Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1883-08-24

the cottages we're all fallen down, and little
farther on three were standing, windows bat
tered in, roofs in in places, and only one IN
habted as il was wont to be, and the dweller
therein remembered us and came out trem-
bling on his sticks, a young man too, as men
should CO. at fifty five, yet too inhrm to WORK
and only anxious that this miserable shelter
should be bis until he follows his dear old
master to the churchyard.
We sat down and looked around us how
familiar il all was, yet how ghastly over
there the shepherd lived and we could Just
see the traces of the path from his cottage to
the lambing yard, now all broken down and
used for hay, scanty crop OF which hed
been gathered of the arabic land, and sold
to neighboring shopkeeper waiting his
convenience there until he chose to tetch II
away yonder, too, once lived the well-kuown
laborers; the little convenionces put up for
them by our host falling bit by bit into decay,
or taken by passers by as the spirit moved
them, for there were none left to prevent;
the tidy garden going back into wilderness,
and the place where the beehives stood, and
where VIC helped Betsey Smith to tie Grape
on the hives when her mother died, as po-
lite intimation to them of the family bereave-
ment was thick with nettes, and dehed'our
attempts to pass into the field in the old ac-
customed way.
Indeed, the whole place was full OF heart
breaks the cottages were all like this, oil the
men had gone "up country all the girls had
gone away to service, and only old Cherrltt
was left to talk over old times and tell US how
the place had fallen into decay one after the
other, farmers had tried but failed owing to
wet seasons and the squire's rent how the
squire had tried farming it himself, but had
only cursed the times and the independence
of the men who would no longer slave them
selves to death for him to have his rent and
to die finally worsted in the struggle, their
capital sunk in the land, and only pittance
left for the wife who had fought the battle
side by side with her husband.
And she stood beside us there in the old
house porch, and we thought over the past
and even smiled at all the pictures we remem-
bered so well the gate was gone in truth,
but there was the sty left, where old Billy the
pig lived, and eat every chicken that crept
into his warm straw bed and as long as the
sty remained, we should recollect how he
reused himself and tried to get over the gate
after some specially fat duckling, and only
succeeded in hanging himself on the topmost
bar where he was suspended squealing, while
we all laughed too much to help him either
backward or forward.
The long row of sycamore trees was still
standing, but no bees came there now, as
they used TO when the flowers were out be-
low the leaves, and made such noise the
while that the whole place was in a regular
charm, as they say in those parts and the
slope after slope of lovely fields, where once
corn waved in the soft wind, and where our
host waged perpetual war with the yellow
''charlock," have gone back to a rough sort
of grass that it will take months to eradicate
and months more before anything can be
grown there again.
But the very sight of them reminds US of
our hosts CHEEKY patience and his many diff
culties, and how once, when he thought he
had beaten that yellow fend and he had
come in rejoicing and rubbing his hands to
think of his enemys defeat, he arose next
morning to find soft rain had fallen, which
had brought it all up again as thick as ever,
and II do believe" he said laughing then,
even if ruefully, that if / dug up spade
full of earth from the bottom of a well, and
flung it abroad, the stuff would spring even
out Of that as strong as ever it did"
Every door is off in the stables, the cor
ners of which are as if bitten off, and the
house is desolate it is impossible to believe
it the same in which we had so many happy
hours but that it is is shown by the very hole
in the wall, where one night we saw a rats
eyes regarding us, while We were playing
whist and by the crooked stairs, where once
we found a governess who was martyr to
neuralgia and stupefed herself with lauda-
mum until she felt about 'all over the place"
and frightened US dreadfuliy for fear she was
having fits
Desolate, dreary, and terrible as is the de-
struction of the farm, we find it too full of
remembrances of good times to be really as
disappointing as it was at first there is no
life about it, no trim neatness, no fine culti-
vation yet the past has so much power, that
the present has much ado to keep itself be.
fore us.
Still when we turn away, we realize the
difference terribly and know how bad all
this is for the village and the laborers who
are fast being e1terminated from these parts,
and we pause again by old Cherritt who
wants us and is waiting for us at his cottage
door, to show us how nice the cottages could
be made if only the farm were once moro
let
We go to him up three stone steps, worn
pathetically thin by the feet of many genera
tions of laborers, silent martyrs, who have
never realized their martyrdom, happily
enough and who only dread two things,
change and the workhouse and we go into
the cottages once more, while the old fellow
dscourses on his rheumatism which is aggra-
waited by heat, and for which he has hum
bic prescription to give US, consisting of half
an eggcup full of benzoline oil, poured slow
ly, as he expresses it, into his hips, and when
we suggest that cottage where the windows
are glazed, and where the water doesn't climb
up the steps into the floor would be better
prescription for it after all, he declares the
water is beautiful water, and it would kill
him to leave the cottage where he was born,
tiny atom of baby, for which it would
seem the world had small use and that the
world has treated very hardly ever since.
The soft spring twilight begins to fall on
the downs, and the thrush sings loudly in the
| tree over tha grave a sad wind moans across
tie river, aud siicuce glides over the land
scape with her hand on her lips. An mex
pressibly sad feeling seizes us we realize
that the Indian poet was right when he told
US that "Spring restored all things-save our
dead and our youth, yet cannot help think
ing that we find both, ay, even if only pale
reflex of either, in the desolate, lonely place
that is the North Farm now b. Pant0R
IN TinSleyS Magazine