Sometimes, overheard snippets of conversation create miniature stories of their own, revealing character and family dynamics as clearly as a novel, and much more succinctly.
Take, for example, this conversation overheard on an airplane:
Kid– When are we going to get something to drink?
Man– They have to serve those people [first class] right now.
Kid– Why?
Man– Because they’re special.
Woman– They are not special. They just paid more.
From The Reshaping of Everyday Life : 1790-1840 (1988) by Jack Larkin:
Just after Chloe Peck was married in Rochester, New York, in 1820, she wrote to her sister of “our family, which consists of 7 persons.” Living and eating together in the Pecks’ establishment were the newly wedded couple and five unrelated men and boys—the journeymen and apprentices of Everard Peck’s bookbinding shop.
Today “family” denotes people bound together by marriage and kinship … but early-nineteenth-century Americans almost invariably echoed Chloe Peck in describing their domestic groups as “families,” suggesting their sense of the household’s functional unity … [Everard] Peck a few years later wrote of his strong sense of responsibility for “the welfare of those connected with us, and the harmony and good order of our family.”
Afterthought: I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the tenor and common details of early U.S. history.
