ogiTHE INLAND 
 §H CITY 
 
 1 ^B! ^ Letter and A Poem 
 
 7 ^""^ OMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 
 
 REPRINTED BY THE 
 ACADEMY PRESS 
 WITH ILLUSTRA 
 TIONS BY THE NOR 
 WICH ART SCHOOL 
 ON THE OCCASION 
 OF THE CELEBRA 
 TION OF THE TWO 
 HUNDRED AND FIF 
 TIETH ANNIVER 
 SARY OF THE SET 
 TLEMENT OF THE 
 TOWN OF NORWICH 
 
 NORWICH CONNECTICUT 
 1659 - 1909 
 
 of California 
 I Regional 
 ' Facility
 
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 THE INLAND 
 CITY 
 
 A Letter and A Poe?n 
 
 by 
 
 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 
 
 REPRINTED BY THE 
 ACADEMY PRESS 
 WITH ILLUSTRA 
 TIONS BY THE NOR 
 WICH ART SCHOOL 
 ON THE OCCASION 
 OF THE CELEBRA 
 TION OF THE TWO 
 HUNDRED AND FIF 
 TIETH ANNIVER 
 SARY OF THE SET 
 TLEiMENT OF THE 
 TOWN OF NORWICH 
 
 NORWICH CONNECTICUT 
 1659 - 1909
 
 FOREWORD 
 (to the 1906 edition) 
 
 JKTorivich is proud to claim Edmund Clarence 
 Stedman as an adopted son and lie is alivajs 
 ready to do honor to the home of his early youth. 
 He came to Norivich at fi-ve years of age and li'ved 
 ivith relatives in Norivich Toivriy attending school 
 here until he ivas fitted for Tale College ar.d 
 returning at a later period to be the editor oj a local 
 newspaper. He alivays kept his interest in the toivn 
 and his friendship for its inhabitants. 
 
 Some years ago Mr. Stedman ivas inuited to address 
 the Norivich Toivn Rural Association at its annual 
 meeting. He ivas unable to be present on that occasion^ 
 but ivrote a letter of regret., a part of ivhich is giuen 
 in these pages, making at the same time a generous con- 
 tribution to the Association. 
 
 ^^The Inland City'' ivas published in one of Mr. 
 Stedman' s early books of poems ivhich is noiv out of 
 print. Hence its reprint at the press of The Norivich 
 Free Academy is most acceptable and fitting, 
 
 Maria Perit Oilman
 
 THE LETTER 
 
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 l:k^^', ...r.\ THE LETTER JVw^J^J?''-i^ 
 
 <(T et me confess that I sat down to write to you, 
 just now, — as I have written to several other 
 Arbor Day Committees, — that I am so embarrassed 
 this month with overwork that I must ask you to 
 wait another year for the few words so kindly desired. 
 
 "But your letter, a graceful petal from 'The Rose 
 uf New England', calls up memories. On second 
 thought 1 cannot put off" in that way the first request 
 sent me from Old Norwich Town. 
 
 "To the 'Landing' one might give the go-by, but 
 not to the 'Old Town' as I knew it j or, rather, as 
 I know it now, and could not have known it until 
 after some knowledge of the outer and less charac- 
 teristic world. 
 
 "For, I now comprehend that even a Hawthorne 
 might have found in old Norwich food for his imagi- 
 nation, and need not have gone abroad for themes and 
 types. Where was there, indeed, a place to rival it, 
 with its rocks and trees and ancient manor houses and
 
 
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 fragrant gardens ; its dear old ladies shutting up the 
 front windows of their mossy houses, but airing, in 
 their ancient carriage, tl^eir more ancient manners and 
 their fine old lace; its curfew rung at 9 p. m.; its 
 burying ground, dating from the time of William and 
 Mary ; its conference-meeting courtships 5 its elm- 
 bordered green, where grass needed no cutting, for 
 the cows clipped the lower end, and we Academy 
 boys gave it small chance to grow between the Church 
 and 'Fuller's Store' ; its base-ball and turkey-matches 
 on Fast Days ; its bon-fires on Thanksgiving ; its baked 
 beans and sewing circles and revivals and town meet- 
 ings ; its Deacons and Tithing-men and Select-men 
 and Justices of the Peace ; its pretty girls each one fit 
 to be the wife of a President, far too sweet and good 
 to be sold to any English Duke ! 
 
 "Old Norwich ! where no one ever got very rich, 
 not even Mr. Fuller ; where our tailor was a states- 
 man and our shoemaker a philosopher ; where, in 
 fact, there was no dull side to the picture, except the 
 long sermons, and a general conviction on the part of 
 the grown-up residents that a funeral was the nicest, 
 as it was the most frequent, kind of entertainment, 
 and that it was ever so much better to go to the house 
 of mourning than to the house of feasting, — Thanks- 
 giving Day excepted. Mrs. Gaskell's 'Cranford' was 
 not a 'circumstance' to that picturesque town, where I 
 played and studied and dreamed, but most of all ran
 
 
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 wild amid its woods and waters, during the ten yt^ars 
 of adolescence, which are the longest season of every- 
 one's life. 
 
 "Two summers ago I passed a week with our young 
 romancer 'Sidney Luska', visiting the old town after 
 a quarter of a centun, 's absence. I saw the good 
 work of the Rural Association. So many more trees, 
 so much more trim and trig, yet picturesque. The 
 whole circuit 'round town' through a continuous grove. 
 One had to climb above it to take it all in. 
 
 "No one can be born amid such beauty without 
 forming unconsciously a taste for the beautiful ; it is 
 the only place that I know of where one could endure 
 the Westminster confession without revision. 
 
 "But I had two griefs during my visit. The first, 
 all will comprehend who are familiar with the annals 
 of the Stedman homestead and with those of Yantic 
 cemetery ; the other, was the loss of my boyhood's 
 companion, that I had verily thought immortal — I 
 mean the brook which came down by the Scotland 
 road and the present Gulliver place, through the 
 meadow and the hollow in front of Deacon Stedman's 
 house and so on to the Yantic river. I do not know 
 what it was called. I never asked its name ; it used 
 to flow right along without calling summer and winter, 
 and to put on great airs in the spring freshet time. 
 It was to me one of the most live and beautiful things 
 on earth. I used so often to seek its company and
 
 
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 follow it up into the woods, and so much of it ran 
 through my uncle's land to the northeast, that I grew 
 to consider it my own brook. There were trout left 
 in it, and often after a rain did I catch a half dozen. 
 I have caught larger ones since, but none worth so 
 much to me. 1 know every turn and hole and riffle 
 in that brook. Nobody ventured to utilize it for 
 anything. 
 
 "What haunted me in those days as I went 
 mooning along it — what I sought to find — I do 
 not know ; but on the first day of my recent visit I 
 went to its banks ; I knew what I was looking for ; 
 it was nothing less than that which Longfellow has 
 entitled 'My Lost Youth'. Well, the brook was as 
 much gone as my youth, just about as much ; there 
 was, to be sure, a tiny trickle glimmering between its 
 narrow banks — the stream too tiny and the banks 
 too narrow to be accounted for by the lens of age 
 substituted for the magnifying eye of boyhood. 
 Plainly there had been a conspiracy somewhere. 
 The next morning I followed the trail through the 
 meadows and up through the woods, until at last, 
 away at the farthest boundary of m,y early rambles, 1 
 came upon a huge stone dam, imprisoning a sparkling 
 mimic lake, and the mystery was solved. Dr. Hale 
 has told of 'the man who stole a meeting house'. 
 No man would have dared steal my brook. It took 
 a corporation. Yes, there were the names engraved
 
 upon the brook's prison walls. They actually gloried 
 in their crime ! Of course it was done by the 'down 
 towners', — and under the transparent pretext of 
 needing water ! In my day that was not a fashionable 
 beverage at the 'Landing'. The cause of temperance 
 doubtless has advanced 5 I confess there was room for 
 it } but the old town has lost one of its prettiest 
 features. 
 
 "However, the Rural Association has added 
 beauties that make amends for all that I have missed, 
 and I will no longer 'Look before and after, and sigh 
 for what is not'."
 
 THE INLAND CITY
 
 
 
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 1^:.:..:-¥zn. THE INLAND CITY f X^lr^^ 
 
 (1851) 
 /"Guarded by circling streams and wooded mountains, 
 
 Like sentinels round a queen, 
 Dotted with groves and musical with fountains, 
 The city lies serene. 
 
 Not far away the Atlantic tide diverges. 
 
 And, up the southern shore 
 Of gray New England, rolls in shortened surges, 
 
 That murmur evermore. 
 
 The fairy city ! not for frowning castle 
 
 Do I extol her name ; 
 Not for the gardens and the domes palatial 
 
 Of Oriental fame ; 
 
 Yet if there be one man who will not rally. 
 
 One man, who sayeth not 
 That of all cities in the Eastern valley 
 
 Ours is the fairest spot ;
 
 Then let him roam beneath those elms gigantic, 
 
 Or idly wander where 
 Shetucket flows meandering, where Yantic 
 
 Leaps through the cloven air. 
 
 Gleaming from rock to rock with sunlit motion, 
 
 Then slumbering in the cove ; 
 So sinks the soul, from Passion's wild devotion, 
 
 To the deep calm of love. 
 
 And journey with me to the village olden, 
 
 Among whose devious ways 
 Are mossy mansions, rich with legends golden 
 
 Of early forest days ; 
 
 Elysian time ! when by the rippling water. 
 
 Or in the woodland groves. 
 The Indian warrior and the Sachem's daughter 
 
 Whispered their artless loves ; 
 
 Legends of fords, where Uncas made his transit, 
 
 Fierce for the border war, 
 And drove all day the alien Narragansett 
 
 Back to his haunts afar ; 
 
 Tales of the after time, when scant and humble 
 
 Grew the Mohegan band. 
 And Tracy, Griswold, Huntington and Trumbull, 
 
 Were judges in the land.
 
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 So let the caviler feast on old tradition, 
 
 And then at sunset climb 
 Vp von green hill, where, on his broadened vision 
 
 May burst the view sublime ! 
 
 The citv spires, with stately power impelling 
 
 The soul to look above, 
 And peaceful homes, in many a rural dwelling, 
 
 Lit up with flames of love ; — 
 
 And then confess, nor longer idly dally, 
 
 While sinks tiie lingering sun, 
 That of all cities in the Eastern valley 
 
 Ours is the fairest one. 
 
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