Not the lofty alone, but the lowly as well, could claim a welcome at those always open doors. Indians, half-breeds, and leather-clad huntsmen hung round the kitchen of Greenaway Court, while Washington and Lord Fairfax dined in the saloon. Not even acquaintance was considered necessary to ensure a cordial reception. "The inhabitants," wrote Beverly, "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 there 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." In Winter, the fire blazed high on the hearth, and the toddy hissed in the noggin; in Summer, the basket of fruit stood in the breeze-swept hall, and lightly clad black boys tripped in, bearing cool tankards of punch and sangaree. The guest need only enter in, to be at home. No one was considered so contemptible, as he who consented to receive money for entertaining visitors. Keeping an inn or "ordinary" was looked upon askance, and the law dealt with the proprietor rigorously, as with one who probably would cheat if he got a chance. His charges were carefully regulated, and he was subject to fine, and even imprisonment, if he went beyond them. A Maryland statute provides that "noe Ordinary-Keeper within this Province shall at any Time charge anything to account for Boles of Punch, but shall only Sell the Severall Ingredients to the Said Mixture according to the Rates before in this Act Ascertained." A traveller, in those good old days, might ride from Maryland to Georgia, and never put up at an Ordinary at all, sure, whenever he wished to stop by the way, of a cordial welcome at a private house. Some planters even kept negroes posted at their gate, to give warning of a rider's approach, that he might be invited in, and that the household might be in readiness to receive him. Such promiscuous hospitality could only exist in a community with a happy faculty for taking life easily, an ability to dispense with the slavery to method, and to be contented though things went wrong. The fastidious European found some of the manners and customs a little trying. "In private houses as well as inns," writes a traveller, "several people are crowded together in the same room; and in the latter it very commonly happens that after you have been some time in bed, a stranger of any condition comes into the room, pulls off his clothes, and places himself without ceremony between your sheets."