CONTRASTS WITH THE PRESENT DAY.
Here it may be well to speak briefly of the contrast between the usages
and customs of the period preceding the Revolution, and the present day.
Some of these customs and regulations have improved with the lapse of
time, others undoubtedly have not.
Two millions of people constituted the entire number of whites, while
away to the westward the red brother extended indefinitely. Religiously
they were Protestants, and essentially they were "a God-fearing people."
Taught to obey a power they were afraid of, they naturally turned with
delight to the service of a God whose genius in the erection of a
boundless and successful hell challenged their admiration and esteem.
So, too, their own executions of Divine laws were successful as they
gave pain, and the most beautiful features of Christianity,--namely,
love and charity,--according to history, were not cultivated very much.
There were in New England at one time twelve offences punishable with
death, and in Virginia seventeen. This would indicate that the
death-penalty is getting unpopular very fast, and that in the contiguous
future humane people will wonder why murder should have called for
murder, in this brainy, charitable, and occult age, in which man seems
almost able to pry open the future and catch a glimpse of Destiny
underneath the great tent that has heretofore held him off by means of
death's prohibitory rates.
[Illustration: THE TOWN WATCHMAN.]
In Hartford people had to get up when the town watchman rang his bell.
The affairs of the family, and private matters too numerous to mention,
were regulated by the selectmen. The catalogues of Harvard and Yale were
regulated according to the standing of the family as per record in the
old country, and not as per bust measurement and merit, as it is to-day.
Scolding women, however, were gagged and tied to their front doors, so
that the populace could bite its thumb at them, and hired girls received
fifty dollars a year, with the understanding that they were not to have
over two days out each week, except Sunday and the days they had to go
and see their "sick sisters."
Some cloth-weaving was indulged in, and homespun was the principal
material used for clothing. Mrs. Washington had sixteen spinning-wheels
in her house. Her husband often wore homespun while at home, and on
rainy days sometimes placed a pair of home-made trousers of the
barn-door variety in the Presidential chair.
Money was very scarce, and ammunition very valuable. In 1635
musket-balls passed for farthings, and to see a New England peasant
making change with the red brother at thirty yards was a common and
delightful scene.
The first press was set up in Cambridge in 1639, with the statement that
it "had come to stay." Books printed in those days were mostly sermons
filled with the most comfortable assurance that the man who let loose
his intellect and allowed it to disbelieve some very difficult things
would be essentially----well, I hate to say right here in a book what
would happen to him.
[Illustration: BOOKS FILLED WITH ASSURANCES OF FUTURE DAMNATION.]
The first daily paper, called _The Federal Orrery_, was issued three
hundred years after Columbus discovered America. It was not popular,
and killed off the news-boys who tried to call it on the streets: so it
perished.
There was a public library in New York, from which books were loaned at
fourpence ha'penny per week. New York thus became very early the seat of
learning, and soon afterwards began to abuse the site where Chicago now
stands.
Travel was slow, the people went on horseback or afoot, and when they
could go by boat it was regarded as a success. Wagons finally made the
trip from New York to Philadelphia in the wild time of forty-eight
hours, and the line was called The Flying Dutchman, or some other
euphonious name. Benjamin Franklin, whose biography occurs in Chapter
XV., was then Postmaster-General.
He was the first bald-headed man of any prominence in the history of
America. He and his daughter Sally took a trip in a chaise, looking over
the entire system, and going to all offices. Nothing pleased the
Postmaster-General like quietly slipping into a place like Sandy Bottom
and catching the postmaster reading over the postal cards and committing
them to memory.
Calfskin shoes up to the Revolution were the exclusive property of the
gentry, and the rest wore cowhide and were extremely glad to mend them
themselves. These were greased every week with tallow, and could be worn
on either foot with impunity. Rights and lefts were never thought of
until after the Revolutionary War, but to-day the American shoe is the
most symmetrical, comfortable, and satisfactory shoe made in the world.
The British shoe is said to be more comfortable. Possibly for a British
foot it is so, but for a foot containing no breathing-apparatus or
viscera it is somewhat roomy and clumsy.
[Illustration: CAUGHT BY FRANKLIN READING POSTAL CARDS.]
Farmers and laborers of those days wore green or red baize in the shape
of jackets, and their breeches were made of leather or bed-ticking. Our
ancestors dressed plainly, and a man who could not make over two
hundred pounds per year was prohibited from dressing up or wearing lace
worth over two shillings per yard. It was a pretty sad time for literary
men, as they were thus compelled to wear clothing like the common
laborers.
Lord Cornwallis once asked his aidy kong why the American poet always
had such an air of listening as if for some expected sound. "I give it
up," retorted the aidy kong. "It is," said Lord Cornwallis, as he took a
large drink from a jug which he had tied to his saddle, "because he is
trying to see if he cannot hear his bed-ticking." On the following day
he surrendered his army, and went home to spring his _bon-mot_ on George
III.
Yet the laws were very stringent in other respects besides apparel. A
man was publicly whipped for killing a fowl on the Sabbath in New
England. In order to keep a tavern and sell rum, one had to be of good
moral character and possess property, which was a good thing. The names
of drunkards were posted up in the alehouses, and the keepers forbidden
to sell them liquor. No person under twenty years of age could use
tobacco in Connecticut without a physician's order, and no one was
allowed to use it more than once a day, and then not within ten miles of
any house. It was a common thing to see large picnic-parties going out
into the backwoods of Connecticut to smoke.
(Will the reader excuse me a moment while I light up a peculiarly black
and redolent pipe?)
[Illustration: LORD CORNWALLIS'S CONUNDRUM.]
Only the gentry were called Mr. and Mrs. This included the preacher and
his wife. A friend of mine who is one of the gentry of this century got
on the trail of his ancestry last spring, and traced them back to where
they were not allowed to be called Mr. and Mrs., and, fearing he would
fetch up in Scotland Yard if he kept on, he slowly unrolled the bottoms
of his trousers, got a job on the railroad, and since then his friends
are gradually returning to him. He is well pleased now, and looks
humbly gratified even if you call him a gent.
The Scriptures were literally interpreted, and the Old Testament was
read every morning, even if the ladies fainted.
The custom yet noticed sometimes in country churches and festive
gatherings of placing the males and females on opposite sides of the
room was originated not so much as a punishment to both, as to give the
men an opportunity to act together when the red brother felt ill at
ease.
I am glad the red brother does not molest us nowadays, and make us sit
apart that way. Keep away, red brother; remain on your reservation,
please, so that the pale-face may sit by the loved one and hold her
little soft hand during the sermon.
Church services meant business in those days. People brought their
dinners and had a general penitential gorge. Instrumental music was
proscribed, as per Amos fifth chapter and twenty-third verse, and the
length of prayer was measured by the physical endurance of the
performer.
The preacher often boiled his sermon down to four hours, and the sexton
up-ended the hourglass each hour. Boys who went to sleep in church were
sand-bagged, and grew up to be border murderers.
New York people were essentially Dutch. New York gets her Santa Claus,
her doughnuts, crullers, cookies, and many of her odors, from the Dutch.
The New York matron ran to fine linen and a polished door-knocker, while
the New England housewife spun linsey-woolsey and knit "yarn mittens"
for those she loved.
Philadelphia was the largest city in the United States, and was noted
for its cleanliness and generally sterling qualities of mind and heart,
its Sabbath trance and clean white door-steps.
The Southern Colonies were quite different from those of the North. In
place of thickly-settled towns there were large plantations with African
villages near the house of the owner. The proprietor was a sort of
country squire, living in considerable comfort for those days. He fed
and clothed everybody, black or white, who lived on the estate, and
waited patiently for the colored people to do his work and keep well, so
that they would be more valuable. The colored people were blessed with
children at a great rate, so that at this writing, though voteless, they
send a large number of members to Congress. This cheers the Southern
heart and partially recoups him for his chickens. (See Appendix.)
The South then, as now, cured immense quantities of tobacco, while the
North tried to cure those who used it.
Washington was a Virginian. He packed his own flour with his own hands,
and it was never inspected. People who knew him said that the only man
who ever tried to inspect Washington's flour was buried under a hill of
choice watermelons at Mount Vernon.
Along the James and Rappahannock the vast estates often passed from
father to son according to the law of entail, and such a thing as a poor
man "prior to the war" must have been unknown.
[Illustration: NOT RICH BEFORE THE WAR.]
Education, however, flourished more at the North, owing partly to the
fact that the people lived more in communities. Governor Berkeley of
Virginia was opposed to free schools from the start, and said, "I thank
God there are no free schools nor printing-presses here, and I hope we
shall not have them these hundred years." His prayer has been answered.