some reminiscences of Longfellow. I would say in reply that although
yielding to no one in my admiration of the character and genius of
Mr. Longfellow or regard for his memory, I still feel quite unable to
contribute anything that would meet your expectations or serve your
purpose, from the fact that my knowledge of him began and to a large
extent closed in very early youth before his powers had developed.
Nevertheless, as everything even remotely connected with him or his is
valued and treasured, I will endeavor to comply with your request.
Hon. Stephen Longfellow, the father of Henry, was a friend of my
father’s and resided near us. Judge Potter, the father of the poet’s
first wife, lived almost directly opposite to us; and in an adjoining
house a sister of the late Eben Steele taught a school which I attended
with two of the daughters of Judge Potter and other children. The
Potter children, being the nearest neighbors, were my playmates. I can
see them now with their little blue aprons and happy faces. There was
something very attractive in the expression of Mary Potter’s features,
the future wife of the poet. It remains as fresh in my recollection
to-day as it was then. I used to hear a great deal about angels, but
cherished very incoherent ideas in regard to them, and one evening when
my mother was teaching me a hymn, the conclusion of which was:--
“May angels guard me while I sleep
Till morning light appears,”
I astonished her by asking if Mary Potter was not an angel.
Though she was quiet and retiring, it made one happy to be in her
society; and she enjoyed fun as well as the rest of us, only in a more
quiet way. One morning there was a platform laid around the pump in
the schoolyard and a man employed to paint it red. On going to dinner
he put his paint-pot and brush under the edge of the platform where
we discovered it. The Potters wore red morocco shoes and I wore black
ones. Some other children who rejoiced in red shoes were very proud of
them, which excited my envy. I painted my own and the shoes of several
others a staring red, and we strutted among our mates with great
satisfaction, which, however, was somewhat abated upon the arrival of
the schoolmistress.
It was the custom at that time in Portland to send children to the
Academy very soon after leaving the primary school, and there I first
met Henry Longfellow; but he was a large boy fitting for college, and I
was a little one. I can therefore only give you the impression made (by
his habits and bearing) upon the mind of a boisterous boy who had with
him nothing in common. But I recollect perfectly the impression made
upon myself and others by his deportment, and from these impressions
draw the inferences I communicate. He was a very handsome boy, retiring
without being reserved; there was no chill in his manners. There was
a frankness about him that won you at once; he looked you square in
the face. His eyes were full of expression, and it seemed as if you
could look down into them as into a clear spring. There were many
rough boys in the school, a great deal of horse-play and a good many
rough-and-tumble games at recess, and the boys who were not inclined to
engage in them often excited the ill-will of their ruder mates who were
prone to imagine that the former felt above them. As a result the quiet
boys sometimes fell victims to this feeling and were dragged out and
rudely treated. But no one ever thought of taking such liberties with
Longfellow, nor did such suspicions ever attach to him. Not even John
Bartels or John Goddard ever meddled with him. I think John Goddard
expressed the common sentiment of the school when, after some boy had
remarked upon Longfellow’s retiring habits, he exclaimed: “Oh, let him
alone. He don’t belong to our breed of cats.” He had no relish for
rude sports, but he loved to bathe in a little creek on the border of
Deering’s Oaks. And he would sometimes tramp through the woods with
a gun; but this was mostly through the influence of others. He loved
much better to lie under a tree and read. Small boys think it a great
affair to tag after larger ones, especially if the larger ones carry
guns, and I have often picked up the dead squirrels that he and others
used to shoot in the oaks. And he and John Kinsman or Edward Preble
would boost me into a tree to shake off acorns for them.
His early associations were very strong, and as is the fact in respect
to most of us, they strengthened with age and cropped out everywhere
in his verse. One familiar with the scenes and events of his youth can
readily trace to their source the allusions in many of his verses. It
was doubtless after gathering the mayflower on some half-holiday or
tramping through the woods that, as he lay beneath some one of those
old oaks on the verge of the forest, with limbs thirty feet in length
within reach of the hand, and looked up through the branches and
watched the clouds go by, he received those impressions which took form
in the following lines:--
“Pleasant it was when woods were green
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go.”
Though Longfellow was a thoughtful, he certainly was not a melancholy
boy, and the minor key to which so much of his verse is attuned, and
that tinge of sadness which his countenance wore in later years, were
due to that first great sorrow which came upon him in the loss of
her to whom I have referred, and which was chiselled still deeper by
subsequent trials. He never buried her, and that beautiful tribute to
her memory in the “Footsteps of Angels” is as true as tender.
He was ever ready to extend a helping hand to others. After leaving
school we took different paths and never met again till 1870, when I
received a communication from him through Mr. James T. Fields, saying
that he had kept run of me and wished me to call upon him at a time
fixed by him. I went and was most cordially received. I asked him how
he had kept run of me. He replied through his brother Alexander, his
sister Mrs. Pierce, and Mr. James Greenleaf, his brother-in-law, an
intimate friend and later schoolmate of mine. We reviewed the past,
and almost the first question he asked in relation to it was about the
scholars in that Academy, and he mentioned almost every name but the
one I knew was most dear to him. This is what led me to say that he
never buried her.
But what a change in that care-worn face, marked with the deep lines
of thought and sorrow, from the smooth-cheeked boy of my early
recollections, unconscious of care and to whom the future was rainbow
tinted and full of hope. The eyes, however, had not lost their wonted
expression, and the same sweet smile was on his lips, and he encouraged
me in the kindest manner to continue in the course I had just then
commenced, in words that it does not become me to repeat, but which
will never be forgotten. And from that time to his death I found that
neither success nor sorrow had narrowed the sympathies or chilled the
heart of Henry Longfellow.
BEN BOLT
Some time since, in the story of a wasted life, we depicted the results
of intemperance and the terrible grasp which this vice fastens upon its
victims, alas, but seldom broken. Lest our young readers should be left
to imagine that reformation is hopeless, we will relate the story of
Ben Bolt.
Ben Bolt was an English sailor about forty years of age, and a very
powerful man, of an iron frame and constitution and a choice man on
board ship. He was withal intelligent, having received a good common
school education, and of most excellent disposition even when in
liquor. He was honest as the sun, was never known to back out of
a ship, cheat his landlord, or run away after getting his month’s
advance. Ben was an excellent singer, and obtained his name from a song
called “Ben Bolt,” that he was very fond of singing. What his real
appellation was, for many years I did not know. He had none of the
vices common to seamen except drinking, and that he had to perfection,
insomuch that he was seldom sober while on shore.
I was conscious of a singular attraction towards Ben; I liked him; and
whenever I could catch him comparatively sober, endeavored to wean him
from his cups. Sailors are, in general, inclined to relate incidents of
their life, and if they have religious or well-to-do parents, to speak
of them with satisfaction and honest pride. Ben, however, was reticent
in this respect.
One day I was sitting at an open window in the reading room of the
Sailors’ Home, and Ben was seated on the piazza outside singing a psalm
in a low tone; at the conclusion he turned, and seeing me, said:--
“Parson, I’ve sung that psalm many times in the parish church at home.”
Then, as though afraid I might pursue the subject further, abruptly
left. I judged from this that during his youth he might have sung in
the church choir; at any rate he could read music, had a thorough
knowledge of it, and was a skilful player on the violin.
There were two hundred grog shops within a short distance of the Home,
several within three or four rods of the door, and every inducement
was held out to encourage seamen to drink. Ben had shipped for New
Orleans, but when the hour came for the vessel to sail, he was missing.
The superintendent of the Home told the “runners” to go to Ben’s
room, get a key, open his chest, and see if he had got his outfit of
sea-clothes and was ready to go, and if so, to search among the grog
shops and find him; but if he had not got his outfit, he would take a
man who was ready and put Ben in another vessel.
I happened to be in the entry when they came upstairs, and went into
the room with them. They opened the chest, and there were his oil
clothes, sea-boots, woollens, and every part of his outfit, and stowed
snugly away among the flannels a two-gallon jug of whiskey. One of the
“runners” took it and was about to pour the liquor out of the window,
but I interfered, saying:--
“You have no right to pour his liquor out; he bought it and paid for it
and worked hard to earn the money.”
“It is against the rules of the house to bring liquor into it.”
“Well, it is here now.”
“When he goes aboard, the mate of that ship will throw it overboard.
The last time he went from here he carried a jug, and the mate of the
ship took all their liquor away, for every man in the forecastle had a
jug.”
“Well, the mate can do as he likes, but you shan’t pour it out.”
I put the jug back and sat down on the chest to wait for Ben. The
“runners” did not succeed in finding him at his usual haunts, and, as
time was pressing, another man was taken and Ben left behind. I knew
he had a noble spirit of his own, and that taking liquor from him by
force had accomplished nothing in the past, and I resolved to make an
effort in another direction. I had some temperance tracts, written
by the boatswain of an English man-of-war, discussing the evils of
intemperance from the sailor’s standpoint, which I knew had produced
impressions upon many sailors. I spread one of these over the jug, then
took a Bible and opened to the twenty-ninth verse of the twenty-third
chapter of Proverbs, locked the chest, and went away.
The doors of the Home were locked at twelve o’clock, and those who were
not in by that time must stay out. Ben came home, as the watchman told
me, about ten minutes before twelve pretty decidedly drunk. Finding
himself safe in his room, he concluded as he was not going in the ship,
and didn’t need the whiskey to carry to sea, he would have a good drink
and turn in. Opening the chest, he saw the tract and read it, espied
the Bible and read that, the result of which was that he turned in
without tasting the whiskey. When he waked in the morning, he read the
tract again, then took the jug, turned the liquor out of the window,
and broke the vessel on the window-sill. At breakfast he told the
“runners” what he had done. Upon this they told him of what had taken
place the previous afternoon, and who had placed the tracts and Bible
in his chest beside the rum jug. He then came into my room, the tears
on his cheeks, exclaiming:--
“Parson, you wouldn’t let ’em pour out my whiskey.”
“No, Ben.”
“Well, I’ve poured it out and broke the jug, and so help me God not
another drop of whiskey shall pass my lips. Rum and I have fell out.
There’s two kinds of drunk, being drunk in the head and in the legs.
I was drunk in the legs last night; I had all I could do to get
upstairs, but my head was clear enough to read that tract and take the
sense of it. The boatswain of that man-of-war talks well ’cause he
talks from experience. I also read the Good Book and took the sense
of that. I went to the “runners,” and they told me you wouldn’t let
’em pour out the whiskey. Ah, that took hold. I knew it wasn’t ’cause
you wanted me to drink liquor that you wouldn’t let ’em pour it out.
I knew you was a bitter enemy to liquor, but a good friend to the man
who drinks it. Don’t think I’ve forgotten all the good words you’ve
said to me during the four or five years I’ve been knocking about this
house drunk. I’ve thought of ’em in the middle watch at sea when I was
myself. I’ve thought of these bloodsuckers round this house trying to
get my money away from me, to take the clothes off my back and the
shoes off my feet, and you trying to get me out of their clutches and
save my soul; and I’ve thought if ever I got ashore again, I’d ship in
with you and sign the articles, and now I am going to do it.”
“Are you really determined to leave off drinking, or is it a mere
impulse of the moment?”
“I never was more resolved to get drunk when I had come off a long
voyage than I now am to keep sober.”
“You cannot do this in your own strength. I have known hundreds attempt
it and fail; you do not, cannot realize the struggle it will cost. Let
us ask help of God.”
We knelt down together. When I had finished, I asked him to pray; he
said he could not.
“Then repeat the Lord’s Prayer with me; we are together in this thing
and must both have our hands on the rope.” He did so, and added to it,”
God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
“Your appetites and passions, Ben, have got you under their feet, and
you must have help outside of yourself; so long as you seek it where we
have sought it together this morning you will succeed.”
The next week he shipped for Australia. For five years I had seen him
go from the house on different voyages, and he had always gone so
intoxicated as to be barely able to sit in the wagon and unable to
get aboard without help. The captain or mate would often say to the
“runners”:--
“What did you bring that drunken fellow here for? I was to have good
men from your place.” And the invariable reply would be:--
“Captain, he will be the best man in the ship when the rum’s out of
him. He’s a bully man.”
This time he went aboard sober and fit for any duty, and came home as
second mate of the ship. He was no longer Ben Bolt, but men who had
been in the ship with him and whom he brought to the Home, called him
Mr. Adams, William Adams.
Note these two characters so strikingly different in circumstances and
in results.
George L., spoken of in “A Wasted Life,” after several struggles for
victory over appetite, yielded and died by his own hand. William
Adams conquered, continued steadfast through life, and accumulated
property. George L. had youth on his side, a mother’s affection and
many kind friends to encourage him, and he made shipwreck. Adams at
forty years of age was a confirmed drunkard, all his associates were in
the practice of the same vice, all leagued together to drag him back,
and with but one friend to take him by the hand and encourage him to
a better course. George L. had a home, his flute, books, and steady
employment. He could attend lectures, find innocent amusement, and
good society. Adams was in the narrow compass of a ship’s forecastle,
where all the conversation among his shipmates was in respect to the
debauchery they had practised while on shore and meant to practise
again at the first opportunity. George L., if he had been so minded,
could have turned down the next street and got clear of his evil
companions, but Adams could not, and when the vessel arrived in a
foreign port, and the crew had money given them and liberty to go
ashore, the pressure was terrible. You may say, he could stay on board
and let them go; so he did. But if you think this was an easy matter
for a person of his previous habits, all I can say is, you don’t know
what sailors are, and are entirely incapable of forming any conception
of the strength of that instinct which leads a sailor to go with his
shipmates either in good or evil. We talk about the strength of the
college tie; the college tie is a spider’s web in the contrast.
Why, I have frequently known the whole watch in a crew of men who had
just come off a long voyage to insist on sleeping in the same room,
three in a bed, and the rest on the floor, because they had been so
long together in the forecastle in the same watch; but after three or
four nights they would pair off and take rooms two together.
All these trials, temptations, and discouragements Adams met and
surmounted. I attribute the failure of George L. to the fact that he
trusted in himself, and the success of Adams to the fact that he went
out of himself at the very outset, went to God for aid. In his case it
was the moral force supplementing the will that had become well-nigh
powerless which decided a contest in which character, consideration,
and happiness both here and hereafter, were at stake. All the talk at
present is about forces of various kinds; but if a young man would have
real force of character and wage a successful contest, let him seek for
it where William Adams sought and found.
MA’AM PRICE
A notable woman was Ma’am Price who taught school in Portland, Maine;
and Polly, her daughter, was a spunky piece and was ready with an
answer to anybody. The schoolroom was in Ma’am Price’s own house that
stood in Turkey Lane, so called from the following circumstance:
Mr.----, who lived in that locality, invited the Reverend Samuel Deane
to dine with him and partake of a turkey. The parson coming according
to appointment found a Cape Cod turkey on the table,--a boiled salt
fish. Notwithstanding the town christened the lane Newburg Street, the
name Turkey Lane clave to the spot more than forty years.
When the British destroyed the town, Turkey Lane was directly in
range of the enemy’s fire; and when Ma’am Price had removed her
household stuff to a place of safety, Polly resolved to save her pig.
A sea-captain who had assisted her advised her to turn the animal out
to shift for itself, as Mowatt had opened fire, and it was not worth
while to risk life to save a pig that was not likely to be hit by a
cannon-ball. Polly, however, fastened a string to the creature’s leg
and undertook to drive it a long mile to Bramhall’s Hill. The pig was
obstinate, Polly determined, the progress necessarily slow. Meanwhile
shells were bursting and flinging the dirt on Polly. One junk of earth
struck the stick from her hand, and red-hot cannon-balls were whirring
around her, but Polly was determined to save the pig, and save it she
did.
Ma’am Price came to Portland from one of the West India Islands.
She was a woman of culture, but very decided and strict in school
discipline. If a boy refused to hold his head up, she fastened a fork
under his chin. No trifling with her.
Some years after this she was obliged to suspend her school on account
of an alarm of smallpox. A number of her scholars, among whom were
my mother and uncles, were inoculated with smallpox virus, put in a
pesthouse, and Ma’am Price, in whose experience and judgment the
parents reposed the greatest confidence, employed to take care of them.
It was customary, before the discovery of Jenner, to inoculate with
smallpox matter; but the patients being first put under a strict régime
and properly and seasonably cared for, the disorder was not much more
severe than varioloid. It was seldom that a patient died or was even
pitted.
These young persons had been long kept on water gruel and were
convalescent, when Hugh McLellan, by aid of friends outside, procured
two lobsters. The whole company were around the table about to partake,
when Ma’am Price made her appearance, and forbade them to take a
mouthful, saying it would kill them. They were, however, resolved
to eat, live or die. When unable to prevent them, for the boys were
large, she took out her box that was filled full of yellow Scotch
snuff, strewed it over the fish, and stirred it in with a spoon. Though
provoked enough at the moment, they cherished no ill-will against her;
at least I think not, when I recollect the number of presents the boys
and girls, whose parents were Ma’am Price’s scholars, used to carry to
Turkey Lane.
The good lady’s house was a great resort for captains of vessels,
with whom her husband had been acquainted in the West Indies, and who
brought her a great many presents,--fruit, shells, coral, eyestones,
and vanilla beans. People who got anything in the eye would go to
her to have an eyestone put in, and the old ladies went there for
sweet-scented beans to put in their snuff-boxes.
We were everlastingly teasing to carry some present to Ma’am Price,
and we found our account in so doing. She would put the eyestones in a
saucer and pour in vinegar, when they would crawl all over the saucer.
She would show us old pictures, needlework, and beautiful shells, and
tell us stories about the West Indies and the pirates. And always when
we carried a present, she gave us tamarind or guava jelly, or some West
India fruit.
There was one fellow who thought--though doubtless it was just his
silly notion--that the boy who carried the most acceptable present
received the largest share of sweetmeats. So one time when he was going
to the good woman’s with several other boys, and all he had to carry
was a plate of doughnuts, while one of the others had a fifteen-pound
turkey, he told that boy if he would present the doughnuts and let
him present the turkey, he would give him two flounder hooks and a
gray squirrel; thus they swapped. We all thought the other boy rather
regretted it when going home, but he regretted it a good deal more
about a week after when Ma’am Price came to call on their respective
mothers and thanked his mother for “the nice plate of doughnuts” she
sent her. Ma’am Price was very punctual and particular in returning her
acknowledgments, and she did it like Britannia stooping to conquer.
I am now going to tell the most wonderful thing that ever happened to
this excellent woman. One forenoon during recess she went into her
little garden, picked a mess of beans in her apron, sat down in the
schoolroom to shell them, and shelled out three diamonds. What a talk
it did make! People came from all the towns round to hear the story and
look at “the diamonds that grew in a bean pod.”
I hear some boy say, “That never could be; diamonds couldn’t grow in a
bean pod.” I have quoted that as town talk, and Ma’am Price and Polly
always thought they grew there. I believe, moreover, that she shelled
them out of a bean pod; I shall stick to that. It’s not the least use
for you to tell me she didn’t. Mrs. Commodore Preble saw her with her
own eyes shell them out, and so did Mrs. Matthew Cobb who lived in the
cottage on the eastern corner of High and Free streets. My mother said
she did, and Mrs. James Deering said so too. Now, then, that’s not all.
The very day before the old lady died Miss Sarah Jewett said to her:
“Ma’am Price, did you truly shell those diamonds out of a bean pod?
Hadn’t the pod been opened, or was it solid together like the other
pods?”
“Bless you, Miss Jewett, how could I tell? You know folks don’t look
at every bean or pea they shell, except there’s one that won’t open
right. I was shelling away and looking at the children to see that they
were all in their seats, when I felt something hard under my thumb and
looked into my lap, and there were two little shining things among the
beans, and another rolled out of the pod under my thumb when I took it
up.”
Miss Jewett had one of the stones set in a ring that is now in the
possession of William Gould of Windham. John Campbell, a relative of
Polly’s, has another, and where the third is I do not know.
Whenever the children carried Ma’am Price a present, she would take the
diamonds out of a cotton in which they were kept, lay them in her lap,
and let the children handle them; after which she would tell how she
shelled them out of the bean pod, and how surprised she was.