Pipowder Courts.
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The lovers for further flight buckled, Or else perchance fell on their knees. The bishop said nothing, but chuckled, And fondled his bottle and fees. All possible troubles that try men He drowned in a midnight debauch, — The high-priest of virtue and Hymen, Whose bellows-flame kindled the torch.
PIPOWDER COURTS. A WRITER, in a recent number of the New York " Evening Post," gives the following interesting account of a curious old English custom which was transplanted in colonial times to the soil of South Caro lina, where it appears to have flourished until late in the last century. Historians have had frequent occasion to remark that, owing to the Cavalier influence under which they were settled, instances and survivals of the older English customs are much more frequently to be met with in studying life in the southern colonies of North America than in the northern. It was but natural for the Cavaliers who settled Virginia and South Carolina to strive to per petuate the old institutions from which their families had derived their greatness, and which at that time were beginning to be treated with contempt by the growing powers in England. It is remarkable, how ever, when we find them attempting to revive ancient social and commercial customs of the realm which had by common consent passed out of use almost centuries before. Such instances are by no means rare; we know that the Earl of Shaftesbury and his co-proprietors of Carolina seriously at tempted to transplant the entire feudal system to the shores of the New World, and several other instances of a like, though scarcely so radical, nature can be cited. Among the most interesting of them are the 34
regulations for conducting the internal com merce of the colonies. As late as 1738 the same rules and customs regarding the hold ing of public fairs obtained in South Caro lina as had governed such institutions in England in the twelfth century, although in the mother-country they had long before fallen into disuse. In former times in England a public fair could only be held by virtue of a special grant from the King, or of immemorial custom; and the Carolinians, as far as was possible, revived the old usage and, with an extravagance of conservatism, clung to it almost down to the period of the Revolution. Of course, they could not claim the right of immemorial custom, and did not have the assurance to apply to the King for grants, but they fell back on the authority of the Colonial Assembly, and required a special legislative act for the holding of a public fair or market anywhere in the province. In 1723, soon after the colony was attached to the crown, the internal trade had increased so greatly that it became necessary to adopt some regulations to facilitate commerce among the people. Accordingly three towns — thriving centres of life at that time, but now long since dead and almost for gotten — Childsberry, Dorchester, and Ash ley River Ferry Town, were, by acts of the Assembly, constituted market-towns, where two annual fairs were to be held, " together
