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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

THE OLD SPRING MARKET. 281
after years, in connection with the foreign accent of the
manufacturer, were inseparably associated in memory with
those red-letter days of their youth, the " general musters"
at the Plains.
Farther down the declivity, upon a primitive style of
table, was a display of New York oysters, which could be
had until a late hour of the evening. The proprietor of this
establishment, were he still living, could bear testimony, in
one instance atleast, to the roguish propensities of Portsmouth boys. A party of a half-dozen youngsters were in
the habit of meeting together for social chat at a second
floor room in Market street, and at one of their gatherings,
when they were in a greatly depressed state for want of
some species of excitement, a member suggested that one
of those mammoth packages, a New Orleans sugar hogshead, which emptied of its contents stood at a grocer's
door at the summit of the hill, should be started downward
in the direction of the oyster stand, which was unanimously
agreed to; and, groping their way through the Egyptian
darkness of the evening, they proceeded to put the project
into execution. Some minutes afterward, the ringleader
who chanced to go down to the Spring for a drink, found
the unfortunate dealer in bivalves in an unwonted state of
excitement, and after uniting with him in bestowing sundry
anathemas upon the perpetrators of the outrage, volunteered
to assist in re-gathering his stock in trade, which lay scattered over a large space upon the ground. One lad, numbered among the conspirators, has still, I think, a residence
at Portsmouth, who will be reminded of this, among the
youthful indiscretions of his early life.
The last of my schoolboy remembrances of the neighborhood, is that of a scene of merriment that occurred
there one aTternoon at the expense of one of a couple of
the hangers-on about the market, who had devised a novel
mode of catching fish in a basket, by means of the hoisting
19