The others also did not speak.  But Grahame made an involuntary angry movement of his foot upon the sand.

[Footnote 73:  A young authoress of Maryland:  has written two novels of unusual promise.]

* * * * *

=_Mary Clemmer Ames,[74] about 1837-._=

From “A Woman’s Right.”

=_315._= A RAILWAY DEPOT IN THE COUNTRY.

...  Yet this depot was the centre of attraction for miles around.  It was the grand hall of re-union for all the people of the scattered town, not second in importance even to the meeting-house.  Here, twice a day, stopped the great Western and Eastern trains, the two fiery arteries through which flowed all the tumultuous life of the vast outer world that had ever come to this secluded hamlet.  Its primitive inhabitants in their isolated farm-houses, under the hills and on the stony mountain-moors, could never have realized the existence of another world than the green, grand world of nature around them and above them, and would have been as oblivious of the great god “News” as the denizens of Greenland, if it had not been for the daily visits of this Cyclops with the burning eye.  Now twice a day, the shriek of his diabolical whistle pierced the umbrageous woods and hilly gorges for miles away, and its cry to many a solitary household was the epoch of the day.  Hearing it, John mounted his nag and scampered away to the station for the Boston journals of yesterday.  Seth harnessed Peggy, and drove off in the buggy in all possible haste, to see if the mail had brought a letter from Amzi who was in New York, or from Nimrod who had gone to work in “Bosting,” or if the train had brought Sally and her children from the city, who were expected home on a visit.  Here, under pretext of waiting for the cars, congregated the drones and supernumeraries of the different neighborhoods, lounging on the steps, hacking the benches with their jack-knives for hours together, while they discussed politics, and talked over their own and their neighbors’ affairs.

A walk to the station on a summer evening, was more to the boys and girls of this rural region, than a Broadway promenade to a metropolitan belle.  Their day’s task done, here they met in pairs, comparing finery and indulging in flirtations, with an impunity which would not have been tolerated by their elders at the Sunday recess in the meeting-house.  Then, besides, it was such an exciting sight to see the cars come in, to see the long rows of strange faces, and to catch glimpses of the new fashions at their open windows.  Besides, at rare intervals, a real city lady would actually alight at the rustic station of Hilltop, followed by an avalanche of trunks, “larger than hen-houses,” the girls would afterwards affirm to their astonished mothers, when it was discovered that the city-lady, in her languishing necessity for country-air, had really condescended to come in search of a remote country-cousin.  Besides the fine lady, sometimes small companies of dashing young gentlemen, with fishing-rods and retinues of long-eared dogs, or a long-haired artist with a portfolio under his arm, all lured by the mountains and woods and streams, to seek pleasure in far different ways, would alight at the station, and ask of some staring rustic where they could find the hotel.