the yard, satinet at twenty-seven and sixpence, maccoboy snuff at eight shillings a pound, coffee at five, writing - paper at four shillings a quire, whiskey at twelve shillings a gallon, Webster's spelling-books at three shillings each, ginger at six shillings a pound, flour at eighteen dollars a barrel, salt at twenty-two-and Colonel Forster might tell the purchaser that, during the six years closing with 1805, to Erie City alone fifteen thousand barrels had been brought from Salina, first by wagon to Black Rock and thence by the lake. Cheese stood at two cents a pound, butter at seven, pork at two, wheat at three shillings a bushel and oats at one, calico at six-and-six the yard, and broadcloth at ten dollars.

Shoemakers, tailoresses, school - masters, packpeddlers, and doctors comprised almost the whole of the travelling population. The doctor had learned his art in a practitioner's office "down East." Patients were bled, purged, and buried. A favorite prescription of Dr. Prendergast* was “2 oz. val. sylv. and caskarel† and epispastic," for which the patient or his estate paid one pound four shillings. The fever-stricken were denied water, but fed bounteously with calomel; the windows in the sick-room were carefully sealed, in order to prevent draughts. Frequent epidemics of small-pox or typhus overran the country.

The school-master was an incipient preacher or physician. In the hollow square of the school

*Of Fredonia, New York.

+ Probably castor-oil.

Limited Curriculum of the Village School

room there raged a perpetual battle between the "master" and the larger boys. The windows were of larded paper, and the puncheon seats kept the children's feet just off the floor. Daball's arithmetic, Webster's spelling-book, the English reader, and quill-pen copies constituted the material for the curriculum. Educational literature did not exist. Seldom were two scholars in the same book or at the same lesson; children were sent to school to learn to read, to write, and to do sums. Schools were maintained by a rate-bill, which might be diminished by boarding the teacher. In the evening he was expected to help the children at their sums, to amuse the household, and, later, to sleep in a frosty bed.

The century was six years old before a court was held in Erie. Judge Yates, as was the custom among members of the State Supreme Court at that time, travelled over the circuit on horseback. In Chautauqua County the foreman and, the secretary of the grand jury paid each a bottle of brandy for the honor of his seat. Taverns were thickly sprinkled over the principal roads, and tavern-keeping was the most profitable business in the country. Strange stories are told about some of these taverns, and the tragedy at Button's Inn has gone into literature.

Erie was made a post-office town in 1798, and the quarterly returns for April, 1805, were sixteen dollars and twenty-eight cents. Between New Amsterdam (now Buffalo) and Erie the road was almost impassable, and the mail, at regular inter

vals, was carried in a handkerchief by a horseman. Two Two years later-1807-mails once a fortnight between Erie and Buffalo were carried by a horseman for one hundred and forty dollars a year. In 1811, John Gray agreed to carry the mail from Buffalo to Cleveland, once in two weeks, for three years, at nine hundred and fifty dollars a year. To-day these cities are six hours apart and correspond by a dozen mails a day.

Five years were to pass before Meadville, Oil Creek, Warren, and Mayville were included in a mail - route. The first quarter of a century was over before a daily stage-line ran from Erie to Buffalo. Often at dead of night the farmer was aroused to help the immigrant, or Colonel Bird's carry-all, out of the sink-hole in the Buffalo road.* Travel by stage was considered peculiarly dangerous. The fare by day, in summer, was four cents a mile; in winter the roads were closed.

In the farm-houses there were no children's books, no toys, no games, no pictures, no musical instruments. The business of life was to work. Each household was a self-sustaining colony-a New England in miniature. Many years passed before planted orchards bore sufficient fruit to make unnecessary the autumnal gathering of wild apples, fox-grapes, and wild plums. The boys gathered ample harvests of beechnuts, butternuts, walnuts, and chestnuts; the girls made stores of dried pump

* Travellers agreed that one of the worst was just west of The Gulf," or Twenty - mile Creek, near the State line-New York and Pennsylvania.

An Aristocracy of Wealth

kins and dried apples. Apple-bees, husking-bees, and quilting-bees were a laborious recreation. In summer might be seen an occasional posy-bed of moss - pinks, marigolds, poppies, lavender, balm, sweet-williams, and summer - savory. Near the door grew lilacs, hollyhocks, and caraway.

In religion, nearly all were Calvinists; in politics, those from the East were Federalists; those from the South, Democratic - Republicans. But religion was of far deeper interest to them than politics. They knew little of the State Legislature and less of Congress. The ideas now embodied in the word nation never occurred to them. Life was a serious business. They had little time to speculate; their wants were pressing and immediate. In 1810 the entire country from Buffalo to Detroit, that now has a population of more than a million, did not have five thousand.

Along the frontier, distinctions in social rank were drawn according to rules unknown in the East. Birth counted for little; wealth levelled all other distinctions. The struggle for existence strengthened individualism. Isolated settlements, such as the older towns in the West were at first, developed a unique aristocracy largely composed of the families of the more prosperous tanners, lumbermen, and farmers, with a few surveyors and civil functionaries, of whom the postmaster and the squire were easily first. The event of the year was training-day, when the raw youth of the district tried their best to understand the noises

hurled at them by their commanding officers. It was thought to be a military age, and easily ran to militia titles. Who in middle life to-day does not remember some large citizen of the days of his childhood who was the colonel or the captainnot merely a colonel or a captain, as in later years. As each militia company elected its officers, titles did not easily run out. In our day men find employment for their surplus social energies in belonging to countless societies, lodges, and associations, and such membership ignores distance. The man who now has a lodge-night six times a week, had he lived then, would have been forced to concentrate his social dissipation upon general musters, election days, and religious meetings.

In the West and Southwest it was easier and more profitable to transport whiskey than corn. The federal collectors hardly ventured over the mountains, and a licensed still was unknown. Drunkenness was the prevailing evil of the times. A grocery-store was usually a liquor-store. In the Northwest some families held slaves, in the early part of the century, in spite of the great Ordinance, and a greater number had colored servants, who, though free by the law, were members of the household and received no wages. In ten years population overspread the greater part of Ohio and Tennessee, crossed the Indiana border in the Southeast, and began to appear along the northern bank of the river; but the Indian country began below the latitude of Indianapolis and