ange contradictions we are constantly finding in human
nature, there were natives of the town who would come back thirty or
forty years after leaving it, just to nestle under this same threatening
mountainside, as old men sun themselves against southward-facing walls.
The old dreams and legends of danger added to the attraction. If the
mountain should ever slide, they had a kind of feeling as if they ought
to be there. It was a fascination like that which the rattlesnake is
said to exert.

This comparison naturally suggests the recollection of that other source
of danger which was an element in the every-day life of the Rockland
people. The folks in some of the neighboring towns had a joke against
them, that a Rocklander could n't hear a beanpod rattle without saying,
"The Lord have mercy on us!" It is very true, that many a nervous old
lady has had a terrible start, caused by some mischievous young rogue's
giving a sudden shake to one of these noisy vegetable products in her
immediate vicinity. Yet, strangely enough, many persons missed the
excitement of the possibility of a fatal bite in other regions,
where there were nothing but black and green and striped snakes,
mean ophidians, having the spite of the nobler serpent without his
venom,--poor crawling creatures, whom Nature would not trust with a
poison-bag. Many natives of Rockland did unquestionably experience a
certain gratification in this infinitesimal sense of danger. It was
noted that the old people retained their hearing longer than in other
places. Some said it was the softened climate, but others believed it
was owing to the habit of keeping their ears open whenever they were
walking through the grass or in the woods. At any rate, a slight sense
of danger is often an agreeable stimulus. People sip their creme de
noyau with a peculiar tremulous pleasure, because there is a bare
possibility that it may contain prussic acid enough to knock them over;
in which case they will lie as dead as if a thunder-cloud had emptied
itself into the earth through their brain and marrow.

But Rockland had other features which helped to give it a special
character. First of all, there was one grand street which was its chief
glory. Elm Street it was called, naturally enough, for its elms made
a long, pointed-arched gallery of it through most of its extent. No
natural Gothic arch compares, for a moment, with that formed by two
American elms, where their lofty jets of foliage