front behind you, and pass "up town," the streets
grow wider, and the architecture becomes more ambitious--streets fringed
with beautiful old trees and lined with commodious private dwellings,
mostly square white houses, with spacious halls running through the
centre. Previous to the Revolution, white paint was seldom used on
houses, and the diamond-shaped window pane was almost universal. Many of
the residences stand back from the brick or flagstone sidewalk, and have
pretty gardens at the side or in the rear, made bright with dahlias and
sweet with cinnamon roses. If you chance to live in a town where the
authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree
within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the
beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. In some parts of the town, when
the chestnuts are in blossom, you would fancy yourself in a garden in
fairyland. In spring, summer, and autumn the foliage is the glory of the
fair town--her luxuriant green and golden treeses! Nothing could seem
more like the work of enchantment than the spectacle which certain
streets in Portsmouth present in the midwinter after a heavy snowstorm.
You may walk for miles under wonderful silvery arches formed by the
overhanging and interlaced boughs of the trees, festooned with a drapery
even more graceful and dazzling than springtime gives them. The numerous
elms and maples which shade the principal thoroughfares are not the
result of chance, but the ample reward of the loving care that is taken
to preserve the trees. There is a society in Portsmouth devoted to
arboriculture. It is not unusual there for persons to leave legacies
to be expended in setting out shade and ornamental trees along some
favorite walk. Richards Avenue, a long, unbuilt thoroughfare leading
from Middle Street to the South Burying-Ground, perpetuates the name of
a citizen who gave the labor of his own hands to the beautifying of that
windswept and barren road the cemetery. This fondness and care for trees
seems to be a matter of heredity. So far back as 1660 the selectmen
instituted a fine of five shillings for the cutting of timber or any
other wood from off the town common, excepting under special conditions.

In the business section of the town trees are few. The chief business
streets are Congress and Market. Market Street is the stronghold of
the dry-goods shops. There are seasons, I suppose, when these shops are
crowded, but I have neve