ONE OF THE LITTLE RIVERS
At the hotel, when I had made the horse comfortable in the barn I betook myself to the bar-room, where a brisk open fire was burning. A number of men were loafing there, most of them smoking. One was a tall, stout-figured man who was always ready to back his opinion with a bet of a certain number of dollars, and quoted knowledge gained a year when he was selectman to prove statements about the worth of farms.
The proprietor of the place was a young man, with small eyes rather red with smoke or something else, a prominent beaklike nose, a mustache, and receding chin. He had an old, straight, short coat on, and he had thin legs, and looked very much like some sort of a large bird. He had a very sure way of speaking, and emphasized this sureness by the manner in which he would withdraw his cigar, half close his little eyes, and puff forth a thin stream of tobacco smoke.
In the morning I was out just as the sun looked over some cloud layers at the eastern horizon and brightened up the misty landscape. I left the hotel, and soon was on my way up the Deerfield River into the mountains. It was a fine day, clear at first, and with many gray clouds sailing later. I jogged on up and down the little hills on the road which kept along the winding course of the river. All the way was hemmed in by great wooded ridges which kept falling behind, their places to be filled by new ones at every turn. The stream made its noisy way over its rough bed, and every now and then a freight train would go panting up the grade toward the Hoosac Tunnel, or a passenger train in swifter flight would sweep around the curve and hurry away to the world beyond.
THE VILLAGE GROCERYMAN
A little off the road in one place was a log house, a sight so unusual in old Massachusetts that such rare ones as one may come across always have a special air of romance and interest about them. This had a pleasant situation on a level, scooped out by nature from the lofty ridge which over-shadowed it. It was made of straight, small logs, laid up cob-fashion, chinked with pieces of boards and made snugger with plaster on the inside. It had a steep roof of overlapping boards, through which a length of rusty stove-pipe reached upwards and smoked furiously. There was a spring before the door, which sent quite a little stream of water through a V-shaped trough into an old flour-barrel. There were some straggling apple-trees about, and behind the house a little slab barn. Inside was a bare room, floored with unplaned boards. There was a bed in one corner, a pine table in another, and a rude ladder led to a hole in the upper flooring, where was a second room. The only occupant then about was cooking dinner on the rusty stove. Light found its way through two square windows and through certain cracks and crevices in the wall.
I followed the rapid river, on, up among the wild tumble of mountains which raised their gloomy rock-ribbed forms on every side. The regions seemed made by Titans, and for the home of rude giants, not of men. Presently a meadow opened before me, and across it lay the little village of Hoosac. The great hills swept up skyward from the level, and here and there in the cleared places you could see bits of houses perched on the dizzy slope, and seeming as if they might get loose and come sliding down into the valley almost any day.
