g bees, and a dozen other types of "bees" served to lighten the
drudgery of such work and developed a spirit of neighborliness that is
perhaps a little lacking under modern social conditions. Ignoring the
crude methods of labor, and the other forms of hardship, we may look
back from the vantage point of two hundred years of progress and perhaps
admire and envy something of the quietness, orderliness, and simplicity
of those colonial homes. After all, however, doubtless many a colonial
mother now and then grew sick at heart over the conditions and problems
facing her. Confronted with the unsettled condition of a new country,
with society on a most insecure foundation, with privations, hardships,
and genuine toil always in view, and with the prospect of the terrible
strain of bearing and rearing an inexcusable number of children, the
wife of that era may not have been able to see all the romance which
modern novelists have perceived in the days that are no more.

_VI. The Size of the Family_

And this brings us once more to what was doubtless the most terrific
burden placed upon the colonial woman--the incessant bearing of
offspring. In those days large families were not a liability, but a
positive asset. With a vast wilderness teeming with potential wealth,
waiting only for a supply of workers, the only economic pressure on the
birth rate was the pressure to make it larger to meet the demand for
laborers. Every child born in the colonies was assured, through moderate
industry, of the comforts of life, and, through patience and shrewd
investments, of some degree of wealth. Boys and girls meant
workers--producers of wealth--the boys on farm or sea or in the shop,
the girls in the home. Since their wants were simple, since the
educational demands were not large, since much of the food or clothing
was produced directly by those who used it, children were not
unwelcome--at least to the fathers.

Yet, who can say what rebellion unconsciously arose sometimes in the
hearts of the women? Doubtless they strove to make themselves believe
that all the little ones were a blessing and welcome--the religion of
the day taught that any other thought was sinful--but still there must
have been many a woman, distant from medical aid, living amidst new, raw
environments, mothers already of many a child, who longed for liberty
from the inevitable return of the trial. Women bore many children--and
buried many. And mothers followed their ch