University of Virginia Library

I.

An evening in the quaint old country store!
While Winter's feet were kicking at the door,
And Winter's white-nailed fingers striving hard
To raise the windows he himself had barred;
Save when he chased upon their weary rounds,
Through tracks of air, his yelling tempest-hounds.
Bark louder, storm-dogs! to our dreamy sight,
Your voices made the fire-cheer twice as bright,
Promoting high beyond a moment's doubt,
The value of the dry-goods shelved about.
There's little you'll be wanting, cheap or dear,
That has not something somewhat like it, here;
Whatever honest people drink or eat,
Or pack their bodies in, from head to feet,
Want what you may, you'll get it—search no more—
Or imitation of it—in this store.
The body's needs not only here you find,
But food, too, for the sympathies and mind;
For in one corner, fed by many lands,
The small post-office dignifiedly stands,
With square, red-numbered boxes in its arms,
Well stocked with white and brown enveloped charms.
Here the little girl, irresolutely gay,
Asks if there's “any thing for us to-day”;
Here the farm lad, who wider fields would seek,
Comes for the county paper once a week.
Through this delivery port-hole there is hurled
Printed bombardment from the outside world;
The great, far world, whose heart-throbs, up and down,
Strike pulses, e'en within this quiet town.
The quaint, well populated country store!
A hospitable, mirth-productive shore,
Where masculine barks take refuge from distress,
In the port of an evening's cheerfulness.
The rusty stove, with wood-fed heat endowed,
Shoots hot invisible arrows at the crowd,
To which the chewing population nigh
Send back a prompt and vigorous reply,
And find time for side-battles of retort,
In various moralled stories, long and short:
From one that's smart and good enough to print,
To one that has a hundred hell-seeds in 't.
Here laws are put on trial by debate,
Here solved conundrums, both of Church and State;
Here is contested, with more voice than brain,
Full many a hot political campaign;
The half surmised shortcomings of the church
Are opened to some sinner's anxious search;
And criticisms the minister gets here,
From men who have not heard him once a year.
Or maybe some inside the sacred fold
No longer their experiences can hold
Within the flock, who 've harked to them so oft,
Invariably referring them aloft,
That, tired of this monotony, they yearn
A little godless sympathy to earn.
And maybe it is one of these, who now,
With elevated feet and earnest brow,
And face where sentiment flits to and fro,
Tells sorrows he has felt not long ago:

[OUR TRAVELED PARSON.]