It Is Celebrated For Its Academy, Where Bancroft, Everett,
And I Know Not How Many More Of The New England Scholars And Men Of
Letters, Received The First Rudiments Of Their Education.
It lies in a
gentle depression of the surface of the country, not deep enough to be
called a valley, on the banks of a little stream, and has a pleasant
retired aspect.
At Durham, some ten miles further on, we found a long
train of freight-cars crowded with the children of a Sunday-school, just
ready to set out on a pic-nic party, the boys shouting, and the girls, of
whom the number was prodigious, showing us their smiling faces. A few
middle-aged men, and a still greater number of matrons, were dispersed
among them to keep them in order. At Dover, where are several cotton
mills, we saw a similar train, with a still larger crowd, and when we
crossed the boundary of New Hampshire and entered South Berwick in Maine,
we passed through a solitary forest of oaks, where long tables and benches
had been erected for their reception, and the birds were twittering in the
branches over them.
At length the sight of numerous groups gathering blue-berries, in an
extensive tract of shrubby pasture, indicated that we were approaching a
town, and in a few minutes we had arrived at Portland. The conductor, whom
we found intelligent and communicative, recommended that we should take
quarters, during our stay, at a place called the Veranda, or Oak Grove, on
the water, about two miles from the town, and we followed his advice.
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