to say that the merits of that individual were thoroughly canvassed. There were observations of approval and disaproval. There were reflections pro and con. At length a pious sister, full of interest in the theme in progress, in substance thus gave expression to her honest thought:
"I think brother Solomon is a real good man. I think he is just as good a minister as anybody needs to have. I don't mean to say that I think he is quite equal to Christ, but I think he is fully equal to Anti-Christ."
There, is no doubt of the place of the good dame's heart, though her remark has given more than one person a side-splitting recreational exercise.
A BIG TREE.
When, in 1750, the proprietors of this township renewed their grant, procuring a title from the Lord Proprietors of John Tufton Mason, they became bound to a stipulation that all suitable pine trees should be reserved, for the use of His Majesty's navy. The local supply of pine trees of primitive gigantic size furnished one representative that has inspired an interesting chapter in the historic roll of the town. The particulars of the story, with a few later data necessarily added, are included in the following sketch, written by a former professional gentleman of Hopkinton, and originally published in the Worcester (Mass.) Palladium:
"Some time previous to the Revolution, a gentleman by the name of Chamberlain, purporting to be an agent for the King of Great Britain, came into this section of the country in pursuit of trees suitable for the masts for the Royal Navy. He found one in the westerly part of Concord, and another in Hopkinton, of enormous size. The one in Hopkinton was a white pine. It grew on the farm lately owned by Mr. Isaiah Webber, about one mile north of the east village. The King's agent employed Capt. Jonathan Chase, the grandfather of the late Bishop Chase, one of the first settlers in the place, with several other persons, to cut the tree and draw it to Sewell's Fall, in the Merrimack river, a distance of eight or ten miles. When the tree was fallen, it was cut off one hundred and ten feet in length, and then measured three feet in diameter at the top. The exact dimensions of the stump I cannot ascertain, but it is certain that Dr. John Webber, father of Samuel Webber, the President of Harvard College, who lived near by, drove a yoke of large oxen upon the stump and turned them about upon it with ease. Fifty-five yokes of oxen were employed to draw the mast to the river, and a road was cut the whole distance through the forest for that purpose; and it is said to have often happened, while passing over the rough country, that several yokes of oxen were suspended by their necks from the ground, by the force of the draught of those forward of them. In passing down a steep hill in the west parish of Concord, the team was divided, and a portion of it put in the rear; but the hold-back chains broke, and the immense burden slid forward with fearful velocity, crushing off the horns of the oxen upon the tongue, and stopping finally against the trunk of a large tree. That place to this day goes by the name of 'tail-down hill.'
The mast was floated down the Merrimack at high water; but in passing over Amoskeag Falls, about twenty miles below the place where it was put into the river, it broke in the middle. The butt end floated out of the current into a small cove in Andover, in Massachusetts, where it remained until it decayed. It was often resorted to as a curiosity, and, tradition says, it was so large that no man could be found who could leap upon it from the ground.
When the mast broke, the king's agent, Chamberlain, was sitting upon his horse on the bank of the river; he exclaimed, 'I am ruined!' and putting spurs to his horse, he rode off, leaving his bills unpaid, and was never seen or heard of afterwards."
