"
Edward Johnson, after mentioning the shifts to which they were put for
food, says,--
"And yet, methinks, our children are as cheerful, fat, and lusty, with
feeding upon those mussels, clams, and other fish, as they were in
England with their fill of bread."
Higginson, himself a dyspeptic, "continually in physic," as he says, and
accustomed to dress in thick clothing, and to comfort his stomach with
drink that was "both strong and stale,"--the "jolly good ale and old," I
suppose, of free and easy Bishop Still's song,--found that he both could
and did oftentimes drink New England water very well,--which he seems to
look upon as a remarkable feat. He could go as lightclad as any, too,
with only a light stuff cassock upon his shirt, and stuff breeches
without linings. Two of his children were sickly: one,--little misshapen
Mary,--died on the passage, and, in her father's words, "was the first in
our ship that was buried in the bowels of the great Atlantic sea;" the
other, who had been "most lamentably handled" by disease, recovered
almost entirely "by the very wholesomeness of the air, altering,
digesting, and drying up the cold and crude humors of the body."
Wherefore, he thinks it a wise course for all cold complexions to come to
take physic in New England, and ends with those often quoted words, that
"a sup of New England's air is better than a whole draught of Old
England's ale.
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