carry the chain of the White and Green Mountains in gentle undulations
to the borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred
acres,--"suitably divided," as the old-school agriculturists say, into
"woodland, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house--a large,
irregularly-built mansion of wood--stands upon a shelf of the hills
looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and
out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward
of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the
scattered pasture lands of the hills; opposite to this and across the
farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys
and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of
similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land, which rolls with a
heavy "ground-swell" along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak
stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all scarred with the
ruthless cuts of new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in
summer-time with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking scythes.
The high-road passes a stone's-throw away; but there is little "travel"
to be seen; and every chance passer will inevitably come under the range
of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes of the
stout dairy-maid,--to say nothing of the stalwart Indian cook.
This last you cannot but admire as a type of that noble old race, among
whom your boyish fancy has woven so many stories of romance. You wonder
how she must regard the white interlopers upon her own soil; and you
think that she tolerates the Squire's farming privileges with more
modesty than you would suppose. You learn however that she pays very
little regard to white rights--when they conflict with her own; and
further learn, to your deep regret, that your Princess of the old tribe
is sadly addicted to cider-drinking; and having heard her once or twice
with a very indistinct "Goo-er night, Sq-quare" upon her lips, your
dreams about her grow very tame.
The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his hobbies and
peculiarities. He has a great contempt, for instance, for all paper
money, and imagines banks to be corporate societies skilfully contrived
for the legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply of silver and
gold by him in the foot of an old stocking, and seems to have great
confidence in the value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of
patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he
sets down as mere theorists, and has far more respect for the contents
of his barnyard than for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific
farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he says, "to keep idle
young fellows from the city out of mischief; but as for real, effective
management, there's nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot
until they were ten, and who count the hard winters by their frozen
toes." And he is fond of quoting in this connection--the only quotation,
by the by, that the old gentleman ever makes--that couplet of "Poor
Richard,"--
"He, that by the plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive."
The Squire has been in his day connected more or less intimately with
turnpike enterprise, which the railroads of the day have thrown sadly
into the background; and he reflects often in a melancholy way upon the
good old times when a man could travel in his own carriage quietly
across the country, without being frightened with the clatter of an
engine, and when turnpike stock paid wholesome yearly dividends of six
per cent.
An almost constant hanger-on about the premises, and a great favorite
with the Squire, is a stout, middle-aged man, with a heavy-bearded
face, to whom Frank introduces you as "Captain Dick"; and he tells you
moreover that he is a better butcher, a better wall-layer, and cuts a
broader "swathe," than any man upon the farm. Beside all which he has an
immense deal of information. He knows in the spring where all the
crows'-nests are to be found; he tells Frank where the foxes burrow; he
has even shot two or three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best
season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding of
bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership of every stray heifer that
appears upon the road: indeed scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion
formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred ones as the
weather, or potato crop, without previous consultation with "Captain
Dick."
You have an extraordinary respect for Captain Dick: his gruff tones,
dark beard, patched waistcoat, and cowhide boots, only add to it: you
can compare your regard for him only with the sentiments you entertain
for those fabulous Roman heroes, led on by Horatius, who cut down the
bridge across the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and families!
A superannuated old greyhound lives about the premises, and stalks
lazily around, thrusting his thin nose into your hands in a very
affectionate manner.
Of course, in your way, you are a lion among the boys of the
neighborhood: a blue jacket that you wear, with bell buttons of white
metal, is their especial wonderment. You astonish them moreover with
your stories of various parts of the world which they have never
visited. They tell you of the haunts of rabbits, and great snake
stories, as you sit in the dusk after supper under the old oaks; and you
delight them in turn with some marvellous tale of South-American
reptiles out of Peter Parley's books.
In all this your new friends are men of observation; while Frank and
yourself are comparatively men of reading. In ciphering, and all
schooling, you find yourself a long way before them; and you talk of
problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a way that sets
them all agape.
As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather stagger your
notions of propriety; nor can you wholly get over their out-of-the-way
pronunciation of some of the vowels. Frank however has a little
cousin,--a toddling, wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a
rich eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing; poor Fanny
is stone-blind! Your pity leans toward her strangely, as she feels her
way about the old parlor; and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or
over the clear, blue sky, with the same sad, painful vacancy.
And yet--it is very strange!--she does not grieve: there is a sweet,
soft smile upon her lip,--a smile, that will come to you in your
fancied troubles of after-life with a deep voice of reproach.
Altogether you grow into a liking of the country: your boyish spirit
loves its fresh, bracing air, and the sparkles of dew that at sunrise
cover the hills with diamonds; and the wild river, with its
black-topped, loitering pools; and the shaggy mists that lie in the
nights of early autumn like unravelled clouds, lost upon the meadow. You
love the hills, climbing green and grand to the skies, or stretching
away in distance their soft, blue, smoky caps, like the sweet,
half-faded memories of the years behind you. You love those oaks,
tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven with a spirit and a
strength that kindles your dawning pride and purposes, and that makes
you yearn, as your forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred
spirit and a kindred strength. Above all you love--though you do not
know it now--the BREADTH of a country life. In the fields of
God's planting there is ROOM. No walls of brick and mortar
cramp one; no factitious distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary
reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and the Natural. The flowers,
the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all give width to your intent.
The boy grows into manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He
claims--with tears almost of brotherhood--his kinship with Nature; and
he feels in the mountains his heirship to the Father of Nature!
This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon the lip of the
boy; but yet it underlies his thought, and will without his
consciousness give the spring to his musing dreams.
----So it is, that, as you lie there upon the sunny greensward, at the
old Squire's door, you muse upon the time when some rich-lying land,
with huge granaries, and cosy old mansion sleeping under the trees,
shall be yours,--when the brooks shall water your meadows, and come
laughing down your pasture-lands,--when the clouds shall shed their
spring fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your paths.
You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your lean-limbed hound, your
stocking-leg of specie, and your snuffbox. You will be the happy and
respected husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles,--a
little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother,--and an accomplished cook
of stewed pears and Johnny-cakes!
It seems a very lofty ambition at this stage of growth to reach such
eminence, as to convert your drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret
spring, into a bank for the country people; and the power to send a man
to jail seems one of those stretches of human prerogative to which few
of your fellow-mortals can ever hope to attain.
----Well, it may all be. And who knows but the Dreams of Age, when
they are reached, will be lighted by the same spirit and freedom of
nature that is around you now? Who knows, but that after tracking you
through the spring and the summer of Youth, we shall find frosted Age
settling upon you heavily and solemnly in the very fields where you
wanton to-day?
This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting impulse. It brings
Age back from years of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth;
and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach far-away shores with
their bones.
That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy and the executioner of
the Fateful changes of our life, may bring you back in Manhood, or in
Age, to this mountain home of New England; and that very willow yonder,
which your fancy now makes the graceful mourner of your leave, may one
day shadow mournfully your grave!
VII.
_The Country Church._
The country church is a square old building of wood without paint or
decoration, and of that genuine Puritanic stamp which is now fast giving
way to Greek porticos and to cockney towers. It stands upon a hill, with
a little churchyard in its rear, where one or two sickly-looking trees
keep watch and ward over the vagrant sheep that graze among the graves.
Bramble-bushes seem to thrive on the bodies below, and there is no
flower in the little yard, save a few golden-rods, which flaunt their
gaudy inodorous color under the lee of the northern wall.
New England country-livers have as yet been very little inoculated with
the sentiment of beauty; even the doorstep to the church is a wide flat
stone, that shows not a single stroke of the hammer. Within, the
simplicity is even more severe. Brown galleries run around three sides
of the old building, supported by timbers, on which you still trace,
under the stains from the leaky roof, the deep scoring of the woodman's
axe.
Below, the unpainted pews are ranged in square forms, and by age have
gained the color of those fragmentary wrecks of cigar-boxes which you
see upon the top shelves in the bar-rooms of country taverns. The
minister's desk is lofty, and has once been honored with a coating of
paint;--as well as the huge sounding-board, which to your great
amazement protrudes from the wall at a very dangerous angle of
inclination over the speaker's head. As the Squire's pew is the place of
honor to the right of the pulpit, you have a little tremor yourself at
sight of the heavy sounding-board, and cannot forbear indulging in a
quiet feeling of relief when the last prayer is said.
There are in the Squire's pew long, faded, crimson cushions, which, it
seems to you, must date back nearly to the commencement of the Christian
era in this country. There are also sundry old thumb-worn copies of Dr.
Dwight's Version of the Psalms of David,--"appointed to be sung in
churches by authority of the General Association of the State of
Connecticut." The sides of Dr. Dwight's Version are, you observe, sadly
warped and weather-stained; and from some stray figures which appear
upon a fly-leaf you are constrained to think, that the Squire has
sometimes employed a quiet interval of the service with reckoning up the
contents of the old stocking-leg at home.
The parson is a stout man, remarkable in your opinion chiefly for a
yellowish-brown wig, a strong nasal tone, and occasional violent thumps
upon the little, dingy, red velvet cushion, studded with brass tacks, at
the top of the desk. You do not altogether admire his style; and by the
time he has entered upon his "Fourthly," you give your attention in
despair to a new reading (it must be the twentieth) of the preface to
Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms.
The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, thin-faced,
flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in his waistcoat-pocket, and
who leads the choir. His position is in the very front rank of gallery
benches facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman has read two
verses of the psalm, the country chorister turns around to his little
group of aids--consisting of the blacksmith, a carroty-headed
schoolmaster, two women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in pink
bonnet--to announce the tune.
This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts his long
music-book--glances again at his little company,--clears his throat by a
powerful ahem, followed by a powerful use of a bandanna
pocket-handkerchief,--draws out his tuning-fork, and waits for the
parson to close his reading. He now reviews once more his
company,--throws a reproving glance at the young woman in the pink hat,
who at the moment is biting off a stout bunch of fennel,--lifts his
music-book,--thumps upon the rail with his fork,--listens
keenly,--gives a slight _ahem_,--falls into the cadence,--swells into a
strong _crescendo_,--catches at the first word of the line as if he were
afraid it might get away,--turns to his company,--lifts his music-book
with spirit, gives it a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and with
a majestic toss of the head soars away, with half the women below
straggling on in his wake, into some such brave old melody
as--LITCHFIELD!
Being a visitor, and in the Squire's pew, you are naturally an object of
considerable attention to the girls about your age, as well as to a
great many fat old ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you
excessively by patting you under the chin after church; and insist upon
mistaking you for Frank; and force upon you very dry cookies spiced with
caraway seeds.
You keep somewhat shy of the young ladies, as they are rather stout for
your notions of beauty, and wear thick calf-skin boots. They compare
very poorly with Jenny. Jenny, you think, would be above eating
gingerbread between service. None of them, you imagine, ever read
"Thaddeus of Warsaw," or ever used a colored glass seal with a Cupid and
a dart upon it. You are quite certain they never did, or they could not
surely wear such dowdy gowns, and suck their thumbs as they do!
The farmers you have a high respect for,--particularly for one
weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown surtout, who brings his whip into
church with him, who sings in a very strong voice, and who drives a span
of gray colts. You think, however, that he has got rather a stout wife;
and from the way he humors her in stopping to talk with two or three
other fat women, before setting off for home, (though he seems a little
fidgety,) you naively think that he has a high regard for her opinion.
Another townsman who attracts your notice is a stout old deacon, who,
before entering, always steps around the corner of the church, and puts
his hat upon the ground, to adjust his wig in a quiet way. He then
marches up the broad aisle in a stately manner, and plants his hat and a
big pair of buckskin mittens on the little table under the desk. When he
is fairly seated in his corner of the pew, with his elbow upon the top
rail,--almost the only man who can comfortably reach it,--you observe
that he spreads his brawny fingers over his scalp in an exceedingly
cautious manner; and you innocently think again that it is very
hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending to lean upon his hand when he
is only keeping his wig straight.
After the morning service they have an "hour's intermission," as the
preacher calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny side of
the building, and, after shaking hands all around, and asking after the
"folks" at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the crops. One man, for
instance, with a twist in his nose, would say, "It's raether a growin'
season;" and another would reply, "Tolerable, but potatoes is feelin'
the wet badly." The stout deacon approves this opinion, and confirms it
by blowing his nose very powerfully.
Two or three of the more worldly-minded ones will perhaps stroll over to
a neighbor's barnyard, and take a look at his young stock, and talk of
prices, and whittle a little; and very likely some two of them will make
a conditional "swop" of "three likely ye'rlings" for a pair of
"two-year-olds."
The youngsters are fond of getting out into the graveyard, and comparing
jackknives, or talking about the schoolmaster or the menagerie, or, it
may be, of some prospective "travel" in the fall,--either to town, or
perhaps to the "sea-shore."
Afternoon service hangs heavily; and the tall chorister is by no means
so blithe, or so majestic in the toss of his head, as in the morning. A
boy in the next box tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping
pellets of gingerbread through the bars of the pew; but as you are not
accustomed to that way of making acquaintance, you decline all
overtures.
After the service is finished, the wagons, that have been disposed on
either side of the road, are drawn up before the door. The old Squire
meantime is sure to have a little chat with the parson before he leaves;
in the course of which the parson takes occasion to say that his wife
is a little ailing,--"a slight touch," he thinks, "of the rheumatiz."
One of the children too has been troubled with the "summer complaint"
for a day or two; but he thinks that a dose of catnip, under Providence,
will effect a cure. The younger and unmarried men, with red wagons
flaming upon bright yellow wheels, make great efforts to drive off in
the van; and they spin frightfully near some of the fat, sour-faced
women, who remark in a quiet, but not very Christian tone, that they
"fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the young bucks much good." It is
much to be feared in truth that it has not.
In ten minutes the old church is thoroughly deserted; the neighbor who
keeps the key has locked up for another week the creaking door; and
nothing of the service remains within except--Dr. Dwight's Version,--the
long music-books,--crumbs of gingerbread, and refuse stalks of despoiled
fennel.
And yet under the influence of that old, weather-stained temple are
perhaps growing up--though you do not once fancy it--souls possessed of
an energy, an industry, and a respect for virtue, which will make them
stronger for the real work of life than all the elegant children of a
city. One lesson, which even the rudest churches of New England
teach,--with all their harshness, and all their repulsive severity of
form,--is the lesson of Self-Denial. Once armed with that, and manhood
is strong. The soul that possesses the consciousness of mastering
passion, is endowed with an element of force that can never harmonize
with defeat. Difficulties it wears like a summer garment, and flings
away at the first approach of the winter of Need.
Let not any one suppose, then, that in this detail of the country life
through which our hero is led, I would cast obloquy or a sneer upon its
simplicity, or upon its lack of refinement. Goodness and strength in
this world are quite as apt to wear rough coats as fine ones. And the
words of thorough and self-sacrificing kindness are far more often
dressed in the uncouth sounds of retired life than in the polished
utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm hearts and honest hearts
distinguishable by the quality of the covering. True diamonds need no
work of the artificer to reflect and multiply their rays. Goodness is
more within than without; and purity is of nearer kin to the soul than
to the body.
----And, Clarence, it may well happen that later in life--under the
gorgeous ceilings of Venetian churches, or at some splendid mass in
Nôtre Dame, with embroidered coats and costly silks around you--your
thoughts will run back to that little storm-beaten church, and to the
willow waving in its yard, with a Hope that _glows_, and with a tear
that you embalm!
VIII.
_A Home Scene._
And now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, or suffer my hero to
slip away from this gala-time of his life, without a fair look at that
Home where his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin and
end.
Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating him
out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of
life,--what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping from
him into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man can go save on
the wings of his dreams. Little does he think--and God be praised that
the thought does not sink deep lines in his young forehead!--as he leans
upon the lap of his mother, with his eye turned to her in some earnest
pleading for a fancied pleasure of the hour, or in some important story
of his griefs, that such sharing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with
his wishes, he will find nowhere again.
Little does he imagine that the fond Nelly, ever thoughtful of his
pleasure, ever smiling away his griefs, will soon be beyond the reach
of either, and that the waves of the years, which come rocking so gently
under him, will soon toss her far away upon the great swell of life.
But _now_ you are there. The firelight glimmers upon the walls of your
cherished home, like the Vestal fire of old upon the figures of adoring
virgins, or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore
hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to its wonted
corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with gray, lies back
upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking up for
some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite sits your mother: her
figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued; her arm perhaps resting
on your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender admonition of
the days that are to come.
The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock, that ticked so plainly when
Charlie died, is ticking on the mantel still. The great table in the
middle of the room with its books and work waits only for the lighting
of the evening lamp, to see a return to its stores of embroidery, and of
story.
Upon a little stand under the mirror, which catches now and then a
flicker of the firelight, and makes it play wantonly over the ceiling,
lies that big book reverenced of your New-England parents,--the Family
Bible. It is a ponderous square volume, with heavy silver clasps that
you have often pressed open for a look at its quaint old pictures, or
for a study of those prettily bordered pages which lie between the
Testaments, and which hold the Family Record.
There are the Births,--your father's, and your mother's; it seems as if
they were born a long time ago; and even your own date of birth appears
an almost incredible distance back. Then there are the marriages,--only
one as yet; and your mother's maiden name looks oddly to you: it is hard
to think of her as any one else than your doting parent. You wonder if
your name will ever come under that paging; and wonder, though you
scarce whisper the wonder to yourself, how another name would look, just
below yours,--such a name, for instance, as Fanny, or as Miss Margaret
Boyne!