The Country of the Pointed Firs quotes

the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and its background of spruces and balsam firs.

When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person.

The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person.

The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.

After a first brief visit made two or three summers before in the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities;

One day she appeared at the schoolhouse itself, partly out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that there was no tansy in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some that grew about the schoolhouse lot.

Being scuffed down all the spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves before they died.

the little procession in the foreground looked futile and helpless on the edge of the rocky shore. It was a glorious day early in July, with a clear, high sky; there were no clouds, there was no noise of the sea.

The song sparrows sang and sang, as if with joyous knowledge of immortality, and contempt for those who could so pettily concern themselves with death.

I stood watching until the funeral procession had crept round a shoulder of the slope below and disappeared from the great landscape as if it had gone into a cave.

it was plain that the captain was his own attentive valet. He sat looking at me expectantly.

I could not help thinking that, with his queer head and length of thinness, he was made to hop along the road of life rather than to walk.

The captain was very grave indeed, and I bade my inward spirit keep close to discretion.

“We have not looked for truth in the right direction. I know what I speak of; those who have laughed at me little know how much reason my ideas are based upon.” He waved his hand toward the village below.

“In that handful of houses they fancy that they comprehend the universe.”

I smiled, and waited for him to go on.

And when they’d got the boat out o’ reach o’ danger, Gaffett said they looked back, and there was the town again, standing up just as they’d seen it first, comin’ on the coast.

Say what you might, they all believed ’twas a kind of waiting-place between this world an’ the next.

”

There, look! there she is: mother sees us; she’s wavin’ somethin’ out o’ the fore door! She’ll be to the landin’-place quick’s we are.”

I looked, and could see a tiny flutter in the doorway, but a quicker signal had made its way from the heart on shore to the heart on the sea.

“How do you suppose she knows it is me?” said Mrs. Todd, with a tender smile on her broad face. “There, you never get over bein’ a child long’s you have a mother to go to. Look at the chimney, now;

“How do you suppose she knows it is me?” said Mrs. Todd, with a tender smile on her broad face. “

There, you never get over bein’ a child long’s you have a mother to go to.

Look at the chimney, now; she’s gone right in an’ brightened up the fire. Well, there, I’m glad mother’s well; you’ll enjoy seein’ her very much.”

The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy on its low walls.

It was one of the houses that seem firm-rooted in the ground, as if they were two-thirds below the surface, like icebergs.

The front door stood hospitably open in expectation of company, and an orderly vine grew at each side;

… many women lack, of being able to make themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest’s pleasure—that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one’s own life that can never be forgotten.

Tact is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held the golden gift.

Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett’s world and mine were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness.

She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself. There was something lonely and solitary about her great determined shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban plain.

It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence.

An absolute, archaic grief possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some historic soul, with her sorrows and the remoteness of a daily life busied with rustic simplicities and the scents of primeval herbs.

“The time o’ sickness an’ failin’ has got to come to all. But Almiry’s got an herb that’s good for everything.” She smiled as she spoke, and looked bright again.

“There’s some herb that’s good for everybody, except for them that thinks they’re sick when they ain’t,”

announced Mrs. Todd, with a truly professional air of finality. “Come, William, let’s have Sweet Home, an’ then mother’ll sing Cupid an’ the Bee for us.”

By the time we thought it discreet to join our hostess we were already sincere friends.

You may speak of a visit’s setting in as well as a tide’s

, and it was impossible, as Mrs. Todd whispered to me, not to be pleased at the way this visit was setting in; a new impulse and refreshing of the social currents and seldom visited bays of memory appeared to have begun. Mrs.

Mrs. Todd gave a funny little laugh.

“Yes’m, old friends is always best, ’less you can catch a new one that’s fit to make an old one out of,”

she said, and we gave an affectionate glance at each other which Mrs. Fosdick could not have understood, being the latest comer to the house.

I liked the variety. There, how times have changed; how few seafarin’ families there are left! What a lot o’ queer folks there used to be about here, anyway, when we was young, Almiry.

Everybody’s just like everybody else, now; nobody to laugh about, and nobody to cry about.

”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Todd after a moment of meditation, “there was certain a good many curiosities of human natur’ in this neighborhood years ago. There was more energy then, and in some the energy took a singular turn.

In these days the young folks is all copycats, ’fraid to death they won’t be all just alike; as for the old folks, they pray for the advantage o’ bein’ a little different.

”

Yes, I recall the wormwood, which is always a planted herb, so there must have been folks there before the Todds’ day.

A growin’ bush makes the best gravestone

; I expect that wormwood always stood for somebody’s solemn monument. Catnip, too, is a very endurin’ herb about an old place.”

She’d had a piece o’ work tryin’ to make him walk accordin’ to her right ideas, but she’d have had too much variety ever to fall into a melancholy.

Some is meant to be the Joannas in this world, an’ ’twas her poor lot.

”

I drank at the spring, and thought that now and then someone would follow me from the busy, hard-worked, and simple-thoughted countryside of the mainland, which lay dim and dreamlike in the August haze, as Joanna must have watched it many a day.

There was the world, and here was she with eternity well begun.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day;

There was the world, and here was she with eternity well begun.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day

; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.

“I thought ’twas goin’ to do well,” she said complacently as we went on again. “Last time I was up this way that tree was kind of drooping and discouraged.

Grown trees act that way sometimes, same’s folks; then they’ll put right to it and strike their roots off into new ground and start all over again with real good courage.

Ash-trees is very likely to have poor spells; they ain’t got the resolution of other trees.”

You lay your ear down to the ground an’ you’ll hear a little stream runnin’.

Every such tree has got its own livin’ spring; there’s folk made to match ’em.

”

We watched the boats drop their sails one by one in the cove as we drove along the high land.

The old Bowden house stood, low-storied and broad-roofed, in its green fields as if it were a motherly brown hen waiting for the flock that came straying toward it from every direction.

The first Bowden settler had made his home there, and it was still the Bowden farm; five generations of sailors and farmers and soldiers had been its children. And presently Mrs.

I turned with interest to hear the worst. Mrs. Caplin’s tone was both zealous and impressive.

“Stim’lates,” she explained scornfully.

“No, Santin never was in the war,” said Mrs. Todd with lofty indifference. “It was a cause of real distress to him. He kep’ enlistin’, and traveled far an’ wide about here, an’ even took the bo’t and went to Boston to volunteer;

“

There’s a great many such strayaway folks, just as there is plants,

” continued Mrs. Todd, who was nothing if not botanical. “I know of just one sprig of laurel that grows over back here in a wild spot, an’ I never could hear of no other on this coast.

“

Yes, Mari’ was one o’ them pretty little lambs that make dreadful homely old sheep,

” replied Mrs. Todd with energy. “Cap’n Littlepage never’d look so disconsolate if she was any sort of a proper person to direct things. She might divert him;

“Yes, you always catch yourself a-thinkin’ what if they all was true, and he had the right of it,” answered Mrs. Todd. “He’s a good sight better company, though dreamy, than such sordid creatur’s as Mari’ Harris.”

“Live and let live,” said dear old Mrs. Blackett gently.

“I haven’t seen the captain for a good while, now that I ain’t so constant to meetin’,” she added wistfully. “We always have known each other.”

She was not so much reminiscent now as expectant, and as alert and gay as a girl. We who were her neighbors were full of gayety, which was but the reflected light from her beaming countenance.

It was not the first time that I was full of wonder at the waste of human ability in this world, as a botanist wonders at the wastefulness of nature, the thousand seeds that die, the unused provision of every sort.

The reserve force of society grows more and more amazing to one’s thought. More than one face among the Bowdens showed that only opportunity and stimulus were lacking—a narrow set of circumstances had caged a fine able character and held it captive.

Neither of my companions was troubled by her burden of years. I hoped in my heart that I might be like them as I lived on into age, and then smiled to think that I too was no longer very young.

So we always keep the same hearts, though our outer framework fails and shows the touch of time.

“ ’Twas pretty when they sang the hymn, wasn’t it?” asked Mrs. Blackett at suppertime, with real enthusiasm. “There was such a plenty o’ men’s voices; where I sat it did sound beautiful.

“You haven’t been to sea for nothing,” I said laughing.

“One trade helps another,”

said Elijah with an amiable smile. “Come right in an’ set down. Come in an’ rest ye,” he exclaimed, and led the way into his comfortable kitchen.

None on ’em thought I was goin’ to get along alone, no way, but I wa’n’t goin’ to have my house turned upsi’ down an’ all changed about; no, not to please nobody.

I was the only one knew just how she liked to have things set, poor dear, an’ I said I was goin’ to make shift, and I have made shift.

I’d rather tough it out alone.” And he sighed heavily, as if to sigh were his familiar consolation.

’Tis full as easy to be alone. I set here an’ think it all over, an’ think considerable when the weather’s bad to go outside. I get so some days it feels as if poor dear might step right back into this kitchen.

I keep a-watchin’ them doors as if she might step in to ary one.

Yes, ma’am, I keep a-lookin’ off an’ droppin’ o’ my stitches; that’s just how it seems. I can’t git over losin’ of her no way nor no how. Yes, ma’am, that’s just how it seems to me.”

but there, I couldn’t pick no day’s weather that seemed to suit her just right. I never set out to worry her neither, ’twa’n’t no kind o’ use; she was so pleasant we couldn’t have no fret nor trouble.

’Twas never ‘you dear an’ you darlin’ afore folks, an’ ‘you divil’ behind the door!

”

As I looked back from the lower end of the field I saw him still standing, a lonely figure in the doorway. “Poor dear,” I repeated to myself half aloud; “

I wonder where she is and what she knows of the little world she left.

I wonder what she has been doing these eight years!”