The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1879-03-13
OUR NEW NEIGHBORS AT pom.
kAPOG.

When 1 saw the little house building,
an eighth of mile beyond my own, on
the Old Bay Road, / wondered who
were to be the tenants. The modest
structure was set we'll back from the
road, among the trees, as if the inmates
were to care nothing whatever for a
view of the stylish equipages which
sweep by during the summer season.
For my part, like to see the passing, in
town or country; but each has bis own
taste. The proprietor, who seemed to
be also the architect of the new house,
superintendent the various details of the
work with an assiduity that gave me a
high opinion OF his intelligence and ex-
ecutive ability, and / congratulated my
self on the prospect of having some very
agreeable neighbors.
1t was quite early IN the spring, if 1
remember, when they moved into the
cottage newly married couple, evil
IDENTITY; the wife very young, pretty and
with the air Of a lady; the husband
somewhat older, but still in the first
flush of manhood. It was understood
in the village that they came from Bal
timore; but no one knew them person.
ally, and they brought no letters of in
PRODUCTION. (For obvious reasons / re-
frain from mentioning names.) 1t was
clear that, for the present at least, their
own company was entirely sufficient for
them. They made no advances to-
ward the acquaintance of any
of the families in the neigh
borhood, and consequently were
left to themselves. That, apparently,
was what they desired, and why they
came to Ponkapog. For after its black
bass and wild duck and teal, solitude is
the chief staple of Ponkapog Perhaps
its perfect rural loneliness should be in
cluded. Lying high up under the wing
of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous
breath of pines and cedars, it chances
to be the mostenchanting bit of genuine
country within 80 miles of Boston.
which, moreover, can be reached in half
an hours ride by railway. But the near
est railway station Heaven be praised! y
is two miles distant, and the seclusion
is without flaw. Ponkapog has one
mail day; two mails day would rem
der the place uninhabitable.
The village-it looks like a compact
village at distance, but unrayels and
disappears the moment you drive into it
has quite large floating population.
do not allude to the perch and picker
ell. Along the Old Bay Road, high
way even in the colonial days, there are
a number of attractive cottages stray
CLING off toward Milton, which are &C.
cupied for the summer by people from
the city. These birds of passage are a
distinct class from the permanent in
habitants, and the two seldom closely
assimilate unless there has been some
previous connection. It seemed to me
that our new neighbors were to come
under the head of permanent inhab-
ltants; they had built their own house,
and had the air of intending to live in
it all the year round.
Are you not going to call on thempn
l asked my wife one morning.
"When they call on u.s." she replied
lightly.
&c But tits our place to call first, they
being strangers !"
This was said as seriously as the cir
cumstance demanded; but nv wife
turned it off with laugh, and said
no more. always trusting to her intu-
itions in these matters. She was RIGHT.
She would not have been received. and
a cool ''not at home'' would have been
a bitter social pill to us if we had gone
out of our way to be courteous.
saw great deal of our neighbors,
nevertheless. Their cottage lay between
us and the post-office-where he was
never to be met by any chanee-and I
caught frequent glimpses of the two
working in the garden. Horticulture
did not appear SO much an object as
exercise. Possibly it was neither; may
be they were engaged in digging for
specimens OF those arrowheads and
flint hatchets which are continually
coming to the surface hereabouts. There
is scarcely an acre in which the plow-
share has not turned up some primitive
stone weapon or domestic utensil, dis
dainfully left to us by the red men who
once held the domain-an ancient tribe |
called the Punkypoags, forlorn de-
scendant of which, one Polly Crowd,
figures in the annual Blue Book, down
to the close of the Southern war, as a
State pensioner. l quote from the local
Whether they were developing
kltchen-garden or emulating Prof. |
Schliemann at Mycenn, the newcomers
were evidently persons of refined mu
steal taste; the lady had voice of re-
sweetness, although of no
great compass, and / used often to lin
ger OF a morning by the high gate and
listen to her executing an operate air,
conJecturally at some window upstairs,
for the house was not visible from the
public road. The husband, somewhere
about the grounds, would occasionally
respond with two or three bars. It was
all quite an ideal, Arcadian business.
They seemed very happy together, these
Two persons, who asked no odasawfat.
ever OF the community in which they
had settled themselves.
There was a queerness, sort of mys-