



Produced by Ron Swanson (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries)






VASSALL MORTON.

A Novel.




BY

FRANCIS PARKMAN,

AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC," AND "PRAIRIE AND
ROCKY MOUNTAIN LIFE."




  Ecrive qui voudra! Chacun a ce metier,
  Peut perdre impunement de l'encre et du papier.
                                             BOILEAU.




BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.

1856.




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1856, by

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.




STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.




Vassall Morton.




CHAPTER I.

  Remote from towns he ran his godly race.--_Goldsmith_.


"Macknight on the Epistles,--that's the name of the book?"

"Yes, sir, if you please. I am desirous of consulting it with a
view--"

"Well, this way, Mr. Jacobs. Here's the librarian. Mr. Stillingfleet,
let me introduce my friend, the Reverend Mr. Jacobs, of West
Weathersfield."

"I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, taking
the librarian's hand with an air of diffident veneration.

"Mr. Jacobs wishes to consult Mackwright on the Epistles."

"Macknight, if you please, Dr. Steele."

"O, Macknight. Will you be so kind as to let him have the use of it in
my name?"

"If you will go with Mr. Rubens, sir," said the librarian, "he will
show you the book."

"Thank you, sir," replied Mr. Jacobs, to whom the words were
addressed; and he followed the assistant among the alcoves in a timid,
tiptoe progress, for, to him, the very air he breathed seemed redolent
of learning, and the dust beneath his feet consecrated to science.

Dr. Steele remained behind, conversing with the librarian.

"My friend has something of the ancient apostolic simplicity hanging
about him still. He looks with as much awe at Harvard College library
as I did myself forty-five years ago, when I came down from Steuben to
join the freshman class."

"So you came from Steuben! Did not old John Morton come from the same
place?"

"To be sure he did. He was the glory of the town. He pulled down the
old clapboard meeting house that his father used to preach in, and
built a new one for him: besides giving a start in business to half
the young men of the village."

"Do you see that undergraduate at the end of the hall, standing by the
last alcove, reading?"

"Yes; what about him? He seems a hardy, good-looking young fellow
enough."

"He is John Morton's son."

"Is it possible? I remember him when he was a child, but have not seen
him for these ten years. After his father's death, his mother took him
to Europe, to be educated; but she never came back; she died in
Paris."

"He is Mr. Morton's only child--is he not?"

"Yes; his first wife had no children; and after he had buried
her,--which, by the way, I believe was the happiest hour of his
life,--he married a very different sort of person, Margaret Vassall,
this boy's mother."

"What, one of the old Vassall race?"

"Exactly; and, I suppose, the last survivor. I used to know her. She
was a handsome woman, and, bating her family pride, altogether a very
fine character. She managed her husband admirably."

"Why, what need had John Morton of being managed?"

"O, Morton was a noble old gentleman, a merchant of the old school,
and generous as the day; but he had his faults. He made nothing of his
three bottles of Madeira at dinner, and besides-- Ah, Mr. Jacobs, so
you have found Macknight."

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, coming up, "I have the volumes."

"See that young man, yonder. That's the son of your old friend, Mr.
Morton."

"Really! upon my word! Ah! Mr. Morton _was_ a friend to me, sir--a
very kind friend."

And, in the simplicity of his heart, Mr. Jacobs glided up to the
student, and blandly accosted him.

"How do you do, young gentleman? I knew your worthy father. I knew him
well. I have often sat at his hospitable board on anniversary week."

Thus addressed, Vassall Morton looked up from his book,--it was
Froissart's Chronicle,--inclined his head in acknowledgment, and
waited to hear more.

"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Jacobs, a little embarrassed: "your father was a
most worthy and estimable gentleman: a true friend of the feeble and
destitute. Ahem!--what class are you in, Mr. Morton?"

"The junior class," said the young man, a suppressed smile flickering
at the corner of his mouth.

"Ahem! I hope, sir, that, like your father, you will long live to be
an honor to your native town."

"Thank you, sir."

"I wish you good morning."

"Good morning, sir," said Morton, divided between an inclination to
smile at the odd, humble little figure before him, and an
unwillingness to wound the other's feelings.

"Are you ready to go, Mr. Jacobs?" said Dr. Steele.

"If you please, sir, we will now take our departure;"--gathering the
four volumes of Macknight on the Epistles under his arm;--"Good
morning, Mr. Stillingfleet; good morning, Mr. Rubens. I am indebted to
your kindness, gentlemen--ahem!"

"This is the way out, Mr. Jacobs," said Steele to his diffident friend
from West Weathersfield, who, in his embarrassment, was going out at
the wrong door.

"I beg your pardon, sir--ahem!" replied Mr. Jacobs, with a bashful
smile. And Dr. Steele, pointing to the true exit, ushered his rustic
and reverend protege from the sacred precinct of learning.




CHAPTER II.

  Richt hardie baith in ernist and play.--_Sir David Lyndsay_.


"Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat saying to
you just now in the library?"

"Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he hoped I
should make just such another."

"Ah, that was kind of him."

"What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me take half a dozen
of them for you. You look as if you were training to be a hotel
porter."

"I am laying in for vacation."

"What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin, Greek, and
mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made for? Take to the woods,
as I do, breathe the fresh air, and see the world at large."

"Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into some
barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes, snakes, wolves,
bears, and catamounts? What sense is there in that? What can you do
when you get there?"

"Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go with me?"

"Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted enough to go
with you, except Meredith, and he ought to know better."

"Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be off to-morrow."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement which caused
Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his arm. Morton gathered
them out of the mud, and thrusting them back again into their place,
left his burdened fellow-student to make the best of his way towards
his den in Stoughton Hall.




CHAPTER III.

  O, love, in such a wilderness as this!--_Gertrude of Wyoming_.


Morton, _en route_ for the barbarous districts of which Vinal had
expressed his disapproval, stopped by the way at a spot which, though
wild enough at that time, had ceased to be a wilderness. This was the
Notch of the White Mountains, perverted, since, into a resort of
_quasi_ fashion. Here, arriving late at the lonely hostelry of one Tom
Crawford, he learned from that worthy person, to whom his face was
well known, that other guests, from Boston, like himself, were seated
at the tea table. Accordingly, descending thither, he saw four
persons. The first was a quiet-looking man, with the air of a
gentleman, and something in his appearance which seemed to indicate
military habits and training. Morton remembered to have seen him
before. At his side, and under his tutelary care, sat two personages,
who, from their dimensions, must have been boys of some seven years
old, but from the solemnity of their countenances, might have passed
for a brace of ancient philosophers. They looked so much alike that
Morton thought he saw double. Each was seated on a volume of Clark's
Commentaries, to raise his chin to the needful height above the table
cloth. Both were encased in tunics, strapped about them with shining
morocco belts. Their small persons were terminated at one end by
morocco shoes of somewhat infantile pattern, and at the other by
enormous heads, with chalky complexions, pale, dilated eyes, wrinkled
foreheads, and mouths pursed up with an expression of anxious care,
abstruse meditation, and the most experienced wisdom.

In amazement at these phenomena, Morton turned next towards the fourth
member of the party; and here he encountered a new emotion, of a kind
quite different. Hitherto, in his college seclusion, he had not very
often met, except in imagination, with that union of beauty, breeding,
and refinement which belongs to the best life of cities, and which he
now saw in the person of a young lady, a year or two his junior. He
longed for a pretext to address her, but found none; when her
father--for such he seemed--broke silence, and accosted him.

"I beg your pardon; is it possible that you are the son of John
Morton?"

"Yes."

"He was my father's old friend. I thought I could scarcely mistake
your likeness to your mother."

"I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Colonel Leslie."

Leslie inclined his head.

"My title clings to me, I find, though I have no right to it now."

He had left the army long before, exchanging the rough frontier
service for pursuits more to his taste.

"Upon my word," pursued Leslie, after conversing for some time with
the new comer on the scenery and game of the mountains