ge," said Laurence. "It was old now, and must have longed for
quiet. Besides, after it had held Washington in its arms, it ought not to
have been compelled to receive all the world. It should have been put into
the pulpit of the Old South Church, or some other consecrated place."

"Perhaps so," answered Grandfather. "But the chair, in the course of its
varied existence, had grown so accustomed to general intercourse with
society, that I doubt whether it would have contented itself in the pulpit
of the Old South. There it would have stood solitary, or with no livelier
companion than the silent organ, in the opposite gallery, six days out of
seven. I incline to think, that it had seldom been situated more to its
mind, than on the sanded floor of the snug little barber's shop."

Then Grandfather amused his children and himself, with fancying all the
different sorts of people who had occupied our chair, while they awaited
the leisure of the barber.

There was the old clergyman, such as Dr. Chauncey, wearing a white wig,
which the barber took from his head, and placed upon a wig-block. Half an
hour, perhaps, was spent in combing and powdering this reverend appendage
to a clerical skull. There too, were officers of the continental army, who
required their hair to be pomatumed and plastered, so as to give them a
bold and martial aspect. There, once in a while, was seen the thin,
care-worn, melancholy visage of an old tory, with a wig that, in times
long past, had perhaps figured at a Province House ball. And there, not
unfrequently, sat the rough captain of a privateer, just returned from a
successful cruise, in which he had captured half a dozen richly laden
vessels, belonging to King George's subjects. And, sometimes, a rosy
little school-boy climbed into our chair, and sat staring, with wide-open
eyes, at the alligator, the rattlesnake, and the other curiosities of the
barber's shop. His mother had sent him, with sixpence in his hand, to get
his glossy curls cropped off. The incidents of the Revolution plentifully
supplied the barber's customers with topics of conversation. They talked
sorrowfully of the death of General Montgomery, and the failure of our
troops to take Quebec; for the New Englanders were now as anxious to get
Canada from the English, as they had formerly been to conquer it from the
French.

"But, very soon," said Grandfather, "came news from Philadelphia, the most
important that America had ever heard of