to Boston cousins, her piles of dainty hand-made underwear were wrapped in fine lawn or linen or muslin handkerchiefs, sweet with delicate scent of orris or lavender or rose. A new gown always came home from the dressmaker's carefully pinned in a thin and worn but newly laundered Madras handkerchief; and pale pink and blue gingham plaids were consecrated to highly polished shirts and spencers.

No Salem infant, even with the requisite number of great-grandfathers and grandmothers, could be considered to have been properly introduced to society until it had dangled in a bundle handkerchief from a pair of steelyards, while its weight, was recorded in the family Bible at the end of the family pedigree.

When on Sunday morning it was my pleasure to be allowed to go with Jane or Bridget to Mr. Hathaway's bakery, for the Sunday morning baked beans and brown bread, which had been prepared at home the afternoon before and consigned to his care and his great brick oven over night, Bridget always shook out two great bundle handkerchiefs of coarse blue and white checked gingham; the pot of beans was placed in the middle of one, the corners being brought up and tied in a hard knot; the other was wrapped about the sweet smelling loaf of brown bread, and the homeward march was taken in company with other maidservants and small girls, it not being unknown in the annals of the town that sometimes the knots had given way or the bundle handkerchief been dropped, and the family breakfast come to grief on the sidewalk.

When Salem women packed their soldiers' trunks three or four and thirty years ago, by the side of the prayer-book from Mr. Wilde or the Bible from Dr. Briggs and the medicine chest from Mr. Pinkham, they laid in a pile of fine new bundle handkerchiefs. Three of these, of dark red silk, with the name embroidered in one corner, came home in one sol

dier's trunk, brought by a guard of honor; for Salem gave the first of the Essex County heroes who laid down. their lives for their country in the war of the Rebellion, as she did in the war of the Revolution.

The last recollection I have of the appearance of the bundle handkerchief in Salem streets, is as it was folded about a book from the Athenæum and carried under the arm of Mr. John Andrews, one of the old-time proprietors of that exclusive and carefully cherished literary institution. I know not if he be living or dead, but it is hard to believe that he does not still take his accustomed walk down Essex Street, with the clock-like regularity of those old residents of Salem whom I do not need to call to mind. Upon his daily visit to the Athenæum, Mr. Andrews ascended the stairs with a shuffling step, always easily recognizable, and entered the reading-room, when he would deposit his bundle on the desk, untie the knots in his handkerchief, a silk one of rich dark colors, and take out his book to replace it with the latest addition to the shelf behind the door or the last new magazine from the table. Every movement, from his low bow upon entering to the final test of the knots of the bundle handkerchief, was made with utmost gentleness and deliberation, and with the finest flavor of old-time courtesy.

The bundle handkerchief, like other things interwoven in Salem's history, has disappeared. Paper and string, prosaic, rustling, tearable, and to be quickly thrown aside, have taken its place. But in the minds of Salem children of a generation ago will always linger a respectful memory of the neat, sweet, fresh, handsome and always useful bundle handkerchief, with its dainty whiteness or its brilliant hues. The fashion of this world passeth away; but there are often revived more inconvenient and less picturesque fashions than that of the bundle handkerchief.

that

ASSUME most readers of the New England Magazine who take the trouble to read this article do not care to know all that it is possible to know about Taunton; and that if they miss the genealogical tables, rosters of military companies, and copies of deeds and wills, which prove so inspiring to the antiquarian mind, they will graciously pardon the omission. It may even be a comfort to be told at the outset that Taunton, after the manner of ancient Rome, lost all its public records, covering the first two centuries of its life, in a disastrous fire which swept the town one Sunday morning in the year 1838. However, by consulting the records of neighboring towns, the state archives at Boston, the accumulations of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the family traditions of the people, and the memory of the oldest inhabitant, it has been possible to gather a tolerably complete and harmonious story which for interest is not exceeded by that of any town in

the Old Colony except Plymouth itself.*

This Old Colony town, an hour's ride from Boston, is neither city nor country, but a measurably happy combination of both. As they say in Scotland of a house that is built for a single family, Taunton is self-contained; its business lies within itself; it is not the bedroom of some larger place. With its nearly 30,000 inhabitants, its one hundred and seventy miles of streets and roads and its two hundred and twenty-five miles of sidewalks; with its shops and stores resorted to as a centre of supply for a large outlying territory in surrounding towns; its large commercial and manu

facturing interests; its shipping, its banks, telephones, electrics, and daily newspapers; its theatre, clubs, and musical festivals, -it exhibits many of the features of urban life. On the other hand, the country aspect appears in the fact that Taunton is made up of a group of seven or eight villages-Hopewell, Whittenton, Britanniaville,

*The citizens are under special obligations to Captain John W. D. Hall, secretary of the Old Colony Historical Society, for eminent service in this direction; to the Rev. S. H. Emery, D.D., president of the Society, for the very full and valuable History of Taunton which he published about two years ago; and to the Hon. E. H. Bennett, dean of the law department in the Boston University and first mayor of Taunton, for the address, a remarkably fine piece of local history, which he delivered at the quarter-millennial celebration of the city in 1889.

Oakland, The Weir (locally pronounced ware), East Taunton (sometimes called Squawbetty, from an ancient squaw, by the name of Betty, who once figured there), and The Green-which are more or less grown together; and if a stranger should happen to see the town on the two or three days in Sep

speaks of coming to The Green. The Green proper, to which considerable historic interest attaches, is a small rectangular piece of well-kept lawn, crossed by broad gravel paths, with a fountain at the centre, and a line of tall immemorial elms around it like soldiers forming a hollow square. The

wooden benches are occupied by loungers in summer time; auctions, as in some old English towns, are occasionally held just at the edge outside on Saturday afternoons; and there the Salvation Army can generally find an audience.

tember, when thousands of people and all sorts of farm products converge at the grounds of the Agricultural Society, he would believe that the farming interests of Taunton are not inconsiderable.

The oldest and largest village, containing the Green or old training field, around which now centres the business life of the whole town, has no other distinctive name. Everybody who comes there from the other villages

The mills or factories of one sort or another to be found in each of the villages named, and the large areas left for residence undisturbed by the sound of hammer or whir of machinery, make Taunton both a businesslike and a homelike place at the same time. One of its admirable features is its roominess. There is a comparative absence of the tenement blocks so common in

other manufacturing towns, while the large number of cottages, together with the generous spaces left between the houses and in front of them, preserve the village appearance, and give the impression that Taunton is a place of comfortable homes. Whether or not this feature is due to a tendency to expansion inherited from the days when the early settlers cried out to the General Court again and again for more elbow room, it is certainly in the interests of fresh air and good health. The trees which line the streets and fill the country around-some of them evergreens even in the heart of the town-the lawns and gardens, the groves, orchards and open fields not far away, the bridges and turns of the river, the brooks and numerous ponds, throw a garment of beauty over the region in the season of outdoor life; and it may be added that the level and for the most part excellent roads make Taunton and vicinity, if not a paradise for horse and bicycle, at least a very good beginning for one.

Taunton River is a favorite place of resort, especially since the formation of the Taunton Boat Club and the erection of its building; and you may see row-boats, canoes and an occa

CITY HOTEL.

sional steam launch plying up or down. stream on pleasant afternoons and evenings. There is a spot on the way to East Taunton which I fancy is deThe serving of some special name. river makes a short bend, and you suddenly find yourself, as it were, in a structure of Gothic architecture. The

a silent place, and the time to visit it is when the sun has sunk low enough to slant its mellow light among the leaves underneath the roof. On several occasions, two seasons ago, I rowed up and entered this Sainte Chapelle of nature between half past four and five o'clock in the afternoon in order to hear a particular bird, whose appointment seemed to be at that hour, start up and sing a wonderful solo somewhere away in the invisible distance. They tell me it was a hermit thrush; but I never have felt quite sure.

The Park, which the electric road company has laid out and equipped, occupies a delightful spot on the edge of Scadding's Pond, and in summer draws throngs of people into its cooling shade. The pond has been rechristened as Sabbatia Lake, from the name of the beautiful flower which grows there. Elder's, Assawampsett and Long-a chain of ponds on the east, from which Taunton derives its fine water supply-Nippenicket further north, and Winnecunnett on the old Bay Road toward Boston, are only a few miles from the Green. Wood

ROBERT TREAT PAINE.

ward Springs, a dell of Arcadian beauty, to which access is had by carriage or bicycle, is much frequented by small picnic parties. The highest land, though less than two hundred feet above the Green, is Prospect Hill, which in autumn wears a robe of gorgeous colors. In the suburbs there are several points of elevated ground, from which one obtains a view of the town with its houses embosomed among the trees, its tall chimneys and churches rising above them, and the dome of the new court house, which seems to have taken on the office of general overseer for the whole region.

The territory of Taunton lay within the jurisdiction of the Plymouth Government; but the first settlers came chiefly from Dorchester in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. We have a mingling of the Pilgrim and Puritan elements, the latter greatly predominating; and Taunton has gone through the experiences common to nearly all the older New England towns. It started with the minister, the teacher and the gristmill; it has had its Puritan Sabbath and Old Testament economy; it has sung long psalms and listened or slept during

long sermons; it has had its stocks, whipping post, pillory and eccentric characters.

Rev. Ephraim Judson, the ninth minister of Taunton, would give out the longest hymn in the book, on summer Sundays, and while the members of his congregation piously sweltered and praised the Lord, he would steal away and lie under a tree until the psalm was ended. He thus escaped, the chronicler adds, both the heat and the singing. His successor, Rev. John Foster, complained of too small a salary, and said, "If the people of Taunton do not raise my salary, I will serve them a trick the devil never did-I will leave them, and the devil never did that." It is not recorded whether the people admitted or denied the latter part of this statement. In 1656, the year in which Miles Standish died, a Scotchman was publicly whipped at