ded to accommodate the
increased public travel soon after the opening of the Norfolk and
Bristol Turnpike, as described in an article entitled "From the White
Horse to Little Rhody," and published in the first volume of this
magazine. No house along the entire line of this once important
thoroughfare dispensed a more generous hospitality or was presided over
by a more genial host. It was twelve miles out from Providence, and a
place where all the stages stopped to change horses, and allow
passengers to partake of a breakfast, or some favorite beverage at the
bar.

Somewhat later in the century Balcom's Tavern in the east part of the
town sprung up, and was maintained for a long period as a popular house
of resort. The original structure, enlarged and changed by successive
additions, still stands on the corner of South Main and Park streets.
Here have been entertained not only celebrities of the earlier days, but
famous modern men, among whom might be mentioned Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Wendell Phillips, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who visited the town as
lyceum lecturers. In 1852 this house was purchased by Dr. Edward
Sanford, who remodelled and repaired it, and made it his own private
residence for thirty years, when it passed into the care of tenants.

The proprietors who gave their names to these public houses were men
quite widely known in their day, though for different reasons. Col.
Hatch was emphatically a man of affairs, and full of business both
public and private; wiser, perhaps, for this world than the next, he
sought to become a political leader and office-holder among his
townsmen. Col. Balcom on the contrary was a merry sporting-man, equally
at home among gamblers and horse-racers, and in the society of
gentlemen. He was politic and adroit, not lacking in good points, though
he had conspicuous vices. The former kept a quiet, orderly, and
eminently respectable house; the latter liked to entertain a jovial
company, and enjoyed the fun too well to frown upon youthful pranks or
hilarious conduct. Among many good anecdotes told of Col. Balcom, there
is one very characteristic, and good enough to find a record here.

It is related that Parson Holman and other pious people of the village
often sought to induce the colonel to reform his course of life and seek
those things which concerned his eternal peace; but the wily landlord,
while receiving them with a most gracious suavity, usually managed to
evade the force of