yed on the back of the bellows with red and
white kernels of corn, or with beans and coffee, where a man slept in a
box-settle at night, to wake up early passengers,--where teamsters came
in, with wooden-handled whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic
flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male gossips, sometimes
including the squire of the neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange
a question or two about the news, and then fall into that solemn state
of suspended animation which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days
produce in human beings, as the Grotta del Cane does in dogs in the
well-known experiments related by travellers. This bar-room used to be
famous for drinking and storytelling, and sometimes fighting, in old
times. That was when there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind
the bar, and a hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make punch, and
three or four loggerheads (long irons clubbed at the end) were always
lying in the fire in the cold season, waiting to be plunged into
sputtering and foaming mugs of flip,--a goodly compound; speaking
according to the flesh, made with beer and sugar, and a certain
suspicion of strong waters, over which a little nutmeg being grated,
and in it the hot iron being then allowed to sizzle, there results a
peculiar singed aroma, which the wise regard as a warning to remove
themselves at once out of the reach of temptation.

But the bar of Pollard's Tahvern no longer presented its old
attractions, and the loggerheads had long disappeared from the fire. In
place of the decanters, were boxes containing "lozengers," as they were
commonly called, sticks of candy in jars, cigars in tumblers, a few
lemons, grown hard-skinned and marvellously shrunken by long exposure,
but still feebly suggestive of possible lemonade,--the whole ornamented
by festoons of yellow and blue cut flypaper. On the front shelf of the
bar stood a large German-silver pitcher of water, and scattered about
were ill-conditioned lamps, with wicks that always wanted picking, which
burned red and smoked a good deal, and were apt to go out without any
obvious cause, leaving strong reminiscences of the whale-fishery in the
circumambient air.

The common schoolhouses of Rockland were dwarfed by the grandeur of the
Apollinean Institute. The master passed one of them, in a walk he was
taking, soon after his arrival at Rockland. He looked in at the rows of
desks, and recalled his late experiences. He c