Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[53] of a want of etiquette, but found Philadelphia society eminently friendly and agreeable. Superior taste and a livelier wit were habitually claimed for the Philadelphia ladies. It was said by a vivacious maiden who went from that city to make a visit in New York-Rebecca Franks, afterward Lady Johnston--that the Philadelphia belles had “more cleverness in the turn of an eye than those of New York in their whole composition.”

There was in Philadelphia a theatre which was much attended, and which must have had a rather exceptional company of actors for that period, inasmuch as Chief Justice Jay assured his wife that it was composed of “decent moral people.” In society, habits were not always quite moral, or conversation always quite decent. Gentlemen, according to John Adams, sat till eleven o'clock over their after-dinner wine, and drank healths in that elaborate way which still amazes the American visitor in England. Nay, young ladies, if we may accept Miss Rebecca Franks as authority, drank each other's health out of punch tankards in the morning. Gambling prevailed among both sexes. An anonymous letterwriter,