The Hills of Hingham

The Hills of Hingham

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hills of Hingham, by Dallas Lore
Sharp This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Hills of Hingham
Author: Dallas Lore Sharp
Release Date: June 23, 2006 [EBook #18664]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HILLS
OF HINGHAM ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE HILLS OF HINGHAM
BY
DALLAS LORE SHARP

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published April 1916

TO THOSE WHO
"Enforst to seek some shelter nigh at hand"
HAVE FOUND THE HILLS OF HINGHAM

PREFACE
The is not exactly the book I thought it was going to be--though I can
say the same of its author for that matter. I had intended this book to set
forth some features of the Earth that make it to be preferred to Heaven
as a place of present abode, and to note in detail the peculiar attractions
of Hingham over Boston, say,--Boston being quite the best city on the
Earth to live in. I had the book started under the title "And this Our
Life"
. . . exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees,"
--when, suddenly, war broke out, the gates of Hell swung wide open

into Belgium, and Heaven began to seem the better place. Meanwhile, a
series of lesser local troubles had been brewing--drouth, caterpillars,
rheumatism, increased commutation rates, more college themes,--more
than I could carry back and forth to Hingham,--so that as the writing
went on Boston began to seem, not a better place than Hingham, but a
nearer place, somehow, and more thoroughly sprayed.
And all this time the book on Life that I thought I was writing was
growing chapter by chapter into a defense of that book--a defense of
Life--my life here by my fireside with my boys and Her, and the garden
and woodlot and hens and bees, and days off and evenings at home and
books to read, yes, and books to write--all of which I had taken for
granted at twenty, and believed in with a beautiful faith at thirty, when
I moved out here into what was then an uninfected forest.
That was the time to have written the book that I had intended this one
to be--while the adventure in contentment was still an adventure, while
the lure of the land was of fourteen acres yet unexplored, while back to
the soil meant exactly what the seed catalogues picture it, and my
summer in a garden had not yet passed into its frosty fall. Instead, I
have done what no writer ought to do, what none ever did before,
unless Jacob wrote,--taken a fourteen-year-old enthusiasm for my
theme, to find the enthusiasm grown, as Rachel must have grown by
the time Jacob got her, into a philosophy, and like all philosophies, in
need of defense.
What men live by is an interesting speculative question, but what men
live on, and where they can live,--with children to bring up, and their
own souls to save,--is an intensely practical question which I have been
working at these fourteen years here in the Hills of Hingham.

CONTENTS
I. THE HILLS OF HINGHAM II. THE OPEN FIRE III. THE ICE
CROP IV. SEED CATALOGUES V. THE DUSTLESS-DUSTER VI.
SPRING PLOUGHING VII. MERE BEANS VIII. A PILGRIM FROM

DUBUQUE IX. THE HONEY FLOW X. A PAIR OF PIGS XI.
LEAFING XII. THE LITTLE FOXES XIII. OUR CALENDAR XIV.
THE FIELDS OF FODDER XV. GOING BACK TO TOWN XVI.
THE CHRISTMAS TREE

[Illustration: The hills of Hingham]
I
THE HILLS OF HINGHAM
"As Surrey hills to mountains grew In White of Selborne's loving view"
Really there are no hills in Hingham, to speak of, except Bradley Hill
and Peartree Hill and Turkey Hill, and Otis and Planter's and Prospect
Hills, Hingham being more noted for its harbor and plains. Everybody
has heard of Hingham smelts. Mullein Hill is in Hingham, too, but
Mullein Hill is only a wrinkle on the face of Liberty Plain, which
accounts partly for our having it. Almost anybody can have a hill in
Hingham who is content without elevation, a surveyor's term as applied
to hills, and a purely accidental property which is not at all essential to
real hillness, or the sense of height. We have a stump on Mullein Hill
for height. A hill in Hingham is not only possible, but even practical as
compared with a Forest