or two, a few chairs, and sometimes a quaint, wooden clock nearly reaching the rafters, completed the furnishing of the kitchen.

5. The "best room

was seldom opened except on Sundays or on great occasions, but was used as

a general closet for the entire family. Clothing decorated the walls, chests of drawers contained the sheets, pillowcases, coverlets, and other household treasures, a cupboard proudly displayed the little china or silver, while the few books which made the family library stood on a convenient shelf.

6. In the sleeping rooms the high four-posted bed with its heavy drapery, its soft feather bed and huge pillows, was the main feature.

7. The chief articles of food were beans, fish,

fowl, pork, corn or brown bread, porridge, with beef or game, and plenty of pie, together with garden vegetables.

8. Money was for a long time unknown. Wampum, beaver skins, and even Indian corn were used as a medium of exchange, but generally trade was by barter. It was not until 1652 that Massachusetts began to coin shillings, sixpences, and threeEach piece had the date, 1652, on one side, with the letters "N. E." On the other side were the figure of a pine tree and the word "Massachusetts."

pences.

9. The colonists paid great attention to education, and gladly supported such schools as were within their means. The schoolmaster "boarded round" among the families and received, besides his board, a small compensation.

10. The people were strongly opposed to plays, balls, concerts, and such entertainments, and in many cases passed laws prohibiting them. The two public gatherings were the town meeting and the church service. All were expected to go to church every Sunday and to sit during the long service patiently and wakefully, for the constable or tithingman was always on hand to keep the children quiet and the men and women awake.

11. The men sat in one part of the church, the women in another, and the children together where

they could be easily watched. There were no means of heating the churches, but the women often carried "foot-warmers" of heated bricks or hot water. No musical instruments were used with the singing, and when stoves and violins were first introduced many refused to attend the church service.

12. The punishments were as strange as the crimes. If a man swore, he was put in the stocks or was obliged to stand in a public place with a split stick on his tongue. In case of repeated and flagrant offences, his tongue was bored with a hot iron. If a man shot a fowl on Sunday, he was publicly whipped.

13. A scolding woman was put on the ducking stool and dipped into the water until she was supposed to be cured of her evil habit; or, in milder cases, was placed at her own door, with a gag tied in her mouth.

14. No word could be spoken against the church or the rulers. The offender was placed in the pillory or stocks, or was fined, and in some extreme cases lost his ears. No boy under twenty could use tobacco unless duly granted permission.

15. The minister was the great man of the village. He was looked up to and consulted about nearly everything, and generally settled what punishment should be inflicted on evil doers.

16. Roads were poor and few, and people traveled on horseback when going any distance, or in rude vehicles when the roads were fairly good in and near villages.

17. As the population increased and trade demanded better means of communication, the oldfashioned stagecoach appeared and made trips monthly or oftener as the patronage proved profitable, but it was a long time before turnpikes and good roads made travel pleasant and easy.

18. There were no regular mails. Letters were sent by messengers, or by friends who were going a journey, while the people generally depended for the news on reports that passed slowly from village to village, so that it might be months before the people living inland in New England heard the news from Virginia.

19. But out of these queer ways of living, and these strange customs of the olden time, has come the New England of to-day, with her churches, and schools, and factories, and manufactures, and, above all, her people, worthy of their ancestry and proud of their origin.

1. Puritan, receptacle, barter, patronage, ancestry, ceiling. 2. What are "short clothes"? Who made the cloth for most of the clothing in those early days? How? What light succeeded the tallow candle?

LXXXV. THE SANDPIPER'S NEST.

1. It was such a pretty nest, and in such a pretty place!

2. One lovely afternoon in May I had been wandering up and down through rocky gorges, by little swampy bits of ground, and on the tops of windy headlands, looking for flowers, and had found many -large blue violets, white violets, creamy and fragrant, gentle little houstonias, and windflowers delicately tinted in blue, straw color, pink, and purple. I never found such in the mainland valleys. The salt sea air deepens the color of all flowers.

3. I stopped by a swamp which the recent rains had turned into a little lake. Light-green ivy leaves cut the water like sharp and slender swords, and in the low sunshine threw long shadows over the shining surface.

4. Some blackbirds were calling sweetly in a clump of bushes, and song-sparrows sung as if they had but one hour in which to crowd the whole rapture of the spring. As I passed through the budding bayberry bushes, to get some milkwhite sprays of shadbush which grew by the waterside, I startled three curlews. They flew away, trailing their long legs, and whistling fine and clear.

5. How full the air was of pleasant sounds! The very waves made a glad noise about the rocks. Going on again, I came to the edge of a little