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

Until II spread from pole to pole!
Joel Srdrts, y. d. IN HGTpcT'S Weekly.
HOME AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
described by Californian who has the true Western
spirit Of conceitl
You came TO California in 1852. You re.
turn home, for the first time, in 1872. Your
home, in an eastern state, is Dozeville.
For the last twenty years you have persist
ed in regarding Dozevile as still possessed of
the attractiveness it had for you in youth.
Reflection told you it must have changed
People who had visited Dozeville and return
ed bore back gloomy stories of its dullness
and monotony. But you had not seen this
You could not realize it, There was for you
one Dozeville - young Dozeville 49, always
young, because you saw il in youth.
In day dreams, in river and bank claims,
picking aud shovelling up to the middle in
mud, slum and water by your cabin door
smoking the evening pipe on the sterile
redges of Nevada prospecting for "ledge,"
you have in imagination many times visited
Dozeville. You have shaken hands with all
its old citizens you have been, for time
the newly returned lion of the place No
matter that letter after letter told you how
sires and grandsires and matrons and bloom
ing, bright.eyed schoolmates had dropped
of you would see yourself, on the Sunday
home at Dozeville, standing at the village
church and with what congregation could
you fill it save the one you had left
The dream is realized the continent is
crossed, you stand bodily in Dozeville None
know Of your coming. 1t is night the train
has stopped at the depot The railroad has
been extended to Dozevile since you left.
Dozevillians were talking of building this
road when you were a boy. The "branch"is is
thirty miles langth fIhax
years talking it over. Old Dozevillians had
lived and died talking of it. At last brisk
New York speculator came along and in a
few months the road was built.
There is a feeble efervesence about the
Dozevllle depot when the train stops. Com
pared with the roaring. hustling, crowding
hustle Of wide awake towns, it is as the Ian
guild pop of stale champagne bottle to the
roar of a forty-two FOUNDER. You get a coach
and are driven towards the family residence.
1t is cold, clear winters night. You look
out; the wind is roaring through the leaf
less sycamores every street has its old
curve, every house in its old place. You
recognize them all, MS though you had left
but yesterday yet gloom seems to hang
about them for you realize now that you are
not to meet this or that old neighbor whose
daily coming and going from those gates
seemed as Interchangeable as the rising and set
ting of yonder moon You have met your
mother and sisters you have almost been
obliged to prove to them your identity. 1t
was a surprise, but not exactly of the quality
you had hoped for. They were hardly pre-.
pared to see middle.aged man, worn by toll
and exposure. The last photograph you sent
home, ten years ago, implied still some ap-
pearance of youth. And after few days,
sometimes after few hours, you make a dis
covery-you are not acquainted with your own
mother and sisters. Twenty years is too
long an absence, there is great gap, a whole
life. time of incident and event between you
and them. You are bound to a thousand Cal
ifornia sympathies and associations Of which
they know nothing. You betray them every
hour. You are continually proving, now
that you are back at the old home, seated in
the old arm chair, and on the very carpet
over which you tumbled in your babyhood
that three-fourths of your heart is back in the
land of geysers, grizzlies and gold. The
mother involuntarily signs. This is not the
boys heart that left her twenty years ago it
is strange mans heart, full of hopes fears
plans and remembrances unknown to her. 1t
is heart recast remodelled. 1t was a beard.
less boy who left her-from the cradle to that
last parting she had known his whole life
but this is bearded man who has returned
with dashes of grey in his hair, with a differ
ent manner and different voice. He brings
With him the volume of twenty years of life,
but she cannot read it all at once. He shows,
carelessly, page here aud there but il
is broken and fragmentary to her. Her eyes
brighten when he speaks concerning some
event of his childhood there she is upon ia
miliar ground-that seems piece of her own
son. Hers, during your entire absence, has
been the quiet life at Dozeville, not making
half dozen new acquaintanoes you have
made hundreds in the same time, and you
bring them all home with you.
There is younger sister in the house. She
has held dim recollection of you all her
life has she longed TO see the mysterious
brother in California who is always writing
home that he is on the eve of making for
tune. She has painted an ideal of him in her
mind, and touched up the picture with many
perfections. And this-you, are the reality
She will not, TO herself, own any disappoint-
ment but she did suppose him different ap.
pearing man. In crowd, he is not the very
! last man she would have singled out for her
brother; but he would not have been the first.
The morning after your arrival you behold
Dozeville by daylight. 1t is very much the
same as when you left woods, fences and
corner posts all in their old places the va
cant lots, fenced in and not built upon when
| you left, are still fenced in and vacant few
| veteran trees upon the main street have dsap,
| peared. Six new houses in twenty years
| One church has been moved from its former
location. Consequent on the change, there
was great dissatisfaction among the congrega-
| tion part seeded aud joined another de-
nomination. 1t was all the work of a new
minister, who had a mania for moving
churches wherever he settled. This occurred
seven years ago you hear all about it before
| being in Dozeville three days
The unpleasantness has not lost its first lus-
| tire they pickle old contentious in Dozevile,
and so keep them ready for use in winter,
when things are dull and the branch road
| showed up.
Dozevile and surrounding territory seem
| to have shrunk. The day journeys of your
youth to Long Beach and Big Pond have
dwindled to mere morning strolls. For years
in the mines did you tramp two or three
miles over mountain and valley to the nearest
store for your -four, beans, coffee and pork
sometimes after hard days work. Doze-
vile miles are mere parlor promenades COM
pared with the rolling, rugged, steep miles
from Mexico Flat to Long Gulch store.
There are three hundred old acquaintance
| in Dozeville to be met and shaken hands
with. All, after the first greetings, make the
remark, "Growing old, see, like the rest of
u.s." This, TO one of 35, from sexagenarians,
septuagenarians and ootogenarians is hard to
bear. The next inquiry is. "How have you
been all this time 7" This is a difficult ques-
tion, also, to find an appropriate and Rpplica-
BILE answer for 10 or 20 times a day. The
long wished for welcome back TO Dozeville
proves a tedious operation. The apples with
! or in your grasp Finally, you deem it advis-