aprons,--for
my gown ... kiss Maria I send her two little handkerchiefs to wipe her
nose..."[119]

_XI. Woman's Sphere_

With all their evidence of love and confidence in their wives, these
colonial gentlemen were not, however, especially anxious to have
womankind dabble in politics or other public affairs. The husbands were
willing enough to explain public activities of a grave nature to their
help-meets, and sometimes even asked their opinion on proposed
movements; but the men did not hesitate to think aloud the theories that
the home was woman's sphere and domestic duties her best activities.
Governor Winthrop spoke in no uncertain terms for the seventeenth
century when he wrote the following brief note in his _History of New
England_:

(1645) "Mr. Hopkins, the governour of Hartford upon Connecticut, came
to Boston and brought his wife with him (a godly young woman, and of
special parts), who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her
understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years,
by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had
written many books. If she had attended to her household affairs, and
such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling
to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are
stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them
usefully and honorably in the place God had set her."

Thomas Jefferson, writing from Paris in 1788 to Mrs. Bingham, spoke in
less positive language but perhaps just as clearly the opinion of the
eighteenth century: "The gay and thoughtless Paris is now become a
furnace of politics. Men, women, children talk nothing else & you know
that naturally they talk much, loud & warm.... You too have had your
political fever. But our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to
wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe &
calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political
debate. They have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all
others. There is no part of the earth where so much of this is enjoyed
as in America. You agree with me in this; but you think that the
pleasures of Paris more than supply its wants; in other words, that a
Parisian is happier than an American. You will change your opinion, my
dear madam, and come over to mine in the end. Recollect the women of
this capital, some on foot, some on horses, & some in