Governor Bradford wrote in his now world-famous _Log-book_, in his lucid and beautiful English, an account of the motives of the emigration from Holland, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the most profound reasons of all, their intense yearning for the true welfare of their children:-- "As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their servants but in a sorte, to their dearest children; the which as it did not a little wound ye tender harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of theier children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, having lernde to bear the yoake in their youth and willing to beare parte of their parents burden, were often times so oppressed with their hevie labours, that though their minds were free and willing yet their bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and became decrepid in their early youth, the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all sorrows most heavie to be borne was that many of their children, were drawne away by evill examples into extravagant and dangerous coarses, getting ye raines off their necks, and departing from their parents." This country was settled at a time when all English people were religious. The Puritan child was full of religious thoughts and exercises, so also was the child of Roman Catholic parents, or one reared in the Established Church. The diarist Evelyn was a stanch Church of England man, no lover of Puritan ways, but he could write thus of his little child:-- "As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion and his sense of God. He had learned all his Catechism early, and understood all the historical part of the Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeem mankind, and how comprehending those messages himself, his godfathers were discharged of his promises. "He would of himself select the most pathetic psalms and chapters out of Job, to read to his maid during his sickness, telling her, when she pitied him, that all God's children must suffer affliction. He declaimed against the vanities of the world before he had seen any. Often he would desire those who came to see him to pray by him, and a year before he fell sick to kneel and pray with him alone in some corner." It was not of a Puritan dame that this was written:--