Chapter III: The Boys Catch the Spirit of the Age

After the departure of James Welch, nothing worthy of note occurred to disturb the quiet enjoyment of life on Elm Island.

Upon Ben’s recovery in the spring, he had hired Robert Yelf for the summer.

Ben, Jr., who now began to manifest as great a capacity for work as he had heretofore evinced for mischief, made himself extremely useful. He assumed the entire charge of the hens, ducks, geese, and turkeys. In the spring he had dropped corn and potatoes, and assisted in planting the garden. He pulled up weeds, carried in wood and chips for his mother, brought up the cows at night, and drove them to pasture in the morning.

After haying, Ben and Yelf finished and rigged the scow, which he had begun before he was taken sick, and built a wharf in the cove, with an inclined platform, over which cattle could be driven to or from the scow. They also built a boat to take the place of the Perseverance, Jr., from Charlie’s moulds, which was an easy matter, as the work was all laid out.

When corn was in the milk, Sally Merrithew ventured to marry Joe Griffin, who had been on probation since he nearly finished Uncle Smullen. Joe built his log house in the midst of a burn, where he had planted corn and sowed wheat in the spring. Ben gave Sally a cow and Captain Rhines a pig to begin housekeeping with, and Ben continued to pasture her sheep on Griffin’s Island, as Joe had no land cleared for pasturing sheep, and they were safe from the wolves on that island. Elm Island gradually improved in beauty as Ben ploughed and removed the stumps; and the fruit trees in the new soil increased rapidly in size.

Amid these quiet occupations and enjoyments, interspersed with tramps in the woods, bear-hunts and gunning expeditions with Uncle Isaac, the autumn, winter, and succeeding summer glided rapidly away.

Very different was the appearance of Elm Island, with its comfortable and roomy buildings, broad fields covered with crops, now fast ripening to the harvest, and vocal with the lowing of kine and the song of birds, from its appearance the morning that Uncle Isaac and Joe Griffin landed on the beach, and startled the herons from their nests with the sound of the axe and the crash of falling trees. Great as was the change that had taken place on Elm Island, it was trifling in comparison with that which obtained in respect to the country at large.

Then it was a period of general poverty and distress, although money was made by individuals through superior energy, tact, and the irregularities then existing in trade, and the intercourse of nations,--Ben and his father being among the fortunate ones.

Then there was neither revenue nor power to collect any; the country oppressed with debt, and no means to pay the old government under which the war of the revolution had been fought--a rope of sand--and no confidence in any quarter. The states were deluged with importations of all kinds--French gewgaws, English broadcloths, iron, cordage, and duck from Russia and Sweden--which people who had any means or credit were but too much inclined to buy, despite the efforts made by the government to discourage it, and encourage home manufacture.

But now the Federal government was established, and Washington at its head, with power to form treaties of amity and commerce, lay duties and imposts; the national debt funded, affording an opportunity for safe and profitable investments; and banks were established. The spirit of the country was up, and rose with a bound over all obstacles, ready to grapple with any odds.

Nowhere was the exhilarating influence of the times more eagerly responded to than in the District of Maine,--with a vast extent of sea-coast, and to a great degree aquatic population, and the town of Portland in particular, then but recently arisen from its ashes after its bombardment by the British, and incorporated, with an unrivalled harbor, a back country almost one unbroken forest of timber of all kinds, for which there was an abundant demand at high prices in Europe and the West Indies, with extensive water-power for its manufacture; vast quantities of ship-timber, with mechanics both native and imported; and a population whose energies were _then_, and have _continued_ to be, equal to every demand made upon them.

This town was among the first to avail itself of, and profit by, these altered circumstances. Mills were going up on every waterfall, wharves building, distilleries erecting, the keels of vessels laid, and the roads thronged with teams dragging the masts, spars, and boards to the place of shipment. Mails were established, and a newspaper published. It is easy to perceive what effect these new excitements must make upon boys so impressible as Charlie and John, at work in the midst of such scenes. They read the Cumberland Gazette, which Mr. Starrett took; also the Columbian Centinel, printed at Boston, which he borrowed from one of his neighbors; a Portsmouth paper, which was sent to a Portsmouth man who worked in the shop. They listened with sharp ears to every word of the excited conversation that occurred within their hearing, in that stirring period, when the state of Europe, its politics, its markets, the troubles in France, and their bearing upon the prosperity of America, became subjects of discussion, and were every whit as much interested as the actual participants, and, when they were alone, talked over all they had heard between themselves.

John was now working as a journeyman, and received four-and-six a day. Charlie found an excellent employer in Mr. Foss, who instructed him by every method in his power, and put him on the best work, as he found that he was capable of doing it, and also increased his wages.

Fishing, too, had received the same impulse as other pursuits, not merely by reason of the increased market for fish, and increased facilities for carrying them to foreign parts, but also in consequence of a bounty granted by the government. And Fred Williams, who, to his traffic in fish and groceries, had added the buying of potash, beef, and pork, was steadily acquiring.

As the country became cleared, great numbers of cattle were raised, and salted beef found a ready market in the West Indies for the use of the slavers.

Potash was in great demand in Europe. Fred was able to barter goods for potash, sell it in Boston at a large advance, and thus make a double profit--making more in that way than by all his other traffic.

Charlie, finding that the price of land was rising, sent word to Uncle Isaac to purchase enough more of the heavy pine growth abutting on the back part of his lot to make, with what he already had, four hundred acres; but Uncle Isaac bought the whole lot, and informed Charlie he might have of him, at the price he gave, enough to make out his four hundred acres. Charlie also bought Birch Island of the state, as he did not relish the idea of being a squatter; and the whole island, containing six acres of first-rate land, covered with a heavy growth of birch, an excellent harbor, and a noble spring of water, cost him only nine shillings. But in those days land on a small island like that was but lightly valued, while birch wood was not considered worth thanking God for.

“Charlie,” said John, in one of those confidential interviews that generally occurred on Saturday night, “couldn’t you build a vessel now?”

“I don’t know but I could. I lined up the Freebooter, while Mr. Foss was laying the keel of another vessel.”

“What is the reason we couldn’t build a vessel? I know I could do the iron-work.”

“I suppose we might do the work if somebody would find the money. It takes a heap of money to build a vessel and fit her for sea.”

“But couldn’t we build one, take time enough, and sell her just as you do the boats--without rigging her?”

“I’ll tell you what we might do.”

“What?”

“Build one, take our own time for it,--I’ve got timber enough on my land to build and load ever so many,--then keep a part of her, and sell the rest; put our work, my timber, and what little money we could muster, against somebody else’s money.”

“Yes, we could do that; but I should much rather have her to ourselves,--say you, and I, and Fred.”

“We might go to work, cut the timber, and set up a vessel, get her along as far as our means would allow, then let her stand till we could earn more. But we should want a captain.”

“That is true; and perhaps Seth Warren or Sydney Chase might take a part, and go in her.”

“Yes, that would be a quarter apiece.”

“Charlie, I heard Captain Pote say, in this very house last Saturday night, that if anybody could get a load of lumber to the West Indies, at the right time, he could make enough to build another vessel.”

“How much do you suppose it costs to build a vessel?”

“I don’t know; the rigging and sails are the most. You can build the hull very cheap, so that she will last a little while without much iron fastening; but you must have good rigging and sails, or else you are liable to lose vessel and cargo.”

“How much?”

“I know Mr. Foss built a vessel for Weeks and Tucker, hull and spars, and found everything, for fifteen dollars a ton, delivered at Pearson’s breast-work, in Portland.”

“Fifteen hundred dollars for the hull and spars of a vessel of a hundred tons?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m sure we could build a sloop of fifty.”

“But a sloop of fifty tons wouldn’t be of any use to carry such bulky cargoes as boards, spars, ton-timber, and molasses, which is what we must do.”

“Ye-e-e-e-s.”

Here the conversation came to an abrupt termination by Charlie’s falling asleep.