“God is great!” said poor David Matson,
unconsciously repeating the familiar words of Moslem
submission. “His will be done. I
loved her, but I shall never see her again.
Give these, with my blessing, to the good woman and
the boys,” and he handed over, with a sigh, the
little bundle containing the gifts for his wife and
children.
He shook hands with his rival. “Pelatiah,”
he said, looking back as he left the ship, “be
kind to Anna and my boys.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” responded the sailor in
a careless tone. He watched the poor man passing
slowly up the narrow street until out of sight.
“It’s a hard case for old David,”
he said, helping himself to a fresh quid of tobacco,
“but I ’m glad I ’ve seen the last
of him.”
When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the
story of her husband and laid his gifts in her lap.
She did not shriek nor faint, for she was a healthy
woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself
and wept bitterly. She lived many years after,
but could never be persuaded to wear the pretty shawl
which the husband of her youth had sent as his farewell
gift. There is, however, a tradition that, in
accordance with her dying wish, it was wrapped about
her poor old shoulders in the coffin, and buried with
her.
The little old bull’s-eye watch, which is still
in the possession of one of her grandchildren, is
now all that remains to tell of David Matson,—
the lost man.
Published originally in The Little
Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1843.
Our old homestead (the house was very old for a new
country, having been built about the time that the
Prince of, Orange drove out James the Second) nestled
under a long range of hills which stretched off to
the west. It was surrounded by woods in all
directions save to the southeast, where a break in
the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green meadows,
picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of
upland. Through these, a small brook, noisy enough
as it foamed, rippled, and laughed down its rocky
falls by our gardenside, wound, silently and scarcely
visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country
Brook. This brook in its turn, after doing duty
at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of
which we could hear in still days across the intervening
woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the
river took it up and bore it down to the great sea.
I have not much reason for speaking well of these
meadows, or rather bogs, for they were wet most of
the year; but in the early days they were highly prized
by the settlers, as they furnished natural mowing
before the uplands could be cleared of wood and stones
and laid down to grass. There is a tradition
that the hay-harvesters of two adjoining towns quarrelled
about a boundary question, and fought a hard battle
one summer morning in that old time, not altogether
