The tavern at Shelburne Falls was about the worst I ever saw, — there being hardly anything to eat, at least nothing of the meat kind. There was a party of students from the Rensselaer school at Troy, who had spent the night there, a set of rough urchins from sixteen to twenty years old, accompanied by the wagon-driver, a short, stubbed little fellow, who walked about with great independence, thrusting his hands into his breeches-pockets, beneath his frock. The queerness was, such a figure being associated with classic youth. They were on an excursion which is yearly made from that school in search of minerals. They seemed in rather better moral habits than students used to be, but wild-spirited, rude, and unpolished, somewhat like German students, which resemblance one or two of them increased by smoking pipes. In the morning, my breakfast being set in a corner of the same room with them, I saw their breakfast-table, with a huge washbowl of milk in the centre, and a basin and spoon placed for each guest.
In the bar-room of this tavern were posted up written advertisements, the smoked chimney-piece being thus made to serve for a newspaper: “I have rye for sale,” “I have a fine mare colt,” etc. There was one quaintly expressed advertisement of a horse that had strayed or been stolen from a pasture.
The students, from year to year, have been in search of a particular rock, somewhere on the mountains in the vicinity of Shelburne Falls, which is supposed to contain some valuable ore; but they cannot find it. One man in the bar-room observed that it must be enchanted; and spoke of a tinker, during the Revolutionary War, who met with a somewhat similar instance. Roaming along the Hudson River, he came to a precipice which had some bunches of singular appearance embossed upon it. He knocked off one of the hunches, and carrying it home, or to a camp, or wherever he lived, he put it on the fire, and incited it down into clear lead. He sought for the spot again and again, but could never find it.
Mr. Leach’s brother is a student at Shelburne Falls. He is about thirty-five years old, and married; and at this mature age he is studying for the ministry, and will not finish his course for two or three years. He was bred a farmer, but has sold his farm, and invested the money, and supports himself and wife by dentistry during his studies. Many of the academy students are men grown, and some, they say, well towards forty years old. Methinks this is characteristic of American life, — these rough, weatherbeaten, hard-handed, farmer-bred students. In nine cases out of ten they are incapable of any effectual cultivation; for men of ripe years, if they have any pith in them, will have long ago got beyond academy or even college instruction. I suspect nothing better than a very wretched smattering is to be obtained in these country academies.
Mr. Jerkins, an instructor at Amherst, speaking of the Western mounds, expressed an opinion that they were of the same nature and origin as some small circular hills which are of very frequent occurrence here in North Adams. The burial-ground is on one of them, and there is another, on the summit of which appears a single tombstone, as if there were something natural in making these hills the repositories of the dead. A question of old H — — — led to Mr. Jenkins’s dissertation on this subject, to the great contentment of a large circle round the bar-room fireside on the last rainy day.
A tailor is detected by Mr. Leach, because his coat had not a single wrinkle in it. I saw him exhibiting patterns of fashions to Randall, the village tailor. Mr. Leach has much tact in finding out the professions of people. He found out a blacksmith, because his right hand was much larger than the other.
A man getting subscriptions for a religious and abolition newspaper in New York, — somewhat elderly and gray-haired, quick in his movements, hasty in his walk, with an eager, earnest stare through his spectacles, hurrying about with a pocketbook of subscriptions in his hand, — seldom speaking, and then in brief expressions, — sitting down before the stage comes, to write a list of subscribers obtained to his employers in New York. Withal, a city and business air about him, as of one accustomed to hurry through narrow alleys, and dart across thronged streets, and speak hastily to one man and another at jostling corners, though now transacting his affairs in the solitude of mountains.
An old, gray man, seemingly astray and abandoned in this wide world, sitting in the bar-room, speaking to none, nor addressed by any one. Not understanding the meaning of the supper-bell till asked to supper by word of mouth. However, he called for a glass of brandy.
A pedler, with girls’ silk neckerchiefs, — or gauze, — men’s silk pocket-handkerchiefs, red bandannas, and a variety of horn combs, trying to trade with the servant-girls of the house. One of them, Laura, attempts to exchange a worked vandyke, which she values at two dollars and a half; Eliza, being reproached by the pedler, “vows that she buys more of pedlers than any other person in the house.”
A drove of pigs passing at dusk. They appeared not so much disposed to ramble and go astray from the line of march as in daylight, but kept together in a pretty compact body. There was a general grunting, not violent at all, but low and quiet, as if they were expressing their sentiments among themselves in a companionable way. Pigs, on a march, do not subject themselves to any leader among themselves, but pass on, higgledy-piggledy, without regard to age or sex.
September 1st. — Last evening, during a walk, Graylock and the whole of Saddleback were at first imbued with a mild, half-sunshiny tinge, then grew almost black, — a huge, dark mass lying on the back of the earth and encumbering it. Stretching up from behind the black mountain, over a third or more of the sky, there was a heavy, sombre blue heap or ledge of clouds, looking almost as solid as rocks. The volumes of which it was composed were perceptible, by translucent lines and fissures; but the mass, as a whole, seemed as solid, bulky, and ponderous in the cloud-world as the mountain was on earth. The mountain and cloud together had an indescribably stern and majestic aspect. Beneath this heavy cloud, there was a fleet or flock of light, vapory mists, flitting in middle air; and these were tinted, from the vanished sun, with the most gorgeous and living purple that can be conceived, — a fringe upon the stern blue. In the opposite quarter of the heavens, a rose-light was reflected, whence I know not, which colored the clouds around the moon, then well above the horizon, so that the nearly round and silver moon appeared strangely among roseate clouds, — sometimes half obscured by them.
A man with a smart horse, upon which the landlord makes laudatory remarks. He replies that he has “a better at home.” Dressed in a brown, bright-buttoned coat, smartly cut. He immediately becomes familiar, and begins to talk of the license law, and other similar topics, — making himself at home, as one who, being much of his time upon the road, finds himself at ease at any tavern. He inquired after a stage agent, named Brigham, who formerly resided here, but now has gone to the West. He himself was probably a horse-jockey.
An old lady, stopping here over the Sabbath, waiting for tomorrow’s stage for Greenfield, having been deceived by the idea that she could proceed on her journey without delay. Quiet, making herself comfortable, taken into the society of the women of the house.
September 3d. — On the slope of Bald Mountain a clearing, set in the frame of the forest on all sides, — a growth of clover upon it, which, having been mowed once this year, is now appropriated to pasturage. Stumps remaining in the ground; one tall, barkless stem of a tree standing upright, branchless, and with a shattered summit. One or two other stems lying prostrate and partly overgrown with bushes and shrubbery, some of them bearing a yellow flower, — a color which Autumn loves. The stumps and trunks fire-blackened, yet nothing about them that indicates a recent clearing, but the roughness of an old clearing, that, being removed from convenient labor, has none of the polish of the homestead. The field, with slight undulations, slopes pretty directly down. Near the lower verge, a rude sort of barn, or rather haystack roofed over, and with hay protruding and hanging out. An ox feeding, and putting up his muzzle to pull down a mouthful of hay; but seeing me, a stranger, in the upper part of the field, he remains long gazing, and finally betakes himself to feeding again. A solitary butterfly flitting