en of the town were all divided into companies, as they
called them, from five or six years of age, till they became
marriageable. How these companies first originated or what were their
exact regulations, I cannot say; though I belonging to nine occasionally
mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I
spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many
boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number; only
this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older,
cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called
heads of the company, and, as such, were obeyed by the others.... Each
company, at a certain time of the year, went in a body to gather a
particular kind of berries, to the hill. It was a sort of annual
festival, attended with religious punctuality.... Every child was
permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once
besides, during the winter and spring. The master and mistress of the
family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while some
old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample
provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts and cakes
of various kinds, to which was added cider, or a syllabub.... The
consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was that, grown up,
it was reckoned a sort of apostacy to marry out of one's company, and
indeed it did not often happen. The girls, from the example of their
mothers, rather than any compulsion, very early became notable and
industrious, being constantly employed in knitting stockings and making
clothes for the family and slaves; they even made all the boys'
clothes."[214]

Childhood in New England meant, as we have seen, a good deal of
down-right hard toil; in Virginia, for the better class child, it meant
much dressing in dainty clothes, and much care about manners and
etiquette; but the Dutch childhood and even young manhood and womanhood
meant an unusual amount of carefree, whole-hearted, simple pleasure.
There were picnics in the summer, nut gatherings in the Autumn, and
skating and sleighing in the winter.

"In spring eight or ten of one company, young men and maidens,
would set out together in a canoe on a kind of rural
excursion.... They went without attendants.... They arrived
generally by nine or ten o'clock.... The breakfast, a very
regular and cheerful one, o