The brown-threshers came next, and they were just as full of chatter and life as they were the year before. Birds never grow old, it seems to me, nor have I ever been able to determine when or where they die. The hunter kills but a very few, and those few of a certain kind. What becomes of the rest? They breed every spring in great numbers; but how, when, and where do they die? We do not find dead birds in the woods; at any rate, very few. Yes, the brown threshers were as young as ever. They looked very shabby and mussed when I last saw them in the fall; but now their brown clothes shone as cleanly as a Quaker-girl's shawl. They took up Nature's music-book, and rattled off all the songs, and glees, and anthems in it—very often making a medley of it, mixing the notes of the birds that were chanting around all together—and they often closed the performance with an original strain of their own, composed on the spot.
When the swallows and the martins came, I knew that spring was fully established. They appeared suddenly during the night; for when the May sun arose, they were twittering and wheeling through the air, shooting up and plunging down in a kind of delicious rapture. Their music was set on the staff of blue skies, south-west winds, and flowers. There was not a note of winter in it. The woods, and streams, and fields seemed to have been waiting for their melody, for all Nature went to work, and was soon clad in beauty, and light, and song.
CHAPTER XXVII.
A Railroad through Puddleford.—Effect on Squire Longbow.—Bright Prospects of Puddleford.—Change.—"The Styleses."—The New Justice.—Aunt Sonora's Opinions.—Ike Turtle grows too.—Venison disappears from among Men.—His Grave, and his Epitaph.
Reader, I have written for you the history of a year's residence at Puddleford. But the place is changed now—very much changed. It is not what it used to be—its people, its habits, are very different. This change was the result of a variety of causes. The first thing that happened to it—a startling event it was—a railroad was built plump through its heart. It was a road running a great distance, and it took Puddleford in its way merely because it happened to fall in its line. I shall never forget Squire Longbow's frenzied excitement the first time the locomotive came puffing and whistling in. He actually lost his dignity for the moment. He ran and wheezed after the steam-horse like a madman, lost his green eye-shade, and committed a very serious breach in the rear part of his pantaloons. He did not venture very near the machine at first, but sheltered himself behind a tree, where he could watch its panting and spitting without danger.
I recollect how pompously the Squire talked on this occasion. He said "all nater couldn't stop Puddleford having ten thousand inhabitants 'fore 'nother census—she'd be one of the ex-poriums (emporiums) of the West—it was nothing on airth that made Greece and Rome but these great etarnal improvements"—and as he was a kind of oracle among a large class, he infused a spirit of consequence and importance into those around him that was quite ludicrous. Ike Turtle, Sile Bates, the Beagles, and Swipes, and many others, actually mounted their Sunday clothes, and wore them every day—but whether Ike himself was in fun or earnest, no person could tell.
The building of this road was the cause of a great change certainly; yet it changed not the population itself, but substituted another in its stead. It brought in a class of persons who had money, and money is omnipotent everywhere. It brought different habits, thoughts, and feelings. The "Styles family" first purchased a large farm near the village. There was an air about them that fairly awed the Puddlefordians. They were petted, run after, imitated. One could hear nothing but "Young Mr. Styles," "Old Mr. Styles," "The elderly Mrs. Styles," "Miss Arabella Styles," "Miss Florinda Styles." Miss Florinda and Arabella wore flaring under-clothes in those days, and this fashion fairly upset the heads of the Puddleford ladies; and in less than a month I could not identify half the women of the place. Their shrunken forms, stuffed with skirts, were about the shape of little pyramids.
Purchases of farms and village property went on, year after year, until nearly every true Puddlefordian was ousted. The place has now, like the snake, cast its skin; and the old pioneers, they who hewed down the forest, and "bore the heat and burden of the day," are living around the outskirts of the village, with hardly a competence, or have emigrated to wilds still farther west.