The widening waters made us tremble with dread and longing for what might be beyond;for when we had passed under the piers of the bridge,the estuary broadened into the harbor and the open sea.Then somebody on board would tell a story of children who had drifted away beyond the harbor-bar and the light-house,and were drowned;and our boyish helmsman would begin to look grave and anxious,and would turn his boat and row us back swiftly to the safe gundalow and tumbledown wharf.
The cars rush into the station now,right over our riverside playground.I can often hear the mirthful shout of boys and girls under the shriek of the steam whistle.No dream of a railroad had then come to the quiet old town,but it was a wild train of children that ran homeward in the twilight up the narrow lane,with wind-shod feet,and hair flying like the manes of young colts,and light hearts bounding to their own footsteps.How good and dear our plain,two-story dwelling-house looked to us as we came in sight of it,and what sweet odors stole out to meet us from the white-fenced inclosure of our small garden,--from peach-trees and lilac-bushes in bloom,from bergamot and balm and beds of camomile!
Sometimes we would find the pathetic figure of white-haired Larkin Moore,the insane preacher,his two canes lain aside,waiting,in our dooryard for any audience that he could gather:
boys and girls were as welcome as anybody.He would seat us in a row on the green slope,and give us a half hour or so of incoherent exhortation,to which we attended respectfully,if not reverently;for his whole manner showed that,though demented,he was deeply in earnest.He seemed there in the twilight like a dazed angel who had lost his way,and had half forgotten his errand,which yet he must try to tell to anybody who would listen.
I have heard my mother say that sometimes he would ask if he might take her baby in his arms and sing to it;and that though she was half afraid herself,the baby--I like to fancy I was that baby--seemed to enjoy it,and played gleefully with the old man's flowing gray locks.
Good Larkin Moore was well known through the two neighboring counties,Essex and Middlesex.We saw him afterward on the banks of the Merrimack.He always wore a loose calico tunic over his trousers;and,when the mood came upon him,he started off with two canes,--seeming to think he could travel faster as a quadruped than as a biped.He was entirely harmless;his only wish was to preach or to sing.
A characteristic anecdote used to be told of him:that once,as a stage-coach containing,only a few passengers passed him on the road,he asked the favor of a seat on the top,and was refused.
There were many miles between him and his destination.But he did not upbraid the ungracious driver;he only swung his two canes a little more briskly,and kept breast of the horses all the way,entering the town side by side with the inhospitable vehicles--a running reproach to the churl on the box.
There was another wanderer,a blind woman,whom my mother treated with great respect on her annual pilgrimages.She brought with her some printed rhymes to sell,purporting to be composed by herself,and beginning with the verse:--"I,Nancy Welsh,was born and bred In Essex County,Marblehead.
And when I was an infant quite The Lord deprived me of my sight."I labored under the delusion that blindness was a sort of insanity,and I used to run away when this pilgrim came,for she was not talkative like Larkin Moore.I fancied she disliked children,and so I shrank from her.
There were other odd estrays going about,who were either well known,or could account for them selves.The one human phenomenon that filled us little ones with mortal terror was an unknown "man with a pack on his back."I do not know what we thought he would do with us,but the sight of one always sent us breathless with fright to the shelter of the maternal wing.I did not at all like the picture of Christian on his way to the wicket-gate,in "Pilgrim's Progress,"before I had read the book,because he had "a pack on his back."But there was really nothing to be afraid of in those simple,honest old times.I suppose we children would not have known how happy and safe we were,in our secluded lane,if we had not conjured up a few imaginary fears.
Long as it is since the rural features of our lane were entirely obliterated,my feet often go back and press,in memory,its grass-grown borders,and in delight and liberty I am a child again.Its narrow limits were once my whole known world.Even then it seemed to me as if it might lead everywhere;and it was indeed but the beginning of a road which must lengthen and widen beneath my feet forever.
