One of the popular customs of the day was to observe Mayday in the country districts by erecting a brightly decorated Maypole, about which the young people danced the simple rustic dances. It is not unusual to find people to-day sighing for a return of the good old customs of yore, and a favorite lament is the lapse of the observance of Mayday in the old English manner. There was, doubtless, some innocent amusement associated with this popular holiday, and only the most captious Puritan could object to it because of its derivation from the old Roman festival of Flora; but, unfortunately, the manners of the sixteenth century did not leave room for much of innocent observance of sports and pastimes in the open air, so that, in fact, the dances about the Maypole were too frequently gross and unseemly. Charles Francis Adams, in his editing of Morton's _Narrative_, in the Prince Society Publications, in commenting upon the Merrie Mount incident in the early settlement of New England, calls attention in a footnote to the judgment of a contemporary writer as to the iniquities which were practised in connection with what in the popular imagination of the day was a wholesome and happy pastime. The statement in the passage quoted by him of the startling depravity which signalized the day throughout rural England awakens the pertinent question as to what was the moral state of the women of the rural population of the country. The testimony of the manners and customs of the day, and the effect upon England of the indescribable profligacy of the peoples of France and Italy, force the unpleasant conclusion, after making all extenuation for the standards which then obtained, that the vice which in the higher circles was as "the creeping thing that flieth" appeared in the lower circles of society in all of its foulness.