The Hard-Scrabble of Elm Island

by Elijah Kellogg

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.