REELY'S POETRY BLOG

You know how we like to read those lists that say things like in 1960, a loaf of bread cost 20 cents?

Here’s an interesting one I found in The Engineers Journal, the same edition where I previously found the Joseph Bert Smiley poem, St. Peter at the Gate:

A Century Ago.

QUEER THINGS WE DID AND DID NOT IN 1794

• Imprisonment for debt was a common practice.
• There was not a public library in the United States.
• Almost all the furniture was imported from England.
• There were no maps, charts or globes in the school rooms.
• An old copper mine in Connecticut was used as a prison.
• Every gentleman wore a cue and powdered his hair in 1794.

• There was only one hat factory, and that made cocked hats.
• Crockery plates were objected to because they dulled the knives.
• No large river in the United States had been spanned by a bridge.
• A horseman who galloped on a city street was fined four shillings.
• A day laborer considered himself well paid with two shillings a day.
• Virginia contained a fifth of the whole population of the country.

• Books were very expensive. ” The Lives of the Poets ” cost $15.
• A man who jeered at the preacher or criticised the sermon was fined.
• Dry goods were designated as ” men’s stuffs ” or ” women’s stuffs.”
• Stoves were unknown ; all cooking was done before an open fire-place.
• Six days were required for a journey between New York and Boston.
• Two stage coaches bore all the travel between New York and Boston.

• A gentleman bowing to a lady always scraped his foot upon the ground.
• The parquet of a theater was called the pit, and was filled with the rabble.
• Vaccination had not become popular, and small-pox was an everyday disease.
• The shipping post and pillory were still standing in Boston and New York.
• The tough characters, where such existed, had no brass knuckles or revolvers.
• The Mississippi valley was not so well known as the heart of Africa now is.
• Three-fourths of the books in every library came from beyond the Atlantic.
• Twenty days were required for a letter to go from New York to Charleston by land.

• The number of toasts drunk at a banquet equaled the number of States in the Union.
• The United States contained fewer people than now live in New York City and its suburbs.
• Quinine was unknown; when a man had ague fits he took Peruvian bark and whiskey.
• In most families, no cooking was done on Sunday; a cold Sunday dinner was the rule.
• All the population of a village assembled at the inn on ” post day ” to hear the news.
• Beef and pork, salt fish, potatoes and hominy were the staple diet all the year round.
• The women’s dresses were puffed with hoops, and stood out two or three feet on each side.
• The only recognized method of imparting information was by the liberal use of the rod.

• The mail of the whole country did not equal that of a single second-rate office now.
• Buttons were scarce and expensive, and the trousers were fastened with pegs and laces.
• The only shoes were stout contrivances of strong hide, with wooden pegs or hobnails.
• There were not any threshing machines. Wheat was threshed out on the barn floors with flails.
• A fever patient was forbidden to drink water, and small-pox was treated in a dark room.
• There were no pianos; the ladies of musical talent played on the spinet or harpsichord.
• Bear skins and buffalo robes were common bed coverings.
• Quilted comforts were a luxury.

• Tomatoes were grown in lower gardens, were called love apples, and thought to be poisonous.
• The yellow fever was more common in every northern city than it is now in tropical towns.
• Gloves were not worn either for style or for comfort. Mittens of yarn were worn in winter.
• Baking was done in a sort of pot on long legs.
• Roasting was effected with a spit or smoke-jack.
• Leather breeches, a checked shirt, a red flannel jacket and a cocked hat formed the dress of an artisan.
• The Philadelphia practice of naming the streets after forest trees had become well established.
• A new arrival in jail was set upon by his fellow-prisoners and robbed of everything be had.
• The windows were filled with diminutive panes of glass, generally not more than four inches square.
• The prisons were in a condition of indescribable filth, and jail fever was known in every town.
• Mails traveled at the rate of thirty or forty miles a day in summer, and half that rate in winter.
• Travel up and down the Hudson was generally suspended in winter time on account of the ice.
• When a man had enough tea, he placed his spoon across his cup to indicate that he wanted no more.
• The fire-places were adorned with tiles brought from Holland and ornamented with Scripture subjects.
• The letter and envelope was a single sheet of paper so folded as to bring a blank page on the outside.
• Postage was paid in money, and the amount was indorsed on the outside of the letter by the postmaster.
• Cravats were unknown, their places being supplied by huge stocks that reached from the shoulders to the ears.
• The first American geography, by Morse, had just appeared. It was full of errors, and soon became unpopular.
• Editors begged their subscribers to pay up; if they had no money, to send in wood, cheese, corn or pork.
• The favorite novels of ” worldly” young women were “Victoria,” ” Lady Julia Mandeville” and “Malvern Dale
• Dances, in Philadelphia, were given every two weeks, but young men under twenty and girls under eighteen were not admitted.
• Anesthetics were not known, and amputations were performed with the patient in full possession of all his faculties.
• Noah Webster’s spelling book was just eleven years old, and in many quarters was looked on as a startling innovation.