England must be the
Promised Land for the genuine representative of the Puritan. Whatever we
may have felt about her lately,--and I confess there have been times
when the declaration of the Fee-Faw-Fum giant of nursery-romance seemed
to be of a moral and praiseworthy character,--there is no doubt, that,
in the year of grace of which I write, and in the regards of many
ratherish-scholarly gentlemen of our country-towns, the British Islands
were the nearest terrestrial correspondences to the Islands of the
Blest. About the massive Past Colonel Prowley never ceased to thrust his
epistolary tendrils. Was not Great Britain a genealogical hunting-ground
where game of rarest plumage might be started? Was not a
family-connection with Sir Walter Raleigh (whose name should be written
_Praleigh_, a common corruption of "Prowley" in the sixteenth century)
susceptible of the clearest proof? There were, in fact, few
distinguished Englishmen of the present day, who, if a provoking
ancestor or two could be unearthed, might not be shown to have the
Prowley fluid in their veins. To many of these eminent personages the
head of the American branch of the family had written, and with several
he had succeeded in establishing a correspondence. Old sermons, moral
obituaries of public characters, celebrations of centennial
anniversaries, and heavy reading of like description, constantly left
the Foxden Post-Office addressed to the British Museum.
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