Dr. Beatty, and the philosophic Franklin adds,— "Never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine service." The fact that a Presbyterian minister would, under any circumstances, consent to measure out rum to his flock suggests a curious contrast between customs past and present; but, as each man received but half a gill at a time, the reverend gentleman may have considered that, in a certain sense, he was assisting in a temperance movement. Thackeray has admirably hit off Dr. Franklin's readiness to advise upon all subjects in his picture of a dinner at Madam Esmond's, before the Braddock expedition, when General Braddock constantly turns to the "little Postmaster from Philadelphia" who seemed to possess much curious information and to have counsel to offer in all emergencies. Nothing seemed to be too great or too small for Franklin's consideration. While abroad upon diplomatic business, he writes his wife minute directions about making and putting down the carpets which he sends her; yet Mrs. Franklin was herself a notable housekeeper. In a letter written to her husband in 1765, she speaks of papered walls in their new house in Franklin Court, while the Fair Hill mansion boasted paper as early as 1717, although the parlors were wainscoted in oak and red cedar. Several carpets Mrs. Franklin mentions as those in the. blue room, the parlor, and other rooms, and even expresses a desire to have a Turkey carpet, which sounds strangely luxurious and modern to our ears, especially as the first carpet remembered in Philadelphia was seen at the house of Owen Jones, at Second and Spruce Streets, about 1750. These early carpets were not very ample, being designed for the centre of the room, the chairs being set around the edges of the square, the middle of which was occupied by the table. Mrs. Franklin also mentions such luxuries as a closet with glass doors, spaces for the "pier of glass," a harpsichord and harmonica; while Sally's room, up two pairs of stairs, beside its regular furniture, contained a trunk and books which seem to be quite beyond her powers of description, as she adds," but these you can't have any notion of." Dr. Franklin, in one of his earlier letters, speaks of such fancyings of his own as a "pair of silk blankets, very fine, just taken in a French prize,” which he thinks would be best to cover a summer bed, some fine damask table-cloths and napkins, snuffer-stand and extinguisher of very beautiful workmanship, and some carpeting "which is to be sewed together in such a way as would make the figures match, and to be finished with a border." Carpets instead of sanded floors and wall-paper in the place of the primitive whitewash were finding their way into modest households, while much greater luxuries were to be seen in such residences as those of the Hamiltons, Allens, Fishers, Morrises, Jameses, and Willings; and, instead of the one maid-servant that Gabriel Thomas speaks of in 1696 as among the comforts of the early settlement, numbers of servants were to be found in many households, some of them slaves. The "slaves' gallery" is still to be seen in old Christ Church in Boston, and in Quaker Philadelphia some good citizens owned slaves, and thought it no harm to will a likely African or a neathanded yellow girl to their children, as they left them their household furniture, horses, and carriages. The days had passed by, in 1760, when the carriages and chariots driven in this city could be told off on the fingers of two hands, as in Mrs. McIlvaine's lines: "Judge Allen drove a coach and four Shippens, Penns, Pembertons, and Morrises, Drove only pairs of blacks and bays.” Du Simitière enumerates the carriages driven in Philadelphia in 1772 as numbering nearly one hundred, although William Peters and Thomas Willing could long claim the distinction of driving the only landaus in old Philadelphia. The time was long past, even in New England, when the iron hand of law or the voice of admonition could keep back the tide of progress in religious toleration or in the gentler arts of life. If, in early days in Plymouth, the settlers walked to the meeting, the governor and elders at their head, the men armed and equipped as for battle, the women, children, and servants well guarded from attack, the day came before the century was out when the governor rolled to the place of worship in his coach. In 1695, Judge Sewall writes that he prevailed upon "Governor Bradstreet and his Lady"* to walk to his new house and wish him joy of it," after which they sat near an hour with Mrs. Corwin and Wharton, and the Governor drank a glass or two of wine, eat some fruit, and took a pipe of tobacco in the new Hall, and finally went away between twelve and one in Madame Richard's new Coach and horses." * Simon Bradstreet's second wife, Mistress Gardner. His first wife, Anne, the poetess, died in 1672. |