[Campton—Friday, 15 June 1866]
Friday morning June 15. Yesterday rain rain, this morning a thick fog, but warm, with signs of clearing.
Finished the book on Shakspeare’s sonnets, contains much repetition, twice too long,—read Mozart’s letters in the evening. Walked several miles, J. many more. He went in to see the school-house, was interested in the teacher, a lame girl with a passion for study. Intends going next year to the seminary at South Hadley, earns about 3.50 a week beside her board while teaching here. Has 42 scholars. J. is always impressed with the large amount of learning the people about here usually gather up from experience. He asked how old the school-house was. “Well, I can’t tell ye exactly, but I helped take up the old fence the other day and the oak posts was rotten,—now it takes just 12 years for oak posts to begin to rot, so it must have been built 12 years at least.”
Rain or sun this place has its own pure attractions. Mrs Willey does not forget we like country beer, therefore she has dexterously compounded some, of checkerberry, spruce, fern, dandelion, into a most delicious beverage, which the gods and the imbibers of Spanish sherry may envy.
Today our paradise is to be invaded. We shall welcome the sun gladly for one may as well be in a hole as on the top of a mountain when the world is wrapped in rain and mist. The grass and corn have reached a lusty growth but the brake is not yet unfolded except in a few places.
The air is filled with a chorus of birds, we strain our ears to listen, and as far as sound can travel, there are the birds voices calling to each other in the silence.
Soon the sun broke through and the mist suddenly fled as at the motion of an unseen hand. The day became resplendent. We took Mr Willey’s new horse for which he has just “swapped” away old Dolly, giving Dolly and $65 “to boot” and drove over “Willey’s Secret.” The Sun warmed us through, soft white clouds came upon the sky to break the fierceness of the sudden heat, the ferns unrolled, the trees were odorous, all the world was gay
Land and sea
Gave themselves up to jollity.
We leaped from the wagon at the top and walked and ran almost to the village. Finding we yet had time we drove through the little village street which was peculiarly still with the hush which attends hour of the noon-tide meal.
Going round by “Durgin’s” in order to smell the forest odors we found the Linnaeus just in blossom. We gathered this, violets, & cornel blossoms, returning home a little late to Willey’s. After dinner we sat drinking in the slumbrous beauty of the day sewing while J. finished reading Sampson Reed’s book on the Growth of the Mind.
Soon came Willey’s wagon with his new guests and then we started again for a visit we had long promised ourselves to Keniston’s Hill. We found the good people all at home enjoying the perfect day, the young daughter was glad to accompany us to the hill, the ascent was everything beautiful combined of view, odors, air, exercise and the hill-top like a baronial park of lovely maples. We found a mighty sugar-house there with 200 buckets and huge pans suggestive of a plentitude of sweet spoil. “How dull it looks here now said the young girl in sugar time it is lovely; the snow is on the ground but the air at mid-day is not very cold at the season we generally choose and it is real pleasant going up to the sugar house”. There was a wood-shed piled full of white birch logs. We burn all those and more too, she said, before the sugar is done. We climbed to the very hill-top and sat upon moss thick as good sponge to look off upon Moose hillock and down into the Franconia Notch, over the winding glancing beauty of the Pemigewasset with the fertile meadows.
After descending we sat awhile with the farmer and his wife. They live like feudal lords of old. Upward of a hundred sheep were nibbling on the hills, oxen and cattle were nearby, a large orchard yields for them apples and pears (few of the latter however, they are just beginning this work). She produced their own cider for our entertainment of perfect quality, clear and shining as wine. And they tried to tempt us with a wine of currants too. There [sic] only lack is that of aid. They are proud as the lords of old but ready money they have not in any large quantity, beside the commoner quality of Irish servant would not be tolerated by these grand Yankee house-keepers; there are few young American girls who like the hard service without they join in as part owners, yet the necessity of having but one table and one family caused this kind of service to be the only desirable one. Poor Mrs Keniston with every blessing of the earth looked too hard worked and of necessity in too ill health to enjoy. In part this may be the result of living upon too little meat, the stamina of the constitution becomes undermined. I wish someone wiser than I would study and preach of this. If beef and mutton is all these women need, let that be sedulously preached until they cannot withstand the pressure, but if hard work is the cause of their loss of teeth and premature decay I see not what can be done. A new order of things I suppose must come but the old system as it reappears here in New England preserves so much of use and beauty that we shall be sorry to see it, if it must, pass away.
