It is astonishing to read of such ruffianly kidnappings under the protection of the British Government, and to know that seamen and sailors who had been so treated would assist in such outrages on others. It is only one of the many proofs that we meet everywhere in history of the thick-skinned indifference and cruelty of nearly all of the human race a century ago.
It was far worse in these matters in England than in the colonies. Mr. Ashton tells us that in one night over two thousand one hundred men were pressed in London alone. Riot and bloodshed accompanied those infamous raids; sometimes a whole town turned out to resist the officers and ship’s men.
CHAPTER IX
THE TAVERN PANORAMA
We have to-day scores of places of amusement, and means of amusement, where in earlier days all diversions centred at the tavern. The furnishing of food and shelter to travellers and to horses, and of liquid comfort to neighbors, was not the only function of the tavern, nor the meeting for cheerful interchange of news and sentiment. Whatever there was of novelty in entertainment or instruction, was delivered at the tavern, and it served as the gathering place for folk on scores of duties or pleasures bent. There was in fact a constant panorama passing within the walls and before the doors of an old tavern, not only in the shape of distinguished, picturesque, and unwonted guests, but through the variety of uses to which the tavern was put. It would be impossible to enumerate them all. Many of the chapters of this book indicate some of them. We can simply glance at a few more of the most common and of the most interesting ones.
Though guests of colonial days are often named as having visited the old taverns which still linger intact, the names of importance which are most frequently heard are those of Revolutionary heroes and visitors, those of Franklin, Washington, and Lafayette being most proudly enumerated. Franklin was a great local traveller. His post-office affairs took him frequently along the road. He was fond of visiting, and people were naturally fond of having him visit them. He was such a welcome guest that he need not have entered a tavern from Maine to Georgia. Washington made several trips through the states, one of much ceremony. He gives the names of the taverns at which he stopped.
I have been in tavern-rooms honored a century ago by the sleeping presence of Washington, but I have never slept in them. I would rather look at them than sleep in them; and I have moralized over the simplicity and lack of luxury which was the best that the tavern could offer, even to that great man.
Lafayette was made welcome in many private houses in his tour in 1824, but he also was a tavern guest. His journal is preserved in Paris, untranslated. In it he tells of seeing the well-known Landing of Lafayette plates and dishes for the first time at a tavern in a small town in western New York.