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 Taghconic : the romance and beauty of th 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 028 817 637 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 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/cu31924028817637 
 
/. E. A. SMITH 
 
TAGHCONIC 
 
 THE ROMANCE AND BEAUTY 
 OF THE BERKSHIRE HILLS 
 
 By GODFREY GREYLOCK 
 
 (/. E. A. Smith, Historian of Pitlsfield) 
 
 ' ' Thou shall look 
 Upon the green and rolling forest tops, 
 And down into the secrets of the glens 
 And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive 
 To hide their windings. Thou shall gaze at once 
 Here on white villages and tilth and herds. 
 And swarming roads, and there on solitudes 
 That only hear the torrent and the wind. 
 
 And eagle's shriek-" 
 
 — Bryant. 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1908 
 
 EAGLE PRINTING and BINDING COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 1908 
 
 p> "irk'i i i 
 I I ,: (; />, I; Y 
 
Epistle Dedicatory 
 
 To Summer Ramblers on the Berkshire Hills 
 
 Friends : — 
 
 From Vermont upon the north to Connecticut upon the 
 south, for fifty miles along the eastern border of New York, 
 extends Berkshire, the most western county of Massachusetts. 
 It is a region of hill and valley, of lake and stream, of wood- 
 land, farm and field. Its beauty is world renowned; for 
 the pens of Cullen Bryant and Catherine Sedgwick early made 
 it their favorite themes, and in later years Holmes and Long- 
 fellow, Hawthorne, Melville and Thoreau have invested it 
 with the halo of their genius. Within its limits lie Monu- 
 ment Mountain, Icy Glen, the Stockbridge Bowl, Green 
 River, October Mountain and a thousand other scenes of 
 storied or of unsung loveliness. 
 
 Bounding the valley on the north, from innumerable 
 points of view, the double peaks of Greylock rise majestically 
 three thousand five hundred feet into the air, the mountain 
 summit of the Commonwealth. Along its western borders, 
 in curves of marvelous grace, lie the dome-like hills of the 
 Taghconic range. Less graceful in outline, but even more 
 romantic with broken and precipitous ascents, wild glens and 
 •tumbling brooks, the Hoosacs shut out the world upon the 
 east. Within this mountain-walled amphitheatre lies cradled 
 the upland valley of the Housatonic, with all its fertile farms, 
 its mansion homes, and frequent villages. Somebody has 
 called it the Piedmont of America. I do not know how just 
 the appellation may be, but I do know that if Piedmont can 
 rightly be called the Berkshire of Europe, it must be a very 
 delightful region. 
 
 What we most admire in Berkshire scenery is its fresh- 
 ness, boldness, and variety. Our hills boast no astounding 
 
TAGHCONIC 
 
 grandeur; there is nothing about them of an Alpine char- 
 acter; they possess few scenes which can properly rank with 
 the sublime. The highest mountain tops, the most precipi- 
 tous cliffs — sufficient to claim our admiration, wild enough 
 to be the marvel of tourists from the tame coast country — 
 cannot, for a moment, compare with similar scenes among 
 the White Mountains, or the Alleghanies — not to mention 
 more unapproachable wonders of nature. Our deepest ra- 
 vines, often penetrated by smooth, flower-bordered roads, are 
 very different things indeed, from the earthquake-rifted 
 chasms of other lands. 
 
 If the traveller seek some object for a day's or a week's 
 wonder, some tremendous cataract or "Heaven piercing Cor- 
 dillera," he must seek it elsewhere. But if he asks for a 
 retreat among wild and picturesque scenery, adorned by 
 much that is pleasant and refined in his city life, but far 
 removed from its heat and turmoil; where he can draw 
 closer the silken cord of social intercourse, and yet throw 
 loose some of its galling chains; where nature ennobles by 
 her greatness but never chills with a frown, he may find it 
 all amid the varied beauty of the Berkshire Hills. 
 
 The inexhaustible variety of our vistas is wonderful. It 
 is marvellous in what an endless series of combinations, 
 mountain, valley, lake, stream, rock, field and wood, present 
 themselves. Wherever you go, you meet a constant succes- 
 sion of changes which at once charm the eye and delight the 
 heart. At every turn 
 
 " You stand suddenly astonished, 
 You are gladdened unaware." 
 
 Through the long summer months you may daily seek, 
 and not in vain, some new object of beauty or of romantic 
 interest. But it may chance that you will not. It often 
 
EPISTLE DEDICATORY 
 
 happens that a few spots become so dear that one revisits 
 them again and again, leaving others of equal or surpassing 
 charms for those to whom they have become like a familiar 
 friend. 
 
 So profusely indeed has nature scattered her wealth of 
 beauty in this fair county that, to many, it seems a useless 
 labor to search out her more choice and hidden gems; and 
 they remain concealed from those who pass their lives within 
 a rifle shot of them. 
 
 The traditions, too, which used to attach to most of these 
 scenes are rapidly fading with the fading years of grey haired 
 men. "Yes, there was a story," I have often been told, 
 "Old Deacon Whitehead or old Captain Grey used to tell it; 
 but they are dead and my memory of it is dim." * * * * 
 
 And now to you, whom I have presumed to call my 
 friends, and for whom these brief pages were more particularly 
 designed, I commend for your kindness what is done. Every 
 word was written in sympathy with your admiration of these 
 glorious hills; a sympathy which seemed to ripen into per- 
 sonal friendship with yourselves. If I shall point any of you 
 to scenes of Nature's gladness, to which you would otherwise 
 have been strangers; if I shall contribute one moment of 
 happiness to your summer hours; if I shall hereafter recall 
 more vividly to your mind these rural scenes, when they shall 
 be a little faded, I shall be amply repaid; how much more, 
 if I shall add one pleasant thought to mingle with your own, 
 as you gaze upon the grand, the noble, or the beautiful, in 
 our dear mountain valley. 
 
 Old Friends: — 
 
 Many years ago, in words like the above I addressed to 
 you a little volume, which, somewhat changed in form, but 
 not one whit in sentiment, I now offer to you again. If the 
 words I then wrote were warm with the glow of first love, 
 they seem tame to express the affection which, in the inter- 
 
TAGHCONIC 
 
 course of years, has been inspired by each fair scene, each 
 now familiar mountain peak ; so many of them now insepa- 
 rably associated with pleasant or tender memories. 
 
 Do you remember — it was but yesterday — standing on 
 the beetling cliffs of Monument Mountain ; clambering through 
 the rock-cumbered recesses of the Icy Glen; lingering in 
 pleasant Mahaiwe, blest of nature and of art; watching the 
 moon and the sunrise on the shaggy shoulders of Greylock; 
 wading and stumbling through the rushing brook up the 
 marble ravine that leads to the Natural Bridge; dazed by 
 the superb overview from Perry's Peak; climbing the cliff- 
 wood recesses of South Mountain; letting the long summer 
 days melt deliriously away, with discourse of books and 
 nature, on the leafy summits of Osceola and Yocun's Seat; 
 in storm on Otaneaque, in sunshine on Constitution Hill; 
 floating half sadly on Lake Onota or the Stockbridge Bowl; 
 in merry masquerade on Pontoosuc or the Lily Bowl; listening 
 to the lonely dash of Wahconah's Falls, or the mirth-mingled 
 murmurs of Lulu Cascade; watching the summer-flash 
 of life and fashion in the romantic solitude of Lebanon; 
 puzzling over the potent charms of Lenox, loved of the literati ; 
 rapt in the noble memories of old Stockbridge on the Plain, 
 and the no less noble memories of Pontoosuc, home of patriots; 
 lingering in many a nameless nook or shaded woodroad, to 
 be, perhaps, thenceforward dearer than all? You cannot 
 have forgotten all this, for you know it was but a little, a 
 very little while ago when it all happened. 
 
 And of tale and tradition; how have they on every hand 
 answered to our seeking, and clothed every scene anew, with 
 old life. To be sure, I have not deemed it necessary to severely 
 criticise every tradition that has been preserved. Enough 
 that it accorded with the spirit and the customs of the day 
 of which it was related, and did not knock its brains out 
 against some hard and ugly fact. Nay, I will even make a 
 more startling confession. When in some dry old documen- 
 
EPISTLE DEDICATORY 
 
 tary history, or original document yellowed by age, I have 
 found a glimpse of real life and story, I have not been 
 ashamed to call in the spirit of any old fellow, whom I 
 supposed cognizant of the facts, to help me fill out the chroni- 
 cle. Living for years half buried in accounts of these departed 
 heroes and among the papers which they wrote — all the while 
 striving with all my might to do justice to their memories — 
 I should have thought it hard indeed if they could not now 
 and then tell me a little story at midnight, when other spirits 
 bestow their time so freely upon those who have no claim 
 at all upon them. My old heroes were not so ungrateful. 
 It does not seem best, however, to quote these spiritual 
 authorities in foot notes, as e. g. 
 
 1 Interview with Capt. Konkapot and Wampenum. 
 
 2 Spirits of Captains Aupaumut and Solomon. 
 
 3 Thus Coochecomeek, but Mahtookamin seems to think otherwise; 
 however, M. did not seem perfectly en rapport. 
 
 I am afraid this sort of thing would not do at all for the 
 Methuselah Society for the Perversion of History. Never- 
 theless the testimony of eye-witnesses of, or actors in, scenes 
 which took place, over two hundred years ago is very satis- 
 factory to right-minded people; and if they are willing to 
 leave their happy hunting grounds or other places of com- 
 fortable spiritual abode and pleasure, to tell old tales of their 
 old home, I for one, am grateful. If you think otherwise, we 
 will not quarrel about it: you shall have the stories all the 
 same, just as the dusky shades of the heroes already quoted, 
 and also Unkamet, Honasada, Wanaubaugus and the gentle 
 Wahconah, told them to me. 
 
 But, from whatever sources I may draw the incidents and 
 legends associated with the scenery of Berkshire, I shall en- 
 deavor that none are inconsistent with the most accurate 
 history; that nothing shall be told, but which at least "might 
 have been." And I trust that none of my readers will be 
 
TAGHCONIC 
 
 so dull as not to be able to detect what is literally true and 
 what partakes of the infirmities of tradition. In the descrip- 
 tion of scenery my aim will be in all cases, without affecting 
 any Pre-Raphaelite precision, to paint a faithful likeness. If 
 I err it will not be in the intention. 
 
 I said that I address these little sketches to those to 
 whom they were first dedicated; but, with the words, comes 
 the thought that, of those favoring eyes to which I should 
 have looked for the kindliest judgment, many have closed 
 forever on the scenes of earth; that there are some spots, 
 once the most joyous, which if we visit them for the purposes 
 of mirth, seem strangely changed: 
 
 "Happy places have grown holy; 
 If we went where once we went, 
 Only tears would fall down slowly, 
 As at splemn sacrament." 
 
 And yet we know that those whom we miss would have 
 grieved sorely had they believed that their departure would 
 leave a shadow, their memory could not brighten, upon the 
 scenes that we enjoyed together. For us who remain, it 
 would have been their wish that that memory should shed 
 upon each spot with which it is associated, a purer and holier, 
 but not less gladsome, light. To the living who have lin- 
 gered with me in loving admiration among the hills of our 
 dear old Berkshire, and to the memories of our dead, I then 
 dedicate these pages. 
 
 We are most of us, still far from having lived out the 
 life which it is appointed for man to live ; still farther perhaps 
 from having thoroughly earned the grave which we would 
 not willingly owe to the charity of a soil to which we have 
 given less than we have received from it. And upon him 
 whose duty it is to live and strive, rests equally the obligation 
 to enjoy; for he who works sadly, works at ill advantage; 
 nor without enjoyment can there be any genuine and heart- 
 
EPISTLE DEDICATORY 
 
 felt gratitude for the gifts of the Creator — of which none 
 speak more directly of Him than these grand mountains, 
 these noble hills, these fair and fruitful valleys ; among which 
 let us hope that our rambles are not yet ended. 
 
 Godfrey Greylock. 
 Pittsfield, June 1st, 1879. 
 
I * 
 
 Our Town 
 
Our Town 
 
 " Mine, and mine I loved, and mine I prized, 
 And mine that I was proud on: mine so much 
 That I was to myself not mine." 
 
 To be sure, the first claim which our town has to notice 
 is that it is ours. The propria affords a paramount and never- 
 to-be-disputed title to our affections. That, all clear-sighted 
 persons admit. The very idea of property is genial to our 
 hearts, even if it be only in the travelled streets of a town, 
 with so much of Heaven's universal gifts as one can there 
 possess, use and enjoy, in common with some thousands of 
 copartners. Says Thoreau, with philosophic acumen — and 
 Southey has the same idea, somewhat enlarged, in "The 
 Doctor" — "I think nothing is to be hoped from you, if this 
 bit of mold under your feet is not sweeter for you to eat than 
 any other in this world — or any other world." "Mine" 
 and more intensely "mine own," are terms of superlative 
 endearment in the patois of the novel writers. So inherent 
 indeed in the human heart, is this correspondence between 
 ownership and affection, that no sooner do we conceive a 
 liking for our neighbor's house, horse, or, anything that is 
 his, than an uneasy, feverish desire to transfer the possession, 
 betrays that our hearts are out of unison with the harmony 
 of nature. 
 
 Nowhere is this natural law of relationship more relig- 
 iously honored than in the love which the good people of 
 Pittsfield bear to their beautiful town. But, waiving this 
 claim, which is, in its terms, not binding upon a stranger, our 
 town has a title to affectionate admiration, which not the 
 most crabbed traveller ever yet desired to impeach. 
 
 It is indeed a fair town; and, standing in the center of 
 that magnificent panorama of hills which encompasses the 
 
12 TAGHCONIC 
 
 county of Berkshire, it is embosomed in beauty — in beauty, 
 whose excess and overwhelming profusion, in some of its 
 broader and more comprehensive presentations, often raise 
 it to the level of the sublime. Branching from its central 
 elm-shaded green, delightful avenues invite into the most 
 picturesque regions. Through long vistas of elms, lindens 
 and maples, you look longingly away to tree-flecked and 
 grove-checkered hillsides, dappled also, it may be, with pas- 
 sing cloud -shadows ; to wooded mountain tops, the nearer 
 brightly green, the more distant sometimes dimly, sometimes 
 darkly; blue, as the fickle powers of the air may ordain. 
 Over valleys lying in goldenest sunshine, you look away to 
 glens deepening into mysterious gloom, and — yet beyond — to 
 pastures, stretched at intervals along the topmost heights, 
 upon whose bright verdure the sunlight lingers longest. 
 Enchanted land, you will think those Hoosac pastures, when, 
 after a summer shower, the rays of the setting sun suddenly 
 burst upon them, while they are overhung by such a rainbow 
 as is possible only among the mountains; its glorious arch, 
 gemlike in the living depths of its color, resting upon pillars 
 of shadowy splendor which find their bases among the foun- 
 dations of the everlasting hills. 
 
 Regions these, one would say, in which much of man's 
 and much of Nature's story must lie hid. Very enticing 
 regions they are in truth; the whole broad landscape one 
 grand volume of song and legend, bound in the most gorgeous 
 green and gold. But, before we permit it to lure us away, 
 I have a story or two to tell, which must be told right here, 
 under this little cluster of elms, and nowhere else. 
 
Stories of a Tree 
 
Stories of a Tree and Its Preservers 
 
 "Wise with the lore of centuries, 
 What tales, if there were tongues in trees, 
 That giant Elm could tell!" 
 
 You must have heard of the old Elm of Pittsfield Park. 
 It has its place of fame among The Trees of America; and 
 has had this many a year. It is not long since it rose here, 
 among the young green growth, the scarred and seared 
 veteran of centuries. Straight into the air it sprang, one 
 hundred and twenty-six feet; a tall grey pillar, bearing for 
 sole capital a few green branches, and a few withered, shat- 
 tered and bare limbs. From Greylock to Monument Moun- 
 tain there was no inanimate thing so revered and venerable. 
 Nor had it grown thus without a story, and one with which 
 the stories of other, and human, lives were closely entwined. 
 
 When it stood, a graceful sapling, in the forest, wherein 
 as yet no white man had his habitation, the spot which is 
 now our peaceful green, with a little neighboring territory, 
 was an upland wood surrounded, except for a narrow space 
 upon the north, by impenetrable swamps: a most defensible 
 camping ground; such as the red engineers knew well how 
 to select. 
 
 And here the St. Francois war parties, returning from 
 their merciless raids into the valley of the Connecticut, were 
 wont to bivouac, binding their way-worn and woe-worn cap- 
 tives to the lithe but firm-set young trees. Many a sorrow- 
 ful sight must have been witnessed by that lone oasis among 
 the hemlock thickets, but one tradition only speaks of in- 
 dividual suffering and adventure. 
 
 Peril the First. 
 Once — as this half -forgotten old story goes — there came, 
 among a group of captives, the daughter of one of those 
 
16 TAGHCONIC 
 
 God fearing pastors who, rather than bow the knee to Baal 
 and Archbishop Laud, forsook their quiet and comfortable 
 livings in Old England to become the living springs of the 
 New England churches. Fair with the light of "Sunny- 
 Devon by the sea," and graced by culture imbreathed with 
 the odor of honeysuckles and roses in the old moss-covered 
 rectory, Isabel Walton carried sunshine, melody and joy into 
 the bare log cabin prepared by the puritanic settlers for 
 her widowed father, in their narrow forest clearing. 
 
 But, one murderous night, torn from the dead body of 
 that father, and spared by the caprice or avarice of the 
 savages, she was brought thus far on her way to Canada. 
 Here, broken with grief and fatigue, she was doomed to 
 death, as an encumbrance to their march, and to death by 
 fire. She was already bound to the sapling Elm, and the 
 faggots piled about her feet, when, happily, the party was 
 joined by a small detachment of French soldiers under the 
 command of a young lieutenant. Touched by the maidenly 
 modesty, as well as by the brave and almost saintly bearing, 
 of the victim, this officer interposed so vehemently that, 
 partly by threats and partly by pledges of ransom, she was 
 rescued; and with her the young Elm escaped its first peril 
 at the hand of man. Supported with tender care and reve- 
 rent regard by her manly preserver, Isabel reached Montreal 
 in safety. And the garrulous old tradition, after the absurd 
 manner of such ancient chronicles, thinks it necessary to 
 add, that weak, captive, and bereaved, as she was, she did 
 not find the long march altogether without its consolations, 
 or indeed at all tedious. I preserve this addendum solely 
 for the benefit of elderly philosophers in search of psychological 
 data. I am quite sure, at least, it will not be needed by any 
 of my fair readers who ever passed an October day in Berk- 
 shire woods, rustling through the crisp carpet of many colored 
 leaves, tumbling over criss-crossed and tangled roots, lunch- 
 ing sociably in sunny glades, climbing paths "so arduous that 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 17 
 
 the liberal support of strong arms was not to be dispensed 
 with; and withal performing feats which would have made 
 their teacher of calisthenics open her pretty eyes very wide. 
 
 And now I must tell you of one thing which I fear some 
 of you will not so well like. But, ah me! in any veracious 
 narrative unpleasant facts will out. Naturally there came 
 a time in their wooing when Pierre and Isabel spoke together 
 of their difference in religious faith. This was certainly after 
 their betrothal, but I think the weight of evidence indicates 
 that it was before their marriage; which the records of the 
 cathedral church fix with great precision at just one year 
 after their arrival at Montreal. The anniversary is a holiday 
 with their descendants even yet. But, whatever may have 
 been the precise time when the lovers ventured upon this 
 delicate topic, it was not until Isabel had become so accus- 
 tomed to yield to the persuasive tones of her preserver and 
 guardian, that the protestant pastor's daughter forsook the 
 faith for which her father suffered — for which she, as well, 
 was ready to suffer — and adopted that in whose communion 
 she could walk with her husband. Mightier than Laud's 
 power of prelacy, or fiercest Torquemada persecutions, are 
 the soft persuasions of love. I beseech you not to think 
 too unforgivingly of the young bride for this love-led back- 
 sliding of hers. Rather than so, I could wish you to dis- 
 believe the story outright; although that, besides being pain- 
 ful to my own feelings would be deemed impolite by the 
 whole long descended Lanaudiniere family of Montreal, who 
 would consider it little that their great-great-great grandfather 
 — be the degree of his grandfathership more or less — had 
 rescued their grandmother in like degree, from the flames 
 of savage torture, had he not also saved her from more en- 
 during torments. 
 
 Should you visit them — these ancient Lanaudinieres — in 
 their ancient Montreal home, they will show you, in a richly 
 gilt frame, still more richly adorned with the precious tarnish 
 
18 TAGHCONIC 
 
 of two hundred honorable years, the portrait of a young 
 woman with very blue eyes very widely expanded; with 
 very yellow hair, and plump cheeks, in which very red roses 
 meet the very white, but very, very decidedly refuse to 
 mingle. A silver crucifix, or it may be of ivory — envious 
 time has here blurred the coloring a little — rests upon a very 
 full and a very fully displayed bosom; while the faint sus- 
 picion of a halo, half retiring into the obscure back-ground, 
 as if doubtful of its right to be there, hovers above the yellow 
 hair. 
 
 You will guess this remarkable picture to be enlarged 
 from a saintly feminine figure in the old family missal; the 
 "specimen piece" perhaps, of some accomplished Lanaudin- 
 iere damsel of an elder generation; or possibly, a study by 
 some artistic cadet of the house, turned monk. Lacking the 
 corrective contemplation of living models, the imagination 
 of the cloistered artists, in their lonely cells, was wont to 
 play strange freaks with saintly personages of the gentle 
 sex; not excepting her lovely majesty, the Queen of Heaven, 
 herself. 
 
 But your guesses will be all wrong; as my friends, the 
 Lanaudinieres, will tell you, as politely as the circumstances 
 will admit. And they will add, with half offended pride, 
 that this is the portrait of grandmother Isabel; a gift to 
 grandfather Pierre from a renowned Jesuit missionary, who 
 painted it with his own pious hand, that the world might 
 not lose the memory of the miracle of a New England Puritan 
 converted to the old faith. Many a year of patient and 
 fruitless labor among hundreds of that stiff-necked race, 
 "captivated" and brought to Canada, had taught the good 
 father what a miracle that was. He believed that it was, 
 and would be, unique. But you must remember that he 
 was a celibate. 
 
 This preposterous painting is prized beyond measure by 
 the present generation of Lanaudinieres, although, in their 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 19 
 
 hearts, they know as well as I do, that it is not in the least 
 like gentle grandma Isabel; save perhaps in the modest 
 halo, which may indeed have glimmered above her golden 
 hair, if saintly heads are ever crowned with such manifesta- 
 tions of Divine favor. 
 
 The neighbors of the owners of this portrait — the Prot- 
 estant neighbors, I mean — maliciously aver that the last 
 genuine likeness of their ancestress departed from the Domin- 
 ion of Canada, when, after a ceremony that was not per- 
 formed cathedral-wise, another Isabel Lanaudinere sailed 
 away, the bride of a young lieutenant-commander in Her 
 Britannic Majesty's Sloop* of War, The Whirligig — The 
 Whirligig of Time, the Protestant wits of Montreal called 
 it. It will be considerate in you when visiting these really 
 excellent, but rather over-sensitive, people, to avoid all allu- 
 sion to Her Majesty's naval service. I trust to your dis- 
 cretion also, not to repeat, what I mention in the strictest 
 confidence, that their much prized Jesuitical portrait is but 
 a sad caricature of features even too delicate for perfect 
 beauty; of eyes as guiltless of a stare as the violet's; of 
 cheeks which, never round or rosy, paled more and more to 
 her young dying day. 
 
 Alas, not all the endearments of husband and children, 
 not the fond affection of new friends, nor the charms of a 
 new home, could altogether banish the memory of what had 
 been in Old, and New, England. 
 
 Meanwhile, troubled by no memories, the young Elm grew 
 and flourished. Memory never troubles things of growth 
 and living verdure. If it should seem to you that any of the 
 woodland scenes to which I am leading you back, are "sick- 
 lied o'er" by any "melancholy cast" of that kind, be assured 
 it is but a sickly fancy of your own. Take boldly with you 
 those to whom you have loved to forecast their charms. 
 They shall tell you, the hills of Taghconic are as green, the 
 sheen of their lakes as sunny, the echoes of their valleys as 
 
20 TAGHCONIC 
 
 joyous, as even you can have portrayed them. The woods 
 remember little of last year's wild flowers — nothing at all of 
 those which perished long ago. It is the stern old rock, 
 wrinkled by the convulsions, hardened by the fires, and fur- 
 rowed by the storms of infinite cycles, which forgets not the 
 most gossamer-like veining of the slender fern which, in his 
 far off youth, lay upon his bosom and faded there. 
 
 But, unmindful even of the buried leaves which nourished 
 its young life, the Elm, quivering with new joy in the new 
 verdure of each new year, grew in beauty and in stature. 
 
 "How straight it grows!" said the Mohegan maiden. 
 
 "Straight as an arrow!" echoed the young warrior, him- 
 self almost as arrow-like. 
 
 Peril the Second. 
 
 But not the young Elm only, grew and exulted in the 
 strength of its youth. The young Commonwealth — the Prov- 
 ince of Massachusetts Bay — also grew apace. And, by and 
 by, some century and a quarter ago, the white man got him- 
 self sufficiently established in the Indian's Poontoosuck, to 
 think of clearing the highways, which, many tumultuous 
 years before, had been laid out very broad and straight; as 
 the Great and General Court at Boston prescribed. 
 
 Here was indeed danger for our Elm. On this much 
 tyrannized globe, there is not another despot so obdurate 
 to every appeal for justice or mercy, as that enemy of the 
 vested rights of Nature in her own loveliness— the old-fash- 
 ioned New England highway surveyor: of whom too many 
 yet remain, to cumber the earth, and scrunch out her deli- 
 cate graces with their hobnailed heels. Witness a thousand 
 turf robbed, shade-bereft waysides, whose dust this torrid 
 summer shall rise up in judgment against these ruthless rava- 
 gers of their comeliness— these soulless deformers of the lawn- 
 like knolls, which nature, with all her marvelous forces, 
 had toiled for a myriad years to round into perfect grace.' 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 21 
 
 Remorseless rascals, they were, for the most part, those 
 old tyrants whose resistless scepter was that hideous relic 
 of barbarism, the ox-goad: and to their most legitimate rule, 
 our dear young Elm was as clearly subject as ever hapless 
 ward to heartless Suzerain. Something savoring of the 
 miraculous was needed to save it alive; and something very 
 like a miracle happened. 
 
 He to whom that cruel, proding scepter was first con- 
 fided in the young plantation of Poontoosuc — so they called 
 then, what is Pittsfield now — was a stout farmer from Weth- 
 ersfield in Connecticut, who had become lord of some thou- 
 sands of acres scattered here and there among the green hills. 
 Tradition has preserved a world of racy and romantic stories 
 about him, which we must not now stay for. In the Indian 
 wars then just ended, he had been a stout soldier; and, 
 afterwards, when the time for that came, he was as stout a 
 patriot; bold alike to resist the encroachments of kingly 
 power and the crude license of a newly enfranchised people. 
 Honor, always, to his memory for these things; but, here 
 and now, chiefly that, one summer day — doubtless one of 
 those perfect June days, which still come in Berkshire, bring- 
 ing all that is best in a man to the surface — with that sweet 
 summer day softening the harshness of his rude work, he 
 saw reverently, what in those forest-hating years, it required 
 a rare eye to see, even with the aid of the most heavenly 
 light, that God had made this tree passing fair; a thing to 
 be loved and honored of many generations, and not to be 
 rooted up like a pestilent weed. 
 
 Shall we praise such a man as this under a pseudonym? 
 Leave him a mere backwoods nominis umbra — an unsubstan- 
 tial ghost of a name; to wander, as dimly remembered, in 
 the dim shades of forgotten forests? I trow, not we! Honor 
 then to the name of Captain Charles Goodrich! 
 
 As was fitting, he had honor; had it for many a year 
 after that genial June day when he saved the Elm alive; 
 
22 TAGHCONIC 
 
 until, well nigh a century old, he died, and was borne under 
 its shadow to his neighboring grave. But long before that, 
 the tree had met its 
 
 Peril the Third. 
 
 From which, to use the pious phraseology of that day, 
 Providence again raised up for it a worthy preserver. 
 
 In that grand year, 1775, the most soul-stirring in all 
 Massachusetts story, a gallant and spirited youth was en- 
 rolled, among the students of Harvard college, as John 
 Chandler Williams; a name indicating his kinship with two 
 families of considerable standing in the scale of the Provincial 
 gentry. Any quiet study was at that time sadly unattainable 
 in the classic shades on the banks of the Charles; but the 
 young gentlemen were not, on that account, necessarily idle. 
 In fact, several of them were notably busy, one well remem- 
 bered April day; having found occupation with some, thence- 
 forward world-renowned, farmers. 
 
 Young Williams was among them; and must in some 
 way have distinguished himself; for, not many days after, 
 he was summoned to the Provincial Congress, then in session 
 at Cambridge; by whom he was as speedily dispatched, 
 with a single companion, upon a secret and delicate mission; 
 every friend of the liberties of the Province being officially 
 enjoined to help him on. This mission was no less than to 
 secure the correspondence of Governor Hutchinson with the 
 enemies of those liberties on both sides the Atlantic. 
 
 These important documents, having been left with sin- 
 gular carelessness in Hutchinson's country-house at Milton 
 Hill, it required only a rapid and secret movement to secure 
 them; and they revealed all His Excellency's secrets, about 
 which the congressmen had so lively a curiosity. 
 
 The congressmen were delighted ; thanked their messenger 
 warmly; voted him the liberal and precise sum of £4. 4s 
 Qd.; and then probably thought no more of him. But he 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 23 
 
 poor fellow, had brought to light other, and more, revelations 
 than he looked for, as you shall see. 
 
 Student-wise, John Chandler loved his cousin; a fair 
 and stately cousin, who was daughter to a grand and stately 
 old father. Now this father — Colonel Israel Williams of 
 Hatfield, once a famous commander of the Indian-fighting 
 militia on the Western Border, and afterwards Chief Justice 
 of the Common Pleas for the old county of Hampshire — 
 had, before the open rupture with the King's Governor, and 
 indeed afterwards, been one of the few friends of Parliament 
 in the General Court. None of the acts of government which 
 had surrounded him with a population of enraged and rebel- 
 lious Whigs, had served to shake his own loyalty to the 
 British crown ; so that, in the year previous to his kinsman's 
 exploit at Milton Hill, Governor Gage appointed him one- of 
 his thirty-six councillors. Mandamus councillors, they were 
 called, being created by the Royal writ, and not elected by 
 the Representatives of the people, as was the old charter 
 privilege. Thus, nothing was more hateful to the patriots 
 than a Mandamus councillor. Resolved that their venerable. 
 judge should not become this odious thing, they — as a mild 
 form of persuasion — shut him up in a small school house, 
 closed the windows, built a huge pitch-pine fire in the ample 
 fire-place, and then blocked the chimney-top. The judge, 
 although a brave, and withal an obstinate man, succumbed 
 — as who would not? — and signed a renunciation of his 
 office, with whatever other pledges his tormentors saw fit 
 to dictate. 
 
 There were a good many hesitating persons made excel- 
 lent Whigs by processes like this. But Judge Williams was 
 not a hesitating person; and, having settled it in his judicial 
 mind that pledges made under duress were not binding, he, 
 like a prudent judge, reserved his decision, and went on his 
 way, but covertly, the same old servant of King George. 
 Trumbull has commemorated his pertinacity in his queer old 
 
24 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Hudibrastic, "McFingal," where he makes that hero taunt 
 his persecutors with the futility of their methods: 
 
 " Have you made Murray look less big, 
 Or smoked old Williams to a Whig? 
 Did our mobb'd Oliver quit his station, 
 Or heed his vows of resignation?" 
 
 Hutchinson's unfortunate letter-book rendered Judge Wil- 
 liams' prudence of no avail, and made it apparent that he 
 had furnished the royal governor with the most dangerous 
 information, and, still worse, had urged the severest measures 
 against the unruly provincials. 
 
 The Whigs can hardly be blamed that, upon this dis- 
 covery, they threw him — even him, one of the "River gods" 
 of the Connecticut — into Northampton jail. It is what fol- 
 lows, that shows us how even zealous patriots, and possibly, 
 although that is not fully established, gallant soldiers, .may 
 come short of being in the least chivalric gentlemen, or even 
 passable Christians. The jails of a century ago were mise- 
 rable places at the best: not at all like the comfortable 
 structures in which modern criminals recruit their exhausted 
 energies, and take lessons of infinite value in their after- 
 rascal-life. The most favored prisoner could not congratulate 
 himself on a prolonged residence in the Northampton jail 
 of 1775; and Judge Williams was not a favored prisoner. 
 
 We might forgive that, too, remembering the fate which 
 he had contemplated as fitting for his jailors. In our distant, 
 latter-day view, it would no doubt have been well had his 
 venerable years and many services to his people softened 
 resentment a little ; nay, even turned aside a little the severity 
 which the safety of the country seemed to require against 
 those whose loyalty was not towards her. But we will not 
 complain that the rigors which he would have visited upon 
 others, recoiled upon his own head. The something which 
 will not be forgiven while the story lives, lies beyond that also. 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 25 
 
 His fair and stately daughter, for all her beauty and all 
 her stateliness, was as loyal to her father as he to his king. 
 Proud, brilliant, and with a wit which could be grandly 
 used in wrath when the occasion demanded wrath; towards 
 him she was gently and devotedly affectionate as only a 
 strong warm-hearted woman can be. With her Roman 
 name — have I said that she was called, Lucretia? — she had 
 some noble qualities of the Roman dame. 
 
 Daily, after the incarceration of her father, this noble 
 and beautiful girl visited him in prison and ministered to 
 his wants. And daily, as she passed to and from his place of 
 confinement, she was subjected to taunts, and insulting 
 threats against him she loved so well, from the baser fellows 
 who, either in official positions or as loiterers, hung about the 
 jail. The favorite councillor of the renegade Governor Hut- 
 chinson, and the chief Tory of Western Massachusetts, could 
 not have looked for extraordinary leniency from the exas- 
 perated partizans who held him in their power; but North- 
 ampton was the home of Hawley and other of the more high- 
 bred and courtly leaders of the people, who could hardly 
 have known and sanctioned the unmanly treatment to which 
 those who had such claims upon their courtesy as the Tory 
 chief and his daughter, were subjected. I believe that, after 
 awhile, they did interfere. The judge was liberated; and, 
 under the surveillance of some local Revolutionary com- 
 mittee, was permitted to live, with such comfort as in that 
 way he could, until the close of the war; and afterwards, 
 for some years, in peace and freedom. 
 
 In the western counties it was too much the custom to 
 leave the "handling of the Tories," — as proceedings against 
 the loyalists were quaintly called, to violent partizans, who, 
 well knowing that the powers above would never finally 
 consent to extreme punishments, were accustomed to provide 
 for their prisoners a little purgatory, by placing them in the 
 custody of coarse and vindictive jailers, who were glad to 
 
26 TAGHCONIC 
 
 undertake the ungracious task in order to gratify some an- 
 cient pique — as often of a private as of a public origin. It 
 was not alone in Revolutionary France that, under the cloak 
 of patriotic zeal, vulgar envy sought, in its coarse way, to 
 humiliate those who had been its social superiors, and low 
 crime to avenge itself of its high-born judges. 
 
 What was the exact nature of the insults heaped upon 
 the proud Judge Williams and his prouder daughter in North- 
 ampton jail, we can only conjecture. Whatever was their 
 character, the latter curbed her resentment for the time, for 
 her father's safety, but it never ceased to rankle in her heart. 
 To her the name of Whig was always hateful; the glorious 
 Revolution was always the "Rebellion," and the theme of 
 her bitterest wit; and, to her life's end, she proclaimed her- 
 self the loyal subject of whatever "Sacred Majesty" filled 
 the throne of Great Britain. 
 
 How, in this temper, she arranged matters with the lover 
 kinsman who had so large a share in bringing about her 
 family misfortunes, the parties interested discreetly kept to 
 themselves : as I had occasion to remark,' a few pages back, 
 love has its own way out of all perplexities. But we hear 
 of no more patriotic exploits recklessly performed by the 
 young John Chandler, who went sedately back to college; 
 graduated with high honors in 1778; studied law with the 
 Honorable, and very conservative — John Worthington at 
 Springfield; and, in due time — himself became a conservative 
 counsellor, and Federal politician at Pittsfield. — And yet the 
 spirit which led him to Lexington and Milton Hill was not 
 quenched; years afterwards, among his fellows of the bar, 
 he was still "Mad Chandler, the Wild." 
 
 The offended, but tender hearted, Lucretia, of all the 
 world, understood perfectly the nature of the change which 
 had come over the young man; and she must have con- 
 sidered it as meeting her at least half way. At any rate, 
 they commenced married life, about the year 1783, in the 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 27 
 
 fine old gambrel roofed mansion — then fresh from the hands 
 of the carpenters — which you still see among the Elms, 
 across the park; still in all its pristine dignity. And there they 
 lived, happy and prosperous ; there died honored and lamented 
 by all around them, notwithstanding the lady's political 
 idiosyncrasy. 
 
 If you ask, "what has all this to do with the perils of 
 The Old Elm?" I answer, "Much every way." 
 
 You will infer with me that such a woman as Lucretia 
 Williams would love bravely where she loved warmly, even 
 though the object of her affections were but a rock or a tree. 
 She was indeed a true lover of the beautiful in nature ; and 
 its undaunted defender, as well, against all the evil fashions 
 of her day. To her we owe yonder cathedral-like colonnade 
 of elms, with whose long succession of gothic arches she sur- 
 rounded her home ; first resolutely levelling the poplar grena- 
 diers, whose stiff plumes, being of the latest importation, 
 were a la mode for all courtly court-yards. Perhaps they 
 reminded her unpleasantly of militia sentinels pacing around 
 Northampton jail. 
 
 For seven long years, however, she consoled herself, for 
 looking through these objectionable bundles of lank twigs, 
 by the luxuriant foliage and graceful form of the fair Elm on 
 the green beyond. She had learned to love it well; and the 
 better after Captain Goodrich — a frequent and congenial 
 visitor at the conservative Williams fireside — had told her 
 something of its story. Then, in the seventh year — or, to 
 be precise, Anno Domini, 1790 — came the Elm's Third Peril. 
 
 The town had hitherto worshipped in a little brown 
 meeting house, rich in grand memories, but poor as it well 
 could be in every other respect. Now they resolved to build 
 anew, in splendor commensurate with their increased wealth 
 and larger figure in the world's eye. A famous Boston archi- 
 tect — one Colonel Bulfinch — furnished a most ornate design 
 evidently suggested by Faneuil Hall, but intended to eclipse 
 
28 TAGHCONIC 
 
 that renowned edifice: and, after the manner of his craft, 
 sent a superbly colored representation of it, with a profusion 
 of scrolls, brackets, pillars, arches and what not, which at 
 the suggestion of Dame Prudence were largely omitted in 
 the completed structure. 
 
 When this astonishing "design" was handed around 
 among the congregation at the next Sabbath nooning, the 
 admiration was so intense that there was danger lest, as in 
 some modern instances, the new building would become a 
 House of Worship in an equivocal sense. But the im- 
 mediate, the "imminent deadly," peril was to the Elm. 
 There was then around it neither park nor public square- 
 nothing but a little grass plot, kept from the public travel 
 in the broad street by immemorial custom. On the outer 
 edge of this green, and well into the legal highway, by the 
 grace of God inspiring Captain Goodrich, the Elm still kept 
 its place, with the little old meeting house almost, or quite, 
 under the shade of its spreading branches. It was intended 
 to place the new building upon the site of the old; but, with 
 the excitement created by its architectural promise, came a 
 desire for a more conspicuous location. 
 
 A large share of the more resplendent glories of the pro- 
 posed edifice were concentrated in the tower and belfry; 
 and these, it was discovered, would delight a majority of the 
 citizens when on their way to church or market, if only they 
 were thrust a few feet into the highway. True, this would 
 mar the fair proportions prescribed for the street by the 
 esthetic old legislators at Boston, and,, what at this distance 
 seems quite as bad, would involve the destruction of the 
 Elm. But, then, incontestibly, the street would still be 
 wide enough for all the purposes of travel; and were there 
 not innumerable elms in the near forest? We have lately 
 cut off the superb vista of the same street by an ugly brick 
 railway station house; and it will hardly do to call that van- 
 dalism in the fathers which must be taste and culture in 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 29 
 
 the sons. At any rate, whatever we may call it, the people, 
 in town meeting assembled, determined to make the sacrifice; 
 although not without stout opposition from Captain Good- 
 rich, "Squire" Williams, and others who held God's beauti- 
 ful creations to be esteemed beyond man's fairest handi- 
 work. If the Elm's indwelling dryad had not before been 
 exorcised by the prayers or frightened away by what passed 
 for music in the old church, it must have shuddered in the 
 deepest recesses of its trunk, at the horrid speeches and reso- 
 lutions of that town meeting. 
 
 In the Williams mansion there was grief, consternation, 
 lamentation, indignation; and then a determined purpose to 
 resist the barbarous edict, so far at least, as it concerned the 
 Elm. Madam Williams did not melodiously request the 
 woodmen to spare her favorite tree ; partly, perhaps, because 
 there was no ballad to that effect in her repertoire; but 
 chiefly, no doubt, that such was not the lady's manner of 
 aiding her friends in their extreme distress. It is of tradi- 
 tion that once in her girlhood she threw herself, with trium- 
 phant daring, between her father and a raging mob of exaspe- 
 rated Whigs. The story is not verified beyond historical 
 doubt, but it is likely enough to be true. By a resort to 
 similar feminine tactics, she certainly saved the Elm ; placing 
 herself resolutely before it when the ax men came to perform 
 their fell task. 
 
 Here was a curiously sad dilemma for the puzzled execu- 
 tors of the town's wicked will. Had almost any other woman 
 thus stood in the path of municipal wrong-doing, she would 
 have been thrust aside with small ceremony; if not with a 
 sharp threat of some of those ingenious and highly civilized 
 punishments contrived by the keen-witted New England 
 fathers, lest the impulsive sex should rush madly from their 
 sphere. 
 
 But with a lawyer's spouse it was quite another matter; 
 that is, if man and wife were in perfect accord, as the Wil- 
 
30 TAGHCONIC 
 
 liamses were to a proverb. In those superstitious days, a 
 gentleman of the green bag was held a most uncanny person 
 to deal with at odds. It was grewsome to think what dread 
 processes he might evoke from the mystic depths of that 
 weird receptacle of the law's imperious dicta and scripta; 
 or from the still more occult and awful recesses, where he 
 sat, among massive and inscrutable tomes, well known by 
 their potent words to have charmed many a man out of a 
 fair estate, and into a foul jail. Not that Squire Williams 
 was known ever to have wrongfully used his abstruse learn- 
 ing. On the contrary he was counted a rather benevolent 
 sort of dealer in the law's black art; given to the defense of 
 the poor, the protection of the widow and the fatherless, and 
 to bringing the counsel of the wicked to naught: still there 
 was no telling what latent fiendishness might be developed 
 even in so benevolent a wizard ; for was he not an attorney, 
 after all? 
 
 There were therefore none to lay violent hands upon 
 Madam Williams, even with the town's most puissant war- 
 rant. Nay, even the Selectmen felt that a dreadful weight 
 was lifted from their mighty breasts, when they found that 
 the Squire would take only, a generous advantage of their 
 ludicrous predicament. 
 
 As I have said, there was, around the Elm, no green or 
 public square, such as adorned a few of the more aspiring 
 villages of the Commonwealth; but a vision of such a glory 
 had danced before the eyes of some of the more ambitious 
 citizens; and especially dazzled the not inconsiderable num- 
 ber who held commissions in the militia, and already in imagi- 
 nation saw themselves resplendent upon a parade ground 
 worthy of their most gorgeous array. The unsophisticated 
 chieftains would have stared at the suggestion of coping and 
 curbing it into an out-of-door parlor. 
 
 Mr. Williams shrewdly seized the opportunity to offer for 
 a village green, so much of his land south of the Elm, as the 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 31 
 
 town would devote to the same purpose from their domain 
 on the north, used for a meeting house site. and burial ground. 
 Under these conditions, it would be hard to guess how far 
 the new church would have receded, had not a great part of 
 the burial ground been already well filled with graves. The 
 old puritanic folk held it idle, or worse, to consecrate their 
 cemeteries; nor did they cover them with conservatories, 
 or convert them into driving parks. I fancy they would 
 have eschewed the word, cemetery, as savoring of paganism. 
 But they held sacred so much at least of the dust in their 
 plain grave yards as had once been animated by living 
 spirits ; and they shrunk from making money, or saving it, by 
 secularizing the soil with which the ashes of their dead were 
 inseparably "mingled. So they were fain to content them- 
 selves, in this instance, with a village green of moderate 
 dimensions. 
 
 It chiefly concerns us, however, that, by the bravery of 
 Madam Williams and the timely generosity of- her husband, 
 the Elm was again saved. 
 
 And now the love of the people began to go out more and 
 more towards it. Fond associations clustered faster and 
 faster around it; growing more tender, and gaining a richer 
 flavor with age — as may always be expected of such luxuries, 
 as well as of others of a less sentimental caste. Children 
 pursued their noisy sports under the tree's expanding shade, 
 pausing often to form fabulous estimates of its size and cen- 
 turies; which, for the most part, their later years never 
 found time to revise. In the near academy, the village boys 
 and girls played their pretty prelude to life's drama. Here 
 were the athletic games whose best remembered feat — en- 
 titling the youth who performed it to a place in the town's 
 little Valhalla — was to hurl a ball over the Elm's loftiest 
 branch. Here lovers lingered a precious moment in their 
 moonlight walks. Here were the Fourth of July celebrations, 
 the cattle shows, and all the country gala-days which bring 
 
32 TAGHCONIC 
 
 boyhood back to the most prosaic citizen who has a heart in 
 him; even if it glow only at these long intervals — as some 
 fanciful people aver that comets periodically revisit the sun 
 to replenish their stock of "caloric," wasted by measureless 
 wanderings in coldest space. And, while the noble tree was 
 thus sending its roots deep down into the hearts of the town's 
 people, it was also growing up to fame; for travellers cele- 
 brated it in their books, and poets in their verse. 
 
 And thus it came about that when any "to the manor 
 born" went out into the great world beyond the mountains, 
 the Old Elm was the center around which clustered all their 
 memories of home; and when any stranger visited the vil- 
 lage, it was the first object of his search — unless, as was most 
 likely, it had been the first to greet his approach. 
 
 Doom. 
 
 But, escaping all peril, to trees as to men, comes at last 
 that which is not danger, but doom. And, as with man, so 
 with the tree to whose mortality the sacred writers so often 
 liken our own, the life which aspires the most loftily best, 
 chances to meet a noble death. It so happened with our 
 Elm. A thunderbolt fell crashingly upon it, and darting 
 straight down its tall trunk, ploughed a wound of ghastly 
 whiteness from stricken bough to seared root. The fiery 
 fluid dried up the juices in its old veins, and the whole tree, 
 although cared for with almost filial tenderness, began slowly 
 to perish. But, even in its death it was fortunate. The long 
 white streak pencilled by the scathing lightning in its smooth 
 bark, caught the eye of Herman Melville, who, in his wonder- 
 ful story of "The White Whale," thus interwove it in his 
 strong-lined portrait of Captain Ahab: 
 
 "Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and 
 continuing straight down one side his tawney scorched face 
 and neck until it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a 
 slender, rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 33 
 
 perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty 
 trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly 
 darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peals 
 and grooves out the bark, from top to bottom, ere, running 
 off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but 
 branded." 
 
 There you have a graphic picture of the old Elm in its 
 decay. And thus in its death-stroke, it found a new life: 
 as the ancients fabled that they who were slain by Jove's 
 thunderbolts thereby became immortal. 
 
 The brave old tree had clearly received his death wound, 
 and remained "greenly alive" but for a space, and only as 
 to a few scanty boughs. Still, grandly wearing this meager 
 coronal, and erect as when the Indian maiden likened it 
 to her warrior lover, it looked as if proudly conscious of the 
 veneration which it inspired; as I have seen some white 
 haired citizen walking beneath it, in a vigorous old age, full 
 of the memories of a gracious youth and a benefiqent man- 
 hood. And, each spring when the young grove about it 
 began to put forth its buds, the question, "Will the old 
 Elm survive this year also?" was anxiously asked by a whole 
 people whose love for it in its grand decrepitude and decay, 
 exceeded even that of Lucretia Williams for its leafy prime. 
 
 Twice again it "midway met the lightnings," and then, 
 one summer morning, the whisper passed along the street 
 that the Elm was bending to its fall. 
 
 The axe — in kindness now — gently aided its slow descent, 
 until in the afternoon it lay prostrate ; while men whom 
 the world does not accuse of immoderate sentimentality, 
 stood aloof, literally weeping; and the more mercurial crowd 
 rushed eagerly to secure a chip, a leaf, a twig, a branch — any 
 relic of their old friend. Soon wherever they who had held 
 it in reverence were scattered abroad, bits of its wood set in 
 gold, appeared among their richest jewels; or, in less costly 
 
34 TAGHCONIC 
 
 guise, were treasured in the most sacred reliquaries of their 
 thousand homes. 
 
 And, lo, when the tree's inmost heart was laid open, 
 there preserved, were found the tokens of its earliest perils 
 and, pervading its whole tissue, the unbroken memories of 
 all its summers, and all that they had done for it. Said I 
 that the woods remember nothing? 
 
 THE GREY OLD ELM OF PITTSFIELD PARK. 
 Tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, 
 
 A tale of thy leafy prime; 
 For thine was a home in the forest, free, 
 
 Ere our bold forefathers' time. 
 Thou sawest the wild- wood all alight 
 
 With the bale-fire's direful glare, 
 Where now the murkiest gloom of night, 
 
 Our household fires make fair. 
 
 Then tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, 
 
 A tale of thy leafy prime, 
 Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free, 
 
 Or our fathers' deeds sublime 1 
 
 Say, when the gorgeous laurel flowers 
 
 And sweet-briar's bloom were gay 
 If here, in the forest's fragrant hours, 
 
 Some dusky loves would stray! 
 Sadly, we know, the captive's sigh 
 
 With thy murmuring sound was blent: 
 Oh tell of the love and the courage high 
 
 That the captive's bondage rent. 
 
 Ay, tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, 
 
 A tale of thy leafy prime, 
 Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free, 
 
 Or our fathers' deeds sublime I 
 
 Tell us the tale how the forest fell 
 
 And the graceful spire arose; 
 And, charmed toy the holy pealing bell, 
 
 How the valley found repose. 
 
STORIES OF A TREE 35 
 
 Our heritage here, with the blow and prayer, 
 Was won by the good and brave, 
 
 While over their toils, like a banner in air, 
 They saw thy branches wave. 
 
 Then tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, 
 
 A tale of thy leafy prime, 
 Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free, 
 
 Or our fathers' deeds sublime! 
 
 Ah, dearly we love thy wasting form, 
 
 Thou pride of our stern old sires, 
 Though torn by the rage of the darting storm, 
 
 And the lightning's scathing fires;, 
 And dearly the sons of the mountain vale 
 
 Wherever their exile be, 
 Will thrill as they list to the song or tale 
 
 If it speak of their home or thee! 
 
 Then tell us a tale, thou grey old tree, 
 
 A tale of thy leafy prime, 
 Of the wild-eyed red man roaming free, 
 
 Or our fathers' deeds sublime! 
 
Another Story 
 
 What Came of, and to, Chandler William's Village Green 
 
Another Story 
 
 "For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but 
 being slain. This, without well knowing its own meaning, the world 
 honors it for. A bravo's trade is slaying; but the world has never 
 respected bravos more than merchants; the reason it honors the soldier 
 is because he holds his life at the service of the state. Reckless he may 
 be— fond of pleasure or adventure. All kinds of bye-motives and mean 
 motives may have determined his choice of a profession and many affect 
 (to all appearance exclusively) his conduct in it; but our estimate of him 
 is based on this ultimate fact — of which we are well assured — that, put 
 him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, 
 and only death and his duty before him, he will keep his face to the front; 
 and he knows that this choice may be put to him at any moment, and has 
 before hand taken his part — virtually takes such part continually; does 
 in reality die daily." — Ruskin. 
 
 And, of the spot whereon the Old Elm once stood, what? 
 Other stories, and grander than the simple tales, I have 
 ventured to tell, early ennobled it; but must nevertheless 
 have the briefest narration here. 
 
 Near yonder very prosaic brick corner, bounding one of 
 the most park-like, and least prosaic of streets, stood, a 
 hundred years ago, the quaint old gambrel-roofed tavern of 
 Colonel James Easton; the commander of the Berkshire 
 Militia, and Ethan Allen's lieutenant in the capture of Ticon- 
 deroga. And, to its hospitable door, late on the dark and 
 rainy evening of May-day, 1775, came Captain Edward Mott 
 and his little band of sixteen Connecticut men, stoutly re- 
 solved, by the Grace of God, and with the help assured them 
 among the Green Mountains, to wrest "the Key of North 
 America" from the grasp of Great Britain. At midnight in 
 the most secret chamber of the old inn, although the bar- 
 room had long been emptied of its tonguey revellers — while 
 the great raindrops dashed and spattered against the pigmy 
 window-panes, and a generous tankard of aromatic punch 
 steamed before each wet and wearied guest — the Connecticut 
 
40 TAGHCONIC 
 
 leaders held council with five or six bold and true men of the 
 vicinage; among them their host, and his neighbor, Ensign 
 — afterwards Colonel — John Brown; a member of the Pro- 
 vincial Congress, who, being specially charged by that body 
 with efforts for the acquisition of Canada, was the projector 
 of this present expedition, as well as of many another daring 
 adventure afterward. 
 
 Before dawn, not to endanger the secrecy of their plans 
 by adding to their company here, Easton and Mott crossed 
 the Taghconic ridge, and passing up the secluded and roman- 
 tic valley of Hancock (it will well repay you to do the same, 
 even with a much less stirring errand) they were joined by 
 twenty-four stalwart minutemen, with Capt. Asa Douglas — 
 a "Douglas, trusty and true" — at their head. In the mean- 
 while, Ensign Brown and the remainder of the party, starting 
 also under cover of the darkness, drove up the Berkshire 
 valley to Williamstown, where they were joined by fif- 
 teen other bold and trusty yeomen. Then all began their 
 march to join Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. 
 All the world knows how that march ended. The spot where 
 the men of Massachusetts and Connecticut first met in council 
 concerning it, in the home of one of the earliest, the bravest, 
 and the truest of Revolutionary patriots, should be held as 
 sacredly memorable as those resting places in old, renowned 
 pilgrimages which royal piety marked with monumental 
 crosses. 
 
 And, on yonder other corner, where, among ancestral 
 trees, a massive mansion marks the site, stood the modest 
 dwelling in which lived and died the Parson of Bennington 
 Field. In the little brown meeting house under the branches 
 of the Elm, year in and year out, he preached that the Gospel 
 of Liberty was part of the Gospel of Christ; and much fruit 
 came of it : sweet and bitter, but for the most part whole- 
 some. Potent to-day beyond much which struggles visibly 
 — and all too audibly — for power, his spirit still lives and 
 
THE VILLAGE GREEN 41 
 
 walks abroad among these hills: and not here only, but far 
 away in ever-extending paths. 
 
 A hundred years ago the pulpit of the little meeting 
 house was indeed the seat of power; so that when the patriot 
 soldiers gathered on the narrow green before its door, it 
 seemed as if their hearts had been verily touched with a 
 live coal from its altar. And, from this holy rallying place, 
 inspired anew by solemn prayer and fervent exhortation, 
 they marched away to Canada, Bennington, Saratoga, Stone- 
 Arabia, or wherever else Berkshire blood flowed for freedom. 
 
 Where they thus assembled, the national independence 
 which they helped to achieve had been commemorated, 
 with rural, but not unmeaning, pomp, for well nigh a hun- 
 dred years, when treason assailed the nation's life. Then, 
 on the same spot where the fathers met to consecrate their 
 lives to the service of their country, the sons assembled for 
 the same holy purpose. Even while the tall Elm still waved 
 its branches — a tattered banner — above them, the minute- 
 men of 1861 responded to the first note of alarm as eagerly 
 and promptly as the minute-men of 1775 sprang to arms 
 when the reveille, beaten by drums as far away as Lexington 
 Common, announced the dawning of the Revolution. 
 
 The old tree fell: but, year after year, often and often, 
 the peal of other than church-going bells, and other music 
 than that of the organ and the choir, deepened the solemnity 
 of the Sabbath, and summoned the people to high conference 
 in the young grove which succeeded to its honors. How 
 vivid is the memory; yet how distant seem those strangely 
 awful Sabbaths, and those anxious nights when the lurid 
 glare of torches fitfully lit up the over-hanging foliage and 
 the endangered flag, while eloquent voices from some rude 
 rostrum, told the danger of the hour to those whose souls 
 were already heavy with the consciousness of it. 
 
 At hours like these, or when, at busy noon, the clangor 
 of bells and trumpets hushed the more sordid sounds of trade 
 
42 TAGHCONIC 
 
 and traffic, what new and conflicting emotions struggled in 
 every breast, as those most full of life and life's longings 
 were adjured to risk all in the defence of that which was 
 dearer than all. Duty, religion, a pure patriotism, a noble 
 ambition; how fervently each was urged in its turn. What 
 promises of life-long honor, and tender regard, to be shared 
 by none — what prophecies of enduring fame, glowed upon the 
 lips of the orators! And, ever and anon, as the young and 
 faithful-hearted — glorifying the plain tables at which they 
 sat into sacredest altars — enrolled themselves in the Grand 
 Army of the Nation's Defenders, how the ringing plaudits, 
 bursting from the full hearts of the people, seemed borne by 
 the' rolling echoes of drums far into the promised future. 
 
 What other memories, in the lives of any of us who did 
 not share in the actual conflict of arms, can compare in grand- 
 eur, with the recollection of those sublime moments; and of 
 others, intermingled with them, when regiment after regi- 
 ment with sad, but proudly unregretful, farewells — and not 
 without solemn prayer and fervent exhortation, as of old, 
 from reverend lips — marched hence to do or to suffer that 
 for which they had set themselves apart? Then, whatever 
 gloom might overhang the hour, we knew that the old heroic 
 spirit, which, in the foolishness of our hearts, we had thought 
 passed away forever, had come again in all its fullness; and 
 that the old triumph was assured. 
 
 Here and there a taint of mean ambition, or meaner 
 avarice, you may have detected in those who received these 
 plaudits, although I hope that you were better minded than 
 to be seeking for it. An army of purely unselfish men, 
 marching in any array, were conceivable only in an age 
 which shall be free of all armies; in that, namely, when 
 nations "shall beat their swords into plough shares, and 
 their spears into pruning hooks." 
 
 For this present, be content that, as to all who enrolled 
 themselves, and — with whatever ulterior reward in view — 
 
THE VILLAGE GREEN 43 
 
 did become actual soldiers, we come, at least, if to nothing 
 better, to Mr. Ruskin's "ultimate fact" of the soldier's 
 soldierly fidelity to the state under whose flag he has enlisted. 
 
 But, on the other hand, in how many did you discover a 
 purity of purpose and of soul, a stern subjection of self to 
 duty, an unboastful heroism so unlooked for, an intellectual 
 strength in quarters so unsuspected, that they seemed Eke 
 a new and sudden inspiration from Heaven. So illy do we 
 read that which lies behind the eyes into which we daily 
 look. Nay, the revelation vouchsafed to our great need, 
 seems in these less exalted days so incomprehensible that we 
 are fast losing it in clouds and doubt. 
 
 Yet surely such men were — and are — and they did in 
 verity shed a luster upon our arms beyond that of conquest. 
 They did exist ; enough of them in almost every New England 
 village, to ennoble its name — if their story could but be 
 worthily told. 
 
 Their ideal, but deeply truthful, type, wrought in endur- 
 ing bronze, surmounts yonder monument, the memorial of 
 those who marched hence, to sacrifice their young lives in 
 the defence of their country. I pray you mark that statue 
 well: it is no common work; but the tribute of genius, to 
 heroism, patriotic devotion, and much else. It represents 
 simply a color-sergeant of the Union army, standing in line 
 of battle, and looking eagerly and thoughtfully into the dis- 
 tance. The figure is erect, but slightly supported by the 
 staff of the colors, which it grasps with both hands — the 
 right also gathering the flag into graceful folds. The work 
 is correct in detail as well as truthful in its grand effect; 
 but these are its minor and prosaic merits; there is more 
 in it than these. Both face and figure are of a peculiar 
 military type — as unique and readily recognized as that of 
 the French Zouave or the Cossack trooper — which the war 
 for the Union developed from material which it found rough- 
 moulded in every Northern village. You will see, as you 
 
44 TAGHCONIC 
 
 study his work, that the sculptor's ideal was a bold, frank, 
 generous man; resolute rather than defiant, of valor without 
 ferocity, of gentle heart, without weakness; self-reliant, but 
 modest; capable of either commanding or obeying; looking 
 into the future as well as the distance; a man with such 
 stuff in him as poets and orators and statesmen, as well as 
 conquering soldiers, are made of. 
 
 They dedicated this memorial one genial September day, 
 with much memorable eloquence, and much military and 
 other pomp, of which I will only here recall, that, among 
 those who had large part in it by word or work, was he 
 
 "As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage; 
 What worthier knight was found 
 To grace in Arthur's golden age 
 The fabled Table, round? 
 
 A voice, the battle's trumpet note, 
 
 To welcome and restore; 
 A hand that all unwilling smote, 
 
 To heal and build once more. 
 
 A soul of fire, a tender heart 
 
 Too warm for hate, he knew 
 The generous victor's graceful part, 
 
 To sheath the sword, he drew. 
 
 The more than Sidney of our day, 
 
 Above the sin and wrong 
 Of civil strife, he heard alway 
 
 The angel's advent song.'' 
 
 Him, I may single out, not invidiously, from those, who 
 on that September day joined in consecrating this monument 
 to its hallowed purposes; for, even while mingling his moni- 
 tions to his surviving comrades, with laudations for the 
 dead, his enfeebled frame prophecied but too truly that his 
 life, too, would soon be added to the great price of the na- 
 tion's unity. 
 
THE VILLAGE GREEN 45 
 
 But you are restless, that I detain you so long upon this 
 contracted spot; and we will leave it; taking with us, how- 
 ever, as I hope, this lesson; that he who, like Captain Good- 
 rich and Chandler Williams, graciously preserves a thing of 
 mere grace and beauty, may well expect that, in due time, 
 much of the grandly and nobly useful — nay, much of sub- 
 lime human action — may cluster around it, and mingle their 
 memories with his own. 
 
Reminiscent 
 
Reminiscent 
 
 The memory of great men is the noblest inheritance of their coun- 
 try. — Blackwood's Mag. 
 
 You have been very patient with me — have you not? — 
 in my long-time weakness of lingering by this old park; and 
 perhaps I ought to reward you with • an excursion to the 
 lakeside or mountain top. But I pray you to be patient 
 yet a little while, as we take a walk among the pretty village 
 houses, with their luxuriant gardens, and court-yards green 
 with shrubbery — a delightful summer promenade. To the 
 townspeople the older of these dwellings are all pregnant 
 with associations of the past; each has its story. They 
 tell you — these good citizens — as you pass along, now pleas- 
 ant, gossiping histories; now low-hissed scandals, mouldy 
 and soured, which ought long ago to have been in their 
 graves; and occasionally you hear a tale of open or proved 
 guilt such as you would rather not believe could have its 
 dwelling in such innocent looking homes. 
 
 You hear them speak names which call up no image in 
 your mind, and which have long since ceased to receive an 
 answer in these streets. They call places by appellations 
 unfamiliar to your ears.. The iron horse has brought new 
 wealth, prosperity and hope to the thriving town. There 
 are groceries where there used to be gardens; mansions where 
 there used to be meadows. The town is richer and handsomer 
 than it was; but in many hearts, for whom the old quiet 
 used to be full of joy and peace, the new wealth and crowd 
 and noisy prosperity cannot but sometimes awaken painful 
 longings. In the stillness of the evening — when the shrill 
 cry of the steam-whistle pierces the ear and goes echoing 
 into the breathless distance, like the shout of a drunken man 
 on the solemn midnight — you listen to their touching rem- 
 iniscences of the past, and are moved by laments for which 
 
50 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the eager, throbbing heart of common life has no chord in 
 unison. 
 
 But, for the present, we will pass scandal and retrospect, 
 except so far as the latter recalls the memory of two men 
 whose wide-spread fame has become identified with that of 
 their homes, and whom I have not mentioned with others 
 who have brought honor to it — George Nixon Briggs and the 
 Rev. Dr. John Todd. Whether there is romance in the 
 lives of either of them or not, there is certainly beauty in 
 their memory, among the hills ; and beauty that is seen afar 
 off. I need not speak in detail of either. Their memoirs, 
 written with rare ability, have long been published to the 
 world; and I only desire here, by a few reminiscences of 
 their lives, to give a pleasant tinting to our scenery. 
 
 And, first, of the much-loved Governor Briggs, whose 
 beautiful tomb in our beautiful cemetery is the spot there 
 most sought by the visitor. You will observe that, conspicu- 
 ous upon it, is a large white marble cross. He loved well 
 that simple symbol of the Christian faith, so long proscribed 
 in New England ; and it was his influence which placed it on 
 the spire of the village Baptist church in which he worshipped. 
 But I shall only have room to give you a few reminiscences, 
 illustrating one of the qualities which won for the good 
 governor so universal popularity, and which were remark- 
 able as mostly referring to incidents which occurred within 
 the compass of a few days. 
 
 In the spring of 1851, I chanced to occupy, one day, 
 a seat with Governor Briggs in the cars of the Boston and 
 Albany Railroad. The train was excessively crowded, many 
 being compelled to stand; and when we reached Westfield 
 there entered our car, at the door most distant from us, two 
 women evidently much wearied; one of whom carried a 
 child. None of the gentlemen in their vicinity seemed to 
 notice their condition; but Governor Briggs went forward, 
 invited them to our seat, and aided the one with a child to 
 
REMINISCENT 51 
 
 reach it. Instantly many seats which had not been vacated 
 for the weak and tired women were placed at the service of 
 the Governor of Massachusetts; but he remained standing, 
 talking kindly to the women and at times soothing the child 
 which had been made restless by its unaccustomed position. 
 There was nothing in this, you may say, more than any true- 
 hearted gentleman ought to have done. True; but, out of a 
 whole car-full, Governor Briggs was the only one to think 
 of doing it. 
 
 We passed on, and as we approached the Brookline 
 Bridge, near Boston, found that a collision had taken place 
 upon it, blocking the passage with the wreck of two trains, 
 which hung by a fearfully precarious hold over the water. 
 It was necessary for the passengers to clamber over and 
 through the wreck, to reach the relief train, while their bag- 
 gage was sent to the city by the highway. But, among 
 them, was an old Irish woman, one of those wrong-headed, as 
 well as ignorant, people who can never be made to see the 
 necessity of anything out of the ordinary course. She would 
 not and could not be separated from her trunk — a rude, 
 hair-covered chest. Most men would have been merely 
 amused by, at least indifferent to, her troubles; but ludi- 
 crous as was her grief, it was piteous and real, and such, 
 however uncouth and groundless, never failed to touch the 
 heart of the governor. So when, having passed from one 
 to another, imploring aid, she came to him, perceiving at 
 once the uselessness of attempting to reason with her, he 
 quietly took hold of one end of her trunk, and helped her 
 carry it over the tottering wreck. The profuse and quaintly 
 expressed thanks of the woman, and her still more profuse 
 and quaint apologies — when, with all her old-world awe of 
 dignitaries, she found whom it was she had made play the 
 porter for her — were extremely amusing. But there were 
 few who witnessed the scene who did not envy Governor 
 Briggs his satisfaction in relieving the distress of even so 
 
52 TAGHCONIC 
 
 rude and uncouth a creature, by so simple a piece of thought- 
 ful kindness. 
 
 Leaving the governor at Boston, I pursued my trip to 
 Martha's Vineyard, where I employed a man to carry me 
 from point to point in search of certain varieties of clay — 
 a plain, but intelligent and quick-witted person, of much 
 shrewdness and criticism, which he applied freely to public 
 men, as we rode along. But, happening to learn incidentally 
 that I was from Pittsfield, he checked his horses suddenly, 
 and exclaimed. "Pittsfield; why Governor Briggs lives 
 there!" Somewhat surprised at his apparent emotion, I 
 assented; and he continued: "I love that man; I always 
 shall. You know I am a Democrat; but I always put in 
 my vote for George N. Briggs. He's got a heart — he has!" 
 I asked him how he found that out; and he replied, that 
 once, when the governor was reviewing the militia at New 
 Bedford, he was standing directly behind him, with his little 
 daughter in his arms. The child begged hard to see the 
 governor and the troops, while the crowd and his position 
 made it difficult to show her either to her satisfaction; but 
 the governor, happening to hear her entreaties, turned around, 
 took her in his arms, and placing her before him on his horse, 
 showed her the soldiers, and then, with a kiss, returned her 
 to her father — a pleased child and a grateful father, you may 
 well believe. "I have loved him for that," he said, "ever 
 since; and I always shall." 
 
 At a later time, arriving at Pittsfield with a travelling 
 acquaintance from the west, he asked me, while the train 
 was accidentally delayed for a few moments, to show him 
 the residence of Governor Briggs, who had then been some 
 months dead; and I took him to a point where he obtained 
 a view of the trees which conceal it. As he seemed deeply 
 interested in the view, I remarked carelessly, "So you are 
 a hero-worshipper." "No," he replied with evident emotion, 
 "I loved the man — I had good reason to!" I had no time 
 
REMINISCENT 53 
 
 to learn the cause of this feeling — whether it arose from 
 some of those minor acts of kindness, such as I have related, 
 and such as the governor was constantly performing — or 
 from some grander benefits, for which occasion more rarely 
 presents itself: but the tone and manner of the speaker 
 were more earnest than would probably have been caused 
 by any trivial beneficence. 
 
 How many friends would be made by a public man whose 
 life was filled with acts of kindness like those I have men- 
 tioned, and governed always by the spirit manifested in them, 
 I leave you to judge. 
 
 You will pass the Governor Briggs homestead on your 
 way to Lebanon or Lake Onota, a little way beyond the 
 Railroad Station in Pittsfield ; a handsome mansion with fine 
 grounds, and rich in portraits, busts and relics of its former 
 owner. 
 
 The parsonage, once the home of Dr. Todd, is not very 
 far from the Park; but it is so changed from what it was 
 that it hardly suggests a memory of him. When I first came 
 to Pittsfield, the first thing I looked for was the author of 
 "The Student's Manual"; and I had no difficulty in singling 
 him out from a number of distingue figures in the village 
 streets. He was the homeliest good-looking man, I ever laid 
 eyes on; and, withal was unmistakably marked with the 
 impress of thought and feeling. Mindful of certain ridicu- 
 lously ineffectual attempts to mould myself upon the syste- 
 matic model prescribed by bis famous book, I held him in 
 almost grewsome awe; and it was a great consolation to 
 find afterwards that he was not nearly so formal a man as 
 I dreaded, but one who did an immense amount of work, 
 simply by attacking it lovingly, and with a loving purpose. 
 You may recollect that he became an author, so that he might 
 add to his means of supporting an aged and infirm mother. 
 
 He was the most contented man I ever knew. Living 
 comfortably and handsomely, if not luxuriously; loving and 
 
54 TAGHCONIC 
 
 loved, not only by his own people, but by the whole com- 
 munity; glorying in and enjoying the natural beauties and 
 the pleasant fortunes of his home; surrounded by a social 
 circle perfectly adapted to his tastes; honored at home, and 
 famous abroad; with admirers to welcome him, wherever he 
 went; with the means and the taste to fill up his vacations 
 with healthful woodland sports: Thus favored of fortune, 
 there was no good reason for discontent, and Dr. Todd was 
 not the man to seek evil ones. Of sorrow and pain, he, like 
 other men, had more than enough ; but they were »the inci- 
 dents of his manhood, not of his position in life. They 
 might be sources of grief and bodily agony ; but not rightly 
 of discontent. 
 
 Seeing the man thus living and, as it seemed to me, living 
 beneficently, and in the tenderest love for all the world* I 
 came — although I had little sympathy for what I supposed 
 to be his abstract theological opinions— to share in the kindly 
 feeling which he inspired in all about me. In this com- 
 fortably Christian mood, I was shocked to find the truculent 
 Theodore Tilton, who had been taken somewhat sharply to 
 task by the good doctor, going about insisting that the' 
 following lines, by Longfellow, were' intended as his portrait : 
 
 "The parson, too, appeared, a man austere, 
 
 The instinct of whose nature was to kill; 
 The wrath of God he preached from year to year, 
 
 And read, with fervor, "Edwards on the Will"; 
 His favorite pastime was to slay the deer 
 
 In summer on some Adirondac hill. 
 E'en now, while walking down the rural lane, 
 
 He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane." 
 
 "Good lack!" I thought, "can this be the man who, to 
 our uninspired eyes, seemed the very soul of gentleness? 
 who seemed to have a childlike love for the meanest flower 
 that blooms? who sorrowed for a loved tree, as for a friend? 
 Where had that austerity been hid for so many years; that 
 
REMINISCENT 55 
 
 it never scared the village children who hung upon his smile 
 just as though.it was benignant. Had all of us really been, 
 for near forty years, ascribing the kindest of humane souls 
 to one whose instinct was to kill, and who did not even spare 
 the lilies in the Berkshire lanes — if any grow there; which I 
 very much doubt, unless somebody, like Dr. Todd, has planted 
 them for the wicked pleasure of cutting them down. There 
 really seemed to be a sad misconception on somebody's part 
 — Mr. Tilton's, as I hoped, since it could not much harm him. 
 But let us see, item by item, wherein the likeness of the 
 picture to the Pittsfield pastor consists. Item first: The 
 scene of the poem is laid in the village of Killingworth ; and 
 Dr. Todd was born in the village of Killingworth in Con- 
 necticut, but was never pastor there. Item second: The 
 Killingworth parson was a "man austere"; there the like- 
 ness fails altogether — Dr. Todd was anything but that. Item 
 third: This austere parson "preached the wrath of God from 
 year to year"; and I suppose that, like thousands of other 
 ministers of religion, the world over, Dr. Todd preached 
 upon that theme as often as he thought it to be his duty: 
 which was certainly not "year in and year out" — for he 
 delighted much more in - preaching the Creator's tender mer- 
 cies, that are over all his works. He rested firmly upon the 
 orthodox Congregational creed — the faith of his fathers — and 
 died steadfast in it; but he loved best to repose upon its 
 sunny side ; and, ever, as his religion ripened with his mellow- 
 ing years, his charity grew broader, and his appreciation of 
 God's loving kindness keener and deeper. Item fourth : The 
 poet's objectionable preacher read with fervor " Edwards on 
 the Will: Dr. Todd was at one time pastor of a church in 
 Northampton which was an off-shoot of that which in 1750, 
 by a majority of one hundred and eighty, refused utterly to 
 have the stern Calvinistic moralist any longer to be their 
 servant — or, as he would have had it, their master — in the 
 Lord. However, the children had long ago repented of the 
 
56 TAGHCONIC 
 
 sin of their fathers — the offending minister having risen to a 
 great height in the esteem of his co-religionists. And so, 
 when they sent out a colony to found a new church, they 
 called it "The Edwards"; and Dr. Todd, who became its 
 first minister, gave the same name to his first-born son. 
 Doubtless he held his celebrated predecessor in reverence; 
 but I had it from his own lips that he deemed, not only the 
 much objurgated and much-admired Treatise on the Free- 
 dom of the Will, but all metaphysical theology whatever, 
 unprofitable reading, while we have the Bible, and the great 
 book of Man and Nature is spread wide-open at its less ab- 
 truse pages. I do not believe that he read a page of "Ed- 
 wards on the Will," with fervor or otherwise, after he left 
 the Theological Seminary. Item fifth: The favorite pastime 
 of the Killingworth Cruelty was to slay the deer in summer, 
 out in the Adirondack country. And so did Dr. Todd love 
 to hunt the deer there, and elsewhere; as hundreds of very 
 worthy people still do. The pleasures of the chase would 
 bring little but pain to myself; and the cold-blooded ruth- 
 lessness with which Kingsley in his "Idylls" gloats over the 
 skillful "killing" of, trout ruins half my pleasure in that 
 otherwise charming book. But that, I take to be a con- 
 stitutional peculiarity; and it would be absurd in the ex- 
 treme for me, on the strength of it, to assume a virtue above 
 that of Canon Kingsley, Isaack Walton, Shakespeare, Adiron- 
 dack Murray, and a host of other renowned trout-killers and 
 deer-slayers, lay and clerical. 
 
 But, to be fair, I suppose that the gist of Mr. Longfellow's 
 accusation, if it be an accusation, lies in the innuendo — "in 
 summer" — intending thereby that the reverend defendant 
 slew the deer, out of season, wantonly, and contrary to the 
 recognized although unwritten laws of venery. And Dr. Todd 
 did pursue the chase on the Adirondack hills in summer. 
 He could not well have done so at any other season; but 
 he obeyed the law in its spirit, if he broke it to the letter: 
 
REMINISCENT 57 
 
 for he scrupulously refrained, however much in need of veni- 
 son, from firing upon a fawn or a nursing doe, and never at 
 any season killed for the pleasure of killing, but rather with 
 pity for the pain inflicted. 
 
 There seem to be some wide divergences between Mr. 
 Longfellow's portrait, and its assumed original; but there is 
 sufficient vraisemblance to justify the assertion that Dr. Todd 
 was the clergyman whom the poet had in his mind, when he 
 wrote "The Birds of Killing worth " ; and it seems equally 
 certain that he was misled by the reports of certain jealous 
 and rascally Adirondack guides — as is very well shown by 
 Dr. Todd's biographer. And it is to be mourned that the 
 most amiable and gentle of our great poets — one to whom 
 the love of all English-speaking people gives such power of 
 reproof and condemnation — should have allowed himself to 
 be led into injustice by such base and vulgar slanderers. I 
 will not believe that he was the more readily induced to give 
 them ceredence by the memory of Dr. Todd's old polemical 
 pastorate — a half a century ago — in Groton. The odium 
 theologicum could hardly rankle so long as that in the celestial 
 mind of the author of so much noble and manly verse. But 
 well says old Selden, speaking of judges who hold the power 
 of life and death: "Let him who hath a dead hand take heed 
 how he strikes." 
 
 Here have I been spending this time which we might 
 have given to pleasant reminiscences of Pittsfield's great 
 pastor in a probably needless defence of him against a ran- 
 dom and unworthy charge: but perhaps I have been able in 
 this way, as well as another, to show how he appeared to 
 one out of his own theological pale. How he looked to one 
 of his own household, both in the faith and according to the 
 flesh, is graphically painted in the full and frank biography 
 published by his son. 
 
Pontoosuc Lake 
 
Pontoosuc Lal^e 
 
 The memory of one particular hour 
 
 Doth here rise up against me. — Wordsworth. 
 
 Oh, thou most rare day in June, whose rain of golden 
 moments fell so preciously by the green borders of Pontoosuc ; 
 there shall be few like thee in the gladdest summer month ! 
 
 With L. and two other friends from the dear tri-moun- 
 tain city, and with one laughing daughter of Berkshire soil I 
 went that faultless morning, to pass' the "lee long 
 summer day" by the clear waters of our favorite lake: the 
 popular favorite, although, fair as it is, I confess that it has 
 a rival in my own esteem. But this is lovely enough to 
 satisfy any reasonable craving. And so. is the approach 
 which brings us to it. Passing the neat and tasteful factory 
 village, whose busy wheels have been turned by the waters 
 of the lake for more than half a century, you enter a piece 
 of winding, willow-shaded road, on the left of which the 
 ground descends abruptly to the rocky bed of the Housatonic 
 river, which issues from the lake a few rods above. Just 
 below, it falls in a cataract, whose worst fault is that it is 
 artificial. Alas, on this whole romantic stream, from the 
 mountains of New Ashford to The Sound, there is not one 
 waterfall which has not been disturbed by art. But water, 
 and especially dashing, sparkling, foaming water, is always 
 beautiful, and this broad, smooth sheet of crystal, rolling 
 over its table of massive marble, to be broken into infinite 
 sparkling drops thirty feet below, is worth at least a passing 
 glance- If you so honor it, you will observe that the smooth 
 water, at frequent intervals in its fall is bent, across its whole 
 width, into rippling curves parallel to its upper surface. 
 The cause is simple enough, but it took us, bright ones, a 
 long while to hit upon it that June morning. No, I shall not 
 
62 ' TAGHCONIC 
 
 tell it here; for it is the prescriptive privilege of the Berk- 
 shire friend who first drives you that way, to propound the 
 problem for your bewilderment. 
 
 Before you have solved it, a slight rise in the road will 
 bring in view the blue surface of the lake, in glassy stillness 
 or sparkling in broken light, dotted only with two emerald 
 islets. Mere dots, now: in that elder day, before the dam- 
 builders — observe that, as I spell it, dam is a noun substan- 
 tive — before the dam-builders had raised the surface of the 
 lake and spoiled some of its prettiest outlines, these islets 
 were quite conspicuous islands; the commodious resort of 
 frequent jolly chowder-parties. At a still earlier day, as you 
 will see by and bye, they had a story. 
 
 You catch your first glimpse of the water between gentle 
 declivities covered by a fine growth of pine, with, here and 
 there in the intermediate opening, an elm, a hemlock or a 
 beech. As you pass through these woody portals — or better, 
 if you stand in the grove on the southern bank — the view 
 expands. The farther shores rise gradually to hills; to 
 mountains. Not far off, in the west, they terminate in the 
 ever-graceful Taghconic domes; every summit of which, in 
 a calm clear day, is mirrored by the unruffled lake. You 
 should see them on such a day in their brave June verdure, 
 or in their October splendors, every height, every hue, glow- 
 ing double, hill and shadow, as perfectly as ever Words- 
 worth's swan. 
 
 On the north, the long valley, a little broken by the bold, 
 fair hills of Lanesboro, stretches away until it finds its bar- 
 rier in that superb culmination of so many Berkshire land- 
 scapes, grand and graceful Greylock. 
 
 You would pause, as we did, to admire the almost artistic 
 arrangement of the stately grove of pines, the single elms, 
 and beeches, and the twin hemlocks scattered along the lawn- 
 like slope between the road and the lakeside; but I know 
 not how much of all these the encroaching waters will leave 
 
PONTOOSUC LAKE 63 
 
 for the delectation of future visitors. There was a very 
 joyous and soothing beauty in the scene as, driving slowly 
 along, with the gently rippling waters upon our left and the 
 cool evergreen grove on our right, we stopped here and there; 
 now to gather splendid bouquets of the rich red columbine, 
 which then grew here in profusion, and now to try, for the 
 most part in vain, to catch a glimpse of the birds, who from 
 their hiding places, joined with most melodious energy in 
 the carolings of M. and F. 
 
 Dismissing our carriage at the northern end of the lake, 
 we sauntered back, lingering by the pebbly shore, where the 
 dashing of the wavelets reminded us all of the great billows 
 that beat upon the Atlantic beach one other summer day. 
 It was strange this mimicry of the great sea by the little 
 mountain loch. F. said she had once been startled in the 
 same way by recognizing the tones of a great orator in the 
 lispings of his infant grand-child. Such are the trifles of 
 which talk is made on summer excursions. 
 
 Then we sat awhile under the great pines, and let that 
 mischief of a Grace — she of the Berkshire Hills — inveigle 
 every one of us into a promise to read there, on our return, 
 verses in their honor, composed during the day. I confess 
 that I was, for a reason which will appear by and bye, the 
 first to assent to this nonsense. But; having assented to it, 
 our wisdom recovered itself, and espying across the lake, an 
 inviting grove familiar to all our lovers of picnic, we deter- 
 mined to make it our camping ground for the day. I have 
 since seen a fanciful array of gaily bannered barges moving 
 thither in long procession bearing the semblance, at least,' 
 of kings and queens, cavaliers and court ladies, priests and 
 bandits, harlequins and columbines, monks and outlaws, 
 clowns, savages, fairies and all the masquerading fraternity, 
 while pealing music echoed among the astonished hills, and 
 the dwellers on the farther shore wondered what on earth 
 was coming now. 
 
64 TAGHCONIC 
 
 In our time the lake fleet was somewhat more scanty; 
 but, by the courtesy of the gentlemen of the neighboring 
 factory, we were enabled to reach the haven where we would 
 be, in a luxurious boat, once the property of Audubon who 
 had used it in his studies of the rich ornithology of the Berk- 
 shire lakes. We were soon quite at home in a nice nook of 
 the grove, where, by the aid of L's flute, F's guitar, the fun 
 of the madcap Grace, a book or two of poetry, and a plenti- 
 ful supply of cold chicken and other "creature comforts," 
 we passed hours which are not lightly to be forgotten in 
 lives which have few such. 
 
 Then, too, there were rough rambles, to the grievous 
 detriment of Grace's flimsy drapery; although, on my soul, 
 I believe the gypsy tore that gown with malice prepense, 
 for the sole purpose of bringing an unhappy victim within 
 range of her wit. At any rate he came, and, as she was 
 repairing damages with an infinitude of pains and pins, im- 
 pertinently asked what she was about? "Collecting my 
 rents, stupid!" And as Grace was the owner of houses and 
 lands in quantities, we all laughed. It is so easy to be witty 
 at picnics. 
 
 "And to laugh at the wit of an heiress anywhere," do I 
 hear you add? Well, perhaps, Monsieur Le Sauer; but that 
 has nothing to do with our lakeside merriment. You haven't 
 an idea what a balm there is in woodland odors. I half 
 believe a day or two in these Berkshire woods would take 
 some of the grimness out of even your visage. The experi- 
 ment is worth trying, for the curiosity of the thing, if for 
 nothing more. I wonder how you would look with a gleam 
 of real genuine happiness in your eye. So come right along 
 old fellow, and we'll take you all about : make a new man of 
 you as like as not. 
 
 There are fanciful legends about this Pontoosuc lake; 
 among them an old tale that a shadowy bark with a shadowy 
 boatman is often seen to flit over its midnight waters, as if 
 
PONTOOSUC LAKE 65 
 
 in quest of that which it is doomed never to find. What it 
 is this restless phantom seeks, whether lost love or hidden 
 foe, I do not know that legends tell. I have often passed 
 that way at the accredited witching hour: sometimes when 
 the pale moon shed a very ghostly light upon the waters, 
 while the shrieks, screams and , howlings that hurtled dis- 
 cordant upon the air, defied all my 'ologies to assign them 
 to any known beast, bird or reptile; sometimes when only 
 the lurid lightnings fitfully lit up the night, and shimmered a 
 thin and sulphurous blue from shore to shore; sometimes 
 when fisher's skiffs, a red torch glowing at every prow, looked 
 sufficiently infernal; but neither in 'ghostly moonlight, by 
 lurid flash, or by glare of torch, can I rightly say that I ever 
 caught sight of his flitting ghostship. 
 
 "You never did! well that shows how much of a seer 
 you are. Now, that ghost's as real as — as real as anything. 
 Why there are two of them." 
 
 It was that saucy Grace who said this, when she read my 
 humiliating confession. The simple fact is that Grace be- 
 longs to one of the old story-telling Berkshire families. One 
 of her ancestors was prime chum to Hendrick Aupaumut, 
 tradition-keeper-in-chief to the Mohegan nation, almost two 
 hundred years ago; and that veracious chronicler indoctri- 
 nated him in all the legendary lore of which he was master. 
 Of course his pretty descendant has a tale to fit every romantic 
 scene among her well-loved hills. I do not know that any 
 of her story-telling ancestry were ever guilty of fathering 
 the wild children of their imagination upon old Aupaumut. 
 If they did, nobody suspected them of it; for they were, all 
 "honorable men," or at least were always so designated in 
 the political columns of the county newspapers. I have, 
 however, sometimes suspected that their quick-witted daugh- 
 ter, rather than let any favorite spot go unstoried, would on 
 the instant invent a tale to meet its exigences ; and if a ghost 
 were needed would e'en haunt it herself. I have gleaned 
 
66 TAGHCONIC 
 
 from her a good deal of the material for the Indian legends 
 of this volume; but in order to secure the accurate truth- 
 fulness, which, as you perceive, characterizes them, I have 
 been obliged to correct her vivacious narration, by the aid 
 of graver authorities ; frequently summoning Hendrick Aupau- 
 mut from the Happy Hunting Grounds for that purpose, 
 and sometimes consulting the historical collections of Dry-as- 
 Dust LL.D. 
 
 In most cases I have thus scrutinized her stories so closely 
 as to leave little doubt of their perfect truth; but in this 
 Pontoosuc affair, I shall devolve that task upon the reader, 
 and tell the tale just as it was told to me. 
 
 Shoon-keek-Moon-keek. 
 "She loved her cousin; such a love was deemed 
 By the morality of these stern tribes 
 Incestuous. ' ' — Bryant. 
 
 In the first place you must know that Pontoosuc was 
 not the aboriginal name of the lake now so called. That is 
 a corruption of the Mohegan word Poontoosuck — "a field 
 for the winter deer," by which the tribe called all the Pitts- 
 field valley, indicating that it was their abundant hunting 
 ground. When the factory of which I have spoken was 
 built, it received the name, simplified for the sake of con- 
 venience, and it was gradually extended to the lake itself. 
 
 The Mohegans, who loved the lake well, called it Shoon- 
 keek-Moon-keek. Why they did so, you will find out if you 
 listen with a little better attention than you gave those 
 phantom voices across the water: loons, herons, owls and 
 foxes, I haven't a doubt. 
 
 Although at certain well-defined seasons of the year, this 
 valley, in the old Mohegan times, used to be all alive with 
 hunters and trappers, its permanent population was exceed- 
 ing scant. The Indians did not greatly affect solitary wig- 
 wams, but the little clusters which passed with them for 
 
SHOON -KEEK-MOON -KEEK 67 
 
 villages were small indeed; and it was one of the smallest 
 which stood in the sunny recess among the hills, seventy or 
 eighty rods below the lake and on the west side of the outlet.. 
 You can hardly mistake the spot. They found some ghastly 
 relics of the aboriginal owners not far from the site of their 
 village, not many years ago. 
 
 The great men of this little community were two brothers,, 
 probably not very conspicuous in Mohegan annals, for their 
 very names are forgotten now; and all else concerning them 
 except this faint legend. It happened one bright day in 
 June, three hundred years ago, that to one of these brothers 
 was born a son, and to the other a daughter; the prettiest 
 little papooses that ever came to light in all that region. 
 Their names, Shoon-keek for the boy, Moon-keek for the 
 girl, seem to have signified their parent's appreciation of 
 that pleasant fact, although I cannot give you a literal trans- 
 lation of the words. 
 
 One shudders to think of the barbarous physical and moral 
 training those young things underwent. No boarding school 
 miss ever had her back straightened by such heroic pro- 
 cesses as gave uprightness to the children of the woods, and 
 I dare say the mental and moral processes were equally rude 
 and effective. The motto was "kill or cure"; the weaklings 
 always gave in, before they made much trouble in the world. 
 As the cousins did not die, the presumption is that they 
 graduated, perfect specimens of the Indian youth and maiden: 
 indeed the tradition hints as much.. 
 
 The other result might have been better for them; but 
 no such gloomy premonition overshadowed their joyous 
 
 childhood. 
 
 "The morning of our days 
 Is like the lark that soars to heaven, all happiness and praise; 
 The earth is full of beauty, rose bloom is on the sky, 
 And hope can never fail us, and love can never die." 
 And so Shoon-keek and Moon-keek revelled together in 
 all the joys of childhood; gathered for each other the arbutus 
 
68 TAGHCONIC 
 
 in spring, the laurel in summer, and all pretty wild flowers 
 in all flowery months; together filled their birchen baskets 
 with the luscious berries of the woods, together chased birds 
 or butterflies; and as they grew older fished on the lake in 
 the same birch canoe. 
 
 It was very pleasant for the fathers to see the children 
 thus absorbed in each other — just brother and sister, as it 
 were: which, considering the stern moral law, I have quoted 
 above from Bryant's famous poem, seems to me much like 
 playing with edge tools ; cousins are so liable to discover that 
 they are only cousins. Not that any consciousness of wrong 
 disturbed the pure happiness of Shoon-keek and Moon-keek: 
 even when they were both thrown into consternation by the 
 matrimonial advances made by divers young men of the tribe 
 to the maiden, they did not suspect the nature of their com- 
 mon grief. Little the simple ones deemed that the affection 
 which, in those pleasant places, had grown up as sweetly 
 and naturally as the may-flower and the violet mingle their 
 perfumes, was unholy. 
 
 So natural and so innocent was their intercourse that, not 
 until the keen eye of jealousy discovered, and its subtle tongue 
 pointed it out, did the fathers of these poor children suspect 
 the love, which they called guilty; nay, not till the voice of 
 parental authority had forbidden their precious meetings, did 
 the lovers learn the nature and ardor of their own passion. 
 
 Parental authority had some rather effective means of 
 asserting itself among our predecessors in this valley. But 
 not for that did the cousins consent to forego each other. 
 The means of evading parental oversight were also abundant 
 in those thick-wooded days. There were hidden recesses in 
 the islands of the lake, in its sedgy shores, in its inlets and 
 outlets, all very tempting to opposed lovers who could both 
 speed the light canoe. Then, as now, at night as well as by 
 day, the surface of the lake was constantly dotted by the 
 little skiffs of the fishermen — and fisherwomen. And then 
 
SHOON -KEEK-MOON -KEEK 69 
 
 as now, the busy plyers of the hook and line little noted at 
 night if one or another skiff, dipping its torch quietly in the 
 wave, suddenly darted into some narrow hiding place. But 
 then it unfortunately happens' that all who go down upon 
 the lake in little boats are not busy plyers of the hook and 
 line, but sometimes, rather, busy-bodies in other men's mat- 
 ters: a sort of people, who, though specifically classed by 
 Holy Writ among the wicked, persist in existing in all ages. 
 And they always make mischief wherever you find them. 
 Nockawando was the mischief-maker on Pontoosuc Lake 
 three hundred years ago; and as he was, not only a prying 
 busy-body, but also a jealous lover of the pretty Moon-keek, 
 you may be sure he was not long in making known to her 
 father the secret of her clandestine, nocturnal meetings with 
 her forbidden cousin: and a pretty lecture the old fellow 
 read her; with a promise of such further measures as on 
 examination he might find the case to demand. 
 
 My dear young lady reader: that threat suggested some- 
 thing much more serious than being locked up in your own 
 room, even on a meagre diet of bread and water. But, if 
 love laughs at locksmiths, what could be expected of a flimsy 
 wigwam, without so much as a latch to rattle or a hinge to • 
 creak, in the way of restraining a brave girl's wayward fan- 
 cies? The lovers had planned a meeting that very night 
 upon the island in the lake;' and they had it. ' They had 
 before determined to fly from Mohegari-land and ask adop- 
 tion into some eastern tribe whose marriage code was less 
 absurd than their own; precisely as an Englishman, resolved 
 to marry his deceased wife's - sister anyhow, just takes her 
 across the Atlantic. The idea Was a capital one; and, under 
 the pressure of Nockawando's terrible discovery, they deter- 
 mined to carry it out the very next night. They should 
 have started right off on the instant. I Wish they had, eVen 
 if the lake had waited to this day for a story and a name. 
 But, even with the primitive wardrobe and diet which pre- 
 
70 TAGHCONIC 
 
 vailed three centuries ago in Mohegan-land, some little prepa- 
 ration seems to have been needful. And, then, Moon-keek's 
 stern parent had intimated that he would wait the return 
 of his brother from Esquatuck, before proceeding to extreme 
 measures. 
 
 But delays are dangerous, as even our sanguine lovers 
 seem to have been aware; for they made sad provision for 
 the possibility of failure. They had not faith enough in the 
 moral code of their nation, to make themselves mangled 
 martyrs to it, like Bryant's monumental maiden, by jump- 
 ing down a five hundred feet precipice into a hugh pile of 
 jagged and splintered flint rocks. They declined martyrdom 
 singly, even in the milder form suggested by the deep waters 
 of the lake. But, however rebellious against the more austere 
 deities of their nation, they were sworn subjects of whatever 
 imp in their mythology played the role of Cupid. 
 
 Before leaving the island, they, therefore, solemnly pledged 
 themselves, that, if any fate should interpose to prevent their 
 flight, and threaten to separate them forever, they would 
 meet beneath the cool waters, and part no more. It was a 
 fearful vow; and yet lovers, educated in a more enlightened 
 faith, have been known to make, and faithfully perform, 
 essentially the same. There was nothing in it, save the 
 cousinly relation of the parties, that was repugnant to the 
 superstitions of the forest. Yet hear what befell those who 
 preferred the worship of the little god, Cupid, whatever may 
 have been his Mohegan name, to the behest of the Great 
 Manitou. 
 
 You will have anticipated that fatal disaster befell the 
 cousins in their proposed flight: fatal indeed it was, and 
 fearful; but it may be briefly told. Shoon-keek, gliding 
 stealthily across the waters to his island rendezvous, died by 
 a treacherous arrow from the bow of Nockawando; and his 
 body, pitching from the canoe, sank with strange swiftness. 
 No breath of life, no spark of soul, lingered to buoy it for an 
 
SHOON -KEEK-MOON -KEEK 71 
 
 instant; but the shadowy semblance of him who had sat 
 there, kept his seat, and the skiff sped on, faster than when 
 driven by mortal arms — towards the island, past the island, 
 into the dim night. 
 
 The expectant maiden discerned it as it passed, and the 
 piteous tone in which she shrieked the, name of her lover 
 pierced the heart even of Nockawando who was approaching 
 the point upon which she stood. The response came back 
 as piteously, from afar, "Moon- keek!" The lover — now a 
 phantom, could then hear and answer the loved voice; but, 
 though his arm seemed to drive on the skiff, another power 
 inexorably guided its course. 
 
 It needed but this, and the sight of the murderer, to tell 
 the frantic girl all that had happened. Nothing remained 
 but to fulfil her vow. Springing into her canoe, she darted 
 it madly from the shore, singing a wild and plaintive death- 
 song. Nockawando hastened to pursue; but, as he drew 
 near, the song ceased and such a supernatural silence pre- 
 vailed that, in the terror of a guilty soul, he would have fled; 
 but flight was no longer possible. He came nearer still: 
 the maiden, like her lover, was a shade. What more he saw 
 or heard, was never known, except that, as he looked, the 
 canoe of Moon-keek, without apparent motion, was afar off. 
 He returned to the village, a gibbering idiot. Neither hunt- 
 ing-ground or war-path ever knew him more. The dusky 
 maidens gazed upon him, shuddering — but pitiful; and he 
 fled from them as from some remembered horror. The 
 tribes-men dealt charitably with him as with one stricken of 
 heaven; but he went ever feebly moaning strange syllables: 
 the wise men said, they were the parting words of the phan- 
 tom maiden. 
 
 Death at last came to his relief. But not so ended the 
 punishment of those who loved not wisely; that is, not ac- 
 cording to the traditions of their people. If legends do not 
 he, it was decreed of Manitou, that so long as the lake shall 
 
72 TAGHCONIC 
 
 dash its waves, so long shall their restless shades flit over 
 them with responsive but bewildering and illusive call and 
 response, while, led by the hope that maketh the heart sick, 
 they nightly seek that meeting, no more to part, to which 
 they impiously pledged themselves in the madness of unlaw- 
 ful love. 
 
 With rightly attuned ears, you may, on almost any night 
 when the lake is not frozen, hear those piteously plaintive 
 voices, calling to each other from ever-changing points, and 
 if you are a right ghost-seer — a sort of gifted folk much more 
 rare than they used to be — you may sometimes faintly dis- 
 cern a shadowy canoe flitting, spectre-like, over the waters; 
 vanishing here, appearing there, in an altogether supernatural 
 way : like an aboriginal Flying Dutchman in miniature. Such 
 are the phantoms of the Mohegan's Shoon-keek-Moon-keek, 
 and our Pontoosuc. 
 
 "If I were rich enough, I would have that cruel lake 
 drained," cried F., her blue eyes filled with tears. 
 
 "Don't," said the laughing story-teller, "It would ruin 
 some of the finest water-power in the county." And yet one 
 could see with half ah eye, that she was proud to' have had 
 one sympathetic auditor. 
 
 "And now," she continued, "now for the pine grove and 
 our improvisings ! ' ' 
 
 Oddly enough.no one owned to giving a thought to that 
 rash promise of the morning, except Grace and my unhappy 
 self — why unhappy, you shall see by and bye. 
 
 The pine is rather a rare tree in this region; but there 
 are a few fine groves; this by the lakeside being the finest, 
 although but a relic of that which the records proudly boasted, 
 a hundred and fifty years ago. It looked very grandly as 
 we paused on our way home, to pay it our tribute of verse. 
 
 Grace, as the proposer, was first called upon for her offer- 
 ing; and gracefully accepting the situation, read: 
 
PONTOOSUC LAKE 73 
 
 Pinos loquentes semper habemits. 
 
 "Lowland trees may lean to this side or to that, though it is but 
 meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their 
 trunks lean aslope. But, let storm or avalanche do their worst; and let 
 the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will neverthe- 
 less grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem; it 
 shall point to the center of the earth, as long as the tree stands. * * * * 
 Other trees tufting crag and hill yield to the form and sway of the ground; 
 clothing it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flat- 
 terers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self 
 contained." — Ruskin. 
 
 All hail to the pine, to the evergreen pine, 
 
 The pride of our forest, the boast of our story: 
 A health to his tassels; still green let them shine, 
 
 To remind the new times of the old fields of glory I 
 'Twas he to our fathers, on Plymouth's bleak shore, 
 
 The first shelter gave and the first welcome bore : 
 Then a health to thy tassels our own native pine; 
 
 A halo of glory, above us they shine. 
 
 All hail to the pine, o'er our heroes that waved, 
 
 Ere plumed was our Eagle or starry flags floated ! 
 On field and on fortress where tyrants were braved, 
 
 The pine on our banner the victor denoted. 
 It marched in the van where our minute-men met, 
 
 Its folds with the blood of our Warren were wet; 
 Proud voices of story are evermore thine, 
 
 And we thrill to thy murmur, O, eloquent pine. 
 
 All hail to our-pine, fadeless type of the true! 
 
 The changeless in beauty, unbending, undaunted; 
 The banner of green, to the May breeze he threw, 
 
 In the gales of December as bravely are flaunted. 
 He meeteth the blast when the tempest is high, 
 
 Nor faints in the heat of the scorched summer sky. 
 Grand poet, pure teacher, high priest of truth's shrine, 
 
 Thou art evermore with us thrice eloquent pine! 
 
 When Grace rolled out that Latin quotation-title in her 
 fullest and richest tones I opened my eyes wide and stared 
 
74 TAGHCONIC 
 
 at her in a half dazed way — glared at her, as she tells it; 
 and got a provokingly saucy smile for my pains. But, as 
 she read on with melodious calmness, my blood fairly tingled; 
 partly with amazement, partly with vexation and perplexity. 
 
 "There was nothing in the verses so startling as that 
 comes to," you remark. 
 
 No indeed! but the fact is, I had spent some weary hours, 
 the day before, preparing to extemporize those very lines, 
 which the minx was coolly reciting as dashed off by herself 
 in our picnic hubbub. But scolding would have been absurd, 
 especially as, to tell the truth, she read my poor purloined 
 verses, so charmingly that they sounded almost like real 
 poetry. To make a formal claim to the authorship was at 
 least dangerous, in view of the probability that this was the 
 very ambuscade into which my fair foe was trying to lead 
 me, and once there I should be at the mercy of her merci- 
 less wit. 
 
 There was only one road out of the scrape; and luckily 
 I took it — I overwhelmed her with the most outrageous 
 praises of her poem, and wondered that it could have been 
 written in the brief and broken intervals of such a day. I 
 had never suspected her of such genius. Then I tore my 
 own manuscript to shreds, declaring that it should never be 
 brought into comparison with such a transcendent work. 
 
 The rest of the party, astounded at my extravagance, 
 fancied that I was crazed by love, or something else equally 
 far from my heart; and even the marvellous equipoise of 
 Grace was a little disturbed. But she quickly regained her 
 composure, and we both kept our counsel for that day. 
 
 Of course the truth came out in the end, and I received 
 the credit which that eloquent reading gained for my verse. 
 Now I am rash enough to throw it away by printing the 
 thing. I won't spoil a story for relation's sake, even though 
 the relationship be so close as mine to myself. And, from 
 the first, I determined to describe this particular picnic 
 
PONTOOSUC LAKE 75 
 
 with reasonable fulness, just to show the uninitiated what a 
 Berkshire picnic really is. I shall not need to depict another 
 so minutely, unless it be of a different class. 
 
 But this is not ended. Some sunny hours of the June 
 day yet remained, and, as our party was to be broken on 
 the morrow, we were tempted to crowd as much as possible 
 of pleasant adventure into the present excursion. We there- 
 fore resolved to extend our ride to a wonderful rock of which 
 we had heard much, and which could be reached by an addi- 
 tional drive of perhaps two miles, around the north end of 
 the lake. There is a nearer road to it from Pittsfield village; 
 but this, by and around Pontoosuc, is far the most picturesque. 
 
The Balanced Rock 
 
The Balanced Rock 
 
 Dropped in nature's careless haste. — Burns. 
 
 Passing again the lakeside, we turned, by a crossroad 
 towards the west, and rolled through a quiet rural country, 
 whose inhabitants, whose fields and cattle, even; nay, whose 
 very houses and barns; seemed as much in exuberant enjoy- 
 ment of the day as ourselves. 
 
 "Every clod feels a stir of might — 
 
 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
 And, groping blindly above it for light, 
 
 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
 The flash of life may well be seen 
 
 Thrilling back, over hills and valleys; 
 The cowslip startles in meadow green; 
 
 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
 And there's never a leaf or a bud too mean 
 
 To be some happy creature's palace." — Lowell. 
 
 A hill on this road affords fine prospects in various di- 
 rections; especially looking backwards upon the lake, which 
 has a wilder picturesqueness than when viewed from any 
 other point. The Taghconics, too, loom up grandly in front. 
 
 When the sun wanted an hour of his setting, we passed 
 a few scattered chestnut trees in a field, and entered the 
 grove which concealed our sphynx. 
 
 The Balanced Rock is a huge mass of white marble — 
 grey upon its weather-stained surface — weighing many tons ; 
 rudely triangular, or still more rudely oval, in its shape; and 
 so nicely balanced on a pivot of a few inches, that, although, 
 by the aid of a lever, it may be made to slightly oscil- 
 late, no force yet applied — and it has been tried with 
 more than reasonable effort — has been able to overturn it. 
 Of course it is not impossible to accomplish this vandalism; 
 but fortunately the means are not within easy reach of ordi- 
 
80 TAGHCONIC 
 
 * . 9 . 
 
 nary wantonness. The great danger is from greed; if this 
 curious work of nature should come into the possession of , 
 men of different character from those who have hitherto 
 owned its site. It should be public property; and one of 
 its recent owners offered to make it so, with sufficient sur- 
 rounding land, on condition that the public would take 
 measures for its preservation. 
 
 The belief used to be that the mass was immovable, 
 which was an excellent reason for calling it the Rolling Rock, 
 by which name it was first introduced to me. But I can bear 
 witness that, on the occasion of a certain notable visit to 
 the spot by the combined scientific associations of Troy, 
 Albany and Pittsfield, certain venerable savans, by the aid 
 of a friendly fence-rail, did obtain distinct vibrations. 
 
 The same learned gentlemen determined, rather more 
 doubtfully, that the great rock was not perched up there — • 
 where it looks like the roc described by Sinbad the sailor — 
 as certain other huge boulders were strewn about the county, 
 by being thrown overboard from ice-bergs or ice-floes, seve- 
 ral million ages ago. It seemed to them, on the contrary, 
 that the Balanced Rock grew where it stands, and that the 
 mass which originally enclosed it had been worn away by 
 innumerable floods. On the other hand, a more recent ge- 
 ologist, after a more complete survey than the pleasure ex- 
 cursions of science, can afford, discards all theories of floating 
 ice, and holds that all these boulders, the Balanced Rock 
 included, were deposited by fields of ice, several thousand 
 feet thick, slowly grinding over the ancient surface of the 
 valley. 
 
 They appear to have done some thorough work — those 
 old ice giants — crushing, as in an emery mill, quartz, slate, 
 mica, corundum, jasper, marble, hornblende, green-stone, 
 iron, and every rock that could be gathered from the neigh- 
 boring mountains, into all required sizes from that of the 
 Balanced Rock and the Alderman, to the dust that grits in 
 
ATOTARHO'S DUFF 81 
 
 your teeth and sends a cold shudder through you when the 
 thermometer is raging among the nineties. You may see 
 fine specimens of ice-age-work carefully assorted in the curi- 
 ous strata of any of our Berkshire gravel-beds; and it will 
 be well worth your while to make a study of them. 
 
 But, as these explanations of the phenomenon of the 
 Balanced Rock refer to obscure dates far back in the infinite 
 eons; and the record, whatever the geologists aver, may not 
 seem to you indisputable, perhaps you may prefer something 
 within the range of authentic history, as related, for instance, 
 by those grave chroniclers, Hendrick Aupaumut and Grace 
 Scheherazade. And it is but reasonable that you should 
 have it. 
 
 J assume that you know something of the Atotarhos of 
 the Iroquois, or Six Nations; a line of kings or emperors, of 
 whom each, when he succeeded to the office, took also the 
 name of the founder of the dynasty, just as the Roman 
 emperors were all Caesars. Individuals of the line were gifted 
 with diverse divine, or at least supernatural, attributes and 
 powers; all being esteemed demi-gods of one estate or an- 
 other. The first, a truculent old fellow, had a complete 
 table service made of the bones of his enemies; and he had 
 an imposing way of receiving even friendly deputations, clad 
 in an entire panoply of living and venomous serpents. I 
 have seen a portrait of his majesty in that royal costume. 
 Most of his descendants, although invariably wise in counsel 
 and mighty in war, were of a more gentle kind. The par- 
 ticular Atotarho, with whom we have here to do, was ordi- 
 narily of even feminine beauty and delicacy; and devoted 
 himself to the cultivation of the milder virtues among his 
 people. A white poet has even ventured to fable that this 
 gentle ruler was the daughter of Count Frontenac, stolen in 
 her infancy, and palmed off on the confiding tribes by a 
 childless predecessor. But the Iroquois were not the sort of 
 people to see any divinity in a woman, and they aver that, 
 
82 TAGHCONIC 
 
 if occasion required, he could assume gigantic proportions 
 and unlimited strength. And this assertion is fully borne 
 out by the story of the Balanced Rock. 
 
 I need not tell you that the Indian youth were severely 
 trained to athletic sports — quoits, clubs and the like, — and 
 you may or may not, have heard that a favorite game, was 
 one which, under the name of "duff," was a favorite also 
 among my own school-fellows, who played it with paving 
 stones. It consists in placing one stone upon another, and 
 then attempting to dislodge it, by pitching a third from 
 such distance as the player can ; a feat which requires more 
 strength and nearly as much skill as the kindred game of 
 quoits. 
 
 It was a long, long while ago that a party of Mohegan 
 youth were excited over this sport in the neighborhood of 
 the Balanced Rock. Words ran high and indeed blows 
 seemed exceedingly imminent when their attention was 
 diverted to a slender youth who stood leaning against a 
 neighboring tree in admiration of a sport in which he seemed 
 ill adapted to take part. Had the elders of the tribe been 
 present, doubtless the courtesy to a stranger required by 
 Indian etiquette would have mitigated the rudeness of the 
 youngsters' wit; but, left to themselves, and taught to de- 
 spise effeminacy, the strange youth appeared to them a fair 
 mark for their raillery, and they did not spare him, notwith- 
 standing his modest and manly responses. 
 
 But the loudest laugh was when, as if provoked beyond 
 endurance, he accepted a taunting challenge to a trial of 
 strength and skill. The laugh was brief, and changed to 
 cries of terror, when they saw the slender but lithe figure 
 grow to giant size. Then they knew the Atotarho of their 
 masters, the Iroquois; and when he hurled the huge rocks 
 about, as you still see them, they would have fled had not 
 his glance held them fast. At last, seizing the largest boulder 
 to be found, as one would a pebble, he fixed it where you now 
 
ATOTARHO'S DUFF 83 
 
 marvel, and the geologists blunder over it, — the Balanced Rock . 
 
 Then, resuming the slender figure, to which the frightened 
 youth were now quite reconciled, he gave them a lesson in 
 manners and morals, which was handed down through all 
 after-generations of the Mohegans, whose tradition-keeper- 
 in-chief yearly repeated it from the top of The Atotarho's 
 Duff. 
 
 Now, does not that sound a vast deal more sensible and 
 truthful than all that stuff about icebergs floating round 
 Perry's Peak, or glaciers five thousand feet thick in the Housa- 
 tonic valley? Methinks I hear you say; "Now, actually, 
 don't itV 
 
 Well, one thing is certain; whether this old rock got its 
 marvellous poise at the hand of enchantment or by the still 
 more wondrous workings of nature, we came to visit it, that 
 June afternoon, with mingled merriment and astonishment. 
 M. rushed to it with a ringing laugh, declaring she would 
 push the monster from the seat he had kept longer than was 
 right. Her gay, fairylike figure pressed against the rude, 
 grey mass with such mimic might, reminded me of a task 
 assigned, in some elfin tale, to a rebellious hand-maiden of 
 Queen Mab. 
 
 We had a little intellectual amusement in deciphering 
 the names of innumerable Julias and Carolines, Rosalinds, 
 James, and "Roxany Augustys," inscribed by affectionate 
 jack-knives, upon the bark of the surrounding trees. Some 
 classic gentlemen, dolefully destitute of a doxy, had enrolled 
 among them the words, ."Memnon" and "Peucinia." I 
 have since heard the story of the merry hour when "Memnon" 
 was inscribed by a hand which has written many a witty 
 and clever volume. Indeed, indeed there must have been 
 a deal of witchery in the cunning priestess who made that 
 stern old rock breathe such mysterious and enchanting music. 
 
 " Can any mortal creature of earth's mould 
 Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?" 
 
84 TAGHCONIC 
 
 I should think not. Was it a wood-nymph then with 
 her music box! Was there ever anything in that broken 
 champagne bottle at the foot of the sphynx? And do wood- 
 nymphs drink champagne? This grove is very questionable 
 and full of marvels. 
 
 When we had clambered with a world of pains on to the 
 top of the rock, we, too, had music — merry and sad — "music 
 at the twilight hour." Then, as the evening shades deepened 
 in the wood came low spoken words of memory and of long- 
 ing for those far away. Alas! if all whom we invoked had 
 come, the grave and the sea must have given up their dead. 
 
 With voices softened and mellowed by deeper feeling, my 
 companions sang an "Ave Maria," and we bade farewell, 
 not gaily, to a scene mysteriously consecrated by memories 
 not its own. So, often, in scenes and hours when we invoke 
 the ministers of joy, other spirits arise in their places, and 
 we do not bid them down. 
 
Lebanon Springs 
 
Lebanon Springs 
 
 ' So when, on Lebanon's sequestered hight, 
 The fair Adonis left the realms of light, 
 Bowed his bright locks, and fated from his birth 
 To change eternal. — Darwin's Botanic Garden. 
 
 Down in the hilly valley, beyond the Taghconics, is 
 Lebanon — New Lebanon: the capital of the Shaker world, 
 the seat of the mineral springs, the most delightful of water- 
 ing places, the birthplace of Samuel J. Tilden, and our 
 Gretna Green. AH the world knows Lebanon, but much of 
 it about as accurately as the knowledge-seeking traveller 
 who, on the morning after his arrival, desired to be shown 
 the cedars for which he was told the place was famous. Lest 
 any of you should waste your time in antiquarian research 
 for the point where "the fair Adonis left the realms of light," 
 I may as well tell you at once that it was the door which 
 opens from the gay parlors of Columbia Hall out upon the 
 long balconies on a moonless night. Lebanon Adonises 
 "bow their bright locks" to the brighter eyes of the belle 
 of the season; and, as there is likely to be a new one every 
 two or three months, they are fated to eternal change. That 
 explains the fable. 
 
 The Springs are a very Mecca for summer pilgrims. The 
 first June heats bring the habitues with their quiet, quite-at- 
 home air. A little later, others, catching a feverish impulse 
 from the city miasma, rush away like mad to flirt awhile 
 with Nature and Hygeia among the mountains. Still others 
 take a season here after their Saratoga; like hock and soda- 
 water after champagne. At all seasons — midwinter even — 
 the people of all the region-round-about love their little trips 
 to The Pool. 
 
 "The Pool": that was the neighborhood name in the 
 simple days of old. Catherine Sedgwick, who then, and 
 always, well loved this resort, delighted to speak of it as 
 
TAGHCONIC 
 
 The Pool, and that is what Miss Warner also calls it in her 
 charming novel, Queechy. Queechy Lake, by the way, is 
 one of the prettiest features in Lebanon scenery, and the 
 ride to it is a favorite drive. 
 
 This valley was the Wyomanoclc of the Mohegans, and 
 the name still clings to the stream which flows through it. 
 Very lovely are both vale and stream. If natural beauty 
 were the sole test of excellence few watering places would 
 rival Lebanon Springs. But they have other merit than this. 
 It is claimed that they are the oldest watering places in 
 America; and village tradition will tell you that, a hundred and 
 seventy years ago, or about the close of the last French and 
 Indian war, a certain Captain Hitchcock, then stationed at 
 Hartford, finding himself afflicted with a grievous malady, 
 was induced to try these waters. "He came," says an in- 
 teresting local writer, "with one servant and a company of 
 Indian guides, and was carried from Stockbridge to the 
 Springs on a litter, and by an Indian trail, there being no 
 roads. He found a large basin filled with water, and, from 
 appearances around it, judged it to be a bathing place for 
 the natives." Captain Hitchcock camped for several days 
 near the springs, and received great benefit from their use. 
 After the peace he returned to New Lebanon as a permanent 
 resident, and his descendants still live there. 
 
 Before the Revolutionary war, the Springs had become 
 noted. In the early part of the present century, they con- 
 tinued to grow in repute, and towards its middle, society 
 there was subjected to the praises of Nat. Willis, the sar- 
 casms of Mrs. Trollope and the judicious criticism of Miss 
 Sedgwick. But why bother with the old life at the Pool 
 while the living world of the Springs so provokingly chal- 
 lenges us to read it — if we can. It were an infinitely curious 
 study to enquire what brings each individual into the re- 
 pectably-motley throng; but, unfortunately for psychological 
 science, the sojourners at fashionable hotels are the most 
 
LEBANON SPRINGS 89 
 
 incommunicative of beings; reticence being the primal law 
 of society — technically so called. Lamentable as that fact is, 
 we need not, however, despair; having a ready resource in 
 that supreme faculty of guessing, which makes us, Yankees, 
 from Emerson to Andrew Jackson Davis, the incomparable 
 philosophers, we all are. 
 
 It is a pleasant and profitable recreation to exercise this 
 precious and peculiar faculty, of a lazy summer afternoon, 
 on the long verandahs of Columbia Hall. Laziness is the 
 mother of at least one school of philosophy, and guessing at 
 the foibles of one's friends is always delightful: their vir- 
 tues, I take it, guessing philosophy generally leaves to be 
 proved. 
 
 There are some hundreds of human beings about the 
 huge hotel, most of whom may be supposed to have some 
 motive, not of a purely sanitary character, in coming here; 
 and to have. also some notion, more or less definite, of the 
 nature of the place and the part they are to play in it. In 
 the old times of The Pool, we might have gone straight to 
 the point, and asked people what they thought of things in 
 general, and themselves in particular; but, since Mrs. Trol- 
 lope, Capt. Hall and the Dickens have snubbed inquisitive- 
 ness out of American manners, that won't do at all. It 
 might reap the reward of impertinence. No matter; a 
 tolerably shrewd guess may do as well. Let us guess then. 
 
 It would not require a Connecticut Solomon to discover 
 that the student-looking young man, with an orange-colored 
 face and sea-green spectacles, thinks himself in an enormous 
 hospital, or perhaps only a mammoth apothecary's shop. 
 I dare say he spends his most contented hours in the fa- 
 mous medicine factory of the Tildens, two miles down the 
 street. He deems those gorgeous, flaunting dames, of whose 
 bright presence he is rather vaguely conscious, of no 
 more real value — since they will not nurse his invalidship — 
 than the colored waters in the apothecary's window opposite. 
 
90 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Those gay ladies themselves, of course, view the matter 
 in a very reverse light. Take one of them, for example — 
 that flirting, chatting, jewelled thing, Madame, the wife of 
 the Wall Street millionaire. With both those clear-orbed 
 eyes wide open, she can see little in this magnificent pano- 
 rama of hill and valley, and this, its life-throbbing heart, 
 more than a splendid ball room or gorgeous saloon; as indeed, 
 for that matter, she would like the wide, wide world to be — 
 and is vastly annoyed that misery, with her discordant 
 shrieks and disgusting deformities, should presume to spoil 
 the music and mar the decorations. 
 
 That blinking exquisite in those outrageously stunning 
 habiliments — him with the eye-glass painfully squinnied in 
 between bloated cheek and villanously low forehead; him 
 with his nose turned up, as if in scorn of the poor moustache 
 struggling for life in the exhausted soil below it : he has gradu- 
 ated from Paris; and the dazzling, dancing dames hold him 
 a prodigy of intellect. But you note that he has all the 
 external symptoms of being a thoroughbred donkey; and I 
 think a practiced guesser would have little difficulty in mak- 
 ing him out a weak cadet of one of those families to whom 
 the Jenkinses of the New York press have given brevet rank 
 as "aristocrats." 
 
 Look again. You would call yonder a frank, free-hearted, 
 undesigning girl. Hear with what joyous, summerly forget : 
 fulness she throws off those snatches of unstudied song; 
 and see how ingenuously the blush rises in her cheek, now 
 she remembers that she is not alone. You would not dream 
 now — would you? — that she looks upon this fair spot only 
 as a mart in which she is to dispose of that dear little com- 
 modity — herself — to the best possible advantage? Yet I'll 
 wager you a small farm I have in the clouds, that every 
 note of that outgushing melody was' aimed, point blank, at 
 the handsome gentleman who has been conversing, these 
 twohours past, with the pale girl in black. I only hope the 
 
LEBANON SPRINGS 91 
 
 minstrel will not be malicious enough to say, the pale girl 
 is "setting her cap" for the handsome gentleman. 
 
 Why don't she turn her thought to drive away the cloud 
 which has settled in the eye of the gloomy-browed man who 
 is pacing the verandah so heavily? Bless us! the summer 
 sunshine glances off from him, and leaves not a trace of light ; 
 he has never sold his shadow to Satan. Yet I misdoubt; 
 and so we go on, doubting and misdoubting, guessing and 
 misguessing: sure enough — if we would consider it — of two 
 things; that we shall always hit wide enough of the mark, 
 and never too near the charitable side of.it. "Wise judges 
 are we, of each other's actions!" 
 
 This Lebanon is not without its vein of romance. How 
 could it be, when youth and age, folly and wisdom, joy and 
 sorrow, love and hatred, life and death, make it their yearly 
 rendezvous? How strange a rendezvous, oft-times! Of those 
 who seek here new thought, new hope, new feelings, how 
 many find only what they bring — a jaded mind and a palsied 
 heart? Mind cramped to the puny pursuit of puny things 
 will not always, upon the mountains, expand and glow with 
 the widening horizon and the purer sunlight. Passion, born 
 luxuriously in the crowded city, grows and strengthens, and 
 will not die, in the bracing upland air. Yet is there forget- 
 fulness of lighter woes and less corroding cares, in the gay 
 saloons and woodland drives, as well as marvellous virtue 
 for the diseased body in the bubbling waters and fresh breezes. 
 Care-worn men and women worn with ennui, do get new 
 elasticity of thought and frame; but in what do they seek 
 a balm for the wounded spirit, who bring hither the broken 
 hearted also — like thee, fair and gentle L. — or was it that 
 thy pure spirit might wing its way to Heaven through purer 
 skies than overhang thy native city? 
 
 I said Lebanon had its vein of romance. A bachelor 
 friend of mine, who has been a lounger at Columbia Hall 
 every summer these ten years past, has a rich fund of stories 
 
92 TAGHCONIC 
 
 — humorous, melo-dramatic, and tragical — about those who 
 have fluttered, flattered, flirted, and flitted here in that time. 
 With him, half the demoiselles who have "made their mar- 
 ket" under his eye, are heroines of a quality which would 
 surprise themselves not a little to know, and their husbands 
 a good deal more. It is often a matter of discussion with 
 us, whether, among other connubial revelations, the arts and 
 devices whereby he was entrapped are usually disclosed to 
 the husband. In the absence of data from which to con- 
 clude, we always end in the same mists in which we set out. 
 One of my bachelor friend's stories I will venture to repeat, 
 although I perceive it loses half its flavor, for lack of the 
 gusto with which he would dwell upon it. 
 
 She Would be a Gentleman's Wife. 
 
 "More beauty than ever at Lebanon this year," I re- 
 marked to my friend, as we sat together one evening, about 
 a year since; it was a common observation, and I thought 
 myself particularly safe in repeating it. 
 
 "Hey! what's that you say?" he ejaculated, after a 
 pause, in which it seemed my words had been following him 
 far down into the depths of reverie. "More beauty than 
 ever! Let me tell you, my dear fellow, that you know noth- 
 ing at all of the matter. It's one of the stupid commonplaces 
 of stupid common people." 
 
 I bowed to the compliment, and the bachelor went on 
 with a half sigh, "Ah! you should have known us in the reign 
 of the bitter and beautiful Lizzie B., or in that of the wonder- 
 working Mrs. M." 
 
 Here the bachelor again relapsed into reverie, and I had 
 time to remark to myself that this hankering after faded 
 flowers, when the world was full of fresh, was an ugly symp- 
 tom that my friend's own hey-day of beaudom must be on 
 the wane. When people begin to complain that they can 
 find no beauty, now-a-days, like that which they used to 
 
OUR FRIEND'S STORY 93 
 
 meet, look if they don't wear wigs, and other falsities of 
 decoration. 
 
 "But the most charming season," resumed the bachelor, 
 emerging again into the present, "was that of 1851, when 
 Kate L. was in the ascendant. She was far enough from 
 beautiful, was Mrs. L., but such a winsome way she had with 
 her that we all, to a man, acknowledged her sceptre — and 
 the most dazzling belle in her realm was ready to die with 
 envy: envy, by the bye, was a vice Mrs. L. was especially 
 free from. Never was woman more ready to recognize and 
 exhibit the charms of her rivals. She surrounded her throne 
 with a constellation of lovely women from far and near, and 
 would let none be eclipsed. A kind-hearted creature was 
 she, and a sensible to boot; a tithe part the jealousy we 
 endured from the splendid. Lizzie B. would have made Kate 
 look as ugly as a Bornese ape. 
 
 "But it was of her throne-maidens that I was going to 
 boast. I wish you could have looked in upon one of our 
 gala nights; we have none such now — (that, entre nous, 
 was a fib of the bachelor's). There was a floral ball we had 
 one night in July — I have some reason to remember it, but 
 no matter. Mrs. L. had made more than usual exertions 
 in getting up this festival, which was the opening one of the 
 season. The arrangements were perfect; — the floral decora- 
 tions unique and profuse; the music superb; and the supper 
 just what it should be. But our Lady Patroness was too 
 true a genius to give to these concomitants the monopoly of 
 her attention. With a magic little crow-quill by way of 
 wand, she summoned from all manner of retreats, the most 
 brilliant assemblage of fair women and distinguished men 
 that I have ever beheld among these hills; and when Mrs. L. 
 summoned youth and beauty, you might be sure there was 
 something to be done. I am going to leave them to do it 
 while I tell you of my cousin Ellen, the fairest of them all. 
 
94 TAGHCONIC 
 
 "You remember Nell — my uncle Fred's Nell — the mer- 
 riest girl that ever hid deep design under careless laugh. 
 Uncle Fred., you must know, left her an orphan at twenty — 
 with exquisite accomplishments, unrivalled tact, and four 
 thousand dollars, with which to make her way in the world, 
 as she best might. Her guardian — a staid, business-like old 
 gentleman, guardian to half the heiresses in the county, as 
 well — when her year of mourning was over, advised her to 
 buy a share in a boarding school, and earn her living by 
 teaching. 'With your accomplishments and talents, my 
 dear,' — the good, fatherly old man was going on, when he 
 was astonished to find his pretty ward cutting short his> 
 speech with — 
 
 "With my accomplishments and talents, my dear guar- 
 dian, I don't intend to squeeze my brain like a lemon, to 
 give flavor to some insipid school-girl, while I might as well 
 be rivalling her mamma. No! I'll invest in — a husband!' 
 — and here her little foot came down with a will. 
 
 "The guardian stared; but he was too sensible a man to 
 oppose a woman whose will was up; and so, under the nomi- 
 nal chaperonship of his wife, Ellen opened her first campaign 
 at Lebanon. 
 
 "That night of the floral f£te, she stood, the centre of an 
 admiring group — a slight, aerial figure, but full of elastic life 
 and vigor; her face transparent with changing light, and her 
 eye overflowing with a flood of love and laughter. She was 
 dressed with wonderful artistic skill; for the life of me I 
 could not imagine how she contrived to arrange her mist-like 
 drapery so that she seemed always on the point of rising into 
 air. I have since heard that it is no mystery among mantua- 
 makers. Among the crowd of women, laden and over-laden 
 with all kinds of flowers, native and exotic, Nell had only 
 twisted in her hair a few snowy, star-shaped blossoms — the 
 spoil of a mountain excursion. Not a fold of her robes, not 
 a tress on her head, but seemed too spiritual for mortal touch. 
 
OUR FRIEND'S STORY 95 
 
 I have since learned that the artistes call this style of dress, 
 la Gabrielle. It is a triumph of genius; but I would not 
 advise any lady weighing over two hundred to attempt it. 
 
 "Frank Leigh was conversing with my etherial cousin in 
 a composed tone, and with a gaze of mere earthly admiration 
 which I could not then have assumed for the world, although 
 Nell and I had been playmates from infancy. I almost 
 shuddered — so strangely had the fancy possessed me — when 
 Frank took her hand, to lead her to the piano, lest she should 
 indeed prove a spirit, and dissolve into thin air. 
 
 " 'Ellen should be a gentleman's wife,' said a pretty and 
 brilliant widow by my side. 
 
 "Wife! so she was human. 'A gentleman's wife,' I re- 
 peated aloud, 'and pray what is a gentleman? — and why 
 should Ellen, more than another, be a gentleman's wife?' 
 
 " 'Why,' replied the widow laughing, 'a gentleman, in 
 Ellen's vocabulary, is a man of elegant manners, with at 
 least one hundred thousand dollars, and a disposition to 
 spend his income in graceful and fashionable follies. Ellen's 
 expensive tastes demand such a husband — and I hope she 
 may get him.' 
 
 " 'Oh, now I am enlightened,' I said. 
 
 " 'I am glad to hear it,' rejoined the widow, merrily., 
 'But come with me out into the balcony, and I'll let you into 
 a secret or two.' 
 
 "Of course, such an offer was not to be resisted; and 
 before we returned, I was put in possession of much recherche 
 gossip, known only to the initiated. 
 
 "There had come that year to the Springs, a fine looking 
 young man — generous, spirited, of captivating address, .and 
 great reputed wealth — Frank Leigh by name; the same who 
 was in attendance upon my cousin Ellen at the floral fete. 
 Of course such a god-send was not to be neglected by anxious 
 mothers, and daughters no less anxious. Mrs. L., finding 
 him clever, fond of sport, and prompt to forward all her gay 
 
96 TAGHCONIC 
 
 schemes, had taken him up at once, and installed him her 
 prime minister. Ellen, I need not say, was quite as readv 
 to acknowledge his merits. 
 
 "Frank was universally declared to be a 'sweet man,' in 
 the ball-room and drawing-room; but he was not a bit of a 
 dandy; there was nothing of the exclusively ladies' man 
 about him, nothing effeminate in his habits. On the con- 
 trary, his tastes were eminently manly. He had yachted on 
 the Atlantic coast, hunted moose in a Maine Winter, and 
 even taken "a run after buffaloes into the Sioux country. 
 Here, among the quiet hills, his exuberant spirits found vent 
 in a passion for wild horsemanship. Jehu was a child to 
 him, with the whip; he was sure always to choose some 
 unmanageable foal of gunpowder, that nobody else would 
 come within a rod of; men, even of strong nerves, were of 
 opinion that saferjpleasures existed than a seat beside Frank 
 Leigh, on one of his break-neck drives; and as for the women, 
 not a soul of the dear creatures, who would have given their 
 eyes to secure him^f or a partner at the last night's ball, could 
 be persuaded ,to trust their ivory necks with him and his 
 'Lightning' next morning. 
 
 "To all this was one most remarkable exception — my 
 brave cousin Nell,£who had come out all at once a perfect Di. 
 Vernon. Ah! but it was an inspiriting sight, to see her 
 mounted on her brown; steed, leading her panting admirers 
 an aimless race over fields, brakes, briers, and fences, till 
 half the chase foreswore all piirsuit of her thereafter. 
 
 "But Nelly's favorite seat was in Frank's light buggy, of 
 which she enjoyed undisputed possession — her rivals thinking 
 it a particularly 'bad eminence.' Of course she was the con- 
 stant^ companion of our^Jehu, and a fit one, as it looked. 
 Travellers marvelled enviously, as Frank's chariot dashed by 
 them, toxhear Nelly's clear, ringing laugh, or rattling song; 
 or even at times to see her slight figure braced back, her 
 loose curls Jlying, and her little hands holding fast the 'lines,' 
 
OUR FRIEND'S STORY 97 
 
 while she urged the foaming horses to yet more impossible 
 speed ; — 
 
 'Like a dream doth it seem, 
 
 When I think of the past; 
 
 Up the road gallantly dashing along, 
 
 Driving two noble steeds, square-built and strong; 
 
 Firmly her little hands grasping the reins, 
 
 Held them as firmly as lovers in chains.' 
 
 "I think the echoes of her merry voice must linger yet 
 among the old woods which skirt the Hancock road. Sure 
 I am that the dwellers in the roadside farm-houses yet 
 remember Frank Leigh's dashing equipage, and the gay couple 
 with whom it used to fly by their doors, at such flashing speed. 
 
 "Beside his equestrian fancies, Frank was exceedingly 
 prone to romantic excursions, and by the aid of the good- 
 natured Mrs. L., who was nothing loath, led us upon a hun- 
 dred wild adventures among the hills, to the great detriment 
 of patent leather and superfine broadcloth. Here, too, Nell 
 was the co-leader with the rattle-brain heir; never a ramble 
 ended until she had joined him in one mad-cap feat or an- 
 other. 
 
 "All this you may be sure gave ample room and verge 
 enough for bitter tongues; but the sage conclusion of one 
 shrewd lady, that 'some folks could do what other folks 
 couldn't,' soon came to be in substance the universal senti- 
 ment. Indeed, with all Nelly's faults and follies, it was im- 
 possible, when you knew her, to think her capable of anything 
 very wrong. 
 
 "One opinion, at least, everybody held, and that was, 
 that she was just the girl to charm Frank Leigh — and that 
 she had charmed him to some purpose. Everybody but my 
 friend the widow, who, while she admitted the boldness and 
 vigor of Ellen's attack, had a doubt or two as to its success. 
 'Ellen,' said the widow, 'has a splendid genius for business, 
 
98 TAGHCONIC 
 
 but very little experience. Do you not notice that Frank of 
 late has another companion sometimes on his rides?' 
 
 " 'What! the timid and femininely delicate Miss P.?' 
 
 "'The same — and with what tender care he curbs his 
 speed when she is his companion?' 
 
 "'It is very kind and considerate of him; the jolts and 
 racing in which Ellen delights, would be the death of Miss P. 
 I am sure it is good in him.' 
 
 " 'Oh, very! And yet is it not possible that she who tames 
 the steed may tame the master?' 
 
 "I admitted the noteworthiness of the fact, but trusted 
 to the genius and address of my fair kinswoman for a suc- 
 cessful issue of her summer campaign. Indeed, as the season 
 waned, her star seemed to rise yet higher into the ascendant, 
 while she relaxed no whit of her zeal, but cut madder freaks, 
 rode more daringly, was more than ever the constant com- 
 panion of Frank, who, although he daily took a quiet drive 
 with Miss P., seemed more than ever devoted to her dash- 
 ing rival. Everybody said Frank had proposed, was about 
 to propose, or at least was in honor bound to propose, to my 
 cousin. He was set down as certain of the fair hands which 
 so gracefully reined in his fiery coursers. Only the widow 
 shook her curls and Miss P. said nothing. 
 
 "One bright morning in September, just before the close 
 of the season, Ellen was setting in the drawing-room sur- 
 rounded as usual by a group of loungers — among whom were 
 Mr. Vinton, a gentleman of singularly reserved and quiet 
 manners, and said to be very timid — and a Miss Phoebe N., 
 a young lady who, in spite of nose and eyes equally awry 
 with her temper, was supposed to be about to seize the quiet 
 gentleman, vi et armis. 
 
 " 'So Frank Leigh has taken us all by surprise, and mar- 
 ried,' said some one, joining the group. 
 
 " 'Married!' 'No?' 'You don't mean it.' 'How!' 'When?' 
 'To whom?' exclaimed a dozen voices at once — the speakers. 
 
' OUR FRIEND'S STORY 99 
 
 of course, fixing their eyes considerately upon Nell: except 
 Miss N., who was enabled to turn only one of hers that way, 
 but answered: 
 
 " 'Oh, to that stupid Miss P. I saw them depart this 
 morning.' 
 
 '"I am sure you would not so speak, if you knew her,' 
 said Ellen, indignantly. 'On the contrary, she is a sweet, 
 sensible, and witty girl.' 
 
 " 'Rather too quiet for me,' mildly remarked the very 
 quiet Mr. Vinton. 
 
 " 'I don't see why you should defend her,' snarled the 
 amiable Phoebe to Ellen. 'She has carried off the prize we 
 all assigned to you.' 
 
 "'To me!' exclaimed Ellen with real laughter and well 
 affected surprise; 'I am sure I am much obliged to you all. 
 Frank is a noble fellow; but do you know, I should have an 
 unconquerable aversion to being rivalled by dogs and horses? 
 — and of course 'Lightning' and 'Ney' will hold equal place 
 in Frank's heart with his wife.' 
 
 " 'But we,' began Miss N., with a malicious look — 
 
 "'But me no buts!' exclaimed Ellen, interrupting her; 
 'I would sooner marry a cobbler than a horse-jockey, be he 
 never so rich!' 
 
 "Mr. Vinton looked radiantly happy, Miss Phcebe dark- 
 eningly the reverse, for it was her 'one woe of of life' that her 
 father had begun his ascent to wealth in the respectable 
 calling of a cobbler. Ellen saw where her shot hit, and then 
 cast a penetrating glance at Vinton, in whose face she read 
 more than she had suspected." 
 
 Here the bachelor paused for breath. "And so," said I, 
 "Miss Ellen lost her summer's work." 
 
 "Not at all," he replied resuming; "you shall hear. 
 Frank Leigh did not choose to fall in love with a woman who 
 rivalled him in the accomplishments of which he was most 
 proud. Even so sensible a fellow as he had a spice of human 
 
100 TAGHCONIC 
 
 vanity — quite enough to cause him to prefer Miss P., who 
 admired his daring feats, to Nelly, who demanded that he 
 should admire hers, and showed, moreover, to all the world 
 that they were not beyond the attainment of a very slight- 
 framed woman. Besides, he could too readily understand all 
 that Nell felt, said, and did; it is not the near view which 
 charms. 
 
 "Poor Vinton, however, looking on from a distance, be- 
 came every day more enamored; — the qualities which Ellen 
 displayed proved so much the more fascinating from their 
 very strangeness to his own nature. But it is in vain to 
 philosophize about these matters; Vinton, like many a sen- 
 sible fellow before and since, contrived to get hopelessly 
 into the meshes before he thought of asking how; and the 
 moment he saw the field clear, resolved to occupy the vacant 
 lovership. 
 
 "Our light-hearted Ariadne I suspect was secretly piqued 
 at her desertion; at all events, she gave the new lover a 
 world of encouragement. Indeed, so rapidly did affairs 
 advance, that the same afternoon Mr. Vinton, in a tremor 
 of fear, made a formal proposal — and was at once accepted. 
 Still more to his joy, Ellen consented — if Miss Phoebe is to 
 be believed, proposed, that the union should take place that 
 same evening. So soon after the demolition of her hopes, 
 Ellen reached their consummation, and was a "gentleman's 
 wife.' " 
 
 "A queer wooing," I said, when the bachelor had con- 
 cluded. "Was the result happy?" 
 
 "Why, the chances were rather against it," he replied; 
 "but fate often treats us better than we deserve. The result, 
 I believe, was happy for both." 
 
 "And how about the widow and yourself?" 
 
 "Is not that the moon rising yonder?" said the bachelor. 
 
On Perry's Peak 
 
On Perry's Peak 
 
 Profit and pleasure, then, to mix with art, 
 T'inform the judgment, nor offend the heart, 
 Shall gain all votes. — Anatomie of Melancholy. 
 
 Of all picnics in which many people join, commend me 
 to a scientific field-meeting. I do not compare that, or any- 
 thing else, with hours like those we passed by the lakeside. 
 The things are too diverse for comparison. Nor do I mean 
 to say that, for once in a while, a merry masquerade in the 
 glamour of the woods, or among the weird rocks of Icy Glen, 
 has not unique charms. But a little science gives a zest 
 always fresh, and a flavor always piquant, never cloying, 
 to the enjoyment of large bodies of fairly well-educated 
 excursionists. 
 
 To go out with a multitude in the vague expectation of a 
 day's pleasure, even in the most romantic regions, often results 
 in pure weariness of spirit. We are all true heirs of the old 
 hunter races. Our joy is in pursuit; and the more definite 
 the object of the chase, the keener the pleasure. That is 
 what makes him who has an aim in life the happy man. 
 That is what inspires alike the gold hunter in the sands of 
 California and the planet seeker among the stars of heaven. 
 It is the old instinct inherited from Nimrod and his fellow 
 huntsmen. Or shall we trace it, far back of these, to progeni- 
 tors in the Darwinian eons? Surely my highly civilized cat 
 shows indications of sharing it, when she leaves the rodent 
 trophies of her chase untasted, to partake of my own meal. 
 Clearly her enjoyment is more purely in the pursuit, than 
 is his who kills the deer, and eats the venison. 
 
 But the point from which I have wandered, is this; an 
 excursion-picnic should, if we would gain the most and the 
 highest enjoyment from it, have a more distinct purpose 
 
104 TAGHCONIC 
 
 than the mere passing of a few hours among pleasant or 
 romantic scenery. 
 
 I have already attempted to paint the delights of the 
 genial, unrestrained social intercourse of a few friends in the 
 freedom of the woods; but in a multitudinous picnic there 
 is no place for that — every hindrance to it. The snobs who 
 affect it are mere kill-joys and marplots. The picnic ex- 
 cursion should have an aim common to all its members; 
 and all should join in it. I will take it for granted that you 
 would not desire that aim to be attendance upon a cock- 
 fight, a pugilistic mill, a horse race, or a Fourth of July 
 celebration. A camp meeting might do; but even if one 
 were at hand, the spirit is not always willing, however it 
 may be with the flesh : just reversing the scriptural dilemma. 
 The field-meeting, as conducted by the scientific associations 
 of several New York and New England towns and cities, 
 seems to meet the want precisely, furnishing interesting ob- 
 jects of pursuit to all intelligent persons, and, for the most 
 part, eliminating all others from the picnic. 
 
 This is a peculiarly American device, essentially differing 
 from the lawn-meeting of an English village instituted as 
 described by Tennyson in his introduction to The Princess: 
 And the difference well illustrates that in the genius of the 
 two nations. The associations under whose auspices our 
 field-meetings are held do not seek a patron in any neighbor- 
 ing great or rich man; nor are their picnics designed to 
 teach the rudiments, or exhibit the common wonders, of 
 science to rustic villagers. The leaders are often leaders, as 
 well, of scientific opinion, investigation and progress, while 
 their associates are generally qualified to aid intelligently in 
 their labors. 
 
 These field-meetings — designed partly as a relaxation in 
 the intervals of more severe study, and partly to keep alive 
 a popular interest in science — are held in neighborhoods 
 where there is a chance that new facts may be elicited, or 
 
PERRY'S PEAK 105 
 
 which present features, intimate acquaintance with which is 
 in itself culture: which contain spots either picturesque, 
 possessed of interesting historical associations, or inviting as 
 a field for scientific research. Generally they combine all 
 these attractions. 
 
 The addresses which close and crown the day, are no dry 
 rehearsals of book lore, but vivacious" description and dis- 
 cussion of what the day has brought to light. There is of 
 course no time for minute investigation or profound study, 
 but clews are struck, to be followed up afterwards, valuable 
 collections are made; and, above all, "thought is quickened 
 and awakes." 
 
 Doubtless there is also a great deal of fun and flirtation 
 not strictly scientific; nor yet, perhaps, wholly otherwise: 
 ending sometimes, I am sure, in the illustration of an entirely 
 natural science, to which so renowned a philosopher as Plato 
 long ago gave his best thought, and a name which is too often 
 taken in vain. But when were hundreds of people, mostly 
 young men and women, ever thrown together in picnic, even 
 of the Sunday School variety, without something of that kind 
 happening? It was said of old: 
 
 "Who marks in church time others symmetry, 
 Makes all their beauty, his deformity.'' 
 
 And yet I have heard of rash young men, even in New Eng- 
 land, "making eyes" across the most Puritanic of meeting 
 houses at blushing girls who, blushing, made eyes back again: 
 both utterly reckless of any resultant ugliness. 
 
 But, so far from there being any precept against love- 
 making at a scientific picnic, there is absolutely a formula 
 provided, suited to the occasion: 
 
 "I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me, 
 Our mutual love is like the affinity 
 That doth exist between two simple bodies : 
 I am potassium to thy oxygen — 
 "lis little that the holy marriage vow 
 
106 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Shall shortly make us one. That unite 
 
 Is, after all, but metaphysical. 
 
 Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid, 
 
 A living acid; thou an alkali. 
 
 Endowed with human sense, that brought together 
 
 We might coalesce into one salt, 
 
 One homogeneous crescile. ****** 
 
 And thus, our several natures sweetly blent 
 
 We'd live and love together until death 
 
 Should decompose this fleshly tertium quid, 
 
 Leaving our souls to all eternity 
 
 Amalgamated. Sweet, thy name is Brown, 
 
 And mine is Johnson, wherefore should not we 
 
 Agree to form a Johnsonate of Brown?" 
 
 The scientific field-meeting being a pot-pourri of solid 
 meats, rich juices and spicy relishes, you will readily believe it 
 is among the choicest of our Berkshire pleasures; especially 
 when it is enjoyed in such good fellowship as the famous 
 Essex and Albany Institute and the Troy Scientific Associa- 
 tion can furnish. The meeting to which I am going to 
 invite you, however, shall consist of only our own home asso- 
 ciation, with a few pleasant friends from Stockbridge, Lenox, 
 and Richmond: a sort of family dinner, as it were. 
 
 Perry's Peak is the highest summit of one of the largest 
 mountain masses in the Taconic range, which, like many of 
 the others, has several minor prominences. It rises one 
 thousand and thirty feet from its base, which itself has an 
 altitude of one thousand and fifty feet above the sea level. 
 A large part of the upper surface of the mountain, including 
 the peak, is bare of trees, and often of soil also; and as the 
 neighboring hills do not press very close upon it, it affords' 
 some of the broadest, grandest, and most picturesque views 
 to be witnessed from any point in Berkshire, extending to 
 Greylock on the north, Mt. Washington on the south, the 
 Catskills on the west and the Hoosacs on the east. 
 
 In the south the Taghconics proudly raise their noble 
 dome against the sky, while nearer, for an interval, they 
 
PERRY'S PEAK 107 
 
 present the appearance of pyramidal summits, the conven- 
 tional form in which the abstract mountain range is repre- 
 sented, but which this rarely assumes to the eye, and never 
 in reality. The far-off Catskills can sometimes hardly be 
 told from the massive clouds which overhang and mingle 
 with them. You will be told that, from the Peak, steamers 
 can be seen passing on the Hudson: but, for that purpose, 
 you may as well be provided with a good field glass ; and , 
 unless the day be very favorable, with the eye of faith also. 
 No doubt it is well to keep the latter aid td vision in constant 
 practice: you will find it as needful at a field- as at a camp- 
 meeting. But I see little good in straining the natural eye 
 in an attempt to discern, doubtfully at best, objects of merely 
 curious interest, when such a grand and beautiful world lies 
 within its easy range. 
 
 For example, here at the western foot of the mountain 
 gleams Whiting's Pond, better known to "the wide- wide 
 world" as Queechy Lake, one of the prettiest lakelets among 
 the hills. Upon the other side we look down upon Rich- 
 mond Lake, another pretty sheet of water, and moreover, a 
 favorite of sportsmen. Eight miles away we see the spires 
 of Pittsfield. Scattered all about are points of individual 
 interest; but it is the grand coup d'mil, which it affords in 
 several directions, that gives Perry's Peak its celebrity. 
 
 Until recently one could easily and safely drive to the 
 very topmost summit; but a few years ago a summer tem- 
 pest sent raging torrents down the mountain-side, cutting 
 huge ravines out of the road, and burying acres of meadow 
 under barren gravel heaps: an interesting study for one in- 
 quisitive as to the Berkshire drift system, but distressful to 
 the industrious farmer and the lazy excursionist. There is 
 still, however, a tolerable road for the greater part of the 
 height, and you may accomplish the rest without much 
 trouble by driving "across lots." For equestrians, there is 
 no difficulty. As I once approached the top of the Peak it 
 
108 TAGHCONIC 
 
 was crowned by a well mounted group whose graceful figures 
 "darkly painted on the clear blue sky" made a striking pic- 
 ture which I should be sorry to think it impossible to repeat. 
 
 Thus easy of ascent, and temptingly accessible from 
 Lenox, Lebanon Springs and Pittsfield, it is no wonder that 
 the Peak has long been a favorite mountain resort, although 
 it has no such romantic interest as that with which Bryant 
 has invested Monument Mountain, nor such poetic fame as 
 Dr. Holmes, Mrs. Kemble and Thoreau, have conferred upon 
 Greylock. It remains unsung, although a poet of no mean 
 powers and with hereditary obligations to do it honor, was 
 born almost at its foot. The reason possibly is that its 
 charms are in the views from, not of, it. Its individuality, 
 although decided, is not of the character which at once strikes 
 either the eye or the imagination. 
 
 The celebrity of the Peak is in the world of science, and 
 there it has hardly a rival among the hills of New England; 
 its fame however, to confess the truth, being less due to any 
 startling wonders of its own than to the puzzling geological 
 phenomena of the region of which it is the conspicuous head 
 and center. It was these, together with its superb over- 
 views, which led our Scientific Association to select Perry's 
 Peak as the theatre for their celebration of the one hun- 
 dredth anniversary of the birth of Alexander Von Humboldt. 
 Think of a celebration which extended from the crowded 
 capitals of Europe to the lonely mountain tops of New 
 England. When did kingly conqueror have glory like that? 
 
 The most uniformly delicious week in the Berkshire year is 
 the second in September. "Then, if ever, come perfect days." 
 And the day of our Anniversary — the fourteenth of the month, 
 was absolutely perfect. The universal voice proclaimed it 
 entitled to the biggest boulder of the purest quartz on Crystal 
 Hill, if ever day deserved to be "marked with a white stone." 
 
 By the courtesy of the occasion, the party which ascended 
 the mountain, that bright September day, was presumed to 
 
PERRY'S PEAK 109 
 
 be an intellectual one, but it required no presumption to 
 pronounce it a glad company, and the merriment was no 
 worse for the attempt to give it a learned flavor. The result, 
 whether a failure or a success as to the original intention, 
 was always funny enough to provoke a laugh that was genuine, 
 if the wit was not. 
 
 Reaching the summit we assembled on a spot marked by 
 the coast survey, as 2089 feet above the sea level. All around 
 us the bare ledges were scored with parallel groovings on 
 broadly polished surfaces, and bore other distinct marks of 
 glacial action. Within a few rods were strewn those wonder- 
 ful boulders whose story has puzzled so many learned heads. 
 And there, with the tumbled ridges of four grand mountain- 
 chains in view, and the purest of sapphire skies overhanging 
 all, we found as fitting a spot as could be desired to com- 
 memorate the centennial birthday of the great naturalist. 
 
 The formal exercises of the celebration, if they could be 
 called formal, were brief and simple. Professor William C. 
 Richards — poet, orator and naturalist — displayed a superb 
 photograph of Humboldt — taken at Berlin and approved by 
 its subject — and, with a brief introduction, read an appro- 
 priate ode full of poetic thought and feeling. 
 
 Then, after an inspection of the evidences of glacial action 
 on the Peak, we betook ourselves to a cool and pleasant grove, 
 in which lay one of the largest of the famous Richmond 
 boulders: and there, with appetites of mountainous propor- 
 tions, discussed our picnic dinner. 
 
 While thus agreeably engaged, we learned that the Peak 
 took its name from the Rev. David Perry, who owned lands 
 here and elsewhere in the town of Richmond, in which he 
 was the second minister of the gospel. Mr. Perry" was rather 
 a liberal, as liberality went with the New England clergy of 
 his day: that is, although a Federalist, as it was natural for 
 a Massachusetts Congregational minister to be, he kept on 
 good terms with his clerical brother of the next town, who 
 
110 TAGHCONIC 
 
 was a flaming Democrat; I have no doubt that he could, 
 and did, often dine with the only Episcopalian rector in the 
 county, without any conviction of a neglect of duty in failing 
 to smother him in his own popish surplice. Nevertheless, I 
 fancy it would have given the good old gentleman a strange 
 sensation could he have dreamed that profane philosophers 
 would come from the end of the earth to find, in his own per- 
 sonal and ecclesiastical domain, evidence that the world was 
 no more made in six days than Rome was built in one; and 
 I do not know what would have happened to him had he 
 foreseen that one of his own descendants, in no very distant 
 generation, would give himself to conducting a newspaper so 
 devoted to the fleeting pleasures of this life as the New York 
 Home Journal. It is fortunate, after all, that even ministers 
 are but short-sighted mortals. I dare say that, if the sainted 
 pastor is now able to look down and see all that has come 
 about so strangely, he regards it with the same equanimity 
 which his successors in office manifest. 
 
 The dinner over, we devoted ourselves to the more strictly 
 scientific work of the day, first listening to the story of the 
 boulders from the lips of their venerable discoverer. But, as 
 I purpose to go into that story somewhat at large, I will 
 make it the subject of another section. 
 
The Richmond Boulder Trains 
 
*; 
 
The Richmond Boulder Trains 
 
 "One must go back to an age before all history; an age which can- 
 not be measured by years or centuries; an age shrouded in mysteries and 
 to be spoken of only in guesses. To assert anything positively concern- 
 ing that age, or ages, would be to show the rashness of ignorance. 'I 
 think that I believe,' 'I have good reason to suspect,' 'I seem to see,' are 
 the strongest forms of speech which ought to be used, over a matter so 
 vast and as yet so little elaborated." — Kingsley's Idylls. 
 
 TEN MILLION YEARS AGO. 
 
 It may have been only one million years ago that the 
 events I am to speak of occurred; but I put it at ten to cover 
 accidents. It may have been less, or perhaps more; the 
 record is not so precise as could be wished if title to real 
 estate depended upon it. But for our present purpose the 
 vague measurement of the unnumbered eons of geology gives 
 a more adequate conception of their immensity than could be 
 obtained from the most definite statement in numbers, even 
 if we knew it to be exact : the mind is so apt to fancy it has 
 a full appreciation of such a statement whereas it really has 
 not the slightest. 
 
 Let me give you a general outline of the physical geography 
 of our hills as described by Dr. Palfrey in his History of New 
 England, on the authority of Professor Guyot. 
 
 "Only moderate elevations present themselves along the greater 
 part of the New England coast. Inland the great topographical feature 
 is a double belt of highlands, separated almost to their bases by the deep 
 and broad valley of the Connecticut River, and running parallel to each 
 other, from the south-south-west to the north-north-east, till, around the 
 sources of that river, they unite in a wide space of table land, from which 
 streams descend in different directions. 
 
 "To regard these highlands, which form so important a feature in 
 New England geography, as simply two ranges of hills, would not be to 
 conceive of them aright. They are vast swells of land, of an average 
 elevation of a thousand feet above the level of the sea, each with a width 
 
114 TAGHCONIC 
 
 of forty or fifty miles, from which as from a base, mountains rise in chains 
 or isolated groups to an altitude of several thousand feet more. 
 
 "In structure the two belts are unlike. The western system, which 
 bears the general name of the Green Mountains, is composed of two prin- 
 cipal chains, the Taghconics, or Taconics, on the east, the Hoosacs [on 
 the west,] more or less continuous, covered, like several shorter ones which 
 run along them, with the forests and herbage to which they owe their 
 name. Between these, a longitudinal valley can be traced, though with 
 some interruptions, from Connecticut to Northern Vermont. ■ In Massa- 
 chusetts and Connecticut, it is marked by the Housatonic and the Hoo- 
 sack; in Vermont by the rich basins which hold the villages of Benning- 
 ton, Manchester and Rutland, and farther on by valleys of less note.* * * 
 
 "The mountains have a regular increase from south to north. From 
 a height of less than a thousand feet in Connecticut, they rise to an aver- 
 age of twenty-five hundred feet in Massachusetts, where the majestic 
 Grey lock, isolated between the two chains, lifts its head to the stature of 
 thirty-five hundred feet. In Vermont, Equinox and Stratton Mountains 
 near Manchester are thirty-seven hundred feet; Killington Peak, Rutland, 
 rises forty-two hundred feet; Mansfield Mountain, at the northern ex- 
 tremity, overtops the rest of the Green Mountain range with an alti- 
 tude of forty-four hundred feet. 
 
 "The rise of the valley is less regular. In Connecticut its bottom is 
 from five hundred to seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. In 
 Southern Berkshire it is eight hundred feet; it rises thence two hundred 
 feet to Pittsfield, and one hundred more to the foot of Greylock; whence 
 it declines to the bed of the Housatonic in one direction and to an average 
 height of little more than five hundred feet in Vermont on the other. 
 Thus it is in Berkshire county that the western swell presents, if not the 
 most elevated peaks, yet the most compact and elevated structure." 
 
 Besides the shorter ranges, mentioned by Dr. Palfrey as 
 lying along the Taconics and Hoosacs, the Berkshire valley 
 is everywhere broken by spurs from the main chains and by 
 hills, often of magnitude. The mass of up-tumblings and 
 down-pullings which meets the eye that looks down upon it 
 from some elevated point, is a marvel and a joy to the geolo- 
 gist. We have locally been accustomed to regard the under- 
 lying rocks — chiefly mica schists of different grades, crysta- 
 line limestones, quartzite and green-stone — as belonging to 
 the very earliest formations. 
 
THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS 115 
 
 Thirty or forty years ago, Professor Emmons maintained 
 a hard fight against cruel odds, to establish that theory, and 
 we fancied his victory complete. But now comes a newer, 
 and very high, authority, Professor Dana, and relying upon 
 the evidence of certain Vermont fossils, denies to our rocks 
 any antiquity greater than the earliest period of the older 
 Silurian epoch; not much, if at all, more than a hundred 
 million years: and that likely to be fearfully cut down if 
 certain still later theorists upon the ages prevail. 
 
 I suppose I shall be told that we must submit to be thus 
 deposed from our high estate and ranked among comparative 
 parvenues; mere rocks of the second order. But 
 
 "On what compulsion must we? Tell me that." 
 The newest geologist is only infallible, while he is the newest; 
 an arrant brevity. Never, within all the borders of Berk- 
 - shire, in schist or quartz, in marble or green-stone, in dyke or 
 bed-rock, ice-ground gravel or unburied boulder, was there 
 ever found the slightest trace of organic forms, animal or 
 vegetable: and shall our pure azoic rocks be robbed of their 
 virgin fame because the Rev. Augustus Wing has detected 
 the slip of a frail distant relative up in Vermont, a hundred 
 million years ago? Worse accidents than that happen in the 
 most primitive families. 
 
 To be sure, our rocks have been greatly metamorphosed, 
 and there is indisputable evidence of violent heat in their 
 impressible youth; but does that prove that their metamor- 
 phoses were like Ovid's? My Berkshire blood is up, and, if I 
 were younger, I would myself ride a geological tilt in their 
 defense, as it is, I summon some youthful champion to put on 
 his armor of proof, and try a joust with this renowned knight 
 of the hammer. Let him show that our old mountain ridges 
 are the very "bones of time"; not fossil bones by any means, 
 but the veritable rockribs of mother earth. But, until such 
 champion shall appear, we will, for the sake of peace, and in 
 submission to the geologic ruler of the hour, admit that we 
 
116 TAGHCONIC 
 
 are only Silurians. It might have been worse; for, after all, 
 the Welsh is a good old stock. 
 
 At any rate, the rocks are there in very palpable moun- 
 tains, Azoic or Silurian as you please ; and they are covered 
 far up their sides, if not to their very summits, by immense 
 deposits of drift, composed of rounded and rolled fragments 
 of all sizes from the huge boulder to the finest sand. The 
 same drift covers the valley; stones of all sizes and of every 
 variety which could be torn from the neighboring hills, being 
 jumbled together in utter confusion as to size, the largest 
 often being at the top ; as you may see finely exemplified on 
 Jubilee Hill in Pittsfield and elsewhere. But, with regard to 
 the prevailing rocks which compose it, the position in which 
 they lie, and in other particulars, you will find the drift of 
 different localities marked by distinct individual character- 
 istics. Even in regard to size, confusion is not absolutely 
 universal: you will find many gravel beds beautifully strati- 
 fied in this respect: but, as compared with the great mass of 
 drift, these are exceptional. These queerly tumbled beds 
 and piles of drift afford an altogether curious study; and one 
 in which there are few adepts. I commend it to you as a 
 summer recreation on the whole preferable to trouting; al- 
 though, if you persist in gratifying your murderous propensi- 
 ties, you may pleasantly combine the two. 
 
 Scattered all over this loose, stony formation, which 
 clothes the rocks of hill and valley as muscles clothe bones, 
 is still another deposit of boulders, generally of considerable 
 size and often very large. They are easily distinguished 
 from the underlying drift; not being, like it, either buried, 
 smoothed or rounded, but exposed, rough and angular, ex- 
 cept when sometimes, their upper surface is worn to a rude 
 dome shape. Neither the boulders or the drift are at all 
 peculiar to Berkshire. Similar formations cover a large por- 
 tion of the Northern hemisphere. The phenomenon which 
 has drawn hither so many eminent geologists is the occasional 
 
THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS 117 
 
 arrangement of the exposed boulders in well-defined trains; 
 which is exceptional, if not unique, so far as observations 
 have been made and published. 
 
 These remarkable trains were discovered, about the year 
 1840, by Dr. Stephen Reed, who, as President of our Scientific 
 Association, led our field-meeting on Perry's Peak. When 
 the feast was over, that day, and we had fraternized with our 
 genial and hospitable Richmond hosts, we listened to local 
 story, told by venerable speakers from Lenox and Stock- 
 bridge, concerning Parson Perry, the second minister, and 
 his parishioner, Col. Rossiter, who, as second in command of 
 the Berkshire militia at the Battle of Bennington, did good 
 service; recalling his men from plundering to fighting, and 
 thereby saving the day which was well nigh lost after it had 
 been once won. 
 
 When we had thus done due honor to some of the old- 
 time local worthies, our venerable president — who might well 
 have served the most fastidious painter as a model for "an 
 old geologist "—told the story of his discovery, illustrating 
 his method very simply.' "If," said he "you should see a 
 cart loaded with apples of a peculiar variety, which, dropping 
 from a leaky tail-board, were strewn all the way back to a 
 certain orchard which alone bore that kind of fruit, you would 
 have no difficulty in determining where that apple train 
 came from." 
 
 By a similar process it is easy to trace the principal, and 
 most perfect, of the Richmond Boulder Trains to its source; 
 since it is an exceedingly well defined and nearly continuous 
 succession of large angular masses of a peculiar chloritic 
 schist, wholly unlike the general bed-rocks of the vicinity, 
 and also differing totally from most of the neighboring 
 boulders. 
 
 Following up this train, Dr. Reed found it terminate, 
 three miles north-west of the Richmond meeting house, on 
 the summit of Fry's Hill, the highest, and almost the central 
 
118 TAGH CONIC 
 
 point of the Canaan Mountains in Columbia county, N. Y.; 
 one of the short ranges which run along the Taconics. The 
 top of this hill is composed of a chloritic schist, precisely like 
 that of the boulders, and unlike any other bed-rock in all 
 that region. Of course no doubt remained of the source of 
 that train, and its discoverer, retracing his steps, continued 
 his investigations until he had followed it in the opposite 
 direction across the towns of Richmond, Lenox and Lee, 
 some ten or twelve miles in all. He believed that it reached 
 still further, and perhaps even to Connecticut. I think he 
 afterwards obtained some evidence that this supposition was 
 correct, but of how conclusive a nature I cannot say. Sub- 
 sequently he found another train of the chloritic schist, 
 originating, like the first, on the Canaan Mountains, and five 
 of limestone derived from the Taconic range; but none so 
 complete as the first. 
 
 In 1842, Dr. Reed published an account of his discovery 
 in the "Lenox Farmer," predicting for the boulders a host 
 of distinguished visitors and a wide fame; a-prophecy which 
 has been amply verified; for during his life he piloted among 
 them, Dr. Birney of Boston, Professors Chester Dewey, 
 Hitchcock, Hosford, Hall and the Brothers Rogers, Sir 
 Charles Lyell, Count Pourtales, and Professor De Saurre. 
 
 Dr. Reed, in his first paper at least, contented himself 
 with simply describing the boulder train. The apple-cart by 
 which it was strewn had long disappeared, and he did not 
 attempt to restore it from his imaginings, doubtless knowing 
 full well that, if he did, the next geologist who came along 
 would make it his first business to upset it. 
 
 Some of his visitors, however, were not so discreet, and the 
 result has been a dozen or more learned essays, of which the 
 most interesting are those of Sir Charles Lyell and Rev. John 
 B. Perry. 
 
 Lyell in his "Antiquity of Man," gives a spirited account 
 of his visit and a graphic description of the rocks, making 
 
THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS 119 
 
 some very fascinating reading. His theory, to use the con- 
 densation of another, is that "at the time of the drift period, 
 the highest points of the .Canaan, Richmond and Lenox 
 ranges formed chains of islands in an ocean; and that the 
 gaps in the Richmond and Lenox ranges were straits through 
 which floated ice-bergs bearing the chloritic blocks from the 
 exposed parts of the Canaan range, and dropping them in 
 their present positions." So strongly did this notion im- 
 press itself upon Sir Charles, that he illustrated his work 
 with a view of the islands, and the rock-laden ice-floes— not 
 ice-bergs — floating between them. He has also given views 
 of some of the larger boulders, and a diagram of the seven 
 trains. 
 
 Mr. Perry "divides the boulders which rest upon the 
 surface of the drift into two classes, according as they are 
 rounded or angular: those which make up the trains being 
 rounded, while the angular are distributed without definite 
 arrangement. He considers that the trains owe their forma- 
 tion to the movement of the general ice-mass which rested 
 upon the region during the glacial period; the boulders, 
 which are found in trains ; and which he believes to be rounded 
 [dome-topped?] Having been torn from prominent peaks, and 
 forced along under the ice-sheet, while the scattered ones 
 were transported to their present position much later, when 
 the ice-mass had become so much reduced in thickness that 
 the peaks in question projected above the surface, so that 
 masses of rock could be lodged upon the ice as well as dragged 
 along under it. 
 
 Since Dr. Reed's death, which occurred in 1876, Mr. 
 E. R. Benton of Boston has made an exhaustive survey of 
 the locality of the boulders and a thorough study of their 
 phenomena, and has published the result in a pamphlet of 
 forty-two pages, forming Number Three of the Fifth Volume 
 of the Bulletin of the Harvard College Museum of Compara- 
 tive zoology. Odd, is it not, that of the three best treatises 
 
120 TAGHCONIC 
 
 upon these rocks— which, however we may class them, show 
 not the slightest vestige of animal or vegetable life — one 
 should be found in a work upon the antiquity of man, and 
 another in a bulletin of zoology? Is then the absence of life 
 the complement of its presence, as well before as after its 
 existence upon this earth? 
 
 But, wherever we may find Mr. Benton's paper, let us be 
 thankful for it: for it is the most complete, satisfactory and 
 philosophical essay upon its subject, which we have, or are 
 likely to have, unless he himself pursues it further. 
 
 Having given a concise resume of the statements and 
 opinions of his predecessors, Mr. Benton proceeds to a geo- 
 logical and topographical description of the Boulder Region, 
 which is illustrated by maps showing the contours of the 
 hills, their bed-rocks and the course of the trains. I con- 
 dense his description of the principal and best defined train. 
 
 The crest of Fry's Hill in the town of Canaan, has an 
 elevation of six hundred and twenty feet above the track 
 of the Boston and Albany railroad in Richmond, which is 
 one thousand and fifty feet above the level of the sea. This 
 crest, extending one hundred and fifty feet down from its 
 summit, is composed of a fine-grained foliaceous mica chloritic 
 schist, very tough and of a green color. It is identical with 
 the boulders of the main train, is of narrow extent here, and 
 has been found, in place, in only one other locality on the 
 range. To its limited extent Mr. Benton attributes the dis- 
 tinctness of the train, whose width varies from two hundred 
 and fifty to five hundred feet; the difference being caused 
 apparently by the varying contours of the hills in its path. 
 
 From the summit of Fry's Hill the train descends in a 
 south 54° east direction; then bends gradually to the south- 
 ward till, at the base of the range, it has a south 27° east 
 direction. Thence it extends just south of the North Family 
 of the Shakers, and up the face and along the crest of a west-, 
 erly spur of the Richmond range, called Merriman's Mount, 
 
THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS 121 
 
 to the crest of the western branch of the range. Jn so doing 
 it gradually changes its direction, to south 68° east; and so 
 crosses the Haskell valley and begins the descent of the 
 Richmond range. In making this descent, it bends con- 
 siderably to the south, crossing the main road in Richmond 
 two miles north of the railroad fetation, till it attains a south 
 25° east direction, where it crosses the railroad. From the 
 railroad the train continues on across the Richmond valley, 
 but curves to the eastward as it mounts the western slope of 
 the Lenox range, crosses its two parallel ridges and descends 
 into the Lenox and Stockbridge valley, where its direction is 
 south 50° east. A half a mile south-east of Mr. Luther 
 Butler's house, near the Lenox and Stockbridge line, the 
 train seems to lose its continuous character; the chloritic 
 schist boulders in the same line, to the south-east, being 
 few, small, and widely separated. 
 
 Far the largest boulders of the train, averaging fifteen 
 feet in length — are found on the eastern slope of the Canaan 
 range; two of them measuring ninety and one hundred and 
 twenty-five feet in circumference respectively, and being about 
 thirty feet in height. On the western slope of this range 
 there are no chloritic schist boulders. Near the Lebanon 
 Shakers they average twelve feet in length; one having a 
 circumference of seventy-five feet. Lyell mentions two with 
 circumferences of seventy, and one hundred and twenty feet 
 respectively, and a height of twenty feet above the soil, lying 
 two miles north of Richmond station. Thence there is a con- 
 stant diminution in size until, in the Lenox and Stockbridge 
 valley, the average length does not exceed two feet. 
 
 By the Richmond range, Mr. Benton means that portion 
 of the Taconic Mountains which lies in Richmond and the 
 adjoining town of Canaan on the west; and is separated by 
 a narrow valley from the Canaan or Columbia range. Fry's 
 Hill is two and a half miles south of Douglas Knob, the pic- 
 
122 TAGH CONIC 
 
 turesque elevation which almost over-hangs Columbia Hall, 
 and forms the northern terminus of the range. 
 
 The Lenox range is a spur thrown off by the Taconics 
 at Egremont, which, broken by the Williams River at West 
 Stockbridge, extends north-eastward to Pittsfield, where it 
 terminates in South Mountain and Melville Hill. Its domes 
 and peaks form some of the most striking and beautiful 
 features in the views, looking north from the Lenox, and 
 south from the Pittsfield valley; while its southern exten- 
 sion, reaching to Stockbridge, is filled with the most delicious 
 scenery. 
 
 But to return to the Boulder trains; Mr. Benton examined 
 three others, all less continuous and composed of smaller 
 blocks than the first; but he failed to find the chloritic schists, 
 in place, upon the points in the Canaan range to which they 
 led, and this, as well as the imperfection in the trains, he 
 attributed to the early exhaustion of the knobs of this rock 
 which formerly crested this ridge at intervals, but were of 
 inferior thickness to that on the summit of Fry's Hill. 
 
 He speaks generally of certain other curious but promis- 
 cuously scattered boulders, and of limestone trains; but 
 appears to have been discouraged as to the latter by the 
 inaccuracies of previous writers. All the three ranges men- 
 tioned exhibit marks of glacial action wherever their beds are 
 exposed ; but none of them send out trains of boulders except 
 the Canaan, as few others anywhere do. The explanation is 
 found in the sharpness and narrow limits of Fry's Hill, and 
 of the other, now obliterated, knobs of chloritic schist, in 
 which the trains, undoubtedly had their origin. 
 
 In accounting for the transportation of the boulders to 
 the positions in which they are now found, Mr. Benton dis- 
 cards Lyell's theory of floating ice, since it. implies that, 
 during the period in which they were deposited, the level of 
 the ocean stood above the crest of the Canaan range, or six- 
 teen hundred and fifty feet higher than it now does. Other 
 
THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS 123 
 
 writers have shown that the same line of reasoning which 
 leads to Lyell's conclusions would require a depression of 
 parts of the glaciated region to a depth of five thousand feet 
 below their present level : a depression which all the evidence 
 indicates did not exist. 
 
 Mr. Benton's own solution of the problem is based upon 
 the fact, now generally admitted by geologists, that in the 
 Post-Pliocene age, this region, in common with a large part 
 of the northern hemisphere, was covered with an ice-sheet 
 several thousand feet thick, which had a slow motion in this 
 district from the north-west to the south-east. But he shows 
 that the boulders could not have rested, and been borne 
 along, upon the upper surface of this ice-sheet; since that 
 pre-supposes cliffs upon the Canaan range which towered 
 above that surface, whereas an ice-sheet which could move 
 across valleys six hundred feet deep, without being materially 
 deflected from its course, must have covered the highest 
 land to the depth of many hundred feet. Nor could the 
 boulders have been dragged along under the ice-mass, with- 
 out leaving marks of abrasion of which none are to be seen. 
 
 It is probable, he thinks, that the boulders were torn 
 from their original bed by the ice sheet, and became imbedded 
 in its mass instead of being dragged along under it. The 
 sharpness of the knob called Fry's Hill favors this supposi- 
 tion, since boulders torn from its upper part would be at 
 least one hundred feet above the lower surface of the ice 
 along the neighboring parts of the crest; and the mass, clos- 
 ing again as soon as it had passed the sharp knob, would 
 hold many of them firmly in its grasp, without allowing them 
 to reach the rocks below, until the ice-sheet had ceased its 
 grinding march and was in process of dissolution. Never- 
 theless, under the incessant influence of gravity, the im- 
 bedded fragments would be constantly working their way 
 downward, and many of them, finally reaching the under 
 surface, would be ground up by the crunching, superincum- 
 
124 TAGHCONIC 
 
 bent, moving mass; and the farther from the source, the 
 greater would be the amount of material lost to the trains, 
 and added to the underlying gravel beds. 
 
 In condensing a portion of Mr. Benton's essay, I have 
 occasionally departed from the order of arrangement pursued 
 by him, and have interpolated, now and then, matter of my 
 own, but I believe that I have given correctly the facts and 
 theories presented by him, so far as I have attempted to give 
 them at all; often using his own language. But he enters 
 much more into detail than it would be possible or proper for 
 me to do here, and touches upon some allied topics to which 
 I have not even alluded. His pamphlet should be in the 
 hands of every student of the boulder phenomena, or of the 
 superficial geology of this locality. 
 
 The boulder and drift deposits in the valley at the base 
 of the Taconics, north of Richmond, offer a fresh and in- 
 teresting field of investigation. At some points there are 
 indications of arrangement in trains; but, whether or not if 
 followed up those indications should lead to discoveries of 
 that character, they could not fail of valuable and curious 
 results. Some of the local deposits of boulders are strikingly 
 suggestive. I have already spoken of the Balanced Rock 
 group. In the romantic town of New Marlboro', next east 
 of Great Barrington, is another rocking stone, quite as firmly 
 based, and with a more pronounced and easy oscillation. 
 Between Onota street and Lake Onota, in Pittsfield, some 
 most singular boulders are strewn. One variety is composed 
 of what appears upon the surface to be a net work, but in 
 reality is a honey comb, of quartz cells filled with a hard 
 schist. Sometimes cells, which were probably filled with a 
 softer rock, are empty, leaving a skeleton of quartz walls. 
 Another variety of soft rock encloses rounded pebbles some- 
 times six or eight inches long. I think some summer or 
 autumn days could be pleasantly passed in tracing these 
 
THE RICHMOND BOULDER TRAINS 125 
 
 queer erratics to their source, and trying to imagine how 
 they were made; and when; and why. 
 
 I fear I may have wearied some of you by dwelling so 
 long upon a theme in which you perhaps take small inter- 
 est. But, when you think of it, is it not after all a wondrous 
 thing? As strange as any marvel of the genii and, at the 
 same time, if we can rightly read it, telling a tale as true as 
 Holy Writ. If Sir Thomas Browne could properly call the 
 moor-logs and fir trees found under ground in many parts of 
 England, "the undated ruins of winds, floods and earth- 
 quakes," of what are these Berkshire boulders the ruins; 
 and where is their date recorded? 
 
 And now, one word more ; that I may have the credit of, 
 for once, closing a story with a sound moral lesson. The 
 study of these rocks will aid you in the clear and conscious 
 recognition of a truth, which I dare say you know already, 
 but perhaps only in a dreamy, unthinking way. It is this, 
 that in those immeasurable ages, matter was composed of 
 the same elements and obeyed implicitly the same laws, 
 which at this moment compose and govern it. both on this 
 little spot of earth and in the illimitable Heavens. Whether 
 there were intelligent eyes to watch them or not, rising and 
 setting suns measured the days; and, if not here, by reason 
 of cold, yet at our antipodes, the procession of the Season's 
 marked the coming and the going of the year. For as. yet 
 we have only begun to approach that epoch, when science 
 and revelation alike require us to believe that the earth was 
 without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of 
 the deep. 
 
The Wizard's Glen 
 
The Wizard's Glen 
 
 Right well I wote, most mighty soveraine, 
 
 That all this famous antique historie 
 
 Of some the abundance of an ydle braine 
 
 Will judged be, and painted forgerie, 
 
 Rather than matter of just memorie. Fairie Queene. 
 
 A four miles' drive from our village brings the excursion.' 
 ist to a deep gorge, now called the "Gulf," but known in 
 the earlier and less sceptical days of the settlement as the 
 "Wizard's Glen." It is the wildest scene in our immediate 
 neighborhood. A narrow valley is enclosed by steep hills, 
 covered far up their sides with the huge rectangular flint 
 rocks which mark this whole mountain range. You see them 
 scattered everywhere, from Greylock to Taghconic; but no^ 
 where else^-unless, perhaps, at Icy Glen or Monument Moun*- 
 tain — piled up in such magnificent and chaotic profusion. It is 
 as though an angry Jove had here thrown down some im- 
 pious wall of the Heaven-defying Titans. Block lies heaped 
 upon block, squared and bevelled, as if by more than mortal 
 art; for of such adamantine hardness are they that never 
 hand nor implement of man could carve them into symmetry. 
 
 In their desolation they seemed charmed to everlasting 
 changelessness ; storm and sunshine leave few traces upon 
 them ; the trickling stream wears no channel in their obdurate 
 surface; only a falling thunderbolt sometimes splinters an 
 uplifted crag, and marks its course by a scar of more livid 
 whiteness. No flower springs from, no creeping plant clings 
 to them for support, save when the rare Herb Robert would 
 fain eheer them with his tiny blossom; or some starveling 
 lichen strives to shroud the livid ghastliness of their hues. 
 
 It is a stern-featured place; and yet of a warm summer 
 afternoon, one — no, not one, it is too intensely sombre for 
 that — but a party can pass a merry hour there, in the cool 
 depths of the ravine. There are some books too, written in 
 
130 TAGHCONIC 
 
 a spirit akin to the fantastic and demoniac grandeur of the 
 place, which can be read there with a double zest. 
 Perched in the angle of a cleft boulder, I once keenly 
 enjoyed some scenes in "Faust." "Manfredt" would not be 
 so out of place there, nor would some parts of "Festus." 
 
 But the best is, to mark how the most humanly merry 
 laughter and the gentlest of gentle voices catch a fiendish 
 echo from the rocky hollows. There is diablerie in the very 
 air; the fairest form I ever knew, as it rose from behind one 
 of those enchanted rocks, looked weird as Lilith, the first 
 wife of Adam. Hecate herself could not have emerged from 
 Hades with half the infernal, grace and beauty; I am sure 
 the place is bewitched. 
 
 Tradition indeed says that, before the decay of the native 
 tribes — of whom a scanty remnant were found by the white 
 man in the valley of the Housatonic — this used to be a 
 favorite haunt of the Indian priests, or wizards. Here, it 
 was said, they wrought their hellish incantations, and with 
 horrible rites offered up human sacrifices to Ho-bo-mo-ko, 
 the Spirit of Evil. One broad, square rock, which chanced 
 to stand alone in the midst of a conveniently clear space, 
 had the credit of being the Devil's altar-stone. Some crim- 
 son stains marked its upper surface, upon which the earlier 
 settlers could not look without a shudder. They were be- 
 lieved to come from the blood of frequent victims — although 
 now-a-days, a sceptic with no analysis at all would find little 
 difficulty in resolving them into "traces of iron ore." For 
 my part, until the analysis is made, I hold fast to the older 
 and better opinion of those who believed that around this 
 ensanguined shrine a spectral crew of savage wizards nightly 
 reenacted the revolting orgies of the past. 
 
 I met, not long since, an old man of ninety winters— 
 perhaps the last believer in their superstitions. He had 
 heard the story of the shadowy sacrifices from an eye-wit- 
 ness, and related it with a credulous simplicity very difficult 
 to gainsay. 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE GLEN 131 
 
 Not far from the year 1770 (as he said), one John Cham- 
 berlain, a brave man and a mighty hunter, of Ashuelot (now 
 Dalton), at the close of a hard day's chase, overtook and slew 
 a deer, somewhere within the Wizard's Glen. While he was 
 dressing his quarry, a terrific storm of thunder, lightning, 
 and hail arose — as Chamberlain averred, with supernatural 
 celerity, as such often seem to do among the mountains. A 
 thunder-storm, even in the ordinary course of nature, is not 
 just the thing to be coveted in this place, by the hardiest 
 deer-slayer; but come what will deer-slayers must make the 
 best of it. Seeking out, therefore, a spot where the rocks 
 were piled one upon another, with cavernous recesses that 
 formed a sort of natural caravansary beneath, he drew his 
 deer under one boulder and ensconced himself snugly under 
 the shelter of another. 
 
 Thus protected, he betook himself to such slumbers as he 
 might get, which turned out to be not the most peaceful. 
 The thunder crashed, the lightning glared and the wind 
 howled in a manner which seemed to our poor John altogether 
 demoniacal. Sleep, in such a hurly-burly of the elements, 
 was out of the question; so, raising himself up, he looked 
 out among the rocks, as he could very well do by the aid of 
 the scarcely intermittent lightning. 
 
 You may be sure that, with all his courage, our hunter 
 was not quite pleased to find himself in full view of the devil's 
 altar-stone. It was an ugly predicament, to say the least of 
 it; but there was no help in the case, and he had only to 
 make the best he could of this also: which turned out to be 
 bad enough again. His eyes once fixed upon it, the haunted 
 spot kept them riveted by a terrible fascination, while Cham- 
 berlain reflected upon his position in a state of mind which 
 was doubtless far enough from that of philosophic calmness. 
 
 Very soon, however, his reflections were interrupted by 
 a wilder rush of the storm, and a yet broader and more vivid 
 flash of lightning, which illumined the whole valley and 
 
132 TAGHCONIC 
 
 revealed the horned Devil himself, seated upon a broken crag 
 and clothed in all the recognized paraphernalia of his royalty. 
 Chamberlain thought him a very Indiany-looking devil in- 
 deed, which rather pleased him afterwards to tell, for he was 
 no lover of the Indian race. 
 
 This was apparently a gala night with Satan, although 
 none of the guests were yet arrived. He was not now going 
 to battle or to work, but rather to hold a royal drawing- 
 room, by way of enjoying himself and receiving homage. 
 His sable majesty has been too long intimate with earthly 
 majesties and their courts, not to recognize the value of 
 becoming stateliness on the part of those who rule states, 
 whether their capitals be here or below: their subjects civil- 
 ized or savage. He sat, therefore, on this occasion enthroned 
 with a very commanding and royal grace, while the arrowy 
 lightnings shot in circles around his head — very much, I judge, 
 as you may have seen the swallows dart and soar of 
 a summer evening, around an old church steeple. 
 
 His Majesty had not long to wait for his loving lieges, 
 for suddenly from the darkness a huge, gaunt-framed wizard 
 leaped out and mounted the altar-stone. If Chamberlain has 
 not painted him blacker than he deserves, this high priest of 
 Satan was a most villainous-looking rascal. His rawboned 
 and ghastly visage was painted in most blood-thirsty ugliness; 
 scalps, dripping with fresh blood, hung around his body in 
 festoons; on his own scull, by way of scalp lock, burned 
 a lambent blue flame ; his distended veins shone through the 
 bright copper-colored skin as if they were filled with molten 
 fire for blood — and, as for his eyes, they glowed with a fiercer 
 light than those of the arch-fiend himself ; whence Chamber- 
 lain maintained that an Indian priest was at least one degree 
 more devilish than the Devil himself. 
 
 The present was evidently a very potent magician, for 
 at his call a throng of ghastly and horrible phantoms came 
 pouring in from every nook and cranny of the valley — each 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE GLEN 133 
 
 with a shadowy tomahawk and a torch, which did not burn 
 with the honest and ruddy glare of pitch-pine, but with a 
 blue color and sulphurous odor, that revealed unmistakably 
 at what fire they had been lighted. 
 
 Every ghost, as he came, made a profound obeisance to 
 the rock-throned Satan, and then took his place in the circle 
 around the altar-stone. By and bye, the chief priest set up 
 a wild, howling chant, and away went the whole rabble rout, 
 yelling and rushing round the altar in a mad, galloping sort 
 of dance, in which they lifted their feet all the while, as if 
 treading upon burning coals or red-hot iron — a step which is 
 only learned in the dancing-schools down below. Many more 
 such diabolical antics they cut, which, as they would neither 
 be profitable by way of example or warning, it does not 
 matter to tell. 
 
 At last they paused, and Chamberlain thought it about 
 time for them to take themselves off. But they were far 
 enough from that: on the contrary, two barbarous looking 
 phantoms — who might in life have been familiars to a savage 
 inquisition — presented themselves, leading between them a 
 beautiful Indian maiden, robed only in her own long black 
 hair. At another moment the beholder might have admired 
 her graceful proportions and regular features— as he did when 
 he afterwards remembered them — but now his senses were 
 too much absorbed by horror.^ Not a word the poor girl 
 spoke, but, stupified and silent, looked around from one un- 
 relenting face to another, as if at a loss to comprehend what 
 it all meant. Alas! she soon knew; for one of the familiars, 
 seizing her rudely around the waist, placed her upon the 
 altar-stone before the priest. Then she shrieked — so wildly 
 that the hunter declared the echo never ceased ringing in his 
 ears to his dying day; — what part she had to perform there 
 was no longer doubtful. But she shrieked not again nor 
 spoke. Only looked up into the fiery eyes of the priest so 
 piteously that it seemed his heart should have melted, had 
 
134 TAGHCONIC 
 
 it been formed even of flint like the stone on which he stood; 
 but it had been hardened in more infernal fires. 
 
 So he took up his demoniac howl again, and went caper- 
 ing madly around the maiden. Then, suddenly pausing be- 
 fore her, he raised his hatchet and the whole phantom circle 
 gathered closer around him, as if to gloat more nearly over 
 their victim's pangs. It seemed the sacrifice was about to 
 be consummated; but as the weapon was raised, the maiden's 
 eyes (averted from it) met those of Chamberlain. The kind- 
 hearted hunter, in whom compassion had overcome fear, could 
 no longer restrain himself; so, taking out his Bible, he pro- 
 nounced the great Name — and with a terrific crash of the 
 elements the whole scene vanished, leaving him in impene- 
 trable darkness — for although the lightnings ceased, as if they 
 had accompanied their master. in his flight, yet the rain fell 
 faster than ever. 
 
 When the morning came, Chamberlain would have taken 
 it all for a dream, for, exhausted with fatigue and excite- 
 ment, he had fallen into a deep sleep ; but he found that the 
 wizards, unable to harm him, while protected by the holy 
 volume, had revenged themselves by stealing his deer, and 
 perhaps giving it to their familiars, the bears — for there were 
 bears in those days — so that there can be no manner of doubt 
 as to the truth and accuracy of Chamberlain's story. 
 
 There is many another legend of this haunted dell ; as for 
 this, I hope you place the same implicit confidence in it 
 which my old informant did. 
 
 Passing through the gorge very late, one piercing cold 
 winter night, the place looked very weird to me. The frozen 
 air was still as death; the white moonlight was reflected 
 from the snow, as I fancied with more of pallor than of bright- 
 ness, and I heard a shriek which I tried to believe came from 
 the maiden victim. But it may have been the scream of 
 some far-off locomotive. Confound those "resonant steam 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE GLEN 135 
 
 eagles!" — there's never a shriek, from Cape Cod to the Tagh- 
 conics — though with the ghostliest ring to it — but they get 
 the credit. 
 

 Undine s Glen 
 
Undine's Glen 
 
 Page. — Apelles, you must come away quickly with the picture. The 
 king thinketh, now you have painted it you play with it. 
 
 Apelles, — If I would play with pictures I have enough at home. 
 
 Page. — None perhaps you love so well. 
 
 Apelles. — It may be I have painted none so well. (Exit page.) 
 
 * * * O Campasne, I have painted thee in my heart; painted! nay, 
 contrary to my art, imprinted, and that in such deep character 
 nothing can rase it out, unless it rub my heart out. — Alexander and Cam- 
 pasne. 
 
 It had been a week of rare sultriness with us — the fierce 
 dying nicker of summer's life-flame. The maple leaves had 
 lost the last remnant of their glossy freshness; the cattle 
 stood cooling themselves under the willow trees in the still 
 pools of the river; long ago the birds had ceased their songs 
 and fled into the deeper recesses of the woods; we, human 
 idlers, lay listlessly under the shade of the nearer groves in 
 dreamy reveries, or feeble speculations upon the destiny of 
 some little cloud which might chance to speck the horizon 
 — the forlorn hope of a thunder-shower. At evening we 
 broached the mildest possible topics of conversation. The 
 nearest approach we made to vigorous effort was when 
 necessity arose for throwing cold water upon any chance 
 theme or project which might heat the blood. 
 
 On the most fiery day of that fiery seven, came a friend 
 who, then of all times, must climb to Washington Mountain. 
 No flaming sword of the elements could fright him from his 
 purpose, and all the chivalry of friendship forbade me to 
 leave him to the chances of being roasted, alive and alone, 
 on some sun-burnt exposure of quartzite: a very possible 
 fate for him who in his scientific ardor lingers too long on 
 those natural gridirons. My friend had passed the livelong 
 summer in New York, and minded our mountain heats no 
 more than Monsieur Chaubert did a furnace only heated 
 three times, instead of seven. 
 
140 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Washington Mountain is the higher portion of that part 
 of the Hoosac range which lies in the town of Washington, 
 and is to be carefully distinguished from Mount Washington, 
 the grand mass of Taconic hills in the south-western corner 
 of the county. The point which we were to visit, was the 
 shore of a pretty and lonely mountain lake, which lies seven 
 miles east of Pittsfield and seven hundred feet above it, or 
 seventeen hundred above the sea-level. The bed-rock here 
 is pure quartz, which is a good thing for the Pittsfield people, 
 who get their luxurious abundance of pure water from the 
 lake, and from mountain streams which flow over the same 
 insoluble formation. It takes here the form of granular 
 quartz — which mineralogists, absurdly to my thinking, nick- 
 name quartzite. When distintegrated, naturally or arti- 
 ficially, it becomes the silicious sand of the glass manu- 
 facture. A very valuable bed of this sand lies on the eastern 
 shore of the lake: of which, more by and bye. I mention it 
 now, merely to confess that it was some speculative interest 
 in the money value of its contents, and not any fanatical 
 devotion to mountain scenery which led us to undertake 
 that pilgrimage which threatened to be so like that from 
 Morocco to Mecca: whatever of a romantic character finally 
 attached itself to the excursion, was purely subsidiary. But 
 in Berkshire, if there is any susceptibility to the romantic in 
 you, you can hardly go to market for a pig without its be- 
 traying itself. 
 
 Thinking to escape the more violent heat, we set out at 
 a very early hour, but the air was already intensely sultry, 
 and, still worse, was filled with a fine white dust, that com- 
 pletely penetrated eyes, nose, and mouth. We could neither' 
 see, breathe, nor speak, with comfort; and the gritty par- 
 ticles between our teeth sent a nervous shudder through the 
 whole frame. As we ascended the mountain we came upon 
 a fine breeze which never fails there, and which at the same 
 
UNDINE'S GLEN 141 
 
 time aggravated the plague of the dust, and inspired us with 
 vigor to devise and execute a remedy. 
 
 Ever and anon, by the roadside, appeared glimpses of a 
 deep, rocky gorge. Up this, L. proposed to ascend the moun- 
 tain by a path familiar to him, and, accordingly, sending our 
 horse forward by a willing youth — who, I rather doubtfully 
 hope, did not seize this rare opportunity to violate the precepts 
 of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals — we 
 plunged down a steep descent, thick beset with brambles, 
 at the bottom, a little brook came tumbling and purling 
 down the hill, and, yielding to its suggestions, we indulged 
 in a series of luscious ablutions. None but those who have 
 experienced the like, can know the thrilling vigor and elas- 
 ticity which penetrated us with the cool mountain air when 
 the burning and inflammatory dust was once removed from 
 the pores. 
 
 Filled with new life, we pushed eagerly up the brook, 
 now clambering over huge angular blocks of flint rock, now 
 sauntering along smooth patches of green sward, and anon 
 pushing our way through a thorny hedge of blackberry 
 bushes, hanging full of the ripest fruit. Still L. led on, till 
 we came to a little level spot of green sward, around which 
 the brook swept in a graceful curve, while a thick leaved 
 maple overhung it. We were here shut out from all sight of 
 human habitation. The only traces of man's ravages were 
 the weather-beaten stumps, which stood, ghastly memorials of 
 his parricidal war with nature, like the bleached sculls which 
 the ploughman turns up on an ancient battlefield. The pre- 
 cipitous hills, on either side, were yet shaggy, although not 
 as of old, with the maple, the beech, the fir and the hemlock. 
 Just up the gorge, the streamlet leaped down a black ledge 
 in a silver white column; while, beyond, the glen was dark 
 with narrowing cliffs and over-hanging trees. Bravely, but 
 in vain, the gorgeous sunshine darted its arrowy rays into 
 that Thermopylae of gloom. 
 
142 TAGHCONIC 
 
 L. flung himself at full length beneath the maple, and I 
 was glad to follow his example. "Do you know," he said, 
 "this is Undine's Glen? Shall I tell you the story of how it 
 got its foreign name?" 
 
 One day in June, some ten years ago, there came to the 
 village hotel in Pittsfield two ladies; the one, Miss Helen V., 
 an heiress, and what was more, a spirited, brilliant, and 
 natural girl. The other was her maiden aunt, Miss M., 
 neither young nor pretty, yet a little romantic and not a 
 little stiff in her manners. Miss M. held moreover the respon- 
 sible office of guardian to her niece, which that young lady 
 took the best care should be anything but a sinecure. 
 
 Riding, walking, and reading, the lone dames whiled 
 away a week or two; when, provokingly enough, just as the 
 last page of their last light reading was cut, there came a 
 rainy, dreary day, as such days will come, even in June, at 
 such desperate junctures, solid literature and re-readings, are 
 not to be thought of; so recourse was had to the landlord. 
 That functionary was anxious to serve his fair guests, but 
 unfortunately his shelves were but meagerly filled. Sud- 
 denly his face brightened with a new idea. Among his 
 boarders was one Dr. M., who, to enliven his hours in the 
 country, had brought with him from New York a curious 
 library. This gentleman was summoned, and made his ap- 
 pearance — a very personable young gentleman, and a clever. 
 The wants of the ladies were made known to him, and he 
 invited them to examine his library for themselves, and some 
 pictures which he prized, as well. 
 
 Helen was delighted, although she did not exactly say so 
 then; Miss M. hesitated, with some secret misgivings, but 
 finally, overcome by the fiend ennui, and the frank bearing 
 of M., she, courteously enough, accepted the invitation. 
 Evening was upon them before they had completed the sur- 
 vey; for, besides his paintings by other artists, M. modestly 
 displayed his own portfolio, filled with sketches of foreign 
 
UNDINE'S GLEN 143 
 
 as well as neighboring scenery. Helen eagerly turned them 
 over, and M. had an enthusiastic word for many a remem- 
 bered scene. After Miss M. had several times reminded her 
 of her prolonged stay, Helen selected De La Motte Fouque's 
 delightful romance of "Undine" from the library, and that 
 evening M. read it aloud to them in their parlor. Before 
 they parted, the ladies had consented to accompany him on 
 the morrow to this spot, of which he was going to complete 
 a sketch. So does friendship ripen when the right sun-light 
 falls upon it. 
 
 They came hither; the artist fixed his easel and wrought 
 upon his sketch. Helen, seated at the foot of this maple, 
 read ' 'Undine' ' to her aunt. But both found an interval to 
 wander up the glen; so with reading, sketching, romancing, 
 — and most likely eating — the day wore away and the night 
 came, — a moonlight night and a moonlight ride home. 
 
 Some days passed, in which M. gained hugely in the good 
 opinion of his fair friends, who continually teased him for a 
 sight of his sketch — which he declared should not be seen 
 until it was completed. 
 
 Thus, something of an air of mystery had woven itself 
 around the picture when at last he brought it out, altogether 
 with the air of a man who knows he has done a nice thing, 
 and is rather proud to have the world see it. 
 
 Never was pride more completely dashed, or lover more 
 completely puzzled. Helen blushed and smiled, but looked 
 strangely and heartily vexed. The guardian aunt frowned 
 unequivocally — not to say scowled. Poor M. turned from 
 one to the other in most innocent and ludicrous bewilderment ; 
 but finally settled down into a fixed consideration of the 
 cloud which had so suddenly gathered on the old lady's brow 
 as a summer storm sometimes will over the placid surface 
 of Lake Ashley. The summer storm is transient, but Miss 
 M. seemed to have an inexhaustible magazine of wrath behind 
 
144 TAGHCONIC 
 
 her wrinkled forehead. So, taking a hint from Helen's eye, 
 at the first growl of the thunder, M. fled. 
 
 The tempest was brewed in this wise. The good old lady, 
 with all her romance and stateliness, had a spice of puritan- 
 ism about her, and the special phase in which it showed itself 
 was a prudish modesty in the matter of pictures. Why it 
 took this form, more than any other, might be discovered, 
 perhaps, if we could pry into the crooks and crannies of her 
 early history. At present it only concerns us to know that 
 it was there, and that in consequence of it she issued a husky 
 edict for M. to "take his vile picture hence." 
 
 Now this vile painting was neither more nor less than a 
 simple and spirited sketch of this scene, into which the artist 
 had interwoven a portrait of Helen in the character of Undine. 
 All very well — only the painter, with the modest assurance 
 of his art, had changed the maiden's chaste garb for a bit of 
 flimsy drapery, which displayed the ivory neck and swelling 
 bosom, the taper leg and rosy foot, as circumstantially as 
 though he had had the original all the while before him for 
 a model. O fair and false imagination, to steal away so fair 
 and true a reality ! 
 
 Miss M. would have thought her ward's character irrep- 
 arably compromised by interchanging a word more with the 
 immoral young man M. had proved himself, in her estima- 
 tion. Helen thought quite otherwise. Fortunately for M. 
 there was another difference in their notions. The aunt 
 loved her morning pillow — the niece her morning walk — and 
 this taste of the damsel's now acquired a new strength that 
 would have charmed Dr. Alcott. In another point of view 
 these sunrise excursions to South Mountain and Melville's 
 Lake might have been thought alarmingly frequent. The 
 young lady Could not have been expected or desired to make 
 her walks solitary, but one who saw how demurely they met 
 at the breakfast table would not have surmised that the 
 painter had been her companion an hour before. 
 
UNDINE'S GLEN 145 
 
 But the end was not yet; walking, it seems would not 
 content them — they must ride as well. So one balmy morn- 
 ing in the gray twilight, a pair of spirited greys were reined 
 up at the south door of the Berkshire House, while our young 
 friends took their places behind them; and then, heigho for 
 Lebanon! "They'll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth 
 young Lochinvar." Gallant champions of Love, those same 
 fiery greys! Before then, and since, they have borne beating 
 hearts up the hills and down the valleys of that seven miles 
 of Hymen's highway which lie between the jurisdiction of the 
 puritan publishment laws and the marriage-encouraging state 
 of New York. I wonder if anywhere in this western world 
 more visions of happiness have been dreamed, more passion- 
 ate pulsations throbbed, than between the tall Elm of Pitts- 
 field and the all-curing Springs of Lebanon. The very mur- 
 murs of the groves have caught the soft tones of lover's vows ; 
 the sparkling streams reflect the ardent gleam of expectant 
 bridegroom's eyes. 
 
 Over this hymenial highway, that balmy morning, our 
 happy couple were rapidly whirled, and before the sun was 
 up, the words were said which bound them in that union 
 which no words can unloose. I doubt if their steeds were 
 urged as impatiently on their return, but they reached their 
 hotel again while the careless guardian, fatigued with the 
 last night's novel, yet slept. How they ever reconciled mat- 
 ters with her I never heard; but it was done, for last week 
 she sat quietly by, while M., in a little recessed back parlor 
 in Brooklyn, told me the story of his wooing. On the wall, 
 too, he pointed out to me the identical "vile painting"; and 
 by her mother's side a little Undine of eight summers shook 
 her sunny curls and laughed, I don't think the painter ever 
 regretted his day's sketching in the wild glen he christened 
 "Undine's Gorge." 
 
 "Can you believe the doctor was ever guilty of such non- 
 sense as that?" said Mrs. M., laughing and blushing, as she 
 
146 TAGHCONIC 
 
 handed me a delicately tinted and perfumed paper. It was 
 one of her husband's effusions in the days of their courtship, 
 and I noticed that his nonsense had been carefully copied in 
 her own neat penmanship. "And will you believe that those 
 silly lines once had the power to make me tell my poor aunt 
 a little fib, and then walk half a mile to meet the saucy fel- 
 low, by Elsie's Haunted Pool? What weak things girls are!" 
 Of course I could but beg a copy of the verses; and here 
 they are: 
 
 Green Hills of Taghconic. 
 
 All sounds are hushed to silence, 
 
 Save the insect's lulling drone 
 And the murmur of the brooklet 
 
 O'er its bed of pebbled stone. 
 Far off, the green hills of Taghconic 
 
 In the glow of the sunset lie, 
 Entwined with a chaplet of roses 
 
 And clasped in the arms of the sky; 
 For, round as the bosom of beauty, 
 
 They swell from the vale in the west, 
 And, catching the rose hue of twilight, 
 
 Seem blushing to be caressed. 
 
 One wreath of a silvery vapor 
 
 That awhile on the hill-top hung, 
 Like a gossamer scarf by a maiden 
 
 O'er her ivory shoulders flung, 
 Is gone; for the sky — a right lover — 
 
 The beautiful wearer kissed, 
 And drew to himself for a token 
 
 The scarflet of silvery mist. 
 But lo, for the token he taketh 
 
 A token more fair he bestows, 
 For, see, on the brow of the mountain 
 
 A starry diamond glows. 
 
 To-night by earth and heaven 
 
 Alike is love-lore taught, 
 And the air with the sweetest wisdom 
 
 Of happiness is fraught. 
 
UNDINE'S GLEN 147 
 
 Then come to our tryst in the gloaming, 
 
 Our tryst by the whispering beech, 
 And we'll con the lessons duly 
 
 That the sages of nature teach; 
 While near us the clear Housatonic 
 
 Meandering flows to the sea, 
 And sounds, with the silence harmonic, 
 
 Are blended in melody. 
 
 The story told, and a bumper drained to the health of the 
 heroine — again up, still up, the cool gorge, till it diverged to 
 the north, while our path lay southward. 
 
Washington Mountain 
 
Washington Mountain 
 
 "A lonely mountain tarn." 
 
 Emerging from Undine's Glen, and 'reclaiming our car- 
 riage, we soon reached the shore of Lake Ashley, a pretty- 
 sheet of water, but more remarkable for its elevation, its 
 loneliness and its unrivalled purity, than for any beauty of 
 contour. The cold, pure serenity of its dark waves, as we 
 looked upon them that day, was indeed exquisite. Lined 
 on all sides but one by unbroken woods, fed only by foun- 
 tains which gush from below, with neither speck nor boat 
 on all its tranquil surface, it seemed, as we rode along its 
 eastern border, the very waters of solitude. It should be so, 
 for since the Indian's graceful bark is gone forever, there 
 remains none which would not disturb the calm beauty of 
 the scene. 
 
 In long delicious draughts of the cool, sweet wave, we 
 drank deep to the mountain maids, and certain maids of the 
 valley: to the spirits of earth, air and water — to all kindly 
 spirits whatever; not forgetting those who were then plan- 
 ning the grand project, since grandly perfected, of teaching 
 these solitary and secluded waters to thread their way through 
 the homes, and sparkle in the fountains of thirsty Pittsfield. 
 They are as refreshing there as a lively, bright-eyed country 
 girl in a Fifth Avenue parlor. Bless them both, girl and 
 mountain stream! 
 
 And then we got down — or, rather, up — to the solid 
 business of the day. Washington Mountain, as I have said, 
 is composed largely of quartzite. On the western slope it 
 lies in laminated strata, of which some, from three to six 
 inches thick, are quarried for flagstones and like purposes. 
 
 In the earlier days of the settlement they were occasion- 
 ally used for grave-stones, although of such adamantine hard- 
 ness as almost to defy the sculptor's most irresistible chisel. 
 
152 TAGHCONIC 
 
 You may see, in the "Pilgrim's Rest" of the PittsfLeld ceme- 
 tery, some curious specimens, a hundred years old, on which 
 the inscriptions, whose depth is almost imperceptible tp the 
 eye, yet look as fresh as if cut yesterday; so little has a cen- 
 tury done to smooth the thin, white roughening, the pains- 
 taking old sculptor was able to effect. 
 
 From these rude quarries, the people of old time called 
 this "Rock Mountain"; a name quite as distinctive and 
 appropriate, to say the least, as that which it now bears. In 
 other parts of the mountain the quartz is of finer grain, and 
 not stratified. Still, like the quartzite boulders you find all 
 the way from the Canaan range to the Hoosac, it appears 
 compact ; but, crush it under a hammer or in an iron mortar — 
 or throw a heated fragment into water — and you shall see 
 it fly into a sand identical with that used by the glass makers. 
 
 In Cheshire, Lanesboro', and other localities along the 
 Hoosac range, this quartzite is found naturally disintegrated, 
 in immense and valuable beds, from which large quantities 
 of silicious sand are annually taken for the local glass works 
 and for exportation; for it is very widely used. It is alto- 
 gether probable that the light by which you read these words 
 comes to you through material which once lay in our Berk- 
 shire sand-beds, now transformed to window glass and lamp 
 chimneys. I had learned that one of these precious deposits 
 lay under a little well-wooded noppit which rose not far 
 from the eastern shore of Lake Ashley. It supplied silicious 
 material for glass works during the war of 1812, but after- 
 wards fell out of use, and almost out of mind. There 'was 
 now a new demand for it; and hence our haste in seeking it 
 that torrid summer day. A small recess in the side of the 
 noppit was the only trace which remained of the labors of 
 the old miners; but there were sufficient indications of a 
 rich deposit. I shall have more to say hereafter of the beauti- 
 ful and curious quartz formations of Berkshire; but for the 
 present it is enough to add, concerning this peculiar bed, 
 
WASHINGTON MOUNTAIN 153 
 
 that the indications of its wealth were not deceptive. It 
 proved among the best in the country, both as to extent and 
 quality; and has long been the source of supply for the 
 famous glass works at Lenox Furnace. 
 
 Such investigations as we had the means for making were 
 soon finished, and we had still time to seek for an extended 
 mountain view. Knowing nothing of the region, we found 
 this a task of no small difficulty; but there was a great re- 
 ward. By mere accident we came upon an outlook open on 
 every side to the surrounding mountains, but cutting off 
 every glimpse of valley. 
 
 "Nunc coelum undique et undique" montes! 
 
 Although there are many similar views among our Green ■ 
 Mountains, there are few in which the seclusion of sky and 
 mountain tops is so complete as in this. To the north-east a 
 wild billowy sea of mountains stretched far away — a taller 
 peak sometimes dashing its splintered crest into the sky, and 
 a white village spire, or a red farm-house, appearing here 
 and there, a floating waif upon the waste. Upon a lo'fty 
 point, miles away, the pretty village of Middlefield glittered 
 in the light of the setting sun. On the north and on the 
 south as far as the eye could reach, extended the long, rolling, 
 billowy swells of the Hoosacs. On the west, the ever beauti- 
 ful Taconics; and, looming far beyond them, the shadowy 
 Catskills, looking like huge ghosts of perished mountains — 
 long ago murdered by crashing earthquakes or smothering 
 ice-sheets. 
 
 The fastnesses of Washington Mountain were among the 
 last strongholds in Massachusetts where the defeated, but 
 not yet wholly desperate, insurgents of the Shay's Rebellion 
 took refuge; and met with new disaster. The sad case of 
 men "who have been in arms against the government" and 
 by failure are placed at the mercy of insulted and vindictive 
 law, has long been one of the most touching themes of his- 
 torical romance. In this instance, to be sure, the triumphant 
 
154 TAGHCONIC 
 
 government, doubtless conscious that it was itself not with- 
 out sin in giving cause for the revolt, was more merciful to 
 the treason than it had been to the poverty which provoked 
 it ; but at the time of the rally on the heights of the Hoosacs, 
 this clemency was by no means well assured, and I doubt 
 not that there was enough of dread and suffering and sorrow 
 there, to touch our deepest sympathies could we but recall 
 their story. 
 
 An excellent road — the old Boston and Albany highway, 
 leads to "Washington Center," and thence another runs 
 southward along the crest of the mountain, through a level 
 pastoral country, affording a charming, invigorating drive 
 with frequent bold and striking prospects. If your imagina- 
 tion is potent to bring back a ragged squad or two of those 
 forlorn old rebels, to enliven the foreground, it will improve 
 the picture. In default of that, a trim school mistress in a 
 jaunty hat, a bronzed and bright-eyed ploughman, and per- 
 haps a grim and grizzled wood-chopper, must serve. 
 
Marvels of the Tunnel City 
 
Marvels of the Tunnel City 
 
 Make straight in the desert a highway for our God : 
 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low; 
 And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, 
 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. — Isaiah. 
 
 The chariot shall be with flaming torches, in the day of his preparation; 
 
 And the fir trees shall be terribly shaken; 
 
 The chariots shall rage in the streets; 
 
 They shall jostle, one against another, in the broad ways; 
 
 They shall seem like torches; they shall run like lightnings. — Nahum. 
 
 Whither shall we go this fine morning? For one I am 
 inclined to extend our rambles a little: and an hour or so 
 on the rail will enable us to spend a long day in any of those 
 delightful localities, brimful of interesting objects and asso- 
 ciations, which cluster thickly around Williamstown and 
 North Adams on the north, Sheffield, Great Barrington and 
 Stockbridge on the south, and in the rich mineral fields of 
 the Corundum hills on the border of Hampshire county. Or 
 we may take the wings of "the resonant steam eagles," and 
 fly away to towering, sparkling, splashing, darkling, Bash- 
 Bish. But I think bright, busy, bustling dashing North 
 Adams, with, its lively streets and peculiar surroundings, 
 will show off well in this cool, clear atmosphere: hot and 
 hazy, or wet and misty, days do not favor them much. 
 
 To my mind, the most notable thing in this fine old town, 
 or its bright new village, is the people: not to disparage 
 some very noble scenery, or perhaps the most remarkable 
 natural curiosity in the Commonwealth; and, least of all, to 
 speak lightly of the grand Tunnel. But North Adams is, 
 I verily believe, the smartest village in "the smartest nation 
 of all creation": the concentrated essential oil of Yankee- 
 dom. As you pass through its streets, you see the evidence 
 of this great truth everywhere; in the shops, in the manu- 
 
158 TAGHCONIC 
 
 factories, in the hotels: and, if these do not convince you, 
 there will be no room for doubt when you come to the Hoosac 
 Tunnel, which is almost as much a North Adams product, as 
 the shoes made by the aid of Chinese cheap labor, or the tex- 
 tile fabrics woven by more costly imported help. 
 
 We look with admiring awe upon the engineering skill 
 and persistence which penetrated from side to center of that 
 enormous mountain-mass, in exact conformity with their 
 intention; but not less skillful and persistent was the en- 
 gineering which carried the Tunnel measures through that 
 solid, but ever-fluctuating body, the Great and General Court; 
 which, like the demoralized rock of the Hoosac Mountain, 
 was all the more difficult to manage for the instability of its 
 constituent material. You think that the waters of the 
 Deerfield River generated the power which bored the Tunnel. 
 Doubtless, in a secondary way, it did; but not until a rill 
 from the State Treasury had become a helpful tributary of 
 the Deerfield. The primary motive force was furnished by 
 that bold engineering which dammed the treasury, and turned 
 a golden stream Tunnelward; and North Adams furnished 
 the engineers. 
 
 Do not misconceive me. I do not use that word, engineer- 
 ing, in an offensive sense, although I admit it to be, in some 
 sort, slang. Slang is often, as in this instance, only meta- 
 phor vulgarized by the newspapers. Every public movement 
 must be engineered; not one, that I know, was ever so non- 
 antagonistic to private interests, or so self-evidently for the 
 common good, that it would engineer itself — move off spon- 
 taneously; and, by virtue of its own native goodness, finish 
 its course triumphantly. Even a revival of religion is not 
 achieved that way ; and I seem to have read somewhere that 
 our American Revolution was adroitly "worked up." As for 
 those who, by engineering or otherwise, helped on the boring 
 of the Hoosac Tunnel, I fully believe that they deserve, and 
 
TUNNEL CITY 159 
 
 will in due time receive, the gratitude of every unselfish well- 
 wisher of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Having read in the old records that, after the Boston and 
 Albany Railroad was opened, its managers were in great 
 doubt whether freight enough would ever be offered, to re- 
 quire the use of the two locomotives which they had placed 
 between Springfield and Pittsfield, I have the courage to 
 find, in the great traffic which already seeks an avenue 
 through the Tunnel, the promise of an adequate direct re- 
 turn for the State's vast expenditure there. But, even if 
 that promise fail, I have the faith in reserve that the defi- 
 ciency will be more than made good, indirectly, by increased 
 wealth and population. 
 
 But what have we to do with profit and loss, in our search 
 for romance and beauty? Of romance, we shall surely find 
 enough in the undertaking and accomplishment of that 
 stupendous Tunnel enterprise; and, if there be any lack of 
 beauty — of which I am not sure — it will find abundant com- 
 pensation in the grandeur of the work; a much more rare 
 attribute of Berkshire marvels. 
 
 The Tunnel, however, as well as the glories of the scenery 
 around North Adams, has been celebrated by a pen so much 
 more competent than mine, that it would be presumption 
 for me to attempt more than the briefest glimpses at them; 
 a barley-corn of quit-rent, as it were, in acknowledgment of 
 homage due. 
 
 The Hoosac Tunnel project is of no recent birth. It is 
 more than sixty-five years since the Massachusetts people, 
 provoked to good works by the success of the Erie canal, 
 conceived the idea of making the Hudson River climb over 
 the Berkshire Hills and run down to Boston; or if, under the 
 protection of certain laws not subject to repeal by the General 
 Court, or to be evaded by its engineers, the waters of the 
 great river obstinately refused to run up hill, then td take 
 from them the ever-increasing burden of western commerce, 
 
160 TAGHCONIC 
 
 which they perversely carried to New York, and turn it 
 eastward by means of a little Yankee Hudson — to wit, a 
 canal — to be manufactured, until it crossed the Hoosacs, out 
 of the lakes and streams of Berkshire. 
 
 One proposition for carrying out this scheme, was to 
 follow nearly what is now the route of the Boston and Albany 
 railroad; but there was some doubt whether Pittsfield and 
 the neighboring heights could furnish an adequate supply of 
 water; and, besides, as one can readily believe, the "rocky " 
 nature of the ground between Pittsfield and Blandford was 
 discouraging.'-' 
 
 On the route now followed by the Troy and Boston rail- 
 road, the engineer found no very troublesome obstacles, ex- 
 cept that, immediately east of North Adams, the Hoosac 
 Mountain reared a barrier fifteen hundred feet high, and, at 
 his very moderate computation, four miles thick. 
 
 Here was something that, even with our advanced scien- 
 tific and material engineering facilities, would give the boldest 
 projector pause; but if it intimidated those old enthusiasts 
 at all, it must have been only for a brief space. Late in the 
 winter of 1825, Governor Eustis appointed Nathan Willis of 
 Pittsfield, Elihu Hoyt of Deerfield and H. A. S. Dearborn of 
 Boston, commissioners, and Colonel Laomi C. Baldwin, en- 
 gineer, to consider the possibility of the scheme for a canal 
 from the Hudson to Boston; and in January, 182 '>, they 
 reported it to be perfectly practicable, by means of a tunnel 
 through the Hoosac Mountain, nearly at the point occupied 
 by the present tunnel. The proposed dimensions were four 
 miles in length, twenty feet in width and thirteen and a half 
 in height; requiring a total excavation of two hundred and 
 eleven thousand cubic yards. The elevation of the moun- 
 tain ranges which still remained was to be overcome by a 
 series of locks, whose total rise and fall were to be three 
 thousand two hundred and eighty-one feet. The commis- 
 sioners estimated the cost of the canal, one hundred and 
 
TUNNEL CITY 161 
 
 seventy-eight miles long, at about six million dollars, includ- 
 ing that of the tunnel which they put at less than one million. 
 
 Colonel Baldwin was probably the daring spirit who first 
 conceived the idea of this gigantic undertaking — far more 
 gigantic than he, in his professional philosophy, dreamed. 
 But, whoever was father to the thought, the people of the 
 Tunnel Region easily adopted it; and, though for a time 
 it seemed to others to die, they knew that it only slept; and 
 never lost sight of it until a locomotive, instead of a canal 
 boat, emerging from the bowels of the mountain, rejoiced 
 their waiting eyes. 
 
 In 1826, a Boston newspaper- writer demonstrated, to his 
 own satisfaction at least, that, on the commissioner's own 
 showing, it would require fifty-two years to complete the 
 proposed excavation. Nevertheless, had it not been for the 
 timely introduction, at that very moment, of steam as a 
 motive power on railroads, there is much reason to believe 
 that the State would have undertaken the tunnel. It is 
 certain, at least, that there would have been a strong party 
 in favor of its so doing. 
 
 And now, if you will consider what chemical and mechani- 
 cal appliances were at the command of the engineer in 1825; 
 what was the cost of labor, and what the pecuniary resources 
 of the State, I think you will concede some grandeur to the 
 courage that did not flinch from a work which has since, 
 under far different conditions, almost frightened some very- 
 solid economists from their propriety. 
 
 The successful use of steam on railroads effectually cured 
 the canal fever, whieh was raging with symptoms very threat- 
 ening to the public purse; and attention was diverted from 
 the Hoosac Mountain — the highest mass of the Hoosac Range 
 — to the more moderate grades of the same chain in Central 
 and Southern Berkshire; which, at no ruinous cost, could be 
 made available even with such locomotive power as the skill 
 of that day was able to provide. 
 
162 TAGHCONIC 
 
 The tunnel project, thus put to rest, slept an unquiet 
 slumber, until it was re-awakened in 1848, by the charter 
 of the Troy and Greenfield railroad with a capital of three 
 million five hundred thousand dollars. A proposed capital 
 only ; for the arbiters of finance did not look kindly upon the 
 scheme, and it languished — in a morning nap perhaps — until 
 its friends, in 1854, secured a loan of two million dollars 
 from the Commonwealth. 
 
 The tunnel work was begun with energy in 1856. But I 
 am not going to attempt the story of its troubles and its 
 triumphs. What with demoralized rock and demoralized 
 legislators; with the rudest inexperience to be transformed 
 to accurate practical knowledge; with useless, followed by 
 the most efficient, machinery; with inadequate, and then 
 with almost too violent, rending power; with sad waste of 
 treasure ; with still sadder sacrifice of life — there was enough, 
 both of obstacle and the overcoming of it. But the final 
 victory came at last; and, as I think, that first locomotive 
 which, on the first of March, 1875, thundered through the 
 vanquished^mountain, was the proudest triumphal car that 
 had ever celebrated conquest. 
 
 If you think my estimate exaggerated, what will you say 
 of Rev. Dr. Todd, Pittsfield's quaintly eloquent, but thor- 
 oughly orthodox, divine, who found in our railroad era the 
 fulfilment^ the sublime prophecies which I have placed at 
 the head^of this article? This was in that glow of feeling 
 excited in the warm-hearted pastor by his official participa- 
 tion in the golden welding of those iron bands by which the 
 Pacific railroad binds together the east and the west; and I 
 am not sure whether he counted his words well grounded 
 doctrine, or merely the play of his bold poetic fancy. But 
 you and I have heard many a less plausible interpretation 
 of prophecy gravely propounded by reverend lips. 
 
 Well, there the Hoosac Tunnel is — not at all the visionary 
 thing it seemed to many eyes, even a quarter of a century 
 
TUNNEL CITY 163 
 
 ago; but a very palpable fact; so palpable indeed that you 
 can feel the darkness within it. You may visit it; but, 
 before you do so, consider well the strength of the old Titanic 
 mountain wall, which, so far as it was a barrier to commerce, 
 it has thrown down; consider the wealth of treasure and of 
 intellect, of human labor and human life, which have gone 
 to its construction; get some conception, if you can, of the 
 mighty flood of travel and traffic which rolls through it in 
 ever-swelling volume. Thus prepared, you may feel the 
 grandeur of the Tunnel; otherwise you may almost as well 
 spend eleven minutes in your coal cellar. Unless, indeed, 
 you chance upon an hour when the cavernous walls are, for 
 some special purpose illuminated; then, I dare say, you will 
 experience some curious sensations; it may be of an exalted 
 nature. 
 
 And now let us return to the Tunnel City: where, how- 
 ever, I shall not attempt to paint for you Mount Hawkes, 
 Williams, Adams or any of the grand hills which look down 
 upon it. They have already been gladdened by a more 
 golden light than I could throw upon them. But I cannot 
 resist the temptation to repeat a visit which I made many 
 years ago to The Natural Bridge: a piece of carving by the 
 Water Nymphs, which I do not find surpassed by anything 
 which Dame Nature's eccentric work-people have effected 
 anywhere in New England. 
 
 Some years ago I took a walk, with a noted traveller, 
 along the bending valley of the Hoosac, to North Adams 
 and Williamstown ; thence to the summit of Greylock, down 
 its most precipitous side into one of its wildest recesses; 
 and down the valley of the Housatonic to Pittsfield. You 
 will wander long before you meet another route so rich in 
 admirable landscape or in objects of marked individual in- 
 terest; but none of them were impressed on my memory so 
 vividly and pleasantly as this bridge, and the ravine by 
 which it is best approached. 
 
164 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Reaching the vicinity by a winding road which afforded 
 superb views towards the south and east, we entered the 
 ravine at its lower terminus. We made no measurements, 
 but the following description, furnished by Rev. John W. 
 Yeomans for the "History of Berkshire" published in 1829, 
 perfectly accords with my impressions. 
 
 "About a mile north-east of North Adams village, Hudson's brook 
 has worn a channel thirty rods long, and in some places sixty feet deep 
 through a quarry of white marble. The ledge terminates at the south in 
 a steep precipice, down which it seems the water once fell; but, finding 
 in some places natural fissures, and in others wearing away the rock, it 
 has formed a passage from thirty to sixty feet below its former bed, and 
 with a mean breadth of fifteen feet. Across this chasm, two masses of 
 rock — one ten or twelve feet above the other — lie like bridges. The upper 
 is now much broken: under the lower, which is beautifully arched, the 
 stream has sunk its bed nearly fifty feet.'' 
 
 The walls of the ravine are perpendicular cliffs of pure 
 white marble, highly crystaline in coarse granulation — a 
 dolomite, if I recollect rightly, susceptible of a fine edge under 
 the chisel. They are mottled all over, from top to bottom 
 with indentations of various shapes and sizes: but oftenest 
 circular and concave, like a saucer, with an average diameter, 
 at a rough guess, of eight or ten inches: making a very pretty 
 Arabesque fret work. But, small or large, the indentations 
 were evidently made by rolling pebbles kept in motion by 
 the waters of the sinking stream. Frequently one of the 
 niche-like recesses has almost its exact counterpart precisely 
 on the opposite side of the chasm; as though a marble mass 
 — in which was a hollow space, like an inverted cauldron or 
 old-fashioned dinner-pot — had been sharply rent in twain, 
 and the sides withdrawn fifteen feet apart: an explanation 
 which has sometimes been rashly made. The phenomenon 
 seems rather to indicate where a ledge of fixed rock extended 
 nearly across the bottom of the brook, forcing the grinding 
 pebbles against the wall on each side. 
 
 Ask the sculptor who makes grave-stones of that marble 
 
TUNNEL CITY 165 
 
 how long he thinks it took the water nymphs to carve out 
 that ravine and fret its walls so curiously. 
 
 Entering the lower opening of the ravine, we waded 
 squarely into the brook, which we found easily fordable; 
 and as it was a warm summer day, we went merrily splash- 
 ing our way almost to the bridge; whereby we got the best 
 possible appreciation of the whole thing. And a high appre- 
 ciation it was, as my companion expressed it in an animated 
 speech when we had ensconced ourselves in opposite niches 
 in the marble walls. 
 
Lanesboro' Sunlight and Shadow 
 
Lanesboro' Sunlight and Shadow 
 
 "Man has two minutes and a half to live — one to smile, one to sigh, 
 and a half to love; for in the midst of this we die. But the grave is not 
 deep; it is the shining footprint of the angel who seeks us; and when the 
 unknown hand throws the fatal dart, man boweth his head, and the 
 shaft only lifts the crown of thorns from his wounds." — Jean Paul 
 RicMer. 
 
 Nestled closest in the bosom of our hills lies the little 
 village of Lanesboro' — the very fondling of Nature. Thither 
 turns never the good mother her wrinkled front; near pres- 
 sing as the mountains clasp the narrow valley, you must not 
 look among them for frowning precipices, or earthquake- 
 rifted chasms. High into the air their summits press, but 
 not in jagged peaks- — only with the full, round swelling of 
 loving breasts, upon which you may repose, if you will, in 
 the gentlest of summer reveries. 
 
 There is one eminence — in patriotic gratitude they call it 
 Constitution Hill — with such a winsome, neighborly look to 
 it, that in our streets, miles away, it seems near as your own 
 garden. If you have in you any yearnings at all after beauty, 
 I am sure you cannot look upon, and not be irresistibly 
 drawn to it, to be lifted up gently and humanly, above the 
 baser things of earth. Lying under its druidical oaks, or 
 seated, farther up, upon a pearl-white quartz rock, in the 
 shade of 'a whispering birch, you will see below you, groves 
 and farms, and broad, fresh meadows, with laughing lake 
 and winding rivulets — like silver embroidery on the green 
 banner of Erin. 
 
 Many fair villages, as well, will dot the scene, whose 
 names — if you do not know — I hope you will never ask, but 
 be content to remember, that under each roof of them all, 
 human lives are wearing themselves out. Then let your own 
 heart interpret for you what the overlooking woods whisper. 
 
170 TAGHCONIC 
 
 If you know well the story of one hearth-stone, think what 
 a thrilling tale it is; and if, in your reveries upon the hill- 
 tops, you multiply that marvellous but common story into 
 the thousand dwellings of the valley, the resultant mass shall 
 be mightier than the mountains which encompass it. 
 
 I could point you to an antique mansion — a grey spot it 
 appears in the far distance, with no over-hanging cloud to 
 distinguish it — at whose story I am deeply moved, as often 
 as I look upon it. The splendors and the shadows, which 
 have by turns darkened and illumined its chambers, pass 
 and repass in spectral reiteration, Over my spirit. Whether 
 I will or not, come the ghosts of fleeting joys, irradicable 
 sorrows; the loftiness of human pride and the lowliness of 
 pride's abasement, which have passed and left no record 
 there; and yet that grey old homestead is no accursed roof, 
 devoted to misery from its foundation, but one even such as 
 its fellows are. Ah! if we could look within the seemly exte- 
 rior of any home — if we could penetrate the heart's chambers 
 of any man, what might not meet us there? Those glowing 
 windows which gleam so cheerily on our evening path, by 
 what funereal torches may they not be lighted? Those radiant 
 faces which meet us smilingly in our noonday walk by what 
 infernal passions may they not be driven on? So, under 
 the green and smiling earth, lie pent the hidden fires, and 
 help the genial sun to quicken the blossom and ripen the 
 fruit. 
 
 This Constitution Hill must be a great promoter of re- 
 verie. I have a friend — a bachelor friend — who, no sooner 
 is he seated upon it, than off he goes dreaming over the 
 whole valley, in a very marvelous way. I do not believe 
 there is a dwelling in sight, from Greylock to Yocun's Seat, 
 that he has not, at some time, made himself pater familias 
 in it. Bring him up hither, and his respect for the Tenth 
 Commandment vanishes like the mist of the valley. An- 
 other friend of mine — an artist — never looks down from this 
 
LANESBORO' 171 
 
 hill, but — presto! change! — the hard work of a century is all 
 gone, and the red Indian comes back again, with wildwood 
 and wigwam, council fire and hunting ground. So you, if 
 you come within the charmed circle of our hill's shaven 
 crown, may, perchance, work some wonderful phantasmagoric 
 changes. 
 
 I do not know how it all comes about. Perhaps some 
 good genius has cast a spell upon the spot — a mode of solving 
 such difficulties to which I confess myself prone, being natu- 
 rally of a superstitious as well as lymphatic turn of mind. 
 
 It may be only another fancy of mine, but the leaves here 
 seem to have a perfection of beauty not attained elsewhere. 
 Nature's work is finished with more care; the curves are cut 
 with a more accurate grace, and the green more faithfully 
 laid on. In the Fall, too, the rich enamellings are done with 
 greater depth of coloring, and without shrivelling up the 
 work in the process, as the careless elves are very apt to do 
 in other groves. The specimens of their workmanship which 
 I have seen here were perfect gems in their way. You shall 
 not desire to see a more gorgeous sight than Constitution 
 Hill in October. 
 
 Just on the western declivity is a good sized cavern, which, 
 a witty lady thinks, may be the home of these elfin workmen ; 
 but in spite of the high authority, I must doubt; such under- 
 ground tenements are more fit dwelling places for bears, 
 wolves, and such like ugly gnomes, than for any gentle spirits 
 whatever. No, ours are 
 
 "Some gay creatures of the elements, 
 Who in the colors of the rainbow live 
 And play 'i the plighted clouds." 
 
 Descending from the hill, you may wander up the stream 
 which flows at its base. If a follower of the "gentle craft 
 of angling," you will not neglect to lie awhile where some 
 thick-leaved maple overshadows a deep pool, where you may 
 
172 TAGHCONIC 
 
 drop your line with the reasonable hope of bringing to shore 
 a dozen fine fish — perhaps even the "Hermit Trout" himself 
 who is believed to haunt these pools, and only dimple the 
 shallows in the pale moonlight; — a wary old fellow he, 
 
 "Too shrewd 
 To be by a wading boy pulled out!" 
 
 I trust you are no patron of this treacherous sport, you 
 were better to sit on some warm bank of green-sward, 
 or dangling your feet over some rustic bridge, to watch the 
 smoothly gliding current, and 
 
 "The shadows of sun-gilt ripples 
 On the pebbly bed of a brook." 
 
 There is no wine, or oil of gladness, which has such a 
 balm for the wounded spirit as the soft murmurs of a rural 
 brooklet. 
 
 Wandering on, you may, if you are fortunate as I have 
 been, sometimes catch a glimpse into dreamland — like a 
 vignette to an old romance, of a youth seated under a spread- 
 ing elm, with a guitar in his hand and a maiden by his side; 
 or even catch Titania shooting grasshoppers with elfin arrows 
 among the ox-eyed daisies and buttercups. When I was a 
 citizen I used to think such things confined to poetry and 
 pain; but here, in the quiet days of summer, things often 
 occur which convince one of the truth of Hood's remark, 
 that "it is dangerous to swear to the truth or falsehood of 
 a romance, even of one's own making." 
 
 On a gentle hillock, by whose side the stream flows in 
 deep willow shade, is the village grave yard. Do not fail 
 to enter it. Among its thick-clustering monuments you can 
 linger with best profit, undisturbed by quaintly ludicrous 
 epitaphs, or monstrous heraldries of death. The touching 
 inscriptions on the simple marbles bespeak alike the chas- 
 tened spirit and the cultivated mind. What wild woe — 
 
THE OLD WORSHIPPER 173 
 
 paternal, filial, fraternal, and conjugal — this narrow spot has 
 witnessed, I shrink from recalling. The marble bears record 
 only of the subdued grief and the Christian hope; the story 
 of the early woe, when the one joy of life perished — when 
 "the young green bole was marked for fellage," is not told 
 to the stranger's eye, and is sacred from the stranger's pen. 
 Yet, for that stranger is the place deeply consecrated; how 
 holy, then, to those whose best of earth is mingled with its 
 dust; I am here often reminded of a beautiful thought 
 of Richter: "The ancients had it, that not even the ashes 
 of the dead should be embarked with the living, for fear of 
 the storm which would be sure to follow. We have learned 
 better, and know that to be accompanied on the voyage of 
 life by the memory of the dead brings calm and not storm; 
 he who always feels one loss, will be less accessible to new 
 sorrow." 
 
 The Old .Worshipper. 
 
 In this grave yard I once witnessed a scene, so touching 
 and solemn, and yet so far removed from any agony of woe, 
 that to speak of it can open anew no half healed wound. It 
 was one of those occasions when the sorrows of earth are 
 so gloriously transmuted into the joys of Heaven, that we, 
 who remain "of the earth, earthy," look upon the transfigu- 
 ration in far-off wonder; while philosophy strives in vain 
 to characterize emotions, in which the consoler, Christ, en- 
 ables the mourner to mingle — as in His own mysterious na- 
 ture — so much of human sorrow with so much of Divine con- 
 fidence. 
 
 Not far from the village grave yard, is the church — a 
 modest gothic structure, built of the grey stone of the coun- 
 try. This was once, for many months, my own place of 
 worship; and still, on a pleasant Sabbath morning, I love to 
 stroll to it. The bracing walk of some half dozen miles, 
 through a delightful region, is no unworthy preparation for 
 the devotions of the sanctuary; and, through the day, the 
 
174 TAGHCONIC 
 
 voices of woods and waters seem to mingle with the deep 
 responses of the congregation. Nature, with her thousand 
 voices, joins in the jubilant chorus, and in subdued tones 
 echoes the supplications of the solemn litany. 
 
 The first morning upon which I entered this church I was 
 struck with the venerable figure of an old -man, who sat in 
 front of me, completely absorbed in worship. Never had 
 my ideal of Christian devotion been so completely filled; no 
 painter could have desired a finer model. His whole soul 
 seemed informed and penetrated with the spirit of the liturgy, 
 in whose eloquent words he poured forth his soul to God. 
 
 His veteran- form was tall and martial in its bearing ; in 
 the deep lines of his countenance you could not mistake the 
 characters of strong intellect, self respect, and unbending 
 firmness of purpose. You would say he was one not likely 
 to yield much obsequious homage to his fellow man; but 
 here, in the presence of Jehovah, his whole bearing was con- 
 formed to the most lowly, yet manly, humility. Nothing 
 could be more impressive than the earnest tones with which 
 he joined in the services of the church. 
 
 Sabbath after Sabbath, my eye sought and found him — 
 the most noticeable figure in the room — until one summer's 
 day, when I entered, the people were waiting, in that hush 
 of expectation which in a country congregation tells one that 
 a funeral is about to take place. On my way to the church 
 I had lingered a few moments, as was my wont, in the grave 
 yard — and had found an open grave in the lot of the vener- 
 able worshipper. I now looked to his pew; it was vacant; 
 and I at once guessed that it was he who was about to enter 
 the sacred portals for the last time. But it was not so: a 
 whisper from a neighbor informed me that it was the wife 
 of the old man who was no more — the wife of his youth. 
 
 Presently, as the procession entered, I saw the widowed 
 husband following close behind the coffin, his head a little 
 bent, as if to approach nearer the form of the sleeper, and 
 
THE OLD WORSHIPPER 175 
 
 his voice a little more tremulous than usual, as he joined in 
 the Scripture appointed to be then read. 
 
 The coffin was laid before the altar, and the old man took 
 his seat, with that forced calmness where the quivering lip 
 shows the struggle hardly yet over, and the victory only half 
 won. 
 
 As the sublime promises of future reunion were read; as 
 the sympathizing tones of consolation fell from the lips of 
 the preacher, I thought the few remaining clouds vanished 
 from the aged face, and a perfect serenity overspread it. 
 When the sermon was ended, with an aspect almost cheerful, 
 he rose up, to follow to her burial-place all that remained on 
 earth of her, with whom, for more than fifty years, he had 
 walked, in sunshine and in storm. What emotions were at 
 work within, none could read — the fixed eye, the firm-set 
 lip, revealed nothing — the prying eye of curiosity, the anxious 
 gaze of friendship, returned alike baffled. And yet, with 
 what overwhelming power must the busy memory of that 
 lonely old man have brought back the thick-crowding events 
 of half a century, from the first thrilling meeting to this last 
 brief parting! It is such moments which must disclose most 
 vividly to the mind of Eld what this life is, which passeth 
 like a dream. Such might have been the retrospect of the 
 mourner of three score years and ten, as he took his few 
 brief steps from the temple to the tomb — or, perchance, his 
 better spirit reached forward to a glorious meeting in that 
 home to which sorrow and parting can never come. 
 
 The coffin was lowered to its place; the people gathered 
 around. The pastor began that beautiful service, in which 
 the church commits earth to its kindred earth, and proclaims 
 the spirit returned to the God who gave it. There, at the 
 clergyman's side, stood the tall and veteran form of the 
 mourner, his thin grey hairs streaming in the mountain wind, 
 a« he repeated, firmly, the proper responses. For a while 
 he looked steadfastly down into the grave — but as the pastor 
 
176 TAGHCONIC 
 
 read: "And the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Him 
 shall be changed and made like unto His own glorious body," 
 the depressed eyes were raised to Heaven with an expres- 
 sion of most triumphant and joyous hope. The struggle was 
 over. The grave had lost its sting; "Death was swallowed 
 up in victory. ' ' It was a spectacle most touching 'and sublime . 
 
 Yet a few moments, and the grave was closed; the people 
 separated to their homes — and the mourner, likewise, de- 
 parted to his — but for not long. He was soon missed from 
 his accustomed seat in the sanctuary. With the fall of the 
 leaf, he went down into the grave — and the grass which in 
 the spring grew upon his wife's mound, waved over two. 
 
 There is another and older grave yard in the town, white 
 with its multitude of marble testimonials. Here there used 
 to be a tomb, carved with masonic symbols, and having a 
 heavy iron knocker on its door. Here, often at midnight — 
 whether the still moon shed her pale light on the ghastly 
 tombstones, or the dark and howling tempest was on — a 
 crazed woman used to enter the grave-encumbered ground, 
 and strike such a peal on the ringing iron that the sleepers 
 in the near dwellings started trembling from their slumbers. 
 There is something terribly significant to me in that gloomy 
 visitation of the tomb. What earnestness of agonized long- 
 ing for their repose, may have impelled that wild nocturnal 
 summons to the dead. "Wake! wake! ye peaceful dwellers 
 in the tomb," perhaps that weary, brain-sick woman said: 
 " Open your dark portals, and give me rest beside ye. Wake! 
 — the living turn from me, and do you also spurn me? — me, 
 who shudder not at any loathsomeness of yours ? ' ' 
 
 But cheerier thoughts for the cheerful light of summer — 
 and, passing the mildewed realms of death, do you hie away 
 to some beautiful hill — Pratt's, Prospect, St. Luke's, or "The 
 Noppit;" or to some fair valley — whither I may not stay to 
 accompany you. 
 
 Lanesboro' was the birthplace of that queerest and wisest 
 
LANESBORO' 177 
 
 of humorists, the Yankee Solomon, Josh Billings: nee Henry 
 Savage Shaw. The people of the village used to affect a 
 certain rural English style, and the older inhabitants still 
 love to speak of it as "The Borough." Hon. Henry Shaw, 
 the father of our humorist, and one of the ablest statesmen 
 who have represented Berkshire in congress, was the Lord 
 of the Manor, and quite held his own in most of the traits 
 which are conventionally ascribed to that class of gentry in 
 England. But there was one notable variation; he was no 
 Episcopalian, but always occupied with his family, the square 
 and spacious pew of state in the Congregational meeting 
 house. 
 
 The rector of St. Luke's, although bearing the same name 
 as the squire, was proud of his descent from the old Bren- 
 tons, and clung fondly to the customs of his ancestral church, 
 as well as to its doctrines. Overflowing with genial wit, 
 charitable, given to hospitality, and devoted especially to 
 the kindlier duties of his priestly office, he might have fur- 
 nished Goldsmith or Praed, a model for their delightful pic- 
 tures of the English country clergyman. A man greatly to 
 be loved. 
 
 In matters of religious dogma and form, there was not 
 that happy accord between the squire and the rector, which 
 usually prevails between similar classes in England; but, 
 although both seemed to belong to another state of society 
 than that which prevailed outside of the Borough, each 
 seemed exactly fitted for the niche in the great temple — the 
 world — in which it had pleased his Maker to place him. 
 That is, so far as his home in the Borough was concerned — 
 outside of that the squire, at least, who took a large part in 
 public affairs, fared like others who mix in the mad whirl of 
 politics and finance, and get more or less of their deserts, as 
 it may chance. But in their retired niches at home, each 
 would gladly have preserved every dear antique ornament, 
 however grotesque, of the life which surrounded him. But 
 
178 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the well-born and polished clergyman and the stately, courtly 
 squire were not the only original characters in the Borough: 
 it was full of them, from these conspicuous specimens down 
 to the sardonic dealer in oysters and poultry — nay, to the 
 very blackest picker of blackberries in "The Gulf." 
 
 Such was the early home in which Josh Billings medi- 
 tated fun and — I have not a particle of doubt — mischief. 
 Here he made curious observation of the odd people about 
 the village, and perhaps treasured up the wise and piquant 
 sayings for which the squire and the parson were renowned, 
 the county over. I will cite one of the squire's, which he 
 ejaculated with some emphasis, although he had the smallest 
 possible personal experience of its truth: "Confound" — that 
 is not exactly the word, but I translate — "Confound poverty: 
 it never did anybody any good!" What do you think of 
 that for truthfulness, compared with the old sentimental 
 philosophy on the same point? 
 
Lake Onota and Its White Deer 
 
ha\e Onota and Its White Deer 
 
 Can I forget? no, never, such a scene; 
 So full of witchery. — Rogers' Italy. 
 
 I said, the other day, that Pontoosuc is not quite my 
 favorite among our mountain lakes. Onota is. Of all the 
 hundred lakelets of Berkshire — exquisitely lovely as many of 
 them are — I think there is not one which equals this in grace 
 of outline, or in its rich background of wood, field and hill. 
 It lies in an elevated valley only two miles west of our main 
 street; and, if you will come with me to the commanding 
 elevation upon its south-west shore, and look across its broad 
 and tranquil surface, towards Constitution Hill and Greylock, 
 you will confess that I have not too highly extolled its charms. 
 I am sure, at least, that I never heard such an admiring shout 
 over any other piece of landscape as went up from scores of 
 Stockbridge and Albany field-meeting visitors when this view 
 was suddenly revealed to them, one glorious summer day. I 
 should have bid you, as you approached the lake, take note 
 of the twin elms which crown the hill upon its eastern side 
 and form a perfect arch — St. Mary's Arch, they call it. But 
 you may observe it from many points in the village. 
 
 When I first wrote of this lake, I said with truth "Of all 
 our enticing groves, none are more perfect than the woods 
 upon the eastern shore of Onota. Few have so hermit-like 
 a solitude, yet none are so far removed from a desolate lone- 
 liness. These shades are sometimes very solemn, but one 
 need not be very sad in them. A merry company might be 
 very gay." As to a large extent of wood, this description 
 still holds generally true, although costly mansions have 
 arisen by the lakeside, and streets are creeping towards it. 
 We must still ramble through woods, and for a little space 
 scramble through brambles, to reach its northern shore. 
 
182 TAGHCONIC 
 
 But it is worth the trouble; for the view southward is 
 wild and picturesque. I have heard artists commend it as 
 the best to be had of the lake. I cannot so think; but its 
 peculiar formation is certainly here displayed to the best 
 possible advantage, and is very curious. At about one 
 quarter of its length from its northern end, it is divided by a 
 narrow isthmus; the northern portion being the work of 
 those industrious and skillful engineers, the beavers — who 
 formed it by building a dam across a small stream which 
 still runs through it, overflowing their embankment in suffi- 
 cient quantities to turn the wheels of large factories at some 
 distance below. The main or southern lake is fed by springs 
 and Taconic mountain brooks. 
 
 The fringed gentian, the cardinal and other gorgeous wild 
 flowers, grow in profusion at the north of the lake. The 
 more pleasant resort, however, is upon the south, where, of 
 a dreamy summer afternoon, one can recline in luxurious 
 reveries, as he watches the image of the mountains, sharply 
 reflected in the clear waters ; sometimes in the green leanness 
 of June, sometimes in the melancholy gorgeousness of au- 
 tumn, or better still, when the haze of the Indian summer 
 invests them with hues of pearly delicacy and richness. 
 
 Perhaps, while you look, a broad-winged eagle will appear 
 above you, soaring and sweeping in the silent sky, till it 
 vanishes into the heavens; or a blue king-fisher will perch 
 awhile upon yonder blasted bough, and then suddenly dart- 
 ing into the water bear away its writhing prey to some hid- 
 den haunt. Other gentler birds will sit a-tilt on the lithe 
 green branches— and, if it be in early summer, serenade your 
 slumberous ear. 
 
 Near by, the cattle will stand in groups on a pleasant 
 point of land which runs out into the lake, and which they 
 seem to love better than other spots. 
 
 Around these shores were some of the earliest settlements; 
 and, before the intrusion of the white man they were the 
 
LAKE ONOTA 183 
 
 favorite haunt of the Indian. A gentleman digging into a 
 bed of peat and marl, upon his farm on the east of the lake, 
 found, at great depth, stakes pointed artificially — evidently 
 the remains of wigwams built ages ago, when, perhaps, the 
 marl bed was a lakelet as crystal clear as Onota. Remains 
 of the rude arts of the later Indians used to be found in the 
 neighboring field; but now they are rarely, if ever, turned 
 up by the plough. 
 
 Upon the eminence to which I first took you, a fort of 
 some pretense was built, during the second French and 
 Indian war, for the protection of the settlements at the 
 south and east; and relics are still occasionally found of the 
 regiments which rested here on their way to the campaigns 
 which ended in the conquest of Canada. There were four of 
 these forts in PittsfLeld, garrisoned partly by soldiers sent by 
 helpful Connecticut; and partly by the settlers, who, com- 
 pelled to abandon their log cabins, took their families with 
 them to these places of refuge. And a jolly time they seem 
 to have had of it, shut up there cozily together — a perpetual 
 tea-party. 
 
 The commissariat accounts are, some of them, still pre- 
 served, and afford us a peep at the housekeeping on Fort 
 Hill a century and a quarter ago. They tell us that the 
 larder of the garrison was plentifully supplied with venison 
 at five pence a pound; wild turkey at a shilling, and beef at 
 twelve pence. Trout were to be had by the hundred for the 
 catching, and partridges for the killing. But the old accounts 
 are chiefly occupied with charges for spirituous liquors in 
 drams of rum, bowls of punch and mugs of flip. Persons of 
 the lower rank took their drams; their superiors revelled in 
 punch; while the more temperate, and the ladies, were gen- 
 erally content with the mild beverage, flip. On some days 
 merriment grew merrier, as on a certain second of Novem- 
 ber — perhaps thanksgiving day — when the gallant Captain 
 Hinman, of the Connecticut troops, is charged with several 
 
184 TAGHCONIC 
 
 punches for himself, and "a mug of flip for Mrs. Piercy." 
 And, just. below, we are startled by this entry: "The wife of 
 Deacon Crofoot, for a mug of flip — a kiss." A merry party 
 of fair women and brave men, there must have been that 
 chill November evening in the old fort ; maugre the possibility 
 that a legion of Onuhgungo fiends would be howling for 
 their scalps before morning. But antiquarian research dis- 
 sipates any visions of the "rosy juncture of four melting 
 lips" as a result of that charge against the Deacon's wife, by 
 showing that the good dame was then sixty-six years old, 
 which doubtless is the reason that the account is not recorded 
 to have been ever liquidated. 
 
 There are a couple of legends about this Onota, perhaps 
 worth the telling. The first is well authenticated, and the 
 other not improbable, as legends go. 
 
 The Legend of the White Deer. 
 
 There is hardly a country where a deer ever trod in which 
 there does not linger some legend of one or more of these 
 graceful animals, either wholly or in part of a supernatural 
 whiteness. It is a fancy which seems to spring spontaneously 
 in the rich soil of a woodman's imagination. The "White 
 Doe of Rylston," and Bryant's "White-footed Deer," will 
 occur to everyone, as instances of the use to which these 
 forest tales have been put in poetry. Traditions of a similar 
 character are said to exist in many tribes of American In- 
 dians, and among others, those of the Housatonic valley. 
 
 A gentleman tells me that in the old witch times — long 
 after the Salem delusion ended — there were no firmer be- 
 lievers in that sort of supernaturalism than the people who 
 lived about Lake Onota; one of whom was his own grand- 
 father, of whom he relates the following anecdote: 
 
 Coming in one day from an unsuccessful day's hunting, he 
 was surprised to see a white deer stooping down to drink at 
 Point Onota — the little cape which extends into the lake at 
 its south end. Instantly his rifle was at his shoulder; but 
 
THE WHITE DEER 185 
 
 before he could pull the trigger, his dog howled, and the 
 startled deer fled into the wood. The marvellous story of the 
 white deer of the Mohegans at once occurred to him, and it 
 entered into his head that his dog was bewitched; or rather 
 that an old hag who lived in "The North Woods" — a section 
 on the northwestern side of the lake — had assumed his form; 
 which, among other freakish powers, she had the perilous 
 reputation of being able to do. With never a doubt, there- 
 fore, that he was all the while belaboring the witch, our dis- 
 appointed hunter waled his poor hound till the woods howled 
 again with his piteous cries. 
 
 This done, he posted away in hot haste to the cabin of 
 the old crone, and demanded that she should show him her 
 back — never doubting that he would find upon it the marks 
 of the stripes he had inflicted upon his miserable beast. Of 
 course the old woman was in a tempest of wrath when she 
 learned the errand of her visitor; and it is believed that he 
 made a retreat more discreet and rapid than valiant, under 
 a sudden shower of blows from that notorious article of house- 
 hold furniture which was supposed to serve its mistress the 
 double purpose of a broom by day and an serial steed by 
 night, and which now answered another very excellent turn. 
 
 Another gentleman, to whom I mentioned this anecdote, 
 tells me an aboriginal legend of this same White Deer. 
 
 "Long before the Englishman set foot in the Housatonic 
 valley," he said, "the Indians used to notice a deer, of com- 
 plete and spotless white, which came often, in the summer 
 and autumn months, to drink at Onota. Against this gentle 
 creature, no red man's arrow was ever pointed; for, in their 
 simple faith, they believed that with her light and airy step 
 she brought good fortune to the dwellers in the valley. 'So 
 long,' the prophecy ran, 'So long as the snow-white doe comes 
 to drink at Onota, so long famine shall not blight the Indian's 
 harvest, nor pestilence come nigh his lodge, nor foeman lay 
 waste his country.' In the graceful animal, the tribe recog- 
 
186 TAGHCONIC 
 
 nized and loved their good genius. He among them who 
 dared to harm her would have met swift punishment as a 
 sacrilegious wretch and traitor." 
 
 Thus protected by the love of her simple friends, year 
 after year, soon as the white blossoms clothed the cherry, 
 the sacred deer came to drink at her chosen fountain; bring- 
 ing good omens to all, and especially to the maiden who first 
 espied her, glittering brightly among the foliage. Finally she 
 brought with her a fawn, if possible, of more faultless purity 
 and grace than herself; and that year more than the usual 
 plenty and happiness reigned around the lake. Not long 
 after this, the first French and Indian war broke out, and a 
 young French officer — Montalbert by name — was sent to 
 incite the Housatonic Indians to join in the league against 
 the English colonies. 
 
 "In his sacred character as an ambassador, he was wel- 
 comed to their lodges, had a seat at their council fire, and 
 listened eagerly to their wild and marvellous tales. Among 
 others, he heard the story of the White Deer; and, however 
 incredulous of her sanctity, sufficiently admired the descrip- 
 tion of her beauty. Among those reckless and ambitious 
 adventurers who set up the standard of France in Canada, 
 it was a passion to carry away some wonderful trophy of 
 the forest domain, to lay at the feet of their sovereign. Even 
 the persons of the savages had thus been presented at the 
 Court of Versailles, and royal favor had not been niggard in 
 rewarding the donors of the more unique and costly trophies 
 of barbaric splendor. 
 
 "It was for such reasons that an uncontrollable desire to 
 possess the skin of the White Deer took possession of Mont- 
 albert. He already enjoyed, in imagination, the reward 
 which could not fail him who brought so rare and beautiful 
 a peltry to the splendid Louis. 
 
 "Not fully aware of the veneration which the Deer received 
 from the natives, he first offered liberal rewards to the hunter 
 
THE WHITE DEER 187 
 
 who should bring him the coveted spoil. For half the prof- 
 fered price, the chiefs would, perhaps, have alienated their 
 fairest hunting-grounds; but the proposition to destroy their 
 Sacred Deer was received with utter horror and indignation. 
 It was gently hinted to Montalbert that a repetition of the 
 offer might ensure him the fate he designed for the Deer. 
 
 "But the Frenchman was not of a nature to be so baffled. 
 He had noticed that one of the native warriors — Wondo, by 
 name — was already debased by the use of the white man's 
 fire-water, of which Montalbert possessed a large supply. 
 Concealing his purposes for a time, the adventurer sought out 
 this Wondo, and shortly contrived to foment the poor fel- 
 low's appetite to such a degree that he became the absolute 
 slave of whoever had it in his power to minister to his desires. 
 
 "When the hunter was thought to be sufficiently besotted, 
 Montalbert ventured to propose to him a plan to secure the 
 skin of the White Deer. Depraved as he had become, Wondo 
 at first recoiled from the thought, but appetite at length 
 prevailed and he yielded to the tempter. 
 
 "Years of unmolested security had rendered the Deer so 
 confident in the friendship of man that, when at last treach- 
 ery came, she proved an easy victim. Before conscience 
 could awaken in the sacrilegious hunter, the gentle animal 
 was taken and slain, and the ill-gotten fur was in the posses- 
 sion of the white man. 
 
 "No sooner had Montalbert secured his prize than, con- 
 cealing it in his baggage, he set out for Montreal; but the 
 legend hints that he never reached the French border, and 
 the beautiful skin of the Indians' Sacred Deer never added to 
 the splendors of French royalty. 
 
 "Among the natives, the impious slaughter was not sus- 
 pected until the fire-water of the slayer was expended, and a 
 returning consciousness compelled him to confess his deed of 
 horror, and to meet the speedy vengeance which atoned for it. 
 
 "Long and earnest were the supplications which the fright- 
 
188 TAGHCONIC 
 
 ened natives sent up to the Great Spirit, that He would avert 
 from the tribe the punishment due to such a crime; but its 
 prosperity never again was what it had been, and its num- 
 bers slowly wasted away. " 
 
Roaring Brook an & Tory's Glen 
 
Roaring Brook an d Tory's Glen 
 
 Fear God, honor the King. — St. Peter. 
 
 The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore 
 resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist 
 shall receive to themselves damnation. — St. Paul. 
 
 And what saith the Koran? "Speak truth to thy Prince." — Blue 
 Beard. 
 
 "Every state and almost every county of New England 
 has its Roaring Brook — a mountain streamlet, over-hung by 
 woods, impeded by a mill, encumbered by fallen trees, but 
 ever rushing, racing, roaring down through gurgling gullies, 
 and filling the forest with its delicious sound and freshness; 
 the drinking places of home returning herds; the mysterious 
 haunts of squirrels and blue jays; the sylvan retreat of 
 school boys, who frequent it in the summer holidays, and 
 mingle their restless thoughts with its restless, exuberant, and 
 rejoicing stream." 
 
 Thus speaks Professor Longfellow of one of the most 
 charming features of our hillsides. Our Roaring Brook, I 
 think must be familiar to the poet. Indeed, it is shrewdly 
 suspected that it is the original of that where Churchill and 
 Kavanagh passed so delightful a day with Cecilia, Alice, and 
 the schoolmaster's wife. If not, it might well have been, for 
 the description is perfect; and there is every reason to be- 
 lieve that the author was familiar with the original. There 
 is a shorter road to it now; but that over which the author 
 of Kavanagh must have driven, is both so pleasant and so 
 rich in memories that I prefer it still; and so will you. We 
 will not hurry over it. 
 
 Passing down the broad elm-shaded, old-fashioned, courtly 
 street which leads east from the Pittsfield Park, we come, at 
 the distance of a few rods to a bold and picturesque knoll, 
 upon which stands one of those square old dwellings, such as 
 
192 TAGHCONIC 
 
 it was the fashion of the New England gentry to build seventy- 
 five or a hundred years ago: and which still delight their 
 descendants, although, like antiques in other branches of 
 art, they seem to defy modern imitation. This was long the 
 country seat of Hon. Nathan Appleton of Boston, whose 
 wife was a daughter of the builder of the mansion, and whose 
 daughter became the wife of the poet Longfellow. On the 
 landing of the broad stairs at the end of its long entrance 
 hall, stood the old clock so touchingly commemorated by 
 him: 
 
 " Somewhat back from the village street 
 Stands the old fashioned country seat; 
 Across its antique portico, 
 Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, — 
 And from its station in the hall 
 An ancient time piece says to all — 
 
 Forever, never, 
 
 Never, forever." 
 
 The mansion, now the residence of Mrs. Thomas F. Plun- 
 kett, has been to some extent remodelled externally, but it 
 preserves all the features noted in Mr. Longfellow's poem. 
 
 A couple of miles further south, on what is known as the 
 old road to Lenox, is the villa built by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 in which he resided for several years. Dr. Holmes had an 
 hereditary interest in Pittsfield; his great-grandfather Col. 
 Jacob Wendell of Boston, with his kinsman, Philip Living- 
 ston of Albany, and Col. John Stoddard of Northampton — 
 "the great New-Englander" — having been equal owners of 
 the township, six miles square, before its division by sale 
 among the first settlers. These great proprietors — or at least 
 Stoddard and Wendell — reserved some of the best lands for 
 themselves; and Col. Wendell making choice of the farm on 
 which Dr. Holmes afterwards built, either he or his son, 
 Judge Oliver Wendell of Revolutionary fame, erected a man- 
 sion upon it for a country seat. In the fierce political feuds, 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 193 
 
 before and during the war of 1812, Judge Wendell was a 
 great stay and consolation to the Pittsfield Federalists to 
 whom he gave much support, moral and pecuniary. The 
 First Church still cherishes among its precious relics, a bap- 
 tismal basin of solid silver, which he presented to the Federal 
 section when it was divided on political issues. I will con- 
 tinue the story in the words of Dr. Holmes's speech at the 
 Berkshire Jubilee in 1844: 
 
 "One of my earliest recollections is of an annual pilgrimage made by 
 my parents to the west. The young horse was brought up, fatted by a 
 week's rest and high feeding, prancing and caracoling, to the door. It 
 came to the corner and was soon over the western hills. He was gone a 
 fortnight; and one afternoon — it always seemed to me a sunny afternoon 
 — we saw the equipage crawling from the west towards the old home- 
 stead; the young horse, who set out so fat and prancing, worn thin and 
 reduced by the long journey — the chaise covered with dust; and all 
 speaking of a terrible crusade, a formidable pilgrimage. Winter-evening's 
 stories told me where — to Berkshire, to the borders of New York — to the 
 old domain; owned so long that there seemed to be a sort of hereditary 
 love for it. 
 
 "Many years passed, and I travelled down the beautiful Rhine. I 
 wished to see the equally beautiful Hudson. I found myself at Albany; 
 and a few hours brought me to Pittsfield. I went to the little spot — the 
 scene of the pilgrimage — a mansion — and found it surrounded by a beauti- 
 ful meadow, through which the winding river made its way in a thousand 
 graceful curves. The mountains reared their heads around it. The blue 
 air, which makes our city pale cheeks again to deepen with the hue of 
 health, coursing about it pure and free. I recognized the scene of the 
 annual pilgrimage and since that I have made an annual visit to it." 
 
 Three or four years after the Jubilee, Dr. Holmes built, 
 upon a round knoll or hill, near the old mansion, a neat, plain 
 villa, commanding a fine view of the whole circle of Berkshire 
 Mountains and of the Housatonic winding its serpentine way 
 through the Canoe Meadows; so called because the Mohegan 
 Indians used to leave there their frail barks, perhaps to visit 
 one of their burial grounds in the vicinity, or perhaps con- 
 sidering this the head of canoe navigation. The knoll was 
 
194 TAGHCONIC 
 
 barren enough when the poet-professor built upon it, but his 
 liberal planting has covered it with rich turf and an abund- 
 ance of trees and shrubbery. The place is however chiefly- 
 notable as having once been the home of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, and the spot where he performed work, the fame of 
 whose results^is now sure to be as lasting as it is universal. 
 
 Some of these results are closely associated with the 
 name of Berkshire. Among those locally most highly prized 
 is Dr. Holmes's poem at the dedication .of the Pittsfield 
 Cemetery: equally charming in its way is " The New Eden," 
 which was read before the Berkshire Horticultural Society at 
 Stockbridge, in the September following the excessively dry 
 summer of 1854, when 
 
 " We saw the August sun descend 
 Day after day with blood-red stain, 
 And the blue mountains dimly blend 
 With smoke- wreaths on the burning plain. 
 
 "Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings 
 We sat and told the withering hours, 
 Till Heaven unsealed its azure springs, 
 And bade them leap in flashing showers." 
 
 In a still finer vein is "The Plough-boy," which was 
 written for the anniversary of the Berkshire Agricultural 
 Society in October, 1849. Dr. Holmes was chairman of the 
 committee upon the ploughing match; the large old church 
 was, as usual on such occasions, crowded almost to suffo- 
 cation, and when his turn came, he mounted half way up 
 the pulpit-stairs and read a report of which I quote a part: 
 
 "Time and experience have sanctioned the custom of putting only 
 plain, practical men upon this committee. Were it not so, the most 
 awkward blunders would be constantly occurring. The inhabitants of our 
 cities, who visit the country during the fine season, would find themselves 
 quite at a loss if an overstrained politeness should place them in this 
 position. Imagine a trader, or a professional man, from the capital of 
 the state, unexpectedly called upon to act in rural matters. Plough- 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 195 
 
 shares are to him shares that pay no dividends. A coulter, he supposes, 
 has something to do with a horse. His notions of stock were obtained in 
 Faneuil Hall market, where the cattle looked funnily enough, to be sure, 
 compared with the living originals. He knows, it is true, that there is a 
 difference in cattle, and would tell you that he prefers the sirloin breed. 
 His children are equally unenlightened; they know no more of the poultry- 
 yard than what they have learned by having the chicken-pox, and play- 
 ing on a Turkey carpet. Their small knowledge of wool-growing is 
 lam (b) entable. 
 
 The history of one of these summer-visitors shows how imperfect is 
 his rural education. He no sooner establishes himself in the country 
 than he begins a series of experiments. He tries to drain a marsh, but 
 only succeeds in draining his own pockets. He offers to pay for carting 
 off a compost heap; but is informed that it consists of com and potatoes 
 in an unfinished state. He sows abundantly, but reaps little or nothing, 
 except with the implement which he uses in shaving, a process which is 
 frequently performed for him by other people, though he pays no barber's 
 bill. He builds a wire fence and paints it green, so that nobody can see it. 
 But he forgets to order a pair of spectacles apiece for his cows, who, taking 
 offense at something else, take his fence in addition, and make an invisible 
 one of it, sure enough. And, finally, having bought a machine to chop 
 fodder, which chops off a good slice of his dividends, and two or three 
 children's fingers, he concludes that, instead of cutting feed, he will cut 
 farming; and so sells out to one of those plain, practical farmers, such as 
 you have honored by placing them on your committee, whose pockets are 
 not so full when he starts, but have fewer holes and not so many fingers 
 in them. 
 
 It must have been one of these practical men whose love of his pur- 
 suits led him to send in to the committee the following lines, which it is 
 hoped will be accepted as a grateful tribute to the noble art whose suc- 
 cessful champions are now to be named and rewarded." 
 
 Dr. Holmes then read the poem now known to fame as 
 the " The Plough-man," which, in his reading, all must have 
 recognized as grand poetry. But I suspect, that not one of 
 the applauding audience — and probably not even the author 
 himself — realized that they were listening to what would 
 afterwards be recognized by the world's great critics as the 
 finest georgic in any living language, or perhaps in any lan- 
 guage whatever. I have my doubts if many understood to 
 the full even the exquisite fun of the " report." 
 
196 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Yielding to his own good nature and the soft persuasions 
 of a committee of ladies, Dr. Holmes once contributed a 
 couple of poems to a fancy fair in Pittsfield. The writer 
 does not gather them into the fold of his published collec- 
 tion, and I do not know that it is quite fair to print them 
 here; but, of course, they got into the newspapers of the 
 day, and I cannot deprive you of the pleasure of reading at 
 least one of them, even if the poet does consider it a trifle, 
 too light for preservation. 
 
 Each of the poems was enclosed in an envelope bearing 
 a motto; and the right to a first and second choice, guided 
 by these, was disposed of in a raffle, to the no small emolu- 
 ment of the object of the fair. I think that the two pieces 
 are now represented by at least a square yard of the quaint 
 ecclesiastical heraldry which illuminates the gorgeous chancel 
 window of St. Stephen's Church. 
 
 The motto of the first envelope ran thus: 
 
 "Faith is the conquering angel's crown; 
 Who hopes for grace must ask it; 
 Look shrewdly ere you lay me down; 
 I'm Portia's leaden casket." 
 
 The following verses were found within. 
 
 "Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art, 
 
 Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care, 
 And — hush, O hush thy beating heart; 
 The One thou lovest will be there. 
 
 "Alas! not loved by thee alone, 
 Thine idol ever prone to range: 
 To-day all thine, to-morrow flown, 
 
 Frail thing that every hour may change. 
 
 " Yet when that truant course is done, 
 If thy lost wanderer reappear, 
 Press to thy heart the only One 
 That nought can make more truly dear!" 
 
HERMAN MELVILLE 197 
 
 Within this paper was a smaller envelope, containing a 
 dollar bill, and this explanation of the poet's riddle. 
 
 "Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell 
 If this is not a truthful letter; 
 This is the one (1) thou lovest well, 
 And nought (0) can make thee love it better (10). 
 
 "Though fickle, do not think it strange 
 That such a friend is worth possessing: 
 For one that gold can never change 
 
 Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing." 
 
 You see now, in part, why our people claim a sort of joint 
 ownership with Cambridge and Boston in Dr. Holmes and 
 his fame. They have moreover a real affection for him, 
 which leads them even to condone his irreverent sneer at 
 Pittsfield's Old Elm, as "sadly in want of a new wig of green 
 leaves:" and the charity which covers a multitude of sins 
 could stretch its skirts, no further than that. He has so 
 much human nature in him that, in spite of some social and 
 educational impediments, he, every little while, gets right 
 down to the heart of things. That is the Berkshire version 
 of the " one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin." 
 And that is what makes Dr. Holmes the most popular of 
 scholarly writers. Do you suppose the world would tolerate 
 so much learning in anybody else? 
 
 A very few rods beyond the Wendell Farms, we come to 
 Arrow-Head, the fine estate formerly owned by Hermann Mel- 
 ville. Mr. Melville is a grandson of that Major Thomas Mel- 
 ville, who, a few generations ago, was known to all Boston- 
 ians as the last genuine specimen of the gentlemen of the old 
 school left in the city, the last wearer of the costume of 'the 
 Revolution, and the last survivor of the Harbor tea party. 
 His son, of the same name and rank, was commandant of 
 the military post at Pittsfield during the war of 1812, and, 
 after the war, President of the Agricultural Society, and 
 
198 TAGHCONIC 
 
 otherwise a leader of men in Berkshire, besides being a man 
 of rare culture. With him, his nephew, Hermann, was domi- 
 ciliated for a time, while in his youth, he played school- 
 master in a wild district — under the shadow of Rock Moun- 
 tain, I think. 
 
 It was probably the memory of this early experience which 
 led Mr. Melville in 1850, in the first flush of his literary suc- 
 cess, to retire to Pittsfield, and soon purchase a fine estate 
 with a spacious old house; adjoining, in the rear, the farm of 
 his early residence with his uncle. This quaint old mansion, 
 he made the home of the most free-hearted hospitality; and 
 also a house of many stories — writing in it "Moby Dick" and 
 many other romances of the sea, and also " The Piazza Tales," 
 which took their name from a piazza built by their author 
 upon the north end of the house, and commanding a bold 
 and striking view of Greylock and the intervening valley. 
 " My chimney and I," a humorous and spicy essay, of which 
 the cumbersome old chimney — overbearing tyrant of the 
 home — is the hero, was also written here. And so, of course, 
 was " October Mountain," a sketch of mingled philosophy 
 and word-painting, which found its inspiration in the massy 
 and brilliant tints presented by a prominent and thickly 
 wooded projection of Washington Mountain, as seen- from the 
 south-eastern windows at Arrow-Head, on a fine day after 
 the early frosts. Mr. Melville was almost a zealot in his love 
 of Berkshire scenery, and there was no more ardent and inde- 
 fatigable excursionist among its hills and valleys. 
 
 And now, let us drive on to the Roaring Brook, which — 
 as you may possibly recollect — we set out to visit. Our 
 way lies through pleasant rustic scenes and the pretty agri- 
 cultural hamlet of New Lenox. Passing this, and guided by 
 the sound of the brook, we come to the mouth of the Tory's 
 Glen, through which its waters leap, tumbling down. 
 
 From the broad summit of Washington Mountain, the 
 brook comes dashing down the deep ravine, smiling in the 
 
TORY'S GLEN • 199 
 
 rare sunshine, glooming in the frequent shade, brawling with 
 the impeding boulders, toying in amber pools with the mossy- 
 banks; but for the most part rushing impatiently from fall 
 to fall, for five restless miles, until, just without the glen, it 
 loses itself in the indolent curves of the Housatonic, which 
 here puts on its gentlest mood. 
 
 It must be a sweet relief to' the water — vexed and wearied 
 by its rough passage among the sharp-angled flint rocks, and 
 by its arduous labors in turning mill wheels — thus to repose 
 at length in the flower-bordered bed of the river, and wander 
 about the meadows, in what leisurely and graceful curves it will. 
 
 Just below the entrance to the Tory's Glen, at a point in 
 the road where it winds around the base of Melville's grand 
 October Mountain, the curves display themselves in a breadth 
 of beauty which they rarely exhibit north of Stockbridge, 
 and help make up a much admired view. It is the beginning 
 of that system of beauty which distinguishes the Stockbridge 
 valley, and affords a kindly relief to the eye, if it wearies of 
 mountains, lakes and waterfalls. 
 
 One warm October day, many years ago, a three miles walk 
 in pleasant company, brought me to the smiling and fertile val- 
 ley, just without the glen, and following directions given with 
 kindly 'zeal, we soon entered it mentally contrasting the cour- 
 tesies of rustic life in New Lenox, with the urbanities of Broad- 
 way, not to any flattering extent in the interest of the city. 
 
 You can see the black opening in the mountain side 
 which indicates the location of the glen from many points 
 in the village of Pittsfield, and if you ask the people what it 
 is they will perhaps tell you, if they are of the fanciful sort: 
 "Oh, that is the Jaws of Darkness;" and you will reply, "Oh 
 yes, I see it is!" And, although you would not be quite cor- 
 rect, the contrast between the cheerful light of the hamlet and 
 the wild, sombre solitude of the mountain gorge is striking- 
 ly impressive. From the shadeless field, you enter upon over- 
 arched paths — among mossy trees, along precipitous rocks, 
 
200 TAGHCONIC 
 
 under the shadow of overhanging mountains. The heart feels 
 the change instantly, and conforms itself instinctively to it. 
 
 Here we find again those adamantine blocks of flint rock 
 which characterize and rudely adorn this whole mountain 
 range. Sometimes they lie confusedly upon the mountain's 
 steep slope; then, again, they impede the rushing course of 
 the brook. In the bed of the stream, the ever-rolling current, 
 in the course of ages, has polished the surface and rounded 
 the edges of even these obdurate masses. It is startling to 
 think by how many years of constant attrition the soft flow- 
 ing wave accomplished its purpose. How many centuries 
 ago did the savage stoop to drink at this mountain stream, and 
 think of nothing but the cooling draught — least of all that the 
 smooth, gliding fluid was bearing away a portion of the solid 
 rock whereon he stood, to form a soil for a conquering race ! 
 
 These rocks form the bed of the brooks; and are piled 
 up along its banks in mad confusion, with crevices and dens 
 between and beneath them, which in former days sheltered a 
 tenement-house population of wild beasts. In one cave 
 which lies under the road, Revolutionary tradition affirms 
 that an outlawed Tory, one Gideon Smith of Stockbridge, 
 once found refuge for weeks. It is a dreary habitation— 
 not in the ornamented style of grotto at all — a couple of 
 small rude chambers built of huge over-lapping flint rocks, 
 without a pendent stalactite or sparkling encrustation, nor 
 even a grotesquely shapen fracture, to relieve their barren 
 walls. Not a desirable residence, in any respect; and, since 
 the war has been ended for a hundred years, and it can do 
 the country no harm — and, especially, as he is dead and it 
 can do him no good — I sincerely pity that hunted Tory 
 driven out to make his home among wild beasts. Although 
 I dare say, he came out, as often as he dared, to sun himself, 
 as the badgers do, in the openings of the wood, if he could 
 find any in that shady retreat. 
 
 I do not know what offense had made him especially ob- 
 
TORY'S GLEN 201 
 
 noxious to the committees of vigilance, to which the safety 
 of the young republic was entrusted; but there is a touching 
 anecdote of him, which, if it was known, ought to have soft- 
 ened even the asperities of war times. It is to the effect that, 
 when concealed in some hiding-place at home, he made his 
 wife cause all his children to pass daily before the crevice 
 which supplied him with light and air; so that he might 
 see their innocent faces and be comforted with the know- 
 ledge of their health and safety. Not a bad man at heart, 
 that! 
 
 Smith seems to have been often a "hunted" man. In 
 May, 1776, he harbored a certain Captain McKay, a British 
 prisoner of war, who had escaped from Hartford, by the aid 
 of John Graves, a Pittsfield Tory. Smith's treasonable hos- 
 pitality becoming known to the committees, the hue and cry 
 was raised against him; and a party, of which Linus Parker, 
 a famous Pittsfield sharp-shooter, was one, repaired to his 
 house. His family reported him not at home, but the seek- 
 ers, confident that he was in the barn, summoned him to 
 surrender. He appeared at the half-open door, peered cur- 
 iously around, and, after some parley, gave himself up. 
 Smith and Parker were nevertheless personally upon friendly 
 terms; and after the war, the former being, with his wife, 
 on a visit to Parker's house, Smith reverted to the incident 
 described, and said that when he opened the barn door, 
 being an extraordinary runner, he felt certain .of making 
 good his escape ; but, seeing Parker with, his famous rifle in 
 hand, he was afraid to make the attempt. 
 
 "And now, Parker," he added, "I want to know if you 
 really would have shot me?" 
 
 "As quick as I ever shot a deer!" was the reply. 
 
 "Then it would have been all over with me," exclaimed 
 his friend, feeling that he spoke in truthful earnest, and 
 
202 TAGHCONIC 
 
 trembling at the memory of the danger which he had 
 escaped. 
 
 Such are the amenities of civil war. There were a good 
 many Tories in Berkshire county, as in every other; made 
 so doubtless, as in all civil conflicts men range themselves, 
 both on the better and the worse side, some from base and sel- 
 fish, some from pure and noble, but most from mixed, motives. 
 The Tories of Berkshire — it might be courteous to call them 
 "loyalists," but it would hardly be distinctive, since loyalty 
 to the crown meant treason to the people — the Tories of 
 Berkshire were mostly of the wealthier, the magisterial, and 
 the more refined, classes; and of those in other grades of 
 society who were bound to them by one tie or another. Not 
 that all, or even a majority, of these classes failed under the 
 test which tried men's souls: but, as ever, wealth and official 
 position proved powerful persuaders against revolution: and, 
 early in the war at least, the leading Tories evidently believed 
 in the prophecies which they uttered so unctuously that, to 
 Whig ears, they sounded unpleasantly like threats: to wit, 
 that the king's generals would come down upon the rebellious 
 colony from Canada, with his resistless army and his savage 
 allies; and that Berkshire would be the first county to feel 
 his vengeance, as it had been the first to provoke it by sup- 
 pressing his courts. It was a prudent error which made 
 most of the Tories; they knew not what this means: "he 
 that seeketh his life, shall lose it" — lacked the virtue which 
 risks all in conflict for the right ; and had neither the daring wis- 
 dom nor the wise courage which plucks the flower, safety, from 
 the thistle, danger. Before the war was over, most of them 
 were — often by rather heroic remedies — cured of their perver- 
 sity — at least as to its external manifestation. I fear the cure 
 was not always radical ; but it sometimes was, as in one instance 
 which I am going to cite for you; no doubt, however, many 
 were religiously sincere in their loyalty: and all were able to 
 make a very plausible, even if hollow, defence from Holy Writ. 
 
CONVERTING A TORY 203 
 
 When a man has made up his mind to do a mean, vicious 
 or cruel thing in his own interest, a text of scripture, which 
 seems to commend or justify it, is very soothing. I think 
 some of us can recollect when the garbled text "servants 
 obey your masters," and St. Paul's injunction to a fugitive 
 slave — Onesimus by name — salved the conscience of almost 
 an entire nation, sorely lacerated by all the rest of the New 
 Testament, to say nothing of the Decalogue, the Declaration 
 of Independence and the great book of nature. The Tories 
 could make out a much better case than that ; as you see by 
 glancing at the head of this article. Those of them who 
 were, or had been, magistrates or officers in the militia had 
 moreover taken the most iron-clad of oaths, not only to bear 
 faith and true allegiance to King George, but to the best of 
 their power, to defend him against all traitorous conspiracies, 
 and to make all such known to him. "All these things," 
 said the subscribers to this oath, " I do plainly and sincerely 
 acknowledge and swear according to the express words by 
 me spoken, and according to the plain common sense and 
 understanding of the same words, without any equivocation 
 or mental reservation whatever:" and, however the majority 
 of good men might find that in the conduct of "the man 
 George," which released them from the obligations of that 
 oath, and discharged them from all allegiance to him, I hope 
 that you will not bestow' unmitigated reprobation upon those 
 whose tender conscience, and. the loyalty to " His Sacred 
 Majesty," sedulously instilled by education into their heart 
 of hearts, refused to be so relieved. 
 
 I am speaking of moral condemnation only: however 
 tenderly we may appreciate the sentiment of natural, but 
 mistaken, loyalty which governed the conscientious adherent 
 to the royal cause, the committees of safety and vigilance 
 could take little account of it. Stern necessity, and duty to 
 a holier cause, imperatively demanded that it should be re- 
 . pressed with a strong hand. And it was done ; harshly per- 
 
204 TAGHCONIC 
 
 haps and unwisely at times ; but effectually, and not with half 
 the vindictiveness and cruelty which would surely have been 
 visited upon the committee-men had the Revolution failed. 
 
 Pardon me for this prolixity; but I am heart-sick of the 
 overstrained magnanimity, falsely so called, which concen- 
 trates all its charities and praises for the defeated champions 
 of the wrong, and reserves all its censures and denunciations 
 for the triumphant defenders of the right. If I recall some 
 of the traits which relieve somewhat the odium justly due to 
 even conscientious support of tyranny and antagonism to 
 freedom, or something of the imperfections which marred 
 the record of the patriots, let me not be construed - as deny- 
 ing that.^to the memory of the rudest sincere Whig, honor 
 and glory are due which that of the most refined and con- 
 scientious Tory must never share. 
 
 And now let me to my stories, the first of which I heard 
 from that best, and most abundantly supplied, of all Berk- 
 shire story-tellers, Governor George N. Briggs; who, by the 
 bye, I am sure would have sanctioned the sentiments I have 
 just expressed. 
 
 In the early part of the Revolution there lived in Lenox 
 a staunch old Tory, who openly professed his allegiance to 
 King George, and his hostility to the rebel cause; but, as 
 he confined his opposition to words, and was greatly respected 
 and beloved by his fellow citizens, for his many excellent 
 qualities as a friend and neighbor, he was allowed for a long 
 while to enjoy his opinions unmolested. But the contest 
 between England and the colonies waxed every day more 
 bitter, and the Committee of Safety began to be troubled 
 with doubts if it were consistent with their duty to permit 
 one^who so loudly vaunted his toryism to live among them, 
 and encourage others to commit outrages of which he would 
 not be personally guilty. 
 
 The matter was often a subject of deliberation, but the 
 committee were reluctant to act. At length, however, in 
 
CONVERTING A TORY 205 
 
 some dark and trying hour — perhaps in the bitterness of 
 defeat, perhaps after hearing of the horrors of Wyoming — 
 they resolved to move. Or, perhaps, as happened in some 
 emergencies, their zeal was quickened by orders from head- 
 quarters. At any rate, paying a visit to the Tory, they in- 
 formed him, they had come to the conclusion that his ex- 
 ample was too pernicious to the cause of liberty to be any 
 longer permitted. They regretted the circumstance, but their 
 duty was imperative; in short, he must take the oath of 
 allegiance to the colonies — or swing. 
 
 The oath was peremptorily and unhesitatingly refused; 
 and the next step was an extemporaneous gallows, erected 
 in the public street, beneath which the recusant was placed, 
 and the rope tightened around his throat, but immediately 
 loosened and the oath again proffered, and again declined. 
 
 All arguments and threats proving abortive, the contemp- 
 tuous loyalist was again drawn up, and left to hang until he 
 became purple in the face — care being taken to lower him 
 and apply restoratives, before life was extinct. Conscious- 
 ness being once more restored, the oath was again tendered, 
 and he was entreated to yield to the necessity of the case: 
 but his stubborn spirit was not yet broken; he refused to 
 renounce his allegiance to the Crown. 
 
 Things had now come to an awkward pass; and the com- 
 mittee, who possibly were by this time sorry they had taken 
 the matter in hand, retired to the tavern for consultation. 
 The New England committee-man could no more deliberate 
 without his mug of flip than the New Amsterdam burgher 
 without his pipe of tobacco. But whatever counsels of 
 mercy there may have been under that genial influence (of 
 which the prisoner was not denied his consoling cup) it 
 was finally resolved that, having put their hands to the 
 plough, it would never do to turn back. Regard for dignity 
 and the authority of the committee forbade it. In short 
 the good of the cause required that the prisoner 
 
206 TAGHCONIC 
 
 should take the oath, or suffer death for his contumacy. 
 
 The loyalist received their decision with unflinching de- 
 termination not to yield a hair's breadth in what he believed 
 to be the right. The committee were equally resolved, and 
 he was again drawn up — -perhaps with some angry violence. 
 And at once it seemed that the work of death had been too 
 effectually done. 
 
 It may be that the committee had not designed to carry 
 their measures to so extreme a length. Possibly they doubted 
 if the authority given them to "handle the Tories" was suffi- 
 cient to warrant them in it, for, although the people of Berk- 
 shire, from 1774 to 1781, would admit no courts of law among 
 them — submitting only to their own committees — there was 
 a tacit exception of capital cases, which were tried before the 
 Supreme Court at Springfield. But, whatever may have been 
 the feeling or intention of the committee in their anger, the 
 sight they now witnessed might well bring back their old affec- 
 tion for a tried friend and kind neighbor. They hastened to cut 
 down the body, and use every effort to undo their fatal work. 
 
 There seemed at first little hope of reanimating the sense- 
 less clay ; but at length the limbs slightly relaxed their rigid- 
 ity, the eyes moved, and the livid hue began to disappear 
 from the cheek. Consciousness slowly and painfully re- 
 turned; the victim sat upright — and the question was again 
 asked: "Will you swear?" "Yes," faintly responded the 
 half-dead convert to patriotism. 
 
 A few moments afterwards, as he was sitting before the 
 tavern fire and a glass of steaming punch — furnished by the 
 order, if not at the expense, of the committee — warming him- 
 self after his dangerous exposure to the chills of the shadow 
 of death, he was heard to mutter thoughtfully to himself — 
 "Well! this is a hard way to make Whigs — but it'll do it!" 
 
 And, accordingly, from that day to the close of the war, 
 he was one of the most zealous and unwavering of the patriots. 
 
 Another story illustrates still more remarkably the same 
 
A TORY'S INTEGRITY 207 
 
 trait of unflinching integrity. It was told to me by the late 
 Hon. Henry Hubbard, who was well versed in Berkshire 
 traditions; but I remember to have read it in my childhood, 
 and, although I cannot recall the name of the book in which 
 I found it, it is likely that I have used some of the phraseology 
 which was impressed upon my youthful memory. 
 
 It seems that, at some time during the Revolution, one 
 Nathan Jackson of Tyringham — a romantic and beautiful 
 farming town of Southern Berkshire — was accused of the 
 crime of high treason against the United Colonies, or States. 
 The trial was to be at Springfield, but the court did not sit 
 for some weeks — during which interval Jackson was confined 
 in the Berkshire county gaol, at Great Barrington, which 
 was in so dilapidated a condition that he might easily have 
 escaped at any time, had he not scorned an act which might 
 indicate cowardice, or reluctance to suffer for his principles. 
 Unwilling, however, to waste his time in idleness, he applied 
 to the sheriff for permission to go out daily to work, promis- 
 ing to return faithfully to the prison every night. So well 
 was his character for integrity established, that, although he 
 was committed on a capital charge, and did not deny the 
 facts alleged against him, the sheriff did not hesitate to com- 
 ply with his request. And so well was that confidence de- 
 served, that the prisoner never failed to return to his quarters 
 punctually every night to be locked up. 
 
 What follows is a still stronger proof of the reliance placed 
 upon his word. The court was to be held at Springfield, 
 and the journey to it was then a weary one, over rough 
 forest roads. Jackson was the only prisoner to be carried 
 on, and the sheriff complained bitterly of the trouble to 
 which he was subjected, particularly at this busy season of 
 the year. The Tory told him that it was quite unnecessary 
 for him to go — he could go just as well by himself; and 
 again he was trusted, and set out alone and on foot, to go 
 fifty miles through the woods to surrender himself to be tried 
 
208 TAGHCONIC 
 
 for his life, upon a charge where he could not hope for an 
 acquittal, and by a tribunal whose right to judge him he 
 could conscientiously deny. Surely, if ever a man had an 
 excuse to palliate a violation of confidence, it was he; the 
 idea, however, seems never to have occurred to him. 
 
 Luckily for him, on his way he was overtaken by the 
 Hon. Mr. Edwards, then a member of the Executive Council, 
 to attend a session of which body he was then on his way to 
 Boston. This gentleman entered into conversation with 
 Jackson, and, without disclosing his own name or official 
 position, learned the nature of his companion's journey, 
 and something of his history. Pondering upon what he had 
 heard, Mr. Edwards pursued his way to Boston; and Jack- 
 son, trudging on, soon reached Springfield, and surrendering 
 himself, was tried; did not deny the facts alleged against 
 him, and, as a matter of course, was found guilty and con- 
 demned to death. 
 
 In due course the petitions for pardon of persons under 
 sentence of death, were considered by the Honorable Council 
 which then exercised the supreme executive authority in 
 Massachusetts. After all had been read Mr. Edwards asked 
 if none had been received in favor of Nathan Jackson of 
 Tyringham. The reply was that there was none; and a 
 member of the council, who had been present at the trial, 
 remarked that the case was one of such undoubted and ag- 
 gravated guilt, and the attachment of the condemned man 
 to the King's cause was so inveterate, that there could be no 
 reason for granting a pardon in this case, unless it was ex- 
 tended in every other. 
 
 Mr. Edwards, in reply, related his adventure with Jack- 
 son on the road, and also his story, which he had taken pains 
 to have substantiated by the sheriff of Berkshire. A mur- 
 mur of admiration went round the council board; it was 
 unanimously agreed that such a man ought not to die upon 
 
SUNNYVALE 209 
 
 the gallows, and, after some brief discussion, an unconditional 
 pardon was made out and dispatched to Springfield. 
 
 The stories suggested by the Tory's Glen have led us far 
 away from it; and we will return only for the purpose of 
 passing again through the pleasant village of New Lenox 
 and its sunny valley; and to answer a question asked me 
 by a companion with whom I once rode through it: "Has 
 so pretty a place no story?" 
 
 To be sure it has; but of that kind which is best told in 
 verse. 
 
 Sunnyvale. 
 
 One sunny summer afternoon, 
 The gladdest in all joyous June, 
 Happiest man beneath heaven's dome, 
 A farmer brought his young wife home; 
 And, as they reached the mountain's brow, 
 And saw his cottage smile below, 
 He bade his bonnie bride mark well 
 How gaily there the sunshine fell. 
 
 June came again — a babe was born. 
 It came once more — the child was gone: 
 Yet, though the farmer's face grew sad, 
 A smile of new-found peace, it had, 
 He strove the mother's grief to calm, 
 And said the June days brought a balm; 
 For something more than sunshine fell 
 From where their child had gone to dwell. 
 
 June came again — the farmer's wife 
 Was passing from our mortal life; 
 They laid her in our sunniest glade 
 Before its frailest flowers could fade. 
 That year the farmer did not mark 
 If earth or sky were bright or dark, 
 Yet still the careless sunshine fell 
 Gaily, as if all things were well, 
 
210 TAGHCONIC 
 
 June cometh now. From scenes the dead 
 Had left too lone, the farmer fled; 
 And strangers, from his lonely hearth, 
 Dispel the gloom with household mirth, 
 While not a tone in any voice 
 Says some have wept, where they rejoice; 
 And still the blithesome sunlight falls 
 As gaily round those cottage walls. 
 
Bash-Bish and the Dome 
 
Bash-Bish and the Dome 
 
 "For here these pathless mountains free 
 Gave shelter to my love and me, 
 And every rock and every stone 
 Bare witness that he was my own." — Campbell. 
 
 Doubtless the wildest and most awe-inspiring gorge among 
 the Berkshire Hills is the deep and shaggy recess in the 
 western side of Mount Washington, into which the famous 
 cascade, Bash-Bish Falls, comes dashing in a striking series 
 of bold leaps and plunges. Speaking of the passage down- 
 ward, along the side of the little cataract, a writer familiar 
 with the Alps, but a little inclined to startling statements, 
 says; "the descent over the rocks, along the awful rent made 
 in the mountain, was wild as an Alpine gorge, and even more 
 perilous." 
 
 Mount Washington is the huge mountain pile — a portion 
 of the Taconic Range, which fills the south-western corner 
 of Berkshire. In grandeur it is rivalled by Greylock alone 
 among our hills; the inhabited portion having an elevation 
 of from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level 
 of the surrounding valleys, while the summit rises to an 
 altitude five or six hundred feet greater. Its grandeur, how- 
 ever, comes from other peculiarities as well as from its height. 
 It has also long been famed for scenes of picturesque beauty; 
 and has of late gained new renown and interest as the locality 
 of Sky Farm; the romantic home of the charming child- 
 poets, Elaine and Dora Goodale. 
 
 If you chance to be in the vicinity of Great Barrington, 
 or if you desire, and have leisure for, a prolonged drive, 
 your better way to Bash-Bish is through that town and 
 Egremont, past Bryant's Green River and over Mount Wash- 
 ington. That is certainly the old fashioned poetic route; 
 but I am going to tell you how the falls looked, one day, to 
 

 T 
 
 214 TAGHCONIC 
 
 a field-meeting of certain scientific associations of Troy, 
 Albany and Pittsfield. 
 
 Bash-Bish lies at an equal distance from Albany and 
 Pittsfield, and an hour's ride on the Boston and Albany 
 railroad brought the excursionists to Chatham, midway be- 
 tween the two — while another hour on the Harlem road 
 carried the united party to the pleasant village of Copake, 
 renowned chiefly for its iron works. 
 
 The location of the village is unique: with an outlook 
 over the smiling fields of New York, on the west, while the 
 frowning mountains of Massachusetts almost over-hang it on 
 the east. 
 
 The falls are about a mile and a half from the village, 
 and not many rods east of the state boundary line. The 
 road to them is delightful. Indeed the first glimpses of it 
 were so enticing that a majority of our party preferred to 
 walk over it, although our hosts — the Troy and Albany 
 Associations — had provided liberally for riding, and the 
 kindly people who welcomed us, gave warning that the ladies, 
 at least, should reserve all their strength for the falls. 
 
 After lingering awhile in -the village, we moved on, to 
 the great stone stack of the iron blast-furnace: the most 
 picturesque of manufacturies, and the only one which adds 
 to, rather than mars, the attractiveness of a region like this. 
 
 A little further, and we came to the handsome and finely 
 located Swiss cottage of Mr. Alfred Douglas, of New York, 
 the proprietor of Bash-Bish and its romantic surroundings; 
 where, by his hospitable invitation, we wandered at will 
 through the spacious grounds and deliciously filled conserva- 
 tories. Even after leaving this charming resting place, most 
 of us did not heed the hurrying summons we began to hear 
 in the impatient roar of the cascade; but dallied listlessly 
 in the park-like groves, by the shady wayside, or on the 
 banks of the stream whose dashing, flashing, gleaming rocks 
 and amber pools reminded us of our own Roaring Brook. 
 
BA5H-BISH 215 
 
 Still the day was not very far advanced when we came 
 where the gorge, widening a little, throws up its barriers into 
 bare cliffs and shaggy, precipitous, or pillar-like, eminences. 
 Through the top of the central cliff, the stream has worn 
 down its way, leaving its walls on either side like huge horns. 
 Between these in no very great volume — but snowy, silvery, 
 summer cloud, foam-like — its waters come down in a succes- 
 sion of bold leaps, divided midway by a rocky shelf into 
 "The Twin Falls." A column worthy, almost, of the Alps 
 or the Yosemite. One peculiarity of the basin at the foot 
 of the falls, is the great variety of views which it affords of 
 the cascade and the rocks which mingle grandly or grotesquely 
 with it. And, wandering from point to point in search of 
 these — now standing on the rudest of rustic bridges, and now 
 on slippery rocks; here on bare and gravelly beaches, and 
 there under green branches — scores of laughing groups helped 
 to fill up and enliven the landscape for each other. This 
 for half an hour, or more; then ambition seized them. "By 
 that sin fell the angels" — Shakespeare's angels; and the 
 danger seemed imminent that it would have a similar result 
 for ours. But the first effect was quite the reverse: it car- 
 ried them right up — almost straight up — the steepest of all 
 possible log-and-rock-encumbered paths, to the Eagle's Nest, 
 Prospect Rock, and all manner of preposterous places. And 
 grosser mortals, whether laden with scientific lore or other- 
 wise, went along per-force. 
 
 It was impossible in the brief time of our visit to make 
 a thorough survey of the falls, and I therefore condense the 
 detailed account of President Hitchcock, who devoted three 
 visits to it: 
 
 From a spot upon Mount Washington whose beauty the President 
 glowingly eulogizes, one descends, two thousand feet, to find himself by a 
 noisy stream, about a rod wide, which for a short distance, tumbles rap- 
 idly down between perpendicular cliffs of talcose slate, a hundred feet 
 high. Soon, striking a huge barrier of this rock, the brook turns, at right 
 
216 TAGHCONIC 
 
 angles, to the left, and for fifty or sixty rods, rushes down a declivity of 
 eighty degrees. Here the water has performed its greatest wonders. 
 Sinking its bed for unknown ages, and at the same time beating with its 
 waters on the edges of the slate, it has worn a dome-shaped cavity to the 
 depth of one hundred and ninety-four feet. At the bottom of this cavity, 
 one is at the foot of a vast wall of rock [the base of "The Eagle's nest,"] 
 which encloses him on the east, south and west; and as it rises, curves 
 outward. So that, looking upward, he sees it, at the height of nearly 
 two hundred feet, projecting full twenty-five feet from its base. From 
 the uppermost fall, the stream leaps in several smaller cascades perhaps 
 sixty feet in the aggregate, half hidden by huge boulders and over-hang- 
 ing trees. At length we arrive at the principal fall. The water divided 
 in twain by a huge boulder poised upon its brink, falls over a nearly straight 
 and perpendicular precipice, about sixty feet, into a deep basin. Any 
 single view, as this detailed description shows, can take in but a small 
 portion of the scenery of Bash-Bish Gorge. President Hitchcock esti- 
 mates the perpendicular height from the top of the highest precipice to 
 the bottom of the lowest fall at three hundred and twenty feet. 
 
 Among the striking prospects offered by these stupendous 
 heights, there was a very clear one that some unfortunates 
 would glance off the paths, slippery with the needles of ever 
 green foliage, and, going sheer down that fearful distance 
 get undistinguishably mashed upon the bare rock beneath; 
 which, for the moment, would have been disagreeable, how 
 ever much of pleasing interest it might have added to the 
 scene for future visitors. But the day passed with no more 
 thrilling incident than a sudden plunge from an insecure 
 plank into the cold stream. Never was so adventurous 
 climbing with so little of startling adventure. 
 
 As the afternoon wore to a close, we gathered for the 
 favorite landscape of the gorge : that from Sunset Cliff, which 
 rises a few rods below the fall. Here the view is down the 
 gorge, westward. For a mile, there is a wooded glen with 
 the stream threading its silver way through it, while at its 
 termination two abrupt hills — Cedar and Elk Mountains — 
 rise on either side, like Herculean pillars, to the height of 
 more than a thousand feet. Near the end of the glen we 
 
BASH-BISH 217 
 
 see the fitly placed cottage of Mr. Douglas, with the American 
 flag floating in grace and beauty by its side. But this bold 
 and pleasing picture is only the foreground to the grand view 
 of the Catskills, which are seen to loom up in the distance 
 lofty, majestic, dim and cloud-like. In perfectly clear days 
 their outlines are sharply cut on the blue sky or sunset clouds. 
 One may doubt which of the two aspects is the most to be 
 enjoyed. We were enraptured with that which was vouch- 
 safed us. 
 
 The explorations of the day over, carriages were more in 
 request than they had been in the morning, although an 
 enthusiastic minority preferred to stroll back as they came. 
 Then we dined luxuriously in the rude but comfortable freight 
 depot : the Albany and Troy Associations still being our hosts ; 
 and Mr. H. S. Goodale, of Sky Farm, adding to the fare two 
 fat turkeys, one of them including in its dressing a witty 
 poem of welcome, and the other a miner alogical tribute in 
 the shape of a superb specimen of kyanite. 
 
 Finally we gathered in the tasteful little church, to ascer- 
 tain what anybody had done for science during the day. I 
 had not observed that any soul had cared for anything except, 
 with might and main, to enjoy the scenery, the scrambles, 
 the rambles, the climbing and all the rest of the woodland 
 jollity. Somebody has said that notes to a fine poem are 
 like an anatomical lecture upon a savory joint ; and I greatly 
 feared that some such comparison would fit a scientific report 
 upon Bash-Bish. But those field-meeting savans, with their 
 eyes trained to special observation, are at home everywhere 
 with their minute philosophy; and everywhere find sources 
 of rare enjoyment which, however they may have before 
 been " caviare to the multitude," they contrive to make the 
 multitude enjoy with them. 
 
 In some departments, Bash-Bish had proved a rich field. 
 Professor Peck, the State Botanist of New York, and a special- 
 ist in fungi, had detected in the gorge five species which were 
 
218 TAGHCONIC 
 
 new to him, as well as some rare and beautiful varieties of the 
 fringed gentian. Mr. Homes, the State Librarian, had made 
 a study of the peculiar and valuable hematite ores. Others 
 contributed their share of scientific discussion: so that the 
 day was found to have been not altogether squandered in 
 pleasure. 
 
 The notes to the poetry of the occasion were furnished, 
 in anything but an anatomical style, by learned and quaint 
 Professor Tatlock of Pittsfield. " They might be epitomized, 
 said a writer in an Albany newspaper, "by the line of Horace:" 
 
 Nullus argento color abdito in terris: 
 
 or, in other words, what is all the beauty of nature that we 
 have been admiring, without men and women — and especially 
 the Albany Institute and their friends — to admire it?" 
 
 There seemed nobody to say anything for the really very 
 interesting local history of Mount Washington and its vicinity. 
 I might indeed, myself, have told the little story which I am 
 now going to tell you ; but there were reasons why I should 
 avoid doing so. 
 
 The Swiss Lovers. 
 You may have read — or, at any rate, whether you have 
 read it or not, it is true — that, at a very early date, there was 
 a Swiss colony of iron makers upon Mount Washington. 
 Miss Sedgwick asserts that they gave the name of Bash-Bish 
 to the cascade — that being the patois of their canton for a 
 small waterfall. But I have my doubts as to that: first, 
 because two or three Swiss gentlemen of whom I made inquiry 
 were not aware of anything of the kind; and, secondly, be- 
 cause Dr. O'Callaghan, the New York historian, once pointed 
 me to an old vocabulary of the language of some western 
 Indian tribes — in Illinois, I think — in which Bash-a-Bish is 
 given as signifying a waterfall. Still Miss Sedgwick may be 
 correct, as she had visited in Switzerland, and was the in- 
 timate friend of the historian, Sismondi, and his family. A 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 219 
 
 resident of one canton in Switzerland is not necessarily 
 familiar with the patois of another, and makers of Indian 
 vocabularies are a long way from infallible, as I grieve to 
 know. 
 
 But, however it may have been with regard to Bash-Bish, 
 Miss Sedgwick is certainly good authority for the assertion 
 that the Swiss colony gave the name of Mount Rhighi to the 
 locality where they settled, in honor of the famous mountain 
 they had left behind. She was a descendant of the most 
 prominent of the early settlers of southern Berkshire, and 
 was likely to be well informed in regard to its history. 
 
 One more preliminary. The brown hematites, which 
 abound in Berkshire, from Mount Washington to Lanesboro' 
 and Cheshire — as well as here at Copake, and in the neigh- 
 boring Connecticut town of Salisbury — are among the most 
 precious of iron ores, they are among the most beautiful, 
 also, when, as they often do, they assume the stalactical 
 form. The black and glossy bubbling shape of many speci- 
 mens gives the impression that they were made by heat; 
 but the real agency was water. The hematite beds were 
 certainly deposited from the decomposition of primitive, or 
 magnetic, ores which once lay at points higher than they. 
 Break one of these glossy pieces, and you shall see the stal- 
 actical crystalization in exquisitely delicate and symmetrical 
 radiation. It is worth one's while, even in the region of 
 rarest landscape, to stop curiously by the side of a rusty 
 ore-heap. There is nothing more admirable in the painting 
 of the loveliest flower, nothing more wonderful in the up- 
 heaval of the mightiest hills, than you may find in the forma- 
 tion of those myriad crystals, about to be cast by rude hands 
 into the seven-fold heated furnace. 
 
 When the fields were first cleared these ores, scattered in 
 boulders over the surface, or not deeply buried, were easily 
 accessible, and iron works sprang up everywhere: not the 
 costly and massive structures you now see, but forges, scarcely 
 
220 TAGHCONIC 
 
 more in appearance than expanded blacksmith shops; al- 
 though they made iron that was iron. It was this slightness 
 of structure and consequent change of location as often as 
 convenience required, that renders it impossible for me to 
 tell you precisely where the forge and iron master's dwelling 
 of my story stood: but you will observe that it could not 
 have been far from the Bash-Bish gorge; perhaps — who 
 knows? — on the very site of the present Copake furnace. 
 
 Doubtless you think this a queer, matter-of-fact introduc- 
 tion to a love story. But this will not be much of a story, 
 after all. You must recollect that it might have been a 
 field-meeting report. And, moreover, the love stories in this 
 volume are, none of them, mere things of fancy; but the 
 genuine growth of this Berkshire soil — or, at the least, fix- 
 tures attached to the reality. 
 
 And there is poetry in the iron-master's trade, Listen to 
 but one verse of a spirited song put into his mouth by J. E. 
 
 Dow: 
 
 "I delve in the mountain's dark recess. 
 And build my fires in the wilderness; 
 The red rock crumbles beneath my blast, 
 While the tall trees tremble and stand aghast. 
 At midnight's hour my furnace glows, 
 And the liquid ore in red streams flows, 
 Till the mountain's heart is melted down, 
 And seared by fire is its sylvan crown." 
 
 Yes, the monotony of woodland excursions by day is 
 grandly relieved by a visit to an iron furnace by night. 
 And the ladies should know that the light from the glowing 
 metal is a great intensifier of some kinds of beauty. 
 
 And now to my story. 
 
 It must be more than a hundred years since there lived 
 near the base of the Bernese Jura, two men quite opposite in 
 character, and — as one of them, at least, conceived — of 
 somewhat different ranks in life. Peter Goubermann earned 
 a moderate livelihood in a narrow recess of the mountain, 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 221 
 
 which, besides the necessary room for his forge and dwelling, 
 had barely space for a modest garden, and pasturage for a 
 single cow. It was a laborious and humble life he led; but 
 he had little ambition to exchange it for one of more wealth 
 and ease; and none at all to rise in the social scale above the 
 station which his fathers had occupied before him for he 
 knew not how many generations. Content that he was 
 secure in the reasonable comforts of his home, and that it 
 was safe from the terrors of the avalanche — whose crash 
 sometimes roused him from his peaceful slumbers to utter a 
 thankful prayer and fall quietly asleep again — almost his 
 sole pride was in his forge, whose iron was unrivalled in the 
 Berne market, and his garden which, for its rods, had not an 
 equal in the canton. 
 
 But, if he exulted in these, his chief pride was his pretty 
 daughter, Annette; not his pride alone, but the pride of 
 the whole neighborhood; its pride and flower, by the con- 
 senting voice of all, except an envious few. And the envy 
 must have been base indeed, which could sour those whom 
 it possessed against one so unspoiled by flattery as Annette 
 Goubermann — the gentlest, kindliest and most unassuming, 
 as well as the most beautiful, of Bernese maidens: as all 
 accounts agree. 
 
 The moral antipodes of that Swiss Valley-Forge was only 
 a mile and a half distant from it, where the possessions of 
 Anton Von Stachel, the great landed proprietor of that region 
 began. The rich man had commenced life with Peter Gouber- 
 mann; and as plain Anton Stachel, the poorer of the two. 
 But he was of that class against whom the prophet Isaiah 
 pronounced the curse : 
 
 "Woe unto them that join house to house, 
 That lay field to field, till there be no place, 
 That they may be placed alone in the earth." 
 
 And he succeeded so well that it seemed as though he 
 would finally leave no place in his mountain microcosm for 
 
222 TAGHCONIC 
 
 any neighbor. The superstitious people said he had discov- 
 ered the philosopher's stone, or possessed some talisman of 
 that sort: and so he had; but it was only his own stony 
 heart, that grew harder and harder every prosperous year. 
 There are many people who prosper under the same poten- 
 tial charm; but wise old Isaiah knew what he was prophecy- 
 ing: it is but a bitter woe to them all at last. 
 
 As the rich man grew in wealth, he increased also in 
 vanity, and either discovered, or pretended to discover, some 
 far-away connection with a gentle German family; where- 
 upon, assuming gentility to himself, he jerked an aristocratic 
 syllable into his plebeian name, and became Anton Von 
 Stachel. That is, he so called himself; and all the neigh- 
 bors, who held him in awe, so addressed him, although the 
 high and mighty council of the canton contemptuously per- 
 sisted in enrolling him simply as "Stachel, yeoman." And 
 he almost bit his tongue through with vexation when he was 
 compelled to answer to the humble patronymic of which his 
 honest father had been proud. 
 
 In republican Switzerland, the legitimate distinctions of 
 social rank are not very marked; but, as in republican 
 America, the craving for them, such as they are, often half 
 crazes the unfortunates upon whose vanity it takes hold; 
 and poor, rich, Stachel — now with, and now without, the 
 "Von" — was a very sad case of this mental malady. His 
 social ambition possessed his soul almost equally with his 
 avidity to add field to field in what he called his " domain." 
 Indeed the two seemed only different developments of the 
 same consuming passion. 
 
 The gossips said, in whispers among themselves — that 
 he had worried his poor wife to death by his attempts to 
 make her conform to his notions of gentility, assume superior- 
 ity over the friends of her youth, and even half disown her 
 own family relations. It is certain that, what with his 
 vanity, his tyranny and his absurdity, he led her a most un- 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 223 
 
 happy life, in a vain attempt to conquer her aversion to false- 
 hood and pretence, and check her generous charities. It is 
 certain moreover that, with all due submission in things 
 reasonable, she made a brave, honest, and womanly resist- 
 ance to wrong and folly, while she could. And then she died. 
 
 Whether the gossips were right as to the cause of her 
 death, I shall not at this distance of time pretend to say; 
 but in their mysterious female Vehme-Gericht — that shadowy 
 tribunal which prevails in all lands, and holding its secret 
 sessions undetected in the midst of crowds, deals doom to 
 high and low, as insidiously and irresistibly as the viewless 
 angel of the plague — in this grewsome conclave, the gossips 
 continued to mutter judgments. And none among them was 
 more positive than this ; that Madame Stachel had left a son 
 who had a deal of the mother in him — or, as the more em- 
 phatic put it, "was all mother" — and that he would one day 
 worry the life out of the old man, unless he forestalled him 
 in that pleasing process. 
 
 As the boy, Hermann, grew up to be a fine, bold, gener- 
 ous-hearted young man, it began to look as though the doom 
 pronounced by the feminine Vehme-Gericht against the house 
 of Stachel, would befall it. The whole neighborhood rang 
 with stories of the wrangles between the father and the son; 
 although even the old man's most cringing adherents were 
 compelled to admit, when pressed to the wall, that Hermann 
 was disobedient only to his most odious commands. 
 
 Of course in due time, the young man lost his heart to 
 the Pride of the Valley. There was nothing strange in that; 
 all the youth of the canton suffered in the same way. The 
 peculiarity of this case was that the honest Annette, rather 
 than Hermann should be robbed, gave her own in exchange. 
 
 There was a little halcyon period of courtship; but when 
 the betrothal was fully determined upon, neither Father 
 Goubermann nor the young people, were of the mind to 
 make a clandestine affair of it. That was not in their truth- 
 
224 TAGHCONIC 
 
 ful natures. Perhaps, too, they did not anticipate the stub- 
 born and violent opposition with which the elder Stachel 
 received the announcement of his son's intentions. To be 
 sure, the iron-master was not rich, and not even the prefix 
 of, "Von," could make the name of Goubermann sound 
 otherwise than peasant-like; but then he could afford his 
 daughter a decent dower; and, as for his name, there was 
 not one in all Switzerland which stood higher for the in- 
 tegrity and sterling worth of its owner. And, then, every- 
 body knew that Annette might have gone to the best man- 
 sion, or one of the best, in the city of Berne, as the bride of 
 the wealthiest young burgher there; and what was more, 
 a right worthy fellow. But the Valley-Forge match would 
 have thwarted one of the fondest schemes of Stachel's am- 
 bition, and he set his face against it as flintily as though it 
 had been his heart. 
 
 I need not tell in detail the story of the long months of 
 waiting and hoping, loving and hating, threatenings and de- 
 fiances. Suffice it, that Father Goubermann would not hear 
 of any marriage without the consent of Father Stachel, at 
 least until further effort was made to obtain it; nor would 
 he listen to Hermann's plan of learning the iron-maker's 
 art, in order that he might make himself independent. 
 
 Six or eight months had passed in this manner when, in 
 an interval of comparative peace — doubtless cunningly pre- 
 pared — his father commissioned Hermann to attend to some 
 affair in connection with his mother's family in a remote 
 section of the confederacy; and, after a tender parting with 
 his betrothed, he set out on his errand without suspicion of 
 treachery. But he had scarcely crossed the borders of the 
 canton when the storm which had long been brewing burst 
 upon the household he loved so well. 
 
 In his life-long course of evil-dealing, Stachel had neces- 
 sarily secured legal tools, as reckless of right and mercy as 
 himself; and now, having determined to break off his son's 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 225 
 
 marriage at any cost, he put the business into the hands of 
 one Beza, a weasel-faced lawyer of Berne. Even the ferret- 
 eyes of the attorney, squinny them as he would, could dis- 
 cover nothing in the conduct of Annette upon which the 
 most harpy-like slander could fasten; and that resort was 
 speedily given over. Nothing remained but, by some device, 
 to bring the iron-master into the power of the oppressor ; and 
 the unimpeachable integrity of the man forbade all hope of 
 effecting this by criminal accusation, or by enticement into 
 any rash act. Thus far, the righteousness of the threatened 
 household was a wall of defence round about them. 
 
 But, almost mad with the ill success of his wicked schemes 
 — which did not even come to the knowledge of those against 
 whom they were plotted — Stachel spurred on his agent with 
 new promise of reward: and not in vain. Beza discovered, 
 or forged, some flaw in the Goubermann title to the iron 
 works and the land attached to them; and his employer 
 hastened to purchase the rights of the person in whom the 
 property would vest, if the flaw should prove fatal: and no 
 efforts were spared to make it so. Before Hermann departed 
 on his journey, the new claim had become so well fortified, 
 although no hint of it had spread beyond the circle of the 
 conspirators, that it seemed impregnable; and, as soon as 
 the young man was well out of the way, the masked battery 
 was uncovered. 
 
 The revelation came upon Father Goubermann like a 
 thunder-bolt from a clear sky. That he rightfully and legally 
 owned the property of which he had so long held undisputed 
 possession, he had no more doubt than he had of his own 
 existence: and that any man should attempt to deprive him 
 of it, seemed to his simple and honest nature, too monstrous 
 for belief. But there lay, staring him in the face, a formal — 
 a very legally formal — demand that he should, not only sur- 
 render it, but also account for long arrears of rents — making 
 an astounding sum total. And the claimant was Anton Von 
 
226 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Stachel, who, more than once, had found means to wring 
 from an unwilling tribunal, a decision which, though legally- 
 correct, the judges knew to be essentially unjust: a man of 
 many well concocted appliances in resisting the right, was 
 Von Stachel. 
 
 That night, it needed no thunder of the avalanche to 
 rouse Goubermann from his slumbers: it found him, for the 
 first time, restless on his bed at midnight. No sleep came 
 to him; and, with the earliest dawn, he started for the city, 
 to consult an honest lawyer — his long-time friend. He found 
 small consolation there. Herr Zwingli had no doubt that 
 Stachel's claim was fabricated and fraudulent; but to resist 
 it would involve a ruinous and doubtful law-suit. Never- 
 theless, he advised resistance, as affording some small hope, 
 and at any rate postponing for awhile the ejectment of the 
 Goubermann family from their home. The ruin of resistance 
 could be no more complete than the ruin of submission. 
 
 Stachel, who had anticipated this legal consultation and 
 its results, met his victim as he was returning home, laden 
 with this woeful counsel. He had waited for this before 
 seeking an interview; and now, conscious that the hypo- 
 crisy of any attempt to give his purpose a friendly coloring 
 would be instantly detected, he came bluntly to his proposi- 
 tion, which was substantially this: that the Goubermann 
 family should leave Switzerland at once, to remain for a 
 given number of years; that they should leave no trace of 
 their course, nor ever in any manner, communicate, so that 
 it could reach Switzerland, the place of their retreat. On 
 these conditions, Stachel offered to pay the iron-master such 
 a sum as would enable him, in England or elsewhere to estab- 
 lish himself in a better position than he left, and consenting, 
 moreover, that he might take with him such personal property 
 as would not betray his course. 
 
 Goubermann listened to these cruel terms silently, and 
 as if in a dream; but they were stamped upon his memory 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 227 
 
 as if branded with a hot iron ; and, no less, the savage warn- 
 ing, uttered by his enemy as they parted, of the probable 
 consequences to his invalid wife of a rejection of this his 
 offer. 
 
 There was another sleepless night at Valley-Forge — a 
 night of agony and prayer, in which the daughter shared, but 
 not the mother, who slept unconscious of the impending evil. 
 In bitterness of soul the father wrestled with his own spirit, 
 and sought counsel of his God. What thoughts possessed 
 the young girl, conscious that her innocent but unhappy love 
 had brought about all this misery, I leave you to imagine; 
 what rebellious thoughts to be crushed back, what youthful 
 longings to be repressed, what pitying compassion for her 
 lost lover; before the victory was won. I do not say that 
 Annette's dream of happiness and Hermann was altogether 
 dissipated by her silent vow; but she said quietly to herself, 
 "If it pleases the good God, it will all come to pass yet; as 
 for me I will perform this present duty which He imposes 
 upon me, without murmuring." And then with a saintly 
 smile, she said: 
 
 " Father, we will go." 
 
 The father half smiled, half sighed, his blessing and his 
 assent. 
 
 When Hermann returned from his journey, he could learn 
 little more from the sorrowing people of the neighborhood 
 than the deserted cottage had already told him. The Gouber- 
 mann family had been missed from their home, one morning, 
 a week previous. They had departed without farewell or 
 explanation; which was strange in such honest and kindly 
 folk, and only to be accounted for as the result of something 
 connected with Stachel's claim upon their property, which 
 Lawyer Zwihgli made public with a free expression of his 
 opinions as to its rascality. It needed but an incautious 
 word, dropped by his father in the heat of passion, to enable 
 Hermann to devine all the rest. 
 
228 TAGHCONIC 
 
 In looking for the success of his plot the father had counted 
 too little upon the depth and constancy of his son's affection 
 for the noble peasant girl, and altogether failed to compre- 
 hend the strength and faithfulness of his whole nature, as 
 well as his quickness of perception. His own experience in 
 hearts led him to believe confidently that, the object of Her- 
 mann's youthful fancy, once sent away, would soon be for- 
 gotten, and the young man ready to receive the impression 
 of new charms. It was not the only mistake he made. In 
 sending Hermann on sthat trumped-up errand, he was the 
 unwitting means of his obtaining a considerable sum of 
 money in hand, and a large bequest afterwards, from a 
 maternal uncle who regarded him with affection for both his 
 moral and personal likeness to his mother. Hermann now 
 found this gift much to his purpose : and that a good Provi- 
 dence justified the faith of the pious and submissive maiden, 
 and made the device of the wicked help to the very end it 
 was intended to prevent. 
 
 It was but a day after his return before Hermann dis- 
 appeared as secretly as the iron-master and his family had 
 departed. But the smiling and smirking gossips made no 
 ado in guessing upon what mission he had gone. Nobody 
 feared that he had plunged rashly into the lake, or laid him- 
 self down in the path of a glacier — as unhappy people, now- 
 a-days, do before a railroad train. 
 
 Probably Stachel had counted as much upon his son's 
 inability to follow the exiles, as upon his measures to con- 
 ceal their route and hiding-place; but the uncle's gift — 
 which the young man did not deem it needful to boast of — 
 was an obstacle to that element in the plot. 
 
 In the region of passports and police with which Switzer- 
 land is surrounded, there is no great difficulty of one dis- 
 posed to use money with moderate — not to say lover-like 
 — liberality, in tracing anybody whom the government is 
 not disposed to hide. Still it took the inexperienced youth 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 229 
 
 some little time to ascertain that the object of his pursuit 
 had passed through France on their way to Great Britain. 
 A wearisome and heart-sickening search there ended, by mere 
 chance, in the discovery that — Father Goubermann not tak- 
 ing kindly to the ways of his rude English fellow-craftsmen 
 — the family had sailed for America. No one could tell him 
 for what port they embarked; but, by good luck, the first 
 ship up was bound for New York; and, impatient of delay, 
 he took passage. 
 
 At New York, he was bewildered by the report that little 
 iron-works, like those I have described, and similar to the 
 well remembered forge in the Jura — were springing up every- 
 where in the wild woods of Pennsylvania, New York, New 
 Jersey, Massachusetts and other provinces. It was a dis- 
 couraging out-look; and, with a heavy though determined 
 heart, he resumed his loving pilgrimage, resolved that it 
 should end only with success or death. 
 
 But now, fortune — which, in storm and sunshine, with his 
 consciousness, or without it, had still been urging him to- 
 wards the haven where he would be — again came visibly to 
 his aid. As the sloop in which he had taken passage lay 
 becalmed on the Hudson, a barge, heavily laden with iron 
 from above, dropped alongside; and the skipper, questioned 
 as to the source of his cargo , shouted : ' ' From Mount Rhighi ! ' ' 
 
 Hermann was startled almost into crying out: but the 
 barge floated out of hailing distance, and he was only able to 
 gather from the sloop's people that she was from Kinder- 
 hook, and that Mount Rhighi must be somewhere in the 
 same vicinity. 
 
 Had he known the remarkable way New York people 
 had of appropriating foreign names, he would have under- 
 stood that the clew was of the faintest ; but, for once, ignor- 
 ance helped him to a correct conclusion. The idea that this 
 Swiss name would lead him to a colony of his countrymen, 
 and finally to those he sought, seized upon him so forcibly 
 
230 TAGHCONIC 
 
 that he sprang on shore at Kinderhook with a lighter step 
 and heart than he had known for months. 
 
 The village was not large, and he easily found Peter Van 
 Schaack, the merchant who had shipped the iron; a warm- 
 hearted gentleman who listened with sympathy to the broken 
 English of the young Switzer's story, and overwhelmed him 
 with joy by expressing his belief that a certain foreign family 
 who had, a few months before, passed through town to Mount 
 Rhighi, were none other than his friends. Mr. Van Schaack 
 pressed him to accept his hospitality for a day or two, until 
 he could have conveyance to the iron- works; but he would 
 not have been the true lover he was, had he not set out at 
 once, and — since that was necessary — on foot, to make his 
 way through the wilderness. 
 
 On the second afternoon after this interview, Annette 
 Goubermann was standing thoughtfully upon the brow of 
 Sunset Cliff in the Bash-Bish gorge. Whether she had come 
 down the mountain to enjoy the sunny outlook, or had gone 
 up the glen to revive her Alpine memories, will be determined 
 when some field-meeting or other shall fix upon the locality 
 of the Goubermann forge. But, there, on Sunset Cliff, she 
 certainly stood, looking dreamily towards the Catskills, and 
 doubtless meditating such things as befit such a maiden at 
 such an hour and on such a spot; when she suddenly uttered 
 a piercing cry, and fell, senseless to the ground. 
 
 In an instant her lover was by her side, and, by the aid 
 of the appliances immemorial in such cases, she was soon 
 restored to consciousness; although it was a long while before 
 Hermann was sufficiently sure of her full recovery to suspend 
 the use of his restoratives; and, even after that, imminent 
 danger of a relapse seemed frequently to recur. I count it 
 selfish on their part — unless Annette's health positively com- 
 pelled it; which, Hermann admitted, her complexion did 
 not indicate — for the pair to keep Father Goubermann and 
 his good wife so long from sharing their felicity; but the 
 
THE SWISS LOVERS 231 
 
 evening shades had sent him in search of his daughter before 
 they thought of leaving their meeting place. The rock which 
 was their seat that evening, and many a happy hour there- 
 after, is still there on Sunset Cliff. The antiquarian may still 
 detect it by the fact that it is just long enough for two, and, 
 unless time has effaced it, by the inscription, Hermann 
 Steim. If it has become obscure with age, some "Old Morta- 
 lity" should restore it. 
 
 I need not paint for you the joyous meeting with the 
 father and mother, nor the mutual explanations which pre- 
 ceded the speedy nuptials of Hermann and Annette. But I 
 trust you will be glad to learn that the whole family lived 
 with delightful harmony in their new home, that Hermann 
 became a very skillful and renowned iron-master; but took 
 with him father and mother, as well as his beautiful wife 
 and children, when he was called back to Berne, to enjoy 
 the property which became his by the death of his father; 
 including the old forge whose fires were now relighted, not 
 from necessity, but out of love for the noble art. 
 
 Stachel fully intended to bequeath his whole estate to 
 some hospital or other public institution; but, like all pros- 
 perous and self-important men, he conceived that life would 
 be long with him, and delayed his preparation for death 
 until it came upon him fearfully and suddenly: for he never 
 recovered from an apoplexy with which he was struck upon 
 learning that the supreme court of the canton had adjudged 
 a poor wretch, whom he thought in his clutches beyond 
 rescue, not bound to Anton Stachel yeoman, by an obliga- 
 tion given to " Anton Von Stachel, gentleman." Rank and 
 name had real meaning in those days. Lawyer Zwingli, 
 who made the point, had come so utterly to hate the old 
 usurer that he smiled, with grim satisfaction, when he heard 
 the fatal result of its success; but the gentle Annette wept 
 that her enemy was cut off in the midst of his sins. 
 
232 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Such is one story of the Swiss occupation of Mount Wash- 
 ington and the Alpine gorge of Bash-Bish. 
 
 The Dome of the Taghconics. 
 While we are in this romantic mountain corner it would 
 be the most unpardonable lese-majesty, not to pay our hom- 
 age to the kingly Dome of the Taghconics. And yet — I con- 
 fess it with shame — never having been presented at that 
 court myself, I am disqualified for introducing you, and must 
 request Mr. Headley to act as usher, with that golden rod, 
 his eloquent pen : 
 
 "Two or three miles from Bash-Bish, is the Dome of the Taghconics, 
 a lofty mountain rising, precisely like a dome, from the ridge of which it 
 forms a part. It is in our estimation, far superior to the Catskill, for you 
 have from a single spot, a perfect panorama below you; you have only to 
 turn on your heel, and east and west, north and south, an almost endless 
 prospect spreads away on the vision. You are the center of a circle at 
 least three hundred and fifty miles in circumference; and such a circle! 
 The mountains that stretch along the horizon between the Connecticut 
 and the Hoosac river on the north-east, fade away as the northern Tagh- 
 conics, the Berlin and the Canaan Mountains greet you in the northwest; 
 and these in turn are forgotten as your eye falls on the dark mass of the 
 Catskill showing its huge proportions against the western horizon. 
 
 "And then, between is such a wealth of scenery. The valley of the 
 Housatonic, for miles and miles, spreads all its loveliness before you 
 There, too, are the two settlements of Canaan, and, further up — a mere 
 spot on the landscape — Sheffield; and, still further up, Great Barrington 
 hardly visible amid its forest of old elms, while the white cliffs of Monu- 
 ment Mountain shut out old Stockbridge from view, and the distant spire 
 of Lenox church closes the long train of villages. 
 
 "Old Saddle-Back of Williamstown (the Greylock Range in Adams, 
 North Adams and Williamstown) stands up to its full height against the 
 misty mountains that repose further off in the horizon — a peculiar feature 
 of the landscape. Egremont stands alone in the valley of the Green River, 
 but its sloping land and swelling hills present a still lovelier variety. A 
 low line of mist is dimly seen stretching along the black base of the Cats- 
 Mils, so indistinct that you would scarcely observe it; and yet that is the 
 lordly Hudson, heaving its mighty tide seaward, laden with the commerce 
 of a nation. A mere pencil mark in the landscape, here, it gives no token 
 of the haste and busy life on its surface. Close under the foot of the 
 
THE DOME OF THE TAGHCONICS 233 
 
 mountain on the south, sleep the sweet lakes of Salisbury, while other 
 lakes dot the horizon in every direction. 
 
 "But I cannot tell you of the prodigality of beauty which meets the 
 eye at every turn. You seem to look on the outer wall of creation, and 
 this old dome seems to be the spot on which nature set her great com- 
 passes when she drew the circle of the heavens. A more beautiful horizon, 
 I have never seen than sweeps around you from this spot. The charm of 
 the view is perfect on every side — a panorama, which becomes a moving 
 one, if you will but take the trouble to turn round." 
 
Greylocfy 
 
Greylock 
 
 Greylock, cloud-girdled, from his mountain throne, 
 
 A voice of welcome sends; 
 And, from green summer fields, a warbling tone, 
 
 The Housatonic blends. — Frances Ann Kemble. 
 
 Spirit of Beauty! Let thy graces blend 
 With loveliest nature all that art can lend. 
 
 Come from the steeps where look majestic forth 
 
 From their twin thrones, the giants of the north 
 
 On the huge shapes that, crouching at their knees, 
 
 Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. 
 
 Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain, 
 
 Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain; 
 
 There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes 
 
 On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, 
 
 Nature shall whisper that the fading view 
 
 Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. — 0. W. Holmes. 
 
 Greylock is the figure-head of the county of Berkshire. 
 I might say that it is the figure-head of the Commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts, if some Boston critic would not cry out 
 that the hill-folk are trying to run the ship of state stern 
 foremost. But the figure-head of the county, it plainly is: 
 and a noble one. What a grand terminal it affords for the 
 mountain bulwarks that so grandly sweep up to it on either 
 side the symmetrical valley. How proudly it lifts itself 
 against the northern sky; the crested front of the mighty 
 landscape ! 
 
 We see it from a myriad points of view, varying its aspect 
 with the different stand-points of the spectator, and with 
 the perpetual changes of the atmosphere ; although the gen- 
 eral directness of the perspective from the south renders the 
 apparent alterations in its contour, from change in the line 
 of vision, to be much less frequent than with most of our 
 mountain shapes. 
 
238 TAGHCONIC 
 
 The isolated mountain range between the Hoosacs and 
 the Taconics, now generally known as the Greylock Range, 
 is not so much a chain as an intertwisted cluster of mountains 
 in the towns of Adams, North Adams and Williamstown ; 
 from which a spur strikes southward through New Ashford, 
 Cheshire and Lanesboro', to Pittsfield. The main cluster has 
 a length, from east to west, of about six miles, and an average 
 altitude of perhaps twenty-four hundred feet above the sur- 
 rounding valley. It consists of six or seven distinct peaks 
 and ridges rising above a common base. The highest peak — 
 the Greylock, from which the cluster takes its name — is upon 
 the east, and has an elevation of thirty-five hundred feet 
 above the sea level, or twenty-six hundred above the valley 
 of the Hoosac, at its base on the north and east. 
 
 The twin peak on the west, less in height than Greylock 
 by three or four hundred feet, commands no view, being 
 covered by woods and having its nearer outlook cut off by 
 surrounding summits. Nor has it any generally recognized 
 name. But it is more conspicuous from the south than its 
 taller brother, and, being of a graceful contour, will make 
 a capital monument, if nothing else; and, for one, I heartily 
 approve the proposition to christen it "Symond's Peak" in 
 honor of the grand old Williamstown Colonel who led the 
 "embattled farmers" of Berkshire in their glorious fight at 
 Bennington. 
 
 The combination of these peaks in the view from the 
 south, bears a rude, but rather striking, resemblance to a 
 saddle, which suggested to the early settlers the name of 
 Saddle-back Mountain by which the cluster was long called; 
 but the comparison was prosaic; and, besides, a similar like- 
 ness had caused the same name to be given to mountain 
 ridges in more than one locality. A finer imagination early 
 seized upon the likeness to the grey locks of an old man, 
 which the top of the highest peak presents when whitened 
 by the snows or frosts of the late fall or early spring, while 
 
GREYLOCK 239 
 
 the body of the hill is clothed in dark forests ; and that sum- 
 mit became Grey lock: one of the most poetic names which 
 ever added grace to the loveliness of nature. 
 
 The rudeness and lack of distinctive meaning of the 
 name " Saddle-back," as applied to the cluster, have caused 
 it to be gradually disused, and the prettier designation has 
 been extended to the whole group, with the addition of 
 "group," "range" or "mountain"; so that the name "Saddle- 
 back" is rarely heard, except from lips which say "his'n" 
 and "hern" for "his" and "hers." But you will observe 
 that there is a difference between "Greylock" and "Grey- 
 lock Mountain" or "The Greylock Group." 
 
 You recollect Grace — the wild and witty Berkshire girl, 
 we met one day down by the borders of Pontoosuc Lake. 
 Well, a while ago, a geologist deeply enamored of her and 
 Berkshire rocks, after showing her a wonderful piece of con- 
 torted strata by the road-side near the lake, was explaining 
 that it was really the most marvellous specimen he had ever 
 met: when the saucy thing threw him completely off his 
 balance by exclaiming, with eyes distended in mock astonish- 
 ment: "What a twistification ! Isn't it nice, though? It 
 looks just like half-worked molasses candy. Did you ever 
 help pull candy, professor? Its awfully jolly!" 
 
 "Awful" and "jolly," I ought to explain, are words 
 which Grace reserves for the sole purpose of extinguishing 
 over-exquisite admirers; but I have no doubt that, if I 
 were to set her to explaining the queer interlacings of the 
 Greylock ridges, she would dash me with something like this : 
 "What a twistification! Its just like one of cook's dough- 
 nuts. Arn't there some in the lunch basket? Let's have 
 them out!" And I feel very much inclined to dispose of 
 the matter in the same way. In quiet earnest, the peaks 
 and ridges, the ravines and cascades, the rugged notches and 
 picturesque nooks of this, as yet only half-studied, mountain 
 group, are food for a season, rather than a tit-bit for a hasty 
 
240 TAGHCONIC 
 
 excursion. They seem moreover to belong to the peculiar 
 domain of the Williams College people, and the summer 
 denizens of Greylock Hall; to whom I commend them, al- 
 though it sounds very like a stranger commending to a man 
 the charms of his own wife. Such counsel is not always 
 superfluous. 
 
 The rest of you, nevertheless, must come with me through 
 the more noted and striking scenes whose beauty boldly 
 challenges us on the peaks, or lies hid in the recesses, of this 
 loftiest and most picturesque mountain of Massachusetts. 
 
 One who has not climbed to the top of Greylock has 
 taken no very high degree as a Berkshire excursionist; and, 
 to be initiated into the highest, he must pass a night there. 
 If you are an invalid, or have any other very valid reason 
 for it, I will, however, help you to take your degrees by 
 proxy: although, for the more convenient connection with 
 what is to follow, I must give the story of my two ascents 
 of the great mountain in reversed order. 
 
 Night and Morning on Greylock. 
 
 It was a laughing, sparkling, companionable, well-assorted 
 party that, passably well supplied with brains, and thor- 
 oughly well versed in the matter-in-hand, met one evening in 
 the most deliciously comfortable of parlors, to organize — as 
 the summons of our queenly chief put it — for a new crown- 
 ing of Old King Greylock. There is much good in these 
 preparatory meetings. In the first place a successful excur- 
 sion must be organized by somebody. However you may 
 tumble into it at hap-hazard, somebody has planned and 
 prepared for it. The victories which nobody organizes are 
 no more to be counted upon, in any undertaking, than the 
 fortunes that fall to lucky people from forgotten California 
 uncles. And, least of all, can you trust to chance for the 
 successful issue . of a day and night mountain excursion, 
 where a single fault in the commisariat or the quarter-mas- 
 ter's department may cause infinite disaster. To be sure, 
 
GREYLOCK 241 
 
 some considerate or generous persons generally provide all 
 things necessary ; but it is every way better to do it in merry 
 committee of the whole. 
 
 If there were no other reward for this equitable course, 
 it is enough that it doubles your pleasure; which you take 
 in two installments; the first being in hand, and sure: to 
 whatever fate, foul weather or other misfortune may bring 
 the second. And, by and bye. when both come to be alike 
 far-off memories, you may doubt which was the richer, and 
 more real. And then, again, in this cosy and informal pre- 
 liminary gathering, you assimilate your party; which — 
 particularly if there happen to be new elements in it — is 
 very desirable. It saves much delay and awkwardness on 
 the morrow. Nobody is distrait, as strangers are apt 
 to be, when you meet for the start; and sometimes very 
 pleasant unexpected pairing results — pemanent or otherwise. 
 
 Our council in preparation for Greylock had no perplex- 
 ing subject of debate. A railway ride to Adams, where 
 carriages to the mountain top had been engaged, disposed of 
 the matter of transportation. Apparatus for open-air cook- 
 ing, we always had ready; and supplies of cold meats, boiled 
 eggs, sandwiches, fruits and all manner of picnic fare were 
 reported in quantities that only mountainous appetites could 
 expect to do away with. It only remained to provide for 
 protection against the night dews, and the mists of the 
 mountain top; and that was soon carefully arranged. In 
 view of the prospective fatigues of the morrow, only a very 
 small allowance of dancing was allowed; and then, to help 
 our anticipations and dreams, Henry Thoreau's graphic ac- 
 count of his night and morning on Greylock was read. It is an 
 episode in his charming" Week on the Concord and Merri- 
 mac," from which I shall presently quote a paragraph ; but you 
 should read the story in full.with the characteristic moral and 
 philosophical observations of the great Secular Solitary. 
 
 His conveyance and commisariat were even simpler than 
 
242 TAGH CONIC 
 
 ours, and much more self-reliant. " I had come over the 
 hills on foot," he writes, " on foot and alone in serene summer 
 days, plucking the raspberries by the wayside, and occasion- 
 ally buying a loaf of bread at a farmer's house ; with a knap- 
 sack on my back which held a few traveller's books and a 
 change of clothing, and a staff in my hand. * * * Reach- 
 ing the mountain top, I had one fair view of the country 
 before the sun went down ; but I was too thirsty to waste any 
 light in, viewing the prospect, and set out directly to find 
 water. First, going down a well-beaten path through a 
 scrubby wood, I came to where the water stood in the tracks 
 of the horses which had carried travellers up. I lay down 
 flat and drank these dry, one after another — a pure, cold, 
 springlike water; but yet I could not fill my dipper, al- 
 though I contrived little syphons of grass stems, and ingenious 
 aqueducts on a small scale; it was too slow a process. Then, 
 remembering that I had passed a moist spot near the top, I 
 returned to find it again; and here, with sharp stones and 
 my hands, in the twilight, I made a well about two feet deep, 
 which soon filled with pure water; and the birds, too, came 
 and drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and making my way 
 back to the observatory, collected some dry sticks, and made 
 a fire on some fiat stones which had been placed on the floor 
 for that purpose ; and so I soon cooked my supper of the rice 
 I had bought at North Adams, having already whittled a 
 wooden spoon to eat it with." With Mr. Thoreau's resources 
 one could afford an extended tour. 
 
 Mr. Thoreau ascended the mountain, from North Adams 
 through "The Notch," a savage cleft between Greylock peak 
 and a lower hill upon the east. Through this rugged pass, 
 dashes a crystal brook, which supplies to the village water- 
 works, an abundance of pure water; and also, with its foam- 
 ing cascade and other brookly beauties, affords an attractive 
 as well as accessible resort for citizens and strangers. At its 
 southern end, where the narrowing notch " slopes up to the 
 
GREYLOCK 243 
 
 skies," it is called " The Bellows-pipe." In our wild northern 
 storms, the fierce winds bellow through it in thousand-fold 
 concentrated fury. 
 
 Our ascent, from Adams, was much more prosaic. We 
 sacrificed a little romance, for the sake of a good deal of 
 ease: still we were often tempted from our comfortable 
 conveyances into groves, glades and recesses among the rocks 
 by the road-side. There was no need of haste. Even after 
 a socially prolonged dinner, enjoyed in full view of a magnifi- 
 cent, but comparatively narrow, landscape, we had ample 
 time to ascend the observatory and enjoy the stupendous 
 scenery which presented itself in every direction. 
 
 We were in rare good fortune. The atmosphere was ex- 
 ceptionally pure, rendering the view as clear and distinct as 
 one of such vast proportions ever can be. Approximately to 
 measure that vastness in your mind, consider that the dia- 
 meter — not the circumference — of the horizon revealed to 
 you, is some three hundred miles. Away in eastern Wor- 
 cester you see Mount Wachusett; the Grand Monadnock in 
 south-western New Hampshire; the lofty peaks of the north- 
 ernmost Taconics in Vermont; the Adirondacks of New York 
 in the north-west, and the Catskills in the south-west. In the 
 south, the far-away hills of Connecticut melt dimly into the 
 Soundward slope. From Mount Tekoa, Mount Tom, and 
 Mount Holyoke in the Connecticut valley, successive ridges 
 rise continually, to the Columbian Mountains of New York; 
 pile after pile in most admired disorder, for a breadth of more 
 than sixty miles: longitudinally, some seventy miles south- 
 ward; and northerly as far as the eye can reach. 
 
 Mr. Gladden, quotes President Hitchcock as saying: "I 
 know of no place where the mind is so forcibly impressed 
 by the idea of vastness, or even of immensity, as where the 
 eye ranges abroad from this eminence:" and it is not for us, 
 in the immediate presence of this majestic overview, to look 
 for a rival to it in Alps or Sierra. 
 
244 TAGHCONIC 
 
 The nearer and gentler, but still bold and commanding 
 view is close upon the south, where the great Berkshire 
 valley lies spread out before us: in its centre the streets 
 and spires of Pittsfield, with their fair cordon of glassy lakes 
 glittering around them, and, on every side, half-hidden vil- 
 lages and village churches gleaming white upon the verdant 
 background of woods and fields; conspicuous among them 
 the fine old meeting houses of Lenox and Dalton — while, 
 most distinct of all, almost under our feet, and so close to 
 the mountain's base as to seem a very part of it, lies the thriv- 
 ing, busy and handsome town of Adams. A scene, take it 
 all in all, to be tenderly yearned over by the children of that 
 glorious valley, and to be lovingly admired by the merest 
 chance-comer to the hill-top. 
 
 While we lingered dreamily over it, the sun went down 
 leaving on that transparent sky, no such cloud-shapes of 
 fantastic gorgeousness as often veil his parting; but, along 
 the whole western horizon, one broad, uniform band of glow- 
 ing light — softening, from richest orange through all golden 
 tints, until it melted from liquid amber into crystal chryso- 
 prase, and then was lost in the prevailing azure. 
 
 The gold paled from the western heavens: and then the 
 grey was absorbed in the blue. The evening shades filled 
 the valley; crept up the mountain side; enveloped grove 
 and tower, and the little group who silently awaited their 
 coming. 
 
 "Darkness upon the mountain and the vale; 
 The woods, the lakes, the fields are buried deep 
 In that still, solemn, star- watched sleep: 
 No sound, no motion, and o'er hill and dale, 
 A calm and lovely death seems to embrace 
 Earth's fairest realms and heaven's unfathomed space. 
 The forest slumbers; leaf and branch and bough, 
 High feathery crest, and lowliest grassy blade. 
 All restless, wandering wings are folded now, 
 That swept the sky, and in the sunshine played. 
 
GREYLOCK 245 
 
 The lake's wild waves sleep in their rocky bowl: 
 
 Unbroken stillness streams from nature's soul, 
 
 And night's great star-sown wings stretch o'er the whole I"— 
 
 Mrs. Kemble. 
 
 As was fitting, even in the merriest party, we yielded for 
 awhile to the solemn promptings of the hour; but it is not 
 fitting, even were it possible, that they should long curb the 
 glee of a mountain excursion. The voice of our chief re- 
 minded us that we had promised our friends at home to 
 signal our presence on Greylock by a blaze which they could 
 see. The appointed hour had come, and the beacon was 
 lighted. Our friends were kind enough to believe they saw 
 it beaming like a star, or a light in a distant window. Per- 
 haps they did. It certainly cast a strange, wild red glare 
 upon the old tower and the over-hanging foliage ; and invested 
 the ladies, who gathered around it, with a weird, gypsy 
 beauty that was very enchanting. 
 
 The little grotto of light, we had wrought out in the 
 great darkness, had hardly disappeared, when the white 
 moon rose up in the eastern sky, revealing new realms of splen- 
 dor. Little by little, the hills and valleys emerged from the 
 shadow; reposing in the pallor, or gleaming in the silver 
 sheen, of the white radiance. There was no longer any 
 color in the picture. It was drawn in crayon — all light and 
 shade. Nor was there daylight's sharpness of outline: the 
 landscape lay in broad surfaces and heavy masses, except in 
 the close foreground. There is something altogether delusive 
 in the brilliance of moonlight. It dazzles, but cannot illumi- 
 nate. It will light you gaily to your serenade; but you 
 cannot read a sentence by it, at its brightest, as you can by 
 a very dim twilight. You need the yellow rays of the spec- 
 trum for that; as you will discover by attempting to read 
 in a church whose "dim religious light" streams through 
 stained windows, and then in one where the garish light of 
 day is rendered still more garish, by being strained through 
 
246 TAGHCONIC 
 
 ground glass, which eliminates most of the yellow from it. 
 You will observe the same difference, although in a less de- 
 gree, between the yellow flame of a kerosene lamp, and the 
 white blaze of a gas-jet; the eye tiring much the quicker 
 under the latter. But it was not dread of spoiling our eye- 
 sight which led our prudent chief to order us to our couches. 
 Indeed the glamour of that illusive splendor seemed magically 
 projected on the scene for our immediate enchantment and 
 witchery. But the white mists which first traced, in delicate 
 lines upon the dark surface, the curves of the river and the 
 lurking places of the lakes, had filled the lower valley, until 
 as we looked down upon it, it lay outspread like a great 
 snow-shrouded plain. And now tall, ghostly, phantom-like 
 shapes upreared themselves on the mountain side. We knew 
 that their embrace was uncanny, if not deadly, and we fled 
 before the advancing specters, screaming — with laughter. 
 
 The floors of the two stories of the tower had already 
 been spread with elastic boughs, of balsamy odor, from the 
 near woods: shaggy bear and buffalo robes, army blankets 
 and rubber coverings were now liberally distributed. Gen- 
 erous draughts of hot coffee were dealt out. Prayers were 
 read. Then stillness was enjoined upon the wakeful and soon 
 those not too much excited by the novelty of the scene 
 slumbered peacefully. Before morning all enjoyed a health- 
 ful sleep, undisturbed except, once or twice, by a fitful cloud- 
 rack which drifted through the open windows — just to re- 
 mind us how near we were to heaven. 
 
 Before I tell you of our awakening, I will read you what 
 Mr. Thoreau says of his : 
 
 "I was up early and perched upon the top of the tower to see the 
 day break; for some time reading the names that had been engraved 
 there before I could distinguish more distant objects. An 'untameable 
 fly' buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance as on a molasses 
 hogshead at the end of Long Wharf. Even here I must attend to his 
 stale humdrum. As the light increased, I discovered around me an 
 ocean of mist which reached up by chance exactly to the base of the 
 
GREYLOCK 247 
 
 tower, and shut out every vestige of the earth; while I was left floating 
 on this fragment of the wreck of a world, on my carved plank in cloud- 
 land: a situation which it required no aid from the imagination to render 
 impressive. As the light in the east steadily increased, it revealed to me 
 more clearly the new world into which I had risen in the night: the new 
 terra firma perhaps of my future life. There was not a crevice left through 
 which the trivial places we name Massachusetts, Vermont and New York 
 could be seen; while I still inhaled the clear atmosphere of a July morn- 
 ing — if it were July there. All around me was spread for a hundred 
 miles on every side, as far as the eye could reach, an undulating country 
 of clouds, answering in the varied swell of its surface to the terrestrial 
 world it veiled. It was such a country as we might see in dreams 
 with all the delights of Paradise. There were immense snowy pastures 
 apparently smooth-shaven and firm, and shady vales between the vaporous 
 mountains; and, far in the horizon, I could see where some luxurious 
 misty timber jutted into the prairie, and trace the windings of a water 
 course, some unimagined Amazon or Orinoko, by the misty trees on its 
 brink. 
 
 As there was wanting the symbol, so there was not the substance 
 of impurity: no spot nor stain. It was a favor for which to be forever 
 silent to be shown this vision. The earth below had become such a flit- 
 ting thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been before not 
 merely veiled tome; it had passed away like the phantom of a shadow, 
 CKi&e ovac, and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed above 
 storm and cloud, so by successive day's journeys I might reach the region 
 of eternal day; aye, 
 
 'Heaven itself shall slide, 
 
 And roll away like melting stars that glide 
 
 Along their oily thread.' 
 
 "But when its own sun began to rise on this pure world, I found my- 
 self a dweller in the dazzling halls of Aurora — into which poets have had 
 but a partial glance over the eastern hills — drifting among the saffron- 
 colored clouds, and playing with the rosy fingers of the Dawn, in the very 
 path of the Sun's chariot, and sprinkled- with its dewy dust, enjoying the 
 benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting glances, of the god. 
 The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy 
 under-side of heaven's pavement; it is only when at a favorable angle of 
 the horizon, morning and evening, that some faint streaks of the rich 
 lining of the clouds are revealed. But my muse would fail to convey an 
 impression of the gorgeous tapestry by which I was surrounded; such as 
 
248 TAGHCONIC 
 
 men see faintly reflected afar off in the chambers of the east. Here, as 
 on earth, I saw the gracious god 
 
 'Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, * * * 
 Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.' 
 Never here did 'Heaven's Sun' stain himself. But, alas, owing as I 
 think to some unworthiness in myself, my private sun did stain himself 
 and 
 
 Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
 
 With ugly wrack on his celestial face; 
 
 for before the god had reached his zenith, the heavenly pavement rose 
 
 and embraced my wavering virtue, or rather I sank down again into that 
 
 'forlorn world' from which the celestial sun had hid his visage." 
 
 Mr. Thoreau, descending the mountain, soon found him- 
 self in the region of clouds and drizzling rain; and the in- 
 habitants affirmed that it had been a rainy and drizzling day 
 wholly. 
 
 Our party had a somewhat different experience, yet with 
 a general likeness. A bugle, surreptitiously carried to the 
 mountain top, roused us with pleasant surprise by a wild 
 reveille as soon as light began to kindle beyond the Hoosacs. 
 The surface of the mist-sea which filled the valley, lay calm 
 and level some two hundred feet below the summit on which 
 we stood; everywhere dazzling- white, except upon its ex- 
 treme eastern verge which flushed with rose red — changing 
 soon to gold, and then to golden blaze. The sun came up 
 and added new splendor to the glowing scene before the 
 morning breeze began to disturb its serenity. 
 
 From the first, three or four distant peaks were seen, 
 like far-off islands in a foaming ocean. Now the mist began 
 to lift itself with the breeze, and roll away into the blue 
 sky; while new islands, promontories, capes, began to appear, 
 until the green earth lay again beneath us, revealed in all its 
 summer beauty. So, to some angel, worshipping in awe and 
 wonder, the broad scene of creation may have been revealed 
 when God said, " Let the waters that are under the heavens 
 be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear: 
 and it was so." 
 
GREYLOCK 249 
 
 I made an excursion to Greylock prior to the one I have 
 just attempted to describe ; and I recall it now for two specific 
 purposes. After the visit to the natural bridge at North 
 Adams, of which I gave an account some while ago, my 
 companion and myself walked to Williamstown, where we 
 passed the night. In the morning we walked to South 
 Williamstown, where, being told that the "Hopper" would 
 be intolerable on a day so intensely hot, we abandoned our 
 intention of exploring that torrid gulf, and went up the 
 mountain. We had no guide, nor any but very obscure 
 directions as to the path we were to pursue; and, making 
 our way pretty much at random, we found ourselves first 
 upon Symond's Peak. Rectifying our mistake, we reached 
 the tower on Greylock, at about one o'clock: not at all 
 fatigued by our tramp. Nor were we unpleasantly wearied 
 when we reached the hotel at New Ashford in the evening, 
 or after our walk to Pittsfield the next day. I make this 
 point to correct the impression that the ascent to Greylock 
 is either difficult or unduly fatiguing to persons of ordinary 
 health and powers of endurance. 
 
 I have also taken you to the top of Greylock again, to 
 tell you of our descent from it on that first trip, and how 
 it brought us into 
 
 The Heart of Greylock. 
 
 It was not until the middle of the afternoon that we 
 yielded to the stern fact that lack of supplies and camp 
 equipage would repress our noble rage to pass the night upon 
 the mountain top; and we shaped our course homeward, 
 taking our bearings solely with reference to directness. 
 
 " Straight is the line of duty, 
 Curved is the line of beauty; 
 Follow the first and thou shalt see 
 The other ever follow thee." 
 
 And that, we found true. Our straight course brought 
 us to the verge of a precipitous descent of something more 
 
250 TAGHCONIC 
 
 than a thousand feet, but with sufficient inclination to give 
 root-hold to a moderately thick growth of trees. 
 
 Down this sharp descent, we dropped rapidly, clinging for 
 support to the branches and undergrowth, and deliciously 
 refreshed by frequent draughts of the cold and limpid water 
 which gushed from a thousand springs, and sometimes dripped 
 its coolness luxuriously upon our heated, upturned faces. 
 
 At the foot of the precipice, a brook brawled its way be- 
 tween banks which afforded a narrow grassy glade in the 
 midst of the dark woods. As we stood in this sunny open- 
 ing, we gazed above and around us in utter amazement and 
 delight. The chasm into which we had been chance-led, 
 was, in shape, an inverted cone, truncated at its reversed 
 apex by the little plain intersected by the brook. The walls, 
 at least a thousand feet in height, and all over enamelled 
 with the richest forest green, appeared to us as perfectly 
 circular and their tops presented a line as level against the 
 sky, as though we had looked up from within some unroofed 
 round tower or castle — of the Titans, for instance. Lost in 
 astonishment at the strange beauty of the spot, and, still 
 more, that whisper of it had never reached us, we pursued 
 our way down the stream, to be still more amazed when the 
 people who lived near, told us that, so far as they knew, it 
 had neither name nor renown. 
 
 Finding afterwards, however, that the persons of whom 
 we sought information were not very intelligent new-comers, 
 I resumed my pursuit of knowledge, and finally learned from 
 a good old family of the neighborhood — besides some pleasant 
 legends which I have carefully stored away — that the names 
 we sought were "Money Hole" and " Money Brook," which 
 were given in respect of a tradition that, in Revolutionary 
 times, a gang of counterfeiters used to haunt their obscure 
 recesses. I do not know how well founded the tradition is; 
 but it is strongly fortified by the fact that, half a century 
 ago, the little stream gained the soubriquet of "The Specter 
 
BALD MOUNTAIN 251 
 
 Brook," because the ghosts of the departed rogues were 
 often seen keeping watch and ward at the entrance of the 
 glen, while mysterious noises were heard within. I can well 
 believe the phantom part of the story; for, to this day, the 
 banks of all our mountain streams are all alive, if that is not 
 a bull, with sheeted ghosts, 
 
 "In the moonlit mist restoring 
 Vanished forms of long ago." 
 
 The roguish name assigned to what it seemed should be 
 rather a classic than a criminal haunt, did not altogether 
 please me, and I was glad to discover, a year or two later, 
 that Professor Albert Hopkins — that gentle, but enthusiastic, 
 spirit to whose fine influence Williamstown and Williams 
 College owe so much of their esthetic interest — had christ- 
 ened it " The Heart of Greylock." 
 
 I was told, too, at the same time, that, had we, on our 
 chance visit, followed the brook up, instead of down, its 
 course, we should have soon come to the Eremite or Hermit 
 Cascade — a waterfall at the least as picturesque and wild as 
 Bash-Bish, and which I have since heard praised by other 
 admirers in similar exalted terms. As I have not yet seen 
 it, my memories of Mount Washington are not disturbed; 
 but, what with a Specter Brook and a Hermit Cascade, the 
 Heart of Greylock certainly offers a fine field for an old- 
 fashioned imagination. 
 
 If you are now ready to climb the mountain again, I 
 
 will take you to the summit whose shaven head gives it the 
 
 name of 
 
 Bald Mountain, 
 
 and also enables it to afford a finer view of the Williamstown 
 valley than can be obtained from the higher peaks. Seven 
 or eight years ago a party composed chiefly, it seems, of col- 
 lege professors, clergymen and other gravely-gay characters 
 — such as much affect Williamstown for a summer resort — 
 with a feminine element of the same caste, dwelt for a while 
 
252 TAGHCONIC 
 
 in leafy tabernacles in a sheltered nook of this summit, and 
 one of the party sent a spirited account of their joys to the 
 New York Observer, of all papers in the world: dating from 
 "Camp Dew- Dew" as if the reverend writer were wholly 
 oblivious of Don Juan and correct orthography. However, 
 his spectacles were good, and we will take a look through 
 them from the mountain top. 
 
 "Our camp lies in this sheltered spot upon Bald Mountain, so near 
 the summit of Greylock that sunset and sunrise parties go out daily, and 
 our artists and botanists climb its sides in search of views and botanical 
 treasures. * * * Select what point you choose of these commanding hills, 
 and below you lies the wide valley, the faint blue line of the river wind- 
 ing past Williamstown, Blackington, and Adams— -the whole framed by 
 the encircling sweep of the Blue mountains; while far away is the white 
 shaft of the observatory on Mount Anthony, and farther in the distance 
 still, overtopping all nearer summits, loom up the dark hills of Vermont. 
 And this landscape is never twice the same: always bold and varied." 
 
 These views are not all to be witnessed from Bald Moun- 
 tain, which is over-topped on the north and east by Prospect 
 Mountain and Greylock. I did not bring you here, however, 
 for the sake of the views; but that you might look down 
 from its northern edge into 
 
 The Abyss. 
 
 upon which the name of "the Hopper" was early inflicted 
 by that unimaginative imagination whose horrid mission 
 seems to have been from the first to curse this picturesque 
 mountain group with the most commonplace nomenclature. 
 I grant that, as you look down into the abyss, it has a strik- 
 ing likeness in form to the hopper of a grist mill; and that 
 this comparison is the readiest mode of conveying to the 
 mind of a stranger some idea of its shape ; but mere form is 
 not the most essential element in the description of any 
 natural object; else were the old likeness of the moon to a 
 green cheese felicitous and poetic. It seems to me that the 
 one idea which that likeness of the abyss to a hopper ought to 
 
THE ABYSS 253 
 
 have suggested was to cast headlong into it, the wretch who 
 first conceived the thought of making use of it in naming 
 this grand work of nature, and let him take his chances of 
 being well ground up on the rough mill-stones at the bottom. 
 
 You will start back in affright lest some such fate may 
 befall yourself, if you approach unwarned the brink of the 
 chasm on the edge of Bald Mountain. Unless nature has 
 favored you with firmer nerves than she grants to most 
 men, or you have plied some such dreadful trade as the sam- 
 phire gatherer's, it will cost you some effort; with much 
 probability of failure, to prepare yourself to observe the 
 abyss from above with any calmness, or without absolute 
 danger of fatal dizziness. It is thus, however, that you best 
 comprehend the terrific grandeur of the scene. 
 
 Having abtained this apprehension, it will be as well if 
 you pursue your study of the place from below. To do this, 
 you will enter it from the Williamstown road, passing through 
 a narrow valley and a ravine, penetrated by a rocky brook, 
 which, now I think of it, used to furnish capital trouting. 
 Reaching the floor of the chasm, you will discover that it 
 does not come to a point, as distance deceived you into 
 thinking when you looked from above, but affords a level, 
 though rock-cumbered, surface. Here you will find your- 
 selves surrounded by four precipitous mountain walls over a 
 thousand feet in eight, or more than twice as high as the 
 crags of Monument Mountain, although not, like them, abso- 
 lutely perpendicular and bare. On these rough and shaggy 
 sides you will see here huge and bare cliffs, there ragged trees 
 clinging to steep ascents and scanty soil, and there patches 
 of richer wood, but still of precarious foothold, here the 
 broad path of the land-slide, and there, piled and scattered 
 below, its mighty ruins. Vastness and desolation will be 
 everywhere about you; and, if you can rid yourself of that dis- 
 enabling association with a mill-hopper, I think you will feel 
 that this great abyss in Greylock is both terrific and sublime. 
 
254 TAGHCONIC 
 
 King Greylock's Mountain Height. 
 
 With jollity, jollity, ho, to-night, 
 To scale King Greylock's mountain height! 
 While many a wild recess profound 
 Sends, rattling back, the echoing sound, 
 As we startle the sleepy forest glades 
 With the joyous rout of our madcap maids: 
 For never a merrier band than they 
 E'er climbed at eve this mountain way! 
 
 Chor. — Then, ho, on our rude, steep path, away! 
 
 With the morrow's light on the topmost height, 
 We must hail the coming pomp of day! 
 
 Oh, whether the height in sunshine lie, 
 Or glamour moonlight cheat the eye, 
 'Tis a laughing light on the mountain side, 
 That owl-eyed care can never abide; 
 And his worldly weight, that worldlings bear, 
 Is loosed at the magical touch of our air; 
 Earth's spell is broke — and the heart is free, 
 As childhood's in its frolic glee! 
 
 Chor. — Then, ho, on our rude, steep path, away! 
 
 With the morrow's light on the topmost height, 
 We must hail the coming pomp of day! 
 
 Our beacon fire this night shall glow, 
 
 A gem on the monarch mountain's brow, 
 
 Or far to our dear home valley gleam — 
 
 A new found love-star's gentle beam. 
 
 Then sweeter couch ne'er wooed to rest, 
 
 Than the springy boughs of the green hill's crest, 
 
 Whose leaves our fragrant bed shall be, 
 
 With the starry night for canopy! 
 
 Chor. — Then, ho, on our rude, steep path, away! 
 
 With the morrow's light on the topmost height, 
 We must hail the coming pomp of day! 
 
Wahconah Falls 
 
Wahconah Falls 
 
 How throbbed my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears, 
 To know the color of my future years. — Rogers. 
 
 A little way off the main road in Windsor, a pleasant 
 farming town on the highlands, some ten miles from us, are 
 Wahconah Falls. I had heard their praises spoken by one 
 who had an affinity with beauty which sought out its kindred 
 in all hidden nooks; and on a bracing Autumn day I sat out 
 to seek them. 
 
 There are few drives through a more agreeable region. 
 The villages of Dalton, through which you pass, form a hand- 
 some town with a fine old meeting house on its ample, lawn- 
 like green. You are enticed to linger as well by the dark 
 rushing river, where you see the groaning locomotive toiling 
 up the steep ascent above you. And there, too, the quaint- 
 looking, paper-mills by the riverside, go far to make up a 
 pretty and novel scene. It is said, that as bright glances 
 are sometimes thrown from the windows of these oddly shapen 
 manufactories as from any balcony, lattice or verandah what- 
 ever. 
 
 The paper manufacture, a great leading interest of Berk- 
 shire, was here introduced into the county in 1799, by Zenas 
 Crane, whose sons and grandsons still carry it on, making 
 among other styles the paper upon which the bonds and 
 bank bills of the United States government are printed. One 
 of them, Hon. Zenas M. Crane, is the proprietor of Wahconah 
 Falls, of whose romantic beauty he is one of the most en- 
 thusiastic admirers. Leaving behind us the pretty villages 
 of Dalton, and its prettier belles — a production for which it 
 was famed long before it gained renown for paper-making — 
 we soon come to The Falls, a romantic miniature cataract, 
 just far enough from the highway to be sheltered from the 
 too careless eye. 
 
258 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Wahconah Brook, one of the larger of the numerous 
 eastern branches of the Housatonic, here pours through per- 
 pendicular cliffs of dark grey rock, a considerable volume of 
 water, which, in two or three leaps, makes a descent of sev- 
 enty or eighty feet. The dark, precipitous cliffs form a 
 striking and sombre vista, and the black and glossy surface 
 of the water affords a fine contrast with the silvery white of 
 the foam into which it breaks. But the peculiar charm 
 which wins the place so many and so constant admirers is 
 indefinable. 
 
 One may be sure of passing a pleasant hour at such a spot. 
 The swift, smooth gliding of water always brings a pleasurable 
 sensation, and there is rare music in the dash of a waterfall 
 free from the discordant clatter of machinery. Alas, too 
 rare in manufacturing Massachusetts! I confess to a mali- 
 cious joy in looking upon the blackened ruins of an old mill 
 which used to stand here, but perished long ago in some 
 fierce conflict with the insulted elements. Heaven send thee 
 no successor, thou grim and grinning skeleton! 
 
 It is in such places as this, that sensible people cut up 
 all manner of boyish antics. Never be over nice about dignity 
 when in near pursuit of the better thing, woodland or rural 
 enjoyment; leave gravity and etiquette at home, in your 
 wardrobe, with all other starched and flimsy articles of ap- 
 parel, and all the flummery of life. Get astride an island 
 rock, that midway divides the stream; where the torrent 
 shall throw its spray over you, and the current dash by on 
 either side your slippery foot-hold. Shout! Rival the noisy, 
 angry stream at its own game. Observe now how superior 
 is organic sound to any mere inarticulate noise: your voice 
 lost in the thunder of the cataract, so that you cannot hear 
 • your own words, comes out clear and distinct, to your friends 
 upon the shore. So the voice of true and prophetic genius 
 lost now in the mad roar of the multitude, shall ring its mes- 
 sage clearly in the ear of the listening future. 
 
WAHCONAH 259 
 
 This cascade makes good its claim to be called beautiful 
 by gaining constantly upon your affections. You come again 
 and again to sit by its ebon pools, and let your eye glide 
 with the fall of its glossy sheet, and sparkle with the glitter- 
 ing fragments into which it breaks among the rocks. I like 
 these minor cataracts, which do not oppress you with their 
 sublimity, where your soul is not absorbed by any awful 
 grandeur. They are like those pleasant books where some- 
 thing is left for the imagination of the reader. There is 
 room for the delights of an "if:" if it had been hung in air 
 like the white ribbon of a bridal bonnet ; if it had been swol- 
 len to mighty bulk, and curved like a horse shoe: if it had 
 fallen from so far that it had lost its way to earth, and so 
 flown back on iridescent wings to heaven. Why, one has a 
 whole cabinet of possible picturesques in that little germ. 
 
 There is a tradition about these falls which I heard, long 
 
 years ago, from a young Indian of the civilized Stockbridge 
 
 tribe, who had come back from the western exile of his people 
 
 to be educated at an eastern college. I hope it will please 
 
 you. 
 
 Wahconah 
 
 At the close of the great Pequot war in 1637, you will 
 recollect that the remnant of that gallant but unhappy 
 nation were driven from Connecticut, and scattered abroad, 
 as they plaintively said, " like the autumn leaves which return 
 not, though the tree grow green again." In this sad exodus, 
 a majority of the fugitives went to swell the Onuhgungo and 
 other fierce tribes of Canada which afterwards took such 
 dreadful vengeance upon the western border settlements of 
 New England. But some bands chose to pause by the way 
 in the valleys of the Housatonic and the Hoosac, where the 
 brotherly kindness of the Mohegans and the Mohawks granted 
 them homes in which game was plenty and hunters were few. 
 
 One of these small parties, under the lead of a young 
 brave, called Miahcomo, built their frail village in that part 
 
260 TAGHCONIC 
 
 of the valley now called Dalton. Here, for forty years, they 
 lived in peace, and, begetting sons and daughters, increased 
 in numbers far beyond the red man's wont. The hill-side, 
 where they buried their dead; the glen, whose thick woods 
 reflected the red glare of their council fire, became dear to 
 them as home; but above all, the inaccessible mountains 
 were prized, as the hunted man only can prize the strength 
 of the hills. 
 
 Almost forty years had passed since the little tribe fled 
 from the flames of Fort Mystic, when the great sachem of 
 the Wampanoags came to them. With strong logic, and 
 glowing eloquence, he painted the rapid encroachments of 
 the white man, and passionately besought them to join in 
 that league which, in the following year, well nigh swept the 
 English colonists from the soil of New England. 
 
 The young braves grasped their tomahawks as they lis- 
 tened, and the sympathetic eye of woman kindled with almost 
 martial fire. But the rulers in savage, as in civilized life, 
 can sometimes be prudent men. The chiefs crushed with 
 cold words of sympathy the hopes which had quickened in 
 the smiles of the people. Miahcomo — the same who had led 
 the tribe from the pursuit of the English — still ruled them; 
 and the young warriors muttered that the horrors of the 
 last night of Fort Mystic, had turned his blood to water at 
 the thought of the Long Knives — although bold as an eagle 
 towards aught else. In more cautious tones they whispered, 
 that if ever a spark of the old fire rekindled in Miahcomo's 
 breast, the wily and cowardly priest Tashmu was always at 
 hand to quench it. Thus the mission of Philip failed, and 
 the tribe continued in peace. 
 
 In the early summer, nearly two years after the visit of 
 Philip, Miahcomo and his warriors were summoned to meet 
 the Mohawks — to whom they had become feudatories — be- 
 yond the Taghconics. Trusting to the quiet of the valley, 
 the village was left in charge of the women, and a few de- 
 
WAHCONAH 261 
 
 crepit old men. Among the former was Wahconah, the old 
 chief's favorite daughter, a young lady of singular personal 
 attractions, and skilled in all the fine arts in vogue among 
 her countrywomen — especially in that of angling. 
 
 What with all these accomplishments, and the high rank 
 of her father, it is little wonder that Wahconah was the idol 
 of all the young men of the village, and, although yet almost 
 a child in years, had — so the rumor ran — received offers 
 matrimonial from a certain mysterious Mohawk dignitary. 
 This latter worthy, the wigwam gossips unanimously agreed, 
 would carry off the prize, whenever he came in person to 
 claim it — for it was a thing unheard of in Indian wooing, 
 that a brave of fifty scalps should sue in vain. 
 
 The young gallants of the Housatonic did not, for all 
 this, remit one whit of their attentions, so that, while they 
 were over the border with her father, the hours hung heavily 
 on the hands of Wahconah. It was, perhaps, to while away 
 the tediousness; perhaps to get a nice dish for her lodge, 
 that the maiden, one sunny afternoon in June, took her fish- 
 ing lines and wandered up the river to our cascade. Before 
 the sun went down, her success had been abundant, and she 
 only waited for one more last prize — a habit which I notice 
 is still invariable with successful people, be they anglers, 
 speculators, or what not. 
 
 But Wahconah did not, after all, seem to have fully set 
 her heart upon this final prize. On the contrary, she lay 
 luxuriously back upon the soft greensward, playfully twining 
 a few scarlet columbines in her dark hair, and smoothing 
 softly down the gay feathers of the oriole and blue-bird that 
 decorated the edges of her white deer-skin robe — a garment 
 which, it must be confessed, was rather excessive in its 
 Bloomerism, considering the primitive nature of the wearer's 
 pettiloons; but that was the fashion of the day, and no fault 
 of Wahconah 's. 
 
2fi2 TAGHCONIC 
 
 The childlike maiden revelled in the very fullness of 
 delightful revery. With a gentle, undisturbing thrill, she 
 felt the richly colored clouds fill her with their delicious 
 warmth ; she dipped her little foot in the stream and laughed 
 aloud to feel the soft caresses of the current ; she mocked the 
 black-bird that sung upon the oak, and the squirrel that 
 chirped upon the hickory; she threw flowers and leaves 
 upon the wave, and smiled maidenly when two chanced 
 to meet and float together down the stream — for that was 
 a love omen. That must have been a pleasant sight in the 
 summer twilight, almost two hundred years ago. 
 
 Pity if it had been lost! — as it was not; for all the while 
 a young warrior had been looking on, from the shelter of a 
 wood on the other side of the stream. It was certainly in- 
 delicate in him to play so long the spy upon a maiden's 
 reveries, but one cannot find it in his heart to blame too 
 severely, when he considers the temptation; and, besides, 
 that the offender was but a mere savage, who never had the 
 advantage of the counsels of Chesterfield, Abbott, or any 
 "Young Man's Friend ' ' whatever. The promptings of nature, 
 however, did at last suggest to him the impropriety of his 
 course; or perhaps he grew impatient. At all events, he 
 hailed Wahconah, in the flowery language of Indian gal- 
 lantry, "Qua Alangua!" that is to say, "Hail! Bright Star! " 
 
 Wahconah, startled at the sudden appearance of a strange 
 warrior, in the absence of her tribesmen, sprang to her feet; 
 but preserving the calmness befitting Miahcomo's daughter, 
 replied "Qua Sesah!" that is "Hail! Brother!" "Nessacus," 
 continued the stranger, introducing himself, "Nessacus 
 is weary with flying before the Long Knives, and his people 
 faint by the way. Will the Bright Star's people shut their 
 lodges against their brethren ? ' ' 
 
 "Miahcomo has gone toward the setting sun," replied 
 the maiden — who by this time had probably come to the 
 conclusion that Nessacus was a very handsome young man, 
 
WAHCONAH 263 
 
 and well behaved — "but his lodges are always open. Let 
 my brother's people follow, and be welcome." 
 
 A signal from the young chief brought a weary, travel- 
 worn band to his side, and Wahconah led the way to the 
 village, while Nessacus related to her the sad story of Philip's 
 defeat and death. " They waste us," he said, " as the pesti- 
 lence which forerun them wasted our fathers." 
 
 "The Manitou is angry with his red childen," said Wah- 
 conah; " He makes the white man mighty, by the strength 
 of the long knife and the fire bird." 
 
 '.' It is not that," responded her companion bitterly, "but 
 the traitor's tongue at our council fires, and the traitor's 
 arrow upon our war-path." 
 
 Wahconah remembered what the people whispered con- 
 cerning Tashmu, and was silent. 
 
 Thus they came to the village; but I must let pass the 
 welcome, and the housekeeping as well, until. Miahcomo's 
 return. Suffice it that in those pleasant days in that moon 
 of flowers, the young people did precisely what you and I 
 would have been likely to do: fell violently in love; and, 
 what was more, in utter disregard of Indian notions of pro- 
 priety, confessed it to each other — a breach of aboriginal 
 etiquette, you will the more readily pardon, if you know 
 experimentally, as I have no doubt you do, how dementing 
 is the glance of a bright eye and the bloom of a damask 
 cheek in the soft light of a June evening, when your heart is 
 as full of love as the air is of fragrance. 
 
 Four suns had ripened the passion of our new lovers, 
 and a fifth was shining genially upon it, when a messenger 
 came in, announcing the near approach of Miahcomo; and, 
 as the custom was, all the people went out to meet him. 
 What visions of happiness, our dreamers had built up in 
 their barbarous way, I cannot tell: nor do I know whether, 
 as a rule, Indian sires have such a fatal way of laying siege 
 to aircastles, as more civilized fathers use : so you can guess 
 
264 TAGHCONIC 
 
 as well as I, whether any tremblings troubled the hearts of 
 our young friends, akin to what young Squire Mansfield and 
 old Banker Barker's daughter might experience in corre- 
 sponding circumstances. But, remember, one love is much 
 like another. 
 
 Wahconah and the chief of her guests stood together on 
 a shaded knoll as, just up the valley, the returning warriors 
 came in sight. Their leader is described as a fine old hero 
 as one should desire to see. His tall sinewy frame was 
 scarcely bent by the snows of seventy years; every wrinkle 
 in his face was firm as if it were a new sinew of added strength; 
 his eye, keen and piercing as that of his youngest archer. 
 
 By the chief's side, walked a different figure; meek even 
 to cringing, with an uncertain step, and weak, restless, un- 
 quiet eye. It was the priest, Tashmu — one of that strange 
 caste, often hated, sometimes despised, but always feared by 
 the aborigines. This Tashmu was a constant attendant upon 
 Miahcomo, and, it was said had acquired a mysterious and 
 powerful influence over the sachem's mind. 
 
 Wahconah shrank from the presence of the wizard as the 
 summer flowier shrinks from the north wind; but his, was, 
 for once, not the most unwelcome figure which met her eye. 
 With her father and his spiritual adviser, came a burly war- 
 rior, not positively old, nor absolutely ugly — only a little 
 smoke-dried or so, and marked by transverse and obverse 
 scars, which, although doubtless honorable, might have been 
 dispensed with as matters of mere beauty. Grace would 
 have likened his face to a smoked ham ornamentally slashed. 
 He was evidently conscious of his renown, and wore the 
 scalps which hung dangling in profusion about him, as proudly 
 as ever civilized hero his jewelled star or blushing ribbon. 
 Wahconah guessed but too shrewdly, that this was her Mo- 
 hawk suitor — although he was far too dignified a character 
 to conduct his wooing in the unceremonious manner which 
 
WAHCONAH 265 
 
 suited his young rival. Perhaps it had been awkward work 
 had he tried. 
 
 When the parties met, a few words explained to the chief, 
 the character of the strangers, and why they were his guests; 
 which ensured a hearty confirmation of the welcome extended 
 them by his daughter. Whatever may have been his medita- 
 tions upon learning the new disasters of his race, and how- 
 ever bitter were the memories they recalled, they did not 
 hinder his holding high revel that night upon the banks of 
 the brook; where feasts were celebrated and athletic games 
 held in honor at once of all his guests. Such was the cour- 
 teous custom of the woods. I leave you to guess whose eyes 
 brightened as Nessacus carried off all the prizes for daring 
 feats, and skillful; and whose darkened as the brawny arms 
 and square frame of the Mohawk, Yonnongah, excelled all in 
 their marvellous strength. There was yet another eye stealth- 
 ily and intently watching every glance and motion, and 
 divining the thoughts of careless hearts. For Tashmu was 
 already, by his evil instinct, the enemy of the young exile. 
 
 Nessacus was no laggard in love nor in business. Early 
 on the morning after the feast, he repaired to the lodge of 
 Miahcamo, and the two remained long in conference. The 
 visit was again and again repeated, but still the nature of 
 their consultations did not transpire : only the name of Wah- 
 conah was mixed in the gossip concerning them; and it was 
 surmised that the courtship of Yonnongah was perhaps get- 
 ting in a bad way. The young chief was certainly gaining 
 the favor of the old, and, as the people hoped, undermin- 
 ing the influence of the dread-inspiring Tashmu: love was 
 casting out fear. But the Mohawk was powerful and the 
 priest crafty; and both were busy and dangerous enemies. 
 For the present it was the part of the latter to discover 
 the desires and plans of Nessacus, and bring them" into the 
 open day, where his ally could attack them with his might. 
 
266 TAGHCONIC 
 
 There was no great difficulty in effecting the revelation; 
 for there was no longer any purpose or possibility of conceal- 
 ment. And two propositions soon came to be national 
 affairs, for discussion at the tribe's council fires: the first 
 was for the marriage of Nessacus and Wahconah ; the second 
 for the migration of the tribe to the west, beyond the reach 
 of the white man's encroachments. 
 
 To the first, Miahcoma gave his support; but he clung 
 to the spot where he had ruled so long and so happily. 
 
 On the other hand, Yonnongah demanded the maiden 
 for his fourth wife, on the strength of some ancient promise 
 of her father; and denounced the far-reaching vengeance of 
 his nation, if their tributaries should attempt to migrate 
 beyond their jurisdiction. The amorous old warrior seemed 
 immovably bent upon securing Wahconah for his lodge; 
 alternately employing threats and those sweet promises, of 
 which even an Indian lover can be so profuse — especially in 
 the ripe experience of his fourth courtship. This was no 
 matter of jest with the sorely perplexed father and sachem; 
 for Yonnongah was a man of might in his nation, and would 
 have scant scruples of delicacy in carrying out his threats. 
 All which, Tashmu lost no opportunity for urging upon his 
 dismayed chief, to the great detriment of our hero's suit. 
 
 Nessacus soon saw how matters were tending, and took 
 a bold, impetuous man's short way out of the difficulty, by 
 challenging his rival to decide the issue by arms. Yonnon- 
 gah, who, to do him justice, was as fearless as Nessacus him- 
 self, closed at once with the proposal; but the priest was not 
 thus to be balked of his chance for villainy. Signs and 
 potents multiplied marvellously: not a bird could fly, or a 
 fish swim, or a cloud float, but each and all were pregnant 
 with divine prohibition of the proposed duel. The powers 
 above and below combined to forbid it. The thunder mut- 
 tered the supernal veto; the winds breathed it; the stars 
 winked it. If one could put perfect faith in Tashmu, never 
 
WAHCONAH 267 
 
 was such a commotion in heaven and "elsewhere," at the 
 coming combat had created. The ordeal of arms was aban- 
 doned. 
 
 It was only fair, since the gods had issued their fiat against 
 one method of solving the tribe's perplexity, that they should 
 provide another. So thought Tashmu, and exclaimed in the 
 council, "Let the Great Spirit speak!" 
 
 " Let the Great Spirit speak, and we will obey," repeated 
 Miahcomo reverently. 
 
 And Yonnongah said: " It is well ! " 
 
 It was then proclaimed that Tashmu would, by divina- 
 tion, enquire that night, in the Wizard's Glen, how the will 
 of the Manitou should be ascertained; and a "bad spell" 
 was denounced against all who should disturb his incanta- 
 tions, by going beyond the precincts of the village. 
 
 Many predicted ill to Nessacus from this committal of 
 his fate to the hands of a well-known enemy; but none ven- 
 tured to remonstrate against a decree recognized by law as 
 heaven-inspired: and still more venturesome would it have 
 been to rebel against the edict, if it emanated, as some be- 
 lieved, from authority the reverse of heavenly. 
 
 A few rods below the cataract of Wahconah Falls is, or 
 was, a sharp rock which midway divides the stream. At 
 the date of our tradition, the current flowed smoothly and 
 evenly on the two sides of it, and it had often been used, 
 like the flight of birds, the aspect of clouds and other simple 
 objects in nature, to ascertain the will of heaven. Upon the 
 night of Tashmu's supposed divination in the "Wizard's 
 Glen," that respectable minister of religion might, instead, 
 have been seen here, assisted by the stronger arms of his 
 Mohawk friend, tugging away at certain great rocks which 
 lay near the shore, and which they finally contrived to place 
 in the water, so as to impede the current upon one side. 
 
 At this same spot, by the riverside, a day or two after- 
 wards, the tribe were assembled, and it was announced to 
 
268 TAGHCONIC 
 
 them that Manitou had delegated the spirit of the stream 
 to settle their difficulties. In other words — a small canoe, 
 curiously carved with mysterious hieroglyphics, was to be 
 launched midway in the river and, as the current chanced 
 to carry it on one side or the other of the dividing rock, the 
 questions in dispute were to be decided. This was a mode 
 of solving knotty points by no means uncommon, and which, 
 therefore, excited no surprise, except that the priest's chances 
 for trickery seemed to be lessened. Simple souls! who knew 
 not that what appears the fairest field often affords the best 
 harvest to accomplished knaves! 
 
 An "era of good feeling" seemed now to dawn. All 
 parties hastened to adopt this as a " finality." Tashmu, in 
 oily words, wished well to his brother Nessacus; and Nessacus 
 resigned himself unreservedly, to the care of his brother 
 Tashmu. The priest was as much puzzled as pleased at 
 this sudden access of confidence; but it, at least, made his 
 part easy to play. 
 
 A solemn feast was now held; and the magical bark, 
 freighted with so many hopes, was then poised in the middle 
 of the stream. Miahcomo was placed in savage state, at a 
 conspicuous point, while Yonnongah and his rival were as- 
 signed separate sides of the river. 
 
 "Let Manitou speak!" exclaimed the priest; and the 
 sacred canoe, released from its moorings, floated steadily 
 down the stream — inclining now to the right hand, now to 
 the left. All eyes intently followed its course, hardly doubt- 
 ing that, by some charm or other, Tashmu would at last 
 cause it to pass near Yonnongah. You will guess that none 
 counted more confidently on such a result than that worthy 
 himself. Still the bark floated regardlessly on, until it 
 touched the magic rock — hung poised there for a moment, then 
 seemed to incline toward the Mohawk; but, the inconstant 
 current striking it obliquely, it swung slowly round, as upon 
 pivot, and passed down the stream, by the feet of Nessacus. 
 
WAHCONAH 269 
 
 "Wagh! the Great Spirit hath spoken, and it is good?" 
 exclaimed Miahcomo ; and the people whose hearts the young 
 chief had somehow gained, shouted "Ho! It is good!" 
 
 The priest and his accomplice gazed at each other in 
 silent astonishment, that Heaven could possibly decide against 
 arguments of such weight as they had used. The former, 
 for a moment, began to suspect that a great God might pos- 
 sibly in reality, rule in the affairs of men — making him to 
 bless whom he would have cursed. But the idea was too 
 mighty for him, and he recurred, naturally, to" a suspicion 
 of treachery. I need not say, however, that he had his own 
 reasons for not pressing an immediate investigation. I do 
 not know that it ever occurred to him that Nessacus might 
 have been a witness to his pious midnight labors, and im- 
 proving upon the hint, rendered them abortive. 
 
 The assent of all parties was accordingly given to the pro- 
 posed marriage; and the time which intervened between the 
 trial and a "lucky day," was to be filled up with feasting and 
 revelry. The disappearance of Tashmu from the scene added 
 to the hilarity of the occasion, and all was wild merriment. 
 
 But alarming intelligence interrupted their festivities. 
 The terrible Major Talcott, with his soldiers, had pursued 
 the brave sachem of Quaboag across the mountains, and 
 slain him with more than two score of his best warriors, at 
 Mahaiwe, on the banks of the Housatonic, not thirty miles 
 from the settlement of Miahcomo. Even their temporary 
 security was gone ; the mountain barrier was already passed. 
 
 The fugitives from the battle at Mahaiwe came thronging 
 in, but at last brought intelligence that the invaders had 
 returned. A party of them brought, also, the missing Tashmu, 
 whom they accused of having offered to lead the enemy to 
 the refuge of Nessacus. The evidence of his guilt was com- 
 plete, and the fate of the criminal was not delayed by any 
 unnecessary judicial forms. 
 
 Only a want of provisions had prevented Major Talcott 
 
270 TAGHCONIC 
 
 from accepting the wizard's kind offer, and he might now 
 return, at any moment, to profit by it. The best haste was 
 accordingly made in their migration, and before the Novem- 
 ber winds blew, Nessacus had led them to a home in the 
 west, where they became a great tribe, and nourished for 
 many generations, before they again heard the white man's 
 rifle. 
 
 As for Wahconah, the story of her happiness comes 
 down to us, through Indian traditions, faint and far, but 
 sweet as the perfume which a western gale might bring from 
 a far-off prairie. 
 
Maplewood 
 
Maplewood and Berkshire's Beauty 
 
 Strowed with pleasaunce, whose fayre grassy grownd, 
 
 Mantled with greene and goodly beautified 
 
 With all the ornaments of Flora's pride. — Faerie Queene. 
 
 It is like a picture in an old story book about France 
 la belle, with arching trees in front, a temple and chateau in 
 the background, and maidens and peasant-girls in all — is 
 the scene at our Young Ladies' Institute, of a pleasant 
 summer twilight. All its light hearted inmates are out in 
 full glee, with circling games and ringing laughter — the truest 
 children of health, content, and innocence. 
 
 But all are not in the giddy group: some have separated 
 from it, and, in couples, with arms affectionately inter- 
 twined, are slowly walking down the long paths, pouring 
 into each other's ears the precious secrets of maiden con- 
 fidence — all the hopes, the dreams, the fears which can find 
 a lodging place in pure hearts. Very precious are those 
 hopes and fears; although neither may ever be realized, yet 
 shall they be a part of life and a part of the woman in all her 
 future. In this life of ours, we pile dream upon dream, effort 
 upon disappointed effort, until the apparent fruitlessness 
 attains to some sort of fruition and reality. There are few 
 things in poetry more beautifully and truthfully said, than 
 these lines of Henry Taylor : 
 
 "The tree 
 Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enriched 
 By its own fallen leaves; and man is made 
 In heart and spirit from deciduous hopes, 
 And things which seem to perish.'' 
 
 Under the vine shaded bowers, or by the sparkling foun- 
 tain, sits here and there a solitary maiden, with thoughts, 
 perhaps, far away in a happy home; striving to bring to 
 her fancy the family group as it is in the old homestead at 
 
274 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the pleasant close of day. She may well be pardoned if, 
 even in this pleasant home of learning, she steals a little 
 while from young companionship, to let the warm but not 
 bitter tears run freely down her cheeks. She will soon rejoin 
 the merry circle, not the least merry there. 
 
 I used constantly to attend the examinations, exhibitions 
 and concerts in the pretty chapel. I don't go so often now. 
 The fact is the girls get my poor mind into a fearful muddle 
 with their sines, cosines, sonatas, arias, ballads, tangents, 
 French nasals, subjectives, German gutturals, objectives and 
 all the rest; till I go home and dream that "Ah, non giunge" 
 is Greek for the segment of a circle, and that some delicious 
 voice is trilling out in notes that reach E alt-, a + b — c=x! 
 How it did wring my heart one anniversary day — that is the 
 feminine of "commencement" — to see a venerable Doctor 
 in Divinity utterly nonplussed by a saucy Miss whom he 
 had under cross-examination as to her theology. "You did 
 not learn that here!" he exclaimed in astonishment at some 
 startling heterodoxy. "Oh dear, no sir!" was the pert 
 response, "I knew it a long while before I came here!" The 
 good man laughed a polite little laugh; but he looked much 
 less the great divine he certainly was, than his conqueror did 
 the little divinity she very possibly was not. 
 
 It was not so in the good old times; but now we are 
 required to believe that beauty and brains are as natural 
 concomitants as strawberries and cream. "Well," as I once 
 heard two astute politcians of opposing schools, agree as 
 they went out from one of Wendell Phillip's lectures on 
 Female Suffrage, "Well, I suppose we must submit to the 
 inevitable." But they did not vote for it, nevertheless. 
 
 The grounds of Maplewood are very beautiful. Nothing 
 in our village is more fascinating to the stranger's eye than 
 its lawns, groves and winding avenues, with their rich orna- 
 mentation of bowers, fountains, vases, and flowers; and, 
 grouped in the center of all, the classic chapel, the balconied 
 
MAPLEWOOD 275 
 
 dormitories and the elephantine gymnasium. The latter, by 
 the bye, was the grand old church in which Thomas Allen, 
 the Bennington battle-parson, President Allen of Bowdoin 
 College, President Humphrey of Amherst, Rev. Dr. John 
 Todd and other noted divines once preached as pastors, and 
 in which Dr Holmes read his " Ploughboy." Maplewood is 
 also historical in another point ; occupying the grounds which 
 in the war of 1812 belonged to the cantonment where thou- 
 sands of national troops gathered for the campaigns on the 
 northern border; and in which the prisoners of war, taken 
 in those campaigns, were confined: fruitful subjects for the 
 young ladies' themes, as it seems to me. After the war, 
 Professor Chester Dewey, the eminent naturalist, established 
 here a boy's school of high reputation; and, in 1841, Rev. 
 Wellington H. Tyler founded the present institute, and soon 
 gained for it a grand reputation. 
 
 The world has found out the picturesque charms, and not 
 unpicturesque comforts, of Maplewood; and now, from June 
 to October it is permitted to invade the sacred precincts with 
 its fashions and pleasures. Even the dance — tabooed in 
 term-time, or masked as "steps and figures" — treads gently 
 the tempting floor between the Corinthian columns of Gym- 
 nasium Hall; and serenades sweetly thrill the balconies 
 sacred from such follies for the rest of the year. Maplewood 
 Institute becomes Maplewood Hall: just as you may have 
 read in weird story of enchanted persons who passed their 
 lives alternating between two widely different shapes. 
 
 It is all very odd, and it's all very charming ; but I did not 
 bring you here on that account. You asked me, sometime 
 ago — yes: I am sure you did — "What is it, after all, that 
 makes this Berkshire so very beautiful!" Now come to the 
 tower of this gymnasium, which stands practically in the cen- 
 ter of our glorious amphitheatre of hills, and I will show you. 
 
 Yes, the views certainly are comprehensive and superb: 
 we will attend to them in a moment. But first listen to 
 
276 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, whom I suppose you will recognize as a com- 
 petent interpreter of the laws of beauty. 
 
 "That country is always the most beautiful which is made up of the 
 most curves." 
 
 That is the great teacher's absolute dictum directly appli- 
 cable here: and listen to another, applicable by indirection 
 but clearly pertinent. 
 
 "In all beautiful designs of exterior descent, a certain regularity is 
 necessary; the lines should be graceful, but they must also balance each 
 other, slope answering to slope, and statue to statue." 
 
 And now observe what may be considered Mr. Ruskin's 
 application of the first-quoted law. It forms part of his ideal 
 description or characterization of "the picturesque blue 
 country" of England; that is, a country having a blue dis- 
 tance of mountains: 
 
 "Its first and most distinctive peculiarity is its grace; it is all un- 
 dulation and variety of line, one curve passing into another with the most 
 exquisite softness, rolling away into faint and far outlines of various 
 depths and decision, yet none hard or harsh; and, in all probability, 
 rounded off in the near ground into massy forms of partially wooded hill, 
 shaded downward into winding dingles or cliffy ravines, each form melt- 
 ing imperceptibly into the next, without an edge or angle. ***** 
 
 "Every line is voluptuous, floating and wavy in its form; deep, rich 
 and exquisitely soft in its color; drowsy in its effect, like slow, wild music; 
 letting the eye repose upon it, as on a wreath or cloud, without one feature 
 of harshness to hurt, or of contrast to awaken." 
 
 I cannot quote the whole description; but you will find 
 it in the Essay upon the Poetry of Architecture; and grand 
 reading the whole book will be for Berkshire summer days. 
 
 But look around you now. Mr. Ruskin might have writ- 
 ten the quoted passages sitting here upon this tower; and 
 been guilty of nothing worse than almost Pre-Raphaelite 
 precision. The landscape is literally all curves: there is not 
 a straight or ungraceful line in it, except it be of man's mak- 
 ing. In what graceful sweeps those mountain walls were 
 thrown up. Into what an endless and infinitely varied sue- 
 
BERKSHIRE'S BEAUTY 277 
 
 cession of interlacing loops and curves, the old glaciers scal- 
 loped their crests and indented their ravines. The meander- 
 ings of the countless brooks, the serpentine windings of the 
 Housatonic, the wavy and sinuous contours of the lakes, 
 soothe the eye by the multitude of their luxurious curves. 
 The bare morains, the wooded knolls, the mossy maple-groves 
 and clumpy stretches of willow, are all soft and rounded. 
 The shadows which lie under the solitary trees on the hill- 
 side, have no harsher shape than that which the fleecy passing 
 cloud casts near them. Nay, Nature, compelling man to her 
 own sweet mood, forces him to bend his railroads and high- 
 ways gently around the circled bases of her mountains. Even 
 when he makes his ways straight, " Nature soon touches in 
 her picturesque graces," and covers his streets and his habi- 
 tations with her swelling drapery. Berkshire, as you see it 
 here, surely answers well to Mr. Ruskin's definition of "the 
 most beautiful country." 
 
 And as to the demands of the second passage which I 
 have quoted, and to the general requisitions of his essay; 
 I repeat what I have said elsewhere : 
 
 "A lovelier landscape one might not desire to see; and when satiated 
 with long luxurious gazing, the spectator seeks to analyze the sources of 
 his delight, all the elements of beauty justify his praise. To the eye the 
 valley here presents the proportions which architects love to give their 
 favorite structures. The symmetry, too, with which point answers to 
 opposing point, exceeds the attainment of art. 
 
 "Variety, the most marvellous, but without confusion, forbids the 
 sense to tire. Colors, the richest, softest and most delicate charm the 
 eye, and vary with the ever-changing conditions of the atmosphere. Fer- 
 tile farms and frequent villages imbue the scene with the warmth of gen- 
 erous life; while, over all, hangs the subdued grandeur which may well 
 have pervaded the souls of the great and good men who have made Berk- 
 shire their home from the days of Jonathan Edwards down." 
 
 And now, in order that we may get back to the Institute, 
 and, as I am in moderately good humor to-night — and more- 
 over as it seems half-way pertinent to the subject — I will give 
 
278 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the young ladies a little sermon, upon a German text, or 
 variation upon a German theme — as they may elect to call 
 it — which I made a long while ago — in fact, before any of 
 them were born. It had a little adventure once, which may 
 improve its flavor. After it had duly gone the rounds of 
 the newspapers, and been consigned, as I supposed, to its 
 long home — the limbo of fugitive verse — it suddenly reap- 
 peared; being communicated to a "spiritual" journal by 
 some great departed, through a female medium of Chelsea. 
 It was tricked out in grave clothes of very flowery prose, but 
 I recognized the familiar thing in a moment, and have re- 
 stored it to its original versiform dress. Still I beg that you 
 will treat it with the regard due to one who has come back 
 from the tomb for your instruction. 
 
 Scatter the Germs of the Beautiful 
 
 "Stteut etfttg in empjanglicfye ©etniitfyer, 
 
 2)e§ ©uten unb be£ Scfyonen Samentomet, 
 Sie letmen unb erblufyen bott ju SJaiimen, 
 
 ©te golbne <Parabtefe3frucfyte tragen.,, 
 
 Scatter the germs of the beautiful; 
 
 By the wayside let them fall, 
 That the rose may spring by the cottage side, 
 
 And the vine on the garden wall. 
 Cover the rough and the rude of earth 
 
 With a veil of leaves and flowers, 
 And strew with the opening bud and cup 
 
 The path of the summer hours. 
 
 Scatter the germs of the beautiful 
 
 In the holy shrine of home; 
 Let the pure and the fair and the graceful there 
 
 In their loveliest luster come: 
 Leave not a trace of deformity 
 
 In the temple of the heart, 
 But gather about its hearth, the gems 
 
 Of nature and of art. 
 
MAPLEWOOD 279 
 
 Scatter the germs of the beautiful 
 
 In the temples of our God; 
 The God who starred the uplifted sky 
 
 And flowered the trampled sod. 
 When he built a temple for himself, 
 
 And a home for his priestly race 
 He reared each arch in symmetry, 
 
 And curved each line in grace. 
 
 Scatter the germs of the beautiful 
 
 In the depths of the human soul; 
 They shall blossom there and bear thee fruit, 
 
 While the endless ages roll. 
 Plant with the pure and beautiful 
 
 This pathway to the tomb, 
 And the pure and fair about thy path 
 
 In Paradise shall bloom. 
 
Quaint Old Stocfybridge 
 
Quaint Old Stockbridge 
 
 Of silence is the thunder born. — Gerald Massey. 
 
 So much has been written about the fair old town of 
 Stockbridge that the tourist finds almost every rood of its 
 soil already storied ground. Seldom does genius owe so 
 much to its dwelling place, and still more rarely is the debt 
 so richly paid. The scenes which have received their fame 
 at the hand of Bryant or Miss Sedgwick need no new cele- 
 bration here; nor does the town which has been the theatre 
 of so much curious history, and the home or birth-place of 
 so many men of intellectual power. Yet the interest which 
 already attaches to such places communicates somewhat of 
 its own zest to whatever may be newly written concerning 
 them. The world has a singular craving to know more of 
 that of which it already knows much, rather than to follow 
 the traveller in "fresh fields and pastures new." You may 
 have noted that the gaping crowd always have the readiest 
 and loudest laugh for their orator's stalest jokes. They are 
 prepared for the point the moment it comes, while the bright- 
 est of them will not seize the gist of the most sparkling original 
 witticism until the opportunity to laugh at it is long past. 
 So, always, the world feels a comfortable security in enjoy- 
 ing that which has before pleased and interested it: that is 
 the advantage that one has in following the path which has 
 already been broken out by genius. And in some such 
 fashion we will explore old Stockbridge. 
 
 There are many objects and localities here, the mere 
 mention of which suggests to you a story or a picture, al- 
 though the story may never have been written, and the 
 picture may never have been born of pencil or camera. "Old 
 Stockbridge on the Plain ' ' is full of these thought-compelling 
 objects. Cradled between hills, enriched by frequent costly 
 villas, picturesque cottages and handsome ornamental grounds 
 
284 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the world-renowned model village of New England lies 
 stretched for a mile along a level surface formed in great 
 part by a singular embankment of the Housatonic, which, 
 although doubtless the work of nature, half deceives you by 
 its regularity into the belief that it is artificial. The river 
 here moves in its most exquisite curves, and is bordered by 
 its richest meadows. Bryant in his Reminiscences of Miss 
 Sedgwick — published in her "Life and Letters" edited by 
 Miss Dewey — thus describes the scene as it first met his eye 
 in the October of 1816, on his first visit to southern Berk- 
 shire. 
 
 "The woods were in all the glory of autumn, and I well remember, 
 as I passed through Stockbridge, how much I was struck by the beauty 
 of the smooth, green meadows, on the banks of that lovely river which 
 winds near the Sedgwick family mansion: the Housatonic whose gently 
 flowing water seemed tinged with the gold and crimson of the trees that 
 overhung them. I admired no less the contrast between this soft scene, 
 and the steep craggy hills that overlooked it, clothed with their many 
 colored forests." 
 
 Wealth and time have, since Mr. Bryant's picture was 
 drawn, done something to adorn the original; nothing to 
 mar its wild beauties or its soft luxuriance. It is still sought 
 by the beauty-seeking artist. Before artist or poet, when 
 the pine and the oak outnumbered the elms, the Mohegan 
 also loved it well. 
 
 Through this superb cradle of the hills, extends, on the 
 north side of the river, the noble avenue which, with a few 
 fine subsidiary streets, forms the old village of story. This 
 avenue is nearly, or quite, straight: but the variation in 
 the spacious court-yards, with their rich shrubbery, and in 
 the planting of the great trees, wards off any impression of 
 stiffness. The elms, in particular, many of them of more 
 than a century's growth, are among the most magnificent in 
 New England. Miss Sedgwick, in one of her letters, gives 
 the following characteristic instance of her remembrance of 
 them on the other side of the Atlantic: 
 
STOCKBRIDGE 285 
 
 "One of the cultivated women of England said to me, in a soothing 
 tone, on my expressing admiration of English trees, 'Oh, you will have 
 such in time, when your forests are cut down, and they have room for 
 their limbs to spread.' I smiled and was silent; but, if I saw in vision 
 our graceful, drooping elms, embowering roods of ground, and, as I looked 
 at the stiff, upright English elm", had something of the Pharisaic 'holier 
 than thou' flit over my mind, I may be forgiven." 
 
 Stockbridge Street — I believe that is the recognized name 
 for this grand avenue — is sprinkled all along with spots of 
 historic or romantic interest. At its western extremity is 
 the old burial ground of the mission Indians; the scene of 
 Bryant's poem, " An Indian at the Burial Place of His 
 Fathers." 
 
 " It is the spot I came to seek — 
 
 My father's ancient burial place 
 
 Ere from these vales, ashamed and weak, 
 
 Withdrew our wasted race. 
 
 It is the spot — I know it well — 
 
 Of which our old traditions tell. 
 
 For here the upland bank sends out 
 
 A ridge towards the river side; 
 
 I know the shaggy hills about, 
 
 The meadows smooth and wide — 
 
 The plains that, toward the southern sky, 
 
 Fenced east and west by mountains, lie. 
 
 A white man, gazing on the scene, 
 
 Would say a lovely spot was here, 
 
 And praise the lawns, so fresh and green, 
 
 Between the hills so sheer. 
 
 I like it not — I would the plain 
 
 Lay in its tall old woods again — " 
 
 This ancient burial-ground has long been sacred from the 
 plough, and now has its proper enclosure and monument. A 
 few rods east of it, on the broad church green, is the monu- 
 ment erected to Jonathan Edwards, who was pastor of the 
 Mission church here, from 1751 to 1757: the period in which 
 he wrote his most celebrated works. 
 
286 TAGHCONIC 
 
 The story of this Indian mission — the most successful in 
 New England — is entirely fascinating, and is worthy of a 
 volume. Indeed Miss Electa F. Jones has compiled an in- 
 teresting book from its records. But I must pass the story 
 with the briefest allusion. It was established in 1734 at 
 Great Barrington, but was removed in 1735 to Stockbridge 
 where the Indians were collected: the whole township being 
 granted by the General Court for that purpose. 
 
 A very few carefully selected white families were admitted 
 to aid in the civilization and christianizing of the neophytes; 
 which the wise managers conceived could be most readily 
 accomplished by initiating them into the art of agriculture. 
 The Devil — or whatever may be his other and true name — 
 well understands the godly influence of a farmer's life; and 
 why should not they also whose mission and endeavor are to 
 thwart him in his wiles. I hope you recollect how, a great 
 way back in the history of our family, Satan, in the likeness 
 of a serpent, set about the seduction of grandfather Adam 
 by disgusting him with his excellent situation as a gardener, 
 and putting it into his silly head that he could shine in one 
 of the learned professions, or perhaps all: and again, how 
 the same cunning tempter, under the name and style of 
 Mephistophiles, played the deuce with poor, vain Faust's 
 virtue by persuading him that a farmer's life would be de- 
 grading to a man of his spirit and genius. The founders 
 of the Stockbridge mission showed that they had the scrip- 
 tural combination of the serpent's wisdom and the dove's 
 innocence when they- employed the plough, as one of the weap- 
 ons of their warfare against Ho-bo-mo-ko ; whom I take to be 
 the same old Diabolus under an aboriginal alias. The white 
 families who were sent out on picket in this semi-spiritual 
 warfare did their duty faithfully, and the mixed red and 
 white church which resulted was harmonious and healthful, 
 besides being strikingly picturesque. But the exceptional 
 success of the Stockbridge mission was without dispute, due 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 287 
 
 to its first pastor, the Rev. John Sergeant, who evinced as 
 wonderful capacity for that work as his sucessor did for 
 metaphysics. The mixed church flourished until 1785, when 
 the Indians accepted a new home among the Oneidas of 
 New York : the separation seeming best for both colors. We 
 will not pry too curiously into the ultimate cause of that 
 voluntary exile ; but the tribe has twice since migrated from 
 state to state — flying from the vices or driven by the cupidity 
 of the race which gave them their religion — and are now in 
 Minnesota, a moral and intelligent community, but mysteri- 
 ously unworthy of American citizenship. 
 
 To return to their metaphysial pastor, Rev. Jonathan 
 Edwards: who was installed August 9, 1751; got cleverly at 
 work just one year later on his long contemplated "Treatise 
 on the Freedom of the Will " ; in nine months nearly finished 
 the rough draught of what he originally intended; completed 
 the work before April, 1753, and published it in 1754. From 
 July, 1754, to January, 1755, he was incapacitated by the 
 chills and fever incident to all new lands, but long since 
 banished from Berkshire. Between the spring of 1755 and 
 the fall of 1757, besides smaller works, he finished his two 
 essays upon "God's end in Creation" and "the Nature of 
 Virtue." The biographers say that he gave to these labors, 
 the leisure left him by his pastoral duties : one would rather 
 infer from the amount of his literary work, that he gave to 
 those duties the leisure left him by his pen; and the steady 
 declension of the mission would tend to the same conclusion. 
 But his correspondence shows that he Was "in labors abun- 
 dant" for the good of his flock; and the decline of religion 
 among them must be traced to other causes than absolute 
 neglect, although the great author could hardly have been 
 so absorbed in the interests of the mission as the simple 
 pastor had been. 
 
 People often talk also of the profound quiet and seclusion 
 in the midst of which President Edwards was able to com- 
 
288 TAGHCONIC 
 
 pose his subtile and recondite works. They must have con- 
 ceived that notion, some dreamy summer afternoon, to the 
 lulling music of rippling fountains and rustling foliage, and 
 after listening perhaps to a less rugged sermon than the 
 mighty Calvinist was wont to preach: there was no room 
 for it in the Stockbridge of 1753-7. The year 1752, follow- 
 ing the deceitful peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, was indeed a sea- 
 son of some quiet on the border, and the new pastor seems 
 to have used it to get settled to his work. After that, came 
 troublous times. From Stockbridge northward to the haunts 
 of the fierce and hostile savages of Canada, the forest was 
 broken only by Fort Massachusetts and the soon-interrupted 
 settlements of Lanesboro' and Pittsfield. The Mission In- 
 dians were restless, and in the spring of 1753; the homicide 
 of one Wampaumcorse by white men, whom they thought 
 insufficiently punished, roused to fury the still savage pas- 
 sions of the young sannaps. The emissaries of the French 
 and the Canadian Indians took advantage of the ferment. 
 Plots and suspicions of plots, for the destruction of the 
 town, followed. Horrible orgies, stimulated by large sup- 
 plies of rum from Kinderhook, were kept up for days in the 
 woods west of the village, for the purpose of further inflaming 
 the rage of the young red men. The pastor, together with 
 the magistrates, was constantly busy, enquiring into the 
 nature and reality of these affairs, and, when they were 
 found genuine, in ascertaining who and how many, of the 
 native Indians were engaged in them; and what real or sup- 
 posed grievances had disaffected them: striving in every 
 way to sooth the passions and allay the storm which had 
 been raised with sedulous cunning. At the same time Mr. 
 Edwards, by letter after letter, piteously implored the Pro- 
 vincial government to come to the relief of the frontier by a 
 commission of such imposing character that it would salve 
 the wounded pride of the Indians, and also with money, 
 after the aboriginal custom, to wash out the stain of blood. 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 289 
 
 He succeeded at last. But quiet had hardly descended 
 once more upon the troubled valley when, one August even- 
 ing in 1754, two Mohegans who had been out on a hunting 
 excursion came flying home with the startling report of burn- 
 ing and massacre they had seen at Dutch Hoosac which had 
 been utterly destroyed by five hundred Canadian Indians, 
 who were doubtless bent southward on the same bloody 
 errand. All was consternation; messengers were sent north- 
 ward to call in the exposed settlers at Pittsfield and Lanes- 
 boro' — southward and eastward, to summon aid: everywhere 
 to alarm the country. This was on Thursday, the 29th of 
 August, and by Saturday night the town was full of armed 
 men. Still, on Sunday afternoon, the fugitives who came 
 in from Pittsfield, on horses sent from Connecticut to bring 
 them off, reported that the woods were full of the enemy, 
 who repeatedly fired upon them, killing one man while the 
 woman on the pillion behind him barely escaped by the aid 
 of the only settler in Lenox. What was worse, they had 
 picked up on the hill above Stockbridge village a fatally 
 wounded child, and on investigation had discovered that, 
 while the people of the town were mostly at church, two 
 Indians had entered the house of one Chamberlain, killed 
 a hired man named Owen, who stoutly resisted them, 
 dashed out the brains of one child, and left another with 
 its head cleft by a tomahawk, near the roadside, where it 
 was picked up. 
 
 The terror which ensued all along the border was pitiable 
 beyond description, and it was months before it was allayed. 
 The veteran Colonel, Israel Williams, declared he had never 
 known its equal. The large body of the enemy which de- 
 stroyed Hoosac proceeded no further south; which raised 
 the grave suspicion that the murders in Berkshire were the 
 work of resident Indians. The report that they were the 
 guilty parties spread all over the Province, and in New York, 
 till it became the duty of their mission-pastor to sift the 
 
290 k TAGHCONIC 
 
 evidence and learn the truth. He did so, and satisfied of 
 their innocence manfully become their warm defender ; which 
 — in the excited state of popular prejudice outside of Berk- 
 shire, and among the soldiers sent thither — was no easy or 
 brief task. But he gave himself to it, and was also the help- 
 ful assistant of the civil and military authorities as long as 
 he remained in Stockbridge; for during all that time it was 
 on a more or less threatened frontier of a province which 
 was constantly sending through it troops for the war in New 
 York and Canada. 
 
 Such was the secluded leisure and the peaceful quiet 
 which favored the composition of the Treatise on the Will, 
 and other great works of Jonathan Edwards. I think that, 
 if we look the grand catalogue carefully over, we shall find a 
 considerable number of illustrious books which were written 
 without much aid from ease, leisure, quiet seclusion, intel- 
 lectual appliances or literary companionship. 
 
 The missionary, Sergeant, first lived in a house which 
 still stands upon "The Hill"; but, before his death, he built 
 another in the village, which was purchased by his successor, 
 and is one of the memorable points upon Stockbridge street, 
 through which we are making such slow progress. It is 
 now the property of a classical and philosophical German 
 gentleman, whose dreams are probably not badly disturbed 
 by belief in the calvinistic dogmas of its original owner. 
 Still the house is scrupulously preserved in its pristine con- 
 dition, and you can still, if you are not very portly, sit in 
 the little closet, about six feet square, which President Ed- 
 wards called his " study," and in which he did such gigantic 
 intellectual work. It would be scarcely ample for the easy 
 chair and commodious desk which modern students require; 
 and the walls would only hold the scantiest of libraries — so 
 far as number of volumes go. 
 
 You may even perhaps sleep in the chamber, where, in 
 the wakeful midnight hours which must often have been his, 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 291 
 
 the most severe, as well as the most subtile, of metaphysicians 
 must have shuddered under the contemplation of his own 
 terrible reasoning, with its awful logical results. For my 
 own part, his doctrines gave me too many cruel hours in my 
 boyhood, for me to desire ever again to come under their 
 dreadful shadow, even in dreams; but, if you like, and have 
 strong nerves, you may sleep comfortably in the mighty 
 reasoner's bedroom : for his home is now but a summer hotel. 
 
 On the pleasant church green, between the Indian burial 
 place and the Edwards Homestead, is the site where stood 
 the plain meeting house in which the missionary, Sergeant, 
 first preached the gospel to his parti-colored flock. A hand- 
 some tower, surmounted by a chime of fine bells — given to 
 the town by Hon. David Dudley Field in 1878 — marks the 
 site. And, as their silvery music rings out daily among the 
 echoing hills, it marks also time's changes since the huge 
 East Indian conch-shell, the gift of the pious people of Bos- 
 ton to the mission, and blown by stout David Nau-nau-nee- 
 ba-nuk in tones which "resounded from center to circum- 
 ference of the town," summoned the white man and the 
 red, to worship their common Creator in one rude but suffi- 
 cient temple. 
 
 Passing, without comment, some interesting historic 
 localities, and also the handsome • marble library building 
 among whose treasures some rich relics of the old times are 
 preserved, we come to bold, beautiful, half rock, half grass- 
 clad, oak-crowned, laurel- wreathed Laurel Hill; upon whose 
 southern verge we shall find the " Sacrifice Rock." Miss 
 Sedgwick thus described both hill and rock in " Hope Leslie." 
 where she first introduced them to fame. 
 
 "They [the chief Mononotto, his prisoner, daughter, and warriors] 
 had entered the expanded vale by following the windings of the Housa- 
 tonic around a hill, conical and easy of ascent, except on the side which 
 overlooked the river, where half way from the base to ,the summit, it 
 rose, a perpendicular rock, bearing on its beetling front the age of cen- 
 turies. On every side the hill was garlanded with laurels, now in full 
 
292 TAGHCONIC 
 
 and profuse bloom, here and there surmounted by an intervening pine, 
 spruce or hemlock, whose seared winter foliage was fringed with the 
 bright, tender sprouts of spring." 
 
 For the story which attaches to the spot, you must look 
 in Miss Sedgwick's enchanting novel. The hill, on which the 
 oak is now, if not the most abounding, the most conspicuous, 
 tree, was given by the Sedgwick family, many years ago, to 
 the Laurel Hill Association, to be forever preserved as a 
 public resort. This famous institution — which holds a place 
 among village improvement societies like that which the 
 Berkshire Agricultural does in its own class of organizations 
 — owes its existence to this gift, and it has not only managed 
 the donation with rare good taste; but has been a chief in- 
 strument in making the village of Stockbridge the perfect 
 thing it is. 
 
 Every year the Association here celebrates its anniversary, 
 with many true, pleasant, and often brilliant, words, both of 
 eloquence and poetry. But it seems to me that the grandest 
 gathering the old hill ever saw, was when, after the laying 
 of the first Atlantic cable, the people of Berkshire assembled 
 by thousands to welcome Cyrus W. Field back in triumph to 
 his native town, and the home of his leisure. That looked 
 to me like a triumph worth having; and I still seem to hear 
 the massive sentences — amid whose rugged strength, poetic 
 beauty bloomed like Alpine roses — with which the venerable 
 President Hopkins, Mr. Field's fellow- townsman by birth, 
 congratulated him upon an achievement which he classed, 
 in character and magnitude, with that of " the world seeking 
 Genoese." 
 
 The stranger who comes to Stockbridge to dream away 
 some slumberous summer hours, and finds it excellently well 
 adapted to that purpose, may fancy that he has come into 
 that land 
 
 "In which it seemed always afternoon, 
 Around whose coast the languid air did swoon." 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 293 
 
 But the insight of a little familiarity with the place will 
 teach him better than that. The repose of Stockbridge is 
 the repose of caste, not of lymphatic vulgarity. Its luxur- 
 ious leisure, so indolently but refreshingly enjoyed, is for the 
 most part either a lasting peace conquered in the hottest 
 life-battle, or the interval of needful rest between two periods 
 of hard work — and probably of hard knocks as well. Fre- 
 quently it is more even than that; it is a season of quiet 
 preparation: the pause of the lion before the leap; nay, it 
 is the silence before the thunder-peal — they have been forg- 
 ing thunder-bolts here, from the troubled era when Jonathan 
 Edwards hurled his lurid theology upon the world, down to 
 this present peaceful summer of — whom and what, you will 
 learn if you read carefully the New York dailies of next 
 winter. 
 
 They have a "Laura's Rest," here in Stockbridge: it is 
 far up a mountain steep. Had it been in Italy, now, they 
 would have placed it in some fountain-lulled, luxurious vale, 
 into which the languid maiden could have lounged listlessly 
 to her siesta. But Stockbridge Lauras must climb before 
 they rest. Is not that the moral of it? 
 
 The repose of Stockbridge is the repose of caste. The 
 same air of quiet, well-bred, refined enjoyment, and of modest, 
 well-bred pride, invests both the place and its people. Of 
 the class of cottages in which it becomes cultivated people of 
 moderate tastes to dwell, Mr. Ruskin says, that in them " we 
 naturally look for an elevation of character, a richness of 
 design and form, which, while the building is kept a cottage, 
 may yet give it an air of cottage aristocracy." We might 
 paraphrase this instruction for application to the class of 
 villages to which Stockbridge belongs. They must be kept 
 villages: to make anything else of them would be to take 
 away their charms. But they must retain also their air of 
 village aristocracy : a widely different thing — be it noted — 
 from the aristocracy of a village. This quiet dignity has 
 
294 TAGHCONIC 
 
 been well maintained in the building up of old Stockbridge, 
 both on the plain and on the hills. 
 
 The influence which gives tone to society here is that of 
 the old South-Berkshire Federal gentry, which has come down 
 in much perfection of spirit in spite of the constant influx 
 of city folk. I do not say that there have not been vast 
 changes in manners and in personnel, as well as in habits of 
 thought, since gentlemen went staidly about Stockbridge 
 street in cocked hats, knee-breeches and silk stockings; and 
 ladies, who called their hoop-skirts farthingales, played 
 "Washington's March" upon London-made Clementi pianos, 
 that sounded like a modern music-box. But the spirit of 
 the old social life and the old breeding — together with very 
 much of the old blood — still survives. Whatever modifica- 
 tion it has received has come to it, not from any absolutely 
 extraneous source, but from those circles of New York society 
 which originally were chiefly made up of, or took their color 
 from, men and women, who went to them from Stockbridge, 
 Great Barrington, Sheffield and Lenox: the Sedgwicks, the 
 Dwights, the Fields, the Bryants, the Deweys and others of 
 like character. Stockbridge society, as it now is, may have 
 been passed, for its refinement, through a metropolitan cru- 
 cible; but, if so, it was at least one of its own making, and 
 its own firing. Undoubtedly both Stockbridge and Lenox 
 have attractions peculiar to themselves, in their locations 
 and scenery: but quite as certainly the great mass of the 
 hundreds who resort to them every summer are governed in 
 their preference by social considerations. In the case of 
 Stockbridge, there is superadded in many instances the love 
 and pride of successful descendants of the old village families, 
 who return to the home of their fathers, to enjoy and adorn 
 it; while acquaintanceship, and kindred tastes, draw after 
 them many to whom life here may prove as familiar as the 
 landscape is strange. 
 
CATHERINE SEDGWICK 295 
 
 And this brings me back to another historic spot on his- 
 toric old Stockbridge street: the mansion in which was born, 
 and where lived and wrote, one whose pen has done more 
 to render Berkshire soil storied and classic ground than even 
 Bryant's; and the charm of whose presence has drawn here 
 more men and women of rare mind and character than have 
 come under any other personal influence: Catherine Maria 
 Sedgwick. 
 
 Miss Sedgwick was born here in 1786! Her father, Theo- 
 dore Sedgwick, served with credit in the Revolutionary war, 
 and won the warm friendship of Gen. Schyler with whom 
 he had many points in common. He was the leader of the 
 Federal party in Western Massachusetts, which made him 
 the first representative in Congress from Berkshire, the first 
 United States Senator from Western Massachusetts, and a 
 Judge of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth, in which 
 office he died while attending court at Boston in 1813. He 
 was a man of much self-assertion; and in that queer piece 
 of portraiture, "The Mirror of the Berkshire Bar in 1799," 
 is dashed off as "Duke Ego the Bully." In the "Shays 
 Rebellion" he was a leader against the insurgents who hand- 
 led him roughly and pillaged his house. He had an intense 
 dread of popular rule, and held that a Jeffersonian Democrat 
 was of necessity an enemy of the country. He conceived 
 that there was a great gulf between him and the people; yet, 
 in such personal relations as he had with them, he was be- 
 nignant and kind. His family affections were of the warmest 
 and most tender conceivable: a peculiarity which was in- 
 herited by all his children, and especially by Catherine. All 
 his sons nevertheless became Democrats, although of the 
 anti-slavery type. His abilities as a statesman, although the 
 admiration of his household and his party, do not appear 
 to have been more than respectable, and were exceeded by 
 those of at least one of his sons — the second Theodore— 
 who, if he did not, as is probable, first conceive the idea of a 
 
296 TAGHCONIC 
 
 railroad across the forbidding hills of Berkshire, was at least 
 its ablest early advocate. 
 
 Miss Sedgwick's mother was a daughter of Brigadier 
 General Joseph Dwight, who won distinction as commander 
 of the artillery at the siege of Louisburg, and afterwards 
 settled at Stockbridge, as the trustee of the Mission School. 
 When the county of Berkshire was established in 1761, he 
 became its first chief justice of the Common Pleas, and was 
 thus the head of the provincial magistracy as well as the 
 military officer of the highest rank in Western Massachusetts ; 
 so that, when his daughter married young Esquire Sedgwick, 
 she was her husband's superior in social rank, as well by 
 these considerations as perhaps by family connection other- 
 wise; just as Miss Abigail Smith as bride outranked the 
 young lawyer, John Adams, as bridegroom. Lawyers did 
 not stand very high per se in the social scale of Provincial 
 times. It required office to lift them. 
 
 The Sedgwick family was harmonious and united, and 
 the strong ties of affection and esteem between its members 
 were among the chief influences in forming Catherine's char- 
 acter, and shaping her life. Many of her intense likings 
 and antipathies — not to say loves and hatreds — were based 
 upon the relations of men and things to her brothers or sis- 
 ters: although it is true that her fine capacity for righteous 
 indignation, and a happy faculty for appreciating the noble 
 in character and intellect, and the right in morals, generally 
 prevailed in matters of high consideration. And if she ex- 
 ceeded measure in her praises of what she admired, or in 
 her denunciations of that which she condemned, that is not 
 without precedent or apology. Miss Sedgwick was a liberal 
 of the liberals; and I think you will remark, if you observe 
 closely, that, so far as words go, there is no intolerance so 
 unsparing as that of liberalism, in whatever department of 
 life or morals it may profess itself. 
 
 I do not, however, purpose to discuss Miss Sedgwick's 
 
CATHERINE SEDGWICK 297 
 
 life or character at large. All this is merely passim: being 
 suggested by hearing, the other day, that "they are getting 
 tired of Sedgwick- worship at Stockbridge" — which I appre- 
 hend can be true only as to a limited circle: and as to that, 
 I trust, only refers to disgust with over- weaning and exclusive 
 consideration, and not to the withholding of high, grateful 
 and perpetual regard from one to whom it is grandly due 
 from all Berkshire: one to whom, at the great Berkshire 
 Jubilee, there was aptly applied the scriptural commendation: 
 "Many daughters have done virtuously; but thou excellest 
 them all!" 
 
 Catherine Sedgwick was a thoroughly Berkshire woman. 
 Her many virtues, her few foibles, were all of an intensely 
 Berkshire type; although their manifestation was sometimes 
 in novel directions; as when she revolted against Calvinism 
 with the same boldness and vigor which her Calvinistic 
 ancestry exhibited in their revolt against popery. She loved 
 the mountain county with all her heart — loved its soil, its 
 scenery, its people; and sought its welfare untiringly. What 
 she has done for its fame, all the world nows; but what she 
 did to make it better worthy of fame is not so often told. 
 Yet the good she effected in mollifying the harsher character- 
 istics of its people, in softening the asperities of their lives 
 and opinions, in doing away uncouthness of manner, in im- 
 planting or extending esthetic tastes, and in similar gentle 
 missions, is beyond estimate. 
 
 She resented bitterly the coarse exaggerations of Mrs. 
 Trollope, and the impertinent criticisms of Basil Hall re- 
 garding Berkshire and American life ; but she knew precisely 
 to what extent they were founded in fact, and she did what 
 her pen could to remove that foundation. And her success 
 was great: one instance may illustrate it. Mrs. Trollope 
 declared that all the bigotry in America was concentrated 
 upon the Berkshire Hills. There can be no doubt that she 
 found a great deal of it here. But there is as little doubt 
 
298 TAGHCONIC 
 
 that it was reasonably mitigated when Dr. Channing, the 
 great apostle of Unitarianism in America, was able in 1842 
 to deliver his last public discourse in the Orthodox Congre- 
 gational church at Lenox and when an eloquent eulogium 
 upon his life and character, written by Miss Sedgwick was 
 received with profound feeling and universal approval by 
 the great throng of Berkshire people at the Jubilee of 1844. 
 Another incident of the same occasion shows how the clouds 
 of bigotry were at that very time lifting from these hills. 
 Macready, the tragedian, recited, at the table, Leigh Hunt's 
 well known poem, " Abou Ben Adhem," to express his re- 
 ciprocity of the feeling which invited him, an Englishman, 
 to participation in this peculiarly local festival. And the 
 committee, of which orthodox Dr. Todd of Pittsfield was 
 chairman, did not hesitate to insert it in the printed record 
 of the occasion, in spite of numerous protests against so- 
 doing on the ground that the poem placed love of man before 
 love of God. A good illustration, that, both of what had 
 been, and what was passing away. And in causing it to 
 pass away, Miss Sedgwick's writings had a large share. 
 
 So, in other directions, was her influence greatly felt in 
 making the life of Berkshire more genial, as well as in de- 
 veloping the spirit of its natural beauties. The local popu- 
 larity of her writings inspired a more general taste for ele- 
 gant literature and associated it with what every day met 
 the eye and the ear. At a later period came her more direct 
 teachings of the good and beautiful in what are termed the 
 practical virtues. But in the interval she cultivated, for her 
 people, by precept, by illustration, by conspicuous example 
 — by indirect as well as by direct induction — a love for all 
 that is graceful in life. 
 
 The home of such a woman is a spot to attract the feet 
 of all who love what she loved and taught so well. It stands 
 • — a plain, square, brown, old fashioned mansion — " some- 
 what back from the village street," in the center of broad, 
 
ICY GLEN 299 
 
 level, elm-shaded grounds. An old green-House — the first, I 
 believe, in Berkshire — is seen in the court-yard; and reminds 
 us that, among Miss Sedgwick's manifold services to this 
 region, was the introduction of new varieties of flowering 
 plants and stimulating the taste for floriculture in many- 
 ways. Some of the flowers and shrubs planted by the hand 
 which wrote "Hope Leslie" were growing rank, and seemingly 
 wild, in the old garden in the rear of the homestead, when I, 
 with a field-meeting party, last visited it. 
 
 Behind the mansion, with a broad strip of rich meadow 
 between, winds the blue Housatonic — at this point some six 
 rods wide. If you cast your eye westward, up the river, as 
 you pass it on the Housatonic railroad, you will get a full 
 view of the old place, and if it be in summer, in one of its 
 pleasantest aspects. 
 
 Here Miss Sedgwick passed her youth and the summers 
 of her early womanhood; and under that roof were written 
 "Hope Leslie" and her other tales of peculiarly local interest. 
 By and bye we will follow her to Lenox. But first we will 
 visit two or three of the spots to which she gave name and 
 fame. 
 
 With the exception of Monument Mountain there is no 
 locality in the vicinity of Stockbridge so widely known as 
 
 Icy Glen. 
 
 I had long impatiently anticipated a visit to this cele- 
 brated ravine, before I was able to gratify my longing: and 
 now that I have repeated my exploration more than once, 
 I almost as impatiently wait for the next. It is a deep, 
 narrow gorge cleft in what is known as Little Mountain, a 
 considerable hill a little south of the river, whose meadow- 
 banks here intervene between it and Laurel Hill. The 
 roughly-wooded sides of the glen descend abruptly to the 
 base of the mountain, which it completely penetrates from 
 south to north. The bottom — an eighth of a mile long — 
 is everywhere thickly cumbered by enormous boulders 
 
300 TAGHCONIC 
 
 and the great trunks of fallen trees; all mossy and slippery, 
 all piled in huge and wild confusion, so as to leave great 
 cavernous recesses, and an often impeded passage for a 
 brawling brook. 
 
 The air is dank, the shade gloomy and the clambering 
 arduous; so that, while attractive to the point of fascination 
 for an occasional visit, the gorge is not, a place to invite 
 loitering. But when — after tumbling and stumbling, climb- 
 ing and sliding, over and under, and among, these devil's 
 playthings of rocks, for a mortal hour — one emerges, just at 
 sunset, upon the mellow rural scene without, he is prepared 
 to welcome ecstatically the smiling landscape. 
 
 The glen sometimes presents a scene of grotesquely pic- 
 turesque delight; when some hundreds of people with flam- 
 ing torches and pealing music — and many of them in fantastic 
 costumes — traverse the ravine at night in such broken pro- 
 cession as, over that crazy pathway, they can. In that chasm 
 of impervious shade, it matters little what the moon and 
 stars may be doing on their far away rounds: the red glare 
 of the torches flashes from the rugged surface of the rocks 
 to the fair faces of the ladies — never so fair as in such fitful 
 radiance — and if, in the uncertain light, some light foot shall 
 slip, the little shriek which announces the disaster, has an 
 invariable echo of silvery laughter. I remember well, one 
 night, when our sole music was merry shouts and ringing 
 laughter, how the mad glen re-echoed with a thousand Babe- 
 lish discordances, until our senses were almost dazed when 
 we came out into the moonlight that rested upon the dewy 
 meadow and mist-wreathed river. 
 
 It was a queer looking crowd we were: the gilt paper 
 rent from the cambric-clad cavaliers and their glittering tin 
 spear-heads bent with frequent service as climbing staffs; 
 the spangled fairies in still more dismal plight; the phan- 
 toms with their ghastly robes in tatters; and all sorts of all 
 possible and impossible characters in sore disorder. 
 
STOCKBRIDGE BOWL 301 
 
 Yet each and all could soothly swear, 
 No merrier troop ere rambled there. 
 
 There are four lakes in the township of Stockbridge, but 
 at some little distance from the village: Mahkeenac, Averse, 
 Mohawk and Agawam. All are very lovely ; but we will, for 
 the present, confine ourselves to that which they now call 
 Mahkeenac, on the authority of an old Indian who came back 
 from the west some years ago to insist that this was its 
 Mohegan name: meaning The Great Water. But as Mah- 
 keenac won't work into poetry, nor very well into prose, 
 and as our Indian friend did not seem to be perfect in the 
 grammar of his own language, I prefer the designation given 
 by Miss Sedgwick: 
 
 The Stockbridge Bowl. 
 
 This lake, which lies on the road between Lenox and 
 Stockbridge — one of the most charming in the whole county 
 — is a mile and a half long, and by many is thought to be 
 the most beautiful sheet of water in Massachusetts. I have 11 
 intimated a moderate dissent from that opinion; but how- 
 ever it may be as to that, there can be no doubt that it is 
 the most famous. Celebrated by the loving pens of Miss 
 Sedgwick and Mrs. Sigourney, it has long had associations 
 which our northern lakes lack. 
 
 And, later, another and higher honor, has fallen to it: 
 in that on its northern shore, Nathaniel Hawthorne lived, 
 while he wrote the " House of the Seven Gables," and the 
 " Blithedale Romance." His home was a little red, scantily 
 furnished cottage, loaned him by an admirer. Notwith- 
 standing the success of the Scarlet Letter, his pecuniary 
 means were still slender; but I suspect that the years passed 
 here were among ,the happiest of his life. I am told that he 
 honored the' mountain and the lake with far more of his 
 attention than he bestowed upon his other neighbors. Her- 
 man Melville, at Pittsfield, Mr. W. A. Tappan at Lenox, 
 and J. P. R. James, the English novelist, who then resided 
 
302 TAGHCONIC 
 
 at Stockbridge, were among his friends; but, for the most 
 part, he lived in great seclusion. One is not much surprised 
 to learn that the creator of Hester Prynne, and Little Pearl, 
 Zenobia and the Pynchons, did not find his highest pleasure 
 in the chit-chat of fashionable circles, or even in literary 
 coteries. Nor need it surprise us that a touch of melancholy, 
 or even at times seeming moroseness, tinged his manner. 
 The knowledge of the sonl's anatomist is that which " by 
 suffering entereth in." 
 
 But that Mr. Hawthorne's heart was warm and tender 
 I am well assured by more than one circumstance, which I 
 do not know that I am at liberty to recall here. But there 
 can be no wrong in mentioning the origin, as I have heard it, 
 of the brotherly friendship which existed between him and 
 Herman Melville. As the story was told to me, Mr. Haw- 
 thorne was aware that Melville was the author of a very 
 appreciative review of the Scarlet Letter, which appeared in 
 the Literary World, edited by their common friends, the 
 Duyckincks; but this very knowledge, perhaps, kept two 
 very sensitive men shy of each other, although thrown into 
 company. But one day it chanced that when they were 
 out on a picnic excursion, the two were compelled by a 
 thunder-shower to take shelter in a narrow recess of the 
 rocks of Monument Mountain. Two hours of this enforced 
 intercourse settled the matter. They learned so much of 
 each other's character, and found that they held so much 
 of thought, feeling and opinion in common, that the most 
 intimate friendship for the future was inevitable. 
 
 I have heard of another odd interview with Hawthorne. 
 A lady from a distant state had expressed an intense desire 
 to meet the great author, and it was arranged that her wish 
 should be gratified at a Pittsfield dinner table ; she was not at 
 all anticipating that he would know her feeling. But it 
 seems that some friend, with a turn for teasing, apprised 
 him of it; and as they were sitting down at the board oppo- 
 
STOCKBRIDGE BOWL 303 
 
 site to each other, an expressive glance from the tell-tale 
 made known to the lady that her secret had been exposed. 
 The result was that two pairs of remarkably fine eyes were 
 very unquiet and that two uneasy people had their dinners 
 spoiled. But I dare say that the appearance of the wine 
 restored ease. 
 
 They are beginning to appreciate the honor conferred 
 upon the county by Mr. Hawthorne's residence in it; and 
 now have treasured up in the historical museum of the 
 Athenaeum at Pittsfield, the desk upon which he wrote the 
 House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and 
 probably other works. It is a plain, solid, handsome piece 
 of mahogany furniture, with an abundance of drawers, and 
 seems exceedingly well adapted to novelist's work. It has 
 a host of visitors. 
 
 But we have been drawn far away from Stockbridge and 
 its lakes. Let us return, and sing in the praise of Mahkeenac, 
 if you still insist upon calling it by the name which appears 
 upon the map, the verses composed in its honor by Mrs. 
 Lydia H. Sigourney, and read at the Berkshire Jubilee: 
 
 The Stockbridge Bowl. 
 
 The Stockbridge Bowl ! Hast ever seen 
 
 How sweetly pure and bright, 
 Its foot of stone and rim of green 
 
 Attract the traveller's sight? 
 High set among the breezy hills 
 
 Where spotless marble glows, 
 It takes the tribute of the rills 
 
 Distilled from mountain snows. 
 
 You've seen, perchance, the classic vase 
 
 At Adrian's villa found, 
 The grape-vines that its handless chase 
 
 And twine its rim around. 
 But thousands such as that which boasts 
 
 The Roman's name to keep, 
 Might in this Stockbridge bowl be lost 
 
 Like pebbles in the deep. 
 
304 TAGHCONIC 
 
 It yields no sparkling draughts of fire 
 
 To mock the madden'd brain, 
 As that which warmed Anacreon's lyre 
 
 Amid the Teian plain — 
 But freely, with a right good will 
 
 Imparts its fountain store, 
 Whose heaven replenished crystal still 
 
 Can wearied toil restore. 
 
 The Indian hunter knew its power, 
 
 And oft its praises spoke, 
 Long ere the white man's stranger plow 
 
 These western valleys broke. 
 The panting deer that, wild withjpain, 
 
 From his pursuers stole, 
 Inhaled new life to every vein 
 
 From this same Stockbridge Bowl. 
 
 And many a son of Berkshire skies, 
 
 Those men of noble birth, 
 Though now perchance their roof may rise 
 
 In far or foreign earth, 
 Shall on this well-remembered vase 
 
 With thrilling bosom gaze, 
 And o'er its mirrored surface trace 
 
 The joys of earlier days. 
 
 But one that .with a spirit glance 
 
 That moved her country's heart, 
 And bade from dim oblivious trance 
 
 Poor Magawaska start, 
 Hath won a fame whose blossoms rare 
 . Shall fear no blighting sky, 
 
 Whose lustrous leaf be fresh and fair 
 
 When Stockbridge Bowl is dry. 
 
Mm, 
 
 Mahaiwe 
 
Mahaiwe 
 
 " Here I have scaped the city's stifling heat, 
 
 Its horrid sounds and its polluted air; 
 And, where the season's milder fervors beat, 
 
 And gales, that sweep the forest-borders, bear 
 The song of bird and sound of running stream, 
 
 Am come, a while to wander and to dream. 
 
 Ay, flame thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, 
 In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. 
 
 The maize-leaf and the maple bough but take, 
 From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. 
 
 The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, 
 
 Sweeps the blue steams of pestilence away." — Bryant. 
 
 I think I will escort you, this brilliant morning, to a 
 region worthy of the goldenest sunlight that ever came from 
 Heaven's alchemy — down that Washington Street of rail- 
 roads, the tortuous Housatonic, to Great Barrington, the 
 greatly 'beautiful early home and foster-mother of Bryant's 
 genius. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher extols without measure the scenery 
 which borders the Housatonic railroad, particularly between 
 Bridgeport and Lenox — being careful to exclude from his 
 commendation the little four miles above what was his home. 
 And it is worthy of ecstatic admiration. Still I think it 
 clearly surpassed by that through which the Boston and 
 Albany road passes between the Connecticut and Hudson 
 rivers; especially in the magnificent gorges between Chester 
 and Washington. I know of no route, rail or highway, 
 which excels this ; except possibly the famous old Stage road 
 over the Hoosac Mountain between Deerfield and North 
 Adams; the same which filled Henry Clay with such amazed 
 delight, when he passed over it fifty years ago on his visit 
 to Berkshire and his friend Henry Shaw. 
 
308 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Between Pittsfield and Westfield, the Boston and Albany 
 Railroad follows substantially the old Indian trail — Un- 
 kamet's Path. Early surveyors and government messengers 
 made great use of it; and tradition asserts that one or two 
 adventurous and spirited women traversed it. The faithful 
 old guide, from which it took its name, lived near the railroad 
 crossing of the east branch of the Housatonic river in Pitts- 
 field, and has left it also attached to a brook and a meadow 
 in that vicinity, where a street has also received the same 
 designation. 
 
 But the Boston and Albany railroad will never take us 
 to Great Barrington. We might, however, drive thither 
 twenty-one miles — through Lenox and Stockbridge. If we 
 did so we should find scenery rivalling that on either of the 
 routes which I have mentioned, here or elsewhere. It is 
 certainly richer in the tokens of wealth, as well as in his- 
 torical and personal associations. A host of notable critics 
 firmly hold that it is easily first of all in Berkshire. But, 
 that we may sooner reach Great Barrington, where we shall 
 find natural beauty to satiety, we will adhere to our purpose 
 of going by the Housatonic railroad, which, for its many 
 excellencies, is a sort of pet, here. 
 
 We might, however, pause a long while, on our way, at 
 the fine town of Lee, the widely famed seat of the paper 
 manufacture, and also of the great quarries of white marble 
 from which the grand extension of the Capitol at Washing- 
 ton was built, as well as many other noted structures. The 
 marble of Berkshire extends through the whole length of the 
 county, and some of it, particularly that of Lee, Sheffield, 
 North Adams, and West Stockbridge, is in the highest repute 
 as building-stone. The remarkable dark blue compact lime- 
 stone of Great Barrington, of which the uniquely beautiful 
 Athenaeum at Pittsfield is built, is not properly a marble. 
 You may see it in place at Mount Petra, whose picturesque 
 little rocky knoll, near the main street of Great Barrington, 
 
MAHAIWE 309 
 
 Dr. Clarkson T. Collins has set apart for the pleasure of the 
 public. And a nice place it is from which to obtain a view 
 of the grand old street and other pleasant prospects. But 
 we are not yet at Great Barrington. 
 
 The marble quarries of Lee, interesting to every intelli- 
 gent visitor, afford a most inviting field to the mineralogist, 
 although, I believe, the old deposit of the much sought 
 bladed tremolite is exhausted. 
 
 Fern Cliff, which holds the place in Lee which Laurel 
 Hill does in Stockbridge, is a handsome eminence near the 
 village. I passed a pleasant May morning there once, and 
 gathered a fine collection of large and rare mosses. But the 
 pride of Lee's romantic scenery is Laurel Lake, a much prized 
 sheet of water, nearly a mile long, which lies on the border 
 of Lenox, a mile and a half from Lee Park, and at the head 
 of a precipitous mountain-stream thickly studded with busy 
 paper mills. It is proof of the profusion of splendid scenery 
 in Berkshire that it is only through a recent introduction 
 by the late Rev. Dr. Gale, that the merits of this fine lake 
 with its pleasant surroundings have obtained general recogni- 
 tion. It seems not likely now to fall into neglect again. 
 
 A great deal of the romance of reality might be wrought 
 out, not only from the secluded haunts of Lee, but from its 
 peculiar material resources and industries; and that without 
 any exhaustive brain- work. But it occurs to me at this 
 moment that we are bound for Great Barrington, where we 
 shall find romance ready made, to our hands: and so much 
 of it that we must confine ourselves chiefly to that which 
 arises from the life and work there of Berkshire's great poet. 
 Berkshire's poet: for if Mr. Bryant's birthplace was not in 
 the county of Berkshire, it was on the Berkshire Hills — a 
 region whose bounds were fixed by a wiser and mightier 
 power than that which defines county lines. It was in a 
 Berkshire college that he was educated, so far as such minds 
 receive their education from colleges; and it was in one of 
 
310 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the loveliest of Berkshire towns that he passed his choicest 
 years — those in which some of his best work was done, and 
 during which his fame became national, or more: the cul- 
 minating years of " a youth sublime." 
 
 I have already quoted from his own account of his intro- 
 duction in 1816 — when he removed to Great Barrington — to 
 that fair region with which his name was forever to be in- 
 separably connected, and over which he has thrown an im- 
 perishable charm. 
 
 It cannot be said that the scenery of Southern Berkshire 
 inspired Mr. Bryant with that intense love of nature which 
 informs the best of his poems. That had already been 
 awakened by the scenes among which his boyhood was 
 passed, and strengthened by the majestic hills and romantic 
 valleys by which Williams College is surrounded. These had 
 been the nurses of his infant thought, and the tutors of his 
 youthful imagination: they, with Shakespeare, Spenser and 
 Milton for text-books — nay, with Homer and Virgil also. 
 
 But Southern Berkshire furnished the already ripened 
 poet of nature with fitting themes in abundance, and fitting 
 accessories of tradition for his faithful portraiture of land- 
 scape: the Mohegan at the burial place of his father; the 
 maiden of Monument Mountain; the murdered traveller of 
 the lonely glen between old and West Stockbridge. 
 
 It may be pleasant, as well, for youthful lovers who 
 wander under the noble elms which give so fine a charm to 
 Great Barrington streets, or on the willow-shaded brink of 
 the Housatonic, the Green river or other of the frequent 
 streams, to remember that here was the scene of the poet's 
 wooing; that, perhaps under the very branches which over- 
 hang them, or on the same verdant bank where they sit by 
 the brook-side, William Cullen Bryant first read from the 
 manuscript, to her who was afterwards his bride, some of 
 those pleasant poems they now delight to read together 
 there. Does it not, my young friends, add to your own joy 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 311 
 
 in so reading Mr. Bryant's verses, to think that he may have 
 thus read them on this very spot more than fifty years ago? 
 
 During Mr. Bryant's residence in Great Barrington — 
 from 1816 to 1825— only a small portion of his time, com- 
 paratively, was given to letters. He took a creditable part 
 in the affairs of the town, of which he was clerk from 1820 
 to 1825. In 1818 he delivered the address at the first anni- 
 versary of the town Bible Society. He was an ardent poli- 
 tician of the Federal school, and in the old files of the county 
 newspapers, we often find his name as secretary or committee- 
 man of party meetings. He was an active, learned and 
 rather fiery young lawyer, with more practice than usually 
 fell to the lot of men of his age at that period. He might 
 have become distinguished, could he have overcome his dis- 
 gust with a profession in which — in his day much more than 
 at present — law was not synonymous with justice. Finally 
 he struck upon an experience which, if the well . supported 
 tradition of the Berkshire bar can be trusted, was so intol- 
 erable that he relinquished practice altogether. The case — 
 "Grotius Bloss vs. Augustus Tobey of Alford" is recorded 
 in the 2d volume of "Pickering's Reports." Mr. Bryant 
 lost his case through a mere technical omission in his declara- 
 tion which did not in the slightest obscure its meaning. 
 That his client's cause was just, the court admitted prac- 
 tically; Chief Justice Parsons prefacing the adverse decision 
 by remarking: "It is with great regret, and not without 
 much labor and research to avoid this result, that we are 
 obliged to arrest judgment." 
 
 Mr. Bryant's just indignation against an administration 
 of the law which compelled its servants to do acknowledged 
 wrong to those who sought justice in its highest state tri- 
 bunal made him ready to seek a more congenial pursuit at 
 the first opportunity. 
 
 The famous first cattle-show of the Berkshire Agricultural 
 Society at Pittsfield occurred during his junior year in Wil- 
 
312 TAGHCONIC 
 
 liams College, and strongly impressed his susceptible youth. 
 He continued the warm friend of the institution, and wrote 
 two odes for its anniversaries. One, which was sung in 1820, 
 is included in his published poems, and commences with the 
 lines, 
 
 "Far back in the ages 
 The plough with wreaths was crowned." 
 
 The second, sung in 1823, seems equally worthy of preser- 
 vation, and is as follows: 
 
 Since last our vales these rites adrair'd, 
 
 Another year has come and flown, 
 But where her rosy steps retired, 
 
 Has left her gifts profusely strown. 
 
 No killing frost on germ or flower, 
 
 To blast the hopes of spring, was nigh; 
 No wrath condens'd the ceaseless shower, 
 
 Or seal'd the fountains of the sky. 
 
 But kindly suns and gentle rains, 
 
 And liberal dews and airs of health, 
 Rear*d the large harvests of the plains, 
 
 And nursed the meadow's fragrant wealth. 
 
 As if the indulgent power who laid, 
 
 On man the great command to toil, 
 Well-pleased to see that law obeyed, 
 
 Had touched, in love, the teeming soil. 
 
 And here, while autumn wanders pale 
 
 Beneath the fading forest shade, 
 Gathered from many a height and vale, 
 
 The bounties of the year are laid. 
 
 Here toil, whom oft the setting sun 
 
 Has seen at his protracted task, 
 Demands the palm his patience won, 
 
 And art has come his wreath to ask. 
 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 313 
 
 Well may the hymn of victory flow, 
 
 And mingle with the voice of mirth, 
 While here are spread the spoils that show 
 
 Our triumphs o'er reluctant earth. ' 
 
 Of the spots in Berkshire to which Bryant's pen has 
 given fame, the most noted is Monument Mountain, which 
 rises near the highway between Great Barrington and Stock- 
 bridge; being within the former town, but considerably 
 nearer to the village in the latter. No description of it 
 could be more precise than that given in Bryant's poem: 
 
 "There is a precipice 
 That seems a fragment of some mighty wall, 
 Built by the hand that fashioned the old world 
 To separate its nations, and thrown down 
 When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path 
 Conducts you up the narrow battlement. 
 Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild 
 With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, 
 And many a hanging crag. But, to the east, 
 Sheer to the vale, go down the bare old cliffs. — - 
 Huge pillars that in middle heaven upbear 
 Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark 
 With the thick moss of centuries and there 
 Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt hath splintered them." 
 
 The mountain has an elevation of five hundred feet above 
 Stockbridge Plain, or twelve hundred and sixty above the 
 sea level. The cliffs rise perhaps four hundred and fifty 
 feet, perpendicularly or a little beetling at the top. Their 
 face is slightly curved inward and their height gradually 
 decreases to the south. At their foot immense piles of 
 angular flinty fragments, which have fallen in the course of 
 ages, are heaped up in confusion; and a detached pinnacle, 
 known as the Pulpit Rock, together with a few other grotes- 
 quely shaped crags, relieve the uniformity of the grey old 
 wall. The Pulpit is after the tall old fashioned type which 
 made the attentive congregation look like a crowd at a bal- 
 
314 TAGHCONIC 
 
 loon ascension. Cliff and fragment, and isolated crag are 
 all formed of compact granular quartz — technically "quart- 
 zite" — the same mineral which, further north when disin- 
 tegrated by some process known only to nature, becomes the 
 silicious sand of commerce. Rumor of this fact had reached 
 the glass-makers, and I was sent to see what could be made 
 of it: so that my first visit to this old poetic mountain was 
 not for the most poetic of purposes. No matter: it is quite 
 easy to weave a little sentiment into any excursion to a place 
 like this. 
 
 The precipice extends northward to about the middle of 
 the mountain where it disappears, although the hillside con- 
 tinues very abrupt. The geological character of the rock 
 also changes, if my slight observations were correct, to mica- 
 schist. At the junction rises the path mentioned in the 
 poem, and by which I reached the summit. In its track, I 
 found some pretty crystals of black tourmaline. Climbing 
 this ascent, which is quite difficult enough to give a zest to 
 it, I bent my head dizzily over the abyss. 
 
 "It is a fearful thing 
 To stand upon the fleeting verge, and see 
 Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall, 
 Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base 
 Dashed them in fragments; and to lay thine ear 
 Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound 
 Of winds that struggle with the woods below, 
 Come up like ocean murmurs." 
 
 The summit commands a noble prospect: 
 
 "The scene 
 Is lovely round; a beautiful river there 
 Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, 
 The paradise he made unto himself, 
 Mining the soil for ages. On each side 
 The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond, 
 Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise 
 The mighty columns with which earth props heaven." 
 
MAHAIWE 315 
 
 The scene is fair to look upon, but I confess, that, after 
 the mountain an.d its immediate surroundings, I was most 
 interested in peering down to its base at a black speck, which 
 my guide assured me was G. P. R. James, the novelist, who 
 then thought of building a residence there, and was at that 
 moment engaged in investigations as to the probabilities of 
 clarifying a muddy pond. When I used, in school-time, to 
 steal the moments due to drier studies to peruse, in the old 
 " National Reader," the poem of Monument Mountain, with 
 
 "Its sad tradition of unhappy love, 
 And sorrows borne and ended long ago." 
 
 I little dreamed that I should ever stand at its base in the 
 glorious light of a Berkshire morning to compute the mar- 
 ketable value of its "bare old cliffs"; and quite as little that 
 I should look down from its summit upon the wizard — a 
 wizard still, though years brought disenchantment to me — 
 whose creations seemed to my boyhood, quite as marvel- 
 ous as those of Walter Scott. Ah, happy period of child- 
 hood's indiscriminating enjoyment: what an appetite I must 
 have had! 
 
 The pile of loose stones which led to Bryant's poem, and 
 gave name to the mountain, was destroyed in wantonness 
 or idle curiosity many years ago. I have been told that the 
 pious contributions of visitors — who adopt the Indian cus- 
 tom of casting a stone upon it as they pass — have restored 
 it. I did not see it; for my guide, a very literal person, in- 
 sisted that there was no monument, nor ever had been. In 
 fact the hard-headed Yankee had very little respect for the 
 romancings of Kate Sedgwick and Cullen Bryant, as he 
 somewhat familiarly designated two distinguished personages. 
 
 Green River, which Mr. Bryant seems to have taken to 
 his heart with the fullness of poetic affection, has its fountain 
 among the rocky hills of Austerlitz, New York; passes 
 through the fine pastoral country of Alford and Egremont, 
 and across the richer agricultural section of Great Barring- 
 
316 TAGHCONIC 
 
 ton, until it joins the Housatonic near the Sheffield border. 
 It was a favorite stream with the Mohegans. The green tint 
 from which it takes its name is communicated by a peculiar 
 clay of which some portion of its banks is composed. Mr. 
 Bryant intimates that it was the favorite haunt of his leisure: 
 
 " When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
 I steal an hour from study and care, 
 And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
 Where wanders the stream with waters of green, 
 As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink 
 Had given their stain to the wave they drink; 
 And they whose meadows it murmurs through 
 Have named the stream from its own fair hue. 
 
 " Yet pure its waters — its shallows are bright 
 With colored pebbles and sparkles of light, 
 And clear the depths where its eddies play, 
 And dimples deepen and whirl away, 
 And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'er-shoot 
 The swifter current that mines its root, 
 Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk the hill, 
 The quivering glimmer of sun and rill 
 With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, 
 Like the ray that streams from the diamond stone. 
 O, loveliest there the spring days come, 
 With blossoms, and birds, and wild-bee's hum; 
 The flowers of summer are fairest there, 
 And freshest the breath of the summer air; 
 And sweetest the golden autumn day 
 In silence and sunshine glides away. 
 
 " Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunnest to glide, 
 Beautiful stream! by the village side; 
 But windest away from haunts of men, 
 To quiet valley and shaded glen; 
 And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill, 
 Around thee, are lonely, and lovely, and still. 
 Lonely — save when, by thy rippling tides, 
 From thicket to thicket the angler glides; 
 Or the simpler comes, with basket and book, 
 
MAHAIWE 317 
 
 For herbs of power on thy banks to look; 
 Or, haply, some idle dreamer, like me, 
 To wander and muse, and gaze on thee. 
 Still — save the chirp of birds that feed 
 On the river-cherry, and seedy reed, 
 And thy own wild music gushing out 
 With mellow murmur and fairy shout, 
 From dawn to the blush of another day, 
 Like traveller singing along its way." 
 
 There ! I positively will not disturb that exquisite picture. 
 
 You will find much of Mr. Bryant's poetry — not only of 
 his earlier but of his later years, colored by the scenes among 
 which he lived while a lawyer at Great Barrington; and one 
 finds it an interesting and agreeable study to wander through 
 those scenes, with his volume in hand, and compare the one 
 with the other. I am sure you cannot but enjoy taking 
 with him "A Walk at Sunset"; deciphering by the aid of 
 book or memory, the Inscription at the Entrance of a Wood; 
 tracing "The Rivulet"; gathering "The Yellow Violet" 
 and the Fringed Gentian, and joining in all his rural pleasures. 
 
 In dwelling thus upon the scenes in Great Barrington 
 which have been illustrated by the genius of Bryant, I do 
 not mean to intimate that there are none of merit which he 
 left unsung. The village, which since his day has grown to 
 a large and handsome town, has characteristic charms beside 
 those of its noted elms, in the graceful irregularity of its 
 streets, in some fine and tasteful buildings, and a general 
 mingling of the pleasant features of town and country. There 
 are other gentle streams to wander by, besides Green River, 
 and majestic hills besides Monument Mountain. 
 
 Great Barrington is also an old historic town. It was 
 the north parish of Sheffield, the first settled town in the 
 county, and when incorporated it was the first shire town of 
 Berkshire. The Indian mission was first established here. 
 Here, first in Massachusetts, the King's Courts were over- 
 thrown by the people in May 1774, with such results of kind- 
 
318 TAGHCONIC 
 
 ling feeling that General Gage wrote home to his govern- 
 ment, "A flame has sprung up at the extremity of the Prov- 
 ince" — "The popular rage is very high in Berkshire, and 
 makes its way rapidly to the rest." Here also the greatly 
 erring but also greatly wronged Shays rebels obstructed the 
 Courts of Commonwealth; and on the borders of the town 
 they met their final defeat. 
 
Town, College and Spa 
 
Town, College and Spa 
 
 Ages and climes remote to thee impart 
 What charms in genius and refines in art; 
 Thee in whose hands the keys of science dwell, 
 The pensive portress of her holy cell; 
 Whose constant vigils chase the chilling damp 
 Oblivion steals upon her vestal lamp. 
 
 They in their glorious course, the guides of youth, 
 Whose language breathed the eloquence of truth; 
 Whose life, beyond preceptive wisdom, taught 
 The great in conduct and the pure in thought. — 
 
 Pleasures of Memory. 
 
 My first visit to Williamstown was made in the company 
 of Samuel Bowles. It was in the days when Mr. Bowles 
 did some of the best reporting for his own journal personally; 
 and he was on his way to the commencement at Williams 
 College, an institution to which he gave love and honor such 
 as he did not scatter wastefully, and whose faculty well 
 appreciated his friendship. I was bound upon a similar 
 errand, and intended to go by railroad and stage through 
 North Adams, but Mr. Bowles would not hear of that route; 
 and insisted upon a drive up the valleys of Lanesboro' and 
 Williamstown, and over the ridge of hills at New Ashford, 
 which he pronounced the most enjoyable ride possible. I 
 was glad enough to accede to the proposal, and we started 
 at the early dawn of the most delicious of summer mornings. 
 
 The drive was all that had been promised of it. My 
 companion, relieved for a time from his exhaustive journal- 
 istic work, was in the height of life and spirits, and descanted 
 upon the scenes through which we passed with all that 
 enthusiasm and those quick perceptive powers which, in after 
 days, rendered his stories of travel across the continent so 
 wonderfully attractive: and perhaps with even more aban- 
 
322 TAGHCONIC 
 
 don, and freshness of feeling. He seemed all alive with the 
 spirit of the morning. Nothing escaped his glance, from the 
 mist- wreaths on the surface of Pontoosuc lake and the butter- 
 flies that fluttered about our path, to the contours of the 
 Greylock group which seemed to change incessantly as we 
 approached and rode along its base. After these many years, 
 I recall perfectly the kindling of his fine eye, and the rich 
 tone of his voice, as he pointed out one striking picture after 
 another. He fairly joyed in the morning glories of the lake; 
 but reserved his most ecstatic praises for the lovely valley 
 in which lies the village of South Williamstown. 
 
 By the roadside in the north part of Lanesboro' is a 
 little grove, long familiar to myself and other lovers of picnic. 
 The river murmurs gently through a green and level space; 
 there are grey old rocks and mossy trees; and, when we 
 passed it, a broken table, a dismantled bower, and other 
 relics of recent revelry, elicited from Mr. Bowles quaint and 
 genial comment that showed his hearty sympathy in the 
 simple pleasures they gave token of. Again, he drew rein 
 long, to admire the nice grouping of bosky woods and single 
 trees on a sunny hill-side. But to tell of half the pleasant 
 things of that July morning ride would tire you in the read- 
 ing, fleetly as they passed in the riding. 
 
 Mr. Bowles's fondness for this region was further exempli- 
 fied the next morning when, in full view of the laborious day 
 before us, he was up at daybreak for a two mile walk to the 
 Sand-Springs — the present site of Greylock Hall. I have a 
 theory that, to fully enjoy sunrise views, they should not 
 be taken in too quick succession, and I kept to my theory 
 and my bed. But the vigorous early-riser came back at 
 breakfast-time all aglow with such descriptive eloquence 
 that to this day I have not forgiven myself that ill-timed 
 indolence. 
 
 In some of his despondent moments of discouragement or 
 disgust with political affairs in those years, Mr. Bowles often 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN 323 
 
 spoke of relinquishing his interest in a daily newspaper, and 
 retiring to the charge of a weekly journal in Berkshire. 
 Whether he ever seriously contemplated so great a change, 
 or it was a mere passing fancy, I do not know; but I hear 
 that he gave much of his most arduous and most loving 
 work to the weekly edition of his own paper: and he cer- 
 tainly had a warm liking for Berkshire. Angels perhaps, 
 better than men, may judge whether it would have been 
 well for him to yield to that mood of longing for a quiet life, 
 rather than, by the tremendous intellectual pressure which 
 he finally chose, to condense the alloted three-score-years- 
 and-ten of man's growth and effort into little more than 
 fifty of measured time. For him, however, it may be that 
 no other result was possible than that which came : no other 
 choice than that he made. 
 
 The impression of Williamstown gained under the pleas- 
 ant circumstances which attended my first visit, was of an 
 old-fashioned, quiet, uniquely beautiful village. It had at 
 that time little to boast in the way of architecture; but, 
 I do not know how it is, it seems to me that, make your col- 
 lege edifices as ugly as you can — and the old architects had 
 immense capacities in that direction — still, if you plant them, 
 with reasonable surroundings of fine trees in a pretty New 
 England town, they soon acquire a classic and tranquil air 
 which goes far to mollify the exasperating effect of brick-red 
 and right-angles upon sensitive nerves. I remember that the 
 tumble-down, cheap, old wooden chapel of a certain salt- 
 water down-east college had an awe-inspiring aspect in my 
 boyish eyes, which I fail to find intensified by the granite 
 and gothic piles which have supplanted it: and I have a 
 similar experience with Williamstown in its new architectural 
 estate. 
 
 Nevertheless the improvements both in town and college, 
 have been made with such unexceptionable good taste that 
 the result has been a genuine growth in beauty, until Williams- 
 
324 TAGHCONIC 
 
 town has come to rival Stockbridge as the model village of 
 New England. Its appearance from within is peculiar — 
 unique so far as I have knowledge — which comes chiefly 
 from a singular and very artistic unity of arrangement. It 
 is in effect a broad park, of perhaps a mile in length, sub- 
 divided into shapely plots and wide unfenced court-yards of 
 verdant turf, with shaded avenues between: and all com- 
 passed within a rim of college edifices, churches, hotels, 
 private dwellings and business structures; while, on the 
 moderate elevations to which the ground rises towards the 
 western extremity, a church, two or three college buildings, 
 and a soldier's monument surmounted by a statue, stand out 
 in bold relief. There are some pieces of exceedingly credit- 
 able and pleasing — even of striking — architecture. The 
 scrupulous care with which the village society, modelled on 
 the Laurel Hill Association, keeps everything in exact order, 
 as well as the perfection of grass, flower and foliage every- 
 where maintained, increase the attractiveness of the scene. 
 But the characterizing element is the unity and harmony of 
 plan which seems to embrace at once town and college, and 
 to have its counterpart in the life of those who dwell in that 
 charmed circle. 
 
 Outside of itself, Williamstown has another peculiarity of 
 landscape, as a college town, in the near neighborhood of 
 Greylock and other mighty hills. Our down-east friends will 
 have their badinage at "Fresh-water colleges." But what 
 to the student is the ocean, whose ordinary acquaintance he 
 makes through the fragrant medium of the Back Bay — his 
 more familiar intercourse being confined to sea sickness on 
 brief holiday excursions — what, for a neighbor to the languid 
 student, is this moody old sea, oftenest making his august 
 presence known by the heralding of east winds and slimy 
 odors, compared with the mighty mountain shapes, which 
 greet his eye with every rising sun, and send him health and 
 vigor in every breeze. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN 325 
 
 Thoreau recognized the strength of the hills; writing, 
 thus, from the top of the tower which once capped Greylock, 
 but was accidentally burned: 
 
 "This observatory is a building of considerable size, erected by the 
 students of Williams College, whose buildings may be seen by day-light, 
 gleaming far down the valley. It would really be no small advantage, 
 if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain; as good at 
 least as one well-endowed professorship. It were as well to be educated 
 in the shadow of a mountain as in more classic shades. Some will re- 
 member no doubt, not only that they went to the college, but that they 
 went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were, 
 generalize the particular information gained below, and subject it to more 
 catholic tests." 
 
 In the Hoosac Valley — of which the Williamstown is an 
 expansion — the mountains assume a very different expres- 
 sion from that which they wear in the central portions of the 
 great Berkshire basin: they make one feel that they are 
 mountains, and not — as at Pittsfield, for instance — mere 
 graceful lines in the landscape. Everywhere in this region 
 one gets an inadequate idea of the magnitude of its moun- 
 tainous character, failing to realize that in Lanesboro' and 
 Pittsfield, he stands upon the summit of a solid mass eleven 
 hundred feet high, whose base extends from the sound to 
 the St. Lawrence, and from the Connecticut to the Hudson: 
 so that nearly one-half the real altitude is lost before the 
 base of the mountains as here visible is reached. The appa- 
 rent height of the mountains, as seen from Central Berkshire, 
 is further diminished by another circumstance. The ranges 
 upon the east and west are continuous ridges, cleft here and 
 there into domes and peaks, with indentations between, 
 comparatively so slight as to leave the crest not serrated, 
 but in wavy or scalloped relief against the sky. 
 
 The valleys which separate the different hills are for the 
 most part, properly, only what are known in English and 
 Scotch landscape, as "Hopes": that is valleys open only at 
 one end. They give the hills grace rather than grandeur. 
 
326 TAGHCONIC 
 
 If the Hoosac and Taconic ranges were sharply divided to 
 their bases by distinct transverse valleys, they would convey 
 an impression of vastly greater magnitude than they now do, 
 although in reality it would be less. 
 
 These weakening influences do not exist to the same 
 extent in the more northern valley. There the mountains 
 press closer upon the villages; the surface of the great swell 
 of land which underlies them is four hundred feet lower than 
 its maximum; and the contours of the mountains are more 
 sharp and distinct. The result is a great gain in grandeur, 
 whatever may be lost in other regards. The landscape is 
 more imposing; you feel the might of Greylock, and the 
 magnitude of the neighboring summits, here at Williams- 
 town, at Adams and North Adams, as you do not feel them 
 in the more open valley at- the south. 
 
 Notwithstanding the distance which separates them, 
 Williamstown seems specially affiliated with Stockbridge, of 
 the towns in the county, by social influences which date very 
 far back. Colonel Ephraim Williams, the founder of the 
 college, was the son of Col. Ephraim Williams, one of the 
 four farmers sent to Stockbridge to aid in civilizing the 
 Indians; and was himself for a time a resident there. Some 
 of the most distinguished early trustees lived in the same 
 town. The long-time President — the massive minded Mark 
 Hopkins — was born in Stockbridge; and so was his gentle 
 brother, Professor Albert Hopkins — a gentle spirit his, how- 
 ever obscured to any by severity of aspect and manner — 
 to whose fine tastes and elegant scholarship the college 
 owes as much in one direction as it does to the sterner 
 qualities of the great President in another. Nathan Jack- 
 son, John Z. Goodrich, David Dudley and Cyrus W. Field, 
 and other of the late liberal benefactors and zealous 
 friends of the college were Stockbridge men, although Mr. 
 Jackson was a native of Tyringham, and Mr. Good- 
 rich of Richmond. 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN 327 
 
 Through these and other causes, the influence of the 
 older, upon the younger town — perhaps I should say their 
 reciprocal influence — has been powerful. Indeed I am not 
 sure but that, if the spirits of Parsons West and Field should 
 come back to Berkshire for a summer Visit they would find 
 themselves quite as much at home in Williamstown as on 
 Stockbridge street. At all events the sort of people most 
 attracted to the college town for rest and recreation, are 
 grand and reverend seigniors of the old Stockbridge gentry- 
 class, who can make merry on mountain excursions with 
 college professors, or lend their aid, if need be, in the village 
 Sunday school and weekly conference meetings. There are 
 among them, I doubt not, gentlemen who find a real luxury 
 in being wakened by the college bell to the consciousness 
 that they are no longer subject to its brazen summons ; some 
 of them having the added delight that their sons are still 
 bond-knechts of learning: which does not mean, young gentle- 
 men, that there is anything as yet especially knightly about 
 you — although there may be — -but that, for four years, you 
 are the bound servants of a noble mistress, of whom you 
 may, when freed by — our baccalaurete, become, if you will, 
 gallant and devoted followers — and who, whether you will 
 it or not, will not wholly forsake you to your life's end, nor, 
 as I reverently believe, even then. 
 
 The grave and reverend seigniors, permanently or trans- 
 iently resident here, give tone to Williamstown life the year 
 round. To be sure, their sons and daughters are not, as a 
 rule, so grave and reverend: but if you meet Ralph Royrter 
 Doister and Miss Flora McFlimsey sauntering up the street — 
 she dangling her parasol and giving back the saucy sun, 
 glances as good as he sends; he twirling his tortoise shell 
 cane and sheltering the delicate blossoms of his complexion 
 with a blue veil — you may set these interesting young per- 
 sons down in your note book as, for certain, erratics from 
 some other summer social sphere. 
 
328 TAGHCONIC 
 
 ■ Thus much, of the old college town. The scene changes 
 two miles to the north; where a fashionable watering place 
 has within a few years started up around some mineral 
 springs which have long had local repute. The analysis of 
 the waters gives a result similar to that of Lebanon Springs 
 but some old farmers of the neighborhood, who were kind 
 enough to be my guides, on a visit " out of season," told 
 wonderful stories of old-time cures of rheumatism and cuta- 
 neous disorders; which would indicate a resemblance to the 
 Missisquoi Springs on the shore of Lake Champlain. To be 
 candid, however, whatever may be the virtues of the waters, 
 the people who come here do not look as if they had anything 
 to be cured which would not be speedily remedied by moun- 
 tain air and free exercise in the old balsamy woods; and I 
 apprehend that health-seeking is a thin excuse for enjoying 
 a few weeks in a delightful and picturesque spot, and with 
 pleasant associates: an apology for that which needs none. 
 
 Greylock Hall, the hostelry of this novel watering place, 
 stands on an elevation well up to the base of the Vermont 
 border-mountains, whose forest-covered sides furnish a strong 
 back-ground for the large, showy building, while a soft fore- 
 ground is supplied by the groves, gardens, bowers and foun- 
 tains of the Hall; a roomy park, carved, as it were, out of 
 the forest primeval, and converted to culture by some eccen- 
 tric magician. The world of fashion, delighting in sensational 
 contrasts, has here retreated towards the rudest recesses of 
 the mountains, as far as it well could without absolutely 
 making its abode in them. Greylock Hall is a slice of metro- 
 politan life and luxury taken up — students of the ' 'Arabian 
 Nights" know how — and dropped right down in the wilder- 
 ness. 
 
 Behind, stretch wild and scraggy mountains with a highly 
 inviting look of native savagery, not a little suggestive of 
 bears and catamounts, although I believe the sportsman 
 must be content finally with much less exciting game; and 
 
WILLIAMSTOWN 329 
 
 before the Hall, lies a rural country with few farm-houses. 
 But, only two miles away, one gets a picturesque glimpse of 
 Williamstown spires, and he knows that, six or seven miles 
 down yonder rich and busy valley, lies the great town of 
 North Adams. At his elbow he hears the click of the tele- 
 graph and close at hand, the jar of the locomotive with its 
 train. Ah, that is the charm of it! The world of fashion, 
 hide itself in what nook or wilderness it may, does not wil- 
 lingly loose its grasp of the telegraph and the railroad, and 
 wants its daily metropolitan journal as regularly at Grey- 
 lock Hall as at the Buckingham or the Clarendon. And 
 with all this mixture of life and loneliness, civilization and 
 savagery, lore and luxury, freedom and comfort, social 
 pleasures with a rural zest and woodland sports with a citi- 
 zen's relish for them; with all these, I conceive that the liking 
 that the world's people — to use a Shakerism — manifest for 
 Greylock Hall, is abundantly accounted for. 
 
,enox 
 
Lenox—The Only One 
 
 The waies through which my weary steps I guide 
 In this delightful land of Faery, 
 Are so exceeding spacious and wyde, 
 And sprinkled with such sweet variety 
 Of all that pleasant is to ear and eye, 
 That I, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts delight, 
 My tedious travell do forget thereby; 
 And when I gin to feele decay of might, 
 It strength to me supplies, and chears my dulled spright. 
 
 Faerie Queene. 
 
 And now, what of Lenox? Of Lenox, whose name has 
 so long been associated with so much of the grandest and 
 most beautiful in Berkshire scenery, the noblest, purest and 
 most graceful in Berkshire life, the most admired and most 
 loved in Berkshire genius: which, not many years ago, ab- 
 sorbed almost entirely whatever attention an influential por- 
 tion of the outer world had to bestow upon the great high- 
 land county of Massachusetts^-Stockbridge alone closely 
 rivalling it in the eye of these fashion-setting folk. 
 
 Lenox is a puzzle; and the mystery with which it chal- 
 lenges us, is the hidden spell that, irresistibly as it seems, 
 yearly compels hither an ever-increasing number of men and 
 women of a superior intellectual — not necessarily literary — 
 caste, and of exceptionally pure and natural tastes: an 
 annual assemblage whose social life is governed by idiosyn- 
 crasies — perhaps indefinable — that distinguish it from every 
 other summer-social circle. It is natural enough, and for 
 the better enjoyment of all, that every section of society, 
 should gather itself together, each after its own kind, and in 
 its own place; but it is not often that the result is so homo- 
 geneous as that which is, every summer, reproduced at 
 Lenox. The characteristics of life there are consequently 
 more individualized and pronounced than in looser and more 
 
334 TAGHCONIC 
 
 temporary social organizations : some of them indeed amount- 
 ing to polished eccentricity. 
 
 I wish it to be understood that my opportunities of ob- 
 serving this peculiar phase of society have been, for the most 
 part — in recent years altogether — from without; and I am 
 aware that the aspect of social formations, like the apparent 
 contours of our mountains, vary strangely with the varying 
 point of view. Whether my own stand-point in this case, 
 being a distant one, has enabled me to borrow any enchant- 
 ment for my picture, I am not able to say. It was once 
 my privilege, for a single season at a certain theatre, to go 
 nightly behind the scenes — where I learned a great deal, to 
 be sure: but it hardly fitted me to prepare a more apprecia- 
 tive morning critique upon the presentation of the play. 
 
 I do not however purpose the absurdity of attempting, 
 with my plentiful lack of data, an analysis of life at Lenox; 
 but simply, in incidental connections, to hint at possible 
 sources of its more patent peculiarities, and some of the 
 elements in that mysterious spell which the spot casts upon 
 its habitues. But I may speak from more thorough infor- 
 mation of that remarkable natural scenery which steadily 
 holds the first place in the love and esteem of so many con- 
 stant beholders, whose tastes have been moulded or corrected 
 by extended travel at home and abroad: scenery whose 
 charms seem to me to consist more in an unusual combination 
 of satisfactory qualities, and freedom from blemish, than in 
 any specific splendor of landscape — however striking in- 
 stances of the latter may here and there present themselves. 
 
 I think that, to obtain a better first effect, we will ap- 
 proach this scenery by a circuitous route. Immediately 
 south of Pittsfield, there rises a short, but — as seen from that 
 town — a conspicuous, and exceedingly picturesque, chain of 
 mountains. The hastiest glance will show the traveller who 
 mounts to the foot-bridge at the Union Depot, how much 
 the landscape owes to the fine shaping of its three great hills. 
 
LENOX 335 
 
 In this regard the Greylock group is not more worth. These 
 hills, of which there are four visible from Pittsfield, are a 
 part of the Lenox range, which, as I told you sometime ago, 
 is a spur thrown off by the Taconics at Egremont. It termi- 
 nates with Melville Hill, which lies in Pittsfield, between the 
 new and old roads to Lenox, its eastern slope being the farm 
 formerly owned by Herman Melville. At its foot, upon the 
 north, is the fine old mansion — now almost in its hundredth 
 year — whose hospitable roof, under the successive mastership 
 of Henry Van Schaack, Elkanah "Watson, Major Thomas 
 Melville, and J. R. Morewood, has welcomed a long and rare 
 array of guests, from Alexander Hamilton and Philip Schuyler 
 to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The grounds 
 of this mansion enclose Melville Lake — the prettiest little 
 lakelet possible, with its crystal-clear wave and rim of green 
 woods. One for whom Berkshire skies should weep, used to 
 call it "A Tear of Heaven"; they who love best the pure 
 white flowers on its placid breast, speak of it as "The Lilly 
 Bowl." There is, upon its eastern shore, a cool and mossy 
 path completely overarched by spreading, thick-leaved 
 boughs : 
 
 "No more sky, for overbranching 
 At your head than at your feet." 
 
 Rarely, through that leafy screen, the green and golden 
 light streams down with transmuted gorgeousness. There is 
 an exquisite wealth of color in some of those woodland tints. 
 I can never forget the rich purple hue which a few struggling 
 rays of summer sunshine imparted to a little spot of black 
 earth as I walked once in this cool retreat, while it was fierce 
 noon-tide without. The very figures painted on the mould, 
 in that royal coloring, are vividly present to me now, while 
 so much that promised to endure has faded from existence, 
 and is fading from memory. 
 
 The first conspicuous eminence in the Lenox Range is 
 South Mountain : a mile from Pittsfield Park, and deservedly 
 
336 TAGHCONIC 
 
 the favorite of such townspeople as enjoy a moderate walk, 
 through pleasant avenues, to an alluring goal. No other 
 spot within easy distance presents so many enticements to 
 the devotee of the romantic in natural scenery. From sev- 
 eral points upon it, you will get the best views of the town 
 of Pittsfield to be had: except, perhaps, one from Day Moun- 
 tain in Dalton. The rocky natural terraces on its north- 
 eastern side afford strolls of novel beauty, and rich in wild- 
 flowers : 
 
 "Flowers, purple, blue and white, 
 Like sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery." 
 
 Mount Osceola, next in the range, is a large and shapely 
 mountain, playing an important part in the landscape, and 
 interesting, although not especially so, to the excursionist. 
 
 Beyond Osceola, and an intervening valley, the Lenox 
 range rises to its greatest altitude, one thousand and sixty- 
 five feet above the track of the railroad at the Richmond 
 Depot, or twenty-one hundred and fifteen, above the sea 
 level. Rising sharply from the Richmond valley, its contour 
 is more clearly defined than that of any other mountain — 
 Greylock always excepted — which is visible from Pittsfield. 
 In this view it assumes a distinctly pyramidal form, which 
 gives it great prominence ; but the summit is not often 
 visited by pleasure-seekers, as thick woods obscure the pros- 
 pects which would otherwise be among the most magnificent 
 in Berkshire. A spectator perched among the boughs of 
 some tall and favorably located tree, looks directly down in 
 different directions, upon the Lenox and Stockbridge, the 
 Pittsfield, Lanesboro' and Dalton, and the Richmond and 
 West Stockbridge valleys, as well as away to the Catskill and 
 other distant summits. But such an observatory defies the 
 daring of the most adventurous young woman in the maddest 
 of our Alpine clubs — not to impugn the aspiring courage of 
 the masculine mountain-climbers — and it behooves the taste- 
 ful people of Lenox or of Pittsfield, to erect here, in some 
 
YOCUN'S SEAT 337 
 
 suitable clearing, a stone tower of liberal dimensions. Visible 
 from every train of the Boston and Albany railroad, it would 
 soon become as famous as the Wadsworth tower near Hart- 
 ford, and render the peak the favorite mountain resort of 
 central Berkshire. 
 
 I once passed a delicious summer-day here with a party 
 of rare climbers, who believed that we were upon Perry's. 
 Peak. We were sorely disappointed in not finding the superb 
 views we had been promised: and the disappointment was 
 aggravated by the tantalizing glimpses, some of us succeeded 
 in getting after much effort. Nevertheless we had a day of 
 memorable enjoyment by the aid of some freely-voiced music, 
 and readings from the poets by one who had a rare gift that 
 way. 
 
 When we came to learn that we had not been upon Perry's 
 Peak at all but only upon the nameless "highest point of 
 the Lenox Range," we felt that so grand a feature of the 
 landscape deserved a less awkward designation: and we 
 agreed upon one. It was a noble and fitting name: but I 
 shall not tell it to you; for it is best to avoid confusion in 
 such matters — and be-thinking ourselves that, as the peak is 
 in the bailiwick of Lenox, its christening by us might be 
 resented as discourteous intrusion, we did not proceed with it. 
 
 Afterwards, however, I mentioned the incident to a bril- 
 liant Lenox woman — a Lenox woman by virtue of a residence 
 of several summers, and, I believe, winters also — who spoke 
 of a name which is certainly not alien to this region: 
 
 Yocun's Seat. 
 
 Yocun was a noted Indian chief of the vicinage, who, with 
 his fellow-chieftain, Ephraim, sold to the grantees from the 
 Province, the rights of their people in the township now 
 divided into Lenox and Richmond; but which as plantations 
 were known as Yocuntown and Mount Ephraim. When 
 Richmond was incorporated as a town in 1765; and Lenox 
 
338 TAGHCONIC 
 
 in 1767, the sachems were, in very unceremonious fashion, 
 deprived of their honors, in order that they might be be- 
 stowed upon Charles Lenox, Duke of Richmond: the friend 
 of Horace Walpole, and the early defender, in the House of 
 Lords, of American colonial rights. 
 
 This seemed to Mrs. X. and the lively circle about her, a 
 very sad case of robbing Peter to pay Paul; and she proposed 
 to rectify the ancient wrong in part, by giving the old Lenox 
 sachem's name to the highest point of Lenox Mountain. And 
 she was the more satisfied of the rightfulness of this tardy 
 and partial restitution of stolen honors, when she unearthed 
 — for£aught I know, from the rich stores of her friend, Miss 
 Sedgwick — a|tradition that Chief Yocun, in his later years, 
 was wont oftenvto seek this^commanding summit, and, seated 
 there in kingly sorrow, to gaze long and sadly over the fair 
 realms which, "partly|by his own act, had passed from the 
 sway of the red man. 
 
 If you think with this justice-loving woman, Yocun's 
 Seat, let it be. 
 
 !/.„- But, by the bye, and before I forget His Grace of Rich- 
 mond entirely, it may relieve the minds of some hypercritical 
 people, of whom I often hear, to tell them that, although 
 there is a Scottish region known as "The Lennox," the 
 charter of the Berkshire town follows correctly the spelling 
 of the ducal family name in using only a single "n." 
 
 The pyramidal appearance of Yocun's Seat, as seen from 
 Pittsfield, is deceptive; it being only the terminal present- 
 tion of a ridge which descends very gradually for some miles to 
 the southwest. The chain is continued by connected eleva- 
 tions through Alford to the main range of the Taconics in 
 Egremont, although the elevation at the last becomes so 
 slight as hardly to be recognized ; giving the spur the appear- 
 ance of an isolated chain of hills. These mountains — many 
 of which command superb views — are generally known by the 
 names of the towns in which they l,ie; but, upon the border 
 
YOCUN'S SEAT 339 
 
 between Alford and West Stockbridge, Tom Ball rises 
 abruptly, and proclaims itself one of the most notable of the 
 great mountains of Berkshire. President Hitchcock speaks 
 of the Lenox spur of the Taconics as here attaining its high- 
 est elevation, but he does not state the height of Tom Ball, 
 nor whether he refers to its elevation above the sea, or above 
 the bottom of the neighboring valley. I think that the latter 
 is intended, and that Yocun's Seat, which rises from a valley 
 level two hundred feet higher than the more southern moun- 
 tain has, is, in regard to the sea level, the higher altitude; al- 
 though the difference can hardly be more than one hundred feet. 
 
 But we have now to do only with the northern portion 
 of the Lenox spur, which bending around the Lenox and 
 Stockbridge valley, separates it from those of Pittsfield, 
 Richmond and West Stockbridge. By the Lenox and Stock- 
 bridge valley, I do not mean the Housatonic valley in which 
 the villages of Lenox Furnace, Lee and Stockbridge on the 
 Plain are built. Lenox has, besides its farming districts, two 
 thriving villages. Lenox Furnace, the seat of the glass and 
 iron works, lies directly upon the Housatonic river and rail- 
 road. Westward from this the ground rises rapidly, four 
 hundred and fifty feet, in two and a half miles; at the end 
 of which commences a shelf of rolling upland, extending into 
 the elbow formed by the Lenox range of mountains on the 
 north and west ; southward, this upland declines a mile and 
 a half to the Stockbridge Bowl, and, past that noble sheet of 
 water on the right, and Mount Deokook on the left, to the 
 brow of the hill which descends abruptly to Stockbridge 
 Plain. And this, from the northern mountain wall to Stock- 
 bridge on the Hill, is the far famed Lenox and Stockbridge 
 valley. 
 
 Upon the upland shelf and its slope to the lake — which 
 you may call Mahkeenac if you are bent upon it — are built 
 the village, and most of the villas, of Lenox-on-the-Heights; 
 the favorite haunt of that summer-life of which I have spoken. 
 
340 TAGHCONIC 
 
 And, now, let us approach Lenox, from Pittsfield, by the 
 circuitous rout of which I told you so long ago. Following 
 the pleasant road which skirts the northern bases of the 
 Lenox range, we shall come, after a drive of a half dozen 
 miles, to the highway from Lebanon Springs, through Rich- 
 mond to Lenox, which here crosses the southern slope of 
 Yocun's Seat. The same route was followed very long ago 
 by some very distinguished tourists to whom I introduced 
 you in the story of Perry's Peak. 
 
 Descending the ridge upon the east, you will obtain the 
 best view of Lenox; a white village, half hidden by em- 
 bowering trees and seated upon a gently sloping and richly 
 cultivated swell of land. In various directions you will see 
 picturesque villas and cottages in park-like grounds, although 
 the most costly are not in this view. On an eminence at the 
 farther end of the village, rises the fine old-fashioned New 
 England meeting house in which William Ellery Channing 
 delivered his last discourse, and which bears on its front the 
 clock presented by Frances Anne Kemble. On your left you 
 will look down the luxurious Lenox and Stockbridge valley. 
 It was the view from this point which compelled from a 
 band of Hungarian exiles the shout, "Beauty! Beauty!" 
 Their English could go no farther than that; nor was more 
 needed. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe for you the nice points of 
 Lenox scenery: there are too many of them. Lenox sum- 
 mer-folk — the most energetic of pleasure seekers — are always 
 trooping to some of them: hill-top, cliff, lakeside or glen— 
 "And small blame to them!" said an Irish friend of mine 
 who had in his student-life been familiar with all that is 
 best in Italian and German landscape — "and small blame to 
 them; for this Lenox beats the world for grand going-places." 
 "Going-places" was a new phrase to me; but I do not think 
 that it needs interpretation. Of these Lenox going-places, 
 one of the most admired is so central as the village church 
 
LENOX 341 
 
 yard. Indeed you can hardly walk a dozen rods without 
 coming upon a new phase of loveliness which in regions 
 where beauty is not so freely lavished would be deemed 
 wonderful. The favorite points are those which, like Church 
 Hill, The Ledge, and Bald Head, look down the rich vista 
 of the Stockbridge Valley, with the blue Dome of the Tagh- 
 conics rising in the distance. But the spot which glows most 
 vividly in my remembrance is "The Old Judge Walker Hill." 
 I passed a glad summer afternoon there, years ago, and 
 made a deliberate effort to fix the landscape in my memory. 
 I do not know how much has, nevertheless, faded; but I 
 still seem to see a rolling country, of mingled wood, field and 
 meadow, intersected with shaded avenues; with Stockbridge 
 Bowl and Laurel Lake gleaming in blue and silver amid the 
 broad verdure ; a pretty glimpse of Lee village in the middle 
 distance ; and, still beyond, great mountains, whose personal- 
 ity I did not recognize. It was a bewildering excess of 
 beauty. 
 
 But grand and lovely as are the natural attractions of 
 Lenox, they are not so pre-eminent as to account for the 
 place which it holds in the esteem of those who give tone to 
 the world's opinions. That has been gained by social in- 
 fluences of exceptional power: which it may not be profane 
 to consider briefly. And among those influences we must 
 concede that a large share were derived primarily from the 
 Sedgwick family: not, however, to the extent of admitting 
 that, in 1821, they went to the shire town of Berkshire, mis- 
 sionaries of culture among a rude people. 
 
 In 1821, Mr. Charles Sedgwick was compelled by his 
 duties as clerk of the County Courts, to remove to Lenox. 
 
 Mr. Sedgwick was the youngest and favorite brother of 
 the authoress, between whom and his wife there was also a 
 very tender friendship. For the two years succeeding his 
 marriage, they had lived as one household in the old Stock- 
 bridge homestead, and the change, in 1821, was very dis- 
 
342 TAGHCONIC 
 
 tasteful to Miss Catherine, whose judgment of her brother's 
 new place of residence was characteristically warped by its 
 connection with the disruption of the pleasant family circle, 
 over which she moaned disconsolately in her correspondence. 
 Her biographer — doubtless receiving her impressions from the 
 writings or conversations of Miss Sedgwick — describes the 
 Lenox of 1821, as "a bare and ugly little village, perched 
 upon ajdesolate hill at the end of six miles of rough and 
 steep^driving " ; and, while admitting, to the full, the native 
 beauties of Lenox scenery, she thinks that to a "native and 
 lover of the rich valley of Stockbridge, with its soft and grace- 
 ful variations of meadow and wood, its gentle river and shel- 
 tering mountains, and the appearance of refinement even 
 then given to its dwellings, Lenox must have seemed dis- 
 mally bleak and uncouth." 
 
 There was certainly some foundation for these strong 
 expressions, but they, as certainly, owe their extreme bitter- 
 ness to the|great liability of Miss Sedgwick's judgment to be 
 disturbed by the relations of men and things to the House 
 of Sedgwick. Lenox-on-the-Heights stands three hundred 
 and|fifty feet higher than Stockbridge-on-the-Plain : full one- 
 quarter of the rise being within a mile of the Sedgwick home- 
 stead on Stockbridge street. The height of Lenox above 
 Pittsfield Park is one hundred and forty-three feet. The 
 present denizens of the place decidedly pique themselves 
 upon its altitude. Tradition tells dismal stories of the Berk- 
 shire roads a half century ago, and the soil of Lenox is not 
 favorable for road building. The drive from Stockbridge, 
 now so wonderfully delicious, was beyond question very dif- 
 ferent at certain seasons of the year 1821. 
 
 President Dwight, who visited the village in 1798, thus 
 describes it: 
 
 "Lenox, the shire town of the county, is principally built upon a 
 single street, on a ridge, declining rather pleasantly to the east and west, 
 but disagreeably interrupted by several deep valleys crossing it at right- 
 
LENOX 343 
 
 angles. The soil and the buildings are good, and the town exhibits many 
 marks of prosperity. The public buildings consist of a church (the same 
 which now crowns the hill), a court-house, a school-house and jail." 
 
 Not a glowing description, nor yet, on the other hand, 
 repulsive. And the place must have improved in the twenty- 
 three years between 1798 and 1821. Still it cannot be denied 
 that the Lenox, even of the latter year, bore but a sorry 
 comparison with either the present urbanized Lenox or the 
 Stockbridge of sixty years ago. In 1821 the Commonwealth 
 had few villages of which the same cannot be said, with at 
 least equal force. 
 
 In regard to social life, the superiority of Stockbridge 
 was less marked; amounting to put it at its strongest, to no 
 more than was to be expected in the older, richer, and more 
 populous town. Lenox had even then a social circle of cul- 
 ture, exceptional even among larger towns. 
 
 As early as the beginning of the present century, as we 
 may fairly infer from the correspondence of so competent a 
 critic as Henry Van Schaack, men of much more than ordi- 
 nary refinement, information and breadth of thought were 
 accustomed to meet around the hospitable board of Major 
 Eggleston. In 1821, Lenox had been for thirty-four years 
 the county seat of Berkshire; and it was then the custom 
 for the judges — more numerous than now — and, at least the 
 leading members of the bar, to remain in town through the 
 long sessions of the courts: a fact which must have greatly 
 benefited local society. And it is no unmeaning jest to add, 
 that some of the most cultured citizens of other sections of the 
 county were often compelled, as prisoners for debt, to pass 
 long periods in Lenox, in its legal capacity as "jail limits." 
 The Lenox Academy, one of the most successful high schools 
 in the state, had flourished since 1803, and in 1821 was under 
 the charge of scholarly Levi Glezen: and it, too, must have 
 had its mollifying effect upon men and manners. 
 
 Among the permanent citizens were the elder and the 
 younger Judge Walker, County Treasurer Joseph Tucker, 
 
344 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Rev. Dr. Shepard, Doctors Worthington and Collins, and 
 James W. Robbins who, with others of like merit, betoken a 
 very respectable elevation of village society. 
 
 I think, therefore, that the picture which appalled Miss 
 Sedgwick's imagination when she first learned the necessity 
 for her brother's removal to the seat of the county business 
 may be sufficiently softened to leave us a prosperous, and 
 rather pleasant, county-town, with a population of some 
 refinement, very considerable liberal culture, and much intel- 
 lectual power: comparing quite favorably with most of the 
 New England county-seats of that era. The six miles exile 
 of the county-clerk and his family fell far short of Siberian 
 severity: as his sister found, when, some ten years later, 
 she consented to share it. 
 
 It was about the year 1831, that Lenox became the chief 
 summer residence of Miss Sedgwick, who in winter made her 
 home with either of two brothers resident in New York, as 
 she might elect. In the interval between 1821 and 1831, 
 Lenox village had improved in appearance, and its society 
 had received some valuable accessions; particularly in the 
 family of Henry W. — afterwards Judge — Bishop, Mr. Sedg- 
 wick's life-long friend. A coterie composed largely of gentle- 
 men holding county-offices, and their families, had grown, or 
 was growing, into a remarkable social body, distinguished 
 for intellectual graces, and the marvel of all observers for its 
 fraternal friendship and close alliance. In this circle, the 
 love-compelling qualities of Charles Sedgwick and the queenly 
 powers of his accomplished wife made them conspicuous. 
 
 But, as yet, Lenox had only provincial distinction. The 
 great world took little note of the superb scenery, still less 
 of the life, of the little mountain town. The residence of 
 Miss Sedgwick soon began to change all this. Her literary 
 fame, the social distinction of her family in the metropolis, 
 and more than all, her sympathies with humanity — which 
 were as world-wide as her local affections were intense — soon 
 
LENOX 345 
 
 began to attract to her country home, men and women of 
 the more intellectual class everywhere; and especially those 
 deeply engaged in efforts to speed the world towards its 
 better future. Not only the champions of freedom and 
 humanity in the great centers of American effort, but the 
 higher order of republican exiles from Italy and Hungary, 
 made pilgrimages to the home of a family whose sympathy 
 with embattled right was not limited by nationality. The 
 keen and friendly interest of the whole Sedgwick family of 
 that generation in the struggles of European republicanism 
 was, by the bye, in violent contrast with the sentiments of 
 their father. 
 
 The singular merit of the family school for young ladies 
 which, begun by Mrs. Charles Sedgwick in 1828, grew to 
 great, fame, also largely influenced the gathering and mould- 
 ing of the summer society peculiar to Lenox; and not less 
 did the accession of Mrs. Kemble, who became, first a fre- 
 quent visitor of the Sedgwicks, and afterwards a permanent 
 resident, zealously active in promoting the good of the town. 
 In a letter, of November 1842, Miss Sedgwick hints the char- 
 acteristics of the social life which grew up under these and 
 similar influences and became so wonderfully attractive. 
 
 "You have heard of Charming' s death, and perhaps that he passed 
 the summer at Lenox, and in a free and happy condition of mind and 
 body, such as he often said he did not remember to have enjoyed since 
 childhood,, and such as his friends had never before observed. He seemed 
 to have thrown off every shackle, to be rid of his precision; and he was 
 so affectionate and playful with the young people that those who did 
 not before know him wondered why any one should fear Dr. Channing. 
 He liked our anti-conventionalism; our free ways of going on — our individ- 
 ual independance of thought and action; he enjoyed, as if he had come 
 to his fathers house, the forever-changing beauty of our hills and valleys 
 and he went away with more than half a promise to return to us next 
 summer. " 
 
 I find this letter, which is addressed to Rev. Dr. Orville 
 Dewey, in Miss Sedgwick's "Life and Letters." In the re- 
 
346 TAGHCONIC 
 
 cently published correspondence of Charles Summer, there 
 are two or three letters which illustrate the unconventional- 
 ism of Lenox life from another point of view. In the latter 
 summer of 1844, Mr. Summer visited Hon. Nathan Appleton 
 in his country-seat at Pittsfield, reinvigorating his impaired 
 health, and "enjoying much the meadows, green fields, rich 
 country and beautiful seenery," in rides upon a horse loaned 
 him by his host's neighbor, Hon. E. A. Newton. He gave 
 his impressions freely in letters to George S. Hillard and Dr. 
 S. G. Howe, who had been his companions during part of his 
 visit. Under date of September 10th, 1844, he writes thus 
 to Mr. Hillard concerning two rides to Lenox: 
 
 "He [Mr. Samuel G. Ward] jolted us in his wagon to view the farms, 
 one of which he coveted. Afterwards, we looked on while, in a field 
 not far off, the girls and others engaged in the sport of archery. Mrs. 
 Butler [Fanny Kemble] hit the target in the golden middle. The next 
 day was Sunday, and I was perplexed whether to use Mr. Newton's horse, 
 as I presume the master never used him on Sunday. But my scruples 
 gave way before my longings for the best of exercises. I left Pittsfield 
 as the first bell was tolling and arrived at Lenox some time before the 
 second bell. I sat in Miss Sedgwick's room; time passed on. Mrs. 
 Butler joined us and again time passed on. Mrs. Butler proposed to ac- 
 company me to Pittsfield on horse-back. I stayed to the cold dinner 
 making it a lunch. Time again passed on from the delay in saddling 
 the horses. We rode the longest way, and I enjoyed my companion 
 very much." 
 
 Again on the 12th Mr. Summer writes to Mr. Hillard 
 from Pittsfield: 
 
 "I wish you were still here. Your presence would help me to bear 
 the weight of Fanny Kembles' conversation. I confess to a certain awe, 
 and a sense of her superiority, which makes me at times anxious 
 to subside into my inferiority, and leave the conversation to be sustained 
 by others." 
 
 The glimpses into the Lenox life of a generation ago, 
 afforded by these extracts, convey a better idea of its peculiar 
 
LENOX 347 
 
 charms than I could give you in any other way. The pas- 
 sing away of that generation of the Sedgwick family, and of 
 most of their associates, together with the removal of others, 
 consequent upon the change in the county seat, has taken 
 away, for the most part, the local frame-work, upon which 
 the summer society of Lenox first formed itself. But it had 
 already outgrown that frame-work. -The flood of life which 
 poured towards these romantic heights as they became more 
 and more known, was perplexing in its variety. Millionaires, 
 artists, poets, politicians, scholars and statesmen came in 
 yearly succeeding waves. Some found themselves in har- 
 mony with the genius of the place and affiliated themselves 
 with it: others, after a more or less brief trial, sought a more 
 congenial resort elsewhere. In the meanwhile, villas and 
 cottages have sprung up on all manner of beautiful sites; 
 and such luxurious appointments as metropolitan tastes de- 
 manded have in some measure been supplied. Society has 
 of course much modified its usages to accommodate itself 
 to these changes. What the exact result has been, as I 
 warned you at the first, I shall not attempt to tell, or even 
 myself to understand, but it is at least something unlike any 
 other social life; and I believe it to have so far retained the 
 old spirit, that Lenox-on-the-Heights — in spite of stately 
 mansions, showy equipages and fashionable clubs — still re- 
 mains the Paradise of unconventional good-breeding. 
 
L'envoi 
 
L' envoi 
 
 To thee, perchance, this rambling strain 
 
 Recalls our summer walks again; 
 
 When doing naught — and to speak true, 
 
 Not caring to find aught to do — 
 
 The wild unbounded hills we ranged, 
 
 While oft our talk its topic changed, 
 
 And, desultory as our way, 
 
 Ranged unconfined from grave to gay: 
 
 Even when it nagged, as oft would chance, 
 
 Kb effort made to break the trance, 
 
 We could right pleasently pursue 
 
 Our sports in social silence, too. — Walter Scott. 
 
 We must finish here our rambles upon the summer-en- 
 chanted hills of Berkshire, which we have ranged, as I hope, 
 not altogether without pleasure, or profit. But I feel that 
 my neighbors will complain, with reason, if I forget the multi- 
 tude of our own enticing "going-places," which, are, at least, 
 not exceeded in number or loveliness even by those of Lenox. 
 To some of them, I have already conducted you; but there 
 are others quite as choice, which it would be unpardonable 
 in one who owes to them so many days of exquisite pleasure, 
 to neglect, for wanderings to the end of the county. And 
 even if I cannot now go with you to them, you too, would 
 have cause for complaint, if I left you totally uninformed of 
 their existence. 
 
 If, coming to us for a single day, you should ask, what 
 ride, of all others to select, the answer would almost certainly 
 be: "To Potter's Mountain!" This bare and lofty Tagh- 
 conic summit lies some six miles north-west of us. When it 
 was very difficult of access it was a frequent and favorite 
 resort of Herman Melville and his companions in picnic. *A 
 new highway to Hancock, now render the ride to its mossy 
 top, perfectly easy, and the whole town seems to have gone 
 
352 TAGHCONIC 
 
 mad over its fine and comprehensive views of mountains, 
 valleys, lakes, streams, villages and groves. 
 
 A most alluring "going-place" for young people, in pairs 
 and parties, is Lulu Cascade, in a lonely nook between two 
 Taghconic hills, some two miles north-west of Lake Onota. 
 It is almost the exact counterpart of the little water-fall of 
 which I told you in the story of Undine's Glen, which was 
 ruined years ago by the wood-choppers. A silver-white 
 column of water falls fifteen feet over dark rocks, into a 
 broad black pool, overhung by a huge grey boulder. Below 
 is a ravine, shaded half with rocks and half with trees, and a 
 rippling brook. The merriest of all parties linger to lunch 
 upon its banks. 
 
 A cool and pretty wood-road leads up the southern bank 
 of the brook, and if, after pursuing it for perhaps half a mile, 
 you climb a moderate hill upon your left, you will find upon 
 its top a basin in which lies Berry Pond: the gem of moun- 
 tain lakelets. Its shore is a favorite camping ground for 
 those who seek a brief interval of woodland life. Berry 
 Pond and Lulu Cascade are not to be omitted in any pro- 
 gramme of Berkshire summer excusions. 
 
 And yet the ride upon which I should best love to take 
 many of you is different from either of those which I have 
 described. What is known as the old, or east, road to Lanes- 
 boro'; and is now little used, runs for a great part of its 
 length along the crest of an upland ridge, noted for its fer- 
 tility. The drive along this road is exceedingly pleasant, 
 with its border of rich farms, over which we look on every 
 side to noble mountain landscapes. After a five-mile drive 
 along this ridge and in a picturesque valley, we rise to the 
 summit of the road on the southern slope of Prospect Hill 
 in Lanesboro', with the village below us and a magnificent 
 overview stretching to the Lenox Hills. We may now de- 
 scend to the village and pursue our way home, past Pontoosuc 
 Lake. But it would be better to turn down the eastern 
 
L'ENVOI 353 
 
 descent to Berkshire village, the seat of the Crystal Glass 
 Manufacture, where, at the foot of Crystal Mountain, we 
 should find, great heaps of white silicious sand, which if it 
 were winter, you could not distinguish from snow-drifts. 
 Then we would enter the works where this beautiful material 
 is transmuted into glass, clear as crystal, or of any, or all, the 
 colors of a summer rainbow, I think some of you would enjoy 
 that excursion. 
 
 I should be glad to show you these and a host of other 
 beautiful and interesting spots which lie close about us. But 
 for the present at least, our rambles are ended. 
 
 I cannot, however, part with you, without removing some 
 false impressions, which a reading of the printed pages leads 
 me to fear that I may have given you. I had no wish in 
 telling the story of John Chandler Williams, to rob Dr. Ben- 
 jamin Franklin of the glory of securing the Hutchinson corre- 
 spondence in England. The letters obtained by the young 
 student-hero must have been supplementary to the Frank- 
 lin acquisition. You will find the authority for my story 
 in the Journals of the Provincial Congress, and in the 
 History of The Williams Family, where it is given in 
 the words of Hon. Edward A. Newton, Mr. Williams's 
 son-in-law. 
 
 In the account of the Dedication of the Pittsfield Soldiers' 
 Monument, the prominence given to Gen. Bartlett by the 
 circumstances of his subsequent early death, led me to the 
 use of language which may be construed as meaning that his 
 brief, but noble, address was the chief feature of the ceremony; 
 whereas in fact the grand address was one of that series of 
 orations by George William Curtis, which, if collected would 
 form at once the most glowing eulogium and the most philoso- 
 phical commentary upon the War for the Union. 
 
 In another place, I see that, quoting very carelessly from 
 memory, I have put the warning, "Let him who hath a dead 
 hand take heed how he strikes," into the mouth of Lord 
 
354 TAGHCONIC 
 
 Chief Justice Selden. My cooler, recollection is that it came 
 from the lips of quaint old Fuller. 
 
 I make these corrections after the wisdom of Sir Richard 
 Moniplies of Castle Collop, whose rule was to speak all the ill 
 he knew of his family: being quite sure that if he did not some 
 ill-natured person would be sure to detect and publish it. 
 
 And, now having confessed and asked absolution for these 
 and all other sins of omission and commission, I beg your 
 kindly reciprocal farewell. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Adams 238, 243 
 
 Adams, North 157, 238, 242, 307 
 
 Agriculture, A Christianizing Power 286 
 
 Albany Institute 80, 106, 214, 218 
 
 Alford 338, 359 
 
 Allen, Rev. Thomas 40, 275 
 
 Appleton, Nathan 192 
 
 Ashley Lake 152 
 
 Athenaeum, Berkshire 303, 308 
 
 Atotarho's Duff 81 
 
 Audubon . 64 
 
 Aupaumut 65, 81 
 
 Balanced Rock 79 
 
 Bald Head 359 
 
 Bald Mountain 241 
 
 Bartlett, Gen. Wm. F 44 
 
 Bash-Bish Falls, 157; (Chapter on) 213 
 
 Beauty and Brains 274 
 
 Beauty of Berkshire Analyzed 276 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward 307 
 
 Bellows pipe, The 243 
 
 Benton, E. R 120 
 
 Berkshire Scenery, Characterized 2, 5, 276 
 
 Berry Pond 352 
 
 Bigotry in Berkshire 297 
 
 Bishop, Henry W 344 
 
 Boulder trains of Richmond 113 
 
 Bowles, Samuel 321 
 
 Bridgeport 307 
 
 Briggs, Geo. N 50 
 
 Brown, Col. John 40 
 
 Bryant, Wm. C 284, 309, 315 
 
 Busybodies 69 
 
 Butler, Luther 12 
 
 Canaan, N. Y 118 
 
 Channing, Rev. Dr. Wm. Ellery 298, 340 
 
 Clay, Henry 307 
 
 Columbia Hall, Lebanon Springs 91 
 
 Constitution Hill 169 
 
Converting a Tory 23, 203 
 
 Copake, N. Y 214, 220 
 
 Crane, Zenas and Zenas M 257 
 
 Curtis, George William, 353 
 
 Dalton 131, 244, 257, 226 
 
 Day Mountain 336 
 
 Deerfield 037' 
 
 Deokook, Mount 339 
 
 Dewey, Prof. Chester 275 
 
 Dome of the Taghconics 232 
 
 Douglas, Alfred 214, 217 
 
 Douglas, Captain Asa 40 
 
 Dwight, Gen. Joseph 296 
 
 Eagle's Nest 215 
 
 Easton, Col. James 29 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan 55, 285 
 
 Egleston, Major Azariah 343 
 
 Egremont 213, 232 
 
 Elm, old, of Pittsfield 15 
 
 Elms of Stoekbridge 284 
 
 Fern Cliff 309 
 
 Field, Cyrus W 392, 326 
 
 Field, David Dudley 291, 326 
 
 Field Meetings, Scientific 80, 102, 214 
 
 Fort Hill, Commisariat and Merry Days at 183 
 
 Geography, Physical 115, 309 
 
 Geology 80, 113, 154, 161 
 
 Glassworks, Berkshire Crystal 352 
 
 Glezen, Levi 243 
 
 Goodale, Elaine and Dora, the child Poets 213 
 
 Goodale, H. S 217 
 
 Goodrich, Captain Charles 21 
 
 Grace, the Madcap 61, 245 
 
 Great Barrington, 216, 241, 308; (Chapter on) 307 
 
 "Green Hills of Taghconic," Song 146 
 
 Green River 213, 232, 315 
 
 Greylock 1; (Chapter on), 237; Heart of 249 
 
 Greylock Hall 240, 328 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 301 
 
 Hancock 40, 351 
 
 Headley, J. T [ 232 
 
Hermit Cascade 251 
 
 Highway Surveyors, tyranny of 20 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 108, 192, 237 
 
 Homes, Henry A 218 
 
 Hoosac Mountains, 1, 140; 152, 161 Splendid Views from 153, 313 
 
 Hoosac Tunnel 158 
 
 Hopkins, Pres. Mark 292, 326 
 
 Hopkins, Prof. Albert 251, 326 
 
 Hopper, The 252 
 
 Housatonic railroad .- 308 
 
 Hudson's Brook 164 
 
 Icy Glen 299 
 
 Indian Mission and Burial Place, Stockbridge 285 
 
 Isabel Walton, Story of 15 
 
 Jackson, Nathan 326 
 
 James, G. P. B, 301, 315 
 
 Josh Billings 176 
 
 Kemble, Mrs. Frances Anne 108, 237, 244, 340, 346 
 
 Lanesboro 152, 169, 219, 288, 322 
 
 Laura's Rest 293 
 
 Laurel Hill 291 
 
 Laurel Lake 309 
 
 Lawyers as Wizards 30 
 
 Lebanon Springs, 87, Life at 88, 145, 328 
 
 Lee 118, 318 
 
 Lenox, 106, 108, 121, 232, 244, 294; {Chapter on) 333 
 
 Lenox Furnace 153, 339 
 
 Lenox Mountain Range 121 , 334 
 
 Lilly Bowl 335 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W 191 
 
 Love making, Scientific 105 
 
 Lulu Cascade 352 
 
 Lyell, Sir Charles 118 
 
 Mahkeenac, Lake 301, 303 
 
 Maplewood Grounds and Young Ladies' Institute 273 
 
 Marlboro, New 124 
 
 Melville, Herman 197, 301, 335, 351 
 
 Melville Hill 335 
 
 Melville Lake 335 
 
 Melville, Major Thomas 197 
 
 Minute-men of 1775 and 1861 41 
 
Money Hole 250 
 
 Monument Mountain 15, 108, 313, 317, 310 
 
 Mount Rhighi 219 
 
 Mount Washington 213, 215 
 
 Nathan Jackson's Integrity.. 207 
 
 Natural Bridge at North Adams 163 
 
 New Ashford 321 
 
 North Adams (Chapter on) 157 
 
 Notch, The, at North Adams 242 
 
 October Mountain 198 
 
 Old Clock on the Stairs 192 
 
 Old Elm of Pittsfield Park 15 
 
 Old Worshipper, The 173 
 
 Onota Lake 181 
 
 Osceola, Mount 336 
 
 Painter's Story, The 142 
 
 Paper Mills 257 
 
 Parker, Sharpshooter Linus 201 
 
 Perry, Rev. David '. .'. 109 
 
 Perry's Peak 103 
 
 Phantoms of Shoon-keek-Moon-keek. 66 
 
 Picnic Life 61, 103, 240 
 
 Pine, Song to the 73 
 
 Pittsfield 11, 39, 107, 336 
 
 Poems: 
 
 Grey old Elm 34 
 
 Pinos Loquentes Semper Habemus 73 
 
 Green Hills of Taghconic 146 
 
 Sunny Vale 209 
 
 King Greylock's Mountain Height 254 
 
 Scatter the Germs of the Beautiful 278 
 
 Stockbridge Bowl 303 
 
 Agricultural Ode 312 
 
 Poontoosuc 66 
 
 Pontoosuc Lake 61, 239, 352 
 
 Potter's Mountain 351 
 
 Quartz 80, 108, 140 
 
 Quartzite 114, 140, 152 
 
 Queechy Lake 88, 107, 140 
 
 Railroads: 
 
 Boston and Albany 307, 308 
 
 Housatonic 308 
 
Rebellion, War of the 41 
 
 Revolution, Patriots of the 40 
 
 Reed, Dr. Stephen 117 
 
 Richards, Wm. C 109 
 
 Richmond 106, 337, 358 
 
 Richmond Boulder Trains 113 
 
 Richmond Lake , 107 
 
 Roaring Brook 190 
 
 Rock Mountain 152 
 
 Sacrifice Rock, The 291 
 
 Saddleback Mountain 238 
 
 Scatter the Germs of the Beautiful 278 
 
 Sedgwick, Catherine M 87, 295, 342 
 
 Sedgwick, Charles 341 
 
 Sedgwick, Theodore 295 
 
 Shaw, Henry and Henry S 177, 307 
 
 Shaw, Rev. Samuel Brenton 178 
 
 Shays Rebels 153 
 
 Sheffield 232, 294 
 
 She would be a Gentleman's Wife 92 
 
 Shoon-Keek-Moon-keek 66 
 
 Sigourney, Lydia H 303 
 
 Smith, Gideon 200 
 
 Soldiers, Honors due to 39 
 
 South Mountain 124, 335 
 
 Spectre Brook , 251 
 
 Stockbridge, 283; Stormy Times in, 288; Indian Massacre. . .294, 308, 333 
 
 Stockbridge Bowl 301, 303 
 
 Stories of the Village Green 39 
 
 Sumner, Charles 346 
 
 Swiss Lovers, The 218 
 
 Symonds Peak 238, 242 
 
 Tales: 
 
 Tales of a Tree 15 
 
 Isabel Walton 16 
 
 Lucretia Williams 23 
 
 Tales of the Village Green 39 
 
 Phantoms of Shoon-keek-Moon-keek 66 
 
 Atotarho's Duff 81 
 
 She would be a Gentleman's Wife 92 
 
 The Wizard's Glen 129 
 
 Undine's Glen 141 
 
 White Deer of Lake Onota 184 
 
 The Old Worshipper 173 
 
Tales: 
 
 Tales of the Tories 200 
 
 The Swiss Lovers 218 
 
 Wahconah 259 
 
 Ten Million Years Ago . 113 
 
 Thoreau, Henry 241, 246 
 
 TBden, Samuel J 87 
 
 Todd, Rev. Dr. John S3, 162 
 
 Tom Ball (Mountain) 339 
 
 Tories' Glen 191, 198 
 
 Tories, Handling of, 23; Tales of 200 
 
 Town, College and Spa 321 
 
 Trollope, Mrs 297 
 
 Troy 106, 214 
 
 Tucker, Joseph 343 
 
 Tunnel City, Marvels of 157 
 
 Tyler, Rev. Wellington H 275 
 
 Undines Glen 139 
 
 TJnkamet's Path 308 
 
 Van Shaack, Henry 343 
 
 Wahconah Falls and a Tradition about Them 257 
 
 Walker, Judges Wm. and Wm. P 343 
 
 Ward, Samuel G 346 
 
 Washington Mountain 151 ,198 
 
 Waterworks, Pittsfield 140, 151 
 
 Wendell, Col. Jacob and Judge Oliver 192 
 
 West, Parson 327 
 
 West Stockbridge 339 
 
 White Deer of Lake Onota 181 
 
 Whiting's Pond 107 
 
 Williams College 238, 310, 321 
 
 Williams, John Chandler 22, 39, 353 
 
 Williams, Col. Israel 22 
 
 Williams, Lucretia 22 
 
 Williamstown 238, 241, 321 
 
 Windsor 257 
 
 Wyomanock 88 
 
 Yocun's Seat 170, 337, 340 
 
AUTHOR'S VVUUOVV UH,J\U. 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth H. Smith Would Have 
 Been 90 Years Old May 1. 
 
 Pittsfleld, April 9. — Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Hubbard Smith, widow of J. B. 
 Smith, historian and author, died last 
 evening at 7:30 o'clock at the home 
 of her niece, Mrs. Isabelle H. Griggs 
 at 3 Orchard street, following an ill- 
 ness of 14 months. Had she lived 
 until May 1 she would have been 90 
 years old. 
 
 Mrs. Smith was of great assistance 
 to her husband when he wrote his 
 history of the Berkshire hills, copy- 
 ing all of his manuscripts and fur- 
 nishing him with many facts which 
 made the history invaluable. She 
 also assisted him in writing "The His- 
 tory of Pittsfleld." She married Mr, 
 Smith in Albany in 1864. 
 
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