Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/559

Rh advice in this direction, and his calling attention to the moral inheritance of the child in the case of Timothy, show that he considered the family the primary social settlement.

Feudalism was, perhaps, a means of developing individualism in the family. Dr. Thwing says: "When not waging warfare, the lord in his castle on crest or side of hill was bound into an intimate and strong relation with wife and children. They were separated from society, and compelled to find satisfaction and contentment in each other. This tended to place members of the family on absolute equality." However, in humble homes, among families without rank or reputation, degradation was developed through the abusive power of the lord over the wives of his dependents.

A most beautiful type of family life is seen at the beginning of our own country in colonial days. It is a revelation to watch the observance of that home amenity—the just consideration of each other—in the Winthrop family, as it grew into nine children and several faithful domestics, who always went to church with the family, and were buried in the family lot. It is as fascinating as a realistic novel, in the best sense of realism, to see them go from an old world to a new, under trying circumstances, yet remaining loyal to each other in enforced absences and exasperating losses. The post-nuptial love letters of John and Margaret Winthrop are as fervid as the prenuptial. The eldest son in this family is like a younger brother to his father, sharing responsibility and labor with him, and always a noble stepson to his loving stepmother. The filial respect, the family government, the family economy, the family unity, the family simplicity, and withal the family hospitality, so sincere and generous as to include the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, John Eliot the missionary, the London lawyer, and the Oxford scholar, who are welcomed without fuss or fume to succotash, hominy, hasty pudding, pumpkin pie, and a feather bed, exhibit a type of family life that puts to shame a merely outward colonial home—a house—full of things, and empty of real lives.

After the picture of the "Governor's family," and the lapse of two hundred years, we may catch a glimpse of a famous social group whose influence has been felt throughout this whole century, in American literature, education, philosophy, and theology. Civil society, also, is largely indebted to that Litchfield family of Lyman Beecher, whose mandate—"Mind your mother! Quick! No crying! Look pleasant!"—was obeyed in military fashion. This household was pre-eminently cheerful, witty, literary, social, and free in its development. The growing young people were not uneasy to go somewhere every night, because the older and younger enjoyed and appreciated each other in delightful evenings at home, where