The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866. Various
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unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in grand style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around it. His tomb stands near the house,—a spacious receptacle, an iron door at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H–. There is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are the gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient burial-ground,—the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and perhaps coats-of-arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart. The people of Thomaston were very wrathful that the General should have laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady, often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady Knox (as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie. She was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that, as long as she lived, she would never enter any house in Thomaston except her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her carriage to the door, and send up to inquire how she did. The General was personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of aristocracy. It is not forty years since this house was built, and Knox was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a stone's throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been laid out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of the river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West Indian vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a lime-kiln. Little appertains to the mansion, except the tomb and the old burial-ground, and the old fort.
The descendants are all poor, and the inheritance was merely sufficient to make a dissipated and drunken fellow of the only one of the old General's sons who survived to middle age. The man's habits were as bad as possible as long as he had any money; but when quite ruined, he reformed. The daughter, the only survivor among Knox's children, (herself childless,) is a mild, amiable woman, therein totally differing from her mother. Knox, when he first visited his estate, arriving in a vessel, was waited upon by a deputation of the squatters, who had resolved to resist him to the death. He received them with genial courtesy, made them dine with him aboard the vessel, and sent them back to their constituents in great love and admiration of him. He used to have a vessel running to Philadelphia, I think, and bringing him all sorts of delicacies. His way of raising money was to give a mortgage on his estate of a hundred thousand dollars at a time, and receive that nominal amount in goods, which he would immediately sell at auction for perhaps thirty thousand. He died by a chicken-bone. Near the house are the remains of a covered way, by which the French once attempted to gain admittance into the fort; but the work caved in and buried a good many of them, and the rest gave up the siege. There was recently an old inhabitant living, who remembered when the people used to reside in the fort.
Owl's Head,—a watering-place, terminating a point of land, six or seven miles from Thomaston. A long island shuts out the prospect of the sea. Hither coasters and fishing-smacks run in when a storm is anticipated. Two fat landlords, both young men, with something of a contrast in their dispositions;—one of them being a brisk, lively, active, jesting fat man; the other more heavy and inert, making jests sluggishly, if at all. Aboard the steamboat, Professor Stuart of Andover, sitting on a sofa in the saloon, generally in conversation with some person, resolving their doubts on one point or another, speaking in a very audible voice; and strangers standing or sitting around to hear him, as if he were an ancient apostle or philosopher. He is a bulky man, with a large, massive face, particularly calm in its expression, and mild enough to be pleasing. When not otherwise occupied, he reads, without much notice of what is going on around him. He speaks without effort, yet thoughtfully.
We got lost in a fog the morning after leaving Owl's Head. Fired a brass cannon, rang bell, blew steam like a whale snorting. After one of the reports of the cannon, we heard a horn blown at no great distance, the sound coming soon after the report. Doubtful whether it came from the shore or a vessel. Continued our ringing and snorting; and by and by something was seen to mingle with the fog that obscured everything beyond fifty yards from us. At first it seemed only like a denser wreath of fog; it darkened still more, till it took the aspect of sails; then the hull of a small schooner came beating down towards us, the wind laying her over towards us, so that her gunwale was almost in the water, and we could see the whole of her sloping deck.
"Schooner ahoy!" say we. "Halloo! Have you seen Boston Light this morning?"
"Yes; it bears north-northwest, two miles distant."
"Very much obliged to you," cries our captain.
So the schooner vanishes into the mist behind. We get up our steam, and soon enter the harbor, meeting vessels of every rig; and the fog, clearing away, shows a cloudy sky. Aboard, an old one-eyed sailor, who had lost one of his feet, and had walked on the stump from Eastport to Bangor, thereby making a shocking ulcer.
Penobscot Bay is full of islands, close to which the steamboat is continually passing. Some are large, with portions of forest and portions of cleared land; some are mere rocks, with a little green or none, and inhabited by sea-birds, which fly and flap about hoarsely. Their eggs may be gathered by the bushel, and are good to eat. Other islands have one house and barn on them, this sole family being lords and rulers of all the land which the sea girds. The owner of such an island must have a peculiar sense of property and lordship; he must feel more like his own master and his own man than other people can. Other islands, perhaps high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a white light-house, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star across the melancholy deep,—seen by vessels coming on the coast, seen from the mainland, seen from island to island. Darkness descending, and looking down at the broad wake left by the wheels of the steamboat, we may see sparkles of sea-fire glittering through the gloom.
AN OLD MAN'S IDYL
By the waters of Life we sat together,
Hand in hand in the golden days
Of the beautiful early summer weather,
When skies were purple and breath was praise,
When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds
And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran
Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards,
And trees with voices Æolian.
By the rivers of Life we walked together,
I and my darling, unafraid;
And lighter than any linnet's feather
The burdens of Being on us weighed.
And Love's sweet miracles o'er us threw
Mantles of joy outlasting Time,
And up from the rosy morrows grew
A sound that seemed like a marriage chime.
In the gardens of Life we strayed together;
And the luscious apples were ripe and red,
And the languid lilac and honeyed heather
Swooned with the fragrance which they shed.
And under the trees the angels walked,
And up in the air a sense of wings
Awed us tenderly while we talked
Softly in sacred communings.
In the meadows of Life we strayed together,
Watching the waving harvests grow;
And under the benison of the Father
Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro.
And the cowslips, hearing our low replies,
Broidered fairer the emerald