othy's fortune was made. After that
he bought himself a big house and planted his garden full of dreadful
wooden statues, the worst of all representing himself.

We lost our fine roads as we left Massachusetts for New Hampshire, but
the country was beautiful: stone-wall country again, with straight, dark
pines; and the road grew better as we neared the dear old sea-going town
of Portsmouth, full of beautiful and romantic houses. In one of the best
of them Governor Wentworth invited his friends to a party and
flabbergasted them all by turning the "party" into a wedding. He married
his housemaid--but she was a beauty! But of all the pleasant things of
Portsmouth the Thomas Bailey Aldrich house is the best. This lovely old
house is kept exactly as he left it. His spirit seems to pervade the
place as a fragrance lingers after the flowers have gone.

You may call Portsmouth "Strawberry Bank" if you like. And once, at the
mouth of Great Bay, there was a terrible bar of rocks beautifully named
"Pull-and-be-Damned-Point." People used to love saying it when they felt
cross, for even the ministers couldn't scold them for mentioning it; but
an interfering government took it away for the prosaic motive of making
a fine harbour.

Across the Piscataqua River we were plumped into Maine, at Kittery,
where there's a big navy yard now, and where once they made splendid
ships.

By a road that ran through woods and past ideal, storybook farmhouses we
came to York, where Captain John Smith came by sea. There we had to stop
and look at "Ye Olde Gaol," because it's the very oldest building of the
American Commonwealth. The prisoners used to be "sold" for several
years, to work out their punishment, just as if they were regular
slaves; and now in the gaol they have all sorts of relics of past, queer
customs. There's a fort still standing, too, with an overhanging upper
story to shoot Indians from, like the houses I wrote you about when we
first came into New England. There was a frightful massacre of the
settlers once upon a time, and a frightful revenge. Also there was a
witch, who lies buried under a great stone, so huge that she can't
possibly squeeze through at night to ride on her deserted broomstick.
There are legends, too, and the nicest we heard was the ghost-tale of
Pirate Trickey, who was hanged on the seashore. That atonement wasn't
enough for his crimes, though! He still haunts the beach, ever binding
sand with a rope, and groa