afterwards I made my own attempt. Fame or reward never entered into my motives. Like quaint John Bunyan, ""Twas mine own self to gratify!" The service was sufficiently pleasing in itself, to be a positive recreation and amusement, furnishing its own reward by the way, "For having my method by the end, Till at length it came to be, For size, the bigness which you see!" I have deemed it my duty, in many cases, to support my fact with the names of the credible relators. Not that they alone me tioned them to me, for it was my practice to confirm surprising facts by concurrent testimony, so far as the things told, were s ceptible of being known to others. Several authorities too, deeed awkward or indelicate to introduce into the printed text, may be found in their connexion, in the original MS. Ânnals, in the C ty Library, and in the Historical Society. There is another remark concerning names which might be propriately mentioned here, as showing that I was aware that names and personalities are sometimes too sensitive to bear the touch. Yet I found it needful to retain them in general, and especially in my MS. as my necessary proofs and vouchers, in cas of dispute or reference. Some that I designed only in initials, the inadvertency of the printer sometimes retained. In other cases, the names were sanctioned by the informants or persons themselves, and finally, as an imposing reason, some names occasionally became a necessary appendage of the story. In searching for some of these facts, was like seeking for the "living among the dead." Only a few of the very aged, as by a cident, had preserved their memory. And very often, person equally old, or even older, dwelling on the spot of interest or in quiry, knew nothing, or nearly nothing, about it. The comparative intelligence of different men of equal ages, was often very dis similar. To exemplify this, I have only to say, that not one aged man in fifty now in Philadelphia, could tell me where was "Guest's Blue Anchor tavern, in Budd's long row,"-nor the "Barbados lot," nor the "Swamp," nor the adjoining "Society Hill,”nor "Bathsheba's bath and bower,"-the "Schuylkill Baptisterion," the "old hospital,"-"Hudson's orchard,"-"Penny-p landing," "Penn's cottage,"-the Swedes' house,”—and many other things spoken of in these pages. I came at them by reading ancient papers, and then by re-calling forgotten things to their me mories, their minds were enabled to seize on long forgotten facts Sometimes, when I have asked ancient persons to tell me what they knew of antiquity, such would seem to have nothing to relate: all seemed a blank to them. But when I have transported myself back to the cotemporaneous occurrences of their youth, and warned their imagination with recitals, with which they were once familiar, I have been rewarded, by receiving many of the lively images of things which my conversation had generated. Without vanity I may say it, I have often made my company agreeable to the aged, and have seen them quickened to many emotions younger than their common feelings or their years. On other occasions I have visited such as were past sensibility, the body enfeebled and the memory decayed: I laboured in vain to revive the expiring spark of life. They were looking for their "appointed change," and this not unwisely engrossed all their thoughts. Finally, carlier questions might have been more successful, and any thing later than my attempt, "would have been absolutely fatal! What I rescued was trembling on the lips of narrative old age" or "tumbing piece meal into the tomb." My regret is, that some of those of whom, or from whom, I write, will scarcely stay to have the chance of reading some of these pages. I might perhaps pertiently hint at my being fully aware of occasional repetition of facts n substance, though not in language,-this necessarily occurred Occasionally from the design of making given chapters more complete on given subjects. With some I shall doubtless need an apology for the little estimation in which they may regard some of my collections; I am content to say, I have only written for kindred minds. The disinguished Montesquieu once pressed this question upon an English nobleman, "Pray, my Lord, does the great Newton eat, drink and Such affections as mine have had precesleep, as other men ?" dents enough in feeling minds-for instance, "the oak," immortalized by Cowper's muse, became so precious that the owner, the Marquis of Northampton, to keep it from its frequent pious thefts, was obliged to enclose it by a strong fence, and to affix to it a notice of prohibition. The chair in which the poet Thomson composed, is exhibited at his commemorative festivals. How many pious thefts have been made upon Shakespeare's mulberry trees and cups made from that, and from the "royal oak," have sold at great prices. Learned doctors still deem it an honour to shroud themselves in Rabelais' old cloak at Montpelier. The taking of the sword of Frederick the Great by Bonaparte, from Berlin to Paris, while it shows his estimate of relics, is treated by Scott Of all such 5 and the world, as a heinous offence to all other men. things, says Edgeworth, and truly too, "we contemplate such with deep curiosity, because they are full of local impressions, and by the aid of these we create the ideal presence." They connect the heart and the imagination with the past. Among the encouragements to such reminiscences, I may mention such evidence as results from public celebrations of feats intended to revive and cherish such recollections. They prove to me that my anticipations from such records as the present, have not been vain. Already has the semi-historical sketches of Erving's muse in this way, given rise to a drama in which is portrayed the costumes and manners of the primitive Knickerbockers. The prologue his "Rip Van Winkle" has some sentiments to my taste and to my future expectations of what may be hereafter set forth in poetry, painting, or romance, to arrest the attention of modern Philade phians, to what were the primitive manners of their forefathers The poet thus speaks, to wit: "In scenes of yore endear'd by classic tales Our country has been described abroad, and perhaps concei of at home, says Flint, as sterile of moral interest. "We have, said, no monuments, no ruins, none of the colossal remains of t ples, and baronical castles and monkish towers, nothing to co the heart and the imagination with the past, none of the dim re lections of the gone-by, to associate the past with the future." But although we have not the solemn and sombre remains of the past, as the remains of the handy work of man, we have every thing in the contemplation of the future. For when our thoughts have traversed rivers a thousand leagues in length, when we have seen the ascending steam boat breasting the mantling surge, her along our opening canals, gleaming through the verdure of the trees, we have imagined the happy multitudes that from the shores shall contemplate their scenery in ages to come, in times when we shall have "strutted through life's poor play," a "been no more !” REMARKABLE INCIDENTS. "A book wherein we read strange matters." THE present chapter is intended to embrace a variety of misellanea of such peculiarity or variety in their occurrence as to aford some surprise, to wit: Wild Pigeons.-The present aged Thomas Bradford, Esq. told ne of hearing his ancestors say they once saw a flock fly over the ity which obscured the sun for two or three hours, and were killed y hundreds, by people using sticks on the tops of the houses. Mr. Bradford himself used to see them brought to the Philadelphia market by cart-loads. The aged T. Matlack informed me he once saw full wagon-load knocked down. A Captain Davy who was in Philadelphia at that time, (described above) went afterwards to Ireand, and there describing what he had seen, and giving the data for heir numbers by giving breadth and time of passing, &c. some of he calculators declared they could not find numerals whereby to stimate their aggregate! They therefore declared it was a whaping lie, and ever after they gave to Captain Davy, the name of Captain Pigeon. Thomas Makin's poetic description of Pennsylvania in 1729, n Latin verse, says, "Here in the fall, large flocks of pigeons fly So numerous, that they darken all the sky." In 1782, Hector St. John, of Carlisle, describing the country scenes he had before witnessed there, says, twice a year they ensnared numerous wild pigeons. They were so numerous in their flight as to obscure the sun. He has caught 14 dozen at a time in nets, and has seen as many sold for a penny as a man could carry home. At every farmer's house they kept a tamed wild pigeon in a cage at the door, to be ready to be used at any time to allure the wild ones when they approached. In 1793, just before the time of the yellow fever, like flocks flew daily over Philadelphia, and were shot from numerous high houses. The markets were crammed with them. They generally had nothing in their craws besides a single acorn. The superstitious soon found out they presaged some evil; and sure enough sickness and death came! Fire Flies. The first settlers and all subsequent European settlers have been much surprised with our night illuminations by our numerous phosphorescent summer flies. Makin thus spoke of them in his day Bees. "Here insects are which many much admire, Whose plumes in summer ev'nings shine like fire." These in the time of Kalm, who wrote of them in 1748, says they were numerous and must have been imported, because the Indians treated them as new-comers, and called them significantly English flies. Hector St. John, at Carlisle, at and before 1782, speaks of the bees being numerous in the woods in that neighbourhood, and gives some humorous stories of their manner of finding the place of the cells and the means of procuring the honey from hollow trees. Rarities sent to Penn. Among the presents sent to William Penn, by his request of the year 1686, were these, to wit: he saying, "Pray send us some two or three smoked haunches of venison and pork. Get also some smoked shad and beef. The old priest at Philadelphia had rare shad. Send also some pease and beans of the country. People concerned ask much to see something of the place. Send also shrubs and sarçafras," &c. In another letter he asks for tame foxes and Indian ornaments. In another he calls for furs, for coverlets and petticoats, and also some cranberries. Flies and Martins.-I have often heard it remarked by aged people that the flies in Philadelphia were much more numerous and troublesome in houses in their early days than since, especially in Market street. The difference now is imputed to the much greater cleanliness of our streets and the speedier removal of offals, &c. It is said too, that the flies and flees were excessive in the summer in which the British occupied Philadelphia, caused then by the appendages of the army. Mr. Thomas Bradford, who has been now 80 years a curious observer of the martins, has noticed their great diminution in the city, which he imputes to the decrease of flies, their proper food. In former years they came annually in vast numbers, and so clamorously as in many cases to drive out the pigeons from their proper resorts. Now he sees boxes which are never occupied. A late author in Europe has said martins decrease there as flies and musquitoes diminish. Hector St. John, in 1782, speaks of his means of ridding his house of flies, in a manner sufficiently alarming to others. He brings a hornet's nest filled with hornets from the woods, and suspends it in lieu of an ornamental chandelier or glass globe, from the centre of his parlour ceiling! Here, being unmolested, they do no harm to any of the family, but pleased with their warm and dry abode, they catch and subsist on numerous troublesome flies. |