Of course she did, poor little over-trained, over-disciplined Richenda, and her open confession of iniquity contrasts agreeably with the anxious assurance given by Anna Winslow to her mother that there had been “no rudeness, Mamma, I assure you,” at her evening party. Naturally, a diary written by a little girl for the scrutiny and approbation of her parents is a very different thing from a diary written by a little girl for her own solace and diversion. The New England child is always sedate and prim, mindful that she is twelve years old, and that she is expected to live up to a rather rigorous standard of propriety. She would no more dream of going into the highway “for the purpose of being rude to the folks that passed” than she would dream of romping with boys in those decorous Boston streets where, as Mr. Birrell pleasantly puts it, “respectability stalked unchecked.” Neither does she consider her diary a vent for naughty humors. She fills it with a faithful account of her daily occupations and amusements, and we learn from her how much wine and punch little New England girls were allowed to drink a hundred years ago; how they danced five hours on an unsustaining supper of cakes and raisins; how they sewed more than they studied, and studied more than they played; and what wondrous clothes they wore when they were permitted to be seen in company. “I was dressed in my yelloe coat black bib and apron,” writes Anna in an unpunctuated transport of pride, “black feathers on my head, my paste comb and all my paste garnet marquasett and jet pins, together with my silver plume, my locket, rings, black collar round my neck, black mitts and yards of blue ribbon (black and blue is high taste) striped tucker and ruffles (not my best) and my silk shoes completed my dress.”