The Young Colonies watched by the “Old Folks at Home.”—Required to furnish Inventories of their Property.—Old People particular as to Shops where the Youngsters traded.—Several Articles of Political Housekeeping, as Printing-Presses, Jury-Boxes, etc., not allowed.—Some Favorites among the Children.—The first American Ring.—Cromwell as a Step-Father.—The Atlantic Swimming-Bath.—Political Rights jarred off the Parent Tree; others fell when ripe.—Some Proprietors sell out to raise Money for Costs.—General Thaw in High Places.—Legislative Mills with two Runs of Stone.—Woman’s Rights in Capsules.—How hard Puritan Wood got softer.—Episcopal Race-Courses enlarged.—A Black Frost curls up the Green Leaves of the Charters.—What Sir Edmund Andros swallowed and the Fit of Indigestion which followed.—Effect of European Housecleaning in setting Colonial Brooms in Motion.—New York swept into the English Pan.—Result of James II.’s Over-stay in Paris.—Slaps in the Face of Canada and their Return.—How Public Events tell on Family Matters tolled long and loud.—People occasionally subject to Scarlet Fever and Fourth of July, but can’t live on either.—Kidd at Sea; takes off a few People.—How the Deficiency was supplied.—Number of Colonists at close of Seventeenth Century.—Would have been more had Chicago started.—Colonial Colts at the Bars of the Eighteenth Century. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the young colonial damsels from England, Holland, Sweden, and Germany had, in the main, obtained comfortable and satisfactory settlements along the Atlantic slopes. The jealous “old folks at home” kept a strict watch on their doings, and sent servants to look after their ways. Here and there some stolen interviews with that very disreputable acquaintance, Legislative Liberty, had been detected; and the servants were especially charged to keep both eyes upon any renewal of such improprieties. Frequent inventories of property were insisted on. All the household stuff was required to be bought at the home shops; and, what hurt the feelings and interests of the young people more than anything else, they were forbidden even to send back what they did not want to use themselves, unless in ships built and despatched from England for them. There were some articles, as printing-presses, jury-boxes, etc., which were deemed by the anxious parents as particularly unnecessary and even improper. Two whims there were, which the youngsters had of late got into their heads, that they were repeatedly enjoined to banish, once for all: namely, the notion of electing somebody to go and meet somebody else and have a talk over that foolish and altogether unsatisfactory subject the taxes; and that other equally absurd fancy of counting over occasionally the loose change collected for public purposes. They told them that such things were above their years, and that, in fact, they knew nothing