The Old Furniture Book, with a Sketch of Past Days and WaysMoore, N. Hudson
History
The Old Furniture Book, with a Sketch of Past Days and Ways
Moore, N. Hudson
Furniture
Many advertisements appear in the papers of men who combined several
vocations, dentistry being one of them, and in 1789 General Washington,
after much pain during the summer, went into the hands of John
Greenwood, dentist, of 56 William Street, New York, who made him a
set of "sea-horse teeth". This had been a very trying summer, and one
newspaper has it that "raw rum has been found exceeding pernicious in
this extreme," and something lighter, like a "Bishop" or "Lawn sleeves"
was recommended, and study of a book published in England called
"Oxford Night-caps" was suggested as furnishing recipes for various
healthful beverages though it was added that the rum had better be
omitted, "as it is very intoxicating, and therefore pernicious."
The President's guests could choose from among Madeira, claret,
champagne, sherry, arrack, spirits, brandy, cordials, porter, beer, and
cider, yet, with it all, unseemly intoxication seems to have been the
exception.
Domestic discipline in New York was enforced on servants, whether bound
or free, by means of an official who was stationed at the calaboose
on the common, and who, for a fee of one shilling, gave a thorough
whipping.
Education was fostered and colleges throve. By 1760 the records state
that the "King's College (Columbia) buildings were so far completed
that the officers and students began to lodge and mess therein."
This was in accordance with the terms of the charter, which further
provided that the students were to wear caps and gowns and to be
within the gates at a certain hour. The plan of education, like our
belongings, was copied from England, and our college was, in the most
material parts, to be like Queen's College, Oxford. The tuition fee
when General Washington entered his step-son, John Parke Custis, there,
was five pounds per annum, with room-rent four pounds, and board at the
rate of eleven shillings weekly.
The late Andrew P. Peabody, writing of college life at Harvard in 1820,
says:
"Coal, just then coming into use, had hardly found its way into
college. The student's rooms, several of the recitation-rooms as
well were heated by open fires. Friction matches, which according
to Faraday were the most useful invention in our age, were not
yet."
He says that the feather-bed was a valuable asset (this article had
held its own for centuries), but that ten dollars would have covered
the other contents of a student's room. It had no carpet, and a pine
bedstead, a washstand, table and desk, and three or four chairs were
all it contained, besides a cannon-ball to be heated on extra-cold
nights, and rolled down stairs on warm ones, "at such time as might
most nearly bisect a proctor's night's sleep."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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