Page:Masterpieces of American Humor (Little Blue Book 959).djvu/45

MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN HUMOR five hundred tons had naturally slight respect for the potentialities of sail-boats twelve feet long. But there was to be no further increase of these odd sticksif I may call them so, in no irreverent moodafter those innocent-looking parallel bars indissolubly linked Ports-mouth with the capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. All the conditions were to be changed, the old angles to be pared off, new horizons to be regarded. The individual, as an eccentric individual, was to undergo great modifications. If he were not to become extincta thing little likelyhe was at least to lose his prominence.

However, as I have said, local character, in the sense in which the term is here used, was not instantly killed; it died a lingering death, and passed away so peacefully and silently as not to attract general, or perhaps any notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my boyhood. The last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had come in, long before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half-obsolete customs and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was not too late, for example, to catch the last town crier—one Nicholas Newman, whom I used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort of affection.

Nicholas NewmanNicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being Edwardwas a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, some-what bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have never since seen a bell of that size disconnected with a