Uncle expected us, and it was delightful to see the meeting between the two brothers, who had not seen each other in twelve years. There were plenty of airy bedrooms, hung with pure white dimity, and after our gypsy life it seemed very pleasant to find once more the comforts of a home. We spent several days at the Maples, attending service in the dear old-fashioned church with its high, square pews.
Aunt Prue had all of our travel-soiled clothing neatly washed, and refilled the emptied hampers and lunch-baskets with abundant supplies from the products of the farm and her own good cookery.
Uncle was a large, easy man, who dearly loved to tell a story to match his own ample proportions, only the twinkle in his eye redeeming him from the charge of deception. Aunt Prue's rigid conscience revolted at uncle's romances. "Asahel Smith!" she would exclaim, "how can you lie like that; and you a church-member?"
"Now, Prudence," Uncle Asahel would reply, "the catechism says a lie is a story told with intention to deceive, and when I told these girls that I drove the oxen home with the last load of hay so fast that I got it into the barn before a drop of water fell, while it was raining so hard behind me that Watch, who was following the wagon, actually _swam_ all the way up from the medder--when I told 'em that, I cal'late I didn't deceive 'em; I was only cultivating their imaginations."
Aunt Prue groaned in spirit, and began to sing, in a high, cracked voice.
"False are the men of high degree, The baser sort are vanity; Weighed in the balance, both appear Light as a puff of empty air."
While at The Maples we made an excursion to Cummington, formerly Bryant's home. We sat in the library, shut in by a thick grove, where he composed his translations of the Odyssey and Iliad, and we played with a little pet dog of which he had been very fond. Not far from the estate is a fine library, Bryant's gift to the little town. "Bryant's River" is a brawling little stream which flows through a very picturesque region. We amused ourselves by fancying that we recognized spots described in several of his poems.
There was a grand old oak upon the place which might have inspired his lines--
"This mighty oak-- By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem Almost annihilated--not a prince In all that proud Old World beyond the deep E'er wore his crown as loftily as he Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Thy hand has graced him."