Stage-coach and Tavern Days

								


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Stage-coach and Tavern Days

STAGE-COACH AND TAVERN DAYS

  By ALICE MORSE EARLE


Author of Home Life in Colonial Days, Child Life in
Colonial Days, and other Social and Domestic
Histories of Colonial Times

    "Long ago, at the end of the route,
The stage pulled up, and the folks stepped out.
They have all passed under the tavern door--
The youth and his bride and the gray three-score.
Their eyes were weary with dust and gleam,
The day had gone like an empty dream.
Soft may they slumber, and trouble no more
For their eager journey, its jolt and roar,

      In the old coach over the mountain."

  NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1900


All rights reserved

  COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO MY HUSBAND HENRY EARLE

Contents

  Chapter                                           Page



      I. The Puritan Ordinary                          1



     II. Old-time Taverns                             30



    III. The Tavern Landlord                          62



     IV. Tavern Fare and Tavern Ways                  76



      V. Kill-devil and its Affines                  100



     VI. Small Drink                                 121



    VII. Signs and Symbols                           138



   VIII. The Tavern in War                           170



     IX. The Tavern Panorama                         194



      X. From Path to Turnpike                       223



     XI. Packhorse and Conestoga Wagon               241



    XII. Early Stage-coaches and Other Vehicles      253



   XIII. Two Stage Veterans of Massachusetts         291



    XIV. A Staging Centre                            308



     XV. The Stage-driver                            320



    XVI. The Romance of the Road                     340



   XVII. The Pains of Stage-coach Travel             361


XVIII. Knights of the Road                         373



    XIX. Tavern Ghosts                               409

List of Illustrations

  Travel in the South in the Thirties. From painting
by Edward Lamson Henry, N.A.                          Frontispiece



                                                                  Page


Ordinary at Duxbury, Mass.                                         3


Taproom Furnishings of an Old Ordinary. Owned by Miss
Elizabeth Nicholson, Providence, R. I.                             7


Oldest House in Easton, Mass.; once an Ordinary                   10


Leather Black-jack                                                14