"One did commend me to a wife both fair and young That had French, Spanish, and Italian tongue.

I thanked him kindly and told him I loved none of such,
For I thought one tongue for a wife too much.
What! love ye not the learned?

Yes, as my life.

A learned scholar, but not a learned wife."

SURELY some crabbed bachelor, heavily fined for remaining in the single state from which no fair lady would help him

to escape, had composed this venomous doggerel for Ann Wing, aged thirteen, to perpetuate with painstaking stitches. How glad she must have been to turn from it to execute in colored silks the impossible roses and trees that illuminate her beautifully worked sampler!

Hannah Head, who was probably as fond of bright colors as any other Quaker child, inveighs upon her square of canvas against those who

"Court to be decked in rich attire

With gold spread, that others may admire,"

insisting in all colors of the rainbow that

"They in whose noble heart true virtue dwells, Need not so much adorn their outward shells."

Poor little girls! such words seem strangely unsuited to your years and experience. We can only hope that your lives were brighter than they seem to us as we look back upon them. This hope is encouraged by the fact that Miss Winslow, a regular attendant of the Old South, was allowed to take part in an entertain

ment where there was dancing, and where the "treat was nuts, raisins, cakes, wine, punch, hot and cold, all in great plenty." The publication of the diary of this Boston school-girl of 1771 throws a more attractive light upon child-life in New England, and leads us to believe that there were others besides Anna Winslow who filled their home letters with descriptions of their innocent pleasures and girlish vanities, even if they, like her, dutifully quoted the text and gave their opinions upon the parson's discourse. After all, girl hearts beat high then as now, and were as quick to respond to the touch of joy or love. Courtship and marriage came so early in those days. that the little maids had scarcely finished their samplers and folded them away before they had to take them out again to copy the letters upon the linen for their bridal outfits.

With all the seeming repression of childlife, and the great outward deference shown to the wishes of parents, there seems to have been considerable independence in loveaffairs among young women in Colonial

days. Even Betty Sewall refused one husband of her father's choice, and kept another unexceptionable parti waiting a year for her answer to his suit; while, from Priscilla Mullins frankly encouraging John Alden to speak for himself, to Phoebe Harrison refusing to give her cherries to any one but the lad for whom they were intended, these gentle creatures seem to have had decided opinions about their partners for life. Phineas Pemberton's "Narrative" tells, in his own words, the quaint story of his love-making :

"Phoebe, with her mother as they were going into Cheshire, called at my master's shop, but I knew them not; she, being then about nine years of age, said to her mother, having got some cherries in her apron, ‘I have a mind to give one of these young men some cherries.' Her mother said, 'Then give to both;' one of my fellow apprentices being then by me and on a market day, I never having seen them before, nor they me, that I know of, and altogether strangers to them. She said, 'No; I will but give to one,' and through the crowd of people that then stood before the counter, she pressed holding out her hand with cherries for me, before I was well aware; and I admired that a child I knew not, should offer me such kindness; but on inquiry remembered I had heard her name, and I retali

ated her kindness at the same time with a paper of brown candy. About two years after that she came that way again with her mother who came into the shop but she did not; She only stayed in the street & then again I remembered her kindness but saw not her face. About two years after that I went to Bolton to get a shop, to set up trade there and then saw her again but remembered little of what before had happened. After I was come there and had settled awhile and took notice of her discreet & modest behavior and features & personage I then was taken with her; She appeared very lovely in my eye tho' then quite young & because of this I suppressed my affection for a time. Other things in the meanwhile offered on that account to me, but more & more love increased in me towards her until I could not conceal it. I then remembered the beginnings thereof as already mentioned. Her parents and friends were very respectful to it but because of her tender years it was still delayed until she was of riper age; in which time she was often not well, sometimes from home under the doctor's hands & once at London in which time many letters passed."

These letters, which were devoutly religious as well as tenderly affectionate, were followed by the marriage of the Quaker lovers. Soon after, being grievously persecuted for conscience' sake, Phineas and Phoebe emigrated to Pennsylvania, where, as in Massachusetts, the Pemberton name