The author has endeavored to follow such advice by bringing forward those qualities of colonial womanhood which have made for the refinement, the intellectuality, the spirit, the aggressiveness, and withal the genuine womanliness of the present-day American woman. As the book is not intended for scholars alone, the author has felt free when he had not original source material before him to quote now and then from the studies of writers on other phases of colonial life--such as the valuable books by Dr. Philip Alexander Bruce, Dr. John Bassett, Dr. George Sydney Fisher, Charles C. Coffin, Alice Brown, Alice Morse Earle, Anna Hollingsworth Wharton, and Geraldine Brooks. The author believes that many misconceptions have crept into the mind of the average reader concerning the life of colonial women--ideas, for instance, of unending long-faced gloom, constant fear of pleasure, repression of all normal emotions. It is hoped that this book will go far toward clearing the mind of the reader of such misconceptions, by showing that woman in colonial days knew love and passion, felt longing and aspiration, used the heart and the brain, very much as does her descendant of to-day. For permission to quote from the works mentioned hereafter, the author wishes to express his gratitude to Sydney G. Fisher and the J.B. Lippincott Company (_Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Days_), Ralph L. Bartlett, executor for Charles C. Coffin, (_Old Times in Colonial Days_), Alice Brown and Charles Scribner's Sons (_Mercy Warren_), Philip Alexander Bruce and the Macmillan Company (_Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_), Anne H. Wharton (_Martha Washington_), John Spencer Bassett (_Writings of Colonel Byrd_), Alice Earle Hyde (_Alice Morse Earl's Child Life in Colonial Days_), Geraldine Brooks and Thomas Y. Crowell Company (_Dames and Daughters of Colonial Days_). The author wishes to acknowledge his deep indebtedness to the late Sylvia Brady Holliday, whose untiring investigations of the subject while a student under him contributed much to this book. C.H. CONTENTS CHAPTER I--COLONIAL WOMAN AND RELIGION I. The Spirit of Woman--The Suffering of Women--The Era of Adventure--Privation and Death in the First Colonial Days--Descriptions by Prince, Bradford, Johnson, etc.--Early Concord. II. Woman and Her Religion--Its Unyielding Quality--Its Repressive Effect on Woman--Wigglesworth's _Day of Doom_--What It Taught Woman--Necessity of Early Baptism--Edward's _Eternity of Hell Torment_--_Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_--Effect on Womanhood--Personal Devils--Dangers of Earthly Love--God's Sudden Punishments. III. Inherited Nervousness--Fears in Childhood--Theological Precocity. IV. Woman's Day of Rest--Sabbath Rules and Customs--A Typical Sabbath.