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t LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 
 
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 J UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 
 
?^'g5;c- 
 
 D E R W E N T; 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 YOUNG LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 ^^% 
 
 >>x>^ 
 
 By JOHN CHESTER. ; / ' '' A''YR!GHT \<\ 
 
 'J a', 
 
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 The scenes of my early life hare crept into my mind 
 like breezes blown from the Spice Islands. 
 
 COLERIDSB. 
 
 r/ 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
 
 770 Broadway, New York. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1S73, by 
 
 A. D. F. Eandolph & Co., 
 
 In the Ofllce of the Librarian of Conc^-ess at Washington, D. C. 
 
 Edward O Jenkins, 
 
 PRIHTER JND STEREOTYFER. 
 
 20 North WUliam Street, N. Y. 
 
Childhood and youth are to age a storehouse of 
 memories. All the incidents and feelings of our young 
 life — our pastimes, our haps and mishaps, our reveries, 
 our penchants, our schools and schoolmates, our attach- 
 ments and dislikes, the characters we note and study, 
 the manners and customs of the time — all these and 
 many more things, impress themselves so deeply on the 
 memory, that they never perish from it. If, during the 
 busy period of middle life, they are lost sight of for the 
 time, yet in the evening of our days, they reappear with 
 great distinctness, and are often adverted to, if not 
 habitually dwelt on. 
 
 It would not be of much interest to the reader to 
 
 know how many years have passed over the writer of , 
 
 these sketches. My memory goes back distinctly to the 
 
 beginning of this century, and a little way, faintly, into 
 
 the last ; how far, I cannot say ; for who can tell which 
 
 is the very earliest of the things he can remember } I 
 
 can return, in thought, along the pathway of my life, 
 
 (3) 
 
4 
 
 through sunshine and shade, till, arriving at limits un- 
 defined and visionary, I seem to lose myself in the light 
 of a cloudless morning. 
 
 ^ I shall ever think myself most fortunate in having 
 been brought up in the country, and on a farm. Around 
 me, in my childhood, were green fields, almost elysian in 
 my young eyes, sparkling waters, musical cascades and 
 brooks, lights and shadows, old groves, ravines, pathless 
 woods — all the poetry of nature. To these advantages 
 were added the wholesome industries of farm life, 
 kind neighbors, good examples, and the absence of the 
 peculiar temptations of cities. 
 
 It is of young life in such circumstances that these 
 pages speak. They comprise a miscellany of sketches 
 and reflections intended for the young or the old, and 
 such as any one whose early life is, or was, in the 
 country, may make in some degree his own ; and where 
 the writer himself appears in them, it is not with any 
 
 ' autobiographical intent, but only because he finds it 
 easier to use the first person than the third. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Paoe. 
 
 Dekwent, 9 
 
 OuE Home, 19 
 
 Fetchikg Fire, 25 
 
 Going to Mixl, 33 
 
 A Starlight Ride, 41 
 
 The Blinding Wood, 47 
 
 Childhood S^lns Souci, 55 
 
 Our Farm, 61 
 
 Farm Work, 67 
 
 Fetching Cows, 85 
 
 Our Derwent School, 99 
 
 Jack-o'-Lanterns, 121 
 
 The River, 131 
 
 Annals of the Meadow, 149 
 
 Cattle, 159 
 
 Sheep, 175 
 
 Dogs, 185 
 
 Birds, 209 
 
 Studies in the Woods 237 
 
 A New House, 253 
 
 Turnpikes, 271 
 
 Derwent Chabactebs, 285 
 
 The Old ThatJksgiving, 303 
 
 Saturday Night, 313 
 
 The Country Sunday, 325 
 
 The Two Great Educators 349 
 
I. 
 
 DERWENT. 
 
DERWENT. 
 
 DERWENT was one of the four parishes in 
 the broad old township of Fenwick. It is 
 a town now ; but I love best to remember it as a 
 parish. That term best suits its old-time history. 
 
 It was a rural, cheerful district everywhere, 
 with much of the picturesque in places, — dells, 
 rocks, brooks, woods, sightly hill-tops, and pleas- 
 ant meadows. 
 
 The Derwent waters were pleasing features of 
 the place. There was the broad Connecticut in 
 front. That shall have a separate notice bye and 
 bye. There were the Derwent and the Little 
 Derwent, tributaries to the Connecticut. It is re- 
 markable that streams will never run straight, if 
 the)'' can help it. Among hills they must run 
 crooked, taking such courses as the valleys open 
 to them ; but they will cut for themselves ser- 
 pentine channels through the softest flat mea- 
 
 (9) 
 
lO D E R WEN T. 
 
 dows, and often, shifting ones, as though sonne 
 freak, or whim, possessed them. That was the 
 way of the Derwent ; a vessel following its wind- 
 ings, through bush and meadow, would be long 
 under your eye, if you watched it, — ^its sails now 
 filled, and now flapping, as the humors of the 
 stream made the wind fair or foul for it. 
 
 The Little Derwent was a pretty stream, reach- 
 mg inland a mile or more, ebbing and flooding 
 with the river tides to that extent, beyond which 
 it became a brook. Wild ducks and other water 
 fowl delighted in its broad marshes. Cranber- 
 ries grew in these spontaneously, not in any 
 quantity for the market, but enough of them to 
 pay you for a wet foot, if a handful or two would 
 satisfy you. The sachem-pea also grew there, 
 whose large, velvety leaf you could not wet, the 
 water rolling off" from it as it does from a water- 
 fow.s breast. 
 
 Pigeon Pond, in the northern part of the parish, 
 was a deep, round, brimming basin, of the purest, 
 coldest water. There was good reason for its 
 pureness and coldness ; it was fed by springs only, 
 from underneath it, — satisfied from itself, as 
 Solomon says a good man is. Though there was 
 no stream running into it, there was a copious 
 
DERIVENT. II 
 
 one, large enough for a considerable water- 
 power, flowing out of it. Wurts's grist-mill, 
 which was one of the " seven wonders " of my 
 childhood, was worked by this stream. What 
 was singular about this lakelet was, that being on 
 high ground, with no hills, or higher grounds, 
 sending streams into it, it got nothing from the 
 rains except the drops that fell on its bosom ; and 
 yet it was always full and out-flowing. Its cir- 
 cumference might be half a mile. 
 
 This little water was attractive to me, as all 
 waters are to boys ; and I loved it for reasons 
 such as a young mind oftener feels than analyzes, 
 its beauty, its solitude, its stillness, and the 
 images it mirrored, — clouds, birds, overhanging 
 treej. And perhaps, also, I had some kindly re- 
 gard for the only craft that floated on it, — a 
 weather-blackened, oarless old canoe, looking as 
 lone as the Ark does in a picture. 
 
 You would find fishes there, too, if you were 
 fond of angling ; and they were of the best kjnds 
 for the frying-pan, — perch, roach, pickerel, with 
 none Of the refuse sorts, such as dace and bull- 
 heads. The pond appeared to be full of them. 
 My cousin Isaac VValdron and I, half-grown boys 
 .hen, coming home that way from our ramblings 
 
12 ■ D E R [VENT. 
 
 in the woods behind it, after game, sat down 
 there to rest and talk, and having our hooks with 
 us, soon caught as many as we cared to carry, 
 with our birds and squirrels. How came the fish 
 to be there ? Curious people often asked and won- 
 dered how. No one knew. The Indians could 
 not have put them there, they thought, their 
 means and habits being what they were. There 
 was, however, no great mystery in the case ; some 
 curious or thoughtful early settler, brought their 
 progenitors from the river in a bucket, and 
 colonized them, a little piscatory settlement, in 
 the midst .of woods and Indians ; and from that 
 it had grown to this. 
 
 The other lake, called Beaver Lake, was in the 
 western half of the parish. We called that the 
 Lakeside, and the people living there Lakesiders. 
 This was a larger water than Pigeon Pond, being 
 a mile and a half, or more perhaps, in circumfer- 
 ence. There were a few dwellings along its western 
 marg-in, looking complacently out on it, and less 
 complacently, I should think, across it, on a 
 sloping wooded ridge that limited their view, and 
 had no compensating beauty. An old chronicler 
 says of this " Pond," as he too diminutively 
 calls it, that it is " remarkable for its being formed 
 
DEKWENT. 13 
 
 by a dam, sufficiently wide for a cart-path, which 
 was apparently made by beavers." Famous 
 builders, truly, are the beavers. There was an- 
 other of their structures, on a large brook not far 
 from us, which was named the Beaver Mill-Dam, 
 some man having once set up a small saw-mill on 
 it. The man and mill passed away, and were for- 
 gotten, while the beavers' work and name be- 
 came permanently connected with the locality. 
 I feel some satisfaction in making this record of the 
 curious and useful labors both of these and those 
 others which made the dam at the foot of the lake. 
 An opportune service, this was, for the first settlers 
 there ; for the beaver-built causeway which they 
 Found ready for them, just separated the lake 
 from a swamp of such a character that they 
 would have found it difficult, with their means, 
 to make a road through it. That swamp, of large 
 extent, was filled with cedars, which were so 
 thick, and tall, and dark, that it was said you 
 could not venture far into it without a compass, 
 or a guide, in a cloudy day, but at the risk of not 
 finding your way out of it ; and certainly it had 
 a labyrinthian look. 
 
 I never passed it without admiring its count- 
 less,, lofty, pointed evergreen tops. It is probable 
 
14 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 that it was once overflowed by the lake, which 
 still discharges itself into it. The lake was the 
 great bathing-place of the young men and boys 
 of that vicinity. In it grew the longest-stemmed 
 pond lilies that I have ever seen, — a fact which a 
 boy would be likely to remember. 
 
 Our old highways had some charms that were 
 peculiar to them. They were rude and rambling, 
 with rarely a level mile, and still less frequently a 
 straight one in them, — running amicably along 
 brook-sides, following their humors, often crossing 
 them on rude timber bridges; asserting their 
 right of way through narrow passes between 
 rocks and hillocks; chmbing and descending 
 hills; damaged by the ever-washing rain, and 
 rvidely repaired. And so unstinted in their 
 width ! One might think that the object of the 
 old proprietors had been to throw as much land 
 into the highways as they could, instead of steal- 
 ing as much from them as they dared, as some 
 people now do. 
 
 Those old, primitive highways ! — there wil 
 never be any more such. They are antiques, 
 pictures, histories. I see in them the enterprise, 
 the labors, the courage, and the large-hearted- 
 ness of men making homes for themselves and 
 
DER WENT. 15 
 
 their posterity in wilds which were pathless and 
 sunless till they came. 
 
 In one of them was a mile of road which is 
 to me the most interesting that my memory re- 
 calls. It is that which took me to and from the 
 house of God, and to and from the school, with 
 loving sisters and a kind brother for companions. 
 It is alive, too, in my retrospect, with the images, 
 and merry with the voices, of school-mates and 
 play-fellows ; — how many of whom fulfilled their 
 short and uneventful day long since, and are 
 gone. 
 
 The reader of a book hkes to know something 
 of the place to which it takes him, and this 
 partial sketch of Derwent has been given with 
 reference to such a wish. There are several 
 other localities, — Hemlock Ledge, The Crows' 
 Rest, The Narrows — to which 1 would invite a 
 friend to go with me, if we were in the place ; 
 but topographies, often wearisome, are never 
 satisfactory. 
 
 The Derwent people were farmers, most of 
 them. They lived scattered along the roads, 
 with here and there a closer small neighborhood. 
 
X6 DERWENT. 
 
 The largest of these was at Derwent Head, which 
 was, as the name implies, the head of tide-watei 
 on the Derwent, and was our business centre. 
 There were brought and dropped, in grand con- 
 fusion, great piles of timber, cord-wood, plank, 
 and whatever the woods furnished for ship-yards 
 and the market. Our only factory was the 
 " Anchor Works," a great dingy building, or 
 system of buildings, in the bottom of a valley 
 through which flowed the stream that supplied 
 its water-power. It was something of an adven- 
 ture, for a young boy, to go down into it, in the 
 evening, to see its glowing forges, and wonder 
 that the anvil's great showers of sparks did not 
 burn the workmen ; and it was a delight to listen 
 to its trip-hammer, at a mile's distance, on a still 
 morning. The ship-yards afforded us a fine sen- 
 sation, now and then, in the sight of a launch. 
 
1 1. 
 
 OUR HOME. 
 
OUR HOME was on a small elevated plat, 
 facing the river, and somewhat less than a 
 mile from it. We thought the house none the 
 less respectable for being old and having 
 sheltered three generations prior to ours. It 
 was open, on its hill-top site, to all wholesome 
 airs, and its windows glistened in the morning 
 sunbeams while the valleys were yet sleeping in 
 the twilight. If you wish to wake to early and 
 pleasant thoughts, an elevated sleeping- room, 
 with an eastern exposure, is to your purpose. 
 Give late sleepers the shady side, with candles 
 to make up after bed-time for the better hours 
 the)?^ lose in the morning. 
 
 The well, more than forty feet in depth, was 
 such as hill and rock necessitated. I suspect 
 that my earliest emotions of the subhme were 
 experienced at that well. So dark and deep ! t 
 dropped pebbles into it — chick ! — to see the water 
 
 (19) 
 
20 DE R WENT. 
 
 sparkle and note how long the sound was in 
 coming up to me, — as a child will. Its apparatus 
 for drawing was the crotch, sweep, and pole, the 
 oldest and simplest sort of well-gear in New Eng- 
 land, as I think it is in all the first-settled parts of 
 our coinitry. And perhaps it is the best, if you 
 have space and sky-room for it. It keeps the 
 well open to the light and air, which is favor- 
 able, if not essential, to its pureness, while the 
 often-dipped bucket stirs the water and keeps it 
 from stagnating. It has a picturesque, as well 
 as a historic interest. 
 
 It is peculiarly suggestive. To the traveller 
 on a rui'al highway, a well-sweep near a house 
 speaks of home and the domestic life more em 
 phatically than does any other object. 
 
 Did you ever think of the crotch, sweep, and 
 pole as an original contrivance ? When and 
 where was it first used ? Tliere is no mention of 
 any fixture at all similar to it in the accounts we 
 have of ancient wells. The common mode ap- 
 pears to have been to draw with a cord and a 
 water-pot, or pitcher, of pottery or metal, that 
 would dip itself A marble curb, found among 
 the ruins of one of Tiberius's villas, and preserved 
 m the British Museum, shows marks, around its 
 
DERIVENT. 21 
 
 edges, of the cords with which they drew. " Sir, 
 thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is 
 deep," said the woman of Samaria to Jesus at 
 Jacob's well. She herself, undoubtedly, had 
 come provided with a rope, together with her 
 water-pot. Solomon speaks of the wheel broken 
 at the cistern, from which we should suppose 
 that wheels, or windlasses, were more or less in 
 use at wells. 
 
 T have not seen the apparatus we are speaking 
 of in foreign countries, and I once thought it 
 might be an invention of the early settlers of 
 America: but it is in fact much older, and has 
 been used more extensively, than I supposed. 
 In a wood-cut of the date of 1518, belonging to 
 an elaborate series entitled " Triumphs of Maxi- 
 milian," by Hans Burgmair, a contemporary of 
 Albert Durer and his rival in the art of design, 
 there is represented a rich embroidered saddle- 
 cloth on which is shown a woman drawing water 
 by her cottage, from a well with a pole, sweep, 
 and bucket, and a rude curb of l<9gs. 
 
 The contrivance, by whomsoever it may have 
 been devised, is a thing curious in conception, a? 
 well as useful in its working. In drawing water 
 with a pole, the trouble was to keep it straight 
 
22 D E R WENT. 
 
 up and steady in the air, which it was difficult tc 
 do if the well was at all deep, or if there was 
 wind ; and its weight, too, in addition to that of 
 the bucket, had to be lifted at arm's length. You 
 wanted a man aloft to help you. But see how 
 these inconveniencies arc disposed of by the 
 sweep. It takes charge of the pole, lowers and 
 raises it perpendicularly, and helps you lift just 
 as much as you please to have it, by the weights 
 you put upon its lower end. 
 
 And this further may be said for it, that any 
 man can set up the crotch, sweep, and pole for 
 himself, while in many cases, particularly in re- 
 mote or new settlements, other kinds of gear 
 cannot be had. 
 
III. 
 
 FETCHING FIRE 
 
HALF-WAY between us and the river, on a 
 lower plat than ours, lived our nearest 
 neighbors, Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Prudden ; their 
 houses and farms being on opposite sides of the 
 road which ran down past us to the landing. 
 The Pruddens were agreeable neighbors and 
 good people ; the Crabbes were such as we shall 
 see. They were an aged couple, living quite 
 alone. Among my very early recollections is 
 that of an incident connected with my first visit 
 to their house. It may seem trivial; but, as 
 young life, regarded as a whole, includes the life 
 of the child as well as that of youth, we must 
 allow a place to some such memories as this, in a 
 few of the pages that are to follow. 
 
 It is a great thing to be a child. For that is to 
 be, more than is possible at any maturer age, a 
 sight-seer and adventurer. In a world as new to 
 him as he is 3'oung in it, the little learner finds him- 
 
 (25) 
 
26 D E R W E N T. 
 
 self surrounded by curiosities and wonders. 
 Every sound, color, shape, and motion, arrests 
 him. This is the secret of his dreams and mus- 
 ings, and his many questions ; and this, too, ac- 
 counts for the distinctness of his subsequent re- 
 collections. 
 
 I had run down to the old man's, Mr. Crabbe's, 
 with one of 'the maids, on a bright, frosty 
 morning, to get some fire. Very strange, 
 now, would seem the idea of lending or bor- 
 rowing fire ; but as there were no friction 
 matches in those days, the practice was to 
 keep it on the hearth if possible ; and if it 
 chanced to go out,, it might be necessary to 
 resort to a neighbor's supply. You imbedded 
 in the ashes, over night, some of the brands or 
 coals, or, if the family had sat up until these were 
 too nearly consumed, you were prepared with a 
 bit of seasoned hickory, or other hard wood, to 
 rake up with remains enough of fire to ignite it. 
 This was a very considerable item of house-keep- 
 ing care. It required some tact to make sure of 
 success ; for, if you buried your brand too deeply, 
 it would be smothered and extinguished ; or, if 
 too slightly, it would all burn out and be gone. 
 
D ER WENT. 27 
 
 It was, in fact, an experiment, and a somewhat 
 critical one, to be repeated nightly. If it failed, 
 as it often would, so that, in the morning, you 
 poked and raked in vain among the ashes for 
 your hid treasure of coals, or for so much as a 
 spark which your breath might kindle into more, 
 or which you could light a match with, then you 
 had to strike fire. You went to some shelf, or 
 cuddy, and took thence a piece of steel shaped so 
 as to be held conveniently, a box or horn of 
 tinder, a gun-flint, and a brimstone match ; and 
 you were, of course, provided with a candle. 
 The spark struck from the steel ignited the 
 tinder, the tinder lit the match, the match lit the 
 candle, the candle set ablaze the wood, and so, 
 behold how great a matter a little fire — a red 
 particle of steel — kindled ! 
 
 If you happened to be out of tinder, or of 
 matches, you must go, then, to a neighbor's for 
 fire ; and a later breakfast and keener appetites 
 would be the consequence. So, too, if you 
 w^anted a light in the night, you must strike one, 
 or find fire on the hearth ; or, these means failing, 
 you must go and wake some neighbor for it, — if 
 light or fire you must have ; which would some- 
 times happen, as in a case of sudden illness. 
 
28 D ER WENT. 
 
 Vessels at sea, whose tinder became damp, or 
 was spent, would be without light in the bin- 
 nacle, or fire in the caboose, for the remainder of 
 the passage, unless some spoken ship supplied 
 them. Crews suffered, and sometimes vessels 
 were lost, in these circumstances. 
 
 Such were the ways in which our morning fires 
 were set agoing, and our extinct fires renewed ; 
 and I have that regard for the steely and flint, and 
 tinder-box, that I deem them worthy to be pre- 
 served as memorials of the olden time. Of what 
 date they are, as an invention, it is beyond history 
 to say ; but in old people's memories they are of 
 the days of great fire-places, huge " back-logs," 
 glowing hearths, dipped candles, and rare incen- 
 diarisms. 
 
 We went, as I was saying, Betty and I, after 
 fire. The old man was just uncovering a plenti- 
 ful store of coals and brands. I remember how 
 he looked. Gross and heavy, he seemed a Blue- 
 beard in his castle ; for his house was a strong- 
 timbered, unfinished, ill-lighted building, and was 
 hung with cobwebs. His uncombed coarse gray 
 hair stood all ways ; his beard was equally neg- 
 lected ; he had shaggy brows, ashy eyes, and a 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 29 
 
 huge fungus-like nose ; and from the condition of 
 his garments you might have thought he had 
 slept in them on a heap of swingHng-tow. These 
 were a child's impressions of him, and as I saw 
 him then I see him now. The wife was as untidy 
 as the husband. 
 
 "Fire?" said the old man, with a crustiness 
 that made me step backward ; " why don't folks 
 keep fire, and not be runnin' to their neighbors 
 after it ? Where 's your tongs ? " 
 
 Betty, not at all disconcerted by his manner, 
 said she had not brought any tongs ; a couple of 
 chips would do to carry a coal between, if he 
 had n't a brand for her. 
 
 " And so you want a part of my wood-pile, to 
 make you out, — a couple of my big chips, heh ? 
 Go out and get 'em then ; but 1 wish folks would 
 fetch their own chips, or th'else their tongs, if 
 they must be comin' arter fire." 
 
 " Just a couple of small chips, as big as clam- 
 hells, or two bits of bark, will do," said Betty. 
 " But there's a nice little brand, there, can't you 
 spare me that, Mr. Crabbe ? " 
 
 " Here, take it, then;" and he held out to her, 
 in his tongs, not the brand she meant, but another 
 so hot that she could not touch it, and he knew 
 
30 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 she could not. " Quick ; you're fiUin' the house 
 — pff-ff — chuck full of smoke ! " 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Crabbe ; that '11 do nicely," 
 said Betty, with the very perfection of good- 
 nature in her tone. " But please let me take 
 tongs and all just to get out doors with it, and I 
 can manage it then, I guess." And running out 
 with it, she dropped it on the ground, and re- 
 turned the tongs. Then, getting a piece of turf 
 which a cart-wheel had cut up in the yard, she 
 wrapped it around one end of the burning stick, 
 and so we went smoking homewards. 
 
IV. 
 
 GOING TO MILL 
 
FIRST THINGS are memorabilia with us; — 
 the first sled, or whistle, for example ; the 
 first suit of boy's clothes, (with pockets in them !) ; 
 the first day at school; the first sight of the 
 ocean ; of a ship ; of a lighthouse ; of a burning 
 building. Through repetition, and our growth 
 in years, such things cease to interest us as they 
 did, yet we always continue to remember them 
 as first possessions «r experiences. 
 
 Among my own First Things was a visit to 
 the mill. Smith Scofield was going with a grist, 
 and as he was starting from the door, the humor 
 took my father to put me up behind him. 
 " There, John," said he ; "you may go, too, and 
 learn the way." 
 
 Smith Scofield was one of our farm-hands. He 
 was a tallish young man, had a kindly tenor 
 voice, wore light summer working-clothes, and a 
 slouched hat. This is all I remember of him. 
 3 (33) 
 
34 DERWENT. 
 
 " As plain as the way to mill," people say. The 
 way to Wurts's mill was not plain ; it was hid 
 away in the fields. At the end of a mile and a 
 half by the highway, you turned right out into a 
 wild of bush pastures and remnants of old woods. 
 This was a new region to me, Urra nova, and my 
 eyes and ears, in passing through it, were those 
 of an explorer. 
 
 There were numerous gates and bars to pass 
 through here, at each of which Smith would let 
 me down by the arm upon the ground, dismount 
 himself, lower and put up the bars, or open and 
 shut the gate, as the case might be, remount and 
 pull me up again into my place ; so that it was 
 no small affair for two such travellers to get for- 
 ward on such a road, with • grist-laden horse. 
 The path was rude and crooked ; it had been 
 made only by wheels and hoofs ; but its rudeness 
 gave it interest. 
 
 We had proceeded half a mile, perhaps, 
 through these fields, following the humor of the 
 path, without seeing the mill, when, at length, a 
 low rumbling, and a " clack, clack," mingled with 
 a dashing sound of water, told us we were near 
 it ; and then, passing round a patch of woods that 
 had screened it, " There 's the mill," said Smith. 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 35 
 
 And there it was ! I was silent, now, till we 
 came- to it. It stood at the foot of a narrow 
 ravine, the natural outlet of a romantic little 
 lake not far behind it, which supplied its working 
 power. Regarded as a building merely, it was, 
 to be sure, but a weather-beaten bro"wn thing ; 
 but attached to it, outside, there was a great 
 wheel, revolving very swiftly under a stream of 
 water that came pouring down upon it from a 
 trough above. Such a wheel ! — its height, its 
 huge shaft, its wide rim, its many buckets ! — I 
 marvelled how they ever got it up, and upright, 
 from the ground, and into its place. 
 
 We went in. Smith was careful to have me 
 understand all that was going on there. He 
 showed me the whirling stone that did the grind- 
 ing betwixt it and a fixed one under it; made me 
 notice how it fed itself with grain just so fast as 
 it wanted it, and no faster, by hitting the hopper 
 and jarring it with its clack, which was a peg 
 fixed in the stone, every time it came round 
 called my attention to the long revolving sieve, 
 the bolter, which sifted the flour from the bran ; 
 and to the cog-wheels, fitting into each other; 
 and all kept moving and at work by that giant 
 wheel outside. All this, with the rumbhng, and 
 
36 DERWEN T. 
 
 the clacking, and the many bags with grists wait- 
 ing to be ground, or to be come for, with their 
 owners' names on them, and the flour bedusted 
 floor, and the dusty cobwebs, 'and the dusty 
 miller, made the inside a curious place, and in- 
 terested me a good deal ; but I was soon out 
 again, gazing at the great thing of all, the water- 
 wheel. It made me dizzy to look up at it. I 
 easily imagined it a thing of life ; it seemed as if 
 it were shrinking and dodging down from under 
 the rude pouring it all the while got upon it, 
 while the saucy, tireless water made a frolic of 
 its work, letting itself down by the wheel's 
 buckets, (which I tried to count, and could not,) 
 and laughing and bounding away along its stony 
 path. 
 
 I have seen, since that day, some of the most 
 famous structures which human hands have built, 
 but I can hardly say I have ever seen any that 
 quite equalled that tremendous, dizzy, toiling 
 overshot wheel. You may smile at this ; but re- 
 member it is a child's wonder at which you smile, . 
 and that things are great, not by measurement in 
 the carpenter's way, by line and rule, but by 
 their effect on the beholder. This is the child's 
 standard for estimating sublimities and grand- 
 
DER VV ENT. 37 
 
 eurs ; and we shall find, if we reflect, that we 
 take the same on with us to life's end. Whether 
 you are three years old, or three-score, nothing 
 is great, for you, that does not impress you 
 greatly, and nothing is small that does. 
 
 And herein, if they will read it, is a lesson for 
 those sedate grown people who wonder at and 
 repress the extravagant emotions of children. 
 
V. 
 
 A STARLIGHT RIDE 
 
THEY woke me out of the sound sleep of a 
 play-wearied boy, a little after the clock in 
 the " long room " had struck ten, one evening, 
 and told me that my grandmother Woodhouse, 
 who had been spending the day with us, and had 
 staid later than usual, was going to take me home 
 with her. She mounted from the horse-block, 
 and they put me up behind her with an abun- 
 dance of good-byes and cautions. " Take care, 
 and don't fall off, John, — don't get asleep, John." 
 Good advice, but perhaps easier to give than to 
 follow, with the rocking of a drowsy horse to 
 hinder, and only a crupper to hold on by. 
 
 VVe had two long miles to go, — long to me 
 by daylight, longer beneath the stars. I had 
 been over the same road often, but never at such 
 an hour ; and it was so grand to be travelling in 
 the night ! 
 
 Night has as many things to see as the day, 
 
 (40 
 
42 DERWENT. 
 
 and more for the imagination to be busy with. 
 Night fashions its own world : it has its own 
 creatures, its own colors, shapes and voices, 
 its own grandeurs, its own mysteries. How 
 many things I saw, heard, felt, and fancied, in 
 that ride, which would have been absent in the 
 day-time ! The tops of hills faintly lighted from 
 the sky, their sides mantled with their own deep 
 shadows ; stars riding on their ridges, or going 
 down behind them, — these were of the scenery 
 of the night. How black the shade was, under 
 the trees and rocks ! A grove in a valley looked 
 as if it stood in a pond of ink. 
 
 The hour was late, as I have said, when we 
 started ; the lights were out in most of the near- 
 est houses as we passed them, and by the time we 
 reached the little village around the Green, which 
 was about mid-way of our distance, there was 
 not a candle left. 
 
 All the houses dark. How still the world was 
 then ! — as still, it seemed to me, as the sky above 
 us. It was not a stillness without a sound : it 
 was that deep quiet which renders audible the 
 faintest sounds, — the cricket's chirp, the falling 
 leaf, — and makes loud sounds louder. I could 
 hear the cows by the road-side, chewing their 
 
DERW ENT. 43 
 
 cuds, with their long breaths between. And how 
 loud the brooks were ! We had several of them 
 to cross, two large ' ones, with wooden bridges, 
 and two or three smaller ones. Each of these 
 had its own proper melodies. Every brook has 
 as many varieties of sound as there are changes 
 in its bed. In one place it murmurs along a 
 stony channel ; in another, tumbling over a ledge, 
 it gives you the gushings of the waterfall ; in an- 
 other, winding through a meadow, it seems to be 
 singing itself asleep. The listening ear hears 
 these different voices of the stream separately 
 and distinctly, as it does the several parts of a 
 concert, or a choir, and at the same time is sensi- 
 ble of the combined effects of them all. 
 
 I was awake to all sounds. Before a very old 
 house which we passed, were two large pines. 
 The merest zephyr was breathing through them. 
 
 " I should think they would cut these trees 
 down," I said. 
 
 " Why, child?" 
 
 " Because they make such a sighing. I 
 should n't think the folks could sleep." 
 
 " Oh, they're used to it, and don't mind it." 
 
 From a clump of trees at a distance there came 
 a startling tii-koo, tu-hoo / 
 
44 DERWENT. 
 
 " What is it, Grandmother?" 
 
 "An owl, my child." 
 
 We rode slowly, the horse jogging on in a 
 reverie, — if horses have reveries, — though now 
 and then, his mistress, awaking from her own 
 abstraction, would quicken him with her whip 
 and her chirruping, giving me due notice of the 
 movement, lest I should be unseated. A long 
 ride it had seemed to me, when we stopped at 
 last under the venerable trees that overshadowed 
 my grandparents' home. 
 
 Such were the first impressions made on a 
 child's imagination by the scenes of night under 
 the open sky of the country. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE BLINDING WOOD. 
 
FROM the situation of our house, we should 
 have had a fine view in front ; but, unfor- 
 tunately, right before us, not twenty rods from 
 our door, there was a tall old wood which cut off 
 our prospect on that side entirely. Its owner 
 was that Mr, Crabbe who so grudgingly gave us 
 the brand of fire, on the morning when I made 
 his acquaintance. His beautiful, but negligently- 
 kept farm lay between us and the river. Such a 
 blind before our eyes, depriving us of so noble a 
 prospect, was not agreeable to us ; we could not 
 but wish it were away, or at least, that an open- 
 ing might be cut through, to give us a glimpse 
 of passing vessels, if no more. But there was no 
 help for it ; the case was not one where that com- 
 mon-law principle. So use your otvn as not to injure 
 another's might be applied ; nor would the old 
 man sell us either the land or the wood itself 
 Still less would he have been likely to make for 
 
 (47) 
 
48 DERW EN T. 
 
 US the opening that we desired, either for love or 
 money ; — certainly not for love. Not that he had 
 not as much love for us as for anybody, but it 
 was contrary to his nature to do a kind act ; he 
 would have slept the worse for it. " Well," said 
 my father, after sounding him a little on the sub- 
 ject, " he has a legal right to have it there, and 
 since he means to do so, we must not allow him 
 the satisfaction of thinking that it frets us." It 
 did not fret us ; it was a nuisance, but we did not 
 let it disturb our equanimity. You may wish a 
 hill away, that obstructs your vision ; but, know- 
 ing that the wish is vain, you do not make your- 
 self unhappy on account of it. Our neighbor's 
 will was as fixed a thing with us as j^our hill is 
 with you. 
 
 But the old man died, and his farm passed to 
 other hands. We all went to his funeral. It im- 
 pressed us as a gloomy one. In what state of mind 
 he left the world, I do not know. Nothing was 
 said on that subject by the minister. I heard 
 nothing of it in the few low words of the neigh- 
 bors who were present. It was to be hoped that 
 his end was better than his life ; but the memory 
 of a man whose reputation while he lived was 
 that of the miser and the churl is not blessed, 
 
D E R W E .V T. 
 
 49 
 
 however he may have died. " His onh^ son and 
 heir was an unthrifty man, coarse Hke his father, 
 with half a score of boys, the most stalwart and 
 bear-like set of fellows we had ever seen. They 
 would strip in mid-winter on a field of ice, and 
 dive through a hole in it, just for the humor of 
 the thing. The probability now was, that we 
 should have these for neighbors ; and that would 
 be more annoying. to us than the irksome wood. 
 Indeed, we might come to like that leafy curtain 
 as a kind of screen between us and those roister- 
 ing, lawless barbarians. But they staid where 
 they had been, and the old house stood vacant. 
 ■ One day our mother surprised us with the in- 
 formation that our grandfather Chester had 
 bought the Crabbe farm ! When news comes 
 with " starthng unexpectedness," as this did to 
 us, w^e want to know particulars ; and if it be 
 good news, we wish to be satisfied of the truth 
 of it; and being so assured, we like to dwell on 
 it with our questions and remarks. What our 
 questions to our mother were, on this occasion, 
 may be known from her replies. " Yes, all of it, 
 quite down to the river." , " Yes, the house too." 
 " The trees? We shall see. Perhaps they'll cut 
 them down, or some of them ; you must ask your 
 
50 DERIVE NT. 
 
 grandfather." And the first time he came to 
 the house, we were around him at once with 
 our petition that he would have a gap cut 
 through the old wood, so that we could see the 
 river. " I shall do more than that, children," 
 he said, " it shall all come down, every tree 
 of it." 
 
 The Crabbe farm, while its old owner lived, 
 was forbidden ground to us ; we hardly dared to 
 cast a glance over its crazy tumble-down fences ; 
 but now we ranged and rambled over it at will ; 
 we gazed and talked, stood still, ran, clambered, 
 peered into unexplored things and places, and 
 made all manner of discoveries and observations. 
 A look into the stables excited our pity for the 
 cattle that had occupied them ; they were floored 
 with cold, hard, shapeless slabs of stone, instead 
 of warm and comfortable planks. We stood on 
 our toes and peeped in at the windows of the 
 silent house, almost superstitiously, half expecting 
 to be startled by the image or the voice of the 
 sour old farmer ; — so difficult it is, for imagina- 
 tive young minds, — and not for young minds 
 only, — to dispeople a dwelling which death has. 
 made vacant. There will be, within it and 
 around it, voices, footsteps, shades, — phantoms 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 51 
 
 and echoes of the past, — which you cannot at 
 • once and easily displace. 
 
 Not man}^ days pass, and men come with axes 
 to cut down the wood. We boys and girls are 
 lookers-on ; and a fine sensation it gives us, to 
 see the largest and the tallest of the old trees fall. 
 First, they begin to quiver just a little, at their 
 tops, as if they felt that their time had come ; 
 then they lean, crackle, and go down, with their 
 wealth of branches and green leaves, to the 
 ground, crushing smaller trees in their way, 
 maiming their peers, and breaking their own 
 strong limbs. A few onl)^ are spared, for their 
 special symmetry, or as shades for cattle in the 
 summer heat. 
 
 And now, the view that is opened to us ! The 
 beautiful, broad Connecticut, some miles of it, 
 above and below ; the boats and vessels on it ; 
 the lands between us and the shore ; the country 
 on the other side, — these are the larger features 
 of the picture, with innumerable smaller ones to 
 fill and perfect it. 
 
VI I. 
 
 Childhood Sans Souci 
 
IT is the life of the child that we have thus far 
 been considering ; we are getting bej'^ond that 
 now, to the years of youth. Is the youth as 
 happy as the child? Life may be to him as full 
 of interest, and more so ; but it is the interest of 
 .excitement, rather than enjoyment. Youth is 
 restless. It has its ambitious aspirations ; its 
 ardent and fickle hopes ; its vague despondencies; 
 its suspense between choices and pursuits ; its 
 pinings for the unattainable and the unreal ; its 
 impatience of the slowness of the years that inter- 
 vene between it and the day of majority, beyond 
 which lies its land of promise. Is this happiness ? 
 It is at least not the bliss of childhood ; which as 
 yet is too joyous to know anything of the tossings 
 of the teens, — those rapids of the river, that are 
 always perilous, and so often wreck an ill-bal- 
 lasted boat. 
 
 Still less, if possible, does the child know of 
 
 (55) 
 
56 DERIVENT. 
 
 those cares that, like a vapor, overhang the later, 
 busier years of hfe. Oh ! happy childhood ! 
 happy in many things, — in the freshness of its 
 perceptions and feelings, — in its innocence, and 
 gayety, and beauty, — in the love of which it is 
 the object, — but most of all in its blissful ignor- 
 ance of care. If for any one thing more than 
 any other, and every other, we should desire to 
 be children again, it is for this. 
 
 Care is the experience of older people. It 
 comes in with responsibilities and years. There 
 is a well-known old hotel near one of our fashion- 
 able resorts, thronged and famous once, which 
 calls itself the Sans Souci. Abundance of wealthy, 
 gay, nothing-to-do people resorted to it in the 
 days of its glory, chatted in the parlors, lounged 
 and dozed in the shades, listened to music, 
 promenaded, danced, and made an enviable show 
 of that delicious quietude and obliviousness of 
 care to which the house invited them ; but who 
 were the real sa7is souci people there ? The 
 children only. 
 
 What is care? Is it thinking of the number of 
 things we have to do, or see to ? Is it a weari- 
 ness of an endless round of duties ? It is not that. 
 Those are cares ; things which are definable, and 
 
DERWENT. 57 
 
 may be reasonable, and necessary, and pleasant, 
 evert. Care has no plural. It is referable to no 
 particular, mentionable cause, or causes. It is a 
 certain vague solicitude, or worry of mind, about 
 one cannot tell what. It is as undefinable as the 
 feeling of loneliness, or superstitious fear in the 
 dark. It remains with us after all our duties are 
 discharged ; after our perplexities are relieved, 
 our fears dissipated. The mother is still conscious 
 of it when the last of her domestic items of the 
 day has been attended to, and all her happy 
 household are asleep ; more conscious of it then 
 than she was in the active performance of the 
 day's duties. The farmer feels it, though the 
 season is propiti(3us, and his crops are doing well ; 
 and feels it still when his barns and granaries 
 are full. The merchant takes it home with him, 
 and to his bed, at night. So does the mechanic. 
 What but this does our Saviour refer to when he 
 says, Take no thought for the morrow? What 
 else does he reprove in Martha, who was careful 
 and troubled about many things? A great vari- 
 ety of epithets expressive of the general sense 
 of its evils have been affixed to it. It is 
 "carping," "corroding," "dull," "cankering" 
 care. Horace calls it envious, — invida cura^ 
 
58 
 
 D ER WENT. 
 
 — that will not suffer us to sleep, — dircllit 
 somnos. 
 
 Such is care ; and more than all things else, sin 
 excepted, it blights human spirits and mars en- 
 joyment. It makes leaner figures than want, and 
 deeper lines in faces than years and toils. How 
 light-hearted is the child, with his freedom from 
 this incubus ! How cheerily the little one bounds 
 into his welcome bed at night ! How happy he 
 wakes ! And through the long hours of the day 
 what thought takes he what may, or maj not be, 
 on the morrow ? 
 
 Why are we not all, and always, children in 
 this respect ? It is because we have not that 
 simple faith in our heavenly Father, which the 
 child has in an earthly one ; we do not cast all 
 our care on Him, who careth for us. 
 
VIII. 
 
 OUR FARM 
 
THE worth of a farm is commonly estimated 
 by its capabilities for tillage. You ask what 
 remunerative crops it will yield. But there is 
 one kind of value which it may have, that is 
 hardly taken into account, except, probably, by 
 the buyer in a depreciative way, — that which 
 may be called its sesthetic value. 
 
 There are parts of it, the supposition is, which 
 are not available for husbandry, being too wild 
 and broken either for planting or for grazing ; 
 there is no money to be got from them. But 
 they have that kind of worth which pictures 
 have ; they are picturesque ; they please the eye, 
 improve the taste, and beautify the mind. And 
 this is a higher value than any such as can be ex- 
 pressed by quantities and numbers ; it meets a 
 higher human want. 
 
 No one can doubt that the Creator has special 
 regard to our susceptibility of impressions from 
 
 (6i) 
 
62 DERWEN T. 
 
 natural scenery, in the diversities he has given to 
 the earth's surface. He might have made it all 
 even, smooth, and cultivable ; but then how 
 monotonous and dull it would have been ! Even 
 a world that was all garden, whatever floral 
 beauties it might have, would be a tiresome one. 
 Every lover of the rude and grand in nature feels 
 that He has done better for us than that ; and is 
 thankful that it is not in human power to change 
 what he has done. You rejoice to know that 
 the hills are everlasting, — men cannot dig them 
 down. You are glad that there are rocks and 
 precipices which man cannot blast away, nor 
 bury ; that there are rough places which he can- 
 not make smooth, and crooked which he cannot 
 make straight ; shades that he cannot • scatter ; 
 cataracts that he cannot still ; streams that he 
 cannot dry up ; lakes and ponds that he cannot 
 convert into corn-fields and meadows. In fine, 
 you are thankful that the Creator has designed 
 the world for our finer feeling, as well as for our 
 grosser wants, and for grateful contemplation, as 
 well as for the labor of the hands. 
 
 Our farm had, for us, much of this poetic in- 
 terest. It comprised great varieties of surfaces 
 and soils, and parts of it were rude enough to be 
 
DERIVENT. 63 
 
 romantic : its landscape views, and especiall}- its 
 sunset views, were delightful. It fronted on the 
 river; on the north, the Derwent was its bound- 
 ary for a short distance, and on the south, the 
 Little Derwent as far as that stream went ; for 
 the rest, it had highways and by-ways on all 
 sides of it, dispensing with the surveyor's stakes 
 and stones. A line of four miles would about go 
 around it. 
 
 Names are descriptive, as well as historic and 
 directive ; and they are as convenient, almost as 
 necessary, for farms as for towns. Every field, 
 brook, or path has its name, as every street and 
 park has, in a city ; or as every room has in a 
 house. The following were some of ours : The 
 Side Hill ; The Shipley Woods, and Place ; The 
 Shady Side ; The Run ; The Under- Ledge ; The 
 Cows' Path ; The Sheep's Rock ; The Crows' 
 Rest. These were of the western half of the 
 tract. The front portion consisted of smooth and 
 gentle swells, slopes, flats and meadows, with 
 some swamps and marshes. 
 
 I have seen many finely-diversified and valu- 
 ble farms, but never one as pleasing to me as was 
 that of ours. The reason will easily be guessed ; 
 it is not chiefly because it was such as I have 
 
64 DEE WENT. 
 
 described it, but because it was our farm, and I 
 passed my young life on it. In my belief, there 
 is greater satisfaction in the ownership of a farm 
 than in any other kind of property. For this a 
 number of good reasons might be given : I will 
 mention but one. It is in the hoi/ie feeling, with 
 the liberty you everywhere have upon your 
 lands ; for that feeling is wider than the mere 
 roof which shelters you, though not wider than 
 your home domain. If, in your ramblings, you 
 come to a division fence between you and another 
 owner, and get over it, you feel that there you 
 are a foreigner; and if you fill your hands, or 
 pockets, with nuts, or fruit, you are perhaps a 
 guilty trespasser. But on your own side, you 
 are at home, and may range about, and take 
 whatever 3-ou find that pleases you. The high- 
 ways are free to you, but that is a vulgar free- 
 dom which you share with others. The freedom 
 of the farm is different. You may there feel — and 
 the view is neither selfish nor extravagant — that 
 everything around you — trees, fruits, rocks, 
 springs, streams, and the very sunbeams, dews, 
 and rain-drops that fall there, — is peculiarly, you 
 may almost say exclusively, your own. 
 
IX. 
 
 FARM AVORK 
 
EACH of the four seasons brings with it 
 its own appropriate work on the farm. If 
 some of it is hard, dusty work, the most of it is 
 easy and pleasant. If much of it must be done in 
 foul weather, the greater part is done in fair. 
 There is an agreeable variety in it ; and it is, 
 above all other occupations, healthful and cheer- 
 ful. 
 
 There is much of it that boys can do as well as 
 men. While very young, they can fetch and 
 carry light things, take messages about the 
 farm, watch birds, and be helpful in various other 
 little ways. Growing older, they can drive and 
 fetch cattle, go to mill, help at haying, pick up 
 apples, fodder cattle, — in a word, can. do such and 
 so many things that the farm could hardly get on 
 without them. Some of these boy-services shall 
 be noticed as we meet with them in the succes- 
 sion of the seasons. 
 
 On our New England farms, most of the 
 
 (67) 
 
68 DERIVENT. 
 
 ploughing, the first work of the spring, is done 
 with oxen instead of horses, as it was in ancient 
 times. The first we hear of Elisha the prophet 
 is that EHjah found him ploughing with twelve 
 yoke of oxen before him, and he with the 
 twelfth, A clumsy plough, or a tough soil, or both, 
 he must have had, to require such a team as that. 
 A man ploughing with a single yoke, and they 
 well broke to the work, can drive for himself; 
 but if there be more than one, he must have a 
 driver; and for that a boy is wanted. This work 
 of driving is easy enough ; I cannot sa}?^ that it is 
 never tedious. It is not active enough for a lad. 
 It is slow walking with slow oxen, over pathless 
 ground, all day long, or till the piece of work in 
 hand is finished. And if your plough-holder 
 happens to be one of the thick-headed sort, or 
 taciturn, with no talk to entertain you, nor an ear 
 to hear you talk, while you stop to allow a breath- 
 ing-spell for the cattle, so much the more tire- 
 some is the day. I remember sometimes being 
 glad, in such circumstances, of the company of 
 the crows, and their more beautifully black and 
 glossy cousins, the crow blackbirds, and other 
 fowls of the air that lit upon our furrows,' look- 
 ing for the grubs and insects which the plough 
 
D E R WEN T. 69 
 
 might have turned up for them. At that season 
 of the year, too, there will be cold daj's, and 
 damp, chilly winds, that make the slow pace a 
 shivering one ; but the plough must not stop, 
 like the sluggard's, by reason of the cold ; and 
 the manly boy schools himself to be indifferent to 
 weather, where duty is concerned. It is a satis- 
 faction to him to see a necessary work go on, and 
 to think of the crop that is going to grow up 
 and flourish, by and by, on the acres they are 
 preparing. 
 
 Planting is another work which a boy can do as 
 well, though not as fast, as a man ; and a good 
 • exercise for his eye it is, to see that he makes the 
 rows straight, parallel, and equi-distant. There 
 is beaut}^ in that, as well as economy of ground. 
 But it takes a farm boy to succeed in it. I have 
 seen a field that an inexperienced man had plant- 
 ed, which looked as if he had followed the tracks 
 of animals that had been driven across it, or as if 
 he had scaled clam-shells over the ground, and 
 dropped his seed where they fell. His crop came 
 up so thick in places that it had not room to 
 grow, while in others wide beds of weeds were 
 laughing at the awkwardness that had allowed 
 them so much liberty. 
 
JQ DERIVE NT. 
 
 The seasons are so constant and progressive in 
 the occupation they bring, that they leave few 
 idle da3'S for their co-worker, the husbandman. 
 Hoeing follows directly upon planting, and fills up 
 most of the interval between that and haying. A 
 boy can do something with the hoe ; but a man's 
 strength is not too much to use it easily and well. 
 There is an expression of many applications, 
 which has its origin in the corn-fields, — the 
 "Boy's Row." The boy is ambitious to be a 
 man, — to be as strong and efficient as men. 
 Hence, if you set him at hoeing with them, he 
 will do his 'best to finish a row as soon as they. 
 But he falls behind. They rally him, and he de- 
 fends himself with the plea that his row is harder 
 than theirs. " Oh yes, Willie, the boy's row is 
 always the hardest." 
 
 A scene in haying is pleasing in a picture ; it 
 is not dull in reality. A company of people, 
 with their scythes, rakes, and forks, and teams 
 loading for the barn, in fine weather, do make a 
 cheerful group. It is a boy's work to rake up 
 the scatterings which the fork leaves in putting 
 the hay upon the carts. This " raking after " 
 was a duty to which I was put while quite 
 young; and there were things about it which I 
 
DERWEXT. 71 
 
 specially like to remember One was, that it 
 obliged me to mind my work, and be quick and 
 stirring. If I stopped to look or listen, the cart 
 would get ahead of me, and then I must carry 
 my rakings to it. Another thing was the thorough- 
 ness and neatness it required. If I left the least 
 lock, or litter of hay behind me, they would send 
 me to fetch it, even to the farthest corner of the 
 lot. Not because of the value of a handful of ha}^ 
 though that was something, but because it was 
 not tidy farming. A mown meadow should look 
 as clean as a swept carpet. Another pleasant 
 thing to recollect is the kindness -shown me 
 by Hiram Heathcote, one of the best of the farm 
 hands, in making my work as easy to me as he 
 could. Some of our men would seem not to care 
 how much they left or dropped for me to look 
 after, when, doing my best, I could just keep 
 along with the cart without such heedlessness on 
 their part ; but Hiram would take up the heaps 
 as clean as he could, scattering little ; and in case 
 of a wind blowing the hay about, or if from any 
 cause, — a brier in myfinger, suppose, or a parti- 
 cle of dust in my eye, — I fell unavoidably be- 
 hind, he would snatch my rake and bring me up 
 even with my work again. I love to record such 
 
j2 DE R WEN T. 
 
 kind acts of that good friend of my boyhood, and 
 I have no small number of them in my memory. 
 From raking I was in time promoted to load- 
 ing, which I liked better. It was not unpleasant 
 to be riding and rocking up in the air. It re- 
 quires some tact to do the work well, — to place 
 the hay all round in a secure and shapely form, 
 taking care of it as fast as a strong man throws it 
 up to you. If that be not done, it may fall off, 
 and though mishaps of this kind ought not to 
 occur, they sometimes do, with ludicrous effect. 
 An old farmer, belonging to the class of univer- 
 sal " uncles;" so called b}^ everybody, bought and 
 hayed some grass in our meadows, and came 
 with his team and man to take it home. They 
 loaded it so oddl}^ that our work-people amused 
 themselves with it. "What ails your load, Uncle 
 John ? How it leans ! It don't look the same 
 way that the oxen do. You won't get half-way 
 home with it." Uncle John heard these pleas- 
 ant observations very composedly, and squinting 
 up at his "load, he said, " It leans and skews a 
 little to be sure, but it lies very fa am, for all 
 that." Walter and I, watching for incident and 
 fun, as boys will, followed the ill-balanced pile 
 with our C3'es, and before it got out of the mead- 
 
DER WENT. y-i 
 
 ows, ofifit went down to the cart-ladders, — much 
 to the surprise of Uncle John, much to the 
 amusement of my brother Walter and myself. 
 It was like Walter to make a humorous applica- 
 tion of Uncle John's words. If he saw one main- 
 taining ridiculous confidence in a thing, he 
 would say, " It lies ver}'- fa'am." 
 
 I was once on a high load which Hiram was 
 driving along a narrow causeway between a 
 ditch and a shallow plash or puddle, which a tide 
 had left there, when suddenly one wheel sunk to 
 the hub, and turned the load topsy-turvy into 
 the water. I had but an instant's time to clam- 
 ber to the upper edge of the load, and came 
 down o« my feet, I hardly know how, on the 
 side of the cart-body. It was a narrow escape 
 from being suffocated under a ton of hay. 
 
 Harvesting, too, as well as haying, has its 
 scenes for pictures. A field of grain is a beauti- 
 ful object at all stages of its growth : it is espe- 
 cially so when it is ripe and ready for the sickle. 
 You admire its evenness, its thick growth, its 
 drooping, richly-burthened heads, and its golden 
 color. Contemplated thus, it is a quiet scene : 
 in the process of harvesting it becomes a lively 
 one, and fitter for the pencil of the artist. 
 7 
 
74 DERWENT. 
 
 Before the introduction of the labor-saving 
 machines worked by horses, of which we have so 
 great variet}^ in these days, the wheat and rye 
 crops were cut in a primitive, slow, and back- 
 breaking way, with the sickle. To cut them like 
 oats, with the cradle, would shake out and waste 
 the grain too much, — all the better for the birds. 
 If we were to mow them, hke grass, the scythe 
 would throw them confusedly into swaths, which 
 would not be convenient for binding. The reap- 
 er cuts them by hanclfuls, and lays them even- 
 ly in gavels. These are bound in sheaves with 
 straw taken from the parcel in hand, or else, 
 frugally, with straw of the previous year's gi'owth 
 brought from the barn. The sheaves, as they are 
 bound, are set upright, and the field is studded 
 with them. These are brought together into 
 shocks, each shock containing sixteen sheaves, 
 and in this form the cart takes them. It may 
 seem as if there were no reason for putting just 
 that number in each parcel; but it is convenient 
 enough to do so, and the amount of the crop is 
 t(.)ld in that way, each shock being estimated to 
 yield a certain amount by measure, on the barn 
 floor. From allusions in the Bible, this way of 
 reckoning by shocks would seem to' have been the 
 
DERWENT. 75 
 
 ancient one, — in use as far back as the time of Job, 
 at least : — "Like as a shock of corn cometh in in his 
 season." The shock, in those days, may not have 
 consisted of exactly the same number as ours ; but 
 it would seem as if it must have been of some 
 definite number, for a hap-hazard parcel would 
 hardly serve for such a simile. 
 
 The slow method of the sickle makes many 
 hands necessary, if the field is large. And the 
 weather, too, is a circumstance to be regarded. 
 Improve the sunshine while you have it, and do 
 not lose it for want of men. To-morrow, it may 
 be showery ; and grain will not stand wet long, 
 without damage. It is a remarkable instance of 
 the divine goodness, that, every year, and in all 
 lands, the bulk of the cereals is safelv housed in 
 barns and granaries under favoring skies, — not- 
 withstanding all fears and prognostications to the 
 contrary. It is very common for farmers to fore- 
 bode bad weather to ruin their crops, in or before 
 the harvest season. There is neither religion nor 
 reason in this weather-wise grumbling. The 
 rainbow itself should shame it into silence. I re- 
 member clouds, mists, showers, and dubious 
 faces at that season, but I cannot recollect any 
 case in which a crop of ours was lost, or mate- 
 
^6 D ER WENT. 
 
 rially damaged, for want of sun enough to har- 
 vest it. 
 
 As 1 stood, one day, on a low hill, an eighth of 
 a mile back of a field of rye in which eleven 
 reapers were working abreast, their motions and 
 appearance reminded me of a string of wild geese 
 in the air. I noticed how regularly they all 
 stooped, and clipped, and rose together, and 
 turned half round as they laid their handfuls in 
 the gavels. When they came in at night to enjoy 
 the "flowing bowl" of milk punch to which they 
 were treated, they made a tired but merry com- 
 pany, and not a tipsy one ; for my grandfather, 
 their employer, would never hire a drunkard. 
 
 The apple - gathering season, when it came, 
 brought us an abundance of occupation Besides 
 several large orchards, there were single trees 
 scattered everywhere about the lots ; so that, in 
 ordinary years, we had eight hundred bushels, or 
 more, of apples, all of which were to be picked 
 up from the ground, or off" the ti"ees, one by one. 
 The most of them fell on clean, smooth sward, 
 which made the gathering of them comparatively 
 easy ; but, in many cases, they would drop in 
 places not so agreeable ; as, for example, a stub- 
 ble-field, a thicket of brijrs; or a quagmire. 
 
DERWENT. yy 
 
 We usually made three circuits of the orchards 
 in a season. In the first we gathered such of the 
 fruit as was early ripe, or fell prematurely. In 
 the middle of the autumn, we took another turn ; 
 the bulk of the apples would then be ripe ; the 
 around would be cov'ered with them, and the air 
 filled with their fragrance. Then, at the final 
 round, a little before the frost came, we shook 
 the trees, and took all the remaining fruit as we 
 went. And by this time it was a satisfaction to 
 us to see each one of them thus bereft of the last 
 shining apple that hung on it, and to say good-by 
 to them for that year, — albeit we had been cheery 
 in the work. 
 
 The picking up was for the most part done by 
 Hiram, Walter and myself; though we had a 
 little help sometimes. 
 
 And I here must record the fact that not un- 
 frequently my sisters would be out with their 
 baskets, — to their credit and that of our mother 
 who permitted them, — to give their brothers wel- 
 come aid, and to enjoy, themselves, a specially 
 happy, wholesome day. I do not doubt that 
 they remember it with pleasure ; and, for myself, 
 I can think of them in no circumstances with 
 more complacency than in those apple orchards 
 
78 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 on a fine, fragrant autumn morning, in their sun- 
 bonnets and aprons, — so blithe and active as they 
 were, and so generously helpful at a task which 
 some mothers' daughters might deem too unfemi- 
 nine for such as they. 
 
 The rules which were given us to be observed 
 in our orchard work, would be useful in many 
 other applications : they were, " Pick clean as 
 you go," and " Get them all." It was not well 
 to be running about with 3'our basket under a 
 tree, picking up the thickest, here and there, and 
 have the same ground to go over again ; nor to 
 leave an apple ungathered because it had fallen 
 where it was not agreeable to get it, or because 
 it hung inconveniently high, or because it was 
 but one. The apple itself was worth little, but 
 the habits of frugality and thoroughness have 
 a value which we were not allowed to disre- 
 gard. 
 
 The winter was sacred to books and schools. 
 Not much work was expected of the boys; still, 
 there were certain "chores" for them to do, at 
 all times ; and when the snow came, with its 
 welcome opportunities for sport, it also gave 
 them more or less wholesome labor in clearing 
 such places as were encumbered by it. Some- 
 
D ER WENT. 79 
 
 times, that task was not a very light one. Yet 
 the snow was always exhilarating and delightful 
 to us. We were much interested in hearing our 
 grandparents speak of what their parents had 
 witnessed when in their teens, — the Great Snow, 
 as it was called, of 1717. This is what a chroni- 
 cler who wrote about fifty years ago, says of it : — 
 "On the 17th of February, 1717, the greatest 
 snow fell ever known in this country, attended 
 by a dreadful tempest. This has been related by 
 fathers to sons ever since, and is still referred to 
 as the Great Snow. It covered the doors of 
 houses, so that the inhabitants were obliged to 
 get out at the chamber windows, and buried and 
 destroyed many sheep." Another account of it 
 says, with a rather singular latitude of figures, 
 " The snow in some places was between six and 
 fourteen feet deep : " which is equivalent to saying 
 that it fell unevenly, in drifts and shallows, as of 
 course it must have done, being accompanied 
 with a " dreadful tempest." Our impressions of 
 that storm, received in the way I have mentioned, 
 were vivid. We thought it grand : we almost 
 wished we might have another such ; provided 
 that the poor sheep should be snugly housed in 
 advance of it. Only to think of putting your sled 
 
8o DERWENT. 
 
 out of the chamber window, and sliding down 
 the great drift into the valley below ! 
 
 Having digressed into this subject of snows, I 
 Avill mention that there occurred another famous 
 one in the year 1798, which comes, though barely, 
 within my own memory. I can recollect how 
 blank the country looked, with all signs of roads 
 and fences obliterated, trees buried up to their 
 lower branches, and no moving creature visi'ble, 
 except now and then a starved crow flying over- 
 head. 
 
 Wood was our only fuel ; and as we burnt it 
 freely in the old-fashioned way, in fire-places, 
 there was much of it to be cut at the door. Such 
 piles as we had in our yard at the coming on of 
 winter, would be a marvel in these days. Walter 
 and I began at cutting, as soon as we could 
 swing a small axe. We called' it work, but in 
 effect it was a pastime ; there was so much 
 physical enjoyment in that kind of exercise. 
 I know of none that is better ; and always, 
 to this day, I have worked up my own wood, 
 with axe and beetle and wedges, purely for the 
 healthfulness and pleasure of it. Indeed I 
 have often bought a load more for the sake of 
 cutting it up than because I needed it. The 
 
DER WENT. 8l 
 
 same was my brother's habit, as long as he 
 lived. 
 
 There is no kind of life that brings all the 
 muscles of the body into use and exercise like 
 the farmer's. There are some occupations that 
 keep one always sitting ; others constantly re- 
 quire a standing position ; some employ the 
 hands only, and others the legs. Many are the 
 inst!inces one meets with, in both sexes, of partial 
 and defective development through partial and 
 defective exercise. But the farm brings the 
 whole of the body into activity, and employs it 
 for a conscious purpose ; for an object. There 
 is no gymnasium comparable to it in this respect. 
 We see, in these times, a variety of g3'mnasia for 
 colleges, for young ladies' seminaries, for remedial 
 institutions : they are all, at best, only tolerable 
 substitutes for something better, where that can- 
 not be had. They may answer for a few athletes, 
 who do not need them, but I deprecate an in- 
 discriminate, compulsory use of them for young 
 human frames, and for invalids. 
 
X. 
 
 FETCHING COWS 
 
D 
 
 RIVING and fetching the cows was a serv 
 
 ice to which I was put very early, perhaps 
 at eight years of age. I have no cause to regret 
 the charge ; it involved more benefits than hard- 
 ships. It roused me in good season in the morn- 
 ing, for one thing. Charles Lamb holds it to be 
 a "popular fallacy" that "we should rise with 
 the lark, and lie down with the lamb." He will 
 have a plenty of people to agree with him, slug- 
 gish souls, as well as some philosophers and doc- 
 tors ; but for myself I prefer the old adage, and 
 shall never be sorry that I rose, if not with the lark, 
 at least with the cows. The duty was assigned to 
 me alone, my brother being excused from it by 
 general consent ; for what reason I cannot say, 
 unless it was because he was by two years ray 
 senior, and that the way of the world was, and is, 
 to devolve a variety of minor services and charges 
 upon the younger rather than the elder boy. 
 
 • (85) 
 
36 DERIVE NT. 
 
 I had not far to go, the nearest corner of the 
 pasture, where the cows were let into it, being 
 not more than an eighth of a mile from the 
 house : it was a different affair to find and fetch 
 them home at night ; for they had a wide range 
 to roam in. My first trouble in the morning, 
 and also the last at night, was with the bars ; 
 they were too heavy and too high for me to let 
 down and put up. I well remember how I lift- 
 ed, tugged, and staggered under them to get 
 them into their places. My father, observing 
 this, had them replaced with lighter ones. I 
 used to wonder at my grandfather, that, in pass- 
 ing through bars, he would let down two or 
 three of the upper ones, when it was so much 
 easier to climb over them ; not appreciating, then 
 the difference which years make in the ways of 
 people. 
 
 The tract where the cows were pastured com- 
 prised, I think, about two hundred acres. There 
 were a few cross-fences on it, but the bars to 
 these were generally let down, so that the cows 
 had the freedom of the whole, — they and the 
 sheep. The oxen were sometimes turned in 
 there, too, but for these more luxuriant pastures 
 were reserved, because, besides their being re- 
 
DERWEN T. 
 
 87 
 
 garded as of a somewhat dignified order of 
 cattle, they had less time for feeding than the 
 others, in consequence of their labors in the 
 yoke. The young cattle, — weaned calves and 
 yearlings, — were sent away for the summer 
 to some outlying lands, two miles away ; and 
 a pleasant season they had of it there, with 
 shades, and brooks, and abundance of sweet 
 feed, and nothing to do but enjoy them- 
 selves. Very sleek they looked, and glad to 
 see us, when we paid them a visit, now and 
 then, to carry them salt, and see how they 
 thrived. 
 
 The topography of the cows' range would re- 
 quire minute details to do it justice : I will only 
 say, in general, that most of it was elevated and 
 uneven, that parts of it were charmingly rude 
 and wild, and that there were points on it from 
 which you had extensive and pleasing prospects, 
 — which prospects often held me lingering and 
 looking longer than my time conveniently al- 
 lowed. Some glimpses of its features may be 
 got from the account I am here to give of one 
 of my excursions through the middle of it, look- 
 ing for the cows. 
 
 Entering at the bars, 1 may go up the face of 
 
88 DEKWENT. 
 
 the hill which forms the foreground of the tract, 
 and along southward on its ridge, — which lays 
 the river scenery open to me on my left, — or, 
 instead of ascending the hill, I may wind round 
 the northern base of it, rising as I go, till I find 
 myself in a green run behind it. Not seeing the 
 objects of my search there, I pass on through a 
 grand old grove of chestnuts, and come into a 
 small park-like opening of three or four acres, 
 between woods ; which we will call the Little 
 Pai-k. Here you will find sassafras ; and the 
 sumac, the acid of whose ripe red berries is 
 rather agreeable ; and blackberries, in the season 
 of them, in great abundance, variety and excel- 
 lence ; and hazel-nuts — and nig]Lt-hazvks,—\i\\\Q\v 
 will give you little pleasure, unless you hold 
 them in better esteem than I do. They appear 
 to have made this their special haunt and play- 
 ground. The air will be full of them at night- 
 fall. I dislike their barbarous note, unpleasing 
 enough when heard alone, but a perfect jargon 
 in the air where a good many of them are " scoot- 
 ing" about together. I dislike their ways and 
 manners more. They have a foolish habit of 
 diving straight down, from a great height, al- 
 most to the ground, and mounting again, making 
 
DERWENT. 89 
 
 a loud, hollow sound with the swiftness of their 
 descent; and sometimes they come swooping- 
 down at me in that way, almost touching my 
 hat, and startling me prodigiously for the in- 
 stant; for the place and the hour are lonely. I 
 might think they meant it for just a frolicsome 
 salutation, a joke and nothing more ; but I wish 
 them all dead, or banished. 
 
 The truth was, they had no reference to Master 
 John Chester at all, in their divings ; they were 
 after flies or bugs ; and if they saw one about 
 John's hat, they did not mind stooping for it 
 there. Very likely he himself would have started 
 it up for them. 
 
 Pausing here in Little Park, to make up my 
 mind in what direction to continue my search, I 
 decide, suppose, to keep on through the Shipley 
 Woods, so called, before me. They are thick 
 and dark. There is only a foot-path through 
 them, narrow, crooked, overhung with limbs of 
 trees and bushes, and scarcely traceable for the 
 dry leaves that cover it. In these woods I am a 
 long way from any house. It is always a rehef 
 to me to get out of them, at night, going either 
 way, but especially going homeward. 
 
 Emerging from these dark and tangled acres 
 
go DERWENT. 
 
 into the brighter world on their southwesterly 
 side, a short distance further brings me to the 
 " Shipley Place." Who or what Mr. Shipley 
 was, no one hereabouts, that I have asked, can 
 tell me. He was probably one of the original 
 proprietaries of the town of Derwent ; but his 
 race and name are unknown in it now. Here are 
 a few acres of smooth, rich, cultivable soil. There 
 is a domestic ruin on the place ; — a cellar, half 
 filled with its own dilapidated wall and with 
 fallen portions of the chimney that rises out of 
 it ; a well, bucketless, of course ; — the relics of a 
 family ; objects such as are • always interesting, 
 being memorial and suggestive. There are a 
 number of very old apple-trees ; two of which 
 are the largest I ever saw, and great bearers still, 
 and of very fine varieties of fruit. There is an 
 old cherry-tree, too, producing an abundance of 
 English sour reds, and climbablc for Walter and 
 me ; on which we fill our stomachs and pockets, 
 when the cherries are ripe, we think, — or almost 
 ripe, at any rate. 
 
 The cows, when found, are glad to see me ; for 
 they need the relief of milking. They move as 
 soon as they are spoken to. They know the 
 way. They take the path I came by, and keep 
 
DER WE NT . 
 
 91 
 
 right on, in single file, without going aside or 
 stopping. What a rustling they make,— there 
 are ten of them, — wading in the leaves through 
 the woods ! I wish the leaves away ; for I like 
 the stillness of woods along with their wildness, 
 that being a part of their poetry ; and then I 
 want to be able to hear what may be heard in 
 such a place, and at such an hour ; — the fluttering 
 of a wing, the hum of a beetle, the footsteps, per- 
 chance, of some dog traversing the woods, — 
 slight sounds that indicate an all-surrounding 
 stillness, and assure me of my safety in it. But 
 nothing can I hear for the leaves under the 
 cattle's feet. 
 
 I very often found them nearer home than in 
 this imaginary case which I have described ; 
 sometimes they would be at the bars, waiting 
 for me ; but this was only when they had calves. 
 Not unfrequently, however, I would have to 
 look far and wide, and long and late, for them, — 
 so that the people at home would wonder what 
 had become of me, and begin to be uneasy. Tired 
 and worried with one of these long searches, one 
 night, I stopped and stood still, in a bushy place, 
 thinking where to look further, — wishing the 
 
g2 DERWEN T. 
 
 whip-poor-wills would be quiet — when I was at 
 once startled and gladdened by the sly voice of 
 Hiram Heathcote, — for he had a way oi ap- 
 proaching you stealthily, and surprising you with 
 his sharp, sudden, almost whisper, from a dis- 
 tance. " Can't find 'em ? " " No." " Where 
 have you looked?" "Everywhere." "In such 
 a place?" "Yes." "And in such, and such, 
 and such ? " " Yes, in all those places." " You've 
 gone dreaming by 'em, with your eyes shut, 
 somewhere. Come." And, seizing my hand, he 
 strode on with me, through bush and brake, and 
 up and down, almost swinging me along the 
 ground, till the truant beasts were found. Never 
 did a tired, disheartened boy get so welcome a 
 lift as that. 
 
 I do not recollect ever giving over the pursuit 
 and going home without the animals, except in 
 one instance ; and then, though it was quite night, 
 my father sent me back to look again. They 
 were in a different pasture, that day, from the 
 one which I have described, and had hid them- 
 selves in a most unwonted place. I had to wade 
 throuofh water to sret to them. 
 
 &^ 
 
 There is no sunny side in life without a shad}'' 
 
DER WENT. 93 
 
 side to match it ; nor any shady one without a 
 sunny, if the heart be right. I might make up a 
 chapter of disagreeables on this cow-driving his- 
 tory of mine, as any complainer can on almost 
 any subject or occasion, if he will. To be waked 
 before you have had your sleep out, — to wet 
 your shoes, and drabble your trowsers, in the 
 grass, while the dew is on it, — to be overtaken 
 with solitude and night in lone fields a long way 
 from home, — to have to traverse, after dark, thick 
 woods made more dismal by fire-flies, owls, 
 croaking frogs, and other creatures of the night ; — 
 to be looking everywhere for animals that are 
 " nowhere," like Saul's lost asses, — to be out un- 
 avoidably in drenching rains, or terrific thunder- 
 storms, — these and the like things, of actual 
 occurrence, together with such bugbears as 
 might be conjured up besides, would be material 
 enough for the chapter in question. But the 
 benefits and pleasures of the service were far 
 more than the care and labor. As a part of my 
 early training, physical and mental, it was better 
 to me than so much time at books and schools. 
 Nor could I have well spared it from my recrea- 
 tions. Those cow-fetchings were agreeable ex- 
 cursions, pleasant rambles; and they were the 
 
p4 DERIVE NT. 
 
 pleasanter because there was an object, a use- 
 ful end connected with them ; for a walk 
 without an object, like life without an aim, 
 is but tedious. They afforded occasion for 
 solitary gazings and musings ; and the soli- 
 tary musings of a child, or a youth, when the 
 objects of his contemplation are harmless and 
 suggestive, as mine were on the hill-tops, and in 
 the woods and open fields, are no idle waste of 
 time ; they contribute to the lasting furniture, 
 the cherished treasures, of the mind. I was in 
 the way, too, in these excursions, of learning 
 divers things which books do not teach us : — the 
 trees of the wood ; the wild flowers and shrubs; 
 plants unknown to cultivation, and of what use 
 they are medicinally ; lights and shades ; shapes 
 and forms ; and many things. But I am indebted 
 to the service most of all, perhaps, for the exer- 
 cise it gave in some important habits, and par- 
 ticularly in those of constancy and perseverance. 
 To drive and fetch the cattle every day, at season- 
 able hours, reliably, no one bidding or reminding 
 me, — that was the constancy. To look for them 
 till I found them, wherever they might be, or 
 whatever the weather, or the hour, — that was the 
 perseverance. I have mentioned the instance in 
 
D E R WENT. 95 
 
 which my father sent me back to look again, and 
 to look till they were found. He was right in 
 doing so, though it seemed hard at the time ; for 
 the habit of a life, a strong character or a weak 
 one, success or failure in business, and, indeed, 
 the salvation of the soul itself, probably, has often 
 turned on a single act of persevering or giving 
 
 UD. 
 
XI. 
 
 Our Derwent School. 
 
SCHOOLS have a large place in early mem- 
 ories ; and I think our primary ones leave 
 more distinct and abiding impressions with us 
 than those we attend in our later youth. 
 
 The first seminary at which it was m)?- privilege 
 to be a pupil, was the district school. The 
 school-house, a low, unpainted building, was on 
 a corner of the green, and near the meeting- 
 house. It had an old look, and was, I believe, as 
 old as the parish itself. Time and the weather 
 had made it very gray, and had rcbbed it of por- 
 tions of its covering ; and no repairs were made 
 on it, because there was talk of building a new 
 one. In its huge fire-place, fires large enough, 
 you might think, to roast an ox, were made. 
 And they did roast the children that were seated 
 nearest them, — to balance which, the remotest 
 ones would be freezing, on a cold day. It was, 
 in fact, a house of three zones, the middle being 
 
 (99) 
 
TOO 
 
 DE R WE N T. 
 
 the temperate one ; the three comprizing various 
 degrees of heat, warmth, and cold, sufficient to 
 have made it generally comfortable, provided 
 these several temperatures could have been 
 equalized in one. 
 
 There was a scene outside, one day, which 
 always comes to me among my reminiscences of 
 that old school-house, and which I shall describe 
 here, not as a school incident, nor for the reader's 
 entertainment, but as characteristic of those 
 times. It is well to know what has been, since 
 the past has lessons for the future. We were 
 arrested in our studies by a drum coming to- 
 wards us across the Green. We were not aware 
 v,^hat it meant, as our raised heads and inquiring 
 looks would have told you : for that was not a 
 training day, nor was the drum beaten in a 
 martial way, musically, but was pounded on by 
 an unpracticed hand, without its usual accom- 
 paniment, the fife. The teacher explained to us 
 that a man was going to be whipped at the 
 whipping-post, for something he had done ; he 
 believed it was for stealing ; and said we might 
 go out and see. We all went. The whipping- 
 post was but a few rods off. The officer in charge 
 
DERWENT. lOi 
 
 of the affair was attended by a number of gentle- 
 men, and a few boys ; the gentlemen being pres- 
 ent to give moral effect to the castigation, and 
 the boys, of course, from curiosity and excite- 
 ment. As for us of the school, we stood, a 
 nervous, shrinking group of lookers-on, in the 
 shadow of the house, — for the most of us were 
 very young, as it was the summer term, when 
 few of the older scholars were in attendance. The 
 culprit, who was a stranger in the place, a vaga- 
 bond apparently, was a strongly built, youngish 
 man, of medium height, with a hard, ugly face, 
 we fancied. A sunny one it hardly could have 
 been, in his circumstances. He was made 
 to strip himself to the waist, and was then tied to 
 the post, and flogged with a common horsewhip. 
 The strokes were not many, but they were well 
 laid on, and forced from him some cries of pain 
 that we heard above the drum. The business 
 being through with, he was let go, the object of 
 a two-fold pity, — for his guilt and for his punish- 
 ment, — and was not seen again in Derwent. 
 But what a spectacle it was, to turn out a young 
 school to look at ! 
 
 Every town had its whipping-post, in those 
 days ; nor had stocks wholly disappeared. They 
 
102 DER WENT. 
 
 Avere not often used, but they might be, and some- 
 times were, as we have seen, and they were 
 standing caveats to rogues. 
 
 We are sent to school to study what is taught 
 in books ; but we do more than that ; we study 
 our schoohnates, and are learners of human 
 nature. Children, in their talk and play among 
 themselves, are undisguised. Any school is 
 favorable to this kind of study, but none equally 
 so with the common school ; for there is none 
 that brings together so great a diversity of minds 
 and manners, and from so great a diversity of 
 homes ;— of these last alone it might suffice to 
 speak, in such a connection, for as the homes are, 
 the children are. This so early and intimate 
 acquaintance with human kind is one of the 
 principal benefits of attendance at these unselect 
 seminaries of the districts. The knowledge thus 
 acquired does not, as some may think, cease to 
 be true and reliable as we grow older : it is as 
 lasting as are the identities of the objects of it. 
 Looking back to what people were in their child- 
 hood and early youth, you perceive that they 
 are still the same in later life. The man does 
 justice to the boy, and the woman to the girl. 
 
DER WENT. 103 
 
 Their maturer education, and the discipline of 
 circumstances, may have modified them more or 
 less, but these have not remodeled them, have 
 not changed, essentially, their mental and moral 
 characteristics. They show the same tempers, 
 dispositions, manners, which you remember of 
 them at school, on the play-grounds, and at their 
 homes. 
 
 The studies of the common school, especially 
 the primary ones, are so rudimental and simple, 
 that they are apt to be regarded as the easiest of 
 all book learning ; whereas, probably, because the 
 learners are beginners, they are the hardest. It is 
 no small achievement to master the speUing-book 
 alone. But let us see. The first thing is the 
 Alphabet. What is the Alphabet? It is a 
 column or a line of characters, twenty-six in 
 number, duplicated, showing the small with the 
 large; and quadruplicated, if you count in the 
 Italics, — as many, all together, as a flock of wild 
 geese, and flying about as high, in the child's 
 apprehension. One hundred and four, all told, 
 to say nothing of " and-by-itself-and," and the 
 double letters. All these are to be mastered by 
 the merest force of will. They have no meanings 
 to assist the memory, no pleasing colors, no 
 
104 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 attractive forms, no helping accompaniments of 
 any kind ; they are mere shapes to be named and 
 remembered. No two of them are alike, ex- 
 actly ; yet some of them are so perplexingly simi- 
 lar as to have originated that familiar caution, 
 " Mind your /'s and ^'s ;" which might as well 
 have been your ^'s and ^'s ; for these require as 
 sharp an eye as those. 
 
 And yet, poor child ! the mother wonders that 
 he should be so long in learning his letters. A 
 whole summer at school, or two or more sum- 
 mers, even, and he does not know them yet! 
 And perhaps she chides him, or blames his 
 teacher. Well, I propose that she set herself to 
 learn some other alphabet, say the Ethiopic, or 
 the Arabic, no more strange and barbarous to 
 her than ours is to the child, and see how easily 
 and quickly she will get it. And, to facilitate 
 the learning, I would have her do it in a noisy 
 school-room, at the point of a pen-knife, reading 
 twice, or four times a day, with tiresome, vacant 
 hours between. Such is her little man's task, ex- 
 actly. 
 
 And here let a protest be entered against send- 
 ing these scholars in the alphabet to school, — if 
 there be any help for it, as in some cases, mostly 
 
DER WENT. 105 
 
 Celtic ones, there may not be. How can a moth- 
 er that loves her child, and can read herself, be 
 willing to subject her little one to so many te- 
 dious sittings and dull readings as he must suffer, 
 with his A, B, C, there, when she might make 
 his acquisition of it more a pastime than a task 
 at home ? 
 
 I have spoken of the barrenness of these alpha- 
 betical readings. That is not all the trouble. 
 Like every other study, they require attention 
 and an effort to remember; and the power of 
 fixing the attention, and the retentiveness of the 
 memory, depend on discipline. But, with the 
 learner of the alphabet, this is the first instance 
 of such an exercise in the way of an imposed 
 study. Hence, how easily he is diverted, and 
 how easily he forgets. " Look on, my child, look 
 on the book. Never mind the fly, the wind, the 
 shadow." But how impossible is such abstrac- 
 tion ! You might as reasonably, and about as 
 effectually, command away the objects that di 
 vert him : begone, wind, shadow, motion. 
 
 These remarks are applicable, with diminish- 
 ing force, to all succeeding studies, — spelling, 
 reading, arithmetic, grammar, and the rest. With 
 diminishing force, not because the studies them- 
 
I06 DERWENT. 
 
 selves are easier, but because of the student's in- 
 creasing power, through habit, of abstraction and 
 attention. 
 
 Go into the district school, and observe that 
 class at study. The book is the Spelling Book ; 
 the lesson a table of words. They are evidently 
 intent on it. The girls bend over it with knit 
 brows, repeating the words mentally, or in low 
 whispers, to themselves, as their moving lips 
 show. The boys manifest a like abstraction, 
 without the moving lips, and in such attitudes as 
 they incline to take : boys being girls in nothing. 
 They are going over the words again and again, 
 and many times ; and this they must do, to be 
 perfect in them. It is no short work, or light 
 task, to get a correct and tolerably extensive 
 knowledge of orthography. Words are many, 
 and, in many cases, are capriciously formed, with 
 no analogy, or law, to tell us how they must be 
 spelled, except the bare authority of usage. 
 Those between the covers of the dictionary are 
 many thousands, and those in common, daily use 
 are not few. Evidence of the exactness, the deli- 
 cacy, the niceness, of orthographic knowledge, 
 as well as the time requisite to the attainment 
 
DERWENT. 107 
 
 of it, we have in the fact that so few, compara- 
 tively, even of those whom we call well-educated 
 people, are thorough in it. Dr. Noah Webster 
 once remarked to me, that "only editors and 
 printers spell correctly." But editors and print- 
 ers are not always faultless in this respect. I 
 have just laid down an English book, of recent 
 date and of wide celebrity, in which there are 
 several orthographic errors ; and they appear, 
 quite too frequently, in very respectable books 
 and editorials in our own country. 
 
 Now I suspect that the district schools make 
 more good spellers than most other seminaries 
 do. I am persuaded that the method they adopt, 
 that of drilling the learners in classes, is the best, 
 and that there is no book so proper for the busi- 
 ness as the Spelling-Book. In such an exercise, 
 the ear helps; mistakes made and corrected 
 have an effect like that of discussion and revi- 
 sion, and if "going above" be practiced, emula- 
 tion stimulates. 
 
 Orthography has so much to do with every 
 kind of writing, and every kind of business, and 
 with personal respectability, that it is quite an 
 infelicity to have passed one's school-days with- 
 out acquiring a thorough and familiar knowl- 
 
I08 DERWENT. 
 
 edge of it ; for this is not often attained after- 
 wards. A man may write a bad hand, as bad as 
 that of a lawyer's brief, and still be a gentleman, 
 or a scholar; but if he misspells, that fact shows 
 him to be a man of defective early education, or 
 else negligent and slovenly in his literary tastes 
 and habits. That letter from your lady friend 
 may be beautifully written, and its sentiments 
 may be fine ; but how oddly a particular word 
 in it strikes you ! It is so out of shape (for words 
 have shapes), that you do not at once make it 
 out. And you say, what a pity she were not less 
 accomplished in her dancing, in her music, even, 
 so she were more correct in her spelling. It has 
 not seldom happened that an important legal 
 document, a will, for instance, has been made 
 void by the equivocal meaning of a misspelt 
 word. The bad speller not only miswrites his 
 own thought, but may misconceive the meaning 
 of another's writing. An illiterate preacher took 
 for his text. Write, Blessed are the dead zuliich die 
 in the Lord; and drew from it the docti'ine that 
 there is " a right blessedness, and a zvrong bless- 
 edness." Had he been exercised, as he would 
 have been in any district-school, in words of like 
 sound with unlike meanings, — write, to use a pen, 
 
DE R WENT. 109 
 
 rigJit, the opposite of wrong ; rigJit, in distinction 
 from left; rite, a ceremony; zvright, a workman, 
 — he would not have spoiled a solemn text, and 
 made himself ridiculous. 
 
 Good or bad habits in the pronunciation, as 
 well as the use of words, are formed much more 
 by home teaching than they can be by that of 
 the school. There are sounds in every language, 
 probably, which children, in their first attempts 
 to talk, find it difficult to articulate. In most 
 cases, they correct the fault early, but not in all 
 cases. I knew a brilliant young man in college, 
 afterwards lieutenant-gov^ernor of his State, who 
 substituted L for R, like the Japanese in their 
 attempts to speak English. Through all his 
 schools, in spite of all his teachers of elocution, 
 the defect had cleaved to him. In conversation, 
 in debate, in reading, he would cast out every r 
 and thrust an / into its place, — apparently with- 
 out embarrassment, and certainly with the natu- 
 ralness and force of early habit. He made queer 
 work with words and names. What book are 
 you leading ? Am I light, or am I long ? Often 
 a stranger introduced by him would be embar- 
 rassed or amused by the alias that would be 
 o-iven him. 
 
110 DERWENT. 
 
 These cases of adult mispronunciation are not 
 attributable to any defects in the vocal organs, 
 but to early training. The family and friends 
 amused themselves with the child's way of speak- 
 ing, encouraged and kept him in it, themselves 
 pronouncing as he did, perhaps, in their talks 
 with him, till it became so fixed a habit that he 
 could not drop it ; for of all learning, the unlearn- 
 ing of our early mispronunciation of words is 
 about the most difficult. 
 
 Let me, then, put in a plea here in behalf of 
 infant learners of their mother tongue. They 
 have to get it wholly by the ear. They cannot 
 go to the dictionary to know how a word should 
 be pronounced. They cannot ask us to spell it 
 for them, as we cannot ask an illiterate foreigner 
 to spell a name which he does not give us intelli- 
 gibly. They must talk as they hear others, or as 
 they are themselves allowed to talk, be it well or 
 ill. If we would secure a correct and graceful 
 use of words in them, such must be our use of 
 words with them. A mother expressed her ad- 
 miration of the select and refined language of the 
 children of a certain family. " Why should they 
 not use such language ? they hear no other," was 
 the reply. They did but what the children of 
 
DERIVE NT. HI 
 
 the rudest family do : they spoke the language 
 of the house. 
 
 Whoever recollects his first endeavors with 
 the pen at school, will remember some foolscap 
 pages of very crooked " straight marks." They 
 were supposed to be parallel, as well as straight ; 
 biit they stood all ways, looking like a field of 
 hop-poles over which a whirlwind had passed. 
 After these, there are essays at curves, or turns, 
 and hair-strokes ; which turns resemble broken 
 rims of cart-wheels, and the hair-strokes, sailors' 
 rope-yarns. Out of these unpromising beginnings 
 there comes, slowly, first a legible, then a re- 
 spectable, and eventually, it may be hoped, a 
 beautiful autography. This last attainment, how- 
 ever, is but rare. The pen is a difficult instru- 
 ment to manage dextrously — more difficult than 
 any tool of the hand craftsman. In fact, penman- 
 ship is a mechanical art ; the learner is an ap- 
 prentice to it ; and I am not sure that it does not 
 require a mechanical genius to become an expert 
 in it. The best penman in our Derwent School 
 was the best whittler in it. 
 
 The method of teaching was, to make us 
 practise first at a coarse hand ; then at one half 
 as large ; and, lastly, we might try at a fine hand. 
 
112 D ER WENT. 
 
 The fine, consequently, was regarded as the test 
 and show of excellence. This consideration, to- 
 gether with the notion that girls must write a 
 smaller hand than boys, that being one of the 
 proprieties of sex, made the girls ambitious to 
 write a very fine one. In this way it was, that 
 my sister Alice formed what I have always called 
 her mustard-seed hand. Her letters still come to 
 me in lines so delicate that rows of mustard-seeds 
 dropped on them would hide them ; — quite in 
 contrast with the large free hand which many 
 ladies now use. I like to see it, both because it 
 is hers, and because it tells me that her almost 
 eighty years have not dimmed her vision. 
 
 It is interesting to note the progress of im- 
 provement in small things as well as in great. 
 We ruled our own paper : it did not come to us 
 blue-lined from the manufacturer as it now does. 
 Conscquentl}^ a ruler and a plummet were a part 
 of our equipment for school. 
 
 Indecorums in the school-room were of course 
 subject to the teacher's notice and correction ; 
 but he also had cognizance, to some extent, of 
 the manners of his scholars outside the house ; 
 and not only around it, but on their way to and 
 
 4 
 
DER WENT . 
 
 113 
 
 from it. I have in mind here a civility which all 
 well brought-up children were expected to ob- 
 serve. They were to show respect to elderly 
 people and to strangers, when they met them on 
 the road, the boys by taking off their hats and 
 bowing, and the girls by dropping a courtesy. 
 For an omission of this duty, school-going chil- 
 dren were liable to be reported to the master ; and 
 sometimes were reported, by some little tell-tale 
 lover of mischief, or some unfledged future moral 
 reformer. " Please, Sir, Charley Cricket didn't 
 make a bow to the man ; " or " Fanny Bluebird 
 didn't make a curchy." 
 
 I suspect that this was an old Teutonic cus- 
 tom, — older than Puritan New England, for you 
 meet with it in parts of Germany, if not ever}^- 
 where among the German peasantry, not only 
 youths, but adults Hfting the hat as they pass you. 
 We might regret its discontinuance with us as 
 a token of respect to seniors and strangers, so 
 amiable in youth ; but its observance now would 
 be out of harmony with the spirit of our Young 
 America. 
 
 One scarcely knows of a more interesting sight 
 than that of a lovely young school commencing 
 8 
 
114 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 the duties of the day with appropriate religious 
 exercises. There is a brief reading of scripture 
 by one or more of the older classes, and then, 
 their heads reverently bowed, and the room hush, 
 there is a prayer so simple, appropriate and fer- 
 vent, that every bosom makes it its own. In 
 that school you may look for order, diligence 
 and improvement, and strong mutual attach- 
 ments. But religion is a delicate thing in the 
 school-room. The prayer may weary by its 
 length, or. chill by its coldness, or shock by its 
 hypocrisy : and they are young and sensitive 
 spirits that are to be affected by it. Instances of 
 such heartless performances, it pains me to re- 
 member; and one especially — droning, wordy, 
 long, repetitional, and every day the same. One 
 of the boys declared that a certain expression in 
 it occurred, by actual count of his, thirty-six 
 times, — a statement which was probably not far 
 from the truth. The man made no profession of 
 religion, but prayed by request of the school 
 committee, using a written form. 
 
 It is matter of history that the Assembly's 
 Catechism used to be taught or recited, in our 
 public schools. I am glad that it is only history 
 
DEE WENT. 115 
 
 now, and not a living custom. I say this with- 
 out the slightest disrespect to the memory of 
 the fathers : few appreciate them more than I 
 do. 
 
 The Shorter Catechism, it was called. Than 
 what it was shorter, I did not know, not having 
 seen or heard of the Larger ; but with what 
 propriety it could be called short, positively, 
 with its one hundred and seven questions to be 
 asked and answered, I could not understand. 
 Saturday was the day for "saying " it; and very 
 tedious was that catechism hour. All the custom- 
 ary lessons of the school were previously gone 
 through with, as on other days. Then, putting 
 books and slates aside, we turned and sat in 
 solemn rows, with folded hands, our faces toward 
 the centre, looking as grave as young faces 
 could, and as — resigned. Sighs from the bosoms 
 of slender forms were audible in the course of 
 this adjustment. 
 
 The teacher's way was, to begin at the young- 
 est, and pass from these to the older. I have a 
 perfect recollection of his beginning with me, 
 once. Laying his hand upon my head, every 
 hair of which felt the touch, he said, " John, 
 
Il6 DE R WENT. 
 
 What is the chief end of man f Amid profound 
 stillness I gave the answer, " Man 'ih chief end 
 ith to glorify God and enjoy him forever T How 
 well I understood that, or any "chief end," I 
 cannot say : what I did know was, that the svm- 
 beams on the floor told us that it was noon, and 
 I was a tired and hungry boy. The youngest 
 would soon be at the end of their small stock of 
 answers ; the older ones would get on stages 
 farther, like a series of relays ; and then after all 
 these, there would be two or three girls, — tall, 
 leaji girls (no wonder they were lean), who would 
 go on to the very last of the hundred and seven; 
 so that we would not get out till one o'clock, or 
 after; — and that, too, on our only play-afternoon 
 of the week! How we wished those pi'odigious 
 memories were shorter! 
 
 Six long hours in the school-room daily, for 
 five and a half days in the week. So many hours 
 of brain-work there (besides lessons to be learned 
 out of the school), for the older scholars, and so 
 many hours of ennui and yawning for the little 
 ones, and at the end of all this, the Catechism ! 
 What ought to be, have been, and are, the con- 
 sequences? Affections of the nerve and spine, 
 headaches, pallor, lassitude, loss of mental power 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 117 
 
 through over-work and stimulation, early decay 
 and death. Died of bad air, bad seats, and 
 TOO many hours in school, would be the pro- 
 per lettering of many a recent head-stone ; and 
 on moss-grown ones, in old cemeteries, you might 
 add, OF saying the Shorter Catechism. Wc 
 have grown a little more considerate of young 
 flesh and blood, than we were ; we have dropped 
 the half day of Saturday, pretty generally, I be- 
 lieve. But we still keep the six hours of the 
 other days. This is too long for the health of 
 young scholars, as overcrowding them with 
 studies, cramming them, is too much for their 
 minds. 
 
 I was sent, for a time, when in my teens, to 
 Bacon Academy, then a young and flourishing 
 institution ; and there we were required to recite 
 the Catechism with Vincent's " Explications " of 
 it. And that our brains might not suffer for 
 want of work on Sundays, we were expected to 
 get these lessons, with their interminable exphca- 
 tions, then, and be ready to recite them the next 
 
 morning. The principal of the Academy, R o 
 
 B gh, whose memory I respect, required the 
 
 same thoroughness in these, that he did in Latin, 
 or any other study. But it was up-hill work. 
 
Il8 DERWEN T. 
 
 The lessons were so ill-gotten that he declared, 
 in a fit of impatience, that he knew of no stronger 
 evidence of total depravity than the aversion of 
 young people to the Catechism. 
 
XII. 
 
 JACK-O'-LANTERNS. 
 
MY father gave us an account, one morning, 
 of an ignis fatuus, otherwise a jack-o'- 
 lantern, which he had seen the evening before. 
 Webster writes the name jack-zvitJi-a-lantcrn ; 
 but I will give it as I have always heard it 
 spoken. Webster also writes Will-wit h-a-wisp, 
 instead of Will-d -the-zvisp ; which is another 
 popular alias of frisky Jack. My father was 
 coming over the bridge that crosses the Der- 
 went, the " Turnpike Bridge," as it was called. 
 The hour was late, and the night dark. The 
 marshy flats that bordered the stream were broad 
 there, and the crossing, except over the channel, 
 was a long causeway, built high enough to be 
 above the tides. As he came upon the bridge, 
 he noticed a light towards the other end of it, 
 which he supposed to be in the hand of some one 
 coming over from that side. It did not, how- 
 ever, meet him half-wav as he expected, but 
 
 (.2.) 
 
122 D E R WEN T. 
 
 staid where it was ; and, on approaching it, he 
 perceived that it was not on the causeway, but 
 over the marsh, a few yards from it. He sat on 
 his horse and looked at it a long time, and, but 
 for the mire, would have got down and gone to 
 it. It rose out of the mud, a fitful, dancing flame, 
 flaring up and dying away by turns, as a burnt- 
 down candle does in its socket. These were 
 circumstances to be noted, — its fantastic motions 
 and its variableness of volume, — as by means of 
 them we may understand the tricks it practices 
 on beholders. 
 
 What are jack-o'lanterns ? Ask the chemists.; 
 they will tell you. I do not concern myself with 
 them scientifically here, but am only looking at 
 them in the light of the old popular ideas of 
 them. Learned professors did not use to tell us 
 what they were, exactly, only that they were 
 some sort of gas, issuing from low wet grounds, 
 and igniting in contact with the air, — though 
 they were said to be sometimes seen in burying- 
 grounds as well, — which increased their mysteri- 
 ousness. 
 
 The prospect from our home included exten- 
 sive marshes and wet meadows, and a jack-o'- 
 lantern over them was not a very rare sight to 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 123 
 
 US ; and we were often hearing of them from 
 others who had seen them,— so that we thought 
 we had a considerably familiar acquaintance with 
 them. There was a variety of popular notions 
 in regard to them, some of which were amusing, 
 and some superstitious. Such notions are hardly 
 to be met with now, I think ; for science, which 
 dissipates a thousand errors, has scattered these 
 will-of-the-wisp illusions. But, as they have for 
 me, and may have for the reader, the interest of 
 history, I shall specify some of them. 
 
 They were thought to have the power of loco- 
 motion ; moving sometimes slowly and some- 
 times with astonishing swiftness, and always 
 horizontally, and near the ground. But this 
 apparent change of place was an illusion. For, 
 observing them attentively, you would perceive 
 that the movement would always be directly 
 towards, or directl}^ from you, and never in a 
 line oblique or perpendicular to this. I watched 
 one, which seemed to be moving very swiftly, 
 from right to left, and against a strong wind, too, 
 for the night was very stormy ; but it soon occur- 
 red to me to reflect that, in looking at it, I had 
 not changed the direction of my eye at all, 
 whereas, if the apparent movement had been a 
 
124 DERWEN T. 
 
 real one, I ought to have turned half-way round. 
 The illusion was aided, doubtless, by the driving 
 wind and sloping rain, — as any fixed object seems 
 to move in a direction opposite to that of a 
 moving one passing b}'^ it. A stake standing in 
 a stream will appear to move against the current. 
 The advance and retrocession of the jack-o- 
 lantern are explainable by the increase and dimi- 
 nution of the flame. Growing larger, it will 
 appear to be coming toward you ; growing less, 
 it will appear to be going from you ; and the 
 rapidity, or slowness, of its movement, to or fro, 
 will depend on the rapidity or slowness of its 
 increase or diminution. 
 
 A number of our hired men, sitting out on the 
 ground, talking, one muggy evening, were 
 attracted by a light that could be nothing but a 
 jack-o-lantern. They all sprang up and gave 
 chase to it. It should have been boy-like in me 
 to join them in such an adventure ; but I did not 
 care to break my neck, tumbling over walls, 
 stones, and stumps in a wild run in the dark. 
 They came back out o^f breath, but in gleeful 
 mood, declaring that there was " no overhauling 
 the thing ; it went swifter than the wind, and 
 was out of sight in a jiffy." 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 125 
 
 It was strange that nobody could ever cateh 
 and examine these phantoms. They could have 
 been caught, had people known how, but not 
 with hounds. Our enthusiastic neighbor, " the 
 Major," was quite sure that he had one of them, 
 once. He approached it with the greatest pos- 
 sible care, and clapped his hat over it. " And 
 what was it?" we asked. "It wasn't nothing," 
 he replied. " But what became of it ; where did 
 it go to.''" "That is more than I know," said 
 the Major. The probability was, that, in tread- 
 ing around in the mud, his foot had closed the 
 orifice from which it issued, else it might have 
 resumed its shining on the removal of the hat. 
 
 It was not to be wondered at, considering the 
 mysteriousness and whimsicalness .of these singu- 
 lar luminaries of wet grounds and misty nights, 
 and the ignorance even of the savants of their 
 nature and composition, if more people than 
 were willing to confess as much should have felt 
 a little skittish at being alone with one of them. 
 
 And you would sometimes hear of ridiculous 
 frights occasioned by them. Two young lovers, 
 returning home from an evening visit, ran burst- 
 ing into a house, the first they came to, with such 
 precipitancy that they overturned chairs and 
 
126 DERWENT. 
 
 tables. " Why, what is the matter ; what has 
 happened?" asked such of the family as had not 
 gone to bed, — in answer to which they declared 
 that they had met a light borne by no mortal 
 hand, and that it passed directly between them ! 
 " Poh ! your poker stories." " No, but we posi- 
 tively did." The place where they met the 
 phantom, or it met them (they could not tell 
 which), was where the road crossed a quagmire. 
 
 There was a popular notion that a jack-o'- 
 lantern would lead you into swamps and fens ; 
 and credulous people really believed there was 
 something in this. And so, indeed, there was. 
 Appearing as these ignes fatui, false fires, do, in 
 wet grounds — in marshes, swamps, and fens — if 
 you direct yaur steps toward them, supposing 
 them to be lights in houses, as easily you may, 
 they will, of course, beguile you into such 
 places. 
 
 The old poets have this superstition. Thus 
 Parnell, in his Fairy Tale : 
 
 " Then Will, who bears the wispy fire, 
 To train the swains among the mire " — . 
 
 And I think you will find it in Shakespeare — who 
 calls it Jack-of-the-lanthorn, by the way. 
 
DERIVE N T. 
 
 127 
 
 A man stopped at our house at late bed-time, 
 one evening, on his way home from a husking. 
 He had enjoyed too well the treat that had been 
 given to the huskers : he was tipsy ; and it was 
 doubtful what sort of steerage he would make 
 of it, getting down to his lodgings. The next 
 morning Mr. Prudden, with whom he was living, 
 sent up to us to know if we had seen anything of 
 Mr. Button. They had sat up late for him ; but 
 he did not come — had not yet come ; and they 
 were concerned about him. My father and 
 others went out to look for him. After a long 
 search, in barns and everywhere, we found him 
 lying by a fence, a few steps from a bog-meadow 
 at the foot of Mr. Prudden's home-lot. He 
 stared at us as we came around him, and inclined 
 to be silent to our inquiries. His look was be- 
 wildered, his clothes were torn and very muddy, 
 one shoe was missing, and altogether he made a 
 very woe-begone figure. He was quite spent, 
 and needed help to rise. The only account he 
 would give of himself, or could give, probably, 
 was, that he had been led into a swamp by a 
 jack-o'-lantern. A short story, and, without 
 doubt, a true one. He saw a light which he 
 thought was in Mr. Prudden's house, and made 
 
128 DERWENT. 
 
 for it, persistently, and very stupidly ; for he had 
 to leave the road for it, and make his way through 
 or over fences ; which would have told a sober 
 man better. So he got swamped and lost.* 
 
 * If some reader should happen to remember an article on 
 Ignis Fatuus which appeared many years ago in " Silliman's 
 Journal of Science," and some incidents mentioned in it, it 
 might be necessary to say that it was contributed by the writer 
 of this. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE RIVER. 
 
"AN ingenious Spaniard says, that 'rivers 
 -^^-^ and the inhabitants of the watery ele- 
 ment were made for wise men to contemplate, 
 and fools to pass by without consideration.' And 
 though I will not rank myself in the number of 
 the first, yet give me leave to free myself from 
 the last, by offering to you a short contempla- 
 tion, first of rivers, and then of fish ; concerning 
 which I doubt not but to give you many obser- 
 vations that will appear very considerable ; I am 
 sure they have appeared so to me, and made 
 many an hour pass away more pleasantly, as I 
 have sat quietly on a flowery bank by a calm 
 river, and contemplated what I shall now relate 
 to you." 
 
 I quote this passage of our quaint old friend, 
 honest Isaak's, because it suits my subject, and 
 perhaps because it pleases me ; though I cannot 
 so confidently promise to append to it " many 
 
 (131) 
 
132 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 observations that will appear very considera- 
 ble." 
 
 The Connecticut, the largest of the New-Eng- 
 land rivers, and one of the most beautiful in the 
 world, was a great thing with me in my boy- 
 hood. Many of my hours of pastime were spent 
 on it and at its side, and many of my working 
 hours, too, along and near its bank. 
 
 I loved to listen to its voices, — the fretting of 
 its tides, coming in with breezes from the south ; 
 the murmurs of its waves ; the dash of oars, when 
 the air was still ; the sailor's, or the boatman's 
 song, on a moon-lit evening : the " Heave-o- 
 heave" of sailors at the windlass, and the click 
 of its dropping pall as they were getting up 
 their anchors ; the flapping of sails when a 
 change of tack was made. 
 
 Every one knows what a conductor of sound 
 is water. The river was said to be a mile wide 
 there. It looked as wide as that; it might be 
 less ; but at any rate it was so wide that no one 
 would think of making his voice heard across it, 
 shouting. And yet in certain states of the at- 
 mosphere, as we stood at the water's edge on 
 our side, the most ordinary sounds would come 
 over to us with perfect distinctness, from the 
 
DERWENT. 133 
 
 other. We often listened to the splash of cattle's 
 feet wading along the opposite shore. There 
 was a solitary hut near the water on that side, 
 tenanted by a poor family. I was startled, one 
 day, by the sharp cry of a child belonging to it. 
 The mother ran out, chiding it as if for a fault. 
 Every syllable was audible. She caught up the 
 little fellow in her arms, uttered an " Oh ! dear" 
 of pity, took him into the house, reappeared in 
 an instant, and ran up the river-side a long way, 
 till she came to a road that turned inland, and 
 disappeared. Something had befallen, evidently, 
 and she was running for help. I learned, after- 
 wards, that her little boy had climbed a tree that 
 overhung a rock, and had fallen and broken his 
 arm. How much have the distinctive dresses 
 of boys and girls, — of the sexes, — to do with their 
 distinctive habits! — though nature, which can- 
 not be reformed away, undoubtedly does more. 
 A girl's dress is not convenient for climbing ; 
 hence girls do not climb, and fall from trees, and 
 break their limbs, as boys so often do, and some- 
 times their necks. 
 
 I was never tired of looking at the river itself, as 
 an object of beauty. But the great charm was the 
 vessels. Almost always there would be some of 
 
134 DERIVE NT. 
 
 these in sight, under sail, or at anchor ; often there 
 would be a whole fleet of them coming into view 
 together, from some reach above or below, where 
 they had all been wind-bound, for hours,or days, 
 it might have been, — on board of which it was but 
 truth to fancy a great deal of gladness, now, if not 
 of gratitude, for the change of wind that had 
 given them release. These would be pleasing 
 objects in any eye ; in mine they were fascinating, 
 because of my strong penchant for the sea. 
 
 No life appeared to me so bold, adventurous, 
 and hardy, and at the same time so jovial, as the 
 sailor's. This impression I got from the river, 
 very naturally ; where I saw only the fresh-water 
 end of the business. The crews of vessels just 
 in from sea were always merry, — though they 
 were less so, going out, I noticed ; and then they 
 saw so much of the world, I fancied, and brought 
 home such luscious fruits and sweetmeats. Thus 
 the river was like to make a sailor of me ; but 
 Providence and my friends were against it ; and 
 so was my own maturer thought. My desire for 
 a life on the ocean did not much outlast my early 
 boyhood. 
 
 This captivating feature of the river, the ves- 
 sels, has in a great degree disappeared from it 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 135 
 
 now. The last time I was there, instead of the 
 many sails that used to so enliven and adorn it, 
 I saw only a dirt)'^-looking schooner, or a rusty 
 sloop, passing up or down, at long intervals, to 
 carry stone, or coal, or such other articles as 
 steamboats and freight-cars do not care to take. 
 A very solitary look my once delightful old Con- 
 necticut had to me. It is the steamboats and 
 cars that have made the change. And what have 
 they given us, instead, — these great things of 
 progress "i of which I do not lightly speak. More 
 speed for goods in a hurry, and for people ; but 
 at the cost of how much of the agreeable and 
 pleasing of the old routes and modes of travel ! 
 What neat and home-like resting-places were 
 those quiet inns we used to stop at, along the 
 green old roads ! 
 
 Dean Swift, I think it was, — some humorist, — 
 defined angling to be " a stick and a string, with 
 a worm at one end and a fool at the other." The 
 author of that witticism would himself have been 
 what he describes, with a fish-pole in his hand ; 
 for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. But 
 I could not have allowed it to be applicable to 
 boys, in my young days ; nor do I now, looking 
 back to that time. There is more sense and bet- 
 
136 DER WENT. 
 
 ter taste in Izack Walton's opinion. " I shall tell 
 you," he says, " what some have observed, and 
 I have found it to be a real truth, that the very 
 sitting by the river's side is not only the quietest 
 and fittest place for contemplation, but will in- 
 vite the angler to it." Angling, sitting still on a 
 river's bank, or a pond's, may have an idle look 
 with it ; and it may be idleness in fact, as the 
 habit of some minds is ; but it may be well for 
 educators of the young to consider whether, in 
 all cases, hours that are spent in apparent listless- 
 ness and vacancy are wasted hours. The richest 
 intellectual stores of the finest minds have been 
 the acquisition, often, of such hours. Rambles 
 in the valley, or by the river, or by the sea-shore, 
 and the society of woods, and shades, and brooks, 
 and feathered and four-footed things, have done 
 for them what seminaries and teachers could 
 not do. 
 
 My brother and I passed many a pleasant hour 
 together, with our hooks and lines. Fish were 
 abundant in our waters, and of various kinds, so 
 that we seldom failed to take as many as we 
 wished. We made some observations on their 
 natures and habits. Aside from their respective 
 qualities for the table, which might be the only 
 
DERWENT. 137 
 
 ones that an epicure would think of, the scaly 
 people have social instincts, are sportive, curious, 
 shy in some cases, bold in others, and, in differ- 
 ent degrees, beautiful, graceful, agile, or strong. 
 It would be tedious to give instances ; but why 
 should they come and go in shoals and compa- 
 nies, if they had no social affinities ; and why 
 does the sturgeon, for example, leap out of water, 
 unless it be in play ? I believe that fishes need 
 repose and sleep, as creatures of the land do, 
 and that, perhaps, they love light and sunshine 
 for this. I saw, one day, a fine large pickerel 
 lying perfectly still, and evidently napping, in a 
 shallow sun-lit water, under the bank of the Der- 
 went. Approaching it carefully, I struck a smart 
 blow with my fish-pole directly over it. In- 
 stantly it darted out of sight, and the next instant 
 returned with a force that threw it high and dry 
 ashore ; and I picked it up. To be awakened 
 so suddenly and violently appeared to have 
 crazed it, — the pickerel being a remarkably shy 
 fish. 
 
 A variety of benefits substantial and lasting, as 
 well as pastimes, my brother and I derived from 
 the river. And if these were got in the way of 
 amusement, the value of them was none the less 
 
138 DERWENT. 
 
 for that. One of the benefits was our familiarity 
 with boats. We learned to manage them with 
 confidence, in the roughest weather, with oars, 
 or with sails. And I can truly say that this 
 acquirement has been of much use to me. Often 
 it has enabled me to be ray own ferryman when 
 I could not have found another. Many a time it 
 has saved me from uneasiness and fear on the 
 water, and has been the means of quieting the 
 apprehensions of others. More than once it has 
 availed me in circumstances of considerable peril. 
 More than once, too, in my boyhvjod, it led me 
 into peril. I remember venturing out with two 
 other lads, in a small boat, in such circumstances 
 that spectators from the shore regarded us as 
 little better than lost ; and indeed we did but 
 narrowly escape. I think we may have owed, 
 in some degree, the cheerfulness and vigor of our 
 boyhood to our boating ; for I know of no better 
 gymnastic exercise than a pull at the oar, and 
 there is no better air, off the hills, than one 
 breathes on the water. 
 
 I have no idea how, or when, we might have 
 acquired this tact and confidence as boatmen, if 
 we had not done so when we were young, and in 
 the way of pastime. There are many useful 
 
DERWENT. I3Q 
 
 things which boys learn, being boys, which they 
 would never learn, being men. 
 
 There was always beauty, and sometimes 
 grandeur, in the river fogs. One needed an 
 elevated position, such as we had at our old 
 home, for observing them. Often they occurred 
 in the evening ; and then they only hid and 
 mystified everything. But oftener they would 
 appear early in the morning, when the previous 
 day had been hot, and the night cool. First you 
 would see a soft, white line, rising from the river, 
 of the same width with it, resting on, and hiding 
 it, and winding Avith it ; the tributary creeks, on 
 both sides, also assuming the same appearance. 
 
 The fleecy vapors, slowly rising, almost sleep- 
 ing, when the air was breathless, would spread 
 themselves over the adjacent meadows and low 
 grounds, and then floating upward and outward, 
 would fill all the lower valleys, and then the 
 higher ones, till only the tops of hills would be 
 visible, showing like islets on a feathery ocean. 
 
 The most of these would be on the further side 
 of the river, the country on that side abounding 
 with hills. Some of them would have houses on 
 them, others groves. 
 
 Fog is a fantastic, shifting thing, curious to 
 
I40 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 contemplate, but not easy to describe; nor do I 
 suppose that any two people would, in a given 
 case, see and describe it alike. And in any large 
 and varied scene, there are small phenomena that 
 hardly can be given descriptively ; they want the 
 eye. In the progress of these vaporous forma- 
 tions, here spoken of, every moment changed the 
 aspect of the landscape, and, in effect, the face of 
 nature. First, as I have said, you had the river 
 and creeks of mist ; then the green meadows 
 turned into a misty lake ; and finally, if the mass 
 happened to rise and rest just high enough, and 
 evenly enough, — no matter if it were a little 
 billowy, — and you looked over it, you had the 
 feathery sea. The illusion of an ocean, or shore- 
 less water, with apolynesiain it, as we sometimes 
 saw it, was perfect. This effect was best beneath 
 a bright full moon. 
 
 The river in its vernal flood, or freshet, was an 
 object of interest, as all rivers are at such a time. 
 There would be thousands of eyes looking at it, all 
 along, from its source to its mouth, many of them 
 anxiously, because of the damage it might do. 
 Instead of our usually placid, quiet river, ebbing 
 and flowing with the tides, and content within 
 its banks, it became a swollen, turbid stream, 
 
DERWENT.- 141 
 
 bearing on its bosom many evidences of the mis- 
 chief it was doing above us. It overflowed and 
 did away its tributaries ; drowned the meadows ; 
 spread a wide lake beneath us; and cast its drift- 
 trash all round upon the temporary shores it 
 made at the bottoms of our front lands. 
 
 One would hardly believe what a bar to social 
 intercourse a river is, between people living on 
 the opposite sides of it. " Mountains interposed 
 make enemies of nations, which had else, like 
 kindred drops, been mingled into one." A mile's 
 width of water makes strangers of families which 
 had else been near and pleasant neighbors. As 
 we looked across to Hadington, it seemed to us 
 a tei-ra incognita. We knew some names of 
 people on that side, and whose were some of the 
 houses that we saw; we were acquainted with 
 their venerable and genial old minister, — the 
 "Patriarch," we called him, — and were often 
 made glad by seeing him in our pulpit and at our 
 house; but in most social respects, and generall}'', 
 the two sides were as two hemispheres. Their 
 gossip and small news, their parties, courtships, 
 weddings, seldom crossed the intervening water. 
 It would be an idle speculation, but hardly an 
 unnatural one, in such circumstances, just to im- 
 
142 
 
 D E R WENT. 
 
 agine how different many things might have 
 been, but for such a barrier; as, for example, 
 what different conjugal and family connections 
 might have been formed, and how much happier, 
 or less happy, the parties to them might have 
 been. 
 
 I am lingering too long, I fear, at the river, but 
 I must say something of its old crossings, the 
 ferries; which had somewhat of the romantic 
 about them. " A boat, a boat ! Unto the ferr3^" 
 
 They were located at the narrowest places of 
 the river, and were from two to four miles apart. 
 They were established by colonial authority, and, 
 of course, were legally protected from opposition 
 lines, and regulated as to fares. " This court" — 
 so runs the grant of one of them, — to wit, the 
 general court. May loth, 1694, — "grants liberty to 
 Robert Wakefield to set up a ferry over the 
 Great River in Hexam for the future ; " and it 
 has been called Wakefield's Ferry from that day 
 to this. 
 
 It was at this ferry that we oftenest had occa- 
 sion to cross, and the account of it to be here 
 given may answer, in most respects, for all of 
 them. The road that led down to it from the 
 main highway was houseless and shady, and 
 
DER WE NT , 
 
 143 
 
 there was neither house nor wharf at either of 
 its landings. Arriving at it on our side, if the 
 ferryman was on the other, and out of sight, 
 as he generally would be, his home being there, 
 you had to blow the horn for him, or rather the 
 great conch-shell, which he kept ready for the 
 purpose. You would find this lying conspicuously 
 on the head of a post. If you had come on a 
 horse, or in a carriage, you must have it where 
 he could see it, and near the water ; else, seeing 
 only a pedestrian, he would come over for you 
 in a skiff, or, if he was in doubt about this, as he 
 might be, seeing a horse, yours or somebody's, a 
 little in the background, you would be asked by 
 him, through a speaking-trumpet, " Have you 
 got a horse ? " If you had, you would say so by 
 bringing the animal forward ; and in that case he 
 would come in a large boat, with a hand to help. 
 The boat was of the scow fashion, though not as 
 large as the ordinary scow ; the bottom as flat as 
 a floor, the sides upright, the ends square. The 
 mast was stepped in one of the sides, to be out 
 of the way of carriages. The sail was a shoulder- 
 of-mutton, boomless, but sometimes having a 
 short gaff". A rude-looking craft was the old 
 ferry scow. 
 
144 DER WENT. 
 
 She was not as regular and punctual in her 
 trips, or transits, as is the modern steam ferry- 
 boat. She knew nothing of time-tables, and not 
 much of time itself. Often some accident, or 
 circumstance such as a strong current, a broken 
 oar, or an intractable horse, would retard her, 
 and tax your patience in waiting. But there is 
 seldom an inconvenience, or a loss, without some 
 compensatory thing attending it ; while you are 
 waiting thus, there will be others arriving and 
 waiting with you ; conversation will ensue, and 
 an opportunity be afforded you for studying 
 characters and manners ; or, you may sit down 
 by yourself and be occupied with listening and 
 looking, — as one may, in such a place, rivers 
 being " made for wise men to contemplate." '' It 
 is very tiresome, this waiting for the boat," says 
 an impatient man to an acquaintance, a lady 
 who is sitting tranquilly on her horse near the 
 shore. " Yes, if one is in haste, it is," she re- 
 plied. " I am not pressed for time, this morn- 
 ing ; and I am never tired of looking at the 
 river." 
 
 The old ferr}^ man, grown grave and weather- 
 beaten with long service, was a character in his 
 way, and might be worthy of our notice; but I 
 
DERIVE NT. 145 
 
 shall leave the river and the reader here, if the 
 reader please, with these good people that arn 
 waiting for the boat. 
 
XIV. 
 
 Annals of the Meadow. 
 
THE MEADOW, as we called it, by way of 
 eminence, but sometimes the River Mead- 
 ow, was an important feature of the farm. It is 
 the margin of meadows that makes the valley of 
 the Connecticut so rich and beautiful. Ours 
 was a fine, luxuriant tract. With the river in 
 front, it had the Derwent and the Little Derwent 
 for its limits north and south. Originally it was 
 a wet and almost impenetrable swamp, a thicket 
 of alders, briers, creeping vines, and a variety of 
 nameless and noxious growths. At the time of 
 my earliest recollection of it, about sixty acres 
 had been reclaimed, but behind these there were 
 many acres still in their wild state. 
 
 This swamp was the home and the hatching- 
 place of various birds, particularly blackbirds. 
 Vast numbers of these made it their retreat and 
 lodging ; and a secure one it was, for you could 
 not see them, nor get at them there with a gun. 
 
 (149) 
 
150 DERWEN T. 
 
 But every winter saw the domain of the bush 
 and the bird contracting, and that of the scythe 
 enlarging ; the winter, with its frosts and leisure, 
 being the time for bush-cutting. The swamp is 
 gone now, and gone are the blackbirds, — as are 
 the Indians with the forest. One sees a few of 
 them flying about, but not those immense flocks 
 that once darkened the air like clouds, and black- 
 ened the tops of trees wherever they lit, and 
 crazed people with their music, if music it was, 
 when the humor took them, some hundreds of 
 them together, to scream and chatter in concert. 
 This they sometimes did, on a bright da}^, with 
 their crops full of stolen corn, no doubt ; but of 
 these performances they were rather chary ; for 
 they were not, naturally, great singers, nor had 
 they good consciences, it may be believed, being 
 thieves and in bad repute. 
 
 The meadow presented a variety of scenes and 
 aspects, successively, in the course of the four 
 seasons, which might be called its Annals. 
 
 Nothing could be more chill and dreary, in a 
 child's eye — in any eye — than that meadow look- 
 ed in winter, — cold, lone, and silent. And the 
 frozen river without a vessel or a boat, between 
 which and the meadow there seemed a sympa- 
 
DERWENT. 151 
 
 thy and fellowship in loneness, was an extension 
 of the scene. The snows that fell on either did 
 not drift and twirl themselves into fantastic 
 shapes and heaps, as they do, so plaj^fully, on 
 uneven ground, but lay in flat, dull, monotony, 
 like a vast sheet spread out to bleach. Nor were 
 the rigors of the picture softened by the cold, 
 bleak hills of Hadington for a background. 
 
 Spring comes, and with it comes the freshet, 
 submerging the meadow for a time, but enrich- 
 ing it with the alluvium it has brought down 
 from many hill-sides and mountains in the north. 
 It is the freshets that have made these bottoms ; 
 for many a century they have been about it. 
 Each age works, — the Creator working in and 
 with its natural forces, — for the benefit of the 
 ages that come after it ; as each generation does 
 for its successors. These bottom-lands, in their 
 rude state, are instances of nature's working ; 
 these charming meadows are instances of man's. 
 
 After the freshet came the fishing season. And 
 then the river's bank and the river were alive 
 with men of the boat and seine, and with people 
 coming from back towns to buy shad. Our fish- 
 ermen, Derwenters generally, were men of good 
 common education, and good morals. The most 
 
152 DERWENT. 
 
 of them had other callings of their own, but they 
 liked to quit them, for the time, for the sake of 
 change. Often there were wits and humorists 
 among them, and generally they were a merry 
 company. Fishing, in all its kinds, is naturally 
 exciting for the adventure of it, and its luck ; 
 and in those days, when the river was so much 
 more full of fish than now, and great hauls were 
 so common, the shad-catching was by no means 
 of the dullest sort. Of course the river-side was 
 an attractive place to boys ; and still more so 
 were the creek-sides, that of the Derwent par- 
 ticularly, if they had their fish-hooks with them. 
 This scene passes, and we have, next, the 
 meadow in its summer aspects. You go down 
 into it about the end of June, suppose. The fish- 
 ermen are gone ; their boats are hauled ashore 
 and sheltered, or turned bottom-up ; the reels 
 are naked, and the capstans idle. The place is 
 lonesome. How rank and rapidly the grass has 
 grown ! You stand and contemplate the broad, 
 green expanse before you, — broad in fact, but 
 seemingly broader than it is, because it is so flat 
 and even, and so destitute of visible bounds and 
 objects to aid the eye in estimating it. We judge 
 of distances, heights, magnitudes, as every pic- 
 
DER WENT. 153 
 
 ture-seer knows, by comparing them with objects 
 that we are familiar with ; for example, of the 
 height of a tower by that of a man we see at its 
 base ; of the extent of a prospect by the size of 
 animals, or other familiar things in the back- 
 ground. In this meadow over which you are 
 looking, there is not a tree, nor a shrub, nor a 
 swell, nor a bush. The line of bush, still unre- 
 claimed, that skirts it on the rear, looks lower 
 than it is, because of the grass which partially 
 conceals it, and, looking lower, seems further off. 
 The grass, peculiar, as it would almost appear, to 
 those river meadows, — I have never seen it else- 
 where, — is exceedingly exuberant, owing to the 
 fertilizing deposits of the vernal floods. Almost 
 even with your eye, it presents a peculiarly soft 
 and feathery surface. It is flecked with its own 
 gay lily, the meadow-lily, and other meadow- 
 loving flowers ; and is vocal with its own bird, 
 the meadow-lark. 
 
 If anything had been wanting to enhance the 
 lonesomeness you naturally felt in such a place, 
 this bird would have supplied it. It had a holi- 
 day look, for its plumage was gay ; but its spirit 
 was restless, and its music peculiar and mel- 
 ancholy. It would rise, fluttering, a few yards 
 
154 DERWENT. 
 
 straight up in the air, warbling as it rose, and 
 then, dropping itself upon a lily-head, or any 
 stem that would bear it, would sit a moment 
 and be up again. Its notes were exceedingly 
 rapid, and as liquid as the sounds of water drop- 
 ping into a silver basin. I never could account 
 for the effect this bird had on me, invariably, 
 whenever I heard it, — and I oftenest met with 
 it in lonely fields of tall grass, particularly the 
 meadows. Nor was I aware that others were 
 similarly impressed by it. Was it owing to 
 some idiosyncrasy in me? Turning now to my 
 dictionary, I find this description of it given by 
 Webster : " A well-known, beautiful bird, often 
 seen in open fields in the United States. Its note 
 is clear, but melancholy." So others, as well as 
 I, have perceived this quality of its music : the 
 idiosyncrasy was the bird's, not mine. I can 
 hardly forbear to mention that, at the moment I 
 am writing this, the note of one of them, still 
 " clear, but melancholy," as in the former time, 
 reaches me from a meadow not far off. 
 
 Go down into the meadow in the afternoon of 
 a bright day in haying-time ; or look down on it 
 from a neighboring eminence. Rakes and forks, 
 flashing in the sun, are streaking the ground 
 
DERWENT. 155 
 
 with long windrows, and rolling these into great 
 brown heaps. Large patches more are striped 
 with swaths, lying as the scythe has laid them. 
 Great loads are piling on the carts and moving 
 off for the barns. 
 
 "And what of all this?" some one will say, per- 
 haps. " What do you invite our attention to 
 here but one of the very ordinary affairs of farm- 
 life, the business of making hay ?" 
 
 It may be that I am too fond of reviving old 
 familiar scenes : it is true that this is but a com- 
 mon one, and any account of it may have but an 
 ordinary interest with ordinary people. The in- 
 terest of any scene, however, as an object of the 
 senses, depends on the eye of the beholder ; since 
 all beauty, all ugliness, is in the mind. In the 
 view of your dry utilitarian, your mere matter- 
 of-fact man, that " mown grass" is so much fod- 
 der, — nothing more, — so much wealth to its own- 
 er ; for the which the said owner is to be con- 
 gratulated, or envied. But, in the musing boy's 
 eye, all those streaks, and belts, and heaps, and 
 loading wains, are a grand and vivid picture, 
 full of life and poetry. And the picture is the 
 more charming because it is a changing one. 
 Each row and pile has its shady side, and the 
 
ic6 DERWENT. 
 
 shadows stretch and spread themselves every 
 moment, as the sun declines, till all the ground 
 is mantled with them, and dusk and night close 
 over the scene. Search in the child's mind for 
 that picture after threescore years and ten have 
 passed, and you will find it. 
 
 Cattle feeding on the meadow, in autumn, fin- 
 ish its history for the year. 
 
XV. 
 
 CATTLE. 
 
AMONG the gifts to man at his creation 
 were the domestic animals. They were 
 given him for meat and for service. But it is 
 not to be supposed that they were merely for 
 these uses ; there were other and finer ends con- 
 cerned in the gift. They have a social and a 
 moral value. They are a trust committed to our 
 care ; and are for the exercise of our benevolent 
 and kindly feelings. They have their poetic 
 aspects. The country would want one of its 
 essential charms without them ; country homes, 
 and farms, would be comparatively dull ; green 
 meadows would be wastes, and pastures unprofit- 
 able wilds. 
 
 Dr. Johnson quotes a passage from Ecclesias- 
 ticus, " His talk is of cattle," with a contemptuous 
 application of it to the friend he was visiting, be- 
 cause he entertained him with his farming affairs, 
 rather than with literary subjects : it might 
 
 (159) 
 
l6o DERWEN T. 
 
 have been well for Dr. Johnson's rough nature 
 if he had himself been more conversant with 
 cattle than he was. 
 
 My talk is of cattle. I have a few things to 
 say here, of their habits, tempers, and behavior. 
 
 They are very susceptible to kind treatment, 
 and equally so to the opposite : which is evidence 
 of the intention of their Creator that kindness 
 should be our law in dealing with them. They 
 recognize the kind owner as a friend, and are 
 glad to see him anywhere. They have a mute, 
 grateful look for him, raising their heads, as he 
 crosses the fields where they are grazing. The 
 call " Co', Co', {Cojne, come,)" would bring ours 
 from the remotest corners of the pasture, — per- 
 haps from a thicket, or a wood, or from behind a 
 knoll, often on the run, and lowing, expecting to 
 be treated with salt, or some other good thing. 
 
 So susceptible to gentleness, and the contrary, 
 are the animals, that you may infer from their 
 behavior the tempers of their owners. The oxen 
 of the kind owner will not refuse the yoke, nor 
 be impatient under it'; it is otherwise with those 
 of the unkind one. Our neighbor, Mr. Nettler, 
 for instance, was a fractious, fretful man, and the 
 behavior of his beasts was answerable to this. 
 
D ER WENT. l6l 
 
 The gentlest and best-broken horse in the world 
 was sure to be spoiled in his hands. So were 
 oxen. He came one day to the foot of a hill with 
 a load of wood. The oxen were doing well 
 enough, but, as they began to ascend, he must 
 needs begin to whip and bawl to keep them 
 agoing. This disheartened and confused them. 
 They stopped and settled back. And now, 
 smarting under the lash, and whisking their tails, 
 they would give, first one and then another, a 
 jerk, no two of them drawing together. '' What 
 does ail the cattle?" said Mr. Nettler, and began 
 to whip and bawl again with vigor. The effect 
 of this was to make the forward yoke swing 
 round on the off side against the hind ones. 
 Being met there with the butt of the whip on 
 their noses, they went round the other way. 
 Meeting with like treatment there, they swung 
 back again. And for the benefit of all abusers of 
 oxen in the yoke, I should like to see a good en- 
 graving of the scene which they and their owner 
 now presented. They were all in confusion and 
 " heads and points." One poor beast would lift 
 his nose as high as he could, to avoid the thwacks 
 that menaced it, while another would drop his 
 between his feet, and another would whisk his 
 II 
 
l62 D ER WENT. 
 
 tail and make a deprecating moan. " I never did 
 see cattle act so," said Mr. Nettler, and kept say- 
 ing so, when, in fact, he had seen his own, these 
 and others of his, act just so a hundred times. 
 
 At this juncture my grandfather happened to 
 come along. "What is the matter, Mr. Nettler; 
 can't they draw it up?" 
 
 "Can't? They zvont, and wouldn't if you 
 threw off half of it. I never did see creeturs act 
 as they do." 
 
 " Suppose you let me try 'em," said my grand- 
 father. " I think they'll take it up easily enough."- 
 
 Getting down from his horse, he passed round 
 the team, patted each ox, spoke to them in kind 
 and cheery tones, and by a little pushing at their 
 hips, — for they were standing all ways, — got 
 them straight and right for a united pull. " Not 
 yet," he said to their fretful and fretted owner. 
 " Not yet ; there is too much white in their eyes 
 for a good start yet." And then, waiting till they 
 had become quite calm and reassured, he took 
 the whip from Mr. Nettler's hand, to prevent his 
 using it, not to use it himself, and in a tone of 
 gentle, but decided authority said, " Come, now, 
 come — all together — go along." And they went, 
 steadily and bravely, quite up the steep, their 
 
DER WENT. 163 
 
 volunteer driver keeping along with them, and 
 their owner following. 
 
 Arriving at the top, " Ho," said my grandfa- 
 ther. " Let them stand and breathe a httle, now ; 
 they have done their duty very well ;" and hand- 
 ing the whip to their owner, he passed round 
 and patted them again. " How strangely they 
 behave !" said Mr. Nettler. " Did anybody ever 
 see such cattle .''" 
 
 The fondness of all creatures for their young is 
 interesting ; that of the neats is not the least so. 
 The cow manifests the greatest satisfaction in 
 suckling her calf. Though her teats may be 
 sore, or her bag caked, she does not mind the 
 sharp teeth or the butting of the young thing. 
 Keeping the calves at home, you will see the 
 mother at the bars of the pasture waiting to be 
 let out at night. 
 
 When a cow calves in the field, she hides her 
 treasure ; and that so securely, in some bush, or 
 dell, that it is difficult to find it. She is careful 
 not to aid you in the search. She lies down, or 
 feeds, at a distance from the spot ; and though 
 she may keep an eye on you if you get pretty 
 near to it, she does it with an air of unconcern. 
 She is relying on the calf to give the alarm, if 
 
164 DER WEN T. 
 
 necessary ; for the calf is in the secret with her. 
 The reliance is not a mistaken one. If you come 
 upon the innocent suddenly, he starts up and 
 bellows with all his might ; and then comes the 
 cow, in great excitement, running and bellowing 
 in response. I remember instances in which the 
 search had to be given up : there was a calf 
 somewhere, but who could tell where? In such 
 cases the cow must be driven home and kept 
 awhile, and then be taken back, and watched 
 from a distance. 
 
 Both quadrupeds and fowls are often laugha- 
 bly at odds with the instincts of the changeling 
 young of different species. A hen will hatch 
 ducks, or goslings, and will care for them as she 
 would for chickens ; but she is greatly embar- 
 rassed by their behavior. They will not under- 
 stand her cluck ; nor take what she scratches up 
 for them from the ground ; nor learn that most 
 important lesson of henhood, the duty of scratch- 
 ing for themselves ; they refuse to roost with her 
 on a tree or on a pole, when they are big enough 
 to do so, and she thinks it not safe for them to 
 sleep on the ground ; and, worst of all, at sight 
 of water, they will run straight into it, at the 
 imminent risk of bein": drowned. All these odd 
 
DERWEN T. 165 
 
 ways of theirs are unaccountable and distressing 
 to her. 
 
 A lamb had lost its mother. We put it to a 
 new milch cow. She disliked the fosterling at 
 first, but soon became as fond of it as she was of 
 her calf, licking the two alternately. When the 
 calf was taken from her to be weaned, she made 
 no complaint; but when the lamb, which- had 
 thriven wonderfully, was taken away, some time 
 after, she had evidently lost her pet. Though 
 she had always been a very quiet and orderly 
 creature, she would now low all day in the pas- 
 tures for the lamb, and break through strong 
 fences to get to it. 
 
 There are various instincts and ways which 
 one notices with interest in all the domestic ani- 
 mals of the farm ; some of which are common to 
 the different kinds, and some peculiar to indi- 
 viduals, and to species. 
 
 They are gregarious ; and this is another way 
 of saying they are sociably disposed among 
 themselves. They like to feed and rest together. 
 If you find one of the herd, or of the flock, in the 
 fields, you may expect to find the others not far 
 off. This was often a relief to me in looking 
 for the cows. Searching everywhere in the wide 
 
l66 DERWENT. 
 
 pasture, I would come at length upon one of 
 them, and would say to myself, cheerily, There ! 
 thei-e's one of you, and the rest are somewhere 
 near. 
 
 They are susceptible of strong individual at- 
 tachments, in certam circumstances. Two horses, 
 or two oxen, that have worked together, are un- 
 willing to be separated. Virgil gives us an in- 
 stance of this, in the passage in which he repre- 
 sents an ox as mourning the loss of his mate, 
 which has dropped and died in the furrow. 
 
 They are all sportive while they are young, 
 and will be more or less so when older, if they 
 are well fed and cared for. You see bullocks 
 locking horns in play, and sleek cows go frisking 
 homewards at night. Even a large fat ox of my 
 grandfather's, capering about the lot with his 
 mate on a frosty Autumn morning, fell and was 
 so much injured that it was necessary to kill him. 
 
 They have their peculiar instinctive fears. The 
 horned cattle — I cannot say as to other kinds — 
 do not like to be .in the woods in a high wind. 
 I remember a number of them running wildly 
 out of a grove of tall old chestnuts into the open 
 ground, and there stopping, with their heads up, 
 looking. A black squall behind them accounted 
 
DERWENT. 167 
 
 for their behavior; they heard it coming, and 
 might be apprehensive, with good reason, that it 
 would bring down trees, or limbs, about their 
 ears ; or they wanted, at any rate, to be out in 
 the open world where they could look and see. 
 A different kind of danger might have sent them 
 into the wood, as a hiding-place. 
 
 Their tempers and resentments, in individual 
 cases, are remarkable. I was in the habit of 
 throwing potatoes, one at a time, to a pet cow. 
 She was extremely fond of them. I threw her a 
 cold boiled one ; she ran to it eagerly, took it in 
 her mouth, dropped it, turned short round and 
 kicked at it ; and cast an angry look at me. We 
 had an animal which we called the Black Cow. 
 She was indeed the blackest, as well as the finest- 
 haired and sleekest creature that could easily 
 have been found ; and gave the richest milk. 
 She might have been exhibited with confidence 
 at a national cattle-show. She was perfectly gen- 
 tle and well-behaved, except when she had a calf; 
 then she was one of the Furies. It was danger- 
 ous for any one to go near her, except a man to 
 whom she was used, armed with a stout stick. 
 It was not our way, however, to beat her, in her 
 moods, high-strung as she was ; that would only 
 
l68 DERWENT. 
 
 have made her worse. It happened one evening 
 that there was no man at home. One of the 
 maids said she w^ould undertake to milk her, if 
 I would stand by her. I, a half-grown boy, ac- 
 cepted the service ; and providing myself with a 
 cudgel, posted myself a yard or two before her 
 She shook her horns at me, now and then, and 
 made other hostile demonstrations, particularly 
 a low angry bellowing or moaning, which was 
 characteristic of her, but held in tolerably well, 
 for her, till the girl had finished the milking and 
 left the yard. Then, as I turned to leave, she 
 drove at me from behind, knocked me down, and 
 stood over me, bellowing, with her nose close to 
 me, fiercely trying to catch me on her horns. I 
 got half up repeatedly, and was knocked down 
 again, but at length succeeded in springing to 
 my feet, my cudgel in my hands. Then she 
 turned and pitched herself right through the 
 strong close siding of the cow-house, an open 
 wing of the barn, as a cornered cat goes through 
 a pane of glass; and ran madly down the road. 
 
 There was an old Scotch Highlander in the 
 place, who was always boasting of his bravery in 
 the old French War; he had been where the 
 " blue bullets were flying, and the Yankees ran 
 
D ERIVE NT . 169 
 
 away." He scouted the idea of being afraid of a 
 cow, — that " rid coo," as he called the one we 
 had to deal with on a certain occasion, — or of 
 using any particular precautions against her ; 
 and, putting his brav^ery in practice, he started 
 for the barn-yard where the creature was, with 
 only a piece of a broomstick in his hand. " Stop, 
 Donald," said my grandfather, calling after him ; 
 " stop, I tell you, or you'll have her horns in 
 you." " Hoot ! mon ; afraid of a coo !" he an- 
 swered, over his shoulder, and kept on into the 
 yard. The cow at once assumed a manner to- 
 ward him more formidable than French bullets. 
 He thought it prudent to retreat ; but before he 
 could get to and over the bars, she had him be- 
 tween her horns, — seated between them, — and 
 pitched him quite over into the street, — much to 
 the amusement of my grandfather, who saw he 
 was not hurt. 
 
 The Black Cow would resent an affront some- 
 times when there was no calf in the case. She 
 was licking some salt upon the edge of a bank 
 which was faced with a steep rock some two 
 yards or more high ; when one of the old wheel- 
 oxen, Duke by name, as white as she was black, 
 and of twice or thrice her weight, came and 
 
lyo D E R WENT. 
 
 drove her away from it, and went to licking it 
 himself. She retired to a higher part of the 
 bank, and stood looking down at him, shaking 
 her horns as her way was, and was evidently 
 getting worked up into a towering passion ; till, 
 by and bye, she turned and plunged squarely 
 down upon him, and with her sharp horns against 
 his ribs, pushed Duke sideways off the steep. It 
 was a wonder, heavy as he was, that it did not kill 
 or lame him ; but he "got up and walked slowly 
 away, while the cow finished the salt in peace. 
 There are characters among animals as there are 
 among men ; that black cow was a character. 
 
 There are animals which, if they were human, 
 you would say were humorists, rogues, wags. 
 Young bulls often are instances of this. You are 
 starting off the cows in the morning for the pas- 
 ture. Mr. Bull resolves that they shall not budge 
 a step without his permission ; and, in pure mis- 
 chief, taking possession of the road in advance 
 of them, he drives them back in your face, per- 
 sistently. Of course, the question of authority 
 is raised between you and him ; — quo warranto. 
 As " neither words nor tufts of grass will do," 
 with the young sauce-box, "you try what virtue 
 there is in stones." 
 
D ER WENT. 171 
 
 I have never seen a steeple-chase, but I was 
 once engaged in what might have passed for 
 one. I was mounted on a smart young horse, 
 and a frolicsome. young bull was my competitor. 
 Rough fields were galloped over; 'braker and 
 tangled vines were ridden through ; a stone fence 
 was leaped ; a steep hill-side swiftly descended, 
 a hidden "pent-road" threaded ; and a mill-pond 
 swam, — that is, the bull swam and re-swam it, 
 myself crossing and re-crossing on the dam, at 
 some risk of being swept off by the water that 
 was pouring over it. And here the bovine party 
 gave up. Cooled by his bath, and his breath 
 spent, he was willing, now, to return on a slow 
 walk to our starting-place — a pair of bars through 
 which he had waggishly refused to pass, or let 
 his fellow-cattle pass, from that pasture to an- 
 other. The race was an exciting one to all con- 
 cerned. The horse enjoyed his part in it. No 
 necks were broken, nor eyes scratched out, but I 
 would not care to repeat the performance. 
 
 Neats, like sheep, goats, deer, and some other 
 grazing animals, crop the grass and swallow it 
 with little or no chewing. In this way they fill 
 themselves, and then, as every one knows, they 
 stop and ruminate, gulping up the contents of 
 
1/2 DERWENT. 
 
 their stomachs by mouthfuls, chewing it thor- 
 oughly, and swallowing it again. Standing or 
 lying in the shade, their eyes half-shut and sleepy, 
 they are a picture of contentment and repose. 
 And this chewing of the cud is to them, without 
 doubt, a prolonged gratification. What are they 
 thinking off? Nothing? That is more than he 
 that says so knows. We say they are rumin- 
 ating. Applying that word to human kind, we 
 mean by it, musing, meditating. Do cattle muse 
 and meditate ? 
 
XVI. 
 
 SHEEP 
 
I WOULD not choose to miss the ovine peo- 
 ple from my farm-life reminiscences, as I 
 would not the bovine, or the equine. " As timid 
 as a sheep," " As gentle as a lamb :" — these are 
 proverbial expressions, and they both convey de- 
 scriptive truth. No creature is more timorous 
 than the sheep is naturally, and none is more 
 confiding, where confidence is safe. Within and 
 around the barn-yard they will eat at the same 
 rack, or pile of hay, with the ox, or the horse, 
 without fear of horns or heels. A mess of oats 
 in a corn-basket was set down in the back yard 
 for old Dick, the pet family horse ; two or three 
 saucy sheep immediately thrust their heads into 
 it, and Dick was Hkely to be robbed of his din- 
 ner. It was of no use to nip their woolly necks ; 
 so, taking the basket in his teeth, he trotted off 
 with it and set it on a pile of cord-wood above 
 their reach. In the pastures they will come 
 
 (I7S) 
 
iy6 D ER WEN T. 
 
 crowding around you, if they know you, tread- 
 ing on your toes, bleating in your face, and ask- 
 ing for the salt you may have been thoughtful 
 enough, they hope, to have in your bag, or bas- 
 ket, for them. 
 
 They have a mortal fear of dogs. At sight of 
 one their instinct is to flee ; but if they have 
 young lambs with them, they will stand and face 
 him, and stamp at him with their feet, — a show 
 of bravery which amuses children more than it 
 scares the dog. They are, however, not at all 
 afraid of their own farm-dog. Nor ai-e they 
 much afraid of their near canine neighbors which 
 they often see, and know to be well-disposed. 
 And how confidingly they go afield with the 
 shepherd's dog, where such are used. Between 
 him and them there is a perfect understanding. 
 He knows the allowed limits of their range ; and 
 if they go beyond them, he brings them in again. 
 He does this in the gentlest manner, and they 
 easily submit to it. Very admirable is his vigi- 
 lance and fidelity. And, in my belief, it is for 
 this service that this species and others suscepti- 
 ble of similar training, were specially intended 
 by the Creator. In wide, unfenced districts, 
 such as the grazing countries of the East were 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 177 
 
 anciently, and are now, and such as there are in 
 many parts of Europe, it would be difficult to 
 manage sheep in large numbers without the dog. 
 And, besides the assistance he renders, he is 
 company for the shepherd, who must be often 
 solitary in the fields. Job employed them in this 
 way ; and had more respect for them, he said, 
 than he had for some of human kind, — " whose 
 fathers I would have disdained to have set with 
 the dogs of my flock." 
 
 Sheep are noticeable as curious path-makers. 
 Moving in single file, and keeping to the same 
 track when once adopted, they tread, with their 
 small, sharp hoofs, a hard, well-defined path, of 
 a few inches' width, and very crooked, — winding 
 through bushes, around stones, hillocks and 
 quagmires, along the valley, up the hill-side, 
 through the wood, — showing more regard to 
 lines of beauty than to economy of distance. I 
 was fond of threading these devious " sheep- 
 paths." 
 
 The ram leads the flock ; where he goes, they 
 follow. I remember a ludicrous instance of this. 
 An old man, drowsy from drink, lay down under 
 the wall by the road-side and fell asleep. Be- 
 hind the wall was a field of grain ; some sheep 
 12 
 
178 
 
 DER IV EN T. 
 
 got into it ; the owner of the field came and 
 drove them out; and the ram, happening to leap 
 the wall just where the sleeper lay, came down 
 right upon him. He started up in a maze, and 
 tried to get upon his feet, but, plump, plump, 
 plump, they all came, knocking him over as fast 
 as he attempted to do so. A mashed hat, torn 
 clothes, and some spots of black-and-blue on his 
 skin, .were the consequences. The old man's 
 comment on his adventure was, " Sheep are an 
 innocent lookhi critter, but they have a good deal of 
 divil in 'em, after all." 
 
 " As crooked as a ram's horn" is a form of com- 
 parison much in use ; and it is the best that could 
 be hit upon ; for of all things ram's horns are the 
 crookedest. No two pairs of them are of a com- 
 mon fashion, nor is it often that the two on the 
 same head are alike and well-mated. The horns 
 of other animals have some form and grace to 
 them, and are ornamental ; those of rams — which 
 are rudely ringed and rough, as well as crooked, 
 — would be deformities were it not that we re- 
 gard them as natural, and proper to such heads. 
 Things of nature's own forming, though they 
 may be unshapely, odd, queer, can hardly strike 
 us as disagreeable. And, indeed, how ridiculous 
 
DERWENT. I^g 
 
 would a ram look with other than such horns 
 as rams naturally have. But they sometimes 
 assume a twist that is uncomfortable to the wear- 
 er. I noticed, one day, in the pasture, that a 
 ram's face was bleeding. I caught him without 
 difficulty, — for he seemed to hope I might re- 
 lieve him, — and found that one of his horns was 
 growing into his cheek, causing him a slow tor- 
 ture. He held still while I cut off as much of it 
 as was necessary. It was a tedious job, for my 
 knife was small and dull ; but the remembrance 
 of it has been a lasting satisfaction to me. It 
 should be a part of every one's wisdom to know 
 that the pleasure resulting from an act of kind- 
 ness, is a lasting pleasure ; and that equally en- 
 during is the pain consequent on its omission. 
 
 " Wool-gathering" is another expression often 
 met with. It has a figurative significance in 
 common use ; the literal is this : sheep, in their 
 ramblings about the fields, will often leave a lit- 
 tle of their wool hanging upon briers and bushes. 
 You can go and glean it, if you will, but it will 
 not pay you for your time. 
 
 The black sheep is made the representative of 
 an ill-behaved person : " He is a black sheep ;" 
 that is, a disturber of his family, or neighbor- 
 
iSo DERIVENT. 
 
 hood, or in some way an exceptional, and excep- 
 tionable, character. The literal black sheep, 
 thus libellouslj made the symbol of bad quali- 
 ties, is peculiar only in its color ; there is hardly 
 one in a hundred. The brown sheep is still more 
 uncommon. 
 
 To an ordinary observer sheep may appear to 
 be so much ahke as not to be distinguishable one 
 from another. This is not the fact ; they are in- 
 dividually knowable by their faces, forms, fleeces, 
 and by other marks. This accords with our 
 Saviour's reference to them in the tenth chapter 
 of John. 
 
 Sheep- washings and shearings are good 
 enough subjects for the poet and the painter, 
 but an account of them such as I, who am no 
 artist, might write, would hardly interest the 
 reader. I will, however, give the outlines of one 
 of them, and leave it for him to fill them up and 
 color them, pictorially, for himself. Imagine, 
 then, a rude pen extemporized at the edge of a 
 pleasing water ; a flowing brook, suppose, or a 
 pond. Into this enclosure the sheep are hud- 
 dled. The men who are to do the washing ap- 
 pear in costumes suited to the occasion, that is 
 to say, in the shabbiest of scarecrow clothes. 
 
 I 
 
DERWENT. l8l 
 
 These take their stand, waist-deep, in the water, 
 while one on shore passes the sheep ill to them, 
 one by one, as they are wanted. Boys incline 
 to have a hand in this ; they like a touse with 
 the creatures, and particularly with the ram ; 
 and perhaps they enjoy a little their groundless 
 apprehensions. There is no fun in it for the 
 sheep. They have no aquatic inclinations, — are 
 not fond of swimming, as the boys are ; and the 
 chill of it ! — a whole fleece full, gallons, of water, 
 which not many days since was ice. The barn- 
 yard, where they have passed the winter, has 
 soiled them, but, at the end of this ablution, they 
 return to their pastures looking as white and 
 clean as linen from the laundry, or, as we say, as 
 white as wool. 
 
 The shearing, which is done a few days later, 
 is a relief to them if the weather be hot ; but if 
 there comes a cold storm soon after it, such a 
 change from their thick winter clothing to al- 
 most none at all is too much for their comfort 
 and for their health, and they must be housed. 
 
 Lambs are interesting for their innocence and 
 playfulness. Washed with the summer showers 
 and dews, they are beautifully white and clean — 
 emblems of purity. They delight to play in 
 
l82 DERWENT . 
 
 troops. You will sometimes see scores of them, 
 if so many can be mustered from the flock, scam- 
 pering away together, like the hurry-skurry at 
 an English fair. I remember counting sixty of 
 them in such a troop, and observing their gam- 
 bols. Now they are running with their might 
 across a level ground ; directly they are lost 
 sight of in a hollow ; in a minute or two more 
 they are on the crest of a small stony knoll, 
 standing thick and close, and making an admira- 
 ble show of heads. Their high physical enjoy- 
 ment is obvious ; how much the pleasure of the 
 frolic is enhanced by the excitement of an emo- 
 tional and social nature in them, — by mutual par- 
 ticipation and companionship, — by emulation, 
 perhaps, — our love for the animal creation may 
 suggest, though our philosophy cannot tell us. 
 
 These, in their play, are witnesses for the be- 
 nevolence of the Creator. 
 
XVII. 
 
 DOGS. 
 
THERE are people who do not like dogs. 
 They have various reasons for their aver- 
 sion to them : — " Dogs are untidy creatures," — 
 " It costs too much to feed them," — " They run 
 mad, sometimes." There are differences in dogs, 
 as w^ell as in human kind, and there are some of 
 the one, as also of the other, whose company is 
 not desirable. But where the antipathy is to all 
 dogs, indiscriminately, I am apt to suspect that 
 the subject of it has not been fortunate in his, or 
 her, canine acquaintance. 
 
 A lady who had had a vague dislike of them 
 from her childhood up, was surprised, one day, to 
 find herself the owner of two, by gift from differ- 
 ent donors. What could she do with them ? It 
 would not be delicate to refuse acceptance of 
 them. They were young, and of no vulgar 
 breeds ; and were, she confessed, pretty crea- 
 tures, — for dogs. Her children were pleased 
 
 (185) 
 
l86 DERWENT. 
 
 with them ; and, at any rate, they were on her 
 hands for the present, and must be fed. She 
 must let them stay till she could give them to 
 friends who would be glad of them, and use them 
 well. A few days pass, and she begins to think 
 that she will keep one of them, and dispose of 
 the other. But now comes the question which? 
 They were so intelligent, so fond, so amusing in 
 their play, so attached to her and the family, so 
 unlike, and yet with such a balance of qualities 
 between them, that, really, she said, it was hard 
 to say which she preferred. She proposed to 
 her husband that he should decide the matter ; 
 he declined to do so, with a smile. He had 
 never sympathized with her in her repugnance 
 to dogs, and was amused with her perplexity. 
 In fine, it took her a whole year — this lady who 
 could never hear of having a dog — to make up 
 her mind which of her two pets she would part 
 with. 
 
 Were I to write a disquisition on dogs, I would 
 meet objections to them thus : A good dog pays 
 his waj^, and more too, whether the trouble or 
 the cost he makes you be regarded. You give 
 him bones and refuse bits, such as a beggar at 
 
DERWENT. 187 
 
 jour door would not accept, and for these see 
 liow he compensates you with love and service. 
 He heightens the pleasantness of your rambles 
 with his company : you sleep the sounder for his 
 vigils. He carries parcels for your children 
 going on errands, greatly to their aid and his de- 
 light. If you are a farmer, he saves you steps 
 when laggard or wayward cattle are to be driv- 
 en. If the hogs are in mischief, you have only 
 to point with your finger and say St ! and your 
 clover is quickly cleared of the grunting poach- 
 ers. And what a promoter he is of good feeling 
 in the house ! You see that group of mirth- 
 loving children ; they are happy, as they are ; 
 but let Banco come in among them, with his 
 laughing eyes and wagging tail, and they are the 
 happier for his company. Or are they out of 
 humor, peevish, suffering ennui, call Banco in, 
 and their tone will be changed. It is hardly in 
 human nature, adult or juvenile, but especially 
 in young natures, to continue long in ill-humor 
 in the presence of a fond and noble dog. And 
 then, his singular attachment to you. Human 
 love excepted, there is no love so strong, 
 constant, and unselfish as his. Who has not 
 heard of most touching instances of the mourn- 
 
l88 DERVVENT. 
 
 ing of dogs for their masters or other human 
 friends ? 
 
 And on the other hand, what fondness we con- 
 ceive for them ! " I never desire to own an- 
 other dog, because I would not feel again so 
 badly for the loss of one," has been said a thou- 
 sand times. " The misery of keeping a dog is his 
 dying so soon," said Sir Walter Scott. I called, 
 not long since, at a friend's house ; the ladies re- 
 ceived me in their accustomed polite and wel- 
 coming way, but with a quiet sorrowfulness in 
 their manner which was not usual with them. 
 Their eyes, evidently, had been wet with tears, 
 and, indeed, the air of the house seemed almost 
 funereal. Being seated in the parlor, and the cus- 
 tomary commonplaces being through with, one 
 of the young ladies said to me, " We are feeling 
 sad to-day ; our poor Ponto was run over 
 and killed at the depot this morning, and 
 we have been having him brought home and 
 buried." 
 
 Slabs of marble, or other memorial monu- 
 ments, are often placed at the graves of dogs. I 
 know a gentleman, a man of genius and a schol- 
 ar, who carved a statue of his Sappho to preserve 
 her memory. 
 
DERWENT. 189 
 
 As to our dogs, there have been more remark- 
 able ones ; yet they had their particular charac- 
 teristics, and being ours, and mixing them- 
 selves as they do, more or less, with these 
 home recollections, they claim some mention 
 here. 
 
 The earliest on my list was a large one, 
 Trooper by name, belonging to my grandfather. 
 He would come every day to see us, and, walk- 
 ing in with the freedom of a friend, would look 
 around for the 3^oung folks of the house, from 
 whom lie was sure of a cheery welcome. Car- 
 pets were fewer in those days than they are in 
 these, and sanding floors, particularly kitchen 
 floors, was a common thing. The sand was 
 sprinkled on wet, and then drawn with a broom 
 into wavy lines, or chequer-work, or whatever 
 figures the maid's or the housewife's fancy 
 choose to give it. It looked quite well so long 
 as it stayed as the broom left it. But whenever 
 Trooper sat down on it, with the merry group 
 about him, he would sweep a clear half circle 
 with his tail ; and it was like children, in the hu- 
 mor of teasing Betty, to make him sit in as many 
 places as they could. " Here, Trooper, sit here, 
 and liere, and here." And so the nice sand car- 
 
IQO D E R WEN T. 
 
 pet would soon be full of bared semicircles and 
 prints of the dog's and children's feet. 
 
 Trooper lived to be old, and my recollections 
 of him are consequently distinct. His color was 
 a rich dark brown, except on the breast, where it 
 was mixed, or gray. I think he was a genuine 
 specimen of that famous old breed, the mastiff, 
 now rarely seen. He was remarkable for his 
 fidelity as a watch-dog. 
 
 Sachem, a young dog, showed symptoms of 
 madness. They tied him up in an out-building 
 to see how his malady would turn. I looked in 
 upon him at a window. At sight of me he drew 
 in his breath, nervously, and made me shudder, 
 by what was between a sigh and a growl. He 
 had to be killed. He affected me with a fear 
 from which I could not get free in years, — 
 the fear of mad dogs. When I was alone in 
 solitary places, or was sent on errands in the 
 dark, this apprehension of meeting a running 
 rabid dog was the one nervous feeling which 
 it took all my manliness to overcome; — so 
 vivid and enduring are strong impressions, and 
 especially those of pain and dread, on young 
 minds. 
 
DERIVE NT. 191 
 
 Splash was a water-dog, sleek, handsome, and 
 good-tempered, but of no manner of service 
 about the house or farm. Send him after a float- 
 ing thing in the water, and he would delight to 
 fetch it to you ; set him on hogs in mischief, and 
 he would run among them and Hck each one in 
 the face. None of the animals, not even the 
 sheep, had the least respect for him as a police- 
 dog. His great amusement was to swim across, 
 and re-swim, the river; which he would do sev- 
 eral times a day when work was going on in the 
 meadows, — for he liked observers. He would 
 aim to land at a particular point, a rock, on the 
 other shore, that his eye fixed on ; in order to do 
 which he must take into account the drift, or 
 leeway, to which he would be subject from the 
 current. A man would throw in a chip, or some 
 light thing, to test it. As Splash could not do 
 that, his way was to plunge in, no matter where, 
 and swim off a little, and then return and run up 
 or down the shore, as he had found the stream to 
 require, to a point sufficiently high, or low, to 
 justify his setting off. Sometimes, finding the 
 force of the current greater than he had thought, 
 as he would when there was a freshet, he would 
 return ashore a second time, run up farther still, 
 
192 DERWENT. 
 
 and set off again. On the other side his way was 
 the same, except that there he had no need to 
 tr}' which way the tide was running, having 
 learned this already. 
 
 Splash had no bad ways ; and, though he had 
 no admirers, except perhaps for his beauty, nor 
 enthusiastic friends, he had no enemies. He was 
 a great listener to talk, and, you might think, an 
 intelligent one ; for if the talk turned on him, 
 with a laugh, he would leave the company. 
 
 Gyp had more of the cur in his look and char- 
 acter than any dog we owned ; — short-legged, 
 long-bodied, dingy-haired, with a plodding gait. 
 I never looked at him without wondering how 
 we came to have such a dog. But he was by no 
 means deficient in brains. He was my father's 
 special favorite ; and he repaid his good-will 
 with an.almost exclusive attachment to him, and 
 by charging himself with the care of everything 
 that belonged to him. If he left his chair a few 
 minutes, of an evening, Gyp would take posses- 
 sion of it, till he came to resume it. He was 
 m3'steriously missing for several days, coming 
 home once or twice in the time, and asking for 
 food, and then immediately disappearing again. 
 
DERWENT. IQ3 
 
 Being followed, he was found in a distant field 
 keeping guard over a coat which his master had 
 left there. 
 
 He was singular in his resentments. My 
 brother and I went out to Lakeside in a sleigh ; 
 he went with us, self-invited. In getting past a 
 snow-drift, the sleigh tipped and hit him. It did 
 not hurt him much, but it so displeased him that 
 he turned short round and went home. On our 
 return, we f@und him mood}' and reserved. The 
 collision was purel}- an accident, or if not, the 
 fault was more his than ours ; but he chose to 
 think it intentional on our part, and laying it up 
 against us, with a persistency not usual with his 
 kind, would never go anywhere with us after- 
 ward. 
 
 Loup was fond of " baying the moon," as Bru- 
 tus calls it, — of baying the echoes, more probably, 
 which is Peter Pindar's idea: — 
 
 " Like some lone puppy, yelping all night long, 
 That tires the very echoes with his tongue." 
 
 Barking in the night is not a commendable habit 
 in dogs; it disturbs wakeful children and nerv- 
 ous people, j>leases nobody, and is, in fine, a 
 
1^4 DE R WENT. 
 
 senseless practice. But I was obliged to Loup 
 for it once. 
 
 I was out on the river in a skiff, as it happened, 
 at midnight. A thick fog had come on, not only 
 enveloping all things in darkness deeper than 
 night, but creating a thousand illusions and be- 
 wilderments such as neither day nor night natu- 
 rally knows. There was no moon, nor stars, in 
 the sky ; no lights from windows ; no shore to 
 the river, no east, west, north, or south, — no any 
 way, nor anything, but fog and water. Where- 
 abouts I was, or which way I might be rowing, 
 or drifting, was past conjecture. 
 
 But now, away in the distance — hark ! It is 
 Loup at one of his midnight serenades. T know 
 his voice, and it guides me to the shore as a fog- 
 bell guides a vessel feeling her way into port. 
 
 Flit, a hunting dog, of one of the hound vari- 
 eties, was a slender, graceful creature, buff and 
 cream-colored, with small, flapping, velvet ears. 
 She had been trained by one of the Heathcote 
 family, a cousin of Hiram. The Heathcotes 
 were of the Nimrod order, mighty hunters, and 
 had been so from the first settlement of the par- 
 ish. One of them said to mc that he knew of no 
 
D EK WENT . 1^5 
 
 music like the music of the hounds after a fox. 
 Their barns were curiosities for the skins that 
 were stretched on them to diy, or stuffed and 
 hung about their windows, — of fox, raccoon, 
 squirrel, muskrat, and woodchuck, and other 
 kinds. Flit had the spirit of the family. Noth- 
 ing pleased her like the sight of a fowling-piece, 
 and no place delighted her like the wild woods. 
 She would readily go with any one, even a 
 stranger, so equipped, and for such a destination. 
 In the woods you would get glimpses of her, 
 coursing everywhere, and hear her light steps 
 among the leaves, till by and bye a single slight 
 bark would announce to you that she had treed 
 a squirrel. Going to her, you find her sitting 
 under a tall tree, looking up. You see the squir- 
 rel on one of the topmost boughs, half hidden 
 by the foliage, looking down at you quite com- 
 posedly ; for he is sure he is too high for you. 
 It is a gray squirrel, of course ; for Flit pays no 
 attention to chipmunks and other trash. You 
 raise your gun and bring it down ; Flit leaps and 
 catches it before it reaches the ground, passes it 
 to you, and is off at once for another. 
 
 The woods, the dog, the game, the boy ! — these 
 make a pictui-e of young life in the country, 
 
igS DERIVE NT. 
 
 which for romance, healthfulness, and pleasure, 
 the city cannot match. 
 
 Jerry and Franco, being contemporaries and 
 playmates, must be named together, though Jer- 
 ry was the elder by two years or more. 
 
 Jerry was a black-and-tan terrier; and the 
 reader must permit me to say he was the finest 
 specimen of his kind that I have ever seen. We 
 had him of a dog-fancier, who, in training him, 
 had done justice to his merits. Franco was re- 
 ported to us as a cross of the Newfoundland with 
 the Spaniel; and from his looks and instincts I 
 should think the account correct, — allowing a 
 predominance of the spaniel. 
 
 Jerry was the handsomer dog of the two ; was 
 more spirited and graceful in his movements, — 
 Avas more brilliant every way, and more attrac- 
 tive to strangers. But Franco had qualities, of 
 a different kind, to match these. 
 
 Jerry had an exuberance of life in him. In 
 his ordinary trots his feet hardly touched the 
 ground ; but to see him in one of his frolicsome 
 runs round and round a field, you would fancy 
 that he was some light thing carried by the 
 wind. He would gambol in the same wild way 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 197 
 
 in the parlor, when allowed to do so; and he 
 was allowed it often. Franco appeared to be 
 equal]}' full of enjoyment in his own quiet way. 
 
 Franco was remarkable for his simplicity and 
 honesty. Though Jerr}-, always full of fun and 
 nischief, was often playing tricks upon him, 
 there was no end to his confiding good-nature. 
 Jerry would pick up a stick, or an old shoe, and 
 challenge him to get it away, if he could; and 
 they would have .a long pull at it, Franco drag- 
 ging Jerry by his superior weight, with a great 
 deal of affected growling and showing of the 
 whites of the eyes, on Jerry's part. 
 
 That was play, and was so understood by both. 
 But Jerry would find an old bleached bone, or a 
 horn, and pretend to gnaw on it, as if it were 
 something good, — too good to be shared with 
 Franco, — though they always took their meals 
 together very amicably and sociably — and if 
 Franco presumed to go near him to see what it 
 was that he was so very choice of, he would fly at 
 him with a snarl. All make-believe, of course ; 
 but Franco, like some people, did not understand 
 jokes, or, if he did, did not resent them. 
 
 Jerry had the peculiar instinct of his breed in 
 the highest degree. No rat was safe on our 
 
iq8 derwent. 
 
 premises for an hour. He would dig at a rat- 
 hole with the greatest enthusiasm. Franco, look- 
 ing on, would wonder what he was about ; he 
 evidently thought the fellow must be out of his 
 senses. Instincts do not understand each other. 
 Sometimes Franco would put in with his paws, 
 to help, though awkwardly, with no idea what 
 so much furious digging meant ; which only 
 bothered- Jerry. Franco had his hunting instinct, 
 too ; but for another kind of game, the muskrat. 
 
 Under chastisement, Jerry would crouch very 
 low, and look up with a meek and penitent air ; 
 but the next minute he would be off frisking and 
 frolicking. He was too full of life to be unhappy 
 long. Reprove Franco for a misdemeanor, and 
 he would be cast down about it all day ; he could 
 not be happy till with a cheery word you forgave 
 him. Then he would be beside himself with joy. 
 
 Jerry was not quarrelsome ; he lived on good 
 terms with his canine neighbors generally ; nor 
 did he ever fight with dogs of his own size. But 
 if a big dog put on airs towards him, he was for 
 a fight at once ; and it would go hard but the 
 big dog would come out of the fray worsted. 
 Jerry's way was to get under the belly of his ad- 
 versary, and bite him in the fore legs, — keeping 
 
DERWENT. 199 
 
 under him by his superior agility. In one in- 
 stance only, while we had him, the large dog, a 
 very savage one, such as wagon-driving peddlers 
 often have with them, got him in his teeth ; and 
 he gave him such a shaking that he was laid up 
 by it for days, — yelping if you touched any part 
 of him. But this did not subdue his spirit ; that 
 was indomitable. 
 
 We had not expected to keep both the dogs. 
 One or the other of them must be disposed of. 
 The question Jiow was easily settled, negativel}'' ; 
 we would not sell them. The question which 
 was often discussed without any decision being 
 reached by the general mind of the family, or by 
 any one of us. But at length it occurred to us 
 that a lady, a friend of ours in Massachusetts, 
 would like just such a dog as Jerry. The result 
 was, that after some correspondence, Jerry, with 
 his collar and chain, was put in charge of the 
 mail-coach driver to be passed on, by a series of 
 stages, to the place of his destination ; and the 
 poor dog left us with a look that said, " For what, 
 and whither, are they sending me into exile ?" 
 A few days after we received a note which ended 
 as follows: 
 
200 D E R WEN T. 
 
 "Jerry arrived safely. He looked weary and 
 anxious, but our manner soon reassured him. 
 ' Are you hungry, Jerry ?' Helen asked him ; and 
 he answered, with his musical voice, in a single 
 bark, ' Yes.' He is quite at home with us al- 
 ready, and we are delighted with him. 
 " Affectionately, your cousin, 
 
 " Elizabeth Chapman." 
 
 Franco missed his fond and sportiNJe playmate, 
 — wondered what had become of him, — -looked 
 wistfully around for him, — woke up at every 
 mention of his name. He would make a lookout- 
 station of the wood-pile in our yard, and sat, 
 watching and listening, on the highest part of it. 
 
 Franco had a fixed dislike of boys. It was 
 hard for a boy to attract him in any way ; but to 
 girls he gave his confidence freely. I suppose 
 that the reason of this was, that boys had thrown 
 stones at him, mischievously, just to scare him ; 
 or had been otherwise uncivil to him. Girls did 
 not do so. He showed this partiality for them 
 everywhere, to strangers as well as to those of 
 his acquaintance, provided they were not untidi- 
 ly dressed. We were riding some miles out of 
 town one day ; on a door-stone sat a neatly-dress- 
 
DERIVE NT. 20I 
 
 ed little miss intently reading. She raised her 
 eyes to us as we passed, and let them fall again 
 on her book. Franco stole up to her and just 
 lapped her cheek. I should have been sorry 
 for his rudeness, if I had not seen that she was 
 not displeased by it at all, but only smiled after 
 the offender as he trotted away from her; which 
 gave me a good impression of the child. 
 
 He would be civil to any one, however appar- 
 eled ; but a person genteelly dressed, especially 
 a lady, would receive a rather over-demonstra- 
 tive welcome- from him. I do not, however, 
 speak of this as a thing peculiar to Franco ; I 
 think it belongs to all dogs that make any pre- 
 tensions to respectability. I have a missionary 
 friend in Siam, who tells me that dogs there give 
 the missionaries much annoyance on account of 
 their dress ; which, being European, and not the 
 native, is in the dogs' view barbarous. 
 
 Franco disliked the katydids. I heard him 
 muttering and growling about the house in a 
 singular low way, one bright evening, and went 
 out to see what the matter was. He was peering 
 and gazing up among the trees and vines, some- 
 times barking a little, sotto voce, as well as growl- 
 ing, and seemed curious to discover what the 
 
202 D E R WENT. 
 
 jargon was, and whence it proceeded ; for there 
 was nothing to be seen. He turned to me to 
 know. They are katydids, Franco, — nothing but 
 katydids ; — noisy things, but they'll do no harm." 
 They had just come for the season in unusual 
 force, and this was the first of his acquaintance 
 with them. He got used to them, but never 
 liked them, evidently regarding them as a set of 
 crazy, cracked-voiced disturbers of night and 
 moonshine. 
 
 He could never be content to go to bed with- 
 out a boil soir to every member of the family. He 
 would come in early in the evening, pass around 
 among us, lap each one with his tongue on the 
 hand, or in the face if he could steal such a lib- 
 erty, and immediately retire to his lodgings in 
 the wood-house, to which he had access through 
 a swing door. 
 
 He was extremely fond of the water. He 
 would plunge in with a whine of gladness, — 
 sometimes from a considerable height, as from a 
 bridge or wharf, which dogs will seldom do, — 
 and would swim about barking with delight, and 
 scouring the surface for floating things to fetch 
 ashore. If you lost a hat, or an oar, overboard 
 from a boat, he would recover it for you ; and I 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 203 
 
 have no doubt he would have saved a drowning 
 child, or that he might have been easily trained 
 to acts of that kind. 
 
 Sundays, — no other days, — he invariably spent 
 away from home. He might not go to church 
 with us, and it was dull staying alone. He knew, 
 from our manner, when the day came, and with- 
 out waiting for us to go, would take himself off in 
 advance of the church-going hour. Sometimes 
 he would pass the day with his friend and neigh- 
 bor, Don, the only dog acquaintance he culti- 
 vated ; but oftener, when the season favored, he 
 would resort to the creeks and hunt muskrats, 
 and bring them home for us to see He might 
 have dug them out of their holes, but probably 
 he caught them swimming, being able to swim 
 faster than they could. 
 
 One morning he was dead. We had noticed, 
 the evening before, that he seemed languid and 
 spiritless ; but the day had been excessively hot, 
 and we thought nothing of it. Alas ! poor Fran- 
 co ! How often has a human being been mourn- 
 ed less sincerely, if not less worthily, than you ! 
 So fine-tempered, intelligent, companionable, — 
 with some amusing oddities, — we shall not soon, 
 nor often, see your like. 
 
204 
 
 DE R WENT. 
 
 We continued to hear from Jerry occasionally. 
 x\ friend of Mrs. C, Mrs. North, took such a lik- 
 ing to him that she gave him to her. Our last 
 intelligence of him came in a letter from Mrs. 
 C, from which the following is an extract : 
 
 "Jerry has departed. The fire of his spirit 
 was unquenched to the last, but his bodily infirm- 
 ities were so great that they pained the hearts 
 of his friends ; yet not a thought had they but 
 that he must be kept and cherished in the family. 
 But at length his sufferings increased so much 
 that it became evident that Jerry must retire. 
 And now, what would be the most easy and hon- 
 orable mode of his exit ? A family consultation 
 was held, and it was decided that an opiate 
 should be administered, and that he should be 
 shot by an expert marksman ; which was done. 
 
 " Gertrude, the only daughter at home, was 
 about to make a visit to Greenfiqld, and told 
 them that the deed must be done while she was 
 away ; and that when she came home she never 
 wished to hear his name mentioned, she should 
 feel so badly. But immediately upon her return, 
 she proposed that the name of the new dog 
 should be changed, and that it should be Jerry. 
 She has just visited us, and in speaking of it, she 
 
DERWENT. 205 
 
 said she was glad his name was not changed, for 
 he had not the qualities that Jerry had, — that he 
 never would be the dog that Jerry was, — that 
 Jerry was 'a remarkable dog i — upon which I ob- 
 served she had especial use for her handkerchief. 
 Helen laughed at her heartily, and told her that 
 she had several times heard her speak of Jerry, 
 and she always ended with tears, and ' Jerry 
 was a remarkable dog.' Gertrude was his faith- 
 ful nurse, when he was almost killed in that sally 
 upon the big dog. [Not the ferocious itinerant 
 before mentioned, but another of his class.] No 
 doubt Jerry would have thought his life well 
 sacrificed, if he could but have beaten that big 
 dog." 
 
XVIII. 
 
 BIRDS. 
 
EVERY intelligent country boy is, to a cer- 
 tain extent, and in his way, an Audubon. 
 He will make you a catalogue of some dozens of 
 birds, and will tell you all about most of them. 
 He will not do it in a sci entitle way, like a pro- 
 fessed ornithologist ; for it is not as a savant that 
 he has noticed them, but only as a curious, ob- 
 servant boy. It is only so that I shall speak of 
 a number of them here. 
 
 Birds enliven our country homes. While I 
 am writing these lines, flashes of light are thrown 
 in upon me from their wings, flitting past my 
 windows. At day-break they charm us with 
 their music, and again at evening ; and all day 
 they are about us, with their affairs and chatter- 
 ing. These may be called the homestead birds ; 
 they like to be among human dwellings. In the 
 fields and woods we have others of different 
 kinds ; and about the waters, others still ; so that 
 
 (209) 
 
2IO DERWENT. 
 
 everywhere, and in great variety, we have their 
 company. 
 
 A large portion of them come and go with the 
 seasons. These are the summer birds. The 
 winter birds stay with us the year round. And 
 they contribute much to the pleasantness of the 
 season of frost and snows. I do not say they 
 abate the dreariness of the winter months ; for 
 those months, wisely used, are not dreary in the 
 country ; they are delightful. 
 
 The bluebirds, forerunners of the spring, are the 
 earliest to come. We announce their arrival to 
 each other, — " The bluebirds are come," — as we 
 do other good news. We are glad to see them. 
 I have dates of the times of their appearance here 
 in Connecticut ; which in some years was in the 
 end of February, but more often not till about 
 the middle of March. Even then they are too 
 early for their comfort, in most instances. There 
 will be deep snows and cold winds coming later 
 than that ; for March will generally be March to 
 the end of its portion of the calendar, and, not 
 content with that, will often supplement itself 
 with a tedious page from April. We look out 
 at our windows then, and say, "The poor blue- 
 birds." They betake themselves to such shelters 
 
DER WENT. 211 
 
 as they may find, and we see no more of them 
 till a sunn}^ morning welcomes them abroad 
 again. 
 
 Next come the robins. Others follow these, 
 till all the families and tribes are here. The 
 latest are the swallows. These are obliged to 
 defer their coming until the season is well ad- 
 vanced, because of the way they live; their food 
 consisting of insects floating in the air, which 
 they catch flying. Of all seasons the dog-days 
 appear to be their harvest-time, — those hot in- 
 sect-breeding days, — and it continues till the 
 autumn frosts destroy their game. And of all 
 hours, the evening twilight appears to be their 
 favorite one. You will see them skimming the 
 air, with great activity, between sundown and 
 dark. They are taking their supper then. How 
 keen their eye must be, to see and catch upon 
 the wing, and in the dusk, so small an object as 
 the mote which they are after ! Would we that 
 our eyes were as acute and microscopic as theirs ? 
 The wish were an unwise one ; for so we should 
 see more and other things than would be agree- 
 able. 
 
 The robin begins to sing with the first faint 
 dawn of the day. If, awaking while it is but 
 
212 DERWENT 
 
 faintly light, I am doubtful whether it is morning, 
 the robin's song assures me that it is. Most 
 birds wait till broader day before they commence. 
 1 know of but one that is earlier than the robin. 
 You will hear the little hair-bird trilling, in his 
 small, brief way, long before day-break; and his 
 notes are so soft and plaintive that you might 
 imagine he was lonesome, or had rested poorly, 
 and was weary of the night. 
 
 The robin sings but little in the middle of the 
 day, being busy then about his food and nest- 
 building, or, later in the season, in caring for his 
 mate and young ones ; but towards evening he 
 renews his melodies, and sings the day out, as he 
 sings it in. So ought we all to do, and so we 
 may, if we have an innocence and a trust like the 
 robin's. 
 
 The cat-bird has no particular time of day for 
 singing ; he sings whenever he is in the humor 
 for it, or has a few minutes' leisure, — sings 
 snatches of tunes, if he has not time for more. 
 He will often give expression to his gladness in 
 his melodies, when the sun shines out again after 
 a soft summer shower. He is the sweetest of all 
 our homestead warblers. The wood-thrush may 
 excel him ; but I do not reckon the thrushes 
 
D ER W E X T. 
 
 213 
 
 among the homestead birds, they being birds of 
 the bush. He sings with more spirit than the 
 robin, with more varied notes, and with a great 
 deal of emotion, — if action be evidence of emotion. 
 The robin sits still, and sings like an automaton 
 or a music-box ; the cat-bird accompanies his song 
 with lively movement of his body and wings. 
 
 The cat-bird has three voices; his cat-like call 
 (whence his name) ; his cluck, which appears to 
 be conversational, and meant, like his viczv, for 
 his mate only ; and his song, which is for all who 
 care to hear. The robin has but two, a peep, and 
 a song. 
 
 The quail is an interesting bird. Not for his 
 plumage, or his music; for he is neither beautiful 
 nor musical ; though he has a kind of plaint which 
 may pass for a warble, or a song. He lives about 
 the farm, but is no thief, or poacher, on it, as too 
 many birds are, one is sorry to sa}'. He will not 
 rob you of your cherries, like the robin ; nor pull 
 up your sprouting corn like the crow ; nor waste 
 and steal your green corn, like the blackbird ; 
 nor waylay your bees at the hive, like the king- 
 bird ; but he feels at liberty to glean in your 
 stubble-field, and will sometimes venture into 
 your barn-yard. 
 
214 
 
 DE R IV EN T. 
 
 Quails interest me by their habits. They 
 appear to have a peculiar fondness for the do- 
 mestic state, or, at least, a longer-lasting love 
 for it than other birds have. Most birds dismiss 
 their young from their care and company as soon 
 as they are old enough to leave the nest, and help 
 themselves ; but the quail family keep together 
 all through the season, not separating, I think, 
 before the pairing-time of the next year. You 
 see a flock of them, a dozen, or more, rise from 
 the ground, fly a little way, and light down 
 again : that is a family of quails. They always 
 fly low, in a kind of a hurried, hovering way, 
 like hens. They have not lightness of form and 
 strength of wing for a high flight, or a long one. 
 Hence they cannot be migratory. We see them 
 quite late in the season, after snows come, and I 
 think they stay the winter through, finding, 
 during the extreme rigors of it, such retreats 
 and shelters as birds know of better than we. 
 He that feeds them shelters them. Familiar as 
 they are to us, and we to them, about our 
 grounds, the)^ are always wild and timid. I 
 never heard of one of them being tamed. They 
 will sometimes allow you to come within a few 
 yards of them without flying, only running and 
 
D ER WENT. 215 
 
 skulking. If you come suddenly upon a young 
 brood of them, they will set up a peeping and 
 run in alarm and hide themselves in the grass, or 
 bushes, like chickens that are too big for their 
 mother's wings to cover them. One thing I have 
 to remember with regret in reference to this sort 
 of birds : I used to set snares and traps for them, 
 and was delighted with my success in taking 
 them. The snares, catching them by the neck, 
 strangled them. That was a cruel way. The 
 trap, which was an open shallow box, set- with a 
 figure four, dropped over them without hurting 
 them ; but being so wild and timid by nature, 
 they were in a wonderful fright, and uttered 
 cries of terror, when I put my hands in to take 
 them out. They are excellent food, and it is no 
 doubt lawful to kill them for that use, if needed 
 for it ; but, for myself, I would now rather see 
 them in the fields, and be hungr}' than see them 
 on my table. 
 
 The quail has a kind of whistling note which is 
 thought to resemble the words '■^ more wet /' and 
 some people regard this as prognostic of rain. 
 But I think that careful note-takers of the 
 weather will tell you, that, like many other 
 signs, it signifies nothing reliable, — nothing un- 
 
2i6 DERWENT. 
 
 less this, that birds, like all sensitive air-breath- 
 ing creatures, feel the effects of atmospheric 
 changes, and have their ways of showing their 
 consciousness of them, whether it be before a 
 storm, , or in, or after one. If this in them fore- 
 tokens wet, or other weather, so, often,' do the 
 sensations and behavior of human people. 
 
 The blue jay, used to be and still is, one of my 
 favorites. His plumage is of the gayest. His 
 proud crest, which he wears with spirit, lowering 
 and elevating it at will, would befit the cap of a 
 high military officer. His voice is less soft than 
 the flute's, it is true, but it is loud, clear and 
 startling, and, to my ear, decidedly musical ; — 
 heard oftenest on a still, sunny autumn day. 
 His haunts are the woodlands, and he stays the 
 winter through. Oi \\\q gcmis corpus, the natural- 
 ists say ; but there is nothing corvine, or crow- 
 like, about him, that I can see, — being no natural- 
 ist, however. 
 
 Those busy climbers iscansores) the wood- 
 peckers, all the varieties of them, are pleasing 
 birds. I .love to watch them winding round 
 trees, on a winter day, or a spring day, looking 
 for insects, or larvae, in the bark ; and to hear 
 the larger ones making the woods ring with 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 217 
 
 their rapid hammering on dry, or hollow trees. 
 These are winter birds. All of them are pretty, 
 some of them are beautiful. I would not willingly 
 miss the woodpeckers from my early recollec- 
 tions, nor break off acquaintance with them 
 now. 
 
 The whip-poor-will may be classed with our 
 birds of song, or not, as people fanc3\ For my- 
 self, I used to feel that he enhanced the lonesome- 
 ness of a lonesome evening,- or a lonesome place, 
 more than he charmed a cheerful one, — that his 
 song, if song it should be called, was too long 
 kept up to be not wearisome, and that one at a 
 time was better than two, or more of them. Two 
 not far apart, vying with each other, like Menal- 
 cas and Damoetas, make themselves ridiculous, — 
 singing the same tune, at the same pitch, but 
 keeping no time. Where many of them are 
 mingling their voices together, the effect is 
 singular. So exactly alike, the}'- seem like 
 the same sound multiplied, or like so many 
 echoes confounding each other. I remember a 
 visit I made with one of my sisters to some 
 friends in Cornwall. The house was on the edge 
 of a wide circular valley, — hills on every side, — 
 with here and there a dwelling. As evening 
 
2l8 DERW EN T. 
 
 came on, the whole valley became vocal with 
 whip-poor-wills. There must have been scores, 
 if not hundreds of them ; it seemed a whip-poor- 
 will camp meeting. The only young lady of the 
 house proposed to give my sister a room which 
 she had herself occupied, a front one over the 
 portico ; but she feared she would be disturbed 
 there b}^ " that tiresome whip-poor-will " which 
 had taken possession, she said, of their front 
 steps for its singing-place. It came every night, 
 after the lights were out, and kept coming, for all 
 that she could do to drive it away. She had 
 clapped and shouted, and pounded on the house ; 
 she had carried up armfuls of wood to throw 
 down at it. All in vain. It would go off for a 
 little while, and then be back again whip-poor- 
 willing away as long as it liked. My sister, 
 amused at the idea of such a contest, accepted 
 the room ; but came down laughing in the morn- 
 ing, confessing a defeat ; for her serenader, she 
 said, was fresh and wakeful, and she tired. Do 
 not judge the bird severely; there are just such 
 human visitors, — always back again upon your 
 dooi'-stone, in spite of the plainest intimations 
 that you would prefer to be alone. 
 
 The whip-poor-wills of the whole valley kept 
 
D E R WENT. 
 
 219 
 
 up their grand choral performances till about 
 midnight, when, with one consent, they ceased ; 
 and then, all at once, the air was full of night- 
 hawks, — jar, jar, jar, like so many spinning- 
 wheels in the heavens ; and these held on till day- 
 break. They may have been catching fireflies, 
 in their swoops. 
 
 The brown thrasher, one of the wide-spread 
 thrush famil}', a fine singer, is of about the robin's 
 size, but more gracefully moulded, and more 
 active. I have to relate an incident which befell 
 one of these birds. I had heard of birds being 
 charmed by snakes, but supposed this to be an 
 imaginary notion. The fact that snakes did 
 sometimes gorge themselves with birds was 
 hardly to be questioned* A man told me that 
 he found one in a snake that he killed which was 
 so large that it was a wonder how the reptile 
 ever got it down his throat, the bird being whole 
 and unmasticated. In fact, he had not got it 
 more than half-way down his gullet, and was so 
 bulged out and deformed by it, that he could 
 hardly crawl, and was the more . easily killed. 
 But how does the snake catch the bird ? Does 
 he coil himself and spring at it, as his manner is 
 with an enemy? I saw one some yards up a 
 
220 DERWENT. 
 
 tree, his tail twined round the body of it, and his 
 head resting on a limb ; he could not coil and 
 spring then, if birds were his object, as not im- 
 probably they were. The incident I have 
 alluded to was this. Passing along the sunny 
 edge of a wood, I was arrested by a brown 
 thrasher that was acting very singularly. It was 
 hopping about on the ground, with its feathers 
 ruffled, uttering cries apparently of distress. I 
 wondered what ailed it, but directly I saw a large 
 black snake a few yards from it, lying at its full 
 length, with its small, piercing eyes fixed upon 
 it, and its fork}^ tongue playing in its mouth. 
 The bird would hop toward it and from it, and 
 to this side and that, and on its scaly back for an 
 instant, but all the while with its head towards 
 it. It was evidently terrified, but seemed unable 
 to fly from the object of its dread. I looked on 
 for some minutes, and then broke the charm by 
 throwing stones at the snake ; which ghded into 
 the bushes, while the bird found his wings, and 
 flew away. Now this, if any, may be taken as 
 an instance of a snake-charmed bird. But what 
 was the nature of the charm ? Evidently it was 
 that kind of stupefaction, that utter loss of self- 
 possession, which sudden and extreme fear pro- 
 
D ER WENT. 221 
 
 duces. The bird was beside itself through sur- 
 prise and terror. Just so charmed, fascinated, 
 lost to all self-helpfulness, are men, sometimes. 
 Read accounts of people that are killed on rail- 
 roads, for instance ; some of whom have survived 
 he shock long enough to tell us that the}'- saw 
 the danger, were perfectly aware of it, but were 
 so surprised and stupefied by it, that they had no 
 mental power to save themselves by stepping off 
 the track, if they were on it, or by pulling a rein, 
 if they were in a carriage, but stood stock-still, 
 or drove madly on, as the case might be, in spite 
 of whistle, bell, and shouting. And here let it 
 not seem out of place to remark, that the training 
 of children to a habit of entire self-possession, 
 under all circumstances, is of no slight import- 
 ance as a part of their education. 
 
 Snakes are such hateful and disgusting things, 
 that I do wrong to mix them in with the better 
 company of birds, as I have done ; but we have 
 the charmed bird's deliverance for compensation. 
 < I confess a pai^tiality for the crow ; or, rather, 
 I have little of the common prejudice against 
 him. He is with me a character. I like his slow, 
 solemn way of flying ; it amuses me. I like his 
 grave and stately gait. I like his " caw," which 
 
222 DERIVE NT. 
 
 has, for him and his fellows, a social, if not a 
 musical significance. Perhaps he uses it as a 
 signal, to let his people know that he is on his 
 way, or where he is. I like his suspiciousness 
 and cunning better than I like those qualities in 
 human kind ; or, at least, I dislike them less. I 
 cannot say that I admire his dietetic tastes in all 
 particulars. Perhaps I have some pity for his 
 leanness ; since that is proverbially his actual 
 condition, if it be not his normal one. " As 
 poor as a crow." There is beauty in his jet 
 black, glossy coat. The social habits of his kind 
 amuse me. Observe the straggling, wide-apart 
 way in which they fly, when a number of them 
 are passing over together ; than which nothing 
 looks more unsociable ; yet hear how vivaciously 
 and noisily they caw together, when they con- 
 gregate at some rendezvous of theirs, such as a 
 woody hill-top, where they like to rest awhile, 
 or some great swamp, where they sleep. The 
 crow is about the shyest of all birds naturally ; 
 it is difficult to get a shot at him ; but once tame 
 him, and get his confidence, and he is afraid of 
 nothing. He will fly in at your window, light 
 on your table, or on the book you are reading, 
 caw in your face, and fly out again. Children 
 
DE RW E N T. 
 
 223 
 
 can make a playmate of him. Curious things 
 are told of the crow, tamed and wild. He is on 
 bad terms with the farmer ; he steals his corn. 
 It is true, he makes some compensation for his 
 larcenies ; he destro)-s grubs and other creatures 
 of the ground that are injurious to crops. But 
 the cultivator is not satisfied with this ; he re- 
 gards and treats him as a thief, a depredator, 
 simply, and takes a variety of methods with him. 
 If he can but once get at him with his gun and 
 shoot him, he makes an example of him by hang- 
 ing him up in the field. He dresses up scare- 
 crows to frighten him. You may have sometimes 
 seen a white string stretched from post to post 
 round a field. The theory of such festooning is 
 this : it is the manner of the crow to light upon 
 the fence and look about a little, before descend- 
 ing to the ground ; he cannot light on the string, 
 and is, besides, suspicious of it, and so keeps off. 
 The crow has a persecutor in the kingbird. 
 You will see a pair of these birds, and sometimes 
 three or four of them, chasing him from one 
 hill-top to another, all the while pouncing on 
 him, and picking his back and wings. He is ex- 
 ceedingly worried by them, and makes a loud, 
 angry caw every time they touch him. He 
 
>24 
 
 D E R WEN T. 
 
 lights on a tree to get rid of them ; they light 
 on another and wait for him to start again. He 
 can neither escape from them nor punish them, 
 because of their superior lightness and activity. 
 They would not dare to pester a hawk so. 
 Sometimes a crow is picked so bare and sore by 
 them, and is so tired, that he can fly no longer. 
 One of our men found one in that pitiable plight, 
 and brought it home to us to show. It was not 
 able to rise from the ground. What the motive 
 of the kingbird is, my reader can divine as well 
 as I. Perhaps they like the excitement of the 
 chase, and make a frolic of it. More probably 
 they dislike the crow in their neighborhood, and 
 mean to clear the coast of him, being afi-aid of 
 him for their eggs and nestlings ; for, among the 
 many bad things he is charged with, one is that 
 he is a despoiler of the nests of the small birds. 
 
 The panic among birds and hens which the 
 hawk produces is worthy of observation as an 
 instance of a fear which is purely one of instinct. 
 The hens and the birds may have never seen a 
 hawk, may know nothing of his character by 
 observation or experience, yet let but the shadow 
 of one of those sharks of the air fall on them, 
 and instantly the birds fl}' to some retreat and 
 
DERIVE NT. 225 
 
 are as bush as death, while the hen giv^es an 
 alarm which her chickens understand, and they 
 run for shelter under her wings. 
 
 It was in connection with a panic of this kind 
 that a mischance happened to our neighbor, old 
 Mr. Heathcote, a veteran hunter. Coming home 
 from one of his fowling excursions on horseback, 
 he heard his hens squalling as he approached the 
 house, and saw the hawk sailing around ov^er his 
 head. Leaning back in the saddle, he pointed 
 his gun at it, fired, lost his balance, and fell over 
 backwards to the ground, much to the amuse- 
 ment of his family, who ran out to see. Neither 
 the marksman nor the hawk was hurt. 
 
 I adverted to the blackbirds in speaking of the 
 meadow. Such multitudes of them as we then 
 had, settling on a field of unripe corn, would 
 make sad work of it. I was often set to watch 
 them. It was tedious business, sitting on a knoll 
 or a rock for a watch - tower, dreaming day- 
 dreams and whittling; making corn-stalk fiddles, 
 and wishing they had more music in them, or 
 mimic boats, and wishing they were ships, and I 
 on board of them, — always wishing. Sometimes 
 I had the dog for compan}-, and for help also, for 
 he would run in and bark among the birds ; and 
 15 
 
226 ' D :: /■; went. 
 
 sometimes a gun, but with powder onlj-, till I 
 was old enough to be trusted with a pouch of 
 shot, too. No place was lonesome .with a dog, 
 nor tiresome with a gun. My brother and T 
 made clack-mills to scare the thieves ; but there 
 must be wind to work them, and often the winds 
 would sleep while the birds were awake. 
 
 The red-winged blackbirds are beautiful for 
 their crimson, epauletted shoulders. No two 
 colors could be more finely contrasted than their 
 deep red and their glossy jet. These are a dis- 
 tinct species, less numerous than the one above 
 mentioned ; the crow blackbirds are another, 
 and the swamp blackbirds, of a rusty black, an- 
 other still. 
 
 Perhaps there is no bird that more fills a 
 young imagination than the owl. I suspect that 
 any child with an illustrated copy of the Burial 
 of Cock Robin in his hand will tell you so. His 
 grotesque appearance ; his solitariness ; his sus- 
 picious, if not culpable, love of the night rather 
 than the day ; his hootings ; — these, and such 
 like things, make the shape and coloring of the 
 picture he has to sit for. I remember being out 
 alone in my boyhood, on a solitary hill-top, in 
 the middle of a profoundly still summer night — 
 
DER WENT. 227 
 
 it SO happened to me — listening to one of them : — 
 Who-00 ! who-00 ! — I stood and hearkened with 
 a feeling that might be called romantic. 
 
 The screech-owl has nothing commendable 
 about him, that I know of; or certainly he is not 
 a praiseworthy character on the whole. Nothing 
 is more sinister than his look and attitude, in a 
 state of repose ; and his deeds agree with this. 
 His screechings at night are execrable. I know 
 of nothing comparable to them, except the 
 screechy, screamy way in which some ladies 
 sing, telling us it is artistic. It is said for him, 
 that he catches mice in barns. That may be 
 true ; for he gets into, barns, often, and dozes 
 away the da}^ there ; but his merits in that par- 
 ticular are more than balanced by his demerits in 
 others : he gets into hen-roosts and dove-cots, 
 too. We had a dove-house full of the most 
 beautiful varieties of doves — white, buff-colored 
 and changeable, fan-tailed and pantaletted. One 
 morning we noticed that they were all out upon 
 the roofs of the house and bam, with their necks 
 stretched, and looking very wild. I went into 
 the dove-house to see what the matter was ; and 
 there, squat in a corner, I found a screech owl — a 
 barn-i)\v\, to give him his laudatory title as a 
 
228 D i: R W E A' T. 
 
 mouse- killei". I had a pet dove, among the rest. 
 That lay dead, with a hole in its breast. I secur- 
 ed Mr. Screech, and, without compunction, ap- 
 plied the lex talionis to him, life for life. The 
 doves' home was spoiled for them. They had 
 been a happy family, but now they quit their house, 
 and would never enter it again. 
 
 Contrast these owl voices — the hootings and 
 the screechings, with the voices of smaller, gen- 
 tler birds, — the liquid voice of the chewink, the 
 soft notes of the phiebe, the lively chatter of the 
 chickadee, and most (^f all, the plaintive cooing 
 of the turtle dove. 
 
 The turtle-dove is one of the most interesting 
 of birds, the very personification of gentleness 
 and modesty ; seen in pairs, never in flocks, and 
 rather rarely seen at all ; loving the deep seclu- 
 sion of the woods. 
 
 I have an anecdote to give of the chewink. 
 We had a hen with chickens. Being a barn-yard 
 fowl, she thought she had, of course, the freedom 
 of tr.e barn-yard. But as often as she went into 
 it she hastened out again in great excitement, 
 with her feathers erect, throwing her head this 
 way and that as if she was dodging something, 
 and clucking her brood along as fast as she could. 
 
DERIVE XT. 229 
 
 What was the matter? Why, a Mrs. Chewmk 
 had made her nest on a low branch of a pear-tree 
 that overhung the yard, and, being ignorant of 
 the character of Madam Hen, and concerned for 
 the safety of her young ones, was scaring her off 
 by flying at and chasing her, and threatening to 
 pick out her eyes. 
 
 The waterfowls give interest to the localities 
 which are their haunts. You see the wild ducks 
 paddling and diving in the creeks and flooded 
 marshes ; the stilted crane and heron, wading 
 along the channel banks and flats ; the bold, shot- 
 defying kingfisher, watching from his wharf-post, 
 or hovering over the water for a dive; and 
 sometimes the wild geese, descending from their 
 long and hungry flight to rest and feed a little on 
 the river. 
 
 There was a fowl, lean and long, sometimes 
 seen, but not often, in our fens and wet meadows, 
 which people called the stake-driver, from the 
 sound it made ; which was hke that of the dri- 
 ving of a stake into hollow or quaggy ground 
 with an axe. It was curious to hear. 
 
 An ornithological collection for a museum, 
 needs not only the birds themselves for its com- 
 pleteness, but their nests and eggs. Their in- 
 
230 DERIVE NT. 
 
 stincts are shown in their nests. We see in 
 thesC; foresight, contrivance, adaptation, skill, 
 taste ; and if human hands had made them" w^e 
 should say they were evidence of mind. But 
 we observe that each individual builds hke every 
 other individual of its species, and each species 
 after a fashion of its own ; and that this they do 
 season after season, devising nothing new, bor- 
 rowing nothing from each other, making- no im- 
 provements, — blindly following, in short, a fixed 
 law. And herein is the difference between in- 
 stinct and mind: mind invents; instinct does not. 
 There is mind concerned in the case, but it is a 
 higher intelligence than that of the birds. 
 
 Different birds select different situations for 
 their nests, and construct them in different ways, 
 and of different materials, according to the habits 
 and requirements of their respective kinds. 
 Some build on trees ; some in and under bushes ; 
 some, under shelving rocks ; some, in holes 
 which they find, or peck for themselves, in old 
 trees ; some, in barns ; some in chimneys ; some, 
 in the open, bare ground ; some, in the face of 
 high banks ; some, the water birds, large and 
 small, upon unfrequented islands, or other undis- 
 turbed localities in the vicinity of waters. 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 231 
 
 Suppose we examine a few of their nests, 
 and see how they are made. 
 
 Here is one of the robin's ; I find it on an 
 apple-tree near the house. It is composed of 
 coarse materials, to begin with, such as strong 
 stems of grass. These are mixed with mud, or 
 clay ; which holds them together, and gives 
 shape and firmness to the structure, or, rather, 
 the straw holds the clay together and keeps it in 
 place till the sun dries and hardens it, as the 
 straw and stubble did in the brick-making in 
 Egypt. This is the foundation. Then the lining. 
 This is made with fine dried grass, or anything 
 that is soft and warm. 
 
 The frame of the little hair-bird's nest is of fine 
 fibrous roots dextrously wov^en together. The 
 lining is of hair, of which barn-yards and stables 
 afford an abundant supply. Long horse-hairs, 
 from the mane, or tail, work in, in coils, nicely. 
 It is this hair-work that gives the bird its name. 
 There is no prettier nest than this. The apple- 
 tree appears to be this bird's favorite place for 
 building. 
 
 The hang-bird, or Baltimore oriole, suspends 
 her nest from a pensile twig at the extreme end 
 of a high branch ; the elm being often chosen for 
 
232 
 
 DE K WENT. 
 
 her purpose. It is made of fine, pliant materials, 
 and is in shape like a silk purse with an opening 
 in its side. It is a curious thing, so snug and 
 cozy, and so airily and gracefully placed. Every 
 breeze rocks the hang-bird's cradle, and a proper 
 lullaby for her would be that old one, " Rock-a- 
 by, baby, on the tree-top," which used to be sung 
 to our little ones. 
 
 The barn-swallows make their nests of stiff, ad- 
 hesive mud, or clay, attaching them to beams 
 and rafters, and lining them with feathers, pro- 
 ducing mud-wall cottages luxuriously furnished. 
 I have often sent a feather off upon the wind to 
 see them chase it. Sometimes two or three 
 would be after it together. 
 
 The chimney-swallow's nest is a very rude and 
 cheap affair, of coarse, short sticks, as big as 
 pipe stems, gummed together and to the flue; 
 in shape like the half of a tea-saucer, with no 
 lining ; as ribbed as a gridiron ; as black as soot. 
 These are the chimney-sweeps among birds, as 
 their cousins, the bank-swallows, are the delvers. 
 Their dress, which is black, or blue-black, is suit- 
 ed to the profession. 
 
 It is a fit description of the crow's nest to say, 
 that it is a common synonym for brush-heap. 
 
D ER WEN T. 
 
 233 
 
 The eagle's is like the crow's, but larger and of 
 larger timber. 
 
 Such of the birds as require soft linings for 
 their nests, are sharp and eager in their search 
 for stuffs for them. They will pick up bits of 
 thread, slack-twisted strings, shreds and clip- 
 pings made by scissors, and all similar things, as 
 well as soft dried grasses. And if you have any 
 small, delicate article of dress to dry, or bleach, 
 it behooves you to see that it is not made off 
 with. A lace collar which my sister Alice had 
 put out thus; was gone when she went for it. 
 She charged it to the birds : and, to substantiate 
 the charge, she put some slips of muslin in the 
 same place, and these she saw them take. Yet 
 they do not, to my knowledge, steal the stuffs 
 they want from each other's nests. It might be 
 convenient for the swallow to appropriate to her- 
 self the feathers of a neighbor swallow's nest ; or 
 for the cat-bird to take the robins; but this does 
 not appear to be consistent with their ideas of 
 good morals and good neighborhood. But to 
 take things which belong to human kind is with 
 them another affair. I used to tie our raspberry 
 canes and grape-vines with coarse strings and 
 candle-wicking, and wondered who untied them 
 
234 DERWENT. 
 
 and carried off the bindings, till I discovered that 
 the birds did it. You may propose to compound 
 with them, or buy them off, as I have often done, 
 by tying handfuls of cotton to the stakes and lat- 
 tices, for their preference and use ; but you get 
 nothing by this ; they carry off your cotton, 
 strings and all, and untie your vines besides. 
 
 The social affinities and habits of the feather- 
 ed tribes are worthy of observation. 
 
 A flock of birds is a social company. Such of 
 them as do not live, or move, in flocks, still like 
 to be in communities, or neighborhoods, of their 
 kind. They sustain, with constancy, the sepa- 
 rateness of their species, being no amalgamation- 
 ists. You never see a flock comprising different 
 sorts. Even such as are of the same genus, al- 
 most of the same species, and of similar modes 
 of living, as the different kinds of swallows, and 
 of ducks, avoid all mixing with each other. 
 Within their own kinds they have sympathies as 
 well as affinities. If you catch a young robin, 
 not fully weaned, not only its parents will be 
 alarmed by its cry, but all the neighbor robins 
 will come flutteiing and peeping around you in 
 wild distress. The migratory birds come and go 
 in companies. Thc^^ often congregate in very 
 
DER WEN T. 235 
 
 large flocks, on the eve of a movement of this 
 kind. I saw a line of swallows not less than an 
 eighth of a mile long, and as straight as an arrow, 
 flying high in the air, in single file and close or- 
 der, going southwesterly, or parallel with the 
 coast, being a migratory company, of course. 
 And one curious thing they did ; passing over a 
 brook, every one of them, in its turn, beginning 
 with the foremost, dropped down to it in an easy 
 curve, like that of a festoon, and just dipped its 
 bill in it, rippling it with its wings, and rose 
 again to its place in the line. It was an exceed- 
 ingly graceful and beautiful movement. Who 
 appointed the rendezvous for those birds ? Who 
 sent out the word? Who marshalled them, des- 
 ignated their leader, and made the sign that put 
 them in motion ? Or did they commence the 
 flight with a few, and receive accessions by the 
 way ? 
 
XIX. 
 
 Studies in the Woods. 
 
THERE are few people who do not find 
 something to interest them in woods. 
 Some, as the botanist and the artist, resort to 
 them for .ends pertaining to their professions: 
 the majority go for recreation only ; they find a 
 " pleasure in the pathless woods," and not much 
 besides, — not suspecting how much they have 
 around them for profitable and pleasing study. 
 Solomon " spake of trees." It is probable that 
 he wrote a treatise on them, and that he added 
 the general science of botany to his dendrology ; 
 for he spake of trees " from the cedar that is in 
 Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out 
 of the wall." Trees, then, must be a proper sub- 
 ject for any one's study. Trees and woods are 
 the subject of this chapter. 
 
 I do not propose a treatise, in the manner of 
 the naturalist, as I did not in speaking of birds 
 and cattle ; but shall make some every-day ob- 
 
 (239) 
 
240 DERWENT. 
 
 servations on them, which may, perhaps, be use- 
 ful to young readers in their woodland excur- 
 sions. 
 
 The twilight of the woods is pleasing. The 
 twilight which the day leaves behind it is every- 
 where the same ; this of the woods is uneven ; 
 there is deep dusk in some places, faint shade in 
 others. 
 
 The colors around you there are a study. No 
 two masses of leaves are tinged alike : one is 
 gray ; another silvery ; another pale yellow ; an- 
 other golden ; and there are many intermediate 
 tints and shadings. These are the effects of the 
 sunbeams that stream down through openings in 
 the leafy canopy above, or are strained through 
 where the spread of leaves is thin. The sun is a 
 great artist in lights, shades, and colors, and de- 
 lights to show his work in woods and groves. 
 With what a glory he lights them up at evening ! 
 
 And then, besides these transient sunbeam 
 paintings, the different kinds of trees differ in the 
 natural color of their foliage. The pale willow's 
 green is not the green of the oak ; the rusty pop- 
 lar's is not that of the maple, or the beech ; nor 
 the hemlock's that of the darkest of the ever- 
 greens. 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 241 
 
 The shapes of trees present you with another 
 study. I refer to the forms which the different 
 kinds naturally take. The tall cedar, the stately 
 pine, the arching elm, the pointed cypress, the 
 spheroidal beech, the sprawling- shrub oak, the 
 pensile weeping willow, drooping to the ground, 
 and the rest, grow in shapes peculiar to them- 
 selves, and by these shapes alone would be dis- 
 tinguishable, though other marks were wanting 
 to them. 
 
 These marks, with other distinctive qualities 
 of trees, are worth knowing, and properly belong 
 to studies in the woods. Almost every country 
 boy of ordinary wakefulness and curiosity, and 
 fond of woodland rambles, can point them out to 
 you. That city people should be unacquainted 
 with them is not surprising; but T know of those 
 whose homes are, and always have been, in the 
 countr\', and to whom the knowledge would 
 be practically valuable, who, beyond the mere 
 shades before their houses, cannot tell one sort 
 of tree, or wood, from another ;— who, if the}' 
 ordered and paid for 51 cord of oak, or hickory, 
 would not know they were cheated, if a cord of 
 chestnut, 'or poplar, were brought them instead. 
 Ladies, in particular, are liable to these imposi- 
 16 
 
2^2 DERWENT. 
 
 tions. For the benefit of such, then, let me say, 
 that, on the cart, you may distinguish one kind 
 from another by the bark, and by the color and 
 the grain, or fibre, of the wood. The standing 
 tree is known by its leaf, its shape, and its bark. 
 In most cases the foliage alone sufficiently des- 
 ignates it. 
 
 The leaves, — the dress of trees, — are worthy 
 of notice as objects of taste and curiosity. Go 
 through the woods and pluck a sample leaf of 
 each kind, and, laying them before 3'ou, make a 
 little study of them. You may arrange them in 
 classes, if you like, under the descriptive terms 
 of the botanist ; as, ovate, lanceolate, palmate, 
 and so forth. You find great differences among 
 them, — varieties of shape, size, shade, texture, 
 :\nd finish. No two of them are just alike, yet, in 
 some cases the differences are so delicate that 
 you have to look again before you perceive 
 them. Some of them have the gloss of the finest 
 varnish ; others are coarse, rough, and slovenly. 
 Some are sallow, while others are so deeply and 
 healthfully green that it might do an invalid 
 good to look at them. Bruise them, and their 
 smells are different. In their shapes they fur- 
 nish patterns for every kind of sylvan ornamen- 
 
D E R WENT. 
 
 243 
 
 tation, in paintings, carvings, carpets, chintzes, 
 and embroidery. If you know them in the 
 woods, you will lov^e them as acquaintances in 
 these artistic connections. 
 
 For completeness of information, one might 
 catalogue the woods, making a synopsis of all the 
 kinds of trees he finds in them ; noting, at the 
 same time, their respective uses and worth, the 
 soils and situations they naturally elect, their 
 comparative longevity, and other facts worthy to 
 be remarked. If he have some regard to method, 
 he will set such as have family resemblances and 
 names together on his list ; as, for instance, the 
 oaks, of which there were, as I remember, as 
 many as eight varieties, or species, in our Der- 
 went woods ; all acorn-bearers, genuine oaks, 
 though differing from each other. The hicko- 
 ries, as closely related as the oaks, and for aught 
 I know, equally numerous or more so, will fill 
 another large place in the list ; the evergreens an- 
 other; the willows and the poplars, others; and 
 so on down to triplets, couples and individuals. 
 
 The grains and colors of woods are worthy of 
 any one's studious attention. They are the more 
 so because of the imitations of them by house- 
 painters. The church I attend is grained in oak ; 
 
244 DERWENT. 
 
 and the graining is as well done, T think, as is 
 the average of such work. I cannot say it pleases 
 me very well; it falls so short of the real. I am 
 not sure that I should not like any one of the 
 hard woods unpainted better than I like this or 
 any imitation. The pews of the old meeting- 
 houses were unpainted, and no one felt that they 
 were lot nice and respectable. Indeed, for my 
 pa I, I should say, eschew the grainer's paint and 
 varnish, and pew your church with the veritable 
 oak, or some other respectable, truth-speaking 
 wood. 
 
 Age in the tree, and time with the timber, 
 deepens the richness of the beautiful kinds of 
 wood : the old is finer than the young and the 
 new. Some picture-frames which I looked at 
 lately, made from one of the beams of an old 
 church which had been taken down, are much 
 more finely hued than they could have been, 
 fresh-made at the time the church was built; 
 which was more than a hundred years before. I 
 have an article made from an old oak, — fabulous- 
 1}^ old, — which for fineness of fibre and richness 
 of color, I have hardly seen surpassed by any 
 wood, in whatever country grown. It is a cane 
 made from the famous Charter Oak of Connect!- 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 245 
 
 cut. The head, secured with a silver fillet, is 
 from a timber, also oak, and beautifully grained, 
 saved from Washington's house at Mount Ver- 
 non while repairs were making on it, under the 
 auspices of ladies, a few year since. My cane, 
 therefore, is not of sapling nor of vulgar origin.* 
 Formerly, chestnut was highly esteemed for 
 ornamental uses. Time hardens it, and gives it 
 
 * I went to look at the old oak once when I was )'oung, being 
 in Hartford. It impressed me greatly with its venerableness ; 
 it was the Methuselah of the old woods world. A few da3'S 
 since, I addressed some inquiries concerning it to a friend in 
 Hartford, and he gives me the following particulars : 
 
 "The old oak fell in a gale of wind, August 21st, 1856;" — 
 which was one hundred and seventy years after it was made the 
 depository of the charter. Its age could not be accurately ascer- 
 tained : it was estimated to be a thousand years. It is said that 
 when the ground on which it stood was cleared (1638) for the 
 residence of Governor Wyllys, the Indians begged that this old 
 tree might be spared, saying that it had been " the guide of their 
 ancestors for centuries," and " when its young leaves appeared 
 in the spring-time, they knew that their corn should be planted." 
 The heart of the main trunk had decayed till only a thin rim of 
 it was left, when it fell ; but, from the branching out of the limbs, 
 it was sound. It was of the white oak species, and was full of 
 leaves and j'oung acorns. It was thirty-three feet in circumfer- 
 ence at the base. 
 
 On its fall, the bells were tolled, by order of the Mayor, and 
 on the ground on which it had stood a band of music played a 
 funeral dirge. 
 
 The wood of it was all saved, and has been " wrought into 
 mementoes of friendship," my correspondent sa3's, " in a thou- 
 sand forms." To what finer uses than these of sentiment and 
 friendship could it have been hallowed ? ' 
 
246 DERIVE NT. 
 
 the dark, rich color of the nut it bears. It takes 
 a fine pohsh. You will see polished floors of it, 
 and, I think, wainscots and other work, in houses 
 built by old grandees of England ; and in the 
 earliest-built dwellings of this country that made 
 some pretensions to style, it was used, more or 
 less, in their best rooms. More recently, it seems 
 to have given place, in cabinet-makers' shops, to 
 mahogany and black walnut ; but now I notice it 
 again in their ware-rooms, and see it mentioned 
 in their advertisements. 
 
 The cedar, particularly the white cedar, is ad- 
 mirable for its grandeur as a tree. It grows 
 large and high, and lives to a great age. It is 
 remarkable for its durability, as timber, and for 
 the permanency of its fragrance. The reader is 
 presumed to know all this; but I must give an 
 instance. Shingles of this wood, taken from an 
 old house seventy years ago, and used as siding 
 on one which was then new, are still in good 
 condition, and likely to last, no one can say how 
 long ; and they are almost, if not quite, as fra- 
 grant as the new wood. What can science tell 
 us of a substance (if it be a substance) so subtile 
 as an odor which can spend itself constantly for 
 a century, and not be exhausted ? 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 247 
 
 I think we have no other native wood that re- 
 sists time and the weather like the heart of the 
 red cedar. An old gentleman showed me a post 
 standing at the edge of a tide-water near his 
 house, — he moored his boat to it, — which he 
 knew had been there sixty years ; and there was 
 no appearartce of decay about it yet. 
 
 There are trees which are of small account for 
 timber, shade, fruit, or fuel, and which you nev- 
 ertheless like to see, for some quality they have. 
 The dogwood is one of these. It bears a profu- 
 sion of large, show}?^, dusky-white, innocent- 
 looking blossoms, vandyke-shaped ; and, as it 
 blows early, before the general leafing out of the 
 woods is sufficiently advanced to hide it, you see 
 it, blinking between the trees, at a considerable 
 distance. It might be likened to a rustic tricked 
 out in his smartest for a holiday. As for its fruit, 
 the dogwood cherry, it is called eatable, but I 
 suspect that most people, after tasting, would 
 think it better thrown away than swallowed. 
 
 The poplar is another of these good-for-little, 
 yet interesting trees of the wood. The tremu- 
 lousness of the aspen, which is a species of the 
 poplar, is proverbial. You may stand and look 
 at it, when the stillness of the air is such that 
 
248 DEKIVENT. 
 
 there is not the slightest waving of the grass, or 
 grain, nor the slightest ripple on the water, nor 
 the least stir of leaves on other trees, and every 
 leaf of the aspen will be quivering. Woodman, 
 spare the poplar. 
 
 It is not my purpose to recommend particular 
 trees for shade or other uses, but I must say a 
 word in behalf of the butternut ; which selon inoi, 
 is one of the pleasantest trees to have near one's 
 house. It is a prettier tree than the ailanthus, 
 which, in appearance, it resembles. I have no 
 respect for the ailanthus ; the odor of whose 
 blossoms is said to be unwholesome ; which litters 
 the ground with its ugly seed-pods, and is a pest 
 by its rapid self-propagation. I would not inter- 
 cede for it with the axe-man, though it were a 
 native of our own woods, as it is not. The but- 
 ternut is a clean and wholesome tree. The smell 
 of its leaves is agreeable. I have a sprig of it on 
 my table now. The nut, if gathered while green- 
 enough, makes a good pickle. The thin waver- 
 ing shadow of this tree does not blight vegeta- 
 tion under it, as other shades do ; on the contra- 
 ry, it aids it by fertilizing the soil by the oiliness 
 of its past years' fallen leaves. You will never 
 see an old butternut without observing the pecu- 
 
DERWENT. 249 
 
 liar greenness of the grass beneath it. You need 
 not go to the woods for a sapling to set out ; plant 
 the nut; it grows rapidly. Plant it in your gar- 
 den, — or by your house, and you will soon have 
 a beautiful tree, and nuts to crack. 
 
 I must not dismiss the trees without some no- 
 tice of the rate and manner of their growth. 
 They grow straight and tall in the woods, be- 
 cause there they must, for want of room to 
 spread themselves. This is a good consequence 
 as it regards some of their uses. If long, straight 
 timbers are wanted, for frames, keels, spars, we 
 find them in the woods. In open situations they 
 develop themselves more in branches, — form 
 lower and heavier heads. And this I suppose 
 to be their normal state. I remember a white- 
 oak on our Derwent farm, under whose branches, 
 which almost touched the ground, a hundred 
 neats might have stood together, or perhaps lain 
 down and ruminate, if amicably disposed. A 
 party of students, rambling afield, came, as I re- 
 member, to a pine of such vast dimensions, — so 
 many branched and so high, — that they could 
 but throw themselves down and gaze up into 
 it with admiration ; and one of them, in his 
 enthusiasm, climbed up into it like a squinel, 
 
250 DERIVE NT. 
 
 and was out of sight, at times, amid its airy 
 foliage. 
 
 As to rates of growth, these of course differ in 
 different trees. There are some that grow up 
 soon, like Jonah's gourd, and soon die. But the 
 slow-growing, and the long-living, are not as 
 slow as some people think ; which I hold it be- 
 nevolent to sa}', inasmuch as there are people 
 who will refuse to plant a tree, particularly a 
 fruit-tree, because it will never come to anything 
 in their day, they think. Poor observers these, 
 as well as selfish. An old lady at the age of 
 seventy, planted a pear-seed, and lived to eat of 
 the fruit from it for years. Look at the chest- 
 nut, the pine, the ash, or any tree in the first year 
 of its appearance among the dry leaves of the 
 woods. It will take an age, one might say, for 
 that thing to get up to treehood, judging from 
 its beginning. But watch it and you will see it 
 shooting up with increasing stretches from year 
 to year. Now you reckon its growth by inches ; 
 by and bye you will increase them by feet — 
 yards — ells. Six years ago a quart cup would 
 have covered that spruce which now looks in at 
 your chamber window. 
 
 There are many things that are of interest in 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 251 
 
 the woods, — trees not only, but many things be- 
 sides ; the twining bitter-sweet, the gay kalmia, 
 the sweet-smelling honeysuckle, the spic}' sassa- 
 fras and wintergreen, the acid sumac, the fra- 
 grant sweet-brier, the coronal blossoms of the 
 tulip-tree, the pensile tags or tassels of the chest- 
 nut and other nut -bearing trees, clambering 
 vines, creepers, berries, plants, mosses, — to say 
 nothing of the furred and feathered people that 
 have their homes in those sylvan haunts. If I 
 had never been, or not often, in woods, I should 
 resort to them as to a cabinet of minerals, or 
 shells, or any museum of useful and curious 
 things ; and with the same desire for knowledge. 
 There would be things for me to learn there 
 "which printed pages could not teach me, and 
 forms, manifold and beautiful, of the Creator's 
 work, which it were a kind of impiety not to see 
 and admire. 
 
XX. 
 
 A NEW HOUSE 
 
A YOUNG family outgrows its house as a 
 child does its clothes. Young people re- 
 quire larger accommodations than do little chil- 
 dren. That was our case. Our father resolved, 
 therefore, to build a new house. 
 
 The site chosen for it was a smooth level lot 
 on the turnpike. We should lose a portion of 
 our fine river view there, which we regretted ; 
 but a good piece of the Connecticut and all of 
 the Little Derwent would still be open to us, and 
 what we lost from our landscape would be bal- 
 anced by other advantages in our new position. 
 
 And now for the plan and style of the new 
 building ; for it was but a castle in the air so 
 long as these were not fixed on. There was no 
 architect in the place. We had carpenters and 
 joiners, but these knew little beyond the com- 
 mon use of tools, with some conceit of gfinerer- 
 bread - work. So, for want of a wiser head in 
 
 255) 
 
256 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 such a business, we young folks set ourselves to 
 contrive and plan. We had, at least, a good pre- 
 text for amusing ourselves in that way. We had 
 time enough, — all the leisure hours we could 
 redeem from books and duties during the winter. 
 We drew many first and second floors, and rude 
 uprights, and, with our heads together and apart, 
 used up much paper and candle-light. Our 
 father amused himself with our essays and talk, 
 without offei"ing any suggestions of his own. 
 
 He was not specially skilled in house-planning, 
 he said, " but, when we made a plan that suited 
 us, he would see what he thought of it." 
 
 One thing was settled in our minds at the out- 
 set ; which was, that our house should not be 
 like any other in Derwent, or elsewhere, that we 
 knew of. There were good -enough houses in 
 the place, it was true, and some that were large 
 and costly; yet, though we had not thought of 
 it before, there was not one that we quite liked, — 
 that was faultless to the eye, and wholly satisfac- 
 tory in its internal arrangements. And, besides, 
 a house patterned exactly after another house 
 had such a servile, imitative look, as if its builder 
 had no " sconce" or '' gumption" of his own ; and 
 if the imitated building- had somewhat that was 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 257 
 
 original and peculiar about it, your copy of it 
 Avould be a kind of plagiarism, a theft. And we 
 liked, too, to see varieties in dwellings ; we 
 knew of nothing more cheap and stupid-looking 
 than a street, or row of houses, all just alike — 
 fac-similes of each other ; or where two-thirds of 
 the houses of a town, or village, were of the same 
 fashion, differing only in size ; as was the case up 
 in Hexam, we remarked. Our house must have 
 a character of its own ; not a pretentious, but a 
 distinctive one, as a matter of good taste. Exter- 
 nally, it must be symmetrical, graceful, agreeable 
 to the eye ; essentially and always agreeable, so 
 that if you passed and looked at it a thousand 
 times, you would not weary of it. Internally, it 
 must be so convenient, and in such perfect taste, 
 that there could be no wish to alter a single thing 
 when you came to live in it ! 
 
 We perceived by these'efforts, that architecture 
 was too high an art for uninstructed heads, and 
 that many mistakes were made in dwellings, and 
 much money misapplied, and much dissatisfaction 
 and disgust incurred, by inexperienced and pre- 
 sumptions contrivers and builders. Our studies 
 gave an artistic turn, too, to our tastes and obser- 
 vations. We began to look at houses, and pictures 
 17 
 
258 DERWENT. 
 
 with houses in them, with the eye of the connois- 
 seur and the critic. Our old house became a curi- 
 osity with us. We went all through it, from the cel- 
 lar to the attic, and stood outside and looked at 
 it, and, in imagiir tion, made ourselves bystanders 
 and lookers-on when it was planned and built, as 
 if we had been the children, instead of great- 
 grandchildren, of the builder ; listening to the 
 talk about the length and breadth of rooms, the 
 height of ceilings, and the great chimney, that 
 must take up so much precious room, in the 
 middle of the house. And we concluded, as the 
 result of our survey, that it was but a plain, un- 
 pretending domicile, but respectable for one of 
 its date ; and we were quite sure that few roofs 
 had covered happier families than that had. 
 
 Our plan - drafting did not result in anything 
 available: I suspect that nobody had supposed 
 it would. It was an amusement and a study 
 with us for a while, and was worth our time and 
 pains. Meanwhile, our father engaged a man of 
 another town to undertake the building in the 
 spring, leaving the details of the contract to be 
 determined by the style and plan that should be 
 adopted. He was a man of experience and taste 
 as a joiner, but of no pretensions as an architect. 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 259 
 
 Our principal Derwent joiner thought himself 
 aggrieved by this : " it was too bad," he said, 
 " that a job of the kind should be taken right 
 from under his nose and given to a stranger." 
 To save feeling, therefore, the contractor afore- 
 said proposed that he should come in and make 
 a joint concern of it with him ; and for the same 
 reason my father consented. He was, besides 
 being a neighbor, a good faithful man, and a 
 strong hand at the more common kinds of work, 
 but was opinionated, and of deprecable judg- 
 ment in nice matters. " We called him Con- 
 tractor Number Two." 
 
 Content with such a partnership, he set his 
 wits at work to produce a plan for us ; and he 
 soon brought one which he fancied must be 
 (juite the thing. He left it for our inspection. 
 It was a great, bulky, boxy thing, and much 
 larger than we wanted. And such a roof! 
 Mansard would have stared at it. The curb, or 
 mansard roof, has great ease and gracefulness in 
 some of its forms and relations, but nothing is 
 more awkward than we sometimes see it, — an in- 
 stance of which we had before us. I am afraid 
 our remarks on the performance were not so 
 considerate as, benevolently, they should have 
 
26o DERWENT. 
 
 been, with reference to the projector. " It would 
 do to build ships in, and ought to be sent to a 
 navy-yard." " It would make a great fire." "It 
 only wants the hull of a vessel under it to be a 
 Noah's Ark." To build such a house as that, to 
 stand for generations and be known and spoken 
 of as the "Chester Place" — that would be fa- 
 
 mous 
 
 In these circumstances the " mother of inven- 
 tion" put us again — and in earnest now — upon 
 trying what we could do ; and with the aid of 
 some works on architecture which we \yere so 
 fortunate as to obtain, we produced a plan which 
 all agreed, or allowed, to be satisfactory. 
 
 And here permit me to suggest to young 
 people the great desirableness of some knowl- 
 edge of this subject of architecture. They are 
 all interested in having pleasant homes ; and in 
 seeing pleasant homes around them. They may 
 have to plan them. And if they extend their 
 acquaintance with the art beyond domestic 
 dweUings, it will be a pleasure to them wher- 
 ever there are beautiful and grand buildings for 
 them to see. 
 
 In the spring the work commenced, and by 
 mid-autumn the house was finished and ready to 
 
DEKWEXT. 261 
 
 receive us. The joiners had done their work 
 well ; and so had the masons and the rest. But 
 there had been some disputing of tastes between 
 Contractor Number Two and us ; and also be- 
 tween him and his associate. Equall}^ confident 
 in his aesthetics with the other, and stronger- will- 
 ed than he, the most that he would consent to, in 
 a case of difference, would be to refer it to us. 
 In one instance they compounded with each 
 other thus : each of them would take one of two 
 front rooms, and " do it off" in his own way. 
 We did not object to this. Number Two 'had 
 set his heart on it for his credit's sake as a master 
 workman ; and we could remove his meretricious 
 ornamentation, if any there should be, after the 
 house was finished. This to some extent we did ; 
 a portion of his fancy-work being finer than we 
 liked. Tastes differ. 
 
 At our first breakfast in our new house, Walter 
 said he heard a tavern sign creaking on its hinges, 
 and. a stage-driver's horn, in the night; Lizzie 
 said she awoke feeling that she was on a visit 
 somewhere, she could not tell where ; and we all 
 found, comparing notes, that we had felt more 
 like lodgers in a strangt dwelling, or at an inn, 
 
262 DERWENT. 
 
 than like sleepers at home. And for a first night's 
 sleep, or a first day, or the first few days, in a new 
 house, such a feeling of strangeness was not sur- 
 prising ; but the impression was slow in leaving 
 us. At first, everything was so " bran new," — 
 the rooms, most of the furniture, the pantries ; — 
 though the girls had less of this feeling than their 
 mother. And things outside were so bare. My 
 sisters declared that " stepping out of door was 
 stepping out into the open, staring, wide world ; 
 for there was not a shade-tree, nor a shrub, nor 
 a vitie, nor any cultivated thing, to indicate a 
 human dwelling." Of course not, girls. The 
 house first, and then the shrubbery and trees. 
 If these be already on the place, so much the 
 better ; if not, they must be waited for until they 
 grow. 
 
 We do not know, till taught by circumstances, 
 how much is comprehended in that loved word, 
 Home. There does not need an ejectment, a 
 fire, an ostracism, to teach us ; a mere removal 
 does it. You build, or buy a house, and move 
 into it, and call it home. It is a lodge, a shelter, 
 a retreat. A home is more than that. The home 
 feeling is a sentiment, and is the growth of time 
 and many fond and delicate associations. You 
 
DERWENT. 263 
 
 cannot extemporize it, nor find it ready to your 
 hand, to be quit-claimed to you for a considera- 
 tion, along with houses and lands, in a deed. 
 
 Wc hardly felt like " folks at home" in our new 
 house, at first, as I have said ; but we slowly grew 
 into the feeling. 
 
 There is a pleasure in building in the country 
 which you cannot have in the city ; you can sur- 
 round your house with pleasant things, — shades, 
 lawns, arbors, fruits, — things for the exercise of 
 your skill and taste, and promotive of your health. 
 It was too late in the season, when we moved, to 
 do much at these ; but in the spring we made a 
 busy scene of our new homestead. The shrub- 
 bery and flowers were my sisters' province, with 
 such help as they might want from stronger 
 hands than theirs. The kitchen garden was my 
 father's hobby ; and a capital one he made of it. 
 I, for my part, built an arbor for grapes, and 
 planted around it three of the best of the many 
 varieties our farm afforded. They were wild 
 grapes, of course ; our Isabellas and other culti- 
 vated varieties, were not to be had. Hiram and 
 I went with an ox-cart to a distant wood, and 
 came home with forty fine young sugar maples ; 
 and a hard day's work we had, getting them up, 
 
:6 !. D E R WEN T. 
 
 their roots were so interlaced with the roots of 
 other trees, and so bound down and hidden 
 among i^ocks and stones. Meantime, my brother 
 Walter, without any one's knowledge, and not 
 suspecting what Hiram and I were about, went 
 into a not distant field, and " backed home" two 
 elms and a soft maple; and thought he had done 
 a great thing till he saw what we had done. The 
 elms were set immediately before the house, the 
 maples along the road. Every one of them 
 lived and flourished. We inclined to laugh at 
 Walter's soft maple in comparison with our 
 sugar maples ; but he gave it a place by itself, 
 and staked his credit upon its becoming a 
 fav'orite with us. And so it did. It assumed 
 the shapeliest of forms as it grew, and when 
 touciied by autumn frosts was the gayest of the 
 line. 
 
 Shenstone observes that " the works of a per- 
 son who builds, immediately begin to decay; 
 while those of him who plants, begin directly to 
 improve. In this, planting promises a more last- 
 ing pleasure than building." Those trees of ours 
 are an instance of this. Hardl}' larger than 
 bean-poles at their planting, and admirable for 
 their size and vigor now, they are likely to be still 
 
D E R WENT. 265 
 
 standing and growing when the house is gone, — 
 unless some vandal axe cuts them down. 
 
 We did not quit the old house for the new one 
 with a feeling of indifference for the old. It had 
 been our home. Our parents had commenced 
 their married life in it ; one of them had been 
 born in it, and so had all their children. It 
 was easy to remove the furniture, but there was 
 a something, undefinable, about it, which we 
 could not take away with us. The dog wonder- 
 ed what we were about. He did not understand 
 at once that he was to have no further duties as 
 a house-dog on those premises, and that he must 
 quit his favorite napping -place under the old 
 willow. 
 
 The old house (and also the new) passed, long 
 since from our ownership and name, as some of 
 us have from the world ; but those of us who 
 survive still cherish an interest in it. Time and 
 distance have not lessened, but have deepened 
 our regard for it. 
 
 The feeling I am speaking of is as common as 
 are remembered early homes. Long pilgrimages 
 are made to gratify it. Men grown rich in cities, 
 or abnjad, come and buy back the old place, and 
 
266 DERWENT. 
 
 use their means and taste to embellish and pre- 
 serve it. If the house itself has been taken down 
 and removed, the home feehng still lingers, like 
 an enchantment, upon the spot. Every vestige 
 of it and its surroundings interests you. The 
 well, with sweep and pole and curb gone ; the 
 old elms, that used to shade the house, shading 
 nothing now but the ground and one another ; 
 the shrubbery, and the fruit-bearing bushes and 
 vines, that spade and plough have spared, grown 
 slovenly and straggling for want of a cultivating 
 hand ; those trees, -such as remain of them, old 
 and moss-grown, under which you used to eat 
 such delicious apples and pears ; that small pic- 
 tured tile which was part of the mosaic that 
 embellished the parlor fireplace ; that old rusty 
 " copper," of the value of a farthing in its day, 
 which you chance to find, — what relics and ruins, 
 for you, are these ! 
 
 It is of country homes that I am speaking, as 
 the reader will perceive ; of city homes I cannot 
 speak from personal knowledge, but I think the 
 interest in them must be less, for reasons that 
 might be given. 
 
 And why is it that we have this peculiar re- 
 gard for our paternal home, — for that one roof 
 
DERWENT. 267 
 
 and hearth-stone, above all others ? We may 
 have had many homes, and pleasant ones, since, 
 but we care for none of them as we do for that. 
 The feeling cannot be transplanted, nor repro- 
 duced elsewhere. The question why, may be 
 worth}' of our thought as a study of the human 
 heart. 
 
 You will suggest, perhaps, the love of kindred, 
 particularly of parents, and a variety of things 
 pleasant, or sad, or both, to remember, in expla- 
 nation of the matter; and these may all be con- 
 cerned in it. But no number of particulars 
 which any memory can furnish, will be all the 
 data we want. Our whole young life, with all 
 that pertained or happened to it, comes into the 
 account. Richter observes that " every first 
 thing continues forever with the child : the first 
 color, the first music, the first flower, paints the 
 foreground of his life." And all our first things 
 happen to us in the home of our childhood. 
 Many of them are too early for the memory to 
 retain, but not too early to affect, permanently, 
 our feeling. The curtained room, the gentle 
 steps and voices, the cradle, the luUa-by, the 
 sweet sleeps and wakings, — of these our memory 
 tells us nothing, but they have left their hues and 
 
268 DERV/ENT. 
 
 pencillings on the soul — are all in " the fore- 
 ground of our life ;" though we cannot distinctly 
 trace their lights and shadings there. But things 
 enough we do remember, that tell us why we 
 loved that early home, and why we love it still. 
 
 There is a reflection which children are too 
 young to make, and which old people make too 
 late. For young heads of families it is a timely 
 one, and they cannot overestimate its conse- 
 quences. If the homes of children are so en- 
 dearing in their memories and affections, how 
 desirable it is that those homes should be as 
 happy as parental love and wisdom and filial 
 dutifulness can make them. 
 
XXI 
 
 TURNPIKES 
 
THERE came along, one day, a number of 
 men, strangers in the place, with surveying 
 instruments. They had a knowing look, and 
 evidently were people of some consequence. 
 They went through the middle of our farm, 
 spying, measuring, and setting stakes. Who in 
 the world were they, and what were they about? 
 They were laying out a turnpike, the great new 
 road, and new kind of road, of which we had 
 heard so much lately, which was to be as straight 
 as a bee-line, and as smooth as a floor. 
 
 After the surveyors came the appraisers, 
 affixing values to the lands taken, — differing 
 widely from the estimates of owners. " Why, it 
 won't more than pay me for the fences I've got 
 to make, let alone the value of the land," would 
 one say ; and this seemed a hardship and a 
 wrong. " But see how it's a going to raise the 
 
 value of your property," would some more 
 
 (271) 
 
272 
 
 D E R WENT. 
 
 reasonable, or less interested person reply ; which 
 would put your injured sense of right at ease 
 again. 
 
 Then came the makers of the road, with their 
 strong teams, and great ploughs, and that new 
 thing under the sun, the ox-shovel ; also spades, 
 picks, wheelbarrows, axes, and blasting appa- 
 ratus. 
 
 And forthwith down go our fences to make 
 way for them; leaving the "long lot" cattle, 
 that is, cattle whose owners kept them in the 
 highway, to walk into our fields at will and ours 
 to go out ; which cost an unreasonable amount 
 of watching and running on our part to turn out 
 the intruders and bring back the strays. They 
 might have had the grace, if not the conscience, 
 to stop the gaps at night, we thought ; but they 
 were contractors by the job, and could not stay 
 to be just. 
 
 We watched the progress of the work, but, for 
 my part, without delight in it. They were 
 turning smooth, green surfaces into a dirty, 
 ragged ridge, and spoiling thus a wide strip of 
 pasturage and mowing ; were felling fine trees, 
 and destroying shades that the cattle loved ; 
 were removing or defacing venerable rocks; and 
 
D E R WENT. 
 
 273 
 
 cumbering the sides of the roadway with stones, 
 stumps and other rubbish, — were, in fine, marring 
 the face of everything, and beautifying nothing. 
 People said there ought to have been a provision 
 in their charter that they should clear the sides 
 of the road of all such encumbrances as they 
 made, and leave it smooth and fair to the foot, 
 and agreeable to the eye ; instead of which 
 owners in many cases had to clear a way for 
 themselves, through the debris, into their lots. 
 Still, the idea was dominant generally that turn- 
 pikes were a great thing, and that these people 
 were doing a great work. 
 
 Looking back, now, upon the movement, with, 
 the excitement and talk which it occasioned, I 
 perceive that it had one wholesome moral effect. 
 Those were stagnant times, comparatively ; there 
 was little of a sensational kind transpiring any- 
 where ; the newspapers were but dull ; and minds 
 were " dropping off to sleep ; " but this turnpike 
 affair comes and stirs them as a summer wind 
 stirs the trees. 
 
 And here I will take occasion to note what no 
 
 grave historian may be at the pains to record, 
 
 that turnpikes were the great popular idea in the 
 
 first one or <^wo decades of this nineteenth 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 D 1: R WEN T. 
 
 centur}^ as railroads have been since; that which 
 I have been speaking of being one of the earliest in 
 Connecticut (chartered 1802), if not quite the earli- 
 est as well as longest. The age came in with turn- 
 pikes, — whatever it may go out with. It was 
 not long before we of Derwent had a second one 
 coming in upon us at right angles with the first. 
 They were regarded with special favor by capital- 
 ists ; by men retiring from business ; by prudent 
 guardians and trustees. The funds of widows 
 and orphans were put into their stocks as safe, 
 permanent, and productive investments, and 
 some affected to see in them dangerous monopo- 
 lies. 
 
 But who can prophesy against the ages, and 
 make provision for the march of things? Those 
 enviable investments, those secure widows' and 
 orphans' funds, those dangerous monopolies, how 
 have they thriven? The contrary way. I sus- 
 pect that about the poorest formerly well-to-do 
 people, dependent on dividends, that the reader 
 knows, are the largest holders of turnpike stocks. 
 How will it be with railroads, by and bye? Who 
 can tell ? 
 
 The roads, when finished, were not as satisfac- 
 tory to people as was expected. In the first 
 
DERWENT. 275 
 
 place, they were rudely and meanly done. A 
 good deal less money than they cost, cheaply 
 made as they were, would have sufficed to make 
 the old highways both handsomer and better. 
 Indeed, they were better as they were. They 
 were harder and smoother to hoofs and to human 
 feet, and better for wheels, also, except in places. 
 They were more populous and sociable ; and 
 were likel}'^ long to remain so. They were more 
 romantic and picturesque, — had more shades, and 
 brooks, and windings, and pleasant hill tops. 
 The contemplative man preferred them. Lovers 
 delighted in them. The strolling moon-lit party 
 liked them better. 
 
 I do not know who the writer of the passage 
 I am about to quote is ; but it is so true to fact . 
 and feeling, that, though the reader may have 
 met with it elsewhere and often, I cannot forbear 
 to grace my page with it. '' I hate turnpikes 
 with a most thorough hatred, — running, as they 
 do, in a straight line, which every one knows is 
 not the line of beauty, passing, as they do, 
 through the most uninteresting part of the 
 country, clouded with dust and business men, 
 and infested by mile-stones and toll-gates. How 
 much pleasanter to take the ' old road' where 
 
2/6 DERIVE NT. 
 
 are sunshine and shade — farm-houses and milk- 
 maids — beautiful prospects and taverns — roman- 
 tic feelings and apples in abundance !" 
 
 Another cause of dissatisfaction with the turn- 
 pikes was, that they did not make adequate com- 
 pensation for the damage they did to the lands 
 and buildings. They made sad work with homes 
 and homesteads, in some cases. It is the road 
 that invites the house, and determines where it 
 shall stand, and which way it shall front. Those 
 are exceptional cases in which houses have been 
 built in the fields, and roads made to them. But 
 the turnpikes paid no regard to this. They 
 passed close behind dwellings, if they pleased — 
 pitched aside their wood piles, — spoiled their 
 wells, — severed their out buildings from them, — 
 went inexorably through their gardens, not even 
 sparing the precious shrubs and flowers which 
 the wife and daughters had so lovingly cherished. 
 In this way they reversed the fronts of houses ; 
 — turned them hind-side-afore ; or gave them 
 two fronts, rather. I remember looking at a par- 
 ticular instance of this, and thinking how morti- 
 fied and vexed the family must be. The house 
 was an old one, of the lean-to fashion. Having 
 been built on the old road, its front was toward 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 277 
 
 it, of course. That was its public side, its side 
 " to see to," and it looked very well. The back 
 was more humble. It was painted red, econo- 
 mically, as was the case with many houses at 
 ' that time, their fronts and ends being white ; and 
 the lean-to roof came down quite low. Close 
 along behind this house comes the turnpike, so 
 near there is hardly room for the rain-water 
 hogshead under the spout. And you can look 
 right into the kitchen as you pass — the house- 
 wife's sanctum. This house had no back to it, 
 now. Wedged in between two highways, it was 
 all front, and chiefly so behind. 
 
 And then, the turnpikes barred us the use of 
 the old roads. They did not shut them up, 
 wholly ; they could not, nor did they need to ; 
 but they ran into and usurped them in places 
 where they chose to put their gates ; so that 
 there should be no getting round their tolls. 
 People felt that this was a kind of robbery. The 
 old roads had prior and primitive rights ; they 
 belonged to the whole public, and to history ; 
 and were not to be set aside thus by upstart 
 chartered companies. 
 
 And, finally, the toll-gates. People were slow 
 in accommodating their ideas to these. Indeed, 
 
278 DERWENT. 
 
 I doubt if they have yet done so, anywhere, 
 fully ; for in my travels about the country where 
 the gates are still kept up, I notice that they will 
 avail themselves of a '' shun-pike," though it may 
 be a mile or two longer, — not because they 
 grudge the pittance of a few cents, so much, but 
 because of the impertinence of the demand ; and 
 sometimes on account of the crustiness of the 
 toll-taker. We had no shun-pikes in Derwent; 
 but going to mill was toll-free by law, as was 
 church-going, and people having occasion to 
 pass through a gate, would manage to be going 
 to mill at the same time. 
 
 A noted droll, an old man, would take a small 
 bag of beans along, as if it were corn. " Beans 
 are light to carry," he would say with a wink. 
 He was suspected, but there was no law for 
 searching bags for tollable articles, as there is 
 for searching trunks for dutiable ones, at the 
 custom-house. 
 
 To show how plain men felt and spoke, let me 
 give, substantially, a talk among our work-people. 
 They are taking their dinner in the fields. 
 
 " These turnpike gates !" says one. " You can't 
 go north, nor south, nor west, but you are fetched 
 up by them." 
 
DERW EN T. 279 
 
 " A highway ought, of all things, to be free," 
 says another. 
 
 " As free as the river is to boats and vessels," 
 says a third. " I'm glad they can't toll-gate the 
 river." 
 
 "■ I don't object to passages and fares. If a 
 stage takes me up and carries me, or a vessel, or 
 a ferry-boat, I am willing to pay for it, of course ; 
 but to pay for every mile my own horse draws 
 or carries me, — shutting me off from the old 
 road, too, and forcing me to go that way, or 
 none, — that looks a httle like extortion /say." 
 
 " And who wafits to be stopping, in a hot day, 
 — your horse stamping for the flies, — waiting for 
 the keeper to come out and open the gate, or if 
 he is nowhere around, waiting for his wife, to 
 wipe her hands and come, — till you could have 
 got a good half mile on your way ?" 
 
 " Or in the middle of a cold night," said 
 Ephraim Bold. 
 
 *' Yes ; and let us hear about that, Ephraim." 
 
 " What time has't got to be ? " asked Ephraim, 
 squinting at the sun. 
 
 " Time enough, Ephraim ; it an't one yet, by 
 considerable ; and you'll be shorter than a ser- 
 mon." 
 
28o DERWENT. 
 
 " And shorter-faced than a preacher," Bold re- 
 plied. 
 
 " Well, I was conniin' down from Pusset — had 
 been up there about a cow, — cold night, fust cold 
 snap we'd had. I got to Hexam gate some'eres 
 about twelve or one o'clock, as nigh as I could 
 guess, — 'twas late anyhow. Found the gate 
 shet — no light — fast asleep. I tried if it would 
 open. No ; locked with a padlock. So, Hello ! 
 the gate, says I, and waited a little. No answer. 
 Hello there, in the house. Hello, the gate. 
 Nobody stirred. I'll see what poundin' '11 do, 
 says I. Pound, pound, pound.. Click, click, I 
 hcered the steel and flint go, and out comes old 
 Burdock with his lantern. I was glad 'twas him, 
 and not his wife; for I'd a touch of his good- 
 nature goin' up. Good evenin', if 'tan't too late, 
 says I. Evenin', says he. Guess your fire ha'n't 
 kep' to-night, by your havin' to strike fire, saj'^s 
 I. Any news, Mr. Burdock? No, says he, as 
 short as pie-crust. Guess we'll have a pretty 
 smart frost to-night, says I. Guess you'd think 
 so if you had just got out of bed, says he, 
 shiverin', for he wa'n't above half dressed. What 
 time does the moon go down ? says I. Why, 
 there it is, in the west, can't you tell yourself? 
 
DER WENT. 281 
 
 I could if I was at home, and knew what time it 
 riz, says I, but up here in Hexam I can't, the lay 
 of the land is so different. If that hill would 
 move a little to the north, I could, I guess, — all 
 the while feelin' for my money, first in one 
 pocket and then in another. Made a good deal 
 of cider up here, this fall, Mr. Burdock? We've 
 made what we've made, says he. And took it 
 to the still mostly? says I. I thought you was 
 in a hurry, says he. I ? No, not much of a 
 one, says I. I thought you must have been in 
 a thunderin' hurry — somebody going for a doc- 
 tor — the way you pounded and hollered, says 
 he. I wish you ivas in one, and then you'd 
 hurry with your toll. Keep cool, says I ; I've 
 got it for you, some'eres in these pockets; you 
 may be sartin on't ; but it takes numb fingers 
 a good while to find things. Yes, here it is, — 
 the ready chink, as the law directs, — holdin' out 
 the coppers to him. He snatched it out of my 
 hand, and gi'n the gate a swing open with spite 
 enough to break it off the hinges. There, 
 go 'long and be hanged to you, says he, and 
 wanted to swear, but didn't outwardl}'. Why 
 had'nt you better leave it open nights? says I. 
 'T would be a savin' of tinder and brimstone to 
 
282 DE R WENT. 
 
 you, and may be save you from catching a cold 
 now and then. Well, good night, says I ; for I 
 thought I would set him a good example, and 
 be civil to him ; and started on." 
 
 1 
 
XXII. 
 
 Derwent Characters. 
 
BEATTIE, in his Dissertation on Laughter 
 and Ludicrous Composition, remarks that 
 " ludicrous qualities are incident to men who live 
 detached in a narrow society ;" whereas " a gen- 
 eral acquaintance with mankind produces a facil- 
 ity of doing what is conformable to general 
 manners, and wears off those improprieties and 
 strange habits that divert by their singularity." 
 
 There will be singular characters in any com- 
 munity, but you will oftenest find them in thinly- 
 inhabited districts. In such communities there 
 are people living in a great degree apart from 
 the rest of mankind, in out-of-the-way places, or 
 in little rustic neighborhoods. Living alone, 
 they think alone ; see few books ; are conversant 
 with few people ; are little open to the corrective 
 observation of others ; know nothing of conven- 
 tionalities, not much of fashions, manners and 
 customs. In such seclusion, — growing up in it 
 
 (z8s) 
 
286 DER WENT. 
 
 from their birth, — they naturally form singular 
 habits and ideas ; they will be odd, quaint, whim- 
 sical, pedantic, or in some way unlike other 
 people. 
 
 Yet they are not, in all cases, nor in most, disa- 
 greeable. On the contrary, they interest us. 
 They are originals. Their odd ideas and habits, 
 and singular modes of expression, have for us a 
 kind of freshness, just as an antique book has. 
 The general style of society is commonplace, 
 monotonous, everywhere dismally alike, and 
 consequently dull ; these help to diversify it. 
 
 Derwent had its characters. I will not here 
 call them odd, or eccentric characters; those 
 epithets would express too much with regard to 
 some of them ; they had their notable peculiari- 
 ties. A number of them may be worthy of so 
 much room as they will occupy on these pages. 
 
 Mr. Willows, — "Uncle Zachary," — was a 
 man of medium stature, a little stooping, — round 
 head, — jutting brows, — small twinkling eyes, — 
 of the kindest dispositions, and of great purity 
 of character. He was in the autumn of his days, 
 as I remember him. His house was the last on 
 one of the old roads ; consequently it was a lone- 
 some one ; for all last houses are lonesome, — on 
 
DE R WENT. 287 
 
 one side at least. An outside one of a village, 
 anywhere, is not desirably located, as to its so- 
 cial aspects ; but the last one on a public high- 
 way, with a houseless mile, or miles, beyond, has 
 always seemed a little dismal to me. The sepa- 
 rateness of a farm-house, a little removed from 
 neighbors on all sides, 1 do not object to ; that is 
 pleasant ; but to be pitched on the very edge of 
 a town, the object of the last look of the out- 
 going traveller, and the first stopping-place of 
 the vagabond coming in, is not an inviting situ- 
 ation, 
 
 A remarkable characteristic of Uncle Zachary 
 was his singular calmness of temper. Nothing 
 elated, depressed, ruffled, or in any way excited 
 him, visibly. If a storm unroofed his barn and 
 deluged its contents, — which actually happened, 
 — he took it as calmly as he would a zephyr 
 whispering at his window. How he attained to 
 this fixed tranquillity of spirit, I am unable to 
 say. There is a natural difference in tempers, 
 and his may have been one of the mildest ; but 
 it may reasonably be presumed that an " even 
 tenor" so peculiar as his, must have been in a 
 greater or less degree the effect of discipline. 
 Perhaps he schooled himself into it through 
 
288 DERIVE NT. 
 
 some theor)^ of self-control, some notion of exem- 
 plariness, some dictate of religious faith ; though 
 there was not the least taint of fanaticism in 
 him. Or, it may be that his wife was a nervous 
 or a passionate woman, and there was need of an 
 opposite manner in him to countervail her ex- 
 citements. I do not know how this was, for she 
 was gone before my memory. 
 
 His house was struck with lightning. It came 
 down through the ceiling of the room where he 
 was sitting, and set fire to the floor. Without 
 leaving his chair, or laying down his pipe, he 
 called to his daughter to bring some water and 
 put it out. A pitcherful sufficed to do it. She 
 then hastened to see what other mischief might 
 have been done, and came back reporting none 
 except that a hen and chickens had been killed 
 outside the door. 
 
 Another of his characteristics was a kind of 
 whiffing of his lips, a whistling whisper, it might 
 be called, which seemed to have made itself nec- 
 essar}^ to his thinking, acting, care-taking, con- 
 versing, and whatever he did. Bid him good- 
 morning, ask his opinion, tell him news, arid he 
 would preface his response with a whcw-ew-ff. 
 
 You could hardly call him absent-minded; 
 
D E R WENT. 
 
 289 
 
 for he would appear to keep an affair itself in 
 mind, thoiiofh at the same time he would seem to 
 be heedless of the way he was getting on with it ; 
 and so miscarriages would happen. He had an 
 odd, dreamy way of driving his oxen, going 
 along some yards before them in the middle of 
 the road, expecting them to follow, speaking to 
 them, now and then, but hardly looking back to 
 see if they minded him or not, — whiffing the 
 while, as his habit was. His cart was a light, 
 low-wheeled one, with a pair of oxen to match. 
 Oxen and cart were a curiosity for size. Instead of 
 a whip, he used a short crotched stick, the prongs 
 a little sharpened, for a goad, as he called it. 
 
 Among the stories that used to be told of his 
 abstractions, this was one : Coming home with a 
 load from the woods, on reaching his house he 
 opened the gate, walked in, and spoke to the 
 cattle to follow. They did not follow, — had not 
 arrived, — were not in sight. He went back 
 along the road, — ivhew-ff-ff, — and found them 
 about half-way home, set in a spot of mire. 
 
 A not easily-forgotten incident of my boyhood 
 
 was a ride he gave me in his little cart. 1 
 
 chanced to fall in with him and it, in the dusk of 
 
 a summer's day, and he asked me to get in. 
 
 26 
 
290 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 We were in the fields, quite away from any road. 
 There was a large lot full of stumps for us to 
 cross, with only a narrow, crooked wheel-track 
 through it. As we entered on this, one of the 
 wheels hit a stump, which scared or vexed the 
 oxen, and, bolting from the track, they set to 
 running, taking a random course through the 
 stumpy field, as chance and fright, or fury, led 
 them ; and the wheels, hitting, first one and then 
 the other, against a stump, slued the vehicle vio- 
 lently this way and that, like a sloop jibing in a 
 shifting gale. The equable old man, sitting in 
 the fore end of the cart, his feet hanging out, 
 perilously, used such methods with his goad and 
 voice as he and the oxen were used to ; but with- 
 out avail. So, handing the goad to me, he said, 
 " Jump out, Johnny, and run ahead of them." 
 Dropping from the cart, I did my best at running 
 and dodging among the stumps, but fell behind, 
 and on the fugitives went till a fence and want 
 of breath brought them to a stand. " Whew- 
 ew-ff," said Uncle Zachary, when I came up ; 
 " they've given us a mighty hard jolting, but 
 nobody is hurt, and nothing broke." 
 
 He was a good man, and I always liked to hear 
 the few remarks he would make at an evening 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 291 
 
 religious meeting, — prefaced and intermingled 
 though they were with his characteristic souffle. 
 But in his prayers there would be nothing of 
 this, which showed a feeling too reverent to ad- 
 mit of such an accompaniment. 
 
 Passing around, reading old and familiar names 
 in the Derwent burying-ground, the last time T 
 was there, I came to the head-stone of Ephraim 
 Bold ; and my spontaneous thought was. The 
 wild ducks are the safer in the creeks and marsh- 
 es while that long, sure shot-gun of his is rusting 
 on its hooks, or has passed into less expert hands. 
 
 Ephraim Bold, or Bold Ephraim, as he was 
 often called, from his fearless nature and the free- 
 dom of his manner, was a strongly-built, square- 
 shouldered man, six feet and an inch or two high, 
 and looking taller than he was from the fashion 
 of his dress, which was always a roundabout and 
 trowsers. You would never see him in a coat 
 of any other fashion, even on public occasions, 
 or at meeting. He was quite uncultivated, but 
 was not wanting in good sense and good nature, 
 and, in his rude way, was a humorist, — an in- 
 stance of which has been given in his affair with 
 the crusty gate-keeper. 
 
292 DER WE N T. 
 
 His great delight was duck-hunting. He cared 
 for no other game, whether furred or feathered. 
 He cared little for any other recreation. He 
 was always on the look-out for ducks on the 
 wing, and in the waters; and. if he saw a flock 
 of them, it was hardly possible for him not to 
 forego or quit work and go after them. A 
 painted landscape in which the Little Derwent 
 should be shown without the smoke of a gun, 
 a flock of startled ducks rising, and the tall figure 
 of a man stepping out from behind a bush, 
 would, to my eye, be an incomplete picture ; so 
 often have I seen Ephraim Bold there in such 
 circumstances. Having a wife to provide for, 
 his ducking cost him more time than he was 
 well able to spare. He was sensible of this, and 
 was always glad of a rainy day as an excuse ; 
 and the rain must be a very pouring one to pre- 
 vent his turning it to such an account. 
 
 A one-idea man hardly pleases us ; we hate a 
 hobby-rider; but a man who has some one ex- 
 clusive bent, or passion, interests us. You would 
 have been interested in Ephraim Bold. He en- 
 joyed his one diversion more than many a pro- 
 fessed devotee to pleasure enjoys his whole 
 round of fashif^nable amusements. You could 
 
D ER WEN T. 293 
 
 not but have sympathized with him in it. You 
 could not but have admired the sagacity, the 
 tact, the almost instinct, as well as the zest, with 
 which he followed it. 
 
 Bold was a ship-carpenter by trade, but he 
 often worked for us, and was one of our best 
 men, especially with his axe and broad-axe in 
 the woods. He was never without a piece of 
 chalk in his pocket, keeping all his accounts and 
 memoranda with it, using doors, beams and 
 pieces of boards, for his account-books. Some 
 one asking, on a Monday morning, where one of 
 the texts of the preceding day was, he gave the 
 chapter and verse. " But how should you know, 
 Ephraim ? You wasn't there to hear it," said the 
 other. " Yes, I was, and I chalked it down on 
 my boot, because my wife won't never believe 
 I've been to meeting, if I can't tell her where the 
 text was." 
 
 Although he had no vices, he was not relig- 
 ious, — was, indeed a sad neglector of religion. 
 But they told me that on his dying bed he was 
 much concerned about his salvation. 
 
 " Aged 70 years." Only seventy ! The " or- 
 dinary age" of man; but one would have ex- 
 pected that a man of his build and constitu- 
 
294 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 tion would have held out for more years than 
 that. 
 
 Mrs. Wakelee was much respected and es- 
 teemed as a woman. But she was one of the 
 greatest " drivers" in the world, — driving herself 
 as well as her household. It was not possible 
 that work or thought should stagnate where she 
 was. You would think that she had everything 
 to do, and scant time to do it in, — that the actual 
 day was the shortest in the calendar, and that 
 she apprehended that the night would be upon 
 her before she was aware. In the matter of house- 
 wife industries, you might almost say she was an 
 exaggeration of the good wife in the last chapter of 
 Proverbs ; — and those days, too, were still the days 
 of the distaff, the spinning-wheel, the loom, the 
 dye-tub, the leach-tub, and other like implements 
 and means of domestic comeliness and comfort. 
 What changes have come over us since then ! 
 
 Yet Mrs. Wakelee was no scold, and I never 
 heard that her family, or work-people, were fret- 
 ted by her hurrying. On the contrary, I suspect 
 her spirit produced its opposite in them, judging 
 from the manner of her children, who were quite 
 staid and deliberate. 
 
DER WENT. 295 
 
 She lived at some distance from us, and I do 
 not recollect ever being in her company but 
 once, though I often saw her at meeting. That 
 once fixed her in my memory. One Saturday 
 evening, she surprised us with a visit, having 
 come to stay all night, and go with us to meet- 
 insf on the morrow. She arrived on her feet 
 from somewhere, — perhaps had walked all the 
 way. 
 
 It was a rare entertainment to hear her talk, 
 she was so spirited in it, and at the same time 
 sensible, and original ; indeed, her whole man- 
 ner as a conversationist was a novelty. 
 
 When the time for church-going came, she 
 proposed to go on my mother's horse, rather 
 than in the carriage. It suited the restlessness 
 of her spirit to go in that way ; — only the wonder 
 was that she did not prefer to go on her feet 
 for greater expedition. She mounted from the 
 horse-block, gathered up the reins, and with a 
 chirrup and a " terup" set off; glancing at me 
 and sa)nng, as she did so, " The lad must run 
 along with me and keep up, and be there to take 
 the jade." It was curious to see the figure she 
 made ; a tall, lean woman, arms akimbo, elbows 
 jerking, switch in hand. I found it an impracti- 
 
296 DERWENT. 
 
 cable task to keep up with her ; for Bessie ap- 
 peared to understand the spirit of her rider, and 
 went at a gait faster than her ordinary church- 
 going one ; but I did get there soon after her, 
 out of breath, to "take the jade." 
 
 In a remote corner af the parish, "out west," 
 there was a plain, brown, one-story house, within 
 and around which there seemed to be an atmos- 
 phere of peculiar simplicity and contentment. It 
 was the house of Deacon Lucas. He was a 
 good man, and worthy of his office. But what I 
 have to say of him relates to his style of conver- 
 sation. In almost everything he said, he would 
 express himself in figures, deriving them from 
 the farm and familiar scenes of nature. A writer 
 of pastorals might have envied him his fertility 
 in these. 
 
 I remember with interest a visit which my 
 brother and I made him in one of our college 
 vacations ; in which he often surprised us with 
 the shrewdness of his remarks, as well as with 
 the quaintness of his language and manner. 
 
 Two gentlemen had been trying to bring about 
 a reconciliation between parties that were at va- 
 riance ; an officious intermeddler had made mat- 
 
DERIVE NT. 297 
 
 ters worse. My brother and I, sitting by our- 
 selves over the embers, at bed-time, were talking- 
 of that affair ; the deacon, overhearing us in the 
 next room, said, " Mr. Ches/^r, I'll tell you one 
 tiling : one man will pull down rail fence faster 
 than two can put it up." He had a wa)% when 
 a thought struck him, of accenting the last sylla- 
 ble or word of his expression, and also the last 
 syllable of a name, in a personal address ; and 
 this gave vivacity to his idea. 
 
 In a parish meeting there were a number of 
 members who were all the time up on their feet, 
 confounding, or retarding business by their am- 
 bitious., noisy talk. Deacon Lucas, getting the 
 floor, exposed the motive of their forwardness 
 by a single remark: "Mr. Modera/^r: we all 
 want to drive the team." The deacon resumed 
 his seat ; the parties referred to resumed theirs. 
 
 We had a neighbor who was always prating 
 of the inconsistencies of professors of religion, as 
 though their failings were a sufficient justifica- 
 tion of his own. Passing Deacon Lucas's door one 
 morning, he stopped and began in his old strain. 
 The deacon heard him awhile, and replied to 
 him thus : " Mr. Pra///£T ! suppose there comes 
 a snow in the night and covers the ground. The 
 
2gS DERIVENT. 
 
 first person that comes along the road here in 
 the morning- is a church member. You come 
 along after him, and you see by his tracks that 
 he has gone very crooked, straying away to One 
 side of the patch and then to the other side, and 
 sometimes turning back a little. Now, would 
 you go crooked because he did, — or would you go 
 straight along f " 
 
 Timothy Lux was one of that sort of Christians 
 who, instead of esteeming others better than 
 themselves, as Paul advises, deem it their duty to 
 act the censor and the prompter of their brethren. 
 There was a business meeting of the church. 
 Timothy Lux was at the meeting, and, not seeing 
 many of the Lakeside members there, thought 
 he must call Deacon Lucas to account for this. 
 
 " Deacon Lucas, what are all the Christians 
 out your way doing, that so few of 'em are 
 here ?" 
 
 " I can't say as to all of them," said the dea- 
 con ; '■' some of them are planting corn, or were, 
 when I came along." 
 
 "Busy with their worldly affairs," said Lux ; 
 " but are any of them alive in religion ?" 
 
 " I don't know as they are, or as religion 's 
 ahve in them," replied the deacon, in a tone al- 
 
DERWENT. 299 
 
 most laughably deliberate and indifferetit, in 
 comparison with the sharp, quick manner of the 
 questioner. '' We live a good deal scattered out 
 our way : we are like coals scattered all about 
 the hearth, and scattered coals are not apt to 
 burn." 
 
 " Yes, but human hands could get those coals 
 together, and make 'em burn," said Lux. 
 
 " Ah, but you would want the bellows, too, the 
 spiritual wind, to kindle 'em," the deacon re- 
 plied. 
 
 " And how is it with you, Deacon Lucas ; have 
 you had any new experiences of late?" 
 
 *' Nothing to boast of." 
 
 My father and the deacon met on Dodsley's 
 Bridge, at a late hour, one evening, both being 
 on horseback. They did not recognize each 
 other till an exchange of salutations revealed 
 them. 
 
 " Good evening," said my father, at random. 
 " Good evening," said the deacon. " We live in 
 u strange world. Some people's minds are like 
 this rack of Dodsley's that hangs across the 
 brook here. It lets all the clean, wholesome 
 water run through, and stops all the trash. I've 
 
200 DEE WENT. 
 
 been talking with such a one this evening. Good 
 night." And the deacon passed on. This was 
 all that was said. 
 
 The rack referred to was a kind of hanging 
 wicker fence suspended from a pole that spanned 
 the brook. I often stopped, when I was a boy, 
 to see the stuff that it ai-rested as it came down 
 the stream ; — leaves, sticks, scum, apples sound 
 and rotten, and other floating things. Such 
 strainers are some minds, the deacon said, letting 
 pass all that is pure and wholesome, and retain- 
 ing what is trivial and foul. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 The Old Thanksgiving 
 
WE still have our annual Thanksgiving. It 
 is to be hoped that we may have it to the 
 end of time ; for it is a festival too precious for 
 its uses and its memories to be discontinued. 
 But it is not in all respects what it was. 
 
 It used to be a State appointment, and as such 
 we loved and respected it. Out of New Eng- 
 land, a festival of the kind was unknown any- 
 where ; and in New England each State chose 
 its own day, which was not often the same as was 
 selected in others. Lately it has been turned 
 into a national affair, the President, by appoint- 
 ment and proclamation of his own, making a 
 common thing of it for all the States. We have 
 no longer a Connecticut Thanksgiving, there- 
 fore ; we have only a piece of a national one. 
 But does not the Governor issue his proclama- 
 tion, regularly, just as heretofore? Yes; but in 
 the manner of a subordinate, — by high permis- 
 
 (303) 
 
304 DERIVE NT. 
 
 sion, as it were, the President having first sent 
 out his, — rather than of a chief-magistrate. We 
 have still a Thanksgiving festival, and a wel- 
 come one ; but it is not the old and genuine 
 Thanksgiving. The day has lost much of its 
 lormer prestige, and interests us less, and other- 
 wise, than it did, by reason of this national adop- 
 tion and enlargement. The more limited the 
 circle is, the more active are the sympathies 
 within it. We might suppose an oecumenical 
 appointment of the kind, a World's Thanksgiv- 
 ing, and there might be grandeur in the idea ; 
 but it is probable that families, as such, would 
 feel little interest in it. And I suspect that New 
 England families, and New England people, feel 
 less interest in a United States Thanksgiving, as 
 such, than heretofore they have felt in their own 
 State Thanksgivings, as such. But, leaving this, 
 we will go back now to the observance as it 
 was. 
 
 The proclamation was read from the pulpit, as 
 is still the custom, on the Sunday preceding the 
 festival. It always ended with these words : 
 ^^ All servile labor and vain recreation on said day 
 arc by law forbidden^ Mark that, young peo- 
 ple, — all play forbidden. And now the great 
 
DERWENT. 305 
 
 topic was Thanksgiving". All was talk and prep- 
 aration, with some questioning of the sky, and 
 of one another, as to the probabilities of the 
 weather. 
 
 The day came. We were all at meeting ; the 
 pews were as full as they ordinarily were on 
 Sundays. The proclamation was read again, 
 with that same prohibition of " vain recreation." 
 The services, conducted by our excellent pastor, 
 were always strikingly appropriate. He took 
 due notice of the reasons we had for thanksgiv- 
 ing of a public kind, both providential and civil; 
 but never in such a way as to wound, politically, 
 in the slightest degree, any reasonable hearer: 
 in other words, his performances were marred 
 by no party bias. Of course he adverted to 
 blessings of a local kind, with which we had 
 been favored as a community. His thanksgiv- 
 ings on behalf of families that had been particu- 
 larly blessed, seemed almost as if they were 
 expressly intended to be congratulatory of such 
 families, while at the same time he loaded them 
 with a sense of their obligations. And then, he 
 was not forgetful of such as had been afflict- 
 ed. With the sympathizing thoughtfulness of a 
 friend, he remembered that there would be sor- 
 
3o5 DERWENT. 
 
 rovvful recollections and tender feelings ming- 
 ling with the greetings and festivities of the 
 season, — that there would be vacant seats at the 
 table and by the fireside. 
 
 About as soon as we came home from meet- 
 ing, dinner was ready to be served ; and we sat 
 down to it as people do who have good health 
 and appetites, good consciences, and good com- 
 pany. We should have felt that something was 
 wanting to us, had no tables been thought of but 
 our own. The minister had been remembered 
 with a fat turkey ; and some ghickens had been 
 killed for people, sick or poor, or both, that our 
 mother knew of. 
 
 And now, having attended the public services, 
 with becoming seriousness, and partaken of the 
 bounties of a plentiful table, with thankful hearts, 
 we young people felt inclined to fill up the day 
 with some lively pastime ; especially if we had 
 cousins with us, or other young companions, to 
 join us in it. But there was that formidable 
 prohibition of " all servile labor and vain recrea- 
 tion," meaning, as we understood it all work and 
 play, — though, as to work, Betty was " sure, fpr 
 her part, there was enough of that done." That 
 was a bar, and a damper. That made a kind of 
 
DERVV EN T. 307 
 
 Sunday of the day : we might not play on Sun- 
 days ; and where was the difference ? It had 
 been twice read in our hearing from " his Excel- 
 lenc3''s " great broad sheet, which was a very 
 grave document; and read from the pulpit, 
 which was a solemn place. It naturally im- 
 pressed us deeply. The law forbade ; and we 
 had been taught that laws must be respected. 
 But the law, so construed, was a snare to con- 
 sciences ; for it was impossible that exuberant 
 young spirits should refrain from all mirthful 
 play at such a time. The law itself was at fault ; 
 it had no right to make such a prohibition. It 
 would have been quite proper for the Governor 
 to recotmnend abstaining from labor and amuse- 
 ment, without commanding, or enjoining it ; but 
 the civil law is out of its province when it as- 
 sumes either to forbid or command any observ- 
 ance, or mode, of a religious kind. It has noth- 
 ing to do with matters of faith, or conscience, 
 purely such, and as such. These are for the 
 cognizance of a higher power. This is coming 
 to be better understood than it used to be, but 
 is still too imperfectly perceived by the generali- 
 ty of people.* 
 
 * Excuse this note in a book which makes no pretensions to 
 
3o8 
 
 DER WE N T. 
 
 I must do our parents the justice to say, that 
 they did not attempt to restrain us from recrea- 
 tion after our return from meeting, only check- 
 ing us if we were too noisy. And I was glad of 
 a remark made to us by our grandfather Chester. 
 We had run down to see him and our grand- 
 mother after dinner; and he, seeing us more 
 demure and self-restrained than he liked, said, 
 " You may run about and play, children, and be 
 as lively as you will. It is'nt children's play that 
 the Governor means by " vain recreation," but 
 such things as balls, horse -racing, shooting-match- 
 es, and the like. And, besides, it is man's law, 
 
 philosophy or metaphysics. There are three institutions of 
 God's appointing, — the Family, the Church, and Civil Govern- 
 ment. The Bible recognizes these, and no others, as His. They 
 cover the whole ground of man's social and moral interests. 
 Each of them has its appropriate sphere, within which its action 
 is legitimate and responsible. But, when any one of them as- 
 sumes to do the work of one or both of the others, or to control, 
 direct, or in any way meddle with them authoritatively, mischief 
 is the consequence; as in the case of the State regulating the 
 Church ; or the Church the State ; or either of these the Family. 
 Hands off: You are out of your province here, may each of them 
 say to the other. And it may be said further, that any popular 
 combination — reform society, league, brotherhood, or whatever 
 it may call itself, be it secret or open, — assuming thus to regu- 
 late, or do the work of any one of these institutions, and by 
 means equivalent to force, or other than such as are simply 
 suasive and moral, undertakes an unwarrantable business, and 
 of whatever use it may be, or aim to be, will eventually work 
 more harm than good, as results will always show. 
 
D ER WENT. 309 
 
 and not God's, that says we mustn't work or 
 play to-day ; and I don't think we are to regard 
 it just as strictly as if God said it." Such an 
 opinion, from such a source, was a sensible re- 
 lief to us. We laughed and played the more 
 heartily for it, and laid our heads on our pillows 
 in greater peace at night. 
 
XXIV. 
 
 SATURDAY NIGHT 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT has a character of its 
 own. All the other secular evenings are 
 mnch alike ; the interest of this is distinct and 
 peculiar. It is to the week what the evening is 
 to the day ; with it comes release from the labors 
 of the week. You throw down your implements, 
 and cast aside your cares, with the feeling that 
 they a'"e not to be resumed in the morning. It 
 brings you social release also ; as on that even- 
 ing you are conventional!}^ excused, generall}', 
 from the receiving and the making of visits and 
 social calls. And this is as grateful, often, as re- 
 lease from toil itself; for you like not only to be 
 alone sometimes, but to feel secure of being so. 
 You welcome that evening above others on that 
 particular account. " I can finish this piece of 
 work, can enjoy this book, or write this letter 
 undisturbed," you say ; " for there will be no one 
 coming in to-night." 
 
 If you have working animals in your service, 
 
314 DERIVE NT. 
 
 vou welcome the evening for their sake. You 
 take off the harness, and the yoke, and say to 
 them, There: there is nothing more for you to 
 do, now, for the six and thirty hours to come ; — 
 recognizing in this, humanel}^ the spirit, as well 
 as dutifully the letter of the injunction, Six days 
 shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day 
 thou shalt rest ; that thine ox and thine ass may 
 rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stran- 
 ger, may be refreshed. 
 
 It is Saturday night in the country, and as it 
 used to be, that I have in mind, in these remarks; 
 they are not in all respects applicable to cities 
 and factory towns. It is to rural homes and self- 
 supporting families, more especially, that the even- 
 ing comes in the liberating, tranquillizing way 
 which has been mentioned. 
 
 Formerly, in New-England, the suspension of 
 labor and worldly care was more entire and ab- 
 solute than it now is, because people " kept Sat- 
 urday night," regarding it as holy time. The 
 old Puritans of New England, and their children 
 after them, as ever)- one acquainted with their 
 history and manners knows, began their Sabbath 
 at sunset on Saturday, and ended it at the same 
 hour on Sunday. That practice has gone into 
 
D ER WENT. 315 
 
 desuetude pretty generally ; though I still hear 
 of families that continue it ; and I always think 
 of these, spontaneously, as good people. With- 
 out personally knowing them, I take them to be 
 good Christians, and, like the Rechabites, re- 
 spectors of the memory of their excellent an- 
 cestors. 
 
 I must take some notice of this old New Eng- 
 land custom ; though I cannot go into the rea- 
 sons of the fathers for it, fully, because it is not 
 my purpose to theologize. They believed that 
 the primeval Sabbath began at evening, that the 
 evening and the morning, and not the morning 
 and the evening, constituted that seventh day on 
 which God rested from his work of creation 
 and which he blessed and hallowed. And such 
 undoubtedly, is the Mosaic account of it. The 
 Jews, following that primeval order, began their 
 Sabbath at evening. From these and some other 
 scriptural and historic (Jewish) premises, they 
 inferred the same law, or limits, for the Christian 
 Sabbath. Much stress was laid on the practice 
 of the Jews. But the Jews' practice was in ac- 
 cordance with their established mode of reckon- 
 ing days. The evening and the morning made 
 their civil day, and of course the evening and the 
 
3l6 D R R WENT. 
 
 morning- must make their Sabbath day ; other- 
 wise it would not be the seventh day, nor any 
 one separate and excUisive day, that they kept, 
 but a part and patch-work of two days. And 
 the same consideration, the relations of the holy 
 with the secular, or civil day, would seem to be 
 the rule for us : our mode of reckoning days 
 being from midnight to midnight, our Sabbath 
 must be conformable. But the Puritans did not 
 see the matter in this light. 
 
 The Fourth Conmiandment itself says nothing 
 as to the time of beginning and ending the holy 
 day, but only says that one seventh day shall be 
 kept, being general enough in the wording of it 
 to admit of its being accommodated to such 
 different divi'^ions of time as diffei-ent peoples may 
 adopt. 
 
 The Jewisn Sabbath and the Christian Sab- 
 bath, or Lord's Day, are not the same institution ; 
 are not commemorative of the same event ; are 
 not appointed to the same ends and uses in all. 
 respects ; and, consequcntl}^ are not necessarily 
 subject to one and the same law. And on this 
 head the Puritans appear to have had some mis- 
 taken ideas. They seem to have regarded the 
 one as identical in its nature, or nearly so, with 
 
D E R WEN T. 
 
 317 
 
 the Other, not materially differing from it except 
 in the change of day. The Christian Sabbath 
 was to be observed, they appear to have thought, 
 in the same spirit, essentially, and with almost 
 the same external strictness, as the Jewish ; 
 being in fact, just the old institution in new rela- 
 tions. Now^, the Lord's Day is as divinely and 
 exclusively set apart to hallowed uses, is as im- 
 portant to the church and the world, and as 
 blessed in the observance of it, as was the Jew- 
 ish Sabbath, but I cannot think it was intended 
 to be kept in exactly the same spirit and out- 
 ward manner; I cannot invest it with all that 
 minuteness of circumspection, that solicitous and 
 watchful self-restraint, and solemn staidness of 
 countenance and demeanor, which the Levitical 
 idea and the Puritans would seem to impose 
 upon it. I believe it to be, in its nature and in- 
 tent, a higher, freer, happier, more refreshing 
 day. 
 
 And here let me drop a query, for over-zeal- 
 ous people, whether we do not crowd too many 
 things, good things though they be, into the Lord's 
 day, to admit of its being so much a season oircst'A.s 
 it was designed to be. Rest, — not sloth, but tran- 
 quillity ior the mind and the body, and recovery 
 
3i8 DERWE N T. 
 
 from fatigue — was a prominent idea, if not the 
 prominent one, in the primeval Sabbath. Should 
 the Christian Sabbath be less recuperative? But 
 how often do we hear people say that Sunday is, 
 for them, the most fatiguing day of the seven. 
 
 We kept Saturday night, as did our neighbors 
 and the Derwent people generally. We were 
 conscientious and cheerful in it ; there were, 
 however, inconveniences attending it. It was 
 not always convenient, was sometimes impracti- 
 ble, to leave an unfinished work, or business, the 
 moment the sun went down. It was difficult to 
 repress the outgushings of joyous 3^oung life 
 the instant the gnomon ceased to cast its 
 shadow on the dial-plate. "Hush! girls; be 
 quiet, boys ; you must not laugh and play, now." 
 Saturday is always apt to seem a short day, and 
 being made shorter than it actually was, by this 
 curtailment of it in favor of the Sabbath, its 
 worldly business would often out-go its allowed 
 legitimate hours, and trench on holy time. 
 Things would get belated. An unlucky load of 
 wood, or hay, would come rumbling home after 
 sunset, or after dark, even; a piece of sewing 
 would fail of getting done by sunlight, and must 
 be finished by candle-hght, or else — it would so 
 
D E R W E X T. 319 
 
 happen — its owner must stay away from meeting 
 on the morrow. Cases of conscience would often 
 be occurrmg. Works of necessity and mercy 
 were allowable ; but you might have doubts 
 whether a particular thing was oae of necessity, 
 or mere}' ; or, if it was, whether Providence, or 
 your own remissness, had made it so. And dif- 
 ferent people might judge differently, in given 
 cases; and one man's liberty might be judged of 
 another man's conscience. There was a tradi- 
 tion in the place, of a certain good deacon, a 
 man of extreme strictness, a Puritan of the Puri- 
 tans, who thought it an unnecessary, and therefore 
 a sinful work, to shave on the Sabbath ; and 
 being half through with that operation when 
 the sun went down on a Saturday night, put 
 away his razor, and went to meeting the next 
 day with a muffler on his face, as if he had a 
 toothache, or the mumps. But how could you 
 always know when the sun did set? in a cloudy 
 day, suppose. There is no vesper bell to tell you, 
 and your clock, or watch, if you have one, may 
 be out of order, or incorrect. Or a hill hides the 
 sun's setting place. " Come, children ; you, 
 must leave off your play now, and come in, it is 
 Saturday night." " Why, mother it is n't sun- 
 
220 D E R WEN T. 
 
 down yet, it is not quite down ; for, don't you see 
 it shines a little, just a little, on the tops of the 
 hills there ?" 
 
 But what of Sunday night? That, of course 
 was secular. To sanctify the one evening was to 
 unsanctify the other ; for we are as little author- 
 ized to extend God's holy time as we are to con- 
 tract it. To work, play, visit, was just as lawful 
 on that evening as on any evening or day of the 
 week; why not? I do not now remember that 
 the noisier kinds of work were generally engaged 
 in; or that the young people bounded away at 
 once into gay company and mirth ; the hallowed 
 influence of the day, and of the sanctuary, hard- 
 ly could, in a religious community, be so soon 
 and wholly dissipated. Yet there were houses 
 where might be heard the buzz of the spinning- 
 wheel ; some mechanics' shops would be lighted ; 
 there was a good deal of visiting, though usually 
 in a quiet way ; and not many years have gone 
 by since town halls in certain places in New 
 England (but not that I know of in Connecticut) 
 were the scenes, on Sunday evenings, of very ex- 
 cited pohtical assemblies and campaign meetings, 
 good Saturday-night-keeping Christians attend- 
 ing them. Such things were not regarded as a 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 321 
 
 profanation of the Sabbath, that being past, 
 though the sentiment of propriety might be hurt 
 by them. 
 
 As for us, we spent the evening quietly with 
 books, or sociably, with friends and neighbors 
 dropping in upon us. But our good pastor regu- 
 larly appointed a Sunday evening meeting, and 
 we went to that generally, not forgetting to take 
 a candle with us to help light the room. 
 
XXV. 
 
 THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. 
 
IT may be the effect of early education, a pre- 
 judice (in the better sense of the word), but 
 my feeling is, that Sunday is a pleasanter day in 
 the country than it can be in the city. I speak 
 of the day itself; you may hear better sermons 
 in the city, though I shall not admit that without 
 claiming a large percentage of exceptions. An 
 old and shrewd judge of men and things whom I 
 knew, used to say of popular city preachers of 
 a certain style, that they could not " enter Fresh- 
 men " in the country ; " ratan preachers," he 
 sometimes called them, — showy, flashy, super- 
 ficial, rather than solid and instructive. You 
 worship in more costly churches, but I suspect 
 that generally you feel less at home in them than 
 we do in our humbler country sanctuaries You 
 have gayer and more fashionably - dressed as- 
 semblies, but you do not see among them more 
 serious, sensible, and comely faces. You go in 
 
 (325) 
 
326 D E R IV E N T. 
 
 larger companies, but you do not, I suspect, 
 take sweeter counsel by the way. 
 
 It is with the day, however, rather than with 
 the services and the people, that we are here 
 concerned. I am partial to the country Sunday, 
 as I have said. And the partiality is a fixed one ; 
 for I have lived in cities without being cured of 
 it. Do you ask me why? A complete answer 
 would require graphic and minute details, if not 
 the gift of poesy ; but the grounds of my prefer- 
 ence may be given briefly thus. The Sabbath 
 is a day for rest and meditation, and the country 
 is eminently favorable to the meditative habit. 
 It is not less so in winter, perhaps, than in sum- 
 mer; but let us suppose, for our present pur- 
 pose, a calm summer morning. Everything 
 around you is in harmony with the day ; is in 
 Sabbath - keeping mood: — the silent, cheerful 
 meadows, — the sleeping hills, — the glassy waters, 
 —the trees standing motionless, like worshippers 
 and listeners, — the quiet look of animals, — the 
 alternating song and silence of the birds, — the 
 faint hum of insects, — the bleat of sheep on the 
 hill-side, — the murmurs, hardly audible, of brooks, 
 that seem to deepen, rather than disturb, the 
 general tranquillity. You have an open sky 
 
DERWENT: 327 
 
 above you, and a wide horizon around you. 
 You breathe a pure and fragrant air. The 
 scenes of Nature, God's work, and not the works 
 and business of men, engage your senses, and fill 
 your mind. You have a degree of freedom 
 which the city does not afford you ; you are set 
 in a large place, comparatively. If your house 
 is at some little distance from neighbors, you can 
 move without being noticed, or can talk, or sing 
 without being heard by them ; nor are you dis- 
 turbed by their movements and voices. You go 
 by green highways to church, — passing, if you 
 have far to walk, a variety of pleasing objects, — 
 shades, gardens, crops, — on your way. I can re- 
 member nothing more charming than the or- 
 chards between us and the meeting-house were, 
 sometimes, when they had put on their beautiful 
 and fragrant vernal bloom between one Sun- 
 day and another. I am sure the day was the 
 happier and hearts the better for them. And 
 you can go as deliberately and musingly as )^ou 
 will, quite alone if you like, or with only your 
 family, or a friend ; for it is not a thronged pave- 
 ment that you are treading. 
 
 Your cit}^ Sunday has its pleasant things, un- 
 doubtedly ; but they are not of the kind which I 
 28 
 
328 DER WENT. 
 
 have mentioned. You look out on roofs and 
 walls, with an inch of sky to see, and still less of 
 the horizon. You go to church, in your car- 
 riage if you keep one, through streets in such 
 condition as Saturday ni"ght may have left them ; 
 or on your feet, with the stream of the people, 
 • along ways that are verdureless and treeless, — 
 worse than treeless, for one pities the poor things 
 that try to take root and heart among paving- 
 stones, — ^with fronts of stores and houses, base- 
 ment stairways, and platforms on your one hand, 
 and gutters on the other ; with awning-posts, 
 lamp-posts, and business signs innumerable ; in 
 all which I see nothing favorable to devotional 
 feeling. One may dislike comparisons; but com- 
 parisons are not necessarily invidious. One can 
 hardly express a preference in any case, without 
 making or supposing a comparison of things. 
 And for my part, I like to know people's prefer- 
 ences, and their reasons ; there is always some- 
 thing to be gathered from them. Whether one 
 has his home on a prairie, or among mountains, 
 or on an island, or by the sea-side, the lake-side, 
 or the river-side, — wherever it may be, — I like 
 to hear from him what he finds desirable, or the 
 contrary, in such a home. He acquaints me 
 
D ER WE X T. 329 
 
 thereby with facts, tastes, habits, and other pro- 
 fitable knowledge. So, if my city friend will 
 tell me about his city Sundays, as frankly as I 
 have told him about my country ones, he shall 
 have my thanks for doing so. 
 
 It has grown, or is growing, out of fashion, 
 even in New England, to call a house of worship 
 a meeting-house ; we all say cJnircJi, now. But 
 for m}' part, though I conform myself to the new 
 way, — when I do not forget it, — I confess a par- 
 tiality for the old. I was baptized in a meeting- 
 house ; our family pew was in a meeting-house ; 
 all my young ideas of public worship were con- 
 ceived in an edifice known and spoken of by that 
 appellation. For these reasons, personal and 
 domestic, I naturally respect the name. I have 
 a regard for it on other accounts. It belongs to 
 the history of New England. It came in with 
 the Puritans ; and I respect their memory. I do 
 not say it came over with them ; for in England 
 they had not been allowed to build for them- 
 selves houses of worship under any name. In 
 adopting it, they had a precedent in apostolic 
 usage : for the word ecclcsia, in the New Testa- 
 ment, which our translators render church, has 
 
330 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 precisely the same significance as our terms 
 meeting-house and meeting. As applied to per- 
 sons, it signifies an assembly, a meeting: applied 
 to place, it designates a meeting-place— a meet- 
 ing-house, if the place be a house. 
 
 The old meeting - house, together with its 
 name, is interesting for its associations with the 
 old social, as well as religious centres. Where it 
 was, there used to be some of the best families ; 
 the largest and best-instructed school ; the parish 
 library ; the best stores ; the parade-ground ; and 
 other *' court-end " things. 
 
 It is interesting for its relations with the main 
 old roads ; it marked the distances between 
 towns and parishes, answering in some degree, 
 the purposes of guide-posts and mile stones. 
 " How far is it to such, and such, a meeting- 
 house ? " would the stranger ask, along his 
 journey. 
 
 On these views of the matter my younger friends 
 will excuse my old-time way of " going to meet- 
 ing," while they are "going to church." In 
 either case we are going heavenward, if we go 
 in a riofht frame of mind. 
 
 ^&' 
 
 Our Derwent meeting-house was, I think, 
 
DER WENT. 
 
 331 
 
 about an average specimen of such buildings of 
 its date. It fronted, looking south, on a shaded 
 common called The Green ; on its left was a 
 high hill, with a perpendicular face of rock ; 
 which was near enough to cast its shadow on 
 the house through all the early morning hours. 
 At the base of that steep of rock was the gray 
 old school-house at which we acquired our 
 spelling-book learning. There were a few neat 
 dwellings around and near the Green. At its 
 lower end, separated from it by a stone fence, 
 was the buiying-ground. 
 
 The house was a well-proportioned, comely 
 building, not destitute of architectural orna- 
 ment, but with no silly gingerbread-work, or 
 other carpenterish nonsense about it, such as is 
 sometimes seen on more modern country church- 
 es. It adopted the Ionic order chiefly, so far as 
 it affected any classic style. It had a decidedly 
 respectable look about it. And Derwerit not 
 being the central parish, the shire-parish, so to 
 speak, of our broad old ten-by-twelve-mile town 
 of Fen wick, its house of worship was never pro- 
 faned by political and town meetings, with their 
 talk and ballot-boxes, as all the old middle-parish 
 meetingr-houses were. 
 
332 DER WENT. 
 
 It had no steeple, and consequently no bell. Of 
 the parishes around us, only one, Sussex, the next 
 on the south, had a bell ; we could just hear it on a 
 still Sunday morning. And what a rapture it was 
 to listen to it ! This want of steeple and bell was 
 a grave deficiency, as I used to fesl. I have at- 
 tached less importance to them since that time, 
 though I would not dispense with them now. 
 Steeples are imposing things in the eyes of chil- 
 dren, as bells are pleasing to their ears. But 
 people do not appear to me to walk or ride to 
 the house of God with the deep, quiet thought- 
 fiilness they used to feel, without the bell ; they 
 seem not to be as meditative by the way. Bells 
 hurry and excite them ; or they wait for the bell, 
 and then hurry. Nor are assemblies any fuller 
 for them, or more punctual. People living near 
 the church rely on the bell-rope to let them know 
 the hour; to tell them when it is time to be get- 
 ting ready, and when to go ; and they sometimes 
 fail of being ready, in consequence. We, in de- 
 fault of the iron tongue, looked at the clock, — at 
 the dial, — at the sun itself, — and were sure to be 
 in time. 
 
 The house was seated with pews. There were 
 no slips below, and none above except along the 
 
D E R WEN T. 333 
 
 front, and side galleries, for the choir, and such 
 miscellaneous people — bachelors and others, — as 
 might choose to occupy them. Pews have a 
 family look, and so have slips; but the pew, be- 
 ing square, groups tlie family together more 
 There is, however, this inconvenience in it- 
 Some of its occupants must sit with their backs 
 to the speaker ; which is worse than riding back- 
 wards. And in prayer-time, all standing to- 
 gether in the middle of the pew, — for we used 
 to stand in prayer, — we were rather huddled, 
 if the pew was full ; and if the prayer was long, 
 the posture was wearisome, especially as we had 
 nothing on which to lean, or bow the head ; and 
 the little folks were lost and half- smothered 
 among the taller ones. Our pastor was never 
 long himself, but ministers that he exchanged 
 with, and strangers, sometimes were. This want 
 of support and of room, was remedied in some 
 houses, — I think in only a few of the very old 
 ones, — by having the seats made so as to be 
 turned up during the standing, and then let 
 down again. But the objection to this was, that 
 the turning up and down made too great a clatter- 
 ing, if not done more gently than some would be 
 thoughtful enough to do it. The first time I 
 
334 DERIVE NT. 
 
 was in a house of this description, which was 
 an old and large one in Massachusetts, the seats 
 were let down so violently, especially in the 
 gallery, at the conclusion of the afternoon ser- 
 vice, that the noise startled me, as if the gallery 
 were falling. 
 
 Our father always bid off the same pew, at the 
 annual sale, against all competitors. " I hate 
 this shifting about," he would say. " I like to 
 have a home-feeling in my pew as I do in my 
 house; which I could not have in a new one 
 every twelvemonth." 
 
 The pulpit was an agreeable one to look at ; 
 and an agreeable one to speak from, as the style 
 of pulpit delivery then was ; as it was not of the 
 striding- to-and-fro and air-sawing, or platform, 
 order. It was finished underneath with a carved 
 work of scollop-shells, by which it appeared to 
 be supported. Over it was the canopy called 
 the sounding-board. Whether it really helped 
 the voice, I cannot say, but that was the idea of 
 it. It had no visible support from above or be- 
 low, but was, to all appearance, merely stuck 
 upon the wall behind ; and seemed not unlikely 
 to come down some day upon the minister's 
 pate, to the astonishment of everj^body in the 
 
D ER WENT. 335 
 
 house. It was easy for a child to imagine that; 
 it was not easy for me not to imagine it. Nor 
 was it impossible to fancy that the house's back 
 must ache, holding up the heavy thing in that 
 arms -length way so long. I wondered if it 
 would bear my weight, if I should be put up on 
 it. And what astonishing quantities of dust had 
 settled on it ; the " dust of ages ; " which nobody 
 could get at to brush off. In such ways would 
 the sounding-board engage my childish thoughts 
 at times, while some good older people slept. 
 
 That old house, made sacred to me by more 
 and more interesting associations than any other 
 place of worship ever can be, is still standing ; 
 but not in its proper character. They have 
 made a town-house of it. The last time I was at 
 Derwent, I went to see it, and was half sorry 
 that I did. It was in good repair, and looked as 
 much like itself as it could in another character 
 and another dress ; that is, it looked so ex- 
 ternally ; I did not care to go into it. It had 
 been painted a cheap russet color, instead of the 
 white it used to wear. In consequence of 
 changes such as time and progress are every- 
 where making, it had ceased to be as central as 
 it was, and a new house had been built in a dif- 
 
336 DERIVENT. 
 
 ferent locality. I went to see that, too ; but 
 though it was well enough for the young people 
 and new-comers into the place, it had for me a 
 painfully barren, unhistoric aspect, and I re- 
 garded it without enthusiasm. 
 
 Although we kept the Sabbath with conscien- 
 tious strictness, on no day were we happier in 
 look and feeling. I ought to say, because we kept 
 it so ; for it is only those who half-keep it that 
 find it irksome. And thus should it be always 
 on a day that was made for man, and not man 
 for it. 
 
 We were quiet in our movements; all work 
 was suspended, except such as was strictly of 
 necessity and mercy ; worldl}^ subjects were dis- 
 allowed in conversation ; our reading was Sun- 
 day reading, the Bible claiming a large place in 
 this. 
 
 Wc were constant at public worship, all going 
 when we could, shutting up the house, leaving 
 Trooper or Splash at home ; who would look 
 after us with a wistful face that said, " I shall be 
 lonesome while you are gone, and have a dog's 
 welcome for you when you return." 
 
 My brother and I, and if the weather and 
 
DERWENT. 337 
 
 walking- were good, our sisters, did not wish to 
 ride; we were so much freer on our feet. And 
 the wa}^ was pleasant, and not too long for 
 young and active spirits. Just a mile. What 
 lover of air and exercise, and rural scenes, would 
 desire a shorter church-going walk than thit; or 
 would prefer wheels to feet in travelling it, es- 
 pecially on Sunday, when we miss our ordinary 
 exercise ? For my part, I have always felt it to 
 be an infelicity, on several accounts, to have 
 one's home quite near the church. 
 
 We had the road to ourselves, generally, till 
 we came to Derwent Head, which was at half 
 the distance. There the people would be just 
 issuing from their houses, and we were mixed in 
 with them. A httle further on we fell in with a 
 stream of people, Lakesiders for the most part, 
 coming from the west ; or, rather, they fell in 
 with us, on horseback, in wagons, and on foot. 
 Very rustic were these western folk, but honest, 
 sensible and worthy. These, brown with dust, 
 and embrowning us, in a dry time, swelled our 
 company for the remainder of the way. 
 
 Before we enter the meeting-house, I propose 
 that we cast an eye on things outside of it; we 
 
338 DE RWEN T. 
 
 shall observe some customs that have passed 
 away with by-gone generations. You see fewer 
 carriages of any description, and especially few- 
 er handsome ones, than one sees around a coun- 
 try church in these times. The horses, coming 
 together from all sides and corners of the parish, 
 present, of course, a variety of qualities and con- 
 ditions. The greater part of them have a work- 
 ing, week-day look, but not many have the ap- 
 pearance of being overworked, or otherwise ill- 
 used. You will admire, among them, the farm- 
 er's sleek saddle-horse, that, instead of the con- 
 finement of the city stable, or any stab'e, enjoys 
 the freedom of the fields all the green summer 
 through, and is "good to catch." On some of 
 the horses you will see side-saddles ; whereby 
 you understand that it is customary for ladies to 
 come to church on horseback, without the long 
 skirts that now embarrass, more than they grace, 
 the wearer. Were the arrand mothers less mod- 
 est than the granddaughters are ; or shall the 
 long ground-sweeping garments of the latter be 
 regarded only as one of the ordinary whimseys 
 of fashion? A pillion would be a curiosity now, 
 and a lady seated on one of those airy and un- 
 stable cushions, behind her husband or other 
 
DERVVENT. 339 
 
 male relative, or friend, her arm around his 
 waist, on a Sunday, or even a week-day, would 
 attract more attention than might be agreeable 
 to her. This, however, was but a common thing 
 in those days. Rustic girls went to balls with 
 their partners in such a fashion. In this connec- 
 tion you will notice the horse-block. Almost 
 every dwelling-house had one, and the meeting- 
 house as well. It was literally a block, in most 
 cases, being sawed from the butt of a great tree, 
 and set on end like an anvil block. 
 
 Our meetings were generally full and attentive ; 
 which is evidence that the services wei'e interest- 
 ing. Our pastor, Mr. Belden, of long continu- 
 ance with us, though not an orator, was a good 
 man, which is better. Goodness is eloquent. 
 His people loved him. Children loved him, and 
 their love is one of the best evidences a minister 
 can have of his fitness for his calling. 
 
 The choir was numerous, and was, T think, as 
 good as the average of countr}^ choirs. The 
 greater part of the singers were good ones in the 
 rough ; to whom nature had given the voice, and 
 perhaps the soul for melody ; but art had not 
 polished and refined them. But on the other 
 
340 DERIVENT. 
 
 hand, art had not spoiled them. They were 
 often reinforced by young recruits from a winter 
 evening singing-?choo]. Very rarely is a sweet- 
 er voice heard than that of Emily Belden of the 
 treble, a daughter of the minister. Her sister 
 Anna sung counter, as the alto was called, no less 
 sweetly. And to me that part was, and is, the 
 most charming of the four. It is such a modest, 
 unambitious thing, feeling its way along the com- 
 mon path, the stave, through such openings as 
 the other parts have left it. A gentleman, who 
 was our guest over a Sunday, said to us, after 
 meeting, " I did not know which most to admire 
 to-day, your very fine treble, or your tremendous 
 tenor." He had reference in this to Miss Bel- 
 den, and to Captain Briggs of the tenor. Capt. 
 Briggs was a remarkable singer, certainly. 
 Enthusiastic in whatever engaged him at all, he 
 was especiall}' so in psalmody. He had passed 
 his early days on the sea, and he sang as though 
 he had practiced with the winds, as they played 
 with the rigging of his vessel, making harp- 
 strings of stays and halyards. He delighted in 
 fugues, or " fuging tunes," as people called them ; 
 which were quite in vogue for a time. It was 
 curious to see how eagerly he would stand 
 
D E R WENT. 
 
 341 
 
 watching- the course of the fugue till it got round 
 to him, and then with what ardor he would fall 
 into it. He seemed to me like a man on the 
 edge of a wharf, ready to throw a rope to a boat, 
 and jump into it, as wind and tide swept it past 
 his standing-place. Captain Ben,. as he was fa- 
 miliarly called, was far from perfect in his ortho- 
 epy. His pronunciation of some words was 
 shocking, " Rej'ice aloud, ye sa'nts, rej'ice." 
 This was not Derwentian, as Captain Ben him- 
 self was not ; he brought it with him from his 
 native place, Blueberry Hill. 
 
 The "deacons' seat" was still in use at the 
 time of these recollections. The deacons al- 
 Avays sat in it, ex officio, apart from their families 
 and the rest of mankind ; albeit they had no du- 
 ty to attend to there except on sacramental oc- 
 casions. Devout and venerable men our two 
 aged deacons, Smalley and Lucas, were, and one 
 might wish he were as good as they ; but it 
 seemed an awful thing to sit there, as they did, 
 in the shadow of the pulpit, and look so solemn. 
 
 Another old custom which had not then gone 
 into disuse, was that of having tithing-men. 
 They were appointed annually by the legislature, 
 as were justices of the peace. Their duty, like 
 
342 D ER WENT. 
 
 that of the proctor of an English University, was 
 to preserve order in the church during the ser- 
 vices. The term was vulgarly corrupted into 
 tiding-maji, as designating one whose business 
 was to bear tidings of disorderly behavior in meet- 
 ings to magistrates or parents. They did not, 
 however, commonly report offenders, except in 
 aggravated cases, but deemed it enough to re- 
 buke them on the spot, with sharp looks, shak- 
 ings, or perhaps a slight cuffing. I suspect that 
 they provoked more disorder than they prevent- 
 ed, or repressed. I do not believe in the wis- 
 dom of espionage over morals, in whatever man- 
 ner, place, or guise it may be exercised, whether 
 by officials, gossips, or popular-reform societies. 
 Always odious, it stirs up the will, provokes re- 
 sentments, and sets pride at odds with con- 
 science and duty. 
 
 It should be mentioned here, as showing the 
 world's progress in matters of comfort, that 
 meeting-houses were not warmed in winter. To 
 warm them with wood fireg and fire-places would 
 have been impracticable ; and stoves, and anthra- 
 cite, " black stones " as people satirically called 
 that kind of fuel, doubting its combustibility, at 
 first, had not come into use. Imagine, then, how 
 
DERIVE XT. 343 
 
 pinched and blue we were, in our pews, on a bit- 
 ter cold day. And think how thin the congrega- 
 tion would be now, if word were sent round the 
 parish on a winter morning, " There will be no 
 fire in the church to-day.'' As some small reme- 
 dy for this great discomfort, foot-stoves were 
 used. The last thing, on leaving home, was to 
 fill the stove-pan with good live coals, sprinkling 
 ashes over them ; and these must be replaced 
 Avith fresh ones at noon, either at home or at 
 some hearth near the meeting. This stove-filling 
 was one of the penalties of living near the meet- 
 ing house. A lady told me she had counted six- 
 teen stoves at once, at her parlor fire, waiting for 
 their turn. These portable little furnaces were for 
 women and girls only ; it was not for us hardy 
 men and boys to use them ; though a mother's 
 or a sister's hand did sometimes slip them under 
 my own ice-cold shoes. And I remember these 
 small warmers pleasantly for the use that was 
 made of them in a neighborly way. Often they 
 v/ould be handed over into the next pew, where 
 they would be welcomed with a grateful nod, or, 
 if not needed, gratefully declined. 
 
 I have no doubt that our home habits of that 
 day enabled us to endure those cold churches as 
 
344 
 
 D E R JVF.A'T. 
 
 we could not now. With our open fire-places 
 and large flues, we had always a free circulation 
 of air about us ; and we slept in cold chambers. 
 But to go now from our stove-heated and furnace- 
 heated parlors and bedrooms, and sit a service 
 through in a fireless church, would seriously en- 
 danijer our health. 
 
 A dismissed congregation dispersing from 
 around a church is too familiar a scene to engage 
 the attention of grown psople ; but to the young 
 observer, to whom all scenes are studies, it pre- 
 sents a variety of noticeable particulars. He 
 sees in it characters, manners, styles, tastes, con- 
 ditions, with sometimes an exciting, or an amus- 
 ing incident. As I pause with m}^ pen in hand, 
 my memory gives me instances. 
 
 There is that plain, good family, the Greys. 
 They are getting into their unpretentious, com- 
 fortable carriage. What a sensible and cheer- 
 ful look they have ! How unaffectedly and pleas- 
 antly they give and receive salutations ! They 
 are not ambitious to attract attention, nor solici- 
 tous to avoid it; they have no thought about 
 that. What they are most conscious of is, that 
 
DER WENT. 345 
 
 it Is the Lord's da}' : that the}' hav^e been hearing- 
 his word, and engaged in solemn worship. 
 
 Turn from these to the Rufuses. Mr. Rufus 
 parades his flashy, bran-new wagon and his 
 prancing fancy horse so close before the steps 
 that there is hardly room for people to get out. 
 He helps his saffron-faced wife in with an air, 
 and then his buttercup daughters; gets in him- 
 self, cracks his long-lashed whip, and away they 
 go, who but they? leaving a wide wake behind 
 them, as the sailors say. 
 
 A young woman, worthy, but of rustic breed- 
 ing, and painfully bashful, whose home is in a 
 corner, has left her horse at a fence, quite away 
 from the house. She goes to him, pets and talks 
 to him a little, and is answered by his glad low 
 whinny, gets on from the fence, tucks her dress 
 about her feet, and pulls the rein, taking care 
 that the bulk of the people shall be well ahead 
 of her. 
 
 A young lady differently educated springs into 
 her saddle from the horse-block, with a score of 
 people around her, and moves off sociably along 
 with others that are going her way. 
 
 Once, in the midst of a number of carriages into 
 which people were getting before the door, there 
 
346 DERIVE NT. 
 
 was a sorrel, bob-tailed, ugl}' horse, which, all of a 
 sudden, began to fall into the most extravagant 
 behavior, rearing and kicking. A dozen people 
 were imperilled by him, and got out of the way 
 as fast as they could. His owner could do noth- 
 ing with him, and for his own personal safety 
 (for the fur}^ reared and struck at and bit him), 
 he let him go, and away he went down the Green, 
 kicking all the way, and staving in the wagon. 
 The' place was thick with people, and for a mo- 
 ment there was great anxiety on their account. 
 " Take care ! Take care, there, " cried several 
 voices unnecessarily, for the smashed and rat- 
 tling wagon made noise enough to warn them. 
 They opened to the right and left and made a 
 wide passage for the beast. At one of the lower 
 corners of the Green there was a pound ; the 
 gate of it was open ; the horse plunged into it ; 
 the wheels, too wide for the gate- way, stuck fast 
 there ; the violence of the fetch-up cleared the 
 horse ; and there he was, self-impounded ; for the 
 wrecked wagon shut him in. " I would never 
 take him out," exclaimed a gentleman, breaking 
 the silence of a great sensation. 
 
 It struck my brother and me oddly one Sunday, 
 after meeting, to see one of our "out-west" folks 
 
DERWENT. 3^7 
 
 going down the road, among many other home- 
 going people, with a bridle in his hand. " What 
 has become of your horse, Mr. Bush?" asked 
 one of his neighbors, — calling to him from on 
 horseback. " My horse has gone Jiome afoot," he 
 replied. The conceit of such an answer so 
 amused us, Walter and me, that we had to turn 
 away our faces to conceal the laugh which we 
 could not repress. It is so easy for young people 
 to laugh. The horse had slipped his bridle, and 
 left it hanging on the post. 
 
x;cvi. 
 
 THE T^A^O GREAT EDU' 
 GATORS. 
 
"T^E QUINCEY, speaking of his childhood, 
 -'— ^ said, that, if he should return thanks to 
 Providence for all the separate blessings of his 
 early situation, these four he would single out 
 as chiefly worthy to be commemorated : that he 
 lived in the country ; that he lived in solitude ; 
 that his infant feelings were moulded by the 
 gentlest of sisters, not by horrid pugilistic broth- 
 ers ; finally, that he and they were dutiful chil- 
 dren of a pure, holy, and magnificent church. 
 
 This is so accordant with my own grateful 
 retrospection that I incline to make a preface of 
 it to this, my closing chapter, I lived in the 
 country, but not in solitude. Our house was not 
 a hermitage ; we had neighbors near enough for 
 most of the needs and uses of social vicinage, — 
 near enough for mutual aid and sympathy, and 
 friendly calls, and to save us from being lone- 
 some, — to say nothing of our numerous and 
 (351) 
 
352 DER IVfJVT. 
 
 lively work-people. At the same time, they were 
 not inconveniently near to us ; they did not 
 cramp and straighten us for room, cast no shad- 
 ows on our windows and door-stones, shut ofif 
 no prospect, hid no landscape beauties from us, 
 imposed no restraints on the freedom of our 
 voices and movements, as neighbors necessarily 
 do, whose eaves drop on each other's yards and 
 gardens. For so much isolation as this, one may 
 reasonably be thankful ; but I do not call it soli- 
 tude. 
 
 I had gentle sisters, and as womanly as they 
 vv^ere gentle ; if they had been less than this, they 
 would have been unworthy of the best of moth- 
 ers. I had no " horrid pugilistic brothers :" a 
 brother I had, of noblest qualities, between whom 
 and me there was a depth and constancy of love 
 not often equalled in the breasts of boys. Alas ! 
 my brother — he has passed from earth since I 
 began to write these papers, and I miss him 
 much. Yet, though I miss, I do not mourn him ; 
 for he has gone in a ripe age, leaving an honored 
 name behind hira, and — best of all consolations 
 for survivors — has gone with an unclouded hope 
 of heaven. 
 
 De Quincey was thankful that he passed his 
 
D ER WENT. 
 
 353 
 
 young life in the countr3\ I presume that every 
 country -born and country - bred man who has 
 seen much of the world, or has done, or been, 
 much in it, and has reflected on the circum- 
 stances which form characters and men, is 
 thankful for such a providence in his own case. 
 
 The reasons for such thankfulness are more 
 and deeper than can be set down in a few brief 
 paragraphs ; but let me advert to a comprehen- 
 sive and very significant fact, in reference to the 
 subject. How is it that the great majority of 
 leading minds in the world have ever been of 
 country origin ? Look through all classes of 
 men, and you will find, generally, that those wh.o 
 have done the best in their professions and pur- 
 suits are men whose birth and early training 
 were in the country ; and, not unfrequently, in 
 districts extremely rural ; in solitudes, even, as 
 De Quincey says, was his case. If any one thinks 
 that I am dealing in wholesale hazardous asser- 
 tion here, let him make for us his own list of able 
 and successful men, — jurists, statesmen, scholars, 
 authors, merchants, soldiers, and others, — and 
 tell us whence they came. Where and what 
 were they in their boyhood ? Of course the city 
 has its distinguished and successful sons, but the 
 
354 
 
 DERWEN T. 
 
 preponderance is, by great odds, in favor of the 
 country. 
 
 The truth is, the country and the city educate 
 their children differently. By education I mean 
 here, not that which we get from schools and 
 teachers, and which is not so properly called 
 education as instruction ; this may be the same 
 in both. I mean that which comes from circum- 
 stances, — from nature, providence, firesides, man- 
 ners, customs ; in short, from natural and social 
 influences generally. 
 
 The ends of education are physical, mental, and 
 moral. With reference to these, let us look at 
 the circumstances of the country-born and coun- 
 try-bred child, and at those of the child born and 
 brought up in the city. 
 
 The city-born, looking out from his nurse's, or 
 his mother's arms, sees such objects as a window 
 in the city opens to him ; and that is his first 
 vision of his outer world. It is a world of walls 
 and roofs, pavements, gutters, awnings, goods, 
 all sorts of vehicles, all sorts of people, all 
 sorts of city noises, and city smells ; with some 
 streaks and spots of sky. A different situation 
 from this is that in which is cast the lot of his 
 young contemporar3' of the country ; who, from 
 
DERIVENT. 355 
 
 his birth, has a green world around, and an open 
 heaven above him, and is conversant with rural 
 s:enes and industries. 
 
 The out-door freedom which the country child 
 enjoys is a great thing for him. I pity a confined 
 child, pining at a window, or wearing away the 
 tedious hours with insipid toys and pictures, — 
 as so many are doing in close and crowded 
 towns. The country child has room to range 
 about, to run, and jump, and look ; and that 
 without the vexatious restraints of servant or 
 nurse. Hireling nurses, at the present day, are 
 the plagues and pests of children, especially of 
 boys. Where are the mothers? It was not so 
 two generations since. 
 
 In one of the streets of a neighboring town 
 the other day, I was overtaken and passed by a 
 fine little fellow running with his might. " I've 
 got out !" he shouted, to me, a perfect stranger 
 to him, as he ran. " Got out of what ?" I asked. 
 " Out of the gate," he said, without slackening 
 his pace or turning his head. It is so delightful 
 to all young things to be at large and free. 
 
 This out-door freedom in infancy and early 
 childhood, is not merely pleasant to the child, 
 but is important to him in several educational 
 
356 DERIVE NT. 
 
 respects : it concerns the health, temper, and 
 efficiency of the future man. 
 
 The young life of the country, all the way up 
 from infancy, tends to the formation of healthy 
 constitutions and manly habits. Its active sports, 
 such as ball-playing, bathing, boating, nutting, 
 gunning, skating, and the like, have that effect. 
 There is nothing invidious in this. The young 
 men and boys of the city are just as much in- 
 clined, naturally, to athletic and manly exercises, 
 as are those of the country, and would do the 
 same things in the same circumstances. Manly 
 feelings and manly ways are the natural and nor- 
 mal ones of boys, as womanly ways and feelings 
 are of girls ; but the city is not the place for 
 their development. 
 
 It has not the means for it. The city, with its 
 wealth, can do many things : it can lay out 
 parks ; make great reservoirs ; build gymnasia : 
 but it cannot make boys' ball grounds of its paved 
 streets ; nor buy, for boys to swim in, these great 
 baths, our lakes, ponds, and rivers ; nor give 
 them to breathe the pure smokeless air of these 
 our open blue heavens ; nor our landscapes to 
 see ; nor our wilds to ramble in. 
 
 The young life of the country is not all a pas- 
 
D E R WENT. 357 
 
 time : there is work, as well as play, both for the 
 mind and for the hands. Boys are sent to school 
 in winter; but in summer, as soon as they are 
 old enough, the}^ are put to some kind of manual 
 labor. The farmer's sons work on the farm ; the 
 merchant's, mechanic's, and other landless men's 
 sons, all find something to do. There are few 
 who are not early inured to work of some kind, — 
 to toil and the bread-earning sweat of the brow. 
 And this is a discipline of the highest importance 
 to the future man in a business point, of view, to 
 say nothing of its concern with his morals. 
 Whatever be the calling he may adopt, whether 
 of the hands or of the mind, or wherever he may 
 prosecute it, he will bring to it this one essential 
 qualification, that he does at least know what it 
 is to work, and will be no drone in it. And to 
 this consideration you may add another ; espe- 
 cially if he is brought up on a farm. In his boy- 
 hood, while at work along with older hands, he 
 is acquiring a knowledge of common men and 
 things ; the kind of knowledge which, like com- 
 mon sense, so many people particularly want. 
 It is safe to hold that no one knows common 
 men at all well and thoroughly, who has not 
 mixed with them more or less in their labors. 
 
358 DERIVENT. 
 
 The country has its advantag-es for the intel- 
 lectual and the moral education, as well as for 
 the physical ; these all going on together. It is 
 the place for reading and thinking. Your spare 
 hours, particularly your winter fireside hours, 
 are not continually broken in upon by frivolous 
 calls and conversations. You are secure of your 
 seclusion ; and the feeling of security is almost 
 as essential to the enjoyment of one's books, 
 thoughts, and pen, as is seclusion itself. You 
 are not tempted to- waste your evenings at places 
 of fashionable amusement, nor to pass them in 
 gay festivities, that fatigue and dissipate, rather 
 than refresh, or in any way profit, either the body 
 or the mind. If you do not read and think more 
 in the country than you would, or well could, in 
 the city, the fault is your o.wn. And it is read- 
 ing, thinking, and observation, that make the 
 man. He may, without these habits, pull a rope, 
 or turn a crank, but he is not competent to direct 
 a movement. 
 
 The country is itself a great book for study. 
 It is everywhere open, fresh, suggestive, and in- 
 structive. It never tires. There are books 
 which we are glad to get through with and 
 close : the book of nature is not one of these. It 
 
DERIVE NT. 359 
 
 has no dull pages. Nor is there any last leaf to 
 it, to which one may come and say, there is the 
 end : I have read it all, and may shut the volume. 
 We cannot exhaust the studies that are open to 
 us in earth and sky. The clouds alone, with 
 their endless sublimities and beauties, have some- 
 thing new to show us every day. If, then, you 
 have but the ordinary capacities and sensibilities 
 of our common human nature, it is not possible 
 that you should grow up from your childhood 
 amid the scenes which surround you in the coun- 
 try, without learning much that you would never 
 learn at all elsewhere, nor fully in an}'- circum- 
 stances, after the period of your childhood and 
 youth. It is true that all the kinds of informa- 
 tion you may get in this way may be material, 
 simply and directly, to the business you propose 
 to follow ; yet no knowledge is valueless to the 
 man, as such ; and it is the man that directs and 
 shapes the business. 
 
 It is to the country that the poet and the 
 painter go for their images and colors ; and 
 though you may be neither painter nor poet, 
 yet, living in their world, with a perceptive, open 
 eye, it is but a natural, not to say a necessary 
 consequence, that some part of the poet's images 
 
360 D E R WEN T. 
 
 and the painter's colors should come to belong 
 to your mental furniture, and give to your mind 
 an interest which would el e be wanting- to it. 
 
 In the various ways which have now been in- 
 dicated, the country brings up its youth with 
 advantages which the city does not and cannot 
 give. Add to these another, of a moral kind. 
 It brings them up plainer, — forms them to sim- 
 pler manners, habits and ideas, — -inculcates in 
 them truer views of character and of living. 
 The well-trained young man of the country be- 
 lieves that character is a distinct thing from cloth 
 • — that it does not depend on the fineness of a 
 coat. He deprecates expensiveness and luxury. 
 He is not ashamed to be economical. He will 
 start poor in the world, if he must, and will work 
 his way up to competence and a position among 
 men by force of his own industry, integrity, and 
 talents. If the patronage of wealth, or influence, 
 is offered him, he will avail himself of it ; if not 
 offered, he will get along without it. And he 
 will choose a wife— when he comes to that — of 
 the same sensible and practical ideas as his own. 
 And theirs will be a love such as outlives the 
 hotiey-moon — founded on harmon}^ of views and 
 sentiments, and sustained by mutual helpfulness. 
 
D E R WEN T. 361 
 
 I know, indeed, that too many of our young 
 men going from the country into the city, are 
 poor exemplars of what I have been saying. 
 They fall into expensive habits ; they dress and 
 live beyond their means, and think they must, if 
 they would be respected. Very likely they are 
 ashamed to have it known that they are from the 
 country, especially if they come from some ob- 
 scure town. Poor, weak youths ! the country, that 
 you are ashamed of, is ashamed of you. Yours 
 are not the strong characters that are fitted to 
 success, either in the city or out of it. 
 
 I think that the reasons which have been given, 
 are sufficient to show why so large a proportion 
 of the class of successful and distinguished men 
 are found to have been born and brought up in 
 the country ; and that they justify any one's 
 thanks for such a birth and breeding, if Provi- 
 dence has so cast his early lot. 
 
 There are thousands of young men going for 
 places and employment from the country to the 
 city, all the while ; sometimes villages are thus 
 left almost destitute of them. There would be 
 no help for this, if help were desirable. On a 
 large view of things it is well ; for so the coun- 
 
362 
 
 DER WENT. 
 
 try is continually supplying- freshness and vigor 
 to the city. As it regards the young men them- 
 selves, individually, it is in many cases the best 
 thing for them, as the event proves ; while in 
 many others it is the worst. 
 
 In these sketches of young life in the country, 
 I have had the farm in view chiefly, and before 
 I dismiss them I have a few things to say in be- 
 half of that kind of life for young men. 
 
 I would say to any young friend of mine. It 
 you have been bred a farmer, and if you own a 
 farm, or are likely soon to own one by inherit- ' 
 ance or gift, or have means to buy one, do not 
 lightl}^ turn your back upon it for any chance 
 that the city may hold out to you. With the 
 exception of the student-life, in one or another 
 of its forms, professional and literary, if even that 
 be an exception, — as, with proper gifts for it, it 
 may be for usefulness, but not for ease, — I know 
 of no more eligible occupation than that of the 
 farmer ; and this is a judgment founded on a 
 long observation of pursuits and results. The 
 reasons for it might fill a volume : I will indicate 
 a few of them. 
 
 The tarmer's is acknowledged to be the most 
 
DERIVE NT. 363 
 
 healthful of all occupations. A good appetite 
 sweet sleep, and cheerful spirits, are its special 
 gifts. There is none more healthful for the mind, 
 or which allows you equal freedom for its culti- 
 vation and improvement. You are free for this, 
 not only when work is done, but while at work. 
 You can think at the plough, and meditate in the 
 fields, as the merchant among his goods, custom- 
 ers and ledgers, or the mechanic with his tools, 
 hardly can. Such a life is the freest from anxiety 
 and care : you can lie down at night feeling that 
 your crops are growing while you sleep, and that 
 your market is sure, be the times what they may. 
 It is the most certainly remunerative : for, though 
 some other business may seem to promise you 
 greater, or more speedy riches, — supposing 
 riches to be the main thing to live for, — yet, 
 along with that promise, it subjects you to 
 chances of reverse and failure. It is not so with 
 the farm. The financial crises and convulsions 
 that so often and so rudely strike down and anni- 
 hilate other fortunes, cannot sweep away your 
 land. You have a stable home on it, and, are 
 sure of present competence and comfort, if noth- 
 ing more ; and with that, if you have Agur's 
 wisdom, you will be satisfied. But you have 
 
364 DERWENT. 
 
 more than that : your farm, well managed, ad- 
 mits of a steady, though not rapid thrift, that 
 promises to satisfy the exigencies of the future. 
 There is no truer independence than that of 
 the husbandman. You have scope for the exer- 
 cise of taste. A well-tilled farm is a pleasing 
 object ; and there is no end to the beauties it 
 may be made to assume. In this idea of it I in- 
 clude a neat, though unambitious dwelling, a 
 garden, flowers, fruits, and many things which 
 young hands should delight to cultivate. 
 
 But here let us ask what is the true idea of the 
 farmer, regarded as a man. There are men, un- 
 washed, unshaven, unmannered, who, because 
 they own land and work on it, call themselves 
 farmers, and pass for such ; but these are no more 
 true representatives of the agricultural class 
 than the dirty small shopman is the beau-ideal 
 of the merchant. The true husbandman is a man 
 of cultivated mind and gentlemanly deportment. 
 There is nothing in his business to make him 
 less than this, and less than this he ought not to 
 allow himself to be. 
 
 One thing more. Among your fond dreams 
 there comes the thought of wife and children ; 
 and where can a young family be more favorabl)^ 
 
DERIVE NT. 365 
 
 trained to virtue, health, and happiness, than in 
 their own loved home upon the farm ? 
 
 But I remind myself that it is to young men 
 that I am talking here, and that, where pursuits 
 for life are in question, advice to them generally 
 amounts to little. They will follow their own 
 predilections in such matters. Doubtless that is 
 best ; the hand of God is in it ; for so all employ- 
 ments, even the hardest, and the roughest, and 
 the humblest, find willing hands to take them, 
 ind the world goes on. 
 
'^Not a Home hut would he the hetterfor hwmig tJiis book.'' 
 
 STEPPING HEAVENWARD. By Mrs. E. 
 Prentiss, Author of " The Flower of the Fam- 
 ily," " The Susy Books,'' etc., etc. One vol- 
 ume i2mo, 432 pages, cloth, $1.75. 
 
 "A capital book, quite the best of its class we have seeu of late, 
 bearing a genuine, unalloyed CTiristian influence. It is so fresh, so 
 Bpicy, so womanly, so thoroughly natural, in short, that it seems im- 
 possible that it can be fiction. To trace the growth of a perfect 
 woman, Is a rare and precious privilege." — Sprinqfield Republican. 
 
 " We have read the book with unmixed and strong pleasure. Our 
 critical eye discerns scarcely a fault in it, while its merits seem many 
 and po&itive. Human nature is. exhibited as it really exists, and not 
 as novelists usually paint it. The characters are natural — real men 
 and women -and act just as Scripture and observation teach us they 
 do act in the circumstances. And the teaching is singularly free from 
 cant, from stereotyped phrases, from morbid tendencies ; and the relig- 
 ion it advocates is an intelligent, cheerful, healthy one, full of lovo 
 and good works. " It is a book to help ' heavenward' the criing and 
 struggling soul ; to teach useful and needed lessons to the unhappy 
 and the afliicted ; and to inspire all with nobler views of duty and 
 higher aims of life." — Am. Quarterly. 
 
 " The book i.-. in fact, the history of a character; commencing at tho 
 iige of sixteen, and continued during a period of nearly thirty years. 
 IL marks the progress of unrenewed nature in its fierce conflicts and 
 quarrels between its passions and its reason, its self-will and the 
 voice of conscience, its seK-love and the Divine law, until ' wearied,' 
 tempest-tossed, and almost despairing, it ' flies as a bird to its moun- 
 tain,' and finds a 'Saviour' and 'peace.' It exhibits the power of 
 religion to make a lovely character, to induce self-control, to soften 
 the asperities that sharpen and embitter the daily intercourse of life, 
 and to develop those nameless amenities in daughter, wife, or mother, 
 that makes one's presence a perpetual benediction." — Christian at 
 Work. 
 
 "We can hardly conceive of a more truthful mirror of life than 
 this book holds up of the characters in it. The struggles heavenward 
 of a very human heart, from guihood to young womanhood, in tho 
 married relation, and in the duties and discipline of maternity, in all 
 their common, every-day details, are spread out before the reader in a 
 way that makes him constantly feel that the record is a true trans- 
 cript, not only of one life, but of a represeutative human life. vVe 
 find so many and such rich lessons in it, so full of gospel teachings, 
 cud free from the conventional forms of such teachings, th.at we can- 
 not attempt to specify, but simply commend the book as one of the 
 purest, tniest and best that has ever been written. Not a home but 
 would be the better lor having it, and not a Sunday-school where therf 
 is a class of larger girls, but ought to procure one or more copies foi 
 ite library." — /S'. S. ^Titnes. 
 
 A. D. F. RANDOLPH & CO., 770 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
 Sold \ry all Booksellers^ or sent by mail, prepaid on receipt of price. 
 
"' Aunt Jane's Hero is so like people we meet, that we are 
 anxious to have them read the hook, in order to profit hy 
 its teachings. We like it and believe others will.'' — Tho 
 Advance. 
 
 A New Volume by the Author of " Stepping Heavenward." 
 
 AUNT JANE'S HERO. One Vol. i2mo, 30c 
 
 pp. $1.50- 
 
 " The object of Aunt Jane's Hero is to deijict a Christian home 
 whose happiness flows from the living Eock, Christ Jesus. It pro- 
 tests also against the extravagance and other evils of the times, which 
 tend to check the growth of such homes, and to show that there are 
 still treasures of love and peace on earth, that may be bought with- 
 out money and without price." 
 
 " The plot of this story is the simplest, the material? the common 
 est — only a young man, professedly a Christian, yet living a life of 
 worldliness — who is brought back through sharp trial? to regain some 
 of his lost ground ; the story of his love and marriage, and pictures 
 of a happy Christian home, with Aunt Jane's influence, like a golden 
 thread running through the whole ; just such scenes and incidents as 
 may happen any day, anywhere. Tet out of these simple materials is 
 vvrought a story of great beauty and power. The titl6 of the book 
 seems to us a misnomer. Aunt Jane's Hero is really much less of a 
 hero than is his wife, little Maggie, of a heroine. Her character is one 
 of rare strength and sweetness ; but she needs it all in keeping up 
 hei husband's courage in dark days, in sustaining his faith, in redeem- 
 ing Lim from selfishness and prompting him to active Christian work. 
 Thfc key-note of the volume is struck in one of the closing para- 
 graphs : ' Those who have got into the heart of this happy home 
 havt wanted to know its secret, seeing plainly that money had little 
 to do with it; and as you have con"flded in me, I will be equally 
 fran?^ with you, and tell you this secret in a few words : We love God 
 and we love each other.' " — The Advance, Chicago. 
 
 " "K'he power of a living practical religiou, as the main thing in life, 
 is br»jught out in contrast with the standards of fashionable morality. 
 Soir»« things in the book we might criticise, but these may be safely 
 left \o the reader's judgment. It has most of the features which made 
 Stfjmnfi Heavenward so deservedly popular, and, like it, deserves 
 thoughtful reading." — Christian Witness. 
 
 ''Aunt Jane's Hero is a very human being, and like all of Mrs. 
 Prentiss' characters, has just that taint of ' total depravity' which 
 proves him a child of Adam and not a creature of fancy. Her charac- 
 ters are not so good, but the lessons taught by their lives may be 
 learned and practiced by others." — The Interior. 
 
 " To mention another volume from the pen and heart of Mrs. Pren- 
 tiss is to send a pleasure and the promise of good to every reader. 
 Already has she secured such a place in the afifections of those whose 
 sympathies are with us, that we have but to tell them that this new 
 book is rich in all that wealth of thought and sentiment and feeling 
 wt ich have made her other works so useful and popular, and our 
 readers will wish to see Aunt Jane's Hero at once."— A^. T. Observer. 
 
 ANSON D. r. RANDOLPH & CO,, 770 Broadwar, N. V. 
 
 Sold iy all Booksellers, and sent ly maU prepaid on receipt if 
 the price. 
 
Si- 
 
 A jStory FOf\ ou^ Older pii\LS. 
 
 "A book excellent in purpose, wise in teaching, and plensant in 
 aiyle.'"— Morning Star. 
 
 SIGNAL LIGHTS. 
 
 "A capital story of domestic life, with more than usual freshness in 
 the material surroundings, and told in excellent style."— ;Sf. 8. Times. 
 
 " None could read carefully this tenderly told story without being the 
 better for it. It is written with a more than ordinary degree of refine- 
 ment, and has that subdued tone^ to use the artist's expression, which 
 recommends it to the cultured people who have learned to regard sensa- 
 tion and flash as nearly allied to vulgarity. The religious teaching is 
 very pure and lovely ; the domestic pictures have a rare naturalness and 
 delicacy of finish, and the sweet Letters scattered through its pages bear 
 al' the marks of real ones, so simple and unstrained are they." — So. 
 Churcltman. 
 
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 770 Broadway, New York. 
 
 One vol. 12mo. 833 pages, neatly bound in cloth, sent by mail, free of 
 expense, on receipt of price, $1.25. 
 
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£! 
 
 A 3tof\y FOf^ OUR Older Girls. 
 
 a 
 
 " We commend it to our tjirl-readurs as a book calculated to exert an 
 inflnence wholly gentle and good."— Washington ChronicU. 
 
 ANNIE MASON; 
 
 on, 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF SHELLS. 
 
 "This story possesses much more than ordinary interest and power. 
 It gives a beautiful illustration of the benefits to be derived from Chria- 
 tian patience, charity, courage, and faith. Had it been written by an 
 author better known to fame, and had it been brought into notice by 
 elaborate and conspicuous advertisement, this volume would have com- 
 manded as many readers as have been secured by books of much greater 
 pretension and less vaevii.''''— Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " The story is well told, forcibly written, and will be found an attract- 
 ive book for every-day reading."— £'xpre««. 
 
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 ciously intermingled with enlivening incident." — Advocate and 
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 One vol. 12mo, 420 pages, neatly bound in doth, sent by mail, free of 
 expensp, on receipt of price, $1.50. 
 
 fJ5 ■ — a 
 
A. 3tof\y For\ OUR Older Girls. 
 S a 
 
 " A fresL and spirited story, well calculated to interest and please.'* — 
 Evening Journal. 
 
 
 FABRICS. 
 
 A STORY OF TO-DAY. 
 
 ''The story is written with a great deal of grace .".nd refinement, and 
 is intended to be a ' Society ' novel, holding up the selfishness and world- 
 liness of the merely IJashionable, in contrast with Christian simplicity and 
 soJf-denial.." — Christian Witness. 
 
 " A well-written story, and the evident aim of the author is to do good 
 to every reader. It is a very interesting narrative, and the pleasures 
 and misfortunes and unlucky days of the young lady who figures prin- 
 cipally, are described iu a manner true to life. It does one good to read 
 such a book, it serves to impress one in a solemn yet pleasant manner 
 of the great aim and end of life, and inculcates those excellent moral pre- 
 cepts which all would do well to imitate." — 7'raiiso-ipt. 
 
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 One vol. 12mo, 380 pnges, neatly bound in cloth, sent by mail, free of 
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A: Story foi\ ouf\ Older Gii^ls. 
 B5 53 
 
 iS 
 
 " It may be safely commended as deeply mterestiug."— ^o^to/i B»- 
 carder. 
 
 Miss Roberts' Fortune. 
 
 A STORY FOR GIRi^S. 
 
 " A book for older girls. Its influence upon the reader is excellent. 
 The plot is simple, the elaboration of the story very fine, showing the gov- 
 erning purpose of the author. The vicissitudes of life are made to pay 
 tribute to a sound Christian moralitj', and to aid in building up a true 
 womanly character. It is a healthy book, and as such we commend it."— 
 ProvidetKX Press. 
 
 " A story of genuine strength and merit. The heroine is an orphan 
 and an heiress, but with tendencies which tend to make her life a lonely 
 and unhappy one. Her resolution to overcome these, and the growth of 
 her character in all natural and healthy directions, is beautifully de- 
 lineated. Besides Miss Roberts, there are other hearty, joyous, quaint, 
 good people. And a quiet little love story running through the whole 
 does not detract from its interest."— 7%e Advance. 
 
 " There is the odor of true Christian sweetness about the leading 
 character, Helen, that will find admirers, while the story in its conrse 
 shows the gradual development of her character into that of a swee t, 
 unselfish woman."— J5«ar<A and Home. 
 
 ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 
 770 Broadway, New York. 
 
 One vol. 12mo, 380 pages, neatly bound in cloth, $1.50. Sent by mtA\ 
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 a