Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
Amesbury has among its attractions a Lion's Mouth! In the old days of
Indian ambushes it must have earned its right to the name. But now the
only existing danger is lest one should be eaten up--with kindness.
It is a short mile from the mills, and a pleasant walk in spite of its
ending! At last there comes a little hollow with a large farm-house on
the left, and a grass road winding past it at right angles with the main
road and leading into beautiful woods. These woods are the very jaws of
the lion; and it is very hard, on a hot summer's day, for those who go
into them to come out again. A few rods up the road from the hollow are
other houses. People bearing some of the earliest recorded names in
Amesbury, descendants of the brave pioneers, are to be found here, or
having departed this life, have left good records behind them. One of
these latter lived here in the pleasantest way. He and his wife carried
on their large farm in an ideal manner; everything was upon a generous
scale. There was money enough not to wear out life in petty economies,
and largeness of soul enough not to put the length of a bank account
against the beauties and refinements of life. The loss of their only
child, and a few years afterward of their grand-daughter, one of the
loveliest children earth ever held, was--not compensated for, that
can never be, but made much less dreary by a friendship of many years'
standing between them and their summer neighbors. In this case, too, the
gentleman is a native of Amesbury, proud and fond of his birthplace.
Every summer he comes to the cottage of this friend, a charming little
house only a few rods from the larger one, and spends the summer here
with his family and servants. He has made a great deal of money in New
York, but fortunately, not too much, for it has not built up a Chinese
wall around his heart; his new friends are dear, but his early friends
are still the dearest.
Between the Mills and this formidable Mouth of the Lion, is the Quaker
Meeting House, a modest, sober-hued building on a triangular green, on
which, before it was fenced in, the boys delighted to play ball on the
days and at the hours (for the Quakers have meeting Thursday also) on
which the grave worshippers were not filing into what cannot fairly be
called the house of silence, because it has been known to echo to
exhortations as earnest, if not as vehement as one may hear from any
pulpit. Still, there are sometimes long intervals of silence, and then
the consciousness that silent self-examination is one purpose of the
coming together, gives an impressiveness to the simple surroundings. It
must have been here that Mr. Whittier learned to interpret so
wonderfully that silent prayer of Agassiz for guidance when he opened
his famous school from which he was so soon called to a higher life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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