d of colonial life. They could tell
us at first hand of those happy, easy-going times that lay between the
long struggle to establish the colonies and the fierce struggle to make
them free.

Though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Carter exactly said so, yet we gathered the
idea that those were days of much dress and frivolity. It seems that
ships came from everywhere with handsome fabrics and costly trifles;
and that rich colonials strove so manfully and so womanfully to follow
the capricious foreign fashions (by means of dressed dolls received
from Paris and London) that usually they were not more than a year or
two behind the styles.

We could not help feeling that the matter of wigs must have been an
especially troublesome one. As styles changed in England, these
important articles of dress (often costing in tobacco the equivalent of
one hundred dollars) had to be sent to London to be made over. Between
the slowness of ships and the slowness of wig-makers, it must often
have happened that even such careful dressers as the fastidious
Secretary himself would be wearing wigs that would scarcely pass muster
at the Court of St. James or at Bath. Indeed, Secretary Carter did not
deny there being some truth in this; but he appeared so at ease that
day at Shirley that we knew, on that occasion at least, he was sure of
his wig.

One more progression along the receiving line, one more generation
passed by the way, and we came upon Charles Carter, with his strong,
kindly face, a gentleman of the days of George III and of the last days
of colonial times.

And what days those were! The days of stamp acts and "tea parties" and
minute men; of state conventions and continental congresses; of
Lexington and Valley Forge and the surrender of Cornwallis; of the
Articles of Confederation and the formation of the Union. This Charles
Carter saw our nation made and, in the councils of his colony, helped
to make it. Here, in old Shirley, he put down the cup from which he had
right loyally drunk the colonial toast, "The King! God bless him!" and
he took it up again to loyally and proudly drink to "George Washington
and the United States of America."

We met still other old-time people at the manor-house that day; but it
would not do to try to tell about them all. The omitted ones do not
count much, being chiefly wives. Everybody knows that in meeting
colonial people it is scarcely worth while considering a man's wife,
for so soon she is gone and