Creative Books

Communities, like individuals, furnish virtues piecemeal. Roger
Williams, with all his wise toleration, bequeathed to Rhode Island no
such system of schools as his persecutors framed for Massachusetts. But
the children who were watched and trained thus carefully might be put to
death, if they "cursed their orderly parents" after the age of
sixteen;--not that the penalty ever was inflicted, but it was on the
statute-book. Sabbath-breaking was placed on a level with
murder,--though Calvin himself allowed the old men to play at bowls and
the young men to practise military training, after afternoon service,
at Geneva. Down to 1769 not even a funeral could take place on Sunday in
Massachusetts, without license from a magistrate. Then the stocks and
the wooden cage were in frequent use, though "barbarous and cruel"
punishments were forbidden in 1641. Scolds and railers were set on a
ducking-stool and dipped over head and ears three times, in running
water, if possible. Mrs. Oliver, a troublesome theologian, was silenced
with a cleft stick applied to her tongue.


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