Pastoral Days; or, Memories of a New England Year

by W. Hamilton Gibson

There are magnificent rock-maples too, and silver-maples that shake down their little swarms of winged seeds. Tulip-trees and spotted buttonwoods grow side by side, and quivering aspens and white poplars are seen at every clearing. There are yellow birch-trunks frayed out with the wind, and great snake-like stems of grape-vine, that twist and writhe among the branches of the trees. There are hop hornbeams, and chestnuts, and—But there is no need to enumerate them all. Just think of every New England tree you ever knew, and add a score besides, and you will form a slight idea of the varied verdure that hems in this charming Housatonic drive, with its rocky roadside embroidered in trickling moss and fumitory; and rose-flowered mountain-raspberry growing so close upon the road that your pony takes a wayward nip, and plucks its blossomed tip as he passes.

Now comes an open level, with wide, expansive views, where every turn upon the road brings its fresh surprise, as some new combination of hazy mountain landscape towers above the distant river bend; and the flitting cloud shadows lead their capricious, undulating chase across the wooded slopes. The roadsides here are full of everchanging beauties too, with their trimmings of ornamental sunflowers, their picturesque old fences, and their clumps of purple-berried poke-weed, with here and there a yellow patch of toad-flax, and aromatic tufts of tansy hugging close against the fence. Even that clambering screen of clematis that trails over the shrubbery yonder cannot hide the scattered tips of crimson that already have appeared among the sumach leaves.

There are a thousand things one meets upon a country ride or ramble which at the time are allowed to pass with but a glance. The eye is surfeited and the mind confused with the continual pageantry. But months afterward, in the reveries about our winter fires, they all come back to us, with the added charm of reminiscence; and whether it be a crystal spring among a bank of ferns, or a thistle-top with its fluttering butterfly and inevitable bumblebee rolling in the tufted blossom, or a squirrel running along a rail, or perhaps a rattling grasshopper hovering in mid-air above the dusty road—no matter what, they all are welcome memories at our fireside, and draw our hearts still closer to the loveliness of nature.

This Housatonic road is rich in just such pastoral pictures. Two hours on such a course soon pass, when our pony whinnies at the welcome sight of the old log water-trough beyond—a landmark old and green when I was yet a boy, still nestling in its rocky bed, shadowed by the drooping hemlocks, still lavish with its overflowing bounty.

This benefactor by the way-side marks a turning-point in our journey, as we leave the grandeur of the Housatonic to pursue our way by the nooks and dingles of the wild Shepaug—a bubbling tributary whose happy waters sing of a varied experience. Now placid through the blossoming fields, now plunging down the precipice to ripple through a verdant valley, where, hemmed in at every turn, it seeks its only liberty beneath the rumbling of the old mill-wheels; and at last, ere it loses its identity in the swelling tide, leaving a mischievous and tumultuous record as it pours through the rocky cañon, and with surging, whirling volume carves huge caverns and fantastic statues in its massive bed of stone. Even now through the dark forest beyond we can hear the muffled roar, and for nearly a league farther as we ascend the long hill it comes to us in fitful whispers wafted on the changing breeze. Reaching the summit of this incline, we find ourselves on a hill-top wide and far-reaching, on right and left losing itself in wooded wold, while in front the level road diminishes to a point, surmounted by blue hills in the distance. Two miles on a pastoral hill-top, where golden-rod and tall spiræas cluster along the lichen-covered walls, where orange-lilies gleam among the alders, with now and then a blazing group of butterfly-plant or a dusty clump of milk-weed. The air is laden with the nut-like odor of the everlasting flowers all around us. The buzzing drum of the harvest-fly vibrates from every tree, and we hear the tinkling bell and lowing of the cattle in some neighboring field. Farther on, we look down from the edge of the plateau through the length of Happy Valley, with its winding stream, its barns and busy mills, its sunny homes glinting through the summer haze. On the left the lofty shadowed cliff known as “Steep-rock” towers against the evening sky, and again we catch the murmuring whiffs of the rushing stream in its sweeping bend beneath the overhanging precipice. A sharp turn round a jutting hill-side, and I meet a prospect that quickens the heart and makes the eye grow dim. There beyond, three miles “as flies the laden bee,” I linger on the welcome sight, as on its hill-top fair two steeples side by side betray the hidden town, my second home.

How lightly did I appreciate the fortunate journey when, twenty summers ago, I followed this road for the first time, when a boy of ten years, on my way to an unknown village, I looked across the landscape to the little spires on that distant hill! Little did I dream of the six years of unmixed happiness and precious experience that awaited me in that little Judea! I only knew that I was sadly quitting a happy home on my way to “boarding-school”—a school called the Snuggery, taught by a Mr. Snug, in a little village named Snug Hamlet, about twenty miles from Hometown.

There are some experiences in the life of every one which, however truthful, cannot be told but to elicit the doubtful nod or the warning finger of incredulity. They were such experiences as these, however, that made up the sum of my early life in that happy refuge called in modern parlance a “boarding-school”—a name as empty, a word as weak and tame in its significance, as poverty itself; no doubt abundantly expressive in its ordinary application, but here it is a mockery and a satire. This is not a “boarding-school;” it is a household, whose memories moisten the eye and stir the soul; to which its scattered members through the fleeting years look back as to a neglected home, with father and mother dear, whom they long once more to meet as in the tenderness of boyhood days; a cherished remembrance which, like the “house upon a hill, cannot be hid,” but sends abroad its light unto many hearts who in those early days sought the loving shelter; a bright star in the horizon of the past, a glow that ne’er grows dim, but only kindles and brightens with the flood of years. Yes, yes; I know it sounds like a dash of sentiment, but words of mine are feeble and impotent indeed when sought for the expression of an attachment so fond, of a love so deep.

Fifteen years ago, with a parting full of sorrow, I rode away from Snug Hamlet yonder in the village stage—a day that brought a depression that lingered long, and lingers still. Glowing, sunset-tinted fields glide by unnoticed now, as, with eyes intent on the distant hill, I look back through the lapse of time. A mile has gone without my knowing it, when a joyous laugh awakens me from my day-dreams. Two boys approach us on the road ahead, and, what might seem very strange to you, one wears a wooden boot-jack strung around his neck and dangling on his breast; but he carries his burden lightly and cheerfully. As they near the carriage I draw the rein, and they both pause by the roadside.

“Well, boys,” I ask, “where do you hail from?”

“We’re from the Snuggery, sir.”