In Old New England, even public rejoicing could become a lesson in civic virtue. Thousands gathered to celebrate the Constitution with temperance and order, drinking beer and cider rather than spirituous liquors, while the book uses such scenes to reveal the moral ideals, discipline, and republican pride that shaped early American life. This richly observed study moves through the whole texture of colonial existence: childhood, courtship, food, travel, holidays, dress, medicine, and death. It lingers over taverns as social crossroads where politics, commerce, hospitality, and news met; over their signs, slogans, and rhymes; over innkeepers, stage-drivers, and the old roads and Indian paths that linked towns. Mile-stones, ruined homesteads, overgrown clearings, and crumbling walls become poignant witnesses to vanished lives, while funeral customs—from printed elegies and witty mourning verses to sermons, bier-cloths, and expense bills heavy with food and liquor—reveal a culture in which grief, ritual, and community were inseparable. Affectionate, exact, and elegiac, this portrait captures the ingenuity, austerity, humor, and humanity of New England's early people. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.