Chapter 6

When I look back to Portsmouth as I knew it, it occurs to me that it must have been in some respects unique among New England towns. There were, for instance, no really poor persons in the place; every one had some sufficient calling or an income to render it unnecessary; vagrants and paupers were instantly snapped up and provided for at “the Farm.” There was, however, in a gambrel-roofed house here and there, a decayed old gentlewoman, occupying a scrupulously neat room with just a suspicion of maccaboy snuff in the air, who had her meals sent in to her by the neighborhood--as a matter of course, and involving no sense of dependency on her side. It is wonderful what an extension of vitality is given to an old gentlewoman in this condition!

I would like to write about several of those ancient Dames, as they were affectionately called, and to materialize others of the shadows that stir in my recollection; but this would be to go outside the lines of my purpose, which is simply to indicate one of the various sorts of changes that have come over the vie intime of formerly secluded places like Portsmouth--the obliteration of odd personalities, or, if not the obliteration, the general disregard of them. Everywhere in New England the impress of the past is fading out. The few old-fashioned men and women--quaint, shrewd, and racy of the soil--who linger in little, silvery-gray old homesteads strung along the New England roads and by-ways will shortly cease to exist as a class, save in the record of some such charming chronicler as Sarah Jewett, or Mary Wilkins, on whose sympathetic page they have already taken to themselves a remote air, an atmosphere of long-kept lavender and pennyroyal.

Peculiarity in any kind requires encouragement in order to reach flower. The increased facilities of communication between points once isolated, the interchange of customs and modes of thought, make this encouragement more and more difficult each decade. The naturally inclined eccentric finds his sharp outlines rubbed off by unavoidable attrition with a larger world than owns him. Insensibly he lends himself to the shaping hand of new ideas. He gets his reversible cuffs and paper collars from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the scarabaeus in his scarf-pin from Mexico, and his ulster from everywhere. He has passed out of the chrysalis state of Odd Stick; he has ceased to be parochial; he is no longer distinct; he is simply the Average Man.

INDEX OF NAMES

ADAMS, NATHANIEL ADDISON, JOSEPH ALLEN, WILLIAM ANANIAS ATKINSON, THEODORE AUSTIN, REBECCA BEAUJOLAIS, DUC DE BLAY, RUTH BOGGS, AMOS BREWSTER, CHARLES WARREN BRIDGET, MOLLY BROWN, REV. ARTHUR BROWN, CAPTAIN ELIHU D. BRUCE, CYRUS BURROUGHS, REV. DR. CHARLES BYLES, REV. MATHER CAROLINE, QUEEN CHADBORN, HUMPHREY CHARLES, PRINCE CHASTELLUX, MARQUIS DE CLAGETT, WYSEMAN COPLEY, JOHN SINGLETON D’ORLEANS, DUC DUNYON, WILLIAM ELIZABETH, QUEEN FENTON, JOHN FOWLE, DANIEL FOWLE, PRIMUS FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN FURBER, THOMAS GEORGE I GERRY, ELBRIDGE GORGES, SIR FERDINAND GUAST, PIERRE DE HAM, SUPPLY HANCOCK, JOHN HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL HILTON, MARTHA HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SOL JAFFREY, GEORGE JAFFRIES, GEORGE JAFFREY JEWETT, SARAH ORNE KEAIS, SAMUAL KEKUANAOA KENNY, PENELOPE KNOX, GENERAL HENRY LAFAYETTE, MARQUIS DE LAIGHTON, ALBERT LAIGHTON, OSCAR LANGDON, COLONEL JOHN LEAR, BENJAMIN LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH MACPHEADRIS, ARCHIBALD MCDONOUGH, JAMES MASON, JEREMIAH MASON, JOHN MASON, JOHN TUFTON MARCH, CLEMENT MATHER, REV. COTTON MESERVE, GEORGE MICHELANGELO MITCHEL, LETTUCE MOFFATT, CATHERINE MOLIERE MONTPENSIER, DUC DE MOSES, JOSEPH NEWMAN, EDWARD NOBLE, MARK ODIORNE, EBEN L. PACKER, THOMAS PEDUZZI, DOMINIC PENHALLOW, WIBIRD PEPPERELL, SIR WILLIAM PEPYS, SAMUAL PHILIPPE, LOUIS PHIPPES, THOMAS PHIPPS, GOVERNOR PICKERING, JOHN PITT, WILLIAM POTTLE, WILLIAM PRING, MARTIN QUINCY, DOROTHY ROCHAMBEAU, COUNT DE ROUSSELET, NICHOLAS RUTLEDGE, EDWARD SERAT, LEONARD SEWELL, JONATHAN SHAKESPEARE SHEAFE, JACOB SHERBURNE, HENRY SHURTLEFF, MARY ATKINSON SHURTLEFF, REV. WILLIAM SIMPSON, SARAH SMITH, CAPTAIN JOHN SOCRATES STAVERS, DAME STAVERS, JOHN STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE STOODLEY, JAMES THAXTER, CELIA THOREAU, HENRY DAVID TILTON, JOHNNY TOWLE, GEORGE WILLIAM WALTON, GEORGE WARNER, JONATHAN WASHINGTON, GEORGE WEBSTER, DANIEL WENTWORTH, BENNING WENTWORTH, JOHN WENTWORTH, JOHN 2D WENTWORTH, COLONEL JOSHUA WENTWORTH, MARY WENTWORTH, MICHAEL WENTWORTH, SARAH WESTWERE, EDWARD WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF WIBIRD, RICHARD WILKINS, MARY E. WINN, TIMOTHY WITHER, GEORGE XANTIPPE

End of Project Gutenberg’s An Old Town By The Sea, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich