deficit. The stratagems to
which he resorted from time to time in order to raise unimportant sums
reminded one of certain scenes in Moliere's comedies.

Mr. Clagett had for his ame damnee a constable of the town. They were
made for each other; they were two flowers with but a single stem, and
this was their method of procedure: Mr. Clagett dispatched one of his
servants to pick a quarrel with some countryman on the street, or some
sailor drinking at an inn: the constable arrested the sailor or the
countryman, as the case might be, and hauled the culprit before Mr.
Clagett; Mr. Clagett read the culprit a moral lesson, and fined him
five dollars and costs. The plunder was then divided between the
conspirators--two hearts that beat as one--Clagett, of course, getting
the lion's share. Justice was never administered in a simpler manner in
any country. This eminent legal light was extinguished in 1784, and the
wick laid away in the little churchyard in Litchfield, New Hampshire. It
is a satisfaction, even after such a lapse of time, to know that Lettice
survived the King's Attorney sufficiently long to be very happy with
somebody else. Lettice Mitchel was scarcely eighteen when she married
Wyseman Clagett.

About eighty years ago, a witless fellow named Tilton seems to have been
a familiar figure on the streets of the old town. Mr. Brewster speaks of
him as "the well-known idiot, Johnny Tilton," as if one should say, "the
well-known statesman, Daniel Webster." It is curious to observe how any
sort of individuality gets magnified in this parochial atmosphere, where
everything lacks perspective, and nothing is trivial. Johnny Tilton does
not appear to have had much individuality to start with; it was only
after his head was cracked that he showed any shrewdness whatever. That
happened early in his unobtrusive boyhood. He had frequently watched the
hens flying out of the loft window in his father's stable, which stood
in the rear of the Old Bell Tavern. It occurred to Johnny, one day, that
though he might not be as bright as other lads, he certainly was in
no respect inferior to a hen. So he placed himself on the sill of the
window in the loft, flapped his arms, and took flight. The New England
Icarus alighted head downward, lay insensible for a while, and was
henceforth looked upon as a mortal who had lost his wits. Yet at odd
moments his cloudiness was illumined by a gleam of intelligence such as
had not been detected in him