be delivered of.”  One morning, he appeared at the flour-mill with a sack of corn to be ground for the almshouse, and was asked what he knew.  “Some things I know,” replied poor Tilton, “and some things I don’t know.  I know the miller’s hogs grow fat, but I don’t know whose corn they fat on.”  To borrow another word from Polonius, though this be madness, yet there was method in it.  Tilton finally brought up in the almshouse, where he was allowed the liberty of roaming at will through the town.  He loved the water-side as if he had had all his senses.  Often he was seen to stand for hours with a sunny, torpid smile on his lips, gazing out upon the river where its azure ruffles itself into silver against the islands.  He always wore stuck in his hat a few hen’s feathers, perhaps with some vague idea of still associating himself with the birds of the air, if hens can come into that category.

George Jaffrey, third of the name, was a character of another complexion, a gentleman born, a graduate of Harvard in 1730, and one of His Majesty’s Council in 1766—­a man with the blood of the lion and the unicorn in every vein.  He remained to the bitter end, and beyond, a devout royalist, prizing his shoe-buckles, not because they were of chased silver, but because they bore the tower mark and crown stamp.  He stoutly objected to oral prayer, on the ground that it gave rogues and hypocrites an opportunity to impose on honest folk.  He was punctilious in his attendance at church, and unfailing in his responses, though not of a particularly devotional temperament.  On one occasion, at least, his sincerity is not to be questioned.  He had been deeply irritated by some encroachments on the boundaries of certain estates, and had gone to church that forenoon with his mind full of the matter.  When the minister in the course of reading the service came to the apostrophe, “Cursed be he who removeth his neighbor’s landmark,” Mr. Jeffrey’s feelings were too many for him, and he cried out “Amen!” in a tone of voice that brought smiles to the adjoining pews.

Mr. Jaffrey’s last will and testament was a whimsical document, in spite of the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, who drew up the paper.  It had originally been Mr. Jaffrey’s plan to leave his possessions to his beloved friend, Colonel Joshua Wentworth; but the colonel by some maladroitness managed to turn the current of Pactolus in another direction.  The vast property was bequeathed to George Jaffrey Jeffries, the testator’s grandnephew, on condition that the heir, then a lad of thirteen, should drop the name of Jeffries, reside permanently in Portsmouth, and adopt no profession excepting that of gentleman.  There is an immense amount of Portsmouth as well as George Jaffrey in that final clause.  George the fourth handsomely complied with the requirements, and dying at the age of sixty-six, without issue or assets, was the last of that particular line of Georges.  I say that he handsomely complied with the requirements of the will; but my statement appears to be subject to qualification, for on the day of his obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic contemporary:  “Well, yes, Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but not eminent in his profession.”