Arthur Colton

“ On all highways it is to be met with and is seldom far to seek—though no harm if it were—because the world is populous with men and animals, and no moment like another. It may be, if you drop on a hay-load, you will have a row with the driver, or you will thump on the head such a free traveller as ours, vast, shaggy, primeval, pipe-smoking, of wonderful fatness.
He seemed a sleepy, contented man, not in point of fact minding thumps on the head. The hay-cart rolled on gently in the dust. Mr. Cummings drowsed in front, unaware, and the Free Traveller drowsed behind, smoking listlessly. ”

“ She had no defence against such battery. Power, daring, and danger were personified in Tommy. He had brought them all to her feet. This it was to live and be a woman. She turned back into the dim shop, her eyes shining. The backs of the dusty books seemed to quiver and glow, even those containing arithmetic, dead philosophies, and other cool abstractions, as if they forgot their figures and rounded periods, and thought of the men who wrote them, how these once were young.
Durdo found it possible, by spending his off hours in Mr. Barria's shop, to keep cheerful without fighting Hamp Sharkey. ”

“ Barria from the rear of the shop watched Janey, sitting among the Annuals and looking out on Cripple Street. He had not entered on the Path himself as a cure for sorrow and suffering; he had come to it from another direction. Yet the first purpose of its system had been the solution of these. It was written:
“Sorrow and suffering will be overcome when this thirst for life is quenched, which makes for continuance, and that desire of separateness and hunger after selfhood are put aside. They will fall away as drops from a lotus leaf.” ”

“ The road from the station across the bridge came through Sanderson Hollow, where the fields were all over cattle and lively horses, and met the Cattle Ridge Road to Hagar. And last, if you looked north from the altar-stone, you saw a long, downward sweep of woodland, and on and on miles and miles to the meadows and ploughed lands toward Wimberton, with a glimpse of the Wyantenaug far away to the left. Such were the surroundings of the place of abandoned gods. No one but ourselves came there, unless possibly the Hermit. ”

“ Delight in the creation of jewelled sounds as an end in itself; delight in the clear morning air of autumn valleys, the sight of burnished leaves and hills in mad revelry of color; delight in following vagrant fancies with loose rein, happy, wine-lipped elves that rise without reason and know no law; delight in the thrill and speed of a sinewy horse compact of nerves; however all these may have entered in the purposes of Mignon, they are not likely to have entered the conjectures of the inhabitants of Wyantenaug Valley, such pleasures of the flesh. ”

“ The minister moved away. They were a stiff-necked people, but after all he felt himself to be one of them. It was his own race. He knew how Andrew Hill felt, as if something somewhere within him were suddenly clamped down and riveted. He understood Adam too, in his private pew on the side porch, the hymn-book on the chair, his eyes on Preston Plains steeple, fixed and glittering. He thought, “We don't claim to be altogether lovely.”
Adam was in his own eyes without question a just man suffering injustice. ”

“ An oil painting of a lady hung over the mantel, and near it some mediæval Madonna, not unresembling the portrait in its pale cheeks, unworldly eyes, and that faint monastic air of vigil and vision and strenuous yearning of the soul to throw its dust aside. Nevertheless the face of the lady was a sweet face, quiet and pure, such as from many a Madonna of the Old World in tawdry regalia looks pityingly down over altar and winking tapers, seeming to say with her tender eyes, “Is it very hard, my dear, the living? Come apart then and rest awhile.” Mignon turned to Mrs. Cullom. ”

“ The swamp, the pond, and most of the clearing were dark together.
Presently she looked cautiously around, first at the three sleepers, and then at us. She crept nearer slowly and crouched beside the dull fire, throwing back her shawl. Her hair was black and straggled about her face, and her eyes were black too, and glittering. The glow of the embers, striking upward, made their sockets cavernous, but the eyes stood out in the midst of the caverns. One knows well enough that tragedies walk about and exchange agreeable phrases with each other. ”

“ The East End Road, which circles the eastern end of the Cattle Ridge, is not at all like the Salem Road. It is wilder and crookeder, to begin with, but that is a superficial matter. It passes through thick woods, dips into gullies, and changes continually, while along the Salem Road there is just the smoky haze on the meadows and dust in the chalices of the flowers; there too the distance blinks stupidly and speculation comes to nothing. But the real point is this: the Salem Road leads straight to Hagar and stops there ”

“ Therefore she buried the child, and came, and she said, 'I have not found it; they tell me the living are few and the dead many.' And he showed her how that nothing endured at all, but changed and passed into something else, and each wass but a changing part of a changing whole, and how, if one thought more of the whole, one so ceased to be troubled much of the parts, and sorrow would fade away quietly.” Janey stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. There was a certain comfort always in Mr. Barria himself, however oddly he might talk. ”

“ One does not choose to be an inscribed monument to the fame of one's private affair. But Cassie had lost that instinct of reserve, and her desolation looked out of her eyes with dreadful candor. The lines of her face, the droop of her figure and even little motions of the hand, signified but one thought. I suppose all ideas possible to the world had become as one to her, so that three boys cowering away from her seemed only a natural enough part of the same subject. It was all one; namely, a baby painted brown, who died queerly in a side tent in Hamilton Fair Grounds. ”

“ They slid away into the darkness together, swiftly and without speaking. The Free Traveller had Cassie's body on his shoulder, carrying it as a child carries a rag doll. The darkness swallowed them at a gulp, and we stood alone by the Black Pond. Several men came into the clearing with lanterns, villagers from Hagar, Harvey Cummings, the minister, and others, who swung their lanterns and shouted.
Now, I suppose that Cassie lies buried to-day somewhere in the South Woods, and it may be that no man alive knows where. ”

“ There are four roads that meet in Hagar: the Cattle Ridge, the Salem, the Windless Mountain, and the Red Rock. The Salem is broad, level, and straight; the Windless sweeps around the mountain, deep through the pines, the jungle of other woods, and the gorge of the falling Mill Stream; the Red Rock is a high, clean hill road, open and bare; the Cattle Ridge Road comes down from highest of all, from far up on the windy brows of the Ridge, and dips and courtesies all the way into Hagar. ”

“ I'll have no post in my pew, for Andrew Hill nor no minister neither.”
“Mr. Wick—”
“You take that post out o' my pew.”
He stumped out of the minister's green-latticed doorway and down the gravel path. His eyes on either side of his sharp nose were like those of an angry hawk, and his stooping shoulders, seen from behind, resembled the huddled back of the hawk, caged and sullen.
The minister watched him. Properly speaking, a primitive nature is an unlimited monarchy where ego is king, but the minister's reflections did not run in these terms. ”

“ It was a Sunday in August and nearly noon. From the side porch of Adam Wick's house on the hill the clustered foliage of the village below was the centre of the landscape. The steeple and ridgepole of the church rose out of the centre of the foliage.
The landscape could not be fancied without the steeple. The dumb materials of the earth, as well as the men who walk upon it, acquire habits. You could read on the flat face of the valley that it had grown accustomed to Preston Plains steeple. ”

“ It possessed gravity, candor, simplicity, an assumption that nothing could be unreasonable or surprising which came in the course of events, that all things and all men were acceptable. Gracia thought that simplicity beautiful, that his speech was like the speech of Tanneguy du Bois, and that he looked like Saint George in the picture which hung in her room—a pale young warrior, such as painters once loved to draw, putting in those keen faces a peculiar manhood, tempered and edged like a sword. Sandy looked oddly like him, in the straight lines of brow and mouth. ”

“ SANDERSON OF BACK MEADOWS Back Meadows lies three miles to the northwest of Hagar, rich bottom-lands in Sanderson Hollow, and the Cattle Ridge shelters it on the north. Five generations of Sandersons have added to the Sanderson accumulation of this world's goods, without sensible interference on the part of moths or rust or thieves that break through and steal. Cool, quiet men, slow of speech and persistent of mood, they prospered and lived well where other families, desiring too many things or not desiring anything enough, found nothing at all desirable and drifted away. ”

“ Months have a way of making years by a rapid arithmetic, and years that greet us with such little variety of expression are the more apt to step behind with faint reproach and very swiftly. Mr. Solley founded the Institute in 1840, and died. The Solley house stood empty, and Miss Lucia Gore by that time was living alone, except for the elderly maiden, Hannah. Looking at the old elms of Wimberton, grave and orderly, there is much to be said for a vegetable life. There is no right dignity but in the slow growths of time. ”

“ The children came up from the Mediterranean in a body, and stared. It was much to them as if, in Greece, the gods had risen up and gone away, for unknown reasons, taking Olympus with them. The old men went along the yellow, dusty road with very shuffling steps, carrying the Elders' Seat, one at each end, till they turned into Captain David's garden and put it down against the porch. ”

“ The squirrel became more excited. Aaron's finger seemed to draw him like a loadstone. He slid down nearer and nearer, as far as the branch allowed, to a foot or two away, chattering his teeth fearfully. We knew that any one who could magnetize so flighty and malicious a person as a red squirrel, must be a magician, however simple he might be otherwise. Aaron snapped his finger and the squirrel fled. “We'd better be movin', Silvy.”
Silvia's tears flowed the faster, and the lines of trouble returned to Aaron's face. ”

“ Mr. Solley had left Wimberton that night. Well, my dear, that is all. I thought he would have come back. It seemed as if he might. I am so old now that I do not mind talking, but I was proud then, and women are not permitted to be very proud. Do your romances tell you that women are foolish and men are sometimes hard on them?
That is not good romance at all, but if you will come to see me again I will tell you much better romances than mine that I have heard, for other people's lives are interesting, even if mine has been quite dull. ”

“ Love should walk over it triumphant, unwearied, and find a fairer romance at the end. Were there not written in the books words to that effect? Babbie moved in a world of dreams, where knights were ever coming home from distant places, or, at least, where every one found happiness after great trouble. She looked up into Mr. Solley's eyes and thought them romantic to a degree. When she heard he had never married the thing seemed as good as proved. And the little old lady at the Institute with the old-fashioned rolled curls above her ears—what a sequel! ”

“ Adam was a simple-minded man; he realized that he was having a good time himself.
It was three days before the church was opened. What may have been Adam's primitive thoughts, moving secretively among his townsmen? Then a sudden rumor ran, a cry went up, of horror, of accusation, of the lust of strife. Before the accusation Adam did not hesitate to make his defiance perfect. The primitive mind was not in doubt. With a blink of his red eyelids, he answered:
“You tell Andrew Hill, don't you put another post in my pew.” ”

“ True Wimberton folk never called the Institute a folly, but only newcomers, before years of residence made them endurable and able to understand Wimberton. Failure is a lady of better manners than Success, who is forward, complacent, taking herself with unpleasant seriousness. Imagine the Institute swarming with people from all parts of the county, a staring success in beneficence!
Mr. Solley's idea was touched with delicacy. It was not a home for Hamilton County poor, but for those who, merely lingering somewhat on the slow descent, found it a lonely road. ”

“ A few hours since, the silent lips had whispered, among many things that came back to his memory in after years like a distant chime of bells, only this that seemed of any immediate importance: “I shall be far away to-night, Joe, but when you say your prayers I shall hear.” The problem that puckered the small brow was whether prayers out of regular hours were real prayers. Joe decided to risk it and, getting on his knees, said over all the prayers he knew. ”

“ We can see the lights of Hamilton from Hagar as of old, but we seldom think of the Celestial City, or any palaces and splendors, but of the multitude of various people who go to and fro, each carrying a story. ”

“ It is no spendthrift flood-stream to be whirling over the bottom-lands in April and scarcely able to wet its middle stones in August, but a shrewd and honest river, a canny river flowing among a canny folk, a companionable river, loving both laughter and sentiment, with a taste for the varieties of life and a fine vein of humor. ”