E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
A Novel
by
Author of Self-Raised, Ishmael, Retribution, The Bridal Eve,The Bride's Fate, Mother-in-Law, The Haunted Homestead, TheBride's Dowry, Victor's Triumph, A Fortune Seeker, etc.
Deep in the primeval forest of St. Mary's, lying between the Patuxentand the Wicomico Rivers, stands the ancient manor house of Luckenough.
The traditions of the neighborhood assert the origin of the manor andits quaint, happy and not unmusical name to have been—briefly this:
That the founder of Luckenough was Alexander Kalouga, a Polish soldierof fortune, some time in the service of Cecilius Calvert, Baron ofBaltimore, first Lord Proprietary of Maryland. This man had, previous tohis final emigration to the New World, passed through a life of the mostwonderful vicissitudes—wonderful even for those days of romance andadventure. It was said that he was born in one quarter of the globe,educated in another, initiated into warfare in the third and buried inthe fourth. In his boyhood he was the friend and pupil of Guy Fawkes; heengaged in the Gunpowder Plot, and after witnessing the terrible fate ofhis master, he escaped to Spanish America, where he led for years a sortof buccaneer life. He afterwards returned to Europe, and then followedyears of military service wherever his hireling sword was needed. Butthe soldier of fortune was ill-paid by his mistress. His misfortuneswere as proverbial as his bravery, or as his energetic complaints of"ill luck" could make them. He had drawn his sword in almost everyquarrel of his time, on every battlefield in Europe, to find himself,at the end of his military career, no richer than he was at itsbeginning—save in wounds and scars, honor and glory, and a wife andson. It was at this point of his life that he met with Leonard Calvert,and embarked with him for Maryland, where he afterwards received fromthe Lord Proprietary the grant of the manor "aforesaid." It is statedthat when the old soldier went with some companions to take a look athis new possessions, he was so pleased with the beauty, grandeur,richness and promise of the place that a glad smile broke over his dark,storm-beaten, battle-scarred face, and he remained still "smiling as indelighted visions," until one of his friends spoke and said:
"Well, comrade! Is this luck enough?"
"Yaw, mine frient!" answered the new lord of the manor in his brokenEnglish, cordially grasping the hand of his companion, "dish ish lokeenough!"
Different constructions have been put upon this simple answer—first,that Lukkinnuf was the original Indian name of the tract; secondly, thatAlexander Kalouga christened his manor in honor of Loekenoff, the nativevillage of his wife, the heroic Marie Zelenski, the companion of all hiscampaigns and voyages, and the first lady of his manor; thirdly, thatthe grateful and happy soldier had only meant to express his perfectsatisfaction with his fortune, and to say:
"Yes, this is luck enough! luck enough to repay me for all the past!"
Be it as it may, from time immemorial the place has been "Luckenough."
The owner in 1814 was Commodore Nickolas Waugh, who inherited theproperty in right of his mother, the only child and heiress of Pe