The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper Read Free Book Online

active desire to emulate the character, the condition, and, peradventure, the wealth of their ancestors also. It was the father of our new acquaintance, the Judge, who first began to reascend in the scale of society; and in this undertaking he was not a little assisted by a marriage which aided in furnishing the means of educating his only son in a rather better manner than the low state of the common schools in Pennsylvania could promise, or than had been the practice in the family for the two or three preceding generations.
    At the school where the reviving prosperity of his father was enabled to maintain him, young Marmaduke formed an intimacy with a youth whose years were about equal to his own. This was a fortunate connection for our Judge and paved the way to most of his future elevation in life.
    There was not only great wealth, but high court interest, among the connections of Edward Effingham. They were one of the few families then resident in the colonies who thought it a degradation to its members to descend to the pursuits of commerce and who never emerged from the privacy of domestic life, unless to preside in the councils of the colony or to bear arms in her defense. The latter had, from youth, been the only employment of Edward’s father. Military rank under the crown of Great Britain was attained with much longer probation, and by much more toilsome services, sixty years ago, than at the present time. Years were passed without murmuring in the subordinate grades of the service; and those soldiers who were stationed in the colonies felt when they obtained the command of a company that they were entitled to receive the greatest deference from the peaceful occupants of the soil. Any one of our readers who has occasion to cross the Niagara may easily observe not only the self-importance, but the real estimation enjoyed by the humblest representative of the crown, even in that polar region of royal sunshine. Such, and at no very distant period, was the respect paid to the military in these states, where now, happily, no symbol of war is ever seen, unless at the free and fearless voice of their people. When, therefore, the father of Marmaduke’s friend, after forty years’ service, retired with the rank of Major, maintaining in his domestic establishment a comparative splendor, he became a man of the first consideration in his native colony—which was that of New York. He had served with fidelity and courage, and having been, according to the custom of the provinces, intrusted with commands much superior to those to which he was entitled by rank, with reputation also. When Major Effingham yielded to the claims of age, he retired with dignity, refusing his half pay or any other compensation for services that he felt he could no longer perform.
    The ministry proffered various civil offices, which yielded not only honor but profit; but he declined them all, with the chivalrous independence and loyalty that had marked his character through life. The veteran soon caused this act of patriotic disinterestedness to be followed by another of private munificence that, however little it accorded with prudence, was in perfect conformity with the simple integrity of his own views.
    The friend of Marmaduke was his only child; and to this son, on his marriage with a lady to whom the father was particularly partial, the Major gave a complete conveyance of his whole estate, consisting of moneys in the funds, a town and country residence, sundry valuable farms in the old parts of the colony, and large tracts of wild land in the new—in this manner throwing himself upon the filial piety of his child for his own future maintenance. Major Effingham, in declining the liberal offers of the British ministry, had subjected himself to the suspicion of having attained his dotage, by all those who throng the avenues to court patronage, even in the remotest corners of that vast empire; but, when he thus voluntarily stripped