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THE
PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND
A Story of the Coast of Maine
BY
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1896
Copyright, 1862 and 1890,
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
Copyright, 1896,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H.O. Houghton & Co.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii
CHAP. PAGE
I. NAOMI 1
II. MARA 5
III. THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL 9
IV. AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY 15
V. THE KITTRIDGES 25
VI. GRANDPARENTS 36
VII. FROM THE SEA 47
VIII. THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 58
IX. MOSES 74
X. THE MINISTER 85
XI. LITTLE ADVENTURERS 99
XII. SEA TALES 110
XIII. BOY AND GIRL 120
XIV. THE ENCHANTED ISLAND 132
XV. THE HOME COMING 143
XVI. THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 154
XVII. LESSONS 165
XVIII. SALLY 175
XIX. EIGHTEEN 179
XX. REBELLION 186
XXI. THE TEMPTER 198
XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED 208
XXIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY 218
XXIV. DESIRES AND DREAMS 229
XXV. MISS EMILY 235
XXVI. DOLORES 245
XXVII. HIDDEN THINGS 258
XXVIII. A COQUETTE 270
XXIX. NIGHT TALKS 279
XXX. THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL 290
XXXI. GREEK MEETS GREEK 303
XXXII. THE BETROTHAL 315
XXXIII. AT A QUILTING 323
XXXIV. FRIENDS 329
XXXV. THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE 335
XXXVI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH 339
XXXVII. THE VICTORY 351
XXXVIII. OPEN VISION 358
XXXIX. THE LAND OF BEULAH 368
XL. THE MEETING 376
XLI. CONSOLATION 380
XLII. LAST WORDS 387
XLIII. THE PEARL 393
XLIV. FOUR YEARS AFTER 398
The frontispiece (Mara, page 376) was drawn by W.L. Taylor. The vignette
was etched by Charles H. Woodbury.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
The publication of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, though much more than an
incident in an author's career, seems to have determined Mrs. Stowe more
surely in her purpose to devote herself to literature. During the summer
following its appearance, she was in Andover, making over the house
which she and her husband were to occupy upon leaving Brunswick; and
yet, busy as she was, she was writing articles for _The Independent_ and
_The National Era_. The following extract from a letter written at that
time, July 29, 1852, intimates that she already was sketching the
outline of the story which later grew into _The Pearl of Orr's
Island_:--
"I seem to have so much to fill my time, and yet there is my Maine story
waiting. However, I am composing it every day, only I greatly need
living studies for the filling in of my sketches. There is old Jonas, my
"fish father," a sturdy, independent fisherman farmer, who in his youth
sailed all over the world and made up his mind about everything. In his
old age he attends prayer-meetings and reads the _Missionary Herald_. He
also has plenty of money in an old brown sea-chest. He is a great heart
with an inflexible will and iron muscles. I must go to Orr's Island and
see him again." The story seems to have remained in her mind, for we are
told by her son that she worked upon it by turns with _The Minister's
Wooing_.
It was not, however, until eight years later, after _The Minister's
Wooing_ had been published and _Agnes of Sorrento_ was well begun, that
she took up her old story in earnest and set about making it into a
short serial. It would seem that her first intention was to confine
herself to a sketch of the childhood of her chief characters, with a
view to delineating the influences at work upon them; but, as she
herself expressed it, "Out of the simple history of the little Pearl of
Orr's Island as it had shaped itself in her mind, rose up a Captain
Kittridge with his garrulous yarns, and Misses Roxy and Ruey, given to
talk, and a whole pigeon roost of yet undreamed of fancies and dreams
which would insist on being written." So it came about that the story as
originally planned came to a stopping place at the end of Chapter XVII.,
as the reader may see when he reaches that place. The childish life of
her characters ended there, and a lapse of ten years was assumed before
their story was taken up again in the next chapter. The book when
published had no chapter headings. These have been supplied in the
present edition.
THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND
CHAPTER I
NAOMI
On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath, in the State of
Maine, might have been seen, on a certain autumnal afternoon, a
one-horse wagon, in which two persons were sitting. One was an old man,
with the peculiarly hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes
the seafaring population of the New England shores. A clear blue eye,
evidently practiced in habits of keen observation, white hair, bronzed,
weather-beaten cheeks, and a face deeply lined with the furrows of
shrewd thought and anxious care, were points of the portrait that made
themselves felt at a glance.
By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of a marked and
peculiar personal appearance. Her hair was black, and smoothly parted on
a broad forehead, to which a pair of penciled dark eyebrows gave a
striking and definite outline. Beneath, lay a pair of large black eyes,
remarkable for tremulous expression of melancholy and timidity. The
cheek was white and bloodless as a snowberry, though with the clear and
perfect oval of good health; the mouth was delicately formed, with a
certain sad quiet in its lines, which indicated a habitually repressed
and sensitive nature.
The dress of this young person, as often happens in New England, was, in
refinement and even elegance, a marked contrast to that of her male
companion and to the humble vehicle in which she rode. There was not
only the most fastidious neatness, but a delicacy in the choice of
colors, an indication of elegant tastes in the whole arrangement, and
the quietest suggestion in the world of an acquaintance with the usages
of fashion, which struck one oddly in those wild and dreary
surroundings. On the whole, she impressed one like those fragile
wild-flowers which in April cast their fluttering shadows from the mossy
crevices of the old New England granite,--an existence in which
colorless delicacy is united to a sort of elastic hardihood of life, fit
for the rocky soil and harsh winds it is born to encounter.
The scenery of the road along which the two were riding was wild and
bare. Only savins and mulleins, with their dark pyramids or white spires
of velvet leaves, diversified the sandy wayside; but out at sea was a
wide sweep of blue, reaching far to the open ocean, which lay rolling,
tossing, and breaking into white caps of foam in the bright sunshine.
For two or three days a northeast storm had been raging, and the sea was
in all the commotion which such a general upturning creates.
The two travelers reached a point of elevated land, where they paused a
moment, and the man drew up the jogging, stiff-jointed old farm-horse,
and raised himself upon his feet to look out at the prospect.
There might be seen in the distance the blue Kennebec sweeping out
toward the ocean through its picturesque rocky shores, docked with
cedars and other dusky evergreens, which were illuminated by the orange
and flame-colored trees of Indian summer. Here and there scarlet
creepers swung long trailing garlands over the faces of the dark rock,
and fringes of goldenrod above swayed with the brisk blowing wind that
was driving the blue waters seaward, in face of the up-coming ocean
tide,--a conflict which caused them to rise in great foam-crested
waves. There are two channels into this river from the open sea,
navigable for ships which are coming in to the city of Bath; one is
broad and shallow, the other narrow and deep, and these are divided by a
steep ledge of rocks.
Where the spectators of this scene were sitting, they could see in the
distance a ship borne with tremendous force by the rising tide into the
mouth of the river, and encountering a northwest wind which had
succeeded the gale, as northwest winds often do on this coast. The ship,
from what might be observed in the distance, seemed struggling to make
the wider channel, but was constantly driven off by the baffling force
of the wind.
"There she is, Naomi," said the old fisherman, eagerly, to his
companion, "coming right in." The young woman was one of the sort that
never start, and never exclaim, but with all deeper emotions grow still.
The color slowly mounted into her cheek, her lips parted, and her eyes
dilated with a wide, bright expression; her breathing came in thick
gasps, but she said nothing.
The old fisherman stood up in the wagon, his coarse, butternut-colored
coat-flaps fluttering and snapping in the breeze, while his interest
seemed to be so intense in the efforts of the ship that he made
involuntary and eager movements as if to direct her course. A moment
passed, and his keen, practiced eye discovered a change in her
movements, for he cried out involuntarily,--
"_Don't_ take the narrow channel to-day!" and a moment after, "O Lord! O
Lord! have mercy,--there they go! Look! look! look!"
And, in fact, the ship rose on a great wave clear out of the water, and
the next second seemed to leap with a desperate plunge into the narrow
passage; for a moment there was a shivering of the masts and the
rigging, and she went down and was gone.
"They're split to pieces!" cried the fisherman. "Oh, my poor girl--my
poor girl--they're gone! O Lord, have mercy!"
The woman lifted up no voice, but, as one who has been shot through the
heart falls with no cry, she fell back,--a mist rose up over her great
mournful eyes,--she had fainted.
The story of this wreck of a home-bound ship just entering the harbor is
yet told in many a family on this coast. A few hours after, the
unfortunate crew were washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in
which they had attired themselves that morning to go to their sisters,
wives, and mothers.
This is the first scene in our story.