It gives one a strange sense of the customs and habits of the olden times
to read an "ordination-bill" from a tavern-keeper which is thus endorsed,
"This all Paid for exsept the Minister's Rum." To give some idea of the
expense of "keeping the ministers" at an ordination in Hartford in 1784,
let me give the items of the bill:--
L s. d.
To keeping Ministers 0 2 4
2 Mugs tody 0 5 10
5 Segars 0 3 0
1 Pint wine 0 0 9
3 lodgings 0 9 0
3 bitters 0 0 9
3 breakfasts 0 3 6
15 boles Punch 1 10 0
24 dinners 1 16 0
11 bottles wine 0 3 6
5 mugs flip 0 5 10
3 boles punch 0 6 0
3 boles tody 0 3 6
One might say with Falstaff, "O monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread
to this intolerable deal of sack!" I sadly fear me that at that Hartford
ordination our parson ancestors got grievsously "gilded," to use a choice
"red-lattice phrase."
Many accounts of gay ordination parties have been preserved in diaries for
us. Reverend Mr. Smith, who was settled in Portland in the early part of
the eighteenth century, wrote thus in his journal of an ordination which
he attended: "Mr. Foxcroft ordained at New Gloucester. We had a pleasant
journey home.
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