T:

Six young men, playing Spanish mandolins, guitars, and harps, says the
Chicago _Herald_, Jan. 18, sat in the balcony of one of the banquet
halls at Kinsley's last evening. Below the musicians, and seated at an
E-shaped table were two hundred and fifty elderly gentlemen, members of
the Illinois Association of the Sons of Vermont, who were destroying
their ninth annual banquet. Pots filled with pork and beans, huge
pumpkin pies, and large blocks of brown bread were spread before the
banqueters. Glass fruit-dishes piled high with ruddy winter apples and
little dishes overflowing with cracked hickory nuts came later, and then
all these good things were washed down with cider and claret. The toasts
were: "Vermont," H. N. Hibbard; "Clergymen of Vermont," Rev. G. N.
Boardman; "Stumps of Vermont," E. B. Sherman; "The Star that never
sets," W. W. Chandler. After the speech-making, Jules Lombard, robed in
black and wearing a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles upon the breast of
his Prince Albert coat, sang "America" and a pretty Scottish serenade.
Among those present were E. G. Keith, II, P. Kellogg, O. S. A. Sprague,
R. S. Smith, Gen. H. H. Thomas, H. N. Hibbard, George Chandler, Harvey
Edgerton, Dr. C. N. Fitch, E. A. Jewett, Col. Arba N. Waterman, E. B.
Sherman, John M. Thatcher, A. W. Butler, Frank Deinson, H. N. Nash, John
M. Southworth, George W. Newcombe, and S. W. Burnham.

NECROLOGY.

December 15.--Samuel Dyer, a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement, died
at South Abington, Mass., aged seventy-eight years. He was intimately
associated with Wendell Phillips and Garrison as an abolitionist, and at
one time held the office of president of the anti-slavery society of
Plymouth county. He was among the first to aid and assist Frederick
Douglass. When George Thompson, of England, became identified with the
anti-slavery movement, his intercourse with Mr. Dyer began, and they
worked together in the cause for many years. He had been a prominent
business man of the town and had held several public offices.

On the same day died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., James C. Fisk,
ex-president of the Cambridge Railroad Company. He was born in Cambridge
in 1825, and always lived in that city. He was President of the Fiskdale
Mills, at Sturbridge, Mass. Mr. Fisk was president of the common council
two years, 1858-9.

December 20.--Frederic Kidder died in Melrose, Mass., aged eighty-one
years. He was born in New Ipswich, N. H.,