The dress described and portrayed of these children all seems very mature; but children were quickly grown up in colonial days. Cotton Mather wrote, “New English youth are very sharp and early ripe in their capacities.” They married early; though none of the “child-marriages” of England disfigure the pages of our history. Sturdy Endicott would not permit the marriage of his ward, Rebecca Cooper, an “inheritrice,”—though Governor Winthrop wished her for his nephew,—because the girl was but fifteen. I am surprised at this, for marriages at fifteen were common enough. My far-away grandmother, Mary Burnet, married William Browne, when she was fourteen; another grandmother, Mary Philips, married her cousin at thirteen, and there is every evidence that the match was arranged with little heed of the girl’s wishes. It was the happiest of marriages. Boys became men by law when sixteen. Winthrop named his son as executor of his will when the boy was fourteen—but there were few boys like that boy. We find that the Virginia tutor who taught in the Carter family just previous to the war of the Revolution deemed a young lady of thirteen no longer a child. Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years Miss Lydia Robinson, aged 12 Years, Daughter of Colonel James Robinson. Marked “Corné pinxt, Sept. 1805.” “Miss Betsy Lee is about thirteen, a tall, slim, genteel girl. She is very far from Miss Hale’s taciturnity, yet is by no means disagreeably Forward. She dances extremely well, and is just beginning to play the Spinet. She is dressed in a neat Shell Callico Gown, has very light Hair done up with a Feather, and her whole carriage is Inoffensive, Easy and Graceful.” The christening of an infant was not only a sacrament of the church, and thus of highest importance, but it was also of secular note. It was a time of great rejoicing, of good wishes, of gift-making. In mediaeval times, the child was arrayed by the priest in a white robe which had been anointed with sacred oil, and called a chrismale, or a chrisom. If the child died within a month, it was buried in this robe and called a chrisom-child. The robe was also called a christening palm or pall. When the custom of redressing the child in a robe at the altar had passed away, the christening palm still was used and was thrown over the child when it was brought out to receive visitors. This robe was also termed a bearing-cloth, a christening sheet, and a cade-cloth.