groups of drunken and dissipated young men of wealth, calling themselves Mohocks, Scourers, and other names, roamed the dark streets armed with swords and bludgeons, assaulting, tormenting, and injuring every one whom they met, who had the ill fortune to be abroad at night.

There was nothing of that sort known in American cities; there was little noise or roistering, no highway robbery, comparatively little petty stealing. The streets were ill-paved and dirty, but not foul with the accumulated dirt of centuries as in London. The streets in nearly all cities were unlighted. In 1697 New Yorkers were ordered to have a lantern and candle hung out on a pole from every seventh house. And And as the watchman walked around he called out, "Lanthorn, and a whole candell-light. Hang out your lights." The watchman was called a rattle-watch, and carried a long staff and a lantern and a large rattle or klopper, which he struck to frighten away thieves. And all night long he called out each hour, and told the weather. For instance, he called out, "Past midnight, and all's well"; "One o'clock and fair winds," or "Five o'clock and cloudy skies." Thus one could lie safe in bed and if he chanced to waken could know that the friendly rattle-watch was near at hand, and what was the weather and

the time of night. In 1658 New York had in all ten watchmen, who were like our modern police; to-day it has many thousands.

In New England the constables and watch were all carefully appointed by law. They carried black staves six feet long, tipped with brass, and hence were called tipstaves. The night watch was called a bell-man. He looked out for fire and thieves and other disorders, and called the time of the night, and the weather. The pay was small, often but a shilling a night, and occasionally a "coat of kersey." In large towns, as Boston and Salem, thirteen "sober, honest men and householders were the night watch. The highest in the community, even the magistrates, took their turn at the watch, and were ordered to walk two together, a young man with "one of the soberer sort."

CHAPTER XV

T

SUNDAY IN THE COLONIES

HE first building used as a church at the Plymouth colony was the fort, and to it the Pilgrim fathers and mothers and children walked on Sunday reverently and gravely, three in a row, the men fully armed with swords and guns, till they built a meeting-house in 1648. In other New England settlements, the first services were held in tents, under trees, or under any shelter. The settler who had a roomy house often had also the meeting. The first Boston meeting-house had mud walls, a thatched roof, and earthen floor. It was used till 1640, and some very thrilling and inspiring scenes were enacted within its humble walls. Usually the earliest meeting-houses were log houses, with clay-filled chinks, and roofs thatched with reeds and long grass, like the dwelling-houses. At Salem is still preserved one of the early churches. The second and more dignified form of New England meeting-house was usually a square wooden build

ing with a truncated pyramidal roof, surmounted often with a belfry, which served as a lookout station and held a bell, from which the bell-rope hung down to the floor in the centre of the church aisle. The old church at Hingham, Massachusetts, still

standing and still used, is a good specimen of this shape. It was built in 1681, and is known as the "Old Ship," and is a comely and dignified building. As more elegant and costly dwelling-houses were built, so were better meeting-houses; and the third form with lofty wooden steeple at one end, in

the style of architecture invented by Sir Christopher Wren, after the great fire of London, multiplied and increased until every town was graced with an example. In all these the main body of the edifice remained as bare, prosaic, and undecorated as were the preceding churches, while all the ambition of both builders and congregation spent itself in the steeple. These were so varied and at times so beautiful that a chapter might be written on New England steeples. The Old South Church of Boston is a good example of this school of ecclesiastical architecture, and is a well-known historic building as well.

The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in the windows, and when glass came it was not set with putty, but was nailed in. The windows had what were termed "heavy current side-shutters." The outside of the meeting-house was not

colored," or "stained" as it was then termed, but was left to turn gray and weather-stained, and sometimes moss-covered with the dampness of the great shadowing hemlock and fir trees which were usually planted around New England churches. The first meeting-houses were often decorated in a very singular and grotesque manner. Rewards were paid by all the early towns for killing wolves; and any person who killed a wolf brought the head to the