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+Project Gutenberg’s An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Old Town By The Sea
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1861]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan L. Farley and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+     PISCATAQUA RIVER
+
+     Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
+     By woods, and fields of corn,
+     Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
+     Upon my birthday morn.
+
+     But I within a city, I,
+     So full of vague unrest,
+     Would almost give my life to lie
+     An hour upon upon thy breast.
+
+     To let the wherry listless go,
+     And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
+     Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
+     Like the red harbor-buoy;
+
+     To sit in happy indolence,
+     To rest upon the oars,
+     And catch the heavy earthy scents
+     That blow from summer shores;
+
+     To see the rounded sun go down,
+     And with its parting fires
+     Light up the windows of the town
+     And burn the tapering spires;
+
+     And then to hear the muffled tolls
+     From steeples slim and white,
+     And watch, among the Isles of Shoals,
+     The Beacon’s orange light.
+
+     O River! flowing to the main
+     Through woods, and fields of corn,
+     Hear thou my longing and my pain
+     This sunny birthday morn;
+
+     And take this song which fancy shapes
+     To music like thine own,
+     And sing it to the cliffs and capes
+     And crags where I am known!
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.   CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+     II.  ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+     III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+     IV.  A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+     V.   OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+     VI.  SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+     VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+     INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+
+
+
+I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+
+I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects
+on the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this
+crust of earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on
+its surface seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the
+other day, then--that is to say, in the month of June, 1603--that one
+Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty
+tons burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
+Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort the
+Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
+windings of “the brave river” for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
+turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object
+of the expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal
+sassafras-tree, from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors,
+could be distilled the Elixir of Life.
+
+It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
+miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
+effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens
+suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network
+of strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the crystal
+water, must have won the tired mariners.
+
+The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
+hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of,
+nor did they encounter--what would have been infinitely less to their
+taste--and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered ashes
+of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they
+were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish
+abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate
+breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
+the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the
+tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder
+sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval solitude. Master Pring
+would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.
+
+Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the
+Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua--Captain John Smith of famous
+memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all sorts
+of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his
+presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky
+selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him
+to examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small
+boat, a ship’s yawl, he skirted the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape
+Cod, keeping his eye open. This keeping his eye open was a peculiarity
+of the little captain; possibly a family trait. It was Smith who really
+discovered the Isles of Shoals, exploring in person those masses of
+bleached rock--those “isles assez hautes,” of which the French navigator
+Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, had caught a bird’s-eye glimpse through
+the twilight in 1605. Captain Smith christened the group Smith’s Isles,
+a title which posterity, with singular persistence of ingratitude, has
+ignored. It was a tardy sense of justice that expressed itself a few
+years ago in erecting on Star Island a simple marble shaft to the memory
+of JOHN SMITH--the multitudinous! Perhaps this long delay is explained
+by a natural hesitation to label a monument so ambiguously.
+
+The modern Jason, meanwhile, was not without honor in his own country,
+whatever may have happened to him in his own house, for the poet George
+Wither addressed a copy of pompous verses “To his Friend Captain Smith,
+upon his Description of New England.” “Sir,” he says--
+
+     “Sir: your Relations I haue read: which shew
+     Ther’s reason I should honor them and you:
+     And if their meaning I have vnderstood,
+     I dare to censure thus: Your Project’s good;
+     And may (if follow’d) doubtlesse quit the paine
+     With honour, pleasure and a trebble gaine;
+     Beside the benefit that shall arise
+     To make more happy our Posterities.”
+
+The earliest map of this portion of our seaboard was prepared by Smith
+and laid before Prince Charles, who asked to give the country a name. He
+christened it New England. In that remarkable map the site of Portsmouth
+is call Hull, and Kittery and York are known as Boston.
+
+It was doubtless owing to Captain John Smith’s representation on his
+return to England that the Laconia Company selected the banks of the
+Piscataqua for their plantation. Smith was on an intimate footing
+with Sir Ferinand Gorges, who, five years subsequently, made a tour of
+inspection along the New England coast, in company with John Mason, then
+Governor of Newfoundland. One of the results of this summer cruise is
+the town of Portsmouth, among whose leafy ways, and into some of whose
+old-fashioned houses, I purpose to take the reader, if he have an idle
+hour on his hands. Should we meet the flitting ghost of some old-time
+worthy, on the staircase or at a lonely street corner, the reader must
+be prepared for it.
+
+
+
+
+II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+
+IT is not supposable that the early settlers selected the site of their
+plantation on account of its picturesqueness. They were influenced
+entirely by the lay of the land, its nearness and easy access to the
+sea, and the secure harbor it offered to their fishing-vessels; yet they
+could not have chosen a more beautiful spot had beauty been the sole
+consideration. The first settlement was made at Odiorne’s Point--the
+Pilgrims’ Rock of New Hampshire; there the Manor, or Mason’s Hall, was
+built by the Laconia Company in 1623. It was not until 1631 that the
+Great House was erected by Humphrey Chadborn on Strawberry Bank. Mr.
+Chadborn, consciously or unconsciously, sowed a seed from which a city
+has sprung.
+
+The town of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua,
+about two miles from the sea as the crow flies--three miles following
+the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this
+point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by
+the interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island
+lake than a river. To the unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet.
+Standing on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court
+Street, a stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the
+ocean. A little observation, however, would show him that he was in a
+seaport. The rich red rust on the gables and roofs of ancient buildings
+looking seaward would tell him that. There is a fitful saline flavor in
+the air, and if while he gazed a dense white fog should come rolling in,
+like a line of phantom breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.
+
+It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the river,
+though few of the notable houses that remain are to be found there. Like
+all New England settlements, Portsmouth was built of wood, and has been
+subjected to extensive conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick
+building that is not shockingly modern. The first house of the kind was
+erected by Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.
+
+Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the fateful
+hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town,
+especially as you saunter along the streets down by the river. The
+worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of
+grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient
+to satisfy a moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers
+and these long rows of empty barracks, with their sarcastic cranes
+projecting from the eaves, rather puzzle the stranger. Why this great
+preparation for a commercial activity that does not exist, and evidently
+had not for years existed? There are no ships lying at the pier-heads;
+there are no gangs of stevedores staggering under the heavy cases of
+merchandise; here and there is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with
+coal, and here and there a square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered
+with fragrant planks and clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at
+the end of the wharf, a ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect
+sympathy with the indolent sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor
+of these crumbling piles and ridiculous warehouses, from which even the
+ghost of prosperity has flown.
+
+Once upon a time, however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive trade with
+the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston
+and New York. At the windows of these musty counting-rooms which
+overlook the river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants,
+in knee breeches and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with
+ruffles at the wrist, waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows;
+the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors at the windlass used
+to echo along the shore where all is silence now. For reasons not worth
+setting forth, the trade with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined
+as well as enriched many a Portsmouth adventurer. This explains
+the empty warehouses and the unused wharves. Portsmouth remains the
+interesting widow of a once very lively commerce. I fancy that few
+fortunes are either made or lost in Portsmouth nowadays. Formerly it
+turned out the best ships, as it did the ablest ship captains, in the
+world. There were families in which the love for blue water was
+in immemorial trait. The boys were always sailors; “a grey-headed
+shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the
+homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the
+mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blasted against
+his sire and grandsire.” (1. Hawthorne in his introduction to The
+Scarlet Letter.) With thousands of miles of sea-line and a score or two
+of the finest harbors on the globe, we have adroitly turned over our
+carrying trade to foreign nations.
+
+In other days, as I have said, a high maritime spirit was characteristic
+of Portsmouth. The town did a profitable business in the war of 1812,
+sending out a large fleet of the sauciest small craft on record. A
+pleasant story is told of one of these little privateers--the Harlequin,
+owned and commanded by Captain Elihu Brown. The Harlequin one day gave
+chase to a large ship, which did not seem to have much fight aboard,
+and had got it into close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger threw
+open her ports, and proved to be His Majesty’s Ship-of-War Bulwark,
+seventy-four guns. Poor Captain Brown!
+
+Portsmouth has several large cotton factories and one or two corpulent
+breweries; it is a wealthy old town, with a liking for first mortgage
+bonds; but its warmest lover will not claim for it the distinction
+of being a great mercantile centre. The majority of her young men are
+forced to seek other fields to reap, and almost every city in the Union,
+and many a city across the sea, can point to some eminent merchant,
+lawyer, or what not, as “a Portsmouth boy.” Portsmouth even furnished
+the late king of the Sandwich Islands, Kekuanaoa, with a prime minister,
+and his nankeen Majesty never had a better. The affection which all
+these exiles cherish for their birthplace is worthy of remark. On two
+occasions--in 1852 and 1873, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
+the settlement of Strawberry Bank--the transplanted sons of Portsmouth
+were seized with an impulse to return home. Simultaneously and almost
+without concerted action, the lines of pilgrims took up their march from
+every quarter of the globe, and swept down with music and banners on the
+motherly old town.
+
+To come back to the wharves. I do not know of any spot with such a
+fascinating air of dreams and idleness about it as the old wharf at the
+end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once a noisy, busy place,
+crowded with sailors and soldiers--in the war of 1812--gives an emphasis
+to the quiet that broods over it to-day. The lounger who sits of a
+summer afternoon on a rusty anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the
+silent warehouses, and look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring
+past the town, cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having
+taken itself off elsewhere.
+
+What a slumberous, delightful, lazy place it is! The sunshine seems to
+lie a foot deep on the planks of the dusty wharf, which yields up to the
+warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, molasses, and spice
+that used to be piled upon it. The river is as blue as the inside of a
+harebell. The opposite shore, in the strangely shifting magic lights
+of sky and water, stretches along like the silvery coast of fairyland.
+Directly opposite you is the navy yard, and its neat officers’ quarters
+and workshops and arsenals, and its vast shiphouses, in which the keel
+of many a famous frigate has been laid. Those monster buildings on the
+water’s edge, with their roofs pierced with innumerable little windows,
+which blink like eyes in the sunlight, and the shiphouses. On your
+right lies a cluster of small islands,--there are a dozen or more in the
+harbor--on the most extensive of which you see the fading-away remains
+of some earthworks thrown up in 1812. Between this--Trefethren’s
+Island--and Peirce’s Island lie the Narrows. Perhaps a bark or a
+sloop-of-war is making up to town; the hulk is hidden amoung the
+islands, and the topmasts have the effect of sweeping across the dry
+land. On your left is a long bridge, more than a quarter of a mile in
+length, set upon piles where the water is twenty or thirty feet deep,
+leading to the navy yard and Kittery--the Kittery so often the theme of
+Whittier’s verse.
+
+This is a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you. Its
+changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds floating
+over it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a place where the
+scenery is more varied and striking; but there is a mandragora quality
+in the atmosphere here that holds you to the spot, and makes the
+half-hours seem like minutes. I could fancy a man sitting on the end
+of that old wharf very contentedly for two or three years, provided it
+could be always in June.
+
+Perhaps, too, one would desire it to be always high water. The tide
+falls from eight to twelve feet, and when the water makes out between
+the wharves some of the picturesqueness makes out also. A corroded
+section of stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the skeleton of a hoopskirt
+protruding from the tide mud like the remains of some old-time wreck, is
+apt to break the enchantment.
+
+I fear I have given the reader an exaggerated idea of the solitude
+that reigns along the river-side. Sometimes there is society here of
+an unconventional kind, if you care to seek it. Aside from the foreign
+gentleman before mentioned, you are likely to encounter, farther down
+the shore toward the Point of Graves (a burial-place of the colonial
+period), a battered and aged native fisherman boiling lobsters on a
+little gravelly bench, where the river whispers and lisps among the
+pebbles as the tide creeps in. It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or
+ex-pilot, with strands of coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a
+face that has the expression of a half-open clam. He is always ready
+to talk with you, this amphibious person; and if he is not the most
+entertaining of gossips--more weather-wise that Old Probabilities,
+and as full of moving incident as Othello himself--then he is not the
+wintery-haired shipman I used to see a few years ago on the strip of
+beach just beyond Liberty Bridge, building his drift-wood fire under a
+great tin boiler, and making it lively for a lot of reluctant lobsters.
+
+I imagine that very little change has taken place in this immediate
+locality, known prosaically as Puddle Dock, during the past fifty or
+sixty years. The view you get looking across Liberty Bridge, Water
+Street, is probably the same in every respect that presented itself to
+the eyes of the town folk a century ago. The flagstaff, on the right,
+is the representative of the old “standard of liberty” which the Sons
+planted on this spot in January, 1766, signalizing their opposition
+to the enforcement of the Stamp Act. On the same occasion the patriots
+called at the house of Mr. George Meserve, the agent for distributing
+the stamps in New Hampshire, and relieved him of his stamp-master’s
+commission, which document they carried on the point of a sword through
+the town to Liberty Bridge (the Swing Bridge), where they erected the
+staff, with the motto, “Liberty, Property, and no Stamp!”
+
+The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of November. On
+the previous morning the “New Hampshire Gazette” appeared with a deep
+black border and all the typographical emblems of affliction, for was
+not Liberty dead? At all events, the “Gazette” itself was as good as
+dead, since the printer could no longer publish it if he were to be
+handicapped by a heavy tax. “The day was ushered in by the tolling
+of all the bells in town, the vessels in the harbor had their colors
+hoisted half-mast high; about three o’clock a funeral procession was
+formed, having a coffin with this inscription, LIBERTY, AGED 145,
+STAMPT. It moved from the state house, with two unbraced drums, through
+the principal streets. As it passed the Parade, minute-guns were fired;
+at the place of interment a speech was delivered on the occasion,
+stating the many advantages we had received and the melancholy prospect
+before us, at the seeming departure of our invaluable liberties. But
+some sign of life appearing, Liberty was not deposited in the grave;
+it was rescued by a number of her sons, the motto changed to Liberty
+revived, and carried off in triumph. The detestable Act was buried in
+its stead, and the clods of the valley were laid upon it; the bells
+changed their melancholy sound to a more joyful tone.” (1. Annals of
+Portsmouth, by Nathaniel Adams, 1825.)
+
+With this side glance at one of the curious humors of the time, we
+resume our peregrinations.
+
+Turning down a lane on your left, a few rods beyond Liberty Bridge,
+you reach a spot known as the Point of Graves, chiefly interesting as
+showing what a graveyard may come to if it last long enough. In 1671 one
+Captain John Pickering, of whom we shall have more to say, ceded to
+the town a piece of ground on this neck for burial purposes. It is an
+odd-shaped lot, comprising about half an acre, inclosed by a crumbling
+red brick wall two or three feet high, with wood capping. The place
+is overgrown with thistles, rank grass, and fungi; the black slate
+headstones have mostly fallen over; those that still make a pretense of
+standing slant to every point of the compass, and look as if they
+were being blown this way and that by a mysterious gale which leaves
+everything else untouched; the mounds have sunk to the common level, and
+the old underground tombs have collapsed. Here and there the moss and
+weeds you can pick out some name that shines in the history of the early
+settlement; hundreds of the flower of the colony lie here, but the
+known and the unknown, gentle and simple, mingle their dust on a perfect
+equality now. The marble that once bore a haughty coat of arms is as
+smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless of heraldry. The lion and
+the unicorn, wherever they appear on some cracked slab, are very much
+tamed by time. The once fat-faced cherubs, with wing at either cheek,
+are the merest skeletons now. Pride, pomp, grief, and remembrance are
+all at end. No reverent feet come here, no tears fall here; the old
+graveyard itself is dead! A more dismal, uncanny spot than this at
+twilight would be hard to find. It is noticed that when the boys pass
+it after nightfall, they always go by whistling with a gayety that is
+perfectly hollow.
+
+Let us get into some cheerfuler neighborhood!
+
+
+
+
+III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+
+AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass “up town,” the streets
+grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious--streets fringed
+with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private dwellings,
+mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through the
+centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
+houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
+the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
+pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
+sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
+authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
+within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the
+beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when
+the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
+fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
+fair town--her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
+more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain
+streets in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm.
+You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the
+overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery
+even more graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous
+elms and maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the
+result of chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken
+to preserve the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to
+arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies
+to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees along some
+favorite walk. Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading
+from Middle Street to the South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of
+a citizen who gave the labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that
+windswept and barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees
+seems to be a matter of heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen
+instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or any
+other wood from off the town common, excepting under special conditions.
+
+In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
+streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of
+the dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
+crowded, but I have never happened to be in Portsmouth at the time. I
+seldom pass through the narrow cobble-paved street without wondering
+where the customers are that must keep all these flourishing little
+establishments going. Congress Street--a more elegant thoroughfare
+than Market--is the Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth. Among the prominent
+buildings is the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and library.
+From the high roof of this building the stroller will do well to take
+a glance at the surrounding country. He will naturally turn seaward
+for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he will see the
+famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles away--Appledore, Smutty-Nose,
+Star Island, White Island, etc.; there are nine of them in all. On
+Appledore is Laighton’s Hotel, and near it the summer cottage of Celia
+Thaxter, the poet of the Isles. On the northern end of Star Island is
+the quaint town of Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a
+sea-gull on its highest rock. A mile southwest form Star Island lies
+White Island, on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the most
+picturesque of the group. Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in any but
+the serenest weather, these wrinkled, scarred, are storm-smitten rocks,
+flanked by wicked sunken ledges that grow white at the lip with rage
+when the great winds blow!
+
+How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea! and how
+softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the unfinished
+fort is! That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to reach which from
+Portsmouth you have to cross three bridges with the most enchanting
+scenery in New Hampshire lying on either hand. At Newcastle the poet
+Stedman has built for his summerings an enviable little stone chateau--a
+seashell into which I fancy the sirens creep to warm themselves during
+the winter months. So it is never without its singer.
+
+Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir William
+Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and where his tomb
+now is, in his orchard across the road, a few hundred yards from the
+“goodly mansion” he built. The knight’s tomb and the old Pepperell
+House, which has been somewhat curtailed of it fair proportions, are the
+objects of frequent pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
+
+From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the
+river with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of Kittery and
+Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a picture worth climbing
+four or five flights of stairs to gaze upon. Glancing down on the town
+nestled in the foliage, it seems like a town dropped by chance in the
+midst of a forest. Among the prominent objects which lift themselves
+above the tree tops are the belfries of the various churches, the
+white façade of the custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the
+Rockingham, the principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find
+in Portsmouth one of the most completely appointed hotels in the United
+States. The antiquarian may lament the demolition of the old Bell
+Tavern, and think regretfully of the good cheer once furnished the
+wayfarer by Master Stavers at the sign of the Earl of Halifax, and by
+Master Stoodley at his inn on Daniel Street; but the ordinary traveler
+will thank his stars, and confess that his lines have fallen in pleasant
+places, when he finds himself among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
+
+Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum--we are supposed to be
+on terra firma again--stands the Old North Church, a substantial wooden
+building, handsomely set on what is called The Parade, a large open
+space formed by the junction of Congress, Market, Daniel, and Pleasant
+streets. Here in days innocent of water-works stood the town pump, which
+on more than one occasion served as whipping-post.
+
+The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number than
+their architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church they are
+constructed of wood or plain brick in the simplest style. St. John’s
+Church is the only one likely to attract the eye of a stranger. It
+is finely situated on the crest of Church Hill, overlooking the
+ever-beautiful river. The present edifice was built in 1808 on the site
+of what was known as Queen’s Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by
+fire December 24, 1806. The chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline,
+who furnished the books for the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two
+solid mahogany chairs, which are still in use in St. John’s. Within the
+chancel rail is a curious font of porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton
+Mason at the capture of Senegal from the French in 1758, and presented
+to the Episcopal Society on 1761. The peculiarly sweet-toned bell
+which calls the parishioners of St. John’s together every Sabbath is,
+I believe, the same that formerly hung in the belfry of the old Queen’s
+Chapel. If so, the bell has a history of its own. It was brought from
+Louisburg at the time of the reduction of that place in 1745, and given
+to the church by the officers of the New Hampshire troops.
+
+The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is
+among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its
+architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice.
+The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what
+strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and
+these closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the
+wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass
+was used. If the building could have been composed entirely of glass it
+would have been done by the thrifty parishioners.
+
+Portsmouth is rich in graveyards--they seem to be a New England
+specialty--ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one
+attached to St. John’s Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has
+not been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point
+of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up
+and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly
+refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and
+is allowed to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a
+row of other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed,
+and here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale
+roses, as becomes a rosebush in a churchyard.
+
+The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
+respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and
+loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior
+to the Revolution--stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and
+secretaries of the Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered
+under the motherly wing of the Church of England. It is almost
+impossible to walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow
+haughty in spirit after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less
+than one of His Majesty’s colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here
+are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the
+Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the
+quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and
+there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial
+devices. You are moving in the very best society.
+
+This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth. An hour’s
+walk from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot, already
+mentioned, where the first house was built and the first grave made,
+at Odiorne’s Point. The exact site of the Manor is not known, but it is
+supposed to be a few rods north of an old well of still-flowing water,
+at which the Tomsons and the Hiltons and their comrades slaked their
+thirst more than two hundred and sixty years ago. Oriorne’s Point is
+owned by Mr. Eben L. Odiorne, a lineal descendant of the worthy who held
+the property in 1657. Not far from the old spring is the resting-place
+of the earliest pioneers.
+
+“This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire,” writes Mr.
+Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years the
+editor of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two volumes of
+local sketches to which the writer of these pages here acknowledges his
+indebtedness.) “occupies a space of perhaps one hundred feet by ninety,
+and is well walled in. The western side is now used as a burial-place
+for the family, but two thirds of it is filled with perhaps forty
+graves, indicated by rough head and foot stones. Who there rest no one
+now living knows. But the same care is taken of their quiet beds as if
+they were of the proprietor’s own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about
+eighty emigrants many of whom died in a few years, and here they were
+probably buried. Here too, doubtless, rest the remains of several of
+those whose names stand conspicuous in our early state records.”
+
+
+
+
+IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+
+WHEN Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by
+the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in
+the struggle for independence. “There are some good houses,” he
+writes, in a diary kept that year during a tour through Connecticut,
+Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, “among which Colonel Langdon’s may
+be esteemed the first; but in general they are indifferent, and almost
+entirely of wood. On wondering at this, as the country is full of stone
+and good clay for bricks, I was told that on account of the fogs and
+damp they deemed them wholesomer, and for that reason preferred wood
+buildings.”
+
+The house of Colonel Langdon, on Pleasant Street, is an excellent sample
+of the solid and dignified abodes which our great-grandsires had the
+sense to build. The art of their construction seems to have been a lost
+art these fifty years. Here Governor John Langdon resided from 1782
+until the time of his death in 1819--a period during which many an
+illustrious man passed between those two white pillars that support the
+little balcony over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and
+his brothers, the Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the Marquis de
+Chastellus, a major-general in the French army, serving under the Count
+de Rochambeau, whom he accompanied from France to the States in 1780.
+The journal of the marquis contains this reference to his host: “After
+dinner we went to drink tea with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and
+of noble carriage; he has been a member of Congress, and is now one
+of the first people of the country; his house is elegant and well
+furnished, and the apartments admirably well wainscoted” (this reads
+like Mr. Samuel Pepys); “and he has a good manuscript chart of the
+harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his wife, is young, fair, and
+tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with her than her husband, in
+whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he had displayed great
+courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes’s expedition.”
+
+It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons of the
+Due d’Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion. Years afterward,
+when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France, he inquired of a
+Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the mansion of ce brave
+Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.
+
+The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under
+the shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an imposing
+appearance as you approach it over the tessellated marble walk. A
+hundred or two feet on either side of the gate, and abutting on
+the street, is a small square building of brick, one story in
+height--probably the porter’s lodge and tool-house of former days. There
+is a large fruit garden attached to the house, which is in excellent
+condition, taking life comfortably, and having the complacent air of a
+well-preserved beau of the ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was
+owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of
+forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St. John’s Church.
+
+At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to which
+we shall come by and by. Though President Washington found Portsmouth
+but moderately attractive from an architectural point of view, the
+visitor of to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste, will find himself
+embarrassed by the number of localities and buildings that appeal to his
+interest. Many of these buildings were new and undoubtedly commonplace
+enough at the date of Washington’s visit; time and association have
+given them a quaintness and a significance which now make their
+architecture a question of secondary importance.
+
+One might spend a fortnight in Portsmouth exploring the nooks and
+corners over which history has thrown a charm, and by no means exhaust
+the list. I cannot do more than attempt to describe--and that very
+briefly--a few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant Street
+there are several which we must leave unnoted, with their spacious
+halls and carven staircases, their antiquated furniture and old silver
+tankards and choice Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist’s best
+manner are to be found here. To live in Portsmouth without possessing a
+family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having
+an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you
+cannot be said to flourish. To make this statement smooth, I will remark
+that every one in Portsmouth has a Copley--or would have if a fair
+division were made.
+
+In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such excellent
+repair, and have so smart an appearance with their bright green blinds
+and freshly painted woodwork, that you are likely to pass many an old
+landmark without suspecting it. Whenever you see a house with a gambrel
+roof, you may be almost positive that the house is at least a
+hundred years old, for the gambrel roof went out of fashion after the
+Revolution.
+
+On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick
+building in Portsmouth--the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by
+Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a
+wealthy merchant, and a member of the King’s Council. He was the chief
+projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America.
+Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children
+of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary,
+whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous
+Copley, still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not known by
+the name of Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon.
+Jonathan Warner, a member of the King’s Council until the revolt of the
+colonies. “We well recollect Mr. Warner,” says Mr. Brewster, writing in
+1858, “as one of the last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early
+childhood he is still before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic
+crown officers. That broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those
+small-clothes and silk stockings, those silver buckles, and that
+cane--we see them still, although the life that filled and moved them
+ceased half a century ago.”
+
+The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and luthern
+windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the architecture of
+the period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in New England. The
+eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from Holland, as were also many
+of the materials used in the building--the hearth-stones, tiles,
+etc. Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the
+brick-work rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The
+interior is rich in paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves,
+the deep-set windows, and along the cornices. The halls are wide and
+long, after a by-gone fashion, with handsome staircases, set at an easy
+angle, and not standing nearly upright, like those ladders by which one
+reaches the upper chambers of a modern house. The principal rooms are
+paneled to the ceiling, and have large open chimney-places, adorned with
+the quaintest of Dutch files. In one of the parlors of the Warner House
+there is a choice store of family relics--china, silver-plate, costumes,
+old clocks, and the like. There are some interesting paintings, too--not
+by Copley this time. On a broad space each side of the hall windows, at
+the head of the staircase, are pictures of two Indians, life size. They
+are probably portraits of some of the numerous chiefs with whom Captain
+Macphaedris had dealings, for the captain was engaged in the fur as
+well as in the iron business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to
+Macpheadris by his red friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
+
+By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings
+on the walls of this lower hall were brought to light. In repairing the
+front entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or
+five layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had peeled
+off cleanly, a horse’s hoof was observed by a little girl of the family.
+The workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the legs,
+then the body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished
+paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size representation of
+Governor Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to
+his assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily
+stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet covered with
+sketches in color, landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes,
+and modern figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel.
+Until then no person in the land of the living had had any knowledge
+of those hidden pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the
+house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe
+her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to
+face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply
+Ham was the leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)
+
+The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that
+these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand.
+Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an
+antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day
+was put up under Benjamin Franklin’s own supervision in 1762--such at
+all events is the credited tradition--and is supposed to be the first
+rod put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod “personally conducted”
+ by Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
+susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim
+on the good-will of the visitor--it is not positively known that George
+Washington ever slept there.
+
+The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old yellow
+barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and Atkinson streets.
+Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of
+corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down
+on the most desirable spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept
+not only one night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was
+a celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence,
+and Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth
+in 1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady--not one of the
+preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties
+unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning
+to tell on her--who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in
+her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of
+her conversation during the last ten years of her life, which she passed
+in the Stavers House, bedridden; and I think those ten years were in a
+manner rendered short and pleasant to the old gentlewoman by the memory
+of a compliment to her complexion which Washington probably never paid
+to it.
+
+The old hotel--now a very unsavory tenement-house--was built by John
+Tavers, innkeeper, in 1770, who planted in front of the door a tall
+post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. Stavers had
+previously kept an inn of the same name on Queen, now State Street.
+
+It is a square three-story building, shabby and dejected, giving no hint
+of the really important historical associations that cluster about it.
+At the time of its erection it was no doubt considered a rather grand
+structure, for buildings of three stories were rare in Portsmouth. Even
+in 1798, of the six hundred and twenty-six dwelling houses of which the
+town boasted, eighty-six were of one story, five hundred and twenty-four
+were of two stories, and only sixteen of three stories. The Stavers inn
+has the regulation gambrel roof, but is lacking in those wood ornaments
+which are usually seen over the doors and windows of the more prominent
+houses of that epoch. It was, however, the hotel of the period.
+
+That same worn doorstep upon which Mr. O’Shaughnessy now stretches
+himself of a summer afternoon, with a short clay pipe stuck between
+his lips, and his hat crushed down on his brows, revolving the sad
+vicissitude of things--that same doorstep has been pressed by the feet
+of generals and marquises and grave dignitaries upon whom depended the
+destiny of the States--officers in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and
+high-heeled belles in patch, powder, and paduasoy. At this door the
+Flying Stage Coach, which crept from Boston, once a week set down its
+load of passengers--and distinguished passengers they often were. Most
+of the chief celebrities of the land, before and after the secession of
+the colonies, were the guests of Master Stavers, at the sign of the Earl
+of Halifax.
+
+While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother country,
+it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met
+to discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist,
+and when the full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early
+intimation of the coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched
+with sullen eyes the secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers’s
+tavern, and one morning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post
+which supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have
+been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent
+out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was
+armed with an axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow
+fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an
+insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious
+mob at once collected, and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in
+the doors and shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only
+through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular
+patriot, that the hotel was saved from destruction.
+
+In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in
+the rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend
+William Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied
+the hotel with ale. The excitement blew over after a time, and Stavers
+was induced to return to Portsmouth. He was seized by the Committee of
+Safety, and lodged in Exeter jail, when his loyalty, which had really
+never been very high, went down below zero; he took the oath of
+allegiance, and shortly after his released reopened the hotel. The
+honest face of William Pitt appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl
+of Halifax, ignominiously removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the
+state records is the following letter from poor Noble begging for the
+enlargement of John Stavers:--
+
+PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777. To the Committee of Safety of the Town of
+Exeter: GENTLEMEN,--As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in confinement
+in gaol upon my account contrary to my desire, for when I was at Mr.
+Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the Gentleman but
+by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad Blow but it is so well
+that I hope to go out in a day or two. So by this gentlemen of the
+Committee I hope you will release the gentleman upon my account. I am
+yours to serve. MARK NOBLE, A friend to my country.
+
+From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House prospered.
+It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the officers of the French
+fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the Marquis Lafayette, all
+the way from Providence, to visit them. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry,
+Rutledge, and other signers of the Declaration sojourned here at various
+times. It was here General Knox--“that stalwart man, two officers
+in size and three in lungs”--was wont to order his dinner, and in a
+stentorian voice compliment Master Stavers on the excellence of his
+larder. One day--it was at the time of the French Revolution--Louis
+Philippe and his two brothers applied at the door of the William Pitt
+for lodgings; but the tavern was full, and the future king, with his
+companions, found comfortable quarters under the hospitable roof of
+Governor Langdon in Pleasant Street.
+
+A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous, that have been enacted
+within this old yellow house on the corner would fill a volume. A vivid
+picture of the social and public life of the old time might be painted
+by a skillful hand, using the two Earl of Halifax inns for a background.
+The painter would find gay and sombre pigments ready mixed for his
+palette, and a hundred romantic incidents waiting for his canvas. One
+of these romantic episodes has been turned to very pretty account
+by Longfellow in the last series of The Tales of a Wayside Inn--the
+marriage of Governor Benning Wentworth with Martha Hilton, a sort of
+second edition of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.
+
+Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare feet and ankles and scant
+drapery when she was a child, and even after she was well in the bloom
+of her teens, used to scandalize good Dame Stavers, the innkeeper’s
+wife. Standing one afternoon in the doorway of the Earl of Halifax, (1.
+The first of the two hotels bearing that title. Mr. Brewster commits
+a slight anachronism in locating the scene of this incident in Jaffrey
+Street, now Court. The Stavers House was not built until the year of
+Governor Benning Wentworth’s death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does
+not fall into the same error.
+
+     “One hundred years ago, and something more,
+     In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
+     Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
+     Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows.”)
+
+Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed and
+lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying a
+pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, “the shifting sunbeam
+danced.”
+
+“You Pat! you Pat!” cried Mrs. Stavers severely; “why do you go looking
+so? You should be ashamed to be seen in the street.”
+
+“Never mind how I look,” says Miss Martha, with a merry laugh, letting
+slip a saucy brown shoulder out of her dress; “I shall ride in my
+chariot yet, ma’am.”
+
+Fortunate prophecy! Martha went to live as servant with Governor
+Wentworth at his mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea. Seven
+years passed, and the “thin slip of a girl,” who promised to be no great
+beauty, had flowered into the loveliest of women, with a lip like a
+cherry and a cheek like a tea-rose--a lady by instinct, one of Nature’s
+own ladies. The governor, a lonely widower, and not too young, fell in
+love with his fair handmaid. Without stating his purpose to any one,
+Governor Wentworth invited a number of friends (among others the Rev.
+Arthur Brown) to dine with him at Little Harbor on his birthday. After
+the dinner, which was a very elaborate one, was at an end, and the
+guests were discussing their tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided into
+the room, and stood blushing in front of the chimney-place. She was
+exquisitely dressed, as you may conceive, and wore her hair three
+stories high. The guests stared at each other, and particularly at her,
+and wondered. Then the governor, rising from his seat,
+
+     “Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
+     And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
+     ‘This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
+     My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!’”
+
+The rector was dumfounded, knowing the humble footing Martha had held
+in the house, and could think of nothing cleverer to say than, “To whom,
+your excellency?” which was not cleaver at all.
+
+“To this lady,” replied the governor, taking Martha Hilton by the
+hand. The Rev. Arthur Brown hesitated. “As the Chief Magistrate of New
+Hampshire I command you to marry me!” cried the choleric old governor.
+
+And so it was done; and the pretty kitchen-maid became Lady Wentworth,
+and did ride in her own chariot. She would not have been a woman if she
+had not taken an early opportunity to drive by Staver’s hotel!
+
+Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of the dignity of her new
+station, and became a grand lady at once. A few days after her marriage,
+dropping her ring on the floor, she languidly ordered her servant to
+pick it up. The servant, who appears to have had a fair sense of humor,
+grew suddenly near-sighted, and was unable to the ring until Lady
+Wentworth stooped and placed her ladyship’s finger upon it. She turned
+out a faultless wife, however; and Governor Wentworth at his death,
+which occurred in 1770, signified his approval of her by leaving her his
+entire estate. She married again without changing name, accepting the
+hand, and what there was of the heart, of Michael Wentworth, a retired
+colonel of the British army, who came to this country in 1767. Colonel
+Wentworth (not connected, I think, with the Portsmouth branch of
+Wentworths) seems to have been of a convivial turn of mind. He shortly
+dissipated his wife’s fortune in high living, and died abruptly in New
+York--it was supposed by his own hand. His last words--a quite unique
+contribution to the literature of last words--were, “I have had my
+cake, and ate it,” which showed that the colonel within his own modest
+limitations was a philosopher.
+
+The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor--a pleasant walk from
+Market Square--is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their
+hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the
+old homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door
+you step into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted
+courteously, waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the
+Wentworth mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though
+it is no longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, in
+their willingness to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers, show a
+hospitality which has always characterized the place.
+
+The house is an architectural freak. The main building--if it is the
+main building--is generally two stories in height, with irregular wings
+forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in
+brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions that look as if they had
+been built at different periods, which I believe was not the case. The
+mansion was completed in 1750. It originally contained fifty-two rooms;
+a portion of the structure was removed about half a century ago, leaving
+forty-five apartments. The chambers were connected in the oddest manner,
+by unexpected steps leading up or down, and capricious little passages
+that seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the architect. But
+it is a mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The cellar was
+arranged for the stabling of a troop of thirty horse in times of
+danger. The council-chamber, where for many years all questions of vital
+importance to the State were discussed, is a spacious, high-studded
+room, finished in the richest style of the last century. It is said that
+the ornamentation of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel,
+cost the workman a year’s constant labor. At the entrance to the
+council-chamber are still the racks for the twelve muskets of the
+governor’s guard--so long ago dismissed!
+
+Some valuable family portraits adorn the walls here, among which is a
+fine painting-yes, by our friend Copley--of the lovely Dorothy Quincy,
+who married John Hancock, and afterward became Madam Scott. This lady
+was a niece of Dr. Holme’s “Dorothy Q.” Opening on the council-chamber
+is a large billiard-room; the billiard-table is gone, but an ancient
+spinnet, with the prim air of an ancient maiden lady, and of a wheezy
+voice, is there; and in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet, near
+which the imaginative nostril may still detect a faint and tantalizing
+odor of colonial punch. Opening also on the council-chamber are several
+tiny apartments, empty and silent now, in which many a close rubber has
+been played by illustrious hands. The stillness and loneliness of the
+old house seem saddest here. The jeweled fingers are dust, the merry
+laughs have turned themselves into silent, sorrowful phantoms, stealing
+from chamber to chamber. It is easy to believe in the traditional ghost
+that haunts the place--
+
+     “A jolly place in times of old,
+     But something ails it now!”
+
+The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only historic house that bears
+the name of Wentworth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of Washington
+Street, stands the abode of another colonial worthy, Governor John
+Wentworth, who held office from 1767 down to the moment when the
+colonies dropped the British yoke as if it had been the letter H. For
+the moment the good gentleman’s occupation was gone. He was a royalist
+of the most florid complexion. In 1775, a man named John Fenton, and
+ex-captain in the British army, who had managed to offend the Sons of
+Liberty, was given sanctuary in this house by the governor, who refused
+to deliver the fugitive to the people. The mob planted a small cannon
+(unloaded) in front of the doorstep and threatened to open fire if
+Fenton were not forthcoming. He forth-with came. The family vacated
+the premises via the back-yard, and the mob entered, doing considerable
+damage. The broken marble chimney-place still remains, mutely protesting
+against the uncalled-for violence. Shortly after this event the governor
+made his way to England, where his loyalty was rewarded first with a
+governorship and then with a pension of L500. He was governor of Nova
+Scotia from 1792 to 1800, and died in Halifax in 1820. This house is
+one of the handsomest old dwellings in the town, and promises to
+outlive many of its newest neighbors. The parlor has undergone no change
+whatever since the populace rushed into it over a century ago. The
+furniture and adornments occupy their original positions and the plush
+on the walls has not been replaced by other hangings. In the hall--deep
+enough for the traditional duel of baronial romance--are full-length
+portraits of the several governors and sundry of their kinsfolk.
+
+There is yet a third Wentworth house, also decorated with the shade of
+a colonial governor--there were three Governors Wentworth--but we shall
+pass it by, though out of no lack of respect for that high official
+personage whose commission was signed by Joseph Addison, Esq., Secretary
+of State under George I.
+
+
+
+
+V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+
+THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the
+crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and
+customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting
+here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the
+withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has
+managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up
+periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town
+clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that
+we are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and
+positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the
+early days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and
+eventful days. The dense forest which surrounded the clearing was alive
+with hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock
+at his bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be awakened by
+the glare of his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the
+Womponoags. Year after year he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of
+flames, as he peered through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither
+he had flown in hot haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse
+at Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an extensive scale, with
+stockades for the shelter of cattle. It held large supplies of stores,
+and was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a
+species of naval ordnance which probably did not belie its name. It also
+boasted, we are told, of two drums for training-days, and no fewer
+than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced recorders--all which suggests a
+mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
+To the younger members of the community glass or crockery ware was an
+unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the
+pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter. The
+diet was also of the simplest--pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of
+ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could get it.
+
+John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
+management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to
+stewards, died before realizing any appreciable return from his
+enterprise. He spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity.
+In 1632, three years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a
+number of neat cattle, “of a large breed and yellow colour.” The herd
+thrived, and it is said that some of the stock is still extant on farms
+in the vicinity of Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of
+staying quality!
+
+In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General
+Court at Boston to grant them a definite township--for the boundaries
+were doubtful--and the right to give it a proper name. “Whereas the name
+of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe
+called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place,
+now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most
+suitable for this place, it being the river’s mouth, and good as any in
+this land, and your petit’rs shall humbly pray,” etc.
+
+Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent French
+wars, Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of bloody
+Indian massacres. No portion of the New England colony suffered more.
+Famine, fire, pestilence, and war, each in turn, and sometimes in
+conjunction, beleaguered the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe
+it out. But that was not to be.
+
+The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as
+it had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house
+and the jail--two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a
+town meeting in 1662, it was ordered “that a cage be made or some
+other meanes invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take
+tobacco on the Lord’s day out of the meetinge in the time of publique
+service.” This salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into
+effect until nine years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to
+have had as many professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a
+cage twelve feet square and seven feet high, with a pillory on top; “the
+said Pickering to make a good strong dore and make a substantiale payre
+of stocks and places the same in said cage.” A spot conveniently near
+the west end on the meeting-house was selected as the site for this
+ingenious device. It is more than probable that “the said Pickering”
+ indirectly furnished an occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we
+find him and one Edward Westwere authorized by the selectmen to “keepe
+houses of publique entertainment.” He was a versatile individual, this
+John Pickering--soldier, miller, moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and
+innkeeper. Michelangelo need not blush to be bracketed with him. In the
+course of a long and variegated career he never failed to act according
+to his lights, which he always kept well trimmed. That Captain Pickering
+subsequently became the grandfather, at several removes, of the present
+writer was no fault of the Captain’s, and should not be laid up against
+him.
+
+Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a rather
+desultory and tentative matter; “the young idea” seems to have been
+allowed to “shoot” at whatever it wanted to; but in that year it was
+voted “that care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skullmaster!] be
+provided for the towen as the law directs, not visious in conversation.”
+ That was perhaps demanding too much; for it was not until “May ye 7” of
+the following year that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their
+finger on this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed
+“to be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching the
+inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters yously doe
+throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the sellectt men in
+behalfe of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by way of rate twenty pounds
+and yt he shall and may reserve from every father or master that sends
+theyer children to school this yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers,
+writers and cypherers 20s., Lattiners 24s.”
+
+Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need not plume themselves on
+their originality. The town clerk who wrote that delicious “yously doe”
+ settles the question. It is to be hoped that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not
+only “not visious in conversation,” but was more conventional in his
+orthography. He evidently gave satisfaction, and clearly exerted an
+influence on the town clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a
+marked improvement in his own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the
+selectmen “to call and settell a gramer scoll according to ye best of
+yower judgement and for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye
+youth of ower town to learn them to read from ye primer, to wright and
+sypher and to learne ym the tongues and good-manners.” On this occasion
+it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury, who engaged “dilligently to
+attend ye school for ye present yeare, and tech all childern yt can
+read in thaire psallters and upward.” From such humble beginnings were
+evolved some of the best public high schools at present in New England.
+
+Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft delusion, though I believe that
+no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. Dwellers
+by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is
+something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the
+imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a
+perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates
+them from the unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at
+midnight, they are haunted by the spectres of the mirage. Their minds
+quickly take the impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore
+found a sympathetic atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the
+Piscataqua--that slender paw of land which reaches out into the ocean
+and terminates in a spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the claws of an
+amorous cat. What happened to the good folk of that picturesque little
+fishing-hamlet is worth retelling in brief. In order properly to retell
+it, a contemporary witness shall be called upon to testify in the case
+of the Stone-Throwing Devils of Newcastle. It is the Rev. Cotton Mather
+who addresses you--“On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown
+by an invisible hand upon the house of George Walton at Portsmouth
+[Newcastle was then a part of the town]. Whereupon the people going out
+found the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying and falling
+thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a great force, but
+really affecting ‘em no more than if a soft touch were given them. The
+glass windows were broken by the stones that came not from without, but
+from within; and other instruments were in a like manner hurled about.
+Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some were as hot as if they
+came out of the fire; and marking them they laid them on the table; but
+in a little while they found some of them again flying about. The spit
+was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward,
+stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it
+was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This disturbance
+continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow whistling
+would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse, but
+nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm
+which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying from
+the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
+through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was
+heard no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the
+boat. A cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the
+floor; a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon.
+Several cocks of hay, mow’d near the house, were taken up and hung upon
+the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the
+house. A man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and
+suspected that a woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining
+some land from here, did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural
+occurrences. However, at last they came to an end.”
+
+Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get
+thee back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp’s
+Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it
+uncomfortable for those about thee.
+
+Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch--a
+tangible witch in this instance--one Molly Bridget, who cast her malign
+spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced
+to reside at the moment. The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr.
+Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one
+remedy at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their
+tales. But when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was
+in consequence quite impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a
+gentleman of expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in
+the yard should be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch
+and do away with the mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires
+were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget rushed from room to room in
+a state of frenzy. With the dying flames her own vitality subsided, and
+she was dead before the ash-piles were cool. I say it seriously when I
+say that these are facts of which there is authentic proof.
+
+If the woman had recovered, she would have fared badly, even at that
+late period, had she been in Salem; but the death-penalty has never
+been hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took
+place there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder
+of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official
+who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of
+Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton
+in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following
+stanzas, however, give the pith of the story--
+
+     “And a voice among them shouted,
+             “Pause before the deed is done;
+     We have asked reprieve and pardon
+             For the poor misguided one.’
+
+     “But these words of Sheriff Packer
+             Rang above the swelling noise:
+     ‘Must I wait and lose my dinner?
+            Draw away the cart, my boys!’
+
+     “Nearer came the sound and louder,
+             Till a steed with panting breath,
+     From its sides the white foam dripping,
+            Halted at the scene of death;
+
+     “And a messenger alighted,
+             Crying to the crowd, ‘Make way!
+     This I bear to Sheriff Packer;
+             ‘Tis a pardon for Ruth Blay!’”
+
+But of course he arrived too late--the Law led Mercy about twenty
+minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled again
+that night before the sheriff’s domicile and expressed its indignation
+in groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was afterwards
+paraded through the streets.
+
+     “Be the name of Thomas Packer
+          A reproach forevermore!”
+
+Laighton’s ballad reminds me of that Portsmouth has been prolific in
+poets, one of whom, at least, has left a mouthful of perennial rhyme for
+orators--Jonathan Sewell with his
+
+     “No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
+     But the whole boundless continent is yours.”
+
+I have somewhere seen a volume with the alliterative title of “Poets of
+Portsmouth,” in which are embalmed no fewer than sixty immortals!
+
+But to drop into prose again, and have done with this iliad of odds and
+ends. Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of establishing the first
+recorded pauper workhouse--though not in connection with her poets, as
+might naturally be supposed. The building was completed and tenanted in
+1716. Seven years later, an act was passed in England authorizing the
+establishment of parish workhouses there. The first and only keeper of
+the Portsmouth almshouse up to 1750 was a woman--Rebecca Austin.
+
+Speaking of first things, we are told by Mr. Nathaniel Adams, in his
+“Annals of Portsmouth,” that on the 20th of April, 1761, Mr. John
+Stavers began running a stage from that town to Boston. The carriage was
+a two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate three passengers. The
+fare was thirteen shillings and sixpence sterling per head. The curricle
+was presently superseded by a series of fat yellow coaches, one of
+which--nearly a century later, and long after that pleasant mode of
+travel had fallen obsolete--was the cause of much mental tribulation (1.
+Some idle reader here and there may possibly recall the burning of
+the old stage-coach in The Story of a Bad Boy.) to the writer of this
+chronicle.
+
+The mail and the newspaper are closely associated factors in
+civilization, so I mention them together, though in this case the
+newspaper antedated the mail-coach about five years. On October 7, 1756,
+the first number of “The New Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle”
+ was issued in Portsmouth from the press of Daniel Fowle, who in the
+previous July had removed from Boston, where he had undergone a brief
+but uncongenial imprisonment on suspicion of having printed a pamphlet
+entitled “The Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.,” an essay
+that contained some uncomplimentary reflections on several official
+personages. The “Gazette” was the pioneer journal of the province. It
+was followed at the close of the same year by “The Mercury and Weekly
+Advertiser,” published by a former apprentice of Fowle, a certain
+Thomas Furber, backed by a number of restless Whigs, who considered the
+“Gazette” not sufficiently outspoken in the cause of liberty. Mr. Fowle,
+however, contrived to hold his own until the day of his death. Fowle
+had for pressman a faithful negro named Primus, a full-blooded African.
+Whether Primus was a freeman or a slave I am unable to state. He lived
+to a great age, and was a prominent figure among the people of his own
+color.
+
+Negro slavery was common in New England at that period. In 1767,
+Portsmouth numbered in its population a hundred and eighty-eight slaves,
+male and female. Their bondage, happily, was nearly always of a light
+sort, if any bondage can be light. They were allowed to have a kind
+of government of their own; indeed, were encouraged to do so, and no
+unreasonable restrictions were placed on their social enjoyment. They
+annually elected a king and counselors, and celebrated the event with a
+procession. The aristocratic feeling was highly developed in them. The
+rank of the master was the slave’s rank. There was a great deal of ebony
+standing around on its dignity in those days. For example, Governor
+Langdon’s manservant, Cyrus Bruce, was a person who insisted on his
+distinction, and it was recognized. His massive gold chain and seals,
+his cherry-colored small-clothes and silk stockings, his ruffles and
+silver shoe-buckles, were a tradition long after Cyrus himself was
+pulverized.
+
+In cases of minor misdemeanor among them, the negros themselves were
+permitted to be judge and jury. Their administration of justice was
+often characteristically naive. Mr. Brewster gives an amusing sketch of
+one of their sessions. King Nero is on the bench, and one Cato--we are
+nothing if not classical--is the prosecuting attorney. The name of the
+prisoner and the nature of his offense are not disclosed to posterity.
+In the midst of the proceedings the hour of noon is clanged from the
+neighboring belfry of the Old North Church. “The evidence was not gone
+through with, but the servants could stay no longer from their home
+duties. They all wanted to see the whipping, but could not conveniently
+be present again after dinner. Cato ventured to address the King: Please
+you Honor, best let the fellow have his whipping now, and finish the
+trial after dinner. The request seemed to be the general wish of the
+company: so Nero ordered ten lashes, for justice so far as the trial
+went, and ten more at the close of the trial, should he be found
+guilty!”
+
+Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless
+Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced
+any emancipation edict. During the Revolutionary War the slaves were
+generally emancipated by their masters. That many of the negros, who had
+grown gray in service, refused their freedom, and elected to spend the
+rest of their lives as pensioners in the families of their late owners,
+is a circumstance that illustrates the kindly ties which held between
+slave and master in the old colonial days in New England.
+
+The institution was accidental and superficial, and never had any real
+root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found in the
+Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it would have
+continued awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his religion into the
+business affairs of life; he was not even able to keep it out of his
+bills of lading. I cannot close this rambling chapter more appropriately
+and solemnly than by quoting from one of those same pious bills of
+landing. It is dated June, 1726, and reads: “Shipped by the grace of God
+in good order and well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct.
+and risque, in and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is
+master under God for this present voyage George King, now riding at
+anchor in the river Piscataqua and by God’s grace bound to Barbadoes.”
+ Here follows a catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo, rounded off with:
+“And so God send the good Briga to her desired port in safety. Amen.”
+
+
+
+
+VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+
+I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
+characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have
+been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity.
+In another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been
+favorable to the development of individual singularity during the latter
+half of the present century. It is easier to do that than fully to
+account for the numerous queer human types which have existed from time
+to time previous to that period.
+
+In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster’s entertaining
+collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and
+variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene.
+They are, in the author’s intention, secondary figures in the background
+of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one’s
+memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one’s self thinking quite
+as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of
+General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism
+and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
+unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller
+the things which are that old hut-dweller’s, we must concede him his
+picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is
+picturesque--now that he is dead.
+
+If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to glance
+at a few old profiles of persons who, however substantial they once
+were, are now leading a life of mere outlines. I would like to give
+them a less faded expression, but the past is very chary of yielding up
+anything more than its shadows.
+
+The first who presents himself is the ruminative hermit already
+mentioned--a species of uninspired Thoreau. His name was Benjamin Lear.
+So far as his craziness went, he might have been a lineal descendant of
+that ancient king of Britain who figures on Shakespeare’s page. Family
+dissensions made a recluse of King Lear; but in the case of Benjamin
+there were no mitigating circumstances. He had no family to trouble
+him, and his realm remained undivided. He owned an excellent farm on the
+south side of Sagamore Creek, a little to the west of the bridge, and
+might have lived at ease, if personal comfort had not been distasteful
+to him. Personal comfort entered into no part of Lear’s. To be alone
+filled the little pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced himself in
+a wretched shanty, and barred the door, figuratively, against all the
+world. Wealth--what would have been wealth to him--lay within his reach,
+but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness,
+and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself
+absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar
+floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful
+disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive--at a distance.
+He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and
+potatoes, the product of his realm. He needed nothing but an island to
+be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he flitted like a frost-bitten
+apparition through the main street of Portsmouth, which he always
+designated as “the Bank,” a name that had become obsolete fifty or a
+hundred years before. Thus, for nearly a quarter of a century, Benjamin
+Lear stood aloof from human intercourse. In his old age some of the
+neighbors offered him shelter during the tempestuous winter months; but
+he would have none of it--he defied wind and weather. There he lay in
+his dilapidated hovel in his last illness, refusing to allow any one to
+remain with him overnight--and the mercury four degrees below zero. Lear
+was born in 1720, and vegetated eighty-two years.
+
+I take it that Timothy Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse, would like
+to have more, was a person better worth knowing. His name reads like the
+title of some old-fashioned novel--“Timothy Winn, or the Memoirs of a
+Bashful Gentleman.” He came to Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of
+the last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry
+Street what was called “a piece goods store.” He was the third Timothy
+in his monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he
+inscribed on the sign over his shop door, “Timothy Winn, 3d,” and was
+ever after called “Three-Penny Winn.” That he enjoyed the pleasantry,
+and clung to his sign, goes to show that he was a person who would ripen
+on further acquaintance, were further acquaintance now practicable.
+His next-door neighbor, Mr. Leonard Serat, who kept a modest tailoring
+establishment, also tantalizes us a little with a dim intimation of
+originality. He plainly was without literary prejudices, for on one
+face of his swinging sign was painted the word Taylor, and on the other
+Tailor. This may have been a delicate concession to that part of the
+community--the greater part, probably--which would have spelled it with
+a y.
+
+The building in which Messrs. Winn and Serat had their shops was the
+property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of Demerara, the
+story of whose unconventional courtship of Miss Catherine Moffatt is
+pretty enough to bear retelling, and entitles him to a place in our
+limited collection of etchings. M. Rousselet had doubtless already mad
+excursions into the pays de tendre, and given Miss Catherine previous
+notice of the state of his heart, but it was not until one day during
+the hour of service at the Episcopal church that he brought matters to
+a crisis by handing to Miss Moffatt a small Bible, on the fly-leaf of
+which he had penciled the fifth verse of the Second Epistle of John--
+
+     “And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I
+     wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+     which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.”
+
+This was not to be resisted, at lease not by Miss Catherine, who
+demurely handed the volume back to him with a page turned down at the
+sixteenth verse in the first chapter of Ruth--
+
+     “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
+     will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+     God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
+     buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but
+     death part thee and me.”
+
+Aside from this quaint touch of romance, what attaches me to the
+happy pair--for the marriage was a fortunate one--is the fact that the
+Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion, which stood
+directly opposite my grandfather’s house on Court Street and was torn
+down in my childhood, to my great consternation. The building had been
+unoccupied for a quarter of a century, and was fast falling into decay
+with all its rich wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not
+full of ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
+ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather’s
+house just across the way? Where else could they bestow themselves so
+conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in process of destruction, I
+used to peep round the corner of our barn at the workmen, and watch the
+indignant phantoms go soaring upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.
+
+A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary
+Atkinson (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to the lot
+of the Rev. William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church between 1733
+and 1747. From the worldly standpoint, it was a fine match for the
+Newcastle clergyman--beauty, of the eagle-beaked kind; wealth, her share
+of the family plate; high birth, a sister to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson.
+But if the exemplary man had cast his eyes lower, peradventure he had
+found more happiness, though ill-bred persons without family plate are
+not necessarily amiable. Like Socrates, this long-suffering divine had
+always with him an object on which to cultivate heavenly patience, and
+patience, says the Eastern proverb, is the key to content. The spirit
+of Xantippe seems to have taken possession of Mrs. Shurtleff immediately
+after her marriage. The freakish disrespect with which she used her
+meek consort was a heavy cross to bear at a period in New England when
+clerical dignity was at its highest sensitive point. Her devices for
+torturing the poor gentleman were inexhaustible. Now she lets his
+Sabbath ruffs go unstarched; now she scandalizes him by some unseemly
+and frivolous color in her attire; now she leaves him to cook his own
+dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she locks him in his study, whither
+he has retired for a moment or two of prayer, previous to setting forth
+to perform the morning service. The congregation has assembled; the
+sexton has tolled the bell twice as long as is custom, and is beginning
+a third carillon, full of wonder that his reverence does not appear;
+and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family pew with a face as
+complacent as that of the cat that has eaten the canary. Presently the
+deacons appeal to her for information touching the good doctor. Mistress
+Shurtleff sweetly tells them that the good doctor was in his study when
+she left home. There he is found, indeed, and released from durance,
+begging the deacons to keep his mortification secret, to “give it an
+understanding, but no tongue.” Such was the discipline undergone by
+the worthy Dr. Shurtleff on his earthly pilgrimage. A portrait of
+this patient man--now a saint somewhere--hangs in the rooms of the New
+England Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston. There he can be
+seen in surplice and bands, with his lamblike, apostolic face looking
+down upon the heavy antiquarian labors of his busy descendants.
+
+Whether or not a man is to be classed as eccentric who vanishes without
+rhyme or reason on his wedding-night is a query left to the reader’s
+decision. We seem to have struck a matrimonial vein, and must work
+it out. In 1768, Mr. James McDonough was one of the wealthiest men in
+Portsmouth, and the fortunate suitor for the hand of a daughter of Jacob
+Sheafe, a town magnate. The home of the bride was decked and lighted
+for the nuptials, the banquet-table was spread, and the guests were
+gathered. The minister in his robe stood by the carven mantelpiece,
+book in hand, and waited. Then followed an awkward interval--there was
+a hitch somewhere. A strange silence fell upon the laughing groups; the
+air grew tense with expectation; in the pantry, Amos Boggs, the butler,
+in his agitation split a bottle of port over his new cinnamon-colored
+small-clothes. Then a whisper--a whisper suppressed these twenty
+minutes--ran through the apartments,--“The bridegroom has not come!”. He
+never came. The mystery of that night remains a mystery after the lapse
+of a century and a quarter.
+
+What had become of James McDonough? The assassination of so notable a
+person in a community where every strange face was challenged, where
+every man’s antecedents were known, could not have been accomplished
+without leaving some slight traces. Not a shadow of foul play was
+discovered. That McDonough had been murdered or had committed suicide
+were theories accepted at first by a few, and then by no one. On the
+other hand, he was in love with his fiancee, he had wealth, power,
+position--why had he fled? He was seen a moment on the public street,
+and then never seen again. It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile
+the bewilderment of the bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough
+had been waylaid and killed, she could mourn for him. If he had deserted
+her, she could wrap herself in her pride. But neither course lay open to
+her, then or afterward. In one of the Twice Told Tales Hawthorne deals
+with a man named Wakefield, who disappears with like suddenness,
+and lives unrecognized for twenty years in a street not far from his
+abandoned hearthside. Such expunging of one’s self was not possible in
+Portsmouth; but I never think of McDonough without recalling Wakefield.
+I have an inexplicable conviction that for many a year James McDonough,
+in some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the effect of his own
+startling disappearance.
+
+Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a personage
+bearing the ponderous title of King’s Attorney, and carrying much
+gold lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr. Wyseman Clagett, of
+Bristol, England, where his father dwelt on the manor of Broad Oaks,
+in a mansion with twelve chimneys, and kept a coach and eight or ten
+servants. Up to the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman
+Clagett had evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His
+wealth consisted of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his
+lapels, and the tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with
+these he contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the
+young beauties of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had
+plighted troth with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to return
+home with a disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of violent temper and
+ingenious vindictiveness, and proved more than a sufficient punishment
+for Lettice’s infidelity. The trifling fact that Warner was dead--he
+died shortly after his return--did not interfere with the course of
+Mr. Clagett’s jealousy; he was haunted by the suspicion that Lettice
+regretted her first love, having left nothing undone to make her do so.
+“This is to pay Warner’s debts,” remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched
+off the table-cloth and wrecked the tea-things.
+
+In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor. The noun
+Clagett speedily turned itself into a verb; “to Clagett” meant “to
+prosecute;” they were convertible terms. In spite of his industrious
+severity, and his royal emoluments, if such existed, the exchequer of
+the King’s Attorney showed a perpetual deficit. The stratagems to
+which he resorted from time to time in order to raise unimportant sums
+reminded one of certain scenes in Moliere’s comedies.
+
+Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They were
+made for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and
+this was their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his
+servants to pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some
+sailor drinking at an inn: the constable arrested the sailor or the
+countryman, as the case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr.
+Clagett; Mr. Clagett read the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him
+five dollars and costs. The plunder was then divided between the
+conspirators--two hearts that beat as one--Clagett, of course, getting
+the lion’s share. Justice was never administered in a simpler manner in
+any country. This eminent legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the
+wick laid away in the little churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire. It
+is a satisfaction, even after such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice
+survived the King’s Attorney sufficiently long to be very happy with
+somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was scarcely eighteen when she married
+Wyseman Clagett.
+
+About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been
+a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of
+him as “the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton,” as if one should say, “the
+well-known statesman, Daniel Webster.” It is curious to observe how any
+sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where
+everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does
+not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only
+after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That
+happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the
+hens flying out of the loft window in his father’s stable, which stood
+in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that
+though he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in
+no respect inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the
+window in the loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England
+Icarus alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was
+henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd
+moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as
+had not been detected in him previous to his mischance. As Polonius said
+of Hamlet--another unstrung mortal--Tilton’s replies had “a happiness
+that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so
+prosperously be delivered of.” One morning, he appeared at the
+flour-mill with a sack of corn to be ground for the almshouse, and was
+asked what he knew. “Some things I know,” replied poor Tilton, “and some
+things I don’t know. I know the miller’s hogs grow fat, but I don’t know
+whose corn they fat on.” To borrow another word from Polonius, though
+this be madness, yet there was method in it. Tilton finally brought up
+in the almshouse, where he was allowed the liberty of roaming at will
+through the town. He loved the water-side as if he had had all his
+senses. Often he was seen to stand for hours with a sunny, torpid smile
+on his lips, gazing out upon the river where its azure ruffles itself
+into silver against the islands. He always wore stuck in his hat a
+few hen’s feathers, perhaps with some vague idea of still associating
+himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come into that category.
+
+George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another
+complexion, a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and one of
+His Majesty’s Council in 1766--a man with the blood of the lion and
+the unicorn in every vein. He remained to the bitter end, and beyond,
+a devout royalist, prizing his shoe-buckles, not because they were of
+chased silver, but because they bore the tower mark and crown stamp. He
+stoutly objected to oral prayer, on the ground that it gave rogues and
+hypocrites an opportunity to impose on honest folk. He was punctilious
+in his attendance at church, and unfailing in his responses, though not
+of a particularly devotional temperament. On one occasion, at least, his
+sincerity is not to be questioned. He had been deeply irritated by some
+encroachments on the boundaries of certain estates, and had gone to
+church that forenoon with his mind full of the matter. When the minister
+in the course of reading the service came to the apostrophe, “Cursed be
+he who removeth his neighbor’s landmark,” Mr. Jeffrey’s feelings were
+too many for him, and he cried out “Amen!” in a tone of voice that
+brought smiles to the adjoining pews.
+
+Mr. Jaffrey’s last will and testament was a whimsical document, in spite
+of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper. It had originally
+been Mr. Jaffrey’s plan to leave his possessions to his beloved friend,
+Colonel Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel by some maladroitness managed
+to turn the current of Pactolus in another direction. The vast property
+was bequeathed to George Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator’s grandnephew,
+on condition that the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name
+of Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no profession
+excepting that of gentleman. There is an immense amount of Portsmouth
+as well as George Jaffrey in that final clause. George the fourth
+handsomely complied with the requirements, and dying at the age of
+sixty-six, without issue or assets, was the last of that particular line
+of Georges. I say that he handsomely complied with the requirements of
+the will; but my statement appears to be subject to qualification,
+for on the day of his obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic
+contemporary: “Well, yes, Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but
+not eminent in his profession.”
+
+This modest exhibition of profiles, in which I have attempted to
+preserve no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of Dr.
+Joseph Moses.
+
+If Boston in the colonial days had her Mather Byles, Portsmouth had her
+Dr. Joseph Moses. In their quality as humorists, the outlines of both
+these gentlemen have become rather broken and indistinct. “A jest’s
+prosperity lies in the ear that hears it.” Decanted wit inevitably loses
+its bouquet. A clever repartee belongs to the precious moment in
+which it is broached, and is of a vintage that does not usually bear
+transportation. Dr. Moses--he received his diploma not from the College
+of Physicians, but from the circumstance of his having once drugged
+his private demijohn of rum, and so nailed an inquisitive negro named
+Sambo--Dr. Moses, as he was always called, had been handed down to us by
+tradition as a fellow of infinite jest and of most excellent fancy; but
+I must confess that I find his high spirits very much evaporated.
+His humor expended itself, for the greater part, in practical
+pleasantries--like that practiced on the minion Sambo--but these
+diversions, however facetious to the parties concerned, lack magnetism
+for outsiders. I discover nothing about him so amusing as the fact that
+he lived in a tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded
+nor shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the discarded shingles
+of the Old South Church when the roof of that edifice was repaired.
+
+Dr. Moses, like many persons of his time and class, was a man of protean
+employment--joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had much pithy and
+fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He certainly impressed the
+Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of uncommon parts, for the Honorable
+Secretary of the Province, like a second Haroun Al Raschid, often
+summoned the barber to entertain him with his company. One evening--and
+this is the only reproducible instance of the doctor’s readiness--Mr.
+Atkinson regaled his guest with a diminutive glass of choice Madeira.
+The doctor regarded it against the light with the half-closed eye of
+the connoisseur, and after sipping the molten topaz with satisfaction,
+inquired how old it was. “Of the vintage of about sixty years ago,” was
+the answer. “Well,” said the doctor reflectively, “I never in my life
+saw so small a thing of such an age.” There are other mots of his on
+record, but their faces are suspiciously familiar. In fact, all the
+witty things were said aeons ago. If one nowadays perpetrates an
+original joke, one immediately afterward finds it in the Sanskirt. I
+am afraid that Dr. Joseph Moses has no very solid claims on us. I have
+given him place here because he has long had the reputation of a wit,
+which is almost as good as to be one.
+
+
+
+
+VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston to
+Portsmouth--it took place somewhat more than forty years ago--was
+attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in the crowded
+station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was unobserved at the time. The
+catastrophe was followed, though not immediately, by death, and that
+also, curiously enough, was unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial
+train, freighted with so many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran
+over and killed--LOCAL CHARACTER.
+
+Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little community, and
+had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to time it had calmly
+produced an individual built on plans and specifications of its own,
+without regard to the prejudices and conventionalities of outlying
+districts. This individual was purely indigenous. He was born in the
+town, he lived to a good old age in the town, and never went out of the
+place, until he was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only
+fifty-six miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity--only fifty-six
+miles by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles distant
+in effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged
+to take a great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story
+mud-turtle--if zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate
+so daring an invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the
+morning, you dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city
+with the golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always
+the coach had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had
+not gone lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in Portsmouth, this
+journey was an event which occurred only twice or thrice during life. To
+the typical individual with whom I am for the moment dealing, it never
+occurred at all. The town was his entire world; he was a parochial as
+a Parisian; Market Street was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North
+End his Bois de Boulogne.
+
+Of course there were varieties of local characters without his
+limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India trade;
+elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal peculiarities; one
+or two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of coat, haunting the Athenaeum
+reading-room; ex-sea captains, with rings on their fingers, like Simon
+Danz’s visitors in Longfellow’s poem--men who had played busy parts in
+the bustling world, and had drifted back to Old Strawberry Bank in the
+tranquil sunset of their careers. I may say, in passing, that these
+ancient mariners, after battling with terrific hurricanes and typhoons
+on every known sea, not infrequently drowned themselves in pleasant
+weather in small sail-boats on the Piscataqua River. Old sea-dogs who
+had commanded ships of four or five hundred tons had naturally slight
+respect for the potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there
+was to be no further increase of these odd sticks--if I may call them
+so, in no irreverent mood--after those innocent-looking parallel bars
+indissolubly linked Portsmouth with the capital of the Commonwealth of
+Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be changed, the old angles
+to be pared off, new horizons to be regarded. The individual, as an
+eccentric individual, was to undergo great modifications. If he were not
+to become extinct--a thing little likely--he was at least to lose his
+prominence.
+
+However, as I said, local character, in the sense in which the term
+is here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering death, and
+passed away so peacefully and silently as not to attract general, or
+perhaps any, notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my
+boyhood. The last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had
+come in, long before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half
+obsolete customs and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was
+not too late, for example, to catch the last town crier--one Nicholas
+Newman, whom I used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort
+of affection.
+
+Nicholas Newman--Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being
+Edward--was a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat
+bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have
+never since seen a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple.
+The only thing about him that matched the instrument of his office was
+his voice. His “Hear All!” still deafens memory’s ear. I remember that
+he had a queer way of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him
+had originally intended a crab, but thought better of it, and made a
+town-crier. Of the crustacean intention only a moist thumb remained,
+which served Mr. Newman in good stead in the delivery of the Boston
+evening papers, for he was incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties
+were to cry auctions, funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals,
+public meetings, and articles lost or found. He was especially strong in
+announcing the loss of reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden
+ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when
+fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person,
+but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as
+a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity
+in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman
+spoken of as “that horrid man.” He was a picturesque figure.
+
+Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with
+those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple
+of the Old North every night at nine o’clock--the vocal remains of
+the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his
+losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can
+more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different
+personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine
+o’clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a
+time at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a
+gay little shop (he called it “an Emporium”), as barber shops generally
+are, decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers
+of tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes--whose antecedents to us boys were
+wrapped in thrilling mystery, we imagined him to have been a prince in
+his native land--was a colored man, not too dark “for human nature’s
+daily food,” and enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics
+in town. At this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every
+official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore a
+name that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or so.
+The situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a Chinese
+policeman, with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper pocket handkerchief,
+patrolling Congress Street.
+
+Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as straight
+as a pine. He possessed his race’s sweet temper, simplicity, and vanity.
+His martial bearing was a positive factor in the effectiveness of the
+Portsmouth Greys, whenever those bloodless warriors paraded. As he
+brought up the rear of the last platoon, with his infantry cap stuck
+jauntily on the left side of his head and a bright silver cup slung on
+a belt at his hip, he seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing
+things in the display. To himself he was pretty much “all the company.”
+ He used to say, with a drollness which did not strike me until years
+afterwards, “Boys, I and Cap’n Towle is goin’ to trot out ‘the Greys’
+to-morroh.” Though strictly honest in all business dealings, his
+tropical imagination, whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of
+autobiography, left much to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared
+with Sol Holmes on such occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid
+integrity. Sol Holmes’s tragic end was in singular contrast with his
+sunny temperament. One night, long ago, he threw himself from the deck
+of a Sound steamer, somewhere between Stonington and New York. What led
+or drove him to the act never transpired.
+
+There are few men who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of which I
+write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue wheelbarrow.
+I find it difficult to describe him other than vaguely, possibly because
+Wilbird had no expression whatever in his countenance. With his vacant
+white face lifted to the clouds, seemingly oblivious of everything, yet
+going with a sort of heaven-given instinct straight to his destination,
+he trundled that rattling wheelbarrow for many a year over Portsmouth
+cobblestones. He was so unconscious of his environment that sometimes a
+small boy would pop into the empty wheelbarrow and secure a ride without
+Wibird arriving at any very clear knowledge of the fact. His employment
+in life was to deliver groceries and other merchandise to purchasers.
+This he did in a dreamy, impersonal kind of way. It was as if a spirit
+had somehow go hold of an earthly wheelbarrow and was trundling it quite
+unconsciously, with no sense of responsibility. One day he appeared at
+a kitchen door with a two-gallon molasses jug, the top of which was
+wanting. It was not longer a jug, but a tureen. When the recipient of
+the damaged article remonstrated with “Goodness gracious, Wibird! You
+have broken the jug,” his features lighted up, and he seemed immensely
+relieved. “I thought,” He remarked, “I heerd somethink crack!”
+
+Wibird Penhallow’s heaviest patron was the keeper of a variety store,
+and the first specimen of a pessimist I ever encountered. He was an
+excellent specimen. He took exception to everything. He objected to the
+telegraph, to the railway, to steam in all its applications. Some of his
+arguments, I recollect, made a deep impression on my mind. “Nowadays,”
+ he once observed to me, “if your son or your grandfather drops dead at
+the other end of creation, you know of it in ten minutes. What’s the
+use? Unless you are anxious to know he’s dead, you’ve got just two or
+three weeks more to be miserable in.” He scorned the whole business, and
+was faithful to his scorn. When he received a telegram, which was rare,
+he made a point of keeping it awhile unopened. Through the exercise of
+this whim he once missed an opportunity of buying certain goods to great
+advantage. “There!” he exclaimed, “if the telegraph hadn’t been invented
+the idiot would have written to me, and I’d have sent a letter by return
+coach, and got the goods before he found out prices had gone up in
+Chicago. If that boy brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs,
+I’ll throw an axe-handle at him.” His pessimism extended up, or down, to
+generally recognized canons of orthography. They were all iniquitous. If
+k-n-i-f-e spelled knife, then, he contended, k-n-i-f-e-s was the plural.
+Diverting tags, written by his own hand in conformity with this theory,
+were always attached to articles in his shop window. He is long since
+ded, as he himself would have put it, but his phonetic theory appears to
+have survived him in crankish brains here and there. As my discouraging
+old friend was not exactly a public character, like the town crier or
+Wibird Penhallow, I have intentionally thrown a veil over his identity.
+I have, so to speak, dropped into his pouch a grain or two of that
+magical fern-seed which was supposed by our English ancestors, in
+Elizabeth’s reign, to possess the quality of rendering a man invisible.
+
+Another person who singularly interested me at this epoch was a person
+with whom I had never exchanged a word, whose voice I had never heard,
+but whose face was as familiar to me as every day could make it. For
+each morning as I went to school, and each afternoon as I returned, I
+saw this face peering out of a window in the second story of a shambling
+yellow house situated in Washington Street, not far from the corner of
+State. Whether some malign disease had fixed him to the chair he sat on,
+or whether he had lost the use of his legs, or, possible, had none (the
+upper part of him was that of a man in admirable health), presented a
+problem which, with that curious insouciance of youth I made no attempt
+to solve. It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of
+that house. I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which
+wove itself about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the
+master of a large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta;
+while still in his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck,
+and seated himself at that window--where the outlook must have been the
+reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of the
+day, and the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry’s bakery-cart was the
+only sound that ever shattered the silence. Whether it was an amatory
+or a financial disappointment that turned him into a hermit was left to
+ingenious conjecture. But there he sat, year in and year out, with his
+cheek so close to the window that the nearest pane became permanently
+blurred with his breath; for after his demise the blurr remained.
+
+In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for an
+undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was a sexton
+in Portsmouth--his name escapes me, but his attributes do not--whose
+impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture of the
+Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was the striking figure,
+even to the eclipsing of the involuntary object of the ceremony. His
+occasions, happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other
+public services that of furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties.
+I always thought--perhaps it was the working of an unchastened
+imagination--that he managed to throw into his ice-creams a peculiar
+chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzzi--arcades ambo--the rival
+confectioners.
+
+Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species
+of restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing
+confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both
+gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines, but
+neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of those
+prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain snuffy little
+shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent side-streets where the football
+of commerce seemed an incongruous thing. These shops were never intended
+in nature. They had an impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not
+recall one that was not located in a private residence, and was not
+evidently the despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis,
+similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyrcheon in The House
+of the Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street door--the upper
+section left open in summer--ushered you, with a sudden jangle of bell
+that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall, haunted
+by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence, through
+another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front parlor,
+but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown, wooden counter, and several
+rows of little drawers built up against the picture-papered wall behind
+it. Through much use the paint on these drawers was worn off in circles
+round the polished brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small
+article required by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a
+peppermint Gibraltar--the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery
+which, when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any
+Portsmouth boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a single
+tooth left unbroken. The proprietors of these little knick-knack
+establishments were the nicest creatures, somehow suggesting venerable
+doves. They were always aged ladies, sometimes spinsters, sometimes
+relicts of daring mariners, beached long before. They always wore crisp
+muslin caps and steel-rimmed spectacles; they were not always amiable,
+and no wonder, for even doves may have their rheumatism; but such as
+they were, they were cherished in young hearts, and are, I take it,
+impossible to-day.
+
+When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that it
+must have been in some respects unique among New England towns. There
+were, for instance, no really poor persons in the place; every one had
+some sufficient calling or an income to render it unnecessary; vagrants
+and paupers were instantly snapped up and provided for at “the Farm.”
+ There was, however, in a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a
+decayed old gentlewoman, occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a
+suspicion of maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her
+by the neighborhood--as a matter of course, and involving no sense of
+dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is
+given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
+
+I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as they were
+affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that
+stir in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my
+purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes
+that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like
+Portsmouth--the obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the
+obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England
+the impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and
+women--quaint, shrewd, and racy of the soil--who linger in little,
+silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England roads and
+by-ways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in the record of
+some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or Mary Wilkins, on whose
+sympathetic page they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an
+atmosphere of long-kept lavender and pennyroyal.
+
+Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower.
+The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated,
+the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement
+more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric
+finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a
+larger world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping
+hand of new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from
+Cambridge, Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico,
+and his ulster from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state
+of Odd Stick; he has ceased to be parochial; he is no longer distinct;
+he is simply the Average Man.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+     ADAMS, NATHANIEL
+     ADDISON, JOSEPH
+     ALLEN, WILLIAM
+     ANANIAS
+     ATKINSON, THEODORE
+     AUSTIN, REBECCA
+     BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE
+     BLAY, RUTH
+     BOGGS, AMOS
+     BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN
+     BRIDGET, MOLLY
+     BROWN, REV. ARTHUR
+     BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D.
+     BRUCE, CYRUS
+     BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES
+     BYLES, REV. MATHER
+     CAROLINE, QUEEN
+     CHADBORN, HUMPHREY
+     CHARLES, PRINCE
+     CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE
+     CLAGETT, WYSEMAN
+     COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON
+     D’ORLEANS, DUC
+     DUNYON, WILLIAM
+     ELIZABETH, QUEEN
+     FENTON, JOHN
+     FOWLE, DANIEL
+     FOWLE, PRIMUS
+     FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
+     FURBER, THOMAS
+     GEORGE I
+     GERRY, ELBRIDGE
+     GORGES, SIR FERDINAND
+     GUAST, PIERRE DE
+     HAM, SUPPLY
+     HANCOCK, JOHN
+     HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
+     HILTON, MARTHA
+     HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+     HOLMES, SOL
+     JAFFREY, GEORGE
+     JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY
+     JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
+     KEAIS, SAMUAL
+     KEKUANAOA
+     KENNY, PENELOPE
+     KNOX, GENERAL HENRY
+     LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE
+     LAIGHTON, ALBERT
+     LAIGHTON, OSCAR
+     LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN
+     LEAR, BENJAMIN
+     LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
+     MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD
+     MCDONOUGH, JAMES
+     MASON, JEREMIAH
+     MASON, JOHN
+     MASON, JOHN TUFTON
+     MARCH, CLEMENT
+     MATHER, REV. COTTON
+     MESERVE, GEORGE
+     MICHELANGELO
+     MITCHEL, LETTUCE
+     MOFFATT, CATHERINE
+     MOLIERE
+     MONTPENSIER, DUC DE
+     MOSES, JOSEPH
+     NEWMAN, EDWARD
+     NOBLE, MARK
+     ODIORNE, EBEN L.
+     PACKER, THOMAS
+     PEDUZZI, DOMINIC
+     PENHALLOW, WIBIRD
+     PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM
+     PEPYS, SAMUAL
+     PHILIPPE, LOUIS
+     PHIPPES, THOMAS
+     PHIPPS, GOVERNOR
+     PICKERING, JOHN
+     PITT, WILLIAM
+     POTTLE, WILLIAM
+     PRING, MARTIN
+     QUINCY, DOROTHY
+     ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE
+     ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS
+     RUTLEDGE, EDWARD
+     SERAT, LEONARD
+     SEWELL, JONATHAN
+     SHAKESPEARE
+     SHEAFE, JACOB
+     SHERBURNE, HENRY
+     SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON
+     SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM
+     SIMPSON, SARAH
+     SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN
+     SOCRATES
+     STAVERS, DAME
+     STAVERS, JOHN
+     STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE
+     STOODLEY, JAMES
+     THAXTER, CELIA
+     THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
+     TILTON, JOHNNY
+     TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM
+     WALTON, GEORGE
+     WARNER, JONATHAN
+     WASHINGTON, GEORGE
+     WEBSTER, DANIEL
+     WENTWORTH, BENNING
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D
+     WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA
+     WENTWORTH, MARY
+     WENTWORTH, MICHAEL
+     WENTWORTH, SARAH
+     WESTWERE, EDWARD
+     WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF
+     WIBIRD, RICHARD
+     WILKINS, MARY E.
+     WINN, TIMOTHY
+     WITHER, GEORGE
+     XANTIPPE
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Old Town By The Sea
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1861]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan L. Farley and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+     PISCATAQUA RIVER
+
+     Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
+     By woods, and fields of corn,
+     Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
+     Upon my birthday morn.
+
+     But I within a city, I,
+     So full of vague unrest,
+     Would almost give my life to lie
+     An hour upon upon thy breast.
+
+     To let the wherry listless go,
+     And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
+     Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
+     Like the red harbor-buoy;
+
+     To sit in happy indolence,
+     To rest upon the oars,
+     And catch the heavy earthy scents
+     That blow from summer shores;
+
+     To see the rounded sun go down,
+     And with its parting fires
+     Light up the windows of the town
+     And burn the tapering spires;
+
+     And then to hear the muffled tolls
+     From steeples slim and white,
+     And watch, among the Isles of Shoals,
+     The Beacon's orange light.
+
+     O River! flowing to the main
+     Through woods, and fields of corn,
+     Hear thou my longing and my pain
+     This sunny birthday morn;
+
+     And take this song which fancy shapes
+     To music like thine own,
+     And sing it to the cliffs and capes
+     And crags where I am known!
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.   CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+     II.  ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+     III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+     IV.  A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+     V.   OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+     VI.  SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+     VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+     INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+
+
+
+I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+
+I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects
+on the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this
+crust of earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on
+its surface seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the
+other day, then--that is to say, in the month of June, 1603--that one
+Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty
+tons burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
+Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort the
+Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
+windings of "the brave river" for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
+turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object
+of the expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal
+sassafras-tree, from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors,
+could be distilled the Elixir of Life.
+
+It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
+miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
+effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens
+suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network
+of strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the crystal
+water, must have won the tired mariners.
+
+The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
+hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of,
+nor did they encounter--what would have been infinitely less to their
+taste--and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered ashes
+of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they
+were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish
+abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate
+breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
+the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the
+tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder
+sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval solitude. Master Pring
+would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.
+
+Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the
+Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua--Captain John Smith of famous
+memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all sorts
+of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his
+presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky
+selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him
+to examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small
+boat, a ship's yawl, he skirted the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape
+Cod, keeping his eye open. This keeping his eye open was a peculiarity
+of the little captain; possibly a family trait. It was Smith who really
+discovered the Isles of Shoals, exploring in person those masses of
+bleached rock--those "isles assez hautes," of which the French navigator
+Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, had caught a bird's-eye glimpse through
+the twilight in 1605. Captain Smith christened the group Smith's Isles,
+a title which posterity, with singular persistence of ingratitude, has
+ignored. It was a tardy sense of justice that expressed itself a few
+years ago in erecting on Star Island a simple marble shaft to the memory
+of JOHN SMITH--the multitudinous! Perhaps this long delay is explained
+by a natural hesitation to label a monument so ambiguously.
+
+The modern Jason, meanwhile, was not without honor in his own country,
+whatever may have happened to him in his own house, for the poet George
+Wither addressed a copy of pompous verses "To his Friend Captain Smith,
+upon his Description of New England." "Sir," he says--
+
+     "Sir: your Relations I haue read: which shew
+     Ther's reason I should honor them and you:
+     And if their meaning I have vnderstood,
+     I dare to censure thus: Your Project's good;
+     And may (if follow'd) doubtlesse quit the paine
+     With honour, pleasure and a trebble gaine;
+     Beside the benefit that shall arise
+     To make more happy our Posterities."
+
+The earliest map of this portion of our seaboard was prepared by Smith
+and laid before Prince Charles, who asked to give the country a name. He
+christened it New England. In that remarkable map the site of Portsmouth
+is call Hull, and Kittery and York are known as Boston.
+
+It was doubtless owing to Captain John Smith's representation on his
+return to England that the Laconia Company selected the banks of the
+Piscataqua for their plantation. Smith was on an intimate footing
+with Sir Ferinand Gorges, who, five years subsequently, made a tour of
+inspection along the New England coast, in company with John Mason, then
+Governor of Newfoundland. One of the results of this summer cruise is
+the town of Portsmouth, among whose leafy ways, and into some of whose
+old-fashioned houses, I purpose to take the reader, if he have an idle
+hour on his hands. Should we meet the flitting ghost of some old-time
+worthy, on the staircase or at a lonely street corner, the reader must
+be prepared for it.
+
+
+
+
+II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+
+IT is not supposable that the early settlers selected the site of their
+plantation on account of its picturesqueness. They were influenced
+entirely by the lay of the land, its nearness and easy access to the
+sea, and the secure harbor it offered to their fishing-vessels; yet they
+could not have chosen a more beautiful spot had beauty been the sole
+consideration. The first settlement was made at Odiorne's Point--the
+Pilgrims' Rock of New Hampshire; there the Manor, or Mason's Hall, was
+built by the Laconia Company in 1623. It was not until 1631 that the
+Great House was erected by Humphrey Chadborn on Strawberry Bank. Mr.
+Chadborn, consciously or unconsciously, sowed a seed from which a city
+has sprung.
+
+The town of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua,
+about two miles from the sea as the crow flies--three miles following
+the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this
+point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by
+the interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island
+lake than a river. To the unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet.
+Standing on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court
+Street, a stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the
+ocean. A little observation, however, would show him that he was in a
+seaport. The rich red rust on the gables and roofs of ancient buildings
+looking seaward would tell him that. There is a fitful saline flavor in
+the air, and if while he gazed a dense white fog should come rolling in,
+like a line of phantom breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.
+
+It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the river,
+though few of the notable houses that remain are to be found there. Like
+all New England settlements, Portsmouth was built of wood, and has been
+subjected to extensive conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick
+building that is not shockingly modern. The first house of the kind was
+erected by Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.
+
+Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the fateful
+hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town,
+especially as you saunter along the streets down by the river. The
+worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of
+grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient
+to satisfy a moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers
+and these long rows of empty barracks, with their sarcastic cranes
+projecting from the eaves, rather puzzle the stranger. Why this great
+preparation for a commercial activity that does not exist, and evidently
+had not for years existed? There are no ships lying at the pier-heads;
+there are no gangs of stevedores staggering under the heavy cases of
+merchandise; here and there is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with
+coal, and here and there a square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered
+with fragrant planks and clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at
+the end of the wharf, a ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect
+sympathy with the indolent sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor
+of these crumbling piles and ridiculous warehouses, from which even the
+ghost of prosperity has flown.
+
+Once upon a time, however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive trade with
+the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston
+and New York. At the windows of these musty counting-rooms which
+overlook the river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants,
+in knee breeches and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with
+ruffles at the wrist, waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows;
+the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors at the windlass used
+to echo along the shore where all is silence now. For reasons not worth
+setting forth, the trade with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined
+as well as enriched many a Portsmouth adventurer. This explains
+the empty warehouses and the unused wharves. Portsmouth remains the
+interesting widow of a once very lively commerce. I fancy that few
+fortunes are either made or lost in Portsmouth nowadays. Formerly it
+turned out the best ships, as it did the ablest ship captains, in the
+world. There were families in which the love for blue water was
+in immemorial trait. The boys were always sailors; "a grey-headed
+shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the
+homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the
+mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blasted against
+his sire and grandsire." (1. Hawthorne in his introduction to The
+Scarlet Letter.) With thousands of miles of sea-line and a score or two
+of the finest harbors on the globe, we have adroitly turned over our
+carrying trade to foreign nations.
+
+In other days, as I have said, a high maritime spirit was characteristic
+of Portsmouth. The town did a profitable business in the war of 1812,
+sending out a large fleet of the sauciest small craft on record. A
+pleasant story is told of one of these little privateers--the Harlequin,
+owned and commanded by Captain Elihu Brown. The Harlequin one day gave
+chase to a large ship, which did not seem to have much fight aboard,
+and had got it into close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger threw
+open her ports, and proved to be His Majesty's Ship-of-War Bulwark,
+seventy-four guns. Poor Captain Brown!
+
+Portsmouth has several large cotton factories and one or two corpulent
+breweries; it is a wealthy old town, with a liking for first mortgage
+bonds; but its warmest lover will not claim for it the distinction
+of being a great mercantile centre. The majority of her young men are
+forced to seek other fields to reap, and almost every city in the Union,
+and many a city across the sea, can point to some eminent merchant,
+lawyer, or what not, as "a Portsmouth boy." Portsmouth even furnished
+the late king of the Sandwich Islands, Kekuanaoa, with a prime minister,
+and his nankeen Majesty never had a better. The affection which all
+these exiles cherish for their birthplace is worthy of remark. On two
+occasions--in 1852 and 1873, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
+the settlement of Strawberry Bank--the transplanted sons of Portsmouth
+were seized with an impulse to return home. Simultaneously and almost
+without concerted action, the lines of pilgrims took up their march from
+every quarter of the globe, and swept down with music and banners on the
+motherly old town.
+
+To come back to the wharves. I do not know of any spot with such a
+fascinating air of dreams and idleness about it as the old wharf at the
+end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once a noisy, busy place,
+crowded with sailors and soldiers--in the war of 1812--gives an emphasis
+to the quiet that broods over it to-day. The lounger who sits of a
+summer afternoon on a rusty anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the
+silent warehouses, and look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring
+past the town, cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having
+taken itself off elsewhere.
+
+What a slumberous, delightful, lazy place it is! The sunshine seems to
+lie a foot deep on the planks of the dusty wharf, which yields up to the
+warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, molasses, and spice
+that used to be piled upon it. The river is as blue as the inside of a
+harebell. The opposite shore, in the strangely shifting magic lights
+of sky and water, stretches along like the silvery coast of fairyland.
+Directly opposite you is the navy yard, and its neat officers' quarters
+and workshops and arsenals, and its vast shiphouses, in which the keel
+of many a famous frigate has been laid. Those monster buildings on the
+water's edge, with their roofs pierced with innumerable little windows,
+which blink like eyes in the sunlight, and the shiphouses. On your
+right lies a cluster of small islands,--there are a dozen or more in the
+harbor--on the most extensive of which you see the fading-away remains
+of some earthworks thrown up in 1812. Between this--Trefethren's
+Island--and Peirce's Island lie the Narrows. Perhaps a bark or a
+sloop-of-war is making up to town; the hulk is hidden amoung the
+islands, and the topmasts have the effect of sweeping across the dry
+land. On your left is a long bridge, more than a quarter of a mile in
+length, set upon piles where the water is twenty or thirty feet deep,
+leading to the navy yard and Kittery--the Kittery so often the theme of
+Whittier's verse.
+
+This is a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you. Its
+changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds floating
+over it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a place where the
+scenery is more varied and striking; but there is a mandragora quality
+in the atmosphere here that holds you to the spot, and makes the
+half-hours seem like minutes. I could fancy a man sitting on the end
+of that old wharf very contentedly for two or three years, provided it
+could be always in June.
+
+Perhaps, too, one would desire it to be always high water. The tide
+falls from eight to twelve feet, and when the water makes out between
+the wharves some of the picturesqueness makes out also. A corroded
+section of stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the skeleton of a hoopskirt
+protruding from the tide mud like the remains of some old-time wreck, is
+apt to break the enchantment.
+
+I fear I have given the reader an exaggerated idea of the solitude
+that reigns along the river-side. Sometimes there is society here of
+an unconventional kind, if you care to seek it. Aside from the foreign
+gentleman before mentioned, you are likely to encounter, farther down
+the shore toward the Point of Graves (a burial-place of the colonial
+period), a battered and aged native fisherman boiling lobsters on a
+little gravelly bench, where the river whispers and lisps among the
+pebbles as the tide creeps in. It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or
+ex-pilot, with strands of coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a
+face that has the expression of a half-open clam. He is always ready
+to talk with you, this amphibious person; and if he is not the most
+entertaining of gossips--more weather-wise that Old Probabilities,
+and as full of moving incident as Othello himself--then he is not the
+wintery-haired shipman I used to see a few years ago on the strip of
+beach just beyond Liberty Bridge, building his drift-wood fire under a
+great tin boiler, and making it lively for a lot of reluctant lobsters.
+
+I imagine that very little change has taken place in this immediate
+locality, known prosaically as Puddle Dock, during the past fifty or
+sixty years. The view you get looking across Liberty Bridge, Water
+Street, is probably the same in every respect that presented itself to
+the eyes of the town folk a century ago. The flagstaff, on the right,
+is the representative of the old "standard of liberty" which the Sons
+planted on this spot in January, 1766, signalizing their opposition
+to the enforcement of the Stamp Act. On the same occasion the patriots
+called at the house of Mr. George Meserve, the agent for distributing
+the stamps in New Hampshire, and relieved him of his stamp-master's
+commission, which document they carried on the point of a sword through
+the town to Liberty Bridge (the Swing Bridge), where they erected the
+staff, with the motto, "Liberty, Property, and no Stamp!"
+
+The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of November. On
+the previous morning the "New Hampshire Gazette" appeared with a deep
+black border and all the typographical emblems of affliction, for was
+not Liberty dead? At all events, the "Gazette" itself was as good as
+dead, since the printer could no longer publish it if he were to be
+handicapped by a heavy tax. "The day was ushered in by the tolling
+of all the bells in town, the vessels in the harbor had their colors
+hoisted half-mast high; about three o'clock a funeral procession was
+formed, having a coffin with this inscription, LIBERTY, AGED 145,
+STAMPT. It moved from the state house, with two unbraced drums, through
+the principal streets. As it passed the Parade, minute-guns were fired;
+at the place of interment a speech was delivered on the occasion,
+stating the many advantages we had received and the melancholy prospect
+before us, at the seeming departure of our invaluable liberties. But
+some sign of life appearing, Liberty was not deposited in the grave;
+it was rescued by a number of her sons, the motto changed to Liberty
+revived, and carried off in triumph. The detestable Act was buried in
+its stead, and the clods of the valley were laid upon it; the bells
+changed their melancholy sound to a more joyful tone." (1. Annals of
+Portsmouth, by Nathaniel Adams, 1825.)
+
+With this side glance at one of the curious humors of the time, we
+resume our peregrinations.
+
+Turning down a lane on your left, a few rods beyond Liberty Bridge,
+you reach a spot known as the Point of Graves, chiefly interesting as
+showing what a graveyard may come to if it last long enough. In 1671 one
+Captain John Pickering, of whom we shall have more to say, ceded to
+the town a piece of ground on this neck for burial purposes. It is an
+odd-shaped lot, comprising about half an acre, inclosed by a crumbling
+red brick wall two or three feet high, with wood capping. The place
+is overgrown with thistles, rank grass, and fungi; the black slate
+headstones have mostly fallen over; those that still make a pretense of
+standing slant to every point of the compass, and look as if they
+were being blown this way and that by a mysterious gale which leaves
+everything else untouched; the mounds have sunk to the common level, and
+the old underground tombs have collapsed. Here and there the moss and
+weeds you can pick out some name that shines in the history of the early
+settlement; hundreds of the flower of the colony lie here, but the
+known and the unknown, gentle and simple, mingle their dust on a perfect
+equality now. The marble that once bore a haughty coat of arms is as
+smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless of heraldry. The lion and
+the unicorn, wherever they appear on some cracked slab, are very much
+tamed by time. The once fat-faced cherubs, with wing at either cheek,
+are the merest skeletons now. Pride, pomp, grief, and remembrance are
+all at end. No reverent feet come here, no tears fall here; the old
+graveyard itself is dead! A more dismal, uncanny spot than this at
+twilight would be hard to find. It is noticed that when the boys pass
+it after nightfall, they always go by whistling with a gayety that is
+perfectly hollow.
+
+Let us get into some cheerfuler neighborhood!
+
+
+
+
+III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+
+AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass "up town," the streets
+grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious--streets fringed
+with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private dwellings,
+mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through the
+centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
+houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
+the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
+pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
+sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
+authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
+within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the
+beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when
+the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
+fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
+fair town--her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
+more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain
+streets in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm.
+You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the
+overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery
+even more graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous
+elms and maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the
+result of chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken
+to preserve the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to
+arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies
+to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees along some
+favorite walk. Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading
+from Middle Street to the South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of
+a citizen who gave the labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that
+windswept and barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees
+seems to be a matter of heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen
+instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or any
+other wood from off the town common, excepting under special conditions.
+
+In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
+streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of
+the dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
+crowded, but I have never happened to be in Portsmouth at the time. I
+seldom pass through the narrow cobble-paved street without wondering
+where the customers are that must keep all these flourishing little
+establishments going. Congress Street--a more elegant thoroughfare
+than Market--is the Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth. Among the prominent
+buildings is the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and library.
+From the high roof of this building the stroller will do well to take
+a glance at the surrounding country. He will naturally turn seaward
+for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he will see the
+famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles away--Appledore, Smutty-Nose,
+Star Island, White Island, etc.; there are nine of them in all. On
+Appledore is Laighton's Hotel, and near it the summer cottage of Celia
+Thaxter, the poet of the Isles. On the northern end of Star Island is
+the quaint town of Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a
+sea-gull on its highest rock. A mile southwest form Star Island lies
+White Island, on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the most
+picturesque of the group. Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in any but
+the serenest weather, these wrinkled, scarred, are storm-smitten rocks,
+flanked by wicked sunken ledges that grow white at the lip with rage
+when the great winds blow!
+
+How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea! and how
+softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the unfinished
+fort is! That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to reach which from
+Portsmouth you have to cross three bridges with the most enchanting
+scenery in New Hampshire lying on either hand. At Newcastle the poet
+Stedman has built for his summerings an enviable little stone chateau--a
+seashell into which I fancy the sirens creep to warm themselves during
+the winter months. So it is never without its singer.
+
+Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir William
+Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and where his tomb
+now is, in his orchard across the road, a few hundred yards from the
+"goodly mansion" he built. The knight's tomb and the old Pepperell
+House, which has been somewhat curtailed of it fair proportions, are the
+objects of frequent pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
+
+From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the
+river with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of Kittery and
+Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a picture worth climbing
+four or five flights of stairs to gaze upon. Glancing down on the town
+nestled in the foliage, it seems like a town dropped by chance in the
+midst of a forest. Among the prominent objects which lift themselves
+above the tree tops are the belfries of the various churches, the
+white fa�ade of the custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the
+Rockingham, the principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find
+in Portsmouth one of the most completely appointed hotels in the United
+States. The antiquarian may lament the demolition of the old Bell
+Tavern, and think regretfully of the good cheer once furnished the
+wayfarer by Master Stavers at the sign of the Earl of Halifax, and by
+Master Stoodley at his inn on Daniel Street; but the ordinary traveler
+will thank his stars, and confess that his lines have fallen in pleasant
+places, when he finds himself among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
+
+Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum--we are supposed to be
+on terra firma again--stands the Old North Church, a substantial wooden
+building, handsomely set on what is called The Parade, a large open
+space formed by the junction of Congress, Market, Daniel, and Pleasant
+streets. Here in days innocent of water-works stood the town pump, which
+on more than one occasion served as whipping-post.
+
+The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number than
+their architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church they are
+constructed of wood or plain brick in the simplest style. St. John's
+Church is the only one likely to attract the eye of a stranger. It
+is finely situated on the crest of Church Hill, overlooking the
+ever-beautiful river. The present edifice was built in 1808 on the site
+of what was known as Queen's Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by
+fire December 24, 1806. The chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline,
+who furnished the books for the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two
+solid mahogany chairs, which are still in use in St. John's. Within the
+chancel rail is a curious font of porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton
+Mason at the capture of Senegal from the French in 1758, and presented
+to the Episcopal Society on 1761. The peculiarly sweet-toned bell
+which calls the parishioners of St. John's together every Sabbath is,
+I believe, the same that formerly hung in the belfry of the old Queen's
+Chapel. If so, the bell has a history of its own. It was brought from
+Louisburg at the time of the reduction of that place in 1745, and given
+to the church by the officers of the New Hampshire troops.
+
+The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is
+among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its
+architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice.
+The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what
+strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and
+these closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the
+wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass
+was used. If the building could have been composed entirely of glass it
+would have been done by the thrifty parishioners.
+
+Portsmouth is rich in graveyards--they seem to be a New England
+specialty--ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one
+attached to St. John's Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has
+not been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point
+of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up
+and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly
+refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and
+is allowed to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a
+row of other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed,
+and here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale
+roses, as becomes a rosebush in a churchyard.
+
+The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
+respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and
+loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior
+to the Revolution--stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and
+secretaries of the Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered
+under the motherly wing of the Church of England. It is almost
+impossible to walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow
+haughty in spirit after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less
+than one of His Majesty's colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here
+are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the
+Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the
+quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and
+there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial
+devices. You are moving in the very best society.
+
+This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth. An hour's
+walk from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot, already
+mentioned, where the first house was built and the first grave made,
+at Odiorne's Point. The exact site of the Manor is not known, but it is
+supposed to be a few rods north of an old well of still-flowing water,
+at which the Tomsons and the Hiltons and their comrades slaked their
+thirst more than two hundred and sixty years ago. Oriorne's Point is
+owned by Mr. Eben L. Odiorne, a lineal descendant of the worthy who held
+the property in 1657. Not far from the old spring is the resting-place
+of the earliest pioneers.
+
+"This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire," writes Mr.
+Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years the
+editor of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two volumes of
+local sketches to which the writer of these pages here acknowledges his
+indebtedness.) "occupies a space of perhaps one hundred feet by ninety,
+and is well walled in. The western side is now used as a burial-place
+for the family, but two thirds of it is filled with perhaps forty
+graves, indicated by rough head and foot stones. Who there rest no one
+now living knows. But the same care is taken of their quiet beds as if
+they were of the proprietor's own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about
+eighty emigrants many of whom died in a few years, and here they were
+probably buried. Here too, doubtless, rest the remains of several of
+those whose names stand conspicuous in our early state records."
+
+
+
+
+IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+
+WHEN Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by
+the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in
+the struggle for independence. "There are some good houses," he
+writes, in a diary kept that year during a tour through Connecticut,
+Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, "among which Colonel Langdon's may
+be esteemed the first; but in general they are indifferent, and almost
+entirely of wood. On wondering at this, as the country is full of stone
+and good clay for bricks, I was told that on account of the fogs and
+damp they deemed them wholesomer, and for that reason preferred wood
+buildings."
+
+The house of Colonel Langdon, on Pleasant Street, is an excellent sample
+of the solid and dignified abodes which our great-grandsires had the
+sense to build. The art of their construction seems to have been a lost
+art these fifty years. Here Governor John Langdon resided from 1782
+until the time of his death in 1819--a period during which many an
+illustrious man passed between those two white pillars that support the
+little balcony over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and
+his brothers, the Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the Marquis de
+Chastellus, a major-general in the French army, serving under the Count
+de Rochambeau, whom he accompanied from France to the States in 1780.
+The journal of the marquis contains this reference to his host: "After
+dinner we went to drink tea with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and
+of noble carriage; he has been a member of Congress, and is now one
+of the first people of the country; his house is elegant and well
+furnished, and the apartments admirably well wainscoted" (this reads
+like Mr. Samuel Pepys); "and he has a good manuscript chart of the
+harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his wife, is young, fair, and
+tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with her than her husband, in
+whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he had displayed great
+courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes's expedition."
+
+It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons of the
+Due d'Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion. Years afterward,
+when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France, he inquired of a
+Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the mansion of ce brave
+Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.
+
+The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under
+the shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an imposing
+appearance as you approach it over the tessellated marble walk. A
+hundred or two feet on either side of the gate, and abutting on
+the street, is a small square building of brick, one story in
+height--probably the porter's lodge and tool-house of former days. There
+is a large fruit garden attached to the house, which is in excellent
+condition, taking life comfortably, and having the complacent air of a
+well-preserved beau of the ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was
+owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of
+forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St. John's Church.
+
+At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to which
+we shall come by and by. Though President Washington found Portsmouth
+but moderately attractive from an architectural point of view, the
+visitor of to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste, will find himself
+embarrassed by the number of localities and buildings that appeal to his
+interest. Many of these buildings were new and undoubtedly commonplace
+enough at the date of Washington's visit; time and association have
+given them a quaintness and a significance which now make their
+architecture a question of secondary importance.
+
+One might spend a fortnight in Portsmouth exploring the nooks and
+corners over which history has thrown a charm, and by no means exhaust
+the list. I cannot do more than attempt to describe--and that very
+briefly--a few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant Street
+there are several which we must leave unnoted, with their spacious
+halls and carven staircases, their antiquated furniture and old silver
+tankards and choice Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist's best
+manner are to be found here. To live in Portsmouth without possessing a
+family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having
+an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you
+cannot be said to flourish. To make this statement smooth, I will remark
+that every one in Portsmouth has a Copley--or would have if a fair
+division were made.
+
+In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such excellent
+repair, and have so smart an appearance with their bright green blinds
+and freshly painted woodwork, that you are likely to pass many an old
+landmark without suspecting it. Whenever you see a house with a gambrel
+roof, you may be almost positive that the house is at least a
+hundred years old, for the gambrel roof went out of fashion after the
+Revolution.
+
+On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick
+building in Portsmouth--the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by
+Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a
+wealthy merchant, and a member of the King's Council. He was the chief
+projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America.
+Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children
+of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary,
+whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous
+Copley, still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not known by
+the name of Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon.
+Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council until the revolt of the
+colonies. "We well recollect Mr. Warner," says Mr. Brewster, writing in
+1858, "as one of the last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early
+childhood he is still before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic
+crown officers. That broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those
+small-clothes and silk stockings, those silver buckles, and that
+cane--we see them still, although the life that filled and moved them
+ceased half a century ago."
+
+The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and luthern
+windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the architecture of
+the period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in New England. The
+eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from Holland, as were also many
+of the materials used in the building--the hearth-stones, tiles,
+etc. Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the
+brick-work rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The
+interior is rich in paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves,
+the deep-set windows, and along the cornices. The halls are wide and
+long, after a by-gone fashion, with handsome staircases, set at an easy
+angle, and not standing nearly upright, like those ladders by which one
+reaches the upper chambers of a modern house. The principal rooms are
+paneled to the ceiling, and have large open chimney-places, adorned with
+the quaintest of Dutch files. In one of the parlors of the Warner House
+there is a choice store of family relics--china, silver-plate, costumes,
+old clocks, and the like. There are some interesting paintings, too--not
+by Copley this time. On a broad space each side of the hall windows, at
+the head of the staircase, are pictures of two Indians, life size. They
+are probably portraits of some of the numerous chiefs with whom Captain
+Macphaedris had dealings, for the captain was engaged in the fur as
+well as in the iron business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to
+Macpheadris by his red friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
+
+By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings
+on the walls of this lower hall were brought to light. In repairing the
+front entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or
+five layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had peeled
+off cleanly, a horse's hoof was observed by a little girl of the family.
+The workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the legs,
+then the body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished
+paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size representation of
+Governor Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to
+his assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily
+stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet covered with
+sketches in color, landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes,
+and modern figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel.
+Until then no person in the land of the living had had any knowledge
+of those hidden pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the
+house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe
+her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to
+face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply
+Ham was the leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)
+
+The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that
+these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand.
+Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an
+antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day
+was put up under Benjamin Franklin's own supervision in 1762--such at
+all events is the credited tradition--and is supposed to be the first
+rod put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod "personally conducted"
+by Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
+susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim
+on the good-will of the visitor--it is not positively known that George
+Washington ever slept there.
+
+The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old yellow
+barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and Atkinson streets.
+Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of
+corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down
+on the most desirable spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept
+not only one night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was
+a celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence,
+and Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth
+in 1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady--not one of the
+preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties
+unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning
+to tell on her--who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in
+her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of
+her conversation during the last ten years of her life, which she passed
+in the Stavers House, bedridden; and I think those ten years were in a
+manner rendered short and pleasant to the old gentlewoman by the memory
+of a compliment to her complexion which Washington probably never paid
+to it.
+
+The old hotel--now a very unsavory tenement-house--was built by John
+Tavers, innkeeper, in 1770, who planted in front of the door a tall
+post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. Stavers had
+previously kept an inn of the same name on Queen, now State Street.
+
+It is a square three-story building, shabby and dejected, giving no hint
+of the really important historical associations that cluster about it.
+At the time of its erection it was no doubt considered a rather grand
+structure, for buildings of three stories were rare in Portsmouth. Even
+in 1798, of the six hundred and twenty-six dwelling houses of which the
+town boasted, eighty-six were of one story, five hundred and twenty-four
+were of two stories, and only sixteen of three stories. The Stavers inn
+has the regulation gambrel roof, but is lacking in those wood ornaments
+which are usually seen over the doors and windows of the more prominent
+houses of that epoch. It was, however, the hotel of the period.
+
+That same worn doorstep upon which Mr. O'Shaughnessy now stretches
+himself of a summer afternoon, with a short clay pipe stuck between
+his lips, and his hat crushed down on his brows, revolving the sad
+vicissitude of things--that same doorstep has been pressed by the feet
+of generals and marquises and grave dignitaries upon whom depended the
+destiny of the States--officers in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and
+high-heeled belles in patch, powder, and paduasoy. At this door the
+Flying Stage Coach, which crept from Boston, once a week set down its
+load of passengers--and distinguished passengers they often were. Most
+of the chief celebrities of the land, before and after the secession of
+the colonies, were the guests of Master Stavers, at the sign of the Earl
+of Halifax.
+
+While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother country,
+it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met
+to discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist,
+and when the full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early
+intimation of the coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched
+with sullen eyes the secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers's
+tavern, and one morning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post
+which supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have
+been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent
+out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was
+armed with an axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow
+fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an
+insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious
+mob at once collected, and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in
+the doors and shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only
+through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular
+patriot, that the hotel was saved from destruction.
+
+In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in
+the rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend
+William Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied
+the hotel with ale. The excitement blew over after a time, and Stavers
+was induced to return to Portsmouth. He was seized by the Committee of
+Safety, and lodged in Exeter jail, when his loyalty, which had really
+never been very high, went down below zero; he took the oath of
+allegiance, and shortly after his released reopened the hotel. The
+honest face of William Pitt appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl
+of Halifax, ignominiously removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the
+state records is the following letter from poor Noble begging for the
+enlargement of John Stavers:--
+
+PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777. To the Committee of Safety of the Town of
+Exeter: GENTLEMEN,--As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in confinement
+in gaol upon my account contrary to my desire, for when I was at Mr.
+Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the Gentleman but
+by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad Blow but it is so well
+that I hope to go out in a day or two. So by this gentlemen of the
+Committee I hope you will release the gentleman upon my account. I am
+yours to serve. MARK NOBLE, A friend to my country.
+
+From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House prospered.
+It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the officers of the French
+fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the Marquis Lafayette, all
+the way from Providence, to visit them. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry,
+Rutledge, and other signers of the Declaration sojourned here at various
+times. It was here General Knox--"that stalwart man, two officers
+in size and three in lungs"--was wont to order his dinner, and in a
+stentorian voice compliment Master Stavers on the excellence of his
+larder. One day--it was at the time of the French Revolution--Louis
+Philippe and his two brothers applied at the door of the William Pitt
+for lodgings; but the tavern was full, and the future king, with his
+companions, found comfortable quarters under the hospitable roof of
+Governor Langdon in Pleasant Street.
+
+A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous, that have been enacted
+within this old yellow house on the corner would fill a volume. A vivid
+picture of the social and public life of the old time might be painted
+by a skillful hand, using the two Earl of Halifax inns for a background.
+The painter would find gay and sombre pigments ready mixed for his
+palette, and a hundred romantic incidents waiting for his canvas. One
+of these romantic episodes has been turned to very pretty account
+by Longfellow in the last series of The Tales of a Wayside Inn--the
+marriage of Governor Benning Wentworth with Martha Hilton, a sort of
+second edition of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.
+
+Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare feet and ankles and scant
+drapery when she was a child, and even after she was well in the bloom
+of her teens, used to scandalize good Dame Stavers, the innkeeper's
+wife. Standing one afternoon in the doorway of the Earl of Halifax, (1.
+The first of the two hotels bearing that title. Mr. Brewster commits
+a slight anachronism in locating the scene of this incident in Jaffrey
+Street, now Court. The Stavers House was not built until the year of
+Governor Benning Wentworth's death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does
+not fall into the same error.
+
+     "One hundred years ago, and something more,
+     In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
+     Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
+     Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows.")
+
+Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed and
+lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying a
+pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, "the shifting sunbeam
+danced."
+
+"You Pat! you Pat!" cried Mrs. Stavers severely; "why do you go looking
+so? You should be ashamed to be seen in the street."
+
+"Never mind how I look," says Miss Martha, with a merry laugh, letting
+slip a saucy brown shoulder out of her dress; "I shall ride in my
+chariot yet, ma'am."
+
+Fortunate prophecy! Martha went to live as servant with Governor
+Wentworth at his mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea. Seven
+years passed, and the "thin slip of a girl," who promised to be no great
+beauty, had flowered into the loveliest of women, with a lip like a
+cherry and a cheek like a tea-rose--a lady by instinct, one of Nature's
+own ladies. The governor, a lonely widower, and not too young, fell in
+love with his fair handmaid. Without stating his purpose to any one,
+Governor Wentworth invited a number of friends (among others the Rev.
+Arthur Brown) to dine with him at Little Harbor on his birthday. After
+the dinner, which was a very elaborate one, was at an end, and the
+guests were discussing their tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided into
+the room, and stood blushing in front of the chimney-place. She was
+exquisitely dressed, as you may conceive, and wore her hair three
+stories high. The guests stared at each other, and particularly at her,
+and wondered. Then the governor, rising from his seat,
+
+     "Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
+     And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
+     'This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
+     My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!'"
+
+The rector was dumfounded, knowing the humble footing Martha had held
+in the house, and could think of nothing cleverer to say than, "To whom,
+your excellency?" which was not cleaver at all.
+
+"To this lady," replied the governor, taking Martha Hilton by the
+hand. The Rev. Arthur Brown hesitated. "As the Chief Magistrate of New
+Hampshire I command you to marry me!" cried the choleric old governor.
+
+And so it was done; and the pretty kitchen-maid became Lady Wentworth,
+and did ride in her own chariot. She would not have been a woman if she
+had not taken an early opportunity to drive by Staver's hotel!
+
+Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of the dignity of her new
+station, and became a grand lady at once. A few days after her marriage,
+dropping her ring on the floor, she languidly ordered her servant to
+pick it up. The servant, who appears to have had a fair sense of humor,
+grew suddenly near-sighted, and was unable to the ring until Lady
+Wentworth stooped and placed her ladyship's finger upon it. She turned
+out a faultless wife, however; and Governor Wentworth at his death,
+which occurred in 1770, signified his approval of her by leaving her his
+entire estate. She married again without changing name, accepting the
+hand, and what there was of the heart, of Michael Wentworth, a retired
+colonel of the British army, who came to this country in 1767. Colonel
+Wentworth (not connected, I think, with the Portsmouth branch of
+Wentworths) seems to have been of a convivial turn of mind. He shortly
+dissipated his wife's fortune in high living, and died abruptly in New
+York--it was supposed by his own hand. His last words--a quite unique
+contribution to the literature of last words--were, "I have had my
+cake, and ate it," which showed that the colonel within his own modest
+limitations was a philosopher.
+
+The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor--a pleasant walk from
+Market Square--is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their
+hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the
+old homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door
+you step into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted
+courteously, waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the
+Wentworth mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though
+it is no longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, in
+their willingness to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers, show a
+hospitality which has always characterized the place.
+
+The house is an architectural freak. The main building--if it is the
+main building--is generally two stories in height, with irregular wings
+forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in
+brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions that look as if they had
+been built at different periods, which I believe was not the case. The
+mansion was completed in 1750. It originally contained fifty-two rooms;
+a portion of the structure was removed about half a century ago, leaving
+forty-five apartments. The chambers were connected in the oddest manner,
+by unexpected steps leading up or down, and capricious little passages
+that seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the architect. But
+it is a mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The cellar was
+arranged for the stabling of a troop of thirty horse in times of
+danger. The council-chamber, where for many years all questions of vital
+importance to the State were discussed, is a spacious, high-studded
+room, finished in the richest style of the last century. It is said that
+the ornamentation of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel,
+cost the workman a year's constant labor. At the entrance to the
+council-chamber are still the racks for the twelve muskets of the
+governor's guard--so long ago dismissed!
+
+Some valuable family portraits adorn the walls here, among which is a
+fine painting-yes, by our friend Copley--of the lovely Dorothy Quincy,
+who married John Hancock, and afterward became Madam Scott. This lady
+was a niece of Dr. Holme's "Dorothy Q." Opening on the council-chamber
+is a large billiard-room; the billiard-table is gone, but an ancient
+spinnet, with the prim air of an ancient maiden lady, and of a wheezy
+voice, is there; and in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet, near
+which the imaginative nostril may still detect a faint and tantalizing
+odor of colonial punch. Opening also on the council-chamber are several
+tiny apartments, empty and silent now, in which many a close rubber has
+been played by illustrious hands. The stillness and loneliness of the
+old house seem saddest here. The jeweled fingers are dust, the merry
+laughs have turned themselves into silent, sorrowful phantoms, stealing
+from chamber to chamber. It is easy to believe in the traditional ghost
+that haunts the place--
+
+     "A jolly place in times of old,
+     But something ails it now!"
+
+The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only historic house that bears
+the name of Wentworth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of Washington
+Street, stands the abode of another colonial worthy, Governor John
+Wentworth, who held office from 1767 down to the moment when the
+colonies dropped the British yoke as if it had been the letter H. For
+the moment the good gentleman's occupation was gone. He was a royalist
+of the most florid complexion. In 1775, a man named John Fenton, and
+ex-captain in the British army, who had managed to offend the Sons of
+Liberty, was given sanctuary in this house by the governor, who refused
+to deliver the fugitive to the people. The mob planted a small cannon
+(unloaded) in front of the doorstep and threatened to open fire if
+Fenton were not forthcoming. He forth-with came. The family vacated
+the premises via the back-yard, and the mob entered, doing considerable
+damage. The broken marble chimney-place still remains, mutely protesting
+against the uncalled-for violence. Shortly after this event the governor
+made his way to England, where his loyalty was rewarded first with a
+governorship and then with a pension of L500. He was governor of Nova
+Scotia from 1792 to 1800, and died in Halifax in 1820. This house is
+one of the handsomest old dwellings in the town, and promises to
+outlive many of its newest neighbors. The parlor has undergone no change
+whatever since the populace rushed into it over a century ago. The
+furniture and adornments occupy their original positions and the plush
+on the walls has not been replaced by other hangings. In the hall--deep
+enough for the traditional duel of baronial romance--are full-length
+portraits of the several governors and sundry of their kinsfolk.
+
+There is yet a third Wentworth house, also decorated with the shade of
+a colonial governor--there were three Governors Wentworth--but we shall
+pass it by, though out of no lack of respect for that high official
+personage whose commission was signed by Joseph Addison, Esq., Secretary
+of State under George I.
+
+
+
+
+V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+
+THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the
+crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and
+customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting
+here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the
+withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has
+managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up
+periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town
+clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that
+we are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and
+positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the
+early days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and
+eventful days. The dense forest which surrounded the clearing was alive
+with hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock
+at his bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be awakened by
+the glare of his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the
+Womponoags. Year after year he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of
+flames, as he peered through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither
+he had flown in hot haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse
+at Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an extensive scale, with
+stockades for the shelter of cattle. It held large supplies of stores,
+and was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a
+species of naval ordnance which probably did not belie its name. It also
+boasted, we are told, of two drums for training-days, and no fewer
+than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced recorders--all which suggests a
+mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
+To the younger members of the community glass or crockery ware was an
+unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the
+pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter. The
+diet was also of the simplest--pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of
+ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could get it.
+
+John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
+management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to
+stewards, died before realizing any appreciable return from his
+enterprise. He spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity.
+In 1632, three years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a
+number of neat cattle, "of a large breed and yellow colour." The herd
+thrived, and it is said that some of the stock is still extant on farms
+in the vicinity of Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of
+staying quality!
+
+In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General
+Court at Boston to grant them a definite township--for the boundaries
+were doubtful--and the right to give it a proper name. "Whereas the name
+of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe
+called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place,
+now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most
+suitable for this place, it being the river's mouth, and good as any in
+this land, and your petit'rs shall humbly pray," etc.
+
+Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent French
+wars, Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of bloody
+Indian massacres. No portion of the New England colony suffered more.
+Famine, fire, pestilence, and war, each in turn, and sometimes in
+conjunction, beleaguered the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe
+it out. But that was not to be.
+
+The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as
+it had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house
+and the jail--two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a
+town meeting in 1662, it was ordered "that a cage be made or some
+other meanes invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take
+tobacco on the Lord's day out of the meetinge in the time of publique
+service." This salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into
+effect until nine years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to
+have had as many professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a
+cage twelve feet square and seven feet high, with a pillory on top; "the
+said Pickering to make a good strong dore and make a substantiale payre
+of stocks and places the same in said cage." A spot conveniently near
+the west end on the meeting-house was selected as the site for this
+ingenious device. It is more than probable that "the said Pickering"
+indirectly furnished an occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we
+find him and one Edward Westwere authorized by the selectmen to "keepe
+houses of publique entertainment." He was a versatile individual, this
+John Pickering--soldier, miller, moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and
+innkeeper. Michelangelo need not blush to be bracketed with him. In the
+course of a long and variegated career he never failed to act according
+to his lights, which he always kept well trimmed. That Captain Pickering
+subsequently became the grandfather, at several removes, of the present
+writer was no fault of the Captain's, and should not be laid up against
+him.
+
+Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a rather
+desultory and tentative matter; "the young idea" seems to have been
+allowed to "shoot" at whatever it wanted to; but in that year it was
+voted "that care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skullmaster!] be
+provided for the towen as the law directs, not visious in conversation."
+That was perhaps demanding too much; for it was not until "May ye 7" of
+the following year that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their
+finger on this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed
+"to be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching the
+inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters yously doe
+throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the sellectt men in
+behalfe of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by way of rate twenty pounds
+and yt he shall and may reserve from every father or master that sends
+theyer children to school this yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers,
+writers and cypherers 20s., Lattiners 24s."
+
+Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need not plume themselves on
+their originality. The town clerk who wrote that delicious "yously doe"
+settles the question. It is to be hoped that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not
+only "not visious in conversation," but was more conventional in his
+orthography. He evidently gave satisfaction, and clearly exerted an
+influence on the town clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a
+marked improvement in his own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the
+selectmen "to call and settell a gramer scoll according to ye best of
+yower judgement and for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye
+youth of ower town to learn them to read from ye primer, to wright and
+sypher and to learne ym the tongues and good-manners." On this occasion
+it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury, who engaged "dilligently to
+attend ye school for ye present yeare, and tech all childern yt can
+read in thaire psallters and upward." From such humble beginnings were
+evolved some of the best public high schools at present in New England.
+
+Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft delusion, though I believe that
+no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. Dwellers
+by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is
+something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the
+imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a
+perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates
+them from the unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at
+midnight, they are haunted by the spectres of the mirage. Their minds
+quickly take the impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore
+found a sympathetic atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the
+Piscataqua--that slender paw of land which reaches out into the ocean
+and terminates in a spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the claws of an
+amorous cat. What happened to the good folk of that picturesque little
+fishing-hamlet is worth retelling in brief. In order properly to retell
+it, a contemporary witness shall be called upon to testify in the case
+of the Stone-Throwing Devils of Newcastle. It is the Rev. Cotton Mather
+who addresses you--"On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown
+by an invisible hand upon the house of George Walton at Portsmouth
+[Newcastle was then a part of the town]. Whereupon the people going out
+found the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying and falling
+thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a great force, but
+really affecting 'em no more than if a soft touch were given them. The
+glass windows were broken by the stones that came not from without, but
+from within; and other instruments were in a like manner hurled about.
+Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some were as hot as if they
+came out of the fire; and marking them they laid them on the table; but
+in a little while they found some of them again flying about. The spit
+was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward,
+stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it
+was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This disturbance
+continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow whistling
+would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse, but
+nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm
+which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying from
+the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
+through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was
+heard no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the
+boat. A cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the
+floor; a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon.
+Several cocks of hay, mow'd near the house, were taken up and hung upon
+the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the
+house. A man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and
+suspected that a woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining
+some land from here, did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural
+occurrences. However, at last they came to an end."
+
+Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get
+thee back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp's
+Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it
+uncomfortable for those about thee.
+
+Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch--a
+tangible witch in this instance--one Molly Bridget, who cast her malign
+spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced
+to reside at the moment. The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr.
+Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one
+remedy at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their
+tales. But when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was
+in consequence quite impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a
+gentleman of expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in
+the yard should be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch
+and do away with the mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires
+were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget rushed from room to room in
+a state of frenzy. With the dying flames her own vitality subsided, and
+she was dead before the ash-piles were cool. I say it seriously when I
+say that these are facts of which there is authentic proof.
+
+If the woman had recovered, she would have fared badly, even at that
+late period, had she been in Salem; but the death-penalty has never
+been hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took
+place there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder
+of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official
+who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of
+Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton
+in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following
+stanzas, however, give the pith of the story--
+
+     "And a voice among them shouted,
+             "Pause before the deed is done;
+     We have asked reprieve and pardon
+             For the poor misguided one.'
+
+     "But these words of Sheriff Packer
+             Rang above the swelling noise:
+     'Must I wait and lose my dinner?
+            Draw away the cart, my boys!'
+
+     "Nearer came the sound and louder,
+             Till a steed with panting breath,
+     From its sides the white foam dripping,
+            Halted at the scene of death;
+
+     "And a messenger alighted,
+             Crying to the crowd, 'Make way!
+     This I bear to Sheriff Packer;
+             'Tis a pardon for Ruth Blay!'"
+
+But of course he arrived too late--the Law led Mercy about twenty
+minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled again
+that night before the sheriff's domicile and expressed its indignation
+in groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was afterwards
+paraded through the streets.
+
+     "Be the name of Thomas Packer
+          A reproach forevermore!"
+
+Laighton's ballad reminds me of that Portsmouth has been prolific in
+poets, one of whom, at least, has left a mouthful of perennial rhyme for
+orators--Jonathan Sewell with his
+
+     "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
+     But the whole boundless continent is yours."
+
+I have somewhere seen a volume with the alliterative title of "Poets of
+Portsmouth," in which are embalmed no fewer than sixty immortals!
+
+But to drop into prose again, and have done with this iliad of odds and
+ends. Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of establishing the first
+recorded pauper workhouse--though not in connection with her poets, as
+might naturally be supposed. The building was completed and tenanted in
+1716. Seven years later, an act was passed in England authorizing the
+establishment of parish workhouses there. The first and only keeper of
+the Portsmouth almshouse up to 1750 was a woman--Rebecca Austin.
+
+Speaking of first things, we are told by Mr. Nathaniel Adams, in his
+"Annals of Portsmouth," that on the 20th of April, 1761, Mr. John
+Stavers began running a stage from that town to Boston. The carriage was
+a two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate three passengers. The
+fare was thirteen shillings and sixpence sterling per head. The curricle
+was presently superseded by a series of fat yellow coaches, one of
+which--nearly a century later, and long after that pleasant mode of
+travel had fallen obsolete--was the cause of much mental tribulation (1.
+Some idle reader here and there may possibly recall the burning of
+the old stage-coach in The Story of a Bad Boy.) to the writer of this
+chronicle.
+
+The mail and the newspaper are closely associated factors in
+civilization, so I mention them together, though in this case the
+newspaper antedated the mail-coach about five years. On October 7, 1756,
+the first number of "The New Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle"
+was issued in Portsmouth from the press of Daniel Fowle, who in the
+previous July had removed from Boston, where he had undergone a brief
+but uncongenial imprisonment on suspicion of having printed a pamphlet
+entitled "The Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.," an essay
+that contained some uncomplimentary reflections on several official
+personages. The "Gazette" was the pioneer journal of the province. It
+was followed at the close of the same year by "The Mercury and Weekly
+Advertiser," published by a former apprentice of Fowle, a certain
+Thomas Furber, backed by a number of restless Whigs, who considered the
+"Gazette" not sufficiently outspoken in the cause of liberty. Mr. Fowle,
+however, contrived to hold his own until the day of his death. Fowle
+had for pressman a faithful negro named Primus, a full-blooded African.
+Whether Primus was a freeman or a slave I am unable to state. He lived
+to a great age, and was a prominent figure among the people of his own
+color.
+
+Negro slavery was common in New England at that period. In 1767,
+Portsmouth numbered in its population a hundred and eighty-eight slaves,
+male and female. Their bondage, happily, was nearly always of a light
+sort, if any bondage can be light. They were allowed to have a kind
+of government of their own; indeed, were encouraged to do so, and no
+unreasonable restrictions were placed on their social enjoyment. They
+annually elected a king and counselors, and celebrated the event with a
+procession. The aristocratic feeling was highly developed in them. The
+rank of the master was the slave's rank. There was a great deal of ebony
+standing around on its dignity in those days. For example, Governor
+Langdon's manservant, Cyrus Bruce, was a person who insisted on his
+distinction, and it was recognized. His massive gold chain and seals,
+his cherry-colored small-clothes and silk stockings, his ruffles and
+silver shoe-buckles, were a tradition long after Cyrus himself was
+pulverized.
+
+In cases of minor misdemeanor among them, the negros themselves were
+permitted to be judge and jury. Their administration of justice was
+often characteristically naive. Mr. Brewster gives an amusing sketch of
+one of their sessions. King Nero is on the bench, and one Cato--we are
+nothing if not classical--is the prosecuting attorney. The name of the
+prisoner and the nature of his offense are not disclosed to posterity.
+In the midst of the proceedings the hour of noon is clanged from the
+neighboring belfry of the Old North Church. "The evidence was not gone
+through with, but the servants could stay no longer from their home
+duties. They all wanted to see the whipping, but could not conveniently
+be present again after dinner. Cato ventured to address the King: Please
+you Honor, best let the fellow have his whipping now, and finish the
+trial after dinner. The request seemed to be the general wish of the
+company: so Nero ordered ten lashes, for justice so far as the trial
+went, and ten more at the close of the trial, should he be found
+guilty!"
+
+Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless
+Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced
+any emancipation edict. During the Revolutionary War the slaves were
+generally emancipated by their masters. That many of the negros, who had
+grown gray in service, refused their freedom, and elected to spend the
+rest of their lives as pensioners in the families of their late owners,
+is a circumstance that illustrates the kindly ties which held between
+slave and master in the old colonial days in New England.
+
+The institution was accidental and superficial, and never had any real
+root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found in the
+Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it would have
+continued awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his religion into the
+business affairs of life; he was not even able to keep it out of his
+bills of lading. I cannot close this rambling chapter more appropriately
+and solemnly than by quoting from one of those same pious bills of
+landing. It is dated June, 1726, and reads: "Shipped by the grace of God
+in good order and well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct.
+and risque, in and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is
+master under God for this present voyage George King, now riding at
+anchor in the river Piscataqua and by God's grace bound to Barbadoes."
+Here follows a catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo, rounded off with:
+"And so God send the good Briga to her desired port in safety. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+
+I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
+characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have
+been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity.
+In another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been
+favorable to the development of individual singularity during the latter
+half of the present century. It is easier to do that than fully to
+account for the numerous queer human types which have existed from time
+to time previous to that period.
+
+In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster's entertaining
+collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and
+variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene.
+They are, in the author's intention, secondary figures in the background
+of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one's
+memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one's self thinking quite
+as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of
+General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism
+and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
+unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller
+the things which are that old hut-dweller's, we must concede him his
+picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is
+picturesque--now that he is dead.
+
+If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to glance
+at a few old profiles of persons who, however substantial they once
+were, are now leading a life of mere outlines. I would like to give
+them a less faded expression, but the past is very chary of yielding up
+anything more than its shadows.
+
+The first who presents himself is the ruminative hermit already
+mentioned--a species of uninspired Thoreau. His name was Benjamin Lear.
+So far as his craziness went, he might have been a lineal descendant of
+that ancient king of Britain who figures on Shakespeare's page. Family
+dissensions made a recluse of King Lear; but in the case of Benjamin
+there were no mitigating circumstances. He had no family to trouble
+him, and his realm remained undivided. He owned an excellent farm on the
+south side of Sagamore Creek, a little to the west of the bridge, and
+might have lived at ease, if personal comfort had not been distasteful
+to him. Personal comfort entered into no part of Lear's. To be alone
+filled the little pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced himself in
+a wretched shanty, and barred the door, figuratively, against all the
+world. Wealth--what would have been wealth to him--lay within his reach,
+but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness,
+and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself
+absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar
+floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful
+disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive--at a distance.
+He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and
+potatoes, the product of his realm. He needed nothing but an island to
+be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he flitted like a frost-bitten
+apparition through the main street of Portsmouth, which he always
+designated as "the Bank," a name that had become obsolete fifty or a
+hundred years before. Thus, for nearly a quarter of a century, Benjamin
+Lear stood aloof from human intercourse. In his old age some of the
+neighbors offered him shelter during the tempestuous winter months; but
+he would have none of it--he defied wind and weather. There he lay in
+his dilapidated hovel in his last illness, refusing to allow any one to
+remain with him overnight--and the mercury four degrees below zero. Lear
+was born in 1720, and vegetated eighty-two years.
+
+I take it that Timothy Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse, would like
+to have more, was a person better worth knowing. His name reads like the
+title of some old-fashioned novel--"Timothy Winn, or the Memoirs of a
+Bashful Gentleman." He came to Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of
+the last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry
+Street what was called "a piece goods store." He was the third Timothy
+in his monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he
+inscribed on the sign over his shop door, "Timothy Winn, 3d," and was
+ever after called "Three-Penny Winn." That he enjoyed the pleasantry,
+and clung to his sign, goes to show that he was a person who would ripen
+on further acquaintance, were further acquaintance now practicable.
+His next-door neighbor, Mr. Leonard Serat, who kept a modest tailoring
+establishment, also tantalizes us a little with a dim intimation of
+originality. He plainly was without literary prejudices, for on one
+face of his swinging sign was painted the word Taylor, and on the other
+Tailor. This may have been a delicate concession to that part of the
+community--the greater part, probably--which would have spelled it with
+a y.
+
+The building in which Messrs. Winn and Serat had their shops was the
+property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of Demerara, the
+story of whose unconventional courtship of Miss Catherine Moffatt is
+pretty enough to bear retelling, and entitles him to a place in our
+limited collection of etchings. M. Rousselet had doubtless already mad
+excursions into the pays de tendre, and given Miss Catherine previous
+notice of the state of his heart, but it was not until one day during
+the hour of service at the Episcopal church that he brought matters to
+a crisis by handing to Miss Moffatt a small Bible, on the fly-leaf of
+which he had penciled the fifth verse of the Second Epistle of John--
+
+     "And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I
+     wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+     which we had from the beginning, that we love one another."
+
+This was not to be resisted, at lease not by Miss Catherine, who
+demurely handed the volume back to him with a page turned down at the
+sixteenth verse in the first chapter of Ruth--
+
+     "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
+     will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+     God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
+     buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but
+     death part thee and me."
+
+Aside from this quaint touch of romance, what attaches me to the
+happy pair--for the marriage was a fortunate one--is the fact that the
+Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion, which stood
+directly opposite my grandfather's house on Court Street and was torn
+down in my childhood, to my great consternation. The building had been
+unoccupied for a quarter of a century, and was fast falling into decay
+with all its rich wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not
+full of ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
+ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather's
+house just across the way? Where else could they bestow themselves so
+conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in process of destruction, I
+used to peep round the corner of our barn at the workmen, and watch the
+indignant phantoms go soaring upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.
+
+A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary
+Atkinson (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to the lot
+of the Rev. William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church between 1733
+and 1747. From the worldly standpoint, it was a fine match for the
+Newcastle clergyman--beauty, of the eagle-beaked kind; wealth, her share
+of the family plate; high birth, a sister to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson.
+But if the exemplary man had cast his eyes lower, peradventure he had
+found more happiness, though ill-bred persons without family plate are
+not necessarily amiable. Like Socrates, this long-suffering divine had
+always with him an object on which to cultivate heavenly patience, and
+patience, says the Eastern proverb, is the key to content. The spirit
+of Xantippe seems to have taken possession of Mrs. Shurtleff immediately
+after her marriage. The freakish disrespect with which she used her
+meek consort was a heavy cross to bear at a period in New England when
+clerical dignity was at its highest sensitive point. Her devices for
+torturing the poor gentleman were inexhaustible. Now she lets his
+Sabbath ruffs go unstarched; now she scandalizes him by some unseemly
+and frivolous color in her attire; now she leaves him to cook his own
+dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she locks him in his study, whither
+he has retired for a moment or two of prayer, previous to setting forth
+to perform the morning service. The congregation has assembled; the
+sexton has tolled the bell twice as long as is custom, and is beginning
+a third carillon, full of wonder that his reverence does not appear;
+and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family pew with a face as
+complacent as that of the cat that has eaten the canary. Presently the
+deacons appeal to her for information touching the good doctor. Mistress
+Shurtleff sweetly tells them that the good doctor was in his study when
+she left home. There he is found, indeed, and released from durance,
+begging the deacons to keep his mortification secret, to "give it an
+understanding, but no tongue." Such was the discipline undergone by
+the worthy Dr. Shurtleff on his earthly pilgrimage. A portrait of
+this patient man--now a saint somewhere--hangs in the rooms of the New
+England Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston. There he can be
+seen in surplice and bands, with his lamblike, apostolic face looking
+down upon the heavy antiquarian labors of his busy descendants.
+
+Whether or not a man is to be classed as eccentric who vanishes without
+rhyme or reason on his wedding-night is a query left to the reader's
+decision. We seem to have struck a matrimonial vein, and must work
+it out. In 1768, Mr. James McDonough was one of the wealthiest men in
+Portsmouth, and the fortunate suitor for the hand of a daughter of Jacob
+Sheafe, a town magnate. The home of the bride was decked and lighted
+for the nuptials, the banquet-table was spread, and the guests were
+gathered. The minister in his robe stood by the carven mantelpiece,
+book in hand, and waited. Then followed an awkward interval--there was
+a hitch somewhere. A strange silence fell upon the laughing groups; the
+air grew tense with expectation; in the pantry, Amos Boggs, the butler,
+in his agitation split a bottle of port over his new cinnamon-colored
+small-clothes. Then a whisper--a whisper suppressed these twenty
+minutes--ran through the apartments,--"The bridegroom has not come!". He
+never came. The mystery of that night remains a mystery after the lapse
+of a century and a quarter.
+
+What had become of James McDonough? The assassination of so notable a
+person in a community where every strange face was challenged, where
+every man's antecedents were known, could not have been accomplished
+without leaving some slight traces. Not a shadow of foul play was
+discovered. That McDonough had been murdered or had committed suicide
+were theories accepted at first by a few, and then by no one. On the
+other hand, he was in love with his fiancee, he had wealth, power,
+position--why had he fled? He was seen a moment on the public street,
+and then never seen again. It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile
+the bewilderment of the bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough
+had been waylaid and killed, she could mourn for him. If he had deserted
+her, she could wrap herself in her pride. But neither course lay open to
+her, then or afterward. In one of the Twice Told Tales Hawthorne deals
+with a man named Wakefield, who disappears with like suddenness,
+and lives unrecognized for twenty years in a street not far from his
+abandoned hearthside. Such expunging of one's self was not possible in
+Portsmouth; but I never think of McDonough without recalling Wakefield.
+I have an inexplicable conviction that for many a year James McDonough,
+in some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the effect of his own
+startling disappearance.
+
+Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a personage
+bearing the ponderous title of King's Attorney, and carrying much
+gold lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr. Wyseman Clagett, of
+Bristol, England, where his father dwelt on the manor of Broad Oaks,
+in a mansion with twelve chimneys, and kept a coach and eight or ten
+servants. Up to the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman
+Clagett had evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His
+wealth consisted of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his
+lapels, and the tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with
+these he contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the
+young beauties of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had
+plighted troth with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to return
+home with a disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of violent temper and
+ingenious vindictiveness, and proved more than a sufficient punishment
+for Lettice's infidelity. The trifling fact that Warner was dead--he
+died shortly after his return--did not interfere with the course of
+Mr. Clagett's jealousy; he was haunted by the suspicion that Lettice
+regretted her first love, having left nothing undone to make her do so.
+"This is to pay Warner's debts," remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched
+off the table-cloth and wrecked the tea-things.
+
+In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor. The noun
+Clagett speedily turned itself into a verb; "to Clagett" meant "to
+prosecute;" they were convertible terms. In spite of his industrious
+severity, and his royal emoluments, if such existed, the exchequer of
+the King's Attorney showed a perpetual deficit. The stratagems to
+which he resorted from time to time in order to raise unimportant sums
+reminded one of certain scenes in Moliere's comedies.
+
+Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They were
+made for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and
+this was their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his
+servants to pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some
+sailor drinking at an inn: the constable arrested the sailor or the
+countryman, as the case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr.
+Clagett; Mr. Clagett read the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him
+five dollars and costs. The plunder was then divided between the
+conspirators--two hearts that beat as one--Clagett, of course, getting
+the lion's share. Justice was never administered in a simpler manner in
+any country. This eminent legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the
+wick laid away in the little churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire. It
+is a satisfaction, even after such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice
+survived the King's Attorney sufficiently long to be very happy with
+somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was scarcely eighteen when she married
+Wyseman Clagett.
+
+About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been
+a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of
+him as "the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton," as if one should say, "the
+well-known statesman, Daniel Webster." It is curious to observe how any
+sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where
+everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does
+not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only
+after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That
+happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the
+hens flying out of the loft window in his father's stable, which stood
+in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that
+though he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in
+no respect inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the
+window in the loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England
+Icarus alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was
+henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd
+moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as
+had not been detected in him previous to his mischance. As Polonius said
+of Hamlet--another unstrung mortal--Tilton's replies had "a happiness
+that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so
+prosperously be delivered of." One morning, he appeared at the
+flour-mill with a sack of corn to be ground for the almshouse, and was
+asked what he knew. "Some things I know," replied poor Tilton, "and some
+things I don't know. I know the miller's hogs grow fat, but I don't know
+whose corn they fat on." To borrow another word from Polonius, though
+this be madness, yet there was method in it. Tilton finally brought up
+in the almshouse, where he was allowed the liberty of roaming at will
+through the town. He loved the water-side as if he had had all his
+senses. Often he was seen to stand for hours with a sunny, torpid smile
+on his lips, gazing out upon the river where its azure ruffles itself
+into silver against the islands. He always wore stuck in his hat a
+few hen's feathers, perhaps with some vague idea of still associating
+himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come into that category.
+
+George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another
+complexion, a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and one of
+His Majesty's Council in 1766--a man with the blood of the lion and
+the unicorn in every vein. He remained to the bitter end, and beyond,
+a devout royalist, prizing his shoe-buckles, not because they were of
+chased silver, but because they bore the tower mark and crown stamp. He
+stoutly objected to oral prayer, on the ground that it gave rogues and
+hypocrites an opportunity to impose on honest folk. He was punctilious
+in his attendance at church, and unfailing in his responses, though not
+of a particularly devotional temperament. On one occasion, at least, his
+sincerity is not to be questioned. He had been deeply irritated by some
+encroachments on the boundaries of certain estates, and had gone to
+church that forenoon with his mind full of the matter. When the minister
+in the course of reading the service came to the apostrophe, "Cursed be
+he who removeth his neighbor's landmark," Mr. Jeffrey's feelings were
+too many for him, and he cried out "Amen!" in a tone of voice that
+brought smiles to the adjoining pews.
+
+Mr. Jaffrey's last will and testament was a whimsical document, in spite
+of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper. It had originally
+been Mr. Jaffrey's plan to leave his possessions to his beloved friend,
+Colonel Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel by some maladroitness managed
+to turn the current of Pactolus in another direction. The vast property
+was bequeathed to George Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator's grandnephew,
+on condition that the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name
+of Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no profession
+excepting that of gentleman. There is an immense amount of Portsmouth
+as well as George Jaffrey in that final clause. George the fourth
+handsomely complied with the requirements, and dying at the age of
+sixty-six, without issue or assets, was the last of that particular line
+of Georges. I say that he handsomely complied with the requirements of
+the will; but my statement appears to be subject to qualification,
+for on the day of his obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic
+contemporary: "Well, yes, Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but
+not eminent in his profession."
+
+This modest exhibition of profiles, in which I have attempted to
+preserve no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of Dr.
+Joseph Moses.
+
+If Boston in the colonial days had her Mather Byles, Portsmouth had her
+Dr. Joseph Moses. In their quality as humorists, the outlines of both
+these gentlemen have become rather broken and indistinct. "A jest's
+prosperity lies in the ear that hears it." Decanted wit inevitably loses
+its bouquet. A clever repartee belongs to the precious moment in
+which it is broached, and is of a vintage that does not usually bear
+transportation. Dr. Moses--he received his diploma not from the College
+of Physicians, but from the circumstance of his having once drugged
+his private demijohn of rum, and so nailed an inquisitive negro named
+Sambo--Dr. Moses, as he was always called, had been handed down to us by
+tradition as a fellow of infinite jest and of most excellent fancy; but
+I must confess that I find his high spirits very much evaporated.
+His humor expended itself, for the greater part, in practical
+pleasantries--like that practiced on the minion Sambo--but these
+diversions, however facetious to the parties concerned, lack magnetism
+for outsiders. I discover nothing about him so amusing as the fact that
+he lived in a tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded
+nor shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the discarded shingles
+of the Old South Church when the roof of that edifice was repaired.
+
+Dr. Moses, like many persons of his time and class, was a man of protean
+employment--joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had much pithy and
+fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He certainly impressed the
+Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of uncommon parts, for the Honorable
+Secretary of the Province, like a second Haroun Al Raschid, often
+summoned the barber to entertain him with his company. One evening--and
+this is the only reproducible instance of the doctor's readiness--Mr.
+Atkinson regaled his guest with a diminutive glass of choice Madeira.
+The doctor regarded it against the light with the half-closed eye of
+the connoisseur, and after sipping the molten topaz with satisfaction,
+inquired how old it was. "Of the vintage of about sixty years ago," was
+the answer. "Well," said the doctor reflectively, "I never in my life
+saw so small a thing of such an age." There are other mots of his on
+record, but their faces are suspiciously familiar. In fact, all the
+witty things were said aeons ago. If one nowadays perpetrates an
+original joke, one immediately afterward finds it in the Sanskirt. I
+am afraid that Dr. Joseph Moses has no very solid claims on us. I have
+given him place here because he has long had the reputation of a wit,
+which is almost as good as to be one.
+
+
+
+
+VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston to
+Portsmouth--it took place somewhat more than forty years ago--was
+attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in the crowded
+station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was unobserved at the time. The
+catastrophe was followed, though not immediately, by death, and that
+also, curiously enough, was unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial
+train, freighted with so many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran
+over and killed--LOCAL CHARACTER.
+
+Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little community, and
+had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to time it had calmly
+produced an individual built on plans and specifications of its own,
+without regard to the prejudices and conventionalities of outlying
+districts. This individual was purely indigenous. He was born in the
+town, he lived to a good old age in the town, and never went out of the
+place, until he was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only
+fifty-six miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity--only fifty-six
+miles by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles distant
+in effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged
+to take a great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story
+mud-turtle--if zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate
+so daring an invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the
+morning, you dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city
+with the golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always
+the coach had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had
+not gone lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in Portsmouth, this
+journey was an event which occurred only twice or thrice during life. To
+the typical individual with whom I am for the moment dealing, it never
+occurred at all. The town was his entire world; he was a parochial as
+a Parisian; Market Street was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North
+End his Bois de Boulogne.
+
+Of course there were varieties of local characters without his
+limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India trade;
+elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal peculiarities; one
+or two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of coat, haunting the Athenaeum
+reading-room; ex-sea captains, with rings on their fingers, like Simon
+Danz's visitors in Longfellow's poem--men who had played busy parts in
+the bustling world, and had drifted back to Old Strawberry Bank in the
+tranquil sunset of their careers. I may say, in passing, that these
+ancient mariners, after battling with terrific hurricanes and typhoons
+on every known sea, not infrequently drowned themselves in pleasant
+weather in small sail-boats on the Piscataqua River. Old sea-dogs who
+had commanded ships of four or five hundred tons had naturally slight
+respect for the potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there
+was to be no further increase of these odd sticks--if I may call them
+so, in no irreverent mood--after those innocent-looking parallel bars
+indissolubly linked Portsmouth with the capital of the Commonwealth of
+Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be changed, the old angles
+to be pared off, new horizons to be regarded. The individual, as an
+eccentric individual, was to undergo great modifications. If he were not
+to become extinct--a thing little likely--he was at least to lose his
+prominence.
+
+However, as I said, local character, in the sense in which the term
+is here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering death, and
+passed away so peacefully and silently as not to attract general, or
+perhaps any, notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my
+boyhood. The last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had
+come in, long before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half
+obsolete customs and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was
+not too late, for example, to catch the last town crier--one Nicholas
+Newman, whom I used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort
+of affection.
+
+Nicholas Newman--Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being
+Edward--was a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat
+bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have
+never since seen a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple.
+The only thing about him that matched the instrument of his office was
+his voice. His "Hear All!" still deafens memory's ear. I remember that
+he had a queer way of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him
+had originally intended a crab, but thought better of it, and made a
+town-crier. Of the crustacean intention only a moist thumb remained,
+which served Mr. Newman in good stead in the delivery of the Boston
+evening papers, for he was incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties
+were to cry auctions, funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals,
+public meetings, and articles lost or found. He was especially strong in
+announcing the loss of reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden
+ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when
+fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person,
+but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as
+a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity
+in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman
+spoken of as "that horrid man." He was a picturesque figure.
+
+Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with
+those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple
+of the Old North every night at nine o'clock--the vocal remains of
+the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his
+losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can
+more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different
+personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine
+o'clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a
+time at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a
+gay little shop (he called it "an Emporium"), as barber shops generally
+are, decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers
+of tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes--whose antecedents to us boys were
+wrapped in thrilling mystery, we imagined him to have been a prince in
+his native land--was a colored man, not too dark "for human nature's
+daily food," and enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics
+in town. At this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every
+official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore a
+name that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or so.
+The situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a Chinese
+policeman, with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper pocket handkerchief,
+patrolling Congress Street.
+
+Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as straight
+as a pine. He possessed his race's sweet temper, simplicity, and vanity.
+His martial bearing was a positive factor in the effectiveness of the
+Portsmouth Greys, whenever those bloodless warriors paraded. As he
+brought up the rear of the last platoon, with his infantry cap stuck
+jauntily on the left side of his head and a bright silver cup slung on
+a belt at his hip, he seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing
+things in the display. To himself he was pretty much "all the company."
+He used to say, with a drollness which did not strike me until years
+afterwards, "Boys, I and Cap'n Towle is goin' to trot out 'the Greys'
+to-morroh." Though strictly honest in all business dealings, his
+tropical imagination, whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of
+autobiography, left much to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared
+with Sol Holmes on such occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid
+integrity. Sol Holmes's tragic end was in singular contrast with his
+sunny temperament. One night, long ago, he threw himself from the deck
+of a Sound steamer, somewhere between Stonington and New York. What led
+or drove him to the act never transpired.
+
+There are few men who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of which I
+write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue wheelbarrow.
+I find it difficult to describe him other than vaguely, possibly because
+Wilbird had no expression whatever in his countenance. With his vacant
+white face lifted to the clouds, seemingly oblivious of everything, yet
+going with a sort of heaven-given instinct straight to his destination,
+he trundled that rattling wheelbarrow for many a year over Portsmouth
+cobblestones. He was so unconscious of his environment that sometimes a
+small boy would pop into the empty wheelbarrow and secure a ride without
+Wibird arriving at any very clear knowledge of the fact. His employment
+in life was to deliver groceries and other merchandise to purchasers.
+This he did in a dreamy, impersonal kind of way. It was as if a spirit
+had somehow go hold of an earthly wheelbarrow and was trundling it quite
+unconsciously, with no sense of responsibility. One day he appeared at
+a kitchen door with a two-gallon molasses jug, the top of which was
+wanting. It was not longer a jug, but a tureen. When the recipient of
+the damaged article remonstrated with "Goodness gracious, Wibird! You
+have broken the jug," his features lighted up, and he seemed immensely
+relieved. "I thought," He remarked, "I heerd somethink crack!"
+
+Wibird Penhallow's heaviest patron was the keeper of a variety store,
+and the first specimen of a pessimist I ever encountered. He was an
+excellent specimen. He took exception to everything. He objected to the
+telegraph, to the railway, to steam in all its applications. Some of his
+arguments, I recollect, made a deep impression on my mind. "Nowadays,"
+he once observed to me, "if your son or your grandfather drops dead at
+the other end of creation, you know of it in ten minutes. What's the
+use? Unless you are anxious to know he's dead, you've got just two or
+three weeks more to be miserable in." He scorned the whole business, and
+was faithful to his scorn. When he received a telegram, which was rare,
+he made a point of keeping it awhile unopened. Through the exercise of
+this whim he once missed an opportunity of buying certain goods to great
+advantage. "There!" he exclaimed, "if the telegraph hadn't been invented
+the idiot would have written to me, and I'd have sent a letter by return
+coach, and got the goods before he found out prices had gone up in
+Chicago. If that boy brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs,
+I'll throw an axe-handle at him." His pessimism extended up, or down, to
+generally recognized canons of orthography. They were all iniquitous. If
+k-n-i-f-e spelled knife, then, he contended, k-n-i-f-e-s was the plural.
+Diverting tags, written by his own hand in conformity with this theory,
+were always attached to articles in his shop window. He is long since
+ded, as he himself would have put it, but his phonetic theory appears to
+have survived him in crankish brains here and there. As my discouraging
+old friend was not exactly a public character, like the town crier or
+Wibird Penhallow, I have intentionally thrown a veil over his identity.
+I have, so to speak, dropped into his pouch a grain or two of that
+magical fern-seed which was supposed by our English ancestors, in
+Elizabeth's reign, to possess the quality of rendering a man invisible.
+
+Another person who singularly interested me at this epoch was a person
+with whom I had never exchanged a word, whose voice I had never heard,
+but whose face was as familiar to me as every day could make it. For
+each morning as I went to school, and each afternoon as I returned, I
+saw this face peering out of a window in the second story of a shambling
+yellow house situated in Washington Street, not far from the corner of
+State. Whether some malign disease had fixed him to the chair he sat on,
+or whether he had lost the use of his legs, or, possible, had none (the
+upper part of him was that of a man in admirable health), presented a
+problem which, with that curious insouciance of youth I made no attempt
+to solve. It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of
+that house. I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which
+wove itself about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the
+master of a large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta;
+while still in his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck,
+and seated himself at that window--where the outlook must have been the
+reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of the
+day, and the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry's bakery-cart was the
+only sound that ever shattered the silence. Whether it was an amatory
+or a financial disappointment that turned him into a hermit was left to
+ingenious conjecture. But there he sat, year in and year out, with his
+cheek so close to the window that the nearest pane became permanently
+blurred with his breath; for after his demise the blurr remained.
+
+In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for an
+undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was a sexton
+in Portsmouth--his name escapes me, but his attributes do not--whose
+impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture of the
+Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was the striking figure,
+even to the eclipsing of the involuntary object of the ceremony. His
+occasions, happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other
+public services that of furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties.
+I always thought--perhaps it was the working of an unchastened
+imagination--that he managed to throw into his ice-creams a peculiar
+chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzzi--arcades ambo--the rival
+confectioners.
+
+Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species
+of restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing
+confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both
+gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines, but
+neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of those
+prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain snuffy little
+shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent side-streets where the football
+of commerce seemed an incongruous thing. These shops were never intended
+in nature. They had an impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not
+recall one that was not located in a private residence, and was not
+evidently the despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis,
+similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyrcheon in The House
+of the Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street door--the upper
+section left open in summer--ushered you, with a sudden jangle of bell
+that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall, haunted
+by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence, through
+another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front parlor,
+but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown, wooden counter, and several
+rows of little drawers built up against the picture-papered wall behind
+it. Through much use the paint on these drawers was worn off in circles
+round the polished brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small
+article required by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a
+peppermint Gibraltar--the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery
+which, when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any
+Portsmouth boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a single
+tooth left unbroken. The proprietors of these little knick-knack
+establishments were the nicest creatures, somehow suggesting venerable
+doves. They were always aged ladies, sometimes spinsters, sometimes
+relicts of daring mariners, beached long before. They always wore crisp
+muslin caps and steel-rimmed spectacles; they were not always amiable,
+and no wonder, for even doves may have their rheumatism; but such as
+they were, they were cherished in young hearts, and are, I take it,
+impossible to-day.
+
+When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that it
+must have been in some respects unique among New England towns. There
+were, for instance, no really poor persons in the place; every one had
+some sufficient calling or an income to render it unnecessary; vagrants
+and paupers were instantly snapped up and provided for at "the Farm."
+There was, however, in a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a
+decayed old gentlewoman, occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a
+suspicion of maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her
+by the neighborhood--as a matter of course, and involving no sense of
+dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is
+given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
+
+I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as they were
+affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that
+stir in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my
+purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes
+that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like
+Portsmouth--the obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the
+obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England
+the impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and
+women--quaint, shrewd, and racy of the soil--who linger in little,
+silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England roads and
+by-ways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in the record of
+some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or Mary Wilkins, on whose
+sympathetic page they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an
+atmosphere of long-kept lavender and pennyroyal.
+
+Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower.
+The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated,
+the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement
+more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric
+finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a
+larger world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping
+hand of new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from
+Cambridge, Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico,
+and his ulster from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state
+of Odd Stick; he has ceased to be parochial; he is no longer distinct;
+he is simply the Average Man.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+     ADAMS, NATHANIEL
+     ADDISON, JOSEPH
+     ALLEN, WILLIAM
+     ANANIAS
+     ATKINSON, THEODORE
+     AUSTIN, REBECCA
+     BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE
+     BLAY, RUTH
+     BOGGS, AMOS
+     BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN
+     BRIDGET, MOLLY
+     BROWN, REV. ARTHUR
+     BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D.
+     BRUCE, CYRUS
+     BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES
+     BYLES, REV. MATHER
+     CAROLINE, QUEEN
+     CHADBORN, HUMPHREY
+     CHARLES, PRINCE
+     CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE
+     CLAGETT, WYSEMAN
+     COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON
+     D'ORLEANS, DUC
+     DUNYON, WILLIAM
+     ELIZABETH, QUEEN
+     FENTON, JOHN
+     FOWLE, DANIEL
+     FOWLE, PRIMUS
+     FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
+     FURBER, THOMAS
+     GEORGE I
+     GERRY, ELBRIDGE
+     GORGES, SIR FERDINAND
+     GUAST, PIERRE DE
+     HAM, SUPPLY
+     HANCOCK, JOHN
+     HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
+     HILTON, MARTHA
+     HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+     HOLMES, SOL
+     JAFFREY, GEORGE
+     JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY
+     JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
+     KEAIS, SAMUAL
+     KEKUANAOA
+     KENNY, PENELOPE
+     KNOX, GENERAL HENRY
+     LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE
+     LAIGHTON, ALBERT
+     LAIGHTON, OSCAR
+     LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN
+     LEAR, BENJAMIN
+     LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
+     MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD
+     MCDONOUGH, JAMES
+     MASON, JEREMIAH
+     MASON, JOHN
+     MASON, JOHN TUFTON
+     MARCH, CLEMENT
+     MATHER, REV. COTTON
+     MESERVE, GEORGE
+     MICHELANGELO
+     MITCHEL, LETTUCE
+     MOFFATT, CATHERINE
+     MOLIERE
+     MONTPENSIER, DUC DE
+     MOSES, JOSEPH
+     NEWMAN, EDWARD
+     NOBLE, MARK
+     ODIORNE, EBEN L.
+     PACKER, THOMAS
+     PEDUZZI, DOMINIC
+     PENHALLOW, WIBIRD
+     PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM
+     PEPYS, SAMUAL
+     PHILIPPE, LOUIS
+     PHIPPES, THOMAS
+     PHIPPS, GOVERNOR
+     PICKERING, JOHN
+     PITT, WILLIAM
+     POTTLE, WILLIAM
+     PRING, MARTIN
+     QUINCY, DOROTHY
+     ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE
+     ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS
+     RUTLEDGE, EDWARD
+     SERAT, LEONARD
+     SEWELL, JONATHAN
+     SHAKESPEARE
+     SHEAFE, JACOB
+     SHERBURNE, HENRY
+     SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON
+     SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM
+     SIMPSON, SARAH
+     SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN
+     SOCRATES
+     STAVERS, DAME
+     STAVERS, JOHN
+     STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE
+     STOODLEY, JAMES
+     THAXTER, CELIA
+     THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
+     TILTON, JOHNNY
+     TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM
+     WALTON, GEORGE
+     WARNER, JONATHAN
+     WASHINGTON, GEORGE
+     WEBSTER, DANIEL
+     WENTWORTH, BENNING
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D
+     WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA
+     WENTWORTH, MARY
+     WENTWORTH, MICHAEL
+     WENTWORTH, SARAH
+     WESTWERE, EDWARD
+     WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF
+     WIBIRD, RICHARD
+     WILKINS, MARY E.
+     WINN, TIMOTHY
+     WITHER, GEORGE
+     XANTIPPE
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      An Old Town by the Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </title>
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+
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
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+
+Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Old Town By The Sea
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1861]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan L. Farley and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+                         PISCATAQUA RIVER
+
+                         Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
+                         By woods, and fields of corn,
+                         Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
+                         Upon my birthday morn.
+
+                         But I within a city, I,
+                         So full of vague unrest,
+                         Would almost give my life to lie
+                         An hour upon upon thy breast.
+
+                         To let the wherry listless go,
+                         And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
+                         Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
+                         Like the red harbor-buoy;
+
+                         To sit in happy indolence,
+                         To rest upon the oars,
+                         And catch the heavy earthy scents
+                         That blow from summer shores;
+
+                         To see the rounded sun go down,
+                         And with its parting fires
+                         Light up the windows of the town
+                         And burn the tapering spires;
+
+                         And then to hear the muffled tolls
+                         From steeples slim and white,
+                         And watch, among the Isles of Shoals,
+                         The Beacon&rsquo;s orange light.
+
+                         O River! flowing to the main
+                         Through woods, and fields of corn,
+                         Hear thou my longing and my pain
+                         This sunny birthday morn;
+
+                         And take this song which fancy shapes
+                         To music like thine own,
+                         And sing it to the cliffs and capes
+                         And crags where I am known!
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA</b></big> </a>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <table summary="">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> INDEX OF NAMES </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects on
+      the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this crust of
+      earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on its surface
+      seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the other day,
+      then&mdash;that is to say, in the month of June, 1603&mdash;that one
+      Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty tons
+      burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
+      Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort the
+      Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
+      windings of &ldquo;the brave river&rdquo; for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
+      turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object of the
+      expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal sassafras-tree,
+      from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors, could be distilled
+      the Elixir of Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
+      miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
+      effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens suddenly
+      at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network of
+      strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the crystal water,
+      must have won the tired mariners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
+      hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of, nor
+      did they encounter&mdash;what would have been infinitely less to their
+      taste&mdash;and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered
+      ashes of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they
+      were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish
+      abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate
+      breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
+      the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the
+      tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder
+      sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval solitude. Master Pring
+      would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the
+      Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua&mdash;Captain John Smith of
+      famous memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all
+      sorts of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his
+      presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky
+      selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him to
+      examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small
+      boat, a ship&rsquo;s yawl, he skirted the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod,
+      keeping his eye open. This keeping his eye open was a peculiarity of the
+      little captain; possibly a family trait. It was Smith who really
+      discovered the Isles of Shoals, exploring in person those masses of
+      bleached rock&mdash;those &ldquo;isles assez hautes,&rdquo; of which the French
+      navigator Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, had caught a bird&rsquo;s-eye glimpse
+      through the twilight in 1605. Captain Smith christened the group Smith&rsquo;s
+      Isles, a title which posterity, with singular persistence of ingratitude,
+      has ignored. It was a tardy sense of justice that expressed itself a few
+      years ago in erecting on Star Island a simple marble shaft to the memory
+      of JOHN SMITH&mdash;the multitudinous! Perhaps this long delay is
+      explained by a natural hesitation to label a monument so ambiguously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The modern Jason, meanwhile, was not without honor in his own country,
+      whatever may have happened to him in his own house, for the poet George
+      Wither addressed a copy of pompous verses &ldquo;To his Friend Captain Smith,
+      upon his Description of New England.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he says&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Sir: your Relations I haue read: which shew
+     Ther&rsquo;s reason I should honor them and you:
+     And if their meaning I have vnderstood,
+     I dare to censure thus: Your Project&rsquo;s good;
+     And may (if follow&rsquo;d) doubtlesse quit the paine
+     With honour, pleasure and a trebble gaine;
+     Beside the benefit that shall arise
+     To make more happy our Posterities.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The earliest map of this portion of our seaboard was prepared by Smith and
+      laid before Prince Charles, who asked to give the country a name. He
+      christened it New England. In that remarkable map the site of Portsmouth
+      is call Hull, and Kittery and York are known as Boston.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was doubtless owing to Captain John Smith&rsquo;s representation on his
+      return to England that the Laconia Company selected the banks of the
+      Piscataqua for their plantation. Smith was on an intimate footing with Sir
+      Ferinand Gorges, who, five years subsequently, made a tour of inspection
+      along the New England coast, in company with John Mason, then Governor of
+      Newfoundland. One of the results of this summer cruise is the town of
+      Portsmouth, among whose leafy ways, and into some of whose old-fashioned
+      houses, I purpose to take the reader, if he have an idle hour on his
+      hands. Should we meet the flitting ghost of some old-time worthy, on the
+      staircase or at a lonely street corner, the reader must be prepared for
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IT is not supposable that the early settlers selected the site of their
+      plantation on account of its picturesqueness. They were influenced
+      entirely by the lay of the land, its nearness and easy access to the sea,
+      and the secure harbor it offered to their fishing-vessels; yet they could
+      not have chosen a more beautiful spot had beauty been the sole
+      consideration. The first settlement was made at Odiorne&rsquo;s Point&mdash;the
+      Pilgrims&rsquo; Rock of New Hampshire; there the Manor, or Mason&rsquo;s Hall, was
+      built by the Laconia Company in 1623. It was not until 1631 that the Great
+      House was erected by Humphrey Chadborn on Strawberry Bank. Mr. Chadborn,
+      consciously or unconsciously, sowed a seed from which a city has sprung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua,
+      about two miles from the sea as the crow flies&mdash;three miles following
+      the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this
+      point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by the
+      interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island lake
+      than a river. To the unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet. Standing
+      on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court Street, a
+      stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the ocean. A
+      little observation, however, would show him that he was in a seaport. The
+      rich red rust on the gables and roofs of ancient buildings looking seaward
+      would tell him that. There is a fitful saline flavor in the air, and if
+      while he gazed a dense white fog should come rolling in, like a line of
+      phantom breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the river, though
+      few of the notable houses that remain are to be found there. Like all New
+      England settlements, Portsmouth was built of wood, and has been subjected
+      to extensive conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick building that
+      is not shockingly modern. The first house of the kind was erected by
+      Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the fateful hand
+      of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town, especially as
+      you saunter along the streets down by the river. The worm-eaten wharves,
+      some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of grass, and the
+      weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient to satisfy a
+      moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers and these long rows
+      of empty barracks, with their sarcastic cranes projecting from the eaves,
+      rather puzzle the stranger. Why this great preparation for a commercial
+      activity that does not exist, and evidently had not for years existed?
+      There are no ships lying at the pier-heads; there are no gangs of
+      stevedores staggering under the heavy cases of merchandise; here and there
+      is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with coal, and here and there a
+      square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered with fragrant planks and
+      clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at the end of the wharf, a
+      ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect sympathy with the indolent
+      sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor of these crumbling piles and
+      ridiculous warehouses, from which even the ghost of prosperity has flown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time, however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive trade with
+      the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston and
+      New York. At the windows of these musty counting-rooms which overlook the
+      river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants, in knee breeches
+      and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with ruffles at the wrist,
+      waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows; the cries of stevedores
+      and the chants of sailors at the windlass used to echo along the shore
+      where all is silence now. For reasons not worth setting forth, the trade
+      with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined as well as enriched many a
+      Portsmouth adventurer. This explains the empty warehouses and the unused
+      wharves. Portsmouth remains the interesting widow of a once very lively
+      commerce. I fancy that few fortunes are either made or lost in Portsmouth
+      nowadays. Formerly it turned out the best ships, as it did the ablest ship
+      captains, in the world. There were families in which the love for blue
+      water was in immemorial trait. The boys were always sailors; &ldquo;a
+      grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck
+      to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before
+      the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blasted
+      against his sire and grandsire.&rdquo; (1. Hawthorne in his introduction to The
+      Scarlet Letter.) With thousands of miles of sea-line and a score or two of
+      the finest harbors on the globe, we have adroitly turned over our carrying
+      trade to foreign nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other days, as I have said, a high maritime spirit was characteristic
+      of Portsmouth. The town did a profitable business in the war of 1812,
+      sending out a large fleet of the sauciest small craft on record. A
+      pleasant story is told of one of these little privateers&mdash;the
+      Harlequin, owned and commanded by Captain Elihu Brown. The Harlequin one
+      day gave chase to a large ship, which did not seem to have much fight
+      aboard, and had got it into close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger
+      threw open her ports, and proved to be His Majesty&rsquo;s Ship-of-War Bulwark,
+      seventy-four guns. Poor Captain Brown!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Portsmouth has several large cotton factories and one or two corpulent
+      breweries; it is a wealthy old town, with a liking for first mortgage
+      bonds; but its warmest lover will not claim for it the distinction of
+      being a great mercantile centre. The majority of her young men are forced
+      to seek other fields to reap, and almost every city in the Union, and many
+      a city across the sea, can point to some eminent merchant, lawyer, or what
+      not, as &ldquo;a Portsmouth boy.&rdquo; Portsmouth even furnished the late king of the
+      Sandwich Islands, Kekuanaoa, with a prime minister, and his nankeen
+      Majesty never had a better. The affection which all these exiles cherish
+      for their birthplace is worthy of remark. On two occasions&mdash;in 1852
+      and 1873, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of
+      Strawberry Bank&mdash;the transplanted sons of Portsmouth were seized with
+      an impulse to return home. Simultaneously and almost without concerted
+      action, the lines of pilgrims took up their march from every quarter of
+      the globe, and swept down with music and banners on the motherly old town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To come back to the wharves. I do not know of any spot with such a
+      fascinating air of dreams and idleness about it as the old wharf at the
+      end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once a noisy, busy place,
+      crowded with sailors and soldiers&mdash;in the war of 1812&mdash;gives an
+      emphasis to the quiet that broods over it to-day. The lounger who sits of
+      a summer afternoon on a rusty anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the
+      silent warehouses, and look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring past
+      the town, cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having taken
+      itself off elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a slumberous, delightful, lazy place it is! The sunshine seems to lie
+      a foot deep on the planks of the dusty wharf, which yields up to the
+      warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, molasses, and spice that
+      used to be piled upon it. The river is as blue as the inside of a
+      harebell. The opposite shore, in the strangely shifting magic lights of
+      sky and water, stretches along like the silvery coast of fairyland.
+      Directly opposite you is the navy yard, and its neat officers&rsquo; quarters
+      and workshops and arsenals, and its vast shiphouses, in which the keel of
+      many a famous frigate has been laid. Those monster buildings on the
+      water&rsquo;s edge, with their roofs pierced with innumerable little windows,
+      which blink like eyes in the sunlight, and the shiphouses. On your right
+      lies a cluster of small islands,&mdash;there are a dozen or more in the
+      harbor&mdash;on the most extensive of which you see the fading-away
+      remains of some earthworks thrown up in 1812. Between this&mdash;Trefethren&rsquo;s
+      Island&mdash;and Peirce&rsquo;s Island lie the Narrows. Perhaps a bark or a
+      sloop-of-war is making up to town; the hulk is hidden amoung the islands,
+      and the topmasts have the effect of sweeping across the dry land. On your
+      left is a long bridge, more than a quarter of a mile in length, set upon
+      piles where the water is twenty or thirty feet deep, leading to the navy
+      yard and Kittery&mdash;the Kittery so often the theme of Whittier&rsquo;s verse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you. Its
+      changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds floating over
+      it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a place where the
+      scenery is more varied and striking; but there is a mandragora quality in
+      the atmosphere here that holds you to the spot, and makes the half-hours
+      seem like minutes. I could fancy a man sitting on the end of that old
+      wharf very contentedly for two or three years, provided it could be always
+      in June.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, too, one would desire it to be always high water. The tide falls
+      from eight to twelve feet, and when the water makes out between the
+      wharves some of the picturesqueness makes out also. A corroded section of
+      stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the skeleton of a hoopskirt protruding
+      from the tide mud like the remains of some old-time wreck, is apt to break
+      the enchantment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I fear I have given the reader an exaggerated idea of the solitude that
+      reigns along the river-side. Sometimes there is society here of an
+      unconventional kind, if you care to seek it. Aside from the foreign
+      gentleman before mentioned, you are likely to encounter, farther down the
+      shore toward the Point of Graves (a burial-place of the colonial period),
+      a battered and aged native fisherman boiling lobsters on a little gravelly
+      bench, where the river whispers and lisps among the pebbles as the tide
+      creeps in. It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or ex-pilot, with strands of
+      coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a face that has the expression of
+      a half-open clam. He is always ready to talk with you, this amphibious
+      person; and if he is not the most entertaining of gossips&mdash;more
+      weather-wise that Old Probabilities, and as full of moving incident as
+      Othello himself&mdash;then he is not the wintery-haired shipman I used to
+      see a few years ago on the strip of beach just beyond Liberty Bridge,
+      building his drift-wood fire under a great tin boiler, and making it
+      lively for a lot of reluctant lobsters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I imagine that very little change has taken place in this immediate
+      locality, known prosaically as Puddle Dock, during the past fifty or sixty
+      years. The view you get looking across Liberty Bridge, Water Street, is
+      probably the same in every respect that presented itself to the eyes of
+      the town folk a century ago. The flagstaff, on the right, is the
+      representative of the old &ldquo;standard of liberty&rdquo; which the Sons planted on
+      this spot in January, 1766, signalizing their opposition to the
+      enforcement of the Stamp Act. On the same occasion the patriots called at
+      the house of Mr. George Meserve, the agent for distributing the stamps in
+      New Hampshire, and relieved him of his stamp-master&rsquo;s commission, which
+      document they carried on the point of a sword through the town to Liberty
+      Bridge (the Swing Bridge), where they erected the staff, with the motto,
+      &ldquo;Liberty, Property, and no Stamp!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of November. On
+      the previous morning the &ldquo;New Hampshire Gazette&rdquo; appeared with a deep
+      black border and all the typographical emblems of affliction, for was not
+      Liberty dead? At all events, the &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo; itself was as good as dead,
+      since the printer could no longer publish it if he were to be handicapped
+      by a heavy tax. &ldquo;The day was ushered in by the tolling of all the bells in
+      town, the vessels in the harbor had their colors hoisted half-mast high;
+      about three o&rsquo;clock a funeral procession was formed, having a coffin with
+      this inscription, LIBERTY, AGED 145, STAMPT. It moved from the state
+      house, with two unbraced drums, through the principal streets. As it
+      passed the Parade, minute-guns were fired; at the place of interment a
+      speech was delivered on the occasion, stating the many advantages we had
+      received and the melancholy prospect before us, at the seeming departure
+      of our invaluable liberties. But some sign of life appearing, Liberty was
+      not deposited in the grave; it was rescued by a number of her sons, the
+      motto changed to Liberty revived, and carried off in triumph. The
+      detestable Act was buried in its stead, and the clods of the valley were
+      laid upon it; the bells changed their melancholy sound to a more joyful
+      tone.&rdquo; (1. Annals of Portsmouth, by Nathaniel Adams, 1825.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this side glance at one of the curious humors of the time, we resume
+      our peregrinations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning down a lane on your left, a few rods beyond Liberty Bridge, you
+      reach a spot known as the Point of Graves, chiefly interesting as showing
+      what a graveyard may come to if it last long enough. In 1671 one Captain
+      John Pickering, of whom we shall have more to say, ceded to the town a
+      piece of ground on this neck for burial purposes. It is an odd-shaped lot,
+      comprising about half an acre, inclosed by a crumbling red brick wall two
+      or three feet high, with wood capping. The place is overgrown with
+      thistles, rank grass, and fungi; the black slate headstones have mostly
+      fallen over; those that still make a pretense of standing slant to every
+      point of the compass, and look as if they were being blown this way and
+      that by a mysterious gale which leaves everything else untouched; the
+      mounds have sunk to the common level, and the old underground tombs have
+      collapsed. Here and there the moss and weeds you can pick out some name
+      that shines in the history of the early settlement; hundreds of the flower
+      of the colony lie here, but the known and the unknown, gentle and simple,
+      mingle their dust on a perfect equality now. The marble that once bore a
+      haughty coat of arms is as smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless of
+      heraldry. The lion and the unicorn, wherever they appear on some cracked
+      slab, are very much tamed by time. The once fat-faced cherubs, with wing
+      at either cheek, are the merest skeletons now. Pride, pomp, grief, and
+      remembrance are all at end. No reverent feet come here, no tears fall
+      here; the old graveyard itself is dead! A more dismal, uncanny spot than
+      this at twilight would be hard to find. It is noticed that when the boys
+      pass it after nightfall, they always go by whistling with a gayety that is
+      perfectly hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us get into some cheerfuler neighborhood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass &ldquo;up town,&rdquo; the streets
+      grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious&mdash;streets
+      fringed with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private
+      dwellings, mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through
+      the centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
+      houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
+      the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
+      pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
+      sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
+      authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
+      within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty
+      of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when the
+      chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
+      fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
+      fair town&mdash;her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
+      more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain streets
+      in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm. You may
+      walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the overhanging
+      and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery even more
+      graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous elms and
+      maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the result of
+      chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken to preserve
+      the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to arboriculture. It
+      is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies to be expended in
+      setting out shade and ornamental trees along some favorite walk. Richards
+      Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading from Middle Street to the
+      South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of a citizen who gave the labor
+      of his own hands to the beautifying of that windswept and barren road the
+      cemetery. This fondness and care for trees seems to be a matter of
+      heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen instituted a fine of five
+      shillings for the cutting of timber or any other wood from off the town
+      common, excepting under special conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
+      streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of the
+      dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
+      crowded, but I have never happened to be in Portsmouth at the time. I
+      seldom pass through the narrow cobble-paved street without wondering where
+      the customers are that must keep all these flourishing little
+      establishments going. Congress Street&mdash;a more elegant thoroughfare
+      than Market&mdash;is the Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth. Among the
+      prominent buildings is the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and
+      library. From the high roof of this building the stroller will do well to
+      take a glance at the surrounding country. He will naturally turn seaward
+      for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he will see the
+      famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles away&mdash;Appledore, Smutty-Nose,
+      Star Island, White Island, etc.; there are nine of them in all. On
+      Appledore is Laighton&rsquo;s Hotel, and near it the summer cottage of Celia
+      Thaxter, the poet of the Isles. On the northern end of Star Island is the
+      quaint town of Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a sea-gull
+      on its highest rock. A mile southwest form Star Island lies White Island,
+      on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the most picturesque of
+      the group. Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in any but the serenest weather,
+      these wrinkled, scarred, are storm-smitten rocks, flanked by wicked sunken
+      ledges that grow white at the lip with rage when the great winds blow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea! and how
+      softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the unfinished fort
+      is! That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to reach which from Portsmouth
+      you have to cross three bridges with the most enchanting scenery in New
+      Hampshire lying on either hand. At Newcastle the poet Stedman has built
+      for his summerings an enviable little stone chateau&mdash;a seashell into
+      which I fancy the sirens creep to warm themselves during the winter
+      months. So it is never without its singer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir William
+      Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and where his tomb now
+      is, in his orchard across the road, a few hundred yards from the &ldquo;goodly
+      mansion&rdquo; he built. The knight&rsquo;s tomb and the old Pepperell House, which
+      has been somewhat curtailed of it fair proportions, are the objects of
+      frequent pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the river
+      with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of Kittery and
+      Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a picture worth climbing four
+      or five flights of stairs to gaze upon. Glancing down on the town nestled
+      in the foliage, it seems like a town dropped by chance in the midst of a
+      forest. Among the prominent objects which lift themselves above the tree
+      tops are the belfries of the various churches, the white façade of the
+      custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the Rockingham, the
+      principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find in Portsmouth one
+      of the most completely appointed hotels in the United States. The
+      antiquarian may lament the demolition of the old Bell Tavern, and think
+      regretfully of the good cheer once furnished the wayfarer by Master
+      Stavers at the sign of the Earl of Halifax, and by Master Stoodley at his
+      inn on Daniel Street; but the ordinary traveler will thank his stars, and
+      confess that his lines have fallen in pleasant places, when he finds
+      himself among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum&mdash;we are supposed to
+      be on terra firma again&mdash;stands the Old North Church, a substantial
+      wooden building, handsomely set on what is called The Parade, a large open
+      space formed by the junction of Congress, Market, Daniel, and Pleasant
+      streets. Here in days innocent of water-works stood the town pump, which
+      on more than one occasion served as whipping-post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number than their
+      architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church they are constructed
+      of wood or plain brick in the simplest style. St. John&rsquo;s Church is the
+      only one likely to attract the eye of a stranger. It is finely situated on
+      the crest of Church Hill, overlooking the ever-beautiful river. The
+      present edifice was built in 1808 on the site of what was known as Queen&rsquo;s
+      Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by fire December 24, 1806. The
+      chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline, who furnished the books for
+      the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two solid mahogany chairs, which are
+      still in use in St. John&rsquo;s. Within the chancel rail is a curious font of
+      porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton Mason at the capture of Senegal
+      from the French in 1758, and presented to the Episcopal Society on 1761.
+      The peculiarly sweet-toned bell which calls the parishioners of St. John&rsquo;s
+      together every Sabbath is, I believe, the same that formerly hung in the
+      belfry of the old Queen&rsquo;s Chapel. If so, the bell has a history of its
+      own. It was brought from Louisburg at the time of the reduction of that
+      place in 1745, and given to the church by the officers of the New
+      Hampshire troops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is
+      among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its
+      architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice.
+      The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what
+      strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and these
+      closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the
+      wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass
+      was used. If the building could have been composed entirely of glass it
+      would have been done by the thrifty parishioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Portsmouth is rich in graveyards&mdash;they seem to be a New England
+      specialty&mdash;ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one
+      attached to St. John&rsquo;s Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has not
+      been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point of
+      Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up and set
+      on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly refuses,
+      and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and is allowed
+      to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a row of other
+      exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed, and here and there
+      is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale roses, as becomes a
+      rosebush in a churchyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
+      respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and
+      loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior
+      to the Revolution&mdash;stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and
+      secretaries of the Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered under
+      the motherly wing of the Church of England. It is almost impossible to
+      walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow haughty in spirit
+      after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less than one of His
+      Majesty&rsquo;s colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here are the tombs of the
+      Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the Sheafes, the Marshes, the
+      Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the quality. All around you
+      underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop,
+      and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in
+      the very best society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth. An hour&rsquo;s walk
+      from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot, already mentioned,
+      where the first house was built and the first grave made, at Odiorne&rsquo;s
+      Point. The exact site of the Manor is not known, but it is supposed to be
+      a few rods north of an old well of still-flowing water, at which the
+      Tomsons and the Hiltons and their comrades slaked their thirst more than
+      two hundred and sixty years ago. Oriorne&rsquo;s Point is owned by Mr. Eben L.
+      Odiorne, a lineal descendant of the worthy who held the property in 1657.
+      Not far from the old spring is the resting-place of the earliest pioneers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire,&rdquo; writes Mr.
+      Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years the editor
+      of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two volumes of local sketches
+      to which the writer of these pages here acknowledges his indebtedness.)
+      &ldquo;occupies a space of perhaps one hundred feet by ninety, and is well
+      walled in. The western side is now used as a burial-place for the family,
+      but two thirds of it is filled with perhaps forty graves, indicated by
+      rough head and foot stones. Who there rest no one now living knows. But
+      the same care is taken of their quiet beds as if they were of the
+      proprietor&rsquo;s own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about eighty emigrants
+      many of whom died in a few years, and here they were probably buried. Here
+      too, doubtless, rest the remains of several of those whose names stand
+      conspicuous in our early state records.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      WHEN Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by
+      the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in
+      the struggle for independence. &ldquo;There are some good houses,&rdquo; he writes, in
+      a diary kept that year during a tour through Connecticut, Massachusetts,
+      and New Hampshire, &ldquo;among which Colonel Langdon&rsquo;s may be esteemed the
+      first; but in general they are indifferent, and almost entirely of wood.
+      On wondering at this, as the country is full of stone and good clay for
+      bricks, I was told that on account of the fogs and damp they deemed them
+      wholesomer, and for that reason preferred wood buildings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The house of Colonel Langdon, on Pleasant Street, is an excellent sample
+      of the solid and dignified abodes which our great-grandsires had the sense
+      to build. The art of their construction seems to have been a lost art
+      these fifty years. Here Governor John Langdon resided from 1782 until the
+      time of his death in 1819&mdash;a period during which many an illustrious
+      man passed between those two white pillars that support the little balcony
+      over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and his brothers, the
+      Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the Marquis de Chastellus, a
+      major-general in the French army, serving under the Count de Rochambeau,
+      whom he accompanied from France to the States in 1780. The journal of the
+      marquis contains this reference to his host: &ldquo;After dinner we went to
+      drink tea with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and of noble carriage;
+      he has been a member of Congress, and is now one of the first people of
+      the country; his house is elegant and well furnished, and the apartments
+      admirably well wainscoted&rdquo; (this reads like Mr. Samuel Pepys); &ldquo;and he has
+      a good manuscript chart of the harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his
+      wife, is young, fair, and tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with
+      her than her husband, in whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he
+      had displayed great courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes&rsquo;s
+      expedition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons of the
+      Due d&rsquo;Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion. Years afterward,
+      when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France, he inquired of a
+      Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the mansion of ce brave
+      Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under the
+      shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an imposing appearance
+      as you approach it over the tessellated marble walk. A hundred or two feet
+      on either side of the gate, and abutting on the street, is a small square
+      building of brick, one story in height&mdash;probably the porter&rsquo;s lodge
+      and tool-house of former days. There is a large fruit garden attached to
+      the house, which is in excellent condition, taking life comfortably, and
+      having the complacent air of a well-preserved beau of the ancien regime.
+      The Langdon mansion was owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr.
+      Burroughs, for a period of forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St.
+      John&rsquo;s Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to which we
+      shall come by and by. Though President Washington found Portsmouth but
+      moderately attractive from an architectural point of view, the visitor of
+      to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste, will find himself embarrassed by
+      the number of localities and buildings that appeal to his interest. Many
+      of these buildings were new and undoubtedly commonplace enough at the date
+      of Washington&rsquo;s visit; time and association have given them a quaintness
+      and a significance which now make their architecture a question of
+      secondary importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One might spend a fortnight in Portsmouth exploring the nooks and corners
+      over which history has thrown a charm, and by no means exhaust the list. I
+      cannot do more than attempt to describe&mdash;and that very briefly&mdash;a
+      few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant Street there are
+      several which we must leave unnoted, with their spacious halls and carven
+      staircases, their antiquated furniture and old silver tankards and choice
+      Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist&rsquo;s best manner are to be found
+      here. To live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by
+      Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor in the old
+      Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you cannot be said to flourish.
+      To make this statement smooth, I will remark that every one in Portsmouth
+      has a Copley&mdash;or would have if a fair division were made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such excellent
+      repair, and have so smart an appearance with their bright green blinds and
+      freshly painted woodwork, that you are likely to pass many an old landmark
+      without suspecting it. Whenever you see a house with a gambrel roof, you
+      may be almost positive that the house is at least a hundred years old, for
+      the gambrel roof went out of fashion after the Revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick
+      building in Portsmouth&mdash;the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by
+      Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a
+      wealthy merchant, and a member of the King&rsquo;s Council. He was the chief
+      projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America.
+      Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children
+      of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary,
+      whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous Copley,
+      still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not known by the name of
+      Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon. Jonathan Warner,
+      a member of the King&rsquo;s Council until the revolt of the colonies. &ldquo;We well
+      recollect Mr. Warner,&rdquo; says Mr. Brewster, writing in 1858, &ldquo;as one of the
+      last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early childhood he is still
+      before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic crown officers. That
+      broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those small-clothes and silk
+      stockings, those silver buckles, and that cane&mdash;we see them still,
+      although the life that filled and moved them ceased half a century ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and luthern
+      windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the architecture of the
+      period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in New England. The
+      eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from Holland, as were also many
+      of the materials used in the building&mdash;the hearth-stones, tiles, etc.
+      Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the brick-work
+      rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The interior is rich in
+      paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves, the deep-set windows,
+      and along the cornices. The halls are wide and long, after a by-gone
+      fashion, with handsome staircases, set at an easy angle, and not standing
+      nearly upright, like those ladders by which one reaches the upper chambers
+      of a modern house. The principal rooms are paneled to the ceiling, and
+      have large open chimney-places, adorned with the quaintest of Dutch files.
+      In one of the parlors of the Warner House there is a choice store of
+      family relics&mdash;china, silver-plate, costumes, old clocks, and the
+      like. There are some interesting paintings, too&mdash;not by Copley this
+      time. On a broad space each side of the hall windows, at the head of the
+      staircase, are pictures of two Indians, life size. They are probably
+      portraits of some of the numerous chiefs with whom Captain Macphaedris had
+      dealings, for the captain was engaged in the fur as well as in the iron
+      business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to Macpheadris by his red
+      friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings on
+      the walls of this lower hall were brought to light. In repairing the front
+      entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or five
+      layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had peeled off
+      cleanly, a horse&rsquo;s hoof was observed by a little girl of the family. The
+      workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the legs, then the
+      body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished
+      paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size representation of Governor
+      Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to his assistance,
+      and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily stripped, laying bare
+      four or five hundred square feet covered with sketches in color,
+      landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes, and modern
+      figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel. Until then no
+      person in the land of the living had had any knowledge of those hidden
+      pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the house intimately
+      ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe her spectacles
+      (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to face with the
+      frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply Ham was the
+      leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that
+      these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand. Even
+      the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an
+      antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day was
+      put up under Benjamin Franklin&rsquo;s own supervision in 1762&mdash;such at all
+      events is the credited tradition&mdash;and is supposed to be the first rod
+      put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod &ldquo;personally conducted&rdquo; by
+      Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
+      susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim on
+      the good-will of the visitor&mdash;it is not positively known that George
+      Washington ever slept there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old yellow
+      barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and Atkinson streets.
+      Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of
+      corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down on
+      the most desirable spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept not
+      only one night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was a
+      celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence, and
+      Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth in
+      1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady&mdash;not one of the
+      preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties
+      unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning to
+      tell on her&mdash;who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in
+      her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of her
+      conversation during the last ten years of her life, which she passed in
+      the Stavers House, bedridden; and I think those ten years were in a manner
+      rendered short and pleasant to the old gentlewoman by the memory of a
+      compliment to her complexion which Washington probably never paid to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old hotel&mdash;now a very unsavory tenement-house&mdash;was built by
+      John Tavers, innkeeper, in 1770, who planted in front of the door a tall
+      post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. Stavers had
+      previously kept an inn of the same name on Queen, now State Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a square three-story building, shabby and dejected, giving no hint
+      of the really important historical associations that cluster about it. At
+      the time of its erection it was no doubt considered a rather grand
+      structure, for buildings of three stories were rare in Portsmouth. Even in
+      1798, of the six hundred and twenty-six dwelling houses of which the town
+      boasted, eighty-six were of one story, five hundred and twenty-four were
+      of two stories, and only sixteen of three stories. The Stavers inn has the
+      regulation gambrel roof, but is lacking in those wood ornaments which are
+      usually seen over the doors and windows of the more prominent houses of
+      that epoch. It was, however, the hotel of the period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same worn doorstep upon which Mr. O&rsquo;Shaughnessy now stretches himself
+      of a summer afternoon, with a short clay pipe stuck between his lips, and
+      his hat crushed down on his brows, revolving the sad vicissitude of things&mdash;that
+      same doorstep has been pressed by the feet of generals and marquises and
+      grave dignitaries upon whom depended the destiny of the States&mdash;officers
+      in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and high-heeled belles in patch, powder,
+      and paduasoy. At this door the Flying Stage Coach, which crept from
+      Boston, once a week set down its load of passengers&mdash;and
+      distinguished passengers they often were. Most of the chief celebrities of
+      the land, before and after the secession of the colonies, were the guests
+      of Master Stavers, at the sign of the Earl of Halifax.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother country,
+      it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met to
+      discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist, and when the
+      full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early intimation of the
+      coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched with sullen eyes the
+      secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers&rsquo;s tavern, and one morning
+      the patriots quietly began cutting down the post which supported the
+      obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have been belligerent
+      himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent out his black slave
+      with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was armed with an axe,
+      struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow fell upon the head of
+      Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an insane man till the day
+      of his death, forty years afterward. A furious mob at once collected, and
+      made an attack on the tavern, bursting in the doors and shattering every
+      pane of glass in the windows. It was only through the intervention of
+      Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular patriot, that the hotel was saved
+      from destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in the
+      rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend William
+      Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied the hotel
+      with ale. The excitement blew over after a time, and Stavers was induced
+      to return to Portsmouth. He was seized by the Committee of Safety, and
+      lodged in Exeter jail, when his loyalty, which had really never been very
+      high, went down below zero; he took the oath of allegiance, and shortly
+      after his released reopened the hotel. The honest face of William Pitt
+      appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl of Halifax, ignominiously
+      removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the state records is the
+      following letter from poor Noble begging for the enlargement of John
+      Stavers:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777. To the Committee of Safety of the Town of
+      Exeter: GENTLEMEN,&mdash;As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in
+      confinement in gaol upon my account contrary to my desire, for when I was
+      at Mr. Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the Gentleman
+      but by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad Blow but it is so well
+      that I hope to go out in a day or two. So by this gentlemen of the
+      Committee I hope you will release the gentleman upon my account. I am
+      yours to serve. MARK NOBLE, A friend to my country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House prospered.
+      It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the officers of the French
+      fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the Marquis Lafayette, all the way
+      from Providence, to visit them. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, Rutledge,
+      and other signers of the Declaration sojourned here at various times. It
+      was here General Knox&mdash;&ldquo;that stalwart man, two officers in size and
+      three in lungs&rdquo;&mdash;was wont to order his dinner, and in a stentorian
+      voice compliment Master Stavers on the excellence of his larder. One day&mdash;it
+      was at the time of the French Revolution&mdash;Louis Philippe and his two
+      brothers applied at the door of the William Pitt for lodgings; but the
+      tavern was full, and the future king, with his companions, found
+      comfortable quarters under the hospitable roof of Governor Langdon in
+      Pleasant Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous, that have been enacted within
+      this old yellow house on the corner would fill a volume. A vivid picture
+      of the social and public life of the old time might be painted by a
+      skillful hand, using the two Earl of Halifax inns for a background. The
+      painter would find gay and sombre pigments ready mixed for his palette,
+      and a hundred romantic incidents waiting for his canvas. One of these
+      romantic episodes has been turned to very pretty account by Longfellow in
+      the last series of The Tales of a Wayside Inn&mdash;the marriage of
+      Governor Benning Wentworth with Martha Hilton, a sort of second edition of
+      King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare feet and ankles and scant
+      drapery when she was a child, and even after she was well in the bloom of
+      her teens, used to scandalize good Dame Stavers, the innkeeper&rsquo;s wife.
+      Standing one afternoon in the doorway of the Earl of Halifax, (1. The
+      first of the two hotels bearing that title. Mr. Brewster commits a slight
+      anachronism in locating the scene of this incident in Jaffrey Street, now
+      Court. The Stavers House was not built until the year of Governor Benning
+      Wentworth&rsquo;s death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does not fall into the
+      same error.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;One hundred years ago, and something more,
+     In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
+     Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
+     Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows.&rdquo;)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed and
+      lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying a
+      pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, &ldquo;the shifting sunbeam
+      danced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You Pat! you Pat!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Stavers severely; &ldquo;why do you go looking
+      so? You should be ashamed to be seen in the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind how I look,&rdquo; says Miss Martha, with a merry laugh, letting
+      slip a saucy brown shoulder out of her dress; &ldquo;I shall ride in my chariot
+      yet, ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunate prophecy! Martha went to live as servant with Governor Wentworth
+      at his mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea. Seven years passed,
+      and the &ldquo;thin slip of a girl,&rdquo; who promised to be no great beauty, had
+      flowered into the loveliest of women, with a lip like a cherry and a cheek
+      like a tea-rose&mdash;a lady by instinct, one of Nature&rsquo;s own ladies. The
+      governor, a lonely widower, and not too young, fell in love with his fair
+      handmaid. Without stating his purpose to any one, Governor Wentworth
+      invited a number of friends (among others the Rev. Arthur Brown) to dine
+      with him at Little Harbor on his birthday. After the dinner, which was a
+      very elaborate one, was at an end, and the guests were discussing their
+      tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided into the room, and stood blushing in
+      front of the chimney-place. She was exquisitely dressed, as you may
+      conceive, and wore her hair three stories high. The guests stared at each
+      other, and particularly at her, and wondered. Then the governor, rising
+      from his seat,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
+     And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
+     &lsquo;This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
+     My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The rector was dumfounded, knowing the humble footing Martha had held in
+      the house, and could think of nothing cleverer to say than, &ldquo;To whom, your
+      excellency?&rdquo; which was not cleaver at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To this lady,&rdquo; replied the governor, taking Martha Hilton by the hand.
+      The Rev. Arthur Brown hesitated. &ldquo;As the Chief Magistrate of New Hampshire
+      I command you to marry me!&rdquo; cried the choleric old governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was done; and the pretty kitchen-maid became Lady Wentworth, and
+      did ride in her own chariot. She would not have been a woman if she had
+      not taken an early opportunity to drive by Staver&rsquo;s hotel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of the dignity of her new station,
+      and became a grand lady at once. A few days after her marriage, dropping
+      her ring on the floor, she languidly ordered her servant to pick it up.
+      The servant, who appears to have had a fair sense of humor, grew suddenly
+      near-sighted, and was unable to the ring until Lady Wentworth stooped and
+      placed her ladyship&rsquo;s finger upon it. She turned out a faultless wife,
+      however; and Governor Wentworth at his death, which occurred in 1770,
+      signified his approval of her by leaving her his entire estate. She
+      married again without changing name, accepting the hand, and what there
+      was of the heart, of Michael Wentworth, a retired colonel of the British
+      army, who came to this country in 1767. Colonel Wentworth (not connected,
+      I think, with the Portsmouth branch of Wentworths) seems to have been of a
+      convivial turn of mind. He shortly dissipated his wife&rsquo;s fortune in high
+      living, and died abruptly in New York&mdash;it was supposed by his own
+      hand. His last words&mdash;a quite unique contribution to the literature
+      of last words&mdash;were, &ldquo;I have had my cake, and ate it,&rdquo; which showed
+      that the colonel within his own modest limitations was a philosopher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor&mdash;a pleasant walk from
+      Market Square&mdash;is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their
+      hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the old
+      homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door you step
+      into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted courteously,
+      waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the Wentworth
+      mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though it is no
+      longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, in their
+      willingness to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers, show a
+      hospitality which has always characterized the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house is an architectural freak. The main building&mdash;if it is the
+      main building&mdash;is generally two stories in height, with irregular
+      wings forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in
+      brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions that look as if they had been
+      built at different periods, which I believe was not the case. The mansion
+      was completed in 1750. It originally contained fifty-two rooms; a portion
+      of the structure was removed about half a century ago, leaving forty-five
+      apartments. The chambers were connected in the oddest manner, by
+      unexpected steps leading up or down, and capricious little passages that
+      seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the architect. But it is a
+      mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The cellar was arranged
+      for the stabling of a troop of thirty horse in times of danger. The
+      council-chamber, where for many years all questions of vital importance to
+      the State were discussed, is a spacious, high-studded room, finished in
+      the richest style of the last century. It is said that the ornamentation
+      of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel, cost the workman a
+      year&rsquo;s constant labor. At the entrance to the council-chamber are still
+      the racks for the twelve muskets of the governor&rsquo;s guard&mdash;so long ago
+      dismissed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some valuable family portraits adorn the walls here, among which is a fine
+      painting-yes, by our friend Copley&mdash;of the lovely Dorothy Quincy, who
+      married John Hancock, and afterward became Madam Scott. This lady was a
+      niece of Dr. Holme&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dorothy Q.&rdquo; Opening on the council-chamber is a
+      large billiard-room; the billiard-table is gone, but an ancient spinnet,
+      with the prim air of an ancient maiden lady, and of a wheezy voice, is
+      there; and in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet, near which the
+      imaginative nostril may still detect a faint and tantalizing odor of
+      colonial punch. Opening also on the council-chamber are several tiny
+      apartments, empty and silent now, in which many a close rubber has been
+      played by illustrious hands. The stillness and loneliness of the old house
+      seem saddest here. The jeweled fingers are dust, the merry laughs have
+      turned themselves into silent, sorrowful phantoms, stealing from chamber
+      to chamber. It is easy to believe in the traditional ghost that haunts the
+      place&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;A jolly place in times of old,
+     But something ails it now!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only historic house that bears the
+      name of Wentworth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of Washington Street,
+      stands the abode of another colonial worthy, Governor John Wentworth, who
+      held office from 1767 down to the moment when the colonies dropped the
+      British yoke as if it had been the letter H. For the moment the good
+      gentleman&rsquo;s occupation was gone. He was a royalist of the most florid
+      complexion. In 1775, a man named John Fenton, and ex-captain in the
+      British army, who had managed to offend the Sons of Liberty, was given
+      sanctuary in this house by the governor, who refused to deliver the
+      fugitive to the people. The mob planted a small cannon (unloaded) in front
+      of the doorstep and threatened to open fire if Fenton were not
+      forthcoming. He forth-with came. The family vacated the premises via the
+      back-yard, and the mob entered, doing considerable damage. The broken
+      marble chimney-place still remains, mutely protesting against the
+      uncalled-for violence. Shortly after this event the governor made his way
+      to England, where his loyalty was rewarded first with a governorship and
+      then with a pension of L500. He was governor of Nova Scotia from 1792 to
+      1800, and died in Halifax in 1820. This house is one of the handsomest old
+      dwellings in the town, and promises to outlive many of its newest
+      neighbors. The parlor has undergone no change whatever since the populace
+      rushed into it over a century ago. The furniture and adornments occupy
+      their original positions and the plush on the walls has not been replaced
+      by other hangings. In the hall&mdash;deep enough for the traditional duel
+      of baronial romance&mdash;are full-length portraits of the several
+      governors and sundry of their kinsfolk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is yet a third Wentworth house, also decorated with the shade of a
+      colonial governor&mdash;there were three Governors Wentworth&mdash;but we
+      shall pass it by, though out of no lack of respect for that high official
+      personage whose commission was signed by Joseph Addison, Esq., Secretary
+      of State under George I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the
+      crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and
+      customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting
+      here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the
+      withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has
+      managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up
+      periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town
+      clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that we
+      are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and
+      positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the early
+      days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and eventful
+      days. The dense forest which surrounded the clearing was alive with
+      hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock at his
+      bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be awakened by the glare of
+      his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the Womponoags. Year
+      after year he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of flames, as he peered
+      through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither he had flown in hot
+      haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse at Strawberry Bank
+      appears to have been on an extensive scale, with stockades for the shelter
+      of cattle. It held large supplies of stores, and was amply furnished with
+      arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a species of naval ordnance which
+      probably did not belie its name. It also boasted, we are told, of two
+      drums for training-days, and no fewer than fifteen hautboys and
+      soft-voiced recorders&mdash;all which suggests a mediaeval castle, or a
+      grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth. To the younger members of
+      the community glass or crockery ware was an unknown substance; to the
+      elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the pot-of-all-work, and their
+      table utensils were of beaten pewter. The diet was also of the simplest&mdash;pea-porridge
+      and corn-cake, with a mug of ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they
+      could get it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
+      management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to stewards,
+      died before realizing any appreciable return from his enterprise. He
+      spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity. In 1632, three
+      years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a number of neat
+      cattle, &ldquo;of a large breed and yellow colour.&rdquo; The herd thrived, and it is
+      said that some of the stock is still extant on farms in the vicinity of
+      Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of staying quality!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General
+      Court at Boston to grant them a definite township&mdash;for the boundaries
+      were doubtful&mdash;and the right to give it a proper name. &ldquo;Whereas the
+      name of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe
+      called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place,
+      now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most
+      suitable for this place, it being the river&rsquo;s mouth, and good as any in
+      this land, and your petit&rsquo;rs shall humbly pray,&rdquo; etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent French wars,
+      Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of bloody Indian
+      massacres. No portion of the New England colony suffered more. Famine,
+      fire, pestilence, and war, each in turn, and sometimes in conjunction,
+      beleaguered the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe it out. But that
+      was not to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as it
+      had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house and
+      the jail&mdash;two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a town
+      meeting in 1662, it was ordered &ldquo;that a cage be made or some other meanes
+      invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take tobacco on the
+      Lord&rsquo;s day out of the meetinge in the time of publique service.&rdquo; This
+      salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into effect until nine
+      years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to have had as many
+      professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a cage twelve feet
+      square and seven feet high, with a pillory on top; &ldquo;the said Pickering to
+      make a good strong dore and make a substantiale payre of stocks and places
+      the same in said cage.&rdquo; A spot conveniently near the west end on the
+      meeting-house was selected as the site for this ingenious device. It is
+      more than probable that &ldquo;the said Pickering&rdquo; indirectly furnished an
+      occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we find him and one Edward
+      Westwere authorized by the selectmen to &ldquo;keepe houses of publique
+      entertainment.&rdquo; He was a versatile individual, this John Pickering&mdash;soldier,
+      miller, moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and innkeeper. Michelangelo need not
+      blush to be bracketed with him. In the course of a long and variegated
+      career he never failed to act according to his lights, which he always
+      kept well trimmed. That Captain Pickering subsequently became the
+      grandfather, at several removes, of the present writer was no fault of the
+      Captain&rsquo;s, and should not be laid up against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a rather
+      desultory and tentative matter; &ldquo;the young idea&rdquo; seems to have been
+      allowed to &ldquo;shoot&rdquo; at whatever it wanted to; but in that year it was voted
+      &ldquo;that care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skullmaster!] be provided
+      for the towen as the law directs, not visious in conversation.&rdquo; That was
+      perhaps demanding too much; for it was not until &ldquo;May ye 7&rdquo; of the
+      following year that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their
+      finger on this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed &ldquo;to
+      be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching the
+      inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters yously doe
+      throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the sellectt men in behalfe
+      of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by way of rate twenty pounds and yt he
+      shall and may reserve from every father or master that sends theyer
+      children to school this yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers, writers
+      and cypherers 20s., Lattiners 24s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need not plume themselves on their
+      originality. The town clerk who wrote that delicious &ldquo;yously doe&rdquo; settles
+      the question. It is to be hoped that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not only &ldquo;not
+      visious in conversation,&rdquo; but was more conventional in his orthography. He
+      evidently gave satisfaction, and clearly exerted an influence on the town
+      clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a marked improvement in his
+      own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the selectmen &ldquo;to call and settell
+      a gramer scoll according to ye best of yower judgement and for ye advantag
+      [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye youth of ower town to learn them to
+      read from ye primer, to wright and sypher and to learne ym the tongues and
+      good-manners.&rdquo; On this occasion it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury,
+      who engaged &ldquo;dilligently to attend ye school for ye present yeare, and
+      tech all childern yt can read in thaire psallters and upward.&rdquo; From such
+      humble beginnings were evolved some of the best public high schools at
+      present in New England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft delusion, though I believe that
+      no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. Dwellers by
+      the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is
+      something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the
+      imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a
+      perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates them
+      from the unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at midnight, they
+      are haunted by the spectres of the mirage. Their minds quickly take the
+      impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore found a sympathetic
+      atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua&mdash;that
+      slender paw of land which reaches out into the ocean and terminates in a
+      spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the claws of an amorous cat. What
+      happened to the good folk of that picturesque little fishing-hamlet is
+      worth retelling in brief. In order properly to retell it, a contemporary
+      witness shall be called upon to testify in the case of the Stone-Throwing
+      Devils of Newcastle. It is the Rev. Cotton Mather who addresses you&mdash;&ldquo;On
+      June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown by an invisible hand upon the
+      house of George Walton at Portsmouth [Newcastle was then a part of the
+      town]. Whereupon the people going out found the gate wrung off the hinges,
+      and stones flying and falling thick about them, and striking of them
+      seemingly with a great force, but really affecting &lsquo;em no more than if a
+      soft touch were given them. The glass windows were broken by the stones
+      that came not from without, but from within; and other instruments were in
+      a like manner hurled about. Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some
+      were as hot as if they came out of the fire; and marking them they laid
+      them on the table; but in a little while they found some of them again
+      flying about. The spit was carried up the chimney, and coming down with
+      the point forward, stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company
+      removing it, it was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This
+      disturbance continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow
+      whistling would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a
+      horse, but nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on
+      to a farm which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying
+      from the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
+      through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was heard
+      no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the boat. A
+      cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the floor; a
+      piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon. Several
+      cocks of hay, mow&rsquo;d near the house, were taken up and hung upon the trees,
+      and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the house. A man
+      was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and suspected that a
+      woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining some land from here,
+      did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural occurrences. However, at
+      last they came to an end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get thee
+      back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp&rsquo;s Hill, where,
+      unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it uncomfortable for
+      those about thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch&mdash;a
+      tangible witch in this instance&mdash;one Molly Bridget, who cast her
+      malign spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced
+      to reside at the moment. The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr.
+      Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one remedy
+      at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their tales. But
+      when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was in consequence
+      quite impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a gentleman of
+      expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in the yard should
+      be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch and do away with the
+      mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires were no sooner lighted
+      than Molly Bridget rushed from room to room in a state of frenzy. With the
+      dying flames her own vitality subsided, and she was dead before the
+      ash-piles were cool. I say it seriously when I say that these are facts of
+      which there is authentic proof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the woman had recovered, she would have fared badly, even at that late
+      period, had she been in Salem; but the death-penalty has never been
+      hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took place
+      there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an
+      infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who,
+      twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth
+      Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a
+      spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following
+      stanzas, however, give the pith of the story&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;And a voice among them shouted,
+             &ldquo;Pause before the deed is done;
+     We have asked reprieve and pardon
+             For the poor misguided one.&rsquo; 
+
+     &ldquo;But these words of Sheriff Packer
+             Rang above the swelling noise:
+     &lsquo;Must I wait and lose my dinner?
+            Draw away the cart, my boys!&rsquo; 
+
+     &ldquo;Nearer came the sound and louder,
+             Till a steed with panting breath,
+     From its sides the white foam dripping,
+            Halted at the scene of death;
+
+     &ldquo;And a messenger alighted,
+             Crying to the crowd, &lsquo;Make way!
+     This I bear to Sheriff Packer;
+             &lsquo;Tis a pardon for Ruth Blay!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But of course he arrived too late&mdash;the Law led Mercy about twenty
+      minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled again that
+      night before the sheriff&rsquo;s domicile and expressed its indignation in
+      groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was afterwards paraded
+      through the streets.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Be the name of Thomas Packer
+          A reproach forevermore!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Laighton&rsquo;s ballad reminds me of that Portsmouth has been prolific in
+      poets, one of whom, at least, has left a mouthful of perennial rhyme for
+      orators&mdash;Jonathan Sewell with his
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
+     But the whole boundless continent is yours.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I have somewhere seen a volume with the alliterative title of &ldquo;Poets of
+      Portsmouth,&rdquo; in which are embalmed no fewer than sixty immortals!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to drop into prose again, and have done with this iliad of odds and
+      ends. Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of establishing the first
+      recorded pauper workhouse&mdash;though not in connection with her poets,
+      as might naturally be supposed. The building was completed and tenanted in
+      1716. Seven years later, an act was passed in England authorizing the
+      establishment of parish workhouses there. The first and only keeper of the
+      Portsmouth almshouse up to 1750 was a woman&mdash;Rebecca Austin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking of first things, we are told by Mr. Nathaniel Adams, in his
+      &ldquo;Annals of Portsmouth,&rdquo; that on the 20th of April, 1761, Mr. John Stavers
+      began running a stage from that town to Boston. The carriage was a
+      two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate three passengers. The fare
+      was thirteen shillings and sixpence sterling per head. The curricle was
+      presently superseded by a series of fat yellow coaches, one of which&mdash;nearly
+      a century later, and long after that pleasant mode of travel had fallen
+      obsolete&mdash;was the cause of much mental tribulation (1. Some idle
+      reader here and there may possibly recall the burning of the old
+      stage-coach in The Story of a Bad Boy.) to the writer of this chronicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mail and the newspaper are closely associated factors in civilization,
+      so I mention them together, though in this case the newspaper antedated
+      the mail-coach about five years. On October 7, 1756, the first number of
+      &ldquo;The New Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle&rdquo; was issued in
+      Portsmouth from the press of Daniel Fowle, who in the previous July had
+      removed from Boston, where he had undergone a brief but uncongenial
+      imprisonment on suspicion of having printed a pamphlet entitled &ldquo;The
+      Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.,&rdquo; an essay that contained some
+      uncomplimentary reflections on several official personages. The &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo;
+       was the pioneer journal of the province. It was followed at the close of
+      the same year by &ldquo;The Mercury and Weekly Advertiser,&rdquo; published by a
+      former apprentice of Fowle, a certain Thomas Furber, backed by a number of
+      restless Whigs, who considered the &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo; not sufficiently outspoken in
+      the cause of liberty. Mr. Fowle, however, contrived to hold his own until
+      the day of his death. Fowle had for pressman a faithful negro named
+      Primus, a full-blooded African. Whether Primus was a freeman or a slave I
+      am unable to state. He lived to a great age, and was a prominent figure
+      among the people of his own color.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Negro slavery was common in New England at that period. In 1767,
+      Portsmouth numbered in its population a hundred and eighty-eight slaves,
+      male and female. Their bondage, happily, was nearly always of a light
+      sort, if any bondage can be light. They were allowed to have a kind of
+      government of their own; indeed, were encouraged to do so, and no
+      unreasonable restrictions were placed on their social enjoyment. They
+      annually elected a king and counselors, and celebrated the event with a
+      procession. The aristocratic feeling was highly developed in them. The
+      rank of the master was the slave&rsquo;s rank. There was a great deal of ebony
+      standing around on its dignity in those days. For example, Governor
+      Langdon&rsquo;s manservant, Cyrus Bruce, was a person who insisted on his
+      distinction, and it was recognized. His massive gold chain and seals, his
+      cherry-colored small-clothes and silk stockings, his ruffles and silver
+      shoe-buckles, were a tradition long after Cyrus himself was pulverized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In cases of minor misdemeanor among them, the negros themselves were
+      permitted to be judge and jury. Their administration of justice was often
+      characteristically naive. Mr. Brewster gives an amusing sketch of one of
+      their sessions. King Nero is on the bench, and one Cato&mdash;we are
+      nothing if not classical&mdash;is the prosecuting attorney. The name of
+      the prisoner and the nature of his offense are not disclosed to posterity.
+      In the midst of the proceedings the hour of noon is clanged from the
+      neighboring belfry of the Old North Church. &ldquo;The evidence was not gone
+      through with, but the servants could stay no longer from their home
+      duties. They all wanted to see the whipping, but could not conveniently be
+      present again after dinner. Cato ventured to address the King: Please you
+      Honor, best let the fellow have his whipping now, and finish the trial
+      after dinner. The request seemed to be the general wish of the company: so
+      Nero ordered ten lashes, for justice so far as the trial went, and ten
+      more at the close of the trial, should he be found guilty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless Abraham
+      Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced any emancipation
+      edict. During the Revolutionary War the slaves were generally emancipated
+      by their masters. That many of the negros, who had grown gray in service,
+      refused their freedom, and elected to spend the rest of their lives as
+      pensioners in the families of their late owners, is a circumstance that
+      illustrates the kindly ties which held between slave and master in the old
+      colonial days in New England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The institution was accidental and superficial, and never had any real
+      root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found in the
+      Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it would have continued
+      awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his religion into the business
+      affairs of life; he was not even able to keep it out of his bills of
+      lading. I cannot close this rambling chapter more appropriately and
+      solemnly than by quoting from one of those same pious bills of landing. It
+      is dated June, 1726, and reads: &ldquo;Shipped by the grace of God in good order
+      and well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct. and risque, in
+      and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is master under God
+      for this present voyage George King, now riding at anchor in the river
+      Piscataqua and by God&rsquo;s grace bound to Barbadoes.&rdquo; Here follows a
+      catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo, rounded off with: &ldquo;And so God send
+      the good Briga to her desired port in safety. Amen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
+      characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have
+      been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity. In
+      another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been favorable
+      to the development of individual singularity during the latter half of the
+      present century. It is easier to do that than fully to account for the
+      numerous queer human types which have existed from time to time previous
+      to that period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster&rsquo;s entertaining
+      collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and
+      variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene.
+      They are, in the author&rsquo;s intention, secondary figures in the background
+      of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one&rsquo;s
+      memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one&rsquo;s self thinking quite
+      as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of
+      General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism and
+      respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
+      unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller the
+      things which are that old hut-dweller&rsquo;s, we must concede him his
+      picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is
+      picturesque&mdash;now that he is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to glance at
+      a few old profiles of persons who, however substantial they once were, are
+      now leading a life of mere outlines. I would like to give them a less
+      faded expression, but the past is very chary of yielding up anything more
+      than its shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first who presents himself is the ruminative hermit already mentioned&mdash;a
+      species of uninspired Thoreau. His name was Benjamin Lear. So far as his
+      craziness went, he might have been a lineal descendant of that ancient
+      king of Britain who figures on Shakespeare&rsquo;s page. Family dissensions made
+      a recluse of King Lear; but in the case of Benjamin there were no
+      mitigating circumstances. He had no family to trouble him, and his realm
+      remained undivided. He owned an excellent farm on the south side of
+      Sagamore Creek, a little to the west of the bridge, and might have lived
+      at ease, if personal comfort had not been distasteful to him. Personal
+      comfort entered into no part of Lear&rsquo;s. To be alone filled the little
+      pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced himself in a wretched shanty, and
+      barred the door, figuratively, against all the world. Wealth&mdash;what
+      would have been wealth to him&mdash;lay within his reach, but he thrust it
+      aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no
+      compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from
+      custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants
+      are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been
+      wholly inoffensive&mdash;at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and
+      subsisted chiefly on milk and potatoes, the product of his realm. He
+      needed nothing but an island to be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he
+      flitted like a frost-bitten apparition through the main street of
+      Portsmouth, which he always designated as &ldquo;the Bank,&rdquo; a name that had
+      become obsolete fifty or a hundred years before. Thus, for nearly a
+      quarter of a century, Benjamin Lear stood aloof from human intercourse. In
+      his old age some of the neighbors offered him shelter during the
+      tempestuous winter months; but he would have none of it&mdash;he defied
+      wind and weather. There he lay in his dilapidated hovel in his last
+      illness, refusing to allow any one to remain with him overnight&mdash;and
+      the mercury four degrees below zero. Lear was born in 1720, and vegetated
+      eighty-two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I take it that Timothy Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse, would like to
+      have more, was a person better worth knowing. His name reads like the
+      title of some old-fashioned novel&mdash;&ldquo;Timothy Winn, or the Memoirs of a
+      Bashful Gentleman.&rdquo; He came to Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of the
+      last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry Street
+      what was called &ldquo;a piece goods store.&rdquo; He was the third Timothy in his
+      monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he inscribed on
+      the sign over his shop door, &ldquo;Timothy Winn, 3d,&rdquo; and was ever after called
+      &ldquo;Three-Penny Winn.&rdquo; That he enjoyed the pleasantry, and clung to his sign,
+      goes to show that he was a person who would ripen on further acquaintance,
+      were further acquaintance now practicable. His next-door neighbor, Mr.
+      Leonard Serat, who kept a modest tailoring establishment, also tantalizes
+      us a little with a dim intimation of originality. He plainly was without
+      literary prejudices, for on one face of his swinging sign was painted the
+      word Taylor, and on the other Tailor. This may have been a delicate
+      concession to that part of the community&mdash;the greater part, probably&mdash;which
+      would have spelled it with a y.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The building in which Messrs. Winn and Serat had their shops was the
+      property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of Demerara, the story
+      of whose unconventional courtship of Miss Catherine Moffatt is pretty
+      enough to bear retelling, and entitles him to a place in our limited
+      collection of etchings. M. Rousselet had doubtless already mad excursions
+      into the pays de tendre, and given Miss Catherine previous notice of the
+      state of his heart, but it was not until one day during the hour of
+      service at the Episcopal church that he brought matters to a crisis by
+      handing to Miss Moffatt a small Bible, on the fly-leaf of which he had
+      penciled the fifth verse of the Second Epistle of John&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I
+     wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+     which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This was not to be resisted, at lease not by Miss Catherine, who demurely
+      handed the volume back to him with a page turned down at the sixteenth
+      verse in the first chapter of Ruth&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
+     will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+     God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
+     buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but
+     death part thee and me.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Aside from this quaint touch of romance, what attaches me to the happy
+      pair&mdash;for the marriage was a fortunate one&mdash;is the fact that the
+      Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion, which stood
+      directly opposite my grandfather&rsquo;s house on Court Street and was torn down
+      in my childhood, to my great consternation. The building had been
+      unoccupied for a quarter of a century, and was fast falling into decay
+      with all its rich wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not full
+      of ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
+      ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather&rsquo;s house
+      just across the way? Where else could they bestow themselves so
+      conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in process of destruction, I
+      used to peep round the corner of our barn at the workmen, and watch the
+      indignant phantoms go soaring upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary Atkinson
+      (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to the lot of the Rev.
+      William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church between 1733 and 1747. From
+      the worldly standpoint, it was a fine match for the Newcastle clergyman&mdash;beauty,
+      of the eagle-beaked kind; wealth, her share of the family plate; high
+      birth, a sister to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson. But if the exemplary man
+      had cast his eyes lower, peradventure he had found more happiness, though
+      ill-bred persons without family plate are not necessarily amiable. Like
+      Socrates, this long-suffering divine had always with him an object on
+      which to cultivate heavenly patience, and patience, says the Eastern
+      proverb, is the key to content. The spirit of Xantippe seems to have taken
+      possession of Mrs. Shurtleff immediately after her marriage. The freakish
+      disrespect with which she used her meek consort was a heavy cross to bear
+      at a period in New England when clerical dignity was at its highest
+      sensitive point. Her devices for torturing the poor gentleman were
+      inexhaustible. Now she lets his Sabbath ruffs go unstarched; now she
+      scandalizes him by some unseemly and frivolous color in her attire; now
+      she leaves him to cook his own dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she
+      locks him in his study, whither he has retired for a moment or two of
+      prayer, previous to setting forth to perform the morning service. The
+      congregation has assembled; the sexton has tolled the bell twice as long
+      as is custom, and is beginning a third carillon, full of wonder that his
+      reverence does not appear; and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family
+      pew with a face as complacent as that of the cat that has eaten the
+      canary. Presently the deacons appeal to her for information touching the
+      good doctor. Mistress Shurtleff sweetly tells them that the good doctor
+      was in his study when she left home. There he is found, indeed, and
+      released from durance, begging the deacons to keep his mortification
+      secret, to &ldquo;give it an understanding, but no tongue.&rdquo; Such was the
+      discipline undergone by the worthy Dr. Shurtleff on his earthly
+      pilgrimage. A portrait of this patient man&mdash;now a saint somewhere&mdash;hangs
+      in the rooms of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society in
+      Boston. There he can be seen in surplice and bands, with his lamblike,
+      apostolic face looking down upon the heavy antiquarian labors of his busy
+      descendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not a man is to be classed as eccentric who vanishes without
+      rhyme or reason on his wedding-night is a query left to the reader&rsquo;s
+      decision. We seem to have struck a matrimonial vein, and must work it out.
+      In 1768, Mr. James McDonough was one of the wealthiest men in Portsmouth,
+      and the fortunate suitor for the hand of a daughter of Jacob Sheafe, a
+      town magnate. The home of the bride was decked and lighted for the
+      nuptials, the banquet-table was spread, and the guests were gathered. The
+      minister in his robe stood by the carven mantelpiece, book in hand, and
+      waited. Then followed an awkward interval&mdash;there was a hitch
+      somewhere. A strange silence fell upon the laughing groups; the air grew
+      tense with expectation; in the pantry, Amos Boggs, the butler, in his
+      agitation split a bottle of port over his new cinnamon-colored
+      small-clothes. Then a whisper&mdash;a whisper suppressed these twenty
+      minutes&mdash;ran through the apartments,&mdash;&ldquo;The bridegroom has not
+      come!&rdquo;. He never came. The mystery of that night remains a mystery after
+      the lapse of a century and a quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had become of James McDonough? The assassination of so notable a
+      person in a community where every strange face was challenged, where every
+      man&rsquo;s antecedents were known, could not have been accomplished without
+      leaving some slight traces. Not a shadow of foul play was discovered. That
+      McDonough had been murdered or had committed suicide were theories
+      accepted at first by a few, and then by no one. On the other hand, he was
+      in love with his fiancee, he had wealth, power, position&mdash;why had he
+      fled? He was seen a moment on the public street, and then never seen
+      again. It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile the bewilderment of the
+      bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough had been waylaid and killed,
+      she could mourn for him. If he had deserted her, she could wrap herself in
+      her pride. But neither course lay open to her, then or afterward. In one
+      of the Twice Told Tales Hawthorne deals with a man named Wakefield, who
+      disappears with like suddenness, and lives unrecognized for twenty years
+      in a street not far from his abandoned hearthside. Such expunging of one&rsquo;s
+      self was not possible in Portsmouth; but I never think of McDonough
+      without recalling Wakefield. I have an inexplicable conviction that for
+      many a year James McDonough, in some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the
+      effect of his own startling disappearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a personage
+      bearing the ponderous title of King&rsquo;s Attorney, and carrying much gold
+      lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr. Wyseman Clagett, of Bristol,
+      England, where his father dwelt on the manor of Broad Oaks, in a mansion
+      with twelve chimneys, and kept a coach and eight or ten servants. Up to
+      the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman Clagett had
+      evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His wealth consisted
+      of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his lapels, and the
+      tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with these he
+      contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the young beauties
+      of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had plighted troth
+      with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to return home with a
+      disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of violent temper and ingenious
+      vindictiveness, and proved more than a sufficient punishment for Lettice&rsquo;s
+      infidelity. The trifling fact that Warner was dead&mdash;he died shortly
+      after his return&mdash;did not interfere with the course of Mr. Clagett&rsquo;s
+      jealousy; he was haunted by the suspicion that Lettice regretted her first
+      love, having left nothing undone to make her do so. &ldquo;This is to pay
+      Warner&rsquo;s debts,&rdquo; remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched off the table-cloth
+      and wrecked the tea-things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor. The noun Clagett
+      speedily turned itself into a verb; &ldquo;to Clagett&rdquo; meant &ldquo;to prosecute;&rdquo;
+       they were convertible terms. In spite of his industrious severity, and his
+      royal emoluments, if such existed, the exchequer of the King&rsquo;s Attorney
+      showed a perpetual deficit. The stratagems to which he resorted from time
+      to time in order to raise unimportant sums reminded one of certain scenes
+      in Moliere&rsquo;s comedies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They were made
+      for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and this was
+      their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his servants to
+      pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some sailor drinking
+      at an inn: the constable arrested the sailor or the countryman, as the
+      case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr. Clagett; Mr. Clagett read
+      the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him five dollars and costs. The
+      plunder was then divided between the conspirators&mdash;two hearts that
+      beat as one&mdash;Clagett, of course, getting the lion&rsquo;s share. Justice
+      was never administered in a simpler manner in any country. This eminent
+      legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the wick laid away in the little
+      churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire. It is a satisfaction, even after
+      such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice survived the King&rsquo;s Attorney
+      sufficiently long to be very happy with somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was
+      scarcely eighteen when she married Wyseman Clagett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been a
+      familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of him
+      as &ldquo;the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton,&rdquo; as if one should say, &ldquo;the
+      well-known statesman, Daniel Webster.&rdquo; It is curious to observe how any
+      sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where
+      everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does
+      not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only after
+      his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That happened
+      early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the hens
+      flying out of the loft window in his father&rsquo;s stable, which stood in the
+      rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that though
+      he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in no respect
+      inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the window in the
+      loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England Icarus alighted
+      head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was henceforth looked upon
+      as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd moments his cloudiness was
+      illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as had not been detected in him
+      previous to his mischance. As Polonius said of Hamlet&mdash;another
+      unstrung mortal&mdash;Tilton&rsquo;s replies had &ldquo;a happiness that often madness
+      hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered
+      of.&rdquo; One morning, he appeared at the flour-mill with a sack of corn to be
+      ground for the almshouse, and was asked what he knew. &ldquo;Some things I
+      know,&rdquo; replied poor Tilton, &ldquo;and some things I don&rsquo;t know. I know the
+      miller&rsquo;s hogs grow fat, but I don&rsquo;t know whose corn they fat on.&rdquo; To
+      borrow another word from Polonius, though this be madness, yet there was
+      method in it. Tilton finally brought up in the almshouse, where he was
+      allowed the liberty of roaming at will through the town. He loved the
+      water-side as if he had had all his senses. Often he was seen to stand for
+      hours with a sunny, torpid smile on his lips, gazing out upon the river
+      where its azure ruffles itself into silver against the islands. He always
+      wore stuck in his hat a few hen&rsquo;s feathers, perhaps with some vague idea
+      of still associating himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come
+      into that category.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another complexion,
+      a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and one of His Majesty&rsquo;s
+      Council in 1766&mdash;a man with the blood of the lion and the unicorn in
+      every vein. He remained to the bitter end, and beyond, a devout royalist,
+      prizing his shoe-buckles, not because they were of chased silver, but
+      because they bore the tower mark and crown stamp. He stoutly objected to
+      oral prayer, on the ground that it gave rogues and hypocrites an
+      opportunity to impose on honest folk. He was punctilious in his attendance
+      at church, and unfailing in his responses, though not of a particularly
+      devotional temperament. On one occasion, at least, his sincerity is not to
+      be questioned. He had been deeply irritated by some encroachments on the
+      boundaries of certain estates, and had gone to church that forenoon with
+      his mind full of the matter. When the minister in the course of reading
+      the service came to the apostrophe, &ldquo;Cursed be he who removeth his
+      neighbor&rsquo;s landmark,&rdquo; Mr. Jeffrey&rsquo;s feelings were too many for him, and he
+      cried out &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; in a tone of voice that brought smiles to the adjoining
+      pews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jaffrey&rsquo;s last will and testament was a whimsical document, in spite
+      of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper. It had originally been
+      Mr. Jaffrey&rsquo;s plan to leave his possessions to his beloved friend, Colonel
+      Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel by some maladroitness managed to turn
+      the current of Pactolus in another direction. The vast property was
+      bequeathed to George Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator&rsquo;s grandnephew, on
+      condition that the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name of
+      Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no profession
+      excepting that of gentleman. There is an immense amount of Portsmouth as
+      well as George Jaffrey in that final clause. George the fourth handsomely
+      complied with the requirements, and dying at the age of sixty-six, without
+      issue or assets, was the last of that particular line of Georges. I say
+      that he handsomely complied with the requirements of the will; but my
+      statement appears to be subject to qualification, for on the day of his
+      obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic contemporary: &ldquo;Well, yes,
+      Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but not eminent in his
+      profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This modest exhibition of profiles, in which I have attempted to preserve
+      no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of Dr. Joseph Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Boston in the colonial days had her Mather Byles, Portsmouth had her
+      Dr. Joseph Moses. In their quality as humorists, the outlines of both
+      these gentlemen have become rather broken and indistinct. &ldquo;A jest&rsquo;s
+      prosperity lies in the ear that hears it.&rdquo; Decanted wit inevitably loses
+      its bouquet. A clever repartee belongs to the precious moment in which it
+      is broached, and is of a vintage that does not usually bear
+      transportation. Dr. Moses&mdash;he received his diploma not from the
+      College of Physicians, but from the circumstance of his having once
+      drugged his private demijohn of rum, and so nailed an inquisitive negro
+      named Sambo&mdash;Dr. Moses, as he was always called, had been handed down
+      to us by tradition as a fellow of infinite jest and of most excellent
+      fancy; but I must confess that I find his high spirits very much
+      evaporated. His humor expended itself, for the greater part, in practical
+      pleasantries&mdash;like that practiced on the minion Sambo&mdash;but these
+      diversions, however facetious to the parties concerned, lack magnetism for
+      outsiders. I discover nothing about him so amusing as the fact that he
+      lived in a tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded nor
+      shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the discarded shingles of the
+      Old South Church when the roof of that edifice was repaired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Moses, like many persons of his time and class, was a man of protean
+      employment&mdash;joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had much pithy
+      and fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He certainly impressed
+      the Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of uncommon parts, for the
+      Honorable Secretary of the Province, like a second Haroun Al Raschid,
+      often summoned the barber to entertain him with his company. One evening&mdash;and
+      this is the only reproducible instance of the doctor&rsquo;s readiness&mdash;Mr.
+      Atkinson regaled his guest with a diminutive glass of choice Madeira. The
+      doctor regarded it against the light with the half-closed eye of the
+      connoisseur, and after sipping the molten topaz with satisfaction,
+      inquired how old it was. &ldquo;Of the vintage of about sixty years ago,&rdquo; was
+      the answer. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the doctor reflectively, &ldquo;I never in my life saw
+      so small a thing of such an age.&rdquo; There are other mots of his on record,
+      but their faces are suspiciously familiar. In fact, all the witty things
+      were said aeons ago. If one nowadays perpetrates an original joke, one
+      immediately afterward finds it in the Sanskirt. I am afraid that Dr.
+      Joseph Moses has no very solid claims on us. I have given him place here
+      because he has long had the reputation of a wit, which is almost as good
+      as to be one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston to
+      Portsmouth&mdash;it took place somewhat more than forty years ago&mdash;was
+      attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in the crowded
+      station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was unobserved at the time. The
+      catastrophe was followed, though not immediately, by death, and that also,
+      curiously enough, was unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial train,
+      freighted with so many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran over and
+      killed&mdash;LOCAL CHARACTER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little community, and
+      had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to time it had calmly
+      produced an individual built on plans and specifications of its own,
+      without regard to the prejudices and conventionalities of outlying
+      districts. This individual was purely indigenous. He was born in the town,
+      he lived to a good old age in the town, and never went out of the place,
+      until he was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only fifty-six
+      miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity&mdash;only fifty-six miles
+      by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles distant in
+      effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged to take a
+      great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story mud-turtle&mdash;if
+      zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate so daring an
+      invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the morning, you
+      dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city with the
+      golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always the coach
+      had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had not gone
+      lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in Portsmouth, this journey
+      was an event which occurred only twice or thrice during life. To the
+      typical individual with whom I am for the moment dealing, it never
+      occurred at all. The town was his entire world; he was a parochial as a
+      Parisian; Market Street was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North End
+      his Bois de Boulogne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there were varieties of local characters without his
+      limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India trade;
+      elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal peculiarities; one or
+      two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of coat, haunting the Athenaeum
+      reading-room; ex-sea captains, with rings on their fingers, like Simon
+      Danz&rsquo;s visitors in Longfellow&rsquo;s poem&mdash;men who had played busy parts
+      in the bustling world, and had drifted back to Old Strawberry Bank in the
+      tranquil sunset of their careers. I may say, in passing, that these
+      ancient mariners, after battling with terrific hurricanes and typhoons on
+      every known sea, not infrequently drowned themselves in pleasant weather
+      in small sail-boats on the Piscataqua River. Old sea-dogs who had
+      commanded ships of four or five hundred tons had naturally slight respect
+      for the potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there was to be
+      no further increase of these odd sticks&mdash;if I may call them so, in no
+      irreverent mood&mdash;after those innocent-looking parallel bars
+      indissolubly linked Portsmouth with the capital of the Commonwealth of
+      Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be changed, the old angles to be
+      pared off, new horizons to be regarded. The individual, as an eccentric
+      individual, was to undergo great modifications. If he were not to become
+      extinct&mdash;a thing little likely&mdash;he was at least to lose his
+      prominence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as I said, local character, in the sense in which the term is
+      here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering death, and passed
+      away so peacefully and silently as not to attract general, or perhaps any,
+      notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my boyhood. The
+      last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had come in, long
+      before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half obsolete customs
+      and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was not too late, for
+      example, to catch the last town crier&mdash;one Nicholas Newman, whom I
+      used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort of affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicholas Newman&mdash;Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being Edward&mdash;was
+      a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat bow-legged, and
+      with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have never since seen
+      a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple. The only thing
+      about him that matched the instrument of his office was his voice. His
+      &ldquo;Hear All!&rdquo; still deafens memory&rsquo;s ear. I remember that he had a queer way
+      of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him had originally intended
+      a crab, but thought better of it, and made a town-crier. Of the crustacean
+      intention only a moist thumb remained, which served Mr. Newman in good
+      stead in the delivery of the Boston evening papers, for he was
+      incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties were to cry auctions,
+      funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals, public meetings, and
+      articles lost or found. He was especially strong in announcing the loss of
+      reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden ladies. The unction with
+      which he detailed the several contents, when fully confided to him, would
+      have seemed satirical in another person, but on his part was pure
+      conscientiousness. He would not let so much as a thimble, or a piece of
+      wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity in the way of tonsorial
+      device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman spoken of as &ldquo;that horrid
+      man.&rdquo; He was a picturesque figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with
+      those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple of
+      the Old North every night at nine o&rsquo;clock&mdash;the vocal remains of the
+      colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his losses
+      elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can more
+      satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different
+      personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine
+      o&rsquo;clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a time
+      at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a gay
+      little shop (he called it &ldquo;an Emporium&rdquo;), as barber shops generally are,
+      decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers of
+      tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes&mdash;whose antecedents to us boys were
+      wrapped in thrilling mystery, we imagined him to have been a prince in his
+      native land&mdash;was a colored man, not too dark &ldquo;for human nature&rsquo;s
+      daily food,&rdquo; and enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics in
+      town. At this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every
+      official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore a name
+      that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or so. The
+      situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a Chinese policeman,
+      with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper pocket handkerchief, patrolling
+      Congress Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as straight as
+      a pine. He possessed his race&rsquo;s sweet temper, simplicity, and vanity. His
+      martial bearing was a positive factor in the effectiveness of the
+      Portsmouth Greys, whenever those bloodless warriors paraded. As he brought
+      up the rear of the last platoon, with his infantry cap stuck jauntily on
+      the left side of his head and a bright silver cup slung on a belt at his
+      hip, he seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing things in the
+      display. To himself he was pretty much &ldquo;all the company.&rdquo; He used to say,
+      with a drollness which did not strike me until years afterwards, &ldquo;Boys, I
+      and Cap&rsquo;n Towle is goin&rsquo; to trot out &lsquo;the Greys&rsquo; to-morroh.&rdquo; Though
+      strictly honest in all business dealings, his tropical imagination,
+      whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of autobiography, left much
+      to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared with Sol Holmes on such
+      occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid integrity. Sol Holmes&rsquo;s tragic
+      end was in singular contrast with his sunny temperament. One night, long
+      ago, he threw himself from the deck of a Sound steamer, somewhere between
+      Stonington and New York. What led or drove him to the act never
+      transpired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few men who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of which I
+      write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue wheelbarrow. I
+      find it difficult to describe him other than vaguely, possibly because
+      Wilbird had no expression whatever in his countenance. With his vacant
+      white face lifted to the clouds, seemingly oblivious of everything, yet
+      going with a sort of heaven-given instinct straight to his destination, he
+      trundled that rattling wheelbarrow for many a year over Portsmouth
+      cobblestones. He was so unconscious of his environment that sometimes a
+      small boy would pop into the empty wheelbarrow and secure a ride without
+      Wibird arriving at any very clear knowledge of the fact. His employment in
+      life was to deliver groceries and other merchandise to purchasers. This he
+      did in a dreamy, impersonal kind of way. It was as if a spirit had somehow
+      go hold of an earthly wheelbarrow and was trundling it quite
+      unconsciously, with no sense of responsibility. One day he appeared at a
+      kitchen door with a two-gallon molasses jug, the top of which was wanting.
+      It was not longer a jug, but a tureen. When the recipient of the damaged
+      article remonstrated with &ldquo;Goodness gracious, Wibird! You have broken the
+      jug,&rdquo; his features lighted up, and he seemed immensely relieved. &ldquo;I
+      thought,&rdquo; He remarked, &ldquo;I heerd somethink crack!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wibird Penhallow&rsquo;s heaviest patron was the keeper of a variety store, and
+      the first specimen of a pessimist I ever encountered. He was an excellent
+      specimen. He took exception to everything. He objected to the telegraph,
+      to the railway, to steam in all its applications. Some of his arguments, I
+      recollect, made a deep impression on my mind. &ldquo;Nowadays,&rdquo; he once observed
+      to me, &ldquo;if your son or your grandfather drops dead at the other end of
+      creation, you know of it in ten minutes. What&rsquo;s the use? Unless you are
+      anxious to know he&rsquo;s dead, you&rsquo;ve got just two or three weeks more to be
+      miserable in.&rdquo; He scorned the whole business, and was faithful to his
+      scorn. When he received a telegram, which was rare, he made a point of
+      keeping it awhile unopened. Through the exercise of this whim he once
+      missed an opportunity of buying certain goods to great advantage. &ldquo;There!&rdquo;
+       he exclaimed, &ldquo;if the telegraph hadn&rsquo;t been invented the idiot would have
+      written to me, and I&rsquo;d have sent a letter by return coach, and got the
+      goods before he found out prices had gone up in Chicago. If that boy
+      brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs, I&rsquo;ll throw an axe-handle
+      at him.&rdquo; His pessimism extended up, or down, to generally recognized
+      canons of orthography. They were all iniquitous. If k-n-i-f-e spelled
+      knife, then, he contended, k-n-i-f-e-s was the plural. Diverting tags,
+      written by his own hand in conformity with this theory, were always
+      attached to articles in his shop window. He is long since ded, as he
+      himself would have put it, but his phonetic theory appears to have
+      survived him in crankish brains here and there. As my discouraging old
+      friend was not exactly a public character, like the town crier or Wibird
+      Penhallow, I have intentionally thrown a veil over his identity. I have,
+      so to speak, dropped into his pouch a grain or two of that magical
+      fern-seed which was supposed by our English ancestors, in Elizabeth&rsquo;s
+      reign, to possess the quality of rendering a man invisible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another person who singularly interested me at this epoch was a person
+      with whom I had never exchanged a word, whose voice I had never heard, but
+      whose face was as familiar to me as every day could make it. For each
+      morning as I went to school, and each afternoon as I returned, I saw this
+      face peering out of a window in the second story of a shambling yellow
+      house situated in Washington Street, not far from the corner of State.
+      Whether some malign disease had fixed him to the chair he sat on, or
+      whether he had lost the use of his legs, or, possible, had none (the upper
+      part of him was that of a man in admirable health), presented a problem
+      which, with that curious insouciance of youth I made no attempt to solve.
+      It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of that house.
+      I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which wove itself
+      about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the master of a
+      large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta; while still in
+      his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck, and seated
+      himself at that window&mdash;where the outlook must have been the reverse
+      of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of the day, and
+      the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry&rsquo;s bakery-cart was the only sound
+      that ever shattered the silence. Whether it was an amatory or a financial
+      disappointment that turned him into a hermit was left to ingenious
+      conjecture. But there he sat, year in and year out, with his cheek so
+      close to the window that the nearest pane became permanently blurred with
+      his breath; for after his demise the blurr remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for an
+      undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was a sexton in
+      Portsmouth&mdash;his name escapes me, but his attributes do not&mdash;whose
+      impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture of the
+      Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was the striking figure, even to
+      the eclipsing of the involuntary object of the ceremony. His occasions,
+      happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other public
+      services that of furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties. I always
+      thought&mdash;perhaps it was the working of an unchastened imagination&mdash;that
+      he managed to throw into his ice-creams a peculiar chill not attained by
+      either Dunyon or Peduzzi&mdash;arcades ambo&mdash;the rival confectioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species of
+      restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing confections
+      to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both gentlemen achieved
+      great popularity in their respective lines, but neither offered to the
+      juvenile population quite the charm of those prim, white-capped old ladies
+      who presided over certain snuffy little shops, occurring unexpectedly in
+      silent side-streets where the football of commerce seemed an incongruous
+      thing. These shops were never intended in nature. They had an impromptu
+      and abnormal air about them. I do not recall one that was not located in a
+      private residence, and was not evidently the despairing expedient of some
+      pathetic financial crisis, similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah
+      Pyrcheon in The House of the Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street
+      door&mdash;the upper section left open in summer&mdash;ushered you, with a
+      sudden jangle of bell that turned your heart over, into a strictly private
+      hall, haunted by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence,
+      through another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front
+      parlor, but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown, wooden counter, and
+      several rows of little drawers built up against the picture-papered wall
+      behind it. Through much use the paint on these drawers was worn off in
+      circles round the polished brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small
+      article required by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a
+      peppermint Gibraltar&mdash;the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery
+      which, when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any Portsmouth
+      boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a single tooth left
+      unbroken. The proprietors of these little knick-knack establishments were
+      the nicest creatures, somehow suggesting venerable doves. They were always
+      aged ladies, sometimes spinsters, sometimes relicts of daring mariners,
+      beached long before. They always wore crisp muslin caps and steel-rimmed
+      spectacles; they were not always amiable, and no wonder, for even doves
+      may have their rheumatism; but such as they were, they were cherished in
+      young hearts, and are, I take it, impossible to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that it must
+      have been in some respects unique among New England towns. There were, for
+      instance, no really poor persons in the place; every one had some
+      sufficient calling or an income to render it unnecessary; vagrants and
+      paupers were instantly snapped up and provided for at &ldquo;the Farm.&rdquo; There
+      was, however, in a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a decayed old
+      gentlewoman, occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a suspicion of
+      maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her by the
+      neighborhood&mdash;as a matter of course, and involving no sense of
+      dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is
+      given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as they were
+      affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that stir
+      in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my
+      purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes
+      that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like
+      Portsmouth&mdash;the obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the
+      obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England the
+      impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and women&mdash;quaint,
+      shrewd, and racy of the soil&mdash;who linger in little, silvery-gray old
+      homesteads strung along the New England roads and by-ways will shortly
+      cease to exist as a class, save in the record of some such charming
+      chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or Mary Wilkins, on whose sympathetic page
+      they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an atmosphere of
+      long-kept lavender and pennyroyal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower.
+      The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated,
+      the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement
+      more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric
+      finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a larger
+      world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping hand of
+      new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from Cambridge,
+      Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico, and his ulster
+      from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state of Odd Stick; he
+      has ceased to be parochial; he is no longer distinct; he is simply the
+      Average Man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      INDEX OF NAMES
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     ADAMS, NATHANIEL
+     ADDISON, JOSEPH
+     ALLEN, WILLIAM
+     ANANIAS
+     ATKINSON, THEODORE
+     AUSTIN, REBECCA
+     BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE
+     BLAY, RUTH
+     BOGGS, AMOS
+     BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN
+     BRIDGET, MOLLY
+     BROWN, REV. ARTHUR
+     BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D.
+     BRUCE, CYRUS
+     BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES
+     BYLES, REV. MATHER
+     CAROLINE, QUEEN
+     CHADBORN, HUMPHREY
+     CHARLES, PRINCE
+     CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE
+     CLAGETT, WYSEMAN
+     COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON
+     D&rsquo;ORLEANS, DUC
+     DUNYON, WILLIAM
+     ELIZABETH, QUEEN
+     FENTON, JOHN
+     FOWLE, DANIEL
+     FOWLE, PRIMUS
+     FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
+     FURBER, THOMAS
+     GEORGE I
+     GERRY, ELBRIDGE
+     GORGES, SIR FERDINAND
+     GUAST, PIERRE DE
+     HAM, SUPPLY
+     HANCOCK, JOHN
+     HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
+     HILTON, MARTHA
+     HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+     HOLMES, SOL
+     JAFFREY, GEORGE
+     JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY
+     JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
+     KEAIS, SAMUAL
+     KEKUANAOA
+     KENNY, PENELOPE
+     KNOX, GENERAL HENRY
+     LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE
+     LAIGHTON, ALBERT
+     LAIGHTON, OSCAR
+     LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN
+     LEAR, BENJAMIN
+     LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
+     MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD
+     MCDONOUGH, JAMES
+     MASON, JEREMIAH
+     MASON, JOHN
+     MASON, JOHN TUFTON
+     MARCH, CLEMENT
+     MATHER, REV. COTTON
+     MESERVE, GEORGE
+     MICHELANGELO
+     MITCHEL, LETTUCE
+     MOFFATT, CATHERINE
+     MOLIERE
+     MONTPENSIER, DUC DE
+     MOSES, JOSEPH
+     NEWMAN, EDWARD
+     NOBLE, MARK
+     ODIORNE, EBEN L.
+     PACKER, THOMAS
+     PEDUZZI, DOMINIC
+     PENHALLOW, WIBIRD
+     PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM
+     PEPYS, SAMUAL
+     PHILIPPE, LOUIS
+     PHIPPES, THOMAS
+     PHIPPS, GOVERNOR
+     PICKERING, JOHN
+     PITT, WILLIAM
+     POTTLE, WILLIAM
+     PRING, MARTIN
+     QUINCY, DOROTHY
+     ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE
+     ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS
+     RUTLEDGE, EDWARD
+     SERAT, LEONARD
+     SEWELL, JONATHAN
+     SHAKESPEARE
+     SHEAFE, JACOB
+     SHERBURNE, HENRY
+     SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON
+     SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM
+     SIMPSON, SARAH
+     SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN
+     SOCRATES
+     STAVERS, DAME
+     STAVERS, JOHN
+     STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE
+     STOODLEY, JAMES
+     THAXTER, CELIA
+     THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
+     TILTON, JOHNNY
+     TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM
+     WALTON, GEORGE
+     WARNER, JONATHAN
+     WASHINGTON, GEORGE
+     WEBSTER, DANIEL
+     WENTWORTH, BENNING
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D
+     WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA
+     WENTWORTH, MARY
+     WENTWORTH, MICHAEL
+     WENTWORTH, SARAH
+     WESTWERE, EDWARD
+     WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF
+     WIBIRD, RICHARD
+     WILKINS, MARY E.
+     WINN, TIMOTHY
+     WITHER, GEORGE
+     XANTIPPE
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/1861.txt b/1861.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e483e18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1861.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2518 @@
+Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Old Town By The Sea
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1861]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan L. Farley and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+     PISCATAQUA RIVER
+
+     Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
+     By woods, and fields of corn,
+     Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
+     Upon my birthday morn.
+
+     But I within a city, I,
+     So full of vague unrest,
+     Would almost give my life to lie
+     An hour upon upon thy breast.
+
+     To let the wherry listless go,
+     And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
+     Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
+     Like the red harbor-buoy;
+
+     To sit in happy indolence,
+     To rest upon the oars,
+     And catch the heavy earthy scents
+     That blow from summer shores;
+
+     To see the rounded sun go down,
+     And with its parting fires
+     Light up the windows of the town
+     And burn the tapering spires;
+
+     And then to hear the muffled tolls
+     From steeples slim and white,
+     And watch, among the Isles of Shoals,
+     The Beacon's orange light.
+
+     O River! flowing to the main
+     Through woods, and fields of corn,
+     Hear thou my longing and my pain
+     This sunny birthday morn;
+
+     And take this song which fancy shapes
+     To music like thine own,
+     And sing it to the cliffs and capes
+     And crags where I am known!
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.   CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+     II.  ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+     III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+     IV.  A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+     V.   OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+     VI.  SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+     VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+     INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+
+
+
+I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+
+I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects
+on the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this
+crust of earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on
+its surface seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the
+other day, then--that is to say, in the month of June, 1603--that one
+Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty
+tons burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
+Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort the
+Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
+windings of "the brave river" for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
+turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object
+of the expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal
+sassafras-tree, from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors,
+could be distilled the Elixir of Life.
+
+It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
+miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
+effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens
+suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network
+of strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the crystal
+water, must have won the tired mariners.
+
+The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
+hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of,
+nor did they encounter--what would have been infinitely less to their
+taste--and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered ashes
+of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they
+were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish
+abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate
+breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
+the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the
+tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder
+sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval solitude. Master Pring
+would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.
+
+Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the
+Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua--Captain John Smith of famous
+memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all sorts
+of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his
+presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky
+selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him
+to examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small
+boat, a ship's yawl, he skirted the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape
+Cod, keeping his eye open. This keeping his eye open was a peculiarity
+of the little captain; possibly a family trait. It was Smith who really
+discovered the Isles of Shoals, exploring in person those masses of
+bleached rock--those "isles assez hautes," of which the French navigator
+Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, had caught a bird's-eye glimpse through
+the twilight in 1605. Captain Smith christened the group Smith's Isles,
+a title which posterity, with singular persistence of ingratitude, has
+ignored. It was a tardy sense of justice that expressed itself a few
+years ago in erecting on Star Island a simple marble shaft to the memory
+of JOHN SMITH--the multitudinous! Perhaps this long delay is explained
+by a natural hesitation to label a monument so ambiguously.
+
+The modern Jason, meanwhile, was not without honor in his own country,
+whatever may have happened to him in his own house, for the poet George
+Wither addressed a copy of pompous verses "To his Friend Captain Smith,
+upon his Description of New England." "Sir," he says--
+
+     "Sir: your Relations I haue read: which shew
+     Ther's reason I should honor them and you:
+     And if their meaning I have vnderstood,
+     I dare to censure thus: Your Project's good;
+     And may (if follow'd) doubtlesse quit the paine
+     With honour, pleasure and a trebble gaine;
+     Beside the benefit that shall arise
+     To make more happy our Posterities."
+
+The earliest map of this portion of our seaboard was prepared by Smith
+and laid before Prince Charles, who asked to give the country a name. He
+christened it New England. In that remarkable map the site of Portsmouth
+is call Hull, and Kittery and York are known as Boston.
+
+It was doubtless owing to Captain John Smith's representation on his
+return to England that the Laconia Company selected the banks of the
+Piscataqua for their plantation. Smith was on an intimate footing
+with Sir Ferinand Gorges, who, five years subsequently, made a tour of
+inspection along the New England coast, in company with John Mason, then
+Governor of Newfoundland. One of the results of this summer cruise is
+the town of Portsmouth, among whose leafy ways, and into some of whose
+old-fashioned houses, I purpose to take the reader, if he have an idle
+hour on his hands. Should we meet the flitting ghost of some old-time
+worthy, on the staircase or at a lonely street corner, the reader must
+be prepared for it.
+
+
+
+
+II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+
+IT is not supposable that the early settlers selected the site of their
+plantation on account of its picturesqueness. They were influenced
+entirely by the lay of the land, its nearness and easy access to the
+sea, and the secure harbor it offered to their fishing-vessels; yet they
+could not have chosen a more beautiful spot had beauty been the sole
+consideration. The first settlement was made at Odiorne's Point--the
+Pilgrims' Rock of New Hampshire; there the Manor, or Mason's Hall, was
+built by the Laconia Company in 1623. It was not until 1631 that the
+Great House was erected by Humphrey Chadborn on Strawberry Bank. Mr.
+Chadborn, consciously or unconsciously, sowed a seed from which a city
+has sprung.
+
+The town of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua,
+about two miles from the sea as the crow flies--three miles following
+the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this
+point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by
+the interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island
+lake than a river. To the unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet.
+Standing on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court
+Street, a stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the
+ocean. A little observation, however, would show him that he was in a
+seaport. The rich red rust on the gables and roofs of ancient buildings
+looking seaward would tell him that. There is a fitful saline flavor in
+the air, and if while he gazed a dense white fog should come rolling in,
+like a line of phantom breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.
+
+It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the river,
+though few of the notable houses that remain are to be found there. Like
+all New England settlements, Portsmouth was built of wood, and has been
+subjected to extensive conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick
+building that is not shockingly modern. The first house of the kind was
+erected by Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.
+
+Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the fateful
+hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town,
+especially as you saunter along the streets down by the river. The
+worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of
+grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient
+to satisfy a moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers
+and these long rows of empty barracks, with their sarcastic cranes
+projecting from the eaves, rather puzzle the stranger. Why this great
+preparation for a commercial activity that does not exist, and evidently
+had not for years existed? There are no ships lying at the pier-heads;
+there are no gangs of stevedores staggering under the heavy cases of
+merchandise; here and there is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with
+coal, and here and there a square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered
+with fragrant planks and clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at
+the end of the wharf, a ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect
+sympathy with the indolent sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor
+of these crumbling piles and ridiculous warehouses, from which even the
+ghost of prosperity has flown.
+
+Once upon a time, however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive trade with
+the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston
+and New York. At the windows of these musty counting-rooms which
+overlook the river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants,
+in knee breeches and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with
+ruffles at the wrist, waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows;
+the cries of stevedores and the chants of sailors at the windlass used
+to echo along the shore where all is silence now. For reasons not worth
+setting forth, the trade with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined
+as well as enriched many a Portsmouth adventurer. This explains
+the empty warehouses and the unused wharves. Portsmouth remains the
+interesting widow of a once very lively commerce. I fancy that few
+fortunes are either made or lost in Portsmouth nowadays. Formerly it
+turned out the best ships, as it did the ablest ship captains, in the
+world. There were families in which the love for blue water was
+in immemorial trait. The boys were always sailors; "a grey-headed
+shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the
+homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the
+mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blasted against
+his sire and grandsire." (1. Hawthorne in his introduction to The
+Scarlet Letter.) With thousands of miles of sea-line and a score or two
+of the finest harbors on the globe, we have adroitly turned over our
+carrying trade to foreign nations.
+
+In other days, as I have said, a high maritime spirit was characteristic
+of Portsmouth. The town did a profitable business in the war of 1812,
+sending out a large fleet of the sauciest small craft on record. A
+pleasant story is told of one of these little privateers--the Harlequin,
+owned and commanded by Captain Elihu Brown. The Harlequin one day gave
+chase to a large ship, which did not seem to have much fight aboard,
+and had got it into close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger threw
+open her ports, and proved to be His Majesty's Ship-of-War Bulwark,
+seventy-four guns. Poor Captain Brown!
+
+Portsmouth has several large cotton factories and one or two corpulent
+breweries; it is a wealthy old town, with a liking for first mortgage
+bonds; but its warmest lover will not claim for it the distinction
+of being a great mercantile centre. The majority of her young men are
+forced to seek other fields to reap, and almost every city in the Union,
+and many a city across the sea, can point to some eminent merchant,
+lawyer, or what not, as "a Portsmouth boy." Portsmouth even furnished
+the late king of the Sandwich Islands, Kekuanaoa, with a prime minister,
+and his nankeen Majesty never had a better. The affection which all
+these exiles cherish for their birthplace is worthy of remark. On two
+occasions--in 1852 and 1873, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of
+the settlement of Strawberry Bank--the transplanted sons of Portsmouth
+were seized with an impulse to return home. Simultaneously and almost
+without concerted action, the lines of pilgrims took up their march from
+every quarter of the globe, and swept down with music and banners on the
+motherly old town.
+
+To come back to the wharves. I do not know of any spot with such a
+fascinating air of dreams and idleness about it as the old wharf at the
+end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once a noisy, busy place,
+crowded with sailors and soldiers--in the war of 1812--gives an emphasis
+to the quiet that broods over it to-day. The lounger who sits of a
+summer afternoon on a rusty anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the
+silent warehouses, and look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring
+past the town, cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having
+taken itself off elsewhere.
+
+What a slumberous, delightful, lazy place it is! The sunshine seems to
+lie a foot deep on the planks of the dusty wharf, which yields up to the
+warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, molasses, and spice
+that used to be piled upon it. The river is as blue as the inside of a
+harebell. The opposite shore, in the strangely shifting magic lights
+of sky and water, stretches along like the silvery coast of fairyland.
+Directly opposite you is the navy yard, and its neat officers' quarters
+and workshops and arsenals, and its vast shiphouses, in which the keel
+of many a famous frigate has been laid. Those monster buildings on the
+water's edge, with their roofs pierced with innumerable little windows,
+which blink like eyes in the sunlight, and the shiphouses. On your
+right lies a cluster of small islands,--there are a dozen or more in the
+harbor--on the most extensive of which you see the fading-away remains
+of some earthworks thrown up in 1812. Between this--Trefethren's
+Island--and Peirce's Island lie the Narrows. Perhaps a bark or a
+sloop-of-war is making up to town; the hulk is hidden amoung the
+islands, and the topmasts have the effect of sweeping across the dry
+land. On your left is a long bridge, more than a quarter of a mile in
+length, set upon piles where the water is twenty or thirty feet deep,
+leading to the navy yard and Kittery--the Kittery so often the theme of
+Whittier's verse.
+
+This is a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you. Its
+changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds floating
+over it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a place where the
+scenery is more varied and striking; but there is a mandragora quality
+in the atmosphere here that holds you to the spot, and makes the
+half-hours seem like minutes. I could fancy a man sitting on the end
+of that old wharf very contentedly for two or three years, provided it
+could be always in June.
+
+Perhaps, too, one would desire it to be always high water. The tide
+falls from eight to twelve feet, and when the water makes out between
+the wharves some of the picturesqueness makes out also. A corroded
+section of stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the skeleton of a hoopskirt
+protruding from the tide mud like the remains of some old-time wreck, is
+apt to break the enchantment.
+
+I fear I have given the reader an exaggerated idea of the solitude
+that reigns along the river-side. Sometimes there is society here of
+an unconventional kind, if you care to seek it. Aside from the foreign
+gentleman before mentioned, you are likely to encounter, farther down
+the shore toward the Point of Graves (a burial-place of the colonial
+period), a battered and aged native fisherman boiling lobsters on a
+little gravelly bench, where the river whispers and lisps among the
+pebbles as the tide creeps in. It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or
+ex-pilot, with strands of coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a
+face that has the expression of a half-open clam. He is always ready
+to talk with you, this amphibious person; and if he is not the most
+entertaining of gossips--more weather-wise that Old Probabilities,
+and as full of moving incident as Othello himself--then he is not the
+wintery-haired shipman I used to see a few years ago on the strip of
+beach just beyond Liberty Bridge, building his drift-wood fire under a
+great tin boiler, and making it lively for a lot of reluctant lobsters.
+
+I imagine that very little change has taken place in this immediate
+locality, known prosaically as Puddle Dock, during the past fifty or
+sixty years. The view you get looking across Liberty Bridge, Water
+Street, is probably the same in every respect that presented itself to
+the eyes of the town folk a century ago. The flagstaff, on the right,
+is the representative of the old "standard of liberty" which the Sons
+planted on this spot in January, 1766, signalizing their opposition
+to the enforcement of the Stamp Act. On the same occasion the patriots
+called at the house of Mr. George Meserve, the agent for distributing
+the stamps in New Hampshire, and relieved him of his stamp-master's
+commission, which document they carried on the point of a sword through
+the town to Liberty Bridge (the Swing Bridge), where they erected the
+staff, with the motto, "Liberty, Property, and no Stamp!"
+
+The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of November. On
+the previous morning the "New Hampshire Gazette" appeared with a deep
+black border and all the typographical emblems of affliction, for was
+not Liberty dead? At all events, the "Gazette" itself was as good as
+dead, since the printer could no longer publish it if he were to be
+handicapped by a heavy tax. "The day was ushered in by the tolling
+of all the bells in town, the vessels in the harbor had their colors
+hoisted half-mast high; about three o'clock a funeral procession was
+formed, having a coffin with this inscription, LIBERTY, AGED 145,
+STAMPT. It moved from the state house, with two unbraced drums, through
+the principal streets. As it passed the Parade, minute-guns were fired;
+at the place of interment a speech was delivered on the occasion,
+stating the many advantages we had received and the melancholy prospect
+before us, at the seeming departure of our invaluable liberties. But
+some sign of life appearing, Liberty was not deposited in the grave;
+it was rescued by a number of her sons, the motto changed to Liberty
+revived, and carried off in triumph. The detestable Act was buried in
+its stead, and the clods of the valley were laid upon it; the bells
+changed their melancholy sound to a more joyful tone." (1. Annals of
+Portsmouth, by Nathaniel Adams, 1825.)
+
+With this side glance at one of the curious humors of the time, we
+resume our peregrinations.
+
+Turning down a lane on your left, a few rods beyond Liberty Bridge,
+you reach a spot known as the Point of Graves, chiefly interesting as
+showing what a graveyard may come to if it last long enough. In 1671 one
+Captain John Pickering, of whom we shall have more to say, ceded to
+the town a piece of ground on this neck for burial purposes. It is an
+odd-shaped lot, comprising about half an acre, inclosed by a crumbling
+red brick wall two or three feet high, with wood capping. The place
+is overgrown with thistles, rank grass, and fungi; the black slate
+headstones have mostly fallen over; those that still make a pretense of
+standing slant to every point of the compass, and look as if they
+were being blown this way and that by a mysterious gale which leaves
+everything else untouched; the mounds have sunk to the common level, and
+the old underground tombs have collapsed. Here and there the moss and
+weeds you can pick out some name that shines in the history of the early
+settlement; hundreds of the flower of the colony lie here, but the
+known and the unknown, gentle and simple, mingle their dust on a perfect
+equality now. The marble that once bore a haughty coat of arms is as
+smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless of heraldry. The lion and
+the unicorn, wherever they appear on some cracked slab, are very much
+tamed by time. The once fat-faced cherubs, with wing at either cheek,
+are the merest skeletons now. Pride, pomp, grief, and remembrance are
+all at end. No reverent feet come here, no tears fall here; the old
+graveyard itself is dead! A more dismal, uncanny spot than this at
+twilight would be hard to find. It is noticed that when the boys pass
+it after nightfall, they always go by whistling with a gayety that is
+perfectly hollow.
+
+Let us get into some cheerfuler neighborhood!
+
+
+
+
+III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+
+AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass "up town," the streets
+grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious--streets fringed
+with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private dwellings,
+mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through the
+centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
+houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
+the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
+pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
+sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
+authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
+within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the
+beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when
+the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
+fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
+fair town--her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
+more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain
+streets in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm.
+You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the
+overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery
+even more graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous
+elms and maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the
+result of chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken
+to preserve the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to
+arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies
+to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees along some
+favorite walk. Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading
+from Middle Street to the South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of
+a citizen who gave the labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that
+windswept and barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees
+seems to be a matter of heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen
+instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or any
+other wood from off the town common, excepting under special conditions.
+
+In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
+streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of
+the dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
+crowded, but I have never happened to be in Portsmouth at the time. I
+seldom pass through the narrow cobble-paved street without wondering
+where the customers are that must keep all these flourishing little
+establishments going. Congress Street--a more elegant thoroughfare
+than Market--is the Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth. Among the prominent
+buildings is the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and library.
+From the high roof of this building the stroller will do well to take
+a glance at the surrounding country. He will naturally turn seaward
+for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he will see the
+famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles away--Appledore, Smutty-Nose,
+Star Island, White Island, etc.; there are nine of them in all. On
+Appledore is Laighton's Hotel, and near it the summer cottage of Celia
+Thaxter, the poet of the Isles. On the northern end of Star Island is
+the quaint town of Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a
+sea-gull on its highest rock. A mile southwest form Star Island lies
+White Island, on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the most
+picturesque of the group. Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in any but
+the serenest weather, these wrinkled, scarred, are storm-smitten rocks,
+flanked by wicked sunken ledges that grow white at the lip with rage
+when the great winds blow!
+
+How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea! and how
+softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the unfinished
+fort is! That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to reach which from
+Portsmouth you have to cross three bridges with the most enchanting
+scenery in New Hampshire lying on either hand. At Newcastle the poet
+Stedman has built for his summerings an enviable little stone chateau--a
+seashell into which I fancy the sirens creep to warm themselves during
+the winter months. So it is never without its singer.
+
+Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir William
+Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and where his tomb
+now is, in his orchard across the road, a few hundred yards from the
+"goodly mansion" he built. The knight's tomb and the old Pepperell
+House, which has been somewhat curtailed of it fair proportions, are the
+objects of frequent pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
+
+From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the
+river with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of Kittery and
+Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a picture worth climbing
+four or five flights of stairs to gaze upon. Glancing down on the town
+nestled in the foliage, it seems like a town dropped by chance in the
+midst of a forest. Among the prominent objects which lift themselves
+above the tree tops are the belfries of the various churches, the
+white facade of the custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the
+Rockingham, the principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find
+in Portsmouth one of the most completely appointed hotels in the United
+States. The antiquarian may lament the demolition of the old Bell
+Tavern, and think regretfully of the good cheer once furnished the
+wayfarer by Master Stavers at the sign of the Earl of Halifax, and by
+Master Stoodley at his inn on Daniel Street; but the ordinary traveler
+will thank his stars, and confess that his lines have fallen in pleasant
+places, when he finds himself among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
+
+Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum--we are supposed to be
+on terra firma again--stands the Old North Church, a substantial wooden
+building, handsomely set on what is called The Parade, a large open
+space formed by the junction of Congress, Market, Daniel, and Pleasant
+streets. Here in days innocent of water-works stood the town pump, which
+on more than one occasion served as whipping-post.
+
+The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number than
+their architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church they are
+constructed of wood or plain brick in the simplest style. St. John's
+Church is the only one likely to attract the eye of a stranger. It
+is finely situated on the crest of Church Hill, overlooking the
+ever-beautiful river. The present edifice was built in 1808 on the site
+of what was known as Queen's Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by
+fire December 24, 1806. The chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline,
+who furnished the books for the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two
+solid mahogany chairs, which are still in use in St. John's. Within the
+chancel rail is a curious font of porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton
+Mason at the capture of Senegal from the French in 1758, and presented
+to the Episcopal Society on 1761. The peculiarly sweet-toned bell
+which calls the parishioners of St. John's together every Sabbath is,
+I believe, the same that formerly hung in the belfry of the old Queen's
+Chapel. If so, the bell has a history of its own. It was brought from
+Louisburg at the time of the reduction of that place in 1745, and given
+to the church by the officers of the New Hampshire troops.
+
+The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is
+among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its
+architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice.
+The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what
+strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and
+these closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the
+wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass
+was used. If the building could have been composed entirely of glass it
+would have been done by the thrifty parishioners.
+
+Portsmouth is rich in graveyards--they seem to be a New England
+specialty--ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one
+attached to St. John's Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has
+not been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point
+of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up
+and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly
+refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and
+is allowed to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a
+row of other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed,
+and here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale
+roses, as becomes a rosebush in a churchyard.
+
+The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
+respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and
+loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior
+to the Revolution--stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and
+secretaries of the Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered
+under the motherly wing of the Church of England. It is almost
+impossible to walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow
+haughty in spirit after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less
+than one of His Majesty's colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here
+are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the
+Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the
+quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and
+there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial
+devices. You are moving in the very best society.
+
+This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth. An hour's
+walk from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot, already
+mentioned, where the first house was built and the first grave made,
+at Odiorne's Point. The exact site of the Manor is not known, but it is
+supposed to be a few rods north of an old well of still-flowing water,
+at which the Tomsons and the Hiltons and their comrades slaked their
+thirst more than two hundred and sixty years ago. Oriorne's Point is
+owned by Mr. Eben L. Odiorne, a lineal descendant of the worthy who held
+the property in 1657. Not far from the old spring is the resting-place
+of the earliest pioneers.
+
+"This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire," writes Mr.
+Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years the
+editor of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two volumes of
+local sketches to which the writer of these pages here acknowledges his
+indebtedness.) "occupies a space of perhaps one hundred feet by ninety,
+and is well walled in. The western side is now used as a burial-place
+for the family, but two thirds of it is filled with perhaps forty
+graves, indicated by rough head and foot stones. Who there rest no one
+now living knows. But the same care is taken of their quiet beds as if
+they were of the proprietor's own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about
+eighty emigrants many of whom died in a few years, and here they were
+probably buried. Here too, doubtless, rest the remains of several of
+those whose names stand conspicuous in our early state records."
+
+
+
+
+IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+
+WHEN Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by
+the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in
+the struggle for independence. "There are some good houses," he
+writes, in a diary kept that year during a tour through Connecticut,
+Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, "among which Colonel Langdon's may
+be esteemed the first; but in general they are indifferent, and almost
+entirely of wood. On wondering at this, as the country is full of stone
+and good clay for bricks, I was told that on account of the fogs and
+damp they deemed them wholesomer, and for that reason preferred wood
+buildings."
+
+The house of Colonel Langdon, on Pleasant Street, is an excellent sample
+of the solid and dignified abodes which our great-grandsires had the
+sense to build. The art of their construction seems to have been a lost
+art these fifty years. Here Governor John Langdon resided from 1782
+until the time of his death in 1819--a period during which many an
+illustrious man passed between those two white pillars that support the
+little balcony over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and
+his brothers, the Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the Marquis de
+Chastellus, a major-general in the French army, serving under the Count
+de Rochambeau, whom he accompanied from France to the States in 1780.
+The journal of the marquis contains this reference to his host: "After
+dinner we went to drink tea with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and
+of noble carriage; he has been a member of Congress, and is now one
+of the first people of the country; his house is elegant and well
+furnished, and the apartments admirably well wainscoted" (this reads
+like Mr. Samuel Pepys); "and he has a good manuscript chart of the
+harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his wife, is young, fair, and
+tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with her than her husband, in
+whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he had displayed great
+courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes's expedition."
+
+It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons of the
+Due d'Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion. Years afterward,
+when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France, he inquired of a
+Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the mansion of ce brave
+Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.
+
+The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under
+the shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an imposing
+appearance as you approach it over the tessellated marble walk. A
+hundred or two feet on either side of the gate, and abutting on
+the street, is a small square building of brick, one story in
+height--probably the porter's lodge and tool-house of former days. There
+is a large fruit garden attached to the house, which is in excellent
+condition, taking life comfortably, and having the complacent air of a
+well-preserved beau of the ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was
+owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of
+forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St. John's Church.
+
+At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to which
+we shall come by and by. Though President Washington found Portsmouth
+but moderately attractive from an architectural point of view, the
+visitor of to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste, will find himself
+embarrassed by the number of localities and buildings that appeal to his
+interest. Many of these buildings were new and undoubtedly commonplace
+enough at the date of Washington's visit; time and association have
+given them a quaintness and a significance which now make their
+architecture a question of secondary importance.
+
+One might spend a fortnight in Portsmouth exploring the nooks and
+corners over which history has thrown a charm, and by no means exhaust
+the list. I cannot do more than attempt to describe--and that very
+briefly--a few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant Street
+there are several which we must leave unnoted, with their spacious
+halls and carven staircases, their antiquated furniture and old silver
+tankards and choice Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist's best
+manner are to be found here. To live in Portsmouth without possessing a
+family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having
+an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you
+cannot be said to flourish. To make this statement smooth, I will remark
+that every one in Portsmouth has a Copley--or would have if a fair
+division were made.
+
+In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such excellent
+repair, and have so smart an appearance with their bright green blinds
+and freshly painted woodwork, that you are likely to pass many an old
+landmark without suspecting it. Whenever you see a house with a gambrel
+roof, you may be almost positive that the house is at least a
+hundred years old, for the gambrel roof went out of fashion after the
+Revolution.
+
+On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick
+building in Portsmouth--the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by
+Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a
+wealthy merchant, and a member of the King's Council. He was the chief
+projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America.
+Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children
+of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary,
+whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous
+Copley, still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not known by
+the name of Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon.
+Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council until the revolt of the
+colonies. "We well recollect Mr. Warner," says Mr. Brewster, writing in
+1858, "as one of the last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early
+childhood he is still before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic
+crown officers. That broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those
+small-clothes and silk stockings, those silver buckles, and that
+cane--we see them still, although the life that filled and moved them
+ceased half a century ago."
+
+The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and luthern
+windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the architecture of
+the period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in New England. The
+eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from Holland, as were also many
+of the materials used in the building--the hearth-stones, tiles,
+etc. Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the
+brick-work rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The
+interior is rich in paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves,
+the deep-set windows, and along the cornices. The halls are wide and
+long, after a by-gone fashion, with handsome staircases, set at an easy
+angle, and not standing nearly upright, like those ladders by which one
+reaches the upper chambers of a modern house. The principal rooms are
+paneled to the ceiling, and have large open chimney-places, adorned with
+the quaintest of Dutch files. In one of the parlors of the Warner House
+there is a choice store of family relics--china, silver-plate, costumes,
+old clocks, and the like. There are some interesting paintings, too--not
+by Copley this time. On a broad space each side of the hall windows, at
+the head of the staircase, are pictures of two Indians, life size. They
+are probably portraits of some of the numerous chiefs with whom Captain
+Macphaedris had dealings, for the captain was engaged in the fur as
+well as in the iron business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to
+Macpheadris by his red friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
+
+By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings
+on the walls of this lower hall were brought to light. In repairing the
+front entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or
+five layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had peeled
+off cleanly, a horse's hoof was observed by a little girl of the family.
+The workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the legs,
+then the body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished
+paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size representation of
+Governor Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to
+his assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily
+stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet covered with
+sketches in color, landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes,
+and modern figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel.
+Until then no person in the land of the living had had any knowledge
+of those hidden pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the
+house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe
+her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to
+face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply
+Ham was the leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)
+
+The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that
+these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand.
+Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an
+antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day
+was put up under Benjamin Franklin's own supervision in 1762--such at
+all events is the credited tradition--and is supposed to be the first
+rod put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod "personally conducted"
+by Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
+susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim
+on the good-will of the visitor--it is not positively known that George
+Washington ever slept there.
+
+The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old yellow
+barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and Atkinson streets.
+Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of
+corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down
+on the most desirable spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept
+not only one night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was
+a celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence,
+and Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth
+in 1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady--not one of the
+preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties
+unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning
+to tell on her--who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in
+her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of
+her conversation during the last ten years of her life, which she passed
+in the Stavers House, bedridden; and I think those ten years were in a
+manner rendered short and pleasant to the old gentlewoman by the memory
+of a compliment to her complexion which Washington probably never paid
+to it.
+
+The old hotel--now a very unsavory tenement-house--was built by John
+Tavers, innkeeper, in 1770, who planted in front of the door a tall
+post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. Stavers had
+previously kept an inn of the same name on Queen, now State Street.
+
+It is a square three-story building, shabby and dejected, giving no hint
+of the really important historical associations that cluster about it.
+At the time of its erection it was no doubt considered a rather grand
+structure, for buildings of three stories were rare in Portsmouth. Even
+in 1798, of the six hundred and twenty-six dwelling houses of which the
+town boasted, eighty-six were of one story, five hundred and twenty-four
+were of two stories, and only sixteen of three stories. The Stavers inn
+has the regulation gambrel roof, but is lacking in those wood ornaments
+which are usually seen over the doors and windows of the more prominent
+houses of that epoch. It was, however, the hotel of the period.
+
+That same worn doorstep upon which Mr. O'Shaughnessy now stretches
+himself of a summer afternoon, with a short clay pipe stuck between
+his lips, and his hat crushed down on his brows, revolving the sad
+vicissitude of things--that same doorstep has been pressed by the feet
+of generals and marquises and grave dignitaries upon whom depended the
+destiny of the States--officers in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and
+high-heeled belles in patch, powder, and paduasoy. At this door the
+Flying Stage Coach, which crept from Boston, once a week set down its
+load of passengers--and distinguished passengers they often were. Most
+of the chief celebrities of the land, before and after the secession of
+the colonies, were the guests of Master Stavers, at the sign of the Earl
+of Halifax.
+
+While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother country,
+it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met
+to discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist,
+and when the full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early
+intimation of the coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched
+with sullen eyes the secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers's
+tavern, and one morning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post
+which supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have
+been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent
+out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was
+armed with an axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow
+fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an
+insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious
+mob at once collected, and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in
+the doors and shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only
+through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular
+patriot, that the hotel was saved from destruction.
+
+In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in
+the rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend
+William Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied
+the hotel with ale. The excitement blew over after a time, and Stavers
+was induced to return to Portsmouth. He was seized by the Committee of
+Safety, and lodged in Exeter jail, when his loyalty, which had really
+never been very high, went down below zero; he took the oath of
+allegiance, and shortly after his released reopened the hotel. The
+honest face of William Pitt appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl
+of Halifax, ignominiously removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the
+state records is the following letter from poor Noble begging for the
+enlargement of John Stavers:--
+
+PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777. To the Committee of Safety of the Town of
+Exeter: GENTLEMEN,--As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in confinement
+in gaol upon my account contrary to my desire, for when I was at Mr.
+Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the Gentleman but
+by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad Blow but it is so well
+that I hope to go out in a day or two. So by this gentlemen of the
+Committee I hope you will release the gentleman upon my account. I am
+yours to serve. MARK NOBLE, A friend to my country.
+
+From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House prospered.
+It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the officers of the French
+fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the Marquis Lafayette, all
+the way from Providence, to visit them. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry,
+Rutledge, and other signers of the Declaration sojourned here at various
+times. It was here General Knox--"that stalwart man, two officers
+in size and three in lungs"--was wont to order his dinner, and in a
+stentorian voice compliment Master Stavers on the excellence of his
+larder. One day--it was at the time of the French Revolution--Louis
+Philippe and his two brothers applied at the door of the William Pitt
+for lodgings; but the tavern was full, and the future king, with his
+companions, found comfortable quarters under the hospitable roof of
+Governor Langdon in Pleasant Street.
+
+A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous, that have been enacted
+within this old yellow house on the corner would fill a volume. A vivid
+picture of the social and public life of the old time might be painted
+by a skillful hand, using the two Earl of Halifax inns for a background.
+The painter would find gay and sombre pigments ready mixed for his
+palette, and a hundred romantic incidents waiting for his canvas. One
+of these romantic episodes has been turned to very pretty account
+by Longfellow in the last series of The Tales of a Wayside Inn--the
+marriage of Governor Benning Wentworth with Martha Hilton, a sort of
+second edition of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.
+
+Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare feet and ankles and scant
+drapery when she was a child, and even after she was well in the bloom
+of her teens, used to scandalize good Dame Stavers, the innkeeper's
+wife. Standing one afternoon in the doorway of the Earl of Halifax, (1.
+The first of the two hotels bearing that title. Mr. Brewster commits
+a slight anachronism in locating the scene of this incident in Jaffrey
+Street, now Court. The Stavers House was not built until the year of
+Governor Benning Wentworth's death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does
+not fall into the same error.
+
+     "One hundred years ago, and something more,
+     In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
+     Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
+     Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows.")
+
+Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed and
+lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying a
+pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, "the shifting sunbeam
+danced."
+
+"You Pat! you Pat!" cried Mrs. Stavers severely; "why do you go looking
+so? You should be ashamed to be seen in the street."
+
+"Never mind how I look," says Miss Martha, with a merry laugh, letting
+slip a saucy brown shoulder out of her dress; "I shall ride in my
+chariot yet, ma'am."
+
+Fortunate prophecy! Martha went to live as servant with Governor
+Wentworth at his mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea. Seven
+years passed, and the "thin slip of a girl," who promised to be no great
+beauty, had flowered into the loveliest of women, with a lip like a
+cherry and a cheek like a tea-rose--a lady by instinct, one of Nature's
+own ladies. The governor, a lonely widower, and not too young, fell in
+love with his fair handmaid. Without stating his purpose to any one,
+Governor Wentworth invited a number of friends (among others the Rev.
+Arthur Brown) to dine with him at Little Harbor on his birthday. After
+the dinner, which was a very elaborate one, was at an end, and the
+guests were discussing their tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided into
+the room, and stood blushing in front of the chimney-place. She was
+exquisitely dressed, as you may conceive, and wore her hair three
+stories high. The guests stared at each other, and particularly at her,
+and wondered. Then the governor, rising from his seat,
+
+     "Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
+     And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
+     'This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
+     My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!'"
+
+The rector was dumfounded, knowing the humble footing Martha had held
+in the house, and could think of nothing cleverer to say than, "To whom,
+your excellency?" which was not cleaver at all.
+
+"To this lady," replied the governor, taking Martha Hilton by the
+hand. The Rev. Arthur Brown hesitated. "As the Chief Magistrate of New
+Hampshire I command you to marry me!" cried the choleric old governor.
+
+And so it was done; and the pretty kitchen-maid became Lady Wentworth,
+and did ride in her own chariot. She would not have been a woman if she
+had not taken an early opportunity to drive by Staver's hotel!
+
+Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of the dignity of her new
+station, and became a grand lady at once. A few days after her marriage,
+dropping her ring on the floor, she languidly ordered her servant to
+pick it up. The servant, who appears to have had a fair sense of humor,
+grew suddenly near-sighted, and was unable to the ring until Lady
+Wentworth stooped and placed her ladyship's finger upon it. She turned
+out a faultless wife, however; and Governor Wentworth at his death,
+which occurred in 1770, signified his approval of her by leaving her his
+entire estate. She married again without changing name, accepting the
+hand, and what there was of the heart, of Michael Wentworth, a retired
+colonel of the British army, who came to this country in 1767. Colonel
+Wentworth (not connected, I think, with the Portsmouth branch of
+Wentworths) seems to have been of a convivial turn of mind. He shortly
+dissipated his wife's fortune in high living, and died abruptly in New
+York--it was supposed by his own hand. His last words--a quite unique
+contribution to the literature of last words--were, "I have had my
+cake, and ate it," which showed that the colonel within his own modest
+limitations was a philosopher.
+
+The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor--a pleasant walk from
+Market Square--is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their
+hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the
+old homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door
+you step into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted
+courteously, waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the
+Wentworth mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though
+it is no longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, in
+their willingness to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers, show a
+hospitality which has always characterized the place.
+
+The house is an architectural freak. The main building--if it is the
+main building--is generally two stories in height, with irregular wings
+forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in
+brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions that look as if they had
+been built at different periods, which I believe was not the case. The
+mansion was completed in 1750. It originally contained fifty-two rooms;
+a portion of the structure was removed about half a century ago, leaving
+forty-five apartments. The chambers were connected in the oddest manner,
+by unexpected steps leading up or down, and capricious little passages
+that seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the architect. But
+it is a mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The cellar was
+arranged for the stabling of a troop of thirty horse in times of
+danger. The council-chamber, where for many years all questions of vital
+importance to the State were discussed, is a spacious, high-studded
+room, finished in the richest style of the last century. It is said that
+the ornamentation of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel,
+cost the workman a year's constant labor. At the entrance to the
+council-chamber are still the racks for the twelve muskets of the
+governor's guard--so long ago dismissed!
+
+Some valuable family portraits adorn the walls here, among which is a
+fine painting-yes, by our friend Copley--of the lovely Dorothy Quincy,
+who married John Hancock, and afterward became Madam Scott. This lady
+was a niece of Dr. Holme's "Dorothy Q." Opening on the council-chamber
+is a large billiard-room; the billiard-table is gone, but an ancient
+spinnet, with the prim air of an ancient maiden lady, and of a wheezy
+voice, is there; and in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet, near
+which the imaginative nostril may still detect a faint and tantalizing
+odor of colonial punch. Opening also on the council-chamber are several
+tiny apartments, empty and silent now, in which many a close rubber has
+been played by illustrious hands. The stillness and loneliness of the
+old house seem saddest here. The jeweled fingers are dust, the merry
+laughs have turned themselves into silent, sorrowful phantoms, stealing
+from chamber to chamber. It is easy to believe in the traditional ghost
+that haunts the place--
+
+     "A jolly place in times of old,
+     But something ails it now!"
+
+The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only historic house that bears
+the name of Wentworth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of Washington
+Street, stands the abode of another colonial worthy, Governor John
+Wentworth, who held office from 1767 down to the moment when the
+colonies dropped the British yoke as if it had been the letter H. For
+the moment the good gentleman's occupation was gone. He was a royalist
+of the most florid complexion. In 1775, a man named John Fenton, and
+ex-captain in the British army, who had managed to offend the Sons of
+Liberty, was given sanctuary in this house by the governor, who refused
+to deliver the fugitive to the people. The mob planted a small cannon
+(unloaded) in front of the doorstep and threatened to open fire if
+Fenton were not forthcoming. He forth-with came. The family vacated
+the premises via the back-yard, and the mob entered, doing considerable
+damage. The broken marble chimney-place still remains, mutely protesting
+against the uncalled-for violence. Shortly after this event the governor
+made his way to England, where his loyalty was rewarded first with a
+governorship and then with a pension of L500. He was governor of Nova
+Scotia from 1792 to 1800, and died in Halifax in 1820. This house is
+one of the handsomest old dwellings in the town, and promises to
+outlive many of its newest neighbors. The parlor has undergone no change
+whatever since the populace rushed into it over a century ago. The
+furniture and adornments occupy their original positions and the plush
+on the walls has not been replaced by other hangings. In the hall--deep
+enough for the traditional duel of baronial romance--are full-length
+portraits of the several governors and sundry of their kinsfolk.
+
+There is yet a third Wentworth house, also decorated with the shade of
+a colonial governor--there were three Governors Wentworth--but we shall
+pass it by, though out of no lack of respect for that high official
+personage whose commission was signed by Joseph Addison, Esq., Secretary
+of State under George I.
+
+
+
+
+V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+
+THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the
+crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and
+customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting
+here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the
+withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has
+managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up
+periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town
+clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that
+we are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and
+positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the
+early days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and
+eventful days. The dense forest which surrounded the clearing was alive
+with hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock
+at his bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be awakened by
+the glare of his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the
+Womponoags. Year after year he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of
+flames, as he peered through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither
+he had flown in hot haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse
+at Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an extensive scale, with
+stockades for the shelter of cattle. It held large supplies of stores,
+and was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a
+species of naval ordnance which probably did not belie its name. It also
+boasted, we are told, of two drums for training-days, and no fewer
+than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced recorders--all which suggests a
+mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
+To the younger members of the community glass or crockery ware was an
+unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the
+pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter. The
+diet was also of the simplest--pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of
+ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could get it.
+
+John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
+management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to
+stewards, died before realizing any appreciable return from his
+enterprise. He spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity.
+In 1632, three years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a
+number of neat cattle, "of a large breed and yellow colour." The herd
+thrived, and it is said that some of the stock is still extant on farms
+in the vicinity of Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of
+staying quality!
+
+In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General
+Court at Boston to grant them a definite township--for the boundaries
+were doubtful--and the right to give it a proper name. "Whereas the name
+of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe
+called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place,
+now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most
+suitable for this place, it being the river's mouth, and good as any in
+this land, and your petit'rs shall humbly pray," etc.
+
+Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent French
+wars, Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of bloody
+Indian massacres. No portion of the New England colony suffered more.
+Famine, fire, pestilence, and war, each in turn, and sometimes in
+conjunction, beleaguered the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe
+it out. But that was not to be.
+
+The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as
+it had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house
+and the jail--two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a
+town meeting in 1662, it was ordered "that a cage be made or some
+other meanes invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take
+tobacco on the Lord's day out of the meetinge in the time of publique
+service." This salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into
+effect until nine years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to
+have had as many professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a
+cage twelve feet square and seven feet high, with a pillory on top; "the
+said Pickering to make a good strong dore and make a substantiale payre
+of stocks and places the same in said cage." A spot conveniently near
+the west end on the meeting-house was selected as the site for this
+ingenious device. It is more than probable that "the said Pickering"
+indirectly furnished an occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we
+find him and one Edward Westwere authorized by the selectmen to "keepe
+houses of publique entertainment." He was a versatile individual, this
+John Pickering--soldier, miller, moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and
+innkeeper. Michelangelo need not blush to be bracketed with him. In the
+course of a long and variegated career he never failed to act according
+to his lights, which he always kept well trimmed. That Captain Pickering
+subsequently became the grandfather, at several removes, of the present
+writer was no fault of the Captain's, and should not be laid up against
+him.
+
+Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a rather
+desultory and tentative matter; "the young idea" seems to have been
+allowed to "shoot" at whatever it wanted to; but in that year it was
+voted "that care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skullmaster!] be
+provided for the towen as the law directs, not visious in conversation."
+That was perhaps demanding too much; for it was not until "May ye 7" of
+the following year that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their
+finger on this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed
+"to be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching the
+inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters yously doe
+throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the sellectt men in
+behalfe of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by way of rate twenty pounds
+and yt he shall and may reserve from every father or master that sends
+theyer children to school this yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers,
+writers and cypherers 20s., Lattiners 24s."
+
+Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need not plume themselves on
+their originality. The town clerk who wrote that delicious "yously doe"
+settles the question. It is to be hoped that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not
+only "not visious in conversation," but was more conventional in his
+orthography. He evidently gave satisfaction, and clearly exerted an
+influence on the town clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a
+marked improvement in his own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the
+selectmen "to call and settell a gramer scoll according to ye best of
+yower judgement and for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye
+youth of ower town to learn them to read from ye primer, to wright and
+sypher and to learne ym the tongues and good-manners." On this occasion
+it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury, who engaged "dilligently to
+attend ye school for ye present yeare, and tech all childern yt can
+read in thaire psallters and upward." From such humble beginnings were
+evolved some of the best public high schools at present in New England.
+
+Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft delusion, though I believe that
+no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. Dwellers
+by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is
+something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the
+imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a
+perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates
+them from the unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at
+midnight, they are haunted by the spectres of the mirage. Their minds
+quickly take the impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore
+found a sympathetic atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the
+Piscataqua--that slender paw of land which reaches out into the ocean
+and terminates in a spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the claws of an
+amorous cat. What happened to the good folk of that picturesque little
+fishing-hamlet is worth retelling in brief. In order properly to retell
+it, a contemporary witness shall be called upon to testify in the case
+of the Stone-Throwing Devils of Newcastle. It is the Rev. Cotton Mather
+who addresses you--"On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown
+by an invisible hand upon the house of George Walton at Portsmouth
+[Newcastle was then a part of the town]. Whereupon the people going out
+found the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying and falling
+thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a great force, but
+really affecting 'em no more than if a soft touch were given them. The
+glass windows were broken by the stones that came not from without, but
+from within; and other instruments were in a like manner hurled about.
+Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some were as hot as if they
+came out of the fire; and marking them they laid them on the table; but
+in a little while they found some of them again flying about. The spit
+was carried up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward,
+stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it
+was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This disturbance
+continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow whistling
+would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a horse, but
+nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on to a farm
+which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying from
+the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
+through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was
+heard no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the
+boat. A cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the
+floor; a piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon.
+Several cocks of hay, mow'd near the house, were taken up and hung upon
+the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the
+house. A man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and
+suspected that a woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining
+some land from here, did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural
+occurrences. However, at last they came to an end."
+
+Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get
+thee back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp's
+Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it
+uncomfortable for those about thee.
+
+Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch--a
+tangible witch in this instance--one Molly Bridget, who cast her malign
+spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced
+to reside at the moment. The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr.
+Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one
+remedy at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their
+tales. But when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was
+in consequence quite impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a
+gentleman of expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in
+the yard should be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch
+and do away with the mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires
+were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget rushed from room to room in
+a state of frenzy. With the dying flames her own vitality subsided, and
+she was dead before the ash-piles were cool. I say it seriously when I
+say that these are facts of which there is authentic proof.
+
+If the woman had recovered, she would have fared badly, even at that
+late period, had she been in Salem; but the death-penalty has never
+been hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took
+place there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder
+of an infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official
+who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of
+Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton
+in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following
+stanzas, however, give the pith of the story--
+
+     "And a voice among them shouted,
+             "Pause before the deed is done;
+     We have asked reprieve and pardon
+             For the poor misguided one.'
+
+     "But these words of Sheriff Packer
+             Rang above the swelling noise:
+     'Must I wait and lose my dinner?
+            Draw away the cart, my boys!'
+
+     "Nearer came the sound and louder,
+             Till a steed with panting breath,
+     From its sides the white foam dripping,
+            Halted at the scene of death;
+
+     "And a messenger alighted,
+             Crying to the crowd, 'Make way!
+     This I bear to Sheriff Packer;
+             'Tis a pardon for Ruth Blay!'"
+
+But of course he arrived too late--the Law led Mercy about twenty
+minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled again
+that night before the sheriff's domicile and expressed its indignation
+in groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was afterwards
+paraded through the streets.
+
+     "Be the name of Thomas Packer
+          A reproach forevermore!"
+
+Laighton's ballad reminds me of that Portsmouth has been prolific in
+poets, one of whom, at least, has left a mouthful of perennial rhyme for
+orators--Jonathan Sewell with his
+
+     "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
+     But the whole boundless continent is yours."
+
+I have somewhere seen a volume with the alliterative title of "Poets of
+Portsmouth," in which are embalmed no fewer than sixty immortals!
+
+But to drop into prose again, and have done with this iliad of odds and
+ends. Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of establishing the first
+recorded pauper workhouse--though not in connection with her poets, as
+might naturally be supposed. The building was completed and tenanted in
+1716. Seven years later, an act was passed in England authorizing the
+establishment of parish workhouses there. The first and only keeper of
+the Portsmouth almshouse up to 1750 was a woman--Rebecca Austin.
+
+Speaking of first things, we are told by Mr. Nathaniel Adams, in his
+"Annals of Portsmouth," that on the 20th of April, 1761, Mr. John
+Stavers began running a stage from that town to Boston. The carriage was
+a two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate three passengers. The
+fare was thirteen shillings and sixpence sterling per head. The curricle
+was presently superseded by a series of fat yellow coaches, one of
+which--nearly a century later, and long after that pleasant mode of
+travel had fallen obsolete--was the cause of much mental tribulation (1.
+Some idle reader here and there may possibly recall the burning of
+the old stage-coach in The Story of a Bad Boy.) to the writer of this
+chronicle.
+
+The mail and the newspaper are closely associated factors in
+civilization, so I mention them together, though in this case the
+newspaper antedated the mail-coach about five years. On October 7, 1756,
+the first number of "The New Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle"
+was issued in Portsmouth from the press of Daniel Fowle, who in the
+previous July had removed from Boston, where he had undergone a brief
+but uncongenial imprisonment on suspicion of having printed a pamphlet
+entitled "The Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.," an essay
+that contained some uncomplimentary reflections on several official
+personages. The "Gazette" was the pioneer journal of the province. It
+was followed at the close of the same year by "The Mercury and Weekly
+Advertiser," published by a former apprentice of Fowle, a certain
+Thomas Furber, backed by a number of restless Whigs, who considered the
+"Gazette" not sufficiently outspoken in the cause of liberty. Mr. Fowle,
+however, contrived to hold his own until the day of his death. Fowle
+had for pressman a faithful negro named Primus, a full-blooded African.
+Whether Primus was a freeman or a slave I am unable to state. He lived
+to a great age, and was a prominent figure among the people of his own
+color.
+
+Negro slavery was common in New England at that period. In 1767,
+Portsmouth numbered in its population a hundred and eighty-eight slaves,
+male and female. Their bondage, happily, was nearly always of a light
+sort, if any bondage can be light. They were allowed to have a kind
+of government of their own; indeed, were encouraged to do so, and no
+unreasonable restrictions were placed on their social enjoyment. They
+annually elected a king and counselors, and celebrated the event with a
+procession. The aristocratic feeling was highly developed in them. The
+rank of the master was the slave's rank. There was a great deal of ebony
+standing around on its dignity in those days. For example, Governor
+Langdon's manservant, Cyrus Bruce, was a person who insisted on his
+distinction, and it was recognized. His massive gold chain and seals,
+his cherry-colored small-clothes and silk stockings, his ruffles and
+silver shoe-buckles, were a tradition long after Cyrus himself was
+pulverized.
+
+In cases of minor misdemeanor among them, the negros themselves were
+permitted to be judge and jury. Their administration of justice was
+often characteristically naive. Mr. Brewster gives an amusing sketch of
+one of their sessions. King Nero is on the bench, and one Cato--we are
+nothing if not classical--is the prosecuting attorney. The name of the
+prisoner and the nature of his offense are not disclosed to posterity.
+In the midst of the proceedings the hour of noon is clanged from the
+neighboring belfry of the Old North Church. "The evidence was not gone
+through with, but the servants could stay no longer from their home
+duties. They all wanted to see the whipping, but could not conveniently
+be present again after dinner. Cato ventured to address the King: Please
+you Honor, best let the fellow have his whipping now, and finish the
+trial after dinner. The request seemed to be the general wish of the
+company: so Nero ordered ten lashes, for justice so far as the trial
+went, and ten more at the close of the trial, should he be found
+guilty!"
+
+Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless
+Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced
+any emancipation edict. During the Revolutionary War the slaves were
+generally emancipated by their masters. That many of the negros, who had
+grown gray in service, refused their freedom, and elected to spend the
+rest of their lives as pensioners in the families of their late owners,
+is a circumstance that illustrates the kindly ties which held between
+slave and master in the old colonial days in New England.
+
+The institution was accidental and superficial, and never had any real
+root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found in the
+Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it would have
+continued awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his religion into the
+business affairs of life; he was not even able to keep it out of his
+bills of lading. I cannot close this rambling chapter more appropriately
+and solemnly than by quoting from one of those same pious bills of
+landing. It is dated June, 1726, and reads: "Shipped by the grace of God
+in good order and well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct.
+and risque, in and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is
+master under God for this present voyage George King, now riding at
+anchor in the river Piscataqua and by God's grace bound to Barbadoes."
+Here follows a catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo, rounded off with:
+"And so God send the good Briga to her desired port in safety. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+
+I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
+characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have
+been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity.
+In another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been
+favorable to the development of individual singularity during the latter
+half of the present century. It is easier to do that than fully to
+account for the numerous queer human types which have existed from time
+to time previous to that period.
+
+In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster's entertaining
+collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and
+variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene.
+They are, in the author's intention, secondary figures in the background
+of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one's
+memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one's self thinking quite
+as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of
+General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism
+and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
+unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller
+the things which are that old hut-dweller's, we must concede him his
+picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is
+picturesque--now that he is dead.
+
+If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to glance
+at a few old profiles of persons who, however substantial they once
+were, are now leading a life of mere outlines. I would like to give
+them a less faded expression, but the past is very chary of yielding up
+anything more than its shadows.
+
+The first who presents himself is the ruminative hermit already
+mentioned--a species of uninspired Thoreau. His name was Benjamin Lear.
+So far as his craziness went, he might have been a lineal descendant of
+that ancient king of Britain who figures on Shakespeare's page. Family
+dissensions made a recluse of King Lear; but in the case of Benjamin
+there were no mitigating circumstances. He had no family to trouble
+him, and his realm remained undivided. He owned an excellent farm on the
+south side of Sagamore Creek, a little to the west of the bridge, and
+might have lived at ease, if personal comfort had not been distasteful
+to him. Personal comfort entered into no part of Lear's. To be alone
+filled the little pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced himself in
+a wretched shanty, and barred the door, figuratively, against all the
+world. Wealth--what would have been wealth to him--lay within his reach,
+but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness,
+and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself
+absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar
+floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful
+disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive--at a distance.
+He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and
+potatoes, the product of his realm. He needed nothing but an island to
+be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he flitted like a frost-bitten
+apparition through the main street of Portsmouth, which he always
+designated as "the Bank," a name that had become obsolete fifty or a
+hundred years before. Thus, for nearly a quarter of a century, Benjamin
+Lear stood aloof from human intercourse. In his old age some of the
+neighbors offered him shelter during the tempestuous winter months; but
+he would have none of it--he defied wind and weather. There he lay in
+his dilapidated hovel in his last illness, refusing to allow any one to
+remain with him overnight--and the mercury four degrees below zero. Lear
+was born in 1720, and vegetated eighty-two years.
+
+I take it that Timothy Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse, would like
+to have more, was a person better worth knowing. His name reads like the
+title of some old-fashioned novel--"Timothy Winn, or the Memoirs of a
+Bashful Gentleman." He came to Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of
+the last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry
+Street what was called "a piece goods store." He was the third Timothy
+in his monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he
+inscribed on the sign over his shop door, "Timothy Winn, 3d," and was
+ever after called "Three-Penny Winn." That he enjoyed the pleasantry,
+and clung to his sign, goes to show that he was a person who would ripen
+on further acquaintance, were further acquaintance now practicable.
+His next-door neighbor, Mr. Leonard Serat, who kept a modest tailoring
+establishment, also tantalizes us a little with a dim intimation of
+originality. He plainly was without literary prejudices, for on one
+face of his swinging sign was painted the word Taylor, and on the other
+Tailor. This may have been a delicate concession to that part of the
+community--the greater part, probably--which would have spelled it with
+a y.
+
+The building in which Messrs. Winn and Serat had their shops was the
+property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of Demerara, the
+story of whose unconventional courtship of Miss Catherine Moffatt is
+pretty enough to bear retelling, and entitles him to a place in our
+limited collection of etchings. M. Rousselet had doubtless already mad
+excursions into the pays de tendre, and given Miss Catherine previous
+notice of the state of his heart, but it was not until one day during
+the hour of service at the Episcopal church that he brought matters to
+a crisis by handing to Miss Moffatt a small Bible, on the fly-leaf of
+which he had penciled the fifth verse of the Second Epistle of John--
+
+     "And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I
+     wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+     which we had from the beginning, that we love one another."
+
+This was not to be resisted, at lease not by Miss Catherine, who
+demurely handed the volume back to him with a page turned down at the
+sixteenth verse in the first chapter of Ruth--
+
+     "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
+     will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+     God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
+     buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but
+     death part thee and me."
+
+Aside from this quaint touch of romance, what attaches me to the
+happy pair--for the marriage was a fortunate one--is the fact that the
+Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion, which stood
+directly opposite my grandfather's house on Court Street and was torn
+down in my childhood, to my great consternation. The building had been
+unoccupied for a quarter of a century, and was fast falling into decay
+with all its rich wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not
+full of ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
+ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather's
+house just across the way? Where else could they bestow themselves so
+conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in process of destruction, I
+used to peep round the corner of our barn at the workmen, and watch the
+indignant phantoms go soaring upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.
+
+A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary
+Atkinson (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to the lot
+of the Rev. William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church between 1733
+and 1747. From the worldly standpoint, it was a fine match for the
+Newcastle clergyman--beauty, of the eagle-beaked kind; wealth, her share
+of the family plate; high birth, a sister to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson.
+But if the exemplary man had cast his eyes lower, peradventure he had
+found more happiness, though ill-bred persons without family plate are
+not necessarily amiable. Like Socrates, this long-suffering divine had
+always with him an object on which to cultivate heavenly patience, and
+patience, says the Eastern proverb, is the key to content. The spirit
+of Xantippe seems to have taken possession of Mrs. Shurtleff immediately
+after her marriage. The freakish disrespect with which she used her
+meek consort was a heavy cross to bear at a period in New England when
+clerical dignity was at its highest sensitive point. Her devices for
+torturing the poor gentleman were inexhaustible. Now she lets his
+Sabbath ruffs go unstarched; now she scandalizes him by some unseemly
+and frivolous color in her attire; now she leaves him to cook his own
+dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she locks him in his study, whither
+he has retired for a moment or two of prayer, previous to setting forth
+to perform the morning service. The congregation has assembled; the
+sexton has tolled the bell twice as long as is custom, and is beginning
+a third carillon, full of wonder that his reverence does not appear;
+and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family pew with a face as
+complacent as that of the cat that has eaten the canary. Presently the
+deacons appeal to her for information touching the good doctor. Mistress
+Shurtleff sweetly tells them that the good doctor was in his study when
+she left home. There he is found, indeed, and released from durance,
+begging the deacons to keep his mortification secret, to "give it an
+understanding, but no tongue." Such was the discipline undergone by
+the worthy Dr. Shurtleff on his earthly pilgrimage. A portrait of
+this patient man--now a saint somewhere--hangs in the rooms of the New
+England Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston. There he can be
+seen in surplice and bands, with his lamblike, apostolic face looking
+down upon the heavy antiquarian labors of his busy descendants.
+
+Whether or not a man is to be classed as eccentric who vanishes without
+rhyme or reason on his wedding-night is a query left to the reader's
+decision. We seem to have struck a matrimonial vein, and must work
+it out. In 1768, Mr. James McDonough was one of the wealthiest men in
+Portsmouth, and the fortunate suitor for the hand of a daughter of Jacob
+Sheafe, a town magnate. The home of the bride was decked and lighted
+for the nuptials, the banquet-table was spread, and the guests were
+gathered. The minister in his robe stood by the carven mantelpiece,
+book in hand, and waited. Then followed an awkward interval--there was
+a hitch somewhere. A strange silence fell upon the laughing groups; the
+air grew tense with expectation; in the pantry, Amos Boggs, the butler,
+in his agitation split a bottle of port over his new cinnamon-colored
+small-clothes. Then a whisper--a whisper suppressed these twenty
+minutes--ran through the apartments,--"The bridegroom has not come!". He
+never came. The mystery of that night remains a mystery after the lapse
+of a century and a quarter.
+
+What had become of James McDonough? The assassination of so notable a
+person in a community where every strange face was challenged, where
+every man's antecedents were known, could not have been accomplished
+without leaving some slight traces. Not a shadow of foul play was
+discovered. That McDonough had been murdered or had committed suicide
+were theories accepted at first by a few, and then by no one. On the
+other hand, he was in love with his fiancee, he had wealth, power,
+position--why had he fled? He was seen a moment on the public street,
+and then never seen again. It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile
+the bewilderment of the bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough
+had been waylaid and killed, she could mourn for him. If he had deserted
+her, she could wrap herself in her pride. But neither course lay open to
+her, then or afterward. In one of the Twice Told Tales Hawthorne deals
+with a man named Wakefield, who disappears with like suddenness,
+and lives unrecognized for twenty years in a street not far from his
+abandoned hearthside. Such expunging of one's self was not possible in
+Portsmouth; but I never think of McDonough without recalling Wakefield.
+I have an inexplicable conviction that for many a year James McDonough,
+in some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the effect of his own
+startling disappearance.
+
+Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a personage
+bearing the ponderous title of King's Attorney, and carrying much
+gold lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr. Wyseman Clagett, of
+Bristol, England, where his father dwelt on the manor of Broad Oaks,
+in a mansion with twelve chimneys, and kept a coach and eight or ten
+servants. Up to the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman
+Clagett had evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His
+wealth consisted of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his
+lapels, and the tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with
+these he contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the
+young beauties of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had
+plighted troth with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to return
+home with a disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of violent temper and
+ingenious vindictiveness, and proved more than a sufficient punishment
+for Lettice's infidelity. The trifling fact that Warner was dead--he
+died shortly after his return--did not interfere with the course of
+Mr. Clagett's jealousy; he was haunted by the suspicion that Lettice
+regretted her first love, having left nothing undone to make her do so.
+"This is to pay Warner's debts," remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched
+off the table-cloth and wrecked the tea-things.
+
+In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor. The noun
+Clagett speedily turned itself into a verb; "to Clagett" meant "to
+prosecute;" they were convertible terms. In spite of his industrious
+severity, and his royal emoluments, if such existed, the exchequer of
+the King's Attorney showed a perpetual deficit. The stratagems to
+which he resorted from time to time in order to raise unimportant sums
+reminded one of certain scenes in Moliere's comedies.
+
+Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They were
+made for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and
+this was their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his
+servants to pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some
+sailor drinking at an inn: the constable arrested the sailor or the
+countryman, as the case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr.
+Clagett; Mr. Clagett read the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him
+five dollars and costs. The plunder was then divided between the
+conspirators--two hearts that beat as one--Clagett, of course, getting
+the lion's share. Justice was never administered in a simpler manner in
+any country. This eminent legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the
+wick laid away in the little churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire. It
+is a satisfaction, even after such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice
+survived the King's Attorney sufficiently long to be very happy with
+somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was scarcely eighteen when she married
+Wyseman Clagett.
+
+About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been
+a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of
+him as "the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton," as if one should say, "the
+well-known statesman, Daniel Webster." It is curious to observe how any
+sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where
+everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does
+not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only
+after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That
+happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the
+hens flying out of the loft window in his father's stable, which stood
+in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that
+though he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in
+no respect inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the
+window in the loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England
+Icarus alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was
+henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd
+moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as
+had not been detected in him previous to his mischance. As Polonius said
+of Hamlet--another unstrung mortal--Tilton's replies had "a happiness
+that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so
+prosperously be delivered of." One morning, he appeared at the
+flour-mill with a sack of corn to be ground for the almshouse, and was
+asked what he knew. "Some things I know," replied poor Tilton, "and some
+things I don't know. I know the miller's hogs grow fat, but I don't know
+whose corn they fat on." To borrow another word from Polonius, though
+this be madness, yet there was method in it. Tilton finally brought up
+in the almshouse, where he was allowed the liberty of roaming at will
+through the town. He loved the water-side as if he had had all his
+senses. Often he was seen to stand for hours with a sunny, torpid smile
+on his lips, gazing out upon the river where its azure ruffles itself
+into silver against the islands. He always wore stuck in his hat a
+few hen's feathers, perhaps with some vague idea of still associating
+himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come into that category.
+
+George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another
+complexion, a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and one of
+His Majesty's Council in 1766--a man with the blood of the lion and
+the unicorn in every vein. He remained to the bitter end, and beyond,
+a devout royalist, prizing his shoe-buckles, not because they were of
+chased silver, but because they bore the tower mark and crown stamp. He
+stoutly objected to oral prayer, on the ground that it gave rogues and
+hypocrites an opportunity to impose on honest folk. He was punctilious
+in his attendance at church, and unfailing in his responses, though not
+of a particularly devotional temperament. On one occasion, at least, his
+sincerity is not to be questioned. He had been deeply irritated by some
+encroachments on the boundaries of certain estates, and had gone to
+church that forenoon with his mind full of the matter. When the minister
+in the course of reading the service came to the apostrophe, "Cursed be
+he who removeth his neighbor's landmark," Mr. Jeffrey's feelings were
+too many for him, and he cried out "Amen!" in a tone of voice that
+brought smiles to the adjoining pews.
+
+Mr. Jaffrey's last will and testament was a whimsical document, in spite
+of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper. It had originally
+been Mr. Jaffrey's plan to leave his possessions to his beloved friend,
+Colonel Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel by some maladroitness managed
+to turn the current of Pactolus in another direction. The vast property
+was bequeathed to George Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator's grandnephew,
+on condition that the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name
+of Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no profession
+excepting that of gentleman. There is an immense amount of Portsmouth
+as well as George Jaffrey in that final clause. George the fourth
+handsomely complied with the requirements, and dying at the age of
+sixty-six, without issue or assets, was the last of that particular line
+of Georges. I say that he handsomely complied with the requirements of
+the will; but my statement appears to be subject to qualification,
+for on the day of his obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic
+contemporary: "Well, yes, Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but
+not eminent in his profession."
+
+This modest exhibition of profiles, in which I have attempted to
+preserve no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of Dr.
+Joseph Moses.
+
+If Boston in the colonial days had her Mather Byles, Portsmouth had her
+Dr. Joseph Moses. In their quality as humorists, the outlines of both
+these gentlemen have become rather broken and indistinct. "A jest's
+prosperity lies in the ear that hears it." Decanted wit inevitably loses
+its bouquet. A clever repartee belongs to the precious moment in
+which it is broached, and is of a vintage that does not usually bear
+transportation. Dr. Moses--he received his diploma not from the College
+of Physicians, but from the circumstance of his having once drugged
+his private demijohn of rum, and so nailed an inquisitive negro named
+Sambo--Dr. Moses, as he was always called, had been handed down to us by
+tradition as a fellow of infinite jest and of most excellent fancy; but
+I must confess that I find his high spirits very much evaporated.
+His humor expended itself, for the greater part, in practical
+pleasantries--like that practiced on the minion Sambo--but these
+diversions, however facetious to the parties concerned, lack magnetism
+for outsiders. I discover nothing about him so amusing as the fact that
+he lived in a tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded
+nor shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the discarded shingles
+of the Old South Church when the roof of that edifice was repaired.
+
+Dr. Moses, like many persons of his time and class, was a man of protean
+employment--joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had much pithy and
+fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He certainly impressed the
+Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of uncommon parts, for the Honorable
+Secretary of the Province, like a second Haroun Al Raschid, often
+summoned the barber to entertain him with his company. One evening--and
+this is the only reproducible instance of the doctor's readiness--Mr.
+Atkinson regaled his guest with a diminutive glass of choice Madeira.
+The doctor regarded it against the light with the half-closed eye of
+the connoisseur, and after sipping the molten topaz with satisfaction,
+inquired how old it was. "Of the vintage of about sixty years ago," was
+the answer. "Well," said the doctor reflectively, "I never in my life
+saw so small a thing of such an age." There are other mots of his on
+record, but their faces are suspiciously familiar. In fact, all the
+witty things were said aeons ago. If one nowadays perpetrates an
+original joke, one immediately afterward finds it in the Sanskirt. I
+am afraid that Dr. Joseph Moses has no very solid claims on us. I have
+given him place here because he has long had the reputation of a wit,
+which is almost as good as to be one.
+
+
+
+
+VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston to
+Portsmouth--it took place somewhat more than forty years ago--was
+attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in the crowded
+station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was unobserved at the time. The
+catastrophe was followed, though not immediately, by death, and that
+also, curiously enough, was unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial
+train, freighted with so many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran
+over and killed--LOCAL CHARACTER.
+
+Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little community, and
+had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to time it had calmly
+produced an individual built on plans and specifications of its own,
+without regard to the prejudices and conventionalities of outlying
+districts. This individual was purely indigenous. He was born in the
+town, he lived to a good old age in the town, and never went out of the
+place, until he was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only
+fifty-six miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity--only fifty-six
+miles by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles distant
+in effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged
+to take a great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story
+mud-turtle--if zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate
+so daring an invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the
+morning, you dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city
+with the golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always
+the coach had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had
+not gone lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in Portsmouth, this
+journey was an event which occurred only twice or thrice during life. To
+the typical individual with whom I am for the moment dealing, it never
+occurred at all. The town was his entire world; he was a parochial as
+a Parisian; Market Street was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North
+End his Bois de Boulogne.
+
+Of course there were varieties of local characters without his
+limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India trade;
+elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal peculiarities; one
+or two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of coat, haunting the Athenaeum
+reading-room; ex-sea captains, with rings on their fingers, like Simon
+Danz's visitors in Longfellow's poem--men who had played busy parts in
+the bustling world, and had drifted back to Old Strawberry Bank in the
+tranquil sunset of their careers. I may say, in passing, that these
+ancient mariners, after battling with terrific hurricanes and typhoons
+on every known sea, not infrequently drowned themselves in pleasant
+weather in small sail-boats on the Piscataqua River. Old sea-dogs who
+had commanded ships of four or five hundred tons had naturally slight
+respect for the potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there
+was to be no further increase of these odd sticks--if I may call them
+so, in no irreverent mood--after those innocent-looking parallel bars
+indissolubly linked Portsmouth with the capital of the Commonwealth of
+Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be changed, the old angles
+to be pared off, new horizons to be regarded. The individual, as an
+eccentric individual, was to undergo great modifications. If he were not
+to become extinct--a thing little likely--he was at least to lose his
+prominence.
+
+However, as I said, local character, in the sense in which the term
+is here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering death, and
+passed away so peacefully and silently as not to attract general, or
+perhaps any, notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my
+boyhood. The last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had
+come in, long before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half
+obsolete customs and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was
+not too late, for example, to catch the last town crier--one Nicholas
+Newman, whom I used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort
+of affection.
+
+Nicholas Newman--Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being
+Edward--was a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat
+bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have
+never since seen a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple.
+The only thing about him that matched the instrument of his office was
+his voice. His "Hear All!" still deafens memory's ear. I remember that
+he had a queer way of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him
+had originally intended a crab, but thought better of it, and made a
+town-crier. Of the crustacean intention only a moist thumb remained,
+which served Mr. Newman in good stead in the delivery of the Boston
+evening papers, for he was incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties
+were to cry auctions, funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals,
+public meetings, and articles lost or found. He was especially strong in
+announcing the loss of reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden
+ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when
+fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person,
+but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as
+a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity
+in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman
+spoken of as "that horrid man." He was a picturesque figure.
+
+Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with
+those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple
+of the Old North every night at nine o'clock--the vocal remains of
+the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his
+losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can
+more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different
+personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine
+o'clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a
+time at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a
+gay little shop (he called it "an Emporium"), as barber shops generally
+are, decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers
+of tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes--whose antecedents to us boys were
+wrapped in thrilling mystery, we imagined him to have been a prince in
+his native land--was a colored man, not too dark "for human nature's
+daily food," and enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics
+in town. At this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every
+official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore a
+name that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or so.
+The situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a Chinese
+policeman, with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper pocket handkerchief,
+patrolling Congress Street.
+
+Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as straight
+as a pine. He possessed his race's sweet temper, simplicity, and vanity.
+His martial bearing was a positive factor in the effectiveness of the
+Portsmouth Greys, whenever those bloodless warriors paraded. As he
+brought up the rear of the last platoon, with his infantry cap stuck
+jauntily on the left side of his head and a bright silver cup slung on
+a belt at his hip, he seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing
+things in the display. To himself he was pretty much "all the company."
+He used to say, with a drollness which did not strike me until years
+afterwards, "Boys, I and Cap'n Towle is goin' to trot out 'the Greys'
+to-morroh." Though strictly honest in all business dealings, his
+tropical imagination, whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of
+autobiography, left much to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared
+with Sol Holmes on such occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid
+integrity. Sol Holmes's tragic end was in singular contrast with his
+sunny temperament. One night, long ago, he threw himself from the deck
+of a Sound steamer, somewhere between Stonington and New York. What led
+or drove him to the act never transpired.
+
+There are few men who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of which I
+write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue wheelbarrow.
+I find it difficult to describe him other than vaguely, possibly because
+Wilbird had no expression whatever in his countenance. With his vacant
+white face lifted to the clouds, seemingly oblivious of everything, yet
+going with a sort of heaven-given instinct straight to his destination,
+he trundled that rattling wheelbarrow for many a year over Portsmouth
+cobblestones. He was so unconscious of his environment that sometimes a
+small boy would pop into the empty wheelbarrow and secure a ride without
+Wibird arriving at any very clear knowledge of the fact. His employment
+in life was to deliver groceries and other merchandise to purchasers.
+This he did in a dreamy, impersonal kind of way. It was as if a spirit
+had somehow go hold of an earthly wheelbarrow and was trundling it quite
+unconsciously, with no sense of responsibility. One day he appeared at
+a kitchen door with a two-gallon molasses jug, the top of which was
+wanting. It was not longer a jug, but a tureen. When the recipient of
+the damaged article remonstrated with "Goodness gracious, Wibird! You
+have broken the jug," his features lighted up, and he seemed immensely
+relieved. "I thought," He remarked, "I heerd somethink crack!"
+
+Wibird Penhallow's heaviest patron was the keeper of a variety store,
+and the first specimen of a pessimist I ever encountered. He was an
+excellent specimen. He took exception to everything. He objected to the
+telegraph, to the railway, to steam in all its applications. Some of his
+arguments, I recollect, made a deep impression on my mind. "Nowadays,"
+he once observed to me, "if your son or your grandfather drops dead at
+the other end of creation, you know of it in ten minutes. What's the
+use? Unless you are anxious to know he's dead, you've got just two or
+three weeks more to be miserable in." He scorned the whole business, and
+was faithful to his scorn. When he received a telegram, which was rare,
+he made a point of keeping it awhile unopened. Through the exercise of
+this whim he once missed an opportunity of buying certain goods to great
+advantage. "There!" he exclaimed, "if the telegraph hadn't been invented
+the idiot would have written to me, and I'd have sent a letter by return
+coach, and got the goods before he found out prices had gone up in
+Chicago. If that boy brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs,
+I'll throw an axe-handle at him." His pessimism extended up, or down, to
+generally recognized canons of orthography. They were all iniquitous. If
+k-n-i-f-e spelled knife, then, he contended, k-n-i-f-e-s was the plural.
+Diverting tags, written by his own hand in conformity with this theory,
+were always attached to articles in his shop window. He is long since
+ded, as he himself would have put it, but his phonetic theory appears to
+have survived him in crankish brains here and there. As my discouraging
+old friend was not exactly a public character, like the town crier or
+Wibird Penhallow, I have intentionally thrown a veil over his identity.
+I have, so to speak, dropped into his pouch a grain or two of that
+magical fern-seed which was supposed by our English ancestors, in
+Elizabeth's reign, to possess the quality of rendering a man invisible.
+
+Another person who singularly interested me at this epoch was a person
+with whom I had never exchanged a word, whose voice I had never heard,
+but whose face was as familiar to me as every day could make it. For
+each morning as I went to school, and each afternoon as I returned, I
+saw this face peering out of a window in the second story of a shambling
+yellow house situated in Washington Street, not far from the corner of
+State. Whether some malign disease had fixed him to the chair he sat on,
+or whether he had lost the use of his legs, or, possible, had none (the
+upper part of him was that of a man in admirable health), presented a
+problem which, with that curious insouciance of youth I made no attempt
+to solve. It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of
+that house. I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which
+wove itself about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the
+master of a large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta;
+while still in his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck,
+and seated himself at that window--where the outlook must have been the
+reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of the
+day, and the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry's bakery-cart was the
+only sound that ever shattered the silence. Whether it was an amatory
+or a financial disappointment that turned him into a hermit was left to
+ingenious conjecture. But there he sat, year in and year out, with his
+cheek so close to the window that the nearest pane became permanently
+blurred with his breath; for after his demise the blurr remained.
+
+In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for an
+undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was a sexton
+in Portsmouth--his name escapes me, but his attributes do not--whose
+impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture of the
+Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was the striking figure,
+even to the eclipsing of the involuntary object of the ceremony. His
+occasions, happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other
+public services that of furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties.
+I always thought--perhaps it was the working of an unchastened
+imagination--that he managed to throw into his ice-creams a peculiar
+chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzzi--arcades ambo--the rival
+confectioners.
+
+Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species
+of restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing
+confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both
+gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines, but
+neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of those
+prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain snuffy little
+shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent side-streets where the football
+of commerce seemed an incongruous thing. These shops were never intended
+in nature. They had an impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not
+recall one that was not located in a private residence, and was not
+evidently the despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis,
+similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyrcheon in The House
+of the Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street door--the upper
+section left open in summer--ushered you, with a sudden jangle of bell
+that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall, haunted
+by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence, through
+another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front parlor,
+but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown, wooden counter, and several
+rows of little drawers built up against the picture-papered wall behind
+it. Through much use the paint on these drawers was worn off in circles
+round the polished brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small
+article required by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a
+peppermint Gibraltar--the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery
+which, when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any
+Portsmouth boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a single
+tooth left unbroken. The proprietors of these little knick-knack
+establishments were the nicest creatures, somehow suggesting venerable
+doves. They were always aged ladies, sometimes spinsters, sometimes
+relicts of daring mariners, beached long before. They always wore crisp
+muslin caps and steel-rimmed spectacles; they were not always amiable,
+and no wonder, for even doves may have their rheumatism; but such as
+they were, they were cherished in young hearts, and are, I take it,
+impossible to-day.
+
+When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that it
+must have been in some respects unique among New England towns. There
+were, for instance, no really poor persons in the place; every one had
+some sufficient calling or an income to render it unnecessary; vagrants
+and paupers were instantly snapped up and provided for at "the Farm."
+There was, however, in a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a
+decayed old gentlewoman, occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a
+suspicion of maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her
+by the neighborhood--as a matter of course, and involving no sense of
+dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is
+given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
+
+I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as they were
+affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that
+stir in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my
+purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes
+that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like
+Portsmouth--the obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the
+obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England
+the impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and
+women--quaint, shrewd, and racy of the soil--who linger in little,
+silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England roads and
+by-ways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in the record of
+some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or Mary Wilkins, on whose
+sympathetic page they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an
+atmosphere of long-kept lavender and pennyroyal.
+
+Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower.
+The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated,
+the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement
+more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric
+finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a
+larger world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping
+hand of new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from
+Cambridge, Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico,
+and his ulster from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state
+of Odd Stick; he has ceased to be parochial; he is no longer distinct;
+he is simply the Average Man.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+     ADAMS, NATHANIEL
+     ADDISON, JOSEPH
+     ALLEN, WILLIAM
+     ANANIAS
+     ATKINSON, THEODORE
+     AUSTIN, REBECCA
+     BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE
+     BLAY, RUTH
+     BOGGS, AMOS
+     BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN
+     BRIDGET, MOLLY
+     BROWN, REV. ARTHUR
+     BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D.
+     BRUCE, CYRUS
+     BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES
+     BYLES, REV. MATHER
+     CAROLINE, QUEEN
+     CHADBORN, HUMPHREY
+     CHARLES, PRINCE
+     CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE
+     CLAGETT, WYSEMAN
+     COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON
+     D'ORLEANS, DUC
+     DUNYON, WILLIAM
+     ELIZABETH, QUEEN
+     FENTON, JOHN
+     FOWLE, DANIEL
+     FOWLE, PRIMUS
+     FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
+     FURBER, THOMAS
+     GEORGE I
+     GERRY, ELBRIDGE
+     GORGES, SIR FERDINAND
+     GUAST, PIERRE DE
+     HAM, SUPPLY
+     HANCOCK, JOHN
+     HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
+     HILTON, MARTHA
+     HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+     HOLMES, SOL
+     JAFFREY, GEORGE
+     JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY
+     JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
+     KEAIS, SAMUAL
+     KEKUANAOA
+     KENNY, PENELOPE
+     KNOX, GENERAL HENRY
+     LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE
+     LAIGHTON, ALBERT
+     LAIGHTON, OSCAR
+     LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN
+     LEAR, BENJAMIN
+     LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
+     MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD
+     MCDONOUGH, JAMES
+     MASON, JEREMIAH
+     MASON, JOHN
+     MASON, JOHN TUFTON
+     MARCH, CLEMENT
+     MATHER, REV. COTTON
+     MESERVE, GEORGE
+     MICHELANGELO
+     MITCHEL, LETTUCE
+     MOFFATT, CATHERINE
+     MOLIERE
+     MONTPENSIER, DUC DE
+     MOSES, JOSEPH
+     NEWMAN, EDWARD
+     NOBLE, MARK
+     ODIORNE, EBEN L.
+     PACKER, THOMAS
+     PEDUZZI, DOMINIC
+     PENHALLOW, WIBIRD
+     PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM
+     PEPYS, SAMUAL
+     PHILIPPE, LOUIS
+     PHIPPES, THOMAS
+     PHIPPS, GOVERNOR
+     PICKERING, JOHN
+     PITT, WILLIAM
+     POTTLE, WILLIAM
+     PRING, MARTIN
+     QUINCY, DOROTHY
+     ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE
+     ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS
+     RUTLEDGE, EDWARD
+     SERAT, LEONARD
+     SEWELL, JONATHAN
+     SHAKESPEARE
+     SHEAFE, JACOB
+     SHERBURNE, HENRY
+     SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON
+     SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM
+     SIMPSON, SARAH
+     SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN
+     SOCRATES
+     STAVERS, DAME
+     STAVERS, JOHN
+     STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE
+     STOODLEY, JAMES
+     THAXTER, CELIA
+     THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
+     TILTON, JOHNNY
+     TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM
+     WALTON, GEORGE
+     WARNER, JONATHAN
+     WASHINGTON, GEORGE
+     WEBSTER, DANIEL
+     WENTWORTH, BENNING
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D
+     WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA
+     WENTWORTH, MARY
+     WENTWORTH, MICHAEL
+     WENTWORTH, SARAH
+     WESTWERE, EDWARD
+     WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF
+     WIBIRD, RICHARD
+     WILKINS, MARY E.
+     WINN, TIMOTHY
+     WITHER, GEORGE
+     XANTIPPE
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Old Town By The Sea
+
+Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #1861]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan L. Farley and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+                         PISCATAQUA RIVER
+
+                         Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
+                         By woods, and fields of corn,
+                         Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
+                         Upon my birthday morn.
+
+                         But I within a city, I,
+                         So full of vague unrest,
+                         Would almost give my life to lie
+                         An hour upon upon thy breast.
+
+                         To let the wherry listless go,
+                         And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
+                         Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
+                         Like the red harbor-buoy;
+
+                         To sit in happy indolence,
+                         To rest upon the oars,
+                         And catch the heavy earthy scents
+                         That blow from summer shores;
+
+                         To see the rounded sun go down,
+                         And with its parting fires
+                         Light up the windows of the town
+                         And burn the tapering spires;
+
+                         And then to hear the muffled tolls
+                         From steeples slim and white,
+                         And watch, among the Isles of Shoals,
+                         The Beacon&rsquo;s orange light.
+
+                         O River! flowing to the main
+                         Through woods, and fields of corn,
+                         Hear thou my longing and my pain
+                         This sunny birthday morn;
+
+                         And take this song which fancy shapes
+                         To music like thine own,
+                         And sing it to the cliffs and capes
+                         And crags where I am known!
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <big><b>AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA</b></big> </a>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <table summary="">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII. </a>&nbsp;&nbsp;
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> INDEX OF NAMES </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old. When one reflects on
+      the countless centuries that have gone to the for-mation of this crust of
+      earth on which we temporarily move, the most ancient cities on its surface
+      seem merely things of the week before last. It was only the other day,
+      then&mdash;that is to say, in the month of June, 1603&mdash;that one
+      Martin Pring, in the ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty tons
+      burden, from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River. The
+      Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for consort the
+      Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men. After following the
+      windings of &ldquo;the brave river&rdquo; for twelve miles or more, the two vessels
+      turned back and put to sea again, having failed in the chief object of the
+      expedition, which was to obtain a cargo of the medicinal sassafras-tree,
+      from the bark of which, as well known to our ancestors, could be distilled
+      the Elixir of Life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or four
+      miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring probably
+      effected one of his several landings. The beautiful stream widens suddenly
+      at this place, and the green banks, then covered with a network of
+      strawberry vines, and sloping invitingly to the lip of the crystal water,
+      must have won the tired mariners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of oak,
+      hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to speak of, nor
+      did they encounter&mdash;what would have been infinitely less to their
+      taste&mdash;and red-men. Here and there were discoverable the scattered
+      ashes of fires where the Indians had encamped earlier in the spring; they
+      were absent now, at the silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish
+      abounded at that season. The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate
+      breath of wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
+      the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly in the
+      tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone mad. No ruder
+      sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval solitude. Master Pring
+      would scarcely recognize the spot were he to land there to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of the
+      Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua&mdash;Captain John Smith of
+      famous memory. After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand combats, and doing all
+      sorts of doughty deeds wherever he chanced to decorate the globe with his
+      presence, he had come with two vessels to the fisheries on the rocky
+      selvage of Maine, when curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him to
+      examine the neighboring shore lines. With eight of his men in a small
+      boat, a ship&rsquo;s yawl, he skirted the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod,
+      keeping his eye open. This keeping his eye open was a peculiarity of the
+      little captain; possibly a family trait. It was Smith who really
+      discovered the Isles of Shoals, exploring in person those masses of
+      bleached rock&mdash;those &ldquo;isles assez hautes,&rdquo; of which the French
+      navigator Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, had caught a bird&rsquo;s-eye glimpse
+      through the twilight in 1605. Captain Smith christened the group Smith&rsquo;s
+      Isles, a title which posterity, with singular persistence of ingratitude,
+      has ignored. It was a tardy sense of justice that expressed itself a few
+      years ago in erecting on Star Island a simple marble shaft to the memory
+      of JOHN SMITH&mdash;the multitudinous! Perhaps this long delay is
+      explained by a natural hesitation to label a monument so ambiguously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The modern Jason, meanwhile, was not without honor in his own country,
+      whatever may have happened to him in his own house, for the poet George
+      Wither addressed a copy of pompous verses &ldquo;To his Friend Captain Smith,
+      upon his Description of New England.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he says&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Sir: your Relations I haue read: which shew
+     Ther&rsquo;s reason I should honor them and you:
+     And if their meaning I have vnderstood,
+     I dare to censure thus: Your Project&rsquo;s good;
+     And may (if follow&rsquo;d) doubtlesse quit the paine
+     With honour, pleasure and a trebble gaine;
+     Beside the benefit that shall arise
+     To make more happy our Posterities.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The earliest map of this portion of our seaboard was prepared by Smith and
+      laid before Prince Charles, who asked to give the country a name. He
+      christened it New England. In that remarkable map the site of Portsmouth
+      is call Hull, and Kittery and York are known as Boston.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was doubtless owing to Captain John Smith&rsquo;s representation on his
+      return to England that the Laconia Company selected the banks of the
+      Piscataqua for their plantation. Smith was on an intimate footing with Sir
+      Ferinand Gorges, who, five years subsequently, made a tour of inspection
+      along the New England coast, in company with John Mason, then Governor of
+      Newfoundland. One of the results of this summer cruise is the town of
+      Portsmouth, among whose leafy ways, and into some of whose old-fashioned
+      houses, I purpose to take the reader, if he have an idle hour on his
+      hands. Should we meet the flitting ghost of some old-time worthy, on the
+      staircase or at a lonely street corner, the reader must be prepared for
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IT is not supposable that the early settlers selected the site of their
+      plantation on account of its picturesqueness. They were influenced
+      entirely by the lay of the land, its nearness and easy access to the sea,
+      and the secure harbor it offered to their fishing-vessels; yet they could
+      not have chosen a more beautiful spot had beauty been the sole
+      consideration. The first settlement was made at Odiorne&rsquo;s Point&mdash;the
+      Pilgrims&rsquo; Rock of New Hampshire; there the Manor, or Mason&rsquo;s Hall, was
+      built by the Laconia Company in 1623. It was not until 1631 that the Great
+      House was erected by Humphrey Chadborn on Strawberry Bank. Mr. Chadborn,
+      consciously or unconsciously, sowed a seed from which a city has sprung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the Piscataqua,
+      about two miles from the sea as the crow flies&mdash;three miles following
+      the serpentine course of the river. The stream broadens suddenly at this
+      point, and at flood tide, lying without a ripple in a basin formed by the
+      interlocked islands and the mainland, it looks more like an island lake
+      than a river. To the unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet. Standing
+      on one of the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court Street, a
+      stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the ocean. A
+      little observation, however, would show him that he was in a seaport. The
+      rich red rust on the gables and roofs of ancient buildings looking seaward
+      would tell him that. There is a fitful saline flavor in the air, and if
+      while he gazed a dense white fog should come rolling in, like a line of
+      phantom breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the river, though
+      few of the notable houses that remain are to be found there. Like all New
+      England settlements, Portsmouth was built of wood, and has been subjected
+      to extensive conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick building that
+      is not shockingly modern. The first house of the kind was erected by
+      Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the fateful hand
+      of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very old town, especially as
+      you saunter along the streets down by the river. The worm-eaten wharves,
+      some of them covered by a sparse, unhealthy beard of grass, and the
+      weather-stained, unoccupied warehouses are sufficient to satisfy a
+      moderate appetite for antiquity. These deserted piers and these long rows
+      of empty barracks, with their sarcastic cranes projecting from the eaves,
+      rather puzzle the stranger. Why this great preparation for a commercial
+      activity that does not exist, and evidently had not for years existed?
+      There are no ships lying at the pier-heads; there are no gangs of
+      stevedores staggering under the heavy cases of merchandise; here and there
+      is a barge laden down to the bulwarks with coal, and here and there a
+      square-rigged schooner from Maine smothered with fragrant planks and
+      clapboards; an imported citizen is fishing at the end of the wharf, a
+      ruminative freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect sympathy with the indolent
+      sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor of these crumbling piles and
+      ridiculous warehouses, from which even the ghost of prosperity has flown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time, however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive trade with
+      the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston and
+      New York. At the windows of these musty counting-rooms which overlook the
+      river near Spring Market used to stand portly merchants, in knee breeches
+      and silver shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with ruffles at the wrist,
+      waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows; the cries of stevedores
+      and the chants of sailors at the windlass used to echo along the shore
+      where all is silence now. For reasons not worth setting forth, the trade
+      with the Indies abruptly closed, having ruined as well as enriched many a
+      Portsmouth adventurer. This explains the empty warehouses and the unused
+      wharves. Portsmouth remains the interesting widow of a once very lively
+      commerce. I fancy that few fortunes are either made or lost in Portsmouth
+      nowadays. Formerly it turned out the best ships, as it did the ablest ship
+      captains, in the world. There were families in which the love for blue
+      water was in immemorial trait. The boys were always sailors; &ldquo;a
+      grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck
+      to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before
+      the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blasted
+      against his sire and grandsire.&rdquo; (1. Hawthorne in his introduction to The
+      Scarlet Letter.) With thousands of miles of sea-line and a score or two of
+      the finest harbors on the globe, we have adroitly turned over our carrying
+      trade to foreign nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other days, as I have said, a high maritime spirit was characteristic
+      of Portsmouth. The town did a profitable business in the war of 1812,
+      sending out a large fleet of the sauciest small craft on record. A
+      pleasant story is told of one of these little privateers&mdash;the
+      Harlequin, owned and commanded by Captain Elihu Brown. The Harlequin one
+      day gave chase to a large ship, which did not seem to have much fight
+      aboard, and had got it into close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger
+      threw open her ports, and proved to be His Majesty&rsquo;s Ship-of-War Bulwark,
+      seventy-four guns. Poor Captain Brown!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Portsmouth has several large cotton factories and one or two corpulent
+      breweries; it is a wealthy old town, with a liking for first mortgage
+      bonds; but its warmest lover will not claim for it the distinction of
+      being a great mercantile centre. The majority of her young men are forced
+      to seek other fields to reap, and almost every city in the Union, and many
+      a city across the sea, can point to some eminent merchant, lawyer, or what
+      not, as &ldquo;a Portsmouth boy.&rdquo; Portsmouth even furnished the late king of the
+      Sandwich Islands, Kekuanaoa, with a prime minister, and his nankeen
+      Majesty never had a better. The affection which all these exiles cherish
+      for their birthplace is worthy of remark. On two occasions&mdash;in 1852
+      and 1873, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of
+      Strawberry Bank&mdash;the transplanted sons of Portsmouth were seized with
+      an impulse to return home. Simultaneously and almost without concerted
+      action, the lines of pilgrims took up their march from every quarter of
+      the globe, and swept down with music and banners on the motherly old town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To come back to the wharves. I do not know of any spot with such a
+      fascinating air of dreams and idleness about it as the old wharf at the
+      end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once a noisy, busy place,
+      crowded with sailors and soldiers&mdash;in the war of 1812&mdash;gives an
+      emphasis to the quiet that broods over it to-day. The lounger who sits of
+      a summer afternoon on a rusty anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the
+      silent warehouses, and look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring past
+      the town, cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having taken
+      itself off elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a slumberous, delightful, lazy place it is! The sunshine seems to lie
+      a foot deep on the planks of the dusty wharf, which yields up to the
+      warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum, molasses, and spice that
+      used to be piled upon it. The river is as blue as the inside of a
+      harebell. The opposite shore, in the strangely shifting magic lights of
+      sky and water, stretches along like the silvery coast of fairyland.
+      Directly opposite you is the navy yard, and its neat officers&rsquo; quarters
+      and workshops and arsenals, and its vast shiphouses, in which the keel of
+      many a famous frigate has been laid. Those monster buildings on the
+      water&rsquo;s edge, with their roofs pierced with innumerable little windows,
+      which blink like eyes in the sunlight, and the shiphouses. On your right
+      lies a cluster of small islands,&mdash;there are a dozen or more in the
+      harbor&mdash;on the most extensive of which you see the fading-away
+      remains of some earthworks thrown up in 1812. Between this&mdash;Trefethren&rsquo;s
+      Island&mdash;and Peirce&rsquo;s Island lie the Narrows. Perhaps a bark or a
+      sloop-of-war is making up to town; the hulk is hidden amoung the islands,
+      and the topmasts have the effect of sweeping across the dry land. On your
+      left is a long bridge, more than a quarter of a mile in length, set upon
+      piles where the water is twenty or thirty feet deep, leading to the navy
+      yard and Kittery&mdash;the Kittery so often the theme of Whittier&rsquo;s verse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you. Its
+      changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds floating over
+      it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a place where the
+      scenery is more varied and striking; but there is a mandragora quality in
+      the atmosphere here that holds you to the spot, and makes the half-hours
+      seem like minutes. I could fancy a man sitting on the end of that old
+      wharf very contentedly for two or three years, provided it could be always
+      in June.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, too, one would desire it to be always high water. The tide falls
+      from eight to twelve feet, and when the water makes out between the
+      wharves some of the picturesqueness makes out also. A corroded section of
+      stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the skeleton of a hoopskirt protruding
+      from the tide mud like the remains of some old-time wreck, is apt to break
+      the enchantment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I fear I have given the reader an exaggerated idea of the solitude that
+      reigns along the river-side. Sometimes there is society here of an
+      unconventional kind, if you care to seek it. Aside from the foreign
+      gentleman before mentioned, you are likely to encounter, farther down the
+      shore toward the Point of Graves (a burial-place of the colonial period),
+      a battered and aged native fisherman boiling lobsters on a little gravelly
+      bench, where the river whispers and lisps among the pebbles as the tide
+      creeps in. It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or ex-pilot, with strands of
+      coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a face that has the expression of
+      a half-open clam. He is always ready to talk with you, this amphibious
+      person; and if he is not the most entertaining of gossips&mdash;more
+      weather-wise that Old Probabilities, and as full of moving incident as
+      Othello himself&mdash;then he is not the wintery-haired shipman I used to
+      see a few years ago on the strip of beach just beyond Liberty Bridge,
+      building his drift-wood fire under a great tin boiler, and making it
+      lively for a lot of reluctant lobsters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I imagine that very little change has taken place in this immediate
+      locality, known prosaically as Puddle Dock, during the past fifty or sixty
+      years. The view you get looking across Liberty Bridge, Water Street, is
+      probably the same in every respect that presented itself to the eyes of
+      the town folk a century ago. The flagstaff, on the right, is the
+      representative of the old &ldquo;standard of liberty&rdquo; which the Sons planted on
+      this spot in January, 1766, signalizing their opposition to the
+      enforcement of the Stamp Act. On the same occasion the patriots called at
+      the house of Mr. George Meserve, the agent for distributing the stamps in
+      New Hampshire, and relieved him of his stamp-master&rsquo;s commission, which
+      document they carried on the point of a sword through the town to Liberty
+      Bridge (the Swing Bridge), where they erected the staff, with the motto,
+      &ldquo;Liberty, Property, and no Stamp!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of November. On
+      the previous morning the &ldquo;New Hampshire Gazette&rdquo; appeared with a deep
+      black border and all the typographical emblems of affliction, for was not
+      Liberty dead? At all events, the &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo; itself was as good as dead,
+      since the printer could no longer publish it if he were to be handicapped
+      by a heavy tax. &ldquo;The day was ushered in by the tolling of all the bells in
+      town, the vessels in the harbor had their colors hoisted half-mast high;
+      about three o&rsquo;clock a funeral procession was formed, having a coffin with
+      this inscription, LIBERTY, AGED 145, STAMPT. It moved from the state
+      house, with two unbraced drums, through the principal streets. As it
+      passed the Parade, minute-guns were fired; at the place of interment a
+      speech was delivered on the occasion, stating the many advantages we had
+      received and the melancholy prospect before us, at the seeming departure
+      of our invaluable liberties. But some sign of life appearing, Liberty was
+      not deposited in the grave; it was rescued by a number of her sons, the
+      motto changed to Liberty revived, and carried off in triumph. The
+      detestable Act was buried in its stead, and the clods of the valley were
+      laid upon it; the bells changed their melancholy sound to a more joyful
+      tone.&rdquo; (1. Annals of Portsmouth, by Nathaniel Adams, 1825.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this side glance at one of the curious humors of the time, we resume
+      our peregrinations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning down a lane on your left, a few rods beyond Liberty Bridge, you
+      reach a spot known as the Point of Graves, chiefly interesting as showing
+      what a graveyard may come to if it last long enough. In 1671 one Captain
+      John Pickering, of whom we shall have more to say, ceded to the town a
+      piece of ground on this neck for burial purposes. It is an odd-shaped lot,
+      comprising about half an acre, inclosed by a crumbling red brick wall two
+      or three feet high, with wood capping. The place is overgrown with
+      thistles, rank grass, and fungi; the black slate headstones have mostly
+      fallen over; those that still make a pretense of standing slant to every
+      point of the compass, and look as if they were being blown this way and
+      that by a mysterious gale which leaves everything else untouched; the
+      mounds have sunk to the common level, and the old underground tombs have
+      collapsed. Here and there the moss and weeds you can pick out some name
+      that shines in the history of the early settlement; hundreds of the flower
+      of the colony lie here, but the known and the unknown, gentle and simple,
+      mingle their dust on a perfect equality now. The marble that once bore a
+      haughty coat of arms is as smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless of
+      heraldry. The lion and the unicorn, wherever they appear on some cracked
+      slab, are very much tamed by time. The once fat-faced cherubs, with wing
+      at either cheek, are the merest skeletons now. Pride, pomp, grief, and
+      remembrance are all at end. No reverent feet come here, no tears fall
+      here; the old graveyard itself is dead! A more dismal, uncanny spot than
+      this at twilight would be hard to find. It is noticed that when the boys
+      pass it after nightfall, they always go by whistling with a gayety that is
+      perfectly hollow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us get into some cheerfuler neighborhood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass &ldquo;up town,&rdquo; the streets
+      grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious&mdash;streets
+      fringed with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private
+      dwellings, mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through
+      the centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
+      houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
+      the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
+      pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
+      sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
+      authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
+      within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty
+      of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when the
+      chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
+      fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
+      fair town&mdash;her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
+      more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain streets
+      in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm. You may
+      walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the overhanging
+      and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery even more
+      graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous elms and
+      maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the result of
+      chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken to preserve
+      the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to arboriculture. It
+      is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies to be expended in
+      setting out shade and ornamental trees along some favorite walk. Richards
+      Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading from Middle Street to the
+      South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of a citizen who gave the labor
+      of his own hands to the beautifying of that windswept and barren road the
+      cemetery. This fondness and care for trees seems to be a matter of
+      heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen instituted a fine of five
+      shillings for the cutting of timber or any other wood from off the town
+      common, excepting under special conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
+      streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of the
+      dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
+      crowded, but I have never happened to be in Portsmouth at the time. I
+      seldom pass through the narrow cobble-paved street without wondering where
+      the customers are that must keep all these flourishing little
+      establishments going. Congress Street&mdash;a more elegant thoroughfare
+      than Market&mdash;is the Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth. Among the
+      prominent buildings is the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and
+      library. From the high roof of this building the stroller will do well to
+      take a glance at the surrounding country. He will naturally turn seaward
+      for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he will see the
+      famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles away&mdash;Appledore, Smutty-Nose,
+      Star Island, White Island, etc.; there are nine of them in all. On
+      Appledore is Laighton&rsquo;s Hotel, and near it the summer cottage of Celia
+      Thaxter, the poet of the Isles. On the northern end of Star Island is the
+      quaint town of Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a sea-gull
+      on its highest rock. A mile southwest form Star Island lies White Island,
+      on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the most picturesque of
+      the group. Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in any but the serenest weather,
+      these wrinkled, scarred, are storm-smitten rocks, flanked by wicked sunken
+      ledges that grow white at the lip with rage when the great winds blow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea! and how
+      softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the unfinished fort
+      is! That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to reach which from Portsmouth
+      you have to cross three bridges with the most enchanting scenery in New
+      Hampshire lying on either hand. At Newcastle the poet Stedman has built
+      for his summerings an enviable little stone chateau&mdash;a seashell into
+      which I fancy the sirens creep to warm themselves during the winter
+      months. So it is never without its singer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir William
+      Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and where his tomb now
+      is, in his orchard across the road, a few hundred yards from the &ldquo;goodly
+      mansion&rdquo; he built. The knight&rsquo;s tomb and the old Pepperell House, which
+      has been somewhat curtailed of it fair proportions, are the objects of
+      frequent pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the river
+      with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of Kittery and
+      Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a picture worth climbing four
+      or five flights of stairs to gaze upon. Glancing down on the town nestled
+      in the foliage, it seems like a town dropped by chance in the midst of a
+      forest. Among the prominent objects which lift themselves above the tree
+      tops are the belfries of the various churches, the white façade of the
+      custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the Rockingham, the
+      principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find in Portsmouth one
+      of the most completely appointed hotels in the United States. The
+      antiquarian may lament the demolition of the old Bell Tavern, and think
+      regretfully of the good cheer once furnished the wayfarer by Master
+      Stavers at the sign of the Earl of Halifax, and by Master Stoodley at his
+      inn on Daniel Street; but the ordinary traveler will thank his stars, and
+      confess that his lines have fallen in pleasant places, when he finds
+      himself among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum&mdash;we are supposed to
+      be on terra firma again&mdash;stands the Old North Church, a substantial
+      wooden building, handsomely set on what is called The Parade, a large open
+      space formed by the junction of Congress, Market, Daniel, and Pleasant
+      streets. Here in days innocent of water-works stood the town pump, which
+      on more than one occasion served as whipping-post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number than their
+      architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church they are constructed
+      of wood or plain brick in the simplest style. St. John&rsquo;s Church is the
+      only one likely to attract the eye of a stranger. It is finely situated on
+      the crest of Church Hill, overlooking the ever-beautiful river. The
+      present edifice was built in 1808 on the site of what was known as Queen&rsquo;s
+      Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by fire December 24, 1806. The
+      chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline, who furnished the books for
+      the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two solid mahogany chairs, which are
+      still in use in St. John&rsquo;s. Within the chancel rail is a curious font of
+      porphyry, taken by Colonel John Tufton Mason at the capture of Senegal
+      from the French in 1758, and presented to the Episcopal Society on 1761.
+      The peculiarly sweet-toned bell which calls the parishioners of St. John&rsquo;s
+      together every Sabbath is, I believe, the same that formerly hung in the
+      belfry of the old Queen&rsquo;s Chapel. If so, the bell has a history of its
+      own. It was brought from Louisburg at the time of the reduction of that
+      place in 1745, and given to the church by the officers of the New
+      Hampshire troops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention. It is
+      among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days. Neither its
+      architecture not its age, however, is its chief warrant for our notice.
+      The absurd number of windows in this battered old structure is what
+      strikes the passer-by. The church was erected by subscription, and these
+      closely set large windows are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the
+      wealthiest citizens of the period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass
+      was used. If the building could have been composed entirely of glass it
+      would have been done by the thrifty parishioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Portsmouth is rich in graveyards&mdash;they seem to be a New England
+      specialty&mdash;ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one
+      attached to St. John&rsquo;s Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has not
+      been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point of
+      Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up and set
+      on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly refuses,
+      and is not shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and is allowed
+      to rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a row of other
+      exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed, and here and there
+      is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive pale roses, as becomes a
+      rosebush in a churchyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
+      respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the principal and
+      loftiest in rank in their generation of the citizens of Portsmouth prior
+      to the Revolution&mdash;stanch, royalty-loving governors, counselors, and
+      secretaries of the Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered under
+      the motherly wing of the Church of England. It is almost impossible to
+      walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow haughty in spirit
+      after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less than one of His
+      Majesty&rsquo;s colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here are the tombs of the
+      Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the Sheafes, the Marshes, the
+      Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the quality. All around you
+      underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop,
+      and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in
+      the very best society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth. An hour&rsquo;s walk
+      from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot, already mentioned,
+      where the first house was built and the first grave made, at Odiorne&rsquo;s
+      Point. The exact site of the Manor is not known, but it is supposed to be
+      a few rods north of an old well of still-flowing water, at which the
+      Tomsons and the Hiltons and their comrades slaked their thirst more than
+      two hundred and sixty years ago. Oriorne&rsquo;s Point is owned by Mr. Eben L.
+      Odiorne, a lineal descendant of the worthy who held the property in 1657.
+      Not far from the old spring is the resting-place of the earliest pioneers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire,&rdquo; writes Mr.
+      Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years the editor
+      of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two volumes of local sketches
+      to which the writer of these pages here acknowledges his indebtedness.)
+      &ldquo;occupies a space of perhaps one hundred feet by ninety, and is well
+      walled in. The western side is now used as a burial-place for the family,
+      but two thirds of it is filled with perhaps forty graves, indicated by
+      rough head and foot stones. Who there rest no one now living knows. But
+      the same care is taken of their quiet beds as if they were of the
+      proprietor&rsquo;s own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about eighty emigrants
+      many of whom died in a few years, and here they were probably buried. Here
+      too, doubtless, rest the remains of several of those whose names stand
+      conspicuous in our early state records.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      WHEN Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much impressed by
+      the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in
+      the struggle for independence. &ldquo;There are some good houses,&rdquo; he writes, in
+      a diary kept that year during a tour through Connecticut, Massachusetts,
+      and New Hampshire, &ldquo;among which Colonel Langdon&rsquo;s may be esteemed the
+      first; but in general they are indifferent, and almost entirely of wood.
+      On wondering at this, as the country is full of stone and good clay for
+      bricks, I was told that on account of the fogs and damp they deemed them
+      wholesomer, and for that reason preferred wood buildings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The house of Colonel Langdon, on Pleasant Street, is an excellent sample
+      of the solid and dignified abodes which our great-grandsires had the sense
+      to build. The art of their construction seems to have been a lost art
+      these fifty years. Here Governor John Langdon resided from 1782 until the
+      time of his death in 1819&mdash;a period during which many an illustrious
+      man passed between those two white pillars that support the little balcony
+      over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and his brothers, the
+      Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the Marquis de Chastellus, a
+      major-general in the French army, serving under the Count de Rochambeau,
+      whom he accompanied from France to the States in 1780. The journal of the
+      marquis contains this reference to his host: &ldquo;After dinner we went to
+      drink tea with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and of noble carriage;
+      he has been a member of Congress, and is now one of the first people of
+      the country; his house is elegant and well furnished, and the apartments
+      admirably well wainscoted&rdquo; (this reads like Mr. Samuel Pepys); &ldquo;and he has
+      a good manuscript chart of the harbor of Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his
+      wife, is young, fair, and tolerably handsome, but I conversed less with
+      her than her husband, in whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he
+      had displayed great courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes&rsquo;s
+      expedition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons of the
+      Due d&rsquo;Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion. Years afterward,
+      when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France, he inquired of a
+      Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the mansion of ce brave
+      Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under the
+      shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an imposing appearance
+      as you approach it over the tessellated marble walk. A hundred or two feet
+      on either side of the gate, and abutting on the street, is a small square
+      building of brick, one story in height&mdash;probably the porter&rsquo;s lodge
+      and tool-house of former days. There is a large fruit garden attached to
+      the house, which is in excellent condition, taking life comfortably, and
+      having the complacent air of a well-preserved beau of the ancien regime.
+      The Langdon mansion was owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr.
+      Burroughs, for a period of forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St.
+      John&rsquo;s Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to which we
+      shall come by and by. Though President Washington found Portsmouth but
+      moderately attractive from an architectural point of view, the visitor of
+      to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste, will find himself embarrassed by
+      the number of localities and buildings that appeal to his interest. Many
+      of these buildings were new and undoubtedly commonplace enough at the date
+      of Washington&rsquo;s visit; time and association have given them a quaintness
+      and a significance which now make their architecture a question of
+      secondary importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One might spend a fortnight in Portsmouth exploring the nooks and corners
+      over which history has thrown a charm, and by no means exhaust the list. I
+      cannot do more than attempt to describe&mdash;and that very briefly&mdash;a
+      few of the typical old houses. On this same Pleasant Street there are
+      several which we must leave unnoted, with their spacious halls and carven
+      staircases, their antiquated furniture and old silver tankards and choice
+      Copleys. Numerous examples of this artist&rsquo;s best manner are to be found
+      here. To live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by
+      Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor in the old
+      Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you cannot be said to flourish.
+      To make this statement smooth, I will remark that every one in Portsmouth
+      has a Copley&mdash;or would have if a fair division were made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such excellent
+      repair, and have so smart an appearance with their bright green blinds and
+      freshly painted woodwork, that you are likely to pass many an old landmark
+      without suspecting it. Whenever you see a house with a gambrel roof, you
+      may be almost positive that the house is at least a hundred years old, for
+      the gambrel roof went out of fashion after the Revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick
+      building in Portsmouth&mdash;the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by
+      Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a
+      wealthy merchant, and a member of the King&rsquo;s Council. He was the chief
+      projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America.
+      Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children
+      of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary,
+      whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous Copley,
+      still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not known by the name of
+      Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon. Jonathan Warner,
+      a member of the King&rsquo;s Council until the revolt of the colonies. &ldquo;We well
+      recollect Mr. Warner,&rdquo; says Mr. Brewster, writing in 1858, &ldquo;as one of the
+      last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early childhood he is still
+      before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic crown officers. That
+      broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those small-clothes and silk
+      stockings, those silver buckles, and that cane&mdash;we see them still,
+      although the life that filled and moved them ceased half a century ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and luthern
+      windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the architecture of the
+      period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in New England. The
+      eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from Holland, as were also many
+      of the materials used in the building&mdash;the hearth-stones, tiles, etc.
+      Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the brick-work
+      rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The interior is rich in
+      paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves, the deep-set windows,
+      and along the cornices. The halls are wide and long, after a by-gone
+      fashion, with handsome staircases, set at an easy angle, and not standing
+      nearly upright, like those ladders by which one reaches the upper chambers
+      of a modern house. The principal rooms are paneled to the ceiling, and
+      have large open chimney-places, adorned with the quaintest of Dutch files.
+      In one of the parlors of the Warner House there is a choice store of
+      family relics&mdash;china, silver-plate, costumes, old clocks, and the
+      like. There are some interesting paintings, too&mdash;not by Copley this
+      time. On a broad space each side of the hall windows, at the head of the
+      staircase, are pictures of two Indians, life size. They are probably
+      portraits of some of the numerous chiefs with whom Captain Macphaedris had
+      dealings, for the captain was engaged in the fur as well as in the iron
+      business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to Macpheadris by his red
+      friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings on
+      the walls of this lower hall were brought to light. In repairing the front
+      entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or five
+      layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had peeled off
+      cleanly, a horse&rsquo;s hoof was observed by a little girl of the family. The
+      workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the legs, then the
+      body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished
+      paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size representation of Governor
+      Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to his assistance,
+      and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily stripped, laying bare
+      four or five hundred square feet covered with sketches in color,
+      landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes, and modern
+      figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel. Until then no
+      person in the land of the living had had any knowledge of those hidden
+      pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the house intimately
+      ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe her spectacles
+      (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to face with the
+      frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply Ham was the
+      leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that
+      these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand. Even
+      the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an
+      antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day was
+      put up under Benjamin Franklin&rsquo;s own supervision in 1762&mdash;such at all
+      events is the credited tradition&mdash;and is supposed to be the first rod
+      put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod &ldquo;personally conducted&rdquo; by
+      Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
+      susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim on
+      the good-will of the visitor&mdash;it is not positively known that George
+      Washington ever slept there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old yellow
+      barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and Atkinson streets.
+      Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of
+      corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down on
+      the most desirable spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept not
+      only one night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was a
+      celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence, and
+      Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth in
+      1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady&mdash;not one of the
+      preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties
+      unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning to
+      tell on her&mdash;who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in
+      her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of her
+      conversation during the last ten years of her life, which she passed in
+      the Stavers House, bedridden; and I think those ten years were in a manner
+      rendered short and pleasant to the old gentlewoman by the memory of a
+      compliment to her complexion which Washington probably never paid to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old hotel&mdash;now a very unsavory tenement-house&mdash;was built by
+      John Tavers, innkeeper, in 1770, who planted in front of the door a tall
+      post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax. Stavers had
+      previously kept an inn of the same name on Queen, now State Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a square three-story building, shabby and dejected, giving no hint
+      of the really important historical associations that cluster about it. At
+      the time of its erection it was no doubt considered a rather grand
+      structure, for buildings of three stories were rare in Portsmouth. Even in
+      1798, of the six hundred and twenty-six dwelling houses of which the town
+      boasted, eighty-six were of one story, five hundred and twenty-four were
+      of two stories, and only sixteen of three stories. The Stavers inn has the
+      regulation gambrel roof, but is lacking in those wood ornaments which are
+      usually seen over the doors and windows of the more prominent houses of
+      that epoch. It was, however, the hotel of the period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same worn doorstep upon which Mr. O&rsquo;Shaughnessy now stretches himself
+      of a summer afternoon, with a short clay pipe stuck between his lips, and
+      his hat crushed down on his brows, revolving the sad vicissitude of things&mdash;that
+      same doorstep has been pressed by the feet of generals and marquises and
+      grave dignitaries upon whom depended the destiny of the States&mdash;officers
+      in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and high-heeled belles in patch, powder,
+      and paduasoy. At this door the Flying Stage Coach, which crept from
+      Boston, once a week set down its load of passengers&mdash;and
+      distinguished passengers they often were. Most of the chief celebrities of
+      the land, before and after the secession of the colonies, were the guests
+      of Master Stavers, at the sign of the Earl of Halifax.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother country,
+      it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met to
+      discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist, and when the
+      full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early intimation of the
+      coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched with sullen eyes the
+      secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers&rsquo;s tavern, and one morning
+      the patriots quietly began cutting down the post which supported the
+      obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have been belligerent
+      himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent out his black slave
+      with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was armed with an axe,
+      struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow fell upon the head of
+      Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an insane man till the day
+      of his death, forty years afterward. A furious mob at once collected, and
+      made an attack on the tavern, bursting in the doors and shattering every
+      pane of glass in the windows. It was only through the intervention of
+      Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular patriot, that the hotel was saved
+      from destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in the
+      rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend William
+      Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied the hotel
+      with ale. The excitement blew over after a time, and Stavers was induced
+      to return to Portsmouth. He was seized by the Committee of Safety, and
+      lodged in Exeter jail, when his loyalty, which had really never been very
+      high, went down below zero; he took the oath of allegiance, and shortly
+      after his released reopened the hotel. The honest face of William Pitt
+      appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl of Halifax, ignominiously
+      removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the state records is the
+      following letter from poor Noble begging for the enlargement of John
+      Stavers:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777. To the Committee of Safety of the Town of
+      Exeter: GENTLEMEN,&mdash;As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in
+      confinement in gaol upon my account contrary to my desire, for when I was
+      at Mr. Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the Gentleman
+      but by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad Blow but it is so well
+      that I hope to go out in a day or two. So by this gentlemen of the
+      Committee I hope you will release the gentleman upon my account. I am
+      yours to serve. MARK NOBLE, A friend to my country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House prospered.
+      It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the officers of the French
+      fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the Marquis Lafayette, all the way
+      from Providence, to visit them. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, Rutledge,
+      and other signers of the Declaration sojourned here at various times. It
+      was here General Knox&mdash;&ldquo;that stalwart man, two officers in size and
+      three in lungs&rdquo;&mdash;was wont to order his dinner, and in a stentorian
+      voice compliment Master Stavers on the excellence of his larder. One day&mdash;it
+      was at the time of the French Revolution&mdash;Louis Philippe and his two
+      brothers applied at the door of the William Pitt for lodgings; but the
+      tavern was full, and the future king, with his companions, found
+      comfortable quarters under the hospitable roof of Governor Langdon in
+      Pleasant Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous, that have been enacted within
+      this old yellow house on the corner would fill a volume. A vivid picture
+      of the social and public life of the old time might be painted by a
+      skillful hand, using the two Earl of Halifax inns for a background. The
+      painter would find gay and sombre pigments ready mixed for his palette,
+      and a hundred romantic incidents waiting for his canvas. One of these
+      romantic episodes has been turned to very pretty account by Longfellow in
+      the last series of The Tales of a Wayside Inn&mdash;the marriage of
+      Governor Benning Wentworth with Martha Hilton, a sort of second edition of
+      King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare feet and ankles and scant
+      drapery when she was a child, and even after she was well in the bloom of
+      her teens, used to scandalize good Dame Stavers, the innkeeper&rsquo;s wife.
+      Standing one afternoon in the doorway of the Earl of Halifax, (1. The
+      first of the two hotels bearing that title. Mr. Brewster commits a slight
+      anachronism in locating the scene of this incident in Jaffrey Street, now
+      Court. The Stavers House was not built until the year of Governor Benning
+      Wentworth&rsquo;s death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does not fall into the
+      same error.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;One hundred years ago, and something more,
+     In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
+     Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
+     Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows.&rdquo;)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed and
+      lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern, carrying a
+      pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, &ldquo;the shifting sunbeam
+      danced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You Pat! you Pat!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Stavers severely; &ldquo;why do you go looking
+      so? You should be ashamed to be seen in the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind how I look,&rdquo; says Miss Martha, with a merry laugh, letting
+      slip a saucy brown shoulder out of her dress; &ldquo;I shall ride in my chariot
+      yet, ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunate prophecy! Martha went to live as servant with Governor Wentworth
+      at his mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea. Seven years passed,
+      and the &ldquo;thin slip of a girl,&rdquo; who promised to be no great beauty, had
+      flowered into the loveliest of women, with a lip like a cherry and a cheek
+      like a tea-rose&mdash;a lady by instinct, one of Nature&rsquo;s own ladies. The
+      governor, a lonely widower, and not too young, fell in love with his fair
+      handmaid. Without stating his purpose to any one, Governor Wentworth
+      invited a number of friends (among others the Rev. Arthur Brown) to dine
+      with him at Little Harbor on his birthday. After the dinner, which was a
+      very elaborate one, was at an end, and the guests were discussing their
+      tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided into the room, and stood blushing in
+      front of the chimney-place. She was exquisitely dressed, as you may
+      conceive, and wore her hair three stories high. The guests stared at each
+      other, and particularly at her, and wondered. Then the governor, rising
+      from his seat,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
+     And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
+     &lsquo;This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
+     My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The rector was dumfounded, knowing the humble footing Martha had held in
+      the house, and could think of nothing cleverer to say than, &ldquo;To whom, your
+      excellency?&rdquo; which was not cleaver at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To this lady,&rdquo; replied the governor, taking Martha Hilton by the hand.
+      The Rev. Arthur Brown hesitated. &ldquo;As the Chief Magistrate of New Hampshire
+      I command you to marry me!&rdquo; cried the choleric old governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was done; and the pretty kitchen-maid became Lady Wentworth, and
+      did ride in her own chariot. She would not have been a woman if she had
+      not taken an early opportunity to drive by Staver&rsquo;s hotel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of the dignity of her new station,
+      and became a grand lady at once. A few days after her marriage, dropping
+      her ring on the floor, she languidly ordered her servant to pick it up.
+      The servant, who appears to have had a fair sense of humor, grew suddenly
+      near-sighted, and was unable to the ring until Lady Wentworth stooped and
+      placed her ladyship&rsquo;s finger upon it. She turned out a faultless wife,
+      however; and Governor Wentworth at his death, which occurred in 1770,
+      signified his approval of her by leaving her his entire estate. She
+      married again without changing name, accepting the hand, and what there
+      was of the heart, of Michael Wentworth, a retired colonel of the British
+      army, who came to this country in 1767. Colonel Wentworth (not connected,
+      I think, with the Portsmouth branch of Wentworths) seems to have been of a
+      convivial turn of mind. He shortly dissipated his wife&rsquo;s fortune in high
+      living, and died abruptly in New York&mdash;it was supposed by his own
+      hand. His last words&mdash;a quite unique contribution to the literature
+      of last words&mdash;were, &ldquo;I have had my cake, and ate it,&rdquo; which showed
+      that the colonel within his own modest limitations was a philosopher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor&mdash;a pleasant walk from
+      Market Square&mdash;is well worth a visit. Time and change have laid their
+      hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on any other of the old
+      homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the threshold of the door you step
+      into the colonial period. Here the Past seems to have halted courteously,
+      waiting for you to catch up with it. Inside and outside the Wentworth
+      mansion remains nearly as the old governor left it; and though it is no
+      longer in the possession of the family, the present owners, in their
+      willingness to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers, show a
+      hospitality which has always characterized the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house is an architectural freak. The main building&mdash;if it is the
+      main building&mdash;is generally two stories in height, with irregular
+      wings forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in
+      brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions that look as if they had been
+      built at different periods, which I believe was not the case. The mansion
+      was completed in 1750. It originally contained fifty-two rooms; a portion
+      of the structure was removed about half a century ago, leaving forty-five
+      apartments. The chambers were connected in the oddest manner, by
+      unexpected steps leading up or down, and capricious little passages that
+      seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the architect. But it is a
+      mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand air. The cellar was arranged
+      for the stabling of a troop of thirty horse in times of danger. The
+      council-chamber, where for many years all questions of vital importance to
+      the State were discussed, is a spacious, high-studded room, finished in
+      the richest style of the last century. It is said that the ornamentation
+      of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel, cost the workman a
+      year&rsquo;s constant labor. At the entrance to the council-chamber are still
+      the racks for the twelve muskets of the governor&rsquo;s guard&mdash;so long ago
+      dismissed!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some valuable family portraits adorn the walls here, among which is a fine
+      painting-yes, by our friend Copley&mdash;of the lovely Dorothy Quincy, who
+      married John Hancock, and afterward became Madam Scott. This lady was a
+      niece of Dr. Holme&rsquo;s &ldquo;Dorothy Q.&rdquo; Opening on the council-chamber is a
+      large billiard-room; the billiard-table is gone, but an ancient spinnet,
+      with the prim air of an ancient maiden lady, and of a wheezy voice, is
+      there; and in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet, near which the
+      imaginative nostril may still detect a faint and tantalizing odor of
+      colonial punch. Opening also on the council-chamber are several tiny
+      apartments, empty and silent now, in which many a close rubber has been
+      played by illustrious hands. The stillness and loneliness of the old house
+      seem saddest here. The jeweled fingers are dust, the merry laughs have
+      turned themselves into silent, sorrowful phantoms, stealing from chamber
+      to chamber. It is easy to believe in the traditional ghost that haunts the
+      place&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;A jolly place in times of old,
+     But something ails it now!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only historic house that bears the
+      name of Wentworth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of Washington Street,
+      stands the abode of another colonial worthy, Governor John Wentworth, who
+      held office from 1767 down to the moment when the colonies dropped the
+      British yoke as if it had been the letter H. For the moment the good
+      gentleman&rsquo;s occupation was gone. He was a royalist of the most florid
+      complexion. In 1775, a man named John Fenton, and ex-captain in the
+      British army, who had managed to offend the Sons of Liberty, was given
+      sanctuary in this house by the governor, who refused to deliver the
+      fugitive to the people. The mob planted a small cannon (unloaded) in front
+      of the doorstep and threatened to open fire if Fenton were not
+      forthcoming. He forth-with came. The family vacated the premises via the
+      back-yard, and the mob entered, doing considerable damage. The broken
+      marble chimney-place still remains, mutely protesting against the
+      uncalled-for violence. Shortly after this event the governor made his way
+      to England, where his loyalty was rewarded first with a governorship and
+      then with a pension of L500. He was governor of Nova Scotia from 1792 to
+      1800, and died in Halifax in 1820. This house is one of the handsomest old
+      dwellings in the town, and promises to outlive many of its newest
+      neighbors. The parlor has undergone no change whatever since the populace
+      rushed into it over a century ago. The furniture and adornments occupy
+      their original positions and the plush on the walls has not been replaced
+      by other hangings. In the hall&mdash;deep enough for the traditional duel
+      of baronial romance&mdash;are full-length portraits of the several
+      governors and sundry of their kinsfolk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is yet a third Wentworth house, also decorated with the shade of a
+      colonial governor&mdash;there were three Governors Wentworth&mdash;but we
+      shall pass it by, though out of no lack of respect for that high official
+      personage whose commission was signed by Joseph Addison, Esq., Secretary
+      of State under George I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the
+      crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and
+      customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting
+      here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the
+      withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has
+      managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up
+      periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town
+      clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that we
+      are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and
+      positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the early
+      days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and eventful
+      days. The dense forest which surrounded the clearing was alive with
+      hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock at his
+      bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be awakened by the glare of
+      his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the Womponoags. Year
+      after year he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of flames, as he peered
+      through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither he had flown in hot
+      haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse at Strawberry Bank
+      appears to have been on an extensive scale, with stockades for the shelter
+      of cattle. It held large supplies of stores, and was amply furnished with
+      arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a species of naval ordnance which
+      probably did not belie its name. It also boasted, we are told, of two
+      drums for training-days, and no fewer than fifteen hautboys and
+      soft-voiced recorders&mdash;all which suggests a mediaeval castle, or a
+      grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth. To the younger members of
+      the community glass or crockery ware was an unknown substance; to the
+      elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the pot-of-all-work, and their
+      table utensils were of beaten pewter. The diet was also of the simplest&mdash;pea-porridge
+      and corn-cake, with a mug of ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they
+      could get it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
+      management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to stewards,
+      died before realizing any appreciable return from his enterprise. He
+      spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity. In 1632, three
+      years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a number of neat
+      cattle, &ldquo;of a large breed and yellow colour.&rdquo; The herd thrived, and it is
+      said that some of the stock is still extant on farms in the vicinity of
+      Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of staying quality!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General
+      Court at Boston to grant them a definite township&mdash;for the boundaries
+      were doubtful&mdash;and the right to give it a proper name. &ldquo;Whereas the
+      name of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe
+      called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place,
+      now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most
+      suitable for this place, it being the river&rsquo;s mouth, and good as any in
+      this land, and your petit&rsquo;rs shall humbly pray,&rdquo; etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent French wars,
+      Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of bloody Indian
+      massacres. No portion of the New England colony suffered more. Famine,
+      fire, pestilence, and war, each in turn, and sometimes in conjunction,
+      beleaguered the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe it out. But that
+      was not to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as it
+      had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house and
+      the jail&mdash;two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a town
+      meeting in 1662, it was ordered &ldquo;that a cage be made or some other meanes
+      invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take tobacco on the
+      Lord&rsquo;s day out of the meetinge in the time of publique service.&rdquo; This
+      salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into effect until nine
+      years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to have had as many
+      professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a cage twelve feet
+      square and seven feet high, with a pillory on top; &ldquo;the said Pickering to
+      make a good strong dore and make a substantiale payre of stocks and places
+      the same in said cage.&rdquo; A spot conveniently near the west end on the
+      meeting-house was selected as the site for this ingenious device. It is
+      more than probable that &ldquo;the said Pickering&rdquo; indirectly furnished an
+      occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we find him and one Edward
+      Westwere authorized by the selectmen to &ldquo;keepe houses of publique
+      entertainment.&rdquo; He was a versatile individual, this John Pickering&mdash;soldier,
+      miller, moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and innkeeper. Michelangelo need not
+      blush to be bracketed with him. In the course of a long and variegated
+      career he never failed to act according to his lights, which he always
+      kept well trimmed. That Captain Pickering subsequently became the
+      grandfather, at several removes, of the present writer was no fault of the
+      Captain&rsquo;s, and should not be laid up against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a rather
+      desultory and tentative matter; &ldquo;the young idea&rdquo; seems to have been
+      allowed to &ldquo;shoot&rdquo; at whatever it wanted to; but in that year it was voted
+      &ldquo;that care be taken that an abell scollmaster [skullmaster!] be provided
+      for the towen as the law directs, not visious in conversation.&rdquo; That was
+      perhaps demanding too much; for it was not until &ldquo;May ye 7&rdquo; of the
+      following year that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their
+      finger on this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed &ldquo;to
+      be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching the
+      inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters yously doe
+      throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the sellectt men in behalfe
+      of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by way of rate twenty pounds and yt he
+      shall and may reserve from every father or master that sends theyer
+      children to school this yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers, writers
+      and cypherers 20s., Lattiners 24s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need not plume themselves on their
+      originality. The town clerk who wrote that delicious &ldquo;yously doe&rdquo; settles
+      the question. It is to be hoped that Mr. Tho. Phippes was not only &ldquo;not
+      visious in conversation,&rdquo; but was more conventional in his orthography. He
+      evidently gave satisfaction, and clearly exerted an influence on the town
+      clerk, Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a marked improvement in his
+      own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the selectmen &ldquo;to call and settell
+      a gramer scoll according to ye best of yower judgement and for ye advantag
+      [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye youth of ower town to learn them to
+      read from ye primer, to wright and sypher and to learne ym the tongues and
+      good-manners.&rdquo; On this occasion it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury,
+      who engaged &ldquo;dilligently to attend ye school for ye present yeare, and
+      tech all childern yt can read in thaire psallters and upward.&rdquo; From such
+      humble beginnings were evolved some of the best public high schools at
+      present in New England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft delusion, though I believe that
+      no hangings took place within the boundaries of the township. Dwellers by
+      the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is
+      something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the
+      imagination. The folk who live along the coast live on the edge of a
+      perpetual mystery; only a strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates them
+      from the unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at midnight, they
+      are haunted by the spectres of the mirage. Their minds quickly take the
+      impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore found a sympathetic
+      atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua&mdash;that
+      slender paw of land which reaches out into the ocean and terminates in a
+      spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the claws of an amorous cat. What
+      happened to the good folk of that picturesque little fishing-hamlet is
+      worth retelling in brief. In order properly to retell it, a contemporary
+      witness shall be called upon to testify in the case of the Stone-Throwing
+      Devils of Newcastle. It is the Rev. Cotton Mather who addresses you&mdash;&ldquo;On
+      June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown by an invisible hand upon the
+      house of George Walton at Portsmouth [Newcastle was then a part of the
+      town]. Whereupon the people going out found the gate wrung off the hinges,
+      and stones flying and falling thick about them, and striking of them
+      seemingly with a great force, but really affecting &lsquo;em no more than if a
+      soft touch were given them. The glass windows were broken by the stones
+      that came not from without, but from within; and other instruments were in
+      a like manner hurled about. Nine of the stones they took up, whereof some
+      were as hot as if they came out of the fire; and marking them they laid
+      them on the table; but in a little while they found some of them again
+      flying about. The spit was carried up the chimney, and coming down with
+      the point forward, stuck in the back log, from whence one of the company
+      removing it, it was by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This
+      disturbance continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow
+      whistling would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting of a
+      horse, but nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay in a boat on
+      to a farm which he had there; but the stones found him out, and carrying
+      from the house to the boat a stirrup iron the iron came jingling after him
+      through the woods as far as his house; and at last went away and was heard
+      no more. The anchor leaped overboard several times and stopt the boat. A
+      cheese was taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the floor; a
+      piece of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon. Several
+      cocks of hay, mow&rsquo;d near the house, were taken up and hung upon the trees,
+      and others made into small whisps, and scattered about the house. A man
+      was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a Quaker, and suspected that a
+      woman, who charged him with injustice in detaining some land from here,
+      did, by witchcraft, occasion these preternatural occurrences. However, at
+      last they came to an end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so get thee
+      back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on Copp&rsquo;s Hill, where,
+      unless thy nature is radically changed, thou makest it uncomfortable for
+      those about thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another witch&mdash;a
+      tangible witch in this instance&mdash;one Molly Bridget, who cast her
+      malign spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse, where she chanced
+      to reside at the moment. The pigs were manifestly bewitched, and Mr.
+      Clement March, the superintendent of the institution, saw only one remedy
+      at hand, and that was to cut off and burn the tips of their tales. But
+      when the tips were cut off they disappeared, and it was in consequence
+      quite impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a gentleman of
+      expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in the yard should
+      be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch and do away with the
+      mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires were no sooner lighted
+      than Molly Bridget rushed from room to room in a state of frenzy. With the
+      dying flames her own vitality subsided, and she was dead before the
+      ash-piles were cool. I say it seriously when I say that these are facts of
+      which there is authentic proof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the woman had recovered, she would have fared badly, even at that late
+      period, had she been in Salem; but the death-penalty has never been
+      hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first execution that ever took place
+      there was that of Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an
+      infant in 1739. The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who,
+      twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth
+      Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a
+      spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following
+      stanzas, however, give the pith of the story&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;And a voice among them shouted,
+             &ldquo;Pause before the deed is done;
+     We have asked reprieve and pardon
+             For the poor misguided one.&rsquo; 
+
+     &ldquo;But these words of Sheriff Packer
+             Rang above the swelling noise:
+     &lsquo;Must I wait and lose my dinner?
+            Draw away the cart, my boys!&rsquo; 
+
+     &ldquo;Nearer came the sound and louder,
+             Till a steed with panting breath,
+     From its sides the white foam dripping,
+            Halted at the scene of death;
+
+     &ldquo;And a messenger alighted,
+             Crying to the crowd, &lsquo;Make way!
+     This I bear to Sheriff Packer;
+             &lsquo;Tis a pardon for Ruth Blay!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But of course he arrived too late&mdash;the Law led Mercy about twenty
+      minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled again that
+      night before the sheriff&rsquo;s domicile and expressed its indignation in
+      groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows, was afterwards paraded
+      through the streets.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Be the name of Thomas Packer
+          A reproach forevermore!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Laighton&rsquo;s ballad reminds me of that Portsmouth has been prolific in
+      poets, one of whom, at least, has left a mouthful of perennial rhyme for
+      orators&mdash;Jonathan Sewell with his
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
+     But the whole boundless continent is yours.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      I have somewhere seen a volume with the alliterative title of &ldquo;Poets of
+      Portsmouth,&rdquo; in which are embalmed no fewer than sixty immortals!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to drop into prose again, and have done with this iliad of odds and
+      ends. Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of establishing the first
+      recorded pauper workhouse&mdash;though not in connection with her poets,
+      as might naturally be supposed. The building was completed and tenanted in
+      1716. Seven years later, an act was passed in England authorizing the
+      establishment of parish workhouses there. The first and only keeper of the
+      Portsmouth almshouse up to 1750 was a woman&mdash;Rebecca Austin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking of first things, we are told by Mr. Nathaniel Adams, in his
+      &ldquo;Annals of Portsmouth,&rdquo; that on the 20th of April, 1761, Mr. John Stavers
+      began running a stage from that town to Boston. The carriage was a
+      two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate three passengers. The fare
+      was thirteen shillings and sixpence sterling per head. The curricle was
+      presently superseded by a series of fat yellow coaches, one of which&mdash;nearly
+      a century later, and long after that pleasant mode of travel had fallen
+      obsolete&mdash;was the cause of much mental tribulation (1. Some idle
+      reader here and there may possibly recall the burning of the old
+      stage-coach in The Story of a Bad Boy.) to the writer of this chronicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mail and the newspaper are closely associated factors in civilization,
+      so I mention them together, though in this case the newspaper antedated
+      the mail-coach about five years. On October 7, 1756, the first number of
+      &ldquo;The New Hampshire Gazette and Historical Chronicle&rdquo; was issued in
+      Portsmouth from the press of Daniel Fowle, who in the previous July had
+      removed from Boston, where he had undergone a brief but uncongenial
+      imprisonment on suspicion of having printed a pamphlet entitled &ldquo;The
+      Monster of Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.,&rdquo; an essay that contained some
+      uncomplimentary reflections on several official personages. The &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo;
+       was the pioneer journal of the province. It was followed at the close of
+      the same year by &ldquo;The Mercury and Weekly Advertiser,&rdquo; published by a
+      former apprentice of Fowle, a certain Thomas Furber, backed by a number of
+      restless Whigs, who considered the &ldquo;Gazette&rdquo; not sufficiently outspoken in
+      the cause of liberty. Mr. Fowle, however, contrived to hold his own until
+      the day of his death. Fowle had for pressman a faithful negro named
+      Primus, a full-blooded African. Whether Primus was a freeman or a slave I
+      am unable to state. He lived to a great age, and was a prominent figure
+      among the people of his own color.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Negro slavery was common in New England at that period. In 1767,
+      Portsmouth numbered in its population a hundred and eighty-eight slaves,
+      male and female. Their bondage, happily, was nearly always of a light
+      sort, if any bondage can be light. They were allowed to have a kind of
+      government of their own; indeed, were encouraged to do so, and no
+      unreasonable restrictions were placed on their social enjoyment. They
+      annually elected a king and counselors, and celebrated the event with a
+      procession. The aristocratic feeling was highly developed in them. The
+      rank of the master was the slave&rsquo;s rank. There was a great deal of ebony
+      standing around on its dignity in those days. For example, Governor
+      Langdon&rsquo;s manservant, Cyrus Bruce, was a person who insisted on his
+      distinction, and it was recognized. His massive gold chain and seals, his
+      cherry-colored small-clothes and silk stockings, his ruffles and silver
+      shoe-buckles, were a tradition long after Cyrus himself was pulverized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In cases of minor misdemeanor among them, the negros themselves were
+      permitted to be judge and jury. Their administration of justice was often
+      characteristically naive. Mr. Brewster gives an amusing sketch of one of
+      their sessions. King Nero is on the bench, and one Cato&mdash;we are
+      nothing if not classical&mdash;is the prosecuting attorney. The name of
+      the prisoner and the nature of his offense are not disclosed to posterity.
+      In the midst of the proceedings the hour of noon is clanged from the
+      neighboring belfry of the Old North Church. &ldquo;The evidence was not gone
+      through with, but the servants could stay no longer from their home
+      duties. They all wanted to see the whipping, but could not conveniently be
+      present again after dinner. Cato ventured to address the King: Please you
+      Honor, best let the fellow have his whipping now, and finish the trial
+      after dinner. The request seemed to be the general wish of the company: so
+      Nero ordered ten lashes, for justice so far as the trial went, and ten
+      more at the close of the trial, should he be found guilty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless Abraham
+      Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced any emancipation
+      edict. During the Revolutionary War the slaves were generally emancipated
+      by their masters. That many of the negros, who had grown gray in service,
+      refused their freedom, and elected to spend the rest of their lives as
+      pensioners in the families of their late owners, is a circumstance that
+      illustrates the kindly ties which held between slave and master in the old
+      colonial days in New England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The institution was accidental and superficial, and never had any real
+      root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found in the
+      Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it would have continued
+      awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his religion into the business
+      affairs of life; he was not even able to keep it out of his bills of
+      lading. I cannot close this rambling chapter more appropriately and
+      solemnly than by quoting from one of those same pious bills of landing. It
+      is dated June, 1726, and reads: &ldquo;Shipped by the grace of God in good order
+      and well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct. and risque, in
+      and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is master under God
+      for this present voyage George King, now riding at anchor in the river
+      Piscataqua and by God&rsquo;s grace bound to Barbadoes.&rdquo; Here follows a
+      catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo, rounded off with: &ldquo;And so God send
+      the good Briga to her desired port in safety. Amen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
+      characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have
+      been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity. In
+      another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been favorable
+      to the development of individual singularity during the latter half of the
+      present century. It is easier to do that than fully to account for the
+      numerous queer human types which have existed from time to time previous
+      to that period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster&rsquo;s entertaining
+      collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and
+      variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene.
+      They are, in the author&rsquo;s intention, secondary figures in the background
+      of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one&rsquo;s
+      memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one&rsquo;s self thinking quite
+      as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of
+      General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism and
+      respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
+      unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller the
+      things which are that old hut-dweller&rsquo;s, we must concede him his
+      picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is
+      picturesque&mdash;now that he is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to glance at
+      a few old profiles of persons who, however substantial they once were, are
+      now leading a life of mere outlines. I would like to give them a less
+      faded expression, but the past is very chary of yielding up anything more
+      than its shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first who presents himself is the ruminative hermit already mentioned&mdash;a
+      species of uninspired Thoreau. His name was Benjamin Lear. So far as his
+      craziness went, he might have been a lineal descendant of that ancient
+      king of Britain who figures on Shakespeare&rsquo;s page. Family dissensions made
+      a recluse of King Lear; but in the case of Benjamin there were no
+      mitigating circumstances. He had no family to trouble him, and his realm
+      remained undivided. He owned an excellent farm on the south side of
+      Sagamore Creek, a little to the west of the bridge, and might have lived
+      at ease, if personal comfort had not been distasteful to him. Personal
+      comfort entered into no part of Lear&rsquo;s. To be alone filled the little
+      pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced himself in a wretched shanty, and
+      barred the door, figuratively, against all the world. Wealth&mdash;what
+      would have been wealth to him&mdash;lay within his reach, but he thrust it
+      aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no
+      compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from
+      custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants
+      are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been
+      wholly inoffensive&mdash;at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and
+      subsisted chiefly on milk and potatoes, the product of his realm. He
+      needed nothing but an island to be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he
+      flitted like a frost-bitten apparition through the main street of
+      Portsmouth, which he always designated as &ldquo;the Bank,&rdquo; a name that had
+      become obsolete fifty or a hundred years before. Thus, for nearly a
+      quarter of a century, Benjamin Lear stood aloof from human intercourse. In
+      his old age some of the neighbors offered him shelter during the
+      tempestuous winter months; but he would have none of it&mdash;he defied
+      wind and weather. There he lay in his dilapidated hovel in his last
+      illness, refusing to allow any one to remain with him overnight&mdash;and
+      the mercury four degrees below zero. Lear was born in 1720, and vegetated
+      eighty-two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I take it that Timothy Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse, would like to
+      have more, was a person better worth knowing. His name reads like the
+      title of some old-fashioned novel&mdash;&ldquo;Timothy Winn, or the Memoirs of a
+      Bashful Gentleman.&rdquo; He came to Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of the
+      last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry Street
+      what was called &ldquo;a piece goods store.&rdquo; He was the third Timothy in his
+      monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he inscribed on
+      the sign over his shop door, &ldquo;Timothy Winn, 3d,&rdquo; and was ever after called
+      &ldquo;Three-Penny Winn.&rdquo; That he enjoyed the pleasantry, and clung to his sign,
+      goes to show that he was a person who would ripen on further acquaintance,
+      were further acquaintance now practicable. His next-door neighbor, Mr.
+      Leonard Serat, who kept a modest tailoring establishment, also tantalizes
+      us a little with a dim intimation of originality. He plainly was without
+      literary prejudices, for on one face of his swinging sign was painted the
+      word Taylor, and on the other Tailor. This may have been a delicate
+      concession to that part of the community&mdash;the greater part, probably&mdash;which
+      would have spelled it with a y.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The building in which Messrs. Winn and Serat had their shops was the
+      property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of Demerara, the story
+      of whose unconventional courtship of Miss Catherine Moffatt is pretty
+      enough to bear retelling, and entitles him to a place in our limited
+      collection of etchings. M. Rousselet had doubtless already mad excursions
+      into the pays de tendre, and given Miss Catherine previous notice of the
+      state of his heart, but it was not until one day during the hour of
+      service at the Episcopal church that he brought matters to a crisis by
+      handing to Miss Moffatt a small Bible, on the fly-leaf of which he had
+      penciled the fifth verse of the Second Epistle of John&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I
+     wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+     which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This was not to be resisted, at lease not by Miss Catherine, who demurely
+      handed the volume back to him with a page turned down at the sixteenth
+      verse in the first chapter of Ruth&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
+     will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
+     God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be
+     buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but
+     death part thee and me.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Aside from this quaint touch of romance, what attaches me to the happy
+      pair&mdash;for the marriage was a fortunate one&mdash;is the fact that the
+      Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion, which stood
+      directly opposite my grandfather&rsquo;s house on Court Street and was torn down
+      in my childhood, to my great consternation. The building had been
+      unoccupied for a quarter of a century, and was fast falling into decay
+      with all its rich wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not full
+      of ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
+      ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather&rsquo;s house
+      just across the way? Where else could they bestow themselves so
+      conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in process of destruction, I
+      used to peep round the corner of our barn at the workmen, and watch the
+      indignant phantoms go soaring upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary Atkinson
+      (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to the lot of the Rev.
+      William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church between 1733 and 1747. From
+      the worldly standpoint, it was a fine match for the Newcastle clergyman&mdash;beauty,
+      of the eagle-beaked kind; wealth, her share of the family plate; high
+      birth, a sister to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson. But if the exemplary man
+      had cast his eyes lower, peradventure he had found more happiness, though
+      ill-bred persons without family plate are not necessarily amiable. Like
+      Socrates, this long-suffering divine had always with him an object on
+      which to cultivate heavenly patience, and patience, says the Eastern
+      proverb, is the key to content. The spirit of Xantippe seems to have taken
+      possession of Mrs. Shurtleff immediately after her marriage. The freakish
+      disrespect with which she used her meek consort was a heavy cross to bear
+      at a period in New England when clerical dignity was at its highest
+      sensitive point. Her devices for torturing the poor gentleman were
+      inexhaustible. Now she lets his Sabbath ruffs go unstarched; now she
+      scandalizes him by some unseemly and frivolous color in her attire; now
+      she leaves him to cook his own dinner at the kitchen coals; and now she
+      locks him in his study, whither he has retired for a moment or two of
+      prayer, previous to setting forth to perform the morning service. The
+      congregation has assembled; the sexton has tolled the bell twice as long
+      as is custom, and is beginning a third carillon, full of wonder that his
+      reverence does not appear; and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family
+      pew with a face as complacent as that of the cat that has eaten the
+      canary. Presently the deacons appeal to her for information touching the
+      good doctor. Mistress Shurtleff sweetly tells them that the good doctor
+      was in his study when she left home. There he is found, indeed, and
+      released from durance, begging the deacons to keep his mortification
+      secret, to &ldquo;give it an understanding, but no tongue.&rdquo; Such was the
+      discipline undergone by the worthy Dr. Shurtleff on his earthly
+      pilgrimage. A portrait of this patient man&mdash;now a saint somewhere&mdash;hangs
+      in the rooms of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society in
+      Boston. There he can be seen in surplice and bands, with his lamblike,
+      apostolic face looking down upon the heavy antiquarian labors of his busy
+      descendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not a man is to be classed as eccentric who vanishes without
+      rhyme or reason on his wedding-night is a query left to the reader&rsquo;s
+      decision. We seem to have struck a matrimonial vein, and must work it out.
+      In 1768, Mr. James McDonough was one of the wealthiest men in Portsmouth,
+      and the fortunate suitor for the hand of a daughter of Jacob Sheafe, a
+      town magnate. The home of the bride was decked and lighted for the
+      nuptials, the banquet-table was spread, and the guests were gathered. The
+      minister in his robe stood by the carven mantelpiece, book in hand, and
+      waited. Then followed an awkward interval&mdash;there was a hitch
+      somewhere. A strange silence fell upon the laughing groups; the air grew
+      tense with expectation; in the pantry, Amos Boggs, the butler, in his
+      agitation split a bottle of port over his new cinnamon-colored
+      small-clothes. Then a whisper&mdash;a whisper suppressed these twenty
+      minutes&mdash;ran through the apartments,&mdash;&ldquo;The bridegroom has not
+      come!&rdquo;. He never came. The mystery of that night remains a mystery after
+      the lapse of a century and a quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had become of James McDonough? The assassination of so notable a
+      person in a community where every strange face was challenged, where every
+      man&rsquo;s antecedents were known, could not have been accomplished without
+      leaving some slight traces. Not a shadow of foul play was discovered. That
+      McDonough had been murdered or had committed suicide were theories
+      accepted at first by a few, and then by no one. On the other hand, he was
+      in love with his fiancee, he had wealth, power, position&mdash;why had he
+      fled? He was seen a moment on the public street, and then never seen
+      again. It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile the bewilderment of the
+      bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough had been waylaid and killed,
+      she could mourn for him. If he had deserted her, she could wrap herself in
+      her pride. But neither course lay open to her, then or afterward. In one
+      of the Twice Told Tales Hawthorne deals with a man named Wakefield, who
+      disappears with like suddenness, and lives unrecognized for twenty years
+      in a street not far from his abandoned hearthside. Such expunging of one&rsquo;s
+      self was not possible in Portsmouth; but I never think of McDonough
+      without recalling Wakefield. I have an inexplicable conviction that for
+      many a year James McDonough, in some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the
+      effect of his own startling disappearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a personage
+      bearing the ponderous title of King&rsquo;s Attorney, and carrying much gold
+      lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr. Wyseman Clagett, of Bristol,
+      England, where his father dwelt on the manor of Broad Oaks, in a mansion
+      with twelve chimneys, and kept a coach and eight or ten servants. Up to
+      the moment of his advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman Clagett had
+      evidently not been able to keep anything but himself. His wealth consisted
+      of his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his lapels, and the
+      tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with these he
+      contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the young beauties
+      of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had plighted troth
+      with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to return home with a
+      disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of violent temper and ingenious
+      vindictiveness, and proved more than a sufficient punishment for Lettice&rsquo;s
+      infidelity. The trifling fact that Warner was dead&mdash;he died shortly
+      after his return&mdash;did not interfere with the course of Mr. Clagett&rsquo;s
+      jealousy; he was haunted by the suspicion that Lettice regretted her first
+      love, having left nothing undone to make her do so. &ldquo;This is to pay
+      Warner&rsquo;s debts,&rdquo; remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched off the table-cloth
+      and wrecked the tea-things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor. The noun Clagett
+      speedily turned itself into a verb; &ldquo;to Clagett&rdquo; meant &ldquo;to prosecute;&rdquo;
+       they were convertible terms. In spite of his industrious severity, and his
+      royal emoluments, if such existed, the exchequer of the King&rsquo;s Attorney
+      showed a perpetual deficit. The stratagems to which he resorted from time
+      to time in order to raise unimportant sums reminded one of certain scenes
+      in Moliere&rsquo;s comedies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They were made
+      for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and this was
+      their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his servants to
+      pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some sailor drinking
+      at an inn: the constable arrested the sailor or the countryman, as the
+      case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr. Clagett; Mr. Clagett read
+      the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him five dollars and costs. The
+      plunder was then divided between the conspirators&mdash;two hearts that
+      beat as one&mdash;Clagett, of course, getting the lion&rsquo;s share. Justice
+      was never administered in a simpler manner in any country. This eminent
+      legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the wick laid away in the little
+      churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire. It is a satisfaction, even after
+      such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice survived the King&rsquo;s Attorney
+      sufficiently long to be very happy with somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was
+      scarcely eighteen when she married Wyseman Clagett.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been a
+      familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of him
+      as &ldquo;the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton,&rdquo; as if one should say, &ldquo;the
+      well-known statesman, Daniel Webster.&rdquo; It is curious to observe how any
+      sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where
+      everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does
+      not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only after
+      his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That happened
+      early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the hens
+      flying out of the loft window in his father&rsquo;s stable, which stood in the
+      rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that though
+      he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in no respect
+      inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the window in the
+      loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England Icarus alighted
+      head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was henceforth looked upon
+      as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd moments his cloudiness was
+      illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as had not been detected in him
+      previous to his mischance. As Polonius said of Hamlet&mdash;another
+      unstrung mortal&mdash;Tilton&rsquo;s replies had &ldquo;a happiness that often madness
+      hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered
+      of.&rdquo; One morning, he appeared at the flour-mill with a sack of corn to be
+      ground for the almshouse, and was asked what he knew. &ldquo;Some things I
+      know,&rdquo; replied poor Tilton, &ldquo;and some things I don&rsquo;t know. I know the
+      miller&rsquo;s hogs grow fat, but I don&rsquo;t know whose corn they fat on.&rdquo; To
+      borrow another word from Polonius, though this be madness, yet there was
+      method in it. Tilton finally brought up in the almshouse, where he was
+      allowed the liberty of roaming at will through the town. He loved the
+      water-side as if he had had all his senses. Often he was seen to stand for
+      hours with a sunny, torpid smile on his lips, gazing out upon the river
+      where its azure ruffles itself into silver against the islands. He always
+      wore stuck in his hat a few hen&rsquo;s feathers, perhaps with some vague idea
+      of still associating himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come
+      into that category.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another complexion,
+      a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and one of His Majesty&rsquo;s
+      Council in 1766&mdash;a man with the blood of the lion and the unicorn in
+      every vein. He remained to the bitter end, and beyond, a devout royalist,
+      prizing his shoe-buckles, not because they were of chased silver, but
+      because they bore the tower mark and crown stamp. He stoutly objected to
+      oral prayer, on the ground that it gave rogues and hypocrites an
+      opportunity to impose on honest folk. He was punctilious in his attendance
+      at church, and unfailing in his responses, though not of a particularly
+      devotional temperament. On one occasion, at least, his sincerity is not to
+      be questioned. He had been deeply irritated by some encroachments on the
+      boundaries of certain estates, and had gone to church that forenoon with
+      his mind full of the matter. When the minister in the course of reading
+      the service came to the apostrophe, &ldquo;Cursed be he who removeth his
+      neighbor&rsquo;s landmark,&rdquo; Mr. Jeffrey&rsquo;s feelings were too many for him, and he
+      cried out &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; in a tone of voice that brought smiles to the adjoining
+      pews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jaffrey&rsquo;s last will and testament was a whimsical document, in spite
+      of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper. It had originally been
+      Mr. Jaffrey&rsquo;s plan to leave his possessions to his beloved friend, Colonel
+      Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel by some maladroitness managed to turn
+      the current of Pactolus in another direction. The vast property was
+      bequeathed to George Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator&rsquo;s grandnephew, on
+      condition that the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name of
+      Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no profession
+      excepting that of gentleman. There is an immense amount of Portsmouth as
+      well as George Jaffrey in that final clause. George the fourth handsomely
+      complied with the requirements, and dying at the age of sixty-six, without
+      issue or assets, was the last of that particular line of Georges. I say
+      that he handsomely complied with the requirements of the will; but my
+      statement appears to be subject to qualification, for on the day of his
+      obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic contemporary: &ldquo;Well, yes,
+      Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but not eminent in his
+      profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This modest exhibition of profiles, in which I have attempted to preserve
+      no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of Dr. Joseph Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Boston in the colonial days had her Mather Byles, Portsmouth had her
+      Dr. Joseph Moses. In their quality as humorists, the outlines of both
+      these gentlemen have become rather broken and indistinct. &ldquo;A jest&rsquo;s
+      prosperity lies in the ear that hears it.&rdquo; Decanted wit inevitably loses
+      its bouquet. A clever repartee belongs to the precious moment in which it
+      is broached, and is of a vintage that does not usually bear
+      transportation. Dr. Moses&mdash;he received his diploma not from the
+      College of Physicians, but from the circumstance of his having once
+      drugged his private demijohn of rum, and so nailed an inquisitive negro
+      named Sambo&mdash;Dr. Moses, as he was always called, had been handed down
+      to us by tradition as a fellow of infinite jest and of most excellent
+      fancy; but I must confess that I find his high spirits very much
+      evaporated. His humor expended itself, for the greater part, in practical
+      pleasantries&mdash;like that practiced on the minion Sambo&mdash;but these
+      diversions, however facetious to the parties concerned, lack magnetism for
+      outsiders. I discover nothing about him so amusing as the fact that he
+      lived in a tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded nor
+      shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the discarded shingles of the
+      Old South Church when the roof of that edifice was repaired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Moses, like many persons of his time and class, was a man of protean
+      employment&mdash;joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had much pithy
+      and fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He certainly impressed
+      the Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of uncommon parts, for the
+      Honorable Secretary of the Province, like a second Haroun Al Raschid,
+      often summoned the barber to entertain him with his company. One evening&mdash;and
+      this is the only reproducible instance of the doctor&rsquo;s readiness&mdash;Mr.
+      Atkinson regaled his guest with a diminutive glass of choice Madeira. The
+      doctor regarded it against the light with the half-closed eye of the
+      connoisseur, and after sipping the molten topaz with satisfaction,
+      inquired how old it was. &ldquo;Of the vintage of about sixty years ago,&rdquo; was
+      the answer. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the doctor reflectively, &ldquo;I never in my life saw
+      so small a thing of such an age.&rdquo; There are other mots of his on record,
+      but their faces are suspiciously familiar. In fact, all the witty things
+      were said aeons ago. If one nowadays perpetrates an original joke, one
+      immediately afterward finds it in the Sanskirt. I am afraid that Dr.
+      Joseph Moses has no very solid claims on us. I have given him place here
+      because he has long had the reputation of a wit, which is almost as good
+      as to be one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston to
+      Portsmouth&mdash;it took place somewhat more than forty years ago&mdash;was
+      attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in the crowded
+      station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was unobserved at the time. The
+      catastrophe was followed, though not immediately, by death, and that also,
+      curiously enough, was unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial train,
+      freighted with so many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran over and
+      killed&mdash;LOCAL CHARACTER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little community, and
+      had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to time it had calmly
+      produced an individual built on plans and specifications of its own,
+      without regard to the prejudices and conventionalities of outlying
+      districts. This individual was purely indigenous. He was born in the town,
+      he lived to a good old age in the town, and never went out of the place,
+      until he was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only fifty-six
+      miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity&mdash;only fifty-six miles
+      by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles distant in
+      effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you were obliged to take a
+      great yellow, clumsy stage-coach, resembling a three-story mud-turtle&mdash;if
+      zoologist will, for the sake of the simile, tolerate so daring an
+      invention; you were obliged to take it very early in the morning, you
+      dined at noon at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city with the
+      golden dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always the coach
+      had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had not gone
+      lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in Portsmouth, this journey
+      was an event which occurred only twice or thrice during life. To the
+      typical individual with whom I am for the moment dealing, it never
+      occurred at all. The town was his entire world; he was a parochial as a
+      Parisian; Market Street was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North End
+      his Bois de Boulogne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course there were varieties of local characters without his
+      limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India trade;
+      elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal peculiarities; one or
+      two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of coat, haunting the Athenaeum
+      reading-room; ex-sea captains, with rings on their fingers, like Simon
+      Danz&rsquo;s visitors in Longfellow&rsquo;s poem&mdash;men who had played busy parts
+      in the bustling world, and had drifted back to Old Strawberry Bank in the
+      tranquil sunset of their careers. I may say, in passing, that these
+      ancient mariners, after battling with terrific hurricanes and typhoons on
+      every known sea, not infrequently drowned themselves in pleasant weather
+      in small sail-boats on the Piscataqua River. Old sea-dogs who had
+      commanded ships of four or five hundred tons had naturally slight respect
+      for the potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there was to be
+      no further increase of these odd sticks&mdash;if I may call them so, in no
+      irreverent mood&mdash;after those innocent-looking parallel bars
+      indissolubly linked Portsmouth with the capital of the Commonwealth of
+      Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be changed, the old angles to be
+      pared off, new horizons to be regarded. The individual, as an eccentric
+      individual, was to undergo great modifications. If he were not to become
+      extinct&mdash;a thing little likely&mdash;he was at least to lose his
+      prominence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, as I said, local character, in the sense in which the term is
+      here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering death, and passed
+      away so peacefully and silently as not to attract general, or perhaps any,
+      notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my boyhood. The
+      last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had come in, long
+      before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half obsolete customs
+      and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was not too late, for
+      example, to catch the last town crier&mdash;one Nicholas Newman, whom I
+      used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort of affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicholas Newman&mdash;Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being Edward&mdash;was
+      a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat bow-legged, and
+      with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have never since seen
+      a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple. The only thing
+      about him that matched the instrument of his office was his voice. His
+      &ldquo;Hear All!&rdquo; still deafens memory&rsquo;s ear. I remember that he had a queer way
+      of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him had originally intended
+      a crab, but thought better of it, and made a town-crier. Of the crustacean
+      intention only a moist thumb remained, which served Mr. Newman in good
+      stead in the delivery of the Boston evening papers, for he was
+      incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties were to cry auctions,
+      funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals, public meetings, and
+      articles lost or found. He was especially strong in announcing the loss of
+      reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden ladies. The unction with
+      which he detailed the several contents, when fully confided to him, would
+      have seemed satirical in another person, but on his part was pure
+      conscientiousness. He would not let so much as a thimble, or a piece of
+      wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity in the way of tonsorial
+      device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman spoken of as &ldquo;that horrid
+      man.&rdquo; He was a picturesque figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with
+      those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple of
+      the Old North every night at nine o&rsquo;clock&mdash;the vocal remains of the
+      colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his losses
+      elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can more
+      satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different
+      personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine
+      o&rsquo;clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a time
+      at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a gay
+      little shop (he called it &ldquo;an Emporium&rdquo;), as barber shops generally are,
+      decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers of
+      tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes&mdash;whose antecedents to us boys were
+      wrapped in thrilling mystery, we imagined him to have been a prince in his
+      native land&mdash;was a colored man, not too dark &ldquo;for human nature&rsquo;s
+      daily food,&rdquo; and enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics in
+      town. At this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every
+      official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore a name
+      that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or so. The
+      situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a Chinese policeman,
+      with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper pocket handkerchief, patrolling
+      Congress Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as straight as
+      a pine. He possessed his race&rsquo;s sweet temper, simplicity, and vanity. His
+      martial bearing was a positive factor in the effectiveness of the
+      Portsmouth Greys, whenever those bloodless warriors paraded. As he brought
+      up the rear of the last platoon, with his infantry cap stuck jauntily on
+      the left side of his head and a bright silver cup slung on a belt at his
+      hip, he seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing things in the
+      display. To himself he was pretty much &ldquo;all the company.&rdquo; He used to say,
+      with a drollness which did not strike me until years afterwards, &ldquo;Boys, I
+      and Cap&rsquo;n Towle is goin&rsquo; to trot out &lsquo;the Greys&rsquo; to-morroh.&rdquo; Though
+      strictly honest in all business dealings, his tropical imagination,
+      whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of autobiography, left much
+      to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared with Sol Holmes on such
+      occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid integrity. Sol Holmes&rsquo;s tragic
+      end was in singular contrast with his sunny temperament. One night, long
+      ago, he threw himself from the deck of a Sound steamer, somewhere between
+      Stonington and New York. What led or drove him to the act never
+      transpired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few men who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of which I
+      write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue wheelbarrow. I
+      find it difficult to describe him other than vaguely, possibly because
+      Wilbird had no expression whatever in his countenance. With his vacant
+      white face lifted to the clouds, seemingly oblivious of everything, yet
+      going with a sort of heaven-given instinct straight to his destination, he
+      trundled that rattling wheelbarrow for many a year over Portsmouth
+      cobblestones. He was so unconscious of his environment that sometimes a
+      small boy would pop into the empty wheelbarrow and secure a ride without
+      Wibird arriving at any very clear knowledge of the fact. His employment in
+      life was to deliver groceries and other merchandise to purchasers. This he
+      did in a dreamy, impersonal kind of way. It was as if a spirit had somehow
+      go hold of an earthly wheelbarrow and was trundling it quite
+      unconsciously, with no sense of responsibility. One day he appeared at a
+      kitchen door with a two-gallon molasses jug, the top of which was wanting.
+      It was not longer a jug, but a tureen. When the recipient of the damaged
+      article remonstrated with &ldquo;Goodness gracious, Wibird! You have broken the
+      jug,&rdquo; his features lighted up, and he seemed immensely relieved. &ldquo;I
+      thought,&rdquo; He remarked, &ldquo;I heerd somethink crack!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wibird Penhallow&rsquo;s heaviest patron was the keeper of a variety store, and
+      the first specimen of a pessimist I ever encountered. He was an excellent
+      specimen. He took exception to everything. He objected to the telegraph,
+      to the railway, to steam in all its applications. Some of his arguments, I
+      recollect, made a deep impression on my mind. &ldquo;Nowadays,&rdquo; he once observed
+      to me, &ldquo;if your son or your grandfather drops dead at the other end of
+      creation, you know of it in ten minutes. What&rsquo;s the use? Unless you are
+      anxious to know he&rsquo;s dead, you&rsquo;ve got just two or three weeks more to be
+      miserable in.&rdquo; He scorned the whole business, and was faithful to his
+      scorn. When he received a telegram, which was rare, he made a point of
+      keeping it awhile unopened. Through the exercise of this whim he once
+      missed an opportunity of buying certain goods to great advantage. &ldquo;There!&rdquo;
+       he exclaimed, &ldquo;if the telegraph hadn&rsquo;t been invented the idiot would have
+      written to me, and I&rsquo;d have sent a letter by return coach, and got the
+      goods before he found out prices had gone up in Chicago. If that boy
+      brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs, I&rsquo;ll throw an axe-handle
+      at him.&rdquo; His pessimism extended up, or down, to generally recognized
+      canons of orthography. They were all iniquitous. If k-n-i-f-e spelled
+      knife, then, he contended, k-n-i-f-e-s was the plural. Diverting tags,
+      written by his own hand in conformity with this theory, were always
+      attached to articles in his shop window. He is long since ded, as he
+      himself would have put it, but his phonetic theory appears to have
+      survived him in crankish brains here and there. As my discouraging old
+      friend was not exactly a public character, like the town crier or Wibird
+      Penhallow, I have intentionally thrown a veil over his identity. I have,
+      so to speak, dropped into his pouch a grain or two of that magical
+      fern-seed which was supposed by our English ancestors, in Elizabeth&rsquo;s
+      reign, to possess the quality of rendering a man invisible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another person who singularly interested me at this epoch was a person
+      with whom I had never exchanged a word, whose voice I had never heard, but
+      whose face was as familiar to me as every day could make it. For each
+      morning as I went to school, and each afternoon as I returned, I saw this
+      face peering out of a window in the second story of a shambling yellow
+      house situated in Washington Street, not far from the corner of State.
+      Whether some malign disease had fixed him to the chair he sat on, or
+      whether he had lost the use of his legs, or, possible, had none (the upper
+      part of him was that of a man in admirable health), presented a problem
+      which, with that curious insouciance of youth I made no attempt to solve.
+      It was an established fact, however, that he never went out of that house.
+      I cannot vouch so confidently for the cobwebby legend which wove itself
+      about him. It was to this effect: He had formerly been the master of a
+      large merchantman running between New York and Calcutta; while still in
+      his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck, and seated
+      himself at that window&mdash;where the outlook must have been the reverse
+      of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the course of the day, and
+      the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry&rsquo;s bakery-cart was the only sound
+      that ever shattered the silence. Whether it was an amatory or a financial
+      disappointment that turned him into a hermit was left to ingenious
+      conjecture. But there he sat, year in and year out, with his cheek so
+      close to the window that the nearest pane became permanently blurred with
+      his breath; for after his demise the blurr remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for an
+      undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was a sexton in
+      Portsmouth&mdash;his name escapes me, but his attributes do not&mdash;whose
+      impressiveness made him own brother to the massive architecture of the
+      Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was the striking figure, even to
+      the eclipsing of the involuntary object of the ceremony. His occasions,
+      happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other public
+      services that of furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties. I always
+      thought&mdash;perhaps it was the working of an unchastened imagination&mdash;that
+      he managed to throw into his ice-creams a peculiar chill not attained by
+      either Dunyon or Peduzzi&mdash;arcades ambo&mdash;the rival confectioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species of
+      restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing confections
+      to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both gentlemen achieved
+      great popularity in their respective lines, but neither offered to the
+      juvenile population quite the charm of those prim, white-capped old ladies
+      who presided over certain snuffy little shops, occurring unexpectedly in
+      silent side-streets where the football of commerce seemed an incongruous
+      thing. These shops were never intended in nature. They had an impromptu
+      and abnormal air about them. I do not recall one that was not located in a
+      private residence, and was not evidently the despairing expedient of some
+      pathetic financial crisis, similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah
+      Pyrcheon in The House of the Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street
+      door&mdash;the upper section left open in summer&mdash;ushered you, with a
+      sudden jangle of bell that turned your heart over, into a strictly private
+      hall, haunted by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence,
+      through another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front
+      parlor, but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown, wooden counter, and
+      several rows of little drawers built up against the picture-papered wall
+      behind it. Through much use the paint on these drawers was worn off in
+      circles round the polished brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small
+      article required by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a
+      peppermint Gibraltar&mdash;the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery
+      which, when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any Portsmouth
+      boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a single tooth left
+      unbroken. The proprietors of these little knick-knack establishments were
+      the nicest creatures, somehow suggesting venerable doves. They were always
+      aged ladies, sometimes spinsters, sometimes relicts of daring mariners,
+      beached long before. They always wore crisp muslin caps and steel-rimmed
+      spectacles; they were not always amiable, and no wonder, for even doves
+      may have their rheumatism; but such as they were, they were cherished in
+      young hearts, and are, I take it, impossible to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that it must
+      have been in some respects unique among New England towns. There were, for
+      instance, no really poor persons in the place; every one had some
+      sufficient calling or an income to render it unnecessary; vagrants and
+      paupers were instantly snapped up and provided for at &ldquo;the Farm.&rdquo; There
+      was, however, in a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a decayed old
+      gentlewoman, occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a suspicion of
+      maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her by the
+      neighborhood&mdash;as a matter of course, and involving no sense of
+      dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is
+      given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as they were
+      affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that stir
+      in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my
+      purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes
+      that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like
+      Portsmouth&mdash;the obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the
+      obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England the
+      impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and women&mdash;quaint,
+      shrewd, and racy of the soil&mdash;who linger in little, silvery-gray old
+      homesteads strung along the New England roads and by-ways will shortly
+      cease to exist as a class, save in the record of some such charming
+      chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or Mary Wilkins, on whose sympathetic page
+      they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an atmosphere of
+      long-kept lavender and pennyroyal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower.
+      The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated,
+      the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement
+      more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric
+      finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a larger
+      world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping hand of
+      new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from Cambridge,
+      Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico, and his ulster
+      from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state of Odd Stick; he
+      has ceased to be parochial; he is no longer distinct; he is simply the
+      Average Man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      INDEX OF NAMES
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     ADAMS, NATHANIEL
+     ADDISON, JOSEPH
+     ALLEN, WILLIAM
+     ANANIAS
+     ATKINSON, THEODORE
+     AUSTIN, REBECCA
+     BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE
+     BLAY, RUTH
+     BOGGS, AMOS
+     BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN
+     BRIDGET, MOLLY
+     BROWN, REV. ARTHUR
+     BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D.
+     BRUCE, CYRUS
+     BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES
+     BYLES, REV. MATHER
+     CAROLINE, QUEEN
+     CHADBORN, HUMPHREY
+     CHARLES, PRINCE
+     CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE
+     CLAGETT, WYSEMAN
+     COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON
+     D&rsquo;ORLEANS, DUC
+     DUNYON, WILLIAM
+     ELIZABETH, QUEEN
+     FENTON, JOHN
+     FOWLE, DANIEL
+     FOWLE, PRIMUS
+     FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
+     FURBER, THOMAS
+     GEORGE I
+     GERRY, ELBRIDGE
+     GORGES, SIR FERDINAND
+     GUAST, PIERRE DE
+     HAM, SUPPLY
+     HANCOCK, JOHN
+     HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
+     HILTON, MARTHA
+     HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+     HOLMES, SOL
+     JAFFREY, GEORGE
+     JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY
+     JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
+     KEAIS, SAMUAL
+     KEKUANAOA
+     KENNY, PENELOPE
+     KNOX, GENERAL HENRY
+     LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE
+     LAIGHTON, ALBERT
+     LAIGHTON, OSCAR
+     LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN
+     LEAR, BENJAMIN
+     LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
+     MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD
+     MCDONOUGH, JAMES
+     MASON, JEREMIAH
+     MASON, JOHN
+     MASON, JOHN TUFTON
+     MARCH, CLEMENT
+     MATHER, REV. COTTON
+     MESERVE, GEORGE
+     MICHELANGELO
+     MITCHEL, LETTUCE
+     MOFFATT, CATHERINE
+     MOLIERE
+     MONTPENSIER, DUC DE
+     MOSES, JOSEPH
+     NEWMAN, EDWARD
+     NOBLE, MARK
+     ODIORNE, EBEN L.
+     PACKER, THOMAS
+     PEDUZZI, DOMINIC
+     PENHALLOW, WIBIRD
+     PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM
+     PEPYS, SAMUAL
+     PHILIPPE, LOUIS
+     PHIPPES, THOMAS
+     PHIPPS, GOVERNOR
+     PICKERING, JOHN
+     PITT, WILLIAM
+     POTTLE, WILLIAM
+     PRING, MARTIN
+     QUINCY, DOROTHY
+     ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE
+     ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS
+     RUTLEDGE, EDWARD
+     SERAT, LEONARD
+     SEWELL, JONATHAN
+     SHAKESPEARE
+     SHEAFE, JACOB
+     SHERBURNE, HENRY
+     SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON
+     SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM
+     SIMPSON, SARAH
+     SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN
+     SOCRATES
+     STAVERS, DAME
+     STAVERS, JOHN
+     STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE
+     STOODLEY, JAMES
+     THAXTER, CELIA
+     THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
+     TILTON, JOHNNY
+     TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM
+     WALTON, GEORGE
+     WARNER, JONATHAN
+     WASHINGTON, GEORGE
+     WEBSTER, DANIEL
+     WENTWORTH, BENNING
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN
+     WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D
+     WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA
+     WENTWORTH, MARY
+     WENTWORTH, MICHAEL
+     WENTWORTH, SARAH
+     WESTWERE, EDWARD
+     WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF
+     WIBIRD, RICHARD
+     WILKINS, MARY E.
+     WINN, TIMOTHY
+     WITHER, GEORGE
+     XANTIPPE
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/ldtwn10.txt b/old/ldtwn10.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/ldtwn10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2602 @@
+**Project Gutenberg Etext of An Old Town By The Sea, by Aldrich**
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+This Project Gutenberg Etext prepared by Susan L. Farley.
+
+
+
+
+
+An Old Town By The Sea
+
+by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
+
+
+
+
+PISCATAQUA RIVER
+
+Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
+By woods, and fields of corn,
+Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
+Upon my birthday morn.
+
+But I within a city, I,
+So full of vague unrest,
+Would almost give my life to lie
+An hour upon upon thy breast.
+
+To let the wherry listless go,
+And, wrapt in dreamy joy,
+Dip, and surge idly to and fro,
+Like the red harbor-buoy;
+
+To sit in happy indolence,
+To rest upon the oars,
+And catch the heavy earthy scents
+That blow from summer shores;
+
+To see the rounded sun go down,
+And with its parting fires
+Light up the windows of the town
+And burn the tapering spires;
+
+And then to hear the muffled tolls
+From steeples slim and white,
+And watch, among the Isles of Shoals,
+The Beacon's orange light.
+
+O River! flowing to the main
+Through woods, and fields of corn,
+Hear thou my longing and my pain
+This sunny birthday morn;
+
+And take this song which fancy shapes
+To music like thine own,
+And sing it to the cliffs and capes
+And crags where I am known!
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+II. ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+III. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+IV. A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+V. OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+VII. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+INDEX OF NAMES
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD TOWN BY THE SEA
+
+I.
+CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
+
+I CALL it an old town, but it is only relatively old.  When one
+reflects on the countless centuries that have gone to the
+for-mation of this crust of earth on which we temporarily move,
+the most ancient cities on its surface seem merely things of the
+week before last. It was only the other day, then--that is to
+say, in the month of June, 1603--that one Martin Pring, in the
+ship Speedwell, an enormous ship of nearly fifty tons burden,
+from Bristol, England, sailed up the Piscataqua River.  The
+Speedwell, numbering thirty men, officers and crew, had for
+consort the Discoverer, of twenty-six tons and thirteen men.
+After following the windings of "the brave river" for twelve
+miles or more, the two vessels turned back and put to sea again,
+having failed in the chief object of the expedition, which was to
+obtain a cargo of the medicinal sassafras-tree, from the bark of
+which, as well known to our ancestors, could be distilled the
+Elixir of Life.
+
+It was at some point on the left bank of the Piscataqua, three or
+four miles from the mouth of the river, that worthy Master Pring
+probably effected one of his several landings. The beautiful
+stream widens suddenly at this place, and the green banks, then
+covered with a network of strawberry vines, and sloping
+invitingly to the lip of the crystal water, must have won the
+tired mariners.
+
+The explorers found themselves on the edge of a vast forest of
+oak, hemlock, maple, and pine; but they saw no sassafras-trees to
+speak of, nor did they encounter--what would have been infinitely
+less to their taste--and red-men.  Here and there were
+discoverable the scattered ashes of fires where the Indians had
+encamped earlier in the spring; they were absent now, at the
+silvery falls, higher up the stream, where fish abounded at that
+season.  The soft June breeze, laden with the delicate breath of
+wild-flowers and the pungent odors of spruce and pine, ruffled
+the duplicate sky in the water; the new leaves lisped pleasantly
+in the tree tops, and the birds were singing as if they had gone
+mad.  No ruder sound or movement of life disturbed the primeval
+solitude. Master Pring would scarcely recognize the spot were he
+to land there to-day.
+
+Eleven years afterwards a much cleverer man than the commander of
+the Speedwell dropped anchor in the Piscataqua--Captain John
+Smith of famous memory.  After slaying Turks in hand-to-hand
+combats, and doing all sorts of doughty deeds wherever he chanced
+to decorate the globe with his presence, he had come with two
+vessels to the fisheries on the rocky selvage of Maine, when
+curiosity, or perhaps a deeper motive, led him to examine the
+neighboring shore lines.  With eight of his men in a small boat,
+a ship's yawl, he skirted the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape
+Cod, keeping his eye open.  This keeping his eye open was a
+peculiarity of the little captain; possibly a family trait.  It
+was Smith who really discovered the Isles of Shoals, exploring in
+person those masses of bleached rock--those "isles assez hautes,"
+of which the French navigator Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts,
+had caught a bird's-eye glimpse through the twilight in 1605.
+Captain Smith christened the group Smith's Isles, a title which
+posterity, with singular persistence of ingratitude, has ignored.
+It was a tardy sense of justice that expressed itself a few years
+ago in erecting on Star Island a simple marble shaft to the
+memory of JOHN SMITH--the multitudinous! Perhaps this long delay
+is explained by a natural hesitation to label a monument so
+ambiguously.
+
+The modern Jason, meanwhile, was not without honor in his own
+country, whatever may have happened to him in his own house, for
+the poet George Wither addressed a copy of pompous verses "To his
+Friend Captain Smith, upon his Description of New England.""Sir,"
+he says--
+
+      "Sir: your Relations I haue read: which shew
+    Ther's reason I should honor them and you:
+    And if their meaning I have vnderstood,
+    I dare to censure thus: Your Project's good;
+    And may (if follow'd) doubtlesse quit the paine
+    With honour, pleasure and a trebble gaine;
+    Beside the benefit that shall arise
+    To make more happy our Posterities."
+
+The earliest map of this portion of our seaboard was prepared by
+Smith and laid before Prince Charles, who asked to give the
+country a name. He christened it New England.  In that remarkable
+map the site of Portsmouth is call Hull, and Kittery and York are
+known as Boston.
+
+It was doubtless owing to Captain John Smith's representation on
+his return to England that the Laconia Company selected the banks
+of the Piscataqua for their plantation. Smith was on an intimate
+footing with Sir Ferinand Gorges, who, five years subsequently,
+made a tour of inspection along the New England coast, in company
+with John Mason, then Governor of Newfoundland.  One of the
+results of this summer cruise is the town of Portsmouth, among
+whose leafy ways, and into some of whose old-fashioned houses, I
+purpose to take the reader, if he have an idle hour on his hands.
+Should we meet the flitting ghost of some old-time worthy, on the
+staircase or at a lonely street corner, the reader must be
+prepared for it.
+
+II.
+ALONG THE WATER SIDE
+
+IT is not supposable that the early settlers selected the site of
+their plantation on account of its picturesqueness. They were
+influenced entirely by the lay of the land, its nearness and easy
+access to the sea, and the secure harbor it offered to their
+fishing-vessels; yet they could not have chosen a more beautiful
+spot had beauty been the sole consideration. The first settlement
+was made at Odiorne's Point--the Pilgrims' Rock of New Hampshire;
+there the Manor, or Mason's Hall, was built by the Laconia
+Company in 1623.  It was not until 1631 that the Great House was
+erected by Humphrey Chadborn on Strawberry Bank.  Mr. Chadborn,
+consciously or unconsciously, sowed a seed from which a city has
+sprung.
+
+The town of Portsmouth stretches along the south bank of the
+Piscataqua, about two miles from the sea as the crow flies--three
+miles following the serpentine course of the river.  The stream
+broadens suddenly at this point, and at flood tide, lying without
+a ripple in a basin formed by the interlocked islands and the
+mainland, it looks more like an island lake than a river. To the
+unaccustomed eye there is no visible outlet. Standing on one of
+the wharves at the foot of State Street or Court Street, a
+stranger would at first scarcely suspect the contiguity of the
+ocean. A little observation, however, would show him that he was
+in a seaport.  The rich red rust on the gables and roofs of
+ancient buildings looking seaward would tell him that.  There is
+a fitful saline flavor in the air, and if while he gazed a dense
+white fog should come rolling in, like a line of phantom
+breakers, he would no longer have any doubts.
+
+It is of course the oldest part of the town that skirts the
+river, though few of the notable houses that remain are to be
+found there. Like all New England settlements, Portsmouth was
+built of wood, and has been subjected to extensive
+conflagrations. You rarely come across a brick building that is
+not shockingly modern.  The first house of the kind was erected
+by Richard Wibird towards the close of the seventeenth century.
+
+Though many of the old landmarks have been swept away by the
+fateful hand of time and fire, the town impresses you as a very
+old town, especially as you saunter along the streets down by the
+river. The worm-eaten wharves, some of them covered by a sparse,
+unhealthy beard of grass, and the weather-stained, unoccupied
+warehouses are sufficient to satisfy a moderate appetite for
+antiquity.  These deserted piers and these long rows of empty
+barracks, with their sarcastic cranes projecting from the eaves,
+rather puzzle the stranger.  Why this great preparation for a
+commercial activity that does not exist, and evidently had not
+for years existed? There are no ships lying at the pier-heads;
+there are no gangs of stevedores staggering under the heavy cases
+of merchandise; here and there is a barge laden down to the
+bulwarks with coal, and here and there a square-rigged schooner
+from Maine smothered with fragrant planks and clapboards; an
+imported citizen is fishing at the end of the wharf, a ruminative
+freckled son of Drogheda, in perfect sympathy with the indolent
+sunshine that seems to be sole proprietor of these crumbling
+piles and ridiculous warehouses, from which even the ghost of
+prosperity has flown.
+
+Once upon a time, however, Portsmouth carried on an extensive
+trade with the West Indies, threatening as a maritime port to
+eclipse both Boston and New York.  At the windows of these musty
+counting-rooms which overlook the river near Spring Market used
+to stand portly merchants, in knee breeches and silver
+shoe-buckles and plum-colored coats with ruffles at the wrist,
+waiting for their ships to come up the Narrows; the cries of
+stevedores and the chants of sailors at the windlass used to echo
+along the shore where all is silence now. For reasons not worth
+setting forth, the trade with the Indies abruptly closed, having
+ruined as well as enriched many a Portsmouth adventurer.  This
+explains the empty warehouses and the unused wharves.  Portsmouth
+remains the interesting widow of a once very lively commerce. I
+fancy that few fortunes are either made or lost in Portsmouth
+nowadays. Formerly it turned out the best ships, as it did the
+ablest ship captains, in the world.  There were families in which
+the love for blue water was in immemorial trait.  The boys were
+always sailors; "a grey-headed shipmaster, in each generation,
+retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of
+fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
+the salt spray and the gale, which had blasted against his sire
+and grandsire." (1. Hawthorne in his introduction to The Scarlet
+Letter.)  With thousands of miles of sea-line and a score or two
+of the finest harbors on the globe, we have adroitly turned over
+our carrying trade to foreign nations.
+
+In other days, as I have said, a high maritime spirit was
+characteristic of Portsmouth.  The town did a profitable business
+in the war of 1812, sending out a large fleet of the sauciest
+small craft on record.  A pleasant story is told of one of these
+little privateers--the Harlequin, owned and commanded by Captain
+Elihu Brown.  The Harlequin one day gave chase to a large ship,
+which did not seem to have much fight aboard, and had got it into
+close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger threw open her
+ports, and proved to be His Majesty's Ship-of-War Bulwark,
+seventy-four guns.  Poor Captain Brown!
+
+Portsmouth has several large cotton factories and one or two
+corpulent breweries; it is a wealthy old town, with a liking for
+first mortgage bonds; but its warmest lover will not claim for it
+the distinction of being a great mercantile centre.  The majority
+of her young men are forced to seek other fields to reap, and
+almost every city in the Union, and many a city across the sea,
+can point to some eminent merchant, lawyer, or what not, as "a
+Portsmouth boy."  Portsmouth even furnished the late king of the
+Sandwich Islands, Kekuanaoa, with a prime minister, and his
+nankeen Majesty never had a better. The affection which all these
+exiles cherish for their birthplace is worthy of remark.  On two
+occasions--in 1852 and 1873, the two hundred and fiftieth
+anniversary of the settlement of Strawberry Bank--the
+transplanted sons of Portsmouth were seized with an impulse to
+return home.  Simultaneously and almost without concerted action,
+the lines of pilgrims took up their march from every quarter of
+the globe, and swept down with music and banners on the motherly
+old town.
+
+To come back to the wharves. I do not know of any spot with such
+a fascinating air of dreams and idleness about it as the old
+wharf at the end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once
+a noisy, busy place, crowded with sailors and soldiers--in the
+war of 1812--gives an emphasis to the quiet that broods over it
+to-day.  The lounger who sits of a summer afternoon on a rusty
+anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the silent warehouses, and
+look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring past the town,
+cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having taken itself
+off elsewhere.
+
+What a slumberous, delightful, lazy place it is!  The sunshine
+seems to lie a foot deep on the planks of the dusty wharf, which
+yields up to the warmth a vague perfume of the cargoes of rum,
+molasses, and spice that used to be piled upon it. The river is
+as blue as the inside of a harebell.  The opposite shore, in the
+strangely shifting magic lights of sky and water, stretches along
+like the silvery coast of fairyland.  Directly opposite you is
+the navy yard, and its neat officers' quarters and workshops and
+arsenals, and its vast shiphouses, in which the keel of many a
+famous frigate has been laid. Those monster buildings on the
+water's edge, with their roofs pierced with innumerable little
+windows, which blink like eyes in the sunlight, and the
+shiphouses. On your right lies a cluster of small islands,--there
+are a dozen or more in the harbor--on the most extensive of which
+you see the fading-away remains of some earthworks thrown up in
+1812.  Between this--Trefethren's Island--and Peirce's Island lie
+the Narrows. Perhaps a bark or a sloop-of-war is making up to
+town; the hulk is hidden amoung the islands, and the topmasts
+have the effect of sweeping across the dry land. On your left is
+a long bridge, more than a quarter of a mile in length, set upon
+piles where the water is twenty or thirty feet deep, leading to
+the navy yard and Kittery--the Kittery so often the theme of
+Whittier's verse.
+
+This is a mere outline of the landscape that spreads before you.
+Its changeful beauty of form and color, with the summer clouds
+floating over it, is not to be painted in words. I know of many a
+place where the scenery is more varied and striking; but there is
+a mandragora quality in the atmosphere here that holds you to the
+spot, and makes the half-hours seem like minutes. I could fancy a
+man sitting on the end of that old wharf very contentedly for two
+or three years, provided it could be always in June.
+
+Perhaps, too, one would desire it to be always high water.  The
+tide falls from eight to twelve feet, and when the water makes
+out between the wharves some of the picturesqueness makes out
+also. A corroded section of stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the
+skeleton of a hoopskirt protruding from the tide mud like the
+remains of some old-time wreck, is apt to break the enchantment.
+
+I fear I have given the reader an exaggerated idea of the
+solitude that reigns along the river-side. Sometimes there is
+society here of an unconventional kind, if you care to seek it.
+Aside from the foreign gentleman before mentioned, you are likely
+to encounter, farther down the shore toward the Point of Graves
+(a burial-place of the colonial period), a battered and aged
+native fisherman boiling lobsters on a little gravelly bench,
+where the river whispers and lisps among the pebbles as the tide
+creeps in.  It is a weather-beaten ex-skipper or ex-pilot, with
+strands of coarse hair, like seaweed, falling about a face that
+has the expression of a half-open clam.  He is always ready to
+talk with you, this amphibious person; and if he is not the most
+entertaining of gossips--more weather-wise that Old
+Probabilities, and as full of moving incident as Othello
+himself--then he is not the wintery-haired shipman I used to see
+a few years ago on the strip of beach just beyond Liberty Bridge,
+building his drift-wood fire under a great tin boiler, and making
+it lively for a lot of reluctant lobsters.
+
+I imagine that very little change has taken place in this
+immediate locality, known prosaically as Puddle Dock, during the
+past fifty or sixty years.  The view you get looking across
+Liberty Bridge, Water Street, is probably the same in every
+respect that presented itself to the eyes of the town folk a
+century ago.  The flagstaff, on the right, is the representative
+of the old "standard of liberty" which the Sons planted on this
+spot in January, 1766, signalizing their opposition to the
+enforcement of the Stamp Act.  On the same occasion the patriots
+called at the house of Mr. George Meserve, the agent for
+distributing the stamps in New Hampshire, and relieved him of his
+stamp-master's commission, which document they carried on the
+point of a sword through the town to Liberty Bridge (the Swing
+Bridge), where they erected the staff, with the motto, "Liberty,
+Property, and no Stamp!"
+
+The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of
+November.  On the previous morning the "New Hampshire Gazette"
+appeared with a deep black border and all the typographical
+emblems of affliction, for was not Liberty dead?  At all events,
+the "Gazette" itself was as good as dead, since the printer could
+no longer publish it if he were to be handicapped by a heavy tax.
+"The day was ushered in by the tolling of all the bells in town,
+the vessels in the harbor had their colors hoisted half-mast
+high; about three o'clock a funeral procession was formed, having
+a coffin with this inscription, LIBERTY, AGED 145, STAMPT.  It
+moved from the state house, with two unbraced drums, through the
+principal streets.  As it passed the Parade, minute-guns were
+fired; at the place of interment a speech was delivered on the
+occasion, stating the many advantages we had received and the
+melancholy prospect before us, at the seeming departure of our
+invaluable liberties. But some sign of life appearing, Liberty
+was not deposited in the grave; it was rescued by a number of her
+sons, the motto changed to Liberty revived, and carried off in
+triumph.  The detestable Act was buried in its stead, and the
+clods of the valley were laid upon it; the bells changed their
+melancholy sound to a more joyful tone." (1. Annals of
+Portsmouth, by Nathaniel Adams, 1825.)
+
+With this side glance at one of the curious humors of the time,
+we resume our peregrinations.
+
+Turning down a lane on your left, a few rods beyond Liberty
+Bridge, you reach a spot known as the Point of Graves, chiefly
+interesting as showing what a graveyard may come to if it last
+long enough.  In 1671 one Captain John Pickering, of whom we
+shall have more to say, ceded to the town a piece of ground on
+this neck for burial purposes. It is an odd-shaped lot,
+comprising about half an acre, inclosed by a crumbling red brick
+wall two or three feet high, with wood capping.  The place is
+overgrown with thistles, rank grass, and fungi; the black slate
+headstones have mostly fallen over; those that still make a
+pretense of standing slant to every point of the compass, and
+look as if they were being blown this way and that by a
+mysterious gale which leaves everything else untouched; the
+mounds have sunk to the common level, and the old underground
+tombs have collapsed.  Here and there the moss and weeds you can
+pick out some name that shines in the history of the early
+settlement; hundreds of the flower of the colony lie here, but
+the known and the unknown, gentle and simple, mingle their dust
+on a perfect equality now.  The marble that once bore a haughty
+coat of arms is as smooth as the humblest slate stone guiltless
+of heraldry.  The lion and the unicorn, wherever they appear on
+some cracked slab, are very much tamed by time.  The once
+fat-faced cherubs, with wing at either cheek, are the merest
+skeletons now.  Pride, pomp, grief, and remembrance are all at
+end.  No reverent feet come here, no tears fall here; the old
+graveyard itself is dead! A more dismal, uncanny spot than this
+at twilight would be hard to find. It is noticed that when the
+boys pass it after nightfall, they always go by whistling with a
+gayety that is perfectly hollow.
+
+Let us get into some cheerfuler neighborhood!
+
+III.
+A STROLL ABOUT TOWN
+
+AS you leave the river front behind you, and pass "up town," the
+streets grow wider, and the architecture becomes more
+ambitious--streets fringed with beautiful old trees and lined
+with commodious private dwellings, mostly square white houses,
+with spacious halls running through the centre. Previous to the
+Revolution, white paint was seldom used on houses, and the
+diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of the
+residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and
+have pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with
+dahlias and sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a
+town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed
+every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be
+especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth.
+In some parts of the town, when the chestnuts are in blossom, you
+would fancy yourself in a garden in fairyland.  In spring,
+summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the fair town--her
+luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem more like
+the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain streets
+in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm.
+You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by
+the overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned
+with a drapery even more graceful and dazzling than springtime
+gives them.  The numerous elms and maples which shade the
+principal thoroughfares are not the result of chance, but the
+ample reward of the loving care that is taken to preserve the
+trees.  There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to
+arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave
+legacies to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees
+along some favorite walk.  Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt
+thoroughfare leading from Middle Street to the South
+Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of a citizen who gave the
+labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that windswept and
+barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees seems
+to be a matter of heredity.  So far back as 1660 the selectmen
+instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or
+any other wood from off the town common, excepting under special
+conditions.
+
+In the business section of the town trees are few.  The chief
+business streets are Congress and Market.  Market Street is the
+stronghold of the dry-goods shops.  There are seasons, I suppose,
+when these shops are crowded, but I have never happened to be in
+Portsmouth at the time.  I seldom pass through the narrow
+cobble-paved street without wondering where the customers are
+that must keep all these flourishing little establishments going.
+Congress Street--a more elegant thoroughfare than Market--is the
+Nevski Prospekt of Portsmouth.  Among the prominent buildings is
+the Athenaeum, containing a reading-room and library.  From the
+high roof of this building the stroller will do well to take a
+glance at the surrounding country.  He will naturally turn
+seaward for the more picturesque aspects. If the day is clear, he
+will see the famous Isle of Shoals, lying nine miles
+away--Appledore, Smutty-Nose, Star Island, White Island, etc.;
+there are nine of them in all.  On Appledore is Laighton's Hotel,
+and near it the summer cottage of Celia Thaxter, the poet of the
+Isles.  On the northern end of Star Island is the quaint town of
+Gosport, with a tiny stone church perched like a sea-gull on its
+highest rock.  A mile southwest form Star Island lies White
+Island, on which is a lighthouse. Mrs. Thaxter calls this the
+most picturesque of the group.  Perilous neighbors, O mariner! in
+any but the serenest weather, these wrinkled, scarred, are
+storm-smitten rocks, flanked by wicked sunken ledges that grow
+white at the lip with rage when the great winds blow!
+
+How peaceful it all looks off there, on the smooth emerald sea!
+and how softly the waves seem to break on yonder point where the
+unfinished fort is!  That is the ancient town of Newcastle, to
+reach which from Portsmouth you have to cross three bridges with
+the most enchanting scenery in New Hampshire lying on either
+hand.  At Newcastle the poet Stedman has built for his summerings
+an enviable little stone chateau--a seashell into which I fancy
+the sirens creep to warm themselves during the winter months.  So
+it is never without its singer.
+
+Opposite Newcastle is Kittery Point, a romantic spot, where Sir
+William Pepperell, the first American baronet, once lived, and
+where his tomb now is, in his orchard across the road, a few
+hundred yards from the "goodly mansion" he built. The knight's
+tomb and the old Pepperell House, which has been somewhat
+curtailed of it fair proportions, are the objects of frequent
+pilgrimages to Kittery Point.
+
+From the elevation (the roof of the Athenaeun) the navy yard, the
+river with its bridges and islands, the clustered gables of
+Kittery and Newcastle, the illimitable ocean beyond make a
+picture worth climbing four or five flights of stairs to gaze
+upon. Glancing down on the town nestled in the foliage, it seems
+like a town dropped by chance in the midst of a forest. Among the
+prominent objects which lift themselves above the tree tops are
+the belfries of the various churches, the white fa�ade of the
+custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the Rockingham, the
+principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find in
+Portsmouth one of the most completely appointed hotels in the
+United States.  The antiquarian may lament the demolition of the
+old Bell Tavern, and think regretfully of the good cheer once
+furnished the wayfarer by Master Stavers at the sign of the Earl
+of Halifax, and by Master Stoodley at his inn on Daniel Street;
+but the ordinary traveler will thank his stars, and confess that
+his lines have fallen in pleasant places, when he finds himself
+among the frescoes of the Rockingham.
+
+Obliquely opposite the doorstep of the Athenaeum--we are supposed
+to be on terra firma again--stands the Old North Church, a
+substantial wooden building, handsomely set on what is called The
+Parade, a large open space formed by the junction of Congress,
+Market, Daniel, and Pleasant streets. Here in days innocent of
+water-works stood the town pump, which on more than one occasion
+served as whipping-post.
+
+The churches of Portsmouth are more remarkable for their number
+than their architecture. With the exception of the Stone Church
+they are constructed of wood or plain brick in the simplest
+style.  St. John's Church is the only one likely to attract the
+eye of a stranger.  It is finely situated on the crest of Church
+Hill, overlooking the ever-beautiful river.  The present edifice
+was built in 1808 on the site of what was known as Queen's
+Chapel, erected in 1732, and destroyed by fire December 24, 1806.
+The chapel was named in honor of Queen Caroline, who furnished
+the books for the altar and pulpit, the plate, and two solid
+mahogany chairs, which are still in use in St. John's.  Within
+the chancel rail is a curious font of porphyry, taken by Colonel
+John Tufton Mason at the capture of Senegal from the French in
+1758, and presented to the Episcopal Society on 1761. The
+peculiarly sweet-toned bell which calls the parishioners of St.
+John's together every Sabbath is, I believe, the same that
+formerly hung in the belfry of the old Queen's Chapel. If so, the
+bell has a history of its own. It was brought from Louisburg at
+the time of the reduction of that place in 1745, and given to the
+church by the officers of the New Hampshire troops.
+
+The Old South Meeting-House is not to be passed without mention.
+It is among the most aged survivals of pre-revolutionary days.
+Neither its architecture not its age, however, is its chief
+warrant for our notice.  The absurd number of windows in this
+battered old structure is what strikes the passer-by. The church
+was erected by subscription, and these closely set large windows
+are due to Henry Sherburne, one of the wealthiest citizens of the
+period, who agreed to pay for whatever glass was used.  If the
+building could have been composed entirely of glass it would have
+been done by the thrifty parishioners.
+
+Portsmouth is rich in graveyards--they seem to be a New England
+specialty--ancient and modern.  Among the old burial-places the
+one attached to St. John's Church is perhaps the most
+interesting.  It has not been permitted to fall into ruin, like
+the old cemetery at the Point of Graves.  When a headstone here
+topples over it is kindly lifted up and set on its pins again,
+and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly refuses, and is not
+shamming decrepitude, it has its face sponged, and is allowed to
+rest and sun itself against the wall of the church with a row of
+other exempts. The trees are kept pruned, the grass trimmed, and
+here and there is a rosebush drooping with a weight of pensive
+pale roses, as becomes a rosebush in a churchyard.
+
+The place has about it an indescribable soothing atmosphere of
+respectability and comfort. Here rest the remains of the
+principal and loftiest in rank in their generation of the
+citizens of Portsmouth prior to the Revolution--stanch,
+royalty-loving governors, counselors, and secretaries of the
+Providence of New Hampshire, all snugly gathered under the
+motherly wing of the Church of England.  It is almost impossible
+to walk anywhere without stepping on a governor. You grow haughty
+in spirit after a while, and scorn to tread on anything less than
+one of His Majesty's colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here
+are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the
+Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of
+the quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins,
+with here and there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons,
+and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in the very best
+society.
+
+This, however, is not the earliest cemetery in Portsmouth.  An
+hour's walk from the Episcopal yard will bring you to the spot,
+already mentioned, where the first house was built and the first
+grave made, at Odiorne's Point. The exact site of the Manor is
+not known, but it is supposed to be a few rods north of an old
+well of still-flowing water, at which the Tomsons and the Hiltons
+and their comrades slaked their thirst more than two hundred and
+sixty years ago. Oriorne's Point is owned by Mr. Eben L. Odiorne,
+a lineal descendant of the worthy who held the property in 1657.
+Not far from the old spring is the resting-place of the earliest
+pioneers.
+
+"This first cemetery of the white man in New Hampshire," writes
+Mr. Brewster, (1. Mr. Charles W. Brewster, for nearly fifty years
+the editor of the Portsmouth Journal, and the author of two
+volumes of local sketches to which the writer of these pages here
+acknowledges his indebtedness.) "occupies a space of perhaps one
+hundred feet by ninety, and is well walled in.  The western side
+is now used as a burial-place for the family, but two thirds of
+it is filled with perhaps forty graves, indicated by rough head
+and foot stones. Who there rest no one now living knows. But the
+same care is taken of their quiet beds as if they were of the
+proprietor's own family. In 1631 Mason sent over about eighty
+emigrants many of whom died in a few years, and here they were
+probably buried.  Here too, doubtless, rest the remains of
+several of those whose names stand conspicuous in our early state
+records."
+
+IV.
+A STROLL ABOUT TOWN (continued)
+
+WHEN Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789 he was not much
+impressed by the architecture of the little town that had stood
+by him so stoutly in the struggle for independence. "There are
+some good houses," he writes, in a diary kept that year during a
+tour through Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, "
+among which Colonel Langdon's may be esteemed the first; but in
+general they are indifferent, and almost entirely of wood. On
+wondering at this, as the country is full of stone and good clay
+for bricks, I was told that on account of the fogs and damp they
+deemed them wholesomer, and for that reason preferred wood
+buildings."
+
+The house of Colonel Langdon, on Pleasant Street, is an excellent
+sample of the solid and dignified abodes which our
+great-grandsires had the sense to build. The art of their
+construction seems to have been a lost art these fifty years.
+Here Governor John Langdon resided from 1782 until the time of
+his death in 1819--a period during which many an illustrious man
+passed between those two white pillars that support the little
+balcony over the front door; among the rest Louis Philippe and
+his brothers, the Ducs de Montpensier and Beaujolais, and the
+Marquis de Chastellus, a major-general in the French army,
+serving under the Count de Rochambeau, whom he accompanied from
+France to the States in 1780. The journal of the marquis contains
+this reference to his host: "After dinner we went to drink tea
+with Mr. Langdon. He is a handsome man, and of noble carriage; he
+has been a member of Congress, and is now one of the first people
+of the country; his house is elegant and well furnished, and the
+apartments admirably well wainscoted" (this reads like Mr. Samuel
+Pepys); "and he has a good manuscript chart of the harbor of
+Portsmouth. Mrs. Langdon, his wife, is young, fair, and tolerably
+handsome, but I conversed less with her than her husband, in
+whose favor I was prejudiced from knowing that he had displayed
+great courage and patriotism at the time of Burgoynes's
+expedition."
+
+It was at the height of the French Revolution that the three sons
+of the Due d'Orleans were entertained at the Langdon mansion.
+Years afterward, when Louis Philippe was on the throne of France,
+he inquired of a Portsmouth lady presented at his court if the
+mansion of ce brave Gouverneur Langdon was still in existence.
+
+The house stands back a decorous distance from the street, under
+the shadows of some gigantic oaks or elms, and presents an
+imposing appearance as you approach it over the tessellated
+marble walk. A hundred or two feet on either side of the gate,
+and abutting on the street, is a small square building of brick,
+one story in height--probably the porter's lodge and tool-house
+of former days. There is a large fruit garden attached to the
+house, which is in excellent condition, taking life comfortably,
+and having the complacent air of a well-preserved beau of the
+ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was owned and long occupied by
+the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of forty-seven years
+the esteemed rector or St. John's Church.
+
+At the other end of Pleasant Street is another notable house, to
+which we shall come by and by. Though President Washington found
+Portsmouth but moderately attractive from an architectural point
+of view, the visitor of to-day, if he have an antiquarian taste,
+will find himself embarrassed by the number of localities and
+buildings that appeal to his interest. Many of these buildings
+were new and undoubtedly commonplace enough at the date of
+Washington's visit; time and association have given them a
+quaintness and a significance which now make their architecture a
+question of secondary importance.
+
+One might spend a fortnight in Portsmouth exploring the nooks and
+corners over which history has thrown a charm, and by no means
+exhaust the list. I cannot do more than attempt to describe--and
+that very briefly--a few of the typical old houses. On this same
+Pleasant Street there are several which we must leave unnoted,
+with their spacious halls and carven staircases, their antiquated
+furniture and old silver tankards and choice Copleys. Numerous
+examples of this artist's best manner are to be found here. To
+live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by
+Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor in the
+old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you cannot be said
+to flourish. To make this statement smooth, I will remark that
+every one in Portsmouth has a Copley--or would have if a fair
+division were made.
+
+In the better sections of the town the houses are kept in such
+excellent repair, and have so smart an appearance with their
+bright green blinds and freshly painted woodwork,that you are
+likely to pass many an old landmark without suspecting it.
+Whenever you see a house with a gambrel roof, you may be almost
+positive that the house is at least a hundred years old, for the
+gambrel roof went out of fashion after the Revolution.
+
+On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest
+brick building in Portsmouth--the Warner House. It was built in
+1718 by Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name
+indicates, a wealthy merchant, and a member of the King's
+Council. He was the chief projector of one of the earliest
+iron-works established in America. Captain Macpheadris married
+Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children of Governor John
+Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary, whose
+portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous
+Copley, still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not
+known by the name of Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his
+son-in-law, Hon. Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council
+until the revolt of the colonies. "We well recollect Mr. Warner,"
+says Mr. Brewster, writing in 1858, "as one of the last of the
+cocked hats. As in a vision of early childhood he is still before
+us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic crown officers. That
+broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those small-clothes and
+silk stockings, those silver buckles, and that cane--we see them
+still, although the life that filled and moved them ceased half a
+century ago."
+
+The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and
+luthern windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the
+architecture of the period as you are likely to meet with
+anywhere in New England. The eighteen-inch walls are of brick
+brought from Holland, as were also many of the materials used in
+the building--the hearth-stones, tiles, etc. Hewn-stone
+underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the brick-work
+rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The interior
+is rich in paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves,
+the deep-set windows, and along the cornices. The halls are wide
+and long, after a by-gone fashion, with handsome staircases, set
+at an easy angle, and not standing nearly upright, like those
+ladders by which one reaches the upper chambers of a modern
+house. The principal rooms are paneled to the ceiling, and have
+large open chimney-places, adorned with the quaintest of Dutch
+files. In one of the parlors of the Warner House there is a
+choice store of family relics--china, silver-plate, costumes, old
+clocks, and the like. There are some interesting paintings,
+too--not by Copley this time. On a broad space each side of the
+hall windows, at the head of the staircase, are pictures of two
+Indians, life size. They are probably portraits of some of the
+numerous chiefs with whom Captain Macphaedris had dealings, for
+the captain was engaged in the fur as well as in the iron
+business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to Macpheadris by
+his red friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
+
+By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden
+paintings on the walls of this lower hall were brought to light.
+In repairing the front entry it became necessary to remove the
+paper, of which four or five layers had accumulated. A one place,
+where several coats had peeled off cleanly, a horse's hoof was
+observed by a little girl of the family. The workman then began
+removing the paper carefully; first the legs, then the body of a
+horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished paper-hanger
+presently stood before a life-size representation of Governor
+Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to his
+assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily
+stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet covered
+with sketches in color, landscapes, views of unknown cities,
+Biblical scenes, and modern figure-pieces, among which was a lady
+at a spinning-wheel. Until then no person in the land of the
+living had had any knowledge of those hidden pictures. An old
+dame of eighty, who had visited at the house intimately ever
+since her childhood, all but refused to believe her spectacles
+(though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to face with
+the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply Ham
+was the leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)
+
+The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious
+that these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced
+hand. Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its
+interest for an antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects
+the Warner House to-day was put up under Benjamin Franklin's own
+supervision in 1762--such at all events is the credited
+tradition--and is supposed to be the first rod put up in New
+Hampshire. A lightening-rod "personally conducted" by Benjamin
+Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
+susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative
+claim on the good-will of the visitor--it is not positively known
+that George Washington ever slept there.
+
+The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old
+yellow barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and
+Atkinson streets. Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive
+perception of the value of corner lots. If it is a possible
+thing, they always set themselves down on the most desirable
+spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept not only one
+night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was a
+celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of
+Independence, and Washington made it his headquarters during his
+visit to Portsmouth in 1797. When I was a boy I knew an old
+lady--not one of the preposterous old ladies in the newspapers,
+who have all their faculties unimpaired, but a real old lady,
+whose ninety-nine years were beginning to tell on her--who had
+known Washington very well. She was a girl in her teens when he
+came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of her
+conversation during the last ten years of her life, which she
+passed in the Stavers House, bedridden; and I think those ten
+years were in a manner rendered short and pleasant to the old
+gentlewoman by the memory of a compliment to her complexion which
+Washington probably never paid to it.
+
+The old hotel--now a very unsavory tenement-house--was built by
+John Tavers, innkeeper, in 1770, who planted in front of the door
+a tall post, from which swung the sign of the Earl of Halifax.
+Stavers had previously kept an inn of the same name on Queen, now
+State Street.
+
+It is a square three-story building, shabby and dejected, giving
+no hint of the really important historical associations that
+cluster about it. At the time of its erection it was no doubt
+considered a rather grand structure, for buildings of three
+stories were rare in Portsmouth. Even in 1798, of the six hundred
+and twenty-six dwelling houses of which the town boasted,
+eighty-six were of one story, five hundred and twenty-four were
+of two stories, and only sixteen of three stories. The Stavers
+inn has the regulation gambrel roof, but is lacking in those wood
+ornaments which are usually seen over the doors and windows of
+the more prominent houses of that epoch. It was, however, the
+hotel of the period.
+
+That same worn doorstep upon which Mr. O'Shaughnessy now
+stretches himself of a summer afternoon, with a short clay pipe
+stuck between his lips, and his hat crushed down on his brows,
+revolving the sad vicissitude of things--that same doorstep has
+been pressed by the feet of generals and marquises and grave
+dignitaries upon whom depended the destiny of the
+States--officers in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and high-heeled
+belles in patch, powder, and paduasoy. At this door the Flying
+Stage Coach, which crept from Boston, once a week set down its
+load of passengers--and distinguished passengers they often were.
+Most of the chief celebrities of the land, before and after the
+secession of the colonies, were the guests of Master Stavers, at
+the sign of the Earl of Halifax.
+
+While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother
+country, it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents
+of the crown met to discuss matters. The landlord himself was a
+amateur loyalist, and when the full cloud was on the eve of
+breaking he had an early intimation of the coming tornado. The
+Sons of Liberty had long watched with sullen eyes the secret
+sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers's tavern, and one
+morning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post which
+supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to
+have been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in
+others, sent out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings.
+The negro, who was armed with an axe, struck but a single blow
+and disappeared. This blow fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it
+did not kill him, but left him an insane man till the day of his
+death, forty years afterward. A furious mob at once collected,
+and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in the doors and
+shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only
+through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and
+popular patriot, that the hotel was saved from destruction.
+
+In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables
+in the rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by
+his friend William Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman,
+who had supplied the hotel with ale. The excitement blew over
+after a time, and Stavers was induced to return to Portsmouth. He
+was seized by the Committee of Safety, and lodged in Exeter jail,
+when his loyalty, which had really never been very high, went
+down below zero; he took the oath of allegiance, and shortly
+after his released reopened the hotel. The honest face of William
+Pitt appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl of Halifax,
+ignominiously removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the
+state records is the following letter from poor Noble begging for
+the enlargement of John Stavers:--
+
+PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777.
+To the Committee of Safety of the Town of Exeter:
+GENTLEMEN,--As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in confinement
+in gaol upon my account contrary to  my desire, for when I was at
+Mr. Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the
+Gentleman but by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad
+Blow but it is so well that I hope to go out in a day or two. So
+by this gentlemen of the Committee I hope you will release the
+gentleman upon my account. I am yours to serve.
+MARK NOBLE,
+A friend to my country.
+
+From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House
+prospered. It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the
+officers of the French fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the
+Marquis Lafayette, all the way from Providence, to visit
+them.John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, Rutledge, and other signers of
+the Declaration sojourned here at various times. It was here
+General Knox--"that stalwart man, two officers in size and three
+in lungs"--was wont to order his dinner, and in a stentorian
+voice compliment Master Stavers on the excellence of his larder.
+One day--it was at the time of the French Revolution--Louis
+Philippe and his two brothers applied at the door of the William
+Pitt for lodgings; but the tavern was full, and the future king,
+with his companions, found comfortable quarters under the
+hospitable roof of Governor Langdon in Pleasant Street.
+
+A record of the scenes, tragic and humorous, that have been
+enacted within this old yellow house on the corner would fill a
+volume. A vivid picture of the social and public life of the old
+time might be painted by a skillful hand, using the two Earl of
+Halifax inns for a background. The painter would find gay and
+sombre pigments ready mixed for his palette, and a hundred
+romantic incidents waiting for his canvas. One of these romantic
+episodes has been turned to very pretty account by Longfellow in
+the last series of The Tales of a Wayside Inn--the marriage of
+Governor Benning Wentworth with Martha Hilton, a sort of second
+edition of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.
+
+Martha Hilton was a poor girl, whose bare feet and ankles and
+scant drapery when she was a child, and even after she was well
+in the bloom of her teens, used to scandalize good Dame Stavers,
+the innkeeper's wife. Standing one afternoon in the doorway of
+the Earl of Halifax, (1. The first of the two hotels bearing that
+title. Mr. Brewster commits a slight anachronism in locating the
+scene of this incident in Jaffrey Street, now Court. The Stavers
+House was not built until the year of Governor Benning
+Wentworth's death. Mr. Longfellow, in the poem, does not fall
+into the same error.
+    "One hundred years ago, and something more,
+    In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,
+    Neat as a pin, and blooming as a rose,
+    Stood Mistress Stavers in her furbelows.")
+
+Dame Stavers took occasion to remonstrate with the sleek-limbed
+and lightly draped Martha, who chanced to be passing the tavern,
+carrying a pail of water, in which, as the poet neatly says, "the
+shifting sunbeam danced."
+
+"You Pat! you Pat!" cried Mrs. Stavers severely; "why do you go
+looking so? You should be ashamed to be seen in the street."
+
+"Never mind how I look," says Miss Martha, with a merry laugh,
+letting slip a saucy brown shoulder out of her dress; "I shall
+ride in my chariot yet, ma'am."
+
+Fortunate prophecy! Martha went to live as servant with Governor
+Wentworth at his mansion at Little Harbor, looking out to sea.
+Seven years passed, and the "thin slip of a girl," who promised
+to be no great beauty, had flowered into the loveliest of women,
+with a lip like a cherry and a cheek like a tea-rose--a lady by
+instinct, one of Nature's own ladies. The governor, a lonely
+widower, and not too young, fell in love with his fair handmaid.
+Without stating his purpose to any one, Governor Wentworth
+invited a number of friends (among others the Rev. Arthur Brown)
+to dine with him at Little Harbor on his birthday. After the
+dinner, which was a very elaborate one, was at an end, and the
+guests were discussing their tobacco-pipes, Martha Hilton glided
+into the room, and stood blushing in front of the chimney-place.
+She was exquisitely dressed, as you may conceive, and wore her
+hair three stories high. The guests stared at each other, and
+particularly at her, and wondered. Then the governor, rising from
+his seat,
+
+    "Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
+    And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
+    'This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
+    My wedding-day; and you shall marry me!'"
+
+The rector was dumfounded, knowing the humble footing Martha had
+held in the house, and could think of nothing cleverer to say
+than, "To whom, your excellency?" which was not cleaver at all.
+
+"To this lady," replied the governor, taking Martha Hilton by the
+hand. The Rev. Arthur Brown hesitated. "As the Chief Magistrate
+of New Hampshire I command you to marry me!" cried the choleric
+old governor.
+
+And so it was done; and the pretty kitchen-maid became Lady
+Wentworth, and did ride in her own chariot. She would not have
+been a woman if she had not taken an early opportunity to drive
+by Staver's hotel!
+
+Lady Wentworth had a keen appreciation of the dignity of her new
+station, and became a grand lady at once. A few days after her
+marriage, dropping her ring on the floor, she languidly ordered
+her servant to pick it up. The servant, who appears to have had a
+fair sense of humor, grew suddenly near-sighted, and was unable
+to the ring until Lady Wentworth stooped and placed her
+ladyship's finger upon it. She turned out a faultless wife,
+however; and Governor Wentworth at his death, which occurred in
+1770, signified his approval of her by leaving her his entire
+estate. She married again without changing name, accepting the
+hand, and what there was of the heart, of Michael Wentworth, a
+retired colonel of the British army, who came to this country in
+1767. Colonel Wentworth (not connected, I think, with the
+Portsmouth branch of Wentworths) seems to have been of a
+convivial turn of mind. He shortly dissipated his wife's fortune
+in high living, and died abruptly in New York--it was supposed by
+his own hand. His last words--a quite unique contribution to the
+literature of last words--were, "I have had my cake, and ate it,"
+which showed that the colonel within his own modest limitations
+was a philosopher.
+
+The seat of Governor Wentworth at Little Harbor--a pleasant walk
+from Market Square--is well worth a visit. Time and change have
+laid their hands more lightly on this rambling old pile than on
+any other of the old homes in Portsmouth. When you cross the
+threshold of the door you step into the colonial period. Here the
+Past seems to have halted courteously, waiting for you to catch
+up with it. Inside and outside the Wentworth mansion remains
+nearly as the old governor left it; and though it is no longer in
+the possession of the family, the present owners, in their
+willingness to gratify the decent curiosity of strangers, show a
+hospitality which has always characterized the place.
+
+The house is an architectural freak. The main building--if it is
+the main building--is generally two stories in height, with
+irregular wings forming three sides of a square which opens in
+the water. It is, in brief, a cluster of whimsical extensions
+that look as if they had been built at different periods, which I
+believe was not the case. The mansion was completed in 1750. It
+originally contained fifty-two rooms; a portion of the structure
+was removed about half a century ago, leaving forty-five
+apartments. The chambers were connected in the oddest manner, by
+unexpected steps leading up or down, and capricious little
+passages that seem to have been the unhappy afterthoughts of the
+architect. But it is a mansion on a grand scale, and with a grand
+air. The cellar was arranged for the stabling of a troop of
+thirty horse in times of danger. The council-chamber, where for
+many years all questions of vital importance to the State were
+discussed, is a spacious, high-studded room, finished in the
+richest style of the last century. It is said that the
+ornamentation of the huge mantel, carved with knife and chisel,
+cost the workman a year's constant labor. At the entrance to the
+council-chamber are still the racks for the twelve muskets of the
+governor's guard--so long ago dismissed!
+
+Some valuable family portraits adorn the walls here, among which
+is a fine painting-yes, by our friend Copley--of the lovely
+Dorothy Quincy, who married John Hancock, and afterward became
+Madam Scott. This lady was a niece of Dr. Holme's "Dorothy Q."
+Opening on the council-chamber is a large billiard-room; the
+billiard-table is gone, but an ancient spinnet, with the prim air
+of an ancient maiden lady, and of a wheezy voice, is there; and
+in one corner stands a claw-footed buffet, near which the
+imaginative nostril may still detect a faint and tantalizing odor
+of colonial punch. Opening also on the council-chamber are
+several tiny apartments, empty and silent now, in which many a
+close rubber has been played by illustrious hands. The stillness
+and loneliness of the old house seem saddest here. The jeweled
+fingers are dust, the merry laughs have turned themselves into
+silent, sorrowful phantoms, stealing from chamber to chamber. It
+is easy to believe in the traditional ghost that haunts the
+place--
+
+    "A jolly place in times of old,
+    But something ails it now!"
+
+The mansion at Little Harbor is not the only historic house that
+bears the name of Wentworth. On Pleasant Street, at the head of
+Washington Street, stands the abode of another colonial worthy,
+Governor John Wentworth, who held office from 1767 down to the
+moment when the colonies dropped the British yoke as if it had
+been the letter H. For the moment the good gentleman's occupation
+was gone. He was a royalist of the most florid complexion. In
+1775, a man named John Fenton, and ex-captain in the British
+army, who had managed to offend the Sons of Liberty, was given
+sanctuary in this house by the governor, who refused to deliver
+the fugitive to the people.  The mob planted a small cannon
+(unloaded) in front of the doorstep and threatened to open fire
+if Fenton were not forthcoming. He forth-with came.  The family
+vacated the premises via the back-yard, and the mob entered,
+doing considerable damage. The broken marble chimney-place still
+remains, mutely protesting against the uncalled-for violence.
+Shortly after this event the governor made his way to England,
+where his loyalty was rewarded first with a governorship and then
+with a pension of L500. He was governor of Nova Scotia from 1792
+to 1800, and died in Halifax in 1820. This house is one of the
+handsomest old dwellings in the town, and promises to outlive
+many of its newest neighbors. The parlor has undergone no change
+whatever since the populace rushed into it over a century ago.
+The furniture and adornments occupy their original positions and
+the plush on the walls has not been replaced by other hangings.
+In the hall--deep enough for the traditional duel of baronial
+romance--are full-length portraits of the several governors and
+sundry of their kinsfolk.
+
+There is yet a third Wentworth house, also decorated with the
+shade of a colonial governor--there were three Governors
+Wentworth--but we shall pass it by, though out of no lack of
+respect for that high official personage whose commission was
+signed by Joseph Addison, Esq., Secretary of State under George
+I.
+
+V.
+OLD STRAWBERRY BANK
+
+THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are
+merely the crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons
+and manners and customs that have left no very distinct record of
+themselves, excepting here and there in some sallow manuscript
+which has luckily escaped the withering breath of fire, for the
+old town, as I have remarked, has managed, from the earliest
+moment of its existence, to burn itself up periodically.  It is
+only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town clerks, and
+in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that we are
+enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and
+positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of
+the early days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were
+stormy and eventful days. The dense forest which surrounded the
+clearing was alive with hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went
+to sleep with his firelock at his bedside, not knowing at what
+moment he might be awakened by the glare of his burning hayricks
+and the piercing war-whoops of the Womponoags. Year after year he
+saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of flames, as he peered
+through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither he had flown in
+hot haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse at
+Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an extensive scale, with
+stockades for the shelter of cattle. It held large supplies of
+stores, and was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers, and
+murtherers, a species of naval ordnance which probably did not
+belie its name. It also boasted, we are told, of two drums for
+training-days, and no fewer than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced
+recorders--all which suggests a mediaeval castle, or a grim
+fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth. To the younger members
+of the community glass or crockery ware was an unknown substance;
+to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the
+pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter.
+The diet was also of the simplest--pea-porridge and corn-cake,
+with a mug of ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could
+get it.
+
+John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
+management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to
+stewards, died before realizing any appreciable return from his
+enterprise. He spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its
+prosperity. In 1632, three years before his death, Mason sent
+over from Denmark a number of neat cattle, "of a large breed and
+yellow colour." The herd thrived, and it is said that some of the
+stock is still extant on farms in the vicinity of Portsmouth.
+Those old first families had a kind of staying quality!
+
+In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the
+General Court at Boston to grant them a definite township--for
+the boundaries were doubtful--and the right to give it a proper
+name. "Whereas the name of this plantation att present being
+Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe called, by reason of a banke
+where strawberries was found in this place, now we humbly desire
+to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most suitable for this
+place, it being the river's mouth, and good as any in this land,
+and your petit'rs shall humbly pray," etc.
+
+Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent
+French wars, Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the
+scenes of bloody Indian massacres. No portion of the New England
+colony suffered more. Famine, fire, pestilence, and war, each in
+turn, and sometimes in conjunction, beleaguered the little
+stronghold, and threatened to wipe it out. But that was not to
+be.
+
+The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as
+soon as it had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the
+school-house and the jail--two incontestable signs of budding
+civilization. At a town meeting in 1662, it was ordered "that a
+cage be made or some other meanes invented by the selectmen to
+punish such as sleepe or take tobacco on the Lord's day out of
+the meetinge in the time of publique service." This salutary
+measure was not, for some reason, carried into effect until nine
+years later, when Captain John Pickering, who seems to have had
+as many professions as Michelangelo, undertook to construct a
+cage twelve feet square and seven feet high, with a pillory on
+top; "the said Pickering to make a good strong dore and make a
+substantiale payre of stocks and places the same in said cage." A
+spot conveniently near the west end on the meeting-house was
+selected as the site for this ingenious device. It is more than
+probable that "the said Pickering" indirectly furnished an
+occasional bird for his cage, for in 1672 we find him and one
+Edward Westwere authorized by the selectmen to "keepe houses of
+publique entertainment." He was a versatile individual, this John
+Pickering--soldier, miller, moderator, carpenter, lawyer, and
+innkeeper. Michelangelo need not blush to be bracketed with him.
+In the course of a long and variegated career he never failed to
+act according to his lights, which he always kept well trimmed.
+That Captain Pickering subsequently became the grandfather, at
+several removes, of the present writer was no fault of the
+Captain's, and should not be laid up against him.
+
+Down to 1696, the education of the young appears to have been a
+rather desultory and tentative matter; "the young idea" seems to
+have been allowed to "shoot" at whatever it wanted to; but in
+that year it was voted "that care be taken that an abell
+scollmaster [skullmaster!] be provided for the towen as the law
+directs, not visious in conversation." That was perhaps demanding
+too much; for it was not until "May ye7" of the following year
+that the selectmen were fortunate enough to put their finger on
+this rara avis in the person of Mr. Tho. Phippes, who agreed "to
+be scollmaster for the the towen this yr insewing for teaching
+the inhabitants children in such manner as other schollmasters
+yously doe throughout the countrie: for his soe doinge we the
+sellectt men in behalfe of ower towen doe ingage to pay him by
+way of rate twenty pounds and yt he shall and may reserve from
+every father or master that sends theyer children to school this
+yeare after ye rate of 16s. for readers, writers and cypherers
+20s., Lattiners 24s."
+
+Modern advocates of phonetic spelling need not plume themselves
+on their originality.  The town clerk who wrote that delicious
+"yously doe" settles the question.  It is to be hoped that Mr.
+Tho. Phippes was not only "not visious in conversation," but was
+more conventional in his orthography. He evidently gave
+satisfaction, and clearly exerted an influence on the town clerk,
+Mr. Samuel Keais, who ever after shows a marked improvement in
+his own methods. In 1704 the town empowered the selectmen "to
+call and settell a gramer scoll according to ye best of yower
+judgement and for ye advantag [Keais is obviously dead now] of ye
+youth of ower town to learn them to read from ye primer, to
+wright and sypher and to learne ym the tongues and good-manners."
+On this occasion it was Mr. William Allen, of Salisbury, who
+engaged "dilligently to attend ye school for ye present yeare,
+and tech all childern yt can read in thaire psallters and
+upward." From such humble beginnings were evolved some of the
+best public high schools at present in New England.
+
+Portsmouth did not escape the witchcraft delusion, though I
+believe that no hangings took place within the boundaries of the
+township. Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious;
+sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse
+of sky and water that dilates the imagination. The folk who live
+along the coast live on the edge of a perpetual mystery; only a
+strip of yellow sand or gray rock separates them from the
+unknown; they hear strange voices in the winds at midnight, they
+are haunted by the spectres of the mirage. Their minds quickly
+take the impress of uncanny things. The witches therefore found a
+sympathetic atmosphere in Newscastle, at the mouth of the
+Piscataqua--that slender paw of land which reaches out into the
+ocean and terminates in a spread of sharp, flat rocks, lie the
+claws of an amorous cat. What happened to the good folk of that
+picturesque little fishing-hamlet is worth retelling in brief. In
+order properly to retell it, a contemporary witness shall be
+called upon to testify in the case of the Stone-Throwing Devils
+of Newcastle. It is the Rev. Cotton Mather who addresses you--
+ "On June 11, 1682, showers of stones were thrown by an invisible
+hand upon the house of George Walton at Portsmouth [Newcastle was
+then a part of the town]. Whereupon the people going out found
+the gate wrung off the hinges, and stones flying and falling
+thick about them, and striking of them seemingly with a great
+force, but really affecting 'em no more than if a soft touch were
+given them. The glass windows were broken by the stones that came
+not from without, but from within; and other instruments were in
+a like manner hurled about. Nine of the stones they took up,
+whereof some were as hot as if they came out of the fire; and
+marking them they laid them on the table; but in a little while
+they found some of them again flying about. The spit was carried
+up the chimney, and coming down with the point forward, stuck in
+the back log, from whence one of the company removing it, it was
+by an invisible hand thrown out at the window. This disturbance
+continued from day to day; and sometimes a dismal hollow
+whistling would be heard, and sometimes the trotting and snorting
+of a horse, but nothing to be seen. The man went up the Great Bay
+in a boat on to a farm which he had there; but the stones found
+him out, and carrying from the house to the boat a stirrup iron
+the iron came jingling after him through the woods as far as his
+house; and at last went away and was heard no more. The anchor
+leaped overboard several times and stopt the boat. A cheese was
+taken out of the press, and crumbled all over the floor; a piece
+of iron stuck into the wall, and a kettle hung thereon. Several
+cocks of hay, mow'd near the house, were taken up and hung upon
+the trees, and others made into small whisps, and scattered about
+the house. A man was much hurt by some of the stones. He was a
+Quaker, and suspected that a woman, who charged him with
+injustice in detaining some land from here, did, by witchcraft,
+occasion these preternatural occurrences. However, at last they
+came to an end."
+
+Now I have done with thee, O credulous and sour Cotton Mather! so
+get thee back again to thy tomb in the old burying-ground on
+Copp's Hill, where, unless thy nature is radically changed, thou
+makest it uncomfortable for those about thee.
+
+Nearly a hundred years afterwards, Portsmouth had another
+witch--a tangible witch in this instance--one Molly Bridget, who
+cast her malign spell on the eleemosynary pigs at the Almshouse,
+where she chanced to reside at the moment. The pigs were
+manifestly bewitched, and Mr. Clement March, the superintendent
+of the institution, saw only one remedy at hand, and that was to
+cut off and burn the tips of their tales. But when the tips were
+cut off they disappeared, and it was in consequence quite
+impracticable to burn them. Mr. March, who was a gentleman of
+expedients, ordered that all the chips and underbrush in the yard
+should be made into heaps and consumed, hoping thus to catch and
+do away with the mysterious and provoking extremities. The fires
+were no sooner lighted than Molly Bridget rushed from room to
+room in a state of frenzy. With the dying flames her own vitality
+subsided, and she was dead before the ash-piles were cool. I say
+it seriously when I say that these are facts of which there is
+authentic proof.
+
+If the woman had recovered, she would have fared badly, even at
+that late period, had she been in Salem; but the death-penalty
+has never been hastily inflicted in Portsmouth. The first
+execution that ever took place there was that of Sarah Simpson
+and Penelope Kenny, for the murder of an infant in 1739. The
+sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine
+years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth
+Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton
+in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The
+following stanzas, however, give the pith of the story--
+
+    "And a voice among them shouted,
+        "Pause before the deed is done;
+    We have asked reprieve and pardon
+        For the poor misguided one.'
+
+    "But these words of Sheriff Packer
+        Rang above the swelling noise:
+    'Must I wait and lose my dinner?
+        Draw away the cart, my boys!'
+
+    "Nearer came the sound and louder,
+        Till a steed with panting breath,
+    From its sides the white foam dripping,
+        Halted at the scene of death;
+
+    "And a messenger alighted,
+        Crying to the crowd, 'Make way!
+    This I bear to Sheriff Packer;
+        'Tis a pardon for Ruth Blay!'"
+
+But of course he arrived too late--the Law led Mercy about twenty
+minutes. The crowd dispersed, horror-stricken; but it assembled
+again that night before the sheriff's domicile and expressed its
+indignation in groans. His effigy, hanged on a miniature gallows,
+was afterwards paraded through the streets.
+
+    "Be the name of Thomas Packer
+        A reproach forevermore!"
+
+Laighton's ballad reminds me of that Portsmouth has been prolific
+in poets, one of whom, at least, has left a mouthful of perennial
+rhyme for orators--Jonathan Sewell with his
+
+    "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
+    But the whole boundless continent is yours."
+
+I have somewhere seen a volume with the alliterative title of
+"Poets of Portsmouth," in which are embalmed no fewer than sixty
+immortals!
+
+But to drop into prose again, and have done with this iliad of
+odds and ends. Portsmouth has the honor, I believe, of
+establishing the first recorded pauper workhouse--though not in
+connection with her poets, as might naturally be supposed. The
+building was completed and tenanted in 1716. Seven years later,
+an act was passed in England authorizing the establishment of
+parish workhouses there. The first and only keeper of the
+Portsmouth almshouse up to 1750 was a woman--Rebecca Austin.
+
+Speaking of first things, we are told by Mr. Nathaniel Adams, in
+his "Annals of Portsmouth," that on the 20th of April, 1761, Mr.
+John Stavers began running a stage from that town to Boston. The
+carriage was a two-horse curricle, wide enough to accommodate
+three passengers. The fare was thirteen shillings and sixpence
+sterling per head. The curricle was presently superseded by a
+series of fat yellow coaches, one of which--nearly a century
+later, and long after that pleasant mode of travel had fallen
+obsolete--was the cause of much mental tribulation (1. Some idle
+reader here and there may possibly recall the burning of the old
+stage-coach in The Story of a Bad Boy.) to the writer of this
+chronicle.
+
+The mail and the newspaper are closely associated factors in
+civilization, so I mention them together, though in this case the
+newspaper antedated the mail-coach about five years. On October
+7, 1756, the first number of "The New Hampshire Gazette and
+Historical Chronicle" was issued in Portsmouth from the press of
+Daniel Fowle, who in the previous July had removed from Boston,
+where he had undergone a brief but uncongenial imprisonment on
+suspicion of having printed a pamphlet entitled "The Monster of
+Monsters, by Tom Thumb, Esq.," an essay that contained some
+uncomplimentary reflections on several official personages.The
+"Gazette" was the pioneer journal of the province. It was
+followed at the close of the same year by "The Mercury and Weekly
+Advertiser," published by a former apprentice of Fowle, a certain
+Thomas Furber, backed by a number of restless Whigs, who
+considered the "Gazette" not sufficiently outspoken in the cause
+of liberty. Mr. Fowle, however, contrived to hold his own until
+the day of his death. Fowle had for pressman a faithful negro
+named Primus, a full-blooded African. Whether Primus was a
+freeman or a slave I am unable to state. He lived to a great age,
+and was a prominent figure among the people of his own color.
+
+Negro slavery was common in New England at that period. In 1767,
+Portsmouth numbered in its population a hundred and eighty-eight
+slaves, male and female. Their bondage, happily, was nearly
+always of a light sort, if any bondage can be light. They were
+allowed to have a kind of government of their own; indeed, were
+encouraged to do so, and no unreasonable restrictions were placed
+on their social enjoyment. They annually elected a king and
+counselors, and celebrated the event with a procession. The
+aristocratic feeling was highly developed in them. The rank of
+the master was the slave's rank. There was a great deal of ebony
+standing around on its dignity in those days. For example,
+Governor Langdon's manservant, Cyrus Bruce, was a person who
+insisted on his distinction, and it was recognized. His massive
+gold chain and seals, his cherry-colored small-clothes and silk
+stockings, his ruffles and silver shoe-buckles, were a tradition
+long after Cyrus himself was pulverized.
+
+In cases of minor misdemeanor among them, the negros themselves
+were permitted to be judge and jury. Their administration of
+justice was often characteristically naive. Mr. Brewster gives an
+amusing sketch of one of their sessions. King Nero is on the
+bench, and one Cato--we are nothing if not classical--is the
+prosecuting attorney.  The name of the prisoner and the nature of
+his offense are not disclosed to posterity. In the midst of the
+proceedings the hour of noon is clanged from the neighboring
+belfry of the Old North Church. "The evidence was not gone
+through with, but the servants could stay no longer from their
+home duties. They all wanted to see the whipping, but could not
+conveniently be present again after dinner. Cato ventured to
+address the King: Please you Honor, best let the fellow have his
+whipping now, and finish the trial after dinner. The request
+seemed to be the general wish of the company: so Nero ordered ten
+lashes, for justice so far as the trial went, and ten more at the
+close of the trial, should he be found guilty!"
+
+Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless
+Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced
+any emancipation edict. During the Revolutionary War the slaves
+were generally emancipated by their masters. That many of the
+negros, who had grown gray in service, refused their freedom, and
+elected to spend the rest of their lives as pensioners in the
+families of their late owners, is a circumstance that illustrates
+the kindly ties which held between slave and master in the old
+colonial days in New England.
+
+The institution was accidental and superficial, and never had any
+real root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found
+in the Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it
+would have continued awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his
+religion into the business affairs of life; he was not even able
+to keep it out of his bills of lading. I cannot close this
+rambling chapter more appropriately and solemnly than by quoting
+from one of those same pious bills of landing. It is dated June,
+1726, and reads: "Shipped by the grace of God in good order and
+well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct. and
+risque, in and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is
+master under God for this present voyage George King, now riding
+at anchor in the river Piscataqua and by God's grace bound to
+Barbadoes." Here follows a catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo,
+rounded off with: "And so God send the good Briga to her desired
+port in safety. Amen."
+
+VI.
+SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES
+
+I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
+characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must
+have been something in the air of the place that generated
+eccentricity. In another chapter I shall explain why the
+conditions have not been favorable to the development of
+individual singularity during the latter half of the present
+century. It is easier to do that than fully to account for the
+numerous queer human types which have existed from time to time
+previous to that period.
+
+In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster's entertaining
+collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the
+number and variety of the odd men and women who appear
+incidentally on the scene. They are, in the author's intention,
+secondary figures in the background of his landscape, but they
+stand very much in the foreground of one's memory after the book
+is laid aside. One finds one's self thinking quite as often of
+that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of General
+Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism and
+respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
+unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old
+hut-dweller the things which are that old hut-dweller's, we must
+concede him his picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not
+respectable; but he is picturesque--now that he is dead.
+
+If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to
+glance at a few old profiles of persons who, however substantial
+they once were, are now leading a life of mere outlines. I would
+like to give them a less faded expression, but the past is very
+chary of yielding up anything more than its shadows.
+
+The first who presents himself is the ruminative hermit already
+mentioned--a species of uninspired Thoreau. His name was Benjamin
+Lear. So far as his craziness went, he might have been a lineal
+descendant of that ancient king of Britain who figures on
+Shakespeare's page. Family dissensions made a recluse of King
+Lear; but in the case of Benjamin there were no mitigating
+circumstances. He had no family to trouble him, and his realm
+remained undivided. He owned an excellent farm on the south side
+of Sagamore Creek, a little to the west of the bridge, and might
+have lived at ease, if personal comfort had not been distasteful
+to him. Personal comfort entered into no part of Lear's. To be
+alone filled the little pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced
+himself in a wretched shanty, and barred the door, figuratively,
+against all the world. Wealth--what would have been wealth to
+him--lay within his reach, but he thrust it aside; he disdained
+luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no compromise with
+convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from
+custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his
+wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and
+seems to have been wholly inoffensive--at a distance. He
+fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and
+potatoes, the product of his realm. He needed nothing but an
+island to be a Robinson Crusoe. At rare intervals he flitted like
+a frost-bitten apparition through the main street of Portsmouth,
+which he always designated as "the Bank," a name that had become
+obsolete fifty or a hundred years before. Thus, for nearly a
+quarter of a century, Benjamin Lear stood aloof from human
+intercourse. In his old age some of the neighbors offered him
+shelter during the tempestuous winter months; but he would have
+none of it--he defied wind and weather. There he lay in his
+dilapidated hovel in his last illness, refusing to allow any one
+to remain with him overnight--and the mercury four degrees below
+zero. Lear was born in 1720, and vegetated eighty-two years.
+
+I take it that Timothy Winn, of whom we have only a glimpse,
+would like to have more, was a person better worth knowing. His
+name reads like the title of some old-fashioned novel--"Timothy
+Winn, or the Memoirs of a Bashful Gentleman." He came to
+Portsmouth from Woburn at the close of the last century, and set
+up in the old museum-building on Mulberry Street what was called
+"a piece goods store." He was the third Timothy in his monotonous
+family, and in order to differentiate himself he inscribed on the
+sign over his shop door, "Timothy Winn, 3d," and was ever after
+called "Three-Penny Winn." That he enjoyed the pleasantry, and
+clung to his sign, goes to show that he was a person who would
+ripen on further acquaintance, were further acquaintance now
+practicable. His next-door neighbor, Mr. Leonard Serat, who kept
+a modest tailoring establishment, also tantalizes us a little
+with a dim intimation of originality. He plainly was without
+literary prejudices, for on one face of his swinging sign was
+painted the word Taylor, and on the other Tailor. This may have
+been a delicate concession to that part of the community--the
+greater part, probably--which would have spelled it with a y.
+
+The building in which Messrs. Winn and Serat had their shops was
+the property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of
+Demerara, the story of whose unconventional courtship of Miss
+Catherine Moffatt is pretty enough to bear retelling, and
+entitles him to a place in our limited collection of etchings. M.
+Rousselet had doubtless already mad excursions into the pays de
+tendre, and given Miss Catherine previous notice of the state of
+his heart, but it was not until one day during the hour of
+service at the Episcopal church that he brought matters to a
+crisis by handing to Miss Moffatt a small Bible, on the fly-leaf
+of which he had penciled the fifth verse of the Second Epistle of
+John--
+
+    "And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I
+    wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that
+    which we had from the beginning, that we love one another."
+
+This was not to be resisted, at lease not by Miss Catherine, who
+demurely handed the volume back to him with a page turned down at
+the sixteenth verse in the first chapter of Ruth--
+
+    "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I
+will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
+where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the
+Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and
+me."
+
+Aside from this quaint touch of romance, what attaches me to the
+happy pair--for the marriage was a fortunate one--is the fact
+that the Rousselets made their home in the old Atkinson mansion,
+which stood directly opposite my grandfather's house on Court
+Street and was torn down in my childhood, to my great
+consternation. The building had been unoccupied for a quarter of
+a century, and was fast falling into decay with all its rich
+wood-carvings at cornice and lintel; but was it not full of
+ghosts, and if the old barracks were demolished, would not these
+ghosts, or some of them at least, take refuge in my grandfather's
+house just across the way?  Where else could they bestow
+themselves so conveniently? While the ancient mansion was in
+process of destruction, I used to peep round the corner of our
+barn at the workmen, and watch the indignant phantoms go soaring
+upward in spiral clouds of colonial dust.
+
+A lady differing in many ways from Catherine Moffatt was the Mary
+Atkinson (once an inmate of this same manor house) who fell to
+the lot of the Rev. William Shurtleff, pastor of the South Church
+between 1733 and 1747. From the worldly standpoint, it was a fine
+match for the Newcastle clergyman--beauty, of the eagle-beaked
+kind; wealth, her share of the family plate; high birth, a sister
+to the Hon. Theodore Atkinson. But if the exemplary man had cast
+his eyes lower, peradventure he had found more happiness, though
+ill-bred persons without family plate are not necessarily
+amiable. Like Socrates, this long-suffering divine had always
+with him an object on which to cultivate heavenly patience, and
+patience, says the Eastern proverb, is the key to content. The
+spirit of Xantippe seems to have taken possession of Mrs.
+Shurtleff immediately after her marriage. The freakish disrespect
+with which she used her meek consort was a heavy cross to bear at
+a period in New England when clerical dignity was at its highest
+sensitive point. Her devices for torturing the poor gentleman
+were inexhaustible. Now she lets his Sabbath ruffs go unstarched;
+now she scandalizes him by some unseemly and frivolous color in
+her attire; now she leaves him to cook his own dinner at the
+kitchen coals; and now she locks him in his study, whither he has
+retired for a moment or two of prayer, previous to setting forth
+to perform the morning service. The congregation has assembled;
+the sexton has tolled the bell twice as long as is custom, and is
+beginning a third carillon, full of wonder that his reverence
+does not appear; and there sits Mistress Shurtleff in the family
+pew with a face as complacent as that of the cat that has eaten
+the canary. Presently the deacons appeal to her for information
+touching the good doctor. Mistress Shurtleff sweetly tells them
+that the good doctor was in his study when she left home. There
+he is found, indeed, and released from durance, begging the
+deacons to keep his mortification secret, to "give it an
+understanding, but no tongue." Such was the discipline undergone
+by the worthy Dr. Shurtleff on his earthly pilgrimage. A portrait
+of this patient man--now a saint somewhere--hangs in the rooms of
+the New England Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston.
+There he can be seen in surplice and bands, with his lamblike,
+apostolic face looking down upon the heavy antiquarian labors of
+his busy descendants.
+
+Whether or not a man is to be classed as eccentric who vanishes
+without rhyme or reason on his wedding-night is a query left to
+the reader's decision. We seem to have struck a matrimonial vein,
+and must work it out. In 1768, Mr. James McDonough was one of the
+wealthiest men in Portsmouth, and the fortunate suitor for the
+hand of a daughter of Jacob Sheafe, a town magnate. The home of
+the bride was decked and lighted for the nuptials, the
+banquet-table was spread, and the guests were gathered. The
+minister in his robe stood by the carven mantelpiece, book in
+hand, and waited. Then followed an awkward interval--there was a
+hitch somewhere. A strange silence fell upon the laughing groups;
+the air grew tense with expectation; in the pantry, Amos Boggs,
+the butler, in his agitation split a bottle of port over his new
+cinnamon-colored small-clothes. Then a whisper--a whisper
+suppressed these twenty minutes--ran through the
+apartments,--"The bridegroom has not come!". He never came. The
+mystery of that night remains a mystery after the lapse of a
+century and a quarter.
+
+What had become of James McDonough? The assassination of so
+notable a person in a community where every strange face was
+challenged, where every man's antecedents were known, could not
+have been accomplished without leaving some slight traces. Not a
+shadow of foul play was discovered. That McDonough had been
+murdered or had committed suicide were theories accepted at first
+by a few, and then by no one. On the other hand, he was in love
+with his fiancee, he had wealth, power, position--why had he
+fled? He was seen a moment on the public street, and then never
+seen again. It was as if he turned into air. Meanwhile the
+bewilderment of the bride was dramatically painful. If McDonough
+had been waylaid and killed, she could mourn for him. If he had
+deserted her, she could wrap herself in her pride. But neither
+course lay open to her, then or afterward. In one of the Twice
+Told Tales Hawthorne deals with a man named Wakefield, who
+disappears with like suddenness, and lives unrecognized for
+twenty years in a street not far from his abandoned hearthside.
+Such expunging of one's self was not possible in Portsmouth; but
+I never think of McDonough without recalling Wakefield. I have an
+inexplicable conviction that for many a year James McDonough, in
+some snug ambush, studied and analyzed the effect of his own
+startling disappearance.
+
+Some time in the year 1758, there dawned upon Portsmouth a
+personage bearing the ponderous title of King's Attorney, and
+carrying much gold lace about him. This gilded gentleman was Mr.
+Wyseman Clagett, of Bristol, England, where his father dwelt on
+the manor of Broad Oaks, in a mansion with twelve chimneys, and
+kept a coach and eight or ten servants. Up to the moment of his
+advent in the colonies, Mr. Wyseman Clagett had evidently not
+been able to keep anything but himself. His wealth consisted of
+his personal decorations, the golden frogs on his lapels, and the
+tinsel at his throat; other charms he had none. Yet with these he
+contrived to dazzle the eyes of Lettice Mitchel, one of the young
+beauties of the province, and to cause her to forget that she had
+plighted troth with a Mr. Warner, then in Europe, and destined to
+return home with a disturbed heart. Mr. Clagett was a man of
+violent temper and ingenious vindictiveness, and proved more than
+a sufficient punishment for Lettice's infidelity. The trifling
+fact that Warner was dead--he died shortly after his return--did
+not interfere with the course of Mr. Clagett's jealousy; he was
+haunted by the suspicion that Lettice regretted her first love,
+having left nothing undone to make her do so. "This is to pay
+Warner's debts," remarked Mr. Clagett, as he twitched off the
+table-cloth and wrecked the tea-things.
+
+In his official capacity he was a relentless prosecutor. The noun
+Clagett speedily turned itself into a verb; "to Clagett" meant
+"to prosecute;" they were convertible terms. In spite of his
+industrious severity, and his royal emoluments, if such existed,
+the exchequer of the King's Attorney showed a perpetual deficit.
+The stratagems to which he resorted from time to time in order to
+raise unimportant sums reminded one of certain scenes in
+Moliere's comedies.
+
+Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They
+were made for each other; they were two flowers with but a single
+stem, and this was their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett
+dispatched one of his servants to pick a quarrel with some
+countryman on the street, or some sailor drinking at an inn: the
+constable arrested the sailor or the countryman, as the case
+might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr. Clagett; Mr. Clagett
+read the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him five dollars and
+costs. The plunder was then divided between the conspirators--two
+hearts that beat as one--Clagett, of course, getting the lion's
+share. Justice was never administered in a simpler manner in any
+country. This eminent legal light was extinguished in 1784, and
+the wick laid away in the little churchyard in Litchfield, New
+Hampshire. It is a satisfaction, even after such a lapse of time,
+to know that Lettice survived the King's Attorney sufficiently
+long to be very happy with somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was
+scarcely eighteen when she married Wyseman Clagett.
+
+About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to
+have been a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr.
+Brewster speaks of him as "the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton,"
+as if one should say, "the well-known statesman, Daniel Webster."
+It is curious to observe how any sort of individuality gets
+magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where everything lacks
+perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does not
+appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only
+after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness
+whatever. That happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had
+frequently watched the hens flying out of the loft window in his
+father's stable, which stood in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern.
+It occurred to Johnny, one day, that though he might not be as
+bright as other lads, he certainly was in no respect inferior to
+a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the window in the
+loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England Icarus
+alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was
+henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at
+odd moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of
+intelligence such as had not been detected in him previous to his
+mischance. As Polonius said of Hamlet--another unstrung
+mortal--Tilton's replies had "a happiness that often madness hits
+on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be
+delivered of." One morning, he appeared at the flour-mill with a
+sack of corn to be ground for the almshouse, and was asked what
+he knew. "Some things I know," replied poor Tilton, "and some
+things I don't know. I know the miller's hogs grow fat, but I
+don't know whose corn they fat on." To borrow another word from
+Polonius, though this be madness, yet there was method in it.
+Tilton finally brought up in the almshouse, where he was allowed
+the liberty of roaming at will through the town. He loved the
+water-side as if he had had all his senses. Often he was seen to
+stand for hours with a sunny, torpid smile on his lips, gazing
+out upon the river where its azure ruffles itself into silver
+against the islands. He always wore stuck in his hat a few hen's
+feathers, perhaps with some vague idea of still associating
+himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come into that
+category.
+
+George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another
+complexion, a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and
+one of His Majesty's Council in 1766--a man with the blood of the
+lion and the unicorn in every vein. He remained to the bitter
+end, and beyond, a devout royalist, prizing his shoe-buckles, not
+because they were of chased silver, but because they bore the
+tower mark and crown stamp. He stoutly objected to oral prayer,
+on the ground that it gave rogues and hypocrites an opportunity
+to impose on honest folk. He was punctilious in his attendance at
+church, and unfailing in his responses, though not of a
+particularly devotional temperament. On one occasion, at least,
+his sincerity is not to be questioned. He had been deeply
+irritated by some encroachments on the boundaries of certain
+estates, and had gone to church that forenoon with his mind full
+of the matter. When the minister in the course of reading the
+service came to the apostrophe, "Cursed be he who removeth his
+neighbor's landmark," Mr. Jeffrey's feelings were too many for
+him, and he cried out "Amen!" in a tone of voice that brought
+smiles to the adjoining pews.
+
+Mr. Jaffrey's last will and testament was a whimsical document,
+in spite of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper. It
+had originally been Mr. Jaffrey's plan to leave his possessions
+to his beloved friend, Colonel Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel
+by some maladroitness managed to turn the current of Pactolus in
+another direction. The vast property was bequeathed to George
+Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator's grandnephew, on condition that
+the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name of
+Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no
+profession excepting that of gentleman. There is an immense
+amount of Portsmouth as well as George Jaffrey in that final
+clause. George the fourth handsomely complied with the
+requirements, and dying at the age of sixty-six, without issue or
+assets, was the last of that particular line of Georges. I say
+that he handsomely complied with the requirements of the will;
+but my statement appears to be subject to qualification, for on
+the day of his obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic
+contemporary: "Well, yes, Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by
+profession, but not eminent in his profession."
+
+This modest exhibition of profiles, in which I have attempted to
+preserve no chronological sequence, ends with the silhouette of
+Dr. Joseph Moses.
+
+If Boston in the colonial days had her Mather Byles, Portsmouth
+had her Dr. Joseph Moses. In their quality as humorists, the
+outlines of both these gentlemen have become rather broken and
+indistinct. "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear that hears it."
+Decanted wit inevitably loses its bouquet. A clever repartee
+belongs to the precious moment in which it is broached, and is of
+a vintage that does not usually bear transportation. Dr.
+Moses--he received his diploma not from the College of
+Physicians, but from the circumstance of his having once drugged
+his private demijohn of rum, and so nailed an inquisitive negro
+named Sambo--Dr. Moses, as he was always called, had been handed
+down to us by tradition as a fellow of infinite jest and of most
+excellent fancy; but I must confess that I find his high spirits
+very much evaporated. His humor expended itself, for the greater
+part, in practical pleasantries--like that practiced on the
+minion Sambo--but these diversions, however facetious to the
+parties concerned, lack magnetism for outsiders. I discover
+nothing about him so amusing as the fact that he lived in a
+tan-colored little tenement, which was neither clapboarded nor
+shingled, and finally got an epidermis from the discarded
+shingles of the Old South Church when the roof of that edifice
+was repaired.
+
+Dr. Moses, like many persons of his time and class, was a man of
+protean employment--joiner, barber, and what not. No doubt he had
+much pithy and fluent conversation, all of which escapes us. He
+certainly impressed the Hon. Theodore Atkinson as a person of
+uncommon parts, for the Honorable Secretary of the Province, like
+a second Haroun Al Raschid, often summoned the barber to
+entertain him with his company. One evening--and this is the only
+reproducible instance of the doctor's readiness--Mr. Atkinson
+regaled his guest with a diminutive glass of choice Madeira. The
+doctor regarded it against the light with the half-closed eye of
+the connoisseur, and after sipping the molten topaz with
+satisfaction, inquired how old it was. "Of the vintage of about
+sixty years ago," was the answer. "Well," said the doctor
+reflectively, "I never in my life saw so small a thing of such an
+age." There are other mots of his on record, but their faces are
+suspiciously familiar. In fact, all the witty things were said
+aeons ago. If one nowadays perpetrates an original joke, one
+immediately afterward finds it in the Sanskirt. I am afraid that
+Dr. Joseph Moses has no very solid claims on us. I have given him
+place here because he has long had the reputation of a wit, which
+is almost as good as to be one.
+
+VII.
+
+PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
+
+THE running of the first train over the Eastern Road from Boston
+to Portsmouth--it took place somewhat more than forty years
+ago--was attended by a serious accident. The accident occurred in
+the crowded station at the Portsmouth terminus, and was
+unobserved at the time. The catastrophe was followed, though not
+immediately, by death, and that also, curiously enough, was
+unobserved. Nevertheless, this initial train, freighted with so
+many hopes and the Directors of the Road, ran over and
+killed--LOCAL CHARACTER.
+
+Up to that day Portsmouth had been a very secluded little
+community, and had had the courage of its seclusion. From time to
+time it had calmly produced an individual built on plans and
+specifications of its own, without regard to the prejudices and
+conventionalities of outlying districts. This individual was
+purely indigenous. He was born in the town, he lived to a good
+old age in the town, and never went out of the place, until he
+was finally laid under it. To him, Boston, though only fifty-six
+miles away, was virtually an unknown quantity--only fifty-six
+miles by brutal geographical measurement, but thousands of miles
+distant in effect. In those days, in order to reach Boston you
+were obliged to take a great yellow, clumsy stage-coach,
+resembling a three-story mud-turtle--if zoologist will, for the
+sake of the simile, tolerate so daring an invention; you were
+obliged to take it very early in the morning, you dined at noon
+at Ipswich, and clattered into the great city with the golden
+dome just as the twilight was falling, provided always the coach
+had not shed a wheel by the roadside or one of the leaders had
+not gone lame. To many worthy and well-to-do persons in
+Portsmouth, this journey was an event which occurred only twice
+or thrice during life. To the typical individual with whom I am
+for the moment dealing, it never occurred at all. The town was
+his entire world; he was a parochial as a Parisian; Market Street
+was his Boulevard des Italiens, and the North End his Bois de
+Boulogne.
+
+Of course there were varieties of local characters without his
+limitations; venerable merchants retired from the East India
+trade; elderly gentlewomen, with family jewels and personal
+peculiarities; one or two scholarly recluses in by-gone cut of
+coat, haunting the Athenaeum reading-room; ex-sea captains, with
+rings on their fingers, like Simon Danz's visitors in
+Longfellow's poem--men who had played busy parts in the bustling
+world, and had drifted back to Old Strawberry Bank in the
+tranquil sunset of their careers. I may say, in passing, that
+these ancient mariners, after battling with terrific hurricanes
+and typhoons on every known sea, not infrequently drowned
+themselves in pleasant weather in small sail-boats on the
+Piscataqua River. Old sea-dogs who had commanded ships of four or
+five hundred tons had naturally slight respect for the
+potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there was to
+be no further increase of these odd sticks--if I may call them
+so, in no irreverent mood--after those innocent-looking parallel
+bars indissolubly linked Portsmouth with the capital of the
+Commonwealth of Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be
+changed, the old angles to be pared off, new horizons to be
+regarded. The individual, as an eccentric individual, was to
+undergo great modifications. If he were not to become extinct--a
+thing little likely--he was at least to lose his prominence.
+
+However, as I said, local character, in the sense in which the
+term is here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering
+death, and passed away so peacefully and silently as not to
+attract general, or perhaps any, notice. This period of gradual
+dissolution fell during my boyhood. The last of the cocked hats
+had gone out, and the railway had come in, long before my time;
+but certain bits of color, certain half obsolete customs and
+scraps of the past, were still left over. I was not too late, for
+example, to catch the last town crier--one Nicholas Newman, whom
+I used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort of
+affection.
+
+Nicholas Newman--Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being
+Edward--was a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed,
+somewhat bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his
+stature. I have never since seen a bell of that size disconnected
+with a church steeple. The only thing about him that matched the
+instrument of his office was his voice. His "Hear All!" still
+deafens memory's ear. I remember that he had a queer way of
+sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him had originally
+intended a crab, but thought better of it, and made a town-crier.
+Of the crustacean intention only a moist thumb remained, which
+served Mr. Newman in good stead in the delivery of the Boston
+evening papers, for he was incidentally newsdealer. His authentic
+duties were to cry auctions, funerals, mislaid children,
+traveling theatricals, public meetings, and articles lost or
+found. He was especially strong in announcing the loss of
+reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden ladies. The
+unction with which he detailed the several contents, when fully
+confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person,
+but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so
+much as a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any
+amiable vanity in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have
+heard Mr. Newman spoken of as "that horrid man." He was a
+picturesque figure.
+
+Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier
+with those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of
+the steeple of the Old North every night at nine o'clock--the
+vocal remains of the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed
+on, perhaps crying his losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling
+is still a custom. I can more satisfactorily explain why I
+associate with it a vastly different personality, that of Sol
+Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine o'clock his little
+shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a time at that
+hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a gay
+little shop (he called it "an Emporium"), as barber shops
+generally are, decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and
+gaudy fly-catchers of tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes--whose
+antecedents to us boys were wrapped in thrilling mystery, we
+imagined him to have been a prince in his native land--was a
+colored man, not too dark "for human nature's daily food," and
+enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics in town. At
+this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every
+official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore
+a name that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or
+so. The situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a
+Chinese policeman, with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper
+pocket handkerchief, patrolling Congress Street.
+
+Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as
+straight as a pine. He possessed his race's sweet temper,
+simplicity, and vanity. His martial bearing was a positive factor
+in the effectiveness of the Portsmouth Greys, whenever those
+bloodless warriors paraded. As he brought up the rear of the last
+platoon, with his infantry cap stuck jauntily on the left side of
+his head and a bright silver cup slung on a belt at his hip, he
+seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing things in the
+display. To himself he was pretty much "all the company." He used
+to say, with a drollness which did not strike me until years
+afterwards, "Boys, I and Cap'n Towle is goin' to trot out 'the
+Greys' to-morroh." Though strictly honest in all business
+dealings, his tropical imagination, whenever he strayed into the
+fenceless fields of autobiography, left much to be desired in the
+way of accuracy. Compared with Sol Holmes on such occasions,
+Ananias was a person of morbid integrity. Sol Holmes's tragic end
+was in singular contrast with his sunny temperament. One night,
+long ago, he threw himself from the deck of a Sound steamer,
+somewhere between Stonington and New York. What led or drove him
+to the act never transpired.
+
+There are few men who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of
+which I write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue
+wheelbarrow. I find it difficult to describe him other than
+vaguely, possibly because Wilbird had no expression whatever in
+his countenance. With his vacant white face lifted to the clouds,
+seemingly oblivious of everything, yet going with a sort of
+heaven-given instinct straight to his destination, he trundled
+that rattling wheelbarrow for many a year over Portsmouth
+cobblestones. He was so unconscious of his environment that
+sometimes a small boy would pop into the empty wheelbarrow and
+secure a ride without Wibird arriving at any very clear knowledge
+of the fact. His employment in life was to deliver groceries and
+other merchandise to purchasers. This he did in a dreamy,
+impersonal kind of way. It was as if a spirit had somehow go hold
+of an earthly wheelbarrow and was trundling it quite
+unconsciously, with no sense of responsibility. One day he
+appeared at a kitchen door with a two-gallon molasses jug, the
+top of which was wanting. It was not longer a jug, but a tureen.
+When the recipient of the damaged article remonstrated with
+"Goodness gracious, Wibird! You have broken the jug," his
+features lighted up, and he seemed immensely relieved. "I
+thought, " He remarked, "I heerd somethink crack!"
+
+Wibird Penhallow's heaviest patron was the keeper of a variety
+store, and the first specimen of a pessimist I ever encountered.
+He was an excellent specimen. He took exception to everything. He
+objected to the telegraph, to the railway, to steam in all its
+applications. Some of his arguments, I recollect, made a deep
+impression on my mind. "Nowadays," he once observed to me, "if
+your son or your grandfather drops dead at the other end of
+creation, you know of it in ten minutes. What's the use? Unless
+you are anxious to know he's dead, you've got just two or three
+weeks more to be miserable in." He scorned the whole business,
+and was faithful to his scorn. When he received a telegram, which
+was rare, he made a point of keeping it awhile unopened. Through
+the exercise of this whim he once missed an opportunity of buying
+certain goods to great advantage. "There!" he exclaimed, "if the
+telegraph hadn't been invented the idiot would have written to
+me, and I'd have sent a letter by return coach, and got the goods
+before he found out prices had gone up in Chicago. If that boy
+brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs, I'll throw an
+axe-handle at him." His pessimism extended up, or down, to
+generally recognized canons of orthography. They were all
+iniquitous. If k-n-i-f-e spelled knife, then, he contended,
+k-n-i-f-e-s was the plural. Diverting tags, written by his own
+hand in conformity with this theory, were always attached to
+articles in his shop window. He is long since ded, as he himself
+would have put it, but his phonetic theory appears to have
+survived him in crankish brains here and there. As my
+discouraging old friend was not exactly a public character, like
+the town crier or Wibird Penhallow, I have intentionally thrown a
+veil over his identity. I have, so to speak, dropped into his
+pouch a grain or two of that magical fern-seed which was supposed
+by our English ancestors, in Elizabeth's reign, to possess the
+quality of rendering a man invisible.
+
+Another person who singularly interested me at this epoch was a
+person with whom I had never exchanged a word, whose voice I had
+never heard, but whose face was as familiar to me as every day
+could make it. For each morning as I went to school, and each
+afternoon as I returned, I saw this face peering out of a window
+in the second story of a shambling yellow house situated in
+Washington Street, not far from the corner of State. Whether some
+malign disease had fixed him to the chair he sat on, or whether
+he had lost the use of his legs, or, possible, had none (the
+upper part of him was that of a man in admirable health),
+presented a problem which, with that curious insouciance of youth
+I made no attempt to solve. It was an established fact, however,
+that he never went out of that house. I cannot vouch so
+confidently for the cobwebby legend which wove itself about him.
+It was to this effect: He had formerly been the master of a large
+merchantman running between New York and Calcutta; while still in
+his prime he had abruptly retired from the quarter-deck, and
+seated himself at that window--where the outlook must have been
+the reverse of exhilarating, for not ten persons passed in the
+course of the day, and the hurried jingle of the bells on Parry's
+bakery-cart was the only sound that ever shattered the silence.
+Whether it was an amatory or a financial disappointment that
+turned him into a hermit was left to ingenious conjecture. But
+there he sat, year in and year out, with his cheek so close to
+the window that the nearest pane became permanently blurred with
+his breath; for after his demise the blurr remained.
+
+In this Arcadian era it was possible, in provincial places, for
+an undertaker to assume the dimensions of a personage. There was
+a sexton in Portsmouth--his name escapes me, but his attributes
+do not--whose impressiveness made him own brother to the massive
+architecture of the Stone Church. On every solemn occasion he was
+the striking figure, even to the eclipsing of the involuntary
+object of the ceremony. His occasions, happily, were not
+exclusively solemn; he added to his other public services that of
+furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties. I always
+thought--perhaps it was the working of an unchastened
+imagination--that he managed to throw into his ice-creams a
+peculiar chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzzi--arcades
+ambo--the rival confectioners.
+
+Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species of
+restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing
+confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both
+gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines,
+but neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of
+those prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain
+snuffy little shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent
+side-streets where the football of commerce seemed an incongruous
+thing. These shops were never intended in nature. They had an
+impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not recall one that
+was not located in a private residence, and was not evidently the
+despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis, similar
+to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyrcheon in The House of the
+Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street door--the upper
+section left open in summer--ushered you, with a sudden jangle of
+bell that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall,
+haunted by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners.
+Thence, through another door, you passed into what had formerly
+been the front parlor, but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown,
+wooden counter, and several rows of little drawers built up
+against the picture-papered wall behind it. Through much use the
+paint on these drawers was worn off in circles round the polished
+brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small article required
+by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a peppermint
+Gibraltar--the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery which,
+when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any
+Portsmouth boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a
+single tooth left unbroken. The proprietors of these little
+knick-knack establishments were the nicest creatures, somehow
+suggesting venerable doves. They were always aged ladies,
+sometimes spinsters, sometimes relicts of daring mariners,
+beached long before. They always wore crisp muslin caps and
+steel-rimmed spectacles; they were not always amiable, and no
+wonder, for even doves may have their rheumatism; but such as
+they were, they were cherished in young hearts, and are, I take
+it, impossible to-day.
+
+When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that
+it must have been in some respects unique among New England
+towns. There were, for instance, no really poor persons in the
+place; every one had some sufficient calling or an income to
+render it unnecessary; vagrants and paupers were instantly
+snapped up and provided for at "the Farm." There was, however, in
+a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a decayed old gentlewoman,
+occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a suspicion of
+maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her by
+the neighborhood--as a matter of course, and involving no sense
+of dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of
+vitality is given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!
+
+I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as
+they were affectionately called, and to materialize others of the
+shadows that stir in my recollection; but this would be to go
+outside the lines of my purpose, which is simply to indicate one
+of the various sorts of changes that have come over the vie
+intime of formerly secluded places like Portsmouth--the
+obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the obliteration,
+the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England the
+impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and
+women--quaint, shrewd, and racy of the soil--who linger in
+little, silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England
+roads and by-ways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in
+the record of some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or
+Mary Wilkins, on whose sympathetic page they have already taken
+to themselves a remote air, an atmosphere of long-kept lavender
+and pennyroyal.
+
+Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach
+flower. The increased facilities of communication between points
+once isolated, the interchange of customs and modes of thought,
+make this encouragement more and more difficult each decade. The
+naturally inclined eccentric finds his sharp outlines rubbed off
+by unavoidable attrition with a larger world than owns him.
+Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping hand of new ideas. He
+gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from Cambridge,
+Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico, and
+his ulster from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis
+state of Odd Stick; he has ceased to be parochial; he is no
+longer distinct; he is simply the Average Man.
+
+
+INDEX OF NAMES
+
+ADAMS, NATHANIEL
+ADDISON, JOSEPH
+ALLEN, WILLIAM
+ANANIAS
+ATKINSON, THEODORE
+AUSTIN, REBECCA
+BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE
+BLAY, RUTH
+BOGGS, AMOS
+BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN
+BRIDGET, MOLLY
+BROWN, REV. ARTHUR
+BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D.
+BRUCE, CYRUS
+BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES
+BYLES, REV. MATHER
+CAROLINE, QUEEN
+CHADBORN, HUMPHREY
+CHARLES, PRINCE
+CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE
+CLAGETT, WYSEMAN
+COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON
+D'ORLEANS, DUC
+DUNYON, WILLIAM
+ELIZABETH, QUEEN
+FENTON, JOHN
+FOWLE, DANIEL
+FOWLE, PRIMUS
+FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
+FURBER, THOMAS
+GEORGE I
+GERRY, ELBRIDGE
+GORGES, SIR FERDINAND
+GUAST, PIERRE DE
+HAM, SUPPLY
+HANCOCK, JOHN
+HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
+HILTON, MARTHA
+HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL
+HOLMES, SOL
+JAFFREY, GEORGE
+JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY
+JEWETT, SARAH ORNE
+KEAIS, SAMUAL
+KEKUANAOA
+KENNY, PENELOPE
+KNOX, GENERAL HENRY
+LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE
+LAIGHTON, ALBERT
+LAIGHTON, OSCAR
+LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN
+LEAR, BENJAMIN
+LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH
+MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD
+MCDONOUGH, JAMES
+MASON, JEREMIAH
+MASON, JOHN
+MASON, JOHN TUFTON
+MARCH, CLEMENT
+MATHER, REV. COTTON
+MESERVE, GEORGE
+MICHELANGELO
+MITCHEL, LETTUCE
+MOFFATT, CATHERINE
+MOLIERE
+MONTPENSIER, DUC DE
+MOSES, JOSEPH
+NEWMAN, EDWARD
+NOBLE, MARK
+ODIORNE, EBEN L.
+PACKER, THOMAS
+PEDUZZI, DOMINIC
+PENHALLOW, WIBIRD
+PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM
+PEPYS, SAMUAL
+PHILIPPE, LOUIS
+PHIPPES, THOMAS
+PHIPPS, GOVERNOR
+PICKERING, JOHN
+PITT, WILLIAM
+POTTLE, WILLIAM
+PRING, MARTIN
+QUINCY, DOROTHY
+ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE
+ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS
+RUTLEDGE, EDWARD
+SERAT, LEONARD
+SEWELL, JONATHAN
+SHAKESPEARE
+SHEAFE, JACOB
+SHERBURNE, HENRY
+SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON
+SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM
+SIMPSON, SARAH
+SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN
+SOCRATES
+STAVERS, DAME
+STAVERS, JOHN
+STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE
+STOODLEY, JAMES
+THAXTER, CELIA
+THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
+TILTON, JOHNNY
+TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM
+WALTON, GEORGE
+WARNER, JONATHAN
+WASHINGTON, GEORGE
+WEBSTER, DANIEL
+WENTWORTH, BENNING
+WENTWORTH, JOHN
+WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D
+WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA
+WENTWORTH, MARY
+WENTWORTH, MICHAEL
+WENTWORTH, SARAH
+WESTWERE, EDWARD
+WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF
+WIBIRD, RICHARD
+WILKINS, MARY E.
+WINN, TIMOTHY
+WITHER, GEORGE
+XANTIPPE
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of An Old Town By The Sea, by Aldrich
+
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