ain. He told
us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his
lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief
magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill luck would have it,
the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught
one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible
old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming
him for life, on a brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of
Lemnos.(1) As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about
it." "Did she die?" we inquired, anxiously. There was a cunning twinkle
in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no she did n't. She got
married."

(1) It was upon the Isle of Lemnos that Vulcan was flung by
Jupiter, according to the myth, for attempting to aid his mother
Juno.

Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a
call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician
and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley
of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very
nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and
cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for
my father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and
illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger
branches of the family. No love-sick youth could drown himself, no
deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without
fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and
shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing
the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country
seclusion, as Autolycus to the clown in "Winter's Tale,"(1) we listened
with infinite satisfaction to his reading of his own verses, or to his
ready improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by
his auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a
new subject his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads, and
all men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as
nearly as I can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper
ballad,--"doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme
sung lamentably." He was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined
to theological disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He