The rubicund butcher of that period (we had no choice) was asked by a long-time patron how he got such a red face.  “Cider apple sass.”  The same patron said, “You have served me pretty well, but cheated me a good deal.”  “Yes, sir, but you have no idea how much I’ve cheated you.”

Our one milliner, positively brilliant in her remarks, when a lady sent back her bonnet twice on the ground that it was not becoming, said, “Remember you have your face to contend with.”

Our only and original gravedigger, manager in general of village affairs.

After the death of a physician, his wife gave a stained-glass window to the Episcopal Church of St. Luke, the beloved physician.  She asked Jason if he liked it.  He said, “It don’t strike me as a particular speaking likeness of Dr. Tom.”

To one of the new professors who ventured to make a few suggestions, “Who be yaou anyway?”

He enjoyed buttonholing people he met in our “graveyard” and pointing out where they “must shortly lie.”

Our landlord—­who that ever saw Horace Frary could forget him?  If a mother came to Hanover to see her boy on the 2.30 P.M. train, no meal could be obtained.  He would stand at the front door and explain, “Dinner is over long ago.”  He cared personally for about thirty oil lamps each day, trimmed the wicks with his fingers, and then wiped them on his trousers.  Also did the carving standing at the table and cleaning the dull knife on the same right side—­so the effect was startling.  One day when he had been ill for a short time his wife said:  “Dr. Dixi Crosby is coming this way now, I’ll call him in.”  “Don’t let him in now,” he begged, “why d——­ it, I’m sick!”

I must not omit the strictly veracious witness who was sworn to testify how many students were engaged in a noisy night frolic at Norwich.  “As fur as I know, there was betwixt six and seven.”

“Webb Hall,” who today would figure as a “down and out,” made many amusing statements.  “By the way I look in these ragged clothes, you might take me for a Democrat, but I’m a red hot Republican.”

He was obsessed by the notion that he had some trouble with a judge in Concord, New Hampshire.  He said fiercely, “I will buy two guns, go to Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other, or else wait quietly till spring and see what will come of it.”  A possible precursor of President Wilson’s Mexican policy.

He was accused by a woman of milking a cow in her pasture; pleaded guilty, but added, “I left a ten-cent piece on the fence.”

An East Hanover man is remembered for his cheek in slyly picking lettuce or parsley in the gardens of the professors and then selling them at the back door to their wives.

And a farmer from Vermont who used to sell tempting vegetables from his large farm.  He was so friendly he cordially greeted the ladies who bought from him with a kiss.  Grandmother evaded this attention by stating her age, and so was unmolested.  The names of his family were arranged in alphabetical order.  “Hannah A., give Miss Kate another cup of coffee; Noah B., pass the butter; Emma C., guess you better hand round the riz biscuit.”