PENSYLVANIA 113 



cursed with exclusive guild-rights and the police is not 

 bribed. The Americans on the whole, like the English, 

 consume more meat than vegetables and the market 

 furnishes them the choicest store, cut very neatly. Be- 

 sides the customary sorts of meat, Europeans find in 

 season several dishes new to them, such as raccoons, 

 opossums, fish-otters, bear-bacon, and bear's foot &c, as 

 well as many indigenous birds and fishes. In products 

 of the garden the market although plentiful is not of 

 great variety, for divers of our better European cab- 

 bages and other vegetables are lacking ; on the other 

 hand all sorts of melons and many kinds of pumpions 

 are seen in great quantity, and fruits also. I have by 

 me no prices-current of the Philadelphia market, but 

 I remember that at the time the best butchers' meat 

 cost only four pence, in the same market where we had 

 paid 15 times as much in the year 1778, 3 shillings 9 

 pence Pensylv. Current , that is, to 4 shillings ; and not- 

 withstanding that prices of provisions have in general 

 not fallen to the low level customary before the war, 

 for not more than a guinea a week a room could be had 

 in several of the public houses, with breakfast, plentiful 

 dinner, and supper, and in private boarding-houses for 

 less or more as one preferred. 



The war has left no sign of want here ; now, as be- 

 fore, the same exuberant plenty prevails. The in- 

 habitants are not only well clothed but well fed, and, 

 comparatively, better than their betters in Europe. 

 Few families can be found who do not enjoy daily their 

 fine wheat-bread, good meats and fowls, cyder, beer, 

 and rum. Want oppresses but few. Work is rewarded 

 and there is no need of catch-pole beadles. 



While the war still lasted several institutions were 

 8 



