Homespun Tales | Page 5

the night to marry and join the
world's people,--that this tragedy had often occurred in their
community.
Here, then, are the three simple homespun tales. I believe they are true
to life as I see it. I only wish my readers might hear the ripple of the
Maine river running through them; breathe the fragrance of New
England for-ests, and though never for a moment getting, through my
poor pen, the atmosphere of Maine's rugged cliffs and the tang of her
salt sea air, they might at least believe for an instant that they had found
a modest Mayflower in her pine woods.
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. July, 1920.
CONTENTS

ROSE O' THE RIVER
I. The Pine and the Rose II. The "Old Kennebec" III. The Edgewood
"Drive" IV. "Blasphemious Swearin'" V. The Game of Jackstraws VI.
Hearts and Other Hearts VII. The Little House VIII. The Garden of
Eden IX. The Serpent X. The Turquoise Ring XI. Rose Sees the World
XII. Gold and Pinchbeck XIII. A Country Chevalier XIV.
Housebreaking XV. The Dream Room
THE OLD PEABODY PEW
SUSANNA AND SUE
I. Mother Ann's Children II. A Son of Adam III. Divers Doctrines IV.
Louisa's Mind V. the Little Quail Bird VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting
VII. "The Lower Plane" VIII. Concerning Backsliders IX. Love
Manifold X. Brother and Sister XI. "The Open Door" XII. The Hills of

Home

ROSE O' THE RIVER

I
The Pine And the Rose
It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his dip
in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the
alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet.
An early ablution of this sort was not the custom of the farmers along
the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's
throw from the water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the
Willow Cove that would have tempted the busiest man, or the least
cleanly, in York County. Then, too, Stephen was a child of the river,
born, reared, schooled on its very brink, never happy unless he were on
it, or in it, or beside it, or at least within sight or sound of it.
The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him, left
him cold in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won his heart.
It was just big enough to love. It was full of charms and changes, of
varying moods and sudden surprises. Its voice stole in upon his ear
with a melody far sweeter and more subtle than the boom of the ocean.
Yet it was not without strength, and when it was swollen with the
freshets of the spring and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams,
it could dash and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them.
Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the sunrise,
with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the sweet loveliness
of the summer landscape.
And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song,
creating and nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path.

Cradled in the heart of a great mountain-range, it pursued its gleaming
way, here lying silent in glassy lakes, there rushing into tinkling little
falls, foaming great falls, and thundering cataracts. Scores of bridges
spanned its width, but no steamers flurried its crystal depths. Here and
there a rough little rowboat, tethered to a willow, rocked to and fro in
some quiet bend of the shore. Here the silver gleam of a rising perch,
chub, or trout caught the eye; there a pickerel lay rigid in the clear
water, a fish carved in stone: here eels coiled in the muddy bottom of
some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of the rocks, lay fat,
sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite untempted by, and wholly
superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.
The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along banks
green with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell tempestuously
over dams and fought its way between rocky cliffs crowned with stately
firs. It rolled past forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, now gentle,
now terrible; for there is said to be an Indian curse upon the Saco,
whereby, with every great sun, the child of a paleface shall be drawn
into its cruel depths. Lashed into fury by the stony reefs that impeded
its progress, the river looked now sapphire, now gold, now white, now
leaden gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its appointed way
to the sea.
After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning draught of
beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at the stairway,
called in stentorian