burn, Smibert, his pupil John Copley,* and from those of Stuart, West, Peale, and Trumbull, were very elegant gentlemen, they were also industrious, God-fearing men and law-abiding citizens. The ladies, their pendants upon the wall, if they were grandes dames in a certain sense, and upon gala days appeared stiff and elegant in their brocades and satins, with hair towering high or tortured into innumerable curls and rings, were far from frivolous as a rule,

* In none of his paintings does Copley more fully display the grace and breadth of treatment which were the distinguishing characteristics of his best work than in the group of his own family. In this picture Mrs. Copley leans forward to caress her boy, whose hand is laid confidingly upon his mother's cheek, while the little maid in the foreground presents a charming combination of childish innocence and dignity. This painting possesses a more than ordinary historic interest, as the older gentleman standing near Mr. Copley, his fatherin-law, is the Mr. Richard Clarke who refused to return the tea consigned to him in 1774, and may thus, in a certain sense, be considered the originator of the Boston tea party, the boy whom Mrs. Copley bends over is the future Lord Chancellor of England, and the little girl, Elizabeth, is looked upon with interest by many Bostonians as their ancestress, Mrs. Gardiner Greene.

and if an occasional ball or play diversified the monotony of their days, the majority of them were spent as Mr. Swanwick describes the excellent Maria spending hers:

"No gadding frenzy takes her choice,

But strictly ruled by reason's voice

No hideous dress this fair one wears,

Not fashions but a mother's cares
Engross her every hour."

Indeed, domesticity was a necessity as well as a virtue in Colonial and Provincial life, and while, as Mr. Dunton remarked of Mrs. William Stewart, of Boston, "Her pride was to be Neat and Cleanly, and her thrift not to be Prodigal, which made her seldom a non-resident of her household," the Southern matron gathered her slaves about her and instructed them in cooking, sewing, and all domestic arts. The woman of the olden time was skilled in the use of her needle, in embroidery, lace-making, and all manner of fine needle-work. Little Miss Swift wrote from Boston to her papa and mamma in Philadelphia of spending

ern homes, or when Mr. William Black told how he was feasted in Annapolis, or when Silas Deane described an elaborate dinner at the house of Miers Fisher in Philadelphia, they little knew what the preparation and arrangement of such a menu meant to the mistress of the household, in days when she could not send around the corner for the latest device in confectionery with which to grace her board, and when the syllabubs and custards were often prepared by the same dainty hands that served them to her guests.

A pleasant story is told of Mrs. Clement Biddle, a worthy descendant of pioneer women of Rhode Island. Mrs. Biddle was with her husband in the Valley Forge encampment, and when an order was issued that the officers' wives should leave the camp, she, with ready tact and skill, prepared so delectable a dinner for General Washington and his staff that the order was not carried out in her case, showing that the heroes of the Revolution were not insensible to the seductions of such good

cheer as a notable Philadelphia housewife knew how to set before the masculine devourer. The story runs that as Mrs. Biddle rose from the table, she airily remarked that she had heard of the order, but felt sure that the General would not apply it to her, to which charmingly feminine speech the Commander-in-Chief, bowing low, replied, "Certainly not to Mrs. Biddle."

"House North Andover, Mass.

AMONG the early settlers of the Colonies there was, occasionally, a woman of more than ordinary intelligence, and now and again a ready writer or a verse-maker. Perhaps in all the settlements, North and South, there was no woman equal in mind and spirit to Anne Hutchinson, whom even her enemies acknowledged to be "a masterpiece of woman's wit."

Enthusiasm, unrestrained by tact or worldly considerations, a strain of headstrongness in her religious fervor, and a power of carrying with her the minds and hearts of her hearers, were apparently the leading characteristics of this devoted young woman, the latter trait being perhaps the most difficult for her persecutors to overlook. From the grim travesty of