to tea.
Strictly speaking, it is necessary to begin with the creation of the
world, in order to give a full account of anything. But, for popular
use, something less may serve one's turn, and therefore I shall let the
past chapter suffice to introduce my story, and shall proceed to arrange
my scenery and act my little play on the supposition you know enough to
understand things and persons.

Being asked to tea in our New England in the year 17-- meant something
very different from the same invitation in our more sophisticated days.
In those times, people held to the singular opinion, that the night was
made to sleep in; they inferred it from a general confidence they had in
the wisdom of Mother Nature, supposing that she did not put out her
lights and draw her bed-curtains and hush all noise in her great
world-house without strongly intending that her children should go to
sleep; and the consequence was, that very soon after sunset the whole
community very generally set their faces bedward, and the toll of the
nine-o'clock evening-bell had an awful solemnity in it, sounding to the
full. Good society in New England in those days very generally took its
breakfast at six, its dinner at twelve, and its tea, at six. "Company
tea," however, among thrifty, industrious folk, was often taken an hour
earlier, because each of the _invitees_ had children to put to bed, or
other domestic cares at home, and, as in those simple times people were
invited because you wanted to see them, a tea-party assembled themselves
at three and held session till sundown, when each matron rolled up her
knitting-work and wended soberly home.

Though Newport, even in those early times, was not without its families
which affected state and splendor, rolled about in carriages with
armorial emblazonments, and had servants in abundance to every turn
within-doors, yet there, as elsewhere in New England, the majority of
the people lived with the wholesome, thrifty simplicity of the olden
time, when labor and intelligence went hand in hand, in perhaps a
greater harmony than the world has ever seen.

Our scene opens in the great old-fashioned kitchen, which, on ordinary
occasions, is the family dining and sitting-room of the Scudder family.
I know fastidious moderns think that the working-room, wherein are
carried on the culinary operations of a large family, must necessarily
be an untidy and comfortless sitting-place; but it is only because they
are ignora