An Old Town by the Sea by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I DOUBT if any New England town ever turned out so many eccentric / characters as Portsmouth. From 1640 down to about 1848 there must have / been something in the air of the place that generated eccentricity. / In another chapter I shall explain why the conditions have not been / favorable to the development of individual singularity during the latter / half of the present century. It is easier to do that than fully to / account for the numerous queer human types which have existed from time / to time previous to that period.

In recently turning over the pages of Mr. Brewster's entertaining / collection of Portsmouth sketches, I have been struck by the number and / variety of the odd men and women who appear incidentally on the scene. / They are, in the author's intention, secondary figures in the background / of his landscape, but they stand very much in the foreground of one's / memory after the book is laid aside. One finds one's self thinking quite / as often of that squalid old hut-dweller up by Sagamore Creek as of / General Washington, who visited the town in 1789. Conservatism / and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the / unconventional its values also? If we render unto that old hut-dweller / the things which are that old hut-dweller's, we must concede him his / picturesqueness. He was dirty, and he was not respectable; but he is / picturesque -- now that he is dead.