imagination. Dolls were almost unknown. We, however, had a very large one, handed down from a previous generation. I shall never forget my experience in taking it one day freshly dressed to a neighbor who was always interested in our plays. She looked horrified. "An' if ye know the second commandment, say it to me!" Of course, I was too well taught, both at home and at school, not to be able to repeat it. "An' don't ye know, my bairn, that that is a graven image?"

Hul gul, odd-or-even, morris, and fox and geese were familiar games, and as we grew older we were delighted to play checkers and backgammon with our father and elder brother. Old maid and high-low-jack sometimes beguiled an evening, but by many cards were considered an invention of the Evil One. Bad, bad — leads to gambling," was the remark I once heard made to a couple in the seventies, who were having a quiet game at the fireside, and who certainly had never seen one played for money in their sober life.

The word co-operation was not a frequent one in the parlance of those days; but there was a great deal of the thing in practice. It was much pleasanter for twenty young people to gather in front of the large pile of corn, to husk it in two hours, even at the risk of forfeiture for the red ears, than for two to do it in ten. The pile exhausted, the supper and games that followed made the evening a pleasant one. There was much more fun in several meeting to pare and cut the winter's supply of apples for apple sauce, than for the members of one household to prepare it. To fill the ninepail brass kettle, polished like a mirror, and the additional heaping panful, to put in when gradual stewing made room for it, would have been stupid work for one or two, but not so with companions to share it and occasionally throw the unbroken peeling the canonical three times around the head and drop it, to see what letter it made. In the towns near the sea, it was pleasant for several to join in the very early ride, and together stack the salt marsh grass which was to be brought home later to season the winter's food for the cattle. Of

course, the "Farmer's Almanac " had to be consulted as to the state of the tides for these expeditions.

The road tax was paid, in part at least, by the combined work of the farmers, when with their teams and under the lead of their "road master" the crooked paths were made straight, and the rough places plain. In winter, the deep snowdrifts were broken through by the long line of oxen attached to sleds, and thus the roads made passable.

But the great co-operation work was the raising of buildings. After the timbers were prepared, the number of men necessary were notified, and during the afternoon, under the direction of the carpenter, were put in place, and the skeleton prepared for its covering. An especially appetizing supper was provided, and in some cases the too liberal distribution of liquor during the work endangered the building and the builders. This was thought to be the cause of a tragedy in Wilton, which was duly recorded in the poetry of those days, and which exhibits a curious mingling of oldtime theology and quaint lamentations: "All on a sudden, a beam broke,

And let down fifty-three;
Full twenty-seven feet they fell,
A mournful sight to see.

"Some lay with broken shoulder bones, And some with broken arms, Others with broken legs and thighs And divers other harms.

"One instantaneously was killed;
His soul has taken flight
To mansions of eternal day
Or everlasting night.

"Two more in a short time did pass

Thro' death's dark shady vale, Which now are in the realms of joy Or the infernal hell.

"Two more in a few minutes' space
Did bid this world adieu,
Who are rejected of their God
Or with his chosen few."

We certainly join with the author of this poem of nearly fifty stanzas in a more cheerful view.

"But we must hope their precious souls
Are with their Jesus dear,
Reaping the fruits, the blessed fruits,
Of faithful servants here."

This was by the Wilton poet of that day. Most small towns had an applicant for literary honors. Ours was not an exception, as a volume of poems by the Rustic Bard on our bookshelves testifies. It was one of the amusements of our childhood, to annoy an elder sister by repeating one addressed to her, beginning:

"Young honored dame of learned fame,

This compliment I send you;
Please to excuse the humble muse,
Nor let my song offend you."

Some of the poems in the volume, in the quaint Scotch phraseology, would not have disgraced Burns. "Others perhaps had more feet than the verse would bear, and the feet were lame without the verse; but all show traces of the genius which with cultivation might have ripened into the true poet.

There was one custom which it is not pleasant to remember. The few town paupers were each year put up at auction, and found homes with those who would board and clothe them most cheaply. As these poor included the insane, who were perhaps unmanageable by any means known then, the old, too feeble for much work, and the child, popularly supposed to be able to earn his own living at seven, we cannot but think their lot must often have been a hard

one.

We confess that our forefathers were sometimes wanting in the "amenities that sweeten life"; but could we expect them in an Abner or an Ahashuerus, a Bildad or a Jehosaphat? Sterne exhorts godfathers "not to Nicodemus their children into nonentities." This sin could not be laid at our ancestors' doors, as much as at ours, with our Hatties', Susies, Katies, Ellies, and the rest of the diminutives we are so fond of using, instead of the full name which lends dignity to the one who has it, and is an inspiration to bear it worthily. Lack of beauty, not of strength, was the fault in the olden time, when Scripture names were almost universal, though not always quite to the extent they were in one family in a neighboring town, whose unfortunate prefixes we used to repeat in our childhood in a kind of rhythm:

66

Elihu, Eliphaz, Amazee,
David, Noah, and Jesse,
Bildad, Levi, Ashur, and Gad

Napthali, Jude, and Sapphira."

The choice was sometimes very peculiar, as in that of Talitha-cumi, a townswoman. Classic and romantic lore was occasionally called on, as in the case of Lorenzo and his twin brothers Homer and Virgil, who lived not far from Horatio Corinna and Diocletian.

I have written of one phase of New England life; but there was another, which has passed away quite as fully. The country towns are now dotted with summer cottages and villas, where city people, with their city habits, come for a few months, but are by no means a type of those families who lived on the acres they had inherited from their forefathers who had bought them from their predecessors, the Indians. In the white house with green blinds, with the short walk from the road, shaded by the grand elms, sat the courtly gentleman of the old school, in his library filled with books, to the contents of which the handsome bindings lent additional value, or leaving it, with stately step and manner as courteous as to a guest, gave directions to his workmen guiding the plough or wielding the scythe. Then the matron, after seeing to every detail of her careful housekeeping, entertained her young friends with stories of her early life, when she had seen Washington, and danced with Lafayette; and handsome as she was now, in her turban and kerchief, it was easy to imagine the grace with which she would take her part in the minuet.

In these days, when researches into the distant past have almost made it present, what could be better to excite interest in that more recent past than to rehabilitate one of those elm-shaded houses. It will soon be too late to gather all that should be in it, and those will have passed away whose memories serve them in arranging the once familiar furnishing. Let us fill it as it should be. In the hall, near the front door, hang the brightly-painted fire buckets, ready for use at the first alarm struck by the meeting-house bell. Below these there is the mahogany hat-tree with its long

with the Madeira mellowed by its two voyages round the Cape. The drawers are filled with dainty table linen, and the shelves with the tall champagne glasses and star cut tumblers and wine glasses. Here is the lignum-vitae caster, with its cut bottles and silver tops, and the oval salts filled for use. On the floor between the claw-footed legs is the velvet-lined sloping case of round ivory-handled knives and forks, each in its own receptacle. The plain leather-seated chairs, an armed one for the head and foot of the table, are ready for the occupants. In the closet is the blue India china dinner set, with one shelf devoted to the white pencilled-edged tea service, the cups and saucers as thin as eggshells.

Back of the dining-room and separated from it by a hall, is the large, cheerful kitchen, with every appliance known then to facilitate the work of those who prepared the dainty cooking for the gentlemen of those days, who were somewhat Epicurean in their tastes. On the shelf in the store closet are loaves of sugar in thin blue wrapping, and by their side the hammer, knife, and scissors, for the housewife to use when each morning she fills her sugar bowls. Guava jelly and jars of foreign sweetmeats stand side by side, with the home-made preserves and the never-failing hard gingerbread and pound cake.

The chambers are, of course, differently furnished, but those most handsomely arranged all have the tall, slender, post, carved bedsteads, with valence and full curtains. In the one over the drawingroom, these are of white dimity, and by the side, between the windows, is the dainty dressing-table, with its starched and fluted sprigged muslin cover and curtain reaching to the floor. In a drawer of the swell-front, brass-handled bureau are the treasures which even almost a century ago were relics of the past. The exquisitely carved Watteau fans, the painted porcelain jewel boxes, containing the funereal rings with their initials and mottoes, are here, as well as the immense fan which takes a strong arm to wield. On the shelves in the closet are the huge bandboxes, not too large for the Leghorn, Navarino, and satin bonnets, with their

wide bows and long feathers. Here hang the matron's heavy black satin and her flowered brocade dresses, by the side of her husband's cloak, with its silver clasp and broad velvet facing. We shut the blinds with their heart-shaped orifices, for the sun must not fade the carpet nor the yellow brocade cover of the highbacked arm-chair.

Across the hall is the mother's room, with its dark chintz curtains and highchest of drawers. Below the lookingglass, with its landscape top, which has reflected the curls of the bride and later her whitened hair, is the quaint low bureau, and on it the velvet-lined dressing box. In the closet are the pretty French calicoes for morning and the black silk for afternoon. The coat, spencer, and surtout of her husband are here, which he wears when she goes downstairs in her pelisse, and with her large sable muff, ready for walk and drive. In still another room are bed-curtains of red on a white ground, where Washington is represented holding aloft a banner with the inscription, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." He is on the way to the Temple of Fame, which, unfortunately, does not look high enough for him to enter.

From this home we go to the farmhouse just outside the grounds. On the walls of this, instead of the portraits by Copley and Stuart, are black silhouettes, the framed sampler, and the map, where the "Northwest Territory" is the generic name for what are now populous states. From the painted porcelain knobs supporting the glass above and below hang the blown thistles, so beautiful that we can hardly pardon the farmer for trying though ineffectually, to destroy the troublesome weed. The three-cornered closet displays through its glass doors the flowered tea-set, and the dresser in the kitchen has its row of pewter plates with the bride's initials. This house, too, has its high chests of drawers, but fortunately for the health of the sleeper no curtains for the beds. covered with patchwork quilts or woven home-made counterpanes. The back kitchen has its cheese-press, and in the dairy near is the churn with its dasher,