These beds were the high four-posters, carved and draped, and ten or fifteen seems a liberal allowance for every household. One Alexander Mackraby, visiting Philadelphia in 1768, before the Revolution, writes home: "I could hardly find myself out this morning in a most elegant crimson silk damask bed." Poor indeed was the householder who did not manage to have one "feder bed," or one of flock, or something soft, and there were always pillows, bolster, coverlids, and blankets, though sometimes, judging from the inventories, the owners did not care particularly about sheets.
CHAPTER VI.
COLONIAL AND LATER PERIODS—Continued.
We have seen by the middle of the century, 1750, how many comforts were obtainable at the large centres, and how many cabinet-makers were at work in the Colonies. About 1756 the ways and people are described thus:
"New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies in winter are frequently entertained either at concerts of musick or assemblies, and make a very good appearance. They are comely and dress well, and scarce any of them have distorted shapes. Tinctured with a Dutch education they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and singular neatness."
Twenty-five years later the British officers quartered in New York made life there very gay. Fox-hunting was practiced till 1781, and was advertised in the "Royal Gazette" as taking place on Ascot Heath, in Brooklyn. Horse-racing took place on Hempstead Plains, Long Island, for life in general was a full copy of what was going on in England. The "New York Gazette" of June 4, 1770, tells us that—
—"a Great Horse-Race was run off on Hempstead Plains for a considerable wager, which engaged the attention of so many in the city that upward of seventy chairs and chaises were carried over the ferry from hence, and a far greater number of horses, so that it was thought that the number of Horses on the Plains at the Races far exceeded a thousand."
Figure 57. ROOM IN WHIPPLE HOUSE, IPSWICH, MASS.