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Illustrated from Photographs by J. Horace McFarland

Na mellow October morning we drove from the thrifty city of Springfield, Massachusetts, with our faces to the southward. We were off for a day's outing.

From Springfield to Portland, as the road goes, is about forty-five miles. The main highway follows the eastern highland of the Connecticut River. It is one continuous, homogeneous street; and we are told that there is not a finer stretch of rural thrift and contentment to be found in America. Green sweeps of valley, billows of hills rolling into the stream, the domes of Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke on the northern horizon, a morning sweetened by the gold and silence of the dying year-we swing out of the streets of Springfield and plunge into the open. Up a hill and round a curve, we have our last view of the city, lying low by the riverside. The road swings into a scattering wood; and we are in the country.

The Connecticut River is to parts of this narrow valley what the Nile is to Egypt. Its broad meadows are overflowed in the spring, and they have given bountiful mowings twice each year for two centuries and more. These lowlands are from a halfmile to two miles wide on either side of the stream. On the higher land at their outer margin, along the thoroughfare, are the farm-houses. The great river must have had an effect upon the settlers of this rolling valley, for the highway has a broad and majestic swing. River and road march onward from the hills to the sea.

The settler must have a piece of mowing-land on the bottom. The farms were therefore narrow, fronting on the river; but they made good their area by running back two or three miles. In the early divisions the farms were split lengthwise; and thereby the farm-houses were brought close together. One who rides behind his horse from Springfield to Portland cannot escape the feeling that he is traveling a long village street.

The journey becomes a panorama. Always wide, at some places the road expands into field-like openings. In these wider spaces one finds the long, rambling village, so characteristic of rural New England. The village seems only a condensation of the accustomed roadside, only a closer settlement of farm-houses. Typical of each town center is the combined store and post-office, the village scales and a spreading

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elm comprising the central figure. Some times there is a quaint building with the legend "Town Records." Again, a handsome library or a public hall denotes the advanced intellectual life of the countryside. The scene is always peaceful, indicating a quiet life; yet the people we meet are alert and well informed. They are always glad to tell us the traditions and history of the neighborhood.

The old town-meeting system of government, in which there is practically no intermediary between the tax-payer and the tax-spender, has been a large factor in the unconscious development of these rural highways, peculiar to New England. This long, wide country street is con

spicuous for its rolling stretches of sward, its cleanness, and its abandon of trees. It has none of the harshness and weediness of the common highway. Its staring banks and unkempt spots were worn away years and generations ago. It is easy, gentle, steady, purposeful; and in these attributes it reflects the homes along its winding sides.

The varying widths are always entertaining. They keep the interest alive. They suggest adaptability to local conditions, not the hard and fast lines of the surveyor. We are in New England, not in the Roman township system of the West.

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Now and then a house sets back an eminence, and the highway fence

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"OUR LAST VIEW OF THE CHY, LYING LOW BY THE RIVERSIDE

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follows the house to its retreat. The wide front space may be park-like with trees.

The New Englander loves the trees. He loves them with no passing affection or mere sentimentalism. They are a part of his life-so much a part of it that he is not aware of the fact. He therefore cherishes the patriarchs of the fields and highways. He patches their broken and decayed branches as long as the spark of life remains; and he mourns for them when they are dead. A Westerner cuts down the ragged and broken tree; for to him the vigor and exuberance of activity appeal more strongly than the repose and mellowness of age. The Western farmer cleans his fields of trees, for he wants broad and sweeping acres. The New England farmer lets the old trees stand, and the landscape is populous with their verdurous heads. The oak which marks his ancestors' birthplace, the tree which was once the public whipping-post, the lone pine with its stratified shadesthese are as much as cattle and farms. The New Englander is rooted in the past. Traditions are parts in the fabric of his life. The trees span the centuries.

Everywhere is found the evidence of this deep-seated love. You are shown the place where once a majestic white oak was a noontime resting-place for generations, and are told the story of the vandal neighbor, an alien in heart if not in birth, who cut it down that he might not have to run his barbed-wire fence six inches aside from a straight line. Or you hear of the veteran of the war of 1812 who, at the very sunset of his life, gave twenty dollars of the burial fund saved from his scanty pension in order that the great tree across the way might not be converted into ship-timber.

The Connecticut Yankee has emphasized his regard for the old trees in an admirable law for their protection. Each town may appoint a tree-warden. As he must serve without pay, he is sure to be a tree-lover. It is his privilege to label permanently as public property any tree on or contiguous to the highway which he deems essential to comfort or beauty. Thereafter the owner of the land on which the tree stands cannot cut it down, except upon the favorable result of a regular appeal to a special committee of the town

meeting, acting in due deliberation. The tree belongs to the town.

Yet the New Englander is not inactive nor forgetful of the opportunities of the present time. The common notion that the agriculture of New England is on the decline is a myth. The agriculture is only changing. Rural New England is prosperous.

This highway from Springfield to Hartford and Portland runs through as thrifty a country as one could hope to see; and the one industry is farming. It is not a district of summer boarders, nor of subur

that the home-nest is carefully nourished and guarded, and that whims of mere fashion are not allowed to perturb the more serious currents of life.

A few miles from Springfield we pass through the charming little village of Longmeadow. The centennial anniversary of the incorporation of the town was celebrated in 1883. A few miles to the south we reach Enfield, which is in Connecticut. It is a town of many historic associations. In the graveyard, on Memorial Day, the graves of the soldiers of the Revolution are decorated, as well as those of the

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ban residence. The clean, well-tilled fields, snug barns, ample and cozy houses, all bespeak a happy and prosperous people. These homes have been paid for from the land; and they are replete with comfort. No other country can show such kingly farm homes, in such numbers, as America.

There is a flavor about these New England farmsteads which suggests thrift, frugality, stability, contentment. The old houses are preserved as long as they are habitable. Modern conveniences are added; porches may be built; large panes are often substituted for the six-by-eight "lights;" but the spirit of the building is still that of the colonial days. One feels

soldiers of the Civil War; and there is a grave of one who fought in the French and Indian War. The news of the battle of Lexington reached this hamlet on a Sunday. The people were summoned from meeting by the beating of a drum; and the following morning seventy-four men marched to Boston.

Enfield is an offshoot of Springfield. Settlement was begun in 1678. In 1688, Totaps, the Indian chief, relinquished title to the land. Thereupon a town-meeting was called; and in 1691 all inhabitants were compelled, by a fine of two shillings for an absence, to attend the meetings. Thirteen constituted a legal

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