ot to attract general, or
perhaps any, notice. This period of gradual dissolution fell during my
boyhood. The last of the cocked hats had gone out, and the railway had
come in, long before my time; but certain bits of color, certain half
obsolete customs and scraps of the past, were still left over. I was
not too late, for example, to catch the last town crier--one Nicholas
Newman, whom I used to contemplate with awe, and now recall with a sort
of affection.

Nicholas Newman--Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being
Edward--was a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat
bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have
never since seen a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple.
The only thing about him that matched the instrument of his office was
his voice. His "Hear All!" still deafens memory's ear. I remember that
he had a queer way of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him
had originally intended a crab, but thought better of it, and made a
town-crier. Of the crustacean intention only a moist thumb remained,
which served Mr. Newman in good stead in the delivery of the Boston
evening papers, for he was incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties
were to cry auctions, funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals,
public meetings, and articles lost or found. He was especially strong in
announcing the loss of reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden
ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when
fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person,
but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as
a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity
in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman
spoken of as "that horrid man." He was a picturesque figure.

Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with
those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple
of the Old North every night at nine o'clock--the vocal remains of
the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his
losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can
more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different
personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine
o'clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a
time at that hour I have flattened my no