The L.L. Brown paper Company’s Mills At Adams.
standing watching the shadows as they chase one another across the slopes of the Hoosac range. Then, too, there were the people themselves. Hawthorne came to North Adams by stage from Pittsfield and stopped at the North Adams House, a tavern which occupied the site of the present Wilson House. On its porch and in its bar room were wont to congregate not only the substantial men of the place, but also the quaint characters and loafers so characteristic of the Yankee village of that day. It was to these latter odd specimens that the future novelist gave most of his attention; and besides being minutely described in his "Note Book," they figure from time to time in his sub- sequent books. There was Platt, the stage driver, who drove Hawthorne from Pittsfield, and whom he describes as "a friend of mine." There was Captain Gavett, who sold sweetmeats and talked philosophy on the tavern porch. There was "Black Hawk," a dissolute, unkempt fellow, who was once a lawyer of some repute, but then a soap boiler and phrenologist. It is he who figures as "Lawyer Giles" in the romance of "Ethan Brand"; and it is at an old limekiln on one of the foothills of Greylock that Hawthorne lays the
 
Left: Hon. Albert C. Houghton; Right: Hon. W. B. Plunkett.
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