Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1875-07-14
Vermont Revisited.


MI D y. Richardson, ono Of the proprciors Of
the Davenport iowa, Democrat, has boon visiting
the scenes Of his youth, In Orange and vicinity,
and writos the following 70 his paper
Over TO Eas, Orange Squire Move, who lives
out In Wisconsin and had not been back 70 Yer
mont Tor twenty years, had agreed to meet me
there. So he did The old friends and old neigh
bors were glad TO sec the robust Squire and his
good wife once more, and there was nothing too
good Tor them The fat,od calf-and numbers Of
them, were slain, and the fat,ed goose, Tor that
'natter-and there was great joy all the wellsin
through In few days Judge Dickey, Of Hum.
Doldt, Iowa. will be here, and when tile boys all
get around together there will be more downright
visiting than you can crowd into a two-acro lot
Tea being dispensed at the hospitible board Of
our old friend, En- Colby, the. Squire proposed i'm
mediately TO climb the steepest hill on the farm
nearly perpendicular pasture back OF the house,
up full two hundred feet in eighty rods Twenty
years OF prairie life gives native vermonter
keen desire to climb hill. lie wants 10 see II
his legs hold out; wants to get away up high,
where he can sit down and see a hundred farms
and study them all over agaln-thlni who lived
there and there quarter Of century ago; enquire
after the men aud women the boys and the girls
that used to live thereit Is all Of the past-pre-
cious little Of the present 1t was A grand look
ont We had up so high in the clear evening Or
ange, Washington, Corinth Topsham, Newbury,
Bradiord-in full view, and In the more dim
background noble old Moosehillock. the King Of
the White Mountain Range-a scope of country
strctching thirty or forty miles away mapped out
In helds pasturage, orchards, sugar woods and
timber lands; threaded with streams, dotted
about with farm houses, here and there a village
the little cities Of the liying-the bigger cities
OF the dead. It was n scene Of rare grandeur, one
| VIC had once been familiar with, but whose real
value had never before been so fully, so uuspeak-
ably appreciated Our old farms, our old homes,
our old school-houses and church lay within
our gaze-the scenes Of carly happy days the
very graves beneath which rest the near and dear
Of earth, were within sight In its early twilight
framing, 1t was picture Of arest splcndor, Of
most magnificent finish.
Sunday morning bells, the little bell from the lit
tie white church, called the neighbors together
Were you ever away from home many years and
then returned 10 your native village aud seated
| yourself in the old church Of Sunday morning,
with your neighbors OF long time ago9 Then you
can appreciate the situation It cannot be des.
crihed. There Is a minister-you scared,
! hear him. The choir is abnndant-youug people
n course Of no earthly consequence-ior YOU
know them not you hear the hymns perhaps
but not heed them; they sing the same old tunes
butare not the same old voices--not the young MGR
OF the bass and tenor that you knew SO well. not
the girls OF the air and contralto whom YOU one,
thought more beautiful than any other girls OF
the face of the earth No use to sing; no hear
chords are touched by the melody Of the stranger
yoices--the romance Of youth, the twtchy little
snatchings at the hcart-strugs come no more
right down to You from the singers seats, becausc
you've been gone many years.
And tho text and the sermon, 1t might hav,
been good, might have been OF this father or that
but you can't preach to man when the memo
ries Of decades are crowding in upon him, -
where familiar homes and face Of long long az,
are rising up in every corner and from every
pew upon him; faces Of parents who sat there
faces OF brothers and sisters now dead or living
faces Of playmates and schoomates, forms ant
faces, bright eyes, rosy cheeks familiar forms
you have called them all up around you again, OF
this side, that side, and the other-you are lac
once more, among kind and kindred again-onl,
a moment then open your eyes to find yoursel
an old man, almost alone--knewn only by report
seen most OF strangers; knowing ten time
more names in the overcrowded churchyard clos
by than Of those about you.
It's nothing new mere life picture that mos
men sometimes have hung before them. Life ant
death rich red blood; then dust again; form
and faces depart, the village Of the dead thrive
on apace, never growing smaller.