“Tobacco 2. 
  Fonda for Pipes 14s.
   2 casks wine 69 gal. 11.
  12 yds.  Cloath 6.
   2 barrels strong beer 3. 
  To spice from Dr. Stringer
  To the porters 2s.
  12 yds.  Bombazine 5. 17s.
   2 Tammise 1.
   1 Barcelona handkerchief 10s.
   2 pr. black chamios Gloves
   6 yds. crape
   5 ells Black Shalloon

  Paid Mr. Benson his fee for opinion on will L9."[217a]

Certainly the custom of making the funeral as pleasant as possible for the visitors had not passed away even as late as the days of the Revolution; for during that war Tench Tilghman wrote the following description of a burial service attended by him in New York City:  “This morning I attended the funeral of old Mr. Doer....  This was something in a stile new to me.  The Corpse was carried to the Grave and interred with out any funeral Ceremony, the Clergy attended.  We then returned to the home of the Deceased where we found many tables set out with Bottles, cool Tankards, Candles, Pipes & Tobacco.  The Company sat themselves down and lighted their Pipes and handed the Bottles & Tankards pretty briskly.  Some of them I think rather too much so.  I fancy the undertakers had borrowed all the silver plate of the neighborhood.  Tankards and Candle Sticks were all silver plated."[217b]

X.  British Social Influences

With the increase of the English population New York began to depart from its normal, quiet round of social life, and entered into far more flashy, but far less healthful forms of pleasure.  There was wealth in the old city before the British flocked to it, and withal an atmosphere of plenty and peaceful enjoyment of life.  The description of the Schuyler residence, “The Flatts,” presented in Grant’s Memoirs, probably indicates at its best the home life of the wealthier natives, and gives hints of a wholesome existence which, while not showy, was full of comfort: 

“It was a large brick house of two, or rather three stories (for there were excellent attics), besides a sunk story....  The lower floor had two spacious rooms, ... on the first there were three rooms, and in the upper one, four.  Through the middle of the house was a very wide passage, with opposite front and back doors, which in summer admitted a stream of air peculiarly grateful to the languid senses.  It was furnished with chairs and pictures like a summer parlor....  There was at the side a large portico, with a few steps leading up to it, and floored like a room; it was open at the sides and had seats all round.  Above was ... a slight wooden roof, painted like an awning, or a covering of lattice work, over which a transplanted wild vine spread its luxuriant leaves....”

“At the back of the large house