It was my intent to devote a chapter of this book to the results of the study of the part borne by children in that sad tale of psychological phenomena and religious fanaticism. The study proved most fascinating, and research was faithfully made; but a stronger desire was that children might find some pleasure in these pages in reading of the child life of their forbears. Such a chapter could neither be profitable to the child nor comprehended by him, nor would it be to the taste of parents of the present day. It was a sad tale, but was not peculiar to Salem nor to New England. The Salem and Boston settlers came largely from the English counties of Suffolk and Essex, where witches and witch-hunters and witch-finders abounded, and Salem children and parents had seen in their English homes or heard the tales of hundreds of similar obsessions and possessions.
New England children were instilled with a familiarity with death in still another way than through talking and reading of it. Their presence at funerals was universal. A funeral in those days had an entirely different status as a ceremony from to-day. It was a social function as well as a solemn one; it was a reunion of friends and kinsfolk, a ceremonial of much expense and pomp, a scene of much feasting and drinking.
Judge Sewall tells of the attendance of his little children when five and six years old at funerals. When Rev. Thomas Shepherd was buried "scholars went before the Herse" at the funeral. Sargent, in his Dealings with the Dead, tells of country funerals in the days of his youth:—
"When I was a boy and 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 remark and the boys were dismissed for the funeral.... A clergyman told me that when he was 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, sugar and water for each."
A crisis was reached in Boston when funerals had to be prohibited on Sundays because the vast concourse of children and servants that followed the coffin through the streets became a noisy rabble that profaned the sacred day.
Little girls were pall-bearers also at the funerals of their childish mates, and young unmarried girls at those of their companions. Dressed in white with uncovered heads, or veiled in white, these little girls made a touching sight.
Religious expression naturally found its highest point in Puritan communities in the strict and decorous observance of Sunday. Stern were the laws in ordering this observance. Fines, imprisonment, and stripes on the naked back were dealt out rigorously for Sabbath-breaking. The New Haven Code of Laws with still greater severity enjoined that profanation of the Lord's Day, if done "proudly and with a high hand against the authority of God," should be punished with death. This rigid observance fell with special force and restriction on children. A loved poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote of the day:—
"Hush, 'tis the Sabbath's silence-stricken morn,
No feet must wander through the tasselled corn,
No merry children laugh around the door,
No idle playthings strew the sanded floor.
The law of Moses lays its awful ban
On all that stirs. Here comes the Tithing-man."
There were many public offices in colonial times which we do not have to-day, for we do not need them. One of these is that of tithing-man; he was a town officer, and had several neighboring families under his charge, usually ten, as the word "tithing" would signify. He enforced the learning of the church catechism in these ten homes, visited the houses, and heard the children recite their catechism. These ten families he watched specially on Sundays to see whether they attended church, and did not loiter on the way. In some Massachusetts towns he watched on week days to keep "boys and all persons from swimming in the water." Ten families with many boys must have kept him busy on hot August days. He inspected taverns, reported disorderly persons, and forbade the sale of intoxicating liquor to them. He administered the "oath of fidelity" to new citizens, and warned undesirable visitors and wanderers to leave the town. He could arrest persons who ran or rode at too fast a pace when going to meeting on Sunday, or who took unnecessary rides on Sunday, or otherwise broke the Sunday laws.