nken man in the Massachusetts Colony in many years. The following
quotation will show how rare was drunkenness and how abhorred. Judge
Sewall wrote in 1686:

"Mr. Shrimpton and others came in a coach from Roxbury about nine
o'clock or past, singing as they came, being inflamed with drink.
At Justice Morgans they stop and drink healths and curse and swear
to the great disturbance of the town and grief of good people. Such
high handed wickedness has hardly before been heard of in Boston."

It is well to compare the orderly, decorous, well-protected existence in
Boston, with the conditions of town life in Old England at that same
date, where drunken young men of fashion under the name of Mohocks,
Scourers, Hectors, Muns, or Tityriti, prowled the streets abusing and
beating every man and woman they met--"sons of Belial flown with
insolence and wine;" where turbulent apprentices set upon those the
Mohocks chanced to spare; where duels and intrigues and gaming were the
order of the day; where foot-pads, highwaymen, and street ruffians
robbed unceasingly and with impunity. Life in New England may have been
dull and monotonous, but women could go through the streets in safety,
and Judge Sewall could stumble home alone in the dark from his
love-making without fear of molestation; and when he found a party of
young men singing and making too much noise in a tavern, he could go
among them uninsulted, and could get them to meekly write down their own
names with his "Pensil" for him to bring them up and fine them the next
day.

Still, the Judge, though he hated noisy revellers, was no total
abstainer. He speaks of "grace cups" and "treating the Deputies," and
sent gifts of wine to his friends. I find in his diary references to
these drinks: Ale, beer, mead, metheglin, tea, chocolate, sage tea,
cider, wine, sillabub, claret, sack, canary, punch, sack-posset, and
black cherry brandy.

Sack, the drink of Shakespeare's day, beloved and praised of Falstaff,
was passing out of date in Sewall's time. Winthrop tells of four ships
coming into port in 1646 with eight hundred butts of sack on board. In
1634 ordinaries were forbidden to sell it, hence the sack found but a
poor market. Sack-posset was made of ale and sack, thickened with eggs
and cream, seasoned with nutmeg, mace, and sugar, then boiled on the
fire for hours, and made a "very pretty drink" for weddings and feasts.

Canary wine was imported at that t