The usual method at that time of reading the Bible through was in the regular succession of every chapter from beginning to end, not leaving out even Leviticus and Numbers. This naturally detracted from the interest which would have been awakened by a wise selection of parts suited to the liking of children; and many portions doubtless frightened young children, as we have abundant record in the writings of Sewall and Mather. J. T. Buckingham stated in his _Memoirs_ that he read the Bible through at least a dozen times before he was sixteen years old. Some portions, especially the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John, filled him with unspeakable terror, and he called the enforced reading of them "a piece of gratuitous and unprofitable cruelty." He was careful, however, to pay due tribute to the influence of the Bible upon his literary composition and phraseology. The constant reading of the beautiful English wording of the Bible influenced not only the style of writing of that day, but controlled the everyday speech of the people, keeping it pure and simple. [Illustration: Mrs. John Hesselius and her Children, John and Caroline] There was one important reason for the unfailing desire of English folk for the Bible and the employment of its words and terms; it was not only the sole book with which most English readers were familiar,--the book which supplied to them sacred hymns and warlike songs, the great voices of the prophets, the parables of the Evangelists, stories of peril and adventure, logic, legends, history, visions,--but it was also a new book. The family of the seventeenth century that read the words of the small Geneva Bibles in the home circle, or poorer folk who listened to the outdoor reading thereof, heard a voice that they had longed for and waited for and suffered for, and that their fathers had died for, and a treasure thus acquired is never lightly heeded. The Pilgrim Fathers left England for Holland before King James' Bible, our Authorized Version, had been published. The Puritans of the Boston and Salem settlements had seen the importation of Geneva Bibles forbidden in England by Laud in 1633, and the reading prohibited at their meetings. They revelled in it in their new homes, for custom had not deadened their delight, and they were filled with it; it satisfied them; they needed no other literature. Though Puritanism in its anxious and restricted religionism denied freedom to childhood, yet the spirit of Puritanism was deeply observant and conservative of family relations. The meagre records of domestic life in Puritan households are full of a pure affection, if not of grace or good cheer. The welfare, if not the pleasure of their children, lay close to the heart of the Pilgrims. Their love was seldom expressed, but their rigid sense of duty extended to duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted.