were placed on the table in profusion, as well as puddings and desserts
numerous and deadly. Dinners were served usually in the afternoon. The
splendid banquet which Adams describes as given to some members of the
Continental Congress by Chief Justice Chew at his country seat was held
at four in the afternoon. The dinner hour was still in the afternoon
long after the Revolution and down to the times of the Civil War. Other
relics of this old love of good living lasted into modern times. It
was not so very long ago that an occasional householder of wealth and
distinction in Philadelphia could still be found who insisted on doing
his own marketing in the old way, going himself the first thing in the
morning on certain days to the excellent markets and purchasing all the
family supplies. Philadelphia poultry is still famous the country over;
and to be a good judge of poultry was in the old days as much a point of
merit as to be a good judge of Madeira. A typical Philadelphian, envious
New Yorkers say, will still keep a line of depositors waiting at a bank
while he discourses to the receiving teller on what a splendid purchase
of poultry he had made that morning. Early in the last century a wealthy
leader of the bar is said to have continued the old practice of going
to market followed by a negro with a wheelbarrow to bring back the
supplies. Not content with feasting in their own homes, the colonial
Philadelphians were continually banqueting at the numerous taverns, from
the Coach and Horses, opposite the State House, down to the Penny
Pot Inn close by the river. At the Coach and Horses, where the city
elections were usually held, the discarded oyster shells around it had
been trampled into a hard white and smooth floor over which surged the
excited election crowds. In those taverns the old fashion prevailed of
roasting great joints of meat on a turnspit before an open fire; and to
keep the spit turning before the heat little dogs were trained to work
in a sort of treadmill cage.

In nothing is this colonial prosperity better revealed than in the
quality of the country seats. They were usually built of stone and
sometimes of brick and stone, substantial, beautifully proportioned,
admirable in taste, with a certain simplicity, yet indicating a people
of wealth, leisure, and refinement, who believed in themselves and
took pleasure in adorning their lives. Not a few of these homes on
the outskirts of the city have come down t