There is, perhaps, a touch of the garrulity of age in this good man’s recital; but I consider his record of his early life, slight as it is, yet too strikingly suggestive to 44 be left to chances which might await a private letter. Indeed, the character thus displayed is surely equal to that of the best of the old Romans, in the middling class of life, enlightened too by a living faith of which they had no conception; and the sketch gives fair warrant for the conclusion, that, in point of manly simplicity and integrity, the traits and the trials of those elder worthies who helped to settle our republican institutions have not been overdrawn.
As I set down these reminiscences I observe the following paragraph in a Boston daily paper of November 27, 1872:—
“November Snow. Fifty-two years ago to-day there were twenty-eight inches of snow on a level in the vicinity of Portsmouth, N. H.”
The late Mr. George Wood, of Washington, a native of our town, in some highly interesting Memorabilia, formerly published, says: “The aristocracy were not on High Street, as now, but on Water Street, and more at the South than the North end, as the old houses give evidence to this day. The Johnsons, Jacksons, Davenports, Coffins, Greenleafs, Bartletts, Pierces, Hoopers, Tappans, Todds, Carters, Lunts, Marquands, and others of wealth, were on Water Street or near it. There were their grand houses and fine gardens, and it was not till they thought of retiring from business that they removed to the West-end or up-town, as gradually as they always do in all places.”
After resigning his office of judge, which he had held for only a few years, but administered with extraordinary ability and integrity, Judge Jackson went abroad for relaxation, and a letter from a gentleman in London to a friend on this side the water says,—“Two of your townsmen, Judge Jackson and Jacob Perkins, now fill the public eye of England, and are the subjects of public and private conversation.”