NAVY-YARD, KITTERY, MAINE.
Formerly, in leaving the church door, you were confronted by a sombre old mansion, having, in despite of some relics of a former splendor, an unmistakable air of neglect and decay. The massive entrance door hung by a single fastening, the fluted pilasters on either side were rotting away, window panes were shattered, chimney tops in ruins, the fences prostrate. It was nothing but a wreck ashore. This was the house built by Lady Pepperell, after the death of Sir William. Report said it was haunted; indeed I found it so, and by a living phantom.
Repeated and long-continued knocking was at length answered by a tremulous effort from within to open the door, which required the help of my companion and myself to effect. I shall never forget the figure that appeared to us:
"We stood and gazed;
Gazed on her sunburned face with silent awe,
Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw."
Poor Sally Cutts, a harmless maniac, was the sole inhabitant of the old house; she and it were fallen into hopeless ruin together. Her appearance was weird and witch-like, and betokened squalid poverty. An old calash almost concealed her features from observation, except when she raised her head and glanced at us in a scared, furtive sort of way. Yet beneath this wreck, and what touched us keenly to see, was the instinct of a lady of gentle breeding that seemed the last and only link between her and the world. With the air and manner of the drawing-room of fifty years ago she led the way from room to room.
We tracked with our feet the snow that had drifted in underneath the hall door. The floors were bare, and echoed to our tread. Fragments of the original paper, representing ancient ruins, had peeled off the walls, and vandal hands had wrenched away the pictured tiles from the fire-places. The upper rooms were but a repetition of the disorder and misery below stairs.
Our hostess, after conducting us to her own apartment, relapsed into imbecility, and seemed little conscious of our presence. Some antiquated furniture, doubtless family heir-looms, a small stove, and a bed, constituted all her worldly goods. As she crooned over a scanty fire of two or three wet sticks, muttering to herself, and striving to warm her withered hands, I thought I beheld in her the impersonation of Want and Despair.
Her family was one of the most distinguished of New England, but a strain of insanity developed itself in her branch of the genealogical tree. Of three brothers—John, Richard, and Robert Cutt—who, in 1641, emigrated from Wales, the first became president of the Province of New Hampshire, the second settled on the Isles of Shoals, and the third at Kittery, where he became noted as a builder of ships.