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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

256 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
Uncle Sam's. The house itself is an old land mark, but it
has been frequently altered and repaired, till it can hardly
be called the same. The most striking feature of its interior
used to be the paper on the walls of the two front rooms.
That on the eastern room, represented a mingling of smoke
and carnage on a field of battle-soldiers in scarlet and
blue uniforms, wounded and dead, prostrate upon the
ground or borne upon litters, falling from their horses or
trampled under foot by them. These figures were a foot
in length, and the horses were the size of cats. I never
felt happy in that room-in turning the eyes fiom one
scene of horror they fell upon another; but in the western
room it was different. There the walls were covered with
a series of sketches from Italian scenery, (with trees the
height of the room,) representing ladies, accompanied by
gaily dressed cavaliers, stepping fiom marble palaces into
waiting gondolas, or leaning over richly decorated balconies; public marts, where were collected groups in all the
gay costumes of the Levant; marble fountains, frbm which
handsome peasant girls were bearing away pitchers and
jars of water; and lazy looking men, lounging among grassgrown ruins, playing upon musical instruments; while a
group of both sexes were dancing. We never tired of
looking at these scenes, and never thought whether there
was furniture in the room or not. Such paper must have
been designed as a substitute for furniture.
The house now used as a hospital is an old landmark,
but is too shabby to be recognized as an acquaintance
by those who knew it in better days, with its well kept
though not handsome exterior, its highly cultivated garden sloping to the very water's edge, and when comfort
and profuse hospitality reigned within. Like many a lhumnan
being, it has fallen, after a long and useful life, into a
shabby and neglected old age.
In tlose days we had no bridges connecting us with