We had the mails to change at the post-offices, and a seemingly
inexhaustible store, intrusted to the care and courtesy of the driver,
and surrounding him like a rampart,--of newspapers, bundles, cans,
pillow-cases full of dried apples, and often letters.
At the red house near the mill below Surrey, a sweet-looking girl ran
out, as we passed, holding her hand forward for a letter, which our
driver pretended to drop half a dozen times, on purpose to tantalize
her. It was pretty to see her blushing, sparkling face, as the blood
danced to her brow with hope, and back with the baffled expectancy to
her heart.
"Neouw, Sil, be still! give to me, yeouw!"
If it hadn't been Yankee, it was soft and melodious enough for an
Italian peasant. As picturesque, too, was her short, blue woollen
petticoat, and white short-gown, that "half hid and half revealed" the
unconstrained grace of healthy mountain-nature; and more modest the
happy look with which she received the letter at last, and flew with it
like a bird back to the red nest.
"A love-letter, I suppose," said I, answering the twinkle of the
driver's good-natured eye.
"Wal, I expect 's likely. They've been sparking now over a year. And
it's a pity, too, such a real clever girl as that is! She a'n't so
dreadful bright, but she's real clever, and ough' to hev a better chance
'n Jim Ruggles."
"A bad match for her?"
"Wal, Jim's a good feller enough, but he drinks. I don't mean to say
nothin' agin moderate drinkin'. I drink myself moderately. But Jim's a
real sponge. He'd drink all day hard and never show it, without it is
bein' cross, maybe, and paler 'n common. Now I say,--and I a'n't no
'reformed inebriate,' nor Father Matthew sort,--but I do say, and will
hold to it, such a man at twenty-one makes a poor beginnin'. If he
lives, he'll be a poor shote, and no mistake. I'm sorry for the gal."
"Somebody ought to tell her. Why not you?"
"Wal, what's the good on 't? She wouldn't hear a word. When a woman's
once sot her mind, don't do no good to talk. For that matter, talkin'
never did do much, I'm thinkin',--exceptin' preachin'. We're bound to
hear that, Parson," he added, laughing, and with a nod which might seem
respectful.
In three hours we had driven thirteen miles. Pretty good progress this
of a warm day, and with a full complement of passengers. We had watched
the sun rise over Walpole hills, and the specks in the distance where
the early farmers were ploughing and sowing. The breaking day, the
bursting spring, and all the outward melodies with which the welcoming
day rings as we toil on, are so many incentives to appetite, and we are
all sharp for the ready breakfast, at six o'clock.
Then, as I am talking of the past, and not of the present, there was
time enough: time enough for the comfortable discussion of breakfast,
for the changing of raiment among the babies, for chatting in the
bar-room, for the interchange of news among the men, and even for
glasses of milk-punch. Tell it not in modern Gath that even the Dominie
spiced his half-mug of flip with an anecdote, and that every man and
woman took cider as well as coffee.
How can I describe the events and vicissitudes that befell us during
this journey of three days and a half to New York? Modern travellers,
who are, or are not, as it happens, run off the track, smashed up, or
otherwise suddenly and summarily disposed of, have little notion of our
successive and amusing accidents, and of how they diversified and
occupied the mind, so as entirely to preclude the _ennui_ which comes
from railroad-travelling, with its ninety-nine chances of safety to one
of accident.
That we were tipped out and over repeatedly,--that one of the leaders
had fits, (which amiable weakness was understood and allowed for by our
driver, who was in hopes the critter wouldn't have 'em that day,)--that
the coach wholly collapsed once, letting all the patient passengers into
a promiscuous heap of unbroken bones,--this, and such as this, will be
easily believed by any New-England traveller who remembers thirty years
back. But how we fell so softly that the brains were never damaged,--why
falling into ditches at night wasn't an unhealthy process,--and, above
all, how the driver's stock of leathern straps, strings, and nails
should always prove exhaustless, and be always so wonderfully adapted to
every emergency,--that was a wonder, and is a wonder still to me. No
amount of mechanical skill, though the Yankee has made machines that
almost think, and altogether do, for him, has superseded or exhausted
his natural tact, expediency, and invention. With string and nail in his
pocket, I would defy the horses of Phoebus to get away from a Yankee, or
his chariot to get out of gear; and if Phaeton had only been a
Vermonter, the deserts of Ethiopia might to this day have been covered
with roses instead of sand. Our driver, though he didn't know his own
powers, knew all about Phoebus, and had read Virgil and Ovid by the
light of a pine-knot in his father's kitchen. This rude culture is the
commonest fact among our mountaineers.
We "stopped over" one day in Hartford, to see the deaf-mutes. Their
bright, concentrated, eager looks haunted me long after. I should like
to know who would stop anywhere now to see anything! One might as well
be put into a gun and fired off to New York as go there now by
steam-cars. Line a gun with red plush, and it is not unlike a "resonant
steam-eagle." And you would see as much in one as in the other.
But travelling in 1830 enlarged your mind. A journey then was one as
_was_ a journey. You saw people, you made their acquaintance, you
entered their hearts and took lodgings,--sometimes for life.
Then the country! You saw that, too,--not the poorest part of it,
scooting round wherever it is most level, till you pronounce the whole
way flat, and are glad to shut your eyes and listen to the engine,
rather than have them ache with seeing everything you would never wish
to look at!
All these days were full of great, beautiful pictures. From the time we
leave the Granite State, with it a wild, fierce grandeur, its long,
dreary reaches of unfertile pastures, and its wealth of stone wall,--so
abundant that travellers wonder where the stones came from to build it,
seeing no lack in the road or field,--from the time we enter on trim,
well-kept Massachusetts, the panorama shifts with ever new interest and
beauty. We leave the pretentious brick houses, or the glaring white
ones, which mark the uncultivated taste of the American Switzerland, and
enter for the first time regions impressed with the necessary element of
fine landscape, maturity. With and under the old oaks and birches rest
the sad-colored houses that have held life and experience,--birth,
death, and old historic adventure.
Looking over the broad meadows that skirt the Connecticut by Hadley and
Northampton, one seems to see under the distant oaks spectral shapes of
Indian struggle, or wandering regicides, hiding their noble heads in
caves, or bursting out like white spirits to lead and avenge. The air is
peopled with traditions far back from the present, but with which the
grave, imposing, characteristic landscape seems still to sympathize.
In two days we emerged from the brown chrysalis of a New-Hampshire
spring into the exultant richness of the winged butterfly,--into white,
fragrant fields of blossoming fruit, and the odor of tree-lilacs.
In my enchantment at the bounteous panorama that spread out before me in
ever varying abundance, I forgot to cultivate any interest in my
fellow-passengers, and, except in listening to some communicative old
women, might really, as far as society was concerned, as well have been
travelling in the style of to-day. Beyond the casual acquaintances I
made when rain compelled me to indoor chat, I saw nobody who interested
me until we reached Springfield. There, at the top of the first short
hill outside the town, after looking back on the white houses standing
in the river-mist like so many ghosts in white muslin, I saw somebody
whom my prophetic soul announced as a companion, looking wholly unlike a
ghost, and very unlike a mist. He raised his hand, just as we were about
passing him, as if signalling an omnibus, and our driver suddenly reined
in his team.
A full, hearty voice, not a bit nasal, but fresh from the broad chest,
showed us a traveller by the road-side, waiting to be taken up.
He sprang with two bounds to the top of the coach, and made room for
himself just above us among the countless boxes.
"Don't let me disturb you, Madam All right. Just room for my bag. Go on,
driver."
"Fine day," said we.
"A warm morning. I have been walking for the last fifteen miles,--but
the sun is too hot for me."
He took off his travelling-hat of weather-beaten Panama, and dried his
broad brow with his handkerchief. Then he looked at us with clear blue
eyes, and tossed back his curling brown hair. He had a gray
travelling-dress, such as everybody wears now, but which was then a
novelty; and something in his curt, clear accents, and his crimson lips,
and the fresh life in his limbs and action, betrayed that he was not an
American. So much the better.