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 Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents.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

310 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
House, in the town where he lives, and was intimate with
those comprising the Bench and Bar; Pierce, Christie,
Hackett, Marston, Hayes, Eastman, Harvey, by all of whom
he was held in high regard —one of them, who was afterPresident, having borrowed money of him, upon which he
based a claim for an office under his administration, that he
didn't get. He was, as I have intimated, not a very dressy
person, therein proving an exception to a rule of our family, and strangers underrated him on account of it. A plain
suit of clothes, perhaps a green baize jacket, his collar
turned back, cravatless, revealing his stout neck, presented
an appearance somewhat different from the beau monde,
but it was tolerated by all those who were not more nice
than wise. There was but one who ever attempted to
meddle with him on this point, and he tried it but once.
Bob knew everything that had ever transpired in town. It
was said of him by an admirer, somewhat irreverently, that
he was next to Omniscience in penetrating human secrets.
He had an intuition that was infallible, and could read men
like a book. Concerning this one alluded to, Bob had obtained the fact that he was owing a large tailor's bill in town,
about which there was some fear. As Bob entered the
Court House one morning, there was an extra number of
lawyers present, and the individual named among them.
"There, gentlemen," said he, pointing to the green jacket
and the open shirt collar, "there is a dress in which to
associate with gentlemen " " True," replied Bob very
quietly; " I don't dress very well, but if I had gone down
to Snip's and run in debt for my clothes, I might have appeared as well as you do." This was a stunner, so to
speak, and Bob was declared the winner by a full bench.
He was always ready with replies that had a salutary
smart in them. Though an early and ardent Jackson man,
in honor of whose inauguration he illumined his house from
attic to cellar in 1829, and inheriting the Democratic chart