eap more
trouble when they are grown than when they are little; for then they all
go away, and keep one anxious the whole time.'
We drove under the steep ledges, the hills of Beulah were passed, and
Prattsville reached.
The following morning was bright and clear, but warm. I rose early, and
went up on the high bluffs overlooking the town. Below was a pretty
pastoral view of stream, meadow, hop fields, pasture lands with cattle,
sundry churches, and neat white houses, shut in by great hills, many
bare, and a few still wooded. Passing beneath the highest ledge, I came
upon an old man, a second Old Mortality, chipping away at the background
for a medallion of the eldest son of Colonel Zadoc Pratt, a gallant
soldier, who fell, I believe, at the second battle of Manassas. On a
dark slab, about five hundred and fifty feet above the river, is a
profile in white stone of the great tanner himself. An honest countryman
had previously pointed it out to me, saying: 'A good man, Colonel
Pratt--but that looks sort of foolish; people will have their failings,
and vanity is not one of the worst!' On the above-mentioned ledges are
many curious carvings, a record of 'one million sides of leather tanned
with hemlock bark at the Pratt tanneries in twenty years,' and other
devices, such as niches to sit in, a great sofa wrought from the solid
rock, and a pretty spring.
At ten o'clock the stage came from Delhi, which place it had left at two
in the morning. Seventy miles from Delhi to Catskill--a good day's
journey! It was full, and our landlord put on an extra, giving me a seat
beside the driver, and filling the inside with men. Said driver was a
carpenter, and an excellent specimen of an American
mechanic--intelligent and self-respecting. This is a great cattle and
dairy region, and we passed several hundred lambs on their way to the
New York market. The driver pitied the poor creatures; and, when passing
through a drove, endeavored to frighten them as little as possible.
'Innocent things!' said he, 'they have just been taken from their
mothers, and know not which way to turn. I hate to think of their being
slaughtered, for what is so meek and so joyous as a young lamb!'
I thought:
'Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis!
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis!
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem!'
--the 'nobis' to include the poor lambs.
At the first turn in the road we
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