Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/30

20 The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character.

There is a village, once the county town,

Through which the weekly mail rolled dustily down,

Where the courts sat, it may be, twice a year,

And the one tavern reeked with rustic cheer;

Cheeshogquesumscot erst, now Jethro hight,

Red-man and pale-face bore it equal spite.

The railway ruined it, the natives say,

That passed unwisely fifteen miles away,

And made a drain to which, with steady ooze,

Filtered away law, stage-coach, trade, and news.

The railway saved it, so at least think those

Who love old ways, old houses, old repose.

Of course the Tavern stayed: its genial host

Thought not of flitting more than did the post

On which high-hung the fading signboard creaks,

Inscribed, 'The Eagle Inn, by Ezra Weeks.'

"If in life's journey you should ever find

An inn medicinal for body and mind,

'T is sure to be some drowsy-looking house

Whose easy landlord has a bustling spouse:

He, if he like you, will not long forego

Some bottle deep in cobwebbed dust laid low,

That, since the War we used to call the 'Last,'

Has dozed and held its lang-syne memories fast;

From him exhales that Indian-summer air

Of hazy, lazy welcome everywhere,

While with her toil the napery is white,

The china dustless, the keen knife-blades bright,

Salt dry as sand, and bread that seems as though

'T were rather sea-foam baked than vulgar dough.

"In our swift country, houses trim and white

Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night;

Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high

Perches impatient o'er the roadside dry,

While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof,

Refusing friendship with the upstart roof.

Not so the Eagle; on a grass-green swell

That toward the south with sweet concessions fell,

It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be

As aboriginal as rock or tree.

It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood

O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood,

As by the peat that rather fades than burns

The smouldering grandam nods and knits by turns,

Happy, although her newest news were old

Ere the first hostile drum at Concord rolled;

If paint it e'er had known, it knew no more

Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o'er

That soft lead-gray, less dark beneath the eaves,

Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves.