However, they were especially interesting people to meet because of their familiarity with the first half of the eighteenth century, that brightest and most prosperous period of colonial life. They could tell us at first hand of those happy, easy-going times that lay between the long struggle to establish the colonies and the fierce struggle to make them free. Though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Carter exactly said so, yet we gathered the idea that those were days of much dress and frivolity. It seems that ships came from everywhere with handsome fabrics and costly trifles; and that rich colonials strove so manfully and so womanfully to follow the capricious foreign fashions (by means of dressed dolls received from Paris and London) that usually they were not more than a year or two behind the styles. We could not help feeling that the matter of wigs must have been an especially troublesome one. As styles changed in England, these important articles of dress (often costing in tobacco the equivalent of one hundred dollars) had to be sent to London to be made over. Between the slowness of ships and the slowness of wig-makers, it must often have happened that even such careful dressers as the fastidious Secretary himself would be wearing wigs that would scarcely pass muster at the Court of St. James or at Bath. Indeed, Secretary Carter did not deny there being some truth in this; but he appeared so at ease that day at Shirley that we knew, on that occasion at least, he was sure of his wig. One more progression along the receiving line, one more generation passed by the way, and we came upon Charles Carter, with his strong, kindly face, a gentleman of the days of George III and of the last days of colonial times. And what days those were! The days of stamp acts and "tea parties" and minute men; of state conventions and continental congresses; of Lexington and Valley Forge and the surrender of Cornwallis; of the Articles of Confederation and the formation of the Union. This Charles Carter saw our nation made and, in the councils of his colony, helped to make it. Here, in old Shirley, he put down the cup from which he had right loyally drunk the colonial toast, "The King! God bless him!" and he took it up again to loyally and proudly drink to "George Washington and the United States of America." We met still other old-time people at the manor-house that day; but it would not do to try to tell about them all. The omitted ones do not count much, being chiefly wives. Everybody knows that in meeting colonial people it is scarcely worth while considering a man's wife, for so soon she is gone and he has another. Truly, Shirley's colonial reception was very enjoyable, we thought, as we took a last glance at the serene, old-time faces and caught a last whiff of ambergris from the queer, old-time wigs. CHAPTER XXV AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING