Note 76 — Chapter I
Reading edition
As in Massachusetts, for instance. "In most country towns ... you will find almost every other house with a sign of entertainment before it.... If you sit the evening, you will find the house full of people, drinking drams, flip, toddy, carousing, swearing." (John Adams's Diary, describing a New England county, in 1761; Works: Adams, ii, 125-26. The Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, now in process of publication by the Essex Institute, contain many cases that confirm the observation of Adams.)