About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of him as “the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton,” as if one should say, “the well-known statesman, Daniel Webster.” It is curious to observe how any sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the hens flying out of the loft window in his father’s stable, which stood in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that though he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in no respect inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the window in the loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England Icarus alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as had not been detected in him previous to his mischance. As Polonius said of Hamlet--another unstrung mortal--Tilton’s replies had “a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.” One morning, he appeared at the flour-mill with a sack of corn to be ground for the almshouse, and was asked what he knew. “Some things I know,” replied poor Tilton, “and some things I don’t know. I know the miller’s hogs grow fat, but I don’t know whose corn they fat on.” To borrow another word from Polonius, though this be madness, yet there was method in it. Tilton finally brought up in the almshouse, where he was allowed the liberty of roaming at will through the town. He loved the water-side as if he had had all his senses. Often he was seen to stand for hours with a sunny, torpid smile on his lips, gazing out upon the river where its azure ruffles itself into silver against the islands. He always wore stuck in his hat a few hen’s feathers, perhaps with some vague idea of still associating himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come into that category.