THE NEW ENGLAND FOUNDATION 11 
that seem strange today. One of the typical controversial 
points of the time was whether the Sabbath began at sunset 
on Saturday or at midnight. The old parson’s advice on this 
question was, if in doubt, to keep both periods as sacred. The 
Field children were required to be in the house by sunset on 
Saturday evening. At that hour the father welcomed them 
solemnly with the words: “We are on the borders of holy 
time.” The suppressed children looked forward anxiously 
for sunset on Sunday when they were free again. Such a 
method of spending week-ends has gone out of fashion, except 
perhaps in Scotland. 
Living conditions during Cyrus’ boyhood were primitive 
and difficult. In the Field home the meals were cooked in 
medieval style over an open fire, with only a brick oven to 
supplement the fire-place. Cook-stoves were unknown, as 
were coal, gas, and kerosene. Lighting was by candles or 
whale oil. ‘The meat supply came from animals killed in early 
winter and packed away in the cellar. There were no butcher- 
shops in Stockbridge, nor even traveling meat-vans. A favor- 
ite dish was salt pork and boiled potatoes—that staple meal 
of so many farmers in the American backwoods. 
Clothes were home-made. Even after Cyrus was working 
in a great New York “emporium” he continued to receive 
clothing made at home by his mother. What such suits lacked 
in fashionable cut, they made up in wearing qualities. Living 
then was much more difficult because nearly everything had 
to be made by hand, even pins and nails. In the more remote 
New England villages the conditions of subsistence ap- 
proached what they had been in medieval Europe, when a 
typical village produced all its necessary staples except iron 
and salt. 
There was, however, an excellent academy in Stockbridge 
—one of those admirable old schools taught by a master who 
took his work seriously. A few years before Cyrus’ attendance, 
a student named Mark Hopkins had absorbed early ideas of 
