Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1883-11-16

able to restrict the number Of these greetings
to three per day. You court retirement, and
avoid more the locality Of the dozen stores
constituting the pulsating center Of Doze.
Vile Let us read the Dozeville sign;
'William Barnes, Books and Stationery"
This is your first youthful playmate. Twen-
~ years ago you left him, just launched in
the Dozeville bookstores he keeps il still.
Then he was a ruddy faced, lively young
man, Just married now he has a worn look
Of age. For 20 years he has stood behind
that counter selling primers, states, slate
pencils, worsted aud dolls to little boys and
girls. For 20 years he had trudged four times
a ay-breakfast, dinner, supper and bedtime
to his dwelling house, 800 yards up the
street. This, and yearly trip to the city for
replenishing the stock of dolls, states, pen
ellis and primers has been his voyagng.
What changes and hurry .skurrying have been
! yours these 20 years Up to Cariboo, down
| to Arizona, over the mountains to Nevada /;
looking on the rise and hustle of the new
mining towns looking on them decayed,
| quiet and deserted years afterwards living
now in this community, now in that, com
! posed OF keen, sharp clever men, gathered
| from the ends of the earth witnessing their
gradual desperation and dropping away-some
TO new fields, some to the grave forming as
sociations and collecting remembrances never
/ 70 bb Aotkoltth htA bhAbuku III hAAln " llllhLh
Barnes has olung TO Dozeville, and Dozevile
has clung to him, and be has kept stationery.
Samuel Scoy, Attorney Rt.law y another
old playmate Samuel Scoy was very troub-
| lesome boy in the neighborhood. He does
| well to practice law now, for be was always
breaking ii ia bis youth He was your part
ner in ringing door bells, changing signs and
robbng melon patches. He is now a sober
man of family. Your conversation with
| Samuel Scoy partakes not of the easy, hilari-
Gus nature of former days; somehow you
cannot find the scapegrace Of old. The Sa-
tan in him seems to have entirely died out.
But the doors open and an elegant woman
enters Sam Scoy-uo, Samuel Scoy, Esq,
attorney. at-lsw, introduces you to his eldest
daughter. Why are you surprised You
might have known this. Sam Scoy was mar
| ried before you left home. This is Samuel
| Scoy, attorney at-law, with whiskers inclined
| to gray, and manner rather stern and Sc
| we're and this is his daughter. You are old
enough to be the father of that self possessed,
elegant young woman. You never thought
Of that before yet were she to visit Coyote
| camp, you aud a half dozen other middle
| aged bachelors would be ordering new suits
| from the bay" What steady old worker
is time tadpoles will grow to frogs infants
to elegant women And this is Miss Scoy,
the daughter of Sam Scoy, whom old Tom
| Bangs once gathered up by the coat collar
and the baggy portion of his pantaloons and
| chucked of the end of Little Neck wharf,
for tsmpering with his eel-pots; and you
| nearly old enough to be grandfather. Now,
you begin to feel your years.
You are invited to Dozeville evening par
| ty. Being single man you are deemed eli
| gible for this sort Of thing. There are pres
| ent a score of schoolmstes' daughters, just
L.. D,,N aV,IG Ca
Scoy are not there. They renounced such
parties years and years ago-they are old
family men. They would as soon be caught
playing marbles on the sidewalk. You pre-
| pare to 60, and attire yourself with all the
| scrupulousness, the care and the anxiety Of
youth. You Co. and fud yourself a worn,
! out of place bovine amid a crowd of calves
The young ladies-Misses Scoy and Barnes
charming olive branches Of your schoolfel-
lows, survey you curiously. They have often
heard their parents speak Of you. You were
| young and gay along with their sires. That
period by the glass in which they survey
life, was ages and ages ago-coeval with the
| American Revolution or the discovery of
| America, or the flood. You are Fan old fell
low" You are introduced to one after anoth-
er but there is no afilistion as in days OF
| yore. The gap of years, crows feet and
struggling gray hairs, lie between you and
them. They listen for period of time con-
sistent with cvility TO tine cracked old love
song of this their fathers friend, and then
| fly away to young Mr.. Cock Sparrow, just
returned from his first collegiate term. Cock
| Sparrow was not even an infant when you
left Now you feel older. More apples have
| withered
1t is your first Sunday at Dozeville, and
you sit once more in the family pew at the
| old church. But the congregation seems
thin. You miss many q stately gray head
The elders are the young men of 1852. Still
the edifce is for you thickly peopled, but not
| with the living. When last you sat here, an
other and older minister preached q farewell
and admonitory sermon to the company of
| young men bound for California. They sat
together in that pew yonder. They were to
return in five years. at least, with much gold
All had sweethearts, and those sweethearts
expected at the expiration of those five years
| to become wives. Most af them sat in the
choir. Some of their daughters sing in the
choir to day. But the fathers of those young
| songsters never went TO California, and for
| got the pastors admonitory sermon, while
they mined, aud traded and drank, and gam
| bled, and fought and talked a language half
Mexican, half English, and ran for office,
and died violent deaths, and were elected to
magnificent shrievalties worth twenty thous-
| and dollars per annum, and learned to bake
their own bread and wash their own clothes
| They never made their piles in the dry dig
| gings, and lost them in turning the bed of the
river, or we're broke" strapped" or pan
ned out" at monte. They never went to
Kern River Gold Bluffs, Frazer Colorado,
Montana or Nevada. They remained at
home and when those five years were up
they married the girls wearied of waiting for
the California adventurers, but few of whom
ever returned and those who did brought
back sad tales of many who remained Thom-
as Spring was bartender, William Dimple' "a
mule driver, Jeremiah Goodboy a confirmed
gambler, and it was whispered that Isaiah
Sweetbrier, the deacon's son, had been hung
in the southern mines for stealing mule.
So the girls became Mrs. Barnes and Sooy,
instead of Goodboy and Sweetbriar All
these memories come crowding thicky upon
| you, as you look on the pew where the young
men bound for California sat twenty years
ago Are not Dozevillians impressed also by
these emembrances on coming here every
Sunday? No; the change has been gradual
for them. They are not looking now over
the wide and freshly. y.cut gap of twenty years.
They are thinking of their dinners-of Mon
days washing-of the forthcoming festiva
for raising funds to repaint the steeple
What lofty steeple that was once Now
the vAne reaches up to the first limb of the
right hand Sentinel at the Big Tree grove
Some of the Dozevillisns hold but dim re-
membrance of CALIFORNIA; grand opening day
the rush and gold fever of 1919, yet yes.
sells, twenty-three years ago. carrying away
the pick of our young men, sailed directly
from Dozeville to San Francisco. But Other
and greater events have since transpired
California, to many of these Dozevillians, il
almost the California of thirty years ago-s
land remote and unknown. Some Of them
scarcely know the existence of the Yosemite
Valley and the big trees. You are disguised
Worse than this some of them have quite
forgotten certain of the young men born an6
bred in Dozeville, long resident in California
You speak of Tom Travers, who was "Doze
Vile boy" Half of California knows Tou
Trsvers. Here are men in Dozeville who
shake their heads feebly at the mention o.
Tom Travers. "Why, Uncle Abraham Trav.
ers' son, next to the Oldest" say you. "Wel
pears as if do remember something of him.
And then they stop for they are hardly Ger
tain whether they do or not. 1t is not strange
Year after year in Dozeville have they trOtteC
around little cirous-ring of life; sitting abou
the same grocery stove in winter, sitting in
the same chairs in front of that grocery il
summer, droning over the weight of the las
murdered hog, or the last strange face seeI