year which was for salt, nails, and the like. Nothing to eat, drink
or wear was bought, as my farm provided all."

The farm food was not varied, it is true, as to-day; for articles of
luxury came by importation. The products of tropical countries, such as
sugar, molasses, tea, coffee, spices, found poor substitutes in home
food-products. Dried pumpkin was a poor sweetening instead of molasses;
maple sugar and honey were not esteemed as was sugar; tea was
ill-replaced by raspberry leaves, loosestrife, hardhack, goldenrod,
dittany, blackberry leaves, yeopon, sage, and a score of other herbs;
coffee was better than parched rye and chestnuts; spices could not be
compensated for or remotely imitated by any substitutes.

So though there was ample quantity of food, the quality, save in the
town, was not such as English housewives had been accustomed to; there
were many deprivations in their kitchens which tried them sorely. The
better cooks they were, the more trying were the limitations. Every
woman with a love for her fellow-woman must feel a thrill of keen
sympathy for the goodwife of Newport, New Hampshire, who had to make her
Thanksgiving mince-pies with a filling of bear's meat and dried
pumpkins, sweetened with maple sugar, and her crust of corn-meal. Her
husband loyally recorded that they were the best mince-pies he ever ate.

As years passed on and great wealth came to individuals, the tables of
the opulent, especially in the Middle colonies, rivalled the luxury of
English and French houses of wealth. It is surprising to read in Dr.
Cutler's diary that when he dined with Colonel Duer in New York in 1787,
there were fifteen kinds of wine served besides cider, beer, and porter.

John Adams probably lived as well as any New Englander of similar
position and means. A Sunday dinner at his house was thus described by
a visitor: the first course was a pudding of Indian meal, molasses, and
butter; then came a course of veal and bacon, neck of mutton, and
vegetables. When the New Englander went to Philadelphia, his eyes opened
wide at the luxury and extravagance of fare. He has given in his diary
some accounts of the lavishness of the Philadelphia larder. Such entries
as these are found:--

(Of the home of Miers Fisher, a young Quaker lawyer.) "This plain
Friend, with his plain but pretty wife with her Thees and Thous,
had provided us a costly entertainment; ducks, hams, chickens,
beef, pig, t