In the journal of the travels of Dr. Alexander Hamilton of Annapolis, Md., who rode through New England in 1744, may be found the description of the furnishings of a chamber in an inn. Doctor Hamilton was accompanied by a negro servant and on a Sunday morning at Marblehead he asked for his portmanteau. "I was told by my man Dromo that it was in his room. I had the curiosity to go and see what kind of a room his room was, and upon a reconnoitre found it a most spacious one, furnished _a la mode de Cabaret_, with tables, chairs, a fine feather-bed with quilted counterpane, white calico canopy, or tester, and curtains, every way adapted for a gentleman of his degree and complexion." Of course 1744 is many years after the period when oak furniture was commonly in use; yet Reid's tavern, "at the sign of the Dragon," in the fishing village of Marblehead, could not have been the resort of fashion or wealth and if a negro slave was given so well furnished a chamber what may have been the furnishings of the chamber occupied by Doctor Hamilton? In a farmer's family, in the early days, it was undoubtedly the habit to wash faces and hands in a small tub or keeler on the washbench in the kitchen. In suitable weather it is altogether likely the men of the family may have washed out of doors, beside the back door, in a bucket of water freshly drawn from the well or brought from the spring. The farm hands, on coming in from the fields, for dinner, or at night, always "washed up" at a bench out of doors and this custom persisted until well into the nineteenth century. My mother, when young, for a time lived on a farm (about 1850) and several times I have heard her describe the farm hand who came to the back door one noon, and looking at his hands remarked, "I guess they are clean enough," and so went into his dinner, without washing. Henry W. Erving of Hartford, Conn., writes: "A couple of years ago I made a pilgrimage to my great-grandfather's former home in Westford, Conn., in company with a kinsman over eighty years old--the last of his generation. It was a very comfortable house, with four rooms and a leanto, with a stone chimney. My great-grandfather lived there as early as 1750. My cousin called my attention to the old well near the door where, by the curb, there was a large stone hollowed out like a trough. He said the 'men folks' as they came from the field, would fill that trough with a bucket or two of water from which they would 'souse' themselves thoroughly, thus not disturbing the goodwife. And of course in the rustic neighborhoods the old customs existed long after they were abandoned in the larger villages and towns.