With all the religious restriction, and all the religious instruction, with the everyday repression of youth and the special Sabbath-day rigidity of laws, it is somewhat a surprise to the reader of the original sources of history to find that girls sometimes laughed, and boys behaved very badly in meeting. The latter condition would be more surprising to us did we not see so plainly that the method of "seating the meeting" in colonial days was not calculated to produce or maintain order. Boys were not separated from each other into various pews in the company of their parents as to-day; they were all huddled together in any undignified or uncomfortable seats. In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered that all the boys of the town "sitt upon ye three paire of stairs in ye meeting-house"; and two citizens were deputed to assist the tithing-man in controlling them and watching them, and if any proved unruly "to psent their names as the law directs." Sometimes they were seated on the pulpit stairs, under the eyes of the entire audience; more frequently in a "boys pue" in a high gallery remote from all other Christians, the "wretched boys" were set off as though they were religious lepers. In Dorchester the boys could not keep still in meeting; the selectmen had to appoint some "meet person to inspect the boys in the meeting house in time of divine service." These guardians had to tarry at noon and "prevent disorder" then. By 1776 the boys were so turbulent, the spirit of independence was so rife and riotous, that six men had to be appointed to keep order, and they had authority to "give proper discipline" if necessary. [Illustration: Margaret Graves Cary, Fourteen Years Old, 1786] It is not necessary to multiply examples of the badness of the boys, nor of the unsophisticated artlessness of their parents. Scores of old town and church records give ample proof of the traits of both fathers and sons. These accounts are often as amusing as they are surprising in their hopelessness. The natural remedy of the isolation of the inventors of mischief, and separation of conspirators and quarrellers, did not enter the brains of our simple old forefathers for over a century. Indeed, these "Devil's play-houses," as Dr. Porter called them, were not entirely abolished until fifty years ago. The town of Windsor, Connecticut, suffered and suffered from "boys pews" until the year 1845. CHAPTER XIII RELIGIOUS BOOKS Lisping new syllables, we scramble next Through moral narrative, or sacred text, And learn with wonder how this world began; Who made, who marred, and who has ransomed man. --Tyrocinium. William Cowper, 1784.