The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 | Page 2

mine hostess's cloak, best bonnet, and go-to-meeting
apparel. There was a good bed, in which I slept tolerably well, and,
rising betimes, ate breakfast, consisting of some of our own fish, and

then started for Augusta. The fat old traveller had gone off with the
harness of our wagon, which the hostler had put on to his horse by
mistake. The tavern-keeper gave us his own harness, and started in
pursuit of the old man, who was probably aware of the exchange, and
well satisfied with it.
Our drive to Augusta, six or seven miles, was very pleasant, a heavy
rain having fallen during the night and laid the oppressive dust of the
day before. The road lay parallel with the Kennebec, of which we
occasionally had near glimpses. The country swells back from the river
in hills and ridges, without any interval of level ground; and there were
frequent woods, filling up the valleys or crowning the summits. The
land is good, the farms looked neat, and the houses comfortable. The
latter are generally but of one story, but with large barns; and it was a
good sign, that, while we saw no houses unfinished nor out of repair,
one man, at least, had found it expedient to make an addition to his
dwelling. At the distance of more than two miles, we had a view of
white Augusta, with its steeples, and the State-House, at the farther end
of the town. Observable matters along the road were the stage,--all the
dust of yesterday brushed off, and no new dust contracted,--full of
passengers, inside and out; among them some gentlemanly people and
pretty girls, all looking fresh and unsullied, rosy, cheerful, and curious
as to the face of the country, the faces of passing travellers, and the
incidents of their journey; not yet damped, in the morning sunshine, by
long miles of jolting over rough and hilly roads,--to compare this with
their appearance at midday, and as they drive into Bangor at dusk;--two
women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child, rattling pretty
speedily down hill;--people looking at us from the open doors and
windows;--the children staring from the wayside;--the mowers stopping,
for a moment, the sway of their scythes;--the matron of a family,
indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head and
shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief
over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its
breakfast,--the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the
door, turning round to creep away on all fours;--a man building a
flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B---- about the
Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British

"into hell's kitchen" by main force.
Colonel B----, the engineer of the mill-dam, is now here, after about a
fortnight's absence. He is a plain country squire, with a good figure, but
with rather a ponderous brow; a rough complexion; a gait stiff, and a
general rigidity of manner, something like that of a schoolmaster. He
originated in a country town, and is a self-educated man. As he walked
down the gravel path to-day, after dinner, he took up a scythe, which
one of the mowers had left on the sward, and began to mow, with quite
a scientific swing. On the coming of the mower, he laid it down,
perhaps a little ashamed of his amusement. I was interested in this; to
see a man, after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying
whether his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his
youth,--mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in
his shirt-sleeves,--and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery
beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and
then went to oversee the laborers at the mill-dam.
* * * * *
Monday, July 24th.--I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in
the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,--the former time at
noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive,
there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the
forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and
babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring
in a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up
the brook, there was a long vista,--now ripples, now smooth and glassy
spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking up the channel; while the
trees stood upon either side, mostly straight, but here and there a branch
thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning over,--not
bending,--but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and ragged;
birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead, leafless pine,
rising