Springhouse

“ Papa paced the cabin, and made it 276 feet long, beyond which there was an outside smoking cabin, and then the forecastle.
Springfield is in the midst of the Grand Prairie, and, as we are not to leave it till the afternoon, we have been exploring the town, and, as far as we could, the prairie which comes close up to it; but the moment the plank pavement ceased, it was hopeless to get further, owing to the dreadfully muddy state of the road. This mud must be a great drawback to residing in a prairie town, as the streets are rendered impassable for pedestrians, unless at the plank crossings. ”

“ It was once a popular walk-way from the Sanitarium on the hill to Magnetic Spring. The winding “up way” from the foot of Mountain Street at the Baptist Church is a short cut to a private home called Mount Air. Taking this stairway reminds us of the tourist who asked a native Ozarker if he was on the right road to Springfield. “Well, not exactly,” he replied, “This road just moseys along for a spell, then it turns into a pig trail, then a squirrel track, and finally runs up a tree and ends in a knot-hole.” ”

“ One-story white houses, very small, but with yards swept clean and neat whitewashed fences, stand under poplars and willows. It is almost an incredible experience to come upon that odd little village as one crosses a wooden bridge and sees boys fishing hopefully in a stagnant canal. At the bend in the lane is a trim white house with vivid flowers in the garden, beds patterned with whited shells, an old figurehead—or is it a cigar-store sign?—of a colored boy in a blue coat, freshly painted in the yard. ”

“ Every highest, furtherest bud that opens day after tomorrow, or in a thousand years, will flash with a spark and a flame, that has climbed up hundreds and thousands of miles from the roots that touch all the gardens of our city, up the old streets of Heaven, where this vine blooms today.
In the twinkling of an eye, while the star chimes of Springfield are ringing new tunes, from the dimmest stars of the blue, from east, 320west, north and south, magic boats sweep down to the Amazonian field. ”

“ THE FLAG CHAPTER I
Snow everywhere; freshly fallen, white and beautiful. It lay unsullied on the village roofs, and, trampled but not yet soiled, in the village streets. The spruce trees on the lawn at Bannerhall were weighted with it, and on the lawn itself it rested, like an ermine blanket, soft and satisfying. Down the steps of the porch that stretched across the front of the mansion, a boy ran, whistling, to the street. ”

“ The village is no more than the inn, the brewery, and a few cottages, and a shop or two, in one of which there was a pretty show of horse ornaments of brass among the saddlery. I almost counted these ornaments, crescents, stars, and bosses, as flowers of Spring, so clearly did I recall their May-day flashing in former years. It was darkening, or at least saddening, as we rode out of Oak Hill along the edge of a park which was notable for much-twisted, dark sycamores on roots accumulated above-ground like pedestals. ”

“ The Spirit of the Lord was manifested and we returned to our tents feeling thankful for the blessings of the Lord upon us.
Through Springfield.
Friday, July 27.—Continued our journey to Springfield on the National road, one hundred and seventy-one miles from Wheeling, in Virginia. Crossed Buck creek, a branch of Mad river just before entering the village on the north. Springfield is a large and beautiful village, the county seat of Clark county, containing about three thousand inhabitants. There are many elegant buildings of brick, and it seems to be a place of considerable trade. ”

“ On the kitchen porch he had paused again, for a little, because he could not see the steps; then had gone on to the well, the garden, the woodhouse, the shop, the barn, and so out into the orchard that shaded the gently rising slope of the hill beyond the house. At the farther side of the orchard, on the brow of the hill, he had climbed the rail fence and had seated himself on the ground where he could look out and away over the familiar meadows and fields and pastures. ”

“ At the back of the lodge stood a crazy porch of rustic woodwork, and therefrom a door, lolling on broken hinges, gave access to the interior of the building. There was a gap here sufficient for the entrance of a man, and he went through it swiftly, and along a stone-paved passage beyond, that was dumb with dust and littered with flaked rags of plaster and crackling wall-paper. So he made his way to a front room that looked upon the drive ”

“ XII THE LONELY FARMHOUSE The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to be so gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of age. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked up with sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockaded with snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, looks like a besieged fort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to the traveler wearily dragging along in his creaking sleigh, the light from its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of a blazing fire. ”

“ Every man, woman, and child felt the pleasing exhilaration of knowing that something was going forward. The square two-story false fronts of the peak-roofed buildings looked with one-eyed approval upon the thronging men and women, horses and dogs, enlivening the single street of the town. A fervent sun shone gratefully upon the loungers in front of the court-house, where the snow was trodden to the solid consistency of a pavement. ”

“ How different it would be to settle with this new people, on the precarious subsistence which I might get for my family here, preaching, and perhaps keeping house, in a log cabin, from the situation I must fill, should I accept the call 101 extended by the large and wealthy church in N. A frontier parish on a prairie, on the outskirts of civilization, and a city parish,–what a contrast! But my heart is strongly drawn towards this people. ”

“ Within a mile or two of the Sweet, we came to what is called the Red Spring, an old dilapidated building, gray with age, and all its windows shattered.
"Before 12 o'clock we entered the smiling valley of the Sweet Springs. Whoever comes to the mountains, should make a visit to the Sweet Springs, if but for one day. Much of the scenery in the neighbourhood is of the most beautiful and refreshing kind, and the whole place is redolent of life and animation, particularly at a time when thronging with company."
The accommodations at this place are sufficient for about 400 persons. ”

“ The habit of turning every spare village green into a summer camp ground for passing tourists in automobiles, that has prevailed through the United States for a long time, has established in all the counties adjoining Springfield an enormous circle of village grounds, and here the great part of the Fair visitors camp by their own machines and come in to the show by day, by local transportation of all sorts. ”

“ A bare adobe yard sloping eastward was bordered by a trickling stream of water along which grew some willows and cottonwoods. Beyond it spread a golden-green field of young alfalfa, and beyond that the greenish-gray plain stretched to the far horizon. Across the front of the house was a narrow wooden porch, and house and porch, walls and sheds, were [Pg 15] all a dazzling white that in the vivid sunshine smote the sight like a blow across the eyeballs. ”

“ This portion of the country abounds in minerals, especially lead and iron; and it is, perhaps, the best watered region in the United States; thousands of large, clear springs burst out from beneath the mountain ranges; but very few issue from their sides, however, which is somewhat remarkable.
We passed through Springfield, which at that time was a beautiful and flourishing little city. A school dismissed while we were riding through the streets, and from the walls of the large seminary issued such a swarm of pretty girls, as would make any young man's head swim with delight as he viewed them. ”

“ This newness in life at the Springs, this background of primitive wilderness against which the drives and dances and piazza promenades of the fashionable frequenters were projected, has long since disappeared, and with it has gone a certain old school exclusiveness which once marked the society at American baths. That society, if not more aristocratic than at present, was at all events more select, simply by virtue of being smaller. ”

“ The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and the habit of life here. But the present occupiers have taken no hints from the natives. In village and country they have done all they can, in spite of the maguey and the cactus and the palm and the umbrella-tree and the live-oak and the riotous flowers and the thousand novel forms of vegetation, to give everything a prosaic look. ”

“ Our house stood near the centre of an oak opening,—a little patch of native prairie-land, with a narrow stream skirting it on one side, and a dense fringe of forest all about. The small story-and-a-half cabin of hewn logs, with its lean-to of rough hand-riven planks, fronted to the southward; and the northern expanse of roof was green with moss. ”

“ Rich men’s ranches, they should perhaps be called. All these, or most of them, would have been invisible from my fence-rail perch, but for the fact, which really made the strangeness of the whole spectacle to a New England man’s eyes, that the rolling land is all unwooded—a broad landscape, stretching away and away, north, south, east, and west, and no forest! ”

“ Haply one will see the water of this spring issuing still from a recess in a hill-side, with an overhanging ledge of rock—the entrance to this cavern being walled across and closed with a gate, thus making, according to ancient fashion, a simple natural spring-house and dairy.
Something like a feeling of exasperation is apt to come over one in turning to the typical modern houses. Nowhere, certainly, in rural America, are there, within the same area, more substantial, comfortable homesteads. They are nothing if not spacious and healthful, frame or brick, two stories, shingle roofs. ”

“ The brook behind my father’s house, in which my bared feet daily waded, turns the wheel of a factory; the trees that shaded our log cabin are metamorphosed into three-story houses; the country has turned into a town—and not more has the form changed than the spirit. ”

“ The public square, a green, pleasant lawn, enclosed by a railing, contains the courthouse and a market, both fine structures of brick: the sides are lined with handsome edifices. Most of the buildings are small, however, and the humble log cabin not unfrequently meets the eye. Among the public structures are a jail, and several houses of worship. Society is said to be excellent, and the place can boast much literary taste. The plan of Internal Improvement projected for the state, when carried out, cannot fail to render Springfield an important place. ”

“ The old war between the town and the gown seems revived, with this difference, that the natives of Springfield act like the University students, and the finest World’s Fair visitors seem the real citizens of the place, insulted at the deeds of the freshmen. ”

“ But the southeast 125point of the Springfield star system is a road that passes through the inner-wall gate at Taylorville and the outer at Pana, and points in the direction of Virginia and Richmond. Our fruit and flower devotees take all roads, but because of the wonders of the early southern spring many of them deem this the holiest way. There are found, more than other where, the botanizing pilgrims of the faiths of my friend Rabbi Terence Ezekiel and my friend Mother Grey and her daughter Roxana. ”

“ When we have shared the blessed bread, communing like true friends, the beauty of all Heaven, the sea in which we move that is above all and through all and in all, will gild more perfectly the Springfield daily grind and the Springfield sabbath. The devout convert and his child and his grandchild will build his house as beautifully as our Sacred Apple Tree is made, as righteously as the Sacred Oak Tree, as democratically as the Golden Rain Tree, which spreads its branches like a gate for 187all of us to pass through in equality. ”

“ Here in the south and at the station most influenced by civilization, the majority of the little houses are built of logs and even roofed with wood. Some are covered with turf. The dwellings of our people in the north are much more primitive. Each house has its low porch, a very necessary addition in this land of "winter's frost and snowing." ”

“ MARGARET FULLER
_CITY OF SPRING GARDEN_.
I am at present domiciled with my excellent friend Abraham Lincoln, in the beautiful city of Spring Garden. This place contains between sixty and seventy thousand inhabitants, a majority of whom are engaged in literary and artistic pursuits. It might vie with ancient Athens for the wealth of mind which is concentrated within its precincts. It is not compactly built, the city covering about thrice the surface of ground that would be occupied by one on earth of the same number of inhabitants. ”