For many years the colonists could not raise any cattle on account of the wolves which roamed day and night through the forests. The Indians were sometimes friendly and would bring them corn, which the settlers would pay for in clothing, knives, etc.; it is said that once one of the Indians gave a settler a peck of corn in exchange for a little puppy-dog. Whenever food was scarce they all shared alike, so that no one had more than another, and after a time, as they began to raise more crops and as the forests became cleared, they got along very nicely and lived as happily in their log-houses as if they had been marble palaces. To-day New England is famous for its beautiful villages, with their broad streets shaded with elms and their wide pleasant lawns and comfortable houses; but if you could have seen a New England village two hundred and fifty years ago, it would have been a very different thing. If you had lived in those days your home would have been a log-house on the edge of a great deep forest. Imagine these little English boys and girls going to bed in a room where the snow could drift in through the cracks, and where they could hear the wolves howling in the forests. How afraid they must have been, and how they must have snuggled under the covers and covered up their faces. Imagine going to a little church built of logs and having a flag waving from it, and cannon in front of it to protect it from the Indians. Sometimes the people were called to church by the beating of a drum, and every man carried his musket with him, as no one knew when the Indians might come. In these queer little churches, families did not sit together as they do now, but the men sat in one place, the women in another, and the children in another. There was always a man to keep the children in order, and well he did it too. No child dared smile in church, or he might be rapped on the knuckles for it. Every one had to go to church, whether he wanted to or not; if any one was absent the "tithing man" was sent after him, and for many years after this custom was given up, the New England mothers used to frighten their children by telling them that the "tidy man" was coming when they were naughty. These children used to go to school in queer little log school-houses, and school was not the pleasant place to them that it is to you. Everybody had to be as solemn there as possible, and all the pupils used to sit up stiffly and primly, and look as grave as little owls, for the schoolmaster was feared and respected next to the minister, and no New England child in that age would have thought of even smiling if the minister were present. The fathers and mothers were very solemn people too--life was such a serious thing to them, they thought it wicked to waste time amusing children. They did not even keep Christmas for many years, and the Puritan children did not know as much about Santa Claus as you do about the man in the moon.