sonage, who edited the Fitchburg
_Reveille._ That was a Whig paper which circulated in the
country towns where Robinson's paper was chiefly taken. He
made poor Piper's life unhappy. One of the issues of his
paper contained a life of Piper. It begun by saying that
Piper began life as the driver of a fish-cart in Marblehead,
and that he was discharged by his employer on account of the
diffuseness of his style. He quoted with great effect on
Otis P. Lord the toast given by the Court Jester of Archbishop
Laud's time: "Great Laud be to God, and Little Lord to the
Devil."

When he was clerk of the House of Representatives there was
a story in the newspapers that he was preparing a treatise
on Parliamentary law. He published a letter denying the statement.
But he added, that if he did write such a treatise, he should
sum it up in one sentence: "Never have an ass in the chair."

I was associated with him one day on the Committee on Resolutions
of the Republican State Convention, held in Worcester. The
Committee went over to my office to consult. While we were
talking together Robinson broke out with his accustomed objurgations
levelled at several very worthy and excellent men. I said:
"William, it is fortunate that you did not live in the Revolutionary
time. How you would have hated General Washington." He replied,
with a smile that indicated the gratification he would have
had if he could have got at him: "He was an old humbug, wasn't
he?"

But Robinson was always on the righteous side of any question
involving righteousness. He was kind, generous, absolutely
disinterested, and a great and beneficent power in the Commonwealth.

CHAPTER VI
FARM AND SCHOOL

I spent my life in Concord until I entered college except
one year when I lived on a farm in Lincoln. There I had
an opportunity to see at its best the character of the New
England farmer, a character which has impressed itself so
strongly and so beneficently on our history. Deacon James
Farrar, for whom I worked, was, I believe, the fifth in descent
from George Farrar, one of the founders of the town of Lincoln.
All these generations dwelt on the same farm and under the
same roof. An ancient forest came to a point not far from
the house. That, with a large river meadow and some fertile
upland fields, made up the farm. In every generation one
or more of the family had gone to college and had become eminent
in professional life, while one of the