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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

BUCK STREET PROMENADE. 121
the neutral ground influence which the boys had created,
without their fathers discovering the use he was about to
make of it, moved, "that the Northwest side of Buck
street be paved with Durham flat stones for a side walk."
The motion prevailed, and this event constitutes the epoch
of the commencement of side-pavements in Portsmouth,
and the memory of the old Tory" is now blessed. Such
was the effect of prejudice, and the result of wisdom and
fore-sight.
As soon as this convenient promenade of Buck street
was completed, those of our fair inhabitants whose domes.
tic relation confined them much of the time to their homes,
when the weather was suitable for the purpose, were seen.
promenading this flat stone side pavement, enjoying the
pure, invigorating, health promoting and life prolonging
atmosphere. It was indeed a luxury, as well to those enjoying good health, as to the feeble ard the convalescent.
At that period of our history the smoking of tobacco,
either in pipes or in the form of cigars, in the streets, was
deemed a nuisance and made by law a penal offence.
Ladies could then.enjoy the rich blessing of the invigorating, uncontaminated atmosphere without being obliged, as
now, at almost every step to encounter and even to contend
with the odious, filthy, sickening fumes of tobacco pipes and
cigars, and the contaminating odors of breath issuing from
the reservoirs of lungs m ade still worse by poisoned
alcoholic liquors imbibed by the smokers.
But we return to our subject of reform, which our good
fathers had determined to effect, It had become a matter
of universal observation and discussion, in the streets, in
our work-shops, in our parlors, in our kitchens, in some of
our public assemblages; and when the inhabitants assembled in town meeting to decide upon the adoption or
rejection of by-laws which had been made to meet the
emergency of the times, the question was proposed by the