Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/212

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1 86 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

walls and fences as one goes through water, yet were they not broken or over- thrown. It was black, as it might be dressed in cloth indeed, yet were we so terrified that none observed what manner if at all it was habited. It made continually a terrifving scream, '•' hoo, hoo," so that some women fainted." Then followed the inevitable theological and diabolical speculations of little account at the present day, though every reader can indulge in his own. Per- haps most will agree with the venerable Dr. Spofford, who, writing recently of the Spofford Hill phenomena, said it was more rational to believe in such in- explicable facts, than to believe that a large number of reputable and sensible people are deceived, or wilfully lie.

��Lieut. Josiah Brown, who lived at Plymouth, N. H., between 1764 and 181 8, as related by Dr. Edward Spaulding, was accustomed to go to Litde's now Livermore's Falls, on horse -back at night, and return in the morning with a couple of meal bags filled with salmon, which he had taken with the spear. Mr. Edward Taylor, who lived at Campton. N. H., has stated that salmon were formerly at Taylor's eddy near an island, so plentiful that if they would lie still he could have walked across the river on their hacks, without once touching the bed of the stream. They were so abundant in Daniel Webstei's boyhood, that fishermen used to bring large quantities to his father and sell them at three cents per. pound, not for cash, but in exchange for corn. It is related of Widow Hemphill, who lived near the mouth of the Suncook, at Garvin's Falls, that, on one occasion, she assisted in spreading the net, and at one haul took eighteen salmon. In 181 7, a party from Concord escorted President Munroe in a boat-ride down the river, and in passing through the locks in Bow, a large salmon was caught, taken on board " alive and kicking," and presented to the President, who expressed great pleasure, saying he had never before seen a live salmon.

��RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PISCATAQUA ASSOCIATION OF MINISTERS AND CHURCHES FOR TEN YEARS,

FROM J 8 25.

��BY REV. ISAAC WILLEY.

THESE churches are in towns about the Piscataqua river, and were settled more than one hundred years before the towns in the interior and north- ern part of the State. They were generally small, had hardly got clear of the half way covenant, and many of them were Arminian in sentiment. It was assigned as a reason for the low condition of these churches, by a distinguished man of the Unitarian faith, that the evangelical doctrines taught in them, were repulsive to the people, and that under such preaching they might not be ex- pected to prosper. The reply of one of the fathers was, that it was the want of these doctrines for which they were suffering. Few men in any age have left behind them a better influence than McClintock of Greenland ; Buckminis- ter of Portsmouth ; Thayer of Kingston ; and Appleton of Hampton, after- wards president of Bowdoin College. It has been a great blessing to these churches, and to their successors in the ministry.

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