“I know not how long the chair remained at Cambridge,” said Grandfather.  “Had it staid there till this time, it could not have found a better or more appropriate shelter.  The mansion which General Washington occupied is still standing; and his apartments have since been tenanted by several eminent men.  Governor Everett, while a professor in the university, resided there.  So at an after period, did Mr. Sparks, whose invaluable labors have connected his name with the immortality of Washington.  And, at this very time, a venerable friend and contemporary of your Grandfather, after long pilgrimages beyond the sea, has set up his staff of rest at Washington’s head-quarters.”

“You mean Professor Longfellow, Grandfather,” said Laurence.  “Oh, how I should love to see the author of those beautiful voices of the night!”

“We will visit him next summer,” answered Grandfather, “and take Clara and little Alice with us—­and Charley, too, if he will be quiet.”

Chapter X

When Grandfather resumed his narrative, the next evening, he told the children that he had some difficulty in tracing the movements of the chair, during a short period after General Washington’s departure from Cambridge.

Within a few months, however, it made its appearance at a shop in Boston, before the door of which was seen a striped pole.  In the interior was displayed a stuffed alligator, a rattlesnake’s skin, a bundle of Indian arrows, an old-fashioned matchlock gun, a walking-stick of Governor Winthrop’s, a wig of old Cotton Mather’s, and a colored print of the Boston Massacre.  In short, it was a barber’s shop, kept by a Mr. Pierce, who prided himself on having shaved General Washington, Old Put, and many other famous persons.

“This was not a very dignified situation for our venerable chair,” continued Grandfather; “but, you know, there is no better place for news, than a barber’s shop.  All the events of the revolutionary war were heard of there, sooner than anywhere else.  People used to sit in the chair, reading the newspaper or talking, and waiting to be shaved, while Mr. Pierce with his scissors and razor, was at work upon the heads or chins of his other customers.”

“I am sorry the chair could not betake itself to some more suitable place of refuge,” said Laurence.  “It was old now, and must have longed for quiet.  Besides, after it had held Washington in its arms, it ought not to have been compelled to receive all the world.  It should have been put into the pulpit of the Old South Church, or some other consecrated place.”

“Perhaps so,” answered Grandfather.  “But the chair, in the course of its varied existence, had grown so accustomed to general intercourse with society, that I doubt whether it would have contented itself in the pulpit of the Old South.  There it would have stood solitary, or with no livelier companion than the silent organ, in the opposite gallery, six days out of seven.  I incline to think, that it had seldom been situated more to its mind, than on the sanded floor of the snug little barber’s shop.”