Mass., and runs in a bee-line north until it reaches the southern end of the Montreal bridge.  This remarkable road has a so-called branch operating once per week between White River Junction and Montpelier, and a triweekly branch extending to Burlington.  Montpelier is the home of Hiram Atkins, the famous “Nestor uv Checkerberry Journalism,” and White River Junction is the whistling station and water-tank from which our country gets its election returns every four years.  Burlington is located on Lake Champlain, and contains the summer residence of that grand old survivor of the glacial period, George F. Edmunds.  Thus in a brief paragraph have we compressed all that can be said of the commerce and the railways of Vermont.

The other view is softened with the haze that hangs over the scenes of childhood in the minds of all men of feeling when interpreted by an artist in expressing the thought “that unbidden rises and passes in a tear.”  It is from Field’s little-known memorial to Mrs. Melvin L. Gray, written while he was in Southern California: 

The quiet beauty of these scenes recalls a time which, in my life, is so long ago that I feel strangely reverential when I speak of it.  I find myself thinking of my boyhood, and of the hills and valleys and trees and flowers and birds I knew when the morning of my life was fresh and full of exuberance.  Those years were spent among the Pelham hills, very, very far from here; but memory o’erleaps the mountain ranges, the leagues upon leagues of prairie, the mighty rivers, the forest, the farming lands, o’erleaps them all; and to-day, by that same sweet magic that instantaneously undoes the years and space, I seem to be among the Pelham hills again.  The yonder glimpse of the Pacific becomes the silver thread of the Connecticut, seen, not over miles of orange-groves, but over broad acres of Indian corn; and instead of the pepper and eucalyptus, the lemon and the palm, I see (or I seem to see) the maple once more, and the elm and the chestnut trees, the shagbark walnut, the hickory, and the birch.  In those days, these rugged mountains of this south land were unknown to me; and the Pelham hills were full of marvel and delight, with their tangled pathways and hidden stores of wintergreen and wild strawberries.  Furtive brooks led the little boy hither and thither in his quest for trout and dace, while to the gentler-minded the modest flowers of the wild-wood appealed with singular directness.  A partridge rose now and then from the thicket and whirred away, and with startled eyes the brown thrush peered out from the bushes.  I see these pleasant scenes again, and I hear again the beloved sounds of old; and so with reverence and with welcoming I take up my task, for it was among these same Pelham hills that the dear lady of whom I am to speak was born and spent her childhood.

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION