Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/31

1867.&#93; The ample roof sloped backward to the ground,

And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round,

Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need,

Like chance growths sprouting from the old roof's seed,

Just as about a yellow-pine-tree spring

Its rough-barked darlings in a filial ring.

But the great chimney was the central thought

Whose gravitation through the cluster wrought.

For 't is not styles far-fetched from Greece or Rome,

But just the Fireside, that can make a home;

None of your spindling things of modem style.

Like pins stuck through to stay the card-built pile,

It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair,

Its warm breath whitening in the October air,

While on its front a heart in outline showed

The place it filled in that serene abode.

"When first I chanced the Eagle to explore,

Ezra sat listless by the open door;

One chair careened him at an angle meet.

Another nursed his hugely-slippered feet;

Upon a third reposed a shirt-sleeved arm,

And the whole man diffused tobacco's charm.

'Are you the landlord?' 'Wahl, I guess I be,'

Watching the smoke, he answered leisurely.

He was a stoutish man, and through the breast

Of his loose shirt there showed a brambly chest;

Streaked redly as a wind-foreboding morn,

His tanned cheeks curved to temples closely shorn;

Clean-shaved he was, save where a hedge of gray

Upon his brawny throat leaned every way

About an Adam's-apple that beneath

Bulged like a bowlder from a furzy heath.

'Can I have lodging here?' once more I said.

He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his head,

'You come a piece through Bailey's woods, I s'pose,

Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak grows?

It don't grow neither; it 's ben dead ten year.

Nor th' ain't a livin' creetur, fur nor near,

Can tell wut killed it; but I some misdoubt

'T was borers, there 's sech heaps on 'em about;

You did n' chance to run ag'inst my son,

A long, slab-sided youngster with a gun?

He 'd oughto ben back more 'n an hour ago

An' brought some birds to dress for supper—Sho!

There he comes now. 'Say, Obed, wut ye got?

(He 'll hev some upland plover like as not.)

Wal, them 's real nice uns an 'll eat A 1,

Ef I can stop their bein' over-done;

Nothin' riles me, (I pledge my fastin' word,)

Like cookin' out the natur' of a bird;

(Obed, you pick 'em out o' sight an' sound,

Your ma'am don't love no feathers cluttrin' round;)