said his servant Tom had behaved
badly, for which he did moderately correct him, and that he did
thereupon run away, and he feared he should lose him. He bought him,
he said, of Captain Davenport, who brought him from the Narragansett
country, paying ten pounds and six shillings for him, and he could ill
bear so great a loss. I ventured to tell him that it was wrong to hold
any man, even an Indian or Guinea black, as a slave. My uncle, who saw
that my plainness was not well taken, bade me not meddle with matters
beyond my depth; and Deacon Dole, looking very surly at me, said I was a
forward one; that he had noted that I did wear a light and idle look in
the meeting-house; and, pointing with his cane to my hair, he said I did
render myself liable to presentment by the Grand Jury for a breach of
the statute of the General Court, made the year before, against "the
immodest laying out of the hair," &c. He then went on to say that he
had lived to see strange times, when such as I did venture to oppose
themselves to sober and grave people, and to despise authority, and
encourage rebellion and disorder; and bade me take heed lest all such
be numbered with the cursed children which the Apostle did rebuke: "Who,
as natural brute beasts, speak evil of things they understand not, and
shall utterly perish in their corruption." My dear Cousin Rebecca here
put in a word in my behalf, and told the Deacon that Tom's misbehavior
did all grow out of the keeping of strong liquors for sale, and that he
was wrong to beat him so cruelly, seeing that he did himself place the
temptation before him. Thereupon the Deacon rose up angrily, bidding
uncle look well to his forward household. "Nay, girls," quoth mine
uncle, after his neighbor had left the house, "you have angered the good
man sorely."--"Never heed," said Rebecca, laughing and clapping her
hands, "he hath got something to think of more profitable, I trow, than
Cousin Margaret's hair or looks in meeting. He has been tything of mint
and anise and cummin long enough, and 't is high time for him to look
after the weightier matters of the law."

The selling of beer and strong liquors, Mr. Ewall says, hath much
increased since the troubles of the Colony and the great Indian war.
The General Court do take some care to grant licenses only to discreet
persons; but much liquor is sold without warrant. For mine own part, I
think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale:--