presentation of
Governor Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to
his assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily
stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet covered with
sketches in color, landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes,
and modern figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel.
Until then no person in the land of the living had had any knowledge
of those hidden pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the
house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe
her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to
face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply
Ham was the leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)

The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that
these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand.
Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an
antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day
was put up under Benjamin Franklin's own supervision in 1762--such at
all events is the credited tradition--and is supposed to be the first
rod put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod "personally conducted"
by Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least
susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim
on the good-will of the visitor--it is not positively known that George
Washington ever slept there.

The same assertion cannot be made on connection with the old yellow
barracks situated in the southwest corner of Court and Atkinson streets.
Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of
corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down
on the most desirable spots. It is beyond a doubt that Washington slept
not only one night, but several nights, under this roof; for this was
a celebrated tavern previous and subsequent to the War of Independence,
and Washington made it his headquarters during his visit to Portsmouth
in 1797. When I was a boy I knew an old lady--not one of the
preposterous old ladies in the newspapers, who have all their faculties
unimpaired, but a real old lady, whose ninety-nine years were beginning
to tell on her--who had known Washington very well. She was a girl in
her teens when he came to Portsmouth. The President was the staple of
her conversation during the last ten y