Dulcet Days in the Hampshire Hills. 



39: 



wood completely choking up the stream 

 and covering it out of sight. The 

 searching sunbeams do not even pene- 

 trate to "where the trout hide," but we 

 know the stream is there all the same, 

 for we can detect its muffled babbling, 

 like the crooning of an old woman in 

 the chimney corner ; and perchance, if 

 we listen attentively, we may hear a 

 muttered tale of some of the bygone 

 3-ears. Ah ! me. The old orchards 

 which were once used for mowings now 

 do niggard duty as pastures, while the 

 pastures themselves are overgrown with 

 scrubby ferns which conceal the multi- 

 tudes of rocks, and are of no use at all. 

 Cornfields and garden patches have long 

 since grown to jungle, and the birch 

 saplings and beeches are stoutest where 

 the old cellar holes are deepest. Even 

 the purple fire-weed which always fol- 

 lowed the burnt land of the clearings 

 has totally disappeared, and its place is 

 usurped by the dog-wood and poison 

 ivy. There has not been a new clear- 

 ing for fifty years ! And the aggravat- 

 ing part of the whole business is that a 

 vagabond crow, which keeps up a bawl- 

 ing frorn the top of a neighboring ram- 

 pike, actually presumes to resent our 

 intrusion, and wakes up a whole colony 

 of his black imps, who join in a lusty 

 gufifaw as they take wing. It is the un- 

 kindest cut of all ! 



It was a hard and unseemly fate 

 which drove our fathers from their 

 homes and scattered them abroad. 

 Cold-blooded economists tell us it was 

 avarice, restlessness and love of gain 

 which impelled them ; but we, who have 

 lived among these granite hills and love 

 them all so well, know the inexorable 

 "cinch " which vicissitudes of trade and 

 change of markets "get" on a man. 

 Think you, indulgent reader, upon 

 mature reflection, that mere love of 

 novelty and lucre would of itself have 



kept these wandering argonauts t,o long 

 away from the ancestral farms, while 

 their infirm old parents lingered, and 

 perhaps languished in solitude through 

 a prolonged old age ? 



Let us not believe it. 



When the country was first settled 

 the population was circumscribed and 

 the methods of livelihood crude and 

 simple. Isolated little communities 

 supplied their own frugal wants. Home 

 demands nurtured home industries, btit 

 the thriftiest were not enriched. There 

 was no currency and small use for credit, 

 except in kind. Since then locations 

 more suitable for agriculture have been 

 discovered and occupied. Steam and 

 electricity have supplanted the brawling 

 mountain streams which erst were uti- 

 lized for scores of manufactories, just 

 as in still earlier times they had afforded 

 the only thoroughfares for inland travel. 

 And now it is a full generation since 

 the young energies of these hill families 

 went out into the West and to the 

 metropolitan centres to seek the for- 

 tunes which never could be won at 

 home. Surely, natural instinct must 

 soon drive many of them back, after so 

 long an interval, to rehabilitate their 

 ancestral domains with their accumu- 

 lated wealth, and so light up the family 

 hearthstones once more with life and joy. 

 Why may they not return to bless and 

 receive the blessing ? A few survivors 

 are still waiting for them. Enough of 

 gain is enough. Or would these busy 

 toilers consume all their lifetime in the 

 effort to be millionaires, and so permit 

 the infirm old people on the homesteads 

 to close each other's eyes as best they 

 may, while their breath goes out with 

 unsatisfied longings and vain regrets ? 

 Why, a dollar in the Hampshire hills will 

 go as far as ten in the whirl of fashion 

 or the business swim — yea, farther than 

 a hundred! And how much true hap- 



