Title: Sketches from Memory (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Author: Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Language: English
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Sketches from Memory

by Nathaniel Hawthorne



THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

It was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from
Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends
between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as
level as a church-aisle. All that day and two preceding ones we had
been loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains,—those old
crystal hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant
wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had
risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to hang below
the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides, those
avalanches of earth, stones, and trees, which descend into the hollows,
leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation
of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a
group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco,
right towards the centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds
in its passage to the farther region.

In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the
Northern Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart
through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous
path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was
travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he
passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across
his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it
asunder a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of
hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain’s
inmost heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side.
This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted
to describe it by so mean an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of
those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not
to the conception, of Omnipotence.


We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance
of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock.
There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous,
especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could
hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in
the direction we were going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of
the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached
behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on
top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab great-coat,
touching the wheel-horses with the whip-stock and reigning in the
leaders. To my mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident,
hardly inferior to what would have accompanied the painted array of an
Indian war-party gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the
passengers, except a very fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One
was a mineralogist, a scientific, green-spectacled figure in black,
bearing a heavy hammer, with which he did great damage to the
precipices, and put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a
well-dressed young man, who carried an operaglass set in gold, and
seemed to be making a quotation from some of Byron’s rhapsodies on
mountain scenery. There was also a trader, returning from Portland to
the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young girl, with a very faint
bloom like one of those pale and delicate flowers which sometimes occur
among alpine cliffs.

They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own
dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre,
surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine
long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained
our first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of
mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a
proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which
support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering
height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to Heaven: he was white
with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was
sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the
other names of American statesmen that have been stamped upon these
hills, but still call the loftiest WASHINGTON. Mountains are Earth’s
undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and never
should be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and
country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, and
whom all time will render illustrious.

The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand
feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear
November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be
a frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface
over the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of
comfortable quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of
pleasant company in the guests who were assembled at the door.

OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS

WE stood in front of a good substantial farm-house, of old date in that
wild country. A sign over the door denoted it to be the White Mountain
Post-Office,—an establishment which distributes letters and newspapers
to perhaps a score of persons, comprising the population of two or
three townships among the hills. The broad and weighty antlers of a
deer, “a stag of ten,” were fastened at the corner of the house; a
fox’s bushy tail was nailed beneath them; and a huge black paw lay on
the ground, newly severed and still bleeding, the trophy of a
bear-hunt. Among several persons collected about the doorsteps, the
most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two, and
corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be
moulded on his own blacksmith’s anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit
and rough humor. As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or
five feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our
arrival or to awaken an echo from the opposite hill.

Ethan Crawford’s guests were of such a motley description as to form
quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
like this, at once the pleasure-house of fashionable tourists and the
homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
the mineralogist and the owner of the gold operaglass whom we had
encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
Southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington and an old squire of
the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt. Besides these strangers, the
rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a
dozen wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off
his paw.

I had joined the party, and had a moment’s leisure to examine them
before the echo of Ethan’s blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
trumpet-tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dream-like symphony of
melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill, and
gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle of
mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us
all into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.

It did one’s heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in the
parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was
built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree
for a backlog.

A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is at his very
door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we held our
hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow, and began a
pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the physician
talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air, and its
excellent effect on Ethan Crawford’s father, an old man of
seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides
and the doctor’s wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their
frequent titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the
trials or enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat
together in a corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit
moveth not, being still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards
their own young wives. The Green Mountain squire chose me for his
companion, and described the difficulties he had met with half a
century ago in travelling from the Connecticut River through the Notch
to Conway, now a single day’s journey, though it had cost him eighteen.
The Georgians held the album between them, and favored us with the few
specimens of its contents, which they considered ridiculous enough to
be worth hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a
“Sonnet to the Snow on Mount Washington,” and had been contributed that
very afternoon, bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines
and annuals. The lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote
from familiar sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those
curious specimens of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on
the mountain-top. The poet was understood to be the young gentleman of
the gold opera-glass, who heard our laudatory remarks with the
composure of a veteran.

Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these
summer travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to
spend a month hereabouts, in sleighing-time, for the sake of studying
the yeomen of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch
by hundreds, on their way to Portland. There could be no better school
for such a purpose than Ethan Crawford’s inn. Let the student go
thither in December, sit down with the teamsters at their meals, share
their evening merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed
has its three occupants, and parlor, bar-room, and kitchen are strewn
with slumberers around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight,
button his great-coat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the
departing caravan a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make head
against the blast. A treasure of characteristic traits will repay all
inconveniences, even should a frozen nose be of the number.

The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere,
and we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the
father and mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending
the peak of Mount Washington. The children of that pair have been
overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In the mythology of the savage,
these mountains were afterwards considered sacred and inaccessible,
full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze of
precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded
themselves in the snow-storm and came down on the lower world. There
are few legends more poetical than that of the “Great Carbuncle” of the
White Mountains. The belief was communicated to the English settlers,
and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to be
seen shining miles away, hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake,
high up among the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were
enthralled with an unutterable yearning to possess it. But a spirit
guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewildered the adventurer with a
dark mist from the enchanted lake. Thus life was worn away in the vain
search for an unearthly treasure, till at length the deluded one went
up the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned no more. On
this theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.

The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of
the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of their haunted
region. The habits and sentiments of that departed people were too
distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It
has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the
most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any
romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at
least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian
story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our
literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as
referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives
him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits
which will sustain him there.

I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our
mineralogist had found the three “Silver Hills” which an Indian sachem
sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of
which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for ever since.
But the man of science had ransacked every hill along the Saco, and
knew nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as
usual with men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged our
session deep into the night, considering how early we were to set out
on our six miles’ ride to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a
general breaking up. I scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms,
and saw but little probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly
bliss, in the first week of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of
three, to climb above the clouds; nor, when I felt how sharp the wind
was as it rushed through a broken pane and eddied between the chinks of
my unplastered chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity on my own part,
though we were to seek for the “Great Carbuncle.”

THE CANAL-BOAT

I was inclined to be poetical about the Grand Canal. In my imagination
De Witt Clinton was an enchanter, who had waved his magic wand from the
Hudson to Lake Erie and united them by a watery highway, crowded with
the commerce of two worlds, till then inaccessible to each other. This
simple and mighty conception had conferred inestimable value on spots
which Nature seemed to have thrown carelessly into the great body of
the earth, without foreseeing that they could ever attain importance. I
pictured the surprise of the sleepy Dutchmen when the new river first
glittered by their doors, bringing them hard cash or foreign
commodities in exchange for their hitherto unmarketable produce. Surely
the water of this canal must be the most fertilizing of all fluids; for
it causes towns, with their masses of brick and stone, their churches
and theatres, their business and hubbub, their luxury and refinement,
their gay dames and polished citizens, to spring up, till in time the
wondrous stream may flow between two continuous lines of buildings,
through one thronged street, from Buffalo to Albany. I embarked about
thirty miles below Utica, determining to voyage along the whole extent
of the canal at least twice in the course of the summer.

Behold us, then, fairly afloat, with three horses harnessed to our
vessel, like the steeds of Neptune to a huge scallop-shell in
mythological pictures. Bound to a distant port, we had neither chart
nor compass, nor cared about the wind, nor felt the heaving of a
billow, nor dreaded shipwreck, however fierce the tempest, in our
adventurous navigation of an interminable mudpuddle; for a mudpuddle it
seemed, and as dark and turbid as if every kennel in the land paid
contribution to it. With an imperceptible current, it holds its drowsy
way through all the dismal swamps and unimpressive scenery that could
be found between the great lakes and the sea-coast. Yet there is
variety enough, both on the surface of the canal and along its banks,
to amuse the traveller, if an overpowering tedium did not deaden his
perceptions.

Sometimes we met a black and rusty-looking vessel, laden with lumber,
salt from Syracuse, or Genesee flour, and shaped at both ends like a
square-toed boot, as if it had two sterns, and were fated always to
advance backward. On its deck would be a square hut, and a woman seen
through the window at her household work, with a little tribe of
children who perhaps had been born in this strange dwelling and knew no
other home. Thus, while the husband smoked his pipe at the helm and the
eldest son rode one of the horses, on went the family, travelling
hundreds of miles in their own house and carrying their fireside with
them. The most frequent species of craft were the “line-boats,” which
had a cabin at each end, and a great bulk of barrels, bales, and boxes
in the midst, or light packets like our own decked all over with a row
of curtained windows from stem to stern, and a drowsy face at every
one. Once we encountered a boat of rude construction, painted all in
gloomy black, and manned by three Indians, who gazed at us in silence
and with a singular fixedness of eye. Perhaps these three alone, among
the ancient possessors of the land, had attempted to derive benefit
from the white mail’s mighty projects and float along the current of
his enterprise. Not long after, in the midst of a swamp and beneath a
clouded sky, we overtook a vessel that seemed full of mirth and
sunshine. It contained a little colony of Swiss on their way to
Michigan, clad in garments of strange fashion and gay colors, scarlet,
yellow, and bright blue, singing, laughing, and making merry in odd
tones and a babble of outlandish words. One pretty damsel, with a
beautiful pair of naked white arms, addressed a mirthful remark to me.
She spoke in her native tongue, and I retorted in good English, both of
us laughing heartily at each other’s unintelligible wit. I cannot
describe how pleasantly this incident affected me. These honest Swiss
were all itinerant community of jest and fun journeying through a
gloomy land and among a dull race of money-getting drudges, meeting
none to understand their mirth, and only one to sympathize with it, yet
still retaining the happy lightness of their own spirit.

Had I been on my feet at the time instead of sailing slowly along in a
dirty canal-boat, I should often have paused to contemplate the
diversified panorama along the banks of the canal. Sometimes the scene
was a forest, dark, dense, and impervious, breaking away occasionally
and receding from a lonely tract, covered with dismal black stumps,
where, on the verge of the canal, might be seen a log-cottage and a
sallow-faced woman at the window. Lean and aguish, she looked like
poverty personified, half clothed, half fed, and dwelling in a desert,
while a tide of wealth was sweeping by her door. Two or three miles
farther would bring us to a lock, where the slight impediment to
navigation had created a little mart of trade. Here would be found
commodities of all sorts, enumerated in yellow letters on the
window-shutters of a small grocery-store, the owner of which had set
his soul to the gathering of coppers and small change, buying and
selling through the week, and counting his gains on the blessed
Sabbath. The next scene might be the dwelling-houses and stores of a
thriving village, built of wood or small gray stones, a church-spire
rising in the midst, and generally two taverns, bearing over their
piazzas the pompous titles of “hotel,” “exchange,” “tontine,” or
“coffee-house.” Passing on, we glide now into the unquiet heart of an
inland city,—of Utica, for instance,—and find ourselves amid piles of
brick, crowded docks and quays, rich warehouses, and a busy population.
We feel the eager and hurrying spirit of the place, like a stream and
eddy whirling us along with it. Through the thickest of the tumult goes
the canal, flowing between lofty rows of buildings and arched bridges
of hewn stone. Onward, also, go we, till the hum and bustle of
struggling enterprise die away behind us and we are threading an avenue
of the ancient woods again.

This sounds not amiss in description, but was so tiresome in reality
that we were driven to the most childish expedients for amusement. An
English traveller paraded the deck, with a rifle in his walking-stick,
and waged war on squirrels and woodpeckers, sometimes sending an
unsuccessful bullet among flocks of tame ducks and geese which abound
in the dirty water of the canal. I, also, pelted these foolish birds
with apples, and smiled at the ridiculous earnestness of their
scrambles for the prize while the apple bobbed about like a thing of
life. Several little accidents afforded us good-natured diversion. At
the moment of changing horses the tow-rope caught a Massachusetts
farmer by the leg and threw him down in a very indescribable posture,
leaving a purple mark around his sturdy limb. A new passenger fell flat
on his back in attempting to step on deck as the boat emerged from
under a bridge. Another, in his Sunday clothes, as good luck would have
it, being told to leap aboard from the bank, forthwith plunged up to
his third waistcoat-button in the canal, and was fished out in a very
pitiable plight, not at all amended by our three rounds of applause.
Anon a Virginia schoolmaster, too intent on a pocket Virgil to heed the
helmsman’s warning, “Bridge! bridge!” was saluted by the said bridge on
his knowledge-box. I had prostrated myself like a pagan before his
idol, but heard the dull, leaden sound of the contact, and fully
expected to see the treasures of the poor man’s cranium scattered about
the deck. However, as there was no harm done, except a large bump on
the head, and probably a corresponding dent in the bridge, the rest of
us exchanged glances and laughed quietly. O, bow pitiless are idle
people!


The table being now lengthened through the cabin and spread for supper,
the next twenty minutes were the pleasantest I had spent on the canal,
the same space at dinner excepted. At the close of the meal it had
become dusky enough for lamplight. The rain pattered unceasingly on the
deck, and sometimes came with a sullen rush against the windows, driven
by the wind as it stirred through an opening of the forest. The
intolerable dulness of the scene engendered an evil spirit in me.
Perceiving that the Englishman was taking notes in a memorandum-book,
with occasional glances round the cabin, I presumed that we were all to
figure in a future volume of travels, and amused my ill-humor by
falling into the probable vein of his remarks. He would hold up an
imaginary mirror, wherein our reflected faces would appear ugly and
ridiculous, yet still retain all undeniable likeness to the originals.
Then, with more sweeping malice, he would make these caricatures the
representatives of great classes of my countrymen.

He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a Yankee by birth, who, to
recreate himself, was examining a freshman from Schenectady College in
the conjugation of a Greek verb. Him the Englishman would portray as
the scholar of America, and compare his erudition to a school-boy’s
Latin theme made up of scraps ill-selected and worse put together. Next
the tourist looked at the Massachusetts farmer, who was delivering a
dogmatic harangue on the iniquity of Sunday mails. Here was the
far-famed yeoman of New England; his religion, writes the Englishman,
is gloom on the Sabbath, long prayers every morning and eventide, and
illiberality at all times; his boasted information is merely an
abstract and compound of newspaper paragraphs, Congress debates, caucus
harangues, and the argument and judge’s charge in his own lawsuits. The
book-monger cast his eye at a Detroit merchant, and began scribbling
faster than ever. In this sharp-eyed man, this lean man, of wrinkled
brow, we see daring enterprise and close-fisted avarice combined. Here
is the worshipper of Mammon at noonday; here is the three times
bankrupt, richer after every ruin; here, in one word, (O wicked
Englishman to say it!) here is the American. He lifted his eyeglass to
inspect a Western lady, who at once became aware of the glance,
reddened, and retired deeper into the female part of the cabin. Here
was the pure, modest, sensitive, and shrinking woman of
America,—shrinking when no evil is intended, and sensitive like
diseased flesh, that thrills if you but point at it; and strangely
modest, without confidence in the modesty of other people; and
admirably pure, with such a quick apprehension of all impurity.

In this manner I went all through the cabin, hitting everybody as hard
a lash as I could, and laying the whole blame on the infernal
Englishman. At length I caught the eyes of my own image in the
looking-glass, where a number of the party were likewise reflected, and
among them the Englishman, who at that moment was intently observing
myself.


The crimson curtain being let down between the ladies and gentlemen,
the cabin became a bedchamber for twenty persons, who were laid on
shelves one above another. For a long time our various incommodities
kept us all awake except five or six, who were accustomed to sleep
nightly amid the uproar of their own snoring, and had little to dread
from any other species of disturbance. It is a curious fact that these
snorers had been the most quiet people in the boat while awake, and
became peace-breakers only when others cease to be so, breathing tumult
out of their repose. Would it were possible to affix a wind-instrument
to the nose, and thus make melody of a snore, so that a sleeping lover
might serenade his mistress or a congregation snore a psalm-tune!
Other, though fainter, sounds than these contributed to my
restlessness. My head was close to the crimson curtain,—the sexual
division of the boat,—behind which I continually heard whispers and
stealthy footsteps; the noise of a comb laid on the table or a slipper
dropped on the floor; the twang, like a broken harp-string, caused by
loosening a tight belt; the rustling of a gown in its descent; and the
unlacing of a pair of stays. My ear seemed to have the properties of an
eye; a visible image pestered my fancy in the darkness; the curtain was
withdrawn between me and the Western lady, who yet disrobed herself
without a blush.

Finally all was hushed in that quarter. Still I was more broad awake
than through the whole preceding day, and felt a feverish impulse to
toss my limbs miles apart and appease the unquietness of mind by that
of matter. Forgetting that my berth was hardly so wide as a coffin, I
turned suddenly over and fell like an avalanche on the floor, to the
disturbance of the whole community of sleepers. As there were no bones
broken, I blessed the accident and went on deck. A lantern was burning
at each end of the boat, and one of the crew was stationed at the bows,
keeping watch, as mariners do on the ocean. Though the rain had ceased,
the sky was all one cloud, and the darkness so intense that there
seemed to be no world except the little space on which our lanterns
glimmered. Yet it was an impressive scene.

We were traversing the “long level,” a dead flat between Utica and
Syracuse, where the canal has not rise or fall enough to require a lock
for nearly seventy miles. There can hardly be a more dismal tract of
country. The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly of white-cedar,
black-ash, and other trees that live in excessive moisture, is now
decayed and death-struck by the partial draining of the swamp into the
great ditch of the canal. Sometimes, indeed, our lights were reflected
from pools of stagnant water which stretched far in among the trunks of
the trees, beneath dense masses of dark foliage. But generally the tall
stems and intermingled branches were naked, and brought into strong
relief amid the surrounding gloom by the whiteness of their decay.
Often we beheld the prostrate form of some old sylvan giant which had
fallen and crushed down smaller trees under its immense ruin. In spots
where destruction had been riotous, the lanterns showed perhaps a
hundred trunks, erect, half overthrown, extended along the ground,
resting on their shattered limbs or tossing them desperately into the
darkness, but all of one ashy white, all naked together, in desolate
confusion. Thus growing out of the night as we drew nigh, and vanishing
as we glided on, based on obscurity, and overhung and bounded by it,
the scene was ghostlike,—the very land of unsubstantial things, whither
dreams might betake themselves when they quit the slumberer’s brain.

My fancy found another emblem. The wild nature of America had been
driven to this desert-place by the encroachments of civilized man. And
even here, where the savage queen was throned on the ruins of her
empire, did we penetrate, a vulgar and worldly throng, intruding on her
latest solitude. In other lands decay sits among fallen palaces; but
here her home is in the forests.

Looking ahead, I discerned a distant light, announcing the approach of
another boat, which soon passed us, and proved to be a rusty old
scow,—just such a craft as the “Flying Dutchman” would navigate on the
canal. Perhaps it was that celebrated personage himself whom I
imperfectly distinguished at the helm in a glazed cap and rough
great-coat, with a pipe in his mouth, leaving the fumes of tobacco a
hundred yards behind. Shortly after our boatman blew a horn, sending a
long and melancholy note through the forest avenue, as a signal for
some watcher in the wilderness to be ready with a change of horses. We
had proceeded a mile or two with our fresh team when the tow-rope got
entangled in a fallen branch on the edge of the canal, and caused a
momentary delay, during which I went to examine the phosphoric light of
an old tree a little within the forest. It was not the first delusive
radiance that I had followed.

The tree lay along the ground, and was wholly converted into a mass of
diseased splendor, which threw a ghastliness around. Being full of
conceits that night, I called it a frigid fire, a funeral light,
illumining decay and death, an emblem of fame that gleams around the
dead man without warming him, or of genius when it owes its brilliancy
to moral rottenness, and was thinking that such ghostlike torches were
just fit to light up this dead forest or to blaze coldly in tombs,
when, starting from my abstraction, I looked up the canal. I
recollected myself, and discovered the lanterns glimmering far away.

“Boat ahoy!” shouted I, making a trumpet of my closed fists.

Though the cry must have rung for miles along that hollow passage of
the woods, it produced no effect. These packet-boats make up for their
snail-like pace by never loitering day nor night, especially for those
who have paid their fare. Indeed, the captain had an interest in
getting rid of me; for I was his creditor for a breakfast.

“They are gone, Heaven be praised!” ejaculated I; “for I cannot
possibly overtake them. Here am I, on the ‘long level,’ at midnight,
with the comfortable prospect of a walk to Syracuse, where my baggage
will be left. And now to find a house or shed wherein to pass the
night.” So thinking aloud, I took a flambeau from the old tree,
burning, but consuming not, to light my steps withal, and, like a
jack-o’-the-lantern, set out on my midnight tour.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Sketches from Memory (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")" ***


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