The houses were small, ill-ventilated, overcrowded, and the singing, praying and exhortation were not favorable to the welfare of the sick, nervous or tired. The long severe Winter was a cause of dread and apprehension. This was weather to which English people were not used, and they had not grown accustomed to battle with the snow and ice. Instead of facing it, they went into their houses to protect themselves against it. So there was much idle time, when only prayer and praise for a God of wrath filled the hours. Not a family was free from disease, not a house but that upon the doorposts were marks of blood. The word "psychology" had never been heard by Mrs. Hutchinson, but the thing itself she knew. She sought to relieve the people of gloom, to stop introspection and self-analyzation. They quarreled, strife was imminent; and when, with the dread of Winter, came the added fear of a Pequot uprising, the whole place was treading the border-land of insanity. It is doubtful whether Anne Hutchinson knew that insanity was infectious, and that whole families, communities, can become possessed of hallucinations--that towns can go mad, and nations have a disease. But this we know, she challenged the eight ministers who were there in the Colony by calling meetings of women only, and teaching a gospel which was at variance with what the eight learned men upheld. Her theme was the Covenant of Grace. Get His spirit in your hearts and you will not have to trouble about details. All your anxious care about your children, your fear of disease, and horror at thought of death, will disappear. This fear is what causes your sickness. "You think some of your acts have been displeasing to God, and therefore you suffer; but I say, if you but have the Grace of God in your souls, and have transcendent minds, you can never displease Him." It will be seen that this is the pure Emersonian faith which has not only been applied to life in general, but to the arts. Anne Hutchinson was the mother of New England Transcendentalism. Self-consciousness is fatal to the art of expression; he who fixes his thought on the movements of his hands and feet is sure to get tangled up in them; good digestion does not require the attention of the party most interested; and he who devotes all of the time to his spiritual estate will soon have the whole property in chancery. Man is not a finality-- he is not the thing--the play's the thing: life is the play and the play is life. Man is only one of the properties. Look out, not in; up, not down, and lend a hand. And these things form the modern application of the philosophy of Anne Hutchinson.