The Portland Sketch Book Part 17

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 a.s.serting 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sions 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 cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tutions; 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 cla.s.ses 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 fas.h.i.+onable color of clothes among this cla.s.s was drab; the coats were made with large cuffs reaching to the elbows, and low collars. All cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 quant.i.ty 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 acc.u.mulated 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, a.s.sembled at the house of the Rev. Samuel Deane of this town, more than one hundred of the fair s.e.x, 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 a.s.sembly. 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 subst.i.tuted 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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, fis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sembled 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 a.s.sociated with that house.

When we look back a s.p.a.ce 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 grat.i.tude 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 inst.i.tutions, and leave them unimpaired to posterity.

THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT.

By N. P. Willis.

At the extremity of a green lane in the outer skirt of the fas.h.i.+onable suburb of New-Haven, stood a rambling old Dutch house, built, probably, when the cattle of Mynheer grazed over the present site of the town. It was a wilderness of irregular rooms, of no describable shape in its exterior, and from its southern balcony, to use an expressive gallicism, _gave_ upon the bay. Long Island Sound, the great highway from the northern Atlantic to New York, weltered in alternate lead and silver (oftener like the brighter metal, for the climate is divine) between the curving lip of the bay, and the interminable and sandy sh.o.r.e of the island some six leagues distant, the procession of s.h.i.+ps and steamers stole past with an imperceptible progress, the ceaseless bells of the college chapel came deadened through the trees from behind, and (the day being one of golden Autumn, and myself and St. John waiting while black Agatha answered the door-bell) the sun-steeped precipice of East Rock with its tiara of blood-red maples flus.h.i.+ng like a Turk's banner in the light, drew from us both a truant wish for a ramble and a holiday.

In a few minutes from this time were a.s.sembled in Mrs. Ilfrington's drawing-room the six or seven young ladies of my more particular acquaintance among her pupils--of whom one was a new-comer, and the object of my mingled curiosity and admiration. It was the one day of the week when morning visiters were admitted, and I was there in compliance with an unexpected request from my friend, to present him to the agreeable circle of Mrs. Ilfrington. As an _habitue_ in her family, this excellent lady had taken occasion to introduce to me a week or two before, the new-comer of whom I have spoken above--a departure from the ordinary rule of the establishment, which I felt to be a compliment, and which gave me, I presumed, a tacit claim to mix myself up in that young lady's destiny as deeply as I should find agreeable. The new-comer was the daughter of an Indian chief, and her name was Nunu.

The transmission of the daughter of a Cherokee chief to New-Haven, to be educated at the expense of the government, and of several young men of the same high birth to different colleges, will be recorded among the evidences in history that we did not plough the bones of their fathers into our fields without some feelings of compunction. Nunu had come to the seaboard under the charge of a female missionary, whose pupil she had been in one of the native schools of the west, and was destined, though a chief's daughter, to return as a teacher to her tribe, when she should have mastered some of the higher accomplishments of her s.e.x. She was an apt scholar, but her settled melancholy when away from her books, had determined Mrs. Ilfrington to try the effect of a little society upon her, and hence my privilege to ask for her appearance in the drawing-room.

As we strolled down in the alternate shade and suns.h.i.+ne of the road, I had been a little piqued at the want of interest and the manner of course with which St. John had received my animated descriptions of the personal beauty of the Cherokee.

"I have hunted with the tribe," was his only answer, "and know their features."

"But she is not like them," I replied with a tone of some impatience; "she is the _beau-ideal_ of a red skin, but it is with the softened features of an Arab or an Egyptian. She is more willowy than erect, and has no higher cheek-bones than the plaster Venus in your chambers. If it were not for the lambent fire in her eye, you might take her in the sculptured grace of her att.i.tudes, for an immortal bronze of Cleopatra.

I tell you she is divine!"

St. John called to his dog and we turned along the green bank above the beach, with Mrs. Ilfrington's house in view, and so opens a new chapter of my story.

I have seen in many years wandering over the world, lived to gaze upon, and live to remember and adore--a constellation, I almost believe, that has absorbed all the intensest light of the beauty of a hemisphere--yet with your pictures coloured to life in my memory, and the pride of rank and state thrown over them like an elevating charm--I go back to the school of Mrs. Ilfrington, and (smile if you will!) they were as lovely and stately, and as worthy of the wors.h.i.+p of the world.

I introduced St. John to the young ladies as they came in. Having never seen him except in the presence of men, I was a little curious to know whether his singular _aplomb_ would serve him as well with the other s.e.x, of which I was aware he had had a very slender experience. My attention was distracted at the moment of mentioning his name to a lovely little Georgian, (with eyes full of the liquid suns.h.i.+ne of the south,) by a sudden bark of joy from the dog who had been left in the hall; and as the door opened, and the slight and graceful Indian girl entered the room, the usually unsocial animal sprung bounding in, lavis.h.i.+ng caresses on her, and seemingly wild with the delight of recognition.

In the confusion of taking the dog from the room, I had again lost the moment of remarking St. John's manner, and on the entrance of Mrs.

Ilfrington, Nunu was sitting calmly by the piano, and my friend was talking in a quiet undertone with the pa.s.sionate Georgian.

"I must apologise for my dog," said St. John, bowing gracefully to the mistress of the house; "he was bred by Indians, and the sight of a Cherokee reminded him of happier days--as it did his master."

Nunu turned her eyes quickly upon him, but immediately resumed her apparently deep study of the abstruse figures in the Kidderminster carpet.

"You are well arrived, young gentlemen," said Mrs. Ilfrington; "we press you into our service for a botanical ramble, Mr. Slingsby is at leisure, and will be delighted I am sure. Shall I say as much for you, Mr. St.

John?" St. John bowed, and the ladies left the room for their bonnets, Mrs. Ilfrington last.

The door was scarcely closed when Nunu re-appeared, and checking herself with a sudden feeling at the first step over the threshold, stood gazing at St. John, evidently under very powerful emotion.

"Nunu!" he said, smiling slowly and unwillingly, and holding out his hands with the air of one who forgives an offence.

She sprang upon his bosom with the bound of a leveret, and, between her fast kisses broke the endearing epithets of her native tongue--in words that I only understood by their pa.s.sionate and thrilling accent. The language of the heart is universal.

The fair scholars came in one after another, and we were soon on our way through the green fields to the flowery mountain side of East Rock, Mrs.

Ilfrington's arm and conversation having fallen to my share, and St.

John rambling at large with the rest of the party, but more particularly beset by Miss Temple, whose Christian name was Isabella, and whose Christian charity had no bowels for broken hearts.

The most sociable individuals of the party for a while were Nunu and Last, the dog's recollections of the past seeming, like those of wiser animals, more agreeable than the present. The Cherokee astonished Mrs.

Ilfrington by an abandonment of joy and frolic which she had never displayed before, sometimes fairly outrunning the dog at full speed, and sometimes sitting down breathless upon a green bank, while the rude creature overpowered her with his caresses. The scene gave rise to a grave discussion between that well-instructed lady and myself upon the singular force of childish a.s.sociation--the extraordinary intimacy between the Indian and the trapper's dog being explained satisfactorily, to her at least, on that attractive principle. Had she but seen Nunu spring into the bosom of my friend half an hour before, she might have added a material corollary to her proposition. If the dog and the chief's daughter were not old friends, the chief's daughter and St. John certainly _were_!

As well as I could judge by the motions of two people walking before me, St. John was advancing fast in the favor and acquaintance of the graceful Georgian. Her southern indolence was probably an apology in Mrs. Ilfrington's eyes for leaning heavily on her companion's arm, but, in a momentary halt, the capricious beauty disembarra.s.sed herself of the light scarf that had floated over her shoulders, and bound it playfully around his waist. This was rather strange on a first acquaintance, and Mrs. Ilfrington was of that opinion.

"Miss Temple!" said she, advancing to whisper a reproof in the beauty's ear.

Before she had taken a second step, Nunu bounded over the low hedge, followed by the dog with whom she had been chasing a b.u.t.terfly, and springing upon St. John, with eyes that flashed fire, she tore the scarf into shreds, and stood trembling and pale, with her feet on the silken fragments.

"Madam!" said St. John, advancing to Mrs. Ilfrington, after casting on the Cherokee a look of surprise and displeasure, "I should have told you before, that your pupil and myself are not new acquaintances. Her father is my friend. I have hunted with the tribe, and have hitherto looked upon Nunu as a child. You will believe me, I trust, when I say, her conduct surprises me, and I beg to a.s.sure you, that any influence I may have over her, will be in accordance with your own wishes exclusively."

His tone was cold, and Nunu listened with fixed lips and frowning eyes.

"Have you seen her before since her arrival?" asked Mrs. Ilfrington.

"My dog brought me yesterday the first intelligence that she was here.

He returned from his morning ramble with a string of wampum about his neck, which had the mark of the tribe. He was her gift," he added, patting the head of the dog and looking with a softened expression at Nunu, who drooped her head upon her bosom and walked on in tears.

The chain of the Green Mountains, after a gallop of some five hundred miles from Canada to Connecticut, suddenly pulls up on the sh.o.r.e of Long Island Sound, and stands rearing with a bristling mane of pine-trees, three hundred feet in air, as if checked in midcareer by the sea.