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