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XXIII.
old Newport days
It was my good fortune, after discharge from the army during the
Civil War, to dwell for a time under the hospitable roof of
Mrs. Hannah Dame,
in Newport, Rhode Island.
Passing out of the front door one day, just as its bell rang, I saw before me one of the very handsomest men I had ever beheld, as I thought.
He wore civilian dress, but with an unmistakable military air, and held out to me a card of introduction from a fellow officer.
He had been discharged from the army on the expiration of his term of service with the regiment he had commanded in
Fremont's Mountain Department.
Being out of employment for a time, and unsettled, as many of us were at that period, he came back to his early training as a market gardener, and, having made the professional discovery that most of the cabbages eaten in
Boston were brought from New York, while nearly all the cauliflowers sold in New York were sent thither from
Boston, he formed the plan of establishing a market garden midway between the two cities, and supplying each place with its favorite vegetable.
This he did successfully for ten years, and then