Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). The carat character (^) indicates that the following letter or letters are superscripted (example: Yo^r most aff^nate Mother). [f.] refers to "long s". * * * * * Child Life in Colonial Days [Illustration: The MM Co.] [Illustration: John Quincy _Frontispiece_] CHILD LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS Written by ALICE MORSE EARLE author of _Home Life in Colonial Days_ and other Domestic and Social Histories of Olden Times With many Illustrations from Photographs MDCCCXCIX New York The Macmillan Company London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1915 All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped November, 1899. Reprinted December, 1899; March, 1904; February, 1909; March, 1915. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. _THIS BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN IN TENDER MEMORY OF A DEARLY LOVED AND LOVING CHILD HENRY EARLE, JUNIOR MDCCCLXXX-MDCCCXCII_ _Foreword_ _When we regard the large share which child study has in the interest of the reader and thinker of to-day, it is indeed curious to see how little is told of child life in history. The ancients made no record of the life of young children; classic Rome furnishes no data for child study; the Greeks left no child forms in art. The student of original sources of history learns little about children in his searches; few in number and comparatively meagre in quality are the literary remains that even refer to them._ _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._