"Well, then, in the first place, I resigned the office of advocate-general, which I held from the crown, which produced me--how much do you think?"
"Shall we say two hundred sterling a year?"
"Well, let it be two hundred. That, for ten years, is two thousand. In the next place, I have been obliged to relinquish the greater part of my business at the bar. Will you set that at two hundred pounds more?"
"Oh, I believe it much more than that!" was the answer.
"Well, let it be two hundred. This, for ten years, makes two thousand. You allow, then, I have lost four thousand pounds sterling?"
"Ay, and more too," said Molyneux. Otis went on: "In the next place, I have lost a hundred friends, among whom were men of the first rank, fortune, and power in the province. At what price will you estimate them?"
"D--n them!" said Molyneux, "at nothing. You are better off without them than with them."
A loud laugh from the company greeted this sally.
"Be it so," said Otis. "In the next place, I have made a thousand enemies, among whom are the government of the province and the nation. What do you think of this item?"
"That is as it may happen," said Molyneux, reflectively.
"In the next place, you know I love pleasure, but I have renounced pleasure for ten years. What is that worth?"
"No great matter: you have made politics your amusement."
"In the next place, I have ruined as fine health as nature ever gave to man."
"That is melancholy indeed; there is nothing to be said on that point," Molyneux replied.
"Once more," continued Otis, holding down his head before Molyneux, "look upon this head!" (there was a deep, half-closed scar, in which a man might lay his finger)--"and, what is worse my friends think I have a monstrous crack in my skull."
This made all the company look grave, and had the desired effect of making Molyneux who was really a good companion, heartily ashamed of his childish complaints.
Another old inn of assured celebrity was the =Cromwell's Head=, in School Street. This was a two-story wooden building of venerable appearance, conspicuously displaying over the footway a grim likeness of the Lord Protector, it is said much to the disgust of the ultra royalists, who, rather than pass underneath it, habitually took the other side of the way. Indeed, some of the hot-headed Tories were for serving _Cromwell's Head_ as that man of might had served their martyr king's. So, when the town came under martial law, mine host Brackett, whose family kept the house for half a century or more, had to take down his sign, and conceal it until such time as the "British hirelings" should have made their inglorious exit from the town.