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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

328 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
high in hoop-time, as they went down the declivity upon
their sleds, side by side, together.
At the foot of the hill, in the old building demolished
ten or a dozen years since, a widow lady kept one of those
little shops so numerous at Portsmouth in former years.
On the, outer shelves was an array of crockery and earthern
ware, the latter with an especial eye to country trade, embracing, (from Dodge's pottery,) capacious milk-pans, pots
for beans or brown bread, jugs and pitchers for the hayingfield, and white mugs that would hold a full quart of cider.
Among the older stock, were relics of a former day, mugs
and pitchers adorned with Porter, Perry, Bainbridge, IHull
and other heroes of the war of 1812, and that now almost
forgotten personage " Toby Philpot." Behind the counter
were barrels and boxes of groceries, and upon the shelves
above, pins, needles, thread, and other notions, with slate
pencils, nuts and apples for the school-boys. A cheese,
whose excellence could always be relied on, occupied a
particular spot on the counter, and near by, arranged upon
a line, were skeins of yarn, stockings, gloves, and mittens,
taken in trade from country customers. There was one
peculiarity about the mittens, that, among the reminisences
of their boyhood, is not forgotten by some of the wearers
to this day. No matter how high upon the wrist they came
when first put on, after an afternoon's service in snow-balling, they could rarely be induced again to reach above the
thumb.
The sun was not more regular in its course than the proprietor of this establishment. If a neighbor's time-piece
stopped, it could be set from her movements, about as correctly as by the Old North clock. Adjoining the shop was
a cosy little sitting:room, with its antique furniture-the
walls adorned with engravings of so old a date they would
be a rare prize, now-a-days, to collectors of such curiosities-and there she could be found, when not called to