/OS 
 
 Country By-M/ays 
 
 BY 
 
 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 
 II 
 
 FIFTH EDITION 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1887. 
 
Copyright, 1881, 
 BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge . 
 Stereotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 
 
CCS 
 
 To 
 T. H. J., 
 
 MY DEAR FATHER ; MY DEAR FRIEND J 
 THB BEST AND WISEST MAN I EVER KNEW? 
 
 WHO TAUGHT MB MANY LESSONS AND SHOWED ME MANY THINGS 
 
 AS WE WENT TOGETHER ALONG THB 
 
 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 M12U48 
 
OONTENTb. 
 
 PAQl 
 
 RIVER DRIFTWOOD 1 ~ 
 
 ANDREW S FORTUNE , 34- 
 
 AN OCTOBER RIDE 92 
 
 FROM A MOURNFUL, VILLAGER . . , . 116 
 
 AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY 139 
 
 A WINTER DRIVE 163 
 
 GOOD LUCK : A GIRL S STORY 186 
 
 Miss BECKY S PILGRIMAGE . 218- 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 
 
 IT the head of tide- water on the river there 
 is a dam, and above it is a large mill-pond, 
 where most of the people who row and sail 
 keep their boats all summer long. I like, perhaps 
 once a year, to cruise around the shores of this pretty 
 sheet of water ; but I am always conscious of the 
 dam above it and the dam below it, and of being con 
 fined between certain limits. T rarely go beyond a 
 certain point on the lower or tide river, as people call 
 it, but I always have the feeling that I can go to Eu 
 rope, if I like, or anywhere on the high seas ; and 
 when I unfasten the boat there is no dam or harbor 
 bar, or any barrier whatever between this and all for 
 eign ports. Far up among the hills the ocean comes, 
 and its tide ebbs and flows. 
 
 When the tide goes out, the narrow reaches of the 
 river become rapids, where a rushing stream fights 
 1 
 
. 2 ; CO UNTR T KY-WA YS. 
 
 with the ledges and loose rocks, and where one needs 
 a good deal of skill to guide a boat down safely. 
 Where the river is wide, at low tide one can only 
 see the mud flats and broad stretches of green marsh 
 grass. But when the tide is in it is a noble and dig 
 nified stream. There are no rapids and only a slow 
 current, where the river from among the inland 
 mountains flows along, finding its way to the sea, 
 which has come part way to welcome the company of 
 springs and brooks that have answered to its call. A 
 thousand men band themselves together, and they are 
 one regiment ; a thousand little streams flow together, 
 and are one river ; but one fancies that they do not 
 lose themselves altogether ; while the individuality of 
 a river must come mainly from the different charac 
 ters of its tributaries. The shape of its shores and 
 the quality of the soil it passes over determine cer 
 tain things about it, but the life of it is something by 
 itself, as the life of a man is separate from the cir 
 cumstances in which he is placed. There must be 
 the first spring which overflows steadily and makes a 
 brook, which some second spring joins, and the third, 
 and the fourth ; and at last there is a great stream, in 
 which the later brooks seem to make little difference. 
 I should like to find the very beginning and head 
 water of my river. I should be sorry if it were a 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 3 
 
 pocd, though somewhere in the ground underneath 
 there would be a spring that kept the secret and was 
 in command and under marching orders to the sea, 
 commissioned to recruit as it went along. Here at 
 the head of tide-water it first meets the sea, and then 
 when the tide is in there is the presence of royalty, 
 or at least its deputies. The river is a grand thing 
 when it is river and sea together; but how one 
 misses the ocean when the tide is out, for in the 
 great place it filled the stream from the hills, after 
 all, looks of little consequence. 
 
 The river is no longer the public highway it used 
 to be years ago, when the few roads were rough, and 
 railroads were not even dreamed of. The earliest 
 chapter of its history that I know is that it was full 
 of salmon and other fish, and was a famous fishing- 
 ground with the Indians, who were masters of its 
 neighboring country. To tell its whole story one 
 would have to follow the fashion of the old Spanish 
 writers whom Garcilasso de la Vega says he will not 
 imitate, in the first chapter of his Commentaries of 
 the Yncas, that delightful composition of uncon 
 scious pathos and majestic lies. When his predeces 
 sors in the field of literature wished to write on any 
 subject whatever, he solemnly tells us, they always 
 began with a history of the globe. One cannot help 
 
4 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 wishing that he had not disdained to follow their ei 
 ample, and had given his theories, which would have 
 been wildly ahead of even the fancies of his time, in 
 general, and full of most amusing little departures 
 from the truth when he came down to details. But 
 the earliest history of the river can well be ignored ; 
 it is but seldom, as yet, that people really care much 
 for anything for its own sake, until it is proved to 
 have some connection with human-kind. We are 
 slow to take an interest in the personality of our 
 neighbors who are not men, or dogs, or horses, or at 
 least some creature who can be made to understand a 
 little of our own spoken language. Who is going to 
 be the linguist who learns the first word of an old 
 crow s warning to his mate y or how a little dog ex 
 presses himself when he asks a big one to come and 
 rout his troublesome enemy ? How much we shall 
 know when the pimpernel teaches us how she makes 
 her prophecies of the weather, and how long we shall 
 have to go to school when people are expected to 
 talk to the trees, and birds, and beasts, in their own 
 language ! What tune could it have been that Or 
 pheus and Amphion played, to which the beasts list 
 ened, and even the trees and stones followed them 
 to hear ? Is it science that will give us back the 
 gift, or shall we owe it to the successors of those 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 5 
 
 friendly old saints who talked with the birds and 
 fishes ? We could have schools for them, if we once 
 could understand them, and could educate them into 
 being more useful to us. There would be intelligent 
 sword-fish for submarine divers, and we could send 
 swallows to carry messages, and all the creatures that 
 know how to burrow in the earth would bring us the 
 treasures out of it. I should have a larger calling ac 
 quaintance than ever out-of-doors, and my neighbors 
 down river would present me to congenial friends 
 whom as yet I have not discovered. The gods are 
 always drawing like toward like, and making them 
 acquainted, if Homer may be believed, but we are 
 apt to forget that this is true of any creatures but 
 ourselves. It is not necessary to tame them before 
 they can be familiar and responsive ; we can meet 
 them on their own ground, and be surprised to find 
 how much we may have in common. Taming is only 
 forcing them to learn some of our customs ; we 
 should be wise if we let them tame us to make use of 
 some of theirs. They share other instincts and emo 
 tions with us beside surprise, or suspicion, or fear. 
 They are curiously thoughtful; they act no more 
 from unconscious instinct than we do ; at least, they 
 are called upon to decide as many questions of action 
 or direction, and there are many emergencies of life 
 
COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 when we are far more helpless and foolish than they. 
 It is easy to say that other orders of living creatures 
 exist on a much lower plane than ourselves ; we 
 know very little about it, after all. They are often 
 gifted in some way that we are not ; they may even 
 carry some virtue of ours to a greater height than we 
 do. But the day will come for a more truly univer 
 sal suffrage than we dream of now, when the mean 
 ing of every living thing is understood, and it is given 
 its rights and accorded its true value : for its life is 
 from God s life, and its limits were fixed by him ; its 
 material shape is the manifestation of a thought, and 
 to each body there is given a spirit. 
 
 The great gulls watch me float along the river, cu 
 riously, and sail in the air overhead. Who knows 
 what they say of me when they talk together ; and 
 what are they thinking about when they fly quickly 
 out of sight ? Perhaps they know something about 
 me that I do not know of myself yet ; and so may the 
 musk-rat, as he hurries through the water with a lit 
 tle green branch in his mouth which will make a 
 salad for his supper. He watches me with his sharp 
 eyes, and whisks into his hole in the sunny side of 
 the island. I have a respect for him ; he is a busy 
 creature, and he lives well. You might be hospitable 
 and ask me to supper, musk-rat! I don t know 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 7 
 
 whether I should care much for you if I were an 
 other musk-rat, or you were a human being, but I 
 shall know you again when I see you by an odd mark 
 in the fur on the top of your head, and that is some 
 thing. I suppose the captive mussels in your den 
 are quaking now at hearing you come in. I have 
 lost sight of you, but I shall remember where your 
 house is. I do not think people are thankful enough 
 who live out of the reach of beasts that would eat 
 them. When one thinks of whole races of small 
 creatures like the mussels which are the natural and 
 proper food of others, it seems an awful fact and ne 
 cessity of nature ; perhaps, however, no more awful 
 than our natural death appears to us. But there is 
 something distressing about being eaten, and having 
 one s substance minister to a superior existence ! It 
 burts one s pride. A death that preserves and ele- 
 rates our identity is much more consoling and satis 
 factory ; but what can reconcile a bird to its future 
 as part of the tissues of a cat, going stealthily afoot, 
 and by nature treacherous ? Who can say, however, 
 that our death may not be simply a link in the chain? 
 One thing is made the prey of another. In some way 
 WIT present state ministers to the higher condition to 
 which we are coming. The grass is made somehow 
 from the ground, and presently that is turned into 
 
6 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 beef, and that goes to make part of a human being. 
 We are not certain what an angel may be ; but the 
 life in us now will be necessary to the making of one 
 by and by. 
 
 There is a wise arrangement in this merging and 
 combining. It makes more room in the world. We 
 must eat our fellows and be eaten to keep things 
 within a proper limit. If all the orders of life were 
 self-existing, and if all the springs that make up the 
 river flowed down to the sea separately and inde 
 pendently, there would be an awful confusion and 
 chaos still ; but this leads one to think of the trans 
 migration of souls and other puzzling subjects! I 
 shall have to end with an ignorant discourse about 
 the globe instead of having begun with it. My river, 
 as I said at first, leads to the sea, and from any port 
 one can push off toward another sea of boundless 
 speculation and curious wonderings about this world, 
 familiar, and yet so great a mystery. 
 
 There are a thousand things to remember and to 
 say about the river, which seems to be of little use in 
 the half dozen miles I know best, after it has made 
 itself of great consequence by serving to carry per 
 haps a dozen or twenty mills, of one kind and an 
 other. Between its dams it has a civilized and sub 
 jected look, but below the last falls, at the Landing, it 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 9 
 
 apparently feels itself to be its own master, and serves 
 in no public capacity except to carry a boat now and 
 then, and give the chance for building some weirs, as 
 it offers some good fishing when the alewives and 
 bass come up, with bony and muddy shad, that are 
 about as good to eat as a rain-soaked paper of pins. 
 I think its chief use is its beauty, and that has never 
 been as widely appreciated as it ought to be. It is 
 the eastern branch of the Piscataqua, which separates 
 the States of Maine and New Hampshire ; and I, be 
 ing a lawless borderer, beg you to follow for a raid 
 on the shores, not for pillaging the farms and cattle- 
 lifting, but to see the trees and their shadows in the 
 water : the high, steep banks where the great pines 
 of Maine thrive, on one hand, and the gently sloping 
 Southern New Hampshire fields fringed with willows 
 and oaks on the other. When you catch sight of a 
 tall lateen sail and a strange, clumsy craft that looks 
 heavy and low in the water, you will like to know 
 that its ancestor was copied from a Nile boat, from 
 which a sensible old sea-captain took a lesson in 
 ship-building many years ago. The sail is capitally 
 fitted to catch the uncertain wind, which is apt to 
 come in flaws and gusts between the high, irregular 
 banks of the river ; and the boat is called a gunda- 
 low, but sometimes spelled gondola. One sees there 
 
10 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 often on the Merrimac and on the Piscataqua and its 
 branches, and the sight of them brings a curiously 
 foreign element into the New England scenery ; for I 
 never see the great peaked sail coming round a point 
 without a quick association with the East, with the 
 Mediterranean ports or the Nile itself, with its ruins 
 and its desert and the bright blue sky overhead ; with 
 mummies and scarabei and the shepherd kings ; with 
 the pyramids and Sphinx that strange group, so 
 old one shudders at the thought of it standing clear 
 against the horizon. 
 
 A hundred years ago the northern country was 
 covered for the most part with heavy timber, and 
 the chief business at Berwick was receiving this from 
 the lumbermen, and sending it to Portsmouth to be 
 reshipped, or direct to the West Indies, to be bar 
 tered for rum and tobacco and molasses, which might 
 be either brought home at once, or sent to Russia, to 
 be exchanged again for iron and sail-cloth and cord 
 age. Not forty years ago there were still twenty 
 gundalows sailing from the Landing wharves, while 
 now there are but two, and long after that the packet 
 boat went regularly every other day to Portsmouth. 
 Until the days of the railroads most of the freight 
 came by water, and the packet skippers were impor 
 tant men. I have always wished to know something 
 
RJVER DRIFTWOOD. 11 
 
 more of the history of the quaint little packet store 
 house which, until within a year or two, stood in the 
 mill-yard, just below the falls. It was built of heavy 
 timbers, as if it might some day be called upon to re 
 sist a battering-ram. The stories were very low, and 
 the upper one projected over the water with a beam, 
 to which was fastened a tackle and fall to hoist and 
 lower the goods. It was a little building, but there 
 was a great air of consequence about it. It was 
 painted a dark red, which the weather had dulled a 
 good deal, and it leaned to one side. Nobody knew 
 how old it was ; it was like a little old woman who be 
 longed to a good family, now dead, save herself ; and 
 who could remember a great many valuable people 
 and events which everybody else had forgotten. It 
 was the last of the warehouses that used to stand on 
 the river-banks, and I was sorry when it was pulled 
 down. The old wharves have almost disappeared, 
 too, though their timbers can still be seen here and 
 there. 
 
 It sometimes takes me a whole afternoon to go 
 two miles down the river. There are many reasons 
 why I should stop every now and then under one 
 bank or another ; to look up through the trees at the 
 eky, or at their pictures in the water ; or to let the 
 boat lie still, until one can watch the little fish come 
 
12 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 back to their playground on the yellow sand and 
 gravel ; or to see the frogs, that splashed into the 
 water at my approach, poke their heads out a little 
 way to croak indignantly, or raise a loud note such 
 as Scotch bagpipers drive out of the pipes before they 
 start a tune. The swallows dart like bats along the 
 surface of the water after insects, and I see a drowned 
 white butterfly float by, and reach out for it ; it looks 
 BO frail and little in the river. When the cardinal 
 flowers are in bloom I go from place to place until I 
 have gathered a deckload ; and as I push off the boat 
 it leaves the grass bent down, and the water-mint 
 that was crushed sends a delicious fragrance after 
 me, and I catch at a piece and put a leaf in my mouth, 
 and row away lazily to get a branch of oak or maple 
 leaves to keep the sun off my flowers. Cardinals are 
 quick to wilt, and hang their proud heads wearily. 
 They keep royal state in the shade, and one imagines 
 that the other flowers and all the weeds at the water s 
 edge take care to bow to them as often as the wind 
 comes by, and pay them honor. They are like fine 
 court ladies in their best gowns, standing on the 
 shore. Perhaps they are sending messages down the 
 river and across the seas, or waiting to hear some 
 news. They make one think of Whittier s high 
 born Amy Wentworth and her sailor lover, for they 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 13 
 
 seem like flowers from a palace garden that are away 
 from home masquerading and waiving ceremony, and 
 taking the country air. They wear a color that is the 
 sign of high ecclesiastical rank, and the temper of 
 their minds would make them furies if they fought 
 for church and state. They are no radicals ; they 
 are tories and aristocrats ; they belong to the old 
 nobility among flowers. It would be a pity if the 
 rank marsh grass overran them, or if the pickerel 
 weed should wade ashore to invade them and humble 
 their pride. They are flowers that after all one 
 should not try to put into vases together. They 
 have, like many other flowers, too marked an indi 
 viduality, and there is more pleasure to be taken 
 from one tall and slender spire of blossoms by itself, 
 just as it is pleasanter to be alone with a person one 
 admires and enjoys. To crowd some flowers together 
 you lose all delight in their shape and beauty ; you 
 only have the pleasure of the mass of color or of 
 their perfume ; and there are enough bright flowers 
 and fragrant flowers that are only beautiful in masses. 
 To look at some flowers huddled together and losing 
 all their grace and charm is like trying to find com 
 panionship and sympathy by looking for a minute at 
 a crowd of people. But there is a low trait of ac 
 quisitiveness in human nature. I pick cardinal flow 
 
14 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 ers by the armful, and nothing less than a blue-and- 
 white ginger pot full of daisies is much satisfaction. 
 
 But to most people one tree, or flower, or river is 
 as good as another, and trees and flowers and rivers 
 are to be found without trouble, while there are some 
 who would never know who has lived beside my 
 river unless it were told here. That says at once 
 that their fame at best is provincial, except for pep 
 pery little Captain John Paul Jones, who gathered 
 the ship s company of the Ranger from these neigh 
 boring farms. Old people, who died not many years 
 ago, remembered him as he walked on the wharves 
 at Portsmouth, with his sword point scratching the 
 ground ; a little wasp of a fellow, with a temper like 
 a blaze of the gunpowder whose smoke he loved. 
 One can imagine him scrambling up the shore here 
 to one of the old farm-houses, as short as a boy ; but 
 as tall as a grenadier, in his pride and dignity ; and 
 marching into the best room, in all the vainglory and 
 persuasiveness of his uniform, to make sure of a good 
 fellow whose looks he liked, and whom he promised 
 to send home a gallant hero, with his sea-chest full 
 of prize-money. And afterward he would land again 
 at one of the stately old colonial mansions that used 
 to stand beside the river, at the Wallingford house 
 by Madam s Cove, or at the Hamilton house, and b 
 received with befitting ceremony. 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 15 
 
 There were many fine houses in this region in old 
 times, but only one still lingers, this same Hamil 
 ton house, which seems to me unrivaled for the 
 beauty of its situation, and for a certain grand air 
 which I have found it hard to match in any house 
 [ have ever seen. It is square and gray, with four 
 great chimneys, and many dormer windows in its 
 high-peaked roof ; it stands on a point below which 
 the river is at its widest. The rows of poplars and 
 its terraced garden have fallen and been spoiled by 
 time, but a company of great elms stand guard over 
 it, and the sunset reddens its windows, and the days 
 of the past seem to have come back, when one is near 
 it, its whole aspect is so remote from the spirit of 
 the present. Inside there are great halls and square 
 rooms with carved wood-work, arched windows and 
 mahogany window-seats, and fire-places that are wide 
 enough almost for a seat in the chimney-corner. In 
 the country about I have heard many a tradition of 
 the way this house was kept ; of the fine ladies and 
 gentlemen, and the great dinner-parties, and the 
 guests who used to come up the river from Ports 
 mouth, and go home late in the moonlight evening 
 at the turn of the tide. In those days the wharves 
 that are fast being washed away were strong enough, 
 %nd there were warehouses and storehouses and piles 
 
16 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 of timber all along the river. The builder of the 
 house was a successful man, who made a great fort 
 une in the lucky West India trade of his time ; he 
 was poor to begin with, but everything prospered 
 steadily with his business interests, and one owes 
 him a debt of gratitude for leaving so fine a house to 
 delight our eyes. 
 
 A little way up the shore there was formerly a 
 ship-yard, and I know of four ships that were built 
 there much less than fifty years ago. My grandfather 
 was part owner of them, and their names, with those 
 of other ships, have been familiar to me from my 
 babyhood. It is amusing that the ships of a family 
 concerned in navigation seem to belong to it and to 
 be part of it, as if they were children who had grown 
 up and gone wandering about the world. Long after 
 some familiar craft has changed owners even, its fort 
 unes are affectionately watched, and to know that a 
 ship has been spoken at sea gives a good deal of 
 pleasure beside the assurance that the cargo is so 
 far on its way to market at Canton or Bombay. I 
 remember wondering why the smooth green bank, 
 where the dandelions were so thick in spring, should 
 be called the ship-yard by my family, and even why 
 any one should call that corner of the town the 
 Lower Landing, since nothing ever seemed to land, 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 17 
 
 unless it were the fleets that children built from chips 
 and shingles. It is a lovely, quiet place, and I often 
 think of an early summer morning when I was go 
 ing down river in a row-boat. The dandelions were 
 sprinkled all over the short green grass, and high on 
 the shore, under a great elm, were two wandering 
 young musicians. They had evidently taken the 
 wrong road, and discovered that this was a long lane 
 that led only to the great house on the point and to 
 the water s edge. They must have been entertained, 
 for they seemed very cheerful ; one played a violin, 
 and the other danced. It was like a glimpse of sun 
 shiny, idle Italy : the sparkling river and the blue 
 sky, the wide green shores and the trees, and the 
 great gray house, with its two hall doors standing 
 wide open, the lilacs in bloom, and no noise or 
 hurry, a quiet place, that the destroying left hand 
 of progress had failed to touch. 
 
 One day I was in one of the upper rooms of the 
 Hamilton house in a dormer window, and I was 
 amused at reading the nonsense some young girl had 
 written on the wall. The view was beautiful, and I 
 thought she must have sat there with her work, or 
 have watched the road or the river for some one 
 whom she wished to see coming. There were senti 
 mental verses, written at different times. She seemed 
 a 
 
18 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 to have made a sort of scrap-book of the bit of wall, 
 and she had left me the date, which was very kind 
 of her ; so I knew that it was 1802, and in the sum 
 mer, that she used to sit there in her favorite perch. 
 This is one of her verses that I remember : 
 
 "May you be blest with all that Heaven may send, 
 Long life, pood health, much pleasure in a friend; 
 May you in every clime most happy be, 
 And when far distant often think of me." 
 
 It was very pleasant to catch this glimpse of girl 
 hood in the old house. I wondered how she liked life 
 as she grew older, and if the lover if that were a 
 lover did think often enough of her, and come back 
 to her at last from the distant climes. She could have 
 wished him nothing better than much pleasure in a 
 friend. I do not know the history of many members 
 of the family; Colonel Hamilton and his consort are 
 buried under a heavy monument in the Old Fields 
 burying-ground, and at the end of the long epitaph is 
 the solemn announcement that Hamilton is no more. 
 It would be a strange sight if one of his heavily-laden 
 little ships came up the river now ; but I like to think 
 about those days, and how there might have happened 
 to be some lumbermen from far inland, who were de- 
 Ughted to gossip with the sailors and carry back up 
 into the country the stories of their voyage. When 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 19 
 
 the French prisoners of war came into Portsmouth, I 
 have heard old people say that there was a great ex 
 citement, and as the ships came in they looked like 
 gardens, for the Frenchmen had lettuces for salads, 
 and flowers growing in boxes that were fastened on 
 the decks ; and it was amusing to hear of these pris 
 oners being let out on parole about the country towns, 
 in Eliot and Newington and Kittery, and all up and 
 down the river. Perhaps more than one of them 
 found their way to the hospitable families in Berwick 
 and were entertained as became their rank and fort 
 unes. In an old house in Eliot there is a little draw 
 ing made by one of these men, and I have an exquis 
 ite little water-color painting of a carnation, with the 
 quaintly written request that charming Sally will 
 sometimes think of the poor Ribere, who will never 
 forget her. It is all that is left of what must have 
 been a tender friendship between this gallant young 
 Frenchman and my grandmother. I found it once 
 among her copy-books, and letters from her girt 
 friends, and love-letters from my grandfather which 
 he sent home to her from sea. She was very young 
 when the poor Ribere was so sorry to part from her, 
 for she married at eighteen (and died at twenty-five) 
 \ knew very little about her until I found in the gar- 
 et the little brass-nailed trunk that had kept her se- 
 
20 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 crets for me. I am sure she often made one of the 
 company that used to come up the river to take tea 
 and go home by moonlight. She was a beautiful girl, 
 and everybody was fond of her. The poor Ribere 
 sat beside her in the boat, I have no doubt ; and per 
 haps it was in the terraced garden with the rows of 
 poplars round it, that she picked the flower he painted, 
 and no doubt he carried it away with him when he 
 was set free again, and was not a prisoner of war any 
 longer. 
 
 There was formerly a bright array of clerical talent 
 iu the river towns, and it was most amusing to listen 
 to the anecdotes which the old people of the last 
 generation delighted to tell of the ministers. Not to 
 speak of the well-known Portsmouth divines, and of 
 Dr. Stevens, of Kittery Point, there was the Rever 
 end Mr. Litchfield, of Kittery, who was called the 
 fisher parson, and his neighbor, Parson Chandler, who 
 might have been called the farmer parson, for he was 
 a celebrated tiller of the soil, and his example was a 
 great blessing to the members of his Eliot parish. 
 The fields there slope to the south and west, and the 
 grass grows green sooner than anywhere else in the 
 region, and the fruits of the earth grow and ripen 
 quickly. He taught his neighbors to improve upon 
 \he old fashions of agriculture. An old friend of 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 21 
 
 mine told me that once he was driving from Ports 
 mouth to Berwick, in his early manhood, with Daniel 
 Webster for company, and when they passed this 
 clergyman s house Mr. Webster said that he should 
 be perfectly satisfied if he could be as great a man as 
 Parson Chandler ; and judging from the stories of 
 his wisdom and eloquence, the young lawyer s was 
 no mean ambition. Mr. Litchfield spent much of 
 his time on week days in the apostolic business of 
 catching fish ; and he was a man of rare wit and 
 drollery, with a sailor-like serenity and confidence 
 iu everything s coming out right at last, and a true 
 mariner s readiness and inteutness when there was 
 work to be done. Once, at a conference in Ports- 
 mouth, the preacher failed to come, and some one had 
 to furnish a sermon in his place. It fell to Mr. Litch- 
 field s share ; and old Dr. Buckminster said, when tha 
 discourse was ended, it being extemporaneous and 
 very eloquent, " My friends, the fisher parson beats 
 us all ! " It is interesting to find that many of the 
 clergymen of that day seem to have been uncommonly 
 practical men. One fancies that they all preached 
 the better because much of their time was spent in a 
 way that brought them in close contact with people s 
 every-day lives. It was no ideal human nature, stud 
 ied from sermons and theological works, and classi 
 
22 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 fied and doomed at the recommendation of the old di 
 vines. One can believe that it was not abstract gen 
 eralities of a state of sinfulness so much as particu 
 lar weakness and shortcomings that they condemned 
 from their pulpits. Parson Litchfield could preach 
 gallantly at some offender who stole from and lied 
 about his lobster-pots when he took his text from 
 Ananias and Sapphira, and Parson Chandler could 
 be most impressive and ready with illustration when 
 he chose the parable of the sower for the subject of 
 his discourse. In Berwick there was a grave and 
 solemn little man, whom all his great parish long re 
 membered admiringly. The church where the whole 
 town centred was at the Old Fields, and it ought to 
 be standing yet, but I do not know that anything is 
 left of it but a bit of paper I found one day, on 
 which is written the names of the men who built it 
 and the sums of money and bundles of shingles or 
 pieces of timber that each contributed. 
 
 I do not know why this should have been so super 
 stitious a neighborhood, but there seems to have been 
 a great deal of trouble from ghosts, and it was the 
 duty of the ministers to drive them away, or to " lay " 
 them, as they called it then. An old man told me 
 once that the parsons made a great secret of it. They 
 met together in a room, which nobody was allowed to 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 23 
 
 enter ; so whether it was a service with mysterious 
 rites, or they only joked together, and thought it 
 well to keep up the reverence in the rustic mind for 
 the power of the priesthood, nobody knows to this 
 day. There is still standing at the Landing a house 
 that has always been said to be haunted. Its ghost 
 was laid properly, but she seems to have risen again 
 defiantly. It formerly stood very near the shore of 
 the little harbor, if one may give that name to what 
 was simply the head of navigation on the river. The 
 family who built and owned it first all died long ago, 
 but I never go by the house without thinking of 
 its early history in those days, when the court end of 
 the little town was next the river, and the old elms 
 shaded the men who were busy with their trading 
 and shipping, and the women who kept up a stately 
 fashion of living in-doors, and walked proudly to and 
 fro in the streets dressed in strange stuffs that had 
 been brought home to them from across the seas. 
 There was a fine set of people in the little town, and 
 Berwick held its head very high, and thought some of 
 the neighboring towns of little consequence that have 
 long since outgrown it and looked down upon it in 
 their turn. It even has given up its place as the 
 head of the family of villages into which the original 
 township has been divided. It is only South Ber- 
 
24 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 wick now ; but I like to call it Berwick here, as it has 
 a right to be called, for it was the oldest settlement, 
 and the points of the compass should have been given 
 to the newer centres of civilization which were its off 
 shoots. 
 
 The oldest houses are, with one or two excep 
 tions, by far the finest ones, and the one of which I 
 have spoken still keeps up as well as it can the pride 
 as well as the name of its first owner. One cannot 
 help being interested in this man, who was one of the 
 earlier physicians of the town, and also had a hand 
 in the business that was connected with the river. I 
 have heard that he came from Plymouth in Massa 
 chusetts and was a minister s son, but if ever a man s 
 heart gloried in the good things of this life it was his, 
 and there was not a trace of Puritan asceticism in his 
 character. His first house was the finest in town, 
 and stood at the head of some terraces that still re 
 main, bordered with rows of elms, and overlooked 
 the river ; but that was burnt, and afterward replaced 
 by another, which was for some mysterious reason 
 built at the foot of the terraces near the water. The 
 doctor was said to be a very handsome man, and he 
 dressed uncommonly well, delighting himself with fine 
 broadcloth cloaks with red linings and silk facings ; 
 and his visits to his admiring patients were paid OB 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 25 
 
 horseback, as was the custom then, but he always 
 rode an excellent horse, and dashed about the coun 
 try in great splendor. He made an elaborate will, 
 entailing his property in English fashion. He waited 
 to see how much General Lord or the other rich men 
 of the town would pay toward any subscription, and 
 then exceeded the most generous. He even asked 
 how much the richest man in the town was taxed, 
 and paid of his own accord a larger sum than he, 
 and somehow contrived to keep up year after year 
 this appearance of great wealth, and expected and 
 received great deference ; though those who knew 
 him best were sure he must be poor, the pride that 
 went with it forbade familiarity and sympathy alike. 
 There has always been a tradition that his first wife 
 came to her death by foul means, and there is a dis 
 like to the house, which seems never to be occupied 
 for any length of time, even after all these years. The 
 people in the neighborhood believe, as I have said, 
 that it is haunted, and I have often heard stories of 
 the strange cries, and the footsteps that sometimes 
 follow you if you go up the hall stairs in the dark. 
 The doctor himself died suddenly, though he has 
 often been seen since in a grand brocade dressing- 
 gown and close velvet cap. His business affairs had 
 naturally become a good deal tangled, but no one 
 
26 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 knew how much so until after his death. For several 
 fears he had been in the habit of carrying back and 
 /orth a little padlocked box when he went to Ports 
 mouth, which was supposed to hold money and valua 
 ble papers ; but when this was brought home from 
 the bank, and broken open, it was found to contain 
 only blank bits of paper. 
 
 His wife, whom the old people in town still re 
 member, must have had a hard time of it in the 
 house on the wharf after she was left a widow ; but 
 she was still the grande dame, and when she went 
 into society her old laces and silks and her fine man 
 ners made her the queen of her company. She gave 
 no sigh of disappointment at her altered fortunes, and 
 as long as the doctor lived and after he died, she was 
 as serenely magnificent and untroubled as he. The 
 Guard could die, but it never surrendered, and the 
 old prestige was kept up bravely. She lived alone, 
 and might sometimes have needed many of the good 
 things of life, for all one knows ; but she was always 
 well dressed, and kept up all possible forms of state, 
 and was rigorous in observing all rules of etiquette. 
 By way of doing a great favor to one of her neigh 
 bors, she allowed a stranger the use of one of her 
 rooms for a short time, and this person used to hear 
 a bell ring in the morning, after which Madam Hovey 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 27 
 
 would move about in her room ; then she would go 
 down-stairs, breakfast being apparently announced; 
 and so on, through the day. There was often a bell 
 heard tinkling in the parlor ; she would apologize for 
 opening the outer door herself, and when the lodger 
 called the mistress of the house was always quite at 
 liberty, and seemed to have been awaiting guests in 
 her parlor, with a bit of lace to mend in her fingers, 
 or some silk knitting, as if she occupied her leisure 
 with such dainty trifles. It was some time before 
 the lodger discovered, to her amazement, that there 
 was not a servant under the roof to do my lady s bid 
 ding, but that she still kept up the old customs of the 
 house. Poor soul ! it was not all silly pretense. If 
 I were to spend a night (which the saints forbid !) 
 in that beloved mansion where she lived in solitary 
 majesty for so many years, I should not expect to be 
 the guest of the proud doctor s first companion whose 
 death is shrouded in mystery, who cries dismally and 
 walks to and fro in the night, to beg for pity and 
 help. I should look over my shoulder for the lady 
 in the high turban, with a red India shawl around 
 her shoulders, who stood so straight, and used to 
 walk up the aisle to her seat in church on Sunday as 
 if she were a duchess. The cries and the steps be 
 hind me would be most annoying, but Madam Hovey, 
 
28 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 if she also haunts her house, would receive me eie- 
 gantly. One can imagine her alone in her house at 
 night, with the jar of the river falls and the wind 
 rattling her windows, fearful of her future, and of 
 the poverty and misery old age held in its shaking 
 hands for her. But she carried a brave face in the 
 daylight, however troubled she may have been under 
 the stars, and she gave to the towns-people the best 
 of lessons in behavior ; for she was always gracious 
 and courteous, and fine in her own manners, a high 
 bred lady, who had been in her day a most apt 
 scholar of the old school. 
 
 My cruises down the river rarely reach beyond 
 High Point, or Pine Point, or the toll-bridge ; but 
 one is tempted to linger there late for the sake of the 
 beautiful view. The salt grass is a dazzling green, 
 if the time is early summer and the tide is partly 
 out, and from the bridge to the Hamilton house 
 the river is very wide. The fine old house faces 
 you, and at its right there is a mountain, which is a 
 marked feature in the landscape on a clear day, when 
 it looks far away and blue in the distance. The 
 great tops of the Hamilton elms look round and 
 heavy against the sky, and the shores of the river are 
 somewhat irregular, running out in points which are 
 for the most part heavily wooded, and form back 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 29 
 
 grounds of foliage for each other. Being at different 
 angles, the light and shade of each are distinct, and 
 make a much finer coloring and outline than could be 
 if the line of the shore were unbroken by so many 
 bays and inlets. It is very pleasant to push the boat 
 ashore in one of these coves, for in the little ravines 
 that lead down to them there are crowds of ferns and 
 wild flowers, and it is easy to find exactly the place 
 for a little feast at supper time. I know many a 
 small harbor on the eastern shore, where a willow or 
 a birch stands out in front of the dark evergreens, 
 and at one place an oak reaches its long branches far 
 out over the water ; and when you are once under its 
 shade, and watch the sunset grow bright and then 
 fade away again, or see the boats go round the point 
 from the wide bay into the narrow reach of the river 
 above it, and listen to the bells ringing in the village 
 or in some town farther away, you hate to think you 
 must take the oars again, and go out into the twilight 
 tr the bright sunshine of the summer afternoon. 
 
 I miss very much some poplars which stood on the 
 western shore, opposite the great house, and which 
 were not long since cut down. They were not 
 flourishing, but they were like a little procession of 
 a father and mother and three or four children out 
 (or an afternoon walk, coming down through the field 
 
30 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 to the river. As you rowed up or down they stood 
 up in bold relief against the sky, for they were on 
 high land. I was deeply attached to them, and in the 
 spring, when I went down river for the first time, 
 they always were covered with the first faint green 
 mist of their leaves, and it seemed as if they had been 
 watching for me, and thinking that perhaps I might 
 go by that afternoon. 
 
 On a spring day how the bobolinks sing, and the 
 busy birds that live along the shores go flitting and 
 chirping and whistling about the world! A great 
 fish-hawk drops through the air, and you can see 
 the glitter of the unlucky fish he has seized as he 
 goes off again. The fields and trees have a tinge of 
 green that they will keep only for a few days, until 
 the leaves and grass-blades are larger and stronger ; 
 and where the land has been plowed its color is as 
 beautiful as any color that can be found the world 
 over, and the long shining brown furrows grow warm 
 lying in the sun. The farmers call to each other 
 *nd to their horses as they work ; the fresh breeze 
 blows from the southwest, and the frogs are cheerful, 
 and the bobolinks grow more and more pleased with 
 themselves every minute, and sing their tunes, which 
 are meant to be sung slower and last longer, as ij 
 the sweet notes all came hurrying out together. 
 
RIVES DRIFTWOOD. Si 
 
 And in the summer, when the days are hot and 
 long, there is nothing better than the glory of the 
 moonlighted nights, when the shrill cries of the in 
 sects fill all the air, and the fireflies are everywhere, 
 and a whiff of saltness comes up with the tide. In 
 October the river is bright steel color and blue. The 
 ducks rise and fly away from the coves in the early 
 morning, and the oaks and maples dress themselvefe 
 as they please, as if they were tired of wearing plain 
 green, like everybody else, and were going to be gay 
 and set a new fashion in the cooler weather. You no 
 longer drift lazily with the current, but pull your 
 boat as fast as you can, and are quick and strong with 
 the oars. And in the winter the river looks cold and 
 dead, the wind blows up and down between the hills, 
 and the black pines and hemlocks stare at each otheT 
 across the ice, which cracks and creaks loudly when 
 the tide comes up and lifts it. 
 
 How many men have lived and died on its banks, 
 but the river is always young. How many sailors 
 have gone down to the sea along its channel, and 
 from what strange countries have the ships come in 
 and brought them home again up this crooked high 
 way ! A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a 
 good thing, since adventurers come into it as we! 
 
32 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it 
 takes something from the world, and has something 
 to give in return. Not the sheltering shores of Eng 
 land, but the inhospitable low coasts of Africa and 
 the dangerous islands of the southern seas, are left 
 unvisited. One sees the likeness between a harbor- 
 less heart and a harborless country, where no ship? 
 go and come ; and since no treasure is carried away 
 no treasure is brought in. From this inland town of 
 mine there is no sea-faring any more, and the ship 
 wrights hammers are never heard now. It is only 
 a station on the railways, and it has, after all these 
 years, grown so little that it is hardly worth while 
 for all the trains to stop. It is busy and it earns its 
 living and enjoys itself, but it seems to me that its 
 old days were its better days. It builds cheaper 
 houses, and is more like other places than it used to 
 be. The people of fifty years ago had some things 
 that were better than ours, even if they did not hear 
 from England by telegraph, or make journeys in a 
 day or two that used to take a week. The old elms 
 and pines look strong yet, though once in a while one 
 blows over or is relentlessly cut down. The willows 
 by the river are cropped and cropped again. The 
 river itself never grows old; though it rushes and 
 
RIVER DRIFTWOOD. 33 
 
 rises high in the spring, it never dries up in the au 
 tumn ; the little white sails flit over it in pleasant 
 weather, like fluttering moths round the track of sun 
 light on the water ; one troop of children after an 
 other steals eagerly down to its forbidden shores to 
 play. 
 
 3 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 
 
 ]T was a cold day early in December, and al 
 ready almost dark, though the sun had just 
 gone down, leaving a tinge of light red, the 
 least beautiful of all the sunset colors, on the low 
 gray clouds in the southwest. The weather was for 
 lorn and windy, arid there had already been a light 
 fall of snow, which partly covered the frozen ground, 
 and was lying in the hollows of the fields and past 
 ures and alongside the stone walls, where the wind 
 had blown it to get it out of its way. The country 
 was uneven and heavily wooded ; the few houses in 
 sight looked cold and winterish, as if the life in them 
 shared the sleep of the grass and trees, and would 
 not show itself again until spring. Yet winter is the 
 leisure time of country people, and it is then, in spite 
 of the frequent misery of the weather, that their so 
 cial pleasures come into stunted bloom. The young 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 3;"> 
 
 people frolic for a while, but they soon outgrow it, 
 and each rising generation is looked upon with scorD 
 by its elders and betters for thinking there is any 
 pleasure in being out-of-doors in cold weather. No 
 wonder that a New England woman cheers herself 
 by leaving her own sewing and going to the parish 
 society to sit close to an air-tight stove and sew for 
 other people ; how should she dance and sing like an 
 Italian peasant under a blue and kindly sky ! There 
 should have been another Sphinx on some vast north 
 ern waste where it is forever cold weather, and the 
 great winds always blow, and generations after gen 
 erations of people have lived and died. Life is no 
 surprise on the banks of the fertile old Nile, it could 
 not help being, but the spirit of the North seems de 
 structive ; life exists in spite of it. 
 
 Along the country road a short, stout-built woman, 
 well wrapped with shawls, was going from her own 
 home, a third of a mile back, to the next house, 
 where there were already lights in one of the upper 
 and one of the lower rooms. She said to herself, 
 " He must be livin yet," and stepped a little faster, 
 even climbing a low wall and going across a field to 
 shorten the distance. She seemed to be in a great 
 hurry, and as she went she left behind her a track oi 
 oroken-dowh golden-rod stalks and dry stems of grass 
 
86 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 which had been standing, frozen and dry, with the 
 thin snow about their roots. " Land sakes, how this 
 field has run out ! " said she, not without contempt ; 
 "lut I don know s I ever expect to see it bettered." 
 She opened the side door of the house and went 
 into the kitchen, where several persons were sitting. 
 There was a great fire blazing in the fire-place, and 
 a little row of mugs and two bowls, each covered 
 with a plate, stood at one side of the hearth to keep 
 warm, as if there were somebody ill in the house. 
 And sure enough there was, for old Stephen Dennett, 
 its master, was nearly at the end of his short last 
 sickness. There were three women and two men in 
 the kitchen, and they greeted the new-comer with 
 subdued cordiahiy, as was befitting; it was a little 
 like a funeral already, and they did not care to be 
 found cheerful, though, to tell the truth, just before 
 Mrs. Haynes came in they solemnly drank a pitcher 
 of old Mr. Dennett s best cider, urging each other to 
 take some, for there was no knowing that there might 
 not be a good deal for them all to do before long. 
 With this end in view of keeping up their strength, 
 they had also shared a mince pie and a large quan 
 tity of cheese. " We d better eat while we can," 
 said old Betsey Morris, who was hostess, having been 
 housekeeper at the farm for a good many years. " I 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 37 
 
 don t feel s if I could lay the table," said she, with 
 unaffected emotion, and the mourners in prospective 
 begged her not to think of it ; but they were hungry, 
 hard-working men and women, and were all glad to 
 have something to eat. When some doughnuts were 
 brought out they ate those also, all trying in vain to 
 think of some apology for such good appetites at such 
 a moment ; but since they had to be silent the feast 
 was all the more solemn. 
 
 It was evident that the sickness was either sudden, 
 or had become serious within a very short time, for 
 the family affairs had gone on as usual. It seemed 
 as if the household had been taken unawares by the 
 messenger of Death, and surprised in the midst of 
 fancied security. It was Wednesday, and the clothes- 
 horse, covered with the white folds of yesterday s 
 ironing, stood in one corner of the kitchen, while the 
 smaller horse, which Betsey Morris always facetiously 
 called the colt, was nearer the fire, with its burden of 
 flannels and blue yarn stockings. It was a comfort 
 able old kitchen, with a beam across its ceiling, and 
 two solid great tables, and a settle at one side the 
 fire, where the two men sat who were going to watch. 
 The fire-place took up nearly all one side of the 
 room ; the wood- work around it was painted black, 
 And at one side the iron door of the brick oven looked 
 
38 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 as if it might be the entrance to a very small dun 
 geon. There was a high and narrow mantel-shelf, 
 where a row of flat-irons were perched like birds gone 
 to roost; also a match-box, and a turkey-wing, and a 
 few very dry red peppers ; while a yellow-covered 
 Thomas s Almanac, much worn, it being Decem 
 ber, was hanging on its nail at one corner. There 
 was a tall clock in the room, which ticked so slowly 
 that one fancied it must always make waiting seem 
 very tiresome, and that one of its hours must be as 
 long as two. On one of the tables there was a spare- 
 rib which had been brought in to thaw. Jonas 
 Beedle and Nathan Martin sat on the settle, while 
 Mrs. Beedle and Mrs. Goodsoe and Betsey Morris 
 were at different distances from the fire in splint-bot 
 tomed chairs. They had seen Mrs. Haynes coming 
 across the field, it was still light enough out-doors 
 for that, but they had not spoken of it to each 
 other, though they put the cider-jug and the rest of 
 the doughnuts into the closet as quickly as possible. 
 
 " I told em one day last week," said Jonas Beedle, 
 " that Stephen seemed to be all wizened lip since 
 cold weather come. Why, here s Mis HaynesJ 
 Take a cheer right close to the fire, now won t ye 
 It s a dreadful chilly night. We ve just ben a-hav 
 iii some ci " 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 39 
 
 " Yes," said his wife, nudging and interrupting him 
 lesperately. " We was just a-sayin we wondered 
 where you was, but I misdoubted you was n t able to 
 be out on account of your neurology." 
 
 " I went over to Ann s this morning," said Mrs. 
 Haynes, still a little out of breath from her walk. 
 " One o her children s took down with throat dis 
 temper, and she expects the rest 11 get it. Joseph, 
 he brought in word after dinner that somebody goin 
 by said Mr. Dennett had a shock this morning, and 
 wa n t likely to come out of it, and I told em I must 
 get right home. I felt s if t was one o my own 
 folks. How does he seem to be ? " 
 
 " Laying in a sog," said Betsey Morris for the 
 twentieth time that day. " The doctor says there 
 ain t much he can do. He had me make some brotl 
 and teas, and he left three kinds o medicine, 
 there s somethin steeping now in them mugs, it 
 ease he revives up. He said we could feed him u. 
 little to a time if he come to any, and if we could 
 keep his strength up he might get out of it. He a 
 coming again about six. He was took dreadful sud 
 den. I was washin up the dishes after breakfast, 
 and he said he was goin over to the Corners : there 
 was a selec men s meeting. He eat as good a break 
 fast as common, but he seemed sort of heavy. He 
 
40 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 went out and put the boss in, and left him in the 
 barn, and come back to get his coat. Says he, * Is 
 there anything you re in need of from the store, 
 Betsey 5 It looks like foul weather. And I says, 
 No. I little thought it was the last time he d speak 
 to me," and she stopped to dry her eyes with her 
 apron, while the sympathetic audience was quiet in 
 the firelight, and the tea-kettle began to sing as if it 
 had no idea of what had happened. " He always was 
 the best o providers. It was only one day last week 
 he was a-joking and saying he was going to keep me 
 better this year than ever he did. Says he, * I m 
 going to take my comfort and live well long s I do 
 live. There s everything in the house ; we killed 
 early, and there s the other hog he set for the first o 
 January ; and he s put down a kag of excellent beef. 
 The sullar s got enough in it for a rigiment, I told 
 him only yesterday ; and says he, Betsey, don t you 
 know it s better to have some to spare than some to 
 want ? I can see him laugh now." 
 
 " There s plenty will need it, if he don t," said 
 Mrs. Goodsoe, who was a dismal, grasping soul, and 
 vat farthest from the fire. 
 
 Mrs. Haynes gathered herself up scornfully, she 
 did not like her neighbor. " You were a-sayin he 
 was going to the selec men s meeting," said she. 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 41 
 
 "Yes," said Betsey. "He said he d got to get 
 some papers, and I offered to fetch em ; but he never 
 wanted to be waited on ; and he went up-stairs, I 
 s pose to that old chist o drawers overhead. I heard 
 a noise like something heavy a-falling ; and my first 
 thought was he d tipped the chist o drawers over, 
 for I know the lower drawers, where the sheets and 
 pillow-cases is kept, sticks sometimes ; and then 
 something started me, and come across me, quick as 
 a flash, that there was something wrong, and I got 
 up-stairs as quick as ever I could, and found him lay 
 ing on the floor." 
 
 " I s pose he did n t know nothin ? " asked Mrs. 
 Haynes. 
 
 " Bless you, no ! I tried to get him up, and I 
 found I could n t. I thought he was dead, but I see 
 Jim Pierce a-goin by, he was some use for once 
 in his life, and I sent him for help. Mis Beedle 
 come right over, bein so near, and Jim met the doc 
 tor up the road, and we got him into bed, and there 
 he lays. It give me a dreadful start. I ain t myself 
 yet."" 
 
 " Andrer s here, I s pose," said Mrs. Haynes, as if 
 she thought it of very little consequence. 
 
 " Yes," said Betsey. " He d walked over to the 
 saw-mill right after breakfast to carry word about 
 
42 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 some boards his uncle wanted, but be got back just 
 as the doctor was leavin . He s been real faithful ; 
 he ain t left the old gentleman a minute. He s all 
 broke down, he feels so. I never saw him so dis 
 tressed ; he ain t one that shows his feelin s much of 
 any." 
 
 " I think likely he 11 be married right away now," 
 said Mr. Martin. " Stephen told me in the summer 
 that he d left him about everything. He ain t no 
 such a man as his uncle, but I don t know no harm 
 of Andrew." A silence fell between the guests, and 
 the fire snapped once in a while and made such a 
 light that the one little oil lamp might have been 
 blown out for all the good it did ; nobody would have 
 missed it. 
 
 " I told our folks last night there was going to be 
 a death over this way," said Mrs. Goodsoe. " I was 
 a-looking out o the window over this way last night 
 just before I went to bed, and I see a great bright 
 light come down ; and I says, There s a great blaze 
 fallen over Dennett s way, and my father always said 
 it was a sure sign of a death. He laughed, and 
 says my eyes was dazzled from setting before the fire. 
 I d like to know what he 11 say when he hears o 
 this," triumphantly. "He went up to the wood 
 ot, chopping, before, day." 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 43 
 
 " I did hear a death-tick in the wall after I went 
 to bed, two or three nights ago," said Betsey Morris; 
 and then there was another pause. 
 
 " I s pose I might go up easy and jist look in, bein* 
 a connection," ventured Mrs. Haynes meekly ; and 
 luckily nobody opposed her. In fact, they had all 
 had that satisfaction. 
 
 "You might ask Andrer if he couldn t rise his 
 uncle s head by and by, so I could give him a little 
 o the broth ; he ain t eat the value o nothin since 
 morning, and he s a hearty man when he s about," 
 suggested Betsey. 
 
 " You ought to help natur all you can," said Na 
 than Martin ; and armed with this sufficient excuse 
 Mrs. Haynes went up-stairs softly. 
 
 Andrew Phillips sat by the bedside, looking as dis 
 mal as possible, a thin, dark young man with a 
 pleasant sort of face, yet you always felt at once that 
 you could get on just as well without him. " Per 
 haps we had better wait now until the doctor comes," 
 answered he when he heard the message from Bet 
 sey. " Do sit down, Mrs. Haynes. I have been 
 wishing somebody would come up, it s lonesome 
 since it got dark. Susan has n t sent any word, has 
 she ? I sent Jim Pierce over right after dinner, but 
 I suppose he stopped in at every house " 
 
44 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 " Not as I ve heard of," said Mrs. Haynes. "I ve 
 only just got here. I was over to Ann s to spend a 
 day or so, and I never got word about y r uncle till 
 past two o clock. How does he seem to be ? " 
 
 " I don t know," said the young man. " He s lost 
 that red look, but he seems to have failed all away ; " 
 and they both went close to the bed to look at the 
 face on the pillow, which showed at once that Death 
 had come very near. The old man s eyes were shut, 
 and he looked pinched and sunken, and as if he were 
 ten years older than in the morning. One hand that 
 lay outside the bed moved a little, and the fingers 
 picked at the blanket. " He has n t stirred all day 
 except his arm, and that hand once in a while, as you 
 see it now." 
 
 Mrs. Haynes knew better than he what it meant, 
 and she gave a long look and turned away with a 
 heavy sigh. " He s death- struck," she whispered, 
 " but he may hold out for a good spell yet. He s 
 been a master strong man ; I should ha said yester 
 day he had as good a chance as any one of us. He s 
 been the best neighbor I ever had, I know that," and 
 she sat down by the fire, and did not speak for a 
 while. She had not taken it in that her old neigh 
 bor was nearing his end until she saw him, and her 
 excitement and curiosity at hearing the news gave 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 45 
 
 way to sincere sorrow. " He 11 be a great loss," 
 said she in a changed voice, after some little time. 
 " I do know but I shall miss him more than anybody, 
 except it was one of our own folks." 
 
 " He s been like father and mother both to me," 
 answered the young man, sorrowfully. " I can t 
 bear to think of getting along without him." 
 
 " Yes, you 11 have to look out for yourself now, 
 Andrer," said Mrs. Haynes. " I don t know s you re 
 to blame for not being of a turn for farming, but I 
 s pose you 11 have a wife to look after, and it s a 
 poor sort of a man that can t keep what s give to 
 him. Susan s a good smart girl ; it 11 be a great 
 thing for you to have a stirrin wife." Andrew 
 winced at this thrust, which had not been given 
 through any malice, for Mrs. Haynes was a kind- 
 hearted woman, if she did happen to be a little want 
 ing in tact, "You ll have to put right to it, next 
 Bummer, to fetch the place up. I come across the 
 seven-acre piece to save time as I come along, and 
 it s run out dreadfully within a year or two. It 
 did n t look to me as if it would be fit for much more 
 than pasture, unless it had a sight laid out on it. I 
 don t see how the old gentleman come to neglect it 
 so ; he used to take a good deal of pains with that 
 oiece years ago, he cut a sight of hay off of it one 
 pell." 
 
46 COUNTRY BY-WAYS, 
 
 It seemed heartless to young Phillips that she 
 should speak slightingly of the man who lay there 
 unable to defend himself. " He has been breaking 
 up this good while," said he, " but I never seemed to 
 see it before." 
 
 Down in the kitchen the neighbors were talking 
 together. The pitcher of cider had come from the 
 very oldest barrel in the cellar, arid it had set the 
 tongues of the company wagging. Mrs. Goodsee 
 had gone home ; she said with a heavy sigh that 
 there was nobody but herself to do anything, and she 
 would be over again before bed-time if her lameness 
 was n t too bad. She tied a great brown-checked 
 gingham handkerchief over her head, and pinned a 
 despairing old black shawl tight round her thin shoul 
 ders, and went out into the night. 
 
 " If you can make it convenient, I hope you 11 be 
 over in the morning, Mis Goodsoe," said Betsey. 
 
 " If it s so that I can," groaned the departing 
 guest. 
 
 " She would n t miss of it," snapped Mrs. Beedle, 
 as the door was shut. And Betsey answered, 
 
 " There ! I did n t want her no more n an old fly 
 and she always did make my flesh creep, but I knew 
 Mr. Dennett would n t want nobody s feelings hurt." 
 
 " I don t see what folks always wants to be com- 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 47 
 
 plaining for," said Mrs. Beedle. " She always was 
 just so when she was a girl. Nothin ever suits her. 
 She ain t had no more troubles to bear than the rest 
 of us, but you never see her that she did n t have a 
 chapter to lay before ye. I ve got s much feelin as 
 the next one, but when folks drives in their spiggits 
 and wants to draw a bucketful o compa?sion every 
 day right straight along, there does come times when 
 it seems as if the bar l was getting low." 
 
 Mr. Beedle and Betsey chuckled a little over this, 
 approvingly. Mr. Martin was dozing at his end of 
 the settle, but presently he roused himself, and asked 
 Mr. Beedle, drowsily, " Do ye know what Otis got 
 for thnrn sticks o rock-maple ? " 
 
 " I don t," said Mr. Beedle ; " they re for ship tim 
 ber, I understood. I heard yisterday he was going 
 to cut some o them white oaks near his house, the 
 second-sized ones ; they was extra nice ones for keels 
 o vessels, I was told." 
 
 " They ain t suitable for keels," said Nathan scorn 
 fully. He had once worked in a ship-yard, and was 
 always delighted to parade his superior knowledge 
 before his land-locked neighbors. " They might be 
 going to use them for kilsons or sister-kilsons." This 
 was added after grave reflection, and Mr. Beedle tried 
 U> remember what part of a ship a sister-keelson was 
 
48 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 but he could not do it ; and he asked Betsey Morris 
 for the lantern, and the two men went out to the 
 barn to look after the cattle, leaving the women alone 
 together. 
 
 " Mis Haynes seems to be stopping up-stairs quite 
 a while," said Mrs. Beedle, 
 
 " I expect Andrer s glad to have her ; he ain t 
 much used to sickness. Poor Andrer ! I expect 
 he 11 take it very hard, losing of his uncle," said 
 Betsey. 
 
 " Well, I tell ye a fat sorrow s a good sight easier 
 to bear than a lean one ; and then he s got Susan. 
 How that girl, that might have taken her pick, ever 
 come to take up with Andrer Phillips is more n I 
 know." (Mrs. Beedle s own daughter had at one 
 time paid Andrew a good deal of attention.) " She 
 wa n t one to drop like a ripe apple off a bough the 
 first time she got asked." 
 
 "Now Mis Beedle," said Betsey with a good deal 
 of spirit, " Andrer ain t the worst fellow that ever 
 was. She might ha done a good deal worse, even if 
 he wa n t expectin property. I don t doubt she had 
 an eye to the means, myself, but he a stiddy as a 
 clock, and his uncle always said he had a good mind. 
 He ain t had to work for his livin ; and the old sir 
 never was one that wanted to give up the reins. He 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 49 
 
 expected the boy to live here after him, and he never 
 had it on his mind to put him to a trade. He 11 
 make a farmer yet ; there s a sight o girls turns out 
 good housekeepers that never had no care before they 
 was married. And Andrer s got a sight o book- 
 earnin ." 
 
 " Book-learnin ! " said Mrs. Beedle, with a jerk 
 of her head. " He s a book-fool, if ever there was 
 one. But I ain t goin to set in judgment," she added 
 in a different tone, suddenly mindful that the young 
 man was likely to be her nearest and richest neigh 
 bor in a few hours. " I always set everything by 
 his mother. Her and me was the same year s child n, 
 and was fetched up together. Don t ever hint I said 
 anything that was n t pleasant. I ain t one that 
 wants to make trouble, and he 11 find me a good 
 neighbor. Anybody has to speak out sometimes." 
 
 " I ain t one to make trouble, neither," said Betsey. 
 " I ve wondered sometimes, myself, he did n t spudge 
 up and be somebody ; his uncle never would ha 
 thwarted him, but then he never give a sign he was n t 
 satisfied. And Andrer never give him a misbeholden 
 word, I can answer for that." 
 
 The doctor came and went, telling the women that 
 he could not say how long the patient might last. 
 
 " I s pose folks knows of it all over town ? " asked 
 
50 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 Betsey, meekly conscious of the importance of the 
 occasion and her own consequence. 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the doctor, who stood warming 
 his great fur coat before the fire, having declined the 
 offer of supper or something hot, for he was in a 
 hurry to get home. His gig rattled away out of the 
 yard, and silence once more fell on the house. An 
 drew came down-stairs for a little while, looking 
 grieved and tired, and said that he meant to watch, 
 at least until midnight ; the doctor thought that his 
 uncle might be conscious before he died. Then Mrs. 
 Haynes came down, and after a while Mrs. Beedle 
 and Betsey tiptoed up the stairs, and as they listened 
 outside the door they heard some one speaking. 
 
 " You don t suppose he s got* his reason ? " whis 
 pered one to the other, and they waited a minute 01 
 two ; it was very cold in the little entry. 
 
 " Yes, sir," they heard Andrew say gently, " you 
 ve had an ill turn ; " and then all was silent again. 
 
 " I must n t forget those town orders. I can t seem 
 to think where they are," said a weak voice that was 
 as unlike as possible the cheerful loud tone in which 
 Mr. Dennett had usually spoken. 
 
 " Don t try to think, uncle," said Andrew. " Don t 
 you feel as if you could eat a little broth ? " Bu/ 
 there was no answer. 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 51 
 
 ** I sha n t stand for selec man another year ; it s a 
 good deal o trouble," said the weak voice, after a 
 minute or two. 
 
 " He thinks it s this mornin , poor creatur , whis 
 pered Betsey. " I guess I 11 step down and get that 
 broth ; what do you think ? Perhaps he would take 
 a little." But when she came back she found it was 
 not wanted. Mrs. Beedle had gone in, and the mas 
 ter of the house lay dying. They stood by the bed 
 side watching, with awe-struck faces, while the mortal 
 part of him fought fiercely for a minute to keep its 
 soul, which had gently and surely taken itself away. 
 There was this minute of distress and agony, and 
 afterward the tired and useless body was still. The 
 old man s face took on a sweet and strange look of 
 satisfaction, a look of rest, as if it found its sleep 
 of death most welcome and pleasant. So soon it 
 was over, the going away which the bravest of us 
 shudder at sometimes and dread ; but dying seems 
 after all, to those who watch it oftenest, a simple and 
 natural and blessed thing, and one forgets the lifeless 
 body in a sudden eagerness to follow the living soul 
 into the new world. 
 
 The funeral was appointed for Saturday, and every 
 body was busy. Andrew instinctively took command, 
 *nd Betsey and the women who came to help her 
 
52 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 consulted him with unwonted deference. The house 
 had to be swept and dusted and put in order, and 
 there were great preparations going on in the kitchen ; 
 for old Mr. Dennett had been a hospitable man, and 
 it should not be said that any one went away from 
 his house hungry. 
 
 " I declare, it don t seem more than yesterday it 
 was Thanksgiving, and he made me make up double 
 the mince pies I did last year. I little thought what 
 they was going to be for," said Betsey Morris, whose 
 heart was very sad. 
 
 The morning after Mr. Dennett had died, a letter 
 came for him from an old friend in Boston, who had 
 left that part of the country in his boyhood, and had 
 made his fortune and become rich and prominent. 
 None of his own family were living there, and he 
 claimed Mr. Dennett s hospitality on the score of 
 their early friendship and the occasional business let 
 ters which had passed between them since. Andrew 
 was a little afraid at first to tell Betsey of this addi 
 tional care, but she received the news graciously. 
 She said, mournfully, how pleased the old gentleman 
 would have been ; but she thought also that she would 
 show the city guest that they knew how to do things 
 if they did live in the country, and since her pride as 
 a housekeeper was put to its utmost test, she was no* 
 
ANDREWS FORT ONE. 53 
 
 sorry to have so worthy a spectator among her au 
 dience. 
 
 But a new interest quickly followed this, for one 
 of the women whispered to another that Andrew 
 could not find the will. He had supposed that it was 
 safe in the keeping of old Mr. Estes, who was the 
 only lawyer in that region ; but Mr. Estes had hap 
 pened to say that two or three weeks before, Mr. 
 Dennett had taken it home with him. Andrew was 
 told that it was written on a sheet of blue letter-paper, 
 and sealed with a wafer. 
 
 " I looked all through the papers in the desk up 
 stairs," said he to Mrs. Haynes, " and in my uncle s 
 coat pockets, but I can t seem to find it." It was an 
 evident relief to tell this, and Mrs. Haynes was at 
 once much interested. "It must have slipped be 
 tween some of the other things, or he may have tied 
 it up with some old bills, or something, by mistake. 
 I suppose Betsey don t know ? " 
 
 But she did not, and was deeply concerned, for she 
 had l^ig indulged hopes of a legacy. She helped 
 Andrew look all through the pigeon-holes again, and 
 in every likely and unlikely place they could think 
 of ; but it was no use, and the fear took possession 
 ?f them that Mr. Dennett might have destroyed it, 
 tneaning to make another will, and never had done 
 
54 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 " He told me only a week or two ago," said An 
 drew, " that everything was going to be mine, and I 
 might do as I chose. I was speaking to him about 
 the barn ; you know he had set his mind on altering 
 it. I don t know what to think," and he went to the 
 bedside and lifted the sheet from the dead man s face ; 
 but he looked white and indifferent, and kept his se 
 crets. 
 
 The days crept by until Saturday, and each night 
 two neighbors came to watch, after the old custom ; 
 and those who were lying awake in the house could 
 hear them every little while tramp up the stairs and 
 down again, and the grumble of their voices as they 
 talked together in the kitchen, trying to keep them 
 selves awake. On Friday Mr. Dunning came, and 
 was shocked to find that the only person he really 
 cared very much to see had so lately died ; but he 
 accepted Andrew s invitation, and made up his mind 
 to stay until the funeral, discovering that it was ex 
 pected of him and looked upon as desirable. There 
 was a strange contrast between him and his old 
 friend ; the city man looked much younger in his 
 well-fitting clothes, and his quick, business-like man 
 ner gave him an air of youth which was in great con 
 trast to Mr. Dennett s slow, farmer-like ways. As 
 he had grown older he had found himself thinking 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 55 
 
 more and more about the people he had known when 
 he was a boy, and the places where he had worked 
 and played. It seemed strange at first to see hardly 
 any familiar faces, and he had a curious sense of lone 
 liness as he sat, himself an object of great interest, 
 among the mourners ; and the pomp and piety of the 
 old-fashioned country funeral interested him not a 
 little. The people gathered from far and near to 
 pay respect to the good man who had died ; and they 
 came in by twos and threes, with solemn faces, to 
 look at him, and many of them touched his face, lest 
 they might have bad dreams of him. It was the first 
 time his friends had come to his house and he had 
 not welcomed them, but he lay in his coffin unmind 
 ful of them all, looking strange and priest-like in the 
 black robe in which they had shrouded him. It was 
 a bleak, cold day, and he would have looked more 
 comfortable, and certainly more familiar, in his own 
 old coat that was faded a little on the shoulders. 
 
 Betsey Morris was dressed in proper black, and 
 was crying softly, with a big pocket handkerchief 
 held close to her face, which she occasionally moved 
 aside a little as the people came in, to dart a glance 
 at them. Andrew looked worn and anxious. Every 
 one told him that the will must be found, but he was 
 by no means certain, and if it did not come to light 
 
56 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 he was left penniless. He was only the nephew of 
 Stephen Dennett s wife, and though he had been al 
 ways treated as a son he had never been formally 
 adopted. Several people noticed that he had a manly 
 look that they never had seen before, but for his part 
 he felt helpless arid adrift. 
 
 After a long and solemn silence the old minister 
 rose to speak of the departed pillar of the church and 
 town, as he called Mr. Dennett, and the old clock in 
 the kitchen ticked louder than ever in the hush that 
 followed. After the remarks were ended he lifted 
 the great Bible which was lying ready on the light 
 stand, and read slowly and reverently the short and 
 solemn last chapter of Ecclesiastes ; and, though there 
 were fewer young people to heed the preacher s warn 
 ing than old people to regret their long delay, it 
 seemed to fit the occasion best. " Or even the silver 
 cord be loosed, or the golden bowl broken," he read 
 in his trembling voice ; " for man goeth to his long 
 home, and the mourners go about the streets." He 
 thought of his kind friend and generous parishioner, 
 and it was said afterward that, though the old parson 
 was an able preacher and gifted in prayer, he never 
 had spoken as he did that day. He knew this chapter 
 by heart ; he had read it at many a funeral before 
 and he repeated the last few verses, lowering the 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE, 57 
 
 Bible as he held it in his arms, for it was heavy 
 And out from between the leaves slid a thin folded 
 paper, which went wavering through the air to the 
 floor ; it was sealed with a big red wafer, and one or 
 two persons who sat close by and saw it, knew by a 
 sudden instinct that it was the missing will. 
 
 Andrew Phillips turned very pale for a moment, 
 and then as suddenly flushed. He started from his 
 chair, but his respect for the time and place checked 
 him, and with great propriety he nodded to the old 
 woman at whose feet it had fallen, a distant con 
 nection of the family, a feeble, wheezing old creature, 
 who had made a great effort to be present. She 
 stooped over stiffly and picked it up ; she looked as if 
 it were only a commonplace paper, which must not 
 litter the floor on such a day. The minister had al 
 ready begun his prayer, but when he besought the 
 Lord that the memory of the departed might be a les 
 son, and that the young man on whom his mantle was 
 to fall might prove himself worthy of it, Andrew 
 prayed for himself still more heartily, and before the 
 coffin-lid was screwed down he bent over and kissed 
 his uncle s forehead. Some of the women s eyes filled 
 with tears ; he might not be a go-ahead young man, 
 but his fondness for his uncle was unaffected, and, be 
 ing his uncle s heir and standing in his place, his feel 
 
58 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 ings were much more to be respected than if he were 
 still a dependent. 
 
 When the mourners were called out he meant, as 
 he went by old Mrs. Towner s chair, to take the will. 
 He had tried to call her attention, and make her un 
 derstand that he wanted the paper; but she was dull 
 of sight, and sat there watching the proceedings with 
 intense interest. Andrew was shy, and he had a hor 
 ror of seeming anxious about the property before all 
 the people; and when he and Betsey were called (Mr. 
 Ly sander Dennett and family, the only cousins, not 
 responding), he went out into the yard, a little un 
 easy at heart, to take his place at the head of the pro 
 cession. 
 
 They walked two by two across the wind-blown 
 field to the little family bury ing-ground. It was a 
 long procession, and the doctor was one of the mourn 
 ers ; he had pleaded in vain critical cases in the next 
 town, for his wife, mindful of the exactions of society, 
 would not hear to any excuses. He shivered and 
 grumbled as he walked with her to the grave. " I 
 shall be out every night for a week after this, looking 
 after lung fevers," said he. " I don t see why people 
 must go through with just so much ! " and he hastily 
 brushed away a cold tear that had started down his 
 cheek when he caught sight of the clumsy coffin as it 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 59 
 
 was carried unevenly along in the hands of the bear 
 ers. He had been deeply attached to old Mr. Den 
 nett, but the people who walked before him thought 
 he showed very little feeling. When they were near- 
 ing the house again some one came running out and 
 spoke to the doctor, who followed him hurriedly ; the 
 word was passed from one to another that old widow 
 Towner was in some kind of a fit, and Andrew s first 
 thought was of the will, for it was she who had it in 
 her pocket. 
 
 She had stayed behind to keep the house, being so 
 feeble, and spent with a long walk in the cold. 
 " Foolish for old people to be out in such perishing 
 weather," said the doctor to himself as he bent over 
 her. " She & gone, poor soul," he told the startled 
 people who were crowding round him. She was lying 
 near the fire-place, on the kitchen floor ; she had been 
 putting on some wood. " I ve been expecting this, 
 she s had a heart complaint these twenty years," 
 said the doctor. 
 
 And the will had disappeared again. They looked 
 in her pocket, but it was not there, and there was no 
 trace of it anywhere ; only at the side of the fire were 
 some scraps of half-burnt writing paper, the order 
 in which people had been called out to take their places 
 in the procession. " I meant to keep that," said Betsey 
 
60 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 Morris, almost angrily. Whether the old wiujw had 
 been a little dazed and had burnt the will also, no 
 body knew, but it was certainly gone. She had been 
 trying to put the house in order a little ; some of the 
 borrowed chairs were already standing oufside the 
 door, for she was familiar with the contents of the 
 house. Poor little drudge ! she had worked to the 
 very end. 
 
 It was almost too great an excitement for the towns 
 people ; most of them had just heard of the missing 
 will for the first time, and the crowd of wagons dis 
 appeared slowly. This sudden death was a great 
 drawback to the funeral feast, but Betsey managed 
 skillfully to muster those guests who were to stay, 
 for that was an important part of the rites. Poor old 
 widow Tbwner was comfortably disposed of, and 
 wrapped in some coverlids, and carried away on the 
 floor of a wagon to the desolate little black house 
 where she had lived alone for many years ; and then 
 the tables were laid, and the company gravely ate 
 and drank their fill. 
 
 Andrew saw his lady-love alone only for a minute 
 after the funeral. " I wish I could stay and help you 
 look for it," said she, " but father says there s a storm 
 coming and we d better get home." It annoyed him 
 to find that her only thought was of the will. To be 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 61 
 
 sure, it was uppermost in his own mind, but he had 
 too lately seen his oldest and kindest friend put into 
 a frozen grave to be quite forgetful of him, and he 
 would have liked best for Susan to sympathize with 
 the better part of his thoughts. It flashed through 
 his mind that he had once heard some one say that 
 Susan had an eye to the windward, but he held her 
 hand the more affectionately for a moment, as he 
 helped her into her father s wagon, and tucked in the 
 buffalo skin with care by way of making amends for 
 such injustice. There had been times when it had 
 seemed to him that Susan could not understand his 
 best thoughts, and that she was a little bored if he 
 talked about subjects instead of people, and he sighed 
 a little and felt lonely as he went back to the house. 
 u The higher you climb, the fewer you have for com 
 pany," he said to himself ; and it struck him as being 
 a very fine thought. 
 
 There was a good deal of conversation going on in 
 the house, and as he opened the kitchen door, where 
 the women were busy clearing away the supper, there 
 was a sudden hush. To tell the truth, they had been 
 taking sides on the question of Susan s being willing 
 to marry him if the will could not be found. 
 
 4< You need n t tell me," said our friend Mrs. Bee- 
 die, as she stood at the closet putting away some 
 
62 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 plates. " Susan never d had him in the world if it 
 had n t been for the property. I always thought 
 she d a looked another way if the dollars had n t 
 shone in her eyes. I don t blame her. I should n t 
 pick out Andrer for his self alone. I d as soon live 
 on b iled rice the year round. I like to see a young 
 fellow that s got some snap to him." 
 
 " But there, now he s got to be his own master he 
 may start up," suggested some. one. " I always 
 thought well of Andrer." 
 
 " Land, so did I ! " said Mrs. Beedle, with surprise. 
 " I ain t saying nothing against him. What do you 
 guess old lady Towner could a done with the will ? 
 It don t seem like her to have burnt it. But she 
 need n t have burnt the paper o names for the pro 
 cession ; they re usually kept. I know we Ve got 
 em to our house for every funeral that s been since 
 I can remember : gran ther s, and grandma am s, and 
 old Aunt Kitty s, and all. She had an awful sight o* 
 folks follow her. You know she wa n t but half-sis 
 ter to grand ther, and owned half the farm. T was 
 her right to have a good funeral, and she had it ; they 
 set out the best there was. Her own mother was a 
 Shepley, and she had over thirty own cousins on the 
 Shepley side, and they were a dreadful clannish set. 
 I know we set the supper table over five times 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 63 
 
 mother always said it was a real pleasant occasion ; 
 t was in September, and a beautiful day for a fune 
 ral, and all the family gathered together. I don t 
 more u just remember it myself. Aunt Hitty was in 
 her ninety-fourth year, and of course her death 
 was n t no calamity, for she had n t had her mind for 
 above two years. I was small, but I can see just how 
 she looked. She d get a word fixed in her mind iii 
 the morning, and she d keep it a-going all day ; some 
 times she d call grand ther by name, and I rec lect 
 one day she said divil, divil, divil, till it seemed as if 
 we could n t stand it no longer." 
 
 " I do hope I sha n t out-live my usefulness," 
 whined a thin little old woman in black. " I always 
 had a dread o being a burden to others." 
 
 " I say," said Mrs. Beedle stoutly, " that old folks 
 has a right to be maintained and done for ; it ain t 
 no favor to them. It looks dreadful hard to me, that 
 after you ve toiled all your good years, and laid up 
 what you could, and stood in your lot and place as 
 long as you had strength, the minute you get feeble 
 you re begrudged the food you eat and the chair you 
 set in. What s the use of scanting yourself and lay 
 ing up a little somethin , and seeing other folks spend 
 it ! Some ain t got no feelin s for the old, but for 
 tny part I like to make em feel of consequence." 
 
64 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 " Poor old Mis Towner ! " said a pleasant-faced 
 woman. " It keeps coming over me about her ; 
 somehow it seems to me as if she had been dreadful 
 hesolate, liviii all alone so. She would do it ; many s 
 the time we ve asked her to our house to stop 
 through a cold spell or a storm, but she never seemed 
 inclined. I thought when I see her coming in to-day 
 she d better be to home ; but she always was a great 
 hand to go to funerals when she could, and then bein 
 a connection, too. Mis Ash and Mis Thompson 
 said they d hurry home and be to her place by the 
 time they got her there." 
 
 " I s pose likely she had a little something laid 
 up ? " asked Betsey Morris. 
 
 " Enough to bury her, it s likely. I know of her 
 having thirty-eight dollars she got for some wood a 
 spell ago. You know she owned a little wood-lot 
 over in the Kimball tract. She picked up a little now 
 and then sellin eggs, but I guess she ain t earnt any 
 thing tailoring this good while, her eyes have been 
 failin her so." 
 
 The will had not been mentioned since Andrew 
 had come in and seated himself on the settle, which 
 had been pushed back from its usual place. It had 
 grown dark, and people had said it was no use to 
 hunt any longer, and he had not the courage to g<f 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 65 
 
 on with the search ; beside, he could only look in the 
 same places over again. He could not help feeling 
 worried ; he was impatient for the morrow to come. 
 It seemed to him that all this suffering and loss was 
 felt by himself alone. It was like a tornado that 
 had blown through his life, but everybody else ap 
 peared to be on the whole enjoying it, and to have a 
 great deal to talk about. He thought, as he listened 
 to the busy, gossiping women, how cheerless and 
 friendless an old age must be when there was no 
 money in a man s pocket, and for the first time in his 
 life he felt poor, and fearful of the future, which had 
 always seemed secure until then. He remembered 
 how often his uncle had said, u It s a cold world 
 when you ve nothing to give it ; " and somehow 
 there *tfas a great difference in his own mind between 
 his sitting there, uncertain and almost unnoticed, and 
 his receiving the people earlier in the afternoon, as 
 the chief mourner and his uncle s heir. He was the 
 master of the house for the time being ; to be sure, 
 the will was missing then, but now it had disappeared 
 almost before his face and eyes. This sudden change 
 in his fortune seemed very strange and sad to him, 
 and he wished Susan had not gone home. Their love 
 for each other was left, at any rate, and he was rich 
 *gain in the thought that she was his ; and then a 
 5 
 
66 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 dreadful doubt came, what if she had an eye to the 
 windward ? But he crushed this serpent of a thought 
 instantly. 
 
 Later Mr. Dunning came in ; he had gone home, 
 with some old acquaintances who lived not far away, 
 and had spent part of the evening. The snow had 
 already begun to sift down as if there were a long 
 storm coming; the people had all gone away, and 
 Andrew and Betsey Morris and their guest were left 
 to themselves. 
 
 " Now tell me what this trouble is about the will," 
 said Mr. Dunning ; and Andrew went over the story 
 briefly. 
 
 " It looks dark for you," said Mr. Dunning, " but 
 it does n t seem as if anybody in their senses would 
 burn such a thing without knowing what it was ; 
 however, she may not have been in her senses. It is 
 a pity you did not take it yourself before you left the 
 house." Betsey thought so too, and could have men 
 tioned that everybody said it was just like him. " It 
 seems to me that she might have put it back in the 
 Bible again, thinking it was a family record, or some 
 thing of that kind." 
 
 " I thought of that, and I looked there, but I could 
 not find it," said Andrew ; but he went into the best 
 room and brought out the Bible, and looked through 
 ; t carefully, leaf by leaf. 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 67 
 
 " Who is the heir at law ? " asked Mr. Dunning ; 
 and he was told that it was a cousin of Mr. Den 
 nett s, old Lysander Dennett, who lived seventeen or 
 eighteen miles away. It would have been a great 
 sorrow to the old gentleman if he had thought of his 
 property going in that direction. 
 
 " He would have given what he had to the State 
 sooner than have such a thing happen ! " said Betsey, 
 excitedly. " I believe he d turn over in his grave. 
 You know he was a very set man, but he did have 
 excellent judgment." 
 
 " I wish I had come a little sooner ; I should like 
 to have seen Stephen again," said Mr. Dunning ; and 
 they were all silent for a time. 
 
 " Why don t you put your uncle s death in the 
 Bible, now you ve got it right here, Andrer ? " 
 asked Betsey, and she brought the little stone bottle 
 of ink, and Andrew carefully wrote the name and 
 date. " He was the last of them," said Betsey 
 mournfully, " and they was always respectable folks. 
 I suppose you remember the old people well as I do, 
 Mr. Dunning ? " 
 
 Mr. Dunning was not used to feeling sleepy al 
 half-past nine, though that hour was unusually late 
 for his entertainers, and finding that he seemed dis 
 posed to linger, Andrew put more wood on the fire, 
 
68 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 and drew some cider, and brought some apples from 
 the cellar, and the guest seemed very comfortable. 
 It was like old times, he said. He asked Andrew a 
 great many questions about the old dwellers in the 
 town, what had become of the boys and girls he 
 used to know ; and at last he asked the young man 
 some questions about himself, and suddenly said, 
 with a directness that was startling, " In case of the 
 will s not turning up, what do you mean to do ? " 
 
 " I have hardly had time to think," said Andrew, 
 flushing ; and then, being sure of sympathy, he 
 opened his heart to the gray-headed man, who seemed 
 to him to be finishing his life while he was just be 
 ginning. " I believe I have n t a very good reputa 
 tion, Mr. Dunning, but I feel sure I could make 
 something of myself if I had the chance. I never 
 have had anything to do that I liked to do. I never 
 took to farming ; my uncle never wanted to give up 
 the reins, and I did n t want him to. He could n t 
 bear the thought of my going away and leaving him, 
 and you know there is n t much business in a farm 
 ing town like this for a young man. I don t know 
 which way to turn," said poor Andrew, a sense of 
 the misery of the situation coming over him as it 
 never had before. "I don t want to blame the best 
 friend I ever had, but I wish now he had put me to 
 iome business or other." 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 69 
 
 " Yes, yes," answered Mr. Dunning absently. 
 * It would have made it easier for you, perhaps ; but 
 if you did n t start of your own accord, he probably 
 did n t want to push you ; he was glad to have you 
 here. My boys are all scattered ; " and then he said 
 no move for a while. Andrew felt half rebuked, and 
 half convinced that it had been right to stay at 
 home. He suspected that his guest was thinking 
 of his own affairs, and wished he had not told so 
 long a story. 
 
 All night long Andrew turned and tossed in his 
 bed, and thought about his troubles, until his head 
 ached, and it was a relief when it was time to get up 
 iu the early dark morning and go out to feed the 
 cattle. As soon as it was light and breakfast was 
 over, they all hunted again for the will, high and 
 low, up-stairs and down, but it was no use ; and later 
 they went decorously to meeting. The neighbors 
 came in, and Mr. Dunning was the hero of the hour, 
 and was treated with great ceremony and honor. He 
 was a well-known man, and his coming was taken as 
 a great favor. Mr. Dennett s fame had been only 
 provincial, and Andrew s perplexities would wait to 
 be considered later. It was a very exciting time, 
 and the people met together in the farm-house kitch 
 ens aiid had a great deal to say to one another. One 
 
70 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 day had been much like another for a great while 
 before that week, and life had been like reading one 
 page of a book over and over again. 
 
 Early Monday morning Mr. Dunning went away. 
 Andrew drove him over to the village to take the 
 stage. He used to dream in his boyhood that he 
 would come back some day a rich man ; the dream 
 had come true ; but there was after all a dreary pa 
 thos in it. Everybody had made a king of him, and 
 had seemed proud if he remembered them, and yet, 
 he did not care as he used to think he should. He 
 said he meant to come back in the summer, and he 
 told Andrew that he hoped to find him master of the 
 place ; and Andrew made a desperate effort to smile. 
 "If I can do anything for you, you must let me 
 know, my boy," said he. " I thought a great deal 
 of your uncle ; he did me some good turns when we 
 were young together." 
 
 " I have often heard him say that he wished he 
 could see you again," said the young man. " He 
 would have been so pleased to have this visit. He 
 used to speak of your sitting together always at 
 school, and he used to be so proud when he read 
 your name in the papers." 
 
 Mr. Dunning coughed a little and looked away, 
 and asked the name of one of the hills which he had 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 71 
 
 forgotten. " Yes, I wish I could have seen him once 
 more," he said after a few minutes ; and then he 
 was forced tc think of his own schemes and plans, 
 for he was on his way back to his every-day world 
 again. 
 
 It was only two or three days before Betsey Mor 
 ris heard the sound of bells, and looked out of the 
 window to see Mr. Lysander Dennett coming in from 
 the road, driving a lame white horse in an old high- 
 backed sleigh. Andrew had gone to see Susan 
 Mathes, so she was all alone. She told herself that 
 Mr. Dennett might have waited a full week before 
 he came spying round, and she would not go to the 
 door to welcome him ; so he was a long time putting 
 his horse under a shed and covering him with the 
 buffalo robe, which was worn until it looked fit for 
 only a blacksmith s apron. He stamped the snow ofl 
 his boots and flapped his arms to get the stiffness out 
 for i% was very cold ; the sky looked as if there wer< 
 another storm coming. He dallied as long as possi 
 ble, hoping that somebody would come out ; but at 
 last he summoned courage, and crossed the yard to 
 the house and knocked at the door. Betsey had been 
 slyly watching him through the window with a grim 
 chuckle, but she kept him waiting a few minutes 
 longer, and then met him with affected surprise. 
 
72 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 She was apparently hospitable, but she placed a chair 
 for him almost into the fire itself, and entreated him 
 to lay off his coat and stop, it was so long since he 
 had been over, a cruel thrust at him for not hav 
 ing been at the funeral. " He never did come less 
 it was after money, mean-spirited old toad ! " thought 
 she. 
 
 Cousin Lysander was slow of speech ; he unwound 
 a long, dingy, yarn comforter from his throat, and 
 then he bent forward and rubbed his hands together 
 before the fire. He had a curious, narrow face, with 
 a nose like a beak, and thin straggling hair and whis 
 kers, with two great ears that stood out as if they 
 were a schooner s sails wing-and-wing. Betsey drew 
 her chair to the other side of the fire-place, and be 
 gan to knit angrily. 
 
 " We was dreadful concerned to hear o cousin 
 Stephen s death," said the poor man. " He went 
 very sudden, did n t he ? Gre t loss he is." 
 
 " Yes," said Betsey, " he was very much looked up 
 to ; " and it was some time before the heir plucked 
 up courage to speak again. 
 
 " Wife and me was lotting on getting over to the 
 funeral ; but it s a gre t ways for her to ride, and it 
 was a perishin day that day. She s be n troubled 
 more than common with her phthisic since cold 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 73 
 
 weather come. I was all crippled up with the rheu 
 matism ; we wa n t neither of us fit to be out " (plain 
 tively). " T was all I could do to get out to the barn 
 to feed the stock whio Jonas and Tiin was gone. 
 My boys was over, I s pose ye know ? I don 
 know s they come to speak with ye ; they re back 
 ward with strangers, but they re good stiddy fel 
 lows." 
 
 " Them was the louts that was hanging round the 
 barn, I guess," said Betsey to herself. 
 
 " They re the main-stay now ; they re ahead of 
 poor me a ready. Jonas, he s got risin a hundred 
 dollars laid up, and I believe Tim s got something 
 too, he s younger, ye know ? " 
 
 But Betsey gave her chair an angry hitch at this 
 mixture of humility and brag, and then was a little 
 ashamed of herself, for the memory of old Mr. Den 
 nett s kindness and patience rebuked her. " I ve al 
 ways heard they was good boys," she said. " Mr. 
 Dennett was speakin of em only last week ; he 
 thought Jonas must be about out of his time." 
 
 ** Next June," said Lysander, taking heart. 
 
 ("I come just as near saying that he spoke of 
 icavin them something," said Betsey afterward, " but 
 I did n t. I thought he might as well tell right out 
 what he come for.") 
 
74 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 " Andrer s away, I take it ? " 
 
 And Betsey answered yes, but that he would be 
 back early. " He went off before dinner ; he s got 
 to be home to see some folks that s coming. You d 
 better stop, now you re over," she said, and her tone 
 was milder. She was a tender-hearted soul, and she 
 had made him uncomfortable until she was misera 
 ble herself. 
 
 " I tell you I dread to see Andrer," said the old 
 man sincerely, in almost a whisper. " I thought I 
 might as well come and have it over with, but I tell 
 you when I got into the yard I wished I was home 
 again. Sometimes I don t feel as if I had a mite o 
 right to what Stephen meant to give to somebody 
 else ; but Andrer ain t got his proofs, and my boys 
 has had a hard chance. Somehow or nother, it s 
 always been up-hill work to our place, and I feel s if 
 the law gives it to me, it s the will o Providence, and 
 I ain t got no right to set my will ag inst it. But I 
 want to make things pleasant with Andrer ; I thought 
 if I come right over, and we talked it over pleasant 
 together, we could fix it someway for the best. I 
 mean well, Betsey, I tell ye honest I do ; and if we 
 find out what Stephen calc lated to do for you, you 
 shall have every cent, if it has to come out o ray 
 part." 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 75 
 
 " I ain t thought no great about that," said Betsey, 
 who was already considering what there was in the 
 house to make a hearty supper for him, he looked so 
 starved and timid, like an old white rabbit. " But I 
 do feel for Andrer, you know how he has been 
 brought up. There he is now, I declare, and he s 
 fetehed Susan with him," and she bustled out to 
 greet them, leaving the visitor more unhappy and at 
 a loss than ever. He had thought that everything 
 was getting on comfortably, and he meant to lay his 
 case before Betsey Morris, and then steal away lest 
 he might encounter Andrew, and the idea of meeting 
 Susan was particularly unpleasant. But he reflected 
 that it would all have to be gone through with some 
 time or other, and he sat up as straight as he could 
 in his chair, prepared to hold his own. 
 
 Betsey shut the kitchen door after her, and went 
 out a few steps to speak to them before they drove 
 on into the shed. " Lysander s come," and for the 
 life of her she could not help a smile. " I was mad 
 at first, but when I come to see how meachin he was 
 I turned to and pitied him, just as your uncle used 
 tc. He d scold dreadfully when he see him a-com- 
 ing, but he always loaded up his old wagon for him 
 when he went home. I guess you can have things 
 pretty much as you want em." 
 
76 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 Andrew frowned. He had to go through the same 
 process of mind as Betsey, but he achieved it in 
 about the same .ength of time ; and though he was 
 very angry at first, after he had put up his own horse 
 he gave the lame white beast a big measure of corn 
 and a pitchforkful of hay, and put her in the warmest 
 stall. He still felt as if he would like to ill-treat her 
 master as he went into the house. Old Lysander 
 looked more meaching than ever, as Betsey had ex 
 pressed herself, and Susan sat near the fire, looking 
 cross and cold. She was a pretty girl, but not a very 
 good-tempered one, and it had been a serious an 
 noyance to her to find that there was some danger of 
 her having to come down from the high perch she 
 had taken as mistress in prospect of the Dennett 
 farm. Andrew had been laughed at for his old- 
 fashioned, sober ways, and for his mind s habit of 
 wool-gathering. Some blunders he had made were 
 kept alive as great jokes, and he had suffered from 
 contrast with a smart young fellow who had come 
 from the nearest large town, and was clerk at the 
 country store ar.d post-office. He had a " way " with 
 him, and Andrew had not, and Susan s heart had 
 been pulled in both directions. 
 
 Andrew shook hands cordially with the old man ; 
 be looked a little like Mr. Dennett, and it seemed a 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 77 
 
 tf some thin and weather-beaten likeness of him were 
 sitting there, forlorn, before his own fire, or as if he 
 had come back unsuccessful from his adventure into 
 the next world. " You 11 stop all night, of course," 
 said the young man. " It s rough traveling, and it s 
 getting dark now. You won t think of going home. 
 I put up your horse. I suppose you want to have a 
 little talk about business, too." It was hard work to 
 say this, and Susan s eyes snapped and grew very 
 black. " I wonder he don t ask him right off if he 
 can t stop here himself," she muttered, and Betsey 
 thought he was too free-spoken altogether. Lysander 
 was evidently touched by this great civility. He had 
 expected to be treated dreadfully, and to tell the 
 truth, though his wife had started him off early in the 
 morning, he had lingered all day at one place and 
 another along the road. 
 
 It grew dark very soon, and Andrew went out to 
 bring in the wood for the night and to do his usual 
 work ; and after a while he came in, looking pleas- 
 anter than before, which made Susan Grosser. She 
 was an honest and just girl according to her lights, 
 and she would not have wished her lover to keep 
 what was not his, but it was her way to make every 
 body feel that it was injustice, and that Andrew was 
 making somebody else an out-and-out present for his 
 
78 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 conscience* sake. She was treating poor Lysander a 
 attempts at conversation with lofty disdain, and he 
 grew more and more humble, and consequently disa 
 greeable. He felt that he was creeping into this 
 good luck by a very crooked way, and it did not be 
 hoove him to put on airs and march in upon his pos 
 sessions with his banners flying ; and though he said 
 to himself over and over that the law makes the best 
 will after all ; that he was certainly Stephen s next 
 of kin and always had had a hard time, and that An 
 drew had been given many favors by somebody who 
 was no blood relation, yet he was very sorry for the 
 young fellow, and showed his sympathy as well as he 
 knew how. 
 
 " I come over a purpose to say to ye that I mean 
 to do what s right about this," he said at last, at the 
 end of a long and awkward pause. " I ve asked ad 
 vice, and I find the property comes to me by the law. 
 But I know Stephen had it in his mind to give you 
 the best part of what he had, and I want to do 
 what s fair and right, and so does my woman and 
 the boys. We 11 leave it out to anybody you name, 
 or you may have your say, or we 11 share even. I 
 don t want to have no trouble. The first thing I 
 says when I got wind of it was I never d touch a 
 cent by claim ; but when I come to think it over, it a 
 
ANDREWS FORTUNE. 79 
 
 come bv law, and our folks have n t laid up nothin to 
 speak of ; it s been so we could n t. My sons are 
 smart, stiddy fellows, and I d like to let the young 
 est one have some schooling ; he always took to his 
 book. I don t want to be a drag on em, when it gets 
 so I can t work. I want ye to think well about it, 
 and let me know. I won t hurry ye, and we 11 
 make out the papers all square whenever you say." 
 
 " Whining old thing ! " said Susan to herself ; and 
 Betsey left her chair and hurried to the closet, im 
 patiently, for nothing whatever, and gave the door a 
 little slam when she shut it again. 
 
 Andrew moved a little in his chair. " No, Mr. 
 Dennett," said he, bravely. " I could n t touch a cent 
 unless the will was found. If I had ever seen it, and 
 knew for certain what was in it, perhaps I should act 
 different ; but as it is I should feel as if I was living 
 on you, and I should n t like that. The law gives 
 you the property, as you say, and I hope you and 
 your folks will be comfortable here. I want to speak 
 about one thing : my uncle told me he had left Bet 
 sey five hundred dollars; he spoke to me about it 
 several times, and I promised I would see to it when 
 anything happened to him. He said he wanted to 
 feel she would be comfortable when she got to be 
 old. I m much obliged to you for what you say, 
 and for coming right over and talking fair and kind." 
 
80 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 Betsey told herself then that he talked like a fool, 
 but she always insisted afterwards that he did speak 
 up like a man. Susan thought her lover was better 
 looking than he used to be ; she really admired him 
 at that moment, but her heart sank within her. " He 
 is dreadful high-flown," she said to herself, with an 
 uneasy sense of what might be required of her as to 
 noble ideas in years to come, if he went on in this 
 way. It was hard, when she had been thinking they 
 would be the two richest young people in town, to 
 find that Andrew had decided to make them almost 
 the poorest. She wished him to go to law ; she 
 thought she was fond of him, but people had always 
 known he had no turn for business, and she had 
 trusted to her own wits to make the farm pay well. 
 Andrew had talked to her in a way that touched her 
 heart only that afternoon, as they drove over, and 
 had told her that he meant to be somebody for her 
 sake, and make her proud of him yet ; and she had 
 smiled and kissed him with great affection, but it had 
 been almost too cold for love-making, and she was a 
 sadly disappointed girl. 
 
 They spent a solemn evening. Old Lysander 
 talked a great deal about the weather and the likeli 
 hood of there being more snow before morning, and 
 then he fell asleep and snored; and later Andrew 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 81 
 
 iralked over with Susan to her aunt s, where she 
 was going to spend a day or two, as often happened. 
 She was dreading to meet her relatives, but Andrew 
 was on provokingly good terms with himself. He 
 told Susan that she was everything to him, and he 
 did n t care about losing the farm so long as he had 
 her ; and she said that she was n t half good enough 
 for him, and resolved that she would n t break his 
 heart now, for he was a well-meaning fellow, but 
 before spring there would be some way she could get 
 out of it. 
 
 The short winter days that followed were dreary 
 enough to the hero of this story. His comfortable 
 life had always seemed a certainty to him, and now 
 new cares and perplexities had fallen heavily upon 
 him. He could not help noticing that there was a 
 change in the manner of his neighbors, and Betsey 
 often mentioned that she could not imagine how her 
 sister got on without her, and was evidently in a 
 hurry to settle herself in her new home. The Den 
 netts had asked them both to stay until spring at the 
 farm, when they meant to make a change, and it 
 seemed the best thing to do ; but Andrew kept him 
 self busier than ever before in his life, lest he might 
 be accused of idling and eating another man s bread. 
 
82 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 He undertook to keep the district school near by, 
 and succeeded tolerably well, and it was a great sat 
 isfaction to be earning something. He hunted far 
 and near for some employment, until he was dis 
 couraged. He knew that Susan would despise his 
 hiring out on a farm for the summer, and there 
 seemed to be nothing else, if there were even that. 
 He felt very forlorn, and sometimes there was a 
 chill in Susan s sunshine, which was the saddest thing 
 of all. 
 
 One day late in January he made up his mind to 
 write to Mr. Dunning and ask him to find some work 
 for him in Boston, though it was awful to think of 
 going so far away. Susan brightened when he spoke 
 of it, and when a letter was received telling him to 
 come as soon as possible he said good-by to her and 
 went, and some one else finished the town school. 
 He often smiled in after-years to think of the misgiv 
 ings with which he left his home, and the tremen 
 dous distance which seemed to lie between it and the 
 city ; it was almost like going off into space. The 
 change to city life was a very great one, and at first 
 he felt as a small boy might who had fastened his 
 sled behind a railway train. However, he proved 
 equal to the place for which Mr. Dunning had rec 
 ommended him ; his steady, painstaking ways found 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 83 
 
 favor with his employers, while he lost some :f Us 
 natural slowness from being with people who were 
 always in a hurry. He wrote long and edifying let 
 ters to Susan, and confided to her his aims and hopes, 
 and his certainty that she would like the city as much 
 as he did. She replied from time to time, but she had 
 by no means the pen of a ready writer ; and when, 
 one day, he had been thinking a great deal about 
 her, and wondering gratefully why she had fallen 
 in love with him, a letter came to say that ohe had 
 decided that they must part. Her father and mother 
 would not consent to her settling so far away, and 
 she hoped they would always be friends ; she never 
 had^been good enough for him, which was not hon 
 est, since she thought herself much too good. It was 
 a heavy blow, and Andrew was miserable for some 
 time. The loss of the will had involved this loss 
 also, and life seemed very dismal. 
 
 But he did not mourn all his days, as at first he 
 thought he should. His business grew very interest 
 ing, and he set his heart upon making a fortune, since 
 other people bad done it without any more hard work 
 than he was willing to do ; and after a while the 
 news reached his old neighbors that his employers 
 thought highly of him and would soon send him out 
 *o China, they being *n the tea business. Then 
 
84 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 even Mrs. Beedle said she always knew there was a 
 good deal to Andrew Phillips, and now folks that had 
 laughed at him were going to see. And sure enough, 
 he did make his way steadily upward, as many a 
 country boy has done before and since. He changed 
 little in reality : he dressed well, and behaved him 
 self in the approved fashion, and gained a good 
 knowledge of the world, and his manner, which had 
 been thought awkward, came to be considered good 
 enough. While in his boyhood he had been called 
 stupid and slow-moulded, among his business friends 
 he passed for a reserved and discreet and cautious 
 man. He never was very attractive ; his associates 
 found no fault with him, for his life was honorable 
 and just, but he did not make many personal friends, 
 though he was so much respected. You might have 
 a strong feeling of attachment for him after you had 
 known him long, but that was all ; he was not a per 
 son whom one could be enthusiastic about. His was 
 not the character which rouses enthusiasm, but after 
 his own fashion he made a success of life, and that 
 cannot always be said of men who are more popular 
 irith their fellows and more gifted by nature than he. 
 He married, after a while, an orphan niece of one 
 of the firm, of which in time he rose to be a partner 
 himself, and everybody thought it was a good match 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 85 
 
 for both of them. The fair Susan was never thought 
 of with a sigh ; it is oftener in love stories than in 
 real life that such wounds of the heart take long to 
 heal. The world seems to come to an end, and then 
 is begun anew ; after people marry, their earlier lov 
 ers are seldom thought of with regret, however dear 
 they were in their day. Andrew s wife was a far 
 better wife for him than Susan ever would or could 
 have been, and he always said so to himself when he 
 thought of the matter at all. They had a pleasant 
 house and a pleasant position in society, and our hero 
 often smiled to think of his misery when he found 
 that his uncle s estates were not to be his, after all. 
 It was a good while before it flashed through his 
 mind, one day, that it had been a blessing in disguise. 
 There had been eight thousand dollars beside the 
 farm ; there never had been a fortune equal to it in 
 that neighborhood ; but his own possessions already 
 covered it over and over again, and it made him fairly 
 wretched to think how small and narrow his life 
 would have been if he had stayed at home on the 
 farm, how much he should have missed, and how 
 much less he could have done for himself and for 
 other people. Fie said more than once that it had 
 been the making of him, and that the hand of God 
 Uad plainly shaped his course. 
 
86 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 After a good many years he went back to his na 
 tive place ; he had been meaning to do it for a long 
 time, and he was somehow often reminded of Mr. 
 Dunning s visit. It was a pleasant week in late sum 
 mer, and the old town was little changed ; only there 
 seemed to be very few old people and a great many 
 younger ones. He went to see every one whom he 
 knew, and his holidays were after all very pleasant. 
 He called upon Susan, and found her old and homely 
 and complaining, though she had married the smart 
 young man at the store, and had been as fond of him 
 as it was her nature to be of any one. It was odd that 
 he was awkward and lank and slow-moulded now, 
 while Andrew was in her eyes a most distinguished 
 and elegant looking man, and she could not imagine 
 how she ever had the courage to dismiss him. " You 
 know I always set a great deal by you, Mr. Phillips," 
 she said, with a look that made her a little like the 
 Susan of old. He seemed a part of her triumphant 
 youth, and it brought back all her old pride and am 
 bition. She had meant to be somebody and had failed, 
 and perhaps she never exactly understood where her 
 mistake had been until then. It is likely that from 
 that time forward she occasionally said that she might 
 have been riding in her carriage. 
 
 Andrew stayed at the Dennett farm ; nothing had 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 87 
 
 ever told him so plainly how different a man he was 
 from what he might have been, or how different a life 
 he led, like coming back to the old house. It seemed 
 very strange to wake up in the morning in his old 
 room, which with unwonted sentiment he had asked 
 if he might occupy. Lysander Dennett had not lived 
 long to enjoy his good fortune, but it had been a great 
 blessing to his sons, who were farmers by nature; 
 and now one lived in the old house, and the other 
 in a new one near by, and they worked the farm to 
 gether, while they were, by reason of their wealth, 
 two of the foremost citizens, and one of them had even 
 been sent to the legislature. The old place was not 
 altered much. Andrew was reminded of his uncle and 
 of his own boyhood at every step, and he offered to 
 buy one or two old pieces of furniture, which were 
 gladly given to him when he was found to be attached 
 to them ; and, since they were brass-mounted and 
 claw-footed, his wife welcomed them with joy, and 
 thought his pilgrimage to his native place had not 
 been in vain. There was a son of Jonas Dennett s at 
 the farm who reminded him of himself in his youth, 
 and he made friends in a grave way with the boy, 
 and said to himself that in a year or two he would 
 give him a start in the world. 
 
 It happened the day before ne ended his visit was 
 
88 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 a rainy day, and he was shut up in the house, though 
 between two showers in the morning he had gone 
 over to pay a last call on Mrs. Beedle, who was still 
 living, grown shorter and stouter than ever, until her 
 little head and broad round shoulders made her look 
 like a June bug. She took great pride in Mr. Phil 
 lips, who, indeed, had been kind to her in many ways, 
 as well as to Betsey Morris, who had died not long 
 before. 
 
 After he had come back he was at his wits end 
 what to do. Jonas Dennett was away and the women 
 were busy, and at last he asked if there were not an 
 old family Bible somewhere in the house, and was di 
 rected to the best room, stiff and dismal as ever, 
 where it was taken down from the chimney cupboard, 
 as the Bible belonging to the Lysander Dennett 
 branch was occupying the post of honor on the little 
 table in the corner. Andrew caught sight of some 
 other ancient-looking volumes, and he mounted the 
 chair himself, reaching in at arm s-length and taking 
 out one old brown book after another. There was 
 nothing very interesting ; they were mostly like Law s 
 Serious Call and the Rise and Progress, and some 
 volumes of old sermons by New England divines. 
 The last book was a great volume of Townsend s 
 Arrangement of the Old Testament. It was almos 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 89 
 
 as large as the Bible itself, and as he took it out it 
 slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. One of 
 the Dennett children, who stood by, stooped to pick 
 it up, and as Andrew came down from the chair, dusty 
 and disappointed in his search, she gave it to him. 
 There was a paper half out between the leaves, which 
 the fall had dislodged, and he pulled it out to replace 
 it more carefully, thinking of something else all the 
 time ; but a strange feeling rushed over him at the 
 sight of it, and he sat down, still holding the big book 
 and the paper, and, to the little girl s surprise, he grew 
 very red in the face. 
 
 It was strange that after so many years he should 
 have been the one to find the missing will. It was 
 carefully written in his uncle s stiff, precise hand, and 
 the farm and all the money, with the exception of 
 Betsey Morris s legacy, and one to the young Den 
 netts, and some smaller ones to the church and the 
 old minister, were left to his adopted son. 
 
 And now Andrew was the rightful heir when he 
 did not wish to be, and he was anything but happy. 
 He remembered the book, and that he looked in it 
 himself ; it used to be on a table in that same room, 
 and poor old Mrs. Towner had carefully replaced the 
 paper in the Bible, as she thought, for this book was 
 not unlike it to her half-blind eyes. Soon after the 
 
90 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 funeral Betsey had put the room severely to rights 
 and had stored the books away in the chimney cup 
 board, where they had been ever since. He could 
 not imagine how he and the other people who had 
 searched had overlooked this paper ; it must have 
 been fastened between two leaves and hidden some 
 how. Indeed, it had always been a puzzle to him 
 why the will should have been in the Bible at all ; it 
 was not like his uncle to put it there ; but after all it 
 is only people in real life who do uncharacteristic 
 things. Andrew went out to the barn and sat there 
 alone for a while, listening to the rain on the shingles 
 overhead and wondering what he should do. He had 
 a great affection for the old place, and he would have 
 liked to think it was his, as his uncle wished it to be. 
 It cost a good deal of effort to give it up ; but he 
 knew that his wife would find it very dull for even a 
 little while in the summer, and it was too far from the 
 city for him to think of spending much time there. 
 It would give him a great deal of trouble, too. And 
 Jonas and Tim Dennett would be thrown out of their 
 homes ; they were worth five or six thousand dollars 
 apiece and their farm now, but they would have to be 
 gin life all over again, they and their wives and 
 children. He was a rich man himself and only a little 
 past middle age, and he came to the conclusion that 
 
ANDREW S FORTUNE. 91 
 
 he would not claim the property that his uncle had 
 given him. 
 
 And when lie went into tl^e house he stood for a 
 minute in the kitchen warming his hands a little over 
 the stove, which to his sorrow had taken the place 
 of the old fire-place ; while nobody was looking he 
 tucked a folded paper in at the draught, and saw it 
 light quickly and burn, and the old wafer spluttered 
 a little, while he felt very solemn, and seemed to his 
 hostess all day to have something on his mind. Ho 
 had a feeling of regret about it from time to time, and 
 he thought sometimes that it would have been just as 
 well to let them know how generous he had been. 
 But he always told himself, whenever he thought of 
 the will afterward, that it was the best thing for him 
 to do. 
 
 So he lost his fortune when he wanted it, and found 
 it was his when he would not take it ; but he thought 
 of the old place more and more as he grew older, and 
 Jonas Dennett s boy came to the city that next spring. 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 
 
 JT was a fine afternoon, just warm enough 
 and just cool enough, and I started off alone 
 on horseback, though I do not know why I 
 should say alone when I find my horse such good 
 company. She is called Sheila, and she not only 
 gratifies one s sense of beauty, but is very interesting 
 in her character, while her usefulness in this world 
 is beyond question. I grow more fond of her every 
 week ; we have had so many capital good times to 
 gether, and I am certain that she is as much pleased 
 as I when we start out for a run. 
 
 I do not say to every one that I always pronounce 
 her name in German fashion because she occasion 
 ally shies, but that is the truth. I do not mind he 
 shying, or a certain mysterious and apparently un 
 provoked jump, with which she sometimes indulges 
 herself, and no one else rides her, so I think she does 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 93 
 
 no harm, but I do not like the principle of allowing 
 her to be wicked, unrebuked and unhindered, and 
 some day I shall give my mind to admonishing this 
 four-footed Princess of Thule, who seems at present 
 to consider herself at the top of royalty in this king 
 dom or any other. I believe I should not like her 
 half so well if she were tamer and entirely and stu 
 pidly reliable ; I glory in her good spirits and I think 
 she has a right to be proud and willful if she chooses. 
 I am proud myself of her quick eye and ear, her sure 
 foot, and her slender, handsome chestnut head. I 
 look at her points of high breeding with admiration, 
 and I thank her heartily for all the pleasure she has 
 given me, and for what I am sure is a steadfast 
 friendship between us, and a mutual understanding 
 that rarely knows a disappointment or a mistake. 
 She is careful when I come home late through the 
 shadowy, twilighted woods, and I can hardly see my 
 way ; she forgets then all her little tricks and capers, 
 and is as steady as a clock with her tramp, tramp, 
 over the rough, dark country roads. I feel as if I 
 had suddenly grown a pair of wings when she fairly 
 flies over the ground and the wind whistles in my 
 ears. There never was a time when she could not 
 go a little faster, but she is willing to go step by step 
 through the close woods, pushing her way through 
 
94 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 the branches, and stopping considerately when a 
 bough that will not bend tries to pull me oC the sad 
 dle. And she never goes away and leaves me when 
 I dismount to get some flowers or a drink of spring 
 water, though sometimes she thinks what fun it would 
 be. I cannot speak of all her virtues for I have not 
 learned them yet. We are still new friends, for I 
 have only ridden her two years and I feel all the 
 fascination of the first meeting every time I go out 
 with her, she is so unexpected in her ways ; so amus 
 ing, so sensible, so brave, and in every way so de 
 lightful a horse. 
 
 It was in October, and it was a fine day to look 
 at, though some of the great clouds that sailed 
 through the sky were a little too heavy-looking to 
 promise good weather on the morrow, and over in 
 the west (where the wind was coming from) they 
 were packed close together and looked gray and wet. 
 It might be cold and cloudy later, but that would not 
 hinder my ride ; it is a capital way to keep warm, to 
 come along a smooth bit of road on the run, and I 
 should have time at any rate to go the way I wished, 
 so Sheila trotted quickly through the gate and out 
 of the village. There was a flicker of color left on 
 the oaks and maples, and though it was not Indian- 
 summer weather it was first cousin to it. I took off 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 93 
 
 my cap *o let the wind blow through my hair ; I had 
 half a Liind to go down to the sea, but it was too 
 late for that ; there was no moon to light me home. 
 Sheila took the strip of smooth turf just at the side 
 of the road for her own highway, she tossed her 
 head again and again until I had my hand full of her 
 thin, silky mane, and she gave quick pulls at her bit 
 and hurried little jumps ahead as if she expected me 
 already to pull the reins tight and steady her for a 
 hard gallop. I patted her and whistled at her, I was 
 so glad to see her again and to be out riding, and I 
 gave her part of her reward to begin with, because 
 I knew she would earn it, and then we were on bet 
 ter terms than ever. She has such a pretty way of 
 turning her head to take the square lump of sugar, 
 and she never bit my fingers or dropped the sugar in 
 her life. 
 
 Down in the lower part of the town on the edge 
 of York, there is a long tract of woodland, covering 
 what is called the Rocky Hills ; rough, high land, 
 that stretches along from beyond Agamenticus, near 
 the sea, to the upper part of Eliot, near the Piscat- 
 aqua River. Standing on Agamenticus, the woods 
 seem to cover nearly the whole of the country as far 
 ts one can see, and thare is hardly a clearing to break 
 this long reach of forest of which I speak ; there 
 
06 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 must be twenty miles of it in an almost unbroken 
 line. The roads cross it here and there, and one can 
 sometimes see small and lonely farms hiding away 
 in the heart of it. The trees are for the most part 
 young growth of oak or pine, though I could show 
 you yet many a noble company of great pines that 
 once would have been marked with the king s arrow, 
 and many a royal old oak which has been overlooked 
 in the search for ships knees and plank for the navy 
 yard, and piles for the always shaky, up-hill and 
 down, pleasant old Portsmouth bridge. The part of 
 these woods which I know best lies on either side 
 the already old new road to York on the Rocky 
 Hills, and here I often ride, or even take perilous 
 rough drives through the cart-paths, the wood roads 
 which are busy thoroughfares in the winter, and are 
 silent and shady, narrowed by green branches and 
 carpeted with slender brakes, and seldom traveled 
 over, except by me, all summer long. 
 
 It was a great surprise, or a succession of surprises, 
 one summer, when I found that every one of the old 
 uneven tracks led to or at least led by what had once 
 been a clearing, and in old days must have been the 
 secluded home of some of the earliest adventurous 
 farmers of this region. It must have taken great 
 courage, I think, to strike the fir.pt blow of one s axa 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 97 
 
 here in the woods, and it must have been a brave cer 
 tainty of one s perseverance that looked forward to 
 the smooth field which was to succeed the unfruitful 
 wilderness. The farms were far enough apart to be 
 very lonely, and I suppose at first the cry of fierce 
 wild creatures in the forest was an e very-day sound, 
 and the Indians stole like snakes through the bushes 
 and crept from tree to tree about the houses watch 
 ing, begging, and plundering, over and over again. 
 There are some of these farms still occupied, where 
 the land seems to have become thoroughly civilized, 
 but most of them were deserted long ago ; the people 
 gave up the fight with such a persistent willfulness and 
 wildness of nature and went away to the village, or to 
 find more tractable soil and kindlier neighborhoods. 
 
 I do not know why it is these silent, forgotten 
 places are so delightful to me ; there is one which I 
 always call my farm, and it was a long time after I 
 knew it well before I could find out to whom it had 
 once belonged. In some strange way the place has 
 become a part of my world and to belong to my 
 thoughts and my life. 
 
 I suppose every one can say, " I have a little king 
 dom where I give laws." Each of us has truly a king 
 dom in thought, and a certain spiritual possession. 
 There are some gardens of miae where somebody 
 7 
 
98 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 plants the seeds and pulls the weeds for me every 
 year without my ever taking a bit of trouble. I have 
 trees and fields and woods and seas and houses, I own 
 a great deal of the world to think and plan and dream 
 about. The picture belongs most to the man who 
 loves it best and sees entirely its meaning. We can 
 always have just as much as we can take of things, 
 and we can lay up as much treasure as we please in 
 the higher world of thought that can never be spoiled 
 or hindered by moth or rust, as lower and meaner 
 wealth can be. 
 
 As for this farm of mine, I found it one day when 
 I was coming through the woods on horseback trying 
 to strike a shorter way out into the main road. I 
 was pushing through some thick underbrush, and 
 looking ahead I noticed a good deal of clear sky as 
 if there were an open place just beyond, and pres 
 ently I found myself on the edge of a clearing. There 
 was a straggling orchard of old apple-trees, the grass 
 about them was close and short like the wide door- 
 yard of an old farm-house and into this cleared space 
 the little pines were growing on every side. The 
 old pines stood a little way back watching their chil 
 dren march in upon their inheritance, as if they were 
 ready to interfere and protect and defend, if any 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 99 
 
 trouble came. I could see that it would not be many 
 years, if they were left alone, before the green grass 
 would be covered, and the old apple-trees would grow 
 mossy and die for lack of room and sunlight in the 
 midst of the young woods. It was a perfect acre of 
 turf, only here and there I could already see a cush 
 ion of juniper, or a tuft of sweet fern or bayberry. 
 I walked the horse about slowly, picking a hard little 
 yellow apple here and there from the boughs over 
 my head, and at last I found a cellar all grown over 
 with grass, with not even a bit of a crumbling brick 
 to be seen in the hollow of it. No doubt there were 
 some underground. It was a very large cellar, twice 
 as large as any *I had ever found before in any of 
 these deserted places, in the woods or out. And that 
 told me at once that there had been a large house 
 above it, an unusual house for those old days ; the 
 family was either a large one, or it had made for itself 
 more than a merely sufficient covering and shelter, 
 with no inch of unnecessary room. I knew I was on 
 very high land, but the trees were so tall and close 
 that I could not see beyond them. The wind blew 
 over pleasantly arid it was a curiously protected and 
 hidden place, sheltered and quiet, witn its one small 
 crop of cider apples dropping ungathered to the ground, 
 nnd unharvested there, except by hurrying black ants 
 ind sticky, witless little snails. 
 
100 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 I suppose my feeling toward this place was like 
 that about a ruin, only this seemed older than a ruin. 
 I could not hear my horse s foot-falls, and an apple 
 startled me when it fell with a soft thud, and I 
 watched it roil a foot or two and then stop, as if it 
 knew it never wouhl have anything more to do in 
 the world. I remembered the Enchanted Palace and 
 the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and it seemed as if 
 I were on the way to it, and this was a corner of 
 that palace garden. The horse listened and stood 
 still, without a bit of restlessness, and when we heard 
 the far cry of a bird she looked round at me, as if 
 she wished me to notice that we were not alone in 
 the world, after all. It was strange, to be sure, that 
 people had lived there, and had had a home where 
 they were busy, and where the fortunes of life had 
 found them ; that they had followed out the law of 
 existence in its succession of growth and flourishing 
 and failure and decay, within that steadily narrowing 
 circle of trees. 
 
 The relationship of untamed nature to what is 
 tamed and cultivated is a very curious and subtle 
 thing to me ; I do not know if every one feels it so 
 intensely. In the darkness of an early autumn even 
 ing I sometimes find myself whistling a queer tune 
 that chimes in with the crickets piping and the cries 
 
AN OCTOBER HIDE. 10? 
 
 of the little creatures around me in the garden. I 
 have no thought of the rest of the world. I wonder 
 what I am ; there is a strange self-consciousness, but 
 I am only a part of one great existence which is 
 called nature. The life in me is a bit of all life, and 
 where I am happiest is where I find that which is 
 next of kin to me, in friends, or trees, or hills, or seas, 
 or beside a flower, when I turn back more than once 
 to look into its face. 
 
 The world goes on year after year. We can use its 
 forces, and shape and mould them, and perfect this 
 thing or that, but we cannot make new forces ; we 
 only use the tools we find to carve the wood we find. 
 There is nothing new ; we discover and combine and 
 use. Here is the wild fruit, the same fruit at heart 
 as that with which the gardener wins his prize. The 
 world is the same world. You find a diamond, but 
 the diamond was there a thousand years ago ; you did 
 not make it by finding it. We grow spiritually, un 
 til we grasp some new great truth of God ; but it was 
 always true, and waited for us until we came. What 
 is there new and strange in the world except our 
 selves ! Our thoughts are our own ; God gives our 
 life to us moment by moment, but He gives it to be 
 dur own. 
 
 4 Ye on your harps must lean to hear 
 A secret chord that mine will bear." 
 
02 - "CO \7NTR Y BY- WA YS. 
 
 As I looked about me that day I saw the differ 
 ence that men had made slowly fading out of sight. 
 It was like a dam in a river ; when it is once swept 
 away the river goes on the same as before. The old 
 patient, sublime forces were there at work in their 
 appointed way, but perhaps by and by, when the ap 
 ple-trees are gone and the cellar is only a rough hol 
 low in the woods, some one will again set aside these 
 forces that have worked unhindered, and will bring 
 this corner of the world into a new use and shape. 
 What if we could stop or change forever the work 
 ing of these powers ! But Nature repossesses herself 
 surely of what we boldly claim. The pyramids stand 
 yet, it happens, but where are all those cities that 
 used also to stand in old Egypt, proud and strong, 
 and dating back beyond men s memories or tradi 
 tions, turned into sand again and dust that is like 
 all the rest of the desert, and blows about in the 
 wind ? Yet there cannot be such a thins as life that 
 
 O 
 
 is lost. The tree falls and decays, in the dampness of 
 the woods, and is part of the earth under foot, but an 
 other tree is growing out of it ; perhaps it is part of 
 its own life that is springing again from the part of 
 it that died. God must always be putting again to 
 some use the life that is withdrawn ; it must live, 
 because it is Life. There can be no confusion to 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 103 
 
 God in this wonderful world, the new birth of the 
 immortal, the new forms of the life that is from ever 
 lasting to everlasting, or the new way in which it 
 comes. But it is only God who can plan and order 
 it all, who is a father to his children, and cares for 
 the least of us. I thought of his unbroken prom 
 ises ; the people who lived and died in that lonely 
 place knew Him, and the chain of events was fitted 
 to their thoughts and lives, for their development 
 and education. The world was made for them, and 
 God keeps them yet ; somewhere in his kingdom 
 they are in their places, they are not lost ; whil 
 the trees they left grow older, and the young tree) 
 spring up, and the fields they cleared are being cov 
 ered over and turned into wild land again. 
 
 I had visited this farm of mine many times sino., 
 that first day, but since the last time I had beeu 
 there I had found out, luckily, something about itd 
 last tenant. An old lady whom I knew in the vil 
 lage had told me that when she was a child she re 
 membered another very old woman, who used to live 
 here all alone, far from any neighbors, and that one 
 afternoon she had come with her mother to see her. 
 She remembered the house very well ; it was larger 
 nd better than most houses in the region. Its 
 
104 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 was the List of her family ; but why she lived alone, 
 or what became of her at last, or of her money or 
 her goods, or who were her relatives in the town, my 
 friend did not know. She was a thrifty, well-to-do old 
 souJ i famous weaver and spinner, and she used to 
 come to the meeting-house at the Old Fields every 
 Sunday, and sit by herself in a square pew. Since I 
 knew this, the last owner of my farm has become 
 very real to me, and I thought of her that day a great 
 deal, and could almost see her as she sat alone on her 
 doorstep in the twilight of a summer evening, when 
 the thrushes were calling in the woods; or going 
 down the hills to church, dressed in quaint fashion, 
 with a little sadness in her face as she thought of 
 her lost companions and how she did not use to go 
 to church alone. And I pictured her funeral to my 
 self, and watched her carried away at last by the 
 narrow road that wound among the trees ; and there 
 ;vas nobody left in the house after the neighbors 
 from the nearest farms had put it to rights, and had 
 looked over her treasures to their hearts content. 
 She must have been a fearless woman, and one could 
 not stay in such a place as this, year in and year 
 out, through the long days of summer and the long 
 nights of winter, unless she found herself good com 
 pany. 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 105 
 
 I do not think I could find a worse avenue than 
 that which leads to my farm, I think sometimes there 
 must have been an easier way out which I have yet 
 failed to discover, but it has its advantages, for the 
 trees are beautiful and stand close together, and I do 
 not know such green brakes anywhere as those which 
 grow in the shadiest places. I came into a well- 
 trodden track after a while, which led into a small 
 granite quarry, and then I could go faster, and at last 
 I reached a pasture wall which was quickly left be 
 hind and I was only a little way from the main road. 
 There were a few young cattle scattered about in the 
 pasture, and some of them which were lying down 
 got up in a hurry and stared at me suspiciously as I 
 rode along. It was very uneven grTmnd, and I passed 
 some stiff, straight mullein stalks which stood apart 
 together in a hollow as if they wished to be alone. 
 They always remind me of the rigid old Scotch Cov 
 enanters, who used to gather themselves together in 
 companies, against the law, to worship God in some 
 secret hollow of the bleak hill-side. Even the small 
 est and youngesi of the mulleins was a Covenanter at 
 heart ; they had all put by their yellow flowers, and 
 they will stand there, gray and unbending, through the 
 fall rains and winter snows, to keep their places and 
 praise God in their own fashion, and they take great 
 
106 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 credit to themselves for doing it, 1 have no doubt, 
 and think it is far better to be a stern and respecta 
 ble mullein than a straying, idle clematis, that clings 
 and wanders, and cannot bear wet weather. I saw 
 members of the congregation scattered through the 
 pasture and felt like telling them to hurry, for the 
 long sermon had already begun ! But one ancient 
 worthy, very late on his way to the meeting, hap 
 pened to stand in our way, and Sheila bit his dry 
 head off, which was a great pity. 
 
 After I was once on the high road it was not long 
 before I found myself in another part of the town 
 altogether. It is great fun to ride about the country ; 
 one rouses a great deal of interest ; there seems to 
 be something exciting in the sight of a girl on horse 
 back, and people who pass you in wagons turn to 
 look after you, though they never would take the 
 trouble if you were only walking. The country 
 horses shy if you go by them fast, and sometimes 
 you stop to apologize. The boys will leave anything 
 to come and throw a stone at your horse. I think 
 Sheila would like to bite a boy. though sometimes 
 she goes through her best paces when she hears them 
 hooting, as if she thought they were admiring, her, 
 which I never allow myself to doubt. It is consid 
 ered a much greater compliment if you make a call 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 107 
 
 on horseback than if you came afoot, but carriage 
 people are nothing in the country to what they are 
 in the city. 
 
 I was on a good road and Sheila was trotting 
 steadily, and I did not look at the western sky be 
 hind me until I suddenly noticed that the air had 
 grown colder and the sun had been for a long time 
 behind a cloud ; then I found there was going to be 
 a shower, in a very little while, too. I was in a 
 thinly settled part of the town, and at first I could 
 not think of any shelter, until I remembered that not 
 very far distant there was an old house, with a long, 
 sloping roof, which had formerly been the parsonage 
 of the north parish ; there had once been a church 
 near by, to which most of the people came who lived 
 in this upper part of the town. It had been for 
 many years the house of an old minister, of wide 
 spread fame in his day ; I had always heard of him 
 from the elderly people, and I had often thought I 
 should like to go into his house, and had looked at it 
 with great interest, but until within a year or two 
 there had been people living there. I had even list 
 ened with pleasure to a story of its being haunted, 
 and this was a capital chance to take a look at the 
 old place, so I hurried toward it. 
 
 As I went in at the broken gate it seemed to me 
 
108 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 as if the house might have been shut up and left to 
 itself fifty years before, when the minister died, so 
 soon the grass grows up after men s footsteps have 
 worn it down, and the traces are lost of the daily 
 touch and care of their hands. The home lot was 
 evidently part of a pasture, and the sheep had nib 
 bled close to the door-step, while tags of their long, 
 spring wool, washed clean by summer rains, were 
 caught in the rose-bushes near by. 
 
 It had been a very good house in its day, and had 
 a dignity of its own, holding its gray head high, as 
 if it knew itself to be not merely a farm-house, but 
 a Parsonage. The roof looked as if the next win 
 ter s weight of snow might break it in, and the win 
 dow panes had been loosened so much in their shak 
 ing frames that many of them had fallen out on the 
 nortli side of the house, and were lying on the long 
 grass underneath, blurred and thin but still unbroken. 
 That was the last letter of the house s death warrant, 
 for now the rain could get in, and the crumbling tim 
 bers must loose their hold of each other quickly. I 
 had found a dry corner of the old shed for the horse 
 and left her there, looking most ruefully over her 
 shoulder after ma as I hurried away, for the rain 
 had already begun to spatter down in earnest. I 
 was not sorry when I found that somebody had 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 109 
 
 broken a pane of glass in the sidelight of the front 
 door, near the latch, and I was very pleased when I 
 found that by reaching through I could unfasten a 
 great bolt and let myself in, as perhaps some tramp 
 in search of shelter had done before me. However, 
 I gave the blackened brass knocker a ceremonious 
 rap or two, and I could have told by the sound of it, 
 if in no other way, that there was nobody at home. 
 I looked up to see a robin s nest on the cornice 
 overhead, and I had to push away the lilacs and a 
 withered hop vine which were both trying to cover 
 up the door. 
 
 It gives one a strange feeling, I think, to go into 
 an empty house so old as this. It was so still there 
 that the noise my footsteps made startled me, and 
 the floor creaked and cracked as if some one followed 
 me about. There was hardly a straw left or a bit of 
 string or paper, but the rooms were much worn, the 
 bricks in the fire-places were burnt out, rough and 
 crumbling, and the doors were all worn smooth and 
 round at the edges. The best rooms were wain 
 scoted, but up-stairs there was a long, unfinished room 
 with a little square window at each end, under the 
 sloping roof, and as I listened there to the rain I 
 remembered that I had once heard an old man say 
 wistfully, that he had slept in just such a " linter " 
 
110 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 chamber as this when he was a boy, and that he 
 never could sleep anywhere now so well as he used 
 there while the rain fell on the roof just over his 
 bed. 
 
 Down-stairs I found a room which I knew must 
 have been the study. It was handsomely wainscoted, 
 and the finish of it was even better than that of the 
 parlor. It must have been a most comfortable place, 
 and I fear the old parson was luxurious in his tastes 
 and less ascetic, perhaps, than the more puritanical 
 members of his congregation approved. There was 
 a great fire-place with a broad hearth-stone, where I 
 think he may have made a mug of flip sometimes, 
 and there were several curious, narrow, little cup 
 boards built into the wall at either side, and over the 
 Hre-place itself two doors opened and there were 
 shelves inside, broader at the top as the chimney 
 sloped back. I saw some writing on one of these 
 doors and went nearer to read it. There was a date 
 at the top, some time in 1802, and his reverence 
 had had a good quill pen and ink which bravely 
 stood the test of time ; he must have been a tall man 
 .o have written so high. I thought it might be some 
 record of a great storm or other notable event in his 
 house or parish, but I was amused to find that he 
 had written there on the unpainted wood some valu 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. Ill 
 
 able recipes for the medical treatment of horses. 
 u It is Useful for a Sprain and For a Cough, Take 
 of Elecampane " and so on. I hope he was not a 
 hunting parson, but one could hardly expect to find 
 any reference to the early fathers or federal head 
 ship in Adam on the cupboard door. I thought of 
 the stories I had heard of the old minister and felt 
 very well acquainted with him, though his books had 
 been taken down and his fire was out, and he himself 
 had gone away. I was glad to think what a good, 
 faithful man he was, who spoke comfortable words 
 to his people and lived pleasantly with them in this 
 quiet country place so many years. There are old 
 people living who have told me that nobody preaches 
 nowadays as he used to preach, and that he used to 
 lift his hat to everybody ; that he liked a good din 
 ner, and always was kind to the poor. 
 
 I thought as I stood in the study, how many times 
 he must have looked out of the small-paned western 
 windows across the fields, and how in his later days 
 he must have had a treasure of memories of the peo 
 ple who had gone out of that room the better for his 
 advice and consolation, the people whom he had 
 helped and taught and ruled. I could not imagine 
 that he ever angrily took his parishioners to task for 
 iheir errors of doctrine ; indeed, it was not of his ac- 
 
112 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 tive youth and middle age that I thought at all, but 
 of the last of his life, when he sat here in the sun 
 shine of a winter afternoon, and the fire flickered and 
 snapped on the hearth, and he sat before it in his 
 arm-chair with a brown old book which he laid on 
 his knee while he thought and dozed, and roused 
 himself presently to greet somebody who came in, a 
 little awed at first, to talk with him. It was a great 
 thing to be a country minister in those old days, and 
 to be such a minister as he was ; truly the priest and 
 ruler of his people. The times have changed, and 
 the temporal power certainly is taken away. The 
 divine right of ministers is almost as little believed 
 
 o 
 
 in as that of kings, by many people ; it is not possi 
 ble for the influence to be so great, the office and the 
 man are both looked at with less reverence. It is a 
 pity that it should be so, but the conservative people 
 who like old-fashioned ways cannot tell where to 
 place all the blame. And it is very odd to think 
 that these iconoclastic and unpleasant new times of 
 ours will, a little later, be called old times, and that 
 the children, when they are elderly people, will sigh 
 to have them back again. 
 
 I was very glad to see the old house, and I told 
 myself a great many stories there, as one canno* 
 help doing in such a place. There must have been 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 113 
 
 BO mdu^, things happen in so many long lives which 
 were lived there ; people have come into the world 
 and gone out of it again from those square rooms 
 with their little windows, and I believe if there are 
 ghosts who walk about in daylight I was only half 
 deaf to their voices, and heard much of what they 
 tried to tell me that day. The rooms which had 
 looked empty at first were filled again with the old 
 clergymen, who met together with important looks 
 and complacent dignity, and eager talk about some 
 minor point in theology that is yet unsettled ; the 
 awkward, smiling couples, who came to be married ; 
 the mistress of the house, who must have been a 
 stately person in her day ; the little children who, 
 under all their shyness, remembered the sugar-plums 
 in the old parson s pockets, all these, and even 
 the tall cane that must have stood in the entry, were 
 visible to my mind s eye. And I even heard a ser 
 mon from the old preacher who died so long ago, on 
 the beauty of a life well spent. 
 
 The rain fell steadily and there was no prospect 
 of its stopping, though 1 could see that the clouds 
 vere thinner and that it was only a shower. In the 
 kitchen I found an old chair which I pulled into the 
 study, which seemed more cheerful than the rest of 
 the house, and then I remembered that there were 
 
114 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 Borne bits of board in the kitchen also, and the 
 thought struck me that it would be good fun to make 
 a fire in the old fire-place. Everything seemed right 
 about the chimney. I even went up into the garret 
 to look at it there, for I had no wish to set the par 
 sonage on fire, and I brought down a pile of old corn 
 husks for kindlings which I found on the garret floor. 
 1 built my fire carefully, with two bricks for andirons, 
 and when I lit it it blazed up gayly, I poked it and 
 it crackled, and though I was very well contented 
 there alone I wished for some friend to keep me 
 company, it was selfish to have so much pleasure 
 with no one to share it. The rain came faster than 
 ever against the windows, and the room would have 
 been dark if it had not been for my fire, which threw 
 out a magnificent yellow light over the old brown 
 wood-work. I leaned back arid watched the dry 
 sticks fall apart in red coals and thought I might 
 have to spend the night there, for if it were a storm 
 and not a shower I was several miles from home, 
 and a late October rain is not like a warm one in 
 June to fall upon one s shoulders. I could hear the 
 house leaking when it rained less heavily, and the 
 soot dropped down the chimney and great drops of 
 water came down, too, and spluttered in the fire. I 
 thought what a merry thing it would be if a party oi 
 
AN OCTOBER RIDE. 115 
 
 young people ever had to take refuge there, and I 
 could almost see their faces and hear them laugh, 
 though until that minute they had been strangers to 
 me. 
 
 But the shower was over at last, and my fire was 
 out, and the last pale shining of the sun came into 
 the windows, and I looked out to see the distant fields 
 and woods all clear again in the late afternoon light. 
 I must hurry to get home before dark, so I raked up 
 the ashes and left my chair beside the fire-place, and 
 shut and fastened the front door after me, and went 
 out to see what had become of my hoise, shaking the 
 dust and cobwebs off my dress as I crossed the wet 
 grass to the shed. The raiu had come through the 
 broken roof and poor Sheila looked anxious and hun 
 gry as if she thought I might have meant to leave her 
 there till morning in that dismal place. I offered her 
 my apologies, but she made even a shorter turn than 
 usual when I had mounted, and we scurried off down 
 the road, spattering ourselves as we went. I hope 
 the ghosts who live in the parsonage watched me 
 with friendly eyes, and I looked back myself, to see 
 a thin blue whiff of smoke still corning up from the 
 great chimney. I wondered who it was that had 
 made the first fire there, but I think I shall have 
 made the last. 
 
\ V 
 
 FKOM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER 
 
 JATELY I have been thinking, with much 
 sorrow, of the approaching extinction of 
 front yards, and of the type of New England 
 village character and civilization with which they are 
 associated. Formerly, because I lived in an old- 
 fashioned New England village, it would have been 
 hard for me to imagine that there were parts of the 
 country where the Front yard, as I knew it, was not 
 in fashion, and that Grounds (however small) had 
 taken its place. No matter how large a piece of 
 land lay in front of a house in old times, it was still 
 a front yard, in spite of noble dimension and the 
 skill of practiced gardeners. 
 
 There are still a good many examples of the old 
 manner of out-of-door life and customs, as well as a 
 good deal of the old-fashioned provincial society, left 
 in the eastern parts of the New England States ; but 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 117 
 
 put side by side with the society that is American 
 rather than provincial, one discovers it to be in a 
 small minority. The representative United States 
 citizen will be, or already is, a Westerner, and IT S 
 instincts and ways of looking at things have certain 
 characteristics of their own which are steadily grow 
 ing more noticeable. 
 
 For many years New England was simply a bit of. 
 Old England transplanted. We all can remember 
 elderly people whose ideas were wholly under the 
 influence of their English ancestry. It is hardly 
 more than a hundred years since we were English 
 colonies, and not independent United States, and 
 the customs and ideas of the mother country were 
 followed from force of habit. Now one begins to see 
 a difference ; the old traditions have had time to al 
 most die out even in the most conservative and least 
 changed towns, and a new element has come in. 
 The true characteristics of American society, as I 
 have said, are showing themselves more and more 
 distinctly to the westward of New England, and 
 come back to it in a tide that steadily sweeps away 
 the old traditions. It rises over the heads of tho 
 prim and stately idols before which our grandfathers 
 and grandmothers bowed down and worshiped, and 
 which we ourselves were at least taught to walk 
 softly by as they toppled on their thrones. 
 
118 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 One cannot help wondering what a lady of the 
 old school will be like a hundred years from now ! 
 But at any rate she will not be in heart and thought 
 and fashion of good breeding as truly an English 
 woman as if she had never stepped out of Great 
 Britain. If one of our own elderly ladies were sud 
 denly dropped into the midst of provincial English 
 society, she would be quite at home ; but west of her 
 own Hudson River she is lucky if she does not find 
 herself behind the times, and almost a stranger and 
 a foreigner. 
 
 And yet from the first there was a little difference, 
 and the colonies were New England and not Old. 
 In some ways more radical, yet in some ways more 
 conservative, than the people across the water, they 
 showed a new sort of flower when they came into 
 bloom in this new climate and soil. In the old 
 days there had not been time for the family ties to be 
 broken arid forgotten. Instead of the unknown Eng 
 lish men and women who are our sixth and sev 
 enth cousins now, they had first and second cousins 
 then ; but there was little communication between 
 one country and the other, and the mutual interest in 
 every-day affairs had to fade out quickly. A traveler 
 was a curiosity, and here, even between the villages 
 themselves, there was far less intercourse than we 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 119 
 
 can believe possible. People stayed on their own 
 ground ; their horizons were of small circumference, 
 and their whole interest and thought were spent upon 
 their own land, their own neighbors, their own affairs, 
 while they not only were contented with this state 
 of things but encouraged it. One has only to look 
 at the high-walled pews of the old churches, at the 
 high fences of the town gardens, and at even the 
 strong fortifications around some family lots in the 
 burying-grounds, to be sure of this. The inter 
 viewer was not besought and encouraged in those 
 days, he was defied. In that quarter, at least, they 
 had the advantage of us. Their interest was as real 
 and heartfelt in each other s affairs as ours, let us 
 hope ; but they never allowed idle curiosity to show 
 itself in the world s market-place, shameless and un 
 blushing. 
 
 There is so much to be said in favor of our own day, 
 and the men and women of our own time, that a plea 
 for a recognition of the quaintness and pleasantness 
 of village life in the old days cannot seem unwelcome, 
 or without deference to all that has come with the 
 later years of ease and comfort, or of discovery in 
 the realms of mind or matter. We are beginning 
 to cling to the elderly people who are so different 
 from ourselves, and for this reason : we are paying 
 
120 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 them instinctively the honor that is due from us to 
 our elders and bettors ; they have that grand pres 
 tige and dignity that only comes with age ; they are 
 like old wines, perhaps no better than many others 
 when they were young, but now after many years 
 they have come to be worth nobody knows how many 
 dollars a dozen, and the connoisseurs make treasures 
 of the few bottles of that vintage which are left. 
 
 It was a restricted and narrowly limited life in the 
 old days. Religion, or rather sectarianism, was apt 
 to be simply a matter of inheritance, and there was 
 far more bigotry in every cause and question, a 
 fiercer partisanship ; and because there were fewer 
 channels of activity, and those undivided into spe 
 cialties, there was a whole-souled concentration of 
 energy that was as efficient as it was sometimes nar 
 row and short-sighted. People were more contented 
 in the sphere of life to which it had pleased God to 
 call them, and they do not seem to have been so often 
 sorely tempted by the devil with a sight of the king 
 doms of the world and the glory of them. We are 
 more likely to busy ourselves with finding things to 
 do than in doing with our might the work that is in 
 our hands already. The disappearance of many of 
 the village front yards may come to be typical of the 
 altered position of woman, and mark a stronghold on 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 121 
 
 her way from the much talked-of slavery and subjec 
 tion to a coveted equality. She used to be shut off 
 from the wide acres of the farm, and had no voice in 
 the world s politics ; she must stay in the house, or 
 only hold sway out of doors in this prim corner of 
 land where she was queen. No wonder that women 
 clung to their rights in their flower-gardens then, and 
 no wonder that they have grown a little careless of 
 them now, and that lawn mowers find so ready a 
 sale. The whole world is their front yard nowa 
 days ! 
 
 There might be written a history of front yards in 
 New England which would be very interesting to 
 read. It would end in a treatise upon landscape 
 gardening and its possibilities, and wild flights of 
 imagination about the culture of plants under glass, 
 the application of artificial heat in forcing, and the 
 curious mingling and development of plant life, but it 
 would begin in the simple time of the early colonists. 
 It must have been hard when, after being familiar 
 with the gardens and parks of England and Holland, 
 they found themselves restricted to front yards by 
 way of pleasure grounds. Perhaps they thought such 
 things were wrong, and that having a pleasant place 
 to walk about in out of doors would encourage idle 
 
122 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 and lawless ways in the young ; at anj r rate, for sev 
 eral years it was more necessary to raise corn and 
 potatoes to keep themselves from starving than to 
 lay out alleys and plant flowers and box borders 
 among the rocks and stumps. There is a great pa 
 thos in the fact that in so stern and hard a life there 
 was time or place for any gardens at all. I can pict 
 ure to myself the little slips and cuttings that had 
 been brought over in the ship, and more carefully 
 guarded than any of the household goods ; I can see 
 the women look at them tearfully when they came 
 into bloom, because nothing else could be a better 
 reminder of their old home. What fears there must 
 have been lest the first winter s cold might kill them, 
 and with what love and care they must have been 
 tended ! I know a rose-bush, and a little while ago 
 I knew an apple-tree, that were brought over by the 
 first settlers ; the rose still blooms, and until it was 
 cut down the old tree bore apples. It is strange tc 
 think that civilized New England is no older than the 
 little red roses that bloom in June on that slope above 
 the river in Kittery. Those earliest gardens were 
 very pathetic in the contrast of their extent and their 
 power of suggestion and association. Every seed 
 that came up was thanked for its kindness, and every 
 (lower that bloomed was the child of a beloved an 
 eestry. 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 123 
 
 It would be interesting to watch the growth of the 
 gardens as life became easier and more comfortable 
 in the colonies. As the settlements grew into villages 
 and towns, and the Indians were less dreadful, and 
 the houses were better and more home-like, the busy 
 people began to find a little time now and then when 
 they could enjoy themselves soberly. Beside the 
 fruits of the earth they could have some flowers and 
 a sprig of sage and southernwood and tansy, or lav 
 ender that had come from Surrey and could be dried 
 to be put among the linen as it used to be strewn 
 through the chests and cupboards in the old country. 
 
 I like to think of the changes as they came slowly ; 
 that after a while tender plants could be kept through 
 the winter, because the houses were better built and 
 warmer, and were no longer rough shelters which 
 were only meant to serve until there could be some 
 thing better. Perhaps the parlor, or best room, and 
 a special separate garden for the flowers were two 
 luxuries of the same date, and they made a notice 
 able change in the manner of living, the best room 
 being a formal recognition of the claims of society, 
 and the front yard an appeal for the existence of 
 something that gave pleasure, beside the merely 
 useful and wholly necessary things of life. When it 
 tfas thought worth while to put a fence around the 
 
124 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 flower-garden the respectability of art itself was es 
 tablished and made secure. Whether the house was 
 a fine one, and its inclosure spacious, or whether it 
 was a small house with only a narrow bit of ground 
 in front, this yard was kept with care, and it was dif 
 ferent from the rest of the land altogether. The 
 children were not often allowed to play there, and 
 the family did not use the front door except upon oc 
 casions of more or less ceremony. I think that many 
 of the old front yards could tell stories of the lovers 
 who found it hard to part under the stars, and lin 
 gered over the gate ; and who does not remember 
 the solemn group of men who gather there at funer 
 als, and stand with their heads uncovered as the 
 mourners go out and come in, two by two. I have 
 always felt rich in the possession of an ancient York 
 tradition of an old fellow who demanded, as he lay 
 dying, that the grass in his front yard should be cut 
 at once ; it was no use to have it trodden down and 
 spoilt by the folks at the funeral. I always hoped it 
 was good hay weather ; but he must have been cer 
 tain of that when he spoke. Let us hope he did not 
 confuse this world with the next, being so close upon 
 the borders of it ! It was not man-like to think of 
 the front yard, since it was the special domain of the 
 women, the men of the family respected but \g 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 125 
 
 nored it, they had to be teased in the spring to 
 dig the flower beds, but it was the busiest time of 
 the year ; one should remember that. 
 
 I think many people are sorry, without knowing 
 why, to see the fences pulled down ; and the disap 
 pearance of plain white palings causes almost as deep 
 regret as that of the handsome ornamental fences 
 and their high posts with urns or great white balls 
 on top. A stone coping does not make up for the 
 loss of them; it always looks a good deal like a lot in 
 a cemetery, for one thing; and then in a small town 
 the grass is not smooth, and looks uneven where the 
 flower-beds were not properly smoothed down. The 
 stray cows trample about where they never went 
 before ; the bushes and little trees that were once 
 protected grow ragged and scraggly and out at el 
 bows, and a few forlorn flowers come up of them 
 selves and try hard to grow and to bloom. The un 
 gainly red tubs that are perched on little posts have 
 plants in them, but the poor posies look as if they 
 would rather be in the ground, and as if they are held 
 too near the fire of the sun. If everything must be 
 neglected and forlorn so much the more reason there 
 should be a fence, if but to hide it. Americans are 
 too fond of being stared at ; they apparently feel as 
 i it were one s duty to one s neighbor. Even if there 
 
126 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 is nothing really worth looking at about a house it is 
 still exposed to the gaze of the passers-by. Foreign 
 ers are far more sensible than we, and the out-of-door 
 home life among them is something we might well 
 try to copy ; they often have their meals served out 
 of doors, and one can enjoy an afternoon nap in a 
 hammock, or can take one s work out into the shady 
 garden with great satisfaction, unwatched ; and even 
 a little piece of ground can be made, if shut in and 
 kept for the use and pleasure of the family alone, a 
 most charming unroofed and trellised summer ante 
 room to the house. In a large, crowded town it 
 would be selfish to conceal the rare bits of garden, 
 where the sight of anything green is a godsend ; but 
 where there is the whole wide country of fields and 
 woods within easy reach I think there should be high 
 walls around our gardens, and that we lose a great 
 deal in not making them entirely separate from the 
 highway ; as much as we should lose in making the 
 walls of our parlors and dining-rooms of glass, and 
 building the house as close to the street as possible. 
 
 But to go back to the little front yards : we are 
 sorry to miss them and their tangle or orderliness of 
 roses and larkspur and honeysuckle, Canterbury 
 bells and London pride, lilacs and peonies. These 
 may all bloom better than ever in the new beds tha< 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 127 
 
 are cut in the turf; but with the side fences that 
 used to come from the corners of the house to the 
 front fence, other barriers, as I have said here over 
 and over, have been taken away, and the old-fash 
 ioned village life is becoming extinct. People do not 
 know what they lose when they make way with the 
 reserve, the separateness, the sanctity of the front 
 yard of their grandmothers. It is like writing down 
 the family secrets for any one to read ; it is like 
 having everybody call you by your first name and 
 sitting in any pew in church, and like having your 
 house in the middle of a road, to take away the fence 
 which, slight afc it may be, is a fortification round 
 your home. More things than one may come in 
 without being asked ; we Americans had better build 
 more fences than take any away from our lives. 
 There should be gates for charity to go out and ? n, 
 and kindness and sympathy, too ; but his life and his 
 house are together each man s stronghold and castle, 
 to be kept and defended. 
 
 I was much amused once at thinking that the fine 
 old solid paneled doors were being unhinged faster 
 than ever nowadays, since so many front gates have 
 disappeared, and the click of the latch can no longer 
 give notice of the approach of a guest. Now the 
 knocker sounds or the bell rings without note or 
 
128 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 warning, and the village housekeeper cannot see who 
 is coming in until they have already reached the 
 door. Once the guests could be seen on their way up 
 the walk. It must be a satisfaction to look through 
 the clear spots of the figured ground-glass in the new 
 doors, and I believe if there is a covering inside few 
 doors will be found unprovided with a peep-hole. It 
 was better to hear the gate open and shut, and if it 
 caught and dragged as front gates are very apt to do 
 you could have time always for a good look out of 
 the window at the approaching friend. 
 
 There are few of us who cannot remember a front- 
 yard garden which seemed to us a very paradise in 
 childhood. It was like a miracle when the yellow and 
 white daffies came into bloom in the spring, and there 
 was a time when tiger-lilies and the taller rose-bushes 
 were taller than we were, and we could not look over 
 their heads as we do now. There were always a good 
 many lady s-delights that grew under the bushes, and 
 came up anywhere in the chinks of the walk or the 
 door-step, and there was a little green sprig called 
 ambrosia that was a famous stray-away. Outside 
 the fence one was not unlikely to see a company oi 
 French pinks, which were forbidden standing-room 
 inside as if they were tiresome poor relations of the 
 other flowers. I always felt a sympathy for French 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 129 
 
 pinks, they have a fresh, sweet look, as if they re 
 signed themselves to their lot in life and made the 
 best of it, and remembered that they had the sun 
 shine and rain, and could see what was going on in 
 the world, if they were outlaws. 
 
 I like to remember being sent on errands, and be 
 ing asked to wait while the mistress of the house 
 picked some flowers to send back to my mother. 
 They were almost always prim, flat bouquets in those 
 days ; the larger flowers were picked first and stood 
 at the back and looked over the heads of those that 
 were shorter of stem and stature, and the givers al 
 ways sent a message that they had not stopped to 
 arrange them. I remember that I had even then a 
 great dislike to lemon verbena, and that I would have 
 waited patiently outside a gate all the afternoon if I 
 knew that some one would kindly give me a sprig of 
 lavender in the evening. And lilies did not seem to 
 me overdressed, but it was easy for me to believe that 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like a great 
 yellow marigold, or even the dear little single ones 
 that were yellow and brown, and bloomed until the 
 snow came. 
 
 I wish that I had lived for a little while in those 
 days when lilacs were a new fashion, and it was a 
 great distinction to have some growing in a front 
 
130 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 yard. It always seems as if lilacs arid poplars be 
 longed to the same generation with a certain kind of 
 New English gentlemen and ladies, who were ascetic 
 and severe in some of their fashions, while in others 
 they were more given to pleasuring and mild revelry 
 than either their ancestors or the people who have 
 lived in their houses since. Fifty years ago there 
 seems to have been a last tidal wave of Puritanism 
 which swept over the country, and drowned for a 
 time the sober feasting and dancing which before had 
 been considered no impropriety in the larger villages. 
 Whist-playing was clung to only by the most worldly 
 citizens, and, as for dancing, it was made a sin in it 
 self and a reproach, as if every step was taken will 
 fully in seven-leagued boots toward a place which is 
 to be the final destination of all the wicked. 
 
 A single poplar may have a severe and unchari 
 table look, but a row of them suggests the antique 
 arid pleasing pomp and ceremony of their early days, 
 before the sideboard cupboards were only used to 
 keep the boxes of strings and nails and the duster ; 
 and the best decanters were put on a high shelf, while 
 the plain ones were used for vinegar in the kitchen 
 closet. There is far less social visiting from house to 
 house than there used to be. People in the smaller 
 towns have more acquaintances who live at a distance 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 131 
 
 than was the case before the days of railroads, and 
 there are more guests who come trom a distance, 
 which has something to do with making tea-parties 
 and the entertainment of one s neighbors less frequent 
 than in former times. But most of the New Eng 
 land towns have changed their characters in the last 
 twenty years, since the manufactories have come in 
 and brought together large numbers either of foreign 
 ers or of a different class of people from those who 
 used to make the most of the population. A certain 
 class of families is rapidly becoming extinct. There 
 will be found in the older villages very few persons 
 left who belong to this class, which was once far 
 more important and powerful ; the oldest churches 
 are apt to be most thinly attended simply because a 
 different sort of ideas, even of heavenly things, at 
 tract the newer resident- 1 . I suppose that elderly 
 people have said, ever since the time of Shem, Ham, 
 and Japhet s wives in the ark, that society is nothing 
 to what it used to be, and we may expect to be al 
 ways told what unworthy successors we are of our 
 grandmothers. But the fact remains that a certain 
 element of American society is fast dying out, giving 
 place to the new ; and with all our glory and pride in 
 modern progress and success we cling to the old as- 
 <ociations regretfully. There is nothing to take the 
 
132 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 place of the pleasure we have in going to see our old 
 friends in the parlors which have changed little since 
 our childhood. No matter how advanced in years we 
 seem to ourselves we are children still to the gracious 
 hostess. Thank Heaven for the friends who have al 
 ways known us ! They may think us unreliable and 
 young still ; they may not understand that we have 
 become busy and more or less important people to 
 ourselves and to the world, we are pretty sure to 
 be without honor in our own country, but they will 
 never forget us, and we belong to each other and al 
 ways shall. 
 
 I have receivtd many kindnesses at my friends 
 hands, but I do not know that I have ever felt my 
 self to be a more fortunate or honored guest than I 
 used years ago, when I sometimes went to call upon 
 an elderly friend of my mother who lived in most 
 pleasant and stately fashion. I used to put on my 
 very best manner, and I have no doubt that my 
 thoughts were well ordered, and my conversation as 
 proper as I knew how to make it. I can remember 
 that I used to sit on a tall ottoman, with nothing to 
 lean against, and my feet were off soundings, I was so 
 high above the floor. We used to discuss the weather, 
 and I said that I went to school (sometimes), or that 
 it was then vacation, as the case might be, and we 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 133 
 
 tried to make ourselves agreeable to each other. 
 Presently my lady would take her keys out of hei- 
 pocket, and sometimes a maid would come to serve 
 me, or else she herself would bring me a silver tray 
 with some pound-cakes baked in hearts and rounds, 
 and a small glass of wine, and I proudly felt that I 
 was a guest, though I was such a little thing an at 
 tention was being paid me, and a thrill of satisfaction 
 used to go over me for my consequence and impor 
 tance. A handful of sugar-plums would have seemed 
 nothing beside this entertainment. I used to be care 
 ful not to crumble the cake, and I used to eat it with 
 my gloves on> and a pleasant fragrance would cling 
 for some time afterward to the ends of the short Lisle- 
 thread fingers. I have no doubt that my manners as 
 I took leave were almost as distinguished as those of 
 my hostess, though I might have been wild and shy 
 all the rest of the week. It was not many years 
 ago that I went to my old friend s funeral and saw 
 them carry her down the long, wide walk, between 
 the tall box borders which were her pride ; and all 
 the air was heavy and sweet with the perfume of the 
 early summer blossoms ; the white lilacs and the flow 
 ering currants were still in bloom, and the rows of 
 her dear Dutch tulips stood dismayed in their flaunt* 
 ing colors and watched her go away. 
 
134 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 My sketch of the already out-of-date or fast van 
 ishing village fashions perhaps should be ended here, 
 but I cannot resist a wish to add another bit of auto 
 biography of which I have been again and again re 
 minded in writing these pages. The front yard I 
 knew best belonged to my grandfather s house. My 
 grandmother was a proud and solemn woman, and 
 she hated my mischief, and rightly thought my elder 
 sister a much better child than I. I used to be afraid 
 of her when I was in the house, but I shook off even 
 her authority and forgot I was under anybody s rule 
 when I was out of doors. I was first cousin to a cat 
 erpillar if they called me to come in, and I was own 
 sister to a giddy-minded bobolink when I ran away 
 across the fields, as I used to do very often. But 
 when I was a vefy little child indeed my world was 
 bounded by the fences that were around my home ; 
 there were wide green yards and tall elm-trees to 
 shade them ; there was a long line of barns and sheds, 
 and one of these had a large room in its upper story, 
 with an old ship s foresail spread over the floor, and 
 made a capital play-room in wet weather. Here fruit 
 was spread in the fall, and there were some old chest* 
 and pieces of furniture that had been discarded ; it 
 was like the garret, only much pleasanter. The chil 
 dren in the village now cannot possibly be so happy 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 135 
 
 as I was then. I used to mount the fence next the 
 street and watch the people go iu and out of the 
 quaint-roofed village shops that stood in a row on the 
 other side, and looked as if they belonged to a Dutch 
 or old English town. They were burnt down long 
 ago, but they were charmingly picturesque ; the upper 
 stories sometimes projected over the lower, and the 
 chimneys were sometimes clustered together and built 
 of bright red bricks. 
 
 And I was too happy when I could smuggle my 
 self into the front yard, with its four lilac bushes and 
 its white fences to shut it in from the rest of the 
 world, beside other railings that went from the porch 
 down each sidB of the brick walk, which was laid in 
 a pattern, and had II. C., 1818, cut deeply into one 
 of the bricks near the door-step. The H. C. was for 
 Henry Currier, the mason, who had signed this choice 
 bit of work as if it were a picture, and he had been 
 dead so many years that I used to think of his ini 
 tials as if the corner brick were a little grave-stone 
 for him. The knocker used to be so bright that it 
 shone at you, and caught your eye bewilderingly, as 
 you came in from the street on a sunshiny day 
 There were very few flowers, for my grandmother was 
 old and feeble when I knew her, and could not take 
 care of them ; but I remember that there were blush 
 
136 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 roses, and white roses, and cinnamon roses all in a 
 tangle in one corner, and I used to pick the crumpled 
 petals of those to make myself a delicious coddle with 
 ground cinnamon and damp brown sugar. In the 
 spring T used to find the first green grass there, for 
 it was warm and sunny, and I used to pick the little 
 French pinks when they dared show their heads in 
 the cracks of the flag-stones that were laid around 
 the house. There were small shoots of lilac, too, and 
 their leaves were brown and had a faint, sweet fra 
 grance, and a little later the dandelions came into 
 bloom ; the largest ones I knew grew there, and they 
 have always been to this day my favorite flowers. 
 
 I had my trials and sorrows in this paradise, how 
 ever ; I lost a cent there one day which I never have 
 found yet ! And one morning, there suddenly ap 
 peared in one corner a beautiful, dark-blue fleur-de-lis, 
 and I joyfully broke its neck and carried it into the 
 house, but everybody had seen it, and wondered that 
 I could not have left it alone. Besides this, it befell 
 me later to sin more gravely still ; my grandmother 
 had kept some plants through the winter on a three- 
 cornered stand built like a flight of steps, and when 
 the warm spring weather came this was put out of 
 doors. She had a cherished tea-rose bush, and what 
 should I find but a bud on it; it was opened jus* 
 
FROM A MOURNFUL VILLAGER. 137 
 
 enough to give a hint of its color. I was very 
 pleased ; I snapped it off at once, for I had heard so 
 many times that it was hard to make roses bloom ; 
 and I ran in through the hall and up the stairs, where 
 I met my grandmother on the square landing. She 
 sat down in the window-seat, and I showed her 
 proudly what was crumpled in my warm little fist. 
 I can see it now ! it had no stem at all, and for 
 many days afterward I was bowed down with a sense 
 of my guilt and shame, for I was made to understand 
 it was an awful thing to have blighted and broken a 
 treasured flower like that. 
 
 It must have been the very next winter that my 
 grandmother died. * She had a long illness which I do 
 not remember much about ; but the night she died 
 might have been yesterday night, it is all so fresh and 
 clear in my mind. I did not live with her in the old 
 house then, but in a new house close by, across the 
 yard. All the family were at the great house, and I 
 could see that lights were carried hurriedly from one 
 room to another. A servant came to fetch me, but I 
 would not go with her ; my grandmother was dying, 
 whatever that might be, and she was taking leave of 
 every one she was ceremonious even then. I did 
 not dare to go with the rest ; I had an intense curi 
 osity to see what dying might be like, but I was afraid 
 
138 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 to be there with her, and I was also afraid to stay at 
 home alone. I was only five years old. It was in 
 December, and the sky seemed to grow darker and 
 darker, and I went out at last to sit on a door-step 
 and cry softly to myself, and while I was there some 
 one came to another door next the street, and rang 
 the bell loudly again and again. I suppose I was 
 afraid to answer the summons indeed, I do not 
 know that I thought of it ; all the world had been 
 still before, and the bell sounded loud and awful 
 through the empty house. It seemed as if the mes 
 senger from an unknown world had come to the wrong 
 house to call my poor grandmother away ; and that 
 loud ringing is curiously linked in my mind with the 
 knocking at the gate in " Macbeth." I never can 
 think of one without the other, though there was 
 no fierce Lady Macbeth to bid me not be lost so poorly 
 in my thoughts ; for when they all came back awed 
 and tearful, and found me waiting in the cold, alone, 
 and afraid more of this world than the next, they 
 were very good to me. But as for the funeral, it gave 
 me vast entertainment ; it was the first grand public 
 occaoion in which I had taken any share. 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 
 
 HAD started early in the afternoon for a 
 long walk ; it was just the weather for walk 
 ing, and I went across the fields with a de 
 lighted heart. The wind came straight in from the 
 sea, and the sky was bright blue ; there was a little 
 tinge of red still lingering on the maples, and my dress 
 brushed over the late golden-rods, while my old dog, 
 who seemed to have taken a new lease of youth, 
 jumped about wildly and raced after the little birds 
 that flew up out of the long brown grass the con 
 stant little chickadees, that would soon sing before 
 the coming of snow. But this day brought no thought 
 of winter ; it was one of the October days when to 
 breathe the air is like drinking wine, and every touch 
 of the wind against one s face is a caress: like a quick, 
 sweet kiss, that wind is. You have a sense of com 
 panionship ; it is a day that loves you. 
 
140 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 I went strolling along, with this dear idle day for 
 company ; it was a pleasure to be alive, and to go 
 through the dry grass, and to spring over the stone 
 walls and the shaky pasture fences. I stopped by 
 each of the stray apple-trees that came in my way, to 
 make friends with it, or to ask after its health, if it 
 were an old friend. These old apple-trees make very 
 charming bits of the world in October ; the leaves 
 cling to them later than to the other trees, and the 
 turf keeps short and green underneath ; and in this 
 grass, which was frosty in the morning, and has not 
 quite dried yet, you can find some cold little cider 
 apples, with one side knurly, and one shiny bright 
 red or yellow cheek. They are wet with dew, these 
 little apples, and a black ant runs anxiously over them 
 when you turn them round and round to see where 
 the best place is to bite. There will almost always 
 be a bird s nest in the tree, and it is most likely to 
 be a robin s nest. The prehistoric robins must have 
 been cave dwellers, for they still make their nests as 
 much like cellars as they can, though they follow the 
 new fashion and build them aloft. One always has 
 a thought of spring at the sight of a robin s nest. If 
 is so little while ago that it was spring, and we werr 
 so glad to have the birds come back, and the life o f 
 the new year was just showing itself; we were, look* 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 141 
 
 mg forward to so much growth and to the realization 
 and perfection of so many things. I think the sad 
 ness of autumn, or the pathos of it, is like that of 
 elderly people. We have seen how the flowers looked 
 when they bloomed and have eaten the fruit when it 
 was ripe ; the questions have had their answer, -the 
 days we waited for have come and gone. Every 
 thing has stopped growing. And so the children 
 have grown to be men and women, their lives have 
 been lived, the autumn has come. We have seen 
 what our lives would be like when we were older ; 
 success or disappointment, it is all over at any rate. 
 Yet it only makes one sad to think it is autumn with 
 the flowers or with one s own life, when one forgets 
 that always and always there will be the spring again. 
 I am very fond of walking between the roads. One 
 grows so familiar with the highways themselves. But 
 once leap the fence and there are a hundred roads 
 that you can take, each with its own scenery and en 
 tertainment. Every walk of this kind proves itself a 
 tour of exploration and discovery, and the fields of 
 my own town, which I think I know so well, are al 
 ways new fields. I find new ways to go, new sights 
 to see, new friends among the things that grow, and 
 new treasures and pleasures every summer ; and later, 
 when the frosts have come and the swamps have 
 frozen, I can go everywhere I like all over my world. 
 
142 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 That afternoon I found something I had never 
 seen before a little grave alone in a wide pasture 
 which had once been a field. The nearest house was 
 at least two miles away, but by hunting for it I found 
 a very old cellar, where the child s home used to be, 
 not very far off, along the slope. It must have been 
 a great many years ago that the house had stood 
 there ; and the small slate head-stone was worn away 
 by the rain and wind, so there was nothing to be 
 read, if indeed there had ever been any letters on it. 
 It had looked many a storm in the face, and many a 
 red sunset. I suppose the woods near by had grown 
 and been cut, and grown again, since it was put there. 
 There was an old sweet-brier bush growing on the 
 short little grave, and in the grass underneath I found 
 a ground-sparrow s nest. It was like a little neigh 
 borhood, and I have felt ever since as if I belonged 
 to it ; and I wondered then if one of the young 
 ground-sparrows was not always sent to take the nest 
 when the old ones were done with it, so they came 
 back in the spring year after year to live there, and 
 there were always the stone and the sweet-brier bush 
 and the birds to remember the child. It was such a 
 lonely place in that wide field under the great sky, 
 and yet it was so comfortable too ; but the sight of 
 the little gave at first touched me strangely, and I 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 143 
 
 tried to picture to myself the procession that came 
 out from the house the day of the funeral, and I 
 thought of the mother in the evening after all the 
 people had gone home, and how she missed the baby, 
 and kept seeing the new grave out here in the twilight 
 as she went about her work. I suppose the family 
 moved away, and so all the rest were buried else 
 where. 
 
 I often think of this place, and I link it in my 
 thoughts with something I saw once in the water 
 when I was out at sea : a little boat that some child 
 had lost, that had drifted down the river and out to 
 sea ; too long a voyage, for it was a sad little wreck, 
 with even its white sail of a hand-breadth half under 
 water, and its twine rigging trailing astern. It was 
 a silly little boat, and no loss, except to its owner, to 
 whom it had seemed as brave and proud a thing as 
 any ship of the line to you and me. It was a ship 
 wreck of his small hopes, I suppose, and I can see it 
 now, the toy of the great winds and waves, as it 
 floated on its way, while I sailed on mine, out of sight 
 of land. 
 
 The little grave is forgotten by everybody but me, 
 I think : the mother must have found the child again 
 in heaven a very long time ago : but in the winter 1 
 wonder if the snow has rovered it well, and 
 
144 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 next year I shall go to see the sweet-brier bush when 
 it is in bloom. God knows what use that life was, 
 the grave is such a short one, and nobody knows 
 whose little child it was ; but perhaps a thousand peo 
 ple in the world to-day are better because it brought 
 a little love into the world that was not there before. 
 I sat so long here in the sun that the dog, after 
 running after all the birds, and even chasing crickets, 
 and going through a great piece of affectation in bark 
 ing before an empty woodchuck s hole to kill time, 
 came to sit patiently in front of me, as if he wished to 
 ask when I would go on. I had never been in this part 
 of the pasture before. It was at one side of the way I 
 usually took, so presently I went on to find a favorite 
 track of mine, half a mile to the right, along the bank 
 of a brook. There had been heavy rains the week 
 before, and I found more water than usual running, 
 and the brook was apparently in a great hurry. It 
 was very quiet along the shore of it ; the frogs had 
 long ago gone into winter-quarters, and there was not 
 one to splash into the water when he saw me coming. 
 I did not see a musk-rat either, though I knew where 
 their holes were by the piles of fresh-water mussel 
 shells that they had untidily thrown out at their front 
 3oor. I thought it might be well to hunt for mussels 
 myself, and crack them in search of pearls, but it was 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 145 
 
 too serene and beautiful a day. I was not willing to 
 disturb the comfort of even a shell-fish. It was one 
 of the days when one does not think of being tired : 
 the scent of the dry everlasting flowers, and the fresh 
 ness of the wind, and the cawing of the crows, all 
 come to me as I think of it, and I remember that I 
 went a long way before I began to think of going 
 home again. I knew I could not be far from a cross 
 road, and when I climbed a low hill I saw a house 
 which I was glad to make the end of my walk for a 
 time, at any rate. It was some time since I had seen 
 the old woman who lived there, and I liked her dear 
 ly, and was sure of a welcome. I went down through 
 the pasture lane, and just then I saw my father drive 
 away up the road, just too far for me to make him 
 hear when I called. That seemed too bad at first, 
 until I remembered that he would come back again 
 over the same road after a while, and in the mean 
 time I could make my call. The house was low and 
 long and unpainted, with a great many frost-bitten 
 flowers about it. Some hollyhocks were bowed down 
 despairingly, and the morning-glory vines were more 
 miserable still. Some of the smaller plants had been 
 covered to keep them from freezing, and were brav- 
 jig out a few more days, but no shelter would avail 
 ihem much longer. And already nobody minded 
 10 
 
146 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 whether the gate was shut or not, and part of the 
 great flock of hens were marching proudly about 
 among the wilted posies, which they had stretched 
 their necks wistfully through the fence for all sum 
 mer. I heard the noise of spinning in the house, and 
 my dog scurried off after the cat as I went in the 
 door. I saw Miss Polly Marsh and her sister, Mrs. 
 Snow, stepping back and forward together spinning 
 yarn at a pair of big wheels. The wheels made such 
 a noise with their whir and creak, and my friends were 
 talking so fast as they twisted and turned the yarn, 
 that they did not hear my footstep, and I stood in the 
 doorway watching them, it was such a quaint and 
 pretty sight. They went together like a pair of horses, 
 and kept step with each other to and fro. They were 
 about the same size, and were cheerful old bodies, 
 looking a good deal alike, with their checked handker 
 chiefs over their smooth gray hair, their dark gowns 
 made short in the skirts, and their broad little feet in 
 gray stockings and low leather shoes without heels. 
 They stood straight, and though they were quick at 
 their work they moved stiffly ; they were talking 
 busily about some one. 
 
 " I could tell by the way the doctor looked that he 
 did n t think there was much of anything the matter 
 with her," said Miss Polly Marsh. " You need u 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 147 
 
 6ell me, says I, the other day, when I see him at 
 Miss Martin s. l She d be up aud about this min 
 ute if she only had a mite o resolution ; and says 
 he, Aunt Polly, you re as near right as usual ; 
 and the old lady stopped to laugh a little. " I told 
 him that wa n t saying much," said she, with an evi 
 dent consciousness of the underlying compliment and 
 the doctor s good opinion. " I never knew one of 
 that tribe that had n t a queer streak and was n t 
 shif less ; but they re tougher than ellum roots ; " 
 and she gave the wheel an emphatic turn, while Mrs. 
 Snow reached for more rolls of wool, and happened 
 to see me. 
 
 " Wherever did you come from ? " said they, in 
 great surprise. " Why, you was n t anywhere in 
 sight when I was out speaking to the doctor," said 
 Mrs. Snow. " Oh, come over horseback, I suppose. 
 Well, now, we re pleased to see ye." 
 
 " No," said I, " I walked across the fields. It was 
 too pleasant to stay in the house, and I have n t had 
 a long walk for some time before." I begged them 
 not to stop spinning, but they insisted that they 
 should not have turned the wheels a half-dozen times 
 more, even if I had not come, and they pushed them 
 oack to the wall before they came to sit down to talk 
 ivith me over their knitting for neither of them 
 
148 . COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 were ever known to be idle* Mrs. Snow was only 
 there for a visit ; she was a widow, and lived during 
 most of the year with her son ; and Aunt Polly was 
 at home but a-eldom herself, as she was a famous 
 nurse, and was often in demand all through that 
 part of the country. I had known her all my days. 
 Everybody was fond of the good soul, and she had 
 been one of the most useful women in the world. 
 One of my pleasantest memories is of a long but not 
 very painful illness one winter, when she came to 
 take care of me. There was no end either to her 
 stories or her kindness. I was delighted to find her 
 at home that afternoon, and Mrs. Snow also. 
 
 Aunt Polly brought me some of her gingerbread, 
 which she knew I liked, and a stout little pitcher of 
 milk, and we sat there together for a while, gossip 
 ing and enjoying ourselves. I told all the village 
 news that I could think of, and I was just tired 
 enough to know it, and to be contented to sit still for 
 a while in the comfortable three-cornered chair by 
 the little front window. The October sunshine lay 
 along the clean kitchen floor, and Aunt Polly darted 
 from her chair occasionally to catch stray little wisps 
 of wool which the breeze through the door blew 
 ilong from the wheels. There was a gay string oi 
 red peppers hanging over the very high mantel 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 149 
 
 shelf, and the wood-work in the room had never 
 been painted, and had grown dark brown with age 
 and smoke and scouring. The clock ticked solemnly, 
 as if it were a judge giving the laws of time, and felt 
 itself to be the only thing that did not waste it. 
 There was a bouquet of asparagus and some late 
 sprigs of larkspur and white petunias on the table 
 underneath, and a Leavitt s Almanac lay on the 
 county paper, which was itself lying on the big Bible, 
 of which Aunt Polly made a point of reading two 
 chapters every day in course. I remember her say 
 ing, despairingly, one night, half to herself, " I don 
 know but I may skip the Chronicles next time," but 
 1 have never to this day believed that she did. They 
 asked me at once to come into the best room, but I 
 liked the old kitchen best. " Who was it that you 
 were talking about as I came in ? " said I. " You 
 said you did n t believe there was much the matter 
 with her." And Aunt Polly clicked her knitting- 
 needles faster, and told me that it was Mary Susan 
 Ash, over by Little Creek. 
 
 " They re dreadful nervous, all them Ashes," said 
 Mrs. Snow. "You know young Joe Adams s wife, 
 over our way, is a sister to her, and she s forever 
 u-doctorin . Poor fellow ! he s got a drag. I m real 
 *oiTy for Joe ; but, land sakes alive ! he might a 
 
150 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 known better. They said she had an old green band 
 box with a gingham cover, that was stowed full o 
 vials, that she moved with the rest of her things 
 when she was married, besides some she car d in her 
 hands. I guess she ain t in no more hurry to go 
 than any of the rest of us. I ve lost every mite of 
 patience with her. I was over there last week one 
 day, and she d had a call from the new supply 
 you know Adams s folks is Methodists and he was 
 took in by her. She made out she d got the con 
 sumption, and she told how many complaints she 
 had, and what a sight o medicine she took, and she 
 groaned and sighed, and her voice was so weak you 
 couldn t more than just hear it. I stepped right 
 into the bedroom after he d been prayin with her, 
 and was taking leave. You d thought, by what he 
 said, she was going right off then. She was cough 
 ing dreadful hard, and I knew she had n t no more 
 cough than I had. So says I, What s the matter, 
 Adaline ? I 11 get ye a drink of water. Something 
 in your throat, I s pose. I hope you won t go and 
 get cold, and have a cough. She looked as if she 
 could a bit me, but 1 was just as pleasant s could 
 be. Land ! to see her laying there, I suppose the 
 poor young fellow thought she was all gone. H 
 meant well. I wish he had seen her eating apple- 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 151 
 
 dumplings for dinner. She felt better long in the 
 first o the afternoon before he come. I says to her, 
 right before him, that I guessed them dumplings did 
 her good, but she never made no answer. She will 
 have these dyin spells. I don t know s she can help 
 it, but she need n t act as if it was a credit to any 
 body to be sick and laid up. Poor Joe, he come 
 over for me last week another day, and said she d 
 been havin spasms, and asked me if there wa n t 
 something I could think of. Yes, says I ; l you 
 just take a pail o stone-cold water, and throw it 
 square into her face ; that 11 bring her out of it ; 
 and he looked at me a minute, and then he burst out 
 a-laughing he could n t help it. He s too good 
 to her ; that s the trouble." 
 
 "You never said that to her about the dump 
 lings ? " said Aunt Polly, admiringly. " Well, / 
 should n t ha dared ; " and she rockec? and knitted 
 away faster than ever, while we all laughed. "Now 
 with Mary Susan it s different. I suppose she does 
 have the neurology, and she s a poor broken-down 
 creature. I do feel for her more than I do for Ada- 
 line. She was always a willing girl, and she worked 
 herself to death, and she can t help these notions, nor 
 being an Ash neither." 
 
 " I m the last one to be hard on anybody that s 
 tick, and in trouble," said Mrs. Snow. 
 
152 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 " Bless you, she set up with Ad line herself three 
 nights in one week, to my knowledge. It s more n 
 I would do," said Aunt Polly, as if there were dan 
 ger that I should think Mrs. Snow s kind heart to be 
 made of flint. 
 
 " It ain t what I call watching," said she, apolo 
 getically. " We both doze off, and then when the 
 folks come in in the morning she 11 tell what a suf- 
 ferin night she s had. She likes to have it said she 
 has to have watchers." 
 
 " It s strange what a queer streak there is run 
 ning through the whole of em," said Aunt Polly, 
 presently. " It always was so, far back s you can 
 follow em. Did you ever hear about that great- 
 uncle of theirs that lived over to the other side o 
 Denby, over to what they call the Denby Meadows ? 
 We had a cousin o my father s that kept house for 
 him (he was a single man), and I spent most of a 
 summer and fall with her once when I was growing 
 up. She seemed to want company : it was a lone 
 some sort of a place." 
 
 " There ! I don t know when I have thought o 
 that," said Mrs. Snow, looking much amused. "What 
 stories you did use to tell, after you come home, 
 about the way he used to act ! Dear sakes ! she used 
 to keep us laughing till we was tired. Do tell her 
 about him, Polly ; she 11 like to hear." 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 153 
 
 Well, I ve forgot a good deal about it : you see 
 it was much as fifty years ago. I was n t more than 
 seventeen or eighteen years old. He was a very re 
 spectable man, old Mr. Dan el Gunn was, and a cap n 
 in the militia in his day. Cap n Gunn, they always 
 called him. He was well off, but he got sun-struck, 
 and never was just right in his mind afterward. 
 When he was getting over his sickness after the 
 stroke he was very wandering, and at last he seemed 
 to get it into his head that he was his own sister Pa 
 tience that died some five or six years before : she 
 was single too, and she always lived with him. They 
 said when he got sa s to sit up in his arm-chair of an 
 afternoon, when he was getting better, he fought em 
 dreadfully because they fetched him his own clothes 
 to put on ; he said they was brother Dan el s clothes. 
 So, sure enough, they got out an old double gown. 
 and let him put it on, and he was as peaceable as 
 could be. The doctor told em to humor him, but 
 they thought it was a fancy he took, and he would 
 forget it ; but the next day he made em get the 
 double gown again, and a cap too, and there he used 
 to set up alongside of his bed as prim as a dish. When 
 \ie got round again so he could set up all day, they 
 thought he wanted the dress ; but no ; he seemed to 
 be himself, and had on his own clothes just as usual 
 
154 COUNTRY B Y- WAYS. 
 
 in the morning ; but when he took his nap after din 
 ner and waked up again, he was in a dreadful frame 
 o mind, and had the trousers and coat off in no time, 
 and said he was Patience. He used to fuss with 
 some knitting-work he got hold of somehow ; he was 
 good-natured as could be, and sometimes he would 
 make em fetch him the cat, because Patience used 
 to have a cat that set in her lap while she knit. I 
 was n t there then, you know, but they used to tell 
 me about it. Folks used to call him Miss Dan el 
 Gunn. 
 
 " He d been that way some time when I went 
 over. I d heard about his notions, and I was scared 
 of him at first, but I found out there was n t no need. 
 Don t you know I was sort o fraid to go, Lizabeth, 
 when Cousin Statiry sent for me after she went home 
 from that visit she made here ? She d told us about 
 him, but sometimes, long at the first of it, he used to 
 be cross. He never was after I went there. He 
 was a clever, kind-hearted man, if ever there was 
 one," said Aunt Polly, with decision. " He used to 
 go down to the corner to the store sometimes in the 
 morning, and he would see to business. And before 
 he got feeble sometimes he would work out on the 
 farm all the morning, stiddy as any of the men ; but 
 rfter he come in to dinner he would take off his coat; 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 155 
 
 if he had it on, and fall asleep in his arm-chair, or on 
 a 1 unge there was in his bedroom, and when he 
 waked up he would be sort of bewildered for a while, 
 and then he d step round quick s he could, and get 
 his dress out o the clothes-press, and the cap, and put 
 ein on right over the rest of his clothes. He was 
 always small-featured and smooth-shaved, and I don 
 know as, to come in sudden, you would have thought 
 he was a man, except his hair stood up short and 
 straight all on the top of his head, as men-folks had 
 a fashion o combing their hair then, and I must say 
 he did make a dreadful ordinary-looking woman. 
 The neighbors got used to his ways, and, land ! I 
 never thought nothing of it after the first week or 
 two. 
 
 " His sister s clothes that he wore first was too 
 small for him, and so my cousin Statiry, that kep 
 his house, she made him a linsey-woolsey dress with 
 a considerable short skirt, and he was dreadful 
 pleased with it, she said, because the other one never 
 would button over good, and showed his wais coat, 
 and she and I used to make him caps ; he used to 
 wear the kind all the old women did then, with a big 
 crown, and close round the face. I ve got some laid 
 away up-stairs now that was mj* mother s she wore 
 caps very young, mother did. His nephew that lived 
 
156 COUNTRY BY-WATS, 
 
 with him carried on the farm, and managed the busi 
 ness, but he always treated the cap n as if he was 
 head of everything there. Everybody pitied the 
 cap n; folks respected him ; but you cculdn t help 
 laughing, to save ye. We used to try to keep him 
 in, afternoons, but we could n t always." 
 
 "Tell her about that day he went to meeting," 
 said Mrs. Snow. 
 
 " Why, one of us always used to stay to home 
 with him ; we took turns ; and somehow or nother 
 he never offered to go, though by spells he would be 
 constant to meeting in the morning. Why, bless 
 you, you never d think anything ailed him a good 
 deal of the time, if you saw him before noon, though 
 sometimes he would be freaky, and hide himself in 
 the barn, or go over in the woods, but we always 
 kept an eye on him. But this Sunday there was 
 going to be a great occasion. Old Parson Croden 
 was going to preach ; he was thought more of than 
 anybody in this region : you ve heard tell of him a 
 good many times, I s pose. He was getting to be 
 old, and didn t preach much. He had a colleague, 
 they set so much by him in his parish, and I did n t 
 know s I d ever get another chance to hear him, so 
 I did n t want to stay to home, and neither did Cousin 
 Statiry ; and Jacob Gunn, old Mr. Gunn s nephew, he 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 157 
 
 said it might be the last time ever he d hear Par 
 son Croden, and he set in the seats anyway ; so 
 we talked it all over, and we got a young boy to 
 come and set long of the cap n till we got back. 
 He hadn t offered to go anywhere of an afternoon 
 for a long time. I s pose he thought women ought 
 to be stayers at home according to Scripture. 
 
 " Parson Ridley his wife was a niece to old Dr. 
 Croden and the old doctor they was up in the 
 pulpit, and the choir was singing the first hymn it 
 was a fuguing tune, and they was doing their best : 
 seems to me it was * Canterbury New. Yes, it was ; 
 I remember I thought how splendid it sounded, and 
 Jacob Gunn he was a-leading off ; and I happened to 
 look down the aisle, and who should I see but the 
 poor old cap n in his cap and gown parading right 
 into meeting before all the folks ! There ! I wanted 
 to go through the floor. Everybody most had seen 
 him at home, but, my goodness ! to have him come 
 into meeting ! " 
 
 What did you do ? " said I. 
 
 " Why, nothing," said Miss Polly ; " there was 
 nothing to do. I thought I should faint away ; but 
 I called Cousin Statiry s tention, and she looked 
 dreadful put to it for a minute ; and then says she, 
 f Open the door for him ; I guess he won t make no 
 
158 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 trouble/ and, poor soul, he did n t. But to see him 
 come up the aisle ! He d fixed himself nice as he 
 could, poor creatur ; he d raked out Miss Patience s 
 old Navarino bonnet with green ribbons and a wil 
 low feather, and set it on right over his cap, and he 
 had her bead bag on his arm, and her turkey-tail fan 
 that he d got out of the best room ; and he come 
 with little short steps up to the pew : and I s posed 
 he d set by the door ; but no, he made to go by us, up 
 into the corner where she used to set, and took her 
 place, and spread his dress out nice, and got his hand 
 kerchief out o his bag, just s he d seen her do. He 
 took off his bonnet all of a sudden, as if he d forgot 
 it, and put it under the seat, like he did his hat 
 that was the only thing he did that any woman 
 would n t have done and the crown of his cap was 
 bent some. I thought die I should. The pew was 
 one of them up aside the pulpit, a square one, you 
 know, right at the end of the right-hand aisle, so I 
 could see the length of it and out of the door, and 
 there stood that poor boy we d left to keep the cap n 
 company, looking as pale as ashes. We found he d 
 tried every way to keep the old gentleman at home, 
 but he said he got i erce as could be, so he did n t 
 dare to say no more, and Cap n Gunn drove him 
 back twice to the house, and that s why he got in so 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 159 
 
 late. I did n t know but it was the boy that had set 
 him on to go to meeting when I see him walk in, 
 and I could a wrung his neck ; but I guess I mis 
 judged him ; he was called a stiddy boy. He mar 
 ried a daughter of Ichabod Piukham s over to Oak 
 Plains, and I saw a son of his when I was taking 
 care of Miss West last spring through that lung 
 fever looked like his father. I wish I d thought 
 to tell him about that Sunday. I heard he was wait 
 ing on that pretty Becket girl, the orphan one that 
 lives with Nathan Becket. Her father and mother 
 was both lost at sea, but she s got property." 
 
 " What did they say in church when the captain 
 came in, Aunt Polly ? " said I. 
 
 " Well, a good many of them laughed they 
 could n t help it, to save them ; but the cap n he 
 was some hard o hearin , so he never noticed it, and 
 he set there in the corner and fanned him, as pleased 
 and satisfied as could be. The singers they had the 
 worst time, but they had just come to the end of a 
 verse, and they played on the instruments a good 
 while in between, but I could see em shake, and I 
 s pose the tune did stray a little, though they went 
 through it well. And after the first fun of it was 
 over, most of the folks felt bad. You see, the cap n 
 had been very much looked up to, and it was his mis- 
 
160 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 fortune, and he set there quiet, listening to the preach 
 ing. I see some tears in some o the old folks eyes : 
 they hated to see him so broke in his mind, you 
 know. There was more than usual of em out that 
 day ; they knew how bad he d feel if he realized it. 
 A good Christian man he was, acd dreadful precise, 
 I ve heard em say." 
 
 " Did he ever go again ? " said I. 
 
 " I seem to forget," said Aunt Polly. " I dare 
 say. I was n t there but from the last of June into 
 November, and when I went over again it was n t 
 for three years, and the cap n had been dead some 
 time. His mind failed him more and more along 
 at the last. But I 11 tell you what he did do, and 
 it was the week after that very Sunday, too. He 
 heard it given out from the pulpit that the Female 
 Missionary Society would meet with Mis William 
 Sands the Thursday night o that week the sewing 
 society, you know ; and he looked round to us real 
 knowing ; and Cousin Statiry, says she to me, under 
 her bonnet, You don t s pose he 11 want to go ? 
 and I like to have laughed right out. But sure 
 enough he did, and what do you suppose but he made 
 us fix over a handsome black watered silk for him 
 to wear, that had been his sister s best dress. He 
 said he d outgrown it dreadful quick. Cousin Statiry 
 
AN AUTUMN HOLIDAY. 161 
 
 she wished to heaven she d thought to put it away, 
 for Jacob had given it to her, and she was meaning 
 to make it over for herself ; but it did n t do to cross 
 the cap n and Jacob Gunn gave Statiry another 
 one the best he could get, but it was n t near so 
 good a piece, she thought. He set everything by 
 Statiry, and so did the cap n, and well they might. 
 
 " We hoped he d forget all about it the next day ; 
 but he did n t ; and I always thought well of those 
 ladies, they treated him so handsome, and tried to 
 make him enjoy himself. He did eat a great sup 
 per ; they kep a-piling up his plate with every 
 thing. I could i> t help wondering if some of em 
 would have put themselves out much if it had been 
 some poor flighty old woman. The cap n he was 
 as polite as could "be, and when Jacob come to walk 
 home with him he kissed em all round and asked 
 em to meet at his house. But the greatest was 
 land ! I don t know when I ve thought so much 
 about those times one afternoon he was setting 
 at home in the keeping-room, and Statiry was there, 
 and Deacon Abel Pinkbam stopped in to see Jacob 
 Gunn about building some fence, and he found he d 
 (yone to mill, so he waited a while, talking friendly, as 
 they expected Jacob might be home ; and the cap n 
 was as pleased as could be, and he urged the deacon 
 11 
 
162 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 to stop to tea. And when he went a way. says he tc 
 Statiry, in a dreadful knowing way, Which of us 
 do you consider the deacon come to see ? You 
 see, the deacon was a widower. Bless you ! when 
 I first come home I used to set everybody laughing, 
 but I forget most of the things now. There was one 
 day, though " 
 
 " Here comes your father," said Mrs. Snow. 
 " Now we must n t let him go by or you 11 have to 
 walk way home." And Aunt Polly hurried out to 
 speak to him, while I took my great bunch of golden- 
 rod, which already drooped a little, and followed her, 
 with Mrs. Snow, who confided to me that the cap 
 tain s nephew Jacob had offered to Polly that sum 
 mer she was over there, and she never could see why 
 she did n t have him : only love goes where it is sent, 
 and Polly was n t one to marry for what she could 
 get if she did n t like the man. There was plenty 
 that would have said yes, and thank you too, sir, to 
 Jacob Gunn. 
 
 That was a pleasant afternoon. I reached home 
 when it was growing dark and chilly, and the early 
 autumn sunset had almost faded in the west. It was 
 a much longer way home around by the road than 
 by the way I had come across the fields. 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 
 
 ]T is very hard to find one s way in winter over 
 a road where one has only driven once in 
 summer. The landmarks change their ap 
 pearance so mucn when the leaves are gone that, un 
 less the road is straight and certain, and you have a 
 good sense of locality, you will be puzzled over and 
 over again. In summer a few small trees and a 
 thicket of bushes at the side of the road will look like 
 a bit of forest, but in winter you look through them 
 and over them, and they disappear almost altogether, 
 they are such thin gray twigs, and take up so much 
 less room in the world, though you may notice a well- 
 thatched bird s-nest or some red berries, or a few flut 
 tering leaves which the wind has failed to blow away. 
 There is a bare, thin, comfortless aspect of nature 
 which is chilling to look at either before the snow 
 comes or afterward ; you long for the poor earth to be 
 
164 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 able to warm herself again by the fire of the summer 
 sun. The white birches bark looks out of season, as 
 if they were still wearing their summer clothes, and 
 the wretched larches which stand on the edges of the 
 swamps look as if they had been intended for ever 
 greens, but had been somehow unlucky, and were in 
 destitute circumstances. It seems as if the pines and 
 hemlocks ought to show Christian charity to these 
 sad and freezing relations. 
 
 The world looks as if it were at the mercy of the 
 wind and cold in winter, and it would be useless to 
 dream that such a time as spring would follow these 
 apparently hopeless days if we had not history and 
 experience to reassure us. What a sorrowful doom 
 the first winter must have seemed to Adam if he ever 
 took a journey to the northward after he was sent 
 from Paradise ! It must have been to him a most 
 solemn death and ending of all vegetable life, yet he 
 might have taken a grim satisfaction in the thought 
 that no more apples could ever get ripe to tempt him 
 or anybody else, and that the mischief-making fruits 
 of the earth were cursed as well as he. 
 
 In winter there is, to my mind, a greater beauty 
 in a leafless tree than in the same tree covered with 
 its weight and glory of summer leaves. Then it is 
 one great mass of light and shadow against the land 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 165 
 
 scape or the sky, but in winter the tracery of the 
 bare branches against a white cloud or a clear yellow 
 sunset is a most exquisite thing to see. It is the dif 
 ference between a fine statue and a well painted pict 
 ure, and seems a higher art, like that, but it is 
 always a puzzle to me why a dead tree in summer 
 should be a painful thing to look at. One instantly 
 tells the difference between a dead twig and a live 
 one close at hand. Such a leafless tree cannot give 
 the pleasure that it did in winter. Yet it looked al 
 most the same in cold weather when it was alive ; is 
 it our unreasoning horror of death, or is it that a bit 
 of winter in the midst of summer is like a skeleton 
 at the feast ? 
 
 A drive in a town in winter should be taken for 
 three reasons : for the convenience of getting from 
 place to place, for the pleasure of motion in the 
 fresh air, or for the satisfaction of driving a horse, 
 but for the real delight of the thing it is necessary to 
 go far out from even the villages across the country. 
 You can see the mountains like great stacks of clear 
 ice all along the horizon, and the smaller hills cov 
 ered with trees and snow together, nearer at hand, 
 and the great expanse of snow lies north arid south, 
 j-d&t and west all across the fields. In my own part 
 of the country, which is heavily wooded, the pine for- 
 
166 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 ests give the world a black and white look that is 
 very dismal when the sun is not shining ; the farm 
 ers houses look lonely, and it seems as if they had 
 crept nearer together since the leaves fell, and they 
 are no longer hidden from each other. The hills 
 look larger, and you can see deeper into the woods 
 as you drive along. Nature brings out so many 
 treasures for us to look at in summer, and adorns 
 the world with such lavishness, that after the frost 
 comes it is like an empty house, in which one misses 
 all the pictures and drapery and the familiar voices. 
 
 This was a drive that I liked. It was a sunshiny 
 midwinter day, with a wind that one was glad to fall 
 in with and not try to fight against, and the great 
 white horse ran before it like a boat, the crooked 
 country roads had been just enough smoothed and 
 trodden by the wood teams to make good sleighing. 
 I met now and then a farmer on his way to market 
 with a load of fire-wood piled high and square on his 
 sled, and the oxen were frosted, and pushed at the 
 yoke and bumped together awkwardly, as if they 
 eould not walk evenly with their crooked knees. 
 There was a bundle of corn-stalks on top the load, 
 and usually the driver s blue mittens were on the 
 sled stakes, with the thumbs out at right angles, as if 
 some spirit of the woodlands were using them tc 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 167 
 
 show the protesting hands he lifted at the irreverence 
 of men. It was many years before I ever felt very 
 sorry when woods were cut down. There were some 
 acute griefs at the loss of a few familiar trees, but 
 now I have a heart-ache at the sight of a fresh clear 
 ing, and I follow as sadly along the road behind a 
 great pine log as if I were its next of kin and chief 
 mourner at its funeral. There is a great difference 
 between being a live tree that holds its head so high 
 in the air that it can watch the country for miles 
 around, that has sheltered a thousand birds and 
 families of squirrels and little wild creatures, that 
 has beaten all flie storms it ever fought with ; such 
 a difference between all this and being a pile of 
 boards ! 
 
 I believe that there are few persons who cannot re 
 member some trees which are as much connected with 
 their own lives as people are. When they stand be 
 side them there is at once a feeling of very great af 
 fection. It seems as if the tree remembered what we 
 remember ; it is something more than the fact of its 
 having been associated with our past. Almost every 
 body is very fond of at least one tree. Morris s appeal 
 to the woodman struck a responsive chord in many 
 an otherwise unsentimental heart, but happy is the 
 man who has a larfi-e acquaintance, and who makes 
 
168 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 friends with a new tree now and then as he goes on 
 through the world. There was an old doctrine called 
 Hylozoism, which appeals to my far from Pagan 
 sympathies, the theory of the soul of the world, of a 
 life residing in nature, and that all matter lives ; the 
 doctrine that life and matter are inseparable. Trees 
 are to most people as inanimate and unconscious as 
 rocks, but it seems to me that there is a good deal to 
 say about the strongly marked individual characters, 
 not only of the conspicuous trees that have been civ 
 ilized and are identified with a home, or a familiar 
 bit of landscape or an event in history, but of those 
 that are crowded together in forests. There is a 
 strange likeness to the characteristics of human beings 
 among these, there is the same proportion of igno 
 rant rabble of poor creatures who are struggling for 
 life in more ways than one, and of self-respecting, 
 well-to-do, dignified citizens. It is not wholly a ques 
 tion of soil and of location any more than it is with 
 as. Some trees have a natural vitality and bravery 
 which makes them push their roots into the ground 
 and their branches toward the sky, and although they 
 started to grow on a rock or on the sand, where we 
 should be sure that a tree would have a hard struggle 
 to keep alive, and would be stunted and dwarfed at 
 any rate, yet they grow tall and strong, and in their 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 169 
 
 wealth of usefulness they are like some of the world s 
 great men who rose from poverty to kingliness. 
 How easy it is to carry out the likeness. The great 
 tree is a protection to a thousand lesser interests, a 
 central force which keeps in motion and urges on a 
 thousand activities. 
 
 It is common to praise a man more who has risen 
 from obscurity to greatness than one who had money 
 and friends at the start, but there is after all little 
 difference in the amount of personal exertion that 
 must be brought to bear. If a man or a tree has it 
 in him to grow, who can say what will hinder him. 
 Many a tree looks starved and thin, and is good for 
 nothing, that was planted in good soil, and the grand 
 est pines may have struggled among the rocks until 
 they find soil enough to feed them, and when they 
 are fully grown the ledges that were in the way of 
 their roots only serve to hold them fast and strengthen 
 them against any chance of overthrow. There is 
 something in the constitution of character ; it is vigor 
 ous and will conquer, or it is weak and anything will 
 defeat it. I believe that it is more than a likeness be 
 tween the physical natures, there is something deeper 
 than that. We are hardly willing yet to say that the 
 higher animals are morally responsible, but it is im 
 possible for one who has been a great deal among 
 
170 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 trees to resist the instinctive certainty that they have 
 thought and purpose, that they deliberately anticipate 
 the future, or that they show traits of character which 
 one is forced to call good and evil. How low down 
 in the scale of existence we may find the first glimmer 
 of self-consciousness nobody can tell, but it is as easy 
 to be certain of it in the higher orders of vegetable life 
 as in the lower orders of animals. Man was the latest 
 comer into this world, and he is just beginning to get 
 acquainted with his neighbors, that is the truth of 
 it. It is curious to read the old stories of the hama 
 dryads and see the ways in which the life of trees has 
 been dimly recognized. They mean more than has 
 been supposed, but the trees own individuality was 
 ignored, and an imaginary race of creatures invented, 
 and supposed to live in them these spirits of th& 
 trees accounted for things that could not otherwise be 
 explained, but they were too much like people, the 
 true nature and life of a tree could never be exactly 
 personified. 
 
 Most trees like most people are collected into great 
 neighborhoods, and one only knows them in com 
 panies, as one looks at a strange town when on a 
 journey and thinks of it only as a town without re 
 membering that it is made up of old and young lives, 
 each with its own interests and influence. Perhaps 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 171 
 
 as you go by, you notice a few faces in the street or 
 at the railway station, and so, when a country road 
 is at the edge of some woods you notice the woods, 
 and perhaps say to yourself that there is a fine wal 
 nut-tree or an oak, but there are no two trees that 
 look alike or are alike, any more than there are two 
 persons exactly similar in shape or nature. It is a 
 curious thing to see the difference of race so strongly 
 marked an oak among white pines is like an Eng 
 lishman among the Japanese, and wholly a foreigner 
 in such society. There is a nobility among trees as 
 well as among men, not fancied by poets but real and 
 unaffected. One likes to see such a grand family of 
 oaks as that at Waverley, and is delighted at the 
 thought of their long companionship ; and what is 
 more imposing than a row of elms standing shoulder to 
 shoulder before a fine old house ? They have watched 
 the people come out for the first time, and for the 
 last time, they have known the family they have shel 
 tered. There seems to be often a curious linking 
 of the two lives, which makes a tree fade and die 
 when the man or woman dies with whom it has been 
 associated; such stones are common in every village, 
 there is a superstition that the withering of a tree 
 near a house is the sign of impending disaster 
 many persons believe that there is something more 
 
172 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 than coincidence and chance about it, and it may be 
 at least that these signs, and others that come true, 
 will be proved some day to be veritable warnings, 
 to break the force of a blow that otherwise would be 
 too sudden and severe. 
 
 Five or six miles from the village I left the road 
 that leads down to the sea and turned off toward the 
 hill called Agamenticus. From some high land which 
 has to be crossed first there is a fine view of the 
 northern country with the procession of mountains, of 
 which Mt. Washington is captain, ranged in marching 
 order on the horizon. Saddleback and its comrades 
 in Deerfield and Strafford brought up the rear, and 
 they were all pale blue in the afternoon light. The 
 nearer hills looked wind-swept and forlorn and the 
 lowlands desolate, and the world was like a great 
 garden that was spoiled and blackened by frost. The 
 snow glistened and the wind blew it off the edges of 
 the great drifts as if it were the spray of those frozen 
 waves. The smoke was coming out of the kitchen 
 chimneys of the farm-houses, and I saw faces quickly 
 appear at the windows as I went by. All the women 
 hurry when they hear sleigh-bells or the sound of a 
 passer-by in those lonely neighborhoods, and it is dif 
 ficult to tell whether you give most pleasure by being 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 173 
 
 K Iriend \\ ho will tell the news or do an errand along 
 tLe road, or by being a stranger who drives an un 
 known horse. Then you are made the subject of 
 reflection and inquiry, and for perhaps a day or two 
 you are like an exciting chapter that ends abruptly in 
 ft serial novel. 
 
 Once over the hills there came in sight a long 
 narrow pond which lies at the foot of Agamenticus ; 
 and as I passed the saw-mill at the lower end by the 
 bridge I saw a well-worn sled track on the ice, and I 
 had too strong a temptation to follow it to be resisted. 
 The pond seemed like a river, the distance was not 
 great across from* shore to shore, and the banks were 
 high and irregular and covered in most places with 
 pines. I had heard that there was a good deal of 
 logging going on in the region, and it was the best 
 possible chance to get into a swampy tract of country 
 which is inaccessible in summer, and which I have 
 always wished to explore. For perhaps three quar 
 ters of a mile I went up the pond, often between the 
 rows of logs which were lying on the ice waiting for 
 the time when they would melt their way into the 
 water and float down to be sawed. I found a cross 
 track which led in the direction I wished to take, and 
 once in the woods there was no wind, and the air was 
 till and clear and sweet with the cold and resinous 
 
174 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 odor of the trees. The wood-road was not very 
 smooth and the horse chose his own way slowly while I 
 looked around to see what could be seen. The woods 
 were almost still, only the blue jays cried once or 
 twice, and sometimes a lump of snow would fall from 
 the bough of a tall pine down through the branches 
 of the lower trees. There were a great many rabbit 
 tracks, those odd clover-leaf marks, deep in the light 
 snow which had fallen the night before, and there 
 were partridge tracks around some bushes to which a 
 few dried berries were still clinging, but the creatures 
 themselves were nowhere to be seen. It must be a 
 dreadful thing to be lost in the woods in winter ! 
 The cold itself soon puts an end to one, luckily ; but 
 to be hungry in such a place, and cold too, is most 
 miserable. It makes one shudder, the thought of a 
 lost man hurrying through the forest at night-fall, the 
 shadows startling him and chasing him, the trees 
 standing in his way and looking always the same as 
 if he were walking in a treadmill, the hemlocks hold 
 ing out handfuls of snow at the end of their branches 
 as if they offered it mockingly for food. 
 
 The people who live in the region of the Agamen- 
 t /cus woods have a good deal of superstition about 
 them ; they say it is easy to get lost there, but they 
 are very vague in what they say of the dangers 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. lib 
 
 that are to be feared. It may be like an unreasoning 
 fear of the dark, but sometimes there is a suggestion 
 that the bears may not all be dead, and almost every 
 year there is a story told of a wild-cat that has been 
 seen, of uncommon size ; and as for a supernatural 
 population, I think that passes for an unquestioned 
 fact. I have often heard people say that there are 
 parts of the woods where they would not dare to go 
 alone, and where nobody has ever been, but I could 
 never succeed in locating them. The swamps at the 
 foot of the mountain are traversed in winter pretty 
 thoroughly and the first and second, and sometimes 
 even the third, growth of pines have been cut off from 
 all that district, so the land has all been walked over 
 at one time and another since there are few trees 
 of the older generation left in all that part of the 
 town. T dare say there is a little fear of the hill 
 itself ; perhaps a relic of the old belief that the gods 
 had their abodes in mountains. So high a hill as 
 Agamenticus could not fail to be respected in this 
 (for the most part) low-lying country, and in spite of 
 its barely seven hundred feet of height it is as prom 
 inent a landmark for fifteen or twenty miles inland 
 as it is for sailors who are coming toward the coast, 
 or for the fishermen who go in and out daily from 
 the neighboring shores. I have often been asked 
 
176 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 about the legend of an uncertain St. Aspenquid, 
 whose funeral ceremonies on this mountain are repre 
 sented as having been most imposing, but I never 
 could trace this legend beyond a story in one of the 
 county newspapers, and I have never heard any tra 
 dition among the people that bears the least likeness 
 to it. 
 
 I caught now and then a glimpse of the top of Aga- 
 menticus as I drove through the woods that bright 
 winter day, and I wished it were possible for any 
 one, not a practiced mountain climber, to scramble up 
 through the drifts and over the icy ledges. I should 
 like to see the winter landscape, the wide-spread coun 
 try, the New Hampshire mountains, and the sea ; for 
 one can follow the coast line from Gloucester on Cape 
 Ann to Portland with one s unaided eyesight ; so well 
 planted is this hill which might be called the watch- 
 tower on the western gates of Maine. 
 
 In the woods there was the usual number of stray- 
 away trees to be seen, and they appealed to my sym 
 pathy as much as ever. It is not pleasant to see an 
 elm warped and twisted with its efforts to get to the 
 light, and to hold its head above the white pines that 
 are growing in a herd around it and seem to grudge 
 it its rights and its living. If you cannot be just like 
 as, they seem to say, more s the pity for you ! Yon 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 177 
 
 should grow as we do and be like us. If your nature 
 is not the same as ours you ought to make it so. 
 These trees make one think of people who have had 
 to grow in loneliness ; who have been hindered and 
 crowded and mistaken and suspected by their neigh 
 bors, and have suffered terribly for the sin of being 
 themselves and following their own natures. Yet I 
 have often seen trees who seem to be hermits and 
 recluses of their own accord not forced absentees 
 from their families. Apple-trees, in spite of their 
 association with the conventional life of orchards and 
 the neighborhood of buildings, do not seem unhappy 
 at the sunshiny edge of a piece of woods, especially 
 if they are near a road. Perhaps they like living 
 alone, as many people do they are glad to be freed 
 from the restraints of society, and are very well off 
 where they are ; though a lonely domesticated tree 
 would seem, naturally, to be most forlorn, an elm 
 among pines or an oak among hemlocks seems to 
 draw attention to its sufferings far more eagerly. An 
 apple-tree seems willing to make itself at home any 
 where, but it is sure to get amusingly untidy and law 
 less, as if it needed to be preached to as well as 
 pruned. There are many trees, however, that always 
 gravitate into each other s society and live in peace 
 fcnd harmony with each other weU ordered neigh- 
 12 
 
178 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 borhoods where there is a good chance for everybody 
 to get his living. 
 
 I have remembered a great many times an old li 
 lac tree that I once saw in bloom by a deserted 
 farm-house. It was in so secluded a place on a dis 
 used road that it could not be sure it was not the 
 last of its race. The earth was washed away from 
 its roots, and it was growing discouraged; it was like 
 a sick man s face at a window. I do not believe that 
 it will bloom many more springs. But there is an 
 other solitary tree which is a great delight to me, and 
 I go to pay it an afternoon visit every now and then, 
 far away from the road across some fields and past 
 ures. It is an ancient pitch-pine, and it grows be 
 side a spring, and has acres of room to lord it over. 
 It thinks everything of itself, and although it is an 
 untidy housekeeper, and flings its dry twigs and sticky 
 cones all around the short grass underneath, I have 
 a great affection for it. I like pitch-pines better 
 than any trees in the world at any rate, and this is 
 the dearest of its race. I sit down in the shade of 
 it and the brook makes a good deal of noise as if 
 starts out from the spring under the bank, and there 
 always is a wind blowing overhead among the stiff 
 green branches. The old tree is very wise, it sees 
 that much of the world s business is great foolishness. 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 179 
 
 and yet when I have been a fool myself and wander 
 away out of doors to think it over, I always find a 
 more cheerful atmosphere, and a more sensible aspect 
 to my folly, under the shadow of this friend of mine. 
 I think it is likely to live until the new houses of 
 the town creep over to it, past Butler s Hill, and the 
 march of improvement reaches it and dooms it to be 
 cut down because somebody thinks it would not look 
 well in his yard, or because a street would have to 
 deviate two or three feet from a straight line. How 
 ever, there is no need to grow angry yet, and the tree 
 is not likely to die a natural death for at least a hun 
 dred years to come, unless the lightning strikes it, 
 that fierce enemy of the great elms and pines that 
 stand in high places. 
 
 There is something very sad about a dying tree. 
 I think in the progress of civilization there will, by 
 and by, arise a need for the profession of tree doc 
 tors, who will be quick at a diagnosis in cases of yel 
 low branches and apt surgeons at setting broken 
 limbs, and particularly successful in making the de 
 clining years of old trees as comfortable as possible. 
 These physicians will not only wage war against the 
 apple-tree borers and the plums black knots, but a 
 farmer will be taught to go through his woods now 
 and then to see that nothing is the matter, just as he 
 
180 COUNTRY BY- WAY 8. 
 
 inspects his cattle, and he will call the doctor for the 
 elms that have not leaved out as they ought, and the 
 oaks that are dying at the top, and the maples that 
 warp and split their bark, and the orchard trees that 
 fail to ripen any fruit. He will be told to drain this 
 bit of ground and turn the channel of a brook through 
 another, time fails me to tell the resources of a pro 
 fession yet in its infancy ! It is a very short-sighted 
 person who looks at the wholesale slaughter of the 
 American forests without dismay, especially in the 
 Eastern States. The fast drying springs and brooks 
 in the farming districts of certain parts of New Eng 
 land show that mischief has already been done, and 
 the clearing of woodlands is going to be regulated by 
 law, I believe, at some not far distant period. There 
 ought to be tree laws as well as game laws. 
 
 I thought of this as I drove on, deeper and deeper 
 into the woods, and could hear more and more plainly 
 the noise of the lumberman at work ; first the ring 
 ing hack, hack, of the axes against the live, hard 
 wood ; and then I caught the sound of voices as the 
 teamsters shouted to each other and to their oxen. 
 There seemed to be a great deal going on, as if there 
 were a crowd of men and a great excitement, bu/ 
 when I could see the open space between the trees 
 there proved to be in all five or six placid-looking 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 181 
 
 farmers with one team drawn by two oxen and a 
 shaggy, unwilling old white horse for leader. This 
 was just ready to start, being loaded with logs to be 
 carried out to the pond, and it was lucky that we had 
 not met it, for the snow was deep and soft outside 
 the narrow track. 
 
 The snow was trampled and covered with brush 
 wood and fallen boughs, the woods looked torn to 
 pieces as if there had been a battle. " This is the 
 way it used to look down in Virginia in war times," 
 said John, the Captain of Horse, who was driving 
 me : "I tell you, you had to dodge when a big shell 
 burst among the *pine-trees ; there would be a crash 
 ing and a cracking among the old fellows ! " We 
 stopped and spoke to the teamster, and one or two of 
 the choppers who were near by came to the side of 
 the sleigh, and we asked and told the news. I spoke 
 of a fire that had been in the village the night before, 
 but they had already found out all about it. It is 
 unaccountable how fast a bit of news will travel in 
 the country, it is a proof of the frequency of commu 
 nication between farming people, you need only let 
 it get a few minutes start of you in the morning and 
 it will beat you by many miles on a day s drive. It 
 is not that a man starts out ahead of you with a faster 
 horse and tells everybody he sees along the road, but 
 
182 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 this invisible telegraph has side-lines, and people who 
 live at the end of long lanes and on lonely cross 
 roads are as well posted as those on the main thor 
 oughfares. 
 
 It would be too slow work following the team, so 
 we were directed back to the pond by another suc 
 cession of paths. I noticed the bits of bright color 
 against the dull green of the woods and the white 
 ness of the snow. The choppers wore red shirts and 
 sometimes blue overalls, and there was a much- worn 
 brown fur cap, with long ear-pieces that flapped a 
 good deal as the energetic wearer nodded his head in 
 explaining our way to us, and disputing the length of 
 different cart-paths with one of his companions. I 
 watched a man creep carefully, like a great insect, 
 along the trunk of a fallen tree, and begin to lop off 
 its branches. It seemed to me that the noise of the 
 lumbermen in the woods must be very annoying to 
 the trees and wake them from their quiet winter 
 sleep, like a racket in a house at night. The scat 
 tered trees that were left standing had a shocked and 
 fearful look, as if some fatal epidemic had slain their 
 neighbors. Just at the edge of the clearing we 
 crossed a little brook, busy under the ice and snow, 
 and coming out to scurry and splash around a lichened 
 rock with great unconcern, as if it were a child play- 
 infi with its tos in the next room to a funeral. 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 183 
 
 There were a great many pines notched with an 
 axe to show that they were to be cut ; about a hun 
 dred and fifty pines in all, the owner told us he was 
 going to get out that season, and they had so far been 
 able to fell them without doing much damage to those 
 they meant to leave standing. Some of the stumps 
 were unusually broad ones. They last many years, 
 and so the tree leaves its own monument when it 
 dies. The inscription on many of the older stumps 
 in those woods might be Lost at sea, as it is on the 
 stones of a sea-port bury ing-ground, for great quanti 
 ties of ship timber have gone from the Agamenticus 
 woods to the shipyards at Portsmouth, and the navy 
 yard across the river. 
 
 On my way back to the pond and the road I found 
 a place I remembered crossing in my childhood, a 
 marshy bit of ground and a small pond in the heart 
 of the woods. It looked exactly as it had that early 
 winter day so long ago, and I remembered that I had 
 seen witch-hazel in bloom there for the first time, and 
 had been filled with astonishment at the sight of 
 flowers in the snow. There used to be a farm-house, 
 now destroyed, at the side of the mountain to which 
 ihis was a short road in winter when the ground was 
 frozen. I looked around for the witch-hazel, but I 
 was too late for it, it was out of bloom and, alas, 
 
184 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 many flowers beside ! else I might have thought it 
 was only yesterday I was there before, that bit of the 
 world had been so unforgotten and unchanged by 
 time. I had wondered for years where that little 
 pond could be. I had begun to think I needed a 
 crooked twig of the uncanny witch-hazel itself to lead 
 me back to it. 
 
 The wind seemed to be making a louder noise than 
 usual when I came out from the stillness of the woods 
 to the open country. The horse was glad to be on a 
 better road and struck out at a brave trot, and, indeed, 
 it was time to hurry, for it was on the edge of the 
 winter twilight and that had been the last load of 
 logs to be sent that day from the clearing. I looked 
 up again and again at the mountain, and I noticed a 
 white place among the trees where there were cleared 
 fields, and remembered a story that always interested 
 me, that there was once a small farm there where an 
 old Scotchman lived alone, many years ago. No one 
 knew from whence he came, and there was no clew 
 to his family or friends, so after his death the prop 
 erty that he left fell to the State. There is some 
 thing very strange about such hidden-away lives, and 
 one cannot help thinking that there are always peo 
 ple who have watched sadly for such stray-aways tc 
 come home, even if they are fugitives from justice, 
 or banished with good cause. 
 
A WINTER DRIVE. 185 
 
 Ou the main road, again, I met a dismal-looking 
 little clam-man driving back to the sea. He and his 
 horse both looked as if they would freeze to death on 
 the way. I heard some clams slide and clash to 
 gether in the box on his sled as we turned out for 
 each other, but it was nearly empty and I had seen 
 it full in the morning, so I suppose he was contented. 
 We said good-day, and he went on again. He was 
 a little bit of a man, and his eyes looked like a fish s 
 eyes from under the edge of a great, rough fur cap. 
 " He s very well off," said John. " I know where 
 he lives at the Gunket." So, after all, I pitied the 
 horse the most, for he never would have been so 
 shaggy if he lived in a barn that the wind off the sea 
 did not blow through every day, from one end to the 
 other. 
 
 The last sight I had of the mountain the top of it 
 was bright where the last flicker of the clear, yellow 
 sunset touched it, but in the low-lands where I was 
 the light was out, and the wind had gone down with 
 the sun, and the air was still and sharp. The long, 
 cold winter night had begun. The lamps were lit 
 and the fires were blazing in all the houses as I hur 
 ried home. 
 
GOOD LUCK: A GIRL S STORY. 
 
 jT seems very odd now to remember that we 
 talked over going to Windy-walls for so 
 many weeks before we could make up our 
 minds to it. We thought of all imaginable reasons 
 why we had better not go, and we all felt a good deal 
 like martyrs when we were forced to decide at last 
 that we had better spend the summer there. It was 
 nine miles from a railroad and four from a post-office, 
 and the house might be uncomfortable ; beside, if my 
 mother were to be ill nobody knew anything about 
 the doctors. The truth was we wished to spend the 
 summer at the sea-shore. We had spent the greater 
 part of the last four or five summers in town, but in 
 the old days when we were prosperous we lived in a 
 house by the sea which we always had missed sadly, 
 and now, when we found we must leave the city, the 
 thought of three or four months at the shore was 
 
GOOD LUCK. 187 
 
 most alluring. But my elder brother, who is the 
 most sensible member of the family, was the one who 
 decided it, for he convinced us that it would be much 
 better for my mother to be inland. At first it had 
 been a question of boarding somewhere in the coun 
 try, but one day my brother Park came home with 
 the news that the people who had been living in an 
 old house of ours in New Hampshire were going 
 to leave it, and that it would be vacant the first of 
 June. It had belonged to a grand-uncle of my father 
 and we had known very little about it ; the tenants 
 were elderly people and had been there so long that 
 it seemed to belong to them more than to us. My 
 younger brother Tom and I were dismayed at first, 
 but we took more kindly to the new plan when my 
 mother proposed that we should go together to put 
 the house in order, a few days before the general flit 
 ting from town. 
 
 There are four of us, my mother, my two brothers, 
 -- Parkhurst, who was then in the medical school, and 
 Tom, who was to enter college the next year, and 
 myself. I do not know anything more unhappy than 
 not having an elder and a younger brother. It is a 
 favorite joke of mine that standing between them one 
 pulls me up and the other pulls me down, and so my 
 character develops symmetrically, and I ought not to 
 
188 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 be wanting in sympathy or experience. When we 
 were all younger we had lived entirely at our ease, but 
 of late years we have had reverses of fortune, and the 
 Boston fire served us as it did many of our friends. 
 It has been very close sailing, with the three of us 
 to send to school and to college, and the frightful 
 taxes on real estate to be paid. My mother insisted 
 that we should not part with our dear old home if we 
 could possibly help it, and, indeed, property had de 
 creased so much in value that it could have been sold 
 only at a great sacrifice, although it was so comfort 
 able and stood in such a pleasant part of the town. 
 I have no doubt it was thought extravagant by some 
 people that we should stay there, though we managed 
 to live on without getting in debt, but now that Tom 
 was to enter college we knew we must rent the old 
 house and so increase our income. Park had had 
 money enough of his own to pay the expenses of his 
 education, and he hoped to go over to Europe the 
 next winter ; then my mother and I were to board 
 somewhere and Tom would be in Cambridge. We 
 hated to think of breaking up, it seemed very hard 
 to us, and we knew that we might never again be to 
 gether in the dear old fashion, even though my mother 
 could ever take the house again, which was, to say 
 the least, doubtful. She was often in ill health and 
 
GOOD LUCK. 189 
 
 Jie change would be very sad. My brothers and I 
 would have given anything if in any way we could 
 have made it possible for her to stay ; if we could 
 have made sure she might always have everything 
 she needed. I do not think we should have minded 
 being poor half as much if it had not been for her. 
 
 I can see now what a blessing these years were to 
 us ; we know the worth of money a thousand times 
 better, and we are richer now in a great many ways 
 because we were once poor, my brothers and I ; while 
 we have friends whose love for us nothing can make 
 us doubt. I am willing to say that we often used to 
 grumble, but I find there are just as many things I 
 want that I cannot buy now, even though I have 
 more money. One does not naturally go into such 
 personalities as these, but for the sake of my story I 
 wished you to know something of its characters to 
 begin with. 
 
 We grew more and more resigned to the thought 
 of taking Uncle Kinlock s house. Tom was seen 
 looking over his fishing-tackle in the hope of finding 
 trout-brooks, and I began to think more kindly of the 
 summer in the country, and to make little plans of 
 my own. Tom and I thought it the best fun in the 
 world to go to Hilton a week before the rest to put 
 the house in order; indeed, I think it was the pleas- 
 
190 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 antest week of the whole summer. I should like to 
 tell you the whole story of it, but I remember that 
 we reached the village late one evening, and in the 
 morning Tom came to the door of the country hotel 
 with a weather-beaten old horse, and after we had 
 collected some provision from the shops, and had 
 loaded part of our luggage into the back of the 
 wagon, we started off for the five miles drive, feeling 
 ourselves master and mistress of the house already. 
 It was a perfect day ; I had seen almost nothing of 
 the country all the spring, and I think I had never 
 felt more pleasure at being alive than I did that 
 morning ; the wind that blew about among the hills 
 was so fresh and sweet, and it was one of the June 
 days which make you feel as one does in October 
 weather. The clover and daisies were all in bloom ; 
 I never saw so many birds together in all my life. I 
 began to long for my mother to come, and I said over 
 and over again how glad I was that she was going to 
 spend the summer there. I remembered delightedly, 
 what I had often forgotten before, that she was so 
 fond of the country. Tom and I sang a good deal 
 at the top of our voices, there being no audience, and 
 we were sorry we had no farther to go, though the 
 horse was slow and the road was rough, and up hill 
 and down all the way. We watched the great white 
 
GOOD LUCK. 191 
 
 clouds blow over, and caught sight of one mountaii 
 or great hill after another, far and near and some 
 times we stopped a litile while to let the horse rest 
 where it was so pleasant that we really could not go 
 on. Tom saw some woods which gave fair prom 
 ises of game, and brooks which he said were just the 
 places for whole congregations of trout, and he thought 
 it was the most delightful bit of country he ever had 
 seen in his life. Some children whom we met on 
 their way to school looked at us with great curiosity 
 and interest, and even the least of the shy sun-bonnets 
 knew that we were strangers and foreigners, and they 
 all stood still to look after us when we had passed. 
 
 We were in a great hurry to see the house, and the 
 last mile or two seemed long. We had been told that 
 it was on a hill, and we looked for it in vain for some 
 time and thought it must have burned down, until we 
 had come through some thick woods and the road had 
 turned, and then it was in full view half a mile beyond. 
 It certainly was not charming at first sight. It 
 looked gray as if it had never been painted, and there 
 were a few tall, sharp spruces in a row at one side. 
 It was a square, blindless house with two great chim 
 neys, and it stood nearly at the top of a hill which 
 would have looked higher anywhere else than there 
 at the outskirts of the mountains. The road wound 
 
192 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 along at the side of the hill, and down below us we 
 could hear the noise of a small river at the bottom 
 of the valley. The house looked squarer and grayer 
 as we came nearer, and we agreed it was exactly like 
 Uncle Kinlock himself, whom neither of us had ever 
 seen within our recollection. There were two or 
 three other houses in sight within a third of a mile, 
 and it was like coming into a village at last, for the 
 last three miles had been almost entirely through the 
 woods. The fields were very green, and the slopes 
 were most beautiful in the sunshine, and all the wild 
 roses were in bloom. It was certainly a very pleas 
 ant country ; one could not find fault with anything 
 out of doors, and there must be room enough at any 
 rate in the old square-roofed house, and that was a 
 good thing. I had almost been sure of a room under 
 the roof too low for me to stand straight in. 
 
 We had to go to the nearest neighbor s for the 
 key, and had a hearty welcome from the mistress 
 of the farm-house, who seemed as glad to see us and 
 as kind as if we had belonged to her. She begged us 
 to come back to dinner and to supper, and even 
 wished us to sleep at her house until ours was fairly 
 in order ; but since our chief pleasure in coming first 
 had been the prospect of keeping house ourselves, we 
 thanked her and said No. There could not be any 
 
GOOD LUCK. 193 
 
 trouble about our staying in the house from dampness 
 or anything like that, for the people had not been 
 long gone and it had been dry weather, and Mrs. Bir- 
 uey told us she had kept the windows open a good 
 deal since she had known we were coming. 
 
 We hurried back and unlocked the door, and Tom 
 said quickly, with a little whistle, " It is n t bad, 
 Polly ; " but I confess that the first impression I had 
 was of its being very dismal. There was a narrow 
 hall, with an awful blue-gray paper covered with 
 fountains which looked as if they had frozen the win 
 ter before and had never thawed out. There was a 
 prim mahogany table and some straight-backed chairs 
 along the wall, and as for the parlor it was so dark 
 that I rushed to open the shutters. The furniture 
 was not bad of its kind, but it was not old enough 
 to be picturesque or quaint ; it was an entirely dull 
 and commonplace country house of the better class. 
 We went about from one room to another ; every 
 thing was gray and brown and black, so I longed 
 for the bright rugs we meant to bring, and to put 
 flowers in the rooms, and for some of our own pos 
 sessions to make it look a little home-like. It was a 
 place to be homesick in, if one ever was homesick 
 anywhere, so there was great need for us to do every 
 thing we could think of to brighten it up. It was 
 13 
 
194 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 with great wisdom that Tom said how many people 
 would go out of town that summer and spend no end 
 of money in far less comfortable places. I do not 
 know whether my brave-hearted young brother was 
 trying to make the best of things at that moment, or 
 whether he really liked the place from the very first, 
 as he always insists now that he did. 
 
 There were four rooms on each floor : two large 
 ones and two somewhat smaller, beside the kitchen ; 
 and there was a garden which was beginning to show 
 a royal crop of weeds though the flowers were bloom 
 ing too ; all the early-summer company of old-fash 
 ioned flowers. Indeed, one might grow strongly at 
 tached to this old place in time, as I certainly did, 
 but I am willing to confess that I was dreadfully dis 
 appointed in it at first. Some friends of mine, Kate 
 Lancaster and Nelly Denis, had once spent a delight 
 ful summer at a fine old house by the sea and I had 
 been with them for a week or two, so I had foolishly 
 framed my expectations on the memory of that. 
 However, there was no use in being dismal, and our 
 house might have been worse. We named it Windy- 
 walls before we finished our lunch, which was the 
 first thing to be thought of after we had opened the 
 shutters everywhere and Tom had unharnessed the 
 horse and unloaded the wagon. Tom thought it was 
 
GOOD LUCK. 195 
 
 a very good name ; I had seen it in a novel once. 
 We had lunch very early ; there really was not a 
 great deal to do until a load of goods could be brought 
 up from the village ; however, we were busy enough, 
 and the old place soon cheered up a little, as if it had 
 been a lonely old person who had felt the need of 
 young company. 
 
 We found that there were fire-places in almost 
 every room, but they were either closed up or had 
 air-tight stoves before them, and I told my brother 
 that we must get those out of the way before my 
 mother came and have the fire-places open, it would 
 be so much pleasanter ; so we went to work at once 
 in the room we had chosen for hers ; and if ever 
 there were two forlorn-looking creatures they were 
 Tom and I when we had finished, for there was an 
 amazing quantity of soot and ashes, "and we decided 
 we would not try to do all in one day. In the sit 
 ting-room there was a great Franklin stove which we 
 wisely left, as it had a gallant array of brass orna 
 ments, and we brought in a quantity of dry wood 
 and made fires everywhere. In the parlor we had 
 great trouble because the chimney seemed so choked, 
 and you cannot imagine our sorrow and dismay when 
 a clumsy, half-fledged chimney-swallow tumbled down 
 luckily into the cold ashes at one side the fire, and 
 
196 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 lay there, giving miserable chirps now and then. We 
 put out that fire quickly enough ! and when we found 
 that the poor bird was badly hurt by its fall Tom 
 killed it and we took a little vacation in order to at 
 tend its funeral under a currant bush in the garden. 
 
 " But we ought to have some andirons," said I, as 
 we went back to the house, " there must be some, 
 somewhere ; everybody used to have andirons." And 
 Tom said perhaps there were some in the garret, so 
 to the garret we went ; and here was a great satisfac 
 tion, for the oldest furniture, as was not long since 
 the fashion, had been stored under the rafters, and 
 we found some fine old chairs which only needed a 
 little brushing to be made again the chief pride and 
 ornament of the house. There were andirons enough, 
 both iron and brass ; but the latter had become vari 
 ous shades of green and black, and our first question 
 to Mrs. Birney, our neighbor, who just then came up 
 the creaking stairs, was who could we get to rub them 
 bright again. She seemed much amused at our en 
 thusiasm over our discoveries, for one could make up 
 a history of the household customs of the last seventy- 
 five years in that garret. I did not know the use of 
 half the things until Mrs. Birney told me; there 
 were spinning wheels for wool and flax, and foot- 
 stoves, and all the apparatus for cooking before au 
 
GOOD LUCK. 197 
 
 open fire ; and there were flax combs and wool cards 
 and candle molds, and various reels and trays, and all 
 the lanterns that had lighted the footsteps of succes 
 sive generations. We carried down the best of the 
 chairs, but we should have liked to stay in the garret 
 and rummage in the chests until dark, if there had 
 not been our own rooms to put in order. Mrs. Bir- 
 ney had taken such good care of the house since its 
 tenants, an old uncle and aunt of her own, had gone 
 away that we found little to do, and we were very 
 much obliged to her because she asked us to drink 
 tea at her house where we had a very good time. I 
 made friends at once with her niece, who was a pale- 
 faced, dark-haired girl, who was just home from a 
 seminary where she was 6tting herself to be a teacher. 
 She seemed all tired out, and I was so sorry for her. 
 I felt as if she were really a great deal older than I, 
 though there was not much difference in our ages, 
 for she seemed to have lost every bit of her girlhood. 
 I think one advantage of city life is that there is 
 much more to entertain and amuse people than in the 
 country. I never before had had the chance to know 
 country girls intimately, as I did that summer; but 
 the more thoughtful ones among them seem to me to 
 be much more thrown in upon themselves and to be 
 toore given to narrow routine and a certain formality 
 
198 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 of life than city girls are. I found this new" frieiid 
 of mine knew a great deal more than I about school- 
 books ; I only wish I were half so good a scholar ; 
 but the more I thought about her and talked Mth 
 her the more I wished she would read novels all her 
 summer vacation ; good-tempered, well-bred English 
 society novels, and no matter if some of them were 
 naughty, for she could only see how much better it 
 is to be good. I wished her to know another sort of 
 people beside the teachers and scholars she was al 
 ways with, and I wished to make her world a little 
 larger, I liked her so very much. Tom had found a 
 crony in Mrs. Birney s son, who seemed a very good 
 fellow and a sportsman by nature, and I heard them 
 already planning a long tramp in search of trout ; 
 for, though one could find some in almost any of the 
 brooks, there was capital fishing in more remote 
 streams among the hills, and I could see Tom s eyes 
 flash as he talked in half whispers, and I was no 
 longer afraid of his growing tired of "Windywalls and 
 its surrounding country. 
 
 We were very hungry at supper time, as Mrs. Bir- 
 ney had evidently expected us to be ; we were very 
 merry, and afterward Annie Birney, the niece, and I 
 talked a while. I found she was an orphan, and 1 
 wrondered if she did not mind coming back there from 
 
GOOD LUCK. 199 
 
 her school, for it was such a bare house, so orderly 
 and clean, and in a way so comfortable ; but there 
 was only a great yellow county map on the wall of 
 the sititng-room where they lived, and the few books 
 1 saw were not at all in the line of her really fine 
 scholarship. I wondered if she did not find life un 
 comfortable ; her education had led her away from 
 her family, yet what she had got from her books was 
 a dry and useless sort of learning, unless for the sake 
 of its being imparted to possible scholars by and by. 
 She was certainly no happier, and her life did not 
 reach out to other people s lives any more because of 
 it. It did not seem to me that she was meant for a 
 teacher, but I suppose she would not have been con 
 tented with any other employment. It seems to me 
 that nature designs very few people to be scholars, but 
 when so many make a failure of life we are greatly 
 surprised. But we are apt to say that they had a 
 good education, when in reality it was the worst edu 
 cation in the world for them, since they were not 
 fitted to do their work. The result of education 
 should be to elevate one s uses, but sometimes a stu 
 dent reminds one of the cheap wooden box in which 
 his books are packed. TVe certainly have different 
 capacities for assimilation of mental food, and I think 
 lhat to be gifted with a tenacious memory and a brain 
 
200 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 that is not constructive, and a little heart that w*lJ a) 
 ways be poor and have nothing to give, is a most mel 
 ancholy state of affairs. There is a certain kind of 
 character, which, if it tries to be a scholar, is a mier 
 with its wealth, because it does not know how to 
 spend and make use of it. 
 
 I think Annie Birney wanted to get out of the rut 
 she was in, and that being with young people who 
 took great pleasure in life was the best thing that 
 could happen to her. I found she had a great capac 
 ity for enjoyment, and she added a great deal to our 
 pleasure at Windywalls. 
 
 I knew that my brother wished to go fishing that 
 very next day, but he was very good and said noth 
 ing about it, and we were busy until night putting 
 things to rights, for early in the morning our posses 
 sions came over from the village. The few days we 
 were alone went by very fast, and at last I was wait 
 ing impatiently for my mother, whom Tom had gone 
 to bring over from the train. It was nearly tea-time 
 when they reached the house, and I was delighted 
 when I saw how pleased my mother was. I had 
 flowers in a dozen places, and some wild sweet-brier 
 roses, for which she had a great liking, in her own 
 room. We had found the curtains that belonged 
 i>n the high-posted beds, and Mrs. Birney and I had 
 
GOOD LUCK. 201 
 
 pnt them up, and I had unpacked the books and 
 placed them always with the bright red and blue ones 
 on top. The weather had luckily given sufficient 
 excuse for a little fire on the hearth in the dining- 
 room, which was the most picturesque part of the 
 house, with its tall clock and slender-legged side 
 board, and there was some pretty willow-pattern 
 crockery to put on the table, and you may be sure 
 we had found somebody to rub the andirons, and had 
 filled a gingerpot with daisies. I think I never was 
 so tired in my life as I was that night, but it was all 
 forgotten and I was more than paid for it. Nancy, 
 an old servant who had always lived with us and who 
 came up with my mother, praised Tom and me to 
 the skies and said she should think we had been at 
 housekeeping for a year, though I am afraid when 
 she inspected her own realm she did not have so 
 much respect for us as at first. I am afraid there 
 were distinct traces of the means by which we had 
 reached the results she had admired, and we did not 
 know how to keep order in our kitchen. We had 
 bought some wild strawberries for tea from a little 
 girl who came knocking at the door, and kind Mrs. 
 Birney had brought us a pitcher of cream and an 
 other neighbor farther down the road had sent us 
 ome fresh eggs, and we felt already as if we be- 
 
202 COUNTRY BY- WAYS. 
 
 longed to the neighborhood. It was pleasant weather 
 day after day, and we felt at first, until the weather 
 changed, as if Windy walls had been an ill-deserved 
 name for the bleak old house from which even the 
 trees stood back. In-doors it grew more and more 
 home-like, and we sent for some striped awnings 
 which we had had in the city and put them over the 
 southern windows to keep out the glare of the sun, 
 and they made the house look as if it were a grave 
 old lady in a young girl s gay trappings. I grew 
 very fond of the hills, and we were continually dis 
 covering new drives and walks. There was one 
 mountain which I always saw first when I waked in 
 the morning and which at last seemed like a friend 
 to me. I think we all tried to live as entirely a 
 country life as we could, and not to be city people 
 who had come to the country for a little while, mean 
 ing to keep apart from its ways as much as possible. 
 Of course there were inconveniences, and I confess 
 that I was lonely sometimes, but does not that feeling 
 come to one anywhere in this world, after all ? Peo 
 ple came to visit us now and then, and I sincerely 
 wish I could spend a part of every summer at Windy- 
 walls, in spite of its having seemed very forlorn and 
 a real trouble when I first knew that I must go there. 
 J had time to do so many things which were always 
 
GOOD LUCK. 203 
 
 crowded out in Boston, and T do like housekeeping, 
 and I must confess to being very fond of doing the 
 every-day things which most girls in these days think 
 very stupid. 
 
 So we settled ourselves down in peace and quiet 
 ness for the long summer among the hills ; and now 
 it must be told that, before my mother came, while 
 Tom and I were busy getting the house ready and 
 Mrs. Birney was helping us, our curiosity was in 
 tensely excited by what she said of Uncle Kinlock. 
 We were surprised and delighted to find that he had 
 been considered a most singular man, and it seemed 
 that the people in the country round about were a 
 good deal in awe of him, as he was unfortunately sub 
 ject to violent fits of bad temper and had very strange 
 ways. It was believed that he was enormously rich, 
 though we poor Leslies who were his heirs had had 
 no very good evidence of that, and we heard it was 
 believed that he had hidden most of his money before 
 he died. He had lived alone with an old servant, 
 whose death had quickly followed his own, but she 
 had told a great many curious stories about him ; that 
 sometimes he would disappear for hours together 
 when she knew he had not gone out cf the house ; 
 Jhat he would go up-stairs and she could not find him 
 though she had often taken pains to search, and after 
 
204 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 a time he would come down the staircase just as usual, 
 and would laugh if he were good-natured or swear if 
 he were not when she asked him where he had been. 
 She insisted that somewhere in the house he had a 
 secret room, and you may imagine the delight with 
 which Tom and I listened to such a bit of gossip as 
 this. I think this old relative of ours must have 
 been a little crazy, for we heard that sometimes he 
 would not speak to any one for days together. 
 
 One chilly evening we were all together in the 
 sitting-room, reading or talking before the fire ; it 
 had been raining all day, and my mother said with a 
 smile, what a pleasant day it had been in the house, 
 and, after all, this was just the weather we had dreaded 
 so much when we talked about coming to Hilton, and 
 she added by way of warning to her eager and easily 
 provoked children, that it was almost always so in 
 life ; that most of our misery comes from our fearing 
 and disliking things that never happen at all. My 
 brother Park looked up from a medical book of os 
 tentatious size, and repeated philosophically the old 
 French proverb, " Nothing is certain to happen but 
 the unforeseen." I was reading a little and watch 
 ing Tom make some new trout-flies as he sat by me 
 at the table where the lights were. 
 
 "O Mary," said he, suddenly, " did you ever tel 
 
GOOD LUCK. 205 
 
 mother that Mrs. Birney says Uncle Kinlock had a 
 secret room somewhere up-stairs, and that he hid a 
 great deal of money there and nobody ever found it?" 
 
 My mother laughed heartily : " Tom, how fool 
 ish ! he never had a great deal of money to hide, 
 and where could there have been a secret room in 
 this square plain house? I wish there had been more 
 good closets ; I don t wonder that people s garrets 
 used to be so filled in old times, for they never had 
 any other place to put things. But I really do re 
 member your father s having heard this story and 
 laughing about it, too." 
 
 " Mrs. Birney said that Uncle Kinlock used to go 
 up-stairs and disappear, and the old woman who lived 
 with him used to hunt for him evefywhere, and after 
 a while he would come down and she never knew 
 where he went. Some people said he must be in 
 league with the devil," said Tom solemnly, " and an 
 old fellow who hangs round the blacksmith s shop 
 over in the village asked me yesterday if we ever 
 found the secret chamber. He said there really 
 was one ; his elder brother who used to work here 
 told him so ; and he said, too, that Uncle Kinlock 
 had been paid for some woodland he had sold a few 
 days before he died, and he had not sent the money 
 to the bank and nobody could find it in the house." 
 
206 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 " There were several people here during his ill 
 ness," said my mother. " Your father found every 
 thing in confusion when he came ; I am afraid the 
 money may have been too strong a temptation." 
 
 " But where could there possibly be another room ? " 
 said T, trying again to puzzle it out, though Tom and 
 I had made a careful survey together, days before. 
 " There are the four rooms on each floor, and the 
 halls, and the garrets, and the closets." And Park 
 said : " I dare say the old fellow s time hung heavily 
 in rainy weather and he played hide and seek with 
 the housekeeper. I don t doubt he was under that 
 great four-poster in the room overhead, and came 
 chuckling out after she went away, with feathers all 
 over his coat." 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! " -said mamma, with an amused 
 little laugh, " if you had ever seen him ! the Grossest, 
 stiff est old man in the world ! " 
 
 But the next day Tom and I were off on a long 
 walk together, and as we were toiling up a hill he 
 said : " Don t you wish that story would come true 
 about Uncle Kiulock s money ? It would be such a 
 lark if we found it and we could stay on at the house 
 in town and Park could go abroad with all sails set, 
 and we would have a pair of saddle-horses." 
 
 " I should like to find the room, at any rate," said 
 
GOOD LUCK. 207 
 
 I ; "it makes me think of the regicide judges, and I 
 lie awake at night thinking about it and wondering 
 where it could be. But we have looked everywhere, 
 unless i t is in one of the chimneys." 
 
 " There is that little garret-room over the outer 
 kitchen, where the little four-paned window is," said 
 Tom. " I put a ladder up the other day and looked 
 in, but there was nothing there." 
 
 " So did I," I said. " It is no use, Tom ; but 1 
 wish we could find out how the story started. I wish 
 we did have more money. I am sorriest when I 
 think of mamma s having to give up the house. I 
 know she dreads it. I almost wish we could go over 
 to Paris with Park in the fall. I think she would 
 like to go abroad again, and it wouldn t seem half so 
 bad as breaking up and having to board in town. 
 We could have a little apartment for the winter, you 
 know, and it would be pleasant for Park to live with 
 us," but poor Tom s face lengthened so at the pros 
 pect of being left alone, that I said nothing more of 
 my plan. I think he was much fonder of home than 
 either Park or I, though that was saying a great deal. 
 
 " I am going to grow rich as fast as I can," said 
 he, presently. " I wish I were ten years older, and 
 you and mamma should do just exactly as you like. 
 When I think she misses anything she used to have 
 
208 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 I am awfully sorry, and it keeps costing her more 
 and more for me, so I know that other things have 
 to be given up." 
 
 " Never mind, Tom," said I, " everybody knows it 
 is money well spent. I only wish there were twice 
 as much for you." 
 
 And Tom, who was tender-hearted but very reluc 
 tant to let it be noticed, said, abruptly : " I wish we 
 had brought a lunch ; I did n t have half enough 
 breakfast I was in such a hurry ; it was like dropping 
 a biscuit down a well." 
 
 " There is one thing we must do, Tom," said I, 
 after a while, " before Aunt Alice comes ; you know, 
 we have never opened the fire-place in that room, 
 and she is apt to be chilly. I think she would like 
 a little blaze on the hearth. Suppose we get it ready 
 after dinner while the others are out driving. I think 
 there is only a fire-board to be taken away and we 
 could have it all in order before they come back. 
 I 11 rub one andiron if you will the other." 
 
 < There are n t any more brass ones," said Tom, 
 but we can give her the funny iron dogs ; yes, of 
 aurse we will do it; are you sure it isn t bricked 
 up?" 
 
 Park was going to drive my mother to the village, 
 wad they started after an early dinner and Tom and 
 
GOOD LUCK. 209 
 
 I were just beginning our work, when an old clergy 
 man who lived some distance away came to call upon 
 mamma, and of course we wished to fill her place as 
 well as possible in giving him hospitality, but we 
 were dreadfully afraid he would stay all the after 
 noon, though we were really so glad to see him. 
 When he had gone, promising to come back to drink 
 tea with us after making some other calls, we hurried 
 up-stairs and were soon busy again, and Tom pulled 
 away the fire-board which had always rattled when 
 there was a breeze, and found the fire-place was open, 
 so there would be only the pile of soot and ashes to 
 carry down-stairs. But it was a miserably shallow 
 fire-place, not half so deep as those in the other 
 rooms. Tom was on his knees before it, when sud 
 denly he stopped and seemed to be lost in thought. 
 " What is it ? " said I, with a good deal of curiosity, 
 but he did not answer, as he rose and opened the 
 closet door which was on that side of the room. 
 There was nothing inside but some blankets ; it was 
 a shallow closet with two shelves at the top and some 
 pegs underneath, and Tom said, eagerly, " Come round 
 here, Polly," and I followed him out into the hall 
 and into the other corner-room at the back of the 
 chimney, where he opened the opposite closet door ; 
 ooked in at Park s coats, and gave a shout, and 
 14 
 
210 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 caught me by the shoulders and behaved as if he had 
 gone crazy. " I wish I knew how to get in ; it s 
 Uncle Kinlock s den, don t you see ? " said he. 
 " There must be a place at the side of the chimney 
 between the closets, they don t take up half the 
 room ; don t you see the chimney goes way through 
 and the back of this closet is n t the back of the 
 other ? Hi yi ! " and my brother went hopping 
 about or one foot by way of expressing his joy at 
 such a discovery. I could not understand what he 
 meant at first, but I thought of Kate Lancaster at 
 once. There was no knowing what we might find, 
 and there had not been a sign of a secret closet in 
 the house at Deephaven. Tom began at once to 
 take down the coats from their pegs ; Park was very 
 orderly, but we threw them all about the room. We 
 looked carefully, but there was no sign of any way 
 to get through, and at last we gave up and went back 
 to the front-room closet, and searched there for some 
 sign of a door or sliding panel. It was very exciting, 
 and Tom at last mounted a chair and looked along 
 the shelves as if he thought the way in was like the 
 entrance to a dove-cote, but at last I saw him reach 
 over and pull at something ; and he threw a bit of 
 wood on the floor and then another and pulled out 
 the shelf a little way, and kicked the back of the 
 
GOOD LUCK. 211 
 
 Closet wliich seemed to be loosened, and I helped 
 him push it along toward the chimney and saw a 
 dark place behind it. 
 
 We could not get the door far back enough for 
 any light to go in, and it was close quarters at any 
 rate, to push through. " You may fall, Tom," said 
 I fearfully, my courage failing me all of a sudden. 
 
 " Down into the china closet ! " said my brother 
 with a very scornful air, as if he thought I ought to 
 know the architecture of the house better than that. 
 <k Let s have a light, though ; there s a candle over 
 on the dressing-table," and T hurried across the room 
 to get it. 
 
 That was a miserable moment, for I looked out of 
 the window to see mamma and Parkhurst driving 
 
 c5 
 
 slowly toward home with the old clergyman following 
 them, blissfully unconscious of their being most un 
 welcome. 
 
 Tom groaned when I told him : " We must be 
 quick and shut it up," said he, and I was only too 
 willing, for we wanted all the glory for ourselves. 
 
 "There are all Park s clothes scattered over his 
 floor," said Tom, as he pushed and tugged at the 
 panel, arid T flew to put them in their places as well as 
 I could and had just succeeded when I heard mnmma 
 <*>me into the lower hall. Tom had gone to the gar- 
 
212 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 ret for the iron dogs, and was just coming back with 
 them, serenely, when he met her on her way to her 
 room. She laughed to see the plight we were in, for 
 we were gray with ashes, and thanked us for open 
 ing the fire-place ; it would be so much pleasanter for 
 Aunt Alice. " You are very thoughtful children," 
 said she in her tender way, which always went 
 straight to our hearts, and she put one of her arms 
 round each of us as we stood before her and kissed 
 us. Tom s eyes filled with tears in a minute ; he 
 was greatly excited. I did not know what he would 
 do, but he kissed her again in his rough, boyish fash 
 ion of two or three years ago, when he had not prided 
 himself on being undemonstrative, and rushed off 
 down-stairs two or three steps at a time. 
 
 " What has come over the boy ? " said my mother, 
 as I followed her into her own room. " Here are 
 some letters for you, and your Aunt Alice will be 
 here day after to-morrow. I had a letter from Mrs. 
 Phillips, who is in Baltimore, and she tells me that 
 Mrs. Anderson, your grandmother s old friend, is very 
 ill and will probably live only a few days. I wish 
 I could have seen her again, dear old lady," said 
 mamma sadly. " I was so sorry to refuse, this 
 spring, when she wished me to come to her, but if 
 could not be helped." 
 
GOOD LUCK. 213 
 
 I knew why she had not gone ; I had something 
 :> Tom s certainty that we should find a fortune in 
 the secret closet into which we had almost looked, 
 and I hoped that mamma might never have to give 
 up anything again. I remembered that I had gone 
 away for a visit just after she had quietly declined 
 this invitation. 
 
 " She was always very fond of me, I think," said 
 my mother. " She always treated me as if I were 
 still a child ; I suppose she could not realize the 
 flight of time. I have felt so old most of the time 
 these last ten years that it was pleasant to have some 
 body think I was young, and it always carried me 
 back to my girlhood to go to see her." 
 
 " I wish you could have seen her again," said I, 
 and mamma looked up at me as if she had been un 
 conscious for a minute of my presence ; I could see 
 she was much saddened ; she always clung closely to 
 her old friends. 
 
 ** The letter has been remailed two or three times, 
 I ought to have had it days ago," said she, and then 
 I left her to go to dress, and afterward hurried to find 
 Tom, whom I fotmd entertaining our guest with 
 mamma for aid. He was quite himself again, and 
 gave me a careless and triumphant nod. He whis 
 pered to me that we must go in that night after the 
 
2] 4 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 others were asleep, and I was willing ; but Mr. Ash- 
 urst was soon after persuaded to stay the night with 
 us and occupy that room, to Tom s and my great dis 
 comfiture, though perhaps it was just as well, for 
 Park would certainly have heard us rattling in his 
 wall, and mamma was always a light sleeper. It was 
 misery to be obliged to wait until next day. 
 
 Next morning I tried to make Tom ready to meet 
 his disappointment, for I did not believe we should 
 find a fortune, but at any rate we were .both a good 
 deal excited, and were so persistent in sending my 
 mother and Park to the village for the letters and to 
 do some trumped-up errands of ours, that they at 
 once suspected a plot. We were given to little sur 
 prises, as a family, and mamma accepted the situa 
 tion ; and though it was a hot morning she went 
 away with my brother, while Tom and I could hardly 
 wait until they were out of the yard. 
 
 " Don t be too sure, old fellow ! " said I, for we 
 had flown up-stairs, and I lit two candles while he 
 was unfastening- the panel. He pushed his way in 
 and 1 quickly followed him. It was a close little 
 place, and at first, coming from bright daylight into 
 flickering candle-light, I could not see. It was like 
 a large closet, and part of the space was in the side 
 of the chimney like &n arch in a cellar, dark as a 
 
GOOD LUCK. 215 
 
 pocket, and as we became accustomed to the light we 
 could see an old three-cornered chair before a small, 
 upright desk ; there was a queer old lamp fastened to 
 the wall with a candle stuck in it, and some books 
 and newspapers were scattered about, much gnawed 
 by mice. It was very stuffy, and it might have been 
 a safe refuge for a regicide judge, but I could not im 
 agine anybody s wishing to stay there for any other 
 reason than to escape pursuit, which might, after all, 
 have been Uncle Kinlock s motive, for we had al 
 ready heard that his housekeeper sought for him dil 
 igently. 
 
 " Hold both the candles, will you ? " said Tom, 
 "I m going to look in the desk," and finding it was 
 locked he wrenched it open to find some pigeon-holes 
 full of old letters and business papers and a great 
 number of cuttings from newspapers, but there was 
 also a worn leather wallet, which we opened in a 
 hurry, to find some money after all ; a large roll of 
 old-fashioned bank-bills, and a little silver. " Do. 
 you suppose the bills are good for anything?" said I, 
 unkindly ; " were not people given a certain time in 
 which to redeem them ? " And then we opened a 
 little drawer which was also locked, and found some 
 gold pieces ; there were two or three hundred dollars, 
 .tnd most of the coins looked quaint and old, so this 
 was real treasure. 
 
216 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 " It is not a very great fortune after all," said I. 
 
 " Who ever thought it would be ? " said Tom, IN 
 his every-day tone. "What do you suppose they 
 will say when they come home ? This must be the 
 money that was paid for the land ; is n t it silly that 
 no one ever found it before in all these years ! " And 
 really I do not think he was half so disappointed a8 I 
 was. Tom is very clever at adapting himself to cir 
 cumstances. 
 
 There were some old books which would be a de 
 light to my elder brother, who had a great fancy for 
 such things, and we began to wish for his return. 
 We read many of the letters and found very few that 
 were interesting, except one or two from rny grand 
 father, but there were some that my father had writ 
 ten Uncle Kinlock, when he was a boy, which we 
 were very glad to see. 
 
 At last we heard the wagon coming back and went 
 in triumph to tell of our discovery. "We have found 
 Uncle Kinlock s secret chamber," said Tom, as if it 
 were of no consequence to him whatever, " and it is 
 a sort of closet in the chimney, a horrid little place-, 
 and we found some gold pieces and a lot of bank- 
 bills in an old wallet, but I don t believe those are 
 good for anything. Come up, and we will show it to 
 you." 
 
GOOD LUCK. 217 
 
 But I noticed that mamma looked very pale, as f 
 something had happened, and Park seemed excited, 
 and neither of them hada word to say, so I begged 
 them to tell me what was the matter. Mamma came 
 toward Tom and me and held us fast again as she 
 had done the day before. " O my dear girl and 
 boy ! " said she, " you will not be poor any more ; 
 dear old Mrs. Anderson is dead, and she has left half 
 her money to me for my mother s sake. You have 
 been so kind to me, and you have made me so rich 
 always with your love, and I never knew until now 
 how much I have wished to do for you." 
 
 Tom and I were dazed for a minute and we all 
 went into the house ; it was a great surprise to us all. 
 and we could not take it in. Tom locked out of the 
 window and whistled a little, and drummed on the 
 sill. " I found two four-leaved clovers this morn 
 ing," said he, presently, " there they are on the table ; 
 I say, Park, will you come up to see the den ? " 
 
 I do not remember that we changed our fashion of 
 living, after that day, though earlier in the season 
 we had been apt to find fault with it, and to wish for 
 something that we did not have. We had thought, 
 too, that we were staying at Windywalls because we 
 must, but we did not leave there until late in the au 
 tumn, and with deep regret even then, which shows 
 he idleness, at least, of quarreling with necessity. 
 
MISS BECKY S PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 JEFORE her brother, the Rev. Mr. Parsons, 
 died, Miss Becky and he had often talked 
 about going back to Maine, to visit their 
 old friends ; but somehow the right time had never 
 come, and now, when she thought of going all by 
 herself, she felt as if it were her duty to carry out 
 this cherished wish. 
 
 To be sure, it would be sad to go alone. They 
 had often said that there would be many changes, 
 and they should find few persons who remembered 
 them ; and so it would not have been altogether 
 cheerful, at any rate. The minister and his sister 
 had had few relatives, and most of those were dead, 
 except a cousin in Brookfield, whom they had heard 
 from now and then, but, though they reminded each 
 other of the changes that had taken place, they stil 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 219 
 
 instinctively thought of their native town as if it 
 were very nearly the same as it used to be when 
 they had last seen it, thirty or forty years before. 
 Their father and mother had died when they were 
 very young, and Miss Becky had lived with an old 
 aunt. Her brother had early shown unmistakable 
 proofs of his calling to the ministry, and had used 
 most of his share of their small fortune for his educa 
 tion ; and he had been settled in his first parish only 
 two or three years when Miss Becky went to live 
 with him, her aunt having suddenly died and Mr. 
 Parsons being in distress for a housekeeper. It 
 proved a most judicious arrangement, for neither of 
 them ever married, and they were capitally suited to 
 each other, having that difference of disposition and 
 similarity of tastes which make it possible for two 
 people to live together without being too often re 
 minded of the fact that we are in this world for the 
 sake of discipline, and not enjoyment. It was always 
 said that Mr. Parsons had been disappointed in love 
 while he was pursuing his studies at the theological 
 school, and whether he took this for an indication 
 that he would be more useful as a single man I do 
 
 O 
 
 not know ; but, at any rate, in spite of frequent good 
 chances and the way to seize them being made easy 
 for him by members of his parishes, he never fell in 
 
220 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 love again and seemed to grow better satisfied with 
 life year by year. He was a handsome man, and 
 Miss Becky was proud of him. He was to her not 
 only the best of preachers and kindest of men, but 
 the most admirable of gentlemen. She had a thor 
 oughly English respect for the cloth, and she had 
 been born in the days when, in her native New Eng 
 land town, the league of Church and State was pow 
 erful and prominent, and the believers in the Con 
 gregational mode of worship and church government 
 were able to look down upon other sects as dissenters. 
 She had left Brookfield with great regret, though she 
 had not known how dear the old place was to her until 
 she came to leave it. She had never been very happy 
 at her aunt s, for she never had liked her uncle very 
 well, and his wife was a fretful, tiresome sort of 
 woman, who made it so uncomfortable for every one, 
 when she was not pleased, that her household became 
 cowards in never daring to take their own way or to 
 have minds of their own about even their own affairs ; 
 and it seemed a bright future to Miss Parsons to have 
 a home of her own, as she knew her brother s house 
 would be, for she was to have all the good fortune of 
 minister s wife, the glory and honor and pride 
 of it, with none of the responsibility of suiting her 
 self to the parish, which in a country town is some 
 times no light weight to carry. 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 221 
 
 It was a long journey to take, for Mr. Parsons 
 had been called to a church in Western New York, 
 which seemed to Miss Becky like a foreign country. 
 It was known throughout Brookfield that she was 
 to start one Monday morning, and on Sunday her 
 departure was referred to in the long prayer before 
 the morning sermon, and in the evening meeting 
 both deacons and some other pillars of the church 
 prayed devoutly that she might be kept from danger 
 and peril on her journey, and that she might help to 
 scatter the good seed among the far-away people 
 with whom she was to make her home. It was al 
 most the same thing as if she were going to be a 
 foreign missionary, and she was very solemn about 
 it ; but after she reached Alton it seemed as civilized 
 and as home-like as Brookfield itself, and any sacri 
 fice she had gloried in making proved to have been 
 only in her imagination. Twice since then Mr. Par 
 sons had accepted calls to other parishes, farther 
 West, and for the last twenty-seven or twenty-eight 
 years they had been in Devonport, which had started 
 to be a rival to New York city itself. It had been 
 disappointed and left at one side by the railroads, 
 which presently put an end to the usefulness of a 
 canal which had brought some business to the little 
 town, and it had grown very dull and a good deal 
 
222 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 less important in its own mind. The minister and 
 his sister had lived on year after year in comfortable 
 fashion. The salary was small, but, fortunately, cer 
 tain, and Miss Becky had a little income which re 
 lieved her from any feeling of dependence or uncom 
 fortable humility toward the parishioners. Her hand 
 had been asked in marriage more than once ; but she 
 never had thought it best to change her situation, for 
 in neither case had it appeared likely that she should 
 better herself, and she felt that there could be no 
 reproach attached to single-blessedness while she 
 kept her brother s house, and he was a minister of 
 the gospel. It gave her a position and duty for 
 which one must have a vocation. 
 
 But, as I have said, as years went on, Miss Becky s 
 heart and thoughts were oftener and oftener turned 
 toward Brookfield ; and the minister himself, from 
 hearing her say so much about it, came to have as 
 great a wish as she to go back to New England. It 
 is always home to all the people who go nway from 
 it to the westward. As they grow older they love it 
 better and better, and it is a strong bond between the 
 older settlers if in their youth they had some knowl 
 edge of each other s neighborhoods. The hearts of 
 New England travelers are often touched at being 
 *sked to visit some old people, because they came 
 
IfISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 223 
 
 from the Eastern States, and with all the Westerner s 
 pride in his new country his thoughts often turn 
 fondly toward the rising sun. There is in this gener 
 ation an instinctive homesickness that will probably 
 be outgrown in the next. To any subject of the 
 Queen England is always home, and a Canadian or 
 a New Zealander is first of all and last of all an Eng 
 lishman. 
 
 Miss Becky s brother, for some months before his 
 death, had not seemed so strong as usual. He was 
 several years older than she, and seemed very old in 
 that part of the country where most of the people are 
 young or, at furthest, middle-aged. He had never 
 been in the habit of taking stated vacations (in fact, 
 it had been a matter of pride and principle with him 
 not to do so) ; but early in the summer he had said 
 he should take a rest of a month when September 
 came, and then they would go to Brookfield. He 
 wished to verify some dates and records, and, though 
 there were few people he cared much to see, there 
 vrere a good many tombstones, and the old town itself 
 was dearer to him than he ever used to believe. He 
 had been hardly more than a boy when he left it, and 
 it was his long-lost boyhood that he hoped to find 
 again. They would go to the seashore for a little 
 while he should like to get a whiff of salt air ; and 
 
224 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 on their way home they would stop in New York, 
 where there was to be a general meeting of the 
 churches that was of great interest to him. 
 
 They talked about their plans like two children ; 
 but they never carried them out, for, as I have said, 
 the minister died. It was a great shock to Miss Becky, 
 who until the very last was sure that a change of air 
 was all that her brother needed to make him well and 
 strong again ; but he only went on a last short jour 
 ney instead, and all the clergy in that corner of the 
 world assembled to follow him, and they preached 
 about him, and wrote about him in the religious news 
 papers, and said how sadly he would be missed and 
 what a pillar had fallen. And then the world went 
 on very much the same as ever, except to Miss Becky, 
 who felt as if it had come to an end. 
 
 She stayed on in Devonport for a while, until she 
 began to be very unhappy. The parish was hearing 
 candidates with a view to settling a successor to Mr. 
 Parsons, and they seemed so unfit for his place (as, 
 indeed, they were, being mostly young and puffed up 
 with pride) that she listened to them with great im 
 patience and distress, and she made up her mind, by 
 little and little, that as soon as the spring opened she 
 would go to Brookfield and make a long visit. After 
 til, there were a good many people in that place and 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 225 
 
 its neighboring towns whom she wished to see, and 
 whom she thought would be glad to see her ; and, if 
 she did not care to vLdt, she had it in her power to 
 board for a while, and the more she thought about it 
 the more in a hurry she felt to be on the way. She 
 was by no means a rich woman ; but, if she lost noth 
 ing, she would have enough to live on comfortably, 
 since she spent but little and had an uncommon fac 
 ulty of making that little go a long way. 
 
 The journey to Boston was bewildering and tire 
 some to her, for the most part ; but when she was 
 fairly started one morning to take the last half-day s 
 car-ride, she was much delighted, and looked out of 
 the window eagerly, and examined the faces in the 
 car, to see if there might not possibly be one that was 
 familiar. The very names of the stations were de 
 lightful to her ears, and after a while she felt as if she 
 were traveling in disguise and as if everybody would 
 be overjoyed if she only told them who she was. " I 
 have n t been here for forty years," she told the con 
 ductor, after he had answered some question she had 
 put to him ; and he looked at her curiously (as if to 
 see whether she was an old acquaintance, she thought), 
 and said that she must find things a good deal changed. 
 She heard a gentleman in front call him Mr. Pres- 
 tott, and, if he had not hurried on, she would have 
 15 
 
226 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 asked him if he were not one of the sons of an old 
 schoolmate of hers, who had married a Prescott and 
 gone to live in Portland. She was sure he had a look 
 of Adaline Emery. 
 
 It was a great pleasure that at one of the stations 
 a new-comer took a seat beside her, the cars being 
 full. She was a woman of about her own age, and 
 evidently a journey was a matter of great importance 
 to her. So Miss Becky felt a sympathy for her, and 
 ventured to say that she had been in the cars for 
 nearly two days and nights, after her companion had 
 asked the name of one of the stations which she had 
 failed to hear. 
 
 " I want to know if you have ! " said she, looking 
 at Miss Becky with respect. " Seems to me I could 
 n t stand it, noways ; but then it ain t come in my lot 
 to be much of a traveler. "Was you ever this way 
 before ? " 
 
 " I was born and brought up down in Brookfield," 
 answered Miss Becky ; " but I have been away pretty 
 near forty years. I wonder if you are acquainted 
 about there any." 
 
 " Why, I was raised in Brookfield," said the woman, 
 * and I ve got a brother and sister living there. I m 
 just going to Brookfield now, to stop with them. I 
 thought it was a great while since I was there ; buf 
 
MJSS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 227 
 
 yon beat me. I was there nine years ago, and I ex 
 pect I shall find a good many changes." And our 
 two friends looked at each other searchingly, and in 
 a minute a glimmer of satisfaction overspread Miss 
 Becky s face. " I declare to my heart if you are n t 
 Mahal y Robinson ! I thought you looked sort of nat 
 ural when I see you come into the cars. I s pose you 
 must have forgot all about Rebecca Parsons by this 
 time." But her friend had not, and they grasped 
 each other s hand and kissed each other at once, and 
 the sudden outburst of affection was most amusing to 
 the neighboring passengers. 
 
 " Why, I feel as if I had got home, seeing you," 
 said Miss Becky, thinking how dreadfully old her 
 friend looked, while the friend thought exactly the 
 same thing of her, and each flattered herself that in 
 her case time had left but little trace of its flight. " I 
 forget your married name ? " inquired Miss Becky. 
 I did know it at the time. You know you wrote me 
 just after I went out West ; but I always think of you 
 as Mahaly Robinson same s when we went to 
 school together." 
 
 " I married first with a Sands; but I lost him when 
 we had only been married three years," said Mahala, 
 without any appearance of regret, " and then I mar 
 ried Joshua Parker, of Gloucester. I Ve been a widow 
 
228 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 now these fourteen .years. Fie was a ship-master and 
 used to sail out o Salem when I first met with him ; 
 and after that he was master of the Fleetwing, out 
 o Boston for a good many years. He was lost at 
 sea. She was never heard from after they left Cal- 
 lao. I wa n t left very well off ; we d had consider 
 able sickness, and his father and mother and a foolish 
 sister made it their home with us and was consider 
 able expense. I always set a great deal by Father 
 Parker, though. He was a real good man and he 
 always did what he could. He got frost-bit down to 
 the Banks, one winter, and his hands and feet were 
 crippled. We had hard scratchin one spell : but my 
 boys and girls got so s they could work, and then 
 there wa n t any more trouble. I ve had a good deal 
 to be thankful for ; but I ve seen the time I d a-laid 
 down and died, I was so discouraged. I live with my 
 youngest daughter now, and she s got as handsome a 
 little farm as you ever see and a good husband. He s 
 doing well, too. They are always thinking o things 
 to please me, both of em. T ain t got a child I ve 
 been sorry for, and that s a good deal to say. There s 
 a sight of risk in fetchin up six of em. But I want 
 to know how it s been with you. I see by " The 
 Congregationalist " that your brother had been takes 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 229 
 
 u Yes," said Miss Becky, with a sigh. " He was a 
 dreadful loss to me. We d been together so many 
 years, and there never was a man like Joseph, any 
 way. He was known all through that part of the 
 West. We d talked about coming on, and it s real sad 
 to come without him ; but I feel s if it was just what 
 he d want me to do, if he knew it. I hoped I should 
 see him stand up and preach in the old meeting-house. 
 Some of his sermons were thought a great deal of. 
 I could n t always understand the deeper thought in 
 em," said Miss Becky, proudly. " We set a good 
 many times to come on ; and we did get as far as 
 New York once/ to the meetings of the American 
 Board, and then somehow there was always some 
 place we thought we must go to first, out West. It 
 ain t that we ve stayed right in the same place all 
 these years," she explained. " My brother used to 
 travel about a good deal. Seems to me, coming back 
 this way, I miss him more than ever. I keep think 
 ing o things I ought to tell him when I get back to 
 Devonport. It s been right hard to get reconciled." 
 
 " Then you re not coming back to settle ? " asked 
 Mrs. Parker. I thought first that perhaps you was. 
 There, we re a getting into Portsmouth ; but I don t 
 suppose I should know my way round. I lived here 
 long of my first husband, and I always liked the 
 place." 
 
230 COUNTRY BY- WATS. 
 
 " I remember coming, when I was a young girl, to 
 stop witli my aunt Dennett for a spell, over on the 
 Kittery shore. We ve got to go across the river, 
 have n t we ? I should n t wonder if you could see 
 the house. My sakes alive, ! how good and fresh the 
 salt water smells ! Don t it ? I declare, how it car 
 ries me back ! " exclaimed Miss Becky. 
 
 " The wind must have come round into the east," 
 said Mrs. Parker, wisely. " It was a little north of 
 west when I started this morning, and I thought I 
 should have a good day ; but then we re going right 
 back into the country. Who are you expecting to 
 stop with ? " 
 
 " I wrote to Cousin Sophy Annis, because I ve been 
 in the habit of hearing from her every year, and one 
 of her sons is living West, and has stopped with us 
 several times. I did n t get any answer, for I started 
 off pretty sudden. I found I was going to have com 
 pany as far as Syracuse. I can go to the tavern, if it 
 don t seem to be convenient for Sophia. I don t know 
 but it would be just as well, any way, for I feel as if 
 I was almost a stranger. I should n t mind the ex 
 pense," she added, with a good deal of satisfaction. 
 
 " I know they won t let you go to no tavern ; 
 Brookfield folks will have altered a good deal if they 
 have come to that ! " exclaimed Mrs. Parker, in a 
 
MISS BE CRTS PILGRIMAGE. 231 
 
 way that was gratifying. " You 11 find more that is 
 glad to see you than you ve any idea of. If you 
 don t find anybody a-waiting for you, you come right 
 home with me to Sister Phebe s ; and then they 11 
 take you over to Sophy s, after tea or in the morning, 
 just as you are a mind to. You know it s right on 
 the way there, and Sophy won t think nothing of 
 your stopping long of me, as we fell in with each 
 other in the cars." 
 
 But it seemed very lonely to Miss Becky, who was 
 tired with her long journey ; and she became uncer 
 tain of her reception, and almost wished she had not 
 undertaken the pilgrimage. She began to understand 
 how changed the place must be, and how little it 
 would be like the Brookfield she had left. And when 
 Mrs. Parker remembered that she had spoken of her 
 brother s preaching in the old meeting-house, and ex 
 plained that it had been torn down, to make place for 
 a new one, the year before, it was really a great sor 
 row to our friend. She felt that if it were not for 
 visiting the burying-ground it would not have been 
 worth while to go at all. 
 
 " T did think it would be so pleasant to set in the 
 old pew again, where I used to set when I was a 
 girl," she said, sadly. " I have thought just how it 
 all looked so many times ! " As they neared Brook- 
 
232 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 field, the country grew more and more familiar, and 
 Miss Becky looked out of the car-window all the time, 
 and was again in high spirits. She told the names of 
 the hills, and when she saw a farm-house that she re 
 membered, not far from the railway, she was perfectly 
 overjoyed, and hurriedly collected her carpet-bag, and 
 her basket, and her big pasteboard box, that held 
 some treasures which she had been afraid to trust to 
 her trunk. " Do tell me if I look all right, Mahaly," 
 she said, quickly passing her hand, in its loose black- 
 thread glove, over the front of her bonnet and her 
 neat frisette. " I don t s pose I am fit to look at. 
 I ve always had to keep myself looking nice, on Jo 
 seph s account, being a minister, and we were always 
 subject to a good deal o company," she remarked ; 
 but Widow Parker said she looked as if she had only 
 traveled from the next town, and in a few minutes 
 more they were standing on the platform of the Brook- 
 field station. 
 
 There were only strangers waiting there, and they 
 were mostly little boys, and Miss Becky felt a strange 
 sense of de solation ; but presently some one greeted 
 Mrs. Parker (who was much flustered) with great 
 cordiality, and she walked off, without giving a 
 thought to her fellow-traveler, who stood still, look 
 ing anxiously at every face that passed, as if she 
 
MISS BECKY S PILGRIMAGE. 233 
 
 hoped to find it familiar. She held the box and the 
 h)Mg and the basket, and suddenly wondered if her 
 trunk had come, and looked down the platform the 
 wrong way, and distressed herself with the thought 
 that it had not been put off the train, since it was not 
 in sight. The little boys strolled away, and the rest 
 of the people began to disappear also, and Miss 
 Becky remembered her companion, and wondered 
 what could have become of Mrs. Parker, who had 
 seemed so friendly ; and just then some one came 
 driving up to the platform. It was a young woman, 
 and she jumped out quickly and came toward our 
 friend. 
 
 " I wonder if you are Miss Parsons ? " asked the 
 girl, pleasantly. 
 
 " Why, yes, dear," said poor Miss Becky, who had 
 been almost ready to cry. 
 
 " Grandmother said that I had better come round 
 by the depot, but the rest of us were certain you 
 would n t be here until to-morrow. How do you 
 do ? " and she kissed the old lady as if she really 
 cared something about her. " We are all so pleased 
 because you are coming. Now let me see to your 
 baggage. We can take the trunk right into the back 
 of the wagon." 
 
 " I was just feeling afraid it had n t come, * said 
 
234 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 Miss Becky ; but the station-master asked if that 
 were not the one which he was just going to drag 
 into the depot, and in a few minutes more they were 
 in the wagon, driving away. 
 
 lk I hope you won t be too tired," said the girl. 
 " We shall have to ride three or four miles ; but then 
 it is nice and cool." 
 
 " T always liked to ride," said Miss Becky, " and it 
 is so refreshing to get out of the cars. There! you 
 don t know what a difference there is between the air 
 here and out West ; but now I want you to tell me 
 who you are ? " 
 
 " I forgot you did n t know," said the girl, laugh 
 ing. " We have talked so much about you that I for 
 got you did n t know me just as well as I do you. 
 I m Annie Downs, and my mother was Julia Annis." 
 
 " I can t believe Sophy Annis has got a grand 
 daughter as old as you ! " exclaimed Miss Becky. 
 " Why, I don t feel any older than ever I did, but she 
 was four or five years older than I." 
 
 " I have a brother and sister older than I," said 
 Annie ; " but they re both married. We lived at 
 Freeport ; but I suppose you knew that father died 
 some years ago, and grandmother was getting feeble, 
 so she wanted mother and me to break up and come to 
 live with her. I have been keeping the town school 
 
MISS BE CRTS PILGRIMAGE. 235 
 
 for two years. It s very near, you know. Mother s 
 brother carries on the farm Uncle Daniel. He 
 says he remembers you, and your coming to say good- 
 by just before you went West ; but grandmother says 
 he was too young." 
 
 " I guess he does remember me," said Miss Becky, 
 with a sudden affection for this relative of hers. I 
 tnow he was a dear little fellow, running round the 
 kitchen. It was in cold weather, I know. I was 
 going to kiss him, and he hid under the table." This 
 was very pleasant and seemed to bring the strange 
 relatives much nearer. " Your mother was the old 
 est, and was quite a girl then. I remember hearing 
 of your father s being taken away ; but I always 
 thought of you all as little bits of children." 
 
 " There, I did feel so lonesome to-day ! " said Miss 
 Becky to old Mrs. Annis and her daughter, that even 
 ing ; " but I feel now as if I had ot back among my 
 own folks. I like out West ; but somehow I never 
 have felt at home there as I do here, and after Jo 
 seph s death I saw it was being with him that had 
 kept me from feeling strange. And I don t know 
 why it is, either, for there are a good many people in 
 our place from New England and everybody is free 
 and neighborly." 
 
 Nothing could have pleased Miss Becky more than 
 
236 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 the welcome she received from the townspeople. She 
 said over and over again that she had no idea she 
 should find so many people who remembered her, 
 and the excitement her visit seemed to make was 
 deeply gratifying. It was exactly the way her brother 
 was treated when he went back to visit one of his 
 old parishes, and she accepted invitations to spend 
 the day or to make a week s visit after haying until 
 she was entirely confused at the thought of her en 
 gagements. It was very pleasant ; but sometimes, 
 when she was tired, the future suggested itself for 
 her decision, and she wondered what she had better 
 do when the visits were over, for there was all the 
 rest of her life to be lived, and she ought to be mak 
 ing some plans. 
 
 ii. 
 
 It would not be^fair to withhold an account of the 
 wretchedness of poor Mrs. Mahala Parker when she 
 remembered, on the evening after her arrival at her 
 sister s, that she had meant to bring with her another 
 guest. Something happened to remind her of their 
 conversation in the cars, and she suddenly looked 
 gray for a minute, while a chill crept over her. 
 " Oh ! my good land o compassion ! " she groaned. 
 ft What have I been and done ? I believe my mind 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 237 
 
 a-failing of me." And her amazed companions asked 
 what could be the matter. 
 
 " I met Rebecca Parsons in the cars," said she, 
 " coming on from the West. We happened to sit in 
 the same seat ; but I never should have known her 
 if she had n t called me by name and told me who 
 she was. She said she had been gone forty years. 
 I should n t have said it was more than thirty, if it 
 was that ; but time does go so fast ! She did n t 
 seem certain about anybody s coming to meet her, 
 and I told her I d fetch her along with me, and then 
 you d send her over to the Annises, where she ex 
 pected to stop ; and I come right off without ever 
 even saying Good-by to her. I don t know what 
 she will think. I never felt so in my life. I don t 
 remember to nave seen no other conveyance there, 
 and she must ha been real put to it to know what to 
 do. I got sort of excited, it s so long since I went 
 anywhere before. It must have looked just as if I 
 wanted to get rid of her. There was something on 
 my mind all the way here ; but I kept thinking it 
 was because I had left something in the cars." 
 
 " Well, right after breakfast one of the girls shall 
 take you over to the Annises, Sister Mahaly," said 
 Mrs. Littlefield. "You d feel better to see her 
 yourself than to send word. I suppose she will be 
 
238 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 there, or she may have stopped up to the tavern, and 
 they ought to know it. And you may as well ask 
 them all to come over and take tea to-morrow and 
 spend a good long afternoon. I sha n t have another 
 chance for some time, on account of haying. I was 
 calculating to ask our minister, any way ; and when 
 I got your letter I thought I would wait until you 
 was here." 
 
 " Adaline sent to Boston by one of our neighbors, 
 who is real tasty, and got me a beautiful cap, just 
 before I came away," mentioned Mrs. Parker. " She 
 said I d be likely to want it, and those I had were get 
 ting a little past ; but I told her I wished she had n t. 
 It will be just what I need, though, won t it ? Re 
 becca was dressed real plain ; but everything seemed 
 to be of good quality. I dare say she put on what 
 was old and would n t hurt, she had so far to come." 
 
 Miss Becky had been a little angry at being de 
 serted ; but she took a grim satisfaction in thinking 
 Mrs. Parker s mind was not what it used to be, and 
 when she made her appearance in the morning, en 
 tirely penitent and armed with an invitation to tea, 
 she was forgiven in full. The tea-party was a great 
 success, and Miss Becky was the centre of attraction. 
 There were so many questions to be asked and an 
 swered, wherever she went ; the fates and fortunes 
 
MISS BE CRTS PILGRIMAGE. 239 
 
 of so many families had to be recounted for her sat 
 isfaction ; and she made herself very agreeable by 
 giving interesting reminiscences of her own life, and 
 telling of the strange customs of some Westerners 
 and the contrasts she noticed in the fashions of living 
 East and West. She felt herself to be a person of 
 great interest and consequence. You may be sure 
 that she wore her best black silk, and that she suc 
 ceeded in leaving an impression on the minister s 
 mind of her being well posted on clerical and relig 
 ious questions. She told the Annis family, compla 
 cently, as they drove home together in the two-seated 
 wagon, after the tea-party was over, that she always 
 felt at home with ministers and knew their ways bet 
 ter than she did anybody s. 
 
 Cousin Sophia was pleased at being the owner of 
 such an attractive and satisfactory guest. " I don t 
 think I ever saw Mr. Beacham appear to enjoy him 
 self better," she said. " He is n t much of a talker, 
 as a general thing ; but you brought him out right 
 off. I tell you, Rebeccy, you ought to set your cap 
 for the parson. He is well off. We give him eight 
 hundred dollars, and he s got means beside. I think 
 he s been a widower long enough ; but folks here 
 has got tired setting their caps for him, less it s old 
 Cynthy Rush, and she pears to think that while 
 there s life there s hope." 
 
240 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 " He seems to be au excellent Christian man," said 
 Miss Becky, flushing a little ; but it was too dark for 
 anybody to notice it. 
 
 " I m going to have him to our house to tea," said 
 Mrs. Annis, giving her daughter a suggestive poke. 
 " He always likes to come in strawberry time." 
 
 Annie Downs had been much amused that evening 
 at the evident interest which Mr. Beacham and Miss 
 Becky took in each other. It was a funny, sedate 
 likeness of a mild flirtation between two young peo 
 ple. They were mindful of the respect due to their 
 own advanced years and the proprieties of a tea- 
 party; but they found each other very attractive. 
 They were both fine-looking. Mr. Beacham would 
 have been fairly imposing in even a gown and bands, 
 but in a surplice he would have been magnificent. 
 One longed to see him in a ruffled shirt and small 
 clothes, instead of his plain black garments ; but his 
 solemn countenance bore on it the stamp of eccle 
 siastical dignity. " Anybody would know he was a 
 minister," said Miss Becky, decidedly, and she had 
 had vast experience among the Western clergy. 
 
 The June days went by quickly, and Miss Parsons 
 enjoyed her visit more and more, and felt less and 
 less inclination to go back to her Devouport life. 
 She had not supposed that people would be so glad 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 241 
 
 to see her ; but, having once welcomed her, they 
 never were made sorry, for our friend was really a 
 good and pleasant person to know. The young peo 
 ple found her full of sympathy and kind-heartedness, 
 and she gave a great deal of pleasure wherever she 
 went. It was easy to see that she did not think only 
 of how her friends greeted her and what they did for 
 her, for she was as anxious to help and to give, 
 in her turn, and she could be as amusing as heart 
 could wish. There was an uufaded girlishness about 
 her yet, in spite of the fallen snows of so many win 
 ters. She was very happy in Brookfield, and there 
 was a companionship to be had even in the cypress- 
 grown burying-grouud, which was dearer to her than 
 she had dreamed it would be. The people in church 
 on Sundays soon felt as if she were again their neigh 
 bor and friend, and Mr. Beacham found himself look 
 ing often toward the Annis pew, as he preached ; and 
 he selected his best sermon the next Sunday after 
 he met Miss Parsons, and repeated it for her benefit, 
 and was rewarded by her telling him, as he gravely 
 shook hands with her on his way out of church, that 
 it reminded her of one of her dear brother s on the 
 tame text, but Mr. Beacham had expanded the sub 
 ject much more fully. " You know how to make 
 things very clear," Miss Becky said, with a sudden 
 10 
 
242 COUNTRY BY-WATS. 
 
 brightening of her eyes and a simple frankness, that 
 he thought extremely desirable. " It is something to 
 be most grateful for, if a word we speak reaches and 
 helps another struggling soul," he said, and shook 
 hands absently with a parishioner in the next pew. 
 
 " Did you see poor Mary Ann Dean at church, to 
 day ?" some one asked, as they drove home after meet 
 ing. And Mrs. Annis answered that she doubted if 
 the poor soul ever got out to church again. " I 
 have n t told you about her, have I, R becky ? She 
 was a daughter of Susan Beckett, who used to be at 
 your aunt s a good deal ; but it may have been after 
 you went West. She has had about the hardest time 
 of anybody I know. Their house burnt down, and 
 they lost most everything ; and four of the family died 
 within sixteen months. Mary Ann was left all alone, 
 with one brother that drank like a fish, and she had 
 to earn what she could and bear the brunt of every 
 thing. She was a good deal younger than the rest 
 of the children. She has been failing this good 
 while ; but she would n t give up. She s always 
 reminded me of a flower in the road that every wheel 
 goes over. There ain t a better young woman any 
 where in Brookfield. I set everything by Mary 
 Ann." 
 
 " I do feel sorry," said Miss Becky. " I had ir OE 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 243 
 
 my mind in meeting to ask you if any of Susan s 
 folks were about here ; and I noticed that poor, sick- 
 looking girl. I 11 go to see her the first of the week, 
 if she don t live too far off, on her mother s account, 
 if nothing else." 
 
 " It is only a little way," said Annie Downs. 
 " I 11 go with you to-morrow afternoon, if you will 
 come along to the school-house after school, Cousin 
 Becky." 
 
 Miss Becky was very kind to this new friend, who 
 soon grew more ill and quite dependent upon the 
 kindness of her neighbors, and our heroine, having 
 no family cares, was with her a good deal for the 
 next fortnight. Haying had begun, and it was lucky 
 that so good a nurse was for the most of the time at 
 leisure, since the other women were all so busy, and, 
 indeed, at any time had their hands full with their 
 own work. 
 
 It happened that two or three times Mr. Beach am 
 came to visit his sick parishioner ; and it must be 
 confessed that Miss Becky did not show her usual 
 composure in the presence of the clergy, and that she 
 began to feel uncomfortably self-conscious and to 
 insist upon it to herself that she took no interest in 
 the man whatever. She openly said (feeling all the 
 *ime that she might be sorry for it) that she did not 
 
244 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 consider him gifted in prayer; but even this bold 
 treason did not keep her heart from fluttering at the 
 mention of his name. The Brookfield people quickly 
 caught at the first hint, which was given by a suspi 
 cious parishioner, and one Sunday noon Miss Becky 
 was joked a little by the people who knew her best, 
 which was very discomposing. 
 
 So one day, late in the afternoon, the Annis family 
 were not surprised to see the minister and Miss 
 Becky come walking up the road together. She had 
 been away for two or three days ; but had been left 
 at Mary Ann Dean s to spend an hour or two, on 
 her way home, and Mrs. Annis s first thought was 
 that the sick woman had suddenly died, and that they 
 were coming together to consult about making some 
 arrangements. But Annie Downs was quicker witted. 
 " I should n t wonder if Cousin Becky had made up 
 her mind to settle down in Brookfield," said she, with 
 a little laugh. 
 
 Mrs. Annis hurried to the door. " Poor Mary 
 Ann ain t gone, I hope ? " she asked, anxiously , a.nd 
 Mr. Beacham looked confused, and answered that 
 she seemed as comfortable as usual. " Miss Parsons 
 and I were speaking of some theological points to 
 which her brother gave much attention," he apolo 
 gized, and everybody felt a little awkward, uutii 
 
MISS BECKTS PILGRIMAGE. 245 
 
 Mr*. Annis bethought herself to take refuge m her 
 duty as hostess. " I want you to stop to tea with 
 us, now you re here, Mr. Beacham," she said, eagerly. 
 " We ve been thinking of sending for you. I had 
 some thoughts of naming Thursday. You always 
 like our strawberries, you know." 
 
 The minister looked very pleased. " I do not know 
 why I cannot accept your hospitality, Mrs. Annis. 
 My housekeeper said she should be absent to-night, 
 though she doubtless made some provision for my 
 supper. And on Thursday I have engaged to he 
 away." 
 
 It was nearly tea-time already ; at least, there was 
 hardly time enough to make sure that the feast would 
 be appropriate for the guest. Mrs. Annis and Mrs. 
 Downs and Annie all scurried to the kitchen at once, 
 and when Mr. Daniel Annis came in from the field 
 he was told who was there, and went at once to array 
 himself in his Sunday clothes. 
 
 " You go in and talk to him, Daniel, and Annie or 
 I will be in pretty quick," said Mrs. Downs. And 
 her brother manfully tried to do his duty ; but after 
 his first greeting and report of the crops he did not 
 know what else to say. Miss Parsons had looked 
 much embarrassed as he entered, and soon went out 
 to the dining-room, leaving the host and his guest to 
 
246 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 entertain each other ; and Daniel wished that some 
 of the women would come back. He thought of the 
 unfailing resource of all farmers, and longed to ask 
 the minister to come out and have a look at the hogs ; 
 but, being a minister, he feared it might not be the 
 proper thing. 
 
 Happily, Mr. Beacham himself suggested that they 
 should take a walk down to the bee-hives, and pres 
 ently they fell into easy discourse together on some 
 parish matters. And after a little while Miss Becky 
 reappeared, and mentioned that some one wished te 
 see Daniel at the barn, about pressing the hay ; and 
 while he hurried back to the house our friend and 
 the minister strolled along together slowly. 
 
 It was a pleasant old garden, and in the middle 
 path there was a long, rickety arbor, covered thick 
 with grape-vines. The sun was getting low ; but, 
 for all that, the shade was pleasant, and Mr. Beacham 
 stopped for a minute, but Miss Becky was uneasy 
 and wished he would go on. 
 
 " Since I laid away my dear companion, now seven 
 years ago," he said, in a tone that made Miss Becky s 
 heart thump dreadfully, " I have had no desire tc 
 fill her place in my home, solitary though it has been 
 but I find that I am no longer contented with my 
 aituation, and that you possess all the qualifications 
 
MISS BECKY S PILGRIMAGE. 247 
 
 to make me happy. We are not young ; but the 
 Lord may continue our lives for many years yet, and 
 I believe that we should enjoy a united home. You 
 already know the responsibilities and cares of a min 
 ister s life, and it seems to me unwise that you should 
 return to the West permanently, though I do not 
 doubt you have formed many associations which are 
 dear to you and which it will be hard to sever. Per 
 mit me to say that you have already become very 
 dear to me, and that I can assure you of a most heart 
 felt and enduring affection. I hope you will take 
 the matter, as I have, into serious and prayerful con 
 sideration." 
 
 Miss Parsons felt for her handkerchief; but she 
 mistook the way to her pocket, and fumbled at her 
 dress without finding it, while the tears were ready 
 to fall from her eyes, and Mr. Beacham and the 
 grape-leaves and a red hollyhock that had pushed 
 through the trellis were all in a dazzle together. 
 She had somehow expected to have the solemn little 
 speech followed by the benediction ; but the minister 
 stood there as if he expected her to say something. 
 So she put out her left hand toward him, and covered 
 her face with the other, and the handkerchief, which 
 was found, at last, just in time. And Annie Downs, 
 who was in the strawberry bed not a dozen feet away, 
 
|48 COUNTRY BY-WAYS. 
 
 hardly daring to breathe lest they should notice her, 
 heard a resounding kiss, and then stole softly away 
 among the pear-trees, and told her mother she need 
 not be worried any more because supper would be 
 so late. 
 
 They went on a wedding journey to Devonport, 
 where Miss Becky was so much older than most 
 people in town that her returning to them a bride 
 caused great fun and astonishment; but everybody 
 was very glad. She seemed so happy herself and she 
 did not look a day over fifty-five. She carried back 
 to the East some household goods that were dear 
 to her, and she gave away the rest most generously. 
 
 But she felt very sad when she paid a last visit to 
 her brother s grave, and as she came away she no 
 ticed some trees he had planted and tended with great 
 care, and she felt as if she were taking a sad fare 
 well of all her happy life with him. She was very 
 contented in Brookfield and was looked up to by the 
 whole parish, and she made Mr. Beacham an excel 
 lent wife ; but she thought, with all her admiration 
 for him, that, although an uncommon writer, he 
 never could quite equal her brother s great sermon 
 on Faith and Works. Dear Miss Becky ! She often 
 thought that her life had been most wonderfully or 
 dered. Everything had happened just right, and 
 
MISS BECKY S PILGRIMAGE. 249 
 
 she did not see how it was that all the events of life, 
 other people s affairs, and things that seemed to 
 have no connection with her, all matched her needs 
 and fitted in at just the right time. If she had come 
 to Brookfield the year before she was sure that she 
 should have had no temptation to stay there, though 
 she and Mr. Beacham did seem to have been made 
 for each other. Mr. Beacham would have said that 
 it was the unfailing wisdom of Providence ; but she 
 wondered at it none the less and was very grateful. 
 Perhaps her life would seem dull, and not in the 
 least conspicuous or interesting to most people ; but 
 for the dullest life how much machinery is put in 
 motion and how much provision is made, while to its 
 possible success the whole world will minister and be 
 laid under tribute. 
 
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