Memories and Anecdotes | Page 8

their beaux sitting in the best
wagon holding hands and staring about (as Warner said to me, "Young
love in the country is a solemn thing"); the booths for sale of
gingerbread, peanuts, cider, candies, and popcorn; the marshal of the
day dashing here and there on his prancing steed. All was excitement,
great crowds, and the blare of the band. Suddenly an aged pair,
seemingly skeletons, so bony and wan were they, were seen tottering
toward the fence, where they at last stopped. They had come from the
direction of the graveyard. The marshal rushed forward calling out, "Go
back, go back; this is not the general resurrection, it is only the
Goffstown Muster."
Doctor Ben Crosby was one of the most admirable mimics ever known
and without a suspicion of ill-nature. Sometimes he would call on us
representing another acquaintance, who had just left, so perfectly that
the gravest and stiffest were in danger of hysterics. This power his
daughter inherited.
John Lord, the historical lecturer, was always a "beacon light" (which
was the name he gave his lectures when published) as he discussed the
subjects and persons he took for themes before immense audiences
everywhere. His conversation was also intensely interesting. He was a
social lion and a favourite guest. His lectures have still a large annual
sale--no one who once knew him or listened to his pyrotechnic

climaxes could ever forget him or them. It was true that he made nine
independent and distinct motions simultaneously in his most intense
delivery. I once met him going back to his rooms at his hotel carrying a
leather bag. He stopped, opened it, showing a bottle of Scotch whiskey,
and explained "I am starting in on a lecture on Moses." There was a
certain simplicity about the man. Once when his right arm was in a
sling, broken by a fall from a horse, he offered prayer in the old church.
And unable to use his arm as usual, he so balanced his gyrations that he
in some way drifted around until when he said "Amen" his face fronted
the whitewashed wall back of his pulpit. He turned to the minister
standing by him, saying in a very audible whisper, "Do you think
anybody noticed it?"
He was so genuinely hospitable that when a friend suddenly accepted
his "come up any time" invitation, he found no one at home but the
doctor, who proposed their killing a chicken. Soon one was let out, but
she evaded her pursuers. "You shoo, and I'll catch," cried the kind host,
but shrank back as the fowl came near, exclaiming: "Say, West, has a
hen got teeth?" At last they conquered, plucked, and cooked her for a
somewhat tardy meal, with some potatoes clawed up in the potato field.
Once, when very absent-minded, at a hotel table in a country tavern, the
waitress was astonished to watch him as he took the oil cruet from the
castor and proceeded to grease his boots.
Doctor John Ordronaux, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at
Dartmouth and various other colleges and medical schools, was another
erudite scholar, who made a permanent impression on all he met. While
yet at college, his words were so unusual and his vocabulary so full that
a wag once advertised on the bulletin board on the door of Dartmouth
Hall, "Five hundred new adjectives by John Ordronaux."
He was haunted by synonyms, and told me they interfered with his
writing, so many clamouring for attention. He was a confirmed
bachelor with very regular habits; wanted his bed to be left to air the
entire day, he to make it himself at precisely 5.30 P.M., or as near as
possible. His walk was peculiar, with knees stiffly bent out and elbows
crooked as if to repel all feminine aggression, "a progressive

porcupine" as someone described his gait. His hour for retiring was
always the same; when calling leaving about 9.30. Rallied about his
methodical habits, he was apt to mention many of his old friends who
had indulged themselves in earthly pleasures, all of whom he had the
sad pleasure of burying.
He was a great admirer of my mother for her loveliness and kind
interest in the students; after her death he was a noble aid to me in
many ways. I needed his precautions about spreading myself too thin,
about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive
enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he
kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful
prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian
phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of
gaining magnetism; believed in associating with butchers. Did you ever
know one that was