Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/31

Rh glimpses from the railway. To learn to love and admire them, you must turn tramp and wander about unburdened by baggage, and tolerably indifferent to accommodation. An old-fashioned New England village is a sight of itself, and we know of nothing that approaches it by way of beauty, unless it be the rural landscapes that surround it.

Durham village is a good type of the New England village that was. The irregular street seems to have been pitched down anyhow, generally over slight irregularities of ground. A swinging sign creaks before the inn door, and a lumbering stage coach drawn by four or six horses would not look out of date driving up under it. There are several of the old square houses of the Revolutionary epoch. Their quaint, small-paned windows, ample door porches, glittering brass knockers, and enormous chimneys, at once attract the attention of the visitor. One could, gazing at these antique houses, almost fancy that from them would issue gentlemen of colonial days, dressed in knee breeches, long clothes, queues, and cocked hats. Each of these houses has its treasure of tradition. In the garret of one ancient mansion a young British officer lay concealed after the capture of Fort William and Mary. Fair hands administered to his wants, and bright eyes illuminated the dreary darkness for the hidden soldier. And that was not the end of the romance. After the war there was a marriage, and the descendants of the red coated soldier of King George and the patriot maiden still live in the old town where the warp and woof of their ancestors' love were woven a hundred years ago.

In a square by itself stands the church, the grey time tint on the venerable walls, and the weather vane rheumatic and unwieldy from age. The swallows are swooping around the belfry, while geese are straying among the calm eyed, contented looking kine, and the ring-boned, spavined equines on the green. Two or three stores, with long benches for seats on each side of the door, where sit two or three aged loafers smoking and a rustic lad indulging in the Yankee propensity of whittling, occur at intervals. Trade cannot be brisk, for as we enter one we awaken the proprietor from a comfortable nap.

Out of doors again we proceed down the street. We descend a slight hill into a little valley. On our left glistens a wide, cove-like expanse of water. It is the river bearing the well-known name of the classic bivalve which here has its waters fettered by a dam. An old tumble down mill stands on the shore. Its machinery is silent, but it evidently wakes up once in a while to show people that it is not yet past the years of usefulness, as is testified by the few thousand feet of boards piled under its roof and the logs scattered about its yard.

Across from the mill, occupying a broad terrace on the hillside, was the mansion that I sought. It will be long before I shall forget the feeling that came over me at the sight of it. There was something so solemn, so dream- like about the ancient house that I stood and gazed at it in a kind of wondering reverie. It seemed as if I had suddenly been placed back in another century, in the company of the paladins of old. The mansion was not of the fashion of these times. The atmosphere that I breathed was laden with the breath of the sulphurous canopy of the battle of Long Island, of Trenton, and of Monmouth. The men of other days surrounded me, and the old house looked down in prouder guise and wore a more cheerful air. There stood in its perfect calm the stately, two-storied, white painted mansion, with its gambrel roof, its high windows, and its barns and out-buildings, shaded by some magnificent poplars and maples whose branches had waved in the breezes of the eighteenth century and shaded the lofty heads of heroes who had inhabited that noble dwelling.

The mansion is situated at a dignified distance: that is to say, about a hundred feet from the street; and the large yard or lawn in front is enclosed by a