July 9th.--Went with B------ to pay a visit to the shanties of the Irish
and Canadians. He says that they sell and exchange these small houses
among themselves continually. They may be built in three or four days,
and are valued at four or five dollars. When the turf that is piled
against the walls of some of them becomes covered with grass, it makes
quite a picturesque object. It was almost dusk--just candle-lighting
time--when we visited them. A young Frenchwoman, with a baby in her
arms, came to the door of one of them, smiling, and looking pretty and
happy. Her husband, a dark, black-haired, lively little fellow, caressed
the child, laughing and singing to it; and there was a red-bearded
Irishman, who likewise fondled the little brat. Then we could hear them
within the hut, gabbling merrily, and could see them moving about briskly
in the candlelight, through the window and open door. An old Irishwoman
sat in the door of another hut, under the influence of an extra dose of
rum,--she being an old lady of somewhat dissipated habits. She called to
B------, and began to talk to him about her resolution not to give up her
house: for it is his design to get her out of it. She is a true virago,
and, though somewhat restrained by respect for him, she evinced a sturdy
design to remain here through the winter, or at least for a considerable
time longer. He persisting, she took her stand in the doorway of the
hut, and stretched out her fist in a very Amazonian attitude. "Nobody,"
quoth she, "shall drive me out of this house, till my praties are out of
the ground." Then would she wheedle and laugh and blarney, beginning in
a rage, and ending as if she had been in jest. Meanwhile her husband
stood by very quiet, occasionally trying to still her; but it is to be
presumed, that, after our departure, they came to blows, it being a
custom with the Irish husbands and wives to settle their disputes with
blows; and it is said the woman often proves the better man. The
different families also have battles, and occasionally the Irish fight
with the Canadians. The latter, however, are much the more peaceable,
never quarrelling among themselves, and seldom with their neighbors.
They are frugal, and often go back to Canada with considerable sums of
money. B------ has gained much influence both with the Irish and the
French,--with the latter, by dint of speaking to them in their own
language. He is the umpire in their disputes, and their adviser, and
they look up to him as a protector and patron-friend. I have been struck
to see with what careful integrity and wisdom he manages matters among
them, hitherto having known him only as a free and gay young man. He
appears perfectly to understand their general character, of which he
gives no very flattering description. In these huts, less than twenty
feet square, he tells me that upwards of twenty people have sometimes
been lodged.
A description of a young lady who had formerly been insane, and now felt
the approach of a new fit of madness. She had been out to ride, had
exerted herself much, and had been very vivacious. On her return, she
sat down in a thoughtful and despondent attitude, looking very sad, but
one of the loveliest objects that ever were seen. The family spoke to
her, but she made no answer, nor took the least notice; but still sat
like a statue in her chair,--a statue of melancholy and beauty. At last
they led her away to her chamber.
We went to meeting this forenoon. I saw nothing remarkable, unless a
little girl in the next pew to us, three or four years old, who fell
asleep, with her bead in the lap of her maid, and looked very pretty: a
picture of sleeping innocence.
July 11th, Tuesday.--A drive with B------ to Hallowell, yesterday, where
we dined, and afterwards to Gardiner. The most curious object in this
latter place was the elegant new mansion of ------. It stands on the
site of his former dwelling, which was destroyed by fire.
The new building was estimated to cost about thirty thousand dollars; but
twice as much has already been expended, and a great deal more will be
required to complete it. It is certainly a splendid structure; the
material, granite from the vicinity. At the angles it has small,
circular towers; the portal is lofty and imposing. Relatively to the
general style of domestic architecture in our country, it well deserves
the name of castle or palace. Its situation, too, is fine, far retired
from the public road, and attainable by a winding carriage-drive;
standing amid fertile fields, and with large trees in the vicinity.
There is also a beautiful view from the mansion, adown the Kennebec.
Beneath some of the large trees we saw the remains of circular seats,
whereupon the family used to sit before the former house was burned down.
There was no one now in the vicinity of the place, save a man and a yoke
of oxen; and what he was about, I did not ascertain. Mr. ------ at
present resides in a small dwelling, little more than a cottage, beside
the main road, not far from the gateway which gives access to his palace.
At Gardiner, on the wharf, I witnessed the starting of the steamboat New
England for Boston. There was quite a collection of people, looking on
or taking leave of passengers,--the steam puffing,--stages arriving,
full-freighted with ladies and gentlemen. A man was one moment too late;
but running along the gunwale of a mud-scow, and jumping into a skiff, he
was put on board by a black fellow. The dark cabin, wherein, descending
from the sunshiny deck, it was difficult to discern the furniture,
looking-glasses, and mahogany wainscoting. I met two old college
acquaintances, O------, who was going to Boston, and B------ with whom we
afterwards drank a glass of wine at the hotel.
B------, Mons. S------, and myself continue to live in the same style as
heretofore. We appear mutually to be very well pleased with each other.
Mons. S------ displays many comical qualities, and manages to insure us
several hearty laughs every morning and evening,--those being the seasons
when we meet. I am going to take lessons from him in the pronunciation
of French. Of female society I see nothing. The only petticoat that
comes within our premises appertains to Nancy, the pretty, dark-eyed
maid-servant of the man who lives in the other part of the house.
On the road from Hallowell to Augusta we saw little booths, in two
places, erected on the roadside, where boys offered beer, apples, etc.,
for sale. We passed an Irishwoman with a child in her arms, and a heavy
bundle, and afterwards an Irishman with a light bundle, sitting by the
highway. They were husband and wife; and B------ says that an Irishman
and his wife, on their journeys, do not usually walk side by side, but
that the man gives the woman the heaviest burden to carry, and walks on
lightly ahead!
A thought comes into my mind: Which sort of house excites the most
contemptuous feelings in the beholder,--such a house as Mr.------'s, all
circumstances considered, or the board-built and turf-buttressed hovels
of these wild Irish, scattered about as if they had sprung up like
mushrooms, in the dells and gorges, and along the banks of the river?
Mushrooms, by the way, spring up where the roots of an old tree are
hidden under the ground.
Thursday, July 13th.--Two small Canadian boys came to our house
yesterday, with strawberries to sell. It sounds strangely to hear
children bargaining in French on the borders of Yankee-land. Among other
languages spoken hereabouts must be reckoned the wild Irish. Some of the
laborers on the mill-dam can speak nothing else. The intermixture of
foreigners sometimes gives rise to quarrels between them and the natives.
As we were going to the village yesterday afternoon, we witnessed the
beginning of a quarrel between a Canadian and a Yankee,--the latter
accusing the former of striking his oxen. B------ thrust himself between
and parted them; but they afterwards renewed their fray, and the
Canadian, I believe, thrashed the Yankee soundly,--for which he had to
pay twelve dollars. Yet he was but a little fellow.
Coming to the Mansion House about supper-time, we found somewhat of a
concourse of people, the Governor and Council being in session on the
subject of the disputed territory. The British have lately imprisoned a
man who was sent to take the census; and the Mainiacs are much excited on
the subject. They wish the Governor to order out the militia at once,
and take possession of the territory with the strong hand. There was a
British army-captain at the Mansion House; and an idea was thrown out
that it would be as well to seize upon him as a hostage. I would, for
the joke's sake, that it had been done. Personages at the tavern: the
Governor, somewhat stared after as he walked through the bar-room;
Councillors seated about, sitting on benches near the bar, or on the
stoop along the front of the house; the Adjutant-General of the State;
two young Blue-Noses, from Canada or the Provinces; a gentleman "thumbing
his hat" for liquor, or perhaps playing off the trick of the "honest
landlord" on some stranger. The decanters and wine-bottles on the move,
and the beer and soda founts pouring out continual streams, with a whiz.
Stage-drivers, etc., asked to drink with the aristocracy, and mine host
treating and being treated. Rubicund faces; breaths odorous of
brandy-and-water. Occasionally the pop of a champagne cork.
Returned home, and took a lesson in French of Mons. S------. I like him
very much, and have seldom met with a more honest, simple, and apparently
so well-principled a man; which good qualities I impute to his being, by
the father's side, of German blood. He looks more like a German--or, as
he says, like a Swiss--than a Frenchman, having very light hair and a
light complexion, and not a French expression. He is a vivacious little
fellow, and wonderfully excitable to mirth; and it is truly a sight to
see him laugh;--every feature partakes of his movement, and even his
whole body shares in it, as he rises and dances about the room. He has
great variety of conversation, commensurate with his experiences in life,
and sometimes will talk Spanish, ore rotundo,--sometimes imitate the
Catholic priests, chanting Latin songs for the dead, in deep, gruff,
awful tones, producing really a very strong impression,--then he will
break out into a light, French song, perhaps of love, perhaps of war,
acting it out, as if on the stage of a theatre: all this intermingled
with continual fun, excited by the incidents of the passing moment. He
has Frenchified all our names, calling B------ Monsieur Du Pont, myself
M. de L'Aubepine, and himself M. le Berger, and all, Knights of the
Round-Table. And we live in great harmony and brotherhood, as queer a
life as anybody leads, and as queer a set as may be found anywhere. In
his more serious intervals, he talks philosophy and deism, and preaches
obedience to the law of reason and morality; which law he says (and I
believe him) he has so well observed, that, notwithstanding his residence
in dissolute countries, he has never yet been sinful. He wishes me,
eight or nine weeks hence, to accompany him on foot to Quebec, and then
to Niagara and New York. I should like it well, if my circumstances and
other considerations would permit. What pleases much in Mons. S------ is
the simple and childlike enjoyment he finds in trifles, and the joy with
which he speaks of going back to his own country, away from the dull
Yankees, who here misunderstand and despise him. Yet I have never heard
him speak harshly of them. I rather think that B------ and I will be
remembered by him with more pleasure than anybody else in the country;
for we have sympathized with him, and treated him kindly, and like a
gentleman and an equal; and he comes to us at night as to home and
friends.
I went down to the river to-day to see B------ fish for salmon with a
fly,--a hopeless business; for he says that only one instance has been
known in the United States of salmon being taken otherwise than with a
net. A few chubs were all the fruit of his piscatory efforts. But while
looking at the rushing and rippling stream, I saw a great fish, some six
feet long and thick in proportion, suddenly emerge at whole length, turn
a somerset, and then vanish again beneath the water. It was of a
glistening, yellowish brown, with its fins all spread, and looking very
strange and startling, darting out so lifelike from the black water,
throwing itself fully into the bright sunshine, and then lost to sight
and to pursuit. I saw also a long, flat-bottomed boat go up the river,
with a brisk wind, and against a strong stream. Its sails were of
curious construction: a long mast, with two sails below, one on each side
of the boat, and a broader one surmounting them. The sails were colored
brown, and appeared like leather or skins, but were really cloth. At a
distance, the vessel looked like, or at least I compared it to, a
monstrous water-insect skimming along the river. If the sails had been
crimson or yellow, the resemblance would have been much closer. There
was a pretty spacious raised cabin in the after part of the boat. It
moved along lightly, and disappeared between the woody banks. These
boats have the two parallel sails attached to the same yard, and some
have two sails, one surmounting the other. They trade to Waterville and
thereabouts,--names, as "Paul Pry," on their sails.
Saturday, July 15th.--Went with B------ yesterday to visit several Irish
shanties, endeavoring to find out who had stolen some rails of a fence.
At the first door at which we knocked (a shanty with an earthen mound
heaped against the wall, two or three feet thick), the inmates were not
up, though it was past eight o'clock. At last a middle-aged woman showed
herself, half dressed, and completing her toilet. Threats were made of
tearing down her house; for she is a lady of very indifferent morals, and
sells rum. Few of these people are connected with the mill-dam,--or, at
least, many are not so, but have intruded themselves into the vacant huts
which were occupied by the mill-dam people last year. In two or three
places hereabouts there is quite a village of these dwellings, with a
clay and board chimney, or oftener an old barrel, smoked and charred with
the fire. Some of their roofs are covered with sods, and appear almost
subterranean. One of the little hamlets stands on both sides of a deep
dell, wooded and bush-grown, with a vista, as it were, into the heart of
a wood in one direction, and to the broad, sunny river in the other:
there was a little rivulet, crossed by a plank, at the bottom of the
dell. At two doors we saw very pretty and modest-looking young women,--
one with a child in her arms. Indeed, they all have innumerable little
children; and they are invariably in good health, though always dirty of
face. They come to the door while their mothers are talking with the
visitors, standing straight up on their bare legs, with their little
plump bodies protruding, in one hand a small tin saucepan, and in the
other an iron spoon, with unwashed mouths, looking as independent as any
child or grown person in the land. They stare unabashed, but make no
answer when spoken to. "I've no call to your fence, Misser B------." It
seems strange that a man should have the right, unarmed with any legal
instrument, of tearing down the dwelling-houses of a score of families,
and driving the inmates forth without a shelter. Yet B------ undoubtedly
has this right; and it is not a little striking to see how quietly these
people contemplate the probability of his exercising it,--resolving,
indeed, to burrow in their holes as long as may be, yet caring about as
little for an ejectment as those who could find a tenement anywhere, and
less. Yet the women, amid all the trials of their situation, appear to
have kept up the distinction between virtue and vice; those who can claim
the former will not associate with the latter. When the women travel
with young children, they carry the baby slung at their backs, and
sleeping quietly. The dresses of the new-comers are old-fashioned,
making them look aged before their time.
Monsieur S------ shaving himself yesterday morning. He was in excellent
spirits, and could not keep his tongue or body still, more than long
enough to make two or three consecutive strokes at his beard. Then he
would turn, flourishing his razor and grimacing joyously, enacting droll
antics, breaking out into scraps and verses of drinking-songs, "A boire!
a boire!"--then laughing heartily, and crying, "Vive la gaite!" then
resuming his task, looking into the glass with grave face, on which,
however, a grin would soon break out anew, and all his pranks would be
repeated with variations. He turned this foolery to philosophy, by
observing that mirth contributed to goodness of heart, and to make us
love our fellow-creatures. Conversing with him in the evening, he
affirmed, with evident belief in the truth of what he said, that he would
have no objection, except that it would be a very foolish thing, to
expose his whole heart, his whole inner man, to the view of the world.
Not that there would not be much evil discovered there; but, as he was
conscious of being in a state of mental and moral improvement, working
out his progress onward, he would not shrink from such a scrutiny. This
talk was introduced by his mentioning the "Minister's Black Veil," which
he said he had seen translated into French, as an exercise, by a Miss
Appleton of Bangor.
Saw by the river-side, late in the afternoon, one of the above-described
boats going into the stream with the water rippling at the prow, from the
strength of the current and of the boat's motion. By and by comes down a
raft, perhaps twenty yards long, guided by two men, one at each end,--the
raft itself of boards sawed at Waterville, and laden with square bundles
of shingles and round bundles of clapboards. "Friend," says one man,
"how is the tide now?"--this being important to the onward progress.
They make fast to a tree, in order to wait for the tide to rise a little
higher. It would be pleasant enough to float down the Kennebec on one of
these rafts, letting the river conduct you onward at its own pace,
leisurely displaying to you all the wild or ordered beauties along its
banks, and perhaps running you aground in some peculiarly picturesque
spot, for your longer enjoyment of it. Another object, perhaps, is a
solitary man paddling himself down the river in a small canoe, the light,
lonely touch of his paddle in the water making the silence seem deeper.
Every few minutes a sturgeon leaps forth, sometimes behind you, so that
you merely hear the splash, and, turning hastily around, see nothing but
the disturbed water. Sometimes he darts straight on end out of a quiet
black spot on which your eyes happen to be fixed, and, when even his tail
is clear of the surface, he falls down on his side and disappears.
On the river-bank, an Irishwoman washing some clothes, surrounded by her
children, whose babbling sounds pleasantly along the edge of the shore;
and she also answers in a sweet, kindly, and cheerful voice, though an
immoral woman, and without the certainty of bread or shelter from day to
day. An Irishman sitting angling on the brink with an alder pole and a
clothes-line. At frequent intervals, the scene is suddenly broken by a
loud report like thunder, rolling along the banks, echoing and
reverberating afar. It is a blast of rocks. Along the margin, sometimes
sticks of timber made fast, either separately or several together; stones
of some size, varying the pebbles and sand; a clayey spot, where a
shallow brook runs into the river, not with a deep outlet, but finding
its way across the bank in two or three single runlets. Looking upward
into the deep glen whence it issues, you see its shady current.
Elsewhere, a high acclivity, with the beach between it and the river, the
ridge broken and caved away, so that the earth looks fresh and yellow,
and is penetrated by the nests of birds. An old, shining tree-trunk,
half in and half out of the water. An island of gravel, long and narrow,
in the centre of the river. Chips, blocks of wood, slabs, and other
scraps of lumber, strewed along the beach; logs drifting down. The high
bank covered with various trees and shrubbery, and, in one place, two or
three Irish shanties.
Thursday, July 20th.--A drive yesterday afternoon to a pond in the
vicinity of Augusta, about nine miles off, to fish for white perch.
Remarkables: the steering of the boat through the crooked, labyrinthine
brook, into the open pond,--the man who acted as pilot,--his talking with
B------ about politics, the bank, the iron money of "a king who came to
reign, in Greece, over a city called Sparta,"--his advice to B------ to
come amongst the laborers on the mill-dam, because it stimulated them "to
see a man grinning amongst them." The man took hearty tugs at a bottle
of good Scotch whiskey, and became pretty merry. The fish caught were
the yellow perch, which are not esteemed for eating; the white perch, a
beautiful, silvery, round-backed fish, which bites eagerly, runs about
with the line while being pulled up, makes good sport for the angler, and
an admirable dish; a great chub; and three horned pouts, which swallow
the hook into their lowest entrails. Several dozen fish were taken in an
hour or two, and then we returned to the shop where we had left our horse
and wagon, the pilot very eccentric behind us. It was a small, dingy
shop, dimly lighted by a single inch of candle, faintly disclosing
various boxes, barrels standing on end, articles hanging from the
ceiling; the proprietor at the counter, whereon appear gin and brandy,
respectively contained in a tin pint-measure and an earthenware jug, with
two or three tumblers beside them, out of which nearly all the party
drank; some coming up to the counter frankly, others lingering in the
background, waiting to be pressed, two paying for their own liquor and
withdrawing. B------ treated them twice round. The pilot, after
drinking his brandy, gave a history of our fishing expedition, and
how many and how large fish we caught. B------ making acquaintances
and renewing them, and gaining great credit for liberality and
free-heartedness,--two or three boys looking on and listening to the
talk,--the shopkeeper smiling behind his counter, with the tarnished tin
scales beside him,--the inch of candle burning down almost to extinction.
So we got into our wagon, with the fish, and drove to Robinson's tavern,
almost five miles off, where we supped and passed the night. In the
bar-room was a fat old countryman on a journey, and a quack doctor of the
vicinity, and an Englishman with a peculiar accent. Seeing B------'s
jointed and brass-mounted fishing-pole, he took it for a theodolite, and
supposed that we had been on a surveying expedition. At supper, which
consisted of bread, butter, cheese, cake, doughnuts, and gooseberry-pie,
we were waited upon by a tall, very tall woman, young and maiden-looking,
yet with a strongly outlined and determined face. Afterwards we found
her to be the wife of mine host. She poured out our tea, came in when we
rang the table-bell to refill our cups, and again retired. While at
supper, the fat old traveller was ushered through the room into a
contiguous bedroom. My own chamber, apparently the best in the house,
had its walls ornamented with a small, gilt-framed, foot-square
looking-glass, with a hairbrush hanging beneath it; a record of the
deaths of the family written on a black tomb, in an engraving, where a
father, mother, and child were represented in a graveyard, weeping over
said tomb; the mourners dressed in black, country-cut clothes; the
engraving executed in Vermont. There was also a wood engraving of the
Declaration of Independence, with fac-similes of the autographs; a
portrait of the Empress Josephine, and another of Spring. In the two
closets of this chamber were mine hostess's cloak, best bonnet, and
go-to-meeting apparel. There was a good bed, in which I slept tolerably
well, and, rising betimes, ate breakfast, consisting of some of our own
fish, and then started for Augusta. The fat old traveller had gone off
with the harness of our wagon, which the hostler had put on to his horse
by mistake. The tavern-keeper gave us his own harness, and started in
pursuit of the old man, who was probably aware of the exchange, and well
satisfied with it.
Our drive to Augusta, six or seven miles, was very pleasant, a heavy rain
having fallen during the night, and laid the oppressive dust of the day
before. The road lay parallel with the Kennebec, of which we
occasionally had near glimpses. The country swells back from the river
in hills and ridges, without any interval of level ground; and there were
frequent woods, filling up the valleys or crowning the summits. The land
is good, the farms look neat, and the houses comfortable. The latter are
generally but of one story, but with large barns; and it was a good sign,
that, while we saw no houses unfinished nor out of repair, one man at
least had found it expedient to make an addition to his dwelling. At the
distance of more than two miles, we had a view of white Augusta, with its
steeples, and the State-House, at the farther end of the town.
Observable matters along the road were the stage,--all the dust of
yesterday brushed off, and no new dust contracted,--full of passengers,
inside and out; among them some gentlemanly people and pretty girls, all
looking fresh and unsullied, rosy, cheerful, and curious as to the face
of the country, the faces of passing travellers, and the incidents of
their journey; not yet damped, in the morning sunshine, by long miles of
jolting over rough and hilly roads,--to compare this with their
appearance at midday, and as they drive into Bangor at dusk;--two women
dashing along in a wagon, and with a child, rattling pretty speedily down
hill;--people looking at us from the open doors and windows;--the
children staring from the wayside;--the mowers stopping, for a moment,
the sway of their scythes;--the matron of a family, indistinctly seen at
some distance within the house, her head and shoulders appearing through
the window, drawing her handkerchief over her bosom, which had been
uncovered to give the baby its breakfast,--the said baby, or its
immediate predecessor, sitting at the door, turning round to creep away
on all fours;--a man building a flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he
talked with B------ about the Boundary question, and swore fervently in
favor of driving the British "into hell's kitchen" by main force.
Colonel B------, the engineer of the mill-dam, is now here, after about a
fortnight's absence. He is a plain country squire, with a good figure,
but with rather a heavy brow; a rough complexion; a gait stiff, and a
general rigidity of manner, something like that of a schoolmaster. He
originated in a country town, and is a self-educated man. As he walked
down the gravelpath to-day, after dinner, he took up a scythe, which one
of the mowers had left on the sward, and began to mow, with quite a
scientific swing. On the coming of the mower, he laid it down, perhaps a
little ashamed of his amusement. I was interested in this; to see a man,
after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying whether his
arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his youth,--
mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in his
shirt-sleeves,--and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery beneath
a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then went to
oversee the laborers at the mill-dam.
Monday, July, 24th.--I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in
the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,--the former time at
noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive,
there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the
forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and
babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in a
little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the
brook, there was a long vista,--now ripples, now smooth and glassy
spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking up the channel; while the trees
stood upon either side, mostly straight, but here and there a branch
thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning over,--
not bending,--but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and ragged;
birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead, leafless
pine, rising white and lonely, though closely surrounded by others.
Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the water;
now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described, looking as
if it had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the workman, doing his
job by rough and ponderous strength,--now chancing to hew it away
smoothly and cleanly, now carelessly smiting, and making gaps, or piling
on the slabs of rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In the interstices
grow brake and broad-leaved forest-grass. The trees that spring from the
top of this wall have their roots pressing close to the rock, so that
there is no soil between; they cling powerfully, and grasp the crag
tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are so thick,
that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost among
confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,--a narrow strip of
bright blue sky above, the sunshine falling lustrously down, and making
the pathway of the brook luminous below. Entering among the thickets, I
find the soil strewn with old leaves of preceding seasons, through which
may be seen a black or dark mould; the roots of trees stretch frequently
across the path; often a moss-grown brown log lies athwart, and when you
set your foot down, it sinks into the decaying substance,--into the heart
of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace
themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or
thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and
perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery;
sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump
of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this tangled
shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are not trodden
through, yet plain enough to the eye, winding gently to avoid tree-trunks
and rocks and little hillocks. In the more open ground, the aspect of a
tall, fire-blackened stump, standing alone, high up on a swell of land,
that rises gradually from one side of the brook, like a monument.
Yesterday, I passed a group of children in this solitary valley,--two
boys, I think, and two girls. One of the little girls seemed to have
suffered some wrong from her companions, for she was weeping and
complaining violently. Another time, I came suddenly on a small Canadian
boy, who was in a hollow place, among the ruined logs of an old causeway,
picking raspberries,--lonely among bushes and gorges, far up the wild
valley,--and the lonelier seemed the little boy for the bright sunshine,
that showed no one else in a wide space of view except him and me.
Remarkable items: the observation of Mons. S------ when B------ was
saying something against the character of the French people,--"You ought
not to form an unfavorable judgment of a great nation from mean fellows
like me, strolling about in a foreign country." I thought it very noble
thus to protest against anything discreditable in himself personally
being used against the honor of his country. He is a very singular
person, with an originality in all his notions;--not that nobody has ever
had such before, but that he has thought them out for himself. He told
me yesterday that one of his sisters was a waiting-maid in the Rocher de
Caucale. He is about the sincerest man I ever knew, never pretending to
feelings that are not in him,--never flattering. His feelings do not
seem to be warm, though they are kindly. He is so single-minded that he
cannot understand badinage, but takes it all as if meant in earnest,--a
German trait. He values himself greatly on being a Frenchman, though all
his most valuable qualities come from Germany. His temperament is cool
and pure, and he is greatly delighted with any attentions from the
ladies. A short time since, a lady gave him a bouquet of roses and
pinks; he capered and danced and sang, put it in water, and carried it to
his own chamber; but he brought it out for us to see and admire two or
three times a day, bestowing on it all the epithets of admiration in the
French language,--"Superbe! magnifique!" When some of the flowers began
to fade, he made the rest, with others, into a new nosegay, and consulted
us whether it would be fit to give to another lady. Contrast this French
foppery with his solemn moods, when we sit in the twilight, or after
B------ is abed, talking of Christianity and Deism, of ways of life, of
marriage, of benevolence,--in short, of all deep matters of this world
and the next. An evening or two since, he began singing all manner of
English songs,--such as Mrs. Hemans's "Landing of the Pilgrims," "Auld
Lang Syne," and some of Moore's,--the singing pretty fair, but in the
oddest tone and accent. Occasionally he breaks out with scraps from
French tragedies, which he spouts with corresponding action. He
generally gets close to me in these displays of musical and histrionic
talent. Once he offered to magnetize me in the manner of Monsieur
P------.
