for posterity. Posterity has not been grateful to Mr.
Middlecott. The street bore his name till he was dust, and then got the
more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him by effacing
what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect, after this, to
see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith Hall! Republics
are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to public remembrance has
the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old Englishman, Mr.
Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the grave to reveal
wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost from the grave to
prove the proverb about republics.

Bowdoin street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if it
thought to itself, "I'm getting old but I'm highly respectable; that's a
comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if it brooded
solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, and
calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street, it was
resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the Union
should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious look,
as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought it best
not. Something of the ghost of its father--it was the only child he ever
had!--walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to look up at
the signs, which bear a strange name, and wringing his ghostly hands in
lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told it in a whisper,
many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of the oldest
inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter never heard
of it; and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe it, by any
sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen a phantom
there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very old person
was. Nobody knew who had seen it; nor when; nor how. The very rumor was
spectral.

All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
enough, however, for one to read, easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters