Food and Drink of Children.
There was an abundance of food for children but not so great a variety. Among the good things were the cereal foods, which were plentiful and varied, many of such having been made from the Indian corn, as, samp, hominy, supawn, pone, succotash, described in another part of this chapter. Beans also were common and made good food for children. There were fruits, as, pears, apples, peaches, and cherries, and also prunes, figs, currants and raisins. There were several kinds of berries, some ripening in the summer and others in the fall, which the children gathered, and, too, there were plenty of nuts for them to gather in.
Sweetmeats for children were plentiful among the colonists even in the early days. There were sugar and molasses from which to make sweet things for the children, not omitting maple sugar. Raisins were brought in by the ships in large quantities for they were quite a dainty with the colonial children and in great demand. There was not a great variety of candy, among such being lemon-peel candy, angelica candy, rock candy, sugar candy, Black Jack, and Gibraltar Rock. It would be surmised that this latter named candy must have had lasting qualities like the all-day sucker of the present-day child. Rock-candy was the favorite and great amounts of it were brought in from China by the ships, one vessel having brought in at one time sixty tubs of this candy. There were candied eryngo-root, candied lemon-peel, and sugared coriander-seeds. The children had plenty of cakes those days and each city had some one confectioner or baker who was noted for his cakes. Boston had Meer's cakes. There were cookies, crullers, egg cakes, marchpanes, maccaroons, and other kinds.
Much less is given about the drink of children of colonial times than even about the food. Mrs. Earle found in an old almanac of the eighteenth century, where advice was given on the "Easy Rearing of Children," that young children should never be allowed to drink cold drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated. Children were given all the cider they wanted, even very little children drank it. Fortunately for the colonial children milk was very plentiful and cheap so they had plenty of that to drink. That children were given the drinks of their elders is shown in the following:
"This picture has been given by Sargent of country funerals in the days of his youth: 'When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country, everybody went to everybody's funeral in the village. The population was small, funerals rare; the preceptor's absence would have excited remarks, and the boys were dismissed for the funeral. A table with liquors was always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his hat with his left hand, smoothed down his hair with his right, walked up to the coffin, gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked face, passed on to the table, took a glass of his favorite liquor, went forth upon the plat before the house and talked politics, or of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped heifers, or horses until it was time to lift. A clergyman told me that when settled at Concord, N. H., he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The body was borne in a chaise, and six little nominal pall-bearers, the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle. Before they left the house a sort of master of ceremonies took them to the table and mixed a tumbler of gin, water, and sugar for each.'"[300]