Mav 20, iSgg.j 
FOHi£:ST AND STREAM. 
be they did not gather there. Possibly the license of 
poetry had much to do with it, Of one thing rest as- 
sm-ed. License or no license, poetry or ribaldry, men 
have gathered in the room across the hallway that 
are now gathered to their fathers, and possibly the 
call to the bar hastened the call to the higher tribunal. 
Yet this bar is high of itself. There men were first 
taught to take it straight, and the high-ball of to-day 
was there first handed down to politicians and posterity. 
■ All that you can procure there now is soft, and as I 
drank my glass of ginger pop on that day I harked back 
to the times when the cattlemen, teamsters, soldiers and 
farmers drank their Medford and their flip, and departed 
feeling for a few brief moments as fine as if one thou- 
sand hens were picking oats from off them. My friend 
showed two marks on the uncovered and hewn beams 
of the dancing room, and said tliat the upper one was • 
the hmit^of Washington's, highest kick; the lower was 
Lafayette's. Say, was he taking advantage of my gulli- 
biiity, or did the Father of his Country unbend at times 
(backward in this instance) and enioy a little fun? It 
is easy to believe it of the Frenchman, for he was of a 
happy turn of mind. I think it possible, for I once played 
leap-frog with a minister near lacustrine shores. 
This tale, although true, is for sportsmen, and we will 
leave the inn for the fields. As we were nearly through 
the orchard, one of the dogs froze with head up as 
though in prayer, and from the top of a scrub apple 
tree a partridge lit out into space. It was an easy shot, 
and the bird goes to my pocket. Among the barberry 
bushes and the saffron and ruby sumach blossoms my 
friend's gun belched the contents of both barrels, and 
he led me by one bird. Later in the dav, in getting 
over a barbed wire fence I became tangled up; with 
one foot on the ground and the other held high up by the 
barbed wire, I struggled to break awav, and the dog 
looked on in sympathy. The wire transmitted the 
tremors and a frightened partridge arose further down 
the line. Excuse the bobance of a gunner— I made the 
shot of a lifetime, considering the circumstances, and 
the dog retrieved the result of it. My companion an- 
swered my shout and freed me from suspense, although 
a portion of myself was left on the fence. He told 
me to let it stay, that he thought it right and legal to 
poison crows. 
As we move further away from the Wayside Inn, the 
game grew scarce, and only one more bird came to bag. 
My friend remarked that experience had taught him to 
keep close to the farmhouses if large numbers were 
wanted, and that usually two or three satisfied him, and 
after securing that number he was content to see his dogs 
do their part alone. We followed an almost obliterated 
road through the woods and undergrowth for a while, 
and after descending the sloping and partridge-berry- 
carpeted side of a ridge, came to an opening of an acre 
or more in extent. In all my wanderings of many years 
in field and forest, no spot was mirrored in my memory 
like this one. I have dreamed of it on long winter 
evenings up in my den, where guns, trophies, fishing 
rods, books and pictures and all trappings pertaining 
to the pastime lie in order or disorder undisturbed. 
There I have thought of it with pipe alight and with 
half-closed eyes, while the wind moaned without and the 
snow patted against the window panes, and a gentle 
voice from an adjoining room interrogated unheeded, 
"Why don't you come to bed?" There in my fancy was 
the spreading savin bush, green, low and symmetrical; 
there were the twisted and gnarled apple trees, bearing 
few remaining frost-bitten fruits for the birds to feed 
upon; there the clusters of the pepperige berry were 
within my reach, and the bright red blossoms, of the 
sumach swayed on their stiffening stalks in the west 
wind; on the stone fence the gray and red squirrel's sport- 
ed, in the pines beyond the crows cawed angrily at our 
intrusion, and awaited our departure to feed upon the 
crumbs of our simple lunch; the dead grass stands up 
against th'e assaults of scurrying autumn leaves; the 
sun shines warm upon me, and the cranberries pop 
under my feet as I go to the spring at the meadow's 
edge; I think I hear the report of my gun, and see 
how it disturbed the living things thereabouts, and the 
stuffed form of the gray squirrel climbing the tree limb 
before me on the wall of my room seems imbued with 
life, and I imagine that his sides pulsate in breathing; 
bltt no, that shot ended all animation, and he is apart 
from his former home by leagues of snow-topped hills 
and frozen vaile3's. 
Now, dear reader, we have been away from the spot 
on a wild goose chase; let us go back to the reality. We 
ate our lunch on the bank of an old cellar hole; sods 
nearly covered the stones from between which mortar 
had long since gone. My friend in answer to a question 
told me that tradition said that it was formerly the 
home of a pioneer settler; that the Indians, enraged at 
the encroacbment and aggressiveness of the Puritans, 
4t- 
had slain the whole family and burned the house. The 
subject put my friend in a retrospective mood, and he 
talked as follows: "Our forefathers came here to escape 
religious persecution, and sought a place where they 
could worship God in freedom, and then denied to others 
the same privilege. When tliey first landed they fell 
upon their knees and then fell upon the aborigines. As 
English and Protestants, they fought the French and 
Catholicism, from Acadia to the Alleghanies and north- 
west to the Great Lakes. They fought the Indians to the 
extermination of the latter, and they burned at the stake 
their own kindred as witches, and, as Tom Moore said 
of the Irish people, 'They hated each other for the love 
of God,' Traces of their bigotry and intolerance are not 
now wholly extinct. But 'the world do move,' and men's 
minds are broadening out, and fighting and wars grow 
less frequent with each century. Preachers and others 
begin to realize the absurdity ©f praying for victory 
and for the slaughter of their opponents. Men of 
science and scholarship advocate the plain teaching of 
the Golden Rule, and the benefits of man's humanity 
to man. The day is coming when all creeds, isms and 
dogmas will go to the wall;, when people will be bound 
together in plain worship of the Creator of these Elysian 
fields, and then joining hands 'witb,- ttialice toward none, 
charity for all,' sing with Longfellow^ 
"There is no death! What seems so is transition; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is hut a suburb of the life Elysian, 
Whose portal we call Death." 
After a while we left the spot afid crossed the meadows 
to the river. I asked in relation to the topography of 
the stream, and my friend said; "This is Sudbury River, 
and Longfellow might as well have applied his ode to it 
as to the River Charles:" 
River that in silence windelh, 
Through the meadows rich and free, 
Till at last thy rest thou findeth, 
111 the bosom of the sea. 
This river is a confluent of the Assabet, Or the re- 
verse is true, and together they form the Concord, which 
in turn empties into the Merrimac, and the united waters 
turn the wheels in the cotton mills of Lowell, where 
the shuttles fly in and fly out and the bobbins whirl 
in endless effort to provide covering for mortals and 
other things. Could we have taken a boat many years 
ago and rowed silently through the Concord River we 
might possibly have surprised Nathaniel Hawthorne and 
Ellery Channing at their antics on the banks; maybe 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau might be 
found with them, and that all had gathered there as a 
result of signals. The first and middle fingers spread 
apart and held vertically has been understood for years 
by country boys to mean, "Will you go swimming?" 
The forefinger alone replies in the negative. These men 
acquired sedateness and scholarly attainments in life, 
yet they must have had a boy's promptings, and very 
likely they could be seen plugging each other with mud 
sods while they ran about the meadows blacked all over 
with river mud, while their clothes lay in four little 
piles on the shore. Possibly they had inflated frogs 
with straws and laughed in "ghouhsh glee" at the failure 
of the loud-voiced amphibians to get below the water 
surface. Then again do you not suppose that they tied 
mud turtles upon strips of shingles and set them afloat 
in an open boat to paddle their own canoe? All of those 
boys developed great thinking power, and in some way 
if any one stays in sleepy old Concord for a length of 
time they are apt to do much thinking. 
A muskrat leaves the shore at our feet, and as he 
darts athwart the stream the two ripples broaden out, and 
together with the shore, form a right-angle triangle. Yet 
what does he care for geometrical terms, cube root or ' 
square root? He is only interested in the roots of the 
sweet flag and of the lilies, and in a desire to budd his 
winter home. 
The sun goes down among the tree tops on the west- 
ern hills, and the day has gone apace. 
Withal it was a day of moods and tenses, 
And breeches rent by barbed-wire fences — 
A day when nature was lavish in giving 
Pleasures that made life worth the living. 
It behooves us to return to home. We leave the Way- 
side Inn to the future and drive out from undel' the oaks, 
grateful for hospitality received. 
Sunday was the next day, and' the family' Carriage 
conveyed us to the village church, where we listened to 
the quiet service, and, although the A'oice of the aged 
tenor was at times too high and somewhat prolonged, 
we departed with a feeling of profound respect for the 
teaching and its teachers. 
In the evening the family gathered around the organ 
in the music room, and their voices blended in harmony 
as hymn after hymn was sung, and when, at midnight I 
It 
was driven in the moonlight to the railroad station to 
take my train for home, and after retiring to my berth 
and when almost asleep and in my sleep the notes of the 
grandest of all hymns rang in my ears: "God, be with 
you till we meet again." W. W. Hastings. 
A Wotd in Appreciation, 
May 12. — Editor Forest and Stream: It is with a feel- 
ing of timidity that I write; but it is all on account of 
not having the gift of literary accomplishments. I can- 
not read Forest and Stream through and then keep my 
tongue silent. In last week's issue Mr. W. W. Hastings 
wrote something that touched me personally; and it 
THE WAYSIDE INN. 
THE INN AND ITS GUARDIAN OAKS. 
