Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston schoolmaster, begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking nature of such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April first. Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and more serious matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote: "Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much displeased." Two days later he writes thus peremptorily of his grandson: "Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere." Though Boston boys played "wicket" on Boston Common, I fancy the young Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were allowed few amusements. They apparently brought over some English pastimes with them, for in 1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston: "Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence." One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised toward boys by Puritan lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the tithingman. He was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do not doubt that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they wished. From the brother sport of winter, skating, they were not debarred; and they went on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned, just as country boys are nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th, 1696: "Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on Fresh Pond. Wm. Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned." In the _New England Weekly Journal_ of January 15th, 1728, we read: "On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers, viz Mr. George and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom of the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;" and in the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of another death by drowning. "A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He was about 16 or 18 years of age." Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates" appear in the _Boston Gazette_, of 1749, and the _Boston Evening Post_, of 1758. The February _News Letter_, of 1769, has a notice of the sale of "Best Holland Scates of Different Sizes."