The Complete Autobiographical Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Герман Мелвилл
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and their range of boarding-houses, with the girls looking out of the windows as aforesaid! And perhaps the wild scenery is all around the very site of the factory, and mingles its impression strangely with those opposite ones. These observations were made during a walk yesterday.
I bathed in a pool of the stream that was out of sight, and where its brawling waters were deep enough to cover me, when I lay at length. A part of the road along which I walked was on the edge of a precipice, falling down straight towards the stream; and in one place the passage of heavy loads had sunk it, so that soon, probably, there will be an avalanche, perhaps carrying a stagecoach or heavy wagon down into the bed of the river.
I met occasional wayfarers; once two women in a cart, — decent, brown-visaged, country matrons, — and then an apparent doctor, of whom there are seven or thereabouts in North Adams; for though this vicinity is very healthy, yet the physicians are obliged to ride considerable distances among the mountain towns, and their practice is very laborious. A nod is always exchanged between strangers meeting on the road. This morning an underwitted old man met me on a walk, and held a pretty long conversation, insisting upon shaking hands (to which I was averse, lest his band should not be clean), and insisting on his right to do so, as being “a friend of mankind.” He was a gray, bald-headed, wrinkled-visaged figure, decently dressed, with cowhide shoes, a coat on one arm, and an umbrella on the other, and said that he was going to see a widow in the neighborhood. Finding that I was not provided with a wife, he recommended a certain maiden of forty years, who had three hundred acres of land. He spoke of his children, who are proprietors of a circus establishment, and have taken a granddaughter to bring up in their way of life; and he gave me a message to tell them in case we should meet. While this old man is wandering among the hills, his children are the gaze of multitudes. He told me the place where he was born, directing me to it by pointing to a wreath of mist which lay on the side of a mountain ridge, which he termed “the smoke yonder.” Speaking of the widow, he said: “My wife has been dead these seven years, and why should not I enjoy myself a little?” His manner was full of quirks and quips and eccentricities, waving his umbrella and gesticulating strangely, with a great deal of action. I suppose, to help his natural foolishness, he had been drinking. We parted, he exhorting me not to forget his message to his sons, and I shouting after him a request to be remembered to the widow. Conceive something tragical to be talked about, and much might be made of this interview in a wild road among the hills, with Graylock, at a great distance, looking sombre and angry, by reason of the gray, heavy mist upon his head.
The morning was cloudy, and all the near landscape lay unsunned; but there was sunshine on distant tracts, in the valleys, and in specks upon the mountain-tops. Between the ridges of hills, there are long, wide, deep valleys, extending for miles and miles, with houses scattered along them. A bulky company of mountains, swelling round head over round head, rises insulated by such broad vales from the surrounding ridges.
I ought to have mentioned that I arrived at North Adams in the forenoon of the 26th, and, liking the aspect of matters indifferently well, determined to make my headquarters here for a short time.
On the road to Northampton, we passed a tame crow, which was sitting on the peak of a barn. The crow flew down from its perch, and followed us a great distance, hopping along the road, and flying, with its large, black, flapping wings, from post to post of the fence, or from tree to tree. At last he gave up the pursuit with a croak of disappointment. The driver said, perhaps correctly, that the crow had scented some salmon which was in a basket under the seat, and that this was the secret of his pursuing us. This would be a terrific incident if it were a dead body that the crow scented, instead of a basket of salmon. Suppose, for instance, in a coach travelling along, that one of the passengers suddenly should die, and that one of the indications of his death would be this deportment of the crow.
July 29th. — Remarkable characters: — A disagreeable figure, waning from middle age, clad in a pair of tow homespun pantaloons, and a very soiled shirt, barefoot, and with one of his feet maimed by an axe; also an arm amputated two or three inches below the elbow. His beard of a week’s growth, grim and grisly, with a general effect of black; altogether a disgusting object. Yet he has the signs of having been a handsome man in his idea, though now such a beastly figure that probably no living thing but his great dog would touch him without an effort. Coming to the stoop, where several persons were sitting, “Good morning, gentlemen,” said the wretch. Nobody answered for a time, till at last one said, “I don’t know whom you speak to: not to me, I’m sure” (meaning that he did not claim to be a gentleman). “Why, I thought I spoke to you all at once,” replied the figure, laughing. So he sat himself down on the lower step of the stoop, and began to talk; and, the conversation being turned upon his bare feet by one of the company, he related the story of his losing his toes by the glancing aside of an axe, and with what great fortitude he bore it. Then he made a transition to the loss of his arm, and, setting his teeth and drawing in his breath, said that the pain was dreadful; but this, too, he seems to have borne like an Indian; and a person testified to his fortitude by saying that he did not suppose there was any feeling in him, from observing how he bore it. The man spoke of the pain of cutting the muscles, and the particular agony at one moment, while the bone was being sawed asunder; and there was a strange expression of remembered anguish, as he shrugged his half-limb, and described the matter. Afterwards, in a reply to a question of mine, whether he still seemed to feel the hand that had been amputated, he answered that he did always; and, baring the stump, he moved the severed muscles, saying, “There is the thumb, there the forefinger,” and so on. Then he talked to me about phrenology, of which he seems a firm believer and skilful practitioner, telling how he had hit upon the true character of many people. There was a great deal of sense and acuteness in his talk, and something of elevation in his expressions, — perhaps a studied elevation, — and a sort of courtesy in his manner; but his sense had something out of the way in it; there was something wild and ruined and desperate in his talk, though I can hardly say what it was. There was a trace of the gentleman and man of intellect through his deep degradation; and a pleasure in intellectual pursuits, and an acuteness and trained judgment, which bespoke a mind once strong and cultivated. “My study is man,” said he. And looking at me, “I do not know your name,” he said, “but there is something of the hawk-eye about you, too.”
This man was formerly a lawyer in good practice; but, taking to drinking, was reduced to the lowest state. Yet not the lowest; for after the amputation of his arm, being advised by divers persons to throw himself upon the public for support, he told them that, even if he should lose his other arm, he would still be able to support himself and a servant. Certainly he is a strong-minded and iron-constitutioned man; hut, looking at the stump of his arm, he said that the pain of the mind was a thousand times greater than the pain of the body. “That hand could make the pen go fast,” said he. Among people in general, he does not seem to have any greater consideration in his ruin because of his former standing in society. He supports himself by making soap; and, on account of the offals used in that business, there is probably rather an evil odor in his domicile. Talking about a dead horse near his house, he said that he could not bear the scent of it. “I should not think you could smell carrion in that house,” said a stage agent. Whereupon the soap-maker dropped his head, with a little snort, as it were, of wounded feeling; but immediately said that he took all in good part. There was an old squire of the village, a lawyer probably, whose demeanor was different, — with a distance, yet with a kindliness; for he remembered the times when they met on equal terms. “You and I,” said the squire, alluding to their respective troubles and sicknesses, “would have died long ago, if we had not had the courage to live.” The poor devil kept talking to me long after everybody else had left the stoop, giving vent to much practical philosophy, and just observation on the ways of men, mingled with rather more assumption of literature and cultivation than belonged to the present condition of his mind. Meantime his great dog, a cleanly looking and not ill-bred dog, being the only decent attribute appertaining to his master, — a well-natured dog, too, and receiving civilly any demonstration of courtesy from other people, though preserving a certain distance of deportment, — this great dog grew weary of his master’s lengthy talk, and expressed his impatience to be gone by thrusting himself between his legs, rolling over on his back, seizing his ragged trousers, or playfully taking his maimed, bare foot into his mouth, — using, in short, the kindly and humorous freedom