blazes out within fifteen days after the sweeping, the fine should be paid by the licensed sweeper for his default, for no chimney will fire if there be not soot left to harbour the sparks. We have at present got engines enough in the town (1734,) but I question whether in many parts of the town water enough can be had to keep them going for half an hour together: it seems to me some public pumps are wanting; but that I submit to better judg ments. As to our conduct in the affair of extinguishing fires, though we do not want hands or good will, yet we seem to want order and method, and therefore I believe I cannot do better than to offer for our imitation the example of a city in a neighbouring province. There is, as I am well informed, a club or society of active men belonging to each fire engine, whose business is to attend all fires with the engine, whenever they happen, and to work it once a quarter of an hour, and see it kept in order. Some are assigned to handle the fire-hooks; others the axes, which are always kept with the engine and in good order; and for these services they are considered in abatement or exemption of taxes. In time of fire they are commanded by officers appointed according to forms prescribed by law, called Firewards, who are distinguished by an external mark, or a staff having at the end a brass emblem of flame of about six inches long; being men selected for their prudence and invested with authority, they alone direct the opening and stripping of roofs by the axe men; the pulling down burning timbers by the hook men; the playing of the engines upon proper points and places; and the opening of lanes among the crowds who usually attend, &c.; they are impowered to require assistance for the removing of goods out of houses on fire, or in danger of fire, and to appoint guards for securing those goods; disobedience to these officers at any such times is punished by a fine of 40 shillings or ten days imprisonment. These officers, with the men belonging to the engine, at their quarterly meetings, discourse of fines; of the faults committed at some; the good management at others; and thus communicating their experience they become wiser, and know as well to command as to execute in the best manner upon emergency. Since the establishment of these regulations there does not appear to have occurred any extraordinary fire in that place, and I wish there never may be any here or there. But they suffered much before they had made such regulations, and so must we; for Italians say, Englishmen feel but cannot see. It has pleased God, however, that in the fires we have had hitherto, all the bad circumstances have never happened together, such as a dry season, high winds, narrow streets, and little or low water, which tends perhaps to make us more secure in our own minds; but if a fire with those circumstances should occur, which God forbid, we should afterwards learn to be more careful. One thought more and I have done. I would wish that tiles or slates could be brought into use as covering to buildings; and that the roofs were not of so sharp a pitch as to prevent walking on them in safety. Let others communicate their thoughts freely, and perhaps some good may grow out of it. A. A. No. XIII. Nothing is more like a fool than a drunken man. Poor Richard. It is an old remark, that Vice always endeavours to assume the appearance of Virtue; thus covetousness calls itself prudence, prodigality would be thought generous, and so of others. This perhaps arises hence, that mankind naturally and universally approve virtue in their hearts, and detest vice, therefore whenever through temptations they fall into vicious practices, they would if possible conceal it from themselves, as well as from others, under some name which does not belong to it. But drunkenness is a very unfortunate vice; in this respect it bears no kind of similitude with any sort of virtue, from which it might possibly borrow a name; and is therefore reduced to the wretched necessity of being expressed by round about phrases, and of perpetually varying those phrases as often as they come to be well understood plainly to signify that a man is drunk. Though every one may possibly recollect a dozen at least of these expressions, used on such occasions, yet I think no one who has not much frequented taverns could imagine the number of them to be so great as it really is. It may therefore surprise as well as divert the sober reader, to have a sight of a new piece lately communicated to me, entitled, The Drinker's Dictionary. A. He's addled. He's casting up his accounts. He's biggy. He's been at Barbadoes. He has been to the salt water. He has been in search of eye water. He's in the way to be weaned. He's water soaked. He's wise or otherwise. He can walk the line. The wind is west with him. The phrases of the Dictionary are not, like most of our terms of art, borrowed from foreign or dead languages; neither are they collected from the writings of the learned; but gathered from domestic sources; no doubt many more might be added. I was almost tempted to add a new one under the letter B, to wit, brut fied, but upon consideration I feared doing injustice to the brute creation, if I represented drunkenness as a beastly vice, since every one knows that the brutes are in general a sober sort of people. This production (The Washing Day) has been generally ascribed to Dr. Franklin; though it has been also claimed for another gentleman. We have thought it fit to notice the circumstance, and its merit will be as good an apology as can be offered, should we be mistaken. I have observed, however, one custom, which, for aught I know, is peculiar to this country. An account of it will serve to fill up the remainder of this sheet, and may afford you some amusement. When a young couple are about to enter into the matrimonial state, a never-failing article in the marriage-treaty is, that the lady shall have and enjoy the free and unmolested exercise of the rights of white-washing, with all its ceremonials, privileges, and appurte nances. A young woman would forego the most advantageous connexion, and even disappoint the warmest wish of her heart, rather than resign the invaluable right. You would wonder what this privilege of whitewashing is I will endeavour to give you some idea of the ceremony, as I have seen it performed. The There is no season of the year in which the lady may not claim her privilege, if she pleases; but the latter end of May is most generally fixed upon for the purpose. attentive husband may judge by certain prognostics when the storm is nigh at hand. When the lady is unusually fretful, finds fault with the servants, is discontented with the children, and complains much of the filthiness of every thing about her-these are signs which ought not to be neglected; yet they are not decisive, as they sometimes come on and go off again, without producing any farther effect. But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the yard a wheelbarrow with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain buckets with lime dissolved in water, there is then no time to be lost; he immediately locks up the apartment or closet where his papers or his private property is kept, and putting the key in his pocket, betakes himself to flight: for a husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during the season of female rage; his authority is superseded, his commission is suspended, and the very scullion, who cleans the brasses in the kitchen, becomes of more consideration and importance than him. He has nothing for it, but to abdicate, and run from an evil which he can Singular custom among the Americans, en- neither prevent nor mollify. titled White-washing. DEAR SIR, My wish is to give you some account of the people of these new states, but I am far from being qualified for the purpose, having as yet seen little more than the cities of New York and Philadelphia. I have discovered but few national singularities among them. Their customs and manners are nearly the same with those of England, which they have long been used to copy. For, previous to the revolution, the Americans were from their infancy taught to look up to the English as patterns of perfection in all things. The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls are in a few minutes stripped of their furniture: paintings, prints, and looking-glasses lie in a huddled heap about the floors; the curtains are torn from the testers, the beds crammed into the windows; chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the yard; and the garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, and ragged breeches. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass: for the foreground of the picture, gridirons and frying pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, spits and under the operation: a mahogany chair and carved franie undergo the same discipline; they are to be inade clean at all events; but their preservation is not worthy of attention. For instance, a fine large engraving is laid flat on the floor; smaller prints are piled upon it, and the superincumbent weight cracks the glasses of the lower tier: but this pots, joint-stools, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There, a closet has disgorged its bowels, cracked tumblers, broken wine glasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds, and dried herbs, handfuls of old corks, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters;-from the rag-hole in the garret to the rat-hole in the cellar, no place escapes un-is of no consequence. A valuable picture is rummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom was come, and the utensils of the house were dragged forth to judgment. In this tempest, the words of Lear naturally present themselves, and might, with some alteration, be made strictly applicable : This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and ceilings of every room and closet with brushes dipped in a solution of lime, called white-wash; to pour buckets of water over every floor, and scratch all the partitions and wainscots with rough brushes wet with soap-suds, and dipped in stone-cutter's sand. The windows by no means escape the general deluge. A servant scrambles out upon the pent-house, at the risk of her neck, and with a mug in her hand, and a bucket within reach, she dashes away numerable gallons of water against the glass panes; to the great annoyance of the passengers in the street. placed leaning against the sharp corner of a table; others are made to lean against that, until the pressure of the whole forces the corner of the table through the canvass of the first. The frame and glass of a fine print are to be cleaned; the spirit and oil used on this occasion are suffered to leak through and spoil the engraving; no matter, if the glass is clean, and the frame shine, it is sufficient; the rest is not worthy of consideration. An able arithmetician has made an accurate calculation, founded on long experience, and has discovered, that the losses and destruction incident to two white-washings are equal to one removal, and three removals equal to one fire. The cleaning frolic over, matters begin to resume their pristine appearance. The storm abates, and all would be well again, but it is impossible that so great a convulsion, in so small a community, should not produce some farther effects. For two or three weeks after the operation, the family are usually afflicted with sore throats or sore eyes, occasioned by the caustic quality of the lime, or with severe colds from the exha lations of wet floors or damp walls. I know a gentleman, who was fond of accounting for every thing in a philosophical way. He considers this, which I have called a custom, as a real periodical disI have been told that an action at law was ease, peculiar to the climate. His train of once brought against one of these water reasoning is ingenious and whimsical; but nymphs, by a person who had a new suit of I am not at leisure to give you a detail. clothes spoiled by this operation; but, after The result was, that he found the distemper long argument, it was determined by the to be incurable; but after much study, he whole court, that the action would not lie, conceived he had discovered a method to diinasmuch as the defendant was in the exer- vert the evil he could not subdue. For this cise of a legal right, and not answerable for purpose he caused a small building, about the consequences; and so the poor gentle- twelve feet square, to be erected in his garman was doubly nonsuited; for he lost not den, and furnished with some ordinary only his suit of clothes, but his suit at law. chairs and tables; and a few prints of the These smearings and scratchings, wash- cheapest sort were hung against the walls. ings and dashings, being duly performed, His hope was, that when the white-washthe next ceremonial is to cleanse and re- ing frenzy seized the females of his family, place the distracted furuiture. You may they might repair to this apartment, and have seen a house raising, or a ship-launch, scrub, and smear, and scour, to their heart's when all the hands within reach are collect-content; and so spend the violence of the ed together recollect, if you can, the hurry, disease in this outpost, while he enjoyed bustle, confusion, and noise of such a scene, himself in quiet at head-quarters. But the and you will have some idea of this clean- experiment did not answer his expectation; ing match. The misfortune is, that the sole it was impossible it should, since a princiobject is to make things clean; it matters pal part of the gratification consists in the not how many useful, ornamental, or valua- lady's having an uncontrolled right to torble articles are mutilated, or suffer deathment her husband at least once a year, and |