idental and superficial, and never had any real
root in the Granite State. If the Puritans could have found in the
Scriptures any direct sanction of slavery, perhaps it would have
continued awhile longer, for the Puritan carried his religion into the
business affairs of life; he was not even able to keep it out of his
bills of lading. I cannot close this rambling chapter more appropriately
and solemnly than by quoting from one of those same pious bills of
landing. It is dated June, 1726, and reads: "Shipped by the grace of God
in good order and well conditioned, by Wm. Pepperills on there own acct.
and risque, in and upon the good Briga called the William, whereof is
master under God for this present voyage George King, now riding at
anchor in the river Piscataqua and by God's grace bound to Barbadoes."
Here follows a catalogue of the miscellaneous cargo, rounded off with:
"And so God send the good Briga to her desired port in safety. Amen."

VI. SOME OLD PORTSMOUTH PROFILES

I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric
characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have
been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity.
In another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been
favorable to the development of individual singularity during the latter
half of the present century. It is easier to do that than fully to
account for the numerous queer human types which have existed from time
to time previous to that period.

In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster's entertaining
collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and
variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene.
They are, in the author's intention, secondary figures in the background
of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one's
memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one's self thinking quite
as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of
General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism
and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the
unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller
the things which are that old hut-dweller's, we must concede him his
picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is
picturesque--now that he is dead.

If the reader has five or ten minutes to waste, I invite him to glance
at a fe