all inclined to hold, that "the former days were better than these," and our ancestors men and women of a soundness and vigor long since lost, there is every proof that the standard of health has progressed with all other standards, and that the best blood of this generation is purer and less open to disorder than the best blood of that. Francis Higginson may stand as the representative of many who might have written with him:
"Whereas I have for divers years past been very sickly and ready to cast up whatsoever I have eaten, . . . He hath made my coming to be a method to cure me of a wonderful weak stomach and continual pain of melancholy mind from the spleen."
His children seem to have been in equally melancholy case, but he was able after a year or two of New England life to write:
"Here is an extraordinary clear and dry air, that is of a most healing nature to all such as are of a cold, melancholy, phlegmatic, rheumatic temper of body."
The Puritans, as life settled into a less rasping routine than that of the early years, grew rotund and comfortable in expression, and though the festivities of training days, and the more solemn one of ordination or Thanksgiving day, meant sermon and prayers of doubled length, found this only an added element of enjoyment. Judge Sewall's diary records many good dinners; sometimes as "a sumptuous feast," sometimes as merely "a fine dinner," but always with impressive unction. At one of these occasions he mentions Governor Bradstreet as being present and adds that he "drank a glass or two of wine, eat some
