Many happy times were recalled here, where we used to go so much before the carriage road to the summit was made on the other side, by the lake. No road, however, can compete with the charm of that footpath up the pasture back of the Mountain House, and on through the ferny woods to the summit. We were almost tempted to try it in memory of old times, but this was our last day, and we could not resist a quiet morning in our sunny room, feasting on the extended view, and comparing it with the Berkshire region. We wished our Berkshire friends were with us to see how lovely our part of the state is.
We stayed just as long as we possibly could in the afternoon and then drove the twelve miles to Leominster before dark, going by way of Wachusett Lake to look at our first camping ground and the old chestnut tree on which swung our five hammocks. Years have told upon the old tree, and it looked very scraggy, while a cellar was being dug on the very knoll where our big tent was pitched, that blew down three times one day. The rocks on which we slept so peacefully, even after finding a snake one morning, may be in the cellar wall. How many “auras” will cluster about that dwelling! Whoever occupies it, may their years be as full of happiness as were the days when “we twelve” camped there! Why not stop right here and let our story end in the key it began, “camping.” If there was a suggestion of minor at first, when we were almost afraid we could not drive this year, the end was a joyous major. What a lovely journey, if it was short!
Soon after this journey report appeared in the Transcript, a long and very interesting letter, also photographs, were received from the finder of the “literature” lost at Palmer. “That man” proved to be two ladies just returning from a long trip by carriage, and when they discovered the unknown property, they concluded some man had borrowed their buggy, and driven to Springfield the night before, and left his papers under the cushion! From the character of the magazines, they fancied the “borrower” to be “a clergyman of liberal views, tall, slender, an ascetic—we were sure he wore eyeglasses—and on that night was arrayed in a long natty mackintosh.” They sent the “treasure trove” back to the Weeks stable, and drove on “shaking the mud of Palmer off our tires, and vowing that we would never trust our beloved Katrina Van Tassel to a Palmer stable again in Fair time.”
CHAPTER XII.
BAR HARBOR AND BOSTON.
Well, we have really celebrated our twentieth anniversary! Twenty consecutive phaeton trips! Nearly eight thousand miles driving through the New England States, New York and Canada! Our phaeton looks a little past its prime, and yet does not seem to feel its age. If, in these days of mysterious communication, it could have a tete-a-tete with the “one-hoss shay,” and compare notes, what a garrulous old couple they would be! Some people thought we ought to have a guardian on our first journey, and had we anticipated a twentieth, we ourselves should have felt as if by that time we should need a corps. If all our wanderings had been revealed to us as we drove along the Connecticut, on that first trip, they would have seemed more improbable than Camille Flammarion’s excursions among the solar systems; but we live now in an age which has ceased to wonder beyond—what next? and time and space are both out of fashion in the realms we are exploring, when not limited to the range of a phaeton; so a twenty years’ look ahead now seems but a passing moment of time.
“Well, well,” do I hear you say, “tell us where you went.” Do not be impatient; if you travel with us, you must be content to go as we go, and we never know where we are going until we have been. It would spoil the whole story if we should tell you now, for it would seem as if we knew all about it when we started off that lovely afternoon the last of June, with maps of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, but without the faintest idea which we should use.
If we were to have a journey, we must go somewhere for the first night; and we decided on Groton, as we have been asked so many times if we have ever stayed at the cosy inn kept by two sisters. We found it as pleasant as had been described to us, and it seemed a good opening for our twentieth to find such a pretty new place for our first night. But where next?
Does it seem strange to you, to go off for a three weeks’ trip without the slightest idea whether you are bound for mountain or sea shore? Well, our experience is that the best journeys make themselves, as the best books write themselves, for they accomplish what we should never think to plan.