butchering-days that belonged to his great-great-grandfather who fought
in the Revolution, and he has an ancient tin lantern that he considers
valuable. He almost quarrels with the young farmer about his corrugated
glass lantern and his large, brilliant, one-paned lantern with the
polished concave tin back, and his brass-mounted globe lantern: they
have resplendent lanterns on the hills. The old farmer says they will
blow up or smash up, whereas his ancient tin lantern is safe. The old
man does not see the boy shinning up a post in the horse-barn (there is
no staircase--nothing but a few pegs stuck over the horses' heads by
which to climb to the hay), the tin lantern swinging on his arm, its
door open and candle flaring. Nor does he see the boy attempt to
increase the lantern's light by filling it with dry leaves. "What has
that darned Irishman been up to now?" says the old farmer, finding it
unsoldered on its shelf.
"The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary
places." The old hill-farmers are lovers of their country. Their
carefully-saved money and their patriotism sustained our great war.
Whoever was a boy on a hill-farm during the war remembers the neighbors
stumbling over the stony roads at twilight, when the day's work was
done, to hear the daily paper read at the farmhouse on The Corners,
eager to know the worst or the best every night. Hugh used to hold the
candle, while Mark read in a slow, understanding voice about the
marching, fighting, wavering, conquering of those days, now less
remembered than the _Iliad_, when we warmed our hearts at the blaze of
war. At every new local name, "Stop!" the old farmer used to say: "let's
see where that is. Get the map.--Hugh, hold the light.--There 'tis, by
that grease-spot--not the tallow-spot Hugh just dropped--the spot where
people have put their fingers around Washington." Such a prodigious
trampling of fingers on the map followed our armies to battle! What a
memory it is to have in the mind!
The old farmer of the hills, however frugal, fosters some luxuries: one
is horses. He has plenty of them, fat and slow from careful usage, and
for the most part spotless bays.
Four white feet and a white nose,
Skin him and give his body to the crows,
says the man of the hills. Melvine, a great horse-breeder, one day took
sides in a quarrel between a horse and its master, fought the man for
abusing his horse--fought him hard and long: 'twas
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