Social intercourse.
Although life among the middle-colony folk was sober and filled with toil, there were the customary rough and simple popular diversions of the period,—for the farmers corn-huskings, spinning-bees, house-raisings, and dancing-parties, at which hard drinking was not infrequent; for the townsfolk horse-racing, bull-baiting, cock-fighting, tavern-parties, balls, and picnics. The people were, as a whole, of a more social temperament than their New England neighbors. There was little luxury within their reach, but they appear to have been as a rule satisfied in their condition, and above want.
Town life.
The principal town was New York. Society there was more gay than in Boston, and more fashionable than in any other American city, except perhaps Charleston. The wealthy landed proprietors spent money freely during the winter season, and the latest London styles were eagerly sought and followed. A social polish was aimed at, clubs were fostered, and pride was taken in the fact that no other American city was so cosmopolitan in tone,—a result of its being the centre of a far-reaching foreign trade. There was much that was English in New York, yet even here the Dutch influence was strong. Visitors speak of the wide, pleasant streets lined with trees, the low brick and stone houses, with their projecting eaves and their gables to the street,—a fashion general in the colonies,—and the insignificant character of the few public buildings. Albany was the centre of the northern fur-trade, and purely Dutch in composition and architecture.
Philadelphia was the Quaker capital. Laid out like a checker-board, with architecture of severe simplicity, its best residences were surrounded by gardens and orchards. The town was substantial, neat, and had the appearance of prosperity. Germantown, near by, settled by the Germans (1683), was largely given over to small manufactures. Newcastle was ill-built and unattractive. The New Jersey towns were rather comely, but insignificant; Trenton was chiefly supported by travellers along the great highway between New York and Philadelphia.
Roads and travel.
There was little intercommunication, except between the larger towns, and the facilities for travel were meagre. Rude farm-wagons, two-wheeled chaises, and saddle-horses were the chief means of conveyance over the rough, stony roads; and on the many and far-reaching rivers, travellers and traders proceeded leisurely by slow-moving craft. New Jersey was traversed by the highways between New York and Philadelphia, over which post-boys rode weekly with the mail in saddlebags. Taverns were in every town in New York and Pennsylvania, and were favorite meeting-places for the village and country folk; but in New Jersey it required legislation to induce villages to maintain "ordinaries" for wayfarers.
96. Intellectual and Moral Conditions.
Education.
Under the Dutch domination common schools flourished in New York, each town supporting them by public aid. The English, however, jealous of educational enterprises under charge of a nonconforming church, suffered them to fall into neglect. Thus at the close of the seventeenth century education was neither general nor of good quality. The English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel established an excellent Church of England school in New York city (1704), but the Dutch did not take kindly to it; they long clung to their mother-tongue and the few rude schools of their own ordering. In Pennsylvania but little attempt was made by the English in the direction of popular education outside of the capital, where was opened (1698) the now famous Penn Charter School, destined for fifty years to be the only public school in the province. The Germans and Moravians maintained some good private schools in the larger Pennsylvania and New Jersey towns, but educational facilities in the rural places were generally wretched, where there were any at all.