COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 13 



A rhyme on an old English pitcher shows that this feeling has 

 been through many, many years the underlying one of the Anglo- 

 Saxon farmers : 



Let the mighty and great 



Koll in splendor and state, 



I envy them not, I declare it. 



I eat my own lamb, 



My own chicken and ham, 



I shear my own sheep and wear it. 



I have lawns, I have bowers, 



I have fruits, I have flowers, 



The lark is my morning charmer ; 



So you jolly dogs now, 



Here's God bless the plow 



Long life and content to the farmer. 



INTEMPERANCE IN COLONIAL DAYS 1 



PERCY WELLS BIDWELL 



intemperance of the colonial period," says Charles 

 Francis Adams, " is a thing now difficult to realize ; and it seems 

 to have pervaded all classes from the clergy to the pauper." 

 We have -already remarked the large consumption of cider in 

 the farmers' families and have commented upon the importance 

 of the retail sale of stronger liquors in the business of the country 

 stores and taverns. Every important occasion in home or church 

 life, every rural festivity was utilized as an opportunity for 

 generous indulgence in intoxicants. Neither the haying-season 

 in early summer, nor the hog-killing season at the end of autumn 

 could be successfully managed without the aid of liberal pota- 

 tions of "black-strap" and "stone-wall." Husking bees, house- 

 raisings, training days, and even christenings, burials and or- 



i Adapted from "Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of 

 the Nineteenth Century." Publication of the Connecticut Academy of So- 

 cial Science, 1916, pp. 374-77. 



