Such, I say, are my own unambitious mental pastimes, but I am aware that
less superficial spirits could not be satisfied with them, and I can not
pretend that my wedding-journeyers were so.
They cast an absurd poetry over the landscape; they invited themselves to
be reminded of passages of European travel by it; and they placed villas
and castles and palaces upon all the eligible building-sites. Ashamed of
these devices, presently, Basil patriotically tried to reconstruct the
Dutch and Indian past of the Mohawk Valley, but here he was foiled by the
immense ignorance of his wife, who, as a true American woman, knew
nothing of the history of her own country, and less than nothing of the
barbarous regions beyond the borders of her native province. She proved a
bewildering labyrinth of error concerning the events which Basil
mentioned; and she had never even heard of the massacres by the French
and Indians at Schenectady, which he in his boyhood had known so vividly
that he was scalped every night in his dreams, and woke up in the morning
expecting to see marks of the tomahawk on the head-board. So, failing at
last to extract any sentiment from the scenes without, they turned their
faces from the window, and looked about them for amusement within the
car.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93