The strange bond between her and the child had grown stronger as time had flown. She felt that she was a thousand times more to her than a child to a mother. The little, tender, loving heart was the one heart that knew and understood and sympathized with her grief. If she lost her she was bereft not only of her eldest born, but of the one who possessed her full confidence, her closest friend, the only one who saved her from the utter loneliness of her misery.

George kept constantly with his daughter. In an agony of self-reproach for his past treatment, he tried in everyway to win back her love and confidence. Florry treated him wistfully, looking at him often with eyes that brought tears to his own, and their remembrance wrung groans from his breast at night. The past was irrevocable; strive as he might, there was no restitution, no oblivion, possible to him.

Freedom from study, change of air

and scene, physicians' skill, were all of no use. Florry died; and by the side of their still, eldest born, George besought his wife to forgive him for the past, to take him back, to give him the chance to win her love once more. "For Florry's sake, Ethel," he pleaded; and Ethel promised, "For Florry's sake, I will try."

And Florry reunited them; but the great earthly happiness they once hoped for and expected they can never know. They are doubtless as happy as most people, but often when George sees the long yellow hair of their living little girl flying down the stairs or in and out of the rooms, he thinks of another little girl with long yellow hair, and shudders at the sudden remembrance" she is dead," feeling a heavy load on his heart. And often when her husband is kindest, Ethel sees a little grave in the beautiful Forest City cemetery, and shrinks shudderingly away from him.

There are many and striking points of difference between the old Greek bard, who wandered from place to place reciting his rhapsodies wherever a crowd of listeners would gather, and his Down East successor, who used to peddle his verses as merchantable wares through the country-sides of the "District of Maine." So far as the method of getting their works into circulation is concerned, the difference may be accounted for by re

ferring to the invention of printing. Other marks of distinction between Homer of Chios, or any other of the seven cities which claims the honor of being his birth-place, and Thomas Shaw, positively of Standish, Maine, must be variously explained. The earlier poet sang of war, the later piped of peace. Homer was blind; and no one can read the productions of Shaw, unless in a state of suspended cogitation, without discovering that

his muse at least was of a somewhat owl-like vision.

At New York sales by auction of books and other property, there have appeared at rare intervals broadsides of poetry by Thomas Shaw, of Standish, Maine. These have been catalogued with much display, and with unusual fulness of description. They have for years commanded prices in the metropolis such as their author never dreamed of asking as he hawked them about among the less appreciative farmers among whom he lived. They are good specimens,-and this is all the merit they can now claim, of a species of literature that had its day in this country a good many years ago. Their value, however, for purposes of illustrating certain phases of New England life at the beginning of this century, is scarcely affected by the circumstance that they are unqualified doggerel.

We glean the little knowledge we have of the author from his productions. Some of his more ambitious

pieces appeared in 1815, and he was

still hard at work in the same line when Lafayette visited this country in 1824. In a poem of twenty-four stanzas inspired by the visit of the French general, he tells us that he was born before the close of the Rev

olution:

"I and some Fathers still remain,

Who saw our Independence gain."

This tribute to the distinguished visitor, records the fact that the poet

The author manifests in this poem a great deal of bitterness towards Great Britain. It was quite natural that the appearance of Lafayette should revive something of the old spirit.

The plan of the work was to exhibit the career of Lafayette, and sing his praises. Attention is directed mainly to what he did for America in the Revolution. The British troops are represented as bees leaving their hive to sting the Americans. Washington and Lafayette beat them off. As this is all the play there is given to the imagination in the whole composition, no one will find fault with the simile. The part which our French ally took is stated over and over again in different terms, but it all amounts to the same thing. A single stanza will serve as a sample:

"On his expense he clothed men

Who stood as needy soldiers then,
Entering our service without pay,
To drive the British bees away."

Later on we are given a glimpse of Lafayette contending for the liberties of his own people :

"Until by chance in prison fell,

And troubles too he knew full well."

It is not difficult to discover the influence of the New England Primer upon the poet's thought, if not upon its expression. He cannot close this encomium upon his hero without indulging the reflection,

"He's but a man when all is done,
All mortal men their course do run."

pay his respects to the Nation's guest.

"He went from place to place in state, And welcomed by small and great,

Whereof we heard and saw the same, And can describe the man by name."

iar sentiment,

Xerxes the Great did die,

And so must you and I."

The next piece is "A Mournful Song, occasioned by the shipwreck

of the schooner Armistice, Captain Douglass, on Cohasset rocks, August 31, 1815...bound from Portland for Baltimore...on which occasion five persons perished. By Thomas Shaw, Standish." This occasional poem, which its author calls "A Mournful Song," is in a somewhat more lively measure than is this poet's wont. There was this about the old Puritan heart, that it took a tremendous force to move it; but when the emotions were once fully roused, the sluiceway by which as a flood they found escape was always regarded as necessarily a poetic vein of feeling. Elegaic poetry afforded both the writer and reader pastime and recreation. It was supposed to possess what was known in pulpit phrase as an "improving" quality. Shaw evidently understood the market value of the article, and supplied the demand judiciously. People in that age had no dread of monopolies, and never dreamed of boycotting a poet.

This particular composition is somewhat in the manner of the ballad. The movement of the narrative is, however, very unsteady. The moralizing is done at inconvenient and unexpected intervals; or, from another point of view, it may be said that the story is broken by reflections that are wholly out of season. The measure reminds the reader of The Ancient Mariner." It is, of course, not impossible that so famous a ballad, printed nearly twenty years before, should be familiar to the poet. The narrative is taken up at the seventh

stanza:

"My mournful song doth take along

Douglass from Portland bay, For to sail fast in August last

Upon the thirtieth day."

This was as far as the author could get without indulging in some very sad, but we may hope profitable, reflections. It is not until he reaches the twelfth stanza that he is able to complete the date of the sailing:

"So they did steer, the fifteenth year,
Out into the wide main;

Perhaps a thought was to them brought,
You can't come back again."

We see here the peculiarity of these early ballad-writers in America ;-they were web-footed, and so, instead of rising on pinions like the lark, they took to the floods of bathos, and there wailed their sorrows like loons.

But the master-piece of Shaw, so far as now appears, was a four-column broadside, fourteen by twenty inches.

The occasion of this production was the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815. The subject was calculated to awaken more than ordinary joy, and here we shall expect to see the poet at his best. Indeed, he seems himself to have looked upon this performance with a good degree of complaisance, for some of the ideas of this reappear in pretty nearly the original language in his lines on Lafayette. The work is divided into two distinct parts after the manner of old-time sermons, the expository part of which was delivered in the morning, while the improvement," as it used to be called,-in later phrase, the" application,”—was "deferred till after intermission."

The first part is taken up with a recital of events preceding the peace. Quite as much space is given to the Revolution as to the War of 1812. The author is profuse in generalities, but rather chary of particulars. The exploits of the enemy, from 1812 to

1815, are summed up in the twentysecond and twenty-third stanzas:

"Their army went to Washington,

And there destruction they begun;
From there and Baltimore they fled,
After their General was dead.

"We lost some frigates by our foe,
Who took them where they could do so;
And took our vessels great and small,
When they into their hands did fall."

Only one victory of our arms is mentioned, and that happened to be an affair that came off after the treaty was signed, and had the least significance of all as related to the subject of the poem:

"While marching to New Orleans town,
Our gallant Jackson cut them down;
And beat their haughty army then
By killing thousands of their men."

66

The improvement" of all this in "Part Second" is a call to give over the contention of party strife:

"Unite, unite now all as one,

Let party spirit all be gone."

Political writers of the time were favored with some excellent counsel, which perhaps entitles the whole performance to perpetuity.

"Ye printers come now take a hint,
No more contention ever print;
And so let party spirit die,

That has so long been printer's cry."

After rehearsing to political editors the sad story of Ahab, he again calls to them,

"Now for God's sake forsake this trade, For this lying the devil made."

It is worth keeping in mind, that while Shaw was attentive to a not very exacting muse on the birch-covered gravel hills of Standish Neck, he could look across Sebago lake to the

head of Kettle Cove where Hawthorne kept his boat tied, and half a mile to the right he could see the tops of the pines which grew about that lad's home and deepened what was later spoken of as " that cursed solitude of Raymond." At the same time, too, up at the head of Long Pond, Seba Smith was getting ready to do some of that political writing which our poet so earnestly deprecated. Over in Gorham, only three or four miles away, Sargent S. Prentiss was living on a farm, and Isaac McClellan was beginning his work. At the city, John Neal must have been heard by that time, and his was a strong-voiced muse; Mellen was cultivating a smoother strain; and Longfellow was already engaged upon his earlier tasks.

But these belonged to another generation, and a happier one for literary enterprise or indulgence. We are not often reminded now how little chance there was for any art to survive the two wars we had with England. Sometimes when we examine the records of towns and parishes for that period, we see how great a falling off there was from colonial times in regard to preparation for clerical work. So, too, the fact that work like Shaw's was made to order, as it were, and that it supplied a real demand, marks a sort of zero point upon the scale of popular taste and interest. The work had just one redeeming quality,—in common with most of the oratory of that period,—its spirit of genuine patriotism; and that was enough to excuse and atone for all literary delinquencies.

The little village of Salmon Falls has had its share of rhythm: success and failure have followed each other like the rise and fall of the waves. The wail of 1690 had died away among the near hills more than a century ago, and the ashes of that cruel fire kindled by the French and Indians had whitened and scattered, when some "Yenghees" of a mechanical turn of mind were attracted by the rush and foam of water over the jagged falls in this winding stream. These men wished to utilize this strength, and so change the course of the merry river that it should become the driving power of a woollen-mill.

About 1824, the capture was made, and the glistening water was caused to run over a dingy, wide-mouthed wheel which caught up the water only to dash it down again with vengeful spite. For ten years the mill ran on, when in 1834 it was burned. In the time of this first mill, teasels were planted by the company about the village in several places; and to-day where the trim new depot on the Boston & Maine line stands, once in awhile a teasel-plant peeps up to see if it can be of any use nowadays.

Acacias were started for shuttle wood: the old ones have died down, and new ones have thrown out their heavy sweetness every June from the high knoll west of "Foundry Pond.”

The agent of the company who owned the mill was Col. Joshua Pierce, of Greenland, and he desired a suitable place of worship. Many of the workmen were Englishmen, and since Col.

Pierce was a believer in the Church of England service, arrangements to start an Episcopal church were soon made.

On Wednesday, December 15, 1830, a notice was posted in the village, reading thus: "All persons desirous of having stated and regular Religious service at Salmon Falls are requested to meet at the School House in said place this evening at eight o'clock."

The church records tell how a number of the inhabitants met, and organized themselves by choosing J. W. Pierce moderator; and, after discussing the subject upon which the meeting was called, it was voted to appoint a committee of three persons to ascertain what could be done among the people toward the erection of a house of public worship, and to report at the adjourned meeting. It was voted that John Wentworth, Daniel Nason, and James Bradbury be the committee.

Friday, Dec. 17, 1830, an adjourned meeting was held, when the committee appointed made a verbal report of their proceedings, and presented a subscription paper having several sums of money subscribed by the inhabitants of the village, and amounting to a sum sufficient to warrant the meeting to go on and prosecute their design of erecting a house of public worship.

At this meeting it was voted that a clerk be appointed, whose duty it should be to record all proceedings of this and future meetings of said subscribers, in a book of records. It was also voted that a committee of three persons be appointed to adopt