The Republican journal., 1915-10-21
Last Days at Crawfords.
A Pleasant Journey Home. Some White
Mountain Stories.


MY DEAR JOURNAL: My trip home
from Crawfords was pleasant one. be-
cause the scenery along the route hac
chosen was new to me and was eXcep.
tionally beautiful Instead of taking
the Maine Central train for Portland at
p. m. and spending the night in that city
as the greatly curtailed train service,
effective about Sept. 9th. would have
obliged ME to do, | took the Boston &
Maine from f'abyans for Boston, this
route coming down through Woodsville,
The Weirs, Lakeport, Manchester and
Nashua, the beautiful lake region of
New Hampshire. was DESTROYS of see.
ing Manchester. as it was in that locality
that the ancestors of my paternal grand
mother settled on coming to this country
many, many years ago. There is ro-
mantle story of noble English lady of
the house of Stuart, who eloped with a
Scottish weaver MacNutt, and came to
this country taking with her one maid
and chest of plate and jewels, which
was lowered from a window of her faith
er's castle by a rope. She purchased
with the jewels large tract of land in
New Hampshire, once called Nuttfeld,
then Londonderry, in a part of which
the city of Manchester now stands. A
few years ago one of her descendants, an
aged man, was in Belfast and told US that
he had himself just sold the last of the
land thus acquired, and that when a child
he had often heard the tale of the elope-
ment from his grandfather and had many
times been in the old house which had
been the home of the noble lady and her
weaver husband. The lady was of course
dlsowned by her family-and the only
reason | can credit the tale at all is be-
cause neat little individual .hoodoo, no
doubt born of noble fathers raging,
seems to have been let loose to roam at
Will among the lady's descendants for
ever, and forever more. The lady was
not a nice lady anyhow, or she would
never have climbed out of the window to
run away with any man; but the story
did have fascination for US as children.
My father, however, taught US, what |
believe to be true, that ones nobility lies
not In ancestry, but in strength of char
acter and broad charity; and with kind
ly rldicule laughed away our great inter
est IN the tale Of the chest of Jewels. |
thought of it all, as the lights of Man
chester flor much to my regret it was
dark when we reached Manchester
tWlnkled and flashed before my interest
ed and curious eyes, and seemed to beck
on me to come nearer and explore the
mysterious country that lay beyond them
in the darkness-the country where nv
ancestors lived and toiled when this part
of America was land of almost un-
broken forests.
The train was late all along and it was
$50 before we reached Boston. | hest
tated between a sleeper on the train
leaving at 3 a. m. and a room at the
hotel across the street, which the North
Station matron assured me was call
right Having decided in favor of the
hotel and the a. m. train, the good lady
kindly volunteered to go across with me,
and | was soon enjoying very restfuI
and comfortable room;but it is question
whether my sleep would have been quite
so sweet, had | known that evening that
my one window looked down through
network of fire escapes into a deep
''well'' which it seemed to me might
form a most successful trap in case of
fire. No, dear Journal, l do not like
Boston or any other great city. Some
wise man has called such city "a sore
on the body polite" and no doubt if he
had lived in these days of electricity and
automobiles, subways and elevated
roads, flying machines and sky scrapers,
he would have called it something much
worse. The trip from Boston was just
like other trips from Boston-too much
like "a twice told tale vexing the ear of
drowsy man" to bear charging upon.
1t rained all day, and read and crochet
ed, then crocheted and read, and then
read and crocheted until we reached
Citypolnt; and the home coming at the
end of it was all that had anticipated.
Already l have visited each favorite
nook about the farm, and have enjoyed
lone of those long drives which are SO
pleasant, over the familiar roads-up
hill and down dale and through the for
ests fair. Tonight the sunset was with
out exception the most glorious that
ever beheld anywhere. The wide sweep
of the crimson western sky. the soft,
mellowed green of the undulating fields
beneath it, the gorgeous red and gold Of
the woodlands beyond the fields, and the
gentle Passagassawaukeag gliding plac-