driving to town in a one-horse buggy.

"How are you, Mr. Templeton?"

"Comin' on, comin' on." This was his invariable reply.

He had the old New England pronunciation, now disappearing. He said
"rud" for road, "daown" for down, and gave an indescribable twist to the
word garden, best spelled "gardin." He had also the old New England
ways. He was forehanded with his winter woodpile, immaculately neat with
his dooryard, determined in his Sunday observance, and if he put the
small apples in the middle of the barrel he refused to raise tobacco,
lest it become a cause of stumbling to his neighbour. He paid his debts,
disciplined his children, and in an age which has come to look chummily
upon God, he dreaded His wrath.

He grew a peculiar, very fine variety of sweet apple which I have never
seen anywhere else. He called it the Pumpkin Sweet, for it was of a rich
yellow. I can see him yet, driving into town with a shallow wagon box
half full of this gold of the orchard; can see him turn stiffly to get
one of the apples for me; can hear him say in the squeaky voice of age:

"Ye won't find no sweeter apples hereabout, I can tell ye that."

He was a dyed-in-the-wool abolition Republican and took the Boston
_Transcript_ for forty-six years. He left two cords of them piled up in
a back storeroom. He loved to talk about Napoleon Bonaparte and the
Battle of Waterloo, and how, if there had not been that delay of half an
hour, the history of the world might have been different. I can see him
saying, with the words puffing out his loose cheeks: