atch the cool balsam breath of the forest. Coming from
out this splendid shade, this silence too deep to be disturbed by light
breezes or vagrant winds, you find yourself on the brow of a descending
hill. The first thing that strikes the eye is a lake that might be a
great blue sapphire dropped into the verdant hollow where it lies. When
the eye reluctantly leaves the lake on the left, it turns to rest upon
the little Shaker Settlement on the right--a dozen or so large
comfortable white barns, sheds, and houses, standing in the wide orderly
spaces of their own spreading acres of farm and timber land. There again
the spring goeth all in white, for there is no spot to fleck the
dazzling quality of Shaker paint, and their apple, plum, and pear trees
are so well cared for that the snowy blossoms are fairly hiding the
branches.

The place is very still, although there are signs of labor in all
directions. From a window of the girls' building a quaint little
gray-clad figure is beating a braided rug; a boy in homespun, with his
hair slightly long in the back and cut in a straight line across the
forehead, is carrying milk-cans from the dairy to one of the Sisters'
Houses. Men in broad-brimmed hats, with clean-shaven, ascetic faces, are
ploughing or harrowing here and there in the fields, while a group of
Sisters is busy setting out plants and vines in some beds near a cluster
of noble trees. That cluster of trees, did the eye of the stranger
realize it, was the very starting-point of this Shaker Community, for in
the year 1785, the valiant Father James Whittaker, one of Mother Ann
Lee's earliest English converts, stopped near the village of Albion on
his first visit to Maine. As he and his Elders alighted from their
horses, they stuck into the ground the willow withes they had used as
whips, and now, a hundred years later, the trees that had grown from
these slender branches were nearly three feet in diameter.

From whatever angle you look upon the Settlement, the first and
strongest impression is of quiet order, harmony, and a kind of austere
plenty. Nowhere is the purity of the spring so apparent. Nothing is out
of place; nowhere is any confusion, or appearance of loose ends, or
neglected tasks. As you come nearer, you feel the more surely that here
there has never been undue haste nor waste; no shirking, no putting off
till the morrow what should have been done to-day. Whenever a shingle or
a clapboard was needed it was p