of sweet meats and preserved fruits of various kinds, and plates of hickory and other nuts ready cracked.  In all manner of confectionery and pastry these people excelled."[213]

To the Puritan this manner of living evidently seemed ungodly, and perhaps the citizens of New Amsterdam were a trifle lax not only in their appetite for the things of this world, but also in their indifference toward the Sabbath.  As Madam Knight observes in her Journal:  “There are also Dutch and divers conventicles, as they call them, viz., Baptist, Quaker, etc.  They are not strict in keeping the Sabbath, as in Boston and other places where I had been, but seemed to deal with exactness as far as I see or deal with.”

But the kindly sociableness of these Dutch prevented any decidedly vicious tendency among them, and went far toward making amends for any real or supposed laxity in religious principles.  Even as children, this social nature was consciously trained among them, and so closely did the little ones become attached to one another that marriage meant not at all the abrupt change and departure from former ways that it is rather commonly considered to mean to-day.  Says Mrs. Grant: 

“The children of the town were all divided into companies, as they called them, from five or six years of age, till they became marriageable.  How these companies first originated or what were their exact regulations, I cannot say; though I belonging to nine occasionally mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke their current language fluently.  Every company contained as many boys as girls.  But I do not know that there was any limited number; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called heads of the company, and, as such, were obeyed by the others....  Each company, at a certain time of the year, went in a body to gather a particular kind of berries, to the hill.  It was a sort of annual festival, attended with religious punctuality....  Every child was permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once besides, during the winter and spring.  The master and mistress of the family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider, or a syllabub....  The consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was that, grown up, it was reckoned a sort of apostacy to marry out of one’s company, and indeed it did not often happen.  The girls, from the example of their mothers, rather than any compulsion, very early became notable and industrious, being constantly employed in knitting stockings and making clothes for the family and slaves; they even made all the boys’ clothes."[214]

Childhood in New England meant, as we have seen, a good deal of down-right hard toil; in Virginia, for the better class child, it meant much dressing in dainty clothes, and much care about manners and etiquette; but the Dutch childhood and even young manhood and womanhood meant an unusual amount of carefree, whole-hearted, simple pleasure.  There were picnics in the summer, nut gatherings in the Autumn, and skating and sleighing in the winter.