SEEN FROMo^ 
 croTHE SADDLE 
 
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 IsA Carringtok Cabell 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 SlielfA..!.i5...S4 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
" IN THE SADDLE " 
 

 ^«3fc 'l^*^-. 
 
 SEEN FROM THE SADDLE 
 
 BY 
 
 ./^ 
 
 ISA CARRINGTON CABELL 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 NEW YORK SVS^^ ^ 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1893 
 
 l\^ 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 C^Y-jL. X . 
 

 
 OTHER VOLUMES IN 
 
 Harper's ''Black and White'' Series. 
 
 Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, 50 cents each. 
 
 A FAMILY CANOE TRIP. By FLORENCE WATTERS 
 Snedeker. 
 
 A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN. By WILLIAM DEAN 
 
 Howells. 
 A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. A Farce. By WILLIAM 
 
 Dean howells. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. An Address. By GEORGE 
 
 WILLIAM Curtis. 
 
 IN THE VESTIBULE LIMITED. By BRANDER MAT- 
 THEWS. 
 
 THE ALBANY DEPOT. A Farce. By WILLIAM DEAN 
 HOWELLS. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 For sale by all booksellers^ or ivill be sent by the publishers^ 
 postage prepaid, on receipt of price. 
 
 Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 All rights reservea. 
 
TO 
 
 S. L. W. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is one of our modern notions that almost 
 everything in life depends upon our point of view, 
 and the artists of the pen and the brush are wan- 
 dering round in search nf the proper point. Our 
 ancestors, not many generations ago, used to see 
 the world mainly from the saddle, and it cannot 
 be doubted that their view of it was virile, and, 
 on the whole, cheerful. We know, as a matter 
 of fact, that the world is instantly changed when 
 one mounts a horse. The rider is in a state to 
 make an image of it different from that formed 
 by the footpad, or the traveller by rail. Perhaps 
 he shares the spirit of the horse, perhaps his ela- 
 tion is due to his slight elevation above the earth, 
 perhaps he is affected by the uncertainty which 
 imparts an air of adventure to the shortest excur- 
 sion, that is so free to bend to the least whim of 
 the rider or the horse. At any rate, he rides 
 away into a novel world, either in the freshness of 
 a spring morning or the poetic light of a summer 
 evening, when the apple - trees are in blossom or 
 
the corn is hanging out its silken tassels, and the 
 most familiar roads and by-ways are created 
 anew for him. It happens, also, that the fatigue 
 of the exercise does not extend to the brain as it 
 does in walking, and the point of view of the rider 
 is apt to be wholesome and hopeful. 
 
 What the world is seen from the top of a bi- 
 cycle we have yet to learn, for the riders of those 
 wheels of modern progress are too much occupied 
 by their own equilibrium and appearance and 
 speed to pay much attention to the sentiments 
 that Nature suggests to her loving observers. In 
 these witty and sympathetic studies of a New 
 England summer we return again to the compan- 
 ionship of a very noble animal, with whom is con- 
 nected whatever is most romantic in the history 
 of our race, and who has been the sharer and in- 
 spirer of much of our noblest poetry and achieve- 
 ment. Perhaps when steam and electricity have 
 entirely relieved him of the degradation of ignoble 
 labors, he may become exclusively the comrade 
 of our hours of ease and pleasure, and young 
 women and young men will find health in his 
 society, and learn that on his back they can any 
 hour ride away from habits of morbid introspec- 
 tion into a cheerful world. 
 
 C. D.W. 
 
SEEN FROM THE SADDLE 
 
 ^OLLY the mare has been trained 
 by a girl. The girl is at college 
 building on her high -school 
 foundation, and has probably 
 got over all the freakish fem- 
 inine ways she taught Dolly, and sobered 
 down into a disciplined character. A disci- 
 plined character is produced by a college 
 education. But Dolly has not left off a 
 single womanish wile since her mistress bade 
 her good-bye last September. She has a little 
 brown head which she twists and turns as if 
 she were looking in a mirror, and she thinks 
 it clever to prance and caper when she is 
 mounted. When she hears a step behind 
 her, like the girl in Mrs. Browning's pretty 
 poem, she pricks up her ears and runs. 
 
Gretchen, Dolly's mistress, has a friend 
 who teaches in a horse kindergarten, and 
 he says if he had had the educating of the 
 mare this would be a very different story. 
 His colts get up to an early breakfast, take 
 a warm bath before eating it, and then ex- 
 ercise according to the best hygienic meth- 
 ods. Not the sound of a whip or a cross 
 word is heard in all the great stock farm, 
 where hundreds of horses are reared ; but 
 when one of them is disobedient or frisky, 
 the trainer takes him up to the printed rules 
 that are pasted on the stable wall and bids 
 him look at them. That one action, full of 
 dignified sorrow, breaks the colt's heart. 
 He turns away crimson with mortification, 
 and never jumps or runs out of time again. 
 But Dolly cannot read. Teach her.^ It is 
 too late. You must teach a colt to read the 
 hour it is born. If you begin later it is a 
 useless task. When, then, are we to start 
 with our children ? Start ? Have we not 
 been told to begin by educating their an- 
 cestors, and are not their ancestors hard at 
 it in literature classes and language classes 
 and whist classes, for the sake of posterity? 
 Dolly and the bay and their riders started 
 
out the other morning with a gayety of 
 spirit and a youthfulness of body they have 
 learned to know do not come with a good 
 conscience but by living under a friendly 
 sky. They were just as good and almost 
 as young during all that terrible rainy spell 
 last week, and they felt old and wretched. 
 And there are philosophers who tell us we 
 are responsible for our mental and moral 
 attitudes ! The wind was blowing, but it 
 blew as if it loved them, and the sunshine 
 showered down softly through delicate green 
 leaves. In the tender blue depths above the 
 crows were sailing lazily ; their ''caws," 
 "caws" were the discord needed to com- 
 plete the harmony of the bird songs. Peo- 
 ple who play or listen to Bach will under- 
 stand. 
 
 They started down Farmington Avenue 
 at a brisk trot. There were two young 
 ladies on bicycles who turned out for them 
 and gave them the courtesy of the road. 
 One looked very pretty in her blue habit 
 and little gold-braided cap; and she had 
 got some distance up the avenue before 
 Dolly's rider recognized her as the little 
 school-teacher with the pale face and the 
 
black gown and straw hat all too big for her, 
 who goes down-town in the 8.30 tram. 
 
 ''Dear! dear!" Dolly's rider exclaimed; 
 "I wish her young man could see her now!'* 
 
 ''Whose young man? How do you know 
 she's got a young man ? If she has, how 
 do you know it would be best for either 
 of them ? Besides, a woman who rides on 
 a bicycle is emancipated and does not want 
 a young man. She is pledged to her work 
 and her ambition. She would not resign it 
 to be a cook or a seamstress without wages." 
 This from D., who rides the bay. Dolly's 
 rider perceived that he had been reading 
 the Arena, and was talking with the zeal of 
 a person to whom this question is novel 
 and interesting; she therefore humored him. 
 
 " Maybe her young man," she said, " is 
 willing to relinquish everything for the love 
 of the schoolma'am, in order to attain to the 
 sphere of a husband and father, the only 
 true and real life for any noble man." This 
 sentiment had such a familiar sound and 
 such a reasonable sound that they had turn- 
 ed into Sisson Avenue before D. realized 
 the neat turn of the tables. How many 
 thousand times he had heard it with com- 
 
placency with "wife and mother" substi- 
 tuted for "husband and father." 
 
 " I am going to Parkville," he said. *' I 
 am interested in the growth of the city ;'* 
 but both knew that going to Parkville was 
 Dolly's doing, not theirs. While they were 
 talking about spheres, she took her head. 
 They trotted down a long, shadeless street ; 
 the sun shone hot, there was a brick house 
 at the end of the lane with " cool lager- 
 beer " lettered on the outside ; little ambi- 
 tious houses are scattered about between 
 grocery stores ; one has a tiled fagade, or 
 rather the whole side of the suburban villa 
 is thus decorated, and other houses are 
 painted in glowing colors, all yellow or all 
 red, or shingled in all the hues of the rain- 
 bow. Having once said he wanted to see 
 Parkville, D. stuck to it. He does not read 
 his Emerson enough to know that consist- 
 ency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, but 
 a sudden flash of memory lighted the little 
 suburb with a vivid interest. " D.," said 
 Dolly's rider, " Patrick lives in Parkville." 
 Now, Patrick is the hired man, and they see 
 his slim, loose-jointed figure every day and 
 regard it with no great curiosity ; but that 
 
he dwelt in one of those neat little houses 
 invested the whole place with a human 
 interest. 
 
 " He lives in a white house with a porch, 
 and he had his picture taken sitting on it ; 
 his little girl was in the yard and his wife 
 at the well." This Dolly's rider repeated 
 eagerly, and for some time they went about 
 looking for the white house and the porch 
 and the little girl and the woman at the 
 well, and Patrick, the presiding divinity, 
 but they did not find them. After they 
 got on the middle Farmington Road, D. 
 suggested that the people had probably 
 gone into the house since the picture was 
 taken last summer, but the remark came too 
 late to destroy the interest in Parkville. 
 
 You know the middle road to Farming- 
 ton, up hill and down, with farms lying on 
 either side: the young grain rows checkered 
 the brown fields, the maples cast long shad- 
 ows upon the sloping knolls, and beyond 
 the acres of greensward and sunshine were 
 bounded by the tenderer green of the for- 
 est. Almost all the way is shaded by elm 
 or maple trees some pious soul, on whom 
 be peace, planted for the comfort of the 
 
wayfarer ; the houses are set up close to 
 the road, with green untrodden yards that 
 lead to small white doors, for there are no 
 paths from the front door to the street or 
 road ; people go in from the side entrance 
 or at the back, and these riders had a feel- 
 ing that these closed doors opened into the 
 best room, that dark and gloomy abode of 
 respectability. So uniform is this custom 
 of shutting up the front of the house, that 
 when they passed a large white house with 
 the grass all trodden down, as if with the 
 tramp of heavy boots, between the low white 
 porch and the gate, and they saw that all 
 the windows were up in the front room, 
 they did not need Dolly's quickened pace 
 and little startled shy to tell them what had 
 happened. Was he glad to quit the narrow 
 bounds of a New England countryside for 
 the great world of mystery in which for so 
 many sordid years his speculative mind had 
 dwelt — the master of the house who had 
 been carried thence but yesterday ? It did 
 not seem an uncheerful place to live in, that 
 sunshiny day ; all the crop was growing in 
 even rows, and the wide barn doors were 
 open as if they expected the hay to be 
 
brought in ; the tall green oats waved in 
 the fields under the breath of the soft wind ; 
 there was a fragrance of wild honeysuckles 
 and clover, and in front of the door, almost 
 overshadowing it, grew a great apple-tree, 
 white with blooms, and the meadow was 
 canopied with their wide-spreading branch- 
 es. There is something in the perfume and 
 the color of certain flowers or trees that 
 affects the character of the people of the 
 country they grow in. The land of the 
 orange flower and the olive is the land of 
 song, of indolence, of music, of sensuous 
 ease. Even the habitant of a climate like 
 England falls under the spell, and in a grove 
 of orange-trees is impelled to write "Childe 
 Harold " or *' Don Juan." The apple-tree is 
 like the New England character ; there are 
 the gnarled trunks, the deep ruts, the pale, 
 pure blossoms, with pink - veined hearts, 
 shedding pure fragrance. Did anybody ever 
 write a poem of passion under an apple- 
 tree ? Only the look at it and the scent of 
 it is a reproof to passion, and a call to con- 
 viction. It is not sensuous, it is not even 
 dreamy or indolent. It is penetrating, spicy 
 almost, and delicate with the shy sweetness 
 
of the New England heart. Yes, it was a 
 pity to have to leave the world while the 
 apple-trees were blossoming. 
 
 " We are sure of a good crop of apples ? 
 We are certainly safe from frost?" The 
 hired man who was ploughing by the fence 
 shook his head. 
 
 " I don't know as it's safe till June," 
 he said; ''and I don't know as it's safe 
 then." 
 
 *' Think of the man who lived here, D.," 
 said Dolly's rider. ** Six months in the year 
 with the road that leads to the world all 
 buried in the snow, and all the hill -side 
 white with snow, and the wind whistling 
 around the house, and he crouched there 
 before the fire, the cold chilling his bones. 
 I've been thinking why all the cults and 
 isms are born in New England. For all 
 those months people have nothing to do 
 but to sit by the fire and dream, and specu- 
 late and evolve queer fancies out of their 
 brains. Who ever heard of a social reform 
 in this country south of Baltimore ; was a 
 new community, or an 'outcomer,' ever in- 
 digenous to a hot climate.^ It's the same 
 in Europe; there are no nihilists in Italy; 
 
it takes the cold of Russia to generate 
 them." 
 
 '' There are insurrections in Chile," said 
 D., who reads the newspapers. 
 
 " Oh, but an insurrection is a passion not 
 a plan, and it is generally a revolt against 
 physical not spiritual nor intellectual op- 
 pression." 
 
 But Dolly started to run, and the conver- 
 sation took a turn. She ran up a hill and 
 down to a little stream where clear sweet 
 water splashes over queer-looking gold col- 
 ored sands. There is a big elm at the deep 
 part where the horses stop to drink, and 
 two orioles celebrated their coming, or the 
 day, by sitting on the fence and singing, 
 first a solo and then a duet ; the notes fell 
 like glittering drops of silver into the glid- 
 ing stream below. A slender white rose- 
 bush was growing up against the fence, not 
 climbing, but swaying towards it as if for 
 protection, with the graces of youth and an 
 inexpressible charm of beauty. It made the 
 horseback people think of a young girl in 
 her father's house. It was a cheerful ride, 
 the very fields looked busy with their early 
 summer growth. They hurried along be- 
 
tween the silver willows and rustling alders, 
 and they looked across the meadows, where 
 the cattle stood in clover, to the blue heights 
 of the Talcott range. A little plantation of 
 soft maples had just put out their blooms. 
 If a painter had painted it, not Mr. Brad- 
 ford Torrey himself could have told whether 
 it was an autumn or a spring scene, for all 
 the blossoms were a brilliant red, and droop- 
 ing over an old stone house that was half- 
 covered with a red vine, looked more like 
 October's signal of warning than May's flag. 
 They stopped at a white house on the hill- 
 side to get water. An old man drew it for 
 them from the well. He was a lean old man, 
 and he had a quid of tobacco in his cheek ; 
 but he was glad to see them, and he offered 
 to go in the house for a glass, speaking de- 
 preciatingly of the tin dipper which these 
 city people greatly preferred. 
 
 " T guess," he said, with a pleased chuckle, 
 " you don't get no such water in Hartford ; 
 they say it's terrible bad there." Did the 
 draught from the clear cool well taste the 
 sweeter for the thought that for all their town 
 meetings and their church privileges the city 
 had nothing half so good to drink ? Dolly's 
 
rider and D. could afford to be more gener- 
 ous. There was a portly female form at 
 the window — a narrow window, shaded by 
 white curtains. '' She's good to him, D.,"said 
 Dolly's rider. ''He's all stained up with 
 chewing tobacco, so she must let him do as 
 he likes." 
 
 But the cheerfulest of rides cannot go on 
 forever without something that if not ex- 
 actly pathetic suggests melancholy. There 
 had been a high wind the night before, and 
 on the road coming home they saw a great 
 willow split in two, and one half, laden with 
 spring leaves, lay prone on the ground. The 
 heart of the tree, black and crumbling as if 
 smitten by lightning, was bared to the piti- 
 less sunshine. 
 
 *' That's what it got for trying to be 
 young," said D., grimly. '* It bore the cold 
 of winter, the heavy snow, the icy blast, and 
 spread its wide branches skyward, vigorous 
 and strong. If it had been content to put 
 out a few elderly sprouts to show it was 
 alive, we could never have seen that rotten 
 heart. It was the weight of the young 
 spring leaves that broke it down, not the 
 wind or the weather, but all its vitality went 
 
out to support them. And in return they 
 sapped its life. Its pride and its beauty were 
 its destruction. Ah, well-a-day !" 
 
 " Like old Mr. B. after his wife died. 
 Don't you remember the spruce gait and 
 the new clothes and the frisky airs — and 
 then, poor old dear — the paralytic stroke .^" 
 said Dolly's rider. 
 
 But D. protested. *' Don't vulgarize my 
 simile by applying it ; that's the fatal prac- 
 ticality which is the death of art. A woman 
 cannot be a great artist because she always 
 wants to utilize things. I never saw one of 
 your sex who could let a flower go on bloom- 
 ing in a secluded spot. She must gather it, 
 impelled by a queer morality that it would 
 be selfish to waste it on the wind and the 
 leaves and the grass it was created for. If 
 she hears a bird sing, she must try to cage 
 it. When you do get your rights good-bye 
 to romance. We'll all be en evidence, every 
 mine worked to its final yield. You'd ban- 
 ish the dead languages from the colleges as 
 of no commercial value, and manufacture 
 sonnets for the occasion as Mr. Brander 
 Matthews is teaching the Columbia boys 
 to do." 
 
14 
 
 " You shall not say we are not romantic ; 
 we can get married and still make heroes of 
 our husbands — if that does not imply the 
 highest imaginative faculty, well, I'd want 
 to know !" retorted Dolly's rider, and then 
 she gave the mare the least little possible 
 touch of the whip, and the theorist was left 
 far behind, as with the wind in their faces 
 they flew down the shady lanes and by the 
 open-mouthed school-children and the man 
 shut up in the red milk-cart and the tram 
 and the jolly red - faced conductor, who 
 touched his cap in a burst of sympathy. 
 But when they got home Dolly's rider had 
 to sit perched upon the saddle till some 
 male person came to take her down. 
 
 There's a moral in this situation. 
 
II 
 
 HEY set out for Bloomfield, but 
 there are as many ways of going 
 there as there are ways to go to 
 Rome, especially if it does not 
 really greatly matter whether 
 you get there or not ; but one has already 
 taken a step towards making a ride interest- 
 ing, if one has fixed on a destination — not but 
 that there are people who like indefiniteness, 
 who like to set out of a June morning with 
 the world before them, and D. is one of this 
 kind. If he had his way he would ride straight 
 out of his own farm-yard into the bank of blue 
 clouds that strives to bound his horizon; 
 he could follow a lane that has no turning, 
 lose himself in a forest of Arden. But Dol- 
 ly's rider is another sort. D. says, *' We'll 
 go somewhere," meaning nowhere. Dolly's 
 rider agrees to the somewhere and thinks of 
 Bloomfield. The vagueness which makes the 
 charm of his wanderings gives her the sensa- 
 tion of being adrift and rudderless, but it is a 
 
pathetic quality of the female mind that it 
 has learned through necessity to reverse nat- 
 ure. Dolly's rider with the strongest inclina- 
 tion to definiteness gratifies it by a ruse. She 
 makes believe she is going to do a thing, and 
 by the exercise of imagination, a faculty D. 
 denies her, gets the poor comfort of being self- 
 deceived. It was this way, therefore, they 
 set out for Bloomfield, turning sharply out 
 of Forest Street into Hawthorne Street, 
 crossing the railroad bridge and riding to the 
 open, where they turned and went up the hill 
 towards Trinity and by Zion Hill Cemetery. 
 
 That was several days ago, and the cold 
 had held so much of spring in its closed fin- 
 gers that the leaves had not burst into 
 full foliage, and looking across the meadows 
 they had their last view for the season of 
 an unobstructed expanse; the limbs of the 
 trees still defined against the horizon, and 
 stretching their lengths against the sky. 
 
 *' Let me have one more look at a free 
 country ; I don't like to peep out at the 
 world from beneath a leafy canopy," said D., 
 who by this time has no doubt revealed his 
 very contradictory character, for he hates 
 spring and he loves summer, yet he waxes 
 
I? 
 
 even sentimental over the first tender green 
 of the leaves, a feeling in which Dolly's pro- 
 saic rider shares. Just as there are flowers 
 whose odor is a key to closed doors of 
 memory, so this first green of spring smites 
 certain hearts. There is something in its 
 tenderness, its freshness, a sense of the be- 
 ginning of life in its soft youthfulness, that 
 stirs the soul and wakes the immortal long- 
 ing, that so long a time has slumbered, to 
 bathe ourselves again in innocency. 
 
 The wood which slopes from the top of 
 the hill to the river is a sweet and sylvan 
 spot which, as neither of the horseback 
 riders expects to sell it for city lots, I vent- 
 ure to say is far from the haunts of fashion 
 and the bustle of traffic. From this green 
 pinnacle they saw the river's curve and the 
 willows that fringe its banks, and thought 
 the turrets of the red houses made Hart- 
 ford, from a distance, look like Rothenburg. 
 There are chestnuts and beeches in the 
 lower grove, and ferns and wind-flowers grow 
 luxuriantly in the green depths, but only a 
 few great oaks shade the upper part, and a 
 field of buttercups shimmers in the morn- 
 ing's shine from the slope of the hill to the 
 
x8 
 
 meadow beyond. I wonder why we cannot 
 grow sentimental over yellow flowers — why 
 the color of yellow is, in fact, inimical to 
 sentiment. Gold has its poetical uses — 
 gates of gold, streets of gold, golden harps, 
 girls, lads, hearts, but the element of pathos 
 is wanting. When the sun sets it sets as 
 often in yellow as in purple clouds, but 
 substitute yellow for purple in Whittier's 
 " Psalm," 
 
 "Till care and trial seem at last 
 Though memory's sunset air, 
 Like mountain ranges over past 
 In yellow distance fair." 
 
 You have the idea, but you have spoiled 
 the poem. D. and Dolly's rider saw a field 
 of clover with the wind blowing over it one 
 afternoon in Sicily, last spring, and as the 
 bells bowed to the breeze and all that deli- 
 cious, undulating, pink meadow waved be- 
 fore them, its beauty smote their hearts with 
 a pleasure so keen that it was almost pain, 
 but they saw the charming sight of this 
 field of buttercups bathed in sunshine with 
 dry eyes. 
 
 They didn't see the grass that stretches 
 
19 
 
 from field to field with unhindered growth 
 in such a spirit of cheerful indifference. As 
 the breeze blew over it it might have been 
 a long succession of billows, while the gray- 
 blooms looked like the crests of the waves, 
 and the clover field beyond became easily 
 the depths of the farther ocean. Dolly's 
 rider even said the birds that flew over it or 
 dipped into the spray were sea-birds. 
 
 *' Nay, rather, comrade, let them be 
 Like skylarks bold, for they, said he, 
 Fly straight to heaven." 
 
 D. quoted from the Provengal poem. " The 
 grass need not seem like anything else than 
 itself to please and charm me. It has the 
 natural waving line of beauty, it is so soft, 
 so silent, so restful to look at, and one has a 
 sort of sentiment about it when one remem- 
 bers that what we have had all our lives 
 beneath our feet will one day lie above us, 
 while the proof that we are not forgotten 
 will be in its tender green." They were pass- 
 ing Zion Hill Cemetery, and the cared-for 
 graves suggested these thoughts, w^hich, af- 
 ter all, were not sad but rather of a pleasing 
 melancholy. 
 
"When it comes to birds," said Dolly's 
 rider, trotting briskly down the hill into the 
 sunshine, ''you'd better look out for what 
 names you give them. I was talking about 
 hearing orioles sing the other day, and some- 
 body insisted orioles never sang from the 
 loth of May till the 15th of August. They 
 keep a little red note-book — no, no, that was 
 unintentional — that they may never forget 
 the date, and that ignorant people may not 
 confound them with bobolinks, who are quite 
 a different family." 
 
 " Do you know," said D., severely, " what 
 all these scrappy little bits of information 
 they gather from all sorts of unreliable 
 sources do for people.^ There is one 1 
 could name who used to be like a glass of 
 pure water, flavorless, it is true, but a clear, 
 sweet draught. But somebody came along 
 and put in a little claret, and another a lit- 
 tle port, and another a little tea, and still 
 another a little brandy, and spoiled the 
 water and made a — detesta — " 
 
 " Oh, D. ! that's a champagne cocktail, and 
 the most refreshing of drinks ! Thank you 
 so very much. I don't deserve to be com- 
 pared to anything so good !" 
 
The path at this juncture became too nar- 
 row to ride abreast. Dolly's rider shot on 
 ahead. In these recollections why does 
 Dolly's rider always shoot on ahead ? Who 
 wrote the book of Joshua and made him 
 the hero of a hundred battles ? Who carved 
 on marble and stone the acts of the great 
 Pharoah, Rameses II., whose mighty spirit 
 pervades all Egypt to this day ? 
 
 Some carper likely will declare there is 
 no honeysuckle lane between Hartford and 
 Bloomfield. But probably he did not choose 
 to take these riders' route to Bloomfield. 
 The little lane with which they made ac- 
 quaintance is bounded on either side by a 
 tall rail-fence, not the most modern style 
 of enclosure, and rather primitive and rude 
 without its covering of vines, but there is 
 nothing quite so pretty when it is intwined 
 with Virginia-creeper and trumpet-flowers ; 
 the corners bulge out like flying buttresses 
 and the vines hang over in cascades, which 
 after a while will be aflame with color. Now 
 they are a green mantle with the pink 
 honeysuckles for a fringe. The bumble- 
 bees were zooning, and though they could 
 not see the little stream that ran alongside 
 
the road for the flowers and creepers that 
 covered it, they were haunted with the 
 sound of running water. 
 
 " It isn't the air or the sunshine or the 
 flowers or the sky that makes summer to 
 me," said D., " it is that low murmur as if 
 of growing things. I can hear the grass 
 start and the flowers spring ; day by day the 
 soul of things fleeing up countless ladders, 
 
 ** ' Airy pyramid of grass. 
 At its motion yields a pass. 
 Through the wind-loved wheat it flows, 
 Up the tufted sedge-flower goes.' " 
 
 I used to say that verse to myself when I 
 was a little boy and went out into the mead- 
 ow and buried my body in the grass. I 
 didn't know whether it was the fairies I 
 heard talking or the flowers, but I knew it 
 meant life, which was summer, the only time 
 we really are alive, the rest of the year we 
 are in the chrysalis." 
 
 " Did you really think that when you were 
 a child }" asked Dolly's rider. " You know 
 the reminiscences of childhood are rarely 
 sincere. We relate what it is probable a 
 child thought or said under known circum- 
 
stances, or what we have heard older people 
 say we said, but our own memories of our 
 own thoughts, are they reliable ? Tolstoi's 
 autobiography with * invention ' written on 
 every page destroyed my faith in his whole 
 scheme of life." 
 
 " Of the thoughts that possessed or flitted 
 over my childish mind," said D., lazily, '' my 
 recollections are as a dream after daylight. 
 I keep them as a laughing summer keeps 
 hoar and frost; as an infant's eyes at eve 
 show morning grief. As I recall the sound 
 of a stream gone by, or a vanished bird's 
 song, or chimes that have died a silver 
 death, I recollect them as day recollects 
 shadows the dawn has put to flight." 
 
 " Oh, D. !" exclaimed Dolly's rider, " you 
 don't mean to make me think that very free 
 translation of Gautier's UElle que reste-il 
 Aujourdhui was your own thoughts about 
 yourself when you were a little boy !" 
 
 " The question of the line of demarkation 
 between the assimilation of an idea and pla- 
 giarism is too subtle to be discussed on a 
 racking horse," replied D., oracularly. '* My 
 crime was in adapting the idea so clumsily^ 
 that you recognized it." 
 
" But, D.," cried Dolly's rider, who was 
 quick to respond to such an unusual, an 
 alarming symptom as humility, '' I knew 
 because I found your bookmark yesterday 
 in Chanso7ts et Ballades T 
 
 *' That's the way doctors diagnose dis- 
 eases. They see the oyster-shells under the 
 porch, and when they say the patient has 
 indigestion, people exclaim, * What wis- 
 dom !' " said D., coming to himself with a 
 jerk of the bridle. 
 
 That jerk meant a gallop through the lane 
 till they reached the main road. At the 
 fork they came to a house they had at first 
 thought deserted. It was an old, brown 
 house, weather-worn, and drooping at the 
 eaves, the shutters hung on broken hinges, 
 the porch was held up by a rotten post, the 
 other had fallen ; tall grass and weeds grew 
 in the front yard, and front windows with 
 the panes out had the look of a toothless 
 mouth. But it had been a good house in 
 its day, and the garden at the side was 
 planted with peach and apple trees, and 
 there were great shrubs and lilac bushes 
 blooming in the wantonness of neglect, that 
 some time or other must have been pruned 
 
and tended. The horseback riders thought 
 of the people who had lived and labored, 
 and hated and loved there, and who prob- 
 ably, wherever they are, think about it with 
 regretful tenderness, as people do of the 
 place they once called home. The desola- 
 tion was so apparent that they were startled 
 when they saw some chickens run. from be- 
 neath the porch, and, surer sign of human 
 occupancy, a brood of young ducks waddle 
 out of the back yard. They rode around to 
 the side entrance, and, though they saw no- 
 body, a yellow calico skirt hanging on the 
 clothes-line revealed the foolishness of 
 theorizing. 
 
 " Oh dear !" moaned Dolly's rider, '' they 
 haven't gone away or died or anything. 
 Just been shiftless and no faculty — and I 
 was just getting ready to — " 
 
 " I know what you were getting ready 
 to do," interrupted D. *' You were getting 
 ready to sentimentalize over the old home- 
 stead, and the ghosts of little feet, and 
 mother's arm-chair. It's a remarkable fact 
 that eighty-eight poems to the hundred in 
 the English language are about home and 
 mother. I for one am glad there is no home 
 
26 
 
 in the French tongue. It saves us from an- 
 other deluge of domesticity." 
 
 The bitterness in his tone puzzled Dolly's 
 rider for an instant, then a light lightened 
 the darkness. " Why, D., it's high noon and 
 lunch time!" she exclaimed. They turned the 
 horses' heads and galloped home through 
 the still, hot sunshine ; so still and hot that 
 the horse-chestnuts hung their white blos- 
 soms in limp languor and the wind-flowers 
 had shut their eyes and the people in the 
 suburban villas all gone into the house and 
 left the red chairs to emptiness. 
 
 When they got into their own street Dol- 
 ly's rider remarked that they had not been to 
 Bloomfield. " Bloomfield?" said D., "who 
 ever said anything about Bloomfield }" 
 
 *' Nobody said," said Dolly's rider, meekly. 
 " They just thought'' 
 
Ill 
 
 I HEY started at an early hour on 
 that perfect day put down in 
 the calendar as Tuesday, the 
 6th of June. There was a fine 
 freshness in the air, and the 
 dew on the grass and flowers brought out 
 the morning sweetness. 
 
 Turning into Albany Avenue, for a little 
 while, they thought they might as well go 
 to the capital of that great State whose vote 
 will decide the next Presidential election. 
 It is a wide, open thoroughfare, big enough 
 for two stage-coaches to thunder down it 
 twice a day, full of passengers and news ; 
 but after they had made up their minds to 
 follow it to its destination, Dolly's rider's 
 fickle ear was caught by the sound, " Here 
 is the famous Blue Hills Road that is one 
 of the seven ways to Bloomfield." 
 
 ** There's a hill at the top of that stretch, 
 D., and it's getting hot ; let's give up Albany 
 for to-day," she said, eagerly, and D., with- 
 
28 
 
 out a word of protest, turned into the fa- 
 mous Blue Hills Road. 
 
 This remarkable acquiescence had a sin- 
 gular effect. For three good moments Dol- 
 ly's rider did not say a word. Then she rode 
 up to him and asked if he was angry. The 
 relations between these people are like those 
 that existed between Mary and Charles 
 Lamb. ** We agree pretty well in our tastes 
 and habits," says Elia of himself and his 
 cousin Bridget — '' yet so as with a difference. 
 We are generally in harmony with occa- 
 sional bickerings, as it should be with near 
 relations. Our sympathies are rather un- 
 derstood than expressed ; and once upon 
 my dissembling a tone in my voice more 
 kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into 
 tears and complained that I was altered." 
 
 The Blue Hills Road — the famous Blue 
 Hills Road — lies between a succession of 
 farms, some of them market-gardens, some 
 flower-gardens, some bearing wheat, or per- 
 chance some other grain. It is shaded by 
 maples and oaks, and there are little houses 
 set farther back in the yards than one sees 
 on the Farmington Road, but they are not 
 so good nor so characteristic. Now and 
 
29 
 
 then one comes to a splendid oak, strong, 
 vigorous, spreading sheltering arms that 
 stretch almost from one side of the way to 
 the other. But oaks are democratic. They 
 grow in the corner of a humble little yard 
 consecrated to pigs and chickens, and the 
 great place on the hill with landscape gar- 
 dens and circular drives is bare of them. 
 
 ** Why do you call this road famous, D. ?" 
 asked Dolly's rider, after a sunny stretch of 
 monotony. 
 
 *' Why do people always speak of their 
 towns as 'good old towns?'" replied D. 
 '* Besides, / didn't make it famous. That's 
 always the way," he continued. ** People 
 insist on making the person who is show- 
 ing the way or who has read a book first 
 responsible for the road or the contents 
 of the book. I'd been at Richfield two 
 days before Polly arrived, and she asked 
 me whether I always had such weather. I 
 told her it wasn't my weather. And then 
 when I re2id\Fz're and Sword htiovQ you did 
 you never left off asking me why Zagobla 
 did thus and so, and what Pan Yan meant 
 by that. All I have to do with the naming 
 of this road is to repeat it has been called 
 
30 
 
 the famous Blue Hills Road since the settle- 
 ment of Hartford." 
 
 But while he was muttering his woes 
 something happened. A man in a buggy, 
 wearing the United States postal service 
 uniform dashed by. He stopped at the fence 
 of a little white house with " for sale " pla- 
 carded on a sign in the yard. There were 
 tall weeds and grasses blocking the walk to 
 the door, and a red rose-bush, wild and tur- 
 bulent, stretched across the best room win- 
 dows. The postman got out and carefully 
 extracted a letter from his pocket, looked 
 at the vSuperscription and then at the house, 
 and started to open the gate. A bent old 
 man in his shirt-sleeves was in the back 
 yard drawing water from a creaking well. 
 
 " Oh, D. !" cried Dolly's rider, " it's from 
 his son out West, you may be sure, and 
 they sent it all the way from Hartford by 
 special delivery. It has money in it, I'm 
 certain, and the money will pay off the mort- 
 gage, and the house needn't be sold. Just 
 think how really paternal the Government 
 is, for a ten-cent stamp sending that man 
 and horse all the way out here to bring that 
 check to that poor old citizen." 
 
" He has put the letter in the box on the 
 gate-post," said D., dryly, " and now he has 
 gone over across the way to give the people 
 in the red house their mail. See, he has 
 turned back. It's the regular nine o'clock 
 delivery — we're not out of corporation lim- 
 its yet." 
 
 Dolly's rider's spirits fell, and she felt so 
 disappointed that she rode quickly past the 
 old man, a vague feeling that she had raised 
 hopes merely to dash them overcoming her 
 with shame. She needed D.'s "Well, you 
 know you didn't say anything to him about 
 the check his son had sent him," to restore 
 her to tranquillity. 
 
 They had ridden two miles farther, per- 
 haps, without adventure, when suddenly D. 
 exclaimed, with the air of having known all 
 the time what they were coming to, " There 
 are the Hartford meadows and the Blue 
 Hills. Now you see, I hope, why they call 
 this the famous Blue Hills Road." 
 
 An undulating plain stretched before 
 them, and beyond was a fringe of willows, 
 and farther still an open country free and 
 fair, and then the lines of mountains, irreg- 
 ular but soft in outline, so far that all the 
 
32 
 
 green was blue, yet near enough to have a 
 sheltering, embracing look, enclosing peace 
 and shutting out the world. The meadows 
 lay glowing in the sun ; a sweep of daisies, 
 another sweep of buttercups, another of pur- 
 ple asters, interwoven in the whole and yet 
 apart, a carpet of rich hues, a harmony of 
 tones. Every now and then Nature makes 
 a spurt and shows us what we might be, 
 what richness, what beauty, what variety. 
 Here are the possibilities of life, every genus 
 keeping its own individuality and doing its 
 best with it, its best being to grow, to bloom, 
 to scatter seed that in other seasons will go 
 to the carpeting of wider, fairer fields. In 
 sight of it, these people made up their minds 
 that even on horseback and riding at full 
 tilt down a smooth piece, they could not 
 get away from the sermon of the flowers. 
 
 You turn off the main road and take a cut 
 across some outlying farms to get to Bloom- 
 field. There were flocks and herds lying 
 under the trees, and people were hoeing and 
 ploughing, some coaxing their teams in the 
 Irish brogue, but all Americanized to the 
 extent of adapting our slouching gait. Here 
 and there was a large old house rambling 
 
into successive outhouses, but these were 
 scattered at long distances, and Dolly's rider, 
 who had talked so much about Bloomfield 
 that it had become a miniature New York 
 in her mind's vision, was disappointed when 
 D. said they had got there. 
 
 **Not to the village," he explained, ''but 
 the town that is the township; the village is 
 yonder." They looked down the hill and 
 saw a white spire gleaming; the hot air 
 rushed up as from a funnel ; they were un- 
 der a sky all sun ; it was quivering and tink- 
 ling with bird songs. Indeed, they saw a 
 plenty of birds, and birds of every variety ; 
 there were finches in three-colored harle- 
 quin suits and tanagers in plenty, and red- 
 eyes ornithologists call vireo salitarii, who, 
 however, did not sing, but fed greedily, not 
 holding with Mrs. Browning that we may 
 prove our work the better for the sweetness 
 of our song, and — the critic may doubt — a 
 little humming-bird who gave these riders a 
 sensation such as they might have had on 
 seeing a flower from the khedive's gardens 
 at Shoobra, or a feather from the shah's 
 peacock. This tiny insect-like creature is 
 indifferent to space. He spent last winter in 
 
34 
 
 Central America or Cuba; he will fly through 
 the air on unwearied wing at the first breath 
 of October. What are days or nights to 
 him seeking the happy isles ? What the blue 
 ether in his search for eternal summer ? 
 
 One wonders how these people who live 
 in Bloomfield township amuse themselves ; 
 they are too far from the village for tea and 
 gossip, and not enough in the country to be 
 reconciled to solitude. One woman, they 
 saw with pleasure, had adapted herself to 
 her surroundings, and yet bent to the cult 
 of culture. She had on a man's old straw 
 hat and a calico dress made in that happily 
 defunct mode known as Mother Hubbard 
 fashion, but she was looping vines over her 
 porch, and in the yard she had arranged 
 what is known in art as a Gypsy Kettle. The 
 kettle was painted a bright red, and in it 
 grew a flourishing red geranium. The illu- 
 sion of a dinner, cooking over a fire out-of- 
 doors, was complete. 
 
 Bloomfield reached did not look like New 
 York. The houses are small and simple, 
 with no soft discoloration of roof or wall, 
 but a weather-beaten gray. It is not denied 
 that there are mansard roofs and shingles 
 
35 
 
 twisted awry, and the town-hall is a house 
 of wood which we will not say is not built 
 on the model of a Grecian temple. But for 
 the most part it looks like an agricultural 
 village somewhat intrenched upon by the 
 modern spirit. 
 
 There are two stores for general merchan- 
 dise, and two churches (was there ever a 
 community so diminutive as to require only 
 one?), the smaller of which, a little wooden 
 building, set in a green grove and gleaming 
 with white paint and green blinds, delighted 
 Dolly's rider. 
 
 ** D., I'm so glad to see it," she said. " The 
 very church Longfellow had in mind when 
 he wrote *The Village Blacksmith.' How 
 do I know? Oh, as Falstaff knew the true 
 prince, and the witches Macbeth. I should 
 like to be here next Sunday and see the 
 church filled with people, farmer folk with 
 strong, keen faces, the women with a sort 
 of Sunday peace in their tired eyes; the 
 girls in their white gowns, and the shy, stal- 
 wart young fellows with bunches of these 
 Bloomfield roses pinned on their coats. I'd 
 like to hear the blacksmith's daughter trill- 
 ing her clear high notes up there in the 
 
36 
 
 choir, the bass rolling out his melodious 
 measures, a little rubato, and — yes, I really 
 would like to listen to the sermon from 
 the white-haired clergyman in rusty black 
 broadcloth, who reconciles predestination 
 and free-will in an hour and a half's dis- 
 course." 
 
 '' For Heaven's sake," said D., " talk low 
 or somebody will overhear you, and we'll 
 be up for libel. The people in Bloomfield 
 get their clothes in New York, and they have 
 a choral society which directs the time of 
 music, and the preacher is giving a course 
 of lectures on Esoteric Buddhism." 
 
 He looked anxiously over his shoulder, and 
 Dolly's rider, who is moral to the extent of 
 feeling sorry for the consequences of sin, 
 galloped out of Bloomfield, and did not feel 
 safe till they got to Tumbledown Brook, 
 which they ventured to think out of the se- 
 lectmen's jurisdiction. They did not cross 
 the bridge, but went down into the water 
 and let Dolly and the bay splash about in 
 that cool stream. There were tall purple 
 irises on the banks of this pretty brook with 
 the melodious name, growing straight and 
 strong amid cascades of ferns, and as they 
 
37 
 
 looked under the arch of the bridge they 
 followed the course of the stream through a 
 winding way, banked on either side with 
 wild roses, that turned their round, pink 
 faces to the sunshine. 
 
 They met only one travelling party be- 
 tween Bloom field and the Albany turnpike. 
 An ancient buggy drawn by a long sorrel 
 horse, who might have been a plough-horse 
 or a racer, it was hard to guess, drawing 
 an old man and his little grandson, for so 
 these people divined their relationship. The 
 old man had little blue eyes set in red flan- 
 nel lids, and he wore a black broadcloth 
 coat and flowered vest, his cotton shirt had 
 a wide collar sewed to the band, and a wide 
 brimmed felt-hat was pulled over his ears. 
 The boy's mother, mindful of his irresponsi- 
 ble and extravagant way of growing, had 
 made his jeans trousers very long, and his 
 little white shirt, which almost reached his 
 knees, was buttoned to them. He stood up 
 straight in the buggy and drove carefully, 
 his freckled little face somewhat puckered, 
 but his mouth firm and solemn. The old 
 man clucked to the horse as if he were help- 
 ing in the business of getting home, but the 
 
38 
 
 boy knew where the responsibility lay. D. 
 touched his hat to them and smiled, which 
 Dolly knew meant, '' I like that boy," and 
 they both nodded back gravely, but they 
 did not take off their hats, deeming it, per- 
 haps, a silly city fashion. 
 
 *' And I like them for it," said Dolly's 
 rider, stoutly. " I like to see people now 
 and then who are a law unto themselves, 
 and act as if they believed, even while ex- 
 ercising the small courtesies of life, what 
 the Constitution of the United States has 
 declared, that all men are free and equal." 
 
 " Where does the Constitution make that 
 interesting declaration ?" queried D. 
 
 " That all men are free and equal ? Why, 
 it says it, of course ; I don't know exactly 
 where, it's enough that it's there — I don't 
 carry the Constitution in my pocket." 
 
 " If you did you'd be safe never to find 
 it," mocked D. *' Some brigands caught an 
 American woman going through Bulgaria the 
 other day. She told them her jewels were 
 in her pocket. After three hours' search 
 they let her go, giving up the job. But 
 that's not the point. Nowhere in the Con- 
 stitution is there any such phrase — it says — " 
 
** Oh, well — the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, then," interrupted Dolly's rider. ** I'm 
 always getting them mixed." 
 
 " There is neither such a phrase nor such 
 an idea in the Declaration," said D., turning 
 into Albany Avenue. 
 
 "Then," exclaimed Dolly's rider, ecstati- 
 cally, "I invented it. I feel like the Bour- 
 geois Gentilhomme when he found he was 
 talking prose." 
 
 But D. smiled compassionately. "You 
 are simply quoting a phrase most governors 
 of most States and most orators in the re- 
 public use and ascribe to the Constitution. 
 You were misinformed, that was all." 
 , " Then we are not all free and equal ?" 
 said Dolly's poor rider, disillusioned; "that 
 is, not by the Constitution .^" 
 
 " Oh, you are by a ' higher law,' perhaps," 
 he said, lightly. "Mr. Seward used that 
 phrase with good effect in early war times, 
 when we wanted to make the proclamation 
 of freedom. But it's too hot to use it now. 
 It's too hot to do anything but go home." 
 
 And so they sought that refuge which has 
 its uses when every other fails. 
 
IV 
 
 >^ ALF-PAST eight o'clock a.m. ; 
 ' [^ thermometer 84° in the shade. 
 They thought they would get 
 to the open country by cross- 
 ing Farmington Avenue at a 
 little new street bordered by little green 
 bushes and shrubs, but the little bushes cast 
 no shadows, and the horseback riders passed 
 through a fiery furnace of unobstructed sun- 
 shine. Dolly's eyes followed the gnats as 
 they swam in the air, and her head swam with , 
 them. How much heat poured from a pre- 
 cipitate height would dissolve a solid into a 
 liquid.^ How much heat burning into that 
 liquid would change it into a ray of light? 
 It was a strange sensation this — melting away 
 before one's own eyes, disappearing in a flood 
 of self. She watched the process in an imper- 
 sonal, disinterested sort of way — the way Ha- 
 drian watched his soul's flight in the pretty 
 poem : 
 
 ** Animula, vagula, blandula, 
 Hospes comesque corporis," 
 
41 
 
 and was taking a kind of dreamy pleasure 
 in feeling the cumbrous flesh glow lighter, 
 freer, more ethereal each instant, preparing 
 to merge itself into a speck of gold and then 
 to dance off and flicker through a green 
 bough, when D.'s warning voice roused her. 
 
 '* You'll lose your figure if you don't look 
 out." 
 
 He said it in the tone he had heard mem- 
 bers of his household use to each other 
 when it was a question between cream with 
 strawberries or a slender form, and the fa- 
 miliar sound and words had their effect. 
 Dolly's rider lowered the thermometer twen- 
 ty degrees by turning into Asylum Avenue, 
 where the south-west wind met them and 
 blew them into the seventies. 
 
 They got a fine view of the open country 
 at the head of this street. The meadows 
 are free of trees, except for a single oak 
 here and there, or a spreading maple, and 
 the sweep of the clover and grass is unob- 
 structed on lowlands and uplands till the 
 clearing is stopped by a deep border of pines. 
 They looked cool and grateful to the eyes 
 after that stretch of sun. At the black- 
 smith's shop at the cross - roads Dolly's 
 
42 
 
 rider announced that the pair were thirsty, 
 and so they rode up to a weather-beaten 
 house at the top of the hill where a woman 
 was ironing, her bench and board set out 
 under the shade of a spreading elm. She 
 was a tall, gaunt woman, poorly clad, and 
 a number of infinitesimally small children 
 were playing about her. The bay, restive 
 after his gallop, plunged and wanted to go, 
 so Dolly's rider forestalled D.'s getting off 
 by asking her for a drink of water. She at 
 once laid down her hot iron and made for 
 the well. "No, no; just that from the pail 
 there," they expostulated. But she smiled, 
 and said : " I will draw you some. I only 
 wish I had the old well-sweep. I've a sort 
 of sentiment for those old wells. The water 
 always seemed to me to be fresher and 
 purer, especially if it's out of the old oaken 
 bucket that hangs in the well." 
 
 "That's New England all over," said D., 
 as they rode off. " That woman has prob- 
 ably never been out of this township since 
 she was married. She is poor, hard worked ; 
 she doesn't have time probably to read a 
 newspaper from daylight till dark; all her 
 life is a round of daily drudgery; but she 
 
43 
 
 has a refinement. Did you notice her ac- 
 cent, and a sentiment, even, that makes her 
 wish for the well -sweep instead of that 
 thing with a crank she turned, even if the 
 crank is easier ? Where else would you see 
 a middle-aged woman, in a worn calico 
 dress, ironing, and minding her children, 
 and having an eye to the kitchen fire — all at 
 the same time ; and in the midst of it pre- 
 serving a certain shy sentiment, and stop- 
 ping in the midst of her work to be hospit- 
 able and to quote poetry ?" 
 
 Dolly's rider looked thoughtful. " When 
 I write a novel, D. — oh, its simply a matter 
 of practice and training ; anybody can ; none 
 of the novelists nowadays have any talent ; 
 they despise talent, which is just an allure- 
 ment into ideality instead of into what is 
 real and true — I shall not try to make my 
 New England woman just a creature in a 
 narrow, prescribed world, crucifying her 
 body and soul trying to keep up appear- 
 ances, and pretending she has three gowns 
 when she has only one. I shall put her in 
 antislavery days, and under an orthodox 
 minister, and let her work it out. There was 
 tragedy enough then in these still New Eng- 
 
44 
 
 (and villages. I got a hint of what it was 
 when I was on a carriage drive in Massachu- 
 setts last summer, and stopped at a little vil- 
 lage for dinner. There was only one parlor 
 in the tavern, so I didn't have to be conscien- 
 tious and walk away when I got interested 
 in a conversation. They were evidently old 
 friends, who had met after a long separation. 
 The man was a Westerner — that is, he had 
 gone West in his early manhood ; the other, 
 an elderly woman, had stayed at home. He 
 was big and prosperous and florid (he talked 
 as if he were used to talk against a tornado) ; 
 but she was little and prim and poor (her 
 dress showed it), but her face was seamed 
 with lines of determination ; that little firm 
 jaw, and small, thin -lipped mouth. From 
 the drift of the conversation, I inferred the 
 lady was talking of some common friend. 
 *I can't take you to see her,' she said, re- 
 gretfully. 'You see we haven't really talked 
 to each other for years. It was in the early 
 abolition times we fell out. The Unitari- 
 ans came in and I joined them, and then 
 I joined the antislavery movement. She 
 stayed orthodox. Her sister Mary Lizzie 
 went with me. It was an awful time — fam- 
 
45 
 
 ilies and friends divided. We were willing 
 enough to be friendly, but they wouldn't. 
 Jane passed me on the street for years with- 
 out speaking. We suffered some — we come- 
 outers.' 
 
 " The man laughed. ' You are a queer set 
 here. You know I am a distiller/ he said, 
 ' and last year I wrote out to Jonah to send 
 me two barrels of apples ; they were, of 
 course, for table use. He always was the 
 best fellow in the world j couldn't get religion 
 when he was a boy — was too wicked, had no 
 conviction of sin. / got it easy enough, 
 and I guess he has by now. Well, he wrote 
 back he was very sorry, but he couldn't send 
 me the apples, because he was afraid I'd 
 make some sort of spirit out of them. Pret- 
 ty dear spirit! The apples were to cost 
 $2.50 a barrel, and I make a gallon of 
 whiskey out of 25 cents' worth of corn ; but 
 you see the conscience of the fellow.* And 
 then he went to the little window and 
 looked out in the street." 
 
 " That's the queer contradictory sort of 
 stuff they're made of," said D., *' these New 
 Englanders. I suppose that Yankee farmer 
 yearned to sell his winter apples, but he 
 
46 
 
 loved something better than he did money, 
 dear as that was. It makes a queer char- 
 acter, that thrift and cunning and saving 
 spirit held in check by principles that lie 
 like a granite foundation/' 
 
 " And speaking of the difficulty of getting 
 religion," said Dolly's rider, '* up in Charle- 
 mont I heard a story about the village shoe- 
 maker. Everybody got religion in the peri- 
 odical revival but Uncle Billy. At last the 
 clergyman called on him in person and 
 urged the matter on his attention. 'Well,' 
 said Uncle Billy, 'I'll make a bargain. If 
 you can convert me, I'll give you the best 
 hog in my pasture.' The parson accepted 
 the proposition, and they knelt down. Af- 
 ter a fervent prayer of perhaps a half an 
 hour the speaker paused. ' Go on,' said Un- 
 cle Billy, ' the hog's mine yet.' " 
 
 D. laughed. " That was his New England 
 conscience; you see, he could no more 
 let the clergyman have the hog if he hadn't 
 justly earned it than he could have pre- 
 tended to have got religion. But where is 
 Tumbledown Brook .^" 
 
 For it may as well be confessed here that 
 the statement made in the last chapter that 
 
47 
 
 the riders visited this charming spot was in- 
 correct. They passed a brook, it is true, and 
 the water tumbled prettily and the bridge 
 looked as if it was going to , but it was not 
 Tumbledown Brook. However, for their 
 oath's sake — for they had promised them- 
 selves to go there — they rode till- they passed 
 the blacksmith's shop on the main road and 
 turned into the wagon -road on the right, 
 where they were assured they would find 
 the fabled spring. A jolly-looking Irishman 
 was coming down the path. 
 
 " How far is it to Tumbledown Brook?" 
 asked Dolly's rider. 
 
 " It's as hot as blazes," said Paddy. 
 
 " Yes, I know ; but how far is it }" 
 
 " It's as hot as blazes, I says." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know , but how far is it to 
 Tumbledown Brook?" 
 
 A puzzled look passed his face. He had 
 been accustomed, they inferred, to the sort 
 of person who took his casual remarks as a 
 reply to any question put to him. 
 
 " It's as hot as bla — ," he began, when D. 
 rode up to him and fixed his gaze. 
 
 " How far is it to Tumbledown Brook, I 
 say?" he demanded, stopping the way. 
 
48 
 
 A light suddenly appeared to break on 
 his inner being. 
 
 " Gosh !" he cried, " and it's a little bet- 
 ter*n a mile from here to the top of the hill, 
 and it's a good half mile from the top of the 
 hill where I've been working to the woods." 
 
 '' And is the brook in the woods ?" said 
 Dolly's rider. 
 
 '' There's birds and trees there and a 
 pretty path," he said, with a pleasant smile, 
 "and it's a good day I am wishing you." 
 
 Both the horseback people nodded back 
 again and smiled. 
 
 " I like Irish people," said Dolly's rider; 
 '' they can't bear to disappoint you by tell- 
 ing you they don't know." 
 
 "They neVer disappoint me by telling me 
 that," said D. " I wonder if there is any 
 such place as Tumbledown Brook ?" 
 
 They rode on; the sun broiled and sizzled. 
 They came to a great bare expanse where 
 200 workmen were hard at it clearing space 
 for a reservoir. The great basin was shorn 
 of its trees, a drill in the centre, an infernal 
 looking black machine, uttering its buzzing 
 roar; the men were marching in line carry- 
 ing hods of red earth on their heads ; the 
 
work of cleaning out that great red-hot 
 caldron looked like one of the hopeless 
 tasks set by some malignant deity in an 
 inferno. 
 
 They skirted the basin and rode into the 
 green wood on the brow of the hill — oh, so 
 still and green after the fiery furnace ! — and 
 walked their panting horses under the hem- 
 locks dusky and sweet, and the fir-trees, 
 whose fine pine-needles turned the ring of 
 the hoofs to silence. Long shafts of light 
 trembled through the birches dark and 
 green and the maples dark and silvery, 
 and through the delicate fans of the great 
 red-oak leaves which flapped like monster 
 dragon -flies in the wind. Tufted ferns 
 waved in patches of brown and green moss, 
 the azaleas growing in the sunny spots were 
 spread with honey lest the dull bee forget 
 to feed ;.» the fir-cones thrust out their 
 feathered heads from tangles of grasses and 
 fungi, and by the trickling streams the toads 
 had raised their small wet tents. Jewelled 
 creatures, brown and old, moved in the 
 green things ; the riders looked up into the 
 trees and saw bright, timid eyes shining, and 
 heard the scamper of small feet and the rush 
 
50 
 
 and beat of wings. A damp, sweet smell 
 came up from the swamp, but where was 
 Tumbledown Brook? 
 
 They rode to the clearing, then across 
 country and into Reservoir Park; before 
 they entered the wood they looked over 
 the meadows covered with waving sedge, 
 dark as it was bent by the wind, reflecting 
 a grayish light from its under side. A farm- 
 house here and there ; a stretch of field ; a 
 fair open country ; wooded heights ; red 
 roads cutting through patches of green ; 
 the sun shining on a weather-beaten gray 
 barn turning it to silver — this is what they 
 saw from the mountain-side ; no Hartford, 
 no Tumbledown Brook. 
 
 The Reservoir Park was also dark and 
 green, and all this wood was alive with 
 sound. The What, what, what of the screech- 
 owl, the creak of the cricket, the brown pee- 
 wees '' cheeping " under the bushes, the 
 caws of the crows, the song of the redeye 
 singing for love, and of the wood -thrush 
 singing for glory. The wind also took its 
 part in the harmonious discords, and rustled 
 and sighed and showered down pine leaves 
 and turned the lily pads upsidedown to 
 
5' 
 
 show the crimson underneath. There was 
 a trickle of water and murmur of hidden 
 rills that flowed from little cool springs. 
 The pools had shrunk to summer heat ; on 
 the sides, smooth, whitish water; in the 
 middle, dark blue. The riders looked at 
 the little minnows shut up in these clear 
 basins, and sighed. Happy minnows ! no 
 big fish to eat you ; no channel to lure you 
 out of peace ! 
 
 They took the road to the lower lake ; it 
 lay enclosed in the green woods, a sapphire 
 set in emerald, shining with an inward fire. 
 Midway in its clear depths the broken re- 
 flections of the sun danced like a rambow 
 on a flame of phosphorescent light, and 
 close to the shore the rays fell obliquely — a 
 shower of gold and precious jewels, as 
 though Danae were hid in the tall grass. 
 The woods on the opposite shore looked 
 dim, the haze of full noon settling upon 
 them in blue mistiness. Ferns and iris, 
 praised of the poets, the broad leaf pota- 
 mogen rearing its great spikes, yellow ra- 
 nunculus, pink swamp - lilies, lupins, blue 
 and white with cup-like leaves to hold the 
 dew — all these and many another thirsty 
 
52 
 
 blossom fringed the banks. Was this the 
 limpid stream and these the fields of Enna 
 where Proserpina gathered flowers ? It 
 was not Tumbledown Brook. 
 
 And it had as well be admitted here that 
 Tumbledown Brook was never reached by 
 them. No more did the ancient voyagers 
 find the spring of immortal youth ; but they 
 did not regret their quest. In looking for 
 a little babbling stream, they found deep 
 waters, and in exchange for the ferns and 
 the bright-eyes that grew upon its bank, 
 they strayed into the meadows of a goddess. 
 And, in a way, they have the brook forever, 
 for it dwells in their fancy— clearer, purer, 
 sounding a sweeter melody than any brook 
 that has its dwelling in the common-place- 
 ness of memory. One cannot be disillu- 
 sioned of this sort of illusion, for it has no 
 vulgar reality. And it is well for us that 
 there are some places which must always 
 exist in the imagination. If we could real- 
 ize our visions we would not mount to 
 heaven; we would simply bring heaven 
 down to earth, and so limit ourselves to a 
 purely practical existence. 
 
 '' D.," said Dolly's rider, coming out of the 
 
53 
 
 woods into the open, and regarding with 
 sickening apprehension the white, stony, 
 sun-smit road that lay between the paradise 
 
 of Street and the spot where they 
 
 stood, " why caiit we fly ?" 
 
 And D., in a cheerful and knowing tone, 
 quoted Mr. Snagsby : '' No wings." 
 
V 
 
 ^ VEN D. admits that summer has 
 been pretty persistent. We 
 have had at least five days of 
 , ^.^^^ ^ it in succession. We haven't 
 s^cXa^^^ lighted the parlor fire since 
 last Saturday ; visitors whisper to each oth- 
 er in a confidential way that they have left off 
 their flannels or have them on, making a 
 merit of it in either case as people do about 
 their intimate affairs. " I dared," " I resist- 
 ed," one hears in asides, in the one case 
 flaunting the recklessness, in the other the 
 endurance. The white duck suit has made 
 its appearance. This costume lasts a long 
 time in New England. Every well-dressed 
 man has one ; but as he only gets a chance to 
 wear it once in two years, and then for half an 
 hour at a time, unless he has a stationary fig- 
 ure, his white duck has to show some adapt- 
 ability. It would be silly to throw away a 
 perfectly good, fresh - looking suit, neither 
 worn nor rubbed, because the waistcoat is a 
 
55 
 
 trifle tight and the coat a suspicion short- 
 waisted; so for the fleeting summer days, 
 when we get up in the nineties, we have a rare 
 show of Hartford men in white Hnen clothes. 
 
 What's fashion, anyway ? Trousers a tri- 
 fle short? Englishmen wear them turned 
 up over their shoe-tops all the year long — 
 besides, it may rain. ''Keep pulling your 
 coat down in the back ; it hitches up a lit- 
 tle." " Yes, you look very nice, so becom- 
 ing. I don't think it makes the very least 
 difference ; everybody understands. I don't 
 believe a human being would notice. To 
 be sure, if you stand that way inviting at- 
 tention, doing everything to make it con- 
 spicuous, of course — Lost your figure? 
 Nonsense ; not lost, but gone before." 
 
 It is with these sweet home voices ring- 
 ing in his ears the Hartford householder 
 starts off every day this week, looking in 
 his snowy apparel as much like a West 
 Indian proprietor as possible. Another 
 week of summer and he will have bought 
 a Panama hat. We are trusting creatures. 
 
 The horseback riders started out with 
 the intention of riding into the bank of 
 low white clouds that hid the woods on 
 
56 
 
 the right of Cedar Hill Cemetery. It was 
 hot and dusty and after noon, but the haze 
 lent itself to the landscape. The Cedar 
 Hill Cemetery road rises and falls with the 
 regularity of a pulse beat, and at every ele- 
 vation the view widens and extends till it is 
 stopped on the right by the Talcott range 
 and on the left by the meadows of the Con- 
 necticut River. The nearer view of Hart- 
 ford shows its red houses set in clumps of 
 green trees, but a dip in the valley and only 
 the church -spires rise out of the woods. 
 Take them out of the landscape, and take 
 out the cultivated fields that lie on either 
 side of the road and stretch to the river on 
 the one hand and the mountains on the oth- 
 er, and there is not a great deal of differ- 
 ence between the view the horseback riders 
 had that afternoon and the sight vouch- 
 safed the first settlers when at last their ex- 
 pectant eyes rested on the promised land. 
 A wilderness of trees, a dense forest which 
 a foreigner would not dream concealed a 
 city and its people in its green depths. 
 
 The highest civilization has brought the 
 face of Nature back to its original aspect, for 
 Nature and man are instinctively at enmity. 
 
57 
 
 She raises barriers of wood and stone against 
 his inroads. She throttles him with her vines 
 and creepers, tangles him in her branches, 
 tempts him with bright flowers into wilder- 
 nesses where he loses his way and is lured 
 to his death. He spends years of toil in 
 fighting the inroads of the forest, conquer- 
 ing Nature, clearing her out, rooting her 
 out, subduing her; and when finally she 
 yields, and he has cut and burned and 
 trampled his way so that she lies a maimed, 
 wounded thing at his feet, he goes to work 
 to revivify her. He replants trees, sows 
 seeds, christens weeds and flowers with roll- 
 ing syllables, and in some spot selected by 
 himself gives her what he pleases to call her 
 liberty. " It looks like the country," is the 
 highest praise one can bestow on some spot 
 where he has elected Nature may follow her 
 own bent. 
 
 In this fancy for swinging back to the 
 original starting-point we don't confine our- 
 selves to physical retrogression. As soon 
 as we've got a religion w^ell in hand, intel- 
 lectual, comprehensive, liberal enough for 
 us, we begin to search for the creed of the 
 simple savage. The theosophists got back 
 
S8 
 
 to the Iswara of the Hindus, and/finding it 
 quite rococo, are now hunting for what 
 they call the Mahath Aitamyam — whatever 
 that may mean, less meaning the better — of 
 the whole cosmos. What does all this clamor 
 for simplicity in thought, religion, manners, 
 and life signify but going back into the 
 wilderness we came from ? 
 
 " D.," said Dolly's rider, looking over the 
 fields which were so hardly won from sav- 
 age Nature and savage man, *' I should think 
 you'd feel pretty badly, when you consider 
 what your ancestors endured when they 
 came over and settled this country ; how 
 they suffered privation and cold and hun- 
 ger, and how they battled with the forest 
 and stony ground all for the sake of Calvin- 
 ism and Puritanism, and now is the Woman 
 of the Seven Hills seated in glory and honor 
 in your midst. All we can see of Hartford 
 from this hill, except the gold ball of the 
 capitol, are the twin towers of the Roman 
 Catholic cathedral. You said I did not 
 know my Constitution of the United States 
 or my Declaration of Independence when I 
 ventured to quote them the other day, but 
 doesn't it seem queer to you that the coun- 
 
59 
 
 try where the Roman Catholic Church has 
 grown and flourished as it has done in no 
 other country since its foundation, is gov- 
 erned under a constitution whose principles 
 the church violently condemns ? 
 
 ** You know the theory of the republic is 
 all men are free whatever the words of 
 the Constitution may say. Everybody, pro- 
 vided he doesn't interfere with anybody 
 else, may go his own way, worship accord- 
 ing to his own forms or no forms, speak his 
 own thoughts, have a free press, education 
 — be at liberty, in fact. 
 
 "But the syllabus says men are not free ; 
 they are not capable of taking care of them- 
 selves; that the clergy must govern the 
 laity; that education and the press must 
 be under censorship ; and as for liberty of 
 thought, the very declaration that the Catho- 
 lic religion is true and all others false puts 
 an end to the theory of toleration." 
 
 " I will not argue with a person who gets 
 her ideas of a democracy so literally from 
 Froude," said D., *'and who has a mere 
 surface knowledge of the tenets of her gov- 
 ernment. The fact of the case is, religion 
 should meet all human wants. Our the- 
 
ology in New England got too intellectual. 
 It was a philosophical religion, and reached 
 only a certain portion of the people. 
 You've got to have your religion in pro- 
 portion to your intelligence. That ad- 
 vanced set of Protestantism of Schleier- 
 macher and Bunsen we've been having for 
 the last twenty years has run over into a 
 sort of society for ethical culture, and the 
 ethical culture has resolved itself in an or- 
 ganization to prevent dulness. When I go 
 to church nowadays I expect to be amused 
 or entertained. Sometimes the preacher 
 diverts me by telling me about the Holy 
 Land, sometimes he tries slides and magic 
 lanterns, or he discusses the questions of 
 the day, the labor problem, etc.; but I think 
 slides have the popular preference." 
 
 Dolly's rider drew out her deadliest 
 weapon — others of her sex have employed 
 it before. 
 
 " Oh, if you are going to be irreverent — " 
 "Catholicism may not appeal to you or 
 me," said D., taking no notice, "but for 
 people who must get their living by physi- 
 cal labor and have not time nor inclination 
 for speculation, or for people who are tired 
 
6i 
 
 of their own judgments and willing to trust 
 to somebody who will take the responsi- 
 bility for them, Catholicism is the final 
 refuge. 
 
 " I think it is Miss Edwards who says the 
 primitive man must have a fetish, the fellah- 
 een of all countries demand a veiled Isis. 
 They revere mystery, when they understand 
 they can be neither awed nor terrified. 
 What was that about the scarlet woman 
 reigning on the Connecticut hills .^ There 
 IS a subtle red tinge over things — see how 
 it has changed since last week." 
 
 Sure enough, the yellowish-green tint that 
 since early last spring had prevailed over 
 the meadows and fields had deepened to a 
 reddish glow. 
 
 The sun, shining through low white 
 clouds, looked like a red midsummer flow- 
 er. The grass had a rosy hue, clover-fields 
 mixed with sorrel in full bloom or purple- 
 red geranium. The white and yellow flow- 
 ers in the little gardens on the highway had 
 given place to red blossoms, red roses, red 
 hollyhocks, smocks, and petunias. Other 
 details caught the eye. 
 
 Lambskills, dogsbane, and other rich- 
 
62 
 
 glowing flowers were tangled with the wild 
 roses in the fence corners, red cattle were 
 feeding in the fields. As long as green and 
 yellow were the colors spring lingered. This 
 glowing tint means summer — lusty, full- 
 bldoded, luxuriant. 
 
 '' If this were France or Germany," said 
 D., '* you'd think it very picturesque." 
 
 On either side of the road were little 
 market gardens, in which women and men 
 were working; the latter were bareheaded, 
 and generally wore bright-colored garments. 
 One old woman, in a brilliant red petticoat, 
 bending over in a cabbage-patch, might have 
 been a study for a painter. There was a 
 little white cottage set back from the cab- 
 bage-patch, in a garden of pink hollyhocks, 
 and on the porch was a young lady in a 
 white dress swinging in a hammock. 
 
 " Marmar," called the young lady to the 
 old woman, " it's most time for you to come 
 in and get supper." 
 
 The illusion vanished. No, they were not 
 in France or Germany, but Irish-America. 
 
 "D.," said Dolly's rider, ''the overflow of 
 Ireland into America may have uprooted or 
 rather choked out Puritanism ; but perhaps 
 
63 
 
 we owe some of the adaptability that makes 
 Americans the most cosmopolitan of races 
 to a people who have so much gayety, so 
 much good-nature as well as caprice. You 
 know it takes a lot of the feminine quality 
 to make a character interesting, and the 
 Irish more than any other supply that trait 
 in our make-up. Think what we were for 
 stiffness and reserve when we were all Puri- 
 tan-English !" 
 
 " I don't know that we mayn't admit, for 
 sake of conversation," said D., ''that the 
 want of tact we complain of in English peo- 
 ple is a lack of feminine quality; but you 
 know what I think of tact." 
 
 ''I'm not going to be rude and tell you 
 you have it," said Dolly's rider. *'If you 
 want to be all masculine or all English you're 
 welcome. At least, they have none of the 
 effusiveness of The Sex. Do you remember 
 the officer we met up the Nile ? He had 
 served under Gordon and idolized him. 
 Talking about his untimely death, he said, 
 * I can tell you this : when I heard he had 
 been murdered I was cross.' And the wom- 
 an who recommended the soup to her hus- 
 band at an American dinner-party as 'not 
 
64 
 
 half so nasty as it looked,' and the lover who 
 proposed to a girl by saying, ' I shouldn't 
 mind our getting married, should you ?' I 
 suppose that's the reason so many English- 
 men marry American women — they want a 
 female person ; and also why so few English 
 women marry American men — they do 7iot 
 want a female person." 
 
 " I suppose there is really no limit to what 
 a person may suppose," said D. " But when 
 people begin to theorize as to why anybody 
 ever marries anybody else they tie them- 
 selves to the tail of a kite. All the theories 
 ever advanced about marriage any way are 
 not worth a row of pins." 
 
 " Oh, if you're going to talk slang as well 
 as those dreadful revolutionary sentiments 
 I shall go home," said Dolly's rider, turning 
 the horse's head towards Hartford. 
 
 D. gave the bay a cut and caught up with 
 them. 
 
 " Slang ! Ah, my Lady Philistina," he said, 
 with triumph in his voice, '* I feel like Mr. 
 Grant White when the English duchess cor- 
 rected him in the same imperious manner 
 for the same 'Americanism,' as she sup- 
 posed. Do you not mind you of the passage 
 
65 
 
 in the sad scene in " Richard II." in which 
 the Queen, apprehensive of her coming 
 woes, says: 
 
 " ' But stay, here come the gardeners ; 
 Let us step into the shadow of the trees. 
 My wretchedness unto a row of pins 
 They'll talk of state.'" 
 
 For the first and only time during their 
 horseback rides it is the duty of the scribe 
 to put on record that D. had the last word. 
 Even Dolly's rider must perforce yield to 
 Shakespeare, but her chagrin lasted into 
 the vSunset. The hills in the west had been 
 darkening for an hour or more, and all at 
 once they became a deep indigo blue, and 
 defined themselves into mountains. A little 
 while ago the horseback riders had taken 
 them for clouds. The sun sank in a round 
 red ball, the after-glow followed soon, a 
 bright scarlet that set on fire two small 
 white clouds on the horizon ; they looked 
 like little burning castles with the light 
 streaming through the windows, and as the 
 conflagration spread they tumbled into the 
 flames. The western sky was a purple waste 
 of sea when they saw it from their own 
 woods. 
 
VI 
 
 I HE air was cleared by the thun- 
 der - storms and rains, but 
 scarcely cooled. The damp 
 summer has kept the leaves 
 fresh and green and luxuriant. 
 One can ride ten miles in any direction 
 around Hartford and not go out of the 
 shade for more than five minutes at a 
 stretch, but trees and rain are both down in 
 D.'s books as nuisances. The rain — well, 
 there is no excuse for rain, he says, except 
 that it is necessary, like death or life or any 
 other discipline; it insures some sort of vege- 
 tation, to be sure, but that doesn't save many 
 a harsh landscape from being unattractive. 
 
 *' Haven't I told you," he announces in 
 his most dictatorial tone, "that the high 
 plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona have 
 everything that the rainy wilderness lacks 
 — sunshine. Heaven's own air, immense 
 breadth of horizon, color, and infinite beau- 
 ty of outline.^ What need of rain when 
 
67 
 
 science can regulate all the moisture we 
 need? For my part I want to live in a 
 country where the hose and I can make our 
 own vegetation. I like the unlimited free- 
 dom of a treeless, rainless land, its infinite 
 expansion, its floods of light, its waves of 
 color, the translucent atmosphere that aids 
 the imagination to create what it will. When 
 you get to the green fields and the trees you 
 know all about it, however beautiful ; it has 
 the effect of a familiar tune, a touch of the 
 commonplace, and if you are not an igno- 
 ramus you must be aware that trees and 
 rain do most of the mischief in the way of 
 creating disease. Where do the germs of 
 consumption wither and die.'^ In a treeless 
 desert. Where do they germinate ? In a 
 New England farm-house, embedded in syl- 
 van shades." 
 
 " D.," said Dolly's rider, " if you had the 
 making of it you'd manufacture a much 
 better world than the one we have, wouldn't 
 you ? Don't be modest, say what you really 
 think." 
 
 " i, at least, having known the failures in 
 this one, would try to profit by experience," 
 said D., thoughtfully. " I have never seen 
 
68 
 
 a farmer who was satisfied with his crops. 
 Every man insists he has had less rain than 
 his neighbor, or more, if rain is not needed. 
 A seasonable or a reasonable rain is the 
 most difficult thing the tiller of the soil ever 
 has to acknowledge to." 
 
 "You couldn't have these elms in your 
 desert, D.," said Dolly's rider, "and you 
 couldn't be without them." 
 
 They were going to Newington along the 
 lovely, shady road that stretches from Park- 
 ville to that pretty village. A succession of 
 splendid elms, as large as the largest oaks, 
 and spreading dense green branches over- 
 head marks the way. Up there in the leafy 
 columns the wood-thrushes were singing ; 
 their notes, falling on the still, hot air, sound- 
 ed like the jangling of keys on a steel bar. 
 
 We talk about the sterility of the New 
 England soil, and it is often stony and un- 
 fruitful near the surface, but that outer cov- 
 ering, hard and unyielding, is no more a 
 proof of barrenness than manners are a 
 proof of morals. The roots of the elms work 
 their way into the dark recesses of the earth. 
 What depth of richness do they find there ! 
 What strength and nourishment ! And as 
 
69 
 
 the seasons pass, and the stripling grows 
 into the tree, and the roots spread and en- 
 large, as the branches stretch forth great 
 limbs, how the warm, rich soil gives up its 
 treasures. What secret springs water it ! 
 What rich juices feed it ! The difficulty, 
 beloved, is not with our New England. It 
 is with us who do not dig down deep 
 enough to find its treasures. 
 
 *' I would not get rid of these elms in this 
 landscape and under these conditions," said 
 D., in his most fair-minded manner. " They 
 do very well for trees, but it's the condi- 
 tions I object to. Set a man down in a 
 desert of perpetual sunshine and no water, 
 except what he brings in a trough from a 
 distant mountain, and he can regulate his 
 life. He can have potatoes and strawber- 
 ries and grass in the same garden. He can 
 even have a garden-party when he's a mind 
 to, without insuring a storm, if there ever 
 was a man with a mind who wanted a gar- 
 den-party! He is independent in a word. 
 But what sort of independence is this of 
 mine that the first cloud that floats along 
 the horizon has it in its power to drench 
 me to my skin and lay me up with rheuma- 
 
70 
 
 tism ? Why, I spend half my life looking at 
 the barometer. I'm always waiting to be 
 interfered with. There is no such tyrant as 
 weather, and no matter how whimsical it 
 is they will call it nature. It would be a 
 mighty different nature if I and a watering- 
 pot had the regulating of it.'* 
 
 There comes a time when the most timid 
 of mortals is constrained to give testimony. 
 
 "D.," said Dolly's rider, indignantly, "I 
 don't believe if you had your way you'd do 
 a bit better than Providence. As for inde- 
 pendence, I'm sure you wouldn't know what 
 to do with it. I won't discuss your attitude 
 on important subjects, but just in the mat- 
 ter of your household and your dress. You 
 always want to do and to look exactly like 
 every other man. You all imitate each 
 other to the detail of the tie of a cravat or 
 the size of a walking-cane, and go on disfig- 
 uring yourself with the most hideous cos- 
 tume ever invented, because if you revolted 
 in any particular you'd look different from 
 the rest. As for matters in daily life we'd 
 be cooking our food in leaves in a hollow 
 in the ground if women had waited for men 
 to buy cooking stoves, and be sitting on our 
 
71 
 
 hands if it were left to you to get new par- 
 lor furniture. If a true history of the world 
 were ever written we'd find out who insti- 
 gated all the great movements. To be sure, 
 and that's the pathetic part of it, women 
 are always the power behind the throne." 
 
 " It is not denied that you are mischief- 
 makers," said D., ''and there is a legend 
 that when the tempted one said to Satan, 
 *Get thee behind me,' the devil obeyed, 
 taking the form of an enticing female. 
 Hence, you see, the term you just now 
 used. I admit we are not as eccentric as 
 women, we don't wear outre clothes or 
 make ourselves conspicuous in dress or 
 manner of living, because we have a sense 
 of humor which warns us of our liability to 
 be ridiculous. Women as a general thing 
 are lacking in humor. The first man who 
 made his appearance looking like a balloon 
 or with a hump on his back would have 
 been laughed out of his hoop-skirt and his 
 tournure. But you saw only the novelty, 
 not the absurdity, and went to imitating 
 them." 
 
 ** D.," said Dolly's rider, " statements are 
 not arguments ; women do possess humor. 
 
72 
 
 I could quote Miss Austen and George 
 Eliot—" 
 
 ** No, no," said D., '* don't quote. Quo- 
 tations spoil the look of a sentence. When 
 I say women are lacking in humor and you 
 remind me of Miss Austen and George 
 Eliot, you condemn your cause by making 
 them an exception to the general rule. 
 When you say men lack humor, I don't 
 refute you by naming Shakespeare. You're 
 like the English official who defended the 
 Egyptian character. I said all Arabs lied, 
 and he indignantly replied he knew three 
 who were absolutely truthful." 
 
 There is one advantage horseback riding 
 has over other modes of locomotion. It 
 is possible to put an end to a conversation 
 by riding ahead. Dolly's rider turned from 
 the main road into a rocky, bushy field that 
 lay between two cultivated farms, a sort of 
 hollow basin to catch the sunbeams that 
 streamed lavishly into it. The ground 
 was dotted over with patches of feathery, 
 barren grass, barberry bushes and creeping 
 juniper, scrub oaks and slim young tulip- 
 trees, with silver sycamores. Wild roses 
 and indigo-weed made splashes of color on 
 
73 
 
 the green, and *'love vine," tangled in and 
 out the dusk of the leaves, webs of spun 
 sunshine. Great gray bowlders sprawled in 
 the thickets, looking like Brobdingnagian 
 lizards of changing hues, as the sunlight 
 flickered on their gray backs. In the crev- 
 ices of the rocks, blossoming sweetbrier 
 straggled. This flower has an innocent 
 perfume that reminds one of the primitive 
 affections. They looked in vain for any- 
 thing useful in this pleasant place, but not 
 even blackberries ripened there, nor wild 
 grapes that grew on neighboring fences and 
 scented the air. 
 
 In thrifty New England no field lies fal- 
 low or overrun with useless weeds without 
 an effort to make it do its part in the labor 
 of life. The horseback people knew this 
 field had been tilled and sown and finally 
 abandoned in despair, but none the less was 
 it a feature in the landscape. Now the 
 rainbow is not utilitarian ; no painter ever 
 dipped his brush in the vermilion of the 
 sunset, nor seraph on lightest wing so much 
 as poised in his flight on the stately battle- 
 ments that guard the horizon. If Nature 
 paints the heavens day after day with ships 
 
74 
 
 that sail on fabled waters, castles that no 
 man inhabits, colors that vanish as we gaze, 
 lights that flame and die ; if all the sky is 
 a splendid spectacle exhibited not to in- 
 struct but to please, not that men or angels 
 may dwell in those fair cities, but simply to 
 delight the eyes that behold them, perhaps 
 w^e who, when we at our best would make 
 our earth a pattern of the heavens, should 
 not lament that a few acres now and then 
 resist the ploughshare and the tilling, and 
 instead of grain bring forth only bright- 
 hued flowers whose colors ape those fleet- 
 ing, transient ones that die nightly in the 
 sky. 
 
 Just within the precincts of Newington 
 they came upon a fine house and grounds. 
 This house is painted a bright red, there 
 are vines about the piazza, a green lawn, 
 a tennis court, a little back from the house 
 is a stable with a smart weathercock on 
 top. The horseback people were very much 
 interested, and stopped a man who was hoe- 
 ing in the next field to ask who lived there, 
 not that the name would have given the 
 slightest amount of information, for the 
 person who told them might have been 
 
75 
 
 mistaken or lied, but it is a peculiarity of 
 human nature to put this sort of question. 
 
 ** Why, Mr. lives there,'* said the man. 
 
 ** I guess everybody in these parts knows 
 him, he's the richest man in Newington." 
 
 He spoke with a sort of personal pride in 
 his wealthy townsman's existence. 
 
 ** I wonder why he doesn't move to Hart- 
 ford," said Dolly's rider. '' I should think 
 anybody who had such a nice house and 
 was able to keep it up in so much style 
 would want to come to a city." 
 
 D. smiled. " He'd be a great fool if he 
 did. He'd not be the richest man in Hart- 
 ford by a long sight, nor would you and I 
 be stopping people at their work to ask his 
 name, nor would working people answer 
 with such an air of friendly participation in 
 his glory. He is a wise man who is content 
 to be the principal personage in his com- 
 munity, wherever that community may be." 
 
VII 
 
 >HE stable boy who brought 
 
 Worchester to Street for 
 
 Philistina to try him would 
 have had them believe that the 
 horse had had an adventurous 
 career. He came from Kentucky and had 
 enjoyed fame and honor. Indeed, from 
 what the stable boy retailed, if Worchester 
 could talk he would probably have said 
 with Ulysses : 
 
 *' Much have I seen and known. 
 Cities of men and manners, 
 Climates, councils, governments, 
 Myself not least, but honored of them all." 
 
 But also like Ulysses he seemed to have 
 no craving to tell what he had seen and 
 known. There is not a trace of vanity — 
 that solvent of reticence — in his steady-go- 
 ing gait, and not the smallest boastfulness 
 or ostentation ; he is a long, tall, sorrel 
 horse, and of a cool and resolute temper. 
 
 ''How do you like him, Philistina?" 
 
77 
 
 asked D. They had gone the length of 
 Washington Street and a mile or two down 
 the country road on the right before he 
 asked this question. D. was riding a new 
 horse himself, and Philistina had been ask- 
 ing him what he thought of it every five 
 minutes since he had mounted it. This lit- 
 tle incident is related to show the difference 
 between the masculine and the female mind. 
 ''Well, he isn't Dolly," said Philistina. 
 " And, in fact, he isn't a female. Dolly has 
 a thousand capricious ways. She jumps at 
 holes in the road ; she runs when she is in 
 danger of being outstripped ; she trembles 
 with excitement ; and she gets depressed 
 when she realizes that she is far from home. 
 But she knows your mood by instinct ; she 
 is sympathetic, sensitive, interesting. Now 
 Worchester — well, D., Worchester is like all 
 male creation. He goes right along the 
 regular road, he gallops if it is a smooth 
 piece, and he walks when it is rough. Just 
 now when I wanted — for no particular rea- 
 son — to ride on the other side of the way, 
 he gave his head such a contemptuous 
 shake that I expected him every minute 
 to say, * Don't be silly, running off at a 
 
78 
 
 tangent, keep to the beaten track/ Now 
 Dolly would have gone over and not only 
 enjoyed the variation but understood it. 
 The truth is, it's a question of sex. It's his 
 penetration in seeing this sort of thing that 
 delights me in Howells. Don't you re- 
 member in The Quality of Mercy, when Mrs. 
 Hillery is warning Louise against Maxwell, 
 who had been brought up in another class of 
 society, and had other ideas and another 
 social code, she says, ' He'd be different 
 enough, merely being a man.' " 
 
 D. smiled. '' Her remonstrance, I recol- 
 lect, had very little effect. Different as 
 they were, Louise preferred him to the 
 most faithful reproduction of herself. I 
 do not know why it is, Philistina, but this 
 cool, bright day makes me melancholy. I 
 say I do not know, and yet I do know ; it is 
 its autumnal character. It is useless to tell 
 me that it is the beginning of July. Such 
 days as these are sent to make us remember 
 that frost and blight are coming, the leaves 
 must change and fall, and ice and snow cover 
 the earth. Look at the grass with the yel- 
 low tinge, and that bush with the leaves 
 turning crimson. Feel this sweet cool 
 
79 
 
 wind, not cold enough to stir the blood, 
 but like the touch of a ghost's fingers. 
 Hear the birds in the copse — every note is 
 reminiscent. Now nobody ever feels mel- 
 ancholy in hot weather. We grumble and 
 are uncomfortable, but the very sense of 
 discomfort gives a feeling of permanence 
 and continuance. We are hot and we al- 
 ways shall be hot. It takes all our time to 
 exist. We have no prescience for to-mor- 
 row except to hope it will come because 
 to-day is pretty disagreeable. But an after- 
 noon like this, when earth and sky and air 
 are bathed in beauty and peace, is also full 
 of warning voices. 
 
 ' Hence in a season of calm weather, 
 Though inward far we be, 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 That brought us hither.' 
 
 That's life — you can't get any present out 
 of it. You've always got something to re- 
 mind you of where you came from or where 
 you're going to. What I want is a now, 
 and leisure to enjoy it. There is no pleas- 
 ure to me in any situation where I am re- 
 minded that it is a passing pleasure. The 
 only person with whom I ever found my- 
 
8o 
 
 self in full sympathy in this hatred of 
 change and this content with the present is 
 a man the Parson was telling me about. 
 He was crippled and deaf and half blind, 
 and the Parson, after dilating on the joys 
 of heaven, asked him if he didn't want to 
 go there. ' No,' he said, stoutly. *I don't; 
 I know what I got.' The hint of autumn 
 in this air is just as melancholy to me as 
 the flush of fever in a consumptive's cheek. 
 Death is not here to-day, but he is coming — 
 surely — for see where he has set his sign." 
 
 " D.," said Philistina, " it may all be true 
 that you have said, except that the bird 
 songs are reminiscent. If you knew about 
 ornithology you'd know that a bird's song 
 is an anticipation, and expresses happiness 
 or joy only, except when the male bird has 
 lost his mate ; then he sings for a few days, 
 but whether to make the other birds know 
 he is in a position to be consoled, or to try 
 to bring her back, you'll have to guess from 
 your knowledge of the male nature. For 
 me the very sense of its transitoriness gives 
 this perfect day an added charm. What are 
 the things we care for but the things that 
 are rare, and, above all, that we have not 
 
8i 
 
 got ? You see that in all the poetry. In 
 northern countries they sing about the date- 
 palm and the orange-trees, and the fragrant 
 breath of summer, and in the East it's all 
 about water and shade. There's hardly a 
 poetical image in the Bible that hasn't got 
 something about running waters and shady 
 rills ; whenever they wanted to boast about 
 .their country, a desire to which the Old 
 Testament writers yielded rather often, you 
 know, they dilated on the brooks and the 
 clear streams and the fountains. Now we, 
 who are used to a plenty of water, don't 
 compare our lady loves to a spring shut up, 
 or a fountain sealed, as Solomon did." 
 
 " I wonder what one of those Old Testa- 
 ment Jews, who has never been beyond Jor- 
 dan in his life, would say," said D., *' if he 
 could be transported to this green lane after 
 all his bragging about his mud holes and 
 his land of milk and honey, two-thirds of 
 which is a desert of limestone rocks and 
 ledges, whitish-gray glaring in the sun, the 
 stones wasted by age, relieved with little 
 scrubby trees, unrejoiced by a single blade 
 of grass, and barren to the extent that the 
 most industrious bird couldn't collect in 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 its length and breadth enough material to 
 make a nest. Would he burst into a sub- 
 lime canticle at the sight of this luxuriant 
 verdure, or be angry because there are 
 places more beautiful than Jerusalem, the 
 joy of the whole earth ? One of the queer 
 things in this world is the effect Palestine 
 has on ministers of the gospel. They come, 
 many of them, from cold countries, and they 
 are fascinated with the idea of a land they 
 have Scriptural authority for believing is a 
 land of vines and olives and palms, of soft 
 skies, and no danger of throat trouble. Of 
 course they pitch their tents, like the rest 
 of us, amid Moslem squalor, barrenness, 
 and within the circuit of icy winds. But 
 there is this to be said for them, they never 
 betray their disillusion about the Brook 
 Cherith, or the site of Jericho, or the ashy 
 soil on which the Jews looked from the 
 mountains of Moab, and wept when they 
 remembered Zion. The faith in the desira- 
 bility of Palestine will never die out as long 
 as clergymen go there and have it to preach 
 about from the time they return till their 
 retirement." 
 
 With that barren land in mind, it did 
 
83 
 
 seem a pleasant country when they turned 
 into the New Haven turnpike, a white road 
 bordered by trees. The landscape gradu- 
 ally closed about them, they heard the cat- 
 tle ripping off the lush grass in the fields, 
 and the rattle of the mowing-machine. 
 
 Now and again they came to little pools 
 where small fish leaped, rippling on the sur- 
 face in ever widening circles ; the mirror of 
 the water was broken by tall knots of irises 
 and bullrushes or a floating layer of lily 
 leaves. The sunlight, as it fell upon the 
 ferns and the grasses of the slopes, blended 
 their several tints of lilac, russet, red, yel- 
 low, and the varied greens into a harmo- 
 nious radiance. On the wooded slope the 
 glossy bronze -red leaves of the beech 
 showed bravely against the green of the 
 chestnuts and their hanging white sprays. 
 Spenser hit on an apt phrase when he called 
 this muscular, stalwart tree ''the warlike 
 beech." 
 
 They met a turtle in the road, his back 
 covered with the fragments of green leaves 
 blown off in yesterday's storm. He was 
 walking along seemingly indifferent to the 
 loveliness of the day and the scenery till the 
 
84 
 
 sight or the sound of the horseback riders 
 made him pause and draw in his head. D. 
 took this for a sign that he did not admire 
 their appearance, and wanted to get down 
 and in vengeance mark his back with the 
 date 10,000 B.C., and so upset the idea of 
 the Biblical chronology, but was deterred 
 by the presence of two little boys sitting 
 on the fence, innocent of latter-day scep- 
 ticism and stockings. He said the mud- 
 turtle reminded him of a horse he once rode 
 going down to Jericho, whose prototype was 
 the Emperor Honorius, whom Gibbon de- 
 scribed as without passions and therefore 
 without talents. 
 
 Of birds and flowers they noted little 
 change since last week, except that the 
 meadow-lilies had grown to maturity, and 
 they came upon stately clumps of wood- 
 lilies growing between the stumps of fallen 
 trees. The ferns were big and lusty, with 
 red seeds powdering the ridge of the fronds, 
 and corn poppies, coreopsis, and red flags 
 flaunting their freckled faces, grew on the 
 road-side. Of birds, the valley-thrush sang 
 its simple flute-like song, but the robbins had 
 lost their pure piercing notes and sputtered 
 
85 
 
 like hoarse stammerers. The care of the 
 young of any species leaves little room for 
 the practice of the fine arts — the woods are 
 full of young fledglings their parents are 
 scolding into the mystery of how to fly. 
 The heat and blaze of midsummer also si- 
 lence many of our birds. 
 
 They turned out of the New Haven Road 
 at a sort of fork, skirted the edge of a deep 
 wood^on the hill-side, and rode along a path 
 too narrow for two to go — abreast, a cool 
 dim path as restful as solitude. 
 
 Suddenly D. stopped and parted the 
 branches of a spreading oak. They looked 
 down into a green basin framed in blue. In 
 the centre Hartford lay ; they saw the 
 gleam of the white and red houses, and the 
 tall church-spires, and the gold dome of the 
 capitol. A dark and glossy background of 
 green spread to the foot of the mountains 
 that seemed to float down in billowy waves 
 to meet it. That stretch of blue, as pene- 
 trating as a ray of light flashed in a dark 
 room, seemed to liberate them from earth. 
 The river meadows looking towards the 
 light glowed or darkened as the clouds float- 
 ing over them separated in flaming masses, 
 
86 
 
 or grew black in heavy blocks. From the 
 hill they saw their great shadows pass slow- 
 ly over the top of the green forest. 
 
 " If we had any such historical association 
 this would be as beautiful as a view of 
 Rome from the Villa D'Este," said Philis- 
 tina. 
 
 D. turned right about in a manner which 
 would have been agitating to Dolly, but 
 was received by Worchester with phleg- 
 matic indifference as all being in a day's 
 work. 
 
 *' No historical association, indeed ! Will 
 you tell me why the Pequot War and Cap- 
 tain John Mason, of Windsor, are not as 
 much matters of history as the fights be- 
 tween the Sabines and the Romans ? Or 
 these paths, trod by the men who origi- 
 nated this government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people, are not as sacred as 
 the walks traversed by Cicero ? There is 
 one point of resemblance, however, I grant 
 you, which makes the view of Hartford as 
 interesting as that of Rome. Both are 
 drained into their own rivers. Let us go 
 home." 
 
VIII 
 
 ' ARDON my whispering, read- 
 er, but the habit has taken 
 fast hold. Philistina has been 
 buying a horse, and the affair 
 has been conducted with so 
 much secrecy and so much diplomacy that 
 loud speech has not been indulged in dur- 
 ing the negotiation. 
 
 The first thing one has to learn when one 
 goes into the horse business is to assume an 
 air of indifference. No matter if horseback 
 riding is the one essential to your health, 
 no matter if your ambition to ride or love of 
 the exercise renders the thought of a horse- 
 less existence insupportable, conceal your 
 real emotion. What you have got to fight 
 in the man who sells you your horse is a 
 cool reluctance to enter into business rela- 
 tions with you. He'd like to have you have 
 the horse. He likes you, likes the way you 
 talk, likes your looks. If he was not a 
 plain man and no flatterer he'd say he'd 
 
rather you have the horse than anybody he 
 ever knew on so short an acquaintance. 
 But there's a little matter between him and 
 a lady over to Willimantic. She's that set 
 on the horse that he'd hardly take the re- 
 sponsibility of disappointing her. But then 
 she hasn't got the figure for it. You've got 
 to have a fine, straight figure to look well 
 on a horse, and the Willimantic lady — well, 
 if a man could be excused for plain speech, 
 is a trifle stout, and he has to own he likes 
 a good horse to have a — well, a handsome 
 appearing rider. Now if that Willimantic 
 lady could be satisfied — Oh, Philistina, 
 with what weapons will you fight such sub- 
 tle, subtle flattery ! 
 
 The fact is, all horse sales are conducted 
 in Oriental fashion. No hurry, plenty of 
 graceful compliments, and cool indifference 
 on both sides. 
 
 Philistina's horse was finally chosen on 
 account of its simple and open past, and 
 its almost haughty acknowledgment of a 
 dearth of social pretension. 
 
 Almost every horse that is for sale is a 
 blooded horse from Kentucky, and has tak- 
 en the prize at the Illinois State fair. 
 
89 
 
 If he balks, it is insisted that balking is 
 an aristocratic tendency. Does he shy, it 
 is a direct inheritance from his great-grand- 
 father, the famous racer. Run — that's the 
 blood. His very faults, like those of Emer- 
 son's good man, illustrated by the wounded 
 oyster who mended his shell with pearl, 
 work to his advantage. His exaggerated 
 head occasions the same sort of pride as 
 the Hapsburg lips ; his stocky legs, as the 
 Guelf peculiarity of being short and fat, or 
 of the Dobson family's light hair and eyes. 
 If he " picks his feet," or shies or bucks, the 
 dealer has the same impartial air of sweet 
 reasonableness in his reply: "I never said 
 he was a rocking-chair, and I disown him 
 to be a Texas mustang. He is a blooded 
 Kentucky horse, and he had the medal at 
 the Illinois State fair." 
 
 " Bring me a mustang," at last cried Phil- 
 istina, with angry insistence, goaded to this 
 act by the same thing that has made her 
 rejoice in her peasant forefathers when peo- 
 ple bragged of the gout, and the mustang 
 was forthcoming and the bargain com- 
 pleted. 
 
 Well, now that the long struggle is over, 
 
go 
 
 what of it? He is safe and sound in the 
 stable. Sound ? — stay — 
 
 There is a freemasonry between horse peo- 
 ple. Philistina found this out when, seeing 
 an advertisement in a paper, she went to 
 a neighboring city to look at a horse. The 
 horse proved to be blind of an eye. She had 
 provided herself with an adviser in the per- 
 son of another horseman, who was to judge 
 of defects, and when she turned to him to 
 corroborate her statement that a missing 
 eye was an awkward blemish, what was 
 her surprise to hear from her own lawyer, 
 " Why, I can't say, marm, as I look at it that 
 way. Horses — blooded horses, which ain't 
 rocking-chairs nor yet mustangs, are al- 
 ways shying at something in the road, and 
 if he is off of an eye, he ain't got but one 
 side to shy from." 
 
 When, therefore, the horse she finally se- 
 lected, fresh from the Texas plains, was real- 
 ly hers, she looked with gratification at the 
 long nine of stablemen from half a mile 
 around, who filed into the stable to see the 
 new purchase, and, of course, to praise it. 
 But circumstances were changed. Every 
 livery - stable owner, every shock - headed 
 
9' 
 
 groom had his word. The acumen with 
 which defects were detected showed merci- 
 less if penetrating gaze. 
 
 Like all shallow criticism and would-be 
 popular criticism, there was no delicate and 
 discriminating praise.. It is much easier to 
 be vulgarly smart and ill-natured than gen- 
 erous and just, thought Philistina when it 
 had been suggested that his ankles were a 
 trifle swelled and there was a smallish lump 
 on his knee, and his back was a ''leetle 
 round for a saddle." What a pity that more 
 substantial comfort cannot be extracted 
 from discriminating observation. 
 
 But to horse. 
 
 Philistina had been brought up in a pious 
 if humble way. She had been taught from 
 youth that while beauty is a fading flower, 
 homeliness is guaranteed to last a lifetime, 
 Therefore, as she bought her horse for his 
 staying capacities, she avoided the snare of 
 good looks. The Texas free-lance had lately 
 been in distressed circumstances, and the red 
 and white hairs on his mottled body were 
 so worn that when Philistina demanded 
 a name for him D.'s immediate response 
 " Esau " looked like an inspiration. As has 
 
92 
 
 been remarked, Philistina bought Esau on 
 account of his democratic birth ; the only 
 record of who he is and whence he came is 
 branded in huge letters on his side. " The 
 cowboys got really mortified," explained D., 
 " because they kept hanging men for steal- 
 ing their own horses; so they reorganized 
 the brands, and not only required owners to 
 put their initial but their initials on." Esau's 
 master, according to this, must have been 
 a Spanish hidalgo, for his name stretches 
 the length of his body. For the rest, it 
 may be said that he has the adaptability of 
 the American character. He settled him- 
 self — he, the denizen of the prairie, the 
 product of the steppes — in his new habita- 
 tion, a New England stable, with a calmness 
 that commanded admiration. Fear does not 
 appear to enter his breast, nor is he daunted 
 by captivity. He seems, indeed, to be of 
 the school of ascetic Brahmins, and appar- 
 ently to regard fate as invincible. 
 
 " We'll take him out after dinner for the 
 first time," said D. " It's so hot he'll not be 
 noticed, anyway, but it's just as well to have 
 the friendly cover of night." 
 
 This remark is noted because it is one of 
 
93 
 
 D.'s boasts that he is indifferent to public 
 opinion, but the truth is he is one of those 
 people who has so persistently condemned 
 certain weaknesses in others that he has 
 acquired the reputation of freedom from 
 these weaknesses, and with freedom, liberty 
 to indulge in them. In consideration of his 
 feelings, therefore, Philistina turned into a 
 side street and made in the direction of 
 Bloomfield. 
 
 The patient souls who have so long fol- 
 lowed the horseback riders will follow them 
 again, perhaps, in the cool of evening. The 
 western sky was amber, and the far re- 
 treated thunder -clouds hung low in the 
 north, emitting quick flashes which revealed 
 their forms. They rode by Little River, 
 whose smooth surface reflected two shades 
 of light, one from the water, the other from 
 the lily pads which bordered it on both 
 sides. The dew was falling, and the smell 
 of new-mown hay scented the air. The lit- 
 tle lane, bordered by trees, looked like the 
 entrance of a moonlit causeway where the 
 light was reflected from the glistening leaves 
 and the liquid shade beneath bounded and 
 narrowed the road. They heard the bull- 
 
frogs down in the meadow trumpeting with 
 a dull, thumping sound, and the whinny of 
 a horse in a distant pasture, and the barking 
 of dogs. With these noises were mingled — 
 subordinating them by its persistence — the 
 gurgle of unwearied water. Things looked 
 large and out of proportion in the half-moon- 
 light. The gray rocks across the road might 
 have been sleeping elephants. Esau's small, 
 thin figure assumed gigantic proportions. 
 Philistina trembled when she thought of what 
 a fall she'd get should he take a notion to 
 throw her at that moment when he was tall- 
 er than Worchester with his head in the air. 
 
 And his gait ? 
 
 Even thus early in their acquaintance 
 Philistina was able to glory in his ambition 
 and that quality which is best described in 
 the popular tongue as *'sand." 
 
 Unlike Shelley at Naples, who would ** lie 
 down like a tired child and weep away this 
 life of care," he held up his Hapsburg lip 
 and trotted on. With no such self-pity as 
 wrung from Burns the cry, 
 
 " Thou art a galling load 
 Along a rough, a weary road 
 To wretches such as I ;" 
 
95 
 
 did he skirt nimbly the outskirts of Asylum 
 Avenue, face the unfamiliar bicycle, and re- 
 gard with unabashed front the mysterious 
 street -car. In his code of manners it is 
 evidently bad form to be surprised. 
 
 '' D.," said Philistina, in that dispassionate 
 tone she has acquired from her associates 
 of the stable-yard, " Esau looks like a don- 
 key and he runs like one. But I am going 
 to apply your wisdom, an act which you 
 have left to me to do. What we look like 
 really does not signify so we are comfortable 
 and happy. People who like me now will 
 like me just as much, though on Esau's back 
 I do present a somewhat absurd appearance. 
 Those who do not like me will be softened 
 to me by my insignificance. For a long 
 time I wore strings to my bonnets and high 
 collars in hot weather, and I suffered many 
 other discomforts in cold, for the sake of 
 appearing well. I do not think anybody 
 ever cated a straw about these sacrifices, 
 or that I ever gained or lost a friend by 
 them. I like Esau, and I am going to ride 
 him in the broad light of day." 
 
 *' Philistina," said D., "you ought to be 
 the heroine of a novel. I am sure you'd be 
 
96 
 
 immensely popular. You know people like 
 renunciation — that is, they like to see it in 
 other people, and you always have the air 
 of having arrived to your great height of 
 moral excellence by self-sacrifice. I saw 
 you liked that little beast, or, rather, I saw 
 that you had made up your mind to think 
 you liked him, because he was the choice of 
 your unassisted judgment ; but I was won- 
 dering how you were going to make some- 
 thing magnificent out of it." 
 
 " D.," said Philistina, ** if I were a man I 
 would not employ sarcasm against a woman. 
 Besides, it deceives nobody. Those who 
 are wittiest at our expense are most infatu- 
 ated about us." 
 
 D. took a short cut for Street. 
 
 *' Summer evenings' sights and sounds 
 make me lonesome," he said, "and home- 
 sick, even though we are only a mile off. 
 You are always talking of what you would 
 do if you were a man, but if men did any of 
 the things women think they would do in 
 their places, this world would be even more 
 impossible than it is now." 
 
IX 
 
 S AU is afraid of chickens. Nay, 
 do not start, reader, nor per- 
 mit contemptuous scorn of his 
 ^BM^{W timidity to turn your heart 
 ^^..— ^e.\3~^^....^. against this stranger in your 
 midst. Rather let the phenomenon set you 
 to thinking. If an ignorant peasant in a 
 remote Itahan village can divine from a bit 
 of wood-carving not larger than your two 
 hands the design of the altar screen and 
 stalls of the Ovieto Cathedral, and from 
 that hint restore the elaborate work of a 
 by-gone age in its entirety, surely you, from 
 the simple fact that the domestic hen has it 
 in her power to agitate and even terrify a 
 horse fourteen and a half hands high, may 
 reconstruct his past. 
 
 And while we are about it, here are other 
 confidences. Esau is afraid of chickens and 
 of churches, and of his own spare figure 
 and elongated head, when he sees them in 
 a pool of water. 
 
98 
 
 As the clergymen say, let us reason to- 
 gether ; when we set out to unravel a mystery 
 let us seize the first thread and hold on 
 to it. 
 
 Why is he afraid of hens, churches, and 
 his own not unusual personality ? 
 
 Because they are strange to him. 
 
 What part of the world could he have 
 dwelt in that such commonplace objects 
 should strike terror to his heart ? 
 
 1 confess, reader, that I am making a 
 mystery where there is no mystery, again 
 following the example of my betters. We 
 all know Esau is a Texas mustang, but 
 these traits, so naively exhibited, give us 
 the same pleasure when we recognize them 
 that a whist-player with the odd trick to 
 his credit derives in talking over the game. 
 There are no chickens except prairie-chick- 
 ens, who are not chickens, on the Texas 
 prairie ; there are no churches there to cast 
 long shadows on the ground, and in that 
 broad expanse no shallow pools in which 
 Esau might have beheld and fallen in love 
 with his own features. If there were not 
 already enough of pathos in life we might 
 afford to linger over this little tragedy and 
 
99 
 
 drop a tear. I said Esau was afraid of him- 
 self. Was it fear alone ? May it not have 
 been grief, disappointment, wounded vanity 
 as well ? Who knows but that until that 
 view of his spare form yesterday afternoon 
 he had not cherished the illusion that he 
 was an Adonis among horses — that he may 
 not have plumed himself on his imag- 
 inary grace and beauty, comparing his 
 charms with those of other steeds and 
 secretly rejoicing in his own superior 
 merits ? 
 
 Well, whatever his theories in the past 
 the mirror has done its work of disillusion. 
 I do not know what effect it will have upon 
 his character. Sadness rather than bitter- 
 ness will probably fall upon his life, for 
 Esau has a gentle heart, but in making you 
 this confidence concerning him I do not 
 fear that I have done amiss. None of us 
 can ever forget the moment when the veil 
 was lifted in our own lives and we saw our- 
 selves for the first time as we really are. 
 In that hour of self-revelation our little as- 
 sumptions of superiority, our small vanities 
 were not only exhibited with unsparing 
 candor, but, as we afterwards learn to be- 
 
lieve, with exaggerated distinctness. The 
 impression remains clear-cut and vivid in 
 our consciousness, so vivid that I feel I need 
 no more apologize for Esau's personal de- 
 fects, now that he is conscious of them and 
 deplores them. We have all suffered the 
 same disillusioning process, and we are 
 united to him by the tie of sympathy. 
 
 Philistina has been riding alone; it would 
 not have been alone if she had ridden Dol- 
 ly. There are people who do not talk who 
 are very pleasantly felt, but Esau is not re- 
 sponsive. She rode towards Farmington 
 yesterday afternoon, and after she was re- 
 mote from cities and men she turned 
 into a country road lined on either side 
 with golden-rod. It was their first sight of 
 this autumnal flower, this signal of the go- 
 ing of summer, and Philistina drew rein 
 and looked at it with a melancholy interest, 
 and so pervaded was she with sadness at 
 the thought (borrowed from D.'s note-book) 
 of how small a part of time they share who 
 are so wondrous bright and fair that she 
 sighed aloud. Esau, who the moment 
 his pace was slackened began to eat grass, 
 looked up, and though I will not affirm 
 
that he said anything, his glance of inquiry 
 was so plainly, " What did you do that for ?'* 
 that Philistina realized his sex and went to 
 explaining. 
 
 " I don't really care about golden-rod, 
 Esau," she said. " I consider it a very much 
 over-praised flower. It has a disagreeable 
 odor in the first place, and that yellow green 
 never appealed to me. I sentimentalized 
 about it because all the artists and the poets 
 make it a subject of romance. When I get 
 time, Esau, I am going to write an essay on 
 the value of individual opinion, which will 
 — will probably occasion the writing of 
 other essays to refute me. That is really 
 all the influence one has in essay writing 
 nowadays. We are very odd creatures, we 
 mortals, and not very different from the 
 people who hunted the Snark or went off to 
 sea with the Teapot and The Quangle Wan- 
 gle. We look at a nickel before taking it 
 or passing it lest it prove false, but we never 
 dream of doing so much by our opinions, 
 but accept them and pass them on, false or 
 true, as may happen. There is nothing 
 more astonishing than the way we let other 
 people decide whether a thing is to us beau- 
 
tiful or unsightly. Now, there is no beauty 
 except a subjective beauty, just as there is 
 no reasoning a man into being good except 
 by giving him a sense within himself of the 
 beauty of goodness. These things rest in 
 our own souls, the standard is set within 
 ourselves." 
 
 Did Esau understand or care ? If he did 
 not, Philistina was not worse off than other 
 preachers to any Sunday morning audience. 
 
 An old tar would have described yester- 
 day as "quiet weather;" the sky wrapped 
 itself in masses of woolly white clouds, the 
 blue line of the hills as evening came on 
 grew to beaten steel, and where a band of 
 purple sank into a rosy mist, a thin gray 
 veil was overspread and tempered the color 
 to a misty harmony. Hartford was buried 
 down there in the hollow of the green trees. 
 Philistina looked back, and looking back 
 she also looked into the coming years. So 
 shall we one day behold life, as if we stood 
 upon a high hill and it was a little village 
 below where we had rested a while. And 
 from the hill we can see the paths and turns, 
 the stretch of sun, the steep ascent, the 
 pleasant valley. What was obscure, is clear 
 
103 
 
 and plain, now we view it from a height. 
 And the village which, small as it was. was 
 yet so large that we were lost in it, unknown 
 and undesired, what a little place to work 
 and puzzle in ! No wonder it was meant 
 just for a station of a day now we have 
 come to this — to this ! 
 
 They turned into the woods, and suddenly 
 the silence of the fields was broken by the 
 crickets singing in the grass. They made 
 as much noise as a colony of blackbirds. 
 The clear ring in their creak tells just as 
 plainly as the golden-rod that we are on 
 the heels of autumn. 
 
 Philistina thought until she began these 
 horseback rides that she knew something 
 of wild flowers, but every day she brings 
 back an unfamiliar species, which she and 
 the botany books are set to the task of 
 naming. 
 
 Yesterday she found butter-and-eggs, toad- 
 flax, johnswort, prunella, cool in the grass, 
 snake-mouthed arethusa, and countless va- 
 rieties of asters. Seeing them growing in 
 such grace and beauty and a certain fragile 
 delicacy and loveliness in the fields, made 
 her long to take them home, and she won- 
 
dered why people cultivated flowers when 
 every meadow and fence corner yield 
 grasses and blossoms that for form and 
 color (that is, a certain tender, spiritual 
 quality of hue) put the greenhouse and 
 garden plants to shame. She found out 
 why when she had got them arranged in 
 vases. All the tender blues and lavenders 
 faded, the slender grasses drooped, the 
 green things paled and withered. You 
 can no more expect a mass of field flowers 
 to adapt themselves to a Sevres vase than 
 you can expect Pocahontas to look beauti- 
 ful in a London gown. Take things from 
 their native environment and you rob them 
 of their charm. In fact, environment is so 
 much an element of beauty that they can- 
 not be judged apart. Who would have the 
 ''Venus of Milo " in her living-room? It is 
 not so, however, with a mental or a moral 
 quality, which is always independently 
 beautiful and desirable. Love nature as 
 we will, in matters like these we see how 
 infinitely higher is the spiritual world. 
 
 When they came out of the wood they 
 met a young girl walking with a person 
 who, in their romantic mood, Esau and 
 
Philistina decided must be her young man. 
 She was a sHght, dark girl, and she had on 
 . a white dress. At the fence corner she 
 stopped and gathered a bunch of golden- 
 rod and pinned it on her shoulder. The 
 gold of the flower brought out the warmth 
 and richness of her dark cheek. It glowed 
 to beauty. I don't suppose she gave herself 
 a thought about the responsibility of this 
 act. How many women consider that on the 
 slender thread of their personal attractions 
 hangs the very existence of a human future. 
 Philistina was reading Herbert Spencer 
 the other day, and she came to the conclu- 
 sion that the tie of a ribbon, the arrange- 
 ment of a waving lock which has swayed 
 the choice of a doubting gallant, is one of 
 the most serious things in life, because that 
 pinch of the curling- iron, or turn of the 
 milliner's fingers gives a race to the world 
 which otherwise never would have ex- 
 isted. 
 
 And was this solitary ride altogether en- 
 joyable ? At least, she thought her own 
 thoughts and spoke her own words without 
 contradiction or ridicule ; but when a wom- 
 an talks, and a man does not say anything, 
 
io6 
 
 she cannot be sure that his silence is all ad- 
 miration. Esau may have been entirely 
 disapproving had he the means to commu- 
 nicate his thoughts. 
 
X 
 
 ?):r^(^.(^ HESE horseback rides around 
 Hartford were all very well, 
 but they were really meant as 
 a preparation for a journey 
 D. and Philistina had long 
 planned to take. When, finally, the day 
 arrived, they started in fine feather, Esau 
 leading the way. They had talked horse 
 and horseback trip right along for two 
 months, and had made plans and unmade 
 them, and it is not complained that friends 
 or neighbors were lacking in either sympa- 
 thy or advice. 
 
 For many a day before they set out peo- 
 ple used to come to see them and tell them 
 where to go, and make out routes for them, 
 and give them hints as to the care of their 
 horses. If they had taken all the advice 
 they got they'd have spent the first night at 
 seven different places — namely, Farmington 
 and Simsbury and Avon and New Hartford, 
 Collinsville, Barkhamsted Light-house, and 
 
io8 
 
 Riverton. If they'd pleased everybody they 'd 
 have strapped their packs in front of the 
 saddle, at the left side, the right, the back, 
 and they'd have had a dozen styles of bags. 
 They'd have fed Esau all the way from 
 three to twelve quarts of oats a day, and 
 washed his back at night with electric oil, hot- 
 water, cold-water, alcohol, Pond's extract, 
 whiskey-and-water, and Lubin's cologne. 
 
 If those people had taken all the warn- 
 ings they got, they wouldn't have stirred 
 outside their front door, or would have 
 given themselves up for broken -necked, 
 crippled, maimed ; but if they had stayed 
 at home they'd have had to encounter the 
 counter-current of derision for missing such 
 a good time because they didn't go. Friends 
 — enemies maybe — told them August was 
 the month for the trip, Berkshire the coun- 
 try to ride through on horseback. 
 
 Dear, dear, what a task to try to please 
 everybody, everybody going different ways. 
 
 Like most people, they pleased them- 
 selves, and at eleven o'clock of a Wednes- 
 day morning they cantered out of Forest 
 Street, all the sidewalk lined with neigh- 
 bors and friends waving adieu. 
 
log 
 
 Stay, no more than they, can the reader 
 of this chronicle start off without delays. 
 
 Every arrangement had been completed 
 the night before. There were three horses 
 and three people to go : Diana, who was a 
 city friend of theirs and Philistina's men- 
 tor, Philistina and D., Sunday, Esau, and 
 Jack the Sailor. 
 
 Sunday is a New Yorker, a bob - tailed, 
 high-stepping bay ; Esau has already oc- 
 cupied space in these pages ; Jack is an 
 aristocratic and handsome saddle-horse. D. 
 and Philistina bought their beasts for econ- 
 omy's sake, expecting to make the expenses 
 of the trip in reselling them. The people 
 they bought them from advised them in the 
 most disinterested manner to take this far- 
 sighted policy. 
 
 They got up long before day : this was to 
 please the neighbors, who told them they 
 must start before it got hot, but it is one 
 thing to get ready and another to be ready. 
 The women were all dressed, bonneted and 
 gloved, and trembling with excitement by 
 six o'clock. Then they had to sit down 
 while Diana read aloud Emerson on '' Self 
 Control " for Philistina's discipline. 
 
It was on account of D. He had been 
 spurring up everybody within a radius of 
 five miles to get ready, whether they were 
 going or not, and prognosticating that two 
 women would never be able to leave the 
 house till the day after they said they would, 
 when suddenly, at the last moment, he dis- 
 covered he had things to do. 
 
 He shut himself up in a room, admitting 
 only male visitors, one at a time. He prob- 
 ably wrote the President's inaugural for him 
 during these long hours ; perhaps he learned 
 the Meisterschaff system of speaking Ger- 
 man, he had plenty of time to do both. 
 
 Day broke, boiled, sizzed, Philistina fret- 
 ted, and Diana looked gratified. " They are 
 all alike," she said ; " all men are inconsist- 
 ent and childish. Now, Philistina, I want 
 you to be a woman." 
 
 '* Dear me, Diana," said Philistina, " that's 
 easy enough. I knew you were rather ex- 
 acting, and I thought you expected me to 
 be a man." 
 
 "A man, indeed !" said Diana, looking at 
 her bracelet watch. **You don't imagine 
 I'd take the responsibility of going on a 
 horseback tour with two of them, do you ?" 
 
" But what do you suppose he is doing?" 
 questioned Philistina. 
 
 "Doing? Why, trying on his clothes," 
 said Diana, promptly. ** People who know 
 them — wives and mothers, you know — tell 
 me when they shut themselves up that's 
 what they are always doing. I'm glad, Phil- 
 istina, you don't care what you look like." 
 
 Philistina moved a little uneasily. She 
 had on a riding -skirt, a linen shirt, and a 
 soft felt hat. It was a trying costume, but 
 she had hoped it was becoming, as people 
 generally do, no matter what liberties they 
 take with their appearance. 
 
 *' You look as if you cared enough for 
 what you * look like,' " she said, a little bit- 
 terly, for Diana wore one of the great Bon 
 Ton's habits, and was very taut and elegant 
 in her equestrian array, but she looked 
 down and smiled with contemptuous indif- 
 ference on her slim figure. 
 
 " I get myself into what they send me, and 
 that's the end of it," she said. "Don't put 
 on a veil, Philistina, it looks vain. Women 
 used to do those affected things, but we 
 know better now ; and do keep in mind that 
 you have got to be an example." 
 
With counsels like these, the moments, 
 sandwiched with philosophy, were whiled 
 away. D. came down at eleven o'clock ; 
 they did mount, did start, and finally got 
 on the road. 
 
 It is just as well to put on record here 
 that bets on Esau, as the favorite, were 
 large and universal. He was so plain, so 
 unassuming, that he carried a certificate of 
 good standing in his every attitude. 
 
 "The little fellow'll outlast the lot," were 
 the last cheering words that echoed from 
 the last neighbor's stable, as Philistina can- 
 tered out of sight of home amid parting di- 
 rections. 
 
 It was a hot day, but the sun was veiled 
 with a thin cloud of haze that hinted at 
 coming drouth and dustiness rather than 
 rain. The summer greenness, after they 
 got into the country, was just beginning to 
 change into russet, yellow, and scarlet tints. 
 Holiday time had come to the growing 
 plants. The tiny village of Avon was to be 
 their first stopping-place for lunch. Esau 
 led the way, for three horses cannot go 
 abreast, and that bold spirit, incased in a 
 small, unsightly frame, was Columbustian 
 
in its pioneer qualities. The big horses' 
 long walk was too much for him, but his 
 unbroken single-foot put them in the rear. 
 They got to Avon in two hours, lunched 
 there, and started at about 4 p.m. for New 
 Hartford. 
 
 A word about roads. The people in Avon 
 are an intelligent and kindly race. They 
 always vote the straight ticket, but they 
 cannot tell the passing traveller how to get 
 anywhere. 
 
 It was this way. New Hartford was the 
 nearest stopping -place for the night, but 
 they must avoid the railroad if possible, and 
 the thing v/as to get a country path undis- 
 turbed by trains. 
 
 They went over to the store, where half 
 a dozen men, middle-aged and aged, were 
 settling the affairs of state by discussion, 
 and asked a way to New Hartford that 
 avoided the railroad. 
 
 " Well, you go up the road a piece," said 
 one man, ''and look at the sign-board, and 
 then turn to the right and go two miles, and 
 that brings you to the Devil's passway— two 
 miles close to the track over the river on 
 the other side." 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 " But we want to avoid that," said D., 
 very slowly and calmly. " We want to get 
 to New Hartford without riding longside 
 the track." 
 
 " Then you go to the next village and turn 
 to the right," said an aged man with a quid 
 of tobacco in his mouth, "and go down a 
 piece on the left, and you'll come to the 
 Devil's passway, and you go along that two 
 miles and then — " 
 
 "That's what I want to avoid," said D. 
 He looked red and talked very loud, as if 
 his auditor was deaf. 
 
 Philistina knew the signs and proposed to 
 take a walk, but Diana opened her reticule 
 and took out three small pellets. 
 
 " For violent excitement," she read the 
 directions in a low but clear voice, " take 
 one of No. 3. For increased ditto, threat- 
 ening apoplexy, one of No. 7. You must give 
 them to him, Philistina, they are a specific; 
 but watch your chance. I despise tact, but 
 that is the way we will have to begin." 
 
 Philistina nodded. Already she divined 
 that it was best to agree to propositions if 
 not to carrying them out. 
 
 A tall man with his beard cut away under 
 
115 
 
 his chin, leaving mouth and cheeks bare, now 
 took his feet from the topmost round of the 
 porch where they had doubtless obstructed 
 the view, and, without looking at D., re- 
 marked to his neighbor, 
 
 *' He might go through Barkhamsted 
 Light-house. It's six miles out of the way 
 on an awful piece of road, but if he's a mind 
 to get away from the cars that'll do it/* 
 
 The individual addressed laughed. 
 
 " Barkhamsted Light-house 's clean out of 
 the world," he said ; *' it's about the farthest 
 place you ever got ; but if he's hunting sce- 
 nery, I guess he'll get it going over them 
 hills." 
 
 " It looks to me as if you people were 
 pretty good-natured," said D., "to let the 
 railroad run longside your highway two 
 miles, and the same highway be crossed 
 three times by the track between here and 
 New Hartford ; it kills a lot of people and 
 frightens a lot of horses ; but as you could 
 help it if you wanted to, I suppose it's all 
 right." 
 
 This sarcastic comment was made after 
 they had mounted their horses, for the Avon 
 people are doubtless like the rest of the 
 
ii6 
 
 world, they prefer their own inconveniences 
 to other people's comforts, and there was a 
 plenty of opportunity to make the same 
 remark about the railroad before the horse- 
 back party got through their trip. 
 
 There is no use in trying to make anoth- 
 er person understand about that afternoon, 
 for there really never was or never will be 
 another just like it, though the same remark 
 can be made about any afternoon in the 
 year, for Nature never repeats herself ; there 
 will be a different setting of the clouds, 
 darker or lighter shadows on the green 
 slopes, a changing glory in the sky. 
 
 But it was nearing five o'clock, and no 
 Barkhamsted Light-house in view. When 
 we in our short-sightedness fret at little in- 
 terruptions, we would do well to remember 
 that most of the good things that happen to 
 us come about through some accidental, per- 
 haps unwelcome, circumstance. Philistina 
 and Esau both wanted to drink, and, though 
 D. and Diana were cross at having to stop, 
 stop they did at a pretty brick house by the 
 river-side, where there was a stone trough 
 and a well-sweep and a pleasant-faced man 
 digging potatoes in his garden. 
 
" Do you know any way we can get to 
 New Hartford without going through the 
 Devil's passway?" asked PhiHstina, after he 
 had given her a drink out of a cool gourd. 
 
 She knew that her persistent habit of ask- 
 ing questions was ill-bred and childish, but 
 the individual who is unencumbered with 
 a reputation for good sense or good man- 
 ners has acquired liberty. 
 
 "We are going through Barkhamsted 
 Light-house," said D., decisively. " Philis- 
 tina, I wish you wouldn't — " 
 
 "You'll go six miles out of your way if 
 you do," said the man, " and I can show 
 you a way through Nigger Hill that's a 
 chance better. There's a track to cross, 
 and the freight trains — well, we can't 
 count on when they won't come ; but you'll 
 have to cross tracks no matter where you 
 go. That's a strange idea you've got about 
 Barkhamsted Light-house." 
 
 " Six men at Avon told me," said D. 
 
 The man shook his head. 
 
 " Them town people," he said, contemptu- 
 ously — but Philistina, wise in her day, did 
 not even smile. 
 
 The new way proved very pleasant. 
 
n8 
 
 Nigger Hill, despite its unromantic name, 
 is a picturesque ascent, and looking from its 
 height there are strips of meadow-land and 
 a line of blue hills, with stretches of pine 
 and beech forest. They went well into the 
 woods after that and began to climb. The 
 sun shone in long rays of gold through the 
 thick foliage, and the birds were chattering 
 as if in consultation as to where to spend 
 the winter. How glad the horseback riders 
 were that they had done talking over plans 
 to go away. The Farmington River ran 
 swiftly in its rocky bed beneath ; they saw 
 it gleam through a thicket of young pitch- 
 pines and white birches that grew from the 
 hill-side to its banks, and above all the 
 wood noises they heard its continuous mur- 
 mur. It was like a human voice, and took 
 away all sense of loneliness. I mean the 
 loneliness that oppresses the heart and 
 makes one feel the irresponsiveness of Nat- 
 ure. It is difficult in these days of scep- 
 ticism to make any statement that will not 
 be controverted, but I think the people 
 who live by rivers are much more cheer- 
 ful than those who dwell on mountain 
 heights or in parts of the country distant 
 
119 
 
 from flowing streams. There is a sense of 
 companionship in the ripple of the waves 
 and of communication with the world in 
 the flow of the water, and the people who 
 live by rivers are not remote from the busy 
 scenes of life, for the river flowing to the 
 sea bears the spirit of the dweller by its 
 side upon its breast to the remotest shores. 
 
 '* Now," said D., when they came to a great 
 stone trough covered with moss and half 
 buried in ferns, whose clear waters flowed 
 from a thicket of sweet fern and fringed 
 orchids, "aren't you sorry you and Esau 
 took your drink down in the meadow in- 
 stead of waiting for this .^" 
 
 Philistina might have said if she had not 
 taken her drink in the meadow D. would 
 not have taken his here ; but she chose a 
 better way, both she and Esau drank again 
 undisturbed by past libations. 
 
 " He is the toughest little fellow I know," 
 said D., after a somewhat difficult ascent 
 of the mountain, when they came in sight 
 of New Hartford. Philistina smiled con- 
 tentedly, ** He could not be so plain for 
 nothing," she said, with the wisdom of ex- 
 perience. 
 
XI 
 
 HEY would have got to New 
 Hartford hours before if it 
 had not been for Esau's ap- 
 petite. Whether he inherited 
 the pecuharities of his great 
 namesake or only imitated them I do not 
 know ; at any rate, there was a strange 
 likeness between them, and an almost un- 
 canny appropriateness in the appellation 
 Esau. 
 
 Esau was not, it is true, tempted to barter 
 his birthright for a mess of pottage, but I 
 am sure he would any day have sold his 
 good name, graven in so elaborate a fash- 
 ion along the length of his body, for a 
 mouthful of grass ; for although he had 
 eaten with enthusiasm at 7 a.m., and with 
 rapture at i P. M., of all the delicacies 
 included in a horse's bill of fare, by five 
 o'clock he began to seek refreshments in 
 every fence corner and along the grassy 
 road, and stop and browse he would, though 
 
Philistina coaxed and urged and finally ap- 
 plied her thread of a whip to his back. Not 
 an inch would he stir, as indifferent to tears 
 and prayers as a marble bust of Pallas. 
 
 Whenever these stoppages occurred, D. 
 would call out in stentorian tones : ** Why 
 don't you come on, Philistina ?" and wait 
 for a reply, although the reason of her tar- 
 rying was as obvious to him as to her. 
 
 " What do you suppose men always ask 
 you why for, when they know just as well as 
 you do, Diana ?" queried Philistina, when 
 Esau and Sunday next rode abreast. 
 
 " Oh, it is simply the old tyrannical nature 
 asserting itself," said Diana. " They require 
 either a reason or an excuse, on the prin- 
 cipal that some people consider a lie from 
 an inferior an apology." 
 
 It was in front of a small white house 
 with green blinds that Esau next paused 
 for refreshments, the grass growing thick 
 and green from the edge of the road to the 
 little rail-fence. A lady was sitting on the 
 porch making a worsted antimacassar by the 
 light of the mackerel sky, and it would have 
 seemed to a looker-on that her innocent 
 and primitive employment would have put 
 
her in sympathy with the simple bucolic 
 pair. What, then, was Philistina's surprise 
 when she heard, in a distinct though sweet 
 and even tone, "I don't suppose father 'd 
 object." 
 
 ** I beg your pardon," said Philistina, be- 
 wildered. 
 
 *' I don't suppose^' a little doubtfully, ** fa- 
 ther 'd object. You see that is rightly his 
 grass your horse is eating. I don't really 
 suppose — I'm not a resident here myself. 
 I'm married and live in Meriden. I've a 
 carriage and horse of my own. I enjoy go- 
 ing out riding very much. I'm not a resi- 
 dent here. I'm just visiting, myself." 
 
 ** I hope you'll have better luck than I've 
 had if you should happen to let him browse 
 on the highway in front of a house when 
 you are, as you say, going out riding," said 
 Philistina, suavely, pulling up Esau with a 
 jerk that really set him going, though as a 
 matter of history he went with his mouth 
 full of the disputed grass. One would like 
 to know more about this economical soul ; 
 it would not be uninteresting to trace her 
 future career, which if thrift insures suc- 
 cess will be high up in the millionaires. 
 
The white and dusty road begins to be 
 dotted at near intervals with Httle white 
 houses, the yards grow smaller, and the 
 number of children playing before the doors 
 increase. The highway has become a street. 
 These httle houses are not pretty, but they 
 are cheerful and neat, and the plot in front 
 is generally crowded with flowers — grown 
 together with no sort of eye to color or ar- 
 rangement, but in hearty luxuriance. The 
 similarity of the houses tells that New 
 Hartford is a manufacturing village, and 
 these are the homes of the hands, though 
 now and then a more ambitious one, 
 with towers and colored paint, points to 
 what joys the ordinary workman may at- 
 tain who becomes a manager or a fore- 
 man. 
 
 Philistina pretended to smile at the am- 
 bitious colored shingles and the mediaeval 
 towers of wood painted pink and yellow 
 as unheard - of atrocities, but D. reproved 
 her sharply with the reminder that not a 
 dozen years ago she thought them the su- 
 preme architectural expression of beauty; 
 for good taste is not as instinctive as we 
 would like to think it, and, unlike the king- 
 
124 
 
 dom of Heaven, comes by observation and 
 not by spiritual gift. 
 
 Among our pale-faced country people 
 they noted any number of curly-headed, 
 dark-eyed children and blowsy, bonnetless 
 women, whose strange tongues and cos- 
 tumes seemed oddly incongruous in the 
 sweet, clean New England village. 
 
 "They have got here then, have they?" 
 said Diana, regretfully. Diana's Christian 
 charity does not include the Russian Jew. 
 
 The horseback riders had all the feel- 
 ing of foreigners themselves, or rather of 
 Americans in a foreign city, when they 
 rode up to the low white house with the 
 green shutters, the only house of entertain- 
 ment they saw in the village, and the maids 
 and the stable-boys ran out, and the propri- 
 etor in the doorway advanced and invited 
 them to descend. There was something 
 quite old world, too, in his attitude ; a 
 deprecating manner in speaking of his 
 house. 
 
 " Just an old-fashioned place, you see," he 
 said, rubbing his hands. " A country inn, 
 but clean beds and a bit of hot supper." 
 
 Philistina in an instant was the repro- 
 
125 
 
 duction of her English great-grandmother. 
 " The rooms will suit us very well, no doubt, 
 my good man," she said. " We will sup at 
 eight ; home-brewed ale, a gooseberry tart, 
 and a couple of juicy cutlets." 
 
 " Didn't he say, ' My lady and 'ot supper,' 
 Diana .^" she whispered, as they went up- 
 stairs. 
 
 "Nonsense, Philistina; and why should 
 you want to think it old England when 
 New England is much nicer ?" But we will 
 not say that his engaging ways, so unlike 
 the supercilious indifference of the hotel 
 clerk to whom they were accustomed, did 
 him any harm in the eyes of his guests. 
 
 That night they sat in the moonlight on 
 the piazza and talked (with a certain con- 
 descension to be sure) to their host. He 
 said there were several hundred Russian 
 Jews in the town, working w^ith an unex- 
 ampled industry at the mills. These in- 
 dustries are the manufacture of rules and 
 of sail-cloth. Perhaps New Hartford has 
 the largest sail-cloth manufactory in the 
 country. *' Listen," he said, *'to the talk of 
 the people as they pass ; you'd never guess 
 you were in New England." They came 
 
126 
 
 slouching by, not quite the independent 
 slouch, either, of our American workmen, 
 but with a sort of assuming indifference as 
 to manners. The women were bareheaded, 
 the men in coarse blouses and trousers. 
 Diana, who is quick at languages, caught 
 Canadian French, Roumanian, Swedish, low 
 and high German, Polish, Viennese patois, 
 Italian, Yorkshire dialect, the Irish brogue, 
 and Russian. 
 
 '* Do they spend their money here ?" D. 
 asked. 
 
 Mine host pointed to a large brick church 
 with a cross on it that put the small white 
 meeting-house to shame. " The Catholics 
 built that," he said, ** but I can't say the 
 rest of them are members of the Village 
 Improvement Society. I heard a Russian 
 Jew cursing one of our people here the 
 other day because she didn't give him what 
 he called good measure for a cent's worth of 
 milk. Industrious ? they're infernally in- 
 dustrious ; they live on nothing, and they 
 can afford to work for nothing. They'll 
 drive us out, you may depend !" 
 
 They had not succeeded in driving one 
 Yankee out. This was a person who, the 
 
127 
 
 horseback riders divined, with a supernat- 
 ural intelligence, had something to sell; 
 though anything further from trade than 
 his manner would have been difficult in- 
 deed to conceive. He had built a sort of 
 platform, raised and railed off, and placed 
 in the middle of the square, and lighted it 
 with torches soaked in oil. He was a fam- 
 ily man, and exhibited with him his wife 
 and boy, as testimonials of his respectable 
 and domestic character, and, by inference, 
 of the trustworthiness of his goods. They 
 sat beside him very straight and dignified, 
 taking his constant reference to them as 
 just tributes to their importance. All the 
 boys in the neighborhood gathered around 
 the railing and looked at them with un- 
 flinching gaze, and a grave and still de- 
 light, not unmixed with hopeless envy. The 
 fellow would have made his fortune in Con- 
 gress talking against time. His voice was 
 sonorous and far-reaching. Not a reference 
 did he make to the business he was engaged 
 in. He quoted poetry, he paid his tribute 
 to religion, he declared himself on the tem- 
 perance question, home, and "the sweet, 
 sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of 
 
128 
 
 wife," received his passing tribute. Only 
 once did he descend to the realm of the 
 commonplace, and that occurred when one 
 of the impassive Yankee children who had 
 guarded against the faintest expression of 
 interest on his upturned, freckled face un- 
 warily trod on a dog. The dog not being 
 bred in the same school of manners where 
 emotion betrays ill -breeding, yelped, and 
 the orator, with cruel injustice, attacked 
 the boy. *' Where were you raised ?'* he de- 
 manded in a fine frenzy. " Interrupting a 
 public speaker in his oration. Have you 
 no home, no mother to teach you better ? 
 No mother, boy? Then God help you !" 
 
 They did not stay the oration out, because 
 the landlord confided to them that Demos- 
 thenes had been in New Hartford before, and 
 was selling electric oil, not that he loved the 
 seller less, who he assured them was a family 
 man, and well worth patronizing, but what 
 did they want with patent medicines ? 
 
 *' The horses are all right, of course," said 
 Philistina, taking her candle. The very act 
 increased the illusion of foreign parts, and she 
 made it as a statement, not an interrogation. 
 
 "Oh, right enough," said D., jauntily. 
 
XII 
 
 ^ I ANA, the innkeeper has just 
 come into the dining-room, 
 and given me such a turn I 
 really don't know how I shall 
 ever bear it." 
 *' When you are excited like that, Philis- 
 tina," said Diana, coldly, " you are incapa- 
 ble of conveying information. How many 
 times has Miss Anthony urged us, when we 
 are agitated, to count twenty, and then say 
 exactly what we mean !" 
 
 " Oh, very well," said Philistina, " if you 
 don't care to know — " 
 
 " Good gracious ! tell me this instant. 
 Was it anything about my trunk not meeting 
 me here as we had arranged ? Why, I had 
 my best hat in it to wear in Lenox, Sunday ; 
 the one with the feathers, you know — that 
 nice English shape that comes down a little 
 over the forehead, but turns up in the back. 
 Did he say it was lost, or hadn't come, or 
 what? For Heaven's sake, Philistina, tell 
 
 9 
 
I30 
 
 me what he said ; if there is anything wom- 
 en ought to cultivate, it's clearness and defi- 
 niteness and despatch. Why on earth don't 
 you tell whether it's my trunk, and what 
 did he think I'd better do ? Oh, dear, that 
 particular hat ! What did he say — now ? his 
 exact words ? You know I can't go down 
 now with my front hair all in a state like 
 this, and the iron hot." 
 
 *' He said," said Philistina, slowly and de- 
 liberately, " Please, my lady — " 
 
 '* Nonsense," said Diana ; " tell me at once. 
 Philistina, I do hope you're not going to 
 try to be humorous. You know Lady Henry 
 Somerset considers humor the very next 
 thing to coarseness. What did he say about 
 my trunk, and don't keep anything from me 
 in a false notion of pity." 
 
 " He said Esau's back had two little lumps 
 on it just at the end of the backbone," said 
 Philistina, *' and he thinks it's going to rise 
 and have to be lanced, and we'd better sell 
 him at once on the road." 
 
 " Sell him, indeed !" cried Diana ; " that's 
 exactly like all the rest of them, trying to 
 impose on us because we are two lone 
 women. But really, Philistina, you ought 
 
not to be so sensational ; why, you made me 
 think something dreadful had happened, 
 ril be down there the minute I get this curl 
 turned." 
 
 *' But, you know, we aren't exactly two 
 lone women," persisted Philistina ; " there's 
 D." 
 
 ''A stable-man can make any other man 
 think anything he wants to have him 
 think," said Diana, '' but don't be argument- 
 ative, Philistina ; you know that's the way 
 with women who do the most harm to the 
 Cause. I'll be there the very minute I get 
 this front hair " — but D.'s voice calling sent 
 Philistina away, so that she divined rather 
 than heard the completion of the sentence. 
 
 She found Esau munching a wisp of hay. 
 There were a great many people about him, 
 and all were giving advice. He alone, the 
 victim and the hero, like the Duke of Ar- 
 gyle on the scaffold, was indifferent, %nd 
 even careless of the end, looking around 
 with an untroubled gaze into eyes that were 
 full of grief. The hostler, a lively Irishman, 
 was, I fear, of a double nature. He wanted 
 to please everybody, and when the livery- 
 stable-keeper — a tall, gray New-Englander, 
 
132 
 
 with a soothing voice — made hopeless prog- 
 nostications as to the condition of the back, 
 he agreed in voluminous speech, but by a 
 large, taciturn wink, communicated the in- 
 formation that the boss was coming it over 
 them, and the horse would be fit enough 
 with careful riding and a proper rubbing 
 down at night. 
 
 ** There is very little the matter," an- 
 nounced Diana, when she appeared, '' but 
 it is just as well to give him six of No. 7. 
 Three for a man — and I suppose we might 
 double the dose without danger to a horse.'* 
 
 I take pleasure in recording that six of 
 No. 7 did not prove too large a dose. Esau 
 ate them cheerfully out of Philistina's hand, 
 and was none the worse. 
 
 " I hope you'll make New Boston by 
 night," said the livery-stable-man. "But, 
 in my opinion, the little un's done for." 
 
 'Mie ladies mounted the horses with scant 
 leave-taking, but D. dropped behind. 
 
 ''You've been paying that hostler, haven't 
 you, D. ?" asked Philistina. " He's such a 
 nice, sensible fellow. Did you see him wink 
 so as to tell us not to believe that disagree- 
 able livery-man ?" 
 
133 
 
 " Yes — ah — I saw him, and I handed him, 
 well — a half-dollar ; poor fellow, that — ah — 
 gesture might have cost him his place. And, 
 as you say, he struck me as a nice, sensible 
 man, though he didn't say anything to com- 
 promise himself — indeed, I believe he rather 
 agreed with his master, but he did — ah — 
 communicate his distrust in the way you 
 mention." 
 
 Ah, well-a-day, only last Sunday D. was 
 laughing at the man who found all his fel- 
 low-beings intelligent and trustworthy, who 
 divining his opinions agreed with them. 
 
 It was a lovely morning, cool and crisp — 
 at least, yet a while, and they followed the 
 Farmington River up hill and down till they 
 again entered a deep wood which was so 
 high above the stream that one looked 
 down upon it from a precipice, but a preci- 
 pice whose steep sides were hidden with 
 golden-rod and purple-topped iron-weed, 
 and lady's-slipper springing up in the hol- 
 lows. Close to the road velvety willows 
 waved, and below their airy tops was a vista 
 of trees, arching above the river-bank ; the 
 glimpses of sky they caught through the 
 overlapping tree -tops showed it an un- 
 
clouded blue, and Philistina bethought her 
 that it looked like a Thursday sky, as it 
 was — a mid-week, washed and ironed sky, 
 on which the most conscientious of New- 
 Englanders might take a well-earned re- 
 pose. 
 
 Pleasant Valley lies between New Hart- 
 ford and Riverton ; it is a charming coun- 
 try, more like one long street than a succes- 
 sion of farms. The houses are built close 
 to the road, with dooryard evergreens that 
 hold them in close shade all the year, and 
 great barns that also show their broad, low 
 gables to the road, and make the houses 
 look small and insignificant. It was at River- 
 ton they decided to stop till the heat of the 
 day was over; I do not know how far this 
 little town is from the railroad, but it looks 
 remote from stores and traffic. A hand- 
 some iron bridge spans the Farmington, 
 and then there is a long, wide street, inter- 
 sected by another street bordered by elms, 
 and another pretty bridge to cross ere you 
 come to the Riverton House, where man and 
 beast are accommodated. 
 
 Philistina could scarcely wait for Esau's 
 saddle to be removed, so eager was she to 
 
I3S 
 
 discover whether the double dose of No. 7 
 had been injurious, and even Diana looked 
 a trifle nervous ; but there was no accel- 
 eration of the size of the lumps, and he 
 was soon eating his four quarts of oats 
 like a first-born who had never been phys- 
 icked nor lost his birthright. 
 
 The day at Riverton was full of a sunny 
 tranquillity, which, somehow or other, gave 
 Philistina a heartache, and yet it was not 
 a heartache she wished away. They sat 
 for a while in the parlor of the inn, a low- 
 ceiled room with stiff furniture, which, 
 while it was not old enough to make them 
 covetous, had a quaint character of its own, 
 and watched the people pass on infrequent 
 journeys up the street to the drug-store and 
 the General Commission. Opening on the 
 parlor is a large and cheerful room, where 
 presently they were sumptuously to dine ; 
 somehow, it had the look of a ball-room, 
 and there were other hospitable apart- 
 ments built in a rambling way all abftut 
 the corner lot the inn occupies, that sug- 
 gest by -gone gayety when my lady passed 
 through with her coach and four, and the 
 lawyers stopped for the night on their way 
 
136 
 
 to Hartford, and the great stages with their 
 load of merchants tarried with the goods 
 and the news, bringing the latest word from 
 Boston. 
 
 Their hostess, however, could weave them 
 no romances of the past. She was a new- 
 comer from quite a different neighborhood, 
 which the riders were surprised to find 
 was, after all, only three miles off, but she 
 counted herself, and was quite submissive 
 to be counted, a stranger. One must live in 
 a New England village at least a century 
 to arrogate to one's self any familiar airs. 
 
 She told them there were two versions 
 of the legend of the Barkhamsted Light- 
 house, an inland warning to seafarers, that 
 often puzzled the travellers. One was that 
 the Indians always kept a light burning 
 there of a dark night to induce travellers 
 to alight, that they might fall upon them 
 and rob them. Another was of a softer 
 nature. A certain old woman, with an un- 
 canny reputation and three pretty daugh- 
 ters, nightly lit the far-reaching torch which 
 guided the maiden's lovers through circui- 
 tous ways from the valley below to the hut 
 on the hill. 
 
^37 
 
 When they were cooled and rested they 
 went down into the village, stopping to lean 
 over the pretty bridge and look at the gold- 
 colored water running in a rapid stream be- 
 neath. There is a factory on the other side, 
 and a Canadian Frenchman with oblique 
 eyes and swarthy complexion told them 
 with bitterness, as if his fair province had 
 been usurped, that the Russian Jew was 
 ousting all the respectable working people 
 out of Riverton. '' Ces sceleratsF' he said, 
 with his Gallic shrug, and Philistina pri- 
 vately thought the shrug and the French 
 were just as incongruous in the dear Puri- 
 tan town as the jargon (we instinctively call 
 all the languages we don't understand jar- 
 gon) of the Russian Hebrew. 
 
 D. does not like graveyards, nor funerals, 
 except the gay Irish funerals which some- 
 how reconcile one to the inevitable by their 
 common -sense cheerfulness in view of so 
 commonplace a thing as death ; but the Riv- 
 erton graveyard, at least, that in which the 
 pretty stone church is set, is really quite a 
 cheery little spot, and Diana and Philistina 
 had little trouble in coaxing him over to sit 
 on the fallen slabs and smell the sweet gar- 
 
138 
 
 den flowers that were blooming all about. 
 The church is disfigured by a Grecian tem- 
 ple that surmounts its solid stone architect- 
 ure ; but for this decoration it would be 
 an aesthetic object to the most heterodox of 
 observers ; but D. said that temple was as 
 much a sign of orthodoxy on a New Eng- 
 land Congregational meeting-house, of a 
 certain period, as a cross of the Catholic 
 belief. There are inanimate things, you 
 know, that are not of themselves inherently 
 good or bad, or religious or heretical, but 
 association has made them so. The Greek 
 temple on top of the meeting-house meant 
 sound doctrine. 
 
 " But where are all the people ?" queried 
 Philistina. 
 
 "The women in Riverton," said D., "are 
 doubtless at their legitimate tasks: keeping 
 their houses." 
 
 "And the men," said Diana, scornfully, 
 " are at theirs : at the tavern or the store 
 drinking beer and talking politics." 
 
 Philistina, who by this time had learned 
 both to run with the hare and hunt with 
 the hounds, contented herself with saying 
 there was something indecorous almost in 
 
the people across the way playing tennis in 
 an old garden. Tennis in Riverton looked 
 somehow as if an old woman had arrayed 
 herself in a too-too youthful gown. 
 
 There were several tombs whose inscrip- 
 tions they deciphered, but one they united in 
 finding unique. A wife of many years* dis- 
 cipline is commemorated by her husband 
 in these words, after birth and marriage are 
 mentioned : 
 
 ''And on the of , 1801, 
 
 Her spirit, it is charitably hoped, 
 Took its flight 
 To fairer realms above." 
 
 *' This is the only candid inscription on a 
 tomb I have ever read," said D. " The wom- 
 an was a virago or a blue -stocking, or a 
 poor cook, and all the husband could say 
 for her was he hoped she had gone to a 
 better place. I'm glad he lived thirty years 
 after her. And the evidence is strong that 
 he was satisfied with his attempt at matri- 
 mony and in no temper to risk it again, for 
 you see there was no tomb to a second wife. 
 There is no such proof of a man's happiness 
 with his first wife as his willingness to un- 
 dertake another." 
 
I40 
 
 *' There is something more pitiful even 
 than the lack of appreciation of this hus- 
 band," said Diana, with flashing eye. *' All 
 these inscriptions under which women lie 
 refer to their relation with the other sex : 
 * A dutiful spouse,' 'An affectionate mother 
 to loving sons,' ' Her brother's joy,' * She 
 shall do him good and not evil all the 
 days of her life,' * Her husband also, and he 
 praiseth her.' Now don't you suppose these 
 women had any personality outside their 
 care for the men of their households, and 
 would like to be remembered because they 
 were wise, or prudent, or sensible as men 
 are remembered.?" 
 
 " My dear Diana," said D., " when these 
 people lived and died they were under the 
 Jewish dispensation. The Puritan woman 
 was an Oriental in her attitude towards 
 men. We have done away with the Jew- 
 ish Sabbath, and we shall do away — I 
 think, indeed, we have already done away — 
 with the Jewish view of woman ; let us 
 hope we have come into the Christian era 
 at last." 
 
 His sweet reasonableness had its effect, 
 and all three strolled about the sunny graves 
 
with a feeling of good-fellowship as if they 
 had at last got on common ground. 
 
 " I wonder why it does not frighten one,'* 
 said Philistina, at last : " the inevitableness 
 of their fate being one's own, and that some 
 day this awful thing must happen to you 
 and to me." 
 
 *' It does not frighten you," said D., "be- 
 cause it is going to happen to me and to 
 Diana and to every other living creature, 
 but not to you. Everybody makes himself 
 the exception, and this, and this alone, is 
 why you are not afraid. But come, we must 
 away." 
 
 At 4 P.M. they cantered out of Riverton. 
 
XIII 
 
 )HE Farmington River rippled 
 and burned and gleamed in 
 the sun — burned a trifle too 
 fiercely to suit the horseback 
 ^^ riders as they rode along its 
 banks to New Boston. And presently the 
 sun set, and all the nearer sky looked like a 
 sort of blushing foam that extended into 
 waves of light and shade. Near the edges 
 of the farther clouds were monoliths and 
 columns of coral that stood out straight 
 and fine, and back of all was a far-reaching 
 mystery of blue. 
 
 But it was a far cry to their destination, 
 and it seemed, at least to Philistina and 
 Diana, as if New Boston was as distant as 
 the New Jerusalem. By seven o'clock — 
 this was August 5th — they began to ask peo- 
 ple how far it was, and to have positive likes 
 and dislikes for them as their replies went. 
 If a person said New Boston was still far 
 off, he was at once set down as an objec- 
 
143 
 
 tionable individual. If the distance was 
 shortened, the reply gave the answerer a 
 good place in the riders' affections. The 
 first woman, a kindly soul, heard them, when 
 they got to Coldbrook and stopped in front 
 of her house, trying to get some informa- 
 tion out of her son, whose intelligence 
 spoke badly for heredity somewhere. But 
 the riders soon discovered that the fault 
 did not come from the maternal side, for 
 the mother came bustling down full of in- 
 terest and information. She was dressing 
 for a church sociable, which term, to ears 
 accustomed to *' meetings of the Young Peo- 
 ple's Christian Endeavor Society," seemed 
 oddly homely, but she didn't mind a mite 
 coming down just this way — if they didn't. 
 As to telling them the way, she guessed 
 she'd do it better'n Jim. Jim was the most 
 dependable body to get to a place that ever 
 was, but he couldn't tell how he got there. 
 He went to New Boston every week, but as 
 to showing you, 'less he went along, he 
 couldn't do it. 'Twas the way with a lot 
 of good people, good they were, and every- 
 body knew it, but they couldn't give any 
 sort of experience if 'twas in heaven itself, 
 
and they'd be asked. All they could say'd 
 be, there they was. 
 
 '* And that would be all they'd need say, 
 I am sure," said Philistina, sympathetically. 
 The boy didn't look so stupid after that, 
 for there is innocence and there is dulness, 
 and they are two different things. 
 
 " How far is it ?" questioned D., when she 
 had given her clear testimony for the river 
 instead of the hill road. 
 
 *' Well, two miles and a half," she replied, 
 with an attitude of sorrow that she could 
 not conscientiously make it less. 
 
 " Only two miles and a half .^" exclaimed 
 Philistina ; '' what a nice, sensible soul ! I 
 almost love her." 
 
 But when they had ridden a half- hour 
 longer, and the next person called out " two 
 miles and a half — a good half, too," both of 
 the ladies broke out in vindictive language. 
 " I never saw a ruder, more disagreeable 
 man." And so on till they reached New 
 Boston in the dim twilight. They hated the 
 people who said it was far, and loved those 
 who decreased the distance, not in the least 
 regarding whether they spoke the truth or 
 not. 
 
145 
 
 The inn at New Boston resolved itself 
 that night in a dim memory of a dark sta- 
 ble, where each man unsaddled his own 
 beast, and a long, low dining-room, where 
 they ate hot steak and fried potatoes, and 
 were thankful. It was exactly the dish they 
 would have ordered had they been at Del- 
 monico's, because when there are three 
 Americans, beefsteak and potatoes are what 
 is always agreed upon. And yet they did 
 not feel like diners at Delmonico's when they 
 went to their well -served meal, presided 
 over by a lady with kind eyes and gray 
 hair who rejoiced hospitably in their being 
 hearty. There are places I recall in Paris 
 and Vienna where the shabby waiter in the 
 worn dress -suit wishes one '' bon appetif' 
 with a show of effusion, but we are conscious 
 that one must pay in sous or even francs 
 for that shallow compliment, and the '* bon 
 appetW is not so genial before a table 
 d'hote dinner as one served a la carte. 
 
 They found next morning that the reason 
 New Boston was so near and yet so far the 
 night before was because it is irregularly 
 built, and the red lights of its houses dodge 
 in and out of view while it is miles away. 
 
146 
 
 The best house and the church are well set 
 up here, but the shops, or rather stores, are 
 in the valley, and New Boston is so coun- 
 try-like and so childless that all the way 
 down from the hill to the town were black- 
 berry-vines covered with untouched fruit. 
 I said childless with a sort of sigh, for the 
 two pretty little girls who ran about the inn 
 proclaimed themselves proudly from Meri- 
 den, and their companion, a boy in his after- 
 noon clean shirt and face, was from Suffield. 
 
 " There's only four other children we 
 know who live here," said the eldest little 
 girl, " and that's one of them ;" and she 
 pointed to a little girl who was going by. 
 She looked indeed a country girl in her 
 blue stuff gown made long, and sewed 
 stoutly onto the waist. A real sun-bonnet 
 covered her head. '* She's taking black- 
 berries to some old people who live in that 
 big house. She has to work, but, oh ! she's 
 a splendid player when she does play." 
 
 " Yes, she's a splendid player," the chil- 
 dren echoed. 
 
 " Henny, Henny, come play!" 
 
 But Henny turned her sturdy little legs 
 neither to the right nor the left. " Soon es 
 
147 
 
 I do my chores," she answered back, and 
 plodded on her busy way. The children 
 hung around and waited aimlessly. The 
 grown people concluded Henny hadn't a 
 bad sort of time, after all. 
 
 Diana and Philistina thought they had 
 never seen such a stylish young man as the 
 one who overlooked them — he called him- 
 self a clerk — at one of the stores. He might 
 as well as not have come out of a Hebrew 
 clothing-store in the Bowery. He wore a 
 thick bang and an air of insolent ease that 
 ought to have put him in the first four of 
 the Four Hundred. Having nothing which 
 they asked for in stock, they advised with 
 him as to the possibilities of the other 
 stores, and then he added to his slender 
 vocabulary: " He knew nothing about New 
 Boston nor the people — 'twa'n't in his line." 
 
 Dear, dear, what was his line.^ The part 
 of Hamlet, with all stars in the company, 
 or that greater social height, the head-waiter 
 at Delmonico's ? 
 
 Down in the village they saw nothing so 
 interesting as this enchanted prince, except 
 a girl with a pretty straw-hat on carrying a 
 glass of jelly across the street ; the waiter 
 
148 
 
 was covered with a napkin, and a sprig of 
 sweet verbena lay on one side. The glass 
 was long and narrow, and of that delicious 
 shape they thought were all smashed the 
 day their grandmothers were buried. 
 
 ** Diana," said Philistina, **did you know 
 anybody ever sent jelly to sick people now- 
 adays ?" 
 
 " Say ill, Philistina," said Diana ; " we are 
 not at sea." And then she burst out with : 
 ** The dear old thing ! I'd almost be willing 
 to be sick to have it brought me, neighbor- 
 like, as that is, only it is wicked, you know, 
 to be ill." 
 
 The drive they presently took, by the 
 courtesy of a Hartford friend, was along the 
 river-bank ; but the river's course was broken 
 by huge rocks and .fallen logs, so that it 
 poured in white cascades into gold-colored 
 pools. On the opposite side was a deep 
 wood of varied greens. The near road-side 
 was also thick -set with green growths: 
 thickets of blackberry bushes, with pennon- 
 like tops, purple thistle, woodbine, flinging 
 itself over rocks and bushes with an abandoii 
 that bespoke a more torrid home than its 
 present temperate one ; thoroughwort, at 
 
149 
 
 which D. trembled. ** They used to give it 
 to me in the spring," he said, '* brewed in 
 a strong tea, against sickness. The better 
 I was, more surely had I to take it to keep 
 well." I only tell the common names of 
 the plants, and that in some confusion — 
 there were knitted banks of golden-rod and 
 sumach, and the "false" buckwheat scram- 
 bling on top. D. looked vainly for blue 
 gentians, finding only one, but saw rabbit's- 
 foot, and May- weed, shepherd 's-purse, and 
 white clover, and civis, and greenbrier fill- 
 ing in the chinks, and wild -grape vines so 
 cunningly intertwined in the thicket that 
 they were constantly calling out at the 
 monstrosity of its bearing mulberries and 
 kindred fruits. 
 
 It gave them a pang to see four comfort- 
 able houses in succession, two with good 
 gardens, where vegetables and grain were 
 growing, and fruit -yards with apple-trees 
 groaning under their load of fruit, the doors 
 and windows nailed up, the place deserted. 
 
 ** Folks gone West," said the driver, la- 
 conically. 
 
 " But it's a terrible life out West," said D. ; 
 " those great distances between the farms, 
 
150 
 
 the cruel winters, the hot summers. Here 
 they have excellent schools, church privi- 
 leges, a free library, really cultivated society 
 in its best sense, and these pleasant places 
 where comparatively they have none of the 
 discomforts of the West." 
 
 " What does your worship know of farm- 
 ing anywhere ?" ventured Philistina. 
 
 ** Know !" said D. " Why, I knew about 
 farming from my birth till my tenth year. 
 Do you suppose a man ever forgets any- 
 thing he learned then ?" 
 
 " Some places seem to have done their 
 work," said the driver, in defence of the 
 emigrants ; *' a new house would look smart 
 and perky in this old village, and you see 
 the young people's passin* off. There's very 
 few children in New Boston. And when 
 you've worked a horse all its measure of 
 days it ought to rest. Our grandsires worked 
 this land, and our fathers worked it, and we 
 worked it. It seems to me it's earned a spell 
 from our children." 
 
 " It IS melancholy, D.," said Philistina, 
 as they went in the stable to saddle their 
 horses ; they never met a liveryman who 
 could do it, which shows they are not used 
 
151 
 
 to women's riding horseback in New Eng- 
 land, 
 
 ** Yes ; but I envy their gift of quiet," said 
 D., looking at the long silent stretch of 
 granite walls, the flower- crowned meadows, 
 the still white houses, every blind shut, the 
 little silent dogs that pass through the 
 lanes. The old men were sitting in their 
 shirt-sleeves before the kitchen doors read- 
 ing the last month's Agriculturist, or mak- 
 ing a feint of reading, for they were fast 
 asleep. 
 
 '' But not enough to want to go back to 
 it, I hope," said Philistina. 
 
 *' No, no," said D., hastily; "we can't go 
 back. Even were one well -beloved risen 
 from the grave, he might well hover out- 
 side his own threshold, doubting his wel- 
 come." 
 
 The road to New Marlborough leads over 
 high hill crests, from which there are ever- 
 changing views, wide sweeps to the south 
 horizon, outcropping granite ridges and 
 bowlders, then a dip into deep woods, and 
 a farewell to a pretty little stream by which 
 they rode two or three miles, silver rushes 
 of water over moss-covered logs, deep silent 
 
152 
 
 pools, bounded on either side with thick 
 undergrowths of flowers- and ferns, and 
 straggling vines that put out long arms to 
 ensnare the travellers and hold them pris- 
 oners in the magic wood. And there was a 
 bridge under which the water shone like a 
 burnished shield, and a long narrow lane, 
 where there were creamy elder bushes, and 
 amber woodbine turned into rubies, and 
 thorn-trees, heavy with coral beads — they 
 might have been jewels, had the riders only 
 stopped to look. And, as they mounted 
 the hill, tall scarlet cardinal-flowers nodded 
 a welcome, and the fences were covered 
 with wild grape, that gave out a sweet, 
 sensuous odor. In the warm, enervating 
 air it was hard to believe this was New 
 England, home of sturdy faiths and grim 
 convictions. " If it lasted much longer," 
 said D., musingly, "this riotous summer, 
 one can fancy our sons and daughters very 
 like the sons and daughters Horace dwelt 
 among, though for that matter the climate 
 of Italy has changed since his day if there 
 is any truth in his description. Instead of 
 vexing ourselves with dogmas and creeds, 
 we would be listeners, pillowed on the green 
 
153 
 
 turf, to orchard choruses, and as the poet 
 has it : 
 
 " ' Ludit herboso pecus omne campo, 
 Festus in pratus vacat otioso, 
 Cum bove pagus.' 
 
 " Does my lady perfect herself in the mod- 
 ern rather than the ancient tongues ? 
 
 ** * In the long grass the herds and flocks shall sport upon 
 the lea, 
 And man and beast in idleness the livelong day shall 
 be.'" 
 
 " But that's about December, D.," cried 
 Diana, " and you've left out a line." 
 
 " His December corresponded with our 
 August," said D., curtly, and falling back to 
 ride with Philistina, who had accustomed 
 herself to ride with Esau for company. 
 
 Sandersfield is a melancholy township, 
 though it is pleasantly placed. Only two 
 families spent last winter in the centre. 
 Somebody told them that in '70 it contained 
 700 souls. But I do not know a more lovely 
 view than that from the height of the pla- 
 teau. A wide, treeless plain, with patches 
 of fire-weed glowing in the midst of the 
 green, clumps of scant " painter's brush " 
 
154 
 
 gleaming like red torches in the grass ; the 
 natural slope in the valley, with belts and 
 bars and flickering spaces of dark shadows 
 playing over it. Then a stretch of forest, 
 and then the Berkshire Hills resting low in 
 the distance and not defining the horizon, 
 so that one has a sense of space and a sense 
 of solitude. 
 
 As they rode along the desolate, deserted 
 country, a voice startled them. 
 
 It was a man in a cabbage-patch, digging 
 diligently ; but he got up and ran into the 
 road. 
 
 " Having a good time }" he called out, 
 cheerily. Bless the fellow for his divine 
 gift of sympathy; he didn't seem to be 
 having a good time, working in that lone- 
 some field ; but he wanted us to be hav- 
 ing it. 
 
 The sight of his forlorn figure and kind 
 smile made them as melancholy as that of 
 the fine old deserted house they reached 
 within a mile or two of New Marlborough. 
 It was a true colonial mansion : wide hall 
 through the centre, a lovely porch with a 
 pointed arch and little fluted columns, 
 which were as dainty and as graceful as 
 
155 
 
 the church -spire in Farmington, and, if 
 there is any justice in this world, ought to 
 bring tears to the eyes of the author of 
 Daisy Miller, since those eyes were un- 
 able to look at a jug of beer and a loaf of 
 bread painted by the younger Teniers with- 
 out a burst of unmanly emotion. 
 
 "There is nothing," said D., *'so helpless 
 looking as a deserted house." 
 
 *' Except," said Diana, sagely, " an empty 
 mind." 
 
 That quotation from Horace had put 
 Diana in a good-humor with herself. 
 
 " But a mind may well be empty of self- 
 ishness and egotism, and many another 
 evil," said D. ** There are very few whole 
 truths ; most of them have to be modified." 
 
 *' Oh," said Philistina, " if you're going to 
 quote old truisms and try to pass them off 
 as original conclusions, I shall ride ahead." 
 
 Ahead meant New Marlborough. Why 
 new.^ It is a very, very old town, and not 
 the most literal of Anglo - Saxon tourists 
 could take it as a plagiarism of the Marl- 
 borough across the water ; not that it is not 
 the prettiest of villages, with its green, its 
 church-spire, and its colonial houses. 
 
iS6 
 
 The horseback people slept well. The 
 next morning, booted and spurred, they 
 sought the stables. 
 
 Esau's back had two humps on it as large 
 as hens' eggs. 
 
 Diana and D. were for the first time 
 united since their literary spat, and they 
 travestied the immortal saying of the two 
 great English leaders during the Franco- 
 Prussian war. *' Warm as are our sympa- 
 thies with Germany," said Disraeli and the 
 Grand Old Man, '* let us weep together over 
 poor France." 
 
 *' Let us weep together," said these two, 
 sorrowfully, *' over poor Esau." 
 
XIV 
 
 I HE fate of Esau hung in the 
 balance two days. By night 
 it was reported in the stables 
 that he was a very sick horse. 
 The next day that he had fall- 
 en lame ; that afternoon he had turned his 
 face to the wall like Elizabeth in the play. 
 D. went out with the stable - man who was 
 attending him, and when he came back his 
 countenance was lightened. 
 
 '* I've sold him," he said, with an air of 
 having accomplished a great feat. 
 
 *' Who to, D. ?'* queried Philistina, who 
 didn't mind grammar when she wanted in- 
 formation. 
 
 "Oh, to the stable-man," said D., in an 
 indifferent manner. '* He says he's taking a 
 risk, but he's willing to." 
 
 Diana and Philistina exchanged glances. 
 
 "How much did you get.^" said the latter. 
 
 " You don't expect a man to sell a dying 
 
 horse for a mine of money, do you ?" replied 
 
158 
 
 D., impatiently. " Come, Philistina, get into 
 the carriage, and let the hotel proprietor 
 drive you over to Stockbridge ; we'll ride." 
 
 "Oh, D.," cried Philistina, "he's cheated 
 you ; I know he has, and it's too bad ! If you 
 only were clever about things like some 
 people—" 
 
 " Philistina," said D., "I have long based 
 my opposition to equal rights on the fact 
 that women are not essentially honest. You 
 know perfectly well in a horse trade one 
 party has got to do the other party, and you 
 are regretting in the liveliest of terms that 
 I didn't do that hostler instead of his doing 
 me. You'd be just the same in any political 
 matter or any legal matter. You'd be like 
 Sir Arthur Helps's old woman, who expected 
 her shilling to buy twice as much as other 
 people's shillings because it was hers. What 
 you wanted would in your eyes be right, and 
 you'd wink at the immorality if you discov- 
 ered any, because you couldn't believe any- 
 thing that could benefit the side you had 
 taken could be very bad." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Philistina, " pecuniary 
 honesty is peculiar to women, though I 
 agree with M. Renan : it is the most hour- 
 
159 
 
 geois of all the virtues, and one supposed to 
 require the least self-repression. Besides, if 
 somebody has to be done in a horse trade, 
 why let that stable-man take the sin on his 
 conscience ? You look much more able to 
 bear it." 
 
 "It is queer," said D., taking no notice, 
 "that association with so noble an animal 
 as the horse seems to affect the character of 
 men to their detriment. You would think 
 that such an animal would be excellent com- 
 pany ; but it is not true. Liverymen, stable- 
 men, jockeys — they are all of a sort. They 
 look you in the face and sweetly lie you out 
 of your choicest steed. After this journey 
 I have done with horses. I have found my 
 temptation, thank Heaven, in time !" 
 
 In almost any other period of American 
 history it would seem a pity to end this 
 record of a journey in humiliation instead 
 of triumph. Twenty years ago, perhaps, the 
 most conscientious of Philistinas would 
 have been pardoned if she had, like the sun, 
 gone down in the golden glow of a recov- 
 ered Esau, herself a sort of a lady centaur 
 on his back, loping in perfect harmony 
 together over the Berkshire hills. But 
 
i6o 
 
 the spirit of the age demands not only that 
 this record be faithful to the eternal verities, 
 but that it be as pessimistic a piece of lit- 
 erature as the sad, sad public loves. Phil- 
 istina was too conscious of that exacting 
 audience to let her saddle experiences ter- 
 minate in commonplace success and good- 
 cheer. She did not, it is true, carry the 
 doctrine of destructiveness so far as to 
 subject herself to a last interview with 
 Esau ; but the calm stoicism with which 
 she changed her riding-habit for a blue 
 flannel skirt and blouse waist, a costume 
 which was repeated with some uniformity 
 by other travellers last summer, and turned 
 her face in another manner of journeying 
 towards Stockbridge, was not without its 
 pathetic aspect. This simple submission to 
 the whirlwind of fate, and acquiescence in 
 the settled belief that men are merely atoms 
 blown in its path, evinced an acquaintance 
 with modern fiction that spoke well for her 
 stern determination to read novels, not for 
 their plot, but their moral lesson. 
 
 Diana and D., for a time at least, went on 
 without her ; and if she was haunted with a 
 vision of Esau prancing out of the stable 
 
i6i 
 
 with his altruistic purchaser on his back as 
 soon as she had got well out of New Marl- 
 borough, let us hope she was willing to let 
 her experience prove that life is very sad 
 and very disappointing, and it becomes us 
 to verify the assertions of the greatest liv- 
 ing authors — that nothing is really worth 
 while. 
 
 THE END 
 
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