Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1858-01-28
Country Life in New England.

10y Wv i'''oo' VI Hialy Will gut WlIn re-
semblance to their early recollections. Is there
not more than one here who remembers such a.
place as this which is now set before him? Tt
is an ancient-looking brown house brown with
that peculiar tint that belongs to weather stain
ed pine, and is the natural complexion of un-
painted New England houses. 1t fronts with
two fair stories to the road but if you take it
IN flank, you see that the roof runs backward
with great slope to within a few feet of the
ground. One huge chimney rises through the
centre OF the ridge pole; a tall poplar, its emu
ious companion, has overtopped it, and drops
a few leaves every autumn down its black throat
A broken milestone 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
barnacles, all round the caves; there ought to
be swing inside, and plenty of hens nests, and
secret deposits ofripening apples in holes of the
haymows; we should find them all, no doubt,
Ii we went in and knew where to look Ever
graceful and beautiful, tbe well sweep, with
the canking iron-bound bucket, and the heavy
stone, Its counterpoise, 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 companionship, and harmonic together as
II they had always lain as they lie The Itch
en- on them are like the seals on royal treas
ures; 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 we'll for the
frult they bore, wonderfully sagacious are boys
at detecting fast graft on slow tree there
are fifty men that remember fifty such boughs
while am speaking. Of course, we do not
forget the crooked footpath running across the
lots te the neighbours farm; that curious little
solitary highway that turns and twists and starts
aside for no conceivable reason all footpaths
in the fields look as if they were trodden out by
lovers or madmen. Not far off was the wood
where the sweet fern breathed its fragrance and
the bayberry repeated it; where the checkerber-
ry spread its aromatic leaves and berries. and
the black birch initiated its flavor with it's bark:
so economical is New England nature in the
matter ofperfumes and spicery 0, the remem-
brance OF the days passed amidst these homely
scenes of tumbling in long grass, and suck
ing OF honeyed clover, and burrowing in noun
famous haycocks, and climbing of ebowed ap-
pie trees, OF waking to the clamor of twittering
swallows, and sleeping at the calrlew of pur-
ring crickets of Indian corn forests, where, be-
ing little, you walk unseen, while thebrocaded
leaves grated aud cracked as you rustled be-
tween the stalks of wild cherry trees, with
bark as bright and brown as fresh bronze. where
the robins fought and scolded for the small ber-
rles; OF old elms where the fre-hang- bird swung
her long purse with the half-dozen eggs in it
natures liberal reckoning when she gives change
for an old couple, with or without feathers of
the chestnut tree that dropped its burs at the
first frost, gaping like dead shell-fsh on the
sea-shore; of the sweet music that is in the On
en- air from the days when you hear the soft
breathing of tbe cows as they crop the tender
grass, to the hot July moons when the mower
passes through the purple red-top and the heavy
noddlng herdsgrass, the measured respiration of
his seythe signing over each rank as it falls
with its lances and pennons and later still.
when the red leaves crackle under foot, and the
wild-goose wedges steer southwark, heard bicb
in the frosty air; and at last when the wind
whistles In the bare trees and the ice snaps in
the ponds like the strings of an overstrained
harpsichord, and so the frozen palms of winter
crash out the last chorus of the year 'ssymphonyl
Ii you were born and bred among such sights
and sounds as these, they will never be out of
your remembrance. 1t is hard if man who
works in poisons shall carry them about with
him ever after, and natures kindly atmosphere
breathed in so long shall not make part of our
systems and run in our blood as long as our svs
TENS hold together and our blood flows. This is
the privilege of the young man of New Eng
land birth; nature not wholly rough and un-
not as in many newer sections of the
country, still reeking with undrained morasses
that breed disease, and deformed with unsightly
ruins of the forest that defy the spirit of beauty
to find resting place among them bnt nature
subdned and humanized, without being depriv-
ed of its greenness and fragrance, is his BIRTH
right; it gives him lessons of beauty no count
ing-room can smother with its ledgers; it gives
his soul horizon no lines of warehouses can SO
wall in that he will not see its blue heavens
through them it gives him an inward sanctuary
of peace and repose that the streets can never
shake him out of let him tread the grass for
fifteen summers, and then plod the pavement
forty years, and his dreams will still be of run
ming barefoot among the clover