It is hardly possible to imagine a greater contrast of character than existed between the settlers of North and South America. Instead of wealth-seeking, voluptuous adventurers, with a religion so flexible, that it adapted itself to every form of human passion, New England was settled by stern, uncompromising Puritans--men who considered mirth an indecorum, the love of women a snare, and dress a shameful memento of the fall of Adam. Though resisting tyranny, they themselves were most tyrannical. The selectmen deemed they had a right to ascertain whether every girl in their village did a proper amount of spinning and weaving; and if a mother staid away from meeting, to tend her babe, the deacon straightway called to reprove her for neglect of the ordinances. It was then customary for women to carry their infants to religious meetings, and attend to all their wants with as much freedom, as if they had been by their own firesides. With regard to external comforts, there was a near approach to equality in the condition of all classes. The employed ate and drank and labored with their employers. Each household was a patriarchal establishment, of which the hired domestics were a component part; and they generally remained in the family they once entered, until they were married or died. It was an almost unheard-of thing for a family to keep more than one female domestic, and her wages, even forty years ago, was not more than two pistareens, or 2_s._ 6_d._ Though cloth was then three times as dear as it now is, this price was sufficient to satisfy all wants; for a new calico gown once a year was then considered quite a luxury. The most respectable inhabitants of the colonies were quite content to ride to church on horseback, with a wife or daughter behind them, on a pillion. One gown of silk brocade was considered wealth, and two constituted magnificence; especially if a string of gold beads, and gold buckles for the shoes, were appended thereto. But though the richest wardrobe of those primitive days would appear scanty enough in modern eyes, men did not fail to discuss the worn-out theme of female extravagance. The Simple Cobbler of Aggawam, who wrote in Massachusetts as early as 1647, says: “I can make my selfe sick at any time with comparing the dazzeling splender wherwith our gentlewomen were embellished in some former habits, with the goosdom, wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. We have about five or six of them in our colony: if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a moneth after. I speak sadly; me thinkes it should break the hearts of English-men to see goodly English-women imprisoned in French cages, peering out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and no body relieves them. It is no marvell they weare drailes, on the hinder part of their heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore-part, but a few Squirrills braines, to help them