ssed strictness in regard to the use of exhilarating
liquors, and I have inspected a tavern-bill rendered to the principal
citizens, for articles of this sort consumed on some joyful public
occasion, at a much later period, the amount of which in quantity, though
not in price, would astonish a modern city council.

At the corner of the street stood an ancient tavern, the principal
establishment of the kind in the place, at which in staging times all the
stage-coaches from Boston and the eastward hauled up to change horses.
It was kept by the father of the popular host of one of the best known of
the long-established New York hotels. I well remember seeing a
considerable body of British sailors halted there for refreshment, under
guard, on their way to some prison in the interior, during the War of
1812. They were true British tars of the traditional type, with immense
clubs of hair, tied up with eel-skins and hanging short and thick down
their necks. They seemed in no wise depressed by their condition and in
fact were treated extremely well, for the general feeling of the town was
decidedly adverse to the war. I also remember a gathering in front of the
tavern, when the evening coach was expected, with the idea of mobbing an
unpopular general officer who was to pass through by that conveyance. But
a better sentiment was inculcated by the more orderly portion of the
assembly, and the obnoxious warrior was not molested, otherwise than by
expressions of dislike, either upon alighting, or when taking his place
to resume his journey. Politics ran very high at the time, almost to the
entire suspension of social relations between the differing parties,--the
Federalists, who opposed the war, and were accused of unpatriotic
sympathy with the cause of the enemy, and the Republicans, often
stigmatized as Jacobins, who were charged with the principles and designs
which had given impulse to the great French Revolution. Doubtless these
parties shared, on the one side and the other, in the hereditary enmity,
long since allayed if not altogether extinguished, between England and
France. But whatever might be the general turn of political sentiment,
both sides felt a patriotic pride in the success of the American arms.
Hence, it is probable, the temper of the crowd assembled to do dishonor
to the unlucky general. While the Republicans were indignant at a
supposed needless national disaster, the Federalists could scarcely
rejoice at it; a