So I came in contact with the up-country people as well as with the
sailors and shipmasters of the other side of the business. I used to
linger about the busy country stores, and listen to the graphic
country talk. I heard the greetings of old friends, and their minute
details of neighborhood affairs, their delightful jokes and
Munchausen-like reports of tracts of timber-pines ever so many feet
through at the butt.
When the great teams came in sight at the head of the village street,
I ran to meet them over the creaking snow, if possible to mount and
ride into town in triumph; but it was not many years before I began to
feel sorry at the sight of every huge lopped stem of oak or pine that
came trailing along after the slow-stepping, frosted oxen. Such trees
are unreplaceable. I only know of one small group now in all this part
of the country of those great timber pines.
My young ears were quick to hear the news of a ship's having come into
port, and I delighted in the elderly captains, with their sea-tanned
faces, who came to report upon their voyages, dining cheerfully and
heartily with my grandfather, who listened eagerly to their exciting
tales of great storms on the Atlantic, and winds that blew them
north-about, and good bargains in Havana, or Barbadoes, or Havre.
I listened as eagerly as any one; this is the charming way in which I
was taught something of a fashion of life already on the wane, and of
that subsistence upon sea and forest bounties which is now almost a
forgotten thing in my part of New England.
Pages:
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414