BREWSTER’S RAMBLE #149 (continued) 

WALKING TO WORK AROUND THE WORLD

As he has resided in the same locality the whole fifty years, (only removing "over the way" when he commenced housekeeping forty years ago)-- the distance from his residence to the office, 2300 feet, has been walked at least four times every day on an average. Thus has he passed over 27,150 miles in one beaten track, compassing more than a circuit round the world,--and that too without the notoriety a short and hurried walk to Chicago (see footnote 2) might give.

Has not this sameness been tiresome? may be asked. O no, it has had its variety in scenery -- it has its variety also, in the change of fellow travellers.

The changes of the seasons present in the hundred and twenty trees daily passed, the bud, the blossom, the full foliage, the autumnal tinges, and the strong and muscular bare limbs of the winter months. They are all company to him in their associations. He has seen, in fifty years, other trees in the same spots where the largest and loftiest elms, of eight or ten feet in circumference, now stand. That at the opening of Pearl street, he saw Ricker Hill put down when a twig. The spot where stands the 10-ft. elm in front of Geo. W. Haven's, was occupied less than fifty years ago by a large horsechestnut, which had taken the place of a lofty Lombardy poplar. And that 8-ft. elm in front of the Academy has its historical remembrance.

The Commissioner of the Sandwich Islands now at Washington will recollect the day when his father applied to him the ferrule for aspiring so high as to break off the tree twelve feet from the ground, where the large branches now spread from the main trunk. T. Starr King was witness on the occasion. There have been trees on the way set out by lady hands, which are held sacred by their departure. One might have been seen a few years since, which had no claim to beauty or vigor, but was for years in a dying state, and like a tomb-stone told only of affection for the departed.

Even from the pavements over which he walks, some associations arise. Passing fifty years ago over a long gravelly walk lined by a row of posts on one side, and the red fence of the Adams garden on the other, he did not reach any pavements until arriving at Mrs. Buckminister's premises. Thence the flat stones were laid to Market street. Now the brick walk extends the whole distance, and far west. As we pass the old granite at the street crossings, the mysterious seams in the rocks bring up thoughts of primeval times -- the square and the octagon stone passes bring up the mechanical contest of years gone by -- and when these stones on a frosty morning display the rich traces of the frost, who cannot find 'sermons in stones?'

Of the male heads of families resident on Islington and Congress streets fifty years ago, there now survive only John P. Lord, Samuel Lord, James F.Shores and Henry Goddard.

All the old occupants of the houses on these streets fifty years ago have passed away, and their places have been supplied by another generation, just then entering upon manhood. He can now look upon these as men of three score and ten, -- but somehow they do not look as old men did to him fifty years ago. Among the old residents he might name Messrs. Akermans, Ham, Jackson, Fitzgerald, Halliburton, Barnes, Story, Fernald, H. S. Langdon, Hill, Folsom, Haven, Storer, Abbott, Sheafe, Parrott, J. Melcher, Treadwell, Dean, Cutter, Rogers, Bell, Dearborn, Lakeman, Brewster, Gerrish, Goddard, Rice, Webster, Clark, John Langdon 2d, N. Melcher, Sowersby, Call, Robinson, Bishop, Bartlett, McIntosh, Isaac Waldron, Wildes and others. Only step for an hour into the shop of John Gaines, the watchmaker, where politics were always on the tapis, and you would meet the leading politicians of the day discussing the affairs of the nation. They are now all gone. In the shop next east of John Gains's might be seen John Somerby, apparently not five years older now than then, industriously engaged in upholstery. Next comes the old Bell Tavern, where 'Squire Brown and Samuel Rea reappear, with Jacob Pritchard the barber, whose shop was in that tavern. Daniel Lowd is sitting on the cellar casement in front, leaning on his staff -- and Supply Ham in the little shop behind his window of watches, as regular as a chronometer, and as reliable. Then George Ham might be seen in the old Billings house, with a magnifier held by his eyelids, and his sons Nathaniel and Daniel aiding him in regulating time. Then the old Walker house, where Robert Metlin the baker lived, who probably knew nothing of saleratus, for he died in 1787 at the age of 115 years. Then came the mansion where "Sally Allen" kept her millinery store -- and next the "fortunate" lottery office of G. W. Tuckerman, which afterwards became Peduzzi's confectionery. There, too, is the ancient Court House on Market-Square, and the venerable North Church behind it.

BREWSTER’S RAMBLE #149 continued