.

Nothing short of a hundred years will set the seal of value on an article
for Mr. Spear, and one hundred fifty is more like it. On his walls are
hats, caps, spurs, boots and accouterments used in the Revolutionary War.
Then there are candlesticks, snuffers, spectacles, butter-molds, bonnets,
dresses, shoes, baby-stockings, cradles, rattles, aprons, butter-tubs made
out of a solid piece, shovels to match, andirons, pokers, skillets and
blue china galore.

"Bill Spear" himself is quite a curiosity. He traces a lineage to the
well-known Lieutenant Seth Spear, of Revolutionary fame, and back of that
to John Alden, who spoke for himself. The bark on the antiquarian, is
rather rough; and I regret to say that he makes use of a few words I can
not find in the "Century Dictionary," but as June was not shocked I
managed to stand it. On further acquaintance I concluded that Mr. Spear's
bruskness was assumed, and that beneath the tough husk there beats a very
tender heart. He is one of those queer fellows who do good by stealth and
abuse you roundly if accused of it.

For twenty-five years Mr. Spear has been doing little else but studying
Colonial history, and making love to old ladies who own clocks and
skillets given them by their great-grandmammas. There is no doubt that
Spear has dictated clauses in a hundred wills devising that William G.
Spear, Custodian of the Quincy Historical Society, shall have snuffers and
biscuit-molds.

At first, Mr. Spear collected for his own amusement and benefit, but the
trouble grew upon him until it became chronic, and one fine day he
realized that he was not immortal, and when he should die, all his
collection, which had taken years to accumulate, would be scattered. And
so he founded the Quincy Historical Society, incorporated by a perpetual
charter, with Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, as
first president.

Then, the next thing was to secure the cottage where John and Abigail
Adams began housekeeping, and where John Quincy was born. This house has
been in the Adams family all these years and been rented to the firm of
Tom, Dick and Harry, and any of their tribe who would agree to pay ten
dollars a month for its use and abuse. Just across the road from the
cottage lives a fine old soul by the name of John Crane. Mr. Crane is
somewhere between seventy and a hundred years old, but he has a young
heart, a face like Gladstone and a memory like a copy-book. Mr. Crane was