3UF, 
 
 COLONIAL 
 
 MOME5 ,fe 
 
 DRAKE 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION, BOSTON, MASS. 
 
OUR 
 
 COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL ADAMS ^RAKE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "OLD LANDMARKS OF BOSTON" - BURGOYNE S INVASION OF 1777" "Tun TAKING 
 OF LOUISBURG" "THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG" ETC. 
 
 * All houses wherein men have lived and died 
 Are haunted houses. " LONGFELLOW. 
 
 BOSTON 
 LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 
 
 10 MILK S T R K E T 
 
 1894 
 
/\ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 TYFE-SETTINT, AND Kl.F.CTROTY I INC; BY 
 
 C. J. PETERS SON. BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 ROCKWELL & Ciit KCHiLL, PRINTERS, BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ONE end which I proposed to myself in this book, besides 
 presenting house and home historically, was to gather up as many 
 distinct types of the colonial architecture of New England as pos 
 sible, from the rude farmhouse of the first settlers to the elegant 
 mansion of a later generation, as it seems to me nothing could give 
 half so clear a picture of a century and a half of colonial life. It 
 was this idea alone which could give cohesion to a series of sketches 
 having little connection in themselves, except as recording fragments 
 of history that had become scattered with the lapse of time. Most 
 of them were written some years ago for Appletori s Journal ; but 
 by the addition of several new subjects, besides re-writing the old 
 ones, the collection bears out, I think, the idea conveyed by the 
 title of OUR COLONIAL HOMES. 
 
 The selections are typical in another sense. I have considered 
 each of these old houses as one of the bricks belonging to the 
 American foundation. All have their interesting story, their admi 
 rable lesson, or patriotic inspiration. They are a legacy from the past, 
 of which our generation is only the trustee. They are the parent 
 hives, from which the outswarms have gone forth over the length 
 and breadth of the land we love. I think myself that the New 
 Englander has some good qualities, one among others being his 
 veneration for the things that have a history or embody a sentiment, 
 like the homes of his fathers. 
 
 810333 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HANCOCK MANSION, BOSTON, MASS i 
 
 THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE, BOSTON, MASS 17 
 
 THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HorsE, MEDFORD, MASS 26 
 
 HOBGOBLIN HALL, MEDFORD, MASS 37 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT S BIRTHPLACE, DORCHESTER, MASS 47 
 
 THE MINOT HOMESTEAD, DORCHESTER, MASS 57 
 
 -THE QUINCY MANSION, QUINCY, MASS 65 
 
 BIRTHPLACES OF THE Two PRESIDENTS ADAMS, QUINCY, MASS 76 
 
 THE ADAMS MANSION, OUINCY, iMASS 91 
 
 THE OLD SHIP, HINGHAM, MASS 105 
 
 THE OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, MASS 117 
 
 THE COLLINS HOUSE, DANVERS, MASS 128 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM, DANVERS, MASS 143 
 
 THE LAST RESIDENCE OF JAMES OTIS, ANDOVER, MASS 150 
 
 THE RED HORSE (WAYSIDE INN), SUDBURY, MASS 160 
 
 -THE PEPPERELLS OF KITTERY POINT 169 
 
 THE EARLY HOME OF JOHN- HOWARD PAYNE, EAST HAMPTON, L.I 176 
 
 THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE, DEERFIELD, MASS 184 
 
 THE OLD GOTHIC HOUSE, RAYNHAM, MASS . . 194 
 
 THE OLD STONE HOUSE, GUILFORD, CONN 203 
 
LLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE HANCOCK HOUSE Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE -j^. 
 
 THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE 35 
 
 HOBGOBLIN HALL . . . 38 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF EDWARD EVERETT 50 
 
 THE Mi NOT HOMESTEAD 58 
 
 THE QUINCY MANSION 67 
 
 HOME OF JOHN ADAMS . 81 
 
 HOME OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS . . 88 
 
 THE ADAMS MANSION . 92 
 
 THE OLD SHIP , 106 
 
 THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE . 122 
 
 THE COLLINS HOUSE 131 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 146 
 
 THE LAST RESIDENCE OF JAMES OTIS 151 
 
 THK RED HORSE (WAYSIDE INN) 163 
 
 HOME OF SIR JOHN PEPPERELL 171 
 
 EARLY HOME OF JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 177 
 
 THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 187 
 
 RUINS OF THE LEONARD FORGE 195 
 
 THE OLD STONE HOUSE 208 
 
OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE HANCOCK MANSION 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 THE old Hancock mansion is seldom mentioned nowadays unac 
 companied by regrets that it could not have been preserved in all its 
 elegant simplicity. Nothing was more easy. The opportunity was in 
 deed urged upon the State as one not to be neglected, if the historic 
 mansion were to be saved at all ; but the appeal, though eloquently made, 
 and strongly supported, was looked upon with suspicion by some, with 
 indifference by others, as a waste of the people s money by more, and 
 finally met defeat at the hands of its enemies in the legislature, not so 
 much on the score of economy as of a short-sighted public policy. 
 
 Could that house be restored to-day, we think it is entirely safe to 
 say that the vote which doomed it to irrevocable destruction would be 
 overwhelmingly reversed. The house, however, has gone beyond a 
 possible resurrection ; the regrets we still have with us. 
 
 After all, time does bring its revenges. The Old Bay State, rich, 
 polite, learned ; high in honor among the great sisterhood John Han 
 cock helped to found with a stroke of that intrepid pen of his, has just 
 caused to be erected at Chicago, for the Columbian Exposition of 1893, 
 a copy of the Hancock mansion, as near as may be to the original, as 
 the expression not only of what she would hold highest before the 
 world, but of what the world best knows and most prizes in her great 
 history. When the citizen of Dakota or of Washington shall innocently 
 
OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 ask what has become of the original, that State pride, of which we pos 
 sess our full share, must and will be heavily discounted. 
 
 There is still another phase to the matter. Our architects, those 
 xnctefa!:igab.e purveyors to public caprice, after ransacking the whole 
 earth, in search of novelty, wearied with turning all the old orders 
 upside down and inside out, suddenly discovered that the colonial resi 
 dences of their own country had some merit. Our renaissance has come 
 in with the discovery. Old colonial is at present the only proper style 
 for a country house ; old colonial is the vogue for household furnishings, 
 and we know not what else. To go through our suburban villages or 
 seaside resorts, one would really imagine that old colonial was something 
 new, or at least a fetich before which our national pride loves to pros 
 trate itself. Let us not deceive ourselves. Reverence for the shadow 
 is in this case a vicarious atonement for our sins against the substance. 
 To use a popular phrase a vile phrase indeed there is money in it. 
 
 But we may not longer indulge in vain regrets. We can only lift a 
 warning finger to those esthetic souls whom the sight of one of these 
 old landmarks so grievously offends, and who are ever crying out, in 
 season and out of season, ecrasons rinfame. 
 
 Thomas Hancock, the builder of the mansion in question, com 
 menced life as a stationer s apprentice in King, now State, Street, and 
 ended the richest man in Boston. From selling goose-quills and car 
 tridge-paper in a stuffy little shop, behind a counter, he boldly struck 
 out into the broader field for which he was so eminently fitted, and in 
 no long time had built up the great fortime without which it is more 
 than doubtful if his needy young kinsman would either have become 
 very rich or greatly renowned. Midas-like, everything he touched 
 turned to gold with such rapidity that it was currently reported, and 
 actually believed by the common people, that he had bought for a 
 song an enormously valuable diamond which he afterwards sold for a 
 great price. Hutchinson, who did not like John Hancock any too well, 
 accounts for the uncle s rise to wealth in a very different way. He says 
 the secret lay in importing from St. Eustatia great quantities of tea in 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 3 
 
 molasses hogsheads, which sold at a very great advance ; and that by 
 importing, at the same time, a few chests from England, the rest was 
 freed from suspicion, and Hancock s reputation as a fair trader did not 
 suffer thereby. Be that as it may, Hancock only toiled and schemed to 
 pile up wealth for others to spend, and spend it they did. 
 
 There is now lying before me, yellow with age, an advertisement cut 
 from an old newspaper, which runs as follows : " Excellent good Bohea 
 Tea, imported in the last ship from London : sold by Tho. Hancock. 
 N.B. If it don t suit the ladies taste, they may return the tea and 
 receive their money again." Nothing, it seems to us, could be fairer. 
 Yet, only a very few years later, the Boston ladies" were signing a 
 pledge not to drink the detested herb ; John Hancock was offering one 
 of his uncle s ships to carry a cargo of it back to England in ; and, in 
 short, tea had really become such a drug in the market that it was 
 being thrown overboard to the fishes. 
 
 When Thomas Hancock, the rich merchant, built this house, in 1737, 
 all the near neighborhood was a waste place covered with scrubby bushes, 
 like any other rough pasture ground ; all the broad green slope running 
 off in front of it a common grazing-field, into which the town s cows 
 were regularly driven every day of the week. This was that lesser 
 Boston, at which modern estheticism now turns up its super-sensitive 
 nose. This was Beacon Hill. Most emphatically Beacon Hill, a name 
 derived from the old signal mast and crate that stood here, was one of 
 the high places of the town. So long as the great field, spreading out 
 beneath it, should remain a common, nothing was ever likely to obstruct 
 the view ; and as it originally had been set apart for this use forever, the 
 old merchant s mind was in all likelihood quite at rest on that score. 
 
 From the time their fathers had first landed at Shawmut, this breezy 
 hill-top had been a lookout. Ever since then the people of Boston have 
 been in the habit of climbing it for the sake of the enrapturing view it 
 unfolds, though they must now toil up the crooked stairway leading to 
 the cupola of the State House, instead of leisurely following the wind 
 ings of the old paths. The ground then finely overlooked all Boston, 
 
4 OCR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 all its spacious harbor, all its islands, far out into the sparkling sea. At 
 its highest point, which rose a little behind the house, the view swept 
 grandly over all the country round the north side of the town, and out 
 among many " tall spires and smoking villages remote." 
 
 Thomas Hancock may well have struck his gold-headed cane upon 
 the ground, as filled with the delights of this lovely panorama he 
 resolved within himself to build him a house of stone, here on this 
 secluded spot, quite removed from the stir and bustle of the town. No 
 sooner said than begun. His fellow-citizens marvelled not a little how 
 he could ever have chosen such an out-of-the-way site as this for his 
 future residence. It was like going out of the world the fashionable 
 world, of course. 
 
 While learning the stationer s trade, Thomas Hancock had also 
 learned to love the stationer s daughter, Lydia Henchman. Like 
 everything else he touched, his suit prospered, and he married her. 
 There is every reason to believe that the match was a happy one. Her 
 niece, who was in a position to know whereof she spoke, pronounced 
 Madam Hancock as ladylike a person as ever lived ; and that is by no 
 means faint praise from a woman who had moved in the very best circles 
 of both the Puritan and Quaker capitals. 
 
 The house was built. In four words we have said it ; yet such 
 houses are not now built in a day, even when materials are so easily 
 transported from a distance, and so quickly hoisted up into position, 
 and this one was long in building. All that a full purse could do or 
 good taste suggest was, however, lavished on the construction. The 
 work was thoroughly done, as all such work was in those days, and 
 when completed looked as if meant to last till doomsday. At the great 
 fire in Boston of 1872 it was remarked that the oldest buildings with 
 stood the flames longest ; this one withstood the attacks of an army of 
 laborers, like a fortress, yielding itself only stone by stone, and after a 
 long siege. 
 
 Behold, then, the actual founders of the Boston branch of the 
 Hancock family duly installed in their new home, from which, in a 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 5 
 
 double sense, they could look down upon all the rest of the admir 
 ing town. 
 
 It was a grand old house, even when hemmed in by modern build 
 ings, imposing only by their height, and the breadth of their polished 
 door-plates, and surely must have been little short of a wonder when 
 it was a new and fresh-looking one. Fifty-six feet front is not often 
 seen among the residences that crowd each other on our fashionable 
 thoroughfares to-day. Then the grounds, beautifully laid out in walks 
 and terraces, reached all the way from Mount Vernon to Joy Street. 
 This merchant wanted elbow-room, and would have it ; breathing- 
 space, with light, air, and sunshine all around him, and plenty of it. 
 The house either began or closely followed upon the era of better 
 building. Even when mellow with age, its gray walls of rough-dressed 
 granite were a most picturesque object. Every passing pedestrian 
 mechanically slackened his pace to look at it. In every one it aroused 
 some new train of thought. It taught history ; it awakened patriotic 
 aspirations ; it stimulated honest endeavor ; it lent an indefinable charm 
 to the neighborhood ; it fitted admirably into its semi-rural surround 
 ings. Indeed, it was a charming old house such a one as one s 
 fancy delights to run riot in, and one s actual body aches to get into. 
 So at least I often thought when I passed it on my way to school. To 
 me it had an atmosphere all its own. It fairly radiated luxury. Pull 
 down that house ! I would as soon have thought of their chopping 
 down the Old Elm, or blowing up Bunker Hill Monument. 
 
 Thomas Hancock had taken into his counting-house on the Dock 
 a nephew, John, whom he designed making a merchant of like himself. 
 Being himself childless, I think he must have looked forward to per 
 petuating the house of Hancock in this way. It happened that the 
 house on the hill was built the very year John Hancock was born. 
 He grew up a high-spirited, impulsive, and strikingly good-looking 
 young man, who, though only the son of a poor country clergyman, 
 soon showed a ready aptitude for the career his uncle had chosen for 
 him. Men said that he was cut out for a merchant. At any rate, 
 
6 -OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 from the day that his uncle adopted him, after his own father s early 
 death, the gossiping world knew that John Hancock s fortune was 
 made. His uncle sent him to Harvard, sent him abroad to polish off 
 his provincial manners, inducted him into all the mysteries of business, 
 and, in short, set the lucky youngster s foot firmly upon the rounds 
 of the ladder to fame and fortune. 
 
 It was therefore here that John Hancock first displayed that ample 
 autograph, since so much admired, which to a reader of character in 
 handwriting shows about equal parts of vanity, decision, and confidence 
 in himself. He was a much prouder man, I doubt not, when he first 
 signed the name of Thomas Hancock and Company, than when signing 
 the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Though already the richest man in the province, Thomas Hancock s 
 wealth continued to roll up, snowball like, during the war for the sub 
 jugation of Canada, from which as banker and factor for the royal 
 forces he reaped a rich harvest ; and just as that war ended he died, 
 leaving his nephew John his principal heir, as well as the inheritor 
 of his extensive business. 
 
 To the imagination of the people of that day the inheritance was 
 something immense. Probably it was somewhat exaggerated. Still, 
 for some time it continued to be the chief topic of conversation in the 
 street, in the counting-house, and by the fireside, all the more because 
 the few really great fortunes then held in the Province could be counted 
 on one s fingers ; and next to counting one s own money, counting that 
 of your neighbors is a most fascinating employment. 
 
 Thomas Hancock, peace to his ashes ! was not one of the sort of men 
 who never leave a penny out of the family. If not generous by nature, 
 he was at least endowed with a little public spirit. The world had made 
 him ; the world should be a little better off for what it had done for 
 him. He did something that no one had clone before him. By the 
 gift of a thousand pounds he became the first native of New England 
 to found a professorship at Harvard University that of Hebrew and 
 the Oriental tongues. So, too, when Harvard Hall was burnt in 1764, 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 7 
 
 the great merchant had expressed his intention of subscribing five hun 
 dred pounds toward furnishing a new library and philosophical appara 
 tus, in room of that destroyed ; but death cut him off from the fulfilment 
 of that purpose. His nephew, however, very honorably carried out his 
 uncle s wishes in this respect, as well he might, considering how little 
 that item would have subtracted from the total footing of seventy-five 
 thousand pounds, clean money, in the late merchant s inventory. 
 
 From this day forth (he was only twenty-seven), John Hancock be 
 came a public character ; and though he began so low down the ladder 
 as selectman of the town, he lived to be president of the first congress 
 of the Thirteen Colonies, or, as one might say, selectman of the nation. 
 If there is to be found anywhere an instance of a more rapid rise to fame 
 and fortune, I have not yet met with it. 
 
 Of the habitues of the mansion in Thomas Hancock s time we know 
 little. There were then no society journals, and it is not our trade to 
 draw upon the imagination in matters of this kind. It would be entirely 
 safe, however, to say that every personage of note who visited Boston 
 hastened to put his legs under Thomas Hancock s mahogany. From 
 the day it was first thrown open, the corner-stone of the mansion was 
 hospitality. We know that Generals Amherst, Moncton, and Lawrence, 
 besides many others of lesser note, were entertained there. We have 
 looked over the monthly butcher s bill ; and we have imbibed a very 
 distinct notion therefrom that there were some rousing dinners given 
 in that house, and much heady arrack-punch drank on such occasions 
 as the King s birthday, for instance. What would we not give to have 
 witnessed the stately formality with which the Honorable So and So 
 bowed himself into the drawing-room, where the owners of the best 
 
 o 
 
 names in the town were assembling, one by one, or to have seen the 
 antique courtesy with which Madam Hancock received him ? There 
 was -a liveried black servant to take his three-cornered hat and gold- 
 headed cane ; another to laclle him out a generous bumper of cool punch. 
 Then there was the host, beaming with punch and good-humor, to offer 
 his own snuff-box, well filled with fragrant rappee of his own importa- 
 
8 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 tion. As dinner was announced, all the company filed out into the 
 spacious dining-hall, now blazing with lights, and hung round with 
 rare old paintings. A rattle of chairs, and the guests were seated. 
 Then began the feast. When the master of the house, his face red 
 with punch and emotion, got up to propose the one toast sacred to all 
 loyal Britons the world over (prefaced by " Fill your glasses ; bumpers, 
 gentlemen, bumpers!"), which word of command instantly brought 
 every guest to his feet, and every eye upon the speaker, " I give you 
 his Majesty the King, God bless him ! " what a clatter of glasses went 
 round that board, and what a dimness was in the eyes of our honest 
 Thomas when the company sat down again ! 
 
 There was such a thing as ripe old Madeira in those days ; and there 
 was such a thing as the gout. 
 
 And to think that foremost among them all, was that young man, 
 whom but a little later on King George would so gladly have seen 
 hanged, at government expense, if he could have caught him ! 
 
 After the founder of the family had been laid away in the family 
 tomb, with all the ceremonious pomp demanded by custom, his illus 
 trious nephew stepped into his shoes, so to speak, with an assured 
 tread. He not only preserved, but so enlarged, the old hospitable 
 traditions of the mansion, that in no long time he had won the fleeting 
 distinction of being the most popular man in the Province ; and what is 
 more, his popularity continued undiminishecl down to the last hours of 
 an eventful life. 
 
 This assured popularity was by no means confined to the male portion 
 of the community. So long as the great mansion lacked a mistress, its 
 incompleteness was sure to be the subject of deep and heartfelt concern 
 to all the scheming mammas of the Puritan capital. It was frightful to 
 think of this poor, rich young man living all alone in that great, splendid 
 mansion with nobody but an elderly aunt, in widow s weeds and high 
 caps, to pour out his tea for him, or comfort his declining years. Cer 
 tain of the Boston belles and there were some bewitching ones, let 
 me tell you may have shared this opinion. It was a great catch ! To 
 be thus insensible was worse than a fault, it was a crime. 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 9 
 
 Great, therefore, is the pity that we should know no more than we 
 do about John Hancock s love story : we only know the sequel. At 
 thirty-seven he was still unmarried, and at thirty-seven one s youthful 
 illusions are apt to have been more or less rudely dissipated. We will 
 simply tell what we know, leaving the impartial reader to draw his 
 own inferences. 
 
 It seems that among- all the rest, or perhaps before the rest, Madam 
 Hancock had picked out a partner for her nephew. This was no other 
 than Mistress Dolly Ouincy, of whom the widow had made a sort of 
 protegee since the death of that young lady s mother. Of course Han 
 cock and Miss Dolly were no strangers to one another. Their families 
 were related, and hers was every bit as good as his. \Yithout doubt the 
 lady was a frequent guest at the mansion. She was by all report most 
 attractive in person and captivating in manners, un pen coquette per 
 haps, yet no more so than was thought permissible in the line ladies of 
 the period. It is grievous, however, to have to believe that they flirted 
 most abominably with the young British officers, who, since they could 
 not conquer the men, gladly turned to the more congenial employment 
 of vanquishing the women. If this sort of warfare did not tend greatly 
 to embitter the political situation, why do we find John Hancock so 
 vehemently asking in his famous address on the Massacre, delivered a 
 full year before his marriage : 
 
 " Did not our youth forget they were Americans, and regardless of 
 the admonitions of the wise and aged servilely copy from their tyrants 
 those vices which must finally overthrow the empire of Great Britain ? " 
 and then instantly declaring with a well-feigned sorrow, " And must I 
 be compelled to acknowledge that even the noblest, fairest part of all 
 the lower creation did not entirely escape the cursed snare." We are 
 at least permitted to draw our own conclusions. 
 
 A man who suffered tortures from the gout before he was fort}* must 
 have been a pretty high liver even for those days. Doubtless this was 
 one cause of Hancock s irritable temper. 
 
 Mistress Dorothy Ouincy, better known to the present generation as 
 
10 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Dorothy O- -, was the granddaughter of Judge Edmund Quincy of 
 Braintree, Mass., and the daughter of his son of the same name. Both 
 her aunt and grandmother were called Dorothy, so that the name was a 
 sort of inheritance on the female side. From this aunt, who married 
 Edward Jackson, many eminent men of that name are descended, 
 besides the poet, O. W. Holmes, and John Lowell, the founder of that 
 peculiarly Boston institution, the Lowell Institute. 
 
 During ten years the mansion had been the resort of fashionable 
 Boston. Though plain, its interior was elegant. The old merchant s 
 taste had run to things rather solid than showy, but his successor had 
 transformed the house into a veritable palace of luxury, over which he 
 presided with a courtliness of manner, an urbanity long remembered, 
 but now, alas ! fast becoming one of the lost arts. He gave capital 
 dinners, he dressed superbly, his wines were the despair of all the 
 epicures of the town. 
 
 These were the days of bachelorhood, yet not of repose. Dark 
 clouds were gathering all along the horizon. We may not know what 
 dreams of domestic happiness had come to the envied master of the 
 mansion before the evil days befell it and him, and they were now close 
 at hand. Whatever they were, the awakening was rude indeed. 
 
 The trumpet s martial sound had called John Hancock to confront 
 his destiny. There was no escaping that call. From politician, Han 
 cock had gradually advanced to patriot and rebel, without which there 
 would have been no such summons for him. The call was peremptory, 
 imperious, startling. He could not have helped seeing the hated red 
 coats pitch their first camp down there on the Common at his feet, or 
 shut his eyes to its meaning. With the dawn, their bugles rang out the 
 rule of the bayonet ; and you can do anything with that sharp instru 
 ment, says the proverb, except sit on it. At all hours of the day his 
 ears tingled with the din of the fifes and drums of eleven British regi 
 ments. His hot blood boiled at the mocking taunts of the beardless 
 subalterns. He saw himself at last forced to choose between King and 
 country, freedom or despotism, and to choose quickly. And for him the 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 1 1 
 
 decision involved a sacrifice such as no other man in the Province, high 
 or low, had been called upon to make no, not one. Let us not forget 
 that. 
 
 We know that a very large proportion of the well-to-do merchants 
 of Hancock s day were out-and-out Tories. These were the loyal 
 Faneuils, Vassalls, Olivers, Royalls, Pepperells, etc. Even some fami 
 lies were divided politically. A moment s reflection, therefore, shows 
 us how deeply society in the Puritan capital must have felt the 
 shock of such a political and social upheaval. At Tory tables the 
 officers of the army and navy were constantly entertained, the King s 
 health regularly drank, the rebels as regularly consigned to everlasting 
 perdition. At houses like Hancock s the company wore anxious faces, 
 toasts were drank in silence, and all the talk was carried on in under 
 tones. 
 
 Hancock has been called vain and vacillating. That is probably 
 true enough. The Royalists believed, or pretended to believe, that 
 Sam Adams led Hancock about by the nose. They even went so far 
 as to nickname him Johnny Dupe. All know the story told by 
 Dr. Waterhouse, that as the two Adamses, John and Samuel, were 
 one day taking a stroll together on the Common, when they had come 
 opposite to the Hancock mansion, Samuel said to John, " I have done 
 a very good thing for our cause in the course of the past week, by 
 enlisting the master of that house into it. He is well disposed, and 
 has great riches, and we can give him consequence to enjoy them." 
 This same idea was probably echoed in the popular saying that Sam 
 Adams did the writing, and John Hancock paid the postage. Our 
 own opinion is that there is far more pungency than truth in that 
 saying. 
 
 John Hancock s choice was for him nothing less than a sentence 
 of banishment. Arch-traitor, vile conspirator, rebel, were the mildest 
 epithets commonly applied to him. King Hancock was derisively 
 added. The house on the hill was shut up ; its owner became a 
 proscribed traitor and fugitive. We next find him presiding over the 
 
12 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 fateful deliberations of the Provincial Congress, with all the dignity and 
 firmness which the gravity of the situation demanded. The country 
 was arming. Day by day the tension was growing more and more 
 unendurable. Something must give way. 
 
 "The first drop of blood may be considered as the signal of civil 
 war," said Edward Gibbon. This sinister prediction was to be verified 
 only too soon. On the very night before the battle of Lexington, 
 Hancock had come down there with Adams to snatch a little allevia 
 tion from the work and worry of official duties. The two patriots 
 alighted together at the now historic parsonage. Two anxious women 
 were waiting to throw themselves into Hancock s arms. One was his 
 aunt, Lydia ; the other tell it not his betrothed wife, Miss Doro 
 thy Quincy. 
 
 The storm burst upon them while they were asleep in their beds. 
 At midnight Revere rode up to the door with his horse dripping with 
 foam. Then came the horrid clang of the church bell, summoning the 
 minute-men to arms. No more sleep that night. 
 
 It needs no seer to tell us of the pale and haggard faces in the 
 parsonage when the daylight stole in, as into a death chamber ; of 
 the stern and impassable Adams, or the nervous, impulsive Hancock. 
 Were ever two men so differently constituted, so linked together 
 in a common destiny ! Hancock nervously trying the lock of his 
 musket, Adams standing with folded arms calmly waiting for the hour 
 of destiny to strike. They heard a confused murmur of voices, like the 
 gust preceding the storm ; then a ringing Word of command, and then 
 a rattling volley followed by a few scattering shots. Then there rose 
 a loud huzza of triumph, followed by the silence of death. It was all 
 over. The first blood had been shed. 
 
 Hancock, we are told, would have rushed off into the thickest of the 
 fight, had not the two frightened and hysterical women clung to him 
 so tenaciously that he was unable to free himself from their grasp. 
 
 After the first fright had a little subsided, Mistress Ouincy impul 
 sively declared her purpose of going back to her father in Boston at 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 13 
 
 once. At this announcement Hancock flared up. " No, madam," said 
 he, " you shall not return as long as there is a British bayonet left in 
 Boston." "Shall not, indeed !" cried Mistress Dolly. "Recollect, 
 Mr. Hancock, I am not under your control yet ; and I shall go in to 
 my father to-morrow." She afterwards very frankly said that at that 
 moment she should have been only too glad to get rid of him. 
 
 We have accepted the story, literally, as a somewhat curious indica 
 tion of how people who have been wrought up to the highest pitch 
 sometimes relieve the tension they can no longer bear. A lovers 
 quarrel as the sequel to the slaughter that had just taken place is 
 a strange anti-climax, to our way of thinking. 
 
 Failing to lay hands upon its master, the King s soldiers proceeded 
 to vent their senseless spite upon the deserted mansion. They hacked 
 and hewed the fences, broke the windows, spoiled the shrubbery, 
 without let or hindrance, until General Gage sent Lord Percy to 
 occupy it as his headquarters. From this time until the evacuation 
 of the town in March, 1776, the house was appropriated to the use 
 first, of Percy, then of Clinton, and lastly of the gourmand, General 
 Grant. It was, certainly, one means of protection, if not precisely what 
 the owner himself would have preferred. His trusty agent, Isaac Caz- 
 neau, however, had taken the precaution to put some of the best furni 
 ture, with the most costly china and glassware, under lock and key. 
 When Clinton came into possession he demanded the key of this 
 strong chamber on the pretence of searching it for seditious papers. 
 Having received it from the reluctant major-domo, Clinton drew these 
 treasures from their hiding-place, gave Cazneau a scolding for his 
 pains, and dismissed him with a curt good-morning. 
 
 One peculiar feature of all of these old houses was the secret hid 
 ing places with which they were furnished, known perhaps only to the 
 person who had caused their construction. The Hancock House was 
 no exception. Not many years before it was torn down, the family 
 were one day at dinner, when suddenly the panel of a closet fell in, 
 disclosing a receptacle hitherto unknown and unsuspected. The 
 
14 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 secret, therefore, must have been well kept. The place was empty, but 
 was probably once used by Hancock to secrete his valuables in, and 
 the knowledge of it had died with him. 
 
 Save that the fences of the neighboring- pasture, where the State 
 House now stands, were carried off by the red-coats for fuel, as legiti 
 mate spoils of war, and the turning of the carriage-house, at the west 
 side, into a hospital, after Bunker Hill battle, the house suffered little 
 at the hands of the soldiery. Doubtless many a poor joke was cracked 
 at Hancock s expense, at his own table, over his own wine, so long as 
 the cellar held out ; but at last there came a day when peremptory 
 notice to quit was served on all the scarlet-coated gentry from George 
 Washington s rebel cannon. They had promised to make Hancock 
 dance upon nothing, and Washington now furnished them with the 
 music. 
 
 It was at this time, when propositions for burning the town, or carry 
 ing it by assault, were being anxiously discussed at the patriot head 
 quarters, and when Hancock was presiding over the deliberations of 
 the Congress at Philadelphia, that he wrote the commander-in-chief, " I 
 pray God to crown your assault with success, though I may be the 
 greatest sufferer." He had already said the same thing more than 
 once. 
 
 During this eventful year one never-failing solace came to light up 
 the proscribed patriot s solitary pathway. In the early autumn of 1775 
 he was united in marriage to his lady-love, Dorothy Quincy. The cere 
 mony took place at the house of Thaddeus Burr, at Fairfield, Connecti 
 cut, the Reverend Mr. Eliot officiating. 
 
 From some old letters of hers written to her father, who had gone 
 to live at Lancaster, Mass., pending the troubles, we learn that Mrs. 
 Hancock was kept busy in directing commissions, in trimming off with 
 her scissors the rough edges of the coarse Continental notes, and in 
 packing them up to be sent off to the army. Thus the honeymoon 
 was passed. Philadelphia she did not like. During the spring of 
 1776 the happy couple boarded with a Mrs. Yard, whose charges 
 
THE HANCOCK MANSION 15 
 
 were at the very moderate rate of $ a week, firewood and candles 
 extra as in Europe. 
 
 Of Hancock s record as president of Congress, we need say no more 
 here than that he never shirked the responsibility of his office, let the 
 danger to him personally be what it might. He had much of the 
 Jacksonian fearlessness in his composition. With Aclams he had been 
 raised to the perilous dignity of a proscribed man. The temper of 
 Congress may be judged by the remark made by Benjamin Harrison, 
 when almost carrying Hancock to the chair. Said he, " We will show 
 Britain how much we value her proscription." 
 
 Once more installed on his own hearthstone, after an absence of two 
 and a half years, Hancock found abundant occupation in putting his 
 house in order, in gathering up the loose ends of his long- neglected 
 private affairs, and in receiving congratulatory visits, or ceremonious 
 calls, or in entertaining the numerous civil and military personages 
 who for the time being found themselves in Boston. During the five 
 years next following Hancock s return from Philadelphia, dukes, counts, 
 and marquises were no unfrequent guests at the mansion ; for Boston, 
 being the only port of consequence not in the enemy s hands, became 
 the rendezvous for the French squadrons from time to time. When 
 Admiral D Estaing was in this harbor, as many as forty of his officers 
 dined every day at the Hancocks table. 
 
 In all the hospitalities of the house, Madam Hancock bore her full 
 portion, and bore it well. Though not a highly-educated woman, she 
 had her full share of mother wit, which made her a charming and viva 
 cious companion, especially to gentlemen. And notwithstanding the 
 almost unbearable conduct she sometimes experienced from the 
 governor, who was as autocratic in his own house as the czar in 
 his palace, she used so much tact as really to manage him. I had 
 it from excellent authority that the governor once brutally beat a 
 domestic for bringing him some refreshments in a china instead of a 
 pewter dish. As the governor died without making a will, there was, 
 of course, no provision for the widow, except what the law gave her. 
 
1 6 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 That event, therefore, wrought a marked change in her worldly condi 
 tion, though it does not appear to have quenched her exuberant spirits. 
 She married again. This husband, Captain Scott, a splendid seaman, 
 who had sailed some of Hancock s ships, also left her a widow, with 
 only a moderate income, certainly a great change for one accustomed 
 to everything wealth could give. 
 
 John Hancock was only fifty- six when he died. At fifty he was 
 already an old man, so debilitated by frequent attacks of the gout as to 
 have to be carried about by his servants when the performance of some 
 public duty made his presence imperative. Such appearances then as 
 sumed a truly dramatic character. The Hancocks do not seem to have 
 been a long-lived family. John s uncle, Thomas, was under sixty when 
 he died. Notwithstanding the many honors he had received, there is 
 something saddening in this brief retrospect of Hancock s life. It 
 almost seems as if the cup of gratified ambition was ever being dashed 
 from his lips. Burke s wise saying that one might as well expect to be 
 happy without virtue as without health seems exactly to fit the case. 
 Well, the old house was pulled clown. Peace to its ashes ! Our 
 streets bristle with monuments to this or that celebrity. But where, oh, 
 where, is the monument to John Hancock ? Echo answers, where ? 
 
 Madam Hancock, on the contrary, lived to a good old age. To the 
 day of her death she was as scrupulously attentive to her personal 
 appearance as when she was a reigning bello- in the first circles of 
 fashion. It was a maxim with her that one owed it to one s self to look 
 as well as one could, or as she herself put it, " She would never forgive 
 a young girl who did not dress to please, nor one who seemed pleased 
 with her dress." If the woman of the world spoke out here, we are no 
 longer at a loss to know how she came to play her role of the first lady 
 of the Commonwealth to such perfection. 
 
THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE 
 
 THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 No city of America has preserved its antiquities with greater venera 
 tion than has Boston, and no other American city is so rich in me 
 morials of the successive steps by which we rose to be a great nation. 
 (True, we may not be able to say this of Boston much longer, but let us 
 say it, at least, while we can.) The shout of thanksgiving which went 
 up when at last, after its terrible baptism of fire, the Old South stood 
 scathless, was echoed all over the land ; and even a faint cheer was 
 heard from the scarce-rebuilt homes of those who, not long before, 
 sought our destruction sword in hand. 
 
 There is then something which unites the sentimental to the prac 
 tical part of us, like the soul to the body. There is then something in 
 the aspect of exterior objects which arouses the imagination, as nothing 
 else can. With the aid of this mysterious conductor we swiftly traverse 
 all the labyrinths of the past. By its quickening power, the dumb 
 speak, the dead are brought to life. Let him who is without imagina 
 tion cast the first stone. 
 
 Macaulay has said, prophetically and wisely, that " a people which 
 takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors, will 
 never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote 
 descendants." I confess that I am much of that man s mind. It is 
 true that we have pride enough, and to spare ; but are we not some 
 thing deficient in that practical wisdom so necessary to its efficiency, 
 and which so often comes too late ? It is true that we cannot stay the 
 march of improvement, that ruthless juggernaut of our times ; but we 
 can at least ransom our most precious treasures out of the spoiler s 
 hands ; we can fight money with money. 
 
1 8 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Every great city is an example of that unaccountable shifting about 
 of the population, by which what perhaps was once its most fashionable 
 quarter has been finally consigned to the sons of poverty and toil. In 
 Boston, thanks to this poverty, we have yet something to show the 
 stranger far better and more interesting than the splendid structures 
 common to all American cities. Let us first walk that way. 
 
 That part of the old city, spreading out on the north of New 
 Washington Street, has undergone little change in the last forty or fifty 
 years. It has of course grown older, but it is at least so far recog 
 nizable as to be about the only section in which men now past middle 
 age feel quite at home. Here are all the old names, some of the old 
 shops, and many of the old houses. Now and then one has been 
 burned down. Here and there a new one has gone up ; yet to all 
 intents the Old North End looks much as it did when some of the 
 best families were still living there, and when what was more truly the 
 Back Bay then, than now, was known as a place where minnows were 
 caught in summer, and smelts in winter. But first fashion forsook it ; 
 then progress turned its relentless back ; so that at length it has 
 mostly been given up to the under-stratum of society, who, we are 
 forced to admit, must live somewhere. 
 
 What would probably surprise the stranger most of all, would be to 
 tell him that the cheap tenement-houses, now swarming with occupants, 
 could ever have held up their heads among the most aristocratic 
 residences of the city or town. It is by far the most impressive 
 lesson in material evolution he could have. It is the outgrown 
 garment ; it is the poor relation upon whom the rich man now turns 
 his back. 
 
 Say that we have by chance directed our steps toward North Square. 
 In these narrow streets where the taller houses seem in great danger 
 of knocking their heads together, and across which neighbors could 
 gossip quite at their ease, a square is no more what its name implies 
 than a napkin is a tablecloth. In all the older parts of Boston it is 
 a diminutive space, either round, oval, or three-cornered, but seldom 
 
THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE 1 9 
 
 square. Here it is three-cornered. As little breathing-places, they 
 could never serve a better purpose than they do in this overcrowded 
 section of an overcrowded city, where pure air is indeed a luxury. 
 Pah ! the atmosphere is actually thick with the vile odors of garlic and 
 onions of maccaroni and lazzaroni. The dirty tenements swarm 
 with greasy, voluble Italians, and bear such signs as Banca Italiane, 
 Grocery Italiane, Hotel Italiane, constantly repeated from door to 
 door. One can scarce hear the sound of his own English mother- 
 tongue from one end of the square to the other ; and finally (can we 
 believe the evidence of our own eyes ? ) , here is good Father Taylor s 
 old brick Bethel turned into a Catholic chapel ! What would Father 
 Taylor have said to that ? Shade of Cotton Mather ! has it come 
 to this, that a mass-house should stand within the very pale of the 
 thrice consecrated old Puritan sanctuary ? 
 
 How those old fellows would have stared, to be sure, to hear of 
 a Boston with an Italian quarter, a Chinese quarter, a Negro quarter, 
 etc. ! Is this that greater Boston we are now hearing so much 
 about ? Let us rather talk a little about that lesser Boston, that was, 
 we engage, a pretty good place to live in, after all. 
 
 One group of crazy old tenements, fit habitation for owls or bats, 
 but scarcely for human beings, long stood at the narrow entrance to the 
 Square. Before the foreign invasion took place, an air of unspeakable 
 loneliness pervaded the irregular space shut in by walls converging 
 to the narrow opening. The tide of travel flowed by it along North 
 Street on one side, and along* Hanover Street on the other. Now and 
 
 o 
 
 then an unfrequent pedestrian, or more unfrequent vehicle, would drift 
 out of the current, up the little ascent and into the Square, as waifs 
 in an eddy. For all the evidence of city life or bustle, it might have 
 been a lost locality. 
 
 What we now call North Street, was long ago named Anne, for good 
 Queen Anne, daughter of that bad King James. Its course lay along 
 the wharves; its inhabitants lived by the shipping. In course of time 
 it became a sort of Wapping, where vice of every sort ran riot, and into 
 
20 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 which it was hardly safe to venture after dark. About every other 
 house was either a dram-shop or a brothel. Some short-sighted 
 moralists thought the evil could be cured by a simple change of name. 
 So from Anne it became North. It was not, however, until the occu 
 pation of a portion of the street for business purposes, that its char 
 acter was, to some extent, retrieved by rooting out the vile dens that 
 had so long flourished at the expense of Poor Jack. 
 
 But prior to that time there were few situations in all Boston more 
 desirable than North Square. And in the fulness of its historic 
 associations, it is unsurpassed by any other locality we can now call 
 to mind. One might easily have believed it a bit carved out of 
 London, so like was the neighborhood in the names of its streets, in 
 the quaint, oddly-constructed shops and warehouses, and even in the 
 signs that creaked above the tavern doors. There was the King s 
 Head in Fleet Street, borrowed from its famed progenitor in Chancery 
 Lane, in which Cowley was born, Titus Oates s conspirators assembled, 
 and where the pope-day exhibitions originated. There were the 
 Red Lyon dating back to 1676, and the King s Arms, in Fish Street ; 
 and, somewhat later, the sign of David Porter, father of the hero of 
 1812, and grandfather of the late admiral, made its bow, so to speak, 
 to the public in the same thoroughfare. 
 
 The old building seen in the illustration is one of the very few 
 remaining examples of the quaint overhanging upper stories once 
 so common in Boston. It is believed to have been erected not long 
 after the destructive fire of 1676. In the year 1735, of our present 
 style, a matron at the North Fnd of Boston made a New Year s present 
 to her husband of a boy, subsequently christened Paul Revere. This is 
 the house in which Paul Revere lived both before and during the Rev 
 olution ; the same Revere whose daring midnight ride to Lexington 
 Longfellow s stirring poem has rendered so famous. In this house 
 Revere profitably carried on his trade of a silversmith, now and then 
 turning his hand to engraving on copper, and even to dentistry when 
 he could get a customer. Among the works he engraved we might 
 
THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE 
 
 2 I 
 
 mention the so-called Bloody Massacre in King Street, in which, 
 as a piece of realism wholly original, a dog- stands unconcernedly 
 looking on, in the foreground, while the murderous volley is being 
 fired off immediately over his head. 
 
 From this house Revere showed his home-made transparencies on 
 the next anniversary of this shocking event, one of which exhibited 
 
 i? UBJ iw 
 
 PAUL REVERE S HOME. 
 
 the ghost of a victim to British bullets vainly trying to staunch with his 
 fingers the flow of blood from a gaping wound in his side. Such 
 exhibitions then had a prodigious effect upon the minds of the popu 
 lace, and Revere must already be recognized as a power in moulding 
 popular opinion. Perhaps his Huguenot blood flowed faster than that 
 of his more phlegmatic neighbors, and very possibly he was quicker 
 to see the shadow of coming events. In everything requiring spirit, 
 decision, and pluck, Revere had a helping hand, not indeed as a leader, 
 but as a trusted lieutenant of the leaders. 
 
22 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 It was from this house, as we have said, that Paul Revere, booted 
 and spurred for the road, started off for his memorable ride to Lex 
 ington on the evening of April 18, 1775. His graphic, yet simple, 
 account of it lay imbedded in the pages of a work known to but few, 
 even in his day, until at length it fell under the eye of Mr. Longfellow. 
 From that moment Revere s reputation was made. Yet it is doubtful if 
 he himself thought he had done anything so very remarkable. The 
 poet such is fame! has placed Revere in a niche higher than he 
 could ever have dreamed of occupying -- higher, indeed, than many 
 whose deserts were far greater than his. 
 
 At the time that Revere lived here, the Square could boast two of 
 the best private mansions in the town, besides the Second Church, 
 which General Howe wickedly caused to be pulled clown during the 
 siege to make firewood of for his soldiers. All the Mathers, so cele 
 brated in the ecclesiastical history of New England, except Richard, 
 who settled at Dorchester, preached there. And from that pulpit 
 emanated most of the sermons by which Cotton Mather s complete 
 ascendency over all of his contemporaries, both as preacher and writer, 
 was so fully established. 
 
 Of the two mansions referred to, the first was that of Sir Charles 
 Henry Frankland, bart, whose miraculous rescue from the great earth 
 quake at Lisbon, in Portugal, is perhaps familiar to the reader through 
 the poem of Holmes, or the memoir by Nason. The whole career of 
 this gallant wooer, careless official, but noble gentleman, is extremely 
 romantic : 
 
 " Tis like some poet s pictured trance 
 
 His idle rhymes recite, 
 This old New-England-born romance 
 
 Of Agnes and the knight." 
 
 If you have read the poem or the biography you know the sequel ; 
 how Sir Harry married the lowly Marblehead girl, and rescued her as 
 she had rescued him. 
 
 We pass on to his next neighbor, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, 
 
THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE 23 
 
 courtly, learned, and astute, but wholly alien to the cause of his country 
 men, and hated all the more because he was a Bostonian by birth. 
 This neighborhood witnessed one of the violent scenes of the Stamp- 
 Act riot, when the governor s house was pillaged, and the mob, made 
 drunk with his own wine, would have sacrificed him to its fury had he 
 not sought shelter in the near-by house of his brother-in-law, the Rev. 
 Samuel Mather. When the mob demanded that the governor be given 
 up to them, the stout-hearted minister told them that his house was 
 his castle, and that he should protect his brother Hutchinson, even 
 though their sentiments clicl not agree. The governor finally made his 
 escape by a back way, and appeared in court the next day which, as 
 chief-justice, it was his office to open without either gown or wig. 
 Such was the importance attached to these articles of dress, that Hutch 
 inson apologized for appearing without them. With tears in his eyes 
 he told the court that the very coat he had on was borrowed. What a 
 situation for the second officer in the province ! 
 
 We learn from a journal written by her own hand that on the night 
 before the battle of Bunker Hill, Samuel Mather s daughter Hannah, 
 having first procured a pass from General Howe, proceeded to the 
 Charlestown ferry-way, one of the two exits from the town. Though 
 his orders were strict, the gallant captain of the guard, knowing the 
 young lady well, passed her without difficulty, and she crossed the river 
 in the last boat after sunset. A little after nine o clock she presented 
 herself at the meeting-house at Watertown, where the Provincial Con 
 gress was then sitting, and asked for Dr. Warren. He came to the 
 door, and the lady took from her bosom a despatch, which she had 
 undertaken to place in his hands. He took the despatch, and said, with 
 his interesting smile, " You shall see me in the morning." That night 
 was his last on earth. 
 
 Some other residents of North Square have left their names to us. 
 The father of Major Samuel Shaw, Knox s talented aide-de-camp, lived 
 here. In Shaw s house were quartered Major Pitcairn and Lieutenant 
 Wragg, the first of whom was mortally, the other slightly, wounded at 
 
24 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Bunker Hill. We have it that for some remarks made at table, 
 Samuel Shaw, an ardent young- rebel, challenged the subaltern, pre 
 ferring to cross swords rather than break bread with his father s unwel 
 come guest. 
 
 Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard in 1737, was born in this 
 part of the town ; and still another president, Edward Everett, lived in 
 early youth in Proctor s Lane, now Richmond Street. 
 
 North Square is also the reputed scene of Captain Kemble s very 
 heinous offence against public morality, in kissing his wife in the open 
 street, where he happened unexpectedly to meet her after landing from 
 a long sea-voyage. Kissing one s wife in public must have gone out 
 of fashion at about that time. 
 
 There is also a weird, uncanny odor of witchcraft clinging about the 
 old triangle. One gooclwife was pronounced a witch on no other 
 grounds than of her suspicious fondness for cats, of which felines she 
 never had fewer than the cabalistic number of nine. The gossips 
 declared that she consulted her cats, as the ancients consulted their 
 oracles. It is quite possible that she could enjoy the ascendency her 
 evil reputation gave her over her weak-minded neighbors. Still another 
 beldam was popularly believed to be in the habit of making nightly 
 trips to Bermuda in an egg-shell, returning before daylight with a 
 supply of fresh rosemary, which happened to be in great request. On 
 such idle tales the lives of individuals often hung suspended in the 
 balance. Viewed by our civilization, they seem like nursery- tales, 
 made to frighten unruly children with ; nevertheless, they are hard, 
 uncompromising facts that look us boldly in the face as we turn over 
 the pages of history. 
 
 One thing more and we shall have done with the old square and 
 its unsavory traditions. Father Taylor was preaching here in the Sea 
 men s Bethel, at the east side, when Charles Dickens, the novelist, 
 went to hear him, and was so greatly impressed and astonished at the 
 preacher s wonderful power over the rude wayfarers of the sea who made 
 up the congregations. In his " American Notes," Dickens has given an 
 
THE HOME OF PAUL REVERE 25 
 
 account of Father Taylor s personal appearance, and manner of deliv 
 ery, in his own inimitable way ; and those who may have had the good- 
 fortune to hear this good and faithful servant of God, and lover of his 
 fellow-men, pour out his rugged eloquence from the pulpit, like a tor 
 rent carrying all before it, will find the picture not overdrawn. It was 
 a stony vineyard ; but the brave old man put his hand and gave his 
 heart unfalteringly to the work, and his memory, like some beautiful 
 flower on a heap of garbage, still blossoms in this desert. Many a 
 strong man has never before been so touched as to have to hide his 
 emotion as when listening to Father Taylor. In fact, his power was 
 wonderful. I recollect but one speaker who could so sway the emo 
 tions of his hearers as he. That was Rufus Choate. 
 
 But no contrast could be half so forcible as that between the past 
 and present of this square. More s the pity. 
 
26 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE 
 
 MEDFORI), MASS. 
 
 OF all the old buildings going back to the colonial period, which 
 accident has left unharmed, the subject we here illustrate must be con 
 sidered the patriarch. It is much the oldest building in New England, 
 if not the oldest in the United States retaining its original form. It 
 
 o o 
 
 derives additional interest as the handiwork of the first planters in the 
 vicinity of Boston, and as one of the first, if not the very first, brick 
 houses erected within the government of John Winthrop. Not only is 
 its title to antiquity thus secure ; but what a pleasure it is to be able to 
 say of this venerable relic, as we now do, that it still stands! In it we 
 have an enduring monument to the founders of New England. We 
 are much struck with the idea that it is as old as our own history is in 
 this New England land. Taken with one of our newest constructions 
 it spans the whole period of time comprised between the coming of our 
 ancestors and the birth of the New Year, 1893. 
 
 Every man, woman, and child, in Medford, knows the " Old Fort," 
 as the older inhabitants love to call it, and will point out the site to you 
 with visible pride that their growing city contains so interesting a relic. 
 Seven or eight minutes of moderate walking, from the Glenwood 
 station of the Medford Branch railroad, brings you to the object of 
 your search, which stands on a little swell of ground, facing the Mystic 
 River, from which, however, it is some distance back. Within twenty 
 years the region roundabout has become quite populous. New streets 
 have invaded what was then the country. New houses have sprung up 
 on all sides. Yet no difficulty will be experienced in finding the Old 
 Fort ; it is sui generis. 
 
THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE 27 
 
 As touching this familiar name of the Old Fort, when this house 
 was built, it of course stood all alone ; it was completely isolated. 
 The occupants were few ; the country on every side was swarming 
 with wild beasts and scarce less savage men. Settlements were few 
 and far between. Escape could be easily cut off. Hence, the idea 
 of defence is here everywhere prominent ; hence, the very briefest 
 survey quite conclusively establishes the belief that this building 
 was meant to be both house and castle. We think it was designed 
 first of all as a trading-post, similar to that of Samuel Maverick 
 at Winnisimmet, and was therefore so built as to stand a siege, if 
 need be, or resist any attempt to burn it over the heads of the 
 occupants. 
 
 The situation was well chosen for defence. It has the river in front, 
 marshes at the east, and did have a considerable stretch of level 
 meadow behind it. As it was from this quarter that an attack was 
 most to be feared, greater precautions were taken to secure this side. 
 The house itself is placed a little above the general level. For a cen 
 tury and a half it stood in the midst of an extensive field of open 
 ground, this being surrounded by a high palisade, guarded by stout 
 gates. No foe could approach unseen by day, or find a vantage- 
 ground from which to assail the inmates. As a solitary outpost it was 
 victualled, garrisoned, and furnished with the means of defence, just 
 the same as would be done to-day by some equally remote corner 
 of our national domain, under similar conditions. 
 
 There is another thing about the location, if it seem strange to the 
 looker-on of to-day. Those men of substance who came over in 
 the great emigration of 1630, and who brought cattle with them, 
 almost immediately found themselves forced out of the peninsula 
 of Charlestown for want of grazing-ground. In a wilderness, cleared 
 land was not to be had. The most desirable spots, therefore, for 
 farmers with cattle, were the lands in the near vicinity of salt-marshes, 
 on which their cattle could be turned out to graze. All along the 
 Mystic there is a vast extent of salt-meadow, so great a breadth of it, 
 
28 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 indeed, that it may well have suggested the entirely happy name 
 of Meadford, now clipped to Medford. 
 
 By reference to the Charlestown records it appears that Cradock s 
 farm, with its belongings, was also called Mystic, and that the river 
 flowing out before it took its name from the farm. 
 
 Here, then, the agents of Matthew Cradock, citizen and skinner 
 of London town, first governor of the Massachusetts Company, in the 
 earlv stao-e of its organization built the house that shall tell now and 
 
 ^ o o 
 
 hereafter the story of his work in behalf of the colony far more 
 eloquently than we can ever hope to do. 
 
 As the surroundings are by no means deficient in historic or 
 picturesque interest, let us for a moment indulge ourselves in glancing 
 over the wide panorama visible to the dwellers in this ancient mansion. 
 
 Behind us rise up bold and austere the shaggy undulations of a chain 
 of hills, that, after rearing here a series of frowning ridges, stretches 
 off to the ocean at Nahant. This region, with its own lakes, its cliffs, 
 its cascades, as wild and romantic as the most ardent lover of nature 
 could wish for, as peaceful and retired as the most inveterate lover 
 of solitude could desire, seems set apart by nature as a breathing- 
 place for the half-million people to-day closing up around it, and the 
 still more dense populations to come. This last stronghold of nature 
 is known as the Middlesex Fells. 
 
 Turning now to the opposite shores of the Mystic, we first see what 
 was formerly known as the " Ten- Hills Farm," granted to Governor 
 Winthrop in 1631, in whose time it reckoned some six hundred broad 
 acres, though not much else is now left except the name he gave it. 
 But for some years the houses of the two governors beamed pleasantly 
 upon each other across the water, at every rising of the sun, and gave 
 out neighborly signal-smokes in testimony that the light on their 
 hearths was still unquenched. For was it not literally a howling wilder 
 ness ? The governor himself tells us how hungry wolves daily came 
 prowling around his house ; and he has also most conscientiously set 
 down what befell him one night when he went out with his gun to get 
 
THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE 29 
 
 a shot at one, how he lost his way, got hopelessly bewildered, and after 
 struggling some hours through briers and thickets finally came across a 
 miserable Indian hovel in which he passed the night. This adventure 
 took place among the thickets of Somerville and Meclford, incredible 
 story to us who see nothing there now but scores of lofty spires and 
 miles of glistening housetops. 
 
 Then there are the hills beyond, which formed part of the Ameri 
 can line of investment during the siege of Boston. But they are no 
 longer what they were. It is no longer a miracle to remove mountains. 
 Bold Putnam declared Prospect Hill impregnable ; but what the British 
 could not take, the city fathers of Somerville have taken. 
 
 Farther to the left is Bunker Hill ; and beyond that again rises the 
 shapely gray shaft commemorating the battle, which the inmates of this 
 house anxiously watched till the last gun was fired. So we see all 
 around us a veritable historic panorama. But to our story. 
 
 There hangs in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, 
 at Boston, the charter of " The Governor and Company of the Massa 
 chusetts Bay in New England," brought over by Winthrop in 1630. 
 The great seal of England, a most ponderous and convincing symbol 
 of authority, is appended to it. We do not believe it was so con 
 spicuously displayed at first. 
 
 It is well known that the settlement of Salem, begun two years 
 earlier under the leadership of Enclicott, was set on foot by this 
 same commercial company, of which Matthew Craclock was the first 
 governor. It is also well known, that in order to induce such men 
 as Winthrop, Dudley, Johnson, Saltonstall, and others to emigrate, 
 and so cast in their own fortunes with that of the colony, Cradock 
 himself proposed the transfer of the government from England to 
 New England. Whether this was done solely upon his own motion 
 does not clearly appear, but at any rate he has the credit of being 
 the prime mover in it. So the making of New England began then 
 and there. 
 
 We cannot enter into the political aspects of this coup d etat. 
 
30 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Doubtless they were fully understood by the actors in it. That it 
 was a more than bold move is apparent enough, even at this distance 
 of time ; and as such it must ever challenge the attention of the 
 student of American history. In spite of the clear intent of their 
 grant from the crown, which had merely set up another commercial 
 corporation, like the India Company, with officers resident in Eng 
 land, these associates quietly proceeded to nullify it by removing 
 their government to America. There was an evident desire to get 
 out of reach of the lion s big paw, strongly suggestive of a purpose 
 to beard the lion, but not in his own den. When the project was 
 first brought forward by Cradock, the strictest secrecy was enjoined 
 upon all the members. That he was its avowed author must be 
 our apology for introducing the incident. No one can deny that 
 his political wisdom has been more than justified by events, or that 
 his voluntary surrender of office did not proclaim an unselfish devotion 
 to the cause, worthy of all praise. 
 
 Craclock never came over himself, yet there are grounds for 
 believing that he meant to do so sooner or later. He was a man 
 having large interests, and the Atlantic voyage was by no means 
 the little pleasure trip it has since become. All this, however, is 
 conjecture. Yet it seems unlikely that he should have spent so 
 much money here unless he really intended to see for himself what 
 was being done with it. He did send over, however, agents, or 
 " servants " as they were styled, one of whom, Samuel Sharp, was 
 a member of Endicott s Council at Salem ; and it is not at all 
 improbable that Sharp, whose name is at least suggestive, may have 
 been instructed to look over the ground, with a view to locating 
 a grant for Cradock. We know that this plantation must have been 
 established very soon after the arrival of the colonists at Charles- 
 town ; though this information comes to us only through the medium 
 of an inquest held upon the body of one Austen Bratcher, who 
 came to his death at the hands of Walter Palmer, there, both 
 being Cradock s men. The story thus sadly begins with a homicide. 
 
THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE. 31 
 
 For the shrewd man of business he undoubtedly was, Cradock 
 seems to have been singularly unfortunate in some of his servants. 
 One had his ears cropped, and was banished out of the jurisdiction ; 
 another was whipped ; and still another was bitterly complained 
 of for his peculations. These things bear out the inference that 
 Cradock s servants must have followed a rather wild life when this 
 old house was new, or their riotous way of living would not so 
 often have invoked condign punishment. They were where they 
 could snap their fingers at the master, but not beyond the reach 
 of that long-armed Puritan justice, so different from the modern 
 sort of thinof. 
 
 o 
 
 To his other undertakings, in support of the new colony, Cradock 
 had added fishing and ship- building. For the fishery he had set 
 up houses at Ipswich and Marble head in the infancy of these 
 plantations. In aid of this important industry he began ship 
 building here, on the Mystic. Quaint old William Wood, in his 
 New England s Prospect, gives us a passing glimpse of what was 
 going on here, so soon as the year after Cradock s men first broke 
 ground. Would that he had given us more ! He says that Master 
 Cradock had impaled a park, for keeping his cattle until he could 
 stock it with deer ; and adds, " Here, likewise, he is at charges of 
 building ships. The last year (1632) one was upon the stocks 
 of a hundred tons ; that being finished, they are to build one twice 
 her burden. Ships without either ballast or loading may float down 
 this river; otherwise the oyster-bank would hinder them which 
 crosseth the channel." 
 
 Either we have not read history right, or Matthew Cradock did 
 more than any other ten men toward setting this colony on its feet. 
 Without great exaggeration he might be called its patron saint, 
 guardian, protector. He furnished ships, money, credit, goods, most 
 lavishly. He helped about everybody who wanted to come over 
 and who needed help Roger Williams among the rest. He made 
 the enterprise respectable from a financial and business point of 
 
32 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 view, so that other men were not afraid to embark in it. And of him 
 all we have left is the house he built to give the enterprise a start, 
 a boom as we call it to-day. 
 
 All hail to thee, then, thou grisly relic of bygone clays ! Thou 
 Alpha and Omega of what civilization has done in all these eventful 
 years. Glad are we that in thine old age thou art not to be 
 turned over to the cold mercies of a pitiless world. And may thy 
 days be yet long in the land we love ! 
 
 \Yith this general glance at Matthew Cradock and his plans we 
 can see for ourselves that he is not at all the sort of man to be 
 dropped out of history. Such plans as his could not have been 
 consummated without a very large outlay. Some one has said that 
 three things are wanting to found a colony. The first is money ; 
 the second is money ; and the third is money. Matthew Cradock 
 knew this. Let us turn now to the house itself, the first to be 
 built in Medford, and the last, let us hope, to be pulled down. 
 That the date of its erection cannot be more accurately fixed is 
 much to be regretted. The same may be said, however, of most of 
 our old buildings, the preservation of the date being the exception 
 rather than the rule. In regard to the Cradock house we have 
 
 o 
 
 unbroken tradition ; we have the evidence of experts ; and both 
 agree in making it the patriarch of all the old houses now standing 
 in New England. 
 
 Unique specimen of the architecture of the early settlers, it must 
 be considered a gem of its kind. In no essential feature is it dis 
 guised by modern alterations, but proudly bears its credentials on 
 its weather-beaten face. The oldest living inhabitant does not 
 remember when it looked differently when it was not already 
 old. His great-grandfather probably said the same thing. 
 
 Time has dealt gently with this venerable relic. Two hundred 
 and sixty odd New England winters - - no zephyrs they - - have 
 searched every nook and cranny of the old fortress, have whistled 
 down the big chimney-stack, have rattled the window-panes in 
 
THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE 33 
 
 impotent rage, have heaped high their snows upon stout roof and 
 massy rafter all in vain. Like Bunker Hill monument, there it 
 stands. Though hoary with age, it is not a ruin ; though the first 
 house built in Medford, it is yet a comfortable habitation. 
 
 Like a veteran of many campaigns, however, the Cradock House 
 does show a few honorable scars. These are its best credentials 
 to antiquity. Part of the east wall has been rebuilt, as can readily 
 be detected in the picture ; perhaps the roof has swerved somewhat 
 from its true outline ; one chimney has come down ; and the loop 
 holes seen in the front wall, through which the watchful sentinel 
 half thrust his trusty matchlock, as he searched the shores around 
 for some lurking danger, were for a long time closed up, though 
 since restored. And then the windows have been enlarged to the 
 detriment of the ensemble, in order to admit more liorht and air. In 
 
 o 
 
 no sense can these alterations be called improvements. You cannot 
 modernize an old building ; the marks of age will stick out somewhere. 
 
 How many generations of men and this house has seldom if 
 ever been untenanted have lived and died within those walls ? It 
 seems almost a triumph of matter over mind, since it has outlived 
 them all. It is impossible to exclude from our minds the idea that 
 such houses have a certain human character, a lifelike part in human 
 history, they seem so crowded with the secrets of those who have 
 lived in them. One look sets all the fibres of that marvellous thing 
 we call memory vibrating within us. The dumb speak : the dead 
 live again. 
 
 When this house was built, Charles I. reigned in Old England 
 and Cromwell had not yet begun his great career. Peter the Great 
 was not then born ; and the house was waxing in years when that 
 prodigy of his age, Frederick the Great, appeared on the stage to 
 show Europe how the part of a monarch should be played. We 
 seem to be speaking of some recent event of to-day when Louis 
 XVI. suffered by the axe of the guillotine, and when Napoleon s 
 sun rose in splendor, to set in darkness. 
 
34 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 The native Indian, who witnessed its slowly- ascending- walls with 
 wonder and misgiving ; the alien Englishman, whose axe wakened 
 new and unheard echoes in the primeval forest ; the colonist native 
 to the soil, who battled and died within view, to found a new nation, 
 have all passed away. But here is this old mansion, the silent, the 
 undisputed witness of all those great epochs of our history. Shall 
 we not then call it a monument? We have said that it is not clear 
 at just what time the house was first erected ; but it has usually 
 been fixed in the year 1634, at which time a large land-grant was 
 made to Cradock by the General Court at this place. The bricks 
 are said to have been burned near by, as bricks are to-day. There 
 was even some little attempt at ornament, as seen in the lower 
 course of the belt which is so laid as to form a cornice. The loop 
 holes were for both watch and ward ; the walls half a yard in 
 thickness. Ponderous iron bars secured the arched windows at 
 the back, and the entrance-door was strongly cased in iron. The 
 fire-proof closets, huge chimney-stacks, and massive hewn timbers, 
 all told of strength and durability in the builder s plan. A single 
 pane of glass, set in iron, and placed in the back wall of the western 
 chimney, overlooked the approach from the town. It was, in short, 
 just such a house as might have served the turn even of an inhabi 
 tant of the Scottish border, with its loop-holes, narrow windows, 
 and doors sheathed in iron. Against an Indian foray it was 
 impregnable. 
 
 Cradock was perhaps the only man connected with the early 
 settlement in Massachusetts Bay whose means admitted of his 
 building such a house. We know, of course, that many brick houses 
 were erected in Boston during the first decade of its history ; but 
 we have found none that can lay claim to quite such an ancient 
 pedigree as this one of which we are now writing. As one fore 
 most in the good work, Cradock seems to have done not only his 
 full share, but done it in the most thorough manner. It is far 
 from improbable that, having in view a future residence in New 
 
THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE 
 
 35 
 
 England, Cradock himself may have given directions for its build 
 ing. At any rate, when in after years he was breasting alone the 
 storm the colonists had raised about his ears, he must often have 
 wished himself there. Possibly this house may have been suggested 
 by his own residence in St. Swithin s Lane, near London Stone. 
 Of course, a structure going back to so remote a period for New 
 
 THE GOVERNOR CRADOCK HOUSE, MEDFORD, MASS. 
 
 England could not well be without its legendary lore. There is, 
 in fact, a tradition running to the effect that this old fort was at 
 one time beleaguered for several clays together by an Indian war- 
 party, who, after finding that they could make no impression on its 
 thick walls, while the fire from the garrison was thinning their 
 own ranks, finally drew off from the attack. Though there is no 
 authentic record of this affair, Indians were doubtless plenty enough 
 in the vicinity ; and though generally peaceable enough if let alone, 
 
36 OCR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 they were always regarded with more or less distrust. The settler 
 seldom stirred abroad without his trusty matchlock and well-filled 
 bandoleer. We cannot give a better picture of the times than 
 that simple yet graphic one of MacFingal: 
 
 " For once, for fear of Indian beating, 
 Our grandsires bore their guns to meeting , 
 Each man equipped on Sunday morn, 
 With psalm-book, shot, and powder-horn ; 
 And looked in form, as all must grant, 
 Like the ancient, true church-militant ; 
 Or fierce, like modern deep divines, 
 Who fight with quills, like porcupines." 
 
 It would be a thousand shames to let such a building, with 
 
 o 
 
 such a history, go to wreck and ruin. How pleasant it is there 
 fore to be able to say that its future, so long in doubt, is at last 
 secure. As he himself says in a note to the writer, General Samuel 
 C. Lawrence bought the Cradock House first " to save it from 
 demolition, and after to plan for its preservation as a permanent 
 monument to the founder of Meclforcl." The people of Medford 
 are to be congratulated upon having a citizen at once so public- 
 spirited, and yet again possessed of such enlightened views. Most 
 heartily do we wish there were more like him. His restoring hand 
 is already visible in the improved appearance of the old structure, 
 and through him and it may the name of Matthew Cradock become 
 better known among us than it is ! 
 
HOBGOBLIN HALL 37 
 
 HOBGOBLIN HALL 
 
 MEDFORD, MASS. 
 
 " A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall 
 Now sotneivliat fallen to decay " 
 
 ONE fine day, while sauntering about the pleasant town of 
 Medford, so rich in specimens of ancient architecture, I was much 
 struck by the appearance of a house standing at the left side of 
 the old Boston road, not half a mile out of the village. It bore so 
 strongly the face and impress of a decayed grandeur, that I knew 
 it at once for one of those elegant country-seats to which the 
 magnates of the good old colony times, as well as of our own, loved 
 to retire from the cares of active business. I at once sought an 
 entrance, with full design to know its history. 
 
 There was no mistake about this house. It bore the genuine 
 stamp of antiquity on its face, as clearly as if the year of the reign 
 of King George II., in which it was erected, had challenged atten 
 tion from above the entrance-door. No modern iconoclast had yet 
 reared a hideous mansard roof above it ; no destroying axe had 
 yet been laid at the root of the stately elms that stood, like giant 
 guardians as they were, along the splendid old drive. 
 
 The grounds, once laid out in most correct taste, were separated 
 from the highway by a low brick wall. From the gateway, flanked 
 by tall wooden columns, a broad avenue, bordered with aromatic 
 box, led straight up to the house, situated at some seventy paces 
 back from the road. The space between was embellished with 
 shrubbery, fruit and shade trees. To the right, as you looked 
 
3 8 OUR COLO XI A I. HOMES 
 
 toward the mansion, was the driveway, with a massive stone gate 
 post of imposing size standing at either side. 
 
 Now that the Hancock House is no more, this house remains 
 about the only example of that early date and style still to be found 
 among us. It is a thousand pities that some public-spirited citizen 
 could not come forward to buy this house for a residence, and so 
 possess himself of something genuinely colonial in its every nook 
 and corner, both inside and out. 
 
 HOP.GOBLIN HALL, MEDFORD, MASS. 
 
 Imagine a very large, three-story brick house, sheathed entirely 
 in wood, except at one end, and having, as is customary when the 
 upper story is lower studded, the upper tier of windows smaller 
 than those underneath them. All the spaces below the windows of 
 the east front, toward which I was looking, were filled in with 
 panels, so that from ground to cornice the windows rose in the 
 form of columns. The reason which prompted the owner to make 
 the west front by far the most ornamental does not readily appear ; 
 
HOBGOBLIN HALL 39 
 
 but certain it was that the mansion, in defiance apparently of the 
 homely maxim, " Put your best foot foremost," has very cavalierly 
 turned its back upon the street, as if to ignore, as much as possible, 
 what was passing in the outer and humble world around. 
 
 Sufficient unto himself, no doubt, with his gardens, his slaves, 
 and his rich wines, was the old Antigua merchant, Isaac Royall, 
 who came in 1737 from his tropical home, bringing his tropical 
 habits with him, to rear what passed for a palace in his day, in 
 this country village, for such he found it. Isaac Royall the first, 
 the author of this charming country-seat, soon died, and was 
 succeeded by Isaac the second, who inherited the five hundred 
 paternal acres, " turf and twig," with the mansion, human chattels, 
 and other worldly possessions of his deceased sire. 
 
 The carriage-drive terminated at the back of the mansion in 
 a court-yard paved with small, smooth beach stones, through the 
 interstices of which the grass grew thickly. To the right of the 
 drive were the stables, while just beyond the house were the slave- 
 quarters, fronting on the court-yard, which was thus enclosed upon 
 three of its sides. The two-story brick building occupied by the 
 negroes was still remaining, the last visible relic of slavery in New 
 
 J"> O J 
 
 England. The deep fireplace in which the blacks had prepared their 
 food was still there ; and the roll of slaves has certainly been called 
 in sight of Bunker Hill, though never, I believe, on its summit. 
 
 On the fourth side of the court-yard there rose a high brick wall, 
 similar to that already mentioned, which opened by an arched gate 
 way into another beautiful garden, in which some of the old box- 
 trees and clumps of lilacs were still growing here and there. A 
 gravelled walk led to the farther end of the garden, where an 
 artificial mound with two terraces had been raised to make a base for 
 a summer-house on which a dilapidated figure of Mercury, minus 
 wings and arms, was poised, unable to fly, unwilling to fall. The 
 garden front of the house overlooked this enclosure, evidently the 
 favorite resort of the family in the cool of the evening. The summer- 
 
40 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 house, a veritable curiosity, displayed much beauty of design, with 
 its panels, its tinted pilasters, and its bell-shaped roof. An artist 
 made the plan for this little structure, now so delightfully ruinous 
 and picturesque. There was a trap-door in the floor, which, when 
 raised, disclosed a cellar, formerly used for the storage of ice, so that 
 beauty and utility were here combined. 
 
 The Royall mansion was modelled after that of a nobleman at 
 Antigua. Everything was in perfect keeping; everything bore the 
 impress of a cultivated taste and a full purse. Mounting the steps 
 of his coach, the owner rolled away in state to attend the meet 
 ings of the Great and General Court at Boston, paid visits to 
 his neighbor Temple at Ten Hills, or his sister Vassall at Cam 
 bridge. Here, too, came George Erving and Sir William Pepperell the 
 younger to woo the West Indian nabob s daughters ; and greatly I 
 mistake if the walls of that same dilapidated summer-house could not 
 have told of many a whispered love- tryst held therein. Why, it was 
 the very place for a stolen interview or a tender declaration ! 
 
 Hut one day Isaac Royall ordered his coach to ride to Boston 
 to dine. He never came back again. 
 
 While he was sipping his Madeira as a gentleman connoisseur 
 should, in serene and innocent enjoyment with his Tory friends, 
 the news of the battle of Lexington burst upon them like lightning 
 from a clear sky. The whole town knew, indeed, that the regulars 
 had gone out, but few believed that any powder would be burned 
 in consequence. Perhaps the convives had even grown a little jolly 
 drinking the kind s health, "God bless him!" and confusion to 
 
 o <> 
 
 all traitors "Hang them!" Be that as it may, it is certain that 
 the hurry and fright of that terrible day were too much for the 
 poor Tory gentleman. Within sight of his house the regulars had 
 been fought with hand to hand, and much blood spilled. Percy 
 and Smith had seen the roads black with men eager for blood. A 
 thousand rumors were abroad. On every hand armed rebels were 
 swarming like locusts from the ground as if rebellion had stamped 
 
HOBGOBLIN HALL 41 
 
 her armed heel, and her legions had come forth. And so it was 
 that suddenly abandoning his own much loved home, with all its enjoy 
 ments, its life of ease, its tender memories, Isaac Royall found himself 
 unexpectedly shut up in Boston, with open rebellion at its gates. 
 
 Meanwhile, all New England was on the march for Boston. 
 Among those who pitched their improvised camps in this neigh 
 borhood were some New Hampshire troops. Their commander, 
 Colonel John Stark, a rough diamond of the first water, found the 
 Royall family living between fear and despair at the sudden turn 
 their affairs had taken. They were afraid of the rude soldiery. 
 They were in despair at the loss of their head. Stark offered him 
 self as a safeguard, was thankfully accepted, and moved in. 
 
 It is supposed that the house was vacated soon after the battle 
 of Bunker Hill, as Stark was immediately ordered to take post 
 on Winter Hill, and there remained during the siege. It is also 
 presumed that the family were permitted to rejoin the derelict 
 husband and father in Boston. 
 
 Before any of these things we have related had happened, 
 Colonel Royall, who was a man of peace at any price, seems to 
 have fully made up his mind to go back to Antigua, but had too 
 long delayed. He now took passage for Halifax ; and finally, when 
 Howe, with his long train of refugees, arrived from Boston, he 
 also departed for England, and there died, sighing for his beautiful 
 home in America, and striving to the last, though always unsuccess 
 fully, to avert the forfeiture of his estate. 
 
 Peace be with him, for an inoffensive, well-meaning, but shock 
 ingly timid old Tory ! He would fain have lived in amity with all 
 men ; but the crisis ingulfed him with its fell sweep, and he was 
 dragged down, protesting to deaf ears. His fears counselled him 
 to run, and he obeyed. But he is not forgotten. His works live after 
 him. His large-hearted benevolence showed itself through many be 
 quests to that country from which he was an alien only in name. The 
 Royall Professorship of Law at Harvard was founded by his bounty. 
 
42 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 He has a town (Royalston) in Massachusetts named for him, and is 
 remembered with kindly feelings in this the place of his former abode. 
 
 After having rambled through the grounds to my full content, I 
 returned to the house, all the better prepared to inspect its interior. 
 
 Lingering in the entrance hall only long enough to admire the 
 elaborately carved balusters and the panelled wainscot, I first passed 
 into the suite of apartments at the right, the reception-rooms proper 
 of the house. These rooms were separated by an arch, in which 
 sliding doors were concealed ; and from floor to ceiling the walls 
 were panelled in wood, the panels being of single pieces, some of 
 which were a full yard in breadth. In the rear of these apartments, 
 and opening to the north, were two alcoves, each flanked by fluted 
 pilasters, on which rested an arch set off with mouldings and carved 
 ornaments. Each recess had a deep, cushioned window-seat, where 
 the ladies of the household could sit with their needlework ; or, it 
 may be, enjoy a delicious tete-a-tete with their beaux when, in 
 winter, the windows were closed against the north-west winds. The 
 cornice formed an appropriate finish to this really elegant salon. 
 
 On the right of the door as I entered, there was a sideboard, 
 which old-time hospitality required should be always garnished with 
 decanters of old wines, or better still, a huge bowl of punch. The 
 host first filled himself a glass with the silver ladle, bowed low, 
 and with a flourish of his arm drank to the health of his guest, 
 who was then expected to pay the same compliment to his host, 
 with interest. If a trifle ceremonious, it is no doubt true that the 
 old manners brought men much closer to each other than do those 
 of to-day. Gentlemen then sat long over their wine. Light or 
 frivolous conversation was interdicted. We hear little of that level 
 ling familiarity that now prevails among the men about town. The 
 day of small talk had not come in. The warmth of hospitality was 
 not all absorbed by the clubs. There was such a thing as a real 
 home life. There was conviviality without excess. When the wine 
 came in the ladies retired. In those days a man drank his pint of 
 
HOBGOBLIN HALL 43 
 
 Antigua or Madeira with no dread of any enemy but the gout, nor 
 feared to present himself before ladies afterward, regardless of the 
 tell-tale aroma he carried with him. What would you have ? It was 
 a custom. It is true that all men drank, yet there were few drunk 
 ards. They drunkards ? Why, we are never tired of extolling them 
 as the pattern of all virtues ! We live in sadly weak-headed, de 
 generate times those old fellows would say, if not better advised 
 touching the size of our national whiskey and beer bills. 
 
 The second floor was furnished with four chambers, all opening 
 on one spacious and airy hall. Of these, the north-west room only 
 demands special description, because it was the best. It had alcoves 
 similar to those already mentioned in the apartment below ; only, in 
 stead of panelling, the walls were covered over above the wainscot with 
 hangings of leather, stamped in gorgeous colors of red, green, and bright 
 gold, with flowers, birds, and beasts of Chinese creation. On this side 
 only were seen the original windows, with their heavy frames and small 
 panes. Every pane shook in the fierce cannonade of March, 1775. 
 
 As wall-hangings were first brought into England from the East 
 by way of Holland, in the reign of William and Mary, we imagine that 
 this room was the one which every visitor was first taken to see. 
 
 After inspecting the kitchen, with its enormous brick oven, still 
 in perfect repair, and its iron chimney-back, handsomely embossed 
 with the Royall arms, I thought of the name which stands at the 
 head of this article, and which Longfellow must have had in mind 
 when he wrote, though not of this house, 
 
 " A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, 
 Now somewhat fallen to decay." 
 
 I therefore inquired of the good lady who had so kindly shown 
 me through the house, if she had ever been disturbed by strange 
 visions or frightful dreams. Had the house ever been haunted, or 
 the scene of secret crime ? She looked at me doubtfully, but 
 promptly replied in decided negative. " They were all good people, 
 
44 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 you know," she pleasantly said, " who dwelt here in bygone times." 
 She had never heard it called Hobgoblin Hall before ; she was 
 sure she did not know why it had been called so. 
 
 Yet I believe my pleasant guide was not then aware, as I 
 believe very few were, that her house had once given shelter to 
 that prince of egotists, that soldier, " full of strange oaths," whom 
 the world, ever too ready to condemn, now calls the traitor Lee 
 General Charles Lee ; the man who believed himself greater than 
 Washington, and was at no pains to conceal his opinion ; the man 
 of the huge nose, satirical mouth and speech, restless eyes, quick- 
 rlaming passions, and slovenly person ; in short, that bundle of 
 strange inconsistencies, that enigma of the Revolution, Charles Lee. 
 
 Lee came with Washington to the camp at Cambridge. He 
 first formed one of the family of the commander-in-chief, but on 
 being placed in command of the left wing, three miles off, an excuse 
 was found for his departure from the somewhat stately formality 
 which ruled at headquarters. Doubtless the change was in no way 
 disagreeable to a man like Washington, who was himself the pattern 
 of personal neatness and personal dignity, and equally urgent that 
 those near him should be so too. 
 
 Washington was evidently a disciple of Caesar in his choice of 
 those who were to be about his person. He loved to have the fat and 
 amiable Knox near him. He may have thought, too, when looking at 
 the spare and cynical Lee, as did the Roman when he exclaimed, 
 
 " Let me have men about me that are fat ; 
 Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o nights : 
 Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look ; 
 He thinks too much : such men are dangerous." 
 
 In his rides about the camp Lee discovered the Royall mansion. 
 With his Pomeranian dog at his heels the general ran over the 
 house, found it to his liking, and decided on the spot to make 
 his headquarters there. The thought probably tickled his fancy 
 that he would thus be making the enemy contribute toward defray- 
 
HOBGOBLIN HALL 45 
 
 ing the expenses of the war. Slaves and all were still there. The 
 general gave his orders, and without delay moved in. 
 
 Possibly the echoing corridors and forsaken apartments may 
 have suggested to his fertile imagination the name of Hobgoblin 
 Hall. He was a good deal of a dreamer metaphysically, as well 
 as intellectually. There was nothing in it, however, more weird 
 and uncanny than himself. His bachelor establishment was shunned 
 by ladies visiting the camp, notwithstanding his repeated and urgent 
 invitations. Mrs. Adams, for instance, wrote to her husband that 
 she had met General Lee while calling at Major Mifflin s ; that Lee 
 was very urgent with her " to tarry in town, and dine with him 
 and the ladies present at Hobgoblin Hall ; but I excused myself. 
 The general was determined," she adds, " that I should not only 
 be acquainted with him, but with his companions too, and there 
 fore placed a chair before me, into which he ordered Mr. Spada to 
 mount and present his paw to me for better acquaintance." Mr. 
 Spada was the Pomeranian dog before referred to. 
 
 Lee s native eccentricity, or his desire to gain notoriety with 
 the army, appears in all his acts. We in vain try to figure to 
 ourselves this tall, swarthy, ungainly looking warrior mounting his 
 horse in the court-yard, and riding off with a pack of yelping curs 
 at his heels, while the negroes follow him with wondering eyes. 
 What manner of man he was may be gathered from his letters to 
 Burgoyne, to Putnam, and from the true incident of his galloping 
 down to the British outposts alone, and, after attracting the sentinel s 
 attention by his Qfesticulations, exclaiming in a loud voice, " Tell 
 
 J c> o 
 
 your officers, fellow, that General Lee is here ! " 
 
 His letter to Putnam is equally characteristic. Here it is in 
 all its integrity : 
 
 "HOBGOBLIN HALL, October 19, 1775. 
 
 "DEAR GENERAL, The bearer of this is a Mr. Page. He has the laudable 
 ambition of seeing the great General Putnam. I therefore desire that you would 
 array yourself in all your majesty and terrors for his reception. Your blue-and-gold 
 
46 OUR COLO XI A I. HOMES 
 
 must be mounted, your pistols stuck in your girdle ; and it would not be amiss if 
 you should black one half your face. 
 
 "I am, dear general, with fear and trembling, your humble servant, 
 
 " CHARLES LEE." 
 
 Grown uneasy at seeing his able, but careiess, lieutenant take 
 up his quarters so far from his troops (he was a mile and a half 
 from the centre of his command), Washington one day wrote Lee 
 a letter on the subject in that firm, full, round hand for which he 
 was remarkable. Lee read the letter, packed up his traps, and 
 removed forthwith to the Tufts house. His notice had presumably 
 been called to the old military maxim, that in war a general should 
 sleep among his soldiers. This incident goes to show that habitual 
 carelessness in Lee which later on led to his capture at Basking- 
 ridge, an event sometimes, though erroneously, we think, imputed 
 to treachery. 
 
 After Lee had gone from the mansion, General John Sullivan, 
 allured by the manifold comforts his fancy conjured up, but wholly 
 ignorant of why his superior officer had so unceremoniously quitted 
 it, very innocently moved in also. Before he had time to get well 
 settled in his new quarters an aide-cle-camp handed him a letter 
 from his excellency, General Washington. In his turn, Sullivan left 
 the house without giving his brother officers any reasons for 
 making so poor an exchange, and went back to Winter Hill and 
 its wintry blasts. The moving despatch may be liberally interpreted, 
 we think, to have read as follows :- 
 
 " Stand not upon the order of your going, 
 But go at once." 
 
 We can only guess how inexplicable these sudden comings and 
 goings must have been to the poor negroes ; we can only admire 
 the firmness of the general, who, by remanding his generals to their 
 proper posts, set an example which might have been followed with 
 advantage in much later times. 
 
EDWARD EVERETT S BIRTHPLACE 47 
 
 EDWARD EVERETT S BIRTHPLACE 
 
 DORCHESTER, MASS. 
 
 WHOEVER has visited an old New England town and Dorchester 
 was one of the oldest before its individuality was merged with that of 
 the greater Boston must have been agreeably impressed with the 
 stately grandeur of the trees growing by the roadsides. In them, at 
 least, the old settlers have left us something for which we should ever 
 hold them in grateful remembrance ; and as there were no village im 
 provement societies in those days we may fairly give credit to those 
 old fellows, whom we imagine only as hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water, for some feeling for the beautiful, and, better still, some thought 
 for those who should come after them. One is everywhere forcibly 
 reminded of Tom Hood s beautiful lines : - 
 
 " Twas in a shady avenue 
 Where lofty elms abound, 
 
 And from a tree 
 
 There came to me 
 A sad and solemn sound." 
 
 Along many an old country highway do these statuesque elms 
 stretch their sheltering branches over the hot and dusty traveller, who 
 loiters in their coolness and shade, and is gently fanned by the softly 
 swaying foliage overhead. Nowhere were these grand old English 
 elms found in greater vigor and profusion than in Old Dorchester. 
 They are the finest among their species ; their foliage is of a deeper 
 green, and is longer retained in autumn, than that of our American 
 variety. You will occasionally meet with a group of the lofty, broad- 
 leaved button-wood, such as stand about the house in which Everett 
 
48 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 was born, but not often. So fantastic is the way in which the limbs 
 of some of these grow, that they appear not unlike huge pythons 
 writhing about in agony ; in winter their ghastly white trunks and 
 twisted branches have a downright weird and spectral aspect. He 
 who planted these sycamores may have had in mind how much they 
 arc honored in the East, or have read of that hollow, cavernous trunk 
 in which, Pliny tells us, a Roman consul, with eighteen soldiers, once 
 
 took refuse from a storm. 
 <> 
 
 Until quite recently, comparatively speaking, Dorchester was a 
 model of quiet, old-fashioned respectability. Had you not known, you 
 would scarce have believed the city to be only three miles away. An 
 air of well-bred gentility, of well-earned repose, sat easily upon the old 
 town. To the crowding city it seemed saying severely, " Keep your 
 distance ! " The estates were ample, the houses roomy, the inhabit 
 ants hospitable. 
 
 In some respects Dorchester more resembled an English country 
 town than any other of our acquaintance. As Lowell has so truly said 
 of Old Cambridge, " it was essentially an English village, quiet, un- 
 speculative, without enterprise, sufficing to itself, and only showing 
 such differences from the original type as the public school and the 
 system of town government might superinduce." In short, it was just 
 such a place as a man of business who loved country life best would 
 be apt to choose for a home. In comparison with Cambridge it was 
 fortunately free from that " cloistered quiet " which so often turned the 
 terrified citizen out of his bed under the impression that the last trump 
 had sounded ; or that overcharged " intellectual atmosphere " so often 
 accompanied by midnight explosions and the crashing of window 
 glass, as to make the unlettered think they were sleeping on a volcano. 
 
 But this was when Dorchester was a country town. You saw none 
 of those prim little bandboxes of cottages, packed so closely together 
 that the occupants can shake hands with each other across lots, out of 
 the windows. The surveyor had not then got in his deadly work. 
 Brick blocks had not gone up ; or whole ranks of trees come 
 
EDWARD EVERETT S BIRTHPLACE 49 
 
 down in his destroying path. Long rows of houses had not begun to 
 imprison the streets or shut out the green fields from the passer-by. 
 In a word, it had not then been built up. 
 
 But since Dorchester became a ward of Boston, its ancient tra 
 ditions have been violently uprooted. The transition state shows a 
 comical jostling of urban with rural life. Perhaps even its old west-of- 
 England name will ere long pass into the oblivion that enshrouds its 
 still more ancient Indian designation. The all-grasping city is ever 
 stretching forth fresh arms, polypus-like, in search of some new 
 spot of ground upon which to plant its unwieldy and unrestful bulk. 
 Wretched Galileo ! why did you ever declare that the world moved ? 
 To some wanderer, just returned from a long absence abroad, 
 
 " New streets invade the country, and he strays, 
 Lost in strange paths, still seeking, and in vain, 
 For ancient landmarks, or the lonely lane 
 Where oft he played at Crusoe when a boy." 
 
 The point where the old road coming from Roxbury burying- 
 ground is crossed by that leading from Upham s Corner in Dorchester, 
 over the old causeway to South Boston, is locally known as The 
 Five Corners," and is the locality of our sketch. 
 
 Long ago, all of what is now South Boston was known as Dor 
 chester Neck, and was used in common by the inhabitants of this 
 town. The "lowing herds" were regularly driven onto the Neck 
 every morning, and wandered about at discretion over the hills and 
 marshes, returning at nightfall, as all good cows do, to the gate which 
 closed the entrance. What Gray s famous " Elegy in a Country 
 Churchyard " so feelingly recalls, was every clay witnessed from this 
 spot. This primitive condition of things continued from the clay of 
 steeple-crowned hats, buff-coats, and matchlocks, clown to a few 
 generations afo. 
 
 o o 
 
 But the fatal day came when that cow-pasture was to play a much 
 more important part in history. Its lofty heights became of strategic 
 
;o 
 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 value to the besiegers of Boston. It was then that over the roads just 
 described the army of General Thomas silently wended its way on 
 one stinging night of March, 1775, to seize those heights; and the 
 startled inmates of our old mansion here saw filing by them the 
 shadowy procession of four thousand men, with their four hundred 
 carts loaded with fascines, chandeliers, and baled hay, and heard their 
 dull tramp, tramp echo along the frozen ground all the livelong night. 
 
 m ; I 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF EDW ARD EVERETT. 
 
 From time to time a figure that sat its horse like a statue passed up 
 and down the moving column in silence ; but the soldiers all knew that 
 statuesque form, and that where he was all was well. 
 
 But, as Mr. Dickens used to remark, in his inimitable satire upon 
 writers of cheap fiction, " Let us not anticipate." 
 
 The house, standing as we see it in the angle formed by two 
 streets, has both a south and west front, with entrances in each. Its 
 high gambrel roof, topped by ornamental balustrade, aids in lifting the 
 
EDWARD EVERETT S BIRTHPLACE 51 
 
 whole structure into one harmonious effect ; still, they knew in colonial 
 times, as well as we now do, how to keep up appearances, so that the 
 mansion has little depth compared with its height and frontage, and, 
 though destitute of any particular feature of ornament, there is some 
 thing decidedly pleasing about its appearance. It is, moreover, in 
 excellent preservation - 
 
 "A brave old house! a garden full of bees, 
 Large dropping poppies, and queen hollyhocks, 
 With butterflies for crowns -tree peonies, 
 And pinks and goldylocks." 
 
 This house belongs to a class of which we find so many examples 
 dating back to between about 1 740 and 1 760, as to confirm the opinion 
 that such houses had become the prevailing fashion. At any rate, they 
 announce an era of better taste ; and they almost invariably signal to 
 us the residence of one of the colonial gentry, in whom all the aristo 
 cratic traditions of his English prototype were most loyally cherished. 
 
 Should we elect to enter the house, we must first raise and let fall 
 the big brazen knocker, which almost frights the quiet neighborhood 
 with its clangor. You next enter a broad hall, which opens at either 
 hand into large parlors, and these in turn have chambers above, with 
 
 " Fair window-prospects opening wide 
 O er history s fields on every side." 
 
 Edward Everett was born in the east chamber, on the right of the 
 picture. Nathan Hale, so distinguished in New England journalism, 
 and some time Everett s instructor at Exeter Academy, was married in 
 the apartment beneath. 
 
 It is supposed that Colonel Robert Oliver built this house about 
 1740, shortly after his removal from Antigua, taking with him a son, 
 Thomas, who became the last Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts 
 under the crown. The estate then comprised forty acres of pasture 
 and marsh. Dorchester might, appropriately, be called the home ot 
 
52 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 governors, she having furnished Stoughton, Taller, Belcher, Hutch- 
 inson, Oliver, Everett, and Gardner, either to Colony or State. 
 
 Colonel Oliver, a descendant of the Huguenot Oliviers, a name 
 renowned in French chivalry, was engaged in trade with the West In 
 dies, and is reported to have brought the first negro slaves to Dorches 
 ter. It is said that he employed them at first in removing a hillock of 
 earth, each laborer carrying his load in a wooden tray upon his head. 
 The colonel being advised to substitute barrows for a process so tedi 
 ous, furnished his slaves with them, but was at his wits end at seeing 
 the negroes returning, each with a well-filled barrow on his head ! It 
 is not many years since the writer saw negroes at work coaling a huge 
 Atlantic steamship in a West-Indian port, by carrying the coal on 
 board in tubs on their heads. Cambridge, Betty, and Mimbo, three of 
 Colonel Oliver s slaves, have stones erected to their memory in the old 
 burial-place, a short distance from the mansion-house. 
 
 The son, afterward lieutenant-governor, had a fortune, much ex 
 ceeding that of his father, left him by a grandfather and great-uncle, 
 so that Oliver pere did not feel called upon to make any provision for 
 Oliver fils in his will, beyond the usual mourning-suit and ring. The 
 younger Oliver removed to Cambridge before the Revolution, where 
 he lived in great state in the elegant seat now known as Elmwood 
 the late residence of the lamented James Russell Lowell. These late 
 Dorchester Olivers, by the by, were of a different family from Andrew, 
 the stamp-master, and Peter, the Chief-Justice of Massachusetts. 
 
 Thomas Oliver, a clapper little man, pleasant of speech and 
 courtly of manner, was in no public office previous to his appoint 
 ment as Hutchinson s deputy a choice which occasioned so much 
 surprise that it was currently believed the name of Thomas had been 
 inserted by accident in the commission instead of that of Peter. 
 But Hutchinson, who managed the affair, knew what he was about. 
 
 Popular agitation \vas fast leading up to open hostilities. To 
 hold office in those stormy times was not a bed of roses, as Oliver 
 soon found out to his cost. To hold high one s head, drink the 
 
EDWARD EVERETT S BIRTHPLACE 53 
 
 king s health, talk flippantly of the rabble, and boastfully of the 
 might of Britain, signalled the true Tory of the Revolution. Oliver 
 was no more unpopular than the rest, or any better judge of the 
 signs of the coming political tempest then about to sweep him and 
 them into oblivion. 
 
 One fine morning in September, 1774, the men of Middlesex 
 appeared in the lieutenant-governor s grounds at Cambridge, and 
 wrung from him a resignation, after which he consulted his safety 
 by a flight into Boston. 
 
 Having seen Thomas Oliver thus summarily disposed of, we are 
 at liberty to return to the paternal mansion. In 1775 it was the 
 residence of Colonel William Burch, one of the royal commissioners 
 of customs. This position was no sinecure, considering that the 
 revenue must be collected at the risk of being knocked on the head. 
 Burch, too, fled ; and the vacant house was then taken possession of 
 by a detachment of the regiment stationed in Dorchester in 1775 
 as an outpost. By this time the roads centring here had made the 
 spot of strategic value. Marks of the occupation are still visible 
 here, as they are also in the old Clapp homestead near by, where 
 the three-cornered orifices made by the soldiers bayonets in the 
 ceiling tell the tale to this day. Burch was proscribed and banished 
 in 1778, and included in the Conspiracy Act of 1779. 
 
 After the war was over Oliver Everett, pastor of the " New 
 South Church," in Boston, from 1782 until his dismission in 1792, 
 took up his abode here in the latter year ; and two years later the 
 eyes of young Edward Everett first opened upon this wicked world ; 
 perhaps the very objects his wondering gaze first dwelt upon were 
 the blue Dutch tiles, with their pictured stories, over the fireplace. 
 
 In 1802 Everett s father died, and the family then removed into 
 Boston. We shall not follow him to his several places of residence, 
 but merely recall the fact that, when young Edward went to Ezekiel 
 Webster s school, in Short Street, Daniel Webster officiated for a 
 short time as teacher there. Everett afterward occupied the same 
 house in Summer Street that had belonged to Mr. Webster. 
 
54 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 There is nothing 1 of proud humility, but much to command our 
 respect, in Everett s own manly declaration that his forefathers " were 
 very humble men, fanners and mechanics, who devoted them 
 selves to a most unambitious career. They left nothing to their 
 descendants of either fame or fortune," he adds, l but a good name," 
 and that we know is better than riches. 
 
 We do not hesitate to reproduce here Everett s charming picture 
 of his schoolboy days, when first he went with 
 
 " Shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 Unwillingly to school." 
 
 " When I first went to a village school," he begins, " I remember 
 it as yesterday. I seem still to hold by one hand for protection 
 (I was of the valiant age of three years) to an elder sister s apron ; 
 with the other I grasped my primer, a volume of about two and a 
 half inches in length, which formed then the sum-total of my library, 
 and which had lost the blue paper cover from one corner - my 
 first misfortune in life. I say it was the practice then, as we were 
 trudging along to school, to draw up by the roadside if a traveller, 
 a stranger, or a person in years passed along, and " make our 
 manners," as it was called. The little girls courtesied, the boys made 
 a bow. It was not clone with much grace, I suppose ; but there 
 was a civility and decency about it which did the children good, 
 and produced a pleasing impression on those who witnessed it. 
 The age of schoolboy chivalry is past, never to return. These 
 manners belong to a forgotten order of things ; they are too precise 
 and rigorous for this enlightened age." 
 
 Professor Lowell, a somewhat younger man than Everett, also 
 alludes in one of his essays to this growing tendency on the part 
 of the rising generation toward complete emancipation from the re 
 straints of old customs, though in a more playful spirit. Speaking 
 of antiquities, lie insists that we have "in America things amazingly 
 old, as our boys, for example." 
 
EDWARD EVERET2^S BIRTHPLACE 55 
 
 It was eminently fitting that when a new school-house was to 
 be erected more than fifty years later, near the spot where their 
 townsman was born, the citizens of Dorchester should have given it 
 the name of Everett. The compliment was no doubt highly appre 
 ciated, even by one who had held so many positions of the highest 
 honor under the national government. Mr. Everett was himself 
 present at the dedicatory services. He detailed with his accustomed 
 felicity of expression, and with a feeling his new-awakened memories 
 so freshly brought forth, his own school-day experiences. The great 
 scholar made no attempt to display his scholarship ; the matchless 
 orator forgot his well-rounded periods. He went back he went 
 over again with playful pathos or delightful humor the story of 
 his own efforts to get an education. Among other things he told 
 the boys there present that much of the success he had achieved 
 in life was owing to his having learned " to read so as to be under 
 stood, to write a legible hand, and to know enough arithmetic to 
 understand when two and two make four." It was an impressive 
 example of American citizenship, the best. Everett s reference to 
 writing a legible hand has peculiar point ; for he wrote not only a 
 legible, but a most beautiful hand, showing a touch of refinement 
 in every stroke and line. No haste, no slovenliness there. His 
 letters are as much models of neatness as of elegance in composition. 
 Like Mr. Longfellow, he was fastidious to a degree in this respect. 
 
 Many of us remember Mr. Everett. In his youth he was extremely 
 handsome. When he was a professor at Cambridge he was of slight 
 build, with light hair and smooth face, with the look of a scholar and a 
 gentleman in it. Even so early as this his fame as a public speaker 
 had gone farther abroad than that of any other man in New England, 
 except Mr. Webster. He came to have a wider audience than any 
 other. Two acts will always especially endear him to Americans ; 
 namely, his earnest efforts in behalf of the Bunker Hill and Mount 
 Vernon Associations. The completion of the monument, and the 
 rescue of the tomb of Washington, are in no small degree due to him. 
 
56 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 His oration on Washington and his 4l Mount Vernon Papers " reached 
 the hearts and firesides of an immense audience ; they brought him 
 nearer to the people than any other American orator of our time we 
 might even say of any time. The address on Washington was first 
 delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association on the 22d 
 of February, 1856, in Music Hall. 
 
 While in the vicinity, the visitor is not only advised, he is urged, to 
 turn back toward Upham s Corner, and take a stroll through the old 
 bury ing-ground there, where some of the most curious epitaphs in 
 New England may be read. 
 
THE MI NO 7 HOMESTEAD 57 
 
 THE MI NOT HOMESTEAD 
 
 DORCHESTER, MASS. 
 
 IT has been truly said that the history of the American Indians, 
 like that of the Carthaginians, has been written by their enemies. I 
 know of no task that may, even now, more profitably employ an impar 
 tial pen than the annals of this doomed race. Our ancestors, who 
 saw in the Indian only a friend to be feared, or an enemy to be 
 destroyed, have laid on the canvas none but the darkest colors. His 
 savage mode of warfare, his cruelties, in short all the more repulsive 
 phases of his character, have been largely dwelt upon ; his virtues, his 
 heroism, and his wrongs have received but scant acknowledgment at 
 the hands of our early historians. We have, in a measure, changed 
 places with the Indian ; and he now occupies a position, in respect 
 to numbers and power, much like that of the first English settlers on 
 the shores of New England. We have grown great, and waxed 
 strong ; he, weak and despised. Like them, he is to-day struggling for 
 a bare existence, though, unlike them, his final disappearance has be 
 come only a question of time, perhaps susceptible even of close calcu 
 lation, since there is so large and influential a section holding that 
 " the only good Indian is a dead Indian." With that section the only 
 solution of the Indian problem is extermination. What a commentary 
 is this upon our boasted civilization ! And how complacently have we 
 looked on while it was being carried into effect ! Little did the Indian 
 dream, when, with outstretched hand, he uttered his famous salutation, 
 " Welcome, Englishmen ! " that he was pronouncing his own sentence 
 of death. 
 
 These thoughts came into my mind while standing before the 
 Minot House, built either by express agreement or sufferance, it 
 
58 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 matters little which, on land belonging to the neighboring tribe. It 
 carried me straight back to the day when our fathers were beggars for 
 a few poor acres of land ; when all Plymouth was afraid of one solitary, 
 naked Indian, armed only with bow and arrows ; when, in short, the 
 Indian was something more than a symbol for our coat-of-arms. 
 
 This house was standing in that part of ancient Dorchester called 
 Neponset, from the river running down through it into the sea. 
 Within a month after I had made a sketch of it, the house, most 
 
 THE MINOT HOMESTEAD, DORCHESTER, MASS. 
 
 unfortunately, took fire, and was nearly destroyed. Our picture 
 presents it in all its antique simplicity. 
 
 The loss of this house was to be regretted for more reasons 
 than one ; it was a most characteristic specimen of the very earliest 
 houses, of which too few are now remaining a type of its class, 
 plain to homeliness if you will, but the outgrowth of a plain people, 
 whose wants were few, and whose means were limited. It was 
 easily and cheaply constructed. As soon as the massive frame 
 
THE Ml NOT HOMESTEAD 59 
 
 could be hewed out of the native forest, all the neighbors lent a 
 hand in raising it. Even the minister was there to assist ; for the 
 ministers of those days did not think it beneath them to minister 
 to the physical wants of their people. In a few clays the house 
 would be roughly boarded in ; in a week or two one or two rooms 
 would be got ready for occupancy ; and from that time on to its 
 completion the work would progress, according as time or means 
 permitted, after the family had moved in. 
 
 The loss of such houses, important aids as they are to getting 
 at the true home-life and thought of our ancestors, is all the more 
 to be regretted because we are now so often reminded, as if it 
 was a matter for general congratulation, that the old Puritan is now 
 quite extinct ; that we ought to be thankful his day and generation 
 is past, never to return ; that the American of the future is not to 
 bear his stamp, or, in fact, any individual stamp at all, but is to be 
 a nameless composite of all the odds and ends of creation, thrown at 
 hazard into the national caldron, 
 
 " Black spirits and white, 
 Red spirits and gray : 
 Mingle, mingle, mingle, 
 You that mingle may." 
 
 Yet it was in dwellings of this sort that the true New England 
 character that by which it became known and honored throughout 
 the world was formed and crystallized. The men of mark, like 
 the Adamses, Otises, Everetts, Aspinwalls, or Minots, were not reared 
 in the lap of luxury. There has been an evolution from generation to 
 generation ; but the forefathers as well knew what honest toil meant, 
 as how to build up a state, and went from the plough to the General 
 Court, and from the General Court back to the plough, without 
 scruple or comment, like honest men. They did not need to be 
 told, either, that public office is a public trust. We shall therefore 
 call this the typical New England home. 
 
60 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 The artist has faithfully reproduced the venerable building which 
 enjoyed the peculiar distinction of being 1 brought within the munici 
 pality of Boston, though originally a country house, by the annexation 
 of Dorchester, itself one of the oldest towns in the Commonwealth, 
 its settlement having preceded even that of Boston by a few days. 
 The Indian name of Dorchester was Mattapan. Over all this region, 
 and before the descent of the pale-faces on his coasts, the Sachem 
 Chicataubut held sway, until gathered to his fathers a few years 
 after the settlement here. In full view are the Milton Hills, which 
 are said to have originated the name of Massachusetts - - literally 
 the place of mountains. Across the Neponset we enter territory 
 almost every rod of which recalls some event interesting or memo 
 rable, the scene of Morton s lawless frolics and Standish s bloody 
 exploits ; the birthplace of the patriots Hancock, Adams, and Quincy, 
 whom we shall presently call upon in the spirit of true pilgrims, 
 not because the past is the past, but because we shall find in it 
 so many useful lessons, so much that is hopeful and inspiring for 
 the future. 
 
 This house was a fairly representative structure of its time and 
 place, as wholly alien to modern ideas as to the requirements of 
 our domestic economy. Of every hundred persons whom accident 
 or curiosity brought to the spot, it is entirely safe to say that ninety- 
 nine would have voted it an old barn, and would have wondered 
 why it should be permitted to cumber the ground, which was 
 worth so many times the few shillings paid for it. But we can and 
 do see in it one of those weak outposts of civilization, uniting, as 
 it were, two historic eras the one that we have so often read of 
 and so deeply pondered, with the one we live in. Still, the house 
 claimed consideration arising from its more than two centuries 
 possession of the ground, beginning from the time when Boston 
 and New York were sea-coast villages, and long before Philadelphia 
 was thought of. The illustration will dispense with further descrip 
 tion, except to say that when built the house was rather superior 
 
THE MI NOT HOMESTEAD 6 1 
 
 to the average farmhouses of the time, and, like most of the early 
 ones, was walled up inside, between joists, with bricks laid in clay 
 mortar, to keep out the cold, and not bullets, as some of our 
 wiseacres have stated. The windows, as they appear in our picture, 
 belong to a much later period than that of the first, or even the 
 second, generation of occupants. There was a small front entry, 
 a kitchen, which in those clays was the real living-room for the 
 whole family, as in it was the mammoth fireplace, in which a blazing 
 fire roared up the big- throated chimney of cold winter nights. 
 Three or four wooden-seated chairs, a settle, a dresser, and possibly 
 a cradle, constituted all the furnishings for an ordinary family. 
 Many a poor boy who in after-life has risen to eminence, has 
 studied his first books, or read his first romance, by the firelight, 
 because household economy required candles to be put out after 
 bedtime, and bedtime varied from the time the chickens went to 
 roost, for the little ones, to nine o clock for the older members of 
 the family. 
 
 In building outside the larger towns, the idea of defence was 
 always more or less prominent, and most houses were therefore 
 strongly built. Convenience of fetching water came into this general 
 idea. A glance at the engraving shows the well, shaded by a decay 
 ing apple-tree, within a few feet of the front door. If this house was 
 built as early as 1640, as claimed (and to all appearance it may have 
 been), the Indians were in a measure unprovided with firearms ; their 
 dependence as yet being chiefly upon their primitive weapons. Still, 
 as they would give all they possessed for a gun, and traders were ava 
 ricious, enough were well armed to give the settlers much uneasiness. 
 So clearly was this arming opposed to keeping the peace, that Eng 
 lish, French, and Dutch alike discountenanced, under severe penalties, 
 the selling of guns and ammunition to the redmen, until, becoming 
 embroiled among themselves, one and all employed the savages in 
 their own behalf, and put in their hands the arms of European warfare. 
 In the first Indian war with the Pequots, the English considered a 
 
62 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 buff-coat, such as was then worn by the troopers and foot-soldiers, as 
 arrow-proof; yet even these were often pierced, while the vengeful 
 shafts rattled against the steel cap and corselets as viciously as did 
 the English cloth-yard shafts at Hastings or Agincourt. 
 
 As is well known, the war with the Pequots occurred in 1637, 
 while young Harry Vane was Governor of Massachusetts Bay, when 
 the power of this, the most dreaded of all the New England nations, 
 was virtually destroyed. As there was no other outbreak of conse 
 quence until Philip s War, in 1675 76, little occasion existed for the 
 erection of garrison-houses I mean such as were afterward expressly 
 constructed with the view of defence until after this war, nor have I 
 met with any among the few remaining in New England that can be 
 satisfactorily traced back of this time. The garrison-houses proper, so 
 far as I am able to judge from their own architecture, and the exi 
 gencies which called them into being, belong to the period of the 
 French and Indian War, arising from the counter-revolution in Eng 
 land and accession of William III. 
 
 During Philip s War the houses called garrisons were no more than 
 ordinary dwellings, designated by the colonial magistrates as such, 
 on account of situation or capability for defence. They were, in fact, 
 rallying-points, so situated as to cover most of the settlement, or 
 its approaches. In this, as in their construction, they embodied the 
 rudest principles of military art and the best. But for the gallant 
 defence of the Chew House, Washington would have won the battle 
 of Germantown. If the farmhouse of Hdugoumont had not cost Na 
 poleon so much time and loss of life before it was carried, he doubt 
 less would have had " those English " where he wanted them, as he so 
 confidently said on that memorable morning. People who have won 
 dered what garrison-houses really were will readily see how any strong, 
 well-built dwelling-house could easily resist Indians a long time. All 
 the frontier settlements had these garrisons, known by the name of 
 their regular inhabitant, receiving in time of danger a quota of soldiers, 
 and affording a refuge to the undefended ones upon an alarm. With 
 
THE MINOT HOMESTEAD. 63 
 
 their stout frames, and walls filled in with brick or plaster, they could, 
 and often did, hold out against overwhelming odds. At a later day the 
 idea of a better defence originated a class of block-houses, constructed 
 solely with a view to putting a stumbling-block in an enemy s way. 
 They were built of logs or hewn timbers, fitted to join closely, with a 
 projecting upper story for firing upon, or scalding with boiling water, 
 those who might attempt to force an entrance. Yet, as the overhang 
 ing upper story was a common feature of English architecture of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is not necessarily to be inferred 
 that all houses of this style in New England were erected for defence 
 alone. 
 
 I have said so much on this point, because I used often to hear 
 the Minot House spoken of as the old Indian fort. Perhaps of even 
 greater interest than the fact that events dating from the Restoration 
 in England down to a recent time have been discussed in it, is that it 
 commemorates an act of female heroism not infrequent in the day of 
 savage warfare, as the narratives of Mrs. Rowlandson, Hannah Dtiston, 
 and others go to prove. The story furthermore strikingly illustrates 
 the perils of frontier life. 
 
 In July, 1675, tms house was occupied by the family of John Minot. 
 One Sabbath, while all but the maid-servant and two young children 
 were gone to meeting, a prowling Indian, who clearly had been on the 
 watch for this very opportunity, came to the door, and attempted to 
 enter the house. Finding the door fastened, he tried to gain an en 
 trance by the window. That, too, was secured against him. The 
 young woman had watched the Indian s motions in great alarm. She 
 was all alone with two helpless children, but she was none of your 
 fainting or crying sort. With rare presence of mind she first hid the 
 little ones under two large brass kettles, and then snatched clown the 
 ever-ready musket from its place and ran up-stairs with it, determined 
 to sell her life as dearly as possible. The gun was empty. The sav 
 age, seeing her in the act of loading, levelled his own gun and fired, 
 but missed her. Our heroine then returned the shot, wounding the 
 
64 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 savage in the shoulder, though not so badly as to disable him. 
 Rendered furious by the pain of his wound, the savage redoubled 
 his efforts to break in through the window. The courageous maid ran 
 back down-stairs, caught up a shovelful of hot coals, and thrust it into 
 the fellow s face. This decided the contest in her favor. The Indian 
 fled to the woods, where he was soon after found stone dead, five miles 
 from the house, his face horribly scorched and scarred by the burning 
 embers. This was probably a stray warrior of Philip s partisans, and 
 was the nearest any hostile Indian approached the New England 
 capital during the war. I need not say with what pleasure I should 
 record the name of the damsel whose courage equalled her presence of 
 mind, but unfortunately 1 have not been able to meet with it. The 
 colonial government did, however, present her w^ith a silver bracelet 
 having this inscription, " She slew the Narragansett hunter." 
 
 The family of Minot in America probably originated with George, 
 the first settler of the name in Dorchester. Of this name, George 
 Richards Minot, the author of the " History of Massachusetts," and of 
 " Shays Rebellion, 1 is known to all students of American history, and 
 his name is especially honored by the Massachusetts Historical Society 
 as one of its founders. It is said that, in the old burying-ground of 
 Dorchester, there was once a stone with this inscription : 
 
 " Here lie the bodies of Unite Humphrey and Shining Minot : 
 Such names as these they never die not." 
 
 The family cradle of the Minots is now in the possession of Joseph 
 Grafton Minot, of Boston. A still more curious relic is preserved in 
 one of the Dorchester families of the name of Pierce, it being neither 
 more nor less than some ship-bread brought over in the Mary and 
 John in 1630. 
 
THE QUINCY MANSION 65 
 
 THE QUINCY MANSION 
 
 QUINCY, MASS. 
 
 IT would indeed be surprising to find a person who had not heard 
 of Quincy, since such substantial bits of the town have, for half a 
 century or so, gone to the making of so many other towns, from one 
 end of the Union to the other. And it would be difficult to find a 
 city of any note whatever in which Quincy had not thus raised a 
 lasting monument to itself. It was only a few years after the Civil 
 War had ceased that a shaft of Quincy granite obtained a broader 
 and happier significance, when on Bunker Hill the representatives of 
 several Southern States grasped the proffered hands of men of New 
 England in sincere amity, and solemnly declared, as men gathered 
 about an altar, that the blood of Bunker Hill, of Eutaw, and of York- 
 town, should ever after mingle under one flag and one country. 
 Through just such spontaneous outbursts of patriotism more has 
 been accomplished in a single clay, I might almost say in a single 
 hour, toward reconciling two proud and somewhat jarring sections, 
 than statesmanship, with all its wisdom, could have clone in 
 years. 
 
 After this, who shall clare deny that history is a power ? or the 
 memory of great deeds a vital impulse in man ? 
 
 Our granite may be, as some indeed affirm, typical of the New 
 England character, hard, inflexible, and susceptible to polish only by 
 the hardest kind of rubbing; but is it not also strong, masterful, and 
 enduring ? Could you have the kernel without the shell ? Yet a 
 solid man of Boston is by no means a petrifaction. Ask Ireland, 
 
66 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Crete, France, or, to come nearer home, Portland, Chicago, New 
 Orleans, Charleston, if his is a heart of stone. 
 
 But granite is by no means all that Ouincy is noted for. Besides 
 its granite, which the reader will, perhaps, wonder could ever lead 
 any one to a train of speculative philosophy, where else but in 
 Ouincy can you find the homes of two Presidents of the United 
 States? Already we have been admitted within the sacred precincts 
 of more than one historic mansion, have held mystical converse 
 with their departed inhabitants, and have, in turning away, mused 
 on the lessons of their lives. There is much in these associations 
 which, if we are not quite able to analyze, we yet feel the full 
 force of. Stupid people may laugh, if they please, may even accuse 
 us of a sickly sentimentality, but we feel that the cultivation of a 
 sentiment that can lead us to honor the memory of the great and 
 good who have lived before us needs no apology. 
 
 In that part of Ouincy locally known as Atlantic, we will now 
 make a brief halt, since here, also, stands one of those old ancestral 
 seats that make for us safe stepping-stones of history across the 
 turbulent flood of modern innovations. We amazingly like to get 
 to one of these spots which record the fortunes of a family from 
 the time the first tree was felled, the first spadeful of earth 
 turned, in unbroken succession down to the present time. We 
 feel as if we could almost shake hands with the first emigrant across 
 the fading shores of time. Such a spot is the Quincy mansion 
 before us. 
 
 Close down by the sea, where you can scent its pungent saltness 
 and inhale its invigorating gales, stands the mansion less antique, 
 perhaps, than some others scattered about the country, but still 
 a fairly good specimen of colonial architecture rather more than a 
 hundred years ago. It is placed on a gentle swell of ground at the 
 extremity of the noblest private estate in New England. Its five 
 hundred broad acres of meadow and woodland give the idea that 
 you have suddenly been dropped into an English park come down 
 
THE QUINCY MANSION 
 
 6 7 
 
 from generation to generation by the law of entail. There is a 
 broad and leafy avenue, a quarter of a mile long-, leading from the 
 highroad up to the mansion ; and everywhere about you are most 
 delightful glimpses, across long levels of salt meadow, of the sea, 
 of Boston Harbor and its islands, of its lighthouses, and of the 
 countless white sails continually winging their way hither and 
 hither, like, birds of passage from clime to clime. 
 
 THE QUJNCY MANSION, QUINCY, MASS. 
 
 A site so near the sea-shore, and commanding such an extensive 
 ocean prospect, would now be considered most available for a 
 summer residence ; but summer and winter were the same to the 
 dwellers in this hospitable mansion, who built their houses to 
 live in all the year round, who were often snowbound in winter, 
 and who, most assuredly, had to get along without those luxuries 
 which we call the necessaries of life such as the daily paper, the 
 early train to the city, steam-heated apartments, electric lights, and 
 
68 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 other inventions of this pampered age. If any one thinks those 
 old fellows did not live long and well, let him carefully compare the 
 oldest gravestones in the cemetery with the newest. Out of re 
 gard, it may be presumed, for our growing tenderness, Providence, 
 they say, has even made our winters milder, if not shorter, than 
 they were in the long ago. 
 
 Colonel Josiah Quincy built this house in 1770 on ground that 
 had been granted his ancestor, Edmund Quincy, as early as 1635. 
 This Edmund was the first of his name in New England. The 
 house is supposed to have replaced an earlier one that was set 
 on fire in the winter of 1769 by the overheating of an oven, and 
 burned to the ground. This, too, was spoken of as a fine house 
 for its day. 
 
 When first I happened to be rambling in the neighborhood - 
 alas! that it should be so long ago I found most hospitable wel 
 come at the old mansion from the daughters of the late Josiah 
 Quincy, President of Harvard College, who then made it their 
 summer home. For four successive generations a son had borne 
 the name of Josiah ; and as two of that name have been mayors of 
 Boston, while all have been more or less distinguished in political 
 life, the patronymic is apt to become a little perplexing. There 
 is an embarrassment of Josiahs. Beyond question there may be, 
 to a genealogist at least, many good arguments raised against the 
 continued use of the same Christian name by a family, especially 
 when that name happens to be borne by three persons of as many 
 different generations all of whom are living. 
 
 In this family, history repeated itself in this way : there were two 
 sets of Josiahs. Back in the Revolutionary time there was the Colonel 
 Josiah, builder of this house, and there was his son, Josiah Jr., called by 
 way of distinction, the patriot. No farther back than the sixties or 
 seventies the same anomalous condition of things, led to many pleasant 
 quips at the expense of the younger Josiah of the two, who was also 
 known in the lifetime of his father, President Quincy, as Josiah Junior. 
 
THE QUINCY MANSION 69 
 
 When both had grown to be old men it was not always easy to 
 tell which was the father, and which the son, or as it was once 
 poetically put, 
 
 " I crave their pardon, but must ask, for one, 
 How shall we know the father from the son ? " 
 
 When these lines were read by the toast-master, at a certain public 
 celebration, the younger Quincy immediately jumped to his feet, and 
 in the midst of great merriment cried out, " Gentlemen, I introduce 
 to you my son, who sits on the right of the chair ! " This brought 
 the elder Quincy to his feet to reprove, with humorous severity, 
 the disobedience of some sons. 
 
 Many doubtless remember, as I clo, these two hale, dignified- 
 looking old gentlemen walking arm in arm down State street together. 
 They made a couple that you could not help turning round to look 
 after. 
 
 When I was once fairly within the house, which was furnished 
 as houses were furnished a century ago where antique-dressed 
 portraits looked down from the walls, and where oriental couches in 
 cool corridors insidiously invited one to post-prandial naps 1 felt 
 as if modern life had little right to intrude itself into such a place. 
 Walking through these spacious apartments in the regulation frock- 
 coat and trousers seemed a good deal like an undress rehearsal on 
 a stage set for / Puritani or The Huguenots. You think that every 
 visitor should be required to don a powdered periwig, laced coat, 
 and silk stockings, in order that the prevailing idea may not be 
 disturbed. And why not ? We do it at the demand of royalty ; 
 why not at the call of patriotism ? 
 
 Very much of the fragrance of the old life still lingered about 
 those wainscotted apartments, as if their former occupants had but 
 just stepped out on some little errand, and might be expected back 
 again the very next moment. 
 
 "You may break, you may shatter, the vase if you will, 
 But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 
 
70 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Now and then, as the gentlest of summer breezes lightly stirred 
 the draperies at the windows, the rustling of silk seemed to announce 
 that coming, and I half turned round to see who might be stepping 
 so lightly across the threshold. Really, a half hour s visit, where all 
 the talk was of the past, almost sufficed to convert the imaginary 
 into the real. 
 
 I have called these old mansions, stepping stones of history. It 
 will be seen that the term as used here is no catch -word. By an 
 easy transition we shall step here from the Ouincys to the Adamses 
 and the Hancocks. Here, surely, was a family triumvirate of no 
 inconsiderable power, whether social, political, or financial weight be 
 meant. More of this hereafter ; but a brief word now is necessary 
 to explain what follows. 
 
 The Colonel Ouincy referred to had a cousin John, who held 
 many public offices under the province, and for whom Ouincy was 
 named when the old town of Braintree was divided. This John 
 lived at Mt. Wollaston, one short stage farther on in our historical 
 pilgrimage, and on a spot to which we have already drawn attention. 
 He is the " grandfather Quincy " of the following extracts from 
 John Adams diary : " Drank tea at Grandfather Ouincy s," " Spent 
 the evening at Colonel Ouincy s with Colonel Lincoln." The men 
 talked politics, and the ladies talked about the fashions by the last 
 London packet. The serpent discord soon, however, introduced 
 itself into this as into many other families, through the disputes 
 with the mother country. Once, when Mrs. Adams was spending 
 the day here, " there came Mr. Samuel Ouincy s wife and Mr. Sum- 
 ner, Mr. Josiah and wife. A little clashing of parties you may be 
 sure. Mr. Sam s wife said she thought it high time for her husband 
 to turn about ; he had not done half so cleverly since he left her 
 advice." The brothers, Samuel and Josiah, took opposite sides in 
 the contest. 
 
 The four Quincys who bore the name of Josiah should not be con 
 founded the one with the other. Colonel Josiah Ouincy, who built 
 
THE QUINCY MANSION 71 
 
 this house, and occupied it during- Washington s investment of 
 Boston, is easily identified by his military title. From seeing the 
 British fleet daily riding at anchor, from his windows, he became an 
 enthusiastic amateur Fulton or Ericsson, in all sorts of destructive 
 inventions. How to blow that fleet sky-high became a sort of mania 
 with him. Every few days he would ride off to camp with some 
 new-incubated project which he felt sure would accomplish the 
 object he had in view. 
 
 Not finding, possibly, at army headquarters, the support he 
 desired, the Colonel wrote to John Adams, who was then attending 
 the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, showing how the thing 
 could be done. Adams replies to this effect: "I have a great 
 opinion of your knowledge and judgment from long experience, 
 concerning the channels and islands in Boston Harbor ; but I con 
 fess your opinion that the harbor might be blocked up, and seamen 
 and soldiers made prisoners at discretion, was too bold and enter 
 prising for me, who am not very apt to startle at a daring proposal ; 
 but I believe I may safely promise you powder enough in a little 
 time for any purpose whatever." 
 
 It is not a whit unlikely that personal considerations may have 
 spurred on the gallant Colonel s inventive genius, because we know 
 that the fleet was continually marauding or foraging on the neigh 
 boring shores or islands, thus keeping the inhabitants, who, like 
 Colonel Quincy, had anything to lose, in perpetual alarm. In one 
 of Mrs. Adams letters we read that after a visit of condolence she 
 was making at the Colonel s, most of the family returned home 
 with her, in consequence of some new alarm, to find a refuge more 
 remote from danger. Indeed, the mansion was such a prominent 
 and tempting object that it is really a wonder how it escaped a 
 visit. 
 
 Colonel Quincy scratched on the window-pane with a diamond 
 the date when that exasperating fleet, to his great joy, finally stood 
 out of the bay under a press of sail, while the Continental drums 
 
72 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 were beating " Yankee Doodle " in Boston streets. The grim 
 satisfaction with which the old colonel watched the enemy s depart 
 ing ships was dashed with bitterness : for one son was on board 
 as an exiled royalist, and, of course, his father s political enemy. 
 
 The name of this son, however, was Samuel, and not Josiah. 
 
 But Colonel Ouincy had still another son, the Josiah Ouincy 
 Jr., of that period, whose memoirs, first written by his son Josiah, 
 have since been revised by his granddaughter, Eliza Susan Ouincy, 
 in a manner every way worthy the subject. Josiah Quincy Jr., as 
 he is still called, from his having died in his father s lifetime, had 
 a great mind imprisoned in a feeble body. He was admitted to 
 the bar in the good old days when bar-meetings were held in the 
 coffee-houses, and the barristers drank punch or flip while question 
 ing a candidate. For the life of us we cannot keep a sober face 
 when we recall how John Adams groaned in spirit over the admission 
 of Ouincy into a profession he thought overcrowded. What would 
 he have said of Webster s famous "There is room enough at 
 
 o 
 
 the top"? 
 
 Young Ouincy threw himself into the patriot cause with all 
 the zeal of an ardent nature that self-interest could not curb or 
 fear suppress. He was a born orator. With John Adams he 
 defended Captain Preston, who was tried by the civil authorities 
 for causing what was so long called the Boston Massacre, against 
 the wishes of his best friends. Even his own honored father 
 upbraided him after this fashion "Good God! is it possible? I 
 will not believe it." 
 
 It required no small amount of moral courage to set at defiance 
 not only public opinion, in this case almost unanimous against the 
 prisoner, but also that of one s best friends, merely to further the 
 cause of pure justice. Preston s acquittal was the making of 
 Ouincy* s reputation as a lawyer. 
 
 In 1774 Mr. Ouincy was in London, whence he wrote to his 
 friend Joseph Reed, of Philadelphia: "My heart is with you, and. 
 
THE QUINCY MANSION 73 
 
 whenever my countrymen command, my person shall be also." 
 But Quincy s fame as a most zealous patriot had preceded him. 
 By some he was looked upon as an emissary and a dangerous 
 man. They were not far wrong. While in London, Quincy, with 
 Franklin, had had the honor of being publicly mentioned in the 
 House of Lords by Lord Hillsborough, who said that there were 
 three men then walking the streets of London who ought to be 
 in Newgate or Tyburn. On his return home the gifted and patriotic 
 Quincy died in sight of his native shores. A more promising life 
 never closed more prematurely or more dramatically. In speaking 
 of him John Adams said he was the greatest orator of his age next 
 to Otis. 
 
 Nothing is easier than to write the biography of the third Josiah 
 Quincy. Wherever you may go in Boston you are sure to see or 
 hear of some evidence to the breadth and genius of his enterprises, 
 and the vigor of his execution of them. The Quincy Market- house 
 and the long ranges of granite warehouses standing on land that 
 he reclaimed from the filthy basins into which the tide had flowed, 
 the mammoth State-street block, are among his monuments ; and 
 he deserves unstinted praise, the more, for having met and overcome 
 the full power of that vis inertia for which the Boston of his day 
 was remarkable. Mr. Getting and Mr. Quincy prostrated old-fogy- 
 dom in its stronghold with the one magical word " Progress." 
 
 Mr. Quincy, again, was a representative in Congress during the 
 exciting sessions of the War of 1812. He was, as his constituents 
 expected him to be, a strong anti-war man, and made some pretty 
 incisive speeches against Mr. Madison s war policy. A man of his 
 pronounced character and outspoken ways very soon aroused the 
 hostility of the so-called fire-eaters of the lower chamber, and it is 
 said he once narrowly missed having a duel on his hands. He be 
 came the subject of party caricature, and was even openly denounced 
 as a British partisan, as were all opponents of that most unpalatable 
 contest. 
 
74 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 After serving as the second Mayor of Boston, Mr. Ouincy became, 
 in 1829, President of Harvard University. In executive ability, and 
 in his short, sharp, and decisive method of dealing with questions 
 perplexing or difficult, there could scarcely be a greater contrast 
 than between Josiah Ouincy and Edward Everett, his successor. If 
 at times a trifle despotic, the former certainly gave to the Uni 
 versity that sound business-like administration which its growing 
 needs more and more demanded, and by which it no doubt largely 
 profited, as Mr. Ouincy was not the kind of man to let the old 
 cobwebs stay his renovating hand. It was to his incumbency of the 
 presidency that we owe the very full history of the University, as 
 the successor to Peirce s work, published in 1833. President Quincy s 
 volumes bear the stamp of his individuality throughout. Gore Hall, 
 the beautiful depository of the college library, was also his work. 
 
 The fourth Josiah Ouincy also became a Mayor of Boston. It 
 was during his term of office that the Cochituate water took the 
 place of the irregular and insufficient supplies obtained from the 
 Jamaica Pond Aqueduct or the old town wells. It was a great day 
 for Boston, and a proud one for Mayor Ouincy, when this beneficent 
 work was crowned with complete success, in the presence of a vast 
 multitude, who had gathered to see the waters of a lake eighteen 
 miles away made the willing servant of every householder in the 
 metropolis. Edmund, another son of President Ouincy, is chiefly 
 known as a fearless anti-slavery writer, though he is also the author 
 of a novel, entitled "Wensley," which won praise from so good a 
 judge of fiction as the poet Whittier, and of a life of his honored 
 father. As one of the most earnest Abolitionists a name, by the 
 by, not now nearly so hateful to ears polite as it once was 
 Mr. Ouincy frequently filled the editorial chair of The Liberator in 
 Mr. Garrison s absence. Miss Eliza S. Quincy is also an author, 
 having, in addition to the work of revision already referred to, 
 assisted her father in the preparation of his valuable " History 
 of Harvard University," besides having, in 1861, got out for private 
 
THE QUINCY MANSION 75 
 
 distribution, a memoir of her mother at once an affectionate trib 
 ute, and a most interesting story of personal reminiscence. 
 
 This necessarily hasty glance at the leading Ouincys (modesty 
 only forbids a reference to the younger generation) suggested by 
 strolling over their ancestral acres, will do all it pretends to, in 
 unearthing to this generation one of the foundation-stones of that 
 social structure represented by what we love to call our old families. 
 Its history begins at the beginning, and is perhaps not yet ended. 
 Any one may clearly see how widespread the influence of such a 
 family becomes through intermarriage, in six or seven generations. 
 The record of sustained intellectual effort throughout all these years 
 is truly a remarkable instance of heredity. We also have in this 
 old mansion not only a point of departure but a point d appui 
 a breathing-place on which to lean while vainly striving to solve 
 that unsolvable question of " What is the future American to be 
 like ? " If what he is to be shall prove worthy of what he has 
 been we think the Republic need have no fear for its future. 
 
7 6 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 BIRTHPLACES OF THE TWO PRESIDENTS ADAMS 
 
 QUINCY, MASS. 
 
 WE have thus far opened at one point only the historical vein 
 which divides with its granite Quincy s claim to world-wide celebrity. 
 We now propose to follow that vein wherever it may lead us. Mean 
 time, the way we take leaves us full liberty to indulge our rambling 
 propensity. 
 
 England has been called a lump of chalk. New England may 
 be likened to a block of granite but thinly covered with soil, and 
 cropping out here and there in masses which the earlier English 
 explorers described, with a shudder, as " daunting terrible." With 
 Yankee quickness we have seized upon our native bed-rock as a 
 type of the indestructible. We have our Granite State. That 
 tickles our vanity. We have our Granite Bank. That smacks of a 
 solidity as immovable as that of the everlasting hills. Some scien 
 tists are fond of deducing a certain connection between the character 
 of a people and the structure of that portion of the earth s crust they 
 inhabit. Should we accept this dogma as true, the analogy between 
 the average Englishman and his chalk, and the average Yankee and 
 his granite, would be curious indeed. 
 
 Geologically considered, no more interesting pathway could be 
 selected than the one lying through Roxbury and Dorchester. For 
 some few miles nothing is seen except the ever-recurring substratum 
 of pudding-stone. The roadside walls, the foundations of the houses, 
 and even many of the public and private buildings, are built of 
 this curious conglomerate, so aptly named, and so full of indigestible 
 plums. From this formation we quickly pass on to the granite 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 77 
 
 range, first called Brain tree -stone, from the earlier name of Quincy. 
 Before these quarries were opened, the outcropping stone was 
 more or less used in building. Its color was a rusty brown, instead 
 of the fine dark gray of that since excavated. King s Chapel, in 
 Boston, built in 1754, is a good example of Braintree-stone as 
 first employed, as well as of the stone-worker s skill as it then 
 existed. 
 
 When we reflect that the ice and granite, which our fathers 
 found so forbidding, have proved such inexhaustible sources of 
 wealth to us, we may well excuse their want of foresight, for no 
 one in his sober senses would have believed there was any value 
 in either. Neal and Josselyn, for instance, could hardly have fore 
 seen that the one would be exported to Calcutta or the other to 
 San Francisco, or that, in quick obedience to the law of demand 
 and supply, the first railway (supposing they had ever dreamed of 
 such a thing) would be built in New England for no other purpose 
 than the removal of manufactured granite from the quarries to 
 tide-water. It is the boast of England that her national airs may be 
 heard in every quarter of the known globe. So be it. Thanks to 
 his ice, the American may have his national drinks in every quarter 
 of the globe his "cocktail" in Shanghai, his "julep" at Grand 
 Cairo, and his "cobbler" in Melbourne, all cooled with American ice. 
 We leave it to the decision of the reader which is the more exhilarat 
 ing to national pride or more stimulating to national vanity. 
 
 Nearly the whole southwestern section of Quincy is one solid 
 mass of granite, rising hundreds of feet above the sea-level. As 
 we have just said, the first railway in New England was here put in 
 operation, in 1826, for the purpose of carrying the granite destined 
 for building Bunker Hill Monument from the quarries to tide-water, 
 on Neponset River. The rails were of wood, plated with iron, and 
 laid on blocks of stone, the gauge being six feet. The carriages 
 weighed about six tons each, and when loaded with twenty tons of 
 stone, were easily drawn by one horse. Before the great fire of 
 
7 8 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 1872, the business part of Boston was so largely built of Ouincy 
 oranite as to ^ive it a certain character of its own. Yet it must 
 
 o o 
 
 be confessed, in spite of a very natural predilection for home 
 products, that the long ranges of granite buildings had a gloomy 
 and unpleasing effect as contrasted with the greater variety of 
 materials, to say nothing of the greatly improved architectural taste, 
 as exhibited in the rebuilding. 
 
 Since we were speaking of railroads only a moment ago, it 
 may not be out of place to state a fact going to show how this every 
 day-affair of our own times was regarded when first presented to 
 the ignorant but struggling mind. There is, I am informed by 
 one who has seen it set down in black and white on the Ouincy 
 records, the protest of a much worked-up citizen against allowing 
 the Old Colony railroad to pass through the town, on the ground 
 that the noise would prevent his hens from laying. 
 
 In our way to the central part of Ouincy we shall pass by the 
 beautiful and commanding eminence known as Mount Wollaston, 
 to which reference was made in the previous chapter, as being the 
 paternal estate and lifelong abode of Hon. John Ouincy, in the 
 good old colony times. It afterwards became the property of his 
 great-grandson, John Ouincy Adams. As this Mount Wollaston is 
 the chosen emblem for the city seal we cannot do better than relate 
 why it was put there. 
 
 Quincy, let us first mention, is remarkable as the scene of the 
 first attempt to set up a Commune in America. It even goes back 
 of Brook Farm and that community. It was really of by no means 
 so dangerous a character as the Paris Commune, which arose on 
 the ruins of the Second Empire. Yet it nevertheless caused the 
 friends of law, order, and good morals, great uneasiness, not to say 
 alarm, for the time being, and eventually had to be broken up by 
 force. One sees that there really is no new thing under the sun. 
 
 In 1625 (we recollect that this was five years before Boston 
 was settled) a certain Captain Wollaston, whose connection with 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 79 
 
 this episode is about all we know of him or are likely to know, 
 began a colony in what is now Quincy. Why in Ouincy, rather 
 than elsewhere ? I think the true answer would be that he was 
 drawn here by a mariner s instinct for some guiding landmark, con 
 spicuous enough to be readily recognized, or at least not easily 
 mistaken for any other. Behind this shore there rose the densely 
 wooded Blue Hills, a most commanding landmark. Other reason 
 there was none ; because, all along here the waters are notably 
 shallow at ebb-tide, a most serious drawback, as we readily discover. 
 Having secured a proper landmark for those entering the harbor, 
 the next thing was to pitch their own habitation where no ships 
 could approach the harbor unseen where, in short, they could see 
 as well as be seen. " I must put these people where they can be 
 found," was probably Captain Wollaston s idea ; and so the emi 
 nence or mount then made choice of has ever since gone by his 
 name - Mount Wollaston. 
 
 In Wollaston s company came that singular individual known to 
 our prolific orthography as a "crank" -Thomas Morton, "of Clif 
 ford s Inn, gent," who had before been among the Pilgrims at 
 Plymouth, between whom and himself there was presently to grow 
 up such a violent dislike. Wollaston soon sailed away to Virginia, 
 with perhaps the most of his colonists, many of whom seem to 
 have been bond-servants or persons who sold their services in 
 consideration of the money advanced for their passage and sub 
 sistence, as he would the sooner get his money back there. That 
 one simple fact is pretty decisive in determining the character of 
 this colony, if not the key to what subsequently befell it. That 
 such men would rather play than work is no new thing. Both 
 Morton and his ignorant followers seem to have preferred a life 
 of idleness and pleasure to one of such industry and toil as 
 usually fell to the lot of new colonists. They thought it far easier 
 to let the Indians work and hunt for them than to do either them 
 selves. Free and jovial companions all, they seem to have tried to 
 
8o OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 get along without either law or gospel, admitting the Indians among 
 them at all times with an almost contemptuous disregard for their 
 own safety. Moreover, Morton seemed to take particular delight in 
 scandalizing his neighbors, the hard-working, pious Pilgrims. Very 
 many of his acts appear to have been conceived as much in a spirit 
 of reckless deviltry as of studied malice. He introduced the old 
 Bacchanalian rites, so abhorrent to the Puritans of that day. With 
 all possible parade his followers cut down and dragged into the 
 settlement a tall pine, which they set up for a May-pole, around 
 which they danced, feasted, and drank, to the great scandal of the 
 Pilgrims, who considered such conduct little short of impious. 
 
 So far as the community of Merry Mount as Morton named 
 Mount Wollaston professed any religion at all, they appear to 
 have followed the forms of the English Church. They finally gave 
 just cause of offence to their neighbors by selling guns to the In 
 dians ; and Morton having repelled with derision the remonstrances 
 of the Plymouth authorities, it was determined to put an end to the 
 colony. So the redoubtable Miles Standish was despatched with a 
 force to Merry Mount, where he seized Morton and the more un 
 ruly spirits, and carried them prisoners to Plymouth. The law of 
 the strongest, an inexorable law in 1628, seems to have been exer 
 cised here in behalf of self-preservation. 
 
 Mount Wollaston having thus been the very first place within 
 her bounds to receive any Christian settlers, is considered Ouincy s 
 original foundation ; and though the name is now confined to one 
 particular spot only, it was for many years the unique designation 
 for all the region round about. 
 
 From Mount Wollaston to the railway station in Ouincy is but 
 a short distance. Though there is much here to detain us, it better 
 accords with our design to pass on through the business centre, 
 oblivious, if possible, to all its sights and sounds. We are first 
 going farther, because there we shall best get the true historical 
 perspective. A short mile farther on, the train, after passing within 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 
 
 8l 
 
 a few rods of a group of ancient-looking dwellings, makes its first 
 stop at the station called Quincy Adams. The eminence rising just 
 beyond is Penn s Hill. Of the near-at-hand houses two are espe 
 cially noted, one as the birthplace of John Adams, the other as 
 that of his scarcely less distinguished son, John Quincy Adams. In 
 one of those not unfrequent moods to which he sometimes gave way 
 
 HOME OF JOHN ADAMS. 
 
 when care weighed too heavily upon him, the elder Adams wrote 
 down impulsively: "I had rather build wall on Penn s Hill than be 
 the first prince of Europe, or the first general or first senator of 
 America." And his accomplished wife speaks always to the heart 
 of every truly domestic woman when she says : " My humble cot 
 tage at the foot of Penn s Hill has more charms for me than the 
 drawing-room at St. James s." These two very characteristic utter 
 ances, surprising as they seem in presence of the things actually 
 
82 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 wished for, furnish the keynote to our investigations. Where indeed 
 should \ve look for better evidence of the truth of that saying that 
 no house is so humble but that a great man may be born in it ? 
 Humble, forsooth! Nothing, we insist, could so shatter the super 
 ficial observer s sentimental expectations as this unobtrusive medi 
 ocrity. In all candor we are at first more than half tempted to 
 doubt whether the elder Adams spoke in all seriousness about 
 building wall, or his accomplished wife in downright sober earnest 
 about going back to her lowly cot. Yet that is precisely the 
 feeling which inspired the immortal line, 
 
 " Be it ever so humble, there s no place like Home." 
 
 We know that we are susceptible to it, if we cannot tell why. 
 
 As it was this very old house which undoubtedly awakened the 
 tenderest memories of these two lives, let us also go back to the 
 period it recalls. Like Joan of Arc s banner, it had been with them 
 in their struggling days, it should not be forgotten in those of their 
 greatest honor. The honest heart knows no distinctions of fame 
 or fortune. 
 
 Of John Adams parents little is known. His father was a small 
 farmer who also worked at shoemaking a quite common employ 
 ment, we may add, t not only in his day, but down to a compara 
 tively recent one among farmers, during the long New England 
 winters, as a means of eking out a slender income. He was also 
 a deacon of the church, so that we have vouchers both for his 
 industry and piety. We also know that he had in him something 
 of the grim Puritan humor. We hope that John Adams was not 
 more ashamed of his father s honest calling than of his own humble 
 birth. In the day of bitter political animosities, however, it did not 
 fail to be remembered against him, and thus cruelly cast in his teeth : 
 
 " Gods ! how they d stare, should fickle Fortune drop 
 The mushroom lordlings where she picked them up, 
 In tinkers , cobblers , or book-binders shop." 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 83 
 
 Of John Adams mother we know even less. The life of a 
 farmer s wife was not apt to be a bed of roses in those days. But 
 there is one thing which speaks volumes. It is said that up to his 
 dying day John Adams never omitted to repeat, at bed-time, that 
 dear little prayer of infancy, first learned no doubt at his mother s 
 knee from out of the well-thumbed old New England Primer : 
 
 " Now I lay me down to sleep." 
 
 Both parents came from good old Puritan stock, and that is 
 much ; for we are not now apologizing for the Puritan, and are 
 consoled by Mr. Gladstone s recent declaration that Puritanism is a 
 " Great Fact." Coming from a Churchman who once held that 
 all the Dissenters in England should be ineligible to office, this 
 also is much. 
 
 Seated on an old stone wall near by, I tried to imagine young 
 John Adams, stripped to his shirt and smalls, ditching in yonder 
 meadow, as the parental alternative to the detested Latin grammar. 
 He declares that he found ditching harder than the grammar, and 
 the first forenoon the longest he ever experienced. From having 
 first jumped at the offer, he finally had to put his pride in his 
 pocket, and go back to study again, as his father no doubt knew 
 he would ; for the elder Adams, honest man ! meant that his son 
 should be something better than he himself was, though he did not 
 live to see his hopes more than realized. Like a great many other 
 men who have become famous, John Adams, we infer from the 
 anecdote, was a dull scholar. We can well imagine what scraping 
 and saving it must have cost his father to send him to Harvard. 
 From this time forward his story is that of the hard-working student 
 who is filled with magnificent aspirations without the means of 
 gratifying them. After leaving college he studied law, teaching 
 school at the same time for a living. Then, while still poor and 
 friendless, came his first triumph of being admitted to the Suffolk 
 bar; and three years later his father died, leaving him this farm. 
 
84 OUR COLONIAL HOMES. 
 
 Here in Quincy he began the practice of law. Being thus installed 
 as head of the family at the age of twenty-six, John Adams be 
 thought him, like most young men, of a helpmeet ; and as we 
 conceive this happy thought of his to have been the true incentive 
 and life-long inspiration of his career, let us endeavor to sketch the 
 portrait of the lady. As some one has so justly observed, since so 
 much has been said about the sufferings of the forefathers, why not 
 say something too about the sufferings of the foremothers, who, in 
 addition to those trials common to both, had also to endure the 
 forefathers themselves. 
 
 Miss Abigail Smith, second daughter of the Rev. William Smith 
 of Weymouth, had as much education as was usual with young 
 ladies of her day. She had never been sent to any school. A 
 clergyman s daughter was, however, considered as having as much 
 better opportunities than other girls in this respect as in her social 
 standing. But in this case, Miss Smith seems to have derived her 
 training chiefly from her grandmother Quincy, of Mount Wollaston, 
 with whom she spent a good deal of her time, very profitably if we 
 may judge by results. It is here that the reader s curiosity touching 
 the union of the names Quincy-Adams is first gratified. Miss 
 Smith s mother was the daughter of Hon. John Quincy of Mount 
 Wollaston. 
 
 We are free to say that after a reperusal of Mrs. Adams ad 
 mirable " Letters," nothing is clearer than that she made her few 
 advantages go a great way. 
 
 John Adams courted, and in 1764 married his lady-love, when 
 she was twenty. A few months before this happy event occurred, 
 the young barrister had been inoculated (as the custom then was) 
 with the small-pox, so that his love-letters had to be well fumi 
 gated before reading. Her maiden letters to him such as we have 
 seen are full of the light bantering of a high-spirited Beatrice, 
 who, for fear of letting her love be seen, shows it in every word 
 and line. John Adams, you were truly a lucky man. 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 85 
 
 When the engagement began to be noised about, we learn that 
 considerable feeling was manifested among Parson Smith s flock 
 because of his letting his daughter make so poor a match. The old 
 antipathy to the profession of the law, which had so long kept 
 lawyers out of the Colony, was not yet extinct. A confused notion 
 was abroad that to be learned in the law was not far different from 
 being learned in the Black Art. People will talk. Mr. Smith could 
 not fail to hear of what was in the air from the gossips, and he hit 
 upon a somewhat novel way of rebuking it. After the marriage 
 ceremony, a sermon was often preached, as people were not then 
 in such a hurry to have things over with as they are now. Before 
 proceeding on this occasion Mr. Smith gave out the text : 4 For 
 John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, He 
 hath a devil." 
 
 For the next ten years the young couple lived sometimes here, 
 at the old homestead, sometimes at Boston, according as the de 
 mands for professional services or the sittings of the courts required. 
 Allusion has already been made to the employment of Adams in 
 that celebrated case of the King against Captain Preston and his 
 men, by which all of the prisoners counsel made reputations. 
 
 Up to this time the young barrister was not much in public 
 life, yet he was often absent travelling the circuits, so leaving his 
 young wife much alone, with a little family growing up around her ; 
 for in these ten years a daughter and three sons were born to 
 them. The day of separation came. In 1774 Adams was sent a 
 delegate to Philadelphia. It will probably never be known just how 
 much John Adams owed to his vigorous-minded, yet thoroughly 
 womanly wife, at this, the important crisis of his life. Not that we 
 believe him to have been vacillating or irresolute, but that we know 
 her mind was made up from the first, and was, as woman s mind 
 generally is when made up, fixed and unchangeable. It was she 
 who was called upon to bear all the real burdens, to make all the 
 real sacrifices, and yet seem to do it all so cheerfully that her 
 
86 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 absent husband might have no excuse for not standing up to his 
 duty like a man on her account. Though those well-fed delegates 
 were well out of harm s reach, they loved to have their little joke 
 about the hangman s noose. Hers was the post of real danger. 
 With the siege of Boston came that sinister train of daily happen 
 ings to which John Adams was fortunately a stranger. In one of 
 her letters to him she says, " The constant roar of the cannon is 
 so distressing that we cannot eat, drink, or sleep." In another, 
 " You can hardly imagine how much we want many common small 
 articles ; not one pin to be purchased for love or money." In an 
 other, "I have been like a nun in a cloister ever since you went 
 away, and have not been into any other house than my father s 
 and sister s except Colonel Ouincy s." They did not live that way 
 at Philadelphia, it is certain. 
 
 During this time of trial we now and then hear of little Johnny 
 acting as post-rider between Boston and Braintree ; and we have 
 somewhere read that the minute-men actually melted up his moth 
 er s silver spoons for bullets, not at all on account of their supposed 
 superior efficacy in using up a " regular," but because of the great 
 scarcity of lead. 
 
 Mrs. Adams gives a most graphic description of the patriot camps, 
 and of the new-fledged generals how they looked, spoke, and acted. 
 She relates how this house shook in the terrible bombardment by 
 which Washington masked his seizure of Dorchester Heights. There 
 is no such day-to-day, absolutely truthful reporter of these momentous 
 events as she. Little John Ouincy Adams, then in his ninth year, 
 was now the man of the house. From this same Penn s Hill over 
 against us he and his mother saw the thick black smoke arising from 
 burning Charlestown on the dreadful clay of Bunker Hill ; and, during 
 all the continuance of the siege, the lad ascended the hill every 
 evening to see the shells thrown by the opposing armies to him 
 only a brilliant pyrotechnic display. 
 
 Enough has been said to show in what kind of school Mrs. Adams 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 87 
 
 was reared. Her native refinement of mind is visible in the son who 
 is known to us as " The old man eloquent." k The cradle-hymns 
 of the child were the songs of liberty." 
 
 That was probably a proud though sad day in this household when 
 that bluff old sea-clog, Captain Tucker, came up to Braintree in his 
 barge to take John Adams on board his ship, as ambassador to France. 
 The frigate Boston was lying out in Nantasket Road waiting for him, 
 and on February I5th she sailed away under a press of canvas. Sir 
 Henry Wotton once defined an ambassador as "an honest gentleman 
 sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." We are not informed 
 how Mr. Adams may have acquitted himself in this respect ; but it is 
 mentioned for the purpose of drawing attention to the fact that young 
 John here began his apprenticeship in the school of diplomacy a 
 calling in which he was destined to be hardly less distinguished than 
 his father. 
 
 John Q. was not quite eleven when he went with his father to 
 France. We feel that the mother s heart must have been wrung by 
 this separation from her boy, yet she was equal to it. At fourteen he 
 was Minister Dana s private secretary at St. Petersburg ; and at a 
 later period he became minister to that court himself, where no less 
 than three Bostonians have served in a like capacity. It was he who 
 so happily hit off Siberia, which he said contained malachite and male 
 factors. He also said this was about all that was known about it 
 among the Russians. But we are not writing his biography ; we are 
 merely suggesting the mother s influence as potent in shaping this 
 young man s career, in moulding his cast of thought, in softening the 
 asperities which we so frequently encounter in the elder Adams. In 
 this family there have been no gamblers, roues, or drunkards. Public 
 life did not necessarily lead to indulgence in vice or debauchery. 
 This is what we should call applied Puritanism. 
 
 There is a pleasing glimpse of " little Johnny," the oldest boy and 
 future President of the United States, in a letter written by John 
 Adams from France, to his kinsman Samuel Adams, who has been 
 
88 
 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 decorated with the significant title of 4i The Last of the Puritans." 
 
 o 
 
 The letter says : 4l The child whom you used to lead out into the 
 Common to see with detestation the British troops, and with pleasure 
 the Boston militia, will have the honor to deliver you this letter. He 
 has since seen the troops of most nations in Europe, without any 
 ambition, I hope, of becoming a military man. He thinks of the bar 
 and peace, and civil life, and I hope will follow and enjoy them with 
 
 HOME OF JOHN gUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 less interruption than his father could. I think it no small proof of 
 his discretion that he chooses to go to New England rather than to 
 Old. You and I know that it will probably be more for his honor and 
 his happiness in the result, but young gentlemen of eighteen do not 
 always see through the same medium with old ones of fifty." 
 
 The reply is equally eloquent of a robust patriotism. It says : 
 "The child whom I led by the hand with a particular design, I 
 find is now become a promising youth. He brought me one of your 
 
BIRTHPLACES OF THE PRESIDENTS ADAMS 89 
 
 letters. God bless the lacl ! If I was instrumental at that time of 
 enkindling- the sparks of patriotism in his tender heart, it will add to 
 my consolation in the latest hour." 
 
 But if Sam Adams was thus proud of kindling " the sparks of 
 patriotism " in just one youthful heart, John Adams may truthfully 
 be said to have caused a regular conflagration by his famous utter 
 ance that the Fourth of July "ought to be celebrated with pomp 
 and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and 
 illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this 
 time forward evermore." With John Adams these occasional eruptions 
 tend to show the slumbering fires beneath a somewhat cold exterior ; 
 and while probably no utterance ever called forth such unbounded 
 enthusiasm on the one hand, or such execration on the other, we 
 are sure it was the heartfelt tribute of an honest man who loved his 
 country as well as he had served it faithfully. 
 
 To return to the house itself, of whose exact age we have no 
 certain knowledge beyond the year of John Adams birth (though it 
 looks old enough to date at any time since the settlement of the 
 town, and is of the prevailing type of that early time) : we find it 
 stated that Henry Adams, the English emigrant, settled at Mount 
 Wollaston (of which Quincy now forms a part), and that from his 
 time onward the successive generations of the family continued to 
 live on the same farm, down to the birth of John Adams, who, in 
 his turn, transmitted it to his son. 
 
 Though considerably the older of the two houses now standing 
 nearly side by side, this one has much the more modern appearance, 
 in consequence of its being better kept up, while the other shows 
 unmistakable signs of neglect. I suppose that hundreds of people 
 visit the place every year, drawn thither by curiosity or the gratifi 
 cation of a more laudable feeling, who are equally struck with the 
 want of local pride as shown in these historic homes. There ought 
 to be, and it is devoutly to be hoped yet may be, a better appreci 
 ation of the fact that most people will go farther to see one such 
 
90 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 humble dwelling as this, with its consecrated memories, than all the 
 palatial residences reared by wealth. A pilgrimage to Stratford-on- 
 Avon is different from a pilgrimage to Ouincy only in degree. 
 
 The house in which John Adams first went to housekeeping, 
 and in which his son John Ouincy Adams was born, should be of 
 somewhat later date, though from having escaped modern altera 
 tions it looks older than the other. From 1800 to 1804, Rev. Peter 
 Whitney, pastor of the First Congregational Society, lived in it. 
 But from the time of Mrs. Adams departure from it, in 1784, to 
 join her husband in London, to resign the care of her cows and 
 her kitchen garden for routs and receptions (very cavalier recep 
 tions too, they were, from certain royal personages), to play the 
 fine lady, and, in short, to be the representative of a great triumph 
 to those to whom it was only a great humiliation, the personal 
 associations with the old home which had become so endeared to 
 her were broken up forever. We can imagine the look she must 
 have cast around her when turning away from the home to which 
 she had been taken as a bride, where her children had been born, 
 and whose every tree and shrub, every stick and stone, she would 
 impress on her memory by one all-embracing look. Undoubtedly 
 women have a much stronger attachment for locality than men. It is 
 Fontenelle, I think, who says that women have a fibre more in the 
 heart, and a cell less in the brain, than men. Who will write the 
 true history of the women of the Revolution ? Place aux dames. 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 91 
 
 THE ADAMS MANSION 
 
 QUINCY, MASS. 
 
 THE previous chapters contained a brief sketch of the more 
 notable localities of Quincy, Massachusetts, and of the birthplaces of 
 the two Presidents Adams. The fine old mansion now before us 
 is associated with their public and private lives after they had 
 reached exalted positions. It will easily be recognized by hun 
 dreds of pilgrims who have been drawn to the spot by its mani 
 fold associations. 
 
 In this house we realize our ideal of what a fine old colonial 
 mansion ought to be. Though a plain, gambrel-roofed building, 
 there is an air of snug and substantial comfort, an atmosphere of 
 undoubted refinement, of well-earned ease, about it. The sun shines 
 brightly in at the windows through the over-shading tree-branches, 
 in whose foliage the birds twitter and chirrup as we approach the 
 balconied porch. There are some fine old trees, box-bordered walks, 
 conservatories, and flower-beds, set off by spaces of smooth-shaven 
 turf, in the grounds about it. The old barn, with its antique 
 weather-vane, which formerly stood below the mansion, was long 
 ago removed to make room for the railway, which, in passing, 
 has ploughed a deep furrow through a corner of the estate. Since 
 then a new avenue has been laid out through it to Mount Wollas- 
 ton. But its dimensions are still ample. Behind the dwelling the 
 grounds descend by a natural slope to a little brook, which goes 
 gurgling along under the willows and down to the sea beyond. 
 
 The house, built long before the Revolution by a Mr. Vassall, 
 is the creation of several owners, and embodies as many different 
 periods, though each of the occupants, in enlarging or altering, 
 
92 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 according to his own ideas or needs, seems to have wisely kept in 
 view the harmony of the exterior as a whole. The elder Adams 
 became the purchaser of the mansion shortly after the Peace of 
 1783, since which time it has remained in the Adams family, Mr. 
 Charles Francis Adams having, like his predecessors, caused some 
 changes to be made, both without and within. 
 
 THE ADAMS MANSION, QUINCY, MASS. 
 
 It would fatigue the reader if I were to enumerate half the 
 objects of interest to be seen within the four walls of the mansion. 
 The rooms are filled with antique furniture, either family heirlooms, 
 or even more curious specimens of foreign make brought from the 
 Hague by the elder Adams substantial tokens of the land of 
 ditches, dikes, and burgomasters. There were tall chests of drawers, 
 of solid mahogany, with wonderful brasses and fantastically curved 
 legs ; and one portly Dutch bureau in particular, that looked as 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 93 
 
 if it might have contained the household effects of the Prince of 
 Orange when he was fighting with Alva, or have come down 
 through a regular succession of their high mightinesses until it fell 
 into the possession of our ambassador at the Hague. Ginevra 
 might have lain concealed in it, and then have made room for all her 
 bridesmaids without the fatal results the poet discourses of. 
 
 It seems a little strange, perhaps, that we should know more about 
 the domestic lives of our great men through strangers than through 
 the nearer medium of our own citizens. In the language of the old 
 saying, one must go away from home to learn the news. We are now 
 speaking of the past. For the modern interviewer there are no 
 barriers ; for the unfortunate possessor of a great reputation there 
 is no corner that he can call his own. The domestic life of such 
 a man as President Adams is, however, something in which we may 
 be permitted to indulge a pardonable curiosity, without prying too 
 closely into family affairs, so closely is that curiosity allied to the 
 feelings of veneration we have for the man himself. 
 
 o 
 
 Mr. Henry Bradshaw Fearon, a well educated Englishman and 
 an observing traveller, visited Boston in 1817, and was taken out 
 to see the venerable ex-president by the late Charles Francis 
 Adams. We will let the visitor describe what he saw and heard in 
 his own way : 
 
 "The ex-president," he says, "is a handsome old gentleman of 
 eighty-four ; his lady is seventy-six (neither is correct) ; she has 
 the reputation of superior talents and great literary acquirements. 
 Upon the present occasion the minister (the day being Sunday) was 
 of the dinner party. As the table of a late King may be amus 
 ing, take the following particulars : first course a pudding made 
 of Indian corn, molasses, and butter; second veal, bacon, neck 
 of mutton, potatoes, cabbages, carrots, and Indian beans ; Madeira 
 wine, of which each drank two glasses. We sat down to dinner 
 at one o clock : at two, nearly all went a second time to church. 
 For tea we had pound-cake, wheat bread and butter, and bread 
 
94 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 made of Indian corn and rye (similar to our brown, home-made). 
 Tea was brought from the kitchen, and handed round by a neat 
 white servant girl. The topics of conversation were various Eng 
 land, America, religion, politics, literature, science and Dr. Priestley, 
 Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Sidclons, Mr. Kean, France, Shakespeare, 
 Moore, Lord Byron, Cobbett, American Revolution, the traitor, 
 General Arnold." 
 
 We are thus made acquainted with what the polite world was 
 talking about at that interesting period. 
 
 Mr. Fearon goes on to describe the homestead itself: "The 
 establishment of this political patriarch consists of a house two 
 stories high, containing, I believe, eight rooms ; of two men and 
 three maid servants ; three horses and a plain carriage. How great 
 a contrast between the individual a man of knowledge and infor 
 mation without pomp, parade, or vicious and expensive establish 
 ments, as compared with the costly trappings, the depraved characters, 
 and the profligate expenditure of- -House and- -! What a 
 lesson in this does America teach ! " 
 
 The intelligent reader can have no difficulty in filling up the 
 blanks. 
 
 One year later, October, 1818, Mrs. Adams was carried out of 
 the house of which she had so long been the chief ornament to 
 be laid away in the tomb. Though short, Jefferson s affectionate 
 letter of condolence can hardly be read even now with dry eyes. 
 After perusing it, it is not so surprising that Jefferson s should 
 be the last name on the ex-president s lips, or to find that a new 
 bond had drawn these two widely dissimilar natures closely together, 
 as they neared the end of life s long journey. 
 
 The apartment in which John Adams passed the evening of his 
 life, after old age had rendered him too feeble to go abroad, contains 
 a massive four-post bedstead, with curiously carved legs, also brought 
 from Holland, and on which the venerable ex-president breathed 
 his last. The good taste which preserves everything in the room 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 95 
 
 in the same condition in which it was left by him is an unfailing 
 gratification to those who may have enjoyed the privilege of 
 inspecting the domestic, unartificial life of this great and good 
 man. 
 
 We also have an account of an interview with the venerable ex- 
 President so late as April, 1825, written by a lady whose " Sketches" 
 are all but unknown to the present generation. She writes as follows : 
 " In one of these excursions, I paid my respects to the ex- President 
 Adams, of Ouincy. My heart beat high as I knocked at his door, 
 which was opened by a servant. I told her I wished to see Mr. 
 Adams if he was not too much indisposed (having heard he had 
 been unwell.) She withdrew, and in a few minutes a most enchanting 
 female (Mrs. Smith) entered the parlor. I handed her my address, 
 and desired her to present it to the President. She returned in 
 a moment and asked me to walk up-stairs. I followed her, and 
 took the precedence in entering the chamber of this venerable 
 patriarch. I found the dear old man sitting up before the fire. He 
 would have risen, but I flew forward to prevent him. He pressed 
 my hand with ardor and inquired after my health." 
 
 After some general conversation, in answer to inquiries about him 
 self, he replied, " That he was then eighty-nine years and six months 
 old ; a monstrous time," he added, " for one human being to support." 
 He could walk about the room, he said, and even down-stairs, though 
 he was at that time very feeble. His teeth were entirely gone, and his 
 eyesight much impaired ; he could just see the window, he said, and 
 the weather-vane that stood out before it, but retained his hearing 
 perfectly. His face did not bear the marks of age in proportion to 
 his years ; nor did he show the marks of decay in his appearance, with 
 the exception of his teeth, and his legs, which were evidently much 
 reduced. He was dressed in a green camblet morning-gown, with 
 his head uncovered, except his venerable locks, which were per 
 fectly white. Like a calm evening sun, he is imperceptibly gliding to 
 lighten other worlds." 
 
96 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Within a little more than a twelvemonth the good old man had 
 o-one to that bourn whence no traveller returns. He was attended 
 
 ;-> 
 
 during his last illness by Louisa Smith, the niece and adopted daughter 
 of Mrs. Abigail Adams, who stated that the last words uttered by the 
 dying statesman were, " Thomas Jefferson." The rest was inarticulate. 
 This was at i P.M., July 4th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of that 
 independence he had done so much towards achieving. 
 
 Another apartment, which I believe to be unique, deserves men 
 tion, as in no other of our old New England mansions have I seen 
 its like. It is wainscoted from floor to ceiling in mahogany. The 
 wood has acquired with age a deep rich color, that harmonizes well 
 with the pictured tiles, tall fire-irons, and antique furniture. It did 
 not speak so well for the taste of the elder Adams that he had caused 
 the paneling of this room to be covered with a coat of white paint, 
 which it had cost much labor to remove. 
 
 The portraits in this room keep touch and time with the furniture. 
 They are especially interesting as specimens of the first century of 
 American art. As all the ceilings throughout the house are very low, 
 giving not more than seven, or seven and a half feet of clear space, the 
 paintings are not seen to the best advantage. In the first room I 
 entered were the well-known portraits of John Adams and his wife, 
 Abigail Adams, both Stuarts. The former is the original from which 
 
 o <^> 
 
 the portrait by Longacre was engraved ; the latter was engraved by 
 Stone for the National Portrait Gallery. Her death occurred in 1818. 
 Hanging between these two beautiful likenesses was, I think, the gem 
 of the room, a portrait of John Ouincy Adams at the age of twenty, 
 done in England, by Copley, while John Adams, an old acquaintance 
 of the painter, was resident there. It is altogether a fine canvas, repre 
 senting a very handsome young man, with clear, expressive eye, thin 
 but finely-cut nose, and thin lips a distinguishing peculiarity of the 
 Adamses. The coloring is superb. Among portraits of unknown 
 artists is a full length of little John Ouincy, at the age of perhaps six 
 years, for whom the town and second President Adams are named. 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 97 
 
 The dress is very quaint, and nearly coincident with the settlement of 
 the country. 
 
 Another portrait is that of Colonel William Stephens Smith, of 
 New York, who was at one time on Baron Steuben s staff, and after 
 ward a member of the military family of Washington. Colonel Smith 
 married, in London, Abigail, the only daughter of John Adams, whose 
 secretary of legation he was. It will be remembered that in the 
 memorable affair of Trenton, Smith was acting as aide-de-camp to 
 General Sullivan, who commanded the advance. After crossing the 
 Delaware, Sullivan, wholly dazed at finding his men s ammunition 
 spoiled by the rain and sleet, sent off Smith to Washington with 
 the unwelcome news, and to ask for further orders. The general 
 was found just getting ready to mount his horse. Smith declared 
 that he could never forget, to his dying clay, the startling vehemence 
 with which Washington exclaimed, " Go back, Sir, and tell General 
 Sullivan to go on ! " 
 
 We have often been struck by the historical parallel furnished to 
 this brilliant master-stroke by Napoleon when, after retreating almost 
 to the gates of Paris, he suddenly turned on his pursuers, and with 
 only fifteen thousand men fought the bloody combat at Montereau, 
 putting to rout thirty-five thousand of the allied troops, who were 
 as far from expecting such an onslaught as Howe, Cornwallis, or Rahl 
 were at Trenton. Napoleon is reported to have said, " Now I am as 
 near Vienna as they are to Paris." With equal truth Washington 
 might have said, " Now I am as near New York as they are to Phila 
 delphia." 
 
 Mrs. Smith s portrait by Copley was, if I am not mistaken, de 
 stroyed by fire ; but there is a capital engraved likeness taken from it 
 in Griswold s "The Republican Court." 
 
 Colonel Smith is said to have stood for the limbs of Washington, 
 in the full-length portrait by Stuart, that formerly hung in Faneuil 
 Hall, Boston, though I have heard that the painter always insisted 
 that the legs were his own. Be that as it may, it is certain that 
 
98 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Stuart, upon being once asked to describe Washington s figure, said 
 very bluntly, that his lower limbs were better suited to the saddle 
 than to grace a drawing-room. 
 
 The portraits of John Quincy Adams, by Stuart, and of Mrs. 
 Louisa Catherine Adams, hung in the bed-chamber before alluded 
 to, at the head of the bed. The former, although not so satisfactory 
 to the family, as a likeness, is the one best known to the public. 
 I did not recognize, in the portrait of Mrs. Adams, the well-known 
 canvas of Leslie. Besides these, which have become in a sense public 
 property, through frequent reproduction in engravings, there is a 
 portrait of John Adams, at the age of ninety, also painted by Stuart. 
 A full length of the same subject, one of Copley s best works, and 
 another of J. O. Adams, by Stuart, were, at the time of this visit, 
 in Memorial Hall, Cambridge. The first picture was placed in the 
 custody of Mr. Nicholas Boylston, while Mr. Adams was absent from 
 the country, and was by that gentleman committed to the keeping 
 of Harvard University. Nicholas Boylston, it may be mentioned, 
 in passing, was one of Harvard s many benefactors, and the founder 
 of the professorship bearing his name, of which John Quincy Adams 
 first occupied the chair. It was of this identical picture, as I have 
 heard, that the senior Adams, when looking at his counterfeit, frankly 
 observed, i4 That fellow could never keep his mouth shut." 
 
 I ought not to omit mention of the portrait of General Washing 
 ton, in his Continental uniform, by Edward Savage, a painter little 
 known in this country. The picture possesses little merit beyond 
 that of being an undoubted likeness, as attested by John Adams ; 
 the artist had no genius for coloring, nor for those inspired touches 
 that put life into a face. This one is flabby, heavy, leaden. Another 
 portrait, of Lady Washington, by the same hand, with a head-dress 
 " fearfully and wonderfully made," hangs by the side of that of 
 the general. Savage was in this country about 1791. He also 
 painted General Knox, and engraved copies of this work on copper 
 plate. 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 99 
 
 After an hour agreeably passed, where every object recalled some 
 interesting event, I took a turn in the library, which is a separate 
 building of stone, erected by Mr. C. F. Adams for the reception 
 of his father s books and manuscripts. It contains a single spacious 
 and airy apartment, contiguous to the residence, and is as cheerful- 
 looking a workshop as any literary man could wish for. The shelves 
 are filled from floor to ceiling with valuable books and manuscripts. 
 Among these treasures are a number of bound folios containing 
 the voluminous correspondence of the elder Adams, which has, 
 in connection with his diary, formed the body for the elaborate 
 work of his grandson. The numerous autographs of most of the 
 distinguished public characters of his time, on both sides of the 
 water, give to these volumes a rare interest, as well as great 
 intrinsic worth. The private library of John Adams was given 
 to the town of Quincy, for the use of the Adams Academy, 
 which he founded by liberal donations of lands, on the condition 
 that the building should be erected of stone on the spot where 
 his friends Colonel Quincy and Josiah Quincy once resided, and 
 where John Hancock, the patriot, was born. This house was 
 built by John Hancock s father. The cellar could be seen until 
 the Academy was built. 
 
 The library is furnished with a long writing-table and a chair 
 or two, but no other furniture evidence that it was meant for 
 work. On entering, a kit-kat portrait of Mr. C. F. Adams is 
 the first thing that meets the eye. It is by Hunt, and no one 
 can fail to be struck by the marked resemblance between father 
 and son, as exhibited in their portraits, even if he had never 
 seen the originals. I must content myself with the briefest 
 notice of this favorite haunt of the statesman and man of letters. 
 To one who delights in rambles among old books, this storehouse 
 of so many busy brains, with its inviting coolness and seclusion, 
 would prove an irresistible temptation to linger. 
 
 Mr. C. F. Adams pen was a truly busy one. Besides the 
 
100 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 letters of his grandmother, one of the most charming characters 
 of her time, he has edited the " Life and Letters" of his grand 
 father, in ten thick volumes, and also the life of his father, J. O. 
 Adams, in itself a formidable undertaking, as the author was 
 most thorough and exhaustive in his work. I do not undertake 
 
 o 
 
 to speak of Mr. Adams diplomatic services abroad during a 
 great national crisis. It is enough to say that the regret which 
 too often forces itself upon Americans that we have no trained 
 diplomats, such as are turned out from the British Foreign Office, 
 and are therefore forced to call untried men to posts of infinite 
 responsibility, was changed to one of unqualified pride and admira 
 tion, that the nation had found in Mr. Adams a diplomatist of the 
 first rank. In this connection it is instructive to take a leaf from 
 his gifted father s diary, wherein he speaks his mind so freely in 
 regard to this son s want of application, and in which he so thinly 
 veils his own fears that the family traditions would not be kept up 
 through the next generation as to suggest that the old saw, "It is 
 a wise child who knows his own father," should be so transposed in 
 this case as to read, "It is a wise father who knows his own son." 
 But here is the extract in question. " Charles," he says, " has a 
 great fondness for books, and a meditative mind, but neither dis 
 position nor aptitude for public speaking or correct reading. Charles 
 must teach himself all that he learns. He will learn nothing 
 from others." His career has proved that he could hardly have 
 had a better teacher than himself. Yet we can well remember 
 when he was distinguished, by his political opponents, as "The 
 last of the Adamses." 
 
 When Mr. Adams found himself in London en route to Geneva, 
 he doubted if, under all the circumstances, an interview with his old 
 antagonist, Lord John Russell, would be desirable, though their rela 
 tions had always been friendly. The ex-premier, however, received 
 Mr. Adams with genuine British cordiality, and remarked to another 
 American, then in London, that, if the United States were wise, 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 
 
 they would keep Mr. Adams at St. James for life. Lord John 
 possessed the good old English trait of giving as well as of taking, 
 and his blows were invariably returned with interest by our repre 
 sentative. Mrs. Adams was a daughter of Peter C. Brooks, one 
 of the eminent merchants of old Boston. She died at Ouincy, 
 June 6, 1889. Edward Everett and Dr. Frothingham were also 
 sons-in-law of Mr. Brooks. 
 
 To return for a moment to the house itself; many distin 
 guished personages have been received in it. Lafayette, for in 
 stance, in 1825, found himself once more in presence of John Adams. 
 
 "That is not the John Adams I remember," said he, sadly 
 shaking his head as he left the mansion. 
 
 "That is not the Lafayette I knew," echoed the patriarch. 
 
 As both had grown old since last they met, it is no wonder that 
 each saw in the countenance of the other the ravages of time. Mr. 
 Monroe, during his tour of the Eastern States, paid a visit to Mr. 
 Adams, and passed a few hours in unconstrained chat with him, the 
 pair walking arm-in-arm about the grounds like any two staid old 
 gentlemen. Bernard, Duke of Saxe- Weimar, after his arrival in this 
 country, waited on the ex-President. Being accompanied by a 
 young naval officer named Van Tromp, a descendant perhaps of the 
 great Dutch admiral, when he was presented to Mr. Adams, the old 
 man of ninety swung his hat in the air and shouted, " Hurrah for 
 Van Tromp ! " On this occasion the talk was all of Holland. The 
 aged host recalled with undisguised pleasure the fact that he had 
 induced the States to declare for the alliance with America, and 
 that the English ambassador could not prevent it, notwithstanding 
 his intrigues. It was then, when England had haughtily demanded 
 satisfaction of the Dutch Republic, that the old Brummbar (the 
 King of Prussia) expressed great displeasure, saying: " Puisque les 
 Anglais veulent la guerre avec tout le monde, Us r auront" 
 
 The annals of the Adams family present some interesting coin 
 cidences. Father, son, and grandson have all been ministers at the 
 
O L ~R COL ONIAL HOMES 
 
 same court. Francis Dana, who was the first envoy of the United 
 States to St. Petersburg, accompanied the elder Adams to Paris 
 as secretary of legation in 17/9. It was at this time that Madame 
 de Vennmnes naively said to Mr. Adams, as he was taking her out 
 
 > J ^> 
 
 to dinner, " Ah, Monsieur, vous etcs Ic Washington dc negotiation" 
 John Ouincy Adams was also our ambassador to St. Petersburg 
 during the invasion by Napoleon. I have been tempted to con 
 trast the conduct of Russia under the Empress Catherine II., when 
 besought by England not to aid her rebellious subjects in America, 
 with that of the British ministry during the late civil war in this 
 country. 
 
 England endeavored by every means in her power to counteract 
 the growing predilection of the empress toward America. Sir James 
 Harris (Lord Malmesbury), then British minister to St. Petersburg, 
 says that England offered, in 1781, to cede Minorca to Russia if 
 that power would effect a peace between the former and France 
 and Spain ; no stipulation or agreement whatever to be made with 
 regard to his majesty s rebellious subjects in America, " who could 
 never be suffered to treat through the medium of a foreign power" 
 The negotiation was without success. The empress continued to 
 use her good offices in behalf of America, even hinting that Euro 
 pean peace might be had by England s renouncing the struggle 
 she \vas making with her colonies. In 1781, suspecting some ships 
 intended for privateers were building at Archangel, on American 
 account, the empress gave orders that they should be stopped. 
 She, however, exhibited an ill-concealed joy when the news of the 
 surrender of Cornwallis reached St. Petersburg. The British envoy 
 succeeded in preventing Mr. Dana s official recognition until after 
 the exchange of ratifications, although the empress had expressed a 
 willingness to grant him an audience on receiving the news of the 
 preliminaries of peace. 
 
 In 1825, John Ouincy Adams became President. Let us draw 
 aside the curtain, and for a moment look at the President as he 
 
THE ADAMS MANSION 103 
 
 appeared at his fortnightly receptions. The account from which 
 we quote goes on to say : " We passed through a large vestibule 
 or hall, and entered a circular room brilliantly lighted, where we 
 found Mr. Adams and his lady, to each of whom I was formally 
 introduced by my companion. Mr. Adams is a man of letters, a 
 fine scholar, and a good statesman. His stature, you observe, is low, 
 his head somewhat bald, and his eye watery, but full and pene 
 trating. He is reserved, but not repulsive, charitable, though for 
 mal, and possessing great warmth of feeling under an exterior of 
 apparent coldness. But, with your consent, we will take up a 
 position where we shall be more convenient to the ices, which, I 
 perceive, are just making their appearance." 
 
 John Ouincy Adams had been intimate with Burke, Fox, Sheri 
 dan, and Pitt. Like the elder Pitt, he died in harness. He was a 
 man of extraordinary physical and intellectual vigor. Even as an 
 octogenarian he was an early riser, taking long walks before other 
 people were astir. His studies for the day were usually finished 
 before he took his breakfast. He wrote and talked admirably. 
 When he was minister at Berlin he wrote the " Letters on Silesia," 
 published in London in 1804, from which Carlyle quotes in his 
 Frederick." The day before his last illness he composed a piece 
 of poetry to a young lady. His letters to his sister were models in 
 beauty of thought and expression ; and his conversation was fasci 
 nating and instructive to a degree which few men have equaled. 
 Born in the clay of colonial vassalage, he lived to see his country a 
 strong and prosperous republic. 
 
 When stricken down on the floor of the House, he had in his 
 hand the memorial of M. Vattemare relative to his collection. The 
 House was then considering a joint resolution of thanks to General 
 Twiggs and other officers of our army in Mexico. The members 
 arose in confusion, and Mr. Adams was carried into the Speaker s 
 room in a dying condition. This was on the 2ist of February, 1848. 
 The senate adjourned, on motion of Mr. Benton, as soon as the 
 
104 Oi R COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 news of Mr. Adams illness reached that chamber. Mr. Clay 
 entered the room where the dying man lay, and held his hand a 
 long- time without speaking, while the tears rolled down his rugged 
 face. All present were deeply affected at the scene. The Mexi 
 can treaty, but just arrived, was forgotten. On the 23d the " old 
 man eloquent" expired. Daniel Webster, then a senator, wrote 
 the inscription for his coffin ; and his remains were laid away with 
 those of his father and mother in a crypt built for the purpose 
 under the porch of the Adams Temple in Quincy. There they now 
 rest. 
 
THE OLD SHIP 105 
 
 THE OLD SHIP 
 
 HINGHAM, MASS. 
 
 HINGHAM, Massachusetts, is one of the prettiest towns on the 
 New-England coast. There was once a woman who wished that, 
 after death, she might go to Paris ; so the truly good Bostonian 
 would desire, no doubt, to go to Hingham. It lies in the hollow 
 arm of land that encloses within its circling sweep the waters of Bos 
 ton Bay. There is only a narrow strip of Weymouth to be crossed, 
 between it and Quincy, and all the way you are walking over his 
 toric ground. Then again, it is not more than a dozen miles from 
 the city across this bay sprinkled with islands ; or you may take the 
 rail and reach Hingham by a jaunt, a little extended as to distance, 
 but not longer as to time. The favorite conveyance, however, in 
 fine weather, is by the steamboat, when every hour you may see a 
 never-ending throng of pallid humanity hurrying from the hot and 
 dusty streets of the city, to breathe with delight the invigorating 
 breezes, cool and fresh, if we may be allowed the expression, from 
 the briny ocean. But whichever way you may have come, there is a 
 story everywhere. 
 
 Hingham is also one of those old towns with a history. You 
 cannot put your finger on the man who staked it out. There are 
 no great ruthless furrows of new streets everywhere ploughed 
 through it improvements I believe they call them. Wherever it 
 has been let alone it is beautiful ; where improved, unsightly. It 
 has a character not at all owing to handsome summer cottages or 
 sea-shore hotels. Cottages and hotels have simply availed them 
 selves of its natural attractions. An old Puritan town, with founda 
 tions resting on the graves of centuries that is the real Hingham! 
 
io6 
 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Well, it is the real Hingham that we are now seeking with all 
 
 our eyes. What is to be seen there besides its picturesque features 
 
 - its superb sea-views, its magnificent drives to Nantasket Beach 
 
 or over the Jerusalem Road ? We answer, come with us and see. 
 
 Placidly seated on the brow of the hill that finely overlooks the 
 harbor is Hingham s quaint old meeting-house precious heirloom 
 
 THE OLD SHIP. HINGHAM, MASS. 
 
 of the past ! which is certainly curious enough, inside and out, to 
 excite the unstinted wonder of a worshipper in modern temples. 
 In Hingham it holds the post of honor, both as respects its 
 situation, and as respects that faint little spark of sentiment which 
 we are doing our best to keep alive by such frequent use of the 
 bellows. It is going down the vale of years in a beautiful old age. 
 This building has now been standing two fully completed cen 
 turies. If, unfortunately, it should be destroyed to-morrow, we 
 
THE OLD SHIP 107 
 
 shall have lost the oldest church edifice of English handiwork 
 not a ruin in all the Union. How many useless regrets there 
 would be ! Where should we ever get another ? What a pity it 
 is that such monuments - - monuments of peace could not be 
 as indestructible as those at Saratoga or Bunker Hill monuments 
 of war ! Just look at it ! Nothing like it, I fancy, has ever come 
 across your puzzled vision before. Compare that short, sharp, 
 decisive-looking spire, springing up from that quaint little turret 
 above such a wilderness of sloping roof, with the tall steeples, 
 stately mediaeval architecture, and luxurious belongings of churches 
 of the same denomination of a more modern date. Perhaps when 
 this house was building, not a few of the frugal husbandmen or 
 fishermen, who then constituted the congregation, may have thought 
 it a most remarkable manifestation of human pride. Possibly they 
 came many miles to see it Perhaps, too, for they were rigid 
 economists, they grumbled not a little at the expense. It cost just 
 ^430 with the old meeting-house thrown in. Is it not an impres 
 sive example of what all these years have wrought in the outward 
 form of religious worship? From 1681 to 1893 i s certainly a 
 goodly vale of years for the imagination to bridge over. John 
 Milton had been dead only a few years, and James II. had not 
 ascended the throne of England, when this house was built. 
 
 o 
 
 Some aesthetic souls have fancied that the early Puritan meet 
 ing-houses, plain to homeliness as they were, must be the outward 
 expression of that morbid antipathy for the beautiful that formed 
 part of the Puritan s character. That he preferred to sit shivering 
 in an ill-built house, wearing out his bones on a hard bench, to 
 yielding to the allurements of Satan in the form of stone buttresses, 
 Gothic arches, or soft cushions as if, in short, mortification of the 
 flesh was all his creed. The true explanation, we think, is that he 
 built all he could pay for, and paid for all he built. The time had 
 not yet come when a big church debt should be considered a mark 
 of prosperity. Frugality, economy, were parts of every man s creed. 
 
108 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 But before he would have anything" else, he would have some place 
 to worship God in, be it ever so humble. And in all his poverty, 
 all his misery, the Puritan, who contributed his mite, was doubtless 
 consoled by the reflection that the Son of man was first wor 
 shipped while lying in a manger. 
 
 The undeniable feeling we have for such determined and 
 pathetic seeking after God, in the wilderness, could be no better 
 evinced than by the marked popularity of such admirable historical 
 paintings as Boughton s " Pilgrims Going" to Meeting." Even modern 
 scepticism is not proof against the simple fact that those people 
 believed in something ; believed so thoroughly as to be willing to 
 lay down their lives rather than be deprived of the blessed privi 
 lege of Sabbath worship. 
 
 We are forcibly reminded of all this by a reference to the 
 building of the first house of worship here, of which the one 
 before us is the successor. That first house was probably erected 
 very soon after the settlers arrived here, at what was then known as 
 Bear Cove, in 1635. Like this one, it had its belfry and its bell; 
 but, unlike this, it had to be surrounded by a stout palisade, which 
 shows us that under what difficulties soever the worship of God 
 might be conducted in those days, the Puritan would not be kept 
 away from ii. In the strictest sense of the word the Sabbath was his 
 holiday. This old house, of which unfortunately no picture is known 
 to exist, stood in the middle of what is now Main Street, opposite 
 to where the Derby Academy now stands. 
 
 We are told that some of the timbers of the first house were 
 used in constructing the new one. If that be the case, the later 
 
 o 
 
 house has the same sort of claim to be considered part and parcel 
 of the original structure as the present frigate Constitution, of 
 glorious memory, has of being worshipped as the original " Old 
 Ironsides" -she having been several times rebuilt. The Select 
 men were likewise directed to provide a new bell " as big again 
 as the old one, if it may be had." But the whole history is told 
 
THE OLD SHIP 109 
 
 in a brass tablet fixed to the meeting-house wall. We have copied 
 it for the reader : 
 
 "This church was gathered in 1635. The frame of this meeting 
 house was raised on the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, and twenty- 
 eighth days of July, 1681, and the house was completed and opened 
 for public worship on the eighth of January, 1681-2. It cost the 
 town ^"430 and the old house." 
 
 No, not all the history, else our self-imposed task were a vain 
 one. 
 
 In Hingham they often call this house "The Old Ship." Should 
 you be at a loss for the proper direction, ask the first youngster 
 you may meet for the Old Ship. In this local name, however, 
 there is no allusion to the old familiar metaphors so effectively 
 used in addressing a seafaring congregation ; though, as to that, 
 Hingham one day had both its fishery and its fleet. The 
 meeting-house belfry may then have been more or less resorted 
 to as an advantageous lookout ; or the comparison may have 
 been suggested by the way the interior is framed. I incline to 
 this latter opinion myself. However, I saw, on ascending to the 
 belfry, that they had painted the points of the compass on the 
 ceiling there, above the bell, as in a ship s binnacle. 
 
 Outwardly the Hingham meeting-house comes nearer to the 
 idea of Puritan architecture than the doctrines preached in it to 
 day clo to Puritan theology ; that follows because, ever since the 
 pastorate of the Rev. Ebenezer Gay, the church has practically 
 been Unitarian, though in his clay it was merely called liberal ; 
 
 but one can easily count over on one s finders the number of 
 j <^> 
 
 those old Congregational churches, which, through all the thick 
 
 o o o 
 
 and thin theological upheavals from that time to this, have held 
 fast to their ancient tenets. How those old divines, of the 
 Mather School, would have stared, to be sure, at seeing their 
 very pulpits become so many focal points for disseminating 
 what they would have thought the rankest heresy ! This Dr. 
 
HO OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Ebenezer Gay, by the by, who preached here for sixty-nine years 
 (1718-1787) has been called the forerunner of Charming. By 
 all accounts he was a large-minded, large-hearted man, a deep 
 thinker and an eloquent pulpit orator. John Adams, who was 
 a great admirer of Dr. Gay, and often went to hear him preach, 
 has left a record of who and what constituted this liberal wing 
 of the church unorthodox it was called so lonof a^o as 
 
 o o 
 
 1750, by which we infer and are surprised to find it so - 
 that the leaven was actively working at a period much earlier 
 than is generally supposed. Writing in 1815 he says: Sixty- 
 five years ago my own minister, Rev. Lemuel Bryant ; Dr. 
 Mayhew of the West Church in Boston ; Rev. Mr. Shute 
 of Hingham ; Rev. John Brown of Cohasset ; and perhaps equal 
 to all, if not above all, Rev. Mr. Gay of Hingham, were Uni 
 tarians." 
 
 It is a most noteworthy fact, that down to, and including, 
 the pastorate of the Rev. H. Price Collier, there had been but 
 eight ministers in a period of more than two hundred and fifty 
 years, settled here, in this house. 
 
 My curiosity was at length gratified by an inspection of the interior 
 of the meeting-house. It had but recently undergone sweeping alter 
 ations. Formerly the whole inside space from floor to belfry was 
 open ; but considerations of personal comfort at length induced the 
 construction of a ceiling, by which the view of the loft overhead was 
 shut out. They said it was not possible to heat the building properly 
 in the coldest weather when, for instance, the tone was taken out 
 of the bell by the intensity of the cold without doing this ; and 
 that brings to mind the fact that still earlier worshippers must have 
 sat there, year in, year out, in winter too, without fire. Stoves for 
 heating were unknown, and we come clown to a period compara 
 tively recent when the wealthier sort of people carried foot-stoves 
 to meeting. I admit that I should have liked the house better in 
 its primitive form ; for the massive white-oak roof-frame is by far 
 
THE OLD SHIP III 
 
 too unique a piece of joiner-work to be thus hicl away out of sight. 
 From all appearance it might have been, perhaps was, put together 
 by shipwrights instead of housewrights by men handier with the 
 broadaxe and adze than with the drawing-knife and plane. Be that 
 as it may, inside and out, old Hingham Church is a veritable archi 
 tectural treasure. When once he got thoroughly warmed up a not 
 inconsequent thing in cold weather how the preacher s voice must 
 have echoed up among those time-stained rafters ! and what a chill 
 its gloomy vastness must have sent to the very marrow of wonderincr 
 little boys as often as the minister s warning finger pointed that 
 way ! 
 
 There was a high, rich-looking pulpit, ascended at the left by 
 railed-in stairs, relieved by hanging draperies at the back, and sur 
 mounted by a sounding-board, a common enough adjunct of those 
 days, though now seldom seen in Protestant churches. It did, how 
 ever, give a decided look of completeness to the sacred desk. The 
 pews were of the old-fashioned, back-breaking sort, high and straight, 
 so that the sitter had to sit bolt upright during sermon-time, with 
 no prospect whatever of taking a stolen nap between whiles. All 
 the pews were topped by a tight ornamental rail, which gave the 
 interior a very pretty effect. These pews were being torn out, and 
 modern ones substituted, better adapted for repose. There was a 
 gallery, too, relieved by panels a whispering gallery, I dare say, if 
 the truth were known. In all respects it was a most brave old 
 house, where many pious souls had doubtless enjoyed the one great 
 consolation of their lives, and from which they went forth strength 
 ened and refreshed to the work of each returning week. 
 
 Who of us does not remember the throngs that once filled our 
 streets of a Sabbath morning, wending their way to meeting ? To 
 stay at home was an unpardonable offence, which carried with it a 
 strange sense of conscious guilt. And the queer-looking vehicles, too, 
 that erstwhile filled the sheds of country meeting-houses to overflow 
 ing, or stood hitched to the nearest trees ! Where are they now ? 
 
112 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 The thought tempts us to reproduce some lines of a lament for the 
 past, written by some disciple of Dr. Holmes : - 
 
 " We used the one-horse shay, we did, 
 
 And read our prayer-books some; 
 Our preachers talked of truth and grace, 
 Instead of tweedledum. 
 
 In time increase of population called for more room so loudly 
 that additions were twice made, once in 1729, once in 1755, by 
 building" on fourteen feet at each end. This enlarged the house to 
 its present dimensions of seventy-three feet by fifty-five feet. 
 
 It was not on account of its religious functions alone that this 
 was done ; but, as is well known, all the old houses of worship were 
 used for town-meetings, so making them serve in a double capacity, 
 both secular and religious. This will appear the less objectionable 
 to those who may think such use a desecration, if we remember 
 that there existed the strictest union between the two. Church and 
 State were, in fact, one under Puritan administration. The town 
 took care of the church as respects its material wants, and the 
 church of the town as respects its spiritual wants. They were, in 
 fact, but one body ; so that a town -meeting not unfrequently 
 resolved itself into a church-meeting, or vice versa. 
 
 Still, we may form some idea of what the interior looked like 
 when first built. There was a gallery running round on three sides 
 - nothing else to hide the roughly-hewn timbers of the frame from 
 view. Rough benches were placed on the floor of the house and in 
 the galleries. To these the congregation were assigned according 
 to age, sex, and condition, by a formal vote. For instance, we have 
 the assignment of " The foreseate for the men on the North side." 
 " In the second seate in the gallary at the west end more of ye 
 young men." " The second seate on the gallary at the East end of 
 the house for ye maids." The young of both sexes, we observe, 
 were kept as far apart as the points of the compass. 
 
THE OLD SHIP 113 
 
 Referring to these old church customs we find it was a universal 
 practice to seat males and females apart, and that married women 
 always occupied different seats from the unmarried. What, it may be 
 asked, would be the result of an attempt to separate the sexes to-day 
 in this arbitrary way in any but a Quaker meeting ? But we must 
 remember that whisperings, stolen glances, or meaning smiles were 
 held unseemly in a Puritan house of worship ; and that a culprit 
 detected in such out-of-place proceedings would have been swiftly 
 and sharply " admonished," as the saying went, before the whole 
 congregation by name. It has not been handed down, so far as 
 I have seen, whether the congregation, to a woman, then turned 
 round to look every late-comer out of countenance. 
 
 The deacons also occupied a seat by themselves, and the only pew 
 this house at one time boasted was reserved for the minister s use. 
 In fact, pews were not generally introduced much earlier than a 
 century ago. When a collection was taken up the whole congrega 
 tion rose and silently marched up past the deacons seat, each person 
 depositing his offering which was not unfrequently a paper prom 
 ise to pay in the bag or box held out in the deacons hands. 
 They then filed back to their own seats. In this way no one could 
 evade a contribution. It was something like the modern parish 
 priest, standing at the church door, box in hand, as the congregation 
 goes out. An amusing procession it must have seemed, as it passed 
 down the broad aisle, where all were obliged to duck their heads or 
 put aside with their hands the bell-rope, which hung down exactly in 
 the middle of the house. 
 
 When there were few hymn-books, a deacon would rise in his 
 seat, clear his throat, and read off very slowly the first line of the 
 selection ; and after this had been sung through by the congregation 
 he would repeat, or " line off," the next. This practice had one good 
 effect, at least : in time the people mostly knew the psalms and 
 hymns by heart. Devotional singing was much practised at home, 
 too, by the fireside ; in fact, sacred music was about all the young 
 
114 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 people knew or could hear sung ; so it was a part of the service 
 always greatly enjoyed by them. 
 
 After regular singers were employed in the churches, and this 
 custom only came in gradually with their growth in other respects, 
 a row, or rows, of seats were assigned to the singers, at or near 
 the front of the congregation. When they rose to sing they faced 
 each other; and there was sometimes a partition between them, on 
 which to lay their hymn and tune books. The leader often used a 
 pitch-pipe in giving out the pitch, after which came the preliminary 
 humming, or snuffling, from base to treble, through which final har 
 mony was secured. Awkward as it was, we fancy that even this 
 "tuning up" must have proved an acceptable relief to a two-hours 
 sermon. 
 
 The first and greatest innovation the old ways suffered was the 
 introduction of the bass-viol. It is impossible to describe the in 
 dignation with which some of the older church-members looked 
 upon its appearance among them. In their minds stringed instru 
 ments had been always associated with such profane amusements as 
 dancing, stage-shows, or bear-baiting, or with the bacchanalian rites 
 of heathen gods. No good could possibly come of it! In a neigh 
 boring town, at the first premonitory scrape, one old man rose up 
 and walked out, saying angrily that he " did not want to go to God s 
 house to hear a big fiddle." In fact, sacred music was then held in 
 as great reverence as any part of the devotional exercises of the 
 Sabbath so much so that if a psalm happened to be sung out-of- 
 doors the bystanders would remove their hats, and remain uncov 
 ered until the singing was ended. Psalms and hymns were not 
 then considered appropriate to such occasions of exuberant jollity as 
 sleigh-rides or hay-rides, or after-dinner sprees. What an old seven 
 teenth century Puritan would have said to a full orchestra crashing 
 out his favorite Hundredth Psalm appalls us to think of! 
 
 Upon the sacred desk, within easy reach of the preacher s right 
 hand, stood the hour-glass funereal symbol, not only of the sands 
 
THE OLD SHIP 115 
 
 of life run out, but sole indicator to the congregation of the lapse 
 of time. I need not suggest whether it was closely watched or not. 
 Although the minister, who every week stood before his people 
 endowed with a personal sanctity which our practical generation 
 does not allow to any one, who could make the most lawless village 
 ruffian cower and slink away by a look, who presided over a com 
 munity of church-goers, and who had a paternal care for everything 
 and every one in it, has passed away, we will not compare him with 
 his more fortunate brother, who has a snug balance at his banker s, 
 needs a year s vacation every now and then for his health or to 
 take a run through Palestine, and who has a rooted aversion to 
 parochial visits. All we know is that our Puritan ancestors, whose 
 numbers were few, and who struggled against every form of hard 
 ship, clung close to their God, as men are apt to do in seasons of 
 great trial, sorrow, or emergency. 
 
 General Benjamin Lincoln, of Revolutionary fame, once wor 
 shipped in this house, and in his declining years often dozed off in 
 sermon- time. Many of the family name still live in Hingham. 
 Behind the meeting-house is the old burial-ground, the invariable 
 adjunct to all our older houses of worship. In it are many curious 
 stones. In this consecrated ground reposes the dust of Governor 
 John Albion Andrew, a man who lived in a great epoch of our his 
 tory, in which he was pre-eminently fitted to stand among the fore 
 most, for he was a power among men. 
 
 In the commercial world towns are noted only for some leading 
 industry, as Lynn for its shoes, Danvers its leather, Westfield its 
 whips, and Hingham its wooden- ware. In the time of Governor 
 Andros, Hingham paid its taxes in milk-pails. This industry is 
 still profitably carried on there. There is one thing more : it is said 
 that Hingham is the only place in New England where the lovely 
 forget-me-not, the fleur-de-souvenance, can be found growing wild. 
 Her ancient, consecrated church, unique souvenir of the past, is 
 the standing injunction of older generations to " Forget Me Not." 
 
Il6 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Farewell, then, to the religious home of honest respectability 
 and simple faith. From foundation stone to vanishing spire it holds 
 for us the idea of a peculiar consecration. We could not calmly 
 look on and see this house turned into a theatre (we have such 
 instances in mind), or into a variety show, or a coal-shed. Ships 
 max* be but boards ; but we can never accustom ourselves to the 
 
 J 
 
 idea that churches embody no more that the Spirit our fathers so 
 often invoked does not abide within their walls. This is the very 
 place to take our spiritual reckoning. Even the hardest materialism 
 stands abashed before this precious link between the quick and the 
 dead of so many generations. Were it forever after to remain with 
 closed doors, it would still be worth its weight in gold for the 
 Christians it has turned out and the souls it has saved, and for that 
 other fact that we owe all we are to those principles of which it is 
 perhaps the best expression of all 
 
THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 
 
 THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 
 
 SALEM, MASS. 
 
 WHEN you go to Salem, as of course you mean to do some 
 time or other, by all means enter by the old Boston Road. At 
 your left is Witch Hill, highest of all the neighboring eminences, 
 looming darkly up at the town s edge, and quite well covered with 
 buildings, except on those faces where the hill rises so steeply up 
 as to forbid it ; for in truth Witch Hill is nothing but a crag, 
 isolated, forlorn, accursed. You are surprised at this. You would 
 have the place disinherited by nature and avoided by man. But 
 the fact remains that it is inhabited, and that, too, in spite of all its 
 horrible associations with the foulest crime that has ever stained 
 the good name of New England. 
 
 In a fit of ill-humor nature heaved this rock above the sur 
 rounding level as a thing predestined to a horrible notoriety among 
 the sons of men. It has its fatal history. If nothing happens that 
 is not foreordained, then this infamous rock also has its high, 
 inscrutable design. Meanwhile, I am fully persuaded that all Salem 
 would breathe freer if on some dark night, when all the Powers of 
 the Air were holding high carnival, 
 
 In thunder, lightning, or in rain," 
 
 the rock should be found to have sunk into the bowels of the earth. 
 Having heard that there was once an old house on the hill 
 which, according to tradition, had been built of timber originally 
 forming part of the first house of public worship in Salem, I looked 
 for, but could not find it. There was an odd suggestion in the fact, 
 if fact it be. In a Catholic country a memorial church, or expiatory 
 
Ii8 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 chapel at least, would have been erected on the spot forthwith, and 
 its lesson, such as it is, sent down to posterity along" with its pen 
 ance, more or less sincere. This is what I actually saw there. 
 
 So far as its general appearance goes, Witch Hill offers no 
 essential difference from the range of which it is a spur, the same 
 we see drawing away from the coast in a northerly direction, toward 
 the Merrimac, except that it is Witch Hill. There is, however, such 
 a weird, such a horrible fascination about the spot, from the moment 
 we identify it, that for the life of us we can see nothing else. 
 With this feeling uppermost in our minds the actual conditions, as 
 we find them, are singularly incongruous. We can think of it only 
 as a place accursed. Now, what do we see? On the summit there 
 is a tolerably level area of several acres ; the soil, however, being so 
 thin that Old Mother Earth s bare ribs show through the holes in 
 her scanty garment. Standing here, where the executions for witch 
 craft actually took place, we might expect a blight to have fallen 
 on the field of blood. Nevertheless, a hardy pioneer, whose house 
 stands on the topmost point of the hill, was, at the time of my 
 visit, gathering a crop of excellent turnips. It is needless to add 
 that the outlook, embracing as it does a varied landscape, is, or 
 rather would be, totally destructive of all such horrible imaginings 
 as the associations of the spot might seem to call up in us if only 
 one could get them out of one s mind. But we have come here 
 to " sup full of horrors," and we are not to be disappointed of our 
 expected feast. 
 
 Over against us is the brown old town, with its steeples thrust 
 heavenward much as the old divines would have pushed their way 
 into the celestial gates. Staid, thrifty, and a world to itself, Salem, 
 you would say, had mostly retired from active business, to live upon 
 the accumulations of the past. Here now runs a broad street, 
 shaded by fine trees, with substantial square mansions, not built 
 close together, but standing just far enough apart to allow a bit of 
 orchard or a pretty garden-spot to nestle among this wilderness of 
 
THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 119 
 
 houses. All our cities were once like that a streak of the country 
 and a streak of the town. Now one city is only distinguishable 
 from another by what nature has done for it, not man. Yonder, 
 again, the way follows along the inner sweep of the harbor, where 
 idle wharves and dismantled shipping tell their own story. All this 
 we can see from Witch Hill. The rest we can imagine. Taken 
 altogether, we think Salem bears a strong family likeness to New 
 port, of which a much puzzled and no less delighted traveller once 
 exclaimed: "Well, this is the only place I was ever in where they 
 build old houses!" Now, with back to the town, turn your looks 
 toward yonder hills, clothed, mayhap, in their rich autumnal tints, 
 crowding each other in a lawless fashion out of the direct road, 
 pushing this way and that way with lowered and shaggy fronts, like 
 a herd of monster bisons madly making off from advancing civiliza 
 tion. A few miles off among these hills nestles the identical little 
 village where, in 1692, the first act of the fearful tragedy began, 
 whose finale was enacted on the spot where we stand. The little 
 cloud, no bigger than a man s hand, which first rose above that 
 insignificant village, soon overspread all the land with desolation 
 and woe. We are thus following its loathsome track with all our 
 
 o 
 
 eyes. 
 
 Having taken in the physical bearings of this dreadful visitation, 
 so to speak, let us turn for a while to some of its moral manifesta 
 tions. 
 
 Reluctant witness that we are, the incisive question must at last 
 be met. But we could not forego it if we would, nor would we if we 
 could. Yet it needs the added evidence of locality to impress the 
 stern fact upon us. It is indispensable to say that " This is the very 
 spot where a score of men and women, as innocent as you or I, suf 
 fered death for an imaginary crime " - otherwise we might refuse 
 to believe the hideous story. 
 
 This hill-top of dismal memory must have presented a scene of 
 awful interest on that momentous July day in 1692. If we cannot 
 
120 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 recall it without a shudder now, what must it then have been for 
 those poor heart-broken ones who were being dragged to execution 
 here ! We see the scaffold erected out yonder. We see that the cart 
 containing the condemned, closely guarded, has traversed the route 
 between the prison and the foot of the hill, and is now toiling its slow 
 way to the top, followed by muttered execrations from those in whom 
 hate and fear struggle for mastery, and who have made a lane for the 
 victims to pass through ; but those who are about to die heed them 
 not, for their strained and haggard looks are fixed upon one single 
 object --the hangman s noose dangling there at the sport of the 
 breeze. Pale, wan, speechless, they seem to realize that their doom is 
 at hand. The sad procession has at length wound its way up the hill 
 side to the summit, and is now grouped around the central object, 
 grotesque yet horrible withal, and visible far and near. Here are the 
 dignified magistrates, the reverend elders too, come to deepen the 
 unspeakable agony and despair of the victims by exhorting them to 
 confess that of which they, with their dying breath, persist in declaring 
 their innocence. Whichever way they turn their entreating eyes they 
 meet only stern, implacable, or averted looks. Here, perhaps, stand 
 the nearest and dearest relatives of the doomed ones, racked with the 
 anguish they dare not show ; here the guards, with bent brows and 
 set looks, closing in around the victims a hedge of steel. The 
 supreme moment comes at last Now the sheriff stands forth. In a 
 voice he vainly tries to render firm he reads the warrant ; he then 
 replaces the paper in his belt. His last words die away in the hush of 
 intense, of awful expectation. Does he look around him, upon that 
 breathless multitude, as if conscious of a duty well performed, or is he 
 seeking support there for his faltering soul ? One by one the con 
 demned are assisted to alight. One by one they are pinioned and 
 blindfolded. Now the hangman conducts them to the foot of the 
 fatal ladder. The halter is put round their necks. A shudder runs 
 through the breathless throng. Short space is given for prayer ; 
 since, unless they confess, they are to be denied even the ministrations 
 
THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 12 1 
 
 of religion. Must they then die rejected both of God and men ? 
 Must they die as the fool dieth ? It is even so. Martyrs to truth, 
 there is no mercy here below ! Their crisped lips move : 
 
 " It is a witch s prayer, 
 And may Heaven read it backwards ! " 
 
 tears trickle down their cheeks, a great sob rises in their throats, one 
 horrid push, and all is over. Hanged until dead, dead, dead ! So 
 says the warrant. Judicial murder has been done, and the awed as 
 sembly silently separates. I do not think there ever have been more 
 heroic deaths. Something rises in our throat as we tell the tale. 
 
 Still another just such scene took place here in the following 
 September. On this clay, in particular, the Rev. Nicholas Noyes 
 appears to have revelled in the agonies of the condemned. Said 
 he, 
 
 " What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging 
 there ! " 
 
 One poor woman, whose last moments he imbittered by telling 
 her that she was a witch, and knew it, turned on him fiercely. 
 
 " You are a liar! " she retorted; " I m no more a witch than you 
 are a wizard ; and if you take away my life, God will give you blood 
 to drink ! " 
 
 The novelist, Hawthorne, has made an effective use of this retort 
 in his " House of the Seven Gables." 
 
 Enough, and more than enough, of Witch Hill. 
 
 Yet another visible memorial of these terrible events is the Old 
 Witch-House, so called, still standing at the corner of North and 
 Essex Streets, in Salem. It is much visited by the morbidly curious. 
 Originally its architecture was notably like that of many old houses 
 still to be seen in Southwark, and some other quarters of Old London, 
 some fifty years ago ; now, sad to say, very little of that original appear 
 ance is left. This is the more to be regretted, because we have not 
 one single specimen of the sort remaining. It was really very quaint 
 
122 
 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 and decidedly not unpicturesque, and the notion of anything pictu 
 resque associated with a Puritan home of the seventeenth century 
 will be new to most people. So much the more is the loss of the 
 evidence to be regretted. 
 
 \Ye are told, and believe, that this house was the dwelling of 
 Roger Williams in 1635-36, when he was preaching here in Salem; 
 
 THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE. 
 
 yet not even so interesting a circumstance as that can charm our 
 thoughts away from the greater attractions derived from traditional 
 association with the Imp of Darkness, 
 
 Here s metal more attractive." 
 
 What the house was like when honest Roger Williams said grace 
 and broke bread in it is not so clearly made out ; since the wants 
 of later proprietors, or its own increasing decrepitude, have at dif 
 ferent periods turned its exterior into a gaunt and wholly unat- 
 
THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 123 
 
 tractive structure ; so that, taking it as we find it, and not as our 
 imagination has pictured it, we have to admit that it is wholly 
 dependent on its ancient associations for being the one peculiar 
 point of attraction to which the stranger s footsteps naturally tend. 
 This, it must be confessed, is disappointing. However, from the 
 recessed area at the back we get a glimpse of its irregular outlines, 
 narrow casements, and excrescent stairways, thus turning the tables, 
 as it were, on the iconoclasts. Wholesale alterations were necessary 
 so long ago as 167475, when this house became the property of 
 Jonathan Corwin, of witchcraft notoriety. The old chimney-stack 
 was pulled down and a new one built. In 1746, and again about 
 1772, it underwent other repairs, which left it much as it now 
 appears. 
 
 Prior to the second series of repairs the house was remarkable 
 for its peaked gables topped out with pineapples carved in wood, 
 its successive overhanging stories giving the idea of a smaller struc 
 ture upon which larger ones had been superposed without regard to 
 the unity of the whole, or the evident appearance which the lower 
 and lesser segment had of being crushed beneath the weight it was 
 compelled to bear up. Narrow lattices, formed of little lozenge- 
 shaped panes set in leaden sashes, comported well with the antique 
 ensemble, until, in an evil hour, the proprietor substituted modern 
 windows, which, in their turn, also became too small. In short, we 
 have here the stage arranged for two centuries ago, the action to 
 be whatever your imagination is capable of. 
 
 The interior of the older part is supported by a massive oaken 
 frame, rudely shaped with the adze, and standing out from the walls 
 
 and ceiling like the ribs of a vessel. The interstices of the western 
 & 
 
 wall are filled with brick, plastered with clay mortar, in the homely 
 phrase of that day called " daub." Somewhere in the manuscript 
 chaos I have met with this item : " Paid ten shillings for daubing 
 the meeting-house." To-day that expression would have a quite 
 different meaning. The occupant told me that, in winter, the older 
 
124 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 rooms are scarcely habitable, as the wind searched out every crack 
 and crevice where this primitive plaster has crumbled away. 
 
 Jonathan Corwin, or Curwen as the name was often spelled, 
 was made a councillor under the new charter granted by King Wil 
 liam, in 1692, to Massachusetts. The charter conferred the powers 
 of civil government, but, for the first time, separated the legislative 
 from the judicial authority. Corwin was one of the justices who 
 issued the warrants, and before whom the preliminary examinations 
 were held, both at Salem Village and in Salem Town. Family tradi 
 tion assigns the south-east lower room in Corwin s house as the 
 scene of some of these proceedings. 
 
 A sample of one of these examinations will best serve to show 
 how they were conducted : not upon the broad legal principle of 
 presuming the prisoner innocent until proved guilty, but upon that 
 of guilt presumed ; and how every art was used to entrap the 
 accused person into making some damaging disclosure. In this 
 case the prisoner, Susanna Martin, was said to have struck down 
 the afflicted people at her feet by merely casting her eye upon 
 them, in the magistrate s presence ; so he asks her : 
 
 "Pray, what hurts these people?" 
 
 " I don t know." 
 
 "But what do you think ails them?" 
 
 " I don t desire to spend my judgment upon it. " 
 
 "Don t you think they are bewitched?" 
 
 " No ; I do not think they are." 
 
 "Tell us your thoughts about them, then." 
 
 "No: my thoughts are my own when they are in; but when 
 they are out, they are another s. Their Master" 
 
 Magistrate interrupting, "Their Master? Who do you think is 
 their master ? " 
 
 "If they be dealing in the Black Art, you may know as well as I." 
 
 " Well, what have you done towards this ? " 
 
 " Nothing at all." 
 
THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 125 
 
 "Why, tis you, or your appearance." 
 
 " I cannot help it." 
 
 "Is it not your Master? How comes your appearance to hurt 
 these ? " 
 
 "How do I know? He that appeared in the shape of Samuel, 
 a glorified saint, may appear in any one s shape." 
 * This woman was handed. 
 
 o 
 
 In its every phase this incredible frenzy simply amazes and con 
 founds us. It unsettles our philosophy. In the first place, the 
 belief in witchcraft, as well by the rich and intelligent as by the 
 poor and ignorant, is a hideous fact. It will not down at our bid 
 ding. The whole Christian world believed it. Then, again, our 
 horror at these iniquitous proceedings is greatly enhanced at the 
 accusation by mere children of grown-up men and women, children 
 sometimes even accusing their own parents. But it culminates at 
 the confessions of guilt, torn from them probably by abject fear of 
 death, made by persons lying under accusation, that they were actu 
 ally witches, had rode to witch meetings on a pole, had written 
 their names in Satan s book, had pinched, bitten, or tormented this 
 or that object of their diabolical malevolence, and so by this most 
 horrible perjury had furnished the one damning proof that was 
 before lacking ; namely, actual knowledge of, and participation in, 
 witchcraft. 
 
 Of this repulsive chapter of history one disquieting reflection 
 must always remain. It is this : Even the court which condemned 
 the unfortunate suspects had no legal existence whatever. The Prov 
 ince charter did not empower the governor to appoint such a court 
 as was constituted by him to try the witchcraft cases ; so that twenty 
 persons were executed, an unknown number died in prison, and 
 hundreds languished there for an imaginary crime, at the instance 
 of an illegal tribunal. 
 
 It may be necessary to remind the reader that this outbreak at 
 Salem was not a solitary instance of superstition run mad. The 
 
126 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 first execution for witchcraft in Massachusetts was that of Margaret 
 Jones, in 1648. This woman s case I have found commented 
 upon in a rare little treatise by Rev. John Hale of Beverly, printed 
 in Boston in 1702, and written in justification of the acts of 1692, 
 in which he bore a quite prominent part. Hale says that he visited 
 Margaret Jones on the day of her execution, in company with some 
 of her neighbors, who took great pains to bring her to confession ; 
 but notwithstanding all their importunities the poor creature con 
 stantly asserted her innocence. They then asked her if she had 
 not been guilty of stealing many years ago, which she admitted was 
 true, but very earnestly declared that she had long ago repented, 
 and believed Christ had pardoned her ; but, as for witchcraft, she 
 was wholly free from it. And so she died. Mrs. Jones was a phy 
 sician, and \vas charged with having a malignant touch. 
 
 What passes in our clay for jugglery, healing by clairvoyance, 
 or spiritualism, would have been a hanging affair in 1692. The 
 performances of the Davenport brothers were almost identical with 
 those of a bewitched person as related by Cotton Mather in that 
 remarkable book, " Wonders of the Invisible World." It is there 
 stated that durino; Martha Carrier s trial " one Susanna Sheldon, in 
 
 o 
 
 open court, had her hands unaccountably ty d together with a wheel- 
 band, so fast that without cutting it could not be loosed ; it was done 
 by a spectre ; and the sufferer affirmed it was the prisoner." 
 
 Are we really as little superstitious as we think we are ? Sev 
 eral cases of haunted houses have been seriously related in the 
 newspapers within a twelvemonth. In the more sparsely settled 
 country villages the reign of popular superstition is by no means 
 ended. On the seacoast much ancient folk-lore remains firmly 
 rooted. Most great men have been superstitious. Passing by King 
 James I., Dr. Johnson was a thoroughgoing believer. Napoleon had 
 his warnings. Marie Antoinette declared that at her wedding she 
 had a presentiment that she was signing her death-warrant, and would 
 have drawn back if her pride had not prevented it. Walter Scott 
 
THE OLD WITCH-HOUSE 127 
 
 believed in second-sight ; so did Johnson. Rousseau tried whether 
 he would be damned or not by aiming at a tree with a stone. 
 Goethe trusted to the chance of a knife s striking the water to know 
 whether some undertaking was going to succeed. Swift placed the 
 success of his life on the chance of landing a trout he had hooked. 
 
 o 
 
 Monk Lewis had his premonitions. Lord Byron had also so firm 
 a belief in unlucky days that he once refused to be introduced to a 
 lady because it was Friday ; and he would never pay visits on this 
 ill-omened day. But why extend the catalogue ? 
 
 A delegation of Zuni Indians, while visiting this city some years 
 ago, told the people of Salem that they did perfectly right in hang 
 ing up the witches. It was one relic of barbarism recognizing 
 another. 
 
I2 g OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE COLLINS HOUSE 
 
 DANVERS, MASS. 
 
 ONE bright October morning the railway train set me down at 
 the station in Peabody, Mass. The air was crisp, bracing, delicious. 
 In the sky there was the faintest blush of crimson lingering 
 
 Like pale rose-chaplets, or like sapphire mist." 
 
 With a pair of good feet which have seldom failed me, and a stout 
 hickory stick for a companion, I could well afford to take pity on 
 those good folk who either drove, or were driven away, in their car 
 riages to the four points of the compass. At any rate, here I was in 
 Peabody, a place overflowing with memories of all sorts, as one 
 soon learns but does not so soon forget. 
 
 This most populous offshoot of the old town of Danvers is joined 
 on to Salem by a continuously built street, so that it is by no means 
 easy to discover when you have left the one and entered the other. 
 In this now bustling section the eminent banker and philanthropist, 
 George Peabody, was born. Since 1868 the town has taken his 
 name. 
 
 In taking a survey of the principal street, the eye quickly falls 
 on the monument, erected in 1835, in memory of the valiant min 
 ute men of Danvers, who fell, fighting for their country, on the 
 Day of Lexington. Near this monument formerly stood the old 
 hostelry known, from its sign, as the Bell Tavern. The honest 
 publican, being also a dealer in chocolate, affixed to his sign-post, 
 underneath the bell, a board inscribed with the couplet - 
 
 " Francis Symonds makes and sells 
 The best of chocolate, also shells. 5 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 129 
 
 Here also the patriot troops, on their way from Salem to Cam 
 bridge, in 1775, halted for refreshment. In the absence of an 
 organized commissariat, the commanding officers were, in those 
 days, usually authorized by the selectmen of the towns to which 
 they belonged to refresh their men at the inns along their route. 
 On one occasion, when there was not time to call the selectmen of 
 Salem together, Timothy Pickering made himself personally respon 
 sible for the refreshment of a large detachment, marching to join 
 the Provincials. The "Bell" was also for some time the residence 
 of Elizabeth Whitman, whose singular story, under the fictitious 
 name of Eliza Wharton, excited the sensibilities of thousands a 
 generation or two ago. In this house she died ; and such was the 
 morbid desire to obtain some memento of her, that the very stones 
 erected over her grave were near being carried away piecemeal. 
 
 Leather, and the products of leather, are the principal industries 
 here. A standing toast of the local Crispins was to this effect : 
 " Danvers may she have all the women in the country to shoe, 
 and the men to boot ! " 
 
 Every New England town has its library ; and that of Peabody, 
 enriched by the sagacious munificence of her distinguished son, is 
 more than usually attractive. As in duty bound, I visited the Insti 
 tute he founded, not so much, I must confess, to look at the books, 
 as to see the portrait presented to Mr. Peabody by Queen Victoria. 
 
 This portrait is an oval, beautifully painted on enamel by Tilt, 
 and is encircled with golden emblems, the crown above, the Queen s 
 cipher below. The artist s pencil has not kept pace, though, with 
 the waxing years of his subject (if a queen can be a subject), who 
 might have sat for this picture twenty years earlier. But then they 
 say that women and pictures should never be dated. It is, how 
 ever, in all respects a most regal gift. The gold box given to Mr. 
 Peabody by the city of London, and the medal struck in his honor 
 by Congress, are also deposited here. These objects, being of great 
 intrinsic value, are- placed in a fire-proof vault, sunk in the wall, 
 
130 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 and covered with glass. It being a holiday when I was there, an 
 unbroken line of visitors constantly passed before the depository of 
 the portrait, until it appeared as if " the majesty or England" were 
 holding a royal levee in the midst of a republican commonwealth. 
 The simplicity of the queen s attire, there being no insignia other 
 than the ribbon and star, was an evident disappointment to many, 
 who clearly expected to see her decked out in full regalia; with a 
 golden crown upon her brows containing the " inestimable sapphire," 
 and a sceptre in her hand so unattractive is royalty when divested 
 of its trappings. 
 
 Greater honors were paid to the remains of George Peabody, 
 the banker philanthropist, than have ever, I think, been vouchsafed 
 to any American who has chanced to die within the dominions of 
 a foreign potentate. They now rest under a granite sarcophagus 
 in Harmony Grove Cemetery, the Mount Auburn of Salem. It was 
 homage well bestowed. This was a man not for a clay, but for all 
 time. 
 
 The house in which Nathaniel Bowditch lived with his mother, 
 when a child, is still standing in Peabody, near the road to Dan- 
 versport. From the windows of this house the future mathemati 
 cian obtained those glimpses of the new moon that filled his young 
 mind with admiration and awe. He was, however, not born in it, 
 but in Salem. 
 
 Following the same wide street out of the town, we shall pres 
 ently reach what is probably the most famous spot in Danvers, if 
 not in Essex County, and for a variety of reasons. It is here, at 
 the junction of the street leading from Danvers Centre with that 
 from Danvers Plain, that we encounter the mansion which forms 
 the subject of this paper. Here, now, is a house which I warrant 
 everybody must like, since it is one of the best specimens of later 
 colonial architecture in existence, besides being essentially different 
 from those we most readily call to mind. Indeed, it is such a 
 strikingly handsome old house that every passing stranger first asks 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 13! 
 
 whose it is, and then what it is. Let us try to give to both ques 
 tions their adequate response. 
 
 As to the first question, the mansion has been for many years 
 the property of Mr. Francis Peabody, who now lives in it, and who 
 has embellished the interior with rare taste. But the house was 
 already old and renowned, though somewhat fallen into neglect, 
 before he moved into it. To those who can remember it thirty or 
 
 THE COLLINS HOUSE, DANVERS. 
 
 forty years back the renovating hand is everywhere apparent. But 
 houses with a history are much better appreciated now than then. 
 It is scarcely thirty years since the Hancock House was demolished, 
 yet we feel great satisfaction in saying that such a piece of van 
 dalism would be impossible to-day. 
 
 As to what the house is, or why we attach so much importance 
 to its preservation, that is a question we shall crave the reader s 
 leave to answer at more length. 
 
 o 
 
132 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 In the first place, it is generally known as the Collins House, 
 from its having- been a long time owned and occupied by Judge 
 Benajah Collins, though it was not in his time that the mansion 
 acquired its title to lasting importance, or its distinctive character as 
 a public memorial. We shall, however, call it the Collins House 
 for the sake of ready identification. Names of least significance 
 frequently become fixed through long use, or until the one preg 
 nant with meaning has been forgotten. It is so in this case. 
 
 o o 
 
 The Collins House, then, stands on part of a tract of twenty 
 acres, formerly laid out to the old worthy Governor Endicott, who 
 was by no means averse to picking up eligible parcels of land here 
 and there ; but it is not of him that we wish to speak. 
 
 Its years seem to sit lightly on this venerable mansion, for to 
 all appearances it is still in a most excellent state of preservation. 
 Standing \vell back from the street, with tasteful and well-kept 
 orouncls between, it is seen to the best advantage ; and, as we have 
 
 c5 O 
 
 said, not only is it sure to attract notice, as being something very 
 different from the rank and file of old houses strewn at intervals 
 along this highway, but happily, also, it is not too much like the 
 still more frequent popular colonial reproductions of to-day. 
 
 This is the house built shortly before the Revolution by Robert 
 Hooper, a merchant of Marbleheacl, who was very rich, very loyal, 
 and, to say the least, very unfortunate. His wealth had so grown 
 with years of business prosperity that the common folk called him 
 King Hooper, partly because he lived " like an emperor in his ex 
 pense," partly because he was the acknowledged autocrat of his village. 
 
 As shown in our illustration, the mansion is of two stories, 
 surmounted by a gambrel roof, the predecessor, as we understand 
 it, of the picturesque, but now generally discarded mansard. This, 
 again, is relieved by an ornamental balustrade at the top. It is a 
 wooden house, with the front done in panelling so as to look like 
 stone, and painted a cool gray so as further to favor the deception. 
 Its having always been well kept up makes it look good for another 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 133 
 
 century at least. Alas ! houses outlast us poor mortals so long that 
 they almost seem rebuking our assumption of superiority as child 
 ish. It is like the discovery of some new planet the farther off 
 it is the smaller we seem. 
 
 Robert Hooper built this house in or about the year 1770. The 
 exact date is not definitely ascertained. From poverty he had 
 raised himself to affluence through trade. From small beo-innino-s 
 
 <-j <^y o 
 
 he had worked his way up until he had secured a monopoly of the 
 fishing business of Marblehead, which, before the Revolution, was 
 greater than that of any port in the colonies, St. John s, perhaps, 
 excepted. He bought up the cargoes of fish as the vessels came in, 
 and shipped them off to Mediterranean ports, where they brought 
 silver and gold, with which he bought goods in England suited for 
 the home market, on which there was another profit. In five years 
 his fortune had doubled ; in ten, trebled. Having solved the prob 
 lem of getting money, he now turned his attention to that other one 
 of how to spend it. He built a fine house at Marblehead ; he set 
 up a chariot. But Marblehead was not big enough for him in his 
 new estate ; so he came out to Danvers and built this delightful 
 country house, far from the cramped and crooked streets, the smell 
 of fish, and the sound of the archaic jargon of Marblehead. 
 
 Robert Hooper s social position seems to have been quite se 
 cure. Had his political position been equally so, there would have 
 been no story to tell. 
 
 Associated with this house is an incident showing clearly and 
 forcibly how the timid colonist of 1774 became the most obstinate 
 of rebels a little later. For a brief time, in fact, the house assumed 
 an official character. It was here that the new governor-general 
 of the Province first began to part with some of his illusions. Let 
 us briefly run over the situation. 
 
 Early in the year 1774 an Act of Parliament shut up the port 
 of Boston to commerce. It was a mean, a cowardly act thus to 
 visit on a whole people the offences of a few. It was meant as a 
 
134 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 punishment for the destruction of the tea by the Bostonians in the 
 preceding year, and was so understood. And it was expected to 
 bring them penitently to their knees. 
 
 This port-bill, as it was called, quickly received the royal assent. 
 The ministry tried to make it appear only as a local affair ; but 
 underneath were seen sticking out the horns and hoofs of the old 
 
 o 
 
 vexed question of taxation without representation, in which all the 
 colonies had an equally lively interest. However, George the Third s 
 German blood was up. There was to be no more trifling, he said. 
 Those rascally Bostonians should be chastised if it took every sol 
 dier in Great Britain to do it. Grass should grow in their streets ; 
 ships should rot at the wharves ; the rich be poor, and the poor 
 starve. Thus said the king. 
 
 Once embarked upon their crusade of vengeance, the purblind 
 ministry did not stop at trifles ; not they. They had the best will in 
 the world, the king was with them to the point of fanaticism, and they 
 had the votes. By another act, at a single stroke nearly every vestige 
 of popular sovereignty was shorn out of the charter granted by 
 their Majesties William and Mary ; by another the king s governor 
 was fully empowered to seize and send home to England for trial any 
 person whatsoever who should be indicted for a capital offence - 
 presumptive treason, of course, being the offence uppermost in the 
 minds of the supple framers of the bill. Troops were hurried off 
 to Boston. General Thomas Gage was appointed military governor 
 with extraordinary powers and equally great expectations. It was 
 evident that the British lion had been aroused at last. 
 
 When copies of the port-bill arrived here the measure everywhere 
 created a deep and, to discerning minds, most dangerous feeling. Men 
 now first hinted at open resistance. In Boston the bells were tolled. 
 In some places the act was reprinted upon paper surrounded by a 
 black border, as was usual upon occasions of public mourning ; and in 
 this form it was cried about the streets under the name of a " bar 
 barous, cruel, bloody, and inhuman murder." These terms strike us 
 
 x 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 135 
 
 at first sight as somewhat extravagant, but in reality they were hardly 
 too strong. Were it possible to conceive of such a thing as the 
 execution of a city, the figure would be quite justified by the fact; 
 since by giving its inhabitants the alternative of leaving or starv 
 ing the taking of the very bread out of their mouths being the 
 equivalent the same end would be reached as by shutting up a 
 prisoner in his cell without food. Apparently there were not half 
 enough adjectives in the language to express all the conflicting feel 
 ings to which this detestable port-bill had given birth. While the 
 Whigs cursed and swore vengeance, the Tories laughed in their 
 sleeves. Well may we judge, then, with what eyes the king s new 
 governor and the king s beef-eaters would be looked upon by an 
 angry, discontented, and high-spirited people, or whether, with bay 
 onets at their breasts, they would be found more tractable than 
 the wild bull that his keepers are pricking and goading to make him 
 show fight against his will. 
 
 Yet the most unaccountable infatuation ruled in England. Men 
 could get up in Parliament and say with cold assurance that there would 
 be no trouble ; that the more you wrung a Yankee s nose the more milk 
 would run out of it! Incredible folly, perpetuated even down to our 
 own times ! How this feeling had grown up I never could understand, 
 for there were men on that floor who had fought on the same fields 
 with the men whom they affected so much to despise ; yet there is 
 little reason to doubt its being the popular impression in England. 
 
 General Thomas Gage had received the King s express command 
 to hold the General Court of the Province at Salem instead of at 
 Boston, as the custom had been. Therefore, when the court convened 
 at Boston as usual, the governor promptly adjourned it to Salem. On 
 the ist of June, Boston was closed against the entry of all shipping. 
 Not even a fishing-smack could bring in fresh fish, or a bale of hay 
 cross Charlestown ferry. At twelve o clock the doors of the custom 
 house were locked for an indefinite period, and the sun of that event 
 ful day went clown in the shadow and gloom of impending revolution. 
 
136 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 It were easy to wax eloquent over the situation of a busy and 
 prosperous town thus suddenly thrown out of employment. We can 
 almost see the faces of the people : see how they looked under this 
 enforced and ruinous idleness ; how they scowled at the sound of the 
 drums in the streets ; and how they turned their backs on the unwel 
 come soldiery as they marched past ; how, again, each look and pres 
 sure of the hand came to have a peculiar meaning ; and how powder 
 and lead began to look up at the point where every useful thing was 
 a drug in the market. 
 
 There was one phase of this embargo worthy of being pondered 
 by its short-sighted projectors. The Bostonians now had nothing to 
 do except to brood over their wrongs, to nurse their wrath, and to 
 invoke vengeance upon their persecutors. To become conspirators 
 was only one step farther on. 
 
 Salem thus became by force of events the official capital and port 
 of entry for the Province. For a brief season it was also to be the 
 governor s official residence. As the time was drawing near when the 
 General Court should assemble, General Gage himself repaired to 
 Salem ; and at the invitation of Robert Hooper he took up his resi 
 dence in the elegant out-of-town mansion which still keeps the incident 
 alive. Here he could enjoy undisturbed the society of men of his 
 own way of thinking. This aristocratic seclusion suited him person 
 ally, and it suited his ideas of what was befitting in the representative 
 of his king. Here he could keep the populace at bay. 
 
 It now remained to be seen what the, men of Massachusetts would 
 do about it ; whether, in fact, they would maintain the bold stand they 
 had taken, or whether, as General Gage had told King George III. 
 when taking leave of him, that the Americans would be lions while 
 Englishmen were lambs, and lambs if they were lions. General Gage 
 had thus disposed of the whole American question with an epigram. 
 
 To their eternal honor the people of Salem sternly refused to 
 sacrifice principle to present advantage. They would not stoop so 
 low as to rise on the ruins of a commercial rival, whose greatest crime 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 137 
 
 was one with which they themselves were in hearty sympathy, and they 
 would not remain silent. Their loyalty to the common cause, expressed 
 with no uncertain voice under his very nose, both surprised and 
 disgusted the governor, who had confidently counted upon a very 
 different state of things. As in all the large towns, so here there were 
 Tories and placemen enough to form a little party of their own. These 
 were now swelling with importance and loyalty. Almost to a man 
 these partisans favored making an example of the ringleaders among 
 the patriots, and were teasing General Gage to begin ; but fortunately 
 for all concerned, Gage was one of the procrastinating sort. He was 
 a true Fabius, both in politics and in the field. 
 
 Thus the attempt to play off Salem against Boston ignomini- 
 ously failed. 
 
 Events hastened. On the appointed day the General Court met. 
 It was much like a kettle simmering on the fire. A little more fuel 
 would set it boiling. Three resolves were prepared in caucus, im 
 mediately brought in, and passed with closed doors before the Tories 
 knew what their opponents were about. Samuel Adams was the 
 prime mover in all this. One resolve appointed five delegates to 
 Philadelphia (a voluntary tax being laid to defray the expense) ; 
 a second looked to assisting the suffering people of Boston ; and 
 the third and last to cutting off all importations of British goods. 
 These measures were calculated to push things with a vengeance. 
 One leaky member, who managed to get out of the House upon 
 the plea of illness, straightway ran to inform the first royalist he 
 could meet with that the House was bent upon revolution, ruin, 
 and all besides. A messenger was instantly sent off to the gov 
 ernor at Danvers. He determined to dissolve the General Court 
 before it should do more mischief. To this end he drew up a hur 
 ried proclamation, with which he despatched his secretary in all 
 haste to the place where the Court was sitting; but when Mr. Sec 
 retary Flucker got there he found the cloor shut in his face. It is 
 said that Sam Adams had put the key in his own pocket. The 
 
138 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 secretary, therefore, was forced to go through the empty form of 
 reading the proclamation on the stairs, in the presence of what few 
 idlers had gathered about him at the prospect of seeing something 
 unusual going on. 
 
 When the Court had quite finished its business it adjourned 
 itself. This was the last General Court held under a royal gov 
 ernor in the old Bay Colony, and in some respects the most mo 
 mentous one in all her history. The standard of revolt was raised. 
 Obtuse as he was, General Gage s eyes were at last opened to the 
 fact that there were among the despised Yankees men of the very 
 first rank as respects political far-sightedness ; men, too, who having 
 once put their hand to the plough would never look back. Upon 
 this unwelcome fact he no doubt sat ruminating here, while the 
 members of the Great and General Court were quietly dispersing 
 to their homes with the satisfaction of a duty well performed, joined 
 to that of having circumvented the king s governor. 
 
 That these reflections were but ill calculated to soothe a troubled 
 spirit, or pour balm upon wounded vanity, must readily suggest 
 itself to any man s mind. The governor-general had come down 
 here to assert himself after the veni, vidi, vici fashion. It really 
 began to dawn upon him, obscurely, that perhaps it was the rebels 
 who had got in the last word. That he, a British general, should 
 ever be forced to measure himself with tinkers and tailors and can 
 dlestick-makers must have been gall and wormwood to him. Not 
 only had he been defied, he actually had been out-generalled by a 
 low tax collector, familiarly called Sam Adams. It was enough to 
 drive a wise man frantic. In my mind s eye I can see the governor 
 now walking up and clown that very orchard, with his head bent 
 down and his hands tightly clasped behind his back, like the little 
 Corsican at St. Helena. He is inwardly asking himself how he shall 
 ever tell the king that in his very first encounter with these base 
 churls he had come off second best. 
 
 The Great and General Court had sat but eleven days ; yet the 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 139 
 
 situation does not seem to have greatly improved with its disso 
 lution, because we find two companies of regulars ordered down to 
 Danvers a month later. That step indicates to our mind the steady 
 growth of a very alarming sentiment in that neighborhood. The 
 presence of so small a force was certainly less a menace than a pre 
 caution ; and we may fairly presume that the governor-general was 
 becoming somewhat uneasy on the score of his personal safety. Be 
 that as it may, the redcoats were marched into a large field over 
 against the mansion, since occupied by Tapley s brick-yards, and 
 there pitched their tents, kindled their camp-fires, and posted their 
 sentinels. 
 
 This was like adding fuel to the flame. We are told and believe 
 that, in general, these myrmidons of King George behaved in a 
 peaceable manner, though they were no true soldiers if they did 
 not make many a midnight assault on the orchards and hen-roosts 
 of the surrounding farms. A la guerre, comme a la guerre. Such, 
 in fact, is the tradition. But the knowledge that they were there 
 to overawe the people could not fail sooner or later to produce its 
 legitimate results. To the townsmen a redcoat was now become 
 the badge of servitude and oppression, and these headquarters the 
 hated seat of a despotic ruler. 
 
 Indeed, the signs grew so alarming that General Gage shortly 
 ordered up more troops to Salem. It was in vain that this or that 
 pretext was alleged for their presence. The torrent of public indig 
 nation could not be stemmed, or a collision much longer averted. 
 Very soon it broke forth in a way to bring matters to a crisis. 
 
 In New England every community was and is a little republic. 
 Ever since the first formation of civil government the people had 
 been accustomed to come together in town meeting, there to dis 
 cuss all matters pertaining to the public weal. It was not only a 
 custom sanctioned by long usage, but it was considered their birth 
 right. All this had now been swept away by an Act of Parliament, 
 and in its stead was substituted the will of a military ruler. Per- 
 
140 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 haps no one step taken by the ministry came so near home to the 
 people as this. It was putting a muzzle upon free speech, a shackle 
 upon unity of action, a collar upon a whole people. If the town- 
 meeting" could be suppressed, then the rising spirit of liberty would 
 be struck down in its citadel and stronghold. 
 
 In disregard of this monstrous edict, the merchants, freeholders, 
 and other inhabitants of Salem, were summoned to meet together for 
 the purpose of considering what measures should be taken in oppo 
 sition to the late Acts of Parliament. The governor instantly issued 
 his proclamation forbidding the assembly. No attention being paid 
 to the proclamation, a company of soldiers were ordered into town 
 to disperse the meeting ; but before they could march to the place 
 where it \vas being held, the business for which it had been called 
 was finished, and the people had quietly dispersed. Two or three 
 arrests, however, were made. 
 
 So far cooler counsels had prevailed. From this moment, how 
 ever, the feelings of pent-up exasperation broke through all restraint. 
 General Gage s house of cards was toppling over ; the General Court 
 had defied him ; the people of Salem spit upon his edicts. His 
 wavering policy disconcerted the bolder Tories and correspondingly 
 emboldened the patriots. Threats and counter-threats buzzed about 
 in the air, were tossed to and fro, and hourly familiarized soldiers 
 and people with the idea that these mutual defiances were only the 
 ominous forerunners of more deadly messengers. Each watched the 
 other closely. Guards were doubled. Upon some sudden rumor 
 the whole encampment was kept under arms all night. Gage him 
 self received a warning of sinister import. One night the inmates 
 of the mansion heard a shot outside. At the same instant a bullet 
 came crashing through the front door was it mere reckless levity? 
 Was it attempted assassination ? 
 
 No one has ever accused Thomas Gage of being a physical 
 coward. But if the crisis was become alarming here, it was tenfold 
 more so in that hotbed of rebellion Boston. Boston was assert- 
 
THE COLLINS HOUSE 141 
 
 ing- her claim still to be the capital of the province, by showing 
 herself to be the most seditious spot of ground in it. Gage had 
 gayly promised to give them toast for their tea. They were now 
 making faces at him and his soldiers at every street corner. With 
 drawn curtains, in old lofts, in cobwebbed garrets, men and boys 
 were running bullets, cleaning up old muskets, making cartridges, 
 scraping powder-horns, sharpening swords ; in grimy cellars, dark 
 ened back rooms, and shady passageways they were dropping in 
 one by one with a silent grip or whispered password. This was 
 what had taken the place of the town-meeting. 
 
 But General Gage had also received peremptory notice to quit 
 Salem. The women of Marblehead had promised to come over and 
 knock his soldiers on the head with their ladles. We are told by 
 Gordon, the historian, that his own personal safety would have been 
 endangered had not the prompt exertions of Dr. Samuel Holten, of 
 Danvers, himself an undoubted Whig, served to keep in check the 
 exasperation of his neighbors. Only a few days after the affair of 
 the town-meeting General Gage took his departure from the Hooper 
 mansion a wiser, if not a happier, man than when he had entered 
 it with the self-conscious remark that, " We shall soon quell all 
 these feelings, and govern all this," giving a comprehensive sweep 
 of his arm, so as to take in all the glorious prospect visible from 
 this inviting spot. Self-deluded general that he was ! in more quiet 
 times he would have made himself a general favorite, since there 
 was nothing of the military despot in his make-up, but to come 
 among an angry and excitable people, tendering the olive-branch on 
 the point of a bayonet, showed that he, too, was the easy dupe of 
 his own false judgment of the Americans, like his royal master. 
 
 On the loth of September the detachment of royal troops, till 
 then stationed at Salem Neck, broke up their camp, and took up 
 the line of march for Boston. Their passage through the town was 
 watched in angry silence. At Danvers the two companies of the 
 64th, which had been acting as the governor s guard, fell in behind 
 
H 2 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 them, and all turned their backs upon patriotic Danvers with as 
 hearty good-will as that with which the inhabitants saw them depart. 
 Many a hot-blooded youth bitterly regretted that he could not have 
 had a parting shot at them. But the wish was only premature ; for 
 within a few short months these same despised countrymen were 
 fighting with these same soldiers face to face on the Lexington 
 road, regardless of death or wounds. How they acquitted them 
 selves there the monument erected to their memory at Danvers 
 bears witness to this clay. 
 
 It was neatly said of George the Third, that instead of goading 
 his American subjects into rebellion, he would have shown greater 
 wisdom by removing his court, family, and government to this side 
 of the ocean, thus leaving Great Britain, as the lesser country, to 
 shift for herself as a colony. 
 
 It is easily seen how the distinction of having entertained the 
 king s governor became for Robert Hooper anything but a source 
 of pleasure after the fighting began. Even a public recantation of 
 his Toryism could not restore his credit with the indignant people, 
 if it could save his property from confiscation. His business was 
 ruined ; his fortune seems to have melted away, no one knows how ; 
 and in the end he died a poor man, after having disposed of his 
 delightful home, and left the scene of his reverses forever. After 
 the decease of Judge Collins the mansion was for some time owned 
 and occupied by the Rev. P. S. Ten Broeck, grandson of the dis 
 tinguished ^Revolutionary general of the same name, who kept a 
 school for young ladies there. As an aid to education, it is a whole 
 corps of teachers in itself. 
 
BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 143 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 
 
 DANVERS, MASS. 
 
 IN Danvers you will often meet with the nanje of Putnam. 
 From Danvers it has spread to every quarter of the Union, to be 
 everywhere respected, honored, distinguished in every walk and 
 calling- of life. From Danvers started the first wagon train for 
 Marietta, O., founded by a Putnam. He was but following in 
 the footsteps of an ancestor of his who was one of the founders of 
 Danvers. 
 
 This was John Putnam, to whom one of the earliest grants was 
 made. In rather more than two hundred years some three thou 
 sand five hundred descendants could trace their pedigree back to 
 this John. 
 
 The homestead of the first Putnam has become widely known 
 of late years as Oak Knoll, the preferred residence of the lamented 
 poet Whittier, who himself pointed out to me John Putnam s grave. 
 John had a son Thomas, whose son Joseph was the father of Gen 
 eral Israel Putnam of the Revolution. 
 
 We are now in the Old Witch neighborhood, the scene of our 
 " Reign of Terror" in 1692. 
 
 It is indeed a quiet little neighborhood to have made such a 
 noise in the world. Never have I fallen among such a nest of old 
 houses of the earliest types. How sombre they look, after all 
 these years ! and how conscious they seem of the secrets lurking in 
 every nook and corner of their old gray walls ! We must really halt 
 here a while, for this is one of those spots that the sentimental 
 traveller can ill afford to pass heedlessly by. 
 
1 44 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 The old-travelled highway takes its course through the village, 
 furnishing its single street, and then, stretching away toward 
 Andover, disappears among the hills. Tis there our way lies. 
 Through this artery the infection spread unchecked, until, as we 
 have read, there were forty men of Andover who could raise the 
 devil as well as any astrologer. Though this is by no means a lost 
 art in some households, it is not now attended with all those pains 
 and penalties which made it so desperate an undertaking in that 
 day. In ours the name of the Evil One is no longer used to 
 frighten unruly children, or his personality clothed with horns, tail, 
 and cloven feet. Notre diablc est toujours a la mode. 
 
 Step by step we pass from scene to scene. The present meet 
 ing-house stands quite near the site of the tunnel-roofed structure 
 of 1692, with belfry and all, much like the Old Ship at Hingham. 
 When the sexton tolled the bell he had to take his stand in the 
 middle of the broad aisle. In 1692 that bell often gave out its 
 sound of fearful import. It was in that house that the Rev. Samuel 
 Parris preached at the time of the witchcraft outbreak, which, strange 
 to say, began in his own family and under his own roof. 
 
 In that old meeting-house, and at Deacon Ingersoll s hard by, 
 the first examinations were held. A little farther on we come to 
 the ground where the old parsonage with the lean-to chamber, in 
 which some of these wicked incantations were first tried, stood so 
 long ago. Some traces of the cellar could still be seen ; and we 
 were told that some relics of the house itself were used in the barn 
 and outbuildings of the Wadsworth House, which was built in 1785, 
 the year that the old parsonage was torn down. In Parris s house, 
 then called the Ministry House, the circle of young people met 
 whose horrible denunciations presently worked such incalculable mis 
 chiefs far and near. Strange, that after such a lapse of time we 
 should still feel such an absorbing interest in every stick and stone 
 in any way associated with this worst of calamities ! We are drawn 
 to it in spite of ourselves, and we turn away as from a plague-spot. 
 
BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 145 
 
 But before we go let us take a last look around. Here were 
 the homes of those " possessed damosels," as the infatuated insti 
 gators were called, and of the self-deluded or self-exalted dealers in 
 sorcery : of Ann Putnam, for instance, a child only twelve years old, 
 whose testimony sent so many to the scaffold ; of Rebecca Nurse, 
 seventy-one years old and one of the salt of the earth, whom even 
 the stern-browed jury could not find it in their hearts to condemn, 
 and so pronounced her " not guilty," but whom the implacable 
 judge, after administering a stern reproof to them, finally sent to 
 her doom. At the Farms lived Giles Corey, that man of iron who, 
 knowing full well the fate in store for him, stubbornly refused to 
 plead, and under the old English law was condemned to the " peine 
 forte et dure," by being crushed to death under heavy weights. 
 This is not tradition, but actual fact. Cotton Mather himself con 
 firms it. Calef, too, asserts that the barbarous sentence was car 
 ried out, and that as the wretched victim s body yielded to the 
 increasing pressure, his tongue protruded, and was thrust back 
 into his mouth with a cane. Poor old Corey was then over eighty 
 years old. The old ballad makes the sufferer cry out in his agony, 
 
 " More weight ! now said this wretched man ; 
 
 More weight ! again he cryed ; 
 And he did no confession make 
 But wickedly he dyed/ 
 
 Except the sunken cavity in the turf, the Witch-Ground now shows 
 no evidence of former habitation. Garden and orchard have entirely 
 disappeared. In a corner, however, I found growing a bank of aro 
 matic thyme, half covered with dead leaves. Tis best so. The dead 
 leaves rustled mournfully as I turned away 
 
 " Out, damned spot out, I say." 
 
 A mile beyond we ought to halt at the house in which Israel 
 Putnam was born. 
 
146 
 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 It stands at the junction of the Newburyport turnpike with the 
 road from Salem to Andover, and is about six miles distant from 
 the former and ten from the latter town. 
 
 So slight is the attachment for locality in a country where there 
 is no hereditary descent, and in which our ambitious youth seem fully 
 to have imbibed the idea expressed by Stephen A. Douglas when he 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM, DANVERS. 
 
 said, in effect, that Vermont was a good State to be born in provided 
 you left it early enough, that it is not common to find homes which 
 have been continuously occupied by five generations of the same 
 family. I was therefore most agreeably surprised to find the old 
 homestead still in the possession of the Putnams. It is formed of 
 two structures, belonging to very different periods, the more modern 
 part having been built as late as the year 1744, while the original 
 house is supposed to date as far back as 1650. 
 
BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 147 
 
 In all probability, when sturdy Thomas Putnam hewed out the 
 rough timbers we still see in that house, the whole region roundabout 
 was covered with a shaggy forest. To-day the house is perhaps the 
 sole remnant of that forest. But what an appalling, what a herculean 
 task lay before the stout yeoman when he first looked around him, 
 axe in hand ! How slow and painful the steps by which a little plant 
 ing ground was at length cleared ! To our way of thinking, the great 
 labor involved in making the first clearing in felling trees, burning 
 brushwood, picking up stones, and the like quite explains the small 
 dimensions of the house. What could wait must wait. So there was 
 just room enough and no more. 
 
 The next generation could take things in a more leisurely way, yet 
 the work went on after the same vigorous fashion. What Thomas 
 Putnam had left in the rough his sons, set themselves to smoothing 
 over. Thomas had raised his crops of corn and beans among the thick 
 set stumps, charred logs, and big bowlders of his unsightly clearing. 
 It took nearly a generation before the monster old stumps could be 
 drawn out with the help of a yoke of oxen, and dragged away to the 
 spot where new walls or fences were to be built. -Thomas s stone 
 heaps and bowlders were to be served in the same way. From sun up 
 to sun down, with axe, pick, and bar, Joseph Putnam and his boys kept 
 busy the echoes of this securely hidden nook in one ceaseless combat 
 with the obdurate soil, which only yielded its harvest inch by inch. 
 This was the sort of school in which the boy Israel Putnam was born 
 and brought up, and it goes very far toward explaining that marvellous 
 physical activity and power of endurance for which he was as remark 
 able at the age of sixty as other men are at forty. 
 
 Before Israel Putnam was born as many as twelve separate families 
 of Putnams had settled in this vicinity ; so that in due time it came to 
 be known as the Putnam neighborhood, of which the present Putnam- 
 ville is the far-fetched reminder. 
 
 It is, even now, a most sequestered neighborhood. The ancient 
 house nestles down in a hollow amonq- the Essex hills, with nothing 
 
148 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 to break in upon the quiet which inlolcls the place except the occa 
 sional and discordant shriek of a locomotive as it goes rumbling 
 along its iron pathway near by. Formerly a little brook, in which 
 the boy Putnam may often have angled bareheaded and barefooted, 
 trickled noiselessly along through the neighboring thickets ; but the 
 building of the railway has since turned that into another channel. 
 A willow of enormous girth, its trunk seamed and disfigured by 
 deep cavities, like some faithful retainer stricken with age and in 
 firmities, stands sentinel before the door. Notwithstanding the long 
 wrenching of the elements, the tree was still in a " green old age," 
 and for every limb reft away had put forth a dozen new shoots in 
 its stead. Half a mile nearer Salem, there is a quaint old house in 
 which a brother of the general lived. General Rufus Putnam, a valu 
 able engineer officer of the Revolution, and one of the pioneers of Ohio, 
 lived at Sutton, a mile and a half from the place of Old Put s nativity. 
 
 Of course I made haste to stand within the chamber in which 
 the general was born. It is a cramped little affair, with rough-hewn 
 posts at the corners, and thick projecting beams overhead. It 
 remains just as it was when the eastern sun came shining through 
 the little panes to greet the astonished vision of young Putnam s baby 
 eyes. In the garret the rafters still show fragments of bark adhering to 
 them, while not a vestige of the forest from which they were cut remains. 
 A stand of bullets moulded for some Frenchman of Montcalm s day, 
 and an old hanger such as was worn by officers prior to the Revo 
 lution, w r ere among the few souvenirs remaining in the house. 
 
 Israel Putnam was born here in 1718, his Grandfather havinp- been 
 
 O O 
 
 the first immigrant of the name who settled in Danvers. After his 
 marriage to Sarah Pope, of Salem, he removed to Pomfret, Connec 
 ticut, when he was twenty-one. Every stage of his history boy 
 hood, manhood, and mature age is filled with incidents illustrating 
 his activity, courage, and address. All this made him the popular 
 idol of his day. In Danvers they still relate how the boy Putnam 
 overcame a ferocious bull he had been sent to drive home. The 
 
BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM 149 
 
 animal having at first driven him from the pasture, young Put, noth 
 ing daunted by a first rebuff, got a pair of spurs, put them on, and 
 returned to the field, where he gained a position behind a large 
 tree. The bull again attacked him, when Putnam, quickly seizing 
 his bullship by the tail, sprung lightly upon his back. Plunging his 
 sharp rowels in the sides of his fiery steed, the animal, maddened 
 with rage and pain, rushed into a miry part of the field, where he 
 stuck fast, and soon bellowed for mercy. 
 
 In pondering the story of the Revolution, -- its trials and hard 
 ships, its hopes and fears, there could hardly be a better object- 
 lesson for the youth of to-day than this very plain- looking dwelling 
 presents. It has been the cradle of a man of the people, who 
 raised himself to a high station by sheer force of his own natural 
 powers. These humble antecedents forcibly remind us that the 
 battle was fought and victory won, not by scholars or troubadours, 
 but by the great agricultural middle class, the hard-handed yeo 
 manry, used to digging ditches and guiding the plough. It was 
 they who formed the real backbone of the Revolution ; they who not 
 only filled the ranks, but led them to the field. Who were the suc 
 cessful generals ? Not the Lees, the Gateses, or St. Clairs, or Con- 
 ways, educated soldiers all, --but the Greenes, Putnams, Starks, 
 Morgans, and Knoxes, men fresh from the anvil, the plough, or 
 the workshop ; the first in the field and last out of it. 
 
 " He dared to lead where any dared to follow." That is the 
 soldier s epitaph. 
 
 In seeking for some flaw in this plain, blunt soldier s harness, 
 his critics have sometimes pretended that he was illiterate. And 
 what of that ? As a specimen of good terse English, however, the 
 following note may serve to illustrate that fallacy : 
 
 HEADQUARTERS, yth August, 1777. 
 
 " SIR, Edmund Palmer, an officer in the enemy s service, was taken as a spy 
 lurking within our lines. He has been tried as a spy, condemned as a spy, and 
 shall be executed as a spy; and the flag is ordered to depart immediately. 
 
 "ISRAEL PUTNAM." 
 "P. S. He has been accordingly hanged." 
 
150 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE LAST RESIDENCE OF JAMES OTIS 
 
 ANDOVER, MASS. 
 
 IN a retired part of the town of Andover, Massachusetts, there 
 is still standing the old farmhouse which was the asylum of the 
 gifted patriot James Otis, after his mind became hopelessly wrecked. 
 It is about two miles from the pretty little manufacturing village of 
 Ballard Vale, and not more than four from the Theological Seminary. 
 Here, with the exception of a short lucid interval, which served to 
 arouse hopes speedily disappointed by a relapse, Otis passed the 
 last two years of his life with Captain Isaac Osgood, a well-to-do 
 farmer of the town. When this period had nearly expired, his 
 friends, believing him entirely recovered, advised his return to 
 Boston ; and he was accordingly brought back to town by his 
 nephew, Harrison Gray Otis, who has related how fascinated he was 
 by the sparkle and wit of his uncle s conversation during their 
 journey. A renewal of his intercourse with his old friends and 
 associates of the Revolutionary clubs, and especially with Governor 
 Hancock, whose dinner-parties were distinguished for their conviv 
 iality and late hours, soon brought on a relapse of his malady. He 
 went back to Andover of his own accord ; and on Friday afternoon, 
 May 23, 1783, exactly six weeks after he had again become an 
 inmate of the Osgood farmhouse, a stroke of lightning laid him 
 dead upon the threshold of the house in which he was already as 
 good as buried from the world. 
 
 Such is, in brief, the story of the deplorable ending of a life of 
 magnificent promise, a life which, perhaps more than any other 
 of its time, bore the unmistakable stamp of true genius. When such 
 
THE LAST RESIDENCE OF JAMES OTIS 151 
 
 a life as that is actually thrown away, we almost feel as if something 
 was out of order in the plan of the universe. 
 
 Whoever may have had occasion to go on such a search as mine, 
 must often have remarked with what ease the places where oreat 
 
 o 
 
 men have once lived yes, and even their very names are forgot 
 ten. Any question concerning what happened longer ago than yes 
 terday is sure to startle honest Hodge out of his usual dulness. 
 
 THE OSGOOD FARMHOUSE, ANDOVER, MASS. 
 
 One man looks at another. Then both look at you in silent aston 
 ishment. Finally you get the direction you want and walk on, 
 followed by that same vacant stare that you and I know so well. 
 
 I found the Osgood farmhouse no exception to this rule, nor 
 did I succeed in getting properly directed until I chanced upon a 
 villager who had been a farm-hancl on the place more than seventy 
 years before. He spoke of "Jimmy" Otis as familiarly as if he had 
 been on terms of personal intimacy with him, and glibly told, as he 
 
152 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 walked along by the side of his oxen, such little scraps of family 
 tradition as had been treasured up relative to one of the most 
 gifted and unfortunate of men. 
 
 The Osgood farmhouse is just such a quiet, out-of-the-way 
 nook as one so afflicted as Otis was would wish to have looked up 
 for him, especially at a time when there were no such boons 
 to society as private asylums for the insane. The road, as you 
 approach it, makes a wide sweep, the capacious barns and out 
 buildings being upon one side and the house upon the other. The 
 residence has one front looking down the road, and another facing 
 toward the south, as seen in the illustration. Before the door on 
 this side are two oak-trees, the one nearest the house being much 
 riven by lightning. A very extensive tract of open land extends 
 on all sides. 
 
 The house is an old one older than it looks. It stands in a 
 charming situation, where, by stepping to his door, the owner could 
 look out over all his broad acres at a glance. Otis himself grew 
 fond of it, though with a man of his active temperament the first 
 gleam of a returning intelligence was a signal to be up and away. 
 Yes, the place is singularly peaceful ; but we can easily realize how 
 a man who had ever lived in the world, or for the world, might 
 be apt to compare it with the peace of the tomb. 
 
 It does sometimes seem as if Otis wandering mind now and 
 then got a glimpse into futurity itself. With plenty to eat, and 
 nothing to do, he grew fat and lethargic ; but just as soon as the 
 muddy stream of his disordered intellect began to flow clear again, 
 just so soon he was both mentally and physically alert as of old. 
 On the very day after his return to Andover, when Mr. Osgood 
 came to call him to dinner, he said with great earnestness, 
 " Osgood, if I die while I am in your house, I charge you to have 
 me buried under these trees " (referring to those under which they 
 were then standing), then adding, with one of those little touches 
 of humor that occasionally shone forth in him like a gleam of sun- 
 
THE LAST RESIDENCE OF JAMES OTIS 153 
 
 shine from out a darkened sky, "You know my grave would over 
 look all your fields, and I could have an eye upon the boys and 
 see if they minded their work." 
 
 I found the house nearly as bare of all useful information as the 
 way to it. How much I would have given for a few minutes with 
 some one who had seen and could appreciate such a man as Otis ! 
 I learned that he was very fat, a great gourmand, and " Oh, such a 
 funny man ! " I was shown the spot where he stood when struck 
 down. To paraphrase an old saying for the nonce, I have learned 
 that in pilgrimages of this sort, one must carry his information 
 under the folds of his mantle. 
 
 Any search for actual memorials of this most unfortunate of 
 men would be unavailing. We may recover only a few details con 
 cerning the manner of his death. Otis occupied a room on the 
 left of the entrance as we see it in the engraving. When the rapid 
 gathering of heavy clouds seemed to presage a thunder-storm, the 
 family were collected in the room on the right and opposite to that 
 of Otis, who stood leaning against the door-post unconcernedly chat 
 ting with the group within. While in the act of telling a story, a 
 tremendous explosion directly overhead, followed by a blinding flash, 
 startled the listeners, one and all ; and at the same instant, seeing 
 Otis stagger, as if about to fall, Jacob Osgood sprang forward to 
 catch him in his arms. The doomed man never spoke again. 
 All efforts to resuscitate him were vain. He had died on the 
 instant, while yet speaking. 
 
 None other of the seven or eight persons within the room at 
 the time were in the least injured. The storm appeared to have 
 spent its fury in this single death-dealing bolt, which had first 
 struck the chimney-stack, then leaped down a rafter which rested 
 on the door-post against which Otis was leaning, splintering the 
 casing of the door, and so passed on down to the ground. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that Otis should have expressed to 
 his own sister, Mercy Warren, a wish that the end might come for 
 
154 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 him in this very way a wish he again and again repeated. " My 
 dear sister," he said, after his mind had become hopelessly im 
 paired, 44 I hope when God Almighty, in his righteous providence, 
 shall take me out of time into eternity, that it will be by a flash 
 of lightning ! " 
 
 As the life was brilliant, so the end was highly dramatic. I have 
 never been able to get out of my mind the striking coincidence 
 there was between John Adams apt characterization of Otis as " a 
 flame of fire," and the way in which he came to his death. 
 
 The marks left in its passage by the fatal fluid have been 
 thoroughly effaced. I confess that I was unprepared for the ob 
 servation of an occupant of the house, to the effect that the blood 
 of Otis had formerly bespattered the door ; but then and she 
 seemed to say it regretfully the door had been painted over by 
 some thoughtless person, and all traces thoroughly obliterated. As 
 to that story, it is known that there were neither marks of any kind 
 on the body of Otis, nor the least distortion of his features. 
 
 Otis was the senior of all the men who, in New England, 
 formed the Revolution, except Samuel Adams, his antipode. He 
 was the ablest, as he was the most feared, of all the patriot junto. 
 There were but one or two men on the side of the Crown who 
 could pretend to break a lance with him in debate or in the news 
 papers. He brought all the resources of history to his aid at the 
 bar, and he had all the ablest of the Old World commentators at 
 his tongue s end. It was to Otis that John Dickinson sent his 
 famous " Farmer s Letters," to be used as his judgment might 
 dictate. The "Circular Letter" of 1768 was drawn up by Otis, 
 and revised by Samuel Adams, to whom this, as well as other 
 documents now among the ablest of our State papers, were passed 
 over by the author with the remark, " I have written them all, and 
 handed them over to Sam to quicuvicue them," a word coined by 
 Otis for this occasion. Had Otis remained in his right mind, he 
 undoubtedly would have enjoyed the perilous distinction of being 
 
THE LAST RESIDENCE OE JAMES OTIS 155 
 
 the first man to be proscribed by the British ministry. Certainly it 
 was a distinction, which, if not coveted, had at least been richly 
 earned. 
 
 It was Otis who struck the keynote to the Revolution by his 
 famous speech against the Writs of Assistance. John Adams can 
 didly admits that Otis was his political master. Among all the men 
 who in New England set the Revolution on its feet, made it 
 respectable in the eyes of the world and in its own, James Otis was 
 unquestionably the peer. When Otis was being talked about at 
 Westminster and St. James , Sam Adams was hardly known out 
 side of town-meetings, John Adams only as a struggling barrister, 
 and John Hancock not at all in any political sense. What the loss 
 of such a man, in the high prime of life, and full vigor of his 
 extraordinary mental powers, meant to the cause, can scarcely be 
 realized at this day. When Otis assumed its direction, he did so 
 as the leader of a forlorn hope. But he had the moral intrepidity 
 for anything. 
 
 All the measures proposed by the opponents of the royal gov 
 ernment were discussed and matured in the clubs. In Boston, the 
 principal of these was the Merchants Club, which had existed for 
 twenty years previous to the rupture with the mother-country. The 
 club held its meetings in a front room of the British Coffee-house 
 in King Street, which was much frequented by all the leaders of 
 popular opinion. Otis inexhaustible humor, trenchant wit, and 
 biting sarcasm made him as much the central figure of this circle 
 as Sheridan, who resembled him in many respects, was at Bellamy s 
 and the London clubs. This also made him the object of bitter 
 hatred to the Royalists, one of whom, an officer of the customs 
 named Robinson, with his friends, assaulted Otis with a bludgeon, 
 inflicting those wounds on the head which eventually caused his 
 insanity. 
 
 For this assault Otis recovered two thousand pounds damages 
 in a civil action ; but such was the extraordinary magnanimity 
 
156 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 of the man that he forgave the debt upon receiving a written 
 apology from Robinson, who unquestionably had meant, if not to 
 kill Otis outright, at least to disable or maim him for life. What 
 could not be done by fair argument was thus to be effected by 
 force. 
 
 There is little doubt that there was much secret rejoicing 
 among the Tories when Otis was thus i4 put out of the way," for 
 we know he was equally hated and feared. 
 
 After his unfortunate encounter with Robinson, which happened 
 in this very coffee-house, Otis became noticeably garrulous, and 
 much more violent and unguarded than ever in his invectives 
 against the crown officers ; but his shafts no longer, as of old, went 
 straight to the mark. He occasionally displayed flashes of his 
 former genius ; but the native warmth of his temper, never under 
 much control, was greatly aggravated by his infirmity, especially 
 so after a little too free indulgence in wine. 
 
 Yet Otis continued now and then to take part in public affairs 
 with some of his old spirit, so much so that his more sanguine 
 friends grew hopeful of his full and entire recovery. 
 
 A private and unpublished letter now before me, dated Sep 
 tember 2, 1776, says that on the previous Monday, James Otis 
 addressed a town-meeting in Boston, and spoke as well as ever, 
 finding great fault with the choosing of some officials during the 
 unsettled state of the town. The " White Wigs," as the more 
 wealthy and influential were called, finally carried the day. 
 
 Except in what relates to his public career and of that we 
 do not know any too much we hear little about Otis, for the 
 reason that in one of his fits of despondency he destroyed all his 
 private papers. This is the more to be regretted because he is 
 known to have had a very rich and extensive correspondence. 
 
 There are, however, two or three anecdotes preserved of him 
 which serve to set forth some of his peculiar traits, since it is the 
 man himself who is speaking to us. 
 
THE LAST RESIDENCE OE JAMES OTIS 157 
 
 In the course of some discussion, Otis having cited the eminent 
 French jurist, Domat, Governor Bernard languidly inquired who Domat 
 was. Quick as a flash came the reply, " He is a very distinguished 
 civilian, and not the less an authority from being unknown to your 
 excellency." 
 
 Otis whimsical rebuke of his friend Molineux one night at the 
 club gives an excellent idea of him when he felt himself in a facetious 
 vein. It seems that Molineux had been bitterly complaining of ill- 
 usage by the Legislature in some affair in which he was interested, in a 
 manner that wearied and disgusted the company. Otis at last arose, 
 and said: " Come, Will, quit this subject, and let us enjoy ourselves. 
 I also have a list of grievances : will you hear it ? " The club expected 
 some fun; and all cried out, "Ay! ay! let us hear your list!" After 
 reciting some of his sacrifices by the loss of offices, which were worth 
 four hundred pounds sterling a year, Otis continued : - 
 
 "In the next place, I have lost a hundred friends, among whom 
 were the men of the first rank, fortune, and power in the Province - 
 at what price will you estimate them ? " 
 
 "Hang them," said Molineux, " at nothing ; you are better off 
 without them than with them." (A loud laugh.) 
 
 " Be it so," said Otis. " In the next place, you know I love 
 pleasure ; but I have renounced all amusement for ten years. What 
 is that worth to a man of pleasure ? " 
 
 " No great matter," said Molineux ; " you have made politics your 
 amusement." (A hearty laugh.) 
 
 "Once more," said Otis, holding his head down before Molineux, 
 " look upon this head ! " (displaying a scar in which a man might bury 
 his finger). "What do you think of this? And, what is worse, my 
 friends think I have a monstrous crack in my skull." 
 
 At this, John Adams, who was present, says the company all at 
 once became very grave, and all looked solemn ; but Otis, setting up 
 a laugh, said, with a gay countenance, to Molineux : - 
 
 " Now, Willie, my advice to you is to say no more about your 
 
158 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 grievances ; for you and I had better put up our accounts of profit 
 and loss in our pockets and say no more about them, lest the world 
 should laugh at us." 
 
 This humorous dialogue put all the company, Molineux included, 
 in good humor, and the remainder of the evening was passed joy 
 ously. 
 
THE RED HORSE 159 
 
 THE RED HORSE 
 
 LONGFELLOW S "WAYSIDE INN" 
 SUDBURY, MASS. 
 
 "And tufts of 70 ay side weeds and gorse 
 Hung in the parlor of the inu 
 Beneath the sign of the Red Horse" 
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 AN Elegy in a Country Tavern has yet to be written by some 
 disciple of Mr. Gray, with chambers in Pump Court instead of Pem 
 broke College. When, therefore, I enter one of these old hostelries 
 of famous memory, I feel inclined to remove my hat, and repeat a 
 mental ave to the departed company of glorious old fellows who 
 cracked their jokes and sipped their punch so many years ago. 
 
 It is a never-failing 1 delight to remember that these houses were 
 
 <_> o 
 
 once frequented by gentlemen in cocked-hats, bag-wigs, small-swords, 
 and the like, and that the conversation, graceful and polished, always 
 introduced with a formal " Sir," and punctuated with many stately 
 bowings and scrapings, was such as is now never heard except in 
 legitimate comedy as presented at some of our first-class theatres. 
 How we should stare to be sure, to be accosted by some Jack Wilkes, 
 Sam Eoote, or Davy Garrick, in ruffles and laced waistcoat, with leg 
 advanced in artistic pose, and negligently tapping a jewelled snuff 
 box ! And how vapid our social chatter seems after a brilliant 
 drawing-room conversation in " She Stoops to Conquer," or an 
 evening with the author of the Spectator ! 
 
 Epistolary correspondence is another lost art. Railway and tele 
 graph have sucked all the marrow out of modern letter- wfi ting 1 , and 
 
160 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 left us nothing but the dry bones and watery commonplaces. The 
 private correspondence of great men, once so rich in materials for the 
 history of their time, has now become of so little moment as to render 
 its examination scarce worth the making, except to autograph hunters. 
 Woe to the man so regardless of the fitness of things as to intrude 
 into a business letter an expression of interest in the personal welfare 
 of his correspondent ! He is at once set down as no business man. 
 His very credit would be in jeopardy for so reckless a disregard of 
 the maxim of the day-- namely, that " Business is business." Yet it 
 is some consolation to know that the clays of Fielding, Addison, Steele, 
 Goldsmith, and Johnson are not likely to be forgotten as easily as their 
 dress and social customs have faded from recollection. 
 
 Some people have a mania for visiting apartments in which cele 
 brated personages have succumbed to the grim foe of mortality. 
 Others prefer the lugubrious associations of the churchyard, with its 
 story of baffled hopes, and perhaps most welcome release from a 
 struggle for mere existence. To my mind there is quite as much sense 
 and far more poetry in communion with the grand old men of the past 
 in the haunts of their happier hours, consecrated by the pleasantest of 
 memories, and where the approaches of life s enemy were combated 
 with unflagging stomachs. For the time, at least, we can put aside 
 whatever might have imbittered their lives, to listen to their formal 
 toasts, their rattling choruses, or sparkling wit, and mayhap ourselves 
 make one in one of those mighty carousals of which the present 
 generation has little conception. For a tete-a-tete with phantoms my 
 preference, as between the drooping willows and dank grass of the 
 churchyard and a snug corner at the " Wayside," is unquestion 
 ably given to the more comfortable quarters of mine host. 
 
 What the subject is capable of has often been shown. We mount 
 our palfrey in the courtyard of the Tabard with the Canterbury pilgrims, 
 the company marshalled by 
 
 "Old Chaucer s boast, the goodly host, 
 Immortal Harry liailly ! 
 
THE RED HORSE 161 
 
 We loiter with Dryclen at Will s Coffee-house, where he sits among the 
 critics, the undisputed lawgiver in all literary disputes. We enjoy 
 many a hearty laugh at the Mitre, in Fleet Street, where Boswell tells 
 us that Johnson loved to sit up late a propos, what a nice young man 
 for a tea-party was Bozzy, and how we could have enjoyed seeing him 
 snubbed by burly Sam! and, last but not least, we linger long about 
 the rickety galleries of the White Hart, in the Borough, where Jack 
 Cade once made his headquarters (or we have been wickedly misled) , 
 and where Dickens first introduced us to Samuel Weller the younger, 
 and where also the machinations of designing Alfred Jingle were 
 thwarted by our preux chevalier Pickwick. A place in those days 
 above the salt was no such bad thino- after all. 
 
 o 
 
 Mr. Tennyson, in that inimitable monologue which has given 
 additional relish to every Englishman s mutton-chop or pint of port, 
 has introduced us to his muse under the exhilarating influence of 
 the blazing hearth and well-known good cheer of the hostel. He tells 
 the waiter, " a something pottle-bodied boy," that, when he dies, - 
 
 " No carved cross-bones, the type of Death, 
 
 Shall show thee passed to heaven ; 
 But carved cross-pipes, and, underneath, 
 A pint-pot neatly graven." 
 
 Mine host has been celebrated in song and story in the most 
 ancient chronicles and poesy. The heart instinctively warms at the 
 mention of his name ; for to his care was confided that most sensi 
 tive of organs to wit, the stomach. Not one of these worth) 
 landlords was ever known to fall, like Vatel, upon his own sword, 
 because there was not enough roast-meat to go round. " He who 
 sleeps dines," may pass for a proverb in France, but could never 
 have become very popular with our English ancestors, who knew 
 far better how to sleep off a hearty meal than go without one- 
 they would infinitely have preferred a lengthened vigil to the brief 
 est period of fasting, and must always be well fed before being led 
 
1 62 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 to battle. All men must die ; but, in order that the evil day may 
 be averted as long as possible, all men must dine. Such, indeed, 
 was the whole philosophy of tavern-life. 
 
 The tavern occupied in the eighteenth century the place which 
 the club does now, with the greater advantage that its doors were 
 open to all comers. Any stranger might mingle in the general con 
 versation of the tap-room without fear of being considered an 
 intruder; and as the poor Irishman once told Goldsmith, when in 
 structing him how to live in London on thirty pounds a year, by 
 spending twopence at a coffee-house you might be "in very good 
 company " several hours every day. 
 
 What was characteristic of the old English inns may be applied 
 with certain modifications to this side of the water. Si^ns swunof 
 
 o o 
 
 in Cornhill, Broadway, or Chestnut Street similar to those that 
 creaked within a short walk of Temple Bar. Bench and bar, mer 
 chants and tradesmen, assembled at the taverns to read their letters, 
 buy and sell, discuss the latest phase of European politics, and ex 
 change all the current gossip. Literature we had none ; but Pope, 
 Swift, Steele, Arbuthnot, and the rest, were as warmly criticised or 
 lauded as they might have been in Longacre or Cheap. When 
 George III. was king, the taverns speedily became noted as political 
 centres nearly all the revolutionary measures being concerted in 
 tavern-coteries or at the clubs. The Non-Importation Act origi 
 nated at a private club ; the destruction of the tea was planned in 
 a tavern. \Ve insist that the annals of some of these old inns 
 would not be without interest in connection with certain passages 
 of American history such, for example, as the meeting of the 
 delegates to the Philadelphia Congress of 1774, at Smith s City 
 Tavern, before they walked to Carpenter s Hall to organize ; or that 
 most affecting leave-taking by Washington of his lieutenants, at 
 Francis s Tavern, in New York a scene to which that of Fontaine- 
 bleau, with all its dramatic embracincrs of standards, does not hold 
 
 o 
 
 a candle, in our opinion. 
 
THE RED HORSE 
 
 In a secluded nook among the Middlesex hills, three miles from 
 Suclbury Centre and about an hour s ride by rail from Boston, is 
 the ancient hostelry which Mr. Longfellow has made famous by his 
 "Tales of a Wayside Inn." It is so embowered among the trees 
 as not to be perceived until a sharp turn of the road brings you 
 almost to the old-fashioned door. And even when you have arrived 
 there, so perfect is the sense of seclusion, so complete the silence, 
 
 THE RED HORSE (WAYSIDE INN), SUDBURY, MASS. 
 
 that it is difficult to believe this now deserted road was ever a much- 
 travelled highway. Nevertheless, .the "Wayside" -or, to call things 
 by their right names, the "Red Horse" -stands on the old post- 
 route between Boston and the Connecticut River, once the great thor 
 oughfare all travelled, and over which a lumbering stage-coach once 
 passed twice a week. 
 
 The region round about, though quiet enough now, is full of 
 the records of more stirring times. Marlborough, Sudbury, and Lan- 
 
1 64 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 caster, the neighboring towns, were frequently harried and well-nigh 
 destroyed in 1676, during Philip s War; and Sudbury Fight, as it 
 is called, has a monument above the graves of the outnumbered 
 colonial soldiers who, when driven like hunted deer to a hilltop from 
 which there was no escape, sold their lives almost to a man on 
 that bloody spot. Not far from us Mount Nobscot rears high its 
 green bulk ; and, should we stand on its summit, rare glimpses 
 there would be of hill and vale, forest and stream, with floods of 
 light and shade a coloring never seen on canvas and a delight 
 ful vista of tranquil inland scenery for twenty miles around. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow freely admitted, in the course of a conversation 
 \vith the writer, that the idea of the "Tales of a Wayside Inn" 
 was taken from Boccaccio s " Decarnerone." The inn, he said, served 
 as a framework for his tales. And he was equally unreserved with 
 regard to certain deviations from the strict letter of historical 
 
 o 
 
 narratives. Like Mr. Whittier, he claimed the fullest freedom in 
 adapting the story to the wants of his muse. This is nothing new. 
 Thucydides long ago warned his readers against the blandishments 
 of the poets. And W T aller has put the same idea into his famous 
 reply to Charles II.: Your majesty knows that poets always sue 
 ceed best in fiction." 
 
 In his " Prelude " Mr. Longfellow has described some of the 
 more salient features of the " Wayside," not forgetting the scutch 
 eon of mine host, nor the "jovial rhymes" cut with a diamond on 
 the window-pane. 
 
 The house is believed to have been built soon after 1680, it 
 having been for nearly a century and a half continuously a public- 
 house, kept by generation after generation of the family of Howe. 
 Indeed, among the country folk it was always spoken of as the 
 Howe Tavern. In respect to antiquity and continued public ser 
 vice, the " Red Horse " may, I think, claim precedence of any 
 tavern in America. Its door was not finally closed to the traveller 
 until 1860, or long after it had outlived its usefulness, and few 
 
THE RED HORSE 165 
 
 customers passed its well-worn threshold. Across the broad space 
 left for the road are the barns and outbuildings, near which stood 
 the tall post on which the sign-board hung. " Look at the date ! " 
 exclaims Thoreau, whose lungs expand joyously in presence of the 
 newly discovered hostelry. The sign, in fact, bore the following 
 
 inscription : - 
 
 "D. H., 1686, 
 E. H, 1746. 
 A. Howe, 1796." 
 
 One corner of the tap-room was railed off from the rest of the 
 room, and furnished with a wooden portcullis, to which the open 
 sesame was a few coppers or an old-fashioned fo pence. This 
 was the bar, which I judge to have been well patronized. In fact, 
 the sanded floor appeared well worn by the shuffling of many feet, 
 and the thick oak beams overhead had taken a deeper coloring, 
 due perhaps to their long seasoning with the steam of spiced rum 
 or flip. As long ago as 1724, during Lovewell s War, this tap 
 room was the regular rendezvous of the troop of horse that 
 patrolled the roads hereabouts -- a band of steel-capped, buff- 
 coated riders, who knew right well where good liquor was to be 
 had by hook or by crook, as soldiers usually do. On the day of 
 the battle of Lexington the minute-men from Worcester, led by 
 Timothy Bigelow, rested here after making a forced march, until 
 the distant rumbling of Percy s cannon hurried them on to the 
 front again. 
 
 But, for all these traditions, the "Wayside" might have dozed 
 away its declining years, forgotten of men, if Mr. Longfellow had 
 not found it out, rekindled the fire on its cold hearth-stone, and 
 with a flourish of his pen, as one might say, given it such custom 
 as no hostelry since Chaucer s day has enjoyed. 
 
 In the " Decamerone " of Boccaccio the terrors of the plague 
 hang over the merry company. The raconteur endeavors to drive 
 away the fear of the dread scourge from the minds of his hearers 
 
1 66 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 by keeping up their spirits. Mr. Longfellow has discarded all such 
 sinister surroundings. His company is made up of landlord, stu 
 dent, Spanish Jew, Sicilian, musician, theologian, and poet, whose 
 stories are told around a blazing wood-fire in the best room of 
 the " Red Horse." One of the old bachelor brothers (Adam and 
 Lyman Howe, the last descendants of a long line of landlords) tells 
 us the story of " Paul Revere s Ride " in verse, that sends the hot 
 blood pulsing through the veins like a trumpet-call, and would 
 have produced on some old Revolutionary pensioner the effect 
 Beranger so sharply describes in the " Vieux Sergent " 
 
 u Le sang remonte a son front qui grisonne, 
 Le vieux coursier a senti 1 aiguillon." 
 
 The rest of the company relate the wild legends of other 
 climes, the roof-tree of the old inn furnishing the setting. At 
 least four of their number are real characters, who were known to 
 affect the quiet of the place, and the cakes and ale of mine host. 
 
 During a visit made to the poet at his historic mansion in Cam 
 bridge, he talked very pleasantly of his first introduction to the 
 " Wayside " some thirty years before. Let the travellers of to-day 
 who grumble at spending six hours on the road between Boston 
 and Xew York take notice. The stage then left town at three 
 o clock in the morning, reaching Sudbury Tavern for breakfast, a 
 considerable portion of the route being thus traversed in total dark 
 ness and without your having the least idea who your companions 
 inside might be. It was under circumstances thus unprepossess 
 ing that he first made acquaintance with Howe s Tavern. Being 
 then upon the subject of taverns and ways of travel, he also nar 
 rated some of his experiences of stage-travel between Boston and 
 Portland, when the " accommodation " took two days for the jour 
 ney. In winter this "accommodation" of illusory import was noth 
 ing more than an ordinary sleigh, furnished with sides of coarse 
 bocking, which madly plunged into the cradle-holes, or slowly 
 
THE RED HORSE 167 
 
 struggled on through the deep snow-drifts like a ship in a heavy 
 sea. The stage then stopped for the night at Portsmouth, a place 
 we do not forget in thinking of " Mistress Stavers " and the "Earl 
 of Halifax." 
 
 While seated in the poet s study my attention was drawn to 
 some very good crayon portraits of such of our literary file-leaders 
 as Emerson and Hawthorne, taken before time and care had snatched 
 all the spiritual out of their faces, and left them 
 
 " Sicklied o er with the pale cast of thought." 
 
 Another of Mr. Sumner, as he might have looked thirty years 
 before, thin-visaged, and with a deeply thoughtful expression, hung 
 above the fireplace. It being just after the election of General 
 Hayes to the presidency, I said, with a glance at this portrait, " He 
 would have made an important figure in this crisis, would he not ? " 
 To which the poet replied very earnestly, "I m glad we ve got along 
 without him. That," he added, pointing to the big easy-chair in 
 which I was sitting before the fireplace, " is Sumner s chair. He liked 
 to lounge." There was, it is understood, a close sympathy between 
 the poet and Mr. Sumner, whose death, like that of Agassiz, was to 
 the former as a personal bereavement. 
 
 I have said much more of Mr. Longfellow than of the Wayside 
 Inn, but the hostelry and the poet are henceforth one and insep 
 arable. Since that visit was paid, the most gracious poet in his 
 personal demeanor toward humbler men of letters has been gathered 
 to his fathers. 
 
 None of the later photographs of him are at all satisfying. 
 Almost invariably they represent a man older by a dozen years 
 than he, with strongly marked and somewhat harsh physiognomy. 
 His face, on the contrary, possessed mobility, and beamed with a 
 natural benignity that the camera has not caught. His complexion 
 was warm, and in agreeable contrast with his hair and beard, both 
 of which were white as snow, and were worn long and very abundant. 
 
1 68 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 He had neither the picturesque wildness of the late British laureate, 
 nor the patriarchal grandeur of the author of "Thanatopsis," who 
 might at any time within the last twenty years of his life have sat 
 for Elijah, or one of the prophets. Mr. Longfellow s head impressed 
 me like a study from one of the Greek antiques, classic and noble. 
 His manner was frank and winning, without any of that overpower 
 ing self-consciousness with which some of our literati are hedged 
 about. 
 
 But I had clean forgotten the " Red Horse," and it is now high 
 time to say au revoir. The inn, never fear, will keep its place in 
 history. We do not forget that Taylor, the water-poet, once kept 
 a public house, or that Israel Putnam was a publican. In the Bible 
 we read that the Saviour was laid in the manger because there was 
 no more room at the inn in Bethlehem. Yet the days of the old- 
 time hostelry are no more. In its stead have arisen the marble and 
 plate-glass palaces, which make one shiver to look at them, and the 
 chop-houses, which have made indigestion national ; but \vhen, as 
 in the case of the " Wayside," we encounter one of these old inns 
 left high and dry in some forgotten by-way, our thoughts go back 
 to the era when the world enjoyed itself as well as it knew how, 
 and was content. Right glad are we, then, that " Old Sudbury 
 Inn," its oaks and its woodbine, have been embalmed in imperish 
 able verse. Still more comfort do we take in the recent announce 
 ment that Sudbury Inn has been purchased by a public-spirited 
 citizen with a view to its preservation. 
 
THE PEPPERELLS OF K2TTERY POINT 169 
 
 THP: PEPPERELLS OF KITTERY POINT 
 
 KITTERY, be it briefly said for the benefit of those unfortunates 
 who have not yet found their way to it, and to whom the name even 
 may at first sound a little outlandish, as it once did to me, is situ 
 ated in the extreme south-western corner of Maine the jumping- 
 on-place, as one might say, since Eastport, at the other extremity 
 of the State, has so long been popularly known as the jumping-off- 
 place. 
 
 There is a good deal of Kittery, as land seems to have been of 
 no object when most of these Maine towns were laid out (Kittery, 
 in fact, having at one time been about as large or larger than the 
 State of Rhode Island, if I am not greatly in error) ; but we have 
 no present concern except with that little corner of it which lies 
 tucked away almost in Old Ocean s tossing bed the Point Kit 
 tery Point. 
 
 It is only in some such out-of-the-way corner as this that one 
 can still discover, here and there, some few traces of the old, the 
 real New England villages the old houses that were once ^ood 
 
 o o o 
 
 enough for anybody to live in (no new ones had been built within 
 the memory of man), the severely plain Orthodox meeting-house 
 standing stiffly up on its neatly kept green, like an ever-watchful 
 sentinel at his post, and here and there the mansion of some village 
 magnate, the only one to whom the title of Mr. was vouchsafed, 
 whose bones now moulder in the village churchyard under a free 
 stone slab, reciting his many virtues to empty air. 
 
 In former times, which saying may mean, in America, not more 
 than ten or twenty years ago, Kittery was not so often heard of 
 outside its own borders or so easily reached as now. One modest 
 
I JO OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 public house served all comers. You went there from Portsmouth 
 by a stage, whose driver, being the errand-boy for the whole village, 
 did his chores as he went along, and answered a perfect fusilade of 
 questions as fast as they were popped at him. You passed Spruce 
 Creek bridge at a trot that made everything rattle again, took the 
 sharp rise past the village meeting-house and churchyard at a 
 gallop, fell into a slow walk as you mounted the last hill, on which 
 the unfinished fort, 
 
 " Like the unfinished window in Aladdin s tower, 
 Unfinished must remain," 
 
 and sa\v before you that most beautiful and refreshing, and at the 
 same time silencing, of all sights, the ocean strewed with white 
 sails, like lilies scattered upon some magnificent blue carpet. In a 
 few minutes more you were deposited at the hospitable door of mine 
 host Safford. 
 
 Right at the turning of the road stands a very old house. Sir 
 William Pepperell, Bart., lived and died in that house. Between the 
 road and the hotel you will pass by his tomb, by which you will under 
 stand that these grounds yes, and acres more were once his 
 grounds, though I never could quite see why the tomb should be 
 considered one of the hotel attractions. Reader, do you ? 
 
 You will now hear much more of Sir William Pepperell than ever 
 before. For some time, at least, you will breathe a Pepperell atmos 
 phere. The Pepperell mansion will inevitably be the very first place 
 you will visit ; for should you neglect doing so, the avowal will be 
 certain to bring a look of such amazement to the face of your first 
 acquaintance that you will feel it as a merited reproof. 
 
 Then, why not go there beforehand with me ? 
 
 The Pepperell mansion, as we see it, really consists of two houses, 
 the south part having been built by the father of the conqueror of 
 Louisburg, and the north part by Sir William himself. The building was 
 once much more extensive than it now appears ; it having been, some 
 
THE PEPPER ELLS OE KITTERY POINT 171 
 
 forty years ago, shortened by ten feet at either end. Until the death 
 of the elder Pepperell, in the year 1734, this house was occupied by 
 his own and his son s families, according to that good old custom we 
 have now outgrown, and must have then contained as many apartments 
 as a good-sized modern hotel. The lawn in front reached quite down 
 to the water ; and an avenue, a quarter of a mile in length, skirted by 
 trees, led all the way to the house of Colonel Sparhawk, a little 
 
 HOME OF SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL. 
 
 east of the village church. Plain as is its exterior, the Pepperell man 
 sion represents one of the greatest fortunes of the colonial time in all 
 New England. It used to be commonly said that Sir William could 
 ride to the Saco, thirty miles distant from his home, without going off 
 of his own possessions. 
 
 The elder Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter 
 Elizabeth and Colonel Sparhawk his residuary legatee, on condition of 
 
I7 2 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 his grandson s relinquishing the name of Sparhawk and taking that 
 of Pepperell. The baronetcy, being extinct with the elder Sir William, 
 was revived by the king for the benefit of this grandson of his, who, 
 being an out-and-out loyalist, went to England in 1775, and the large 
 estates in Maine and elsewhere were confiscated. The last baronet is 
 the prominent figure in West s 4k Reception of the American Loyalists." 
 In the poet Longfellow s Cambridge mansion there is, or was, hanging 
 in the drawing-room, one of Copley s striking pictures, representing 
 two children in a park, the portraits being those of William and Eliza 
 beth Royall Pepperell. In the Essex Institute at Salem, Mass., there 
 is a full-length portrait of the victor of Louisburg, painted in London, 
 by Smibert, in 1751. The baronet is attired in a coat of scarlet cloth, 
 richly laced, and has a truncheon in his hand. The background is filled 
 in with a spirited representation of the siege in full action. 
 
 And who was this William Pepperell, upon whom all these honors 
 had been showered ? A mere trader and shipbuilder of Kittery Point ; 
 a man who had been all his life contentedly engaged in peaceful pur 
 suits in adding year by year to his gains and his ventures, on sea 
 and land, until his wealth had become the talk of the colony ; a man 
 of scrupulous integrity, of virtuous character, of reserved powers per 
 haps that only needed the call of opportunity to draw them out. That 
 this quiet, unassuming, contented man of business should be suddenly 
 called upon to lead an army forth to a desperate and well-nigh hope 
 less undertaking, is an instructive reminder that the old traditions were 
 not extinct by which every colonist was at least half a soldier. It lets 
 us into the spirit of that utterly contemptible policy by which the 
 colonists were left to fight their own battles or perish. All they pos 
 sessed in the world had been won by their own efforts. From Acadia 
 to the Carolinas one long bloody track attested their trials and their 
 never-failing courage. These were indeed more peaceful times, but 
 when the summons did come again it found the sons worthy of the 
 sires. War was now threatening them again, not indeed a war of 
 their own making or of their own choosing, but one into which they 
 
THE PEPPERELLS OF KITTERY POINT 173 
 
 were being dragged by the ridiculous quarrels in Europe about the 
 Austrian succession. Nevertheless, it was war. Their fishery, ship 
 building, commerce their all, in short were at stake. So the old 
 drums were taken down from the wall, the preachers went up into their 
 pulpits, men and boys spent the long winter evenings in running 
 bullets and in cleaning up the old Queen s arms, and women diligently 
 worked at scraping lint. Suggestive division of labor ! the men s 
 of dangers to be met, the women s of binding up their wounds. 
 
 Against all the obstacles that can be conceived of William Shirley 
 created an army and fleet. Against all the probabilities in the case 
 William Pepperell took Louisburg. What does the world say of such 
 desperate enterprises as this was ? If unsuccessful, they are just 
 what might be expected from sheer ignorance, rashness, and self- 
 conceit ; if successful, they are strokes of genius. 
 
 And what was going on over the water? The year 1745 opened 
 with all Europe in commotion. The Emperor Charles VII. dead in 
 January ; all the petty German princes striving for the imperial crown ; 
 France supporting the pretensions of the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; 
 Austria, seeinor her advantage in the muddle, invades Bohemia ; Fred- 
 
 o o 
 
 erick the Great swoops down upon Saxony, and marches into Dresden 
 at the head of his grenadiers ; war is surging along the Rhenish 
 frontier, and blazing fiercely in Silesia, Hungary, and Italy ; France is 
 in the field with a powerful army, led by her illustrious soldier and 
 profligate, Maurice de Saxe. 
 
 England has, of course, a hand in the broil. Dissension is in 
 her cabinet when unity is all essential. Lord Chesterfield is hurried 
 off to the Hague to try to induce the States General to engage in 
 the war. The quadruple alliance is signed at Warsaw, England, 
 as usual, furnishing the money. The allied army, under the Duke 
 of Cumberland, confidently advances against the French, and once 
 more Belgium becomes the battle-ground. Fontenoy is fought. 
 Marshal Saxe, giving orders from his litter because too sick to 
 mount his horse, wins the day, and with it all the Austrian Nether- 
 
1/4 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 lands. Duke William, afterward the red-handed victor of Drum- 
 mossie Moor, falls back upon Brussels. 
 
 Here the beaten and dispirited army is roused from its des 
 pondency by the news of the fall of Louisburg, the great French 
 stronghold, sometimes called the Dunkirk of America. Great were 
 the rejoicings in the allied camp. A review of the whole army, by 
 order of the duke, signalized the event. The forces were drawn up 
 in battle order, the park of artillery being formed on an extensive 
 plain near Vilvorden. According to the military etiquette of the 
 time, the field-officers saluted his royal highness as he passed the 
 line by dropping the points of their swords, while the other officers, 
 who carried fusees, only took off their hats. 
 
 Enough could not be said in England in praise of the gallantry 
 of the colonists. In thirty years these very colonists were being 
 called cowards, poltroons, lambs, by the same fickle popular voice ! 
 
 Nothing better illustrates the ever-changing fortunes which men 
 and nations experience than the fact that the mighty fortress which 
 cost twenty-five years to build, sustained two sieges, and before 
 whose strong walls hundreds of lives were sacrificed, would, if it 
 
 o 
 
 were now in existence, possess not the least political consequence, 
 while, on the other hand, the homely dwelling of the Pepperells 
 still remains, overlooking the sea much as it did when the flag of 
 France waved above the battlements of Cape Breton. 
 
 That is the whole story in a nutshell down to the time when 
 Sir William passed off the stage; his favorite grandson became a 
 banished man, and his name, title, and possessions were swallowed 
 up in the vortex of revolution. His very grave was treated with 
 cruel neglect. Surely, Sir William Pepperell deserved better of his 
 country than that all his lands and estates should now be comprised 
 in that six feet of ground yonder. From the page of history the 
 name of Sir William Pepperell shines out gloriously, perennially ; 
 the story of Louisburg is deathless ; on the actual face of things the 
 name of Sir William Pepperell is only a national reproach. 
 
THE PEPPERELLS OF KITTERY POINT 175 
 
 Close by the mansion is the very ancient dwelling of John Bray, 
 the bluff old shipwright, whose daughter Margery, the baronet s 
 father wooed and won, notwithstanding Bray s dislike of the match, 
 as he thought his daughter was throwing herself away. Back in 
 the neighborhood of the meeting-house, which was passed on our 
 way down to the Point, is the mansion built by Lady Pepperell 
 after her husband s death. After living thirty years a widow, she 
 died in that house in 1789, and in a few years more the property 
 came into the possession of Captain Joseph Cutts, in whose family 
 it still remains. 
 
 Farther on, toward the sea, the same road we have travelled 
 will take us to Gerrish s Island, a place invested with more or less 
 historical and poetical interest. Francis Champernoune s grave is 
 there to arouse the one, and the Thaxter cottage to excite the 
 other. Yonder the road goes straggling on over the hills to Old 
 York, and to fields and pastures new. 
 
;6 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE EARLY HOME OF JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 
 
 "HOME, SWEET HOME" 
 EASTHAMPTON, LONG ISLAND 
 
 JOHN HOWARD PAYNE did a great many things in the course of 
 an eventful life, and did them all well ; yet the world really remem 
 bers him for one thing only as the author of " Home, Sweet 
 Home." That simple and touching lyric, inspired perhaps in a 
 moment of deepest despondency, the outpouring of a heart wrung 
 by disappointment, by unrequited hopes, the cry of a deeply sensi 
 tive soul from out of its inmost depths, finds such sympathetic 
 response in so many other hearts, is so tenderly soothing withal, 
 as to have become not only one of the treasures of the language, 
 but one of its greatest boons to poor suffering humanity. 
 
 What else could possibly have inspired such an unfailing interest 
 in that most unpretentious dwelling in which the precocious and bashful 
 lad passed his earliest youth ? What else but that talismanic touch 
 upon the hearts of men that can set every secret chord vibrating, could 
 every year draw so many pilgrims merely to gaze upon the dull and 
 senseless wood of a very commonplace old house at East Hampton - 
 the home of John Howard Payne ? 
 
 In looking at it the words " Re it ever so humble" instantly sug 
 gest themselves. In looking at it we are again forcibly reminded ot 
 that secret, that unexplained affinity existing between the houses men 
 have lived in and the men themselves their lives and fortunes. It is 
 as if some eternal law forbade putting the twain asunder. Do what 
 we will we can never rid ourselves of the notion that " les abseus sont 
 
EARLY HOME OF JOHiV HOWARD PAYNE 177 
 
 7#." To some extent we do hold communion with their departed 
 spirits. 
 
 John Howard Payne was what the world calls a genius : he was 
 more than this ; he was a most precocious genius. As inevitably 
 follows, he was flattered, overpraised, caressed to that extent that a 
 much older and wiser head than his might have been turned 
 
 The 
 
 THE EARLY HOME OF JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. 
 
 precocious flower faded before its full maturity. But of what he failed 
 to achieve as actor, author, or critic fame and fortune fame at least 
 came to him with the stroke of the pen that wrote " Home, Sweet 
 Home ; " and had he been as worldly wise as he was gifted, his for 
 tune would have been made also then and there. 
 
 Is the world really any larger than a teacup? Does not the great 
 master wisely say, " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin " ? 
 
178 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Truly, we cannot choose but think so when we find all fashionable 
 London, yes, and unfashionable too, applauding" and singing words sug 
 gested by the thoughts of this homeliest of old houses, in an obscure 
 spot of a distant land, that no one had ever heard of. Payne sang to 
 this, his own dear old home, as to something most sacred to him. His 
 
 o 
 
 mind and heart had wandered back to old Long Island s yellow sands, 
 to the village where he had played as a boy. Within a week all Lon 
 don was singing that same refrain of 4 Home, Sweet Home" for what 
 it appealed to in each separate individual. In every one it awoke the 
 sweetest and purest emotions. You cannot bring together to-day, were 
 it in the most remote corner of earth, any assemblage of English- 
 speaking people who do not know by heart the words of " Home, 
 Sweet Home," or who would not sing it, not all with steady voices, but 
 with greater feeling and unction than any other song in the language. 
 Payne s mortal body long lay in the burning sands of far-away Morocco, 
 and its final return to its native soil was in direct answer to that 
 deathless plea for home. Many is the rude company it has hushed into 
 solemn silence ; many the dreary bivouac it has solaced and cheered ; 
 many the lump that has risen in the throat as the tremulous notes 
 were wafted from the distant camp to the ears of the solitary sentinel 
 as he paused to listen on his perilous round. Who would not rather 
 have written " Home, Sweet Home " than the blood-stirring " Mar- 
 sellaise" ? 
 
 We, too, are a singing people. What has become of all the songs 
 that have enjoyed an ephemeral popularity within every man s recollec 
 tion ? There are songs that belong to particular epochs. " Home, 
 Sweet Home " is for all time. Even our John Brown song has fulfilled 
 its great mission ; but what an effect that song had upon the flagging 
 spirits of the soldiers ! " Let me write the songs, and I care not 
 who makes the laws," says Beranger. " Us chantent, Us payeront" 
 exclaimed Mazarin triumphantly, 
 
 We do not design to reproduce here even the leading incidents of 
 John Howard Payne s well-known career. We do not disguise the 
 
EARLY HOME OF JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 179 
 
 feeling we have that but for " Home, Sweet Home " he would, in spite 
 of his admitted talents, have been long since forgotten, or at best 
 remembered only by his own generation. His greatest, and perhaps 
 most unconscious, effort contained no new or original thought. Home 
 and its associations had been the theme of many who wrote before 
 Payne. There was Goldsmith s fine apostrophe to an old home : - 
 
 " In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
 In all my griefs, and God has given my share, 
 I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
 Here to return, and die at home at last." 
 
 Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, who could hardly be drawn away 
 from his own loved fireside to mix with the great world, has declared 
 in one of his favorite essays that " Home is home, though it is never 
 so homely." 
 
 Then there have been others to whom Payne s idea may per 
 haps have furnished the keynote. Woodworth s " Old Oaken 
 Bucket " achieved instantaneous success and a long life by striking 
 the same chord in a slightly different key. His 
 
 * How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood " 
 
 is much like "There s no place like home." 
 
 In how many households have we all seen the familiar motto, 
 " Home, Sweet Home," conspicuously placed to catch the eye! It 
 is like a benediction like the Oriental salutation of "Peace be 
 unto this house ! " Some of the most successful plays of the day 
 owe all their popularity to this one idea, or to some simple inci 
 dent carrying us back to long-forgotten scenes, or reviving slum 
 bering memories. Witness the wonderful success of "The Old 
 Homestead," and other plays of that simple character. Who would 
 have believed that so commonplace an act as that of calling in a 
 cat from out-of-doors would have "brought clown the house" as it 
 does in "The County Fair?" 
 
I So OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 East Hampton consists of one long and broad street bordered 
 with well-grown trees. The street is, in fact, of such a generous 
 breadth that the roadway takes up but a span of it, the rest being 
 left to grow grass, on which the geese strut and scream out lustily 
 at the stranger s approach. It is more like a village green than a 
 street. The place, having been originally settled by New England- 
 ers, is, to all intents, strictly a New England town, retaining, thanks 
 to its isolation, much of the flavor of its old life. One frequently 
 runs up against some well-known name, or hears some delightfully 
 archaic word let slip with all the artless confidence of long usage. 
 A search for the Payne homestead soon revealed the suggestive fact 
 that more than one house in the village contended for the honor of 
 being the actor-poet s legitimate birthplace. The old lady in " specs" 
 and close cap, who peered doubtfully at me through the half-opened 
 door, remarked absently that she had " heerd the house was con- 
 sider bly evaporated." 
 
 " By fire, ma am?" I ventured to suggest after a moment s 
 reflection. 
 
 "Oh, no," she replied; "it hain t burned down, as I knows on. 
 It s all gone to wrack and ruin, so they say." % 
 
 It then dawned upon me that she had meant to say that the 
 house was much dilapidated. 
 
 The village was laid out somewhat after the French manner, 
 with farms running off from the great street toward the seashore 
 on one side, and on the other stretching back toward the bay. It 
 is pitched upon ground originally belonging to the powerful Mon- 
 tauk tribe, with whom the English settlers very wisely established 
 an era of enduring good feeling by fair dealing and considerate 
 treatment, so that peace and good will continued to subsist between 
 them to the last. It was well that these white men chose to act 
 up to the Christian rule of " Live and let live," rather than to adopt 
 for their guidance the unrelenting one that where the two races 
 come in contact one must be hammer and the other anvil ; other- 
 
EARLY HOME OF JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 181 
 
 wise East Hampton might have its record of bloodshed to show 
 instead of its more uneventful one. We are right glad of this, 
 because a different story would infallibly tend to disturb, if not 
 extinguish altogether, that delightful atmosphere of harmony with 
 which its every nook and corner seems filled to overflowing. The 
 benison of "Home, Sweet Home" seems to have descended upon 
 every house in the village. Before we know it the burden of that 
 melodious refrain is running through our own head. We find our- 
 self humming it. We are in quite the proper frame of mind to 
 approach the home which gave to John Howard Payne the one 
 idea that made him famous, and in return for which the poet has 
 made East Hampton immortal. 
 
 Very homely indeed is the gray old cottage that is pointed out 
 to you. Its hooded front-door, its shingled walls, which are again 
 become the fashion, its big brick chimney, stalwart and strong, 
 belong to hundreds of other houses, in a hundred other villages. 
 Happily, the noiseless footstep of time has passed over it, and left 
 it only a little more grizzled than when Payne s young feet pat 
 tered in and out over the well-worn threshold. Upon going inside 
 we find everything as plain as plain can be. There are the same 
 worn floors and stairways ; there is the same monster fireplace in 
 the kitchen, besmeared with a back of velvety soot, where the boy 
 Payne so often sat and watched the antics of the flames, while he 
 was painting pictures and dreaming the dreams of youth. Did he 
 ever imagine that the day would come when he should bitterly put 
 aside "that false money" reputation as a worthless thing, and sigh 
 for the simple pleasures of youth he had once tasted here? 
 
 The house itself is our best assurance that the sentiment of 
 r Home, Sweet Home " had no luxurious background. There is no 
 false note in it. 
 
 As Charles Lamb has so truly said, " Nothing fills a child s 
 mind like an old mansion." Young Payne s must have been unu 
 sually receptive to such impressions. And then we are, moreover, so 
 
1 82 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 glad to think that his boyhood s home must have been a happy 
 one ; because with every turn of an adverse fortune, like a ship 
 beaten out of her course, his mind always turns back to this anti 
 quated homestead, as to the road and haven where all is calm, 
 and the still waters flow peacefully on. 
 
 1 have seen and talked with people who knew Payne quite inti 
 mately. One person told me of an incident in Payne s career that 
 1 do not think has ever got into print. He said that at one time 
 the versatile actor and author became deeply interested in the study 
 of Indian manners and customs; so much so, indeed, that he made 
 a long journey to Georgia for the purpose of getting first-hand 
 information. His eccentric appearance or conduct or both gave rise 
 to suspicions that he was tampering with the Cherokees, among 
 whom he was, for the time, a visitor. At any rate, Payne was 
 arrested by the Georgia authorities, and held a prisoner by them 
 until he could give a satisfactory account of himself, when he was 
 set at liberty. 
 
 Another gentleman related that after Payne s father removed to 
 Boston, which he did when young John Howard was in his twelfth 
 year, the lacl developed his first passion for the stage, often visiting 
 "Old Federal Street" in company with my informant. In common 
 parlance, he became stage-struck. At this time Payne organized a 
 number of boys of his own age into a military company, called the 
 Federal Band, of which Payne was the captain and animating spirit. 
 The company wore a neat uniform of its own, though it was com 
 pelled to appear on parade with borrowed muskets. " Payne," said 
 my friend, who was then over eighty, " had an ambition to be a 
 soldier ; we boys all thought him destined to be a second Bona 
 parte at least. You ought to have seen us when, with Payne march 
 ing at our head, we turned out along with the regular militia of the 
 city. I tell you, the streets of Boston weren t big enough for us." 
 
 To tear down that old house would be almost a sacrilege. 
 None feel so deeply what the word home means as the homeless. 
 
EARLY HOME OE JOHN HOWARD PAYNE 183 
 
 We raise monuments to all the virtues ; let us keep this one sacred 
 to that little heaven upon earth which shines out through the gloom 
 of so many darkened lives, like a beacon light. God bless all our 
 homes ! To every father and mother there is a lesson taught here 
 to make home a happy one for their children ; to make it so attrac 
 tive that there will be no place like it, rather than none to be so 
 eagerly shunned ; to cultivate the domestic virtues ; to instil a 
 knowledge and love for what all men instinctively turn to in the 
 dark hour of trial or misfortune. A benison upon this old house ! 
 We feel that we have not come in vain to renew its hallowed 
 memories. True, there is little enough to be said of it ; yet we 
 have seen it and are content. John Howard Payne is not dead. 
 So long as "Home, Sweet Home" shall be sung, his will be an 
 ever-living presence. There is indeed 
 
 " Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But cloth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
184 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 
 
 DEERFIELD, MASS. 
 
 A MASTER of description has said that " There are places about 
 which one forms for himself, upon a name more or less sonorous, a 
 certain fixed idea." It is a fact that our imagination goes before 
 us to show us the way, sometimes to play us strange tricks, some 
 times to the increase of our delight a hundredfold. With only this 
 one uncertain guide, nothing more, for I had in this instance reso 
 lutely refused to look at either books of travel or gazetteers, I 
 sought my idea, my picture rather, in the simple name of Deer- 
 field, with its ready suggestion of some sheltered and romantic nook 
 to which those timorous denizens of the forest wilds regularly came 
 down to feed upon the sweetest grasses or browse upon the most 
 tender shoots. I pleased myself much with the thought that some 
 adventurous hunter had first seen it thus from some neighboring 
 
 height ; that 
 
 "The native burghers of this desert city," 
 
 to whom the report of the death-dealing rifle was as yet unknown, 
 had indeed bequeathed it its name of peace. 
 
 Now let me try to describe the reality as I saw it on one of 
 those soft, sunny days of early spring, when leaves are first green. 
 The train had left me at Greenfield, that incomparable village so 
 luxuriously stretched out upon its mountain terrace, from which, 
 like a Sybarite, it overlooks the valley of the Connecticut far down 
 to the deep cleft between Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke, which 
 stand there like two giants guarding a pass. 
 
 The sight was one to delight even the most jaded traveller ; so 
 I cannot tell how long I stood there looking at it in charmed 
 
THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 185 
 
 silence. At last it came to me that this was not my valley. In 
 truth, my imagination had so far cheated me that the half had not 
 been told. Surely this must be some little corner of Eden left here 
 below just to show man how surpassing fair the antique world had 
 been before his fall. Before me opened a great oval basin between 
 oblique mountain walls, one side all light, the other all shadow, 
 their feet buried in the valley, their gray heads reclining upon the 
 breasts of loftier heights behind. Everywhere a light vesture of 
 grayish-green, so thin as to seem almost transparent, was stealing 
 up toward the summits. These patriarchs had the appearance of 
 being seated in their chairs of granite, facing toward each other, 
 gravely and silently watching the passing of one race of men after 
 another, as we might a procession of laborious ants. 
 
 Beneath me, like a tessellated floor, lay long miles of beautiful 
 prairie land, warm with vivid yellow tints, as if streaked with 
 patches of sunshine, through which, now here now there, came the 
 gleam and sparkle of a winding river. That should be the Deer- 
 field, just come down out of the mountains at my right, and slack 
 ening its pace on entering this great audience hall of nature. The 
 Connecticut runs invisible at your left, along the bases of the hills, 
 as if seeking an outlet there, but finding none. Nearest me, down 
 in the valley, I saw what seemed an extensive and luxuriant grove 
 growing in the midst of this prairie. Above this grove was thrust 
 one solitary white spire, straight, stiff, and pointed, like the spike 
 on a grenadier s helmet ; and, on looking closer, the glimmer of 
 white walls showed here and there among the thick-set trees, like 
 a brood of chickens peeping out from under their mother s protect 
 ing wings. They told me that was Old Deerfield. 
 
 And so on, as far as the eye can reach, the valley is strewn 
 with villages. Farms succeed farms. Nature has been lavish, man 
 prosperous. Why it was that fate should have driven one race out 
 of this Eden to admit another, who knew it not, is not given us 
 to know ; but we do understand (and are reminded of the slothful 
 
1 86 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 servant in the parable) that the native Indian could never have 
 brought about what \ve now see. 
 
 In a few minutes more, so short is the distance, I alighted from 
 the train at Old Deerfield Station and walked down the hill into 
 the village. It has that neat and thrifty look common to all our 
 New England villages. Its principal and only street I found com 
 pletely embowered beneath the overarching branches of a double 
 rank of magnificent elms, so that one walked up and down in a 
 beautiful arcade of living green. This was my grove ; and this tall 
 church-steeple my spike. As for those elms, they deserve to be 
 celebrated by some disciple of Tom Hood. I renounce the attempt 
 in advance. 
 
 In company with the Hon. George Sheldon, who is the deposi 
 tary of all the local traditions, I visited all the places of historic 
 interest, both in and out of the village. I first asked to be shown 
 the spot where the old Sheldon house, or as it is still familiarly 
 called, the " Old Indian House," had formerly stood. The building 
 itself was torn down in the year 1848 by its owner, on account of 
 its alleged unfitness for further occupancy. It was then supposed 
 to be something like one hundred and seventy years old. Here is 
 its history : 
 
 Those hardy pioneers who first pitched their lonely cabins still 
 farther down this valley were not long in discovering it to be the 
 garden spot of New England. At this time it was well peopled 
 by the native inhabitants, who extended to the new-comers a hos 
 pitable welcome. As step by step the white men ascended its 
 course, sowing in their march the seeds of hamlets and villages, no 
 other spot seemed to offer such manifold advantages as this one, 
 where the junction of the lesser stream with the greater river 
 marked out at once a geographical boundary, a strategic position, 
 and a natural line of defence. 
 
 Accordingly, a band of stout yeomen from eastern Massachu 
 setts settled here in the year 1670. For a few years they lived 
 
THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 
 
 I8 7 
 
 side by side with their more numerous and more savage neighbors 
 in apparent harmony and good will. The Indians had their village, 
 the white men theirs. The Indians hunted and fished much, but 
 sowed little ; the white men ploughed, sowed, and reaped like their 
 fathers. At length the uprising of Philip of Pokanoket cast a fire 
 brand among these Indians. Philip s emissaries had long been busy 
 among them. Presently they grew sullen, moody, watchful. Then 
 the whites attempted to disarm them. They resisted. This was the 
 
 THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE, DEERFIELD, MASS. 
 
 signal for that series of bloody encounters which laid waste the 
 whole valley. Deerfield was depopulated. The Indians fought like 
 fiends incarnate ; the settlers fought for their lives. 
 
 In the end the settlers remained the masters. The struggle 
 rolled away from the desolated valley, leaving its traces on every 
 hand. Once more the decimated white men gathered about their 
 broken hearthstones. With a courage that commands our admira 
 tion they set about rebuilding their homes. Taking counsel of 
 
1 88 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 their dear-bought experience, they surrounded their little village 
 with a stout stockade, kept watch and ward, concerted signals with 
 their neighbors, kept their trusty muskets loaded and primed, and 
 in all things behaved like men who knew and realized that their 
 lonely outpost was most truly the post of danger. 
 
 Time wore on uneventfully. The remembrance of past horrors 
 was fast being effaced. The village grew and prospered apace. It 
 must have been during this interval of peace that the Sheldon 
 house was built. It stood close by the side of the little village 
 church, whose bell was never silent of a Sabbath morn. Perhaps it 
 was the largest house in the village. At any rate, it was of unusual 
 size and strength. Its second story projected out over the first, 
 after the manner of many of the houses of this early time. The 
 frame was hewed out of stout timber ; the walls between joists 
 were filled in with bricks. When the family retired at night doors 
 and windows would be fast bolted and barred. Captain Sheldon 
 and his wife slept in the east room, on the lower floor, while his 
 son and his son s wife occupied the long chamber up-stairs, which 
 ran the whole length of the house. 
 
 King William s War broke out fiercely, and with it came that 
 horrible massacre at Schenectady which ought, it would seem, to 
 have opened the eyes of people situated like those of Deerfield to 
 their own danger. The situation of these two places as respects 
 their complete isolation was almost precisely similar. Their history 
 was destined to be as like as two leaves taken from the same 
 book. 
 
 After a short cessation, hostilities again broke out in Queen 
 Anne s time, and again the frontier settlements were warned to be 
 on their guard. In the Old Country it was France against Eng 
 land ; in the New World it was colonist against colonist. Canada 
 was the arsenal whence numerous war-parties were launched on 
 their murderous inroads against our exposed frontiers. The long 
 distance stretching out between precluded the possibility of timely 
 
THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 189 
 
 warning being given. Often the deadly blow fell unheralded. All, 
 therefore, that the frontiersmen could do was to put their little vil 
 lage in the best state of defence possible, post their sentinels, keep 
 their powder dry, and exercise the most sleepless vigilance. And 
 that was exactly what the infatuated inhabitants of Deerfield did 
 not do. 
 
 While the settlers were thus resting in the most profound secu 
 rity, all unknown to them the governor of Canada was setting on 
 foot one of his murderous expeditions against them. The historian 
 Charlevoix says it consisted of two hundred and fifty men, com 
 manded by one De Rouville ; but other writers place the number 
 at a much higher figure. Probably the Jesuit historian left out of 
 account the Indians who joined De Rouville later. It was a fright 
 ful march to look forward to. Notwithstanding the deep repugnance 
 we feel toward the actors in this abominable tragedy, it is impossible 
 to withhold our admiration for the warlike hardihood that prompted 
 it. If the destroying angel had followed in their footsteps, instead 
 of leading their van, we should find it hard to repress an emotion 
 of gratitude ; but divested of all its horrors, it must stand as an 
 example of what men will do and dare even in the worst of causes. 
 
 The march had, of course, to be performed on snow-shoes. 
 Those accustomed to brave the rigors of a northern winter need 
 not be told that it was long and painful. At each halting-place, 
 sheltered from the cutting blasts by burying themselves in the 
 depths of the forest, these hardy rangers would scrape out shallow 
 burrows in the snow, in which they lay down, wrapped in their blan 
 kets, until called up to resume their march. A few dead boughs, 
 hastily gathered, smouldered at their feet. The bearded Canadian 
 and painted savage shared this wretched bivouac together. Over hill 
 and mountain, across forest and vale, they came steadily on. One 
 would have said that the thirst for vengeance kept their blood warm. 
 
 The winter of 1703-04 was so cold that all the streams watering 
 this valley were early frozen over, with the exception of Green River, 
 
1 90 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 which has a rapid current. A war- party could, therefore, as easily 
 cross these rivers on the ice as on dry land. There had also been 
 an unusual fall of snow, which had drifted up against the palisades 
 of the fort, at the exposed north side, in so many places that each 
 big drift was an open postern, so that the village could be entered 
 with all ease. These sinister conditions would seem to have called 
 for redoubled vigilance, yet they seem to have passed unregarded. 
 The ground enclosed within the stockade amounted in all to about 
 twenty acres, with perhaps twice that number of houses separated 
 by garden-plots, more or less extensive. The Sheldon house was 
 situated near the north-west angle, where the snow lay deepest. 
 Besides the regular inhabitants some twenty enlisted soldiers of the 
 colony were quartered among the different houses, which they were 
 to aid in defending, in case of an attack, while ordinarily furnishing 
 sentinels by day and night. 
 
 At the same hour when the mothers of Deerfield were hushing 
 their little children to sleep, little dreaming they were lulling them 
 to that slumber which knows no waking, De Rouville was going into 
 camp, in the concealment of a pine wood only two miles north of the 
 village. From this point he would have first to cross the Deer- 
 field, an easy thing to do on the ice, and next to advance for 
 a long distance over the open plain, at the risk of being discovered 
 sooner or later by the sentinels on the walls. 
 
 Not daring to light fires, the invaders shivered through the in 
 tervening hours. Finding all quiet, De Rouville aroused his men 
 shortly after midnight for the assault. Like shadows they stole out 
 of the darkness of the woods. As the crust was now strong enough 
 to bear them up, they left their snow-shoes behind them, marching, 
 however, with the utmost caution, and halting frequently to listen. 
 It was needless. All was quiet. The faithless guards, in their 
 turn, had left their posts at almost the same moment that the 
 enemy had left his encampment. It was as if the unsuspecting vic 
 tims had been delivered into the assassins hands, both gagged and 
 bound, 
 
THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 191 
 
 Early in the morning of Tuesday, the 29th of February, 1703-04, 
 a clay long to be remembered in the annals of Deerfield, in the 
 gray darkness that precedes the dawn, the head of De Rouville s 
 column reached the fort unperceived and unchallenged. The village 
 inside lay wrapped in the most profound quiet. Easily mounting 
 over the snowdrifts, the assailants had only to drop down on the 
 other side until all were collected within the fort. They then 
 rushed on to the assault. 
 
 Scattering themselves about in small parties, so as to cut off 
 escape from one house to another, the wretches began a simulta 
 neous onslaught upon each house. While one or two hacked away 
 
 at the doors with their hatchets, the rest stood with cocked o-uns 
 
 & 
 
 ready to shoot down the first of the inmates who should show him 
 self. The very first warning that the terrified citizens had of what 
 was upon them came from the storm of blows raining clown upon 
 their doors, and the frightful outcries with which the assailants 
 accompanied their destructive work. 
 
 In five minutes an indescribable uproar raged throughout the village. 
 
 One of these bands assaulted the Rev. Mr. Williams s house, and 
 another that of his neighbor, Captain Sheldon. Well for him the 
 Captain himself was not at home ; but his wife was, and she, poor 
 soul, was startled from her sleep by that unearthly din at her door, 
 which, fortunately, being thick and strongly barred, stoutly resisted 
 every attempt to force it open. Rendered furious at being stopped 
 by a door, the assailants then set to work upon it with their toma 
 hawks to see if they could not split it open in that way. Though 
 the house is gone, the door remains to this day to attest the fury 
 of the blows dealt it at that moment. A hole was soon hacked 
 large enough to admit the muzzle of a musket. The assailants 
 peered through it. Some one was seen stirring in the right-hand 
 lower room. Instantly a musket was thrust in and fired. The bullet 
 struck poor Mrs. Sheldon as she was in the act of rising from her 
 bed, and she fell back upon it a corpse. 
 
192 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Meantime the son and wife up-stairs were also awakened by the 
 tumult, and must have heard the fatal shot below. Realizing their 
 peril, they took the only way of escape open to them by throwing 
 open the window of their chamber, and jumping from it to the 
 ground beneath. Sheldon fell on his feet without sustaining any 
 hurt, and ran for the nearest woods, which he fortunately gained in 
 safety. The woman was less fortunate. Her ankle was sprained by 
 the fall, so that, being rendered helpless, the marauders soon laid* 
 hands upon her. The husband kept on to the next settlement be 
 low, where he gave the alarm. 
 
 Having by this time gained an entrance to the house, the 
 assailants converted it into a depot for the reception of their nu 
 merous prisoners. All the rest, except one, were set on fire, and were 
 fast being reduced to ashes along with the ghastly evidences of the 
 morning s bloody work, which the butchers thus left the flames and 
 the wolves to complete. Forty-seven dead bodies were left on this 
 funeral pyre ; one hundred and twelve persons were marched off 
 captives. Woe to those who should lag behind ! 
 
 Charlevoix says that the marauders lost only three Frenchmen 
 and a few savages (as if their loss were a matter of too small 
 account to give numbers), but he adds that De Rouville himself 
 was wounded. Others place the loss at thirty men. 
 
 All the resistance met with here seems to have come from the 
 one house just mentioned, which only seven brave men successfully 
 defended against all comers. Rev. Mr Williams, one of those taken, 
 relates how a chief who had led the assault upon his house was 
 instantly killed by a shot from this one, which he says stood next 
 to his own. Had there been half a dozen like it, there might have 
 been a far different story to tell. 
 
 The alarm, however, spread to the scattered farms below, from 
 which a number of settlers hurried to the burning village, eager to 
 avenge the slaughter of their friends and kindred. They were in 
 time to drive out a few stragglers who had stayed behind plunder- 
 
THE OLD INDIAN HOUSE 193 
 
 ing, after the main body had moved off toward the river with their 
 prisoners and booty. Upon hearing the firing, De Rouville turned 
 back to the assistance of his laggards ; and a lively skirmish ensued 
 between him and the settlers who had advanced beyond the village, 
 but were now obliged to fall back again. De Rouville then re 
 sumed his retreat in a leisurely manner toward Canada. 
 
 The French historian treats this sacking of Deerfield as if it was 
 some great and glorious exploit. We must confess that we see very 
 little more heroism in it than we would in the descent of a pack 
 of famishing wolves upon a sheepfolcl. To make these creeping 
 miscreants appear in any other light than that of so many midnight 
 assassins is to turn honorable warfare into a mockery. He says 
 exultantly and truly that a great many people were killed. That 
 fact is incontestable. They were killed either in their beds or at 
 the moment of jumping out of them half dazed and wholly defence 
 less. In this plight they were knocked on the head one after 
 another, until every house was a shambles. What else is this but 
 downright butchery ? We have nothing to say against the savages, 
 except that they were savages ; but in those Frenchmen who formed 
 two-thirds of the attacking force we recognize that same furcur de 
 sang, that same taint of wolfish ferocity, as in the savage. Whether 
 
 O J O 
 
 innocent blood ran unchecked under a De Rouville or against the 
 plighted faith of a Montcalm, it is the same hideous story from 
 beginning to end ; everywhere rises in our ears the same terrible 
 slogan of " Kill ! kill ! " which has re-echoed from St. Bartholomew 
 to the Terror, and from the Terror to the Commune. At Deerfield 
 none were spared until this brutal thirst for blood had first been 
 fully glutted. To call De Rouville s band soldiers were a libel upon 
 the name. Let us call them common cut-throats. 
 
 Voltaire says that Frenchmen are not tigers, but monkeys. W 7 e 
 have our own ideas on that head. 
 
194" OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 THE OLD GOTHIC HOUSE 
 
 RAVMIAM, MASS. 
 
 Tins very quaint specimen of the homes of our fathers a veri 
 table house of seven gables it is too long ago obtained a facti 
 tious celebrity through the misdirected assiduity of the early historian 
 of Ray n ham, the Rev. Peres Fobes. That gentleman having claimed 
 for it an age going far back of Philip s War, proceeded, out of 
 hand, to connect it with a series of blood-curdling incidents of that 
 war, notwithstanding the vane affixed to the eastern gable of the 
 house bore on its honest face the plain elate of the year 1700, thus 
 giving to the story what our worthy friend Touchstone would have 
 called the lie direct. 
 
 This false glamour surrounding it for so many generations, certainly 
 through no fault of its own, converted the house in the eyes of all who 
 passed it into a veritable chamber of horrors. Its memories evoked 
 either a shrug or a shudder. Its traditions were perpetuated with 
 the most religious exactness from father to son. Listen to one or 
 two of the specific facts set forth by the reverend narrator : - 
 
 " In the cellar under this house was deposited, for a considera 
 ble length of time, the head of King Philip ; for it seems that even 
 Philip himself shared the fate of kings : he was decollated, and his 
 head carried about and shown as a curiosity by one Alderman, the 
 Indian who shot him." 
 
 And again, in the same convincing vein : " Under the doorsteps 
 of the same building now lie buried the bones of two unfortunate 
 young women who in their flight here were shot clown by the 
 Indians, and their blood was seen to run quite across the road." 
 
THE OLD GOTHIC HOUSE 195 
 
 These thrilling tales did not lack for a certain air of probability. 
 All our little world, at least, has heard of King Philip, that re 
 doubted avenger of his race who chose death before dishonor ; and 
 many of us have also heard of the Leonards of Taunton, who are 
 so intimately associated with this spot of ground, and who, more 
 over, have so often been described to us as having gained the fast 
 
 RUINS OF THE LEONARD FORGE, RAYNHAM, MASS. 
 
 friendship of that mighty chieftain a friendship formed by his 
 making the forge a halting-place as he passed up and down between 
 Mount Hope, where he lived, and the Fowling Pond, a mile or so 
 beyond the forge, where he came to shoot ducks, geese, and brant 
 once or twice every year. We may remark in passing that even 
 presidents of the United States are not averse to seeking relaxation 
 from official cares in this way. 
 
196 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 On these occasions the master of the forge had always treated 
 Philip like a man and a brother, as it was certainly quite for his 
 interest to do ; nor did the so-called barbarian forget to repay kind 
 ness with kindness when the outstanding debt fell due. 
 
 So far certainly the old story is plausible enough. But through 
 the persistent and intelligent research of Mr. Elisha C. Leonard, 
 himself one of the old stock, we now know the exact truth about 
 that Gothic House that, in short, it did not go much farther back 
 than the date assigned to it on the vane. All the old cobwebs 
 have been swept away, and the situation completely renovated and 
 restored. Not only did the local historian efface all the gory tradi 
 tions attaching to it with unsparing hand, but, in the spirit of that 
 excellent maxim which declares that 4i nothing is settled that is not 
 settled right," he has given us the true story complete in all its 
 parts and in all its simplicity. 
 
 The simple fact is, that one house had been taken for another. 
 In destroying an illusion, incrusted by the lapse of years, the con 
 scientious investigator did not fail to put his hand upon the rightful 
 claimant ; that is to say, upon the house built by or for James 
 Leonard, and occupied by him during the sanguinary scenes of King- 
 Philip s War. There are so many of these Leonards that we find it 
 difficult to marshal them properly before us without getting them 
 mixed up ; but this James the First is our man for a thousand pounds. 
 
 The story of the Taunton Iron Works has been told down to 
 the minutest detail. Something has teen added of late through the 
 discovery of a certain old ledger, from which Captain J. W. D. Hall 
 has published some very interesting extracts. These works, or 
 " bloomerie " as they were commonly called, long constituted not 
 only the most important feature of ancient Taunton, but of all the 
 country round ; and from far and wide they were resorted to for 
 the products of their smutty forges. Who can doubt that the big 
 trip-hammers were in themselves objects of never- failing wonder to 
 Philip and his greasy Wampanoags, as they sat and smoked and 
 
THE OLD GOTHIC HOUSE 197 
 
 watched them by the hour, or that their rude understandings could 
 
 o 
 
 fail to invest the master of such a tremendous power with some 
 thing a little beyond the attributes of common men ! 
 
 Some of the referred-to extracts afford a clear insight of the 
 important part that this "bloomerie" sustained toward the commu 
 nity at large. It not only forged them bar-iron ; it was their mint, 
 for it furnished their actual circulating medium. Witness one or 
 two illustrations : 
 
 " TAUNTON, April i, 1700. 
 
 "CAPT. LEONARD, I desire you to give John King credit upon works book 
 
 for 20 shilling of iron as money. 
 
 "Your friend to serve, 
 
 "JOHN HALL." 
 
 Here is a very curious order from Rev. Samuel Danforth, the 
 fourth minister of Taunton, to pay his 4 servant mayd" in the ac 
 cepted circulating medium of the times : 
 
 "To CAPTAIN THOMAS LEONARD: 
 
 "Sr I would pray you to pay Elizabeth Gilbert (my late servant mayd) the sum 
 of thirty shillings in iron at 18 sh. per Cwt. to her or her order c^r place it to 
 
 my account *** pr yr friend and servant 
 
 " SAML DANFORTH. 
 "Dated TANTON, March n, 1703-4." 
 
 Here is one of his business orders : Rev. Mr. Danforth wants 
 iron to buy nails. 
 
 "To CAPT. THOMAS LEONARD, in Tanton . 
 
 " Sr I have got Thomas Willis to go to Bridgewater to fetch me some nails from 
 Mr. Mitchell s this night : & pray to let him have 200 of iron to carry with him 
 to pay for them: of which, 100 on acct of Edward Richmond; 53. worth on acct 
 of Thomas Linkon, son of John Linkon, by virtue of his note herewith sent you : 
 for the remainder I may by yr leave be yr debtor for a while till I have another 
 note from some other to ballance against it : & remain yr obliged 
 
 " SAML DANFORTH. 
 " 26 8mo., I7O2. 1 
 
 All we can say is, that specie must have been a scarce com 
 modity indeed, when people had to resort to such shifts and turns 
 
198 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 in order to carry on the common every-day affairs of life. Yet, so 
 far as we can judge, it does not seem to have involved any particu 
 lar hardship. But what would the smart " servant mayde " of to-day 
 think at being tendered her weekly wages in a lump of iron bigger 
 than she could lift ! For these people it most assuredly was an 
 iron age. 
 
 When they hoisted the great water-gate, the loud and monoto 
 nous thud, thud, of the ponderous trip-hammers could be distinctly 
 heard for miles around. In my boyhood days I have often listened 
 to the sound, on a still day, in the adjoining town of Middleborough. 
 To the farmers of those days it grew to be like the voice of an old 
 friend. Far different, however, was the ear-piercing scream of the 
 intrusive locomotive, which set all his teeth on edge, his creatures 
 to scampering about their pastures in affright, and all the village 
 dogs to howling in concert. 
 
 The first steps toward setting up these works were taken as 
 early as the year 1652, but it was four years later before they were 
 in working order for the manufacture of iron. Their location here 
 in the first place was owing to the finding of abundance of bog- 
 iron ore in the neighboring ponds and swamps, from which, in fact, 
 the forge was supplied for eighty years or more. The site is on 
 the great country highway, over which all the travel then passed 
 between Taunton and Raynham Centre, which once formed part of 
 Old Taunton. After many ups and downs, last of which was their 
 conversion into an anchor forge, the works were finally stopped in 
 1865, after a continuous life of more than two hundred years. For 
 eighteen years more they lay idle. The old work- sheds were then 
 demolished ; so that when I saw it last the cumbrous old trip-ham 
 mers, the dam, and the foundation walls, alone remained of the once 
 famous Leonard Forge. 
 
 It were well if the ruthless hand of demolition had stopped here. 
 
 On the opposite side of the highway, over against the forge, on 
 an island formed by the mill-stream and waste-way, there was stand- 
 
THE OLD GOTHIC HOUSE 199 
 
 ing 1 till within a few years a very ancient one-story, gambrel-roofed 
 house. It had been long- abandoned as unfit for further occupancy. 
 One entered through a little porch in front, and there was a lean-to 
 at the back. Such a looking house!" was the common exclama 
 tion of every passer-by. It had been gutted, the window-sashes 
 removed or demolished, leaving the floors littered with nameless rub 
 bish. Fit tenement for owls or bats, it had become an eye-sore, a 
 wayside pauper, a ready-made butt for all the shafts of cheap ridi 
 cule or inconsiderate epithets, usually rounded off with the savage 
 exclamation of "Why don t they tear it down?" 
 
 Such was its condition when I visited it. The sight was not a 
 pleasant one to look at. Now and then a stray sunbeam struggled 
 through the lowering sky into the room, to be followed by deeper 
 shadows that filled its every nook and corner with gloom. They 
 came and went like silent mourners taking their last look at the 
 departed. I hope some day to see its monument erected. It is a 
 pleasant spot, overhung by trees. The clear brook, which of yore 
 turned the groaning mill-wheel, glides swiftly beneath a rustic bridge 
 ere it tumbles over the dam below. Strange perversity that in this 
 busy New England of ours, a spot once full of the joyous bustle 
 of life and labor should have thus reverted to its original solitude! 
 
 o 
 
 Yet, beyond reasonable question, this same sorry-looking wreck 
 was the identical building first erected for the occupation of the 
 master-workman and his mates, in the small beginnings at the 
 forge. At that time it probably passed for a very good sort of a 
 house. It certainly fulfilled all wants. James Leonard himself was 
 only a salaried employee. Nothing was so scarce as money. Econ 
 omy, therefore, ruled in every branch of outlay. With such limited 
 means at their command, the energies of the projectors were neces 
 sarily directed to getting their works going first of all. That done, 
 better things would, no doubt, come in good time. And so they did. 
 
 We accept, then, without qualification, the deduction that this 
 house must have been the one in which King Philip was enter- 
 
200 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 tained in his passage to and fro ; that it was the one taken under 
 his protection at the breaking-out of hostilities ; that consequently it 
 was the same one to which the affrighted settlers fled for protection 
 when Philip s human bloodhounds were following close on their 
 track; and, if we are to believe tradition, it was the place where 
 the gory head of the great Wampanoag long lay concealed after 
 being neatly severed from the trunk. 
 
 In this mean-looking house, with that of Thomas Leonard, the 
 eldest son of James, which stood on the south side of the road, 
 and the forge building just beyond, soldiers were kept while the 
 war lasted. So long as that continued the forge assumed the char 
 acter of an outpost. The three buildings completely commanded 
 the road as well as each other, so that here was a natural rallying- 
 point for the hard-pressed settlers of the neighborhood. It was 
 strongly desired by those who knew its history that this precious 
 relic of that deadly struggle which had solved the question whether 
 New England should be heathen or Christian, pagan or civilized, 
 should be spared the ravages of improvement as it had been those 
 of time. This hope was, however, not destined to be fulfilled. 
 The old house was demolished soon after I visited it ; and with its 
 disappearance not only Raynham and Taunton, but the whole 
 country, has lost one of its treasures. 
 
 Of the Gothic House, which we have described as belonging to 
 a later period, little is to be said except that it belonged to a very 
 quaint and picturesque style of architecture, which we should much 
 like to see reproduced in some of the buildings of our own day. 
 The late Mr. Hawthorne was able to invest his 4k House of Seven 
 Gables " with almost human attributes ; so much so indeed that the 
 old dwelling itself seemed a living presence to us. Certainly the 
 houses men have lived in do bring us closer to their lives than all 
 other means put together. They are no longer the phantoms of 
 our imagination. We see them in their very habits " as they lived." 
 
 The Leonard house with the peaked gables stood on the west 
 
THE OLD GOTHIC HOUSE 201 
 
 side of the Fowling Pond road, about two hundred yards from the 
 forge ; was of two stories, and fronted toward the south, with the 
 end toward the road. Its owner and builder was Captain James 
 Leonard, the Second, son of the original master of the forces. In 
 course of time it became the property of Zephaniah Leonard, the 
 grandson of this James, who, it is said, did not fail to keep up the 
 traditions of the mansion for hospitality and good cheer. Nobody 
 occupies precisely the same position in society nowadays as the 
 men of that generation did in their time. In his immediate sphere 
 
 Zephaniah Leonard was the great man the autocrat, in short of 
 
 his day. He was major of the county regiment, and captain of the 
 cavalry attached to it. Later on he was made a judge of the Court 
 of Common Pleas, which office he continued to hold until his death 
 in 1766. By a somewhat remarkable coincidence his wife died on 
 the same day with himself, so that husband and wife were buried 
 in one grave together. Dying intestate, according to a custom 
 common enough in that day, and not yet extinct in some parts of 
 the country, the homestead itself was divided between his two sons, 
 from whom it descended through two generations more of Leonards 
 down to 1850, when, in consequence of its dilapidated condition, it 
 was pulled down, after standing one hundred and fifty years, or 
 from the reign of Queen Anne to that of Victoria, and after having 
 sheltered five generations of the same family. 
 
 Our notice of the Leonards of ancient Taunton closes as it 
 began with a reference to the Rev. Peres Fobes, minister of Rayn- 
 ham, who, I know not how, easily mistook one house for another. 
 Another mistake of his will not, I imagine, be so easily forgiven, 
 or so soon forgotten. It w r as a custom when any person of dis 
 tinction in the community had died to apply to the minister for an 
 epitaph. Who should better know all the qualities of his parish 
 ioners ? who so well the exact line of Scripture fit to hit the 
 case ? Upon the decease of Major Zephaniah and his wife their 
 pastor, Rev. Mr. Fobes, composed their epitaph, into which some 
 
202 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 traces of an old family feud are thought to have crept, either inad 
 vertently, or, as some wits suggested, with irony prepense. Be that 
 as it may, here is the inscription, as originally cut, though one line 
 is now wanting : - 
 
 " To dust and silence so much worth consigned 
 Sheds a sad gloom o er vanities behind. 
 Such our pursuits ? Proud mortals vainly soar. 
 See here, the wise, the virtuous are no more. 
 How mean Ambition ! how completely hate ; 
 How dim the tinsel glories of the Great ! 
 Even the Leonards undistinguished fall, 
 And death and hovering darkness hide us all." 
 
 The disappearance of this one line of the inscription is accounted 
 for in this way. By the descendants of the defunct, who believed 
 they knew how to read between the lines, it was considered more 
 in the light of condemnation than of commendation. Common 
 people saw only its flatness. Accordingly, on one memorable day, 
 a certain moody young man took a hammer and chisel, with which 
 he incontinently erased the objectionable line. So it now appears 
 on the sarcophagus erected over the remains in the Plains Ceme 
 tery. All will agree, we think, in characterizing the epitaph, as a 
 whole, as a most labored, turgid affair, even if all should not see in 
 it a timely warning to be careful who shall write our epitaphs. 
 
THE OLD STONE HOUSE 203 
 
 THE OLD STONE HOUSE 
 
 GUILFORD, CONN. 
 
 AFTER taking note of the many curious contrasts afforded by the 
 houses themselves, we are infallibly led to Pope s conclusion that 
 
 " Honor and fame from no condition rise." 
 
 We have seen two presidents of the United States coming out of 
 a very ordinary farmhouse ; a general of high military renown from 
 another ; a fisherman s son, become a baronet, from another. We 
 have seen some houses made famous by what has happened within 
 their walls ; others through the mere caprice of genius, like the 
 Wayside Inn. In short, our sentimental peregrinations have led us 
 among people of all sorts and conditions, into the dust and smoke 
 of battle, and from grave to gay. One more of these patriarchs, 
 and we have done. 
 
 The pleasant seashore town of Guilford, Connecticut, is yet an- 
 other example of the way in which advancing civilization followed 
 close in the retreating footsteps of an absolutely lethargic and un- 
 progressive barbarism. Galileo s memorable declaration that the 
 world moves may be as truly applied to the course of events as to 
 the turnings of our globe. And the destruction of whole races of 
 men for the benefit of others better endowed for the great work 
 of pushing forward progress into the uttermost parts of the earth, 
 cruel as it seems, is the distinct philosophy of all human history. 
 
 Although the country lying on the west of the Connecticut did 
 not belong to the Pequots, they held the local tribes in a sort of 
 vassalage by the fear of their prowess in war. These Mohawks of 
 
204 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 New England were, therefore, the first obstacle in the way of the 
 whites. Whoever vanquished them would more than inherit their 
 mastery over the detached and weaker tribes over whom that nation 
 had so long lorded it with iron hand. 
 
 When, therefore, those fierce and intractable Pequots who sur 
 vived the edge of the sword abandoned in dismay the lands they 
 also had once wrested from weaker tribes, the victorious whites, 
 weary of slaughter, fully believed themselves the chosen instruments 
 of Divine wrath in freeing the land of such idolatrous hordes ; nor 
 in word or deed do they ever evince the least prick of conscience 
 at having performed the work thoroughly well. It was the philoso 
 phy of that century ; it has been the philosophy of our own. 
 
 Then began the more Christian work of planting villages, of 
 welding together infant communities, of replenishing the desolated 
 land with inhabitants, of establishing the new Messiah of peace and 
 good will, even though its coming had been announced by the sword. 
 Humanity may weep over the crimes committed in its name, but 
 would the world to-day be willing to go back to the old order of 
 things ? 
 
 Guilford was the early blossom of that ferocious Pequot War. 
 The savages had begun it by waylaying, murdering, and torturing 
 the scattered English. The English finished it by roasting the Pe 
 quots alive in the flames of their own villages. To this day one of 
 the headlands of Guilford commemorates an incident of that war. 
 The story goes that some fugitive Pequots, flying to this place for 
 security, were hemmed in by their pursuers. Right well they knew 
 what their portion would be. Taken in a trap, after making heroic 
 efforts to escape, resigned but defiant still, the Pequots submitted 
 to their fate with all the stoicism of their race. An Indian never 
 whimpered when the axe was raised to strike. At that supreme 
 moment he was no longer a barbarian, but a man. A redeeming 
 heroism exalted his last moments. He looked his executioner in 
 the eye without flinching. Mononotto, the Pequot chief, had his 
 
THE OLD STONE HOUSE 205 
 
 skull split at a stroke. The Mohegans struck off his head and set 
 it up in the forks of a branching oak, from which circumstance the 
 place thenceforward took the name of Sachem s Head. 
 
 The Indian name of Guilford was Menuncatuc. 
 
 The way being thus cleared, it was not long before the whites 
 began to flock into what subsequently became New Haven Colony, 
 a self-made colony, if we may use the term, since it was wholly 
 the work of the governed ; for charter they had none, organic law 
 none. These were chiefly new emigrants for whom the opening up 
 of new territory had the same alluring charm as it has ever had 
 since the world began. To Menuncatuc about forty people from 
 Kent, Suffolk, and Surrey, in England, accordingly came in the year 
 1639; their final choice of this spot being determined, it is said, by 
 its marked resemblance to the old home across the water. Our 
 conception of the Puritan broadens as we find him thus in touch 
 with human sympathy. Yet it is by no means a new thing to find 
 this revivifying 1 sentiment alive and active amono- the original emi- 
 
 > O fc> t"> 
 
 grants. It was transplanted from the old England to the New ; it 
 has been transplanted from bleak New England all the way to the 
 Pacific. 
 
 These settlers (and it will never do to pass over with a shrug 
 forces so distinctly operative in directing the very acts of men) hon 
 orably purchased the lands of the natives, merely stipulating that 
 the late owners should immediately remove from them. The act, 
 severely practical and commonplace as it may seem, may, neverthe 
 less, be construed into a feeling of lingering distrust toward the 
 red man. They would buy with him, sell with him, but of his com 
 pany they would fain be rid. We cannot blame them. It is fair to 
 presume that all New England was still talking of the war and its 
 horrors. 
 
 We like to think about people who had taken such a distinct 
 forward step of what they fancied they were going to do with the 
 full and entire liberty they carried with them in their wise heads. 
 
206 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 Why was not the phonograph then invented to transmit to us their 
 conversations ? How earnestly they must have talked it all over 
 until drowsiness put its spell upon their tongues, prayed over it, 
 slept upon it, perhaps dreamed about it ! Usually the English 
 colonist, bound by old forms, exploded traditions, hereditary sub 
 mission, and what not, could not be made to stir a step until he 
 had first encumbered himself with all the wordy and generally 
 meaningless formalities of a sheepskin duly signed and sealed. 
 In fact, he was the slave of forms. These Guilfordites were as free 
 as the Indians whom they had just bought out. While building 
 their poor cabins, they were also contriving air-castles out of their 
 cherished theories of self-government. It required no little forti 
 tude, considerable confidence in themselves, not to forget an unde- 
 viating reliance in the Guiding Hand, to enter upon the experiment 
 at all. But these enthusiasts felt no fear ; their world was all before 
 them, and they were filled with the youthful desire to carve out 
 their fortunes for themselves. 
 
 Of this united brotherhood of choice spirits were the Rev. Henry 
 Whitfield, " that gracious and faithful pastor ; " Samuel Desborough, 
 his son-in-law, afterwards Lord Keeper of Scotland; William Leete, 
 afterwards governor of New Haven Colony ; and John Hoadley, who 
 subsequently held the post of Chaplain of the Castle of Edinburgh, 
 presumably through his friend Desborough s influence. In respect of 
 ability this was no ordinary combination of men. All were young, 
 all full of life and hope and energy, of zeal and determination to 
 make their mark on the wilderness in which they had cast their lot. 
 
 Having taken up ground outside of existing charter limits, these 
 settlers were now wholly thrown upon their own resources as respects 
 their organic law. They therefore fell back upon the great moral 
 law of all Christian men. In this way the Scriptures became their 
 fundamental law, of which the pastor was, of course, the admitted 
 expounder. In its first estate Guilford, therefore, stands for a unit 
 of self-government, under strictly ecclesiastical forms. 
 
THE OLD STONE HOUSE 207 
 
 Rude lives these pioneers must have led at first ! Scant living 
 and hard beds must have been their lot ! Work began with the 
 first glimmer of dawn, and ended only when the red sun sank behind 
 the darkening hills in the west. Then, stretched out on the bare 
 ground in their cloaks, under the stars, the tired toilers fell into the 
 deep sleep that waits on honest labor, to wander away into the land 
 of dreams. One for all, all for one ; this was their true federation 
 of love and labor. 
 
 The minister s comfortable housing seems to have been one of 
 the first things looked to. At any rate, we find these settlers almost 
 immediately setting about building him a house, a house of stone. 
 Notwithstanding their friendly arrangement with the native owners, 
 says the tradition (and we are more than half inclined to believe it 
 true), the settlers thought it only the part of prudence to build at 
 least one house which should be so constructed as to serve at need 
 both as castle and fortress. It certainly explains why so much time 
 and labor should be expended on a stone house when, on most 
 grounds, one of wood was to be preferred. 
 
 We might follow those first-comers in their perambulations about 
 in search of a site for their principal house ; observe their animated 
 pointings hither and thither ; listen to the pros and cons with which 
 the advantages of this or that spot were discussed ; see them thought 
 fully leaning on the muzzles of their muskets ; but most assuredly 
 come with them to the safe conclusion at last, that the little ris 
 ing-ground situated at the head of the great plain was, on the whole, 
 the spot of all others. 
 
 So to work all went with a will. There must have been clever 
 artisans among them, as the undertaking was no common one for 
 those primitive days. To begin with, the rough stone lay at quite 
 a distance from the chosen site. We are told that while some 
 toiled with sledge and bar at getting out the stone at the quarry, 
 others trudged to and fro with the hand barrows. So, counting 
 those who were employed in mixing the mortar, or in laying up the 
 
2O8 
 
 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 walls, about all the able-bodied men present must have put in 
 more or less labor on the building. That the work was well done 
 we know. The minister himself was a scholar, refined, delicately 
 reared, unaccustomed to labor with his hands ; yet for all that we 
 think it would be safe to wager something that he did not stand 
 idle while others worked, but was as bus)- as the busiest. When 
 every man had done his share the house was built. 
 
 We do not precisely know either when the house was com- 
 
 THE OLD STONE HOUSE, GUILFORD, CONN. 
 
 pleted, or when first occupied. It is more likely than not that it 
 was ready for its tenant some time during the year 1640. Such 
 houses are not built in a clay. And to think that any vestige of 
 the self-same building should be standing to-day, greatly emphasizes 
 the durable character of the work done so long ago. When we 
 cast a look back and think of its great age, a year or two more or 
 less becomes a small matter indeed. 
 
 The Old Stone House (we do not know either just when it began 
 to grow old, or to be affectionately called so) was a solid, sub 
 stantial, and even comfortable dwelling, as it was meant to be, not 
 
THE OLD STONE HOUSE 209 
 
 only for that time, but for two centuries later. It consisted of a 
 main building and an " L." Plain to homeliness it certainly was; yet 
 its two big outside chimneys, heavily buttressed up against the 
 exterior walls, have no counterpart, that we know of, in New Eng 
 land, though that manner of building was common enough in the 
 Middle and Southern colonies. It makes us fancy that this house 
 must have had a prototype somewhere in far-off Surrey. If so, it 
 was a modern-antique when first built, - - a new-old house. And 
 why not ? Guilford was chosen because it looked like the old home. 
 Why may not these exiles have carried that same idea into their 
 building, and so have made it monumental ? 
 
 All agree that in its original form the Old Stone House was a 
 very picturesque object. We have, therefore, taken great pains to 
 present it as nearly as possible as it was. The walls were laid 
 two feet thick in mortar that, with time, became as hard as the 
 stone itself. The woodwork was made strong and durable, though 
 not too clumsy, with low ceilings for warmth as well as for economy s 
 sake. After a long departure from this old way, we, the prodigal 
 sons of this wiser generation, are going back to the example set 
 by the Puritan fathers in this respect. But how the big fires must 
 have roared up those chimneys of a cold winter s night ! and how 
 like from a furnace in full blast the sparks must have streamed up 
 out of their sooty throats into the outer darkness ! 
 
 We are told that at the first marriage solemnized in the 
 Stone House the wedding feast consisted wholly of pork and 
 beans. 
 
 For a full decade onward from the date of its erection the his 
 tory of the parsonage is wrapped up in that of the infant colony; 
 and that, we regret to say, is one of gradual but steady disintegration. 
 The causes for this state of things must be sought for among the 
 narratives of the time. It is only alluded to here in explanation 
 of what befell the promising beginnings of Gmlford, where so many 
 good men and true were expending their best energies at hard 
 
210 OUR COLONIAL HOMES 
 
 and unremunerative labor in the hope of seeing their infant plan 
 tation eventually take firm root. 
 
 That this "rockie, sandy wildernesse" did not realize their hopes 
 is only too evident from the sequel. We find them at least half 
 convinced that their experiment was a failure ; for \ve find them 
 casting about for some place to remove to where they might have 
 11 cities read) builded and land ready tilled," and turning longing 
 eyes in the direction of the Delaware, where they did make one 
 serious but wholly disastrous attempt to settle a town. 
 
 The situation here at Guilforcl, and in the neighbor settlements 
 also, was precisely that from which some abnormal condition, such 
 as war, for instance, would be sure to profit, and profit to the utmost. 
 
 It is well known that the breaking-out of civil war in Old Eng 
 land gigantic struggle which shook the world ! resulted in call 
 ing back many of the bravest spirits in the Puritan colonies to 
 serve under Cromwell s banners. From the shores of the distracted 
 island came forth the Macedonian cry of "Come over and help us !" 
 nor did it fall on dull ears. The ocean was not broad enough or 
 deep enough to extinguish the memory of the wrongs that had first 
 driven the Puritans into exile. Long had they listened for the 
 first faint notes of the war-trumpet, and it was now being sounded 
 out loud and clear. Many a young man therefore gladly threw 
 down the mattock and spade to buckle on the sword. With that 
 same trusty weapon a score or more carved their names deeply in 
 the history of those troublous times. Some fell, some returned, and 
 some remained behind to see the great fabric they had sweat blood 
 to rear, come down with a crash into the dust at the blowing of an 
 enchanted horn. 
 
 Mr. Whitfield himself went back to England in 1650. Hubbard 
 attributes his doing so partly to " the sharpness of the air, he hav 
 ing a weak body, and partly to the toughness of those employments 
 wherein his livelihood was to be sought, he having been tenderly 
 and delicately brought up. He therefore, finding his estate wasted 
 
THE OLD STONE HOUSE 21 I 
 
 very much, his body decaying, and many other things concurring, 
 removed back again to England, not without the tears and unspeak 
 able lamentations of his dear Hock. This," Hubbard continues, 
 "was a great loss not only to them, but to all that side of the 
 country." We can well believe that the loss of such a man would 
 appear to his people in the light of a public calamity. Like dear 
 Old Goldy s village preacher, - 
 
 " A man he was to all his people dear, 
 And passing rich with eighty pounds a year." 
 
 We learn that Mr. Whitfield sold his Guilford estate to a Major 
 Thompson, who in turn transmitted it to his heirs. At the beo-in- 
 ning of this century it was described by President Dwight as lately 
 belonging to one Joseph Pynchon ; and from other sources we find 
 that it was at this time considered of equal value with any other 
 building in the township, was in a tolerable state of preservation, 
 and even then was much visited by strangers. So it remained 
 down to the year 1868, when, alas! the ruthless destroyer, time, 
 decreed that the days of the ancient landmark were numbered. It 
 was torn down and rebuilt. All that is really ancient in the present 
 structure is the big chimney at the north end, although some of the 
 old materials and foundation walls were used in the rebuilding. 
 That, however, constituted the most characteristic feature of the Old 
 Stone House, in its original form, and fortunately that was retained. 
 We might say with entire truth that for a half-century, at least, the 
 history of Guilford seems to revolve around the Old Stone House, 
 or that whenever we think of Guilford a picture of the Old Stone 
 House at once rises into view. 
 
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