with his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's watch over the city.
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The Province House is constructed
of brick, which seems
recently to have been overlaid
with a coat of light-colored paint.
A flight of red freestone steps,
fenced in by a balustrade
of curiously wrought iron,
ascends from the court-yard
to the spacious porch, over
which is a balcony, with an iron
balustrade of similar pattern and
workmanship to that beneath.
These letters and figures—16 P.S. 79—are
wrought into the iron-work of the
balcony, and probably express the date
of the edifice, with the initials of its
founder's name. A wide door with
double leaves admitted me into the
hall or entry, on the right of which
is the entrance to the bar-room.
It was in this apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levees, with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the councillors, the judges, and other officers of the crown, while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor. But the room, in its present condition, cannot