The sign-board was an interesting survival of feudal times, and with its old-time carved and forged companions, such as vanes and weathercocks, doorknockers and figureheads, formed a picturesque element of decoration and symbolism. Many chapters might be written on historic, commemorative, emblematic, heraldic, biblical, humorous, or significant signs, nearly all of which have vanished from public gaze, as has disappeared also the general incapacity to read, which made pictorial devices a necessity. Gilders, painter-stainers, smiths, and joiners all helped to make the tavern-sign a thing of varied workmanship if not of art. It is said that Philadelphia excelled in the quantity and quality of her sign-boards. With fair roads for colonial days, the best and amplest system of transportation, and the splendid Conestoga wagons, great inns multiplied throughout Pennsylvania. In Baltimore both taverns and signs were many and varied, from the Three Loggerheads to the Indian Queen with its "two hundred guest-rooms with a bell in every room," and the Fountain Inn built around a shady court, with galleries on every story, like the Tabard Inn at Southwark. The swinging sign-board of John Nash's Tavern at Amherst, Massachusetts, is here reproduced from the _History of Amherst_. It is a good type of the ordinary sign-board which was found hanging in front of every tavern a century ago. In Virginia and the Carolinas taverns were not so plentiful nor so necessary; for a traveller might ride from Maryland to Georgia, and be sure of a welcome at every private house on the way. Some planters, eager for company and news, stationed negroes at the gate to invite passers-by on the post-road to come into the house and be entertained. Berkeley, in his _History of Virginia_, wrote:-- "The inhabitants are very courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation than being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and then he may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good-nature is so general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal servants to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation affords; and the poor planters who have but one bed, will often sit up, or lie upon a form or couch all night, to make room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey." So universal was this custom of free entertainment that it was a law in Virginia that unless there had been a distinct agreement to pay for board and shelter, no pay could be claimed from any guest, no matter how long he remained. In the few taverns that existed prices were low, about a shilling a dinner; and it was ordered that the meal must be wholesome and good.