Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/289

 THE BARTLETT MANSION.

��261

��THE BARTLETT MANSION.

��BY FRED MYRON COLKV.

��T think there can be no other New Hampshire town just like Kingston ; I mean Kingston Plains, not East Kings- ton, where is a railroad station, and the usual number of small boys and more elderly loafers to gather around when the in-going or out-coming Boston train halts its regular two and a half minutes for the convenience of embarking or disembarking passengers, six times dur- ing the day. East Kingston, though only a hamlet in embryo, is alive and noisy; at the village on the plains there is a peace and a quietness and a dream-like repose that gives it an air of monastic seclusion. There are three stores and two hotels that seem to be prosperous, but you never see any loiterers about the doors. You walk through the streets and see no soul, not even a child. In the great square and common herds of cows feed with unrestrained license, and some of the owners go out night and morning, a la Madame Hancock, and fill their milk- pails with the lacteal fluid, mulley cow standing as complacently on the green as though at home in the fenced barn- yard. Many of the houses have piazzas and porticoes, but they are never oc- cupied. You can walk on, where you will, in unchartered freedom. The solitude, the undisturbed repose, con- tribute to the sense of a hoar antiquity. You have dropped into an ancient bor- ough, where the inhabitants live in the old fashion, a borough of old days and forgotten times.

Still, the place looks modern enough. The village is located on a large plain, near the center of the town, and about two miles from the station at East Kings- ton. Its general appearance is indica- tive of thrift and business enterprise. There are about one hundred dwelling- houses — many of elegant structure ; the streets are wide, and pleasantly shaded by rows of elms and maples. So far,

��indeed, the suggestive features of the place are popularly enterprising, and when we consider the many other at- tractions we are disposed to grant that she has claims as honorable as any town of her size in America. Here on this broad, fertile plain, the first settle- ment of the town commenced, under the charge of James Prescott, Ebene- zer Webster, Ebenezer Stevens, and others, more than one hundred and eighty-five years ago ; and ever since Kingston has been making a history for herself.

Blood is a good thing in this world of ours, and it "tells," too, often enough to earn the consideration of all intelligent and discriminating persons. It is not every thing, to be sure, but it can not be gainsaid that its influence has been beneficent in our country. What would Virginia have been without her -ancient noblesse, the cavaliers of spur and sword, and their pride of far- reaching ancestry? Would the old Dominion have been famous as the ••.Mother of Presidents?" We opine not. How different would have been the history of New York without the great names of her patroons, the Living- stons, the Schuylers, the Delanceys, and the A^an Rensselaers ! And does not New Hampshire owe something to her patrician gentry in the old time? In the old colonial days Kingston had good blood in her, and her people had capacity and courage to do and dare. First and foremost among her citizens, during the Revolution, and for twenty years before and after that gloomy peri- od, was Hon. Josiah Partlett, the first governor of New Hampshire, and the leading worthy from our state who signed that great charter of human lib- erty, the Declaration of Independence.

It is pleasant sometimes in reading early colonial history to meet with a name which has borne honors before in

�� �