Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/397

 ALONG THE JOHN STARK RIVP:R. 361

With a hasty discharge he followed the retreating antlers, and within a hah" mile, came upon the wounded monarch, tearing the eartii and bellowing in dying agony. At a safe distance from the enraged leader, he sent a well di- rected shot, and with the fifth discharge killed the fourth moose.

It is said that Stanley used to relate this incident with a show of honest nar- rative challenging doubt, and adding, that this hunt kept him in beef and rum for a whole year.

About a mile below the first, or Dodge & Abbott damming of the John's river, is a second artificial obstruction. Here was built, in early VVhitefield days, the " Foster mill," and here among the pineries settled one Foster. There are Fosters and Fosters ; but I venture to think there was but one Perley Foster, and he the sire of a son who became the hero of two wars. In a humble home in this secluded spot, was born, in 1S23, Gen. John G. Foster. The spark of military enthusiasm engendered in the father, kindled to flame in tlie nature of the son. In 1846 he graduated from West Point, as second lieutenant of engi- neers, standing third in a class of 59. He served with gallantry during the Mexican war, and at its close received a captain's commission in the regular army.

The breaking out of the Southern rebellion found_him in South Carolina on government duty, and as major he was with Gen. Anderson at the defense of Fort Sumpter. Fighting nis way through the war with constantly increasing honors, the surrender of the rebels found him a major-general, crowned with laurels well-won. His home in the later years of his life, we believe, was in Nashua, where he died, in 1874, in his fifty-second year.

In the life of Gen. Foster was well illustrated the declaration of the poet, that

" Honor :md fame, from no condition rise ; Act well your part, there, all the honor lies."

The last trace of the old Foster house is obliterated. Nothing remains to mark the birth-place of a man of note, but the dim outlines of a cellar ; not even the traditional sentinel of an ancient apple tree. We remember to have passed along the almost disused, half-forgotten road, one summer day in the long-ago, when the old house, from dilapidation, had become untenantable. Clapboards were rattling in the wind ; the doors and windows were in useless ruin ; a thicket of unrebuked thistles was crowding about the entrance ; and the only thing of beauty about the spot was a broad-disced sun-flower, growing upon the sunny side, with a flourishing family of tall hollyhocks. After awhile the old structure, from constant wind-beatings, tumbled down ; the ruins were gathered up or burned, and the site plowed under. Descendants of the ancient May-weeds still linger, I am told, around the place of the old gate- way, and there are relics of a way-side fence ; but even the noisy brook, which tinkled its way across the road and down into the beaver meadow, is almost run dry.

Thus does time, the obliterator, crowd away the past, with its homes and its hallowed spots, to make room for the future.

The old Foster mill, by its additions and changes, has lost its originality, but the river still rushes onward, singing as it runs,

"Men may come and men \ni\y go. But I How on for ever."

Forty years ago, from this point downward for two miles, the stream found its way through a forest almost unmarred by the axe of man. It was a primeval solitude, the key to which the babbling river alone held ; and as we

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