A walk in the older and more thickly settled parts of the town is not without its rewards. There are to be found well-known objects of interest,--the Jewish burial-ground, with its luxurious screen of carefully tended flowers; the Redwood Library, rich in old books and the possession of the finest cut-leaved beech on the island; and the old Stone Mill, on which so much speculative reasoning in prose and verse has been lavished. Some years ago, those ruthless civic hands which know neither taste nor mercy, despoiled the mill of the vines which made it picturesque, but even thus denuded, it is an interesting object. There is old Trinity, with its square pews and burial tablets, and a last-century “three-decker” pulpit, with clerk’s desk, reading-desk and preaching-desk, [Illustration: DOORWAY OF OLD HOUSE ON THAMES STREET.] all overhung by a conical sounding-board of extinguisher pattern--a sounding-board on which whole generations of little boys have fixed fascinated eyes, wondering in case of fall what would become of the clergyman underneath it. And, besides these, each westward-leading street gives pretty glimpses of bay and islands and shipping, and there is always the chance of lighting on a bit of the past,--some quaint roof or wall or doorway, left over from Revolutionary times and holding up a protesting face from among more modern buildings. Winter or summer, the charm which most endears Newport to the imaginative mind is, and must continue to be, the odd mingling of old and new which meets you on every hand. A large portion of the place belongs and can belong to no other day but our own, but touching it everywhere, apart from it but of it, is the past. It meets you at every turn, in legend or relic or quaint traditionary custom still kept up and observed. Many farm-hands and servants on the island still date and renew their contracts of service from “Lady-Day.” The “nine-o’clock bell,” which seems derived in some dim way from the ancient curfew, is regularly rung. The election parade, dear to little boys and peanut-venders, has continued to be a chief event every spring, with its procession, its drums, its crowd of country visitors, and small booths for the sale of edibles and non-edibles pitched on either side the State-House Square, which, in honor of this yearly observance, is called familiarly, “The Parade.” One of the oldest militia companies in New England is the Newport Artillery, and _The Mercury_, established in 1758 by a brother of Benjamin Franklin, is the oldest surviving newspaper in the United States. Newport also possesses a town-crier. He may be met with any day, tinkling his bell at street corners and rehearsing, in a loud, melancholy chant, facts regarding auction-sales, or town-meetings, or lost property. And, turning aside from the polo-play or the Avenue crowded with brilliant equipages, a few rods carries you to the quiet loneliness of a secluded burial-place, with the name of an ancient