With its high hills and pine forests, and all its ponds and brooks and
distant mountain views, there are few such delightful country towns in
New England as the one where I was born. Being one of the oldest
colonial settlements, it is full of interesting traditions and relics
of the early inhabitants, both Indians and Englishmen. Two large
rivers join just below the village at the head of tide-water, and
these, with the great inflow from the sea, make a magnificent stream,
bordered on its seaward course now by high-wooded banks of dark pines
and hemlocks, and again by lovely green fields that slope gently to
long lines of willows at the water's edge.
There is never-ending pleasure in making one's self familiar with such
a region. One may travel at home in a most literal sense, and be
always learning history, geography, botany, or biography--whatever one
chooses.
I have had a good deal of journeying in my life, and taken great
delight in it, but I have never taken greater delight than in my rides
and drives and tramps and voyages within the borders of my native
town. There is always something fresh, something to be traced or
discovered, something particularly to be remembered. One grows rich in
memories and associations.
I believe that we should know our native towns much better than most
of us do, and never let ourselves be strangers at home. Particularly
when one's native place is so really interesting as my own!
Above tide-water the two rivers are barred by successive falls.
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