'----the street,
Filled with its ever-shifting train;'
but they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country
life--their mere snatch at its midsummer beauty, the one free-drawn
breath of their wearied spirit--is acquaintance with it. As well might
one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare's heroines,
only in her court-dress at her uncle the duke's ball, guess at her
infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her
drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest
dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the
simplicity of her majesty, she is then _en pleine toilette_. But any
other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months:
blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy
fetters; changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds;
sweet, budding, blossoming May; flowery June; fruitful September;
golden, glorious October; dreary, thoughtful November; and all of
Winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity.
But let our citizens come to our rural districts; the more, the better
for them! Only let them not imagine they get that 'enough' which is 'as
good as a feast.'
This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the
country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the
'White Hills of New Hampshire.'
'That resort of people that do pass
In travel to and fro'
during the intense months of July and August, we found in October so
free from visitors, that we might have fancied ourselves the discoverers
of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all
the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who
shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps
their best instruction, in Nature's 'free school,' we intended to give
some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling
season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty
of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said
was happily superseded.
At a little inn in a small town, after we came down from the 'high
places,' we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole
route by a day. A rain came on, and we were detained together for
twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading
of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my
friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to
call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against
being a party to the contribution.
'Mine,' she said, 'is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before
we left home.'
'So much the better,' we rejoined, 'for the pleasure will be the
longer.'
'But it has been written in every mood of feeling.'
'Therefore,' we urged, 'the more variety.'
At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into
my lap, saying:
'Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can
not read it aloud.'
So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to
my room. The reading cheated me of an hour's sleep; perhaps because I
had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the
morning I begged Miss Langdon's permission to publish it. She at first
vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate
to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with
the journey.
'But, dear child,' I urged, 'who that reads THE CONTINENTAL knows you?
And besides, when this is published, (if indeed the Messrs. Editors of
that popular journal graciously permit it to see the light,) you will be
on the other side of the Atlantic; and before you return, this record
will be forgotten, for, alas! we contributors to Monthlies do not write
for immortality.'
'But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted to write,' she pleaded.
I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for the public
because not fitted for the task; and, thinking of 'the fools that rushed
in,' (there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar
quotation,) I continued to urge till my young friend yielded, on my
promising to omit passages which relate to the emotions and rites of the
inner temple; Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness
or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best
writers--Mrs. Browning, for instance--to impart, by sonnets and in
various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring
public those secrets from the heart's holy of holies that one would
hardly confess to a lover or a priest.
It is to our purpose, writing, as we profess to do, _pour l'utile_, that
our young friend indulged little in sentiment that her circumstances
rendered dangerous to her peace, and that, being a country-bred
New-England girl, she conscientiously, set down the coarser realities
essential to the well-being of a traveler--breakfasts, dinners, etc. But
before proceeding to her journal, I must introduce my _debutante_, if
she who will probably make but a single appearance before the public may
be so styled.
Mary Langdon is still on the threshold of life; at least those who have
reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than
three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a
simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French
novels and other light reading has left the purity and candor of her
youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree
of the knowledge of evil--not _good_ and evil--were never transplanted
into our New World. 'If ye eat of it,' your love of what is natural and
simple 'will surely die;' ye will lose your perception of the sweet
odors of the flowers Providence has sown along your path, and the vile
exhalations from these fruits of corrupted genius will hide from you the
star of duty--perhaps Nature's sternest light, but her best.
Mary Langdon's simplicity is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father
has given her what he calls 'a good old-fashioned English education;'
that means, he says, that 'she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and
cipher, which few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.' As
might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young
friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises
out of the necessities of country-life in its best aspects. There is
hardly a position in our country, now, so isolated but one may 'follow
the arts' if one chooses, foreign artists and accomplished exiles
pervading our country parts. Mary has availed herself of the facilities
thus afforded to cultivate a musical talent and temperament, and acquire
enough of the foreign languages to open their literature to her.
Strangers do not call Mary Langdon handsome; but her friends do, and
they marvel that her fair oval face, her spirited expression, tempered
by the sweetest mouth and most pearly and expressive teeth, do not
strike all eyes. And then she is so buoyant, so free of step and frank
of speech, that while others are slowly winding their way to your
affections, she springs into your heart.
With due respect to seniority, we should have presented Mr. Langdon
before his daughter. On being called on for his journal, he said he was
not 'such a confounded fool as to keep one for any portion of his life.
He should as soon think of crystallizing soap-bubbles. He had dotted
down a few memoranda in his memorandum book, as warnings to future
travelers, and we were welcome to them; though he thought we were too
mountain-mad to profit by them, if indeed any body ever profited by any
body else's experience!' The fact was, the dear old gentleman had left
home in a very unquiet state of mind. He hated at all times leaving his
home, abounding in comforts. He detested travel under what he termed
'alleviating circumstances.' He was rather addicted to growling; this
English instinct came over with his progenitor in the Mayflower, and
half a dozen generations had not sufficed to subdue it. But Mr.
Langdon's 'bark is worse than his bite.' In truth his 'bite' is like
that of a teething child's, resulting from a derangement of sweet and
loving elements.
We found our old friend's memoranda so strongly resembling the grumbling
of our traveling cousins from over the water, that we think it may be
edifying to print it in a parallel column, as a per contra, illustrating
the effects of the lights or shadows that emanate from our own minds.
Providence provides the banquet; its relish or disrelish depends on the
appetite of the guest.
But to Mary Langdon's letter, which, as it was begun before she left
home, bears its first date there:
'LAKE-SIDE, _28th September_.--My Dear Sue: I have not much more to tell
you than my last contained. Carl Heiner left our neighborhood last week,
determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both
very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people
making great sacrifices to others, and then letting them lose all the
benefit of the sacrifice, by the manner of it, I summoned up courage,
and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and--you will think
me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted--I soon became so. I read, over and
over again, your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded
by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not
see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have
exaggerated notions of filial duty, that I have come to mature age and
ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself; that in the
nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and
that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant
of my father's days; and above all, that I am foolish to give in to his
prejudices, and _selfishness_, you added, dear, and did not quite efface
the word. Now I see there is much reason in what you say, and I have
only to answer that I can not leave my father with a shadow of his
disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown
together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we
make the other, and rotten it often proves. Susy, you lost your parents
when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my
surviving one. Since my mother's death and Alice's marriage, he has
lived in such dependence on me, that I can't tell what his life would be
if I were to leave him; and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural,
and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl Heiner. O
Sue----'
'Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of
our young friend's heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface
there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have
been convinced that 'love's reason' is _not_ always without reason. The
letter proceeds:
'I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men's
prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be
cured of them. My father's do not spring from any drop of bitterness,
for he has not one--nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you
know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and
he naturally partakes the opinions of his cotemporaries, who--the few
surviving--believe all foreigners to be a sort of 'outside barbarians,'
and especially regard those who have participated in the revolutionary
movements of Europe as impertinent invaders of our exclusive birthright
to 'liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness.' Artists, in the
creed of these good old gentlemen, are mere vagrants; and so my father
comes to look upon Carl's intense love of his art, and his confidence in
his future success, justified as it is by that already achieved, as a
mere hallucination. So it is all ended--_for the present_. How subtle is
hope! it still lurks in my heart in spite of the strongest probability
that all is ended _forever_.'
* * * * *
GLEN-HOUSE, _White Hills, October 3d_.--I am resuming my unfinished
letter to you, my dear Sue, much nearer heaven than I began it. The
day of Carl's sailing from New-York, my father proposed to me to go
to Boston, take up Alice there, and come up to the hill-country.
Dear father! he was offering me a lump of sugar after the bitter
medicine, and I accepted it, sure at least of a momentary sweet
sensation, and very sure that my poor father felt comforted by the
self-complacency flowing from the enormous sacrifice he was making
in coming up to the highlands at this cold season. My sister was
glad enough to get a holiday from her nursery, so, on Monday, the
second of October, a mellow, beautiful day, we came into Boston to
take the two o'clock cars for Portland. We had three hours upon our
hands, which were pleasantly filled up by visits to a studio and a
picture-shop, and finally to refresh our mortal part, which had
been running down while we were feasting the immortal, to a
restaurateur's.
We groped our way up-stairs into a little back-room in School
street, where, if we did not find luxuries and elegance, we did
wholesome fare and civility. The rail-ride to Portland was dusty
but brief, and we arrived there in time to see its beautiful harbor
while the water reflected the roses thrown by the last rays of the
sun upon the twilight clouds. We eschewed the hotel, and were
kindly received at the boarding-house of a Miss Jones, a single
woman somewhere between thirty and forty, who so blends dignity
with graciousness, that she made us feel more like guests than
customers. One might well mistake her reception for a welcome. Her
house is a model, adding variety and abundance to the perfection,
in all but these attributes, of the table of an English inn, and
having the quiet and completeness, neatness and elegance, that have
made the English tavern a classic type of comfort. It seems this
house with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from
their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be
apocryphal, but which certainly would not be discordant with the
character of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady finished her
patriarchal days serenely, and when she was dying, begged that the
order of her house might be in no wise disturbed by the event of
her decease, but that 'the gentlemen would play their evening game
of whist as usual'!
Miss Jones's morning face was as benign as her evening countenance
had been. No lady could have administered hospitality with more
refinement. We were to be at the station before seven, and just as
our carriage-door was closing, it was reopened, and a rough but
decent country-woman was shoved in, the driver muttering something
about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a
little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating against the
procedure--no native American would do that, you know--but he was
just lighting his after-breakfast segar, and he shrunk from the
impropriety of smoking in such close quarters, with even such a
woman-stranger. 'I hope, madam,' he said, 'a segar does not offend
you?' 'La! no, sir,' replied our rustic friend most good-naturedly,
'I like it.' My father's geniality is always called forth by the
touch of his segar. He said, with a smile at the corners of his
mouth: 'Perhaps, madam, you would try one yourself.' 'I would!' she
answered eagerly. My father hospitably selected his best segar,
which she took, saying: 'Thank you kindly, sir. I s'pose I can
light it at the end of yours.' My dear, fastidious father
heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the good woman,
unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for
boon, smoked away vigorously. Alice, who never loses sight of her
duty to avert a possible mischance from any human being, rather
verdantly suggested, 'that the segar might make her sick.' 'Mercy,
child! I am used to pipes,' she replied; which, indeed, we might
have inferred from her manner of holding the segar. Her rapid puffs
soon resulted in the necessity usually engendered by smoking, and
half-rising from her seat it was too evident that she mistook the
pure plate-glass for empty space. My father let down the glass as
if he had been shot, but she, no wise discomposed, even by our
laughing, (for Alice and I could not resist it,) merely said,
coolly: 'Why, I didn't calculate right, did I?' There are
idiosyncrasies in Yankeedom, there is no doubt of it. We had a long
drive to the cars, but there our close companionship, and our
acquaintance, too, ended, except that the woman's husband--for she
had a husband, some Touchstone, whose 'humor' it was to 'take that
no other man would,' came to me, and asked me to put my window
down, for his 'wife was sick.' But as I had just observed the good
woman munching a bit of mince-pie, I thought that, coming so close
upon the segar might possibly offend her stomach more than the
fresh, untainted air, so I declined, as courteously as possible,
with the answer I have always ready for similar requests, 'that I
keep my window open to preserve the lives of the people in the
car.' 'That's peculiar!' I heard her murmur; but her serenity was
no wise discomposed by my refusal, or her sickness. Surely the
imperturbable good-nature of our people is national and peculiar.
By the way, there were notices posted up in these cars, which
reminded us that we were near the English Provinces, and under
their influence. The notices ran thus: 'Gentlemen are requested not
to put their feet on the cushions, and not to spit on the floor,
and to maintain a respectable cleanliness. The Conductors are
required to enforce these requests.' Must we wait for the
millennium to see a like request and like enforcement in our own
cars?
We found ourselves surrounded by intelligent people of the
country--_habitués_ who gave us all the local information we asked,
told us when we came to 'Bryant's Pond,' and that the poor little
shrunken stream that still brawled and fretted in its narrowed
channel, along which we were gliding, was the Androscoggin. At
Gorham, but seven miles from the Glen-House, we found a wagon
awaiting passengers, 'the last of the season,' we were told. 'The
houses are all closed,' (he spoke technically) added our driver,
'and the cold has already been so tedious that the _bubble_ has
burst on Mt. Washington.' 'What! the bubble! What means the man?'
exclaimed my father. 'Oh!' said I, 'it is only a poor joke upon
some 'nothing venture, nothing have' people who have come here
since the company season is past, they have told them the bulb had
burst.' 'Oh! the bulb! the bulb!' exclaimed my father; 'oh! that's
it, and I don't in the least doubt it' And as we went on slowly
making the long ascent, he looked 'sagely sad.' However, Alice was,
as she always can be, 'bright without the sun,' and my father
kindly protested that the slight sprinkling that, ever and anon,
reminded us of our exposure in an open wagon, was no annoyance to
him, and he even responded to our exclamations of delight at the
wreaths of mist that floated around the mountains, and dropped over
their summits, so that our imaginations were not kept in abeyance
by definite outlines, and we were at liberty to fancy them just as
high as we wished them. The air was as soft as in the early days of
September, and our steeds very considerately lingered, thus
prolonging our pleasure, so that we came into the Glen-House with
keen appetites, a needful blessing, we thought, when Mr. Thompson,
its host, said: 'We are not prepared for company in October, and I
don't know that we shall find any thing but pork and beans to give
you!' My father looked blank, and blanker yet when we were ushered
into a parlor where, instead of finding the crackling wood-fire
that we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, there was one of
those frightful black stoves that have expelled from our life all
the poetry of the hearthstone--but, courage, we can open the
stove-door, and see a sparkle of light and life.
10 P.M.--Before bidding you good night, dear Sue, I must tell you
'pour encourager les autres' who may come after us that our
scrupulous host performed so much better than he promised, that
when we were summoned to our dinner it was served in a cosy little
room, as neatly as a home dinner, and hot, which a hotel meal, _in
the season_, never is, and that the ghost of the pork and beans
which had terrified us, was exorcised by actual tender chickens,
fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies; and
our man, William, the driver, was converted into a waiter, doing
his part as if he were 'native to the manner.'
[N.B.--Our old friend's memorandum was scanty, and so we publish
but a small extract from it. We smile at his infirmities--more in
love than ridicule--and are not fond of proclaiming them, and only
do so in this brief extract to justify our assertion that his
traveling temper reminded us of English tourists, who would seem to
make it a point to turn their plates bottom-side upward. The
father's and daughter's records of the same scenes are both true.
The one is the right, the other the wrong side of the tapestry.
Strange, that any eye should make the fatal mistake of looking at
the last rather than the first.]
_September 29th, Anno Domini 18--._ ---- Left my comfortable
lowland home for unknown parts, and known mountain regions of snow
and ice. The Lord willing, I am sure of one pleasure--coming home!
_Monday Evening._--We had three mortal hours on our hands this
morning in Boston. I called on my dear old surviving friends of the
---- family. Not one of them, they tell me, has yet risked his life
in a rail-car. Wisdom is not extinct! Called on dear Widow O----,
who gave me a nice lunch of pickled oysters, rolls and butter, and
a glass of old Madeira. Meantime the girls were ranging round
studios(?) and picture-shops. This rage for art has come in with
the foreign tongues, since my time. Picked them up at a
restaurateur's. What a misnomer! What refreshment could be found in
the little back-parlor of a shop, with herds coming in and herd
going out, and a few faint rays of light stealing in between the
windows and the walls of back-buildings surrounding them? Came in
the cars to Portland. Dust disgusting! Shall never again see the
original color of my coat! Dust laid on inches deep, the continual
presence of a mob, and peril to life and limb; death staring you in
the face, ready to grab you at any moment. This is what we get by
the modern improvement of rail-cars over a gentleman's carriage,
with select and elect friends, and leisure to look at a beautiful
country! Travelers now are prisoners under sentence of probable
death--their jailer being called a _conductor_. Oh! I cry with my
old friend Touchstone: 'When I was at home, I was in a better
place!'
Rather a nice house, this of the Misses Jones--old-fashioned,
neatness, and comfort. But the lady should not favor us with the
company of her guest! Bad butter for tea. And my daughters
pronounce the house perfect!
_Tuesday Morning._--Bad butter again! could eat nothing.
_Tuesday Afternoon._--Happy illustration from a smoking old woman,
this morning, of the pleasant accessories of railroad traveling.
Found only an open wagon at Gorham, and a rain impending.
Convenience of travelers much talked of, but in my opinion, the
convenience of those who transport them is alone consulted.
The approach to the mountain, dreary. The girls--Lord, help
us!--call it beautiful, sublime! Not very cold, but the driver says
the bulb has already burst on Mount Washington! What an arrant old
fool I was to propose coming up here! The 'Glen-House closed!' But
the landlord graciously, as a favor, 'took us in'--a 'take in' to
the tune of his summer-prices, no doubt. Fried salt-ham at dinner,
and mince-pie for a supplement!
Went with the girls to walk, and plunged into forest-paths, where,
instead of our broad, smiling, home meadows, and orchards, and
gardenspots, we could see nothing but the ghostly mountains in
their fog-shrouds, and precipices, and uprooted trees, and that
plague of our Egypt--Paddies--who are making a road to the summit
of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be
dragged up to see a savage view--ninety-nine times out of a hundred
befogged!
_Wednesday._--Well, here we are! raining all night, and when I
could sleep, haunted by dire mischances, torrents, slides, etc.
Waked by a devilish gong! Hot biscuits, potatoes, and corn-bread,
on the breakfast-table; could eat none of them. Villainous tea!
Raining and sunshining alternately, so that no mortal can tell
whether to go or stay; and meantime here am I, sitting by a gloomy
window where I can see nothing but these useless mountains. Lord,
forgive me! The angels do hover about me, even here, in the shape
of my children! Etc., etc., etc.!
The cloudy evening has closed in upon us early. It has been long, but
not tedious. We began it with reading aloud _The Heir of Redcliffe_. It
is one of those novels of the day that seem to me to preach, as few
preachers do, the true Gospel doctrine. It is so cleverly, so charmingly
written, that one is persuaded of the Christian truths of forgiveness
and self-sacrifice, vitalized in the lives of Guy and Amy, without one
thought or argument bristling up against them, as they sometimes do
against the ordained preacher. I will try to imitate Amy in her cheerful
submission to a disappointment far heavier than mine--for the husband
must be dearer than the lover.
You think me cool, dear friend; I am only trying to be so, and how far I
shall succeed I doubt, as a cold shivering runs through my veins as I
hear the winds and think of Carl on the ocean.
I laid down my pen. I perceive my father watches me very narrowly. 'My
child,' he said, 'you are shaking with cold,' (not with 'cold,' I could
have answered;) 'these confounded stoves,' he added, 'keep one in an
alternate ague and fever; come, waltz round the room with your sister,
and get into a glow.' So, singing our own music, we waltzed till we were
out of breath; and Alice has seated herself at picquet with my father,
who has a run of luck, 'point! seizieme! and capote!' which puts him
into high good humor--and I may write unmarked, and let my thoughts,
unbridled, fly off after Carl. He was to write me once more before his
embarkation, but I can not get the letter till we return, and I have not
the poor consolation of looking over the list of the steamer's
passengers and seeing the strange names of those who would seem to me
happy enough to be in the same ship with him--and yet, what care they
for that! Poor fellow! he will be but sorry company, I know. I find
support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in
that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I
almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could
receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl
drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She
hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I
said, 'Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel'--'Oh! that's
nothing but a nonsense, child,' she said, 'men an't that way; they go
about among folks and get rid of feelings; it's women that stay at home
and keep 'em alive, brooding on 'em!' Will he soon 'get rid' of them?
Why should I thus shrink from a consequence I ought to desire? and yet,
in my secret soul, I do shrink from it. But perhaps it will be easier as
I go on, if it be true that
'Each goodly thing is hardest to begin;
But entered in a spacious court, they see
Both plain, and pleasant to be walked in.'
_Wednesday Morning._--My father happened to cast his eye across the
table as I finished my last page, and he saw a tear fall on it. Throwing
down his cards he said, 'Come, come, children, it's time to go to bed;'
and stooping over me, he kissed me fondly, and murmured: 'Dear, good
child, I can not stand it if I see you unhappy.' He shall not see me so;
I have risen to-day with this resolution.
The rain has been pouring down all night, but at this glorious point of
sight, directly under Mount Washington, we are 'equal to either fate,'
going on or staying.
Mr. Thompson has again surprised us with a delicious breakfast of tender
chickens, light biscuit, excellent bread, fresh eggs, and that rarest of
comforts at a hotel, delicious coffee, with a brimming pitcher of cream.
We wondered at all these domestic comforts, for we have not heard the
flutter of a petticoat in the house till we saw our respectable landlady
in spectacles gliding out of the room. We learned from her that she was
the only womankind on the 'diggings.' Every thing is neatly done, so we
bless our October star for exempting us from the tardy and careless
service of chambermaids. While it rains, we walk on the piazza, enjoying
the beautiful and ever-varying effects of the clouds as they roll down
the mountains, and roll off--like the shadows on our human life, dear
Susan, that God's love does often lift from it.
The Glen-House is on the lowest ridge of the hill that rises opposite to
Mount Washington, which, as its name indicates, stands head and
shoulders above the other summits, having no peer. Madison and Monroe
come next, on the left, and then Jefferson, who appears
(characteristically?) higher than he is. In a line with Mount
Washington, on the other side, are Adams, Clay, etc. These names
(excepting always Washington) do not, with their recent political
associations, seem quite to suit these sublime, eternal mounts, but as
time rolls on, the names will grow to signs of greatness, and harmonize
with physical stability and grandeur. Jefferson's head seems quite
consistently modeled after an European pattern. It runs up to a sharp
point, and wants but accumulated masses of ice to be broken into Alpine
angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more
beautiful than this--none can be grander.
* * * * *
My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day, dear Susan.
Whenever he lays his hand upon my head or shoulder, it seems like a
benediction; and Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet
solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we
were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she
said: 'Will you let Sara come and pass the winter with you and father?'
I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as
I do on paper to you--a kind of confidential implement is a pen.
* * * * *
We have all been walking, in the lowering twilight, on the turnpike,
which is making by a joint-stock company, up Mount Washington, The road,
by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at
sixty-three thousand dollars. The workmen, of course, are nearly all
Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as
possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by macadamizing it,
from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to
modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to
the enterprise, the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky
precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual
development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions:
'When is the road to be finished?' 'And, faith, sir, it must be done
before winter comes, down below.' The next replied: 'When the year comes
round.' And another: 'Some time between now and niver.' 'Friend,' said I
to one of them, 'have you such high mountains in Ireland?' 'Yis, indeed,
that we have, and higher--five miles high!' Paddy is never over-crowed.
'Straight up?' I asked. 'By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.' 'In
what part of Ireland is that mountain?' 'In county Cork.' 'Of course, in
county Cork!' said my father, and we passed on through the _débris_ of
blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stones, till we
got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern,
silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it,
and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr.
Thompson's. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my
father hates monotony, and was glad of 'something different,' as he
called it) by bowling--my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me,
according to her general luck in life.
* * * * *
_Thursday Morning, October 6th._--The weather still uncertain, but more
beautiful in its effects on these grand mountains, in their October
glory, than I can describe to you. They are grand--Mount Washington[A]
being higher than Mount Rhigi and Mount Rhigi is majestic even in the
presence of Mont Blanc and of the Jungfrau. The rich coloring of our
autumnal foliage is unknown in Europe, and how it lights up with
brilliant smiles the dark, stern face of the mountains! Even when the
sun is clouded, the beeches that skirt the evergreens look like a golden
fringe, radiant in the sun; and wherever they are seemingly rippling
adown the mountain's side, they make 'sunshine in a shady place.' The
maples are flame-colored, and in masses so bright that you can scarcely
look steadily on them; and where they are small, and stand singly, they
resemble (to compare the greater to the less) flamingos lighted on the
mountain-side. Then there is the infinite diversity of coloring--the
soft brown, the shading off into pale yellow, and the delicate
May-green. None but a White of Selborne, with his delicately-defining
pen, could describe them. While we stood on the piazza admiring and
exclaiming, the obliging Mr. Thompson brought out a very good telescope,
and adjusted it so that our eyes could explore the mountains. He pointed
out the foot and bridle-path to the summit of Mount Washington. Various
obstacles have prevented our attempting the ascent. If my father would
have trusted us to guides, there are none in October, nor trained
horses; for as the feed is brought from below, they are sent down to the
lowlands as soon as _the season_ is over. Besides, the summits are now
powdered with snow, and the paths near the summits slippery with ice.
And though I like the scramble, and the achievement of attaining a
difficult eminence, I much prefer the nearer, better defined, and less
savage views below it. Guided by my landlord, my eye had followed the
path past two huge, out-standing rocks which look like Druidical
monuments, to the summit of Mount Washington, where I had the pleasure
of descrying and announcing the figure of a man. My father and Alice
both looked, but could not make it out. I referred to Mr. Thompson, and
his accustomed eye confirmed the accuracy of mine. Mr. Thompson was much
exercised with conjectures as to where the traveler came from. He had
seen none for the last few days in the mountains except our party, and
he naturally concluded the man had made his ascent from the Crawford
House. My eye seemed spell-bound to the glass. I mentally speculated
upon the character and destiny of the pilgrim who, at this season, and
alone, could climb up those steeps. My imagination invested him with a
strange interest. He had wandered far away from the world, and above it.
There was something in his mind--perhaps in his destiny--akin to the
severity of this barren solitude. The spell was broken by a call from my
father: 'Come, Mary; are you glued to that glass?' he exclaimed; 'the
rain is over, and we are off in half an hour.' And so we were--with
Thompson, Jr., for our driver, one of our young countrymen who always
make me proud, dear Susan, performing well the task of your inferior,
with the capacity and self-respect of your equal. Long live the true
republicanism of New-England!
[Footnote A: Mount Washington is six thousand seven hundred feet high.]
My father had been rather nettled in the morning by what he thought an
attempt, on the part of Mr. Thompson, to take advantage of our
dependence, and charge us exorbitantly for conveying us thirty-three
miles to the Mountain-Notch; but, on talking the matter over with our
host, he found that his outlay, with tolls, and other expenses, was such
that he only made what every Yankee considers his birthright, 'a good
business' out of us; so, my father being relieved from the dread of
imposition, was in happy condition all day, and permitted us, without a
murmur of impatience, to detain him, while we went off the road to see
one of the two celebrated cascades of the neighborhood. It was the Glen
Ellis Fall. We compromised, and gave up seeing the Crystal Fall, a
half-mile off the road on the other side; and enjoyed the usual
consolation bestowed on travelers on like occasions, of being told that
the one we did not see was far best worth seeing. However, we hold all
these wild leaps of mountain streams to be worth seeing, each having an
individual beauty; and advise all who may follow in our traces, to go to
the top and bottom of the Glen Ellis.
I have often tried to analyze the ever fresh delight of seeing a
water-fall, and have come to the conclusion that it partly springs from
the scramble to get at the best and all the points of view, setting the
blood in the most sluggish veins to dancing, and, as you know, '_tout
depend de la manière que le sang circule_.'
I can not describe to you, my dear Susan, the enjoyment of this day's
ride. As heart to heart, my father's serenity answered to my
cheerfulness, and rewarded it. Our cup was brimming and sparkling. There
was a glowing vitality in the western breeze that blew all the clouds
from our spirits, and shaped those on the mountain-sides into
ever-changing beauty, or drove them off the radiant summits. We laughed,
as the vapor condensing into the smallest of hailstones, came pelting in
our faces as if the elements had turned boys and threw them in sport!
What may not Nature be to us--play-fellow, consoler, teacher, religious
minister! Strange that any one wretch should be found to live without
God in the world, when the world is permeated with its Creator!
Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the
mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed
to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into
the forest upon the stems of the white birches--Wordsworth's 'ladies of
the wood'--and danced on the mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen
leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded,
and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a
fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the
barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of
us--I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story--fancying,
while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot
through some woodland, saw a bear--yes, a bear! face to face, and made,
you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were
not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth
'scape, but quietly told us that 'three bears had been seen in that
neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or
desperately hungry!' It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives
depended on the chances of Bruin's appetite.
This meeting with the fox--the Mercury of the woods--and with the
bear--the hero of many a dramatic fable--would, in the forests of the
Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into
pretty legends or traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the
'Forsaken, woful, solitary maid,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,'
set on by the 'ramping beast;' and for the knight? why, it would be easy
to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington,
into a lover and deliverer, whose 'allegiance and fast fealty' had bound
him to my trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for
fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if
no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream
near Davis's, crossing the way, which we were told was called 'Nancy's
Brook.' We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all
ended in one source--man's perjury and woman's trust. A poor girl, some
said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived
with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and 'singing to him,' no
doubt, 'when she his evening food did dress,' till he grew tired, and
one day went forth and did not come back; and day after day she waited,
but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the
brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic
tale.
The sun was set to us behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached
the 'Willey Slide,' and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the
'Mountain Notch.' Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we
were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian
traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels,
sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from
Alice's, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that
passed before he disappeared in the forest.
'Are you frightened?' said Alice; 'this is a lonely road; shall I hail
the wagon?'
'Oh! no,' I replied.
'But,' she urged, 'this may be some fugitive from justice.'
'Nonsense, Alice; don't you see by his air that he is a gentleman?'
'No,' she saw nothing 'but that he was light of foot, and anxious to
escape observation.'
I had seen more; I had seen, or my mind being prepossessed by one image,
I had shaped the reality to the imagination, as ghost-seers do, and in
the pedestrian had seen that form that henceforward is to me as if it
had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns. It was a mere fancy.
Alice--she is a cautious little woman--was continually looking back,
from fear; and I--I may as well confess it--from hope; but we saw
nothing more of the traveler. He was truly a fugitive from us--or, more
probably, in spite of the gentlemanly graces my imagination had lent
him, a collier returning to his shanty in the forest. The apparition had
spoiled our twilight walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened
by the mountains that rise like walls on either side of the road, and
Alice hurried forward, so that we had no time to look for the cascades,
and forms of animals, and profiles of men, that we had been forewarned
we should see on the hill-sides. The stars were coming out, and the full
moon--indicated by the floods of silver light it sent up from behind
Mount Webster--when we passed through the portal of the 'Notch' and came
upon the level area where the 'Crawford House' now stands.
Here we found my father, already seated in a rocking-chair by a broad
hearthstone and a roaring, crackling fire. And beside these cheering
types of home-contentments, he had found a gentleman from the
low-country, with whom he was already in animated discourse. The
stranger was a fine, intelligent, genteel-looking person, who proved to
be a clergyman whom Alice had once before met at the Flume-House. He is
a true lover of nature and explorer of nature's secrets, a geologist,
botanist, etc., etc., and he most wisely comes up to the high places at
all seasons, whenever he feels the need of refreshment to his bodily and
mind's eye. Perhaps he finds here an arcana for his theology; and I am
sure that after a study here he may go hence a better as well as a wiser
man, and better able, by his communings here, to inform and mold the
minds of others. No teachers better understood the sources and means of
mental power and preparation than Moses and Mohammed; and their studies
were not in theological libraries, but in the deepest of nature's
solitudes.
Perhaps our friend has no direct purpose beyond his own edification in
his rambles in the mountains. He is familiar with every known resort
among them, and most kindly disposed to give us thoroughfare travelers
information. He made for us, from memory, a pencil-sketch of the peaks
to be seen from Mount Willard, with their names. We verified them
to-day, and found the outline as true as if it had been daguerreo-typed.
An observation so keen, and a memory so accurate, are to be envied.
This house, at the Mountain Notch, is called the Crawford House. The old
Crawford House, familiar to the pioneer travelers in this region, stands
a few rods from it, or rather did, till the past winter, when it was
burned, and its site is now marked by a few charred timbers. Old
Crawford's memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his
name. He lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful
solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait
on age, 'respect, and troops of friends.' His son--whose stature, broad
shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the
middle ages--is driver, in the season, and sportsman in and out of it.
He stood at the door this morning as we were driving off to the Falls of
the Ammonoosuck, with his fowling-piece in hand, and asked leave to
occupy a vacant seat in the wagon. My father was a sportsman in his
youth--some forty years ago; his heart warms at the sight of a gun, and
besides, I fancy, he had some slight hope of mending our cheer by a
brace of partridges; so he very cheerfully acquiesced in Crawford's
request. Alice and I plied him with questions, hoping to get something
out of an old denizen of the woods. But he knew nothing, or would tell
nothing; the 'tongues in trees' were far more fluent than his. But even
so stony a medium had power, afterward, to make my heart beat. I was
standing near him at the Falls, and away from the rest, and I asked him
(Sue, I confess I have been either thinking or dreaming of that
'fugitive' all night) if he had seen a foot-traveler pass along the road
last evening or this morning. 'No; there was few travelers any way in
October.' He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: 'It's a pity folks
don't know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport
never so smart!' Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, the most
impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were
talking, and I was seemingly measuring with my eye the depth of the
water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their
position, and come close to me. 'Oh!' said the man, 'I recollect--I did
see a _stranger_ on Mount Willard this morning, when I went out with my
gun--he was drawing the mountains; a great many of the young folks try
to do it, but they don't make much likeness.'
Perhaps this timely generalization of friend Crawford, prevented my
father and Alice's thought following the direction of mine. I _know_
this youth is not Carl Heiner, it is not even possible he should be; and
yet, the resemblance that in my one glance I had fancied to perceive to
him, and the coincidence of the sketching, had invested him with a power
to make my cheeks burn, and my hands cold as ice. I stole off and looked
at the deep, smooth cavities the water had welled in the rocks, but I
did not escape my sister's woman's eye.
'Mary, dear,' she whispered, when she joined me, 'you are not so strong
as you think yourself.'
Dear Susan, if I am not strong, I will be patient; patience, you will
say, implies a waiting for something to come; well, let it be so; can a
spark of hope live under the ashes I have heaped upon it?
* * * * *
The rocks are very beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The
stream which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts
of the summer, shrunken to a mere rill, but even now, and at all
seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! a drive
any where in these hills 'pays'--to borrow the slang of this bank-note
world--for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly
saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the
Casse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark even from our
sportsman's eye, and--a far easier achievement--started the blood in my
father's veins. The instinct to kill game is, I believe, universal with
man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters
like Monkbarns, is very much of an Uncle Toby in disposition. He sprang
from the wagon, borrowed Crawford's gun, and reminding Alice and me so
much of Mr. Pickwick, that we laughed in spite of our terror lest he
should kill, not the partridge, but himself; but, luckily, he escaped
unhurt--and so did the bird. Crawford secured two or three brace of them
in the course of the morning's drive. I fear we shall relish them at
breakfast, to-morrow, in spite of our lamentations over their untimely
loss of their pleasant mountain-life. I asked our driver how they
survived the winter (if haply they escaped the fowler) in these high
latitudes? 'Oh!' he said, 'they had the neatest way of folding their
legs under their wings and lying down in the snow.' They subsist on
berries and birchen-buds--dainty fare, is it not?
We found a very comfortable dinner awaiting us, which rather surprised
us, as our landlord, Mr. Lindsay, a very civil, obliging person, and a
new proprietor here, I believe, had promised us but Lenten
entertainment; but 'deeds, not words,' seems the motto of these
mountaineers.
In the afternoon we drove up Mount Willard; 'straight up Ben Lomond did
we press,' but our horses seemed to find no difficulty for themselves,
and made no danger for us in the ascent. I shall not attempt to describe
the view. I have never seen any mountain prospect resembling that of the
deep ravine (abyss?) with its convex mountain-sides. The turnpike-road,
looking like a ribbon carelessly unwound, the only bit of level to be
seen, and prolonged for miles. The distant mountains that bound the
prospect you may see elsewhere, but this ravine, with the traces of the
'Willey Slide' on one side of it, has no parallel. Don't laugh at me for
the homeliness of the simile--it suggested a gigantic cradle. Here, as
elsewhere, we were dazzled by the brilliancy of the October foliage, and
having found a seat quite as convenient as a sofa, though being of rock,
not quite so easy, we loitered till the last golden hue faded from the
highest summit. And we should have staid to see the effect of the rising
moon on the summits, contrasting with the black shadows of night in the
abyss, but my father had observed that our driver had neglected the
precaution of blanketing his horses; and as a mother is not more
watchful of a sucking-child than he is of the well-being of animals, it
matters not whether they are his own, he begged us to sacrifice our
romance to their safety. Alice and I walked down the mountain; it was
but a half-hour's easy walk.
* * * * *
I have forborne talking with Alice on the subject that haunts me in
spite of myself. I know I have her sympathy and her approval; and that
should satisfy me. But this evening, as we were returning, she said:
'Did you feel any electric influence as we sat looking at the view
Crawford's '_stranger_' sketched this morning?'
'I thought of Carl,' I honestly answered, and turned the subject.
Alas! Sue, when do I not think of him?
* * * * *
PROFILE HOUSE, _Saturday Evening_.--We have again, to-day, experienced
the advantage of these open mountain-vehicles, which are quite as
'roomy' and as easy as the traveling-jails called stagecoaches, which
always remind me of Jonah's traveling accommodations. Again, to-day, we
have been enchanted with the brilliancy of the foliage. It is just at
the culminating point of beauty, and I think it does not remain at this
point more than three or four days when you perceive it is a thought
less bright. Why is it that no painting of our autumnal foliage has
succeeded? It has been as faithfully imitated as the colors on the
pallet can copy these living, glowing colors; but those who have best
succeeded--even Cole, with his accurate eye, and faithful, beautiful
art--have but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to
nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that nature's toning is
inimitable, and that the broad overhanging firmament with its cold,
serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped
harvest-fields, temper to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that,
within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse to
reproduce these harmonies?
* * * * *
_Saturday Evening._--We have driven some twenty-three miles--from the
Mountain Notch to the Franconian Notch--to-day; the weather has been
delicious. The drive has been more prosaic, more commonplace, or
approaching to it, than we have before traveled in this hill country.
This October coloring would make far tamer scenery beautiful, but I can
fancy it very bleak and dismal when 'blow, blow November's winds,'
whereas here, at the Franconian Notch, you feel as it were housed and
secured by nature's vast fortresses and defences. The 'Eagle's Cliff' is
on one side of you, and Mount Cannon (called so from a resemblance of a
rock on the summit to a cannon) on the other, and they so closely fold
and wall you in, that you need but a poetic stretch of the arms to touch
them with either hand; and when the sun glides over the arch in the
zenith above--but a four hours' visible course in mid-winter--you might
fancy yourself sheltered from the sin and sorrow that great Eye
witnesseth.
You will accuse me, I know, dear, rational friend, of being '_exalté_,'
(vernacular, cracked,) but remember, we are alone in these inspiring
solitudes, free from the disenchantment of the eternal buzzing and
swarming of the summer-troops that the North gives up, and the South
keeps not back.
We were received at the Profile House with a most smiling welcome by Mr.
Weeks, the _pro tem._ host, who promises to make us 'as comfortable as
is in his power,' and is substantiating his promise by transferring his
dinner-table from the long, uncarpeted dinner-saloon with its fearful
rows of bare chairs and tables, to a well-furnished, home-looking
apartment, where a fire-place worthy of the middle ages, is already
brightened with a hospitable fire. The great rambling hotel is vacant,
and its silence unbroken, save by the hastening to and fro of our
willing host, who unites all offices of service in his own person, and
the pattering of his pretty little boy's feet--the little fellow
following him like his shadow, and, perchance, running away from other
shadows in this great empty house. The little fellow makes music to my
ear; there is no pleasanter sound than the footsteps of a child.
* * * * *
I left Alice dressing for dinner--I think Alice would perform the
ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked on a desert island--and my
father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at
these seasons, when 'time stands still withal,' or rather, to him, keeps
a snail's fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the
lake, a short walk, to greet the 'Old Man of the Mountain,' as they
prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the Headland
Cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named 'The Old
Man's Punch-bowl.' The nomenclature of our country certainly does not
indicate one particle of poetry or taste in its people. There are, to be
sure, namesakes of the old world which intimate the exile's loving
memories, and there are scattered, here and there, euphonious and
significant Indian names, not yet superseded by Brownvilles or
Smithdales, but for the most part, one would infer that pedagogues,
sophomores, and boors, had presided at the baptismal-font of the land.
To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that
accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline,
like the Sphynx, a mystery in the desert--to call it the Old Man of the
Mountain, is irreverence, desecration! I and this exquisite little lake,
lapped amid the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose 'million
unseen spirits' may do the bidding of that heroic old Prospero who
presides over it--to call this gem of the forest a 'Punch-bowl,' is a
sorry travesty. I paid my homage to him while his profile cut the
glowing twilight, and then sat down at the brim of the lake.
Dear Susan,
----'the leanings
Of the close trees o'er the brim,
Had a sound beneath their leaves.'