The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-11-06
Forty Years AGO.


The trunk of the period was covered
with sealskin, the bristly hair outward,
and studded with small brass nails.
The baggage-smasher had barely been
developed. Valises were long and
narrow. Saddle-bags were not out Of
date.
City hotels called the guests to meals
by the gong or dinner-bell The land
lord sat at the head of the table and
carved the breakfast steak. The guests
dined together all at the same hour.
Dinner was served with great parade
and formality. The walters removed
the covers from the chatting dishes at
given signal, bore them aloft out of the
room then reappeared again and carried
off the dishes to be carved at side-tables.
The splendors of the Astor House were
almost reverentially talked Of in country
homes. Hordes of ragged girls and
boys infested the hotel corridors offering
toothpicks for sale. Without older
boys beset the countryman, whisking
under his nose copies of dubious books
filed with colored prints. They carried
their stock, wrapped in brown paper,
by the basketful.
The oyster saloon of that time was
furnished with stalls and curtained
recesses, affording parties more seclu-
sion and quiet than those of to-day. 1t
hung without cloth-covered balloon
shaped sign, painted red, inside of which
a candle was stuck at night.
The bar of the period was more dingy
hot s. l,,4 ~
was better. Brandy then was not
obsolete. In the city drinks were three
cents "before the SCREEN" and six cents
behind it. Six cent drinks were deemed
extrayagant, and so were three-cent
cigars. Among old and prosperous
families could be found more cut-glass
decanters and port or Madeira either
in the closet or on the side-board than
to-day. Hundreds of the smaller az
ricultural villages forty years ago
maintained one or two ''taverns' where
now there are none. Tipping intem-
perance among our native population
was far more general.
The ''solid men, of the town belonged
to engine companies, and pumped faith
fully at fires. A village fire often
terminated in subdued and respecta-
bic drunk. Exhaustion justified unusual
recourse to stimulants at unaccustomed
hours, and the rest followed. The
engine was always under repair after
fire, and always broke down at one.
Householders were required by law to
keep leathern buckets, to be used at
fires. They hung in the hallway, and
had the owners name painted on them
in white letters
The Temperance cause had just
commenced Its adherents were termed
''Washingtonians." Washington gave
his name to a good many things, good,
bad, and indifferent-from the village
tavern to the latest born, tow-headed,
snub-nosed urchin.
The liberty-pole of the period was
surmounted by the Phrygian cap of lib
erty.
Boys were apprenticed or ''bound'' to
trades at fifteen or sixteen and served
out their time till twenty-one. Runa-
way apprentices were advertised in the
papers, and all persons forbidden to
trust or harbor them"
A church organ was grand affair,
and quite unknown in country churches.
Musical instruments of any description
found their way with difficulty into the
choirs of certain denominations. A
bass-viol was only tolerated in our Pres
| bvterian Church. When old Truman
Smith heard the first cat-gut scraped in
the Methodist Church he stalked, sol
emn and indignant, down the aisle in
his long black cloak, and was never seen
there again"
A steamboat was curiosity in many
of the small ports and harbors. Crowds
| f1ocked to see one arrived from New
York, and the first rush of steam from
the escape-pipe sent every small boy
scampering in fright up the wharf, and
the grown people quaked little inter-
nally.
Thousands had never seen a railroad
or train of cars, and never were to see
them. Villagers living one hundred
miles from New York could only reach
the city by stage, the trip occupying
from two to three days.
The letter postage to Illinois has been
thirty and forty cents, and ten cents did
not carry letter much over one hun
bred miles.
Photographing. just then entered on
its career, was termed ''daguerreotyp--
ing" The impressions were not fixed
on the metal plates, and people wishing
to remove speck from the picture
would sometimes remove the glass and
brush the head, to their dismay.
Justices of the Peace were termed
..Squires," and the appellation always
remained with them.
Every family owned its warming-pan.
These, on cold nights, previous oretiring,
were filled with live Goals and passed up
and down the bed between the sheets tc
give it a more endurabfe temperature.
So obsolete has the warming-pan be.
| come that recently lady from the city
| at an old-fashioned farm house desired
to buy one to add to her parlor orna
| ments.
The family bed of 1912 was double
| the present height, and the bed usually
sustained by support of rope, or, as il
| was termed, corded" Heated bed
rooms were not common, and retiring
on winter nights was martyrdom fol
| man.
The family rags were saved, thrown
into the rag bag, then cut into narrow
strips, these rolled into big balls, at
tractive to the infant eye through theil
variegated hues, and when enough haC
been accumulated, they were taken tt
some local weaver and manufactured
into rag carpet. The domestic rag car
pet suggested in appearance the Turk
ish rug; when new it was pretty foo
covering, and in durability would last ;
generation.
| The goose-quill was still in use fo
writing. Steel pens were an innova
ton. To make" or ''mend" the quill
was necessary accomplishment for tn
writer. "Blotting sand' was used il
place of blotting paper. Gummed en-