyster of a quart of water boiled to a pint, which, with the quantity of two or three nutive present ease
”For the pills, they are rated pepper, made up with turpentine, very stiff, and so, & fast two hours after But if there be any fever with the flux, this must not be used till the fever is removed by the cup”
Each remedy bears the internal warrant of an immediate need for a fresh one, and it is easy to see from what source the national love of patent medicines has been derived Another prescription faithfully tried by both giver and receiver, and which Anne Bradstreet may have tested in her various fevers, was sent to John Winthrop, Jr, by Sir Kenelularities in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society ”For all sorts of agues, I have of late tried the following netical experiment with infallible success Pare the patient's nails when the fit is co of fine linen or sarsenet, and tie that about a live eel's neck in a tub of water The eel will die and the patient will recover And if a dog or hog eat that eel, they will also die I have known one that cured all deliriu, with an elixer lass & digested 15 ray powder, not one drop of hu This I know to be true, & that first it was as black as ink, then green, then gray, & at 22 month's end it was as white & lustrous as any oriental pearl But it curedit or anything else sufficiently ive a value to its possession remains to this day But the prescriptions istrate had a double efficacy for a ti's evil, and that the ordinary marks known to every physician fan-overnor's list of remedies had been made up froed to deal with being ”plague, s sickness,” besides broken bones and all ordinary injuries
Sis are used indiscriminately, and there is one remedy on which Dr Holmes comments, in an essay on ”The Medical Profession in Massachusetts,” ” live toads into an earthern pot so as to half fill it, and baking and burning the which latter possibility I suspect Mada to say--until they could be reduced by pounding, first into a brown and then into a black, powder” This poas the infallible reue, small-pox; purples, all sorts of feavers; Poyson; either by way of Prevention or after Infection”
Consumption found a cure in a squirrel, baked alive and also reduced to a Powder, and a horrible witches' broth of earth-worovernor ives full details of an electuary of s, which seeuished success Coral and amber were both powdered and used in special cases, and antimony and nitre were handled freely, with rhubarb and the whole series of ancient remedies The Winthrop papers hold nuood he had done the for further benefactions, one of these frohty-two had ceased to trouble hi a wonder how ”a thing so little in quantity, so little in sent, so little in taste, and so little to sence in operation, should beget and bring forth such efects”