The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' RebellionBellamy, Edward
General
The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' Rebellion
Bellamy, Edward
Shays' Rebellion, 1786-1787 -- Fiction
Around the green stand the public buildings of the place. Here is the
tavern, a low two-story building, without porch or piazza, and entered
by a door in the middle of the longest side. Over the door swings a
sign, on which a former likeness of King George has, by a metamorphosis
common at this period, been transformed into a soldier of the
revolution, in Continental uniform of buff and blue. But just at this
time its contemplation does not afford the patriotic tipler as much
complacency as formerly, for Burgoyne is thundering at the passes of
the Hoosacs, only fifty miles away, and King George may get his red coat
back again, after all. The Tories in the village say that the landlord
keeps a pot of red paint behind the door, so that the Hessian dragoons
may not take him by surprise when they come galloping down the valley,
some afternoon. On the other side [of] the green is the meeting-house,
built some thirty years ago, by a grant from government at Boston,
and now considered rather old-fashioned and inconvenient. Hard by the
meeting-house is the graveyard, with the sandy knoll in its south-west
corner, set apart for the use of the Indians. The whipping-post, stocks,
and cage, for the summary correction of such offences as come within the
jurisdiction of Justice Jahleel Woodbridge, Esquire, adorn the middle of
the village green, and on Saturday afternoon are generally the center of
a crowd assembled to be edified by the execution of sentences.
On the other side [of] the green from the meeting-house stands the
store, built five years before, by Timothy Edwards, Esquire, a structure
of a story and a half, with the unusual architectural adornment of a
porch or piazza in front, the only thing of the kind in the village. The
people of Stockbridge are scarcely prouder of the divinity of their
late shepherd, the famous Dr. Jonathan Edwards, than they are of his
son Timothy's store. Indeed, what with Dr. Edwards, so lately in their
midst, Dr. Hopkins, down at Great Barrington, and Dr. Bellamy, just over
the State line in Bethlehem, Connecticut, the people of Berkshire are
decidedly more familiar with theologians than with storekeepers, for
when Mr. Edwards built his store in 1772, it was the only one in the
county.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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