that attracted
my attention there was a statement in the village paper, that no less than
twenty persons in that quiet place had obtained patent-rights for
inventions and improvements during the past year. They had been at
everything, from an apple-parer to a steam-engine. In the next column was
an article "on capital punishment," and the leader was thoroughly fired up
with a bran-new project for a railroad to the Pacific. That day I dined
with a member of Congress, a peripatetic lecturer, and the principal
citizens of the township, and took the return cars at night amid the glare
of a torch-light procession. Repose, forsooth? Why, the great busy city
seemed to sing lullaby, after the shock of that quiet New-England village.

But in this quaint, mouldy old town, one _can_ get an idea of the calm and
the tranquil--especially after a celebration. It has been said: "Halifax
is the only place that is finished." One can readily believe it. The
population has been twenty-five thousand for the last twenty-five years,
and a new house is beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant.

The fog cleared up. And one of those inexpressibly balmy days followed.
June in Halifax represents our early May. The trees are all in bud; the
peas in the garden-beds are just marking the lines of drills with faint
stripes of green. Here and there a solitary bird whets his bill on the
bare bark of a forked bough. The chilly air has departed, and in its place
is a sense of freshness, of dewiness, of fragrance and delight. A sense of
these only, an instinctive feeling, that anticipates the odor of the rose
before the rose is blown. On such a morning we went forth to visit
Chezzetcook, and here, gentle reader, beginneth the Evangeliad.

The intuitive perception of genius is its most striking element. I was
told by a traveller and an artist, who had been for nearly twenty years on
the northwest coast, that he had read Irving's "Astoria" as a mere
romance, in early life, but when he visited the place itself, he found
that _he was reading the book over again_; that Irving's descriptions were
so minute and perfect, that he was at home in Astoria, and familiar, not
only with the country, but with individuals residing there; "for," said
he, "although many of the old explorers, trappers, and adventurers
described in the book were dead and gone, yet I found the descendants of
those pioneers had the peculiar characteristics of their fathers; and the
daughter o