The people neither had nor needed sumptuary laws: gentle and simple, they dressed in homespun. As late as 1768 a letter from Barnstable tells of the visit of some ladies “dressed all in homespun, even to their handkerchiefs and gloves, and not so much as a ribbon on their heads. They were entertained with Labrador Tea; all innocently cheerful and merry.” Men worked hard, and “lived” well: wild fowl and venison, fish in their variety throughout the year were to be had for the taking; and the farmers had homely fare a-plenty—seasoned bean broth for dinner, an Indian pudding, pork, beef, poultry. It was a life meagre, perhaps, in the picture of it, but all deep concerns were there—love, loyalty, birth, death, a conviction of personal responsibility for what should follow—and the whole web of it was shot through with a rich, racy humor. They could be neither driven nor easily led, these people; and justice they meant to exact and cause to be done. In the old time their fathers had turned misfortune to the profit of their souls, and in the new country the natural energy of the children led them to succeed in what they might undertake. The Independents were men who, if they had not loved many luxuries, had loved one with a consuming zeal; and it was perhaps excusable that those of the second generation should dole out with a more sparing hand the freedom that had been purchased at so great a price. Yet were they, again, for their time, liberals; and it seems to have been true that the prospect of universal salvation brightened in proportion to the distance from Salem and Boston. Plymouth, at any rate, even in its “dark age,” between 1657 and 1671, was a bad second to Massachusetts Bay when it came to the persecution of heretics or witchcraft hysteria, although for the latter there might be people here and there who indulged themselves, without fear of molestation, in playing with the idea of magic. There is a story of Captain Sylvanus Rich, of Truro, who, shortly before getting under weigh in a North Carolina port, bought from an old woman a pail of milk, and no sooner was he at sea than the ship was as if storm-bedevilled. The hag who had sold him the milk, declared Captain Rich, had bewitched him and his craft. Every night, he told his mates, she saddled and bridled him and drove him up hill and down in the Highlands of Truro. Far out of their course, they swept on to the Grand Banks and were like never to make port, when, by good luck, they fell in with a vessel commanded by the captain’s son who supplied their needs and as effectually broke the spell of the witch.