fragmentary notes of old stage days.
��187
��don, a Graham, or a Lenoir, with, however, a brass lock on his bed-room door that came from France in the seventeenth century, and with a man- tel in the room most curiously carved, high and narrow, oaken and black. Perhaps the clapboards outside are of oak and beaded at the edge laborious- ly by handiwork, and the great hinges of the door were beaten into shape by a stalwart arm two hundred years ago. On the verandah encircling the house a half-dozen couples may promenade abreast, and the many little building- that cluster about make the place seem like a small village.
Careful serving and exquisite cour- tesy make the sojourner a happy soul, unless care follows him from the sad- dle, and he goes to his bed to find it piled high with soft blankets, fine linen and the downiest of pillows, while the room is enchanted by an open fire glowing behind the fretwork of the fender.
Caste is present in this country, but respectability is respected, and repre- sentatives of the first quality are seen gracious and kindly at the infarings of the farmers. With the advancing years the intelligence of both classes broadens and deepens until one may believe that they may sometime meet naturally on the common level of hu- manity and Christianity. One does not expect ignorance and education to assimilate, even though the mutual feeling be one of thorough kindliness and of respect for abilities which are indisputable.
Wakened from morning sleep by the horn of the hunter and the baying of his hounds, one is reminded of the
��novels of the late lamented Anthony Trollope, and in fact the whole tone of life in the Land of Nod is curiously like that depicted in the most soporific of those books. To hunt the deer and chase the fox is the unfailing amuse- ment of Nodite gentlemen, down to the six year old boys, while an occa* sional bear hunt up the mountains adds an element of danger to spice the fascination. The late dinner and the lively evening conversation, varied by music and games, with — if I must tell it — a monstrous punch-bowl well filled, or great bowls of egg-nog, finish to his satisfaction the hunter's day.
But the fields are well watched in the season of growth, and it is only now and then that some ne'er-do-well leaves his crops to the careless super- vision of the black people, who work well, as a rule, only under intelligent direction, just as is the case with the majority of white laborers.
The opening chapters of Miss Wool- son's "For the Major," now being published in Harper's Magazine, give a charming revelation of a society startlingly like that in certain portions of the Land of Nod, the fair and peaceful country that awaits with quiet eagerness the coming of people who will make it blossom with homes for whose needs field, forest and stream are ready to give of their abundance, while the full earth shall open its vast stores of precious stones and pure gold. To develop the remarkable re- sources of the Rip Van Winkle state there are needed three things, i. e., money, electricity, and Yankees ; the third being given imply the first and second.
��FRAGMENTARY NOTES OF OLD STAGE DAYS.
��BY CLARA CLAYTON.
��The stage route known as the For- est Line, extended from Nashua to Charlestown, N. FL, forming a con- necting link in the line from Boston to
��Saratoga, and was one of the most famous in the state for many years. It was founded in 1833, and continued unbroken till the scream of the steam
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