d the great rocks on which the piers stood, spreading away
below in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maples that lined
the green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him, except now and
then the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or the muffled far-off voices
of some chance passers on the road. Seen from this high perch, the
familiar village, sending its brown roofs and white spires up through
the green foliage, had a strange aspect, and was like some town in a
book, say a village nestled in the Swiss mountains, or something in
Bohemia. And there, beyond the purple hills of Bozrah, and not so far as
the stony pastures of Zoah, whither John had helped drive the colts and
young stock in the spring, might be, perhaps, Jerusalem itself. John had
himself once been to the land of Canaan with his grandfather, when he
was a very small boy; and he had once seen an actual, no-mistake Jew,
a mysterious person, with uncut beard and long hair, who sold
scythe-snaths in that region, and about whom there was a rumor that he
was once caught and shaved by the indignant farmers, who apprehended in
his long locks a contempt of the Christian religion. Oh, the world
had vast possibilities for John. Away to the south, up a vast basin of
forest, there was a notch in the horizon and an opening in the line of
woods, where the road ran. Through this opening John imagined an army
might appear, perhaps British, perhaps Turks, and banners of red and of
yellow advance, and a cannon wheel about and point its long nose, and
open on the valley. He fancied the army, after this salute, winding down
the mountain road, deploying in the meadows, and giving the valley to
pillage and to flame. In which event his position would be an excellent
one for observation and for safety. While he was in the height of
this engagement, perhaps the horn would be blown from the back porch,
reminding him that it was time to quit cutting brush and go for the
cows. As if there were no better use for a warrior and a poet in New
England than to send him for the cows!

John knew a boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who afterwards became a
general in the war, and went to Congress, and got to be a real governor,
who also used to be sent to cut brush in the back pastures, and hated it
in his very soul; and by his wrong conduct forecast what kind of a man
he would be. This boy, as soon as he had cut about one brush, would
seek for one of several holes in the ground (and he