Mosses from an old manse
the flame of the candle, and beheld it consume unread. It is fixed in
my mind, and was so at the time, that he had addressed me in a style of
paternal wisdom, and love, and reconciliation which I could not have
resisted had I but risked the trial. The thought still haunts me that
then I made my irrevocable choice between good and evil fate.
Meanwhile, as this occurrence had disturbed my mind and indisposed me
to the present exercise of my profession, I left the town, in spite of
a laudatory critique in the newspaper, and untempted by the liberal
offers of the manager. As we walked onward, following the same road, on
two such different errands, Eliakim groaned in spirit, and labored with
tears to convince me of the guilt and madness of my life.
SKETCHES FROM MEMORY
THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
It was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from
Bartlett, passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends
between mountainous walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as
level as a church-aisle. All that day and two preceding ones we had
been loitering towards the heart of the White Mountains,—those old
crystal hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant
wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had
risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to hang below
the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides, those
avalanches of earth, stones, and trees, which descend into the hollows,
leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation
of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a
group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco,
right towards the centre of that group, as if to climb above the clouds
in its passage to the farther region.
In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the
Northern Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart
through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous
path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was
travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he
passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across
his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but, rending it
asunder a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of
hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain’s
inmost heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side.
This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted
to describe it by so mean an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of
those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not
to the conception, of Omnipotence.
We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance
of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock.
There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous,
especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could
hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or, in
the direction we were going, the extremity, of the romantic defile of
the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached
behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on
top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab great-coat,
touching the wheel-horses with the whip-stock and reigning in the
leaders. To my mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident,
hardly inferior to what would have accompanied the painted array of an
Indian war-party gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the
passengers, except a very fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One
was a mineralogist, a scientific, green-spectacled figure in black,
bearing a heavy hammer, with which he did great damage to the
precipices, and put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a
well-dressed young man, who carried an operaglass set in gold, and
seemed to be making a quotation from some of Byron’s rhapsodies on
mountain scenery. There was also a trader, returning from Portland to
the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young girl, with a very faint
bloom like one of those pale and delicate flowers which sometimes occur
among alpine cliffs.
They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own
dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre,
surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine
long before it left the external world. It was here that we obtained
our first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of
mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a
proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which
support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering
height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to Heaven: he was white
with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was
sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the
other names of American statesmen that have been stamped upon these
hills, but still call the loftiest WASHINGTON. Mountains are Earth’s
undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and never
should be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and
country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, and
whom all time will render illustrious.
The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand
feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear
November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be
a frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface
over the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of
comfortable quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of
pleasant company in the guests who were assembled at the door.
OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS
WE stood in front of a good substantial farm-house, of old date in that
wild country. A sign over the door denoted it to be the White Mountain
Post-Office,—an establishment which distributes letters and newspapers
to perhaps a score of persons, comprising the population of two or
three townships among the hills. The broad and weighty antlers of a
deer, “a stag of ten,” were fastened at the corner of the house; a
fox’s bushy tail was nailed beneath them; and a huge black paw lay on
the ground, newly severed and still bleeding, the trophy of a
bear-hunt. Among several persons collected about the doorsteps, the
most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two, and
corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be
moulded on his own blacksmith’s anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit
and rough humor. As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or
five feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our
arrival or to awaken an echo from the opposite hill.
Ethan Crawford’s guests were of such a motley description as to form
quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
like this, at once the pleasure-house of fashionable tourists and the
homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
the mineralogist and the owner of the gold operaglass whom we had
encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
Southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington and an old squire of
the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt. Besides these strangers, the
rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a
dozen wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off
his paw.
I had joined the party, and had a moment’s leisure to examine them
before the echo of Ethan’s blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
trumpet-tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dream-like symphony of
melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill, and
gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle of
mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us
all into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.
It did one’s heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in the
parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was
built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree
for a backlog.
A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is at his very
door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we held our
hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow, and began a
pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the physician
talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air, and its
excellent effect on Ethan Crawford’s father, an old man of
seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides
and the doctor’s wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their
frequent titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the
trials or enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat
together in a corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit
moveth not, being still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards
their own young wives. The Green Mountain squire chose me for his
companion, and described the difficulties he had met with half a
century ago in travelling from the Connecticut River through the Notch
to Conway, now a single day’s journey, though it had cost him eighteen.
The Georgians held the album between them, and favored us with the few
specimens of its contents, which they considered ridiculous enough to
be worth hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a
“Sonnet to the Snow on Mount Washington,” and had been contributed that
very afternoon, bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines
and annuals. The lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote
from familiar sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those
curious specimens of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on
the mountain-top. The poet was understood to be the young gentleman of
the gold opera-glass, who heard our laudatory remarks with the
composure of a veteran.
Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these
summer travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to
spend a month hereabouts, in sleighing-time, for the sake of studying
the yeomen of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch
by hundreds, on their way to Portland. There could be no better school
for such a purpose than Ethan Crawford’s inn. Let the student go
thither in December, sit down with the teamsters at their meals, share
their evening merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed
has its three occupants, and parlor, bar-room, and kitchen are strewn
with slumberers around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight,
button his great-coat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the
departing caravan a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make head
against the blast. A treasure of characteristic traits will repay all
inconveniences, even should a frozen nose be of the number.