among the household furniture, silk beds and hangings, damask table-
cloths, Turkey carpets, pictures, pier-glasses, massive plate, and all
things proper for a noble mansion. Wine was more generally drunk than
now, though by no means to the neglect of ardent spirits. For the
apparel of both sexes, the mercers and milliners imported good store of
fine broadcloths, especially scarlet, crimson, and sky-blue, silks,
satins, lawns, and velvets, gold brocade, and gold and silver lace, and
silver tassels, and silver spangles, until Cornhill shone and sparkled
with their merchandise. The gaudiest dress permissible by modern taste
fades into a Quaker-like sobriety, compared with the deep, rich, glowing
splendor of our ancestors. Such figures were almost too fine to go about
town on foot; accordingly, carriages were so numerous as to require a
tax; and it is recorded that, when Governor Bernard came to the province,
he was met between Dedham and Boston by a multitude of gentlemen in their
coaches and chariots.

Take my arm, gentle reader, and come with me into some street, perhaps
trodden by your daily footsteps, but which now has such an aspect of
half-familiar strangeness, that you suspect yourself to be walking abroad
in a dream. True, there are some brick edifices which you remember from
childhood, and which your father and grandfather remembered as well; but
you are perplexed by the absence of many that were here only an hour or
two since; and still more amazing is the presence of whole rows of wooden
and plastered houses, projecting over the sidewalks, and bearing iron
figures on their fronts, which prove them to have stood on the same sites
above a century. Where have your eyes been that you never saw them
before? Along the ghostly street,--for, at length, you conclude that all
is unsubstantial, though it be so good a mockery of an antique town,--
along the ghostly street, there are ghostly people too. Every gentleman
has his three-cornered hat, either on his head or under his arm; and all