Many of the methods familiar to us in railroad service to-day were invented by Pease, and were crudely in practice by him. He introduced the general ticket office in 1795, and no railroad office to-day sells tickets to all the points served by Pease. His stage office was in State Street, Boston. He evolved what we now term the "limited" and "accommodation" service of railroads; in fact, the term "limited" originated with mail-coaches limiting passengers to a specific number. Pease's fast mail line took but four passengers in each coach, and ran to New York three times a week with the mails. The slower line charging lower prices ran the other days of the week and took all applicants, putting on extra coaches if required. This service began in 1793. Tolls were commuted on Massachusetts turnpikes before 1800, so that condition of railroad travel is a century old.
Not far from this Pease Tavern is a sulphur spring which has some medicinal repute, and which attracted visitors. To reach it at one time you passed close to the house of the Indian, Old Brazil, and his wife Nancy, and this was always a ticklish experience. Miss Ward tells their blood-curdling story. His real name was the gentle title Basil, but he had been a pirate on the high seas, and Brazil was more appropriate. He and his wife thriftily ran their little farm and industriously wove charming baskets and peddled them around the neighboring towns. These last leaves on the tree were, for all the perceptions of Shrewsbury folk, peaceful creatures as they were honest; but when Brazil had been treated to a good mug of hard cider at tavern or farm-house (and no one would fail thus to treat him) he told of his past life with such fierce voice and horrid gesture as made him equally a delight and a terror to the children and to many older folk as well.
[Illustration: Harrington Tavern, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.]
He had been a bloodthirsty villain; scores, perhaps hundreds, of helpless souls on captured craft had perished at his gory hands. He detailed to the gaping loungers at the tavern with a realism worthy a modern novelist how he split the heads of his victims open with his broadaxe--exactly in the middle--"one half would fall on one shoulder, tother half on tother shoulder! ugh! ugh!" and with another pull of cider, husband and wife trotted contentedly home. About 1850 they died as they had lived, close--and loving--companions. As a fitting testimonial to the pirate's end, the village boys put a charge of gunpowder in the brick oven of the peaceful little kitchen and blew the pirate's house in fragments.