" Many a
piece of village electioneering was also discussed and "worked" between the
services. The shivering women crowded around the blazing and welcome fire,
and seated themselves on rude benches and log seats while they ate and
exchanged doughnuts, slices of rusk, or pieces of "pumpkin and Indian mixt"
pie, and also gave to each other receipts therefor; and they discoursed
in low voices of their spinning and weaving, of their candle-dipping
or candle-running, of their success or failure in that yearly trial of
patience and skill--their soap-making, of their patterns in quilt-piecing,
and sometimes they slyly exchanged quilt-patterns. A sentence in an old
letter reads thus: "Anne Bradford gave to me last Sabbath in the Noon House
a peecing of the Blazing Star; tis much Finer than the Irish Chain or the
Twin Sisters. I want yelloe peeces for the first joins, small peeces will
do. I will send some of my lilac flowered print for some peeces of Cicelys
yelloe India bed vallants, new peeces not washed peeces." They gave one
another medical advice and prescriptions of "roots and yarbs" for their
"rheumatiz," "neuralgy," and "tissick;" and some took snuff together, while
an ancient dame smoked a quiet pipe. And perhaps (since they were women as
well as Puritans) they glanced with envy, admiration, or disapproval, or
at any rate with close scrutiny, at one another's gowns and bonnets and
cloaks, which the high-walled pews within the meeting-house had carefully
concealed from any inquisitive, neighborly view.
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