They lead the unfettered spirit up, in triumph to its home.
A MONTICELLO DAY.
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BY ALFRED B. STREET.
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Monticello is one of the loveliest villages upon which the sun shines. It occupies, in two rows, the aides and summit of a steep hill, surrounded by orchards, grain-fields, and meadows; which in turn are girdled by the unbroken wilderness. The single street is formed by the broad turnpike, with smooth grassy margins that extend like carpets of emerald up to the very porches, from the edges of the highway. Two side-walks fringed with maples, (the most beautiful shade trees in the world) form, with their brown stripes, the only interruption to the smooth green margins above referred to. The street (or highway more properly speaking) is hard and smooth as a sea-beach, over which the wagon-wheel rolls as evenly and swiftly as over the surface of that very important invention of modern times, the Plank road. Indeed it is more like the glide of the rail-car over the T road than any thing else, and the way that a span of Halsey’s horses can whirl a carriage through the street of the village, “is a caution” to lazy folks.
The houses are mostly new and uniformly painted white, and peep out from their rows of maples in the most agreeable and picturesque manner. In fact, so sylvan is the whole appearance of Monticello, buried as it is amongst its leaves, that it looks like some huge bird’s nest in the branches of an enormous tree. It is an isolated place, too, tucked away behind the Shawanyunk Mountain, and although placed upon a hill, is as far removed from the busy world as it well could be. It is true, Hamilton’s red coach crawls daily from Newburgh on the Hudson, through it, carrying the mail with great regularity and despatch, (good conscience,) on its snail-like pace to Lake Erie, but if the line depended only for its continuance upon its passengers, its life would be short indeed. In fact, if Uncle Sam’s “pap” (as Uncle Jack says) were not freely bestowed, it would not really last longer than a chicken with the pip.
Such being the state of things, it may readily be imagined that we villagers have every thing to ourselves, as far as the great world without is concerned, and that we are very little troubled with any affairs except our own. It is true they furnish trouble enough of themselves, but they are generally of such a nature that the detachment of grannies and old maids from the main body of the village which take a most pious and praise-worthy care of the morals of the place, can usually settle them over a long “tea drink” at one or the other of their dwellings.
With these preliminaries I now proceed to endeavor to sketch the gliding of a summer’s day over our beautiful village, albeit my touches may be skill-less, and my colors faint.