Vermont Phœnix

H. G. Otis.—The venerable Harrison Gray Otis was invited to the late centennial celebration of the settlement of Barnstable, Cape Cod. He is too far advanced in years to run over the country to such merry makings, but his letter declining attendance shows that his heart is young yet. We make some extracts:

There can be in the course of nature, but few persons present at your Jubilee, who retain the vivid and precious recollections which I do, of what Barnstable was in the year 1775; of its scenery, its localities, its people; and of their firmness, and patriotism, during the terrible year. Barnstable was not only the place of the birth and residence of my immediate ancestors for our generations, but it afforded, to my childhood, an asylum from the storms of War, and a retreat for my peaceful studies, during the siege of Boston. I had been there but a few weeks, before the news arrived of the conflagration of Charlestown. This came to us, not in the shape it has since assumed, of a real victory, though nominal defeat; but with the unmitigated horrors of conflagration, massacre, and as a specimen of the mode in which our peaceful villages were intended to be swept with the fire and sword.

Never can I forget the sensation of the people of Barnstable in that dismal hour; I sincerely believe from impressions then made, and constantly renewed since, that every man, capable of bearing arms, was ready to rush to the death in revenge of his martyred countrymen. The minds of the public were convulsed all the violent passions of our nature, except fear, which seemed to be unknown.

Barnstable was not only the scene of my earliest friendship but of my first love. I became enamoured of a very charming young person, nearly of my own age—but the course of this love did not run smoothly. In an innocent ramble over the fields and hedges, with her and other young persons, she had the misfortune to lose a necklace of genuine gold beads; the fault was neither hers, nor mine, but of the string on which they were threaded; but still, as real mint drops were in that day very valuable, and Treasury notes greatly on the decline, the circumstance brought me into some discredit with the family as accessory to a loss, which impaired the faculty of resuming specie payments when the time should arrive, and resulted in a future non-intercourse.