rt lived under the hill, and Messrs. Nadab and Abihu Peters
lived by the cross road, and the old "widder" Smith lived by the meeting
house, and Ebenezer Camp kept a shoemaker's shop on one side, and
Patience Mosely kept a milliner's shop in front; and there was old
Comfort Scran, who kept store for the whole town, and sold axe heads,
brass thimbles, licorice ball, fancy handkerchiefs, and every thing else
you can think of. Here, too, was the general post office, where you
might see letters marvellously folded, directed wrong side upward,
stamped with a thimble, and superscribed to some of the Dollys, or
Pollys, or Peters, or Moseses aforenamed or not named.

For the rest, as to manners, morals, arts, and sciences, the people in
Newbury always went to their parties at three o'clock in the afternoon,
and came home before dark; always stopped all work the minute the sun
was down on Saturday night; always went to meeting on Sunday; had a
school house with all the ordinary inconveniences; were in neighborly
charity with each other; read their Bibles, feared their God, and were
content with such things as they had--the best philosophy, after all.
Such was the place into which Master James Benton made an irruption in
the year eighteen hundred and no matter what. Now, this James is to be
our hero, and he is just the hero for a sensation--at least, so you
would have thought, if you had been in Newbury the week after his
arrival. Master James was one of those whole-hearted, energetic Yankees,
who rise in the world as naturally as cork does in water. He possessed a
great share of that characteristic national trait so happily denominated
"cuteness," which signifies an ability to do every thing without trying,
and to know every thing without learning, and to make more use of one's
_ignorance_ than other people do of their knowledge. This quality in
James was mingled with an elasticity of animal spirits, a buoyant
cheerfulness of mind, which, though found in the New England character,
perhaps, as often as any where else, is not ordinarily regarded as one
of its distinguishing traits.

As to the personal appearance of our hero, we have not much to say of
it--not half so much as the girls in Newbury found it necessary to
remark, the first Sabbath that he shone out in the meeting house. There
was a saucy frankness of countenance, a knowing roguery of eye, a
joviality and prankishness of demeanor, that was wonderfully
captivating, espec