Doctor draggled in the dirt."

Certainly, a tone of unusual refinement pervaded the better educated
class of the community in the old town, at the period of this relation,
and not a little stateliness of manner was kept up by some of the older
families. Indeed, I think they would compare very favorably in point of
intelligence and manners, with persons of a similar class, as described
by the great authorities heretofore referred to, and others, who have
given us vivid pictures of social life in the Scottish capital. To be
sure, the colonial days of distinct social rank had long gone by. But,
half a generation before, the town had been one of the most flourishing
and wealthy in New England, and to the counting-houses of its principal
merchants young men resorted, even from the capital of the State, to
learn the art and practice of business. Those who filled the several
learned professions were persons of the highest eminence in their several
callings,--drawing pupils around them who afterwards, and on wider fields
of action, attained great names and some of whom occupied the loftiest
civil positions in the land.

Among the students, for example, in the office of that great lawyer and
judge, Chief Justice Parsons, while he practised at the Bar, and who
subsequently attained eminence, were John Quincy Adams, afterwards
President of the United States, and Rufus King, afterwards Senator in
Congress from the State of New York, and twice Minister Plenipotentiary
to Great Britain; and Robert Treat Paine, so celebrated in his day, as
an orator and poet.[10] Of one of these eminent persons I heard a
story, formerly, from a friend of very high character as a man and a
lawyer, the late Hon. William Baylies, of West Bridgewater,
Massachusetts. It seems that while Mr. King, then a young man, was in the
practice of his profession in Boston he was detained in attendance upon
court at Plymouth, until late on Saturday evening. It was necessary for
him to be at home seasonably on Monday morning, and accordingly he
mounted his horse early on Sunday, the ordinary mode of travel, in those
days, and proceeded leisurely on his way. It was summer time; and in
passing through the township of Hanover, in Plymouth County, he
approached a plain wooden structure by the roadside, in which, as he
could see by the assemblage within, the door and windows being open, that
it was a time of religious service. Alighting, out of deference to the
character o