It looked a
little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that
were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste,
had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees
planted in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman
implied a defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising in
people who lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof, and a
triumphal arch for its entrance.
This place was known as "Colonel Sprowle's villa," (genteel
friends,)--as "the elegant residence of our distinguished
fellow-citizen, Colonel Sprowle," (Rockland Weekly Universe,)--as "the
neew haouse," (old settlers,)--as "Spraowle's Folly," (disaffected and
possibly envious neighbors,)--and in common discourse, as "the
Colonel's".
Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle of the Commonwealth's
Militia, was a retired "merchant." An India merchant he might, perhaps,
have been properly called; for he used to deal in West India goods,
such as coffee, sugar, and molasses, not to speak of rum,--also in tea,
salt fish, butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit,
agricultural "p'doose" generally, industrial products, such as boots
and shoes, and various kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end of
the establishment in calicoes and other stuffs,--to say nothing of
miscellaneous objects of the most varied nature, from sticks of candy,
which tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to
ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged
Bibles, stationery,--in short, everything which was like to prove
seductive to the rural population.
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