Say, That's a grand rock,' 'This a pretty fall,"

Not thinking, Are we worthy?' What if all

The scornful landscape should turn round and say,

'This is a fool, and that a popinjay'? I often wonder what the Mountain thinks

Of French boots creaking o'er his breathless brinks,

Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd,

If some fine day he chanced to think aloud.

I, who love Nature much as sinners can,
Love her where she most grandeur
shows, in man:
Here find I mountain, forest, cloud, and

sun,

River and sea, and glows when day is done;

Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest

The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading

zest.

The natural instincts year by year retire,

As deer shrink northward from the settler's fire,

And he who loves the wild game-flavor

more

"In our swift country, houses trim and white

Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night;

Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high

Perches impatient o'er the roadside dry, While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof,

Refusing friendship with the upstart roof.

Not so the Eagle; on a grass - green swell

That toward the south with sweet concessions fell

It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be

As aboriginal as rock or tree.

It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood

O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood,

As by the peat that rather fades than burns

The smouldering grandam nods and knits by turns, Happy, although her newest news were

old

But the great chimney was the central thought

Whose gravitation through the cluster wrought;

For But just the Fireside, that can make a home;

't is not styles far-fetched from Greece or Rome,

None of your spindling things of modern style,

Like pins stuck through to stay the cardbuilt pile,

It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair,

Its warm breath whitening in the October air,

While on its front a heart in outline

showed

He knew the haunt of every beast and bird,

Or where a two-pound trout was sure to lie,

Waiting the flutter of his home-made fly;

Nay, once in autumns five, he had the luck

To drop at fair-play range a ten-tined buck;

Of sportsmen true he favored every whim,

But never cockney found a guide in

him;

A natural man, with all his instincts fresh,

Not buzzing helpless in Reflection's mesh,

Firm on its feet stood his broad-shoul

dered mind,

As blutly honest as a northwest wind; Hard- -headed and soft-hearted, you'd

scarce meet

A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and

sweet;

Generous by birth, and ill at saying 'No,'

Yet in a bargain he was all men's foe, Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade,

And give away ere nightfall all he made.

"Can I have lodging here?' once more I said.

He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his head,

"You come a piece through Bailey's woods, I s'pose,

Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak grows?

It don't grow, neither; it's ben dead ten year,

Nor th' ain't a livin' creetur, fur nor

(He 'll hev some upland plover like as not.)

Wal, them's real nice uns,, an 'll eat A 1,

Ef I can stop their bein' over-done; Nothin' riles me (I pledge my fastin' word)

Like cookin' out the natur' of a bird; (Obed, you pick 'em out o' sight an' sound,

Your ma'am don't love no feathers cluttrin' round;)

Jes' scare 'em with the coals, thet 's my idee.'

Then, turning suddenly about on me, 'Wal, Square, I guess so. Callilate to stay?

I'll ask Mis' Weeks; 'bout thet it's hern to say.'

"Well, there I lingered all October

through,

In that sweet atmosphere of hazy blue, So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving, That sometimes makes New England fit for living.

I watched the landscape, erst so granite glum,

Bloom like the south side of a ripening plum,

And each rock - maple on the hillside

make

His ten days' sunset doubled in the lake; The very stone walls draggling up the hills

Seemed touched, and wavered in their roundhead wills.

Ah! there's a deal of sugar in the sun! Tap me in Indian summer, I should run A juice to make rock-candy of, - but

then

We get such weather scarce one year in

ten.

"There was a parlor in the house, a

room

To make you shudder with its prudish gloom.

The furniture stood round with such an air,

There seemed an old maid's ghost in every chair

Which looked as it had scuttled to its place

And pulled extempore a Sunday face, Too smugly proper for a world of sin, Like boys on whom the minister comes in.

The table, fronting you with icy stare, Strove to look witless that its legs were bare,

While the black sofa with its horse-hair pall

Gloomed like a bier for Comfort's funeral.

Each piece appeared to do its chilly best
To seem an utter stranger to the rest,
As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin,
Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn.
Two portraits graced the wall in grim-
mest truth,

Mister and Mistress W. in their youth,New England youth, that seems a sort of pill,

Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the Will,

Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a

I'm quite aware 't is not in fashion here,

But then your northeast winds are so severe !

"But to my story: though 't is truly naught

But a few hints in Memory's sketchbook caught,

And which may claim a value on the

score

Of calling back some scenery now no

more.

Shall I confess ? The tavern's only Lar

Seemed (be not shocked!) its homelyfeatured bar.

Here dozed a fire of beechen logs, that bred

Strange fancies in its embers golden-red, And nursed the loggerhead whose hissing dip,

Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip

That made from mouth to mouth its genial round,

Nor left one nature wholly winterbound;

Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow

ripe For Uncle Reuben's talk - extinguished pipe; Hence rayed the heat, as from an indoor sun,

That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic fun.

Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine;

wait for moisture, wrapt in sunbaked clay;

This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task,

Perched in the corner on an empty cask, By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor

cleer.

"In this one room his dame you never

saw,

vorite air,

Though Yankee Doodle' claimed its proper share.