prominent among their fellows have done so by achievements in special
directions only, and confined to limited portions of their lives.
Particularly true is this remark when applied to Major Robert Rogers,
the Ranger, who, in our last French war, greatly distinguished himself
as a partisan commander, and gained as wide fame as did any other
soldier of equal rank and opportunity.

I do not introduce him here as a saint, for, as is well known, no
quality of sanctity ever entered his composition; but rather, as the
resolute commander of resolute men, in desperate encounters with a
desperate foe; as a man eminently fitted for the rough work given him to
do. And just here and now I am reminded of a remark made in his old age
by the late Moody Kent, for a long period an able member of the New
Hampshire bar, and there the associate of Governor Plummer, George
Sullivan, and Judge Jeremiah Smith, as well as of Jeremiah Mason, and
the two Websters, Ezekiel and Daniel, all of whom he survived. Said Mr.
Kent, one day, evidently looking forward to the termination of his
career, "Could Zeke Webster have been living at my decease he would have
spoken as well of me, yes, as well of me as he could." If one can summon
to his mind and heart the kindly charity attributed to Mr. Webster, he
may, should he care for it, find a comfortable hour in the society of
this famous Ranger. He was born of Scotch-Irish parents, in the good old
Scotch-Irish town of Londonderry, New Hampshire, in the year 1727.[A] At
the time of his birth, this was a frontier town, and its log houses were
the last civilized abodes which the traveller passed as he went up the
Merrimack valley on his way to Canada. It was the seed-town from which
were afterwards planted the ten or a dozen other Scotch-Irish townships
of New Hampshire.[B] It was the first to introduce and scatter abroad
Presbyterian principles and Irish potatoes over considerable sections of
this Province.