Part 31

The handwriting in all these ancient books is very different from our modern penmanship, invariably bearing an appearance not exactly of much labor, but of much care, as if the writer did not use a pen every day--did not become too familiar with that weighty implement, and hence had a vast respect for it when he did take it in hand. Every t is crossed, every i is dotted, every a and o perfectly rounded, every tail of every g and y and z is precisely twisted in colonial script. I think the very trouble and preparation incident to writing conduced to the finish and elegance of the penmanship. No stylographic pens were used in those days, but instead, a carefully prepared quill; and the ink was made of ink-cake or ink-powder dissolved in water; or, more troublesome still, home-made ink, tediously prepared with nutgalls, walnut or swamp maple bark, or iron filings steeped in vinegar and water, or copperas.

Special pains were taken in writing a name in a book. Penmanship was almost a fine art in colonial days, the one indispensable accomplishment of a school teacher; and he was often hired to exercise it in writing a name "perspicuously" in a book. Sometimes the owner's name is seen drawn with much care in a little wreath or circle of ornamentation. This may be what Judge Sewall refers to with so much pride when he speaks of "writing a name" in a gift-book, or it may be what was known as "conceits" or "fine knotting."

The colonists had a very reprehensible habit, which (save for the pains taken in writing) might be called book-scribbling. Rude rhymes and sentiments are often found with the past owner's name, and form a title-page lore which, ill-spelt and simple as the verses are, have an interest to the antiquary of which the writer never dreamed. They consist chiefly of adjurations to honesty, specially with regard to the special volume thus inscribed:

"Steal not this book my honest friend, For fear the gallows will be your End."

"If you dare to steal this Book The Devil will catch you on his Hook."

This was accompanied by the outline of a very spirited "personal devil" with a pitchfork and an enormous gridiron.

Still another appealed to terrors:

"This is Hanah Moxon Her book You may just within it Look You had better not do more For old black Satan's at the Door And will snatch at stealing hands Look behind you! There He Stands."

This had a tail-piece of an open door with a very black forked tail thrust out of it.

In a leather-bound Bible was seen this rhyme:

"Evert Jonson His book God Give him Grase thair in to look not only to looke but to understand that Larning is better than Hous or Land When Land is Gon & Gold is spent then larning is most Axelant When I am dead & Rotton If this you see Remember me Though others is forgotton."

Different portions of this script have been seen in many books.

Four rhymes seem to be specially the property of schoolboys, being found in Accidences, Spellers, "Logick" Primers, and other school-books, down even to the present day.

"This book is one thing, My fist's another, If you touch the one thing, You'll feel the other."

"Hic liber eat meus And that I will show Si aliquis capit I'll give him a blow."

"This book is mine By Law Divine And if it runs astray I'll call you kind My desk to find And put it safe away."

"Hic liber est meus Deny it who can Zenas Graves Junior An honest man."

There also appears a practical warning which may be read with attention and profit by the public now a days:

"If thou art borrowed by a friend Right welcome shall he be To read, to study, not to lend But to return to me.

"Not that imparted knowledge doth Diminish Learnings Store But books I find if often lent Return to me no more."

"Read Slowly--Pause Frequently--Think Seriously--Finger Lightly--Keep Cleanly--Return Duly--with the Corners of the Leaves NOT TURNED DOWN."

The fashion of using book-plates was by no means so general among New England Puritans as among rich Virginians and New Yorkers and Pennsylvanian Quakers. Mr. Lichtenstein, writing in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1886, says he has seen no New England book-plates of earlier date than 1735. At later dates the Holyokes, Dudleys, Boylstons, and Phillips, all used book-plates. The plates most familiar to students in old libraries in New England are those of the Vaughans and of Isaiah Thomas.

Another, a living interest is found in these old, dusty, leather-bound volumes, which is not in the inscriptions and not, alas, in the printed words. They are the chosen home of a race of pigmy spiderlings who love musty theology with an affection found in no one else nowadays. In these dingy homes they live and rear their hideous little progeny: for in the cold light of a microscope these tiny brown book-dwellers are not beautiful; they are flat, crab-like, goggle-eyed, hairy; and they zigzag across the page on their ugly crooked legs in a sprawling, drunken fashion. They do not eat the books; they live apparently on air; yet if you crush them between the pages they leave a stain of vivid scarlet to reproach you in future readings for your needless cruelty. I cannot kill them; though flaming is their blood's rebuke, it is aristocratically as well as theologically blue. In their veins runs the ichor--arachnidian though it be--that came over in the Mayflower; yes, doubly honored, came over in the special stateroom of an Ainsworth's Psalm-Book or a Genevan Bible. No degrading alliances, no admixtures through foreign emigration, have crossed that pure inbred strain; my book-spiders are of real Pilgrim stock--they are true New England Brahmins.

Any one who turns over with attention the books of an old New England library must be struck with a sense of the affection with which these books have been treasured, the care with which they have been read, and, in case of accident, with which they have been repaired. One psalm-book, nibbled by mice, has had every page neatly mended by the insertion of thin sheets of paper to replace the lost bits; and some painstaking and pious New Englander, with a pen and skill worthy the illuminating monks of another faith, has minutely printed the missing letters on both sides of the inserted slip in a text no larger than the surrounding print. Another book, a Bible, burnt in round holes by a slow-burning coal from the pipe of a sleepy reader, has been mended in the same careful manner. I have seen Bibles that have been read and turned over till the margins of the pages at the lower corner and outer edge were worn off down to the print by loving daily use. In one such the margins had been neatly replaced by pasted slips of paper. In more than one book I have found a minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the volume, showing a personal interest and love for a book which can hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show a patient and appreciative perusal.

Though books were so closely cherished, so seemly bekept in colonial days, they were subject to one indignity with which now they are unmenaced and undegraded--they were sometimes sentenced to be burned by the public hangman. In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick Muggleton, who set up to be prophets, were burned by that abhorred public functionary in Boston market-place; and two years later Quaker books were similarly destroyed. William Pyncheon's book was burned, in 1650, in Boston Market. In 1707 a "libel on the Governor" was hanged by the hangman. In 1754 a pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters," a sharp political criticism on the Massachusetts Court, was thus burned in King Street, Boston. From the Connecticut Gazette of November 29th, 1755, we learn that another offending publication was sentenced to be "publickly whipt according to Moses Law with 40 stripes save one, then Burnt." How a true book-lover winces at the thought of the public hangman placing his blood-stained hand on any book, no matter how much a "monster."

XII

"ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS"

From the earliest days the Puritan colonists fought stoutly, for the sake of St. Paul, against long hair. They proved themselves worthy the opprobrious name of Roundhead. Endicott's first act was to institute a solemn and insistent association against long hair. This wearing of long locks was one of the existing evils, a wile of the devil, which bade fair to creep into New England, and in its incipiency was proceeded against by the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the long-growing locks--"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or Russianly--whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off their long hair into a civil frame." Exact rules were given from the pulpit as to the properly Puritan length--that the hair should not lie over the neck, the band, or the doublet collar; in the winter it might be suffered to grow a little below the ear for warmth. Personal pride and dignity were appealed to, that no Christian gentleman would wish to look like "every Ruffian, every wild-Irish, every hangman, every varlet and vagabond." By Sewall's time, however, Puritan though he were, we see his white locks flowing long over his doublet collar, and forming a fitting frame to his serene, benignant countenance.