Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1885-06-10
THE LEGENDARY SHIP.

and Gum!''
THE LEGENDARY SHIP.
A Tale of the Eaczy Days of New Haven
Cclony.
An unexpected and very profitable
groth of our business made the immedi-
ate purchace of piece of land necess-
airy. My partners requested me to ne
gotiate for few acres in the vicinity of
New Haven, and I at once began to do
so. An annoying delay occurred owing
to the illegibillity of an ancient record
which made it impossible to obtain a
perfect title. I was abont to abandon
to buy the property, when Twas remind
ed that a gentleman we'll know to me
might be able to give the information
that could not be deciphered from the
record. This person was a professor
in the COLLIDE, a man of wide repute as
a scholar, and an ardent student of the
colonial epoch of the town.
found him i'll his library and he,
without any hesitation, gave me the
informction which I sought, and told
me where 1 should find such legal
proofs of clear title as / desired. Twas
impressed with the accuracy of his
learning and the rediness with which it
responded to his demands, and VEN
tured to say to him that the acquisition
of such mass of names and dated
must have cost him great labor. To
my surprise he replied that I was mis-
taken, the tauth being that he mastered
such incidents with eass. His great
mental efforts, he sead, were requsred
by the processes of anylisis and COM
parison which were necessary to separ-
ate truth from the rubbich and chaff of
tradition and record, and by by the
reasoning necessary accurately to trace
causes to those results which, when
gruped constituted trustwarthy history.
''For instance said he. II have
herea document which will cost me the
most severe application before L am
through with it,
l had observed that there lay upon
the table a roll nf manuscript. The
table was Uttered with pamphlets, doc
uments, aged and wormeaten books,
and I do not know why my attention
was specially fixed upon this particular
roll of paper. 1t was plainly an aged
manuscript. The paper was ribbed
and unruled, like that in use century
or more ago; and if it once was white,
the years had faded it to dull, buff,
leathery hue, while the care with which
he afterward handled it indicated that
it had little tenacity of fibre. l knew
that he referred to this old roll of
manuscript, and, as l expected, he took
it up.
II have here" he continued, "a
remarkable historical narrative, which
l found among some refuse in a garnet,
where it has lain for more than a
hundred years. 1t is an account of a
strange, unnatural occurrence, OF
which have heard by tradition, and
which is even casually mentioned in
Mather's Magnolia. have, however,
always regarded it as unworthy OF
serious consideration, believing that
there was either no foundation for the
tradition or else that it could be traced
to the Authorizations of disordered
brain. l now, however, have an
account of it which l canuot ignore
1t was written by a clergyman of the
most godly character, a man who
could not, even in jest, speak false
hoods, and he asserts that he was him
self an eyewitness of what he describes.
How, then, can l refuse to accept this
record? 1t gives all that a historian
requires to satisfy him of the authen'
ITCHY of any alleged occurrence. 1t Is
the genuine manuscript of a man
whom know to have lived, and it is
not a hearsay account. If we are tC
to put faith in any of the records of the
past, we must accept this one. dc
not know of an established fact of his.
tory that has any better easis than this
document gives to substantiate the
wonderful phenomenon which il
records.
Il confess continued the Professor
with some animation of speech, ''tha1
such a Problem as is presented by thi:
manuscript has never before been giver
to me to solve. As a historian, l an
compelled to accept as true what l here
read, while as physicist must regard
the record as the widest and most i'm
probable of romances. Were it basec
oh the testimony of one person it coulc
easily be rejected as vision or alienation
of mind, to which the austerity of the
Puritans seems to have rendered some
of them peculiarly liable. / am con
fronted, however, with the assertion O.
this writer, as well as with the inherent
proof of the assertion, that he was one
of many witnesses. 1t is, indeed, ar
interesting problem, and the difficulty
of reconciling an occount that must be
accepted as truthful history with the
fact that it must be denied as physi
cal possibility makes the task fascina
ting
Doubtless Prof. M-observed that
he had awakened a pleasing interest il
me. Indeed, Il took no pains to concea
it, and told him that would gladly
hear the story that had so puzzled him
He at once unrolled the manuscript
"This appears said he, ito have
been written by the Rev. DIR. Prentice
and in the year 1880. Judge it was
letter to a friend, although the ravages
of time have made the first few SEN
fences illegible. l have other manu-
/ scripts of this clergyman, a few ser
mons, and having thus been enabled tc
make comparisons, / find the handwrit
ing of all to be identical. will moi
read it in full, and will paraphrase some
of the text, for it is written in the still
formal manner of that day, many of the
words found in it being now obsolete
j" There had come, began the Pro