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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

'SCHOOL DRAMATIC EXHIBITIONS. 323
ashes, other memorials of the great conflagration of 1813
were visible around, in the form of old cellars and bricks,
innumerable, the latter affording an inexhaustible fund of
amusement in recess time. Upon the summit of the hill,
on the State street side was an old well, with the stump of
a half-burnt pump in the centre. It was a hid eous trap,
into which it is a miracle that more than one unfortunate
wight did not fall, during the years its open mouth stood
ready to receive them. One day it occurred to Master
Stevens, in connection with the above, that he would bring
the boys' play to some practical account. Having interested
them just before recess hour with the incident in ancient
history where. a river is recorded to have been filled up, by
each soldier of one of the conquerors of old throwing a
stone into it, he then suggested that they should thus fill
up the old well with a portion of the bricks that lay so profusely scattered around. It would be such rare fun, they
were not slow to act upon the hint thus given them, and before the bell rang for their return, (delayed a little probably
in honor of the occasion,) the dangerous aperture had been
filled to the surface of the ground; the last course of brick
laid with the smoothness and precision of a Russ-pavement.
Let us cast a backward look to the days when school
dramatic exhibitions were in vogue, and see what it pre
sented to our view. It is a winter evening. The first
floor of the school-house is converted for the time being
into a theatre, with. a crowded audience. A partition ex
tends across the lower end of the room, one-half the
enclosed space answering the purpose of that mystery of
mysteries in a theatre, the green room, and the remainder
as a stage, with its green curtain. There is no gas to cast
its brilliancy upon bright eyes and fair faces, where bright
eyes and fair faces still are seen, (for no visionary had ever
dreamed of such a corporation as the Portsmouth Gas
Company,) but Tetherly's "' dips" in tin candlesticks sis