rtence suffered by the Puritan child. In truth,
Solomon's unwholesome caution, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," was
all too strictly observed in those conscience-ridden Puritan days. I had
a child's lively disapproval of Solomon, since the curse of his
sarcastic comment came down with the Puritan strain in my own blood, and
I have a smarting recollection of it.

God-fearing Thomas and his brothers added to their mother's artistic
equipment not only a list of variously shaded brown from the bark of the
black walnut tree, and of yellows from the leaves and twigs of the
sumac and wild cherry, but numberless others. She was an untiring color
hunter, an experimenter with the juices of plants and flowers and
berries, and with every unwash-outable stain. She set herself to the
exciting task of repetition and variation. She tried the velvet shell of
young butternuts upon threads of her white wool, and found a spring
green, and if she spread over it a thinnest wash of hemlock bark, they
were olive, and if she dipped them in mitigated indigo, lo! they were of
the green of sea hollows. The butternut in all stages of its growth,
from the smallest and greenest to the rusty black of the ripe ones, and
the blackest black of the dried shell, was a mine of varied color; and
the brass kettle of from ten to twenty quarts capacity, which served so
many purposes in domestic life, could be tranquilly carrying out some of
her propositions in the corner of the wide chimney while dinner was
cooking, or in the ashes of the burned-out embers while the household
slept.

[Illustration: QUILTED COVERLET made by Ann Gurnee.]

[Illustration: HOMESPUN WOOLEN BLANKET with King George's Crown
embroidered with home-dyed blue yarn in the corner. From the Burdette
home at Fort Lee, N. J., where Washington was entertained.

_Courtesy of Bergen County Historical Society, Hackensack, N. J._]

[Illustration: CHEROKEE ROSE BLANKET, made about 1830 of homespun wool
with "Indian Rose" design about nineteen inches in diameter worked in
the corners in home-dyed yarns of black, red, yellow, and dark green.
From the Westervelt collection.

_Courtesy of Bergen County Historical Society, Hackensack, N. J._]

It was interesting and skillful work to extract these colors, and the
emulation of it and the glory of producing a new one was not without
its excitement. There was a certain "fast pink" which was the secret
of one ingenious ungenerous Puritan woman, who