and produce the sound of which I have just spoken.
The old bull hearing the sound and seeing his companions
departing concluded he would follow their example. He turned
tail too, and retreated down the mountain side, much to my
relief.

On our walk through Lanesboro we stopped at a plain country
tavern to get lunch. There were several codgers such as in
those days used to haunt country bar-rooms about eleven o'clock
in the morning and four o'clock in the afternoon. Sitting
in an old wooden chair tilted back against the wall of the
room was one of them curled up with his knees sticking up
higher than his head. He looked at Gray's stately proportions
and called out: "How tall are you?" Gray, who was always
rather careful of his dignity, made some brief answer not
intended to encourage familiarity. But the fellow persisted:
"I would like to measure with you." Gray concluded it was
best to enter into the humor of the occasion. So he stood
up against the wall. The other man proceeded to draw himself
up out of the chair, and unroll, and unroll, and unroll until
at last his gigantic stature reached up almost as high as
Gray's. But he fell short a little. I learned, later, that
it was a man named Shaw who afterward became famous as a writer
and humorist under the pseudonym of Josh Billings. He was
the son of Henry Shaw, formerly of Lanesboro; at that time
a millionaire dwelling in New York, and known to fame as
one of the two Massachusetts Representatives who voted for
the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Henry Shaw was, I believe,
a native of Lanesboro, and had represented the Berkshire district
in Congress.

The person whom the Worcester lawyers of this time like best
to remember was Peter C. Bacon. He was the Dominie Sampson
of the Worcester Bar. I suppose he was the most learned man
we ever had in Worcester, and probably, in Massachusetts.
He was simple and guileless as a child; of a most inflexible
honesty, devoted to the interest of his clients, and an enthusiastic
lover of the science of the law. When, in rare cases, he
thoroughly believed in the righteousness of his case, he was
irresistible. But in general he was full of doubts and hesitation.
He was, until he was compelled to make his arguments more
compact by the rules of court limiting the time of arguments,
rather tedious. He liked to go out into side-paths and to
discourse of matters not material to the issue but suggested
to him as he went al