The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 | Page 7

show his
unwelcome visage. In the tavern, prints from Scripture, varnished and
on rollers,--such as the Judgment of Christ; also, a droll set of colored
engravings of the story of the Prodigal Son, the figures being clad in

modern costume,--or, at least, that of not more than half a century ago.
The father, a grave, clerical person, with a white wig and black
broadcloth suit; the son, with a cocked hat and laced clothes, drinking
wine out of a glass, and caressing a woman in fashionable dress. At
Thomaston, a nice, comfortable, boarding-house tavern, without a bar
or any sort of wines or spirits. An old lady from Boston, with her three
daughters, one of whom was teaching music, and the other two were
school-mistresses. A frank, free, mirthful daughter of the landlady,
about twenty-four years old, between whom and myself there
immediately sprang up a flirtation, which made us both feel rather
melancholy when we parted on Tuesday morning. Music in the evening,
with a song by a rather pretty, fantastic little mischief of a brunette,
about eighteen years old, who has married within a year, and spent the
last summer in a trip to the Springs and elsewhere. Her manner of
walking is by jerks, with a quiver, as if she were made of calves-feet
jelly. I talk with everybody: to Mrs. Trott, good sense,--to Mary, good
sense, with a mixture of fun,--to Mrs. Gleason, sentiment, romance, and
nonsense.
Walked with Cilley to see General Knox's old mansion,--a large,
rusty-looking edifice of wood, with some grandeur in the architecture,
standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old
burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for
defence against the French and Indians. General Knox once owned a
square of thirty miles in this part of the country; and he wished to settle
it with a tenantry, after the fashion of English gentlemen. He would
permit no edifice to be erected within a certain distance of his mansion.
His patent covered, of course, the whole present town of Thomaston,
with Waldoborough and divers other flourishing commercial and
country villages, and would have been of incalculable value could it
have remained unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in
grand style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was
obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is little
left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around it. His
tomb stands near the house,--a spacious receptacle, an iron door at the
end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the
Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of

his family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except
one daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H----.
There is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are
the gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient
burial-ground,--the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant
spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and
perhaps coats-of-arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart.
The people of Thomaston were very wrathful that the General should
have laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never
throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady,
often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady
Knox (as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie.
She was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that,
as long as she lived, she would never enter any house in Thomaston
except her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her
carriage to the door, and send up to inquire how she did. The General
was personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its
vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as
an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of
aristocracy. It is not forty years since this house was built, and Knox
was in his glory; but now the house is all in decay, while within a
stone's throw of it there is a street of smart white edifices of one and
two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving mechanics, which has been
laid out where Knox meant to have forests and parks. On the banks of
the river, where he intended to have only one wharf for his own West
Indian vessels and yacht, there are two wharves, with stores and a
lime-kiln. Little appertains to the mansion, except the tomb and the old
burial-ground, and the old fort.
The descendants are