第43章

Mile after mile you pass under their solid ramparts, but far enough to receive the idea of their height and breadth, their vast material greatness,--far enough to let the broad green levels of the intervale slide between, with here and there a graceful elm, towering and protective, and here and there a brown farm-house. But man's works show puny and mean beside nature, which seems spontaneous as a thought. Man's work is a toil; nature's is a relief. Man labors to attain abundance;nature, to throw off superabundance. The mountain-sides bristle with forests; man drags himself from his valley, and slowly and painfully levels an inch or two for his use; just a little way here and there a green field has crept up into the forest. The mountain-chin has one or two shaven spots; but for the greater part his beard is still unshorn. All along he sends down his boon to men. Everywhere you hear the scurrying feet of little brooks, tumbling pell-mell down the rocks in their frantic haste to reach a goal;--often a pleasant cottage-door, to lighten the burden and cool the brow of toil;often to pour through a hollow log by the wayside,--a never-failing beneficence and joy to the wearied, trusty horses. From the piazza of the Waumbeck House--a quiet, pleasant, home-like little hotel in Jefferson, and the only one, so far as I know, that has had the grace to take to itself one of the old Indian names in which the region abounds, Waumbeck, Waumbeck-Methna, Mountains of Snowy-Foreheads--a very panorama of magnificence unfolds itself. The whole horizon is rimmed with mountain-ranges. The White Mountain chain stands out bold and firm, sending greeting to his peers afar.

Franconia answers clear and bright from the south-west; and from beyond the Connecticut the Green hills make response.

Loth to leave, we turn away from these grand out-lying bulwarks to front on our return bulwarks as grand and massive, behind whose impregnable walls we seem shut in from the world forever.

A little lyric in the epos may be found in a side-journey to Bethel,--a village which no one ever heard of, at least I never did, till now; but when we did hear, we heard so much and so well that we at once started on a tour of exploration, and found--as Halicarnassus quotes the Queen of Sheba--there was more of it than we expected. The ride down in the train, if you are willing and able to stand on the rear platform of the rear car, is of surpassing beauty. The mountains seem to rise and approach in dumb, reluctant farewell. The river bends and insinuates, spreading out to you all its islands of delight.

Molten in its depths, golden in its shallows, it meanders through its meadows, a joy forever. Bethel sits on its banks, loveliest of rural villages, and gently unfolds its beauties to your longing eyes. The Bethel House,--a large old-fashioned country-house, with one of those broad, social second-story piazzas, and a well bubbling up in the middle of the dining-room--think of that, Master Brooke!--a hotel whose landlord welcomes you with lemonade and roses (perhaps he wouldn't YOU!),--a hotel terrible to evil-doers, but a praise to them that do well, inasmuch as it is conducted on the millennial principle of quietly frightening away disagreeable people with high rates, and fascinating amiable people with reasonable ones, so that, of course, you have the wheat without the chaff,--a hotel where people go to rest and enjoy, and wear morning-dresses all day, and are fine only when they choose--indeed, you can do that anywhere, if you only think so. The idea that you must lug all your best clothes through the wilderness is absurd. A good travelling-dress, admissible of bisection, a muslin spencer for warm evenings, and a velvet bodice when you design to be gorgeous, will take you through with all the honors of war. Besides, there are always sure to be plenty of people in every drawing-room who will be sumptuously attired, and you can feast your eyes luxuriously on them, and gratefully feel that the work is so well done as to need no co-operation of yours, and that you can be comfortable with an easy conscience. Where was I? O, on the top, of Paradise Hill, I believe, surveying Paradise, a little indistinct and quavering in the sheen of a summer noon, but clear enough to reveal its Pison, its Gilton, its Hiddekel, and Euphrates, compassing the whole land of Havilah; or perhaps Iwas on Sparrowhawk, beholding Paradise from another point, dotted with homes and church-spires, rich and fertile, fair still, with compassing river and tranquil lake; or, more probable than either, I was driving along the highland that skirts the golden meadows through which the river purls, ruddy in the setting sun, and rejoicing in the beauty amid which he lives and moves and has his being. Lovely Bethel, fairest ornament of the sturdy mountain-land, tender and smiling as if no storm had ever swept, no sin ever marred,--in Arcadia that no one would ever leave but for the magic of the drive back to Gorham through piny woods, under frowning mountains, circled with all the glories of sky and river,--a drive so enticing, that, when you reach Gorham, straight back again you will go to Bethel, and so forever oscillate, unless some stronger magnet interpose.

A rainy day among the mountains is generally considered rather dismal, but I find that I like it. Apart from the fact that you wish, or ought to wish, to see Nature in all her aspects, it is a very beneficent arrangement of Providence, that, when eyes and brain and heart are weary with looking and receiving, an impenetrable barrier is noiselessly let down, and you are forced to rest. Besides, there are many things which it is not absolutely essential to see, but which, nevertheless, are very interesting in the sight. You would not think of turning away from a mountain or a waterfall to visit them, but when you are forcibly shut out from both, you condescend to homelier sights.