The domination of unyielding law in the puny affairs of men—the unfathomableness of Mœra, the lot no man can escape—comes upon one afresh upon this hill-top. What clay we are in the hands of fate! “ἅπαντα τíχτει χθὼν πάλιν τε λαμβáνει,” cried Euripides—“all things the earth puts forth and takes again.”
But why should the efforts of men to build a human hive have here been wiped away—here where all nature is wholesome and in seeming unison with regulated human life? The air sparkles buoyantly up to your very eyes—and almost intoxicates you with its life and joy. Through its day-translucence crows cut their measured flight and brisker birds flitter, and when the young moon shines out of a warm west elegiac whippoorwills cry to the patient night.
Neither volcanic ashes nor flood, whirlwind nor earthquake—mere decay has here nullified men’s efforts for congregated life and work. The soil of the hill, porous and sandy, is of moderate fertility. Native oaks and chestnuts, slender birches and fragrant hemlocks, with undergrowths of coral-flowering laurel, clothe its slopes. Over its sandstone ledges brooks of soft water treble minor airs—before they go loitering among succulent grasses and spearmint and other thirsty brothers of the distant meadows.
Nearly two hundred years ago pioneers of a Roundhead, independent type—the type which led William of Orange across the Channel for preservation of that liberty which Englishmen for hundreds of years had spoken of as “antient”—such men broke this sod, till then untouched by axe or plough. They made clearings, and grouped their hand-hewn houses just where in cool mornings of summer they could see the mists roll up from their hill-locked pond to meet the rosy day; just where, when the sun sank behind the distant New York mountains, they could catch within their windows his last shaft of gold.
Here they laid their hearths and dwelt in primitive comfort. Their summers were unspeakably beautiful—and hard-working. Their autumns indescribably brilliant, hill-side and valley uniting to form a radiance God’s hand alone could hold. Their winters were of deep snows and cold winds and much cutting and burning of wood. The first voice of their virid spring came in the bird-calls of early March, when snow melted and sap mounted, and sugar maples ran syrup; when ploughs were sharpened, and steaming and patient oxen rested their sinews through the long, pious Sabbath.
Wandering over this village site, now of fenced-in fields, you find here and there a hearth and a few cobbles piled above it. The chimney-shaft has long since disappeared. You happen upon stone curbs, and look down to the dark waters of wells. You come upon bushes of old-fashioned, curled-petal, pink-sweet roses and snowy phlox, and upon tiger lilies flaunting odalisque faces before simple sweetbrier, and upon many another garden plant which “a handsome woman that had a fine hand”—as Izaak Walton said of her who made the trout fly—once set as border to her path. Possibly the very hand that planted these pinks held a bunch of their sweetness after it had grown waxen and cold. The pinks themselves are now choked by the pushing grass.
And along this line of gooseberry-bushes we trace a path from house to barn. Here was the fireplace. The square of small boulders yonder marks the barn foundation. Along this path the house-father bore at sunrise and sunset his pails of foaming milk. Under that elm spreading between living-room and barn little children of the family built pebble huts, in these rude confines cradling dolls which the mother had made from linen of her own weave, or the father whittled when snow had crusted the earth and made vain all his hauling and digging.
Those winters held genial hours. Nuts from the woods and cider from the orchard stood on the board near by. Home-grown wood blazed in the chimney; home-grown chestnuts, hidden in the ashes by busy children, popped to expectant hands; house-mothers sat with knitting and spinning, and the father and farm-men mended fittings and burnished tools for the spring work. Outside the stars glittered through a clear sky and the soundless earth below lay muffled in sleep.
Over yonder across the road was the village post-office, and not far away were stores of merchant supplies. But of these houses no vestige now remains. Where the post-house stood the earth is matted with ground-pine and gleaming with scarlet berries of the wintergreen. The wiping-out is as complete as that of the thousand trading-booths, long since turned to clay, of old Greek Mycenæ, or of the stalls of the ancient trading-folk dwelling between Jaffa and Jerusalem where Tell-ej-Jezari now lies.
The church of white clap-boards which these villagers used for praise and prayer—not a small temple—still abides. Many of the snowy houses of old New England worship pierce their luminous ether with graceful spires. But this meeting-house lifts a square, central bell-tower which now leans on one side as if weary with long standing. The old bell which summoned its people to their pews still hangs behind green blinds—a not unmusical town-crier. But use, life, good works have departed with those whom it exhorted to church duty, and in sympathy with all the human endeavor it once knew, but now fordone, in these days it never rings blithely, it can only be made to toll. Possibly it can only be made to toll because of the settling of its supporting tower. But the fact remains; and who knows if some wounded spirit may not be dwelling within its brazen curves, sick at heart with its passing and ineffective years?