NATURE'S 
railroad within a dozen miles! Some would 
call them lonesome, but here is where solitude 
is most charming. The only wayfarers are the 
barefooted school children who trip their daily 
two-mile walks as though it were a pastime. 
There are no tramps—no thieves—for there is 
nothing to steal. There are no locks on the 
houses and the barndoors stand wide open. 
The old water troughs where we used to drink — 
when children are demolished, and the trick- 
ling spring runs along the middle of the road 
and wears gullies in the sand and gravel. The 
‘‘thank-you-marms” are worn, level, and the 
guard rails are out of place, for the towns- 
people don’t ‘‘work the roads” any more. 
There is not travel enough to justify the labor 
and expense. As we climb the hills out of the 
valley each foot of altitude expands the view. 
Some of the distant mountain ranges are su- 
perb. Directly below us is the valley panor- 
ama, with the old mill ponds dwindled into 
pools and the face of the brook revealed at in- 
tervals through the hovering alder-bushes. 
Hard by on the “side hill”’ is a rickety cottage 
and an old man. He fixes a clear and basilisk 
eye on the wayfarer, but there is no _ rec- 
-ognition, and he turns away as if only a 
blank were before him. Poor old man! 
He is ninety years old! Once he was select- 
man, and afterward deacon. In those days it 
was the custom of the country to raise the hat, 
or nod, even when strangers met. It is differ- 
ent now, and he wonders at it. Hisson’s fam- 
REALM. 99 
ily live in Boston, and so an old woman of 
seventy does the housekeeping for him. There 
are no other occupants of the cottage. When 
the church bell tolls next year or the year 
after, the townspeople at the centre will unfasten 
the padlock which secures the rickety hearse- 
house door, and a string of shabby one-horse 
teams and two-seated buggies will follow the 
vehicle to the already populous churchyard. 
The small party of rapidly diminishing surviv- 
ors always attend to this last duty with scru- 
pulous exactness. It is all that they are able to 
do. 
Shades of our goodly forefathers forbid that 
strangers should possess our heritage! Here 
in these sacred hills is the last remaining 
nursery of the pure indigenous native type. 
Here are the old houses, the old furniture, the 
old methods and manners; the straight-backed 
chairs, the towering clocks, the mammoth chim- 
ney places, the elaborate carvings, the warming 
pans, the andirons, the candles and the snuf- 
fers. Foreigners have never yet ventured in. 
Even a negro is a living curiosity. Let us 
jealously preserve the few last remaining acres 
of our New England hill country and colonize 
them, not with unsympathetic Scandinavians 
and French-Canadians, but with summer cot- 
tagers who are proud to recognize the kinship 
of the Yankee pioneers who peopled these de- 
lectable though rugged lands. Then, indeed, 
in the near future, will there be Dulcet Days 
for the Hampshire Hills. 
