The scarlet letter

Honestly, let me quote a passage from chapter seven of nathaniel hawthorn's The Scarlet Letter, and then ask you a question.

... the children of the Puritans looked up from their play, -- or what passed as play with those sombre little urchins, --and spake gravely one to another:--
"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter; and, of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!"

I mean, what the shit? Did people actually talk like that back in seventeenth century America? Moreover, did children speak like that?