eulogiums on the Puritans (not omitting
G. W. Curtis's orations) and an equal
number of attacks on the Puritans (not
omitting Mencken's Prefaces). From
these authentic documents I have culled
the following descriptive terms applied to
Puritans. I append a table for the benefit
of the reader. Puritanism means:

I look upon this catalogue and am puz-
zled to find "the whole truth." When I
think of Puritan "temperance" I am re-
minded of cherry bounce and also the
good old Jamaica rum which New Eng-
land used to make in such quantities that
it would float her mercantile marine.
When I think of "demonology," I remem-
ber that son of Boston, Benjamin Franklin,
whose liberality of spirit even Mencken
celebrates, when he falsely attributes it
to French influence, having never in his
omniscience read the Autobiography.
When I think of "liberty and individual
freedom," I shudder to recall stories of
the New England slayers and the terrible
middle passage which only Ruskin's su-
perb imagination could picture. When I
think of "pluck and industry," I recollect
the dogged labors of French peasants,
Catholic in faith and Celtic in race. When
I see the staring words "brutal intoler-
ance" I recall the sweet spirit of Roger
Williams, aye, the sweeter spirit of John
Milton whose Areopagitica was written
before the school of the new freedom was
established. When I read "hypocrisy" and
"canting" I cannot refrain from associat-
ing with them the antics of the late Wil-
helm II who, I believe, was not born in
Boston. So I take leave of the subject.
Let the honest reader, standing under the
stars, pick out those characteristics that
distinctly and consistently mark the Puri-
tans through their long history.

If we leave generalities for particulars
we are equally baffled. Some things of
course are clear. The art of reading and
writing was doubtless more widely spread
in New England than in the other colo-
nies, but that has little or no relation to
education or wisdom. Until about 1890
New England did most of the Northern
writing for "serious thinkers." It is not
necessary to name authors or magazines.
New England early had a considerable
leisure class free for excursions into the
realm of the spirit, but whether that was
the product of Puritanism or catches of
cod is an open question. Most of our his-
tories have been written in New England,
but the monopoly has long passed. New
England contributed heavily to western
settlement, to the Union army, and to the
annual output of textiles. Puritanism did
not build our railways, construct our blast
furnaces or tunnel our hills.

But when one goes beyond so many
pages of poetry, so many volumes of his-
tory and sermons, and the Puritan Sab-
bath one is in a quaking bog. Critics at-
tribute the raucous and provincial note
in our literature to the Puritans. No stu-
dent of the history of civilization would

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