Old Times

What would be the surprise of our pilgrim fathers if they could witness the effeminate luxury of their children? Coffee and tea were known to them only as the most uncommon luxuries. It would do to tell of for years as an epoch in life, by the person who had set down to a table where those drinks were furnished.-The first tea used in Amherst, N. H. was sent from Boston to the minister. The minister's family, not being acquainted with the manner of using the luxury, boiled it in a pot and sipped it as broth. They probably found their tea broth less palatable as well as nutritious than their favorite bean porridge.

Johnson says of the farmers of Lynn, "The chiefest corn they planted was Indian grain.-And let no man make a jest of pumpkins, for with this the Lord was pleased to feed his people, to their good content till corn and cattle were increased."

In clothing, the same simplicity prevailed.-A fur hat and a pair of boots generally lasted a man his lifetime, and nobody but old men thought of owning such an article of apparel as a great coat. A writer in the Old Colony Memorial says, "I recollect a neighbor of my fathers, who had four sons between nineteen and thirty years of age. The oldest got a pair of boots, the second a surtout, the third a watch, and the fourth a pair of silver buckles. This made a neighborhood talk that the family were on the high road to insolvency."

As to their riding, it was all done on horseback. The wife rode to a meeting on a pillion behind her husband, and carried the child in her arms if they had one. No young woman then thought it a hardship to walk five or six miles to meeting. No provision was ever thought of for warming meeting houses, in any kind of weather, and nobody staid [stayed] at home on account of the cold.-Amesbury Transcript.