decent, God-fearing men were allowed to keep
taverns, and the names of persons who had earned the reputation of
intemperance were posted up in those taverns as a warning to the host
that he should sell such men no liquor. In Connecticut tobacco was
forbidden to any one under twenty years of age, unless on the express
order of a physician. Those who were over twenty were only allowed to
smoke once a day, and then not within ten miles of any dwelling.

{77}

[Sidenote: 1765--American colonial customs]

In spite of their democratic simplicity, even the New England colonists
had their distinctions of rank as clearly marked as among the people of
old England. The gentry dressed in one fashion; the working classes
dressed in another. The family rank of students determined their
places in the lists of Harvard College and Yale College. In Boston,
the chief New England town, life was naturally more elaborate and more
luxurious than in the country places. Ladies wore fine clothes and
sought to be modish in the London manner; gentlemen made a brave show
in gayly colored silks and rich laces, gold-headed canes and costly
snuff-boxes. Even in Boston, however, life was simpler, quieter, and
sweeter than it was across the Atlantic; there was Puritanism in its
atmosphere--Puritanism and the serenity of learning, of scholarship, of
study.

There was much more wealth in the province of New York; there was much
more display in the southern colonies. New York was as famous for its
Dutch cleanliness and its Dutch comfort as for its Dutch windmills that
twirled their sails against the sky in all directions. There was store
of plate and fine linen in New York cupboards. There were good things
to eat and drink in New York households. Down South the gentlefolk
lived as gentlefolk lived in England, with perhaps a more lavish
ostentation, a more liberal hospitality. They loved horses and dogs,
horse-racing and fox-hunting, dancing, music, high living, all things
that added to the enjoyment of life. Their servants were their own
black slaves. The great city of the South was Charleston, the third of
the colonial cities. The fourth and last was Philadelphia, the "faire
greene country town" of Penn's love, the last in our order, but the
first in size and splendor, with its flagged sidewalks that had made it
famous throughout the American continent as if it had been one of the
seven wonders of the world, with its stately houses of