Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

NEWCASTLE. 175
mounted the creed and decalogue. The sills had gone to
decay, and the floor had consequently sunk some inches
below its original position, but the building served for
summer use, and the people loving the old place of worship
where their ancestors had been wont to gather, continued to
to occupy it every season until the cold winds of autumn
drove them to the shelter of the less spacious but more
comfortable structure, where on week-days,
d' The village master taught his little school."
Among the many improvements upon the island none
are more conspicuous than those visible in the vicinity of
the spot occupied at a former day by the ancient sanctuary.
The tasteful and well-kept flower garden, with its gravelled
walks, wrought out of the once rough, uncultivated ground,
attached to the modern church, has in its season of bloom
a most bright and cheerful appearance, highly complimentary to him to whose good taste citizens and strangers
are annually indebted for so pleasant a feature; and the neat
enclosure around the little cemetery, with the order in
which it is kept, are a great improvement upon our earlier
remembrances of the place, when a rough board fence or
dilapidated stone wall, which the writer has forgotten, alone
protected it from the incursions of stray animals in search
of pasture.
At the time of which we write, there was much of social
and neighborly intercourse among the people of the island,
as they met and discussed the news brought by some one
who had returned from a trip to town, an event oftentimes
not of daily occurrence in unpropitious weather, especially
(luring a sharp, cold spell of mid-winter. The receipt of
the Journal and Gazette were semi-weekly events of rare
interest, and their contents from the title to the last line of
the advertisements on the fourth page, were duly digested.
A Boston paper was about as much of a novelty to the
inhabitants as is now one from Canton or Honolulu.