his gravestone still stands, half-eaten away by time, and over-run by weeds and briars, with a figure of the sturdy parson in full canonicals carved on the top, scowling from the midst of a bag wig, and apparently keeping a grim watch over the precincts. After his death, his lands passed into the hands of a more degenerate race, and once more the powers of the air were rampant. Not a great while after this, there dwelt in this neighborhood a person of no small repute, named Zadoc Town. He had come there a few years previous, from parts unknown. He was a thin, keen man, with sharp features, and a pair of restless black eyes, placed so close to his nose, that they seemed intended to look straight forward, and in no other direction. Mosquito Cove had been a quiet place enough before his arrival, dozing away under the weight of its own antiquity, believing in nothing, and looking upon all greatness as departed from the earth when Parson Woolsey was buried, and some-what disposed to think, as all shrewd towns are apt to do, that what Mosquito Cove did not know was not worth knowing, and what Mosquito Cove did not possess was not worth possessing, unless it might be the money of other people. But when Zadoc came, he stirred them up, he removed the veil from their eyes, and soon had the town in a turmoil. He took up his abode on a narrow by-road, at a short distance from the village, in a precise-looking house with green shutters, in which two holes were cut like eyes, giving the house as keen and wide-awake a look as its owner.
Here he dwelt under the shadow of two poplar-trees, and of a sister as keen and straight-forward in aspect as himself, and for whose energetic spirit and sharp tongue, it was said, he had a very wary deference. Be that as it may, any restraint that he suffered at home only rendered him more restless abroad. He was here and there, up to his eyes in every man's matters, except his own. He called public meetings; he demonstrated to them the size of the world outside of the village; he denounced Quakerdom, then the prevailing epidemic of the place; he talked of establishing schools, newspapers, periodicals, and banks. He failed in all! but succeeded in forming a fire- insurance company, of which he was the president, and had all the honor, while a tight-fisted old farmer was made treasurer, and kept
