The sounds went onward towards the north
The murmur of tongues, the tramp and tread
Of a mighty army to battle led."
BALLAD OF THE CID.



Life's tragedy and comedy are never far apart. The ludicrous and the
sublime, the grotesque and the pathetic, jostle each other on the stage;
the jester, with his cap and bells, struts alongside of the hero; the
lord mayor's pageant loses itself in the mob around Punch and Judy; the
pomp and circumstance of war become mirth-provoking in a militia muster;
and the majesty of the law is ridiculous in the mock dignity of a
justice's court. The laughing philosopher of old looked on one side of
life and his weeping contemporary on the other; but he who has an eye to
both must often experience that contrariety of feeling which Sterne
compares to "the contest in the moist eyelids of an April morning,
whether to laugh or cry."

The circumstance we are about to relate, may serve as an illustration of
the way in which the woof of comedy interweaves with the warp of tragedy.
It occurred in the early stages of the American Revolution, and is part
and parcel of its history in the northeastern section of Massachusetts.

About midway between Salem and the ancient town of Newburyport, the
traveller on the Eastern Railroad sees on the right, between him and the
sea, a tall church-spire, rising above a semicircle of brown roofs and
venerable elms; to which a long scalloping range of hills, sweeping off
to the seaside, forms a green background. This is Ipswich, the ancient
Agawam; one of those steady, conservative villages, of which a few are