All the red glory of sunsetting hour,
Comes till I seem to lie lapped in bright dreams
Lulled by the lullaby murmur of streams.
James Kennedy.
Had I time to picture this level, grass-grown street, with ten or fifteen square box-looking houses, windowless, empty and desolate; a school-house with its long vacation of twenty-three years; a bank with heavy shutters and ponderous locks, whose floor, Time, the universal burglar, had undermined; two large furnaces with great rusty wheels, whose occupation was gone forever; a thousand tons of charcoal, untouched for a quarter of a century; thousands of bricks waiting for a builder; a real haunted house, whose flapping clap-boards contain more spirits than the Black Forests of Germany—a village so utterly desolate, that it has not even the vestige of a graveyard—if I could picture to you this village, as it appeared to me that weird midnight, lying so quiet,
"under the light of the solemn moon,"
you would realize as I did then, that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and that Goldsmith in his "Deserted Village" had not overdrawn the description of desolate Auburn.
By special request, we were permitted to sleep that night in the Haunted House and no doubt listened to the first crackling that the old fire-place had known for years. Many bedsteads in the old building were still standing, so we only needed bedding from the hotel to make us comfortable. As we went to sleep we expressed a wish to be interviewed in the still hours of the night by any ghosts or spirits who might happen to like our company; but the spirits must have been absent on a visit that evening, for we slept undisturbed until the old bell, suspended in a tree, rang out the cheery notes of "trout and pickerel." We understand that the Haunted House from that night lost its old-time reputation, and is now frequently brought into requisition as an "Annex," whenever the hotel or "Club House," as it is now called,[page 206] happens to be full. The "Deserted Village" is rich in natural beauty. Lakes Henderson and Sanford are near at hand, and the lovely Preston Ponds are only five miles distant.