LADY FENWICK'S TOMB. dition, or nearly so, and a lock of it is preserved in an air-tight box in the Acton Library at Saybrook. to Hartford, had just returned with instructions from the General Court, stepped forward and forbade the reading. The clerk of Andros attempted to go on. "Silence!" roared Captain Bull; and then with deep sonorous voice he recited the protest of the Hartford authorities. When he had finished, Sir Edmund Andros, pleased with his boldness and soldier-like bearing, asked his name. "My name is Bull, Sir." "Ball! It is a pity your horns were not tipped with silver!" Andros wrote to his royal master after his return to New York that nothing could be done with officers or people in Connecticut, for the existing government was bent upon defending its chartered rights. Saybrook's historical point, where the lordly palaces of Europe were to have been and are not, was the seat of the first Yale College. The building was one story high and eighty feet long, and, together with the lot, was a donation from Nathaniel Lynde, the great Saybrook land-holder, who was a grandson of the Earl of Digby. The books which formed the college library were do By-the-way, this library, which was dedicated with great enthusiasm on July 4, 1874, will repay a visit. It is an institution which originated with the ladies of Say-nated by the ministers in the vicinity. The brook about twenty years ago, but which remained to take definite shape through the gift of a lot to the trustees by Hon. Thomas C. Acton, the well-known President of the Board of Police Commissioners in New York city in the time of the draft riot. He was also chiefly instrumental in raising funds to erect the handsome building, which, in grateful recognition, was christened the Acton Library. It contains some seventeen hundred volumes already, and the germ of a museum of relics and curiosities. It is sitnated on one of the principal streets of Say-presently a warrant was issued to the sheriff brook, directly opposite the summer residence and attractive grounds of Mr. Acton. An attempt was made in 1675 to annex Saybrook and its surrounding territory to New York. Sir Edmund Andros appeared off the coast with an armed fleet, and demanded the surrender of the fort in the name of the Duke of York. "We will die first," was the reply of Captain Bull, the commander. The garrison was immediately drawn up and prepared for action. Andros did not wish to incur bloodshed, and sent pacific messages. He finally proposed an interview with the officers, and landed. He was received courteously. But when he ordered the duke's patent and his own commission to be read, Captain Bull, whose messenger, sent in hot haste scholarly people of Lyme and Saybrook enjoyed the privilege of attending fifteen Commencements, and sixty of the graduates of that period afterward became distinguished in the ministry. When the subject was agitated of removing the institution to New Haven, these two ancient towns at the Connecticut's mouth arrayed themselves in open opposition. But potent influences were working elsewhere. The Governor and his royal council finally visited Saybrook in state-it was in the summer of 1718-and to convey the college library to New Haven. He proceeded to the house where the books were kept, and found resolute men assembled to resist his authority. He summoned aid, entered forcibly, and placed the books THE ACTON LIBRARY, SAYBROOK. under a strong guard for the night. In the hour. Lyme embraces a number of small vilmorning every cart provided for the jour- lages scattered over its wide territory, and ney was found broken, and the horses were the intervening drives are exceptionally atindulging in the liberty of a free country. tractive. The road to North Lyme winds Other conveyances were obtained, and the among sharp steeps, wild crags, around glimtroubled sheriff was escorted out of Say-mering lakes, through weird ravines and brook by a company of soldiers. But, alas! the bridges on the road to New Haven were all destroyed. After multiplied delays and vexations the end of the route was reached, when, lo! three hundred of the books were missing, also valuable papers. It was whispered that they had been spirited away and buried. Saybrook is larger than Lyme, and more given to business. Its streets are broad and beautiful, and well lined with the venerated trees which the first settlers planted. Its homes are mostly surrounded with spacious gardens and grounds. It has a newness hardly in keeping with its length of years, but many houses are standing, nevertheless, which have tasted the salt air for three and four half-centuries, and are full of historic charms and associations. Prominent among them is the Hart mansion. It was built by Captain Elisha Hart, the son of the old minister of Saybrook, and brother of Major-General William Hart, one of the original purchasers of the three and onehalf million acres of land in Ohio known as the "Western Reserve." Captain Hart married the daughter of John M'Curdy, of Lyme, and they were the parents of seven of the most beautiful women on this side of the Atlantic. Two of these daughters were courted and wed under this roof by the distinguished naval officers, Commodore Isaac and Commodore Joseph Hull. It was the residence of Commodore Isaac Hull and his family for many years. A third daughter married Hon. Heman Allen, United States minister to South America. A fourth married the celebrated Rev. Dr. Jarvis. The house teems with incident, and many a thrilling romance might be gathered from its silent halls. Saybrook has five miles or more of seabeach, presided over by Fenwick Hall, a great elegant summer hotel, which draws annually hundreds of visit ors. Lyme and Saybrook are about ten minutes by railroad apart; by carriage and the picturesque old Connecticut River ferry-boat, with its white sail, perhaps an darksome gorges, every now and then emerging into the broad sunlight upon the top of some remarkable elevation, where magnificent views may be obtained, stretching for miles up the Connecticut and across the Sound, with the valleys of soft green, the pretty curving creeks reflecting the blue sky, and Lyme half hidden among the leaves below. The variety in the landscape would drive an artist to distraction. It is a singular mixture of the wild and the tame, of the austere and the cheerful. A beautiful lake some two miles long lies among these hills, seemingly thrown in by nature hap-hazard as a sort of plaything for her subjects. The Mohegan Indians had a settlement upon its shore in the olden times, and their bark canoes skimmed its polished surface in all weathers. It abounds in legends. When piracy was at its zenith, several noted brigands were in hiding for some time in a cave near "Lion's Rock," and it was afterward currently reported that Captain Kidd had buried a box of treasures under the same overhanging bowlder. Two negro slaves stole away one dark night to dig for it, armed with a Bible, which they had been told it was necessary to read aloud whenever the devil should make his appearance to THE HART MANSION. protect the property. They were followed to their ghostly task by some waggish young men, who hid near by to watch operations. For a time there was no sound save the steady stroke of the pick-axe into the earth. All at once there was a clink as if it had hit some hard substance. "Quick, Sambo, read de Bible; I hear de debel down dar," cried Pete. Sambo scrambled for the book and turned over the leaves. "Read, Sambo, read; de debel am gettin' hold ob de lid ob de box." "I can't find de place, de debel he shake me so," said Sambo, dropping the Bible and running, followed by Pete, neither looking behind them nor pausing until they had accomplished the whole five miles to the town. Upon the heights near this lake is the residence of the celebrated Rev. Dr. E. F. Burr, author of Pater Mundi, Ecce Cœlum, and other works, who is the pastor of the church in North Lyme. To the west a short distance, near the old homestead of the Elys, and on one of the highest points in the region, is the elegant country-seat of Mr. Z. S. Ely, of New York. This romantic corner of Lyme was the ancient home of the Seldens and Sterlings, one branch of the Lords, and other notable families. It was here that John Pierrepont, the poet, wooed and won his pretty Lord bride; and it was also here that Henry Howard Brownell's last poem was written. Lyme, notwithstanding its uneven surface, has very little waste land. Agriculture and the raising of horses, mules, and horned cattle have been a great source of wealth to the inhabitants, particularly in former years. The shad-fisheries in the Connecticut have also yielded large profits; and shell and other fish have been taken plentifully from the Sound. The town has a thrifty, well-cared-for appearance even to its remotest borders, and a quiet, unconscious aspect, as if the stormy world had rained only peace and contentment upon its legendary soil and historic homes. It is one of the loveliest nooks on the New England coast; and if its distinguished sons and daughters could all be gathered home, the world might well pause to exclaim, in figurative language, "However small a tree in the great orchard, Lyme is a matchless producer of fruit." QUATRAINS. SPENDTHRIFT. THE fault's not mine, you understand: FAME. Such kings of shreds have wooed and won her, Such crafty knaves her laurel owned, It has become almost an honor Not to be crowned. EPICS AND LYRICS. It sometimes chances that the stanchest boat A CHILD'S GRAVE. A little mound with chipped head-stone, The grass-ah me!-uncut about the eward, Summer by summer left alone, With one white lily keeping watch and ward. TO ANY POEТ. Out of the thousand verses you have writ, THE HEATHEN. Let me o'erleap that custom; for I can not -SHAKSPEARE. T was once commonly believed that kings, ministers, statesmen, heroes, philosophers, and great folks generally exercised a controlling influence in moulding the character of centuries and directing the destinies of nations, while stars, planets, comets, aurora borealis, eclipses, and other highnesses (more or less serene) participated in their honors and responsibilities. Lord Bacon embalms the popular faith in one of his terse aphorisms: "Princes are like unto heavenly bodies, which cause good VOL. LII.-No. 309.-22 or evil times, and have much veneration, but no rest." Modern biographers and interviewers leave our princes neither rest nor veneration; and it requires the least smattering of science to perceive that nowadays the heavenly bodies have no hand in the management of our public affairs. Princes and planets being thus dethroned and discredited, our political philosophers have turned in an opposite direction, and now maintain that the people themselves are the true sources of power, while wisdom and counsel are only to be found in the voice of the multitude. And in compliment to the grangers, who are rapidly becoming a power in the land, we will proceed further to illustrate our faith by likening a free people to a mighty tree, deep-rooted, wide - branching, cloudtouching, with foliage of perennial greenbacks and fruits for the healing of the na tions, especially the effete monarchies of healthy altitude of a thousand feet or more Europe and the barbarous hordes which in- above the ocean tides, is enabled through: fest this and other continents. As for offi- his weekly telescopic journal to contemcials, those pretentious governmental agen-plate the folly and confusion of the great cies to whom so much power and influence world beneath, calmly wondering how it were formerly attributed, what are they in our eyes but so many troublesome vermin, taking the color, taste, and odor of the plant which engenders them; squirming borers secretly sucking the sap that flows up from the vigorous roots; greedy caterpillars pitching their subtle tents where the green-backed leaves grow thickest; strident ephemera that by luck or impudence have succeeded in crawling to the topmost boughs, thence to be picked off and gobbled by some investigating tomtit, or whirled by the next popular breeze into contemptuous oblivion? has happened that all the knaves, blockheads, and bunglers together should have been selected to run the machinery, when there is so much intelligence and honesty going to waste among the unemployed spectators; so many statesmen out of place who carry on the tip of their tongues the simple word which, like a cabalistic charm, would silence all this stupid wrangling, but they can't get a hearing; good Samaritans who are ready with their flask of olive-oi! to mollify the vinegar, pepper, and mustard of this pungent salad, but the people don't Glistening in the many-colored light of seem to like oil in their messes; so much a free press, and quivering with the winds untried integrity, which, like Hazael of old, of free discussion, the character and prod-exclaims, "Is thy servant a dog that he uct of our national plant, as it shows above- should do this thing?" but is never intrustground, would seem to be sufficiently welled with the opportunity. understood; but the wise cultivator knows the tree of liberty is not an air plant, and in seeking assurance of its continued health, growth, and fruitfulness, he must consider the wide-spreading, hard-working system of roots-that humble brotherhood which with obscure and unceasing labor draws life and vigor from the bounteous earth to sustain the whole; and it is precisely because we happen to be located in the midst of one of these distant and obscure bunches of rootlets, and have had occasion to observe how the political sap which sustains our free institutions is elaborated, that we feel justified in enlightening the public with our personal experiences. Shrinking from the competition, and underrating the prizes offered in the great world, I concluded some ten years ago to set up my tabernacle in Hardscrabble, a remote village in the mountains of my native State. Here, with pure air, quiet rural surroundings, and the absence of any high and exacting standard of living, I was enabled to realize the truth of Pope's philosophic couplet, "Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, When our hill-folks wish to indicate a cool and comprehensive judgment, they say, "Hit looks jess that way to a man up a tree," the point of which homely figure is keenly apparent to one who, from a secluded and Indeed, the current of my own unambitious life was sometimes so disturbed by the blundering and patent ignorance of our rulers that, while all ideas of place or political preferment had been definitely ruled out of my plans, I felt constrained by a sense of duty to embody my views on the questions involved, and send them to a newspaper for publication. Now your country editor, generally very limited in all kinds of resources, is the most cheerful recipient of gratuitous contributions, any thing from a big turnip to a twocolumn article being gratefully acknowledged. My communications were always introduced with a flourish of compliments; surprise that such abilities should so persistently keep out of the public service; intimations that my fellow-citizens would not long permit this seclusion; just the sort of man needed in our Legislature at this crisis, etc. Occasionally in the hunting or fishing season I had a city friend to spend a week with me, and, as may be supposed, profited by the opportunity to ventilate my thoughts and readings. A hospitable host's opinions are swallowed with his wine, and my guest politely wondered I didn't assert these valuable and statesman-like views in Congress. Then, during the long, dull winter months, when intellectual humors have accumulated uncomfortably, I have often been constrained to seize upon the first countryman that happened to call with marketing. I invite him to a seat by the fire, and he replies with the grangers' formula of "Hard times and high taxes." To hasten the thawing process I offer him a glass of sherry, and at once proceed to explain the causes and remedy for the prevailing griefs. As the unaccustomed beverage warms up his Baotian faculties, he turns |