Presently the path became plainer, and as I glanced along its vista, my eye caught a flash of bright yellow gleaming from something at a distance. The object was shaped like a chimney, but it seemed to spring from the ground among the scrub-oaks. The path began to descend, at first gradually, then more abruptly, and I discovered that there was winding through the barrens ahead of me a small river, which a moment’s consideration told me must be the Chocorua River, on its way to the Bearcamp. Beyond the river was a small clearing and in it stood a red and white house with brilliant yellow chimneys. Then the land rose again abruptly, inclosing the little meadow and its cottage between high walls of sand, scrub, and pines.
Surprised to find an inhabited house in the heart of the plains, where I had supposed nothing but mayflowers and chewinks lived to break the monotony of scrub and pine, I pushed on to learn more of the place. When the path came to the river it crossed by a rustic bridge formed of a large bow-shaped tree with pieces of board nailed to it, and a strong hand-rail braced among its broken branches. The bridge was really artistic, as well as ingenious in construction. From its farther end I could see the whole of the tiny valley of which the mysterious house was the gay capital. Five or six acres of grass-land and pasture were surrounded by woods and sand hills. Three cows fed along the river bank. Near the house was a neatly fenced garden, and as I came to the fence I found it crossed by a real stile with three steps up and two steps down, and a rail to lean upon.
My approach had, ere this, attracted the attention of the inhabitants of the hidden valley, and five heads were visible at windows, house angle, and fence corners. I crossed the stile and gained the little piazza. The garrison massed around its commander and mother, who was ironing a white apron on the kitchen table. Strong, plump, and smiling, she was proud of her little army,—a boy of fourteen, with soft black eyes, black hair, and the rich color of the Acadian peasant glowing on his cheeks; three tow-headed girls, with their mother’s blue eyes, and a fifth, a girl of two summers, with beauty and dignity enough for a duke’s darling. No overtures of mine were sufficient to conquer this haughty little being’s reserve. She would have nothing of me, and finally intimated a desire that I should move on, and leave her undisturbed in her apple-eating. This I did, taking a farewell look at the cozy house from the crest of the sand-hills which rose between it and the railway. From the ridge I could see many a mile of forest, and many a mountain peak, none fairer than Chocorua. A grouse rose from the scrub at my feet, and flew nearly an eighth of a mile before alighting.
The little child’s beauty haunted me as I strolled down the railway track, and I wondered what her future would be if she grew up in that snug nook in the woods and sand; what her character would be with its mingling of Celtic, Gallic, and Saxon elements; frozen in the northern winter and burned under the hot summer suns of the Ossipee plains.
At last the train came and bore me away towards the city. The sun sank in orange splendor behind the Ossipees, and then the night overwhelmed color and form in its shadows, and left the mind freer in its musings. What had the day brought forth at the polls? Had the party of past glories and present decay won another of its wonderful series of victories, or had the people risen in their might and spoken for reform? I hoped for some gleam of news before the journey was over, but Portsmouth, Newburyport, Salem, and Lynn were all passed without tidings of what the day had done. Even in Boston, with its narrow streets filled with restless rivers of men and women, there seemed to be no word of victory or defeat.
At half past ten I reached a small room high in one of the great newspaper offices on Washington Street. Its windows looked out upon a strange sight. Far below me was a vast expanse of human heads upon which shone the bluish white glare of the hooded electric lamps. As white bubbles, densely spread upon the pale green of the ocean’s water in some rock-rimmed grotto, surge now out, now in; to left, to right; advancing, retreating; crowding or separating; so those countless human heads swayed first one way, then another, moved by fickle eddies and forces hard to understand. Wild cries came from the crowd, cheers, jeers, and yells of pain or brutal merriment.
Inside the room the wearisome clicking of a telegraph operator’s machine charmed a circle of eager men and women. As sheet after sheet was written by the operator, they passed from hand to hand. Some of those present read them nervously, others, really intensely concerned, seemed almost indifferent. Now and then hearty applause greeted a dispatch, or deep regret was expressed at some friend’s defeat; but as a rule the fragmentary news was received silently. Midnight passed, and then, as the morning hours wore on, we knew that the people had achieved one of the most remarkable transfers of political power ever accomplished in the Union. Still, the result in Massachusetts was in doubt, and even those who watched until dawn finally sought sleep without knowing how the smaller cities had settled the great governorship contest.
Before sleep came to me, a panorama of the day swept in feverish review across my closed eyelids. I saw the surging mob in Washington Street, the group around the telegraph machine, the motley crowd in the Tamworth town-hall, the baby beauty of the Ossipee plains, and then, like a benediction, came a vision of Chocorua, snow-capped and immutable in a pale blue sky, with the rosy light of the clear November morning flooding its wondrous peak.
A WINTRY WILDERNESS.
North of the Sandwich Mountains, inclosed by a circle of sombre peaks, there once lay a beautiful lake. Centuries ago its outflowing stream, now called Swift River, cut so deeply between the spurs of Chocorua and Bear mountains that the greater part of the lake drained away into the Saco at Conway, leaving its level bed a fair and rich-soiled intervale.