By letting the mind's eye travel back carefully and vigilantly
over the scenes of a youth passed in a rural part of New England, and
taking notes of its journey, she has made a graphic picture of life in
that corner of the country forty years ago. Not a few men and women who
were "raised" there have carried away, bit for bit, the same
reminiscences, so exactly does one New England landscape resemble
another, in details of foreground at least. The same description of
orchard, stone walls or old well will fit any farm in Maine or
Massachusetts, and fond recollection sniffs the same odor of sputtering
doughnuts through the kitchen-door, whether it carries one back to the
Green hills or the White. Recollections are alike, but impressions
differ, one class of minds retaining the sense of bareness and gloom
which is so continually insisted upon in some New England books, and
others, as in the book before us, dwelling lovingly upon the wholesome
flavor, pungent yet mellow, which gives New England country life a
distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the
mother-country. Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H.
Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective
pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment.
Pages:
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394