THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.
He was on the way to Lynn, when he drove up before Blingo’s door, to visit “Moll” Pitcher, a woman who was reputed to have the gift of second sight, and who “told fortunes by tea-cups.”
“Lord” Dexter, as he was called, but really Timothy Dexter, of Newburyport, was a real and very famous character of the last century. He was a mildly insane man, who had acquired a large fortune by trading adventurously at sea. The grotesque fact of his sending warming-pans to hot climates, and of the ship’s captain selling them for ladles for molasses and returning with a fortune, was an old-time wonder-tale, as well as the joke of his writing a book called “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” and putting all the punctuation marks on the last page, with the direction to the readers to “Pepper the dish to suit themselves.”
His strange mansion and gardens and statues are still to be seen pictured in old books, as is his own portrait in costume, with embroidered vest, cocked hat, and laced trousers. There were many stories of this eccentric man who so greatly enjoyed the fancy that he was a lord.
Curious as is this history, well-known to the old New England families, it is hardly more so than that of “Moll” Pitcher, who figures in one of Whittier’s poems, and who was equally celebrated as an odd character in New England a century ago, when trading by sea was the principal business along the coast.
This strange woman seems to have been sincere in her belief that she possessed the gift of “second sight,”—an hallucination that she probably inherited from her grandfather, who thought that he was a “wizard,” whatever that may have been.
The sailors went to consult her in regard to their voyages, and crews sometimes refused to depart from port if her predictions were unfavorable. She had a strong, masculine face, with something hidden behind it; a rather kindly face withal, but self-conscious and keen.
Apart from her hallucination and its evil influences, she was a good and self-respecting woman. The simple cottage where she lived was visited for many years after her death, which occurred in 1813, by collectors of traditions and folk-lore, and by nearly all strangers who made a pilgrimage to Lynn.
Like Lord Dexter, this woman seems to have been mildly insane. The two seemed to be confidential friends, and Dexter used to ride over to Lynn to consult with her. He was reputed to have gained a part of his wealth by the aid of her divining tea-cups.
Blingo soon shod the horse. The imaginary “lord” and his plebeian poet entered the coach. The driver mounted his box, and the footman his post. There was a crack of the whip, a rush of the startled black horses, and a great cloud of dust rose again, as the grotesque vehicle wheeled away under the glimmering autumn leaves, in the direction of the blue capes of Lynn.
As it passed from the view of the humble smithy, Blingo the blacksmith and Tommy Topp sat down beside each other in the open door, and discussed the import of this curious event. The effect of this harlequinade on the mind of the old blacksmith and the boy was to make them ill at ease in their simple stations of life.
“This is a strange world,” said Blingo,—“a very strange, strange world. Look at Timothy Dexter. He got rich by accident, and thinks he’s a lord. Here I have to work hard all day in order to live, and pay my honest debts, and then have nothing left for old age. That man never worked as I work a day in his life. Now he’s going to see that lying old fortune-teller. It’s all wrong, yet see how he prospers! I declare I lose faith in everything.”
The sun was sinking over the autumn hills in mingled lustres of vermilion and gold. The shadows were darkening in the woods and orchards. Everywhere the crickets were chirping in the fading grasses, and their lonesome notes only added to the honest blacksmith’s dissatisfaction. There are times when even a true heart becomes discouraged.
“Blingo!” said Tommy, “I’m thinkin’ that we might be rich.”
“Are you? I should like to know how?”
“We might get Moll Pitcher to tell our fortunes, as well as Lord Dexter. I have been told something that I believe is true.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been told that there is a pot of gold hidden in the High Rock of Lynn.”
“Who told you that?”
“Grandma Pennypacker.”
There was a thoughtful silence.
“Well, what if there is?” continued Blingo.
“I’ve a plan,” said Tommy, hesitatingly. “I’d like to go and ask Moll Pitcher if she’ll tell me where the money-pot is hidden. And then if she tells me we can go and dig it up, and you can have half of the gold and I will have half. That will be fair. Everybody knows it’s up there somewheres, but no one knows where. She only asks three shillings to look into her tea-cup. And then—and then—perhaps we might ride in a chariot and have a big house.”
There had been a legend for nearly a hundred years in Lynn that certain pirates landed on the coast, and buried treasures at High Rock or Dungeon Rock, two well-known places near the village. Three of these men were captured and taken to England, but a third one, Thomas Veale, continued to live there for many years, but, it is supposed, was buried in the rocks by the earthquake of 1658.
THE HORTICULTURAL BUILDING.
This legend, as is usual with legends, grew with years, and it is still repeated in Lynn. It filled the popular fancy more than one hundred years ago, and was especially vivid in Lord Timothy Dexter’s day.
Visions of riches began to expand in the boy’s mind, and his mental mood perceptibly affected the honest soul of Blingo.
“Think what we might do if we were only rich!” said the boy, with eager eyes.
“I don’t know. I’m afraid we shouldn’t feel just honest as we do now, if we had money that we had not earned ourselves, and that didn’t belong to us,” said Blingo. “It’s a great thing to feel that one’s honest.”
“But the money-pot don’t belong to anybody. It’s as much yours and mine as any one’s. It belongs to the man that finds it.”
“Yes, yes; p’r’aps so; p’r’aps not; and p’r’aps I’d lose my own respect if I was to let you go to a fortune-teller to find it. Stands to reason that the Lord don’t reveal His secrets through Moll Pitcher’s tea-cups; and if He don’t who does? That’s what I’d like to know—who does? It’s the Evil One himself.”
The boy sat silent. The sounds around the farm-houses were echoed here and there,—the dog’s bark and the chore-boy’s whistle. Now and then a light gust of wind, like the passing of a messenger unseen, shook down the yellow leaves, and left a rustling in the withered trees.
Afar, a bell was ringing in a steeple of Lynn, and nearer there was a rumble of cart-wheels laboring under a weight of corn.
“There is a great deal of comfort,” said Blingo, after this pause, as if talking to himself, “there is a great deal of comfort to be taken with money if it can be got honestly.”
“But I’ll go to the fortune-teller.”
“That wouldn’t help me inwardly. I’m afeard it wouldn’t be right for me to allow you to do what I wouldn’t like to do myself, and I never heard of any good that ever come from consulting tea-grounds. Still—” and there was another pause—“Still, money would be handy with a wife and seven children, and gray hairs comin’. Yes, it would.”
The word “still” settled the question with Tommy, and he started up and walked away without another word. He had almost reached the decision to pay a visit to the Lynn fortune-teller, after the example of Lord Dexter. As he hurried home that wish was confirmed, and he fell asleep in the attic to dream of fortune and fame, chariots and poets, and a château overlooking the blue capes of the sea.
MACHINERY HALL.
The next morning Tommy arose, and after breakfast started in the direction of Lynn. The first pause in his rapid journey he made at Blingo’s smithy.
“Blingo, I’m goin’.”
“Do tell!” said Blingo, dropping his hammer. “Well, it may be right, but I don’t feel quite right about it. Still, I would not fly into the face of good fortune. Here, she’ll charge you three shillings for lookin’ into the tea-cup, and I’ll pay my part. Here it is.”
Tommy took the money. Then his feet flew along the path by the side of the turnpike. He did not stop again until he reached the fortune-teller’s door.
The simple cottage of Moll Pitcher was gay with the last blossoms of a morning-glory vine. Tommy paused to wonder a moment at the pile of variegated bloom, when the small front door opened, and the fortune-teller herself appeared, with an inquiring face.
“The frost has spoiled them,” said she, seeing Tommy looking at the morning-glories. “They will all die in a few days; it is a pity. Won’t you come in?”
Tommy entered the solitary cottage, and was shown a chair in a simple, plain room.
“I’ve come to ask you about something,” he said. “I’m poor. We’re all poor at home, and—and—I—I wish I had money. I’ve come to see if you’ll help me to find some.”
“To find some? Mercy, child,—
“If I only knew, if I only knew,
What do you think that I would do?”
She sat down in a patched chair, and rocked to and fro.
“They say that you know everything,—all the secrets of the hidden treasures, where the money-pots are, and all,” ventured Tommy.
She looked the lad sharply in the face with her keen eyes, then smiled and said:—
“If I only knew, if I only knew,
What do you think that I would do?”
There was another silence, which Tommy ventured to break.
“Would you be willing to look into the tea-cup for me? I’ve brought the pay with me.”
“What for?” asked the old woman.
“To tell me where the pirates hid the money-pot,” said Tommy, his voice trembling.
“Mercy on ye, boy,—
“If I only knew, if I only knew,
What do you think that I would do?”
There was another long silence. Tommy was very nervous; he waited until it seemed to him he could wait no longer, and then he asked, faintly, “What would you do, if you only knew?”
She drew her chair near to him. “Listen. What would I do? I’d go and get it for myself. Now you’d better go home, my lad. This is all I can do for you this morning. Go to work and honestly earn your money. There, don’t say that Moll Pitcher has not given you good advice, and I won’t charge you anything for it.”
The disappointed boy dragged his feet back to the smithy over the highways and byways during the long autumn afternoon, and sank down at last on the doorsill of the shop, where the vision of Lord Dexter’s magnificence had appeared to him.
Blingo came and leaned over him.
“Well, what did she tell you?”
“She couldn’t find it,” said Tommy.
“What did she say?”
“She only said if she knew where the money was, she’d get it herself.”
THE “DARBY RING.”[3]
When I was young, it was common to hear boys upon the skating ponds speak of “cutting the Darby,” by which expression they were supposed to indicate a swift ring movement upon the ice. The term, I believe, is still used, although comparatively few people may be acquainted with its origin. It came into use through a very singular occurrence, which for a time was the one great local event of a considerable farming and maritime region stretching along the northeastern shore of Narragansett Bay.
In the summer of 1798, many respectable persons, whose homes were in the pleasant towns of Bristol, Warren, and Barrington, R. I., together with some few in the neighboring communities of Swansea and Rehoboth, Mass., were made the victims of a queer delusion.
A short time previous, a man named Darby, or Derby,—the first being the form generally accepted by tradition,—had come to Warren from some part of Connecticut, taken up his abode in the town, and opened a school. As he was a person of pleasing address, he soon became a decided favorite with the honest sea-captains and farmers, who constituted the “solid men” of a population at once rural and commercial.
A keen judge of human nature, he knew how to adapt his speech to suit the character of the person whose sympathies he wished to engage; while the fact that he was a schoolmaster made his utterances oracular to a degree with a people to whom the “Columbiad” of good Joel Barlow was the only known classic.
He was fond of conversing upon mineralogy; and thence gliding easily into necromancy and kindred subjects, he would dwell upon the possibility of unearthing buried treasure through the exercise of some mysterious art akin to the supernatural.
[3]Adapted from a story by Mr. George Coomer in “Youth’s Companion.”
With abundant citations and authorities at his tongue’s end, he would call up the traditions of Kidd, Bellamy and other freebooters, and show how probable it was that much of their ill-gotten gain remained somewhere hidden about the New England shores.
In the course of a few months he had wormed himself into the confidence of a number of sober and substantial people,—but he always chose for his intimate friends those who had property.
The generation of our great-grandfathers must have been much more credulous than our own, for it is agreed upon all sides that the crafty adventurer met with no difficulty in obtaining converts to his pretended golden views. His operations were systematized more and more, till they extended from Warren to the neighboring towns, where he readily found those who became eager to sit at the feet of one possessed of so much mystic learning.
Thus the plans of the schemer progressed to his complete satisfaction, until the “Darbyites” began to hold regular night-gatherings with a view to a more complete organization, and for the perfecting of certain necessary charms. It appears surprising that in so short a time he should have been able to find so many victims, all of excellent character and social position. Of course, the “Nobodies,” as the uninvited were called, were not wanted,—and it was this class which stood off and hooted at the “Somebodies.”
The impostor was not long in giving his adherents to understand that nothing could be effected without money,—metal must be made to attract metal; and, however close-fisted they may have been in the ordinary affairs of life, the excited old farmers and shipmasters contributed liberally of their substance to further Darby’s scheme. Would they not be repaid a thousandfold when the treasures of the “Adventure” galley, buried with many a charm by Kidd’s own hand, should be given forth to the light of the moon?
Imagination must have wrought powerfully with them, giving their plodding, everyday hearts for the time a kind of poetry. No doubt they had wonderful dreams by night and day, and saw many a tempting vision:
“Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl;
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels.”
And now came the placing of the famous “Darby Rings,” one of which was situated near the main road between the villages of Warren and Bristol, and another at Mount Hope, once the home of the great Indian sachem, King Philip; while others still were, I believe, established.
The “Darby Ring” was merely a circle of some forty feet in diameter, about which the treasure-seekers, in single file, would follow their leader at a dog-trot, reciting some exceedingly silly jargon, and at times pausing to perform such grotesque and childish acts as at a more rational moment would have disgusted them. A part of my childhood was passed on the premises which embraced one of these; and although nearly forty years had then gone by since the feet of the Darbyites had paced its magic round, there were still visible some faint traces of what had been. The earth was a little depressed, and the outer edge of the circle showed something like a ridge.
It was in the southeast corner of an orchard; and, no doubt the soft, golden buttercups sprang there in Darby’s time, as they did when we children played about the spot years and years after.
The excitement was now at its height. Nothing was thought of among the dancing, prancing treasure-hunters but Kidd, with his black flag and his kegs of broad doubloons. With wild enthusiasm they recited the lines of the old doggerel, wherein he recounts his fortune:—
“I had ninety bars of gold,
As I sailed, as I sailed;
I had ninety bars of gold,
As I sailed;
I had ninety bars of gold,
And dollars manifold,
And riches uncontrolled,
As I sailed.”
At each nightly meeting they were required to carry in their hands sticks of witch-hazel, which were supposed to possess the power of enabling their holders to detect the presence of buried treasure. Thus each devotee had his little rod, carefully cut and trimmed in some deep old swamp, where he had sought it out with a seriousness and intentness of purpose that one smiles to think upon.
How they must have looked capering about the ring, each with his stick of witch-hazel!—not boys, but men,—grave, practical old fellows, some of whom had, perhaps, that very afternoon been hoeing corn in their own broad fields, and others taking account of cargoes of molasses and sugar at the village wharves.
That there might be no disposition to waver in the ranks, it was Darby’s custom to cheer his retainers with encouraging words; and his smooth and confident tones were as reassuring to them as the “honk” of the leading gander to a flock of wild geese.
“Only be true to me,” he would say, “and I will get the money,”—a remark of which they saw the significance a great deal better afterwards than they did at the time.