Connecticut western news., 1881-09-21
ssDelectus,, i'm Canada.


 away country to most of us, it is still only little trip of fifteen hours here and want to tell you of the journey, made a week since, on one of the hottest days of the season.
 We left Hartford at six in the morning, the low lying mists presaging the heat which should follow later in the day. The passen- gers were few, and had the half-awake, thrown together air of people reused prematurely from their slumbers. The villages through which we first passed were also just awaken ing, and at the cottage doors and windows ap- peared tumbled, curly heads, and white-robed little figures. anxious, like Toddy, to ''see the wheels go wound," and wave their hands in salutation to the people on the cars. At Springfield we changed cars, and began the uninterrupted journey through the beautiful Connecticut river valley. Truly there is not the world over, lovelier plain than this. We hear of the beauty and picturesqueness of the castled Rhine, of the flower bordered Arno, of the quiet Thames and Shannon and Clyde, but where is one of them all flowing through & land where peace and plenty seem more to smile, than the blue Connecticut And one feels, in going through this garden of New England, how essentially is it land of homes, and one does not wonder that from these quiet, beautiful towns, these hills and valleys, have gone out men who have been the brain of the nation, men ready to think and act aye, and die--tor their country and her honor. At Chicopee, and Mt. Tom station, the wide, placid river was full of logs, fioated down from far toward it's source to feed the busy mills. Through wide, level meadows, acres and acres with no fences, and with big patch es of corn and tobacco here and there, we reached Northampton. elm-shaded and old. where tall sunf1owers nodding at us over the garden fences, showed that love for the aesthetic has penetrated even the conservative Bay State. Through Whately. with low, roll ing brown hills away at the left, bearing scat tered trees, Deerfield, with long rows of grand old elms along it's streets, from among which gleam out the white houses and the slender spire of the village church, and pretty Green field, set also among it's trees.
 The richpess and beauty of that meadow iand, green with grass, waving with the brown tassels of corn, or with the broad, low, green tobacco leaves covering its surface, is some- thing always to stay fast in ones memory. The day began to grow very warm, and the cinders and dust to make themselves noticed, in the way disagreeable things and people usually have of rendering themselves cor spicuous. People famed themselves in an ex- hausted fashion.
 Western farmer and his family of numer- ous tiaxen- haired, smutty, urattractive young children, who had fearful fashion of con- stantly demanding Ca cookie" and munching it. spilling the crumbs indiscrimi nately upon ones shoulders, the cushions and the floor, were going, after visit in New England, to their home at the far West, a four days jour ney. An enormous basket served to contain a supply of 'scookies" and other edihles for the entire journey. The stalwart, good natured '-'''~r aeeosted us, asked our destination, and wished that his journey, too, ended that night, in which am sure his thin, worn little wife, weary with holding the big, fretful baby, heartily joined. A pair ofcountry lovers she, irresistible in elaborately arranged blonde hair and a wonderfully constructed bonnet of blue, with pink roses he, dapper young fel- low, with face vacant of all expression, sat with their heads in close proximity, saying pretty things to each other behind the screen O1 newspaper, In Wn1cn both were interested. | An elderly maiden lady, bright faced and en- ergetic, came in with a big basket of gay | flowers, leading her little niece, tiny, fair faced little thing attired in the long-pantalet- ed style of her aunt's youth. There was the | usual variety of traveller to be found on a rail- | way train, and ''plenty of human nature" to be studied.
 As we came through Vermont, changing cars It White River junction, the country became more rugged and mountainous, and there was no lack of variety in the scenery. About St. Albans the air grew dark with the smoke of the wood fires, and the sky of dull red, giv- ng lurid air to everything. But as we came over the Canadian plains, the evening was as fair and clear and starlight as one could wish. The approach to Montreal is lovely. The river lere is two miles wide, where the Victoria bridge crosses it, and before entering this, one tees the crescent shaped city with it's gleam- ng lights, climbing above the base of the which rises royalty behind it. the