University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
MORTON OF “MORTON'S HOPE.”

My uncle Joshua had been bred a merchant.
He had been, however, engaged in trade but a
few years, and with indifferent success. When
my grandfather died, Joshua and my father
were the only surviving children; and as the
latter, by his erratic course of life, and various
and sundry misdemeanours, which at present I
shall only hint at, was no great favourite with
any one, it was considered highly reasonable by
every body, but the person most interested, that
the scapegrace should be disinherited, and the
bulk of my steady old grandfather's fortune go
to his eldest son, Joshua.

Joshua of course left off trade. His disposition
and tastes were literary and scientific. He had
received a tolerable education for the provinces,
and he now took himself off to the Old World
to complete it.

He remained many years in England and
upon the Continent; cultivating the arts and
sciences, pursuing various whimsical schemes,

from one time to another, and in short, leading
much the same sort of life, which an indolent
man of easy fortune and respectable talents is
apt to lead, in any age or country. He returned
to his native province a few years before my
birth, resolutely repulsed all advances of matrimonial
alliances from the most distinguished
colonial families, the Deputy Governor's and
innumerable members of the Council among
the number; built himself a huge castle of
pine planks and shingles, which he dignified
with the title of Morton's Hope, and there shut
himself up with his schemes and oddities. He
had been disappointed in an early passion, and
had become shy of women. He had had two
sisters, Miss Plentiful Morton, who had married
a schoolmaster from Passamaquoddy, and died
about a year before his return, leaving an
enormous progeny, every one of whom he religiously
hated; and Miss Fortitude Morton,
who had remained in single blessedness, and
whom he now took with him to the Hope, as
his housekeeper. My aunt, Forty, was the
genealogical relative whom I have spoken of in
the first chapter. As for myself, I shall not
now relate the singular course of events which
made me the third inmate of the Hope; suffice
for the present, that I was adopted by my uncle
at a very early age.

It would be very difficult for me to sketch the
character of my uncle, and on the whole I shall
not attempt it. It seems to me that every one
must have known him, and to explain his character
seems to be like explaining any one of
the natural phenomena, which we assume as
being known instinctively by every one. A few
of his leading characteristics may be, however,
traced in as many lines. He was a bundle of
contradictions, or rather he was through life
possessed with the desire of preaching what he
never once thought of practising. He was the
most kind-hearted man in the world, and he
invariably talked like an ascetic; he was idle,
self-indulgent, luxurious, and would talk to you
by the hour, of the necessity of industry, comment
on his mercantile career, and recommend
Spartan diet, and penitentiary soup, when you
knew he ransacked the country for luxuries for
his table. He was indefatigably charitable, but
always railed against the pernicious practice of
alms-giving, and would praise what he called
the dignified policy of the ancient nations, who
gave the poor and the aged to the dogs, instead
of locking them up in hospitals. I have known
him brow-beat a pauper who asked an alms,
and make a speech to him, on the necessity
of industry, till the beggar was fairly worried
out of his patience, and have then seen him

sneak back to give him five times as much as
any one else would have done, out of pure
soft-heartedness.

In short, he made amends as he thought, for
doing just what he chose, and allowing every
body under his charge almost every kind of
indulgence, by preaching the most rigid and
ascetic doctrines. If you heard him praise a
person, you might have been sure that he was
the very reverse of himself in every particular;
if you heard him recommend any line of conduct,
or praise any particular doctrine, you would be
sure that he would act directly contrary in
every respect. If you heard him animadvert on
any sort of extravagance, he was certain not to
rest till he had been guilty of it himself. It
may be easily inferred that in regard to all
matters touching my education and management,
he was likely to be absurdly rigid in theory,
and as ridiculously indulgent in practice. I may
add to all this, that my uncle's head was constantly
full of some scheme, or some “theory,”
(to use a favourite phrase of his own) which
occupied most of his attention for a short time,
and then was thrown aside forever. Sometimes
they were good, sometimes preposterous, and sometimes
indifferent; but they were always thrown
aside for others before they had time to ripen.

As for my aunt Fortitude, she was the reverse

of her brother in most respects, and she always
maintained a great influence over him. She
was, as we have seen, most eminently conservative
in her political principles, and it was lucky for
her that she was, from the very conformation
of her character, conservative in every thing.
Joshua would have burned down his house, or
baked me in a pasty, if he had taken it into
his head that either was necessary for the furtherance
of any theory, or scheme, that might have
employed him; but Fortitude was always ready
to resist any very extravagant innovations. She
managed with the most consummate skill, gave
him his head, when she saw that he would
kick up his heels and play the devil if she did
not, but generally succeeded in breaking him in
at last. She never argued with him or anybody;
if necessary to dispute, her only instrument was
contradiction. She met her antagonist half way,
knocked him down with a flat denial, and then
left him to pick himself up as he could. With
her brother, Joshua, she lived in the main in
perfect amity; she humoured him in his whims,
except when she thought it absolutely necessary
he should be checked. When he mounted any
one of his hobbies—and he kept a stud of them
—she contented herself with getting out of the
dust.

Morton's Hope stood, as I have said, some

ten miles from the capital of the Bay Province.
Like most New England country-seats, even to
the present day, it was nothing more than a
huge deal box. It was very spacious, with
wide entries and large parlours; for if a man
chooses to live in a packing case, he may at
least have room. There was a smart colonnade
at one end which rose to the third story, and
supported a small portico, placed there, apparently,
for no reason but that the columns might have
something to support,—and a huge flight of
marble steps at the other, led up to a wooden
terrace, which ran round the whole edifice, and
was stuck round with a miscellaneous collection
of broken-nosed statues, purchased at auction,
and at a bargain. Joshua had studied the fine
arts in Italy, and resolved that he would make
his house a model of a villa: he accordingly
occupied himself for six months previous to the
erection, by a careful perusal of Scamozzi and
Palladio, drew two or three dozen plans, and
just as the architect called upon him to execute
his designs, he became possessed with an absurd
mania for the useful, turned his back upon the
architect, left his villa at sixes and sevens, and
commenced erecting a miniature cotton factory
on a brook that ran through his estate.

This happened to be at the exact epoch when
the first and imperfect attempts in this species

of manufacture were beginning to excite attention
in the old country; and my uncle was always
peculiarly interested in any new display of human
ingenuity. So great, too, were his emulation
and his industry, that his own efforts outstripped
the progress actually made at that period; so
that even at a later day, he would have been
considered no contemptible cotton-spinner.

The architect accordingly had the whole business
of building to himself, and in due time completed
what he supposed to be a copy of the Temple
of Theseus at Athens; and was proceeding to
make it as uninhabitable on the inside as it was
preposterous on the out, when he was confronted
on the threshold by Fortitude, who insisted that
the house was intended as a dwelling-place, and
who accordingly took care that it should be
arranged in conformity to such intentions. In
consequence, the house was comfortable enough,
and Joshua contented himself with declaiming
about the villas of Vicenza and the palaces of
Michael Angelo.

As the Grecian taste had been entirely consulted
in the erection of the mansion, it was thought
proper to construct the stables upon a Gothic
model. Unfortunately, however, as my uncle's
enthusiasm had cooled before the completion of
the establishment, the stables were left to the
architect's discretion; and as Fortitude, who was

a financier, refused to make any further allowance
upon the contracts, there was consequently only
as much Gothic put upon the stables as the
builder could afford for the original price.

Thus both the Grecian temple and the Saxon
cathedral presented on the whole a much more
pretentious than complete appearance.

The house stood at the base of a conical hill,
the centre of a considerable range, which occupied
most of the Morton estate. Immediately behind,
and around it, rose a primeval forest, which
Joshua protected with a paternal care, and which
stretched as far as eye could reach. I was
accustomed to run wild in these woods for the
first and happiest years of my life;—I shall never
forget their magnificence:—and since I have
been a sojourner in the Old World, I have
learned to prize and admire the forests of the
New.

It was a stately congregation of maples, chestnuts,
and evergreens. Above your head a canopy of
the densest and most variegated foliage almost
shut out the sun, and allowed only its chequered
beams to slant in upon a twilight as solemn
and mysterious as a Druid's wood. Below, the
decayed leaves and branches formed a supernaturally
rich mould, rife with vegetation, from which
sprang flowers and berries, and creeping vines, in
endless succession.

As you wandered through it, you saw no
sights, and heard no sounds save those of Nature.
The dried branches crackled under your feet,
the music of a thousand birds resounded through
the boughs; the lizards shot to and fro in the
patches of sun-light, and the robins went hopping
and whistling about in the shade almost at your
feet; the squirrel chattered complacently to himself
as he sat on the top of a tree and dropped his
nut-shells on your head; the misanthropic cat-bird
poured out a moody note or two as you intruded
on his privacy;—and towards evening, under
the shadow of an ancient stump, you might
even catch the retiring form of some anchorite
raccoon, as he made his frugal supper of roots
and herbs, at the door of his cell. At twilight,
a golden shower of fire-flies illuminated the air,
the whip-poor-wills sang a few staves of their
lackadaisical ditty, and the slender notes of half
a dozen tree-toads piped out in faint accordance
with the sonorous croak of a whole swimming
school of frogs in a neighbouring marsh. On the
skirts of the forest, the Anisippi, a full and rapid
brook, describing many evolutions, and passing
in front of the house, threw itself in a series
of natural cascades through a deep dingle brim
full of rocks, moss, tall weeds, and flaunting
wild flowers; thence it went sputtering and singing
to itself towards the meadows below, gradually

swelled to a river, and whirled the wheels of
Joshua's cotton factory, before it lost itself in the
ocean.

I could ramble through this forest for ever — but
as my readers are not so familiar with its charms,
and have not so many associations connected with
it, I will stop before I have quite exhausted their
patience; hoping that the present chapter has
fulfilled the purpose of making them a little
acquainted with my uncle and aunt, and the domain
of Morton's Hope.