A triangle of mutual helpfulness and prosperity was formed by England, New England, and the Barbadoes in this widespread relationship of the Hall family in matrimony, business, kin, and friendly allies. England sent to the Barbadoes English trading-stuffs and judiciously cheap and attractive trinkets. The islands sent to New England sugar and molasses, and also the young children born in the islands, to be educated in Boston schools ere they went to English universities, or were presented in the English court and London society. There was one school in Boston established expressly for the children of the Barbadoes planters. You may read in a later chapter upon the dress of old-time children of some naughty grandchildren of John Hall who were sent to this Boston school and to the care of another oft-married grandmother. In this triangle, New England returned to the Barbadoes non-perishable and most lucrative rum and salt codfish—codfish for the many fast-days of the Roman Catholic Church; New England rum to exchange with profit for slaves, coffee, and sugar. The Barbadoes and New England sent good, solid Spanish coin to England, both for investment and domestic purchases; and England sent to New England what is of value to us in this book—the latest fashions. A Puritan Dame. A Puritan Dame. When I ponder on the conditions of life in Ipswich at the time these letters were written—the few good houses, the small amount of tilled land, the entire lack of all the elegancies of social life; when I think upon the proximity and ferocity of the Indian tribes and the ever present terror of their invasion; when I picture the gloom, the dread, the oppression of the vast, close-lying, primeval forest,—then the rich articles of dress and elaborate explanation of the modes despatched by John Hall to his mother would seem more than incongruous, they would be ridiculous, did I not know what a factor dress was in public life in that day. Poor Madam Symonds dreaded deeply lest The Plague be sent to her in her fine garments from London; and her dutiful son wrote her to have no fear, that he bought her finery himself, in safe shops, from reliable dealers, and kept all for a month in his own home where none had been infected. But she must have had fear of disaster and death more intimately menacing to her home than was The Plague.