The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-08-22

rarer all the time, and we drove up to
| Mrs. Watkins little paradise on earth in
| due state.
'"As soon l took one look at the
/ wag way the gables sagged down l knew
| why the former proprietor had aban-
| doned 1.-THE thought that some night u
| storm might come up and he'd wake up
to find he was holding shingle roof in
| his lap with a lot of rafters pressing
| down on his forehead had borne upon
his mind SO that he'd moved off the place.
| But Mrs. Watkins was all raptures over
! 1T, and Watkins, poor creature that he
| Is, caught the fever from her. She said
she'd bet anything there was a grand
! fathers clock behind the hall door, all
ready to start ticking. But the only
! thing we found belonging to grandfather
was a pair of veteran overhalls, and
F., they weren't ticking either, being cordu-
roy, and having evidently been retired
| from duty many years before on ao-
count of serious disabilities sustained in
! active service. The parlor looked like a
) place where you could never feel at
F, home unless you were sitting up with
a corpse there, and the bed rooms had
an aroma about them that suggested a
| woodpeckers nest But Watkins was
| going around. busy as a clown dog and
burbling with happy anticipations. He
sat down on the wreckage of a chair
himself up with Joy written all over his
| infatuated map and he says to me,
:" This will be dandy place for week
end parties, he says. Yes, I says, but a
| poor one for weekend baths. The only
thing, I says, in the shape of bath tub
| around this establishment I says, is
cracked soap dish and what it makes up
in shape says, 1T lacks in SIZE says.
| Anytime I says, that I should under
| take to crowd my person into a china
| soap dish and take a BATH I says, I
| have a feeling that I would lop over the
edges / says, in way to remind me of
large batch of yeast in small crock
"And I'm quite sure that old side
board is genuine Chippendale" puts in
| Mrs. Watkins, twittering with joy like
canary.
It'll take oath that the plumbing is
genuine Mohawk Indian I says. 7 guess
l must be lacking in romance and
poetry says, but I wouldn't give one
set of hot and cold water fixtures for all
! the old oaken buckets that ever hung
in WELL says. "Hanging's none too
good for Them I says.
well, we stood 1t week.
Some weeks are longer than others
Larry. There are some weeks that are
only week long, while others last for
several years and your hair turns white
| before Sunday comes. This week that we
| spent at the abandoned farmhouse was
one of those long weeks. At the end of
an eternity-eternty began on a Monday
morning and lasted until Saturday night,
as I recall-the watkins decided that
they wouldn't care to put In their de-
| Ginning days on an abandoned farm
! spending their summer evenings listen
! ing to the remarks of the katydids. which
remarks, while entertaining the first few
! million times you hear them. lack variety
and grow monotonous in time, and spend
1fper
into drum stove that would be roaring
| like a lion and trying to climb up the
| chimney one minutes and the next min
| ute would be settled back on It's launches
as cold as wedge, and spending the
| winter evenings freezing to death and
spending the spring evenings praying for
thaw. Anyway, found out some things
about the climate and the agricultural
conditions Of that part of New England
| that were not exactly enthusing. From
what I could gather the principal prod
| ucts Of the soil were hay In the summer,
nasal oatarrh in the winter, summer
| boarders six weeks year and seigh-rid-
ing all the rest of the time.
80 we did q little abandoning our
selves and moved on to a quaint old
fashioned fishing village that Mrs Wat
kins had been reading up on in a truth
full little booklet put out by the travel
ing passenger agent of Vermont rail-
| were frugal people. They were even
saving with the names of their towns
| They figured it out, I suppose, that there
| wasn't any telling when all the names
| would give out and they'd have to begin
| using numbers. So they called one town
Rubenham and another Rubenham Gen.
| ire and another South Rubenham and
another North Rubeniam and another
| Sou by-Sou'east Rubenham and so on I'M
| til the landscape was dotted with Ru-
benhams so they ran together on the
map and gave 1t a coagulated appear
ance. We drew South Rubenham for
! ours. 1t was a lovely little hamlet pop
ulated by a sturdy race who derived
| their livelihood from fish and boarders
/ and fed the boarders anything that the
fish wouldn't accept as bait. If the fish
| hadn been more exclusive In their diet
than the boarders were the boarders
| would starve to death. But the sun
| believe even David Belasco would have
| tried to improve on one of those sun
sets. But while you were giving your
| eyes a treat at sunset, a dead fish or
| a dying boarder would float up near you
| and make it an even break. And you
couldn't get a daily paper until it had
| become a weekly and the only reading
matter could find at the house where
we stopped was large brown book on
| the diseases of the horse and a copy of
| the Confessions of Wesley K Bass, The
| Boy Drunkard of Rutland. And there
| were some lovely walks in the woods,
| only the woods were thickly settled by
; 'skeeters and rattlesnakes that probably
| got along well together. because they
| had the same mutual dislike for city
strangers.
I'VE stood that three days and then
we moved across the lake to summer
| hotel that was just the same as every
| other summer hotel in the known world.
, 1t had Lovers Leap where an Indian
| maiden mourned 80 years for her lover
| who came not, he being deceased. and
then cast herself nearly II feet down the
precipice, and Saddle Rock Mountain,
/ and a DEVILS Punchbowl and a Pulpit
Rock that looked just as much like
pulpit as 1t didn't look like one, and
livery stable with a schedule OF prices
that would have made Captain Kidd sor-
ry he ever went to sea when he might
have stayed at home and driven the
hack to the depot.
"And so, because I never could stand
IoPk Ala Not hi