Peter Parley's Own Story. Samuel G. Goodrich

eight children, that they all attained respectable positions in life, and at my father's death he left an estate of four thousand dollars. These facts throw light upon the simple annals of a country clergyman in Connecticut, half-a-century ago; they also bear testimony to the thrifty energy and wise frugality of my parents, and especially of my mother, who was the guardian deity of the household.

      Ridgefield belongs to the county of Fairfield, and is now a handsome town, as well on account of its artificial as its natural advantages; with some two thousand inhabitants. It is fourteen miles from Long Island Sound, of which its many swelling hills afford charming views. The main street is a mile in length, and is now embellished with several handsome houses. About the middle of it there is, or was, some forty years ago, a white, wooden Meeting-house, which belonged to my father's congregation. It stood in a small grassy square, the favorite pasture of numerous flocks of geese, and the frequent playground of school-boys, especially on Sunday afternoons. Close by the front door ran the public road, and the pulpit, facing it, looked out upon it on fair summer Sundays, as I well remember by a somewhat amusing incident.

      In the contiguous town of Lower Salem dwelt an aged minister, by the name of Mead. He was all his life marked with eccentricity, and about those days of which I speak, his mind was rendered yet more erratic by a touch of paralysis. He was, however, still able to preach, and on a certain Sunday, having exchanged with my father, he was in the pulpit and engaged in making his opening prayer. He had already begun his invocation, when David P——, who was the Jehu of that generation, dashed by the front door upon a horse, a clever animal, of which he was but too proud—in a full, round trot. The echo of the clattering hoofs filled the church, which, being of wood, was sonorous as a drum, and arrested the attention, as well of the minister as the congregation, even before the rider had reached it. The minister was fond of horses, almost to frailty; and, from the first, his practised ear perceived that the sounds came from a beast of bottom. When the animal shot by the door, he could not restrain his admiration; which was accordingly thrust into the very marrow of his prayer "We pray Thee, O Lord, in a particular and peculiar manner—that's a real smart critter—to forgive us our manifold trespasses, in a particular and peculiar manner," &c.

      I have somewhere heard of a traveller on horseback, who, just at eventide, being uncertain of his road, inquired of a person he chanced to meet, the way to Barkhamstead.

      "You are in Barkhamstead now," was the reply.

      "Yes, but where is the centre of the place?"

      "It hasn't got any centre."

      "Well, but direct me to the tavern."

      "There ain't any tavern."

      "Yes, but the meeting-house?"

      "Why didn't you ask that afore? There it is, over the hill!"

      So, in those days, in Connecticut, as doubtless in other parts of New England, the meeting-house was the great geographical monument, the acknowledged meridian of every town and village. Even a place without a centre, or a tavern, had its house of worship; and this was its point of reckoning. It was, indeed, something more. It was the town-hall, where all public meetings were held for civil purposes; it was the temple of religion, the pillar of society, religious, social, and moral, 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, 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 centre 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 the day, between Boston and New York; and had become a general and favorite stopping-place for travellers. 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, during 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 north-eastern 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 travellers 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 in the conflict, sword in hand.

      This personage, whom I shall have occasion again to introduce to my readers, was, in my time, a justice of the peace, town librarian, and general oracle in such loose matters as geography, history, and law; then about as uncertain and unsettled in Ridgefield, as is now 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, serjeants, 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 cannon-ball, 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 now-a-days comprehend or appreciate these things!

CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      THE NEW HOUSE—HIGH RIDGE—NATHAN KELLOGG'S SPY-GLASS—THE SHOVEL—THE BLACK PATCH IN THE ROAD—DISTRUST OF BRITISH INFLUENCE—OLD CHICH-ES-TER—AUNT DELIGHT—RETURN AFTER TWENTY YEARS.

      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 narrow horizon of childhood: we removed from the Old House