It has surprised me that this complaint--and others--should have been sent home to England, where (as we have abundant evidence) the whipping of servants was excessive and constant. Pepys and other old English authors make frequent note of it. Pepys whipped his boy till his arm was lame. The _Diary of a Lady of Quality_ gives some glimpses of this custom. On January 30, 1760, Lady Frances Pennoyer writes at her home at Bullingham Court, Herefordshire, that one of her maids spoke in the housekeeper's room about a matter that was not to the credit of the family. My lady knew there was truth in what the girl said, but it was not her place to speak of it, and she must be taught to know and keep her place. The diarist writes:-- "She hath a pretty face, and should not be too ready to speak ill of those above her in station. I should be very sorry to turn her adrift upon the world, and she hath but a poor home. Sent for her to my room, and gave her choice, either to be well whipped or to leave the house instantly. She chose wisely I think and with many tears said I might do what I liked. I bade her attend my chamber at twelve. "Dearlove, my maid, came to my room as I bade her. I bade her fetch the rod from what was my mother-in-law's rod-closet, and kneel and ask pardon, which she did with tears. I made her prepare, and I whipped her well. The girl's flesh is plump and firm, and she is a cleanly person, such a one, not excepting my own daughters who are thin, and one of them, Charlotte, rather sallow, as I have not whipped for a long time. She hath never been whipped before, she says, since she was a child (what can her mother and the late lady have been about I wonder?), and she cried out a great deal." Poor little Dearlove, fair and plump, and in bitter tears--you make a more pleasing picture seen through the haze of a century than fierce my lady with her rod. The many hundred pages of Judge Sewall's diary give abundant testimony of his tender affection for his children. In this record of his entire married life he but twice refers to punishing his children; once his son was whipped for telling a lie, a second time he notes the punishment thus:-- "1692, Nov. 6. Joseph threw a knob of Brass, and hit his sister Betty upon the forehead so as to make it bleed; upon which, and for his playing at Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks I whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in, call'd by his Grandmother, he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle, which gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage." It was natural that Judge Sewall, ever finding symbols of religious signification in natural events, should see in his son Joseph's demeanor a painful reminder of original sin; and we can imagine with what sad sense of duty he whipped him.