"
He was a dyed-in-the-wool abolition Republican and took the Boston
_Transcript_ for forty-six years. He left two cords of them piled up in
a back storeroom. He loved to talk about Napoleon Bonaparte and the
Battle of Waterloo, and how, if there had not been that delay of half an
hour, the history of the world might have been different. I can see him
saying, with the words puffing out his loose cheeks:
"And then Blooker kem up--"
To the very last, even when his eyes were too dim to read and his voice
was cracked, he would start up, like some old machine set a-whirring
when you touched the rusty lever, and talk about the Battle of Waterloo.
No one, so far as I know, ever heard him complain, or bemoan his age, or
regret the change in the times; and when his day came, he lay down upon
his bed and died.
"Positively nothing will be reserved," were the familiar words of the
poster, and they have a larger meaning in an old country neighbourhood
than the mere sale of the last pan and jug and pig and highboy. Though
we live with our neighbours for fifty years we still secretly wonder
about them.
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