Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

But at last—at last—spring did come at Poganuc! This marvel and mystery of the new creation did finally take place there every year, in spite of every appearance to the contrary. Long after the blue-bird that had sung the first promise had gone back into his own celestial ether, the promise that he sang was fulfilled.

Like those sweet, foreseeing spirits, that on high, bare tree-tops of human thought pour forth songs of hope in advance of their age and time, our blue-bird was gifted with the sure spirit of prophecy; and, though the winds were angry and loud, though snows lay piled and deep for long weeks after, though ice and frost and hail armed themselves in embattled forces, yet the sun behind them all kept shining and shining, every day longer and longer, every day drawing nearer and nearer, till the snows passed away like a bad dream, and the brooks woke up and began to laugh and gurgle, and the ice went out of the ponds. Then the pussy-willows threw out their soft catkins, and the ferns came up with their woolly hoods on, like prudent old house mothers, looking to see if it was yet time to unroll their tender greens, and the white blossoms of the shad-blow and the tremulous tags of the birches and alders shook themselves gaily out in the woods. Then under brown rustling leaf-banks came the white waxy shells of the trailing arbutus with its pink buds, fair as a winter's dawn on snow; then the blue and white hepaticas opened their eyes, and cold, sweet white violets starred the moist edges of water courses, and great blue violets opened large eyes in the shadows, and the white and crimson trilliums unfurled under the flickering lace-work shadows of the yet leafless woods; the red columbine waved its bells from the rocks, and great tufts of golden cowslips fringed the borders of the brooks. Then came in flocks the delicate wind-flower family: anemones, starry white, and the crow foot, with its pink outer shell, and the spotted adder's tongue, with its waving yellow bells of blossom. Then, too, the honest, great green leaves of the old skunk cabbage, most refreshing to the eye in its hardy, succulent greenness, though an abomination to the nose of the ill-informed who should be tempted to gather them. In a few weeks the woods, late so frozen—hopelessly-buried in snow drifts—were full of a thousand beauties and delicacies of life and motion, and flowers bloomed on every hand. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth."

And, not least, the opening season had set free the imprisoned children; and Dolly and the boys, with Spring at their heels, had followed the courses of the brooks and the rippling brown shallows of Poganuc River for many a blissful hour, and the parsonage had every where been decorated with tumblers and tea-cups holding floral offerings of things beautiful at the time they were gathered, but becoming rather a matter of trial to the eye of exact housekeeping. Yet both Mrs. Cushing and Nabby had a soft heart for Dolly's flowers, sharing themselves the general sense of joy for the yearly deliverance of which they were the signs and seals. And so the work of renewing the face of the earth went on from step to step. The forest hills around Poganuc first grew misty with a gentle haze of pink and lilac, which in time changed to green and then to greener shades, till at last the full-clothed hills stood forth in the joy of re-creation, and, as of old, "all the trees of the field clapped their hands."

Poganuc in its summer dress was a beautiful place. Its main street had a row of dignified white houses, with deep door-yards and large side-gardens, where the great scarlet peony flamed forth, where were generous tufts of white lilies, with tall spires of saintly blossoms, and yellow lilies with their faint sweet perfume, and all the good old orthodox flowers of stately family and valid pretensions. In all the door-yards and along the grassy streets on either side were overshadowing, long-branching trees, forming a roof of verdure, a green upper world from whose recesses birds dropped down their songs in languages unknown to us mortals. Who shall interpret what is meant by the sweet jargon of robin and oriole and bobolink, with their endless reiterations? Something wiser, perhaps, than we dream of in our lower life here.

Not a bit, however, did Hiel Jones trouble his head on this subject as he came in on his high stage seat in lordly style on the evening of the third of July. Far other cares were in Hiel's head, for to-morrow was the glorious Fourth—the only really secular fête known to the Yankee mind—and a great celebration thereof had been resolved on by the magnates of Poganuc, and Hiel was captain of the "Poganuc Rangers"—a flourishing militia company which was to be the ornament of the forthcoming celebration.

It had been agreed for that time to drop all political distinctions. Federalists and Democrats, Town Hill folk and outside folk, were all of one mind and spirit to make this a celebration worthy of Poganuc Center and the great cause of American Independence. A veritable cannon had been hauled up upon the village green and fired once or twice to relieve the bursting impatience of the boys and men who had helped put it there. The flag with its stars and stripes was already waving from the top of the Court-house, and a platform was being put up in the Meeting-house, and people were running this way and that, and standing in house-doors, and talking with each other over fences, in a way that showed that something was impending.

Hiel sprang from his box, and, after attending to his horses, speedily appeared on the green to see to things—for how could the celebration to-morrow be properly presented without Hiel's counsels?

"Look here, now, boys," he said to the group assembled around the cannon, "don't be a burnin' out yer powder. Keep it for to-morrow. Let her be now; ye don't want to keep bangin' and bangin' afore the time. To-morrow mornin' we'll let 'er rip bright and early, and wake all the folks. Clear out, now, and go home to yer suppers, and don't be a blowin' yerselves up with powder so that ye can't see the show to-morrow."

Hiel then proceeded into the Meeting-house and criticised proceedings there.