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126 of communicating these details to the world. Women danced at the redcoat balls, or curtsied and yawned at Mrs. Washington's receptions, and then went home and confided their experiences either to their friends, in long, gossiping letters, or to the secret pages of their diaries. It was a lamentable waste of "copy," but a saving of dignity and self-respect.

As for the earlier, easier days, when the infant colonies waxed fat on beef and ale, literary aspirations had not then begun to afflict the hearts of men. It is delightful to think how well little Philadelphia, like New York, got along without so much as a printing press, when she had starved out her only printer, Bradford,—a most troublesome and seditious person,—and sent him over to little Boston, which even then had more patience than her neighbours with books. Yet all this time, honest citizens were transcribing in letters and in journals whatever was of daily interest or importance to them; and it is by help of these letters and these journals that we now look back upon that placid past, and realize the every-day existence of ordinary people,