140 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



fountains. And yet the name Village Green, is, 

 somehow, tenderly cherished ; it rallies to my thought 

 a great cycle of rural memories belonging to song, to 

 childhood, to story and to travel wherein I see, in 

 bountiful procession, broad-armed elms, dancing peas- 

 ants, flocks of snowy geese, shadows of church 

 spires, boys with satchels, bonfires of fallen leaves, 

 militia " trainings," and some irate Betsey Trotwood, 

 making a soldierly dash at intruding donkeys. It is 

 quite possible that these ill-assorted memories may 

 confound public and private Greens, as well as Eng- 

 lish and American, but all have their spring in that 

 good old name of the Village Green. I hope that it 

 is not a strange name, and that it will never grow 

 strange while grass is green, and villages are founded. 

 In old days of stage-coach travel, one came, after 

 a tedious, lumbering drag over hills, and through 

 swampy flats, (where, if season favored, wild grape- 

 vines, or white azalias, tossed their rich fragrance into 

 coach windows,) upon some lifted plateau of land, 

 where the white houses shone among trees, flanking a 

 level bit of greensward, and geese grazed the com- 

 mon ; and where was a whipping-post, may be pos- 

 sibly a decaying pair of oaken stocks, and a court- 

 house with its belfry. I do not think such old village 

 commons of New England, (and I suspect they were 

 rarely to be seen in other parts of the country,) were 



