Passages from the American Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne (eBook)

North Adams still.--The village, viewed from the top of a hill to the westward at sunset, has a peculiarly happy and peaceful look.  It lies on a level, surrounded by hills, and seems as if it lay in the hollow of a large hand.  The Union Village may be seen, a manufacturing place, extending up a gorge of the hills.  It is amusing to see all the distributed property of the aristocracy and commonalty, the various and conflicting interests of the town, the loves and hates, compressed into a space which the eye takes in as completely as the arrangement of a tea-table.  The rush of the streams comes up the hill somewhat like the sound of a city.

The hills about the village appear very high and steep sometimes, when the shadows of the clouds are thrown blackly upon them, while there is sunshine elsewhere; so that, seen in front, the effect of their gradual slope is lost.  These hills, surrounding the town on all sides, give it a snug and insulated air; and, viewed from certain points, it would be difficult to tell how to get out, without climbing the mountain ridges; but the roads wind away and accomplish the passage without ascending very high.  Sometimes the notes of a horn or bugle may be heard sounding afar among these passes of the mountains, announcing the coming of the stage-coach from Bennington or Troy or Greenfield or Pittsfield.

There are multitudes of sheep among the hills, and they appear very tame and gentle; though sometimes, like the wicked, they "flee when no man pursueth."  But, climbing a rude, rough, rocky, stumpy, ferny height yesterday, one or two of them stood and stared at me with great earnestness.  I passed on quietly, but soon heard an immense baa-ing up the hill, and all the sheep came galloping and scrambling after me, baa-ing with all their might in innumerable voices, running in a compact body, expressing the utmost eagerness, as if they sought the greatest imaginable favor from me; and so they accompanied me down the hillside,-- a most ridiculous cortege.  Doubtless they had taken it into their heads that I brought them salt.

The aspect of the village is peculiarly beautiful towards sunset, when there are masses of cloud about the sky,--the remnants of a thunder-storm.  These clouds throw a shade upon large portions of the rampart of hills, and the hills towards the west are shaded of course; the clouds also make the shades deeper in the village, and thus the sunshine on the houses and trees, and along the street, is a bright, rich gold.  The green is deeper in consequence of the recent rain.

The doctors walk about the village with their saddle-bags on their arms, one always with a pipe in his mouth.

A little dog, named Snapper, the same who stands on his hind legs, appears to be a roguish little dog, and the other day he stole one of the servant-girl's shoes, and ran into the street with it.  Being pursued, he would lift the shoe in his mouth (while it almost dragged on the ground), and run a little way, then lie down with his paws on it, and wait to be pursued again.

 August 11th.--This morning, it being cloudy and boding of rain, the clouds had settled upon the mountains, both on the summits and ridges, all round the town, so that there seemed to be no way of gaining access to the rest of the world, unless by climbing above the clouds.  By and by they partially dispersed, giving glimpses of the mountain ramparts through their obscurity, the separate clouds lying heavily upon the mountain's breast.  In warm mornings, after rain, the mist breaks forth from the forests on the ascent of the mountains, like smoke,--the smoke of a volcano; then it soars up, and becomes a cloud in heaven.  But these clouds to-day were real rain-clouds.  Sometimes, it is said, while laboring up the mountain-side, they suddenly burst, and pour down their moisture in a cataract, sweeping all before it.

Every new aspect of the mountains, or view from a different position, creates a surprise in the mind.

Scenes and characters:--A young country fellow, twenty or thereabouts, decently dressed, pained with the toothache.  A doctor, passing on horseback, with his black leather saddle-bags behind him, a thin, frosty-haired man.  Being asked to operate, he looks at the tooth, lances the gum, and the fellow being content to be dealt with on the spot, he seats himself in a chair on the stoop with great heroism.  The doctor produces a rusty pair of iron forceps; a man holds the patient's head; the doctor perceives that, it being a difficult tooth to get at, wedged between the two largest in his jaws, he must pull very hard; and the instrument is introduced.  A turn of the doctor's hand; the patient begins to utter a cry, but the tooth comes out first, with four prongs. The patient gets up, half amazed, pays the doctor ninepence, pockets the tooth, and the spectators are in glee and admiration.

There was a fat woman, a stage-passenger to-day,--a wonder how she could possibly get through the door, which seemed not so wide as she.  When she put her foot on the step, the stage gave a great lurch, she joking all the while.  A great, coarse, red-faced dame.  Other passengers,--three or four slender Williamstown students, a young girl, and a man with one leg and two crutches.

One of the most sensible men in this village is a plain, tall, elderly person, who is overseeing the mending of a road,--humorous, intelligent, with much thought about matters and things; and while at work he has a sort of dignity in handling the hoe or crow-bar, which shows him to be the chief.  In the evening he sits under the stoop, silent and observant from under the brim of his hat; but, occasion calling, he holds an argument about the benefit or otherwise of manufactories or other things. A simplicity characterizes him more than appertains to most Yankees.

A man in a pea-green frock-coat, with velvet collar.  Another in a flowered chintz frock-coat.  There is a great diversity of hues in garments.  A doctor, a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced, brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily.  He sat down on the step of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait, attended by a fine Newfoundland dog.

A barouche with driver returned from beyond Greenfield or Troy empty, the passengers being left at the former place.  The driver stops here for the night, and, while washing, enters into talk with an old man about the different roads over the mountain.

People washing themselves at a common basin in the bar-room! and using the common hair-brushes! perhaps with a consciousness of praiseworthy neatness!

A man with a cradle on his shoulder, having been cradling oats.  I attended a child's funeral yesterday afternoon.  There was an assemblage of people in a plain, homely apartment.  Most of the men were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and one or two were in shirt-sleeves.  The coffin was placed in the midst of us, covered with a velvet pall.  A bepaid clergyman prayed (the audience remaining seated, while he stood up at the head of the coffin), read a passage of Scripture and commented upon it. While he read and prayed and expounded there was a heavy thunder-storm rumbling among the surrounding hills, and the lightning flashed fiercely through the gloomy room; and the preacher alluded to GOD's voice of thunder.

It is the custom in this part of the country--and perhaps extensively in the interior of New England--to bury the dead first in a charnel-house, or common tomb, where they remain till decay has so far progressed as to secure them from the resurrectionists.  They are then reburied, with certain ceremonies, in their own peculiar graves.

O. E. S------, a widower of forty or upwards, with a son of twelve and a pair of infant twins.  He is a sharp, shrewd Yankee, with a Yankee's license of honesty.  He drinks sometimes more than enough, and is guilty of peccadilloes with the fair sex; yet speaks most affectionately of his wife, and is a fond and careful father.  He is a tall, thin, hard-featured man, with a sly expression of almost hidden grave humor, as if there were some deviltry pretty constantly in his mind,--which is probably the case.  His brother tells me that he was driven almost crazy by the loss of his wife.  It appears to me that men are more affected by the deaths of their wives than wives by the deaths of their husbands. Orrin S------ smokes a pipe, as do many of the guests.

A walk this forenoon up the mountain ridge that walls in the town towards the east.  The road is cut zigzag, the mountain being generally as steep as the roof of a house; yet the stage to Greenfield passes over this road two or three times a week.  Graylock rose up behind me, appearing, with its two summits and a long ridge between, like a huge monster crouching down slumbering, with its head slightly elevated.  Graylock is properly the name for the highest elevation.  It appeared to better advantage the higher the point from which I viewed it.  There were houses scattered here and there up the mountainside, growing poorer as I ascended; the last that I passed was a mean log-hut, rough, rude, and dilapidated, with the smoke issuing from a chimney of small stones, plastered with clay; around it a garden of beans, with some attempt at flowers, and a green creeper running over...