There was about this little village a singular union of refinement and rusticity, of cultivated plain and steepling rock, of blooming meadow and dusky forest. The long, wide street, saving the highway and a few stray paths here and there, was a bright, grassy lawn, decorated with abundance of sugar-maples, which appeared to have found their Paradise. Such is the shape of the encircling hills and ledges that the site of the village seemed a sort of secluded Happy Valley, where everything turns to poetry and romance. And this aptitude is abundantly encouraged by history; for here was once the favored home of a tribe of Indians. All around--the rivers, the hills, the forests--are still rife with legends and remembrances of the olden time. A rocky mound, rising above the river on one side, and dark forests on the other, bears the name of "Pomperaug's Castle;" a little to the north, near a bridle-path that traversed the meadows, was a heap of stones, called "Pomperaug's Grave." To the east I found a wild ledge, called "Bethel Rock." And each of these objects has its story.
It was a great time, that happy week--for let it be remembered that for a whole year I had been imprisoned in a country store. What melody was there in the forest echoes then! Ah! I have since heard Catalani, and Garcia, and Pasta, and Sontag, and Grisi; I have even heard "the Swedish Nightingale;" nay, in France and Italy--the very home of music and song--I have listened to the true nightingale, which has given to Jenny Lind her sweetest and most appropriate epithet; but never, in one or all, have I heard such music as filled my ears that incense-breathing morn, when I made a foray into the wilds of Woodbury!
We returned to Danbury after a tour of some five or six weeks. The succeeding autumn and winter presented no peculiar incident--with a single exception. There was, if I rightly remember, in the month of February, a certain "cold Friday," which passed down to succeeding generations as among the marvels of the time. It had snowed heavily for three days, and the ground was covered three feet deep. A driving wind from the north-east then set in, and growing colder and colder, it became at last so severe as to force everybody to shelter. This continued for two days, the whole air being filled with sleet, so that the sun, without a cloud in the sky, shone dim and grey as through a fog. The third day the wind increased, both in force and intensity of cold. Horses, cattle, fowls, sheep, perished in their coverings. The roads were blocked up with enormous drifts; the mails were stopped, travelling was suspended; the world, indeed, seemed paralyzed, and the circulation of life to be arrested.