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PREFACE.

It is nearly twenty years since a Gazetteer of New-Hampshire
was published, and although the State has not increased in popu¬
lation, still the change in every branch of business has been quite
as great as in any State in New England. We have now nearly
double the miles of railway, and three times the number of miles of
telegraph wire that we had twenty years ago. The wealth of
the State has increased nearly one hundred per cent. Where
there were but hamlets in 1855, there are now large manufacturing
villages, and the busy hum of life is heard from morning till night.

We are now living in the days of fast steamboat lines, railroad
express trains, telegraphs and pneumatic tubes.

All branches of business are done with railway speed, and what
it took years to accomplish, thirty years ago, is now performed in
as many months. Time and space have been brought nearly to a
focus. The cotton merchant in Boston can do more mercantile
correspondence in one week with his branch house in Liverpool,
by telegraph, than could he done fifteen years ago in a long life¬
time. Where it took months to convey intelligence by mail, it is
now done by telegraph, in as many minutes. Where weeks were
required to perform a journey by stage, it is now accomplished by
rail, in as many days. In our country, a generation has been
crowded into years/years into months, months into days, and days
into hours. The old Farmer’s clock that has stood in his kitchen
corner for more than forty years with the wise monition written
on its dial that “ time is money,” has seen the maxim heeded and
fully carried out in this generation. In this age men make their
fortunes in a day and sometimes lose them quite as soon.

In preparing this work we have endeavored to keep the above