"Bill Spear" himself is quite a curiosity. He traces a lineage to the well-known Lieutenant Seth Spear, of Revolutionary fame, and back of that to John Alden, who spoke for himself. The bark on the antiquarian, is rather rough; and I regret to say that he makes use of a few words I can not find in the "Century Dictionary," but as June was not shocked I managed to stand it. On further acquaintance I concluded that Mr. Spear's bruskness was assumed, and that beneath the tough husk there beats a very tender heart. He is one of those queer fellows who do good by stealth and abuse you roundly if accused of it. For twenty-five years Mr. Spear has been doing little else but studying Colonial history, and making love to old ladies who own clocks and skillets given them by their great-grandmammas. There is no doubt that Spear has dictated clauses in a hundred wills devising that William G. Spear, Custodian of the Quincy Historical Society, shall have snuffers and biscuit-molds. At first, Mr. Spear collected for his own amusement and benefit, but the trouble grew upon him until it became chronic, and one fine day he realized that he was not immortal, and when he should die, all his collection, which had taken years to accumulate, would be scattered. And so he founded the Quincy Historical Society, incorporated by a perpetual charter, with Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, as first president. Then, the next thing was to secure the cottage where John and Abigail Adams began housekeeping, and where John Quincy was born. This house has been in the Adams family all these years and been rented to the firm of Tom, Dick and Harry, and any of their tribe who would agree to pay ten dollars a month for its use and abuse. Just across the road from the cottage lives a fine old soul by the name of John Crane. Mr. Crane is somewhere between seventy and a hundred years old, but he has a young heart, a face like Gladstone and a memory like a copy-book. Mr. Crane was on very good terms with John Quincy Adams, knew him well and had often seen him come here to collect rent. He told me that during his recollection the Adams place had been occupied by full forty families. But now, thanks to "Bill Spear," it is no longer for rent. The house has been raised from the ground, new sills placed under it, and while every part--scantling, rafter, joist, crossbeam, lath and weatherboard--of the original house has been retained, it has been put in such order that it is no longer going to ruin. From the ample stores of his various antiquarian depositories Mr. Spear has refurnished it; and with a ripe knowledge and rare good taste and restraining imagination, the cottage is now shown to us as a Colonial farmhouse of the year Seventeen Hundred Fifty. The wonder to me is that Mr. Spear, being human, did not move his "secondhand-shop" down here and make of the place a curiosity-shop. But he has done better.