Norwich bulletin., 1921-07-23
GHOST TOWNS OF NEW ENGLAND

The ghost towns of New England ae- 1 peal in a special way to the Nomad, for | he was born in z New England village !!
 which is now a ghost. What are the | Ghost Towns? writes The Nornad in The |
 Boston Transcript They are the towns
 that once possessed a soul and life of |
 their own-that once were little centres | of business and intellectual life, but now
 are inert, without an active native pop llIation, without snap or gumption, with
 out local originative force and even
 without inherited memories of the past l
 the people all gone who once made them |
 the centres from which thought and ac-
 tivity radiated, and the places of these people, if they are filled at all. nllfd with :
 men and women, newcomers who have
 no connection or sympathy with the dyn- annie past of the town. These places are the mere graveyards of their former
 selves Sometimes, if the place is small
 enough, the village itself has quite van
 ished That is very nearly the case with
 the hamlet in which the Nomad first
 saw the morning light that at the same
 moment was f1attering the mountain-tops.
 h his early childhood, the village had it's little nest of industries-its shop, where wagons and buggies were built, it's chair factory, it's starch factory by the falls it's general store, shoemaker who
 busiIy begged away on his bench, it's
 bIaeksmith, and so on.
 In the midst of it's little common stood what the people called the watering trough, but which was in reality foun- | tain, for to it was brought in pipes or nliznp-fegs the water from the hills and all day long the water gushed for the benefit of man and beast and while the oxen and horses stopped to take deep
 draughts of the cool spring water the
 men sat on the bench and gossiped. It was real little mountain centre. What | is there now? The fountain is gone. and all trace of it. Chair shop, blacksmith 1 shop, sheemaker's shde, all have disap- tpeared-not only the men. but the build ] ings that housed them. The houses that IstiII stand-three or four of themEare l farmhouses now.
 1 On the IilIock the old meeting house stiH stands. unscathed, but how lonely 1t looks The store, too. is theref but it IS f just a store at the crossroads, and when the proprietor was asked about the old
 people, he knew not one of them, and their very names were unfamiliar to him. It is as if the fathers of the village in de-
 parting for the old world, had taken the
 | village with them. Perhaps you may
 meet it over there one day-shoemaker' $
 shop and watering trough with its deep
 breathing beasts. and the blacksmith with
 the great leather sling wherein he swung
 the mild-eyed oxen for their shoeing, and
 all the rest-a Yankee village living
 tegain on the other side of the Styx. Why
 not an immortality in heaven for villages
 as well as men-for good little villages
 that never did any harm
 That Is one of the phases of the New
 England ghost-village phenomenon. An other phase, which the Nomad will touch
 upon more particularly today, is the lit lle town which seems to be structurally intact, and which may even have added : houses to the original number, but where the old life has been completely sup : planted by another population. There on the common with it's ancient e1ms and nanles and pine trees, you may wals with ghosts every day. Sudh town and a beautiful one, is the ancient town of Colchester, in eastern central Con- Enecticut, which the Nomad lately visited Lying high on a breezy plateau, Its broad, long village street looking west ward over wide sweep of country tt the Marlboro and Glastonbury hills ane the valley of the Salmon river, it's ole tNeuses still radiant in their tree-embow cred dignity, it's triangular common stil surrounded with neatly kept houses, the , village does not appear to have falleI into material deeifne-but how very far away is it's active past The change is plainly declared in the condition 0.
 the village burying-greund which tht . village itself has strut out from it's view : as if it were thing that it wanted tt f forget. by buildings that conceal 1t iron : the street This ancient and beautiful cemetery is now a knee-deep jungle ot myrtle and other vines, through whicf : you must struggle in order to read the in 1, scriptions on the gravestones of tine fore : fathers Here the Nomad spent an houl s without seeing a living soul souls there 7 may have been, fitting about-one seem : led to hear them fiutter through th' } abounding vegetation-but though tn, I back of the houses and stores of the vii T lage thoroughfare fanked all of ont b side of the cemetery the solitude wa t profound.
 And here the Nomad observed a mos T curious and typical thing; there is in thi $ cemetery a burial lot, still surroundet e by an iron railing, upon wa4ch stands H great spruce tree that seems to have ex
 1 tinguished every prestige of the graves 0 r the people buried upon the lot. SauareE e in the middle of the plot stands the vas l, trunk of this tree; it's buttressed root S- { eAlcAd OuLWafQ 10 the very edge of tn e lot On the ground outside the rafiine l. fiat on their faces, lie two or thre 0 Igravestones. Have they been pushed oq, e there by the growth of this tree, so fam g ously thriving on the dust of the h1rna. > being buried sere? That is the stor + plainly told by the stock trunk and wide y ly spreading branches by the buttressfn 'e roots. by the prostrate stones outside tn It railing, Even in their death the ol Colchester folk seem to Have been pushe Il out of their nests Nature Is in leasu e, with Ule new corners. Well, it is Na g. lures cue to seize her opportunities He it spruce tree had fine chance in th- ll lot, and has made the most of it. Nc y is it so bad thing for the oceypsnt i'll after all. They have left their earthl a beds and gone up into the air. whe1 1T day by day they eonsort with the rel tn eyed Viero that is at this moment preael in ing over their obIiterated graves, ar 'n the oriole that has hung her nest fro n, the adjoining elm tree, and the fashir Tn tanager that is ehip7eherring at the II, 10 wonted intrusion of the living visitor. ] y- the midst of death they are in Life. h. Just before he squeezed his way tn es the buFying ground through the passa, of way at the back of the store, the Nons an noticed the bleak old Bacon seminar nd a building of brick which once was ce noted seat of learning in Cennecttcr
 it And here in the cemetery on a gray ut stone, he read all about Bacon hinse e. who seems to have founded the fnstit