The Newtown bee., 1891-12-18
DAY OF TERROR IN WEST CHES
TER.
NOW AND THEN.

NOW AND THEN.
October on the Boston road in 1891.
A region of joy and plenty; region of
wealth and peace and safety; an old
gold background to picture where the
lights are bright and the shadows tenn
pered.
With easy curves and kindly grades,
the broad highway runs toward the cap
ital of Massachusetts from the metrop-
oils of America. 1t is as hard and firm
as the bed of a billiard table-a road
which is almost un-American in It's
perfection.
On either side stretch the spacious
lawns and well kept grounds of families
of wealth, some of whom have held the
land for generations. Here and there
the virgin rock crops out, adding its
bold touch to variegated and some
what rugged landscape. Here and
more cultivated spaces of farm and gar
den. Here and there a stream cuts it's
devious way toward the south and
emptes into one of the salty esturaries
that mark the northern boundaries of
the God gifted sheet of water, Long
Island Sound, glimpscs of which you
may sometimes see amid the distant
rocks and hillocks. A heavily freight
ed line of electric poles skirts the edge
of the broad avenue and croons 4Folian
rpnsip n rho RI he 70
hear it.
Peace and plenty, peace and plenty,
that is the song of this harp of thou
sand strings. And the eye says that it is
well sung in this land of milk and honey
How full are the shocks of corn stand
ing in the wayside fields. How the
trees of the orchard bend beneath their
giant loads of apples. The very ground
beneath the trees is white with wasting
fruit, and here and there in places you
see young mountain of collected
apples waiting for the coming of the
cider mill.
The traffic of the road is not so heavy
as it was before the time of the railroad
but it is still we'll travelled highway
The days of the stage coach and freight
van are no more, and in their places are
the lighter buggies and family carriages
the tallyhOs, which still keep up SEM
blance of the olden time, and the light
wagons of the butchers and marketmen
going from house to house in search OF
orders. These, with an occasional farm
wagon and now and then Ixion on his
modern wheel, make up the business of
the road, whose chief end after all seems
on the left bearing the heaviest burdens
of commerce.
There was no peace or plenty here in
October, 1880. If the great modern AGO.
liam harp had been strung along in that
sad period, it would have crooned of
death and sorrow. 1t would have told
of deadly wrongs and land of blight
and ruin. 1t would have sung of the
torch and the assassin's bullets, of tort
ured men and outraged women, of the
SINNERS and the Cowboys, the bloodiest
scoundrels that ever hid in the bloody
train of war. For the Boston road
threaded the neutral ground, the region
between two hostile armies, friendly to
either as necessity or policy dictated, but
protected by neither, land constant prey
to the harpies that bore allegiance to no
side but that of plumber.
There was no travel upon the great
highway in those days, l promise you.
The grass grew scythe high where now
the level macadam makes easy running
for light wheels. The farms that flank
ed the way were overgrown desolations
of weeds. The houses were torn, despoil-
ed and often burned to the ground. The
cattle were few and wild. Weeds ran
amuck where once were gardens, for it
was a waste of time to raise fruit or veg
etables or anything of value, the possess
sion of which seemed to add new perils
to life, exciting as it did the cupidity of
the SINNERS and often leading the way
to the torture chamber and gibbet.
The leaves fell softly upon wood and
void, the squirrels chartered cheerily
among the pattering nuts, but all else in
that region breathed the spirit of war,
which is the spirit of desolation. From
Kingsbridge, where the camp fires of the
British were lit, to the Gordon of the Con-
tinentals; from the Byram River to the
Hudson, there was not one happy family
in that black harvest time mot one which
pressed its pillow in confidence that the
morning would find its house still stand
ing and the inmates still unframed. Wing
or tory, or two-faced-and there were
plenty of the latter-it made no differ
ence. All were sharers in the common
reign of terror.
III.
ENOCH THE SPY.
Three wears before, there had been a