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By Root 489 0

mornings on the West balcony and pointed to the wild wide Merrimac as it ancestral plowed its original forest-trail thru the site of Now-Lowell–not a house–New England was alone in the woods of time. Where Dracut Tigers field now is, back of homeplate, in the shrubs and stub pines, a red man Indian stalked in the silent mom–the birds that luted in the dew, and pointed rosy eyes to the new Promised East, are now the birds that fritter on the branch of dust–ancestral voices in the mute mist of morning, without fanfare or cry, quiet, it was bound to be there a long time– Phloggett trains his telescope on these woods, on the hump-rise of the sandbank in its wild golden isle mid green,—the huge tree across the street from my Sarah Avenue house stood then with the same majesty and height above the solid grunchy vastness green of the Pawtucketville forest–no dream-skyscrapers sprung from Mt. Vernon Street-George Washington was a boy stalking deer in Virginia flat forests– In the Gaspé peninsula up north the first of the American Armorican Duluozes was wrangling with his squaw on the Wolf River morns–over by Pine Brook, in the 18th century, peaceful, tepees were pitched in the sward carpet of the spring, over the pine hill the crows cawed, a hunter came tramping home over the field–a young Indian boy dove brown and naked with his tuft-hair and red-stone bracelet into the cool pool of life–it was centuries later I came by there with Sebastian and Dicky Hampshire and we sang poems to the rising sun–African alligator adventures took place along Pine Brook (Slow Waters) clear to the Rosemont (Ohio River at its Cairo) junction with (Swift Waters) Merrimac in the drowsy afternoons of Indian children– Fellaheen singers with greasy manes and capes made mournful Hebraic cries along the merced walls of Cadiz, in the 18th century morn– The whole world, fresh and dewy, rolled to the sun–as it will tomorrow morning so golden-

Old Epzebiah Phloggett the owner of Phlogget Hill Castle–Snake Hill Castle it eventually became, because of the overabundance of small snakes and garter snakes to be found on that hill–little Tom Sawyers of early Lowell pre Civil War went angling up that hill from the old Colonial slums of Prince Street or Worthen where Whistler was born, found the snakes, renamed the hill– Phloggett died in solitude and black loneliness in the primordial castle … some ghastly thing was buried with him. It was years later the cool lake of the basin was rippled by the oars of the Thoreau brothers, and Henry himself up-glanced the Castle with a snort so profound with contempt he never wrote it–besides, his eye was in the water lily, his hand was on the Upanishads–

For a very real snaky reason the unnamably evil owner of the Castle died–of snakebite. Buried no one knew where —derelict castle gooked alone.

Phloggett had sold Black Ivory to the Kings.

In the 19th century it was bought from some firm in Lynn by a landed family from Lynn, contemptuous of the manufacturing gentry but forced to face the early mills across the water; it became their summer place. Oil paintings were hung on the walls, in niches, family portraits, the fireplace roared, the genteel sons stared at the Merrimac with after dinner sherries–from the sun-red west balcony in March dusks, and were bored. Post chaises couldn’t make it to the Castle, bad road–so finally the family got bored–and then the sicknesses began, they all died of something or other. It began to be realized the Castle was never meant for human occupation, it had a hex. The family (Reeves of Lynn) (they’d renamed it Reeves Castle) packed and got out, depleted–the mother, a daughter and three sons dead, one an infant–all of them had been on a summer at the Lowell Castle–the father and his remnant son went to Lynn, got moldered with Hawthorne’s bones nearabouts–

And the Castle was a derelict heap without windows and full of bats and kidcrap flaps for a hundred years.

In 1921 it was bought up by the only kind of person who would want it. Bought up cheap, dusty records in Lynn had been eaten by termites,