[Roller-user] of the late Hon. Otis P. Lo

[Oscar S. <deg...@ha...>]

Ative of Melrose, owns an original bill of sale of "a negro woman named
Pidge, with one negro boy;" also other documents, among which is Mr.
Sprague's diary, wherein he gives the following account of the
wonderfully dark day in 1780, a good reminder of which we experienced
September 6, 1881, a century later: FRIDA May the 19th 1780. This day
was the most Remarkable day that ever my eyes beheld the air had bin
full of smoak to an uncommon degree so that wee could scairce see a
mountain at two miles distance for 3 or 4 days Past till this day after
Noon the smoak all went off to the South at sunset a very black bank of
a cloud appeared in the south and west the Nex morning cloudey and
thundered in the west about ten oclock it began to Rain and grew vere
dark and at 12 it was almost as dark as Nite so that wee was obliged to
lite our candels and Eate our dinner by candel lite at noon day but
between 1 and 2 oclock it grew lite again but in the evening the cloud
came, over us again, the moon was about the full it was the darkest Nite
that ever was seen, by us in the world.[A] [Footnote A: This was printed
in the sketch of Melrose in "History of Middlesex County," vol. II.] * *
* * * NAMES AND NICKNAMES. BY GILBERT NASH. To the antiquarian, the
historian, or the general scholar, there are few more interesting
studies than that of names. It is a pursuit of rare delight to trace out
the derivation of those with which we have been long familiar, and to
follow up the associations that have rendered them dear, curious or
ridiculous, as the case may be. The names themselves may be of no value,
but the spot or circumstance that gave them birth cannot fail to throw
around them an atmosphere of peculiar interest. The subject is a broad
one and may be, with time and inclination, extensively cultivated; and,
even in the limits of a short article, many phases of it of general
importance and interest may be satisfactorily treated, and it is
proposed in the following paragraphs to present only a few of them. In
the present rage for ni