rough, and wild: but delicate slopes of land, gently-swelling
hills, wooded valleys, and slender streams, abound. Every little
colony of houses has its church and school-house peeping from among
the white roofs and shady trees; every house is the whitest of the
white; every Venetian blind the greenest of the green; every fine
day’s sky the bluest of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight
frost had so hardened the roads when we alighted at Worcester, that
their furrowed tracks were like ridges of granite. There was the
usual aspect of newness on every object, of course. All the
buildings looked as if they had been built and painted that
morning, and could be taken down on Monday with very little
trouble. In the keen evening air, every sharp outline looked a
hundred times sharper than ever. The clean cardboard colonnades
had no more perspective than a Chinese bridge on a tea-cup, and
appeared equally well calculated for use. The razor-like edges of
the detached cottages seemed to cut the very wind as it whistled
against them, and to send it smarting on its way with a shriller
cry than before. Those slightly-built wooden dwellings behind
which the sun was setting with a brilliant lustre, could be so
looked through and through, that the idea of any inhabitant being
able to hide himself from the public gaze, or to have any secrets
from the public eye, was not entertainable for a moment. Even
where a blazing fire shone through the uncurtained windows of some
distant house, it had the air of being newly lighted, and of
lacking warmth; and instead of awakening thoughts of a snug
chamber, bright with faces that first saw the light round that same
hearth, and ruddy with warm hangings, it came upon one suggestive
of the smell of new mortar and damp walls.
So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning when the sun
was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and
sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant
Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It
would have been the better for an old church; better still for some
old graves; but as it was, a wholesome repose and tranquillity
pervaded the scene, which after the restless ocean and the hurried
city, had a doubly grateful influence on the spirits.
We went on next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield. From
that place to Hartford, whither we were bound, is a distance of
only five-and-twenty miles, but at that time of the year the roads
were so bad that the journey would probably have occupied ten or
twelve hours. Fortunately, however, the winter having been
unusually mild, the Connecticut River was ‘open,’ or, in other
words, not frozen. The captain of a small steamboat was going to
make his first trip for the season that day (the second February
trip, I believe, within the memory of man), and only waited for us
to go on board. Accordingly, we went on board, with as little
delay as might be. He was as good as his word, and started
directly.
It certainly was not called a small steamboat without reason. I
omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have been
of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, might
have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with
common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These windows
had bright-red curtains, too, hung on slack strings across the
lower panes; so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian
public-house, which had got afloat in a flood or some other water
accident, and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this
chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible to get
on anywhere, in America, without a rocking-chair. I am afraid to
tell how many feet short this vessel was, or how many feet narrow:
to apply the words length and width to such measurement would be a
contradiction in terms. But I may state that we all kept the