CHAPTER XIII.

"The tall cliff challenges the storms
That lower upon the vale below,
Where shaded fountains send their streams,
With joyous music in their flow."

THE morning after my arrival in the village of T., the sun rose brightly in a cloudless skythe pure air of the highlands breathed fresh and cool-and the prospect, which, from that elevation, appeared to me boundless, added its charms, mellowed by the distance, to the other attractions of the scene. I looked out from the window upon the beautiful garden beneath it, blooming as in earth's first spring, and diffusing sweet incense upon the morning air. All seemed associated with happiness and light, except the reflection that it was not the home of my earlier youth-a scene which, to all who are unpolluted by life's sad changes, ever seems the dearest in the world. But these melancholy remembrances were partially dispelled by the greetings of my relatives;

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VILLAGE ON THE MOUNTAINS.

and the day was spent in rambling around the village, and enjoying the novelty this exercise afforded. A wide heath extended in every direction, sprinkled with fern and other bushes, varied occasionally by clusters of birch, and laurel, and pine; beyond which, toward the East, the eye glanced over descending ranges to the lowlands beneath, which extended on to the verge of sight.

Near the centre of the village stood the church whose bell I heard tolled the evening previous. It was somewhat retired in its immediate location; for, between it and the single street on which most of the buildings stood, was a large green, nearly twenty rods in depth, by which it seemed to be separated from the business portion of the place. And it ever seemed to me appropriate, to seclude from such scenes the edifice consecrated to the hallowed purpose of lifting our thoughts from earth, and teaching us to live as strangers in the world. Behind the church, on the side of a hill overshadowed by aged-oaks which had purposely been spared, appeared a number of scattered monuments and grave-stones, some of which, by their snowlike purity, contrasted strongly with the thick foliage around them, deeply dyed in green.

THE DRUNKARDS' HAMLET.

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And, as if to add animation to all the scene, from some unseen solitude there echoed the tumultuous sound of a water-fall among those mountains, as a broken stream wound its way through many a ravine and lonely dell, down to the valley of the Connecticut.

The contrast between the village of T. and that through which we passed the day before, must have been noticed by the most heedless eye. The fences in many places were broken downin several of the houses, old hats and garments protruded where glass was broken-some buildings, equally accessible to fowl, beast, and insect, gave no indications of human inhabitants, except the occasional creaking of the unpatented wellpole, as some wretched mother prepared the lonely meal for herself and her worse than fatherless children; and the ornament of a heap of knots, an apology for a wood-pile, before the front door --what was once a school-house, stood, without a window, or chimney, or door, a store-house for a crop of hemp belonging to one of the residentsragged children were wandering idle through the street, or playing amid the dirt by the road-sidefields were uncultivated-roads out of repair

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THE VILLAGE HOTEL.

and the tavern alone seemed full of life and

prosperous. There it stood on the corner, in full view of the church, a temple devoted to Bacchanalian rites, in opposition to that erected for purer sacrifices to the Most High God. Around this centre of attraction stood a dozen or more men of different ages, with crimson faces and blood-shotten eyes, engaged apparently in earnest conversation. As I had seen several written notices of the anticipated meeting posted up in central positions, giving a statement of its character, I presumed that such discourse was upon that subject, and in opposition to the contemplated effort for the hated, conscience-awakening temperance reformation.

There were three or four gentlemen in that village who alone had exerted themselves for the temperance cause. They had seen the waves of intemperance, for years, on the increase, bearing to ruin, both temporal and eternal, the old and the young, the affluent and the poor, the gifted and the simple, the learned and the ignorant; and they had attempted, by measures which successively proved ineffectual, to stay the desolating scourge. This want of success, therefore, was not the result of indolence; but, rather, because