wagons' rumbled over all the main roads of the country, serving the emigrant, the traveller whose time did not demand the express speed of a stage-coach, and conveying a large part of the freight that moved between cities not connected by water. The driver of a Conestoga rode on a wheel horse, and he and those with him carried their own bedding, which they spread out on the floor of the public room in the tavern where they halted for the night.

The slow progress that the country was making in its use of private travel vehicles during the early years of periodic transportation is illustrated by the fact that in the year 1761 there were but thirty-eight wheeled conveyances in Philadelphia. Their several types and numbers were: three coaches, fifteen chaises, eighteen chariots and two landaus. By 1772 the people of the town owned eighty-four vehicles, and in 1794 they had eight hundred and twenty-seven. There were twenty-two privately owned wheeled vehicles in Boston in 1768, and 145 like equipages in 1798. Similar figures for other communities do not appear, but the advancement of various important cities in the respect indicated was doubtless substantially parallel with the cases cited.

Throughout the eighteenth century, as well as in the seventeenth, the winter season continued to be a favorite time for travel. The scarcity of wheeled wagons of various sorts was not reflected in the use and popularity of sleds. Every family had one or more of them, and the discomforts due to cold weather and biting gales were much preferred to the troubles that attended a journey at any other time. In thickly settled parts of the country, during the frost months, a wayfarer in a sleigh was rarely

1 Those that travelled between the East and Pittsburgh were often called "Pitt Teams," though they were identical with the Conestoga.

out of sight of equipages similar to his own. Many hundred horse-drawn sleds were to be seen in the streets of any town on a clear winter day,' and long-extended travel was undertaken in them. A large proportion of the snow craft were home-made, box-like affairs, but like everything else of the period to which paint would cling they were highly seasoned with all the essences of the rainbow.

1 Henry's "History of the Lehigh Valley" (Pa.) says five hundred sleds were either standing in the streets of Easton or passing through them at one time. Daniel Webster sometimes went between his New Hampshire home and Boston in a

sleigh.

EARLY TAVERNS

T

AFFAIRS

CHAPTER XIII

THEIR RELATION TO TRAVEL AND PUBLIC RATES FIXED BY LAW CONSTABLES WATCHED TRAVELLERS CLOSELY · HOW THE SLEEPING PROBLEM WAS SOMETIMES SOLVED A TAVERN DINNER TABLE EQUIPPED TO SATISFY HUNGER RATHER THAN FOR ARTISTIC DISPLAY - - LAWS REGULATING RETAIL CHARGES FOR FOOD UNIVERSAL HOSPITALITY OF THE SOUTH FIRST TRAVEL TO INTERIOR NEW YORK - EFFECT OF THE REVOLUTION ON THE MENTAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE

HERE was one feature of primitive travel in America which, though not in itself a method of locomotion, was nevertheless so intimately related to the movements of travellers and to all public affairs as to require attention in a study of early conditions. That phase of the subject was the little tavern, or inn, destined at last to develop into a palace beneath whose roof the exacting demands of a thousand guests are supplied by an army of servants. The evolution of the public house has kept pace for nearly three hundred years with the changing system whereby the pilgrim has reached its doors, and in size, methods and conveniences it has consistently reflected the manner in which the traveller has pursued his actual journey.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the tavern had reached a position of consequence in the national life,

and from that period until about the year 1830 its importance steadily increased both as a factor in the affairs of the people and as an essential element to be considered in the making of any journey. Conditions coming into being at that time gradually altered the status of the tavern in its relation to the public, and afterward, though increasing in bulk and magnificence, the inn lost much of its former influence. It has now come to be taken as a matter-of-fact incident; as an institution whose chief characteristics can be anticipated and depended on by those who have need of it. The modern hotel has been standardized and reduced to an automatic machine of entertainment. This was not true in the early times, for then the inn possessed nothing of system but revealed, instead, the character of its proprietor. If the host possessed a marked individuality, either congenial or unpleasant, so also did his hostelry. To-day there is no host, in the old sense; only a staff of trained experts in each of a dozen departments, who by invisible methods minister to the population that drifts through a maze of endless corridors and lofty halls. The early tavern has become a big department store for the sale of sleep, food and drink.

Public inns came into existence almost as soon as the English speaking race secured a permanent foothold in the northern colonies. The earliest known establishment of the kind was licensed by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1634,' and from that time they multiplied amazingly. By the year 1675 Cotton Mather declared that every other house in Boston was a tavern, though his assertion was of course an exaggeration. He objected to the smoking and drinking that prevailed in the houses of public entertainment.

1 Drake's "Old Boston Taverns": p. 19.

All places of the sort were from the first regulated by strict laws passed for the purpose. Even the prices they might charge were named by the authorities. In 1634 the cost of a meal at a Boston inn was fixed at sixpence, and the Court declared that a patron must pay no more than one penny for a quart of beer. Should an innkeeper demand more than the legal rate for food and drink he

L

FRAUNCE'S TAVERN, Cor of BROAD & PEARL STREETS.

55.-Fraunce's Tavern, a popular pre-Revolutionary inn of New York City. In the assembly room, occupying the second story, Washington took farewell of his generals. The building still remains. This and the following eight illustrations suggest the accommodations available to early travellers in the East.

was to be arrested and fined. Another Massachusetts law also provided that no private individual might take a stranger into his home without giving surety for the good conduct of the newcomer. The particular statute in ques

1 Similar regulations passed by the New York Common Council in 1675 fixed the price of tavern lodging at threepence, and the charge for a meal at eightpence.

A usual price for tavern accommodations throughout the colonies from 1700 until about the time of the Revolution was three shillings a day. For this sum the traveller got his lodgings, a fire, if necessary, three meals and beer between-times.