It’s a great bore to have to write with poor ink like this, a’n’t it? But that’s not what I was going to say. I’ll tell you what I’ve been about and leave the little miseries for the last page, if there’s room.

After that, that morning, Kingsbury could not get to the cars without calling on Miss Abby, and I was glad of another opportunity to dun her (hoping to save my attorney the trouble of collection). I’ve got her blessing, but not the shoe, and parted from those regions & went & came unto the coasts which lie around about the Caravanserai at Meriden, where we had to wait an hour or two, waiting the moving of the mail coach. K. found an honorable shad eater with whom he discussed the Railroad Question, and I employed myself with the newspaper till I had used up all my lead. Then we drank a bottle of ginger pop. After this, instead of smoking to pass away the time, I studied nature—a much more stupid and sensible “aid to digestion.” The richest subjects as usual were exposed right before us.

I was considerably interested in a couple, male and female species, genus Homo. They were in full feather and deep colored and though young, appeared to be in “mating season.” The male had his feet confined in such small toed, tight little fire buckets, & his nether plumage so cruelly strapped over them, that he found it difficult to walk, and at first I thought him a cripple, from the odd style in which he planted his motives. Poll—spinate; hair, soapy: covered with a cloth cap, with a long tassel & square visor, cocked with a rake to his weak side & worn continually in the ladies’ parlour. He handed the she one a pamphlet from the table, & she looked at it a moment & said, “It’s a novel!”

“Yes, I guess ’tis.”

“Why! You don’t real novels?”

“O, yes, I’ve read more’n one, I tell you. I admire to read ’em.”

“How can you! I never read a novel in all my born day.”

“You never? Well, I have. I tell you if I ha’n’t!”

When the agent opened the office, he Hung himself onto his extremes, & after gaining his balance progressed to the pigeon hole and sung out “Tickets for two!” And I took the opportunity to get an envelope for the newspaper which we sent by Jackson who was in the cars—& I suppose she got it, didn’t she!

The driver over was a pretty good sample, too. He was good natured as a blind cow. Only as he had driven over early that morning & was out late the night before—sparkin’—(wonder if he is better off than I) he was somewhat sleepy. He remembered me (as Collins) and asked kindly after [208]the “Harford gals.” Then he had a “great team.” Only one of ’em lame, and so far from vicious that he had the utmost confidence in them & let them do just as they pleased, except—sometimes when he was catching a nap, when as the wheelers were trying to get out of the way of the old coach as it was rattlin’ down the hill into ’em, then, as we pitched over a riser, & he was all but tossed over their heads, he would fetch up on the footboard, & waking suddenly, recover the reins & sing out “Hey! old brown!”

As we got into Cheshire he was kind enough to describe the country to me, pointing out the various objects of interest to an enlightened traveller: the roads, the “center,” the ragin’ canawl, &c., till, as we were getting towards (my) Bear Mountain,K. , in calling my attention to the prospect (which is rich), hap’d to tell me we were crossing the road to Cheshire. I corrected him & told him that was the “Morse’s Farm’s road” and went down under the Mountain, where the Barnes girls live. The driver looked at me some, but did not offer any more information about the roads for some time.

Among the passengers was a young old maid of less than forty who boasted that she had got a new set of teeth that would not wear out quite so quick as those she’d shed. At last K. says “we’ve arrived,” and you know what kind of a place we were at. I like it. What a good natured, smooth pated, contented old gentleman his pater is? I like him all the better, I suppose, for telling me that a young man couldn’t have a more rational view of happiness than I did—which most folks would think queer. But he’s right, for he has just such himself & he’s happy withal. He says he don’t want anything except about $5,000, well invested. And I don’t know anybody [who does not] feel a good deal so, and there are a few that need it less.

The next morning I went with K. up the river, a mile or two, to Mr. Joseph Welton’s, the farmer with whom I am now living. The next morning we went surveying some cord wood on wild lands of Mr. K’s on Drum Hill & came home after noon tired & hungry. Eat some dinner & went to sleep soon after. I recollect K.’s finished a letter to you and it seems to me I tried to write a postscript, but I have not a very distinct idea whether I succeeded or not. Anyhow, we both slept till near supper time, when it was raining, and it has been keeping a doing so almost ever since, except sometimes when we dared it by going out without an umberill.

Did you “go into s’ciety” any here? I have visited the Kendricks which is the aristocracy & Martha which plays something Grand March on the piano—who are most beautifully turned out—and Miss Johnson that they pester Fred about, & Fred’s Gran’ma & ’lisha—and they are all good clever folks, besides several more.

Yesterday I came up here. I found boss had gone over the hill to help the men what keeps the “town poor.” (I am now next door to the workhouse.) So I got a hoe & went and helped plant corn all the p.m. Don’t you think I shall do? We had two or three of the paupers with us, and I [209]was exceedingly edified by their conversation. One chap—built like a table fork—only he had a horrible fever sore—informed me that he did not associate himself with every old tramper that came along and I felt highly flattered, you may be sure, that I was allowed to have the next row to him. There was another one with an outlandish name, something like “Ham,” who hail’d from “Guntown,” and said he had been a soldier & could tell of moving accidents—&c., &c. Very entertaining, but I was more interested in the view of “work hus” economy that he uncurtained for me.

As he had been used to night watching they made him nurse, & he opened rich with an account of sitting up with an old woman who finally got so “she couldn’t scold no longer.” “And then,” says he, “I was in hopes she was goin’, but she held on, & when I woke up again she had [her] old mouth wide open, a breathin’ like all possessed. I was a good mind to cram down a big junk of opium, but remembered the doctor said ’twouldn’t have no effect on her, she’d drank so much gin. And so I put it in my pocket, & I got a piece on’t now. And the darn’d old thing han’t cum out the winder yet & she can scold now like the devil. She mends stockins & has to get old blind Eunice to thread her needle for her.” I found the stairs were so arranged that they could not move a coffin through them, but had to go out the window, till it has got to be a common phrase. Says he, “I likes to have ’em die—coz they never gives me no rum only to pay for digging a grave.”

When I came home here I found the school-marm, who is “boarding ’round” the district, and I suppose will stay here a week or so. As she is young, pretty, and rather intelligent, I “didn’t mind” till bed time, when Mrs. W. asked me if I should prefer to “sleep with a companion!” I told her I would rather be by myself. “Then we’ll put you here till the schoolmarm’s gone. Then you go into her chamber.” And she showed me into a little box, pretty nearly filled with a feather bed.

It is a pleasant place, and I think I shall like it pretty well as a school, but it will be awful dull if I don’t hear from you and the rest now & then. Welton is an old schoolmate of F.K.’s and has taught school some himself. By the way, he is a churchman, and when he reads prayers you would think he was trying to read so as to show the Examining Committee that he did not have to spell the hard words. He is tolerably well-informed and has been very successful as a farmer. He’s got a good farm and he’s proud of it, and he’s a good & rather pretty wife with a kind expression, and he loves her like—as I mean to mine.

On the whole I think I am tolerably well off and I feel very much obliged to Kingsbury for finding the place for me. I am to work or play, come or go just as I please, but I mean to stay and work, till after haying anyway.

I am writing in the next room to the bedroom, and if you will put me in mind of it when I see you, I will tell you a good female Yankee trick I was just witness to. (Is hearing, witnessing?)

[210]

I cannot close without telling you how happy I am as a Christian. I trust I am not over-confident, hut I do think a man ought to be able to be better satisfied with himself, by the grace of God, in the country rather than in the city. One has so much more opportunity and inclination for reflection and prayer that he must be better improving his time.

I don’t know when I shall mail this letter, so I can’t say whether it is to find you in Hartford or Yale; but you will write me before long—do. Not the first few days of the term though, if you love me, not till you are over the first attack of the blues. Love to Clint. Hope he found the prison Democratic enough. ’Twould just suit him if we could all live so levely; baiting the keepers who are the convict’s aristocracy. It’s queer that such a sensible fellow as he shouldn’t see that what he calls the aristocracy is the more Democratic portion of the people (in feeling), and what he calls the Democratic are just the ones that wish to be Aristocratic (really.)