The murmuring word Mishawum has been forgotten. English subjects, long since gone to thrones in heaven, have left in the name “Charlestown” a whisper of their reverence, not for Charles Stuart himself, but for the lawful order and government of which he was the representative.
Charlestown’s hills are holy with the houses of God,—rightful descendants of that “Great House” which John Sagamore, the Aberginian chief, gave the Puritan Winthrop “free consent to build.” There is a little knoll, sloping toward the sunset, that is sacred with the dust of old-time saints. There is another, looking toward the sunrise, that is glorious with the blood of heroes. On the hill-tops beside the churches, on the slopes beside the buried great and good, all about the town, are the free schools of a people that wisely love their children and the future. Grim, and with some suggestion of remoteness, glower the barred windows of the prison that throws its shadow over those recreant sons that forget lesson and example. On the opposite side of the peninsula, among the massive conveniences of the Navy Yard, telling of uncounted treasure and unmeasured strength, throbs a pulse of the Government of the United States.
On every side are wharves, shipping, bridges, railroads, mighty enginery,—all the stupendous achievements of man’s ten little fingers and his unseen, resolute will, and amid them the thoughtful and genuine observer is thrilled as though he were walking the paths of a mountain land.
Here, on the 30th of October, in the year 1822, William and Tabitha R. Simonds became the parents of a son. This child was named William, but, as he is best known to his youthful readers as Walter Aimwell, in these pages he will be called by this latter name.
Charlestown was the birthplace and childhood’s home of Walter Aimwell; and, when it was no longer the place of his actual residence, his feet retrod its streets as often as his limited leisure permitted.
I must think these facts had some degree of influence upon his mind and character. His intellect had such a power of quiet observation, and of ready and just reflection, that the objects about him could not escape his attention, nor could the significance of those objects. Charlestown, like a noble matron of old Greece, hung about his childhood and youth a tapestry of stately figures; and he was always familiar with the pictured legends of freedom and conscience and power and patience and triumph.
Let no young reader misunderstand this. No surroundings can, of themselves, make a youth noble. In regard to everything that grows, from a tiny plant to a grand character, it is true that not all depends upon the soil and climate; quite as much results from the intention or action of the roots in the soil. Plant a thistle in the loam of the garden, it will be a thistle still,—a thistle of thistles, perhaps, yet a thistle. But Walter Aimwell had no wish to be a cumberer of the ground; and the fibres of his attentive mind reached about, and found, and silently drank in, the ennobling suggestions of the great Present and the illustrious Past.
CHAPTER II.
SALEM.
When Walter Aimwell was about six years of age, his father, a man of kind disposition and religious principle, was removed by death. Soon after their bereavement, the family left Charlestown, and took up their abode in Salem. Here Walter, who was the third of four sons, remained until he was nearly thirteen years of age.