off a little? If you keep on in this way, you’ll be in your grave in
less than a month. How would you like that?”
“Arrah, begorra,” he replied, with a look of hopeful resignation, “if I
cud awnly be shure o’ me gude skvare dthrink in the other wurrld, oi
wudn’t moind.”
The record of a single evening spent in the village store, with its
rural jargon and homespun yarns, its odd vernacular and rustic gossip,
would make a volume as rare and unique as the characters it would
depict.
The store itself is a matchless picture in its way, and for variety in
accessory is as rich as could be wished for. The low, murky ceiling,
hung with all manner of earthly goods--scythes and rakes, boots and
pails, in pendulous array; bottles and boxes, brooms and breast-pins,
are here--in short, everything that heart could wish or thought suggest,
from speckled calicoes to seven-cent sugar, or from a three-tined fork
to a goose-yoke. Evening after evening, for an hour or so, I was tempted
thither, until I found the week had gone. Sunday came again--Sunday in
New England. The old bell swung on its wheel in the belfry, ringing out
its call to devotion, and ere the echo had died in the recesses of the
mountain beyond the still atmosphere reverberated with an answering peal
from the little sister church in the valley below, as the scattered
groups with strolling steps wend their way to “meeting,” and the gay
loads from Newborough go flitting by on the accustomed Sunday drive.
Monday dawned on Hometown. It found me up and doing. I had enjoyed one
week of glorious loafing, but work was the programme for the next. I
went to Draper’s Inn and engaged a horse and buggy “until further
notice.” “A spang-up team” he called it, and it would be up “in half a
jiffy.” We were waiting for it when it came, and what with our variety
of luggage in the shape of canvases, color-boxes, hammocks, camp-seats,
and easels, every bit of available space in that buggy was well
utilized. Before the clock has struck nine, we are spinning along down
through the village, now past the store, now over the bridge, and
turning to the right, we glide by the little post-office, as the kind
face of Father Tomlinson nods a “good-bye” from the door-way.
A little farther, and we have left the little slope-roofed school-house
in our path, and are soon ascending the long hill of Zoar, from which we
look back four miles to the cliff and nestling town. In ten minutes more
we approach the brow of a steep declivity, and the broad Housatonic
opens up to view, winding off into the misty mountains in the distance.
There is now a drive of half a mile along the side of a wild
mountain-slope, where mountain-laurels grow in wild profusion, and the
rooty, overhanging banks are tufted with rich green moss, overgrown with
checker-berries and arbutus. The river roars far down below us, and for
a few minutes our eyes feast on as lovely an extent of varied New
England landscape as is easily found. And yet this is only a short
section of one of the many matchless drives that follow the course of
this beautiful river around the borders of Hometown.
[Illustration: FAMILIAR FACES AT THE VILLAGE STORE.]
Suddenly we leave the stream as it glides away on an abrupt turn beneath
the crescent of a rocky precipice, and before we have fairly lost the
sound of the ripples we have arrived at our journey’s end. A pair of
bars under an old butternut-tree mark the place. The carriage is backed
to the side of the road, and the horse turned loose in the rocky meadow.
This is Joab Nichols’s “pasture lot,” with fodder consisting principally
of huge boulders, hardhack, and spleenwort; to be sure, with a stray
relish of “butter-and-eggs” here and there, and a thousand white saucers
of wild carrot handy to go with them. One or two trips across the field
bring all our luggage, and we are soon enjoying cool comfort in the
hemlock shade of a fairy grotto. Above us the babbling brook bounds and
splashes over mossy rocks, disappearing in a mass of creamy foam, from
under which it eddies toward us only to plunge twenty feet into a
miniature cañon below. Again, yonder it bubbles into a whirling pool,
where the bordering ferns bend and nod above its buoyant surface; and
now gliding from view beneath the tangle of drooping boughs, it
disappears only to burst forth once more in its merry song as it rushes
over the rapids.
“I chatter, chatter as I go,
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.”
Here in this wild retreat I have found my sylvan studio--shut in by
fringed and fragrant evergreens, enlivened by the undergrowth of
feathery fronds, and the shimmer of the beech, as the tracery of
overhanging boughs trembles in the gentle breeze. Day after day finds us
in this little paradise, and as one in luxurious hammock swings away the
hours, now lost in fiction, now in short repose, or perhaps with busy
needle fashions graceful figures in Kensington design, the canvas on the
easel shows a fortnight’s constant care, and the palette changes to a
keepsake of a sunny memory--a tinted souvenir.
For two weeks the gurgling brook sang to us in this wild retreat. As
evening after evening closed in upon us, the unfinished pictures were
stowed away in horizontal crevices between the rocks, and, with hammock
still swinging in the trees, we left the gloom to the hooting owl, that
evening after evening, with tremulous cry, proclaimed the twilight hour
from the tall hemlock overhead. Ere long the murmuring Housatonic
shimmers below us in the moonlight as we hurry on our homeward way, and
the distant lights of Hometown are soon seen glimmering; through the
evening mist. The old bridge now rumbles through the darkness its signal
of our return, and the host of Draper’s Inn is seen awaiting us at the
illumined door-way. A quiet, cosy supper, and in the rays of a gleaming
lantern, held aloft to light our path, we follow our lengthening shadows
to the old front gate. Repeat this day’s record fourteen times, and you
have the sum of a happy experience, with but one drawback: it had an
end--an end that would have left its reaction, were it not for the store
of increased pleasure that awaited us for the few closing days of our
pilgrimage--for me, at least, although in other scenes, its climax.
[Illustration: A SOUVENIR.]
Many like me are happy in the possession of a dear old homestead; but
there are few, I ween, who enjoy the blessing of a double inheritance
such as has been my lot--two homes which share my equal devotion, two
homes without a choice; the one this beloved heirloom in Hometown, and
the other--But you shall see. We shall be there soon, for the little
satchel is packed, and the carriage awaits us at the gate. A drive of
eighteen miles is before us--a beautiful series of pictures. Down
through the village, past the old red mill and smithy, with its ringing
anvil, and we are soon winding our way through a sombre glen. Presently
we catch glimpses of the great rumbling factory, with its clouds of
smoke and steam melting into the wooded mountain above. The old yellow
bridge now creaks under our approach, and ere we are aware a sudden turn
leads us out of a wilderness on to the shore of the beautiful
Housatonic. For a few minutes the rushing water trickles through the
wheels as over jolting stones our pony leads us through the ford, and,
refreshed by the cool bath, makes a lively sally up the eastern bank.
For ten miles the Housatonic guides us around its winding curves through
a path of ever-changing beauty, now shut in by the dense, dark
evergreens, and again emerging into a bower of silvery beeches, where
the roadway is carpeted with mottled shadows, and the dappled trunks
flicker with the softened glints of sunlight. Here we come upon a sandy
stretch where the road is sunken between two sloping banks thick-set
with mulleins and sweet-fern, and overrun with creeping brambles. The
stone-wall above is wreathed in trailing woodbine, and along its crest
we see the swaying tips of wheat from the edge of the field just beyond;
and here we pass a border of whortleberry bushes, laden with their
fruit. Now it is a hazel thicket crowding close upon our wheels, and
among the leaves we see the brown, tanned husks of the ripening nuts,
almost ready for that troop of boys and girls that you may be sure are
watching and waiting for them.
The old gray toll-bridge soon nears to view, with its two long spans and
fantastic beams. Farther on, peering from its willows, stands the ruined
cider-mill, with its long moss-grown lever jutting through the trees--an
old-time haunt, now crumbling in decay. But we only catch a glimpse of
it, for in a moment more we are shut in beneath another bower of beeches
and white birches, where the road takes a steep ascent, and the rippling
river sends up its sunny reflections among the leaves and tree-trunks.
When once more upon a level, it is to look ahead through a long avenue
of shade--a leafy canopy two miles in length--with only an occasional
break to open up some charming bit of landscape across the water. In
these two miles of umbrage you may see types of almost every tree that
grows within the boundaries of New England. Old veteran beeches are
here, their trunks disfigured with scars that once were names cut in the
bark. Here are spots that look like half obliterated figures; and here
are spreading hieroglyphs that tell, perhaps, of old-time vows plighted
at the trysting-tree; and here’s a semblance of a heart, a broken heart
indeed, if its present form be taken as a prophetic symbol.
[Illustration: ALONG THE HOUSATONIC.]
There are magnificent rock-maples too, and silver-maples that shake down
their little swarms of winged seeds. Tulip-trees and spotted buttonwoods
grow side by side, and quivering aspens and white poplars are seen at
every clearing. There are yellow birch-trunks frayed out with the wind,
and great snake-like stems of grape-vine, that twist and writhe among
the branches of the trees. There are hop hornbeams, and chestnuts,
and--But there is no need to enumerate them all. Just think of every New
England tree you ever knew, and add a score besides, and you will form a
slight idea of the varied verdure that hems in this charming Housatonic
drive, with its rocky roadside embroidered in trickling moss and
fumitory; and rose-flowered mountain-raspberry growing so close upon the
road that your pony takes a wayward nip, and plucks its blossomed tip as
he passes.
Now comes an open level, with wide, expansive views, where every turn
upon the road brings its fresh surprise, as some new combination of hazy
mountain landscape towers above the distant river bend; and the flitting
cloud shadows lead their capricious, undulating chase across the wooded
slopes. The roadsides here are full of everchanging beauties too, with
their trimmings of ornamental sunflowers, their picturesque old fences,
and their clumps of purple-berried poke-weed, with here and there a
yellow patch of toad-flax, and aromatic tufts of tansy hugging close
against the fence. Even that clambering screen of clematis that trails
over the shrubbery yonder cannot hide the scattered tips of crimson that
already have appeared among the sumach leaves.
There are a thousand things one meets upon a country ride or ramble
which at the time are allowed to pass with but a glance. The eye is
surfeited and the mind confused with the continual pageantry. But months
afterward, in the reveries about our winter fires, they all come back to
us, with the added charm of reminiscence; and whether it be a crystal
spring among a bank of ferns, or a thistle-top with its fluttering
butterfly and inevitable bumblebee rolling in the tufted blossom, or a
squirrel running along a rail, or perhaps a rattling grasshopper
hovering in mid-air above the dusty road--no matter what, they all are
welcome memories at our fireside, and draw our hearts still closer to
the loveliness of nature.
This Housatonic road is rich in just such pastoral pictures. Two hours
on such a course soon pass, when our pony whinnies at the welcome sight
of the old log water-trough beyond--a landmark old and green when I was
yet a boy, still nestling in its rocky bed, shadowed by the drooping
hemlocks, still lavish with its overflowing bounty.
This benefactor by the way-side marks a turning-point in our journey, as
we leave the grandeur of the Housatonic to pursue our way by the nooks
and dingles of the wild Shepaug--a bubbling tributary whose happy waters
sing of a varied experience. Now placid through the blossoming fields,
now plunging down the precipice to ripple through a verdant valley,
where, hemmed in at every turn, it seeks its only liberty beneath the
rumbling of the old mill-wheels; and at last, ere it loses its identity
in the swelling tide, leaving a mischievous and tumultuous record as it
pours through the rocky cañon, and with surging, whirling volume carves
huge caverns and fantastic statues in its massive bed of stone. Even now
through the dark forest beyond we can hear the muffled roar, and for
nearly a league farther as we ascend the long hill it comes to us in
fitful whispers wafted on the changing breeze. Reaching the summit of
this incline, we find ourselves on a hill-top wide and far-reaching, on
right and left losing itself in wooded wold, while in front the level
road diminishes to a point, surmounted by blue hills in the distance.
Two miles on a pastoral hill-top, where golden-rod and tall spiræas
cluster along the lichen-covered walls, where orange-lilies gleam among
the alders, with now and then a blazing group of butterfly-plant or a
dusty clump of milk-weed. The air is laden with the nut-like odor of the
everlasting flowers all around us. The buzzing drum of the harvest-fly
vibrates from every tree, and we hear the tinkling bell and lowing of
the cattle in some neighboring field. Farther on, we look down from the
edge of the plateau through the length of Happy Valley, with its winding
stream, its barns and busy mills, its sunny homes glinting through the
summer haze. On the left the lofty shadowed cliff known as “Steep-rock”
towers against the evening sky, and again we catch the murmuring whiffs
of the rushing stream in its sweeping bend beneath the overhanging
precipice. A sharp turn round a jutting hill-side, and I meet a prospect
that quickens the heart and makes the eye grow dim. There beyond, three
miles “as flies the laden bee,” I linger on the welcome sight, as on its
hill-top fair two steeples side by side betray the hidden town, my
second home.
How lightly did I appreciate the fortunate journey when, twenty summers
ago, I followed this road for the first time, when a boy of ten years,
on my way to an unknown village, I looked across the landscape to the
little spires on that distant hill! Little did I dream of the six years
of unmixed happiness and precious experience that awaited me in that
little Judea! I only knew that I was sadly quitting a happy home on my
way to “boarding-school”--a school called the Snuggery, taught by a Mr.
Snug, in a little village named Snug Hamlet, about twenty miles from
Hometown.
There are some experiences in the life of every one which, however
truthful, cannot be told but to elicit the doubtful nod or the warning
finger of incredulity. They were such experiences as these, however,
that made up the sum of my early life in that happy refuge called in
modern parlance a “boarding-school”--a name as empty, a word as weak and
tame in its significance, as poverty itself; no doubt abundantly
expressive in its ordinary application, but here it is a mockery and a
satire. This is not a “boarding-school;” it is a _household_, whose
memories moisten the eye and stir the soul; to which its scattered
members through the fleeting years look back as to a neglected home,
with father and mother dear, whom they long once more to meet as in the
tenderness of boyhood days; a cherished remembrance which, like the
“house upon a hill, cannot be hid,” but sends abroad its light unto many
hearts who in those early days sought the loving shelter; a bright star
in the horizon of the past, a glow that ne’er grows dim, but only
kindles and brightens with the flood of years. Yes, yes; I know it
sounds like a dash of sentiment, but words of mine are feeble and
impotent indeed when sought for the expression of an attachment so fond,
of a love so deep.
Fifteen years ago, with a parting full of sorrow, I rode away from Snug
Hamlet yonder in the village stage--a day that brought a depression that
lingered long, and lingers still. Glowing, sunset-tinted fields glide by
unnoticed now, as, with eyes intent on the distant hill, I look back
through the lapse of time. A mile has gone without my knowing it, when a
joyous laugh awakens me from my day-dreams. Two boys approach us on the
road ahead, and, what might seem very strange to you, one wears a wooden
boot-jack strung around his neck and dangling on his breast; but he
carries his burden lightly and cheerfully. As they near the carriage I
draw the rein, and they both pause by the roadside.
“Well, boys,” I ask, “where do _you_ hail from?”
“We’re from the Snuggery, sir.”
“I thought so,” said I, with a laugh, in which they both joined. “But
what are you doing with that boot-jack?”
“Oh, you see,” said one, with a roguish smile, “Charlie and I were
having a little tussle in the sitting-room, and he picked up Mr. Snug’s
boot-jack in the corner and began to pummel me with it; and jest as we
were having it the worst, and were rollin’ on the floor, Mr. Snug came
in and caught us in the job, and now we’re _payin’_ for it.”
“How so?” I inquired, well knowing what would be the response.
“Oh, you see, Mr. Snug held a diagnosis over our remains, and said he
thought we were suffering, for the want of a little exercise, and
ordered us on a trip to Judd’s Bridge.”
“And the boot-jack?”
“Oh, he said that Charlie might want to play with that some more on the
way, and that he’d better fetch it along;” and with a mischievous
snicker at his encumbered companion, he led him along the road in an
hilarious race, while we enjoyed a hearty laugh at their expense.
And this a _punishment_! Yes, here is an introduction to one phase of a
system of correction as unique as the matchless institution in which it
had its birth--a system without a parallel in the annals of chastisement
or school government, and which for thirty years has proved its wisdom
in the household management of the Snuggery.
“To Judd’s Bridge!” How natural the sound of those words! How many
times have I myself been on that same pilgrimage of penance! The
destination of these boys is a rickety but picturesque structure which
spans the Shepaug five miles below Snug Hamlet. Through three decades it
looks back to its host of acquaintances of those romping lads who, in
the superfluity of exuberant spirits, made havoc and din in the
household. The dose is administered with wise discrimination both as to
the symptoms and the needs and strength of the patient. It always proves
a sterling remedy, and sometimes, indeed, a sugar-coated one, as in the
case of these two ruddy, rollicking examples.
[Illustration]
Judd’s Bridge is but one of a score of places which serve in the
administration of Snuggery discipline. It is, however, the one most
remote, and its ten-mile journey is reserved as an heroic dose for
extraordinary cases, after other prescriptions have been tried without
avail. Next on the list comes Moody Barn, with “open doors” every day in
the week to its frequent callers. This old settler, gray and
weather-beaten, marks a point one mile from the Snuggery, where the
still waters of the Shepaug run slow and deep--the favorite
“swimming-hole” of the Snuggery.
[Illustration: THE HAUNTED MILL.]
And then there’s Kirby Corners, a mere stroll of a few minutes round the
square of a rock-bound pasture--just enough to give yourself time to
think a bit and congratulate yourself on what you have escaped. All
these, and several more, are vivid in my memory; friends, old and
intimate. And here’s another, right before us by the roadside. For
several minutes through the tantalizing trees we have heard its rumbling
wheel, its reiterating clank, and busy saw; and now, as its familiar
outline looms up against the evening sky, the vision seems to darken, as
on that night of long ago, when through the shadowy mystery of the
moonlit gloom I stole my way among the sheltering golden-rod; when the
lofty flume, like a huge horned creature, seemed to stride athwart me in
the darkness, and the fitful boyish fancy saw strange phantoms in the
floating, melting mist. This ancient structure reposes in a verdant dell
at the foot of Snug Hamlet Hill. A choice of two roads lies before
us--one short and direct, the other a roundabout approach. A sudden
impulse leads me into the latter. On right and left I see the same old
rocks and trees. There stands the aged beech to whose gnarled and hollow
trunk I traced the agile flying-squirrel, and with suffocating flame and
smoke drove him from his hiding-place. Here between large rocks and
stones the trout-stream runs its course, now pouring in small cataracts,
now eddying into still, dark nooks, where in those by-gone times I
dropped the line of expectancy, but showed the clumsiness of adversity.
A few minutes later, and we are gliding again by the dark Shepaug, now
flowing calm and silent beneath a rugged bank, wild and umbrageous,
where the swarm of katydids, with grating discord, maintain their old
dispute, that never-ending feud. The wheels turn noiselessly in the
shifting sand as we pursue our way. The low gray fog steals lightly over
the lily-pads, floating into seclusion beneath the sheltering boughs,
or, like an evanescent spirit, borne upon the evening breath, is lifted
from the gloom, and slowly melts into the twilight sky. The solitary
whippoorwill from his mysterious haunt, perhaps in yonder tree, perhaps
in the mountain loneliness beyond, proclaims with dismal cry his
oft-repeated wail. And as we ascend the darkening path, through the
still night air, in measured cadence long and sad, we hear the toll of
the distant knell. Threescore-and-ten its numbers tell of the earthly
years--a curfew requiem for the dead. Even as we pass the little chapel
at the summit of the hill, and the bell has scarcely ceased its
melancholy tidings, we hear the shouts and merry laughs of the boys on
the village green. Presently its broad expanse, shut in by twinkling
windows and massive trees, spreads out before us, as a clear and ringing
voice, like that of old, echoes through the growing darkness, “One
hundred! Nothing said, coming ahead!” and a dim figure steals cautiously
from the steps of the old white church to seek in the sequestered
hiding-places. With a heart that fairly thumps, I urge my pony onward
across the green, and ere he slackens his pace I am at my journey’s end.
The dear old Snuggery, with its gables manifold and quaint, its
fantastic wings and towers, stands there before me, the glowing windows
beaming through the maples. Leaving our pony in willing hands, we enter
the gate, and are soon upon the wide porch.
[Illustration: PURSUERS AND PURSUED.]