o 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 BY 
 
 W. C. PRIME, LL.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ALONG NEW ENGLAND ROADS 
 "i GO A-FISHING" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 I8 95 
 
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE PRIMEVAL FOREST I 
 
 II. A TROUT-STREAM 12 
 
 III. AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 24 
 
 IV. BEYOND 37 
 
 V. AN OLD ANGLER 54 
 
 VI. DOUGHNUTS AND TOBACCO 67 
 
 VII. JOHN LEDYARD 77 
 
 VIIT. THURSDAY-EVENING MEETING .... 85 
 
 IX. AN EASTER LONG AGO 92 
 
 X. AN OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS IO2 
 
 XI. ALONE AT THANKSGIVING Ill 
 
 XII. HOW THE OLD LADY BEAT JOHN . . . 122 
 
 XIII. PHILISTIS , 128 
 
 XIV. A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 135 
 
 XV. LIFE SEEN THROUGH A WINDOW ... 148 
 
 XVI. COLORED PEOPLE 156 
 
 XVII. EXAMPLE 172 
 
 XVIII. THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 180 
 
 xix. A CHILD S VOICE 191 
 
 XX. PURITAN SUNDAY . 2OI 
 
 M310310 
 
AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 
 
 LONESOME LAKE cabin stands three thousand 
 feet above the sea, in the primeval forest. It is 
 reached by a zigzag bridle-path, cut in the moun 
 tain-side, which leads up from the Franconia Notch 
 road. The cabin and lake are a thousand feet 
 above the road. Both road and bridle-path go 
 through the primeval forest. No axe of lumber 
 man has, hitherto, desecrated this forest sanctuary. 
 
 The expression " primeval forest " is little under 
 stood by many who use it. While there is an 
 almost universal desire to preserve portions of our 
 American forests from the saw-mill, there seems to 
 be everywhere a prevalent notion that this end can 
 be accomplished by a judicious system of forestry, 
 which includes the plan of thinning out the woods, 
 selecting and cutting from year to year some of 
 
2 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the older trees, guarding the younger to grow up 
 and grow old, thus preserving and cherishing a 
 perpetual succession of shadowy groves. Well 
 meant though this plan doubtless is, and suited to 
 preserving parks, it would, if carried out, be destruc 
 tive to the primeval forest, whose grandeur in things 
 large and beauty in things small can only be pre 
 served as they have been created, by letting alone. 
 The forest can take care of itself, but is jealous of 
 interference. It is not a park, nor does it resemble 
 a park. The one is mere nature, the other is art. 
 The natural forest is a world of innumerable creat 
 ures, animate and inanimate, who have from time 
 immemorial lived in community. You can never 
 tame the wildness of those people. 
 
 Why not call trees people ? since, if you come to 
 live among them year after year, you will learn to 
 know many of them personally, and an attachment 
 will grow up between you and them individually. 
 They will be companionable to you, as are your 
 horses and your dogs, and after a while you will 
 have the same sympathy with them that you have 
 with the next higher order of living beings whom 
 you call animals. 
 
 There are hundreds of white-birch trees on the 
 mountain-side, and on the ridge, and around the lake, 
 each of which I know, and of these there are per 
 haps twenty or thirty with which I have had long 
 relations of friendship. I would not have the 
 
THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 3 
 
 woodman s axe touch any tree on this mountain 
 for any money. Every one is a friend. Some, I 
 cannot say why, by reason of one or another pecu 
 liarity, are special friends. You would not find it 
 very easy to say what characteristics, differing from 
 those of other persons, make the friends you chiefly 
 love specially dear to you. Nor would it be pos 
 sible to say why certain trees in this vast forest 
 always seem particularly precious in my eyes ; 
 whether it is because of stateliness, or grace, or 
 firmness, or calm strength that speaks of trust 
 worthiness, or because this one looks jovial and 
 tosses his arms more recklessly, or that one is a 
 seemingly sad old fellow, whose forlorn and weary 
 look asks for sympathy. 
 
 Often I have questioned one old friend concern 
 ing his life story, and he has silently told much of 
 it; wherein is instruction. For the life of a tree 
 has its resemblances to the life of a man, and the 
 latter may find good example in the former. 
 
 His youth was passed among difficult surround 
 ings, and the labor of living was arduous. He 
 adopted early the motto of success, whether of 
 a young tree or of a young man, "patience and 
 perseverance." The mountain - side was rocky, 
 and the only soil was the dead dust of his 
 ancestors, clinging among the stones, and mixed 
 with the gravel of decaying granite. At the very 
 start, when he sent out his young roots, they en- 
 
4 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 countered bowlders on every side. Haste and 
 impatience would have ruined him, and left the 
 bowlders masters of the situation. He directed 
 his roots warily around them, feeling along their 
 sides, and drinking rain that dripped from them, 
 and thus the youth grew strong with the help of 
 the obstacles that were in his way. So his full 
 strength was attained, and his roots reached far 
 and interlocked with the roots of his young friends, 
 and they helped one another to stand up in the 
 winds. 
 
 All the time there had been one bowlder espe 
 cially obnoxious and obstructive. But he had 
 been patient, and thrust a root between this and 
 another, greater, which almost touched it. And 
 that root thrived, and though strangely shaped and 
 flattened between the rocks, was healthy, so that 
 when the day of his strength arrived the bowlder 
 was to him no more a trouble ; for with the abun 
 dant force in that root he quietly shoved the great 
 rock out of his way and forgot it. So patience in 
 the time of weakness prepares for victory in the 
 time of strength. 
 
 It is strange that with our changing flesh we bear 
 always the scars of mishaps in childhood. It must 
 be some hundreds of years since a squirrel in mid 
 winter (when squirrels feed on the tender tips of 
 birch branches) ate rather deep, and stopped for 
 ever in the sapling the growth of that twig. But 
 
THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 5 
 
 just below the end was a branching twig, which the 
 squirrel let alone. Why? I don t know. How 
 should I know what scared a squirrel on this moun 
 tain two hundred generations of squirrels ago ? 
 The tree s history is recorded, but of the squirrel s 
 nothing can be known except this one incident. 
 How do we know it was a squirrel that bit off 
 the twig ? I answer, how can you account for it 
 otherwise ? Suggest a better theory, and we will 
 accept it. That s the principle on which half the 
 modern ologies go. Devise a theory and accept 
 it as demonstrated truth, and rest your scientific 
 faith on it, because no one has invented a better 
 theory. I believe in the squirrel, and the evidence 
 that a squirrel bit off that branch is as good as the 
 evidence for nine-tenths of the supposed truths in 
 modern progressive science. 
 
 The small ungnawed branch grew out nearly at 
 a right angle to the main stem ; and there, when I 
 first knew my old friend, was a huge knee, close to 
 the tree trunk, in one of the branches nearly a foot 
 in diameter, where the twig had started out from the 
 little stem. 
 
 I have often wondered what made other scars on 
 the body and arms of my old friend. The stormy 
 life he led I know all about. Who that has win 
 tered and summered in the hill country of New 
 Hampshire does not know it ? Every winter was 
 fierce with snow and frost and tempest. Every 
 
6 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 summer had its stretches of dry times among the 
 rocks and gravel, three thousand feet above the 
 sea, when the white blood ran slow and hot and 
 feverish in the veins. And then came the summer 
 storm, wild, mad, with thunder shaking the moun 
 tains, and lightning falling on one and another and 
 another of the trees, sending them down riven and 
 shattered, and then wind, such as winter knows not, 
 heavy wind dragging wet clouds through the tree- 
 tops with awful speed, howling by turns, and by 
 turns hushing down to horrible silence before the 
 next flash of the lightning and the next tremendous 
 gust, wherein all the trees writhe and twist and 
 toss their branches in hopeless struggling. But no 
 that is only the external manifestation in which 
 the tree, like the strong man, seems at times to give 
 way to the pressure of the trials that environ him. 
 The agony is not hopeless. The strong trunk 
 is not moved. Storms rarely reach the depths 
 of the forest, where the trees, standing together, 
 guard one another. When it is wildest and most 
 fearful up in the tree-tops it is calm below, and 
 the violent gale breathes only gentle breaths of soft, 
 cool air in the depths of the forest. The compan 
 ionship of the trees in a great forest is a magnif 
 icent sight when a storm is raging over them. 
 
 There were a dozen of them, near together, around 
 my old friend, of about the same age. Their ances 
 tors had settled here together, among the spruce- 
 
THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 7 
 
 trees and balsams. There is a water-course close by 
 them, where in rains a torrent descends the moun 
 tain, and where in dry times some water is mostly 
 always flowing down under the rocks and moss and 
 oxalis. Birch - trees love such places, and looking 
 up from the valley you can trace the lines of all the 
 water-courses down the mountain, by the lighter- 
 green foliage of birches contrasting with the dark 
 green of the pines which cover most of the hill 
 country where the axe has not done its devastating 
 work. These old people have grown old together, 
 and it is interesting to see how differently they have 
 grown old, just as men do. 
 
 Some were poorer and some were richer. But 
 the wealth and the poverty had no relation to the 
 land they lived on. It resulted from the stuff that 
 was in them, the vigor of constitution, analogous to 
 the will in a man. 
 
 There is one mighty old fellow who stands di 
 rectly on the top of a rock, three or four feet in di 
 ameter, and who sent his roots down on three sides 
 of it. So the tree stood on the rock as on a ped 
 estal, and you can see the big stone, hugged by 
 the great roots, under the very centre of the 
 trunk ; and he is stout and green and rugged, good, 
 apparently, for a hundred years more. Life and 
 success with him are due to determination and 
 making the most of his small opportunities. 
 
 There is another, who stood close by my old 
 
8 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 friend, and who is like some old men, shabby in his 
 attire and utterly regardless of his appearance. He 
 had the best of land, and had grown fat on it and 
 lived sumptuously, and when old age came he grew 
 cynical, despised the young modern slips of trees 
 around him, then grew misanthropic and selfish 
 and careless. You never saw such rags as the old 
 wretch wears. They flutter in the wind around 
 his miserable old body from the ground up for forty 
 feet, streamers of bark, some long and black and 
 scarcely holding to him, some rolled up in tight 
 rolls, dingy and dirty. I remember him when he 
 was a noble white birch, and his dress was snow 
 and gold, and when the afternoon sun shone slant 
 ing down the mountain I have seen the fringes of 
 his robes touched with crimson and purple, and his 
 apparel then was altogether royal. 
 
 Why did not he go down instead of my kingly 
 old friend ? The woods are full of graves of great 
 trees, long green mounds, mossy and beautiful. 
 Why has not that old fellow, who has nothing to 
 live for, lain down to be covered up comfortably, 
 and forgotten ? 
 
 Many joyous memories are connected with my 
 old friend. Once, years ago, as I came down the 
 mountain, I found on his trunk a scrap of white 
 paper, whereon a friend, strolling up the path thus 
 far, but no farther, had written a few lines from 
 Horace, and another few from Menander, and fast- 
 
THE PRIMEVAL FOREST 9 
 
 ened them there, where he was sure I would find 
 them. Once, years ago, I sat on one of his great 
 roots, and talked with a friend with whom I shall 
 never talk again in the language of this world. 
 Once, years ago, as I came down the zigzag path, 
 I looked across the angle from two hundred feet 
 above, and saw two lovers sitting at his foot, and 
 knew they were telling, with eyes and lips, the old 
 and never -too -old story of young hope. There 
 are lovers in these forests sometimes ; for the 
 Profile House is only three miles away, and Lone 
 some Lake has become one of the sights to see, 
 and it is a charming stroll this way for those who 
 love to wander and talk. They are old married 
 people now, those lovers, but if they came here to 
 morrow they would not see any change in the 
 forest ; for they took no note of trees or rocks or 
 anything, but one of the other. And they would 
 not miss the tree, or know that his is that huge 
 trunk that lies all along the hill-side. 
 
 One day I was walking down the path, and, as is 
 my custom, sat down often to look at trees and 
 plants and animals. A northwester was blowing, 
 but this side of the mountain was sheltered, and 
 only now and then a whirl of wind shook the tree- 
 tops. I was looking down the hill-side towards my 
 old friend. A red squirrel was standing on a dead 
 branch, a few feet off, looking doubtingly at me. 
 A woodpecker was at work on a trunk almost 
 
10 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 within reach of my hand. A white-throat sparrow 
 was pouring out that long, sweet refrain which is 
 most melodious of all forest sounds when heard as 
 the sun is going down. 
 
 There was a rustle of the breeze, and a sudden 
 rising of the sound of the river down in the valley, 
 which showed that for the moment the current of 
 air was from the southeastward. And then there 
 was a loud, crashing crack, and after it silence. 
 What internal shock, what violent emotion, what 
 that, to the tree, was like the sudden memory of a 
 great joy or a great grief to an old man, had broken 
 the stout old heart of my friend I cannot tell. 
 Was it that breath of wind ? He fell towards it, 
 not away from it. 
 
 In the silence that followed the sound of the 
 heart-breaking he seemed to be looking downward 
 for a place to lie. Then slowly his lofty branches 
 glided across among the branches of the other 
 trees, and swept gently downward through them. 
 Two of his companions reached out strong arms to 
 catch and hold him up, but he slipped quietly out 
 of their hold vain hold now that all was over 
 and so lay down among the mosses. But he did 
 not lie comfortably with his body on some small 
 bowlder, and he lifted himself up with a convulsive 
 spring, and then lay down again. Nor was he yet 
 at ease. For a moment he turned a little, this 
 way and that way, till he secured his bed of rest, 
 
THE PRIMEVAL FOREST II 
 
 along among the rocks, and then there was perfect 
 quiet. 
 
 The south wind stole in softly over him. And 
 the shabby old fellow, who ought to be lying there, 
 fluttered his dirty rags, and seemed to be shaking 
 himself from head to foot with unseemly laughter. 
 Much as I abhor an axe, I am tempted to cut down 
 that old tree. Better some wet October day I 
 will set fire to his rags, and see the column of flame 
 shoot skyward around him. It will not hurt, only 
 purify him, and he may send out young branches 
 and be a better tree. 
 
 No ; there is no science of forestry which can 
 preserve the solemnity and beauty of the primeval 
 forest. The one only law to be enforced from 
 generation to generation is, " Let it alone." 
 
II 
 
 A TROUT-STREAM 
 
 THERE are no streams in all the world more 
 beautiful and grand than are the streams which 
 flow down the ravines of the Franconia Mountains 
 and out into the valleys. It is not to be denied 
 that the State of New Hampshire, by its legisla 
 tion or neglect of legislation, has reduced the value 
 of the valley lands by destroying the beauty of 
 these streams after they leave the mountain slopes. 
 No one cares to build a country home on the bank 
 of a river flowing with mush of saw-dust, unap 
 proachable except by wading in soft, rotten wood, 
 foul with drifting slab stuff and the waste of saw 
 mills. To see water flowing in all the exhilaration 
 of freedom you must go from the valley to the 
 foot of the mountain, and meet the rivers where 
 they come out from the forest. Or enter the forest 
 high up on the mountain-side and find the spring 
 brook, and follow it down the wild gorge through 
 which it rushes, receiving constantly other streams, 
 and growing into a torrent before it sweeps out on 
 the level country and dies a miserable death, sud- 
 
A TROUT-STREAM 13 
 
 denly losing all spirit, vigor, life, and beauty in the 
 mill-dam. 
 
 Pond Brook is the name of the stream which, 
 flowing out of Echo Lake on the summit of Fran- 
 coma Notch, wanders down through a dark ravine 
 some four or five miles, always in primeval forest, 
 until it emerges on the valley lands, and, after a mile 
 of sunshine on fields and farms, is lost in Gale 
 River. There are trout in Pond Brook, mostly 
 small in the ravine, many large in the open coun 
 try. Times are not now what they once were here. 
 Time was when this brook was one of the finest 
 trout-streams in the world. But times have changed. 
 A large manufacturing village, six miles away, turns 
 out on every Sunday morning in April and May 
 scores of men with poles and lines, who reduce 
 the trout to a comparatively small number. I have 
 counted, on a Sunday morning, thirteen rods fol 
 lowing one another within two hours along the 
 bank where the brook meets the river. 
 
 Nevertheless, the angler who cares less for the 
 number and size of his fish than for the surround 
 ing joys which make trout-fishing so delightful will 
 not fail to find his reward here, under the lofty 
 slopes of Mount Lafayette, among the fields of 
 Franconia Valley, than which no valley of America 
 or Europe is more beautiful. 
 
 There are spots of ideal beauty all along the 
 stream, where I have been accustomed to linger, 
 
I 4 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 and forget, and remember. There is one such spot 
 where the river cuts under its left bank for ten or a 
 dozen rods, while the other shore is a broad stretch 
 of gravel. It flows swiftly, three or four feet deep 
 under the high bank, on which various bushes hang 
 in a dense mass of foliage. Then it spreads out 
 over a wider bed of cobble-stones, making as it 
 descends two superb curves of beauty ; then takes a 
 straight course down a rushing rapid for ten or fif 
 teen rods more. In this stretch of the stream I 
 have, in the many years that I have fished Pond 
 Brook, taken more trout and larger trout than in 
 any other part of it. It is so open and free from 
 trees and bushes on one shore, that you can use a 
 fly rod with great comfort, and cover seventy or 
 eighty feet with easy casting. 
 
 It was warm, though late in the season, when I 
 sat down there, the other day. Golden -rod and 
 asters made the fields bright; once in a while a Va 
 nessa butterfly sailed along, and fluttered his choc 
 olate-black wings with old-gold borders close under 
 my eyes as he paused for a whiff of my cigar. The 
 remains of a barbed-wire fence skirted the top of 
 the bank, an example of the fast prevailing bar 
 barism of the nineteenth century. There is no 
 more barbaric custom in the history of mankind 
 than the use of barbed wire to enclose fields. The 
 express purpose is to hurt cattle. Without the 
 hurting the barbs are useless, and plain wire would 
 
A TROUT-STREAM 15 
 
 do as well. I have seen fine horses ruined by those 
 abominations of modern fencing. 
 
 It was a day to sit lazily on the river-bank and 
 look around and think. I took my fly-book from 
 my pocket and hunted through its leaves for some 
 fly which might possibly call up a trout in the 
 rapid. As I turned over the leaves, somewhat 
 listlessly, I found myself thinking of something far 
 away in time and space. It was a very clear mem 
 ory or you might call it a vision, seen through the 
 suns and the mists of more than a half-century. 
 I saw another grassy meadow somewhat like this, 
 and a stream not so large as this, winding its way 
 through it. 
 
 On the bank, or on a knoll a little way from the 
 bank, sat an old man and a very small boy. The 
 man was a tall, slender man, with a stoop in his 
 shoulders, long arms, long legs, long, thin, gray hair 
 hanging over his checked shirt, blue eyes, a sharp 
 nose, an equally sharp chin. Every minute partic 
 ular of his dress and appearance came back to me 
 distinctly. The boy was not yet five years old. 
 But, young as he was, he was intensely interested in 
 the instruction he was receiving. The old man 
 was showing him the flies in his fly-book, telling 
 him how he tied them, answering the innumerable 
 questions of the little shaver whom he was teach 
 ing to take trout with the fly. 
 
 For this man was a renowned angler; and, like all 
 
16 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 genuine anglers, was kind to little children, and took 
 great delight in teaching this one the gentle art. 
 At that moment he was explaining that no orte 
 ought to tie a fly for trout on anything stouter than 
 a single horse-hair. We had no silk- worm snells 
 and leaders in those days. Nor had we silk lines. 
 His line was made of horse-hair, five or six strands, 
 tapering down to three and two and one. His rod 
 was hickory, two lengths spliced. I do not remem 
 ber the reel, but from later experiences I think it 
 was a large, wooden, home-made reel. His lessons 
 soon became practical. 
 
 The little boy took the rod in both hands, and 
 began casting, or trying to cast. The perverse 
 line behaved as it always behaves with beginners. 
 The old man patiently disentangled it from mullen- 
 tops and tussocks of grass, and with careful fingers 
 extracted the hooks, now from his own shirt and 
 now from the boy s. Once in a while the cast went 
 out well, and the boy with delight obeyed the in 
 structor, drawing, letting the flies go back on the 
 current, drawing across, lifting the bobber and 
 dancing it up on the ripples. And suddenly there 
 was a rush at the tail fly. His little eyes were in 
 tently watching the cast, and the rush so startled 
 him that he unconsciously jerked his rod and struck 
 his first trout exactly as he should have struck him. 
 
 Then came the struggle. He wanted to lift that 
 fish out with a swing; but the old man held him 
 
A TROUT-STREAM 17 
 
 firmly by his right arm, and compelled him to han 
 dle the rod correctly. It was a marvel, has been 
 always since that day a marvel, why that single 
 horse-hair did not break. It held on the gentle 
 spring of the hickory rod while the fish went under 
 one bank and under the other, while he went down 
 stream and the reel paid out and the boy trotted 
 in the deep grass following the trout, and the old 
 man kept firm grasp on the right arm of the little 
 angler. 
 
 Yes, he was an angler then, and thereafter through 
 all his life. He killed that trout, a half-pounder 
 he or the old man, who managed the rod by manag 
 ing his arm. And when the trout lay on the grass 
 they two sat down again and talked. Many and 
 many a time after that they two sat on the grass 
 by the brook-side and talked. The old man died 
 long ago. But I have in my fly-book a reminder of 
 him two flies which he tied when he was very old. 
 It was seeing them that brought back this memory 
 as I sat in the sunshine. 
 
 While I read my fly-book after this fashion a 
 grasshopper leaped on to the open page. I caught 
 him, and I then caught three or four more, and 
 threw them into the swift stream. They disap 
 peared in the current; but in a moment, sixty feet 
 down stream, I saw a small fish rise and swash the 
 water as he seized two of them in succession. 
 
 So I stood up on the high grass-covered bank, 
 
18 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 and resumed fishing in fact instead of in fancy. I 
 worked the water thoroughly, beginning with short 
 casts and extending line till I had sixty or seventy 
 feet out. Nothing rose. Then I paid out until the 
 flies (I was using two) were more than a hundred 
 feet away, swinging across and back, in and over 
 the rushing water. I forgot that I was fishing, and 
 watched the action of the flies, practising with them 
 to make their actions life-like, thinking for the mo 
 ment only that I was dancing flies on a running 
 stream. Then I began to reel in line, and the tail 
 fly flapped in the current close to the bowlders on 
 my shore, while the upper fly, a small golden pheas 
 ant feather, hung loosely, swinging in the air three 
 or four inches above the water. There was a trout 
 under those rocks. He had seen those flies for 
 several minutes, and what he had thought about 
 them must be matter of conjecture. Perhaps he 
 suspected them to be shams. Perhaps he was 
 not in a feeding mood. Probably he was in that 
 condition in which men often find themselves, com 
 fortable and lazy, too much so to be easily induced 
 to disturb himself. There are moral lessons to be 
 learned in angling. Here was one. Temptation 
 may be steadily withstood, but the moment of yield 
 ing comes like a flash. The price of successful 
 resistance is eternal, unwavering, vigilant self-re 
 straint. Something that was very life-like, a flutter 
 of the wing, a gleam of light on the golden feath- 
 
A TROUT-STREAM 19 
 
 er, a doubling or outstretching of the hackle legs, a 
 curve in the water through which he was looking 
 something caught the trout intellect, broke into 
 the caution with which he had surrounded himself, 
 and he went with a rush for that fly. 
 
 I, standing on the bank nearly a hundred feet up 
 stream, and knowing nothing of the intellectual 
 struggle going on in a trout s brain down there, 
 was astonished and somewhat startled when a 
 noble fish went into the air, sending a cloud of spray 
 over the fly, and falling with his broad side on the 
 hook. I had expected nothing so large. 
 
 Trout take the fly in various ways. They are 
 skilful, by experience. In many instances, when the 
 fly is on or near the water, the fish strikes it with 
 his tail, and turns swiftly to seize it in his mouth. 
 It is a charming sight to watch an insect passing 
 over a shallow where trout are numerous near the 
 mouth of a cold brook or on a broad rapid, and 
 see the tails of the fish dash water at him. Often 
 you may see, as flies light on the water, the broad 
 tail of a large fish swash over one, and then the 
 swirl as the head swings around and the mouth 
 takes in the half-drowned fly. It is very common, 
 therefore, when fishing with flies to hook fish 
 through the tail fin. Often a fish throws his whole 
 body over an insect. 
 
 Now and then a skilful trout will leap into the 
 air, mouth open, and engulf a fly in his throat. 
 
20 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 This is an interesting sight when it occurs, for you 
 will remember that looking from below the water 
 into the air, unless the view be perpendicular, the 
 line of vision is around a corner, along the angle 
 of refraction of light. The insect is one, two, or 
 more inches away from the straight line of vision, 
 and if the fish leaps for the insect on the direct line 
 of vision he will certainly miss him. Do trout 
 learn by experience the principle of the refraction 
 of light in passing through different mediums ? 
 
 I did not hook this trout. He hooked himself. 
 As he fell on the fly the hook pierced the skin 
 just below the adipose fin, close to the tail fin. If 
 he had been hooked in the regular way, in his 
 mouth, I should probably have lost him because of 
 what next occurred. The grassy bank on which I 
 was standing was some ten feet above the stream, 
 cut away in the spring freshets so that the turf 
 extended to the edge, and the earth mixed with 
 loose stone sloped steeply down to the rapid, bor 
 dered here with round water -worn stones fallen 
 from this crumbling bank. The trout found a mor 
 al lesson at the fly end of my tackle concerning 
 temptation. I found another lesson at the other 
 extreme of the tackle, the butt of my rod, " Let 
 him that thinketh he standeth," etc. 
 
 As the fish leaped I suddenly stepped forward. 
 The bank gave way like dry dust under my feet, 
 and I sat down with a tremendous thud on the 
 
A TROUT STREAM 21 
 
 edge of the sod. No, not on it, but in it, for I 
 went down through it first with a crush of earth 
 and dust and stones ; then, as my heels dug through 
 the loose material below, with a slow but sure de 
 scent which nothing could arrest. I had but one 
 hand to use, for the rod was in my right hand, 
 and that fish was fighting like a tiger on the line, 
 and the reel was paying out, and there was not 
 more than thirty feet of line left on it, and below 
 that rapid was a hole full of brush, whence one 
 could never hope to recover hooks, much less a 
 large trout. 
 
 It was a bright day, with a clear sunshine glit 
 tering over the rapid. I remember distinctly how 
 my high, black, water-proof boots shone as they de 
 scended into the glitter. The round stones con 
 tinually gave way under me, and I sat down lower, 
 lower, lower in swift progression, until I was sitting 
 up to my waist in the river, my rod by some mys 
 terious instinct transferred from my right to my 
 left hand, while with the former I was bracing my 
 self against a bowlder which was only a few inches 
 under water. But for that bowlder I should have 
 rolled over and over in the current. 
 
 Standing up in a stream of water is not so easy 
 as it may seem. Rising to your feet after sitting 
 down in it is wholly another affair from getting up 
 from the ground in the air. Without knowing it 
 we stand, walk, sit up, move about, swing, and man- 
 
22 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 age our bodies by a continual exertion of mind as 
 well as muscle. A dead man cannot stand. A 
 child must learn by experience to walk, and by 
 slow practice acquire the use of the countless 
 muscles, from head and eyes to feet and toes, 
 which are essential to standing, walking, and run 
 ning. All this experience we acquire in the air. 
 In the water, where a pound of flesh no longer 
 presses downward an avoirdupois pound, much of 
 our atmospheric experience is useless. With a 
 heavy medium like water around us, it is no easy 
 thing to regain foothold once lost. This is why 
 many persons are drowned in water in which, with 
 due presence of mind, they could stand up on hard 
 bottom and walk ashore. 
 
 I swung my feet down -stream, and secured a 
 rough hold for my heels. Then I transferred my 
 rod again to the right hand, felt that the fish 
 was on the hook, worked my body into a firm posi 
 tion, gradually found good foothold, and at last 
 stood up in the river. Then I waded across to 
 the shallow gravel bottom on the other side, and 
 began to wonder at the continued vigor of that 
 trout. For I did not know where the hook had 
 pierced him. A trout struck and held by the 
 mouth in a rapid, with his head up - stream, is 
 quickly controlled. The gills, which are the lungs, 
 soon yield to the rush of the water. It was a long 
 time before I got that fish. I don t know how 
 
A TROUT-STREAM 23 
 
 long. He weighed a trifle over three pounds and 
 a half a fine fish for a mountain stream which a 
 hundred anglers visit every spring. 
 
Ill 
 
 AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 
 
 THE sun was nearing the horizon. The road 
 ran close by the side of the river. It was a nar 
 row road just there, and the river was but a small 
 stream a brooklet rather than a brook. But they 
 call it the river, because far down the highland 
 slopes, when it reaches the open country, having 
 received all along its way supplies of water from 
 thousands of springs, it is a river, turning the 
 wheels of great mills, and, farther on, floating 
 ships. 
 
 Here it ran between grassy banks, crossing and 
 recrossing the road, which was not even bridged 
 over it. But as we drove on it grew stronger, and 
 when another road joined that on which we were 
 driving another stream came in also, and thereafter 
 the road was better and the stream was larger. 
 Soon the slope which had been gentle on the open 
 upland became more steep. Road and river en 
 tered the forest, and plunged downhill together. 
 They never separated for miles, the wagon -track 
 following every bend and angle of the torrent, un- 
 
AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 25 
 
 til, at the foot of the long descent, both together 
 came out on a broad valley. 
 
 Three or four miles across the valley we could 
 see the white tower of a church and a mass of elm- 
 trees which hid the village. But we did not 
 go on to the village. For as we left the forest 
 and came out on the plain we parted company 
 with the stream, which wandered away in green 
 meadows, while the road passed in front of a 
 farm-house, standing among sheds and barns, all 
 looking old and weather-worn, but all in good 
 order. 
 
 The place had not changed in aspect since I 
 drove up to the door of the old house forty odd 
 years ago. The same stone-walls enclosed the fields, 
 the same clematis vines ran over them, the same 
 white spires of meadow-sweet stood up out of low 
 green thickets, the same choke-cherry trees dangled 
 their bunches of berries above them. The house 
 was equally unchanged. And now, as I pulled up 
 at the steps, the lapse of time was more difficult of 
 realization when I saw an elderly man sitting on 
 the little piazza. For just such a man, without 
 coat or waistcoat or hat, with short gray beard and 
 frizzly gray hair, sat there when I drove away from 
 the house. 
 
 Of course, I said to myself, this is not my old 
 host, Eleazar Thorn. He must have gone to the 
 church-yard company years ago. Who can it be ? 
 
26 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 "They tell me you keep travellers overnight 
 once in a while," I said. 
 
 "Yes, we give em such as we ve got," was the 
 answer ; " we don t keep tavern, but when any one 
 comes along that wants to stay with us, why we try 
 to make em comfortable." 
 
 An hour or two later, sitting on the piazza with 
 my host, whose name I had not yet learned, I asked: 
 " What has become of the Thorn family that used 
 to live here ?" He looked at me for a moment as if 
 uncertain what to say ; then replied, " The old folks 
 died long sence." "And Ezer?" I asked. Again 
 he looked at me, now a little longer time, and at 
 length said, " I m Ezer ; but I don t remember you." 
 
 It is not worth while to relate how I reminded 
 him of the time when, in company with an artist 
 friend, I spent a week at the house, and of the ur 
 gent advice then given him to cultivate his evident 
 talent with the pencil. 
 
 " Did you give it up entirely ?" 
 
 "I haven t drawn a picture for more n forty 
 year." 
 
 " Why did you give it up ?" 
 
 He turned his eyes away from me, let them rove 
 over the country, looked now for an instant at one 
 thing, then looked to another, and at last said: "Well, 
 I don t know as there was any particular reason, 
 only, you see, little Susie died, and there wasn t any 
 one to make pictures for." There was no special 
 
AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 27 
 
 emotion in his voice. It was a simple matter of 
 fact in his history which he was relating. But when 
 I remembered the old time, there was in his answer 
 a certain pathos. 
 
 One evening, the first evening of our stay, we had 
 come in from a long day s fishing, and, as we ap 
 proached the house, found Ezer sitting on the pi 
 azza step, and by his side a little girl of six years 
 old. He was a large-framed and somewhat uncouth 
 boy or young man. His hands were large, rough 
 ened with farm-work, and burned with sunshine. 
 She was a pretty child, with a great lot of curls 
 hanging from a well-shaped head, and a pair of eyes 
 whose beauty I remember through almost a half- 
 century. He was making pictures for her. He had 
 a sheet of brown paper, the wrapper from off some 
 package, and a broad carpenter s pencil. They two 
 were having a jolly time. He was making rapid 
 sketches. When he began one she would lean over, 
 and with her bright eyes follow the broad lines as 
 they went hither and thither over and around one 
 another, until suddenly she would shout, "It s a 
 cow," or " It s a crow," or " It s a fish," and, clap 
 ping her hands with delight, exclaim, " Make me 
 another, Ezer." 
 
 My companion, older than I, was an artist of 
 fame in those days, and his work is not yet forgot 
 ten. You can see his pictures in galleries and read 
 of him in books. He was greatly interested in the 
 
28 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 sketches made by the boy, and said that he had 
 wonderful ability. He gave him hints, directions, 
 instruction, and when he came away he said, " I 
 shall be surprised if we do not one day hear more 
 of that boy." But we did not. He never left the 
 farm. The motive of the artist in him was only the 
 love of the little one, his sister s child. When the 
 child died the motive was gone forever. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was an artist, and a great artist. 
 For, after all, there is but one accurate measure of 
 merit in any work of art namely, its success in ac 
 complishing the purpose of its production. This 
 principle is not understood as it should be. What 
 ever other ideas may be held as to the constituents 
 of high art, the fact remains always that if the ar 
 tist have a purpose in his work and that purpose is 
 not accomplished, he has failed ; if it be accomplish 
 ed, he has achieved success. The major part of 
 criticism is wasted, because of neglect of this fun 
 damental principle. 
 
 The domain of art production is immensely wider 
 and more grand than the domain of that which is 
 called criticism. In the arrangement of this world 
 and of mankind in it, the divine order is that art 
 shall supply the wants, minister to the desires, grat 
 ify the wishes of men. Nature is God s gift, and 
 art is equally his endowment. That is a very nar 
 row, though it is a very common, belief that the 
 purpose of high art is the product of works which 
 
AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 29 
 
 accord with the ideas and please the tastes of a lim 
 ited number of persons called educated people. 
 The highest education in this world produces only 
 a very little knowledge, and what is called culti 
 vated taste is full of error, egotism, and ignorance. 
 If we ever attain to the superior knowledge of the 
 immortals we shall know how little we knew here, 
 how feeble were our ideas of the beautiful, how rude 
 and rough and graceless were the pictures and stat 
 ues and poems and other works of our arts which 
 some of us think ourselves able to pronounce im 
 mortal. The standards of merit which we shall 
 then apply will not be such as we read about and 
 try to apply here. And this, I think, is very certain : 
 that when we look back at this life and its wants, 
 its desires, and the small measure of supply to them 
 which all our arts and artistic ability have fur 
 nished, we shall know that the standards we used 
 were very untrustworthy. We shall see that every 
 where have been artists accomplishing as great 
 work, in unknown ways, as those artists whose 
 names are famous. There have indeed been thou 
 sands of artists in every country for every one 
 whose name is recorded. There have been Mi 
 chael Angelos and Titians and Raphaels in almost 
 every hamlet and village of the civilized world. 
 
 There was a little girl who died last winter in a 
 farm-house over the mountains. It was a lone 
 some place, two miles from any other house, and 
 
30 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 in the deep snows of the winter practically inac 
 cessible. The child suffered greatly for two months, 
 lying on a bed in a small room off the kitchen. On 
 the wall hung a cheap lithograph representing " The 
 Guardian Angel." It was what you would call a 
 wretched mess of color; and when the mother 
 showed it to me, telling the story, I confess that 
 the angel s form and dress were to me suggestive 
 of a cheap theatrical get-up, and the face was with 
 out expression. This was its beauty in my esti 
 mate. 
 
 But there was something in that picture which 
 won the child s heart. In her severest pain she 
 gained fortitude and calm by fixing her eyes on it. 
 Through the nights she waited for morning, to see 
 it when daylight came in at the window. She was 
 sometimes overheard talking to it. To her vision 
 and the soul to which the vision ministers, the 
 angel was one of the messengers of a land where 
 all things are full of light and love and ineffable 
 beauty. The poor lithograph rose in that room to 
 the rank of the Sistine Madonna, or the San Marco 
 saints of Fra Angelico. When she went at last to 
 join other little children in the joy of Paradise she 
 took with her innumerable holy and pure thoughts, 
 a soul refined and much educated for the new life, 
 by the miserable daub, as you and I would have 
 called it, which to her was the perfection of beauty. 
 
 And it was as beautiful as any work of art ever 
 
AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 31 
 
 made. Would you dare deny it to the child ? Will 
 you argue it with her if you ever meet her ? The 
 measure of beauty is in the mind that receives, not 
 in any other mind. 
 
 Our own conceptions of beauty change, not 
 only with education, but with conditions of mind. 
 Raphael could not have painted a picture to win 
 that child s admiration away from her lithographed 
 angel in blue and red. Had the child lived she 
 might have grown to admire the Transfiguration in 
 the Vatican, and she might even have grown to ad 
 mire Turner s blotches of mystery. There is no 
 possibility of foreseeing what, in art production, we 
 may be led to admire and enjoy by the circum 
 stances and associations into which we are led. 
 Nor is there any authority which can tell us what 
 we ought to enjoy. The notion of some writers that 
 there is such an authority, a standard of beauty, is 
 simply a proposal to take away freedom from art 
 purchase and production, and destroy its power. 
 
 The world for which that boy Eleazar worked 
 was a small one, but he satisfied all its desires, 
 gratified all its tastes, fulfilled all its imaginations. 
 More no artist ever did. If you say that the great 
 artist has greater thoughts than those of his race 
 and age a common saying, which sounds in idle 
 words and has in it no intelligible truth then he 
 too, the farmer boy, had higher thoughts than he 
 expressed with pencil. But of what value to you 
 
32 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 or to me or to any one are your imaginary " higher 
 thoughts " of the artist if he cannot express them ? 
 The world of art is a practical world. To all of 
 us, in every station of life, come, sometimes often, 
 overpowering thoughts, glimpses through mist and 
 gloom of a higher life than we live ; conceptions, al 
 most but not quite formed, of greater achievements, 
 nobler works than we are doing. But if we do not 
 realize them, whether we be only commonplace 
 laborers in the ordinary ways of life, or whether 
 we be artists with chisel or pencil, these amount to 
 nothing for the practical work of benefiting or 
 pleasing ourselves or others. 
 
 Sometimes it is said that time alone measures 
 the merit of works of art ; that those which survive 
 from generation to generation are the great works. 
 This is a false notion. Often the greatest works 
 have perished, having accomplished their purposes ; 
 often the inferior have outlasted the changes of 
 human tastes and fancies, and established for them 
 selves the name of greatness. You will find this 
 to be true : that many of those works of art which 
 are most renowned, most talked of, and most writ 
 ten about, produce in reality very little impression 
 on those who look at them now. They are rather 
 curiosities, which must be seen because celebrated, 
 but they produce little effect on the independent 
 mind. This is eminently true of many renowned 
 statues and paintings. Its truth can be seen when 
 
AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 33 
 
 the galleries and museums in which these works 
 are preserved are crowded with visitors, and you 
 observe how few linger around these specific works. 
 Nor is it in any degree probable that if you, not 
 knowing their origin, could to-day see works of 
 Zeuxis or Apelles, you would find in them anything 
 to admire. 
 
 All this is wandering from the subject, though 
 directly connected with it. Ezer Thorn was a 
 great artist, although he worked for one only ad 
 mirer, and that one a six-year-old child. All his 
 works perished as soon as executed all but one. 
 Late that evening, after he had gone to bed, I was 
 sitting in the old kitchen alone, and, having finished 
 reading the book I had brought with me, looked 
 around for something else. Typography was scarce 
 in that old house. My eye fell on a corner cup 
 board with glass doors, which I opened. In it I 
 found a large Bible. 
 
 Whatever estimate you place on this book, my 
 friend, it is a great book for one who wants some 
 thing to read. It is infinitely the greatest collec 
 tion of philosophy, poetry, history, law, known to 
 the world of printing. 
 
 As I opened this I found on the last fly-leaf a 
 sketch which was doubtless one of the drawings 
 made by the boy artist many years ago. In fact, 
 next morning he confirmed my conjecture, and re 
 called the time when he made it. Susie had asked 
 
34 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 him to make a picture of an angel. He had never 
 seen an angel, nor a picture of an angel. He did 
 not know what ideas other people had of angels. 
 So this was an original work. Such works are 
 very rare, very rare indeed. All artists are copyists, 
 in one or another sense. There are certain expres 
 sions of thought which have been handed down 
 from age to age, which may be said to constitute 
 the alphabet of art, with which artists write. An 
 gels have been made in pretty much the same way 
 for centuries. They are always very human in ap 
 pearance. Some of the fifteenth -century artists 
 made them seem more powerful and superhuman 
 by giving them majestic wings ; but a later school 
 reduced them to very lovely human forms, with 
 wings which could not possibly lift those forms 
 above the level of earth and earthly things. And 
 mostly angels in art have been nine-tenths human 
 with faint suggestion of the heavenly. 
 
 This was a strange picture on the-fly leaf of the 
 old Bible. It was a mysterious whirl as of clouds, 
 but somehow all the clouds, when you had looked 
 at them a while, seemed to be wings, no one inde 
 pendent of another. That which looked as if in 
 the form of a wing was also part of the form of an 
 other and another. And there were eyes, not 
 strongly drawn, in fact only to be seen as if by 
 flashes, here and there and everywhere in the whirl 
 ing cloud of wings. There was no plagiarism here 
 
AN UP-COUNTRY ARTIST 35 
 
 on any other artist. It was a boy s struggle to re 
 duce into visible form his original but vague ideas. 
 It was not a very successful struggle. 
 
 It was in vain that I tried to get from the old 
 man some indication of his ideas in that drawing. 
 He had totally forgotten it and why he made it so. 
 Only, he said, that was the last drawipg he ever 
 made for little Susie, sitting by her side when she 
 was sick, and when she had asked him for the 
 picture of an angel. He now studied it a long 
 time. Then, oddly enough, he pointed out to me 
 what I had not seen, some lines among the mists, 
 which certainly assumed the form of a child, with 
 garments trailing away into wings. 
 
 "Now I remember," he said. " That was Susie ; 
 the doctor had told me she was very sick ; I was 
 afraid she was going to die. She did die soon 
 after that. I thought of my little girl going away 
 into a strange country alone, and among people she 
 and I didn t know. She couldn t make anything 
 out of my picture. Neither could I. I don t think 
 I ever tried to make a picture after that one. It 
 was such a dead failure." So he, like many other 
 artists, failed because he essayed too much. Pos 
 sibly Susie might have been satisfied with the pict 
 ure in former days, but now she was near heaven, 
 and had visions of angels which he had not. 
 
 If you and I ever do see angels, what will we think 
 of the pictures of them which we have been ac- 
 
3 6 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 customed to see here ? If we ever see the face of 
 the Virgin Mother, most blessed of women, what 
 will we think of the pictures of her we have here 
 admired portraits of Roman harlots ? If we ever 
 see the combined beauty and majesty of His face, 
 what measure will we accord to the attempts of 
 human art to make portraits of Him ? 
 
IV 
 
 BEYOND 
 
 IT was in the midst of a crowded county fair. 
 A man was lying on the ground, surrounded by a 
 hundred others, who could hardly be kept from 
 pushing one another on to the body which lay 
 there, while two doctors were kneeling over it. 
 " What s the matter ?" was the universal outcry, 
 and men were pressing in to see they knew not 
 what, but something they supposed to be part of 
 the show. Perhaps it was a pig with two heads, or 
 a calf with six legs, or some other monstrosity. It 
 had happened only a moment before. A drunken 
 fellow had staggered against a horse, and then vi 
 ciously cursed and kicked the animal. The horse, 
 rightly enough, kicked back, and the man fell. 
 The medical men were together, examining the 
 horses. Both sprang to the fallen man, and the 
 crowd began to gather. 
 
 " Poor Joe !" said one of the doctors, at length, 
 looking up and around at the crowd. " Stand back, 
 men stand back." 
 
 The circle widened at once, those behind yield- 
 
38 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 ing instantly when the low murmur passed from 
 one to another that Joe Flint had been kicked by 
 a horse and killed. 
 
 " Is he dead, doctor?" 
 
 " Not dead, but he will be soon." 
 
 Standing with the doctors before the occurrence, 
 and standing by them now, was a tall, fine-looking 
 man, the owner of several horses near by. He did 
 not hear what the first one said, for his eyes were 
 on the countenance of the other who knelt by the 
 injured man, with his hand on his pulse and his 
 gaze fixed on the changing face. After a little the 
 doctor looked up and met the eyes of the tall 
 farmer. 
 
 " Is he badly hurt, doctor ?" 
 
 " He s a dead man, Abner." 
 
 " Dead !" 
 
 " No, not yet, but" 
 
 The man lifted his hat from his head. One and 
 another and another of the men around followed 
 his example, and in a few seconds more than six- 
 score of heads were bared, while silence grew and 
 grew, spreading to the outer circle, and then through 
 out the grounds. One, two, three minutes might 
 have passed when both the doctors rose, neither 
 saying a word. But all around them knew that the 
 man was dead. 
 
 He was a miserable, drunken dog, a nuisance to 
 the community, whose departure from it was gain 
 
BEYOND 39 
 
 to all and loss to none. He was a profane wretch, 
 a terror to children on the village street a man out 
 of whom had long ago gone almost all the char 
 acteristics which distinguish man from brute. No 
 one regretted his death. Rather, as the news 
 spread around, each person, man and woman, who 
 heard that Joe Flint had been kicked dead by a 
 horse he had provoked, felt, if it were not uttered 
 by all as it was by some, that " it was a good rid 
 dance." 
 
 "Abner," said Dr. Gray, as they walked away 
 from the scene, " I want to ask you a question." 
 
 " Say on, doctor," said the other. 
 
 " Why did you take off your hat when I told you 
 that Joe was not dead yet ? If you had waited till 
 he was dead I would have asked no question. It 
 is a common thing for men to uncover in the 
 presence of death. But you did not take off your 
 hat when I said he was a dead man, and you took 
 it off when I said he was still alive." 
 
 Abner Whitney was a man of remarkable char 
 acter in a New England community where were 
 many notable men. A wealthy but a hard-working 
 farmer, he had from boyhood been noted as an 
 extensive reader of books, and yet more noted as 
 a philosophical thinker. His unfailing kindliness 
 of manner, his superior intellectual power, had 
 made him the most influential man in the com 
 munity. He commanded the respect of all classes 
 
40 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 of people with whom he came in contact. Once 
 he walked into the great hall of a large hotel, 
 where were gathered men from all parts of the 
 country. He wore his ordinary working -clothes, 
 having come in on an errand concerning a load of 
 hay. Attracted by a free discussion which was 
 going on among the guests, he stopped to listen. 
 One of the talkers, an eminent judge, catching 
 sight of his face and the intelligence of his eye, 
 suddenly appealed to him with " Isn t that so, my 
 friend ?" Whereupon he took up the subject and 
 expressed his views vigorously and clearly, in 
 somewhat homely phrase, but with all the more 
 effect on the group. As he was suddenly called 
 away, a young man exclaimed aloud in the old 
 phrase, " Why, he s a gentleman and a scholar." 
 
 Yes, he was a gentleman, and his scholarship 
 was of no mean order. He was silent for a little 
 after the doctor s question, and at length said : 
 " The fact is, doctor, I have always very great re 
 spect for any one that s dying. It began with me 
 when the minister lost his little boy. You remem 
 ber. It was twenty years ago." He paused. 
 
 " But you don t mean to say you had any feeling 
 of respect for that poor devil, Joe." 
 
 " Yes, I mean just that. When that little five- 
 year-old boy died I was just beginning to think a 
 good deal about about well, about things in 
 general. I was everlastingly asking myself the 
 
BEYOND 41 
 
 reason of things. And the more I thought and 
 read the more I seemed to see that back of all that 
 happens, from the growing of potatoes to the reg 
 ular rising of the sun, there was some cause that 
 men couldn t find. And when the little fellow was 
 nearing his end, it came across me while I was 
 watching him that he was going behind the curtain 
 I was trying to look through, and would soon know 
 more than I about everything. You can t imagine, 
 doctor, how large that small boy suddenly seemed 
 to me. I can t tell you exactly what I mean by 
 large, but instead of the little one that I had 
 carried about in my arms he was getting to be a 
 giant. No, I hadn t any respect for Joe Flint while 
 he was making a nuisance of himself here, but 
 when you said he was only just alive, and going to 
 die soon, why, I thought to myself how much that 
 fellow was going to know in a little while. Doctor, 
 Joe Flint at this moment is another sort of person 
 than the Joe Flint we knew an hour ago. What 
 he is or where he is, God knows. I don t care to 
 imagine. But while he was here, a man like you 
 and me, and I was looking at him, all the contempt I 
 used to feel for him went away like a flash, and I 
 took off my hat to a soul that was going in five 
 minutes to know more than all the philosophers." 
 Abner Whitney was a mighty man, of high soul, 
 like the great Hebrew general whose name he bore. 
 And, like him, he did in all things what he believed 
 
42 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 to be duty, loyal to his God, his country, his princi 
 ples ; and he did it all with a union of firmness and 
 gentleness which gave him great power. The peo 
 ple in a wide district of country not only respected 
 him, but loved him. It is not often that a man 
 wins the love of his fellow-men. Abner Whitney 
 had won it when a young man, and never lost it. 
 It was not only his universal benevolence in acts ; 
 but, in addition, the way in which he was benevo 
 lent his manner, his voice, his tone which com 
 manded the regard of even the rudest and rough 
 est among the people. It was often said of him 
 that no one ever heard him speak harshly or with 
 any appearance of unkindness in his heart, except 
 once. 
 
 Was that unkindness ? It was a strange occur 
 rence, which lived long in the memories and fire 
 side talks of the people. 
 
 Abner and Enoch Whitney were half-brothers, 
 sons of the same father, having different mothers. 
 Enoch was four years older than Abner. From 
 their childhood they had been of diverse character. 
 When they grew up to be school-boys the several 
 traits which marked their dispositions became more 
 and more distinct. All the tendencies of Abner s 
 life were towards the good ; all those of Enoch s 
 were towards evil. Enoch was emphatically a 
 bad boy. There was no ill that boys can do 
 which he did not do, from robbing bird s-nests and 
 
BEYOND 43 
 
 exploding fire-crackers in frogs mouths to robbing 
 choice fruit-trees and trampling down beds of 
 choice flowers. Tradition told many stories of the 
 patient affection which Abner showed his elder 
 brother, the efforts he made to shield him from 
 punishments, the unfailing devotion which he dis 
 played in spite of the uniform rebuffs which he 
 met. He never looked for gratitude, and he never 
 got it. Enoch was a rude cub, without a particle of 
 brotherly affection, never grateful, never uttering a 
 word of thanks for kindness ; but, on the contrary, 
 ill-treating and abusing his younger brother on all 
 occasions. 
 
 The difference of four years in their age was 
 overcome rapidly in their intellectual growth. The 
 younger brother overtook the elder and passed 
 him in school. The two entered college together 
 in the same class, one at fifteen, the other at nine 
 teen. The former was an excellent scholar a 
 steady, persevering, and acquiring student. The 
 latter was in all respects the reverse, and did not 
 finish the course. 
 
 When their father died the young men inherited 
 a property regarded in those days as a respectable 
 fortune. Enoch was a lawyer in the city, Abner 
 having remained at home with his father and moth 
 er, cultivating the farm and managing the estate, 
 which included some thousands of acres of timber 
 land. 
 
44 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 The will of their father made a just and wise di 
 vision of his property between the sons, subject to 
 the life interest of the widow, who survived her 
 husband only a few years. Enoch was dissatisfied 
 with the division, and attacked the will, alleging 
 that his father had a weak mind, and that Abner 
 had unduly influenced him. Abner defended his 
 father s memory, and when the will was sustained, 
 and no doubt remained of the wisdom and sanity 
 of the father, offered to Enoch, as a free gift, the 
 division which the latter had professed to think 
 more just. Enoch accepted it, without thanks. 
 Abner s estate prospered. Enoch s vanished in 
 disreputable speculations made in the city. Again 
 and again, when in trouble, Enoch unblushingly 
 applied to his brother for assistance, and never 
 failed to receive the help he asked. Abner kept 
 his secrets, and never spoke of his brother s char 
 acter or of what he had himself done for him. But 
 there were lawyers and others, town - clerks and 
 county registrars, who knew much of what was go 
 ing on, and who talked freely. The marvel of the 
 whole country for years was the patience of Abner 
 Whitney with his offending brother. 
 
 But few, if any, knew the one chief offence oth 
 er than the seventy times seven minor offences of 
 that miserable hound, Enoch Whitney. Abner had 
 yielded to him many treasures. The greatest treas 
 ure of his life had been, from boyhood up, his love 
 
BEYOND 45 
 
 for the minister s daughter. I say his love for her 
 had been the treasure, for he did not possess her 
 love. His brother won that away from him. For 
 years Abner knew that she was secretly betrothed 
 to Enoch, and that Enoch was playing fast and 
 loose with her. Abner made no effort to win her, 
 but he loved her just the same. No one knows 
 the history of this episode in his life further than 
 this : that Enoch won the confidence of the minis 
 ter, borrowed all his little estate, ruined him, and 
 then ceased to see or write to Mabel. The min 
 ister came to Abner at last, as did all that were in 
 trouble, and asked for advice in his old age. Ab 
 ner knew well all that the minister now told him, 
 for he had eyes, and little that concerned the hap 
 piness of Mabel ever escaped his watchfulness. 
 One great fact had escaped it. 
 
 Do not imagine that in Abner s treatment of his 
 brother there was any feebleness of mind or man 
 ner. It had long ago become well settled between 
 them that the younger brother regarded the elder 
 as an unmitigated scoundrel. Enoch never cheat 
 ed Abner but once, and after that Abner always 
 recognized the attempted fraud and advanced the 
 required loans, telling his brother very quietly 
 what he recognized. There had been times when 
 Abner conferred benefits on his brother, accom 
 panying them with urgent appeals to his reason, 
 to his conscience, to the memory of their honest 
 
46 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 father. But he had ceased to do this long ago, as 
 vanity of vanities. Now that the minister had 
 asked his help, he sent for Enoch to come down 
 into the country, and demanded of him an account 
 ing with the minister and his daughter. His power 
 over his brother was ample, and he used it firmly. 
 The revelation which his interposition brought 
 about surprised him. That evening the two broth 
 ers walked into the parsonage together, and, while 
 Enoch was silent, Abner deliberately showed the 
 minister the state of his pecuniary affairs, and the 
 arrangement he had made with his brother for 
 their security, and then revealed the fact that 
 Enoch and Mabel had been secretly married a 
 year ago. He did not tell the minister that 
 Enoch had denied the marriage, had laid his plans 
 to repudiate it and destroy all evidence of it. 
 
 Some years went by. Enoch had taken his wife 
 to the city. Abner took care to be informed al 
 ways of the condition of his family. Enoch kept 
 him well enough informed of his own pecuniary 
 condition by applications whenever he was in trou 
 ble. Again and again and again the foolish scamp, 
 growing more and more foolish and more scamp 
 ish as he grew older, attempted to deceive his 
 brother, and seemed to deceive him, and as often 
 the brother seemed to forgive him. Twenty times 
 Abner relieved the actual distress of Mabel and 
 her children on her application. For, ignorant al- 
 
BEYOND 47 
 
 ways of Abner s love for her, Mabel never hes 
 itated to apply to the rich brother of her husband 
 for aid ; and when she learned the real character of 
 the man she had married, did not scruple to tell 
 his brother what she had discovered. It is much 
 to be feared that Mabel was not worth the love of 
 such a man as Abner. But men of large mental 
 size have often loved women of small intellectual 
 measurement. 
 
 One by one the three children of Enoch and 
 Mabel died, and were brought to the country grave 
 yard and buried by their grandfather s side. While 
 she was yet a young woman Mabel became an in 
 valid. The unkind treatment of her husband had 
 much to do with the increase of her illness, and 
 there were dark sayings among the people of the 
 behavior of Enoch in the last few weeks of her 
 wasted and joyless life. She died, and was brought 
 to the family gathering, and Enoch stood by as 
 they closed her grave. Some said he was broken 
 down by grief ; but others, wiser, said, as Abner 
 seized his arm and led him staggering away, that 
 Enoch was drunk at the funeral of the wife he had 
 killed. But no one ever heard from Abner one 
 word of ill speech concerning Enoch, nor any sug 
 gestion of censure. 
 
 But Abner Whitney was human. He had pas 
 sions like other men. It is small credit to a man 
 or woman to be what is called "good" by nature. 
 
4? AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 That self-restraint or discipline which suppresses 
 the evil, curbs anger, produces calmness, gentle 
 ness, forbearance, kindness, in appearance and in 
 fact, is far more admirable. That this man was 
 exercising strong self-restraint all his life long in 
 his dealings with his brother no one knew. Enoch 
 had been, like many whom you and I know, a busi 
 ness man of reputation in the city, holding his 
 head as high as any, while he was fit only for the 
 jail of the felon. He finally reached his proper 
 place, at a time when a spasm of virtue, seizing on 
 the public, compelled the prosecution and punish 
 ment of some robbers. He had more than once 
 forged his brother s signature and been forgiven. 
 But the forgiving brother was powerless to save 
 him now. He went to prison, and died in the 
 course of his first year of convict life. It was said 
 that in his prison life he gave some evidence of 
 repentance. But people did not put much faith in 
 the story. 
 
 The country graveyard was on the hill by the 
 church. There was only one tree in it, a giant old- 
 growth pine, under whose shade was much pine 
 trash and little verdure. Elsewhere the ground 
 and the graves were covered with grass, long and 
 yellow in September. The wind shook the grass 
 in yellow waves. It moaned and soughed and 
 sighed through the giant pine. The ground sloped 
 away a little towards the east. It was noticeable, 
 
BEYOND 
 
 49 
 
 though few notice it in country graveyards, that all 
 the head-stones were at the western ends of the 
 graves, and all the feet of those lying there were 
 towards the east. And for some reason, perhaps 
 the shape and slope of the ground, when you stood 
 on the upper step of the stile coming over the 
 stone-wall, and looked at that enclosure, it struck 
 you at once as somewhat like a group of carriages 
 or boats, and in winter-time always as a group of 
 sleighs, going in close company eastward towards 
 the country from which comes the dawn. 
 
 All these had their feet towards Jerusalem, as 
 the custom has been with the Christian dead for 
 many ages. For the pilgrimage is not yet wholly 
 accomplished, although they have laid down here 
 their loads of humanity, and have found rest else 
 where while they wait for the dawn of the eternal 
 day and for the voice of the Leader calling them 
 to take up the humanity again, no longer heavy, 
 because purified, and to go on in labors that do 
 not weary and lives that are perfectly satisfied. 
 
 One Sunday morning the minister, not Mabel s 
 father he was lying outside the church the new 
 minister, had preached a second- advent sermon. 
 He believed very firmly in the personal return and 
 reign of the Lord in some undated future. 
 
 Abner Whitney was much impressed by the ser 
 mon, and after the service stood for half an hour 
 in the graveyard with the minister, talking of the 
 
50 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 subject. It is impossible for any one who believes 
 in the resurrection of the dead to stand in such a 
 place and not picture to himself the scene one day 
 to be visible there. The old man he was now over 
 seventy stood near his father s grave and looked 
 along the row of head-stones. The grave of the old 
 minister, Mabel s father, was parallel with that of 
 Abner s father, some ten or twelve feet distant. 
 Mabel had been buried close by her father, be 
 tween him and her husband s father. There was 
 space left between the two families for Enoch and 
 Abner to lie side by side. 
 
 He pondered a long time on that mysterious sub 
 ject " What will they look like when they awake ? 
 Will the children look like children ? Will the old 
 folks have gray hair and pale cheeks ? W r ill Mabel 
 look as she looked at twenty, or will she be the 
 sad-eyed, worn woman we laid here ? Will I will 
 I what will I look like ? What hour of my life 
 has stamped this body for immortal identity ? Shall 
 I be the boy of ten, the man of thirty, or old-look 
 ing, as I now am ? When Mabel and I look at one 
 another again, will she see in my eyes the love of 
 the school-boy and recognize it ? Or will she see 
 the truth of that night when I learned that she 
 was Enoch s wife ? What will I look like when I, 
 with all the rest of them, wake and go towards Je 
 rusalem above, the mother of us all ?" And the 
 thoughtful, perplexed man turned away from the 
 
BEYOND 51 
 
 graves and walked homeward, pondering as he 
 walked, until there came into his thoughts the only 
 solution of this puzzling problem, and he exclaimed 
 aloud, " I shall be satisfied with thy likeness when 
 I awake." 
 
 The next morning came word that Enoch was 
 dead in prison. Abner went to the distant prison 
 and brought the dead man home to the old house, 
 and ordered all things fit for the funeral and burial. 
 There was then, for two days, in his soul a great 
 conflict. Had he done his duty to his brother al 
 ways ? Had he in truth and in heart forgiven him 
 his countless offences ? Could he lay him in the 
 grave and lie down by his side, and when the time 
 for the rising should come could he stand up and 
 say to Enoch and to Mabel, " Come, let us go for 
 ward together." To Mabel, yes. To Enoch, no ; 
 unless perhaps in prison life there had been some 
 change in that wretched character. 
 
 All his life long this man Abner had been given 
 to fierce mental struggles. That outwardly calm 
 life was in reality one of frequent storms, tempests, 
 cyclonic nights preceding serene days. The night 
 before he buried Enoch was such a night. 
 
 They stood around, all the people of the coun 
 try, as Abner followed the hearse into the church 
 yard and up to the side of the grave. According 
 to custom, there were two bars across the grave, on 
 which the coffin was to be rested before lowering. 
 
52 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 Abner looked down into the grave, then up at the 
 blue, and strained his eyes to see through it and 
 beyond. He had seen the side of Mabel s coffin ex 
 posed. Stepping back, as they were lifting Enoch s 
 coffin to place it on the rests, with the feet towards 
 the east, he suddenly spoke out, in his deep, stern 
 voice : 
 
 " The other way ! The feet this way, the head 
 that way !" 
 
 He waved his hand swiftly as he spoke, indicat 
 ing a turning of the body. There was no mistaking 
 his meaning. Men were accustomed to obey him ; 
 and, though surprised, they now obeyed him. Prob 
 ably the minister, alone of all those there, fully ap 
 preciated the meaning of the incident. Even to 
 him it was a revelation of the soul of Abner Whit 
 ney. As they two left the grave, Abner spoke, 
 more to himself than to the minister : 
 
 " My work is done. I have not judged him, and 
 I will not judge him. In the time to come, when 
 we rise, he shall first of all face her and me. I 
 will give him my hand, and he may turn and go 
 with us if God will. But perverse he has been all 
 his life, and his way lay not towards the light. I 
 have put him with his face set in his own way, 
 which was always other than our way. I have 
 done with him. He is in other hands." 
 
 Abner Whitney is dead, and they have filled up 
 the space between the grave of Enoch and that of 
 
BEYOND 53 
 
 his father. It seems to me utterly impossible for 
 any reasonable mind to form a just and satisfying 
 theory of life which does not include immortality, 
 the resurrection of the dead, heaven and hell. 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 
 
 THE wind was blowing freshly down the valley, 
 the horses were in good order, and the country 
 was springing up everywhere to greet the late but 
 welcome spring. 
 
 My destination was nowhere in particular. A 
 trout-stream ran near the road-side. My horses 
 know a trout-stream well, and are almost sure to 
 stop without a touch on the reins if they see a 
 good place for a cast. 
 
 And this was just what they did that morning, 
 though it was something more than a stream and 
 good fishing-ground which arrested them. For on 
 the green grass at the head of a sparkling pool, in 
 a clear, rushing river, a rod or two from the road 
 side, a boy was kneeling and adjusting a cast of 
 flies. The horses knew what the boy was at, and 
 took it for granted this was the proper place to stop. 
 
 " Are there trout in the river ?" I asked. 
 
 " Oh yes, lots of em, but you can t catch em 
 very easy ; anyhow I can t, but granther can, and 
 I m learnin how." 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 55 
 
 There was a clump of bushes between me and 
 the head of the pool, but as the boy was speaking 
 I saw a line with two flies go out into the air from 
 behind the bushes, and the cast fell on the rip in 
 the pool, and as it came up towards the foam there 
 was a swash and dash of the water, and the line 
 straightened out taut, and then cut the surface as 
 it swung across towards us. As yet no rod or 
 fisherman was visible, but in a few moments both 
 emerged to view. 
 
 An old man, wading in the shallow edge of the 
 stream, stepping with caution, but firmly, came into 
 view, his eye fixed steadily on the pool, and as full 
 of light and brightness as a boy s eye. He knew 
 what he was about, that was plain enough. He did 
 not look up for some time, but when his glance 
 caught the horses and buckboard, and met mine, 
 he nodded cheerily, but quietly held to his work. 
 It is quite as pleasant to see a fish handsomely 
 taken as to take one yourself. He held his rod in 
 the right hand, well up, and the bend away down 
 to the butt spoke of a weighty fish. The first few 
 rushes had been controlled before the angler came 
 in sight, and now the trout was hanging low down 
 in the water, and swinging slowly from side to side 
 of the pool. Passing his rod to the left hand, he 
 began to use the reel, with judgment, and the fish 
 came nearer. Then he rushed, and the fingers left 
 the reel to run, and the rod bowed a little down to 
 
56 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the stream to ease the strain, and I saw his finger 
 press on the line against the rod below the reel to 
 make it drag more heavily. So the fish did not go 
 into the swift water below the pool, but, yielding to 
 the persuasion of the rod, turned and gave it up. 
 
 In less than five minutes he lay on the green 
 grass, and I weighed him a plump three pounds ; 
 and then I looked up to meet the smiling face of 
 the old angler. 
 
 " The boy says he is learning to take trout. I 
 fancy he couldn t have a better teacher." 
 
 " Well, I ought to know how to take them here. 
 I ve fished this river every spring nigh on to seventy 
 years." 
 
 " You began it young." 
 
 " Not so very young. I m eighty-one, and I ve 
 caught trout since I was seven years old." 
 
 " And like it as well as ever ?" 
 
 He looked first at me, then at the river, then up 
 into the sky, and swept a glance around the scene 
 before he replied. Then he said, with emphasis : 
 " Yes, just the same as ever. When I had hold of 
 that trout I was thinking of a four-pounder I took 
 out of this pool when I wasn t fifteen years old, and 
 I felt just as I felt then. I don t believe it s in 
 human nature to change one bit in feeling about 
 taking trout from ten years old to a hundred." 
 
 There was a keen pleasure in talking with an 
 experienced angler of this sort, and we talked as 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 57 
 
 cheerily as anglers love to talk. He told me a 
 great many things worth remembering about the 
 habits of the fish in that river. For the habits of 
 trout, like those of men, are different in different 
 localities. Hence it is that books of instruction, 
 and rules about flies for certain seasons, and writ 
 ten ways of fishing are of small account. My ex 
 perienced friend took no stock in the imitation 
 theory. " Sometimes," he said, " but not often in 
 this water, a trout takes a fly because it looks like 
 a fly of the season ; but mostly, I think, they are 
 tempted by the variety which is offered them in 
 something alive and eatable which they haven t 
 tasted before. A trout is a greedy eater. In the 
 freshets he crowds his stomach with sticks and 
 stones and everything which goes along in the 
 thick water." 
 
 " Are trout of this size plentiful here ?" 
 " No, no. The river is well stocked ; but of late 
 years the average size will not be much above a 
 quarter pound. But every spring I get three or 
 four fish running from two to three pounds, and 
 a few pounders. There s another in the pool as 
 large as this one. I saw them both rise a while ago. 
 Will you try a cast ?" And he offered me his rod. 
 "No, I will not interfere with your sport." 
 " Not a bit of it. I would like to see another 
 man take that fellow better than to take him my 
 self." 
 
58 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 " You belong to the true brotherhood," I said ; 
 "but I will use my own rod." 
 
 " Try this one. I made it myself last winter, a 
 year ago, and it will serve you well." 
 
 It was a capital rod, made of the wood of the 
 tree commonly known as shad-blow or sugar-plum. 
 He told me he had trained and straightened grow 
 ing trees for years before cutting them. The rod 
 was in two pieces, spliced and wound, and weighed 
 perhaps ten ounces. The line was of horse-hair, a 
 marvel of braiding, without an end out anywhere to 
 catch in the guide-rings , and the flies a black tail- 
 fly and a golden hackle bobber. I looked at him 
 as I looked at them, and he answered my look. 
 " Yes, they are all home-made." 
 
 Surely it would have gladdened the soul of Izaak 
 to meet this lover of the gentle art. For after I 
 had cast in vain over the pool and wasted my ener 
 gies for naught, as he sent his flies down under the 
 overhanging bank, where I had been with mine a 
 dozen times, up came that other trout to the gold 
 en hackle, and, taking it, was taken. 
 
 We passed the day together along the banks of 
 the stream, going for an hour to his home near by 
 for dinner, and coming out afterwards to talk rath 
 er than fish by the side of the water. My friend 
 was a very gentle old man. How could one be 
 otherwise who had been for seventy years a lover 
 of the most refining of all arts ! The valley in 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 59 
 
 which he lived was very familiar to him, but famil 
 iarity had bred love, not contempt. He had never 
 desired to live elsewhere. His life had been 
 passed among scenes that were full of beauty, and 
 their beauty had entered into and become part of 
 his soul. He had no very extensive knowledge of 
 books, but the few books he did know he knew 
 well, and they were books worth knowing. Wise 
 as men may grow, the wisest, after all, know but 
 very little more than their fellows. And this calm 
 life had given to him much knowledge which re 
 nowned philosophers have not, and could not have, 
 but by just such experience and education as his. 
 
 Before the sun had set we were seated on the 
 veranda of his house, and he was telling of his 
 early life in it, with his wife, long gone. 
 
 As, in after-years, I learned more about the char 
 acter of the old farmer and angler, I learned that 
 he was very fond of living over again that long 
 past, in which his house had been well filled with a 
 large family. Now they had mostly scattered 
 some to the city, one to the Far West, two to the 
 farther away country. These two were mother and 
 daughter. And though it was more than forty 
 years ago that they two went away, Isaac never 
 ceased to be fond of talking about them, and al 
 ways talked of them only as " gone away." To 
 hear him you would have supposed that they went 
 away only a few days ago. The lapse of time had 
 
60 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 been to him as nothing since his wife and eldest 
 daughter left him in the house with two sons, and 
 nothing of womankind to be cared for or to care 
 for him, 
 
 He talked this evening of his wife, for something 
 I said reminded him of something which she once 
 said. A trifle was always enough to set him to 
 thinking aloud of either his wife or child Bessie 
 the mother or Bessie the daughter. 
 
 "Come along with me," he said, "and I ll show 
 you what I call their portraits." And he led me a 
 little way from the house through a grove, down a 
 short, steep path, into a ravine a very wild and 
 very beautiful spot, especially at this moment. For 
 it opened out to the westward, and the light that 
 follows after sunset was pouring up between the 
 overhanging trees and struggling against the brawl 
 ing stream. 
 
 A little way up the brook was a high, large rock, 
 much moss-covered, in the front of which was a 
 curved hollow, forming a sort of rude niche or re 
 cess. There was a bench, ancient and decayed, 
 made of a log, hewn flat on the top and supported 
 on stones. Three persons could have been com 
 fortably seated on it. Overhead, on the top of the 
 rock, were masses of fern, and groups of fern-moss 
 were hanging on the side of the slope, making an 
 exquisite drapery. The rocks in front of the bench 
 were white and shining. For when the brook was 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 6l 
 
 high it overflowed them. Altogether this was as 
 beautiful a spot as you could well imagine. 
 
 "There they are," said he, sitting down on a 
 stone and fixing his eyes on the niche. "There 
 they sit, just as they used to sit. What would I 
 care for a painted picture of them two, when I can 
 see them any day, sitting and working and talking." 
 
 "But I can t see them," I said, "and you can t 
 make your friends know them." 
 
 "And it ain t important I should. They don t 
 belong to you or to any one else. There s Siah 
 Stevens, he lost his wife ten years ago, and he s got 
 a painted picture of her. It was made for him by 
 a first-rate man, too. They say he s a great artist. 
 He used to board at Siah s in the summers. I 
 never saw him painting. They said he didn t paint 
 trees and mountains and such things, like most of 
 them that come here. But he painted Siah s wife 
 for him, and Siah shows it to everybody ; and Siah s 
 got another wife, and they have new boarders now, 
 and she shows the picture to them when they first 
 come, and she says : That s Siah s first wife, and 
 
 she was painted by the great Mr. , who used 
 
 to board with us. Us! Yes, she d say us! But 
 what s the good of that picture to Siah, I d like 
 to know. Sometimes, perhaps, when she was ex 
 pecting company and had fixed herself up, and set 
 herself to look genteel, maybe she looked like it. 
 But most o the time Judith didn t look a bit like 
 
62 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 that. All the portraits I ever saw have the folks 
 dressed up. Perhaps in cities the women -folk 
 do keep all the time looking that way, and may 
 be their husbands and children remember them 
 mostly in such dress, and it s right to get them 
 painted so. But I should think a man would get 
 tired of seeing his wife all the time in one colored 
 dress, with her hair slicked, and the same fixings 
 on her neck. No, I don t want any painted pict 
 ure of Bessie for myself, and no one else has any 
 real care to know how she looked. If they ask 
 you, you can tell em. And it s a great deal more 
 important, then, to tell them how she looked to me 
 than how she looked to strangers." 
 
 I did not ask him, but he saw in my eyes the 
 question ; and after a moment s silence he went on 
 talking, in a somewhat low and dreamy voice. I 
 will not attempt to write his words, but, oddly 
 enough, it struck me at first, not oddly at all as it 
 seemed on reflection, his description of his wife 
 was more an account of the impressions left on his 
 mind by her mind than any description of her per 
 son. Unconscious poet that Issac was, like By 
 ron s, his similes were of thoughts, not things. She 
 was beautiful to him, he said, as beautiful as this 
 very evening. And she was just as gentle and 
 quiet in her ways as that streak of rosy cloud in 
 the glow of sunset. She wasn t a softly, no-action 
 girl or woman. She had a mind, and when she 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 63 
 
 cared to show it she was knowing enough. But no 
 one ever heard her speak a harsh word to man or 
 boy or beast. " What color was her hair ? well, 
 it was the color of those pine-trees on the moun 
 tain this afternoon." Now, my good friend, do not 
 imagine that pine-trees on a mountain- side are 
 green. There s no green about them sometimes, 
 and when the evening sunlight is slanting over 
 them they are often, as then, a golden brown. 
 
 " Her eyes ? They were dark, dark as dark as 
 dark as well, they were dark as it is in the 
 night sometimes when I m lying awake thinking of 
 her." 
 
 " It has been a lonesome life for you." 
 " No ; not a bit so. I m lonesome once in a 
 while, but somehow I never yet seemed to get to 
 thinking of her gone. Mostly it s with me as it 
 used to be in the evenings when she was sitting 
 on the other side of the table sewing, and the 
 children had gone to bed, and I was tired o the 
 day s work, and we didn t talk much mayhap nev 
 er said a word the whole evening. But we were 
 just as contented to keep still, and I m just as con 
 tent to keep still now and see her as I can all the 
 time. You know it s a kind of selfish love for your 
 friends that can t be happy except when you have 
 them around you. I m certain sure that she s hap 
 py, and I don t doubt she likes me to be happy, and 
 I think she sees me much of the time just as I see 
 
64 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 her I mean she sees into me. I know I think 
 more of what she was than what she looked ; and 
 that s the way I suppose she thinks of me now. 
 These are pretty hard-looking hands," and he held 
 up his brown, hard hands; "but I don t think she 
 notices their color or much worries that they ain t 
 as shapely as they were when I first knew her. But 
 whatever they find to do I think the good Lord 
 lets her know it s done as it was when she was 
 here, honestly always, and I expect that s a com 
 fort to her. You see, when you come to have some 
 one that s very close to you gone over to the other 
 country, and you ve put their body in the grave 
 yard, why, a sensible man gets to thinking more of 
 himself as something else than his body. Other 
 wise, how can he think about them that s gone and 
 keep on talking to them ?" 
 
 "But, Isaac, they don t answer when we talk. 
 That s the hardest part of it." 
 
 " Now I ain t so sure of that. You see, the 
 body s over there. She hasn t got any lips to 
 speak words with, and you can t expect to hear 
 what you used to hear. But it s just like this, 
 according to my mind : When I was particularly 
 glad, or particularly sorrowful and troubled about 
 anything, many a time I d sit and talk for an hour 
 at a time at Bessie, and she d listen and never say 
 a loud word. But she d answer, and say her say, 
 all the same. I d look at her, and she d look sor- 
 
AN OLD ANGLER 65 
 
 ry, or kind o smile, or her eyes would bright up, 
 and all the time I was talking she d be answering 
 every word, and giving me her opinion, and what 
 she thought I ought to do and how I ought to feel ; 
 and it did me a great deal more good than if she d 
 talked it all out. Now I expect I get just the same 
 kind of advice and comfort from her. Anyway, I 
 tell her everything everyday, just as I used to." 
 
 " You have discovered one of the great joys of 
 life, my old friend," I said. " They who are gone 
 away are doubtless waiting. For the end is not 
 yet, and they, as also we, are still looking forward to 
 another life, into which none will enter until all go 
 together, in the body. Meantime, how much they 
 know of us, and how much they say to us, in the 
 voiceless language of the intellect, the universal 
 language which all men of all times and nations, 
 living here, or gone away, understand and use 
 how often they are the suggesters of our thoughts, 
 the guides of our decisions, the promoters of our 
 happiness, we cannot measure. They make the 
 saddest error in life who bury their dead, body and 
 soul, out of sight and out of reach, and consider 
 them as sent away to wander alone until the resur 
 rection among the countless ghosts of all the hu 
 man race who have gone before. You have the 
 true secret of happy lonesomeness, for you keep 
 your dear ones around you, dear now as ever." 
 
 Why shouldn t I? It s better and happier for 
 
66 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 them, too. Just suppose Bessie coming here to see 
 and talk to me, and finding I wouldn t see her, 
 wouldn t hear her, had set my mind that she was 
 gone, and that was the end of it. Would it suit 
 her ?" 
 
 Happy are they who live conscious that life is 
 surrounded by an innumerable cloud of witnesses. 
 Happy, too, they who have the beloved so close to 
 them in their hearts and lives that they need no 
 painted portraits to recall faces which would other 
 wise be forgotten. 
 
 I accepted his invitation, and spent the night 
 with him. In the morning, as I took the reins to 
 drive off, the boy stood by, looking somewhat as if 
 he would like to go away too and see the world. 
 "Good-bye, my boy," I said. Don t go away 
 from here ; there s nothing in all the world worth 
 leaving this spot to see ; grow up like your grand 
 father, to be a fisherman and a man." I consider 
 the advice sound. I hope the boy will take it. 
 
VI 
 
 DOUGHNUTS AND TOBACCO 
 
 HAVE a cigar, or a pipe ? Do you know much 
 about art in pipes? There lies open a great field 
 for an art book. Shapes and kinds of pipes have 
 been described, but the art ornamentation of the 
 great peace promoter must be in infinite variety and 
 abounding beauty if one can judge from a few 
 specimens. Look at that Persian sheeshee, with its 
 elaborate arabesques in black enamel. Was there 
 ever a more perfect gem than that Dresden pipe- 
 bowl, painted with the myth of Cupid and Psyche? 
 Or that Berlin porcelain head of a fish, colored from 
 nature ? 
 
 Coffee, tea, tobacco, the three luxuries which have 
 delighted and enlightened mankind, have all three 
 evoked the highest talent of artists, probably because 
 they are alike luxuries which make men and women 
 contemplative, receptive, ready to appreciate and 
 calm to enjoy whatever is beautiful. The Turk 
 drinks his coffee from an exquisite fingan, held by 
 a zerf, on which Saracen art exhausts its richness. 
 The Chinaman takes his tea from an egg-shell cup 
 
68 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 of wonderful fineness, blazoned with symbols of 
 peace, home loves, good wishes, in enamels rivalling 
 sapphires and rubies and emeralds. The North 
 American Indian, however little he knows of sculpt 
 ure, carves his red pipe -bowl into some shape to 
 please his eye, while the civilized smoker employs 
 sculpture and painting to decorate his enjoyment. 
 
 There are some men afflicted with the idea that 
 these luxuries ought to be eradicated ; who worry 
 themselves to death and write newspaper articles 
 because people drink tea and coffee and smoke to 
 bacco. I don t know whether any of the anti tea 
 and coffee men are left alive, but some anti-tobacco 
 men still contrive to sustain existence. 
 
 No anti -tobacco man has yet invented a reason 
 against smoking which is not equally strong against 
 ice-cream, water-ices, iced-water, apple-pie, or dough 
 nuts. 
 
 The doughnut is a good subject of comparison. 
 The prevalence of doughnut eating in the interior 
 of New York and northern New England is appall 
 ing. Medical science which does not agree about 
 tobacco is generally down on doughnuts. And 
 doughnuts in the morning ! Think of them. In 
 northern New England few breakfast - tables have 
 been set for fifty years, public or private, without 
 doughnuts. If up-country gravestones told truth 
 you would find ten saying "died of doughnuts" 
 where one said "died of tobacco." 
 
DOUGHNUTS AND TOBACCO 69 
 
 The anti-tobacconist is fond of appealing to the 
 statements of unknown medical men who have said 
 tobacco is unhealthy. He knows perfectly well that 
 for every one such there are two or ten medical men 
 who deny that it is unhealthy. Medical science is 
 that only on which doctors agree. The weight of 
 medical opinion, backed by the practice of medical 
 men, is in favor of smoking. We are not talking 
 about excessive use of tobacco. Cold water in ex 
 cess is poison. Milk in excess is deadly. All medi 
 cal men agree that doughnuts are dangerous. 
 
 " It is an expensive luxury." Yes, according to 
 the tobacco you smoke. What if it is ? That is no 
 reason why a man who has the money to spend 
 should not spend it for tobacco, or doughnuts, or 
 fine clothing, or beautiful and pleasant things. The 
 argument may apply to the man who spends more 
 than he ought, but is nonsense when carried to the 
 extreme that all expense for luxuries is wrong. The 
 men who use this argument against tobacco exhibit 
 its fallacy in their own persons, clothed in luxuries 
 where rough, undyed garments would answer all 
 their needs. It is one of the notions of communism, 
 which is unable to see the stagnation of equality in 
 property. The arts of beauty, of making objects 
 of luxury, are the support of modern civilizations. 
 Repress expenditures to buying mere necessities of 
 life, and one factory of cotton goods would supply 
 the wants now supplied by ten ; ninety per cent, of 
 
7 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the labor would be thrown out of employ ; com 
 merce would cease ; governments would perish. 
 
 The duty of the man who has money to spend it 
 on reasonable luxuries is beyond question, unless 
 we agree to reduce life to barbaric conditions, for 
 bid all the refinements and adornments of civiliza 
 tion, live in huts, clothe ourselves in skins and un- 
 dyed woollen stuffs in winter, and dispense with all 
 clothing in August. No, we can t accept any argu 
 ment that our expenditures must be reduced to the 
 bare necessities of life. We were made, by a good 
 maker, with powers of enjoyment. Taste, smell, 
 sight, hearing, touch, all are given, not only as means 
 of life, but as means of receiving pleasure, gratifica 
 tion, delight. To be happy in the use of the senses 
 is God s blessed gift to humanity. Some enjoy pie, 
 cake, doughnuts ; some enjoy tobacco. The ex 
 pense is no argument against the man who, having 
 the money wherewith to buy doughnuts or tobacco 
 as he prefers, or both if he likes both, buys and 
 smokes tobacco. 
 
 But the anti-tobacco man says it makes a bad 
 odor. He omits to say that it is bad to his nose. 
 There is no greater impertinence than this of mak 
 ing your nose the governing nose in society. It is 
 probable that a large majority of noses in America, 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in each country taken 
 separately, regard the odor of tobacco as very 
 agreeable. But that is nothing to the argument. 
 
DOUGHNUTS AND TOBACCO 71 
 
 It only proves that odor is a matter of individual 
 taste. If the odor is disagreeable to you, that is a 
 first-rate argument that you should keep your nose 
 out of the way of tobacco smoke. It is also a good 
 argument against smoking in public places. But it 
 is no argument against smoking at Lonesome Lake 
 Cabin. You think it an evil that away up on the 
 mountain, three thousand feet high, in the free winds, 
 I smoke tobacco. Confine your attention to this 
 point. It is a good way to get at the abstract ques 
 tion of the right or wrong of smoking tobacco. You 
 will observe that all nasal considerations here are 
 to be determined by my nose and not yours, and 
 your argument on odor is not applicable. 
 
 Do I hear you say that it is a bad odor, and I 
 ought to dislike it ? Pardon me, but that is a com 
 mon sort of impertinence. Nothing is more ridic 
 ulous than to insist on our tastes as good, and other 
 people s, which differ from ours, as bad. Your nose 
 in not to be poked into other people s business. 
 Probably you have always thought no one has a 
 right to go into society with perfumes disagreeable 
 to you, and that you have a perfect right to use 
 musk or violet or geranium or anything that you 
 think people ought to like. It is a great blunder. 
 Your nose is for your guidance and gratification, 
 not for mine. That is God s law, given with human 
 senses. 
 
 The odor of tobacco is not only pleasant to me, 
 
7 2 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 and pleasant to pretty much every one of the visit 
 ors to the cabin, but it is pleasant to the most 
 lovely inhabitants of the world around. If on any 
 sunny afternoon of summer you visit us among the 
 mountains you may see a sight to do your heart 
 good. When we sit in the soft air on the piazza 
 smoking quietly, there are gorgeous butterflies, such 
 as Cupid might well love, which scent the aroma 
 from afar, and come hovering around, and light on 
 our beards and mustaches. As the twilight falls 
 over us, great sphinx-moths, rich in color and swift 
 of wing, poise themselves in the air close to our 
 faces, and breathe the odor which they love. 
 
 But you say " tobacco stupefies the intellect and 
 senses." Nonsense, man. Don t talk absurdities. 
 It makes dull intellects brilliant, and gives brilliant 
 intellects new vigor. It rests the weary, refreshes 
 the worn, consoles the depressed. For every pro 
 found thinker since the seventeenth century, every 
 great teacher, poet, philosopher, preacher, every 
 man who has benefited the human race by his in 
 tellectual labor, for every one of these whom you 
 can name as not a smoker of tobacco, you yourself 
 know two or four or ten who smoked. Your argu 
 ment is so thoroughly and stupidly untrue that it 
 never could have been uttered by one whose in 
 tellect did not need the awakening influence of 
 tobacco. 
 
 Perhaps you say " smoking leads to drinking." I 
 
DOUGHNUTS AND TOBACCO 73 
 
 have heard anti-tobacco men say so. This is an 
 other absurdity, without a shadow of truth. Smok 
 ing allays thirst. Doughnuts lead to drinking. You 
 can t eat two without taking a drink, and if there is 
 any cider around you will be tempted. If there is 
 no cider you will be drinking beer or whiskey or 
 something bad for you. No one can drink cold 
 water with doughnuts. They don t go together in 
 reason. This argument is good against doughnuts, 
 but not worth a cent against tobacco. 
 
 "But some men who smoke also drink." Yes, 
 and some who smoke work, and study, and visit the 
 poor, and are charitable and useful, and pray. Try 
 the argument on that proposition and see what it is 
 worth. 
 
 After all, do you drop back on the last resort of 
 the one who has no sensible argument and tries 
 abuse? You say that Dr. Somebody said a cigar 
 was a thing with a fire at one end and a fool at the 
 other. The only possible answer to such an argu 
 ment is in kind, and there can be no reasonable 
 doubt, if he did say it, that Dr. Somebody was a 
 donkey, whether his name be Aristotle or Franklin. 
 
 And now, having exhausted argument and abuse, 
 you ask me why I smoke. You want a reason in 
 favor of smoking. I could give you a hundred, but 
 one is all sufficient. I like it. I like good dough 
 nuts and I like good tobacco. That is conclusive 
 and binding on you until you show it to be wrong. 
 
74 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 I like it. The scent of burning Latakia is sweeter 
 to me than sickly roses or effeminate odors of violet. 
 In the perfumed cloud are many visions. Why, 
 man, it grew on Lebanon. Jebel-es-Sheik, Hermon 
 of old, the sheik of mountains, looked from afar 
 down the hill-slopes of Laodicea. Every evening 
 refreshed the young plants with dews. The sun 
 that rose in the morning from beyond Damascus 
 and Palmyra and Nineveh shone on Jerusalem 
 while it ripened them. The soil from which they 
 rose is dust of Egyptian soldiers of Sesostris, flying 
 Persians from the field of Issus, and pursuing Mace 
 donians. When the smoke rises from it, you can see 
 wonderful shapes and shades that go floating among 
 the rafters of my cabin, crowding one another, till, 
 unless you have gotten used to them, you will be 
 gin to think of going out into the less uncanny and 
 more familiar society of the woods and stars. You 
 don t know what treasures are packed for thought 
 ful smokers in every bale of that tobacco. Each 
 bunch of those leaves, in which history, imagination, 
 and enjoyment are condensed as in few printed 
 leaves, was chosen carefully by a son of Ishmael, 
 and mingled, as he knew his friend s taste, with the 
 Koranee, which gives life and force to the shapes 
 and shadows born of the burning Latakia. He has 
 sent me many small bales of those leaves, and from 
 time to time I have given them away or burned 
 them to call up the spirits. They remind me, too, 
 
DOUGHNUTS AND TOBACCO 75 
 
 of him, and of the many times in years past that he 
 and I have slept in the cool night air falling from 
 Hermon, or looked down in the morning from that 
 hill -side at the blue beauty of Galilee. Till the 
 next bale comes, if ever it come (for alas ! long si 
 lence bids me fear my friend is dead), that little 
 remnant in the gazelle-skin bag is reserved for even 
 ings of happy memories. 
 
 It is no light business, when a man is growing old 
 with his pipe for a companion, to hurl at him a 
 lot of your inanities about his bad habits. You, 
 who do it, must be well assured that you are in 
 sound mind and senses before you enter his house 
 with your notions, your ideas of right and wrong, 
 your nasal perceptions and affections. If you pre 
 fer in crowded rail-cars and public places to breathe 
 hot, feverish breath, foul with the smell of all kinds 
 of food and with diseases from all sorts of lungs, 
 possibly others may prefer the breath purified by 
 smoking some herb. In many countries where 
 smoking is allowed in some and prohibited in other 
 public carriages, nine-tenths of travellers, ladies as 
 well as gentlemen, prefer to ride where smoking is 
 allowed. Be sensible, then, and don t subject your 
 self to a reasonable charge that you are a mere 
 public nuisance yourself with your constant iteration 
 of your personal dislikes, and your everlasting pro 
 jecting of your nose into public notice. Contend as 
 much as you please that men and women who use 
 
76 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 perfumes, who eat garlic, who perspire in hot work, 
 who smoke tobacco, or who otherwise make them 
 selves perceptible to other people s noses should 
 stay at home and not annoy those noses. That has 
 nothing to do with the propriety of smoking tobacco 
 in quiet homes like Lonesome Lake Cabin. 
 
 It is so complete a puzzle to know what it is 
 which worries the soul of the man who writes savage 
 abuse of tobacco, that we, who would gladly relieve 
 him, are unable to afford him any consolation. 
 
 Come up to the cabin this summer, and learn to 
 smoke. The first may, but I don t believe the 
 second pipe will make you sick in this mountain 
 atmosphere. And you will be a better man for it. 
 You will feel better yourself, and take a more kindly 
 view of the world, and of people whose noses are 
 built on principles differing from yours. If you 
 want to argue the question we will argue it. Only, 
 before you come, go carefully over your prejudices 
 against smoking, and see if your reasons do not 
 apply with much the same force to doughnuts. 
 
 I will not join you in an argument against dough 
 nuts. One must have some respect to his reputa 
 tion in New England. 
 
VII 
 
 JOHN LEDYARD 
 
 As you come up the Connecticut Valley to the 
 mountain country you have without doubt often 
 noticed the quiet beauty of the river under the 
 forest-covered hill at the station of Hanover and 
 Norwich. Hanover, with Dartmouth College, lies 
 a half-mile or so from the station, on the New 
 Hampshire side, concealed from the rail by the 
 high land and trees on the eastern bank. 
 
 Often as I pass on the rail or drive through Han 
 over and across the bridge to White River village I 
 never fail to recall, in imagination, a scene on the 
 river-side a hundred years ago, when a life of wan 
 dering may be said to have begun which thereafter 
 led all over the world, and had sad and solemn end 
 ing on the bank of the Nile, within sight of the 
 pyramid of Shoofou. 
 
 When I was a boy the name of John Ledyard 
 was more familiar to boys and men than now. 
 Perhaps it was more familiar to me because he 
 was a family relative, and my father had letters 
 
78 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 and memorials of him, at which I looked some 
 times with wondering interest. 
 
 Dartmouth College had been in existence but 
 two or three years when the Hartford boy was 
 sent there to be in some sort under the direct 
 charge of President Wheelock, a friend of the 
 family. I call Ledyard a Hartford boy because, 
 although born at Groton, he had been taken in 
 hand by a relative, Thomas Seymour, of Hartford, 
 and had been at school and commenced reading 
 law in the Connecticut city. It was a small city 
 then, and part of Ledyard s boyhood was passed 
 in Mr. Seymour s house, which stood somewhere 
 on the bank of Little River, now called Park River; 
 then doubtless a clear stream. 
 
 He was about twenty years old when his restless 
 disposition made it evident that the law was not his 
 vocation. He never could obey, and restraint of 
 any kind was to him intolerable. Oddly enough 
 he took to the notion of becoming a missionary. I 
 suspect from the circumstances that he had vague 
 ideas of the charm of life among the heathen and 
 small concern about their souls. Dartmouth was 
 in wild regions. Indian boys were students there. 
 The idea of becoming a missionary among the 
 savages was attractive. The very life at the col 
 lege in the northern wilderness presented tempting 
 features. So with a horse and two-wheeled carriage 
 he started, carrying his baggage and sundry posses- 
 
JOHN LEDYARD 79 
 
 sions, for the long drive from Hartford to Hanover. 
 There was no road, except here and there from one 
 to another settlement. But he went safely through. 
 It is a notable fact that this would-be missionary 
 to the Indians carried with him the rude outfit of 
 a theatre, scenery and curtains, wherewith to amuse 
 himself and his college companions, white and cop 
 per colored. And it seems too that he established 
 theatrical performances at Hanover, and I am not 
 aware that Dr. Wheelock interfered to interrupt 
 their successful run. 
 
 A year or so at Hanover was all the restless boy 
 could stand. Once during that year he had disap 
 peared for some months, and it is supposed had in 
 that time roved among the Indians, perhaps, as 
 far as Canada. The experience probaby dispelled 
 the romance of missionary life, which had thus 
 far in thralled his imagination. His horse and 
 sulky were gone. History does not record their 
 fate. He was far away from civilization. But 
 daily he saw the strong flow of the Connecticut 
 downward towards the distant sea, and across the 
 sea lay the islands and countries of the great world, 
 and many unknown countries full, in his fancy, of 
 marvellous adventures. 
 
 Close to the bank of the river he felled a great 
 forest tree, whose vast trunk gave him a log fifty 
 feet long and three feet in diameter. This he fash 
 ioned into a boat not a canoe, as is sometimes 
 
80 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 written, but evidently a dugout. His college com 
 panions helped him, probably Indian boys as well 
 as white boys. Did they know his purpose ? I 
 fancy not. They were the pioneers of college boat 
 ing-clubs , and as you whirl along the iron track to 
 day you can with fancy eye-glasses see across the 
 river, under the overhanging trees, that group of 
 jolly boys, working with fire and steel, burning and 
 hewing, chatting and chattering, full of life and 
 vigor and fun, while the vast log takes shape from 
 day to day. They are all dead long ago. I have 
 no catalogue of the Dartmouth alumni, and know 
 nothing of any of them. Whatever their lives there 
 after, they were all more or less characterized by 
 wondrous adventure. There never was a human 
 life which had not in it passages of the sort we call 
 romance passages of deep emotion, strong con 
 flict, great pain or great joy. They are all dust 
 now, those boys, and from the living flesh and bone 
 and sinew that worked on Ledyard s boat at Dart 
 mouth in 1772 trees have grown large and strong 
 birches and maples here, palm-trees in Africa. 
 
 The boat was finished, and in a starry night of 
 April, when the river was running full with the 
 melting snows of the mountain country, the young 
 voyager stole down to the shore, pushed off into 
 the current, and began his wanderings. 
 
 He made choice of companionship which, incon 
 gruous as it may seem, was not strange when we 
 
JOHN LEDYARD 8l 
 
 consider his character. He had provisioned his 
 boat, and took his bear- skin for covering. For 
 company he carried his Greek Testament and his 
 Ovid, and drifting down the glorious river, than 
 which none on earth runs through more beautiful 
 and varied scenery, he lay rolled in his shaggy 
 covering and read now the wildest romances of 
 Greek and Roman mythology, now the eternal 
 truths of revelation. 
 
 Of his adventurous voyage we know nothing ex 
 cept that as he approached the gorge at Bellows 
 Falls he was so intent on one or the other of his 
 books that he barely escaped being drawn into the 
 rapids and hurled to destruction. But he escaped, 
 dragged his dugout around the falls, and resumed 
 the voyage. So it happened that Mr. Seymour and 
 his family in Hartford were surprised one sunny 
 morning at seeing this strange craft coming from 
 the Connecticut up the Little River, stopping in 
 front of the house and discharging a solitary voy 
 ager, the once intended Indian missionary. 
 
 Thereafter followed fifteen or sixteen years of 
 roving life, realizing in the main all the imagina 
 tions of the boy. With Captain Cook he went 
 around the world. Alone he penetrated the depths 
 of Siberia. He was always travelling, travelling, 
 travelling. 
 
 It is not probable that at any time in all his 
 fancies and forethinkings had ever come to him 
 
82 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 any imagination of the end, and least of all of such 
 an end as he at last reached. In Cairo, whither he 
 had gone with intent to cross Africa to the west 
 ern sea, and where he had concluded, after three 
 months of anxious delay, an arrangement with an 
 Arab merchant to take him a thousand miles and 
 leave him then to force his own way to Timbuctoo, 
 just at the moment of packing his luggage for the 
 start, a sudden illness and a fatal overdose of med 
 icine arrested his wanderings on earth, and the 
 restless boy of Dartmouth, the reckless voyager on 
 the Connecticut, went suddenly, without scrip or 
 purse, to see the wonders of the undiscovered coun 
 try. 
 
 No one knows where he was buried. Elsewhere 
 I have written of my vain attempts in Egypt in 
 1855 to ascertain something about this. I renewed 
 the inquiries a few years ago in Cairo. But the 
 search was utterly hopeless. Even the Moslem lets 
 his father s tomb crumble without repair, and an 
 Eastern cemetery is always a ruined graveyard. But 
 he was, of course, not buried in Mohammedan 
 ground. Neither is it certain that Greek or Copt 
 or Armenian or Latin would admit his poor dust to 
 the companionship of their dust. It was a curious, 
 a very remarkable search which I made, in all and 
 every of the various monasteries and churches in 
 Cairo, Fostat, and Boulak, seeking some trace of 
 Ledyard s death or burial. I had long interviews 
 
JOHN LEDYARD 83 
 
 with very aged clergymen, longer interviews with 
 custodians of pretended records, which proved to 
 be no records, and after all I was left to the long 
 est interviews with my own imaginations, in the 
 wonderful glamour of Egyptian evening lights, when 
 the sun was going or had gone down into the Lib 
 yan Desert. 
 
 Many times every year I pass along the river- 
 bank at Hanover, and see that group of boys under 
 the trees hewing out the boat. Many times I have 
 come up the river-side in the night, and have seen 
 the solitary voyager drifting down the current 
 under this same old sky. And so it occurs that 
 while other travellers see only the beautiful river 
 and the dark trees which still shade it from the 
 forenoon sun, or perhaps the glitter of moon or 
 stars in the ripples, I see more. For, unlike the 
 boy who fancied far off a golden sunlight on a free 
 and roving life, I see a straightened form, made 
 for strength, but very still ; a face of exceeding 
 beauty, but now set and calm ; surrounding people 
 wearing strange robes, uttering no words of sorrow; 
 a grave in the yellow sand, where the desert meets 
 the Nile flood ; the sun gone down, the twilight 
 coming over the pyramids and flooding around the 
 Mokattam hills, in haste to claim the valley for si 
 lence and gloom, the flood of the Nile flowing to 
 meet the flood of the Connecticut in the one great 
 sea, and the Hartford boy at rest, alone. But not 
 
84 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 alone. For the rivers of human life that have 
 flowed in many ages through many valleys, like the 
 rivers of Asia and Africa and America, have poured 
 their counted and numbered drops into one great 
 sea. And when Menes and Osirtasen and Thoth- 
 mes come crowding back with the sons of Israel and 
 Ishmael and the men of Phoenicia and Macedonia 
 and Ethiopia, to seek in Egyptian dust their own 
 dust, wherewith to be reclothed, the pale face of 
 the Hartford boy will shine in the new light, and 
 he will find the ashes which I vainly searched for. 
 
VIII 
 
 THURSDAY-EVENING MEETING 
 
 IT was unusual for me to make such a blunder. 
 I had forgotten the road directions given me five 
 miles back, in the last of the twilight, and now it 
 was dark very dark pitch dark. I was alone in 
 my buckboard. It was blowing a gale, and the rain 
 was driving in wet blankets. I was in haste, for 
 the road was yet long before me, and the speed we 
 had kept up till darkness came was still kept up. I 
 could trust the horses reasonably well to turn out 
 if they met anything, and as to driving, it was just 
 no driving, but only sitting with reins in hand and 
 letting things go. 
 
 I did not see the school -house till I had come 
 alongside of it. It stood at the fork of the road, 
 and we had taken the right hand. As I caught 
 sight of the little windows through which dim light 
 shone out I knew that I was passing the school- 
 house, where I had been told to take Which was 
 it the right or the left? I pulled suddenly on the 
 reins and the horses slowed. The next instant I 
 thought I remembered that I was to take the right- 
 
86 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 hand road, and on we went. Although at the in 
 stant I was not conscious that I had heard any 
 thing, yet for a second or two, as I went away, 
 sounds from the school-house came faintly to my 
 ears, and there was enough in them to assure me 
 that I had heard, before I thought of it, the singing 
 of a hymn by several voices. The tune was famil 
 iar. The words were, " Who are these in bright 
 array, this innumerable throng ?" and then I was 
 passing under a large tree, and the wind and the 
 branches were making a sound which was like the 
 roar of a cataract. 
 
 In ten seconds I knew I was on the wrong road. 
 The words of my direction came back suddenly and 
 distinctly: "Left hand at the school -house, right 
 hand fifty rods beyond it." So I pulled up and in 
 spected the position. You can turn a buckboaxd 
 short around by getting out, taking the hind axle 
 in your hand to lift the hind wheels around one 
 way while with your other hand you turn horses 
 and fore axle around the other way. This I did, 
 and when it was done I lighted the lantern which 
 hung over the front of the dash-board. 
 
 Back we went to the school - house. And this 
 time I listened. All was silent as I came near, 
 then suddenly the voices broke out again with in 
 describable richness and melody : 
 
 "Hunger, thirst, disease unknown, 
 On immortal fruits they feed." 
 
THURSDAY-EVENING MEETING 87 
 
 You say I thought it musical and melodious be 
 cause of the contrast with the howling storm in 
 which I was driving. Possibly so. I don t know 
 that that makes any difference in the fact. In all 
 the arts, the correct test of the power the merit 
 of the work is its effect on the individual whose 
 opinion is concerned. 
 
 As I turned slowly around the front of the little 
 school-house I saw, standing in the porch, a boy of 
 fifteen or thereabouts. " What s going on here ?" I 
 asked him. 
 
 " Parson s a-preachin ; Thursday- evenin meet- 
 in ," he said. 
 
 "Hold the reins; they won t move. Stand 
 still, boys," I said to him and to the horses, and 
 pushed open the door. 
 
 There were just fifteen persons in the small 
 room five women, five men, five boys and girls. 
 There were four candles lighted, two on the un- 
 painted wooden desk of the teacher, two at the 
 rear of the room, each in a tin candlestick on a 
 scholar s desk. One of the men was in the chair 
 at the teacher s end of the room. He was an old 
 man with white hair. His face was one of much 
 interest, and I would have been tempted to study 
 its lines but for the fact that a light seemed to 
 shine out of it which compelled notice. They 
 were all singing, he with them, and the hymn ended 
 as I stood in the doorway. 
 
88 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 There was music, melody, sublimity in that hymn 
 sung in that little school-house by those people. 
 Time was when the character of New England was 
 full of the influence of such meetings as that, held 
 in scattered school -houses all over the country. 
 The student of American history will make griev 
 ous error who shall omit from his considerations 
 the power of the Church exerted through the week 
 ly meetings as well as the Sunday services. They 
 were largely prayer- meetings. This one was a 
 prayer- meeting, and when, after a half-minute of 
 silence, the man with the white hair began to pray, 
 I fell on my knees in front of the door. People 
 in the up-country of New England are not used to 
 seeing men kneel when they pray. Only two girls 
 and a boy saw me. The rest sat with their backs 
 towards me, and dropped their heads forward. It 
 was too late to change my position, nor was it nec 
 essary. I had knelt under the impulse of the 
 voice, which was the soul of humble entreaty. The 
 words with which he began, "We beseech thee," 
 were as heaven-reaching in their tone as any re 
 sponse of choir or voice you ever heard in the 
 litany. The prayer was brief, and every sentence 
 in it was a compact petition, for I think every one 
 could be found in Holy Writ. Before the people 
 had raised their heads I had quietly come out, re 
 sumed the reins, and went plunging along the dark 
 road in the tempest. 
 
THURSDAY-EVENING MEETING 89 
 
 But dark as it was, I was no longer alone. An 
 innumerable company of thoughts, if not of per 
 sons, attended me. The voices of the stormy 
 night were not, as before, confused sounds of nat 
 ure unrestrained. They became, and this without 
 imagination, intelligible utterances of that Omnip 
 otence which governs the natural as well as the 
 invisible world. 
 
 For in this life of ours, wherein the employ 
 ments, the pleasures, the annoyances, the troubles, 
 the griefs, the desires, and the successes or failures 
 of men occupy all our attention and thought, there 
 is nothing which so completely lifts a man out of 
 his apparent surroundings into view of his real 
 surroundings as prayer. Not necessarily his own 
 prayer, but the sight, the sound of some one else 
 praying. 
 
 When men are sick and send for the minister, 
 nothing which he can say to the sick man has any 
 such power over the mind as what he says when he 
 speaks to another world and the God who, he be 
 lieves, hears him. If you see and hear a person 
 talking to another who is invisible to you, you do 
 not doubt the existence of that other, unless the 
 speaker is insane. So, when men hear the sound 
 of prayer to God they have a strong conviction 
 that the speaker is speaking to some one he knows, 
 some one who hears him. And I am inclined to 
 think that among the influences with which the 
 
go AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 character of New England was moulded in former 
 years, none was more powerful than the prayer 
 which boys and girls as they grew up were accus 
 tomed to hear, Sundays and week-days, addressed 
 to the invisible God. 
 
 They grew up with a consciousness of subjection 
 to an authority higher than any which they made 
 by voting at town-meeting. That sense of subjec 
 tion made better citizens than ever can be made 
 without it. It is essential to a good and wise gov 
 ernor or master that he know how to obey, how to 
 serve. The man who is conscious, or even who 
 has only a vague idea of the existence of a power 
 absolute over him and over his State and his coun 
 try, is a restrained man. And he is a happier, a 
 more comfortable man. There is tremendous 
 power and great satisfaction to the honest man in 
 the knowledge that in the midst of his good and 
 evil, pleasant and unpleasant surroundings, he can 
 speak and be heard in a world very far away from 
 this, and be heard by a willing hearer. 
 
 Whatever you think about it, my friend, I think 
 that the best part of the American character, the 
 strength, the trustworthiness, the good blood of the 
 body politic was in the prevalent consciousness of 
 responsibility to God. There is not so much of it 
 as there once was. The blood is thinner than it 
 used to be in some parts of the body, and other 
 parts show symptoms of blood poison. 
 
THURSDAY-EVENING MEETING 91 
 
 As I drove on through forests which scarcely 
 made the night seem any darker, now along the 
 banks of wild torrents, now across flats where the 
 water lay deep over the road, I thought much as I 
 have here written. And constantly would come to 
 me the sound of that grand hymn, with its glorious 
 vision of the throne and the white - robed hosts 
 around it. And I thought of that little company, 
 doubting much whether you can find anywhere fif 
 teen persons gathered in any assembly more of 
 whom are worthy or likely to wear those robes. 
 
IX 
 
 AN EASTER LONG AGO 
 
 THE village road ran due north and south. It 
 was very broad, full a hundred and fifty feet, with 
 large old trees on both sides, standing in not very 
 straight line on the outer edge of the sidewalks. 
 These trees were elms and maples, mostly, which 
 had been planted by former generations. Among 
 them stood an occasional horse-chestnut, later in 
 troductions. The elms were mighty trees, some of 
 them gigantic, spreading their arms and hanging 
 their long branches down over the wagon-road on 
 one side and over the sidewalk and the front yards, 
 and sometimes over the houses, on the other side. 
 The houses were continuous, one yard adjoining 
 another, on each side of the road (street, they 
 called it there) for a quarter of a mile from the 
 river bridge at one end to the cross-road corners at 
 the other end of the village. At the cross-road 
 stood the two churches, on corners diagonally op 
 posite one another, and on the alternate corners 
 the village store the only store and the village 
 tavern. 
 
AN EASTER LONG AGO 93 
 
 The Episcopal church stood in the graveyard, 
 which stretched along up the road. The Presbyte 
 rian church had no graveyard. The village was a 
 very old one ; the two churches were about equally 
 old. For much more than a century the people of 
 the village and of the rich farming country around 
 it had been accustomed to worship according to 
 the manners of their fathers some in one, some in 
 the other church. For the most part there had 
 never been any religious controversy or any ten 
 dency to it among them while they lived, and when 
 they died they all lay down peacefully side by side 
 without controversy in the village burial-ground. 
 
 There came a time when controversy arose. It 
 came, as it often comes, from a cantankerous Chris 
 tian of one or the other church, who made himself 
 offensive to a member of the other church, and 
 thus began a quarrel. It was of no account at first. 
 But as months and years went on the people first 
 the women, then the men began to be ranged on 
 the two sides of the dispute. What it was about 
 no one now knows, and it is not altogether certain 
 that in those days any one knew. Enough that it 
 produced a very wide breach in the social constitu 
 tion of the neighborhood, which lasted for many 
 years. 
 
 The ablest and most influential man in the com 
 munity was Silas Lawton, a lawyer, a man of wealth 
 for the times, an elder in the Presbyterian church, 
 
94 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 about fifty years old, living in a fine old house next 
 door to the tavern. He was a gentleman by birth 
 and habit of life, given to extensive reading, and 
 the last man in the world to take part in a village 
 quarrel of any kind. But none of us are free from 
 the influences of our surroundings, and Mr. Lawton 
 had persuaded himself that the most important 
 question of the day for that neighborhood was 
 whether the door of the Episcopal church was not 
 the gate of hell. He probably came to a conclusion 
 finally when he heard that his professional rival 
 and personal friend Thompson, a church-warden of 
 the Episcopal church, had said that he would as 
 soon enter a heathen temple as a Presbyterian 
 church. 
 
 Here were two ordinarily sensible men, men of 
 intelligence, behaving like two fools. And for that 
 matter, on this subject all the community were fools 
 all except the two clergymen, who respected 
 one another, recognized one another as earnest 
 servants of one Master, and were accustomed to 
 hold familiar intercourse. 
 
 Something which the Episcopal clergyman had 
 always done in his church, lighting some candles, 
 or putting water into the communion wine, or wear 
 ing a peculiar dress in short, some particular part 
 of the ritual had become a subject of talk, then of 
 severe animadversion, among the people of the 
 other church. And Silas Lawton had spoken very 
 
AN EASTER LONG AGO 95 
 
 strongly on the subject, and had then gone further 
 and condemned everything in and about the Epis 
 copal church. In particular, he furnished to the 
 village newspaper articles, not apparently contro 
 versial, on Church history, in which he demonstrat 
 ed to his own satisfaction that the Church calendar 
 is all wrong, that Christmas is months out of the 
 way, that Good Friday is not the anniversary of the 
 Crucifixion, and that Easter is by no possibility the 
 correct date of the Resurrection. In short, he made 
 havoc of the whole business of Church anniversa 
 ries and celebrations, and rejoiced some people 
 while he angered others. Thus religious animosi 
 ties were raging in the village when a series of 
 events happened. 
 
 It was in March a cold, tempestuous March. 
 Old Dr. Malen, the dependence of the people for 
 forty years, died suddenly. Next day Silas Lawton s 
 only child, Fanny, the best-loved, brightest, best- 
 worth-loving girl of fourteen ever known, was taken 
 sick. The nearest medical man lived twelve miles 
 away. They sent for him, but he was off on a dis 
 tant visit, and word was left for him to come. But 
 he did not come, and Fanny was very, very ill. 
 All that night the wind made moans in the leafless 
 elm-trees, and the soul of Silas Lawton was in an 
 guish. The morning brought no relief. There 
 was plenty of sympathy, plenty of help from neigh 
 bors ; but help that did no good, for no one knew 
 
96 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 what was the matter with the girl. Why did not 
 the doctor come ? It was not till another messen 
 ger had been sent and returned that they knew the 
 reason. He too was sick. No help could be ex 
 pected there. 
 
 Late in the afternoon a travelling-carriage drove 
 up to the tavern door, and three persons sought 
 lodging for the night. Their appearance produced 
 a village sensation. Not a dozen of the people had 
 ever before seen a Sister of any religious order. A 
 horror of Roman Catholics characterized many 
 such villages as this. It was soon reported that 
 three " nuns " were at the tavern, and their jour 
 ney, whither and wherefore they were going, 
 formed the subject of talk in every house that 
 night. 
 
 It came to the knowledge of these ladies by 
 merest accident that there was great distress and 
 anxiety in the house next to the tavern. They 
 inquired the particulars, and the landlady told 
 them all. The eldest of the three is described in 
 the village traditions as of impressive appearance, 
 speaking in a low voice which commanded atten 
 tion by its suppressed music, looking with eyes 
 that gave one the idea they had no desire to see 
 anything on earth patient, calm, long-suffering 
 eyes which expressed no emotion, unless patience 
 be emotion. She sent the landlady to Silas Law- 
 ton to say that a lady, a stranger, who had some 
 
AN EASTER LONG AGO 97 
 
 knowledge of disease and medicine, proffered her 
 help, if perchance she could be of any use. 
 
 In brief time Fanny Lawton was in the best of 
 hands. She was dangerously ill. Some say it was 
 a case of lung-fever, inflammation of the lungs, or 
 pneumonia in one of its forms. Others say it was 
 a quick fever. Others have other theories. Those 
 three Sisters fought the enemy all night. In the 
 morning two of them went on with their carriage, 
 but the eldest remained. It was a Thursday morn 
 ing. That day the opinions of people were some 
 what divided as to the course of Silas Lawton. 
 Some thought he did well enough. Others thought 
 he had taken a fearful risk in admitting this nun 
 into his house, and especially to the side of his dy 
 ing daughter. Why, she might baptize her secretly, 
 and so make a Romanist of her; or she might make 
 the sign of the cross over her, and so do her some 
 awful harm. Who could tell what evil might be 
 done by such an emissary of Satan ? By Friday the 
 opinions took definite shape, and Mr. Lawton was 
 severely censured. 
 
 He cared nothing and knew nothing of this vil 
 lage talk. His life was very much bound up in 
 that child. His love for her was abounding, con 
 trolling. He had always known that he loved her, 
 but he never knew a thousandth part how much. 
 Therefore, time, village talk, all were unheeded, and 
 his whole soul was intent on the fluctuating signs 
 
 7 
 
98 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 of life or of death in that room. Powerless to do 
 anything himself, he could only look on. But much 
 he looked into the patient face of the unweary 
 ing nurse, much he sought some expression, some 
 promise, out of those calm eyes, but in vain. Some 
 how, for a long time, when she was kneeling by 
 the side of the bed, it never came into his head 
 what she was doing, and doing so often. Then 
 suddenly, when it flashed into his mind that she 
 was praying, he fell on his knees. And when the 
 landlady, who saw it, told of this outside, people 
 said it was incredible that Silas Lawton should be 
 seen kneeling and praying with a Roman Catholic. 
 
 Friday and Saturday went by. It was late on 
 Saturday night when the Sister told him that she 
 believed the child would live. Still they watched 
 by her all night. 
 
 Again the wind was up, now a gale from the 
 south, and the sounds, although perhaps to other 
 ears the same, were to him wholly different. For 
 now he had hope. He had more than hope. He 
 had somehow confidence in that stranger, who 
 seemed to him sent from God. The voices of nat 
 ure, which he had always heard, as most men hear 
 them in accord with their mental conditions at the 
 moment, now seemed to teach him new truths. In 
 reality it was only that his own reasonable soul 
 was teaching them, because for the first time in his 
 life he was in a receptive state. 
 
AN EASTER LONG AGO 
 
 99 
 
 Before daybreak the Sister told him she was sure 
 that danger was past, and added that she had been 
 so confident of it the evening before that she had 
 arranged at the tavern for horses to take her on. 
 He was startled, and at first tried to keep her. But 
 no, she must go; and he could not but think she 
 had done more than enough for him. He tried to 
 thank her, but she said, simply, let us thank Him, 
 and turned her face to the east, where were the signs 
 of the dawn. Making a sign on her breast, she 
 bowed her head. He did not make the sign, but 
 bowed his head as well. 
 
 Then over him came tumultuously a hundred 
 thoughts how in old times Christians had prayed, 
 looking eastward, because thence comes the light 
 of the world breaking on its darkness ; because 
 thereaway are Jerusalem, and Calvary, and the 
 Olive mountain whence He ascended ; because, 
 because what mattered it to him the reason now? 
 God had given him back his child through the 
 faith and work of this woman, and he would thank 
 God, looking eastward, westward, anyway-ward, now, 
 and forever hereafter. 
 
 And she went, leaving him happy but dazed. 
 The sun was rising as she drove away. He saw it 
 rise, and his eyes were tremulous or the air was 
 tremulous or something intervened, for the sun 
 danced, actually danced, in the hazy air which fol 
 lowed the southerly rain of the night. He looked 
 
100 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 down the road, eastward, whither the stranger had 
 driven. He went in, and Fanny s eyes greeted him 
 with a look that went to his heart. 
 
 " Where is she, father ?" she whispered. 
 
 "Gone away," he whispered back. 
 
 " Where to ?" 
 
 "I don t know." 
 
 "I know," she said; "there s a Catholic church 
 
 and a convent at W , and it s only thirty miles, 
 
 and she will be there by church-time." 
 
 "Why by church-time?" 
 
 "Why, father, it s Easter Sunday." 
 
 Then he went out again and looked up the road, 
 clown which the sun was shining. Now he remem 
 bered about the sun dancing on Easter mornings, 
 and the memory did not offend him. Now he be 
 gan to say to himself that he was in very close 
 sympathy with every one who served the same Lord. 
 He began to think I cannot write what he thought, 
 but this was what he did: He went into his little 
 conservatory and cut every flower there, and made 
 a splendid bouquet, and took it across the street 
 and put it on the communion-table in front of the 
 pulpit in the Presbyterian church. 
 
 It was the first time he had ever offered a flower 
 to God. When he had done it, it seemed to him 
 wonderful that he had never done it before. And 
 when, coming out, he met the minister and told 
 him what he had clone, the minister was glad, for 
 
AN EASTER LONG AGO IOI 
 
 he had wanted some such help as he was now as 
 sured of. And they two judiciously guided things 
 so that the people yielded their prejudices, and 
 great peace followed in the community. The strong 
 est influence was that which came from the Sister. 
 No one knew her name. She had only said she 
 was Sister something a Latin name they had not 
 remembered. They began to think she was a good 
 servant of her Master. And herein she had done 
 His service in a way she did not know. Some time, 
 in a country where there are no misunderstandings, 
 some of those people will meet her. Many have 
 already met her and know her by a new name, and 
 all of them will understand one another, measuring 
 each other by their likeness to Him. 
 
X 
 
 AN OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS 
 
 IT was a great while ago. That expression con 
 veys various ideas of lapse of time. It may imply 
 only a few months. To a child of ten it might 
 mean five years. To you it may suggest ten thou 
 sand, a thousand, five hundred, a hundred, or fewer 
 years. There is a country in which they do not 
 measure time, as we do, by tiny watches or rolling 
 worlds. I am thinking about that country to-night, 
 as pretty much all of us do think more or less about 
 it at this time of year. 
 
 A library in one way illustrates the prophecy of 
 the angel that " Time shall be no longer." Around 
 me, as I write, covering all the walls from floor to 
 ceiling, are books. Some are the everlasting, the 
 imperishable thoughts and words of souls who, thou 
 sands of years ago, counted time as we count it, and 
 who for thousands of years have ceased to count it. 
 Others are of later ages, of men and women who 
 lived and wrote when the sun and the planets and 
 the stars stood in relations to one another quite 
 different from those they now occupy ; of all the 
 
AN OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS 103 
 
 successive ages, from the old Chaldean whose think 
 ings are cut in cuneiform on the seals which are 
 reproduced in various modern volumes, down to the 
 Christmas story writer of A.D. 1890. And all the 
 books, the undying thoughts of people of dead and 
 buried generations, stand solemnly together, all thor 
 oughly alive and wide awake, intelligent and intelligi 
 ble, living, speaking beings. The material things of 
 the world measure time, and are worn and wasted 
 by time the spiritual, the thoughts of men, remain 
 immutable and powerful. The companionships 
 of the immortals are not like our companionships 
 who now know personally only the few who col 
 lide with us in this short life. Have not some of 
 those, whose thoughts embodied in books are thus 
 brought together in my library, also met one an 
 other ? 
 
 Is there anything strange or improbable in the 
 idea that two or three people, wholly unlike, may 
 have met elsewhere, even by some such accident as 
 caused the meeting of their thoughts on yonder 
 shelf? It happened in a simple way. I had been 
 referring to several authors, and their books lay in 
 a pile. A child came into the library with a book 
 in hand, which she had found in another part of the 
 house. She read awhile and left the book lying on 
 the old theologians, and so all the books happened 
 to go up on the shelves together. Therefore I 
 laughed a little when I saw the old picture-book, 
 
104 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the History of Puss in Boots, a thin book, squeezed 
 tight between Thomas Aquinas on Job and Augus 
 tine De Civitate Dei. 
 
 I don t know and I don t care who wrote Puss in 
 Boots, though his thoughts do seem for the present 
 as imperishable as those of the Philosophers of the 
 Greeks and the Fathers of the Church. But on the 
 fly-leaf of that book are, in manuscript, four words 
 between two names ; the first the name of a boy, 
 and the last that of her who gave the book to the 
 boy " a long time ago." And the four words, em 
 balming the thought of one who wrote them, are 
 as eloquent as any words of philosophy or theology 
 are words which in theology express the infinite 
 difference between the Christian religion and every 
 other religion. For in no other system does the 
 idea appear, which is the foundation idea in the 
 Christian faith, that the God who made and gov 
 erns is related to the man who neglects and forgets 
 and rebels against him by the relationship of love. 
 "With the love of" those are the words between 
 the two names. They were written on a Christmas 
 Day a long time ago. 
 
 There are several men and women, elderly peo 
 ple now, who remember the young beauty of " Cous 
 in Sarah" and her matronly beauty when she lived 
 a centre of happiness and beneficence. On that 
 Christmas Day, a long time ago, there were gathered 
 in the old house a large company, mostly children, 
 
AN OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS 105 
 
 who had come up from the city to spend Christmas 
 week with grandfather and grandmother, hale old 
 people, 
 
 Sarah was the eldest of all the grandchildren, a 
 woman grown, for she was twenty years old then, 
 and she was the only one who had been brought up 
 by the old people and still lived in the old home. 
 All the others were much younger from fifteen down 
 to five. She was, in fact, hostess, and a capital one 
 they thought her then. There had been thejolliest 
 sort of a morning when the stockings were opened, 
 and the customary tempest of young delight, which 
 made the large house ring as it never rang but once 
 a year with that purest of cheery music, the voices 
 of happy children. 
 
 All the morning Sarah had given herself to the 
 innumerable cares of the household as well as to the 
 fun of the children. Then to the door came the big 
 sleigh, into which grandpa and grandma were stowed 
 on the back seat, and as many small folks as pos 
 sible piled in ; and behind it came up Sarah s 
 horses and cutter. You would have stood a long 
 time in a colder day than that (the thermometer was 
 ten below zero in the early morning) to look at that 
 beautiful structure, the cutter, itself snow-white, with 
 here and there a touch of gold. But you would 
 have stood longer to look at the horses, magnificent 
 blacks, with human eyes, full of gentleness and fire 
 combined. And you would have looked with all 
 
106 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 your eyes had you seen that equipage when it rushed 
 off in the brilliant sunshine, she holding the reins, a 
 boy of six years old on either side of her in the cut 
 ter, only their small faces visible above the piles of 
 white fox fur that filled the cutter. 
 
 The church was three miles away, in a scattered 
 little village. Service was not over till half-past 
 twelve. Then, as she was taking the reins in her 
 hands, the village doctor came up with a quick step. 
 
 " I am sorry to tell you, Miss Sarah, that Tommy 
 Grove is not doing well to-day. The fact is, I m 
 afraid, in our Christmas occupations, we have let 
 him be forgotten, and " 
 
 " I have forgotten him. Thank you, doctor. I ve 
 neglected the boy, and to say I have been very busy 
 is no excuse." 
 
 " I Really, Miss Sarah, I didn t" 
 
 " Yes, you did, doctor, and you did right, and I 
 thank you heartily. It s not too late." 
 
 Away went the horses not towards home. A 
 half-mile down the road they stopped before a 
 small, shabby house, with a broken gate blocked 
 open in a snow-drift, through or over which a nar 
 row trodden path led to the door. 
 
 " Come in with me, boys. It will do you good." 
 
 The interior would make a sorrowful Christmas 
 picture. A bare room, with a little poor furniture, 
 a good fire on a hearth where bricks were scarce, a 
 round griddle hanging from a crane over the fire, a 
 
AN OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS 107 
 
 pan of buckwheat batter on the floor, two cakes on 
 the griddle, a stout woman in the middle of the 
 room, and a sick boy in bed in the corner, scarcely 
 to be seen through the smoke of the fat from the 
 griddle which filled the room. 
 
 The boy s little thin features lighted with a smile 
 when he saw his visitor, and fell again when she 
 told him she had only come to see him for a mo 
 ment. But he brightened again when she said she 
 would come again before night. A few questions 
 to him and to his mother, some cheery words, and 
 all were out again in the cutter and flying over the 
 country. It was seven miles to the town, where 
 were the court-house and several stores. The 
 black horses knew the road, and knew that their 
 mistress was in a hurry. The sleigh-bells did not 
 jingle or ring, but just swung out a sharp, shrill, 
 tremulous cry of bronze, which cut the air like a 
 knife as they swept townward. 
 " One mile from town there was something strange 
 in sight ahead. You could see it a half-mile away. 
 It was a drunken man, fallen over, out of the track, 
 on the two-feet-deep snow, and lying as if dead. 
 She pulled up by his side. The boys were afraid. 
 Not she. She calmed them, got the drunken fellow 
 on his feet close by the cutter, then tumbled him 
 over into it. If he had been a stranger, doubtless 
 she would have done the same, but this was no 
 stranger. He was the son of her grandfather s 
 
108 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 old friend, long dead. He had been a brilliant 
 man, educated and respected, now a vagabond. 
 He lay still enough after she saw that his head 
 was all right. 
 
 The horses stopped in front of the principal 
 store. A dozen ready hands relieved her of the 
 miserable load, and relieved the two boys of the 
 terror which had possessed their small souls for 
 the last few minutes. In the store the scene was 
 not as it would be to-day in such a store. The 
 world had not then a thousandth part of the things 
 for Christmas merry-making that we now have. 
 Toys for children were few and simple. Books 
 were scarce and expensive. While she was mak 
 ing her purchases one of the boys discovered that 
 book, Puss in Boots, and the two together were en 
 raptured with the dauby pictures, colored by hand, 
 wherein is shown how the bright cat enriched the 
 marquis, her master. 
 
 " Come, boys, it is time to be off." 
 
 " Oh, Cousin Sarah, do look at this book ; it s so 
 funny." 
 
 " I m in a great hurry. Bring the book with you, 
 if you want it, Johnny." And back we went, like 
 the wind, over the white road, and through the 
 white land. Then, indeed, the boys thought noth 
 ing of that whiteness, nor did it enter their young 
 heads that they were riding with Cousin Sarah in a 
 holier light than that of sun on snow. The swift 
 
AN OLD-TIME CHRISTMAS 109 
 
 horses were not more heedless than they of the ra 
 diant company of angels who, in after-years when 
 they recalled that sleigh-ride they knew must have 
 accompanied them. The land, the fields, the hills, 
 the road-side, all were white. But as that splendid 
 vision flashed along the road the horses feet filled 
 all the air around them and behind them with dust 
 of gold, as of the streets of the celestial city. 
 
 Again they were in the room where the sick boy 
 was wearying away the lonesome Christmas after 
 noon. In a moment, with tacks and hammer, parts 
 of her purchase, she transformed the room into a 
 gallery of art of wonderful beauty. Beauty, I say, 
 for beauty is never in the object, but always in the 
 eyes that look and see. Right well she knew that 
 law sensible, beautiful Cousin Sarah ; and she had 
 sought and found beauty not for herself, but for 
 Tommy Grove. Children had not in those days 
 the wonderful works of art which are now abun 
 dant. But she had selected from such as we then 
 had. Tommy lay silent with open eyes, opening 
 wider and wider, filling all the time fuller and full 
 er of joy while one and another and another were 
 put up where he could see them easily. There 
 were pink children playing, and blue children pray 
 ing, young ones in sacred and profane history and 
 story, and conspicuous among them all there was a 
 somewhat rude, but to him how lovely, picture of a 
 Mother, in blue robe and yellow kerchief, holding 
 
HO AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 in her arms a Child. It was the Christmas centre, 
 centre of all beauty, now and forever. 
 
 " Where have you been with these children, Sa 
 rah?" asked the grandmother, as they came into 
 the old house; and the grandfather looked the 
 same question, both of them at the same moment 
 looking also their entire love and trust. And 
 when she said, " Grandpa, I had forgotten Tommy 
 Grove," they looked at each other and said nothing. 
 That evening she wrote in the Pitss in Boots book 
 the name of a six-year old boy " with the love of 
 Cousin Sarah." And the book is not out of place 
 between St. Thomas and St. Augustine. 
 
 I am not that boy. A long time ago he died. 
 Not so long time ago Cousin Sarah died. While 
 she lived her life was a benediction to many young 
 boys and girls, and to many others, old and young. 
 There are some such people not many whose 
 whole lives are, like that Christmas sleigh-ride, in 
 the dust of celestial gold, in the sunshine of the 
 better country, with continual attendance of angels. 
 Only her thought, a loving thought for the boy, re 
 mains here in her handwriting. She now knows 
 such saints as Elizabeth of Hungary ; and they, and 
 such as they, are gathering roses in Paradise. 
 
XI 
 
 ALONE AT THANKSGIVING 
 
 THE house stood near the road a half-mile or 
 less from the church and store and tavern, which 
 might be called the centre of the village. It was 
 not much of a village ; only a dozen or so of houses 
 scattered along the old country road. They were 
 all old houses, and stood under old trees. For this 
 was one of those villages, not uncommon, wherein 
 life had been very much the same for several gen 
 erations, and that which we call progressive civil 
 ization had not invaded it. Even when a railway 
 was constructed through the valley running paral 
 lel with the road, and a station was established 
 fifty rods from the church, no one had been tempt 
 ed to build a new house, no increase was produced 
 in the value of land, no mill or factory was erected 
 on the bank of the stream. 
 
 This house was the largest and best in the neigh 
 borhood. It was of the kind now called " colo 
 nial " ; a large two-story double frame-house, with 
 a front door in the middle opening out on a porch 
 a little wider than the door, and opening in to a 
 
112 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 broad hall which separated the two large rooms on 
 the left from two like rooms on the right. It had 
 an extension, an L in the rear, for the kitchen, and 
 behind the kitchen a good-sized dairy-room, and 
 beyond this a wood-shed, and beyond the wood 
 shed the stable and carriage -house, and beyond 
 that the barns. Very sensible, roomy, comfortable 
 houses are those old " colonial " houses. In the 
 north country they were cool in summer and warm 
 in winter, and when heavy snow-storms came the 
 entire establishment, from front parlor to barn, was 
 accessible to man or woman without going out-of- 
 doors. There was one great fault in this plan, a 
 plan which prevails still in the building of modern 
 farm-houses in northern New England. That fault 
 consists in the danger from fire. When a fire oc 
 curs in such a house in the country, where fire- 
 engines are unknown, if it once gets beyond con 
 trol it sweeps everything in one conflagration. I 
 have seen a fire starting in the barn work its de 
 stroying way to wood - house, dairy, and so on 
 through the whole establishment, while a hundred 
 men stood around powerless to arrest it. 
 
 This old house was well kept up. Looking at it 
 you would say that its owner was well-to-do. He 
 was more. He was very rich. He had from youth 
 up retained possession of the homestead, and all 
 that was in it, and had lived there. Much of his 
 time had been passed in the city, but he had no 
 
ALONE AT THANKSGIVING 113 
 
 house there, and this was his home. Its ancient 
 furniture was rich, and he had added to it abun 
 dant stores of luxury for the delight of the eye 
 and the body. He was no miser. He valued 
 money, rightly enough, only for its purchasing pow 
 er. But he had never for an instant conceived the 
 idea of using that power to purchase any gratifica 
 tion for any one but himself. Whatever he wanted, 
 whatever desire he had, whatever whim took pos 
 session of him, he used his wealth freely for his 
 own pleasure. But never for the happiness of any 
 one else. He lived for self and only self. 
 
 It came to pass, as a matter of course, that as he 
 grew to middle age he was a man without friends. 
 In the village and thereabouts he was regarded very 
 much as a stranger. The minister had long ago 
 left him out of his books, for he had long ago with 
 drawn himself severely from all local associations, 
 whether of church, or charity, or social life. In the 
 city he was well known as a man of wealth, and had 
 many acquaintances in the street and the clubs, but 
 no friends. His intercourse with mankind, though 
 outwardly cordial, with all the apparent friendliness 
 which characterizes the surface of social and busi 
 ness life, was nevertheless purely formal, without 
 heart or heartiness, and furnished no happiness for 
 those solitary times when most men need some 
 thing warm and cheery to think about. This man 
 was no rare and peculiar specimen of humanity. 
 
114 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 He was just what thousands of men are, of whom 
 others say "he cares for nothing but business." 
 
 There had been a good deal of autumn work on 
 the home farm, and he had superintended it, not go 
 ing to town for several days. He had not been 
 quite well. He had queer sounds in his ears and 
 queer whirlings in his head. The week had been 
 a succession of golden days, growing colder from 
 day to day. It was nearly sunset, and he stood at 
 the front window looking out over the landscape. 
 The elm-trees which stood in front of the house 
 were leafless. The road beyond them was dusty, 
 and when a wagon went by clouds rose, reddened 
 in the sunlight, and drifted out over the meadow on 
 the other side of the road, where stood a group of his 
 cattle waiting to be brought in to their night shelter. 
 Beyond the meadow was the river, a noble stream, 
 in which when he was a boy he had found trout 
 plentiful, and, finding them, had found happiness. 
 
 He did not know why it was this evening that 
 looking over there he remembered his boyhood, and 
 it was strange to him to recall that kind of happi 
 ness which he then enjoyed. He had never been 
 unhappy ; he thought he had been on the whole a 
 happy man ; but just now there was a queer thrill of 
 delight, for one little instant, in his mind, as if he 
 were no longer a strong man of fifty, but that boy, 
 with other boys, down yonder on the bank of the 
 river. When that thrill passed away he somehow 
 
ALONE AT THANKSGIVING 115 
 
 recognized that he was now quite far from being as 
 happy as he was once. 
 
 The thought disturbed him, and he dismissed it 
 impatiently, and turned to the side window, whence 
 he looked down the road. There he saw the church 
 and the church-yard behind it. There were no 
 leaves on the intervening brush, and he could see, 
 prominent among the stones, the monument which 
 was over the graves of his father and his mother. 
 He did not think of the words of just praise which 
 were on the stone, and which all who knew them 
 and all who did not know them could read. He 
 thought of them as he knew them, and he couldn t 
 help thinking of himself as they knew him. Thought 
 is very swift. It takes but the time of a lightning- 
 flash for one to review a long, a very long history. 
 He saw them his father, an honorable, God-fearing, 
 neighbor-loving man, respected, loved, honored by 
 all the people ; his mother, a calm-eyed lovely lady, 
 to whom the rich and the poor alike looked with 
 assurance of sympathy in sorrow and help in dis 
 tress. But chiefly he saw her as his mother, her 
 look into his eyes, her exceeding beauty to him. 
 How he loved, how he worshipped her ! And how 
 she loved him, him her boy ! It was but a flash of 
 memory, and again he was himself, the man grown, 
 and moulded by a life unknown to his father and 
 mother. When he was thus again himself he could 
 not help thinking how great was the contrast be- 
 
Il6 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 tween that old life and this in one respect, that now 
 no one loved him. And that thought lingered. 
 
 He tried to laugh it away as sentimental. But it 
 would not be laughed away. For it is a serious, 
 solemn thought, involving all that concerns one s 
 character and life. Not to have the love of any 
 one, man or woman, boy or girl, is a terrible afflic 
 tion, and most terrible to him who says he does 
 not want it ! For such saying argues that the 
 man isn t worth loving, and therefore that the soon 
 er he is under the sod and out of the way the 
 sooner his place may be filled for the good of so 
 ciety. 
 
 He had never loved or been loved by any woman 
 but his mother. So he now said to himself. And 
 yet as he said it he turned from the window and, 
 crossing the room, stood before a picture which hung 
 on the wall. He possessed many superb pictures 
 by renowned artists. There was an Old Crome, the 
 envy of connoisseurs, a Gainsborough whose gen 
 uineness was not to be impeached, a Cuyp of ex 
 quisite beauty. There were a dozen other paintings 
 in his room, landscapes and figure pieces, each of 
 which was a gem. He had good taste, and had grat 
 ified it always. But he walked directly over to the 
 place where was hanging a painting by an unknown 
 artist, which he had bought simply because he liked 
 it. He stood before it and looked into the face of 
 a young country girl holding her apron full of wild 
 
ALONE AT THANKSGIVING 117 
 
 flowers and shading her eyes from the sun with her 
 uplifted hand. 
 
 He looked at that face but an instant. Perhaps 
 there is no reason for the conjecture that that fair 
 countenance resembled a face he had seen in the 
 life. Perhaps it was a foolish fancy of his that if he 
 ever met that girl in flesh and blood he could ask 
 her to love him. Perhaps but imagination here is 
 vain. 
 
 He had stood there but a moment when the but 
 ler opened the folding-doors and announced that din 
 ner was served. He dined alone as usual. His 
 table shone with bright light on silver and old por 
 celain and glass. He sat facing the fireplace. 
 Above it was the old wooden mantel-piece, its white 
 front ornamented with charming reliefs, vases, and 
 wreaths. The chairs were the ancient family chairs 
 heavy mahogany. The very fire-irons, with their 
 brass mountings, the andirons, tongs, shovel, poker, 
 all were the old irons handled by the old folks, and 
 by himself when he was a boy in this room. 
 
 It was a struggle now to keep down memories, 
 and he gave up the struggle and let them have their 
 way, for they were rather cold memories and did not 
 disturb him at the first. But they grew warmer 
 as the solitary dinner progressed, and he began to 
 ask himself why, on this particular evening, such a 
 crowd of them pressed in on him. It was not till a 
 little later that he knew. He was somewhat of an 
 
IlS AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 epicure. His servants knew his ways and what he 
 liked, and he gave no orders for his meals. That 
 was their business. Now as the butler lifted the 
 cover from the silver soup-tureen he recalled the old 
 time when the tureen was a mighty old Staffordshire 
 vessel, cream white with bright green ruffled edge, 
 and his mother filled the soup-plates for six children 
 around the table, five daughters all dead long ago, 
 and one son now dining here alone. 
 
 He remembered the face and form of Tacitus, the 
 old colored butler of those days. He saw for a 
 moment across the room the white-aproned Delia, 
 wife of Tacitus, waiting to wait on Tacitus should 
 need be. He saw all that was there forty years ago, 
 and a very unpleasant dinner he had of it. For all 
 this remembering of old times and early life was 
 not to his liking. He had long ago moved out of 
 that life and its relationships. It was his custom to 
 drink at dinner only a sparkling table water, until 
 he arrived at the fruit, when he always took his 
 bottle of wine and finished it with his cigar. He 
 drank usually a plain, sound Burgundy of medium 
 grade, Macon or Pommard ; but once in a while, 
 say on New Year s Day or Fourth of July, he would 
 take a higher grade of wine of the vineyards of gold, 
 perhaps Romance or Richebourg or Vougeot. For 
 in his cellar he had ample stock of fine wines, which 
 he used temperately. 
 
 It was a surprise to him when taking up his glass 
 
ALONE AT THANKSGIVING 119 
 
 of wine, which his servant had filled, and lifting it 
 towards his lips he recognized the aroma of Vougeot. 
 
 " Why is this, Paolo ?" he asked. 
 
 " I thought, sir, you would wish some good wine 
 to-day." 
 
 "Why to-day?" 
 
 " Surely, sir, to-day is what you call Thanksgiving." 
 
 Thanksgiving Day ! Hopeless now to struggle 
 with those crowding memories. What man who 
 was a Connecticut boy forty years ago can expel 
 from his mind the memories of home on that day ? 
 He was not an emotional man. He gave no ex 
 ternal sign of the internal tumult. He smoked his 
 cigar and drank a single glass of wine, and thought, 
 and thought, and thought. He left the table and 
 walked into the front room, and sat in the large 
 chair by the window, and looked out at the light of 
 the full moon and thought. He lay back in his chair 
 and looked across at that girl s picture, lit by a 
 strong bar of light from the dining-room that bright 
 and beautiful face which looked back at him ; and 
 the riot of his thinking became tumultuous. 
 
 " The past," he said to himself, " was full of peo 
 ple, and the future will be full of people, and I am 
 alone among them all. Alone ! What have I ever 
 done for any man or woman or child, any being in 
 the universe, that that person should thank God that 
 he made me ; that that person should come up to 
 me and say, I thank you ? Alone ! I am alone 
 
120 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 now ; and when I go where there is no buying and 
 selling, and no one to care for me as a buyer or 
 seller, I shall be absolutely alone. What is the cur 
 rency of that country where my father and mother 
 now are ? Not gold or silver ! What was that old 
 song the mother used to sing in this very room ? 
 
 There nectar and ambrosie spring ; there musk and civet 
 
 sweet ; 
 
 There many a fair and dainty drug is trod down under 
 feet. 
 
 If I go there without money in my purse, wherewith 
 am I to buy those dainties? Wherewith am I to 
 buy the bread of life ? What shall I live on ? Why, 
 the currency of that country is love. The bread 
 of that life is love. So my mother told me. Have 
 I any to carry with me when I go ? Shall I find 
 any one who has any to lend me, or pay me, or to 
 give me there ? Did I ever give a gift or do a good 
 thing to any one, young or old, rich or poor any 
 thing for which I did not expect, demand, and get 
 full repayment ? Does any one on earth, in heaven 
 or hell, owe me one iota of kindness, gratitude, love? 
 Lay up treasure ; lay up treasure What was 
 that advice I used to get from the old folks here ?" 
 Vain were it to attempt an analysis of the crush 
 and crash of thoughts which filled the brain and 
 bewildered the intellect of the strong man, around 
 whom were now gathering profound shadows. He 
 sat there motionless. The servants cleared away 
 
ALONE AT THANKSGIVING 121 
 
 the table in the other room, and wondered to see 
 him sitting by the window in the dim light. They 
 went away to their own part of the house, leaving 
 him, as was their custom, to the solitary occupation 
 of the great house. Towards midnight one of them 
 came into the dining-room to put out the lights. He 
 was still sitting there. When they came to lay the 
 breakfast-table in the morning he was still there. 
 Had his soul gone out beyond the November moon 
 light out into the unknown light or unknown dark 
 ness, into the cold, shivering, alone? 
 
 No ! Better, perhaps, if it had or, at least, as well. 
 
 What visions, memories, imaginings, what peni 
 tences or what despairs, were in that imprisoned 
 soul then and thereafter no one knows. The house 
 is there, the pictures are there, the furniture, the 
 fire-irons, the porcelains and glass and silver are 
 there. But the sunshine never finds its way through 
 the closed shutters. The wine is ripening in the 
 cellar bins, but for whose lips no one can tell. The 
 man himself is there, body and soul, in an upper 
 room, in that mysterious condition, more mysterious 
 than death, which forbids intelligent intercourse be 
 tween an imprisoned mind and the world around it. 
 But his great fortune, accumulating under the care 
 of strangers, is just as useful to him and to his fel 
 low-men no less, no more as it was when his fin 
 gers gathered the coins together, and grasped them 
 and held them. 
 
XII 
 
 HOW THE OLD LADY BEAT JOHN 
 
 WE had been driving out some miles in the after 
 noon, and coming home in the twilight, passed a 
 substantial -looking though very old farm-house, 
 with comfortable barns and out-buildings, indicating 
 a well-to-do householder. The rich bottom-lands, 
 which stretched away a half-mile from the river to 
 the hill - slopes, covered with abundant birch and 
 maple, were luxuriant with grain and corn. 
 
 That evening, when we were sitting in the libra 
 ry, after dinner, smoking and chatting, I asked the 
 Judge, " To whom does that farm we passed on the 
 level belong?" 
 
 The Judge is not and never was on the bench. 
 Yet long as I had known him, and that was a long 
 time, he had been called "Judge" by all the coun 
 try people, because it was an established fact of 
 ancient date that he decided most of the disputes 
 and differences, commercial and social, which arose 
 in that part of the country. It is frequently the 
 case, as here, that one man in a scattered community 
 is the recognized adviser to whom people can go. 
 
HOW THE OLD LADY BEAT JOHN 123 
 
 My old friend had inherited this position from his 
 father, who had been to a former generation what 
 the son now was to his neighbors. They came to 
 him on all occasions when they needed counsel, and 
 he did the work of a half-dozen lawyers. No one had 
 died or could die comfortably and leave property 
 
 unless his will had been drawn by "Judge ." 
 
 He had the perfect confidence of all. Living from 
 youth up among them, known to be a man of ex 
 tended education, whose life was passed in study, 
 but who was also a practical farmer of great skill 
 and success, having large property, and always giv 
 ing his advice and services as a matter of friendship 
 and neighborly kindness, and not for fee or reward, 
 his position was one of commanding influence. His 
 influence was commanding, too, for the reason that 
 he almost never exerted it. He took no prominent 
 part in politics ; but in the old times there were very 
 many voters in the town, and more in the county, 
 who could give no other reason for their votes than 
 this : that they voted as the Judge voted. 
 
 I have said that he drew the wills for people who 
 had property. This was no small generosity, for it 
 involved much time and often great inconvenience. 
 But the Judge was an essential part of the social 
 structure in that town, and quietly performed what 
 he regarded as the duty and pleasure of his posi 
 tion. 
 
 When I asked him who was the owner of that 
 
124 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 farm he laughed outright, and, after a moment s pause, 
 said, " I will tell you a story. 
 
 "One stormy winter night, after midnight, I was 
 sitting here reading, the rest of the family having 
 gone to sleep long before, when old Dr. Strong 
 thundered at the door-knocker, and made noise 
 enough to wake the Seven Sleepers. It is a way 
 he has, and neither my wife nor the girls, who were 
 roused out of slumber, nor I myself, had any ques 
 tion who was at the door. I let him in myself, and 
 a tempest of wind and snow with him. The blast 
 that drove him into my arms also put out the hall 
 lights, whirled into the library, and flared the read 
 ing-lamp so that it broke the chimney and blazed 
 up to a colored tissue-paper affair which Susie had 
 put over the shade, set it on fire, and for a moment 
 threatened a general conflagration of papers and 
 books on the table. 
 
 " Shut" the door yourself! I shouted, and rushed 
 in here to put out the fire. That done, I went back 
 and found the old doctor out of breath, in the dark, 
 trying to shut the door against the wind. It took 
 the strength of both of us to do it. Then I told 
 him to find his way to the library, for he knew it, 
 and I went off in search of another lamp. 
 
 "When I came back he was just recovering his 
 wind, and, after a gasp or two, told me his errand. 
 Old Mrs. Norton is dying. She can t live till 
 morning. She s alive now only on stimulants. 
 
HOW THE OLD LADY BEAT JOHN 125 
 
 She wants to make a will, and I have come for 
 you. 
 
 " A nice night, I said, for a two-mile drive, to 
 make a will for a woman who hasn t a cent in the 
 world to leave. Why didn t you tell her so, and 
 have done with it. 
 
 " Now look here, said the doctor, * this is a case 
 of an old woman and old neighbor and friend, and 
 she wants you to do something for her, and you ll 
 do it, if it s only to comfort her last hours. Get 
 your things and come with me. We shall not find 
 her alive if you don t hurry, and you ll be sorry if 
 that happens. 
 
 " The upshot of it was that I went. We had a 
 fearful drive out to the farm-house on the flat, which 
 you are asking about. Mrs. Norton was the widow 
 of John Norton, who had died forty odd years be 
 fore this. John Norton when he married her was a 
 widower with one son John. He was a man of con 
 siderable property, and when he died left a widow, 
 that son John by his first wife, and two sons by his 
 second wife. The elder son, John, had never been 
 on very warm terms with his step-mother, and for 
 some years had had no intercourse with the family. 
 
 " I found the old lady lying in the big room, on 
 a great bedstead on one side of the room, opposite 
 to the broad chimney, in which was a roaring fire, 
 the only light in the room. After the doctor had 
 spoken to her and administered something a stim- 
 
126 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 ulant, I suppose he came over to me and said in a 
 whisper : Hurry up ; she s very weak. 
 
 "I had brought paper and pen and ink with me. 
 I found a stand and a candle, placed them at the 
 head of the bed, and, after saying a few words to 
 her, told her I was ready to prepare the will, if she 
 would now go on and tell me what she wanted to 
 do. I wrote the introductory phrase rapidly, and, 
 leaning over towards her, said: Now go on, Mrs. 
 Norton. Her voice was quite faint, and she seemed 
 to speak with an effort. She said : First of all I 
 want to give the farm to my sons Harry and James ; 
 just put that down. But, said I, you can t do 
 that, Mrs. Norton ; the farm isn t yours to give away. 
 
 " The farm isn t mine? she said, in a voice de 
 cidedly stronger than before. 
 
 " No ; the farm isn t yours. You have only a life 
 interest in it. 
 
 " This farm, that I ve run for goin on forty-three 
 year next spring, isn t mine to do what I please with 
 it! Why not, Judge? I d like to know what you 
 mean ! 
 
 " Why, Mr. Norton, your husband, gave you a 
 life estate in all his property, and on your death the 
 farm goes to his son John, and your children get the 
 village houses. I have explained that to you very 
 often before. 
 
 "And when I die John Norton is to have this 
 house and farm, whether I will or no ? 
 
HOW THE OLD LADY BEAT JOHN 127 
 
 " Just so. It will be his. 
 
 " Then I ain t going to die ! said the old woman, 
 in a clear and decidedly ringing and healthy voice. 
 And, so saying, she threw her feet over the front of 
 the bed, sat up, gathered a blanket and coverlet 
 about her, straightened up her gaunt form, walked 
 across the room, and sat down in a great chair be 
 fore the fire. 
 
 " The doctor and I came home. That was fifteen 
 years ago. The old lady s alive to-day. And she 
 accomplished her intent. She beat John, after all. 
 He died four years ago, in Boston, and I don t know 
 what will he left. But whoever comes into the farm 
 house when she goes out, it will not be John. And 
 since John s death the farm has been better kept, 
 and everything about it is in vastly better condition 
 for strangers than it would have been for John." 
 
XIII 
 
 PHILISTIS 
 
 WE were sitting by the fire after breakfast. The 
 dominie was thinking. I was turning over a pile 
 of old newspapers and wondering why he had kept 
 them. 
 
 "That paper," said he, "I kept because it had a 
 letter from Sicily, speaking of a beautiful coin of 
 Philistis. It is engraved in Visconti. Did you ever 
 see it? 1 
 
 " See it, man ? Yes ; did I never show it to you ?" 
 
 " Show what ?" 
 
 " That coin of Philistis. I first saw it thirty years 
 ago, fell in love with it as the most beautiful head 
 produced by Greek art in die - cutting that I ever 
 saw, and I never have parted with it. I know a 
 woman who looks like that face of the Sicilian 
 queen." 
 
 So saying, I took the silver coin from its little 
 envelope in my pocket-case, and handed it to him. 
 Whoever has seen that silver tetradrachm knows the 
 beauty of that head of Philistis. 
 
 My friend was more silent than before. He held 
 
PHILISTIS 129 
 
 the coin in his hand, and buried his gaze into it for 
 some space of time. 
 
 "Yes, I thought so ; but the Greek engraver was 
 far ahead of the modern who attempted a copy. 
 He knew her, he loved her, if she was a queen. 
 And this is she. I thought I knew her. Yes, it is 
 she." 
 
 " You knew her too. Where did you know " 
 
 " No, no, my friend. It has been said that God 
 never makes persons of different generations ex 
 actly alike. That is not true. There was one Phi- 
 listis in old times. You knew another. I knew a 
 third, and she might have been a resurrection in the 
 body of this Sicilian woman. Come with me." 
 
 The library opened out at its side to a little gate 
 entering the church-yard, and he led me to a grave, 
 by which he paused and said, " My Philistis is 
 here." 
 
 Then, leaning on the head-stone while I leaned 
 on another, the smoke of our cigars ascending in 
 the still October air, the sunshine glittering on 
 maple-leaves that fell through the brilliant light, 
 one by one, on graves around us, he talked. 
 
 " She was born in that old house over yonder. 
 When I met you in Jerusalem in 1856 she was a 
 child of ten years old. When I came home and 
 saw her again I thought she was the loveliest child 
 for beauty of face and beauty of mind I had ever 
 known. I have seen many since, and I think so 
 
 9 
 
130 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 still. She has lain here quietly enough for fifteen 
 years. The first rest she ever had, after her girl 
 hood was over, she found here. 
 
 " What a woman she was at nineteen ! Till then 
 her life was sunny; after that it was all cloud and 
 storm. What she looked like, judge by your coin. 
 She had not much companionship here of her own 
 grade of mind, but there were three or four daugh 
 ters of neighbors within the ten-mile stretch of my 
 parish who went to school with her, and afterwards 
 they begged me to give them lessons. And they 
 grew up fond of reading and fond of art history, 
 and their visits to New York and Albany were full 
 of incident and opened their minds; and she went 
 once to Europe for a year with her aunt, and once 
 to Cuba and Mexico with her father. I don t ex 
 actly like that word cultivated, for she was far 
 ahead of what you ordinarily mean by a cultivated 
 woman. I can t tell you what a light she was to us 
 in the old parsonage. My daughter was younger 
 than she, and owes all she is to the rare example 
 of perfect womanhood, self-trust, and self-respect 
 which that dear girl showed her. 
 
 " She had troubles beginning to surround her 
 life when she was nineteen. You can judge of the 
 courage with which she was likely to meet all the 
 troubles of this world by what once happened 
 under my own eyes. 
 
 "You see over there across the valley, where the 
 
PHILISTIS 131 
 
 river comes out of the glen ? It runs deep and 
 strong through the ravine, and rushes out to the 
 level land through a narrow gorge. We had gone 
 out there to look for a rare fern. Botanizing was 
 a favorite play for us. We were five or six. I 
 with my horse and buckboard took one of the girls. 
 She and the others were on horseback. It was in 
 August. We had left the horses, and were searching 
 up the banks of the river. I was standing on the 
 ridge of rock, fifty feet above the river. She had 
 gone below me up a narrow ledge along the stream, 
 three or four feet above and close over the edge of 
 the swift water. A few bushes clung there and lay 
 out over the stream. Suddenly I heard a cry of 
 horrible distress. I looked down to her instinc 
 tively. She was all right, but she too had heard it, 
 and was looking up-stream. Then my eyes followed 
 hers, and twenty rods above I saw a twelve -year- 
 old boy on a rock gesticulating and yelling. In the 
 river, rolling and plunging down the rapid, was a 
 bundle of something, It turned out afterwards to 
 be his little brother, who had rolled off the rock 
 into the river. She told me afterwards she had 
 seen them a moment before, and knew it was the 
 child. 
 
 " It took just about thirty seconds for that bun 
 dle of clothes to come swift as an arrow down to 
 us. Knowing the girl as well as I did, my only 
 thought was that she would do something rash, 
 
132 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 and I looked at her steadily and wished for wings 
 to drop myself down to her side. 
 
 "Now I will tell you what I saw her do. I saw 
 her measure with. her eye the course of the current 
 and the direction of the child s sweep. Then she 
 measured the depth of the water at the foot of the 
 ledge she was standing on, and, seeing bottom, not 
 very deep, she sat down on the ledge and deliber 
 ately slid down, feet first, into the water, and stood 
 up straight and firm, and seized the trunk-stem of 
 a bush that lay out over the water. Then, without 
 looking away from the child, she sent out a clear 
 ringing call for help, that went over the rocks in 
 spite of the river s noise. By this time I was half 
 way down the steep, and I answered her. The 
 child was coming towards the upper side of the bush. 
 I thought it was safe to strike there. So did she. 
 But at the last moment a swirl sent the little one 
 off shore, just into the end of the bush, and as it 
 caught and swung once around there and was go 
 ing away to death, she threw herself quietly I say 
 quietly, for it was a graceful motion forward on 
 her face, plunged her right hand into the mass of 
 branches and grasped them, while with her left she 
 seized the clothes of the child. Her feet swung 
 out down-stream, the water boiled over her shoul 
 ders and face, but she held on with both grasps, 
 and the bush swayed down and in shore just in 
 time for me to seize her and draw them both 
 
PHILISTIS 133 
 
 ashore. No, I didn t draw them ashore. She 
 touched bottom with her feet, and when she felt 
 my grasp on her clothes let go the bush, took my 
 hand, and stood up in the water, and I got them 
 both ashore somehow. 
 
 " That s the stuff some of our Northern women 
 are made of. Gentle, lovable, full of all purity ; 
 taught all graces by the beauty which surrounded 
 her life ; unspotted of the world ; ah, my animadul- 
 cis, no love of man ever stained thy sweet soul ! 
 
 "I could have placed here the sad epitaph of 
 Julia Alpinella : 
 
 11 ^ Hie jaceo, iiifelicis patris infelix proles ; exorare 
 pair is necem non potui ; male mori in fatis ilk erat ; 
 vixi annos xxni. " 
 
 I did not ask nor did my friend relate to me any 
 of the story which is summed up in that (perhaps 
 fabulous) old epitaph of a servant of Diana, and of 
 a modern New England girl. Was it not Byron, or 
 who was it, that said it was the saddest story ever 
 told on a memorial tablet ? 
 
 When I went to my room that night I missed 
 the coin. Next morning he said he had looked at it 
 three times in the night, when he woke, restless 
 from dreams, and and did I value it very much ? 
 Would I let him show it to just two ladies, who 
 knew and loved his Philistis ? Yes, I would, and 
 therefore he might keep it, but only till we meet 
 again, for did not I too know a fair woman whose 
 
134 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 face was that of the queen of Hiero? But his 
 Philistis was dead, and mine lives yet; he loved his 
 Philistis as his own child, and I but admired the 
 one I knew as a beautiful woman. But then the 
 more reason I should have it. For the living change, 
 and as they change they imperceptibly efface our 
 memories of what they were ; and so a thing of 
 beauty is not a joy forever, unless it be like the 
 silver stamp of the Greek gem-engraver s die. 
 
 " But you, my friend, you remember that face ; 
 you haven t forgotten it ?" 
 
 " Never, never, but I want this. Get anothei 
 for yourself. Leave this one here. Have a por 
 trait painted of your Philistis. Get a sculptor to do 
 her in marble. She is no such woman as was our 
 little one, the light of our eyes." 
 
 Could I resist him ? Don t we all of us have 
 that same feeling that those we have loved and 
 lost were far more lovely than those any one else 
 has loved and lost ? 
 
XIV 
 
 A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 
 
 WHEN Christmas-time approaches, young people 
 grow merry, and old people, if they are right-mind 
 ed, should grow calmly happy. We who have kept 
 Christmas festivals for many years, so that we can 
 count back one after another of them for a half- 
 hundred and more, ought to have laid up a store 
 of pleasant things to think about. If we have not 
 done so it is time to begin. 
 
 On Monday the snow fell nineteen inches deep, 
 and all the country is white for the joyous festival. 
 Christmas without snow is unknown to our memo 
 ries, who were brought up in the north country. 
 Sitting before the fire a little while ago, there came 
 into my thoughts a group of faces which were so 
 full of bright, overflowing joy, and the beauty of 
 youth and hope, that I am half convinced every 
 one of them, wherever they are, in this or another 
 world, has lighted up with memory of the same 
 scene. 
 
 It was in the Christmas holiday vacation. I 
 was at home from college. I am not sure now 
 
136 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 whether in those days they gave us a Christmas 
 vacation in Princeton, but I know that I went 
 home. I remember getting up early in the cold 
 winter morning, taking the stage, and dragging 
 through deep mud to New Brunswick, where we, a 
 lot of New York boys, took steamboat down the 
 Raritan and up the bay to New York. The Phila 
 delphia Railroad was then running, with small, old- 
 fashioned coaches for cars. But the railroad fares 
 were high, and the students from New York knew 
 how to save a dollar or two out of their allowances 
 by taking stage and steamboat. I went up the 
 Hudson, to my home above the Highlands, in an 
 evening boat. The river had remained open that 
 year much later than usual. Next day began the 
 Christmas jollities ; but it is one evening s advent 
 ures which arrest my memories to-night. 
 
 It was a brilliant, cold afternoon when Joe S 
 came to hunt me up and propose a sleigh -ride. 
 There was to be a grand convention of some soci 
 ety that evening at a town fifteen miles up the river. 
 It was always easier in those days for daughters to 
 persuade their mothers to let them go on a sleigh- 
 ride to a certain place and meeting than to go on 
 a sleigh-ride pure and simple. And then, any great 
 meeting religious, moral, or sensational was a 
 far greater event than now in the rural districts. 
 
 " But where can we get a team, Joe ?" I said. 
 " Our horses are gone off." 
 
A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 137 
 
 "Your father s big sleigh hasn t gone ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then I ll tell you what I propose. Mr. Staun- 
 ton is in New York. His sorrels haven t been out 
 for a week. He lets you drive them. You get 
 them. I ll bring around my father s bays and our 
 farm harness. We ll hitch them to your big sleigh. 
 It ll make a glorious team." 
 
 " But who will drive them ? None of them were 
 ever harnessed four-in-hand. If I m going for a 
 sleigh-ride with the. girls, I m not going to give all 
 my time to tooling a new team like that, I can tell 
 you." 
 
 " That s all fixed. Steve will be here in fifteen 
 minutes with old Caesar, and Caesar can drive any 
 thing that ever went in harness." 
 
 Boys were boys then, and will be boys forever. I 
 thank God devoutly that there are yet hours in 
 which I know that I am a boy ; and always about 
 Christmas-time the boy-spirit comes back and as 
 serts its omnipotence over care and responsibility 
 and sorrow and years. 
 
 There was no thought in any of our young heads 
 of the risk, the danger to the precious load we in 
 tended to take. The prospect of a glorious moon 
 light sleigh-ride, four boys, four girls, and any mar 
 ried couple we could get to go along (to do propri 
 ety), this shut out all thought except of how to get 
 off. But there was a very doubtful point, in which, 
 
138 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 as I grew older in fact, before I was four hours 
 older I became convinced my boy enthusiasm had 
 led me to do wrong. I do not tell the story for 
 boys imitation. I cannot make a moral to the 
 story by relating a catastrophe as the fitting punish 
 ment for our wrong-doing. All went off with su 
 perb success. But, my boys, if one of you read this, 
 don t go and do so. It was only next door to horse- 
 stealing. That is fact. For I knew that Joe s 
 father would never trust that pair of bays in any 
 hands but his own. They were splendid animals, 
 and he and Mr. Staunton were forever matching 
 one another with their favorite teams. I knew also 
 that although Mr. Staunton had often trusted me 
 with those powerful sorrels, he would not be very 
 likely to let me or any one put them in a four-horse 
 team, especially with those bays. However, I left 
 Joe to settle his own conscience and bring the 
 horses, while I went over to Mr. Staunton s stable, 
 took the sorrels from his coachman, who thought it 
 must be all right, and asked no questions. 
 
 We had a time of it getting them into harness. 
 Caesar was full of ecstasy over the prospect. The 
 old colored man knew horses all by heart, and knew 
 boys too. He understood the entire performance, 
 and he wanted the fun as much as we, and suggested 
 no difficulties ; but he looked to the harness with 
 all his old eyes. Caesar had some confidence in 
 me, boy though I was, and he whispered to me : 
 
A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 139 
 
 "You re going to sit by me on the box-seat, Mr. 
 W , ain t you ?" 
 
 While the harnessing was going on I had gone 
 into the house and asked my elder brother and his 
 wife to go with us, and obtained their assent. Bet 
 ter company for such a ride no boys and girls on 
 earth could have had. 
 
 When all was ready, my brother came out and 
 joined us. Joseph and Stephen and my brother 
 piled into the sleigh. Caesar took the reins on the 
 high front seat. I sat by him. The sun was just 
 on the horizon. The flush of sunset was over the 
 whole country, covered deep with two feet of snow 
 on a level, and drifts six and ten feet high wherever 
 the wind had eddied or dropped a light fleece. It 
 was forty rods from our carriage - house to the 
 street gate and the turn into the road. It was 
 three-quarters of a mile up the road to the fork, 
 then half a mile down the other road to the two 
 
 houses, where we had sent Philip P to ask 
 
 our four young friends to be ready. 
 
 Two men who stood at the leaders heads (the 
 bays were on the lead) let go, and the team sprang 
 forward. Then, for just a moment, the sorrels 
 threatened to balk, and the off horse stood up and 
 struck out his fore -feet at the bay leader. The 
 nigh sorrel had intended to go all right, but at that 
 he struck the dash-board with his iron heels, and 
 stretched his head down and out as if he wanted 
 
140 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 to fight. The whole team was almost in a tangle 
 for the instant, but the next they were straining 
 steadily on the tugs, and we were going for the 
 gate. 
 
 " Sit down !" I shouted to my companions, who 
 were all standing up and holding by the back of 
 the box-seat and one another, watching the horses. 
 They paid no heed. We went through the gate, 
 and as we went through it I saw that Caesar hadn t 
 force enough in his old left arm to swing that 
 mighty team up the road. I seized the reins above 
 his hands, and with all my strength, added to his, 
 the horses yielded, the leaders plunging through the 
 snow on the opposite side of the beaten track in 
 the main road, the wheelers swinging in the track, 
 the sleigh, like a stone in a sling, hurled around and 
 rising on one runner, with the other high in the air. 
 Do you know what a catapult is ? A sleigh swing 
 ing as that sleigh swung, and fetching up with a 
 sudden shock in the track, is a catapult. I did not 
 know that Stephen had been shot into a snow 
 drift, for Caesar went away from my side like a dark 
 shell from a mortar. Wide-awake Caesar! He 
 didn t hold on to the reins. I was alone on the 
 box, the broad straight road before me, and the 
 horses going not quite so swift as the rays of the 
 red sunset which shot right up the road. 
 
 The beaten track was narrow, but the road was 
 Broad and level. It is generally an easy matter to 
 
A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 141 
 
 stop a runaway team under such circumstances, 
 and I followed the rule. The leaders yielded to a 
 steady strain, and the wheelers followed them into 
 the deep snow. A few rods of that was enough for 
 them. They brought up, trembling and frightened 
 at their own doings. A few kind words and 
 touches did them good, while Stephen and Caesar 
 overtook us, with sundry sleigh-robes that had gone 
 out with them. When we reached the fork of the 
 roads we had gotten up too much steam for a turn 
 down the sharp angle, and went a mile farther, 
 around a square, and back. By the time we came 
 in front of the house of that dear old lady whose 
 daughters we proposed first to pick up, the team 
 was calm enough to stand without any of us at their 
 heads. Fortunate that, for she never would have 
 let the girls go if she had seen any of the events of 
 the previous fifteen minutes. I see I have called 
 her an old lady. That is another illustration of 
 the ever-persistent boyhood in us. I should call 
 one of her age a young lady now. She was the 
 beautiful mother of two beautiful daughters, and 
 the three were like three sisters in appearance. 
 
 If one were to write out the memories of one such 
 day and evening, as they crowd in on him when he 
 deliberately invites them in, he could fill a vol 
 ume. 
 
 Our company was made up, and the short twilight 
 had changed into the white light of a winter moon, " 
 
142 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 nearly full, when we were off for a fifteen-mile stretch, 
 up hill and down, over a glassy road. 
 
 Sleigh-riding by moonlight was, in our younger 
 days, the most exhilarating of all pleasures. It is 
 difficult to explain why it was so. The social en 
 joyments of the young in winter evening gather 
 ings, receptions, dancing-parties, balls are more or 
 less attractive to different dispositions. But I never 
 knew one young person yet, in good health, who 
 would not give up any ball or any conceivable social 
 enjoyment for a sleigh-riding party by moonlight. 
 And I think it fair to say that the underlying reason 
 for this is in the innate love of the beautiful, the 
 pure, the holy, which most, if not all, young people 
 possess. No wealth of flowers, no lavish expendi 
 ture of art on the adornment of a ball-room, sur 
 rounds the young heart with such beauty and glory 
 as the winter snow light, and in no life that art and 
 wealth can create do pure young souls find their 
 native atmosphere of purity, to which they were 
 born, and in which alone they breathe freely. A 
 moonlight night in a snow-covered country, if it be 
 not nearer the light of heaven than any other earthly 
 light, is at least more unearthly than any other, for 
 in such illuminated nights we see only the glory and 
 nothing of the vileness of this life. 
 
 I cannot linger on that ride in these pages. You 
 who never took a sleigh-ride would like to know 
 how the time was passed as we flew like the wind 
 
A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 143 
 
 along the road. Well, we were all a fairly educated 
 lot of young people. There was a pretty steady rattle 
 of talk and story and joke and riddles, and now and 
 then a song. Was there any chance for a quiet talk 
 just one with one? Obviously there was, for sleigh- 
 bells on four swift horses fill the air with noise, and 
 that makes confidential talk as easy as a balcony, 
 or a conservatory, or any such place of escape from 
 a ball-room. Did I enjoy it, up there on the box- 
 seat with old Caesar? Bless your soul, my dear 
 young lady, I didn t sit next to Caesar after we 
 started. There was some one between us with a 
 lovely face! such eyes! such hair! such a little pair 
 of hands ! little even in their fur gloves. And those 
 little hands were constantly aching to get hold of 
 those reins ; and once, when the team came down 
 to a walk half-way up a hill, Caesar let them hold the 
 hurricane till we reached the top. All that winter 
 I wrote poetry about those same eyes and that face 
 and those hands, and I could have referred you to 
 the poetry in print, if the editors of the Nassau 
 Monthly had not refused to recognize its value. 
 
 I must hurry on. We drove to the hotel in the 
 large village, ordered supper, and, to make a proper 
 report to the mothers at home, went for ten minutes 
 to the meeting. I wish I could remember what it 
 was about. I don t ; and I don t think I knew then, 
 though it was in a large church, and we found a large 
 audience. 
 
144 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 But I do know and have never forgotten that 
 when we had been standing five minutes behind the 
 back pews near the doors, where many were standing, 
 and we were looking over the heads of the people 
 at some one who was firing away on a platform in 
 front of the pulpit, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and, 
 looking around, met the eyes of my father s friend, 
 Mr. Staunton, owner of the sorrel horses. 
 
 For an instant I was well, there is no word to 
 explain the exact sensation. If one were writing a 
 French novel he would say he nearly fainted, he 
 was "bouleversed," he was any exaggeration you 
 please. But this is plain fact, and the fact is that 
 American boys in those days were never much taken 
 aback by the unexpected, which was then, as now, 
 always happening. What came nearer to causing a 
 violation of the proprieties of a meeting in a church 
 by a shout of laughter was the pressure on my wrist 
 of one of those little hands, now ungloved, and the 
 despairing countenances of the whole party. It was 
 lucky that they were all near enough together to see 
 and hear what passed. In a low voice Mr. Staunton 
 said : 
 
 " I m glad to see you. I came up in the boat 
 from New York, and instead of stopping at home I 
 thought I would come on up to the meeting, on the 
 chance of finding some one here and getting a ride 
 home. How did you come here? Can you take 
 me down ?" 
 
A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 145 
 
 "Oh yes, certainly; just as well as not; we ve 
 got a big sleigh and four horses ; come to the hotel 
 after the meeting. We re going there now for sup- 
 per." 
 
 He went up the aisle. He was a delegate, or a 
 director, or something or other. He was a grand 
 good man, and we young people all were very fond 
 of him. We went out. What fun we had at supper, 
 and what a burst of merriment would come once in 
 a while as we arranged for taking our good friend 
 Mr. Staunton home behind his own horses "unbe 
 knownst " to him ! But we solemnly pledged our 
 selves to each other that if we succeeded, we would 
 never whisper the story to any human being so long 
 as he lived. And we did it, and we kept the pledge. 
 He lived to a good old age and died only three 
 years ago, and last summer at Lonesome Lake I 
 told the story for the first time to his nephew. 
 
 The horses came to the hotel door. The girls 
 surrounded him, and talked and hustled him into 
 the sleigh first of all, because he was our invited 
 guest and must be best cared for. That was the 
 moment of chief danger, for he "was a lover of horses, 
 and had a way of walking around and looking at a 
 team. That team was worth looking at ! I changed 
 seats with Caesar. There was no telling what might 
 happen, and the way to be ready for the unexpected 
 is to expect everything. 
 
 The team was fresh now, and the moon was as 
 
146 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 bright as ever. I had almost forgotten the over 
 hanging trouble as the sleigh swept along the white 
 track behind those magnificent animals. Suddenly 
 there was silence behind me where had been a 
 babel of voices. They were appalled, and saw no 
 way to avoid what seemed to be an inevitable rev 
 elation. "Why didn t you pull his feet out from 
 under him and tumble over him, and get up a gen 
 eral scrimmage," I afterwards asked Joe. " I was 
 too scared to think of anything when I saw him 
 stand up and take hold of the box-seat and look 
 at those horses," frankly confessed my poor Joe. 
 The next moment I heard a voice close to my ear. 
 
 " I didn t think there was a pair of horses in the 
 country that could step so like my sorrels. Whose 
 are they, W ?" 
 
 Before the words were out the loose white snow 
 at the road-side was flying from the heels of the 
 leaders, over the sorrels, into his face, over the 
 sleigh ; the trot was broken into a short, plunging 
 gallop, the right runner, off the track, was ploughing 
 deep in the unbeaten white, and most of the people 
 in that sleigh were expecting an upset. Two of 
 them, on the front seat, expected no such thing, 
 for out of a sable fur hood at my left came a quick 
 cry, and, " Oh, Mr. Staunton, do sit down, you nearly 
 threw me out ; make him sit down." 
 
 And down he went, into all their arms, for Joe 
 had come to his senses by this time. Then they all 
 
A NORTHERN SLEIGH-RIDE 147 
 
 made much of him for an hour, and got him to tell 
 ing stories, and all went bravely on till we ap 
 proached home. 
 
 "We ll drop you at the corner, Mr. Staunton ; 
 stand ready to jump." And out he went ; the horses 
 came down to a slow gait without stopping ; and 
 among those trees in that light he couldn t tell a 
 sorrel from an iron-gray, as we rushed away to the 
 village. 
 
 There were no bells about those horses when 
 about three o clock in the morning I led them my 
 self into their stable. I woke the coachman, who 
 slept in the carriage-house, and enjoined on him 
 perpetual silence, sealed with silver, more much 
 more than I had saved by coming from Princeton 
 to New York in the stage and steamboat. 
 
 Yes, boys; that s the only thing in this story 
 worth your remembering. Doing wrong mostly 
 must be paid for ; and a dime in those days, to a 
 country boy, was bigger than a dollar is now. But 
 what a night that was ! The moon has grown much 
 paler since those times. This is a true story. Wit 
 ness my hand. 
 
XV 
 
 LIFE SEEN THROUGH A WINDOW 
 
 THERE was nothing remarkable about the appear 
 ance of the house. It was old and weather-colored ; 
 that is, having been built of wood and never paint 
 ed, a gray-brown tint had come over all the wood, 
 perhaps fifty years ago, and remained unchanged. 
 For if any boards had at any time been removed, 
 those replacing them had soon taken the same tint. 
 It was but one story high, and there were four rooms 
 on the floor. A very ancient block-house, the orig 
 inal home of the family, adjoined it, and was still 
 useful, part of it as the dairy and part as the wood 
 shed. 
 
 There were old trees a little way from the house, 
 but none shaded it. On each side of the door, which 
 was in the middle of the long side, and fronted the 
 road, was a group of bushes, I am not sure what. 
 They partly shaded the broad stone door-step, and 
 also shaded the windows nearest the door on each 
 side. It was through one of these that I caught 
 sight of her face. The glass was that queer old 
 twisted, uneven, shining, and iridescent glass that 
 
LIFE SEEN THROUGH A WINDOW 
 
 149 
 
 one never sees nowadays, but which was the only 
 kind used in country-houses in old times. It had 
 its smooth, transparent spots, and the occupants of 
 houses, especially the young people, always learned 
 the exact location of those available spots, and went 
 straight to them to look out, unless they were con 
 tent with distorted views of nature. 
 
 Many times, driving by, I had seen that face 
 through that same window, and at length it hap 
 pened that I had occasion to see the man of the 
 house on some business about a horse, and so it 
 came that one day when I asked him a question 
 about the neighborhood, he said, " My mother could 
 tell that j you never saw her ; come in and see her." 
 And so I went into the room on the south side, and 
 saw the face without the intervening glass. It was 
 a face of wonderful beauty. She was a very old 
 lady, and for almost or quite fifty years had been an 
 invalid, unable to walk, moved daily from her bed 
 in the adjoining room to her chair by that window, 
 and removed at night to her bed again. Her mind 
 was clear and active, her body sadly ill and suffer 
 ing. She had never been out of those rooms for 
 half a century. The world seen through one win 
 dow for fifty years might well have a peculiar aspect. 
 And as I often afterwards stopped to see and talk 
 with her, I had some curiosity to know what this as 
 pect was to her vision. 
 
 If you imagine that she had seen but little of it 
 
150 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 you are mistaken. The experiences of life which 
 make up what we call " the world " are more varied 
 perhaps in great cities, but the impressions they 1 
 make are deeper in the country. And through that 
 window she had seen very much, and what she had 
 seen had entered into her soul. I cannot enumer 
 ate them not a tenth or a hundredth part of the 
 things she saw. I need not speak of the recurrence 
 of the seasons, the coming of springs on meadows 
 and hills, and the white coverings of winters, the 
 growth of great trees from young saplings, the com 
 ing into the fields and along the fences and walls 
 of new foliage and new flowers, the successive crops 
 on the lowlands across the road, and the generations 
 of cattle and sheep that grazed in the pastures. 
 All these she knew, and as her children were living 
 and dutiful they had always taken care that she saw 
 all that it was possible she could see. Though 
 her eyes had never seen the new barns and stock- 
 sheds to the north of the house, every horse and ox 
 and cow and calf, I think every lamb on the farm, 
 had been shown to her through that window-pane. 
 One day while I sat with her I saw the collie dog 
 look up and smile at her through the glass, and she 
 nodded to him, and he went on satisfied. 
 
 She was a widow when sickness first seized on 
 her, and was ill very long before she could be 
 brought out to the window. The first sight she saw 
 there was the funeral of her father, and that scene 
 
LIFE SEEN THROUGH A WINDOW 151 
 
 she remembered vividly as the beginning of her 
 views of life through the window. His neighbors 
 carried him out of the door and down the walk to 
 the gate, and laid him in the old box-wagon, and 
 took him away. After that many of the beloved 
 things of the world passed out of her view just there. 
 She had four sons, and one of them she saw carried 
 away just so. Her daughter s wedding made gay 
 the green in front of the house. One by one, in 
 after-years, she saw grandchildren come in at the 
 gate, first babies brought in arms, then toddling 
 children, glad to come to see her, then romping 
 boys, never rough or rude in her presence, then stout 
 young men, vigorous and full of life, and graceful 
 girls, and every one of them most loving and tender 
 to her. There was never one of them who did not 
 enjoy sitting on the footstool by her side and talking 
 to her, and telling her all their hearts delights and 
 anxieties. Somehow that room was a safe treasury 
 for the deposit of young folks secrets, and what was 
 placed there was safe and never stolen or betrayed. 
 Her youngest son, years ago, she saw turn back at 
 the gate and wave his hand to her as he went away, 
 and again and again at intervals of years she saw 
 him coming in, each time bringing new honors that 
 he had won, and him too she saw at last brought in 
 by other hands to rest a little in the old home, and 
 taken out again through the gate whither she had 
 seen many that she loved go and many carried. 
 
152 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 If the effect of such views of life be always the 
 same it would be well for all of us to spend our 
 lives behind the old-fashioned panes of window- 
 glass. There was no distortion in the vision of my 
 good old friend. Cheery and always bright, she had 
 a clear judgment of persons, sound appreciation 
 of character, abundant content, and her life had 
 been, she said, and she proved it by her visible life, 
 full of enjoyment. She always saw the bright side. 
 Even the deepest afflictions, added to her one con 
 stant affliction, failed to destroy that ineffable calm 
 and peace of mind in which she lived. Books she 
 had read in great number, but mostly she read her 
 Bible, and the visions she had through her window, 
 whether of joy or grief, were alike interpreted to her 
 and commented on by the philosophy which is above 
 all human reason. 
 
 Hers had been a life worth living. We who think 
 we see things through no clouds or mist or refract 
 ing medium, are far from seeing as clearly as did 
 she. In all the country around she was a centre of 
 good and benevolent influences. She knew all the 
 people, young and old. So that when she at last 
 went away the whole country mourned. She died 
 in the late summer. 
 
 The ending was very pleasant. For a little she 
 became a child again not childish, but just a little 
 child ; so, at least, it seemed to those who cared 
 for her. 
 
LIFE SEEN THROUGH A WINDOW 153 
 
 She was sitting just there in the morning of a 
 warm day. She had been very silent that morning ; 
 at least, so her grandson told me afterwards, but it 
 may have been only an imagination. She was 
 never talkative, and, unlike some old persons, she 
 was wont to listen and smile her reply instead of 
 speaking. So when a child of three years old, 
 playing on the grass before the house, looked up 
 into her face, and, holding up a bunch of flowers, 
 shouted something to her, she only smiled and said 
 nothing. Then the child repeated her question in 
 a child s dictatorial way, and now the smile was 
 very sweet that stole over the thin white features, 
 and at the same time a far-away gaze was seen in 
 her eyes. I say " was seen," for her grandson, a 
 man of forty, coming in at the gate just then, was 
 so struck by that gaze that he turned around and 
 looked up the bend of the valley road, thinking she 
 saw persons coming, and was trying to recognize 
 them at a distance. 
 
 "There is no one on the road that I can see, 
 grandmother," he said as he entered the door and 
 turned into her room. 
 
 But there was some one on the road up which she 
 was looking, with her face close to the pane of glass. 
 
 Not to eyes purely human is it given to see those 
 who travel that road ; but many times the aged, 
 sometimes the young, are permitted for a while, be 
 fore the silver cord is quite loosened, to look with 
 
154 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 superhuman vision along the road which the angels 
 and spirits of the just use in going to and fro be 
 tween this and their country. How many of them 
 she saw no one knows, but that she saw two at 
 least cannot be doubtful. For just now her grand 
 son approached her chair and heard her voice. 
 She was murmuring to herself, and over and over 
 again, smiling all the time, she was saying, " Joshua, 
 Joshua, Susy, Susy." 
 
 Not far away from the farm there is an old 
 graveyard, in which is a brown stone with two 
 half -circle elevations on the top, and that one 
 stone tells of the death of Joshua and Susan, twin 
 children, in the year 1787. They were her brother 
 and sister, a little older than she. When she was 
 three years old they died at six. It is not likely 
 that on this earth there was any other human be 
 ing remaining whom those children had known and 
 loved, or who had known and loved them. Had 
 they waited all these long years for the coining of 
 their baby sister ? As they waited and watched, 
 did she seem to them, from year to year, to grow 
 older and less fair and beautiful than they had left 
 her in the freshness of infancy? Were they ever 
 weary of waiting ? Do they keep count of days and 
 years in the country whose light is perpetual and 
 unchanging ? Was she always a child to them 
 grown strong in the atmosphere of Paradise ? 
 
 Doubtless she, who alone of all the living could 
 
LIFE SEEN THROUGH A WINDOW 155 
 
 have memory of those names thus coupled together 
 in tones of affection, saw them on the road along 
 which her mysterious vision was directed. After 
 that she seemed to see no earthly scenes ; and when 
 they carried her out of the sunshine the smile did 
 not leave her face, or if for a brief time it was not 
 there, it came again with great beauty. She did 
 not speak again. All that day she lay calm and 
 quiet, and her company was evidently of the other 
 sort of people, of whom we, so long as we are 
 wholly human, know little and can imagine little. 
 The evening drew on. The birds sang in the maples 
 until the cry of the nighthavvk alone was heard in 
 the twilight. Then over on the hill-side whippoor- 
 wills called mournfully to one another as the night 
 went along. At midnight her grandson, the clergy 
 man, arrived from his distant home. He looked 
 for a little while at her beautiful face, spoke but 
 received no reply, then knelt by the bed and re 
 peated the words of the Lord s Prayer. He did 
 not use the blundering form of the new revision, 
 but the old phrases with which for so long time she 
 had been familiar. As the sound reached her ears 
 that sound which seemed to be in the language 
 of the other country, which Joshua and Susy under 
 stood, and in which they joined her lips moved 
 as if syllabling the words, but no sound came from 
 them : nor after that. 
 
XVI 
 
 COLORED PEOPLE 
 
 INTELLIGENT minds are seeking with great sin 
 cerity the solution of the problem : What is to be 
 the future of the colored race in our country ? And 
 many are seeking it in great blindness. The gov 
 erning white race in the Northern States are in 
 general as ignorant of the character, the qualities, 
 the abilities and disabilities of the colored race as 
 they are of the character of the Afghans. 
 
 I am not speaking now of how little Northern 
 men know about the colored race in the Southern 
 States. I refer to the knowledge which whites in 
 New England, New York, and elsewhere have of 
 the colored people in their own states and towns 
 and villages. 
 
 Political excitement and the wiles of politicians 
 for the past forty years have kept the Southern 
 colored man in sight so constantly that the North 
 ern colored man has sunk out of sight. That kind 
 of philanthropy which many delight in, forming 
 societies, making speeches, collecting other people s 
 money to spend, has found ample field in distant 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 157 
 
 parts of the country, and the charity which ought 
 to begin at home has not had its beginning. 
 
 There is more need to-day of Northern people 
 recognizing the condition of the Northern colored 
 man than of bothering about the Southern colored 
 man. The colored race in the North is more neg 
 lected by Northerners, more isolated, set apart by 
 the dominant sentiment of the whites than the col 
 ored race at the South by white Southerners. 
 
 The relations between the two races at the South 
 are more Christian, more favorable to the elevation 
 of the colored man, than at the North. 
 
 These are strong statements, but I write them 
 deliberately and with knowledge. I could fill 
 volumes with what I am confident would interest 
 some readers, records of my personal acquaintance 
 with Northern colored people, their homes, their 
 employments and enjoyments, their social gather 
 ings, their mutual benefit efforts, literary and other 
 clubs and societies, their marriages, their funer 
 als, and especially their religious associations in 
 churches. It is pitiable beyond expression to see 
 how utterly alone and unaided they are. 
 
 The colored people of the Northern States are, in 
 fact, more "looked down on " by Northern whites 
 than are the Southern freemen by Southern whites. 
 This is no sweeping statement that I make without 
 observation. Look around you, my friend, wher 
 ever you live, and consider the subject. What do 
 
158 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 you do for colored people ? What is your mental 
 method of regarding them ? What do you know 
 about the race in your city ? Did you ever try to 
 help them in any of their efforts to help them 
 selves ? 
 
 There are good people at the North who are liv 
 ing in complete self-satisfaction that with the aboli 
 tion of slavery in the South they have done a glori 
 ous work, and all that they need do for the colored 
 race in all the states, North and South. And all the 
 time, at their doors, close around them, the race is 
 living, a dependent people, unaided, uncared for, 
 disregarded. There is plenty of work for the phi 
 lanthropy of the North among Northern colored 
 people. 
 
 The struggle of the colored people of the North 
 for their own improvement and general advance is 
 one of the deepest interest, full of pathos, because 
 so patient and so unaided. Brought up in my baby 
 hood and childhood by the hands of colored people, 
 watched in my boyhood and youth by dark faces 
 that I loved as well as any white faces, I have all 
 my life been closely attached to many colored folk. 
 How many Northerners who read this were ever at 
 the wedding of a colored young man and woman, 
 the baptism of a colored child, a social gathering of 
 colored people, a meeting of a literary society of 
 colored young men? How many of you ever cheered 
 a respectable colored family by a friendly call not 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 159 
 
 a visit of patronage, but one of good-will and neigh- 
 borliness ? How many of you ever went, where all 
 are free to go, to the funeral of a colored person ? 
 Do you say you were never invited on any such 
 occasions ? Why not ? Did you ever give indica 
 tion that you would accept an invitation ? Would 
 you go, if invited, except as a matter of curiosity ? 
 Those people, as a class throughout the North, live 
 always conscious that you don t want their invita 
 tions, that you don t purpose to associate with them 
 on any terms of any kind which may imply equality. 
 Equality ! The word is one of the humbugs of our 
 age. It is the name of an imagination, a condition 
 that has no existence in social and community life. 
 In many a group of white men and women in society 
 there are some (and you know them when you meet 
 them) who are fitter for the State Prison than for 
 your companionship ; some who are immeasurably 
 below others in moral, intellectual, physical, and 
 other considerations. You are not going to make 
 people your equals, black or white, by treating them 
 as your " neighbors " in the highest authoritative 
 sense of that word. 
 
 Legislation about hotels and railways will never 
 produce equality. That will always be an individual 
 question, dependent on influences far above the reach 
 of law. You can no more legislate a man into society 
 which rejects him than you can legislate railway and 
 stock swindlers out of society which accepts them. 
 
Ife AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 Don t imagine me seeking to abolish distinctions 
 of the races, and bring about even apparent equal 
 ity. I don t believe in it, don t want it, don t be 
 lieve all the philanthropy on earth will or ought to 
 accomplish it. Educated in the Westminster Cat 
 echism, I would have all men taught their duties in 
 their several places and relations as " superiors, in 
 feriors, and equals " ? places and relations which 
 will exist for all eternity, here and hereafter ; with 
 out which the world would stagnate on a dead level 
 of imbecility. But the superior owes duties of kind 
 ness, assistance, protection, education, sympathy, 
 love to the inferior. 
 
 Yes, that is the word, love. I know or I should 
 say I have known, for all of them have gone to God 
 and rank now as he ranks his chosen, in various 
 lustre I have known black men whom I loved, 
 to whose lives of faithfulness, in their humble sta 
 tions, I look back with affection, to whose graves my 
 thoughts go, in wakeful night-times, as they often go 
 to the graves of the beloved dead. 
 
 It was but a short time ago that one of them 
 died. He was a servant, but more than a servant, 
 steward of the entire household, of family interests, 
 and a large part of the financial affairs, trusted and 
 faithful, respected, honored I use the word again 
 loved, by the old, by the children, by every one. 
 The bouse was in one of our most wealthy cities. 
 Few men in the city were more widely known or 
 
COLORED PEOPLE l6l 
 
 respected by the community, rich and poor. His 
 fine form, his speaking countenance, his intelligent 
 eye. all made him a man of mark. He was a gen 
 tleman in even* sense of the word in manner, habit, 
 kindliness to those whom he could help, and he 
 helped many in higher stations than his own. His 
 intellectual ability and his intelligence were above 
 those of the average of the people of the city. He 
 was honored and trusted by the colored population. 
 He was a free giver according to his small ability in 
 charities and in his church, in which he held the 
 most responsible position as a layman. 
 
 I have no space to dwell on the beauty of his 
 character, which made us all love him. He was a 
 child in his simplicity of faith, while he was a man 
 in his unbending integrity. We never thought of 
 the household as existing without him. When he 
 was struck down by sudden illness, we had a reve 
 lation of the social conditions of the colored people 
 in the city which astonished us. He was a member 
 of a society. From the moment of his attack his 
 associates devoted themselves to him, and when 
 they found that everything possible was done for 
 him as a member of the family, they detailed, day 
 and night, three men to be ready for any emergency. 
 Night after night I walked through the house and 
 saw in the gloom those three dark forms and faces, 
 motionless, only the eyes asking me if anything 
 were wanted. They offered to detail a man to sup- 
 
162 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 ply as far as possible his place as butler, this be 
 ing a part of their system whereby to save one of 
 their number from losing employment by sickness. 
 At the same time a similar association of colored 
 women, of which his wife was a member, detailed 
 women to attend on and help the wife and care for 
 the young children of the sick man, all of whom were 
 members of the household. No wealthy white man 
 in the land can, with all his money, command such 
 unremitting devoted attention in his last illness as 
 the colored men and women thus gave to one of 
 their number. There was no moment in all the 
 weeks of his sickness that there were not several 
 men and women within call to supplement the at 
 tentions we gave him. 
 
 There have been sad mornings in that old house, 
 when the daylight has come in on the dead faces of 
 those of the family who have gone, but scarcely one 
 more sad than that morning when his dark face was 
 set, irresponsive for the first time. 
 
 His funeral was appointed for the third day after, 
 and the daily papers gave notice of the hour at 
 which would be buried, as the notice said, this 
 "faithful steward and friend." His coffin stood in 
 the very spot where had stood the coffin of the old 
 father whose years of age and feebleness he had 
 tended to their close ; where had stood the coffin of 
 the mother, whose saintly memory hallows the old 
 house under the trees she loved ; where each coffin 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 163 
 
 of each of our dead in the old home had stood. 
 He was a lover of flowers, and abundant bloom was 
 around him. At the appointed hour the house be 
 gan to fill. Every room, hall, staircase was crowded 
 with an assembly of people, come there to honor a 
 dead man worthy of all honor. His favorite hymn 
 was sung with exquisite melody of voices. So, all 
 the care and tenderness that we could bestow on 
 our dead fathers or brothers we bestowed on him, 
 for he was one of us. 
 
 But in the crowded assembly which came to honor 
 the dead there were only two white men and four 
 white ladies. Nor was this matter of surprise. It is 
 not a special characteristic, so far as I know, of any 
 one part of the North, that the color line should be 
 drawn thus sharply. It is thus drawn everywhere. 
 I have attended many funerals of colored persons, 
 and in most cases have been the only white person 
 present. 
 
 Writing about colored people reminds me of an 
 old couple, who were once well known to many 
 readers of this, and who have for some years past 
 been citizens of another country, where they are 
 happily settled. For there is a better country than 
 this of ours, howsoever we may boast of our institu 
 tions. 
 
 The Church of the Transfiguration in New York 
 is widely known by a name given it long since 
 "The Little Church Around the Corner." This 
 
164 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 was never a properly descriptive name, for it is not 
 a little church. It seats nearly a thousand people, 
 and is generally full. But the low ceiling, the wan 
 dering shape of the floor, the quiet and warm tone 
 of the decoration, the paintings hanging low on the 
 walls, and the numerous memorial windows, many 
 of which are to children of the parish, give it a 
 more compact and home-like appearance than some 
 other churches, and lead strangers to underesti 
 mate its size. The members of the Transfigura 
 tion parish, old and young, are warmly attached to 
 their church, and it is unnecessary to add that 
 they are still more warmly held in bonds of very 
 tender affection and respect to the rector, who is 
 their father and friend. The church was founded 
 by him and has always been under his guidance. 
 It is a working church, reaching in its chanties 
 and ministrations all classes and colors of people. 
 The record of these works is not to be published 
 here. It is kept in a book elsewhere. Not the 
 least interesting and important part of the work is 
 among the colored people of New York, many of 
 whom are members of the parish. 
 
 Old members of the parish remember George 
 and Elizabeth Wilson, who for a long period were 
 door-keepers and pew-openers in the church. Wil 
 son was a tall colored man with gray hair and 
 beard, a wrinkled forehead over a pair of fine eyes, 
 a stoop in his back, and sometimes a halt in his 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 165 
 
 step. For he was a rheumatic old man, quite 
 feeble, never fit for hard work, and therefore a pen 
 sioner on the chanties of the church. He did a 
 little work, with his wife, in and about the church, 
 which is, on week-days as on Sundays, always open 
 for any one who may seek a place of rest and 
 prayer. Elizabeth was not much better in health 
 and strength than Wilson, but she was more active, 
 and regarded the church as her special possession 
 and care, for which she was responsible to the rec 
 tor and to God. Wilson had been a slave in his 
 younger days. Elizabeth was born free. At almost 
 any time of any day you would be sure to find the 
 two, moving slowly about the church, dusting here, 
 cleaning there, arranging this or that ; or perhaps 
 sitting, silent, as if at home. They knew every 
 member of the parish by sight, and on Sundays, 
 standing at the transept door, recognized instantly 
 any stranger, and showed him or her to a seat. 
 They were a loving couple, closely attached to one 
 another ; devout and humble in life and conversa 
 tion, much loved by all the parish. They had be 
 come, I might almost say, a part of the church dec 
 oration, for their forms made a feature of no little 
 beauty in the home-like church. Their faces always 
 greeted incomers with a smile of welcome, and 
 when first one and then the other was missed there 
 was a vacancy to which it took long to become ac 
 customed. 
 
166 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 They grew old under the care and in the service of 
 the Transfiguration parish. Elizabeth was the first 
 to go. There were some very touching, very thrill 
 ing occurrences in the room where she lay dying. 
 None was more so than what old Wilson said to her 
 just before she died. The last blessing had been 
 given, the passing soul committed " into thy hands, 
 O Lord." The rector and Wilson were kneeling 
 side by side. The old man, silently weeping, held 
 his old wife s hand. She was restless, and moved 
 her head uneasily. Still holding her hand in one 
 of his, he reached out the other, gently passing it 
 over her forehead as if he would smooth the wrin 
 kles, and said, " Never mind, never mind, Bessie 
 darling, you ll soon be washed all white." No 
 one had ever before these days heard him call her 
 any name but Elizabeth. No one had ever before 
 heard from him any suggestion that he desired to 
 be of any other color. His heart now spoke out its 
 hidden emotions, of love and longing, when he let 
 his old companion go before him to the land of rest 
 from labor, and of rank and station according to 
 the will of the Master and King, in whom he had 
 perfect trust. 
 
 He did not wait long behind her. He was very 
 lonesome. He wandered in a vacant way around 
 the church. He sat a great deal in silent thought 
 there and at home. No one knows how lonesome 
 life can be to a poor, old, rheumatic colored man, 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 167 
 
 whose only companion of forty years has died. But 
 he looked into the other world now with new 
 thoughts and new desires. Elizabeth was there*, 
 waiting for him, white of countenance and pure of 
 soul. Poverty and lowliness in this world compel 
 miserable surroundings and associations with vice 
 and sin and shame. The joys of paradise are not 
 so entrancing to the vision of those who in this 
 world live among the delights of life and the exter 
 nal refinements of society. The poor and lowly in 
 New York cannot keep clear of the abominable sur 
 roundings of poverty ; and to those poor who are 
 pure in heart, as were Wilson and Elizabeth, the 
 sight of the beautiful country over yonder is full of 
 joy and refreshment and hope, even before they 
 enter it. 
 
 At least once a week, sometimes oftener, he came 
 to see us, and to talk about Elizabeth. Many vis 
 itors have been in my library, many dear friends, 
 who have gone away forever. None of them have 
 left here more enduring memory than he. He was 
 a child philosopher, a child theologian. He told us 
 what he thought, not as beliefs, not as opinions, but 
 as ideas that had come to him when he sat alone 
 thinking of this and the other life, and commenting 
 to himself on the words of revelation. Wonderful 
 ly clear, marvellously penetrating are the wisdom 
 and comment which come sometimes from such 
 simple, thoughtful minds. He never knew he was 
 
168 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 talking theology or any other ology. He only re 
 vealed, with the simplicity of a child, the workings 
 of a mind which had one great foundation princi 
 ple of thought and reason faith in a Saviour of 
 men. 
 
 Wilson was a sensible man, without any imagi 
 nation. Therefore we noted as more interesting 
 and remarkable an occurrence which he related 
 one morning, in my library, to one of the ladies 
 who had been with Elizabeth in her last hours. 
 
 " I saw Elizabeth last night," he said. 
 
 "You dreamed about her, did you?" said the 
 lady. 
 
 " No, ma am, it wasn t any dream. I was awake, 
 and she was in the room, and I saw her as plain as 
 I see you." Being questioned, he described the 
 vision. He always spoke slowly, and with choice 
 of his words. 
 
 " It was all dark in the room, and I was lying 
 awake thinking about her, and saying to myself, 
 She is happy and comfortable ; and I looked up 
 and she was standing by the side of the bed, look 
 ing just like she used to look a good many years 
 ago when she was well and strong." 
 
 " Was she dressed in white ?" 
 
 " No, ma am, she had a kind of a mouse -colored 
 cloak on, something like what ladies wear when it 
 rains." 
 
 " And you were awake ?" 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 169 
 
 "Just as awake as I am now, ma am, and I had 
 my eyes wide open." 
 
 " Did she speak to you ?" 
 
 " No, ma am ; you see I was surprised, for it was 
 dark, and I couldn t see nothing else ; but I could 
 see her just as plain as if it was light; and she 
 stood still, and just kind o smiled ; but she didn t 
 speak ; no, she didn t say anything. She was light 
 ed up, somehow, so I could see her. I was going 
 to speak to her, but before I could get myself 
 straight to say anything, she wasn t there, and I 
 didn t see her any more." 
 
 Wilson had told his vision to some one that 
 morning who had tried to persuade him that it 
 was his imagination a pure delusion. Not so we. 
 Why should he not believe he had seen her? What 
 harm in believing that God had sent her to com 
 fort him in his lonesome old age ? Who dare af 
 firm it was not so ? We encouraged him to believe 
 it. Soon after that he saw her, and knew whether 
 his night vision had been delusion or reality. 
 
 Both he and she died in the faith. The rector 
 was with them to the last. One after the other was 
 brought into the church, laid before the altar where 
 they had worshipped with us, carried thence to the 
 church cemetery, and committed to the earth until 
 the resurrection. 
 
 Often and often I see visions of them, almost as 
 plainly as Wilson saw Elizabeth. I see them when 
 
170 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 I go down the transept, standing at the door as in 
 old time. I think many of us who worship in the 
 Church of the Transfiguration will be glacl when 
 we see them in the eternal temple, whose door and 
 door-keeper is their and our Lord. 
 
 When you are passing through Twenty -ninth 
 Street, turn into the church-yard, which with its shad 
 owy trees, its fountain, and flowers and birds, sepa 
 rates the church from the street. Enter the church. 
 It is always open ; many weary men and women 
 rejoice to find it so. On the right-hand side of the 
 transept door, and also on the right-hand side of 
 the baptistery, observe, as you enter, a stained-glass 
 window. Perhaps this is the only window in any 
 church in the world which is a memorial of a 
 colored person. It was placed where it is, be 
 cause that is the door which for years the old man 
 and old woman Wilson and Elizabeth used to 
 attend. The painting in the window represents the 
 baptism of the Ethiopian by St. Philip. This is the 
 inscription : " IN MEMORY OF GEORGE B. and ELIZ 
 ABETH WILSON, sometime door-keepers in this house of 
 the Lord. Ps. Ixxxiv. 10." The reference is to 
 these words : " For a day in thy courts is better 
 than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in 
 the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of 
 wickedness." They are not door-keepers now. No 
 servant or apostle, not Peter for all his keys in 
 symbolic art, keeps that door. For the King is 
 
COLORED PEOPLE 171 
 
 himself the door, and no Peter keeps Him. Con 
 tent, humble, and faithful as door-keepers in the 
 church here, they walk now with kings and priests 
 in the peace that is unbroken, the safe citizenship 
 which is beyond all revolutions. 
 
XVII 
 
 EXAMPLE 
 
 IT was after sunset one evening, a long time ago. 
 The road was good, and I had only four miles to 
 drive. My horses were tired, for I had come a 
 long way since noon and the sun had been hot. 
 There was a sharp turn of the road to the left. At 
 this point a new stretch of road diverged from the 
 old road and joined it again two miles beyond. 
 This two miles of the old road was a very bad road, 
 and some twelve years ago the new road was laid 
 out, over better ground. The old road was defi 
 nitely abandoned, and at each end of it a lot of 
 brush was piled across it as a barrier, so that stran 
 gers should not mistake it. In the course of years 
 the brush heaps had decayed and disappeared, but 
 the entrances to the old road had grown up with 
 golden-rod and aster, so that there was no sem 
 blance of a roadway. That two miles of the old 
 road was always a favorite drive for me. It was 
 all in the forest, and was all very nearly level. In 
 fact it was a bad road, because it was so level that 
 the water did not drain away from it, and teams 
 
EXAMPLE 173 
 
 cut it up, and there were mud holes, and occasion 
 al projecting tops of rocks and uncovered roots of 
 trees. 
 
 My reason for preferring a buckboard to any oth 
 er wagon for ordinary use in the country is that it 
 will stand rough work over unbroken ground. You 
 can turn into the open fields or forests, and drive 
 over rocks and logs if you drive with care, and 
 your horses are trustworthy for such work. Log 
 ging roads, used only in winter with sleds, present 
 frequent temptations to one who wanders around 
 the country seeking beauties of nature, and with 
 a buckboard one can often drive for miles into the 
 apparently impenetrable forests. 
 
 I was perfectly familiar with this old abandoned 
 road, knew where its worst places were, could 
 crowd my buckboard into the brush and avoid bad 
 holes. For the most part it was a good trotting- 
 road, and as it would save a considerable distance 
 to my tired horses and myself I took it. You will 
 understand that I drove straight on into it, for the 
 new road turned short away on the left. 
 
 The forest arched over the entrance. I went on 
 at an easy trot for half a mile, then drew out sharp to 
 the right to avoid a bad hole, formerly mended with 
 logs, and now presenting the ends of those logs 
 to catch and twist and smash a wheel. Then I 
 plunged the horses breasts into the low brush on 
 the left of the road, and thus avoided the end 
 
174 
 
 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 of a great tree-trunk which had fallen and lay half 
 way across the old track, on the right-hand side. 
 The twilight outside the wood was almost darkness 
 here, but both horses and driver knew the road, 
 and we went on at a fast trot for thirty rods, when 
 I heard a piercing scream, followed by a succes 
 sion of intermingled screams and shouting. It all 
 came from behind me. I pulled up and listened 
 an instant ; then turned the horses into the low 
 bushes, jumped out, and lifted the hind axle of the 
 buckboard to the right while the horses swung 
 around to the left, and drove back. 
 
 In the gloom I found some people who had come 
 to grief. They were a man and a woman, who had 
 been driving one horse before a buckboard. They 
 had plunged into the hole and broken one wheel, 
 then pulling instantly on the off rein had wrecked a 
 fore-wheel on the log, and were thrown unhurt into 
 the bushes. Their horse was an old logger, accus 
 tomed to catastrophes, and had stopped for orders. 
 
 There was nothing to do for these people except 
 to give them a lift. Their buckboard was left where 
 it stood. Mine was single, but the woman sat by me 
 on the seat, and the man sat on the back end of the 
 board leading his horse. For the uninitiated it may 
 be well to explain briefly that a buckboard is a 
 wagon whose seat stands on a broad spring - board 
 which extends from axle to axle. The structure 
 is simple, the riding on rough roads is very much 
 
EXAMPLE 175 
 
 easier than that of any vehicle on steel springs, and 
 if properly built of good stuff it will carry a very 
 heavy load. I drove slowly now. The moon, the 
 harvest-moon, two days or so after the full, had risen, 
 but moonlight makes a wood road more difficult to 
 drive than darkness. It creates shapes and shad 
 ows wholly unfamiliar. It makes dark-looking holes 
 across the road with the shadows of bushes or tree- 
 trunks. 
 
 You have probably been wondering what these 
 people were doing in that wild wood road. I had 
 been puzzling myself with the same question, but 
 had not asked it ; in fact, little had been said 
 nothing that was not absolutely necessary. For 
 when I found them their first words to me had been 
 somewhat short and gruff, and I had neither thought 
 nor opportunity of measuring them. I had been 
 smoking a cigar when the screams arrested me. It 
 was still between my teeth as they loaded into my 
 buckboard, and I threw it away as I took my seat. 
 
 The world is made up of all sorts of people. It 
 wouldn t be the world it is but for this fact. As in 
 physical nature the wisdom of the great Direc 
 tor has provided compensations and balances, low 
 grades of animals to devour filth and be food for 
 other grades, thus forever rounding the circle of 
 life, so it may be that He has intended some kinds 
 of men and women to fill places in the moral world 
 in which they have their uses, though we cannot 
 
iy6 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 discover what those uses are. What these people 
 whom I had picked up in the woods were made for, 
 what purpose they serve in the economy of moral 
 nature, I don t know, unless they were made as irri 
 tants, mustard-plasters, blisters. Certainly we need 
 that class of people sometimes. They were of a 
 queer sort. As I took my seat and started the 
 horses, the woman spoke. Naturally one might 
 have expected something in the way of thanks. 
 Nothing of the sort was there. She spoke in a semi- 
 patronizing, semi-didactic way, expressing her sor 
 row not unmingled with offence at my being one of 
 the sinners who use tobacco. 
 
 She gave me a lecture on smoking and drinking, 
 which I received in humility. It was plain that she 
 supposed me to be a resident of the country in which 
 she was on a " mission." She talked glibly, and her 
 companion occasionally suggested approval from 
 the axle behind us. There was no convenient place 
 into which I could dump them again, without hurt 
 ing them, strong as was the temptation to do it. 
 They did not seem to belong to any society or any 
 body, but were adrift, living on the country through 
 which they drifted. The amount of false history, 
 false translation, false quotation, false doctrine, and 
 trash which this woman gave me, as an unlettered 
 rustic, while I from time to time made a suggestion 
 by way of ignorant inquiry, and so started her on 
 afresh, was positively astounding. 
 
EXAMPLE 177 
 
 I dropped them gracefully at the first house, and 
 never heard what became of them. But as I lit a 
 fresh cigar and the horses resumed their usual 
 
 O 
 
 speed, I pondered on a part of the lecture I had 
 heard. 
 
 It appeared that these people did not know their 
 road, and having heard me say whither I was going, 
 followed me, relying on me as a guide. Thus my 
 example, in taking the wood road instead of the 
 public road, had led them to disaster. " You are 
 responsible for your example," is a common gener 
 alization, and the anti-tobacco woman reiterated the 
 phrase. It is a favorite phrase with many enthusi 
 astic advocates of total abstinence and many preach 
 ers of " reforms." 
 
 There are few doctrines more thoughtlessly and 
 carelessly taught, even by men of intelligence, than 
 this doctrine of responsibility for example. By this 
 dogma life is walled in to the narrowest limits, 
 loaded down with the heaviest burdens of responsi 
 bility for the sins of others. Life is no such diffi 
 cult labor. When I drove that road I was under no 
 obligation to inquire or to think whether any other 
 person was going to put on me the responsibility of 
 showing him the road. I deny absolutely any and 
 every charge that I, by my example, led that party 
 to a smash-up. Life would not be worth living if in 
 all that we do and do rightfully and rightly we are 
 to be held responsible for others who, following our 
 
178 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 examples, undertake to do the same things and do 
 them wrongfully and wrongly. The strong swim 
 mer is not chargeable with the death of the man who, 
 seeing how easily he swims and thinking to do it as 
 well, plunges in and is drowned. The tight-rope 
 walker is not responsible for the broken neck of the 
 fool who follows his example. The skilled hunter 
 is not to be accused of the death by wild beasts of 
 the unskilled man who emulates his deeds. The 
 cool man of iron nerve who climbs precipices, walks 
 on dizzy edges, leaps over deep chasms, has nothing 
 to do as guide of the weak brain and legs which 
 follow him to their destruction. In each of these, 
 and in a thousand like cases, it is essential to re 
 sponsibility that the follower who has gone to grief 
 establish on his part a claim on the leader he fol 
 lowed, a right to take his example and guidance, 
 and that he then follow the example exactly. 
 
 The path of duty in this world is a narrow path, 
 and sometimes a very difficult path. But it ought 
 not to be made painfully laborious. If the upright 
 man, doing that which is right, following as closely 
 as he can the example of his Master, who was once 
 man among men, is to be told that his right-doing 
 becomes wrong-doing because others may misinter 
 pret it, that his praying may be a sin because others 
 may think he is praying to idols, that his teaching 
 of truth may be a sin because others may follow his 
 example and teach error, that his pure affections 
 
EXAMPLE 179 
 
 may be sins because others may plead his example 
 for their impure affections, that his temperance may 
 be a sin because others may imitate him in eating 
 and drinking, but do them intemperately if, in short, 
 the doctrine is true that man is responsible not only 
 that his life and conversation be right, but also that 
 his right-doing shall not be used by others to justify 
 their wrong-doing, then duty is too complex for our 
 humanity. 
 
 Grant that we are responsible for example in ill- 
 doing, ill -living. That we are responsible when 
 others follow us in right-doing and go beyond us 
 into wrong ways is untrue. There is no difficulty 
 in drawing the line. But the subject is muddled 
 by careless teaching, and so muddled that people of 
 vagrant habits and minds, like those I picked up in 
 the woods, distribute damning error in connection 
 with it. The woman said in substance that she 
 could teach Christ himself to set a better example 
 in a land of wine-bibbers. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 
 
 THE minister was a Presbyterian and a low-church 
 man. He was a very low churchman. The dif 
 ference between a churchman and a very low 
 churchman is that the latter has little respect for 
 the special considerations which make his church a 
 church. There are churchmen and low-churchmen in 
 all churches. The day of the old high-church Pres 
 byterians is mostly gone by, except in the Scotch 
 churches. The book of government of the church 
 is pretty much forgotten, very much avoided, most 
 ly unknown to the laity, and when discovered by 
 some inquisitive layman is often explained away. 
 It is very high-church. The low-church Presbyte 
 rian minister, earnest, sincere, a hard-working and 
 devout man, had warm affiliations with all the clergy 
 in the town and neighborhood, excepting one. He 
 "exchanged" with them, giving his own people to 
 understand that there was nothing in Presbyterian- 
 ism which made it worth their while or his while to 
 maintain it as a superior organization. He did not 
 preach this doctrine, but he practised it. Once in 
 
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 181 
 
 a while he rejoiced the hearts of the old deacons 
 and elders by a rousing sermon, in which he set be 
 fore the congregation the distinctive features of the 
 grand old church sanctified by the blood of the 
 martyrs of Scotland, in whose faith hosts had gone 
 from the toils and the moils of this world to the 
 rest and the immaculate robes of the other. In 
 such sermons he struck hard blows at Baptists and 
 Methodists, sounding blows aimed at doctrines; 
 and harder blows at Episcopalians, mostly aimed at 
 practices ; for he was a learned theologian, and he 
 knew that the Thirty-nine Articles were Calvinistic 
 enough to burn holocausts of Servetuses. Like 
 thousands of the clergy of all denominations when 
 they preach denominational sermons, he made the 
 fearful error of teaching " how these people differ 
 from us," instead of teaching the grand truth of the 
 ages, how marvellous is the identity of most denom 
 inations in the essential doctrines of Christianity. 
 
 Whatever he was in theology, he was a faithful 
 pastor of his own people, and untiring in seeking out 
 the poor, the distressed, the neglected, the sinning. 
 You may think you know hard-working men. I tell 
 you there are clergymen of various denominations 
 all over the world whose daily and nightly unceas 
 ing labors surpass all you ever imagined of hard 
 work, and with constant surroundings of distress, 
 misery, anguish. This clergyman lived a life of 
 such labor. 
 
::; AMONG THE NORTHERN* HILLS 
 
 There was an Episcopal church in the large manu 
 facturing town, founded with express reference to 
 certain families of English working-men. A rector 
 who was called a high-churchman had been over it 
 for some years. No one knew exactly what "high- 
 church" meant, but most people had a tolerably 
 correct idea when they said, with much indignation, 
 "he thinks his church a great deal better than 
 ours." Probably that was what he thought That 
 is what every Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, 
 Lutheran, ought to think and teach of his own 
 church. If he does not he has no business in his 
 church. Other people thought him a high-church 
 man because the worship of God in his church was 
 very ornate. There was no denying it, He had 
 4"andlps on the communion - table, which he called 
 the altar; and he wore a stole with crosses em 
 broidered on it : and he emphasized the is when 
 he read a this is my body," uttering the words very 
 slowly. There is no end to the things they said 
 this high-church ritualist did, even to praying for 
 the dead. But the most serious charge made 
 him, in the mouths of Christians of various 
 was that when he gave the benediction he 
 held out two fingers and made over the heads of his 
 kneeling congregation the sign of the cross. I 
 don t think there was anything in those days which 
 many good people were so afraid of as the sign of 
 the cross. Precisely what injury they feared was 
 
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 183 
 
 not definable, but no one ever feared the evil eye in 
 the days of witchcraft with more sincere apprehen 
 sion. Nor would this sketch be complete without 
 the statement that the Presbyterian minister, while 
 not foolishly afraid of it, did regard the use of this 
 sign as a superstitious abomination, and talked and 
 taught and preached as he thought about it 
 
 Thus much as to what li they said " about the 
 rector. Now as to what he was. No two men 
 were ever more alike in spirit and life than the 
 minister and the rector. The latter was a man of 
 deep study, much learning, devout piety, complete 
 self-abnegation, and devotion to the work of his 
 ministry. He had been married, but his wife and 
 two children had died not gone away for he had 
 never considered his family broken up, had never 
 stopped saying " give us our daily bread," precisely 
 as when they knelt with him. This man was im 
 bued with love for his Master and love for his 
 fellow-man. His whole life was given to the work. 
 He was day and night among the people, with 
 those who were in trouble, with criminals in prison, 
 and criminals who had come to him with confes 
 sions of sin and penitence, with the sick, the dead, 
 the desolate. His ritualism, as it was called, was 
 in his opinion useful in the work of his Master, 
 and the crowded little church, the full Sunday- 
 school, the working character of his young people 
 in their little societies, the constant accessions 
 
184 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 to his parish these attested some wisdom in his 
 views. It began to be said that the poor peo 
 ple of this small church did as much charitable 
 and reforming work as the richest congregation in 
 the town. 
 
 It is not to be denied that there was some weak 
 ness, some foolishness in his ritualistic practices. 
 No man is perfect in judgment. But his mistakes 
 did no harm. Nothing that he did was aggressive. 
 Ritualism has never been aggressive. It is always 
 inside of churches, generally waging a defensive 
 war against attacks of outside foes, and not often 
 getting much sympathy from bishops. Withal this 
 good man had, from long habit of study and lone 
 some devotion to his work, gotten the idea in his 
 mind that other denominations of Christians were 
 poor workers in the field of the world, other so- 
 called churches very doubtful gates by which to en 
 ter the kingdom of heaven. He had adopted that 
 very stupid custom of some churchmen, of trying 
 to defy the law of language in America, and insist 
 that it was wrong to use the word " church " ex 
 cept when speaking of his church. The preface of 
 his own prayer-book, the statutes of his State, the 
 literature of his age, the common-sense and com 
 mon practice of the people which settles words all 
 were against him. But he lived in a world of his 
 
 o 
 
 own, and rarely thought of any other a common 
 error, which injures many a good man s influence. 
 
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 185 
 
 I have taken so much space in describing 
 these two men that I have little left for my 
 story. 
 
 There was small-pox in the town one winter, and 
 wide-spread terror. Those are times when the peo 
 ple who are fond of abusing churches and clergy 
 fly to them for aid. It is a queer characteristic of 
 men who despise religion that they want the church 
 near them when they or their dear ones are dying, 
 and especially desire religious services at their 
 burials. And it may be added that such men seem 
 then to think the church an institution specially 
 created for all men, though they never attended its 
 services or paid towards its support. Now they 
 ask its services gratuitously, accept them without 
 thanks, and without repayment by any offering to 
 church or minister. 
 
 The rector and the minister were everywhere 
 among the poor victims of the pestilence. They had 
 never met. One night the minister was told by the 
 doctor that a poor Scotch woman, whom he had 
 missed from her usual seat in the gallery of his 
 church, was dying. He went through the snow 
 storm, wading in drifts and battling the wind, to a 
 little lonesome wooden house on the outskirts of 
 the town. It was midnight and after. No one 
 answered his knock. He opened the unlocked 
 door, entered a room, and saw, by a dim candle 
 light, a woman s form lying on a miserable pallet, 
 
186 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 and the rector kneeling by it, praying aloud for the 
 soul that had just gone. 
 
 " Is she gone ?" he said as the voice ceased, and 
 he saw the rector make with his ringer on the fore 
 head, foul with disease, the sign of salvation. 
 
 " She is at perfect rest." 
 
 " Do you say that ?" 
 
 " Yes, I have seen her often, before she became 
 delirious. She was full of faith." 
 
 " You have been here often ? and I have not ! 
 She was one of my people, not yours. I never 
 knew she was ill." 
 
 "Yes, I know it. It was by accident I heard of 
 her, and perhaps I ought to have sent you word ; 
 but I have been very busy. She was a simple, 
 good soul. She loved the Master. He loved her. 
 No pestilence comes where she is now !" 
 
 It was thus these two met. And it happened 
 within the week that a very similar occurrence took 
 place, this time the rector finding the minister with 
 a dying girl, one of the children of the Episcopal 
 Sunday-school. That day they walked away to 
 gether, and fell into a conversation about baptism 
 and regeneration, and each found that the other 
 had thorough knowledge of what the Fathers and 
 more modern theologians had said about it, and 
 that they were not far apart in their own opinions. 
 For they understood a fundamental rule that when 
 men settle the meaning of common words in the 
 
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 187 
 
 language, they find that much apparent theological 
 disagreement ceases. 
 
 They had thought themselves very far apart, and 
 they found themselves very close together. When 
 love lights the pages of controversial theology, it is 
 astonishing how divergences vanish. There was 
 not a bit of rancor, nothing but love in the hearts 
 and lives of these two honest servants of the same 
 Master. They parted that night, each surprised 
 and very thoughtful ; each convinced that between 
 the Episcopalian baptismal " regeneration " and 
 the Presbyterian baptismal "ingrafting into Christ" 
 there was no difference which could be made clear 
 to the poor mother of the dying child. 
 
 They met often after this, and each learned more. 
 The minister discovered that in all human worship 
 there is, of course, more or less ritualism, since 
 " worship in spirit " means worship in person and 
 purse, and men bend their knees in bodily ritualism 
 when they desire to bow their souls in the humility 
 of prayer. The rector learned that ritualism was 
 good only when and so far as it would do good in 
 the work he had at heart, and that the idea of sub 
 stituting color symbolisms of church device for 
 the settled color symbolisms of Europe, America, 
 or China, was a vain imagination of churchmen un 
 educated in the various symbolic languages of the 
 world. 
 
 I think the point on which they talked most was 
 
188 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the subject of Holy Orders. The Presbyterian 
 learned to think more than ever of his church s 
 teachings that his own ordination was in unbroken 
 succession from the Apostles, through the laying 
 on of the hands of the Presbytery. The Episco 
 palian began to consider, as he never had before, 
 the fact that in his church a bishop, or a dozen 
 bishops, cannot ordain a priest without the same 
 laying on of the hands of the Presbytery. Time 
 would fail me to enumerate the points of dogma 
 or doctrine on which, in their now constant inter 
 course, they talked, opening their souls to one an 
 other. 
 
 Then grew up between these two men a mutual 
 admiration and affection, which became warmer 
 from year to year. They were men of God. In 
 their humanity were weaknesses, imperfections, 
 which their intercourse helped to show them. One 
 in their faith, one in their purposes of life, in their 
 object in work, in their devotion to one divine 
 Master and His work in the world, they found in 
 finite joy in helping each the other. Neither of 
 them ever thought that his church was less fitted 
 for the great work than the other. Each loved 
 his own church the more, and while the rector be 
 came more wise in his ritual, the minister became 
 more of a high -church Presbyterian. While the 
 rector wanted to introduce incense, but never did, 
 the minister allowed his young people to intro- 
 
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 189 
 
 duce, what is the same thing, odorous flowers to 
 accompany and ornament worship. 
 
 Time passed on, and those two men loved one 
 another to the end. The rector went first. His 
 life of labor wore him out at last. Besides, there 
 were voices always calling him, and that almost 
 always hastens the day of going. Too ill to stand 
 or walk, he was carried to his native village in the 
 up-country to gain strength, said the doctor ; to 
 die, said the worn laboring man. Thither a few 
 weeks later he summoned his closest friend, the 
 Presbyterian minister, and for two days they held 
 holy communion. 
 
 In the afternoon, just before sunset of the sec 
 ond day, there was a sharp, sudden change in the 
 sick man. The minister had promised him, and 
 now to fulfil his promise knelt by his side, opened 
 the ready prayer-book, and began the words : " Oh, 
 Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of 
 just men made perfect after they are delivered 
 from their earthly prisons " and there a choking 
 sob interrupted his tremulous voice. For an in 
 stant he closed his eyes. Opening them he saw 
 the face of his friend as the face of the first mar 
 tyr, as the face of an angel, and knew that he was 
 dead. And then the Presbyterian voice rose clear 
 as he went on with the prayer : " We humbly com 
 mend the soul of this Thy servant, our dear broth 
 er, into Thy hands as into the hands of a faithful 
 
igo AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 Creator and most merciful Saviour. Wash it, we 
 pray Thee, in the blood of that immaculate Lamb 
 that was slain " and so on till he finished the 
 prayer. Though I know nothing about it, I have 
 no doubt he prayed with and for his brother ever 
 after, till they two met again and began together 
 prayers that will be offered as long as souls exist 
 and need anything from God. 
 
 The day his friend arrived the rector had said, 
 " Will you read the prayer in the visitation service 
 when I am dying ; and will you read the committal 
 in our burial-service when you bury me ?" and the 
 minister had said, " I will." So on a sunny after 
 noon, when all the people of all the country around 
 were gathered in the village graveyard, the minis 
 ter with clear voice said the words " earth to earth, 
 ashes to ashes, dust to dust," sprinkling the mould 
 on the coffin with his own hand. 
 
 Heaven was open overhead that afternoon. 
 The angels saw the burial. The happy ones in 
 paradise saw it all. The joyous soul, that had 
 gone from the clay which was in the coffin down 
 there in the open grave, saw on the coffin the 
 dust his brother s hand had sprinkled in the form 
 of the cross of the Lord, whom those two men 
 had served as well as they could. 
 
XIX 
 A CHILD S VOICE 
 
 WE don t know half the time who are our fellow- 
 travellers in this journey of life. I rode some hun 
 dred miles, and not happening to look into another 
 car on the train did not see its occupants. When 
 we reached the station, while some passengers were 
 transferred to trains going on in one and another 
 direction, and some were rushing for carriages and 
 busses to hotels, I collided with a lady, apologized 
 for the accident, looked just an instant at her face, 
 and did not see her again. Riding up in the omni 
 bus, I was conscious of a queer muddle of thoughts, 
 caused by a glance at that face, in the crowd at 
 the station. I had seen the face of a living, act 
 ive, wide-awake person, but I had in mind the 
 well-remembered countenance of one I knew was 
 long dead. 
 
 When we were comfortably settled, and had 
 washed off the accumulated dirt of various States, 
 through which we had been dragged in what we 
 moderns regard as the perfect style of luxurious 
 travel, I sat on the piazza of the hotel looking at 
 
IQ2 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the mountains with no small delight. But I could 
 not expel that face from my mind. As twilight 
 came on there came with a click a snap a sud 
 den flash-light on memory, which you have doubt 
 less often experienced, the explanation, a very sim 
 ple one, of my muddle. This face was probably 
 that of a daughter grown to close resemblance of 
 her mother who lived long ago. 
 
 It is very certain that the modern theories which 
 ascribe memory to the arrangement of particles of 
 the brain are based on insufficient observation of 
 that mental action which is called memory. When 
 asked if you remember an occurrence, and you re 
 ply " Yes," it may riot and does not strike you what 
 an innumerable variety of facts impressed on your 
 mind are at once recalled to view. The occurrence 
 is one fact, but the surroundings are hundreds, which 
 go to make up the memory. Do you remember a 
 face, seen long ago? You do, but what a compli 
 cated picture is that which, suddenly entering into 
 your mental view, leads you to say " Yes, I re 
 member it." The when, the where, a room, its 
 furniture, its light, dress, ornaments, countless sur 
 roundings, external and internal, mental, moral cir 
 cumstances, all go to make this instantaneous pict 
 ure. If each of the almost infinitesimal particles 
 of the brain received a photographic picture, with 
 added colors, it would scarcely be sufficient to con 
 vey all the distinct thoughts and facts which come 
 
A CHILD S VOICE 193 
 
 in the lightning-flash of a memory of one face, one 
 landscape, one event. 
 
 But let us leave the mystery of memory to the va 
 garies of biology, while we rejoice in it as a posses 
 sion which will be ours when the particles of our 
 brains have ceased to ache with physical labors. 
 
 Into the soft twilight came the picture of a coun 
 try church in a northern winter s day. All the 
 landscape around it was white, except where an 
 occasional pine-tree lifted its dark foliage. There 
 were not many pine-trees left. For it was a part of 
 the country long cleared and settled, and rich farms 
 stretched over the rolling land in all directions from 
 the village. But there were three great pines, grand 
 wide-spreading white-pines, which stood in the grave 
 yard close to the church. The sounds of the wind 
 through them were many toned. In summer, when 
 the windows were open and the breezes were gen 
 tle, the voices were musical ; in winter, when the 
 north winds raged, they were thunderous and ma 
 jestic. 
 
 It was a splendid winter day, with a brilliant sun 
 shine, and a stiff breeze drifting the snow in sheets 
 and mists of gold and iridescent light. Within the 
 old church were none of the comforts and luxuries 
 of modern churches. The interior was plain ; a 
 gallery ran across one end ; the pulpit was at the 
 other end, high up, a round pulpit with a round 
 sounding-board hung above it. It was reached by 
 13 
 
194 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 a winding stairway on one side. On either side of 
 the pulpit was a high window, covered with green 
 blinds, one of which was partly raised to let in light 
 on the minister s sermon desk. Through that win 
 dow you could see the dark branches of one of the 
 great pines, waving solemnly, swaying slowly to and 
 fro ; and constantly, through the darkness among 
 the branches, went sheets of sparkling light as the 
 snow flew by on the wind. 
 
 Some of the pews were of a kind which few mod 
 ern Americans have seen. These were the pews in 
 the middle part of the church, in front of the pulpit, 
 and were family pews, square, with seats running all 
 around them. They were shut off from other pews, 
 not alone by the high partitions, but also by silk 
 curtains, a foot or so deep, hanging from bars above 
 the partition rails. Thus the occupants of the pew 
 were invisible to all other persons on the floor of 
 the church. The pulpit was so high that the minis 
 ter could see those who were facing him, and occu 
 pants of the end gallery could see those who sat 
 with their backs to the pulpit. Those pews, I have 
 said, were family pews, and they were well filled. 
 Somehow, in modern times, it would seem that fam 
 ily pews are not much needed. Perhaps families 
 are not so large. Perhaps the custom of going to 
 church all together is not so rigidly observed. It 
 was a sight to see a father and mother with six, 
 eight, or more children, and perhaps some servants, 
 
A CHILD S VOICE i 95 
 
 file into one of those pews, and file out of it when 
 the service was over. 
 
 The precentor was missing. He had never been 
 missing before. Sudden sickness, an upset into a 
 snow-drift and a smashed-up cutter, or some other 
 unforeseen cause, had kept him away. There were 
 plenty of men and women, any one of whom could 
 have supplied his place if accustomed to stand up 
 and sing in front of gazing people. But even in a 
 country congregation, where everybody knew every 
 body else, that embarrassment which keeps so many 
 good speakers and good singers unknown made it 
 difficult to supply the place of the absent precentor. 
 
 Elder James Douglas was growing to be an old 
 man. He was nearly eighty, but neither his bodily 
 nor his mental strength seemed in any way abated. 
 He was a man of courage, as his early life, in per 
 ilous times, had amply testified. Nor in his later 
 years had any one imagined that he could be af 
 fected with timidity by the presence of man, woman, 
 or devil. It nevertheless gave him a certain shock, 
 the like of which he had never experienced, when 
 the minister gave out the hymn and no precentor 
 appeared in front of the pulpit. The elder sat in 
 a pew at the foot of the pulpit stair. From the re 
 motest times within the memory of the people he 
 had taken the minister s place when the latter was 
 absent. He knew that all looked to him to supply 
 any existing need. But it had never before hap- 
 
196 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 pened to him to lead in singing. The tunes in 
 which he had joined with clear and correct voice 
 for fourscore years were as familiar to him as the 
 words of the oldest hymns. But every one who has 
 tried it knows that for public speaking or public 
 singing one must have a certain something back of 
 knowledge of words or tunes. 
 
 The tall form of the old man, as he rose in the 
 elder s pew and stepped out to the pulpit front, was 
 the embodiment of courage, but there was no cour 
 age there. Still he started well, and the people, 
 not knowing how weak was the leadership, joined 
 heartily. The volume of praise was so full and 
 strong that by the time they had reached the end 
 of the first stanza the elder had begun to think he 
 had discovered his vocation, and went boldly at the 
 second stanza with full voice. 
 
 There is an old French proverb which teaches 
 that it is only the first step which is difficult. Like 
 many other proverbs it is a falsehood, sometimes 
 costly, as many a man knows who has tried to walk 
 a narrow plank across a river or a chasm. The el 
 der made the common mistake of those who find 
 themselves in unaccustomed paths, after boldly es 
 saying the first steps. He looked ahead. 
 
 If you find yourself unexpectedly on your feet 
 making a speech, and you begin to feel shaky, don t 
 think ahead, don t look forward ; just confine your 
 self to the work in hand, the sentence you are enun- 
 
A CHILD S VOICE 197 
 
 dating, and give no thought to what is to follow 
 until you come to the end of what you are saying 
 in short, speak in public as you always speak in 
 private conversation. 
 
 The elder began thinking whether he could carry 
 the tune successfully over the notes in the next 
 line, and, thinking, began to weaken as he sang. 
 The voice which had been firm escaped his con 
 trol, and only an uncertain sound murmured from 
 his lips. Did you ever watch the process of the 
 breaking down of a congregation of people who 
 are apparently singing bravely together when the 
 leader s voice falters ? One and another voice fol 
 low him for a note or two ; here one stops, there 
 another, then a dozen, and a total collapse ensues. 
 Thus it was now. All the people saw that James 
 Douglas was scared, and the silence into which 
 they fell was mingled with inquiring wonderment. 
 
 Whatever they thought was but for one instant. 
 They were not singing, the elder was not singing, 
 and yet through and above the strange rushing, 
 throbbing sound of the wind in the pine branches 
 there was another sound. Where did it come from ? 
 Was it a miracle ? No one had ever heard such a 
 sound in that church. The hymn was singing itself, 
 in a child s voice, clear, sweet, the same tune, not 
 loud, on the contrary quite low. The minister stood 
 up in the pulpit and looked down into the pews. 
 Elder Douglas swept his gray eyes from floor to 
 
I 9 3 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 gallery and gallery to floor. No one could tell 
 where the sound came from, except only John Rob- 
 son, who sat solitary in the front seat of the end 
 gallery with twinkling eyes fixed on the minister s 
 pew. 
 
 A child s voice, singing, is always melodious. To 
 those who heard it then this voice was wonderfully 
 sweet as it sang the words : 
 
 "Other refuge have I none; 
 Hangs my helpless soul on Thee : 
 Leave, ah, leave me not alone." 
 
 The lost courage of the elder had now come back. 
 He was not the man to think any sound supernat 
 ural which reached his physical sense of hearing. 
 Others in describing the incident used to say that 
 they did think for a while there was something un 
 canny about it. Not so the elder. He had been 
 scared when he found himself trying what he had 
 never before tried, the leadership of a singing con 
 gregation, and facing the awful idea that he might 
 break down. Now the child s voice restored his 
 confidence and faith in himself. His full, rich old 
 voice joined the tiny treble, and then all the peo 
 ple came in together, so that the church was filled 
 with their voices 
 
 "Still support and comfort me!" 
 
 and they finished the stanza in a fine burst of 
 song. 
 
A CHILD S VOICE i 99 
 
 Then came a trying moment. The elder and the 
 people, and the minister too, as all afterwards con 
 fessed when they talked it over, having finished the 
 stanza successfully, were one and all affected by 
 similar thoughts. What had happened ? What was 
 that voice ? \Vill I be able to lead this next stanza ? 
 Will the elder lead on ? Will the voice be heard 
 again ? 
 
 Elder Douglas had no intention of pausing, but 
 he did pause involuntarily, while he was wondering 
 whether the child would again sing. A great gust 
 of wind swept around the end of the church, and 
 one of the long branches of the pine dashed its 
 soft needles across the window-panes, and a deep 
 sigh swelled into a sobbing voice, all in one in 
 stant ; and then the little voice, all alone, was 
 heard " Thou, O Christ" It must be some child, 
 said every one to himself or herself, and everybody, 
 old and young, sang " art all I want," and so the 
 hymn went on to the end. 
 
 After the service the people talked, and asked 
 one another who it was or what it was, but as no 
 one could give any explanation they separated, 
 with considerably more for Sunday -evening dis 
 cussion than usual. But John Robson knew all 
 about it, as he walked to the parsonage behind the 
 minister and his granddaughter, who, with her 
 mother, had come up for a winter visit. The 
 mother was ill. The child had gone to church with 
 
200 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 the minister, and had been put alone into the 
 great square pew, where she sat with her back to 
 the pulpit and her feet on her grandmother s foot- 
 stove, which John had placed for her before morn 
 ing service began. John thought the front seat in 
 the pew the proper one for children. So it was, 
 according to custom, when older persons were pres 
 ent. John was always fond of telling the story, 
 how he sat in the gallery and saw the eight-year- 
 old child, shut out of sight in the great pew, sing 
 ing her hymn right on, unconscious whether others 
 were singing or not. 
 
 Where is the child now ? Who can tell which 
 way any one has travelled among the countless 
 ways which led hither and thither from the door 
 of that old church, ways in the world and ways out 
 of the world ? Was it her face, grown now to be 
 like the face of her mother, which I saw in the 
 crowd at the station ? 
 
XX 
 
 PURITAN SUNDAY 
 
 Do you know what that old and worn phrase, 
 " A golden winter morning," means ? If you have 
 never seen it in our extreme northern country, of 
 course you do not. It is not a poetic description, 
 but plain English, describing the light. For the 
 light makes the morning, and is the morning. Over 
 all the country, far and near, rises from the snow a 
 mist, invisible in the twilight and equally invisible 
 after the sun is three hours high. When the sun 
 comes above the horizon this mist is lit into yellow 
 gold-dust. Around trees and other dark-colored 
 objects there is a halo. Mountain-peaks seem to 
 radiate light, and house - tops nearer to you blaze 
 with lustre. If there has been a recent still fall of 
 snow which has rested on branches of trees and 
 leaves of evergreens, and this begins to drift light 
 ly in the early day, it is more distinctly like gold- 
 dust in the air. For nothing is white in this light, 
 but everything partakes of the yellow tint, and the 
 fields are covered with cloth-of-gold. 
 
202 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 Yesterday morning was one of these golden 
 mornings. And it was Sunday morning. And 
 that made it more golden. For to you and me, my 
 friend, who possess that priceless treasure of hu 
 manity, the love of Sunday, there is always an at 
 mosphere on such a morning such as one may 
 think they will enjoy who pass the gates of pearl. 
 In summer or winter, in city or in country, Sunday 
 morning brings to us great calm and peace. 
 
 They greatly mistake who imagine that in the 
 minds and memories of all children who were 
 brought up in the old-fashioned Puritan ways of 
 "keeping" Sunday there is any pain or dislike to 
 the day, produced by the rigidness with which we 
 were made to keep it. You may find now and 
 then one who likes to talk of the bigotry of that 
 day in his childhood, but in the main it is not the 
 Puritan children who when they grow old abuse 
 the Puritan Sunday. With all its rigidness it was 
 nevertheless a day apart from all other days, and it 
 entered into the soul of the boy or the girl as an 
 other life, in another country, among other people, 
 wholly other than the life of the six days. Perhaps 
 in early manhood, in the whirl of active life and 
 the absence of desire for mental rest, some may 
 contemn the bonds of the old Sunday. But its 
 memories are more deeply and more tenderly cher 
 ished by those children, now grown to be old men 
 and women, than any memories of the other days. 
 
PURITAN SUNDAY 203 
 
 One day in seven the boy lived more or less in 
 company not of this world. He thought it hard 
 sometimes, often. He had small love for the he 
 roes of old Bible history, and a little more, but not 
 very much, for Great-heart and Christian and the 
 worthies of the allegory, wherein he read the story, 
 but did not attempt to master the allegorical mean 
 ing. 
 
 But to-day, after fifty years in the work of the 
 world, I challenge him, whoever he be, to answer 
 you what part of his young life and young reading 
 is most precious to him what, if he must forget, 
 would he desire now to retain longest ? He will 
 tell you that his memories of old Sundays at home, 
 of Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings, of the 
 church and its people, of family scenes, and books 
 read with brothers and sisters and friends on Sun 
 days are his most constant, most enduring, and 
 most beloved subjects of memory. 
 
 I do not take any stock in the common saying of 
 this day that the Puritan Sunday was injurious to 
 the character of children, because they so gladly 
 escaped from its bonds into freedom that they 
 went to the other extreme. I believe if you could 
 poll the honest vote to-day of the sons and daugh 
 ters of old Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Congregation 
 al, and other families, in which they kept Sundays 
 in the most rigid Puritan style, and who are now 
 keeping it in the free-and-easy style of our time, 
 
204 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 they would be wellnigh unanimous in saying that 
 they would prefer to have their children taught to 
 keep Sunday as they used to keep it, rather than 
 brought up as now, practically without any sever 
 ance between the life of the first day and the life of 
 the other six. 
 
 Not love Sunday because one was made to ob 
 serve it too rigidly in youth ! Don t believe it. No 
 one that wasn t so brought up has a tenth part of 
 an idea what it is to love it. What if it was hard 
 on us ? What if we do remember the longings we 
 often had to be out of the bonds, the wish we often 
 uttered that it were Monday morning ! Now we 
 know and feel that one day in seven, one month in 
 seven, one year in every seven, we were out of this 
 world, and in another world. For that is what 
 Sunday then was. A world in which there is rest 
 is another world than this in which we work. And 
 whether we liked it or not, it made us know the re 
 ality that there is another world, just as plainly as 
 if every Saturday night we had been sent to Asia, 
 and made to pass one-seventh of our time there 
 until we grew up and could go and spend our time 
 where we pleased. 
 
 If a boy had been thus physically sent to spend 
 a day in each week in some strange country, he 
 would all his life remember most vividly what 
 he saw there, and the people he met there, and 
 this may be the reason why memories of old Sun- 
 
PURITAN SUNDAY 205 
 
 days are more distinct as a rule than of other 
 days. 
 
 How clearly the boy for though he has lived to 
 threescore and ten he is a boy still how clearly 
 he remembers the winter Sunday mornings, the 
 ride to church, a sober sort of ride compared with 
 that moonlight straw-ride on Friday night with 
 four horses and a jolly load in the sleigh but a 
 pleasant ride withal. He says nothing to the old 
 folks as they turn the corner by the big chestnut- 
 tree about what happened there. His mother re 
 marks that the snow looks trampled as if a drove of 
 cattle had been in the drift. He does not explain 
 that as they went flying around that corner eighteen 
 young people were hurled promiscuously into that 
 drift, and the horses went tearing down the road 
 with the upset sleigh, leaving robes and blankets 
 all along the road till they brought up in the church- 
 shed. No one is to know that fact, and it did not 
 leak out till midsummer too late to be a stopper 
 on various other rides. 
 
 At the church door he remembers now there 
 was some whispering with boys about that small 
 affair. But in the church the thoughts of Fri 
 day night vanished, and the old man would not 
 have remembered it at all but that he recalls that 
 Sunday-morning ride and every little incident of it. 
 For the old people he saw gathered there are now 
 all gone, all now in that other country where they 
 
206 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 do not work and weary. They are to him now as 
 people whom one has seen in distant travel, in 
 peculiar costume, in a strange country. 
 
 Sunday dress is a feature in memory. People so 
 dressed are wholly other than the same people in 
 week-day dress. For why they are indeed now of 
 another race. That old brown coat, with its thick, 
 high collar up to the very scalp of the head, is a 
 queer, quaint old thing to remember, if you think of 
 the coat only ; but when you see it, the collar half 
 hidden by the flowing white locks of the old man, 
 who put it on every Sunday morning for fifty years 
 as the ceremonial garment wherein he came into 
 the presence of his Lord to worship Him, then it 
 shines as bright as the embroidered chasuble of an 
 Ambrose or a Gregory. That black poke-bonnet 
 and black woollen shawl and black merino dress 
 have no aesthetic characteristics whereby to com 
 mend themselves to recollection or by reason of 
 which one should specially recall the thin, pale face 
 of the old maiden sister of the farmer, whom you 
 might have seen on Saturday in other dress doing 
 her dairy work as she had done it close on to three- 
 quarters of a century. But worn as they were only 
 on Sundays, and only when she came to sit with 
 her of Bethany at the feet of the Master, the black 
 bonnet of the dear old woman is in memory bright 
 with starry lights, and her shawl and dress are 
 pure and shining as the white robes they of Sardis 
 
PURITAN SUNDAY 207 
 
 wear, walking now with Him where it is always a 
 golden Sunday. 
 
 My pen has wandered away from what I began 
 to write. The memories of the group in the church 
 on the old-fashioned Puritan Sunday morning 
 crowd in on me. They are gone into the country 
 wherein they lived much of their lives here, espe 
 cially the one-seventh of their lives called Sundays 
 the country wherein they tried on that day to 
 make us learn to live also. Perhaps they did not 
 succeed in bringing into this lower world the exact 
 atmosphere of that to which they have since gone. 
 But they impressed on our souls the ineffaceable 
 truth that there is, parallel with this life, another 
 wherein the patriarchs and prophets, the apostles 
 and martyrs, the saints of many ages, the beautiful, 
 the beloved, the holy women and stainless children 
 are living while we are living here. When we re 
 member them, the teachers of our youth, especially 
 when we remember them on a Sunday morning in 
 church or a Sunday evening by the fireside, we 
 have no doubt at all that they are now in the pleas 
 ant country of their old hope and faith, with that 
 admirable company whose lives they taught us to 
 study on Sundays and imitate on week-days. 
 
 They were, many of them, very poor and very 
 hard-working people. The ten-hour working-man 
 of the city leads a life of ease compared with those 
 up-country farming families. Before daybreak be- 
 
208 AMONG THE NORTHERN HILLS 
 
 gan and after dark ended each day s toil and labor 
 of man and woman, and children so soon as they 
 were old enough to work. And the reward was 
 scanty a bare subsistence, yielded by the hard soil 
 which gave them nothing willingly, only graves 
 when the work at last was over. No class of la 
 borers on earth work so hard, and therefore need 
 and enjoy the Sunday rest so much, as the farming 
 population of our country. 
 
 And they loved the day, just as they kept it, or 
 tried to keep it, in close conversation with another 
 and better country. They loved the church and 
 the service. There were stern and solemn counte 
 nances set on the face of the minister then. There 
 were faces of exceeding human loveliness in the 
 congregation. I wonder sometimes whether they 
 get together now, whether in the time surely to 
 come we shall all, or many of us, get together and 
 send ringing out over the eternal hills the songs we 
 sang here of a Sunday morning in the old church. 
 
 They will need no translation into that country s 
 language. For that at least we learned in the Puri 
 tan Sunday, the language of the other world, and 
 we can t forget it. It clings like mother-tongue, 
 and it is the language of the mother of us all. So 
 that if, perchance, where she now is, that dear old 
 woman, whose lot here was poverty, and sometimes 
 positive want, shall meet Martha or Mary, Elizabeth 
 of Hungary or Brigitta or Lucia or Catharine, she 
 
PURITAN SUNDAY 209 
 
 will have no trouble in talking with them. Nor, if 
 the Bishop of Ephesus should chance to walk by 
 and speak with them, would he fail to understand 
 her when she said in his own and her own language, 
 " We do not hunger, neither thirst any more." 
 
 Yes, they talk one language there a language 
 you and I heard, if we did not learn, used, if we 
 did not understand, in those old Sunday evenings ; 
 and depend upon it, however much we have forgot 
 ten the lessons of those clays, there remains much 
 of the good they did in others. And to-day the 
 most powerful element for good in our country, the 
 most conservative principle in the rush of social 
 and political life around us, is that which yet re 
 mains to us of the old-fashioned Puritan Sunday, 
 
 THE END 
 
BY WILLIAM C. PRIME 
 
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