Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1874-12-10
NO. 2se.
Tales and Sketehes.
THE WRATH OF THE WINTHROP MAN.
SION.

THE WRATH OF THE WINTHROP MAN.
One who has visited the quaint old bor-
ough of Ipswich, in Massachusetts, will
readily remember the long reach of white
and ritted sand-hills and sandwasts which
stretch between its eastern limits and the
ocean. In driving to its beach, the road
winds drearily and clumsily along, and
your view now embraces the wide and un-
broken sea, white with breakers in-shore,
and with the sails of hardy and venture
some shippers beyond; when, anon, the
dazzling hills hide them all, and distract
your attention to your poor beast wading
in the thick and deepening sand.
About midway the road forks, and, if the
reader will take the fork to the right, he
will, if he pleases, arrive with me at the
point where the incident which wish here
briefly to narrate actually occurred on the
night OF the nineteenth day of October, in
the year of grace one thousand eight hum
dred and five.
| would premise. however, that in the
old towns of Massachusetts known par e1-
cellence as fishing towns-such as Marble
head, Ipswich. Beverly, and Salen,-one
may visit civilizations and precincts SO ut
terly and strangely at variance with what
he meets elsewhere upon this continent,
that sojourn in one of them is like the
dream OF a forgotten world.
Queer people, quaint customs, strange
dialects, and strange attires, surround and
absorb him al every step. Legends and
stories of the marvellous and the weird
salt stories of goblins and gnomes born of
the salty sea, whose wailing ever conjures
strange fancies in the simple brains of its
simple children; and most of all, relics of
the witch-lore fostered long ago in their
grandsires, by the wise old witlessnes of
Father Cotton Mather-live and dwell in
these strange by-ways of busy State.
The weird, sad cry of the sea, ever vary
! ing-sometimes like the shouts of ship
wrecked and freezing sailors in the surf,
anon plaintive like the call of frightened
child to its mother, or sharp and piercing
like the Shrek of terrified girl; the long,
silent, snow bound nights and monotonous
wntry days of these towns, when no trav-
eler reaches them, and no tidings of the
hustle and and glare of great cities pene-
trates to the ears OF their quiet denizens;
the ever-present memories of neighbors
who one day went out upon the tossing
ocean, and of whose after-history they had
|
make 1t not unnatural that the marvellous,
the weird, the supernatural and the
strange, should dwell most of all in the
minds and brains of the housewife and the
kittens in the sun, and, thence transmitted
to the children, should come to be staples
of these tranquil towns, until the minds OF
all. men, women, and children, are like
costly story books of the past.
| Rut most of all in the town of TpSwfob
so remote and ancient that it might, for
all it knows of the outside world, or the
outside world of it. be on the floating ISL
and of the Purtans (Which, tradition tells
US, is hugging all this storied shore) itself
do these legends breed and thrive.
Besides the sea, touched long ago by
Puritan keels-tor the story of bow the
Maytlower first sighted Ipswich, but was
| frightened away again by its rough break
ers, first having left Harry Main in the
surf, is old aud tamiliar--it is full of tales
of the regicides, who lived long months in
the cellarage OF an old mansion which
still stands under its elm-trees on the hill
side; and of the witches who remained in
iron chains in its stone Jail, but who came
out inter cdnem Ct tupun, and scared the
peaceful people into more subjects for
those unsightly laws; it has as we'll its
stories of the little old gentleman in black,
which prlnceiy parsonage, once having
heard that Whiteield was about to preach
in the First Congregational Church of that
village. entered the sanctuary himself the
night before. and barricaded all the doors.
but the next day, being the Sabbath"
says the Old chronicle,n Mr.. Whytfelde
he wente alonge with ye good people, and
prayed earnestlic before We doore,
whereyat ye divil strove mightilie, but
finale ye doore opened, and Mr.. Whyt-
tielde and they that were with him en-
tered, and We divil was seen to run to We
top OF ye steepil, whence he leaped down
upon ye rock y and where, to quote from
IA poetical storyteller of the place
''--they show you still,
Embedded deep in the solid rock,
The indelible print OF his iron hoof;
And tell you the devil has never shown
Face or hoof since that day, in the honest
town..
If we-the reader and take this
right fork of the beachroad, we will find
that it soon strikes upon spire of high
ground that interrupts the otherwise sandy
precincts, and runs almost to the low-tide
line, terminating in u bluff of rock. partly
carpeted with turf, and partly barren and
bare, which stands Squarely facing out to
sea.
Hallway up this bluff. and fronting on
the ocean, there was erected in 1880. a
mansion. which still stood there on the
10th of October, 1900. and which had not
lost clapboard off its frowning side, or
shingle from its roof, on the 18th of July,
1871, when this narrator visited it, in its
two hundred and thirty fourth year. and
which, if it has been destroyed since,
which is hardly possible, cannot fail to be
fresh in the minds of thousands besides.
This house was built by Governor Win
throp, and occupied, as l have said, by
him in 1857 1t is of the stereotype New
England style, OF two stories, with the
huge chimney in the midst. the front-door
in the centre of one side of its parallelo-
gram, two windows on each side thereof.
and five windows above.
Its exterior, never painted, and worn
by the ocean winds and inland storms OF
almost two hundred and fifty years, is
black and rugged. But houses built in
those days were built by the Puritans, who
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