Chapter V: Part 5

On the road to Northampton, we passed a tame crow, which was sitting on the peak of a barn. The crow flew down from its perch, and followed us a great distance, hopping along the road, and flying, with its large, black, flapping wings, from post to post of the fence, or from tree to tree. At last he gave up the pursuit with a croak of disappointment. The driver said, perhaps correctly, that the crow had scented some salmon which was in a basket under the seat, and that this was the secret of his pursuing us. This would be a terrific incident if it were a dead body that the crow scented, instead of a basket of salmon. Suppose, for instance, in a coach travelling along, that one of the passengers suddenly should die, and that one of the indications of his death would be this deportment of the crow.

July 29th.--Remarkable characters:--A disagreeable figure, waning from middle age, clad in a pair of tow homespun pantaloons, and a very soiled shirt, barefoot, and with one of his feet maimed by an axe; also an arm amputated two or three inches below the elbow. His beard of a week's growth, grim and grisly, with a general effect of black; altogether a disgusting object. Yet he has the signs of having been a handsome man in his idea, though now such a beastly figure that probably no living thing but his great dog would touch him without an effort. Coming to the stoop, where several persons were sitting, "Good morning, gentlemen," said the wretch. Nobody answered for a time, till at last one said, "I don't know whom you speak to: not to me, I'm sure" (meaning that he did not claim to be a gentleman). "Why, I thought I spoke to you all at once," replied the figure, laughing. So he sat himself down on the lower step of the stoop, and began to talk; and, the conversation being turned upon his bare feet by one of the company, he related the story of his losing his toes by the glancing aside of an axe, and with what great fortitude he bore it. Then he made a transition to the loss of his arm, and, setting his teeth and drawing in his breath, said that the pain was dreadful; but this, too, he seems to have borne like an Indian; and a person testified to his fortitude by saying that he did not suppose there was any feeling in him, from observing how he bore it. The man spoke of the pain of cutting the muscles, and the particular agony at one moment, while the bone was being sawed asunder; and there was a strange expression of remembered anguish, as he shrugged his half-limb, and described the matter. Afterwards, in a reply to a question of mine, whether he still seemed to feel the hand that had been amputated, he answered that he did always; and, baring the stump, he moved the severed muscles, saying, "There is the thumb, there the forefinger," and so on. Then he talked to me about phrenology, of which he seems a firm believer and skilful practitioner, telling how he had hit upon the true character of many people. There was a great deal of sense and acuteness in his talk, and something of elevation in his expressions,--perhaps a studied elevation,--and a sort of courtesy in his manner; but his sense had something out of the way in it; there was something wild and ruined and desperate in his talk, though I can hardly say what it was. There was a trace of the gentleman and man of intellect through his deep degradation; and a pleasure in intellectual pursuits, and an acuteness and trained judgment, which bespoke a mind once strong and cultivated. "My study is man," said he. And looking at me, "I do not know your name," he said, "but there is something of the hawk-eye about you, too."

This man was formerly a lawyer in good practice; but, taking to drinking, was reduced to the lowest state. Yet not the lowest; for after the amputation of his arm, being advised by divers persons to throw himself upon the public for support, he told them that, even if he should lose his other arm, he would still be able to support himself and a servant. Certainly he is a strong-minded and iron-constitutioned man; hut, looking at the stump of his arm, he said that the pain of the mind was a thousand times greater than the pain of the body. "That hand could make the pen go fast," said he. Among people in general, he does not seem to have any greater consideration in his ruin because of his former standing in society. He supports himself by making soap; and, on account of the offals used in that business, there is probably rather an evil odor in his domicile. Talking about a dead horse near his house, he said that he could not bear the scent of it. "I should not think you could smell carrion in that house," said a stage agent. Whereupon the soap-maker dropped his head, with a little snort, as it were, of wounded feeling; but immediately said that he took all in good part. There was an old squire of the village, a lawyer probably, whose demeanor was different,-- with a distance, yet with a kindliness; for he remembered the times when they met on equal terms. "You and I," said the squire, alluding to their respective troubles and sicknesses, "would have died long ago, if we had not had the courage to live." The poor devil kept talking to me long after everybody else had left the stoop, giving vent to much practical philosophy, and just observation on the ways of men, mingled with rather more assumption of literature and cultivation than belonged to the present condition of his mind. Meantime his great dog, a cleanly looking and not ill-bred dog, being the only decent attribute appertaining to his master,--a well-natured dog, too, and receiving civilly any demonstration of courtesy from other people, though preserving a certain distance of deportment,--this great dog grew weary of his master's lengthy talk, and expressed his impatience to be gone by thrusting himself between his legs, rolling over on his back, seizing his ragged trousers, or playfully taking his maimed, bare foot into his mouth,--using, in short, the kindly and humorous freedom of a friend, with a wretch to whom all are free enough, but none other kind. His master rebuked him, but with kindness too, and not so that the dog felt himself bound to desist, though he seemed willing to allow his master all the time that could possibly be spared. And at last, having said many times that he must go and shave and dress himself,--and as his beard had been at least a week growing, it might have seemed almost a week's work to get rid of it,--he rose from the stoop and went his way,--a forlorn and miserable thing in the light of the cheerful summer morning. Yet he seems to keep his spirits up, and still preserves himself a man among men, asking nothing from them; nor is it clearly perceptible what right they have to scorn him, though he seems to acquiesce, in a manner, in their doing so. And yet he cannot wholly have lost his self-respect; and doubtless there were persons on the stoop more grovelling than himself.

Another character:--A blacksmith of fifty or upwards, a corpulent figure, big in the paunch and enormous in the rear; yet there is such an appearance of strength and robustness in his frame, that his corpulence appears very proper and necessary to him. A pound of flesh could not be spared from his abundance, any more than from the leanest man; and he walks about briskly, without any panting or symptom of labor or pain in his motion. He has a round, jolly face, always mirthful and humorous and shrewd, and the air of a man well to do, and well respected, yet not caring much about the opinions of men, because his independence is sufficient to itself. Nobody would take him for other than a man of some importance in the community, though his summer dress is a tow-cloth pair of pantaloons, a shirt not of the cleanest, open at the breast, and the sleeves rolled up at the elbows, and a straw hat. There is not such a vast difference between this costume and that of Lawyer H------ above mentioned, yet never was there a greater diversity of appearance than between these two men; and a glance at them would be sufficient to mark the difference. The blacksmith loves his glass, and comes to the tavern for it, whenever it seems good to him, not calling for it slyly and shyly, but marching steadily to the bar, or calling across the room for it to be prepared. He speaks with great bitterness against the new license law, and vows if it be not repealed by fair means it shall be by violence, and that he will be as ready to cock his rifle for such a cause as for any other. On this subject his talk is really fierce; but as to all other matters he is good-natured and good-hearted, fond of joke, and shaking his jolly sides with frequent laughter. His conversation has much strong, unlettered sense, imbued with humor, as everybody's talk is in New England.

He takes a queer position sometimes,--queer for his figure particularly, --straddling across a chair, facing the back, with his arms resting thereon, and his chin on them, for the benefit of conversing closely with some one. When he has spent as much time in the bar-room or under the stoop as he chooses to spare, he gets up at once, and goes off with a brisk, vigorous pace. He owns a mill, and seems to be prosperous in the world. I know no man who seems more like a man, more indescribably human, than this sturdy blacksmith.

There came in the afternoon a respectable man in gray homespun cloth, who arrived in a wagon, I believe, and began to inquire, after supper, about a certain new kind of mill machinery. Being referred to the blacksmith, who owned one of these mills, the stranger said that he had come from Vermont to learn about the matter. "What may I call your name?" said he to the blacksmith. "My name is Hodge," replied the latter. "I believe I have heard of you," said the stranger. Then they colloquied at much length about the various peculiarities and merits of the new invention. The stranger continued here two or three days, making his researches, and forming acquaintance with several millwrights and others. He was a man evidently of influence in his neighborhood, and the tone of his conversation was in the style of one accustomed to be heard with deference, though all in a plain and homely way. Lawyer H------ took notice of this manner; for the talk being about the nature of soap, and the evil odor arising from that process, the stranger joined in. "There need not be any disagreeable smell in making soap," said he. "Now we are to receive a lesson," said H------, and the remark was particularly apropos to the large wisdom of the stranger's tone and air.

Then he gave an account of the process in his domestic establishment, saying that he threw away the whole offals of the hog, as not producing any soap, and preserved the skins of the intestines for sausages. He seemed to be hospitable, inviting those with whom he did business to take "a mouthful of dinner" with him, and treating them with liquors; for he was not an utter temperance man, though moderate in his potations. I suspect he would turn out a pattern character of the upper class of New England yeomen, if I had an opportunity of studying him. Doubtless he had been selectman, representative, and justice, and had filled all but weighty offices. He was highly pleased with the new mill contrivance, and expressed his opinion that, when his neighbors saw the success of his, it would be extensively introduced into that vicinity.

Mem. The hostlers at taverns call the money given them "pergasus,"-- corrupted from "perquisites." Otherwise "knock-down money." Remarkable character:--A travelling surgeon-dentist, who has taken a room in the North Adams House, and sticks up his advertising bills on the pillars of the piazza, and all about the town. He is a tall, slim young man, six feet two, dressed in a country-made coat of light blue (taken, as he tells me, in exchange for dental operations), black pantaloons, and clumsy, cowhide hoots. Self-conceit is very strongly expressed in his air; and a doctor once told him that he owed his life to that quality; for, by keeping himself so stiffly upright, he opens his chest, and counteracts a consumptive tendency. He is not only a dentist, which trade he follows temporarily, but a licensed preacher of the Baptist persuasion, and is now on his way to the West to seek a place of settlement in his spiritual vocation. Whatever education he possesses, he has acquired by his own exertions since the age of twenty-one,--he being now twenty-four. We talk together very freely; and he has given me an account, among other matters, of all his love-affairs, which are rather curious, as illustrative of the life of a smart young country fellow in relation to the gentle sex. Nothing can exceed the exquisite self-conceit which characterizes these confidences, and which is expressed inimitably in his face, his upturned nose, and mouth, so as to be truly a caricature; and he seems strangely to find as much food for his passion in having been jilted once or twice as in his conquests. It is curious to notice his revengeful feeling against the false ones,-- hidden from himself, however, under the guise of religious interest, and desire that they may be cured of their follies.

A little boy named Joe, who haunts about the bar-room and the stoop, four years old, in a thin, short jacket, and full-breeched trousers, and bare feet. The men tease him, and put quids of tobacco in his mouth, under pretence of giving him a fig; and he gets curaged, and utters a peculiar, sharp, spiteful cry, and strikes at them with a stick, to their great mirth. He is always in trouble, yet will not keep away. They despatch him with two or three cents to buy candy and nuts and raisins. They set him down in a niche of the door, and tell him to remain there a day and a half: he sits down very demurely, as if he meant to fulfil his penance; but a moment after, behold! there is little Joe capering across the street to join two or three boys who are playing in a wagon. Take this boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country roue, to spend a wild and brutal youth, ten years of his prime in the State Prison, and his old age in the poorhouse.

There are a great many dogs kept in the village, and many of the travellers also have dogs. Some are almost always playing about; and if a cow or a pig be passing, two or three of them scamper forth for an attack. Some of the younger sort chase pigeons, wheeling as they wheel. If a contest arises between two dogs, a number of others come with huge barking to join the fray, though I believe that they do not really take any active part in the contest, but swell the uproar by way of encouraging the combatants. When a traveller is starting from the door, his dog often gets in front of the horse, placing his forefeet down,-- looking the horse in the face, and barking loudly, then, as the horse comes on, running a little farther, and repeating the process; and this he does in spite of his master's remonstrances, till, the horse being fairly started, the dog follows on quietly. One dog, a diminutive little beast, has been taught to stand on his hind legs, and rub his face with his paw, which he does with an aspect of much endurance and deprecation. Another springs at people whom his master points out to him, barking and pretending to bite. These tricks make much mirth in the bar-room. All dogs, of whatever different sizes and dissimilar varieties, acknowledge the common bond of species among themselves, and the largest one does not disdain to suffer his tail to be smelt of, nor to reciprocate that courtesy to the smallest. They appear to take much interest in one another; but there is always a degree of caution between two strange dogs when they meet.

July 31st.--A visit to what is called "Hudson's Cave," or "Hudson's Falls," the tradition being that a man by the name of Henry Hudson, many years ago, chasing a deer, the deer fell over the place, which then first became known to white men. It is not properly a cave, but a fissure in a huge ledge of marble, through which a stream has been for ages forcing its way, and has left marks of its gradually wearing power on the tall crags, having made curious hollows from the summit down to the level which it has reached at the present day. The depth of the fissure in some places is at least fifty or sixty feet, perhaps more, and at several points it nearly closes over, and often the sight of the sky is hidden by the interposition of masses of the marble crags. The fissure is very irregular, so as not to be describable in words, and scarcely to be painted,--jetting buttresses, moss-grown, impending crags, with tall trees growing on their verge, nodding over the head of the observer at the bottom of the chasm, and rooted, as it were, in air. The part where the water works its way down is very narrow; but the chasm widens, after the descent, so as to form a spacious chamber between the crags, open to the sky, and its floor is strewn with fallen fragments of marble, and trees that have been precipitated long ago, and are heaped with drift-wood, left there by the freshets, when the scanty stream becomes a considerable waterfall. One crag, with a narrow ridge, which might be climbed without much difficulty, protrudes from the middle of the rock, and divides the fall. The passage through the cave made by the stream is very crooked, and interrupted, not only by fallen wrecks, but by deep pools of water, which probably have been forded by few. As the deepest pool occurs in the most uneven part of the chasm, where the hollows in the sides of the crag are deepest, so that each hollow is almost a cave by itself, I determined to wade through it. There was an accumulation of soft stuff on the bottom, so that the water did not look more than knee-deep; but, finding that my feet sunk in it, I took off my trousers, and waded through up to my middle. Thus I reached the most interesting part of the cave, where the whirlings of the stream had left the marks of its eddies in the solid marble, all up and down the two sides of the chasm. The water is now dammed for the construction of two marble saw-mills, else it would have been impossible to effect the passage; and I presume that, for years after the cave was discovered, the waters roared and tore their way in a torrent through this part of the chasm. While I was there, I heard voices, and a small stone tumbled down; and looking up towards the narrow strip of bright light, and the sunny verdure that peeped over the top,--looking up thither from the deep, gloomy depth,--I saw two or three men; and, not liking to be to them the most curious part of the spectacle, I waded back, and put on my clothes. The marble crags are overspread with a concretion, which makes them look as gray as granite, except where the continual flow of water keeps them of a snowy whiteness. If they were so white all over, it would be a splendid show. There is a marble-quarry close in the rear, above the cave, and in process of time the whole of the crags will be quarried into tombstones, doorsteps, fronts of edifices, fireplaces, etc. That will be a pity. On such portions of the walls as are within reach, visitors have sculptured their initials, or names at full length; and the white letters showing plainly on the gray surface, they have more obvious effect than such inscriptions generally have. There was formerly, I believe, a complete arch of marble, forming a natural bridge over the top of the cave; but this is no longer so. At the bottom of the broad chamber of the cave, standing in its shadow, the effect of the morning sunshine on the dark or bright foliage of the pines and other trees that cluster on the summits of the crags was particularly beautiful; and it was strange how such great trees had rooted themselves in solid marble, for so it seemed.

After passing through this romantic and most picturesque spot, the stream goes onward to turn factories. Here its voice resounds within the hollow crags; there it goes onward; talking to itself, with babbling din, of its own wild thoughts and fantasies,--the voice of solitude and the wilderness,--loud and continual, but which yet does not seem to disturb the thoughtful wanderer, so that he forgets there is a noise. It talks along its storm-strewn path; it talks beneath tall precipices and high banks,--a voice that has been the same for innumerable ages; and yet, if you listen, you will perceive a continual change and variety in its babble, and sometimes it seems to swell louder upon the ear than at others,--in the same spot, I mean. By and by man makes a dam for it, and it pours over it, still making its voice heard, while it labors. At one shop for manufacturing the marble, I saw the disk of a sun-dial as large as the top of a hogshead, intended for Williams College; also a small obelisk, and numerous gravestones. The marble is coarse-grained, but of a very brilliant whiteness. It is rather a pity that the cave is not formed of some worthless stone.

In the deep valleys of the neighborhood, where the shadows at sunset are thrown from mountain to mountain, the clouds have a beautiful effect, flitting high over them, bright with heavenly gold. It seems as if the soul might rise up from the gloom, and alight upon them and soar away. Walking along one of the valleys the other evening, while a pretty fresh breeze blew across it, the clouds that were skimming over my head seemed to conform themselves to the valley's shape.

At a distance, mountain summits look close together, almost as if forming one mountain, though in reality a village lies in the depths between them.

A steam-engine in a factory to be supposed to possess a malignant spirit. It catches one man's arm, and pulls it off; seizes another by the coat-tails, and almost grapples him bodily; catches a girl by the hair, and scalps her; and finally draws in a man, and crushes him to death.

The one-armed soap-maker, Lawyer H------, wears an iron hook, which serves him instead of a hand for the purpose of holding on. They nickname him "Black Hawk."

North Adams still.--The village, viewed from the top of a hill to the westward at sunset, has a peculiarly happy and peaceful look. It lies on a level, surrounded by hills, and seems as if it lay in the hollow of a large hand. The Union Village may be seen, a manufacturing place, extending up a gorge of the hills. It is amusing to see all the distributed property of the aristocracy and commonalty, the various and conflicting interests of the town, the loves and hates, compressed into a space which the eye takes in as completely as the arrangement of a tea-table. The rush of the streams comes up the hill somewhat like the sound of a city.

The hills about the village appear very high and steep sometimes, when the shadows of the clouds are thrown blackly upon them, while there is sunshine elsewhere; so that, seen in front, the effect of their gradual slope is lost. These hills, surrounding the town on all sides, give it a snug and insulated air; and, viewed from certain points, it would be difficult to tell how to get out, without climbing the mountain ridges; but the roads wind away and accomplish the passage without ascending very high. Sometimes the notes of a horn or bugle may be heard sounding afar among these passes of the mountains, announcing the coming of the stage-coach from Bennington or Troy or Greenfield or Pittsfield.

There are multitudes of sheep among the hills, and they appear very tame and gentle; though sometimes, like the wicked, they "flee when no man pursueth." But, climbing a rude, rough, rocky, stumpy, ferny height yesterday, one or two of them stood and stared at me with great earnestness. I passed on quietly, but soon heard an immense baa-ing up the hill, and all the sheep came galloping and scrambling after me, baa-ing with all their might in innumerable voices, running in a compact body, expressing the utmost eagerness, as if they sought the greatest imaginable favor from me; and so they accompanied me down the hillside,-- a most ridiculous cortege. Doubtless they had taken it into their heads that I brought them salt.

The aspect of the village is peculiarly beautiful towards sunset, when there are masses of cloud about the sky,--the remnants of a thunder-storm. These clouds throw a shade upon large portions of the rampart of hills, and the hills towards the west are shaded of course; the clouds also make the shades deeper in the village, and thus the sunshine on the houses and trees, and along the street, is a bright, rich gold. The green is deeper in consequence of the recent rain.

The doctors walk about the village with their saddle-bags on their arms, one always with a pipe in his mouth.

A little dog, named Snapper, the same who stands on his hind legs, appears to be a roguish little dog, and the other day he stole one of the servant-girl's shoes, and ran into the street with it. Being pursued, he would lift the shoe in his mouth (while it almost dragged on the ground), and run a little way, then lie down with his paws on it, and wait to be pursued again.

August 11th.--This morning, it being cloudy and boding of rain, the clouds had settled upon the mountains, both on the summits and ridges, all round the town, so that there seemed to be no way of gaining access to the rest of the world, unless by climbing above the clouds. By and by they partially dispersed, giving glimpses of the mountain ramparts through their obscurity, the separate clouds lying heavily upon the mountain's breast. In warm mornings, after rain, the mist breaks forth from the forests on the ascent of the mountains, like smoke,--the smoke of a volcano; then it soars up, and becomes a cloud in heaven. But these clouds to-day were real rain-clouds. Sometimes, it is said, while laboring up the mountain-side, they suddenly burst, and pour down their moisture in a cataract, sweeping all before it.

Every new aspect of the mountains, or view from a different position, creates a surprise in the mind.

Scenes and characters:--A young country fellow, twenty or thereabouts, decently dressed, pained with the toothache. A doctor, passing on horseback, with his black leather saddle-bags behind him, a thin, frosty-haired man. Being asked to operate, he looks at the tooth, lances the gum, and the fellow being content to be dealt with on the spot, he seats himself in a chair on the stoop with great heroism. The doctor produces a rusty pair of iron forceps; a man holds the patient's head; the doctor perceives that, it being a difficult tooth to get at, wedged between the two largest in his jaws, he must pull very hard; and the instrument is introduced. A turn of the doctor's hand; the patient begins to utter a cry, but the tooth comes out first, with four prongs. The patient gets up, half amazed, pays the doctor ninepence, pockets the tooth, and the spectators are in glee and admiration.

There was a fat woman, a stage-passenger to-day,--a wonder how she could possibly get through the door, which seemed not so wide as she. When she put her foot on the step, the stage gave a great lurch, she joking all the while. A great, coarse, red-faced dame. Other passengers,--three or four slender Williamstown students, a young girl, and a man with one leg and two crutches.

One of the most sensible men in this village is a plain, tall, elderly person, who is overseeing the mending of a road,--humorous, intelligent, with much thought about matters and things; and while at work he has a sort of dignity in handling the hoe or crow-bar, which shows him to be the chief. In the evening he sits under the stoop, silent and observant from under the brim of his hat; but, occasion calling, he holds an argument about the benefit or otherwise of manufactories or other things. A simplicity characterizes him more than appertains to most Yankees.

A man in a pea-green frock-coat, with velvet collar. Another in a flowered chintz frock-coat. There is a great diversity of hues in garments. A doctor, a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced, brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily. He sat down on the step of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait, attended by a fine Newfoundland dog.

A barouche with driver returned from beyond Greenfield or Troy empty, the passengers being left at the former place. The driver stops here for the night, and, while washing, enters into talk with an old man about the different roads over the mountain.

People washing themselves at a common basin in the bar-room! and using the common hair-brushes! perhaps with a consciousness of praiseworthy neatness!

A man with a cradle on his shoulder, having been cradling oats. I attended a child's funeral yesterday afternoon. There was an assemblage of people in a plain, homely apartment. Most of the men were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and one or two were in shirt-sleeves. The coffin was placed in the midst of us, covered with a velvet pall. A bepaid clergyman prayed (the audience remaining seated, while he stood up at the head of the coffin), read a passage of Scripture and commented upon it. While he read and prayed and expounded there was a heavy thunder-storm rumbling among the surrounding hills, and the lightning flashed fiercely through the gloomy room; and the preacher alluded to GOD's voice of thunder.

It is the custom in this part of the country--and perhaps extensively in the interior of New England--to bury the dead first in a charnel-house, or common tomb, where they remain till decay has so far progressed as to secure them from the resurrectionists. They are then reburied, with certain ceremonies, in their own peculiar graves.

O. E. S------, a widower of forty or upwards, with a son of twelve and a pair of infant twins. He is a sharp, shrewd Yankee, with a Yankee's license of honesty. He drinks sometimes more than enough, and is guilty of peccadilloes with the fair sex; yet speaks most affectionately of his wife, and is a fond and careful father. He is a tall, thin, hard-featured man, with a sly expression of almost hidden grave humor, as if there were some deviltry pretty constantly in his mind,--which is probably the case. His brother tells me that he was driven almost crazy by the loss of his wife. It appears to me that men are more affected by the deaths of their wives than wives by the deaths of their husbands. Orrin S------ smokes a pipe, as do many of the guests.

A walk this forenoon up the mountain ridge that walls in the town towards the east. The road is cut zigzag, the mountain being generally as steep as the roof of a house; yet the stage to Greenfield passes over this road two or three times a week. Graylock rose up behind me, appearing, with its two summits and a long ridge between, like a huge monster crouching down slumbering, with its head slightly elevated. Graylock is properly the name for the highest elevation. It appeared to better advantage the higher the point from which I viewed it. There were houses scattered here and there up the mountainside, growing poorer as I ascended; the last that I passed was a mean log-hut, rough, rude, and dilapidated, with the smoke issuing from a chimney of small stones, plastered with clay; around it a garden of beans, with some attempt at flowers, and a green creeper running over the side of the cottage. Above this point there were various excellent views of mountain scenery, far off and near, and one village lying below in the hollow vale.

Having climbed so far that the road seemed now to go downward, I retraced my steps. There was a wagon descending behind me; and as it followed the zigzag of the road I could hear the voices of the men high over my head, and sometimes I caught a glimpse of the wagon almost perpendicularly above me, while I was looking almost perpendicularly down to the log-hut aforementioned. Trees were thick on either hand,--oaks, pines, and others; and marble occasionally peeped up in the road and there was a lime-kiln by the wayside, ready for burning.

Graylock had a cloud on his head this morning, the base of a heavy white cloud. The distribution of the sunshine amid mountain scenery is very striking; one does not see exactly why one spot should be in deep obscurity while others are all bright. The clouds throw their shadows upon the hillsides as they move slowly along,--a transitory blackness.

I passed a doctor high up the road in a sulky, with his black leather saddle-bags.

Hudson's Cave is formed by Hudson's Brook. There is a natural arch of marble still in one part of it. The cliffs are partly made verdant with green moss, chiefly gray with oxidation; on some parts the white of the marble is seen; in interstices grow brake and other shrubs, so that there is naked sublimity seen through a good deal of clustering beauty. Above, the birch, poplars, and pines grow on the utmost verge of the cliffs, which jut far over, so that they are suspended in air; and whenever the sunshine finds its way into the depths of the chasm, the branches wave across it. There is a lightness, however, about their foliage, which greatly relieves what would otherwise be a gloomy scene. After the passage of the stream through the cliffs of marble, the cliffs separate on either side, and leave it to flow onward; intercepting its passage, however, by fragments of marble, some of them huge ones, which the cliffs have flung down, thundering into the bed of the stream through numberless ages. Doubtless some of these immense fragments had trees growing on them, which have now mouldered away. Decaying trunks are heaped in various parts of the gorge. The pieces of marble that are washed by the water are of a snow-white, and partially covered with a bright green water-moss, making a beautiful contrast.

Among the cliffs, strips of earth-beach extend downward, and trees and large shrubs root themselves in that earth, thus further contrasting the nakedness of the stone with their green foliage. But the immediate part where the stream forces its winding passage through the rock is stern, dark, and mysterious.

Along the road, where it runs beneath a steep, there are high ridges, covered with trees,--the dew of midnight damping the earth, far towards midnoon. I observed the shadows of water-insects, as they swam in the pools of a stream. Looking down a streamlet, I saw a trunk of a tree, which has been overthrown by the wind, so as to form a bridge, yet sticking up all its branches, as if it were unwilling to assist anybody over.

Green leaves, following the eddies of the rivulet, were now borne deep under water, and now emerged. Great uprooted trees, adhering midway down a precipice of earth, hung with their tops downward.

There is an old man, selling the meats of butternuts under the stoop of the hotel. He makes that his station during a part of the season. He was dressed in a dark thin coat, ribbed velvet pantaloons, and a sort of moccasins, or shoes, appended to the legs of woollen stockings. He had on a straw hat, and his hair was gray, with a long, thin visage. His nuts were contained in a square tin box, having two compartments, one for the nuts, and another for maple sugar, which he sells in small cakes. He had three small tin measures for nuts,--one at one cent, others at two, four, and six cents; and as fast as they were emptied, he filled them again, and put them on the top of his box. He smoked a pipe, and talked with one man about whether it would be worth while to grow young again, and the duty of being contented with old age; about predestination and freewill and other metaphysics. I asked him what his sales amounted to in the course of a day. He said that butternuts did not sell so well as walnuts, which are not yet in season; that he might to-day have sold fifty cents' worth of walnuts, never less than a dollar's worth, often more; and when he went round with a caravan, he had sold fifteen dollars' worth per day, and once as much as twenty dollars' worth. This promises to be an excellent year for walnuts. Chestnuts have been scarce for two or three years. He had one hundred chestnut-trees on his own land, and last year he offered a man twenty-five cents if he would find him a quart of good chestnuts on them. A bushel of walnuts would cost about ten dollars. He wears a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles.

A drunken fellow sat down by him, and bought a cent's worth of his butternuts, and inquired what he would sell out to him for. The old man made an estimate, though evidently in jest, and then reckoned his box, measures, meats, and what little maple sugar he had, at four dollars. He had a very quiet manner, and expressed an intention of going to the Commencement at Williamstown to-morrow. His name, I believe, is Captain Gavett.

Wednesday, August 15th.--I went to Commencement at Williams College,-- five miles distant. At the tavern were students with ribbons, pink or blue, fluttering from their buttonholes, these being the badges of rival societies. There was a considerable gathering of people, chiefly arriving in wagons or buggies, some in barouches, and very few in chaises. The most characteristic part of the scene was where the pedlers, gingerbread-sellers, etc., were collected, a few hundred yards from the meeting-house. There was a pedler there from New York State, who sold his wares by auction, and I could have stood and listened to him all day long. Sometimes he would put up a heterogeny [this is a word made by Mr. Hawthorne, but one that was needed.--S. H.] of articles in a lot,--as a paper of pins, a lead-pencil, and a shaving-box,--and knock them all down, perhaps for ninepence. Bunches of lead-pencils, steel-pens, pound-cakes of shaving-soap, gilt finger-rings, bracelets, clasps, and other jewelry, cards of pearl buttons, or steel ("there is some steel about them, gentlemen, for my brother stole 'em, and I bore him out in it"), bundles of wooden combs, boxes of matches, suspenders, and, in short, everything,--dipping his hand down into his wares with the promise of a wonderful lot, and producing, perhaps, a bottle of opodeldoc, and joining it with a lead-pencil,--and when he had sold several things of the same kind, pretending huge surprise at finding "just one more," if the lads lingered; saying, "I could not afford to steal them for the price; for the remorse of conscience would be worth more,"--all the time keeping an eye upon those who bought, calling for the pay, making change with silver or bills, and deciding on the goodness of banks; and saying to the boys who climbed upon his cart, "Fall down, roll down, tumble down, only get down"; and uttering everything in the queer, humorous recitative in which he sold his articles. Sometimes he would pretend that a person had bid, either by word or wink, and raised a laugh thus; never losing his self-possession, nor getting out of humor. When a man asked whether a bill were good: "No! do you suppose I'd give you good money?" When he delivered an article, he exclaimed, "You're the lucky man," setting off his wares with the most extravagant eulogies. The people bought very freely, and seemed also to enjoy the fun. One little boy bought a shaving-box, perhaps meaning to speculate upon it. This character could not possibly he overdrawn; and he was really excellent, with his allusions to what was passing, intermingled, doubtless, with a good deal that was studied. He was a man between thirty and forty, with a face expressive of other ability, as well as of humor.

A good many people were the better or the worse for liquor. There was one fellow,--named Randall, I think,--a round-shouldered, bulky, ill-hung devil, with a pale, sallow skin, black beard, and a sort of grin upon his face,--a species of laugh, yet not so much mirthful as indicating a strange mental and moral twist. He was very riotous in the crowd, elbowing, thrusting, seizing hold of people; and at last a ring was formed, and a regular wrestling-match commenced between him and a farmer-looking man. Randall brandished his legs about in the most ridiculous style, but proved himself a good wrestler, and finally threw his antagonist. He got up with the same grin upon his features,--not a grin of simplicity, but intimating knowingness. When more depth or force of expression was required, he could put on the most strangely ludicrous and ugly aspect (suiting his gesture and attitude to it) that can be imagined. I should like to see this fellow when he was perfectly sober.

There were a good many blacks among the crowd. I suppose they used to emigrate across the border, while New York was a slave State. There were enough of them to form a party, though greatly in the minority; and, a squabble arising, some of the blacks were knocked down, and otherwise maltreated. I saw one old negro, a genuine specimen of the slave negro, without any of the foppery of the race in our part of the State,--an old fellow, with a bag, I suppose of broken victuals, on his shoulder, and his pockets stuffed out at his hips with the like provender; full of grimaces and ridiculous antics, laughing laughably, yet without affectation; then talking with a strange kind of pathos about the whippings he used to get while he was a slave;--a singular creature, of mere feeling, with some glimmering of sense. Then there was another gray old negro, but of a different stamp, politic, sage, cautious, yet with boldness enough, talking about the rights of his race, yet so as not to provoke his audience; discoursing of the advantage of living under laws, and the wonders that might ensue, in that very assemblage, if there were no laws; in the midst of this deep wisdom, turning off the anger of a half-drunken fellow by a merry retort, a leap in the air, and a negro's laugh. I was interested--there being a drunken negro ascending the meeting-house steps, and near him three or four well-dressed and decent negro wenches--to see the look of scorn and shame and sorrow and painful sympathy which one of them assumed at this disgrace of her color.

The people here show out their character much more strongly than they do with us; there was not the quiet, silent, dull decency of our public assemblages, but mirth, anger, eccentricity,--all manifesting themselves freely. There were many watermelons for sale, and people burying their muzzles deep in the juicy flesh of them. There were cider and beer. Many of the people had their mouths half opened in a grin, which, more than anything else, I think, indicates a low stage of refinement. A low-crowned hat--very low--is common. They are respectful to gentlemen.

A bat being startled, probably, out of the meeting-house, by the commotion around, flew blindly about in the sunshine, and alighted on a man's sleeve. I looked at him,--a droll, winged, beast-insect, creeping up the man's arm, not over-clean, and scattering dust on the man's coat from his vampire wings. The man stared at him, and let the spectators stare for a minute, and then shook him gently off; and the poor devil took a flight across the green to the meeting-house, and then, I believe, alighted on somebody else. Probably he was put to death. Bats are very numerous in these parts.

There was a drunken man, annoying people with his senseless talk and impertinences, impelled to perform eccentricities by an evil spirit in him; and a pale little boy, with a bandaged leg, whom his father brought out of the tavern and put into a barouche. Then the boy heedfully placed shawls and cushions about his leg to support it, his face expressive of pain and care,--not transitory, but settled pain, of long and forcedly patient, endurance; and this painful look, perhaps, gave his face more intelligence than it might otherwise have had, though it was naturally a sensitive face. Well-dressed ladies were in the meeting-house in silks and cambrics,--the sunburnt necks in contiguity with the delicate fabrics of the dresses showing the yeomen's daughters.

Country graduates,--rough, brown-featured, schoolmaster-looking, half-bumpkin, half-scholarly figures, in black ill-cut broadcloth,--their manners quite spoilt by what little of the gentleman there was in them.

The landlord of the tavern keeping his eye on a man whom he suspected of an intention to bolt. [A word meaning in Worcester, I find, "to spring out with speed and suddenness."--S. H.]

The next day after Commencement was bleak and rainy from midnight till midnight, and a good many guests were added to our table in consequence. Among them were some of the Williamstown students, gentlemanly young fellows, with a brotherly feeling for each other, a freedom about money concerns, a half-boyish, half-manly character; and my heart warmed to them. They took their departure--two for South Adams and two across the Green Mountains--in the midst of the rain. There was one of the graduates with his betrothed, and his brother-in-law and wife, who stayed during the day,--the graduate the very model of a country schoolmaster in his Sunday clothes, being his Commencement suit of black broadcloth and pumps. He is engaged as assistant teacher of the academy at Shelburne Falls. There was also the high sheriff of Berkshire, Mr. Twining, with a bundle of writs under his arm, and some of them peeping out of his pockets. Also several Trojan men and women, who had been to Commencement. Likewise a young clergyman, graduate of Brown College, and student of the Divinity School at Cambridge. He had come across the Hoosic, or Green Mountains, about eighteen miles, on foot, from Charlemont, where he is preaching, and had been to Commencement. Knowing little of men and matters, and desiring to know more, he was very free in making acquaintance with people, but could not do it handsomely. A singular smile broke out upon his face on slight provocation. He was awkward in his manners, yet it was not an ungentlemanly awkwardness,-- intelligent as respects book-learning, but much deficient in worldly tact. It was pleasant to observe his consciousness of this deficiency, and how he strove to remedy it by mixing as much as possible with people, and sitting almost all day in the bar-room to study character. Sometimes he would endeavor to contribute his share to the general amusement,--as by growling comically, to provoke and mystify a dog; and by some bashful and half-apropos observations.

In the afternoon there came a fresh bevy of students onward from Williamstown; but they made only a transient visit, though it was still raining. These were a rough-hewn, heavy set of fellows, from the hills and woods in this neighborhood,--great unpolished bumpkins, who had grown up farmer-boys, and had little of the literary man, save green spectacles and black broadcloth (which all of them had not), talking with a broad accent, and laughing clown-like, while sheepishness overspread all, together with a vanity at being students. One of the party was six feet seven inches high, and all his herculean dimensions were in proportion; his features, too, were cast in a mould suitable to his stature. This giant was not ill-looking, but of a rattier intelligent aspect. His motions were devoid of grace, but yet had a rough freedom, appropriate enough to such a figure. These fellows stayed awhile, talked uncouthly about college matters, and started in the great open wagon which had brought them and their luggage hither. We had a fire in the bar-room almost all day,--a great, blazing fire,--and it was pleasant to have this day of bleak November weather, and cheerful fireside talk, and wet garments smoking in the fireside heat, still in the summer-time. Thus the day wore on with a sort of heavy, lazy pleasantness; and night set in, still stormy.

In the morning it was cloudy, but did not rain, and I went with the little clergyman to Hudson's Cave. The stream which they call the North Branch, and into which Hudson's Brook empties, was much swollen, and tumbled and dashed and whitened over the rocks, and formed real cascades over the dams, and rushed fast along the side of the cliffs, which had their feet in it. Its color was deep brown, owing to the washing of the banks which the rain had poured into it. Looking back, we could see a cloud on Graylock; but on other parts of Saddle Mountain there were spots of sunshine, some of most glorious brightness, contrasting with the general gloom of the sky, and the deep shadow which lay on the earth.

We looked at the spot where the stream makes its entrance into the marble cliff, and it was (this morning, at least) the most striking view of the cave. The water dashed down in a misty cascade, through what looked like the portal of some infernal subterranean structure; and far within the portal we could see the mist and the falling water; and it looked as if, but for these obstructions of view, we might have had a deeper insight into a gloomy region.

After our return, the little minister set off for his eighteen miles' journey across the mountain; and I was occupied the rest of the forenoon with an affair of stealing--a woman of forty or upwards being accused of stealing a needle-case and other trifles from a factory-girl at a boarding-house. She came here to take passage in a stage; but Putnam, a justice of the peace, examined her and afterwards ordered her to be searched by Laura and Eliza, the chambermaid and table-waiter. Hereupon was much fun and some sympathy. They searched, and found nothing that they sought, though she gave up a pair of pantalets, which she pretended to have taken by mistake. Afterwards, she being in the parlor, I went in; and she immediately began to talk to me, giving me an account of the affair, speaking with the bitterness of a wronged person, with a sparkling eye, yet with great fluency and self-possession. She is a yellow, thin, and battered old thing, yet rather country-lady-like in aspect and manners. I heard Eliza telling another girl about it, under my window; and she seemed to think that the poor woman's reluctance to be searched arose from the poorness of her wardrobe and of the contents of her bandbox.

At parting, Eliza said to the girl, "What do you think I heard somebody say about you? That it was enough to make anybody's eyes start square out of their head to look at such red cheeks as yours." Whereupon the girl turned off the compliment with a laugh, and took her leave.

There is an old blind dog, recognizing his friends by the sense of smell. I observe the eager awkwardness with which he accomplishes the recognition, his carefulness in descending steps, and generally in his locomotion. He evidently has not forgotten that he once had the faculty of sight; for he turns his eyes with earnestness towards those who attract his attention, though the orbs are plainly sightless.