"Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere."
Though Boston boys played "wicket" on Boston Common, I fancy the young Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were allowed few amusements. They apparently brought over some English pastimes with them, for in 1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston:
"Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that several persons have received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in the streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that game in any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under the penalty of twenty shillings for every such offence."
One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised toward boys by Puritan lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the tithingman. He was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do not doubt that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they wished. From the brother sport of winter, skating, they were not debarred; and they went on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned, just as country boys are nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th, 1696:
"Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on Fresh Pond. Wm. Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned."
In the New England Weekly Journal of January 15th, 1728, we read:
"On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers, viz Mr. George and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom of the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;"
and in the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of another death by drowning.
"A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Foster, skating on the ice from Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was drown'd. He was about 16 or 18 years of age."