582 Revieivs of Books
as at English provincial inns and the food was better. In the same period the City Hotel kept by two old bachelors (p. 37) in New York City was a famous hostelry. It was said that Willard never went to bed, but "performed his parts of host, clerk, book-keeper and cashier." Certainly he attended to his business literally; for when he was called out on the great occasion that opened Niblo's Garden, it was found that he had not owned a hat for years.
Coaching [by stage was fairly established about the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1718 (p. 260) Wardwell ran a line from Boston to Rhode Island, now Newport. The first carriages were an extension of a carryall, with seats across, somewhat like the present Concord wagon. The stage-coach proper, developed from the English models, was perfected at Concord, N. H., in 1827. These coaches have gone over the whole world. This method of travel was very romantic and the old driver was hardly inferior to the landlord of the tavern as a social agent.
Our author gives proper emphasis (p. 245) to the evolution of the Conestoga wagon, prairie schooner, army transport, from the days of Braddock's march to its entry into San Francisco. It has embarked at the Golden Gate and probably it will occupy the Philippines, for it is a vehicle of civilization.
The book is the most interesting of Mrs. Earle's writings; but it is not the best arranged. It shows haste and a lack of proportion, the inferior parts crowding and jostling the better portions. There is some confusion in the treatment of different sections of the country, and by confounding periods of time. If pictures are to illustrate and not carry the text, why is there a modern house (p. 23) like Buckman's Tavern, to set forth the Puritan ordinary in its earliest days? The matter being redundant, the text loses by complication of facts drawn from English history. An extended account of life and movement, in tavern and coach, should not be dumped (p. 434) into a graveyard and end abruptly in an epitaph.
But these are minor criticisms. The matter affords important illustrations of history, and the treatment is interesting. The gossiping style accords with the subject in hand, and the author's patient industry sufficiently guarantees the numerous facts. The book is amply illustrated, beautifully printed, and mounted on clumsy paper.
So many of the books on public questions at the present day are written to advocate some particular reform, rather than to set forth the observed facts of political evolution; so many of the authors ought to be classed as political pamphleteers, rather than as students of the science
