JULY
His wife now brought in a blanket she had bought at the “Boston Store,” and we all examined it, felt of it, and guessed what it was worth. Then she told what she paid, and how cheap she could get various other things, and what apples would bring.
THE PET OF THE FARM
As we sat chatting after supper, Mr. Cogswell took out his watch and began to wind it. It was of the Waterbury variety, and winding took a long time, and gave him a chance to discourse of watches in general, and of this kind in particular. Frank had such a watch, he said, and he took it to pieces and it was about all spring.
“You never saw such a thing,” said Mrs. Cogswell. “Why, it sprung out as long as this table.”
“Ho, as long as this table!” said Mr. Cogswell; “it would reach ’way across the room.” He said his own watch kept very good time as a general thing, only it needed winding twice a day.
A RAINY DAY
I was out early the next morning. The east still held some soft rose tints, streaks of fog lingered in the valley, and the frost still whitened the grass. After breakfast I went northward, down through the woods and pastures, into Miller’s valley. I followed a winding ravine in which a mountain brook went roaring over its uneven bed toward the lowland. I came into the open again at the little village of Wendell Depot. It was a barren little clearing, I found, wooded hills all about, a railroad running through, several bridges, and a dam with its rush and roar of water; a broad pond lay above, and below, the water foamed and struggled and slid away beneath the arches of a mossy stone bridge, and hurried on to pursue its winding way to the Connecticut. There was a wooden mill by the stream-side. It was a big, square structure with dirty walls and staring rows of windows. No trees were about, only the ruins of a burned paper-mill, whose sentinel chimney still stood, a blackened monument of the fire. There were a few of the plain houses built by the mill for its help, a hotel, some sand-banks, a foreign population, a dark, hurrying river, the roar of a dam, long lines of freight-cars moving through, and grim hills reaching away toward the sky.