Law and Gospel,
embodied in an orthodox steeple and a court-house, occupy the steep,
rocky eminence in its midst; below runs the small river under its
picturesque stone bridge; and beyond is the famous female seminary, where
Andover theological students are wont to take unto themselves wives of
the daughters of the Puritans. An air of comfort and quiet broods over
the whole town. Yellow moss clings to the seaward sides of the roofs;
one's eyes are not endangered by the intense glare of painted shingles
and clapboards. The smoke of hospitable kitchens curls up through the
overshadowing elms from huge-throated chimneys, whose hearth-stones have
been worn by the feet of many generations. The tavern was once renowned
throughout New England, and it is still a creditable hostelry. During
court time it is crowded with jocose lawyers, anxious clients, sleepy
jurors, and miscellaneous hangers on; disinterested gentlemen, who have
no particular business of their own in court, but who regularly attend
its sessions, weighing evidence, deciding upon the merits of a lawyer's
plea or a judge's charge, getting up extempore trials upon the piazza or
in the bar-room of cases still involved in the glorious uncertainty of
the law in the court-house, proffering gratuitous legal advice to
irascible plaintiffs and desponding defendants, and in various other ways
seeing that the Commonwealth receives no detriment.
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