The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-08


 Magazine. 1 M sitting as 1 write in a sunny corner of the pasture behind our house. 4 Though it is but the first week in September we had a frost last night and the sun is grateful. The potato plants are already brown, the fodder corn is whitening, the leaves of the pumpkin vines are dropping round their stems This early frost is a great blow to the farmers of our New England valley one of their besetting discoura gements. The valley stretches southward from where l sit ten miles to the great blue bulk of Moosiauke, which is beautifully framed through our barn door. The val ley in the east by three mountains, aver aging four thousand feet in height and springing directly up from the farms. ln deed, the pastures eat their green way up the slopes into the timber. These three great hills have been numbered in times past, but by the grace of heaven it was no fault of the lumber men-the fire did not follow, nor the destructive landslide. They are once more going back to their dark, billowy Areen of spruce and hemlock. Across the level meadows at the valley bottom, beyond the elms which fringe the little river. rises a parallel wall of much lower hills, velvety with upland farms or timbered with second growth where the white birches gleam in the trailing shadow of cloud. I am perched high enough in the pasture to see, both north and south the cto of Co ter of mile apart, along the ribbon of the single road, each set like a gem in its acres of green moving, its squares of corn, it's pastures sloping up past picturesque sugar houses into the shaggy mountain timber. New Hampshire holds few views at once more rugged with frownng mountains and soft and intimate with pastoral charm
 We are only four miles from a well known village to the north and the fash ionable summer hotels. As I look at the neat and prosperous farms near by, realize that their prosperity is largely due to this proximity. We are in the summer boarder zone. To each one of these farms comes from 5000 to 5000 annually, in some cases more of "city money" But southward, following the white ribbon of the road toward the wild northern shoulders of Moosilauke as the town and the railroad recede the case becomes quite different. me at most, and we have left the summer boarder zone. The air of prosperity ceases; we seem first to step back into more primitive community lingering
 
 ished community. We step into the land of abandoned farms into a half wild beautiful, pathetic desolaton.
 Two or three miles up the road is the next village. There is a general store" and postoffice combined, close to the road, redoent with the mingled odor of | calico, kerosene and chewing tobacco | Across the road is a tiny millpond and mouse gray sawmill now seldom used. Beyond the mill pond rise the dark hem locks and over their spired tops looms | the summit of a mountain. Here in the center of the village are not more than ten houses. three of them boarded up and abandoned. Through the window chinlls of one you may see the crayon portraits still hanging on the walls and tho crocheted tidies on the chairs. Just south of the mill pond is a deserted cremery, covered now with flaming posters announcing new brand of to- bacco and the county fair; and just beyond that is the town hall. The brook flows under the town hall pnd the lower story is the smithy.
 The hall is reached by an inclined plane, as if it had once been carriage shop. Tie unpainted walls of this quaint municipal building are also plas- f tered with posters. and the forest trees brush its roof and tint the aged shin gles beautiful messy green. Then the road winds up a hill and passes on to- ward Moosiauke.
 l Soon the valley widens out. Side of the road. facing tamarack swamp. is the white church, guiltless of spire and guiltless of minister save for the Sunday afternoon visits of a pastor from the northern village There are no houses near it now; it represents the ancient center of population. An eighth of a mile away an abandoned farmhouse sits | in the fields under the shadow of the sleeping wall of the mountain. Under the shadow of this wall, too, Is the vil- lage cemetery, all the graves running cast and west. no douht in obedience to