Inquiry among aged residents of New Rochelle has been made from time to time for a great many years. The Hon. J. B. Stallo, late U. S. Minister to Italy, told me that in early life he visited the place and saw persons who had known Paine, and declared that Paine resided there without fault. Paine lived for a time with Mr. Staple, brother of the influential Captain Pelton, and the adoption of Paine's religious views by some of these persons caused the odium.* Paine sometimes preached at New Rochelle. * Mr. Burger, Pelton's clerk, used to drive Paine about daily. Vale says: "He [Burger] describes Mr. Paine as really abstemious, and when pressed to drink by those on whom he called during his rides, he usually refused with great firmness, but politely. In one of these rides he was met by De Witt Clinton, and their mutual greetings were extremely hearty. Mr. Paine at this time was the reverse of morose, and though careless of his dress and prodigal of his snuff, he was always clean and well clothed. Mr. Burger describes him as familiar with children and humane to animals, playing with the neighboring children, and communicating a friendly pat even to a passing dog." Our frontispiece shows Paine's dress in 1803. Cheetham publishes a correspondence purporting to have passed between Paine and Carver, in November, 1806, in which the former repudiates the latter's bill for board (though paying it), saying he was badly and dishonestly treated in Carver's house, and had taken him out of his Will. To this a reply is printed, signed by Carver, which he certainly never wrote; specimens of his composition, now before me, prove him hardly able to spell a word correctly or to frame a sentence.* * In the Concord (Mass.) Public Library there is a copy of Cheetham's book, which belonged to Carver, by whom it was filled with notes. He says: "Cheetham was a hypocrate turned Tory," "Paine was not Drunk when he wrote the thre pedlars for me, I sold them to a gentleman, a Jew for a dollar-- Cheetham knew that he told a lie saying Paine was drunk--any person reading Cheetham's life of Paine that [sic] his pen was guided by prejudice that was brought on by Cheetham's altering a peice that Paine had writen as an answer to a peice that had apeared in his paper, I had careyd the peice to Cheetham, the next Day the answer was printed with the alteration, Paine was angry, sent me to call Cheetham I then asked how he undertook to mutilate the peice, if aney thing was rong he knew ware to find him & sad he never permitted a printer to alter what he had wrote, that the sence of the peice was spoiled--by this means their freind ship was broken up through life------" (The marginalia in this volume have been copied for me with exactness by Miss E. G. Crowell, of Concord.)