there. In the midst of a year of distress, when crops had failed owing to cold and wet summer, she wrote to her son in England :

'When I thinke of the troublesome times and manyfolde destractions that are in our native Countrye, I thinke we doe not pryse oure happinesse heare as we have cause, that we should be in peace when so many troubles are in most places of the world.'

The duties of a housekeeper, and those which belonged to her husband's office, occupied her mind. The question of domestic service was already one which caused grave anxieties to the mistress of a house. It does not appear that Winthrop had in his family any 'Moors' or negroes; but he received in 1634 a license to entertain an Indian as a household servant.' Margaret Winthrop seems to have been more fortunate in her domestic arrangements than some of her neighbors. Living as she did in a town, she had less difficulty in procuring English servants than those householders who inhabited country districts. Mary Dudley, for instance, who lived 'farre from ye baye,' at Cambridge and Ipswich, was led a sad life by her maids.

'I thought it convenient,' she writes to her mother, to acquaint you and my father what a great affliction I have met withal by my maide servant, and how I am like through God his mercie to be freed from it: at her first coming she carried herself dutifully as became a servant; but since through mine and my husband's forbearance towards her for small faults she hath got such a head, and is growen soe insolent that her carriage towards vs, especially myselfe is vnsufferable. If I bid her doe a thing shee will bid me doe it myselfe, and she says how she can give content as well as any servant but shee will not, and sayes if I love not quietnes I was never so fitted in my life for shee would make me have enough of it. If I should write to you of all the reviling speeches and filthie language shee hath vsed towards me I should but grieve you.'

Apart from the difficulties and hardships which naturally fell to the lot of early emigrants, the life had many compensations. There was, as yet, little of the joyless gloom which, in the second generation, hung so heavily over New England. Puritans though they were, the people were not morose, witchhaunted fanatics. Society was congenial, for in tastes, interests, and religion, the new settlers were united. Many grad uates of Oxford or Cambridge lived in the immediate neighborhood of Margaret Winthrop ; many others were old friends

and neighbors from the Eastern Counties; the majority were people of substance and well connected in the Old World. Life, moreover, was stirring and picturesque, and it centred round Margaret Winthrop's home. French Catholics, such as the Sieurs d'Aulnay and La Tour, intrigued against each other in Winthrop's Hall chamber. Sojourners, like Sir Harry Vane or Hugh Peter, came and went. Daring adventurers, such as Captain Underhill or Captain Cromwell, relieved the sombreness of Puritanism by a dash of the wild and reckless buccaneer.

Training-days on the Common, and still more the annual installation of magistrates at Boston, were scenes which glowed with some of the sunny richness of Elizabethan times. The processions through the street, and across the market-place, to the meeting-house, on these festive occasions, were not without their pomp and ceremony, while in appearance the crowd of onlookers was far more varied and picturesque than any gathering in the Old World. The train-bands of colonial soldiers, whose burnished armor, pikes, and muskets shimmered in the sun, made a brave show, as they marched to the sound of drum and clarion. Behind them came the group of magistrates, large of build, and square of countenance, wearing that demeanor of natural authority, which in the New World inspired the respect of men who had placed the ocean between them and their kings, princes, and all degrees of artificial nobility. If the dark clothes of English emigrants gave to the crowd a prevailing tint of sombre hue, yet the black cloaks, starched bands, and steeplecrowned hats of the elders, were varied with other and brighter figures. Here, for example, stood apart a group of Indians in all their savage finery, their red and yellow ochre, their feathers, their bows and arrows, their curiously embroidered deerskin robes, surpassing in impassive gravity the most sour-visaged Puritan. There, again, rollicked a party of bearded, sun-blackened seamen, half traders, half buccaneers, puffing clouds of smoke from under their broad brimmed hats of palm-leaf, and drinking from their pocket flasks huge draughts of aqua vita, though both tobacco and brandy were forbidden to the townsfolk.

Such were some of the aspects which

the New World presented to Margaret Winthrop. More important by far was the religious life of New England. At first the congregations were held in the open air under a tree; then they gathered, it is probable, in Governor Winthrop's house; finally, a mud-walled meetinghouse was built. Here were held the week-day lectures; here also, at the Sabbath services, John Wilson as pastor, and John Cotton as teacher, accompanied by much doleful singing, ministered to the spiritual wants of the community. Already those religious differences had sprung up, which afterwards bore such bitter fruit in the colony; Roger Williams was preaching against theocratic government; Anne Hutchinson was busy with her revelations and prophesyings; and Samuel Gorton taught that there were no such places as heaven or hell. Such troubles scarcely disturbed the serene faith of Margaret Winthrop. Yet the close of her life was in other ways full of anxiety. Her husband's estate had suffered by his devotion to the business of the State, and he was reduced to poverty. But he was not destined to leave his wife a widow, and penniless. On June 14th, 1647, when he was entering on his eleventh term as Governor, Margaret Winthrop died. In his 'Journal,' Winthrop thus records his loss:

'In this sickness the governour's wife, daughter of Sir John Tindal, Knight, left this world for a better, being about fifty-six years of age; a woman of singular virtue, modesty and piety, and specially beloved and honoured of the country.'

Winthrop only survived his wife two years; but, we regret to add, he lived long enough to marry a fourth time.

The next volume in the series, 'Eliza Pinckney,' carries us over a whole century and lands us in South Carolina, the most typical of the Slave states. The change is one not merely of climate, soil, and products; it is social, political, religious, moral and industrial. We leave behind the democratic commercial group of Northern states, self-governing republics in all but the name, with their elective, representative, self-taxing assemblies, their independent congregations, their condensed population, their small plots of land, townships, town meetings, and village politics. We enter the colonial monarchies of the

Southern States, with their ecclesiastical hierarchies, their oligarchical society, their huge landed estates, tilled by slaves, their slaves, their isolated life, and their feudal administration of local government and justice. It is as a representative of this planter aristocracy that the portrait of Mrs. Pinckney is painted. And a charming picture, we may add, is that which her descendant has drawn and set against a background of the occupations, customs, manners, and habits of thought of women of South Carolina in the eighteenth century.

In 1738 Eliza Lucas, then a girl of fifteen, the daughter of Colonel George Lucas, an officer of the English army, who afterwards became Governor of Antigua, settled with her mother and younger sister in South Carolina. English by birth, and educated in England, she threw herself with surprising energy into the life by which she was surrounded in her new home. Her father had barely had time to purchase land and settle plantations, before he was recalled to the West Indies. Mrs. Lucas was an invalid, and to the elder daughter fell the charge of all domestic affairs. At an age when most girls are still at school, she had on her shoulders the care of three plantations.

The management of a plantation was in itself no light task. Miss Lucas began her day at five o'clock in the morning. Her first visitor was the plantation nurse to ask for advice and medicine; then came the housekeeper and the division of daily work to two hundred men and maids. Letters had to be written to the overseers, crowded with minute details of planting operations, sheep-shearing, bacon-curing, soap-boiling, wood-cutting, salting of beef, or loading of vessels. Under the eye of the mistress the maids were set to their wool-carding, spinning, weaving, cutting and making of clothes. When once the machine was set in order for the day, it probably ran with smoothness. But Miss Lucas was not content to work by routine. She was full of schemes. Now she tries an experiment of sending eggs packed in salt to the West Indies. At another time she cultivates plots of ginger, cotton, lucerne, or cassada, to see whether such crops were suited for the highlands of South Carolina. Her experiments in indigo proved a source

of wealth to the colony. After many disappointments, she succeeded, for the first time, in establishing her crop, and mastering the secret of its preparation. Just before the Revolution, the annual value of the export of indigo was 1,107, 660/. —no slight boon for a girl to have bestowed upon the province. When, asks her biographer, with pardonable pride, 'will any "New Woman" do more for her country?'

In the midst of this busy life, Miss Lucas made time to gratify other tastes. Devoted to music, she regularly set aside certain hours in the day to its study, and writes to ask her father's permission to send to England for 'Cantatas, Welden's anthems, Knolly's rules for tuning.' She loved reading, and did not disdain novels. Her friend, Colonel Pinckney, kept her supplied with books, though one of her neighbors thought she would 'spoil her marriage and make herself look old long before she was so,' by her love of literature.

'I send herewith,' she writes, 'Col. Pinckney's books, and shall be much obliged to him for Virgil's works, notwithstanding this same old Gentlewoman (who I think too has a great friendship for me) has a great spite at my books, and had like to have thrown a volm of my Plutarch's Lives into the fire the other day; she is sadly afraid, she says, I shall read myself mad. '

Besides her interest in farming, her passion for music, her taste for literature, she had a genuine love of nature. She devotes a page of foolscap to a description of a nest of mocking-birds. She spent hours in her garden, where she tried to acclimatize new varieties of plants. She delighted in trees, and speaks of them in stilted style indeed, yet with genuine enthusiasm.

Nor was Miss Lucas in the least unfeminine. She is unaffected in her delight when a box comes out from England, containing materials for new clothes, books, and apples. The arrival of such boxes was looked forward to with something more than curiosity when almost all the luxuries, and many of the necessaries, of life came from the mother country. Carriages, bedsteads, furniture, and baskets were made in England. Even the materials for the fashionable fad of japanning tea-caddies were imported. Meddicines' also came from home, and Miss Lucas, who suffered from headaches, had to wait six months before Dr.

Mead's prescription could be made up. At her own home she was an admirable specimen of the squire's wife. It was part of her daily life to visit the sick on her plantations. Fond of children, she not only taught her little sister, but held a school for a 'parcel of little negroes.' Eager to be useful to those around her, she studied a law-book in order to make wills for her poor and uneducated neighbors, 'who have a little land, a few slaves and cattle to give their children, that never think of making "a will" till they come upon a sick bed, and find it too expensive to send to town for a lawyer.

Society in South Carolina had much of the charm and many of the faults that characterise the society of a territorial aristocracy. It brought plenty of gaiety into the active life of Miss Lucas. Balls at Charles Town, when the fleet came in were great events. Miss Lucas tells her father that she had danced a minuet with his

'old acquaintance, Capt. Brodrick. A Mr. Small (a very talkative man) desires his best respects, and says many obliging things of you for wch I think myself obliged to him, and therefore punished myself to hear a great deal of flashy nonsense from him for an hour together.

Then there was' vizeting' among her country neighbors. For the most part visits were paid by water. Rowed in

long canoes by six or eight negroes, who sang in perfect tune as they swung their paddles, she landed at one of the private wharves which were indispensable to a country house. If she drove, she went with her mother in a coach drawn by six horses, the gentlemen perhaps riding by the side on their spirited Chickasaws. The homes of the planter aristocracy were built on the English model, baronial mansions, with large rooms wainscoted in long narrow panels, with high carved mantels and deep window-seats. Hospitality was generous. Lavish dinners, where wine and food were alike plentiful, served with fine silver, damask, and Indian china, were followed by the scraping of fiddles, and a dance in which, either indoors or out, in the ballroom, the servants' hall, or on the lawn, the whole household, white and black, took part. Grave minuets, or cheerful country-dances, were danced with gentlemen in powdered hair, square

cut coats, long waistcoats, breeches, and buckled shoes, by Miss Lucas and her girl friends, dressed in their best attire of brocade or lute-string, with huge hoops, and towering heads,' and high-heeled shoes.

One other feature in the character of this South Carolinian gentlewoman remains to be noticed. She was unaffectedly religious. In the pleasant fashion. of an elder sister she warns her brother against the sneers of Voltaire or the jibes of the Encyclopedists. Her simple

piety stands out in her 'private devotions,' or in her 'Resolutions.'

Miss Lucas was now twenty-three years of age. Her father had already proposed to her two eligible suitors. As As to the first she knew him too slightly. As to the other he was too old; 'the riches of Chili and Peru, if he had them, could not purchase a sufficient esteem for him to make him my husband.' She therefore begged to make her own choice. It was not long in coming. In 1744 she married Colonel Charles Pinckney, a childless widower, twenty years her senior, whose first wife had been her dearest friend. He was a man holding a very distinguished position in the colony, an eminent lawyer, Speaker of the House of Assembly, and a wealthy planter. Their marriage proved a very happy one.

As a married woman Mrs. Pinckney continued to live the same active life as before, though her anxieties were increased by the birth of three children, two sons and a daughter. In 1752 her husband accepted the position of Commissioner of the Colony in London. A voyage of twenty-five days from Charles Town brought them to England. It is curious to read that their first step was to hire a house at Richmond for innoculation against the small-pox. This important precaution taken, she desired, as a loyal subject, to see what there was of Royalty. A long and interesting account is given of her visit with her husband and children to the widowed Princess of Wales at Kew. Carrying a present with them for their little girl to give, they sent in a card thus inscribed:

'Miss Harriott Pinckney, daughter of Charles Pinckney, Esq. one of His Majesty's Council of South Carolina, pays her duty to Her Highness and humbly begs leave to present her with an Indigo bird, a Nonpareil, and a Yellow bird, wch she has brought from Carolina for her High

ness.

The little girl and her present, the father and mother and their two boys, were received by the Princess with the greatest cordiality, saw the whole family, and apparently had an interview which lasted considerably more than two hours. The Princess and her daughters asked a number of questions, some of which were of a domestic character, such as whether Mrs. Pinckney suckled her own children. Others related to the Colony, its constitution, its foundation, its manufactures; others to the Indians, their color and manners; others to the homes of South Carolinans, their food, their wine, their mode of eating and dressing turtle. Among other observations which Mrs. Pinckney makes are these two. She notes the heartlessness of Londoners, and comments on the very disagreeable habit of perpetual card-playing.

The Pinckneys remained in England till March, 1758, when troubles on the frontier, arising out of the Seven Years' War, made her husband's return necessary. They left behind them their two boys to be educated in England. Hardly had they landed in South Carolina than Mr. Pinckney was struck down by fever and died. After the first agony of grief was over, his widow devoted herself to the education of her daughter and the care of her estates. She had also to choose a school for her sons.

man.

In 1768 Mrs. Pinckney's daughter married, and she was now a lonely woAlready the shadows of the coming Revolution were beginning to gather. But South Carolina was firmly bound to the Mother Country, not only by commerce, but by the tie of personal loyalty. Few of the natives of the province even dreamed of cutting themselves adrift from England, however strongly they might sympathize with their brethren at Boston. Up to 1775, few signs of the approaching storm appear in Mrs. Pinckney's letters. With her sons it was otherwise.

In 1769 the eldest, Charles Pinckney, returned to South Carolina, after taking his degree at Oxford and being called to the Bar. Years of absence in England had not weakened the attachment which he and his brother Thomas felt for their native country. A picture had been painted of him, before he left the Old World, which represents him in the attitude of declaim

How

ing against the Stamp Act, while his brother was nicknamed by his English companions The Little Rebel. ' deeply the latter felt the threatening aspect of affairs, is proved by the fact that he had studied the art of war at the Military Academy of Caen, and, as the following extract from a letter to Mr. Ladson shows, had prepared himself in other ways for the outbreak of hostilities.

At this period,' writes Thomas Pinckney, American politics occupied much of the pub lic mind in London, and the young Americans attended a meeting of their countrymen convened by Dr. Franklin, Mr. Arthur Lee, Mr.

Ralph Izard, &c., for the purpose of framing petitions to the Legislature and the King, deprecating the Acts of Parliament, then passing, to coerce our Country. But the petitions not having the desired effect, and foreseeing that an appeal must probably be made to arms, we endeavored to qualify ourselves for the event and hired a sergeant of the Royal Guards to drill us at your Father's lodgings. From him we obtained the knowledge in military service we could derive from a person of his rank.'

It is not our purpose to follow the course of the struggle which ended in American independence. In the Northern States matters advanced far more rapidly than in the South, as was only to be expected from the social, religious, industrial, and political differences between the two great groups of colonies. In the one case, separation was probably inevitable; in the other, it might have been at least postponed. The life of Mercy Otis, who in 1754 had married James Warren, illustrates the rapid growth of the desire for independence in Massachusetts, which was the hotbed of revolutionary feeling. Mrs. Warren was from the first in the thick of the fray. As the wife of James Warren, the sister of James Otis, the intimate friend of John and Samuel Adams, the personal enemy of Governor Hutchinson, and a bitter political satirist, she herself played no inconsiderable part in the movement. She was, however, a woman without a spark of humor, whose mind was always on stilts, never stooping to chronicle small beer, rarely addressing even her husband except in academic style and with measured decorum. She begins one of her letters with the statement that she will for once ignore politics, having so much to tell her husband of domestic interests.

From such a woman it would be vain to expect those homely touches, which not only heighten tragedy by the force of contrast, but help us to realize how ordinary women pursued the even tenor of their ways under the gathering blackness of the Revolutionary storm. For these we must return to the letters of Mrs. Pinckney, the main interest of whose life was still centred in the careers of her sons, the health of her daughter, the growth of her grandchild, the engrossing cares of household duties, or the simple pleasures of society. Here we find in abundance those petty details which, by their juxtaposition with graver subjects, bring out into fuller relief the tragic forces at work in America. terwoven with tender messages, domestic anxieties, or local gossip, runs a crimson web of allusions to political events, which, though at first slender, gradually widens till the whole texture is red with the horrors of war. Between Mercy Warren and Eliza Pinckney there was little in common. Character, tastes, early associations, interest,circumstances, were all unlike. Yet, under the pressure of the national struggle, the two women see eye to eye, and feel heart with heart, the same patriotic devotion to the cause of American Independence.

In

Mrs. Pinckney, at the beginning of the momentous year, 1775, was living at Charles Town. It is not altogether uncharacteristic of the woman that one of the first hints of the gravity of the situation comes through her difficulty in performing a shopping commission for her daughter in the country. In February, 1775, the decree of the Continental Congress had come into operation, and no British goods were imported.

'Jones sent me word,' writes Mrs. Pinckney, 'that the stores had been searched and he could not get a bit of fine washing Pavillion gauze [mosquito net] anywhere. I afterwards sent old Mary, with directions not to miss a store, and to let them know it was Cash. After two or three days' search she got me some coarse stuff for wch I payed ready money.'

At the close of the same letter is an allusion which brings before us the first visible sign of resistance. 'I send,' she says, '16 Cake knots for my dear Boy, to whom remember me tenderly. Prideau, 'tis thought, will dye of a pleurisy.' Mrs. Prideau did die, and, as mourning goods were all imported, she

Mrs.