For the first two-thirds of a semester, words go into the student, packaged in books, lectures, articles, class discussions, and primary sources. For the last third of the semester, words come out of the student, packaged in papers. Like the law of the conservation of mass/energy, there is a law of the conservation of words: fewer words come out of the student than go into the student.

This semester, I have two significant papers to write. The first deals with Alexander Hamilton’s First Report on the Public Credit. The second studies how Puritans in seventeenth-century Massachusetts used Sabbatarianism and other conceptions of time as both the means and the end of converting Indians. It will first explain first Puritan conceptions of work and time, second Indian conceptions of work and time, and third how Puritan conceptions were transferred (or rejected) by Indians. I recently realized that I’m studying only half of the topic. It would be equally worthwhile to study how Indian conceptions of time were transferred or rejected to Puritans, particularly to the “white Indians,” the captives of the Indians who were assimilated into their culture. Perhaps I can expand the paper over the summer.