to the people around. It will not be considered strange then, if I look back to the meeting-house of Ridgefield, as not only a most revered edifice-covered with clapboards and shingles, though it was-but as in some sense the starting point of my existence. Here, at least, linger many of my most cherished remembrances.

A few rods to the south of this, there was, and still is, a tavern, kept in my day, by Squire Keeler. This institution ranked second only to the meeting-house; for the tavern of those days was generally the center of news, and the gathering place for balls, musical entertainments, public shows, &c.; and this particular tavern had special claims to notice. It was, in the first place, on the great thoroughfare of that day, between Boston and New York, and had become a general and favorite stopping-place for travelers. It was, moreover, kept by a hearty old gentleman, who united in his single person the varied functions of publican, postmaster, representative, justice of the peace, and I know not what else. He besides had a thrifty wife, whose praise was in all the land. She loved her customers, especially members of Congress, governors, and others in authority, who wore powder and white-top boots, and who migrated to and fro, in the lofty leisure of their own coaches. She was indeed a woman of mark, and her life has its moral. She scoured and scrubbed and kept things going, until she was seventy years old, at which time, du

ring an epidemic, she was threatened with an attack. She, however, declared that she had not time to be sick, and kept on working, so that the disease passed her by, though it made sad havoc all around her— especially with more dainty dames, who had leisure to follow the fashion.

Besides all this, there was an historical interest attached to Keeler's tavern, for deeply imbedded in the northeastern corner-post, there was a cannon-ball, planted there during the famous fight with the British in 1777. It was one of the chief historical monuments of the town, and was visited by all curious travelers who came that way.* Little can the present generation imagine with what glowing interest, what ecstatic wonder, what big round eyes, the rising generation of Ridgefield, half a century ago, listened to the account of the fight as given by Lieutenant Smith, himself a witness of the event and a participator of the conflict, sword in hand.

This personage, whom I shall have occasion again. to introduce to my readers, was, in my time, a justice

* Keeler's tavern appears to have received several cannon-shots from the British as they marched through the street, these being directed against a group of Americans who had gathered there. A cannonball came crashing through the building, and crossed a staircase just as a man was ascending the steps. The noise and the splinters overcame him with fright, and he tumbled to the bottom, exclaiming"I'm killed, I'm a dead man!" After a time, however, he discovered that he was unhurt, and thereupon he scampered away, and did not stop till he was safe in the adjoining town of Wilton.

of the peace, town librarian, and general oracle in such loose matters as geography, history, and lawthen about as uncertain and unsettled in Ridgefield, as is now the fate of Sir John Franklin, or the longitude of Lilliput. He had a long, lean face; long, lank, silvery hair, and an unctuous, whining voice. With these advantages, he spoke with the authority of a seer, and especially in all things relating to the revolutionary war.

The agitating scenes of that event, so really great in itself, so unspeakably important to the country, had transpired some five and twenty years before. The existing generation of middle age, had all witnessed it; nearly all had shared in its vicissitudes. On every hand there were corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, and colonels-no strutting fops in militia buckram, raw blue and buff, all fuss and feathers-but soldiers, men who had seen service and won laurels in the tented field. Every old man, every old woman had stories to tell, radiant with the vivid realities of personal observation or experience. Some had seen Washington, and some Old Put; one was at the capture of Ticonderoga under Ethan Allen; another was at Bennington, and actually heard old Stark say, "Victory this day, or my wife Molly is a widow!" Some were at the taking of Stony Point, and others in the sanguinary struggle of Monmouth. One had witnessed the execution of André, and another had been present at the capture of Burgoyne.

The time which had elapsed since these events, had served only to magnify and glorify these scenes, as well as the actors, especially in the imagination of the rising generation. If perchance we could now dig up, and galvanize into life, a contemporary of Julius Cæsar, who was present and saw him cross the Rubicon, and could tell us how he looked and what he said we should listen with somewhat of the greedy wonder with which the boys of Ridgefield listened to Lieutenant Smith, when of a Saturday afternoon, seated on the stoop of Keeler's tavern, he discoursed upon the discovery of America by Columbus, Braddock's defeat, and the old French war-the latter a real epic, embellished with romantic episodes of Indian massacres and captivities. When he came to the Revolution, and spoke of the fight at Ridgefield, and punctuated his discourse with a present cannonball, sunk six inches deep in a corner-post of the very house in which we sat, you may well believe it was something more than words-it was, indeed, "action, action, glorious action !" How little can people nowadays-with curiosity trampled down by the march of mind and the schoolmaster abroad-comprehend or appreciate these things!

LETTER III.

The first Remembered Event-High Ridge-The Spy-glass-Sea and Mountain-The Peel-The Black Patch in the road.

MY DEAR C******

You will perhaps forgive me for a little circumlocution, in the outset of my story. My desire is to carry you with me in my narrative, and make you see in imagination, what I have seen. This naturally requires a little effort-like that of the bird in rising from the ground, which turns his wing first to the right and then to the left, vigorously beating the atmosphere, in order to overcome the gravity which weighs the body down to earth, ere yet it feels the quickening impulse of a conscious launch upon the air.

My memory goes distinctly back to the year 1797, when I was four years old. At that time a great event happened—great in the near and narrow horizon of childhood: we removed from the Old House to the New House! This latter, situated on a road. tending westward and branching from the main street, my father had just built; and it then appeared to me quite a stately mansion and very beautiful, inasmuch as it was painted red behind and white in front-most of the dwellings thereabouts being of