Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/29

Rh she has yet to tell me when we meet.

Now I have finished my sad—or glad?—story of "Jennie's wedding cake," and it is Jennie's after all!

And see! down the road under the budding elms, are coming Paul and my Jennie.

When you have seen one Shaker settlement, you know almost precisely how they all look,—the same arrangement of buildings, the same style of dress and furniture, the same habits of thrift and tidiness, and that appearance about everything, as if here, at last, you had found a people settled into their places for their whole life-time. There is something about this air of permanence which takes hold upon you for the time being. You, yourself, are not sure of anything; you may be obliged to change your place of abode to-morrow, or nest week, or at farthest sometime; you are not certain even that you can keep your own homestead in your family. Everybody is liable to "sell out," to fail in business; changes uncounted on may take place, contingencies may arise, necessitating a removal, even to those whose local attachments would seem to be strong enough to hold them to one spot all their lives. To "move on," like poor Jo., is the order for most of the race.

But here is a body of men and women who are absolutely fixtures; who have not only voluntarily committed themselves to a mode of life pre-arranged for them, but have done it with the knowledge that into it henceforth there will be no place for plan or conjecture about their future, as to where they may be living, or what be doing, a few years hence. In one sense, and a very practical one, their pilgrimage is ended. They may, and do make journeys to sister communities and elsewhere, but no more think of any other change than we do of coming back after we are dead.

They are there to stay. And that fact accounts for a great deal. It is partial explanation of the contentment on the faces of the Shaker sisters. It is a reason for the repose and settledness which pervade a Shaker village—that indefinable something, so altogether unlike the life of ordinary villages, and which you feel in the air, and are conscious of by some instinct, as men claim to be aware of the presence of spirits. Whether you pass along the streets, or enter the houses, or wherever you go, you feel that you are beyond the realm of hurry; there is no restlessness, or fret of business, or anxiety about anything; it is as if the work was done, and it was one eternal afternoon. Nor does anything dispel this feeling, even when you are in the midst of their industries, and the making of cheese, the milking of cows, the washing and ironing, and baking, and harvesting are going on around you. They do it all so leisurely, so quietly, that you feel something as he did who saw men "as trees walking."

They are the only people in this country, if not in the world, who have been able for nearly a hundred years to live on the plan of a community of property, conducting their domestic affairs on the principle of co-operative house-keeping. Somewhere among the founders was remarkable sagacity and forecast; and though their numbers fail, those qualities have by no means fallen off. It was an evidence of their far-seeing, practical sense that they chose such advantageous localities for their settlements.

Not the least desirable among the nineteen that exist in the United States, is that in the old, farming town of Canterbury, in New Hampshire. The three villages, separated by fields, are on one long street on the crest of a ridge. They come into sight—three clusters of white or straw-colored buildings, with red roofs—as you ascend the last hill. The Shak-