refused to allow the young folk to "ride the goose" at the annual feast. The Board of Burgomasters in 1654 ordered that "as the winter holidays are at hand there shall be no more ordinary meetings of this board between this date, December 14th, and three weeks after Christmas. The court messenger is ordered not to summon anyone in the meantime." The typical merry Christmas, with its lavish hospitality its boar's head, wassail bowl, plum pudding and general feasting and jollity continued in England, and hence in Maryland until the year 1641-42, when the King's troubles with Parliament began and the Puritans made the attempt to abolish Christmas as a festival, and passed their first ordinance to suppress the performance of plays. Next ministers were forbidden to preach on the Nativity, and in June, 1647, Parliament abolished the observance of saint's days and the three grand festivals, Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide-"any law, statute, custom, constitution or canon to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding." The King protested, but was answered. In London much resistance was made to the new law. but might prevailed, and for twelve years the observance of Christmas ceased as a holiday. Upon the restoration of King Charles II the festival and sacred observance of Christmas were resumed, but it is said that court revels never attained to their former splendor. In Maryland, with the increase of population and of wealth, the pleasures of life were more and more enjoyed on the large plantations. The abundance of holly and cedar in every planter's woods enabled his young folk to adorn the home with lavish hand. The mistletoe here, as in England, still found at the top of decaying oak trees, was the cause of much innocent merriment in Colonial mansions when Christmas decked the halls. These were the ideal Christmas times! The great house gathered beneath its wide-spreading roof all the scattered younger family branches at the Christmastide, when the feasting was a wonder to behold, quite rivaling that in the mother country, when thirty-two courses are said to have been the order of the day! And the spirit of the Yuletide was "Heap on the wood, the night is chill, We'll keep our Christmas merry still." CHAPTER V LEONARD CALVERT'S FIRST LETTER FROM MARYLAND RECENT investigation has brought out fuller knowledge of the early days in Maryland-days full of adventure and industry to the newcomers. For the first time the general reader is to be given the opportunity of perusing Leonard Calvert's own account of his arrival in Maryland through his letters sent to Sir Richard Lechford of Shellwood, in the County of Surrey, Knight. These personal communications in a most unexpected way were brought back to Maryland after an interval of nearly three centuries, and, together with abstracts of certain other letters to Caecelius Calvert sent by the gentlemen adventurers who accompanied the LieutenantGovernor on the expedition, are full of human interest. All of these were forwarded to London on the return voyage of the Ark, just one month after her arrival in Maryland, in 1634, and the experiences related throw valuable and interesting side lights on the pioneer days in the province, when the red man, gorgeous in paint and feathers, was king of the forest. This "war paint," which we have supposed was always a sign of ferocity, we are told by this first Calvert was used by the Indians as a means of defense against gnats. In his letter, dated at Point Comfort, May 30, 1634, Leonard Calvert recites how they stopped at Virginia to land some passengers there and to deliver the letters from the King to the Governor and Council, after which |