While our friends we had left at Weirs were preaching and being preached to, we quietly enjoyed the Sunday hours in our pleasant parlor overlooking the lake, reading and resting from our rough drive. At sunset we strolled to the water’s edge, sat down in an anchored row-boat and watched the clouds, which were grandly beautiful, looking at first like an immense conflagration, then resolving into black, smoky clouds as the last rosy tint faded.
Monday was a perfect day and Charlie was as fresh for the twenty-eight miles to Dover as we were. The road was familiar, but seemed none the less pleasant. At Rochester we looked for the hotel, with beautiful hanging baskets all around the piazza, where we spent a night two years ago on our homeward drive from the mountains. Just after supper at Dover we heard a great chorus of bells, whistles and puffing engines. There was a fire just across the street, and we watched the devouring flames and the feather beds and bundles as they were thrown from the second story window into the drenched street, until the excitement was over, then went out for a walk. That night we packed up a little more than usual and planned what to do in case of fire, for our baggage is necessarily so limited on these journeys we should miss even the smallest article. Our precaution insured us sweet sleep and we took an early leave of Dover for Exeter, where we rested two hours, then started for Epping. Suddenly we changed our minds, faced about and went to Kingston. We had never been in Kingston. If we had, we never should have faced that way again; for the best hotel was the poorest we had yet found, and the drive to Haverhill the next day very uninteresting. We fully appreciated the dry retort of a chatty old man, who gave us some directions, then asked where we came from that morning—“Kingston Plains! Good Lord!”
The drive from Haverhill to Andover was quite pleasant. We arrived there at three o’clock in the afternoon, and although we had driven but twenty miles, at once decided to go no farther that day. The heat was still oppressive, and no rain had fallen since we left home, except the shower at the Isles of Shoals. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible with books and lemonade. “Another pleasant day!” we said with a sigh, next morning. We were really longing for one of our cosy rainy-day drives.
Lowell and Lawrence were in our direct homeward route, but to avoid those places we had full directions to Littleton, and started in good faith for that place, but came across a guideboard which said, “Boston, twenty miles,” in the opposite direction. The temptation was too great, and once more we faced about. We called on friends as we drove through Reading and Maplewood, and finally found ourselves at Point of Pines. The heat and discomfort we had experienced were all forgotten there. The brilliant illuminations and the music made the evening hours delightful. The cool night was a luxury indeed. We spent the morning on the piazza with friends, and, after an early luncheon, drove into Boston via Chelsea Ferry. Oh! how hot it was! We thought there had been a change in the weather, but concluded we had been told truly, that it is always cool at the “Point.”
The crowded city streets distract Charlie, but we succeeded in wending our way to Devonshire street, where we got the latest news from home from a friend. Our last mail we had received at Weirs. We did a little shopping on Winter street, and then left the busy city for Cambridge, and on through Arlington and Lexington to Concord, a drive one cannot take too often, so full is it of historic interest. As we near the home of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts, and the monuments of Revolutionary interest, the very atmosphere seems full of recollections and reminiscences. The noble words of Emerson, the hermit life of Thoreau, the fascinating writings of Hawthorne, transcendental people, “Little Women” and cousins just like other people, are all confused with skirmishes with the English, and the effort to realize it is all true. We have experienced this ecstasy more than once before, and it has faded away naturally as we drove on, but this time the spell was broken suddenly. We stopped at the hotel and found it just like a hundred other country taverns, not a suggestion of anything transcendental, and we felt as if dropped from the heights into the abyss of commonplaceness. We tried to rise again by watching from our window the passers-by and selecting those who looked as if they had been to the Summer School of Philosophy, but all in vain, and by the time we were ready to leave in the morning our enthusiasm had sunk to the Kingston level.
We had ordered our mails reforwarded from Weirs to Fitchburg, and now we were perplexed to know how to get them on our way home, when Leominster comes first. We studied our map and finally asked directions to Littleton again, and this time saw no enticing guideboard. We lunched at Ayer, lost our way trying to go from Shirley to Lunenburg (we rarely take a wrong road except when near home, where we are so sure we know we do not ask), and were ready for our two-hours’ rest when we arrived. The dust we shook off there was more than replaced before we reached Fitchburg. So many people were driving it was like a trip through the clouds; and the heat was so great, with the sun in our faces all the way, we set that little drive apart as the most uncomfortable of our whole journey. We forgot all our dusty zigzagging, however, as we drove leisurely towards Leominster, reading our letters, which were none the less interesting for having been a week in the Fitchburg post office.
Curious friends questioned our knowledge of geography, as they always do when we come from Boston through Fitchburg, and go our roundabout ways, but many years’ experience has convinced us there is more beauty in a curved than a straight line. We have taken longer journeys, and had better weather, but we shall always remember the journey of last summer as one of the pleasantest.
CHAPTER IV.
MOOSILAUKE AND FRANCONIA NOTCH.
“You did not take your drive this year, did you? I have seen nothing of it in the papers.” This oft-repeated query, and many similar hints, suggest that we have kept the pleasant incidents of our last summer’s drive to ourselves long enough; and the kindly interest of friends we know, and some we do not know, should be sufficient incentive to prompt our pen to tell you all about it.