THE BERKSHIRES AND BENNINGTON
Greenfield, where the party spent the night, they found to be a
pleasant old town with the wide, tree-bordered streets to which they
were growing accustomed in this trolleying pilgrimage. A quiet hotel
sheltered them and they slept soundly, their dreams filled with
memories of colleges and rose gardens and Indians in romantic
confusion. The next day they started westward.
Pittsfield they found to be a large town whose old houses surrounded by
ancient trees gave a feeling of solidity and comfort.
"Longfellow wrote 'The Old Clock on the Stairs' here," said Mr. Emerson
pointing out the Appleton house. "The first stanza describes more than
one of the old mansions," and he recited:--
"Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,--
'Forever--never!
Never--forever!'"
"I remember that poem, but I never liked it much;" acknowledged
Dorothy; "it's too gloomy."
"It is rather solemn," admitted Mr. Emerson. "You'll be interested to
know that merry Dr. Holmes used to come to Pittsfield in the summer.
There are many associations with him in the town."
"I'm sure he wrote gayer poems than 'The Old Clock on the Stairs' when
he was here."
"Is this a very old town?" Ethel Blue asked.
"It was settled in 1743. Does that seem old to you?"
[Illustration: "It was settled in 1743"]
"1743," Ethel repeated, doing some subtraction by the aid of her
fingers, for arithmetic was not her strong point. "A hundred and
eighty-seven years," she decided after reflection. "Yes, that seems
pretty old to me. It's a lot older than Rosemont but over a hundred
years younger than Plymouth or Boston."
"A sort of middle age," Mr. Emerson summed up her decision with a smile.
After luncheon at the hotel an early afternoon car sped on with them to
a station whence they took an automobile for a drive through
Stockbridge and Lenox with their handsome estates and lovely views.
The trolley whizzed them back over the same route to North Adams and
westward to Williamstown.
"One of my brothers--your great-uncle James, Ethel Brown--went to
Williams College," said Mr. Emerson, "and I shall be glad to spend the
night here and see the town and the buildings I heard him talk so much
about."
"Why don't we get out, then?"
"We're going now to Bennington, Vermont."
"Vermont! Into another state!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.
"When we come back we'll leave the car here."
"Are those the Green Mountains?" asked Dorothy as the trolley ran into
a smoother country than they had been in while traveling in the
Berkshires, but one which showed a background of long wooded ranges
rising length after length against the sky.
"Those are the Green Mountains; and this is the 'Green Mountain State,'
and the men who fought in the Revolution under Ethan Allen were the
'Green Mountain Boys'."
"But, ranged in serried order, attent on sterner noise,
Stood stalwart Ethan Allen and his 'Green Mountain Boys'
Two hundred patriots listening as with the ears of one,
To the echo of the muskets that blazed at Lexington!"
quoted Mrs. Emerson. "They were bound northward to the British fort at
Ticonderoga."
"Did they get there?"
"They took the British completely by surprise. That was in May, 1775.
It was in August, two years later that the battle of Bennington took
place."
"We'd better agree to have dinner or supper here if we don't want to
get back to Williamstown after all the food in the place has been eaten
by those hungry college boys," suggested Mrs. Emerson.
Mr. Emerson took a hasty glance at the setting sun.
"You never spoke a truer word, my dear," applauded her husband, "though
this is vacation and the boys won't be there! Still, I'm as hungry as
a bear. Let's have our evening meal, whatever it proves to be, in
Bennington."
They were all hungry enough to think the plan one of the best that
their leader had offered for some time, so it was only after what
turned out to be supper that they went back to Williamstown.
In the moonlight the towers of the college buildings glimmered
mysteriously through the trees, and the girls went to bed happy in the
promise of what the morning was going to bring them.
Ethel Brown was sorry that there were no students to be seen on the
grounds when they wandered about the next morning, for she would have
liked to see what sort of boys they were, and, if she liked their
looks, have suggested to Tom or James that they come here to college
amid such lovely surroundings. She liked it better than Amherst but
Ethel Blue preferred that compact little village, and Dorothy clung to
her deep-seated affection for Cambridge.
"After all, our Club boys have their plans all made so we don't need to
get excited over these colleges," decided Ethel Brown; "and I'm glad
they're all going to different ones because when they graduate we'll
have invitations to three separate class-days and other festivities."
"What a perfectly beautiful tower," exclaimed Dorothy.
"It's the chapel. That light-colored stone is superb, isn't it!"
"Some of these other buildings look as old as some of the oldy-old
Harvard ones."
"They can't be anywhere near as old. This college wasn't founded until
1793."
"That's old enough to give it a settled-down air in spite of these
handsome new affairs. There must be lovely walks about here."
"Hills almost as big as mountains to climb. But the boys don't have
any girls to call on the way the Amherst boys do, with the Smith girls
and the Mt. Holyoke girls just a little ride away."
"Perhaps they'd rather have mountains," remarked Ethel Brown wisely.
As the college was not in session Mr. Emerson was not able to see any
of the records that he had hoped to look over to search for his
brother's name, and as almost all of the professors were out of town,
he could not question any of the older men of the place as to their
recollection of him. He was quite willing, therefore, to take a
comparatively early train for Albany.
They arrived early enough to go over the Capitol, seated at the head of
a broad but precipitous street. It was very unlike the stern
simplicity of the Massachusetts State House, but they amused themselves
by saying that at least the two buildings had one part of their
decoration in common. In Albany the tops of the columns were carved
with fruits and flowers, all to be found in the United States. In
Boston a local product, the codfish, held a position of honor over the
desk of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
"All made in the U. S. A.," laughed Dorothy, quoting a slogan of the
wartime, intended to help home industries.
They wanted to see the Cathedral and St. Agnes' School as well as the
State Board of Education Building, and after they had hunted them out
with the help of a map of the city, and had taken a trolley ride into
the suburbs, and had eaten a hearty dinner they were glad to go to bed
early so as to be up in time to catch the Day Boat for New York.
"What splendid weather we've had," exclaimed Mrs. Emerson as they took
their places on the broad deck of the handsome craft. It was not the
same one that had taken them to West Point at the end of May. This one
was named after Hendrik Hudson, the explorer of the river. They found
it to be quite as comfortable as the other, and the day went fast as
they swept down the stream with the current to aid them.
Occasionally broad reaches of the river grew narrower and wider again
as the soil had proven soft or more resistant and the water had spread
or had cut out a deep channel. Off to the west the Catskills loomed
against the sky, more varied than the Green Mountains and more rugged.
"More beautiful, too, I think," decided Ethel Blue. "I like their
roughness."
A storm came up as they passed the mountains and the thunder rumbled
unendingly among the hills.
"Listen to the Dutchmen that Rip Van Winkle saw playing bowls when he
visited them during his twenty years' nap," laughed Ethel Brown who was
a reader of Washington Irving's "Sketch Book."
"I don't wonder he felt dozy in summer with such a lovely scene to
quiet him," Mrs. Emerson said in his defence. "I feel a trifle sleepy
myself," and she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes with an
appearance of extreme comfort.
They passed Kingston which was burned by the British just two months
after the battle of Bennington; and by a large town which proved to be
Poughkeepsie.
"Here's where we should land if we were going to finish our
investigation of colleges by seeing Vassar," said Mr. Emerson.
"I'm glad we aren't going to get off!" exclaimed Ethel Brown. "I'm so
undecided now I don't see how I'll ever make up my mind where to go!"
"Something will happen to help you decide," consoled Dorothy. "Isn't
this where the big college boat races are rowed?" she asked Mr. Emerson.
"Right here on this broad stretch of water. A train of observation
cars--flat cars--follows the boats along the bank. I must bring the
Club up here to some of them some time."
"O-oh!" all the girls cried with one voice, and they stared at the
river and the shore as if they might even then see the shells dashing
down the stream and the shouting crowds in the steamers and on the
banks.
Below Newburgh the river narrowed beneath upstanding cliffs and a point
jutted out into the water.
"Do you recognize that piece of land?" Mr. Emerson asked.
No one did.
"You don't recall West Point?"
"We're in the position now of the steamers and tugs we watched while we
were having our dinner at the hotel. Do you see the veranda of the
hotel? Up on the headland?"
They did, and they felt that they were in truth nearing home. The
remainder of the way was over familiar waters, and they called to mind
the historic tales that Roger and Mr. Emerson had told them on the
Memorial Day trip.
"We've seen so much history in the last week, though," declared Ethel
Blue, "that I don't believe I can ever realize that I'm living in the
twentieth century!"