Stage-coach and Tavern Days

Cider Pitcher and Cups.

By the closing years of the seventeenth century nearly all Virginia plantations had an apple orchard. Colonel Fitzhugh had twenty-five hundred apple trees. So quickly did they mature, that six years after the scions were planted, they bore fruit. Many varieties were common, such as russets, costards, pippins, mains, marigolds, kings, and batchelors. So great was the demand for cider in the South that apple orchards were deemed the most desirable leasing property. Cider never reached a higher price, however, than two shillings and a half in Virginia during the seventeenth century. Thus it could be found in the house of every Maryland and Virginia planter. It was supplied to the local courts during their times of sitting. Many households used it in large quantity instead of beer or metheglin, storing many barrels for everyday use.

At a very early date apple trees were set out in New York, and cultivated with much care and much success. Nowhere else in America, says Dankers, the Labadist traveller, had he seen such fine apples. The names of the Newton pippin, the Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie swaar apple, the red streak, guelderleng, and others of well-known quality, show New York’s attention to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swedist naturalist, spoke of the splendid apple orchards which he saw throughout New York in 1749, and told of the use of the horse press in the Hudson Valley for making cider. Cider soon rivalled in domestic use in this province the beer of the Fatherland. It was constantly used during the winter season, and, diluted with water, sweetened and flavored with nutmeg, made a grateful summer drink. Combined with rum, it formed many of the most popular and intoxicating colonial drinks, of which “stone-wall” was the most potent. Cider-royal was made by boiling four barrels of cider into one barrel. P. T. Barnum said cider-spirits was called “gumption.”

A New Hampshire settler carried on his back for twenty miles to his home a load of young apple trees. They thrived and grew apace, and his first crop was eight bushels. From these, he proudly recounted, he made one barrel of cider, one barrel of water-cider, and “one barrel of charming good drink.” Water-cider, or ciderkin, was a very weak, slightly cidery beverage, which was made by pouring water over the solid dregs left after the cider had been pressed from the pomace, and pressing it over again. It was deemed especially suitable for children to drink; sometimes a little molasses and ginger was added to it.

A very mild tavern drink was beverige; its concoction varied in different localities. Sometimes beverige was water-cider or ciderkin; at other times cider, spices, and water. Water flavored with molasses and ginger was called beverige, and is a summer drink for New England country-folk to-day.

Parson’s Tavern.

John Hammond wrote of Virginia in 1656 in his Leah and Rachel:—

“Beare is indeed in some places constantly drunken, in other some nothing but Water or Milk, and Water or Beverige; and that is where the good-wives (if I may so call them) are negligent and idle; for it is not want of Corn to make Malt with, for the Country affords enough, but because they are slothful and careless; and I hope this Item will shame them out of these humours; that they will be adjudged by their drinke, what kind of Housewives they are.”

Vinegar and water—a drink of the ancient Roman soldiery—was also called beverige. Dr. Rush wrote a pamphlet recommending its use by harvest laborers.

Switchel was a similar drink, strengthened with a dash of rum. Ebulum was the juice of elder and juniper berries, spiced and sweetened. Perry was made from pears, and peachy from peaches.

A terrible drink is said to have been popular in Salem. It is difficult to decide which was worse, the drink or its name. It was sour household beer simmered in a kettle, sweetened with molasses, filled with crumbs of “ryneinjun” bread, and drunk piping hot; its name was whistle-belly-vengeance, or whip-belly-vengeance. This name was not a Yankee vulgarism, but a well-known old English term. Bickerdyke says small beer was rightly stigmatized by this name. Dean Swift in his Polite Conversations gives this smart dialogue:—

This would hardly seem a word for “polite conversation,” though it was certainly a term in common use. Its vulgarity is in keen contrast to the name of another “small drink,” a name which brings to the mental vision thoughts of the good cheer, the genial hospitality, the joy of living, of Elizabethan days. A black letter copy of the Loyal Garland, a collection of songs of the seventeenth century, thus names the drink in this gay song:—

“To the Tavern lets away!
There have I a Mistress got,
Cloystered in a Pottle Pot;
Plump and bounding, soft and fair,
Bucksome, sweet and debonair,
And they call her Sack, my Dear!”

It is vain to enter here into a discussion of exactly what sack was, since so much has been written about it. The name was certainly applied to sweet wines from many places. A contemporary authority, Gervayse Markham, says in The English Housewife, “Your best Sackes are of Seres in Spain, your smaller of Galicia or Portugall: your strong Sackes are of the islands of the Canaries.”

Sack was, therefore, a special make of the strong, dry, sweet, light-colored wines of the sherry family, such as come from the South, from Portugal, Spain, and the Canary Islands. By the seventeenth century the name was applied to all sweet wines of this class, as distinguished from Rhenish wines on one hand and red wines on the other. Many do not wish to acknowledge that sack was sherry, but there was little distinction between them. Sherris-sack, named by Shakespeare, was practically also sherry.

Sack was so cheap that it could be used by all classes. From an original license granted by Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1584, to one Bradshaw to keep a tavern we learn that sack was then worth two shillings a gallon.

Toby Fillpots.

Perhaps the most famous use of sack was in the making of sack-posset, that drink of brides, of grooms, of wedding and christening parties. A rhymed rule for sack-posset found its way into many collections, and into English and American newspapers. It is said to have been written by Sir Fleetwood Fletcher. It was thus printed in the New York Gazette of February 13, 1744:—

Sack was drunk in America during the first half-century of colonial life. It was frequently imported to Virginia; and all the early instructions for the voyage cross-seas, such as Governor Winthrop’s to his wife and those of the Plymouth Plantations, urge the shipping of sack for the sailors. Even in Judge Sewall’s day, a century after the planting of Boston, sack-posset was drunk at Puritan weddings, but a psalm and a prayer made it properly solemn. Judge Sewall wrote of a Boston wedding:—

Flip Glasses and Nutmeg Holders.

Canary soon displaced sack in popular affection, and many varieties of closely allied wines were imported. Sir Edmund Andros named in his excise list “Fayal wines, or any other wines of the Western Islands, Madeira, Malaga, Canary, Tent, and Alcant.” Claret was not popular. The consumption of sweet wines was astonishing, and the quality was exceeding good. Spiced wines were much sold at taverns, sangaree and mulled wines. Brigham’s Tavern at Westborough had a simple recipe for mulled wine: simply a quart of boiling hot Madeira, half a pint of boiling water, six eggs beaten to a froth, all sweetened and spiced. Nutmeg was the favorite flavoring, and nutmegs gilded and beribboned were an esteemed gift. The importation of them was in early days wholly controlled by the Dutch. High livers—bon vivants—carried nutmegs in their pockets, fashionable dames also. One of the prettiest trinkets of colonial times is the dainty nutmeg holder, of wrought silver or Battersea enamel, just large enough to hold a single nutmeg. The inside of the cover is pierced or corrugated to form a grater. The ones now before me, both a century and a half old, when opened exhale a strong aroma of nutmeg, though it is many a year since they have been used. With a nutmeg in a pocket holder, the exquisite traveller, whether man or woman, could be sure of a dainty spiced wine flavored to taste; “atop the musky nut could grated be,” even in the most remote tavern, for wine was everywhere to be found, but nutmegs were a luxury. Negus, a washy warm wine-punch invented in Queen Anne’s day by Colonel Negus, was also improved by a flavoring of nutmeg.

CHAPTER VII

The shops in Boston were known by sign-boards. In 1761 Daniel Parker, goldsmith, was at the Golden Ball, William Whitmore, grocer, at the Seven Stars, Susannah Foster was “next the Great Cross,” and John Loring, chemist, at the Great Trees. One hatter had a “Hatt & Beaver,” another a “Hatt & Helmit”; butter was sold at the “Blue Glove” and “Brazen Head”; dry-goods at the “Sign of the Stays” and at the “Wheat Sheaf”; rum at the “Golden Keys”; pewter ware at the “Crown and Beehive”; knives at the “Sign of the Crown and Razor.” John Crosby, for many years a noted lemon trader, had as a sign a basket of lemons. In front of a nautical instrument store on the corner of State and Broad streets, Boston, still stands a quaint wooden figure of an ancient naval officer resplendent in his blue coat, cocked hat, short breeches, stockings, and buckles, holding in his hand a quadrant. The old fellow has stood in this place, continually taking observations of the sun, for upwards of one hundred years. It will be seen that these signs were often incongruous and non-significant, both as to their relation to the business they indicated, and in the association of objects which they depicted.

A rhyme printed in the British Apollo in 1710 notes the curious combination of names on London sign-boards:—

“I’m amazed at the signs
As I pass through the town;
To see the odd mixture
A Magpie and Crown,
The Whale and the Crow,
The Razor and Hen,
The Leg and Seven Stars,
The Axe and the Bottle,
The Sun and the Lute,
The Eagle and Child,
The Shovel and Boot.”

Addison wrote nearly two centuries ago on the absurdity and incongruity of these sign-boards, in The Spectator of April 2, 1710. He says, advocating a censorship of sign-boards:—

“Our streets are filled with blue boars, black swans, and red lions; not to mention flying pigs, and hogs in armour, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. My first task therefore should be like that of Hercules, to clear the city from monsters. In the second place I would forbid that creatures of jarring and incongruous natures should be joined together in the same sign; such as the bell and the neat’s tongue; the dog and the gridiron. The fox and goose may be supposed to have met, but what have the fox and the seven stars to do together? And when did the lamb and dolphin ever meet, except upon a sign-post? As for the cat and fiddle there is a conceit in it, and therefore I do not intend that anything I have said should affect it. I must, however, observe to you upon this subject, that it is usual for a young tradesman, at his first setting up, to add to his sign that of the master whom he has served; as the husband, after marriage, gives a place to his mistress’s arms in his own coat. This I take to have given rise to many of those absurdities which are committed over our heads; and as, I am informed, first occasioned the three nuns and a hare, which we see so frequently joined together.”

Many of the apparently meaningless names on tavern signs come through the familiar corruptions of generations of use, through alterations both by the dialect of speakers and by the successive mistakes of ignorant sign-painters. Thus “The Bag o’ Nails,” a favorite sign, was originally “The Bacchanalians.” The familiar “Cat and Wheel” was the “Catherine Wheel,” and still earlier “St. Catherine’s Wheel,” in allusion to the saint and her martyrdom. The “Goat and Compass” was the motto “God encompasseth us.” “The Pig and Carrot” was the “Pique et Carreau” (the spade and diamond in playing cards). Addison thus explains the “Bell Savage,” a common sign in England, usually portrayed by an Indian standing beside a bell. “I was formerly very much puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading of an old romance translated out of the French, which gives an account of a very beautiful woman who was found in a wilderness, and is called in French, La Belle Sauvage, and is everywhere translated by our countrymen the Bell Savage.”

“The Bull and Mouth” celebrates in corrupt wording the victory of Henry VIII. in “Boulougne Mouth” or Harbor. In London the Bull and Mouth Inn was a famous coach office, and the sign-board bore these lines:—

“Milo the Cretonian
An ox slew with his fist,
And ate it up at one meal,
Ye Gods! what a glorious twist.”

Twist was the old cant term for appetite.

The universal use of sign-boards furnished employment to many painters of inferior rank, and occasionally even to great artists, who, either as a freak of genius, to win a wager, to crown a carouse, or perhaps to earn with ease a needed sum, painted a sign-board. At the head of this list is Hogarth. Richard Wilson painted “The Three Loggerheads” for an ale-house in North Wales. George Morland has several assigned to him: “The Goat in Boots,” “The White Lion,” “The Cricketers.” Ibbetson paid his bill to Landlord Burkett after a sketching and fishing excursion by a sign with one pale and wan face and one equally rubicund. The accompanying lines read:—

“Thou mortal man that livest by bread,
What makes thy face to look so red?
Thou silly fop that looks so pale,
’Tis red with Tommy Burkett’s ale.”

Gérôme, Cox, Harlow, and Millais swell the list of English sign-painters, while Holbein, Correggio, Watteau, Gerriault, and Horace Vernet make a noble company. The splendid “Young Bull” of Paul Potter, in the museum of The Hague, is said to have been painted for a butcher’s sign.

Benjamin West painted many tavern signs in the vicinity of Philadelphia, among them in 1771 that of the Three Crowns, a noted hostelry that stood on the King’s Highway in Salisbury Township, Lancaster County. This neighborhood was partly settled by English emigrants, and the old tavern was kept by a Tory of the deepest dye. The sign-board still bears the marks of the hostile bullets of the Continental Army, and the proprietor came near sharing the bullets with the sign. This Three Crowns was removed in 1816 to the Waterloo Tavern, kept by a relative of the old landlord. The Waterloo Tavern was originally the Bull’s Head, and was kept by a Revolutionary officer. Both sides of the Three Crowns sign-board are shown on page 143. By tradition West also painted the sign-board of the old Hat Tavern shown on page 147. This was kept by Widow Caldwell in Leacock Township, Lancaster County, on the old Philadelphia road.

The Bull’s Head Inn of Philadelphia had a sign suited to its title; it was sold in the middle of this century to an Englishman as the work of Benjamin West. The inn stood in Strawberry Alley, and West once lived in the alley; and so also did Bernard Wilton, a painter and glazier, in the days when the inn was young and had no sign-board. And as the glazier sat one day in the taproom, a bull ran foaming into the yard and thrust his head with a roar in the tavern window. The glazier had a ready wit, and quoth he: “This means something. This bull thrust his head in as a sign, so it shall be the sign of the inn, and bring luck and custom forever.” I think those were his words; at any rate, those were the deeds.

West also painted the “Ale Bearers.” One side had a man holding a glass of ale and looking through it. The other side showed two brewers’ porters carrying an ale cask slung with case hooks on a pole—as was the way of ale porters at that day. It is said that West was offered five hundred dollars for a red lion sign-board he had painted in his youth. In the vicinity of Philadelphia several taverns claimed to have sign-boards painted by the Peales and by Gilbert Stuart, and an artist named Hicks is said to have contributed some wonderful specimens to this field of art.

Browne’s Hall, Danvers, Massachusetts, 1743.

General Wolfe was a favorite name and figure for pre-Revolutionary taverns and sign-boards. There was a Wolfe Tavern near Faneuil Hall in Boston; and the faded sign-board of the Wolfe Tavern of Brooklyn, Connecticut, is shown on page 211 as it swung when General Israel Putnam was the tavern landlord. These figures of the English officer were usually removed as obnoxious after the Declaration of Independence. But the Wolfe Tavern at Newburyport continued to swing the old sign “in the very centre of the place to be an insult to this truly republican town.” This sign is shown in its spruce freshness on page 180. It is a great contrast to “Old Put’s” Wolfe sign-board.

A Philadelphia tavern with a clumsy name, though a significant one, was the Federal Convention of 1787 Inn. I cannot imagine any band of tavern tipplers or jovial roisterers ever meeting there, but it was doubtless used for political gatherings. It had a most pretentious sign painted by Matthew Pratt, a pupil of Benjamin West. It was said that his signs were painted in a style that should have given them place in a picture gallery, had it not been that the galleries of those days were few, and artists found their most lucrative employment in painting signs for taverns and stores. This inn kept first by a man named Hanna, then by George Poppal, was at 178 South Street, near Fifth Street. The sign was a painting of the National Convention which met May 14, 1787, in the State House or Independence Hall to frame the Constitution of the United States. George Washington was president, Mayor William Jackson was secretary. The convention met in the East Room, which was distinctly and correctly represented on the sign-board; its wainscoting, the Ionic pilasters supporting a full entablature beneath a coved ceiling, all were taken down by a “Commissioner of Repairs,” and all now are happily reproduced and restored. On one side of the sign-board Washington was seen seated under the panel bearing the arms of Pennsylvania. The dignified Judge Wilson occupied the chair, and Franklin sat near. All the heads were portraits. On both sides of the sign-board were the lines:—

“These thirty-eight men together have agreed
That better times to us shall very soon succeed.”

Watson, writing in 1857, tells of the end of this historic sign-board:—

“This invaluable sign, which should have been copied by some eminent artist and engraved for posterity, was bandied about like the Casa Santa of Lorretto from post to pillar till it located at South Street near the Old Theatre. The figures are now completely obliterated by a heavy coat of brown paint on which is lettered Fed. Con. 1787.”

Hat Tavern and Sign-board.

This offence against historic decency can be added to the many other crimes against good taste which lie heavily on the account of the middle of the nineteenth century. The fin du siècle has many evils which are daily rehearsed to us; but the middle of the century was an era of bad taste, dulness, affected and melancholic sentimentality and commonplaceness in dress, architecture, household furnishings, literature, society, and art—let us turn from it with haste. It is equalled only in some aspects by some of the decades of dulness in England in the reign of George III.

Another sign-board painted by Woodside is described in Philadelphia newspapers of August, 1820:—

The Revolutionary War developed originality in American tavern signs. The “King’s Arms,” “King’s Head,” “St. George and the Dragon,” and other British symbols gave place to rampant American eagles and portraits of George Washington. Every town had a Washington Tavern, with varied Washington sign-boards. That of the Washington Hotel at Salem, Massachusetts, is on page 63.

The landlord of the Washington Inn at Holmesburg, Pennsylvania, one James Carson, issued this address in 1816:—

“Ye good and virtuous Americans—come! whether business or pleasure be your object—call and be refreshed at the sign of Washington. Here money and merit will secure you respect and honor, and a hearty welcome to choice liquors and to sumptuous fare. Is it cold? You shall find a comfortable fire. Is it warm? Sweet repose under a cool and grassy shade. In short, every exertion shall be made to grace the sign of the hero and statesman who was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

On Beach Street a tavern, with the name Washington Crossing the Delaware, had as a sign-board a copy of Sully’s famous picture. This must have been a costly luxury. A similar one used as a bridge sign-board is on page 239.

About 1840 one Washington Tavern in Philadelphia, on Second and Lombard streets, displayed a sign which was a novelty at that time. It was what was known as a “slat-sign”; perpendicular strips or slats were so set on the sign that one view or picture was shown upon taking a full front view, a second by looking at it from one side, a third from the other. The portrait of Washington and other appropriate pictures were thus shown.

Other patriotic designs became common,—the Patriotic Brothers having a sign representing the Temple of Liberty with weapons of war. On the steps of the temple a soldier and sailor grasp hands, with the motto, “Where Liberty dwells, there is my country.”

A very interesting sign is in the possession of the Connecticut Historical Society. It is shown on page 28. This sign is unusual in that it is carved in good outline on one side with the British coat of arms, and on the other a full-rigged ship under full sail, flying the Union Jack. At the top on each side are the letters U. A. H., and 1766. It is enclosed in a heavy frame, with heavy hangers of iron keyed to suspend from a beam.

The initials U. A. H. stand for Uriah and Ann Hayden, who kept the tavern for which this board was the sign. It stood near the river in Essex, then Pettspung Parish, in the town of Saybrook, Connecticut. The sign was relegated to a garret when the British lion and unicorn were in such disrepute in the new land of freedom, and, being forgotten, was thus preserved to our own day.

An old sign shown on pages 151 and 153 swung for nearly a century by the roadside before a house called Bissell’s Tavern, at Bissell’s Ferry, East Windsor, Connecticut. Originally it bore an elaborate design of thirteen interlacing rings, each having in its centre the representation of some tree or plant peculiar to the state it designated. These interlacing links surrounded the profile portrait of George Washington. Above this was the legend, “The 13 United States.” Beneath this, “Entertainment by David Bissell, A.D. 1777.” Ten years later the words David Bissell were painted out and E. Wolcott substituted. The date 1787 was also placed in both upper corners of the board. In 1801 the sign and house came to Joseph Phelps. A new design was given: a copy of the first gold eagle of 1795, and on the other the reverse side of same coin and the name J. Phelps. In 1816 J. Pelton bought the Ferry Tavern, and he painted out all of J. Phelps’s name save the initials, which were his own. He hung the sign on the limb of a big elm tree over the Ferry road.

Arad Stratton, who kept the old tavern at Northfield Farms, had a splendid eagle on his sign-board, which is shown on page 140. This tavern built in 1724 was pulled down in 1820.

William Pitt’s face and figure frequently appeared on sign-boards. One is shown on page 156 which hung at the door of the Pitt Tavern in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This tavern was kept from 1808 to 1838 by Landlord Henry Diffenbaugh. The sign-board was painted by an artist named Eicholtz, a pupil of Sully and of Gilbert Stuart, whose work he imitated and copied.

A small, single-storied ancient tavern used to stand near the old Swedes’ church. Over the door was a sign with an old hen with a brood of chickens; an eagle hovered over them with a crown in its beak; the inscription was: “May the Wings of Liberty cover the Chickens of Freedom, and pluck the Crown from the Enemy’s Head.” This was a high flight of fancy, and the Hen and Chickens was doubtless vastly admired in those days of high sentiment and patriotism after the Revolution.

Lafayette and Franklin showed their fame in many a sign-board. When the sign of the Franklin Inn was set up in Philadelphia in 1774, it bore this couplet:—

“Come view your patriot father! and your friend,
And toast to Freedom and to slavery’s end.”

John Hancock was another popular patriot seen on tavern signs. The sign-board which hung for many years before John Duggan’s hostelry, the Hancock Tavern in Corn Court, is shown on page 110. This portrait crudely resembles one of Hancock, by Copley, and is said to have been painted by order of Hancock’s admirer, Landlord Duggan. At Hancock’s death it was draped with mourning emblems. It swung for many years over the narrow alley shown on page 182, till it blew down in a heavy wind and killed a citizen. Then it was nailed to the wall, and thereby injured. It was preserved in Lexington Memorial Hall, but has recently been returned to Boston.

It was natural that horses, coaches, and sporting subjects should be favorites for tavern signs. A very spirited one is that of the Perkins Inn, at Hopkinton, New Hampshire, dated 1786, and showing horse, rider, and hounds. The Williams Tavern of Centrebrook, Connecticut, stood on the old Hartford and Saybrook turnpike. One side of its swinging sign displayed a coach and horses. It is shown on page 400. The other, on page 396, portrays a well-fed gentleman seated at a well-spread table sedately drinking a glass of wine. Sign-boards with figures of horses were common, such as that of the Hays Tavern, page 65; of the Conkey Tavern, page 190; of Mowry’s Inn, page 57; and of the Pembroke Tavern, page 217.

Of course beasts and birds furnished many symbols for sign painters. On the site where the Northfield Seminary buildings now stand, stood until 1880 the old Doolittle Tavern. It was on the main-travelled road from Connecticut through Massachusetts to southern New Hampshire and Vermont. Its sign-board, dated 1781, is on page 158. It bore a large rabbit and two miniature pine trees.

Joseph Cutter, a Revolutionary soldier, kept an inn in Jaffray, New Hampshire, on the “Brattleboro’ Pike” from Boston. His sign-board bore the figure of a demure fox. It is shown on page 412.

Indian chiefs were a favorite subject for sign-boards; three are here shown, one on page 203, from the Stickney Tavern of Concord, New Hampshire; another on page 382, from the Wells Tavern at Greenfield Meadows, Massachusetts; a third on page 310, from the Tarleton Inn of Haverhill, New Hampshire.

Two Beehive Taverns, one in Philadelphia, one in Frankford, each bore the sign-board a beehive with busy bees. The motto on the former, “By Industry We Thrive,” was scarcely so appropriate as—

“Here in this hive we’re all alive,
Good liquor makes us funny.
If you are dry, step in and try
The flavor of our honey.”

The sign-board of Walker’s Tavern, a famous house of entertainment in Charlestown, New Hampshire, is shown on page 162. It bears a beehive and bees. This sign is now owned by the Worcester Society of Antiquity.

The Washington Hotel, at the corner of Sixth and Carpenter streets, had several landlords, and in 1822 became the New Theatre Hotel. Woodside painted a handsome sign, bearing a portrait of the famous old actor and theatrical manager, William Warren, as Falstaff, with the inscription, “Shall I not take mine ease at my inn?” A writer in the Despatch says the tavern did not prosper, though its rooms were let for meetings of clubs, societies, audits, and legal proceedings. It was leased by Warren himself in 1830, and still the tavern decayed. He left it and died, and the fine sign-board faded, and was succeeded by the plain lettering, Fallstaff Inn, and the appropriate motto, chosen by Warren, gave place to “Bring me a cup of sack, Hal.” The place was a “horrible old rattletrap,” and was soon and deservedly demolished.

The Raleigh Inn, in Third Street, showed the story of the servant throwing water over the nobleman at the sight of smoke issuing from his mouth. This was a favorite tale of the day, and the portrayal of it may be seen in many an old-time picture-book for children.

On Thirteenth Street, near Locust, was a sign copied from a London one:—

“I William McDermott lives here,
I sells good porter, ale, and beer,
I’ve made my sign a little wider
To let you know I sell good cider.”

On the Germantown road the Woodman Tavern had a sign-board with a woodman, axe, and the following lines:—

“In Freedom’s happy land
My task of duty done,
In Mirth’s light-hearted band
Why not the lowly woodman one?”

The Yellow Cottage was a well-known Philadelphia tavern, half citified, half countrified. Its sign read:—

“Rove not from sign to sign, but stop in here,
Where naught exceeds the prospect but the beer.”

These lines were a paraphrase of the witty and celebrated sign, said to have been written by Dean Swift for a barber who kept a public house:—

“Rove not from pole to pole, but stop in here,
Where naught excels the shaving but the beer.”

Sir Walter Scott, in his Fortunes of Nigel, gives this version as a chapter motto:—

“Rove not from pole to pole—the man lives here,
Whose razor’s only equalled by his beer.”

Entering a large double gate, the passer-by who was seduced by this sign of the Yellow Cottage walked up a grand walk to this cottage, which was surrounded by a brick pavement about five feet wide which was closely bordered in front and sides by lilac bushes and some shrubs called “Washington’s bowers.” These concealed all the lower story on three sides except the front entrance. If you could pass the bar, you could go out the back entrance to a porch which extended across the back of the house. Here card-playing, dominos, etc., constantly went on; thence down a sloping field, at the end of the field, was an exit. On one side of this field was a stable, chicken-house, and pens which always held for view a fat hog or ox or some unusual natural object. Shooting parties were held here; quoit-playing, axe-throwing, weight-lifting, etc.; and it had also a charming view of the river.

Biblical names were not common on tavern sign-boards. “Adam and Eveses Garden” in Philadelphia was not a Garden of Eden. This was and is a common title in England. Noah’s Ark seems somewhat inappropriate. The Angel had originally a religious significance. The Bible and Peacock seems less appropriate than the Bible and Key, for divination by Bible and key has ever been as universal in America as in England.

In Philadelphia, on Shippen Street, between Third and Fourth, was a tavern sign representing a sailor and a woman, separated by these two lines:—

“The sea-worn sailor here will find
The porter good, the treatment kind.”

No doubt thirsty tars found this sign most attractive; more so, I am sure, than the pretentious sign of Lebanon Tavern, corner of Tenth and South streets. This sign was painted by the artist Pratt. On one side was Neptune in his chariot, surrounded by Tritons; underneath the lines:—

“Neptune with his triumphant host
Commands the ocean to be silent,
Smooths the surface of its waters,
And universal calm succeeds.”

On the other side a marine view of ships, etc., with the lines:—

“Now calm at sea and peace on land
Have blest our Continental stores,
Our fleets are ready, at command,
To sway and curb contending powers.”

As the sign purveyor dropped easily into verse, albeit of the blankest type, these lines surmounted the door:—

“Of the waters of Lebanon
Good cheer, good chocolate, and tea,
With kind entertainment
By John Kennedy.”

Chocolate and tea seem but dull bait to lure the sailor of that day. The Three Jolly Sailors showed their cheerful faces on a sign-board appropriately found on Water Street. One of the tars was busy strapping a block, and the legend below read:—

“Brother Sailor! please to stop
And lend a hand to strap this block;
For if you do not stop or call,
I cannot strap this block at all.”

In Castleford, England, the Three Jolly Sailors has a different rhyme:—

“Coil up your ropes and anchor here,
Till better weather does appear.”

In Boston the Ship in Distress was a copy of a famous sign-board which hung in Brighton, England, a century ago. Both had the appealing lines:—

“With sorrows I am compassed round,
Pray lend a hand, my ship’s aground.”

Tippling-houses in both Philadelphia and Boston had a sign-board painted with a tree, a bird, a ship, and a can of beer, and these quaint lines, an excellent tavern rhyme:—

“This is the tree that never grew,
This is the bird that never flew,
This is the ship that never sailed,
This is the mug that never failed.”

Other Philadelphia sign-boards of especial allurement to sailors were “The Wounded Tar,” “The Top-Gallant,” “The Brig and Snow,” “The Jolly Sailors,” “The Two Sloops,” “The Boatswain and Call,” and “The Dolphin.” The sign-board of the Poore Tavern (page 405) shows a ship under full sail.

In a small Philadelphia alley running from Spruce Street to Lock Street, was a sign-board lettered “A Man Full of Trouble.” It bore also a picture of a man on whose arm a woman was leaning, and a monkey was perched on his shoulder, and a bird, apparently a parrot, stood on his hand. The woman carried a bandbox, on the top of which sat a cat. This sign has a long history. It was copied from the famous sign-board of an old ale-house still in Oxford Street, London; (it is here shown, opposite this page). It is said to have been painted by Hogarth; at any rate, it is valued enough to be specified in the lease of the premises as one of the fixtures. The name by which it is known in London is The Man Loaded with Mischief. The bird is a magpie, and the woman holds a glass of gin in her hand. In the background at one side is a pot-house, at the other a pawnbroker’s shop. The engraving of this sign is signed “Drawn by Experience, Engraved by Sorrow,” and the rhyme:—

“A monkey, a magpie, and a wife
Is the true emblem of strife.”

A similar sign is in Norwich, another in Blewbury, England. One inn is called The Mischief Inn, the other The Load of Mischief. Still another, at Cambridge, England, showed the man and woman fastened together with a chain and padlock. A kindred French sign-board is called Le trio de Malice (the trio being a cat, woman, and monkey).

An old Philadelphia tavern on Sixth Street, below Catherine Street, had the curious name, The Four Alls. The meaning was explained by the painting on the sign, which was a very large one. It represented a palace, on the steps of which stood a king, an officer in uniform, a clergyman in gown and bands, and a laborer in plain dress. The satirical inscription read:—

“1. King—I govern All.
2. General—I fight for All.
3. Minister—I pray for All.
4. Laborer—And I pay for All.”