ered by hand. I have seen a little shirt and a cap embroidered with the coat of arms of the Lux and Johnson families and the motto, "God bless the Babe;" these delicate garments were worn in infancy by the Revolutionary soldier, Governor Johnson of Virginia. In the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, are the baptismal shirt and mittens of the Pilgrim Father, William Bradford, second governor of the Plymouth Colony, who was born in 1590. All are of firm, close-woven, homespun linen, but the little mittens have been worn at the ends by the active friction of baby hands, and are patched with colored "chiney " "chiney" or calico. A similar colored material frills the sleeves and neck. A pair of baby's mitts of fine lace also may be seen at the Essex Institute. These were wrought in the sixteenth century, and the stitches and work are those of the antique Flanders laces. I have seen many tiny mitts knit of silk and mittens of fine linen, hemstitched, worked in drawn work or embroidered, and edged with thread-lace, and also a few mitts of yellow nankeen which must have proved specially irritating to the tiny little hands that wore them. I have never seen a woollen petticoat that was worn by an infant of pre-Revolutionary days. It may be argued that woollen garments, being liable to ruin by moths, would naturally not be treasured. This argument scarcely is one of force, because I have been shown infants' cloaks of wool as well as woollen garments for older folk, that have been successfully preserved; also beautifully embroidered' long cloaks of chamois skin. I think infants wore no woollen petticoats; their shirts, petticoats, and gowns were of linen or some cotton stuff like dimity. Warmth of clothing was given by tiny shawls pinned round the shoulders, and heavier blankets and quilts and shawls in which baby and petticoats were wholly enveloped. The baby dresses of olden times are either rather shapeless shapeless sacques drawn in at the neck with narrow cotton ferret or linen bobbin, or little straight-waisted gowns of state. All were exquisitely made by hand, and usually of fine stuff. But the babies in pioneer settlements a century ago had to share in wearing homespun. It is told of one in a log cabin in a New Hampshire clearing that when the grandmother rode out eighty miles on horseback to see her son's first baby, she shed bitter tears at beholding the child, but a few months old, clad in a gray woollen homespun slip with an apron or tier of blue and white checked linen. The mother, a frontier lass, dressed the infant according to the fashions she was accustomed to. Nothing could show so fully the costume of children in olden times as their portraits, and a series of such portraits of successive dates will be given in these pages. Many of them are asserted to be by the three well-known artists of colonial days, Blackburn, Smibert, and Copley; a few are by Peale, Trumbull, and Stuart. I have accepted all family traditions as true, and in many cases believe them to be true, especially since there were few painters of any rank in the community, and no others who could paint portraits such as those which have been preserved. The Gilbert Stuarts and Trumbulls usually have some authentic pedigree. Many of these |