Social changes in New England in the past fifty years
^^rv-i- ' 0 » o ' .^^ O - , , 1 - .> 0 " o - '^ -^^0^ r> V 0 ' * °' CV V'^ V V ^oV ^ o " a r * • , 1 • aO ^ * o „ o ' aV o_ .o^_^ ^0 r'^^ ^ .V ^oK "^-^ v> .^' 'j^ <:^ v^ 0 ^oV" jP V, * S^^^^s^^ ' 4 o ^ <5> ' o « o - ^ SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE PAST FIFTY YEARS EDWIN W. SANBORN 32 Nassau Street, New York City Reprinted from the Report of the Froceedini^s of the A merican Social Science Association for iqoo BOSTON George H. Ellis, Printer, 272 Congress Street 1901 Offt. 2 06 SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE PAST FIFTY YEARS. Fifty years ago the new order of things had made little change in the outward appearance of New England. It was still a com- pact community, peopled for the most part by direct descendants of the old Puritan stock. It was a land of farmers, and the type of New England life was the country village. Commerce and fisheries were important sources of wealth ; but merchants and seafaring men, as well as the minister, lawyer, doctor, and me- chanic, generally owned a little land, and helped to make agricult- ure the prevailing occupation. Factories had been slowly taking the place of household industry, yet manners and way of living belonged to the homespun age. People continued to prepare, by the chastening of Fast Day, for the exuberance of May muster. The electric telegraph was a mysterious novelty. Stage-coaches still creaked and rattled over many routes of traffic. Railroad trains were drawn by small, asthmatic locomotives, having large smoke-stacks, shaped like an inverted volcano and pouring forth proportionate volumes of smoke. Delays were frequent, to slake the thirst of the engine and replenish the itinerant wood-pile which served as fuel. The cars had low, flat roofs and small, cinder-cemented windows, and were but little better ventilated than the drawing-room cars of the present day. The railroad system of New England has always been rich in "junctions," where, in the early days, the traveller awaited his "connecting train " for periods ranging from a fleeting hour to undetermined stretches of duration. It is a curious fact, noted by the late Pro- fessor Phelps in his poetic tribute to Essex Junction, that there was always a cemetery near, catering perhaps to such wayfarers as might sink under wasting afflictions or be suddenly stricken at the lunch counter. Beyond the reach of the railroads, wood and farm produce were carried to market by river boats and coasting schooners, which brought back the " W. I. goods and groceries " of the country store. It was still the day of large families and small travel, of near-by markets and local peculiarities. The smallness of travel applied only to landsmen, and not to the farmers who ploughed the deep. Coves and harbors along the coast were lively with Down- East punkies and clippers, and with the curing and storing of fish. Daniel Webster, trying a case on Cape Cod relating to a small harbor in the South Pacific, found that seven of the jury had often visited the harbor and knew all about it. The commander of a Russian exploring expedition, engaged in one of the early attempts to square the arctic circle, became lost in a fog as he was about to secure his fame by sur- veying the terminal facilities of the earth. When the fog lifted, he found himself in the midst of a Yankee fleet and near a harbor which was their regular base of supply for cruises to the north- ward. The wives and daughters of Nantucket climbed up to the " whale-walks " on their house-tops to watch for returning husbands and fathers. Bangor was the largest pine-distributing centre on the continent, and the lines of the Gloucester fishermen had gone out through all the earth. The New England of the Puritans had reached the height of its prosperity and the golden age of its literature. It was making ready for its day of trial and sacrifice in the Civil War. About the middle of the century the rapid extension of railroads brought the " rocky farm " into contrast and competition with the "rich prairie." The Walker tariff of 1846 and the opening of new markets stimulated the building of large factories and hastened the "rush to the cities." The discovery of gold on the Pacific coast aggravated the Western fever, while famine and dis- turbances abroad were start,ing a migration across the Atlantic. The growth of shore fishing and the canning of sea-food were beginning to affect the deep-sea fisheries, when the reciprocity treaty of 1854 opened our markets to Canadian fishermen. The surviving monsters of the deep were seeking discreet seclusion just as the introduction of mineral oils rendered their pursuit less profitable. If some supernatural observer could have taken a bird's-eye view of New England in 1850 and again in 1900, he would read the story of change in plain characters. Approaching New England, as would become a Superior Intelligence, by way of 5 Boston, he would find the region for some fifteen miles around the gilded dome on Beacon Hill so "filled in " as to form a con- tinuous city with a million people, nearly half of them — figuring back for three generations — being Irish, about one-sixth "Old Americans," and the rest Germans, British, Scandinavians, Italians, Frenchmen, Chinamen, and citizens generally. Moving along the seacoast, his eye would be caught by the bleaching " whalers " labelled as curiosities at the New Bedford docks, by the villas and palaces at Newport, by the sagging wharves of Salem and Newburyport, and by huge hotels at every sandy beach from Narragansett to Old Orchard. In smaller harbors he might see a trim Yankee clipjSer lying idly in the mud at the head of the cove, while a splendid pleasure yacht rests at anchor within the point. An old weather-cured skipper, whose voice pierced the fogs of the Great Banks and rose above the blasts of the Horn, is perhaps taking out a party of land lubbers and lubberesses in his catboat to fish for scup or flat-fish. In river valleys the smoke of factory chimneys would draw attention to busy cities, wherever water power had fixed a site for manufacturing. In their suburbs he would mark the hard roads, with their maze of wires and buzz of trolleys and lines of thrifty dwellings. He would note that the forests had been thinned and shrinking back up the mountain ranges and toward the northern border. He would miss the flocks and herds which dotted the hill pastures, and would linger above the scrubby fields, tumble-down fences, and decaying houses of the abandoned farms. Less often he would come upon a de- serted church, a ghastly hulk, weather-stained and crumbling, win- dows blind and glaring, ridge-pole sunken, lightning-rod loosened from the tottering steeple, and drooping like the bedraggled feather of a fallen outcast. In the streets of the cities he would be im- pressed by the large plate glass windows of the shops, with their display of attractions, and by the variety of fruit and produce offered for sale. Having left a New England of full-blooded Yankees, which 6 supplied its own wants and sent little abroad, he finds a popula- tion half foreign, dependent on others for its corn and grain and beef and mutton, but supplying half the nation with boots and shoes, making three-fourths of its cottons and using half its wool. Early in the century, each farm, like the community, was self- sustaining. The " independent farmer " was indeed independent. Food and clothing are both grown on the farm. He made his own sleds, brooms, medicines, vinegar, soap, ox-yokes; some- times his own tools, rope, shingles, boxes, barrels, and furniture. He drew sweetness from rock-maples and dipped light from tal- low. He got his pins from the white-thorn bush in the pasture. He grafted trees and painted buildings. ' He would " like to see anything he couldn't do." The congenial practice of swap- ping helped him to be independent even of money. The home- spun idea was the key to everything in life and character. Clothing being made at home, the flax grown and the sheep raised corresponded to the number in the family. Little money was needed ; and, there being little money and little knowledge of the outer world, there was small temptation to extravagance. Everything centred in the home. A hundred associations, now things of the past, solidified family life. A farmer setting out for church in his broadcloth coat might notice the very sheep whose greeting would remind him that he was wearing the wool at second hand. He w^ould pass the fields where his straw hat and dinner basket had grown, and where the linen of his wife's go-to- meeting gown had blossomed. The leather of his boots had been grown and perhaps tanned on the farm. The striking of fire from a flint and drawing of water with a sweep were picturesque rites, a communion with the localized spirits of fire and water, which were cheapened as matches were carried in the pocket and pump handles bobbed in the kitchen. The modern system of division of labor has brought the New England farmer many comforts and advantages, and mocks him with a vision of many more. Supplies and appliances better than were made at home are laid at his door, and many are wonder- fully cheap. The Standard Oil Company has taken charge of candle-dipping. Factories at Lowell and Fall River maintain a continuous spinning-bee. The trouble is that they all want money. Before he thinks of buying comforts or luxuries, there are certain fixed charges to be met, — for taxes, labor, commer- cial fertilizers, and groceries, with demand for tools, machinery, harnesses, wagons, and a hundred other things. In the scheme of specialization where comes in the specialty which is to bring the New England farmers their share of the medium of exchange ? Those who have not emigrated have answered the question to some extent by leaving the rougher lands for market gardens, poultry, fruit, and dairy farms ; but the result of changed condi- tions has been the disappearance of the agricultural New Eng- land of fifty years ago. In the manufacturing towns .which have become the centre of characteristic life, changes have been chiefly in the way of growth and expansion. Before 1850 factory work had been done by young people from the farms. In summer the factory bell aroused the town at half-past four in the morning for a day's labor of thirteen hours. Wages were low, but board could be had at $1.00 to $1.50 by the week. Native labor was soon dis- placed by foreign, the early immigration being Irish ; and the Irish have been succeeded by the incursion of French Canadians, beginning twenty years later. At present these latest arrivals, in a solid body of half a million, compact in language and intact in religion, are testing the digestive powers of New England. Manufacturing industry, along with its growth, has passed through a process of evolution. Many small local factories found themselves unable to compete with the resources of the larger centres, and have dropped out. The location of factory towns was fixed at first by water power, but of late the mills have become largely independent of water. The advantage of cheap transpor- tation and the effect of competition have been shown in the con- centration of cotton mills around Narragansett Bay and Buzzards Bay. The church and school of Puritan New England have been differently affected by these fundamental changes. The division into sects had occurred in the first half of the century, the Bap- tists, Universalists, Methodists, Unitarians, etc., separating from the Congregational order and the Episcopalians and Presbyterians coming in. The breaking up was natural in a time of mental and spiritual ferment, though the causes affecting individuals were doubtless varied. In the case of Zephaniah Cross the going over to the Baptist communion was due to the Eastman auction. A bellows-top buggy was sacrificed at such figures that Mr. Cross 8 was constrained to bid it in. The lofty " bellus-top " would not turn back, and on arriving at his stall in the orthodox church sheds he found himself unable to drive under the roof. The horse sheds of the Baptist society were built upon more liberal lines, and after a season of earnest deliberation he became a convert to the doctrine of immersion. In cities and thriving towns the problems of the churches are little different from those which are found under like conditions elsewhere. In the villages and hill country the division into sects has proved a serious disadvantage. Even country churches are more comfortable than fifty years ago. It was not much before 1850 that stoves were introduced. There are many tradi- tions of the opposition with which this symbol of worldly luxury was received. In one church it had been finally decided to use stoves for the first time upon a certain Sunday. A strong oppo- nent of the innovation had been but a short time in his pew before he found the heat insufferable. He first removed his overcoat and then his coat, only to learn that, owing to delays, no fire had as yet been started in the stoves. Stoves were generally placed in the rear of the church, on either side ; and products of combustion were supposed to be carried through a long rambling stovepipe, suspended by wires under the galleries, to chimneys at either side of the pulpit. The intrusion of any secular concern upon the peace of the Sabbath jarred upon the senses. Pat Rogers from time immemorial had conducted a laundry at Hanover in the in- terest of Dartmouth students. He was a familiar figure trundling the " wash " to his laboratory or wheeling back the laundered residuum. On a quiet Sunday morning a conscientious student was shocked to see Mr. Rogers delivering a portion of his finished product. Patrick explained that it was a case of peculiar exigency. " What will become of you if you thus desecrate the Sabbath ? " " I dunno, sor. I s'pose likely I'll fetch up at the baad place." " Ah, but think of what that means ! What will you do there .-" " "Oh, begobs, I s'pose I'll gwan aboot the same as here, — wash for stoodents." Education has no story of decay except in decreased at- tendance at rural schools and disappearance of many of the unendowed academies. The strength of the old district school was in the close relationship of teacher and pupils. The school like the home was full of local associations and individual char- acter. The school-boy of fifty years ago remembers the noon- mark on the window-sill, the crack in the floor where classes toed the mark, the raspberry bush inciting^ to tardiness, and the birch provided in the compensation of nature as a corrective. The learning of a few books " by heart " fostered exactness of knowledge, with freedom and accuracy in giving it expression. If written examinations had prevailed in those days, the scholars would have compared favorably with those of the present day in preciseness of definition and in ability to tell what they knew. Children went barefoot in summer. In winter the boys wore home-made caps with flapping ear-laps, home-knit comforters, and copper-toed cowhide boots, periodically greased to exclude the elements. It is a strange but true story of the force of early habit that an honored and well-known scholar, sitting at a formal dinner and becoming abstracted during the brilliant monologue of another distinguished guest, was seen anointing his boots with the oil of the salad cruet. After spinning-wheels and looms were carried to the attic, few families could afford to buy store clothes. They made up the cloth at home, allowing liberal margins to growing boys, some of whom never attained the full standard of their sleeves and trousers. Children in the old times were so numerous that like silver in the days of Solomon they were nothing accounted of. It is certainly a change to the present age when the child is father of the man, and of the grandparent and of the whole community. One sympathizes with the man mentioned by Mr. Emerson who felt it a misfortune to have been born when children were nothing and to have lived until men were nothing. As late as 1850 all the colleges of New England were "seats of learning " of the old-fashioned sort. At the opening of the academic year the country colleges welcomed the candidate for matriculation mounted on a farm wagon, drawn by the horse which could be most easily spared from farm work, and bearing the blessing of his mother and the seed-cakes of his grandmother. Chapel exercises were held before daylight in midwinter, in chapels lighted by candles and heated by the Aurora Borealis. A chronic form of suicide, known as "boarding one's self," was not uncommon. The lack of amusements and of rational forms of exercise led to such laborious forms of pleasantry as gathering the blinds and gates of the village upon the campus or the elevation of a horse or cow to the college belfry. lO Higher education has not merely become higher, but broader, — too broad, as old-fashioned people think, to be deep. Wealth has increased at the old centres of learning. Wisdom could not fail to accumulate when, as has been remarked, so much is brought in by successive classes of Freshmen and so little is carried away by Seniors. / The lyceum was another power in education which brought the Mahomets of New England to the mountains of New Hamp- shire, Vermont, and the Berkshires. Newspapers now bring a larger world to the same hill country, but without the personal magnetism and touch of enthusiasm inspired when Emerson, Holmes, and Phillips lectured in the meeting-house and college students boarded 'round in the school district. There was also an agreeable reaction on the minds and pockets of the lecturers. Dr. Chapin used to say that he valued the fame derived from lecturing, F-A-M-E standing for Fifty And My Expenses. Mr. James T. Fields having given one of his charming lectures in the missionary spirit in a small place, where no amount had been agreed upon, his charges were discussed with the Lecture Com- mittee. "We had calkerlated," said the Si,pokesman, "to make it five dollars ; but it wa'n't exackly what we expected, and we have conclo/Dded that tew fifty would be abaout right ! " The railroads and newspapers have also robbed the tavern of its importance as a social club. In the stage-coach days the tavern-keeper was a person of importance and dignity. He gathered news from travellers and hobnobbed with public men. Neighbors dropped in with gossip, which he was expected to broadcast. He was a combined bulletin board, club steward. Exchange, Board of Trade, and Associated Press. It is a tribute to the old New England tavern that a large proportion of the men who have made the reputation and managed the business of the great hotels of New York as well as in more distant cities served their apprenticeship in New England, and largely on main lines of stage traffic which ran from Boston up through New Hampshire. With the decrease of road travel taverns sank into a desuetude not wholly innocuous. In "wet" or semi-wet towns they became a " hang-out " for local sons of Belial. At arid cross-roads it became difficult to obtain nourishment except at stated times. An indulgent landlady might fry the wayfarer a few buckwheat cakes and a cup of tea, but eggs and meat were hard to find. The II bicycle has not done all that was expected as a reviving force ; , but the general reaction of city on country is slowly awakening the country hotel. As educational forces and means of grace, we should not omit the maiden aunt, who in the big New England families was as much an institution as the New England conscience, which, in- deed, she personified and guided in practical channels. As depicted in a sketch of the "New Hampshire Way of Life," by Mr. F. B. Sanborn, the work in the house " was done by the wife, daughters, and maiden aunts, who were apt to inherit a residence in the old house upon their father's death, and who were indis- pensable to the simple life of the rural community. Theodore Parker used to quote an aunt who said, ' Mr. Parker, the position of a maiden aunt is very important : without maiden aunts the world could not be peopled, sir ! ' There was more in this odd remark than met the ear. In the nursing and pupilage of New Hampshire children the aunt bore a great part. Besides nursing the sick, they were usually tenders of other women's babies and instructors of children as they grew older. Emerson's Aunt Mary bore the largest part in his education and that of his brilliant brothers. Being asked once what he should have done without her, he said : ' Ah ! that would have been a loss ! I could have better spared Greece and Rome ! ' " To appreciate what the loss of Greece and Rome would have meant to our fathers and grandfathers, it is only necessary to take up the " occasional literature " of fifty years ago, entitled, perhaps, " An Historical Address upon the Opening of the Toll- bridge across the Onion River " or " Remarks upon Thanksgiv- ing Day, suggested by the Protracted Drought." The subject matter would be found to consist largely of reflections suggested by ancient history and of moral deductions therefrom. The ordinary tone of writing was stilted and full of mild moralizing. For a chance example, in a magazine article of 1852, describing the wearing apparel of early New England, we note, after a de- scription of the shoes of our forefathers, " While appendages for the feet are properly provided, true ornaments of the mind and heart should not be neglected." In spite of ministers and schoolmasters and maiden aunts, and perhaps in protest against the strictness of their training, there has always been a streak of " queerness " running up 12 through the New England granite. The fathers were shrewd and practical ; but, as Miss Gorren in a recent essay on the Anglo- Saxons well remarks : " Their close attention to the realities of life seems to unfit the mind for correct judgment in abstract things. Nowhere are so many persons of sound intelligence in all practical affairs so easily led to follow after crazy seers and seeresses. An active mind refuses to be shut out from the world of the highest abstractions ; and, if not guided thither by regular training and habit, it will set off even at the tail of the first ragged street procession that passes." It must be allowed that there has always been in the New England character a certain streak of superstition. The Yankee housewife was careful in observing signs, even to such trifling matters as the dropping of a dish-cloth or the overturning of salt. Farmers are still found who are guided in the planting of crops and the slaying of swine by phases of the moon. Since the day of witchcraft the force of superstition has been weakened ; but as late as March of the present year the newspapers were reporting an enormous business transacted in the city of Boston in the advertisement and sale of so-called luck boxes, — small boxes con- taining a brass ring, supposed to emanate from India, but really manufactured at Lynn. They were sold at ninety-nine cents apiece, and were guaranteed to confer the favors of fortune. When the business of this good man was interrupted, there were said to have been more than twenty thousand letters in the post- office inscribed with his address. Perhaps the characteristic New England humor derived its flavor from the same causes. Repressed intensity sought expres- sion in a shrewd exaggeration which was made picturesque by habits of close observation. So of the oft-mentioned Connecticut man, who returned from a tour of Europe unwilling to admit that he had seen anything more remarkable than at home. " You say you went across Switzerland into Italy. You must have been impressed by those mighty mountains." '* Wall, now you speak on't, I dew remember I might ha' passed over some risin' graound." A tourist inquires of a native sitting on the tavern porch at Colebrook, with face red from exposure to the elements (and also, it being Independence Day, to alcoholic stimulants), in regard to running certain rapids in the upper Connecticut in a canoe. 13 " Go over 'em in a canoe, why .... you couldn't go over them falls in a balloon." For a single illustration of the quaint, earthy, Yankeeish sayings, I refer again to " The New Hampshire Way of Life." An old carpenter named Herrick, full — as became his occupation — of wise saws, was at work shingling the Close barn. Deacon Close was an extremely small man, with an ex- pression of worried importance, caused by a long search for the elusive penny among the rocks of the hill farm. His mental as well as physical powers had succumbed to the lapse of years. " Jeems" came up from the hay-field, and called out to Herrick, who was shingling the roof, " Mr. Herrick, have you seen anything of father lately ? " "Oh, yes," was .the cheerful answer, " I see the old cat cair him under the barn abaout half an hour ago." This, too, appeals to the mind by the vivid picture which it sug- gests. The humor in this exaggeration was sometimes uncon- scious. The antipathy of New England housekeepers to dirt is well known. Their life was such a wearisome contest with dust that they often prematurely resolved themselves into it. One of these housekeepers, expecting a visit from friends, by a special effort made her house spotless and speckless. She greets her visitors at the door with the hearty invitation, " Come right in, if you can — for the dirt." The literature of New England was an outgrowth of the native characteristics of the people, of their homely philosophy and shrewd humor. It was the offspring of church and school, and was not without the usual characteristics of a minister's son. An interesting study of its relation to its stern parent is offered in Mr. Sidney George Fisher's " Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times." The expansion of literary life began late irl the eighteenth century with the decline of the Puritan domination, with the relaxation of severity and the freeing of the individual judgment. Most of the great actors in the literary drama were descendants for many generations of New England ministers, whose minds were trained to shrewd investigation and close analysis. These literary men were all born between 17S0 and 1827, the time of change from total repression to absolute free- dom. They lived amid inspiring events, not unlike those of the Elizabethan era ; a vast expansion in discovery and settlement toward the West ; with the wars and rumors of wars of a heroic age. They were stimulated by the rising spirit of invention and H discovery. They produced a literature which was complete in poetry, romance, philosophy, history, and theology, as well as criticism. Coming now to the moral, which must be drawn in the old- fashioned way from these comparisons, we find it colored by individual bias. The elderly pessimist sighs for the ' simple, hearty enjoyments of the good old times ; the neighborly running in to borrow a rising of yeast or a setting of eggs ; the Sociable which came as a January thaw in the neighborhood winter; the blazing hearth, with pie closet and rum closet inviting consultation on either hand. He is heard to speak of the aping of empty gentility, of formal calls and stupid receptions, of vulgar display and snobbish extravagance. The student of sociology, developed under the new system, points out the barrenness and narrowness of the life of the fathers, its poverty and lack of color. He calls attention to the prim and clammy aristocracy which grew up wherever circumstances permitted, as in the cities from Boston to Portland. With the logic of results in his favor, he plans to force restored vitality upon the disheartened hill towns by University Extension and systematic lecturing. The old-school philosopher complains that the cut and-dried ward caucus is shutting off the open discussion of the town meeting. He says that the doctrine of foreordination has been transferred from religion to politics. Our opinions, like our wearing materials, come to us machine- made. He pictures the disgrace which would have overtaken a freeman who sold his blood-bought rights as a voter for pieces of silver. Now he knows of hundreds — The younger man inter- rupts merely to remark that the broader discussions which have come in with the modern press and a freer social life have rendered needless these endless powwows over the choice of a fence-viewer or culler of staves. Except for the occasional and uncertain opportunities offered by a fire or a funeral, the town meeting was the only occasion when our grandfathers could get together and talk things over. It has to be admitted that the praise of old-fashioned social 15 life will hardly bear examination. The necessities of things had made the exaltation of " work " a sort of mechanical religion. Faces, even of the young, assumed a set, anxious, but determined expression. Their life was described by that long and dreary word " utilitarian." The farmer thought of the cloud-capped mountain as a convenient but unreliable barometer, and of the joyous cascade as a feature of the grist-mill. Economy was a fetich, and extravagance a sin. The good times which the young people managed to have stand out by contrast against the cold uniformity of the sombre background. The characteristic traits of the New England of fifty years ago were the natural outcome of such a life working upon such material, — versatility, " capable- ness," practical skill, shrewd common sense, with lapses into gul- libility, close observation and quaint remark, earnestness, philo- sophic humor, craving for knowledge, ambition to " be some- thing." They were close-mouthed and close-fisted, self-contained, and self-assertive. No other race of farmers " have had such acute intelligence, reverence for learning, and keen sense of the superior importance of spiritual things." For six generations they worked in their narrow training school, without realizing that they w^ere victims of special hardship. But, when a broader life was offered, they lost no time in going out to preach the sermons, teach the schools, edit the journals, make the laws, build up the business, and take charge of the purses and principles of the whole nation. Their lives of patient self-denial were not without a craving for brightness and beauty. It seldom went farther among the men than to express itself in neat dooryards and trim fences and in the stately trees which lined the streets of every village. Our grandmothers loved the scent of lilacs and syringa and the cheeriness of hollyhocks and tiger lilies. In the days when car- pets, except rag rugs, were an unheard of luxury, Mrs. Rowe has told us that a good sister secured a large square of sail-cloth, and with a few crude colors painted upon this canvas rude patterns of familiar flowers, chiefly blue roses and green lilies, covering the whole with a thick coat of varnish. Everybody came to see, and wonder and admire, Deacon Close among them. Turning his honest, weather-beaten face earnestly upon the erring sister, he exclaimed, " Do you expect to have all this, Sister Meiggs — and heaven, too ?" i6 The characteristic craving for knowledge included all things, great and small. It never overlooked the most trifling details of other people's affairs. Wendell Phillips is sometimes quoted as saying that the Puritan hell would be a place where every one had to mind his own business. A minister's wife, after a some- what disturbed pastorate in a town in Eastern Massachusetts, described it as having the quiet of the grave — without its peace. Jerry Hatch has been consumed with curiosity for years in trying to determine whether the stones which glitter in the brooch worn by the Widow Stillings, as she makes her majestic progress into church, are the "ginooine " thing. The widow passes away suddenly and apoplectically. The brooch is understood, at her special direc- tion to have been consigned with her to the casket, and no opportunity offered to "view the remains." Jerry's suspicions are confirmed ; but he is overheard to remark gloomily, " I shan't find aout till the Day o' Judgment, and then there'll be so much goin' on that it's more'n likely I sh'll forget all abaout it." The old and new are now so closely interwoven that they may be compared side by side in any corner of New England, as was brought to mind by a recent bicycle trip beyond the beaten path in Connecticut. We had been told that good accommodations could always be had at Poole's Corners ; and Captain Poole was found hospitably disposed, but there was to be a dance in the hall over his store. "You see," he explained, "we're goin' to hev a kind uv a social gatherin' to raise money for a new hearse. There's a room I s'pose you could have, but I've kinder promised it to the feller that plays the bull-fiddle. He's always a-tunin' of it up, and then they'll want to leave their hats and things there and be runnin' in and out till pretty late. You'd do better to go on to the Tuttle place, — Mrs. Whipple Tuttle's. It may bother ye a shade to locate the place," continued the captain, observing the deepening shadows. " Tuttle's ruther a common name here, and so I may say is Whipple. Turn down there by John Bazro's shoe shop. Yes, that's his sign, — Jean Bergeron, — queer way of spellin' them Frenchmen have. Then keep a-bearin' to the left till you come to a big yeller house with a wind- wheel. You can't miss it. That ain't the place, but it's the John Henry Tuttle place ; and there you leave John Hen's barn on the left, and go past Aunt Jim's, then by a red house, — John Tuttle's (Red House 17 John we call him), — and, lemme see, there's one other house to the right, — John Hen's John lives there now, — and right next is the widder's." At the foot of a long lane we found a man finish- ing some work in the dusk, of whom we inquired, " Is that Mrs. Tuttle's house up the lane ? " " Yes " (with an amiable grin). " Do they accommodate people with rooms and — er — something to eat .'' " " Yes." "Do you think they can take care of us?" (With gratifying smile.) " Yes, yes." We toiled up the lane to learn that it was a private retreat for the feeble-minded, and that no further applications would be re- ceived. '• But your button-headed baboon at the foot of the lane said you entertained travellers." " Oh, he's a Polock." There was so much difficulty in finding Mrs. Tuttle's — with a light sprinkling of rain beginning to fall — that we stopped at a comfortable-looking house on the way. It proved to be a Mrs. John Whipple's place, Mrs. Whipple had " nothing in the house," " and I can't give you no separate room. You might sleep with the hired man. He's real clean for one of them Rooshan Finns." We thanked her, and moved on to Mrs. Tuttle's. It was a large house, rambling loosely in two general directions. Mrs. Tuttle could not provide for us, but thought that Mrs. Tuttle Whipple, "right in the next house," would furnish accommodations. We proceeded to the next doorway, and knocked several times. A faint light appeared at the end of the hall, which blew out before the lady carrying it reached the door. " Is this Mrs. Tuttle Whipple ? " we inquired. "No, sir," — in a slightly injured tone, — "this is Mrs. Whipple Tuttle to whom you were just speaking at the other end of the house. This is a kind of double house. I told you the next house." We apologized, and groped our way to the next building, which was gloomy and unlighted. After pounding on the door, we heard a door open, apparently in another building; and a woman's form was seen approaching. " Is this Mrs. Tipple Whup — er — pardon — Mrs. Tuttle Whipple ? " " No, young man, it is not. It is Mrs. Whipple Tuttle. I told you to go to the next house. This ain't no house. It's the Catho- lic church," • i8 We went to the next edifice, and knocked again. An elderly lady appeared in the distance with a dim candle. It must be Mrs. Whipple Tuttle again. " Er — is this Mrs. Whittle Tupple, — I mean Mrs. Tuttle Whipple ? " "Yes," said the lady, "but I don't want any" — " Not at all, madam. We only want something to cat. Will pay for whatever " — " Oh, well, it's after our supper time ; but we got up a supper for six Eyetalian laborers that are workin' on the mill-dam. Bein' the night before a holiday, they must 'a' gone down to the village and got drunk. So if you " — We ate the supper of the six sons of Italy, and slept the sleep of the righteous anaconda. As to the comparative advantages of the old way of life, if any- body wants to try for himself, as a native philosopher observed, " there ain't no law agin it." Only a few days ago a man went into a store in Fairfield, Me., and remarked that everything except the boots that he had on — namely, stockings, shirts, under- clothes, outside clothes, and cap — were spun, woven, and made by his mother. The fact that we seldom hear of such cases confirms the general belief that the new order of things, from a material point of view, is an improvement. The Puritan New England was like a mighty tree, which, after a slow, patient growth of two hundred years and sending its seeds to float upon the Western air, bowed before the storms of change. But strong shoots are springing up in the old soil. There seems to be a feeling in many quarters that New England is in a bad way. Look through an index of periodical literature for the past ten years, and you find information grouped under such heads as the following : — NEW ENGLAND: Decline of ; Decay of Rural ; Decadence of Thought of; Problems of Churches of; Crisis in Industries of. If there has been any general decline in material prosperity, it is not a matter of record. The census of 1895 showed a gain in population in Massachusetts of 15 per cent., about the same as in 19 Wisconsin, in the growing region of the West. The percentage of increase throughout New England for the past ten years will be found to be the largest for any decade since 1850. Bank clearings, railroad earnings, savings deposits, school appropriations, and other barometers fail to show any area of depression. In New England it is particularly true that social changes depend on economic conditions. During the general sluggishness of business the present advantages of cotton manufacturers in the South were brought into marked prominence. As was the case in New England fifty years ago, they are favored with an abun- dance of native labor at low wages, and are free from restrictions as to age of operatives and hours of labor. The wage-demanding element is not yet organized. Southern manufacturing will in- crease to the benefit of the South and advantage of the whole country. Jobbers of boots and shoes in the West will become manufacturers. In these and other lines, local manufacturers will supply their own tributary country with many grades of goods. How far they will cut into New England business is not yet clear. 