hout the
township; and no important measure can pass the board of selectmen
without the Squire's approval;--and this from no blind subserviency to
his opinion,--because his farm is large, and he is reckoned
"forehanded,"--but because there is a confidence in his judgment.

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the country parson, or of
the schoolmaster, or of the village doctor; and although the latter is a
testy politician of the opposite party, it does not all impair the
Squire's faith in his calomel; he suffers all his Radicalism with the
same equanimity that he suffers his rhubarb.

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the small farmers, consider
the Squire's note-of-hand for their savings better than the best bonds
of city origin; and they seek his advice in all matters of litigation.
He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire in a New-England
village implies; and many are the sessions of the country courts that
you peep upon with Frank, from the door of the great dining-room.

The defendant always seems to you in these important cases--especially
if his beard is rather long--an extraordinary ruffian, to whom Jack
Sheppard would have been a comparatively innocent boy. You watch
curiously the old gentleman sitting in his big arm-chair, with his
spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuffbox in hand,
listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder
deeply,--with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,--and you listen with
intense admiration as he gives a loud preparatory "Ahem!" and clears
away the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong practical
sense which distinguishes the New-England farmer,--getting at the very
hinge of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision, and
satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk as much as by the
leniency of his judgment.

His lands lie along those swelling hills, which in southern New England
carry the chain of the White and Green Mountains in gentle undulations
to the borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred
acres,--"suitably divided," as the old-school agriculturists say, into
"woodland, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house--a large,
irregularly-built mansion of wood--stands upon a shelf of the hills
looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and
out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward
of the dwelling. Between them a hi