Few places can present a more delightful promenade than this front of Harrisburg; and the writer hereof has more than once sought to express his appreciation of the walk and the gorgeousness of the views to be enjoyed therefrom. The scene is ever fresh—ever delightsome, to one who has an eye for the beautiful of nature, and a heart to be warmed into the enjoyment of that beautiful. No frequency of indulgence palls the appetite here—no change of season diminishes the attraction. Whether the stream murmurs round the projecting rock and over masses of pebbles that mark its bed and are visible in summer, or whether the current dashes deep and bold, fed by the melting snows of the upper mountains, it is beautiful; beautiful in its simple exhibition—beautiful in its terrible grandeur. Whether the setting sun steeps the current in liquid, tremulous light, or the wild, tempestuous blasts of January heap up the waters in dark and chaffing masses, all is beautiful; and men go forth to gaze in quiet enjoyment on the peaceful flow of July, or to enrich and stimulate their feelings with the all-conquering power of the down-rushing torrent of March.
Indulging in dreamy pleasure one morning late in June, while contemplating the loveliness of the scene, I cast my eyes away to the mountains through which the river forces its course a few miles above the town, and was delighted to see the first evidences of the rising sun in the yellow light that tinged the topmost peaks of those mighty promontories, while heavy wreaths of mist, engendered on the ground below, were rolling upward, like giants anxious to bathe early in the sunlight—an enjoyment that must have cost them existence, or, perhaps, only present visibility.
I can now recall some of the reflections to which the magnificent scene gave rise. Those children of the mist, that tended upward, were they only imaginary beings? only the workmanship of my fancy, upon the crude materials that sprung up from the fens? or were those misty shapes indeed the essential forms of spirits, whose tendencies were upward—who, though dragged downward by the grossness of their outward covering, which affected its home and would abide in its cold, dark birth-place, struggled upward to the light and heat, and were released from the clogging properties of the visible and the impure, while they put on the invisible and the purified?
I knew the law of physics, by which the ascensive power of matter is augmented by heat, and consequently felt that some of those who were sleeping in the vicinity, would have referred all those misty images of the mountains to well known and always occurring circumstances. I admit that natural causes produce just such effects as the ascension of these wreaths of mist. But may not He who enacts the laws by which all these events occur, connect also the state, habits and tendencies of some class of beings with the operation of those laws? Because the sun gives light and heat to the system of which it is the centre, because we know that it riseth and goeth down, and because we can calculate the influence of its light and heat upon our planet, does it follow that the same body may not be the home of millions of rational beings, who would laugh if told that we, mundane men, thought that luminous body made for the convenience of the earth?
I was calculating the effect upon one who should, while standing on that mountain, venture to address these wreathy forms, and find himself understood and answered, when the presence of a person whom I had once or twice seen, at the peep of dawn,
“Brushing, with hasty steps, the dew away,”
renewed a resolution of putting to him a question as to the origin of a certain enclosure in the vicinity. There was, between the upper bank and the edge of the river, directly in front of the town, a small enclosure, perhaps fifteen feet square, surrounded by a decaying board fence, and having in it two miserably looking Lombardy poplars, touched with all the squalidness of decay which characterizes the age of that short-lived tree. Brambles, too, had sprung up in the enclosure, and they covered a small rising of the ground, with some invisible emblems. My object was to know why such a place was allowed in front of the town; why it was made, and why thus continued.
“That,” said my friend, “is the grave of old Mr. Harris, for whom the town was named, long before they thought of building the capitol yonder. But there is a long story connected with the matter, and you can learn the whole of it if you will call, with proper motives and in a proper manner, upon a descendant of the old patriarch who resides in the neighborhood.”
Now, I saw in this man some signals of fancy, and I felt determined to get the story out of him. But he professed to be in too much haste; he had his day’s work to perform, and he had almost forgotten the story. But I persevered with him and obtained some account, which, after eleven years, I put on paper, not venturing to quote my friend for authority, telling the story not exactly as ’twas told to me, but as I recollect and reconstruct the narrative.
Mr. Harris was one of the pioneers of Pennsylvania. He saw the country rich and beautiful before him, and “went forth and stood and measured the earth” in and around the place where now stands the borough which bears his name. The beauty of scenery, the delicate softness of the valley contrasting with the towering summits of the mountains around, made the place exceedingly desirable. He, like the men of his times, had an eye for the beautiful, and a far-reaching ken that took in the future with the present; and so he sat down on the shores of the Susquehanna, on what was then perhaps an island, though now a part of the main land.