Litchfield enquirer., 1873-01-30
coH1d harz1 W Vhen he read the nhmbexa Reasi fhat had come

1t6t Ho WAil M M zzH}E Id hid
 lIot cen dared to pTzy for. It vas so
 much more than he expected, d,-it was the dream of years, indeed, made true.
 i For Samuel Cutts had proved to him. ] self that he was good leader of men.
 He knew he was, and many men knew 1t who had followed him under Carolina
 suns, and in the snows of Valley Forge.
 Samuel Cutts knew, equally we'll, that he
 was pot good maker of money, nor erea-
 tor of pork and potatoes. Six years of
 farming in the valley of the Merrimac
 had proved that to him, if he had never learned it before. Samuel Cutts' dream had been, when he went away to explore
 the Western Reserve, that he would like
 to bring together some of the best line
 officers and some of the best priyates of the old Fighting Twenty and
 take them, with his old provident skill,
 which had served them SO well upon so many camping grounds, to some regions where they could stand by each other again. as they had stood by each other
 before, and where sky and earth would yield them more than sky and earth have yet yielded any man in Eastern Massa-
 chusetts. Well as said, the Western
 Reserve did not seenn to be the place. Af- ter all, ':the Fighting Twenty-seventh"
 were not skilled i'll the tilling of the land. They furnished their quota when the
 boats were to be drawn through the ice ] of the Delaware, to assist in Rahls Christ
 mas party at Trenton; and for many an
 authorization at the ''head of Elk' had
 the Fighting Twenty-seyenth" provided half the seamen for the transport It was the Fighting Twenty-seyenth" who l cut out the Princess Charlotte" cutter in Edisto Bay. But the Fighting Twen- l ty-seventh." had never, so far as any one 1 knew, beaten one sword into one plough- share. nor one spear into one pruning | hook. But Tripp's Cove seemed to offer different prospect. Why not, with a 1 dozen or two of the old set, establish there not the New Jerusalem indeed, but something little more elastic, & little more helpful, 8 little more alive, than these kiln-dried, sun-dried, and time-dried old towns of the seaboard of Massaehu- setts ? At any rate, they could live to- 1 gether iu Tripp's Cove, as they wintered together at Valley Forge, at Bennett's s Hollow, by the Green Licks, and in the Lykens Intervale. This was the question which Samuel Cutts wanted to solve, and 1 which the fatal figures 219-7 put him in the way of solving. ''Trpp's Cove Is our Christmas pres ent, said Sybil Cutts to her husband, as they went to bed. But so far removed were the habits of New England then from the observance of ecclesiastical anniver- saries, that no one else had remembered that day that 1t was Christmas which was passing.
 CHAPTER II. TRIPP's COVE.
 Call this long preface, if you please, but it seems to me best to tell this so that I may explain what manner of people those were and are who lived, live, and will hva at Tripp's COve,-and why they have been, are, and will be linked togeth- CT, with a sort of family tie and relation ship which one does not often see in the
 villages self-formed or formed at hap-haz- ard on the seaside, or in the prairies of l America. Tripp,s Cove never became ''the Great Mercantile City of the Flu ture, nor do believe It ever will. But there Samuel Cutts lived in happy life for fifty years, ,-and there he died. hon. ored, blessed, and loved. By and by there came the second war with England, the Endymiena. .eanaa cruising along upon the coast picking up the fishing boats and the coasters, burning the ships on the stocks, or compelling the owners to ransom them. Old General Cutts was seventy years old then; but he was, as he had always been. the head of the settle ment at Tripp's,-and there were no lack of men younger than he, the sergeants or the high privates of the Fighting Twen- ty-seventh, who drilled the boys of the village for whatever service might im- pend. When the boys went down to Run r. D1 s-Sg back to her with half their crews dead or dying. faster than they came, old General Cutts was with them, and took sight over his rife as quickly and as bravely as the best of them. And so twenty years more passed on,-and, when he was weH-nigh ninety, the dear old man died full of years and full of blessings, all because he had launched out for himself, left the life he was not fit for, and undertaken life in which he was at home.
 Yes and because of this also, when 1861 came with its terrible alarm to the Tripp's Cove was all right. The girls were eager for service, and the boys were eager for service. The girls stood by the boys, and the boys stood by the girls. The husbands stood by the wives, and the wives stood by the husbands. I do not mean that there was not many anoth- CT community in which everybody was steadfast and true. But do mean that here was one great family, although the census rated 1t as ve-and-twenty fami- lies, which had one heart and one soul in the contest, and which went into 1t with one heart and one soul ,-every man and every woman of them all bearing each others burdens. 5r s- Little Sim Cutts, who broke the silence that night when the postman threw down the ''BOston Gazette, was an old man of eighty-fve when they all got the news of the shots at Fort Sumter. The old man was as hale and hearty as half the men of sixty in this land are to-day. With all his heart he encouraged the boys who volunteered in answer to the first call for regiments from Maine. Then with full reliance on the traditions of the Fighting Twenty-seventh, he ex- plained to the fishermen and the coast CTS that Uncle Abraham would need them for his web footed service, as we'll as for his legions on the land. And they found out their ways to Portsmouth and Charles town, so that that might enter the navy as their brothers entered the army. And so | it was, that, when Christmas came in 1861. there was at Tripp's Cove only one of that noble set of young fellows, who but a year before were hauling hemlock and spruce and fir and pine at Christmas at the girls order, and worked in the meet ing house for two days as the girls bade them work, so that when Parson Spauld- ing came in to preach his Christmas ser mon he thought the house was a bit of the woods themselves. Only onei
 And who was he? -< azs
 How did he dare stay among all those girls who were crying out their eyes, and sewing their fingers to the bones,-meet- ing every afternoon in one sitting room or another, and deyouring every word that came from the army? They read the worst swelled letter that came home from
 Mike Sawin and prized it and blessed it and cried over it, as heartily as the mo-