unto his favorite
devotion; where having a small repast carried him up for his dinner, he
continued until the tolling of the bell. The public service of the
afternoon being over, he withdrew for a space to his pre-mentioned
oratory for his sacred addresses to God, as in the forenoon, then came
down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a
Psalm, and toward bedtime betaking himself again to his study he closed
the day with prayer."

To many a modern reader such a method of spending Sunday for either
preacher or laymen would seem not only irksome but positively
detrimental to physical and mental health; but we should bear in mind
that the opportunity to sit still and listen after six days of strenuous
muscular toil was probably welcomed by the colonist, and, further, that
in the absence of newspapers and magazines and other intellectual
stimuli the oratory of the clergy, stern as it may have been, was
possibly an equal relief. Especially were such "recreations" welcomed by
the women; for their toil was as arduous as that of the men; while their
round of life and their means of receiving the stimulus of public
movements were even more restricted.

_V. Religion and Woman's Foibles_

The repressive characteristics of the creed of the hour were felt more
keenly by those women than probably any man of the period ever dreamed.
For woman seems to possess an innate love of the dainty and the
beautiful, and beauty was the work of Satan. Nothing was too small or
insignificant for this religion to examine and control. It even
regulated that most difficult of all matters to govern--feminine dress.
As Fisher says in his _Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times_:

"At every opportunity they raised some question of religion and
discussed it threadbare, and the more fine-spun and subtle it was
the more it delighted them. Governor Winthrop's Journal is full
of such questions as whether there could be an indwelling of the
Holy Ghost in a believer without a personal union; whether it was
lawful even to associate or have dealings with idolaters like the
French; whether women should wear veils. On the question of
veils, Roger Williams was in favor of them; but John Cotton one
morning argued so powerfully on the other side that in the
afternoon the women all came to church without them."

"There were orders of the General Court forbidding 'short sleeves