One, the fortunate possessor of some
competence, sailed his own ship across the Atlantic, and delivered up to
Massachusetts her governor and gentry. Another, incapable of being
suppressed, though a servant, seized the destinies of an aristocratic
colony, and held them for a while, until accumulating enemies bore him
down, and wedlock and the gibbet followed close together. Poverty would
not relinquish its gripe upon the race; they struggled up like clods
upon the ploughshare, and fell back again into the furrow.
As Meshach Milburn thought of these things he took up a portion of the
bog ore from the hearth.
"Here is iron," he said, thoughtfully, "true iron, which makes the blood
red, moulds into infinite forms, nails houses together, binds wheels,
and casts into cannon and ball. But this iron ran into a bog, formed low
combinations, and had no other mould than twigs and leaves afforded. Its
volcanic origin was forgotten when it ran with sand and gravel away from
the mountain vein and upland ore along the low, alluvial bar, till, like
an oyster, the iron is dredged from the stagnant pool, impure,
inefficacious, corrupted. So is it with man, whose magnetic spirit
follows the dull declivity to the barren sandbars of the world, and
lodges there. I am of the bog ores; but that exists which will flux with
me, clean me of rust, and transmit my better quality to posterity. O,
youth, beauty, and station--lovely Vesta! for thee I will be iron!"
Milburn looked around the single room inquiringly.
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