The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 | Page 4

his hundred men. I saw his steady, heroic face, no longer pale, but full of stern purpose and strength. And so they all looked,--strong, able, determined. The call took all our young men from Barton. Not one would remain behind.
And that is why I could not love Percy Lunt. How hard she worked at our soldiers' club! how gentle and respectful she always was to me! If I had not been always preoccupied and prejudiced, I might have pitied the poor, overcharged heart, that showed itself so plainly in the deathly pallor of the young cheek, and the eyes so weighed down with weeping. Colonel Lunt and his wife watched her with loving eyes, but they could do little to soothe her. Every heart must taste its own bitterness. And, besides, she wasn't their own child.
CHAPTER II.
Every village has its great man and woman, and Colonel Lunt and his wife were Barton's. Theirs was the only family whose table appointments were of sufficient elegance to board the preceptor of the academy. All the Lyceum lecturers stopped at Colonel Lunt's; and Mrs. Lunt was the person who answered the requirements of Lady Manager for the Mount Vernon Association, namely, "social position, executive ability, tact, and persistency."
They were the only family in Barton who had been abroad. The rest of us stayed at home and admired them. They had not always lived in Barton; perhaps, if they had, we should not have succumbed so entirely as we all did, ten years ago, when Colonel Lunt came and bought the Schuyler place, (so called because General Schuyler stopped there over night on his way to fight Burgoyne,) and brought his orphan niece and adopted daughter with him, and also a French governess for the child. These things were not in Barton style at all; all our children being educated at the town school, and finished, as means allowed, by three months' polish at some seminary or other. Of course, in a country town like Barton, which numbers nearly fifteen hundred inhabitants, there is enough to interest and occupy every one. What would be gossip and scandal in a different social condition is pure, kindly interest in Barton. We know everybody, and his father and mother. Of course each person has his standing as inevitable and decided as an English nobleman's. Our social organization is perfect. Our circles are within and within each other, until we come to the cr��me de la cr��me of the Lunts and six other families. The outer circle is quite extensive, embracing all the personable young men "who are not embarrassed with antecedents," as one of our number said. The inner one takes in some graduates of college,--persons who read all the new books, and give a tone to Barton. Among the best people are the Elliotts and Robertses. The lawyers and shopkeepers come in of course, but not quite of course--anywhere but in Barton--is included the barber. But Mr. Roberts was an extreme case. He had been destined to literary pursuits, became consumptive, and was obliged, by unforeseen contingencies, to take up some light employment, which proved in the end to be shaving. If it had been holding notes instead of noses, the employment would have been vastly genteel, I dare say. As it was, we thought about the French ��migr��s and marquises who made cakes and dressed hair for a living, and concluded to admit Mr. Roberts, especially as he married a far-away Elliott, and was really a sensible and cultivated man. But as we must stop somewhere, we drew a strict line before the tinman, blacksmith, and Democrats of all sorts. We are pure-blooded Federalists in Barton, and were brought up on the Hartford Convention. I think we all fully believed that a Democrat was unfit to associate with decent people.
As in most New England towns, the young fly from the parent nest as soon as they are fledged. Out of Barton have gone, in my time, Boston millionnaires, state secretaries, statesmen, and missionaries,--of the last, not a few. Once the town was full of odd people, whose peculiarities and idiosyncrasies ran to seed, and made strange, eventful histories.
But we have ceased to take such microscopic views of each other since the railway came within ten miles of us, and are now able to converse on much more general topics than formerly. Not that there isn't still opportunity to lament over the flighty nature of kitchen incumbents, and to look after the domestic interests of all Barton; but I think going to Boston several times a year tends to enlarge the mind, and gives us more subjects of conversation. We are quite up in the sculpture at Mount Auburn, and have our preferences for Bierstadt and Weber. Nobody in Barton, so far, is known to see