The people who live on the farms are, I suppose, much like farm people everywhere. “Folks are folks”; yet, after being much with them, certain qualities impress themselves upon one’s notice as characteristic; they have a dry sense of humor, and quaint and whimsical ways of expressing it, and with this, a refinement of thought and speech that is almost fastidious; a fine reticence about the physical aspects of life such as is only found, I believe, in a strong race, a people drawing their vigor from deep and untainted springs. I often wonder whether there is another place in the world where women are sheltered from any possible coarseness of expression with such considerate delicacy as they find among the rough men on a New England farm.
The life is so hard, the hours so necessarily long, in our harsh climate, that small-natured persons too often become little more than machines. They get through their work, and they save every penny they can; and that is all. The Granges, however, are increasing a pleasant and wholesome social element which is beyond price, and all winter you meet sleighs full of rosy-cheeked families, driving to the Hall for Grange Meeting, or Sunday Meeting, or for the weekly dance.
Many of the farm people are large-minded enough to do their work well, and still keep above and on top of it; and some of these stand up in a sort of splendor. Their fibres have been seasoned in a life that calls for all a man’s powers. Their grave kind faces show that, living all their lives in one place, they have taken the longest of all journeys, and traveled deep into the un-map-able country of Life. I do not know how to write fittingly of some of these older farm people; wise enough to be simple, and deep-rooted as the trees that grow round them; so strong and attuned to their work that the burdens of others grow light in their presence, and life takes on its right and happier proportions when one is with them.
If the first impression of our country is its uniformity, the second and amazing one is its surprises, its secret places. The long ridges accentuate themselves suddenly into sharp slopes and steep cup-shaped valleys, covered with sweet-fern and juniper. The wooded hills are often full of hidden cliffs (rich gardens in themselves, they are so deep in ferns and moss), and quick brooks run through them, so that you are never long without the talk of one to keep you company. There are rocky glens, where you meet cold, sweet air, the ceaseless comforting of a waterfall, and moss on moss, to velvet depths of green.