“The general custom of having two or three beds in a room to be sure is very disagreeable; it arises from the great increase of travelling within the last few years, and the smallness of their houses, which were not built for houses of entertainment.”

Mr. Twining said that after you were asleep the landlord entered, candle in hand, and escorted a stranger to your side, and he calmly shared the bed till morning. Thurlow Weed said that any one who objected to a stranger as a bedfellow was regarded as obnoxious and as unreasonably fastidious. Still Captain Basil Hall declared that even at remote taverns his family had exclusive apartments; while in crowded inns it was never even suggested to him that other travellers should share his quarters.

Ellery Tavern.

Many old tavern account-books and bills exist to show us the price of tavern fare at various dates.

Mr. Field gives a bill of board at the Bowen Inn at Barrington, Rhode Island. John Tripp and his wife put up at the inn on the 11th of May, 1776.

s.d.
“To 1 Dinner 9
To Bread and Cheese 7
To breakfast & dinner 13
To 1 Bowl Toddy 9
To Lodging you and wife 6
To 1½ Bowl Toddy 11½
To ½ Mug Cyder 1½
To lodge self and wife 6
To 1 Gill Brandy 5½
To breakfast 9½
Mug Cyder 1½
To ½ bowl Toddy 4½
Dinner 8
To 15 Lb Tobacco at 6d. 76
To ¼ Bowl Toddy 4½
To ½ Mug Cyder 1½
To Supper 6”

I suppose the quarter bowls of toddy were for Madam Tripp.

The house known for many years as the Ellery Tavern is still standing in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and is a very good example of the overhanging second story, as is shown in the front view of it given on [page 79]; and also of the lean-to, or sloping-roofed ell, which is shown by the picture on [page 83] of the rear of the house. This house was built by Parson White in 1707, and afterward kept as a tavern by James Stevens till 1740; then it came into the hands of Landlord Ellery. As in scores of other taverns in other towns, the selectmen of the town held their meetings within its doors. There were five selectmen in 1744, and their annual salary for transacting the town’s business was five dollars apiece. The tavern charges, however, for their entertainment amounted to £30, old tenor. It is not surprising, therefore, to read in the town records of the following year that the citizens voted the selectmen a salary of £5, old tenor, apiece, and “to find themselves.” Nevertheless, in 1749, there was another bill from the Ellery Tavern of £78, old tenor, for the selectmen who had been sworn in the year previously and thus welcomed, “Expense for selectmen and Licker, £3. 18s.” The Ellery Tavern has seen many another meeting of good cheer since those days.