Noah Brooks (1830–1903)

Tales of the Maine Coast is a book of seven short stories, written by Noah Brooks (1830-1903), a native of Castine, Maine. Reading his stories makes me think that he may have had a mischievous boyhood, for there are boys and their doings as a sidelight to each story. He must have loved his home town, for the descriptions are so picturesque.

The author says, “The setting of these short tales is mainly in and around the ancient town of Castine, Me., thinly disguised under the name of “Fairport.” That town was the birthplace and is the present habitation of the author, who has sketched many of his characters from real life. All of the stories were written as diversions at infrequent intervals during the later years of a busy life with the hope that readers may find in them the same recreation that the writer has, and at the same time gain some notion of the characteristics of the people and the natural scenery of the Maine coast.”

The short stories included in this book are:
Pansy Pegg. About an orphan girl, raised by the locals, rough and sturdy, and thinking herself unlovable, who rejects a suitor.

The Apparition of Jo Murch. During an unsavory career in slave-trafficking, the black sheep of the town, Jotham Murch, was reported to have been hung for piracy in Portsmouth harbor. But here is one who is claiming to be Jo Murch, back to the home-town and chewing the fat about all the good old times. He misremembers a few things. Is it really Jo Murch? Or did Jo learn some tricks from an earlier happening in the old home town?

The Hereditary Barn. “Very gloomy and poverty-stricken did the Joslin place appear to old man Joslin in the winter of 1807, when, an embargo having been declared by the United States Government, a blight fell on every industry of the New England seaboard States.” And the hereditary barn takes its first toll, with the suicide of a despondent farmer, followed by a gloomy family history of more of the same. Until something changes.

The Phantom Sailor. A seaport town, so many boys and men lost at sea. Three mothers, missing their lost sons. A sailor returns home, going straight to each home in turn, each mother thinking this her own returned son. Young boys of the town follow him, trying to expose him, including Jo Murch and the narrator, Bill Rivers. Bill grows up to be a newspaperman, follows a story about a fallen lighthouse in another town, and there he meets Dan More, a man with a story to tell.

The Honor of a Family. Extended family living together in the old family home. The oldest daughter’s husband is a pain in every way. Her brother, the only son of the family who hadn’t gone to sea, finally marries, but his wife is unable to conceive. They adopt a youngster from the poor-house. The brother-in-law doesn’t want to lose anything to a usurper, so tries to ‘expose’ him.

The Waif of Nautilus Island. A bad storm, a broken vessel, sailors washed ashore, one bearing an infant, which the family raises as their own.

A Century Ago. A scene from the Revolutionary War from ‘the fort’ at Castine, Maine. I wonder if there is some family history in this one. All the other stories are cloaked, as the author says, in the fictional town of Fairport, but this story says Castine. The family in this story is named Perkins, and Noah Brooks’ mother was a Perkins. When one of the boys asked another character what they fought for. The other says, “Wal ! you’ll hev to ask your ma about that. She wuz a Perkins, and some of her folks fit into the Revolutionary war. There wuz old Captain Joe Perkins; he wuz your gran’ther Perkins’s gran’ther, or great-gran’ther, I don’t justly know which. But it was a great fight, anyway.”

I don’t know that any of these stories were extraordinary, but Mr. Brooks certainly made me fall in love with his neck of the woods with his descriptive scenery. OK, you got me. I was already head-over-heels in love with Maine. But, still I enjoyed the book.… (más)