The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-14
Olden Times.

In those days, people drank green tea, and ate
heavy suppers, and went to bed with warming.
pans and DightCaps, and slept on feather beds
with curtains around them, and dreaded fresh air
in their rooms as much as sensible folks now-a-
days dread to be without it. And il they he ard
a noise in the night they got up and groped
about in the dark. and procured light with much
difficulty, with flint and steel, and tinder. box,
and unpleasant sulphur matches. And went TO
the medicine chests, and took calOmel aud blue
pills and salts and senns and jalap and rhubarb.
la those days, the fine gentlemen tipped old ia.
msica and btters in the morning, and lawyers took
their clients to the sidebOards for dram while
the fine ladies lOunged on sofas reading Byron and
Moore and Scott. In those days long, leather fire.
buckets were hung in the entries filled with water
and when FIRE broke out every citizen was
a fireman: In these days gentlemen chewed
tobacco, Indifferent where they expectoratsd,
and ladies cleaned their dental pearls with suuif
and wore thin shoes, and laced themselves into
feminine wasps and consumption. Babies were
put TO sleep with spanking aud paregoric UrchiDs
were fioeged at school a pOste-iOri and subjected
to all sorts of unbeard Of chastisements. Picture
books and toys were dear, and poor. Big boys
pleyed hockey" or, as they called it down
South, handy" in the streets with crooked
sticks and hard wooden balls policemen being un-
known, and went home TO their mothers to have
broken shins annOnted with op0deldOc. Street
lights occurred between schools, and school mas.
ters were prosecuted by the biggest
boys. Young ladies danced nothing but
Virginia reels, in wide entry halls, by the
light of candles that called for snuffsrs
every ten minutes, to music by black fdders or
cracked and jlngling pianos while mothers sat
dsrniDg stockings, and fathers PLAYED backgam-
mon, or gambed and swigged brandy and water
or came home late, roaring bacchanailn songs
end nquiring of their sleepy wives in which
brown parcel the milk was wrapped up. Board
ing-schOO misses in calico gowns practced the
Battle Of Prague, ;" or the "Caph of Bagdadn
or Clementini's "Sonatas" of instruments not
much bigger than modern young lsdy's travel
ing trunk, strung with jsngling wires that were
always swapping; end occasionally chirped Tom
Moores Melodies" or such airs as " Gsily the
Troubsdor," or Pray, Papa, Stay Little
Longer" or I" The Banks of the Blue Mosche.he-
he-helle." Guests sat on hard wooden chairs,
sometimes with their feet up, over roaring
wOOd.fres, "spittin' round. and maxim
'emselves sOciabe," with juleDs, eggnog
apples sDd cider. Every man shaved, wore bell
crowned hat, swallow tailed coat with a horse
collar carried turnp shaped time keeper in his
waisthand, with q heavy seal hanging out, had bis
breecbes pockets full of silver hslf-dollsrs, wore
roundtoed boots and linen shirts cased his throat
with high standing shirt collars; ate all manner Of
nauseOus quack medicines, dned at one o'clock,
some families eating the pudding before the meat;
took maps in the afternOOns-On Sundays pre-.
ferring the pews for that purpOse-had nothing to
say against slavery or rum, took a mesgre weekly
newspaper, smoked "loug-nines" ate fried
oysters and lobster salad, aud drank fiery MADEIRA
or punch at twelve O'Clock at night got his feet
wet on slushy days, took awful colds aud rheuma-
tisms, sent for DR.. Ssngrado, and was bed, bis-
tered and leached: had nightmares, headaches,
dyspepsia, fever, delirium, death, and dsrkened
rooms.