Note 876 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
"It took a good deal of New England rum to launch a 75 ton schooner ... to raise a barn ... or to ordain a regular minister.... Workingmen in the fields, in the woods, in the mills and handling logs and lumber on the river were supplied with regular rations of spirits." (Maine Hist. Soc. Col. (2d Series), vi, 367-68.)
The rich people of Boston loved picnic parties in the near-by country, at which was served "Punch, warm and cold, before dinner; excellent beef, Spanish and Bordeaux wines, cover their tables ... Spruce beer, excellent cyder, and Philadelphia porter precede the wines." (De Warville, 58.) This inquiring Frenchman called on Hancock, but found that he had a "marvelous gout which dispenses him from all attentions and forbids the access to his house." (Ib., 66.) As to New England country stores, "you find in the same shop, hats, nails, liquors." (Ib., 127.)