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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

330 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
the smaller youngsters to follow their example, they started
for a slide. When once underway, it went with locomotive
speed, and as there was no such thing possible as guiding
so clumsy an affair, it finally brought up at the point mentioned above-all the others making their escape, with the
exception of one small specimen of young Portsmouth,
before the final catastrophe occurred.
I cannot close these sketches without at least a passing
notice of the venerable church, known as " Parson Walton's Meeting House," that in former years adjoined the
widow's residence; the same structure that, afterwards
remodelled, was finally torn down to give place to the new
chapel of the Unitarian Society. It was one of the most
antique of the old New England churches, now fast passing
asvay, and of which not a vestige will remain, ere many
years have elapsed, in the most sequestered country village.
It stands before me now, both in its interior and exterior
aspect, just as it looked when untouched by the hand of
modern improvement. The plain and unpainted, but not
ungraceful pulpit, and its faded velvet cushion whose tassels swayed to and fro in the summer breeze; the solemn.
looking sounding-board, exciting childish wonder how it
was ever raised to its seemingly lofty height, or what sustained it there; the square pews, nearly large enough for
a small family to live in, city tenement-house fashion; the
long galleries, that creaked at every footstep I the gayly
colored chandelier, suspended by a painted rope from the
ceiling; the queer looking poles, well filled with hooks and
nails, rising above the pews, designed for coats and hats,
but looking, in more modern times, like some arrangement
for the suspension of a clothes-line; the long pews, one on
each side the centie aisle, where a choir had once been
located, (the ladies occupying one, the gentlemen the
other,) with seats that turned upward on a pivot while the
occupants were standing, and elevated forms in the centre