NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. No. CCCCII. NOVEMBER, 1883.-VOL. LXVII. OF A VACATION IN VERMONT. F the Green Mountains one might probably say, paraphrasing Montesquieu's famous prediction about the spirit of laws, that they are more generally admired than visited. Poets sing without seeing them. They have furnished ready and familiar figures to orators who could hardly point them out on the map. That they stimulate the virtues of the patriot, and grow a stalwart race of men, is one of those axioms which one meets over and over again in the pages of writers who have never felt their rugged breezes, or measured the sons of Vermont in their own homes. Nor is this service which the State renders to rhetoric shared in anything like an equal degree by other States, which also have mountains, loftier perhaps and grander than its own. Even the White Mountains seem to be less frequently used, while the Alleghanies, the Rocky Mountains, and other noble chains throughout the country are almost unknown in literature and oratory. Only one thing is therefore wanting to complete the singular pre-eminence of Vermont. If her mountains and valleys were more often traversed and better known, if her children were studied through personal contact and acquaintance, the phrases of enthusiasm and admiration would not perhaps be subdued, but they would be well informed, just, rational, more serviceable to their authors, and not less complimentary to their objects. The present article can, of course, repair this neglect only in part. To describe the whole State, or even all its leading beauties, would require a dozen volumes instead of as many pages; or if attempted on a small scale would be little more than a catalogue of natural objects, without those minute details which could alone justify them to the critical eye. We shall therefore take for description two favorite points in the Vermont landscape, and then invite the reader with their aid to complete the picture. One of these shall be the highest peak in the State; the other, one of the lowest valleys. The former is in the northeast, and stands guard over the Connecticut; the latter is in the south west, and opens out into Champlain and the Hudson. Mount Mansfield will illustrate the grandeur and majesty of the Green Mountains themselves. Otter Creek irrigates a narrow vale between the mountains, and supplies the power for one of the leading industries of the State. Both regions, too, are somewhat frequented by tourists, and one of them is on the direct line of a railway. Mount Mansfield is accessible either from the east or from the west. If from the west, the last railway station is Underhill, where there is a popular summer hotel, and whence carriages can ascend as far as the Half-way House. For the rest of the distance the tour is only for pedestrians, but there is a good foot-path, and a succession of views, as one ascends, affords a pleasant diversion, relieves the labor, and prepares for the final panorama which is revealed from the summit. The favorite route is, however, by way of Stowe, which lies southeast of the mountain. It is reached by stage from Morrisville, eight miles distant on the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Railroad, or from the better known and more convenient station of Waterbury, ten miles distant, on the Central Vermont Railroad. This great thoroughfare furnishes the means of easy access from New York and Boston, and connects with the more important lines of communication in all directions. The tourist who like myself chooses the last described course finds at Waterbury the final traces of a corrupt urban civili Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. VOL. LXVII.-No. 402.-51 zation. Beyond here all is primitive, idyllic, Arcadian; at Waterbury the contentious hackman still survives. But it is a mild form of contention, sobered apparently and rendered decorous by the clear air, or the solemn mountains, or the grave religious tone of a Vermont village. We had missed the stage, and the runners for several livery-stables offered to provide special transportation. Their rivalry, though really keen, was suppressed into a sympathetic desire to furnish the traveller the most comfortable, the swiftest, and safest conveyance; and from this desire every low, mercenary consideration was sternly banished. "Don't take that other fellow's team," said one of them, in a sad tone; "the last time he went over, a wheel run off, and he nearly killed his party." "That man," retorted the other, brushing a kindly tear out of his eye, "lost his way last week, and was five hours on the road." Then a third began, in a mild, expostulating voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, I wouldn't go with either of them men. If you really want to go, I have a team," etc. Thus the strife of these benevolent gentlemen went on. We finally decided to wait for the stage, and the three rivals walked off together with an air of pious resignation, humming in chorus one of Moody and Sankey's hymns. In some other parts of the world, I suppose, a writer who wished to show that the inherent friendship of these men could survive all brief professional differences would say that they repaired to the nearest bar and took a drink together. At Waterbury the evening prayer-meeting would seem to be a more fitting place for the fraternal reconciliation. the poorer farmers take revenge on society for inequalities that are really due to their own idleness and improvidence. The Vermont farmer works, saves, keeps clear of mortgages, and—is polite. At a little village where we stopped to water the horses a Green Mountain boy of some seventy summers, wrinkled and browned, but with flexible muscles in his gaunt frame and a smart twinkle in his eyes, entertained the passengers with some conversation. "Goin' up to Stowe ?" "Ever been there?" "Wa'al, our girls about these parts they've all gone to the White Mountains." "Indeed! That's surprising. There's such fine scenery right here at home, why do they go to the White Mountains?" "Why do they go to the White Mountains? Wa'al, they go there because they git three dollars a week." "Oh!" rejoined the coach, hastily, with some embarrassment; we had not thought of it in that light." "Yes, sir," added the veteran, clinching his argument-“yes, sir, one of my girls gits three dollars a week, and don't have nothing to do but wash tumblers." And he bowed kindly as the stage moved away. It seemed fitting to one of our party, a cynical person, to remark afterward that even washing tumblers day after day might become monotonous, and exclude the opportunities for that æsthetic culture now so much needed by domestic servants. "Still," he added, "if the newspapers may be trusted, they have the society of Dartmouth students in the busy season." Let us respect honest toil. Not all Ver ains even by the liberal conditions which are there offered. Enough of them at least remain to do the service of the Mount Mansfield House, and to do it well. Neat, quick, intelligent, obliging, they lose no caste by earning their way; in winter they are the belles of "society." Brawny young farmers will find them the best of wives, and if another war should afflict the country, their sons will rush to arms not less promptly than did their fathers and brothers twenty years ago. The stage is ready at last, and the two hours' drive, especially if one has an out-mont girls are drawn to the White Mountside seat, is no unpleasant experience on a July evening. It is the very heart of the Green Mountains. The road is good; the hills are neither too prolonged nor too abrupt. Enticing trout streams shoot across the way or ripple along its side. Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump are seen, now on one hand, now on the other, as we pursue our sinuous course. The farms are neat, orderly, and apparently prosperous, although the oats and wheat seem to have a hard battle for life with the rocks and the sand. The people are plain, but cheerful, civil, and obliging. One observes little of that outward sullenness by which in some other parts of the country Stowe is a typical Vermont village of some one thousand inhabitants. The houses are nearly all white, and the white houses nearly all have green shutters, though slight differences in the styles of architecture and a modest discrimination in the choice of flowers and the arrangement of flower beds afford a partial satisfaction to the eye. There is a small white church, and its spire, or "steeple," as the parishioners call it, shoots ambitiously upward into the clear blue air. There is a hotel, the Mount Mansfield House, built in 1864, and for some time in charge of a veteran Boston journalist-a spacious building, with broad verandas and long halls, with vast salons, where the waltz may safely be attempted, and well-disposed lawns, across which the croquet balls bound from morning till night, and the harmless missiles of tennis make their abrupt flights. From "Sunset Hill," a sharp elevation back of the hotel, the village resembles a flock of geese on the wing, the two main streets diverging toward the east and the west, while the apex, where the leader may be imagined, points timidly toward Waterbury on the south. Many other things may also be seen from Sunset Hill. In the rear is the Worcester range; south, Camel's Hump; west, Mount Mansfield itself; and in the intervals, especially toward the northwest, the green valley with its silver streams, its well-stocked farms, its neat farm-houses, with their barns and other buildings grouped in little colonies about them. This is, too, a good point from which to begin the work of seeing a man's face in the profile of Mount Mansfield. The illustration provides all the materials of the problem. The features are all there in bold relief-forehead, nose, mouth, lips, chin-and the reader who fails to catch the resemblance will never understand why the mountain was called "Mans-field." He will be reduced to the false theory that its namesake was a famous English judge. The distance from Stowe to the summit of the mountain is about nine miles. For five miles the route follows the ordinary country road through a pleasant valley; then it breaks off into the mountain, and winds about by easy grades to the top. |