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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

MY BROTHER BOB. 307
Like a true Englishman, he would not speak of his military life, except in answer to questions,-but the military
steps, positions and motions, and habits of his youth, were
part of his life, and endured as long as he lived.
RAMBLE CXXXIX.
ilIy B3rother Bob.
THE genuine truthfulness of the following story, from the
genial pen of our old townsman, B. P. Shillaber, Esq., as
well as its lively account of no less a character than Commodore Mifflin or Toppin Maxwell, induces us to give it as
one of the Rambles. Like the two above named, " My
Brother Bob'" had his home on the South shore of the
North Mill Pond.
It was the remark of a distinguished orator who once
discoursed about the Father of his Country, that " G.
Washington was not a loud boy." I may, with some propriety, apply the same remark to my brother Bob. He is
not a "loud boy," in the sense wherein the term loud
might be supposed to apply. He does not stand at the
street corners and brawl, to the disturbance of neighborhoods; he has no particular fancy for the boisterous; but
he is a quiet man, full of good sense, practical to a fault,
honest, plain spoken, industrious, prudent. He possesses
very little of the ornate or ornamental, and yet he attracts
by qualities the opposite of those which usually control.
A hardy, gnarled, rough man, yet he is respected more for
his integrity of character, and the qualities enumerated,
than hundreds who wear far better clothes and make more
pretension to refinement. Bob is not an Adonis, for per