The night was long, measured off by the fog horn, and our breath stopped once when suddenly the boat stood still and the machinery was silent. It was a real relief when the creaking and groaning began again, and we rolled on, resuming the tooting. We would not believe we slept a wink but for the fact we dreamed that, as we came near home, after our Bar Harbor to Boston sail, Jerry was independent and wayward, and swung round suddenly. One said, “Never mind, let it be a turn to the house the other way,” but before we got there he swung round again, and then the driver was “up,” and said, “He has got to mind, if I can make him.” She drew up the reins with a grip that would have turned the Lewiston, and the result was that after much creaking and groaning of the old phaeton, Jerry was rolled up like a kitten in front of the carriage, and the “driver” was prostrate under the back wheels. The dreamer extended a hand to Jerry, and he touched it as graciously as any lord of the land, then arose and we three stood upright, unharmed; and so we did, after our three hundred miles’ water trip, on the wharf in Boston at eight o’clock.
The boatman attempted to harness Jerry, and the optimistic dreamer, sitting in the phaeton, had full faith in his land wisdom, but the driver came back from the boat office just in time to help him out of a very perplexing dilemma. He had placed the saddle, and was diligently searching for a place to put the crupper aiming towards the ears. The driver with some difficulty suppressed her amusement, as she readjusted the saddle. With a cheery “Good-by, Jerry,” the boatman returned to his sphere, and we were soon off for breakfast.
Jerry was quite at home at the familiar stable in Mason street. After breaking our fast we gave the morning to shopping, and early in the afternoon we began a round of calls in Boston and vicinity, which kept us busy several days. We could not think of ending our delightful journey so abruptly as to be in Bar Harbor one day and in Leominster the next, as we might have done.
We visited thirteen suburban towns, and could write a letter almost as long as this one without exhausting the charms of the Wayside Chapel in Maplewood, and the home of its owner under the same roof, which we enjoyed through a friend, who exclaimed as we called, “Oh, you are just in season to attend our daily fifteen minutes’ service.” It is the embodied long-cherished idea of a helpful woman, and is full of the work of her own hands and brain, from the embroidered carpets and draperies, the allegorically painted walls, and fitting mottoes, to many of the books on her shelves. But all this you can go and see, for it is open to whomsoever wills to go in, without money and without price; a church with a creed of one word—Love.
After this unexpected visit and service, we started off in pursuit of a hotel, and at sunset found ourselves at Woburn. This was not at all our intention; we were not ready to go home yet, and drove back towards Boston the next morning for more calls, then faced about and took a two days’ round-about for home, passing the old Wayside Inn in Sudbury on our way. We took our last dinner at the Lancaster House, called on friends, then drove around by Spec Pond, surprised the campers, and had a fine row in the “G. W.,” whose hold on our affections is only strengthened by absence. We took Jerry camping for a week, later in the season, and he was a great acquisition to camp life, but we must pass by the delights of that week, even our visit to the Shakers, and hasten home over Rice hill. The view was never so lovely as in that sunset glow. Our journey ended in golden glory, but we still feel it was not complete; and from the queries of some of our friends, it would seem as if they thought we did not have “much of a journey,” but it was one of our very best, and at Bar Harbor we were just the same distance from home in miles and time as we were at Berthier, Canada, two summers ago. It is all owing to that abrupt return by water, and sometime we hope to tell you how we drove to Boston, put Jerry on board boat for Bar Harbor, then finished up our Twentieth Phaeton Trip.
CHAPTER XIII.
DIXVILLE NOTCH AND THE NORTH SHORE.
“In a buggy”! How strange that sounds! Not half so nice as “in a phaeton.” Even after such a delightful journey as we have had in a buggy (there never was a more ugly name for anything so nice), we grieve to tell you the dear old phaeton has gone; not to pieces, like the one-hoss shay, but to be initiated into a new life, with new associations and environments, which is often like the elixir of life to people, and may give our phaeton another quarter of a century.
It went away a month before our journey, and every time we went to drive in the new buggy we found ourselves making comparisons. The seat is higher; it is not upholstered on the side, and it seems as if we should fall out; the floor is narrower. How strange it seems without shields—fenders, they say now! Then we would come to our senses and say, How foolish! Really, this is luxurious—leaning back, which we could not do comfortably in the phaeton, without a shawl for a pillow—how much room there will be without the bags in front! We shall enjoy it partly tipped back. How much lighter for Jerry! It is nice; of course we shall like it. The old phaeton would look shabby enough beside it, with the dilapidated top and faded brown cushions, but the ease of a phaeton “hung round it still.” What good times we did have in it!
And then we would wonder who would have it, and fancy some poor man taking it, who lived a little out of town, and had somebody’s pet horse to keep until he died a natural death. Would the “auras” of those twenty journeys take shape as he jogged about? They would be there, and if his eyes should be holden in his normal waking condition, we felt sure, should he fall asleep on his way home some sultry summer night, his dreams would be like a running panorama without geographical order, if the pictures of our journeys appeared chronologically. Along the Connecticut River, with a view from Mt. Holyoke, would be followed by Lake Winnipiseogee and the Isles of Shoals, Newport, Martha’s Vineyard, Boston suburbs, Berkshire Hills, Hudson River, Green Mountains, Lake George, Saratoga, White Mountains, and Boston, Vermont, Canada, Franconia Notch, Old Orchard Beach, New Jersey, Dixville Notch, Catskill Mountains, Narragansett Pier and Bar Harbor! Would the poor man be able to locate himself at once, when aroused by the familiar sound of the horse’s hoof on the barn floor? Ought we to tell him about it? We decided to entrust him to the manager of the panorama.