ditions. The first years of life at Plymouth are the records of a bitter struggle, not for comfort but for existence. Scarcely less sad are the pages of Governor Winthrop's journal, which tell of the settlers of Massachusetts Bay. On the journey across seas not a child "had shown fear or dismayedness.” Those brave children were welcomed to the shore with good cheer, says the old chronicler, Joshua Scottow; "with external flavor and sweet odor; fragrant was the land, such was the plenty of sweet fern, laurel, and other fragrant simples; such was the scent of our aromatic and balsam-bearing pines, spruces and larch trees, with our tall cedars." They landed on a beautiful day in June, "with a smell on the shore like the smell of a garden," and these happy children had gathered sweet wild strawberries and single wild roses. It is easy to picture the merry faces and cheerful laughter.

Scant, alas! were the succeeding days of either sweetness or light. The summer wore on in weary work, in which the children had to join; in constant fears, which the children multiplied and magnified; and winter came, and death. "There is not a house where there is not one dead," wrote Dudley. One little earth-weary traveller, a child whose "family and kindred had dyed so many," was, like the prophets in the Bible, given exalted vision through

sorrow,

sorrow, and had "extraordinary evidence concerning the things of another world." Fierce east winds searched the settlers through and through, and frosts and snows chilled them. The dreary ocean, the gloomy forests, were their bounds. Scant was their fare, and mean their roof-trees; yet amid all the want and cold little children were born and welcomed with that ideality of affection which seems as immortal as the souls of the loved ones.

Pros

Hunger and privation did not last long in the Massachusetts colony, for it was a rich community -for its day - and soon the various settlements grew in numbers and commerce and wealth, and an exultant note runs through their records. perous peoples will not be morose; thanksgiving proclamations reflect the rosy hues of successful years. Child life was in harmony with its surroundings; it was more cheerful, but there was still fearful menace to the life and health of an infant. From the moment when the baby opened his eyes on the bleak world around him, he had a Spartan struggle for life; half the Puritan children had scarce drawn breath in this vale of tears ere they had to endure an ordeal which might well have given rise to the expression "the survival of the fittest." I say half the babies, presuming that half were born in warm weather, half in cold. All had to be baptized

within a few days of birth, and baptized in the meeting-house; fortunate, indeed, was the child of midsummer. We can imagine the January babe carried through the narrow streets or lanes to the freezing meeting-house, which had grown damper and deadlier with every wintry blast; there to be christened, when sometimes the ice had to be broken in the christening bowl. On January 22, 1694, Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, records in his diary:

"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the falling and driving of Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A Child named Alexander was baptized in the afternoon."

The Judge tells of his own children - four days old shrinking from the icy water, but crying not. It was a cold and disheartening reception these children had into the Puritan church; many lingered but a short time therein. The mortality among infants was appallingly great; they died singly, and in little groups, and in vast companies. Putrid fevers, epidemic influenzas, malignant sore throats, "bladders in the windpipe," raging small pox,

carried off hundreds of the children who survived baptism. The laws of sanitation were absolutely disregarded-because unknown; drainage there was nor deemed necessary; disinfection was feebly desired - but the scanty sprinkling of vine

none

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