and getting continually lost on the
bluff outside; little chickens and turkeys, and great turkeys, not
pleasant to the eye, but good for food, and turkey-gobblers,
stiffest-mannered of all the feathered creation; and geese, sailing in
the creek majestic, or waddling on the grass dumpy; and two or three
wild geese, tolled down from the sky, and clipped away from it forever;
and guinea-hens, speckled and spheral; and, most magnificent of all, a
pea cock, who stands in a corner and unfolds the magnificence of his
tail. Watching his movements, I could not but reflect upon the
superior advantages which a peacock has over a woman. The gorgeousness
of his apparel is such that even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed in the like; yet so admirable is the contrivance for its
management that no suspicion of mud or moisture stains its brilliancy.
A woman must have recourse to clumsy contrivances of india-rubber and
gutta-percha if her silken skirts shall not trail ignobly in the dust.
The peacock at will rears his train in a graceful curve, and defies
defilement.

Besides abundance of food and parade-ground, these happy fowls have a
very agreeable prospect. Their abrupt knoll commands a respectable
section of the Androscoggin Valley,--rich meadow-lands, the humanities
of church-spire and cottage, the low green sweep of the intervale
through which the river croons its quiet way under shadows of rock and
tree, answering softly to the hum of bee and song of bird,--answering
just as softly to the snort and shriek of its hot-breathed rival, the
railroad. Doubtless the railroad, swift, energetic, prompt, gives
itself many an air over the slow-going, calm-souled water-way, but let
Monsieur Chemin de Fer look to his laurels,--a thing of yesterday and
tomorrow,--a thing of iron and oil and accidents. I, the River,
descend from the everlasting mountains. I was born of the perpetual
hills. I fear no more the heat o' the sun, nor the furious winter's
rages; no obstacle daunts me. Time cannot terrify. My power shall
never faint, my foundations never shrink, my fountains never fail.

"Men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever."

And the railroad, pertinacious, intrusive, aggressive, is, after all,
the dependent follower, the abject copyist of the river. Toss and
scorn as it may, the river is its leader and engineer. Fortunes and
ages almost would have been necessary to tunnel those mountains, if
indeed tun