Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/221

Rh Undoubtedly Dinah and all her contemporaries proved infinitely better servants than the second generation of those brought from England; who even as early as 1656, had learned to prefer independence, the Rev. Zechariah Symmes writing feelingly: "Much ado I have with my own family, hard to get a servant glad of catechising or family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in Yorkshire and those I brought over were a blessing, but the young brood doth much afflict me."

An enthusiastic cook, even of most deeply Puritanic spirit, had been known to steal out during some long drawn prayer, to rescue a favorite dish from impending ruin, and the offence had been condoned or allowed to pass unnoticed. But the "young brood" revolted altogether at times from the interminable catechisings and "family duties", or submitted in a sulky silence, at which the spirit of the master girded in vain.

There seems to have been revolt of many sorts. Nature asserted itself, and boys and girls smiled furtively upon one another, and young men and maidens planned means of outwitting stern masters and mistresses, and securing a dance in some secluded barn, or the semblance of a merry making in picnic or ride. But stocks, pillory and whipping-post awaited all offenders, who still found that the secret pleasure outweighed the public pain, and were brought up again and again, till years subdued the fleshly instincts, and they in turn wondered at their children's pertinacity in the same evil ways. Holidays were no part of the Puritan system, and the little Bradstreets took theirs on the way to and from school, doing their wading