CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BEQUEST OF STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 1943 Date Due Cornell University Library PS 2859.S2D6 A dissatisfied soul and A prophetic rama 3 1924 022 179 380 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022179380 A DISSATISFIED SOUL A DISSATISFIED SOUL AND A PEOPHETIC EOMANCEE BY AMIE TBUMBULL SLOSSOF AUTHOR OP "SEVEN DREAMERS," "TISHIN* JIMMY," ETC., ETC., ETC. BONNELL, SILVER & CO. 48 WEST 22d STREET NEW YOEK 1908 U Copyright, 1908, By BONNEIX, SILVER & CO. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Old Mill House . . . Frontispiece Carriage Road on Mount Washington . . 45 Breakwater, Stonington 52 Old Light House 63 A DISSATISFIED SOUL It was when Elder Lincoln was supplying the pulpit of the old Union Meeting-House in Fran- conia. He was a Congregationalist, but was al- ways styled Elder, as was also any clergyman of any denomination; it was, and is now, consid- ered there the fit and proper title for a minister. There were three places of worship in the village representing as many denominations, called collo- quially by the residents the Congo, the Freewill, and the Second- Ad, these names being "short" for the Congregationalist, Freewill Baptist, and Second- Ad ventist churches. The Congregationalists and Baptists held their services in the same house of worship, each taking its turn, yearly I think, in providing a clergyman. Elder Lincoln was the choice of the Congos at that time, a dear, simple-hearted old man whom we loved well. We were sitting together, the good Elder and I, 7 8 A DISSATISFIED SOUL on the piazza of the little inn — it was when Uncle Eben kept it — and talking quietly of many things. I do not recall just how it came about, but I know that our conversation at last veered around to the subject of the soul's immortality, its condition im- mediately after it left the body, possible probation, and the intermediate state, technically so called. In the midst of this talk I saw an odd look upon the face of the Elder, a sort of whimsical smile, as if he were thinking of something not so grave as the topic of which we talked, and when he spoke, his words seemed strangely irrelevant. "Do you know," he asked, "who has taken the old mill-house on the Landaff road, the one, you know, where Captain Noyes lived?" I did not know; I had heard that somebody had lately moved into the old house, but had not heard the name of the new occupant. "Well," said the Elder, still with that quaint smile upon his face, " before you form any definite opinions upon this subject of the intermediate state you should talk with the good woman who lives in that old house." He would not explain further, save to tell me that Mrs. Weaver of Bradford had taken the house, that she was an elderly woman, A DISSATISFIED SOUL 9 practically alone in the world, anxious to know her new neighbors and to make new friends. It was largely owing to this hint that, soon after our Sunday evening talk, I came to know Mrs. Apollos Weaver, to gain her friendship and confi- dence, and to hear her strange story. It was not told me all at one time, but intermit- tently as the summer days went by. Yet every word of the tale was spoken in the old mill-house, and I never pass that ancient brown dwelling, standing high above the road on its steep, grassy bank, with the two tall elms in front, the big lilac bush at the door, and the cinnamon rosebushes straggling down to the road, that I do not think of Mrs. Weaver and her story. It was not in reply to any question of mine that she told it, for, notwithstanding Elder Lincoln's suggestion, I somehow shrank from asking her di- rectly about her theological views and beliefs. I had received a telegram one day relating to a busi- ness matter, and as I sat with Mrs. Weaver at the open door of the mill-house, I spoke of it, and of the nervous dread the sight of one of those dull yellow envelopes always brought me. "Yes," she said, "they're scary things, any 10 A DISSATISFIED SOUL way you take it ; but sometimes the writing one is worse than getting one. I never shall forget, as long as I live, the time I tried and tried, till I thought I should go crazy trying, to put just the right words, and not more than ten of them, into a telegraph to John Nelson. Over and over I went with it, saying the words to myself, and try- ing to pick out something that would sort of break the news easy, and yet have him sense it without any mistake: 'Maria has come back, don't be scared, all well here.' No, the first part of that was too dreadful sudden. 'Don't be surprised to hear Maria is with us now ! ' Oh no, how could he help being surprised, and how could I help making him so? " For you see, Maria was dead and buried, and had been for three whole weeks ! "John Nelson had stood by her dying bed at the very end ; he'd been at the funeral, one of the mourners, being her own half-brother and her nighest relation. He was the last one of the fam- ily to view the remains, and had stayed behind with Mr. Weaver and one of the neighbors to see the grave filled up. So to hear she was staying with us now < would be amazing enough to him, A DISSATISFIED SOUL 11 however I could break it or smooth it down. It was amazing to us, and is now to look back at, only we sort of got used to it after a spell, as you do to anything. "Maria Bliven was n't a near relation of ours, being only my first husband's sister, — I was Mrs. Bliven when I married Mr. Weaver, you know, — but she had lived with us off and on for years, and she'd been buried from our house. Mr. Weaver'd been real good about having her there, though lots of men wouldn't have been, she belonging, as you might say, to another dispensation, my first hus- band's relations. The fact was, she did n't stay to our house long enough at a time for anybody to get tired of her, — never stayed anywheres long enough for that. She was the fittiest, restlessest, changeablest person I ever saw or heard of; and never, never quite satisfied. A week in one place was enough, and more than enough, for Maria. She'd fidget and fuss and walk up and down, and twitch her feet and wiggle her fingers, and make you too nervous for anything, if she had to stay in one spot twenty-four hours, I was going to say. So always just as I was going to be afraid Mr. Weaver would get sick of seeing Maria around and 12 A DISSATISFIED SOUL having a distant relation like her at the table every meal, she'd come down some morning with her carpet-bag in her hand, and say she guessed she'd go over to Haverhill and spend a few days with Mrs. Deacon Colby, or she'd take the cars for Newbury or Fairlee to visit with the Bishops or Captain Sanborn's folks, and sometimes as far as Littleton to Jane Spooner's. Then Mr. Weaver and me, we'd have a nice quiet spell all to our- selves, and just when we were ready for a change and a mite of company and talk, Maria would come traipsing back. Something did n't suit her, and she was n't satisfied, but she'd always have lots of news to tell, and we were glad to see her. " Off and on, off and on, that was Maria all over, and more off than on. Why, the time she got her last sickness — the last one, I mean, before the time I'm telling you about — it was her getting so restless after she'd been staying three or four days with Aunt Ellen Bragg over to Piermont, and starting for home in a driving snowstorm. She got chilled through and through, took lung fever, and only lived about ten days. " We did everything we could for her, had the best doctor in the neighborhood, and nursed her A DISSATISFIED SOUL 13 day and night. Mr. Weaver was real kind, she being only a distant relation, but nothing could raise her up, and she died. We had a real nice funeral, Elder Fuller attending it, and we buried her in our own lot next to Mr. Bliven. It seemed dreadful quiet, and so queer to think at this time she'd gone for good and all, and that she'd got to stay now where she was, and not keep coming back in her restless, changing kind of way whether she was satisfied or not. I really did miss her, and I believe Mr. Weaver did, too, though he would n't own it. " And here she was, and here was I half crazy over making up a telegraph to tell John Nelson about it. "She'd been gone just exactly three weeks to a day, she having died the 11th of March, and it being now the second day of April. "I was sitting at the window about ten o'clock in the forenoon peeling potatoes for dinner. I'd brought them into the sitting-room because it had a better lookout and was lighter and pleasanter in the morning. It was^ an early spring that year, though it came out real wintry afterwards, and the grass was starting up, and the buds showing on 14 A DISSATISFIED SOUL the trees, and somehow I got thinking about Maria. She was always glad when it came round spring, and she could get about more and visit with folks, and I was thinking where she was, and how she could ever stand it with her changing ways, to stay put, as you might say. Just then I looked out from the window over towards the river and the bridge, and I saw a woman coming. The minute I saw her I says to myself, 'She walks something like Maria Bliven.' She was coming along pretty quick, though not exactly hurrying, and she had somehow a real Bliven way about her. She came straight on in the direction of our house, and the closer she came, the more she walked like Maria. I did n't think it was her, of course, but it gave me a queer feeling to see anybody that favored her so much. The window was open, and I got nearer and nearer to it, and at last stretched my head out and stared down the street, a potato in one hand and the knife in the other. The sun was warm when you were out in it, exercising, and I saw the woman untying her bonnet-strings and throwing them back. Dear me ! that was a real Bliven trick. I'd seen Maria do it herself fifty times. She was getting pretty nigh now, and the A DISSATISFIED SOUL 15 first thing I knew she looted up at the house and nodded her head just as Maria used to when she came home from visiting. Then in a minute I saw her plain as day. It was Maria Bliven, sure enough ; there was no mistaking her. "I see by your face what you are thinking about; it's what strikes every soul I ever tell this to. You're wondering why I take this so cool, as if it was n't anything so much out of the common. "Well, first place, it all happened a good many years ago, and I've gone through a heap of things since then, good and bad both, enough to wear off some of the remembering. And again, somehow, I took it kind of cool even then. It appeared to come about so natural, just in the course of things, as you might say, and only what you might have expected from Maria with her fitty, unsatisfied ways. And then — well, you'll see it yourself as I go on — there was something about Maria and the way she took it, and seemed to expect us to take it, that kept us from getting excited or scared or so dreadful amazed. " Why, what do you think was the first and only single remark I made as she came in at the door just as she had come in fifty times before after 16 A DISSATISFIED SOUL visiting a spell? I says, 'Why, good-morning, Maria, you've come back.' And she says, ' Good- morning, Lyddy; yes, I have.' "That was all, outside, I mean, for I won't deny there was a swimmy feeling in my head and a choky feeling down my throat, and a sort of trembly feeling all over as I see Maria drop into a chair and push her bonnet-strings a mite further back. She sat there a few minutes, I don't recol- lect just how long, and I don't seem to remember what either one of us said. Appears to me Maria made some remark about its being warm weather for the beginning of April, and that I said 't was so. Then sometimes I seem to remember that I asked her if she'd walked all the way or got a lift any part of it. But it don't hardly appear as if I could have said such a foolish thing as that, and anyways, I don't recollect what she answered. But I know she got up pretty soon and said she guessed she'd go up and take off her things, and she went. " There was one potato dished up that day for dinner with the skin on, and it must have been the one I was holding when I first caught sight of Maria down the road. So that goes to show I was A DISSATISFIED SOUL 17 a good deal flustered and upset, after all. The ' first tiling was to tell Mr. Weaver. He was in the barn, and out I went. I did n't stop to break the news then, but gave it to him whole, right out. ' Polios, ' I says, all out of breath, ' Maria Bliven's come back. She's in her bedroom this minute, taking off her things.' I never can bring back to my mind what he said first. He took it kind of calm and cool, as he always took everything that ever happened since I first knew him. And in a minute he told me to go and telegraph to John Nelson. Tou see, besides John's being Maria's nearest relation, he had charge of the little prop- erty she'd left, and so 't was pretty important he should know right off that she had n't left it for good. " Now I've got back to where I begun about that telegraph. Well, I sent it, and John came over from Hanover next day. I can't go on in a very regular, straightahead way with this account now, but I'll tell what went on as things come into my head, or I'll answer any questions you want to ask as you appear so interested. Everything went on natural and in the old way after the first. Of course, folks found out pretty quick. Bradford's 2 18 A DISSATISFIED SOUL a small place now, and 't was smaller then, and I don't suppose there was a man, woman, or child there that did n't know within twenty-four hours that Maria had come back. There was some talk naturally, but not as much as you'd think. Folks dropped in, and when they'd see her looking about as she did before she left, and we going on just the same, why, they got used to it themselves, and the talk most stopped. " But though they thought she was the same as she used to be, I knew she was n't. It's hard to put it into words to make you understand, but Maria hadn't been many hours in the house be- fore I saw she was dreadful changed. First place, she didn't talk near so much. Before she left she was a great hand to tell about all her doings after she'd been on one of her visits. She'd go all over it to Mr. Weaver and me, and it was real interesting. But she never said one sin- gle word now about anything that had happened since we saw her last, where she'd been, what she'd done, or anything. She and me, we were together by ourselves a great deal, more than ever before, in fact, for somehow the neighbors did n't come in as much as they used to. Maria was al- A DISSATISFIED SOUL 19 ways pleasant to them, but though they said she was just the same as ever, with nothing queer or alarming about her, I saw they did n't feel quite at home with her now, and did n't drop in so often. But sit together, she and me, hours at a time as we might, never one word of what I couldn't help hankering to know passed Maria's lips. Why didn't I ask her, you say? Well, I don't know. Seems to me now, as I think it all over, that I would do it if I could only have the chance again. You wouldn't hardly believe how I wish and wish now it's too late that I had asked her things I'm just longing to know about, now I'm growing old and need to look ahead a little, and particular now Mr. Weaver's gone, and I'm so hungry to know something about him, we having lived together most fifty years, you know. But there was some- thing about Maria that kept me from asking. And sometimes I think there was something that kept her from telling. I feel sure she was on the point of making some statement sometimes, but she could n't ; the words would n't come ; there did n't seem to be any way of putting the informa- tion into words she knew, or that was used in our part of the country, anyway. Dear me, what lots 20 A DISSATISFIED SOUL of times I've heard her begin something this way, ' When I first got there, I ' — ' Before I come back, I ' — Oh, how I'd prick up my ears, and most stop breathing to hear! But she'd just stop, seem to be a-thinking about something way, way off, and never, never finish her remarks. Yes, I know you wonder I did n't question her about things. As I said before, I can't hardly explain why I did n't. But there was something about her looks and her ways, something that, spite of her being the old Maria Bliven I had lived in and out with so many years, somehow made her most like a stranger that I could n't take liberties with. "Mr. Weaver and me, of course, we talked about it when we were all by ourselves, mostly at night, when it was still and dark. It did seem real strange and out of the common someways. Neither one of us had ever had anything like it happen before to anybody we knew or heard of. Folks who'd died, generally — no, always, I guess, up to this time — died for good, and stayed dead. We were brought up Methodists; we were both professors, and knew our Bibles and the doctrines of the church pretty well. We knew about two futures for the soul — the joyful, happy one for the A DISSATISFIED SOUL 21 good and faithful, and the dreadful one for the wicked. And we'd always been learnt that to one of these localities the soul went the very minute, or second, it left the body. That there were folks that held different opinions, and thought there was a betwixt and between district where you stayed on the road, where even the good and faithful might rest and take breath before going into the wonderful glory prepared for them, and where the poor, mistaken, or ignorant, or careless souls would be allowed one more chance of choosing the right, we did n't know that. I never'd heard of that doctrine then, though a spell after that I hardly heard anything else. " I don't know as I told you about Elder Jane- way from down South somewhere coming on board with us one summer. He was writing a book called Probation and he had a way of reading out loud what he was writing in a preaching kind of way, so that you could n't help hearing it all, even if you wanted to. And all day long, while I sat sewing or knitting, or went about my work, baking and ironing and all, I'd hear that solemn, rumbling voice of his going on about the ' place of departed spirits,' the Scripture proofs of there 22 A DISSATISFIED SOUL being such a place, what it was like, how long folks stayed there, and I don't know what all. That was just before I came down with the fever that I most died with, as I was telling you the other day, and they say this talk of the Elder's appeared to run in my mind when I was light- headed and wandering, and I'd get dreadful ex- cited about it. " But at the time I was telling about I had n't heard this, so Mr. Weaver and I would talk it over and wonder and guess and suppose. ' Oh, Polios,' I whispered one night, ' you don't presume Maria is a — ghost? ' 'No more than you be,' says Mr. Weaver, trying to whisper, but not doing it very well, his voice naturally being a bass one. ' Ghosts,' he says, ' are all in white, and go about in a creepy way, allowing there are any such things, which I don't.' 'But what else can she be, Polios,' I says, ' she having died and been buried, and now back again? Where's she, or her soul or spirit, been these three weeks, since that? ' " 'Well, come to that, I don't know,' Mr. Weaver would say. And he did n't. No more did I. " Where had she come from that morning when A DISSATISFIED SOUL 23 she appeared so unexpected as I sat peeling the potatoes? Not a single soul had seen her, as far as we could find out, before the very minute I catched sight of her at the turn of the road. Folks had been at their windows or doors, or in their yards all along that very road for miles back, and on the two different roads that come into the main one there were plenty of houses full of peo- ple, but nobody, not one of them, saw her go by. There was Almy Woolett, whose whole business in life was to know who passed her house, and what they did it for. She was at her front win- dow every minute that forenoon, and it looked right out on the road, not fifteen foot back of where I first saw Maria, and she never saw her. "Then, as to what clothes she came in, folks have asked me about that, and I can't give them a mite of satisfaction. For the life of me I can't remember what she had on before she went up to her room and took off her things. I'm certain sure she was n't wearing what she went away in, for that was a shroud. In those days, you know, bodies was laid out in regular appropriate burying things, made for the occasion, instead of being dressed all up like living beings, as they do nowadays. And 24 A DISSATISFIED SOUL Maria did n't come back in that way, or I might have thought her a ghost sure enough. Sometimes I seem to recollect that she had on something sort of grayish, not black or white, but just about the color of those clouds out there, just over the mill, almost the color of nothing, you might say. But there, I ain't sure, it's so long ago. But I know she had on something I never'd seen her wear before, and she never wore again, for when she came downstairs she was dressed in her old blue gingham, with a white tie apron. I own up I did look about everywheres I could think of for the things she came in, but I could n't find them high nor low. Nor a sign of them was there in her bedroom, in the closet or chest of drawers, or her little leather trunk, and I'm certain sure they was n't anywheres in the house when I ransacked for them, and that was n't two hours after Maria came back. "It's only little specks of things I can tell you about that happened after this; anything, I mean, that had to do with her queer experience. I watched her close, and took notice of the least thing that seemed to bear on that. She complained a good deal of being lonesome, and when I recom- A DISSATISFIED SOUL 25 mended her going out more and visiting with the neighbors, she'd say so sorrowful and sad, ' There ain't anybody of my kind here, not a single one ; I'm all alone in the world.' And, take it one way, she was. " One day she and me were sitting together in the kitchen, and one of Billy Lane's boys came to the door to borrow some saleratus. After he'd gone, I says to Maria, 'I told you, did n't I, that Billy Lane died last month? He died of lockjaw, and it came on so sudden and violent he was n't able to tell how he hurt himself. They found a wound on his foot, but don't know how it came.' ' Oh,' says Maria, as quiet and natural as you please, ' he told me he stepped on a rusty nail down by the new fence.' I was just going to speak up quick, and ask how in the world he could have told her that, when he did n't die till a week after she did, when she started, put on one of her queer looks, and says, 'There, I forgot to shut my blinds, and it's real sunny,' and went upstairs. " The first death that we had in Bradford after her coming back was little Susan Garret. We'd heard she was sick, but did n't know she was dan- gerous, and were dreadful surprised when Mr. . 26 A DISSATISFIED SOUL Weaver came in to supper and told us she was dead. I felt sorry for Mrs. Garret, a widow with only one other child, and that a sickly boy, but I must say I was surprised to see how Maria took it to heart. She turned real white, kept twisting her hands together, and sort of moaning out, 'Oh, I wish I'd knowed she was going, I wish I'd knowed. If she'd only wait just a minute for me,' and crazy, nervy things like that. I had to get her upstairs and give her some camphor and make her lay down, she was so excited like. She didn't calm down right away, and when I heard her say sort of to herself, ' Oh, if I could only a seen her! ' I says, 'Why, Maria, you can see her. We'll run right over there now. I guess they've laid the poor child out by this time, and they'll let us see the body.' Such a look as Maria gave me, real scornful, as you might say, as she says, 'That! see that ! What good would it do to see that I want to know.' Why, I tell you it made me feel for a minute as if a body was of no account at all, leastways in Maria's opinion. And yet she'd used hers to come back in anyways! 'Twas quite a spell before she cooled down, and she never ex- plained why it worked her up so, and I'm sure I A DISSATISFIED SOUL 27 don't know. Whether it was because she thought little Susan had gone to the place she herself had come away from, and wished she had known in time to go back along with her just for company, or again, whether she felt bad because she had n't had a chance to give the child some advice or di- rections that would have helped her along on the road that Maria knew and nobody else probably in all that county did know, why, I have n't an idea. " I believe I told you a ways back that after she got home Maria all the time had a kind of look and way as if she'd done something she had n't ought to done, or was somewhere she had n't any business to be, somehow as if she belonged some- where else. "In the old days she was n't ever satisfied long at a time in any place, but she was always pleased to get back, leastways for a spell. But from the minute she came this time she was troubled and worried. And that grew on her. She was always sort of listening and watching, as if she expected something to happen, starting at the least bit of noise, and jumping if anybody knocked or even came by the gate. She got dreadful white, and so poor she did n't weigh no more than a child, and 28 A DISSATISFIED SOUL such little trifling things worked her up. For in- stance, we had heard a spell before, Mr. Weaver and me, that Mr. Tewksbury over at South New- bury was dead, and we believed it, not kuowing anything to the contrary. But one day Mr. Weaver came in and he says, 'Lyddy, you recol- lect we heard the other day that Silas Tewksbury was dead? Well, I met him just now coming over the bridge.' Maria was in the room, and first thing we knew she gave a kind of screech, and put her two hands together, and she says, ' Oh no, no, no, not another of us ! I thought 't was only me. Oh, deary, deary me, that's what they meant. They said it would n't end with me ; they begged me not to try; and now I've started it, and it won't never stop. They'll all come back, all, every single one of 'em,' and she cried and moaned till we were at our wits' ends what to do. It was n't till she found out that Mr. Tewksbury had n't ever died at all, but 't was his brother at White River Junction that was taken off, that she got quiet. " So it went on, Maria sort of wearing out with worrying and grieving about something she could n't seem to tell us about except by little hintings. A DISSATISFIED SOUL 29 and such, and Mr. Weaver and me, we wondering and surmising and talking all alone nights in whis- pers. We did n't understand it, of course, but we'd made up our minds on one or two points, and agreed on them. Maria had never been to heaven, we felt sure of that. There were lots of reasons for that belief, but one is enough. Nobody, even the most discontented and changeablest being ever made, would leave that place of perfect rest and peace for this lonesome, dying, changing world, now would they? And as for the other locality, why, I just know certain, certain sure she'd never been there. That would have showed in her face, and her talk, and her ways. If it is one little mite like what I've always been learnt it is, one minute, one second spent there would alter you so dreadfully you'd never be recognized again by your nighest and dearest. And Maria was a good woman, a Christian woman. Her biggest fault was only her fretting and finding fault, and want- ing to change about and find something better. Oh no, no ; wherever Maria Bliven had come from that morning in April it was n't from that place of punishment, we felt sure of that, Mr. Weaver and me. As I said once before, we had n't heard 30 A DISSATISFIED SOUL then that there was any other place for the dead to go to. But from things Maria let drop, and the way she behaved-, and our own thinking and studying over it, we began to come to this, that maybe there was a stopping-place on the road be- fore it forked — to put it into this world's sort of talk — where folks could rest and straighten out their beliefs and learn what to expect, how to look at things, and try and be tried. Last summer I heard a new word, and it struck me hard. Mrs. Deacon Spinner told me her son had gone off to learn new ways of farming and gardening and such. She said they had places nowadays where they learnt boys all that and they called them ' Experiment Stations.' The minute I heard that I says to myself, ' That's the name ! That's what the place where Maria came back from, and that Elder Janeway knew so much about, had ought to be called, an Experiment Station.' But at that time, in Maria's day, I'd never heard of this name no more than I had of Elder Janeway, and the place or state he was always writing and talking about. But, after all, I don't believe I care to go back on what ma and pa and all the good folks of old times held on those subjects. There was n't A DISSATISFIED SOUL 31 any mincing matters those days; 't was the very best or the very worst for everybody as soon as they departed this life, and no complaints made. I'm certain sure any of those ancestors of mine, particular on the Wells side — that was pa's, you know — would have taken the worst, and been cheerful about it, too, rather than have had the whole plan upset and a half-and-half place inter- duced. But then, if there ain't such a locality, where in the world did Maria come from that time? I tell you, it beats me. "Now this very minute something comes into my head that I have n't told you about, that I don't believe lever told anybody about ; I don't know as I can tell it now. It is like a sound that comes to you from way, way off, that you think you catch, and then it's gone. It was just only a word Maria used two or three times after she came back, a dreadful, dreadful curious word. It was n't like any word I ever heard spoke or read in a book; 't was n't anything I can shape out in my mind to bring back now. First time I heard it she was sitting on the doorstep at night, all by herself. It was a nice night with no moon, but thousands of shining little stars, and the sky so 32 A DISSATISFIED SOUL sort of dark bluish and way, way off . Maria did n't know I was nigh, but I was, and I was peek- ing at her as she sat there. She looked up right overhead at the sky, and the shining and the blue, and then she spoke that word, that curious, singu- lar word. I say she spoke it, and that I heard it, but somehow that don't make it plain what I mean. Seem's if she only meant it, thought it, and I sort of catched it, felt it — Oh, that sounds like crazy talk, I know, but I can't do any better. Some- how I knew without using my ears that she was saying or thinking a word, the strangest, meaning- est, oh, the curiousest word ! And once she said it in her sleep when I went into her room in the night, and another time as she sat by her own grave in the little burying-ground, and I had fol- lowed her there unbeknownst. I tell you, that was n't any word they use in Vermont, or in the United States, or anywheres in this whole living world. It was a word Maria brought back, I'm certain sure from — well, wherever she'd been that time. " Well, it was wearing to see Maria those days, growing poorer and poorer, and bleacheder and bleacheder, and failing up steady as the days went A DISSATISFIED SOUL 33 by. And one day just at dusk, when she and me were sitting by ourselves, I mustered up courage to speak out. ' Maria,' I says, ' you don't appear to be satisfied these times.' "'Satisfied! ' she says, ' course I ain't. Was I ever satisfied in all my born days? Was n't that the trouble with me from the beginning? Ain't it that got me into all this dreadful trouble? Deary, deary me, if I'd only a stayed where' — • She shut up quick and sudden, looking so mourn- ful and sorry and wore out that I could n't hold in another minute, and I burst out, 'Maria, if you feel that way about it, and I can see myself it's just killing you, why in the world don't you — go back again? ' I was scared as soon as I'd said it, but Maria took it real quiet. 'Don't you suppose I've thought of that myself? ' she says. 'I ain't thought of much else lately, I tell you. But as far's I know, and I know a lot more than you do about it, there ain't but just one way to there, and that,' she says, speaking kind of low and sol- emn, 'that is — the way — I went before. And I own up, Lyddy,' says she, 'I'm scaret o' that way, and I scursely dast to doit again.' ' But,' I says, getting bolder when I saw she was n't offended at 34 A DISSATISFIED SOUL my speaking, ' you say yourself you ain't sure. Maybe there is some other way of getting back; there's that way — well, that way you came from there, you know.' "'That's different,' says Maria. But I saw she was thinking and studying over something all the evening, and after she went to her bedroom she was walking about, up and down, up and down, the biggest part of the night. In the morning when it got to be nigh on to seven o'clock, and she not come down, I felt something had happened, and went up to her room. She was n't there. The bed was made up, and everything fixed neat and nice, and she had gone away. "'Oh, dear,' I says to Mr. Weaver, 'that poor thing has started off all alone, weak as she is, to find her way back.' 'Back where?' says Polios. Just as if I knew " But we both agreed on one point. We could n't do anything. We felt to realize our own igno- rance, and that this was a thing Maria must cipher out by herself, or with somebody that was way, way above us to help her. It was a dreadful long day, I tell you. I could n't go about my work as if nothing had happened, and I could n't get out A DISSATISFIED SOUL 35 of my head for one single minute that poor woman on her curious, lonesome travels. Would she find the road? I kept a-thinking to myself, and it was a hard, dark one like the one everybody else had to go on before they got to the afterwards-life, a valley full of shadows, according to Scripture, with a black, deep river to ford, a ' swelling flood,' as the hymn says? "Well, the day went by somehow, — most days do, however slow they seem to drag along, — and the night came on. Though we did n't mean to meddle or interfere in this matter, Mr. Weaver and me, we had asked a few questions of folks who dropped in or went by that day. Maria had been seen by people all along the same road she had come home by that other time, and on both the roads that joined it. Two or three, seeing how beat out and white she looked, had offered her a ride, but whichever direction they were going she had always answered the same thing, that she was n't going their way. It was nigh nine o'clock, and we were just shutting up the house for the night, when I heard steps outside and the gate screaked. "1 felt in a minute that it was Maria, and I 36 A DISSATISFIED SOUL opened the door as quick as I could. There she was trying to get up the steps, and looking just ready to drop and die right there and then. It took Polios and me both to get her in and upstairs. It was n't any time for questions, but when Mr. Weaver had gone, and I was getting her to bed, I says, as I saw her white face with that dreadful look of disappointedness, 'You poor thing, you're all beat out.' 'Yes,' she whispers, her voice most gone she was so wore out, 'and I could n't find the road. There ain't but one, — leastways to go there by, — and, that's the way I went first-off. I'd oughter known it. I'd oughter known it.' " I could n't bear to see her so sorrowful and troubled, and I said what I could to comfort her by using Scripture words and repeating the prom- ises made there about that dark valley and the deep waters, and the help and company provided for the journey. But that mournful look never left her face, and she kept a-whispering, 'That's for once; not a word about the second time. Mebbe there ain't any provision for the second time.' And what could I say? "I believe I have n't told you how much time A DISSATISFIED SOUL 37 the poor woman spent those days in the graveyard, sitting by her own grave. I can't get over that, even after all these years, that queer, uncommon sight of a person watching over their own burying place, weeding it [and watering it as if their own nighest friend lay there. I don't see why, either. I don't even know whether her body was there. Folks don't have two, and she'd brought one back, and was in it now. And, as far as we could see, it was the very same body she wore when she died, and that we'd buried next to Mr. Bliven. Any- way, she appeared to like that place, and showed a lot of interest in taking care of it. There was n't any headstone. We had ordered one, but it had n't come home when she returned, and we had told Mr. Stevens to keep it a spell till we fixed what to do about it. I was glad it was n't up. I can't think of anything that would be more trying than to see your own gravestone with your name and age and day you died, with a consoling verse, all cat out plain on it. I know, one time, I saw her putting a bunch of sweet-williams on that grave. She looked sort of ashamed when she saw I was watching her, and she says, a mite bash- ful, ' You know they was always her favorite 38 A DISSATISFIED SOUL posies.' 'Whose?' I asked, just to see what she'd say. But she was so busy fixing the sweet- williams she did n't take any notice. "Maria failed up after this right along, and pretty soon she was that weak she could n't get as far as the graveyard, hardly even down to the gate. And I says to Mr. Weaver that she need n't worry about finding the way back to where she belonged, for she'd just go as she went the other time if she did n't flesh up and get a little ruggeder. One day, when I went into her room, she says to me, ' Lyddy, I want help, and mebbe I can get it in the old way we used to try. You fetch me the big Bible and let me open it without looking, and put my finger on a verse and then you read it out. Mebbe they'll take that way of telling me what to do, just mebbe.' " I never approved of that kind of getting help, it always seemed like tempting Providence, but I felt I must do most anything that would help sat- isfy that poor woman, and I got the Bible. She opened it, her lean hands shaking, and she laid one of her bony fingers on a passage. I must say it took my breath away when I saw how appro- priate it was, how pat it came in. 'T was in A DISSATISFIED SOUL 39 Ezekiel, and it went this way: 'He shall not re- turn by the gate whereby he came in.' " Maria give a sort of cry and laid her head back against the pillow on the big chair she was sitting in. 'There, there,' she says, all shaking and weak, 'I most knew it afore, and now I'm certain sure. I've got to go — the — old — way.' "And so she did. After all, I was n't with her when she went, and it was n't from our house she started. I got run down and pindling from tak- ing care of her and studying how to help her out of her troubles. So Mr. Weaver wrote to John Nelson, and after a spell it was fixed that he should take Maria over to his house in Hanover, and he did. It was a hard journey for her, so weak as she was, and she did n't stand it very well. But she had one more journey to take, the one she'd been dreading so long, and trying to put off. "It was n't so dreadful hard, I guess, after all, for they said she fell asleep at the last like a baby. Just before she went, she says very quiet and calm, all the worry and fret gone out of her voice, she says to John and Harriet, who was standing by the bed, ' I'm dreadful tired, and I guess I'll drowse off a mite. And mebbe I'll be let to go in 40 A DISSATISFIED SOUL my sleep.' Then in a minute she says slow and sleepy, her eyes shut up, ' And if I do, wherever they carry me this time, I guess when I wake up I shall — be — satisfied,' and she dropped off. " I guess she was, for she went for good that time and stayed. She was buried there in Han- over in John's lot. We all thought 't was best. It would have been awk'ard about the old grave, you know, whether to open it or not, and what to do about the coffin. So we thought 't was better to start all over again as if 't was the first time, with everything bran-new, and nothing second- handed, and we did. But Maria Bliven's the only person I know that's got two graves. There's only one headstone, though, for we took the one we'd ordered before from Mr. Stevens, he altering the reading on it a little to suit the occasion. You see, the first time we'd had on it a line that was used a good deal on gravestones then, ' Gone for- ever.' That did n't turn out exactly appropriate, so we had it cut out, and this time we had on — Elder Fuller put it into our heads — that Scripture verse, a good deal like Maria's dying words, though I don't believe she knew she was quoting when she said it, 'I shall be satisfied.' " A DISSATISFIED SOUL 41 "Well," said good Elder Lincoln one July day as we met on the Lisbon road, " have you heard Mrs. Weaver's account of Maria Bliven's unex- pected return? " The Elder had been at Streeter Pond fishing for pickerel, for he belonged to that class styled by dear old Jimmy Whitcher "tishin' ministers." He had not met with great success that day, but he had been all the morning in the open, and there was about him a breezy, woodsy, free look which seemed to dissipate shadows, doubts, and dreads. " Yes," I replied, " I have heard it all. What in the world do you make of it ? " "Well, I don't make anything of it," said the Elder. "There's no conspicuous moral to that story. Mrs. Weaver did not make the most of her opportunities, and we do not gain much new light from her account. Old Cephas Janeway, who wrote a ponderous work on Probation which nobody read, was largely responsible, I guess, for the feverish dream of the old woman. But to her it's all true, real, something that actually happened. And, do you know, somehow I almost believe it myself as I listen to the homely details, and it brings ' thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.' " 42 A DISSATISFIED SOUL He was silent a minute, then taking up his fish- ing basket, very light in weight that day, he raised the lid, looked with unseeing eyes at its contents, and said absently, "I can't help wishing I had met Maria after she came back. There is just one thing " — He did not complete the sentence, and I saw that his thoughts were far away. With a good-by word which I know he did not hear, I turned aside, leaving him there in the dusty road. A PKOPHETIC EOMANCER A PROPHETIC ROMANCER No, I don't remember when it first came into my head that I could write, write for print, I mean, of course. I'd always been a great fetter- writer, thinking nothing of covering a whole sheet of foolscap to send off to Cousin Hannah at Hebron or Aunt Lois way out in Ohio. I was good at compositions, too, they said, writing my own just as soon as the subject was given out and then helping the other boys and girls on theirs. That was to Miss Faxon's school, you know, not far from the Congregational meeting-house. I was n't born here in Stonington, but over to Mystic. Pa and ma moved here when I was a baby, and here I was brought up and here I lived till a grown-up girl; in short, up to the very time I'm going to tell you about. We lived in another house then, way down by the water, nigh Captain Jared Smith's, and not very far from Iry Pendle- ton's — you know the grandchildren of both of them, in New York, I guess. 45 46 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER I was an only child, and my folks was pretty well-to-do, so I had an easy time and maybe was a raite spoilt, as they say only children are apt to be. There is n't much to tell about my doings as a young one nor even as a growing girl, so I'm just going to skip over to the time you want to hear about and some notion of which has come to your ears. Pa and ma were both dead, died in the same year, him from cold and over working the night of the rope-walk fire when so many houses were threatened, and ma from lung fever a short time after. I was left comfortable, plenty to live on in my quiet way. The house was mine, and I kept right on there. But I did n't have enough to do, that was my great trouble. There was a garden, but I did n't care much for gardening ; I raised a few vegetables, and I had a small posy patch, but they almost took care of themselves, and I hired Joe Burdick to do the hard part of the work. I tried to help in the church, but there was n't really much to do there. They did n't have so many ways of church work then with all kinds of unions and societies and associations, and a Chris- tian Endeavorer had never even been heard of in A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 47 Stonington them times. I went to Sewing Society every Wednesday afternoon, and had it at my house when it came my turn. I got subscribers for The Messenger and carried it 'round and distributed tracts when they wanted me to. I worked for the fair when they held it, and generally had a table, and was always regular at meeting Sundays, and to Thursday evening lecture and Saturday night prayer-meeting. They never had any of these clubs for ladies they have everywheres these days where they get things out of books about pictures and politics, religion and geography, copy it all out on clean, nice paper tied together with ribbon and read it to the meeting. Nor the other kind where they study all winter about some big poetry- writer and guess what he meant by some verses that don't seem to have any sense at all. More'n likely he did n't mean 'em to have any. Clubs like that would have been real musical to me them days and helped pass the time wonderful. Women' s clubs they call them now. I should like to have seen the body that would have dast to speak of me or any of the best Stonington ladies as women those days. We was ladies and lived up to it, or meant to. Might about as well have called us females. 48 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER So, some ways or other, just when I don't recol- lect, as I said before, it come into my head that I'd be an author. I guess it was reading some story in a paper or maybe a magazine that made me think I could write something about as good. At any rate, the notion came, and came to stay. My first piece was to be a story, and I thought it all out before I began to write. I had some common sense, so I made up my mind at once that I must lay it in just such a place as I'd lived in all my days, for that was the only kind of country I knew enough about. It was to be nigh the salt water, amongst the seaweed, the boats, the whale- ships, and sailors. The story was to be called after the principal character, the hero, as the books say/ 'T was to be named "Egbert Winchester." That sounded real well to me. There was a Lord Egbert in a book I'd been reading, and I had an acquaintance over to Westerly whose middle name was Winchester, from a place in Massachusetts. I wrote the title big and plain at the top of my first sheet of foolscap and begun. Then come the first surprise and riddle of all the riddles and surprises that followed. I was setting in the east room, as we called it, the A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 49 pleasantest, homeiest room in the house, I always thought. It looked out on the salt water which was sort of grayish-blue that day, streaky and tumbly, for there was quite a blow. John Almy's boat, dark green, with the name, Lizzie M. , in red, and Ed. States's with a white stripe 'round it and a dory or two was bobbing up and down by the stakes they was tied to. Betsy Hallam's three boys was wading nigh the shore, and Joe Hubbard running up and down Stanton's dock with Leo, his dog. Thinks I to myself, "I'll just begin my story by describing what I see from the window now, just exactly as it is." So I dipped my pen in the ink-bottle and set off. The first words was to be — I'd composed it in my head — like this, " I gazed upon the stormy sea and the sandy shore." But what do you think I set down instead? My writing run exactly this way : " I gazed upon the distant hills with the clouds around their tops." " Mercy me!" I says to myself, " what on earth is the matter with me? Hills! There ain't any in sight, ain't hardly one in reach, except Lantern Hill, and that ain't high enough to have clouds around it. I really believe I must have been nap- ping and dreamt I was in a foreign land." 50 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER I took another sheet and begun again, taking a good squint first at the water and the boats, the whole picture I had looked out on so many times — all my born days, in fact. But, as I turned away from looking and dropped my eyes down to the white paper, the whole pictur', so nat'ral and homey, sort of faded away even from remembering, and I was looking on mountain-tops way down below me, fur-ofE ponds and streams, real little in the distance, and soft, white, woolly clouds down amongst 'em hiding some of 'em from sight. I rubbed my eyes, but it did n't help, and I see it was inside my head and mind the trouble was. I never had been nervy and fussy about myself. I had the Hancox common sense — my mother was a Haneox, you know — and I was n't easy flustered, but 't was a mite upsetting. I lay down my pen and says to myself, "Now, Prudence Shaw, it's time you stopped this non- sense. Give up your composing stories for this time and try to compose yourself." We did n't have all these soothing medicines then that folks take nowadays every time they feel cross or tired of doing nothing or mad at somebody. But we had tea, dreadful good tea, A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 51 brought straight across from Chiny and such tea districts, and that was real comforting. I went into the kitchen and made a pot of my best com- pany Hyson, and I drank two cups. Then I laid down on the sofa and tried to doze off. But I could n't. Spite of the tea — and I'd made it good and strong — I was wide-awake, thinking hard and seeing strange things as if I remembered 'em plain and clear. But they was things I never had seen in all my born days. For always, always, every single time, I was up on the mountains, high mountains too, looking down from high up, not straight across water as I'd done all my life over to Watch Hill and the Hummocks and Fisher's Island. I'd try hard, with my eyes tight shut, to think of something nat'ral such as I'd looked out at only a few hours before. I'd say to myself: "Don't you remember that handsome sunset you saw Tuesday from the parlor window, when it went down, a big red ball, behind Noah Cheesebro's store, with the sky all yellow-gilt 'round it, and how it dropped into the water nigh Cyrus Pendle- ton's wharf? Or can't you seem to see the Tiger coming in from her long whaling voyage as she did a spell back, and the sailors hurrying ashore? 52 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER Can't you most smell the hot tar in those big iron pots at the wharf, mixed with the salty seaweed and lots of other smells you've known and loved all your life? Just stop and pictur' out the breakwater, the rope-walk, and the old lighthouse down to the Point, can't ye now? " Maybe for a minute I could bring it up and sense it, but before I could catch it to hold and look at plain 't would fade out like a nice dream you want to think of when you wake up in the morning sometimes. And there, instead, would be great rough black rocks, all sizes and shapes, acres and acres of them, as far as I could see, deep dark hollows where I could n't see the bottom, with sides like walls of stone, steep and slippery. And way, way off in the distance, holes in the clouds would show me ponds shiny as looking-glass, looking no bigger than saucers, rivers just as shiny, like lines of silver wire, and little plaything villages with mites of doll-houses in 'em. There was n't any salt, fishy, seaweedy smell, but while I was seeing — or remembering — with my eyes shut tight there'd seem to be such a different air but every bit as nice and even more nat'ral, a strong, bracing, high- up air that made me catch my breath and think of a z 3 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 53 heaven and everything high and big and deep. Winds that most took me off my feet, thick wet fog without a bit of salt in it, shutting out every single thing from sight, and then, in a jiffy, lift- ing up like a curtain at a show so I could see all the wonders of the world for a minute before it come down with a run and hid it all. Oh, where had I seen all this before or ever dreamt or read about it ! I could n't tell ; it beat me. But I would n't give up. I was just crazy to write that story. I thought of it every hour of the day and it kept me awake nights. Seemed as if it was all inside my head on to the very end of the last chapter. I felt it swelling and growing and trying to get out and be writ down, till I thought my brain could n't stand it a minute longer but must bust open. I've often wondered if all authors feel that way when they're thinking up a story or composing a piece of poetry. Bimeby I see there was no use struggling, I must write it some ways. And as I could n't make it go at all as a Stonington sort of seashore, salt-water story, why, I must just lay it in the mountains where it seemed to want to start out and do the best I could. 54 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER I knew some authors did that way, and writ about places and things they'd never seen in all their lives, so why should n't I try it? I began over again and let my story, the begin- ning of it anyway, lay in the mountains, and most of it on the top of the highest mountain amongst 'em. I grew dreadful fond of that hill. It was queer how I got to feeling I'd lived there myself and knew it just as well as my own Connecticut home. It was a strange place, too, nothing all over it but rocks, acres and acres of them. Sto- ningfcon had a good many, and I'd always thought it about as stony as any district could be. But, my! Its soil looked as if it had been strained through a cullender compared to the land up there I was writing about. There was n't any land to speak of, 't was all rocks. They was all shapes, all sizes, close together, crowded, for miles and miles, I should say. On some of them there was a kind of mossy covering, grayish or greeny or yellow, and there was whitish parts to some of them look- ing in the sun like loaf-sugar, and there was little bits of looking-glass stuff thin as paper peeling off of some of the stones. 'Twas a wild, lonesome, uncivilized-looking place, and yet there appeared A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 55 to be a house up there, right on the very top of the hill, and I was in it with the folks I was writing about. There was n't anything else, not a tree of any kind, nor even a bush, no garden, nor, as far as I could tell, no blowth of any kind. But I could see a road, quite a good wagon-road, though real sloping and crooked, going down from a mite below the house. Up to the end of my first chapter though, I had n't been on that road and had n't an idee where it went or what was on it. But I had a feeling all the time that the story had to do with that road, that something very particular and interesting was to happen on it or nigh it. I wanted dreadfully to know what it was. But one trouble about writing a book yourself is that, however much excited you be over it, you can't turn to the last page to see how it's coming out. No, not any more than you can in your own life. You've got to live that first before you know how it ends. Well, at that very time, as 'I'd fin- ished the first chapter of my story — it was all about scenery and such, as most stories be — and I'd begun a fresh page with Chapter II. at the top, something else very amazing happened. I got a letter one morning in a writing I did n't 56 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER know. 'Twas postmarked Bridgton, Me., a place I'd never seemed to hear of. When I opened it I found it was from Mary York, a kind of relation of mine on pa's side. She spent one year in Stonington with'Lijah Shaw's folks, and went to school with me at Miss Faxon's. I never had heard from her since, though I'd always liked her, and 't was real pleasant to see her writing again. And what do you think she wrote about? She said she'd been looking over old things in a trunk up garret and she'd come across a book-mark of perforated cardboard I'd worked myself and give to her when she went away. It had " Remember me " on it in red worsted, and was sewed on a green ribbon. It brought back the old times, she said, and she'd been thinking about them and me ever since and wishing she could see me. She said she'd been spending two seasons in New Hampshire at a house on the top of Mt. Washing- ton, helping the pastry cook and so on. She liked it up there, and it would be dreadful nice if she could have me with her this time. They wanted somebody to help with the sewing and make sou- venirs to sell to the sightseers and all, and why would n't I come and take the place? Well, I A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 57 did n't need to work for my living, but, as I said before, I did n't have enough to do at home. I liked change too real well and never' d got much of it in all my life. So, to make a long story short, I decided to go, and I went. Somehow, when I was thinking it over and mak- ing up my mind, it never come into my head about that story of mine and how it was all about moun- tains and such. I was so busy getting ready and planning ahead that I did n't touch the writing at all, so there was n't anything to remind one of the queer idees that had kept coming over me and making pictur's before my eyes when I was com- posing that story of mine. I put it into my trunk, 'though, with my writing things, to carry along. Never mind about the journey, the longest by a good sight I'd ever took. You know every step of it yourself, but it took longer then than it does now. Mary was to meet me in Portland, and she did. The rest of the way we was together and how we did talk ! It was most of it about old times in Stonington, the school and the girls and boys, and who was married and who was dead and all that. So there was n't room for any talk about the 58 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER place we were bound for and what it looked like. 'T was pouring rain and a high wind when we got to Gorham. Driving up the mountain I had enough to do keeping my bonnet on — my head, too, I might say — and holding my wrappings 'round me to think how things looked even if I could have seen 'em. But with the rain and fog and me wearing spectacles, as I did from a young one, and them too wet to see through, why, there was n't any scenery or views for me the whole day. That weather lasted three whole days. Fog, fog, fog, I never see such fog. It was as wet as pouring rain and thicker than hasty pudding. You could n't see an inch further than the window- glass. But I had plenty to do, unpacking and getting things to rights, learning what my work was to be, and making friends with the folks in the house. Mis' Rogers kept it then, a real smart, capable woman and friendly with us all. There was a nice set of help, mostly New Hampshire girls, and I felt to home right away. The third day after we got there when I first looked out in the morning 't was the same kind of weather, thick fog and nothing to see. I was working 'round my room about ten o'clock, when Mary York came A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 59 running in and she says, " Just look out of your window now, it's clearing." I should think it was ! Such a sight ! The fog was running up like a curtain at a show and there, there — Oh, it's no use trying to tell about it, you know as well as anybody in the world what's to be seen up there at such a time, but even you can't really describe it, now can you? It took my breath away, and I did n't say one word, only looked and looked. 'T was amazing, wonderful, splendid, and all, but that was n't what knocked me over, scared me so. 'T was because it was n't a new thing to me ; I'd seen it all, all, every speck of it before. The very first word I said when Mary looked at me to see how I took it was " Oh, how nat'ral, how nat'ral ! " "Nat'ral," she says, "I should say 't was sort of unnat'ral to anybody that had lived all their life down by salt water, Stonington way. You never dreamt of a sight like this, I guess, did you?" And I says, "That's just what I have." Just then down came the fog, shutting everything out; some one called Mary from the backstairs, and off she run. I stood stock still for a minute and 60 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER then I went over to my trunk. I took out the papers and writing things I'd left in the tray, 'raongst them that story of mine. And I read it over, that first chapter — the only one, in fact, so far. Well, 't was hard to believe ; I could n't understand it. It's just as hard to believe now, and I've never got to understanding it yet. For there it was all written out, weeks before, by me, myself, born and raised down by the salt water with never a high hill in sight, and 't was as good an account of what I'd just been seeing from my window on the top of that sightly mountain with its head above the clouds as a body could write with it all before their eyes. I was scared, as I said, but kind of excited and worked up, too. But, most of all, I was just crazy to go on with that story and see what would hap- pen in it and how it would all come out. I'd read about great authors and their ways, how they'd throw themselves into their work, forgetting everything else in the world and letting their wives and children starve or freeze while they was writing at their books or plays. Now I could un- derstand it. 'T was genius, the books say, that made the writers go on like that, but, dear me! A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 61 I was n't a genius, was I? I had the Hancox smartness and maybe the Shaw vanity and stuck- upness, but — Well, it's a fact, I never had an idee that I was anything out of the common. I did n't know just what to think, for I'd never felt as I did now in all my born days before. I was all nerved up, shaky, and upset, hot and cold . to once, till I could get at that writing. Well, come afternoon, I got an hour or two to myself, and I shut myself up in my bedroom and begun. I had written Chapter II. at the top of the page before I left home, and now I went on. Right off, the very minute I'd dipped my pen in the bottle, I see this chapter was to be about the hero- ine, the young lady of the story. Now I had chosen her given name before I ever begun at all, just as I had Egbert Winchester's, though I had n't exactly settled what her family name was to be. But, anyway, she must be called Pamela, after somebody in a beautiful book I'd read out of the village library. I wrote the capital " P " and was going to follow with an "a." But — as it's al- ways saying in "Cornelius, the Despot," "fancy my horror and imagine my sensations " when I see I had written an "r" and followed it with .62 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER "udenee." So instead of Pamela I'd gone and called the heroine by my own given name, Pru- dence. I made up my mind I just would n't give in this time. "If I do," I says to myself, "there'll be no end to it. 'T won't be my story at all, but somebody else's, and I won't have any say about it. It's ridic'lous, I won't have it." So I took a fresh sheet, and begun again. But there ! it was n't any use, I could n't think of a single thing to say about Pamela, but if I called her Prudence she'd go all right, and my head was crammed full of things to write about her. Of course I give in. "It's genius, after all," I says, " and you can't go against that, nobody ever did and got along." So Prudence it was, and I went on writing about her by that name. I had made her up months before, and knew just what sort of a young lady she was and what to say about her. Tall and slim, what the story-books call willowy — with real dark, silky hair, waving like, and such a white satin skin with just a mite of pink in the cheeks like Angelina in the "Maid of the Castle," who had it " like the interior of a seashell." That never seemed to give a notion of pink cheeks to me, but then maybe we did n't have that kind of A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 63 seashell in ' Stonington ; mostly mussels and qua- hogs and periwinkles ours was. And she was to walk sort of gliding, with a long silken train to her dress traipsing along the floor behind her. Oh, I can see her this minute as I had her made up then, so stylish and highborn like and novel- ish. But she never come out like that. When I went to tell about her, all I could do, she was rather short, and real fleshy. Her hair was n't a bit dark, but decided sandy ; not red, you know, but about the color of mine those times. Her cheeks would n't have made even a story- writer think of shells, for they was bright red and the skin was n't like white satin, 'less it was polka- dot pattern, from the freckles. " What in the land makes me tell of a girl like this? " I says out loud, reading over what I had written that day on the mountain. " She's like a born and bred Stonington girl, and she was to have been a city young lady, a summer boarder at the Wadawannuck. Why, she might be me my- self for all there is like a real heroine." And she might; I' see it plain as I went on. For I did go on; I could n't help it. It was most like a crazy spell, though there never had been any of that in 64 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER our family ; Zaccheus Hancox was n't our branch. I wrote and wrote, every minute I got to myself. The weather was bad all that early season, and I could n't have got out much if I had felt like it, and I did n't want to, a mite. I just wanted to keep on at that story. In one way it was like living my own life in a new and interesting way, for I see more and more that the girl, Prudence, was me in most ways. The sandy hair, red cheeks, palish blue eyes, freckles, and all were mine. She was sort of fleshy, too, like the Hancoxes, and walked quick and heavy like the Shaws . And she was always up on a high mountain, just like me. But for all she favored me so strong in her looks and ways there was things about that girl dreadful different from me or any of my folks; oh, terrible different. For one thing, she was a Methodist and her family, too; now the Shaws, and the Han- coxes, too — our branch, I mean — were Congrega- tional inside and out. And if there was a sect they did n't like, it was the Methodists ; they was even worse than Baptists to us all. When I see my heroine was veering that way I did my best to head her off. Seemed as if 1 could n't stand it to take my pen in hand and write her A PR0PBET10 ROMANCER 65 over, as you might say, into that deluded denom- ination. But she went. Before I could scarcely realize what she — or me — had done, she was fairly in that sect, body and soul, and happy in it, too. , I stopped writing then, put the sheets away in the tray of my trunk, and made up my mind I'd never be an author. What was the use, if I did n't have any influence at all over my characters, and they done just what they pleased, spite of me, when if they'd stopped to think they'd never have been made at all nor had a breath of life except for me, the authoress of them all. I kept to that notion for a day or so. I read up some Congrega- tional books I had, and thought over all the bad things I had ever heard about Methodists and en- couraged myself not to give in. I says, " I just won't write a story where the principal female character refuses up and down to be what she is, or is meant to be by her authoress. Just at that time — I suppose it was fate or providentialness — I heard Almeny Perry, one of the waitresses, tell- ing the other girls that her minister was coming up next day. Almeny was nigh about the nicest of the help, a dreadful good, steady, religious girl, as we all agreed. So I says to her that I was 5 66 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER real glad that he was coming, and would she mind introducing him to me as I wanted some help and advice, and she said of course she would and pleased to. He came, Rev. Mr. West his name was, a pleas- ant-spoken, nice-looking man, and Almeny took me in to talk with him. Now, you see, I was n't going to tell him about my story and all that, only to speak about my own denomination and its being better, of course, than any other, particular the Methodists. I thought he could sort of strengthen me in the good work and help me hold up my feeble hands. Nat' rally I took it for granted he was a Congregational himself, Almeny belonging to his church and she most the best girl I knew. But when I laid the matter before him I see a queer sort of look come over his featur's, pretty nigh a smile, and he says, "I'm afraid, Miss Shaw, I should be a mite prejudiced, advising you, as I'm a Methodist myself." Land of the living ! I never was so surprised in all my born days, and I've had more surprise parties than most folks in my life. I could n't speak first off, and he see something how 't was. He spoke up real kind and he says, "So you A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 67 thought I was a Congregational, Miss Shaw, did you? " " Of course I did," I says, with the tears coming, from the being disappointed and all. " Why do you say ' of course ' ? " says he. "Because you look so good," I burst out, "and because Almeny — Oh, you don't mean to say she's a Methodist, too." The earth's foundations seemed shaken — I'm using words from "Cornelius the Despot" again, Stonington language don't seem good enough. I never, never will forget how good that blessed man was in my trial. He set by me and talked for quite a spell. He did n't try to change my doctrines, not a mite. It seemed he thought a good deal of the Congregationals and had some relations in that denomination. But he told me why he liked his own sect best, and he did somehow make it plain that it was the best in some ways, and when he went away he promised to send me some books to help me, and he did. And I read them, and Almeny and me had lots of talks and — well, in less than a fortnight, I found myself a Methodist heart and soul, the first Shaw — my branch — I'll engage that ever accepted the views of what pa always called "that deluded sect." 68 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER I had n't touched my book all that time. I was so stirred up and upset in my religious convictions, and I'd most forgot how I'd felt toward my hero- ine, when one day I come across the story in the tray of my trunk where I'd gone to get a clean handkerchief. I did feel sort of sheepish and ashamed like as I read it over. But I owned up handsome and made.it all right with the other Prudence, my heroine, and begun writing again as if nothing had happened. It went along real smooth for a spell, but then all of a sudden there come up another little unpleasantness. It was n't no great of a trouble, but it put me out of sorts. All the Shaws in the female line, two or three generations 't any rate, had been musical, sung in the choir, learnt singing to scholars in school, and so on. And every single one of them had sung "second," as we called it then, alto was a word come later in our part of the country. Grandma Shaw sung second in the choir over at Mystic for years, and Aunt Angeline Clift come after her. I remember both of them, and how low and deep their notes was. Aunt Angie always said she could sing bass better than her brother, Uncle Nathan, and I guess she could, for he had rather A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 69 a squeaky high-toned voice at his lowest. I my- self always sung second, could n't reach a high note anyways. And now just as I was going to have my heroine singing to herself all alone in the twilight, sitting on a big ragged rock on the moun- tain and looking over to the west, just as I was about writing of the "low, rich, deep notes," I found myself telling of the "high, shrill, sweet, treble voice." As soon as I see what I'd wrote I crossed it right out, set my teeth and wrote over again, meaning this time to make that voice low enough and deep enough so there would n't be any mistake, but — what I wrote was like this : " Did any other being ever reach such lofty, piercing heights as that treble of hers got up to easy? " or to that effect, you know. Treble ! and her a Shaw — for by that time I knew she was a Shaw and meant to keep her so. I slat that sheet of foolscap to one side, and into my trunk tray went the whole pile of writing. Well, you see what's com- ing, of course. Not twenty- four hours after, as I was at work in the linen-room singing to myself "Boll on, Silver Moon," Mary York came along and she says : " Why, I did n't know you had such a good 70 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER treble voice, Prudence, thought you always sung second. But you go higher than I can, seems if." And I did. By bedtime next day I was sing- ing the highest of anybody in that house and tak- ing treble parts in all the tunes. Then I gave up, I see I'd started this girl of mine in life, and I'd got to let her go on, and nothing I could do would stop her or turn her What's more, it looked as if I'd got to follow in her steps, even if they stomped on every belief and habit and way of the Shaw family — our branch. She dressed in pink. We'd always held that was n't becoming, the Shaws being all sandy-haired. I let her, not opening my mouth. And that week Aunt Hannah Lang- worthy sent me a new neck ribbon of bright rose pink. I tried it on, and somehow it looked real nice, taking the sandy look out of my hair instead of putting more in, and I wore it. She ate shellfish that had been poison to us Shaws from the creation of the world, Grandpa's brother Ephraim dying from hard-shell crabs and Cousin Priscilla Moss laying at death's door for weeks from clam chowder. 'Course I found myself taking in Portland lobster within three days after and relishing it. So on and on and on. I've spun A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 71 this out, and it sounds as if it took a long time for it to happen. But it was only a few weeks from beginning to end. You see, I had not brought the hero in yet. I just hated to introduce him for fear he'd go and turn out something different from what I wanted him. Way back in Stonington I'd dreamed about him and he was — oh, such a noble-looking gentle- man ! 'Course, he was a city person and a summer boarder. Like Roanoke Lamont in " The Disin- herited," "no disfiguring toil had marred his slen- der white hands," he was just aristocratic all through. I'd stand firm about that, I says to my- self. If the heroine wanted to turn out a country girl, well and good. But he should be of high birth and stoop a good way down to lift her to his wealth and station. It come about so different. I told you I did n't go out very much. I never was no great of a walker, and nigh the hotel it was hard going, dreadful stony and rough. I had seen the road now that I had dreamed about in the beginning of my book, a long sloping wagon-road going down the mountain. You could see it from the plat- form and the windows of the house. I never 72 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER looked down at it, but what I felt a queer, choky, swallowy feeling as if something had happened to me thereabouts or was going to, some day. I could n't scursely tell whether 't was to be something good or sort of bad. It made my eyes get all wet and fetched a ball up in my throat, and yet there was something nice about it, too. Was the princi- pal characters going to meet somewheres along that road, and maybe in terrible circumstances? I guess I forgot to tell you that way back in Stonington, before ever I put pen to paper, when I was thinking up my story and just got to mak- ing up the meeting for the first time of Pamela and Egbert, there came into my head quick and sudden — that's the way great thoughts come, they say — these singular words : " She held out to him her left hand, for the other " The idees stopped running like a candle going out, and I was in the dark and had n't the least notion why she shook hands in that awk'ard way. I thought it more than likely the next words would have been "was stained with another's blood" or " polluted by the touch of " — somebody or other, probably a base wretch, or something of that sort. One afternoon when I had an hour or two for A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 73 myself ahead of me I set down to my writing. The other girls and boys that had leave to, had gone off to walk ; some down the Crawford bridle path, some to Tuckerman's Ravine (a good name for that dreadful scramble, Sim Colton, the en- gineer, used to say, " for, if anything will tucker a man out, that climb will," he says), and some down along that wagon-road. I could see this last lot from my window as I set there, strolling along, two by two mostly, and passing out of sight 'round the bend, and I wondered what was on ahead there and what it was that had happened or was going to happen along that road, and if it was me it would happen to or was only something in my book and in the life of the made-up Pru- dence. Then I began to write. I see right off I was going to describe the hero. In fact, the chap- ter was to be called by his name, and I must write that down first of all at the top. It was to be Eg- bert Winchester, you know. I wrote a big " E " with a flourishy capital, and was just going to follow it with a " g " when my pen sort of shook a mite and I see I'd made a "z," and before I had time to cross it out it run on quick. And there, if you will believe it, instead of Egbert I'd gone and 74 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER writ Ezry, a Bible name, you know, but used com- mon in Connecticut, and, I guess, all over New England. Ezry! And him to be a city gentle- man, lofty as anything. Dear, dear! Genius or not, I could n't have it. I crossed the whole word out with the blackest, inkiest mark I could make and begun again. The " E " come out all right and flourishy, but the pen, spite of holding it tight, with my ringers most down to the p'int, wriggled crooked and made a "z," and then run on with "ra," and there was Ezry over again, and I was mad, ashamed, and terrible discouraged. "It ain't any earthly use," I says, most crying, "but I'll have to let it go now or I can't write at all. So I'll just not take no notice of this, and say nothing about the last name at present, maybe bimeby when they've forgot about it I can slip it in without them noticing." Who I meant by "they" and "them" land knows! I suppose I was alluding to the something or somebody inside or outside of me that had someways took charge of this story of mine. The chapter begun by describing Ezry, as it kept on calling him. And every single thing went crooked and crossways. He ought to have been A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 75 tall, towering above his peers, but he come out a mite below the average. I wanted him lithe — that always seemed such a splendid word to use — but he was actually stocky, not precisely stout nor fleshy, but square-built and strong-looking. His hair was to be black as a raven's wing, and his eyes dark and flashing. But my pen went and gave him kind of lightish yellow, flaxy kind of hair, with eyes of the commonest drab gray color, with palish eyebrows and eyewinkers. And his hands! Deary dear, how I struggled with them hands ! But whiten 'em and smooth 'em as much as I could, they come out big and rough and brown, with plenty of signs of hard work or what the book called disfiguring toil. Yes, everything, every single thing went wrong. He did n't stride with a haughty air, but sort of loped along a bit awkward ; his features did n't wear a look of proud disdain, but I own up 't was a pleasant expression, real friendly. And his clothes ! There, I can't even now — years afterwards — talk about them and how different they turned out from the clothes — garb, I mean — Egbert Winchester was to have been dressed, I mean attired, in. When he come in first with them on I dropped my pen, making a big 76 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER blot, and leaned back in my chair, putting my hands up over my face. As it says in " Domenic Wycherly's Kevenge," "a torrent of tears came to my relief " ; 't was something of a torrent, for my handkerchief was just sopping. I was so terrible disappointed, you see. My last hope of having this story my own work was gone. I'd got noth- ing on earth to do with it. Call it genius or what all, something was to work inside or outside of me, and it done what it was a mind to. You'd think the easiest way out was to stop writing, tear up the story, and give it up. But I just could n't. If you'd ever been an author you'd know that. Write I must, my own way if I could, but if not, why, somebody else's way. If I could have made my heroine a real Pamela and up to her name, I'd have been tickled to pieces. But as I could n't do that I'd got to write about her anyways, Pamela, plain Prudence, or be-she-who-she-be, as Aunt Libby Howe used to say. And the same with my hero. So the very next day I found myself at my scribbling again and picturing out Ezry, he that was Egbert. Different as he was from my in- tended, as you might call him, it was queer how A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 77 interested I got in him and how I kind of liked him. He really was easier to get along with than Egbert would have been, and I felt more at home with him. So I went slow over the describing him, and I had n't even introduced him and Pru- dence to each other when my writing was inter- rupted sudden. I remember the very line I'd fin- ished that time. No wonder, for I've read it over since lots of times. These was my last words : " How little did my hero dream that fair morn that on that very road he was to meet his fate !" That road again, I says to myself. I must go down there some day and see what it's like, and why in the land it always gives me such a stirred- up feeling to think about it. Just then I see it was raining; it most generally was that season. I guess falling weather ain't ever very scurse up there. My window was open, and I went to pull it down. The sash was wet and slippery and somehow slid through my fingers. I tried to stop it by putting my hand under it and shoving up. But down it come right on two of my fingers. There's no use telling how it hurt. Most every- body at some period of their lives has had such a thing happen, and if there's anyone that has n't, 78 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER why, they'd better not hear about it till it comes. My hand was no use to me for quite a spell, tied up and dreadful painful. So my writing was n't took up. I was most sick for a few days with the ache and the f every state it kept me in, and I scursely thought once of the story and where I'd left off. It come out real pleasant one day after dinner and Mis' Rogers urged me to go out and take a walk. " Go a piece down the road, the carriage road," she says, "you'll get a good view of the Glen House and all, it's so clear and it will do you good." So I went. My hand was still tied up, but it did n't ache much, and I really enjoyed things. The sun was shining, and it was real still for the Summit, just enough of a soft blow to cool you. And the view! Now tell me, is there a sightlier, viewlier spot on the Lord's earth than that mountain top at its best? I was looking out at it as I went along, remembering how it sur- prised me the first time I see it way back in Ston- ington and noticing how exactly like that same pictur' it was to-day. But somehow it did n't bother me or make me wonder how it come about. I just took it as . it was, feeling quiet and dozey A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 79 and still and dreadful contented. I'd forgot my wondering about this road and what was to happen along it, when I see a figure way down, round a bend, coming slowly up the road. 'T was too far off to know what kind of a person 't was, and I did n't much care. I was thinking of other things, and I was n't ever very scary, so I just kept strolling along. As I got nigher I see it was a man, and when he was close to I see he was young, and I kind of liked his looks. A nice, healthy, strong-looking country fellow, some stocky, with a brown, pleasant sort of face. He had on rough kind of clothes, a dark-blue flannel shirt, and no collar nor necktie, and he was carry- ing his coat on his arm. He was het up with the climbing, and his cloth cap was pushed back so I could see his yellow hair, a mite curly, laying sort of dampish on his forehead, and I liked his looks, as I said. Just as we was going to pass each other, he stepped a mite out one side and I done the same, and my foot slipped on a loose stone so's I most fell over. I reached out my hand, my left one, of course, the other being tied up, and catched at the man's sleeve without thinking what I was doing. He took hold of my arm real firm and 80 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER steadied me, and I was all right in a minute. And then I says, "Thank you." Them was the very first words I ever spoke to him. And his'n to me was "Don't mention it." He asked me something about the way and how far it was to the hotel, and then I went on down and he went on up. Now I see you're looking ahead, and back, too, and deciding right off that this was the great thing that was to happen on that road to the heroine of my name. But that's no sign that I done the same. I did n't. True as I live, my novel or any- thing relating to it never come into my head that whole afternoon. I went on quite a piece before I turned, and I won't deny I thought quite a lot about that young man, for I liked his looks. When I was going back, a mite out of breath, climbing up, all of a sudden I come right on him round a turn, sitting on a stone side of the road. Somehow we spoke to each other way back that first day as if we was old friends, seems to me. And he walked along by my side. He was real polite and good-mannered, and told me his name right off. Whaples it was, and he was from Leb- anon, he said. "This State?" I asked him, and A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 81 when he says, " No, ma'am, in the State of Con- necticut," I wanted to scream. It was so good to see some one from the old Nutmeg State. " Call it that, if you want to," Uncle Nate used to say, " but there ain't any greater" that being a kind of joke, you know. Well, we felt most like first cousins after that, and talked a streak. Mary York said afterwards she never in all her born days was so took aback as when she seen me that time coming up to the house with that stranger, him and me talking and acting so friendly and intimate. 'T was queer, I own up, for I never had cared much for beaux and such things, like other girls. Well, Mr. Whaples liked the place and said he'd admire to stay. They chanced to need another man at the stables just that very time and he took the place. 'T was the old story, you see ; I liked his looks, as I said before, and I liked them better as the days went on. I liked his ways, too, and it was n't long be- fore I see he liked mine. I let him know the worst first-off. That was always a real Hancox habit, not putting on company manners to deceive folks as some families do. He told me he was a Congregational and all the Whapleses — his branch 6 82 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER — was that, too. I owned right up, honest, that spite of my bringing up and the views all my fam- ily held, I was a Methodist, though, there not being any church of that persuasion — nor any other, to tell the truth — on the Summit I had n't yet took the last step. He did n't seem a bit put out, though he did n't say anything. A spell after, as we were sitting talking with some of the help, somebody asked him what church he belonged to. He says real quiet, without looking my way, he says, " My folks are Congregational, and I used to hold with that kind ; but now I'm thinking of going over to the Methodists," he says. I told him, too, how I'd gone back on lots of the family beliefs, how I'd raised my voice from a low second to a high treble ; that I'd took to wear- ing pink that no Shaw before me had ever held as becoming ; and how I even eat shellfish that had always before been to our family like pork to the Jews. It did n't make any difference to him, nor change his favorable views of me and my ways. All I done, he thought, was just about right, and what I did n't care about he did n't set much by himself. But he had one very singular way of speaking. A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 83 I could n't seem to understand it. When I'd tell him some of my beliefs or holdings, he'd say, sort of low to himself like, "I knew it," and really sometimes he'd show he knew some of my ways by speaking of them before I'd told him about them. I begun to wonder. 'T was n't many hours after I met him first that I found out what his given name was. 'T was Ezry. That ought to have come over me as a big surprise, you'd think, but it did n't. Sing'lar as it may seem, I never thought at first how strange and fulfilling 't was, for my book and that hero of mine had gone clean out of my head. You see, a more interesting story with him and me for principal characters, had be- gun right off and there. He knew what my name was the first day, for he heard the girls calling me by it. 'T was then I noticed for the first time that queer habit of his'n, for when he heard Ellen Hawes call out " Did your walk do you good, Pru- dence? " he just says, low to himself like, "I knew it." Somehow, every time I heard him say that, a choky, swallowy feeling would come over me, but I could n't tell why. I was with him the first time he ever see that mournful object, the gravestone of Lizzie Bourne. 84 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER I had n't got used to that story then, a dreadful sad one, and as I told him about the poor girl and how she lost her life up there my eyes was wet and my voice shaky. He did n't seem worked up much and not a bit surprised. He just says, low like, to himself, "I knew it," and I did n't dast ask what he meant. So 't was about everything, I could n't show him anything new. Seemed's if he was interested, but only like somebody that's come back to a place he used to know well. The Tip-top House, the Northern Peaks, the lights over to Berlin on a clear night, even that sur- prisingest sight you sometimes see, the shadow of the mountain itself showing against the afternoon sky, they was no news to him. He'd just look at 'em calm like and then say soft, "I knew it." Love matters moves along dreadful fast up on that mountain. I don't scursely know why 't is. Sometimes I think the fog — there's such lots of it — is kind of soft and mellering, and maybe that has something to do with it. Or again, p'raps it's what they call the altitude, the high-upness, you know, that sort of raises your feelings and draws up your heart. I don't just know, but 't any rate there's a dreadful lot up there of courting and A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 85 keeping company and making plans for settling down and all. They've got a way of measuring what they call the v'locity of the wind, but there ain't a machine ever made that can measure off the v'locity of some of the sweethearting on that elevation o' land. It comes to a head terrible soon. I don't hold with telling all about your own private affairs to other folks, not even to a good friend like you, though I don't disremember a single thing that happened them first days. But one time before things were settled betwixt him and me, we was talking about the time before we'd even seen each other, as folks always do, you know, and there come out a wonderful, amazing thing. That's what you heard about, I guess. For I've told it a good many times to show these up-and-down folks that won't believe anything they don't see with their own eyes or hear with their own two ears, and can't catch hold of with their two hands. As some old book says — I don't think it's the Bible, but it might be — "there's more happenings in the heavens and the earth than Horatio," whoever he was, or any living soul ever dreamed about. We was sitting on the rocks looking out on what 86 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER they call the Lake of the Clouds, way, way down below us. We had n't been saying anything for a spell — there's times when you don't care about talking, you know — but all of a sudden Ezry says, " I remember sitting here with you and looking down on that water more'n a year back." " Eemember what ! " I says, all took aback, "why, we had n't neither of us ever seen this mountain a year back." " I had," he says, very quiet like, his eyes look- ing as if he was sort of dozey or dreaming, " I had, and it was just like 't is now, and you were here and just what you be now." I was a mite scared, he looked so queer and talked so sing'lar. I put my hand on his arm and kind of shook him. " What in the land is the matter of you? " I says ; " are you dreaming? " "Ko," he says, taking hold of my hand and looking as if he'd just waked up, " but I guess I was for a spell nigh a year ago. Dreams don't always go by contraries, as they say, for mine's come true." Well, then he told me a story, sing'- lar uncommon story 't was. I could n't for the world understand it no more'n I can at this very minute. I won't spin it out if I can help it, but A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 87 it was like this. Down in Connecticut, about a year before, he'd, sadden like, felt that he was built for an author, and must go to writing a book. 'T was to be a sort of novel, and all the characters was to be first-class city folks. But it was to start in Lebanon, his own place and the only one he knew much about. 'T was to be called " Ethel- wynd Wilmot." He told me how he begun and how he tried to set down the pictur' he see out of his window. Lebanon's a inland place, you know, rolling country and not a sight of salt water around. But it was my experience over again. He kept writing about salt water, rocks, seaweed, and ships, things he'd never seen in all his born days. Then come a part different from mine. Being a man, he was stronger, I suppose, and he broke away from the seashore part. But instead of com- ing home to Lebanon and the things he knew, what did he do but start of writing about high moun- tains 'most like the Alps he'd learnt about at school, and him being on the very toppest of all. And then the time he had with his characters ! 'T was me over again. His stylish, high-toned hero came out a common country fellow, looks, clothes, and 88 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER all. When he was telling about that and how mad it made him, and how when he tried to write his name Ethelwynd, the pen would wiggle and go crooked, making a " z " and coming out Ezry, his own given name, I begun to feel scared. Oh, what if he said he was mad and disappointed when his heroine would n't stay stylish and citified and — I would n't wait. " What about the heroine, Ezry? " I says, a mite bashful. "Well, she was to have been named Pauline, like some one in a, play I'd read, and dreadful proud and queenly and all." " Was she tall and had real dark waving hair, and her skin like satin with her cheeks like the interior of a seashell?" I asks quick and excited. "Why, certainly," he says, dreadful surprised. " Was she willowy? " says I. " Some willowy," he says. " And, Ezry ! " I asks, my voice shaking, " did she glide with haughty steps? " "She done that," he says; "how'd you know?" "That same girl! " I sobs out, "and I just can't bear her, poking in every time where she is n't wanted. And you — you — liked her? " I asks, for A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 89 I could n't bear what the books call the terrible suspense another minute. " You bet I did n't," he says, so loud and de- cided I could n't help believing him. "I never liked her, never felt to home with her for one sin- gle minute. I only thought a real heroine had ought to be that kind. They generally be in books, you know. But I never wrote about her after all, for she come out all different." "How was she different?" I says, aching to know and yet kind of scary about it, too. "Why," he says, "she come out just exactly the sort of girl to make a rough common chap like the hero (he was me over again, you know) happy. I've thought about that girl every day of my life since she come into that novel of mine, but I never see her in the flesh till — that day I come up the carriage-road, Prudence, and met — you ! " And then he Mercy me! there's pa at the door and the table not set. Wipe your feet, Ezry, and come right in. I've got company, you see.