Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1858-10-27

| as business contracts, and upon women this
practice was most oppressive. The power OF
father in the disposal of his daughter was, as
a general rule, absolute. Young people
! sought escape from under this oppression by
| clandestinc matches, and these We're multiplied
| by the uncertain state of the marriage law.
| We pass over the frightful abuses to which
way was made ty a custom that declared ev
cry marriage valid that was performed any
where between persons of any age and under
any circumstances, if it was soleInnised by an
ordained minister of the Protestant and Ro-
man church with the consent of the contract
ing parties. This rule begot Fleet-parsons,
and gave, it was said, the revenue of a bishop
ric to Keith's chapel in May Fair. Three
thousand couples were married in one year at
that chapel. It's advertisements appeared in
the newspaper almost daily, and, through the
year seventeen hundred and fifty, this atroci-
Gus puff was prefixed to them in the Public
Advertiser: ave are informed that Mrs.
Keith's corpse was removed from her hus-
bands house in May Fair, the middle of Octo-
Der last to an apothecary's in South Audley
Street, where she lies in a room hung with
mourning, and is to continue there until Mr..
Keith can attend her funeral"
London streets, in the early days of George
Third, were infested with bold thieves, who
did not scruple TO stop carriages after dark in
the public thoroughfsres. Drunken men were
constantly to be met no well dressed gentle
injury walk mile out of town could not
be taken, even in daytime, without some risk
of being waylaid. In the streets the narrow
footway. until seventeen hundred and sixty
one, separated from the carriage road only by
line of disconnected stakes and posts, set at
wide intervals, was frequently blocked up with
chairs, wheelbarrows, or distractions placed
there for the direct purpose of annoyance.
Carmen and hackney coachmen considered it
good sport to splash clean people from head
TO foot. If terrified woman or bewildered
stranger slipped into the kennel, there were
shouts of triumph and delight. In the road
way the confusion was yet greater. There be-
ing no regulations for traffic, dead locks and
stoppages arose. Loud alterations were then
swollen by the chorus about carriages Of Grip
Piles and beggars, and if there were ladies in a
family coach, some street vocalist was likely
to begin filthy song, of which the refrain
would be taken up by numerous bystanders.
Mobs were common; foreigners were habtu-
ally nsulted sometimes a pickpocket was
hauled TO the pump; sometimes man came
by, shrieking under the lash at the cart tail.
Such is the account given by Mr.. Massey on
his faith as historian, of the condition from
which we have surely worked some little way
upward since the first years of the reign of
George the Third, and in the Lifetime
of his immediate predecessors. For ev-
cry statement in it there is plenty of authori-
ty. 1t is not a complete picture OF those
times, but it is picture of that part of them
which is now dead, and we have copied it for
the plcasurable contemplation Of any one who
is ut all Jealous for a revival of old habits.