consideration of small things, the largeness of their first purpose dwindled and contracted, and inconceivable pettiness came at last to be the seal upon much of their action. Mr. Johnson, a minister whose course is commented upon by Bradford, excommunicated his brother and own father, for disagreement from him in certain points of doctrine, though the same zeal weakened when called upon to act against his wife, who doubtless had means of influencing his judgment unknown to the grave elders who remonstrated. But the interest was as strong in the cut of a woman's sleeve as in the founding of a new Plantation. They mourned over their own degeneracy. "The former times were better than these," the croakers sighed, and Governor Bradford wrote of this special case; "In our time his wife was a grave matron, and very modest both in her apparel and all her demeanor, ready to any good works in her place, and helpful to many, especially the poor, and an ornament to his calling. She was a young widow when he married her, and had been a merchant's wife by whom he had a good estate, and was a godly woman; and because she wore such apparel as she had been formerly used to, which were neither excessive nor immodest, for their chiefest exception were against her wearing of some whalebone in the bodice and sleeves of her gown, corked shoes and other such like things as the citizens of her rank then used to wear. And although, for offence sake, she and he were willing to reform the fashions of them, so far as might be, without spoiling of their garments, yet it would not content them except they came full up to their size. Such was the strictness or rigidness (as now the term
