There are many among us to this day who remember with pleasure their visits to the strange old fortune-teller of Lynn, at the base of High Rock.
We have been thus particular in the description of this spot as it is the birth-place of two persons who will bear an important part in the tale we are about to relate, and partly, because we love this spot where we have whiled away many an hour of our boyish days. The peculiarities of one’s birth-place have much influence upon formation of the character and disposition. The associations that hang about us in childhood, have double weight upon our tender and susceptible minds at that time, to those of after days, when the character is more formed and matured, and the mind has become more stern and inflexible. It behoves us then to speak thus particularly of the birth-place and the associations of those who are to enact the principal characters in the drama which we relate.
There lived at the very base of High Rock about seventy years ago, a few families of the real puritanic stock, forming a little community of themselves. The occupation of the male portion of the hamlet was that of fishermen, while the time of the females was occupied in drying and preserving the fish and such other domestic labor as fell to their lot. The neighborhood, resembled in every particular, save that it was far less extensive, the present town of Swampscot, which is situated but about three or four miles from the very spot we are now describing, and whose inhabitants, a hardy and industrious people, are absolutely to this day ‘fishermen all.’
The date to which we refer was just at the commencement of the principal causes of difference between the colonies and the mother country; the time when shrewd and thoughtful men foretold the coming struggle between England and her North American dependances. Already had the opposition of the colonies to the odious Stamp Act, and more particularly the people of Massachusetts Bay, as Boston and the neighboring province was named, become so spirited and universal that the British Parliament had only the alternative to compel submission or repeal the act, which was at length reluctantly done. Yet the continued acts of arbitrary oppression enforced by parliament upon the people, such as the passing of laws that those of the colonists charged with capital crimes, should be sent to England to be tried by a jury of strangers, and like odious and unconstitutional enactments had driven the people to despair, and prepared them by degrees for the after startling events that caused all Europe to wonder and England herself to tremble!
The State Street massacre, the celebrated tea scene, in which the indignant inhabitants of Boston discharged three hundred and fifty chests of tea into the water of the bay, the thousand petty acts of tyranny practised by the soldiers of the crown; the Boston Port Bill blockading the harbor of Boston, all followed in quick succession, each being but the stepping stone to the great events to follow. These were the scenes at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and the many well-contested and bloody fields of the Revolution, until these United States of America were acknowledged to be free and independent!
The bold and adventurous characters of the men were affected as well by the times we have described, as by the hardy nature of their employment. The dangers that often times surrounded the homes of the females, gave rise to a stern and manly disposition even in those of the gentler sex who formed a part of the community, and altogether it was made up of stern and dauntless spirits. There was at the commencement of our tale about the year 1773, two families who occupied one spacious and comfortable cottage in the little neighborhood we have described. These were the families of Henry Campbell, and William Lovell, both fishermen, who sailed a staunch fishing craft together. Their families consisted of their wives and an only child each-William and Fanny, and it was the honest hope and promise of the parents that the children when arrived at a proper age should be united to each other. Nor were the betrothed on their part any way loth to such an agreement, for they loved each other with an affection that had grown with their years from earliest childhood. The course of true love seemed certain to run smooth with them at least, the old adage to the contrary notwithstanding.
William had been brought up almost entirely on board his father’s vessel, and he was as good a sailor as experience in this way could make. He was now nineteen, with a firm, vigorous, manly form, and an easy and gentlemanly bearing; his face when one came to be familiar with it, was decidedly handsome; showing forth a spirit that spurned all danger He was young, ardent and imaginative, and could but poorly brook the confinement of his father’s occupation, which engaged much of his time; his generous and ambitious mind aspiring to some higher calling than that of an humble fisherman He was but little on shore, save in the severe winters that come early and stay late in these northern latitudes; but then this season was looked forward to with pleasure by all. The long winter evenings were spent happily with Fanny, as she industriously pursued some female occupation, while he perhaps read aloud some instructive book or interesting tale, or they listened to some story of the old French and Indian war from their parents, who had been participators in their dangers and hardships. Then the subject of the present state of the prospects and interests of the colonies, and the oppression of the home government, were also fully discussed. Thus the time had passed away until William had reached his nineteenth year, when he resolved to make a bold push for fortune, as he said, and after obtaining permission which was reluctantly granted by his parents, he made arrangements to ship from Boston to some foreign clime as a sailor. A distant voyage in those days was an adventure indeed, and comparatively seldom undertaken.
William Lovell had been to Boston and shipped on board a merchant vessel for the West Indies and from thence to some more distant port, and had now returned to the cottage to put up his little bundle of clothes and bid farewell to his old companions and friends, and to say good-bye to his parents and her whom he loved with an affection that found no parallel among those with whom he had associated. It was this very love which had given birth to the ambition that actuated him, and the desire to acquire experience and pecuniary competency.
It was the evening before he was to sail, a mild summers night, when with Fanny he sought the summit of High rock. They seated themselves upon the rough stone seat, hewn from the solid rock by the hand of the red man, or perhaps by some race anterior even to them, and long and silently did both gaze off upon the distant sea. It was very calm, and the gentle waves but just kissed the rocky borders of Valiant and threw up little jets of silver spray about the black mass of Egg Bock. The moon seemed to be embroidering fancy patterns of silver lace upon the blue ocean, which scarcely moved, so gentle were the swells of its broad bosom under the fairy operation. This was some seventy years gone by, years of toil and labor, of joy and sorrow, years of smiling peace and angry war, three score and ten years ago, and yet within a twelve month I have sat upon that rock, aye, upon that very stone, and looked upon the same silvery sea, and viewed the same still, silvery scene; gazing on the same iron-bound shores, and the black and frowning mass of Egg Rock still there, as if placed a sentinel upon the shore, and yet sufficiently within the domain of Neptune to lead to the belief that it serves the hoary old god rather than the spirits of the land.
Fanny Campbell was a noble looking girl. She was none of your modern belles, delicate and ready to faint at the first sight of a reptile; no, Fanny could row a boat, shoot a panther, ride the wildest horse in the province, or do almost any brave and useful act. And Fanny could write poetry too, nay, start not gentle reader, her education was of no mean character. Such slight advantages as chance had thrown in her way had been improved to the utmost, and her parents finding her taste thus inclined, had humoured it to the extent of their limited means. Thus Fanny had received nearly every advantage attainable in those days. Once or twice in the course of the year, she was accustomed to pass some weeks at the house of a Reverend divine at Boston, with whom her father claimed some relationship. While here, the good man discovered her taste and inclination for study, and gave her such instructions as he was able, with the loan of books to amuse and strengthen her mind. By these means Fanny had actually obtained an excellent education at the time when we have introduced her to the reader; being but seventeen years of age. In her turn she had communicated her information to William Lovell and thus the two had possessed themselves of a degree of education and judgment that placed them above their friends in point of intelligence, and caused them to be looked up to in all matters of information, and scholarship.
‘Fanny,’
