A BOSTON SCHOOLGIRL'S DIARY.*
THE confidences of children are such precious things that they should be held sacred ; we have no business to pry into their thoughts for our own amusement, or to make fun of their little hopes and fears. All the same, we can enjoy to the full the glimpse into the past afforded to us by a well-kept childish diary, when the little hands that jotted down these daily records in childish writing and elementary spelling have long since vanished into dust, and when no living creature remains to be vaguely hurt, in the tenderest of feelings, by the remarks of an unsympathetic public. Such childish diaries can be written with no ulterior motive, probably only the merest details will be noted ; but it is those very details and trifles that throw side-lights on past events, and that are probably overlooked by writers with broader horizons and greater pretensions. Little Anna Green Winslow, whose diary, kept in the years 1771-72, has just been edited by Miss (P) Alice Morse Earle, was sent from Nova Scotia to the care of an aunt in Boston, for schooling, and from the quaint little records written for the amusement of her parents, we get a fair idea of life in Boston a few years before the War of Independence broke out. The troops were still his Majesty's, and the King's coronation day was duly observed with fireworks ; but there are hints of the Boston massacre in the spring of 1771, and Miss Anna announces that she is "a daughter of liberty," and therefore, "I chuse to wear as much of our own manu- factory as pocible." She is also a sturdy little Puritan, denouncing Christmas Day as a holiday ordained by the "Pope and his associates," and she and her aunt are much troubled by the threatened advent of an Episcopal Bishop, and much dislike the gowns with full sleeves worn by various pastors, which they call "Episcopal cassocks." Miss Earle adds notes referring chiefly to the people mentioned by little Anna, among whom, she tells us, are the two Boston ministers, Dr. Bacon and Dr. Pemberton, who read Governor Hutchinson's obnoxious "Thanksgiving Proclamation," in 1771, to their unwilling congregations. In the preface, or "Foreword," as she prefers to call it, Miss Earle says that Anna Green Winslow was evidently not
• Diary of Anna Green Winslow. Edited by Alice Morse Earle. Boston: • Boughton, Mifflin, and Company.
"so passionate and gifted and rare a creature as that star among children—Marjorie Fleming—but a natural and homely little flower of New England life." We could not expect to find a second Marjorie Fleming ; Sir Walter Scott's " darling Maidie " stands alone. There are no passages in the little New Englander's diary to equal the Scotch child's forcible denunciation of the multi- plication table :—" I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times and 7 times 7 it is what Nature itself can't endure," or the meditation on " Senciable and Religious Subjects," the appreciation of the Newgate Calendar, and the longing to speak about lovers and heroines, which breaks out in spite of stern repression. There is no mention of anything so " papithatic " as love in Anna's dairy. She holds private " constitations" with her girl friends, which result in an assembly and " dansing ; danceing I mean ; " but the company invited are all Miss Nancy, and Miss Peggys, and Miss Pollys, we hear little or nothing about any boys or men, though she notes that "Mr. Beacon" (Bacon), the minister of the old South Church, takes much notice of her, and she adds, "I think I like him better every time I see him." She learns writing of a famous writing master, and the facsimile of a page of the original diary shows what a clear hand he taught his little scholars ; but Miss Nanny was no more of a model child than was Marjorie Fleming, and she records her own shortcomings as truthfully :—" I have just now been writing four lines in my book almost as well as the copy. But all the intreaties in the world will not prevail upon me to do always as well as I can, which is not the least
trouble to me, tho' its a great grief to Aunt Deming." And she notes again :—" This minute I have received my queen's nightcap from Miss Caty Vaus,—we like it. Aunt says, that if the materials it is made of were more substantial than gauze, it might serve occationally to hold anything mesued
by an 1-2 peck ; but it is just as it should be, and very decent, and she wishes my writing was as decent. But I got into one of my frolicks, upon sight of the cap."
Little Anna was fond of finery, and we gather a good deal of information about the strange head-dresses and smart clothes of that period. She tells her mother that she went to a "very genteel, well-regulated assembly" attired in "my yellow coat, black bib and apron, black feathers on my head, my past comb, and all my past garnet marquisett and jet pins, together with my silver plume—my loket, rings, black collar round my neck—black mitts, and two or three yards of blue ribbin (black and blue is high test), striped tucker and ruffels (not my best), and my Bilk shoes compleated ray dress." Besides all this fantastic head garniture of plumes, combs, and pins, she wore the " Heddus roll," an immense erection of false hair and tells how her aunt measured her head and cap with her apron, and "from the roots of my hair on my forehead to the top of my notions, I mesur'd above an inch longer than I did downwards from the roots of my hair to the end of my chin." She was taken to funerals and to hear lectures and sermons, and her notes on the sermons she heard do credit to her industry if not to her knowledge of theology. We are particularly struck with her industry. Here is an account of a winter's day spent at home —" I have spun thirty knots of 'inning yarn, and (partly) new-footed a pair of stock- ings for Lucinda [Lucinda was a slave-girl bought by Mrs. Deming], read a part of the Pilgrim's Progress, copied part of my text journal (that if I live a few years longer, I may be able to understand it, for aunt sais, that to her, the con- tents as I first mark'd them, were an impenetrable secret), play'd some, tuck'd a great deal (Aunt Deming says it is very true), laughed enough, and I tell aunt it is all human nature, if not human reason. And now I wish my honoured mamma a very good night."
We noticed last year Miss Earle's collection of Customs and Fashions in Old New England, in which there are quotations from several old diaries. Certainly no picture of bygone days can be so accurate as those drawn when the Past was still the Present, and no chapter of history written in modern times could bring home to Englishmen the changes made in the last hundred and twenty years more forcibly than does this childish record written when New England was still a British colony, and before the great Republic of the United States was in existence.
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