Identifier: largerhistoryofu01higg (find matches)
Title: A larger history of the United States of America, to the close of President Jackson's administration
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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a manof high standing in the churchesâmitigating the care of souls,in 1679, by the erection of a private nine-pin alley on his ownpremises. Still there was for a time a distinct deepening ofshadow around the lives of the Puritans, whether in the Nortlvern or Southern colonies, after they were left wholly to them-selves upon the soil of the New World. The persecutions andthe delusions belong generally to this later epoch. In theearlier colonial period there would have been no time for them,and hardly any inclination. In the later or provincial periodsociety was undergoing a change, and wealth and aristocraticways of living were being introduced. But it was in the inter-mediate time that religious rigor had its height. Modern men habitually exaggerate the difference between 196 HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. themselves and the Puritans. The points of difference are sogreat and so picturesque, we forget that the points of resem-blance, after all, outweigh them. We seem more remote from
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COTTON MATHpR. them than is really the case, because we dwell too much onsecondary matters â a garment, a phrase, a form of service.Theologian and historian are alike overcome by this; as soonas they touch the Puritans all is sombre, there is no sunshine, SECOND GENERATION OF ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA, 197 no bird sings. Yet the birds filled the woods with their musicthen as now; children played; mothers talked pretty nonsenseto their babies; Governor Winthrop wrote tender messages tohis third wife in a way that could only have come of long andreiterated practice. We cannot associate a gloomy tempera-ment with Miles Standishs doughty defiances, or with FrancisHigginsons assertion that a draught of New England air isbetter than a flagon of Old English ale. Their lives, like alllives, were tempered and moulded by much that was quite apartfrom theologyâhard work in the woods, fights with the Indians,and less perilous field-sports. They were unlike modern menwhen they were at church, but

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