University of Virginia Library

1. I.
The Old Tavern at Bayley's Four-Corners.

YOU will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners
as it is more usually designated, on
any map of New England that I know of. It is
not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely
an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place
called Greenton is at the intersection of four
roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty
miles from the nearest settlement of note, and
ten miles from any railway station. A good
location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely;
but there has always been a hotel there, and for
the last dozen years it has been pretty well patronized
— by one boarder. Not to trifle with an
intelligent public, I will state at once that, in the
early part of this century, Greenton was a point
at which the mail-coach, on the Great Northern

Route, stopped to change horses and allow the
passengers to dine. People in the county, wishing
to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put
up overnight at the old tavern, famous for its
irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The
tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley,
who rivalled his wallet in growing corpulent,
and in due time passed away. At his death the
establishment, which included a farm, fell into
the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley
left his son-in-law a hotel, — which sounds handsome,
— he left him no guests; for at about the
period of the old man's death the old stage-coach
died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam
the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide
of progress, the tavern at the Corners found
itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank.
Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously,
there was some attempt to build a town
at Greenton; but it apparently failed, if eleven
cellars choked up with débris and overgrown
with burdocks are any indication of failure. The
farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in
New Hampshire; and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law,
could afford to snap his fingers at the travelling
public if they came near enough, — which
they never did.

The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same
as when Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts
in 1840, except that Sewell has from time to time
sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers
to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar
is still open, and the parlor door says Parlour
in tall black letters. Now and then a passing
drover looks in at that lonely bar-room, where a
high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles
with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon
on a shelf; now and then a farmer comes across
country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly
glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus
caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with
a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign,
on which there is a dim mail-coach with four
phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman
whose head has been washed off by the rain.
Other customers there are none, except that one
regular boarder whom I have mentioned.

If misery makes a man acquainted with strange
bedfellows, it is equally certain that the profession
of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one

into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of
Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept
me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the
year. I do not think I would, of my own volition,
have selected Greenton for a fortnight's
sojourn at any time; but now the business is
over, I shall never regret the circumstances that
made me the guest of Tobias Sewell and brought
me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's
Son.

It was a black October night in the year of
grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front
of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the
ten miles' ride from K——had been depressing,
especially the last five miles, on account of the
cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang
of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn
round in the road and roll off in the darkness.
There were no lights visible anywhere, and only
for the big, shapeless mass of something in front
of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I
should have fancied that I had been set down by
the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in no
amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull
or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side

of the house with my heavy walking-stick. In a
minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere
aloft, then I heard the sound of a window opening,
followed by an exclamation of disgust as a
blast of wind extinguished the candle which had
given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette
of a man leaning out of a casement.

“I say, what do you want, down there?” said
an unprepossessing voice.

“I want to come in, I want a supper, and a
bed, and numberless things.”

“This is n't no time of night to go rousing
honest folks out of their sleep. Who are you,
anyway?”

The question, superficially considered, was a
very simple one, and I, of all people in the world,
ought to have been able to answer it off-hand;
but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there
came drifting across my memory the lettering on
the back of a metaphysical work which I had
seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library.
Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collection
of title and author, the lettering read as follows:
“Who Am I? Jones.” Evidently it had puzzled
Jones to know who he was, or he would n't

have written a book about it, and come to so
lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly
puzzled me at that instant to define my identity.
“Thirty years ago,” I reflected, “I was nothing;
fifty years hence I shall be nothing again,
humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am
I, sure enough?” It had never occurred to me
before what an indefinite article I was. I wish
it had not occurred to me then. Standing there
in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with
the problem, and was constrained to fall back
upon a Yankee expedient.

“Is n't this a hotel?” I asked finally.

“Well, it is a sort of hotel,” said the voice,
doubtfully. My hesitation and prevarication had
apparently not inspired my interlocutor with confidence
in me.

“Then let me in. I have just driven over
from K—— in this infernal rain. I am wet
through and through.”

“But what do you want here, at the Corners?
What's your business? People don't come here,
least ways in the middle of the night.”

“It is n't in the middle of the night,” I returned,
incensed. “I come on business connected

with the new road. I'm the superintendent of
the works.”

“Oh!”

“And if you don't open the door at once, I'll
raise the whole neighborhood,—and then go to
the other hotel.”

When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a
village with three or four thousand population at
least, and was wondering vaguely at the absence
of lights and other signs of human habitation.
Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed
and asleep at half past ten o'clock: perhaps I am
in the business section of the town, among the
shops.

“You jest wait,” said the voice above.

This request was not devoid of a certain accent
of menace, and I braced myself for a sortie
on the part of the besieged, if he had any
such hostile intent. Presently a door opened
at the very place where I least expected a door,
at the farther end of the building, in fact, and
a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle
with his left hand, appeared on the threshold.
I passed quickly into the house with Mr.
Tobias Sewell (for this was Mr. Sewell) at my

heels, and found myself in a long, low-studded
bar-room.

There were two chairs drawn up before the
hearth, on which a huge hemlock backlog was
still smouldering, and on the unpainted deal
counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with
bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent
libations. Against the discolored wall over
the bar hung a yellowed handbill, in a warped
frame, announcing that “the Next Annual N. H.
Agricultural Fair” would take place on the 10th
of September, 1841. There was no other furniture
or decoration in this dismal apartment, except
the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling,
hanging down here and there like stalactites.

Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf,
and threw some pine-knots on the fire,
which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed
him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty,
with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set
eyes, perfectly round, like a carp's, and of no
particular color. His chief personal characteristics
seemed to be too much feet and not enough
teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face,
as he turned it towards me, wore a look of interrogation.

I replied to his mute inquiry by taking
out my pocket-book and handing him my
business-card, which he held up to the candle and
perused with great deliberation.

“You're a civil engineer, are you?” he said,
displaying his gums, which gave his countenance
an expression of almost infantile innocence. He
made no further audible remark, but mumbled
between his thin lips something which an imaginative
person might have construed into, “If
you're a civil engineer, I'll be blessed if I would
n't like to see an uncivil one!”

Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than
his bite, — owing to his lack of teeth probably,
— for he very good-naturedly set himself to work
preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold
ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled
condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in
a distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feeling
satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother
himself about his identity.

When I awoke the sun was several hours high.
My bed faced a window, and by raising myself
on one elbow I could look out on what I expected
would be the main street. To my astonishment

I beheld a lonely country road winding up
a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge.
In a cornfield at the right of the road was a
small private graveyard enclosed by a crumbling
stone-wall with a red gate. The only thing suggestive
of life was this little corner lot occupied
by death. I got out of bed and went to the
other window. There I had an uninterrupted
view of twelve miles of open landscape, with
Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not
a house or a spire in sight. “Well,” I exclaimed,
“Greenton does n't appear to be a very closely
packed metropolis!” That rival hotel with
which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was
not a deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight.
“By Jove!” I reflected, “maybe I'm in the
wrong place.” But there, tacked against a panel
of the bedroom door, was a faded time-table
dated Greenton, August 1, 1839.

I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went
smiling down stairs, where I found Mr. Sewell,
assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom
of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me
on a small table — in the bar-room!

“I overslept myself this morning,” I remarked

apologetically, “and I see that I am putting
you to some trouble. In future, if you will
have me called, I will take my meals at the usual
table-d'hôte.”

“At the what?” said Mr. Sewell.

“I mean with the other boarders.”

Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop
from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork
against the woodwork of the mantel-piece, grinned
from ear to ear.

“Bless you! there is n't any other boarders.
There has n't been anybody put up here sence —
let me see — sence father-in-law died, and that
was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there's Silas;
he's a regular boarder; but I don't count him.”

Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had
lost its custom when the old stage line was
broken up by the railroad. The introduction of
steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal
error. “Jest killed local business. Carried it
off I'm darned if I know where. The whole
country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence
steam was invented.”

“You spoke of having one boarder,” I said.

“Silas? Yes; he came here the summer

'Tilda died, — she that was 'Tilda Bayley, —
and he's here yet, going on thirteen year. He
could n't live any longer with the old man. Between
you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father,
was a hard nut. Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crooking
his elbow in inimitable pantomime, “altogether
too often. Found dead in the road hugging
a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus
in the barn,” added Mr. Sewell, intending, I
presume, to intimate that a post-mortem examination
had been deemed necessary. “Silas,” he
resumed, in that respectful tone which one should
always adopt when speaking of capital, “is a
man of considerable property; lives on his interest,
and keeps a hoss and shay. He's a great
scholar, too, Silas; takes all the pe-ri-odicals and
the Police Cazette regular.”

Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop,
when the door opened and a stoutish, middle-aged
little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped
into the room.

“Silas Jaffrey,” said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive
sweep of his arm, picking up me and
the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. “Be
acquainted!”

Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his
hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a
dapper little man, with a head as round and
nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an
orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling
gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the
numerous freckles upon which were deepened by
his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded
me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird,
which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage,
looked like an undertaker eating an omelet.

“Silas will take care of you,” said Mr. Sewell,
taking down his hat from a peg behind the door.
“I've got the cattle to look after. Tell him, if
you want anything.”

While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped
up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped
away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough,
occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight
fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly
round his head and seemed to possess a luminous
quality of its own.

“Don't I find it a little slow up here at the
Corners? Not at all, my dear sir. I am in
the thick of life up here. So many interesting

things going on all over the world, — inventions,
discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters,
mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musicians,
statesmen, distinguished travellers, prodigies
of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very
few events or persons escape me. I take six
daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all
the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I
could not get along with less. I could n't if you
asked me. I never feel lonely. How can I,
being on intimate terms, as it were, with thousands
and thousands of people? There's that
young woman out West. What an entertaining
creature she is! — now in Missouri, now in Indiana,
and now in Minnesota, always on the go,
and all the time shedding needles from various
parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it!
Then there's that versatile patriarch who walks
hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of
wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of
giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one
may say that historical colored woman who knew
Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of
Bunk — no, it is the old negro man who fought
at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that
period. Really, now, it is quite curious to observe
how that venerable female slave — for-merly
an African princess — is repeatedly dying
in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to
life again punctually every six months in the
small-type paragraphs. Are you aware, sir, that
within the last twelve years no fewer than two
hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington's
colored coachmen have died?”

For the soul of me I could n't tell whether this
quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not.
I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at
him.

“Then there are the mathematicians!” he
cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply.
“I take great interest in them. Hear this!”
and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket
in the tail of his coat, and read as follows: “It
has been estimated that if all the candles manufactured
by this eminent firm (Stearine & Co.)
were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and
⅞ times around the globe. Of course,” continued
Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively,
“abstruse calculations of this kind are not, perhaps,
of vital importance, but they indicate the

intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now,”
he said, halting in front of the table, “what with
books and papers and drives about the country, I
do not find the days too long, though I seldom
see any one, except when I go over to K — for
my mail. Existence may be very full to a man
who stands a little aside from the tumult and
watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he
may see more of the battle than those who are
in the midst of the action. Once I was strug-gling
with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as
the best; perhaps I should have been struggling
still. Indeed, I know my life would have been
very different now if I had married Mehetabel, —
if I had married Mehetabel.”

His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had
come over his bright face, his figure seemed to
have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded
out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very
antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned
to the door and passed into the road.

“Well,” I said to myself, “if Greenton had
forty thousand inhabitants, it could n't turn out
a more astonishing old party than that!”