University of Virginia Library

Letter From Maine.—No. 2.

The last letter from Maine! how painful a word
this may be, only those who can fully appreciate
this beautiful, hospitable, noble-hearted State, can
say.

Maine stands as a living disproval of the received
opinion, that Northern latitudes chill the
blood, or check the flow of warm and social feeling.
There is a fullness, a frankness, and freedom,
combined with simplicity, about the social
and domestic life of this State, which reminds
me of the hospitality and generosity of Kentucky,
more than anything else, and yet has added to it
that stability and intelligent firmness peculiar to
the atmosphere of New England. Perhaps it is
because Maine, like Kentucky, is yet but a half-settled
State, and has still a kind of pioneer,
backwoods atmosphere about it. All impulses
which come from the great heart of nature, from
the woods, the mountains, or the ocean, are always

pure and generous—and those influences in
Maine are yet stronger than the factitious secondhand
and man-made influences of artificial life.

Truly, whether we consider the natural beauty
of Maine, or the intellectual clearness and development
of her common people, or the unsophisticated
simplicity of life and manners there, or the
late glorious example which she has set in the eyes
of all the nations of the earth, one must say she
is well worthy of her somewhat aspiring motto—
the North Star! and the significant word,
“Dirigo!”

Dirigo. That word is getting to have, in this
day, a fullness of meaning, that perhaps was not
contemplated when it was assumed into her escutcheon—for
Maine is indeed the North Star,
and the guiding hand in a movement that is to
regenerate all nations—and from all nations the
cry for her guidance begins to be heard.

It is said that the very mention of the State of
Maine, in temperance gatherings in England, now
raises tumults of applause, and that Neal Dow
has been sent for even as far as Berlin, to carry
the light of this new gospel of peace on earth,
and good will to men.

The last election in Maine, taken altogether, is
the most magnificent triumph of principle, pure
principle, that the world ever saw. Thousands
and tens of thousands of money had been sent by
liquor dealers in other States to bribe voters—it
had been triumphantly asserted that votes in
Maine could be had for two dollars a head—but
when they came to try the thing practically upon
her sturdy old farmers and fishermen, they then
got quite a new idea of what a Maine man was.
The old aquatic farmers, who inherit all the noble
traits both of sea and land, shook their hands
most emphatically from holding bribes, and the
mountain farmers showed that in the course of
their agricultural life and experiments they had
learned, among other things, the striking difference
between wheat and chaff. No! no! bribing was
plainly “no go” in Maine; the money was only
taken by a few poor, harmless loafers, of the kind
who roost on rail fences on a sunny day, or lean
up against barns, when for obvious reasons they
are in no condition to roost, and who are especially
interested in the question of the rights of
women to saw wood.

The election in Maine is an era in the history

of elections, because there, for once, men of principle
forsook all party lines and measures, to vote
for PRINCIPLE alone. Whigs voted for Democrats,
Democrats for Whigs, with sole reference to their
relation to the temperance cause, and thus a great
and memorable victory was gained. Party is the
great Anti-Christ of a republican government,
and the discipline of party has hitherto been so
stringent that it really has been impossible to determine
the sentiment of a Christian man by his
vote, except so far as it might signify the opinion
of the party with which they were connected.
Maine, in agreement with her motto, “Dirigo,”
has set the example of two very great and
important things. One is, that this traffic may
be suppressed by law; and the other is, that
men of principle can vote out of their party—and
the second suggestion is quite equal in value with
the first. For if men can vote out of their party
for one great question of right, they can for another;
and the time is not distant, we trust, when
the noble State of Maine will apply the same
liberty to other subjects.

While I have been writing this, an invisible
spirit has been walking in our forests, and lo, the

change! The serrated ranks of spruces are
lighted with brilliant forms of trees, flame coloured,
yellow, scarlet, all shining out between the unchanged
steel blue of the old evergreens. If one
wants the perfection of American forest scenery,
he must have for the rainbow illumination of autumn,
a background of sombre black green like
ours. Fancy the graceful indentations, the thousand
lake-like beautiful bays of this charming
shore, now reflecting in their mirror this hourly
brightening pageant—fancy the ships gliding in
and out from Jeddo, China, California, England!
and you can fancy the regret and longing of
heart with which I leave a coast so beautiful.
Fancy that you see dwellings, speaking alike of
simplicity and of refinement—imagine families
where intelligence, heartiness, warm hospitality,
and true Christian principle, all conspire to make
your visit a pleasure, and your departure a regret,
and you can fancy a more intimate reason of the
sorrow with which I write myself no longer a resident
of that State. But as I leave it, I cannot
but express the wish that every family, and every
individual may remember the glory which their
State has now, and the character which it has
now to sustain in the eyes of the whole civilized
world.

The women of Maine have had no small influence
in deciding the triumph of the cause which
sheds such lustre on their State. All women, as
a natural thing, are friends and advocates of the
cause of temperance, a cause involving so much
to sons, brothers, and husbands; and the Maine
women have acted most decidedly and nobly in its
support.

To the “North Star,” now the eyes of all the
world are turning, and we must look to it to guide
us in everything that is right and noble. May
that star be seen as plainly leading the generous
cause of freedom! that cause whose full success
shall wipe from the American escutcheon its only
national stain.