Tales of the Chesapeake Part 3

I climbed over the coping of the graveyard wall last spring, and followed my companion, the narrator of the following story, to what appeared to be the very oldest portion of the inclosure. The tombstones were in some cases quite illegible as to inscriptions, worn bare and smooth by more than a century's rains and chipping frosts, and others were sunken deep in the gra.s.s so as to afford only partial recompense for the epitaph hunter.

"This is the Ticking Stone," said my companion, pointing to a rec.u.mbent slab, worn smooth and scarcely showing a trace of former lettering; "put your ear upon it while I pull away the weeds, and then note if you hear any thing."

I laid my ear upon the mossy stone, and almost immediately felt an audible, almost tangible ticking, like that of a lady's watch.

"You are scratching the stone, Pusey," I cried to my informant.

"No! Upon my honor! That is not the sound of a scratch that you hear.

It cannot be any insect nor any process of moving life in the stone or beneath it. Can you liken it to any thing but the equal motion of a rather feeble timepiece?"

I listened again, and this time longer, and a sort of superst.i.tion grew over me, so that had I been alone, probably I would have experienced a sense of timid loneliness. To stand amidst those silent memorial stones of the early times and hear a watch beat beneath one of them as perfectly as you can feel it in your vest pocket, and then to feel your heart start nervously at the recognition of this disa.s.sociated sound, is not satisfying, even when in human company.

"This is the best ghost I have ever found," I said. "Perhaps some one has slipped a watch underneath, for it is somebody's watch; there _is_ something real in it."

"I took the stone up once myself," said Pusey, "and the ticking then seemed to come up from the ground. While I deliberated, an old man came out of yonder old s.e.xton-looking house, and warned me not to disturb the dead. He crossed the wall, and a.s.sisted me to replace the stone, and then bade me sit down upon it, ancient mariner-like, while he disclosed the cause of the phenomenon."

Here my companion stopped a minute--and in the pause we could hear the old trees wave very solemnly above us, and a nut, or burr, or sycamore ball, came rattling down the old kirk roof as we stood there in the graves, to startle us the more, and then he said:

"It is just as queer as the tale he told me--the disappearance of that old man. n.o.body about here can recognize him from my descriptions. He walked toward the old mill down the Newark road, and the next time I looked up he was gone. The people in the house there think I am flighty in my mind for insisting upon his appearance to me at all."

"Go on with the tale right here, my flesh-creeping friend," I said.

"It will do us good to feel occasionally solemn."

"This stone, young man," said my Quakerly rebuker, in a hard country farmer's voice; "this stone is the London Tract Ticking Stone. It is the oldest preacher and admonitor in this churchyard. It is older than the graves of any of the known pastors or communicants round about it.

"In the year 1764 the comparative solitude of this region was broken by a large party of chain-bearers, rod-men, axe-men, commissaries, cooks, baggage-carriers, and camp-followers. They had come by order of Lord Baltimore and William Penn, to terminate a long controversy between two great landed proprietors, and they were led by Charles Mason, of the Royal Observatory, at Greenwich, England, and by Jeremiah Dixon, the son of a collier discovered in a coalpit. For three years they continued westward, running their stakes over mountains and streams, like a gypsy camp in appearance, frightening the Indians with their sorcery. But, near this spot, they halted longest, to fix with precision the tangent point, and the point of intersection of three States--the circular head of Delaware, the ab.u.t.ting right angle of Maryland, and the tiny pan-handle of Pennsylvania.

"The people of this region were spa.r.s.e in number, but of strong, sober, and yet wild characteristics. The long boundary quarrel had made them predatory, and though G.o.d-fearing people, they would fight with all their religious intensity for their right in the land and the dominion of their particular province. They suspended their feuds when the surveying battalion came into their broken country, and looked with curious interest upon all that pertained to the distinguished foreign mathematicians. Around their camp of tents and pack-mules, peddlers and preachers called together their motley congregations, and the sound of axes clearing the timber was accompanied by fiddling and haranguing, the fighting of dogs, and the coa.r.s.e tones of religious or business oratory. It was in the height of the era of the great period of the Dissenters in England, and Methodist, Baptist, and Calvinistic zealots were piercing to the boundaries of English-speaking people, wild forerunners of those organized bands of clergy which were speedily to make our colonies sober-minded, and prepare them for self-government.

"Charles Mason was the scientific spirit of the party--a cool, observing, painstaking, plodding man, slow in his processes and reliable in his conclusions, and the bond of friends.h.i.+p between himself and Dixon was that of two unequal minds admiring the superiorities of each other. They had already proceeded together to the Cape of Good Hope on two occasions to study an eclipse and an occultation. Mason liked Dixon for his ready spirits, almost improvident courage, speed with details, and worldly bearing. Though little is known of their memories now, because they left us no prolific records and spent much of the period of service among us in the midst of the wilderness or in the reticence required for mathematical calculation, yet they were the successors of Was.h.i.+ngton in the surveying of the Alleghany ridges. Their survey was reliable; the line was true. How much superior does it stand to-day to the line of thirty degrees thirty minutes, which is the next great political parallel below it, and was partly run only a few years afterwards! Up to their line for the next hundred years flowed the waters of slavery, but sent no human drop beyond, which did not evaporate in the free light of a milder sun. G.o.d speed the surveyor, whoever he be, who plants the stakes of a tranquil commonwealth and leaves them to be the limit of bad principles, the pioneer line of good ones!

"Charles Mason had spent many years of his life, up to his old age, experimenting with timepieces of his own invention. Many years before, Sir Isaac Newton had called the attention of the British Government to the necessity for an accurate portable time-keeper at sea, to determine longitude, and in 1714 Parliament offered a reward of 20,000 pounds sterling for such a chronometer. Thenceforward for fifty years the inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion and uncommunicative self-reliance that none knew, none will ever know, the motive principle he employed or the enginery he devised. While he was working at this survey, near the spot at which we stand, the Board of Award gave the 20,000 to one John Harrison, almost at the very instant when Mason and Dixon's line was begun. This you can confirm by any history of Horology. Charles Mason lived down to the year 1787, surviving Dixon, who had died in England ten years previously, and he was known to say to the end of his days, to people resident in Philadelphia, that a child had eaten up 20,000 belonging to him at a single mouthful.

"The child whom the neighborhood at that time accused of this act was known in later life as Fithian Minuit, babe of a woman of mixed English and Finnish-Dutch descent, who came from the fishermen's town of Head of Elk, a few hours jog to the southward, to sell fish to the surveying camp. She was a woman of mingled severity of features and bodily obesity, uniting in one temper and frame the Scandinavian and the Low Dutch traits, ignorant good-humor, grim commerce, and stolid appet.i.te. Her baby was the fattest, quaintest, and ugliest in the country; ready to devour any thing, to grin at any thing, go to the arms of everybody, and, in short, it represented all the traits of the Middle State races--the government of the members, including the brain, by the belly.

"One day this Finnish-Dutch baby--aged perhaps two years--was picked up by one of the a.s.sistant surveyors and carried into the tent of Charles Mason. The great surveyor was at that instant bending down over a small metallic object which he was examining through the medium of a lens. He recognized the child, and seemed glad of the opportunity to dismiss more serious occupation from his mind, so he instantly leaped up and poked the fat urchin with his thumb, tempting the bite of its teeth with his forefinger, and was otherwise reducing his tired faculties to the needs of a child's amus.e.m.e.nt, when suddenly the voice of its mother at the tent's opening drew him away.

"'Fresh fish, mighty surveyor! Fall shad, and the most beautiful yellow perch. Buy something for the sake of Minuit's baby!'

"The celebrated surveyor, who seemed in an admirable humor, stepped just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval his a.s.sistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and picked up the tiny object lying there under the magnifying gla.s.s.

"'This is the little ticking seducer which absorbs my master's time,'

he said. 'Why, it isn't big enough for an infant to count the minutes of its life upon it!'

"At this the fat, good-humored baby, antic.i.p.ating something to eat, reached out its hands. The surveyor's a.s.sistant, in a moment of mischief, put the object in the child's grasp. The child clutched it, bit at it, and swallowed it whole in an instant.

"Before the a.s.sistant surveyor could think of any other harm done than the possible choking of the child, the child's mother and the great surveyor entered the tent. The arms of the first reached for her offspring, and of the second for the subject of his experiment.

"'My chronometer!'

"'The child of the fish-woman ate it!'

"The fish-woman screamed, and reversed the urchin after the manner of mothers, and swung him to and fro like a pendulum. He came up a trifle red in the face, but laughing as usual, and the ludicrous inappositeness of the great loss, the unconscious cause of it, the baby's wonderful digestion, the a.s.sistant's distress, and the surveyor's calm but pallid self-control, made Jeremiah Dixon, dropping in at the minute, roar with laughter.

"'Dixon,' said Mason, 'the work of half my life, my everlasting timepiece, just completed and set going, has found a temperature where it requires no compensation balance.'

"'I am glad of it,' said his a.s.sociate, 'for now we can proceed with Mason and Dixon's line, and nothing else!'

"A look, more of pity than of reproach, pa.s.sed over Mason's scarcely ruffled face--the pity of one man solely conscious of a great object lost, for another, indifferent or ignorant both of the object and the loss. He took the smiling urchin in his hands, and raising it upon his shoulder, placed his ear to its side. Thence came with faint regularity the sound of a simple, gentle ticking. They all heard it by turns, and, while they paused in puzzled wonder and humor, the undaunted infant looked down as innocent as a chubby, cheery face painted on some household clock. The innocent expression of the child touched the mathematician's heart. He filled a gla.s.s with good Madeira wine, and drank the devourer's health in these benignant words:

"'May Minuit's baby run as long and as true as the article on which he has made his meal!'

"Next day they set the great stone in the corner of the State of Maryland, and, breaking camp, vanished westward through the cleft of light opened by their pioneers, pursued yet for many miles by a motley mult.i.tude.

"Before many years this fertile country filled up with hamlets, mills, and churches; the War of Independence scarcely interrupted its prosperity, because the Quaker element adhered with constancy to neither side, and only one campaign was fought here. The story of the boy who ate a watch pa.s.sed out of general knowledge and remark; he was known to have been a drummer at the battle of Chadd's Ford, and to have buried his mother before the close of the war, at the Delaware fis.h.i.+ng hamlet of Marcus Hook, amongst her Finnish progenitors.

"But soon after the peace, the short, fat body and queer, merry Dutch face of Fithian Minuit were known all along the roads of Chester, Cecil, and Newcastle counties, by parts of the people of three States, as components of one of the least offensive, most industrious, and most lively and popular young chaps around the head of the Chesapeake.

"He was respectful with the old and congenial with the young--always going and never tired, up early and late, of a chirruping sort of address and an equal temper, and while he appeared to be thrifty and money-making, he did all manner of good turns for the high and the humble; and, although everybody said he was the homeliest young man in the region, yet more village girls went to their front doors to see him than if he had been a showman coming to town to do feats of magic.

He was not unintelligent either, and could play on the violin, compute accounts equal to the best country book-keeper, and as he was of religious turn, although attached to no particular denomination, the meeting-houses on every side, hardly excepting the Quakers themselves, delighted to see him drive up on Sundays and tell an anecdote to the children and sing a little air, half-hymn sort, half stave, but always given with a good countenance, which apologized for the worldly notes of it. If any severe interpreter of Christian amus.e.m.e.nts took the people to task for tolerating such a universal and desultory character, there were others to rise up and ask what evil or pa.s.sionate word or act of sorry behavior in Fithian Minuit could be instanced. The severe Francis Asbury himself raised the question once on the Bohemia Manor amongst the Methodists, and got so little support that he charged young Minuit with the possession of some devilish art or spell to entrap the people; but Fithian once, when the good itinerant's horse broke down on the road, met Mr. Asbury, won his affections, and mended his big silver watch.

"This mending of clocks, watches, and every description of time-keepers was the occupation of Minuit. He had picked up the art, some said, from a Yankee in the army at the close of the war, and certainly no man of his time or territory had such good luck with timepieces. Residing in the little village of Christina (by the pretentious called Christi-anna, and by the crude, with nearer rect.i.tude, called Crist_ene_), Fithian kept a snug little shop full of all manners and forms of clocks, dials, sand-gla.s.ses, hour-burning candles, water-clocks, and night tapers. He had amended and improved the new Graham clock, called the 'dead scapement,' or 'dead-beat escapement' (the origin of our modern word _dead-beat_, signifying a man who does not meet his engagements, whereas the original 'dead-beat' was the most faithful engagements-keeper of its time.

Perhaps a dead-beat nowadays is a time-server; for this would be a correct derivation). From this shop the young Minuit, in a plain but reliable wagon, with a nag never fast and never slow, and indifferent to temperatures, travelled the country for a radius of forty miles--not embarra.s.sed even by the Delaware, which he crossed once a month, and attended fully to the temporal and partly to the spiritual needs of all the Jerseymen betwixt Elsinborough and Swedesboro.

"Over the door of Minuit's whitewashed cabin on the knoll of Christina was the sign of a jovial, fat person, bearing some resemblance to himself, in the centre of whose stomach stood a clock inscribed, 'My time is everybody's.' Past this little shop went the entire long caravan and cavalcade by land between the North and South, stage-coaches, mail-riders, highwaymen, chariots, herdsters, and tramps; for Christina bridge was on the great tide-water road and at the head of navigation on the Swedish river of the same name, so that here vessels from the Delaware transferred their cargo to wagons, and a portage of only ten miles to the Head of Elk gave goods and pa.s.sengers res.h.i.+pment down the Chesapeake. This village declined only when the ca.n.a.l just below it was opened in 1829 and a little railway in 1833. It was nearly a century and a half old when Minuit set his sign there, before General Was.h.i.+ngton went past it to be inaugurated.

From Fithian's window the pleasant land was seen spread out below him beyond the Christina; and the Swedish, Dutch, and English farms smiled from their loamy levels on sails which moved with scarcely perceptible motion through the narrow d.y.k.es planted with greenest willows. Before his door the teamsters, ill-tempered with las.h.i.+ng and swearing at their teams in the ruts of Iron Hill, schoolboys from Nottingham, millers' men from Upper White Clay, and bargemen and stage pa.s.sengers, recovered temper to see the sign of the great paunch with a timepiece set so naturally in it indicating the hour of dinner. Within they found the clock-maker, with face beaming as if reflected from a watch-case, working handily amongst a hundred ticking pieces, of which he looked to be one. There were large sundials for the outer walls of barns and farm-houses, very popular in the Pennsylvania hills; sand-gla.s.ses for the Peninsula, where it cost nothing to fill them; and hour-burning candles, much affected by the Chesapeake gentry, which gave at once light and time. There were ancient striking clocks, such as the monks may have used to disturb them for early prayers, which, with a horrible rattle of wheels and clash of heavy weights, hammered the alarm. There were the tremendous watches of river captains who had aspired to go to sea, and old crutch escapement watches which Huygens himself had perhaps handled in Holland. The window was filled with trains of wheels and pinions, snails and racks, crystals, and faces and watches, cackling at each other. There were striking clocks which rung chimes or rocked like little vessels on apparent billows, or started off with notes like gra.s.shoppers. A hundred of the most musical tree-frogs shut up in a piano might give a feeble notion of the tunes and thrummings a.s.sembled in this shop. It was the same day or night, and the power of Fithian Minuit over time-keepers was nearly miraculous. He appeared to be able to smile an old watch into action. Transferred to his hand, some spent and rusty sentinel, long silent and useless, seemed to feel the warmth of the mender and resumed the round of duty. He would buy from the old estate halls on the Sa.s.safras and the Chester rivers, tall, solemn clocks, dead to the purpose of their creation, their stately learned faces lost to former automatic expressions or waggery, and when exposed to the infectious influences of his shop, a gurgle of sound as of the inhalation of air into their lungs had been heard, according to some people, and next day the carca.s.s of the clock would be found resonant and its faculties recovered. One day the great patriots, John d.i.c.kinson and Caesar Rodney, riding past Christina together, stopped for dinner, and sent their watches in to be cleaned meantime.

"'Minuit,' said Rodney, 'you are a devil with a time-keeper!'

"'Nay, Minuit,' said d.i.c.kinson, 'thou art the gentlest custodian of time in our parts. I would some one could regulate these States and times like thee.'

"The country round resorted to Minuit for repairs, but he generally came himself along the roads fortuitously about the time anybody's dials stood still. He was almost equal as a weather prophet to his fame as a mechanic, and as his broad, fat face, blue eyes, and portly body pa.s.sed some farmer's gate, the cheery cry would go up, perhaps:

"'Make hay--the wind's right!' or again: 'Time enough, farmer, with another pair of hands. But it's coming from the east!'

"Had it been possible to suggest any superst.i.tion about a man universally popular, people would have said that this henchman of time and minute-hand of diligence drew his power from doubtful sources.

Further north, where there was less superst.i.tion than amongst these mingled unspiritualized populations, Minuit might have been burnt as a wizard. A little doctor in the Deutsch hills, who once prescribed for the clock-mender, reported that his pulse had a metallic beat, and, looking suddenly up, he saw, where Minuit's face had been, a round clock face looking down and ticking at him. This doctor was a worthless fellow, however, and loose of tongue. Minuit, it was observed, never used a tuning-fork in church, like all leaders of religious music, but cast his eyes down a moment towards his heart, and tapped his foot, and then, as if catching the pitch somewhere from within, he raised the tune and carried it forward with an exquisite sense of rhythm.

"A very old man and a cripple, who lived across the way from Minuit's, affected to observe extraordinary changes in his stature according to the weather changes, elongating as the temperature rose, and in very cold weather sinking into himself; this man also observed, on the day of a solar eclipse, that for the period there was nothing at all in the place where the clock-mender's head had been except a ring of light which enlarged as the disk of the sun was released. But who could rely upon the vagaries of an old man, who could do nothing but make memoranda out of his window upon the doings of his neighbors?

"If anybody knew more than that Fithian Minuit was an obliging, neighborly man, and a model for mechanics, it must have been the subject of his romance. He was related to have told all that he knew upon the mystery of his being to his clergyman, and there is nothing now to confirm the gossip; for the preacher himself has gone to sleep in the old Shrewsbury graveyard in Maryland.

"At Port Penn, where the last island in the channel of the lower Delaware now raises its flaming beacon, and the belated collier steers safely by Reedy Island light, lived the daughter of an old West India and coasting captain, who would permit his chronometers to be repaired and cleaned by n.o.body but Minuit. His cottage stood where now there is a broad and sandy street leading to a wooden pier and to bathing-houses on a pleasure beach. The few people near at hand were pilots, captains of bay craft, and grain-buyers; although the Dutch and Swedish farms, alternating with long marshes, musical with birds, had lined the wide Delaware at this point many a year. In calm, sunny weather, the broad beauty of the river and its low gold and emerald sh.o.r.es, with bulky vessels swinging up on the slow full tide, combined the sceneries of America and the Netherlands; but when a gale blew over the low sh.o.r.es, scattering the reed-birds like the golden pollen of the marsh lilies, and cold white gulls succeeded, diving and careening like sharks of the sky, the s.h.i.+ps and coasters felt no serenity in these wide yeasty reaches of the Delaware bay, and they labored to drop anchor behind the natural breakwater of Reedy Island.

There, cl.u.s.tering about as thickly in that olden time as they now seek from all the ocean round the costly shelter of Henlopen breakwater, coaster and pirate, fisherman and slaver, sent up the prayer a beneficent government has since granted in the fullest measure, for a perfect Coast Survey and a vigilant Lighthouse Board.

"The daughter of Captain Lum was named Lois, and she was the junior of Fithian Minuit by several years, a slender, beautiful girl, with hair and eyes of the softest brown, and household ways, daughterly and endearing.