Various native berries had restorative and preventive properties when strung as a necklace. Uglier decorations were those recommended by Josselyn to New England parents, strings of fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs, a sure promoter of easy teething. He also

Mayflower Cradle, owned by the Pilgrim William White

advised scratching the child's gums with an osprey bone. Children died, however, in spite of these varied charms and doses, in vast numbers while teething.

There were some feeble expressions of revolt against the horrible doses of the day. In 1647 we hear of the publication of "a Most Desperate

Booke

Booke written against taking of Phissick," but it was promptly ordered to be burnt; and the doses were continued until well into this century. The shadow of their power lingers yet in country homes.

Many alluring baits were written back to England by the first emigrants to tempt others to follow to the new world. Among other considerations Gabriel Thomas made this statement:

"The Christian children born here are generally wellfavored and beautiful to behold. I never knew any to come into the world with the least blemish on any part of the body; being in the general observed to be betternatured, milder, and more tender-hearted than those born in England."

John Hammond lavished equal praise on the children in Virginia. It was also asserted that the average number of children in a family was larger, which is always true in a pioneer settlement in a new country. The promise of the Lord is ever fulfilled that he will "make the families of his servants in the wilderness like a flock."

A cheerful home life was insured by these large families when they lived. Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all with the same mother. Green, the Boston printer, had thirty children. Another printer, Benjamin Franklin, was one of a

family of seventeen.

William Rawson had twenty

children by one wife. Rev. Cotton Mather tells

us:

"One woman had not less than twenty-two children, and another had no less than twenty-three children by one husband, whereof nineteen lived to man's estate, and a third was mother to seven and twenty children.”

He himself had fifteen children, though but two survived him. Other ministers had larger families. Rev. John Sherman, of Watertown, Massachusetts, had twenty-six children by two wives. Rev. Samuel Willard, the first minister of Groton, Massachusetts, had twenty children, and was himself one of seventeen children. It is to the honor of these poorly paid ministers that they brought up these large families well. Rev. Abijah Weld, of Attleboro, Massachusetts, had an annual salary of about two hundred and twenty dollars. He had a small farm and a decent house; he lived in generous hospitality, entertaining many visitors and contributing to the wants of the poor. He had fifteen children and reared a grandchild. In his fifty-five years of service as a minister he was never detained from his duties nor failed to perform them.

Rev. Moses Fiske had sixteen children; he sent three sons to college and married off all his daugh

ters;

ters; his salary was never over ninety pounds, and usually but sixty pounds a year, paid chiefly in corn One verse of a memorial poem to

and wood.

Mrs. Sarah Thayer reads:

"And one thing more remarkable

Which here I shall record;

She'd fourteen children with her

At the table of her Lord.”

These large families were eagerly welcomed. Children were a blessing. The Danish proverb says, "Children are the poor man's wealth." To the farmer, especially the frontiersman, every child in the home is an extra producer. No town in New England had less land to distribute than Boston, but on all allotments women and children received their full proportion; the early allotments of land in Brookline (then part of Boston) were made by "heads," that is, according to the number of people in the family.

It is an interesting study to trace the underlying reason for naming children many of the curious. names which were given to the offspring of the first colonists. Parents searched for names of deep significance, for names appropriate to conditions, for those of profound influence-presumably on the child's life. Glory to God and zealous ambition

for

for the child's future were equally influential in deciding selection.

Rev. Richard Buck, one of the early parsons in Virginia, in days of deep depression named his first child Mara. This text indicates the reason for his choice: "Call me Mara for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full and the Lord hath brought me home empty." child was christened Gershom; for "bare him a son and called his name he said I have been in a strange land." Eber, the

His second Moses' wife Gershom, for

Hebrew