Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/266

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

254

��Unread.

��nobility, and it was as Sieur de Fron- sac that he was recognized in France. He was the only person born in New Hampshire who has ever received the decoration of the Order of St. Louis, which is one of the highest in Eu- rope.

When he returned to America in 1802 he settled in Savannah, Ga., where he remained for about two years. He then finally located at Portland, Me., in which place he en- tered into the West India trade, estab- lishing his store and office on Ingra- ham's wharf. He had a moderate interest in shipping and landed prop- erty. He was junior steward of the Ancient Landmark Lodge of Free Masons in Portland. As a performer on the violincello he had, perhaps, although an amateur, no equal in Maine, while his general knowledge of music was complete in other de- partments.

He married, in 1809, Sallie, daugh- ter of John Pray, formerly of Savan- nah, Ga., who had been a captain in the colonial navy of Georgia in the Revolution, and the naval commis-

��sioner for that commonwealth. Capt. Prav was an Irish refueee, who had married Mary, daughter of Major Joshua Hamilton, the son of Henry Hamilton, M. P. for County Donegal, and sou of Lieut. Gen. Sir Gustavus Hamilton, 1st Viscount Boyne, Vice- Admiral of Ulster, Privy Councillor of Great Britain, etc. (See Burke's Peerage.)

Thomas Forsyth left a family of six children at the time of his death, Dec. 21, 1849, at Portland. One other, a son, had died before him in Texas.

He was a man of refined tastes and high ability, an honor to the state in which he was born, reverenced by his children, the head of his family, ac- knowledged as a patron of the poor, to whom he dispensed liberally, and a man loving the good and the meri- torious. His faith in republics was wanting, but he recognized the ties which bound him to his native land, and no doubt through their influence saw the greatest possibility laid out before her. Those who knew him recognized a Christian gentleman.

��UNREAD.

By Alice Freese Durgin.

As the dull dav faded into murkv nio;ht.

Wearily from out the gloom she rose, and stept

Towards the hearth, where dying embers kept

Their feint of life, from which all life had fled.

"How frail thou wert ! How empty, and how mean," she said,

"Thou s(>eu)est, now thou liest ended,

Poor hapless life ! No fond delight blended

With the heavy pain, to make one shadow bright."

What was the sound that falling on her brokenly,

As blossoms lightly blown from off a tree,

Woke faintest memories of some calm, silver light.

Shining in young summer's long remembered night?

Trembling as the vision broke, she prayed with bowed head, —

"Dear Life ! I thank Thee for the page unread."

�� �