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Miss Mehetabel's Son By: Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) |
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By Thomas Bailey Aldrich Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
I. THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR CORNERS. You will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four Corners, as it is more
usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is
not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The
almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of
four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest
settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good
location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always
been a hotel there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well
patronized by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent public, I
will state at once that, in the early part of this century, Greenton was
a point at which the mail coach on the Great Northern Route stopped to
change horses and allow the passengers to dine. People in the county,
wishing to take the early mail Portsmouth ward, put up overnight at the
old tavern, famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather beds.
The tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivalled his
wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away. At his death
the establishment, which included a farm, fell into the hands of a
son in law. Now, though Bayley left his son in law a hotel which sounds
handsome he left him no guests; for at about the period of the old
man's death the old stage coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and
steam the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress,
the tavern at the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a
sand bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there
was some attempt to build a town at Green ton; but it apparently failed,
if eleven cellars choked up with débris and overgrown with burdocks
are any indication of failure. The farm, however, was a good farm, as
things go in New Hampshire, and Tobias Sewell, the son in law, could
afford to snap his fingers at the travelling public if they came near
enough which they never did. The hotel remains to day pretty much the same as when Jonathan Bayley
handed in his accounts in 1840, except that Sewell hasfrom time to time
sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers to bridal couples
in the neighborhood. The bar is still open, and the parlor door says
Parlour in tall black letters. Now and then a passing drover looks in at
that lonely bar room, where a high shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum
ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon on a shelf; now
and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops and stock and take
a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus caravan with
speckled ponies, or a menagerie with a soggy elephant, halts under the
swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail coach with four phantomish
horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off
by the rain. Other customers there are none, except that one regular
boarder whom have mentioned. If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed fellows, it is equally
certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often takes
one into undreamed of localities. I had never heard of Greenton until
my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest
season of the year. I do not think I would, of my own volition, have
selected Greenton for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the
business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me
the guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations with
Miss Mehetabel's Son. It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that discovered
me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the ten miles' ride from K had been depressing, especially
the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set
in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn round
in the road and roll off in the darkness... Continue reading book >>
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Fiction |
Literature |
Short stories |
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