Turned her still look upon the sky,
The lighted stream and broken shore;
Oh, God! it was a mockery,
--The bridegroom--Death--upon her breast
For aye possessing and possessed!
With the deep calmness of despair,
The mourner raised his marble head,
And on the silken cushions there,
With icy hands, composed the dead;
Then tore her veil off for a shroud,
And in her voiceless mourning bowed.
That holy sorrow might have awed
The very wind--but mockingly
It flung his matted hair abroad,
As trifling with her agony,
And with a low and moaning wail
Bore on its wings the bridal veil;
Then came a cold and starry ray,
And on his marble forehead lay.
Father of heaven! she could not brook
That floating hair, that rigid look.
With one quick gasp she forward sprung,
And to the helm in frenzy clung,
Until the barque shot on its way
Where a dense shadow darkest lay;
And there, as shrouded with a pall,
The barge swept to the very shore;
The fell hyena's fiendish call
Rang wildly to her ear once more,
And from the deep dark solitude
She saw the hungry jackall creep,
And whimper for his nightly food,
Where many a monster lay asleep
Just in the margin of the flood,
As resting from a feast of blood.
Around the corpse the widow flung
Her snowy arms, and madly clung
To that cold bosom, whence a chill
Shot through her heart, and frantic still
Her eyes in horror turned to seek
That prowling beast, whose hungry jaws
Worked fiercely and began to reek
With eager foam, as with his paws
He tore the turf impatiently,
And howling snuffed the passing clay.
It was not that she feared to die;
In the deep stillness of her heart,
Her spirit prayed most fervently
There with the dead to hold its part.
The only boon she cared to crave,
Was for them both a christian grave;
But oh! the agonizing thought!
That in her madness she had brought
That loved and lost one, for a feast,
To vulture and to prowling beast,
Where all things fierce and wild had come
To howl a horrid requiem.
But soon a stronger current bore
The freight of death from off the shore;
Again the trembling starlight broke
Above the still and changing clay,
And with its pearly kisses woke
The widow from her trance, who lay
Convulsed and shivering with dread,
Her white arms clinging to the dead;
For yet the stilly night wind bore
The wild beasts' disappointed roar.
Within the far o'erhanging wood,
A bulbul listening to her heart,
Poured forth upon the air a flood
Of gushing love;--with lips apart
The widow clasped her trembling hands,
And bent her ear to catch the strain,
As if a seraph's low commands
Were breathed into her soul;--again,
That heavenly sound came gushing out,
Like waters in their leaping shout;
Over her heart's deep frozen spring
The gentle strain went lingering,
And touched each icy tear that slept
With sudden life, until she wept.
* * * * *
Again the lovely morn awoke
Upon that temple still and lone;
Its rosy bloom in gladness broke,
And to the holy altar-stone
Came down subduedly and dim,
Through painted glass, o'er sculptured limb:
Outstretched within that gorgeous gloom,
Shaded by pall and sable plume,
As chisseled from the very stone,
The Bridegroom lay. A broken moan
Rose up from where the Widow bowed,
Her forehead buried in the pall,
Her fingers grasping still the shroud,
And every limb betraying all
The agony that wrung her heart.
It was a sad and fearful sight,
That lifted head, those lips apart,
When through the dim and purplish light
Those who obeyed the bridal call
Now gathered for the funeral;
A soft and solemn strain awoke
The silence of that lofty dome,
And through the fretted arches broke
The music surging to its home;
Then with a firm and heavy tread
The bearers slowly raised the dead;
She followed close, her trembling hand
Still clenched upon the gloomy pall,
In snowy robes and pearly band,
As at her wedding festival;
And in her bright disshevelled hair
A broken orange-blossom lay,
Withered and all entangled there;
Fit relic of her bridal day;
Thus onward to the tomb she passed,
Her white robe swaying to the blast,
And mingling at each stirring breath
There with the drapery of death.
JACK DOWNING'S VISIT TO PORTLAND.
By Seba Smith.
In the fall of the year 1829 I took it into my head I'd go to Portland.
I had heard a good deal about Portland, what a fine place it was, and
how the folks got rich there proper fast; and that fall there was a
couple of new papers come up to Downingville from there, called the
Portland Courier and Family Reader; and they told a good many queer kind
of things about Portland and one thing another; and all at once it
popped into my head, and I up and told father, and says I, I'm going to
Portland whether or no; and I'll see what this world is made of yet.
Father stared a little at first, and said he was afraid I should get
lost; but when he see I was bent upon it, he give it up; and he stepped
to his chist and opened the till, and took out a dollar and gave to me,
and says he, Jack, this is all I can do for you; but go, and lead an
honest life, and I believe I shall hear good of you yet. He turned and
walked across the room, but I could see the tears start into his eyes,
and mother sot down and had a hearty crying spell. This made me feel
rather bad for a minute or two, and I almost had a mind to give it up;
and then again father's dream came into my mind, and I mustered up
courage, and declared I'd go. So I tackled up the old horse and packed
in a load of ax handles and a few notions, and mother fried me some
dough-nuts and put 'em into a box along with some cheese and sassages,
and ropped me up another shirt, for I told her I did n't know how long I
should be gone; and after I got all rigged out, I went round and bid all
the neighbors good bye, and jumped in and drove off for Portland.
Ant Sally had been married two or three years before and moved to
Portland, and I inquired round till I found out where she lived, and
went there and put the old horse up and eat some supper and went to bed.
And the next morning I got up and straightened right off to see the
Editor of the Portland Courier, for I knew by what I had seen in his
paper that he was just the man to tell me which way to steer. And when I
come to see him I knew I was right; for soon as I told him my name and
what I wanted, he took me by the hand as kind as if he had been a
brother; and says he, Mr. Downing, I'll do any thing I can to assist
you. You have come to a good town; Portland is a healthy thriving place,
and any man with a proper degree of enterprise may do well here. But
says he, Mr. Downing, and he looked mighty kind of knowing, says he, if
you want to make out to your mind, you must do as the steamboats do.
Well, says I, how do they do? for I did n't know what a steam boat was,
any more than the man in the moon. Why, says he, they _go ahead_. And
you must drive about among the folks here jest as though you were at
home on the farm among the cattle. Dont be afraid of any of 'em, but
figure away, and I dare say you will get into good business in a very
little while. But, says he, there's one thing you must be careful of,
and that is not to get into the hands of them are folks that trades up
round Huckler's Row: for there's some sharpers up there, if they get
hold of you, would twist your eye teeth out in five minutes. Well after
he had gin me all the good advice he could I went back to Ant Sally's
again and got some breakfast, and then I walked all over the town to see
what chance I could find to sell my ax handles and things, and to get
into business.
After I had walked about three or four hours I come along towards the
upper end of the town where I found there were stores and shops of all
sorts and sizes. And I met a feller, and says I, what place is this? Why
this says he, is Huckler's Row. What, says I, are these the stores where
the traders in Huckler's Row keep? And says he, yes. Well then, thinks I
to myself, I have a pesky good mind to go in and have a try with one of
these chaps, and see if they can twist my eye teeth out. If they can get
the best end of a bargain out of me, they can do what there aint a man
in Downingville can do, and I should jest like to know what sort of
stuff these ere Portland chaps are made of. So in I goes into the best
looking store among 'em. And I see some biscuit lying on the shelf, and
says I, Mister, how much do you ax apiece for them are biscuit? A cent
apiece, says he. Well, says I, I shant give you that, but if you 've a
mind to, I'll give you two cents for three of 'em, for I begin to feel a
little as though I should like to take a bite. Well, says he, I would n't
sell 'em to any body else so, but seeing it 's you I dont care if you
take 'em. I knew he lied, for he never see me before in his life. Well
he handed down the biscuits and I took 'em, and walked round the store
awhile to see what else he had to sell. At last, says I, Mister, have
you got any good new cider? Says he, yes, as good as ever you see. Well,
says I, what do you ax a glass for it? Two cents, says he. Well, says I,
seems to me I feel more dry than I do hungry now. Aint you a mind to
take these ere biscuit again and give me a glass of cider? And says he,
I dont care if I do; so he took and laid 'em on the shelf again, and
poured out a glass of cider. I took the cider and drinkt it down, and to
tell the truth it was capital good cider. Then, says I, I guess it 's
time for me to be a going, and I stept along towards the door. But, says
he, stop Mister. I believe you have 'nt paid me for the cider. Not paid
you for the cider, says I, what do you mean by that? Did n't the biscuit
that I give you jest come to the cider? Oh, ah, right, says he. So I
started to go again; and says he, but stop, Mister, you did n't pay me
for the biscuit. What, says I, do you mean to impose upon me? do you
think I am going to pay you for the biscuit and let you keep 'em tu?
Aint they there now on your shelf, what more do you want? I guess sir,
you dont whittle me in that way. So I turned about and marched off, and
left the feller staring and thinking and scratching his head, as though
he was struck with a dunderment. Howsomever, I did n't want to cheat him,
only jest to show 'em it want so easy a matter to pull my eye teeth out,
so I called in next day and paid him his two cents. Well I staid at Ant
Sally's a week or two, and I went about town every day to see what
chance I could find to trade off my ax handles, or hire out, or find
some way or other to begin to seek my fortune.
And I must confess the editor of the Courier was about right in calling
Portland a pretty good thriving sort of a place; every body seemed to be
as busy as so many bees; and the masts of the vessels stuck up round the
wharves as thick as pine trees in uncle Joshua's pasture; and the stores
and the shops were so thick, it seemed as if there was no end to 'em.
In short, although I have been round the world considerable, from that
time to this, all the way from Madawaska to Washington, I 've never seen
any place yet that I think has any business to grin at Portland.
PORTLAND AS IT WAS.
By William Willis.
The advantages which in early days our new country held out for
employment, encouraged immigration, and the population was almost wholly
made up by accessions from the more thickly peopled parts of
Massachusetts. To the county of Essex particularly, in the early as well
as more recent period of our history, the town is indebted for large
portions of its population. Middlesex, Suffolk and the Old Colony, were
not without their contributions. But the people did not come from such
widely different sources as to produce any difficulty of amalgamation,
or any striking diversity of manners. They formed one people and brought
with them the steady habits and good principles of those from whom they
had separated. There were some accessions before the revolution made to
our population from the other side of the Atlantic; the emigrants
readily incorporated themselves with our people and form a substantial
part of the population. Within twenty years, the numbers by immigration
have increased more rapidly, especially from Ireland, but not
sufficiently to destroy the uniformity which characterises our
population, nor to disturb the harmony of our community.
It cannot have escaped observation that one of the principal sources of
our wealth has been the lumber trade. We have seen on the revival of the
town in the early part of the last century, how intimately the progress
of the town was connected with operations in timber. Before the
revolution our commerce was sustained almost wholly by the large ships
from England which loaded here with masts, spars, and boards for the
mother country, and by ship building. The West India business was then
comparatively small, employing but few vessels of inferior size. After
the revolution our trade had to form new channels, and the employment of
our own navigation was to give new activity to all the springs of
industry and wealth. We find therefore that the enterprise of the people
arose to the emergency, and in a few years our ships were floating on
every ocean, becoming the carriers of southern as well as northern
produce, and bringing back the money and commodities of other countries.
The trade to the West Indies, supported by our lumber, increased vastly,
and direct voyages were made in larger vessels than had before been
employed, which received in exchange for the growth of our forests and
our seas, sugar, molasses and rum, the triple products of the cane. This
trade has contributed mainly to the advancement and prosperity of the
town, has nourished a hardy race of seamen, and formed a people among
the most active and enterprising of any in the United States.
The great changes which have taken place in the customs and manners of
society since the revolution, must deeply impress the mind of a
reflecting observer. These have extended not only to the outward forms
of things, but to the habits of thought and to the very principles of
character. The moral revolution has been as signal and striking as the
political one; it upturned the old land marks of antiquated and
hereditary customs and the obedience to mere authority, and established
in their stead a more simple and just rule of action; it set up reason
and common sense, and a true equality in the place of a factitious and
conventional state of society which unrelentingly required a submission
to its stern dictates; which made an unnatural distinction in moral
power, and elevated the rich knave or fool to the station that humble
and despised merit would have better graced.
These peculiarities have been destroyed by the silent and gradual
operation of public opinion; the spirit which arose in the new world is
spreading with the same effect over the old. Freedom of opinion is
asserting a just sway, and it is only now to be feared that the
principle will be carried too far, that authority will lose all its
influence and that reason and a just estimate of human rights will not
be sufficient restraints upon the passions of men. The experiment is
going on, and unless education, an early and sound moral education go on
with it, which will enlighten and strengthen the public mind, it will
fail of success. The feelings and passions must be placed under the
charge of moral principle, or we may expect an age of licentiousness to
succeed one of authority and rigid discipline. We may be said now to be
in the transition state of society.
Distinctions of rank among different classes of the community, a part
of the old system, prevailed very much before the revolution and were
preserved in the dress as well as in the forms of society. But the
deference attached to robes of office and the formality of official
station have all fled before the genius of our republican institutions;
we look now upon the man and not upon his garments nor upon the post to
which chance may have elevated him. In the circle of our little town,
the lines were drawn with much strictness. The higher classes were
called the _quality_, and were composed of persons not engaged in
mechanic employments. We now occasionally find some old persons whose
memory recurs with longing delight to the days in which these formal
distinctions held uncontrolled sway.
The fashionable color of clothes among this class was drab; the coats
were made with large cuffs reaching to the elbows, and low collars. All
classes wore breeches which had not the advantage of being kept up as in
modern times by suspenders; the dandies of that day wore embroidered
silk vests with long pocket flaps and ruffles over their hands. Most of
those above mentioned were engaged in trade, and the means of none were
sufficiently ample to enable them to live without engaging in some
employment. Still the pride of their cast was maintained, and although
the cloak and perhaps the wig may have been laid aside in the dust and
hurry of business, they were scrupulously retained when abroad.
There were many other expensive customs in that day to which the spirit
of the age required implicit obedience; these demanded costly presents
to be made and large expenses to be incurred at the three most important
events in the history of man, his birth, marriage and death. In the
latter it became particularly onerous and extended the influence of its
example to the poorest classes of people, who in their show of grief,
imitated, though at an immeasurable distance, the customs of the rich.
The leaders of the people in the early part of the revolution, with a
view to check importations from Britain, aimed a blow at these expensive
customs, from which they never recovered. The example commenced in the
highest places, of an entire abandonment of all the outward trappings of
grief which had been wont to be displayed, and of all luxury in dress,
which extended over the whole community. In the later stages of the
revolution however, an extravagant and luxurious style of living and
dress was revived, encouraged by the large amount both of specie and
paper money in circulation, and the great quantity of foreign articles
of luxury brought into the country by numerous captures.
The evils here noticed did not exist in this part of the country in any
considerable degree, especially after the revolution; the people were
too poor to indulge in an expensive style of living. They were literally
a working people, property had not descended upon them from a rich
ancestry, but whatever they had accumulated had been the result of their
own industry and economy. Our ladies too at that period had not
forgotten the use of the distaff, and occasionally employed that
antiquated instrument of domestic labor for the benefit of others as
well as of themselves. The following notice of a _spinning bee_ at Mrs.
Deane's on the first of May 1788, is a flattering memorial of the
industry and skill of the females of our town at that period.
"On the first instant, assembled at the house of the Rev. Samuel Deane
of this town, more than one hundred of the fair sex, married and single
ladies, most of whom were skilled in the important art of spinning. An
emulous industry was never more apparent than in this beautiful
assembly. The majority of fair hands gave motion to not less than sixty
wheels. Many were occupied in preparing the materials, besides those who
attended to the entertainment of the rest, provision for which was
mostly presented by the guests themselves, or sent in by other generous
promoters of the exhibition, as were also the materials for the work.
Near the close of the day, Mrs. Deane was presented by the company with
_two hundred and thirty-six_ seven knotted skeins of excellent cotton
and linen yarn, the work of the day, excepting about a dozen skeins
which some of the company brought in ready spun. Some had spun six, and
many not less than five skeins apiece. To conclude and crown the day, a
numerous band of the best singers attended in the evening, and performed
an agreeable variety of excellent pieces in psalmody."
Some of the ante-revolutionary customs "more honored in the breach than
in the observance"--have been continued quite to our day, although not
precisely in the same manner, nor in equal degree. One was the practise
of helping forward every undertaking by a deluge of ardent spirit in
some of its multifarious mistifications. Nothing could be done from the
burial of a friend or the quiet sessions of a town committee; to the
raising of the frame of a barn or a meeting-house, but the men must be
goaded on by the stimulus of rum. Flip and punch were then the
indispensable accompaniments of every social meeting and of every
enterprise.
It is not a great while since similar customs have extensively prevailed
not perhaps in precisely the instances or degree above mentioned, but in
junkettings, and other meetings which have substituted whiskey punch,
toddy, &c. for the soothing but pernicious compounds of our fathers.
Thanks however to the genius of temperance, a redeeming spirit is
abroad, which it is hoped will save the country from the destruction
that seemed to threaten it from this source.
The amusements of our people in early days had nothing particular to
distinguish them. The winter was generally a merry season, and the snow
was always improved for sleighing parties out of town. In summer the
badness of the roads prevented all riding for pleasure; in that season
the inhabitants indulged themselves in water parties, fishing and
visiting the islands, a recreation that has lost none of its relish at
this day.
Dancing does not seem to have met with much favor, for we find upon
record in 1766, that Theophilus Bradbury and wife, Nathaniel Deering and
wife, John Waite and wife, and several other of the most respectable
people in town were indicted for dancing at Joshua Freeman's tavern in
December 1765. Mr. Bradbury brought himself and friends off by pleading
that the room in which the dance took place, having been hired by
private individuals for the season, was no longer to be considered as a
public place of resort, but a private apartment, and that the persons
there assembled had a right to meet in their own room and to dance
there. The court sustained the plea. David Wyer was king's attorney at
this time.
It was common for clubs and social parties to meet at the tavern in
those days, and Mrs. Greele's in Backstreet was a place of most
fashionable resort both for old and young wags, before as well as after
the revolution. It was the _Eastcheap_ of Portland, and was as famous
for _baked beans_ as the "Boar's head" was for sack, although we would
by no means compare honest Dame Greele, with the more celebrated, though
less deserving hostess of Falstaff and Poins. Many persons are now
living on whose heads the frosts of age have extinguished the fires of
youth, who love to recur to the amusing scenes and incidents associated
with that house.
When we look back a space of just two hundred years and compare our
present situation, surrounded by all the beauty of civilization and
intelligence, with the cheerless prospect which awaited the European
settler, whose voice first startled the stillness of the forest; or if
we look back but one hundred years to the humble beginnings of the
second race of settlers, who undertook the task of reviving the waste
places of this wilderness, and suffered all the privations and hardships
which the pioneers in the march of civilization are called upon to
endure; or if we take a nearer point for comparison, and view the
blackened ruin of our village at the close of the revolutionary war, and
estimate the proud pre-eminence over all those periods which we now
enjoy, in our civil relations and in the means of social happiness, our
hearts should swell with gratitude to the Author of all good that these
high privileges are granted to us; and we should resolve that we will
individually and as a community sustain the purity and moral tone of our
institutions, and leave them unimpaired to posterity.
THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT.
By N. P. Willis.