Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/69

 ILLEGIBLE MANUSCRIPT IX PRINTING-OFFICES.

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��The more I have learned of the history and character of the ;t Celebrated Ven- triloquist," the more I have been com- pelled to pay him honor. When I re- member the race to which he belonged ; the probable deteriorating influences un- der which he passed his early life ; the ab- sence of all family and social ties and re- straints ; the incentives and allurements to recklessness and ruin ; the lack of all the ordinary processes and opportunities for education and discipline; the profes- sion which he chose and followed ; the disgrace of his wife and infamy of his children ; and that, under all these, he lived honorably and died respected; I seem to see a man whom nature has roy- ally endowed, struggling against vast odds which finally threw but never van- quished him. "He was as good a citizen as ever lived in Andover; and one of the truest and best men that ever lived ! " This was the testimony of his nearest neighbor for forty years after Potter died.

The lewdness of the half-idiot daugh- ter occasioned litigation, after Potter's death, in which Judge Nesmith and the late Samuel Butterfield were counsel, out of which grewa curious decision in law in relation to adultery, that obtained considerable notoriety in New Hamp- shire.

Potter was buried in his own front yard. When the Northern railroad was built his remains had to be moved back some yards, the limits of the road cover-

��ing his first resting-place. The wife did not long survive her husband, and a simple marble slab " In Memory of Sally H., wife of Richard Potter, '"who died Oct. 24, 1836, aged 49 years," preserves her name from oblivion. The two graves have been pointed out by the conductors on the Northern road, to numberless travellers within the last thirty years.

The daughter died and, it is said, was buried beside her parents. But no trace of a grave is discoverable.

The son's name was Richard Crom- well. He was sometimes called " Dick" and sometimes " Crom." He was dis- solute and unprincipled. The property which his father left he soon squan- dered. He sold the farm to a Mr. Colby of Bow, who sold it to Aaron Colby of Andover, who sold it to Wm. Howe, Esq., who sold it to John E. Morrison, the present owner.

Taking his father's apparatus he trav- eled, in company with Stephen Fellows, for a time, giving exhibitions, but was not successful. He finally mortgaged the kit, and when it was taken from him under the mortgage, he broke into the premises where it was kept and stole it; in consequence of which he became a fu- gitive, as he had long before been a vag- abond, and was last heard of at Lansing- burg, N. Y. Thus is the family of the " great Magician " become extinct; but his name and his fame appear to have become historic.

��ILLEGIBLE MANUSCRIPT IN PBINTING-OFFICES.

��BY ASA MC FARLAND.

��In every well-regulated printing-office inflexible rules are observed regarding manuscript that is to be put in type. The necessity for such rules is obvious ; for authors, in general, have no standard themselves, and their manuscripts differ as much as the peculiarities of those who prepare them. Many thoroughly-edu- cated men write a hand of which they

��ought to be ashamed; others, with mea gre educational advantages, make lines so fair that the youngest apprentices at the printing-business have no difficulty in putting their " copy " into type. The late Rufus Choate, so eminent as a law- yer and so eloquent as an advocate, wrote a hand so obscure as to confound printers and all others who undertook to decipher

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