oud of frosty
breath. It is the mark of inexperience in this section of the country to
confound a sleigh which you use for riding with the sledge that is
devoted to heavy work; and it is, I believe, a still greater sign of
worthlessness to think that oxen are driven, as they are in most places,
by scientific twisting of the tail. The driver with red mittens on his
hands, felt overstockings that come up to his knees, and, perhaps, a
silvery-gray coon-skin coat on his back, walks beside, crying, 'Gee,
haw!' even as is written in American stories. And the speech of the
driver explains many things in regard to the dialect story, which at its
best is an infliction to many. Now that I have heard the long, unhurried
drawl of Vermont, my wonder is, not that the New England tales should be
printed in what, for the sake of argument, we will call English and its
type, but rather that they should not have appeared in Swedish or
Russian. Our alphabet is too limited. This part of the country belongs
by laws unknown to the United States, but which obtain all the world
over, to the New England story and the ladies who write it. You feel
this in the air as soon as you see the white-painted wooden houses left
out in the snow, the austere schoolhouse, and the people--the men of the
farms, the women who work as hard as they with, it may be, less
enjoyment of life--the other houses, well painted and quaintly roofed,
that belong to Judge This, Lawyer That, and Banker Such an one; all
powers in the metropolis of six thousand folk over by the railway
station. More acutely still, do you realise the atmosphere when you read
in the local paper announcements of 'chicken suppers' and 'church
sociables' to be given by such and such a denomination, sandwiched
between paragraphs of genial and friendly interest, showing that the
countryside live (and without slaying each other) on terms of terrifying
intimacy.

The folk of the old rock, the dwellers in the older houses, born and
raised hereabouts, would not live out of the town for any consideration,
and there are insane people from the South--men and women from Boston
and the like--who actually build houses out in the open country, two,
and even three miles from Main Street which is nearly 400 yards long,
and the centre of life and population. With the strangers, more
particularly if they do not buy their groceries 'in the street,' which
means, and is, the town, the town has little to do; but it knows