Truly this is a striking and picturesque scene in colonial life, one worthy of Hogarth's pencil. The bronzed English sailor, inflamed with drink, ear-ringed, pigtailed, with short, wide, flapping trousers and brave with sash and shining cutlass; the gay, volatile Frenchman, in the beautiful and courtly dress of his day and nation, all laces and falbalas; and the solemn pragmatic Puritan tipstaff, with long wand of black and white, and horn lanthorn, with close-cropped head, sad-colored in garments, severe of feature, zealous in duty; and the spectators standing staring at the stocks; Indian stragglers, fair Puritan maidens, fierce sailor-men, a pious preacher or sober magistrate--no lack of local color in that picture. It is interesting to note in all the colonies the attempt to exterminate all idle folk and idle ways. The severity of the penalties were so salutary in effect, that as Mrs. Goodwin says in her _Colonial Cavalier_, they soon would have exterminated even that social pest, the modern tramp. Vagrants, and those who were styled "transients," were fiercely abhorred and cruelly spurned. I have found by comparison of town records that they were often whipped from town to town, only to be thrust forth in a few weeks with fresh stripes to another grudged resting place. Such entries as this of the town of Westerly, Rhode Island, might be produced in scores: "September 26, 1748. That the officer shall take the said transient forthwith to some publick place in this town and strip him from the waist upward, & whyp him twenty strypes well layd on his naked back, and then be by said officer transported out of this town." The appearance of crime likewise had to be avoided. In 1635 Thomas Petet "for suspition of slander, idleness and stubbornness is to be severely whipt and kept in hold." More shocking and still more summary was the punishment meted out to a Frenchman who was _suspected_ only of setting fire to Boston in the year 1679. He was ordered to stand in the pillory, have both ears cut off, pay the charges of the court, and lie in prison in bonds of five hundred pounds until sentence was performed. These Massachusetts magistrates were not the only ones to sentence punishment on suspicion. In Scotland one Richardson, a tailor, being "accusit of pickrie," or pilfering, was adjudged to be punished with "twelve straiks with ane double belt, because there could be nae sufficient proof gotten, but vehement suspition." Writing of punishments of bygone days, an English rhymester says: "Each mode has served its turn, and played a part For good or ill with man; but while the bane Of drunkenness corrupts the nation's heart-- Discrediting our age--methinks the reign Of stocks, at least, were well revived again."