Brooklands

“ It is on the eastern side of the central portion of the county of Franklin, near the head-waters of an unnamed branch of the Kennebec. On the map he used, there is no town located very near. Brookdale, no doubt, was a name of his own invention.
All the places and persons described existed in his mind with as much distinctness, apparently, as if the scenes had been long familiar to him, and the persons were those with whom he was intimately acquainted. To the only friend with whom he freely conversed upon the subject, he always spoke of them as really existing. ”

“ But the lips had closed sternly, and Lady Moreham, seemingly quite forgetful of her young auditors, was gazing far away. Faith ventured, at length, to jog her consciousness.
"You asked me, once, a good deal about Brookline—were you there too?"
The lady nodded, then turned and looked at her with a quizzical glance.
"Ah, child, never be so curious to hear a sad story! Every one has griefs enough to bear without appropriating other people's. Yes, we did live in Brookline for several happy years—my husband and I. Our home was the porter's lodge of one of those fine places you used to admire. ”

“ The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the country's annals (of which more hereafter) , all made an appeal to her imagination, and centred her thoughts on what she saw about her. There was door which no man ever opened—had never opened since Revolutionary times—should she see it? Should she know it if she did see it? Then Mr. Van Broecklyn himself! just to meet him, under any conditions and in any place, was an event. But to meet him here, under the pall of his own mystery! ”

“ The whole world is sliding down hill faster and faster every minute, and folks in Brookville think matters are going to improve, when they are sliding right along with the Emperor of Germany and the King of England, and all the rest of the big bugs. I can’t figure it out, but in some queer, outlandish way that war over there has made it so folks in Brookville can’t pay their minister’s salary. ”

“ A LATE SUPPER.
The story begins one afternoon in June just after dinner. Miss Catherine Spring was the heroine; and she lived alone in her house, which stood on the long village street in Brookton,—up in the country city people would say,—a town certainly not famous, but pleasant enough because it was on the outer edge of the mountain region, near some great hills. One never hears much about Brookton when one is away from it, but, for all that, life is as important and exciting there as it is anywhere ”

“ If I come not back at all, when it is known for sure here that I am dead, then I rede thee make as little delay as thou mayest, but get thee gone at once, thou and thy nurse, from the pleasant house of Brookside, and go straight to the house of the Grey Sisters, which thou hast seen from without many a time, that lieth betwixt wood and water a seven miles down the river, and tell them that I have sent you and bid them to cherish you ”

“ So that it may be said, the city proper to-day stands consolidated on one side of the ancient neck with Roxbury and Dorchester, and on the other with Roxbury and Brookline. There still remain, however, a section of Charles River, forming a bay of itself, between Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline, and a considerable portion of the South Bay between Roxbury and South Boston. Brookline—originally Muddy Brook—was formerly considered as belonging to Boston, and its lands were apportioned among the early settlers of the town for agricultural purposes and the keeping of cattle. ”

“ Brookfield was during the greater part of his life a hard-working servant of the public, and his friends could only obtain his delightful company in the rare and scanty intervals of school-inspecting—a profession of which not even the leisure is leisurely. ”

“ Thus having proved the origin of the good people of Brookhaven, it follows as a matter of course, that they were not only a pious people, a church-going people, but also great lovers of order and decorum. Happily, so important a conclusion does not rest for its authority on mere inference alone ”

“ Brenzett village is larger and livelier than Snargate. From it Brookland, Ivychurch, and Newchurch are most easily reached—the first, on the right-hand side of this causeway road to New Romney, in Walling Marsh; the others to the left, in the Marsh of Romney. Brookland is distant one mile from the main road, on a by-way that, if you follow it long enough, brings you dustily into Rye; dustily, because the traffic that resorts to Brookland station cuts up the surface to an astonishing extent ”

“ Jim Dodge had been hoeing potatoes all day. It was hard, monotonous work, and he secretly detested it. But the hunting season was far away, and the growing potatoes were grievously beset by weeds; so he had cut and thrust with his sharp-bladed hoe from early morning till the sun burned the crest of the great high-shouldered hill which appeared to close in the valley like a rampart, off Grenoble way. As a matter of fact, the brawling stream which gave Brookville its name successfully skirted the hill by a narrow margin which likewise afforded space for the state road. ”

“ Auspiciously dawned the settlement of Brookfield, which now bid fair to become early populated by a religious, intelligent and industrious people. But the spirit of speculation came also. The same year that Stephen Hoxie and Capt. Brown came in, Michael Myers, Jedediah Sanger and John I. Morgan, purchased all the unsold lands of Brookfield, together with Sangerfield. ”

“ The most impressive part of the spectacle was the defunct giantess, whose wide-spreading draperies and head-gear, as Brooks came down with a well-studied crash, took up so much of the floor that the rest of us had no room left to die in dignity. The piece was so much of a success that we performed it again at the house of Theodore Lyman, in Brookline,—and still again, at Chickering Hall in Boston.
Though Brooks could frolic upon occasion, his mood in his student days was prevailingly grave, and as he matured, warmed, and deepened into earnest religious conviction. ”

“ There, also, was the delegation from Brook Farm, in whose appearance it was plain to see that in Arcadia the hair was worn long, that the stiff collar and cravat were repudiated, and that woollen blouses were a mute protest against the body coats of a selfish and competitive civilization. Those young fellows walked in from Brook Farm and out again. They made nothing of ten miles or so each way under the winter stars. ”

“ Broeck, in the north of Holland, is said to be the original Spotless Town. We did not visit this place, but it is thus described by a writer in Public Opinion who has done so:
"The palings of the fences of Broeck are sky-blue. The streets are paved with shining bricks of many colors. The houses are rose-colored, black, gray, purple, light blue or pale green. The doors are painted and gilded. For hours you may not see a soul in the streets or at the windows. The streets and houses, bridges, windows and barns show a neatness and a brilliancy that are absolutely painful. ”

“ Eventually the 49th arrived at Kingston, the second stage. They made the rest of the journey over Lake Ontario in another swiftly sailing schooner.
By the time the whole trip was completed Brock had been afforded much food for thought. He saw a country whose resources were barely touched. Where we now have thriving communities, he saw settlements where the people might be counted by handfuls. In the long journey up the St. Lawrence the abundance of fish and game and the vast sources of wealth contained in the land alone must have amazed him. ”

“ The least calm of these men who debated upon what we were worth, and just what should become of us, was Brougham. Like most who love to torment, he himself was easily tormented. How does this champion of liberty look as he rises to condemn the policy on the Canadian question as “vacillating, imbecile, and indolent;” as he puts his awkward questions to those whom he calls his “noble friends” or “the noble lords,” all looking marvellously uncomfortable when their names are in that merciless mouth. ”

“ When both boys said they had never been on a real farm, the driver, whose name, he told them, was Gus Rede, had so much to say about the fun that awaited boys on a farm and especially such a fine place as Brookside that before Bobby and Twaddles knew it the bus had driven up to the post-office and there was dear Aunt Polly waiting to welcome them.
"Bless their hearts," she said warmly, when she had kissed Mother and had hold of a child with either hand. "Are they all tired out, poor lambs? It's a fearful place to get to, especially the first trip." ”

“ We've tried to persuade her to stay, but it seems the summer is a very bad time to be away from a farm. But a week from to-morrow, if you are all very good and help me as much as you can, I will take you to Brookside to visit Aunt Polly for a month, or as long as she can stand four active youngsters in her quiet house. ”

“ This is undoubtedly the reason why they build their houses in such inaccessible places, invisible until you are close to them. The natives of Brooker Island constantly make expeditions to Sud-Est in their large war canoes for the express purpose of obtaining heads, and as they are more powerful than their opponents, seldom leave without a number of these ghastly trophies. No wonder the natives of Sud-Est live in mortal dread of them. ”

“ Mr. Howell mounted the wagon with Sandy by his side; Mr. Bryant took his seat with the other two boys in an open buggy, which they were to drive to “the river” and there trade for a part of their outfit. Fond and tearful kisses had been exchanged and farewells spoken. They drove off 19 into the West. The two women stood at the gate, gazing after them with tear-dimmed eyes as long as they were in sight; and when the little train disappeared behind the first swale of the prairie, they burst into tears and went into the house which was now left unto them desolate. ”

“ The villages in general lie back under the shelter of the downs some distance from the shore; a coastguard station, a lonely farm house, or some fishermen's houses as at Brook, forming the only habitations of man we come to along many miles of shore. Brook Point is a spot of great interest to the geologist. Here we come upon Wealden strata somewhat older than any in Sandown Bay. The shore at the Point at low tide is seen to be strewn with the trunks of fossil trees. They are of good size, some 20 ft. ”

“ The village of Brookport, Long Island, is a summer place. It lives, like the mosquitoes that infest it, entirely on its summer visitors. At the time of the death of Mr Ira Nutcombe, the only all-the-year-round inhabitants were the butcher, the grocer, the chemist, the other customary fauna of villages, and Miss Elizabeth Boyd, who rented the ramshackle farm known locally as Flack's and eked out a precarious livelihood by keeping bees. ”

“ Brookline has long been regarded as a model city suburb. It is connected with [v.04 p.0647] Boston Common by boulevards of the Metropolitan Park System. The first settlement was probably made about 1635, and it was called Muddy River until 1705, when it was created a township under the name of Brookline. Up to 1793 it belonged to Suffolk county, of which Boston is a part, and since that time it has belonged to Norfolk county; but Boston has in its growth almost surrounded it, and because of its great wealth there has been a long struggle for and against its merger in Boston. ”

“ The next day the four children and Mother Blossom and Aunt Polly, with Linda and Jud part of the time and Spotty and Poots in constant attendance, explored Brookside thoroughly.
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They saw the poultry yard, where ducks and chickens and guinea-hens and one lame turkey lived happily together. The other turkeys roamed all over the farm, and Aunt Polly said that at night they slept out of doors in the trees. She said they would be sick if cooped up in houses, and that they had to roam half-wild to thrive. ”

“ Brook Farm, however, was not the only Community which was founded by the disciples of the ‘Newness.’ There was one established in 1843 on a farm called Fruitlands, in the town of Harvard, about forty miles from Boston. This was of much more ultra and grotesque character 38than Brook Farm. Here were gathered the men and women who based their hopes of reforming the world and of making all things new on dress and on diet. They revived the Pythagorean, the Essenian, and the Monkish notions of Asceticism with some variations and improvements peculiarly American. ”

“ But I can give you a better idea of the geography of Brookdale by the aid of a little map, which will 40show you at a glance an outline of the objects which Whistler saw from the hill, and also some things which he could not see from that position. The house numbered 1 is Mr. Davenport’s, and behind it is the hill from which Whistler obtained his view. No. 2 is Mr. Preston’s house, and No. 3 is the schoolhouse. The map shows the position of the lake, the river, and the brook near Mr. Davenport’s house. It also shows the Cross Roads village, and the principal roads passing through the town. ”

“ Not being accustomed to Brook Farm’s quick changes, my little talk with Dr. Ripley made me a few minutes late at the Knoll, where I found two-score or so of children and half as many grown-ups engaged in a snowball scrimmage. Inquiring for Angus, I turned over the toboggan to him for the first ride. He asked if the slide was all right, if I had made the jump over the brook, and if Mr. Hosmer was badly hurt. As he was a little backward about coming forward, so to speak, I took the initiative, inviting any girl to join me who had courage enough to face the music. ”