Old Country

“ To the old country, when it is as old as Ribe, we shall remain, I suppose, to the end of time a lot of ex-savages, barely reclaimed from the woods and scalp-locks and such, and in the nature of things not made to last. ”

“ But even here the century-old country life of France is menaced, and that threat hanging over it renders it more dear, and almost sacred, that the rural novel in France is at once more exact and more tender in its record than it was in the century gone by. ”

“ There lay, then, so long unused, that vast and splendid land so soon to write romantic history of its own, so soon to come into the admiration or the wonder of a great portion of the earth—a land of fascinating interest to the youth of every country, and a region whose story holds a charm for young and old alike even today. ”

“ Every traveller who came from the old country and made friends with those living here was another link between the old country and the new. It rejoiced his heart to see so many evidences of the warm feeling of affection towards the old country, that dear mother land whose pride in and attachment to the colonies was growing stronger every year. ”

“ Long ago, so the legend of the story-telling old men ran, our people had drifted to the south, where was a warmer clime, but something had driven them northward again and they had long lived a roving, sturdy, and fierce community in a country of rock and plain, fruitful in season, it is true, and with good hunting, peopled as it was by many grass-eating brutes and furred beasts of prey, and warm as well, but hard to bear in winter because of the breath of northern glaciers. ”

“ What is true of an old country is true of old men, and old women, too. I am very much disposed to say of this young nation of America, that their teasing us with our defects might just get the answer which a worthy member of the church of Scotland gave to his son, who was so dissatisfied with the defects in the church, that he was determined to go over to a younger communion. 'Ah, Sandy, Sandy, man, when your lum reeks as lang as ours, it will, may be, need sweeping too.'10 Now, I do not deny that we need sweeping ”

“ The Old Town was set in a meadow, grass to the right of it, grass to the left of it, stretching away toward the horizon until in the south and east it came up against the black moor, and toward the sunset a little way met the sands of the western sea. What sport was there for boys in such a country? ”

“ That Old Country is plenty strange, too, for a plain man to consider, for I seen women drunk and children starving, and had to bat a white man's head for shining a nigger's shoes. It beats me how such a tribe can ride herd on a bunch of empires as easy as I drive cows, but if I proceed to unfold all I don't know, I'll be apt to get plumb talkative. ”

“ There is also even a belief (the wish being father to the thought) that the United States of America have a sentimental feeling for the Old Country; and one frequently hears the platform or banquet stock phrase, "Blood is thicker than water." ”

“ Then all at once he thought he had heard one of the old men say that the Land of Souls lay to the south, and so, filled with new hope and courage, he set his face southwards. For many, many miles the country looked the same as it did round his own home. ”

“ It shows, at any rate, how many remote, decaying villages and country-neighborhoods of the North, and forest-nooks of the West, and old mansion-houses in cities, are shaken by the tremor of our native soil, so that men long hidden in retirement put on the garments of their youth and hurry out to inquire what is the matter. ”

“ The face of the country, too, has been altered, by many a village built, and many an old mansion pulled down, long tracts of country brought into cultivation, and deep plantations of old trees shadowing that ground which in those days was unwholesome marsh, or barren moor. ”

“ And the men pass out, as they lose the game
That we play in the Golden West:
But their thoughts must turn as the days grow late.
In a dream, to some “cocky” patch
Where the old folk stand at their homestead gate,
And they laugh ’neath their whitening thatch. [94]
DAN THE HATTER.
An Old North Country Identity.
I tramped again ’neath a blazing sky,
In a Western land where the deserts lie:
But the rush and roar, and the life we knew,
When the ’Nineties echoed the whole world through,
Were silent, or uttered their speech alone
With a drab and dreary monotone. ”

“ No better example could be found than this old town with its families who had come from well-to-do circumstances, not, as was the case with so many settlers of the new country, in order to escape trouble. ”

“ The gentry or nobility—the terms are the same on the Continent—went to live in the towns. They could no longer afford to inhabit their country mansions. They acquired a taste for town life, its conveniences, its distractions, its amusements ”

“ All the accounts we have of the Highlands from travellers and others down to the end of the 18th century, show the country in a state of commotion and confusion, resulting from the changes consequent on the rebellion, the breaking up of old relationships, and the gradual encroachment of lowland civilisation, lowland modes of life, and lowland methods of agriculture. ”

“ The mountains may not be richer, or the mountains more lofty, but every dell and stream are consecrated. Therefore, a new country must be inferior to the old. Its loftiest associations lead but to the labors of the colonist, or his wars upon the wild beasts that were there before him. ”

“ Not only is each of the great array of characters set forth vividly, but the larger problems of the countryside are illuminated from various angles. A map of the village shows every cottage, some fifty genealogical trees explain the relationships of the villagers, and a 'Who's Who' gives full information about each inhabitant. The author has taken three years to write this book, and it is the fruit of a life-time's close observation. All who were born in the country or have any interest in rural life and problems must be interested in Old England. ”

“ That towns, and even great towns, abode by the traditions of country life, is now abundantly manifest, but the indications above given shed only partial light on rural conditions in their earliest and fullest form. ”

“ In our own day, however, the Old West generally means the old cow country of the West—the high plains and the lower foothills running from the Rio Grande to the northern boundary. The still more ancient cattle-range of the lower Pacific Slope will never come into acceptance as the Old West. ”

“ In this Old-World, constricted country it requires quite an effort of memory to recall those spacious days upon our own open, rolling plains and hillsides. Gone are the great streets of wooden two-storey huts, with their electric light, steam heat, and hot showers ”

“ That is to an immense extent gone, and can never be restored. We are all cosmopolitan now, and live and die to ourselves.
But let us come to some of the peculiar features of old village life, before there were railways, and when the post did not come every day.
Old Church Orchestra.
At that time most villages had their feasts, revels, [243] harvest homes, ringers' suppers, shearing feasts, and other entertainments. Some of us can remember when in the village churches the gallery was occupied by the village band, fiddles and viol, ophicleide, flute &c. ”

“ To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; ”

“ Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; And from its station in the hall An ancient timepiece says to all,— "Forever—never! Never—forever!" ”

“ See where the downs stretch their solitary heads amid the clear and spiritual hues of the sky. And as you go on, the chime of flocks, and the discovery of sweet hamlets, and the voices of their children at play, and the tinkle of the plough-team bells, shall make you feel that the rural peace and delight of Old England are as strong in her heart as ever. ”

“ A change came over the sleepy old territory. These active, pushing emigrants, the best blood of the older states, are leveling the forests, they are delving in the mines, they are tunneling the mountains, they are toiling in the grain fields, they are building cities, towns and villages, filling the heavens with the shining towers of religion and civilization.
The old settler finds himself in the midst of a strange new age and almost uncomprehended scenes. The old order of things has passed away but your sturdy self-reliant pioneer looks not mournfully into the past. ”

“ As I walked along the red road betwixt the fluffy cotton fields from village to village and from mansion to mansion, those stately farmhouses of the South, I was always on the lookout for the oldest folk along the way. The young ones knew only of the war that was just past, the middle-aged thought of the old Civil War as somewhat of a joke, but the only thing the old folks will never laugh over is the great strife which with its before and after made the very passion of their lives. ”

“ It floated past through the archway, toward those eyes. Who was it laughed in there? The old South itself—that incredible, fine, lost soul! That "old-time" thing of old ideals, blindfolded by its own history! That queer, proud blend of simple chivalry and tyranny, of piety and the abhorrent thing! Who was it laughed out of that old slave-market, at these white eyeballs glaring from out of the blackness of this dark cattle-pen? What poor departed soul in this House of Melancholy? But there was no ghost when we turned to look—only our old guide with her sweet smile. ”

“ The first view of Old England, after a long absence, is worth a myriad of the common-place adventures of life. The land of promise lay before them, but its shore seemed low and distant; and its chalky cliffs were shining white as snow in the morning sun, so pale and dim, that they seemed more like the edge of a vast field of ice than firm land. Every man strained his eyes towards it, and pointed out to his comrades the spires and villages, which he imagined he could trace through the dim haze that floated on the waters of the Channel. ”

“ Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the lark and the linnet, Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of neighbors Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip together, And, at the end of the street, the village church, with the ivy Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet graves in the churchyard. Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my religion; Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself back in Old England. You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it: I almost Wish myself back in Old England, I feel so lonely and wretched. ”

“ At such a time not only Nature smiles but our quiet villages and grave old spires wake up from winter in the mellow air and wear their centuries lightly. At such a time you might come just at evening on one of those old villages in a valley and find it in the mood to tell you the secret of the ages that it hid and treasured there before the Normans came. ”

“ Little French towns stood white on the hillsides and in villages of whitewashed houses under thatch roofs, with deep, low barns filled with the first fruits of the harvest, peasant girls laughed as they filled their jugs from the wells, and boys and girls played games in the marketplaces; and old men and women, sitting in the cool gloom of their doorways, watched the old familiar things of peaceful life and listened to the chimes of the church clocks, without any terror in their hearts. ”

“ Plain history in fascinating guise is so rare a gift to the per- functory seeker for knowledge that attention must be called to a charming new book, 'Old Colony Days,' written in the sprightliest of easy styles for young or old, and displaying the high lights of the history of the New Eng- land colonies. ”

“ In reading the journals and narratives of the early settlers of New England nothing is more remarkable than the entire silence of the worthy writers in respect to the natural beauty or grandeur of the scenery amid which their lot was cast. They designated the grand and glorious forest, broken by lakes and crossed by great rivers, intersected by a thousand streams more beautiful than those which the Old World has given to song and romance, as "a desert and frightful wilderness." ”

“ You can only know the New South, but there is a generation, now passing away, which holds in loving memory the South as it used to be. 10 Those memories are a legacy to the new generation from the old, and it behooves the old to hand them down to the new.
"The days that are no more" come crowding around me, insistent that I interpret them as I knew them; there are the happy plantation days, the recollection of which causes my heart to throb again with youthful pleasure, and near them are the days, the dreadful days, of war and fire and famine. ”

“ Reader, there are mental pictures in the wilderness, as vivid as any in nature. They are the pictures of the past. They haunt the pioneer by day and by night. They go with him over the fields—sit down with him by the streams—linger around his evening hearth, and rise up in his dreams.
I was born in New England. The village was very old, and had received and discharged generations of men. Some two centuries ago, a troop of iron-sided old pilgrims, full of theology and man's rights, an offshoot of a larger body, with their pastor at their head, founded the place, and gave it tone and direction. ”