Historical fiction, American; New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon
the sky. Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer’s practised
ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number of its
wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with their iron
tramp. Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth betimes to
take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his wife with
their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between them. The
bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes and
carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty with
yesterday’s journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled with
a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse and
driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a whole
summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome
maidens! Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man who as
he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon
the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of
pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad in
black, with a meditative brow, as of one who, whithersoever his steed
might bear him, would still journey through a mist of brooding thought.
He is a country preacher going to labor at a protracted meeting. The
next object passing townward is a butcher’s cart canopied with its arch
of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a “sauceman” driving a wagon full of
new potatoes, green ears of corn, beets, carrots, turnips and summer
squashes, and next two wrinkled, withered witch-looking old gossips in
an antediluvian chaise drawn by a horse of former generations and going
to peddle out a lot of huckleberries. See, there, a man trundling a
wheelbarrow-load of lobsters. And now a milk-cart rattles briskly
onward, covered with green canvas and conveying the contributions of a
whole herd of cows, in large tin canisters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account