The Family
Spoke With Great Sympathy Of John, A Young French Canadian, "A Gentlemanly
Young Fellow," They Called Him, Who Had Been Much In Their Family, And Who
Had Just Come From The North, Looking Quite Ill.
He had been in their
service every summer since he was a boy.
At the approach of the warm
weather, he annually made his appearance in rags, and in autumn he was
dismissed, a sprucely-dressed lad, for his home.
On Sunday, as I went to church, I saw companies of these young Frenchmen,
in the shade of barns or passing along the road; fellows of small but
active persons, with thick locks and a lively physiognomy. The French have
become so numerous in that region, that for them and the Irish, a Roman
Catholic church has been erected in Middlebury, which, you know, is not a
very large village.
On Monday morning, we took the stage-coach at Middlebury for this place.
An old Quaker, in a broad-brimmed hat and a coat of the ancient cut,
shaped somewhat like the upper shell of the tortoise, came to hand in his
granddaughter, a middle-aged woman, whom he had that morning accompanied
from Lincoln, a place about eighteen miles distant, where there is a
Quaker neighborhood and a Quaker meeting-house. The denomination of
Quakers seems to be dying out in the United States, like the Indian race;
not that the families become extinct, but pass into other denominations.
It is very common to meet with neighborhoods formerly inhabited by
Quakers, in which there is not a trace of them left. Not far from
Middlebury, is a village on a fine stream, called Quaker Village, with not
a Quaker in it. Everywhere they are laying aside their peculiarities of
costume, and in many instances, also, their peculiarities of speech, which
are barbarous enough as they actually exist, though, if they would but
speak with grammatical propriety, their forms of discourse are as
commodious as venerable, and I would be content to see them generally
adopted. I hope they will be slow to lay aside their better
characteristics: their abhorrence of violence, and the peaceful and
wholesome subjection in which, of all religious denominations, they seem
to have best succeeded in holding the passions. In such remote and
secluded neighborhoods as Lincoln, their sect will probably make the
longest stand against the encroachments of the world. I perceived,
however, that the old gentleman's son, who was with him, and, as I
learned, was also a Quaker, had nothing peculiar in his garb.
Before sunset we were in sight of those magnificent mountain summits, the
Pico, Killington Peak, and Shrewsbury Peak, rising in a deep ultra-marine
blue among the clouds that rolled about them, for the day was showery. We
were set down at Rutland, where we passed the night, and the next morning
crossed the mountains by the passes of Clarendon and Shrewsbury. The
clouds were clinging to the summits, and we travelled under a curtain of
mist, upheld on each side by mountain-walls. A young woman of uncommon
beauty, whose forefinger on the right hand was dotted all over with
punctures of the needle, and who was probably a mantua-maker, took a seat
in the coach for a short distance. We made some inquiries about the
country, but received very brief, though good-natured answers, for the
young lady was a confirmed stammerer. I thought of an epigram I had
somewhere read, in which the poet complimented a lady who had this defect,
by saying that the words which she wished to utter were reluctant to leave
so beautiful a mouth, and lingered long about the pearly teeth and rosy
lips.
We passed through a tract covered with loose stones, and the Quaker's
granddaughter, who proved to be a chatty person, told us a story which you
may possibly have heard before. "Where did you get all the stones with
which you have made these substantial fences?" said a visitor to his host,
on whose grounds there appeared no lack of such materials. "Look about you
in the fields, and you will see," was the answer. "I have looked,"
rejoined the questioner, "and do not perceive where a single stone is
missing, and that is what has puzzled me."
Soon after reaching the highest elevation on the road, we entered the
state of New Hampshire. Our way led us into a long valley formed by a
stream, sometimes contracted between rough woody mountains, and sometimes
spreading out, for a short distance, into pleasant meadows; and we
followed its gradual descent until we reached the borders of the
Connecticut. We crossed this beautiful river at Bellows Falls, where a
neat and thriving village has its seat among craggy mountains, which, at a
little distance, seem to impend over it. Here the Connecticut struggles
and foams through a narrow passage of black rocks, spanned by a bridge. I
believe this is the place spoken of in Peters's History of Connecticut,
where he relates that the water of the river is so compressed in its
passage between rocks, that an iron bar can not be driven into it.
A few miles below we entered the village of Walpole, pleasantly situated
on the knolls to the east of the meadows which border the river. Walpole
was once a place of some literary note, as the residence of Dennie, who,
forty years since, or more, before he became the editor of the Port Folio,
here published the Farmer's Museum, a weekly sheet, the literary
department of which was amply and entertainingly filled.
Keene, which ended our journey in the stage-coach, is a flourishing
village on the rich meadows of the Ashuelot, with hills at a moderate
distance swelling upward on all sides. It is a village after the New
England pattern, and a beautiful specimen of its kind - broad streets
planted with rock-maples and elms, neat white houses, white palings, and
shrubs in the front inclosures.
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