An Old Town by the Sea by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

THESE old houses have perhaps detained us too long. They are merely the / crumbling shells of things dead and gone, of persons and manners and / customs that have left no very distinct record of themselves, excepting / here and there in some sallow manuscript which has luckily escaped the / withering breath of fire, for the old town, as I have remarked, has / managed, from the earliest moment of its existence, to burn itself up / periodically. It is only through the scattered memoranda of ancient town / clerks, and in the files of worm-eaten and forgotten newspapers, that / we are enabled to get glimpses of that life which was once so real and / positive and has now become a shadow. I am of course speaking of the / early days of the settlement on Strawberry Bank. They were stormy and / eventful days. The dense forest which surrounded the clearing was alive / with hostile red-men. The sturdy pilgrim went to sleep with his firelock / at his bedside, not knowing at what moment he might be awakened by / the glare of his burning hayricks and the piercing war-whoops of the / Womponoags.

Year after year he saw his harvest reaped by a sickle of / flames, as he peered through the loop-holes of the blockhouse, whither / he had flown in hot haste with goodwife and little ones. The blockhouse / at Strawberry Bank appears to have been on an extensive scale, with / stockades for the shelter of cattle. It held large supplies of stores, / and was amply furnished with arquebuses, sakers, and murtherers, a / species of naval ordnance which probably did not belie its name. It also / boasted, we are told, of two drums for training-days, and no fewer / than fifteen hautboys and soft-voiced recorders -- all which suggests a / mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth. / To the younger members of the community glass or crockery ware was an / unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the / pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter. The / diet was also of the simplest -- pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of / ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could get it.