Be Courteous | Page 3

and stooping down, he whispered to a mild, lovely-looking
girl, who, seated upon a box, was holding her parasol so as to shield
from the sun's rays a sickly little boy. "Take a vote of the company,"
whispered the pretty girl, whom he called Mary.
"If it be your minds," said Henry, rising to his feet, "that we call at
Appledale, and invite Miss Martha and Miss Emma Lindsay to be of
our company, please manifest it by raising the right hand. It is a vote,"
he quietly continued, taking his seat.
"Mary Palmer!" called out Fanny; "you are a simpleton, and so fond of
serving people as to court insult."
Mary's cheek flushed a little. It was not the first time that she had been
called a simpleton, or some kindred name, by the out-spoken Miss

Fanny; for this young lady prided herself on not being afraid to speak
plainly, and tell people just what she thought of them.
As we before said, Mary's cheek flushed a little; but she instantly
thought to herself, "It is Fanny, and I won't mind it." So she smiled, and
said very gently, "I am sure, Fanny, that no sensible person will insult
me for trying to be courteous, though I may not exactly understand the
way. It can do the Misses Lindsay no harm to receive such an invitation
from us, and we cannot be injured by a refusal."
"For my own part," said Henry, "I think that the question whether we
are to be neighbors or not should be settled. They are strangers, and it is
our business to make the first advance toward an acquaintance. If they
decline, we have only hereafter to keep at a respectful distance."
"Precious little respect will they find in me," said Fanny. "I am too
much of a Yankee to flatter people by subserviency, or to put myself
out of the way to gain acquaintances about whom I care not a fig. But
drive on: while we are prating and voting about the nabobs at
Appledale the sun is growing hot."
Henry gathered up his reins, and away the wagons clattered down the
long hill, and with a short, thunder-like rumble crossed the bridge
between the Sliver Place and Appledale. Perhaps the writer may be
called to account for this romantic name: he will therefore give it here.
Appledale was once called Snag-Orchard, on account of the old trees
whose fugitive roots often found their way into the road, making great
trouble, and causing great complaint from the citizens, who yearly
worked out a tax there.
The people of that place would never have thought of calling it
anything else, had it not been for Susan and Margaret Sliver, who
sometimes wrote verses, and thought that Appledale sounded better in
poetry than did Snag-Orchard. These ladies, (they called themselves
young, but we must be truthful, even at the expense of courtesy,)
--these ladies, Margaret and Susan, said that this old place was
decidedly romantic; but the plain people living in that vicinity knew but
little of romance. If they saved time from hard labor to read their Bible,
it was certainly a subject for thankfulness. Most of them thought that
Snag-Orchard was a gloomy place, and that it was a pity for so much
good ground to be taken up with overgrown trees. It suited Mr.
Croswell, however, who was the former proprietor. He had but little

interest in the land belonging to this world, for all his relatives, nearly
every one, had gone to the land that is "very far off." He loved the trees,
and seemed to us like an old tree himself, from which kindred branch
and spray had fallen, leaving him in the world's wilderness alone. Some
thought him melancholy; but he was not: he was only waiting upon the
shore of that river dividing the "blessed land" from ours; and one spring
morning, very suddenly to his neighbors, he crossed that river, and
found more, infinitely more than he had ever lost. After he was gone,
the house was closed for a time; and through the bright days of the
following summer, when the foliage became heavy upon the old trees,
casting so deep a shadow as to make noonday but twilight there, and
when the night breeze sang mournfully among the pines in the rear of
that old house, people coming from the pond by the way of the plain
looked stealthily over their shoulders at Snag-Orchard: but they knew
not why, for nothing was there--nothing but loneliness and desertion.
There was a report among the school children that the Croswell house
was haunted; and in his merry moods poor Graffam had told the boys,
how many a time upon a dark night, when going from Motley's Mills to
his