Massachusetts Gazette, Sept. 1, 1786.
STOCKHOLM, Aug. 8.
A widow lately died near Landſcrone, aged 118 years. She continued to get a livelihood by ſpinning till ſhe was 116.
Salem Mercury, Nov. 25, 1786.
DINNER IN "OLD TIMES."
It was an old custom in New England to begin dinner with pudding instead of soup. Many persons of the last generation may remember, as the writer distinctly does, seeing old people who still adhered to this practice as late certainly as from 1850 to 1860. The writer was once at a dinner where all the family began with soup except the father, a gentleman of the old school, who had a piece cut from a fresh-baked plum-pudding. He remarked to the company that such had always been his practice; and so he excused himself for keeping to his own fashion of dining. The custom of eating pudding before meat is still very common in Yorkshire, England. The following extract from a Boston paper of 1819 shows that John Adams, in 1817, kept up the old style of dinner, which, as might perhaps be imagined, was not confined to the common people, so called.
In "old times" it was customary to say to children, "Those who eat the most pudding shall have the most meat."
Extract from the "Narrative of a Journey of 5000 miles through the Eastern and Western States of America," in 1817.—By Henry B. Fearon, an Englishman.