Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1856-07-26
COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND



Ii is hard to draw picture OF New England
country life without making portrait which
the fancy, a, least, Of many will gifi with
resemblance to their early recollections. Is
there not more than one here who remembers
such place as this which is now set before
him II is an ancieni-ooking brown house /;
brown with that peculiar tint that belongs to
wealher-slained pine, and is the natural com
plexion of unpain,ed New Eaeland houses
1t fron.s with two fair stories TO tho road but
If you take it in flank, you see inat the roof
runs backward with great slope 10 within a
few feet Of The ground. One huge slnaie
chimney rises through the centre of the ridge
pole a tall poplar, its emnloos companion,
has overopped il. and drops few leaves every
autumn down into its black throat. broken
millstone gives certain dignity to the main
entrance at whose threshold it lies. That is
the barn, Of course, vast, brown, like the house,
with ring of swallows nests, like barnaces,
all round the caves; there ought to be swing
inside, and plenty OF hens nests and secret de-
posits Of ripening apples in holes Of the hay
mows; we should find them all, no Doubt if
we went in and knew where to look. Ever
graceful and beautiful the well-sweep, with the
clanking iron-bohnd bucket, and the heavy stone
its counterpoisc, stands little back and at one
side. The stone walls must have been laid
more than fifty years, to Judge BY their present
Look all the stones seem to have grown into
| eompanionship, and harmonze together as if
they had always lain as they lie. The lchens
4 on them are like the seals on royal treasures /:
they show with their broad unbroken stamps
that nothing has been disturbed for many long
year. There is the orchard there are trees
in it famous for early apples, and limbs Of trees
that the boys knew well for the fruit they bore !;
wonderfully sagacious are boys at detecting a
fast graf on a slow tree there are fifty men
that remember fifty such boughs while | am
speaking. OF course. we do not forget the
crooked ioolpaih running across the lots TO our
neighbor's farm that curious little solitary
highway that turns and twists aud starts aside
for no conceivable reason all iootpalhs in the
Z fields look as II they were tTodden out by lovers
and ,naimen. Not far or was the wood where
the sweet fern brealhed its fragrance and the
baybeny repeated il; where the checkerberry
spread its romantic leaves and berries and the
black birch initiated its flavor with its bark ;
so economical is New England nature in the
matter Of perfumes and spicery.
o, the remembrance of those early days pass
cd amidst these homely scenes LOT tumbling
in long grass, and sucking II honeyed clover,
and buuowing in mounisin-irees of waking
TO the clamor of twittering swallows, and sleep
I ing at the curlew of purring cIiokels of In
dian corn forests where, being little, you walk
ed unseen. while the brocaded leaves grated
and cracked as you rustled between the stalks,
Of wild cherry trees, with bark as bright and
brown as fresh bronze where the robins fought
aud scolded for the small berries of old elms
where the fro-hang-bird swung her long purse
with the half a-dozen eggs in IL natures libe-
I raj reckoning when she gives change for an old
couple, with or without feathers, Of the chest
nut tree that dropped its burs al tho first frost,
gaping like dead shell-fsh on the sea-shore ;
of the sweet music that is in the open air from
the days when you hear the soll breathing OF
the cows as they crop the tender grass, TO the
hoi July Moons when tho mower passes through
the purpled red-lop and the heavey nodding
heTdsgTass, the measured respiration Of his
scylhe signing over each rank as il falls with
all its lances and pennons and later still, when
the red leaves craekle under foot, and the wild
goose wedges steer southwark, heard high in
The frosty air, and at the last, when the wind
whistles in the bare trees and tho ice snaps in
the ponds like the strings of an over-slrained
harpsichord, and so the frozen palms Of winter
crash out the last chorus of the year's sympho-
ny.
II you were born and bread among such
sights and sounds as these, they will never die
out of your remembrance, Il is hard il a mar
who works in poisons shall carry them abou
with him ever sfler, and natures kindly aimcs
phere brealbed in so long, shall not make !
part Of our systems and run in our blood as
long as our systems hold together and our blood