Publisher's Synopsis
Who buys? Who buys? 'Tis like a market-fair; The hubbub rises deafening on the air: The children spend their honest money there; The knaves prowl out like foxes from a lair. Who buys? Who sells? Alas, and still alas! The children sell their diamond stones for glass; The knaves their worthless stones for diamonds pass. He laughs who buys; he laughs who sells. Alas! In the days when New England was only a group of thinly settled wildernesses called "provinces," there was something almost like the old feudal tenure of lands there, and a relation between the rich land-owner and his tenants which had many features in common with those of the relation between margraves and vassals in the days of Charlemagne. Far up in the North, near the Canada line, there lived at that time an eccentric old man, whose name is still to be found here and there on the tattered parchments, written "WILLAN BLAYCKE, Gentleman."
