Box wagons, guiltless of springs, were owned by some farmers, but for easy travel a good horse was preferred, the man riding in front and the wife or daughter behind upon a pillion. Physicians needed and bestrode stout nags, always carrying saddle-bags and the few simple surgical instruments then known. The infallible lancet was stored in the l)ig ])ocket-book, as at least once a year, usually in the spring, 'a good bleeding' was deemed a necessity. Blooded horses were not scarce, for many of the gentry kept racing stables.

"In winter the people rode about in huge sleighs, some of which were of great length and had covers,

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.

halt' extending over tlieni. The horses were decked with a prnt'usion of brass bells strung upon leather straps. When the youths and maidens went for long drives they carried foot-stoves -- a tin box pierced with holes and set in a wooden frame, and enclosing an iron cup filled with hot embers."

The quarter of a century following the achievement of national independence was a period fraught with mechanical inventions that imparted a powerful BtinuiUis to the material progress of the country. The steam-engine was being vastly improved, the application of the newly-discovered power to milling and manufacturing was making rapid progress, and the locomotive and steamboat were taking shape in the minds of Oliver Evans, Stephenson, Rumsey, Fitch and Fulton. In 1803 Oliver Evans had begun to build

steam-engines in Philadelphia, and in 1813 published an article in which he claimed that in 1773 he had suggested steam as a motor on land, and in 1778 had proposed its application to boats. In 1804 he built a machine for cleaning docks, and propelled it by its own engine overland to the Schuylkill River, where he launched it into the stream, fixed a paddle-wheel to it and navigated it around to the Delaware.