Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/381

Rh of which the children may not be cognizant until they obtain it in history. Scott and Burns became what they were through impartations at the ingleside; and every well informed man or woman should have something to impart without being first asked for it, as children left to themselves are not more likely now than in another age to ask questions.

In "Adams' Annals of Portsmouth" an account is given of a great procession that was formed there in 1778 to celebrate the signing of the constitution by New Hampshire (completing the number of states required for its ratification), in which all the trades were represented, among them blacksmiths at work at their forges; and I cannot help the belief that Joseph Shillaber was there, hammering out his approval with emphatic blows. It is not an unreasonable conjecture, and who can dispute it?

When the "Sons of Portsmouth" returned to their old home in 1853, one of his descendants singled out for a speech was to be introduced by a sentiment that recognized both the "navy and the army." This identified him as a soldier as well as a sailor; and what if he had gone to the front and been killed, or done anything else of a distinguishing character? His biographer might have had a bigger story to tell, wherein his imagination undoubtedly would have been tempted to run wild over impossible fields, and quite compromised the veracity of the chronicler, whose plain story of the events that actually did occur must excite the reader's admiration. As the Connecticut philosopher at the grave of Adam regretted, with tears, that his ancestor had not lived to see him, and that he had not lived to see his ancestor, the writer confesses to a similar weakness, and indulges in a similar regret.

Sketches of towns, like sketches of the lives and characters of individuals, are liable to criticism, for one to "the manner born" is very likely to say more than the exact truth, that is, to guild the picture and adorn it with lights and shades that are not absolutely visible to the eyes of those who see afar off. In this short sketch I will endeavor to confine myself within the limits of fact, and curb the impatient strivings of fancy, so that those who are acquainted with the rugged character of our town and its surroundings shall not say the picture is overdrawn, and those who may be led to gaze for the first time on the beauties which nature here reveals shall say the truth has not half been told.

It is now one hundred and twenty-one years since Lancaster was first settled, David Page, Emmons