application of Biblical verses, his carefully balanced arguments, his
earnest consideration of what seems to the modern reader a most trivial
question. To him, however, and probably to the women also it was a
weighty subject, more important by far than the cause of the high
mortality among both mothers and children of the day--a mortality
appallingly high. It would seem that the fevers, sore throats,
consumption, and small pox that destroyed women and babes in vast
numbers might have claimed some attention from the hair-splitting
clergyman and his congregation. We must not, however, judge the age too
harshly. It is utterly impossible for us of the twentieth century to
understand entirely the view point of the Puritans; for the remarkable
era of the nineteenth century intervenes, and freedom from superstition
and blind faith is a gift which came after that era and not before.

From time to time the colonists to the south may have sneered at or even
condemned the severity of New England life, but in the main the
merchants of New York and the planters of Virginia and Maryland realized
and respected the moral worth and earnest nature of the Massachusetts
settlers. For example, the versatile Virginia leader, William Byrd,
remarks sarcastically in his _History of the Dividing Line Run in the
Year 1728_: "Nor would I care, like a certain New England Magistrate to
order a Man to the Whipping Post for daring to ride for a midwife on the
Lord's Day"; but in the same manuscript he pays these people of rigid
rules the following tribute: "Tho' these People may be ridiculed for
some Pharisaical Particularitys in their Worship and Behaviour, yet they
were very useful Subjects, as being Frugal and Industrious, giving no
Scandal or Bad Example, at least by any Open and Public Vices. By which
excellent Qualities they had much the Advantage of the Southern Colony,
who thought their being Members of the Establish't Church sufficient to
Sanctifie very loose and Profligate Morals. For this reason New England