-fashioned matchlock gun, a walking-stick
of Governor Winthrop's, a wig of old Cotton Mather's, and a colored
print of the Boston massacre. In short, it was a barber's shop, kept by
a Mr. Pierce, who prided himself on having shaved General Washington,
Old Put, and many other famous persons.

"This was not a very dignified situation for our venerable chair,"
continued Grandfather; "but, you know, there is no better place for news
than a barber's shop. All the events of the Revolutionary War were heard
of there sooner than anywhere else. People used to sit in the chair,
reading the newspaper, or talking, and waiting to be shaved, while Mr.
Pierce, with his scissors and razor, was at work upon the heads or chins
of his other customers."

"I am sorry the chair could not betake itself to some more suitable
place of refuge," said Laurence.

"It was old now, and must have longed for quiet. Besides, after it had
held Washington in its arms, it ought not to have been compelled to
receive all the world. It should have been put into the pulpit of the
Old South Church, or some other consecrated place."

"Perhaps so," answered Grandfather. "But the chair, in the course of its
varied existence, had grown so accustomed to general intercourse with
society, that I doubt whether it would have contented itself in the
pulpit of the Old South. There it would have stood solitary, or with no
livelier companion than the silent organ, in the opposite gallery, six
days out of seven. I incline to think that it had seldom been situated
more to its mind than on the sanded floor of the snug little barber's
shop."

Then Grandfather amused his children and himself with fancying all the
different sorts of people who had occupied our chair while they awaited
the leisure Of the barber.

There was the old clergyman, such as Dr. Chauncey, wearing a white wig,
which the barber took from his head and placed upon a wig-block. Half
an hour, perhaps, was spent in combing and powdering this reverend
appendage to a clerical skull. There, too, were officers of the
Continental army, who required their hair to be pomatumed and plastered,
so as to give them a bold and martial aspect. There, once in a while,
was seen the thin, care-worn, melancholy visage of an old tory, with a
Wig that, in times long past, had perhaps figured at a Province House
ball. And there, not unfrequently, sat the rough captain of a privateer,
just returned from a successful cruise, in