Miss Mehetabels Son

Miss Mehetabel's Son, by
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: Miss Mehetabel's Son
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23357]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MEHETABEL'S SON ***

Produced by David Widger

MISS MEHETABEL'S SON.
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901

I. THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR CORNERS.
You will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more
usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is
not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The
almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four
roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest
settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good
location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a
hotel there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well
patronized--by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent public, I
will state at once that, in the early part of this century, Greenton was a
point at which the mail-coach on the Great Northern Route stopped to
change horses and allow the passengers to dine. People in the county,
wishing to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put up overnight at the
old tavern, famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds.
The tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivalled his
wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away. At his death
the establishment, which included a farm, fell into the hands of a
son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-law a hotel--which
sounds handsome--he left him no guests; for at about the period of the
old man's death the old stage-coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one,
and steam the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress,
the tavern at the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a
sand-bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there
was some attempt to build a town at Green-ton; but it apparently failed,
if eleven cellars choked up with débris and overgrown with burdocks
are any indication of failure. The farm, however, was a good farm, as
things go in New Hampshire, and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law, could
afford to snap his fingers at the travelling public if they came near
enough--which they never did.
The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same as when Jonathan
Bayley handed in his accounts in 1840, except that Sewell hasfrom

time to time sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers to bridal
couples in the neighborhood. The bar is still open, and the parlor door
says Parlour in tall black letters. Now and then a passing drover looks
in at that lonely bar-room, where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa
Cruz rum ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon on a
shelf; now and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops and
stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus
caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with a soggy elephant,
halts under the swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail-coach with
four phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has
been washed off by the rain. Other customers there are none, except
that one regular boarder whom have mentioned.
If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows, it is
equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often
takes one into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of Greenton
until my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the
dreariest season of the year. I do not think I would, of my own volition,
have selected Greenton for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now
the business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made
me the guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations
with Miss Mehetabel's Son.
It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that discovered
me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners.
Though the ten miles' ride from K------ had been depressing, especially
the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set in,
I