 | Traits of American life |  |
THE SILVER MINE.
“Coming events cast their shadows before.”
Now I always had a penchant for fairy lore,
and well do I remember the pleasure with which I
used to listen to the story of Cinderella and her
little glass slipper—what a friend her good fairy
proved! And there was Gracioso, too—how could
her tasks have ever been performed but through the
aid of the kind fairy? Thus I thought, when a child;
and even now it seems quite a poetic grievance
that not a single fairy ring has been discovered, or
any tradition preserved, that the gay elves ever
set foot in our land. When Robin Goodfellow exclaimed—
In forty minutes,”—
than do the British reviewers, when they boast of
the wondrous achievements of the human mind,
and the progress of intellect. Indeed, we are as
nobility; we are as rational as republican; and
Captain Hall would doubtless have proved, had he
argued the matter with his usual sagacity, that
this skepticism to the marvellous was caused by
the lack of imagination, and consequently that
Americans never had, would or could excel in
works of genius. Certain it is that our literature,
if we ever have a national literature, must differ in
character from that of the old world. But let that
pass for the present. I am intending to tell a
marvellous story, but one I heard for truth (bating
a few trifling circumstances I have introduced by
way of embellishment), and from those who reverenced
truth. I am aware of the risk I run, and
that I may be called superstitious;—no matter—so
I give the impression I wish, the effect will be
beneficial to my readers.
Among the first settlers of the town of Newport
(N. H.), was deacon Bascom. I intend for
the future to give truly the names of places, and of
persons, as far as I can, without offending the
living. Why should our writers, while relating a
story, be so careful to conceal the whereabouts?—
and always say the town of —? Why not speak
out? We want the locality of all interesting adventures,
whether real or fictitious, fixed. We
with more interest, and look on the scenes described
with the familiarity of remembered places.
Well, deacon Bascom lived in Newport, (a very
pretty village you will find there now—then it
was a wilderness,) and a good honest man he was,
as Connecticut ever sent forth, to build up the wild
places of our country. I should like to sketch his
character—and yet it is not necessary. The incident
will show the man; that is, it would, if I
could tell, in his own words and manner, as described
to me, how he was beset by the temptation
to become rich. To be sure, New Englanders are
generally beset by a like temptation; but the deacon's
was in quite an original way.
Deacon Bascom, like all his countrymen fifty
years ago, held the true paradisaical doctrine, that
it was “not good for man to be alone.” A wife
was then considered indispensable to the prosperity
as well as happiness of every one who wrote
himself man; and children were blessings—real
treasures. Alack! what a change half a century
has produced. Now our gentlemen are wholly
engrossed with caring for their own dear selves;
marriage is slavery, and a family a bill of cost.
Our fine young men, who should be the glory and
strength of New England, go to find their graves
in the marshes of the south, or the prairies of the
Well-a-day, it is better to spin than to sigh:
factories are more useful than convents;—the girl
who lives in the bustle and buzz of forty thousand
spindles, will not be very likely to pine in thought,
or grow sentimental; and she cannot scold. It is
an excellent place for those who never intend to
marry, and whose system of enjoyment centres in
procuring “meat, fire and clothes.” But for opportunities
of improving the mind, or gaining
household knowledge, a young girl might as well
be placed before the mast, or behind the drum:—
and a man might as reasonably expect a spinning-jenny
to make a good wife, as a Jenny brought up
in a factory.
Now deacon Bascom had a good wife, and, for
those days, an intelligent one; and it was thinking
over her many estimable womanly qualities, and
the training requisite to make women what they
ought to be, what they are capable of becoming,
that brought the factory Spectre, blasting this fair
world with the love of gold, before my eyes. My
speculations on this subject have no reference to
questions on political economy, or no farther than
connected with the moral and mental improvement
and happiness of my “own dear land.” Some
time I may write them, but not now; my story is
to be told.
Suppose yourself, my friend, in a room of tolerable
size, but in height hardly exceeding eight feet;
the ceiling is pine boards, and the bare beams are
seen above, seemingly ready to enforce on any
high-headed wight the practical application of that
pithy sentence—“Stoop as you go through the
world, and you will miss many hard thumps;”—
a stone fire-place, rudely constructed, must occupy
almost one whole side of the square apartment,
and you may place any quantity of wood you
please (that does not exceed your powers of computation
in square feet) therein, and set it blazing!
By the bright light you may easily examine my
hero. There he sits, deacon Bascom, a reverend
looking man, though not with years; he has not
probably numbered more than forty-five, but men
were then deacons in gravity at forty-five—now
they are dandies in taste.
There he sits in his arm-chair, a huge high-backed
chair; he sits a little inclined forward, his
hands joined together, and resting on his knee, and
his gaze fixed intently and thoughtfully on the
blazing hearth; and there is something in his countenance
which reveals that unwonted and strange
fancies are passing in his mind His good wife is
plying her knitting-needles briskly, but her eyes
are anxiously rivetted on the face of her husband,
as if she would not only read his thoughts, but
knows he is thinking of his dream. It was a singular
dream, far beyond her powers of interpretation,
and so she had simply given it as her opinion
that it meant nothing at all. But from the deacon's
mind the impression was not easily dismissed.
He had, a few nights before, dreamed that a man
clothed in black appeared to him, and asked him if
he wished to be rich. The deacon, as most deacons
it is to be feared would, even in these enlightened
days, answered in the affirmative. The man in
black then told him, that if he, the deacon, would
go alone to a particular place, describing the same,
on Sunapee mountain, and raise a stone which he
would find beneath a blasted tree, he would then
and there discover a silver mine, that would enrich
him and his children. What made the dream more
remarkable, it was repeated three times; and deacon
Bascom, though a man of strong powers of
mind, had some faith in dreams. But this he could
not interpret any better than his wife. Yet he
lacked something of her contented philosophy, and
could scarcely believe it meant nothing at all. This
question he was now pondering, whether it were
better to commence the search for the mine, or reject
the dream as a temptation from the great adversary
of souls. He was a pious man, and had he
known it was a temptation to love the world unduly,
not know this—it might be, that the means of doing
good were to be entrusted to him, and he ought
not to reject the stewardship. However, the tremendous
March storm, which was then raging
without, and the reflection that it was almost impracticable
to penetrate to the mountain, and certainly
impossible for him to go alone at that season,
on such an adventure, with any prospect of success,
and as he did not quite believe the miraculous,
though the marvellous had made an impression on
his mind, he finally came to the conclusion, the
only part of his cogitation, by the way, he communicated
to his better half (how seldom do men,
even the best and most indulgent of husbands, appreciate
the deep sympathy and soul-companionship
of which women are capable!) that he should
delay exploring for the mine till he was more confirmed
on the course of his duty respecting it. And
so they retired to rest in peace.
Six months passed away, and the dream, if remembered
by either of the good people, had never
been mentioned—when the very same vision again
appeared to the deacon. He saw the man in black,
who appeared importunately to urge that the mine
should be sought. Deacon Bascom could no longer
excuse himself on account of the bad weather; and,
finally, persuaded that it was only with the hope of
it, that he was actuated, he took his gun and axe,
and a luncheon of bread and cheese, and followed
by the prayers of his wife, set out to find the silver
mine.
Sunapee mountain is about four miles from Newport.
You must never measure distance merely
by miles. Think of travelling four miles on a
M`Adamized turnpike—'tis only a pleasant jaunt;
but imagine you are to force your toiling march
four miles through a thick wilderness, and 'tis a
prodigious journey! Deacon Bascom had explored
the route once before, in pursuit of a bear; and besides,
being a tolerable surveyor, and having that
keen perception and recollection of local appearances,
which seems acquired almost as by instinct,
when such knowledge is necessary, he had no fears
of being lost in the woods. Sunapee mountain;
you, good reader, probably know nothing about it,
and care less. Well, I presume you are acquainted
with the names and legends of the mountains of
Scotland and Wales; and you are familiar, too,
with the Appenines and Pyrenees—and what a
hum-drum amusement it is to come home here, to
our own wild mountains and unpoetic world, for
the scenes of story or song! If the rail-road projected
from Boston to Ogdensburg, by the way of
Concord, N. H., and Windsor, Vt., is ever completed,
mountain; the lofty, wooded hill, heaving
up its proud head, on one hand, like a giant, to
guard the fair lake that stretches away in the distance
on the other.
All the fashionable world will then make the
tour of the rail-road; and then the mountain will be
known and talked of as a grand and picturesque
view, as affording rich themes for the romantic, if
not rich silver mines.
The morning deacon Bascom started on his mine-exploring
tour was a beautiful one, the sun shining
with the brilliancy of a summer noon; and the soft
shadowy vapour that, during our fine autumn days,
floats like a white transparent veil over all the horizon,
seemed only, by excluding the heat and
glare, to increase the light and beauty of the scene.
What the deacon thought of the fine day, is immaterial
to my story. Those who are in the hot pursuit
of wealth, seldom pause to worship the God of
Nature; and rarely do the places where gold and
silver abound, have any attractions for the lovers of
the romantic and sequestered. The person who
gives up his soul to the love of money, must never
expect to see the beauties in the world of nature.
He has palsied the chord that responded to the
harmonies of his Creator's works. The miser
would calculate the worth of all he sees in money.
from the heart; and to those who refuse him that,
He never unlocks his treasures. But don't think
my hero is to prove a miser.
It is true he had not so many temptations to the
sin of avarice as beset men now-a-days. Display
was not then considered necessary to respectability;
and he had not an extravagant wife. Mrs. Bascom—
how I wish I had a few pages to allow you for the
record of your domestic virtues!—A woman she
was, it must be confessed after all, and had a deep
curiosity to know whether her husband's dream
was really true; but then it was mostly for the
credit of dreams, in general, she wished it might
prove true. Of the riches it promised, she had
very vague and unfashionable ideas. No fine dresses
and gay parties floated in perspective before her;
the winter clothing for her family she had prepared
with her own hands; her house she thought comfortable;
it was as good as her neighbour's houses,
and why should she be anxious to outshine them?
She looked round on her neat and nicely arranged
furniture,—there was not an article she
wished displaced, either for better or finer, because
her things were all so convenient, and all connected
with associations of the friends who had purchased,
or presented, or praised them. She liked all she
had, and thought she had enough—and the treasures
she perfectly satisfied? How I wish I could boldly
answer in the affirmative!
on the last thanksgiving festival, and she thought,
if her husband found the silver mine, she would
have a new punch-bowl; and then her best blocktin
tea-pot, just as bright as a silver one, and she
thought quite as handsome, had a small spot melted
on the nose (the carelessness of a help that proved
herself a harm)—and Mrs. Bascom, who had that
refined economical taste which revolts from every
appearance of carelessness and waste, had been
mortified at the appearance of her tea-pot. So she
calculated on a new punch-bowl and tea-pot, as she
anxiously looked from hour to hour for the arrival
of her husband. At length, late in the afternoon,
he appeared, and his wife, as she met his smile and
welcomed him, and arranged the dinner she had
kept warm for him, and saw the children all pressing
round him, for the kiss or kind word, felt herself
a happy woman, even with a cracked punch-bowl,
and melted tea-pot, and a thought of the silver
mine scarcely occurred; nor was the subject
named by her till after the children were all in
the table before him, deacon Bascom informed his
wife that—he had relinquished all thoughts of the
silver mine!
“I followed,” said he solemnly, “the directions
given me by the man in black, and I found the
rock he had described; and there stood the blasted
tree; and I have no doubt but there is a silver
mine. But I had been doubting, every step I took,
whether I was in the way of my duty. I determined
to pray for light to guide me. I knelt down,
and saw, in my own mind, how vain was gold and
silver; and I felt that should my children be corrupted
by the riches I there sought, how terrible
would be my guilt, and the accusations of my conscience!
I thought I had enough—I had health and
strength, and, with the blessing of God, I could
support you and our children. And I prayed, as
our Saviour directed—`Lead us not into temptation;'
and left the stone, and am determined that
never mortal man shall from me learn where it is
to be found.”
His wife agreed in all his opinions, and thought
he had acted a very wise part. “I will,” said she,
“boil the punch-bowl in skim milk, and it will be
as strong and handsome as ever; (had she lived in
these temperance times she would have dispensed
care a fig about the little melted spot.”
The children of that good couple were excellent
men and women, and their descendants are worthy
and respectable people.
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