Excerpt from Oldtown Fireside Stories The Columbian Sentinel came from Boston with its slender stock Of news and editorial; but all the multiform devices - pictorial, narrative, and poetical - which keep the mind Of the present generation ablaze with excitement, had not then even an exist ence. There was no theatre, no Opera; there were in Oldtown no parties or balls, except, perhaps, the annual election, or Thanksgiving festival; and when winter came, and_the sun went down at half-past four O'clock, and left the long, dark hours of evening to be provided for, the necessity Of amusement be came urgent. Hence, in those days, chimney-corner story-telling became an art and an accomplishment. Society then was full Of traditions and narratives which had all the uncertain glow and shifting mys tery Of the firelit hearth upon them. They were told to sympathetic audiences, by the rising and fall ing light Of the solemn embers, with the hearth crickets filling up every pause. Then the aged told their stories to the young, - tales Of early life tales Of war and adventure, Of forest-days, Of Indian cap tivities and escapes, Of bears and wild-cats and pan. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.