Later in the history of the colony, when
hooped petticoats and laced hoods and mantles, and long, embroidered gloves
fastened with horsehair "glove tightens," and when velvet coats and satin
breeches and embroidered waistcoats, gold lace, sparkling buckles, and
cocked hats with full bottomed wigs were worn, the gray, sombre old
meeting-house blossomed like a tropical forest, and vied with the worldly
Church of England in gay-garbed church attendants.
Stern and severe of face were many of the members of these early New
England congregations, else they had not been true Puritans in heart, and
above all, they had not been Pilgrims. Long and thin of feature were they,
rarely smiling, yet not devoid of humor. Some handsome countenances
were seen,--austere, bigoted Cotton Mather being, strangely enough, the
handsomest and most worldly looking of them all. What those brave, stern
men and women were, as well as what they looked, is known to us all, and
cannot be dwelt upon here, any more than can here be shown and explained
the details of their religious faith and creed. Patient, frugal,
God-fearing, and industrious, cruel and intolerant sometimes, but never
cowardly, sternly obeying the word of God in the spirit and the letter, but
erring sometimes in the interpretation thereof,--surely they had no traits
to shame us, to keep us from thrilling with pride at the drop of their
blood which runs in our backsliding veins.
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