h care
Then added be of spirit a small share.
And that you may the drink quite perfect see
Atop the musky nut must grated be."

Every buffet of people of fashion contained a punch-bowl, every dinner
was prefaced by a bowl of punch, which was passed from hand to hand and
drunk from without intervening glasses. J. Crosby, at the Box of Lemons,
in Boston, sold for thirty years lime juice and shrub and lemons, and
sour oranges and orange juice (which some punch tasters preferred to
lemon juice), to flavor Boston punches.

Double and "thribble" bowls of punch were commonly served, holding
respectively two and three quarts each, and many existing bills show
what large amounts were drunk. Governor Hancock gave a dinner to the
Fusileers at the Merchants' Club, in Boston, in 1792. As eighty dinners
were paid for I infer there were eighty diners. They drank one hundred
and thirty-six bowls of punch, besides twenty-one bottles of sherry and
a large quantity of cider and brandy. An abstract of an election dinner
to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1769, showed two hundred
diners, and seventy-two bottles of Madeira, twenty-eight bottles of
Lisbon wine, ten of claret, seventeen of port, eighteen of porter,
fifteen double bowls of punch and a quantity of cider. The clergy were
not behind the military and the magistrates. In the record of the
ordination of Rev. Joseph McKean, in Beverly, Mass., in 1785, these
items are found in the tavern-keeper's bill:

30 Bowles of Punch before the People went to meeting 3
80 people eating in the morning at 16d 6
10 bottles of wine before they went to meeting 1 10
68 dinners at 3s 10 4
44 bowles of punch while at dinner 4 8
18 bottles of wine 2 14
8 bowles of Brandy 1 2
Cherry Rum 1 10
6 people drank tea 9_d_

The six mild tea-drinkers and their economical beverage seem to put a
finishing and fairly comic touch to this ordination bill. When we read
such renderings of accounts we think it natural that Baron Reidesel
wrote of New England inhabitants, "most of the males have a strong
passion for strong drink, especially rum and other alcoholic beverages."
John Adams said, "if the ancients drank wine as our peo