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Show THE PENNSYLVANIA MOUNTAINS. The doctor, with the two ladies, took passage for Harrisburg. They were equipped for the mountains, with valises, short flannel dresses, waterproofs, a pound or two of good tea, and a tin pot. The doctor carried gun, fishing-tackle, and a flask of Scotch whisky, which was his one catholic remedy, in the woods, for cuts, fevers, colds, or rattlesnake bites. <br><br> At Harrisburg they took the Niagara express to Lock Haven, a cheerful little lumber town lying high among the hills, where they spent the night. Early in the morning the doctor called Sarah to the window of the inn parlor. "There is my old friend Hoeven with the spring wagon. I wrote for him to meet us. Hoeven is the cabinet-maker among the Nittany Mountains." <br><br> "I am afraid this is a civilized wilderness to which you are taking us, doctor," said Sarah. "No cabinet-makers adorned our Virginia Canaan." "Oh, the Pennsylvania spurs of the Alleghanies are time compared with those of Virginia or the Carolinas. The very hills are leveled on top, you will observe, as if some ancient Dutch Gog or Magog had set his broad foot on every peak, flattening them down. ?? and McKean countries are tolerably savage, but even there the yellow farmhouses with green shutters and the big barn are beginning to show themselves. A few deer, bear, and foxes still hide up in the fastnesses of the hills to which we are going, but they are fast disappearing. There are no wolves nor panthers, such as we shall find in the higher ranges of the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina and West Virginia. <br><br> Every county in Pennsylvania is yoked down to civilization by a ‘pike' and toll taxes." "I'm very glad to hear it," exclaimed his wife. "And what society shall we find, George?" "You will not have a chance to study any of the picturesque phases of human nature, of which you are fond, I'm afraid, my dear," said the doctor, anxiously. "Plenty of half-savage bear-hunters and moonshiners in North Carolina. <br><br> But the Dutch or Scotch-Irish farmer has taken possession of the most solitary recesses in the Pennsylvania mountains outside of the mining districts. His wife has her patent churn and wringer, her parlor with hair-cloth chairs, and photograph album on the table; his boy is at some cheap local college, and his daughter drapes her calico polonaise by the latest fashion in the Bazar." <br><br>"But what kind of society is there?" demanded his wife, impatiently. "There is church twice a month, sewing bees, and apple-butter stirrings. The older women seldom leave their kitchens except to go to church. The wife of a ‘near' Pennsylvania hill farmer is, perhaps, the hardest-worked living being in the United States. But as for the girls, schools and magazines, and a day or two at the Exposition in 1876, have leavened the young people. The girl does not make as good butter as her mother, but she works tidies and decorates pickle-jars. She has her lover, of course. He does not bring her flowers or opera tickets, but a leg of mutton weekly from the sheep his folks have killed. But there is as fine an aroma of love in it as in the costliest bouquet." <br><br> "Don't talk such nonsense to Sarah," said Mrs. Malook, sharply. "What did we come to these mountains for, I wonder? If only to study vulgar love-making and tawdry apings of fashions, we need not have left New York." "We are going to study nature, and I am taking you to Center and Clinton counties, my dear," said the doctor, meekly, "because the mountains there, though lower than others in the range, are more precipitous and picturesque than any in the State. I can show you there in miniature the peculiar features of Californian scenery; the same effects of volcano action on the hills, the great sand deposits, and the canyons."-Rebecca Harding Davis, in Harper's Magazine. |
