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Nicholas Newman–Nicholas was a sobriquet, his real name being Edward–was a most estimable person, very short, cross-eyed, somewhat bow-legged, and with a bell out of all proportion to his stature. I have never since seen a bell of that size disconnected with a church steeple. The only thing about him that matched the instrument of his office was his voice. His “Hear All!” still deafens memory’s ear. I remember that he had a queer way of sidling up to one, as if nature in shaping him had originally intended a crab, but thought better of it, and made a town-crier. Of the crustacean intention only a moist thumb remained, which served Mr. Newman in good stead in the delivery of the Boston evening papers, for he was incidentally newsdealer. His authentic duties were to cry auctions, funerals, mislaid children, traveling theatricals, public meetings, and articles lost or found. He was especially strong in announcing the loss of reticules, usually the property of elderly maiden ladies. The unction with which he detailed the several contents, when fully confided to him, would have seemed satirical in another person, but on his part was pure conscientiousness. He would not let so much as a thimble, or a piece of wax, or a portable tooth, or any amiable vanity in the way of tonsorial device, escape him. I have heard Mr. Newman spoken of as “that horrid man.” He was a picturesque figure.

Possibly it is because of his bell that I connect the town crier with those dolorous sounds which I used to hear rolling out of the steeple of the Old North every night at nine o’clock–the vocal remains of the colonial curfew. Nicholas Newman has passed on, perhaps crying his losses elsewhere, but this nightly tolling is still a custom. I can more satisfactorily explain why I associate with it a vastly different personality, that of Sol Holmes, the barber, for every night at nine o’clock his little shop on Congress Street was in full blast. Many a time at that hour I have flattened my nose on his window-glass. It was a gay little shop (he called it “an Emporium”), as barber shops generally are, decorated with circus bills, tinted prints, and gaudy fly-catchers of tissue and gold paper. Sol Holmes–whose antecedents to us boys were wrapped in thrilling mystery, we imagined him to have been a prince in his native land–was a colored man, not too dark “for human nature’s daily food,” and enjoyed marked distinction as one of the few exotics in town. At this juncture the foreign element was at its minimum; every official, from selectman down to the Dogberry of the watch, bore a name that had been familiar to the town for a hundred years or so. The situation is greatly changed. I expect to live to see a Chinese policeman, with a sandal-wood club and a rice-paper pocket handkerchief, patrolling Congress Street.

Holmes was a handsome man, six feet or more in height, and as straight as a pine. He possessed his race’s sweet temper, simplicity, and vanity. His martial bearing was a positive factor in the effectiveness of the Portsmouth Greys, whenever those bloodless warriors paraded. As he brought up the rear of the last platoon, with his infantry cap stuck jauntily on the left side of his head and a bright silver cup slung on a belt at his hip, he seemed to youthful eyes one of the most imposing things in the display. To himself he was pretty much “all the company.” He used to say, with a drollness which did not strike me until years afterwards, “Boys, I and Cap’n Towle is goin’ to trot out ‘the Greys’ to-morroh.” Though strictly honest in all business dealings, his tropical imagination, whenever he strayed into the fenceless fields of autobiography, left much to be desired in the way of accuracy. Compared with Sol Holmes on such occasions, Ananias was a person of morbid integrity. Sol Holmes’s tragic end was in singular contrast with his sunny temperament. One night, long ago, he threw himself from the deck of a Sound steamer, somewhere between Stonington and New York. What led or drove him to the act never transpired.