The Indians are said to have
spared him in succeeding wars on account of his kindness to them.
Even in 1700 he was so old and gray-headed that his scalp was
worth nothing, since the French Governor offered no bounty for
such. I have stood in the dent of his cellar on the bank of the
brook, and talked there with one whose grandfather had, whose
father might have, talked with Lovewell. Here also he had a mill
in his old age, and kept a small store. He was remembered by
some who were recently living, as a hale old man who drove the
boys out of his orchard with his cane. Consider the triumphs of
the mortal man, and what poor trophies it would have to show, to
wit:--He cobbled shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cut a
handsome swath at a hundred and five! Lovewell's house is said
to have been the first which Mrs. Dustan reached on her escape
from the Indians. Here probably the hero of Pequawket was born
and bred. Close by may be seen the cellar and the gravestone of
Joseph Hassell, who, as is elsewhere recorded, with his wife
Anna, and son Benjamin, and Mary Marks, "were slain by our Indian
enemies on September 2d, [1691,] in the evening.
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