e 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.

The governor of New Netherlands at first entertained all visitors to New
Amsterdam at his house in the fort. But as commerce increased he found
this hospitality burdensome, and a Harberg or tavern was built; it was
later used as a city hall.

In England throughout the seventeenth century, and indeed much later,
traversing the great cities by night was a matter of some danger. The
streets were ill-lighted, were full of holes and mud and filth, and were
infested with thieves. Worse still, groups of drunken and dissipated
young men of wealth, calling themselves Mohocks, Scourers, and other
names, roamed the dark streets armed with swords and bludgeons,
assaulting, tormenting, and injuring every one whom they met, who had
the ill fortune to be abroad at night.

There was nothing of that sort known in American cities; there was
little noise or roistering, no highway robbery, comparatively little
petty stealing. The streets were ill-paved and dirty, but not foul with
the accumulated dirt of centuries as in London. The streets in nearly
all cities were unlighted. In 1697 New Yorkers were ordered to have a
lantern and candle hung out on a pole from every seventh house. And as
the watchm