most households there were sideboards well
furnished with spirits, brandy, homemade wine, metheglin, etc., which
were offered to guests. It was a fashion or custom to offer a drink of
some kind whenever a neighbor called.

"My grandfather being obliged to have so many men at least two months
each year became disgusted with the custom of furnishing so much cider
and spirits to the men in the field, as many of them would come to the
house at supper time without any appetite and in a quarrelsome mood.
There would be wrestlings and fighting during the evening and the chain
in the well could be heard rattling all night long. So one year,
probably about 1835 or '36, he decided that he would do it no longer.
His brother and many of his neighbors tried to dissuade him and
prophesied that he would not be able to get sufficient help to secure
his crops, but he declared he would give up farming before he would
endure it any longer, and announced when securing his extra help for
that summer that he would furnish no cider or spirits in the field, but
that coffee and other drinks would be carried out and that every man
should have a ration of spirits at each meal. Most of the men he had had
in past years came back and seemed to be glad to be out of the way of
temptation. The next year he dispensed with the ration at meal times,
and the custom grew among his neighbors with surprising rapidity; it was
but a few years when it became general, with a few exceptions, where the
farmer himself was fond of it, until to-day such a thing is not heard
of, and in fact, the farmer, like the railroads and other large
corporations, do not care to employ a man that is in the habit of using
spirits at all."

In the years 1890-1905 there were only two families on the Hill which
followed primitive custom in "putting in cider" into the cellar in
quantity for the winter. In five more a very small quantity was kept. In
the other cases it was regarded as immoral to use the beverage. The
writer was only once offered a drink of alcoholic beverage in six years'
residence on the Hill.

In respect to the standard of living which is regarded as necessary to
the maintenance of respect and social position, the Hill exhibits two
strata of the population. The city people, and the farmers and laborers.
The former class, besides the Hotel and its cottages, comprise seven
households, who have formed their ways of living upon the city standard.
The others, resident a