and tradition has it that, on one occasion, an explosion took 20 place by night, which blew away a part of the side wall, lifted the bed on which a negro woman, the slave of the occupant, was asleep, bore her safely across the road, and planted her, bed and all, upon the spreading branches of an apple-tree, without injury. An early owner of the place was the ancestor of one of the recent Presidents of the United States, and it was known, until quite a modern period, as the Pierce Farm.

Not many years ago, there still remained at the corner of a street, between the points just designated, one of those ancient houses not common in this country, the second story resting on heavy beams, which showed themselves in the outside walls, and the walls of the long, low dwelling filled in with a coat of dark plaster braced by wooden cross-pieces, like those of Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford. The handsome houses before alluded to were the residences chiefly of merchants, or sea-captains, who had retired from their maritime or commercial occupations 21 with a competence, or of prosperous professional persons.[2] But a competence in those frugal days was an insignificant sum in comparison with the fortunes of our own time, scarcely approaching the annual income of the shoddy-masters, who now regulate the avenues of social and so-called aristocratic life. Indeed, I was once informed by an old inhabitant, that the richest person in the town, near the close of the last century, was assessed upon only ten thousand dollars’ worth of personal property. But I 22 think there must be some mistake in this statement, unless the rate of taxation was exceedingly low; for this same prosperous merchant devoted twenty times as much as that reputed capital to certain pious uses, during his protracted life-time, and still left forty times as much at his decease. Doubtless in those better days, the inevitable “rates” (“death and rates,” they used to say, “were certain”) were so small as to press but lightly upon the incomes of individuals in moderate circumstances, and the means of getting at the exact measure of a man’s worldly “worth,” had not reached their present degree of perfection. Indeed I may state, upon unquestionable authority, that, late in the first quarter of the present century, a highly respected trader of the town, who lived genteelly and was taxed upon a supposed capital of eighteen thousand dollars, waited upon the assessors and blandly told them, “Gentlemen, I have been more than usually prosperous the last 23 year, and am willing you should tax me upon an additional thousand.” Such combined integrity and disinterestedness was the theme of universal commendation; but when the old gentleman went to another reckoning a few years afterwards, his heirs had the benefit of an estate nearer one hundred thousand dollars in value, than the limited capital which had contributed its quota to the public burdens. In a word, I have heard my Aunt Judith say, that in her youth it was usual for respectable young women to take service with more thriving neighbors or friends, for the annual allowance of their board and a single calico gown, at four and sixpence a yard,—as the price was before mills were established on our own ground.

I cannot help referring more particularly to some of the families of the town, who imparted to it a well-founded reputation, not surpassed, if equaled, by that of any town or city in the land; for instance, there 24 were the Lowells, who gave name, afterwards, to that wonderful city of spindles, which enjoys as world-wide a standing in the annals of manufacturing enterprise as the old-world Manchester of a long-anterior date, and one of whom, amid the desolate ruins of Luxor, struck by the hand of fatal disease, conceived the idea of establishing that noble Institute which bears his name, and will convey it to future grateful generations; a name, too, which has so resounded in the popular literature of the day. Then, there were the Jacksons, famous in mechanics and in two of the learned professions; Charles Jackson, the erudite and upright judge, and James Jackson, one of those skillful and truly benevolent physicians, whose memory is still in the hearts of many surviving patients. The Tyngs, too, resided there, long honorably connected with colonial history and still represented by descendants of national repute. Amongst other remarkable individuals was Jacob 25 Perkins, the famous inventor, who at an advanced age ended his useful career with no little foreign celebrity in the great city of the world. I have read lately of his successful exhibition of his wonderful steam-gun, in the presence of the Duke of Wellington and other competent judges of the experiment, and know not what national prejudice, perhaps, or other casual reason, prevented its adoption.[3] In science, too, we had Master Nicholas Pike, an ancient magistrate, whose arithmetic held its ground throughout the country, until it was superseded by that of Master Michael Walsh, which received the high commendation of so capital a judge, in matters of calculation, as the old land-surveyor and finally head of the 26 nation, Washington. Master Walsh was an Irishman by birth, though “caught young,” as Dr. Johnson remarked, to account for any distinction acquired by natives of Scotland; and he displayed much of that impulsive temperament imputed to the people of Erin’s Green Isle. He dressed in the old style, his gray hair gathered into a queue, and wearing top-boots to the last. He was an excellent classical scholar, as well as mathematician. The pupils he prepared for college did justice to his instructions, and some have acquired great eminence in the several professions and in the conduct of important national affairs. As an instance of his patriotic attachment to his adopted country, upon casually meeting, late in life, a certain writer of the town, after a cordial salutation, he added with a slight dash of the brogue, “I thank ye for the Red and the Blue!” The young person was a little taken aback, not remembering the allusion, for a moment, when the old 27 gentleman repeated emphatically,—“The Red and the Blue, ye know—Tom Campbell.” It was in reference to a couple of stanzas, addressed to the United States by that great lyric poet, scarcely equaled in his day, namely:—

To this the American had retorted:—