The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times Read online

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  THE ENTAILED HAT

  OR

  _PATTY CANNON'S TIMES_

  A Romance

  BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND

  "GATH"

 

  NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1884

  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by

  HARPER & BROTHERS,

  In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

  _All rights reserved._

  TO

  JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER

  OF DELAWARE

  AND

  HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL

  OF MARYLAND

  LOVERS OF OLD TIMES

  WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA

  "Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are notvenerable."--CARLYLE: _Sartor Resartus_

  INTRODUCTION.

  Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no placewell, though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, aftertwenty-five years of describing localities and society, he would beidentified with none.

  "Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked, feeling thevacant spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees,household habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones ofthe local species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and completethe pastoral mind.

  Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive fromsome striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser policymight have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, inwealth or literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn, as infirst love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the little, lowly regionwhere his short childhood was lived, and where the unknown generationsof his people darkened the sand--the peninsula between the Chesapeakeand the Delaware.

  Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, on the border ofVirginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see anearly book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternalancestor, of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative. Hisbreath was almost taken by finding the following provisions, datedFebruary 12, 1800:

  "I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO HIM ANDHIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate.

  "I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all myhand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to mydaughter, Grace Milbourn."

  The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "theForest," as a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, andthrough a deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of thesewills.

  Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the landof his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend,avoided being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like HesterPrynne wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron Mask,this being took both sexes and different characters, as the authorweighed the probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it,and started to portray it in a little tale.

  The story broke from its confines as his own family generation hadbroken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, whereverthe mystic Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by hismother's hand.

  Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, andher death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of thatdreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, andher haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still living.

  Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only thenarration of an episode, but the story of a large region comprehendingthree state jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern lifearose upon the ruins of old colonial caste.