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On the left-hand side of the road are what are called by the men who own them, "pastures." Considered as pastures from an animal's point of view, they must be disappointing; stones for bread to a cruel extent they give. Considered as landscape, they have, to the trained eye, a charm and fascination which smooth, fulsome meadow levels cannot equal. There can be no more exquisite tones of color, no daintier mosaic, than one sees if he looks attentively on an August day at these fields of gray granite, lichen-painted boulders, lying in beds of light-green ferns, bordered by pink and white spireas, and lighted up by red lilies.

The stretches of stone wall tone down to an even gray in the distances, and have a dignity and significance which no other expedient for boundary-marking has attained. They make of each farm a little walled principality, of each field an approach to a fortress; and if one thinks of the patience which it must need to build them by the mile, they

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ceased; open fields on either side give us long stretches of view to the north and to the south. The road-sides are as thick set with green growths as the sides of English lanes. To my thinking they are beautiful; copses of young locusts, birches, thickets of blackberry and raspberry bushes, with splendid waving tops like pennons; spiræa, golden rod, purple thistle, sumac with red pompons, and woodbine flinging itself over each and all in positions of inimitable grace and abandon. With each rod that we rise the outlook grows wider; the uplands seem to roll away farther and farther; the horizons look like sea-horizons, distant and misty, and the white houses of the town might be signal stations. Presently we come out upon a strange rocky plateau, small, with abrupt sides falling off in all directions but one, like cliff walls. This is the centre of the town. It is simply a flattened expanse of a mountain spur. The mountain itself is only three thousand

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There are some old, tattered leather-bound books behind the counter of "the store," which are full of interesting records of that time. There are traditions of Governors' visits a hundred years before the Revolution; and a record of purchase of twelve square miles, "not including the mountain," for twenty-three pounds, from three sachems of the Nipmucks. In 1743 the first settlement was made on the present town site, by a man who, being too poor to buy, petitioned the Colonial Government to give

OLD HIDE-AND-SEEK TOWN RECORDS.

acter of an Honest and Laborious man, and is minded to settle himself and his Family thereon."

It was given to him on the condition that he should keep a house for the accommodation of travelers "going West!" Immortal phrase, which only the finality of an ocean can stay.

Twenty years later, the handful of settlers voted "to hire four days preaching in May next, to begin ye first Sabbath, if a minister can be conveniently procured," and that Christian charity was as clearly understood then as to-day may be seen by another record a few pages further on, of the town's vote to pass on to the next settlement, a poor tramp with his family: "Hepzibah, his wife, Joseph, Isaac, Thankful, Jeduthun, Jonathan and Molly, their children." There is an inexplicable fascination in this faded old record on the ragged page. Poor fellow; a wife and six children in such a wilderness, with no visible means of support! Why did they call that first girl "Thankful?" And what can it be in the sound of the word Jeduthun, which makes one so sure that of all the six children, Jeduthun was the forlornest? As we approach the Revolutionary period, the records grow more distinct. There is even a sort of defiant

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ROAD THROUGH "THE LONG WOODS."

Even while the town was training its Minute Men, the records open," In his Majesty's name; "but a few months later, comes a significant page, beginning, "In the name of the Government and People of the Province of the Massachusett's Bay." This page records. the vote of the town, "To concur with the Continental Congress in case they should Declare Independence." Five months later is a most honourable record of a citizen who went to the Provincial Congress, rendered his account for fifty pounds for his expenses, and then, so that no heirs of his should demand it in future, presented it to the town in a formal receipt, "from him who wishes them every good connected with this and the Future State." Could any strait of the Republic to-day develop such a Congressman as that? After spending a few hours' in looking over these old records, one feels an irresistible drawing towards the old graveyard, where sleep the clerk and his fellowIt is the "sightliest" place in the town. On the apex of the ridge, where the backbone of the hill sticks out in very bare granite vertebræ, it commands the entire horizon, and gives such a sweep of view

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of both land and sky as is rarely found from
a hill over which runs a daily used road.
By common consent, this summit is called
Sunset Hill; it might as well have been
named for the Sunrise also, for, from it, one
sees as far east as west; but the Sunrise has
no worshipers, and all men worship the Sun-
In summer, there are hundreds of
strangers in Hide-and-Seek Town; and every
evening, one sees on Sunset-Hill, crowds
who have come up there to wait while the
sun goes down; chatting lovers who see in
the golden hazy distance only the promised
land of the morrow; and silent middle-aged
people to whom the same hazy distance
seems the golden land they long ago left
behind. The grave-yard lies a few steps.
down on the south-west slope of this hill. In
August, it is gay with golden rods, and the
old gray stones are more than half sunk in
high purple grasses.
The sun lies full on it
all day long, save in the south-west corner,
where a clump of pines and birches keeps
a spot of perpetual shade. Many of the
stones are little more than a mosaic of green
and gray lichens. Old Mortality himself
could not restore their inscriptions. The
oldest one which is legible is dated 1786,
and runs :

"Thy word commands our flesh to dust;
Return, ye sons of men ;

All nations rose from earth at first,

And turn to earth again."

Seven years later, a man, who was, as his grave-stone sets forth, "inhumanly murdered" by one of his townsmen, was laid to rest, under the following extraordinary

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stanza:

"Passengers, behold! My friends, and view,
Breathless I lie; no more with you;
Hurried from life; sent to the grave;
Jesus my only hope to save;
No warning had of my sad fate;
Till dire the stroke, alas! too late!"

Surely, in those old days only the very queer survived! And, among the queerest, must have been the man who could carve upon a fellow-man's tomb such a light tripping measure as this:

"This languishing head is at rest;
Its thinking and aching are o'er.
This quiet, immovable breast

Is heaved by affliction no more.
This heart is no longer the seat
Of trouble and sorrowing pain;
It ceases to flutter and beat;
It never will flutter again."

But one cannot afford to spend in the old grave-yard, many of his summer days in

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Hide and Seek Town. Fascinating as are these dead men's sunny silent homes with the quaint inscriptions on their stone lintels, there is a greater fascination in the sunny silent homes of the living, and the roads leading to and fro among them. North, south, east, and west, the roads run, cross, double, and turn, and double again; as many and as intricate as the fine-spun lines of a spider's web. You shall go no more than six or seven miles in any direction without climbing up, or creeping down, to some village; and the outlying farms of each meet midway, and join hands in good fellowship.

There is a fine and unbroken network of industry and comfort over the whole region. Not a povertystricken house to be seen; not one;

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not a single long stretch of lonely wilderness; even across the barrenest and rockiest hill-tops, and through the densest woods, run the compact lines of granite walls, setting the sign and seal of ownership and care on every acre. The houses are all of the New England type; high, narrow-angled, white, ugly, and comfortable. They seem almost as silent as the mounds in the grave-yard, with every blind shut tight, save one, or perhaps two, at the back, where the kitchen is; with. the front door locked, and guarded by a pale but faithful "Hydrangy;" they have somehow the expression of a person with lips compressed and finger laid across them, rigid with resolve to keep a secret. It is the rarest thing to see a sign of life, as you pass by on a week day. Even the hens step gingerly, as if fearing to make a noise on the grass; the dog may bark at you a little if he be young; but, if he is old, he has learned the ways of the place, and only turns his head languidly at the noise of wheels. At sunset, you may possibly see the farmer sitting on the

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porch, with a newspaper. But his chair is tipped back against the side of the house; the newspaper is folded on his knee, and his eyes are shut. Calm and blessed folk! they only knew how great is the gift of their quiet, they would take it more gladly, and be serene instead of dull, thankful instead of discontented.

They have their tragedies, however; tragedies as terrible as any that have ever been written or lived. Wherever are two human hearts, there are the elements ready for fate to work its utmost with, for weal or woe. On one of these sunny hill-sides. is a small house, left unpainted so many years, that it has grown gray as a granite boulder. Its doors are always shut, its windows tightly curtained to the sill. The fence around it is falling to pieces, the gates are off the hinges; old lilac bushes with bluish mouldy-looking leaves crowd the yard as if trying their best to cover up something.

For years, no ray of sunlight has entered this house. You might knock long and loud, and you would get no answer; you

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