"Where dust and mud the equal year divide."
The old inhabitants may be supposed to be reconciled to that dust, of which they are made, and to which they naturally expect in a few years to return. Thus Lowell finds it in his heart to sing the praises of Cambridge soil,
"Dear native town! whose choking elms each year
With eddying dust before their time turn gray,
Pining for rain,—to me thy dust is dear;
It glorifies the eve of Summer day."
But, however native Cantabs may feel, the temporary resident hails the friendly watering-cart, which appears at intervals in the streets, since the old town has changed itself into a city.
A flower-garden on the south side, separates Judge Story's house from the village blacksmith, who has had the rare happiness of being celebrated in the verses of his two fellow-townsmen, the poets Longfellow and Lowell;
"Under a spreading chestnut tree,
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arm
Are strong as iron bands.
"His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan,
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whatever he can,
And looks the whole world in the face
For he owes not any man.
"Week in, week out, from morn to night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell
When the evening sun is low.
"And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor."
Among the children who thus looked in upon the old smith in former days, was Lowell himself, who has embodied this juvenile reminiscence in a few lines, which may be appropriately inserted here, and the curious reader may contrast the image they contain, with the parallel one in the concluding lines from Longfellow, quoted above.
"How many times prouder than King on throne,
Loosed from the village school-dame's A's and B's,
Panting have I the creaky bellows blown,
And watched the pent volcano's red increase,
Then paused to see the ponderous sledge brought down
By that hard arm voluminous and brown,
From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees."
The village blacksmith is dead now; the fires which he lighted in the forge have gone out, and an unknown successor wields the sledge, which may still be heard as ever, from the piazza of his neighbor's house, and down the road on the other side, as far as the row of lindens which overshadow a mansion once inhabited by the worthy old Tory, Brattle, who has given his name to the street.
The external appearance of Judge Story's house does not add much to the poetry of its surroundings. It runs back in an irregular way, a long distance from the street, and at its furthermost end, in the second story, is, or used to be, the library, commanding the same view which constituted such a recommendation to Dick Swiveller's house, namely, the opposite side of the way. There is not, therefore, an opportunity for much romance to cluster about it, nor is its attractiveness increased, when the reader is reminded that the story beneath answered the purposes of a woodshed. But the house which witnessed the daily labors of such a man, need not covet or pretend to those outside attractions which it unquestionably lacks.