found a
minutely written home-made index on the blank pages at the end of the
volume, showing a personal interest and love for a book which can
hardly be equalled. Careful notes and references and postils also show a
patient and appreciative perusal.

Though books were so closely cherished, so seemly bekept in colonial
days, they were subject to one indignity with which now they are
unmenaced and undegraded--they were sometimes sentenced to be burned by
the public hangman. In 1654 the writings of John Reeves and Ludowick
Muggleton, who set up to be prophets, were burned by that abhorred
public functionary in Boston market-place; and two years later Quaker
books were similarly destroyed. William Pyncheon's book was burned, in
1650, in Boston Market. In 1707 a "libel on the Governor" was hanged by
the hangman. In 1754 a pamphlet called "The Monster of Monsters," a
sharp political criticism on the Massachusetts Court, was thus burned in
King Street, Boston. From the _Connecticut Gazette_ of November 29th,
1755, we learn that another offending publication was sentenced to be
"publickly whipt according to Moses Law with 40 stripes save one, then
Burnt." How a true book-lover winces at the thought of the public
hangman placing his blood-stained hand on any book, no matter how much a
"monster."

XII

"ARTIFICES OF HANDSOMENESS"

From the earliest days the Puritan colonists fought stoutly, for the
sake of St. Paul, against long hair. They proved themselves worthy the
opprobrious name of Roundhead. Endicott's first act was to institute a
solemn and insistent association against long hair. This wearing of long
locks was one of the existing evils, a wile of the devil, which bade
fair to creep into New England, and in its incipiency was proceeded
against by the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair
like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly
against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson
Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched
burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the
long-growing locks--"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or
Russianly--whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long
nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. Men under sentence
for offences were offered release from punishment if they would "cut off
their long hair into a civil frame." Exact rules were given from the
pulpi