them with. Now
lands in Maine were not very salable, and, if the simple and ordinary
process of sale had been followed, the lands might not have been sold
till this day. So they were distributed by these Lotteries, which in
that time seemed gigantic. Every ticket-holder had some piece of land
awarded to him, I think,--but to the most, I fear, the lands were hardly
worth the hunting up, to settle upon. But, to induce as many to buy as
might, there were prizes. No. 1, I think, even had a "stately mansion"
on the land,--according to the advertisement. No. 2 had some special
water-power facilities. No. 5, which Mr. Cutts's ticket had drawn, was
two thousand acres on Tripp's Cove,--described in the programme as that
"well-known Harbor of Refuge, where Fifty Line of Battle Ship could lie
in safety." To this cove the two thousand acres so adjoined that the
programme represented them as the site of the great "Mercantile
Metropolis of the Future."

Samuel Cutts was too old a man, and had already tested too critically
his own powers in what the world calls "business," by a sad satire, to
give a great deal of faith to the promises of the prospectus, as to the
commercial prosperity of Tripp's Cove. He had come out of the Revolution
a Brigadier-General, with an honorable record of service,--with
rheumatism which would never be cured,--with a good deal of paper money
which would never be redeemed, which the Continent and the Commonwealth
had paid him for his seven years,--and without that place in the world
of peace which he had had when these years began. The very severest
trial of the Revolution was to be found in the condition in which the
officers of the army were left after it was over. They were men who had
distinguished themselves in their profession, and who had done their
very best to make that profession unnecessary in the future. To go back
to their old callings was hard. Other men were in their places, and
there did not seem to be room for two. Under the wretched political
system of the old Confederation there was no such rapid spring of the
material prosperity of the country as should find for them new fields in
new enterprise. Peace did any thing but lead in Plenty. Often indeed, in
history, has Plenty been a little coy before she could be tempted, with
her pretty tender feet, to press the stubble and the ashes left by the
havoc of War. And thus it was that General Cutts had returned to his old
love whom he had married