iiTnnittiSvf^'aitiiiiiiiJ^ 111 SUMNKR F. CLAFUN GATHERED Cbiss / £j IhkS PRESENTED BY M \N< 111 ^ I 1 K. N. H. WAYSIDE NOTES OF "LITTLE PITCHERS" GATHERED AMONG NEW HAMPSHIRE HILLS BY SUMNER F. CLAFLIN MANCHESTER, N. H. Legend — Don't ask Posterity to print the stuff you ocrite — print it yourself RUA\KORD PRINTING CO. CONCORD, N. H. 1907 Gift (: - ' idi4 CONTENTS. Dated at Freedom, N. H. The Tale of a Grip A Ramble iu Venuout Vermont Ramble Coutiuued Wilder and Lyme Note Book Notes . The Soug of the Check In the Heart of the Mountains The Plug .... In Eaton, N. H. . In Eaton .... Along the Saco The Old Saco From Swift River to Sandwich Little Pitcher's Notes . At Sixtj'-Six Notes from Freedom . The Honest Forester . In the Ossipee Country- Picking Up . . . ■ A Fresh Story or Two Life's Tides .... When Dad Runs the Separator Wayside Notes . More Notes . . . • Another Batch of Notes Snake Stories Along the Connecticut TheTater .... UpinThetford . Among the Green Hills of Hanover The Pohtical Situation in New Hampsl August 11, 1900) Difficulties of a Humorist . A Few Stories from the Saco as it appeared 'AGE 1 4 7 11 14 If) 19 20 20 23 24 26 28 29 32 35 3fi 40 41 44 45 48 48 49 52 55 58 60 63 63 66 70 72 75 IV ( ONTENT ■>. Mr. Pitcher Still Traveling 88 lu Ossipee 82 lu Madison 84 Jim Durgey's Farm 86 Milton Three Pouds aud Up Aloug 88 Chocorua aud the Bear Camp 91 Predictions — Wlien You Are Sure 94 When the Paper Man Comes 96 The Winchester .... 97 Old Man Finn 98 Thaw . 102 Get Your Gun 103 Sandy the Tramp 103 To Our Mothers . 105 Snyder's Twins . 106 Endicott Rock ILLUSTRATIONS. Sumner F. Clafliu ' ' Hanover After Commencement The Profile The Peak of Chocorua Squam Lake, near Sandwich PAGE Frontispiece Facing 8 17 89 31 " And ye who are living shall thirst and lack the while we are resting there. " Facing 35 Melvin Village "47 Newfound Lake "49 Northeast View from Cardigan Mountain, Newfound Lake iu the Distance Facing 53 Connecticut River Below Hanover Bridge "My Home " Union Station, Rochester, N. H: " The Splendor of Mornings on Mountain Tops " . Chocorua from Chocorua Lake The Connecticut Valley, Ascutney in the Distance . Endicott Rock 60 65 80 87 91 105 107 DATED AT FREEDOM, N. H. The ^yood Butchers at WorJt. — Uncle John Elwell and His Old Grist Mill. — The Weak-kneed Recruit. Freedom, December 18, 1904:. A noticeable feature of Carroll County scenery is the rapid disappearance of the evergreen forests. ;Most of the lower lands and hills have been cut over in recent years by the everywhere present portable sawmill. If it is not pres- ent now a large conical mound of sawdust shows that it recently has been. Only the inaccessible fastnesses of the towering mountains have escaped the woodman's axe and saw. Most of the pine and spruce timber is now sawed down and then sawed into proper lengths, and any thing that will saw out a two by four stick twelve feet long goes. The skinning process is being done up brown. That this leaves a verj' dilapidated looking countrv goes without say- ing. The only system followed is one of complete exploita- tion. By the way, while President Roosevelt was men- tioning the new reservations for public park purposes of the Colorado Canyon and an addition to Yellowstone Park and others. I wonder why he didn't say a word al)out Sen- ator Gallinger's pet hobby, the White ^Mountain Park? Personally I believe that every resident of New England should be interested in the movement to set apart the White ^lountain region for a public park and it should be acquired from the wood butchers and scenery spoilers as soon as possible before their devastating work is complete. Last week I attended a baked bean supper not a thou- sand miles from Tamworth. Admission fifteen cents, and every mother, son and daughter of that crowd had a twenty- 2 WAYSIDE NOTES. five cent hunger along with them, or I'm no judge; and after the supper there was an entertainment worth a quarter more, by local talent. The ladies of the local parish fur- nished the beans, also a first-class outfit of pies, cakes and fixings, and paid their fare in besides, I understand. There was a handsome sum realized and I'm glad of it. With such an arrangement the society couldn't lose any- thing, and at all events all who participated had an excel- lent time, but while it's none of my business, I would sug- gest that the society would be considerable richer by charg- ing what the entertainment and supper were really worth. In conversation with my old friend, Hardy Wiggin, while at Tamworth recently, the talk turned to the 'subject of gristmills, which are becoming less common every year in this section, and I remarked that I had heard that when John Elwell ran the gristmill here at Tamworth, he had all he could grind, although often running the machinery far into the night. Mr. Wiggin pointed out that the ma- chinery formerly in use was much slower in operation than that used at present, and while he did not claim that that was the reason why he only advertises to run his. mill on Saturdays now. he seldom has enough grinding to make a day's work of it at that. He told me a little story that is worth repeating. It seems a man from Birch In- tervale came down one morning to Uncle Elwell 's mill and left a bushel of corn to be ground. It was a cold morning in winter and by nine o'clock. Uncle John had got his old- fashioned cumbersome water wheel free of ice and started on the grist. At eleven o'clock he was still grinding, and the man from Birch Intervale was getting impatient. "Mr. Elwell," says he, "I could eat that meal faster than you grind." "Could, hey!" snorted Uncle John. " 'Bout how long do you think you could keep it up?" "Till I starved to death, b'gosh!" was the laconic reply of the gentleman from Birch Intervale. Wlien I was over in Smoky Hollow a week or two ago (not far from IMelvin Village) my old friend Alfred Ayers WAYSIDE NOTES. 6 was telling about the various articles in the line of hen, skunk and other oils that were good for the joints, rheuma- tism, wounds and the like, which reminded him of Uncle Joe Plummer, who once lived over on the "^lountain Road" that skirts the Ossipee group from Melvin's to Tuftonbor- ough Center. The old man (he was younger then) was drafted to go to the front and didn't want to go — not very bad! When he arrived at the front, or as near to it as he ever got, he suddenly became the possessor of as unruly a pair of weak knees as ever puzzled an army surgeon. They wobbled fearfully. They bent backwards and forwards and sideways. He absolutely could not stand on his pins, and as for service he was as useless as a wooden Indian. That the surgeons were puzzled puts it mildly. They were absolutely dumbfounded and tetotally mystified. No such case had ever been encountered before, or has been since, so far as I know. The man was not shamming, that was certain, because his legs showed for themselves, and so far from "doing it on purpose," the learned officers could not see how he could do it at all. Neither had they ever heard of a case where Nature had played a similar trick on an otherwise healthy man. IMr. Plummer soldiered in the hospital for several months, and finally in despair the medi- cal authorities discharged him and he was sent home, where he rapidly recovered ; and years afterward, while in the en- joyment of a fat pension of, I am told, twenty-four dollars a month, he never ceased to extol the virtues of rattlesnake 's oil as a lubricant. "I don't know what I sh'd a done," said he, "ef them boys 'er mine hadn't kep me supplied from rattlers they got up on the ole Ossipee Mountain ; an ' fact is I had got gol darn nigh run out ov ile when them ;sawbones gin me up ez a hopeless case!" WAYSIDE NOTES. THE TALE OF A GRIP. How I Got Separated from Mine and the Nerve-Baching Strain That Followed. I am only a light brown leather Grip — you may call me Grip for short. Do not think, however, to pass me by without further parley. I have a tale to tell. That short, stout, pussy individual that escorts me around needn't think he's so large. He couldn't do a thing without me, and he knows it now. He didn't, though, till the other day w^hen he and I parted company at the railroad junction. You see it was this w^ay. The gentleman who considers him- self my boss went and crammed a number of pass books, with a lot of names and dates in them, into my capacious in- sides, also a number of magazines and other papers and blank receipts and five or six apples, which latter he meant later to transfer to his own interior — but there's many a slip, you know. Well we got over to Epping Junction — I think the conductor said — and Mr. Man got out, and taking me by the handle trudged down the platform to the little cooped-up waiting room, which was rather more cooped up than usual from the fact that a lot of carpenters were cut- ting out sections of each wing of the station and shoving the remaining portions up together, and the wheezy old coal stove in the center of the room was doing its best to drive Jack Frost out through a thousand crevices in the tem- porary walls. Mr. Man dumped me down on the long settee that ran along one side of the room Avithout any ceremony — he's got used to that — but I bet I learned him a lesson though. Then he w^ent out and walked up and down the platform. There was a whole lot of ladies in the waiting room and Mr. Man is a little mite diffident in the presence of the other sex — between you and me — and I noticed him glance through the window as he passed to see what the prospect WAYSIDE NOTES. was of a corner to himself. Well, the next I noticed a tall, slim man, with gray hair and a pleasant face, rushed in and asked the station man if he couldn't leave his grip inside the office (that's where my boss ought to have left me, he's awful careless), and the station man said he could, and out he rushed. Right at the door he met a man he called Brown, and I heard him ask Brown if he was going over, and Brown said he was, and then he looked in and saw me minding my own business and saying nothing to any one, and then he looked after Mr. Dickey — that was the tall gray man's name — and he saw that Mr. Dickey hadn't any grip, and was just climbing into his (Mr. Brown's) wagon, and he got the fool notion that Mr. Dickey didn't know what he was about, and had forgotten his grip; and what does he do but dance up to me — who was sitting there with all those ladies and minding my own business — and he grabs me up and races after Mr. Dickey and shoves me into his wagon and off we go, me all the time so full of rage and indignation at such a high-handed outrage that I could not speak. What was I to do ? There was my boss, Mr. Man, walking calmly up the platform, and as we rattled round the corner up the street the tail board fell down and I was in plain view of him, but he never saw me at all. If I was as absent-minded I don't know what would happen to me. I resigned myself to my fate. Over to the postofifice we went — IMr. Brown carries the mail, you know. Then we went to the hotel, and I was slapped down into one corner and left to my own melancholy reflections. I knew a catastrophy had occurred. I, the custodian of my boss' business, from whom I had never been so rudely separated before, was lying here in a dark corner of the hotel office, unable to move hand or foot — I didn't have any. And there was i\Ir. ]\Ian — what about him ? There 'd be a pretty scene when he discovered that I was gone. I imagined him coming gingerly into the female infested precincts of the all-tore-up station, and burying his bashful face behind a newspaper — a favorite trick of his. Then by and by when 6 WAYSIDE NOTES. a lot more ladies came trooping in and seats were at a premium, him peeking around furtively to rescue and re- move me from my position on the settee — only to his horror to find me gone. You've heard of a drowning man catching at straws, and the scenes of a lifetime passing through his mind as he churns the water for the last time. Well, I expect my boss was about the worst broke up man you ever saw. He realized, I hope, as never before, that while I am modest and unassuming, I am really an important part of the outfit. I know for a fact that Mr. Man seriously con- templated abandoning his trip and returning home for a new valise and another outfit. How did he know that Mr. Dickey and Mr. Brown knew anything about me ? Had he not proclaimed his loss to all the occupants of the sta- tion? He seriously contemplated calling in a matron to search the ladies. He really wished they'd move over lest their skirts covered his precious Grip. He peered anx- iously under the benches and the stove. He hunted up the station agent and the track men and wildly thought of tel- ephoning the general manager. Put yourself in his place, gentle reader, and you won't wonder. I am an important part of a traveling man's outfit. He can't do business without me, let me tell you. Just about this time, fate, or chance, or providence, or psychical phenomena, led Mr. Man to step up to Mr. Dickey and Mr. Brown and very humblj' and somewhat hopelessly ask them if they had seen anything of me. Mr. Dickey said he hadn't. Mr. Brown said he hadn't. "Did-n't you put your grip into the olfice?" asked ]Mr. Man of Mr. Dickey. Mr. Dickey averred that he did. "Well, now. you didn't pick up mine by mistake, did you, when you went over town?" asked Mr. Man with a voice tremulous with emo- tion. "I don't think I could have; did you see me?" he asked of Mr. Brown. I suspect he may have lost his grip himself sometime and wanted to be as easy as he could with my poor boss. WAYSIDE NOTES. ' ' ' I say, ' ' says Mr. Brown, as a ray of intelligence lighted up his countenance, "wasn't that your grip I picked up in the station and took over to town just now?" "Of course not," says ]\Ir. Dickey, and then there was a hustle. Mr. Man's train was due and me a quarter of a mile away. Mr. Brown jumps into the mail wagon and goes rattling over to town after me, while "Sir. Man paces up and down the platform, looking at his watch, and then at the grade over which the train for Rochester is expected any moment to appear. Well, to make a long story not much longer, Mr. Brown came into the hotel office where I w^as fuming and fretting in my corner, and roughly yanked me out of it; then he slapped me into his rum old wagon with a bang that jarred my slats. I really believe he gave me a spiteful kick as he jumped to the seat and we rattled back again to the Junction, where we arrived just as the Rochester train came in. There was a joyful reunion. :\Ir. :\Ian knows my value as a traveling companion now as he never did before. The conductor shouted all aboard, and we two swung onto the platform as the train rolled away, and the incident was closed. A RAMBLE IN VERMONT. The Red-Faced Gent.— Hanover After Commencement.— Mr. Gihhens' Adventures.— Mr. Blanchard's Tin Pedlar.. —Old Man Manchester's Wonderful Plug. Editor of The Gazette: If any of your readers happen to see a red-faced gent, carrying an imitation leather bag, about two hundred pounds avoirdupois — the gent, not the bag, of course — pass- ing along, through, or over, any of the roads within twenty miles of Hanover, during the next few weeks, casting fur- WAYSIDE NOTES. tive glances at the hayfields or scraping hurried and in- vokmtary acquaintance with the canine fraternity by the way, this is to inform them that he is not a candidate for initiation into the ancient and honorable order of hay- makers. He is a granger and a pretty good hand at ' ' mow- ing away" cabbages, beans, potatoes and other products of the farm except hay, and his real mission is in connec- tion with your valuable paper — this by the way of expla- nation. Hanover after Commencement is a good deal like the cir- cus field after the menagerie has departed, but still its quiet streets at any time wear a homelike aspect that is peculiarly its own. I was not long in finding that a large part of the Gazette's sphere of usefulness lies on the Ver- mont side of the river up through Norwich, Strafiford, Vershire, Thetford, Fairlee, etc., and the first postoffice I struck, across the river, was Lewiston, located right in the bottom of the river valley, which is here quite narrow. The territory coming here for mail is restricted to the lit- tle hamlet and the river road for a couple of miles above, but a half day spent here resulted in a doubling of the list of the Gazette, and an evening at mine host Blanchard's equipped me with several, to me, new" and interesting yarns, a few of which are here set forth : I believe the old gentleman's name was Gibbens who used to relate these yarns to interested listeners at the popular auditorium where cheese, molasses, codfish and dried ap- ple were dispensed, along with local wit and wisdom and sage advice. He said that in his younger days he used to team in win- ter across Lake Champlain, and one cold day he started from the New York side to cross to Burlington with a six- horse team and a load of fifteen hundred bushels (sic) of grain. As he proceeded, the weather became rapidly warmer, and as he sat upon the top of the piled-up bags the heat became so oppressive that he nodded off to sleep. How long he slept he knew not, but imagine his surprise, on wak- WAYSIDE NOTES. 9 ing up with a start, to fiud that his team had stopped, that a heavy downpour of rain accompanied by thunder and lightning had set in, and that his load and team were en- tirely surrounded by water. In fact, he was floating on a detached cake of ice about half an acre in extent. "What to do I didn't know," said Mr. Gibbens, ''till a happy thought occurred to me and I got down and went around to the hind end of my load, pulled out the tail board and with it for an oar paddled my way ashore. It was the clos- est shave I ever had," concluded the old man. The old gentleman stated that one night he was awakened from a sound sleep and on looking out in his garden he descried a dozen or more cats at work on his just-made turnip beds. It was a cold, frosty night in June, he said; in fact, a freezing shower early in the evening had coated beds and all with a coating of glare ice. "I asked Maria, my wife, where my ammunition for my old Queen's arm was and she said she didn't know, so I went and got a lot of crab apples and loaded my gun with those. Taking aim at the howling bunch of cats in the garden I let 'er drive, and, would you believe it, we gathered up two bushels of fine mince meat the next morning piled up against the garden fence." Of course we believe it. What interest would old Gibbens have in prevaricating about a little thing like that ? ]\Ir. Blanehard told about a tin pedlar who once stopped with him over night, and during the course of the evening, the said tin pedlar became reminiscent and incautiously "told one" on himself. He said he called at a house one day and was met at the door by as handsome a young white woman as he ever saw, and hanging to her skirts were three or four pickaninnies as black as the proverbial ace of spades. ' ' How in the name of creation, if you will excuse my boldness, madam, did you ever become possessed of this nigger family?" asked the pedlar sympathetically. "Well, mister," the young woman replied, "if you must know, I'll tell you. I had a sister that married a tin ped- lar and I married a nigger to redeem the family!" 10 WAYSIDE NOTES. Old man Manchester, who used to live in Norwich, was a pretty good hand to tell a story, according to ]\Ir. Blan- ehard, who said that while stopping at his uncle's house many years ago, the old man called there one morning and after the cider had passed around two or three times, cleared his throat and told the following yarn for the bene- fit of the young folks who were eagerly listening : "I had an old horse, ' ' said he, ' * that I prized highly, l)ut poor Tom got so old that I decided one day to kill him. I took him out on the barn floor and knocked him in the head, and, just to remember him by, I skinned him and hung the skin over the high beam, intending the next morning to draw the carcass away and bury it. In the night I heard a racket in the barn as though some large animal was thrash- ing around, and on investigation I found old Tom had come to life and was standing on the barn floor chewing hay off the mow. What to do I didn 't know. The poor old horse 's hide was frozen stiff on the beam, but there lay a lot of warm sheeps' pelts on the floor, and without thinking of the consequences, I grabbed up three or four of them and threw them over the old horse's back, to which thej^ stuck at once. Well the old horse got along so well after that I turned him out to pasture in the spring, and when it came time to shear sheep I got two hundred and fiftj^ pounds of nice wool off from the old plug." I heard some more stories this week but am not just sure Brother Musgrove will print them, so quit just where I am. WAYSIDE NOTES. 11 VERMONT RAMBLE CONTINUED. The Union Village Dam.— The Phonograph.— Doc Howard of West Fairlee. — Walton's Vermont Register for 1837. As Brother Musgrove used the last grist I sent in, I here- with enclose some more. I was up at Union Village. Vt., last week, via Pompanoosuc, known as Pompa, for short, the whole name being Ompompanoosuc, I believe. At Pat- terson's I found a busy industry in the manufacture of hard wood furniture that employs quite a number of hands steadily at fair wages. At Union Village I stopped at the home of the well- known cattle buyer, A. V. Turner, and I wish I'd taken more notes of the interesting things he told me. In speak- ing of the Colburn blacksmith shop, he said it once stood further up the stream at the point where the old dam and flourishing mills used to stand, that were washed away by the remarkable flood of October 1, 1869. At that time Doctor Howard lived in the village, and as one of the own- ers of the dam and mill property, he tried to interest his colleagues, some of whom owned the Colburn shop, in re- building the dam, which would necessitate moving that building a few feet out of the way while the dam timbers were being put in place. The owners of the shop, how- ever, would not allow it to be moved, and after twice get- ting out the necessary timbers and failing to engage the other owners in the enterprise, the doctor in disgust sold out his interest and left the town. Across the road from mine host's, in Union Village, was a phonograph sending forth its fascinating waxery voice on the evening air. What would the people of fifty years ago have thought of it? What will the people fifty years hence be having in the way of new inventions ? ]\Iay we be there to see. I met a second cousin of mine the other night about sun 12 WAYSIDE NOTES. down, up on IMiddle Brook in West Fairlee, and at his invitation I adjourned to his domicile and tarried with him that night. He had been out in the Civil War and was full of yarns that would fill up your valuable paper, but the incident that I want to relate was regarding an- other Doctor Howard, who practised at West Fairlee many years ago. A short, heavy, thick-set, black-whiskered Englishman, he had a good practice, but being too accommodating to those in trouble, he finally had to face a jury in conse- quence of the untimely death of a young woman patient. The jury thought him guilty and the judge gave him eight years at Windsor making scythe snaths. Medical gentle- men should not be too accommodating. The doctor had plenty of time for mature reflection between his stunts in the workshop and I presume he came to the above conclu- sion long before he finally got out for good behavior, some- what less than the specified time. He came back up to West Fairlee and opened a drug store. One evening a lit- tle man about four and a half feet high, who had been coached by the group of loungers out on the curbstone, walked into the shop, and standing where he could make his escape before the doctor got around the counter, he began : "M-M-Mr. Howard, h-h-how did you 1-1-like making scythe snaths down to W-W-Winsorr ? " "That's how I liked it," roared the doctor, and before the little man could reach the door he bounded over the counter and with one hist of his heavy boot sent the little man sailing into the street. He, too, learned something by his experience. William Stevens of West Fairlee, Vt., has a Walton's Vt. Eegister and Farmer's Almanac for 1837. Contains a vast amount of national and state information, list of members of congress and town statistics. It is an interesting query whether or not any of the men who were old enough to figure as town officers in the state of Vermont, in 1837, and especially those whose names are given in the list, are living today. We think it is not WAYSIDE NOTES. 13 likely, but many of the readers of the Gazette would prob- ably remember them as having been living among them within the last twenty or thirty years. Life is a kaleidoscope at best, into which we gaze for a few short years ; it is ever changing and the combinations that are constantly forming and reforming would startle us if we could look ahead a dozen or a score of years and see what they were to be. We wouldn't want to, however. Things happen full fast enough to suit us. To drop into first person singular, I ventured into a hospitable looking dooryard, near the curi- ous little pond above East Thetford, Vt., last Saturday, thinking no evil, and with no other design than to spread a knowledge of the Gazette to them that sat in darkness, and were just getting through their dinner. Arrived at the shed door I was met by a long yellow cur dog that had apparently come in contact with a lawn mower and lost a part of his hair in ragged, irregular patches. The canine proceeded to get acquainted with me in a manner that was neither refined nor polite, and as the tousled-haired genius who stood in the doorway and watched proceedings didn't call the dog off, I quietly but firmly resented the undue familiarity. It is curious that the owners and fanciers of these lovely animals never seem to realize that other folks have rights and privileges that are at least equal to those of a dog, and when they call on business, which is perfectly legitimate, they are entitled in common decency to at least civil treatment. Yes, I hit the dog, and he ki-yied. I meant to hit him, and I would hit any dog that had never been educated to know his place, and Avhen the tousled- headed owner asked for a bill of particulars I gave them in the only language that the OAvner of such an animal could understand. It so happened that a female head was at the doorway, and the next instant a fusillade of old boots, rubl)ers, and other bric-a-brac rained around me. for- tunately witli no disastrous results, as a woman's aim is never very accurate, and especially a woman boiling over with wrath because her little doggie (about the size of a 14 WAYSIDE NOTES. wolf) had been abused. I stopped long enough in the yard to explain to the crowd the exact social status they occupied in my humble opinion, and then resumed my placid and normal journey down the road. Soon on, soon over. Honors about even. And all brought on because I hit another man's too familiar canine. We never know when storms will rage about our ears and boots, rubbers and fur will flv. WILDER AND LYME. A Good Bath. — John Laiham's Religion and His Appetite. — John Straw's Yarns. I have visited the pleasant village of Wilder this week, and added about 400 per cent, to the Gazette list. I also wandered into the elegant library building, the gift of the founder of the place, I believe, and in hunting around after "the boss" I found a fine bowling alley, billiard or pool room, a smoking or card room, reading rooms, and, best of all, some fine bath rooms, with regulations indicating that a bath was free. I take everything that is free on prin- ciple, whether I need it in my business or not, and so I had one. I disrobed, stepped into the "sousing room" and monkeyed with several of the valves and knobs for a while, and by and by the tin halo (like Eockefeller wears) over- head began to squirt and I was assaulted on all sides by streams of water. I almost *felt like "Moses-smote-the rock," of whom I used to hear in Sunday school, but after coming down out of an atmosphere of ninety in the shade to get pelted with quite so much liquid coolness so suddenly almost unnerved me, and you know it takes quite a shock to unnerve a newspaper agent or book canvasser. Speaking of baths reminds me of John Latham, well known in Lvme and Hanover fortv vears ago. He was WAYSIDE NOTES. 15 web-footed and could swim like a duck. He was also re- ligious at times. Some town boys at Lyme once met him on the bridge that spanned Grant Brook near Turner's blacksmith shop, and asked him to kneel down and pray for them, intending to push liim into the deep water below and see him swim out after the ceremony had begun. Un- cle John was too astute for them and while he knelt down and prayed he kept his eyes wide open. "Why don't you shut your eyes, John?" they asked him. "Well, boys! We are comnianded to watch as well as pray," replied John with an expansive grin and I guess he had to in that crowd all right. Del Webb, with whom I stopped one night in Hanover, remembered John Latham quite well, and told of being in bathing with some boys in the Connecticut when it was proposed to swim across. Del was the youngest of the lot and as he could not swim the biggest boys told him he must stay back. "The little lad can go just as well as not," said Uncle John. "I will carry him on my back" (giving a broad sound to back), and he did. Del affirms that he rode as easily as a horse. One time John was at Commencement and a boniface was giving a full dinner of baked beans and the fixings for twenty-five cents. John had been, which is said to be not unusual with him, about a week without a square meal, and some of the Lyme boys chipped in to give him a feed. John ate and ate and ate, seven plates full of beans, and was just looking around for the bread and pie when the restaurateur threw up the sponge. "Good God, boys, how much will he eat? Here take back your money and call him off!" John, however, smiled that heavenly smile of his and allowed "he'd finish his meal now he Avas at it." And he did, but he couldn't have got another except at special rates. The heavy and erratic showers of the past week remind me of a story told by John Straw, formerly of Lyme, who averred that he or someone he knew was driving over near Moose ]Mountain one day when a violent thunder storm 16 WAYSIDE NOTES. broke over the mountain and soon the big drops began to rain in the hind end of his express wagon. He had a good reader, a remarkable roader in fact, and he just touched him with the whip, when he put off before the on-coming gale and storm like the very wind itself. It was four miles to Lyme Plain, but he made it, and although the rain beat in the hind end of the wagon all the way, filling it half full, not a drop of water touched horse or driver. ]\Ir. Straw also told about a man in Lyme who used to tell some pretty good stories himself, one of them to the effect that he was out hoeing corn one hot day in June near a stone wall that separated the field from a pasture. All of a sudden he was startled by seeing a large deer leap the fence and land in a huge snow drift, where with a well directed blow he killed him with his hoe. "Look here, mister," says a bystander, "how do you account for that air snow drift in hoein' time?" "Oh, well!" said the story teller nonchalantly, "I guess I got two stories mixed." But that, dear reader, is not as bad as telling the same one twice to the same crowd. NOTE BOOK NOTES. The House of Eleven Gables. — TJte SiJite Fence. — Auto- mohiles — "Otter-Mow-Grass." — Mrs. Hodges' Bugs.- — The Song of the Check. Jackson, August 20. 1905. In the midst of lofty mountains once more! Nature at its very best ! Fresh and green and smiling — always smil- ing — just like me, only, however, I may not be so green. The ' ' House of Eleven Gables ' ' near the Crakashin Golf Links is full, aye more than full. I sauntered up to the THB PKOFILH. Up whrre the blue of Heaven Contrasts thy f^ray black brow, Thou art indeed a Monarch — Master of Tinu' art thoxi! Brooding aljove yon valleys Where the hill-born rivers flow, Stately thy i)ose vs'hile wild wind blows And the storm (doiids come and go! Thy rock-hewn face forever takes The elemental shocks. A monument to Patience thon, And SileiK-e done in rocks! For when the gale revilest tlioii Or the fierce sun burning hot. Thou art serene, benignant And thy mute lips answer not! WAYSIDE NOTES. 17 broad piazza and inquired for the genial proprietor. Pro- prietors are always genial except when listening to a tale of hard luck to be succeeded by a request for a temporary loan, then the smile flickers out and a look of ineffable sad- ness succeeds, such as settles on the face of a professional humorist. He has heard that tale before, and as he thinks of seventeen days' unpaid board and the probably empty trunk up in No. 49, a cold glitter steals into his cabn blue eye. As I remarked before, I inquired for the landlord. "^ No one spoke at once, but after a few minutes a repose- ful school marm from Camlu-idge rose to the situation and advised me to pass around the gable end, bear down past the side veranda and through the woodshed and I'd prob- ably find the old man in the ice house, while his wife and baby might be swinging in a hammock in the hen-pen. The horse barn being occupied by some students from Brown University. Sometimes I find the "family" cooped in the wood- shed, sometimes in the attic and again do^vn cellar. Some have only moved into the horse stable while the rush lasts, ]3ut everywhere I have been this week it is the same story, and the festive boarder and the ubiquitous landlord are both tanned and making hay while the sun shines. Where I stopped ]\Ionday night they told me about the tall and rough looking "spite fence" that adorns (?) the former driveway to the little white church near by. It stands out like a sore thumb and bristles with the uncon- cealed hostility that it was built to represent, and yet there were two sides to the story. The owner of the adjoin- ing property, it seems, went to the church officers and of- fered to pay the entire cost of moving the edifice to a better location and give one hundred dollars in addition to put in a furnace, which has long been needed, his idea being to benefit the church and secure for himself l)etter access from his residence to the road. The church officers demurred. AVas this not the place where their fathers had worshipped? Why shoidd they 18 WAYSIDE NOTES. disturb the traditions? No; they couldn't and they wouldn't! And they didn't either, and the abutting owner didn't conceal his disgust. Then the rumor went round that he was going to build a spite fence. One en- terprising citizen from the East Branch neighborhood was reported as saying that if he (the owner) built a spite fence, he (the enterprising citizen) would "suttenly" tear it down. Of course our Chicago friend heard of it, and of course his fighting blood boiled up. He hadn't much idea of building a spite fence anyway, but a dare is a dare, and up went the fence, a good strong one, such as an ox couldn 't stir. Then our legal luminary aforesaid sat down and waited for the e. c. from East Branch to come along. A few curious people were in ear shot when the gentleman came up the road, but if they thought there was going to be any trouble they were disappointed. The Chicagoan pointed out the fact that there was the fence and if the East Brancher thought it best to tear it down he could wade in any time. ''I'll not take any legal measures to stop it." he concluded, Init there was a reminiscent look in his eye that boded something doing for any one who disturbed his pretty fence, and the man from East Branch made haste to disclaim any such unholy intention as that imputed to him. and the fence may be seen right where it was built any fair day without the aid of a spy glass. Automobiles have been more common than ever this summer and the familiar "honk, honk" of the great ma- chines as they speed along the highways has almost become so common as not to disturb the equanimity of the equine population. A couple of autoists halted their car along side of a stone wall the other day, and seeing a farmer on the other side tinkering up his mowing machine, one of them inquired rather flippantly, "What ye got there, old man, — an automobile?" "Naw," replied the old farmer with evident disgust, ' ' 'tort ter mow grass, but 'twon 't b ' gosh ! ' ' There are several things an automobile ought to do also. WAYSIDE NOTES. 19 but it won't, and when you buy one on the strength of the agent's assertion that it ean be run for one cent a mile, you don't want to forget the anxious moments spent in prayerful meditation as you lie on your back and gaze with perplexity and wheel-grease on your manly countenance earnestly up among the vitals of the dodgasted thing to try and ascertain why it gets balky. It's always breaking down at the wrong time, which is any old time, and a cent a mile for gasoline is one of the least of its owner's troubles. Try it and see for yourself ! Going up over by Double Head Mountain through Dun- dee, I called at IMrs. Hodges. Mrs. Hodges has one of those old hand looms that used to be so common fifty years ago or more, and she is using it too. She makes stacks of rugs and they are nice ones, just the kind one dreams about getting out on to in a cold winter morning when the thermometer is way down to zero, and the fire has gone out, as it usually does. Soft as velvet, thick and sumptuous. It will pay you to stop and look at them if you ever pass that way. Here is a little skit to wind up with : THE SONG OF THE CHECK. "Lan'lord, dear, I waut your ear, My little tale to speil; I've lo.st my pocket-book, it's queer, — You know just how I feel! But I'll send you a check, Lau'Iord, I will, When I get home tomorrow, I'll send you a big fat check, I will; And a ten I'd like to borrow." But the landlord laughed a bitter laugh, He'd heard that tale before; And the man with a hat-box, in room IG, Was briefly shown the door! 20 WAYSIDE NOTES. IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS. "He Wanted His Hoss Writ Up." — Speaking of White Horse Ledge. — The Mason's Secret Work. Bartlett, August 25, 1905. Since writing you last I have visited Glen, Bartlett and passed along the west side of the Saco to Conway. There were no signs that the corn cannery at Glen was going to start up this season and my impression is that the experi- ence of the last few years has been rather disastrous to the business along the Saco. Early frosts have worked havoc with the crop, and I know of some canneries that have moved down into the lower part of the state. I got in and rode up the east side of the Saco the other day with a gentleman, who demanded as a penalty that I should immortalize his docile old plough horse. I criti- cally surveyed the animal for signs of precocity which might not be visible to the naked eye or that might have escaped me on a cursory and hasty glance, and not seeing any, I asked a few leading questions to draw out the in- formation desired regarding pedigree, etc. THE PLUG. As we passed up the valley, i^ir! That nag with drooping head, He traveled like a snail, sir! Indeed, I thought him dead. His breed I could not learn, sir! Perchance a Morgan sire And a Pereheron his dam, sir, If any should inquire. He was from "Kennedaw", sir; ' Of that I make no doubt. Five hundred for a pair, sir. The old man flung it out; — WAYSIDE NOTES. 21 And another nag to boot, sir! For so I understood That the man who turned the trick, sir. Was two hundred to the good. He shelled the golden shekels, sir, Like corn from off the "Cobb." And I'm the handy rhymer, sir, To celebrate the job. Speaking of horses puts me in mind of the celebrated pegasus that is said to adorn the face of White Horse ledge. It's a horse all right, With a tail good and strong; But he "haint got no legs," And he can't get along! His head is high flung But there's something that's wrong, For he "haint got no legs," And he can't get along! He stays while the tempests Shriek out their wild song, For he "haint got no legs," And he can't get along! As long as the Saco shall roll on its way. As long as the great cliffs above it shall stay, 'Twill remain there, I think, till the great final gong, For it "haint got no legs," and it can't get along! Wliy can't some artistic soul with a brush and a pot of paint just touch up this wonderful freak of nature by ad- ding the lacking members ? A couple of years ago I had occasion to write a piece about Mr. Joseph Pitman, who taught fifty-five terms of school in the Saco valley, beginning when he was seven- teen. It has recently come to my knowledge that the gentleman who taught "Uncle Joe" in his younger days (he is now eighty-two) is still living and hale for a man of his years, at the age of eighty-nine. I refer to Mr. J. M. Meserve of the Iron INIountain House, Jackson. I do not know, but it would not surprise me if ^Mr. INIeserve were the oldest living school teacher in the state. 22 WAYSIDE NOTES. At the place where I stopped in Bartlett last Monday night, my hostess was explaining the significance to her of a Masonic chart hanging above the dining room table. It seems that it had belonged to her father, who was a prom- inent and well known member of the fraternity, and in connection with it she stated that when she was a little girl, certain uninstructed members of the order would come to her father for instruction in the lettered work of the order. "I had a play room," said she, "near the stove pipe hole above the sitting room where father received his friends, and one evening as he was tutoring a brother as to the meaning of a long string of letters, which I had heard repeated from my point of vantage so long that I had got it by heart, the visitor chanced to ask about a couple of letters when my father's attention was attracted elsewhere, and as the answer was not forthcoming promptly, I eagerly called out the missing words from my perch by the stove pipe. That settled it. There wasn't any more secret work for me, and while I didn't get it where the chicken got the ax, I got it plenty, so I didn't hanker for any more of father's secret work." To change the subject : How many of our readers know how the matter of a national park for the White Mountain region stands at present ? Is it true, as is now stated, that Doctor Gallinger's bill calls for the purchase for the pur- pose of the park of "stump land only"? If so, we bet- ter not have a park, for the enterprising lumbermen can make stump land out of it fast enough as they are doing now, and if permitted to keep it they might kindly fork over a few dollars in taxes if they felt like it. I do not think Doctor Gallinger is such a humorist as this would in- dicate, but unless the powers that (are supposed to) be get a hump on pretty soon the White ]\Iountains will be "stump land only" for fair. WAYSIDE NOTES. 23 N EATON, N. H. ''Goshen." — "Potter Neighborhood." — Eaton Slandered in Verse. — A Pet Woodehuck. — TJie Showman's Parrot in the Hands of the Philistines. August 31, 1905. Mrs. John D. Legere, over in South Conway, otherwise known as "Goshen," owns a farm that for about fifteen years she carried on herself, hiring very little help, doing personally nearly all the work that the average farmer does in this section. In speaking of it to the agent, she remarked that as a woman always realizes the value of having a good supply of fuel, she always determined to have her wood cut and put in the shed, a year's supply ahead all the time. Her plan was to cut it before the snow fell in the fall and with her oxen haul it up to the house on the first sledding that came; then during the winter she Avorked it up and packed it in the shed in the spring. Over in the Potter neighborhood I came across J. P. Davidson and his men picking rocks off a piece of land just laid down. It had been so long since I had seen any one picking rocks that I thought it worth making a note of. So much of farming is done by machinery now that these jobs that require bending the back and grubbing the earth have become so unpopular as to be almost a lost art. as you might say. From here my road led up over the high hills to the little village of Snowville in Eaton. Eaton has a choice assortment of hills, from the tops of which the panorama of mountain and valley that spreads out around one is grand and beautiful. On these hills the air is wonderfully fine. There isn't any better air in seven states than they have in Eaton. I asked a man I met in the road who ap- peared as if he might have been a resident what sort of a town Eaton was anyway, and his reply follows: 24 WAYSIDE NOTES. IN EATON. Wheu Jehovah got tired of his job, There remained a tremendous great gob Of roelis. gravel and sand Left over on hand, So he dumped it right out of his hod. And, friend, this is the place where it fell. In Eaton, I'm sorry to tell, The soil is so poor You couldn't. I'm sure, Though bravely you tried, raise h — 1! But the views and the air they are great, And the sunlight your craving would sate; With food, clothing and drink Fui-nished free now I think I could live in that town first-rate. Where I stopped all night in Eaton, conversation turned on the difference between the climate here and down in Georgia, as two of the comi^any present were residents of that state, and I had just been explaining for the benefit of Wiffers, a Georgian, that most of our aqueducts froze up last winter on account of the frigidity, and what an abundant ice crop we were blessed with, when he rejoined that in Georgia, at Savannah I think, they manufacture their ice and furnish 300-pound chunks of coolness for seventy-five cents. At times, he said, rival ice companies would run the price of ice down in competition till they would actually give it away to any who would take the trouble to come and get it. Now I like that idea, you can take it or leave it, while up here the company that furnishes us with ice is altogether too effusive. We have to take it and no excuses and protestations suffice. E. L. Doloff up on the hill beyond Snowville has a unique and cunning pet in the interesting personality of a wood- chuck. He was captured when about the size of a large rat and now he is rather larger than the ordinary bean- WAYSIDE NOTES. 25 eating chuck of the corn patch, and shows every sign of being in prosperous and easy circumstances from a wood- chuck's point of view. He runs about the house and yard and always shows up at the kitchen table at his usual meal time. He has no intercourse with the common ordinary herd of woodchucks that inhabit the surrounding fields, as befits an aristocratic and self-made chuck. I presume, however, if he should get caught by some of the common herd aforesaid, away from his base, he would have to prove his superiority in a rough and tumble fight. There are probably jealousies among woodchucks the same as among other quadrupeds (yes, and bipeds, too!). This reminds me of a showman's parrot. It seems that after having sat on his perch for many moons and listened while the ticket taker had dispensed the paste board that admitted to the "greatest show on earth," Polly finally took it into his foolish head to scrape the acquaintance of the uneducated and plebian birds of the adjacent woods. He listened to the "call of the wild" to his subsequent sor- row. When his master found him he was sitting on the limb of a big oak, bobbing first this way, then that, surrounded by a crowd of black and ugly crows that were pecking at him viciously. He still had a few feathers remaining and was vociferating shrilly, "One at a time, gentlemen. Don't push, don't crowd. Plenty of time, gentlemen, take your turn. D — n it gentlemen, take your turn. Time enough. One at a time ! " Wild folks of the woods never take kindly to those of their species that have had the advantages of domestication. 26 WAYSIDE NOTES. ALONG THE SACO. Elden Grover's Frost. — Anderson's 50-Cent Dollar. — Leav- itt's Indian Relics. — The Old Saco. September 5, 1905. The Agent meandered down the north bank of the Saco last week, visiting on the way Fag End, East Conway, Green Hill, the various parts of Chatham, Fryeburg and a part of Lovell, and found that up to that time the frost had held off and a fair corn crop appeared to be a certainty, the shops having already started up at North Fryeburg, Fryeburg and Conway Corner. I must qualify the state- ment just a mite in order to preserve my hard-earned and highly prized reputation for aljsolute and unvarying veracity and unsullied truth. ]\Iy friend Elden Grover of Green Hill, the well-known weather prophet, is said to have predicted a frost the last of August, and as I came past his place the pumpkin vines and bean tops had that tired and shrivelled look that indicated that Elden 's proph- ecy had been verified. A gentleman at Kearsarge Village told me that when old Kearsarge jNIountain became cloud- capped, the old Nick couldn't stop its raining, and when Elden Grover says there'll be a frost there's going to be one even if it has to be made to order for his special benefit. ]\Ir. 0. Anderson, who lives at South Chatham, is some- thing of a wag in a way, and he was telling me about when he was at the county seat on the jury, he had the pleas- ure of listening to the Republican candidate for governor, bloviating on the subject of free silver, which he said was only worth fifty cents on the dollar when minted. A hench- man of the aforesaid candidate had the duty of paying off the jury when the business of the court had finished, and when he came to Mr. Andrews he passed him -out in change WAYSIDE NOTES. 27 three silver dollars. Brother Andrews held the silver in his open palm, looked at it critically and then at the pay- master. "Look here, ]\Ir. Paymaster, you've made a mis- take, this is a dollar and a half short." "How's that I" demanded that functionary; "ain't that three dollars all right?" "No," says Brother Andrews positively, "according to your candidate for governor it ain't. He said, you recol- lect, that these dollars are worth only fifty cents, and so I'll trouble you for just one fifty more, — if — you — please ! ' ' But although he kept his hand out for nearly a minute, while the onlookers smiled a large smile, he didn't get the rest of his pay, and he afterwards found (if he didn't know it before) that Uncle Sam's money is worth just what it claims to be and always has been. D. H. Leavitt of Chatham said he would like to visit jNIanchester sometime and look through the museum there, as he understood they had a pair of snow shoes made some- thing like the more modern "skee," only not so long, that were discovered in the woods near Amoskeag many years ago and placed in the museum as Indian relics. He said the snowshoes were probably a pair he and his brother had made away back in the 40 's and tried to use them in a deep snow of that period, when they were found to be no good and left in the woods in disgust. "It's too bad to lay such a clumsy job to the redskins," said Mr. Leavitt, "and I want to set the archajologist of the future right on this point." I told him I'd do what I could in this matter and knowing the importance that attaches to any thing found in this department I herewith hasten to set history right. 28 WAYSIDE NOTES. THE OLD SAGO. A good many years ago The Saco rau sluggish and slow, "Fish Street" on the right With "Mud City" in sight, Still northward its waters did flow. Around by the "Harbor" it went In search of a suitable vent. Then veering I'ound south Towards its far ocean mouth Like a mighty great horse-shoe it bent. For many and many a day The flood on its indolent way, As if lost and strayed On the intervales staid. Till the farmers thought Nick was to pay! One night — this was long, long ago — Those old farmers, whose names we don't know, With shovel and pick Cut a channel quite slick Where the great, sluggish river could flow. And now in the "Town Farm" hill Through this channel the river runs still; Straight across the horse-shoe The "New Saco" runs thi'ough And "while water runs" it will! Just one word for the "Old Saco's" bed — .Just a line for a river that's dead; Nevermore there shall glide The great pent mountain tide That over its intervales spread. Nevermore, 'tis a sad word to say ; In the night you were stolen away, And the poor empty bed Of a river that's dead Moans for you forever and aye! WAYSIDE NOTES. 29 FROM SWIFT RIVER TO SANDWICH. Peter Gee, Blueherrij PicJicr. — Robert Drew and the Frog. — Big Men in Here. — The Rival Towns. September 13, 1905. Last week as the greatest storm of the season (4 2-3 inches of rainfall) trailed off into other quarters, I made my Avay up the Swift River Valley and stopped at W. Chase Colby's over night. Mr. Colby is one of the few old settlers in this region and an interesting man to meet, and when you arrive, as I did, about eight o'clock at night, carrying a gnawing feeling under your vest and a weary feeling all over, the welcome to a farmer's home and a farmer's fare knocks the spots off of the most hospitable hotel I know. Mr. Peter Gee, whom I met there, has picked 801 quarts of blueberries on the bushes on Eagle Ledge, a foot spur of the IMoat Mountain, -this year, in three weeks, or over forty quarts a day. One gentleman, who shall be nameless, told me he picked "over 100 quarts up on Moat Mountain on the 29th day of August;" and wh^^ should I doubt his word, when a reference to my almanac shows conclusively that there was a 29th day of August; Moat INIouutain was there and the blueberries were there ; what more evidence do you want ? After doing Conway I went through South Albany, where I found the new Piper House, with a good comple- ment of guests, also the smaller houses around Choeorua, though the large hotel at Tamworth Village has not had as many an usual. ^NFy impression is that the smaller houses are getting the preference this season, and I am told that September is l)ecoming more and more a vaca- tion month each year. As I came over by Silver Lake I niet a relative of Mr. Robert Drew, the unlettered poet of Silver Lake, who died 30 WAYSIDE NOTES. many years ago, but who is well remembered by many in this section, and she told me several reminiscences of her relative, one of which has never been mentioned, I believe, in these notes. It seems that when a young man (he lived to be over 90), he was employed to saw the wood pile at the school house, and during recess the teacher engaged him in conversa- tion and bantered him to do a sum in arithmetic as follows : If a frog jump up one foot in a well every day, and fall back two feet every night, how long will it take him to get out of the well? Young Drew was to have till the next day to figure it out. Bright and early the next morning the teacher ar- rived at the school house, but young Drew with his buck saw was there at the wood pile before her, vigorously ply- ing it on the large hard wood sticks. ' ' Well, Robert, how did you succeed with your frog 1 ' ' "Madam," sa.ys Robert: — "Your sum I've tried Until I'm cloyed; No more on it I'll dwell; I've got your rule. And quit your school; And you'll find your frog in h — 11!" Many a lad — yes, and perhaps many a sweet young miss, too — has felt like dismissing troublesome problems in a like off-hand manner, but ''tain't for them"; the poet you know has a right to exercise poetic license where other mortals can't. That's why I court the muse, as you may say, to amuse the court, see? The big men are all moving into Tamworth now. Ex- President Grover Cleveland and "Sir. Findly are the two latest additions to the landed proprietors in that town and — I've been pricing farms some myself! Mr. Cleveland has bought the Francis Remick farm for $3,750 which, I understand, he paid spot cash for. INIaybe your readers would like other details about the farm. >(,irAM LAKK. NKAl! SANDWK li. WAYSIDE NOTES. 31 This farm was probably cleared and worked first by Jonathan Philbrick, who was born at Bretton Woods and settled first on the Bear Camp intervale, moving to the Kemick place on Stevenson Hill in 1772. His son, Stephen Philbrick, was born in 1771 and lived all his life here, dy- ing in 1872 at the age of 102, and is said to be buried back of the barn on the south side of the road upon the farm that Mr. Cleveland has bought. John Remick. the father of Francis, bought the farm of Aaron Smith, who had bought it of the Philbricks, and oc- cupied it twenty-five years, November, 1865, so it has been in the Remick family for forty years. Of course every- body hopes ^Ir. Cleveland will like his new home, and that Sandwich will not secede from the Union because he is no longer a resident "in their midst." Mr. Cleveland is big enough for both towns : Up beyond the Belknap Mountains Lies a valley ever fair; And the smile of the Great Spirit Is resting there — is resting there! Down below the eternal mountains, Where the Bear Camp River flows, Towns of Sandwich and of Tamworth Share their triumphs and their woes. There's a rivalry between them, Though it may not come to blows; Tam worth's got 'im now, but Sandwich Perhaps can have his dirty clothes. Only residents of this section are supposed to know to w'hat the above alleged poetry refers, and I ain't saying, that they will know without a chart, which will be sent on application. 32 WAYSIDE NOTES. LITTLE PITCHER'S NOTES. The Ajfdble Fraud. — Jerry Goodwin and Bill Dimick. — Where the Finger of Death Had Touched. That mild influence, that impelling touch, Nor a dight too little, nor a dight too much, That takes from cupidity its last shining cent, Nor leaves a trace of where its master went ; That appeals to thrift to save an extra dime. And vanishes before it fathoms the design. Ubiquitous he comes, he conquers and he goes, Whither and whence, that's what nobody knows! The above beautiful and touching lines about size up the situation in regard to a gentleman, we might call him "the man from i\Iaine," who recently blew over from "down east," and after "doing" Rochester came up through Milton, Union, Sanbornville, Wolfeboro and Os- sipee, and perhaps other towns, selling a couple of maga- zines, w^hich usually cost $1.80 for $1.00. At least he se- cured a number of nice large blank receipt books at some stationery store, and with a fountain pen full of red ink made out some elaborate affirmations that he had "Re- ceived the sum of one dollar (per head) for magazine set number 1"^ — whatever that might mean. Of course it was supposed to mean the magazines the smooth and oily gen- tleman was showing. Diplomas in the school of sad experi- ence at $1.00 apiece come rather high, but they may be most effective in the long run. In the meantime, if the gentleman with the receipt book and the winsome smile will only come back, "Nobody Avon't do a thing to him!" Dear friends, when Little Pitchers, and dozens and doz- ens of local workers whom you have known for years, are selling magazines just as low as they can, what's the use of tempting Providence by trying to "do a little better?" Let me let you into a secret. The magazines this gentle- WAYSIDE NOTES. 83 man offered you cannot be secured by an agent for the sum he charged. Neither company of magazine publishers which he claimed to represent is offering any free premi- ums, either of music or patterns,, whatever, and both com- panies furnish their agents with their own printed blank receipts, which guarantee that the person holding them is an authorized agent. But then, brethren, this is useless, for the next bunco man will probably have an entirely new scheme to which these cautions will not apply. I came up on Jerry Goodwin's train the other day, and as Jerry wouldn't furnish me a seat in the smoker — stand- ing room only being the order of the day — I got into the baggage car. At Hayes, which, owing to the leather board mills, etc., is getting to be a lively, hustling annex to the city of Rochester, among other parcels of baggage were two dress suit cases, bearing tags for that station, but our genial friend, the baggage master, after putting out the other articles, resumed his nonchalant attitude at the desk, oblivious of the fact that two pieces of baggage were being carried by, until some distance toward Milton. Little Pitchers was an amused spectator, and when the baggage smasher remarked that the man who never made a mistake must be a fool, he added "or a liar," and it is even so. Some mistakes are worse in their consequences than others, but all are the result of the fallibility of the human mind, even at its best, and lucky it is if the only consequence of a mistake is the carrying by of a couple of dress suit cases. Speaking of Jerry Goodwin, reminds me of my friend. Bill Dimiek. Bill works for the road in the huml)le ca- pacity of a painter, and of ccmrse going up and down the line from his home at North Conway, rides free. Jerry is not in his element except he is having a little quiet fun with some one, and one day finding Bill seated in the smoker, with a number of strangers, sitting near the end of the car taking a quiet nap, he grabbed him !)>• the shoul- der and demanded in a voice designed to reach the length 4 34 WAYSIDE NOTES. of the car: "Where's your ticket?" Bill hadn't got any. "Got any money?" "Yes, sir," says Bill. "Well, pay your fare, then, and be quick about it!" This latter with a threatening" glower which heightened the interest of the on-lookers quite a little. "I won't!" says Bill doggedly. "Well, by gings, then you get otf at the next station, un- derstand?" and Bill apparently bowed to the inevitable. But he didn't get off, and when Jerry came through the next time, the other passengers expected to see trouble for the obdurate passenger. Jerry came along down the aisle till Bill's seat was reached. Bill was again fast asleep, apparently. Jerry started back in surprise, then reached over and grabbed Bill's collar, shouting, "Wake up there, old man!" Bill woke up as ordered. "Didn't I tell you to get off?" "Yes, sir, you did!" affirmed Bill. "Well, why didn't you do it?" Shaking a threatening finger in his face, ' ' Now, the next stop you get off — see ? " As that was Bill's destination he didn't see fit to dispute Jerry's statement and the other passengers heaved a sigh of re- lief, or disgust, according as they viewed the prospect of a fellow mortal striking the cold, unfeeling station plat- form with one of those old-fashioned "dull, sickening thuds." Coming over by the Pineriver Road that curves around the base of Green Mountain, I called at the well remem- bered home of Joseph S. Smith, where several times in the last ten years I have been entertained over night. Crape was on the door, the black sleigh of the undertaker was before it, and in the house and yard were sympathizing and sorrowing friends. With the funeral director I went in to take a last look at the face of my deceased friend. Beside me was a friend of his boyhood with frame shaken with emotion ; about me were the sorrowing members of the family circle. The wife whom he tenderly nursed for years lay in the little granite encircled burying ground below the tall pines of the towering Green Mountain, and today they were taking him out there to lie in peace beside Ami yi' who arc liviiiji sliall thirst and lack The wliilc \vc arc icstiiiif tlirrc." WAYSIDE NOTES. 36 her. As I sadly wended my way up through the unbroken snow of the unfrequented mountain road to Lord's Hill, my thought took form as follows: I've been where the fini^er of death has touched And gathered tlie ripened grain; I've looked on that pallid face and said: "This is the end of pain." I've been where the finger of death has touched And gone on my way again. But some day the finger of death will come, Sealing this heart of mine; And the voice will speak to my ear alone: "My beloved, come ; it is time." And the voice that shall speak to me alone I know, dear Lord, will be thine. And then I shall go on the long, long track. To a land my God knows where; I shall go like him, and shall not come back ; I shall rest, and I shall not care. And ye who are living shall thirst and lack. The while we are resting there. AT SIXTY-SIX. The following poem was sent to Mr. Hobbs of Hampton on his 66th birthday and used in the Exeter News Letter: The years fly swiftly with us all And life is all too brief; But we should all, both great and small, Hold joy and let go grief. For to us all the sorrows come, And to us all comes joy. iSo let us take the swwts of life, — Forget wliat may annoy. 36 WAYSIDE NOTES. And when we come to sixty-six, As our friend does to-day, May we like him have learned the tricks Which drive grief and care away. And while we cherish memory And all virtues ever sung, May we like him in spirit be Just sixty-six years young. NOTES FROM FREEDOM. The Bald-Headed Blacksmith. — Harmon's Story of Robert Drew. — Roland Park and Uncle Neal's Yellow Cat. — Oliver Brown's Old Mare "That Wouldn't Back."— Drew's Verses. I have been pursuing the even tenor of my way around and about old Carroll County during the week since I last w^rote you, and while I can't report anything particularly new, I certainly have no evil report to bring. The most remarkable thing I have heard of is the new crop of hair that has begun to grow on that bald-headed blacksmith's head up at six-mile pond. It is declared for a fact that a luxuriant and downy mess has sprung up all over his bald knob, of a fascinating brick shade, that is the envy of all the girls in Madison. Too bad he's mar- ried ! This phenomenon is interesting to me, because Lit- tle Pitchers is getting just a mite scarce of hair on his intellectual dome himself — or perhaps we should say our- self — and when we see Baldy we are going to find out what did it, if possible. I was over Lord's Hill in Effingham last Aveek and chanced to get into conversation with H. W. Harmon, who was formerly a resident here but has for many years been engaged in business down country. When a boy he said WAYSIDE NOTES. 37 he remembered Uncle Robert Drew, the versatile and witty character to whom I have referred in these notes before. "When a boy," he said, "and living at home, I remember once my father heard that Mr. Drew was cutting hay on a farm owned by my uncle up in Madison, and thinking to safeguard his interests, as he was away down country on business at the time, he took me along and drove up to the Madison farm, one hot day in July, to see what IMr. Drew was doing. When we came to the meadow we found ]\Ir. Drew and his youngest boy busily engaged in spread- ing out a lot of grass they had just cut down on my uncle's land. Robert greeted my father warmly, and asked him to come over into the shade of the trees and sit down while he ate his dinner, as it was about noon. We went over, and after talking of various matters, my father finally got around to the object of his visit. 'Mr. Drew,' said he, ' you don 't own this land you are working on here, do you ? ' 'Oh no, no! This isn't my land, Mr. Harmon,' replied Robert. 'It belongs to your brother.' 'Well, how comes it you are cutting this grass, Mr. Drew?' 'Well,' says Robert. 'I'll tell you ; you see it was this way: Your brother came up to my place one day last spring, and he saw my little boy there playing about the house, and he kept a saying kind of softly to himself, "My God, my God, what can I do! What can I do!" I couldn't think what to make of him and finally I asked him what was the matter. "Look here, Mr. Drew," says he, "you been stealing my timber off 'm my land here for more than twenty years and I haven't said a word, for I knew you had a family grow- ing up and needed it. but I thought now they were all up out of the way, and I came over to notify you to quit, but here I find is another young one coming up and I don't know what to do. " " See here, ' ' he says kind of sudden like, ' ' if you '11 keep out of my timber you can have all the grass you want down there in my meadow." And that's why I'm down here, squire,' said Robert, as he took a fresh chew of tobacco. And as Rol)ert seemed to be honest about 38 WAYSIDE NOTES. it, father accepted the situation good naturedly and we left for home." It is said that on one occasion Daniel Webster, on a trip to the White Mountains by team, met and got into con- versation with jMr. Drew on the blueberry plains near Six- mile Pond, and was so amused and interested by his con- versation that he spent a half day in his company, and no doubt regaled him with what he had under the carriage seat. One night this week I spent at Koland Park, overlook- ing Dan Hole Pond, or Lake Dauhole, at the foot of the Ossipees, and which place in fair weather commands a fine view of Mount Washington, thirty or forty miles away. Quiet, secluded, but easy of access, its nearly thirty cot- tages and two large boarding houses are filled each season and the summer population is constantly growing. I have to record, however, that one of the attractions of the park is probably no more. I say probably, as I know of a case where a large brown dog was shot to death and dragged out to a gravel pit, and showing signs of life, was beaten to death with a shovel, and then buried under six inches of earth and in about six weeks came limping back to the house, a little groggy, but still in the ring, as the sporting papers say. This attraction was Uncle T. R. Neal's large yellow cat. This cat, while not exactly a weather lireeder, was depended on to foretell the approach of winter, as he would go away in the spring, and remain in the woods in the vicinity all through the summer, often seen but seldom caught, and along into the fall, till just as winter sets in for keeps, when he would return to the house. This fall it was deemed desirable to reduce the cat population by one on account of his excursions into forbidden places, and he was chloroformed, but unlike Uncle John Sanborn's pet dog, Nellie, up at Gushing 's Corner, last week, he took the dose philosophically, and after lying dormant, if not door- mat, for several hours, he got up and went off. Being re- captured they tried the water cure on him, tying him in a WAYSIDE NOTES. 39 bag with a stone for a sinker, but it must have come untied, for a day or two later he was seen lurking about the prem- ises, and this time a shotgun was brought into requisition, and it is believed that with a good share of his jaw blown off he has received his quietus. Although he has escaped to the woods and has not since been, seen, there is no certainty that the cat will not come back. At the comfortable boarding house of L. L. Farnham & Co., I met and conversed with the venerable T. R. Neal, referred to above, and, among other things, he told me a story of Oliver Brown, who used to live on Brown's Ridge, south of Ossipee Comer, where ]\Ir. Adams now lives, and Adam Brown, his brother, lived near by. Oliver, it seems, had a black mare, Janette by name, that became old and lazy and fat, and he decided to kill her. So one day in the late fall he took her out into the pasture, away from the house, and knocked her in the head. Now Janette was a good and docile beast, but she had one failing— she wouldn't back. This was known to all people in that vi- cinity. When she had ceased her struggles, Oliver, noting that she w^as good and plump, determined to have a steak out of her, and so he cut about a dozen pounds of juicy horse meat from her hind quarter, and took it home. A day of two later, he invited Adam over to dinner, and had him try some of that steak, which was pronounced the best he ever ate, and w^ouldn't rest till he had learned where Oliver got it. After several evasive replies, Oliver finally owned up that Adam had been feasting on a hind quarter of poor old Janette. Horrified he Avent to the door on a run, and tried to throw up his dinner, with Oliver close behind. "Adam," says he, "don't you know that poor old Janette never was known to back?" And she didn't begin then, though Adam tried various methods to accomplish the result, and never forgave Oliver for feeding him on horse meat. I will close with one more anecdote of Robert Drew, or at least, attributed to him by a gentleman who claimed to 40 WAYSIDE NOTES. know. He called at a house one day at the noon hour to get some dinner, and was informed by the matron that her poor old mother had just died and she was trying to think of an appropriate verse for her tombstone. ' * Madam, I can make you a verse, I think, ' ' said Mr. Drew. ' ' What was your mother's name?" "Mary," was the reply. "Ah, yes, a good old Bible name," said Robert. "How will this do: "Mother Mary died of late And went direct to Peter's gate." "That will do for two lines," said the daughter, "but what will go with it ? I want four. " " Well, ' ' said Robert, "I'll give you the other two after dinner." Dinner was duly discussed, and as Robert rose to leave the house, the daughter requested the other two lines. "Oh, yes," said Robert, "I most forgot; here they are: "St. Peter met her with a club And sent her back to Belzebub." And then he faded away. THE HONEST FORESTER. He was an Honest Forester, And he dwelt one of three, Within the shadow of a wood P>eneath a great elm tree. He had a strong and mighty arm, He had a telling stroke. And with his shining blade he cleft The heart of many au oak. His neighbors they were shiftless men, Most shiftless drones were they. Who never bad an extra stick In the fireplace to lay. So now our Honest Forester, For twenty-seven years WAYSIDE NOTES. 41 His back pile never had he used, But only the front tiers. At last a winter long and cold Had settled on the earth, The snow was overwhelming deep, Of wood there was a dearth. His neighbors burned their fences up. And fodder from the mow. And then they came to borrow. But he couldn't spare it now, For when he reached his rearmost pile. Amazed was he to mark. The worms had powdered every stick And only left the bark. IN THE OSSIPEE COUNTRY. Friends Gone On. — David Hohhs' Story About Uncle Steve Allard. — Ezra Dodge Case. — Picking Vp. I was up through Ossipee Valley lately — some call it Bear Camp, some Jehosaphat, and the genial conductor, Jerry Goodwin, calls it Free Silverville, on account of its having been the residence of the able exponent of the theory of William J. Bryan, F. K. Hobbs, postmaster and station agent until his recent sudden death, who was so well known politically as a campaigner of many years as to need no introduction to Pioneer readers, but whose death is greatly lamented. I did not meet Mr. Helme, the elder whose meetings were so disturbed by roughs last summer as to horrify the Boston correspondents, and send a spasm throughout New Eng- land, but I saw a good many others, as I have done in my travels tlirough here for ten years past, and so far as my ob- servation goes, there is no more quiet and law-abiding people in America than right among and around the Ossi- pee Mountains of New Hampshire. 42 WAYSIDE NOTES. I visited West Ossipee, where I learned that the day be- fore all that was mortal of E. D. Whitehouse, the veteran hotel man, had been returned to mother earth. The fu- neral was, I believe, held at Chick meeting house in Os- sipee, and there, in the quiet graveyard, his body rests not far from where his earthly career began. For some time before his death, ]\Ir. Whitehouse had entertained a curi- ous fancy that he was away from home, and frequently ex- pressed a desire to return. A fancy, we may say, and yet a reality ; else why do we instinctively say, as we fold the tired hands of our loved ones on the unthrobbing breast, ' ' They have gone home ' ' ? Up by Blackman's mill, another old friend of mine and of the Pioneer has joined the silent majority. He was not a man in life who cared to be with the majority. A free thinker, a liberal, a Socialist, a man of large frame, large heart, and large ideas, Alvah Moore, with better school ad- vantages and a different environment, might have shone with as much luster as Garrison and Philips. He died as he lived, looking for the dawn of the brighter day on this earth wherein shall dwell righteousness. At Chocorua I put up with my friend, David Hobbs, who lived when a boy up in Albany near the Swift River, and not far from the domicile of the noted bear hunter of former days, Stephen Allard. Indeed, he was so near that Uncle Stephen held an idea that IMr. Hobbs had squatted on his land. One day Mr. Hobbs and his family had oc- casion to go down the trail through the woods to a neigh- bor's, and in doing so he chanced to meet Mr. Allard, who at once began to point out to ]\Ir. Hobbs, in shrill and un- mistakable accents, what he should and should not do as regards cutting any stick of timber, planting any corn, po- tatoes, or pasturing or otherwise occuping any of said premises described, to wit : viz, what he called his farm. As ^Ir. Hobbs had pretty good proof that he had a right to his land, he grew indignant at the tongue lashing, and finally grabbing up a club said: ''Look here, Steve Al- WAYSIDE NOTES. 43 lard, I've heard enough (tf this, and don't you let another word out of your head, or I '11 give you a taste of this stick. ' ' "Well, well, well, well," says Steve, "don't you strike me, :\Ir. Hobbs, or I'll show you the law, by mighty I will." As Mr. Allard's flow of language dried up in regard to agrarian rights, Mr. Hobbs did not proceed any further with his club, and in after days the two men became firm friends. I cannot say as much, however, for a certain Mv. Stratton, of whom ]\Ir. Hobbs told me, because I don't know. It seems that Mr. Stratton had cut. burned and cleared a patch of land in the Albany wilderness, near Mr. Allard's, and had sowed the same to grain, which in the late summer he was duly cutting up with a sickle, when who should appear on the scene but Uncle Steve ; Mr, Stratton was some surprised, but he was not only surprised but wrathy when the old man ordered him to quit cutting the grain, claiming it was on his land. Running up to him and brandishing his sickle close to the old man's neck he dared him to repeat what he had said. "Well, well, well, well, Mr. Stratton," shrilled Uncle Steve in his high pitched voice, "don't you touch me with that sickle, or I'll show you the law, by mighty I will." Uncle Steve, how- ever, kept his law to himself, and Mr. Stratton completed his harvesting in peace. They say the devil always leaves a bar down, but if he does no one has found it in the case of Ezra Dodge, whose body lay dead in his o^vn door yard for two or three months before it was discovered and buried, three years or more ago. A Boston clairvoyant described the murderer and referred to a tin box of papers that would be found in the cellar, at the time ; but though the box was found the papers were missing, and up to date, no one has been apprehended as the slayer of the eccentric old man. I spent a night recently with my friend. Bill Dimick, at North Conway, and his young son, Walter, a lad of nine or ten, was laboriously inditing an epistle to his teacher in the district school. Asking for a pointer as to what he should 44 WAYSIDE NOTES. write that would be interesting, I suggested that he tell her that he proposed to be a good boy during the next term of school. "Yes," said he naively, "but I don't like to tell lies!" PICKING UP. As I swing around the country, oh! There's business picking up. If any one should aslv you. oh ! Just say it's picli:ing up! The rag man and the paper man Have work enough to do. There's drummers, drummers on each hand All looking out for you. The grangers soon will have a show, The church a festival. The Sunday school has needs, you know, That on your pockets call ; The sisters dear, God bless 'em all. With all their dark designs, Will ask you for a tribute small; * Your pockets must be mines! And whichsoever w^ay you turn There's evidence enough * That everybody's business is Picking up the stuff I There's business picking up, my friends, Business picking up, If anybody asks, just say. There's business picking up. WAYSIDE NOTES. 45 A FRESH STORY OR TWO. Charlie" Fhilbrick of Chicago, Andrew Welch and the Know-Nothings. — The Blacksmith's Helper. — Life's Tides. As there is a fresh story or two in my grip, I think I'll give your readers just one more inJ3ietion this time, by your leave, Brother Dorr. I got off at Centerville, which Jerry persists in calling Center Ossipee, spite of everything I can say, and went by way of the new road, which parallels the railroad track one mile south, then w^est by Chick meeting house and through "Hackney" to Water Village, and put up at one of the best appointed sets of farm buildings in the county, owned by Levi AV. Brown. I had never stopped there before, and at the risk of never stopping there again I am going to re- late an incident connected with a trip to the Chicago World's Fair made by Mr. Brown, his wife, and ''Life" Connor and wife of Exeter. Said ]Mr. Brown : "Life and I were interested in cattle, and ^\e just couldn't leave Chi- cago without visiting the stock yards, and as we knew that Charlie Philbrick from Hampton was buyer for the Swift Company, we went over to the yards to look him up. Sev- eral men we met didn 't seem to understand us, and had the look of foreigners anyway, but we ran across a bright lit- tle boy who at once said he knew Charlie, and if we would get up onto the fence (the place consisted of innumerable passages and yards enclosed by high fences and swinging gates), he would go and send him round to us. In a few minutes several hundred head of cattle from the plains came roaring down the passage way where we had been, and behind them came Charlie. He didn't notice us un- til, as the noise of the hundreds of hoofs died awaj--, Life drawled out, 'Say, Charlie, have ye got a farrow cow ter sell?' An uiimistaka])lo whiff from Yankeeland. and a sur- 46 WAYSIDE NOTES. prised look stole over Charlie's face, till he saw us on the fence. Well, yes, he was giad to see us, and took us up to the stable, where, after protestations that we hadn't rode a horse for twenty years, we were provided with mounts and went out and watched Charlie buy cattle by the carload with as much quickness and despatch as is sometimes used in the purchase of four-weeks veal calf out here. The drov- ers sometimes kicked at the prices, but finally ended by ac- cepting them." Note: They probably realized that the big companies were running the meat business for their board and clothes and wanted to help them out in their praiseworthy philanthropy. I called on Uncle Andrew Welch over in Tuftonborough, and he told me a yarn which, as I didn't write it down at the time, may be a little twisted, but nevertheless ought to contribute to the gaiety of nations and hurt no one : An- drew and Jack Thompson were not know-nothings in the antibellum days, no-sir-ree! But they had an intense de- sire to find out what "them fellers" were cutting up at their secret conclaves, and b'gosh they were going to, too. So when they heard that there was to be a meeting in John Lamprey's hog pen, they proceeded to get there first, and to avoid detection they crawled in with the hogs in a dark comer of the pen. The meeting was duly pulled off and Jack and Andy got the secret rap at the outer and inner doors, and the password, and also learned that the next meeting would be at Jim Libbey's, over near Mackerel Comer. When the time came for the meeting the two spies started out, but before they had gone far Jack's courage failed him, and I '11 let Andrew tell the rest. ' ' We went back to my house and got some hard cider and sat awhile, and then started out. When we got to Jim's we were met at the door and gave the knocks and the passwords all right, and got into Jim's big kitchen, which was full of men, young and old, some of whom we knew and some we didn 't. Now we had heard that one of the rites of the secret meet- ings was the climbing of a greased pole, feet first, by Doc Mplv'm Village. WAYSIDE NOTES. 47 Seavery, and Jack, the tarnal fool, was just drunk enough so't he believed it, and he blinked round a few minutes an ' then blurted out, ' Say, fellers, whare 's th ' greased pole, hie ! that Doc Seavery 's goin ' ter climb ? ' That knocked us higher 'n a cocked hat an' we were hustled out lively, so we didn't learn any more secrets of the order." I also stopped at a new place at Melvin Village this week with Mr. and Mrs. D. J. Hersey. Mrs. Hersey told me of a blacksmith who, I believe, formerly ran a shop at j\Iel- vin. who stuttered, and he also had a helper who stuttered. He had taught the boy a few things about the shop, and one morning gave him a sledge hammer, and after heating a bar of iron to the proper pitch gave the boy the order to: "S-s-s-s-strike!" " Wh-wh-wh-where shall I s-s-s-strike ? " yelled the boy. "Oh, darn, it's cold!" remarked the disgusted vulcan as he placed the iron back in the forge. Mrs. Hersey also told me about an amusing epitaph she saw in a cemetery at her girlhood home at Norwood, Mass. As a child she and her girl friends used to hunt among the ancient stones of the church yard for quaint verses, and this was one: "Here lies the wife of Roger Martin. She was a good wife to Roger, sartin." One would think the above was make-up if it were not vouched for. ]Mrs. Hersey is the local correspondent for the Wolfeboro paper, and as such wrote that: "The church and parson- age has been much improved by the recent repairs, and now Melvin A^illage has no reason to blush for either church or parsonage." She was somewhat surprised upon getting her next paper to find that the words "to blush" had been left out. with a result disastrous to the intended meaning, and apologies and explanations were in order. 48 WAYSIDE NOTES. LIFE'S TIDES. There are subtle waves in our mental sea, There are depths of murky night, There are calms where sunken vessels be That once were so fair to the sight. And as I look back on the dimming track, I wonder whence and where Came the tide that sundered our ships — Alac! And bore us here and there. But the tide that has passed will not return, Though other tides may come ; There is naught to regret, for we live to learn Life's lessons one by one. Lord, when will the school be done? WHEN DAD RUNS THE SEP.4RATOR. When Dad runs the separator He's an awful noise creator. As it twangs and twangs away, Very early in the day. Yes, by jings, it's mighty early in the morning. One can't get another blink 'er Sleep to sooth his tired winker. So he might as well skiddoo "When Dad begins, I'm telling you. His daily exercises in the morning. He gives out it's his "piany," But that don't help it any; It's worse than a durn'd buzz saw, Or a donkey's soulful he-haw. When Dad runs the separator in the morning. WAYSIDE NOTES. WAYSIDE NOTES. 49 Newfound Lal-e.—What Some Men Will Do with a Pen- cil and a Block of Paper.— New Hampton, the old In- stitution.— Old Man Smith.— Cultivate the Poetry in You. June 14, 1906. Gentle Readers: I have just crawled out of Newfound Lake and am stopping at my friend :\Ierriirs in East Hebron for the night. I was warned by ]\Irs. M. that there wouldn't be much to eat if I staid, but if three nice fresh eggs, a bar of "Johnny cake," two slices of delicious bread, strawberries and cream, a cup of tea, a glass of milk with the cream in it, jelly sandwiches, cookies and pure spring water in abundance is not much, then I am a light eater. There was plenty more in reach. It is wonderful what some men will do with a pencil stub and a block of paper. When I got this I'm writing on it was with an indistinct idea that the Enterprise readers might still care to hear from "Old Man Claflin" (that's what I heard a kid calling me lately). Of course I'm just as young as I ever was — or nearly so. I enjoy my swim in the lake the same as ever (tho' somehow the water holds pretty cold this spring). I can do twenty miles a day, if I don't make my stories too long when selling "the best lo- cal paper in the country," and I can do a turn at baseball with some husky youth to run for me. True I'm getting considerable of a Dutch shape, "five feet one way and four feet 'tother." My noble forehead is gradually extending towards the back of my neck and those lines of thought around my classic eyes and elsewhere are getting steadily more pronounced, but that doesn't make a young man of forty-three old, does it? I answer, no! So 'tisn't neces- sary for you, gentle reader, to "butt in." True, since last I addressed the readers of the Enterprise I've exchanged my "widowhood" for a widow and five children (I had 5 50 . WAYSIDE NOTES. five myself). But are we not enjoined to see after the widow and the fatherless, and I suppose a widow should also look after the widower and the motherless. That's right, too! It is true as reported, that between us we've got two handsome grandsons as you ever saw, but what of that? You can't pretend that shoving a man into the grand dad class makes him old, can you ? I guess not ! Gentle reader, a man is as young as he feels, and while I used to consider a portly gentleman with a bald head as rather old some years ago, I can now see where I made my mistake; it was all in the point of view. See? Last Monday after a brief call at the office, I went down the hill and across the covered bridge over the bawling Pemigewasset and so over the hill road to New Hampton. I never reached New Hampton by any other. Calm and quiet the village lay on both sides of ''Jordan's" stream and the students were preparing for Commencement Day with foolscap by the ream. That night the air was all too still, the mercury ran too low, and the garden truck below the hill was frosted white as snow. But where the "grey eagle's" eerie lies, and the hills that there abound, fanned by the warm breath from the skies, quite free from frost w^ere found. I've travelled North, I've travelled East, I've been to Jericho, but ne'er for my eyes a richer feast than the Pinnacle can show. The mountain ranges rank on rank encircle it afar, while here and there a silver lake gleams like a fallen star. It's rather tough footing it over these magnificent hills, but my automobile is out of repair and my medical adviser says walking is good for me; anyway, I don't feel very badly about it and as I chew a toothpick and gaze at my vanishing stub of a pencil. I wonder if necessity wasn't the mother of philosophy as well as invention. I went to Ashland from the Pinnacle by way of the "Old Institution," meeting at the home of A. F. Dol- loff a gentleman whom 7 should call old. His name is Jeremiah Smith and his age is ninetv-seven. He lives in WAYSIDE NOTES. ^^ the neighborhood and happened to be calling on Mr. Dolloff at the same time I did. Mr. Smith has a couple of nieces living at Ashland and in a recent letter to them he told them he hadn't much to write and felt more like the Irish- man who had stolen a couple of letters and was in doubt which one to send to his mother and which to his sister. Pretty good joke for an almost centenarian. Grass and all kinds of forest trees have grown finely this spring on account of the abundance of rain. This is particularly fortunate, owing to the fact that all over the state much grass was' winter-killed and but for the favorable weather for grass the crop would have been a short one. INIay I note^in passing, gentle readers, that a whippoorwill is just now trilling me a song from his place in the edge of the woods across the way? The quiet landscape around old Newfound 's placid waters is wrapped in the shadows of approaching night. How soothing the scene! Much that is best in life doesn't cost us a cent. Ever think of it? No? Well, it's time you did. This is not preaching; it's plain common sense. The man who is too occupied with the dull details of tis work to listen to a bird song now and then, or be awed by the majesty of a tempest or impressed by the beauty of a sunset, or the grandeur of a night full of stars, is in a bad way and losing the best part of his life. Gentle readers, cultivate the poetry in you. There is more to be admired in old Cardigan IMountain and the cliffs of Sugar Loaf than in a forty-story sky-scraper. The flight of a wild goose beats any invention" for speed and beauty of motion that man has yet invented and there's always a lot to learn from the open book of Nature. Did you ever notice that the men and women who live the long- est and stay young and fresh are the ones who are always studying into things, taking a human and wholesome inter- est in what passes before their eyes? That attitude of mind with wholesome tastes as to hours of retiring, food and drinks is what keeps them young in thought, virile 52 WAYSIDE NOTES. and vigorous. I don't know of any one that wants to grow old and get into the has-been class, so I deem the above hints will be interesting, if not wholly new. MORE NOTES. Charlie Watts' Stories of Jack Ames. — Gensing Warning. — Notice of Brother Sleeper. — A Mean Man. Charlie Watts, who lives up in Groton and used to re- side over in Gilford near the lake (Winnipesaukee), told me several anecdotes of an odd character who lived near Belknap Mountain years ago named Jake Ames. You know that people will tell stories sometimes without any inten- tion to deceive, but after awhile they get so they actually believe them themselves. Jake said he went fishing one time in the lake and he kept getting hold of a tremendous great fish and losing his hook and line on him, and also a pole or two. So at last he went over to the blacksmith shop and had a hook made, attached to a rope, which he figured a yoke of oxen couldn't break, and baited it with a pig's liver. Well, he hadn't fished long before the monster came up and swallowed the bait, hook and all. Uncle Jake took a turn 'round a yellow birch that stood handy, and in about half an hour the convulsions of the big salmon ceased and he was pulled ashore. He was eleven feet long and his head and tail dragged on the ground as Jake walked home with him, while his feet sunk clean up to his ankles in the hard clay road, he was so heavy. Uncle Jake had no use for style and he had a steel knife and fork that he had used sixty years without washing; after each meal he would simply draw each handy tool through his mouth and stick them in a crack in the beam over his table. When his wooden dishes got so gummed up he couldn't scrape it off he got him a new set, as wood WAYSIDE NOTES. 53 was plenty. He had a yoke of steers that were his special pride, and once when they had a town fair in Gilford Uncle Jake claimed that he hitched on to a big rock near the "four corners" and turned it half way round, after forty yoke of his neighbors' oxen had failed to budge it. Every- body loves a cheerful liar and tales of prowess never lost anything in re-telling. Japheth Gray, who lives close up to the great bare sides of old Cardigan Mountain, told me that when a boy, and soon after the terrible fires had swept every vestige of tree life and vegetable mold from the eternal ledges, the boys of the neighborhood used to, for a diversion, scale the sum- mit of the mountain and with levers and bars roll the numerous boulders down the mountain side, which he said accounted for the fact that few boulders remain there. I had just been conjecturing that the ancient glaciers did it before the arrival of man on the scene, but Japheth cor- rected me. Some one along the road a mile from Mr. Gray's has put up a sign warning people not to dig "gensing" in his woods. Gentle reader, do you happen to know what gensing is? It is a plant that looks some like sarsaparilla. It is worth a fabulous price because, mainly, of its market in China, where they believe it has marvelous powers in preserving, lengthening and making successful the life of the eater thereof. It is a good deal like the well known American fetish "gin sling." They take it when sick to make them well. They take it when well and it makes them sick. They take it to make them feel rich, and when rich it often makes them poor. When cold they take it to warm them, and when hot they consider it a means of keeping cool, M'hen really "gin sling" is not as good as water for an everyday drink. The heathen Chinese Avith his ginseng fetish is not the only deluded mortal one meets by any means, but he cheerfully sticks to his theories and parts with his good money for what grows wild in our forest deUs. 54 WAYSIDE NOTES. A young gentleman of only seventy-nine, who lives over in Alexandria and has occupied the same farm there for forty years, told me that when he bought it it only cut one ton of haj^ (there are four acres), and now it cuts three. As this is making three blades of grass grow where only one grew before, I don't see why Mr. S. B. Sleeper isn't a public benefactor, and I cheerfully comply with his re- quest to work his name into my wayside notes. The aged resident of a community like Alexandria hasn't got so much in the way of achievement to boast of as we who live in bigger towns, who can tell of the wonders of man's in- vention that have grown up under our eyes, but what Na- ture has done and is doing is always worthy of mention. The gentleman who told me recently about a farm in Rhode Island that produces ten tons of hay to the acre per year is a more picturesque story teller, but does not possess the element that makes for credibility^ while Brother Sleeper does. Mrs. M. B. Patten, where I stopped near the Protile Falls recently, told me of a man almost as mean — yes, quite — as the one who hired his little boy to go to bed without his supper by giving him a cent, and then after he was asleep stole the cent. It was a Mr. Pearson, who lived over near Austin Corbin's father in Grantham many years ago. His wife died and he put his children out among the farmers, as he thought he couldn't care for them. One boy was taken by Mr. Corbin. Mr. Pearson afterwards married again, and in the course of time went to see how this boy was getting on. The poor little fellow was almost dead with homesickness, and when his father finally started for home the boy begged to go with him. Being sternly re- fused, the poor little fellow clung on to the rear of his father's wagon, from which the brute dislodged him with vigorous blows of his whip over the head and shoulders. Who said our grandfathers were not chivalrous men? WAYSIDE NOTES. 55 ANOTHER BATCH OF NOTES. The Chicken Thief.— The Scrap Book Faddist.— Farms for Sale_ — Q^ 0. Stevens' Predictions. — A Community of De- serted Homes. I run across in my travels occasionally some one who has a good idea along some line that might — about this time — as the Farmers' Almanac observes, be of interest to those whom it may concern. For instance, Mr. J. R. Sleeper of Bridgewater, a gentleman of eighty bleak winters and more or less remarkable summers, informed me that the disgust- ing familiarity and sangfroid with which the common, or- dinary, little, darned, striped, American skunk of com- merce (good for his oil and pelt) had invaded his chicken coops and appropriated over thirty of his most promising chicks, had driven him to invent a skunk-proof coop, as he believed. It is a large dry-goods box, with poles for roosts running from side to side of the interior, having a roosting capacity of about fifty chicks, I believe, according to size. A slide door at one side admits the- chicks and when they are all in the door is secured, and a wire screen admits air, but not skunks. Mr. Sleeper is of the opinion that skunks are on the increase "in our midst," but "I dunno." Sometimes when I chase down a "constant reader" of the local paper who is owing for eight or ten years and he puts up a plea that he "never signed" for it and don't intend to pay for it, I feel that possibly :Mr. Sleeper is right. This, dear reader, does not refer to any one not abundantly able to pay, nor to anyone who ever really asked to have it stopped. Moses F. Little of Hill, since retiring from active business a few years ago, or perhaps a little before that, has been col- lecting poetry and compiling scrapbooks. He has rising 28,000 pieces, in eight or ten large volumes, and it is a 56 WAYSIDE NOTES. matter of speculation with me whether, if capital punish- ment is abolished, the compulsory reading of this poetry would be more drastic and effective as a deterrent of crime. Some poetry is a crime, but there is some that is really good — now mine for instance — but I refrain from expressing my opinion and don't ask for yours. Anyhow, Mr. Little has a big contract if he expects to capture all the poetry afloat. I called in at a barber shop in Hill and George H. Twom- bly was tonsuring me in a neat and tasty manner while Elder Rice was patiently waiting, when some remark of mine stirred up the tonsorial artist to break out with "Now, gentlemen, this ain't no lie I am about to tell ye, but when I was a boy and lived at home, there was a man lived near us that sowed a piece to barley one spring, and when it was up about four inches I '11 be durned if the pesky sheep didn't get in and eat it right down to the ground. It was rather late to do anything with it then, and as it was over back of the sheep pasture they put the fence up and didn 't go near it till the end of haying, when they were surprised to find that a nice crop of oats had grown up on it, though there hadn't been oats sowed on it for twenty years. No sir, I wouldn't have believed it myself, if I hadn't seen them oats with my own eyes, gentlemen ! ' ' Speaking of Hill reminds me that I stopped over night at Geo. W. Dearborn's, who was one of the jurymen on the LePage-Langmaid murder case many years ago. Mr. Dear- born is rising seventy-five and quite vigorous for his years. He lives in the same house where his grandfather settled when coming to the town from Rockingham County, where the family originally settled, and four generations of Dear- borns have attended the local district school at Hill Center, His farm is a good one for cultivation and a good one for summer boarders, but it's for sale, and a gentleman named Call, also of Hill, says they're all for sale but the orphans' home and the county farm, which isn't as true now as it was a few years ago. Many New Hampshire farms are drifting into the hands of syndicates and summer resi- WAYSIDE NOTES. 57 dents and ^rowin'i' up to wood and timlxT. which is just what most of them are adapted for and litth' else. Geo. 0. Stevens of Canaan, whom I reeently met, is not much of a talker, and doesn't ^o off half-cocked, but he says that Billy Bry^an is the man that is going to sweep the country in 1908. He was a Bryan man when Bryan was regarded as "too radical" for any use, say ten or twelve years ago. Strange what changes ten years will work. Now Bryan is the conservative, to whom the "safe and sane ' ' element that picks your pocket while calling attention to the wicked socialists' scheme to "divide up the prop- erty," is looking for protection from Roosevelt. Have you noticed the pines this spring? Thousands on thousands of them have many, if not all, of their lower limbs tipped with four to six inches of dead wood on which the needles are red as though scorched by fire. No growth has been made on them this year. What is the reason? I think it is because of the warm spell in January, '06. In many New Hampshire towns the ground thawed out. Frog ponds opened up and the frogs were heard peeping. I think these pines started to grow sufficiently so that when the cold wave in March struck them, or earlier, the new growth was frozen so severely that the ends of the limbs were killed. Nature has a chilly and biting way of adminis- tering punishment upon the tender growing plants that she nourishes into being, and only the fittest can survive. I no- ticed these pines in many sections of New Hampshire this spring, but perhaps as much as anywhere upon the hills of North Groton. This is a slumbering community a little back from the railroad that one climbs into, some like the upper berth in a Pullman, only it's more of a climb, and when one gets there he finds in the most thickly settled part of the comnumity sixteen empty houses and deserted farms out of a possible thirty-two within a mile or so of the North Groton post-office. A farm of forty-four acres, nineteen of which is wood lot, buildings in fair condition, one mile from Groton post-office, is to be sold in a few days, "as we go to press," 58 WAYSIDE NOTES. at auction, and probably $200 will take it. Why don't some of you fellows get out here who are raving about the greedy monopolists and landlords, and stop paying rent? There's room for several thousand up here among the hills. SNAKE STORIES. Mr. Dalton's Grandmother Used to Tell Them to the Kids. J. F. Hastings of Penacook, formerly of Bristol, always has a funny story to tell me (he's along in the seventies and an undertaker by profession). Isn't it curious that humorists are generally solemn and cadaverous, and un- dertakers more often jolly and gay? This time Brother Hastings told me about the grandmother of a Mr. Dalton, who lives, or did live, on the river road from Bristol to New Hampton. This old dame, according to Mr. Hastings, was of solemn and austere mien. She never laughed and seemed hurt if anyone else did, but she could tell stories, and the children were duly impressed by her weird and uncanny tales of ghosts, and unusual occurrences that hap- pened "when I was young." She was totally blind, but could do as good a stint at knitting socks as anybody. The story that impressed the youthful mind of Brother Hast- ings the most was as follows : "When I was a young girl," said grandma, "I used to pick berries from the raspberry bushes on the hill up back of the barn, and I enjoyed it all except that I was very much afraid of snakes. They don't have no such snakes now, child, as they used to in them days, no, indeed ! Leastwise, I haven 't seen none like 'em. They were great big house adders, big as a stove pipe ; and there was the long streaked water snakes that would reach up with a mouth a foot across, and swallow a goose or a duck just like they would a chicken, though of WAYSIDE NOTES. 59 course chickens didn't swim on water. Then there was the curious hoop snakes that would take their tails in their mouth and come rolling right after you like a great live hoop ; and the jointed snakes, that if you hit one a hard blow Avith a sled stake, he would fall all to pieces and you had to kill every piece, or they would join together again and crawl off as if nothing had happened. The black snakes in them days were so long that they would twist their tail around a prong in the stump fence and fasten on to another stump a dozen feet away, and sometimes I've put my hand on what I thought was a rail in the dark and had it slip down and glide off into the brush with an awful hiss. Oh ! them snakes were a good deal bigger than we have nowadays, yes, indeed! But what I was going to tell you about was, one day when I'd been berrying up on the side hill two or three hours, and the sun was just baking hot, I looked up on hearing a little crackling noise, and my eyes bulged right out of my head. I dropped my berries and I verily believe my hat would a 'lifted right off of my cork- screw curls, when I seen the biggest old hoop snake I guess that ever w^as. It was bigger than a cart wheel, and I saw it was beginning to roll right towards me, so I putter for the house as fast as I could leg it, and that awful thing right after me. When I went around the corner of the barn the hoop snake just struck the upper corner a glancing blow that tore every board off that end of it, and then whirled dowTi across the road ; and when it struck the stone wall it knocked the wall down and bounded fifty feet into the air. It went crashing out of sight towards the river and I never saw it again." Well, I should say once was enough. 60 WAYSIDE NOTES. ALONG THE CONNECTICUT. The River Sailor. — Stopping With Johnson.— A Latham Story. — "Tater" Hill in Prose and Verse. I saw the Ancieut Mariner. — The one of which we dream ; His grizzly mane hung down his back, His boat ploughed up the stream. It ploughed three miles an hour, sir! 'Twas that or just about, Unless there came a shower, sir, And drowned his fire out. His smokestack was a stovepipe; His whistle was of tin ; His boat of blue could sail in dew. It was so light and thin. And when he turned about, sir, To travel back again. He went so fast the scenery past It gave his eyes a pain. I heard something the other afternoon as I passed up the left bank of the Connecticut which sounded like a tea kettle boiling and sputtering to itself, only it sputtered with a little more regularity. It was not as loud as a gasoline en- gine, and it didn't have the vicious honk of a motor cycle. It was a quiet, restful chug, chug, chug ; and after looking around for awhile I discovered that it proceeded from a little blue boat that was not making much noise, nor a great lot of headway, but by selecting a stationary object to squint by, I became convinced that its steady application to business was having results. It was actually moving, and the venerable gentleman who appeared to be captain, officers, crew and sole passenger, seemed to be taking lots of comfort as he shaded his eyes and peered at the brown waters and green shores of the river, up which he was mak- ing his lazy and listless way, and I half wished I had noth- CONNKCTICt'T KIVKH ISKI.OW HAX()\ KK I'.HIDCK. WAYSIDE NOTES. 61 ing else to do but dally with a craft like that. It must be great fun. I put up the first night out with a Gazette patron named Johnson. Of course, dear reader, you couldn't expect me to pass this point without referring to the song entitled "Too Much Johnson," but though there are six of the manly little boys and one darling little girl, all under ten, I believe, they are none too much, and the Rambler, who has fourteen to call him "pa," likes to speak an appreci- ative word for the Yankee who goes in strong on the rising generation. Leave something behind worth while, friends. Money and monuments of marble are things that anyone can acquire, but posterity is not so easy to acquire. To many it has been denied to leave a root of remembrance behind them. ^Mr. Johnson told me of a brother of his who is a famous fox hunter. At least, he has a number of traps, and when he comes up the pike to Farmer Brown's, or Jones', or Smith's, and innocently asks leave to set his traps over in the farmer's woods, he gets permission, the more readily as the foxes are known to be a pest of the Avorst kind. By and by Johnson pulls up his traps and moves on, having presumably got all the foxes to be had in those woods. (He has certainly got an estimate of all the timber in them and transmitted it to headquarters.) Then, pretty soon, along comes a timber speculator. He doesn't care much for foxes, but he's long on timber, got more lots than he knows what to do with, but he might invest in just one more, merely to hold till it got its growth ; might cut it sometime, you know. Well! You wouldn't think those two forerunners of a portable sawmill were partners, but that's just what they are, and now I've let you in on this thing perhaps you better look your own timber lot over and run the price up a few hundred. It'll stand it, for old Dame Nature is working riglit along and timber is increasing faster than money in a bank, — yes, in two hanks! I don't think this storv al)()ut John Latham, wliose name 62 WAYSIDE NOTES. has appeared in a previous article of mine, has ever been published. J. J. Conant of Thetford, a gentleman well over eighty and who has just returned from a winter spent beyond the Mississippi, told me that it was either Sidney Converse, or a boy of a previous generation named Con- verse, who had playfully hit John over his bare back with a riding whip when he was taking one of his frequent baths in Post pond. John didn't say much, but watching his opportunity, seized the offender and plunged him under water, where he held him till he nearly drowned, chuckling the while, "There, ye little sinner, stay down there and watch the little fishes swim ! ' ' I believe it was INIrs. Conant who told me of the origin of the appellation of "Tater Hill," in Thetford. Mind you, it is not "Potato Hill." It seems that after the Revolution, a soldier in that war, named Crandall. and his wife, moved on to the hill, cleared up a few acres and reared a log cabin in the clearing, plant- ing the virgin soil to "taters." "Taters" grew in those days, and the tops had filled the clearing all but one lit- tle path or trail that led from the valley, when one night, Crandall 's brother from Connecticut came up to the cabin to be accommodated for the night. He thought they were elderberry bushes, but in the morning, when he saw them by daylight and noted that they had grown half way up the giant old growth trees and covered the cabin roof, he ejaculated, "Brother, you ought to call this 'Tater' Hill," and "Tater" Hill it has been from that day to this. Mr. Crandall and his wife both lived to be ninety-six years of age and died on the farm which they cleared on "Tater" Hill . WAYSIDE NOTES. 63 THE TATER. Here's to the glory of "taters" departed, The potatoes of commerce are naught to compare, So puiiky and guarly and oft hollow-hearted, And so few in the hill, as we all are aware. Those taters were taters, there's no use denying, Our grandfathers raised 'niong the stones and the stumps, As long as a ball bat, they used them for prying The rocks from the furrows, to pile them in clumps. Then hey for the taters, the great mealy taters, The bustiii' big taters our grandfathers raised; For stock, starch, or table they have no imitators. At their truthful description we may well be amazed. UP IN THETFORD. The Lost Name. — Bill Stevens' Stones. — Fletcher (Proctor) on Parade. Did yon ever have a name escape you? I have, and it gives one that foolish feelinor that makes one want to step out behind the shed and kiek him or herself, as the case may be. He was an aged citizen Of eighty years or more, And he sat beneath his chestnut tree Before his cottage door. And he was to the manor born In that vicinity; None were more versed in neighbor lore. Or longer lived than he. So I made bold of him to ask His nearest neighbor's name; He took it for an easy task To just pronounce the same. 64 WAYSIDE NOTES. "Oh, yes; his name is — lem-me-see! What the thunder is it any way? It's strange it has escaped from me. I see that fellow passing every day! "He's got a wart beside his nose, He wears a last year's hat. He's got a light gray suit of clothes, His name — I can't get that I "Just wait a minute — let me think! It's neither singular nor long." Then, pulling at his thin gray hair, He allowed his memory'd gone wrong! "Oh, never mind, my aged friend, I soon will learn your neighbor's name." So at the neighbor's door I called. He forthwith to the portal came. "Dear sir I" I said in accents mild, Being a stranger in your town Might I inquire your honored name?" "My honored name," says he, "is Brown!" Strange what a little thing, will floor a man sometimes. I called on my old friend Bill Stevens up in West Fairlee this week and tried to make him think he could remember David French, who used to live on the Leonard Quimby farm up on Tater Hill, thirty odd years ago; and after I mentioned that he had three girls and a boy, whose names were Eliza, George, Jennie and Emma, some of them about Bill's age, that subtle and elusive thing called memory be- gan to work, and Bill went back into its recesses and dug out the following: "Oh yes," said he, '*I remember Dave French all right. Lived right across the corner of the roads from him. I re- member right well he had one of the biggest and crossest old bulls I ever see. Had 'im turned out in a back pasture a good ways from the house, and me and my brother Fred didn't know anything about it till we got mighty nigh the middle of the lot one day, out skunk hunting. Then we MY HOMH. It isn't very pretty. It isn't very grand. But, friends, my wife lives in it — The best wife in the land! And who so has a. eottaj-'c, A little happy home. Has joy though hard Ins pathway And far his feet mav roam. So. vi(>w it not with scorning. This little lienveii on cartli. But may your own be like it. And may you know its worth ! WAYSIDE NOTES. 65 sighted the old fellow bearing down on us with his head down, full head of steam on, and bellering for blood. There was a swamp about thirty rods from us where a few logs and stumps would allow a foothold, and Fred and I made some long, irregular tracks in that direction, with the bull a close third. I don't know which got there first, but we Avere both ahead of the bull an' lit on the high places out in about two rods from the edge of the mire. The bull was so thirsty for gore that he never stopped till he was clear to his belty in the mud and couldn't get any nearer. So after we had tantalized the brute till he frothed at the mouth in his wild rage, we skipped out and went over and notified Dave that he'd have ter get a yoke of oxen and go over and pry up his bullship. And that is what he done, but he used to keep him in a pen with a ten-foot fence around it after that till he got ready to beef him." Mr. Stevens is of the opinion that trees grow rings or grains irregularly, growing three rings some years and none on others. He says that many years ago over at Campbell's Corner in Thetford, on the day that James Campbell was born, Eben Campbell, his father, left a little cherry tree growing in the garden that then had a slight stock and only two leaves, stating that when James was twenty-one years of age he would cut the tree down. True to his word he did cut it down on the day James was twenty-one, and there were forty-seven grains or circles from the heart to the circumference. "And," added Bill, "I guess Jim '11 vouch for the correctness of this statement." Somebody knows the story that goes with "Sawney Bean," a section of Thetford; "Canton," West Fairlee; "Pekin," Post Mills, and Skunk HoUow, but I dcm't. so I will leave it to other hands. Politics are waxing hot up among the green hills and mountains of old Vermont, and it may have been this, or the hot weather, or the fact that what I don't know about Vermont politics would fill a big book, that caused me to shed the following: 66 WAYSIDE NOTES. "Can you perceive our Percival?" Asked Fletcher on parade. "And what's the bugger doing of this morning? I've got a think a-coming, And I tell you I'm afraid!" "It's nothing much — it's nothing much!" His first lieutenant said, "For Clement's boom is dying at the horning." "What have the Independents done?" Asked Fletcher on parade. "And will they stick until election morning? I'm troubled in my dreams of them, In battle paint arrayed." "Oh, don't you fear — oh, don't you fear!" His first lieutenant said, "We've got the dough to win, election morning." "But the Democrats have swallowed him," Says Fletcher on parade. "The bob and line and sinker all have gone in. And if they can keep 'im down, I just know my game is played." "Now switch that off — now switch that off!" His first lieutenant said, "For its dough will win the game, election morning.' AMONG THE GREEN HILLS OF HANOVER, The 8 elf -Made Toad.— Mrs. M. and the Parson.— Don't Judge Hastily. He viewed me with his placid eye. He neither smiled nor spoke. He was a thing of mystery, His style I scarce could brook. He moved not from his country seat Beside the teeming road, And all who passed with high disdain He viewed — this warty toad! WAYSIDE NOTES. 67 For he had passed a lifetime there, And every sign he wore That he was a really "self-made" toad, What could he want for, more? And while he swelled with sudden pride Because of place and power, A dump cart wheel rolled over his head And laid him low that hour! Readers, we have most of us witnessed such a sad termi- nation as that depicted above, but have we ever realized that the poor toad is a type of a class of people and cor- porate organizations that play their little parts on a more or less larger scale ? Well, he is, and the next few years, unless all signs fail, the "dump cart wheel" of destiny is liable to work havoc with some of the best laid schemes of our alleged self-made men of commerce and industry. "Watch and see! I was pleased not long since by a little piece of neigh- borhood gossip that I heard that I don't think will hurt anyone in retailing and had considerable of a humorous "tinge to it. It seems that the good parson of the locality had been making calls on his parishioners, and among the number was old I\Irs. M . Twice had he called and exchanged views on the w^eather, the old lady's health, the crops, the prospects for spring chickens, and the state of that particular branch of Zion. Twice had he been invited to stop to supper and twice had he accepted the invitation. Twice also he had wound up his pastoral visit with a brief and satisfactory prayer. Twice, too, when he shook the hand of the dear old ^Mother in Israel had he found a silver dollar in his not reluctant palm. But the third time was his undoing. "Yes," remarked Mrs. M. reminiscently, "he come here and was jest as nice as could be till after supper, an' he'd i)ieked his teeth an' praised my victuals an' inquired all about my late husband, whose picture was hanging opposite the lookin' glass in the sitting room, an' 68 WAYSIDE NOTES. asked if we shouldn't have a season of prayer, and then what do you suppose he started off with? Well, you couldn 't guess in a year. He gets down beside the big arm chair I always set in for the parson, and I bowed my head and he says, says he, 'Lord. I thank thee that even a little light has shined in on the ignorant!' Think of it! Now who did that ereeter mean? I guess, by gracious, if he meant me he could save his breath ! I ain 't any more ig- norant than he is, and I straightened right up and let him pray it out, and when he got through, I rose up and showed him the door with an air that would keep milk from turn- ing for a week, I guess, an' I didn't shake his hand neither. He looked kind of worked up, but he never said a word and took his hat an' left as stiff as a ramrod, an' he hain't darkened my door since. Well, last week who should I see out here on the corner but the parson, and he was talking with Deacon Spilker and Mr. Potts, the druggist, and I walks right out to 'em, for I wanted 'em to hear what I was about to say, and says I: 'Parson, you was kind enough to call on me twice, and when you first came I gave you a dollar for coming. Now for six weeks you haven't been nigh the house, and here's a dollar,' says I, 'for stayin' away, ' ' ' ' Do you mean it ? ' says he. and says I 'I do ! ' and with that I held out the dollar and he took it and stuffed it in his pocket with a queer look on his face, and Deacon Spilker coughed, and Mr. Potts appeared as if he was tickled over something. WellJ I went back in the house then and haven't seen the parson since." Everyone knows I am not a politician and will realize that I approach the subject without prejudice, and with my usual jaunty manner, as follows : A gay old silk stocking from Boston Aspired to be Gov'ner for "just one ;" But while money talks, In spite of his rocks His "address" was the point he lost on! WAYSIDE NOTES. 69 A "close" man who lives in the city Opined he could capture the kitty, Put his eggs in "Put's" hat, (He was blind as a bat) For he dropped the whole l)unch — what a pity! (But he got there just the same.) There was "Rosy" from Derry and he — Boui^ht a trumpet and blowed it quite free. But he blew it so loud That he tired the crowd. So that was the end of all three. For that "Last shall be first in the race" Has been often and often the case. And the Sullivan man. The latest who ran. May (nit) get the coveted place. In traveling about over the state I am brought in contact with many of the brothers of the mystic links every day, and I wish to say that I have yet to meet one of whom I was ashamed, and hope the sentiment may be reciprocated. Odd Fellowship is a school that teaches the age-old lesson that humanity will never cease to need of our common brotherhood. As we meet and greet a brother, there is a thrill of pleasure little less than that experienced in the meeting of a blood relation, and as we think with pride and satisfaction of what Odd Fellowship has done, and is do- ing, it is barely possible that we may throw out the chest just a little too much. In this connection you will pardon me if I refer to a little incident related to me by a brother in Whitefield. He said that while living at Lisbon some years ago, an aged brother in the order fell sick, and for a long time re- ceived the aid from his lodge to which he was entitled, including care and watchers when needed, and he finally died, receiving the last sad rites of the order. Now the old gentleman was also a ^lason, and while it was known that the\' had lielpod him in his hours of dis- 70 WATSIDE NOTES. tress, it was generally believed that the Odd Fellows had done for him much the most. At a meeting of the order soon after the brother's burial, some criticism of the Ma- sonic fraternity was heard in the lodge room for the sup- posed lack of fraternal aid in the case in question. After a while the brother who related the incident, and who is also a Mason, proposed that a committee of two, one from each order, be sent to interview the widow of the late brother on the subject of aid received. This committee, after the interview, reported duly, and some of the brothers were surprised to learn that the Masonic fraternity had in this particular case given much the largest amount for the relief of the brother. Let us, brothers, keep on in our good work, knowing that it is more blessed to- give than to receive, and honoring kindred fraternal orders engaged in the same great work. There is a field for all. THE POLITICAL SITUATION In New Hampshire, as it Appeared August 11, 1906. Oh who shall wave the banner, And who shall bear the palm ; To whom the loud hozanna Float lip from town and farm? "Oh, I will take the pennant," Says cheerful Rosy P. "I'll whittle down your taxes, If you will hear to me. I'm I'eady and I'm willing. And I'm listening patiently To hear that office calling, And my name's Economy ! Oh, I'll pare the state's expenses Till they look like 30 cents ; And the nigger in the woodpile I'll expose, at all events !" WxVYSIDE NOTES. Then up speaks the gonial Greenleaf From his perch among the rocks, Telling how he loves our mountains, You can safely bet your socks ! And he wouldn't shirk the duties Of his citizenship, no fear; And he's willing to be governor Fully two months in the year ! And Charlie Floyd, the "Close" man. Is more than willing, too, With his polished "B. M." collar. To govern just a few. What with these and Winston Churchill. The quill pushing Cornish man, There'll be one to hold the standard. And three, at least, who "also ran." So sound 'em on "the issues" And thump 'em on the back, .nd make 'em promise faithful. So they can't take it back. What about the Salem race track And the awful liquor curse? hat will they do with the dog laws. And with "mobiles," which are worse? Will they free our old toll bridges. And do up the grafter crew? The hete noir of all "muckrakers," Will they kill free liasses too? Oh, they love the horny-fisted Son of toil an awful lot ; But will it last all winter. When the campaign is forgot? Will it last till after Christmas. With its heart throb fierce and hot? I iiause to hear some doubting Thomas Coolly answer, "I guess not 1" 71 72 WAYSIDE NOTES. DIFFICULTIES OF A HUMORIST. People Who Balk at Puhlicity. — The Back Comb. — Lost Wad. — Dog Days. — Advertising Frauds. — Urwle Mark Pierce and the Needed Rain. — An Andover Reminiscence. August 20, 1906. It is with diffidence that I resume my pencil after an absence of a year from your midst. The fact is that some of your readers took me too seriously last year, and one en- terprising gentleman stated to me last week, that if he had met me just after reading an article of mine in which he was mentioned, there would have been seven kinds of trouble and black eyes for at least one. A gentleman like that of course isn't to blame. He isn't used to having his name and business paraded in cold type, but really there was nothing to get excited over. Think of Brother Rockefeller and Brother Carnegie and Uncle Russell Sage and Hettie Green. Can you remember anything compli- mentary having been said of them in the last ten years un- less it was a paid advertisement, and you don't hear of their rearing up on their hind legs and prancing into the publicity arena wanting to maul someone and wipe up the floor with them, also decorate their optics, or put a new kink in their nose? Indeed not! Why, they'd have to work overtime to chase down a thousandth part of the lies that are told about them, to say nothing of the truth, and that's a good deal more than some people can stand. This year I have determined to mention no names and then there won't be any trouble, except in cases where it is absolutely necessary. The first new sub I took this w^eek looked rather sheepish when in reaching into his back pocket for some of the need- ful for the Reporter, he pulled out instead of a wallet, a lady's back hair comb. But he was equal to the emer- WAYSIDE NOTES. geiicy. and explained that he found it under an old apple tree up near one of the summer boarding houses. I think it belonged to one of those Boston school-marms. Last spring a Kearsarge man was plowing, on the road leading from the Russell Cottages to Intervale, and after plowing up an acre or so he discovered that his pocket- book had in some way slipped into a furrow and been cov- ered up. As it contained over a hundred dollars and valu- able papers, it was too valuable to lose, and so, like the famous "man of our town, and he was wondrous wise," who "jumped into another bush and scratched them (his eyes) back again," our friend reversed his plow and after turning back fifteen furrows plowed up his lost treasure, which was a pretty good day's work in itself. The weather we've had recently has been doggoned hot, even for dog days, in which dogs are supposed to go on a rampage. Speaking of dogs, I am inclined to believe that they are fully as safe in dog days as at any time. I have certainly found them so. A dog that will exert him- self to unload a load of bark for your special benefit on one of these sweltering August days, is an enterprising and hard working pup and ought to be encouraged— where you enjoy the bark and can use it in your business. There is a man up at Glen Station who is one of a thou- sand. He has been unable to move except on crutches or in a wheel chair for nearly five years. His ailment is, I be- lieve, a spinal trouble. He answered, it seems, an adver- tisement of a specialist in New York, who engaged to im- prove his condition within a specified time or refund the cost of the treatment, which had to be paid in advance. The treatment was taken according to directions, with abso- lutely no improvement, and of course a request for the promised "refund" was made. This was met by the doc- tor in New York with a demand for a string of affidavits and legal requirements sworn to before a justice. It hap- pens that our sick friend has a neighbor who is a justice and so it was not so hard to fill out the papers as requested <-t WAYSIDE NOTES. •* and fire them back at the New York doctor, with the result that he actually got his money back. The point of the above unvarnished tale (I am not going to varnish any more tales) is that if patent medicine vend- ers, picture enlargers, book agents, — yes, and some news- paper and magazine canvassers would use the public as they would like to be used themselves, business would be better for bona fide agents. One of the worst swindles going is the oily sneak who comes to you and begs your photographs of dead or living friends for enlarging, agreeing to return the picture, and you needn't pay for the enlarged picture unless it suits you. Nothing is said about a frame. When after a long and tedious wait you are notified that you can have the enlarged picture by paying for a three or four dollar frame. Otherwise — and this is the dirtiest part of the business — you don 't get your original photograph back. I know several cases in my experience where this has hap- pened and the picture stolen was the only one they had of some near and dear friend. The picture thief is the worst kind of a thief, and it has become such a nuisance that few people will trust a picture of a loved one in the hands of strangers without absolute proof of their honesty. I know Uncle Mark Pierce won't get mad if I mention his name. He lives up near Glen Station and is on the sunny side (that's the western side, you know) of eighty; and when I remarked that I was wearing (dust) tanned shoes the other day, his instant rejoinder was that they were getting mighty popular, which reminds us that it's time for more rain. Crops generally have done well all over New Hampshire where I have traveled, but I hope before this reaches your readers the much needed will have happened ; as the old fellow prayed at the meeting which had been devoted to prayers for long-delayed rain, and af- ter several different kinds of copious and sudden down- pourings had been requested, this old chap prayed as follows: "Oh Lord, send us rain. We need it. But, Lord, don't send it in cloud-bursts an' torrents an' sudden WAYSIDE NOTES. '^ floods, ez these folks has been eallin' for, but. Lord, send us a good old drizzly-drozzly rain that soaks in gradual and freshens up the yearth!" That's the kind we're look- ing for at the present time. Over in Andover, N. H., twenty miles from the state house in Concord, many years ago there lived a family of Pages, in which w^ere two boys who grew to manhood to- gether and were inseparable companions. A certani quaintness of speech and shrewd simplicity made them marked characters, whose sayings were handed down and will be remembered by older residents of Andover even now. One day the boys went up on what was known as Stevens Hill near the Flaghole, where the state house in the dis- tance was plainly visible. Lander Page, shading his eyes and looking intently in that direction, declared: "Bruver Jo, I can see a ''minge" (small insect) on the state house dome ! ' ' Bruver Jo, not to be outdone, shaded his own eyes and after taking a long look replied : ' ' So you can, Bruver Lander, and I can see him wink." If this story has been told before, it may be new to some. A FEW STORIES FROM THE SACO. He Wouldn't Have it Sawed Off, Thank You.— Bill Dim- ick's Pig Story.— McGillicuddy, the Lahor Van.— Ac- cording to Sam Oompers. " September 3. 1906. Among the smart old men of Eaton, which town I visited last week. I think :\Ir. Joseph Shackford should be men- tioned. Last winter :\Ir. Shackford had the misfortune to lose two of his fingers in a buzz saw, and as they didn't seem to heal as rapidly as desired, on advice of a local physician, he went to a hospital down country for treatment. These down country hospitals are a great institution for carving people up and splicing and transplanting, etc., but 76 WAYSIDE NOTES. when they told Mr. Shaekford that they couldn't see but what he would have to have his arm lopped off, he averred that he couldn't see it in that light, and he guessed he'd lug his arm back with him just as it was, if it was all the same to them. The upshot was that Mr. Bickford came back to Eaton, and though over eighty years of age, has used that arm (and the other one) in planting, hoeing and raising as nice pieces of corn, beans and potatoes, acres in extent, as there are in Eaton, besides haying and all his other farm work. I don't think these flip doctors would be so ready to part with portions of their anatomy as they are to slice up other people. There is a remarkable spring in West Fryeburg at the farm of Mrs. Sarah N. Stevens, which always fails up in a wet time but puts in its best licks the dryer the weather happens to be. This is accounted for on the theory that the vein of which the spring is a part runs with such force when there is plenty of water that it is diverted to another channel. This theory, I confess, doesn't sound just right somehow, but I mention it just to see if some of our local wise men couldn't trot out a better one. I can't. The new trail up Kearsarge Mountain from Alvin Head's in South Chatham is much patronized this season and some of these fine fall days the views are said to be ex- cellent from the summit. I am willing to take their word for it, as I like the view (of the summit) better from the old familiar country roads that I have been promenading over with my little brown bag for the last dozen years or so. Bill Dimick of North Conway, where I spent Sunday with my wife, told me a bran new (to me) story, and I guess it comes in here. It seems that in a certain com- munity, thirty or forty miles from here (it couldn't have been any nearer) lived one of those lean-souled people who always borrow, but never lend, and he had been borrowing pork of his neighbors with the voluble assurance that "he'd pay it back when he killed his pig." until he actually bor- rowed more pork than his most sanguine estimate of his WAYSIDE NOTES. 77 own porker would enable him to return. He happened to mention this fact to a neighbor, when he advised him as follows : " I '11 tell you what you do, Rube ; you kill your pig an' hang it out ter cool over night; then you pull it in early an' take it down cellar an' hide it, then you give out that air pig was stole, see? An' they'll believe ye an' they'll be so sorry they'll maybe chip in an' give ye some more pork, see ? ' ' Rube "see" and he followed directions to the letter — with one exception. When he got up and went out to pull in his pig in the frosty morning hour — it wasn't there! His wise neighbor had it in liis cellar. Over went Rube to this neighbor and came storming in vociferating that "some one had stolen his pig." "That's right, that's right, old feller," chimed in the neighbor, "stick to it right smart; they'll suttinly believe ye!" "But I tell you it is stole!" yelled Rube, purple in the face. "Didn't I say that was right, neighbor?" yelled the other. ' ' Stick to it, they '11 all believe ye. ' ' And Rube took his large bunch of wrath and departed and really it was not much satisfaction to him that they did all believe him, but I hope they didn't give him any more pork. It served him right, pretty near! As I was crossing the lawn of Doctor Lougee. at Frye- burg, on Friday la.st, I noticed a young man sprinting down ]\Iain Street and once only he let out a yell, ' ' Fire ! " He didn't need to yell again. I glanced to the roof of the Ox- ford House, where thick, heavy smoke was pouring from end to end and from the windows of the towers at either corner. It was doomed, and only for sheer luck the whole village would have gone. The water in the hose pipes had very little force, and finally gave out altogether. Four- teen houses were swept away during that fateful da.y, and Fryeburg has a problem of ade(|uate water supply for fire protection, which is easier to lay out Ihan it is to figure out. 78 WAYSIDE NOTES. I called at North Fryebiirg at the bran new hall, as I heard a distant rumbling- that indicated some kind of an at- mospheric (hot air) disturbance. I found it was only D. J. McGillicuddy, from Lewiston, trying to convince a bunch of the horny-fisted that he was a great friend of the labor- ing man. With tears in his eyes he told them that the wicked Eepublicans had got all the offices in the state of Maine trustified and allotted; in particular the speaker of the house and the president of the senate are mortgaged till 1942. As I wasn't after any of those offices, I didn't stop to hear any more, but I think it is too bad they won't let Dan have a job; he is "an awful willin' worker!" But seriously, the spectacle of Sam Gompers without the shadow of authority from the A. F. of L., prancing into Little- field's district and trying to pay off a personal score by electing the genial and rubicund Daniel to an office in which there is no evidence he would favor labor more than his op- ponent, when there is a candidate in the field, on a plat- form favoring all the demands of labor and also all that labor ought to demand, a candidate who carries a Union card in his pocket and the interests of Union labor at heart, is one most edifying to "the man in the road!" After about a thousand years more Gompers will learn something of the proper attitude of labor in politics. He doesn't know its a, b. c now, and is a mighty lame duck for the position he has been honored with. MR. PITCHERS STILL TRAVELING. Appropriate Mnsings. — Taking Notes. — Jerry Goodwin's Trains Full as Usual. — TJ^icle Gust Fullerton's Story. December 10, 1906. Fame is a verj" elusive thing, dear readers, and while you are making a wild and frantic dash for the star-eyed, wall- eyed or cross-eyed goddess, I shall never undertake to put salt on her — excuse me — to catch up with her. WAYSIDE NOTES. 79 I've been traveling in Carroll County for eleven years (does it seem so long?) and I've just got to the point where a few people know me, — not by my first name, but as Mr. Pitchers. They say ' ' Little ' ' doesn 't sound appropriate to a red-faced, bald-headed, hippopotamus-shaped old lobster, who has been successfully initiated into the venerable and ancient order of Grandads (with a big G, please), and it doesn't make but little difference to me, so long as they suit themselves. One old lady I met called me a money grabber. That hurt what remains of my feelings. The idea ! I\Ie mercenary ? Perish the thought ! Any one who has ever noticed the unassuming and insinuating manner I have when I amble into the door yard, causing the hens and eats to take refuge in flight, and dogs, if there are any, to at once assume a Avarlike attitude, will admit without coaching, that my visits are of the purely unofficial and so- cial variety ; but perhaps you never noticed that when I 've pinched whatever filthy lucre there may be coming my way, while I fain would longer linger, I do not linger longer — I skiddoo, as it were, leaving nothing behind but the mem- ory of my fascinating smile — grin, some call it. I have noticed in my varied career that it pays to take notice as one goes along, and to take notes — if they are col- lectable, so last Monday Avhen I was at Epping I took some observations. The first thing I noticed was a gentleman Avith a jumper and overalls on. lugging a small forge and several metallic tools over past the railroad station, and I sized him up for a plumber. When I Avoke up and found all the Avater ])ipes in the house frozen up the other morn- ing, I realized Avhat the plumber is for. lie is the man Avho rii)s up your floor, tears the inAvards out of your sink, iuA-estigates the secret places of the most high, so to speak, and makes out an elegant bill after it is all oA'or but the shouting — you are the fellow Avho has to shout. I asked the plumber Avhat Avas the price of eighteen carat diamonds, and Avhat make of automobile he used Avhile touring the continent in the good old sunnner time, but he never 80 WAYSIDE NOTES. laughed. I hoped to win his confidence and engage him in conversation, but all he said was for me to go and follow myself round a while. Then I noticed a carload of boards in a freight train near by and took a note of that. Perhaps no one will be inter- ested in this item, but when I say that I observed the sta- tion agent go along and yank out a piece about six feet long from between the two piles, where a knight of the road had been occupying an upper berth, I reflected that there were some things rougher than the planed side of a board to ride on, — for instance, the rough side. The station agent didn't place the board on top of the load, as I thought he would. No, he shoved it under the platform with a lot of others, and I learned a lesson in thrift. If he had taken something more valuable it would have been graft, but that isn't near as pretty a word, gentle readers. Another carload on the train I mention contained, I should say, 300 small fir trees about three inches in diameter at the butt. Christmas is coming. Hundreds of carloads of these trees will be cut from the hillsides of New Eng- land to gratify a time-honored custom, but does it pay? In a few years where is all the paper stock to come from? There was enough fibre in one of those fir trees to make a whole Boston Sunday paper, with a Bingville supplement, containing forty 'leven pages, and here it was being wasted to hang Christmas presents on. "When I thought of what future generations would do for Boston Sunday papers, it unnerved me, and I went in and took a drink — of ice- water. When I got to Rochester, Jerry's train was standing right where it was last summer when I was there, and Jerry stood by the steps explaining to a red-headed woman from Happy Valley when the 11.30 train would leave, so I did not butt in on the conversation, but squirmed into the smoking car. I carry a corkscrew for the purpose; it's the only way I know of, as it's always jam full. Through the thick clouds of tobacco smoke I saw a seat half-way down the car, and INIOX STATION. U()('lll>l l.l; N. II- WAYSIDE NOTES. 81 with me, to see a thing like that on Jerry Goodwin's train is to appropriate it. There was a drummer saw it a trifle later than I did; at any rate I slid into it first, and he landed second. As he got up out of my lap and glared at me, he hissed with biting sarcasm, "You're no lady!" I didn't dispute him, but passed the matter off with a light remark about being "onto my job." The fact is, you have to be if you get a seat in the smoker on Jerry's train. Up at Wolfeboro, where I've been reconnoitering this week, "Uncle Gust" Fullerton was telling me about an old- timer who lived on the Cemetery hill, towards Mirror Lake, named Ben Tibbetts. He lived, I think, where Blake Home now lives, and had a son whom he wanted to give a good education, a thing he had been deprived of himself. After a while the boy arrived at that period in the acquisi- tion of knowledge which comes to many of us sooner or later, when he discovered that his pa "never et a goger- phy or sw^allowed a 'rithmetic. ' ' He w^as mortified beyond measure to find that his dad had been farming on the theory that the earth was flat, and in spite of his efforts to con- vince him, he refused to believe that the globe on which we lived whirled round from west to east once every twenty- four hours, unavoidable delays excepted. And the old man's disgust was plainly evident when he told a neigh- bor that "if that air boy goes to school much longer he'll be a natural born fool! " All of which shows the danger of too much education interfering with filial relations. As I faced the northwester that blew on the "Broads," across the Wolfeboro hills, I got a little gay with the poetic deity unbeknown to him, no doubt, with the following sad result : Oh, where are all those moonlight larks The boarders took last summer, The open-work soeks and peek-a-boos — (My, wan't that girl a stunner I) The birds are gone with all their songs, (Oh, lovely were those peaches!) The time for fruit is when it's ripe, — That's what reflection teaches. 7 82 WAYSIDE NOTES. IN OSSIPEE. A Moral Bach ^Voods Community. — Grover Cleveland's Haunts. — How Pine Grows. — Marsfon's Bees and Other Bees. December 17, 1906. When I arrived at Ossipee last week, the "beautiful snow," so called, had got there (about a foot) ahead of me, but, as I landed with both feet, that made me one foot ahead, and during the short and shadowy afternoon I jDlod- ded round by the county farm and brought up at Emily Goldsmith's, a mile north of the Corner, whose comfortable home has sheltered Little Pitchers on several previous oc- casions. Friend Meloon at the county farm informed me there were only three prisoners in the county jail and his "fam- ily" is only about seventy, all told. That speaks well for both the prosperity and morality of the country we heard so much about last year in the Boston papers as being a sort of Sodom of lawlessness and riot. It's fortunate for some people that liars don't all meet the fate of Ananias, and it was rather tough on him that he lived too soon. He could make big money writing specials for the daily papers if he were only alive now. Tuesday I went up by Duncan Lake, where Grover Cleve- land has a summer cottage and spends quite a lot of his vacation from his insurance duties. Grover says the mos- quitoes here will compare favoral)ly with those he is used to in New Jersey, and quite a lot of them will weigh a pound. If, as I've been informed. Duncan Lake has no visible outlet, I should not think its waters in a dry season would be very inviting, but Grover has tastes of his own, and in his quest for seclusion and the simple life, he has shown extreme good sense, while honoring New^ Hampshire and Carroll County especially with his kindly presence. WAYSIDE NOTES. 83 They are cutting off the biill pines, white pines, Norway pines and everything else that is eutable on Pine River phiius, and when I made a flippant remark about seeing the finish of the pine industry to an Effingham man this week he stated in rebuttal that there were more than ten million feet of pine yet in Effingham, and quite a lot of other tim- ber. Pine just naturally grows in this region, and all you have to do is to forget to cut the grass for a couple of years and the little pines shoot up twenty to thirty inches in a season. J. L. Marston is getting quite a reputation as a bee hunter. His regular stunt is in the line of nice juicy steaks, veal-ram-lam-sheep and mutton, but he has cap- tured five swarms of bees this fall, and several hundred pounds of honey. Two swarms he found in the swamps at the foot of Green Mountain, one up on the side of the moun- tain, one near Lily pond, and one in the partitions of a dwelling house in Lynn. I\Ir. jMarston saved one swarm and the rest were destroyed. It is said that bees are getting numerous over at the state capitol as the time for the Legislature to meet and elect a U. S. senator draws nigh. We hope some people won't get stung, but we fear they will. Political bees are elusive creatures. I've been asked so many times what I think about politics that I 'm going to set down a few thinks here. They don't cost you a cent. I think Mr. Floyd will be elected by the Legislature, not because he ought to be, but because the party lash will be applied, and men who would like right well to "rub in" his unpopularity won't dare to. I think that Heniy E. Burnham will be re-elected U. S. senator, not because he is the fittest for the position, but because he is a perfectly safe man for the corporation, and they have no reason to tlirow him overboard that I have dis- covered. I think there will Ix' an anti free i)ass law ]>assed and 84 WAYSIDE NOTES. signed by Mr. Floyd, because the railroads Avant one. It will pay them better and appease a popular clamor. I think no anti-railroad law will be passed; that the work of the Lincoln Republican Club has fizzled out ; that Putney and the corporation crowd are in full control of New Hampshire, and will be until men with more sand than The Lincoln Club undertake the house-cleaning. Speaking of railroad domination, a gentleman I met a few days ago told me that a friend of his was in Lucius Tuttle 's office in Boston while the convention in Concord was wrest- ling with the choice of a Republican candidate for gover- nor, and overheard a verbal order to a lieutenant on the ground, "to nominate Floyd, cost what it may." Of course with such platform as that manufactured by the Republi- can phrase butchers strictly "to get in on" and nothing else, Floyd was the logical candidate. They can use him in their business ! How much it cost to cause Pillsbury to fly to the support of his old friend and schoolmate (Put- ney's man, Floyd) and call off the bold bluff of Churchill and the Lincoln Republicans can never be known, as it will never have place in the archives of campaign expenses. IN MADISON, Christmas. — C. 0. Knox's Experience. — The Elder at the "Corner." — Jim Durgy's Farm. — Friend Gihnan's Ejn- sodes. Silver Lake, N. H., December'25. 1906. The observant citizen will notice when his eagle eye hits the top of this column that Christmas is here. Some people don't notice anything about this joyous festival but the gradual elongation of the leg, which takes place about this time of the year, as the almanacs say ; but this lengthening WAYSIDE NOTES. 85 process isn't fatal, thank Heaven, and after it is all over we may go forth with a light heart and a lighter pocket- book to face the stern realities of life, conscious of a wad well spent. Charles 0. Knox, who lives on a slight elevation over to- wards Hedgehog Mountain, at "Six Mile Pond," and works on the railroad section, was just about to retire at 7 p. m. last IMonday evening when he was aroused by something crushing through the crusted snow back of his house, and looking out of his back window saw a large dark object moving around the end of the house towards the "port cullis" (see dictionary). He got there first, however, pre- pared for bear or wildcat, or whatever it might be. Well, friends, it might be either one of them, but it was not; it was Little Pitchers, somewhat winded, but still in the ring. The track we made looked like "Bill Hepburn's" fresh from the county seat (see Bingville Bugle), but I'll swear Little Pitchers hadn't taken a thing except a few subscrib- ers, and he had a thirst on him something awful, and hungry enough to eat a leather pie. I\Ir. Knox, who is eighty years young and growing younger faster than we are, took us in, and while he told us stories of his cooking experiences at Alton Bay campmeetings, twenty years ago, ]\Iiss Ella, his comely housekeeper, completed the arrange- ments for filling a long felt want in Little Pitchers. ]\Ir. Knox used to wrestle nine hundred (900) pounds of meat per day, a barrel of potatoes, and beets, turnips, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, etc., etc., for the edification of the in- ner man. He wasn't much on the super man; the parsons attended to that, but when it came right down where we do business," he was evidently ' ' Johnnie on the spot ' ' with the goods, and we'll bet a doughnut against a transcenden- tal continental that he saved more souls and did more good than all the elders on the grand stand. The way to reach a sinner's heart is through his stomach, and when it comes to that, a hungry man is like one that hath no music in his soul — fit for treasons, strategems and desperate 86 WAYSIDE NOTES. deeds. Don't mistake us, dear readers; this world would be a dreary waste without our elders, who are onto their jobs, as most of them are; but w^e firmly believe that when the Kingdom of Heaven is set upon this earth, where it rightly belongs (see Lord's prayer), its foundations w^ill be laid broad and deep in full stomachs and physical and ma- terial prosperit3^ If you doubt this, that's your privilege, but our guess is as good as yours for a while yet. "When we struck the parsonage at Madison Corner, we were about to rap in a subdued manner on the outer door, when a hair-raising sound, as of mortal agony, came from the wood shed ; then there was another, bimeby there was some more, and the noise of a desperate struggle. We must act and act quickly. In a time like this a brave man will not hesitate. Clinching our teeth firmly, we cautiously stepped down off the veranda and started for Doctor ]Mar- tin's, but e'er w^e reached the doctor's we met the elder's wife coming from the post-office, totally unconscious of w^hat was happening in their happy home. We. in a few brief sentences, explained our idea that "murder most fowl" was being done in that woodshed, and for goodness sake for her to hurry home at once. But she merely re- marked: "0 fudge, he's only killing a hen!" JIM DURGEY'S FARM. Jim Diirgey lived on a sightly hill, Where the mountains lined the sky. He toiled in his fields for many a year, And he put a snug nest egg by. He chopped in his woods in the winter time. And he logged all his timber down. He figured and saved each dollar and dime, And at last he moved into town. But he never once thought of those matchless hills Among which his life work laid. Nor caught the grand thought with which God fills The land that His centuries made. THK Sl'LKNDOR OF MORNINOS ON MOUNTAIN ToTS. WAYSIDE NOTES. 87 The spleutlor of mornings on mountain tops To Jim Durgey liad never a charm, And sunsets rare when night's curtain drops Were no use to him on his farm. But a man who grubbed in the noisy town And wearied his soul in its niurlv, Came out and bought Jim Durgey's farm, As a place to rest from his work. P. S. This last fellow is supposed to have seen more beauty in the landscape lying around loose over on the Lead Mine Road than Jim did, but our gasoline engine went back on us before we could saw off any more verses, and Brother Dorr has got to have this early, so we'll let the reader imagine the rest. Our friend, Oilman, at Center Ossipee, told us about two matrimonial episodes that he said happened in Ossipee. One couple being duly hitched, the grateful swain in- quired Avhat the bill amounted to. "Well," said the elder, as he mentally wondered whether the fellow figured on the basis of a sure thing or a gold brick, "the law allows me one dollar, but you can pay me what it's worth." "Oh!" saj'S the thrifty benedict, "I didn't know that. Well, if the law allows you a dollar, parson, I'll gin ye fifty cents more an' that'll make it a dollar an' a half, b'gosh, an' it's worth it, ain't it, Sally?" "How much, parson?" asked the man in the case, in episode number two, after the indissoluble bonds had been fitted with neatness and dispatch to the willing necks of the happy pair. The parson with becoming diffidence de- clining to fix a price in so sacred a matter, the man in the case (an expert fisherman) helped him out thus: "Well, parson, this 'ere is sunthin we don't do every day an' I shall always feel obliged to ye an' so will ]\[ary. TIow would a nice mess 'er suckers strike ye'" We think they probably struck where I wear my tlap- jacks — right in the stomach. ]\rr. Oilman once had a neighl)or. ])ut nnieli to his sor- bo WAYSIDE NOTES. row, he has moved away, after the death of his lamented wife, down into Maine. Before his departure, however, he held an auction and sold off all his household goods, tools and farm — except a timber lot, which around here is worth more than money in the bank — and among other things a picture of his wife went under the hammer, so we are told, as its possession made the poor man feel bad. Once Mr. Oilman called on his neighbor, as neighbors do in the country sometimes, and requested the loan of his log- ging sleds, as he was having some new ones made and couldn't Avait for them. His neighbor was away at the time and his wife loaned the sleds. When Mr. Oilman's own sleds were done, he took home the borrowed ones in complete order, but was met with the assertion that he had stolen them, and nothing less than $10 (which was more than they were worth) would settle. Mr. Oilman being a peaceable man, offered to swap his new sleds for the old ones, which was finally agreed to, but when his hired man went down and brought the sleds home they were minus the clevis which belonged to them, all of which shows that all the mean cusses don't live in the city after all. MILTON THREE PONDS AND UP ALONG. The Ice Crop. — "That you, George f" — Snowshoeing. — Lumbermen Bampant. — Mr. Sylvester White's Ohserva- tions of the Hedgehog. December 31, 1906. The Carroll County ice crop is being harvested and it's a good one. Ice will be so cheap another summer that it will be within reach of all. Even in Khode Island and Connecticut they are cutting a fair quality of ice, and it is stated that Rockefeller has an ice (a nice) pond on his WAYSIDE NOTES. 89 preserves in New Jersey on which he can be seen skating M'ith great sang froid (see dictionary) while his bank ac- count increases at the rate of three dollars a second. When- ever he sits down unexpected^ on the ice it is said to leave a clearly defined dollar sign on the surface — everything some people touch seems to turn to money. We were de- scending the steps of a house at Milton Three Ponds one time and our feet slipped out from under us, while our brown leather bag flew wildly aloft; we didn't strike on our stern end either, we struck on our stomach and the result was a couple of "owes" instead of a dollar mark. As we turned down the dark lane that leads to the Widow Moore's, near Black Man's mill, after dark last Wednesday evening, a couple of ladies passed along the main road, and descrying a dark object (which was we), called out in a friendly way: "That you, George?" Now George was the widow's son, and of course we denied the charge, promptly adding that we were Little Pitchers, and the quick chorus of "Oh yes, we know you!" convinced us that Little Pitchers is certainly well, if not favorably, known in daylight or dark in this county where our busi- ness has taken us the last ten years. More than the usual number of snowshoers are attracted to the mountains this winter on account of the deep snows and prospects now of a "real old-fashioned winter." But we are thankful that we get exercise enough without being obliged to tie a couple of great snowshoe rafts onto our feet and punch irregular holes in the snow over the white and drift-covered landscape. We will give a reward of fifty cents to any person who can show us where the fun comes in. The lumbermen are around the mountains up here and over in Pemigewasset valley and up north of the Presiden- tial and Franconia ranges of mountains, frantically work- ing into the remaining fringe of timber, trying to get the last of it ])efore the government steps in and makes a na- tional reservation out of the ghastly remains. They re- 90 WAYSIDE NOTES. mind us of the worms that attack an unburied carcass, and there'll be about as much left when they finish. The fourteen miles of new railway from Conway up Swift River will land millions of feet of lumber on the line leading to Portsmouth and the immense pulp mill lo- cated there, and with the large plant of Kennett & Lord up near Passaconway Mountain turning out five million feet this winter, work is going to be plenty and help scarce. "We offered our services the other day as a cookie (cook's helper) in one of the camps, but the boss, after critically surveying our front elevation, allowed we would help the cook too much and passed us on. We ain't to blame if we are forty-six inches round the waist and still growing. One of our respected parents ate a good while and the other ate a good deal, and we happened to take after them both, which accounts for our undoubted capacity as a gastro- nomic artist. Sylvester "White of Gossville, N. H., who is stopping at Newman Drew's, under the shadow of one of the Ossipee group of mountains, and on the banks of the Bear Camp River, believes religiously in white hedgehogs. "We've heard of white blackbirds and they are very scarce, but now we are asked to believe that white hedgehogs exist. To prove this proposition Mr. "White produced a tobacco box full of white hedgehog hair and quills, which came from a se- cluded part of the mountain, where a fox and hedgehog had participated in a banquet. Mr. "White had what was left of that hedgehog after the festivities were over. It now remains for some enterprising observer to produce a live white hedgehog before some darn fox has used him in his business. CHoroRTA KHOM CHOCOHIA LAKK. WAYSIDE NOTES. 91 CHOCORUA AND THE BEAR CAMP. An Educated Bird Dog. — Emotional Insanity in a Hen. — Elias French's Pipe. Up near Chocorua lives a youngster who is quite a sports- man, and hence is fond of our foor-footed friend, the dog. He had one a few weeks ago. It was a nice little fellow. I think it was a bird dog; not the kind that scares the scant wits out of the denizens of the henyard,. and chews up a chicken or two just for exercise, nor the kind that scares all the birds out of the woods before you get a shot at one. He was a good dog and he minded his own business, which is unusual in dogs and some men, until one unlucky day, down at West Ossipee, I think it was, amid the bustle and confiTsion incident to the departure of the mail train south, he got separated from his master. Time went by on its regular schedule for a week or two and one day our dog fancier heard that a doctor in a neighboring town had found and was training a bird dog. Filled with hope the boy sent a letter to the gentleman, describing his dog and asking for information as to the dog he had acquired, and if it proved to be his would he kindly send it home. Some time elapsed and then the kind gentleman replied : Yes, he had the dog ; there was no doubt of that. Furthermore, he proposed to keep said dog unless .$35 for professional services training said dog was to him in hand paid. This is very interesting if it is good law, but of course, to a lay- man, or the man in the road, it looks a good deal like con- fiscation. They say that possession is nine points of the law, but it is not generally understood to be the whole thing, and interested parties up in Chocorua are anxiously awaiting the outcome. When I came down the pike to the Bear Camp River bridge at the base of the Os.sipee, near ]\Ir. Hobbs', I was 92 WAYSIDE NOTES. surprised and shocked at the unseemly conduct of a hen. Now a hen is usually considered as mild-mannered as a sucking dove, so to speak. She is modest and unassum- ing, goes about her business with very little fuss and feathers (compared to a peacock) and one would scarcely realize the mighty responsibilities devolving upon her as the producer of all the hen fruit on the market. Her product cannot be adulterated. Upon every one of her billion eggs is stamped the undeniable impress of her genius. Sometimes man, the base tieceiver, will mark up the date of her vintage a couple of weeks or so to make them strictly fresh, but that isn't her fault. By and large she is the most honest thing that travels upon two legs, and the most calm and serene of the barnyard popula- tion. Furthermore the hen is the first to attract the at- tention of the budding farmer. Notice the young mill operative or fair-cheeked clerk who has got the fever for raising chickens, who is hopelessly balled up with the call of the farm out in the country. He buys a copy of the New England Homestead or recklessly subscribes for the Farm and Borne, and in forty-eight hours he has absorbed a lot of roseate views on "Money in Hens," and his fortune is made. He throws up his job, borrows a few hundred dol- lars and moves on the Sandy Hollow Road with seventeen brown leghorns, eleven black minorcas and a couple of full- blooded roosters, ready to acquire tan, freckles, hen lice and yards of experience. If he finds any money in hens he's a lucky man. I've found more in the ash barrel. But something was undeniably in this hen I speak of. She cocked her head on one side, and as I cahie rapidly down on her, she charged at me. I am not naturally timid. I've faced all the dogs this side of Hill, N. H., and been as- saulted by turkey gobblers with flapping red ringuses hanging down over their threatening beaks. Hissing, long- necked geese have put on their most forbidding aspect and disputed my passage, but never before did the common do- mestic hen of commerce attempt to block my way. I hesi- WAYSIDE NOTES. 93 tated. The report that I retreated is a base fabrication. That hen just literally flew right into my face and of all the unearthly squawks I ever heard that hen let loose. I side stepped and she settled down in her former position, as- suming a dignified attitude. Sylvester White, who saw her afterwards, said he thought she appeared to have lost her head. I think he referred to her getting it in the neck, but while I am not an expert, I think it was a case of emotional insanity. It shows that hens, like some people, should stick to tl>e position they are fitted for and not get too far from their own quiet roost. Elias French of East Madison has never figured in my notes before as far as I remember, but he showed me a pipe the other day when I stopped there that he asserted had a history. It's all right, of course, for some things to have a history, and not for others — grass widows for instance. There is a date on the stem, Avhich is about a foot long, and according to that the pipe is 112 years old. Mr. French takes a smoke with this pipe at stated intervals and handles it with great care. It was made at St. Ono, or St. Ino, or St. Uno in France, and if I really knew it was that old, I "dono" but I'd smoke a mild charge of sweet brier in it myself and dream of the musty past w^hen only the nobil- ity smoked those ancient T. D's, and before the common herd caught on to it and compelled the nobility to go to smoking cigars. Mr. French also has a Winchester 44-40 gun with which he shot a 300-pound deer not long ago that had ten points on his moose-like horns. He is believed to have been a cross breed and certainly the largest shot in this section in vears. 94 WAYSIDE NOTES. PREDICTIONS— WHEN YOU ARE SURE. Verified and Unverified Prophecies. — Tlie "Best" Side and the Other Side. — A Dog with a Specialtij. — When the Paper Man Comes. January 14, 1907. We take pleasure in announcing that our predictions of a few weeks ago regardinu- the governorship, the senator- ship and the complete dtiiiiinntion of our state affairs by the Boston & Maine Railroad were fully verified. There is nothing like predicting what you are sure of. Now we want to predict some more. It will take a little longer to realize it, but it is just as sure. The time is coming when, instead of the public service corporations controlling the nation as they do today, the nation will control the public service corporations, but — the nation never will control them without owning them, Mr. Ruzvelt, Mr. Bryan, or any one else to the contrary notwithstanding. For the nation to ''regulate" a gigantic trust or system of trusts that it does not own is an absurdity, an irridescent dream, and the fakirs who tell us it can be done are merely tempo- rizing. They know better. The people don't know any better now, but by and by they will. Experience is a dear teacher, but a thorough one, and ten years from now ]\Ir. Bryan's modest proposal that the nation take over the "trunk lines" of railroad will look like the height of con- servatism. In fact, from being a radical of the radicals ten years ago, Mr. Bryan has now become, aside from Ruz- velt, about the only hope of the Wall Street gang for stem- ming the rising tide in favor of public ownership of the public utilities which constitute the machinery of our mod- ern civilization. Old things, old ideas, old methods are passing, and a severe jolt, like that anticipated by Rocke- feller, Stuyvesant Fish and other able men today, wherein our alleged prosperity has its mask torn off and stands re- WAYSIDE NOTES. 95 vealed in all its ghastliness with hard times, panic, millions out of employment, soup kitchens and destitution ; condi- tions likely to develop at any time under private, selfish and irresponsible conduct of the people's affairs by the great trusts, will precipitate the development of a sentiment that no power can stay in favor of public, responsible con- trol and ownership of the means of production and distri- bution, — exactly what is I^eing advocated today by a half million voting Socialists in this country, and millions more who advocate it without knowing that it is Socialism. So much for that. We were up around the Ossipees last week and found that some exceptions were being taken to our statement that the fact that only three inmates of the county jail spoke well fiir the morality of Carroll County. They are saying that there are plenty of enterprising burglars, thieves and firebugs that ought to be in jail, and the county jail would have to be enlarged if they were all accommodated. Now don't charge this to Little Pitchers; we are not to blame for the statement. We like to see the best side always. Up at Tuftonborough Corner we were entertained over night at the home of our old friend, H. F. Hodgdon, Avell known as an expert hunter. He has been boarding a hound known as Hunter, that has a record of twenty-six wood- chucks in one season, and in the -twelve years of his can- ine existence no less than 200 killed. He makes a specialty of Avoodchucks and we admire his taste. Now some fool dogs will go and tackle one of those animated pin cushions the state has paid a bounty on for several years and get into a condition no self-respecting dog would like to be found in, with a rich lot of souvenir hedgehog quills adorning their mugs, that look worse than the dog muzzles made and pro- vided for them l)y the authorities down in ^Massachusetts. Others will interfere with disastrous effect with those lit- tle black and white animals we always give a wide I'terth to, owing to tlieir i)ungent od(u*. When we run across a really wise dog like Hunter, we take off our hat to him. He chews 96 WAYSIDE NOTES. woodehucks, that 's good ; he eschews skunks and that 's bet- ter; a good deal better for him and all concerned. There are other dogs that haven't read up on our wonderful game laws, that don't know any better than to chase deer and kill sheep. Under good management, however, you can make about anything you want out of a dog. Mr. Hodgdon has four at the present time that are to be trained for fox hounds. He stated that no less than seventeen foxes have been started from points within a mile of his house that have been captured the past fall. Many times when we call at a house where there are children, a little scene is enacted that calls up the following versified reminiscence : WHEN THE PAPER MAN COMES. Little Johuny Yellow Locks Hides behind the range When he sees the Paper Man, Face so fat and strange. Little Johnny Yellow Locks, 'Fraid as he can be, Thinks " 'praps that big, old Paper Man Will make a grab for me!" Don't he know the Paper Man Won't hurt little boys? Don't mind him when he comes again, But keep on with your toys. For well the big, old Paper Man Harks back to days when he In terror from a peddler ran. And "shinned up" in a tree. And from its branches down he fell. Beside the pasture bars, Struck square upon his head and saw Forty million stars. WAYSIDE NOTES. 97 THE WINCHESTER. [The following is the story of a Winchester, 44-40, old-style rifle, presented to Ellas G. French, East Freedom, N. H.. by Joseph Connor, of Kezar Falls, Me., 1904.1 Looking for a gun, Elias? Well, here's the thing for you, 'Tis all a hunter's heart desires. With aim both far and true. I've carried it in wild and war, I've tested it of old, And never did its black throat roar But that its dead shot told! When Two Chief Boar, the redskin, Hung hard on Custer's flank. 'Twas this black throated Winchester The iiale face blood that drank! Oh! those were scenes of carnage, boy. Where this gun bore its part — Wild was the fray and fierce the joy In Tw^o Chief Boar's black heart. One day, long after. Two Chief Floar Approached me on the street, The "murder gun" upon his arm. Soft moccasined his feet. Attracted by the yellow gleam Of the cuff studs that I wore, The savage bantered me to trade For half an hour or more. I cared not for his paltry pelf, — The gun it was that took my eye; And many a waiTior since that day Has seen it but to die! For I was with bold General Miles When he trailed down Sitting Bull— If war is Hell, this Winchester Has dealt it out in full! 98 WAYSIDE NOTES. And when it speaks, the aiitlered deer Goes down before its flame. A liuudred yards away the fox Shall prove your certain game ! And when in competition with The crackest on the plains, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack— My boy, you know their names. Its black throat never yet has spoke But that its aim was true. A servant, faithful, it has proved To me and will to you! So handle it with care, boy, For it must needs obey. 'Tis yours to will for good or ill. It speaks as you shall say! But never more, I hope, boy, Shall it seek human gore. Men have no use for "murder guns," And war must rage no more! OLD MAN FINN. He Takes a Trip ^Yest and Is Reminded of Old Times. February 1, 1907. Old Man Finn had just returned from South Dakota and was fairly bubbling over with the subject, when I had the pleasure of stopping at his place, not far from Goshen Cen- ter, the first of last week. "Why," he said, "my cousin, Eph, an' his son, Ike, went out there thirty years ago an' took up quarter sections, 160 acres apiece, government land, an' the railroad came right in there, an ' afore they know 'd it the city had grow 'd right up round them. Eph an' Ike are wealthy men ter- day,— yes, sir, wealthy. Ike owns two grain elevators an' Eph owns three, an' houses an' lots, an' a business block WAYSIDE NOTES. 99 in Webster, an' pilin' np the money hand over fist. But, Mister, they do waste a pile 'er good material out there, thousands er bushels er flax they raise there an' most all the straw goes to waste. Last year, Eph raised 4,000 bushek- of wheat, he did, an ' they burnt the straw, every spear on 't, and the corn they raise, — w'y, it's the greatest com coun- try I ever see, stalks average ten feet high, two an' throe ears on a stalk, and most all the fodder rots in the field. Some on um take a rail of railroad iron an 'hitch horses on each end an' drag it over the field when the ground is frozen an' that breaks the stalks all down so's they can plow it in the spring. Say, if I had a couple 'er thousand dollars, know w^iat I'd do? By Mighty I'd go right out to Chicago an' put it inter machinery fer makin' linen from that flax that's goin' ter waste, by JMighty I would. There's millions in it an' they can raise it an' deliver it fer two dollare a ton, an' glad to at that. I had (piite a talk with Eph about this an' he says the farmers out there are jest awaitin' fer some one ter come along an' start the thing." I broke in at this point and shouted into Mr. Finn's off ear (he is very deaf) that I wondered some of those ex- Yankees from Carroll County hadn't started a linen mill before now to use up the surplus fiax. ]\Ir. Finn grunted and said that he had an uncle that was, so I knew he heard me. "I tell ye what," continued Mr. Finn, "seein' them cous- ins 'er mine out there put me in mind of the old times when we used ter go ter school together right here in Con- way. My, but wa'nt them the times! We had one teacher that came from Dartmouth College, an ' we throw 'd 'im out the first day after he tackled the job. He had a set er rules that he laid down ter us big boys as long as yer arm, an' I hain't no doul)t they were good ones too, but we was full er ginger an' didn't take to 'em no great, an' when the gentleman got oxcited an' offered to lick us big boys (I was just turned eighteen then) collectively and individ- 100 WAYSIDE NOTES. ually, we just naturally made a rush fei* 'im an' before he knew where he was he had passed out through the winder, sash an' all, an' was stickin' meditatively in a snow bank. The next teacher we had was from Brownfield, an' we got along with him slick enough after we'd got acquainted, as ye might say. I 'member one night after school the teacher got ter wrestlin' with the big boys after I'd started for home. My little brother came er iimnin' up an' he says, all out er breath, 'Hi, teacher's wrestlin' all the big boys down an' he says he c'n wrestle any boy in school, he don't care who 'tis.' I jest turned round an' marched back as quick as I could, fer I was acliin' ter get a holt on him, an' when I come up ter the schoolhouse yard he'd just throw 'd Ed Snow, an' Tom Perkins was rubbin' his shin, an' the teacher was wavin' his fists an' spittin' on his hands an' spattiu' them together an' callin' on anyone to 'walk up, tumble up, any way ter get up; here's where ye get yer money's Avorth, and satisfaction guaranteed. ' I walked right up be- fore he gin out a second invitation, an' he says kinder tan- talizin', 'Mr. Finn, take your choice of holts an' it'll be a wrastle,' says he, 'to a finish,' and he w^inked to the rest of the boys. I says 'Back holt,' and he says, 'Are ye ready?' I said, 'Ready!' an' before he know'd it, I'd tripped him up an' throw 'd him just as flat on his back as he could lay. He was kinder dazed fer a minute, but soon's he got his breath back he said he wasn't satisfied an' he got up and we clinched again, and he said, ' Are you ready ? ' An' I said. 'Ready!' He tried the same old hip lock that he'd started to try before an' I countered him an' tripped him with my left foot an' throw 'd him jest the same as I had before, only this time I throw 'd him about ten feet over the bankin' an' into a big snowdrift. Well, he crawled out after he got his wind an' didn't ask for no more, an' I asked him if he was satisfied an' he said he was, so we all went home. Well, that night at the supper table my brothers was a tellin' pa how I'd throw 'd the teacher an' he laughed an' said it 'minded him er when WAYSIDE NOTES. 101 he was a boy an' how he bantered gran'ser ter wrastle with him an' they took hold, back holts, an' he throw 'd gran'ser, an' then pa got np from the table an' he danced a jig on the kitchen floor an ' he sang : Hoity toity, wlioops to dee. I'm ju8t as young as I used to be. If yi>u wimt anything of nie, Hoity toity, whoop.s te dee. "An' then he spit on his hand an' whooped an' said he hadn't got a son that could lay him on his back, an' if they thought they could to come right along an' he'd give 'em the worth of their money. "I says, 'Pa, I'd like mighty well ter wrastle with you, but if I throw you, you won't be mad ter me will ye?' An' he says, 'Hi, if you lay me on my back I'll gin ye that Jersey heifer you think so much of, an' I ain't thinkin' er partin' with it neither, very much; now come on, son, put up or shut up.' An' what could I do? I wan't sure I c'd down pa, but there, he'd dared me to it, as ye might say, an' so we took back holts and ma she shoved the table an ' chairs back an ' we had it out right there in the kitchen. At fir.st I watched him ter see what he was trying ter do, an' we circled round the room once er twice, an' twice he tried ter ketch me off my guard with a hip lock, and pa was no slouch of a wrastler, either, but Lord, he couldn't throw me over mor'n a stone post, and pretty soon I throw 'd out my left foot good an' strong an' hit him on the ankle an' at the same time fetched a quick jerk that landed pa flat on his back. He laid there a second er two, stunded, but up he gets an' says he ain't got enough, an' so we had it all over again; the second time he went down I landed on his stomach an' it knocked the breath clean out er his body, but as soon as he got it back he said that was good an' plenty, an' for me to help him up. "Well, I helped pa up and ma she got the campher bot- tle, an' she 'lowed it served pa right if he didn't know any more than ter get ter wrestlin with ])(iys at his time er life. 102 WAYSIDE NOTES. an' I seen it didn't set well on pa gettin' throw 'd twice, but he gin me the calf jest as he said he would, an' ma says ter me one day afterwards kinder confidential, 'Yer pa 'lows 3'ou won't mind him no more now ye know ye can handle him.' An' I says, 'Now, ma, you tell pa if he ever mentions that again, that I shall always be just the same to him as ever, an' I wouldn't a done it, only he dared me.' Ma patted me on the shoulder an ' said she knew it and that settled that. "Yes," continued Mr. Finn meditatively, as he aimed at the open grate and spit on the stove hearth, "I c'd wrastle in those days,' an' by Mighty, I ain't seen anyone c'd lay me on my back yet," and as Little Pitchers had not observed anyone of that description lurking in the vicinity, we made it unanimous. THAW. There's a horde of lurking devils In the jungles of the land, Watching tenselj^ for the outcome Of the tri.'il now in hand. And a carnival of murder Swift to follow there will be, If a smirched, bribe-tainted justice Shall set the murderer free! His mute victim lies dishonored. Struck down by "unwritten law." Hail! all Hail! Assassination! And glorify assassin Thaw! No! "Eye for eye and tooth for tooth!' Must give way some time, I trow, To the law of love and truth, — Then why not invoke it nowV Who murders hath the brand of Cain! The same brand on man or state. Then spare the life of one insane And let the asylum be his fate! WAYSIDE NOTES. lOH GET YOUR GUN. 01(1 fogies used to tell us Our defender was the state, And to apply to courts of justice If we wished to arbitrate! But we're finding out in sorrow That they were not up to date. Get your gun, get your gun! Get your gun, gun, gun! When you feel a hunch of anger. Or a brain storm coming on, Don't wait till it blows over Or your best chance will be gone; While it lasts no one can touch you, Hustle till the deed is done. Get your gun, get your gun! Get .vour gun, gnu. gun ! Then the judge will charge the jury How the statutes aren't complete. And you bravely added to them. Though it were a desperate feat; How the law that's not been written Has our statutes surely beat! Get your gun, get your gun! Get your gun, gun, gun! SANDY THE TRAMP. He Plays Dan Cupid with Good Svccess. — A Story of Ac- tual Occurrence. John Ladcl, road agent and tramp officer of Epping, was up against it. A lot of gutters to be cleaned out and no available help. Four able-bodied hobos in the tramp house for the night also claimed attention. Happy thought! 104 • WAYSIDE NOTES. Why not set the tramps to work? No sooner said than done, and a few days later, the job completed, the tramps all but one left town, disgusted and determined to give Epping a wide berth in future. Sandy Rhodes had worked better than the rest. He was no real tramp and Mr. Ladd had got him a place with his father and maiden sister of fifty summers, who lived on a farm near by. Here Sandy proved an efficient hand and beguiled his evenings telling his employers of adventures on the road. Among other things he told them, was about a certain Christopher Colum- bus Hobbs, of West Ossipee, who had often befriended him when in hard luck. Not the least interesting part of the story to Miss Ladd was the fact that he was a bachelor of about fifty and owned a nice farm in a beautiful valley at the foot of the Ossipee JMountains. Sandy's one failing was an irresistible appetite for rum, and it was not long before, upon the receipt of his month's wages, Sandy come up among the missing. The months wore away and the infirmities of age began to tell upon the elder Mr. Ladd, so that with his daughter he abandoned the farm and moved to Raymond village not far away, the farm being taken by another son from the city. About this time there came a letter to Miss Ladd which agreeably surprised her. It was in the bold handwriting of Christopher Columbus Hobbs, and it detailed that he had paid the fare of Mr. Sandy Rhodes to Epping and would like to know if he had arrived all right? And it also stated that the writer had heard some very favorable re- ports of Miss Ladd from the aforesaid Sandy Rhodes, and would like to correspond with her with a view to matri- mony, or better still, pay her a visit. Now wouldn't that jar you? Miss Ladd, whose one aim in life since the death of her mother many years before, had been to look after her poor old father, had no time for foolish fancies. It didn't take long to indite, with some trepidation it is true, a not too effusive reply, setting forth that Sandy WAYSIDE NOTES. 105 had not as yet appeared, that things had changed somewh.it. that Father Ladd was unlikely to last many weeks. < r perhaps days longer, that j\Iiss Ladd should consider her first duty to her parent so long as he should need her care, but that she too had heard good reports through her tramp cupid of the fair (pialities of her correspondent, and would not be averse to a correspondence nor to a visit from Mr. Hobbs at his convenience. The passing of poor Father Ladd, the coming of I\Ir. Hobbs and his favorable reception, and wedding bells, and a dear, delightful home in Ossipee's fair vale. "We might quit here, but just a word more to say, that Sandy Rhodes will alwavs be welcome, if he comes sober. TO OUR MOTHERS. At the close of an address in the old Congregational Church at Lyme, N. H., Old Home Day, 1901, the author repeated the following original poem : Let others tell the tale of wars, Tlie chiise. and wild alarms; Of meu, who fought iu country's cause. Reared on our hillside farms. Let others write the records down Of Lyme's successful sons; Or tell the mournful tales, forsooth, Of the lost, forgotten ones. IIow many sailed life's troubled seas And grasped each tinselled prize. Or lived abroad in beds of ease. The wicked, weak and wise. But as I walk in silent paths, Lyme's city of the dead. The vision rises in my soul Of the lives our mothers led. 106 WAYSIDE NOTES. How tenderly they nursed the sous And daughters, brave and fair; Heroically their work was done, Their lives were lives of care. Each day the endless burden came, Each day "twas l)ravely borne ; The thrice-schooled tongue would not complain Although the heart be torn. And oft in secret hearts have bled While prayer for help ascended, And mother-love has conquered fear. With God's own love been blended. Let others tell the stories o'er Of bravery on flood and field, But memory forever more Unto our mothers true shall yield The homage of a part well done, A measure full of endless praise Not graved on crumbling iilates of stone, Rut in our hearts secure always. Here's to the mothers of our town, "Not dead, l>ut gone before." Think on their virtues, friends, and crown With love and honor evermore The guardians of our earliest years. The wise instructors of our youth, Who wiped away our childish tears And led us in the ways of truth. And when we build our watch-fires high. And where we raise our shafts of stone. We'll paint their records on the sky And cause their life work to be known. SNYDER'S TWINS. We don't forget those happy days When Snyder went a-wooiug, Dan Cupid held the reins that time, And Love had something doing. 0^ > 5 > -<, u. < H O y C ^ ^ • a; -t^ 0) c5 ,^ i S 5 £333 H < r- WAYSIDE NOTES. 107 We (lou't forget the boiieyinouii, Or the moous come striuging later ; Since Snyder and his other half Knew wedded joys far greater. But now we sing a larger world, A heaven higher and wider, That's opened to himself and wife Since twins have come to Snyder ! Ah, happy boy ! Oh, i)recious girl ! Kind Fate, the great divider. Bestowed a blessing rich on you When she gave you two to Snyder. lil