Child Life in Colonial Days

								

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.