the
commanding officer, who released them.

The joke was consolatory to the inhabitants. It was on this occasion
that Rev. Mather Byles heightened the general merriment by his
celebrated jest on the British soldiers:

"The people," said he, "sent over to England to obtain a redress of
grievances. The grievances have returned _red-dressed_."

The Hall is still used for public meetings, and the region roundabout is
still an important public market.

[Illustration: Chauncey Jerome]

CHAUNCEY JEROME,

YANKEE CLOCK-MAKER.

Poor boys had a hard time of it in New England eighty years ago.
Observe, now, how it fared with Chauncey Jerome,--he who founded a
celebrated clock business in Connecticut, that turned out six hundred
clocks a day, and sent them to foreign countries by the ship-load.

But do not run away with the idea that it was the hardship and
loneliness of his boyhood that "made a man of him." On the contrary,
they injured, narrowed, and saddened him. He would have been twice the
man he was, and happier all his days, if he had passed an easier and a
more cheerful childhood. It is not good for boys to live as he lived,
and work as he worked, during the period of growth, and I am glad that
fewer boys are now compelled to bear such a lot as his.

His father was a blacksmith and nailmaker, of Plymouth, Connecticut,
with a houseful of hungry boys and girls; and, consequently, as soon as
Chauncey could handle a hoe or tie up a bundle of grain he was kept at
work on the farm; for, in those days, almost all mechanics in New
England cultivated land in the summer time. The boy went to school
during the three winter months, until he was ten years old; then his
school-days and play-days were over forever, and his father took him
into the shop to help make nails.

Even as a child he showed that power of keeping on, to which he owed his
after-success. There was a great lazy boy at the district school he
attended who had a load of wood to chop, which he hated to do, and this
small Chauncey, eight or nine years of age, chopped the whole of it for
him for _one cent_! Often he would chop wood for the neighbors in
moonlight evenings for a few cents a load. It is evident that the
quality which made him a successful man of business was not developed by
hardship, for he performed these labors voluntarily. He was naturally
industrious and persevering.

When he was eleven years of age his father suddenly died, and he fo