Child Life in Colonial Days

We know little of the childhood days of our forbears, and have scant opportunity to make comparisons or note progress. The child of colonial days was emphatically "to be seen, not to be heard"--nor was he even to be much in evidence to the eye. He was of as little importance in domestic, social, or ethical relations as his childish successor is of great importance to-day; it was deemed neither courteous, decorous, nor wise to make him appear of value or note in his own eyes or in the eyes of his seniors. Hence there was none of that exhaustive study of the motives, thoughts, and acts of a child which is now rife.

The accounts of oldtime child life gathered for this book are wholly unconscious and full of honesty and simplicity, not only from the attitude of the child, but from that of his parents, guardians, and friends. The records have been made from affectionate interest, not from scientific interest; no profound search has been made for motives or significance, but the proof they give of tenderness and affection in the family are beautiful to read and to know.

The quotations from manuscript letters, records, diaries, and accounts which are here given could only have been acquired by precisely the method which has been followed,--a constant and distinct search for many years, combined with an alert watchfulness for items or even hints relating to the subject, during as many years of extended historical reading. Many private collections and many single-treasured relics have been freely offered for use, and nearly all the sentences and pages selected from these sources now appear in print for the first time. The portraits of children form a group as rare as it is beautiful. They are specially valuable as a study of costume. Nearly all of these also are as true emblems of the generous friendship of the present owners as they are of the life of the past. The rich stores of our many historical associations, of the Essex Institute, the American Antiquarian Society, the Long Island Historical Society, the Deerfield Memorial Hall, the Lenox Library, have been generously opened, carefully gleaned, and freely used. The expression of gratitude so often tendered to these helpful kinsfolk and friends and to these bountiful societies and libraries can scarcely be emphasized by any public thanks, yet it would seem that for such assistance thanks could never be offered too frequently, nor too publicly.

Nor have I, in gathering for this,--as for my other books,--failed to exercise what Emerson calls "the catlike love of garrets, presses, and cornchambers, and of the conveniences of long housekeeping." Many long-kept homes have I searched, many an old garret and press has yielded conveniences for this book.

Though this is a record of the life of children in the American colonies, I have freely compared the conditions in this country with similar ones in England at the same date, both for the sake of fuller elucidation, and also to attempt to put on a proper basis the civilization which the colonists left behind them. Many statements of conditions in America do not convey correct ideas of our past comfort and present and liberal progress unless we compare them with facts in English life. We must not overrate seventeenth and eighteenth century life in England, either in private or public. England was not a first-class power among nations till the time of the Treaty of Paris, in 1763. When our colonies were settled it was third-rate. Life among the nobility was magnificent, but the life of the peasantry was wretched, and middle-class social life was very bleak and monotonous in both city and country. From early days life was much better in many ways in America than in England for the family of moderate means, and children shared the benefits of these better conditions. A child's life was more valuable here. The colonial laws plainly show this increased valuation, and the child responded to this regard of him by a growing sense of his own importance, which in time has produced "Young America."

_It is my hope that children as well as grown folk will find in these pages much to interest them in the accounts of the life of children of olden times. I have had this end constantly in my mind, though I have made no attempt, nor had I any intent, to write in a style for the perusal of children; for I have not found that intelligent children care much or long for such books, except in the very rare cases of the few great books that have been written for children, and which are loved and read as much by the old as by the young.

As our tired century has grown gray it has developed an interest in things youthful,--in the beginnings of things. Its attitude is akin to that of an old man, still in health and clear-headed, but weary; who has lived through his scores of crowded years of action, toil, and strife, and seeks in the last days of his life a serene and peaceful harbor,--the companionship of little children. There is something of mystery, too, in "the turn of the century" something which then makes our gaze retrospective and comparative rather than inquisitive into the future. Hence this year of our Lord MDCCCXCIX has been the allotted day and hour for the writing of this book. There has been a trend of destiny which has brought not only a book on oldtime child life, and that book at this century end, but has included the fate that it should be written by Alice Morse Earle. Kismet!_