208 ANNE REEVE ALDRICH. ALDRICH, ANNE REEVE, an American poet and novelist; born in New York, April 25, 1866; died there, June 22, 1892. She was the author of "The Rose of Flame" (1889); "The Feet of Love," a novel (1890); and "Songs about Life, Love, and Death" (1892). MINE OWN WORK. I MADE the cross myself whose weight Was later laid on me : This thought is torture as I toil Up life's steep Calvary. To think mine own hands drove the nails! I sung a merry song, And chose the heaviest wood I had If I had guessed if I had dreamed. A SONG OF LIFE. Did I seek life? Not so: its weight was laid upon me; And yet of my burden sore I may not set myself free. Two love, and lo, at love's call, a hapless soul must wake: Like a slave it is called to the world, to bear life, for their love's sake. Did I seek love? Not so love led me along by the hand. Love beguiled me with songs and caresses, while I took no note of the land. And lo, I stood in a quicksand, but Love had wings, and he fled: Ah fool, for a mortal to venture where only a god may tread! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY, an American journalist, poet, and novelist; born at Portsmouth, N. H., November 11, 1836. He entered the counting-house of his uncle, a New York merchant, where he remained three years; began to write for various periodicals, and subsequently acted as proof-reader in a printing-office. He became connected with the Boston "At.antic Monthly," of which he was editor from 1883 to 1892. His poems include: "The Bells" (1855); "Baby Be" (1856); "Cloth of Gold" (1874); "Flower and Thorn" (1876); "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book" (1881); "Mercedes and Later Lyrics;" also a household edition of his complete poems (1885); "Wyndham Towers" (1889); "The Sisters' Tragedy and Other Poems" (1891); and "Unguarded Gates and other Poems" (1895). I. MISS MEHETABEL'S SON,1 - 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 1 Copyright, 1885, by T. B. Aldrich. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. VOLI. - 14 ward, put up over night 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 sandbank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; 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 has from 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 I 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 |
