University of Virginia Library

VI.
A New England Squire.

FRANK has a grandfather living in the country,
a good specimen of the old fashioned New
England farmer. And—go where one will, the world
over—I know of no race of men, who taken together,
possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of
those elements of comfort, which go to make a home
beloved, and the social basis firm, than the New
England farmers.

They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined;
they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic;
they know only so much of older nations as their
histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable
world they hold no place;—but in energy, in
industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge,

and in manly independence, they make up a race, that
is hard to be matched.

The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of
intelligence, and sterling worth, infants, compared with
them: and the farmers of England are either the
merest jockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their
sacks, samples, and market-days;—or, with added
cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency
to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior
intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly, as that
their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and
are to be left to their cattle and the goad.

There are English farmers indeed, who are men
in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the
current of the year's intelligence; but such men are
the exceptions. In New England, with the school
upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free-acting
church, to watch every valley with week-day
quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound,
the men become as a class, bold, intelligent, and
honest actors, who would make again, as they have
made before, a terrible army of defence; and who
would find reasons for their actions, as strong as their
armies.

Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still
hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely, but neat.
Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy

for the gew-gaws of foreign importation, and makes it
a point to appear always in the village church, and
on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun.
He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none.
He is known as the Squire, throughout the township;
and no important measure can pass the board of
select-men without the Squire's approval:—and this,
from no blind subserviency to his opinion, because his
farm is large, and he is reckoned “fore-handed,” but
because there is a confidence in his judgment.

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the
country parson, or of the school-master, or of the
Village doctor; and although the latter is a testy
politician of the opposite party, it does not at all
impair the Squire's faith in his calomel;—he suffers
all his Radicalism, with the same equanimity that he
suffers his rhubarb.

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the
small farmers consider the Squire's note of hand for
their savings, better than the best bonds of city origin;
and they seek his advice is all matters of litigation.
He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire
in a New England village implies; and many are the
country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from
the door of the great dining room.

The defendant always seems to you, in these

important cases,—especially if his beard is rather
long,—an extraordinary ruffian; to whom Jack Sheppard
would have been a comparatively innocent boy.
You watch curiously the old gentleman, sitting in his
big arm chair, with his spectacles in their silver case
at his elbow, and his snuff box in hand, listening
attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him
ponder deeply—with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,—and
you listen with intense admiration, as
he gives a loud, preparatory “Ahem,” and clears away
the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong
practical sense, which distinguishes the New England
farmer,—getting at the very hinge of the matter,
without any consciousness of his own precision, and
satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk, as
much as by the leniency of his judgment.

His lands lie along those swelling hills which in
southern New England, carry the chain of the White
and Green Mountains, in gentle undulations, to the
borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred
acres,—“suitably divided,” as the old school agriculturists
say, into “wood-land, pasture, and tillage.” The
farm-house, a large irregularly built mansion of wood,
stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward,
and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and
out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx, a
little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them

a high timber gate, opens upon the scattered pasture
lands of the hills: opposite to this, and across the
farm-yard which is the lounging place of scores of red-necked
turkeys, and of matronly hens, clucking to their
callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens
upon the wide meadow land, which rolls with a heavy
“ground swell,” along the valley of a mountain river.
A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate,
its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of
new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer
time, with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking
scythes.

The high-road passes a stone's throw away; but
there is little “travel” to be seen; and every chance
passer will inevitably come under the range of the
kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes
of the stout dairy-maid:—to say nothing of the
stalwart Indian cook.

This last, you cannot but admire as a type of that
noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has
woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how
she must regard the white interlopers upon her own
soil; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's
farming privileges, with more modesty than you would
suppose. You learn, however, that she pays very
little regard to white rights,—when they conflict with
her own; and further learn, to your deep regret,

that your Princess of the old tribe, is sadly addicted
to cider drinking: and having heard her once or
twice, with a very indistinct “Goo-er night Sq-quare,”
upon her lips—your dreams about her, grow very
tame.

The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his
hobbies, and peculiarities. He has a great contempt,
for instance, for all paper money; and imagines banks
to be corporate societies, skillfully contrived for the
legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply
of silver and gold by him, in the foot of an old
stocking; and seems to have great confidence in the
value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of
patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig,
and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists; and has
far more respect for the contents of his barn-yard, than
for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific
farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he
says, `to keep idle young fellows from the City out of
mischief; but as for real, effective management, there's
nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot
until they were ten, and who count the hard winters
by their frozen toes.' And he is fond of quoting in
this connection,—the only quotation by the by, that
the old gentleman ever makes—that couplet of Poor
Richard:—

The Squire has been in his day, connected more or
less intimately with Turn-pike enterprise, which the
rail-roads of the day have thrown sadly into the background;
and he reflects often, in a melancholy way,
upon the good old times when a man could travel in
his own carriage quietly across the country, without
being frightened with the clatter of an engine;—and
when Turn-pike stock, paid wholesome yearly dividends
of six per cent.

An almost constant hanger-on about the premises,
and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, middle-aged
man, with a heavy bearded face—to whom Frank
introduces you, as “Captain Dick”; and he tells you
moreover, that he is a better butcher,—a better wall
layer, and cuts a broader “swathe,” than any man
upon the farm. Beside all which, he has an immense
deal of information. He knows, in the Spring, where
all the crows' nests are to be found; he tells Frank
where the foxes burrow; he has even shot two or
three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best
season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding
of bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership
of every stray heifer that appears upon the road:
indeed, scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion

formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred
ones as the weather, or potato crop, without previous
consultation with “Captain Dick.”

You have an extraordinary respect for Captain
Dick: his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waistcoat,
and cow-hide boots, only add to it: you can
compare your regard for him, only with the sentiments
you entertain for those fabulous Roman heroes, led
on by Horatius, who cut down the bridge across
the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and
families!

A superannuated old greyhound lives about the
premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his thin
nose into your hands, in a very affectionate manner.

Of course, in your way, you are a lion among
the boys of the neighborhood: a blue jacket that
you wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their
especial wonderment. You astonish them, moreover,
with your stories of various parts of the world which
they have never visited. They tell you of the haunts
of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit in the
dusk after supper, under the old oaks; and you
delight them in turn, with some marvellous tale of
South American reptiles, out of Peter Parley's books.

In all this, your new friends are men of observation;
while Frank and yourself, are comparatively men of
reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, you find

yourself a long way before them; and you talk of
problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a
way that sets them all agape.

As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather
stagger your notions of propriety; nor can you wholly
get over their outside pronunciation of some of the vowels.
Frank, however, has a little cousin,—a toddling,
wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a rich
eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing;
poor Fanny is stone blind! Your pity leans toward
her strangely, as she feels her way about the old parlor;
and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the
clear, blue sky—with the same, sad, painful vacancy.

And yet—it is very strange!—she does not grieve:
there is a sweet, soft smile upon her lip,—a smile that
will come to you in your fancied troubles of after life,
with a deep voice of reproach.

Altogether, you grow into a liking of the country:
your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and the
sparkles of dew, that at sunrise cover the hills with
diamonds;—and the wild river, with its black-topped,
loitering pools;—and the shaggy mists that lie, in the
nights of early autumn, like unravelled clouds, lost
upon the meadow. You love the hills climbing green
and grand to the skies; or stretching away in distance,
their soft, blue, smoky caps,—like the sweet, half-faded

memories of the years behind you. You love those
oaks tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven, with
a spirit and a strength, that kindles your dawning pride
and purposes; and that makes you yearn, as you
forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit,
and a kindred strength. Above all, you love—though
you do not know it now—the Breadth of a country
life. In the fields of God's planting, there is Room.
No walls of brick and mortar cramp one: no factitious
distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches
of the spirit, tend toward the True, and the Natural.
The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all
give width to your intent. The boy grows into
manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He
claims,—with tears almost, of brotherhood,—his kinship
with Nature; and he feels, in the mountains, his heir-ship
to the Father of Nature!

This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon
the lip of the boy; but yet it underlies his thought, and
will, without his consciousness, give the spring to his
musing dreams.

—So it is, that as you lie there upon the sunny
greensward, at the old Squire's door, you muse upon
the time when some rich lying land, with huge
granaries, and cozy old mansion sleeping under the
trees, shall be yours;—when the brooks shall water
your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture

lands;—when the clouds shall shed their spring
fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your
paths.

You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your
lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and
your snuff-box. You will be the happy, and respected
husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles,
—a little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother,—and
an accomplished cook of stewed pears, and Johnny
cakes!

It seems a very lofty ambition, at this stage of
growth, to reach such eminence, as to convert your
drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into a
bank for the country people; and the power to send a
man to jail, seems one of those stretches of human
prerogative, to which few of your fellow mortals can
ever hope to attain.

—Well, it may all be. And who knows but the
Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be lighted
by the same spirit and freedom of nature, that is
around you now? Who knows, but that after tracking
you through the Spring, and the Summer of Youth,
we shall find frosted Age settling upon you heavily, and
solemnly, in the very fields where you wanton to-day?

This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting
impulse. It brings Age back, from years of wandering,
to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters

armies of ripe manhood, to bleach far-away shores with
their bones.

That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy
and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our life,
may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to this
mountain home of New England; and that very willow
yonder, which your fancy now makes the graceful
mourner of your leave, may one day shadow mournfully
your grave!