Ixxxii LIFE OF WILSON. 



in the streets; the sound of social industry, and the gay scenery of 'the 

 busy haunts of men,' had a most exhilarating effect on my spirits, after being so 

 long immured in the forest. My own appearance, I believe, was to many equally 

 interesting; and the shopkeepers and other loungers interrogated me with their 

 eyes as I passed, with symptoms of eager and inquisitive curiosity. After fix- 

 ing my quarters, disposing of my arms, and burnishing myself a little, I walked 

 out to have a more particular view of the place. 



" This little metropolis of the western country is nearly as large as Lancaster 

 in Pennsylvania. In the centre of the town is a public square, partly occupied 

 by the court-house and market-place, and distinguished by the additional orna- 

 ment of the pillory and stocks. The former of these is so constructed as to 

 serve well enough, if need be, occasionally for a gallows, which is not a bad 

 thought; for as nothing contributes more to make hardened villains than the 

 pillory, so notliing so effectually rids society of them as the gallows ; and every 

 knave may here exclaim, 



" My bane and antidote are both before me." 



I peeped into the court-house as I passed, and though it was court day, I was 

 struck with the appearance its interior exhibited ; for, though only a plain 

 square brick building, it has all the gloom of the Gothic, so much admired of 

 late, by our modern architects. The exterior walls, having, on experiment, 

 been found too feeble for the superincumbent honors of the roof and steeple, it 

 was found necessary to erect, from the floor, a number of large, circular, and 

 unplastered brick pillars, in a new order of architecture (the thick end upper- 

 most), which, while they serve to impress the spectators with the perpetual 

 dread that they will tumble about their ears, contribute also, by their number 

 and bulk, to shut out the light, and to spread around a reverential gloom, pro- 

 ducing a melancholy and chilling effect ; a very good disposition of mind, , 

 certainly, for a man to enter a court of justice in. One or two solitary indivi- 

 duals stole along the damp and silent floor; and I could just descry, elevated 

 at the opposite extremity of the building, the judges sitting, like spiders in a 

 window corner, dimly distinguishable through the intermediate gloom. The 

 market-place, which stands a little to the westward of this and stretches over 

 the whole breadth of the square, is built of brick, something like that of Phi- 

 ladelphia, but is unpaved and unfinished. In wet weather you sink over the 

 shoes in mud at every step ; and here again the wisdom of the police is mani- 

 fest; as nobody at such times will wade in there unless forced by business or 

 absolute necessity; by which means a great number of idle loungers are, very 

 properly, kept out of the way of the market folks. 



" I shall say nothing of the nature or quantity of the commodities which I 

 saw exhibited there for sale, as the season was unfavorable to a display of their 

 productions ; otherwise something better than a few cakes of black maple sugar, 

 wrapped up in greasy saddle-bags, some cabbage, chewing tobacco, catmint and 

 turnip tops, a few bags of meal, sassafras-roots, and skinned squirrels cut up into 

 quarters — something better than all this, I say, in the proper season, certainly 



