"In ante-bellum days, at this season of the year, when there was a long session, a party went down the Potomac every Saturday on the steamboat Salem to eat planked shad. It was chiefly composed of Senators and Representatives, with a few leading officials, some prominent citizens, and three or four newspaper men, who in those days never violated the amenities of social life by printing what they heard there. An important house in Georgetown would send on board the steamer large demijohns filled with the best wines and liquors, which almost everybody drank without stint. Going down the river there was a good deal of card playing in the upper saloon of the boat, with some story telling on the hurricane deck. Arriving at the white house fishing grounds, some would go on shore, some would watch the drawing of the seine from the boat, some would take charge of the culinary department, and a few would remain at the card tables. The oaken planks used were about two inches thick, fourteen inches wide, and two feet long. These were scalded and then wiped dry. A freshly caught shad was then taken, scaled, split open down the back, cleaned, washed and dried. It was then spread out on a plank and nailed to it with iron pump tacks. The plank with the fish on it was then stood at an angle of forty-five degrees before a hot wood fire and baked until it was a rich dark brown color, an attendant turning the plank every few moments and basting the fish with a thin mixture of melted butter and flour. Meanwhile an experienced cook was frying fresh shad roe in a mixture of eggs and cracker dust at another fire. The planked shad, meanwhile, were served on the planks on which they had been cooked, each person having a plank and picking out what portion he liked best, breaking up his roast potato on the warm shad, while the roe was also served to those who wished for it. After the fish came punch and cigars and then they reëmbarked and the bows of the steamer were turned toward Washington. When opposite Alexandria an account was taken of the liquor and wine which had been drunk, and an assessment was levied, which generally amounted to about $2.00 each. I never saw a person intoxicated at one of these shad bakes, nor heard any quarreling."

It is said that Webster went fishing the day before he was to deliver his welcome to Lafayette, and got drunk. As he sat on the bank he suddenly drew from the water a large fish and in his majestic voice said, "Welcome, illustrious stranger, to our shores." The next day his friends, who went fishing with him, were electrified to hear him begin his speech to Lafayette with these same words.

[CHAPTER V]
Church and Clergy

The first tavern at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was kept by a deacon of the church, afterwards, steward of Harvard college; and the relation of tavern and meeting house did not end with their simultaneous establishment, but they continued the most friendly neighbors. Licenses to keep houses of entertainment were granted with the condition that the tavern must be near the meeting-house—a keen contrast to our present laws prohibiting the sale of liquor within a certain distance of a church. Those who know the oldtime meeting house can fully comprehend the desire of the colonists to have a tavern near at hand, especially during the winter services. Through autumn rains and winter frosts and snows the poorly built meeting house stood unheated, growing more damp, more icy, more deadly, with each succeeding week. Women cowered shivering, half-frozen, over the feeble heat of a metal footstove as the long services dragged on and the few coals became ashes. Men stamped their feet and swung their arms in the vain effort to warm the blood. Gladly and cheerfully did the whole crowd troop from the gloomy meeting house to the cheerful tavern to thaw out before the afternoon service, and to warm up before the ride or walk home in the late afternoon. It was a scandal in many a town that godly church members took too freely of tavern cheer at the nooning; the only wonder is that the entire congregation did not succumb in a body to the potent flip and toddy of the tavern-keeper. In mid-summer the hot sun beat down on the meeting house roof, and the burning rays poured in the unshaded windows. The tap-room of the tavern and the green trees in its dooryard offered a pleasant shade to tired church-goers, and its well sweep afforded a grateful drink to those who turned not to the tap-room. There are ever back-sliders in every church community; many walked into the ordinary door instead of up the church alley. The chimney seat of the inn was more comfortable than the narrow seat of the "pue." The general court of Massachusetts passed a law requiring all inn-keepers within a mile of any meeting house to clear their houses "during the hours of the exercise." "Thus," Mr. Field says wittily, "the townsmen were frozen out of the tavern to be frozen in the meeting house." Our ancestors had no reverence for a church save as a literal meeting house, and it was not unusual to transform the house of God into a tavern. The Great House at Charlestown, Massachusetts, the official residence of Governor Winthrop, became a meeting house in 1633, and then a tavern, the Three Cranes, kept by Robert Leary and his descendants for many years. It was destroyed in June, 1775, in the burning of the town.

The first revenue relinquished by the West India Company to the town of New Amsterdam was the excise on wine, beer, and spirits, and the sole condition made by Stuyvesant on its surrender was as to its application, that the salaries of the Dominies should be paid from it. For a year beginning November, 1661, the burghers of Esopus paid a tax on liquor, the proceeds of which were used to build a parsonage for the minister. St. Philip's church in Charleston, South Carolina, was originally built by a tax of two pence a gallon on spirits imported in 1670. Between 1743 and 1750 the public revenues of South Carolina were all raised by three per cent duties on liquors, wines, sugar, molasses, slaves, and imported dry-goods, and produced about forty-five hundred pounds, of which one thousand pounds were devoted to paying the salaries of ten ministers. The dedication of St. Michael's church in Charleston, South Carolina, was followed by a great dinner, at which a large amount of liquor was consumed.

Under such circumstances it could not be expected that the clergy would be much troubled with scruples on the use of liquor, and the evidence is that they were not. We must bear in mind that the use of liquors was universal in those days. "Ordination Day" was almost as great a day for the tavern as for the meeting house. The visiting ministers who came to assist at the religious service of ordination of a new minister were usually entertained at the tavern. Often a specially good beer was brewed called "ordination beer," and in Connecticut an "ordination ball" was given at the tavern—this with the sanction of the parsons. The bills for entertaining the visitors for the dinner and lodging at the local taverns are in many cases preserved. One of the most characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. It runs:

To keeping ministers,£s.d.
2mugs toddy, 24
5Segars, 510
1pint wine, 39
3Lodgings, 9
3Bitters, 9
3Breakfasts, 36
15Boles punch,110
24Dinners,116
11bottles wine, 36
5Mugs flip, 510
5Boles Punch, 6
3Boles Toddy, 36

The bill is endorsed with unconscious humor, "This is all paid for except the Minister's Rum."