A little dog, named Snapper, the same who stands on his hind legs,
appears to be a roguish little dog, and the other day he stole one of the
servant-girl's shoes, and ran into the street with it. Being pursued, he
would lift the shoe in his mouth (while it almost dragged on the ground),
and run a little way, then lie down with his paws on it, and wait to be
pursued again.
August 11th.--This morning, it being cloudy and boding of rain, the
clouds had settled upon the mountains, both on the summits and ridges,
all round the town, so that there seemed to be no way of gaining access
to the rest of the world, unless by climbing above the clouds. By and by
they partially dispersed, giving glimpses of the mountain ramparts
through their obscurity, the separate clouds lying heavily upon the
mountain's breast. In warm mornings, after rain, the mist breaks forth
from the forests on the ascent of the mountains, like smoke,--the smoke
of a volcano; then it soars up, and becomes a cloud in heaven. But these
clouds to-day were real rain-clouds. Sometimes, it is said, while
laboring up the mountain-side, they suddenly burst, and pour down their
moisture in a cataract, sweeping all before it.
Every new aspect of the mountains, or view from a different position,
creates a surprise in the mind.
Scenes and characters:--A young country fellow, twenty or thereabouts,
decently dressed, pained with the toothache. A doctor, passing on
horseback, with his black leather saddle-bags behind him, a thin,
frosty-haired man. Being asked to operate, he looks at the tooth, lances
the gum, and the fellow being content to be dealt with on the spot, he
seats himself in a chair on the stoop with great heroism. The doctor
produces a rusty pair of iron forceps; a man holds the patient's head;
the doctor perceives that, it being a difficult tooth to get at, wedged
between the two largest in his jaws, he must pull very hard; and the
instrument is introduced. A turn of the doctor's hand; the patient
begins to utter a cry, but the tooth comes out first, with four prongs.
The patient gets up, half amazed, pays the doctor ninepence, pockets the
tooth, and the spectators are in glee and admiration.
There was a fat woman, a stage-passenger to-day,--a wonder how she could
possibly get through the door, which seemed not so wide as she. When she
put her foot on the step, the stage gave a great lurch, she joking all
the while. A great, coarse, red-faced dame. Other passengers,--three or
four slender Williamstown students, a young girl, and a man with one
leg and two crutches.
One of the most sensible men in this village is a plain, tall, elderly
person, who is overseeing the mending of a road,--humorous, intelligent,
with much thought about matters and things; and while at work he has a
sort of dignity in handling the hoe or crow-bar, which shows him to be
the chief. In the evening he sits under the stoop, silent and observant
from under the brim of his hat; but, occasion calling, he holds an
argument about the benefit or otherwise of manufactories or other things.
A simplicity characterizes him more than appertains to most Yankees.
A man in a pea-green frock-coat, with velvet collar. Another in a
flowered chintz frock-coat. There is a great diversity of hues in
garments. A doctor, a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced,
brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily. He sat down on the step
of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and
walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait,
attended by a fine Newfoundland dog.
A barouche with driver returned from beyond Greenfield or Troy empty, the
passengers being left at the former place. The driver stops here for the
night, and, while washing, enters into talk with an old man about the
different roads over the mountain.
People washing themselves at a common basin in the bar-room! and using
the common hair-brushes! perhaps with a consciousness of praiseworthy
neatness!
A man with a cradle on his shoulder, having been cradling oats. I
attended a child's funeral yesterday afternoon. There was an assemblage
of people in a plain, homely apartment. Most of the men were dressed in
their ordinary clothes, and one or two were in shirt-sleeves. The coffin
was placed in the midst of us, covered with a velvet pall. A bepaid
clergyman prayed (the audience remaining seated, while he stood up at the
head of the coffin), read a passage of Scripture and commented upon it.
While he read and prayed and expounded there was a heavy thunder-storm
rumbling among the surrounding hills, and the lightning flashed fiercely
through the gloomy room; and the preacher alluded to GOD's voice of
thunder.
It is the custom in this part of the country--and perhaps extensively in
the interior of New England--to bury the dead first in a charnel-house,
or common tomb, where they remain till decay has so far progressed as to
secure them from the resurrectionists. They are then reburied, with
certain ceremonies, in their own peculiar graves.
O. E. S------, a widower of forty or upwards, with a son of twelve and a
pair of infant twins. He is a sharp, shrewd Yankee, with a Yankee's
license of honesty. He drinks sometimes more than enough, and is guilty
of peccadilloes with the fair sex; yet speaks most affectionately
of his wife, and is a fond and careful father. He is a tall, thin,
hard-featured man, with a sly expression of almost hidden grave humor, as
if there were some deviltry pretty constantly in his mind,--which is
probably the case. His brother tells me that he was driven almost crazy
by the loss of his wife. It appears to me that men are more affected by
the deaths of their wives than wives by the deaths of their husbands.
Orrin S------ smokes a pipe, as do many of the guests.
A walk this forenoon up the mountain ridge that walls in the town towards
the east. The road is cut zigzag, the mountain being generally as steep
as the roof of a house; yet the stage to Greenfield passes over this road
two or three times a week. Graylock rose up behind me, appearing, with
its two summits and a long ridge between, like a huge monster crouching
down slumbering, with its head slightly elevated. Graylock is properly
the name for the highest elevation. It appeared to better advantage the
higher the point from which I viewed it. There were houses scattered
here and there up the mountainside, growing poorer as I ascended; the
last that I passed was a mean log-hut, rough, rude, and dilapidated, with
the smoke issuing from a chimney of small stones, plastered with clay;
around it a garden of beans, with some attempt at flowers, and a green
creeper running over the side of the cottage. Above this point there
were various excellent views of mountain scenery, far off and near, and
one village lying below in the hollow vale.
Having climbed so far that the road seemed now to go downward, I retraced
my steps. There was a wagon descending behind me; and as it followed the
zigzag of the road I could hear the voices of the men high over my head,
and sometimes I caught a glimpse of the wagon almost perpendicularly
above me, while I was looking almost perpendicularly down to the log-hut
aforementioned. Trees were thick on either hand,--oaks, pines, and
others; and marble occasionally peeped up in the road and there was a
lime-kiln by the wayside, ready for burning.
Graylock had a cloud on his head this morning, the base of a heavy white
cloud. The distribution of the sunshine amid mountain scenery is very
striking; one does not see exactly why one spot should be in deep
obscurity while others are all bright. The clouds throw their shadows
upon the hillsides as they move slowly along,--a transitory blackness.
I passed a doctor high up the road in a sulky, with his black leather
saddle-bags.
Hudson's Cave is formed by Hudson's Brook. There is a natural arch of
marble still in one part of it. The cliffs are partly made verdant with
green moss, chiefly gray with oxidation; on some parts the white of the
marble is seen; in interstices grow brake and other shrubs, so that there
is naked sublimity seen through a good deal of clustering beauty. Above,
the birch, poplars, and pines grow on the utmost verge of the cliffs,
which jut far over, so that they are suspended in air; and whenever the
sunshine finds its way into the depths of the chasm, the branches wave
across it. There is a lightness, however, about their foliage, which
greatly relieves what would otherwise be a gloomy scene. After the
passage of the stream through the cliffs of marble, the cliffs separate
on either side, and leave it to flow onward; intercepting its passage,
however, by fragments of marble, some of them huge ones, which the cliffs
have flung down, thundering into the bed of the stream through numberless
ages. Doubtless some of these immense fragments had trees growing on
them, which have now mouldered away. Decaying trunks are heaped in
various parts of the gorge. The pieces of marble that are washed by the
water are of a snow-white, and partially covered with a bright green
water-moss, making a beautiful contrast.
Among the cliffs, strips of earth-beach extend downward, and trees and
large shrubs root themselves in that earth, thus further contrasting the
nakedness of the stone with their green foliage. But the immediate part
where the stream forces its winding passage through the rock is stern,
dark, and mysterious.
Along the road, where it runs beneath a steep, there are high ridges,
covered with trees,--the dew of midnight damping the earth, far towards
midnoon. I observed the shadows of water-insects, as they swam in the
pools of a stream. Looking down a streamlet, I saw a trunk of a tree,
which has been overthrown by the wind, so as to form a bridge, yet
sticking up all its branches, as if it were unwilling to assist anybody
over.
Green leaves, following the eddies of the rivulet, were now borne deep
under water, and now emerged. Great uprooted trees, adhering midway down
a precipice of earth, hung with their tops downward.
There is an old man, selling the meats of butternuts under the stoop of
the hotel. He makes that his station during a part of the season. He
was dressed in a dark thin coat, ribbed velvet pantaloons, and a sort of
moccasons, or shoes, appended to the legs of woollen stockings. He had
on a straw hat, and his hair was gray, with a long, thin visage. His
nuts were contained in a square tin box, having two compartments, one for
the nuts, and another for maple sugar, which he sells in small cakes. He
had three small tin measures for nuts,--one at one cent, others at two,
four, and six cents; and as fast as they were emptied, he filled them
again, and put them on the top of his box. He smoked a pipe, and talked
with one man about whether it would be worth while to grow young again,
and the duty of being contented with old age; about predestination and
freewill and other metaphysics. I asked him what his sales amounted to
in the course of a day. He said that butternuts did not sell so well as
walnuts, which are not yet in season; that he might to-day have sold
fifty cents' worth of walnuts, never less than a dollar's worth, often
more; and when he went round with a caravan, he had sold fifteen dollars'
worth per day, and once as much as twenty dollars' worth. This promises
to be an excellent year for walnuts. Chestnuts have been scarce for two
or three years. He had one hundred chestnut-trees on his own land, and
last year he offered a man twenty-five cents if he would find him a quart
of good chestnuts on them. A bushel of walnuts would cost about ten
dollars. He wears a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles.
A drunken fellow sat down by him, and bought a cent's worth of his
butternuts, and inquired what he would sell out to him for. The old man
made an estimate, though evidently in jest, and then reckoned his box,
measures, meats, and what little maple sugar he had, at four dollars. He
had a very quiet manner, and expressed an intention of going to the
Commencement at Williamstown to-morrow. His name, I believe, is Captain
Gavett.
Wednesday, August 15th.--I went to Commencement at Williams College,--
five miles distant. At the tavern were students with ribbons, pink or
blue, fluttering from their buttonholes, these being the badges of rival
societies. There was a considerable gathering of people, chiefly
arriving in wagons or buggies, some in barouches, and very few in
chaises. The most characteristic part of the scene was where the
pedlers, gingerbread-sellers, etc., were collected, a few hundred yards
from the meeting-house. There was a pedler there from New York State,
who sold his wares by auction, and I could have stood and listened to him
all day long. Sometimes he would put up a heterogeny [this is a word
made by Mr. Hawthorne, but one that was needed.--S. H.] of articles in a
lot,--as a paper of pins, a lead-pencil, and a shaving-box,--and knock
them all down, perhaps for ninepence. Bunches of lead-pencils,
steel-pens, pound-cakes of shaving-soap, gilt finger-rings, bracelets,
clasps, and other jewelry, cards of pearl buttons, or steel ("there is
some steel about them, gentlemen, for my brother stole 'em, and I bore
him out in it"), bundles of wooden combs, boxes of matches, suspenders,
and, in short, everything,--dipping his hand down into his wares with the
promise of a wonderful lot, and producing, perhaps, a bottle of
opodeldoc, and joining it with a lead-pencil,--and when he had sold
several things of the same kind, pretending huge surprise at finding
"just one more," if the lads lingered; saying, "I could not afford to
steal them for the price; for the remorse of conscience would be worth
more,"--all the time keeping an eye upon those who bought, calling for
the pay, making change with silver or bills, and deciding on the goodness
of banks; and saying to the boys who climbed upon his cart, "Fall down,
roll down, tumble down, only get down"; and uttering everything in the
queer, humorous recitative in which he sold his articles. Sometimes he
would pretend that a person had bid, either by word or wink, and raised a
laugh thus; never losing his self-possession, nor getting out of humor.
When a man asked whether a bill were good: "No! do you suppose I'd give
you good money?" When he delivered an article, he exclaimed, "You're the
lucky man," setting off his wares with the most extravagant eulogies.
The people bought very freely, and seemed also to enjoy the fun. One
little boy bought a shaving-box, perhaps meaning to speculate upon it.
This character could not possibly he overdrawn; and he was really
excellent, with his allusions to what was passing, intermingled,
doubtless, with a good deal that was studied. He was a man between
thirty and forty, with a face expressive of other ability, as well as of
humor.
A good many people were the better or the worse for liquor. There was
one fellow,--named Randall, I think,--a round-shouldered, bulky, ill-hung
devil, with a pale, sallow skin, black beard, and a sort of grin upon his
face,--a species of laugh, yet not so much mirthful as indicating a
strange mental and moral twist. He was very riotous in the crowd,
elbowing, thrusting, seizing hold of people; and at last a ring was
formed, and a regular wrestling-match commenced between him and a
farmer-looking man. Randall brandished his legs about in the most
ridiculous style, but proved himself a good wrestler, and finally threw
his antagonist. He got up with the same grin upon his features,--not a
grin of simplicity, but intimating knowingness. When more depth or force
of expression was required, he could put on the most strangely ludicrous
and ugly aspect (suiting his gesture and attitude to it) that can be
imagined. I should like to see this fellow when he was perfectly sober.
There were a good many blacks among the crowd. I suppose they used to
emigrate across the border, while New York was a slave State. There were
enough of them to form a party, though greatly in the minority; and, a
squabble arising, some of the blacks were knocked down, and otherwise
maltreated. I saw one old negro, a genuine specimen of the slave negro,
without any of the foppery of the race in our part of the State,--an old
fellow, with a bag, I suppose of broken victuals, on his shoulder, and
his pockets stuffed out at his hips with the like provender; full of
grimaces and ridiculous antics, laughing laughably, yet without
affectation; then talking with a strange kind of pathos about the
whippings he used to get while he was a slave;--a singular creature, of
mere feeling, with some glimmering of sense. Then there was another gray
old negro, but of a different stamp, politic, sage, cautious, yet with
boldness enough, talking about the rights of his race, yet so as not to
provoke his audience; discoursing of the advantage of living under laws,
and the wonders that might ensue, in that very assemblage, if there were
no laws; in the midst of this deep wisdom, turning off the anger of a
half-drunken fellow by a merry retort, a leap in the air, and a negro's
laugh. I was interested--there being a drunken negro ascending the
meeting-house steps, and near him three or four well-dressed and decent
negro wenches--to see the look of scorn and shame and sorrow and painful
sympathy which one of them assumed at this disgrace of her color.
The people here show out their character much more strongly than they do
with us; there was not the quiet, silent, dull decency of our public
assemblages, but mirth, anger, eccentricity,--all manifesting themselves
freely. There were many watermelons for sale, and people burying their
muzzles deep in the juicy flesh of them. There were cider and beer.
Many of the people had their mouths half opened in a grin, which, more
than anything else, I think, indicates a low stage of refinement. A
low-crowned hat--very low--is common. They are respectful to gentlemen.
A bat being startled, probably, out of the meeting-house, by the
commotion around, flew blindly about in the sunshine, and alighted on a
man's sleeve. I looked at him,--a droll, winged, beast-insect, creeping
up the man's arm, not over-clean, and scattering dust on the man's coat
from his vampire wings. The man stared at him, and let the spectators
stare for a minute, and then shook him gently off; and the poor devil
took a flight across the green to the meeting-house, and then, I believe,
alighted on somebody else. Probably he was put to death. Bats are very
numerous in these parts.
There was a drunken man, annoying people with his senseless talk and
impertinences, impelled to perform eccentricities by an evil spirit in
him; and a pale little boy, with a bandaged leg, whom his father brought
out of the tavern and put into a barouche. Then the boy heedfully placed
shawls and cushions about his leg to support it, his face expressive of
pain and care,--not transitory, but settled pain, of long and forcedly
patient, endurance; and this painful look, perhaps, gave his face more
intelligence than it might otherwise have had, though it was naturally a
sensitive face. Well-dressed ladies were in the meeting-house in silks
and cambrics,--the sunburnt necks in contiguity with the delicate fabrics
of the dresses showing the yeomen's daughters.
Country graduates,--rough, brown-featured, schoolmaster-looking,
half-bumpkin, half-scholarly figures, in black ill-cut broadcloth,--their
manners quite spoilt by what little of the gentleman there was in them.
The landlord of the tavern keeping his eye on a man whom he suspected of
an intention to bolt. [A word meaning in Worcester, I find, "to spring
out with speed and suddenness."--S. H.]
The next day after Commencement was bleak and rainy from midnight till
midnight, and a good many guests were added to our table in consequence.
Among them were some of the Williamstown students, gentlemanly young
fellows, with a brotherly feeling for each other, a freedom about money
concerns, a half-boyish, half-manly character; and my heart warmed to
them. They took their departure--two for South Adams and two across the
Green Mountains--in the midst of the rain. There was one of the
graduates with his betrothed, and his brother-in-law and wife, who stayed
during the day,--the graduate the very model of a country schoolmaster in
his Sunday clothes, being his Commencement suit of black broadcloth and
pumps. He is engaged as assistant teacher of the academy at Shelburne
Falls. There was also the high sheriff of Berkshire, Mr. Twining, with a
bundle of writs under his arm, and some of them peeping out of his
pockets. Also several Trojan men and women, who had been to
Commencement. Likewise a young clergyman, graduate of Brown College, and
student of the Divinity School at Cambridge. He had come across the
Hoosic, or Green Mountains, about eighteen miles, on foot, from
Charlemont, where he is preaching, and had been to Commencement. Knowing
little of men and matters, and desiring to know more, he was very free in
making acquaintance with people, but could not do it handsomely. A
singular smile broke out upon his face on slight provocation. He was
awkward in his manners, yet it was not an ungentlemanly awkwardness,--
intelligent as respects book-learning, but much deficient in worldly
tact. It was pleasant to observe his consciousness of this deficiency,
and how he strove to remedy it by mixing as much as possible with people,
and sitting almost all day in the bar-room to study character. Sometimes
he would endeavor to contribute his share to the general amusement,--as
by growling comically, to provoke and mystify a dog; and by some bashful
and half-apropos observations.
