This ostentatious collection, some of the members of which
appeared placed there rather for show than service, consisted of the
courthouse, the jail, the tavern, and the shop of the blacksmith--the
two last-mentioned being at all times the very first in course of
erection, and the essential nucleus in the formation of the southern and
western settlement. The courthouse and the jail, standing directly
opposite each other, carried in their faces a family outline of
sympathetic and sober gravity. There had been some effect at pretension
in their construction, both being cumbrously large, awkward, and
unwieldy; and occupying, as they did, the only portion of the village
which had been stripped of its forest covering, bore an aspect of mutual
and ludicrous wildness and vacancy. They had both been built upon a like
plan and equal scale; and the only difference existing between them, but
one that was immediately perceptible to the eye, was the superfluous
abundance of windows in the former, and their deficiency in the latter.
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