Some betook themselves into the wide, dusky barn, and lay
there for hours together on the odorous hay; while the sunstreaks and
the shadows strove together,--these to make the barn solemn, those to
make it cheerful,--and both were conquerors; and the swallows
twittered a cheery anthem, flashing into sight, or vanishing as they
darted to and fro among the golden rules of sunshine. And others
went a little way into the woods, and threw themselves on mother
earth, pillowing their heads on a heap of moss, the green decay of an
old log; and, dropping asleep, the bumblebees and mosquitoes sung and
buzzed about their ears, causing the slumberers to twitch and start,
without awaking.
With Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and myself, it grew to be a
custom to spend the Sabbath afternoon at a certain rock. It was
known to us under the name of Eliot's pulpit, from a tradition that
the venerable Apostle Eliot had preached there, two centuries gone by,
to an Indian auditory. The old pine forest, through which the
Apostle's voice was wont to sound, had fallen an immemorial time ago.
But the soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface, had
apparently never been brought under tillage; other growths, maple and
beech and birch, had succeeded to the primeval trees; so that it was
still as wild a tract of woodland as the great-great-great-great
grandson of one of Eliot's Indians (had any such posterity been in
existence) could have desired for the site and shelter of his wigwam.
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