LULLED in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain.
Awake but one, and, lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies.
Each, as the various avenues of sense
Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense,
Brightens or fades; yet all, with magic art,
Control the latent fibres of the heart.

Childhood's loved group revisits every scene,
The tangled wood-walk, and the tufted green.
Indulgent MEMORY wakes, and, lo! they live,
Clothed with far softer hues than light can give.
Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below,
To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know;
Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm,
When nature fades, and life forgets to charm,
Thee would the Muse invoke: to thee belong
The sage's precept, and the poet's song.
What softened views thy magic glass reveals,

When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals!
The Pleasures of Memory.

PREFACE.

I

HAVE not stretched this "simple story of Newport life, manners, and customs to the length which it might have reached, if I had chosen; because I felt that ample justice to my subject could be done within narrower limits, and that a less pretentious volume might attain a more extensive circulation, and so prove more useful to my native town, not merely now, but in years to come.

Had Newport remained stationary as when I left it sixty years ago, I might never have thought of reviving in order the events, &c, which are herein described: but it having become literally a watering-place, viz. a summer residence for fashionables, it occurred to me, that I might profitably unlock the storehouse of memory, and give such a familiar narrative of "olden time" as would prove acceptable in old homesteads and to new-comers; and I now sub

mit the work with all its unintentional errors, if any should crop out, to the residents, and to the visitors who, it is presumed, will flock from year to year to "the island" not surpassed for pleasantness and salubrity, even by that from which it derived its name.