56
��RICHARD POTTER.
��group, but many tears and loud beating hearts. I stepped forward as the lips parted, and " dear Will," was whispered almost inaudibly ; nothing more.
I deemed it best to retire and leave the frail flower to those who loved her best, and to whom she was dearest, and only pressing the hand of my friend, travel- worn and almost overcome with this sud- den grief, (he had been told of Ellen's death before reaching the village) I went out and over to my room at the ho- tel.
The dim-lighted windows, and shadows moving silently about in the mansion across the river, disturbed my sleep un- til long after the noon of night had stud- ded the sky with starry watchers.
I only heard next day that the weary soul still tarried among friends on this side ; and receiving a promise from Will that he would inform me when the change came, I left the place and friends, hoping against feeble hope.
��A telegram reached me a week later, only saying : " She is still with us, and doctor says she is better."
But why need I trouble you longer with details? The sequel is soon told in an extract received from my friend some months after I left them as above, in which he says :
" You must be sure and come ; the cir- cle will be incomplete without yon. We shall have a quiet wedding, but it will be a happy one. E. says, as you have been a sharer in our sorrows, so bhould you witness our highest joy. We are to have the old homestead on the river, and it is a sunny home since the light of it has returned to us. Poor, dear girl, how she must have suffered during those long months of loneliness. But it is all past, and the sun shines brightly where erst but cloud shadows spread. Be sure and come, and we will have a ' Merry Christ- mas,' indeed."
And I was there.
��BICHABD POTTEB.
��BY REV. SILAS KETCHUM, WINDSOR, CONN.
��Read before the Annual Meeting of the New
" In Memory of Richard Potter, the Celebrated Ventriloquist, who died Sept. 20, 1S35, aged 52 years."
Such is the legend on the stone that marks the resting-place of a very re- markable man. To the generation now passing and nearly passed away, no man in New England was better known, prob- ably, than he. From Quebec to New Orleans there was scarcely a man, woman or child that had not beheld with vacant wonder his marvelous tricks, or laughed themselves weak at his endless ventrilo- quial imitations and inimitable drollery.
How he would compare for skill with men of his own craft in our day it would be impossible to determine. Professors of his art were by no means so common in the days of our fathers as now. The chemistry of the atmosphere, of liquids and heat was less generally understood. The principles of electricity and magne-
��Hampshire Antiquarian Society, July 16, 1878.
tism were scarcely understood at all.
Tricks with these, which would have
been incredible except on demonstration,
are now familiar to every school-boy.
In Potter's day the notion of magic and
the possession of occult powers, was by
no means eradicated from the popular
mind. Whether he was greater or less
than Signor Blitz, the Fakir of Ava,
Jonathan Harrington and '"the Great
Hermann," it would be only a matter of
speculation to enquire. Probably the
latter; as all arts tend to elimination of
the crude and the perfection of their
methods. But, if all that has been reported of
Potter is true, he must have possessed powers not only marvelous, but su- pernatural. He could handle and swallow melted lead. He could go into a heated oven, with a joint of raw meat, and remain in the oven till the meat was
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