The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Mehetabel's Son, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: Miss Mehetabel's Son

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23357]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS MEHETABEL'S SON ***

Produced by David Widger

MISS MEHETABEL'S SON.

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901

I. THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR CORNERS.

You will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more
usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is
not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The
almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of
four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest
settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good
location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always
been a hotel there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well
patronized--by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent public, I
will state at once that, in the early part of this century, Greenton was
a point at which the mail-coach on the Great Northern Route stopped to
change horses and allow the passengers to dine. People in the county,
wishing to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put up overnight at the
old tavern, famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds.
The tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivalled his
wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away. At his death
the establishment, which included a farm, fell into the hands of a
son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-law a hotel--which sounds
handsome--he left him no guests; for at about the period of the old
man's death the old stage-coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and
steam the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress,
the tavern at the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a
sand-bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there
was some attempt to build a town at Green-ton; but