—“New England’s Crisis,” BENJAMIN TOMPSON, 1675. _“I am neither Niggard nor Cynic to the due Bravery of the true Gentry.”_ —“The simple Cobbler of Agawam,” J. WARD, 1713. _“Never was it happier in England than when an Englishman was known abroad by his own cloth; and contented himself at home with his fine russet carsey hosen, and a warm slop; his coat, gown, and cloak of brown, blue or putre, with some pretty furnishings of velvet or fur, and a doublet of sad-tawnie or black velvet or comely silk, without such cuts and gawrish colours as are worn in these dayes by those who think themselves the gayest men when they have most diversities of jagges and changes of colours.”_ —“Chronicles,” HOLINSHED, 1578. CHAPTER I APPAREL OF THE PURITAN AND PILGRIM FATHERS I t is difficult to discover the reasons, to trace the influences which have resulted in the production in the modern mind of that composite figure which serves to the everyday reader, the heedless observer, as the counterfeit presentment of the New England colonist,—the Boston Puritan or Plymouth Pilgrim. We have a very respectable notion, a fairly true picture, of Dutch patroon, Pennsylvania Quaker, and Virginia planter; but we see a very unreal New Englishman. This “gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter,” appears with goodwife or dame in the hastily drawn illustrations of our daily press; we find him outlined with greater care but equal inaccuracy in our choicer periodical literature; we have him depicted by artists in our handsome books and on the walls of our art museums; he is cut in stone and cast in bronze for our halls and parks; he is dressed by actors for a part in some historical play; he is furbished up with conglomerate and makeshift garments by enthusiastic and confident young folk in tableau and fancy-dress party; he is richly and amply attired by portly, self-satisfied members of our patriotic-hereditary societies; we constantly see these figures garbed in semblance in some details, yet never in verisimilitude as a whole figure.