the long, low
dwelling filled in with a coat of dark plaster braced by wooden
cross-pieces, like those of Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford. The
handsome houses before alluded to were the residences chiefly of
merchants, or sea-captains, who had retired from their maritime or
commercial occupations with a competence, or of prosperous professional
persons.[2] But a competence in those frugal days was an insignificant
sum in comparison with the fortunes of our own time, scarcely approaching
the annual income of the shoddy-masters, who now regulate the avenues of
social and so-called aristocratic life. Indeed, I was once informed by an
old inhabitant, that the richest person in the town, near the close of
the last century, was assessed upon only ten thousand dollars' worth of
personal property. But I think there must be some mistake in this
statement, unless the rate of taxation was exceedingly low; for this same
prosperous merchant devoted twenty times as much as that reputed capital
to certain pious uses, during his protracted life-time, and still left
forty times as much at his decease. Doubtless in those better days, the
inevitable "rates" ("death and rates," they used to say, "were certain")
were so small as to press but lightly upon the incomes of individuals in
moderate circumstances, and the means of getting at the exact measure of
a man's worldly "worth," had not reached their present degree of
perfection. Indeed I may state, upon unquestionable authority, that, late
in the first quarter of the present century, a highly respected trader of
the town, who lived genteelly and was taxed upon a supposed capital of
eighteen thousand dollars, waited upon the assessors and blandly told
them, "Gentlemen, I have been more than usually prosperous the last
year, and am willing you should tax me upon an additional thousand."
Such combined integrity and disinterestedness was the theme of universal
commendation; but when the old gentleman went to another reckoning a few
years afterwards, his heirs had the benefit of an estate nearer one
hundred thousand dollars in value, than the limited capital which had
contributed its quota to the public burdens. In a word, I have heard my
Aunt Judith say, that in her youth it was usual for respectable young
women to take service with more thriving neighbors or friends, for the
annual allowance of their board and a single calico gown, at four and
sixpence a yard,--as the price was before m