ge, or
covered with beds of seaweed. Nothing alive, except the gulls, abode
on these solitary shores. No lighthouse stood on any point, to shake
its long, warning light across the mariners' wake. Now and then a
drowned man floated in among the sedge, or a small craft went to
pieces on the rocks. When an easterly wind prevailed, the coast
resounded with the bellowing sea, which brought us tidings from those
inaccessible spots. We heard its roar as it leaped over the rocks
on Gloster Point, and its long, unbroken wail when it rolled in on
Whitefoot Beach. In mild weather, too, when our harbor was quiet, we
still heard its whimper. Behind the village, the ground rose toward
the north, where the horizon was bounded by woods of oak and pine,
intersected by crooked roads, which led to towns and villages near
us. The inland scenery was tame; no hill or dale broke its dull
uniformity. Cornfields and meadows of red grass walled with gray
stone, lay between the village and the border of the woods. Seaward
it was enchanting--beautiful under the sun and moon and clouds. Our
family had lived in Surrey for years. Probably some Puritan of
the name of Morgeson had moved from an earlier settlement, and,
appropriating a few acres in what was now its center, lived long
enough upon them to see his sons and daughters married to the sons and
daughters of similar settlers. So our name was in perpetuation, though
none of our race ever made a mark in his circle, or attained a place
among the great ones of his day. The family recipes for curing herbs
and hams, and making cordials, were in better preservation than the
memory of their makers. It is certain that they were not a progressive
or changeable family. No tradition of any individuality remains
concerning them. There was a confusion in the minds of the survivors
of the various generations about the degree of their relationship to
those who were buried, and whose names and ages simply were cut in the
stones which headed their graves. The _meum_ and _tuum_ of blood were
inextricably mixed; so they contented themselves with giving their
children the old Christian names which were carved on the headstones,
and which, in time, added a still more profound darkness to the
anti-heraldic memory of the Morgesons. They had no knowledge of
that treasure which so many of our New England families are boastful
of--the Ancestor who came over in the Mayflower, or by himself, with
a grant of land from Parlia