y, elsewhere referred to in
this narrative as suffering immense losses by his advances to the
government, when its needs were great and its credit was low, and in
other ways. Tristram Dalton was a Senator of the United States from
Massachusetts, in the First Congress under the Constitution; and
Theophilus Bradbury, afterwards appointed to the bench of the supreme
court of the State, was a member of the Federal House of Representatives
during a part of Washington's administration. Indeed, from some of the
early inhabitants of the town are descended not a few of the principal
families in the capital of the State; and its representatives, by some
tie of original or later connection, are scattered throughout the whole
country.

I linger somewhat longer and lovingly upon this preliminary part of
whatever story I may have to tell, because I am aware of nothing in the
literature of New England which furnishes precisely similar
reminiscences, and because pictures of past manners, if truthfully
portrayed, can hardly fail to be both interesting and useful. We heard
plentiful stories, in our youth, of a higher style of living in colonial
days, of coaches kept by the upper class of citizens; of their slaves,
whom we knew in their emancipated condition as gardeners and waiters in
general; of the cocked hats, the gold-embroidered garments, the laced
ruffles of the gentlemen, and the highly ornamented, but rather stiff
garniture in which the ladies with their powdered heads saw fit to array
themselves, as they now present themselves to us on the living canvas of
Copley. It was in the handsome residence of Mr. Dalton, long after his
decease, that I saw hangings of gilded morocco leather on the walls of
the principal room,--a substitute for the wall-paper in common use, and
which I have never seen or heard of in any other instance, in the United
States.

Our collector of the customs was peculiarly one of this class of
gentlemen of the old school. He was a person of very warm temperament and
of remarkable characteristics; an ardent Democrat, who, upon the
accession of President Jefferson, had succeeded Colonel W----, the first
collector of the port, appointed by Washington, under whom he had served
with distinction in the Revolutionary War. The residence of the latter,
and the office of customs itself, in those simpler days, were in the
house which was afterwards the birthplace of the writer of these
sketches. To that war the successor