Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848

They had gone to the ends of the earth to be in society at home. But ignorant they went and ignorant they returned.

"Edward and Fanny shall know every thing," said Mrs. Fairchild, and teachers without end were engaged for the young Fairchilds, who, to their parents' great delight were not only chatting in "unknown tongues," but becoming quite intimate with the little Ashfields and other baby sprigs of nobility.

"Who is that pretty boy dancing with your Helen, Mrs. Bankhead?" asked some one at a child's party.

"Young Fairchild," was the reply.

"Fairchild! What, a son of that overdressed little woman you used to laugh at so at the opera?" said the other.

"The same," replied Mrs. Bankhead laughing.

"And here's an incipient flirtation between your girl and her boy," continued the other archly.

"Well, there's no leveler like Education. The true democrat after all," she pursued.

"Certainly," replied Mrs. Bankhead. "Intelligence puts us all on a footing. What other distinction can or should we have?"

"I doubt whether Mrs. Fairchild thinks so," replied her friend.

"Indeed you are mistaken," replied Mrs. Bankhead earnestly. "She would not perhaps express it in those words: but her humble reverence for education is quite touching. They are giving these children every possible advantage, and in a few years, when they are grown up," she continued, laughing, "We mothers will be very glad to admit the young Fairchilds in society, even if they must bring the mother with them."

"I suppose so," said the other. "And old people are inoffensive even if they are ignorant. Old age is in itself a claim to respect."

"True enough," returned Mrs. Bankhead; "and when you see them engrossed and happy in the success of their children, you forgive them a good deal. That is the reward of such people."

"They have fought through a good deal of mortification though to attain it," rejoined the other. "I wonder whether the end is worth it?"

"Ah! that's a question hard to settle," replied Mrs. Bankhead seriously. "Society at large is certainly improved, but I doubt whether individuals are the happier. No doubt the young Fairchilds will be happier for their parents' rise in the world – but I should say the 'transition state' had been any thing but a pleasant one to the parents. The children will have the tastes as well as the means for enjoyment; the one Mrs. Fairchild having found to be quite as necessary as the other."

"This is the march of intellect, the progress of society, exemplified in the poor Fairchilds," replied the other laughing. "Well, thank Heaven my mission has not been to rise in the world."

TWILIGHT. – TO MARY

Oh! how I love this time of ev'n,
When day in tender twilight dies;
And the parting sun, as it falls from heaven,
Leaves all its beauty on the skies.
When all of rash and restless Nature,
Passion – impulse – meekly sleeps,
And loveliness, the soul's sweet teacher,
Seems like religion in its deeps.
And now is trembling through my senses
The melting music of the trees,
And from the near and rose-crowned fences
Comes the balm and fragrant breeze;
And from the bowers, not yet shrouded
In the coming gloom of night,
Breaks the bird-song, clear, unclouded.
In trembling tones of deep delight.
But not for this alone I prize
This witching time of ev'n,
The murmuring breeze, the blushing skies,
And day's last smile on heaven.
But thoughts of thee, and such as thou art.
That mingle with these sacred hours,
Give deeper pleasure to my heart
Than song of birds arid breath of flowers.
Then welcome the hour when the last smile of day
Just lingers at the portal of ev'n,
When so much of life's tumults are passing away,
And earth seems exalted to heaven. H. D. G.

THE SAGAMORE OF SACO

A LEGEND OF MAINE

BY ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH

Land of the forest and the rock —
Of dark blue lake and mighty river —
Of mountains reared aloft to mock
The storms career, the lightning's shock —
My own green land forever. Whittier.

Never was country more fruitful than our own with rich materials of romantic and tragic interest, to call into exercise the finest talents of the dramatist and novelist. Every cliff and headland has its aboriginal legend; the village, now thrifty and quiet, had its days of slaughter and conflagration, its tale of devoted love or cruel treachery; while the city, now tumultuous with the pressure of commerce, in its "day of small things," had its bombardment and foreign army, and its handful of determined freemen, who achieved prodigies of single handed valor. Now that men are daily learning the worth of humanity, its hopes and its trials coming nearer home to thought and affection; now that the complicated passions of refined and artificial life are becoming less important than the broad, deep, genuine manifestations of the common mind, we may hope for a bolder and more courageous literature: we may hope to see the drama free itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true ground, and will create, rather than portray – delineate, rather than dissect human sentiment and emotion.

The State of Maine is peculiarly rich in its historically romantic associations. Settled as it was prior to the landing of the Pilgrims, first under Raleigh Gilbert, and subsequently by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose colony it is fair, in the absence of testimony, to infer never left the country after 1616, but continued to employ themselves in the fisheries, and in some commerce with the West Indies, up to the time of their final incorporation with the Plymouth settlement. Indeed the correspondence of Sir Richard Vines, governor of the colony under Sir Ferdinando Gorges, with the Governor of Plymouth, leaves no doubt upon this head; and it is a well known fact that the two settlements of De Aulney and De la Tour at the mouths of the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers, even at this early age, were far from being contemptible, both in a commercial and numeric point of view. Added to these was the handful of Jesuits at Mont Desert, and we might say a colony of Swedes on the sea-coast, between the two large rivers just named, the memory of which is traditional, and the vestiges of which are sometimes turned up by the ploughshare. These people probably fell beneath some outbreak of savage vengeance, which left no name or record of their existence.

Subsequently to these was the dispersion of the Acadians, that terrible and wanton piece of political policy, which resulted in the extinction and denationalizing of a simple and pious people. The fugitive Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests, suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant states, (five hundred having been consigned to Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia,) and others, lonely and bereft, found a home with the humble and laborious farmers of this hardy state, whose finest quality is an open-handed hospitality. These intermarrying with our people here, have left traces of their blood and fine moral qualities to enhance the excellence of a pure and healthful population.

Then followed the times of the Revolution, when Maine did her part nobly in the great and perilous work. Our own Knox was commandant of the artillery, and the bosom friend of Washington: our youth sunk into unknown graves in the sacred cause of freedom; and our people, poor as they were, for the resources of the state were then undeveloped, cast their mite of wealth into the national treasury. Northerly and isolated as she is, her cities were burned, and her frontiers jealously watched by an alert and cruel enemy. Here, too, Arnold sowed his last seeds of virtue and patriotism, in his arduous march through the wilderness of Maine to the capital of the Canadas, an exploit which, considering the season, the poverty of numbers and resources, combined with the wild, unknown, and uncleared state of the country, may compete with the most heroic actions of any great leader of any people.

A maritime state, Maine suffers severely from the fluctuations of commerce, but is the first to realize the reactions of prosperity. Her extended seaboard, her vast forests, her immense mineral resources, together with a population hardy, laborious, virtuous, and enterprising; a population less adulterated by foreign admixture than any state in the Union, all point to a coming day of power and prosperity which shall place her foremost in the ranks of the states, in point of wealth, as she is already in that of intelligence.

We have enumerated but a tithe of the intellectual resources of Maine – have given but a blank sheet as it were of the material which will hereafter make her renowned in story, and must confine ourselves to but a single point of historic and romantic interest, connected with the earlier records of the country. We have alluded to the first governor, Sir Richard Vines, a right worthy and chivalric gentleman, the friend and agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Walter Raleigh, and other fine spirits of the day. His residence was at the Pool, as it is now called, or "Winter Harbor," from the fact that the winter of 1616-17 was passed by Vines and his followers at this place. After a residence of eighteen or twenty years, devoted to the interests of the colony, the death of his patron, the transfer of the Maine plantation to the Plymouth proprietors, together with domestic and pecuniary misfortunes, induced Sir Richard Vines to retire to the Island of Barbadoes, where we find him prosperous and respected, and still mindful of the colony for which he had done and suffered so much.

Prior to his departure, and probably not altogether unconnected with it, he had incurred the deadly hatred of John Bonyton, a young man of the colony, who in after years was called, and is still remembered in tradition as the "Sagamore of Saco." The cause of this hatred was in some way connected with the disappearance of Bridget Vines, the daughter of the governor, for whom John Bonyton had conceived a wild and passionate attachment. Years before our story she had been suddenly missing, to the permanent grief and dismay of the family, and the more terrible agony of John Bonyton, who had conceived the idea that Bridget had been sent to a European convent, to save her from his presence. This idea he would never abandon, notwithstanding the most solemn denials of Sir Richard, and the most womanly and sympathizing asseverations of Mistress Vines. The youth listened with compressed lip, his large, remarkable eye fixed with stern and searching scrutiny upon the face of the speaker, and when he was done the reply was always the same, "God knows if this be true; but, true or false, my hand shall be against every man till she be found."

Accordingly we find the youth, who seems to have been possessed of those rare and strong points of character which go to make the hero, in constant collision with the people of the times. Moody and revengeful, he became an alien to his father's house, and with gun and dog passed months in the wildest regions of that wild country. With the savage he slept in his wigwam, he threaded the forest and stood upon the verge of the cataract; or penetrated up to the stormy regions of the White Mountains; and anon, hushed the tumultuous beatings of his heart in accordance with the stroke of his paddle, as he and his red companions glided over that loveliest of lakes, Winnépisógé, or "the smile of the Great Spirit."

There seemed no rest for the unhappy man. Unable to endure the formalities and intermedlings, which so strongly mark the period, he spent most of his time on the frontiers of the settlement, admitting of little companionship, and yielding less of courtesy. When he appeared in the colony, the women regarded his fine person, his smile, at once sorrowful and tender, and his free, noble bearing with admiration, not unmingled with terror; while men, even in that age of manly physique looked upon his frame, lithe yet firm as iron, athletic and yet graceful, with eyes of envious delight. Truth to say, John Bonyton had never impaired a fine development by any useful employment, or any elaborate attempts at book-knowledge. He knew all that was essential for the times, or the mode of life which he had adopted, and further he cared not. His great power consisted in a passionate yet steady will, by which all who came within his sphere found themselves bent to his purposes.

The Pilgrims even, unflinching and uncompromising as they were, felt the spell of his presence, and were content to spurn, to persecute, and set a price upon the head of a man whom they could not control. Yet for all this John Bonyton died quietly in his bed, no one daring to do to him even what the law would justify. He slept in perfect security, for he knew this, and knew, too, that the woods were alive with ardent and devoted adherents, who would have deluged the soil with blood had but a hair of his head been injured. The Sagamore of Saco was no ordinary man; and the men of the times, remarkable as they were, felt this; and hence is it, that even to this day his memory is held in remembrance with an almost superstitious awe, and people point out a barrow where lie the ashes of the "Sagamore," and show the boundaries of his land, and tell marvelous tales of his hardihood and self-possession.

They tell of a time when a price had been set upon his head, how, when the people were assembled in the little church for worship, John Bonyton walked in with gun in hand, and stood through the whole service, erect and stern as a man of iron, and no one dared scarcely look upon him, much less lift a finger against him; and how he waited till all had gone forth, even the oracle of God, pale and trembling, and then departed in silence as he came. Surely there was greatness in this – the greatness of a Napoleon, needing but a field for its exercise.

CHAPTER II