In the record of his will we find the following, which will show you how our ancestors made their wills:
Two mahogony tables, 1 square table, 16 leather bottom chairs, 1 mahogony desk, 7 looking glasses, 1 set of china (42 pieces), 1 coffee set (30 pieces), 34 linen sheets, 25 pair pillow cases, 1 pew in First Congregational Meeting House, 1 pew in Second Congregational House, etc., etc., besides a long list of notes and other properties.
This is very different from the wills of today, isn't it? I presume we have many boys as brave and true as William, and many girls as dear and sweet as Thankful, and perhaps one hundred years from now other boys and girls will be reading about some of you. So let us live in such a way that we may have our story written and enjoyed as is this true story of Thankful Dexter and William Cleghorn.—Evelyn Cleghorn Dimock Henry, Xavier Chapter, D. A. R., Rome, Ga.
[THE BLUE LAWS OF OLD VIRGINIA.]
Usually in discussion of blue laws, those very Draconian regulations which have so aroused the ire or the respect of moderns, depending upon which way they look at it, the debaters confine themselves mostly to New England Puritan forms, or those of New York, Pennsylvania or New Jersey.
In the days the Puritans formulated the blue laws, Virginia was looked upon as the home of high living and frivolity. Even to this day few would look for such measures among that old aristocratic colony.
As a matter of fact, the Virginians of the seventeenth century, had a habit of enacting indigo-tinted laws, and likewise enforcing them, which might have made the Puritans sit up late at night to beat them.
Aside from the stern and vindictive intolerance which finds utterance in the acts of the Virginia Assembly between the years 1662 and 1680, the most striking element in them is the tremendous premium placed upon spying and informing. In most every case in which such a reward is possible the law encouraged the man to spy upon his neighbor.
If the Virginia husbands agreed with Kipling that "a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke," the following act must have been the occasion of much domestic infelicity.