Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/235

Rh of a reckless and utterly defiant community, did not one recall the fact that life was so hedged about with minute detail, that the most orderly citizen of this day would have been the disorderly one of that.

One resource, of entertainment, was always open to Puritan households. Hospitality was on a scale almost of magnificence, and every opportunity seized for making a great dinner or supper, the abundant good cheer of which was their strongest reminder of England. The early privations were ended, but to recall them gave an added zest, and we may fancy Roger Clap repeating the experience found in his memoir, with a devout thankfulness that such misery was far behind them.

"Bread was so scarce, that frequently I thought the very crusts of my father's table would have been very sweet unto me. And when I could have meal and water and salt boiled together who could wish better. . . . It was not accounted a strange thing in those days to drink water, and to eat samp or hominy without butter or milk. Indeed it would have been strange to see a piece of roast beef, mutton or veal, though it was not long before there was roast goat."

Generous living had become the colonial characteristic. Even in the first years, while pressure was still upon them, and supplies chiefly from England, one of them wrote:

"Sometimes we used bacon and buttered pease, sometimes buttered bag pudding, made with currants and raisins, sometimes drinked pottage of beer and oatmeal, and sometimes water pottage well buttered."

Health had come to many who had been sickly from childhood. In fact, in spite of the theory we are