In The Morning The Other Side Of The Picture Was Revealed In The Colours
Of The Sunlight.
There was never a cloud in the sky that rested on the
snow-line of the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet.
Hills of pure
white, or speckled and furred with woods, rose up above the solid white
levels of the fields, and the sun rioted over their embroideries till
the eyes ached. Here and there on the exposed slopes the day's
warmth - the thermometer was nearly forty degrees - and the night's cold
had made a bald and shining crust upon the snow; but the most part was
soft powdered stuff, ready to catch the light on a thousand crystals and
multiply it sevenfold. Through this magnificence, and thinking nothing
of it, a wood-sledge drawn by two shaggy red steers, the unbarked logs
diamond-dusted with snow, shouldered down the road in a cloud of frosty
breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to
confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is
devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of
worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places,
by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his
hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a
silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee,
haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the
driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its
best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried
drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be
printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its
type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or
Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs
by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world
over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel
this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left
out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people - the men of the
farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less
enjoyment of life - the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed,
that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all
powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway
station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read
in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church
sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched
between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the
countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying
intimacy.
The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and
raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration,
and there are insane people from the South - men and women from Boston
and the like - who actually build houses out in the open country, two,
and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long,
and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more
particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which
means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows
everything, and much more also, that goes on among them. Their dresses,
their cattle, their views, the manners of their children, their manner
towards their servants, and every other conceivable thing, is reported,
digested, discussed, and rediscussed up and down Main Street. Now, the
wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the
problems of everybody else's life with delicacy, sometimes makes
pathetic mistakes, and the town is set by the ears. You will see,
therefore, that towns of a certain size do not differ materially all the
world over. The talk of the men of the farms is of their
farms - purchase, mortgage, and sale, recorded rights, boundary lines,
and road tax. It was in the middle of New Zealand, on the edge of the
Wild horse plains, that I heard this talk last, when a man and his wife,
twenty miles from the nearest neighbour, sat up half the night
discussing just the same things that the men talked of in Main Street,
Vermont, U.S.A.
There is one man in the State who is much exercised over this place. He
is a farm-hand, raised in a hamlet fifteen or twenty miles from the
nearest railway, and, greatly daring, he has wandered here. The bustle
and turmoil of Main Street, the new glare of the electric lights and the
five-storeyed brick business block, frighten and distress him much. He
has taken service on a farm well away from these delirious delights,
and, says he, 'I've been offered $25 a month to work in a bakery at New
York. But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it
just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding
of cattle. Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness
that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of
work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be
turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary;
then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of
hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on
the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of
the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the
friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse.
Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an
arch, is never at rest.
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