That law has now, I think, fallen into abeyance, and such matters are regulated in Boston much as they are in other large towns farther eastward. It still, I conceive, calls itself a Puritan city; but it has divested its Puritanism of austerity, and clings rather to the politics and public bearing of its old fathers than to their social manners and pristine severity of intercourse. The young girls are, no doubt, much more comfortable under the new dispensation--and the elderly men also, as I fancy. Sunday, as regards the outer streets, is sabbatical. But Sunday evenings within doors I always found to be what my friends in that country call "quite a good time." It is not the thing in Boston to smoke in the streets during the day; but the wisest, the sagest, and the most holy--even those holy men whom the lecturer saw around him--seldom refuse a cigar in the dining-room as soon as the ladies have gone. Perhaps even the wicked weed would make its appearance before that sad eclipse, thereby postponing or perhaps absolutely annihilating the melancholy period of widowhood to both parties, and would light itself under the very eyes of those who in sterner cities will lend no countenance to such lightings. Ah me, it was very pleasant! I confess I like this abandonment of the stricter rules of the more decorous world. I fear that there is within me an aptitude to the milder debaucheries which makes such deviations pleasant. I like to drink and I like to smoke, but I do not like to turn women out of the room. Then comes the question whether one can have all that one likes together. In some small circles in New England I found people simple enough to fancy that they could. In Massachusetts the Maine liquor law is still the law of the land, but, like that other law to which I have alluded, it has fallen very much out of use. At any rate, it had not reached the houses of the gentlemen with whom I had the pleasure of making acquaintance. But here I must guard myself from being misunderstood. I saw but one drunken man through all New England, and he was very respectable. He was, however, so uncommonly drunk that he might be allowed to count for two or three. The Puritans of Boston are, of course, simple in their habits and simple in their expenses. Champagne and canvas-back ducks I found to be the provisions most in vogue among those who desired to adhere closely to the manner of their forefathers. Upon the whole, I found the ways of life which had been brought over in the "Mayflower" from the stern sects of England, and preserved through the revolutionary war for liberty, to be very pleasant ways; and I made up my mind that a Yankee Puritan can be an uncommonly pleasant fellow. I wish that some of them did not dine so early; for when a man sits down at half-past two, that keeping up of the after-dinner recreations till bedtime becomes hard work.
In Boston the houses are very spacious and excellent, and they are always furnished with those luxuries which it is so difficult to introduce into an old house. They have hot and cold water pipes into every room, and baths attached to the bedchambers. It is not only that comfort is increased by such arrangements, but that much labor is saved. In an old English house it will occupy a servant the best part of the day to carry water up and down for a large family. Everything also is spacious, commodious, and well lighted.
I certainly think that in house-building the Americans have gone beyond us, for even our new houses are not commodious as are theirs. One practice which they have in their cities would hardly suit our limited London spaces. When the body of the house is built, they throw out the dining-room behind. It stands alone, as it were, with no other chamber above it, and removed from the rest of the house. It is consequently behind the double drawing-rooms which form the ground floor, and is approached from them and also from the back of the hall. The second entrance to the dining-room is thus near the top of the kitchen stairs, which no doubt is its proper position. The whole of the upper part of the house is thus kept for the private uses of the family. To me this plan of building recommended itself as being very commodious.