In Connecticut it was first the custom, and then the order, lasting as late as 1708, that "the ministers of the gospel should preach a sermon, on the day appointed by law for the choice of civil rulers, proper for the direction of the town in the work before them." They wrote state-papers, went on embassies, and took the lead at town-meetings. At the exciting gubernatorial election in 1637, Rev. John Wilson, minister of the First Church in Boston, not satisfied with "taking the stump" for his candidate, took to a full-grown tree and harangued the people from among the boughs. Perhaps the tree may have been the Great Elm which still ornaments the Common; but one sees no chips of that other old block among its branches now. One would expect that the effect of this predominant clerical influence would have been to make the aim of the Puritan codes lofty, their consistency unflinching, their range narrow, and their penalties severe,--and it certainly was so. Looking at their educational provisions, they seem all noble; looking at their schedule of sins and retributions, one wonders how any rational being could endure them for a day. Communities, like individuals, furnish virtues piecemeal. Roger Williams, with all his wise toleration, bequeathed to Rhode Island no such system of schools as his persecutors framed for Massachusetts. But the children who were watched and trained thus carefully might be put to death, if they "cursed their orderly parents" after the age of sixteen;--not that the penalty ever was inflicted, but it was on the statute-book. Sabbath-breaking was placed on a level with murder,--though Calvin himself allowed the old men to play at bowls and the young men to practise military training, after afternoon service, at Geneva. Down to 1769 not even a funeral could take place on Sunday in Massachusetts, without license from a magistrate. Then the stocks and the wooden cage were in frequent use, though "barbarous and cruel" punishments were forbidden in 1641. Scolds and railers were set on a ducking-stool and dipped over head and ears three times, in running water, if possible. Mrs. Oliver, a troublesome theologian, was silenced with a cleft stick applied to her tongue. Thomas Scott, in 1649, was sentenced for some offence to learn "the chatachise," or be fined ten shillings, and, after due consideration, paid the fine. Sometimes offenders, with a refinement of cruelty, were obliged to "go and talk to the elders." And if any youth made matrimonial overtures to a young female without the consent of her parents, or, in their absence, of the County Court, he was first fined and then imprisoned. A new etymology for the word "courting."