er the fact that many of these women of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony were accustomed to the comfortable living of
the middle-class country people of England, with considerable material
wealth and even some of the luxuries of modern civilization, we may
imagine, at least in part, the terrifying contrast met with in the New
World. For conditions along the stormy coast of New England were indeed
primitive. Picture the founding, for instance, of a town that later was
destined to become the home of philosopher and seer--Concord,
Massachusetts. Says Johnson in his _Wonder Working Providence_:

"After they had thus found out a place of abode they burrow themselves
in the earth for their first shelter, under some hillside, casting the
earth aloft upon timber; they make a smoke fire against the earth at the
highest side and thus these poor servants of Christ provide shelter for
themselves, their wives and little ones, keeping off the short showers
from their lodgings, but the long rains penetrate through to their great
disturbance in the night season. Yet in these poor wigwams they sing
psalms, pray and praise their God till they can provide them houses,
which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the earth by the
Lord's blessing brought forth bread to feed them, their wives and little
ones.... Thus this poor people populate this howling desert, marching
manfully on, the Lord assisting, through the greatest difficulties and
sorest labors that ever any with such weak means have done."

And Margaret Winthrop writes thus to her step-son in England: "When I
think of the troublesome times and manyfolde destractions that are in
our native Countrye, I thinke we doe not pryse oure happinesse heare as
we have cause, that we should be in peace when so many troubles are in
most places of the world."

Many another quotation could be presented to emphasize the impressions
given above. Reading these after the lapse of nearly three centuries, we
marvel at the strength, the patience, the perseverance, the imperishable
hope, trust, and faith of the Puritan woman. Such hardships and
privations as have been described above might seem sufficient; but these
were by no means all or even the greatest of the trials of womanhood in
the days of the nation's childhood. To understand in any measure at all
the life of a child or a wife or a mother of the Puritan colonies with
its strain and suffering, we must know and comprehend her religion. Let
u