w them
north-about, and good bargains in Havana, or Barbadoes, or Havre.

I listened as eagerly as any one; this is the charming way in which I
was taught something of a fashion of life already on the wane, and of
that subsistence upon sea and forest bounties which is now almost a
forgotten thing in my part of New England.

Much freight still came and went by the river gundelows and packets
long after the railroad had made such changes, and every village along
its line lost its old feeling of self-sufficiency.

In my home the greater part of the minor furnishings had come over in
the ships from Bristol and Havre. My grandfather seemed to be a
citizen of the whole geography. I was always listening to stories of
three wars from older people--the siege of Louisburg, the Revolution,
in which my father's ancestors had been honest but mistaken Tories,
and in which my mother's, the Gilmans of Exeter, had taken a nobler
part.

As for the War of 1812, "the last war," as everybody called it, it was
a thing of yesterday in the town. One of the famous privateer crews
was gathered along our own river shore, and one member of the crew, in
his old age, had been my father's patient.

The Berwick people were great patriots, and were naturally proud of
the famous Sullivans, who were born in the upper part of the town, and
came to be governors and judge and general.

I often heard about Lafayette, who had made an ever-to-be-remembered
visit in order to see again some old friends who lived in the town.
The name of a famous Colonel Hamilton, the leader in the last century
of the West India trade, and the histories of the old Berwick houses
of Chadbourn and Lord were delightfully familiar, and one of the
traditions of the latter family is more than good enough to be told
again.

There was a Berwick lad who went out on one of the privateers that
sailed from Portsmouth in the Revolution. The vessel was taken by a
British frigate, and the crew put in irons. One day one of the English
midshipmen stood near these prisoners as they took their airing on
deck, and spoke contemptuously about "the rebels."

Young Lord heard what he said, and turned himself about to say boldly,
"If it were not for your rank, sir, I would make you take that back!"

"No matter about my rank," said the gallant middy. "If you can whip
me, you are welcome to."

So they had a "capital good fight," standing over a tea-chest, as
proud tradition tells, and the Berw