New England bygones . shes snaps their twigs likethe click of pistols. Anything stiiTing in the wood, or out of it,sends an echo flying over the resonant fields, rarm-houses andbarns are bright with harvest lights. Distance and moonlightlend charm to mild festivities, and girls, seen from the highway,move and Work amongst their sheaves with a classic grace. Ifthe doors of the barns are shut, then from cracks and crevicesand galjle-windoWS streams the Iuddv light, and merry as l^ellsburst out the singing voices of young men and maidens. Theirsongs are mostly quaint ballads, swelling full u])on
New England bygones . shes snaps their twigs likethe click of pistols. Anything stiiTing in the wood, or out of it,sends an echo flying over the resonant fields, rarm-houses andbarns are bright with harvest lights. Distance and moonlightlend charm to mild festivities, and girls, seen from the highway,move and Work amongst their sheaves with a classic grace. Ifthe doors of the barns are shut, then from cracks and crevicesand galjle-windoWS streams the Iuddv light, and merry as l^ellsburst out the singing voices of young men and maidens. Theirsongs are mostly quaint ballads, swelling full u])on the night air. One of these old barns was an attractive place, with its ceiling AFTER THE SUMMKU. 223 lofty and cobwebbed, its gable-windows far up and dusty and dim,its walls flanked on either side bv solid mows of sweet-smellino;hay, which clung to the boards and beams wav u[) to the was full of the odor of the dricil fo-iis and flowers that hadbeen entangled and cut down with the grasses; and ladders and. worknig-tools, leaning agamst its mows, blended m Ijcautv withits many-shaded browns, as did every senseless thing and dumbbeast and living man within its walls. Behold an ancient husking-party,—merry gathering. Thebarn is dimlv lighted by candles in tin lanthorns, hung high onpegs. The homely structure suffers a night-change into a lofty 224 NEW ENGLAND BYGONES. liall, wiih arches and stained roof and iretted beams. iV new lifeseems to be born into the withered grass. It clings to and twinesabout the jagged wood with a fantastic carving. A whole yearhas gone into the mixing of the colors of this picture, in theshadows of which sit the buskers of the corn harvest. Thel>ra\vny arms of young men and the ];)lump arms of maidenskeep time to tlieir music. Some are breaking the ears fromthe stalk; others are stripping the husks irom the ear, lighteningtheir tasks with the babble of flying tongues. Stout men bearbrimful baskets of golden ears to the granary; heaps
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookpublisherphila, bookyear1883
