File:Our first century (1905) (14596983480).jpg

Identifier: ourfirstcentury00eggl (find matches)
Title: Our first century
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Eggleston, George Cary, 1839-1911
Subjects: United States -- Social life and customs To 1775
Publisher: New York, A.S. Barnes & Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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prompt baptism un-der unfavorable conditions. There were other causes ofinfant mortality however, in the imperfect heating ofhouses, in the unwise drugging that prevailed, in thelack of drainage and proper ventilation, and in other con-ditions of life in the New England of that time. And there was compensation for the excessive infantmortality in the equally excessive birth rate. The menof Puritan New England were accustomed to marry earlyand often. Bridegrooms at the time of their first mar-riages were usually under twenty years of age, and ifthey were widowed they were never long, as the oldrecords show, in taking new partners to themselves.Twelve or fifteen children constituted an ordinaryfamily. Fifteen or twenty children were not unusual.Families of from twenty to twenty-five children wereso frequent as not to excite any wondering remark, and EDUCATION, RELIGION, MARRIAGES 197 there are records showing even thirty or more childrenas the sheaf of a single father and mother. In New
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A wedding in New Amsterdam. York families were scarcely so large as in New England,but men and women in that colony married early, andfamily life was honored as the only fit condition. / .Mii£ 198 OUR FIRST CENTURY The psalm singing of that time was a very dismal andsoul-wearying performance. We know because both thewords and the music survive to us in trustworthy rec-ords. The sermonizing was even dryer and drearier.We know for the reason that all the printing presses ofNew England were chiefly employed, for a hundred yearsand more, in printing sermons, and hundreds of thosediscourses survive on the remoter shelves of our greatlibraries. They dealt almost entirely with matters oftheological doctrine, scarcely at all with matters of rightliving. The parsons and the magistrates regulated con-duct much more directly than by sermonizing. Theyhad the law for their weapon in such matters. It is easy to suppose that the sturdy, healthy NewEngland boys and girls were the greatest sufferers

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