It is not proposed, in this history, to tell where Sevenoaks was, and is to-day.  It may have been, or may be, in Maine, or New Hampshire, or Vermont, or New York.  It was in the northern part of one of these States, and not far from the border of a wilderness, almost as deep and silent as any that can be found beyond the western limit of settlement and civilization.  The red man had left it forever, but the bear, the deer and the moose remained.  The streams and lakes were full of trout; otter and sable still attracted the trapper, and here and there a lumberman lingered alone in his cabin, enamored of the solitude and the wild pursuits to which a hardly gentler industry had introduced him.  Such lumber as could be drifted down the streams had long been cut and driven out, and the woods were left to the hunter and his prey, and to the incursions of sportsmen and seekers for health, to whom the rude residents became guides, cooks, and servants of all work, for the sake of occasional society, and that ever-serviceable consideration—­money.

There were two establishments in Sevenoaks which stood so far away from the stream that they could hardly be described as attached to it.  Northward, on the top of the bleakest hill in the region, stood the Sevenoaks poor-house.  In dimensions and population, it was utterly out of proportion to the size of the town, for the people of Sevenoaks seemed to degenerate into paupers with wonderful facility.  There was one man in the town who was known to be getting rich, while all the rest grew poor.  Even the keepers of the dram-shops, though they seemed to do a thriving business, did not thrive.  A great deal of work was done, but people were paid very little for it.  If a man tried to leave the town for the purpose of improving his condition, there was always some mortgage on his property, or some impossibility of selling what he had for money, or his absolute dependence on each day’s labor for each day’s bread, that stood in the way.  One by one—­sick, disabled, discouraged, dead-beaten—­they drifted into the poor-house, which, as the years went on, grew into a shabby, double pile of buildings, between which ran a county road.

This establishment was a county as well as a town institution, and, theoretically, one group of its buildings was devoted to the reception of county paupers, while the other was assigned to the poor of Sevenoaks.  Practically, the keeper of both mingled his boarders indiscriminately, to suit his personal convenience.

The hill, as it climbed somewhat abruptly from the western bank of the stream—­it did this in the grand leisure of the old geologic centuries—­apparently got out of breath and sat down when its task was half done.  Where it sat, it left a beautiful plateau of five or six acres, and from this it rose, and went on climbing, until it reached the summit of its effort, and descended the other side.  On the brow of this plateau stood seven huge oaks which the chopper’s axe, for some reason or another, had spared; and the locality, in all the early years of settlement, was known by the name of “The Seven Oaks.”  They formed a notable landmark, and, at last, the old designation having been worn by usage, the town was incorporated with the name of Sevenoaks, in a single word.