Dorothy Canfield

“ The village looked out of its windows, saw the wooden building blazing like a great torch, hurried on its clothes, and collected around the fire. No effort was made to save the library. People stood around in the chilly morning air, looking silently at the mountain of flame which burned as though it would never stop. They thought of a great many things in that silent hour as the sun rose over Hemlock Mountain, and there were no smiles on their faces. They are ignorant and narrow people in Hillsboro, but they have an inborn capacity unsparingly to look facts in the face. ”

“ Sometimes people from Hillsboro leave our forgotten valley, high among the Green Mountains, and "go down to the city," as the phrase runs. They always come back exclaiming that they should think New Yorkers would just die of lonesomeness, and crying out in an ecstasy of relief that it does seem so good to get back where there are some folks. After the desolate isolation of city streets, empty of humanity, filled only with hurrying ghosts, the vestibule of our church after morning service fills one with an exalted realization of the great numbers of the human race. ”

“ His own father and mother grew to seem far away and alien, and his sister came to be like a part of himself. To her alone of all living souls had he spoken freely of his passion for adventuring far from home, which devoured his boy-soul. He was sixteen when her husband finally came back from the war, and he had no secrets from the young matron of twenty-six, who listened with such wide tender eyes of sympathy to his half-frantic outpourings of longing to escape from the dark, narrow valley where his fathers had lived their dark, narrow lives. ”

“ The big, cheerful, sunlighted room full of grown-ups and children, talking together, even laughing out loud at times, did not look like any sophisticated idea of a library, for Hillsboro was as benighted on the subject of the need for silence in a reading-room as on all other up-to-date library theories. If you were so weak-nerved and sickly that the noise kept you from reading, you could take your book, go into Elzaphan Hall's room and shut the door, or you could take your book and go home, but you could not object to people being sociable. ”

“ At seventeen she was a slender sprite of a girl, to reach whose unearthly aloofness the warm human hands of her companions strained unavailing. Each winter she descended to the valley and to school and church, a silent, remote child, moving like one in a dream. And every spring she came back to the hill, to Timothy and his pipes, to the pines and the uplands, to the Round Stone and the white road in front of it. ”

“ The strong, sword-like green leaves thrust themselves boldly up into the spring air like a challenge. The plants vibrated with vigorous life.
In the field beyond them, as vigorous as they, strode Adoniram Purdon behind his team, the reins tied together behind his muscular neck, his hands grasping the plow with the masterful sureness of the successful practitioner of an art. The hot, sweet spring sunshine shone down on 'Niram's head with its thick crest of brown hair, the ineffable odor of newly turned earth steamed up about him like incense, the mountain stream beyond him leaped and shouted. ”

“ She reached the deserted clearing breathless, and paused to savor its slow, penetrating peace. The white birches now almost shut the house from view; the barn had wholly disappeared. From the finely proportioned old doorway of the house protruded a long, grayed, weather-beaten tuft of hay. The last utilitarian dishonor had befallen it. It had not even its old dignity of vacant desolation. She went closer and peered inside. Yes, hay, the scant cutting from the adjacent old meadows, had been piled high in the room which had been the gathering-place of the forgotten family life. ”

“ The well-kept old village still preserved its outer shell of quaintness and had a constantly increasing charm for summering strangers who rejoiced with a shameless egotism in the death-like quiet of the moribund place, and pointed out to visiting friends from the city the tufts of grass beginning to grow in the main street as delightful proofs of the tranquillity of their summer retreat.
Miss Abigail overheard a conversation to this effect one day between some self-invited visitors to her wonderful garden. Her heart burned and her face blackened. ”

“ I saw Cousin Tryphena picturesquely as the Happy Fool of old folk-lore, the character who, through his very lack of worldly wisdom, attains without effort all that self-seeking folks try for in vain. The happy ending of her adventure filled me with a cheerful wonder at the ways of Providence, which I tried to pass on to her in the exclamation, "Why, Cousin Tryphena, it's like a story-book! You're going to enjoy having those people. The woman is as nice as she can be, and that's the brightest little boy! He's as smart as a whip!" ”

“ As the Frenchman came into sight, the old man turned to Nathaniel, "Is this the gentleman who painted your willows?"
"Oh, aye!" cried Nathaniel.
The Frenchman dismounted near them with sparkling glances of inquiry. "See, LeMaury, this is young Master Everett, whom you have bewitched with your paint-pots. He would fain be an artist—de gustibus——! Perhaps you have in him an apprentice for your return to France."
The artist looked sharply at Nathaniel. "Eh, so? Can young master draw? Doth he know aught of chiaroscuro?"
Nathaniel blushed at his ignorance and looked timidly at his protector. ”

“ The denizen of the great world entered the poor, low-ceilinged room, looked around at the dreadful chromos on the walls, at the cheap, darned muslin curtains, at the gaudy rag rugs, at the shabby, worn books in inextricable confusion on the shelves, and listened with gleaming eyes to the account given by the librarian for the day of the years of patient and uncomplaining struggles by which these poverty-stricken mountaineers had secured this meager result. ”

“ It is very quiet, the station is black and deserted, the road winding up to the village glimmers uncertainly in the starlight, and dark forms hover vaguely about. Strangers say that it is a very depressing station at which to arrive, but we know better. There is no feeling in the world like that with which one starts up the white road, stars below him in the quiet pool, stars above him in the quiet sky, friendly lights showing the end of his journey is at hand, and the soft twilight full of voices all familiar, all welcoming. ”

“ Just before he reached the door, he set the bucket down with a cry of ecstasy and darted to the edge of the garden, where the peas were just thrusting green bowed heads through the crumbling earth. He knelt above them breathless, he looked up to the maple-twigs, over which a faint reddish bloom had been cast in the night, beyond to the lower slopes of the mountain, delicately patterned with innumerable white stems of young birch-trees, and clasped his hands to see that a shimmer of green hung in their tops like a mist. ”

“ Everett always ate very heartily on Sabbath mornings, but Nathaniel usually pushed his plate away.
As a rule he walked to church between his father and his mother, like a little child, although he was now a tall lad of sixteen, but to-day he was sent back for a psalm-book, forgotten in the hurry of their early start. When he set out again the rest of the village folk were all in the meeting-house. The sight of the deserted street, walled in by the forest, lying drowsily in the spring sunshine, was like balm to him. ”

“ Can a banker in the city by any possibility come to know what kind of an individual is the remote impersonal creature who waits on him in a department store? Most bankers recognize with a misguided joy this natural wall between themselves and people who are not bankers, and add to it as many stones of their own quarrying as possible; but they are not shut off from all the quickening diversity of life any more effectually than the college-settlement, boys' Sunday-school, brand of banker. ”

“ I am an old man and I have learned that they lie who say it is true. There is no hell but in our own hearts when we do evil; and we can escape a way out of that by repenting and doing good. There is no devil but our evil desires, and God gives to every man strength to fight with those. There is only good in your love for the fair things God made and put into the world for us to love. No man but only your own heart can tell you what is wrong and what is right. Only do not fear, for all is well."
The scene was never to fade from Nathaniel Everett's eyes. ”

“ Jehiel did not answer. The two old men stood silent, looking down the valley, lying like a crevasse in a glacier between the towering white mountains. The sinuous course of the frozen river was almost black under the slaty sky of March.
"Seems kind o' providential, havin' so much money come to you just now, when your sister-in-law's jest died, and left you the first time in your life without anybody you got to stay and see to, don't it?" ”

“ Susie was very fond of her stepfather at first, but when she came of school age, mixed more with the other children, and heard laughing, contemptuous remarks about him, the frank and devouring egotism of childhood made her ashamed of her affection, ashamed of him with his uncouth gait, his mouth always sagging open, his stammering, ignorant speech, which the other children amused themselves by mocking. Though he was prospering again with his sheep, owned the pasture and his house now, and had even built on another room as well as repairing the older part, he spent little on his own adornment. ”

“ Life is not accounts, or banks, or even Latin examinations, and it is a sign of inexperience to think it so. The trouble with the despairing banker is that he has never had a chance to become aware of the comforting vastness of the force which animates him in common with all the rest of humanity, to which force a bank failure is no apocalyptic end of Creation, but a mere incident or trial of strength like a fall in a slippery road. Absorbed in his solitary progress, the banker has forgotten that his business in life is not so much to keep from falling as to get up again and go forward. ”

“ She did not stir after this, her hands laid along her cheeks as though to hold her head quite still, her eyes directed with a smiling eagerness toward a huge rock, looming dimly in the transparent twilight. The silence was oppressive. Timothy's blood ran chill as the expectancy grew more and more strained in the child's eyes. He did not dare look at the rock himself. He stared only at the elfin creature before him, and when her hands were finally flung out in a gesture of welcoming ardor, he broke the unearthly silence by crying out loud in a rapid whirl, "God save us. Christ save us! ”

“ We do not blame city dwellers for not having it, we ourselves lose it when we venture into their maelstrom. Like them, we become dwarfed by overwhelming numbers, and shriveled by the incapacity to "sense" the humanity of the countless human simulacra about us. But we do not stay where we cannot feel ourselves live! We hurry back to the shadow of Hemlock Mountain, feeling that to love life one does not need to be what is usually called happy, one needs only to live. ”

“ Just so the children we have spoiled, the people we have lived with, will continue to keep us living with them. We shall have time to grow quite used to whatever awaits us after the tangled rose bushes of Hillsboro burying-ground bloom over our heads, before we shall have gradually faded painlessly away from the life of men and women. ”

“ Christmas time was the hardest for her. The traditions of old Greenford were for much decorating of the church with ropes of hemlock, and a huge Christmas tree in the Town Hall with presents for the best of the Sunday-school scholars. Winding the ropes had been, of old, work for the young unmarried people, laughing and flirting cheerfully. By the promise of a hot supper, which she furnished herself, Miss Abigail succeeded in getting a few stragglers from the back hills, but the number grew steadily smaller year by year. She and Miss Molly always trimmed the Christmas tree themselves. ”

“ The president of that date was, like all the other presidents of Middletown College, a florid, hearty old gentleman with more red blood than he knew what to do with, in spite of his seventy years. He was vastly amused at the inexperienced young fellow's simple-minded notion, and, clapping him on the shoulder, said with his cheerfully Johnsonian rotundity: "Why, my dear young sir, your recent sad bereavement must have temporarily deranged your mental faculties, that at your age you can contemplate adopting such a desiccated mode of existence. ”

“ The minister bowed his head sadly. "Aye, even as I thought. Sinful lust of the eye draggeth you down to destruction. You whose salvation even now hangs in the balance, for whose soul I wrestle every night in prayer that you may be brought to the conviction of sin, 'you were glad.' Remember the words, 'If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.'"
Nathaniel made no reply. He caught at the door, looking up wretchedly at his father. When the minister turned away without speaking again, he drew a long breath of relief. ”

“ No, the folks in Heath Falls were very grand. They traveled themselves, and saw more strangers than a little. You had to pay good money for shelter and food, and, of course, the doctor did not cure for nothing. He was a kind man, the trader, and he did his best to keep Hannah from a wildly foolish enterprise.
But his best was not good enough. She went home and looked at her poor Ann Mary, as white as a snow drift, her big dark eyes ringed with black circles, and Hannah knew only two things in the world—that there was a doctor who could cure her sister, and that she must get her to him. ”

“ Madame Orloff turned on the collector the somber glow of her deep-set eyes. "I have dreamed it," she said.
"It is real," said Vieyra. "You are the first to see it. I wished to observe how——"
"It's an unknown Vermeer!" The doctor brought his big white hand down loudly on this discovery. "Nobody but Vermeer could have done the plaster wall in the sunlight. And the girl's strange gray head-dress must be seventeenth-century Dutch of some province I don't——"
"I am a rich man, for a picture-dealer," said Vieyra, "but only national governments can afford to buy Vermeers nowadays." ”

“ Lack of any elements of common life form as impassable a barrier as lack of a common language, whereas with us, in Hillsboro all the life we have is common. Everyone is needed to live it.
There can be no city dweller of experience who does not know the result of this herding together of the same kind of people, this intellectual and moral inbreeding. To the accountant who knows only accounts, the world comes to seem like one great ledger, and account-keeping the only vital pursuit in life. ”