"I have been schooling from 7 to 11 Poor children, yearly--I am now not schooling as many--my school is doing well--we have a good minister and he is a good Preacher. The Church is doing well. I am now commencing one more building, 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and three stories high, for the convenience of more room for Boarders in the ---- Institute. "I wrung more Bells at the fall of Richmond than any man in the United States, which they was all purchased with one man's money--7 was the number, 4 large ones & 3 small ones--it is true I was a little opposed to the War--but no matter. The Brick Church and the Buildings I built for the ---- Institute now with Interest cost me now over $43.000. They are all Paid for and I am out of Debt. I have furnished every stick of wood for the Church, and have carried the most of it in since it was built. I still wring the Bells on all occasions." etc. etc. There is, perhaps, a touch of the garrulity of age in this good man's recital; but I consider his record of his early life, slight as it is, yet too strikingly suggestive to be left to chances which might await a private letter. Indeed, the character thus displayed is surely equal to that of the best of the old Romans, in the middling class of life, enlightened too by a living faith of which they had no conception; and the sketch gives fair warrant for the conclusion, that, in point of manly simplicity and integrity, the traits and the trials of those elder worthies who helped to settle our republican institutions have not been overdrawn. ----- [1] As I set down these reminiscences I observe the following paragraph in a Boston daily paper of November 27, 1872:-- "NOVEMBER SNOW. Fifty-two years ago to-day there were twenty-eight inches of snow on a level in the vicinity of Portsmouth, N. H." [2] The late Mr. George Wood, of Washington, a native of our town, in some highly interesting _Memorabilia_, formerly published, says: "The aristocracy were not on High Street, as now, but on Water Street, and more at the South than the North end, as the old houses give evidence to this day. The Johnsons, Jacksons, Davenports, Coffins, Greenleafs, Bartletts, Pierces, Hoopers, Tappans, Todds, Carters, Lunts, Marquands, and others of wealth, were on Water Street or near it. There were their grand houses and fine gardens, and it was not till they thought of retiring from business that they removed to the West-end or up-town, as gradually as they always do in all places."