of community efforts in which considerable levity was countenanced.
Earle's _Home Life in Colonial Days_ copies an account written in 1757,
picturing another form of entertainment yet popular in the rural
districts:

"Made a husking Entertainm't. Possibly this leafe may last a Century and
fall into the hands of some inquisitive Person for whose Entertainm't I
will inform him that now there is a Custom amongst us of making an
Entertainm't at husking of Indian Corn where to all the neighboring
Swains are invited and after the Corn is finished they like the
Hottentots give three Cheers or huzza's, but cannot carry in the husks
without a Rhum bottle; they feign great Exertion but do nothing till
Rhum enlivens them, when all is done in a trice, then after a hearty
Meal about 10 at Night they go to their pastimes."[210]

_IX. Dutch Social Life_

In New York, among the Dutch, social pleasures were, of course, much
less restricted; indeed their community life had the pleasant
familiarity of one large family. Mrs. Grant in her _Memoirs of an
American Lady_ pictures the almost sylvan scene in the quaint old town,
and the quiet domestic happiness so evident on every hand:

"Every house had its garden, well, and a little green behind; before
every door a tree was planted, rendered interesting by being co-eval
with some beloved member of the family; many of their trees were of a
prodigious size and extraordinary beauty, but without regularity, every
one planting the kind that best pleased with him, or which he thought
would afford the most agreeable shade to the open portion at his door,
which was surrounded by seats, and ascended by a few steps. It was in
these that each domestic group was seated in summer evenings to enjoy
the balmy twilight or the serenely clear moon light. Each family had a
cow, fed in a common pasture at the end of the town. In the evening the
herd returned all together ... with their tinkling bells ... along the
wide and grassy street to their wonted sheltering trees, to be milked at
their master's doors. Nothing could be more pleasing to a simple and
benevolent mind than to see thus, at one view, all the inhabitants of
the town, which contained not one very rich or very poor, very knowing,
or very ignorant, very rude, or very polished, individual; to see all
these children of nature enjoying in easy indolence or social
intercourse,

'The cool, the fragrant, and the dusky hour,'

clothed in the