第262章

Higginson; so is Raphael Pumpelly; so is Mr.Secretary Hitchcock; so is Henderson; so is Learned; so is Summer; so is Franklin MacVeigh; so is Joseph L.Smith; so is Henry Copley Greene, when I am not occupying his house, which I am doing this season.Paint, literature, science, statesmanship, history, professorship, law, morals,--these are all represented here, yet crime is substantially unknown.

The summer homes of these refugees are sprinkled, a mile apart, among the forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm smooth country roads which are so embowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight in there, and comfortable.The forests are spider-webbed with these good roads, they go everywhere; but for the help of the guide-boards, the stranger would not arrive anywhere.

The village--Dublin--is bunched together in its own place, but a good telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars.I have spelt it that way to be witty.The village executes orders on, the Boston plan--promptness and courtesy.

The summer homes are high-perched, as a rule, and have contenting outlooks.The house we occupy has one.Monadnock, a soaring double hump, rises into the sky at its left elbow--that is to say, it is close at hand.From the base of the long slant of the mountain the valley spreads away to the circling frame of the hills, and beyond the frame the billowy sweep of remote great ranges rises to view and flows, fold upon fold, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unwordly, to the horizon fifty miles away.In these October days Monadnock and the valley and its framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are sumptuously splashed and mottled and be-torched from sky-line to sky-line with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; and when they lie flaming in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the spectator physically, it stirs his blood like military music.

These summer homes are commodious, well built, and well furnished--facts which sufficiently indicate that the owners built them to live in themselves.They have furnaces and wood fireplaces, and the rest of the comforts and conveniences of a city home, and can be comfortably occupied all the year round.

We cannot have this house next season, but I have secured Mrs.Upton's house which is over in the law and science quarter, two or three miles from here, and about the same distance from the art, literary, and scholastic groups.The science and law quarter has needed improving, this good while.

The nearest railway-station is distant something like an hour's drive; it is three hours from there to Boston, over a branch line.You can go to New York in six hours per branch lines if you change cars every time you think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take the trunk line next day, then you do not get lost.

It is claimed that the atmosphere of the New Hampshire highlands is exceptionally bracing and stimulating, and a fine aid to hard and continuous work.It is a just claim, I think.I came in May, and wrought 35 successive days without a break.It is possible that I could not have done it elsewhere.I do not know; I have not had any disposition to try it, before.I think I got the disposition out of the atmosphere, this time.I feel quite sure, in fact, that that is where it came from.

I am ashamed to confess what an intolerable pile of manuscript I ground out in the 35 days, therefore I will keep the number of words to myself.

I wrote the first half of a long tale--"The Adventures of a Microbe" and put it away for a finish next summer, and started another long tale--"The Mysterious Stranger;" I wrote the first half of it and put it with the other for a finish next summer.I stopped, then.I was not tired, but Ihad no books on hand that needed finishing this year except one that was seven years old.After a little I took that one up and finished it.Not for publication, but to have it ready for revision next summer.

Since I stopped work I have had a two months' holiday.The summer has been my working time for 35 years; to have a holiday in it (in America)is new for me.I have not broken it, except to write "Eve's Diary" and "A Horse's Tale"--short things occupying the mill 12 days.