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" The landlord of colonial days may not have been the greatest man in town, but he was certainly the best-known, often the most popular, and ever the most picturesque and cheerful figure. "
Alice Morse Earle
Days
Greatest
Man
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" We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller named John Josselyn, a man of everyday tastes and much inquisitiveness, and the pleasing literary style which comes from directness, and an absence of self-consciousness. "
Alice Morse Earle
Man
New
Style
" Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of the early lists of workmen. "
Alice Morse Earle
Early
New
Without
" By the year 1670, wooden chimneys and log houses of the Plymouth and Bay colonies were replaced by more sightly houses of two stories, which were frequently built with the second story jutting out a foot or two over the first, and sometimes with the attic story still further extending over the second story. "
Alice Morse Earle
Two
Sometimes
Colonies
" The study of tavern history often brings to light much evidence of sad domestic changes. Many a cherished and beautiful home, rich in annals of family prosperity and private hospitality, ended its days as a tavern. "
Alice Morse Earle
Family
Beautiful
History
" Sunken gardens should be laid out under the supervision of an intelligent landscape architect; and even then should have a reason for being sunken other than a whim or increase in costliness. "
Alice Morse Earle
Landscape
Intelligent
Out
" In the seventeenth century, the science of medicine had not wholly cut asunder from astrology and necromancy; and the trusting Christian still believed in some occult influences, chiefly planetary, which governed not only his crops but his health and life. "
Alice Morse Earle
Medicine
Life
Science
" Every sea-captain who sailed to the West Indies was expected to bring home a turtle on the return voyage for a feast to his expectant friends. "
Alice Morse Earle
Friends
Return
Turtle
" Our Puritan forefathers, though bitterly denouncing all forms and ceremonies, were great respecters of persons; and in nothing was the regard for wealth and position more fully shown than in designating the seat in which each person should sit during public worship. "
Alice Morse Earle
Nothing
Wealth
Worship
" In the early New England meeting-houses the seats were long, narrow, uncomfortable benches, which were made of simple, rough, hand-riven planks placed on legs like milking-stools. "
Alice Morse Earle
New
Uncomfortable
Long
" There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world. "
Alice Morse Earle
World
Life
Children
" It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source - the inventories of the estates of the colonists. "
Alice Morse Earle
Colonists
Reliable
Source
" From the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes in bleak New England, he had a Spartan struggle for life. "
Alice Morse Earle
England
Struggle
New
" When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable. "
Alice Morse Earle
First
Finding
Difficulties
" Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing strangers; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the beauty of life. "
Alice Morse Earle
Lie
Life
View
" One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a pair of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often before any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining engine. "
Alice Morse Earle
Devil
Building
God
" In the early days of the New England colonies, no more embarrassing or hampering condition, no greater temporal ill, could befall any adult Puritan than to be unmarried. "
Alice Morse Earle
Colonies
Adult
Days
" We have very pretty Dutch gardens, so called, in America, but their chief claim to being Dutch is that they are set with bulbs, and have Delft or other earthen pots or boxes for formal plants or shrubs. "
Alice Morse Earle
Plants
Boxes
America
" It is plainly evident that, in a country where land was to be had for the asking, fuel for the cutting, corn for the planting and harvesting, and game and fish for the least expenditure of labor, no man would long serve for another, and any system of reliable service indoors or afield must fail. "
Alice Morse Earle
Service
Man
Long
" The seventeenth-century baby slept, as his nineteenth-century descendant does, in a cradle. Nothing could be prettier than the old cradles that have survived successive years of use with many generations of babies. "
Alice Morse Earle
Generations
Years
Baby
" It is heartrending to read the entries in many an old family Bible - the records of suffering, distress, and blasted hopes. "
Alice Morse Earle
Family
Suffering
Bible
" The first meeting-houses were often built in the valleys, in the meadow lands; for the dwelling-houses must be clustered around them, since the colonists were ordered by law to build their new homes within half a mile of the meeting-house. "
Alice Morse Earle
New
Valleys
Within
" The first and most natural way of lighting the houses of the American colonists, both in the North and South, was by the pine-knots of the fat pitch-pine, which, of course, were found everywhere in the greatest plenty in the forests. "
Alice Morse Earle
Lighting
American
Natural
" The men in those old days of the seventeenth century, when in constant dread of attacks by Indians, always rose when the services were ended and left the house before the women and children, thus making sure the safe exit of the latter. "
Alice Morse Earle
Children
House
Men
" The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool. "
Alice Morse Earle
Seen
Most
Noble