Litchfield enquirer. [volume] (Litchfield, Conn.) 1829-current, 1880-09-09
The unaduterated article, perhaps, have yet

Type Of many other New England towns,
Cornwall unlike anything the fertile or in
fertile Southern mind ever imagined. Tits
about ten miles long by six or seven miles
broad, and its shape is not defined by any of
the geometrical oaths with which O'Connell
annihilated the angry fshwoman. 1t embra-
ces no lessthan seven villages, to wit: Corn
wall Plain, (the- Cornwall proper) Cornwall
Bridge, East Cornwall, North Cornwall, West
Cornwall, Cornwall Centor and Cornwall Hol-
low. 1t Is all one town, embraced under one
municipal government, but with separate se-
lectmen and other functionaries for each viii
lage. Although the census has just been
taken, no one has yet given me an accurate
count of the population either of the town or
OF this particular hamlet in which / am now
writing. | should say that Cornwall Plain
numbered about.cne hundred and fifty souls.
Just at this time there were at least one hum
dred boarders, most of whom are domiciled in
the Beers House. At church on Sunday the
ccngregatiep, including strangers and those
who drove id from the country (if there is any
country in aiand where you can almost toss a
Biscuit from one village to another) did not
exceed one hundred and twenty. There be-
ing but one church, this would indicate no
very passionate love of religious exercises on
the part either Of the natives or the visitors !;
but the weather was hot, and at home I am
not very pious myself. There is one store,
one doctor, no lawyer, no blacksmith-shop no
hotel in the proper sense of the term, no bar
roo IN and no barber; one has to ride seven
miles to get shaved if too lazy to shave him.
self It ls,a pretty place, the prettiest by far,
l fancy, of all the Cornwalls, though have
seen but three of them the "loveliest village
OF the plain or the hills. There are one or
two short cross streets, but the shape of the
hamlet is that of a T. houses being strung
along the road leading up from Cornwall
Bridge, and again along the road that goes
east to Litchfield and west to West Cornwall.
The first house of note is the Beers House,
then comes the church, opposite is the chapel,
adjoining that is the store, and in front of the
store is an open space an acre or an acre and
a-half in extent forming lovely little mall
or green. feur-sid post, painted white, is
set in The mall at the turning of the road to-
ward West Cornwall, and on this post isstuck,
pinned, pasted or wafered any notice or hand
bill of public Importance. Practically all the
houses are old, one or two being really new,
while others have received modern improve
ments in tie shape of porches, &c. Two low
pitched stories, with wing, often prolonged
into number of rooms for cooking working,
&c, and in some instances, a cellar, consti-
tute the prevailing style. Just across from my
lodgings there is large double frame house,
four rooms on a floor, two stories and gar
ret, the stories high-pitched, high roof, an
antiqne portico (stoop it would be called here)
no lock to the door, which is bolted inside,
but there is a latch with iron thumb-piece-
just such a house as grandee of the last Gen.
fury would build. You see it's counterpart
in all the older states of the South. Another
house just like it is at the lower end of the
mai Street, and third at the upper end.
Tt se people in the old days had ideas as am
pie as any of our shareholders; doubtless some
of them did own slaves, although we see no
trace Of the Kitchen id the yard which was
thought to. be necessity when colored pee-
one lot is an old store, long gone, out of use,
10 glass in a row. Just such window ashes
taken from decayed houses, you will find
scattered in the country roundabout and in
serted at times in the veriest novels. RI. -e .s.
Ii you ask what makes the place SO pretty,
the answeris not the hills, sloplng boldly up
from the little vale in which it nestles, not the
street, level as floor, nor yet the elms and
naples, but the clean houses. Paint and
green sward that is it. SO far as my obser-
vation goes, there is not a broken do wn, dingy,
gone, weatherboard house, such as
you see anywhere in the South-not one in the
village bounds. They are all white, all clean
And then the grass Look at the road in
front of this house, on each side of it. There
are ten, fifteen, in some places twenty feet of
fresh, vivid sod. People keep to the roads,
leaving the bright: turf unhurt Arch this
turf with high ens and naples; you see the
is just what a, village ought to be.
But not all villages are equal to Cornwall
Plain some are sllaiJlly enough ~" 80 r q.
'AS. CoRNwALL PLAIN, August 5, 1880.
This particular Cornwall, is no ordinary
place. Here the people come to vote here
the town records are kept In a big iron safe in
the store; here the only newspaper in the sew
en- hamlets comprising the town is printed
here the oldest living graduate of Yale College
resides; here Gen. ISedgwick, of the United
States army, was born, and here John c. Cal
houn1 is buried Yes.,i Late one evening |
assembled the hills in hopes of getting a view,
but the deepening shades forbade. A little
on an upland lawn promised the
"nncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture" of
Gray's Elegy. ! entered. 1t was too dark to
read the Inscriptions on the huddled grave
stones of the village kinds, SO | turned my
steps, as men will do, 4 % that tallest monument,
a shaft of granite, and there-imagine the ef,
feet on the Seutherner just arrived and alone
lin bold letters read John G. Calhoun"
Buried here 2 Impossible! A monument to
his memory in the heart of .Yankeeand?
Equally impossible Drawing nearer, read,
''Died in 1874" The deceased was kinsman
of Mr.. Philo G. Calhoun. president of the
Fourth National Bank of New York. His
sons live here at this day. but what relation he
bore to the South Carolina statesman did not
learn. The impression produced by the mon
ament so Unexpectedly encountered l shall
never fl rget. -l.,.... ..t...,,k ,....,, =,
!, The population of the seven Cornwalls, as 1
have just learned, is a fraction under /, SEQ, of
Cornwall Plain shout $50. And until recently
no newspaper. This will astonish all Mary
land and Virginia The Cornwall Star issued
its fourth number yesterday morning, is 4 by
b inches in size, printed 'onacream -colored pa
per, and very neatly printed too. Published
weekly during July and August for Is cents,
postage paid single numbers 8 cents, :. The
editor. Mr.. J. e. Whitney, an undergraduate
is quite q wag. He is glad to be assured of
the good health of sundry ''concoctors of mat
ter and metre;" upbraids the people for not
painting the church, (Which looks spotIess to
Southern eye,) and deplores the unpayed con-
dition Of the sidewalks. Counting, he declares,
begins on the path, from meeting or the con-
cert, and ends In the parlor. Lovers walking
in Indian filein order to keep out of the damp
grass cannet make much head, or rather heart,
way; hence mot a marriage has occurred in
our village.for half a century, unless the BRIDE
groom owned a, horse, and, carriage, - and did
his counting at trot. Dropping into poetry
on the first'page, he describes sunset on Lake
Waramaug and tells how, c...,..o,olas str-
9ftqlgat bust n starry blstsrJIsssTr lid
. And while I saw the slow and open moon
Floating on the tides Of moonlight, grandly
-, nse qsd sisgG III .a!oe4fea. .l5ees,, sg1si
Washing away the stars like pebbles from the.
I'd 81 sizes spiansb tsisefqaaod sis .iiadoi.H
i Italics mine These be original and vIgor-
GUS metaphors, or ] am much mistaken /; but
the young man has ''snap" in him despite his
imagery and ought to persesere. ea,a.s h y
What be says about the infrequency Of mar
riage in Cornwall is not all exaggeration. For.
q period Of ten years, as am gravely assured,
nobody was born within the village limits.
Things are better now,l but oall the nurses and