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Title: The New England Country
Author: Clifton Johnson, - To be updated
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The New England Country" ***
[Illustration: JANUARY]
THE
NEW ENGLAND
COUNTRY
[Illustration]
TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS
BY CLIFTON JOHNSON
BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD
PUBLISHERS MDCCCXCVII
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY CLIFTON JOHNSON
THE NEW ENGLAND COUNTRY
PRESS OF
Rockwell and Churchill
BOSTON
CONTENTS
PART I
PAGE
OLD TIMES ON A NEW ENGLAND FARM 1
PART II
THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 34
PART III
NEW ENGLAND AS THE TRAVELLER SEES IT 57
PART IV
CAMPING AMONG THE NEW ENGLAND HILLS 82
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
JANUARY _Frontispiece_
OLD FIREPLACE 1
A FOOT-STOVE 1
CANES AND UMBRELLAS 1
THE CHURN 2
YE ENTRANCE OF OLD FASHION 2
FARM TOOLS 2
A LOOM 3
FANS AND BACK-COMB 3
OLD CHAIRS 3
ONE OF THE OLD HOUSES 4
A SILHOUETTE PORTRAIT 5
A RIVER-BOAT BEFORE THE DAYS OF RAILROADS 5
REELS 6
A COMFORTABLE FARM-HOUSE 6
THE FLAX-WHEEL 6
FEBRUARY 7
KITCHEN UTENSILS 9
GOURDS AND PIGGINS 9
THE WINDING ROADWAY 10
A MILL-YARD IN THE VALLEY 11
A SUNNY GLEN 11
A QUIET DAY 12
A BARN-DOOR GROUP 13
A TURN IN THE ROAD 14
A COUNTRY STAGE COACH IN WINTER 14
A HILLTOP VILLAGE 15
A LITTLE LAKE 16
A VILLAGE SCENE 17
SNOW-FIELDS ON THE HILLS 18
MARCH 19
CLEARED LAND 21
GATHERING SAP IN THE SUGAR ORCHARD 22
WAYSIDE BERRY-PICKERS 23
A FARM AMID THE BIG HILLS 24
A LITTLE HOME ON THE HILLSIDE 25
AN OLD MILL 25
A SAW-MILL 26
A SPRING MORNING 27
A WILLOW-LINED RIVER 28
APRIL 29
A LOOK DOWN ON THE CONNECTICUT 31
THE SPRING HOEING 32
AN OLD TAVERN 33
THE FRIENDLY GUIDE 34
A HILL TOWN 34
THE BACK SHEDS 35
WINTER TWILIGHT--GOING UP FOR ONE MORE SLIDE 36
A HILL-TOWN VILLAGE 37
HOMES AND OUT-BUILDINGS BY THE WAYSIDE 38
NEW ENGLAND ROCKS 39
HOLDING THE HORSES WHILE HIS FATHER GOES IN TO GET A DRINK OF WATER 40
MAY 41
A DAM ON THE CONNECTICUT 43
AT THE RAILROAD STATION 43
A MANUFACTURING VILLAGE 44
THE RAILWAY-CROSSING IN THE VILLAGE 45
A STONE BRIDGE 46
A GROUP OF LITTLE FISHERMEN 47
A WAYSIDE WATERING-TROUGH 48
A COUNTRY SCHOOL WATCHING A TEAM GO BY 48
AN OLD BURYING-GROUND 49
BELOW THE DAM 50
A MASSACHUSETTS MOUNTAIN 51
THE FERRYBOAT 51
A FALL ON THE CONNECTICUT 52
JUNE 53
THE GROWING BOY IN HIS LAST YEAR’S CLOTHES 55
AT THE BACK-DOOR 55
THE ACADEMY 56
A HORSE-CHESTNUT MAN 57
AFTERGLOW 57
THE VILLAGE CHURCH 58
ONE OF THE HUMBLER HOUSES 59
A DESERTED HOME 59
GETTING A LOAD OF SAWDUST BACK OF THE SAW-MILL 60
A MEADOW STREAM 60
A HOME UNDER THE ELMS 61
A DOOR-STEP GROUP 62
A ROADSIDE FRIEND 63
BETTER THAN HOEING ON A HOT DAY 64
JULY 65
THE PET OF THE FARM 67
A RAINY DAY 68
A HAMLET AMONG THE HILLS 69
SUMMER SUNLIGHT IN A “GORGE ROAD” 70
ONE OF THE LITTLE RIVERS 71
THE VILLAGE GROCERYMAN 72
AN OUTLYING VILLAGE 73
A VILLAGE VIEW IN A HALF-WOODED DELL 74
THE OLD WELL-SWEEP 75
IN HAYING TIME 76
THE STREAM AND THE ELMS IN THE MEADOW 77
UNDER THE OLD SYCAMORE 78
AUGUST 79
ONE OF THE OLD VILLAGE STREETS 81
THE HOUSE WITH THE BARN ACROSS THE ROAD 82
A WARM SUMMER DAY 83
AT WORK IN HER OWN STRAWBERRY PATCH 84
SEPTEMBER 85
EVENING 87
A LOAD OF WOOD ON THE WAY UP TO THE VILLAGE 88
A WATERFALL IN THE WOODS 89
A PANORAMA OF HILLS AND VALLEYS 90
A PASTURE GROUP 91
OCTOBER 93
A PASTURE GATE 95
A ROAD BY THE STREAM 96
AT THE PASTURE GATE 97
THE SHEEP PASTURE 98
A QUIET POND 99
HUSKING-TIME 100
SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW 101
NOVEMBER 103
THE VILLAGE ON THE HILL 105
A MILL IN THE VALLEY 106
CLOUD SHADOWS 107
A LOG HOUSE 109
AN EARLY SNOW 110
ON A MOUNTAIN CRAG 111
ONE OF THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PEAKS 111
AMONG THE BIG HILLS 112
A DESERTED HUT IN THE WOODS 113
CHARCOAL KILNS 114
ROUGH UPLANDS 115
DECEMBER 117
A PATH IN THE WINTER WOODS 119
WINDY WINTER--ON THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL 120
AFTER A STORM 121
[Illustration: OLD FIREPLACE]
PART I
OLD TIMES ON A NEW ENGLAND FARM
[Illustration: A FOOT-STOVE]
About “old times” there always hovers a peculiar charm. A dreamland
atmosphere overhangs them. The present, as we battle along through it,
seems full of hard, dry facts; but, looking back, experience takes on
a rosy hue. The sharp edges are gone. Even the trials and difficulties
which assailed us have for the most part lost their power to pain
or try us, and take on a story-book interest in this mellow land of
memories.
[Illustration: CANES AND UMBRELLAS]
To speak of “the good old times” is to gently implicate the present,
and the mild disapproval of the new therein suggested is, from elderly
people, to be expected. We grow conservative with age. Quiet is
more pleasing than change. The softened outlines of the past have
an attraction which the present matter-of-fact hurry and work have
not, and the times when we were young hold peculiar pleasure for our
contemplation. To actually prove by logic and rule that the old times
were better than the new would not be easy. They had their lacks. The
world learns and gains many things as it ages. It is to be hoped that
it grows better as it grows older; but even so the past has its charm,
whether one of memories in which we ourselves were actors, or of story,
which shows the contrast to the present which is the out-growth of that
past.
[Illustration: THE CHURN]
[Illustration: YE ENTRANCE OF OLD FASHION]
In writing of “old times” we have a definite period in mind. All times,
in truth, but the present are old, but wherever the phrase is met with,
it refers to the years when the grandfathers and grandmothers then
living were young. Ever since there were grandfathers and grandmothers
there have been “old times,” and these times have kept even pace with
the ageing of the world, following, shadow-like, the accumulating
years, and always nearly three-quarters of a century behind the
present. It therefore follows that the “old times” pictured in this
volume have to do with the early part of this century.
[Illustration: FARM TOOLS]
This old life as it ran then in our New England farmhouses was the
typical American life, and was not essentially different from country
life in any of our Northern States. Even with that of the city it had
many things in common. The large places had much the character of
overgrown villages, and were not yet converted into the great blocks
of brick and stone, now familiar, where business may throng miles and
miles of noisy streets. Factory towns, too, with their high-walled
mills and grimy, crowded tenements huddling about, were of the future.
[Illustration: A LOOM]
[Illustration: FANS AND BACK-COMB]
But the dawn of the new century was the herald of change. Everywhere
was activity. The country was new, and we had many needs which the
Old World did not feel. Necessity made us inventors, and ingenuity
became an American characteristic. A long line of towns stretched
along the Atlantic coast and occupied an occasional interval along the
larger streams, and houses were beginning to appear and hamlets to
grow farther inland. The adventurous were pushing westward. The heavy
canvas-topped wagons drawn by the slow-moving oxen were trundling along
the road toward the setting sun. Under the white arch of canvas were
stored the furniture and household supplies of a family. Behind were
driven the sheep and cattle which should form the nucleus of new flocks
in the new home.
[Illustration: OLD CHAIRS]
The century was seven years old before Fulton’s steamer made its trial
trip. Advantage was quickly taken of this new application of power,
and soon steam vessels were puffing up and down all the larger rivers
and along the coast, though a dozen years elapsed before one ventured
across the Atlantic. Railroads were still unthought of. Even wagons
were not common for some years after the close of the last century.
There were very few places in the United States whose inhabitants
exceeded ten thousand in 1800; but the building of factories shortly
commenced, and these became the magnets which drew a great tide of life
from the country and from foreign shores into the cities. The factories
gave the deathblow to the multitude of handicrafts which up to this
time had flourished in the New England villages.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE OLD HOUSES]
The New England town of the period was made up of a group of houses
about an open common. At least, it started thus. As the town grew, a
second street or a number of them were laid out parallel or at right
angles to the first, or houses were erected along the straggling paths
which led to the surrounding fields; and the paths in time grew to
the dignity of roads, and linked the scattered houses and hamlets to
the parent village. The central village, where the lay of the land
permitted, was built on a broad hilltop, partly, as in the case of the
older towns, for purposes of defence, partly because here the land was
less thickly overgrown with trees and underbrush and was more easily
cleared. Another reason was that the Old World towns were built thus,
and the emigrants to this country naturally did likewise, even though
the Old World life in feudal times which gave reason for this was
entirely of the past.
[Illustration: A SILHOUETTE PORTRAIT]
Here was the meeting-house, a big, quiet building fronted by the spire.
A group of weather-worn sheds were close behind it, where parishioners
living at a distance might shelter their horses during services. Not
far away was the tavern, a substantial and roomy building whose sign
swung from the front or dangled from a tree or pole close by. Then
there would be four or five little shops and stores among the lines of
comfortable two-story dwellings.
[Illustration: A RIVER-BOAT BEFORE THE DAYS OF RAILROADS]
People in general neglected ornamental trees, though there were before
this occasionally persons who had set out shade trees, and places
which had started lines of elms along the village streets. About this
time Lombardy poplars became fashionable. The poplar was a French
tree, and was therefore championed by the Jeffersonian Democrats, who
had for France a decided partiality. For the most part these trees
have disappeared. Still, here and there their tall, compact, military
forms are seen standing dark and stiff, and with a still lingering air
about them of foreign strangeness. The appearance of the common or the
village in general was little thought of. Sidewalks received almost no
attention, and such paths as there were had been made by the wear of
travel.
[Illustration: REELS]
[Illustration: A COMFORTABLE FARMHOUSE]
[Illustration: THE FLAX-WHEEL]
What fine buildings those houses of old times were and still are!--not
in the least pretentious, but having a certain distinguished air of
comfort and stability; no suggestion of the doll-house which so many
of our Queen Anne cottages bring to mind, but withal an appearance
of quiet and attractive dignity. The supreme effort of the builder
seems to have centred in the doorways, which are often quite intricate
in their ornament; yet they are never reckless in design, and are
always pleasing in effect. Often, too, the decoration of the doorway
was echoed in the ornament of the window-frames and the cornice
under the eaves. Piazzas were rare, but many houses had a porch
before the entrance. The finer residences had knockers on the front
doors. Door-bells came into use a little later. Instead of the modern
door-knobs, iron latches were used, or in some cases wooden ones. If
the latch had no thumb-piece--and the more primitive ones had not--a
string was attached and run through a hole bored for the purpose just
above. The latch was on the inside, and there was no way of raising it
except the latchstring hung out. Locking was readily accomplished by
pulling in the string. Some houses had wooden buttons on the doors just
over the latch, which, when turned down, held the latch in its notch
and thus locked the door. In still other cases doors were locked by
means of a fork thrust in just above the latch, but for the most part
doors of buildings, both public and private, went unlocked.
[Illustration: FEBRUARY]
[Illustration: KITCHEN UTENSILS]
Houses in town, and the meeting-house as well, were painted red or
yellow. Many houses, especially those belonging to the poorer people
and those outside the main village, were unpainted. On some of our
old buildings may yet be seen suggestions of these former brilliant
hues, though sun and storm have been softening the tones all through
the years, so that only a shadowy tint of the old red or yellow still
clings to the weather-worn clapboards. Most houses changed color to
white, when that became the fashion fifty years ago. Blinds of the
modern pattern were not much used before the century was well begun.
In the Indian days heavy wooden doors were swung to across the window
openings to bar the passage, but after 1750 the Indians were no longer
objects of terror to New England people.
[Illustration: GOURDS AND PIGGINS]
The larger wild animals were almost altogether gone by this time in the
regions longest settled. The sheep pastured on the hills were not now
in danger from prowling wolves or bears. Some of the old farmers had
perhaps in their younger days heard the dismal cry of the former far
off in the woods, perhaps had shot a black bear or two, or caught a few
in traps; but now a bear, wolf, or wildcat was rarely seen anywhere
in the vicinity of the older towns. Deer had almost disappeared. Wild
turkeys could still be shot in considerable numbers, and in the fall
great flocks of pigeons made their flights in sufficient numbers to
darken the sky.
To the boys, that seems the golden age when the Indians lurked in
the deep woods, when bears and wolves and other wild beasts had to
be fought with. At such a time who would not be a hero! Hoeing corn,
digging potatoes, bringing in wood, milking cows, where is the chance
to show our talents in these things? The heroes are in the West, the
North, or in the Tropics now. These present times are slow and dull,
and hold no such opportunity as had the fathers, for the valiant youth
to show his quality. But this feeling is a mistaken one. The lives of
the fathers were many times dull to them; they had much monotonous
labor; wild animals were nuisances, which caused loss and worry; while
the Indians gave them many a scare, and awakened little feeling in
the youngster of that day beyond one of terror. At the time of which
I write the pioneer epoch was past in New England, but many stories
of Indians and wild beasts were told about the firesides on winter
evenings.
[Illustration: THE WINDING ROADWAY]
[Illustration: A MILL-YARD IN THE VALLEY]
[Illustration: A SUNNY GLEN]
In a country town the coming of the stage-coach was one of the events
of its daily life. Some places were visited by the coaches once or
twice a week, others once a day or even oftener. When the lumbering
coach swept down the village street with crack of whip and blast of
horn, everybody tried to see it as it rumbled past. Happy was the man
or boy whom business or pleasure called to the tavern when the driver
with a flourish brought his horses to a standstill before the door.
The driver was a very important person in the eyes of most of the
villagers, and by none was his importance more highly appreciated than
by himself. His dignity was made the more impressive by the high beaver
hat he wore. News was slow in travelling, and the papers of the day
were rather barren of the gossipy items which the average human being
craves. This man of the world, therefore, who, in his journeyings,
saw and heard so much of which his fellowmen were ignorant, assumed a
magnified importance. He always found ready listeners, and his opinions
had much weight. If inclined to be reticent he was questioned and
coaxed to divulge his knowledge of the happenings in the outside world
with no little anxiety. When railroads came, the coaches travelled
remoter ways. Some found a last resting-place in backyards, and there
amid other rubbish, grasses, and weeds gradually fell to pieces.
Others, pushed onward by the iron horse, went West, getting farther
and farther from their old haunts, till at last the Rocky Mountains
were reached. It may be that some of the old New England coaches are
still at work in those rugged regions.
[Illustration: A QUIET DAY]
Another characteristic vehicle of the times was a long, heavy wagon
with an arched canvas top and high board sides, drawn by from four to
ten horses, which travelled between Boston and towns inland, conveying
tea, coffee, and store goods, and returning with a load of pork,
butter, cheese, and grain. These wagons were useful when families
wished to travel long distances. When the railroads began to do their
former work the wagons were utilized by the emigrants, and finally on
the Western plains were given the name of “prairie schooners.”
When an inland town was in the neighborhood of a navigable stream the
heavier supplies, such as sugar, rum, and molasses, were brought up the
river in big flat-boats. These boats were clumsy, square-ended affairs,
with a narrow cabin across the stern just high enough for a man to
stand up in, where were a couple of bunks and a rude stove. A big,
square sail on a thirty-foot mast moved the craft, but when the wind
failed it was necessary to resort to poling. The helmsman had his post
on the roof of the cabin, and he with one other man made up the crew.
Sometimes they ate their meals on board, sometimes stopped at a village
on the banks and went to the tavern. When darkness settled down they
hitched somewhere along shore, but at times, when the wind was fair and
the moon bright, would sail on all night.
[Illustration: A BARN-DOOR GROUP]
Post-offices were in the early days far less common than now, and
postage was expensive, varying in amount with the distance the missive
travelled. Letters were not stamped, but the sum charged was marked
on the corner and collected by the postmaster on delivery. Envelopes
were not in common use till about 1850. Letters were usually written
on large-sized paper, and as much as possible crowded on a sheet. The
sheet was dexterously folded so that the only blank space, purposely
so left, made the front and back of the missive. Then the letter was
directed and sealed with wax, and was ready for the mail. Towns not
favored with a post-office would get their mail by the stage-coach,
or, if off the stage routes, would send a post-rider periodically
to the nearest office. As the post-rider came jogging back with his
saddle-bags full of newspapers and letters, the sound of his horn
which told of his approach was a very pleasant one to those within the
farm-houses, who always looked forward with eagerness to the day which
brought the county paper with the news.
[Illustration: A TURN in THE ROAD]
[Illustration: A COUNTRY STAGE COACH IN WINTER]
The out-door farm life of that time was distinguished by its long hours
and the amount of muscle required. The tools were rude and clumsy,
and the machines which did away with hand labor were very few. From
seed-time to harvest, work began with the coming of day light in the
morning, and only ceased when in the evening the gray gloom of night
began to settle down.
[Illustration: A HILLTOP VILLAGE]
Up to this time little fencing had been done about the pasture land,
that being common property on which everybody turned loose their sheep
and cattle. Many of the creatures wore bells, which tinkled and jingled
on the hillsides and in the woods from morn till night. But now the
towns were dividing the “commons” among the property-holders, fences
were built, and the flocks separated. On rocky land many stone walls
were built, but in the lowlands the usual fence was made by digging
a ditch, and on the ridge made by the earth thrown out making a low
barrier of rails, stakes, and brush. Gradually more substantial fences
were built, for the most part of the zigzag Virginia rail pattern.
Oxen did most of the heavy farm-work, such as ploughing and hauling,
and it was not till after 1825 that horses became more general. The
common cart which then answered in the place of our two-horse wagon was
a huge two-wheeled affair having usually a heavy box body on the “ex.”
But when used in haying, the sides of the box were removed and long
stakes were substituted.
In the summer the men were out before sun up, swinging their scythes
through the dewy grass, and leaving long, wet windrows behind them for
the boys to spread. Mowing, turning, and raking were all done by hand,
which made the labor of haying an extended one. In the busiest times
the women and girls of the family often helped in the fields “tending”
hay, or loading it, or raking after. They helped, too, in harvesting
the grain and flax, and later in picking up apples in the orchard.
They did the milking the year round, using clumsy wooden pails, and
for a seat, a heavy three-legged stool or a block of wood. The smaller
children drove the cows to pasture in the morning and brought them back
at night, often a distance of a mile or two along lonesome roadways or
by-paths.
[Illustration: A LITTLE LAKE]
When the grain ripened, it was reaped by hand with the slender,
saw-edged sickles. The peas and oats, which were sowed together, had
to be mowed and gotten in; the flax had to be pulled and rotted;
there was hoeing to be done, and the summer was full of work. In the
fall the corn had to be cut and husked and the stalks brought in, the
pumpkins and squashes gathered, potatoes dug, the haying finished, and
the apples picked. Most farms had large orchards about them, and many
barrels of apples were stowed away in the cellar, but the larger part
was made into cider. There would usually be several little cider-mills
in a town, whose creaking machinery could be heard on many a cool
autumn day groaning under its labors. The shaking of the apple-trees
and carting the fruit to mill, and the taking copious draughts of the
sweet liquid through a straw from the tub that received it from the
press, and then the return with the full barrels--all this had more
of the frolic in it than real work, particularly for the boys. The
sweet apples, in large part, were run through the mill by themselves,
and the cider was boiled down at home into a thick fluid known as
apple-molasses, used for sweetening pies, sauce, and puddings. When
harvesting was done, the cellar was full of vegetables in barrels and
bins and heaps, and heavy casks of cider lined the walls, and little
space was left for passageways. Even in broad daylight it was a place
mysterious, gloomy, and dungeon-like; yet its very fulness which made
it thus was suggestive of good cheer.
[Illustration: A VILLAGE SCENE]
Winter, too, brought plenty of work, but it was not so arduous and
long-continued as that of summer. There was the stock to feed and
water and keep comfortable; the threshing to do; trees must be felled
in the woods and sledded to the home yard, there to be worked up into
fireplace length; tools needed mending; there was the flax to attend
to, and, if new fencing was to be done in the spring, rails must be
split.
Grain was threshed out with hand-flails on the barn floor. On many days
of early winter and from many a group of farm buildings the rhythmic
beat of the flails sounded clear on the frosty air as straw and grain
parted company. When it was necessary to go to mill, the farmer filled
a couple of bags, fastened them across the back of his horse, mounted
in front, and trotted off to get it ground, or perhaps his wife or one
of the children mounted instead and did the errand. The grist-mill was
in some hollow where the water paused above in a sleepy pond, and then,
having turned the great slow-revolving wooden wheel against the side of
the mill, tumbled noisily on down the ravine.
[Illustration: SNOW-FIELDS ON THE HILLS]
In the earliest days of spring, if the farm had a maple orchard within
its borders, there were trees to tap, and sap to gather and boil down.
The snow still lay deep in the woods where the maples grew, and the
sap-gathering was done with an ox-sled on which was set a huge cask.
In some sheltered nook of the woods a big kettle was swung over an
open-air fire, and the boiling-down process commenced.
Not much farm produce was sold for money; the people raised and made
much more of what they ate and wore than at present, and exchanged with
neighbors and the village storekeeper whatever they had a surplus of
for things which they lacked. Even the minister and doctor were paid
in part with wood, grain, and other produce. At the beginning of the
century accounts were kept in pounds, shillings, and pence, and the
money in use was of foreign coinage, mainly English and Spanish.
[Illustration: MARCH]
The kitchen was the centre of family life. Here a vast amount of work
was done. Here they ate, spent their evenings, and commonly received
visitors. Often it served as a sleeping-room besides. Its size was
ample, though the ceiling was low and pretty sure to be crossed by a
ponderous beam of the framework of the house, the lower half projecting
from the plastering above. A few straight-backed chairs sat stiffly up
against the wainscoted wall, and seemed to have an air of reserve that
would change to surprise if one ventured to move or use them. There
stood the dresser, with bright array of pewter, a small table, a bed
turned up against the wall and hidden by curtains, a cradle, a stand,
a great high-backed settle, and lastly, extending almost across one
end of the room, was the most important feature of the kitchen, the
fireplace.
[Illustration: CLEARED LAND]
Let us take an early morning look into one of these old kitchens. Dusky
shadows still linger; we cannot make objects out clearly; one or two
coals are glowing in the cavernous mouth of the fireplace, and a wisp
of smoke steals upward and is lost in the gloomy chimney. It is late
in the fall. When winter really sets in, the turned-up bed will come
into use. Somebody is moving about in the bedroom, and now the door
is opened and the man of the house, in frowzled head, comes from the
sleeping-room. He is in his shirt-sleeves, and the heels of his big
slippers clatter on the floor as he shuffles across to the fireplace.
He is a smooth-faced, middle-aged man, vigorous, but slow-moving, and
bent by hard work. He pokes away the ashes, throws on the coals a few
sticks from a pile of three-foot wood on the floor close by, and in a
few moments there is a fine blaze and crackle. The room is chilly, and
the man rubs his hands together, stooping forward to catch the warmth
from the fire. A scratching is heard on the outside door. He shuffles
over and opens it. The cat glides in and rubs against him gratefully as
she goes over to the fireplace, where she seats herself on the hearth
and proceeds to make an elaborate toilet.
[Illustration: GATHERING SAP IN THE SUGAR ORCHARD]
The man kicks off his slippers and pulls on a pair of stiff, heavy
boots. He takes his coat from a peg by the fireplace, puts it on and
his cap, and goes out. Every footstep falls clear and distinct on the
frozen ground. The big arm of the well-sweep in the yard creaks as
he lowers the bucket for water. Soon he returns with a brimming pail,
fills the iron tea-kettle, then goes out again.
[Illustration: WAYSIDE BERRY-PICKERS]
The kettle, suspended from the crane, seems quite shocked by this
deluge of cold water. It swings in nervous motion on its pot-hook and
shakes from its black sides the water-drops, which fall with a quick
hiss of protest into the fire. The heat below waxes greater, and the
cat moves to a cooler position.
It is lighter now. The tea-kettle recovers from its ill-humor, and,
half asleep, sings through its nose a droning song of contentment and
sends up the chimney quite a little cloud of steam. Now the woman of
the family has appeared and bustles about getting breakfast. She calls
the children at the chamber door. Down they come, and crowd about the
fire or scrub themselves in the wash-basin on the table. Grandfather is
up, and he and the older boys go out-doors. Grandma helps the smaller
children fasten their clothes and wash their faces, and assists about
the housework.
[Illustration: A FARM AMID THE BIG HILLS]
Some of the older girls, perhaps grandma or the mother also, soon take
their wooden pails and go to the barn to milk the cows. When they
returned, they strained the milk through cloths held over the tops of
the pails into the brown earthen pans, and then were ready to help with
the breakfast preparations. A second kettle has been hung from the
crane, in which potatoes are boiling. Coals have been raked out on the
hearth, and over them is set a long-legged spider on which slices of
pork are sizzling.
By the time breakfast was ready, the men, by reason of their open-air
exercise, had appetites which nought but very hearty food could
appease. Before they sat down to eat, the family gathered about the
table and stood while the head of the family asked a blessing. Then the
older ones seated themselves, while the children went to a small second
table at one side, about which they stood and ate, trotting over to
the main table when they wished to replenish their plates.
[Illustration: A LITTLE HOME ON THE HILLSIDE]
Many families had cider on the table to drink at every meal. Other
people would have coffee or sometimes tea, though the latter was
not much used except for company, and neither to such an extent as
at present. Coffee was sweetened with molasses ordinarily, and so
accustomed did palates become to this, that when sugar came into more
general use, it was considered by many a very poor substitute.
Breakfast eaten, the household gathered about the main table once more
and stood while thanks were returned. Then followed family worship. It
was customary to read the Bible from beginning to end,--a chapter each
morning,--all the family reading verses in turn; and then, if they were
musical, a hymn was sung. Lastly, all knelt while prayer was offered.
[Illustration: AN OLD MILL]
Work now began again. The men left to take up their labor out of doors,
while the women busied themselves in the house with their varied
tasks. As the morning wore away, preparation began for dinner. What
was known as a “boiled dinner” was most often planned. It was prepared
in a single great pot. First the meat was put in; then from time to
time, according as the particular things were quick or slow in cooking,
the vegetables were added,--potatoes, beets, squash, turnip, and
cabbage,--and probably in the same pot a bag of Indian pudding. When
clock or noon-mark registered twelve, the dinner was dished up and the
men called in. The meal was hearty and simple, and the family did not
feel the need of much besides the meat and vegetables. Even bread was
hardly thought necessary. Sometimes pie or pudding was brought on for
dessert, but not regularly. The pie-eating era began a generation later.
[Illustration: A SAW-MILL]
At six o’clock the supper-table was set. The cows had been fed
and milked; the boys had brought in the wood, and as they had no
wood-boxes, they dumped the heavy three-foot sticks on the floor by
the fire, or stood it up on end against the wall at one side, or piled
it between the legs of the kitchen table; and other odd jobs were
done, and the family gathered about the table. Bread and milk was
quite apt to be the chief supper dish. After the blessing was asked
and the elders had seated themselves, the children would fill their
pewter porringers or wooden bowls and pull their chairs up about the
fireplace. Instead, they would sometimes crouch on the stone hearth,
while the fire glowed and crackled and set the lights and shadows
playing about the little figures. Their chatter back and forth and the
company of the fire made their circle like a little world in itself,
and the grown folks and their talk seemed far, far away.
[Illustration: A SPRING MORNING]
When supper was ended and the dishes done, the women took up their
sewing and knitting. Almost everything worn was of home manufacture,
and the task of making and mending was a never-ending one. Even the
little girls of four or five years were not idle, but were taking their
first lessons with the knitting-needles. The men had less real work
to do,--perhaps were occupied with mending a broken harness or tool,
making a birch broom, whittling out a few clothes-pins, or constructing
a box-trap in which to catch mice. Sometimes certain of the family
played games. Evening, too, was a time for reading.
Just before the children went to bed, the family laid aside all
tasks and games, and read a chapter from the Bible and had prayers.
By nine o’clock all had retired except the father,--the head of the
family,--who wound the clock, pulled off his boots in a boot-jack of
his own making, and yawned as he shovelled the ashes over some of the
larger hard-wood coals, lest the fire should be lost during the night.
Then he, too, disappeared, and the fire snapped more feebly, with now
and then a fresh but short-lived effort to blaze, and so faded into a
dull glow and left the gloomy shadows of the room in almost full sway.
It is difficult to compare the old life with the new and say that in
any particular way one was better than the other, and decide under
which conditions character would grow most manly or most womanly.
Human nature is the same now as fifty or seventy-five years ago; but
that nature grows in a different soil, and surrounded by a different
atmosphere. Our present standards are unlike the old, the conditions
surrounding us have changed, and the way in which our feelings, our
desires, and aspirations find expression is changed as well.
[Illustration: A WILLOW-LINED RIVER]
It is certain that all the elements of life and growth are within
easier reach, and may more easily be drawn together and assimilated,
that under favorable conditions one can get a finer and broader
culture. Nature with all its forces, holding power for help and
hindrance, has been brought more under man’s subjection. Contributions
to the sum of human thought and knowledge have been many and valuable.
As the years have slipped away the upward path has been made broader
and smoother, and one can travel it in more comfort and go much faster.
But, at the same time, the downward paths have increased in number and
attractiveness, and the narrower ways and more rigid training of three
generations ago would unquestionably have held some steady who now are
deteriorating.
The fathers made the path toward virtue both narrow and rugged. It
required sturdy self-control to keep that way; but each sternly held
himself, his family, and his neighbors to the task. Any backsliding
or stepping aside called for severe reprimand or punishment. About
their lives was a certain forbidding formality and setness. They had
a powerful sense of independence, but were very conservative. Any
change of thought or action was looked upon as dangerous, and they
often made what was their independence another’s bonds. Life was to
them very serious. In it, according to their interpretation, there was
room for little else than sober years of work. What enjoyment they got
in life came from the satisfaction in work accomplished, in an improved
property, and in prosperous sons and daughters.
[Illustration: APRIL]
Men’s character moulds their features. It graved deep lines of stubborn
firmness on the faces of the men of that time. There were shown
determination and enterprise and ingenuity. In the eyes were steadiness
and sturdy honesty. But the softening which the free play of humor
and imagination would help produce were lacking. The man’s nature was
petrified into a rock which held its own, and withstood the sunshine
and the buffeting storm with equal firmness. He had ability and
willingness to bear great burdens, and the generation did a vast amount
of work in the world.
[Illustration: A LOOK DOWN ON THE CONNECTICUT]
The individual to-day is much more independent of the world close
about him than he was seventy-five years ago. He asks less of his
neighbors, they less of him. The interests of the community are of less
importance to him, and he is of less importance to the community. The
town which in the old days would have been a little world to him is now
but a small space on the earth. Man has grown more restless. A quiet
life of simple usefulness is not enough. His fingers itch for money and
he dreams of fame. He feels the swirl of the current which draws him
toward those great whirlpools of life,--our modern cities. There alone,
it seems to him, are things done on a grand scale to be admired; there
alone he sees fair scope for energy and ability. One by one the country
dwellers leave the home farms, and some there are win fame and some get
fortune, but many are forever lost sight of.
[Illustration: THE SPRING HOEING]
In times past there was less hurry and more content. To be satisfied
with what one has is to have happiness, whether one lives in a hovel
or in a mansion. To live with economy in comfort was once enough. But
the view of what constitute the necessities of comfort has changed
vastly, and what would once have been accounted luxury may now be but
a painful meagreness. The people formerly travelled very little, and
had small contact with outside life, save that of neighboring towns,
which differed little from that at home. Journeys which now, with the
aid of steam, are slight undertakings, were then very serious. In the
case of journeys of any length, prayers were offered in church for the
traveller’s safe return; and when the journey was ended, the minister
gave thanks for the happy accomplishment of the trip. The labor and
uncertainty connected with a long journey, and the unfamiliarity with
the destination, made home seem a very safe and comfortable place. The
newspapers were prosy and slow, and gave little account of the outside
world to excite and attract the young. Long reports of legislative
and congressional doings, and discussions of subjects political and
religious, filled many columns. No space was wasted on light reading.
The object was not so much to interest as to instruct the reader.
The communications and reports of news were inclined to be prosy and
pompous, but were always thoughtful and courteous, rarely abusive or
trivial. There was an almost entire lack of local news, and such things
as stories, slang, or nonsense were not allowed.
[Illustration: AN OLD TAVERN]
PART II
THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY
[Illustration: THE FRIENDLY GUIDE]
The New England country has with the ageing of the century been
depopulated. The causes are various, but the evolution of the newspaper
has much to do with this. Visions of movement, and wealth, and fame
penetrate daily to the smallest village. Youth has always elements of
unfixity and uneasiness. It craves stir and excitement. The future is
full of golden possibilities. Riches or position present no height
which may not be scaled. But it is not the farm which holds these
higher possibilities. No, they are to be won in store, or shop, or
bank, where the noisy tides of the big towns keep up their restless
sway through the leagues of brick-walled city streets. In the city
is always movement. Not a paper comes into the country village but
that tells of some grand emprise, some fresh excitement, that has
its home in a familiar near city. But the chronicler for the home
village finds no items more worthy of note than that some one’s cow
has died, and that Amanda Jones is visiting Susan Smith. The contrast
presented is one of home monotony and triviality, and city stir and
grandeur. The picture is not altogether a true one. Acquaintance with
the big places is to the country boy almost uniformly disappointing.
The buildings are not so high nor so fine as he supposed. The din and
crowds of the city streets grow confusing and wearisome. If he stays
and gains a situation, and begins to work his way up in the world,
he finds competition intense, his freedom sharply curtailed, and his
lodgings narrow and in many ways lacking comfort. If he lives on his
wages, which at first will be very small, close economy is required
in food, clothes, and other expenses. In summer the heat is apt to
make office and lodging-place stiflingly disagreeable. All through the
year memories of the home farm, if he be imaginatively inclined, make
Arcadian pictures in his mind, and he many times questions if he has
not jumped from the frying-pan into the fire.
[Illustration: A HILL TOWN]
[Illustration: THE BACK SHEDS]
No one place holds every element of pleasure or comfort. The country
has its lacks, so has the city. The ideal home is perhaps in the
country village within easy travelling distance of some big town. Thus
you may largely avoid the drawbacks of either place, while you have
within reach all their pleasures. To live far back among the hills, cut
off from the nearest railway station by many miles of hard travelling,
is, in these modern days, a positive hardship. Few young people will
settle down contentedly where they are so cut off from the pleasures of
seeing the world by occasional railroad trips, and getting the glimpses
they crave of the busier life of the cities. Hence the tide sets away
from the remoter towns. The masses always follow the turn of the
current whichever way it shows strong tendency to run, and the boys,
as they grow up, live in full expectation of leaving the home place
after school-days are over. One by one they go from the valleys and the
hill-tops, and merge into the busier life of the factory villages and
the cities. An air of depression lingers over the regions they leave.
The most vigorous life has departed, enterprise is asleep, thrift lags.
There are still houses neatly kept, with clean, well-tilled fields
about, and a town now and then which is a happy exception to the rule;
but there is much which is hopeless and despondent. Few roads can be
followed far without coming upon some broken-windowed ruin of a house,
now for years unoccupied, and wholly given over to decay. The children
left, drawn by dreams of the gains the city or the sea or the far
West offered; and the parents are gone, too, now. The shingles and
clapboards loosen and the roof sags, and within, damp, mossy decay has
fastened itself to walls, floor, and ceiling of every room. Gaps have
broken in the stone walls along the roadway, and the brambles are thick
springing on either side. In the front yard is a gnarled, untrimmed
apple-tree with a great broken limb sagging to the ground, and about
a ragged growth of bushes. As time goes on, the house falls piece by
piece, and at last only the shattered chimney stands, a grim monument
of the one-day comfortable home--a memorial of the dead past. Yet even
now life is not all of the past. Amidst the rubbish careful watching
might reveal many of the little creatures of the field, and at eventide
of summer days you might see a darting of wings and descry a little
company of swallows dipping toward the chimney’s open cavern.
[Illustration: WINTER TWILIGHT--GOING UP FOR ONE MORE SLIDE]
[Illustration: A HILL-TOWN VILLAGE]
Some of the deserted homes would be still habitable, and that very
comfortably so, were there tenants. The life possible on these farms
would seem much happier and more desirable than that possible to the
poor family in the tenement of a factory village or in the crowded
quarters of our cities. But the country is to such very “lonesome,” and
there is hardly a city family of the more ignorant classes but will
choose squalor in the city rather than comfort in the country. The
noise and continual movement of the town have become a part of their
lives, and severed from that it is but a blank, unspeaking landscape
unfolds before their eyes. Nature is really never lonesome. Only
our habit and education make it so seem. Nature is always singing,
whether in our fellow humans, or in the hills and valleys, or in the
life of plants and animals. It is we lack eyes to see and ears to
hear. Nevertheless, mankind is naturally social, and though Robinson
Crusoe and his island were very interesting, we do not envy him the
experience, and demand at least a few congenial neighbors within easy
reach.
[Illustration: HOMES AND OUT-BUILDINGS BY THE WAYSIDE]
There is hardly any purely farming community in New England but that
has decreased in population within the past fifty years. It has been
the hill towns which have suffered most, but the valley towns have
been affected as well. It has become the habit to account all country
life dull, and the city’s superior liveliness, and the chances to earn
ready money offered by stores and factories, draw away the life of even
the most favored communities. New England is to-day much less a region
of thrifty Yankee farmers than it is a land of busy manufacturing
villages. Of these, enterprise and ingenious inventiveness are
characteristic. They call to them a large foreign population which
fills the monotonous rows of tenements in the neighborhood of the
mills, or in the case of the more thrifty establishes itself in little
separate family homes on the outskirts. The farming regions about
naturally take to market gardening, and these places become the chief
buyers of produce for the country miles about.
Farming towns within easy distance of the railroads usually attain a
fair prosperity, and energy and forethought give good returns for labor
expended. The towns themselves with their elm-shadowed streets are
neatly kept, and there is a certain pride taken in the good appearance
of the homes half hidden in the drooping foliage. In the remoter towns
are found thrifty dairy farms here and there, but the villages as a
whole are inclined to look weatherworn and hopeless. Many of the houses
have been strangers to fresh paint for a score of years or more; and
others, though still inhabited, depress with their broken chimnies,
leaky roofs, and decrepit out-buildings; while there are not wanting
the homes altogether deserted, silent, broken-windowed, and sepulchral.
Often these upland towns are nearly barren of well-grown trees which
might add so much to their appearance, and the trees there are, look
wind-blown and storm-beaten. This, with the thin, weedy grasses which
grow on the opens before the churches, gives such places an accumulated
forlornness.
[Illustration: NEW ENGLAND ROCKS]
It may be possible to find one of the outlying hamlets entirely
deserted. There are little villages where you may find half a dozen
or more forsaken homes, and no more than one or two still occupied;
and the whole village and land is concentrated in one or two big
farms,--big only in acres, however. There is slight attempt, as a
rule, to keep up a thorough tillage. The best of the fields are gone
over each year and a scanty harvest gleaned, and it may be questioned
if equal labor on fewer acres would not produce greater results. The
surplus buildings of the now depopulated village receive slight care,
and time and decay deal hardly with them. The best of them serve as
storage places for farm crops or tools. The more broken-down are levied
upon occasionally for a few boards to mend a fence or a leak in one of
the neighboring buildings, and so is hastened their time of complete
ruin.
[Illustration: HOLDING THE HORSES WHILE HIS FATHER GOES IN TO GET A
DRINK OF WATER]
Some places have won the favor of the summer visitors, and so have
gained renewed prosperity. A few weeks’ sojourn far from the heat
and noise of the city on these quiet, breezy hill-tops is no small
pleasure, and many a person of means takes pride in the cottage home
he has bought in some nook he thinks especially favored by nature,
and looks forward all through the lengthening days of the spring to
the time when he can unlock its door once more, wind the clock in the
hall, and settle himself with his family for the yearly vacation. He
finds not a little fussing and fixing to employ him about the place,
and he saunters forth in his oldest suit, when the notion takes him, to
talk with his neighbors the farmers. The chances are he gets off his
coat and renews his youth by helping in the hay-field, and there, like
enough, the rest of his flock hunt him out, and all have a triumphal
ride on the loaded cart behind the slow-moving oxen to the barn.
[Illustration: MAY]
[Illustration: A DAM ON THE CONNECTICUT]
[Illustration: AT THE RAILROAD STATION]
When the summer visitor came up from the railroad station on the train,
he noted the enticing look of the little streams in the hollows, and
the tinkling murmur of the waterfalls sounded in his ear a call to get
forth his fishing-rod. He was not long settled in his vacation home
before the fishing-tackle was forthcoming, and he might be seen with
vast caution and seriousness following up the neighboring brook through
the tangled woods, and across the pastures among the rank-growing ferns
and grasses, casting the fly and trailing it after the most approved
fashion along the surface of the water, and perchance, if destiny
favored, pulling forth at times a dainty little trout. The streams are
so thoroughly fished that at finger-length, in the more accessible
regions, the fish is esteemed a prize. Driving is always in order.
There are glens, and waterfalls, and high hills with wonderfully far
outlooks, and delightful winding valleys, to visit almost without
number.
[Illustration: A MANUFACTURING VILLAGE]
On Sunday the summer visitor goes to the village church. Perhaps the
services are not as brilliant as those to which he is used, but there
is a comfortable simplicity to the place, the people, the sermon,
and the singing which charms. The visitor is often a ready and valued
helper in making the church and its belongings more attractive, and
takes an interest in the schools and library and appearance of the
town, which to many a place has been of great assistance. The vacation
which includes, beside the ordinary out-door pleasuring, some of this
sort of helpfulness gives a multiplied satisfaction at its close.
[Illustration: THE RAILWAY-CROSSING IN THE VILLAGE]
The country dwellers of New England are not to-day, in the mass, as
strong charactered and vigorously intelligent as were those of the
early part of the century. Those elements have found greater attraction
and greater chance of reward elsewhere. It often happens that thrift
seems to dwell rather with recent comers from across the water than
with the older families. This is sometimes claimed to be because the
first will live more meanly than the latter could bring themselves to.
The truth is, the new-comers have no pride of family name to sustain,
they know attainment rests only on hard work, and their secret of
success lies more in their steady labor and good business habits than
in any meanness of living. The scions of the old families are looser
in their methods and more reckless and showy, and far less given to
vigorous work. They may be heard to bewail over this foreign element as
usurpers; but in reality comers of thrift and intelligence, whatever
their former homes, are a help to the town life. Hard work, saving
habits, and the aspiration to give the children of the family an
education, has a healthful effect on character, and win oftentimes for
those growing up in these homes culture and practical ability equalling
the best of that of the older families. If a foreign family takes up
with some little house on the outskirts, it may live very shabbily for
the first few years. But the land about is gradually brought under full
and thrifty tillage, little sheds begin to spring up behind the house,
by and by a barn is built, and then the house is made over and an L
added, and the progress toward prosperity as presented to the eye is a
thing to be admired. It is almost always the remnants of the worn-out
Yankee families which come on the town, and not these foreigners.
[Illustration: A STONE BRIDGE]
“Yankee” has become almost a synonym for ingeniousness, thrift, and
“cuteness.” You can’t scare him; get him in a tight place and he will
find a way out; set him a task and he will find some way to do it in
half the time you expected; make him the butt of a joke and he will
get even with you and pay heavy interest; no matter what part of the
earth you transplant him to or the conditions you surround him with,
he accommodates himself to the new circumstances, and proceeds with
alacrity to financially profit by them. He is a born arguer, and a born
pedler, and a born whittler, a Jack-at-all-trades and good at them all.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF LITTLE FISHERMEN]
This, it may be, is the typical Yankee, and without a doubt such can
be found; but not every inhabitant of New England is made that way.
Yankees are of all kinds, and the abilities, virtues, and short-comings
are much mixed in the parcelling out. The Yankee is a man of opinions,
and shows great readiness to impart them to others; but the depth
or shallowness of these depends on the man. He is inclined to slow
speaking and nasal tones, and when a question is asked has a way of
turning it over in his mind once or twice before he gives answer,
often improving the interval to spit seriously and meditatively. In
bargaining, whatever the amount involved, he is given to dickering,
crying down, or upholding the price, according as he is buyer or
seller. The thrifty man is sometimes simply the man of push and
ability, sometimes the miserly man who drives sharp bargains and
forecloses mortgages when his poor neighbors are in trouble, and sells
hard cider to the drinkers; or he may be one of high standing in church
and community, who, though stickling for fairness, is sure to buy low
and sell high; who is up at sunrise in summer and long before daylight
in winter; who makes long days and fills them with hard work, and is
esteemed a hard master by sons and hired men; who lives frugally, and
when it comes to spending, as the saying goes, “squeezes the dollar
until the eagle squeals.”
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE WATERING-TROUGH]
[Illustration: A COUNTRY SCHOOL WATCHING A TEAM GO BY]
As a rule New England country people save nothing above expenses, and
even then, spending all they earn, can have few more than the most
common comforts of life, and rarely a luxury. Circumstance or some
untoward accident of fate may bring this result, but an unstriving
lack of thrift is more frequently the cause. Those of this class have
a way of being always a little behind in what they do, and there is a
dragging want of vitality in what they attempt. They are a little late
in planting, a little late in harvesting. They never get full crops,
and fall below the best always in quality, and are apt to suffer loss
through frost or foul weather. “The stitch in time which saves nine”
about their buildings they do not take, and these buildings lose boards
here and there, and presently begin to sag and need a prop to keep
them from coming down prone. So crops, and animals, and farm-tools are
ill-protected, and there is increased loss.
[Illustration: AN OLD BURYING-GROUND]
As compared with the typical Southerner, the Yankee has less warmth
of enthusiasm, less open-heartedness and chivalry, but he is steadier
and has greater staying-power. The ne’er-do-well class of the North
may wear their hearts on their sleeves and be as free as air in their
kindliness and generosity; but Yankee thrift, however generous or
philanthropic, is self-controlled and inclined to be reticent and
politic. But though this may lessen the charm and poetry of it, there
is no doubting its increased effectiveness.
Thrift is apt to become with the well-to-do a sort of passion. The
lack of it in a neighbor stirs continued and sarcastic criticism. On
the other hand, thrift easily runs into closeness; but the worshipper
of thrift is not mean and entirely selfish in this regard. It is a
pleasure to him to see well-tilled fields, even if they belong to
others, and he has the wish to make what attracts him general. The rich
at their death often leave their fortunes in whole or in part to some
charity or educational institution which will further a more general
thrift.
[Illustration: BELOW THE DAM]
In stories of New England village-life we find a curious dialect used
by the characters. Quaintness and uncouthness are both prominent.
To one thoroughly acquainted with its people these stories savor of
exaggeration and caricature. Ignorance everywhere uses bad grammar,
whether in town or country, New England or elsewhere. Isolation tends
also to careless speech. But the New Englander has not either, as
a rule, to so marked a degree as to make him the odd specimen of
humanity pictured in books. Life in the small villages and on the
outlying farms does not present very numerous social advantages, and
the result is a necessity for depending on one’s own resources. This,
with those possessed of some mental vigor, develops individuality of
thought and stable and forceful character. In the towns it requires the
consultation and help of about half a dozen friends for a young person
to accomplish any given object, great or small. On the farm, where
neighbors are few, the boy or girl does his or her own thinking and
working. Such have more pith and point to their brain movement, and in
after life under as favoring circumstances will accomplish more.
[Illustration: A MASSACHUSETTS MOUNTAIN]
[Illustration: THE FERRYBOAT]
Individuality expresses itself in manner and speech as well as thought,
and odd ways and queer ideas and peculiar observations are to be met
with very commonly in the New England country. The heavy work brings
a certain amount of clumsiness with the strength. The rough clothes
usually worn, and the slight care given them, often make an individual
grotesque, and the majority of the workers attain to the picturesque
in their costumes with their variety of patched and faded oldness. A
peculiarity of recent years has come with the fashion of derby hats.
There is a naturalness about an old slouch hat, however ancient,
stained, and misshapen. If it does not grow old gracefully, it at least
does so logically and without reminding the beholder of a more exalted
past. But the battered and leaky derby retains to the last a stiff look
of aristocracy which ill fits its dilapidated seediness.
[Illustration: A FALL ON THE CONNECTICUT]
[Illustration: JUNE]
But whether a man is uncouth or not depends on other things than
his occupation. Neatness is a growth from within rather than from
without, and though no sensible farmer works in his Sunday clothes
on week-days, there are many by whom you are agreeably impressed,
no matter where you meet them. A look from the car window on a rainy
day, as you pause at the villages on your route, reveals a curious
motley group hanging about the platform. The depot is a favorite resort
on stormy days when work is slack on the farm; but loafing is not
characteristic of the best of the community, and it is hardly fair to
judge all by the specimens who here present themselves.
[Illustration: THE GROWING BOY IN HIS LAST YEAR’S CLOTHES]
[Illustration: AT THE BACK-DOOR]
Indoors, where presides the housewife, we expect to find neatness in
supreme rule, for the New England woman has in that a wide repute.
It is to be doubted if the old-time shining and spotless interiors
which the grandmothers tell about are as universal now as formerly.
But house-cleanings come with great regularity in most families, and
the consumption of brooms and scrubbing-brushes in New England is
something enormous. With the advent of wall-paper and carpets and the
great variety of furniture and knick-knacks now within reach, has come
a discontent with the old simplicity, and the changes are often not
pleasing. Taste runs too much in wall-paper and carpets to dark colors
and pronounced patterns, and the rooms appear boxy. If much money
is spent on furniture it is apt to be spent on style rather than on
substantial and quiet comfort. The pictures on the walls are usually a
queer collection, from--it would be hard to imagine where; of colored
prints, engravings cut from newspapers, and photographs of deceased
members of the family. The science of house decoration is something
very modern, and it will take time to learn how to do it simply and
harmoniously.
[Illustration: THE ACADEMY]
Life’s currents pursue a tangled course, and while we catch many
strains of harmony, there are discordant notes of which we rarely get
entirely out of hearing. New England is not perfect, but once to have
known is always to love it, no matter how far one wanders or how fair
new regions open before one’s eyes. Its changing seasons, its rugged
hills and tumbling streams, its winding roadways, its villages and
little farms, cling in the memory and sing siren songs of enticement.
Nature is sometimes harsh, but she has many moods, and nowhere more
than here; and if harsh sometimes, she is at other times exceeding
sweet. In cold or heat, storm or sunshine, New England’s rough fields
are still the true Arcadia to her sons and daughters.
PART III
NEW ENGLAND AS THE TRAVELLER SEES IT
[Illustration: A HORSE-CHESTNUT MAN]
To really see and know New England one must leave the railroads and
take time for a long tramp or drive. Railroads are only intended to
link together the cities and larger towns, and they seek the level
and monotonous for their routes, and pursue always as straight and
prosaic a course as circumstances will admit. The view from the
windows of ragged banks of earth or rock, where a path has been cut
through a hill, or of the sandy embankments, where a hollow has been
filled, and of pastures, swamps, and stumpy, brushy acres, where the
timber has lately been cut off, are often dismal. At the same time the
real country as seen from the winding, irregular roadways that link
the villages and scattered farms together may be quite cheerful and
pleasing.
[Illustration: AFTERGLOW]
With the purpose of seeing the real New England in its highways and
byways, its hills and valleys, its nooks and corners, I started out
one autumn day on a buckboard. I had a little bay horse, fat and
good-natured, quite content to stop as often and long as I chose, and
to busy herself nibbling the grass and bushes by the roadside, while
I sketched or photographed. She had a decided disinclination for fast
travelling, and wanted to walk as soon as a hill came in sight. But
I wished to go slowly in the main, and we got along very agreeably,
though at times I fear my remarks and hints to the creature between the
shafts were not complimentary or pleasing to that animal. Houses where
one could get a lunch at noon were not always handy, and I took the
precaution to carry along some eatables for myself and a few feeds of
oats for the horse.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE CHURCH]
It was nine o’clock when I left Old Hadley in Central Massachusetts and
turned northward up the valley. A cold wind was blowing, and many gray
cloud-masses were sailing overhead. The region about was one of the
fairest in New England,--a wide, fertile valley basin stretching twenty
miles in either direction. The Connecticut River loops through it with
many graceful curves, and blue ranges of hills bound it on every side.
At intervals of about ten miles on this level you come upon the few
scores of houses, which cluster about the churches at the centre of the
towns, and there are many little hamlets where are lesser groups of
homes.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE HUMBLER HOUSES]
I was jogging across some meadows, when I came to a few houses flanked
by numerous out-buildings and half hidden by the trees about them. Some
children were by the roadside. They had rakes and a big basket, and
were intent on gathering the maple leaves which carpeted the ground.
They stopped to watch me as I approached.
“Take my picture,” cried a stout little girl, and then threw the basket
over her head and struck an attitude.
“All right,” was my reply.
“Oh!” she said, “I want my cat in,” and raced off to the house to
secure it.
[Illustration: A DESERTED HOME]
She was no sooner back and in position than she found a new trouble.
She had on a little cap with a very narrow visor, and as the sun had
now come out, its bright light made her eyes wink. Suddenly she spoke
up and said the little cap made her cry, and wanted to get a hat, if I
would let her. When she returned I made haste to snap the camera before
any other ideas could occur to her. We were pretty well acquainted by
the time I finished, and she wanted to know how much I charged for my
picture, and said she guessed she would get one if I came that way
again.
The town of Sunderland lay a little beyond. It is a typical valley
town, with a long, wide street lined by elms and maples, thickset on
either side by the white houses of its people. Everything looked
thrifty and well kept. The wind blew gustily, and sometimes would start
the leaves which had just begun to strew the ground beneath and send
windrows of them scurrying along the road like live armies on a charge.
[Illustration: GETTING A LOAD OF SAWDUST BACK OF THE SAW-MILL]
I was in the village in the late afternoon, when school let out. It
was interesting to note the way the boys came down the street slamming
about, shouting, and tripping each other up. It seemed to me there was
one sort of youngster who had need to reform. You find this variety
in every village where half a dozen boys can get together. He talks
in a loud voice when any witnesses or a stranger is about, is rude to
his fellows, jostles them and orders them about, cracks crude jokes,
either exceedingly pointless, or else of great age and worn threadbare,
at which he himself has to do a good share of the laughing. He is, in
short, showing off, and the show is a very poor one. He makes himself
both disagreeable and ridiculous to most, and can only win admiration
from a few weak-minded companions or overawed small boys. He is apt to
grow into something of a bully among those weaker than himself, and to
become, when older, a young man with a swagger.
[Illustration: A MEADOW STREAM]
It was October, the days were short, and I had early to seek a
stopping-place for the night. It still lacked something of supper-time
when I put my horse out at one of the farm-houses, and I took the
opportunity for a walk on the village street. The damp gloom of evening
had settled down. There were lights in the windows and movements at the
barns, and a team or two was jogging homeward along the road. Westward,
in plain sight across the river, was the heavy spur of a mountain,
dark against the evening sky. A single little light was trembling
on the summit of the crag. This came from a building known as “the
prospect house.” The proprietor lives there the year around, and from
Sunderland’s snug street, on cold winter nights, the light is still to
be seen sending out shivering rays into the frosty darkness.
[Illustration: A HOME UNDER THE ELMS]
I returned presently to the house and had supper. That finished, the
small boy of the family brought a cup of boiled chestnuts, and while we
munched them, explained how he had picked up eighty-one quarts of nuts
so far that year. In his pocket the boy had other treasures. He pulled
forth a handful of horse-chestnuts, and told me they grew on a little
tree down by the burying-ground.
“The boys up at our school make men of ’em,” he said. “They take
one chestnut and cut a face on it like you do on a pumpkin for a
jack-o’-lantern. That’s the head. Then they take a bigger one and cut
two or three places in front for buttons, and make holes to stick in
toothpicks for legs, and they stick in more for arms, and with a little
short piece fasten the head on the body. Then they put ’em up on the
stove-pipe where the teacher can’t get ’em, and they stay there all
day. Sometimes they make caps for ’em.” He got out his jack-knife and
spent the rest of the evening manufacturing these queer little men for
my benefit.
[Illustration: A DOOR-STEP GROUP]
The next morning I turned eastward and went along the quiet, pleasant
roads, now in the woods, now among pastures where the wayside had grown
up to an everchanging hedge of bushes and trees. Much of the way was
uphill, and I sometimes came out on open slopes which gave far-away
glimpses over the valley I had left behind.
About noon I stopped to sketch one of the picturesque watering-troughs
of the region. There was a house close by, and a motherly looking old
lady peeked out at me from the door to discover what I was up to. I
asked if I might stay to dinner. She said I might if I would be content
with their fare, and I drove around to the barn. An old gentleman and
his hired man were pounding and prying at a big rock which protruded
above the surface right before the wagon-shed. They had blasted it,
and were now getting out the fragments. By the time I had my horse put
out, dinner was ready, and we all went into the house. We had “a boiled
dinner,”--potatoes, fat pork, cabbage, beets, and squash all cooked
together. The dish was new to me, but I found it quite eatable.
I was again on the road, jogging comfortably along, when I noticed
two little people coming across a field close by. They walked hand
in hand, and each carried a tin pail of apples. The boy was a stout
little fellow, and the girl, a few sizes smaller, very fat and pudgy
and much bundled up. I told them I’d like to take their pictures. They
didn’t know what to make of that; but I got to work, and they stood
by the fence looking at me very seriously. I was nearly ready when a
woman from the doorway of a house a little ways back called out, “Go
right along, Georgie! Don’t stop!” I told her I wanted to make their
photographs--it wouldn’t take but a minute. She said they ought to be
dressed up more for that. But I said they looked very nice as they
were, and hastened to get my picture. Then the two went toddling on.
The boy told me there was a big pile of apples back there; also, as I
was starting away, that his father had just bought a horse.
[Illustration: A ROADSIDE FRIEND]
I took the sandy long hill way toward Shutesbury, a place famous for
miles about for its huckleberry crops. It is jokingly said that this
is its chief source of wealth, and the story goes that “One year the
huckleberry crop failed up in Shutesbury, and the people had nothin’ to
live on and were all comin’ on to the town, and the selectmen were so
scared at the responsibility, they all run away.”
The scattered houses began to dot the way as I proceeded, and after a
time I saw the landmarks of the town centre--the two churches, perched
on the highest, barest hilltop eastward. The sun was getting low,
and chilly evening was settling down. Children were coming home from
school; men, who had been away, were returning to do up their work
about the house and barn before supper, and a boy was driving his
cows down the street. I hurried on over the hill and trotted briskly
down into the valley beyond, but it was not long before the road again
turned upward. The woods were all about. In the pine groves, which grew
in patches along the way, the ground was carpeted with needles, and the
wheels and horse’s hoofs became almost noiseless. There were openings
now and then through the trunks and leafage, and I could look far
away to the north-east, and see across a wide valley the tree-covered
ridges patched with evergreens, and the ruddy oak foliage rolling
away into ranges of distant blue, and, beyond all, Mount Monadnock’s
heavy pyramid. The sun was behind the hill I was climbing, and threw a
massive purple shadow over the valley. Beyond, the ridges were flooded
with clear autumn sunlight. Far off could be seen houses, and a church
now and then--bits of white, toy-like, in the distance. The eastward
shadows lengthened, the light in the woods grew cooler and grayer, and
just as I was fearing darkness would close down on me in the woods, I
turned a corner and the hill was at an end. There were houses close
ahead, and off to the left two church steeples.
[Illustration: BETTER THAN HOEING ON A HOT DAY]
This was New Salem. The place had no tavern, but I was directed to one
of the farm-houses which was in the habit of keeping “transients.”
There was only a boy at home. His folks were away, and he had built
a fire in the kitchen and was fussing around, keeping an eye on the
window in expectation of the coming of the home team. It arrived soon
after, and in came his mother and sister, who had been to one of the
valley towns trading and visiting. The father was over at “the other
farm,” but he came in a little later. Mrs. Cogswell told of the day’s
happenings, and how she had found a knife by the roadside. It was
“kind of stuck up,” and she said she would bet some old tobacco-chewer
owned it. However, Mr. Cogswell, having smelt of it, guessed not.
[Illustration: JULY]
His wife now brought in a blanket she had bought at the “Boston Store,”
and we all examined it, felt of it, and guessed what it was worth.
Then she told what she paid, and how cheap she could get various other
things, and what apples would bring.
[Illustration: THE PET OF THE FARM]
As we sat chatting after supper, Mr. Cogswell took out his watch and
began to wind it. It was of the Waterbury variety, and winding took a
long time, and gave him a chance to discourse of watches in general,
and of this kind in particular. Frank had such a watch, he said, and he
took it to pieces and it was about all spring.
“You never saw such a thing,” said Mrs. Cogswell. “Why, it sprung out
as long as this table.”
“Ho, as long as this table!” said Mr. Cogswell; “it would reach ’way
across the room.” He said his own watch kept very good time as a
general thing, only it needed winding twice a day.
[Illustration: A RAINY DAY]
I was out early the next morning. The east still held some soft rose
tints, streaks of fog lingered in the valley, and the frost still
whitened the grass. After breakfast I went northward, down through the
woods and pastures, into Miller’s valley. I followed a winding ravine
in which a mountain brook went roaring over its uneven bed toward the
lowland. I came into the open again at the little village of Wendell
Depot. It was a barren little clearing, I found, wooded hills all
about, a railroad running through, several bridges, and a dam with its
rush and roar of water; a broad pond lay above, and below, the water
foamed and struggled and slid away beneath the arches of a mossy stone
bridge, and hurried on to pursue its winding way to the Connecticut.
There was a wooden mill by the stream-side. It was a big, square
structure with dirty walls and staring rows of windows. No trees were
about, only the ruins of a burned paper-mill, whose sentinel chimney
still stood, a blackened monument of the fire. There were a few of the
plain houses built by the mill for its help, a hotel, some sand-banks,
a foreign population, a dark, hurrying river, the roar of a dam, long
lines of freight-cars moving through, and grim hills reaching away
toward the sky.
From here I went westward, and in the early afternoon crossed
the Connecticut River and began to follow up the valley of the
Deerfield. I had to go over a big mountain ridge, but after that had
comparatively level travelling. I went on till long after sunset, and
presently inquired of a man I met walking if there were houses on
ahead. He said Solomon Hobbs owned the nearest place, and lived up a
big hill a ways off the main road. A little after I met a team, and
concluded to make more definite inquiry. “Can you tell me where Mr.
Hobbs lives?” I asked.
“Who, John?” he questioned as he pulled in his horse.
“No, Solomon,” I replied.
“Oh, er, Solly! He lives right up the hill here. Turn off the next road
and go to the first house.”
[Illustration: A HAMLET AMONG THE HILLS]
It was quite dark now, and when I came to the steep, rough rise of the
hill I got out and walked and led the horse. In time I saw a light on
ahead, and I drove into the steep yard. I had my doubts about stopping
there when I saw how small the house and barn were. A man responded to
my knock on the door and acknowledged to the name of Solomon Hobbs. He
was a tall, broad-shouldered, long-bearded farmer, apparently about
fifty years of age. He had on heavy boots and was in his checked
shirt-sleeves. He didn’t know about keeping me overnight, but their
supper was just ready, and I might stay to that if I wanted to. He
directed me to hitch my horse to a post of the piazza and come in. On
a low table was spread a scanty meal. Codfish was the most prominent
dish on the board. After eating, I was ushered into the little parlor,
for they had certain pictures of the scenery thereabout they wished
me to see. Mr. Hobbs brought along his lantern and set it on the
mantel-piece. It remained there though Mrs. Hobbs came in and lit a
gaudy hanging-lamp. She was a straight little woman with short hair,
rather curly and brushed up, wore earrings, did not speak readily, and
acted as if her head did not work first-rate. The little boy, who was
the third member of the family, came in also. There was an iron, open
fireplace with charred sticks, ashes, and rubbish in it. The carpet on
the floor seemed not to be tacked down, and it gathered itself up in
bunches and folds. The sofa and marble-topped centre-table and many of
the chairs were filled with papers, books, boxes, and odds and ends.
[Illustration: SUMMER SUNLIGHT IN A “GORGE ROAD”]
There was some doubt as to where the pictures were, and it required
considerable hunting in books and albums and cupboards and boxes and
top-shelves to produce them. I did not notice that they put up any of
the things they pulled down. Mr. Hobbs said of his wife that she had
been in poor health for a year past, and hadn’t been able to keep
things in order. When I had examined the pictures I got ready to start
on. Mr. Hobbs said there was a hotel a mile up the road. I unhitched my
horse, and the little boy, with a lantern, ran before me and guided me
through the gateway.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE LITTLE RIVERS]
At the hotel, when I had made the horse comfortable in the barn I
betook myself to the bar-room, where a brisk open fire was burning. A
number of men were loafing there, most of them smoking. One was a tall,
stout-figured man who was always ready to back his opinion with a bet
of a certain number of dollars, and quoted knowledge gained a year when
he was selectman to prove statements about the worth of farms.
The proprietor of the place was a young man, with small eyes rather red
with smoke or something else, a prominent beaklike nose, a mustache,
and receding chin. He had an old, straight, short coat on, and he had
thin legs, and looked very much like some sort of a large bird. He had
a very sure way of speaking, and emphasized this sureness by the manner
in which he would withdraw his cigar, half close his little eyes, and
puff forth a thin stream of tobacco smoke.
In the morning I was out just as the sun looked over some cloud
layers at the eastern horizon and brightened up the misty landscape.
I left the hotel, and soon was on my way up the Deerfield River into
the mountains. It was a fine day, clear at first, and with many gray
clouds sailing later. I jogged on up and down the little hills on the
road which kept along the winding course of the river. All the way
was hemmed in by great wooded ridges which kept falling behind, their
places to be filled by new ones at every turn. The stream made its
noisy way over its rough bed, and every now and then a freight train
would go panting up the grade toward the Hoosac Tunnel, or a passenger
train in swifter flight would sweep around the curve and hurry away to
the world beyond.
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE GROCERYMAN]
A little off the road in one place was a log house, a sight so unusual
in old Massachusetts that such rare ones as one may come across
always have a special air of romance and interest about them. This
had a pleasant situation on a level, scooped out by nature from the
lofty ridge which over-shadowed it. It was made of straight, small
logs, laid up cob-fashion, chinked with pieces of boards and made
snugger with plaster on the inside. It had a steep roof of overlapping
boards, through which a length of rusty stove-pipe reached upwards
and smoked furiously. There was a spring before the door, which sent
quite a little stream of water through a V-shaped trough into an
old flour-barrel. There were some straggling apple-trees about, and
behind the house a little slab barn. Inside was a bare room, floored
with unplaned boards. There was a bed in one corner, a pine table in
another, and a rude ladder led to a hole in the upper flooring, where
was a second room. The only occupant then about was cooking dinner on
the rusty stove. Light found its way through two square windows and
through certain cracks and crevices in the wall.
I followed the rapid river, on, up among the wild tumble of mountains
which raised their gloomy rock-ribbed forms on every side. The regions
seemed made by Titans, and for the home of rude giants, not of men.
Presently a meadow opened before me, and across it lay the little
village of Hoosac. The great hills swept up skyward from the level,
and here and there in the cleared places you could see bits of houses
perched on the dizzy slope, and seeming as if they might get loose and
come sliding down into the valley almost any day.
[Illustration: AN OUTLYING VILLAGE]
At the tunnel was a high railroad bridge spanning the river, a long
freight train waiting, a round signal station, a few houses, and the
lines of iron rails running into the gloomy aperture in the side of
the hill. This was in a sort of ravine, and so somewhat secluded and
holding little suggestion of its enormous length of over four miles.
Some sheep were feeding on a grassy hillside just across the track, and
looking back upon them they made a very pretty contrast to the wild
scenery. The hills mounded up all about; the sun in the west silvered
the water of the rapid river; a train waiting below the iron span of
the bridge sent up its wavering white plume of smoke; and here on the
near grassy slope were the sheep quietly feeding.
The road wound on through the same romantic wildness; now a mountain
would shoot up a peak steeper and higher than those surrounding; but
none of them seemed to have names. As one of the inhabitants expressed
it, “They are too common round here to make any fuss over.”
[Illustration: A VILLAGE VIEW IN A HALF-WOODED DELL]
In the late afternoon, after a hard climb up the long hills, I passed
Monroe Bridge, where in the deep ravine was a large paper-mill. The
road beyond was muddy and badly cut up by teams, and progress was slow.
I expected to spend the night at Monroe Church, which I understood
was three miles farther up, but I got off the direct route and on to
one of the side roads. The sun had disappeared behind the hills and a
gray gloom was settling down. The road kept getting worse. It was full
of ruts and bog-holes. Like most of the roads of the region, the way
followed up a hollow, and had a brook by its side choked up with great
boulders. I came upon bits of snow, and thought there were places where
I could scrape up a very respectable snowball.
[Illustration: THE OLD WELL-SWEEP]
After a time I met a team and stopped to inquire the way to the church,
and the distance. The fellow hailed had a grocery wagon, and no doubt
had been delivering goods. He seemed greatly pleased by my question; in
fact, was not a little overcome, showed a white row of teeth beneath
his mustache, and he quite doubled up in his amusement. He said he did
not know where the church was; and he guessed I wasn’t much acquainted
up in these parts; said he wasn’t either. He stopped to laugh between
every sentence. He apparently thought he was the only man from the
outside world who ever visited these regions, and now was tickled to
death to find another fellow had blundered into his district. There was
no church about there, he said; I must be pretty badly mixed up; this
was South Readsboro’, Vermont. “This is the end of the earth,” he said.
He kept on laughing as he contemplated me, and I got away up the road
as soon as I could, while he, still chuckling to himself, drove down.
The snow patches become larger and more numerous, and soon I came into
an open and saw a village up the hill. This was October, and the sight
ahead was strange and weird. The roofs of the buildings were white with
snow; there were scattered patches of it all about, and a high pasture
southward was completely covered. It seemed as if I had left realities
behind; as if in some way I was an explorer in the regions of the far
north; as if here was a little town taken complete possession of by the
frost; as if no life could remain, and I would find the houses deserted
or the inhabitants all frozen and dead. There was a little saw-mill
here and some big piles of boards; everywhere marks of former life; but
the premature frost seemed to have settled down like a shroud on all
about. I entered the village and found a man working beside a house,
and learned from him that I had still three miles to travel before I
came to the church.
[Illustration: IN HAYING TIME]
I took a steep southward road and led the horse, with frequent rests,
up the hills. Darkness had been fast gathering, the sunset colors had
faded, one bright star glowed in the west, and at its right a gloomy
cloud mass reached up from the horizon. The neighboring fields got
more and more snow-covered, until the black ribbon of the muddy road
was about the only thing which marred their whiteness. There were
rocky pastures about, intermitting with patches of woodland. Here and
there were stiff dark lines of spruce along the hilltops, and these,
with the white pastures, made the country seem like a bit of Norway.
Snow clung to the evergreen arms of the spruces and whitened the upper
fence-rails, and the muddy trail of the road ceased in the crisp
whiteness.
I was going through a piece of woods when I saw a house ahead with a
glow of light in a window. I went past the friendly light. The dreary
road still stretched on. No church was in sight, and I drew up and
ran back to the house. A man came to the back door with a lamp. He
said it was still two miles to the church, and I asked if I might stay
overnight. Soon I had my horse in the yard and was comfortably settled
by the kitchen fire. The kitchen was large, but the long table, the
stove, a bed, and the other furniture made it rather cramped when the
whole family were indoors. There were grandpa, and grandma, and “Hen”
and his wife, and “Bucky,” and “Sherm,” and “Sis,” and Dan, and little
Harry, not to mention a big dog and several cats. After supper, grandma
fell to knitting with some yarn of her own spinning; grandpa smoked his
pipe and told bear stories; “Hen” mended a broken ramrod so that his
gun might be ready for a coon hunt he was planning; Mrs. “Hen” sewed;
“Sherm” and “Bucky” were in a corner trying to swap hats, neckties,
etc., and “Sis” was helping them; Dan ran some bullets which he made
out of old lead-pipe melted in the kitchen fire; and Harry circulated
all about, and put the cats through a hole cut for them in the cellar
door, and climbed on the chairs along the walls, and picked away the
plastering at sundry places where the lath was beginning to show
through.
[Illustration: THE STREAM AND THE ELMS IN THE MEADOW]
Bedtime came at nine and I was given a little room partitioned off in
the unfinished second story. In the first gray of the next morning a
loud squawking commenced outside of so harsh and sudden a nature as to
be quite alarming to the unaccustomed ear. Later I learned this was the
flock of ducks and geese which had gathered about the house to give a
morning salute. The wind was whistling about, and came in rather freely
at the missing panes in my window. As soon as I heard movements below I
hastened downstairs. The two fellows in the bed in the unfinished part
adjoining my room were still snoozing, and there were scattered heaps
of clothing about the floor.
There was no one in the kitchen, and though the stove lid was off, no
fire had yet been started. I heard old Mr. Yokes out in the back room.
[Illustration: UNDER THE OLD SYCAMORE]
“’Bout time ye was gettin’ up,” he called to me.
“Yes,” I said, “I heard you stirring, and thought it must be about time
to turn out.”
“Oh, it’s you, is it? I thought ’twas one of the boys. They didn’t
bring in no kindlings last night.”
[Illustration: AUGUST]
He sat down by the stove and went to whittling some shavings. He had
not yet got on either shoes or stockings. One by one the rest of the
family straggled in, and the fire began to glow and the heat to drive
out the frostiness of the kitchen atmosphere. Outdoors the weather was
threatening, and there were little drives of sleet borne down on the
wings of the wind. After breakfast I concluded to leave this land of
winter and followed down one of the steep roads into the autumn region
of the Deerfield valley. By brisk travelling I succeeded by close of
day in getting to the quiet meadows along the Connecticut. It had been
a five days’ journey. I saw only a little patch of New England, and the
description is necessarily fragmentary; but at least there is presented
characteristic phases of its nature and life as the traveller on a
leisurely journey may see them.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE OLD VILLAGE STREETS]
PART IV
CAMPING AMONG THE NEW ENGLAND HILLS
It was a warm night of midsummer. In a secluded hollow of the Green
Mountain ranges of lower Vermont was pitched a small white tent. A
half-moon was shining softly through the light cloud-hazes overhead,
and had you been there, you could have made out the near surroundings
without much difficulty. Tall woods were all about, but here was a
little open where grasses and ferns and low bushes grew in abundance,
and on a chance level of the steep, uneven hillside the campers had
pitched their tent. In the deep, tree-filled ravine close below was
a stream, whence came the sound of its fretting among the rocks, and
from a little farther up the solemn pounding of a waterfall. From the
other direction came a different sound. It was the gentle clinking of a
hammer on an anvil. On the farther side of the narrow strip of woods,
which shut it from sight, was a farmhouse, and it was thence came the
sound of hammering.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE WITH THE BARN ACROSS THE ROAD]
[Illustration: A WARM SUMMER DAY]
The tent has two occupants. They are both young fellows, who had on
the day previous started from their Boston homes for a vacation trip
to the woods. In the city they were clerks,--one in a store, the other
in a bank. The chance that brought them to this particular spot for
their vacation was this: a school friend of theirs, who was blessed (or
perhaps otherwise) with more wealth than they, and who was next year to
be a senior in Harvard, had informed them a few weeks previous that his
folks were going to the Groveland House for the summer. This, he said,
was in the centre of one of the prettiest and most delightful regions
of all New England, and he urged his friends, Clayton and Holmes, to by
all means go along too. He expatiated on the beauties of the place with
such an eloquence (whether natural or acquired at Harvard, I know not)
that these two gave up the idea of a trip they had been planning down
the coast and turned their thoughts inland.
But when they came to study the hotel circular that Alliston gave them,
and noted the cost of board per week, this ardor received a dampener.
“Phew!” said Holmes, “we can’t stand that. I don’t own our bank yet.”
“No, we can’t, that’s a fact,” said Clayton. “I’d want more of a raise
in my pay than I expect to get for years before I could afford that
sum. The dickens! I thought these country places were cheap always--and
here’s a little place we’ve never heard of that charges more than half
our big hotels here in Boston.”
[Illustration: AT WORK IN HER OWN STRAWBERRY PATCH]
“Well, we’ve got to give up that idea, then,” Holmes said. “I suppose,
though, we might find a place at some farmhouse that wouldn’t charge
too high.”
“The trouble is,” Clayton responded, “that I don’t like to go poking
off into a region where we don’t know a soul, and take our chances of
finding a comfortable stopping-place at the right price. Then, you
see, it’s going to cost like anything getting there--just the fare on
the railroad. I don’t know as we ought to have considered the thing at
all.”
[Illustration: SEPTEMBER]
“I hate to give it up,” said Holmes. “We’ve seen a good deal of the
shore, but have had hardly a sight of the country. It would be a great
thing, for a change, to take that trip to Vermont. Now, why couldn’t we
try camping out? That’s what the youngsters do in all the small boys’
books I’ve ever read. We’re rather older than the boys who were in the
habit of doing that sort of thing in the books. But then, you know,
that may be a good thing. It may have given us a chance to accumulate
wisdom sufficient to avoid those hairbreadth adventures the youngsters
were always having. They are good enough to read about, but deliver me
from the experience.”
“Harry,” said Clayton, “I believe that’s a good idea.”
[Illustration: EVENING]
The conversation and thinkings necessary to settle the details were
many and lengthy, and I forbear repeating them. The long and short of
it is that on Monday, August 14, in the earliest gray of the morning,
they were on the train that was to carry them to the Vermont paradise
they had in mind.
John Clayton, as luck would have it, worked in a dry-goods house, and
therefore in planning a tent he was enabled to get the cloth for its
makeup at a trifle above cost. He and Harry made numerous visits to the
public library on spare evenings and consulted a variety of volumes
devoted more or less directly to the science of camping out. The amount
of information they got on the subject was rather bewildering, but they
simplified it down to a few things absolutely necessary to think of
beforehand, and concluded to trust to commonsense for solving further
problems.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Harry, who attended
Sunday-school regularly.
The cloth used for the tent was cotton drilling. John’s mother sewed
the strips together under his direction, and their landlady allowed him
to set it up in the little paved square of yard back of the block, and
there he and Harry gave it a coat of paint to make it waterproof. The
whole thing did not cost three dollars, and, as the boys said, “It’ll
last us a good many seasons.” Aside from their tent they purchased a
small hatchet, a ball of stout twine, a few nails, a lantern, and some
tin pails, cups, and plates, and several knives, forks, and spoons.
[Illustration: A LOAD OF WOOD ON THE WAY UP TO THE VILLAGE]
It had been a question just where their camping-place should be. “We
can’t very well pitch our tent in the hotel yard,” said Harry. “That
high-priced proprietor wouldn’t allow it, I’m sure; and, besides, we
shouldn’t want to.”
Another perusal of the summering-place circular disclosed the fact that
it gave a list of the attractions of the region about, with certain
comments thereon. Among the rest was noted a waterfall seventy feet
high. It was amid surroundings, so the circular said, exceedingly
beautiful and romantic (whatever that may be). The boys thought that
style of place would suit them to a T, and Harry, who carried the
circular about in his pocket, got it out at the bank the next day after
this decision was arrived at and underscored this waterfall with red
ink.
In the late afternoon of August 14th the two were set down, “bag and
baggage,” at the forlorn little station which was the railroad terminus
of their journey. To the left was a high sand bluff, half cut away,
crowned with a group of tall pines. A little up the tracks was a deep,
stony ravine where a little river sent up a low murmur from the depths.
This was spanned by a high railroad trestle, and when the train rumbled
away across it and disappeared around the curve of a wooded slope,
the boys watched the curls of smoke fade into thin air and felt a bit
homesick. Beyond was a small freight-house, but no other buildings
were in sight. It was a little clearing in the midst of the woods. The
only path leading away was the road, which made a turn about the near
sand bluff, and then was lost to sight. At the rear of the depot was
a smart stage-coach, into which a group of people were being helped by
a slick footman. This coach was an attachment of the Groveland House.
“Were the young gentlemen bound for the hotel?”
“No,” said Clayton, “we’re not going to the hotel. Isn’t there any
other coach?”
“Oh, yes, but that leaves here at two o’clock. It has a long route
through the different villages, over the hills, delivering the mail and
other truck. If it waited for the four-thirty train it would hardly get
around before midnight.”
“We’re much obliged,” said Clayton, and the two went back to the front
platform and sat down on their baggage.
“We won’t go up to that hotel if we have to pitch our tent here on the
sand back of the depot,” said John.
[Illustration: A WATERFALL IN THE WOODS]
They heard the coach rattle briskly away up the road, and the
depot-master stamping around inside. He came out presently, and after
locking the front door approached them. “Expectin’ some one to meet
ye?” he asked. He was a stout figured man, with a smooth, round,
good-natured face that won the boys’ confidence at once.
“No,” John said, “we don’t know any one about here. We came on a little
camping trip. You see in Boston there are horse-cars running every
which way that take you anywhere you want to go, and I s’pose we’ve got
so used to them that we never thought of having any trouble in getting
to the place we wanted to go to, though this is out in the country.”
“Oh, ye came from Boston, did ye? I kinder thought ye was city fellers.
Guess ye’ll find horse-cars in these parts about as scarce as hen’s
teeth--just about. Whare was ye thinkin’ of goin’, anyhow?”
“We were going to Rainbow Falls.”
“Rainbow Falls? Well, now, you’ve got me. I do’no’ as I ever heared of
’em. Where be they?”
Harry whipped out his circular. “Why, here they are,” he said. “See!
right here under this heading, ‘Nature’s Attractions in the Drives
about Groveland,’” and he pointed to the line underscored with red ink.
[Illustration: A PANORAMA HILLS AND VALLEYS]
The station agent set down the two lanterns he had in his hand and drew
a spectacle case from his vest pocket. “Sho,” said he, when he got his
glasses adjusted, “‘Rainbow Falls,’ so ’tis. ‘Surroundings exceedingly
beautiful and rheumatic’--er, no, it’s _ro_mantic it says, I guess; the
letters is blotted a little. Seventy feet high, it says. Well, now, I
don’t know what that is, unless it’s the falls over at Jones’ holler.
The hotel folks have gone and put a new-fangled name onto it, I guess.
There never’s been any ‘rainbow’ about it that I’ve ever heared of.”
“Is it a good place to camp out, should you think?” asked John.
“Well, yes; pretty good, if you like it,” was the reply. “Now, if you
fellers want to get up there to-night, there’s some houses up the road
here a few steps, and I presume ye can hire some one to get ya up there
if ye want to.”
[Illustration: A PASTURE GROUP]
“How far is it?” Harry asked.
“I should say it was five miles or something like that,” said the man;
and he walked off down the track.
“Now,” said John, “we must wake up. I see no signs of houses, but we’ll
follow up the road.”
The result was that a short walk brought them to a little group of
habitations, and they accosted a farmer boy who was weeding in a garden
and made known their wants. He would take them up, he said, if his
folks would let him.
“How much would you charge?” asked Harry.
“Well, I do’no’,” said the boy. “It’s goin’ to be considerable trouble,
and it’s a good five miles the shortest way, and hard travellin’, too,
some of the way. I should think ’twould be worth thirty-five cents,
anyhow.”
“We’ll pay you fifty,” said John, “if you’ll hurry up with your team.”
“I’ll have to ask ma first,” the boy replied.
He went to the house, and the two outside heard a low-toned
conversation, and a woman looked out at them from behind some
half-closed blinds. Then out came Jimmy with a rush and said he could
go. He took pains to get his hoe from the garden, which he cleaned by
rubbing off the dirt with his bare foot before hanging it up.
“Have ye got much luggage?” he asked. “’Cause if ye have we c’n take
the rack wagon. The express wagon’s better, though, if ye haven’t got
much. That old rack’s pretty heavy.”
The lighter vehicle, which proved to be a small market wagon, was
plenty large enough, and into that was hitched the stout farm-horse,
and the three boys clambered up to the seat.
“Git up!” cried Jimmy, cracking his whip, and away they rattled down to
the depot.
“Now,” said Jimmy, “they’s two ways of gettin’ where you want to go,
and when you get there they’s two places where you can go to. The road
over Haley’s Hill is the nearest, but it’s so darn steep I’d about as
soon drive up the side of a meeting-house steeple.”
“Then you’d rather go the other road, I suppose.”
“Well, I do’no’; that’s considerable more roundabout.”
“You can do as you please,” said John. “We’ll risk it, if you will.”
“I guess I’ll go over Haley’s Hill, then. But I reckon you fellers’ll
get shook up some. ’Tain’t much more’n a wood-road, and they’s washouts
on the downhill parts and bog-holes where its level that they’ve dumped
brush and stuff into. You’ll have to walk up the steep parts. Don’t you
want something to eat?” he then asked. “I brought along a pocketful of
gingerbread, ’cause I knew I shouldn’t get home till after dark. Here,”
and he pulled out a handful of broken fragments, “better have some.”
“Thank you,” said John; “but we had a rather late lunch on the cars,
and I don’t think we’ll eat again till we get the tent pitched. What
was it you said about there being two places up there we could go to?”
The boy took a mouthful of gingerbread, and when he got the process of
mastication well under way he responded, “Well, there’s Jules’, and
there’s Whitcomb’s. Jules’ is on one side of the brook and Whitcomb’s
is on the other. Jules is the Frenchman, ye know.”
“Which place is best?”
[Illustration: OCTOBER]
“I do’no’ ’bout that. Whitcomb’s is the nearest.”
“We’ll try the nearest place, I think.”
“I guess we’d better tumble out now,” said the boy. “We’re gettin’ on
to Haley’s Hill, and old Bill’s gettin’ kinder tuckered. Hold on! don’t
jump out now. I’ll stop on the next thank-you-marm.”
[Illustration: A PASTURE GATE]
He pulled in his steed just as the wheels went over a slight ridge that
ran across the road, and the three alighted. They were in the dusk of
a tall wood of beech and birches that was almost gloomy, so thick were
the trees and so shut out the light. The road increased in roughness
and in steepness, and finally the boy at the horse’s head called out,
“I say, I guess you fellers better push behind there. Bill can’t hardly
move the thing, and he kinder acts as if he was goin’ to lay down.”
The campers made haste to give their support, and the caravan went
jolting and panting up the slope till the leader let fall the
bridle-rein and announced: “There, we’re over the worst of it. Now, if
I can find a good soft stone to set on we’ll rest a minute, and then
we’ll fire ahead again, and I’ll get ye to Whitcomb’s in less’n no
time.”
Jimmy found a bowlder to his mind and began to draw on his stores of
gingerbread again. The horse nibbled the bushes at the roadside. The
campers took each a wagon wheel and leaned on that and waited.
“I guess we might get in now,” said the boy, rising and brushing the
crumbs off his overalls. “It’s pretty rough ahead, but they ain’t much
that’s steep.”
There were stones and bog-holes to jolt over, but after a little they
came on to a more travelled way, and presently Jimmy drew in his horse
and said, “This is Whitcomb’s house right here. That’s his dog at the
gate barkin’ at us.”
John went to the front door and rapped. He got no response, and
concluded from the grasses and weeds that grew about and before it that
front-door visiting was a rare thing at that house. A narrow, flagged
walk ran past the corner to the rear. He followed it, and in an open
doorway of the L found Mr. Whitcomb reading a paper.
[Illustration: A ROAD BY THE STREAM]
“A friend and myself would like to camp over in your pasture for a few
days, if you don’t object,” said John.
“All right, go ahead,” said the farmer. “If you behave yourselves,
and put up the bars after ye so’t the cows won’t git out I ain’t no
objections.”
“Thank you,” said John. “We’ll try to do that. Have you milk to sell?
We’d like to buy a couple of quarts or so a day.”
The man turned his head toward the kitchen. “Ann,” he said, “how is
that--can ye spare any?”
A tall, thin-faced woman came to the door. She carried a baby in her
arms. “I don’t think we have any milk to spare,” she replied. “We
raise calves, because I ain’t well enough to tend to the milk and make
butter, and they drink about all we have. And I have two children, and
the oldest ain’t much more’n a baby, and they have to have some. We’d
like to accommodate you, but I don’t see how we can.”
“It’s all right,” John replied; “we will find some other place for our
milk supply.”
He returned to the team and they drove through a wide, rocky mowing lot
till they came to a stone wall which was without a break, and entirely
blocked the way. A pasture lay beyond.
“The falls,” said Jimmy, “are right over in them woods t’other side of
this pasture. If ’twasn’t for this pesky stone wall I’d drive right
over there with ye. We’d ‘a’ done better to ‘a’ gone to Jules’. His
place is only a little ways straight over here, but it’s a mile and
more by the road.”
“Well, we’ve travelled far enough for one day,” said Harry. “Let’s get
our tent over into the pasture and pitch it there.”
“Agreed,” said John. “The sky has been cloudy all the afternoon, and it
looks more like rain than ever now. I shan’t feel easy till we get a
roof over our heads.”
They tumbled their bundles over the fence and made their driver happy
with a half-dollar, with which he drove whistling away. He, however,
informed them that “he guessed likely he’d get up to see ’em in a few
days, if they didn’t get sick of camping before that and clear out.”
[Illustration: AT THE PASTURE GATE]
The campers dragged their bundles over to a low beech-tree a few rods
distant, and beneath its spreading branches proceeded to erect their
tent. Poles and pegs they cut in a thicket near by. Their chief trouble
was the lack of a spade to make holes for the end poles in the hard
earth. But they made the hatchet do the work, though the fine edge they
had taken pains to put on it before leaving Boston disappeared in the
process.
After the tent was up they got their things into it and spread
their bedding. The next thing was to hunt up a spring to serve as a
water-supply.
“You get out a lunch,” said John. “and I’ll fill this tin pail with
water.”
[Illustration: THE SHEEP PASTURE]
That was easier said than done. He stumbled about in the dusk over the
rough pasture-land with its tangle of ferns and hardhack bushes, and
the best he could do was to get a couple of pints of fairly clean water
from a rocky mud-hole. Afterward he scooped the hollow deeper with his
hands, hoping it would soon fill with clear water.
At the tent Harry had the lunch spread and had lit their lantern.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked. “It’s half-past eight. If we’d
had any farther to go we’d have been in a fix. Is that all the water
you could get? I’m dry as a desert.”
“I’ll get more after supper,” said John. “I’ve tumbled half over the
pasture and I can’t find anything but bog-holes.”
[Illustration: A QUIET POND]
After eating, both went out, Harry with the lantern, John with two
pails. The clouds overhead had thinned and the stars twinkled through
in places. The lantern with its two attendant figures went zigzagging
over the lonely pasture waste to the water-hole. It had not yet
cleared, but they skimmed off enough with a pail-cover to slake their
thirst. They did not say much as they wended their way back to the
tent, but both had the feeling that camping out was proving a rather
severe experience of pioneering.
“I’m dead tired,” said Harry, as he flung himself down on the bedding
inside. “Let’s turn in for the night.”
A few minutes later Farmer Whitcomb, glancing across the fields, saw
the soft glow of the lantern through the canvas walls of the tent
disappear, and remarked, “Well, they get to bed early for city folks,
but I’ve always thought myself nine o’clock was about the right
time.” He cleared his throat, looked up to the sky to get a hint of
to-morrow’s weather prospects, and went in and locked the door. Soon
his light, too, was out.
The last sound the campers heard was the wind fluttering through the
beech leaves in the tree above. It was a great change from the city
noises and surroundings with which they were familiar.
On the following morning the campers were out at sun-up. Harry went
over to their particular mud-hole and succeeded in scooping up a
pailful of water, but he had not gone five steps before his foot
slipped on a dewy hummock and the pail went flying. He returned to the
original source of water-supply, but there was no chance of getting
more just then, and the result was he wended his way across the fields
and filled his pail at the Whitcomb well-sweep.
[Illustration: HUSKING-TIME]
“It’s no use,” he said on his return, “we’ve got to get nearer water.
If matters go on as they’ve begun we’ll waste half our vacation over
this one thing.”
“Well, we’ll look around after breakfast.” said John. “I’ve been trying
to make a fire, but everything’s so soaked with dew you can’t make
anything burn. I wonder if they always have such dews up here. It’s
just as if we’d had a heavy rain. We’ll have to get in our firewood the
night beforehand.”
“It’s a cold bite again this morning, is it?” said Harry. “I tell you,
we’ve got to study up this matter. We must reform some way. Why, we’re
getting right down to barbarism. By the way, how d’you sleep last
night?”
“First-rate,” John replied; “don’t remember a thing, only I feel a
little sore in spots this morning.”
“That’s it,” said Harry; “same way with me. Feel’s if I’d had a good
licking. Now, see here.” He rolled down the bedclothes and exposed the
ground. “See those humps? There’s a stone sticking up. Here’s another.
There’s a stub where some little tree has been cut off, and there are
several sticks and natural hummocks of the earth thrown in besides.
Why, the worst savage, unless he was drunk, would be ashamed to use
such a bed.”
“Well,” said John. “let us be thankful that we’ve come through the
thrilling experiences that we have so far met with alive; to-day
we’ll hustle around and find a new camping-ground, and in the future
we’ll live in a style properly becoming to our dignity as members of
Bostonian civilization, etc. But, come now, you’ve been regarding that
bed of torture long enough. Trials past are only so many myths and
shadows. At any rate, that’s what Solomon or some other wise fellow has
said. What you want to do is to fortify yourself for trials to come.
Supposing we go over and see this Jules after breakfast.”
[Illustration: SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW]
“I found out how to get there from our landlord when I went over for
water,” said Harry. “There’s a side road that leads down to a little
grist-mill just above here, and at the mill there’s a foot-bridge
across the stream.”
“Good!” said John; and after breakfast our campers went down to the
mill, which, with the placid pond above, was completely closed in
by the green masses of the forest. It was a gray little building,
with mossy shingles, and broken windows and doors. There were boards
missing here and there from its sides, and it was so old and rude it
seemed a wonder it did not slide down the precipice it half overhung.
It had not been used for some time--that was plain. Below it was a
steep, irregular fall of rocks over which thin streams of water were
tumbling. Across the ravine, at the summit of the cliff, was a low
dam; but it leaked badly, and the water did not reach its top by some
inches. Midway in the stream, at the dam, was a rocky island where grew
a few stunted pines. A foot-bridge crossed to it from a lower door
of the mill. Thus it was necessary to climb to the top of the island
cliff, where another bridge swung high up over the narrow ravine to the
farther shore.
The boys poked about the mill and the pond for some time and then
crossed the bridges. But they were no sooner across than John
exclaimed, “How that thing did sway and crack! I’d walk ten miles
before I’d cross that rotten plank again.”
“So would I,” said Harry. “It fairly made my hair stand on end. A
fellow wouldn’t be good for much after he’d tumbled down into a ravine
as deep and rocky as that, I guess. The waterfall must be close by
here. I can hear it. But let’s hunt up Jules first. His last name is La
Fay, so Whitcomb said.”
A faintly marked path led away through the woods, and the two followed
it. Some distance beyond it opened into a highway. They saw no signs of
habitations, but they followed the road until they met an ox-cart.
“Can you tell us where Mr. La Fay lives?” asked John of the young man
who was guiding the slow team.
“Yes,” said he, “you take a narrer little road that turns off into
the woods down here a piece. You don’t live round in these parts, do
ye?”
[Illustration: NOVEMBER]
“No,” replied John.
“I don’t belong around here either, and I’m mighty glad of it.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” John asked.
“It’s so darn lonesome. That’s what’s the matter. Nothin’ but woods,
with now and then a farm kinder lost in it. Nothin’ goin’ on.
Everything draggin’ along slow as this old ox-team. I’ve hired out to
Deacon Hawes for the season, but I shan’t stay more’n my time out.
You’re campin’ up round here, ain’t ye? Allen’s boy brought ye up last
night, so I heard. Mebbe I’ll drop in and see ye this evenin’. We’ve
got some sweet-corn just ripenin’ down at the place that might taste
good to ye.”
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE ON THE HILL]
The campers told him they would be glad to see him, and said that they
expected to be near La Fay’s, at the falls. They took the road he had
indicated. It led through a dense young forest. The trees interwove
their branches overhead so closely that the sunshine with difficulty
penetrated the foliage to fleck the damp depths below with its patches
of light. A short walk brought them out of the woods into a good-sized
clearing sloping down into a wooded valley. Down the hill was a long,
squarish house, one end entirely unfinished, and brown with age and
decay. The rest had at some remote period been painted white. In front
was a row of maples, beneath which a calf was tied. Opposite the house
was a weatherworn barn, and behind it a small shed with a chimney at
one end. The big barn-doors were open, and Mr. La Fay was just rolling
out his hay-wagon. He was apparently about thirty-five years of age--a
handsome, powerfully built man, square headed and strong jawed. He wore
a mustache, had dark, curly hair, and a pair of clear, gray eyes, which
looked straight at one and that held sparks which could easily flash
into fire. The boys stated their errand, and La Fay told them to choose
any place they pleased for their tent and go ahead. He could furnish
them milk, and a horse occasionally if they wanted to drive.
“You are close by the falls if you go over there beyond that piece of
woods.” he said; “and from our hill here you can see half the world.”
[Illustration: A MILL IN THE VALLEY]
He took them out on the ridge beyond the barn. It was indeed a
beautiful piece of country--mowing-lots and orchards and pastures
close about, a broken valley far below, where a little stream here and
there glinted in the sunshine, and, bounding the horizon, many great,
forest-clad hills. Here and there were far-away glimpses of hilltop
villages, of which La Fay gave them the names and the number of miles
they were distant. The boys were delighted.
[Illustration: CLOUD SHADOWS]
“Now, the way for you fellows to manage,” said Mr. La Fay, “is either
to take my horse and wagon for your traps, or, if you haven’t got too
many, to lug them across the stream down here. You’ll find an old road
and a ford that you can wade across a little below the falls, if you’re
not afraid of getting your feet wet.”
“We’ll try that way,” said John.
A little yellow dog which had been smelling around now began barking
over something he had found a few steps down the hill.
“What’s he got now, I wonder,” said La Fay, going toward him.
On the grass lay the remnants of a big turkey, about which the dog was
sniffing excitedly.
“That’s my gobbler,” said La Fay. “A fox must have got hold of him last
night. See, back there where all those feathers are scattered about
is where the fox jumped onto him. That’s where he’d squatted for the
night. Well, I’ll have that fox one of these days. That little dog
can’t be beat for tracking. He’s the best dog to start up partridges or
hunt rabbits or anything of that sort you ever see.”
The boys asked if they might borrow a spade, and while at the barn
getting it a little girl came running out to them from the house. She
was perhaps eight or nine years old, a stout, vigorous little person,
resembling her father closely in features.
“That’s the young one,” said La Fay. “Have you got the dishes washed,
Birdie?”
“Yes,” she replied, and then stood looking curiously at the strangers.
“She does a good share of my housework for me,” La Fay went on. “I do
the washing and the butter-making myself, and I get a woman to help
once in a while in baking and mending. I can make as nice butter as
any woman in this county. Look at my hands. They’re hard, but they’re
smooth and clean. A farmer’s hands needn’t be rough and rusty if he’ll
only use soap and water enough, and be particular about it. I work as
hard on my farm as any man about here, and I’m often up half the night
blacksmithing, but I don’t believe there’s a man in the town can show
such hands as those.”
He looked toward the girl once more and continued, “The young one’s
mother ran away from her home two months ago. I never want to set eyes
on her again. We didn’t get along over-well together, sometimes. She
had a temper, and I had a temper. I tell you, I smoke, and I drink,
and I swear like the Old Nick; but I don’t steal, and I don’t lie,
and I don’t get drunk. Mary was like me, only there were times when
she’d take too much drink. Then she’d flare up if I went to reasoning
with her. The week before she left, she caught up a big meat knife
she’d been using and flung it at me so savage that if I hadn’t dodged
quicker’n lightning ’twould have clipped my head, sure. It stuck in
the wall and the point broke off. Well, I must get to haying now; but
come round to the house any time. If Birdie or myself ain’t there,
you’ll find the key to the back door behind the blind of the window
that’s right next to it. Go right in whenever you please. I know you
fellows are honest. I know an honest man when I see him. I’d trust you
with my pocketbook or anything. I don’t care what church you go to, or
if you don’t go at all. I can tell what a man’s made of by his looks.
There’s some folks that I wouldn’t want to be on the same side of the
fence with. I tell you, money and policy count for a great deal in this
world, I despise ’em.”
[Illustration: A LOG HOUSE]
He turned to the little girl and said, “Run in and get your hat Birdie,
we must get in two or three loads before dinner, if we can.”
The campers with their spade went through the strip of woods La Fay had
indicated, and found a pretty bit of pasture beyond. The falls were in
plain hearing in the ravine below, and they found a little level just
suited for the tent, and not far away a fine spring of clear, cold
water. Lastly, they noticed that one corner of the lot was a briery
tangle of blackberry vines that hung heavy with ripe berries. This they
thought an undoubted paradise--every delight at their tent door. First
they ate their fill of berries, and then went down into the hollow. The
bed of the stream was strewn with great bowlders. Around towered the
full-leaved trees. A little above was the fall, making its long tumble
down a narrow cleft of the rocky wall.
[Illustration: AN EARLY SNOW]
The boys made a crossing by jumping from rock to rock in the bed of
the stream. Below, they found the ford and the old road, and went up
the path and across the pasture to their tent. It was something of a
task getting their traps over to the new camping-place, but by noon
the white canvas was again in place and they had dinner. By aid of the
spade they gave the end poles of the tent a firm setting, and they dug
a trench on the uphill side of the camp to protect them from overflow
in case of rain.
[Illustration: ON A MOUNTAIN CRAG]
I will not attempt to more than catalogue their doings for the next
few days. That afternoon they took a long tramp to the village to lay
in fresh food supplies. They returned at dusk, and found the young man
whom they had met with the ox-team that morning, at the tent door with
a bag of sweet-corn. He assisted them in making a fire, and they had a
grand feast for supper. The next day, which was Wednesday, they took a
long drive over the hills to points of interest that La Fay told them
about. Thursday was reserved for a trouting expedition. Friday they
drove over to the Groveland House to see their college friend, Alliston.
“Well, fellows,” he said, “how do you like it?”
“Splendid!” said the campers; “we’re having a grand, good time. How do
you get along here?”
[Illustration: ONE OF THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PEAKS]
“It’s rather dull times, I think myself,” said Alliston. “We talk, and
talk, and play tennis, and have a grand performance every day or two
over a drive or a clambake. But half the time I think we’re making
believe we’re having a good time rather than really having it. I have
an idea, some way, that you fellows are getting the best of it.”
[Illustration: AMONG THE BIG HILLS]
Nearly every evening the campers had callers, and in their tramps and
rides they made many interesting acquaintances. After lights were out
they usually heard the sound of the hammer and the wheezing of the
bellows up at La Fay’s little shop beyond the woods.
Saturday morning came. The campers were still in bed, but they were
awake. It had been a very hot night.
“Poke your head out, will you, Harry, and see what the weather’s going
to be,” said John.
Harry loosed a tent flap and looked out. “The sun’s shining,” he said,
“but the west is full of clouds and looks like a shower.”
“Well, let’s not hurry about getting up. If we take the noon train for
Boston we shan’t get home much before midnight, and we may as well take
it easy now.”
They continued napping. Half an hour later a gloom as of approaching
night settled down over the landscape, and there was a threatening
grumble of thunder in the skies. The waterfall in the hollow took on
a strange wailing note, rising and falling with the wind, and the
rustling of the leaves of the near woods seemed full of premonitions.
The air began to cool and little puffs of wind began to blow, and the
boys turned out and poked around getting breakfast. Then came some
great scattering drops of rain, followed by a mighty crash of thunder
and a dazzling flash of lightning that seemed to open the flood-gates
of heaven, and the rain came down in sheets. The air took on a sharp
chill, and the boys got on their overcoats. The wind increased in force
and shook the tent menacingly with its mad gusts. The flashing of the
lightning and the heavy roll of the thunder were almost continuous, and
through it all sounded the hollow mourning of the waterfall.
“I tell you,” said Harry, as he sat crouched on a roll of bedding, “I
haven’t much confidence in our mansion for such occasions as this.”
[Illustration: A DESERTED HUT IN THE WOODS]
He had hardly spoken when something gave way, and down came the tent,
smothering him in wet canvas. It was some moments before the two could
disentangle themselves. They made unsuccessful attempts to repair the
wreck, but finally had to be content to prop up the ridge-pole so that
it would shed the rain from their belongings, while they secured an
umbrella and scud through the storm to the house, which they reached
half drenched.
“The young one” was sitting by the kitchen window. Her eyes were
dilated and she looked frightened. She had her hands folded idly in her
lap. That was unusual, for she was ordinarily very busy.
“You don’t like these thunder-storms, do you?” said Harry.
Oh, she didn’t mind them, she answered.
“Where’s your father?” Harry asked.
“He went off down to the village before I got up. I guess he was going
to get some flour.”
“Then you’ve been all alone in this storm,” Harry said.
She did not reply.
A fire was burning in the stove, and the campers hung their wet
overcoats behind it, and themselves drew chairs to the stove and sat
with their feet on the hearth. On the table was a pile of unwashed
dishes. From the large room next to the kitchen came the sound of
dripping water. There was a great pool on the floor in one place, and
two or three pans were set about to catch the streams trickling through
the ceiling.
[Illustration: CHARCOAL KILNS]
“This side of the roof always leaks when it rains hard,” said Birdie.
“Papa’s going to fix it when he has time. I never seen it rain like it
does to-day.”
The shower was very heavy, but it did not last long. The clouds rolled
away, and the sun shone down on the drenched earth from a perfect dome
of clear, blue sky. Birds sang, and insects hummed and chirruped in the
grasses, and the breezes shook little showers of twinkling water-drops
from the trees. The air was full of cool freshness and sunshine. It
seemed to give new life and cheer to every living creature. The campers
were quite gleeful as they ran over to their tent after the storm was
well past.
“We’ll just hoist the ridge-pole into place,” said John, “and let
things dry off, and then we’ll pack up.”
The goods inside had escaped serious wetting, but they thought best to
hang two of the blankets on some neighboring saplings.
“What a racket the water makes down in the gorge,” said Harry. “Let’s
go down and have a look at it.”
Everything was wet and slippery, and they took off shoes and stockings
and left them at the tent.
“I declare!” exclaimed John, as they approached the stream, “this is a
big flood. There’s hardly one of those big bowlders but that the water
covers clear to the top. How muddy it is! and see the rubbish! A man
couldn’t live a minute if he was to jump in there. How it does boil and
tear along!”
[Illustration: ROUGH UPLANDS]
“Come on, let’s go up to the dam,” shouted Harry, endeavoring to make
himself heard above the roaring waters.
He clambered along over the rocks among the trees on the steep bank,
but he had no sooner got within seeing distance than he stopped short
and called excitedly to John close behind him, “It’s gone! It’s gone!
The whole thing’s washed away,--dam, and bridge, and mill,--all gone to
smash. And see! the gorge at the fall’s all choked up with big timbers.
See the water spout and splash about ’em.”
It was a grand sight--the mighty tumble of waters from the precipice
above, foaming down into the gorge, then broken in the narrow, almost
perpendicular, chasm into a thousand flying sprays, whence the mists
arose as from a monster, steaming cauldron. And there the boys saw a
rainbow which they had looked for in vain before. They stayed nearly an
hour, fascinated by the turmoil of the flood.
“I suppose we’ve got to think about packing up,” remarked John at last,
with a sigh.
“It’s a pity we can’t stay around here another week,” said Harry.
They climbed slowly up the wooded bank to the tent, pulled it to
pieces, rolled all their belongings into snug bundles, put on shoes
and stockings and went over to the house. As they approached they
heard sounds of angry dispute. They turned the corner at the barn and
stopped. La Fay was standing in the kitchen doorway. In the path before
him stood a woman. She had on a pretty bonnet trimmed with gay ribbons.
Over her arm hung a light shawl. Her face was thin, and there were blue
lines beneath her burning black eyes. She stood sharply erect.
“Move on!” thundered La Fay, “and never show yourself here again.”
“It’s Mrs. La Fay,” whispered Harry. “She’s come back.”
“Jules! Jules!” said the woman; and then her tones, either of excuse or
pleading, dropped so low the boys did not catch the words.
“We’d better go back,” suggested John.
“I say I want to hear no more,” Jules continued fiercely. “The quicker
you get off the premises, the better.”
The woman looked at him in silence a moment, then turned short around
and walked with quick steps away. La Fay stood frowning, with clenched
fists, in the doorway. In the farther corner of the kitchen “the young
one” was crouched in a chair, crying. The boys had turned away, but the
drama had come to a sudden termination and they approached again.
[Illustration: DECEMBER]
La Fay saw them. “She’s been back,” he said; “but I’ve sent her packing
again. She came early this morning while I was away. She was here
through the storm.”
It was a painful subject, and John hastened to say that they had packed
up ready to go to the train.
“My horse is out there by the barn hitched into my lumber-wagon,” said
La Fay, “but I’ll change him into the carryall. I’ll be ready inside of
ten minutes.”
[Illustration: A PATH IN THE WINTER WOODS]
“All right, then,” John responded; “we’ve got a little more to do to
our bundles, and we’ll be over there with them.”
At the edge of the woods they looked up the road leading away from the
clearing, and just beyond sight of the house they saw the woman again.
Her arms were about her head, and she was leaning face forward against
a big chestnut-tree. Once she clasped her hands and gave a sudden look
upward. Then she resumed the former position.
The boys went down to their camp and did their final packing. The
sunshine was becoming warmer. The wind was blowing more briskly, and
it kept the grasses swaying and the leaves of the trees in a perpetual
glitter of motion. In the aisles of the wood a thrush was chanting its
beautiful song. From the hollow sounded the never-ceasing roar of the
fall.
La Fay appeared, bundles were packed into the carriage, and they were
off. They had just entered the road leading to the highway, when Harry
spied a shawl lying at the foot of a tall chestnut. “What’s that?” he
asked.
La Fay drew in his horse and Harry jumped out and picked it up. He
handed it to La Fay.
“Why,” said the man, “that’s Mary’s. She must have dropped it.”
[Illustration: WINDY WINTER--ON THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL]
He laid it across his knee and said nothing for a long time. Indeed,
they were more than half-way to the depot before he spoke more. Then
he fell to stroking the shawl gently with his right hand and said.
“Mary ain’t done right. I know it; I know it. Poor girl! she’s had a
rough time since she’s been away. I don’t know but I ought to have been
easier with her. And I like her still I don’t get over that, someway. I
can’t help it. If the past was blotted out, I’d do anything for her.”
He spoke all this slowly and meditatively.
Suddenly he straightened up. “Boys,” he exclaimed. “I’ll blot out the
past so far as I can. I’ll start new, if Mary will. I haven’t been any
too good myself. I know where she’ll go to-day. I’ll hunt her up on the
way back.”
With this resolution made he became quite jovial and talked very
cheerfully all the distance to the depot. “Boys,” said he, as he shook
hands at parting, “I’m glad you’ve been up here. You’re good fellows. I
like to talk with you. Birdie, I know, will miss you a good deal, now
you’re gone. She told me only yesterday, ‘I wish Mr. Clayton and Mr.
Holmes would stay up here a long time, so I could learn to talk nice,
the way they do.’ If you ever get around this way again be sure to come
and see Jules the Frenchman.”
The train rumbled into the station at that moment, and the campers
hastily bade a last adieu and were off.
[Illustration: AFTER A STORM]
[Transcriber’s Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
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