to trace out the authors of the mischief through these pages.
Therefore we cannot say where Pinchbrook is, or even give a hint which
would enable our readers to fix definitely its locality.

Pinchbrook is a town of about three thousand inhabitants, engaged, as the
school books would say, in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and the
fisheries, which, rendered into still plainer English, means that some of
the people are farmers; that wooden pails, mackerel kegs, boots and shoes,
are made; that the inhabitants buy groceries, and sell fish, kegs, pails,
and similar wares; and that there are about twenty vessels owned in the
place, the principal part of which are fishermen.

We have not the agricultural and commercial statistics of the place at
hand; but the larger territorial part of the town was devoted to the
farming interest, and was rather sparsely populated, while the principal
village, called Pinchbrook Harbor, was more densely peopled, contained two
stores, four churches, one wharf, a blacksmith shop, and several shoe and
bucket manufactories.

We are willing to acknowledge that Pinchbrook is rather a singular name.
The antiquarians have not yet had an opportunity to determine its origin;
but our private opinion is that the word is a corruption of _Punch_-brook.
Perhaps, at some remote period in the history of the town, before the Sons
of Temperance obtained a foothold in the place, a villainous mixture,
known to topers under the general appellation of "punch," may have been
largely consumed by the Pinchbrookers. Though not a very aged person
ourself, we have heard allusions to festive occasions where,
metaphorically, the punch was said to "flow in streams." Possibly, from
"streams" came "brooks,"--hence, "Punchbrook,"--which, under the strange
mutations of time, has become "Pinchbrook." But we are not learned in
these matters, and we hope that nothing we have said will bias the minds
of antiquarians, and prevent them from devoting that attention to the
origin of the word wh