University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

The old stage road from Philadelphia to Lancaster, within a league
or more of the latter place, descends abruptly into a narrow glen,
through which, over a rocky bed, tumbles a wild and noisy brook.
Gigantic trees line its rugged banks, and form above a leafy canopy,
through which the noon-day sun scarce penetrates, flecking the dark
sward beneath with splashes of golden light, and gilding here and
there a sparkling wave as it leaps upward in its gambols. Across the
stream is thrown a rustic bridge, so old that from the huge gaps in
in its crazy joints, there grow, nourished by the dark, rich loam, with
which time has filled them, long waving grass, shrubs, and even flourishing
young trees; so that the passing traveller is scarcely less over-shadowed
in crossing the bridge than in the forests through which
the road has hitherto wound. One of the rude beams of the structure,
with an eye both to economy and strength, characteristic of those
days when it was built, is morticed in the trunk of an aged sycamore,
which flings broadly above it, its long, white spectral arms, as if its
protecting genii. At the foot of the tree, a narrow, rustic wheel-road
turns off to the right, and following the bank disappears in the intricacies

of the overhanging trees. Upon the bark of the sycamore,
but so near the ground that a horseman would have to lean from his
saddle to read it, is nailed a guide-board, fashioned like a man's hand,
with the fore finger extended. From its worm-eaten corners, its
weather-beaten face, and faintly visible characters, it doubtless was
placed there by the founders of the bridge itself. With some difficulty,
the words, “To Eden” can be made out by the curious traveller
who may chance in a summer's day to stop and refresh his horse
and himself in the cool glade, ere he attempts the perilous passage of
the little bridge before him.

`To Eden.”

This is all the passing traveller knows. Not a figure to mark the
distance, nor the least trace of there ever having been any placed
there, is visible to the nicest eye. “To Eden!” reads the stranger.
and passes on his way; and the little finger-board which for a moment
drew his attention and awakened a temporary curiosity is soon
forgotten! But it shall not be so with ourselves, dear reader! We
are a traveller, not of the highways but of the byways; the seeker
out of snug rural nooks; a lover of shade rather than of sunshine;
delighting more in the fragrance of flowers, and the green sward
that clothes the hills and all the vallies round, than in the rocky turnpike
and dusty thoroughfares; beholding more beauty in a majestic
tree than in a stately tower; more harmony in the hum of a bee than
in the buzz of the crowd; more beauty in a running rivulet than in
the finest jet d'eau; more enjoyment in a ramble through a woodland
path than a dashing drive through Chestnut street; and, altogether
believing that true happiness is to be sought rather in the quiet corners
of the world than amid the splendid pageantries of life, invested
as they may be with all the blandishments of art. We will not now,
therefore, cross the old bridge and travel along the turnpike; but
leaving the highway, turn short into the path at the foot of the tree,
and follow its windings beside the brook, which, after twice leaping
into a cascade of tumbling snow, and thrice spreading out into a
miniature mere, without a ripple upon the mirror like surface of its
breast, dashes riotously through a narrow channel, and is lost amid
the gloom of the deep set forests. But after a brief absence, if we
continue our way, we shall see it issuing in a vale and expanding into
a little lake of the most picturesque character, with a quiet hamlet of
a few white cottages, clustered about a snowy spire, on one side, and
a gentle slope of pasture land, sprinkled with herds on the other;

while around rise hills with green luxuriant swells, either crested with
noble forests, or sweeping down to the shore, in lawns of the brightest
verdure. This hamlet is “Eden!” the valley, which you perceive
is not a mile in length, and in width scarce half as much, is called
Eden Valley; and the lake, lively with ducks and geese, and children's
adventurous barks, sent off with many a shout, from the village
shore, is called “Eden Mere.” Is it not all beautiful! so still,
so quiet, so rural, so shut out from the world around it! How much
we should have lost, had we crossed the old bridge and rode on to
Lancaster, and yet have wandered only a mile and a half from the
high road; for, the venerable guide-board is silent, this only is the
distance of the lowly hamlet from the old sycamore. Indeed it is so
near that the village children used always of a Saturday afternoon to
follow the stream up to the bridge to fish; for there is beneath it, nigh
one corner, a fine deep trout-hole, in which their dirty naked feet,
hanging over the timber ends, the holiday rogues would ply their
hooks till they could no longer see their shadows in the black waters
below them; then with their loaded baskets, they would-start on a
nimble race homeward, and as twillight gathered the faster they ran;
for there were familiar tales of woodland goblins, remembered then,
that quickened their pace, lest night should overtake them ere they
reached the school house; which being the first building on the village
skirts, in the direction of the bridge, was to them, safe ground.
This school-house was an ancient scructure, having existed through
three generations of village urchins, the grand child sitting at the
same hacked and inky bench where his grandfather had been first inducted
into the mysteries of Dilworth.

It stood at the extremity of the village street, on an open green
space, where several forest oaks, suffered to remain, cast a shade upon
its roof and the surrounding lawn, which, in summer, was their play
ground; the Mere, which was a stone's throw in front, being in winter,
with its glassy bosom inviting the skater to his favorite pastime,
substituted for it. The school house was a square wooden building,
with a high Dutch roof, its low eaves stretching on every side, far
beyond the outer walls. It had four windows placed very high from
the ground, one on each side of the house; and a single door facing
the water. An irregular flat stone, well worn by little feet, was laid
before it, and the grass, for many yards around it, was trodden by the
feet of three generations of urchins, till it had become nearly as hard
and smooth as the door stone itself. Every thing about the school-house

was characteristic. The narrow clapboards were covered with
initials; and names only traditionally known in the village, were cnt
deep into the wood, with jack knives, some bearing date as far
back as 1753; while here and there were curious hieroglyphics, that
no man might tell the meaning of, but doubtless meant for good honest
words and letters: there were to be seen, also, profiles of more
or less merit; men, all legs and head; scrawls with lead pencils or
red chalk on the smoother and whiter surfaces; names of favorite
school girls, now grandmothers; caricatures of the several masters,
and the usual display of obscene words, that show the corrupt state
of the human heart even in its earliest existence—one and all charcteristics
of a village school house.

Dominie Spankie, at the period of our stay, presided over the destinies
of the three-score-and-ten urchins that constituted the juvenile
population of the village of Eden; and this school house was the
realm in which he had reigned for forty years; and scarce was there
to be found a male inhabitant, under fifty years of age in the village,
whom, in his time, the Dominie had not had between his knees, inflicting
upon him the healthful dicipline of castigation. The Dominie
had once been a soldier in the wars, having followed Braddock
into the wilderness, and got much damage, as he asseverated, by “the
dread onslaught of the wild savages,” losing two fingers on his right
hand by the blow of a tomahawk, and one of his eyes by an arrow:
and it was pleasant of a Saturday evening to him, on the stoop of the
quiet inn of Eden, to relate his warlike exploits, using his ferule, which
he never let out of his hand, save when sleeping, now as a musket, now
as a broadsword, to aid in illustrating to his wondering listeners, the
deeds he had seen and of which he had been a part. The Dominie
was tall of stature, erect and military in his port; with a long and
sinewy frame, marvellously spare of flesh. His hair was thick and
and grey, for he was waxing towards his sixtieth year, and being brushed
desperately back from his forehead, bristled over his head after a
exceedingly terrific manner. His long habit of command over a regiment
of unruly breechlings, had settled a frown upon his shaggy
brows; and, as nature had given him a sort of under-eye-brow, his
aspect, combined with his sightless orb, when the other was turned
upon an offender, was awful to behold. The Dominie, indeed governed
by his eye alone; a look being found sufficient to paralyze the stoutest
urchin that had the misfortune to incur his wrath. His long service
as master, and elevatud him in some sense, to the dignity of

pater familias to the whole village; all the souls in which had been
in their youth, under his especial eye; and from long habit he still
felt disposed to look after the manners and affairs of his quondam pupils,
and they themselves, from the same force of habit, to yield him
reverence and obedience. So, what with the boys at school, and their
fathers at home, the Dominie got to be, save the minister, the most
important personage in Eden. By the good wives he was looked upon
with a respect amounting to awe; and as he would frown upon
them as well as upon their lords and their lords pledges, when things
went not to his liking, his looks made such an impression upon many
of the more nervous portion of the woman kind, that, (being a bachelor,
the Dominie did little consider the times and seasons for administering
refroof,) nearly every other male child, to the wonder and astonishment
of the whole hamlet, came into the world marked with
one eye, and a double pair of eye-brows, looking for all the world
as like the Dominie's as one pea looks like another. But this belongs
rather to the “Chronicles of the Hamlet of Eden,” and to the Life
and Acts of Dominie Spankie, (which have carefully been written
and peradventure, one day will see the light,) than to our story, to
which what has yet been said is only prefatory.