A LOCAL 
 COLORlIST 
 
 ANNE TRUMBULL SLOSSON 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OB 
 
 STEWART HENRY BURNHAM 
 1943 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 2859.S2L8 
 
 A local colorist, 
 
 3 1924 022 179 422 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022179422 
 
BOOKS BY ANNIE TRUMBULL SLOSSON 
 
 PUBLISHED BY CHAELES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 A Local Colorist (postage extra) net, 75c. 
 
 Story-Tell Lib net, SOc, 
 
 Fishin' Jimmy net, 30c. 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
"An(i be sure you put in Ids nl Icitul color." 
 
A LOCAL COLO a I ST 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE TRUMBULL SLOSSON 
 
 ADTHOR OF 
 " FISHIN' jimmy," " STORY-TELL LIB," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1912 
 
COPYEIGHT, 1912, BX 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 Published March, 1912 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Local Colorist i 
 
 A Nature Cure 37 
 
 A Dissatisfied Soul 63 
 
 A Prophetic Romancer loi 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 "1 X /"HEN I was a mite of a child I was always 
 ^^ sayin'^ that I'd be a book-writer when I 
 growed up. I rec'lect lots of times folks askin' 
 me — as they're always doin' with young ones, 
 you know — what I was goin' to be when I got 
 a woman grown, and my sayin' every time I 
 should be a great author. Sometimes I'd make 
 it more partic'lar and say a poet or a story- 
 writer, or again I'd have it a editor or some 
 kind of newspaper-maker, but most gen'rally 
 'twas just a plain author, no partic'lar sort. So, 
 feelin' that way from the very beginnin', 'twas 
 queer that I never did write for print as the 
 years went by. I was forever thinkin' about it, 
 plannin' for it, surmisin' just how 'twould feel 
 when my own makin's-up was printed out and 
 read all over the airth, and I never for one 
 single minute give up bein' certain sure that be- 
 fore I died — and long afterward, too — I should 
 be known and spoke of as a great, a dreadful 
 great, authoress. But I never seemed to get at 
 
 3 
 
4 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 it. You see, I was so busy. I never had to work 
 for my livin', but I was oldest of five and had 
 lots to do helpin' ma with the little ones and the 
 housework. 
 
 Then there was school and lessons till I was 
 nigh seventeen, and after that beaux, and pretty 
 soon one beau in partic'lar — Mr. Kidder, you 
 know. You can't write much in courtin' days, 
 nor in marryin'-time neither, and 'course when 
 little Nathan come and then Fanny Ann and 
 Prudence, my hands were too full for authorin'. 
 But I kep' on lottin' on doin' it some day, 
 knowin' I should manage it somehow. 
 
 It wa'n't till I was left all alone by myself 
 two year ago that I felt I could really begin. 
 I set the day quite a spell aforehand. It was 
 to be the 28th of May. The spring cleanin' 
 would be through by that time, and the pre- 
 servin' and cannin' and puttin' up jell and pick- 
 les not begun. Only a few summer boarders 
 gen'rally come as early as that, so there wouldn't 
 be much gbin' on outside to watch from the 
 windows and take off my mind. Altogether it 
 seemed just the right time. Of course there had 
 to be a set day in case my writin's turned out 
 pop'lar and talked about, and I was pretty cer- 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 5 
 
 tain they would. Folks always want to know 
 all about great writers, and I kep' sayin' over 
 to myself words from the newspaper accounts: 
 "It was only a few years ago, on the 28th of 
 May, that this interestin'" — or "thrillin'," or 
 "beautiful," or somethin', as the case might be 
 — "authoress begun her first and perchance her 
 greatest book." 
 
 I laid in my writin' things, a new bottle of 
 ink, some pens, and a quire of paper, and fixed 
 my table in a good light. That was in March, 
 for I was always forehanded. I was beginnin' to 
 be a mite impatient, wantin' to have the worst 
 over, when one day a new idee come into my 
 head. Up to that cold March mornin', if you'll 
 believe it, I never once thought what kind of 
 writin' I should begin with; verses or prose 
 pieces, narr'tives or what-all, I hadn't decided 
 on any of 'em. It didn't take very long, though. 
 I was dreadful fond of story-books, and I never 
 cared no great for poetry or lives of folks or 
 travellin' adventur's. I'd write stories, just one 
 first ofif, and then a lot of 'em " by the authoress 
 
 of ." My! I hadn't fixed on a name. But 
 
 that could come later when I knew what kind 
 of a story it was. Then come the hardest of all 
 
6 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 — what it should be about, I couldn't make up 
 my mind about that. I won't go over all the 
 different plans I had; to write about lords and 
 earls or lay it in heathen lands or in Mayflower 
 days among the Pilgrims, or in the Civil War, 
 or among pirates and Captain Kidd, or early 
 Christian martyrs. I went over all them and 
 lots more, but wasn't a bit nearer decidin', when 
 Mary Dowd passed through here on her way 
 to Hall. She'd writ me aforehand, and I went 
 over to the depot to see her. There was only 
 about half an hour between trains, and we had 
 a great deal to say. She is real smart, you 
 know — had the Dayville School three terms, and 
 is a great book-reader, so I wanted her advice. 
 But she was all for my tellin' her first how my 
 rhubarb pies was made; then she branched off 
 into pie crust gen'rally, and how hers never had 
 that light shortness mine always had, and it was 
 only a few minutes before train-time that I got 
 a chance to put my case. She was real inter- 
 ested, and she says right off quick, without havin' 
 to think it over, "Oh," she says, "write a dia- 
 lect story; that's the only thing that takes these 
 days." "What in creation's that?" I says, and 
 she looked most sorry for me. But she's real 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 7 
 
 kind-hearted, and she begun to explain. Before 
 I could get much idee of the thing the train whis- 
 tled and she started to pick up her bag. Near 
 as I could understand, dialect — I didn't know 
 just how to spell it or speak it then, but I got 
 it right afterward — dialect was any kind of queer, 
 outlandish talk folks in any deestrict use, the 
 queerer the better. The more you put in your 
 story and the worse 'twas spelt and the harder 
 to understand, why, as I gathered from what 
 she said as she climbed up the steps — bag in 
 one hand and umbrella in the other and a book 
 under each arm, so't she couldn't help steppin' 
 on her skirt in front every step — why, the better 
 your story was and the bigger pay it fetched. 
 "But where'U I get this derelict talk?" I says, 
 not gettin' the right word first off, and knowin' 
 the other from Captain Gates, who'd followed 
 the sea. " Go 'round till you find it," she says, 
 as she went into the car, and tripped on the sill 
 so's she most fell over, "and then write it out." 
 "How'U I know how to spell it?" I calls out as 
 she settles into her seat and begins to fix her 
 things. "You don't have to know," says she 
 through the window; "don't make any differ- 
 ence how it's spelt; that's why it's so easy." 
 
8 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 Just as the train started she put her face down 
 to the open part of the window — it was only up 
 a little way and was wedged there as they always 
 be in cars — and called out, "And be sure you 
 put in lots of local color." "What color?" I 
 hollered out as loud as I could. ' I see her 
 mouth open, but I couldn't for the life of me 
 catch a word, and in a jifify she was out of sight. 
 Well, I wrote to her for more partic'lars, and 
 she sent me a whole sheetful of explainin's. 
 She said dialect was most everywheres, but dif- 
 ferent in different places. I'd find it nigh me or 
 further away. But when I'd got it I mustn't only 
 take it down lit'ral, but I must put in the color 
 she'd spoke of, which meant the sort of folks that 
 talked the dialect, how they looked and acted, 
 and all about the place and the scenery, and 
 partic'lar the weather. There must be dark, 
 lowerin' clouds, or an azure sky or wailin' winds 
 or lurid sunsets or something similar. That was 
 all called local color, she said, and it was a 
 most important — in fact, a necessary ingredjent. 
 "Like lard in pie crust," I says to myself, for 
 that word ingredjent sounded like receipt-book 
 talk, and the last part of her letter was about 
 my rhubarb pies again. 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 9 
 
 Well, 'course I had to begin now, first thing, 
 to hunt up folks that talked dialects, and it 
 wasn't any easy job I tell you. Mary'd said it 
 might be found right 'round you or further 
 away. 'Twas certain sure it couldn't be 'round 
 me, for I lived then, just as I do now, here in 
 the mountains, though it was in Francony those 
 days instead of here in Lisbon, and there wasn't 
 a thing of the kind in the whole place. I knew 
 every single soul for miles 'round, and they all 
 talked good, plain, sensible talk like everybody 
 else, nothin' queer or what you might call dia- 
 lectic. But I was set on bein' fair and correct, 
 and not leavin' any stone unturned, as the sayin' 
 is, without turnin' it up. So I went over in my 
 mind all the folks there and what languages 
 they used. I didn't seem to find anything sin- 
 g'lar, but thinks I, I'll go 'round amongst the 
 people a little and talk with 'em and take par- 
 tic'lar notice of what they say. It didn't come 
 to anythin'. Even the old aged folks that might 
 have fetched down from past generations some 
 strange lingo or other, they talked the right 
 kind of talk we all of us use. I didn't tell 'em 
 what I was at, but sort of drawed 'em out on 
 different subjects and watched sharp for any 
 
lo A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 dialects. But not a sign of 'em turned up. 
 Even Gran'sir Peckham, more'n eighty year old, 
 didn't show a mite of it. I talked about the 
 weather with him as he stood at the gate one 
 time; asked him if he thought 'twould be a nice 
 day, and so on. He said just what anybody 
 anywheres that had took notice of the clouds 
 would say, that it was goin' to be catchin' 
 weather like the day afore, when he got soppin' 
 wet over to the medder lot, and he cal'lated 
 'twould keep on thataway till the moon fulled. 
 '"T any rate," he says, "it's growthy weather 
 for grass." Nobody could have talked sensibler 
 nor more like other folks nor with scurser dia- 
 lect. And Aunt Drusilly Bowles, bom and 
 raised right there on the Butter Hill road, she 
 was just the same. A mite of a body she is, 
 you know, lookin' as if you could blow her over 
 with one breath, but tough and rugged. She 
 was carryin' two pails of water, one in each 
 hand, as I went by, and I called out to her, 
 "Ain't they heavy?" I says. "Not a mite — 
 that is, for me," says she. "I could heft twice 
 as much." She come out to the road, still a-car- 
 ryin' the pails, and went on talkin'. "I don't 
 see," says she, "but I'm jest as spry and up- 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST ii 
 
 and-doin' as I was twenty year back. The 
 Priests, our branch — mother's side, ye know — 
 they're a long-lived tribe and peart and chirky 
 to the last. Ma herself was dreadful poor, never 
 weighed ninety pound in all her born days, but 
 she was powerful strong, all bone and sinner to 
 the last. There wa'n't never a peakid or pin- 
 dlin' Mest I ever heerd tell on," she says, straight- 
 enin' up, sort o' proud like. And it was all 
 like that, plain, nat'ral language like anybody's, 
 not a sign of dialection, as you might call it. 
 So I traipsed 'round that town till my feet ached 
 lookin' for what I knowed aforehand wasn't 
 there. I wouldn't go anywheres else till I'd 
 tried every chance to home. 
 
 When I was sure there wasn't a speck of real 
 dialect in Francony nor for miles 'round there, 
 I took the cars for Haverhill, where my niece's 
 son, Eben Reynolds, lived. Ridin' in the stage 
 over to Bethlehem for the mornin' train, I 
 couldn't get this thing out o' my head. You're 
 somethin' of a writer yourself, ma'am, and 
 must know how it kind o' spiles things havin' 
 to think how they'd look in print. I know I 
 heerd Leonard Colby say once — he used to 
 write pieces for the paper, you know — that he 
 
12 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 couldn't even say good night to his girl when he 
 was keepin' company with Ellen Peabody with- 
 out thinkin' to himself how 'twould be called in 
 print "a yearnin' embrace" or somethin'; said 
 it took part of the int'rest out of it. So 'twas 
 with me that time. 'Twas a real nice mornin', 
 a spring feelin' in the air, the trees not exactly 
 budded out, but showin' they were goin' to be 
 pretty soon, a kind .of live purplish gray all over 
 'em, and the sky a pictur'. But I couldn't just 
 set still and let it all soak into me without act'- 
 ally thinkin' about it, as I used to, no more'n 
 these new folks that call theirselves natur'- 
 lovers can really love natur'. They're after 
 book names for what they see, examples of 
 amazin' smartness in birds or creatur's like 
 what Professbr Thingamy or Doctor Thisorthat 
 writ about. And I was huntin' for the dialect 
 way of tellin' what I see that day. I looked up 
 to the sky, such a pretty blue, and the little soft 
 white woolly clouds strimmered all over it, and 
 I wondered if there was any dialectic word 
 that answered to strimmer. Seems 's if there 
 couldn't be one that pictur'd out the real thing 
 so good. For them clouds was strimmered and 
 nothin' else. I thought as I see the apple trees 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 13 
 
 with their spranglin', crooked, knotty branches 
 showin' a'ready signs of the spring life, thinks, I 
 "They'll be pink with blowth afore we know it." 
 And then 'stead of just being comfortable and 
 pleased over that idee I went and begun guessin' 
 if there was any other word in any part of the 
 world that stood for "blowth." Certain sure 
 there couldn't be a word that described things 
 so plain. AVhy, you can't only see the posies as 
 you're sayin' it, but you can act'ally smell 'em. 
 "Oh, how glad I be," I says to myself, "that I 
 don't have to talk dialect or any other outland- 
 ish languages started, I daresay, in Babel times 
 when folks got so mixed up and confused." 
 'Course I'm always kind to foreigners and make 
 allowances for 'em. Look at it one way, it 
 ain't their fault their talkin' that -way. But I 
 feel to rejoice, as they say in prayer-meetin', 
 that I wasn't born or raised one. Sometimes 
 seems 's if, even if I ha;d been, I'd have broke 
 away when I growed up and sensed things. I 
 can't pictur' anybody with a drop of Spooner 
 blood in 'em talkin' such lingo as Dutch Peter 
 over to Lisbon or Mary Bodoe on Wallace Hill 
 keep jabberin' all the time. However and where- 
 withal, as Deacon Lamb used to say in meetin's. 
 
14 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 thankful as I might be that I talked good New 
 Hampshire, I was bound to find the other kind 
 afore May 28th, when my book was to begin. 
 
 But I hadn't any more luck Haverhill way 
 than 'round home. It made me feel real mean, 
 too, visitin' as I was and folks showin' me so 
 much attention, and me spyin' on 'em, as you 
 might say, and prickin' up my ears in hopes of 
 hearin' some queer dialecty talk to use in my 
 writin's. Served me right that I didn't hear a 
 speck. Eben's folks come from our way, and 
 o' course they talked good Francony-American, 
 and their neighbors done the same. When I 
 went over the river to Bradford I was in Ver- 
 mont, you know. I thought mebbe they'd 
 speak different over there, but they didn't. 
 They conversed jest our way, only more so, if 
 anything. For some of the old folks kep' up 
 words I had 'most forgot, but good, sensible, 
 straight-meanin' words, with nothin' outlandish 
 or dialectical about 'em. Grandma Quimby, 
 raised in Whitefield, but marryin' a Bradford 
 man and livin' there thirty year, she says when 
 I asked her how her little granddaughter Dorry 
 was, "Little?" say she. "Why, you'd ought to 
 see her; she's a great big gormin' girl now." 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 15 
 
 That "gormin"' did bring back old times and 
 pa. He always applied that term to me when 
 I was growin' up, and it's a scrumtious word. 
 I do lot on words that pictur' things out like 
 that. And her daughter, Aunt Meeny Tucker, 
 she puts in: "And Cyrus's gettin' a big boy 
 too. It's all his pa can do to manage him. 
 He's got the Dodge grit, and he's real master- 
 ful, runs all over the town without leave, the 
 kitin'est boy." Exactly what ma used to say 
 about Dan'l. Oh, I do so set by the good, plain, 
 meanin' talk! By this time I see I must go 
 further away if I expected to get hold of any- 
 thing to use in my writin's, and I decided to go 
 to Nashaway to Jane Webster's, and if I didn't 
 get it there to keep on as fur as Brown's Cor- 
 ners, 'cross the Massachusetts line. " If I don't 
 find it there," I says to myself, " I'll give up. I 
 can't go to Injy's coral strands, not even to find 
 ingredjents for my book-writin'." 
 
 'Twas the same story at Nashaway, no dia- 
 lects at all, not the least taste, though I visited 
 'round, in all classes, as they say. Then I went 
 to Massachusetts. But, dear land! Brown's 
 Corners wasn't a mite different from Francony 
 or Lisbon, Haverhill or Bradford. Common talk 
 
i6 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 full o' common sense, both of 'em common to 
 all New England, f'r aught I know. I didn't 
 know anybody at the Corners but Mis' Harris 
 Spooner, own cousin to Mr. Kidder's first wife, 
 and I put up with her. She'd always lived in 
 Massachusetts, born there, and I sort of hoped 
 I could pick up something sing'lar in her con- 
 versation worth puttin' into my story. But 
 'twas no good; seems even there so nigh to 
 Boston their languages is same as oum. She 
 didn't talk of anything scursely but about Vi- 
 letty — Mr. Kidder's first, you know, my prede- 
 cessor, 's they say — and how pious and sickly 
 she was. Told me all about her last days, how 
 white and meechin' she looked, and how dread- 
 ful poor and skinny, and yet how she hung on, 
 hung on till seemed 's if she never'd pass away. 
 And she dwelt on Mr. Kidder's sorrer and how he 
 kind o' clung to Viletty 's if he couldn't part with 
 her, and how mebbe that was the reason she hung 
 on, himg on so long. She said some folks think 
 if you hold on too tight to them you set by when 
 they're sick and ready to go, they can't break 
 loose, somethin' seems to draw 'em back and 
 pin 'em down. And she told how she says to 
 him frequent, "Reuben, Reuben," says she. 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 17 
 
 "let her go home, loose your hold and let her 
 depart." Well, seems he did. 'T any rate she 
 did depart, or else o' course I wouldn't have 
 been Mis' Reuben Kidder now. 'Twas real in- 
 terestin' and nigh about all news to me, for Mr. 
 Kidder wasn't no great of a talker. Anyway, 
 men folks never seem to talk about things as 
 well as women, do they? Leave out the little 
 trimmin's that set it off so and stick to main 
 facts, the last thing we care about. He'd never 
 once mentioned all the time we lived together 
 how Viletty had hung on, hung on, and it's bein' 
 thought likely 'twas because of his tight hold 
 on her. You'd think he'd a-known it would be 
 entertainin' to me, takin' Viletty's place as I 
 had. The whole narr'tive was spoke in as good 
 plain talk as any I could have put it in myself, 
 down to the very end, Viletty's dyin' words, the 
 layin' out, the wreaths and crowns and pillers 
 from the neighbors, and the funeral exercises. 
 She said she'd take me out to the buryin'-ground 
 afore I left, a dreadful sightly place on Dodd's 
 Hill, to see the grave. I'd have admired to go, 
 but it rained the whole endurin'^ time, and I 
 didn't get a chance. 
 
 Well, here 'twas the 24th of May, and no dia- 
 
i8 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 lections to put into that story that was to be 
 started on the 28th. I was dreadful upset and 
 put out. Seemed certain sure that I couldn't 
 do the kind of book that was most in the fashion 
 that time, and so must set to work at some- 
 thing different. As for the local color, if that 
 only meant sceneries and weather and actin's 
 and doin's, why, I could fix them all right, but, 
 as I understood Mary Dowd to say, that wasn't 
 no use without a lot o' this dialect, and that I 
 couldn't find high nor low. Up to that time 
 I hadn't told a single creatur' what I was at. 
 But that day, as I was goin' along in the train, 
 who should get in at Greenfield station but 
 Abby Matthews on her way home from visitin' 
 with Ephraim's folks. I was so glad to see 
 her, and so filled up with all I'd been through 
 and wanted to go through, that I spilled over 
 and emptied out my whole heart. I told her 
 every single thing, how I'd always been set on 
 bein' an authoress and what Mary Dowd said 
 and how I'd traipsed all over the airth lookin' 
 for dialects and couldn't find a speck, and me 
 only four days from the date I'd set for beginnin' 
 my great, prob'ly my greatest, work. She was 
 real interested and pleased too, said 'twould be 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 19 
 
 a great thing for Francony and for Grafton 
 County — in fact, for the whole State 0' New 
 Hampshire — to have an authoress of their own. 
 As for this dialect, she said she'd heerd of it 
 as bein' all the go nowadays in storybook writin', 
 but to the best of her rememberin' she hadn't 
 never seen a case of it herself. It was some kind 
 of queer-soundin' talk when you heerd it, and 
 queerer-lookin' when you read it, and the 
 spellin' was every which way, no reg'lar rule. 
 As for her, says she, she never conceited folks 
 did talk just that way in any deestrict on the 
 airth; she'd always held that the story- writers 
 made it up as they went along, and she'd advise 
 me to do so myself. As for "local color," she 
 never'd heerd of such a thing, and I'd better 
 not have anything to do with it. "Tell your 
 story plain and straight, and put everything 
 down in black and white and steer clear o' any 
 other colors, local or be-they-who-they-be," she 
 says. "But I can't make up a thing I don't 
 know anything about," says I. "If I only could 
 see a sample. of this dialectical talk or hear some- 
 body speak a mite of it, I'd see where I was 
 standin', but I can't make a start afore I know 
 more about it; that's the thing of it. I'm every 
 
20 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 bit as sot as you can be, Abby Matthews, on 
 beginnin' this great work. AH is, I must have 
 a mite of a hint or a help to start me, and then 
 I can go on like a house afire." She see the sense 
 of that, and just then the train slowed up comin' 
 into Bath, where she was goin' to get out, and 
 in a minute I was left by myself again. 
 
 "Well, Abby ain't been of much use in one 
 way," thinks I, "but she gave me sympathy, 
 and 'twas a sight of comfort to talk things over 
 with her. And, after all, I guess sympathy's 
 worth more'n dialect in the long run, and some- 
 times seems 's if 'twas nigh about as scurse." 
 I just gave up hope that night, yet 'twas only 
 next day that I found what I was lookin' for — 
 dialect and plenty of it. 
 
 I'm afraid you won't hardly understand, and . 
 mebbe '11 think it dreadful when I tell you 'twas 
 in answer to prayer. I've always been in the 
 habit of askin' the Lord for what I wanted, even 
 if I wasn't sure 'twas a right thing to want. I 
 left it to Him to decide that and to show me 
 if I'd made a mistake. He give the gift of 
 tongues one time, you know, and He promises to 
 put the very words into your mouth that you'd 
 ought to speak in tryin' times, so why'd this thing 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 21 
 
 be so dreadful different? Anyway, I tried it, 
 and I told Him the whole story that night. And 
 I says if there wasn't any harm in my bein' 
 an authoress — and lots of real Christians fol- 
 lowed that business, as He well knew — and if I 
 couldn't be a real fav'rite without puttin' in this 
 thing, would He p'int out to me where to find it 
 and how I'd ought to make use of it and, if 'twas 
 possible, to do good with it. I got up real com- 
 forted and went to bed easier in my mind than 
 I had for a long spell. I was 'round the house 
 next forenoon doin' the work, and I stepped 
 to the window to shake out my dust-cloth. I 
 see some one goin' along the road; a stranger 
 I knew 'twas right off. 'Twas a young lady^ 
 real nice-lookin', and I guessed she must be an 
 early summer boarder. I didn't want to be seen 
 starin' at her, and was Just goin' to step back out 
 o' sight, when she looked up and smiled in a real 
 pretty, friendly way. 'Course I smiled back, and 
 she come closer and says " Good morning." I slat 
 the dust-cloth down and come 'round to the front 
 door, and in five minutes we was talkin' away like 
 old cronies. Seems she was stayin' over to Mis' 
 Nichols's — I'd heerd they was expectin' a boarder 
 — only come night before, and she was lookin' 
 
22 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 'round the place. Well, I hadn't heerd her say 
 a dozen words 'fore I see she talked different 
 from the folks 'round there, different from any- 
 body I'd heerd anywheres. Now I can't show 
 you just how 'twas different. I never could 
 act out things and show how folks did 'em, 
 copyin' their talk and ways. I always broke 
 down and sp'iled the dialogues at school exhibi- 
 tion if they give me a part. But I can tell you 
 some of the things that made this talk so dread- 
 ful queer and give me, right at the very beginnin', 
 what they call in prayer-meetin' a tremblin' hope 
 that I was findin' what I'd looked for so long. 
 
 First place, everything she said sounded like 
 readin' out of a book. Now you know 'most 
 everybody has two kinds of talk, one for speakin' 
 and the other for writin' and readin'. Talk- 
 talk and book-talk, as you might put it. But 
 my! you couldn't see any difference here; any 
 of it might have been read off from a book or a 
 paper. And then such queer, long stretched- 
 out words, some of 'em span new to me and 
 some I'd seen in books or heerd in sermons or 
 lectur's. She had a way of stoppin' short 'twixt 
 her words that I couldn't make out or get used 
 to, like this: When she wanted to say she didn't 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 23 
 
 like winter 's well as summer she said she "did 
 not like it at," then a kind of stop before she put 
 in "all." First off I thought it was an accident 
 and she'd stopped to swaller or get her breath 
 or something. But she done it again and kep' 
 doin' it, and I see 'twas a habit — part of her 
 dialects. "At — all" says she every single time 
 'stead of "atall," as everybody else says. Then 
 the most musical thing — I almost laughed every 
 time she said it — when she asked me if I'd ever 
 been somewheres or done something partic'lar 
 she'd say "Did — you" this or that, with a stop 
 between the words long enough for a swaller, 
 or a stutter, or a gap, or a hiccup. "Did — you" 
 she'd always say, 'stead of "didjer," as other 
 folks say. And when she wanted to put in 
 "ever" she'd stop the same way 'twixt you and 
 ever. "Did-you-ever" she says, 'stead of the 
 right way, "Didjever," like other folks. She 
 was int'rested in all I said and real friendly, 
 wanted to keep me talkin', and hoped she wasn't 
 inconveniencin' me, and so on. And when I 
 said I wasn't partic'lar busy, only just potterin' 
 'round, she says, "Potterin'! Such a delightful 
 term!" she says; "it reminds me of Keeram- 
 mix" whoever he was — "and the plastic art. 
 
24 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 Potterin'!" she says over again, laughin', as if 
 'twas some uncommon, foreignish word or other. 
 Where did she come from? Why, that word's 
 used all over the airth, far's I know. I did hear 
 a woman one time from down Connecticut way 
 say putterin' 'stead of potterin', but I guess 
 that was only her way of pronouncin' it. When 
 I says of Joel Butts, settin' on his door-step 
 'cross the street, that he was "shif'less as a cow 
 blackbird," she claspt her hands and says, 
 "Delicious! and shows such a fa-mil-i-ar-i-ty 
 with nature and a certain knowledge of omi — 
 something." (I writ that down as quick as she 
 went away.) 'Course I didn't let her see I was 
 usin' her for a copy; she didn't suspicion it. 
 She ast lots of questions and listened sharp to 
 what I said. But I guess she see pretty quick 
 there wa'n't nothin' queer about my languages. 
 The commonest things, the talk used by all sen- 
 sible folks the world over, seemed to strike her 
 most and stir her all up. Times I thought she 
 wasn't exactly polite, what we'd call, for she'd 
 repeat over somethin' I'd said and laugh, but 
 as she always ended by praisin' it up I didn't 
 mind. And I was so tickled at findin' a case 
 of genuin' dialects. There was a chiny posy- 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 25 
 
 holder in my window with some dried grass in 
 it from last year, just a common one, had be- 
 longed to ma. She didn't seem to know what 
 'twas 'tall; asked if it was an "antic" or a "air- 
 loom"; and again she spoke of it as a "varze." 
 When I told her over again and louder, conceitin' 
 she might be a mite hard o' hearin', that 'twas 
 only a old crock'ry posy-holder, she hollered out, 
 "Posy-holder — how dear!" And I hadn't said 
 a word about the price. I didn't want to sell it, 
 anyway. "Posy," says she, "the quaint old 
 word of the poets, Old English," she says. But 
 I told her no, 'twas Chinee, I guessed, fetched 
 over by ma's brother. Uncle Elam, who fol- 
 lered the sea. 
 
 That started her off again, and she says it 
 after me: "Follered the sea! How expressive 
 and vivid, suggestin' the call of the ocean to its 
 lovers," and such queer crazy-soundin' talk. I 
 had to write it down quick, makin' an excuse 
 to go into the other room. Another thing queer 
 was her 'pologizin' the whole 'durin' time for 
 goodness knows what and beggin' me to forgive 
 her for somethin' or 'nother. If she didn't sense 
 what I said and wanted to hear it over again, 
 she'd ask me to excuse her dumbness by sayin' 
 
26 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 "Beg pardon." Time and again she says that 
 when she hadn't done a thing, and when I an- 
 swered polite every time, "Don't mention it," 
 I see she was still expectin' somethin' and waitin' 
 for me to say over again what I'd said afore. 
 Then I see 'twas dialect for "What say?" and 
 I put it down on my list. She had lots of those 
 dialectics. When she was surprised at anything 
 I'd tell her, she'd say, kind o' drawlin' like, 
 "Fancy!" the fan part sort o' spread out, and 
 I found that meant "Do tell" or "You don't 
 say." And over 'n' over when I fetched in 
 some common sayin', a weather sign about thun- 
 der in the mornin', farmers take warnin', or 
 how turnin' back some o' your clothes you'd put 
 on wrong side afore was bad luck, or any such 
 well-known things, she'd say a real queer word. 
 "Foclore," most 's if she was swearin', as 
 Uncle Ben Knapp used to say "C'rinthiansl" 
 when he got excited. 
 
 One time I fetched her out a glass of milk and 
 some hot gingerbread I'd just baked, and I fixed 
 her in the rocker under the big ellum. She was 
 real tickled, and give me to understand that it 
 made her think of somebody named Al Fresscoe. 
 I s'pose he most gen'rally et outdoors. She 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 27 
 
 always had some queer remark to make about 
 everything. When Si Little's ox team was 
 standin' out in the road one day she went out 
 and looked right into the creatur's' faces, and 
 she says over some lingo about Juno and oxides; 
 or mebbe 'twas ox-hides. And when I was tell- 
 in' her about Elbert Hill and how climbin' he 
 was, how he'd come up from a poor boy, and 
 now took in partner with Knight Brothers and 
 aimin' to be a selectman some day, she was real 
 struck and says, "Excelsior!" I think 'twas 
 that; 'twas some kind o' stuffin' material, any- 
 way. Even the commonest things like sayin' 
 Jabez Goss was the well-to-doist man in Little- 
 ton, which everybody knows he is, she'd appear 
 so struck or tickled over. I'd wonder every 
 minute what fur-off ign'rant country she come 
 from. Once I was tellin' her about Jesse Baker 
 to Sugar Hill and how he could make verses on 
 anything in the heavens or airth or the waters 
 under the airth, f 'r aught I know. I said nobody 
 ever learnt him how to do it, he just took to 
 it soon's he could speak; 'twas natur', I guessed. 
 And she says some of her queer outlandish jab- 
 ber about poets bein' nasty and not fit. She 
 didn't say for what. Wonder if she'd say that 
 
28 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 about Watts and the rest o' the hymn-makers. 
 'Course this I'm tellin' you didn't all take place 
 in that first meetin'. It wanted four days then 
 to the 28th, the time I was to become an author- 
 ess, and I contrived to see Miss Mandeville (I'd 
 found out her name) lots. I'd run out in the 
 front yard whenever I see her comin' by, and I'd 
 happen into the store if she went in. She was 
 more'n willin' to talk with me, and I got together 
 a whole mess of dialections and writ 'em down 
 careful, though I didn't worry about the spellin', 
 as I'd heerd that wasn't no great matter. She 
 come into my house two or three times and was 
 real int'rested in my things and talked dialect 
 about 'em like a streak all the time. She looked 
 at my old clock on the mantel-shelf that was 
 grandma's and asked about it. It had stopped, 
 as it had a way of doin' frequent, and I told her 
 it didn't keep reg'Iar time like my new one in 
 the kitchen, but I said I liked it better than that 
 one because it had been in our family so long 
 and I'd seen it since I was a speck of a young one, 
 and she says, "That goes without sayin'," says 
 she. I hadn't an idee what she meant, for it 
 don't go at all most times whether you say any- 
 thing or not. 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 29 
 
 She was lookin' over my photograph album 
 and she come to a likeness of Timothy Banks 
 that used to keep store to Whitefield and moved 
 down East. She turned it over to look on the 
 back for his name, I s'pose, and she says, " Oh, 
 Parree!" 'Twas one of her by-words, I guess, 
 for there wa'n't any name there, only the man 
 that took the pictur' down in Paris, Maine, where 
 the Bankses live. Oh, she had some outlandish 
 word for everything under the sun. What do 
 you think she called goin' anywheres to stay 
 over Sabbath day? You'd never guess. Wee 
 Kend! 'Pears to be dialect for visitin' from 
 Saturday to Monday — bakin'-day to wash-day, 
 you know. But I can't tell you half; 'twould 
 take a month o' Sundays. 
 
 She had out-o'-the-wayest words for every- 
 thing. Speakin' o' Lyman Waters and how he'd 
 fell away from his religion and now didn't even 
 believe there was any God at all, what do you 
 think she called him? An agg nostick! That 
 was her dialection for a plain, common infidel 
 that says in his heart there is no God. The 
 Bible just calls him a fool, you know. And 
 them different ways folks get into by spells, 
 catchin' ways, you know, that runs through a 
 
30 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 deestrict, she spoke of as fads. Asked me one 
 time if I'd took up this new fad of mas-ti- 
 catin' my food a long time as recommended by 
 Whitcher, or Belcher, or some one or other. 
 But I told her no, I just chewed my victuals 
 before swallowin', 's I always had. 
 
 I was so tickled by findin' all these dialects 
 for my story that I 'most forgot I hadn't got a 
 mite of local color to spread over 'em. How 
 could I get it, not knowin' anything of the kind 
 of local'ty she come from, her folks, and her 
 bringin' up? Mebbe, thinks I, that will come 
 out after a spell, and I can put it on last thing, 
 like the third coat o' paint 'Lias Davis is put- 
 tin' on his house 'cross the road there. Sing'lar, 
 I says to myself, to speak o' writin' 's if 'twas 
 dififerent colors. Though, come to think of it, 
 I've heard of blue laws and blue books and yel- 
 low newspapers, red letters and black lists. But 
 I never knew anything till lately of this local 
 colorin' matter to stories, and I haven't got an 
 idee how to put it on. Just plain and thick all 
 over, or strimmered about and different in spots. 
 'Course I could describe Miss Mandeville and 
 all her colors — reddish hair, and indiger blue 
 eyes, and pale-complected, and all. I could put 
 
\ A LOCAL COLORIST 31 
 
 Vn the weather, too; there's more in Francony 
 than most deestricts, and it's all colors, too, prob- 
 ably local 's well as the rest, though I hadn't 
 got yet a real clear idee what that was. But 
 that way-off, sing'lar land she come from, where 
 her folks lived, and everybody talked dialect 
 talkj why, I hadn't no more idee how to paint it 
 out than — than anything. 
 
 Well, come May 28th, I waked up 'fore sun- 
 rise full o' my story. I got breakfast out o' the 
 way and washed up the dishes bright and early 
 and done the housework so's to be all ready to 
 set down to my writin'. My list o' dialections, 
 all took from this queer boarder's talk, was 
 real lengthy now, plenty to begin with, anyway. 
 As for the colorin', I could put in some weather 
 and scenery — Mary Dowd said that was part 
 of it — and touch it up bime-by with another 
 shade or so as I got some more information. 
 I'm sot on havin' lots of that color 'tany rate, 
 thinks I, so if it runs or fades there'll be enough 
 left to show. I'd tried my pen and found it 
 went all right, and took a clean sheet o' paper 
 to begin, when all of a sudden I rec'lected that 
 I hadn't said my prayers that mornin'. I was 
 dreadful ashamed. But it's bein' the great an- 
 
32 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 niversary I'd looked ahead to so long and me so 
 excited and nerved up and all, I'd clean forgot 
 my duty and my religion. Land's sake, how 
 small I felt! Down went my pen and I shoved 
 back my chair and went up-chamber 's quick as 
 I could go. 
 
 It's well I done it. And yet it fetched me the 
 biggest disapp'intment of my whole life long and 
 as good as changed all my futur', my line o' busi- 
 ness, my hopes, my everything. I was kneelin' 
 by my bed, dreadful ashamed and just beginnin' 
 to tell the Lord about it, when — ^before you could 
 say Jack Robinson — a queer feelin' come all over 
 me, and I was seein' things in a terrible dif- 
 ferent light. What had I been doin' these last 
 few days? What was I lookin' ahead to doin' 
 the days to come ? I most heerd them questions 
 asked out loud by some one, and I hid my face in 
 the patchwork quilt and wished it could cover me 
 up soul and body I was that ashamed. A poor 
 young creatur', a stranger within our gates, had 
 come to my door, come friendly and well-mean- 
 in'. And how had I acted to her ? I had drawed 
 her out, spied on her, took notice of her mistakes, 
 set down on paper her dialections, rejoicin' over 
 her stumblin' speech that I might set it out in 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 33 
 
 ^rint for the world to laugh oyer. And all that 
 lAAbigail Jane Kidder, might be a great author- 
 ess. Do you wonder I was so ashamed I could 
 a-ciawled under that bed if 'twould a-hid me 
 froiii every human bein'. That poor young crea- 
 tur'!\I thinks. Was it her fault she used that 
 formo' speech, that "lispin', stammerin' tongue," 
 as the hymn says? Didn't most likely her 
 own folks use it, or similar, in that fur-off land 
 from whence she come ? Mightn't I, raised 's I'd 
 been in a civilized c'mmunity, amongst plain- 
 speakin' folks, have got into that kind o' dialec- 
 tics if my relations and neighbors had all talked 
 it in my comp'ny ? Likely enough, for language 
 is dreadful catchin'. 
 
 Well, never mind about that next hour. That's 
 between me and some One else. But when I 
 got up off my knees, brushed off my skirt, and 
 smoothed out the quilt, I knew as well as I know 
 it this very minute that I wasn't ever goin' to be 
 a dialectical story-writer. I'd left off that habit 
 afore 'twas too strong to break. 
 
 I won't deny I was disappointed. I own 'twas 
 kind o' hard, one way, to think that the 28th of 
 May, looked ahead to so long as the day of my 
 beginnin' to be a great authoress, was, after all, 
 
34 A LOCAL COLORIST 
 
 the day of my leavin' off bein' one. But I knew 
 my duty and I meant to do it. You might think 
 I could a-took up some other kind of writin' that 
 wouldn't ask me to draw out sing'lar folks and 
 make fun of 'em. But somehow the sad tumin' 
 out of this experiment kind o' set me agin' liter- 
 ary things, and I couldn't scursely look at that 
 new pen and the clean white foolscap without 
 feelin' qualmy. So I ain't an authoress, after 
 all, and I guess I never will be now. 
 
 It come out after Miss Mandeville went away 
 — I forgot to say she'd gone that very day afore 
 I see her again, called home sudden — it come 
 out she was from Boston way, not so dreadful 
 fur off, after all, and was some kind of a writin' 
 person. Some folks had it she was lookin' up 
 dialectics herself to make pieces out of, but that 
 couldn't be, I guess, or she wouldn't a-come here. 
 Though mebbe she'd been misinformed, and so, 
 after she met me and the other folks and heerd 
 us talk, she found out she'd come to the wrong 
 local'ty and went off. But I think of her fre- 
 quent, and sometimes I find myself hopin' that 
 though she wa'n't here long she may a-profited 
 a mite by what she heerd, and left off some of 
 her own talk and took on some o' ourn. As 
 
A LOCAL COLORIST 35 
 
 I said afore, language is real catchin', and we 
 never know what little word o' ourn, dropped 
 in season, as they say, may spring up and bear 
 fruit — yea, a hundredfold. And mebbe even 
 dialect, if it ain't been too long standin', may be 
 broke up and helped, or mebbe clean cured, take 
 it in time and afore you're too old and sot in your 
 ways. 
 
A NATURE CURE 
 
A NATURE CURE 
 
 VT'OU see I was ailin' for 'most the first time 
 -'- in my life. I suppose I'd had measles and 
 whooping cough and such things when I was a 
 young one; I disremember. But I know I was 
 never sick enough after I grew up to have a 
 doctor or lay abed in the daytime. Till the time 
 I'm telling of, I mean. I'd had a kind of tryin' 
 time that there ain't any use of talkin' about. 
 Everybody has their own troubles and they 
 scursely ever come single, no more than twins 
 do. And seems as if there was a whole flock 
 of 'em come down on me that time and sort o' 
 broke me all to pieces. I lost my appetite, turned 
 again' my victuals, felt trembly and good-for- 
 nothing mornings and didn't sleep good nights. 
 I lost my flesh, got dreadful poor and white look- 
 in' and, in fact, wasn't no more like the old Nancy 
 Babbitt of a year or two back than — anything. 
 I was living right here in Wethersfield then in 
 this same old house built by Gramper Robbins's 
 brother Timothy and in the family ever sence. 
 39 
 
40 A NATURE CURE 
 
 My neighbors was real kind and friendly and got 
 all worked up over me and my looks. 'Course 
 they all had advice to give and medicines to talk 
 about. And to please them and not hurt their 
 feelin's I took everything, advice, medicines and 
 all. My, the stuff I swallered that summer! All 
 that part o' the town smelt o' boneset and hard- 
 hack, princy-pine, valerium, Injun turnip, dande- 
 lions, thurrerwort and saffron and such, steepin', 
 boilin', settlin', drawin', smokin', as the good 
 folks 'round there worked over their cook-stoves 
 till they were all het up, making nasty doses to 
 cure and stren'then and brace up their old neigh- 
 bor. But nothin' done any good, I kep' on get- 
 tin' poorer and chalkier and lazier and good-for- 
 nothin'er, with no interest in anything or any- 
 body, not even myself. This was five year ago, 
 before I'd ever seen you, you know; you wouldn't 
 dream how different I looked from now, those 
 times. I had in old Doctor Sawyer, who gave 
 me what he called tonics, iron enough to start a 
 foundry, bitter things for an appetite and stren'th- 
 eners that made my ears ring and get deef, but 
 all to no good. And Mis' Talcott fetched in 
 Doctor Churchill from Har'ford. He was a 
 young man and new school and done all kind o' 
 
A NATURE CURE 41 
 
 things to me, new fangled doctorin' things, you 
 know, like puttin' ear-trumpets in his ears and 
 listenin' to my innards and knockin' on me all 
 over and askin' me forty 'leven questions that 
 didn't seem to have anything to do with my health 
 or my lack of it. He talked about the Babbitt 
 well o' water back o' the house, and the cistern, 
 and Kettle Pond, 'most half a mile away. He 
 even changed the subject to moskeeters and 
 wanted to know whether I'd been much bit up 
 that season, asked me if I had good teeth and 
 could chew my victuals hard, dwelt on open win- 
 ders and fresh air and talked germs and floatin' 
 creatur's till I was all crawly. But 'twasn't any 
 use, I done every single thing he told me to, left 
 off everything I liked to do, biled my drinkin' 
 water till it didn't have no taste, left my winder 
 down at the top 'most an inch and had cold in 
 my head for a week after, chewed my victuals 
 till my gums was all salivated and sore, sprinkled 
 stuff — I forget its name, means Rough-on-germs 
 or something sim'lar — all 'round the house so it 
 smelt like a medicine store and kep' me sneezin', 
 and swallered little cases, made o' glue and stuffed 
 full o' doctor stuff, afore and after my meals so I 
 didn't enjoy expectin' my victuals nor recollectin' 
 
42 A NATURE CURE 
 
 'em afterwards. No good from all of it, not a 
 speck. But I paid the bills cheerfully and felt 
 I'd done my duty in my poor way. I kep' on 
 sickly and doleful, wouldn't go into comp'ny 
 nor take part in any entertainments except meet- 
 in's Sundays and Thursday nights and o' course 
 funerals. But they was scurse that year, only 
 two, I believe, the whole fall, and they wasn't 
 very interestin' ones, just the common kind o' 
 cases we knew all about and expected, no sudden 
 occasions, like accidents or fits. So there didn't 
 seem to be anything to take me out o' myself and 
 divert my mind. Even the church was luke- 
 warmer than usual, not a sign of a revival at 
 hand, nor any particular awakenin'. And the 
 State's Prison down the road was dreadful quiet 
 that year, not a prisoner breakin' out nor strikin' 
 a keeper nor anything; 'twas real discouragin'. 
 But one day in November, soon after Thanks- 
 givin', there come a visitor to Mis' Julius Web- 
 ster's. She was a school teacher, or she had been 
 — I believe she'd left off — and she was dreadful 
 nice. Harriet Webster brought her over to call, 
 thought 'twould do me good, I s'pose. And it 
 did, but not just in the way she looked for. Har- 
 riet told her, I guess, about my case and if she 
 
A NATURE CURE 43 
 
 hadn't I should have let on myself. For I took 
 to her right off and felt sort o' drawed, most's if 
 I knew she could help me. They didn't stay very 
 long that first time, but when they was leavin' 
 Miss Hubbard — that was her name — asked me 
 if she couldn't call over next day and have a good 
 talk and I says, " Do so; I'd admire to have you." 
 Well, she come. She took off her things and 
 visited with me most two hours. And when she 
 went away I found I'd begun to feel a speck o' 
 hope about myself. For she'd told me o' some- 
 thing she was sure, certain sure, would cure me, 
 make me my old self, only better and brighter'n 
 ever. 'Twas a queer thing and didn't mean any- 
 thing at all to me first-off. I never shall forget 
 how puzzled and fuzzled-up I was when Miss 
 Hubbard put her hand on my arm, lookin' into 
 my face with her big black eyes and says so ear- 
 nest, "Miss Babbitt," says she, "what you want 
 is — " then the queerest word, I neVer'd heard 
 anything like it even in doctor talk, the worst 
 gabble on the airth, you know. I've learnt all 
 about it sence, but that time I didn't know no 
 more than the man in the moon what 'twas. It 
 sounded this way as I spell it to you, "Nacher- 
 studdi." 'Course I s'posed it was some kind o' 
 
44 A NATURE CURE 
 
 physic and the name wasn't any queerer or 
 harder to say than opedildoc or 'lixer proprietatis, 
 well-known, common medicines in every house. 
 "My!" I says. I don't rec'lect saying anything 
 more first-off, and she went on. "Yes, Miss 
 Babbitt," says she, real earnest, "that is what 
 you need to uplift soul as well as body. Let the 
 fresh air of heaven," says she, "enter into you 
 and cleanse and heal," she went on, and a lot 
 about considerin' the lilies and goin' to the ants 
 and words like that that didn't seem to me to 
 have a thing to do with doses o' medicine and 
 such. But when I asked about this stuff, if it 
 was allopath, if it was a patent medicine, if it 
 come in bottles or boxes, whether they had it 
 over to the store, and how expensive it was, she 
 explained it all out. It was the studyin' of natur', 
 she said, in the new and beautiful way; readin' 
 and learnin' what wise folks writ about birds and 
 animals and plants and bugs and things, goin' 
 round among them and observin' — how she did 
 dwell on that word observin', seemed to have a 
 different meanin' to her from just lookin' at 
 things or watchin' 'em — "observin'" says she, 
 "the workin's o' natur' and the creative hand." 
 I ain't a goin' to tell you all she said. First 
 
A NATURE CURE 45 
 
 place I disremember it and then 'twould take too 
 long and I want to give you an idee of all that 
 come from it afterwards. When I told her I'd 
 always liked natur', hearin' the birds sing and 
 pickin' posies and lookin' at the squirrels and 
 woodchucks and such creatures she said oh that 
 wasn't no good, it was "observin' intelligently" 
 that done the thing. Seemed there was books 
 about it. How to reco'nize plants and bushes 
 and such when you come on 'em and how to tell 
 birds from fowls and tame creatures from wild 
 ones and all. They're something like the Who's- 
 Who books and they call 'em the How-Toose. 
 Miss Hubbard give me the names of two or three, 
 said they was so plenty just now the market was 
 overstocked and the price real low and so I found 
 it. Then the thing was how I could observe and 
 study livin' things in the dead o' winter in a cold 
 deestrict like Har'ford County. And she says I 
 must go down South, for 'twas dreadful impor- 
 tant, my beginnin' right away. 
 
 That come out just right, for in the nick o' 
 time Loviny Beach from Bristol come over to see 
 me. She told me she was goin' to Floridy next 
 week for a throat she'd catched Thanksgivin' 
 time and couldn't throw ofiF and I'd better come 
 
46 A NATURE CURE 
 
 too. She said she was goin' to a place called 
 Ormond, settled by Connecticut folks with lots 
 o' Bristolers there, and goin' to stay with an old 
 neighbor o' hern and she knew certain sure they 
 could take me in and cheap too, and glad to do it. 
 Well, the end of it was I went. Such a jour- 
 ney! Racketted and shook up in the cars two 
 or three days and nights, sleepin' in a box more 
 like a cofl&n than a bedstead under horse blankets 
 that wouldn't show dirt, eatin' the mite o' victuals 
 you didn't spill, the cars shook so, and falling all 
 over things when you tried to walk about; hard 
 seats with straight up and down backs, dust and 
 smoke and all kinds o' dirt all over you. My! 
 I longed for home and the old buggy with Dolly 
 to draw it. But I must own Ormond was a 
 dreadful pretty place when you got there. It 
 made me think o' the good old hymn 
 
 " Lo, on a narrer neck o' land 
 'Twixt two onbounded seas I stand." 
 
 Only one o' the seas is a river, the Halifax they 
 call it, I don't know why. The village is right 
 along the bank o' that. But you cross a bridge 
 and go along a piece and you come to the ocean. 
 My ! what a sight. A long beach with more sand 
 
A NATURE CURE 47 
 
 than I ever see afore in all my born days, enough 
 and to spare to scour every inch o' floorin' in 
 Wethersfield or all Har'ford County. And then 
 the soapsudsiest waves rollin' up on it out o' the 
 indiger blue waters. Land ! 'twas terrible sightly. 
 I could study that kind of natur' all day. But 
 that wasn't the sort to cure folks. 'Twas live 
 stock that done that. 
 
 Loviny took me 'round — she'd been there afore 
 — and showed me how the land lay. She knew 
 some o' the help over to the hotel, the big one, 
 nigh the river, and she took me there. It's a 
 splendid tavern and kep' real nice. There was 
 two hotel keepers that time, Mr. Rice and Mr. 
 Sanderson. Mr. Rice he was real tall and Mr. 
 Sanderson he wasn't. Mr. Rice was from Ken- 
 tucky way and Mr. Sanderson he wasn't; Mr. 
 Rice had a wife and Mr. Sanderson he hadn't. 
 Mis' Rice was dreadful nice; everybody liked 
 her, and if there'd been a Mis' Sanderson why 
 she'd a been Just as nice, I'm certain sure. Both 
 these tavern keepers was pleasant spoken and 
 real gentlemen every inch of 'em. 
 
 And the kitchen folks was awful nice, bein' 
 most all from New England. There was a lady 
 there that saw to things 'round the house; Miss 
 
48 A NATURE CURE 
 
 Stark was her name and she come from New 
 Hampshire. I don't hardly know what she was 
 to the hotel, not exactly a housekeeper thougli 
 she did housekeep fine. But she done every- 
 thing else too, partic'Iar fixin' posies and deco- 
 ratin' things. I always hold that for that line o' 
 business Miss Stark couldn't be beat. 
 
 Well, I'd got to begin right off on the naturin'. 
 I most wished I hadn't. For the scenery was so 
 interestin' and different from anything I'd ever 
 seen that I just longed to spend my time enjoyin' 
 it. But 'course I couldn't having come fur to 
 observe it — a very different thing, you know. 
 
 I wish you yourself hadn't ever been in Floridy 
 so't I could tell you all about it. So different, 
 so terrible different from anything I'd ever seen 
 except in geography books. It looked so much 
 like the pictur's o' uninhabited islands, where 
 only man is vile, that 'twas hard for me to think 
 it wasn't filled with heathen that bowed down to 
 idols 'stead o' being occ'pied by real Christian 
 folks that went to meetin'. Bananas and oranges 
 and lemons and such grocery things growin' on 
 the trees as calm as if 'twasn't anything uncom- 
 mon and they was greenin's or pippins or Bart- 
 lett pears. And the underbrush, why 'twas just 
 
A NATURE CURE 49 
 
 palm-leaf fans stickin' up everywheres, only green 
 'stead o' buff and, o' course, none of 'em bound 
 with ribbon or galoon, like the meetin' ones at 
 home. House plants and tame posies growin' 
 wild like dandelions and clovers; phlox and myr- 
 tle and widders-tears and flowerdeluces like the 
 very ones in Wethersfield gardins just comin' up 
 along the roads 's if they was weeds. How I did 
 want to spend a spell pickin' some of 'em and 
 makin' bo'quets. But the How-To books said 
 you must pull 'em all to pieces and look at their 
 innards and such, and then call 'em names, aw- 
 ful ones, like Traddy Scancher for that pretty 
 blue widders-tears like mine in the front yard at 
 home. 
 
 Well, I soon see I'd come to the right spot for 
 natur' study, for 'twas all the go. You met the 
 studiers everywheres, all kinds of 'em. Some of 
 'em went alone by theirselves, some in flocks. 
 You'd meet a hull litter of 'em some days, carry- 
 in' little spyglasses and How-To books, peekin' 
 into bushes and squintin' up into trees or tiptoin' 
 real still in amongst the palm-leaf fans to s'prise 
 some kind of a bird. I shouldn't think any sort 
 of a fowl would 'a' been s'prised at their 'pearance 
 that winter, natur' studiers was that common 
 
50 A NATURE CURE 
 
 everywheres. They was a real nice behaved set 
 o' folks, I must say, and when they see me taggin' 
 on behind 'em and tryin' to see what they was 
 doin' they'd speak to me real kind and after a 
 spell they gen'rally asked me to jine 'em, and I 
 did, frequent. But deary me, after half an hour 
 o' that kind of natur' studyin' I was all tuckered 
 out. For 'twa'n't just lookin' at the birds and 
 hearin' 'em sing, but they pried into all their 
 little ways and doin's, their housekeepin's, their 
 bathin' and eatin' and trainin' their families. 
 Somehow it didn't seem real polite to do that, 
 for birds has their rights. There's birds' rights 
 as well as women's rights, I hold, and if they 
 want to get behind a bush to wash theirselves or 
 to eat a worm, why seems kind o' rubberin' to 
 steal in an' watch 'em unbeknownst. Then 
 they'd get so worked up over little things I couldn't 
 see much int'rest in. They didn't overlook noth- 
 in', and they writ it all down in little account 
 books they had along. Mebbe 'twas wicked, but 
 I couldn't help 'plyin' Scriptur' words to them 
 bird women, and thinkin' to myself how not a 
 sparrer could fall to the ground without their 
 takin' notice. And their ears! Good land, what 
 they couldn't hear! The littlest, stillest dicky- 
 
A NATURE CURE 51 
 
 bird couldn't disguise his voice so't they didn't 
 reco'nise it right off, and call out his name and set 
 it down in the account books. They give the 
 poor little creatur's nicknames too from some 
 queer looks born with 'em and not their fault a 
 mite, red-eyed this or white-eyed that, and red- 
 headed t'other. But on the whole, 's I said a 
 spell back, they was pleasant-spoken, kind folks 
 and wouldn't hurt a baby. They was most of 
 'em Orderbons they said and explained to me 
 'twas a furren word, meanin' something like 
 Folks-That- Won't- Wear-Feathers, Injun I guess, 
 like Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horse, you know. I 
 liked that part. I never could stomach women's 
 deckin' theirselves out in the pretty coverin's 
 God dressed the birds in. 
 
 But 'twa'n't all bird studyin' I done that win- 
 ter. There was a lot o' folks observin' posies 
 and weeds and growin' things. I'd always set 
 everything by my gardin and thought I liked 
 wild plants and tame ones too. But seems you 
 can't observe 'em without puUin' 'em to pieces, 
 though you can look at 'em without that. I went 
 'round with some o' the posyites and 'twas al- 
 most ridic'lous to see and to hear 'em. Seems 
 weeds are just as good and a mite more so than 
 
52 A NATURE CURE 
 
 the scrumtiousest flowers to geniwine observers. 
 They'd stop at some weedy thing, as common- 
 lookin' as pusley or jimson-weed, and they'd 
 pick some o' the blowth and peek into it through 
 Httle round glasses they all carried. Then they'd 
 talk about it, the craziest talk, loonier far's I 
 know than the bird folks, full o' words like pettles 
 and croUers and stamuns and pistols and cal- 
 luckses and pappooses. They'd pull off leaves 
 and squint at 'em and talk about their nerves 
 and their veins and their teeth 's if they was 
 creatur's. And oh, the names they called 'em 
 all! Some o' the plants I'd knowed all my life 
 in Connecticut and it seemed real homey to see 
 'em down there. But I couldn't relish it as I 
 wanted to, it riled me up so to hear 'em nick- 
 named that way. Think o' callin' an elder bush, 
 just like the one back o' the house in Wethers- 
 field that I get the berries from for elderb'ry-tea, 
 Sam Bucuss. Well, they done it. And golden- 
 rod that comes up so bright and yeller in the fall 
 all 'round me at home they spoke on it as the 
 Argo, the solid Argo. Nothin' solid about it 
 anyway; it's real soft and feath'ry. Some o' the 
 plants they dug up to see what was down below. 
 I could 'a' told 'em that without observin'; 'twas 
 
A NATURE CURE 53 
 
 roots. I knew that afore I learnt my letters. 
 But they 'peared s'prised to find it out every 
 time. Most of 'em carried along tin boxes, long, 
 narrer ones, and they'd put the plants in 'em to 
 take home for more observin', I s'pose. And 
 the commonest plants they'd give the queerest 
 names to. Huckleberry bushes they called some- 
 thing like Vaccination; I didn't 'zactly get it, 
 and never liked to ask too many questions. And 
 even the oak trees they called Quirks and the 
 cattails 'long the water Typhoids, 's if they was 
 fevers. 
 
 And with all this observin' and peekin' and 
 pryin' into the posies they was real ign'rant o' 
 what the 'erbs was good for and how you'd 
 oughter use 'em. I'd put in a remark occasional 
 as to whether this or t'other plant that looked 
 a mite like ones at home was Just as good for 
 fits or quinsy sore throat or water-brash as the 
 Wethersfield one and they'd sort o' look at each 
 other and at me and own up they didn't know. 
 Or I'd inquire if 'twas the roots or the milk or 
 the leaves o' the Floridy dandelion that was best 
 for a bracin' medicine and if you steeped it and 
 took it hot or swallered it cold. Or I'd just say 
 real modest and meek, as a beginner 'd oughter. 
 
54 A NATURE CURE 
 
 that that 'erb there looked 's if it might be good 
 to draw a bile to a head, put on warm and wet 
 up a mite. But they didn't seem to take no int'r- 
 est in that kind o' thing. And when I'd catch 
 sight of a homey posy like some I had in the 
 yard at home and p'int it out, Bouncin' Bet 
 f 'r instance or Red Sage, they'd put on a kind 
 o' scornful look and say, real contemptible, 
 "escaped from cultivation/' S'pose they had; 
 some folks act by spells as if they'd done it too. 
 It wasn't just the birders and planters that 
 studied natur'. There was creatur' studiers 
 lookin' for animals. They went creepin' and 
 crawlin' through the brush to find squirrels and 
 rabbits and wild mice. And even snakes! 
 One man had, a book about 'em with pictur's 
 that made your blood stand on end; big, crawly, 
 stripid, fat snakes painted to life, the snakiest 
 kind o' snakes. And he went 'round observin' 
 'em or tryin' to, but I must say they're rather 
 scurce to Ormond, and I, for one, didn't mind 
 if they was. And these animal and creatur' 
 studiers they did observe the queerest things that 
 I wasn't smart enough to see, I must say. They 
 knowed just what the squirrel, or mouse, or 
 what-all, was thinkin' and feelin'; could tell 
 
A NATURE CURE SS 
 
 from his looks and behavin' what he was plan- 
 nin' to do or what he'd done the day before, what 
 d'nomination his church was or how he voted at 
 'lection, f'r aught I know. They'd see a squir- 
 rel runnin' along and jumpin' from one scrub 
 oak to another in one o' the trails — 's they call 
 wood-roads down there — and they'd say," There, 
 he rec'lects that this is the time the band stops 
 playin' to the big hotel and the lodgers come out 
 to walk, and he's goin' to get out o' the way." 
 Or they'd see a medder-mouse goin' way 'round 
 a bunch o' bushes 'stead o' through 'em and 
 they'd tell how that creatur' had a relation way 
 back, great-uncle or aunt or something, that had 
 been hurt someway goin' through them same 
 bushes and so all the medder-mice o' futur' gen- 
 erations always went 'round 'em. And things 
 like that. Therfe was lots o' stories sim'Iar in 
 my How-To books and "Creatur's I've met in 
 S'ciety" and other volumes like that. 
 
 But about the singlarest natur' folks was the 
 bug people. Lawsey! To see them goin' out on 
 one of their observin' trips — or observatories you 
 might call 'em — was a sight for sore eyes. Long 
 sticks with bags at the end made out o' moskeeter 
 nettin', bottles and boxes and bags and I d'know 
 
S6 A NATURE CURE 
 
 what-all hangin' to their belts. And they'd do 
 the queerest things, runnin' all down the road, 
 growed men and women, some of 'em real old 
 too, after a little moth-miller, wavin' the muslin 
 bags in the air like "an army with banners," as 
 Scriptur' says. They'd squat in the mud and 
 dig in it for things, they'd scrape bark off o' the 
 trees and turn boards and stones over to see 
 what was under 'em. They'd carry live, crawlin', 
 hairy caterpillars 'round with 'em and raise 'em 
 in their rooms, givin' 'em leaves and all kinds 
 o' gardin sass for victuals. Oh, I never did! 
 Goin' along the Daytony road one time, along 
 the river, I come on one o' 'em, an old woman. 
 She was stoopin' down to peek at a kind o' weed, 
 a real common-lookin' thing with no blowth on 
 it. I stopped and I see she was pickin' some o' 
 the leaves and puttin' 'em into a little tin box. 
 And I says, "Please, ma'am, what you gittin' 
 them for?" And she says, "For worms," says 
 she, and o' course I asked, "Does it cure 'em, 
 and how do you take it?" She didn't 'pear 
 to sense what I said and I found afterwards 
 she was feedin' worms on them leaves to raise 
 'em, and then see if they'd turn into anything. 
 'Course they would. I could 'a' told her that. 
 
A NATURE CURE 57 
 
 Everything in this world turns into something 
 else, give it time. We will ourselves, alive or 
 dead, and why not a caterpillar? Ain't it in 
 Scriptur' that even a worm will turn ? But most 
 of these naturers was a mite ign'rant of anything 
 outside their own observatory ways. They had 
 a Natur' Glub that winter. A lady org'nized it 
 that was stayin' over to the house at the shore. 
 Folks said she learnt naturin' to studiers 'round 
 the hull country and had org'nized more nat'ral 
 s'cieties and 'sociations for observin' things than 
 any other live woman; a notorious organist she 
 was for such nat'ral historical things. The club 
 met over to the tavern and I went to some o' the 
 meetin's. They told their 'speriences, as you do 
 in prayer meetin', the birders and the buggists, 
 the posyites'and the rat-catchers. My! how the 
 big words did fly 'round that room. They made 
 my ears ring worse 'n that bracin' medicine the 
 doctor from Har'ford give me. Made me think 
 of the gabble that took place when they were 
 puttin' up that Tower in Babel, and even 
 Scriptur' calls that a confounded kind o' lang- 
 widge; it don't often give way to words like 
 that, does it? But I don't blame it this time. 
 I felt like sayin' something worse 'n confounded 
 
S8 A NATURE CURE 
 
 when I heerd them natur' clubbers talkin'. Oh, 
 how mixed up I did get twixt 'em all! I disre- 
 member most of the words, thank fortun', but 
 some of 'em come back to me, partic'lar nights 
 when I've et a hearty supper and dream hard. 
 I know they talked about juncos and juncusses; 
 one kind was bulrushes and t'other sort was 
 birds, but I don't know which was which. 
 Seems the princ'ple diff'rence twixt a snow bird 
 and a bulrush — the kind Moses slep' in when 
 he was a young one — is that one of 'em's a co 
 and t'other a cuss; both of 'em bein' juncs. 
 Ain't it ridic'lous? The birders they talked 
 about Red-Eyed Very- Olds and Sore-Throated 
 Wobblers and Red-Headed Thingamys or Top- 
 Knotted What-You-Call-Ems. And a prom'nent 
 rat-catchin' man he told about a very scurse 
 muss he'd found in the ma'sh grass. Then a 
 bug-lady made a speech about a real expensive 
 tumble-bug she'd come across or invented or 
 somethin', the newest kind. She said she lotted 
 on namin' it after Ormond, and if the cockroach 
 she picked up in the orange grove turned out 
 val'able she was goin' to call it Sandersonus 
 Ricei after the two gentlemen that kep' the big 
 tavern. One of the posyites had discovered a 
 
A NATURE CURE 59 
 
 new weed — as if that was somethin' oncommon; 
 I find a new one in my gardin about once a week 
 — and he showed it off as proud as Lucy Ferr. 
 Looked to me like Wethersfield pigweed, but 
 they give it a name as long and jaw-breakin' as 
 Skinnyattalus or Terrydellfewgo. 
 
 I went home from that meetin' all riled up and 
 nervy. As I was goin' 'cross the bridge I says 
 to myself, "Nancy Babbitt, this natur' bis'ness 
 is too much for you. You never'll make head 
 nor tail of it and there's no use a tryin'. Give 
 it up afore it's too late and enjoy the nice things 
 God made for folks without 'temptin' to observe 
 anything. The hull danger's in doin' that, ob- 
 servin' 'stead o' lookin' at things." 
 
 I was so tuckered out that I went right to bed 
 and drowsed off 's quick 's my head hit the piller 
 and slep' sound all night. But I waked up early 
 and lay a thinkin'. Seemed to me I'd wasted 
 my time, spent my savin's, come way off from 
 my friends and feller Christians in Wethersfield, 
 addled my brains over a mess of big words and 
 things, come dreadful nigh losin' the real likin' 
 I'd had all my life for posies and birds and but- 
 terflies and chipmunks; and all for what ? Why 
 did I leave my comfortable little home and mix 
 
6o A NATURE CURE 
 
 up with these crazy natur' folks? Then, sud- 
 den and quick come the answer, 's if somebody, 
 hollered it at me, " 'Twas for your health, Nancy 
 Babbitt; to cure your ailin's, and where are they 
 now?" I set up straight in the bed, but my 
 head was swimmy, as I thought, Where was 
 my ailin's? I hadn't took no notice of 'em for 
 weeks! As I set there I catched sight o' my 
 face in the lookin' -glass on the wall at the foot 
 o' my bed. Was that the Nancy Babbitt that 
 left Connecticut a spell back, lean and chalk 
 color and sickly and mopy-lookin' ? Tanned 
 and filled out, cheeks red, eyes a shinin', was 
 that the same count'nance? "Why, I ain't a 
 invalid no more, be I?" I says to myself or to 
 that able-bodied woman in the lookin'-glass. 
 And I wa'n't! Now I'm terrible fair-minded, 
 all the Babbitts be. I'm always ready to own 
 up to the truth, when I see it, even when it goes 
 again' my own beliefs and holdin's. So I goes 
 on to myself, " 'Twas natur' study done it after 
 all!" But I've got a good deal o' human natur' 
 in me and I went on, " But 'twas the disapprovin' 
 it, and the follerin' them loony folks 'round to 
 prove how ridic'lous 'twas, that helped me most, 
 after all." 
 
A NATURE CURE 6i 
 
 There's nothin' so stren'thenin' and bracin' 
 and liftin' up 's bein' opposed to somethin' and 
 fightin' again' it and stickin' hard to your own 
 belief. And that's truer in the Babbitt family, 
 Connecticut branch, than in any other I ever see. 
 
 Well, I come home, and here I be. And I'm 
 free to confess that I never in all my born days 
 set so much by my posies, the cute little birds 
 'round the yard, the chipmunks scamperin' all 
 over the woods and the big yeller butterflies 
 wavin' their pretty wings in the sun as I do now 
 sence I left ofif for good-and-all my observin' 
 natur' and only jest look at it. 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 TT was when Elder Lincoln was supplying the 
 -'- pulpit of the old Union Meeting-House in 
 Franconia. He was a Congregationalist, but 
 was always styled Elder, as was also any clergy- 
 man of any denomination; it was, and is now, 
 considered there the fit and proper title for a 
 minister. There were three places of worship 
 in the village representing as many denomina- 
 tions, called colloquially by the residents the 
 Congo, the Freewill, and the Second-Ad, these 
 names being "short" for the Congregationa- 
 list, Freewill Baptist, and Second-Adventist 
 churches. 
 
 The Congregationalists and Baptists held their 
 services in the same house of worship, each 
 taking its turn, yearly I think, in providing a 
 clergyman. Elder Lincoln was the choice of 
 the Congos at that time, a dear, simple-hearted 
 old man whom we loved well. 
 
 We were sitting together, the good Elder and 
 I, on the piazza of the little inn — it was when 
 6s 
 
66 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 Uncle Eben kef)t it — and talking quietly of many 
 things. I do not recall just how it came about, 
 but I know that our conversation at last veered 
 around to the subject of the soul's immortality, 
 its condition immediately after it left the body, 
 possible probation, and the intermediate state, 
 technically so called. In the midst of this talk 
 I saw an odd look upon the face of the Elder, a 
 sort of whimsical smile, as if he were thinking of 
 something not so grave as the topic of which we 
 talked, and when he spoke, his words seemed 
 strangely irrelevant. " Do you know," he asked, 
 " who has taken the old mill-house on the Lan- 
 daff road, the one, you know, where Captain 
 Noyes lived?" I did not know; I had heard 
 that somebody had lately moved into the old 
 house, but had not heard the name of the new 
 occupant. 
 
 "Well," said the Elder, still with that quaint 
 smile upon his face, " before you form any defi- 
 nite opinions upon this subject of the interme- 
 diate state you should talk with the good woman 
 who lives in that old house." He would not ex- 
 plain further, save to tell me that Mrs. Weaver 
 of Bradford had taken the house, that she was 
 an elderly woman, practically alone in the world, 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 67 
 
 anxious to know her new neighbors and to make 
 new friends. 
 
 It was largely owing to this hint that, soon 
 after our Sunday evening talk, I came to know 
 Mrs. Apollos Weaver, to gain her friendship and 
 confidence, and to hear her strange story. 
 
 It was not told me all at one time, but inter- 
 mittently as the summer days went by. Yet 
 every word of the tale was spoken in the old 
 mill-house, and I never pass that ancient brown 
 dwelling, standing high above the road on its 
 . steep, grassy bank, with the two tall elms in front, 
 the big lilac bush at the door, and the cinnamon 
 rosebushes straggling down to the road, that I 
 do not think of Mrs. Weaver and her story. 
 
 It was not in reply to any question of mine 
 that she told it, for, notwithstanding Elder Lin- 
 coln's suggestion, I somehow shrank from ask- 
 ing her directly about her theological views and 
 beliefs. I had received a telegram one day re- 
 lating to a business matter, and as I sat with 
 Mrs. Weaver at the open door of the mill-house, 
 I spoke of it, and of the nervous dread the sight 
 of one of those dull yellow envelopes always 
 brought me. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "they're scary things, any 
 
68 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 way you take it; but sometimes the writing one 
 is worse than getting one. I never shall forget, 
 as long as I live, the time I tried and tried, till 
 I thought I should go crazy trying, to put just 
 the right words, and not more than ten of them, 
 into a telegraph to John Nelson. Over and over 
 I went with it, saying the words to myself, and 
 trying to pick out something that would sort of 
 break the news easy, and yet have him sense it 
 without any mistake: 'Maria has come back, 
 don't be scared, all well here.' No, the first 
 part of that was too dreadful sudden. 'Don't 
 be surprised to hear Maria is with us now!' 
 Oh no, how could he help being surprised, and 
 how could I help making him so? 
 
 "For you see, Maria was dead and buried, 
 and had been for three whole weeks! 
 
 " John Nelson had stood by her dying bed at 
 the very end; he'd been at the funeral, one of 
 the mourners, being her own half-brother and 
 her nighest relation. He was the last one of 
 the family to view the remains, and had stayed 
 behind with Mr. Weaver and one of the neigh- 
 bors to see the grave filled up. So to hear she 
 was staying with us now would be amazing 
 enough to him, however I could break it or 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 69 
 
 smooth it down. It was amazing to us, and is 
 now to look back at, only we sort of got used to 
 it after a spell, as you do to anything. 
 
 " Maria Bliven wasn't a near relation of ours, 
 being only my first husband's sister, — I was 
 Mrs. Bliven when I married Mr. Weaver, you 
 know, — ^but she had lived with us off and on for 
 years, and she'd been buried from our house. 
 Mr. Weaver'd been real good about having her 
 there, though lots of men wouldn't have been, 
 she belonging, as you might say, to another dis- 
 pensation, my first husband's relations. The 
 fact was, she didn't stay to our house long 
 enough at a time for anybody to get tired of 
 her, — never stayed anywheres long enough for 
 that. She was the fittiest, restlessest, change- 
 ablest person I ever saw or heard of; and never, 
 never quite satisfied. A week in one place was 
 enough, and more than enough, for Maria. 
 She'd fidget and fuss and walk up and down, 
 and twitch her feet and wiggle her fingers, and 
 make you too nervous for anything, if she had 
 to stay in one spot twenty-four hours, I was 
 going to say. So always just as I was going to 
 be afraid Mr. Weaver would get sick of seeing 
 Maria aroimd and having a distant relation like 
 
70 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 her at the table every meal, she'd come down 
 some morning with her carpet-bag in her hand, 
 and say she guessed she'd go over to Haverhill 
 and spend a few days with Mrs. Deacon Colby, 
 or she'd take the cars for Newbury or Fairlee 
 to visit with the Bishops or Captain Sanborn's 
 folks, and sometimes as far as Littleton to Jane 
 Spooner's. Then Mr. Weaver and me, we'd 
 have a nice quiet spell all to ourselves, and just 
 when we were ready for a change and a mite of 
 company and talk, Maria would come traipsing 
 back. Something didn't suit her, and she wasn't 
 satisfied, but she'd always have lots of news to 
 tell, and we were glad to see her. 
 
 " Off and on, off and on, that was Maria all 
 over, and more off than on. Why, the time she 
 got her last sickness — the last one, I mean, 
 before the time I'm telling you about — it was 
 her getting so restless after she'd been staying 
 three or four days with Aunt Ellen Bragg over 
 to Piermont, and starting for home in a driv- 
 ing snowstorm. She got chilled through and 
 through, took lung fever, and only lived about 
 ten days. 
 
 " We did everything we could for her, had the 
 best doctor in the neighborhood, and nursed her 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 71 
 
 day and night. Mr. Weaver was real kind, she 
 being only a distant relation, but nothing could 
 raise her up, and she died. We had a real nice 
 funeral. Elder Fuller attending it, and we buried 
 her in our own lot next to Mr. Bliven. It 
 seemed dreadful quiet, and so queer to think that 
 this time she'd gone for good and all, and that 
 she'd got to stay now where she was, and not 
 keep coming back in her restless, changing kind 
 of way whether she was satisfied or not. I 
 really did miss her, and I believe Mr. Weaver 
 did; too, though he wouldn't own it. 
 
 " And here she was, and here was I half crazy 
 over making up a telegraph to tell John Nelson 
 about it. 
 
 "She'd been gone just exactly three weeks to 
 a day, she having died the nth of March, and 
 it being now the second day of April. 
 
 " I was sitting at the window about ten o'clock 
 in the forenoon peeling potatoes for dinner. I'd 
 brought them into the sitting-room because it 
 had a better lookout and was lighter and pleas- 
 anter in the morning. It was an early spring 
 that year, though it came out real wintry after- 
 wards, and the grass was starting up, and the 
 buds showing on the trees, and somehow I got 
 
72 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 thinking about Maria. She was always glad 
 when it came round spring, and she could get 
 about more and visit with folks, and I was 
 thinking where she was, and how she could 
 ever stand it with her changing ways, to stay 
 put, as you might say. Just then I looked out 
 from the window over towards the river and the 
 bridge, and I saw a woman coming. The min- 
 ute I saw her I says to myself, ' She walks some- 
 thing like Maria Bliven. ' She was coming along 
 pretty quick, though not exactly hurrying, and 
 she had somehow a real Bliven way about her. 
 She came straight on in the direction of our 
 house, and the closer she came, the more she 
 walked like Maria. I didn't think it was her, of 
 course, but it gave me a queer feeling to see any- 
 body that favored her so much. The window was 
 open and I got nearer and nearer to it, and at last 
 stretched my head out and stared down the street, 
 a potato in one hand and the knife in the other. 
 The sun was warm when you were out in it, exer- 
 cising, and I saw the woman untying her bonnet- 
 strings and throwing them back. Dear me ! that 
 was a real Bliven trick. I'd seen Maria do it her- 
 self fifty times. She was getting pretty nigh now, 
 and the first thing I knew she looked up at the 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 73 
 
 house and nodded her head just as Maria used 
 to when she came home from visiting. Then in 
 a minute I saw her plain as day. It was Maria 
 Bliven, sure enough; there was no mistaking 
 her. 
 
 "I see by your face what you are thinking 
 about; it's what strikes every soul I ever tell this 
 to. You're wondering why I take this so cool, 
 as if it wasn't anything so much out of the com- 
 mon. Well, first place, it all happened a good 
 many years ago, and I've gone through a heap of 
 things since then, good and bad both, enough to 
 wear off some of the remembering. And again, 
 somehow, I took it kind of cool even then. It 
 appeared to come about so natural, just in the 
 course of things, as you might say, and only what 
 you might have expected from Maria with her 
 fitty, unsatisfied ways. And then — well, you'll 
 see it yourself as I go on — there was something 
 about Maria and the way she took it, and seemed 
 to expect us to take it, that kept us from getting 
 excited or scared or so dreadful amazed. 
 
 "Why, what do you think was the first and 
 only single remark I made as she came in at the 
 door just as she had come in fifty times before 
 after visiting a spell ? I says, ' Why, good-morn- 
 
74 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 ing, Maria, you've come back.' And she says, 
 'Good-morning, Lyddy; yes, I have.' 
 
 "That was all, outside, I mean, for I won't 
 deny there was a swimmy feeling in my head and 
 a choky feeling down my throat and a sort of 
 trembly feeling all over as I see Maria drop into 
 a chair and push her bonnet-strings a mite fur- 
 ther back. She sat there a few minutes, I don't 
 recollect just how long, and I don't seem to re- 
 member what either one of us said. Appears to 
 me Maria made some remark about its being 
 warm weather for the beginning of April, and 
 that I said 'twas so. Then sometimes I seem to 
 remember that I asked her if she'd walked all 
 the way or got a lift any part of it. But it don't 
 hardly appear as if I could have said such a fool- 
 ish thing as that, and anyways, I don't recollect 
 what she answered. But I know she got up 
 pretty soon and said she guessed she'd go up 
 and take off her things, and she went. 
 
 "There was one potato dished up that day for 
 dinner with the skin on, and it must have been 
 the one I was holding when I first caught sight of 
 Maria down the road. So that goes to show I 
 was a good deal flustered and upset, after all. 
 The first thing was to tell Mr. Weaver. He was 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 75 
 
 in the bam, and out I went. I didn't stop to 
 break the news then, but gave it to him whole, 
 right out. 'Polios,' I says, all out of breath, 
 'Maria Bliven's come back. She's in her bed- 
 room this minute, taking off her things.' I never 
 can bring back to my mind what he said first. 
 He took it kind of calm and cool, as he always 
 took everything that ever happened since I first 
 knew him. And in a minute he told me to go 
 and telegraph to John Nelson. You see, besides 
 John's being Maria's nearest relation, he had 
 charge of the little property she'd left, and so 
 'twas pretty important he should know right off 
 that she hadn't left it for good. 
 
 "Now I've got back to where I begun about 
 that telegraph. Well, I sent it, and John came 
 over from Hanover next day. I can't go on in a 
 very regular, straightahead way with this account 
 now, but I'll tell what went on as things come 
 into my head, or I'll answer any questions you 
 want to ask, as you appear so interested. Every- 
 thing went on natural and in the old way after 
 the first. Of course, folks found out pretty 
 quick. Bradford's a small place now, and 'twas 
 smaller then, and I don't suppose there was a 
 man, woman, or child there that didn't know 
 
76 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 within twenty-four hours that Maria had come 
 back. There was some talk naturally, but not 
 as much as you'd think. Folks dropped in, and 
 when they'd see her looking about as she did 
 before she left, and we going on just the same, 
 why, they got used to it themselves, and the talk 
 most stopped. 
 
 "But though they thought she was the same 
 as she used to be, I knew she wasn't. It's hard 
 to put it into words to make you tmderstand, 
 but Maria hadn't been many hours in the house 
 before I saw she was dreadful changed. First 
 place, she didn't talk near so much. Before she 
 left she was a great hand to tell about all her 
 doings after she'd been on one of her visits. 
 She'd go all over it to Mr. Weaver and me, and 
 it was real interesting. But she never said one 
 single word now about anything that had hap- 
 pened since we saw her last, where she'd been, 
 what she'd done, or anything. She and me, we 
 were together by ourselves a great deal, more than 
 ever before, in fact, for somehow the neighbors 
 didn't come in as much as they used to. Maria 
 was always pleasant to them, but though they 
 said she was just the same as ever, with nothing 
 queer or alarming about her, I saw they didn't 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 77 
 
 feel quite at home with her now, and didn't drop 
 in so often. But sit together, she and me, hours 
 at a time as we might, never one word of what I 
 couldn't help hankering to know passed Maria's 
 lips. Why didn't I ask her, you say? Well, I 
 don't know. Seems to me now, as I think it all 
 over, that I would do it if I could only have the 
 chance again. You wouldn't hardly believe how 
 I wish and wish now it's too late that I had asked 
 her things I'm just longing to know about, now 
 I'm growing old and need to look ahead a little, 
 and particular now Mr. Weaver's gone, and I'm 
 so hungry to know something about him, we hav- 
 ing lived together most fifty years, you know. 
 But there was something about Maria that kept 
 me from asking. And sometimes I think there 
 was something that kept her from telling. I 
 feel sure she was on the point of making some 
 statement sometimes, but she couldn't; the 
 words wouldn't come; there didn't seem to be 
 any way of putting the information into words 
 she knew, or that was used in our part of the 
 country, anyway. Dear me, what lots of times 
 I've heard her begin something this way, 'When 
 I first got there, I' — 'Before I come back, I' — 
 Oh, how I'd prick up my ears, and most stop 
 
78 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 breathing to hear! But she'd just stop, seem to 
 be a-thinking about something way, way o£f, and 
 never, never finish her remarks. Yes, I know 
 you wonder I didn't question her about things. 
 As I said before, I can't hardly explain why I 
 didn't. But there was something about her looks 
 and her ways, something that, spite of her being 
 the old Maria Bliven I had lived in and out with 
 so many years, somehow made her most like a 
 stranger that I couldn't take liberties with, 
 
 "Mr. Weaver and me, of course, we talked 
 about it when we were all by ourselves, mostly at 
 night, when it was still and dark. It did seem 
 real strange and out of the common someways. 
 Neither one of us had ever had anything like it 
 happen before to anybody we knew or heard of. 
 Folks who'd died, generally — ^no, always, I guess, 
 up to this time-^ied for good, and stayed dead. 
 We were brought up Methodists; we were both 
 professors, and knew our Bibles and the doc- 
 trines of the church pretty well. We knew about 
 two futures for the soul — the joyful, happy one 
 for the good and faithful, and the dreadful one 
 for the wicked. And we'd always been learnt 
 that to one of these localities the soul went the 
 very minute, or second, it left the body. That 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 79 
 
 there were folks that held different opinions, and 
 thought there was a betwixt and between district 
 where you stayed on the road, where even the 
 good and faithful might rest and take breath 
 before going into the wonderful glory prepared 
 for them, and where the poor, mistaken, or ig- 
 norant, or careless souls would be allowed one 
 more chance of choosing the right, we didn't 
 know that. I never'd heard of that doctrine 
 then, though a spell after that I hardly heard 
 anything else. 
 
 " I don't know as I told you about Elder Jane- 
 way from down South somewhere coming to 
 board with us one summer. He was writing a 
 book called Probation and he had a way of read- 
 ing out loud what he was writing in a preaching 
 kind of way, so that you couldn't help hearing it 
 all, even if you wanted to. And all day long, 
 while I sat sewing or knitting, or went about my 
 work, baking and ironing and all, I'd hear that 
 solemn, rumbling voice of his going on about the 
 'place of departed spirits,' the Scripture proofs 
 of there being such a place, what it was like, how 
 long folks stayed there, and I don't know what 
 all. That was just before I came down with the 
 fever that I most died with, as I was telling you 
 
8o A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 the other day, and they say this talk of the Elder's 
 appeared to run in my mind when I was light- 
 headed and wandering, and I'd get dreadful ex- 
 cited about it. 
 
 " But at the time I was telling about I hadn't 
 heard this, so Mr. Weaver and I would talk it 
 over and wonder and guess and suppose. ' Oh, 
 Polios,' I whispered one night, 'you don't pre- 
 sume Maria is a — ghost?' 'No more than you 
 be,' says Mr. Weaver, trying to whisper, but not 
 doing it very well, his voice naturally being a bass 
 one. 'Ghosts,' he says, 'are all in white, and 
 go about in a creepy way, allowing there are any 
 such things, which I don't.' ' But what else can 
 she be. Polios,' I says, ' she having died and been 
 buried, and now back again ? Where's she, or her 
 soul or spirit, been these three weeks, since that ?' 
 
 "'Well, come to that, I don't know,' Mr. 
 Weaver would say. And he didn't. No more 
 did I. 
 
 "Where had she come from that morning 
 when she appeared so unexpected as I sat peel- 
 ing the potatoes? Not a single soul had seen 
 her, as far as we could find out, before the very 
 minute I catched sight of her at the turn of 
 the road. Folks had been at their windows or 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 8i 
 
 doors, or in their yards all along that very road 
 for miles back, and on the two different roads 
 that come into the main one there were plenty 
 of houses full of people, but nobody, not one of 
 them, saw her go by. There was Almy Wool- 
 ett, whose whole business in life was to know 
 who passed her house, and what they did it for. 
 She was at her front window every minute that 
 forenoon, and it looked right out on the road, 
 not fifteen foot back of where I first saw Maria, 
 and she never saw her. 
 
 "Then, as to what clothes she came in, folks 
 have asked me about that, and I can't give 
 them a mite of satisfaction. For the life of me 
 I can't remember what she had on before she 
 went up to her room and took off her things. 
 I'm certain sure she wasn't wearing what she 
 went away in, for that was a shroud. In those 
 days, you know, bodies was laid out in regular 
 appropriate burying things, made for the occa- 
 sion, instead of being dressed all up like living 
 beings, as they do nowadays. And Maria didn't 
 come back in that way, or I might have thought 
 her a ghost sure enough. Sometimes I seem to 
 recollect that she had on something sort of gray- 
 ish, not black or white, but just about the color 
 
82 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 of those clouds out there, just over the mill, al- 
 most the color of nothing, you might say. But 
 there, I ain't sure, it's so long ago. But I know 
 she had on something I never'd seen her wear 
 before, and she never wore again, for when she 
 came downstairs she was dressed in her old blue 
 gingham, with a white tie apron. I own up I 
 did look about everywheres I could think of for 
 the things she came in, but I couldn't find them 
 high nor low. Nor a sign of them was there in 
 her bedroom, in the closet or chest of drawers, 
 or her little leather trunk, and I'm certain sure 
 they wasn't anywheres in the house when I ran- 
 sacked for them, and that wasn't two hours 
 after Maria came back. 
 
 "It's only little specks of things I can tell 
 you about that happened after this; anything, I 
 mean, that had to do with her queer experience. 
 I watched her close, and took notice of the least 
 thing that seemed to bear on that. She com- 
 plained a good deal of being lonesome, and 
 when I recommended her going out more and 
 visiting with the neighbors, she'd say so sor- 
 rowful and sad, 'There ain't anybody of my 
 kind here, not a single one; I'm all alone in 
 the world.' And, take it one way, she was. 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 83 
 
 " One day she and me were sitting together in 
 the kitchen, and one of Billy Lane's boys came 
 to the door to borrow some saleratus. After 
 he'd gone, I says to Maria, 'I told you, didn't I, 
 that Billy Lane died last month? He died of 
 lockjaw, and it came on so sudden and violent 
 he wasn't able to tell how he hurt himself. They 
 found a wound on his foot, but don't know how 
 it came.' ' Oh,' says Maria, as quiet and nat- 
 ural as you please, ' he told me he stepped on a 
 rusty nail down by the new fence.' I was just 
 going to speak up quick, and ask how in the 
 world he could have told her that, when he 
 didn't die till a week after she did, when she 
 started, put on one of her queer looks, and says, 
 ' There, I forgot to shut my blinds, and it's real 
 sunny,' and went upstairs. 
 
 "The first death that we had in Bradford 
 after her coming back was little Susan Garret. 
 We'd heard she was sick, but didn't know she 
 was dangerous, and were dreadful surprised 
 when Mr. Weaver came in to supper and told 
 us she was dead. I felt sorry for Mrs. Garret, 
 a widow with only one other child, and that a 
 sickly boy, but I must say I was surprised to 
 see how Maria took it to heart. She turned 
 
84 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 real white, kept twisting her hands together, and 
 sort of moaning out, 'Oh, I wish I'd knowed 
 she was going, I wish I'd knowed. If she'd 
 only wait just a minute for me,' and crazy, 
 nervy things like that. I had to get her up- 
 stairs and give her some camphor and make her 
 lay down, she was so excited like. She didn't 
 calm down right away, and when I heard her 
 say sort of to herself, ' Oh, if I could only a seen 
 her!' I says, 'Why, Maria, you can see her. 
 We'll run right over there now. I guess they've 
 laid the poor child out by this time, and they'll 
 let us see the body.' Such a look as Maria gave 
 me, real scornful, as you might say, as she says, 
 ' That ! See that ! What good would it do to see 
 that I want to know.' Why, I tell you it made 
 me feel for a minute as if a body was of no ac- 
 count at all, leastways in Maria's opinion. And 
 yet she'd used hers to come back in anyways! 
 'Twas quite a spell before she cooled down, and 
 she never explained why it worked her up so, 
 and I'm sure I don't know. Whether it was be- 
 cause she thought little Susan had gone to the 
 place she herself had come away from, and 
 wished she had known in time to go back along 
 with her just for company, or again, whether 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 85 
 
 she felt bad because she hadn't had a chance 
 to give the child some advice or directions that 
 would have helped her along on the road that 
 Maria knew and nobody else probably in all 
 that county did know, why, I haven't an idea. 
 
 "I believe I told you a ways back that after 
 she got home Maria all the time had a kind of 
 look and way as if she'd done something she 
 hadn't ought to done, or was somewhere she 
 hadn't any business to be, somehow as if she 
 belonged somewhere else. 
 
 "In the old days she wasn't ever satisfied 
 long at a time in any place, but she was always 
 pleased to get back, leastways for a spell. But 
 from the minute she came this time she was 
 troubled and worried. And that grew on her. 
 She was always sort of listening and watching, 
 as if she expected something to happen, starting 
 at the least bit of noise, and jumping if anybody 
 knocked or even came by the gate. She got 
 dreadful white, and so poor she didn't weigh no 
 more than a child, and such little trifling things 
 worked her up. For instance, we had heard a 
 spell before, Mr. Weaver and me, that Mr. 
 Tewksbury over at South Newbury was dead, 
 and we believed it, not knowing anything to the 
 
86 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 contrary. But one day Mr. Weaver came in 
 and he says, 'Lyddy, you recollect we heard 
 the other day that Silas Tewksbury was dead? 
 Well, I met him just now coming over the 
 bridge.' Maria was in the room, and first thing 
 we knew she gave a kind of screech, and put 
 her two hands together, and she says, 'Oh no, 
 no, no, not another of us! I thought 'twas 
 only me. Oh, deary, deary, me that's what 
 they meant. They said it wouldn't end with 
 me; they begged me not to try; and now I've 
 started it, and it won't never stop. They'll all 
 come back, all, every single one of 'em,' and 
 she cried and moaned till we were at our wits' 
 ends what to do. It wasn't till she found out 
 that Mr. Tewksbury hadn't ever died at all, but 
 'twas his brother at White River Junction that 
 was taken ofiF, that she got quiet. 
 
 "So it went on, Maria sort of wearing out 
 with worrying and grieving about something she 
 couldn't seem to tell us about except by little 
 hintings and such, and Mr. Weaver and me, we 
 wondering and surmising and talking all alone 
 nights in whispers. We didn't understand it, of 
 course, but we'd made up our minds on one or 
 two points, and agreed on them. Maria had 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 87 
 
 never been to heaven we felt sure of that. There 
 were lots of reasons for that belief, but one is 
 enough. Nobody, even the most discontented 
 and changeablest being ever made, would leave 
 that place of perfect rest and peace for this 
 lonesome, dying, changing world, now would 
 they? And as for the other locality, why, I 
 just know certain, certain sure she'd never been 
 there. That would have showed in her face, 
 and her talk, and her ways. If it is one lit- 
 tle mite like what I've always been learnt it is, 
 one minute, one second spent there would alter 
 you so dreadfully you'd never be recognized 
 again by your nighest and dearest. And Maria 
 was a good woman, a Christian woman. Her 
 biggest fault was only her fretting and finding 
 fault, and wanting to change about and find 
 something better. Oh no, no; wherever Maria 
 Bliven had come from that morning in April it 
 wasn't from that place of punishment, we felt 
 sure of that, Mr. Weaver and me. As I said 
 once before, we hadn't heard then that there was 
 any other place for the dead to go to.\ But from 
 things Maria let drop, and the way she behaved, 
 and our own thinking and studying over it, we 
 began to come to this, that maybe there was a 
 
88 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 stopping-place on the road before it forked — to 
 put it into this world's sort of talk — where folks 
 could rest and straighten out their beliefs and 
 learn what to expect, how to look at things, and 
 try and be tried. Last summer I heard a new 
 word, and it struck me hard. Mrs. Deacon Spin- 
 ner told me her son had gone off to learn new 
 ways of farming and gardening and such. She 
 said they had places nowadays where they learnt 
 boys all that and they called them ' Experiment 
 Stations.' The minute I heard that I says to my- 
 self, 'That's the name! That's what the place 
 where Maria came back from, and that Elder 
 Janeway knew so much about, had ought to be 
 called, an Experiment Station.' But at that time, 
 in Maria's day, I'd never heard of this name no 
 more than I had of Elder Janeway, and the place 
 or state he was always writing and talking about. 
 But, after all, I don't believe I care to go back 
 on what ma and pa and all the good folks of old 
 times held on those subjects. There wasn't any 
 mincing matters those days; 'twas the very best 
 or the very worst for everybody as soon as they 
 departed this life, and no complaints made. I'm 
 certain sure any of those ancestors of mine, par- 
 ticular on the Wells side — that was pa's, you know 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 89 
 
 — would have taken the worst, and been cheerful 
 about it, too, rather than have had the whole 
 plan upset and a half-and-half place interduced. 
 But then, if there ain't such a locality, where in 
 the world did Maria come from that time? I 
 tell you, it beats me. 
 
 "Now this very minute something comes into 
 my head that I haven't told you about, that I 
 don't believe I ever told anybody about; I don't 
 know as I can tell it now. It is like a sound that 
 comes to you from way, way off, that you think 
 you catch, and then it's gone. It was just only 
 a word Maria used two or three times after she 
 came back, a dreadful, dreadful curious word. 
 It wasn't like any word I ever heard spoke or 
 read in a book; 'twasn't anything I can shape 
 out in my mind to bring back now. First time 
 I heard it she was sitting on the doorstep at night, 
 all by herself. It was a nice night with no moon, 
 but thousands of shining little stars, and the sky 
 so sort of dark bluish and way, way off. Maria 
 didn't know I was nigh, but I was, and I was 
 peeking at her as she sat there. She looked up 
 right overhead at the sky, and the shining and 
 the blue, and then she spoke that word, that curi- 
 ous, singular word. I say she spoke it, and that 
 
90 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 I heard it, but somehow that don't make it plain 
 what I mean. Seems 's if she only meant it, 
 thought it, and I sort of catched it, felt it — Oh, 
 that sounds like crazy talk, I know, but I can't 
 do any better. Somehow I knew without using 
 my ears that she was saying or thinking a word, 
 the strangest, meaningest, oh, the curiousest 
 word ! And once she said it in her sleep when I 
 went into her room in the night, and another 
 time as she sat by her own grave in the little 
 burying-ground, and I had followed her there 
 unbeknownst. I tell you, that wasn't any word 
 they use in Vermont, or in the United States, or 
 anywheres in this whole living world. It was a 
 word Maria brought back, I'm certain sure from 
 — well, wherever she'd been that time. 
 
 " Well, it was wearing to see Maria those days, 
 growing poorer and poorer, and bleacheder and 
 bleacheder, and failing up steady as the days 
 went by. And one day just at dusk, when she 
 and me were sitting by ourselves, I mustered up 
 courage to speak out. 'Maria,' I says, 'you 
 don't appear to be satisfied these times.' 
 
 " 'Satisfied ! ' she says, ' course I ain't. Was I 
 ever satisfied in all my born days ? Wasn't that 
 the trouble with me from the beginning? Ain't 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 91 
 
 it that got me into all this dreadful trouble? 
 Deary, deary me, if I'd only a stayed where' — 
 She shut up quick and sudden, looking so mourn- 
 ful and sorry and wore out that I couldn't hold 
 in another minute, and I burst out, 'Maria, if 
 you feel that way about it, and I can see myself 
 it's just killing you, why in the world don't you 
 — go back again ? ' I was scared as soon as I'd 
 said it, but Maria took it real quiet. ' Don't you 
 suppose I've thought of that myself?' she says. 
 'I ain't thought of much else lately, I tell you. 
 But as far 's I know, and I know a lot more than 
 you do about it, there ain't but just one way to 
 there, and that,' she says, speaking kind of low 
 and solemn, 'that is — the way — I went before. 
 And I own up, Lyddy,' says she, 'I'm scaret o' 
 that way, and I scursely dast to do it again.' 
 ' But,' I says, getting bolder when I saw she wasn't 
 offended at my speaking, 'you say yourself you 
 ain't sure. Maybe there is some other way of 
 getting back; there's that way — well, that way 
 you came from there, you know.' 
 
 "'That's different,' says Maria. But I saw 
 she was thinking and studying over something all 
 the evening, and after she went to her bedroom 
 she was walking about, up and down, up and 
 
92 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 down, the biggest part of the night. In the morn- 
 ing when it got to be nigh on to seven o'clock, 
 and she not come down, I felt something had 
 happened, and went up to her room. She wasn't 
 there. The bed was made up, and everything 
 fixed neat and nice, and she had gone away. 
 
 '"Oh, dear,' I says to Mr. Weaver, 'that poor 
 thing has started off all alone, weak as she is, to 
 find her way back.' 'Back where?' says Polios. 
 Just as if I knew. 
 
 " But we both agreed on one point. We could- 
 n't do anything. We felt to realize our own ig- 
 norance, and that this was a thing Maria must 
 cipher out by herself, or with somebody that was 
 way, way above us to help her. It was a dread- 
 ful long day, I tell you. I couldn't go about my 
 work as if nothing had happened, and I couldn't 
 get out of my head for one single minute that 
 poor woman on her curious, lonesome travels. 
 Would she find the road? I kept a-thinking to 
 myself, and was it a hard, dark one like the one 
 everybody else had to go on before they got to the 
 afterwards-life, a valley full of shadows, accord- 
 ing to Scripture, with a black, deep river to ford, 
 a ' swelling flood,' as the hymn says ? 
 
 " Well, the day went by somehow, — most days 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 93 
 
 do, however slow they seem to drag along, — and 
 the night came on. Though we didn't mean to 
 meddle or interfere in this matter, Mr. Weaver 
 and me, we had asked a few questions of folks 
 who dropped in or went by that day. Maria had 
 been seen by people all along the same road she 
 had come home by that other time, and on both 
 the roads that joined it. Two or three, seeing 
 how beat out and white she looked, had offered 
 her a ride, but whichever direction they were 
 going she had always answered the same thing, 
 that she wasn't going their way. It was nigh 
 nine o'clock, and we were just shutting up the 
 house for the night, when I heard steps outside 
 and the gate screaked. 
 
 "I felt in a minute that it was Maria, and I 
 opened the door as quick as I could. There she 
 was trying to get up the steps, and looking just 
 ready to drop and die right there and then. It 
 took Polios and me both to get her in and up- 
 stairs. It wasn't any time for questions, but 
 when Mr. Weaver had gone, and I was getting 
 her to bed, I says, as I saw her white face with 
 that dreadful look of disappointedness, 'You poor 
 thing, you're all beat out.' 'Yes,' she whispers, 
 her voice most gone she was so wore out, 'and 
 
94 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 I couldn't find the road. There ain't but one, — 
 leastways to go there by, — and, that's the way I 
 went first-ofif. I'd oughter known it. I'd oughter 
 known it' 
 
 "I couldn't bear to see her so sorrowful and 
 troubled, and I said what I could to comfort her 
 by using Scripture words and repeating the prom- 
 ises made there about the dark valley and the 
 deep waters, and the help and company provided 
 for the journey. But that mournful look never 
 left her face, and she kept a- whispering, 'That's 
 for once; not a word about the second time. 
 Mebbe there ain't any provision for the second 
 time.' And what could I say? 
 
 "I believe I haven't told you how much time 
 the poor woman spent those days in the grave- 
 yard, sitting by her own grave. I can't get over 
 that, even after all these years, that queer, un- 
 common sight of a person watching over their 
 own burying place, weeding it and watering it as 
 if their own nighest friend lay there. I don't see 
 why either. I don't even know whether her body 
 was there. Folks don't have two, and she'd 
 brought one back, and was in it now. And, as 
 far as we could see, it was the very same body 
 she wore when she died, and that we'd buried 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 95 
 
 next to Mr. Bliven. Anyway, she appeared to 
 like that place, and showed a lot of interest in 
 taking care of it. There wasn't any headstone. 
 We had ordered one, but it hadn't come home 
 when she returned, and we had told Mr. Stevens 
 to keep it a spell till we fixed what to do about it. 
 I was glad it wasn't up. I can't think of any- 
 thing that would be more trying than to see your 
 own gravestone with your name and age and day 
 you died, with a consoling verse, all cut out plain 
 on it. I know, one time, I saw her putting a 
 bunch of sweet-williams on that grave. She 
 looked sort of ashamed when she saw I was watch- 
 ing her, and she says, a mite bashful, ' You know 
 they was always her favorite posies.' 'Whose?' 
 I asked, just to see what she'd say. But she was 
 so busy fixing the sweet-williams she didn't take 
 any notice. 
 
 "Maria failed up after this right along, and 
 pretty soon she was that weak she couldn't get 
 as far as the graveyard, hardly even down to the 
 gate. And I says to Mr. Weaver that she needn't 
 worry about finding the way back to where she 
 belonged, for she'd just go as she went the other 
 time if she didn't flesh up and get a little ruggeder. 
 One day, when I went into her room, she says 
 
96 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 to me, 'Lyddy, I want help, and mebbe I can 
 get it in the old way we used to try. You fetch 
 me the big Bible and let me open it without look- 
 ing, and put my finger on a verse and then you 
 read it out. Mebbe they'll take that way of tell- 
 ing me what to do, just mebbe.' 
 
 " I never approved of that kind of getting help, 
 it always seemed like tempting Providence, but I 
 felt I must do most anything that would help sat- 
 isfy that poor woman, and I got the Bible. She 
 opened it, her lean hands shaking, and she laid 
 one of her bony fingers on a passage. I must 
 say it took my breath away when I saw how ap- 
 propriate it was, how pat it came in. 'Twas in 
 Ezekiel, and it went this way: 'He shall not re- 
 turn by the gate whereby he came in.' 
 
 "Maria give a sort of cry and laid her head 
 back against the pillow on the big chair she was 
 sitting in. 'There, there,' she says, all shaking 
 and weak, 'I most knew it afore, and now I'm 
 certain sure. I've got to go — the — old — way.' 
 
 " And so she did. After all, I wasn't with her 
 when she went, and it wasn't from our house 
 she started. I got run down and pindling from 
 taking care of her and studying how to help her 
 out of her troubles. So Mr. Weaver wrote to 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 97 
 
 John Nelson, and after a spell it was fixed that 
 he should take Maria over to his house in Han- 
 over, and he did. It was a hard journey for 
 her, so weak as she was, and she didn't stand 
 it very well. But she had one more journey to 
 take, the one she'd been dreading so long, and 
 trying to put off. 
 
 " It wasn't so dreadful hard, I guess, after all, 
 for they said she fell asleep at the last like a 
 baby. Just before she went, she says very 
 quiet and calm, all the worry and fret gone out 
 of her voice, she says to John and Harriet, who 
 was standing by the bed, ' I'm dreadful tired, 
 and I guess I'll drowse off a mite. And mebbe 
 I'll be let to go in my sleep.' Then in a min- 
 ute she says slow and sleepy, her eyes shut up, 
 ' And if I do, wherever they carry me this time, I 
 guess when I wake up I shall — be — satisfied,' 
 and she dropped off. 
 
 "I guess she was, for she went for good that 
 time and stayed. She was buried there in Han- 
 over in John's lot. We all thought 'twas best. 
 It would have been awk'ard about the old grave, 
 you know, whether to open it or not, and what 
 to do about the coffin. So we thought 't was 
 better to start all over again as if 'twas the first 
 
98 A DISSATISFIED SOUL 
 
 time, with everything bran-new, and nothing 
 second-handed, and we did. But Maria Bliven's 
 the only person I know that's got two graves. 
 There's only one headstone, though, for we took 
 the one we'd ordered before from Mr. Stevens, 
 he altering the reading on it a little to suit the 
 occasion. You see, the first time we'd had on 
 it a hne that was used a good deal on grave- 
 stones then, 'Gone forever.' That didn't turn 
 out exactly appropriate, so we had it cut out, 
 and this time we had on — Elder Fuller put it 
 into our heads — that Scripture verse, a good 
 deal like Maria's dying words, though I don't 
 believe she knew she was quoting when she 
 said it, 'I shall be satisfied.'" 
 
 "Well," said good Elder Lincoln one July day 
 as we met on the Lisbon road, "have you 
 heard Mrs. Weaver's account of Maria Bliven's 
 unexpected return?" 
 
 The Elder had been at Streeter Pond fishing 
 for pickerel, for he belonged to that class styled 
 by dear old Jimmy Whitcher "fishin' ministers." 
 He had not met with great success that day, but 
 he had been all the morning in the open, and 
 there was about him a breezy, woodsy, free 
 
A DISSATISFIED SOUL 99 
 
 look which seemed to dissipate shadows, doubts, 
 and dreads. "Yes," I replied, "I have heard it 
 all. What in the world do you make of it?" 
 
 "Well, I don't make anything of it," said the 
 Elder. "There's no conspicuous moral to that 
 story. Mrs. Weaver did not make the most of 
 her opportunities, and we do not gain much 
 new light from her account. Old Cephas Jane- 
 way, who wrote a ponderous work on Probation 
 which nebody read, was largely responsible, I 
 guess, for the feverish dream of the old woman. 
 But to her it's all true, real, something that ac- 
 tually happened. And, do you know, somehow 
 I almost believe it myself as I listen to the 
 homely details, and it brings 'thoughts beyond 
 the reaches of our souls.' " 
 
 He was silent a minute, then taking up his 
 fishing-basket, very light in weight that day, he 
 raised the lid, looked with unseeing eyes at its 
 contents, and said absently, "I can't help wish- 
 ing I had met Maria after she came back. 
 There is Just one thing" — He did not com- 
 plete the sentence, and I saw that his thoughts 
 were far away. With a good-by word which I 
 know he did not hear, I turned aside, leaving 
 him there in the dusty road. 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 "^JO, I don't remember when it first came into 
 ■^ ^ my head that I could write, write for print, 
 I mean, of course. I'd always been a great let- 
 ter-writer, thinking nothing of covering a whole 
 sheet of foolscap to send off to Cousin Han- 
 nah at Hebron or Aunt Lois way out in Ohio. 
 I was good at compositions, too, they said, 
 writing my own just as soon as the subject 
 was given out and then helping the other boys 
 and girls on theirs. That was to Miss Faxon's 
 school, you know, not far from the Congrega- 
 tional meeting-house. I wasn't born here in 
 Stonington, but over to Mystic. Pa and ma 
 moved here when I was a baby, and here I was 
 brought up and here I lived till a grown-up 
 girl; in short, up to the very time I'm going to 
 tell you about. We lived in another house then, 
 way down by the water, nigh Captain Jared 
 Smith's, and not very far from Iry Pendleton's 
 — you know the grandchildren of both of them, 
 in New York, I guess. 
 
 103 
 
I04 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 I was an only child, and my folks was pretty 
 well-to-do, so I had an easy time and maybe 
 was a mite spoilt, as they say only children are 
 apt to be. There isn't much to tell about my 
 doings as a young one nor even as a growing 
 girl, so I'm Just going to skip over to the time 
 you want to hear about and some notion of 
 which has come to your ears. 
 
 Pa and ma were both dead, died in the same 
 year, him from cold and over working the night 
 of the rope-walk fire when so many houses were 
 threatened, and ma from lung fever a short 
 time after. I was left comfortable, plenty to 
 live on in my quiet way. The house was mine, 
 and I kept right on there. But I didn't have 
 enough to do, that was my great trouble. There 
 was a garden, but I didn't care much for garden- 
 ing; I raised a few vegetables, and I had a small 
 posy patch, but they almost took care of them- 
 selves, and I hired Joe Burdick to do the hard 
 part of the work. I tried to help in the church, 
 but there wasn't really much to do there. They 
 didn't have so many ways of church work then 
 with all kinds of unions and societies and asso- 
 ciations, and a Christian Endeavorer had never 
 even been heard of in Stonington them times. I 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 105 
 
 went to Sewing Society every Wednesday after- 
 noon, and had it at my house when it came my 
 turn. I got subscribers for The Messenger and 
 carried it 'round and distributed tracts when 
 they wanted me to. I worked for the fair when 
 they held it, and generally had a table, and 
 was always regular at meeting Sundays, and to 
 Thursday evening lecture and Saturday night 
 prayer-meeting. They never had any of these 
 clubs for ladies they have everywheres these 
 days where they get things out of books about 
 pictures and politics, religion and geography, 
 copy it all out on clean, nice paper tied together 
 with ribbon and read it to the meeting. Nor 
 the other kind where they study all winter about 
 some big poetry-writer and guess what he meant 
 by some verses that don't seem to have any 
 sense at all. More'n likely he didn't mean 'em 
 to have any. Clubs like that would have been real 
 musical to me them days and helped pass the 
 time wonderful. Women's clubs they call them 
 now. I should like to have seen the body that 
 would have dast to speak of me or any of the 
 best Stonington ladies as women those days. 
 We was ladies and lived up to it, or meant to. 
 Might about as well have called us females. 
 
io6 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 So, some ways or other, Just when I don't 
 recollect, as I said before, it come into my head 
 that I'd be an author. I guess it was reading 
 some story in a paper, or maybe a magazine, 
 that made me think I could write something 
 about as good. At any rate, the notion came, 
 and came to stay. 
 
 My first piece was to be a story, and I thought 
 it all out before I began to write. I had some 
 common sense, so I made up my mind at once 
 that I must lay it in just such a place as I'd 
 lived in all my days, for that was the only kind 
 of country I knew enough about. It was to be 
 nigh the salt water, amongst the seaweed, the 
 boats, the whale ships, and sailors. The story 
 was to be called after the principal character, 
 the hero, as the books say. 'Twas to be named 
 "Egbert Winchester." That sounded real well 
 to me. There was a Lord Egbert in a book I'd 
 been reading, and I had an acquaintaince over 
 to Westerly whose middle name was Winchester, 
 from a place in Massachusetts. I wrote the 
 title big and plain at the top of my first sheet 
 of foolscap and begun. 
 
 Then come the first surprise and riddle of all 
 the riddles and surprises that followed. I was 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 107 
 
 setting in the east room, as we called it, the 
 pleasantest, homeyist room in the house, I always 
 thought. It looked out on the salt water, which 
 was sort of grayish-blue that day, streaky and 
 tumbly, for there was quite a blow. John Almy's 
 boat, dark green with the name Lizzie M in red, 
 and Ed. States's with a white stripe 'round it, and 
 a dory or two, was bobbing up and down by the 
 stakes they was tied to. Betsy Hallam's three 
 boys was wading nigh the shore, and Joe Hub- 
 bard running up and down Stanton's dock with 
 Leo, his dog. Thinks I to myself, " I'll just be- 
 gin my story by describing what I see from the 
 window now, just exactly as it is." So I dipped 
 my pen in the ink-bottle and set off. The first 
 words was to be — I'd composed it in my head — 
 like this, "I gazed upon the stormy sea and the 
 sandy shore." But what do you think I set down 
 instead? My writing run exactly this way: "I 
 gazed upon the distant hills with the clouds 
 around their tops." 
 
 "Mercy me!" I says to myself, "what on earth 
 is the matter with me ? Hills! There ain't any 
 in sight, ain't hardly one in reach except Lan- 
 tern Hill, and that ain't high enough to have 
 clouds around it. I really believe I must have 
 
io8 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 been napping and dreamt I was in a foreign 
 land." 
 
 I took another sheet and begun again, taking 
 a good squint first at the water and the boats, 
 the whole picture I had looked out on so many 
 times — all my born days, in fact. But, as I 
 turned away from looking and dropped my eyes 
 down to the white paper, the whole pictur', so 
 nat'ral and homey, sort of faded away even from 
 remembering, and I was looking on mountain- 
 tops way down below me, fur-ofiE ponds and 
 streams, real little in the distance, and soft, 
 white, woolly clouds down amongst 'em hiding 
 some of 'em from sight. I rubbed my eyes, but 
 it didn't help, and I see it was inside my head 
 and mind the trouble was. I never had been 
 nervy and fussy about myself. I had the Han- 
 cox common sense — my mother was a Hancox, 
 you know — and I wasn't easy flustered, but 't 
 was a mite upsetting. 
 
 I lay down my pen and says to myself, " Now, 
 Prudence Shaw, it's time you stopped this non- 
 sense. Give up your composing stories for this 
 time and try to compose yourself." 
 
 We didn't have all these soothing medicines 
 then that folks take nowadays every time they 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 109 
 
 feel cross or tired of doing nothing or mad at 
 somebody. But we had tea, dreadful good tea, 
 brought straight across from Chiny and such tea 
 districts, and that was real comforting. I went 
 into the kitchen and made a pot of my best com- 
 pany Hyson, and I drank two cups. Then I 
 laid down on the sofa and tried to doze off. 
 But I couldn't. Spite of the tea — and I'd made 
 it good and strong — I was wide-awake, thinking 
 hard and seeing strange things as if I remembered 
 'em plain and clear. But they was things I never 
 had seen in all my born days. For always, al- 
 ways, every single time, I was up on the moun- 
 tains, high mountains, too, looking down from 
 high up, not straight across water as I'd done 
 all my life over to Watch Hill and the Hum- 
 mocks and Fisher's Island. I'd try hard, with 
 my eyes tight shut, to think of something nat'ral 
 such as I'd looked out at only a few hours before. 
 I'd say to myself: "Don't you remember that 
 handsome sunset you saw Tuesday from the par- 
 lor window, when it went down, a big red ball, 
 behind Noah Cheesebro's store, with the sky all 
 yellow-gilt 'round it, and how it dropped into the 
 water nigh Cyrus Pendleton's wharf ? Or can't 
 you seem to see the Tiger coming in from her 
 
no A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 long whaling voyage as she did a spell back, and 
 the sailors hurrying ashore? Can't you most 
 smell the hot tar in those big iron pots at the 
 wharf, mixed with the salty seaweed and lots of 
 other smells you've known and loved all your 
 life ? Just stop and pictur' out the breakwater, 
 the rope-walk, and the old lighthouse down to 
 the Point, can't ye now?" Maybe for a minute 
 I could bring it up and sense it, but before I 
 could catch it to hold and look at plain 'twould 
 fade out like a nice dream you want to think of 
 when you wake up in the morning sometimes. 
 And there, instead, would be great rough black 
 rocks, all sizes and shapes, acres and acres of 
 them, as far as I could see, deep dark hollows 
 where I couldn't see the bottom, with sides like 
 walls of stone, steep and slippery. And way, 
 way off in the distance, holes in the clouds 
 would show me ponds shiny as looking-glass, 
 looking no bigger than saucers, rivers just as 
 shiny, like lines of silver wire, and little play- 
 thing villages with mites of doll-houses in 'em. 
 There wasn't any salt, fishy, seaweedy smell, 
 but while I was seeing — or remembering — ^with 
 my eyes shut tight there'd seem to be such a 
 different air but every bit as nice and even more 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER iii 
 
 nat'ral, a strong, bracing, high-up air that made 
 me catch my breath and think of heaven and 
 everything high and big and deep. Winds that 
 most took me off my feet, thick wet fog without 
 a bit of salt in it, shutting out every single thing 
 from sight, and then, in a jiffy, lifting up like a 
 curtain at a show so I could see all the wonders 
 of the world for a minute before it come down 
 with a run and hid it all. Oh, where had I seen 
 all this before or ever dreamt or read about it! 
 I couldn't tell; it beat me. 
 
 But I wouldn't give up. I was just crazy to 
 write that story. I thought of it every hour of 
 the day and it kept me awake nights. Seemed 
 as if it was all inside my head on to the very end 
 of the last chapter. I felt it swelling and grow- 
 ing and trying to get out and be writ down, till 
 I thought my brain couldn't stand it a minute 
 longer but must bust open. I've often won- 
 dered if all authors feel that way when they're 
 thinking up a story or composing a piece of 
 poetry. 
 
 Bimeby I see there was no use struggling, I 
 must write it some ways. And as I couldn't 
 make it go at all as a Stonington sort of seashore, 
 salt-water story, why, I must just lay it in the 
 
112 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 mountains where it seemed to want to start out 
 and do the best I could. 
 
 I knew some authors did that way, and writ 
 about places and things they'd never seen in all 
 their lives, so why shouldn't I try it? 
 
 I began over again and let my story, the be- 
 ginning of it anyway, lay in the mountains, and 
 most of it on the top of the highest mountain 
 amongst 'em. I grew dreadful fond of that hill. 
 It was queer how I got to feeling I'd lived there 
 myself and knew it just as well as my own Con- 
 necticut home. It was a strange place, too, 
 nothing all over it but rocks, acres and acres of 
 them. Stonington had a good many, and I'd 
 always thought it about as stony as any district 
 could be. But, my ! Its soil looked as if it had 
 been strained through a cullender compared to 
 the land up there I was writing about. There 
 wasn't any land to speak of, 'twas all rocks. 
 They were all shapes, all sizes, close together, 
 crowded, for miles and miles, I should say. On 
 some of them there was a kind of mossy covering, 
 grayish or greeny or yellow, and there was whitish 
 parts to some of them looking in the sun like 
 loaf-sugar, and there was little bits of looking- 
 glass stuff thin as paper peeling off of some of 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 113 
 
 the stones. 'Twas a wild, lonesome, uncivilized- 
 looking place, and yet there appeared to be a 
 house up there, right on the very top of the hill, 
 and I was in it with the folks I was writing about. 
 There wasn't anything else, not a tree of any 
 kind, nor even a bush, no garden, nor, as far as 
 I could tell, no blowth of any kind. 
 
 But I could see a road, quite a good wagon- 
 road, though real sloping and crooked, going 
 down from a mite below the house. Up to the 
 end of my first chapter though, I hadn't been 
 on that road and hadn't an idee where it went 
 or what was on it. But I had a feeling all the 
 time that the story had to do with that road, 
 that something very particular and interesting 
 was to happen on it or nigh it. I wanted dread- 
 fully to know what it was. But one trouble 
 about writing a book yourself is that, however 
 much excited you be over it, you can't turn to 
 the last page to see how it's coming out. No, 
 not any more than you can in your own life. 
 You've got to live that first before you know 
 how it ends. Well, at that very time, as I'd 
 finished the first chapter of my story — it was 
 all about scenery and such, as most stories be 
 — and I'd begun a fresh page with Chapter II 
 
114 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 at the top, something else very amazing hap- 
 pened. 
 
 I got a letter one morning in a writing I didn't 
 know. 'Twas postmarked Bridgton, Me., a 
 place I'd never seemed to hear of. When I 
 opened it I found it was from Mary York, a 
 kind of relation of mine on pa's side. She spent 
 one year in Stonington with 'Lijah Shaw's folks, 
 and went to school with me at Miss Faxon's. I 
 never had heard from her since, though I'd al- 
 ways liked her, and 'twas real pleasant to see 
 her writing again. And what do you think she 
 wrote about ? She said she'd been looking over 
 old things in a trunk up garret and she'd come 
 across a book-mark of perforated cardboard I'd 
 worked myself and give to her when she went 
 away. It had "Remember me" on it in red 
 worsted, and was sewed on a green ribbon. It 
 brought back the old times, she said, and she'd 
 been thinking about them and me ever since and 
 wishing she could see me. She said she'd been 
 spending two seasons in New Hampshire at a 
 house on the top of Mt. Washington, helping the 
 pastry cook and so on. She liked it up there, 
 and it would be dreadful nice if she could have 
 me with her this time. They wanted somebody 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 115 
 
 to help with the sewing and make souvenirs to 
 sell to the sightseers and all, and why wouldn't 
 I come and take the place ? Well, I didn't need 
 to work for my living, but, as I said before, I 
 didn't have enough to do at home. I liked 
 change, too, real well and never'd got much of 
 it in all my life. So, to make a long story short, 
 I decided to go, and I went. 
 
 Somehow, when I was thinking it over and 
 making up my mind, it never come into my 
 head about that story of mine and how it was 
 all about mountains and such. I was so busy 
 getting ready and planning ahead that I didn't 
 touch the writing at all, so there wasn't any- 
 thing to remind one of the queer idees that had 
 kept coming over me and making pictur's before 
 my eyes when I was composing that story of 
 mine. I put it into my trunk, though, with 
 my writing things, to carry along. Never mind 
 about the journey, the longest by a good sight 
 I'd ever took. You know every step of it your- 
 self, but it took longer then than it does now. 
 Mary was to meet me in Portland, and she did. 
 The rest of the way we was together and how 
 we did talk! It was most of it about old times 
 in Stonington, the school and the girls and boys, 
 
ii6 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 and who was married and who was dead and 
 all that. 
 
 So there wasn't room for any talk about the 
 place we were bound for and what it looked 
 like. 'Twas pouring rain and a high wind when 
 we got to Gorham. Driving up the moun- 
 tain I had enough to do keeping my bonnet 
 on — my head, too, I might say — and hold- 
 ing my wrappings 'round me to think how 
 things looked even if I could have seen 'em. 
 But with the rain and fog and me wearing spec- 
 tacles, as I did from a young one, and them too 
 wet to see through, why, there wasn't any scen- 
 ery or views for me the whole day. That 
 weather lasted three whole days. Fog, fog, fog, 
 I never see such fog. It was as wet as pouring 
 rain and thicker than hasty pudding. You 
 couldn't see an inch further than the window- 
 glass. But I had plenty to do, unpacking and 
 getting things to rights, learning what my work 
 was to be, and making friends with the folks 
 in the house. Mis' Rogers kept it then, a real 
 smart, capable woman and friendly with us all. 
 There was a nice set of help, mostly New Hamp- 
 shire girls, and I felt to home right away. The 
 third day after we got there when I first looked 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 117 
 
 out in the morning 'twas the same kind of 
 weather, thick fog and nothing to see. I was 
 working 'round my room about ten o'clock, 
 when Mary York came running in and she 
 says, "Just look out of your window now, it's 
 clearing." 
 
 I should think it was! Such a sight! The 
 fog was running up like a curtain at a show 
 and there, there — Oh, it's no use trying to 
 tell about it, you know as well as anybody in 
 the world what's to be seen up there at such a 
 time, but even you can't really describe it, now 
 can you ? It took my breath away, and I didn't 
 say one word, only looked and looked. 'Twas 
 amazing, wonderful, splendid, and all, but that 
 wasn't what knocked me over, scared me so. 
 'Twas because it wasn't a new thing to me; I'd 
 seen it all, all, every speck of it before. 
 
 The very first word I said when Mary looked 
 at me to see how I took it was " Oh, how nat'ral, 
 how nat'ral!" 
 
 "Nat'ral," she says, "I should say 'twas sort 
 of unnat'ral to anybody that had lived all their 
 life down by salt water, Stonington way. You 
 never dreamt of a sight like this, I guess, did 
 you?" And I says, "That's just what I have." 
 
ii8 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 Just then down came the fog, shutting every- 
 thing out; some one called Mary from the back- 
 stairs, and off she run. I stood stock still for a 
 minute and then I went over to my trunk. I 
 took out the papers and writing things I'd left 
 in the tray, 'mongst them that story of mine. 
 And I read it over, that first chapter — the only 
 one, in fact, so far. Well, 'twas hard to believe; 
 I couldn't understand it. It's just as hard to 
 believe now, and I've never got to understand- 
 ing it yet. For there it was all written out, 
 weeks before, by me, myself, bom and raised 
 down by the salt water with never a high hill 
 in sight, and 'twas as good an account of what 
 I'd been seeing from my window on the top of 
 that sightly mountain with its head above the 
 clouds as a body could write with it all before 
 their eyes. 
 
 I was scared, as I said, but kind of excited 
 and worked up, too. But, most of all, I was just 
 crazy to go on with that story and see what 
 would happen in it and how it would all come 
 out. I'd read about great authors and their 
 ways, how they'd throw themselves into their 
 work, forgetting everything else in the world 
 and letting their wives and children starve 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 119 
 
 or freeze while they was writing at their books 
 or plays. Now I could understand it. 'Twas 
 genius, the books say, that made the writers 
 go on like that, but, dear mel I wasn't a 
 genius, was I? I had the Hancox smartness 
 and maybe the Shaw vanity and stuck-upness, 
 but — Well, it's a fact, I never had an idee 
 that I was anything out of the common. I 
 didn't know just what to think, for I'd never 
 felt as I' did now in all my born days before. 
 I was all nerved up, shaky, and upset, hot and 
 cold to once, till I could get at that writing. 
 Well, come afternoon, I got an hour or two to 
 myself, and I shut myself up in my bedroom 
 and begun. I had written Chapter II at the 
 top of the page before I left home, and now I 
 went on. Right off, the very minute I'd dipped 
 my pen in the bottle, I see this chapter was to 
 be about the heroine, the young lady of the 
 story. Now I had chosen her given name be- 
 fore I ever begun at all, just as I had Egbert 
 Winchester's, though I hadn't exactly settled 
 what her family name was to be. But, anyway, 
 she must be called Pamela, after somebody in a 
 beautiful book I'd read out of the village library. 
 I wrote the capital "P" and was going to follow 
 
I20 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 with an "a." But — as it's always saying in 
 "Cornelius, the Despot," "fancy my horror 
 and imagine my sensations" when I see I had 
 written an "r" and followed it with "udence." 
 So instead of Pamela I'd gone and called the 
 heroine by my own given name, Prudence. I 
 made up my mind I just wouldn't give in this 
 time. "If I do," I says to myself, "there'll be 
 no end to it. 'Twon't be my story at all, but 
 somebody else's, and I won't have any say about 
 it. It's ridic'lous, I won't have it." So I took 
 a fresh sheet, and begun again. But there! it 
 wasn't any use, I couldn't think of a single 
 thing to say about Pamela, but if I called her 
 Prudence she'd go all right, and my head was 
 crammed full of things to write about her. Of 
 course I give in. "It's genius, after all," I says, 
 " and you can't go against that, nobody ever did 
 and got along." So Prudence it was, and I 
 went on writing about her by that name. I 
 had made her up months before, and knew just 
 what sort of a young lady she was and what to 
 say about her. Tall and slim, what the story- 
 books call willowy — with real dark, silky hair, 
 waving like, and such a white satin skin with 
 just a mite of pink in the cheeks like Angelina 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 121 
 
 in the "Maid of the Castle," who had it "Hke 
 the interior of a seashell." That never seemed 
 to give a notion of pink cheeks to me, but then 
 maybe we didn't have that kind of seashell in 
 Stonington; mostly mussels and quahogs and. 
 periwinkles ours was. And she was to walk 
 sort of gliding, with a long silken train to her 
 dress traipsing along the floor behind her. Oh, 
 I can see her this minute as I had her made up 
 then, so stylish and highborn like and novelish. 
 But she never come out like that. When I went 
 to tell about her, all I could do, she was rather 
 short, and real fleshy. Her hair wasn't a bit 
 dark, but decided sandy; not red, you know, 
 but about the color of mine those times. Her 
 cheeks wouldn't have made even a story-writer 
 think of shells, for they was bright red and the 
 skin wasn't like white satin, 'less it was polka- 
 dot pattern, from the freckles. 
 
 "What in the land makes me tell of a girl 
 like this?" I says out loud, reading over what 
 I had written that day on the mountain. " She's 
 like a born and bred Stonington girl, and she 
 was to have been a city young lady, a summer 
 boarder at the Wadawannuck. Why, she might 
 be me myself for all there is like a real heroine." 
 
122 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 And she might; I see it plain as I went on. 
 For I did go on; I couldn't help it. It was 
 most like a crazy spell, though there never had 
 been any of that in our family; Zaccheus Han- 
 cox wasn't our branch. I wrote and wrote, 
 every minute I got to myself. The weather was 
 bad all that early season, and I couldn't have 
 got out much if I had felt like it, and I didn't 
 want to, a mite. I just wanted to keep on at 
 that story. In one way it was like living my 
 own life in a new and interesting way, for I see 
 more and more that the girl. Prudence, was me 
 in most ways. The sandy hair, red cheeks, 
 palish blue eyes, freckles and all were mine. 
 She was sort of fleshy, too, like the Hancoxes, 
 and walked quick and heavy like the Shaws. 
 And she was always up on a high mountain, 
 just like me. 
 
 But for all she favored me so strong in her 
 looks and ways there was things about that girl 
 dreadful different from me or any of my folks; 
 oh, terrible different. For one thing, she was 
 a Methodist and her family, too; now the Shaws, 
 and the Hancoxes, too — our branch, I mean — 
 were Congregational inside and out. And if 
 there was a sect they didn't like, it was the 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 123 
 
 Methodists; they was even worse than Baptists 
 to us all. 
 
 When I see my heroine was veering that way 
 I did my best to head her off. Seemed as if I 
 couldn't stand it to take my pen in hand and 
 write her over, as you might say, into that de- 
 luded denomination. But she went. Before I 
 could scarcely realize what she — or me — had 
 done, she was fairly in that sect, body and soul, 
 and happy in it, too. I stopped writing then, 
 put the sheets away in the tray of my trunk, and 
 made up my mind I'd never be an author. What 
 was the use, if I didn't have any influence at all 
 over my characters, and they done just what they 
 pleased, spite of me, when if they'd stopped to 
 think they'd never have been made at all nor 
 had a breath of life except for me, the authoress 
 of them all. I kept to that notion for a day or 
 so. I read up some Congregational books I had, 
 and thought over all the bad things I had ever 
 heard about Methodists and encouraged myself 
 not to give in. I says, " I just won't write a story 
 where the principal female character refuses up 
 and down to be what she is, or is meant to be by 
 her authoress. Just at that time — I suppose it 
 was fate or providentialness — I heard Almeny 
 
124 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 Perry, one of the waitresses, telling the other 
 girls that her minister was coming up next day. 
 Almeny was nigh about the nicest of the help, a 
 dreadful good, steady, religious girl, as we all 
 agreed. So I says to her that I was real glad 
 that he was coming, and would she mind intro- 
 ducing him to me as I wanted some help and 
 advice, and she said of course she would and 
 pleased to. 
 
 He came. Rev. Mr. West his name was, a pleas- 
 ant-spoken, nice-looking man, and Almeny took 
 me in to talk with him. Now, you see, I wasn't 
 going to tell hini about my story and all that, 
 only to speak about my own denomination and 
 its being better, of course, than any other, par- 
 ticular the Methodists. I thought he could sort 
 of strengthen me in the good work and help me 
 hold up my feeble hands. Nat'rally I took it 
 for granted he was a Congregational himself, 
 Almeny belonging to his church and she most 
 the best girl I knew. But when I laid the mat- 
 ter before him I see a queer sort of look come over 
 his featur's, pretty nigh a smile, and he says, 
 " I'm afraid, Miss Shaw, I should be a mite preju- 
 diced, advising you, as I'm a Methodist myself." 
 
 Land of the living! I never was so surprised 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 125 
 
 in all my bom days, and I've had more surprise 
 parties than most folks in my life. I couldn't 
 speak first off, and he see something how 'twas. 
 He spoke up real kind and he says, "So you 
 thought I was a Congregational, Miss Shaw, did 
 you ? " "Of course I did," I says, with the tears 
 coming, from the being disappointed and all. 
 "Why do you say 'of course' ? says he." 
 " Because you look so good," I burst out, "and 
 because Almeny — Oh, you don't mean to say 
 she's a Methodist, too." The earth's founda- 
 tions seemed shaken — I'm using words from 
 "Cornelius the Despot" again, Stonington lan- 
 guage don't seem good enough. I never, never 
 will forget how good that blessed man was in my 
 trial. He set by me and talked for quite a spell. 
 He didn't try to change my doctrines, not a mite. 
 It seemed he thought a good deal of the Congre- 
 gationals and had some relations in that denom- 
 ination. But he told me why he liked his own 
 sect best, and he did somehow make it plain that 
 it was the best in some ways, and when he went 
 away he promised to send me some books to help 
 me, and he did. And I read them, and Almeny 
 and me had lots of talks and — well, in less than 
 a fortnight, I found myself a Methodist heart 
 
126 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 and soul, the first Shaw — my branch — I'll en- 
 gage that ever accepted the views of what pa 
 always called "that deluded sect." 
 
 I hadn't touched my book all that time. I 
 was so stirred up and upset in my religious con- 
 victions, and I'd most forgot how I'd felt toward 
 my heroine, when one day I come across the 
 story in the tray of my trunk where I'd gone to 
 get a clean handkerchief. I did feel sort of 
 sheepish and ashamed like as I read it over. But 
 I owned up handsome and made it all right with 
 the other Prudence, my heroine, and begun writ- 
 ing again as if nothing had happened. It went 
 along real smooth for a spell, but then all of a 
 sudden there come up another little unpleasant- 
 ness. It wasn't no great of a trouble, but it put 
 me out of sorts. All the Shaws in the female 
 line, two or three generations 't any rate, had 
 been musical, sung in the choir, learnt singing 
 to scholars in school, and so on. And every 
 single one of them had sung "second," as we 
 called it then, alto was a word come later in our 
 part of the country. Grandma Shaw sung sec- 
 ond in the choir at Mystic for years, and Aunt 
 Angeline Clift come after her. I remember both 
 of them, and how low and deep their notes was. 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 127 
 
 Aunt Angie always said she could sing bass better 
 than her brother, Uncle Nathan, and I guess she 
 could, for he had rather a squeaky high-toned 
 voice at his lowest. I myself always sung sec- 
 ond, couldn't reach a high note anyways. And 
 now just as I was going to have my heroine sing- 
 ing to herself all alone in the twilight, sitting on 
 a big ragged rock on the mountain and looking 
 over to the west, just as I was about writing of 
 the "low, rich deep notes," I found myself telling 
 of the "high, shrill, sweet, treble voice." As 
 soon as I see what I'd wrote I crossed it right 
 out, set my teeth and wrote over again, meaning 
 this time to make that voice low enough and deep 
 enough so there wouldn't be any mistake, but — 
 what I wrote was like this : " Did any other being 
 ever reach such lofty, piercing heights as that 
 treble of hers got up to easy?" or to that effect, 
 you know. Treble ! and her a Shaw — for by that 
 time I knew she was a Shaw and meant to keep 
 her so. I slat that sheet of foolscap to one side, 
 and into my trunk tray went the whole pile of 
 writing. Well, you see what's coming, of course. 
 Not twenty-four hours after, as I was at work in 
 the linen-room singing to myself " Roll on, Silver 
 Moon," Mary York came along and she says: 
 
128 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 "Why, I didn't know you had such a good 
 treble voice, Prudence, thought you always sung 
 second. But you go higher than I can, seems 
 if." 
 
 And I did. By bedtime next day I was sing- 
 ing the highest of anybody in that house and tak- 
 ing treble parts in all the tunes. Then I gave up. 
 I see I'd started this girl of mine in life, and I'd 
 got to let her go on, and nothing I could do would 
 stop her or turn her. What's more, it looked as 
 if I'd got to follow in her steps, even if they 
 stomped on every belief and habit and way of 
 the Shaw family — our branch. She dressed in 
 pink. We'd always held that wasn't becoming, 
 the Shaws being all sandy-haired. I let her, not 
 opening my mouth. And that week Aunt Han- 
 nah Langworthy sent me a new neck ribbon of 
 bright rose pink. I tried it on, and somehow it 
 looked real nice, taking the sandy look out of my 
 hair instead of putting more in, and I wore it. 
 
 She ate shellfish that had been poison to us 
 Shaws from the creation of the world, Grandpa's 
 brother Ephraim dying from hard-shell crabs and 
 Cousin Priscilla Moss laying at death's door for 
 weeks from clam chowder. 'Course I found my- 
 self taking in Portland lobster within three days 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 129 
 
 after and relishing it. So on and on and on. 
 I've spun this out, and it sounds as if it took a 
 long time for it to happen. But it was only a 
 few weeks from beginning to end. 
 
 You see, I had not brought the hero in yet. I 
 just hated to introduce him for fear he'd go and 
 turn out something different from what I wanted 
 him. Way back in Stonington I'd dreamed about 
 him and he was — oh, such a noble-looking gentle- 
 man! 'Course, he was a city person and a sum- 
 mer boarder. Like Roanoke Lamont in "The 
 Disinherited," "no disfiguring toil had marred 
 his slender white hands," he was just aristocratic 
 all through. I'd stand firm about that, I says 
 to myself. If the heroine wanted to turn out a 
 country girl, well and good. But he should be 
 of high birth and stoop a good way down ,to lift 
 her to his wealth and station. 
 
 It come about so different. I told you I didn't 
 go out very much. I never was no great of a 
 walker, and nigh the hotel it was hard going, 
 dreadful stony and rough. I had seen the road 
 now that I had dreamed about in the beginning 
 of my book, a long sloping wagon-road going 
 down the mountain. You could see it from the 
 platform and the windows of the house. I never 
 
I30 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 looked down at it, but what I felt a queer, choky, 
 swallowy feeling as if something had happened to 
 me thereabouts or was going to, some day. I 
 couldn't scursely tell whether 'twas to be some- 
 thing good or sort of bad. It made my eyes get 
 all wet and fetched a ball up in my throat, and 
 yet there was something nice about it, too. Was 
 theprincipal characters going to meet somewheres 
 along that road, and maybe in terrible circum- 
 stances? 
 
 I guess I forgot to tell you that way back in 
 Stonington, before ever I put pen to paper, when 
 I was thinking up my story and just got to mak- 
 ing up the meeting for the first time of Pamela 
 and Egbert, there came into my head qmck and 
 sudden — that's the way great thoughts come, 
 they say — these singular words: "She held out 
 to him her left hand, for the other " 
 
 The idees stopped running like a candle going 
 out, and I was in the dark and hadn't the least 
 notion why she shook hands in that awk'ard way. 
 I thought it more than likely the next words would 
 have been "was stained with another's blood" or 
 "polluted by the touch of" — somebody or other, 
 probably a base wretch, or something of that sort. 
 
 One afternoon when I had an hour or two for 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 131 
 
 myself ahead of me I set down to my writing. 
 The other girls and boys that had leave to, had 
 gone off to walk; some down the Crawford 
 bridle path, some to Tuckerman's Ravine (a 
 good name for that dreadful scramble, Sim 
 Colton, the engineer, used to say, "for, if any- 
 thing will tiicker a man out, that climb will," 
 he says), and some down along that wagon- 
 road. I could see this last lot from my window 
 as I set there, strolling along, two by two mostly, 
 and passing out of sight 'round the bend, and 
 I wondered what was on ahead there and what 
 it was that had happened or was going to hap- 
 pen along that road, and if it was me it would 
 happen to or was only something in my book 
 and in the life of the made-up Prudence. Then 
 I began to write. I see right off I was going to 
 describe the hero. In fact, the chapter was to 
 be called by his name, and I must write that 
 down first of all at the top. It was to be Eg- 
 bert Winchester, you know. I wrote a big " E" 
 with a flourishy capital, and was just going to 
 follow it with a "g" when my pen sort of shook 
 a mite and I see I'd made a "z", and before I 
 had time to cross it out it run on quick. And 
 there, if you will believe it, instead of Egbert 
 
132 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 I'd gone and writ Ezry, a Bible name, you know, 
 but used common in Connecticut, and, I guess, 
 all over New England. Ezry! And him to be 
 a city gentleman, lofty as anything. Dear, 
 dear! Genius or not, I couldn't have it. I 
 crossed the whole word out with the blackest, 
 inkiest mark I could make and begun again. 
 The "E" come out all right and flourishy, but 
 the pen, spite of holding it tight, with my fingers 
 most down to the p'int, wriggled crooked and 
 made a "z," and then run on with "ra," and 
 there was Ezry over again, and I was mad, 
 ashamed, and terrible discouraged. "It ain't 
 any earthly use," I says, most crying, "but I'll 
 have to let it go now or I can't write at all. So 
 I'll just not take no notice of this, and say noth- 
 ing about the last name at present, maybe 
 bimeby when they've forgot about it I can slip 
 it in without them noticing." Who I meant by 
 "they" and "them" land knows! I suppose 
 I was alluding to the something or somebody 
 inside or outside of me that had someways took 
 charge of this story of mine. 
 
 The chapter begun by describing Ezry, as it 
 kept on calling him. And every single thing 
 went crooked and crossways. He ought to 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 133 
 
 have been tall, towering above his peers, but 
 he come out a mite below the average. I 
 wanted him lithe — that always seemed such a 
 splendid word to use — but he was actually 
 stocky, not precisely stout nor fleshy, but square- 
 built and strong-looking. His hair was to be 
 black as a raven's wing, and his eyes dark and 
 flashing. But my pen went and gave him kind 
 of lightish yellow, flaxy kind of hair, with eyes 
 of the commonest drab gray color, with palish 
 eyebrows and eyewinkers. And his hands! 
 Deary dear, how I struggled with them hands! 
 But whiten 'em and smooth 'em as much as I 
 could, they come out big and rough and brown, 
 with plenty of signs of hard work or what the 
 book called disfiguring toil. Yes, everything, 
 every single thing went wrong. He didn't stride 
 with a haughty air, but sort of loped along a bit 
 awkward; his features didn't wear a look of 
 proud disdain, but I own up 'twas a pleasant 
 expression, real friendly. And his clothes! 
 There, I can't even now — ^years afterwards — 
 talk about them and how different they turned 
 out from the clothes — garb, I mean — Egbert 
 Winchester was to have been dressed, I mean 
 attired, in. When he come in first with them 
 
134 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 on I dropped my pen, making a big blot, and 
 leaned back in my chair, putting my hands up 
 over my face. As it says in "Dominic Wych- 
 erly's Revenge," "a torrent of tears came to 
 my relief"; 'twas something of a torrent, for 
 my handkerchief was just sopping. I was so 
 terrible disappointed, you see. My last hope 
 of having this story my own work was gone. 
 I'd got nothing on earth to do with it. Call it 
 genius or what all, something was to work in- 
 side or outside of me, and it done what it was a 
 mind to. You'd think the easiest way out was 
 to stop writing, tear up the story, and give it up. 
 But I just couldn't. If you'd ever been an author 
 you'd know that. Write I must, my own way 
 if I could, but if not, why, somebody else's way. ' 
 If I could have made my heroine a real Pamela 
 and up to her name, I'd have been tickled to 
 pieces. But as I couldn't do that I'd got to 
 write about her anyways, Pamela, plain Pru- 
 dence, or be-she-who-she-be, as Aunt Libby 
 Howe used to say. And the same with my hero. 
 So the very next day I found myself at my 
 scribbling again and picturing out Ezry, he that 
 was Egbert. Different as he was from my in- 
 tended, as you might call him, it was queer 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 135 
 
 how interested I got in him and how I kind of 
 liked him. He really was easier to get along 
 with than Egbert would have been, and I felt 
 more at home with him. So I went slow over 
 the describing him, and I hadn't even introduced 
 him and Prudence to each other when my writ- 
 ing was interrupted sudden. I remember the 
 very line I'd finished that time. No wonder, 
 for I've read it over since, lots of times. These 
 was my last words: 
 
 " How little did my hero dream that fair morn 
 that on that very road he was to meet his fate!" 
 
 That road again, I says to myself. I must 
 go down there some day and see what it's like, 
 and why in the land it always gives me such a 
 stirred-up feeling to think about it. Just then 
 I see it was raining; it most generally was that 
 season. I guess falling weather ain't ever very 
 scurse up there. My window was open, and I 
 went to pull it down. The sash was wet and 
 slippery and somehow slid through my fingers. 
 I tried to stop it by putting my hand under it 
 and shoving up. But down it come right on 
 two of my fing&rs. There's no use telling how 
 it hurt. Most everybody at some period of their 
 lives has had such a thing happen, and if there's 
 
136 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 anyone that hasn't, why, they'd better not hear 
 about it till it comes. My hand was no use 
 to me for quite a spell, tied up, and dreadful 
 painful. So my writing wasn't took up. I was 
 most sick for a few days with the ache and the 
 fevery state it kept me in, and I scursely thought 
 once of the story and where I'd left off. 
 
 It come out real pleasant one day after dinner 
 and Mis' Rogers urged me to go out and take a 
 walk. " Go a piece down the road, the carriage 
 road," she says, "you'll get a good view of the 
 Glen House and all, it's so clear and it will do 
 you good." So I went. My hand was stiU 
 tied up, but it didn't ache much, and I really 
 enjoyed things. The sun was shining, and it 
 was real still for the Summit, just enough of a 
 soft blow to cool you. And the view! Now 
 tell me, is there a sightlier, viewlier spot on the 
 Lord's earth than that mountain top at its best ? 
 I was looking out at it as I went along, remem- 
 bering how it surprised me the first time I see 
 it way back in Stonington and noticing how 
 exactly like that same pictur' it was to-day. 
 But somehow it didn't bother me or make me 
 wonder how it come about. I just took it as 
 it was, feeling quiet and dozey and still and 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 137 
 
 dreadful contented. I'd forgot my wondering 
 about this road and what was to happen along it, 
 when I see a figure way down, round a bend, 
 coming slowly up the road. 'Twas too far o£E 
 to know what kind of a person 'twas, and I didn't 
 much care. I was thinking of other things, 
 and I wasn't ever very scary, so I just kept 
 strolling along. As I got nigher I see it was a 
 man, and when he was close to I see he was 
 young, and I kind of liked his looks. A nice, 
 healthy, strong-looking country fellow, some 
 stocky, with a brown, pleasant sort of face. He 
 had on rough kind of clothes, a dark-blue flannel 
 shirt, and no collar nor necktie, and he was 
 carrying his coat on his arm. He was het up 
 with the climbing, and his cloth cap wks pushed 
 back so I could see his yellow hair, a mite curly, 
 laying sort of dampish on his forehead, and I 
 liked his looks, as I said. Just as we was going 
 to pass each other, he stepped a mite out one 
 side and I done the same, and my foot slipped on 
 a loose stone so's I most fell over. I reached 
 out my hand, my left one, of course, the other 
 being tied up, and catched at the man's sleeve 
 without thinking what I was doing. He took 
 hold of my arm real firm and steadied me, and 
 
138 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 I was all right in a minute. And then I says 
 "Thank you." Them was the very first words 
 I ever spoke to him. And his'n to me was 
 "Don't mention it." 
 
 He asked me something about the way and 
 how far it was to the hotel, and then I went on 
 down and he went on up. 
 
 Now I see you're looking ahead, and back, too, 
 and deciding right ofif that this was the great 
 thing that was to happen on that road to the 
 heroine of my name. But that's no sign that I 
 done the same. I didn't. True as I live, my 
 novel or anything relating to it never come into 
 my head that whole afternoon. I went on 
 quite a piece before I turned, and I won't deny 
 I thought quite a lot about that young man, for 
 I liked his looks. When I was going back, a mite 
 out of breath, climbing up, all of a sudden I 
 come right on him round a turn, sitting on a 
 stone side of the road. Somehow we spoke to 
 each other way back that first day as if we was 
 old friends, seems to me. And he walked along 
 by my side. He was real polite and good- 
 mannered, and told me his name right off. 
 Whaples it was, and he was from Lebanon, he 
 said. "This State?" I asked him, and when 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 139 
 
 he says, "No, ma'am, in the State of Connecti- 
 cut," I wanted to scream. It was so good to 
 see some one from the old Nutmeg State. " Call 
 it that, if you want to," Uncle Nate used to say, 
 "but there ain't any greater," that being a kind 
 of joke, you know. 
 
 Well, we felt most like first cousins after that, 
 and talked a streak. Mary York said after- 
 wards she never in all her born days was so took 
 aback as when she seen me that time coming 
 up to the house with that stranger, him and me 
 talking and acting so friendly and intimate. 
 'Twas queer, I own up, for I never had cared 
 much for beaux and such things, like other girls. 
 Well, Mr. Whaples liked the place and said he'd 
 admire to stay. They chanced to need another 
 man at the stables just that very time and he 
 took the place. 'Twas the old story, you see; 
 I liked his looks, as I said before, and I liked 
 them better as the days went on. I liked his 
 ways, too, and it wasn't long before I see he 
 liked mine. I let him know the worst first-o£f. 
 That was always a real Hancox habit, not put- 
 ting on company manners to deceive folks as 
 some families do. He told me he was a Con- 
 gregational and all the Whapleses — his branch 
 
I40 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 — was that, too. I owned right up, honest, that 
 spite of my bringing up and the views all my 
 family held, I was a Methodist, though, there 
 not being any church of that persuasion — nor 
 any other, to tell the truth — on the Summit I 
 hadn't yet took the last step. He didn't seem 
 a bit put out, though he didn't say anything. 
 A spell after, as we were sitting talking with 
 some of the help, somebody asked him what 
 church he belonged . to. He says real quiet, 
 without looking my way, he says, " My folks are 
 Congregational, and I used to hold with that 
 kind; but now I'm thinking of going over to the 
 Methodists," he says. 
 
 I told him, too, how I'd gone back on lots of 
 the family beliefs, how I'd raised my voice from 
 a low second to a high treble; that I'd took to 
 wearing pink that no Shaw before me had ever 
 held as becoming; and how I even eat shellfish 
 that had always before been to our family like 
 pork to the Jews. It didn't make any differ- 
 ence to him, nor change his favorable views of 
 me and my ways. All I done, he thought, was 
 just about right, and what I didn't care about 
 he didn't set much by himself. 
 
 But he had one very singular way of speaking. 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 141 
 
 I couldn't seem to understand it. When I'd tell 
 him some of my beliefs or holdings, he'd say 
 sort of low to himself like, "I knew it," and 
 really sometimes he'd show he knew some of 
 my ways by speaking of them before I'd told 
 him about them. I begun to wonder. 'Twasn't 
 many hours after I met him first that I found 
 out what his given name was. 'Twas Ezry. 
 That ought to have come over me as a big sur- 
 prise, you'd think, but it didn't. Sing'lar as it 
 may seem, I never thought at first how strange 
 and fulfilling 'twas, for my book and that hero 
 of mine had gone clean out of my head. You 
 see, a more interesting story with him and me 
 for principal characters, had begun right off 
 and there. He knew what my name was the 
 first day, for he heard the girls calling me by 
 it. 'Twas then I noticed for the first time that 
 queer habit of his'n, for when he heard Ellen 
 Hawes call out "Did your walk do you good, 
 Prudence?" he just says, low to himself like, 
 "I knew it." Somehow, every time I heard 
 him say that, a choky, swallowy feeling would 
 come over me, but I couldn't tell why. 
 
 I was with him the first time he ever see 
 that mournful object, the gravestone of Lizzie 
 
142 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 Bourne. I hadn't got used to that story then, 
 a dreadful sad one, and as I told him about the 
 poor girl and how she lost her life up there my 
 eyes was wet and my voice shaky. He didn't 
 seem worked up much and not a bit surprised. 
 He just says, low like, to himself, "I knew it," 
 and I didn't dast ask what he meant. So 
 'twas about everything, I couldn't show him 
 anything new. Seemed 's if he was interested, 
 but only like somebody that's come back to a 
 place he used to know well. The Tip-top 
 House, the Northern Peaks, the lights over to 
 Berlin on a clear night, even that surprisingest 
 sight you sometimes see, the shadow of the 
 mountain itself showing against the afternoon 
 sky, they was no news to him. He'd just look 
 at 'em calm like and then say soft, "I knew it." 
 Love matters moves along dreadful fast up 
 on that mountain. I don't scursely know why 
 'tis. Sometimes I think the fog — there's such 
 lots of it — is kind of soft and mellering, and 
 maybe that has something to do with it. Or 
 again, p'raps it's what they call the altitude, 
 the high-upness, you know, that sort of raises 
 your feelings and draws up your heart. I don't 
 just know, but 't any rate there's a dreadful lot 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 143 
 
 up there of courting and keeping company and 
 making plans for settling down and all. They've 
 got a way of measuring what they call the v'loc- 
 ity of the wind, but there ain't a machine ever 
 made that can measure off the v'locity of some 
 of the sweethearting on that elevation o' land. 
 It comes to a head terrible soon. I don't hold 
 with telling all about your own private affairs 
 to other folks, not even to a good friend like 
 you, though I don't disremember a single thing 
 that happened them first days. But one time 
 before things were settled betwixt him and me, 
 we was talking about the time before we'd even 
 seen each other, as folks always do, you know, 
 and there come out a wonderful, amazing thing. 
 That's what you heard about, I guess. For I've 
 told it a good many times to show these up- 
 and-down folks that won't believe anything they 
 don't see with their own eyes or hear with their 
 own two ears, and can't catch hold of with their 
 two hands. As some old book says — I don't 
 think it's the Bible, but it might be— "there's 
 more happenings in the heavens and the earth 
 than Horatio," whoever he was, or any living 
 soul ever dreamed about. 
 We was sitting on the rocks looking out on 
 
144 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 what they call the Lake of the Clouds, way, way 
 down below us. We hadn't been saying any- 
 thing for a spell — there's times when you don't 
 care about talking, you know — ^but all of a sud- 
 den Ezry says, 
 
 "I remember sitting here with you and look- 
 ing down on that water more'n a year back." 
 
 "Remember what!" I says, all took aback, 
 "why, we hadn't neither of us ever seen this 
 mountain a year back." 
 
 " I had," he says, very quiet like, his eyes look- 
 ing as if he was sort of dozey or dreaming, " I had, 
 and it was just like 'tis now, and you were here 
 and just what you be now." I was a mite scared, 
 he looked so queer and talked so sing'lar. I put 
 my hand on his arm and kind of shook him. 
 " What in the land is the matter of you ? " I says; 
 " are you dreaming ? " 
 
 "No," he says, taking hold of my hand and 
 looking as if he'd just waked up, "but I guess I 
 was for a spell nigh a year ago. Dreams don't 
 always go by contraries, as they say, for mine's 
 come true." Well, then he told me a story, sing'- 
 lar uncommon story 'twas. I couldn't for the 
 world understand it no more'n I can at this very 
 minute. I won't spin it out if I can help it, but 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 145 
 
 it was like this. Down in Connecticut, about a 
 year before, he'd, sudden like, felt that he was 
 built for an author, and must go to writing a 
 book. 'Twas to be a sort of novel, and all the 
 characters was to be first-class city folks. But 
 it was to start in Lebanon, his own place and the 
 only one he knew much about. 'Twas to be 
 called " Ethelwynd Wilmot." He told me how 
 he begun and how he tried to set down the pictur' 
 he see out of his window. Lebanon's a inland 
 place, you know, rolling country and not a sight 
 of salt water around. But it was my experience 
 over again. He kept writing about salt water, 
 rocks, seaweed, and ships, things he'd never seen 
 in all his bom days. 
 
 Then come a part different from mine. Being 
 a man, he was stronger, I suppose, and he broke 
 away from the seashore part. But instead of 
 coming home to Lebanon and the things he knew, 
 what did he do but start of writing about high 
 mountains 'most like the Alps he'd learnt about 
 at school, and him being on the very toppest of 
 all. And then the time he had with his charac- 
 ters! 'Twas me over again. His stylish, high- 
 toned hero came out a common country fellow, 
 looks, clothes, and all. When he was telling 
 
146 A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 
 
 about that and how mad it made him and how 
 when he tried to write his name Ethelwynd, the 
 pen would wiggle and go crooked, making a"z" 
 and coming out Ezry, his own given name, I be- 
 gun to feel scared. Oh, what if he said he was 
 maii and disappointed when his heroine wouldn't 
 stay stylish and citified and — I wouldn't wait. 
 "What about the heroine, Ezry?" I says, a mite 
 bashful. 
 
 "Well, she was to have been named Pauline, 
 like some one in a play I'd read, and dreadful 
 proud and queenly and all." 
 
 " Was she tall and had real dark waving hair, 
 and her skin like satin with her cheeks like the 
 interior of a seashell?" I asks quick and excited. 
 
 "Why, certainly," he says, dreadful surprised. 
 
 " Was she willowy ? " says I. 
 
 "Some willowy," he says. 
 
 "And, O Ezry!" I asks, my voice shaking, 
 "did she glide with haughty steps?" 
 
 " She done that," he says; " how'd you know ? " 
 
 " That same girl ! " I sobs out, " and I just can't 
 bear her, poking in every time where she isn't 
 wanted. And you — ^you — liked her?" I asks, 
 for I couldn't bear what the books call the ter- 
 rible suspense another minute. 
 
A PROPHETIC ROMANCER 147 
 
 "You bet I didn't," he says, so loud and de- 
 cided I couldn't help believing him. "I never 
 liked her, never felt to home with her for one sin- 
 gle minute. I only thought a real heroine had 
 ought to be that kind. They generally be in 
 books, you know. But I never wrote about her 
 after all, for she come out all different." 
 
 "How was she different?" I says, aching to 
 know and yet kind of scary about it, too. 
 
 "Why," he says, "she come out just exactly 
 the sort of girl to make a rough common chap 
 like the hero (he was me over again, you know) 
 happy. I've thought about that girl every day 
 of my life since she come into that novel of mine, 
 but I never see her in the flesh till — that day I 
 come up the carriage-road. Prudence, and met 
 —you!" 
 
 And then he Mercy me! there's pa at the 
 
 door and the table not set. Wipe your feet, Ezry, 
 and come right in. I've got company, you see. 
 

 ^