Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country

We listened awhile then but heard no sound in the thicket, although Fred was growling ominously, his hair on end. As for myself I never had a more fearful hour than that we suff...

My regiment left New York by night in a flare of torch and rocket. The streets were lined with crowds now hardened to the sound of fife and drum and the pomp of military prepara...

So I had to lie down beside him again and think out the problem as best I could. My mind was never more acutely conscious and it gathered many strange impressions, wandering in...

But now I have better things to write of, things that have some relish of good in them. I was very weak and low from loss of blood for days, and, suddenly, the tide turned. I ha...

I had a lot of fun that first winter, but none that I can remember more gratefully than our trip in the sledgehouse--a tight little house fitted and fastened to a big sledge. Un...

The love of labour was counted a great virtue there in Faraway. As for myself I could never put my heart in a hoe handle or in any like tool of toil. They made a blister upon my...

I remember how hopefully we started that morning with Elizabeth Brower and Hope waving their handkerchiefs on the porch and David near them whittling. They had told us what to d...

We heard no more of the voices. Uncle Eb had brought an armful of wood, and some water in the teapot, while I was sleeping. As soon as the rain had passed he stood listening awh...

Of all that long season of snow, I remember most pleasantly the days that were sweetened with the sugar-making. When the sun was lifting his course in the clearing sky, and Marc...

A small boy in a big basket on the back of a jolly old man, who carried a cane in one hand, a rifle in the other; a black dog serving as scout, skirmisher and rear guard--that w...

Uncle Eb was a born lover of fun. But he had a solemn way of fishing that was no credit to a cheerful man. It was the same when he played the bass viol, but that was also a kind...

The folks of Faraway have been carefully if rudely pictured, but the look of my own person, since I grew to the stature of manhood, I have left wholly to the imagination of the...

It was a time of new things--that winter when I saw the end of my fifteenth year. Then I began to enjoy the finer humours of life in Faraway--to see with understanding; and by G...

I worked some weeks before my regiment was sent forward. I planned to be at home for a day, but they needed me on the staff, and I dreaded the pain of a parting, the gravity of...

I came down Broadway that afternoon aboard a big white omnibus, that drifted slowly in a tide of many vehicles. Those days there were a goodly show of trees on either side of th...

The north country lay buried in the snow that Christmastime. Here and there the steam plough had thrown its furrows, on either side of the railroad, high above the window line....

Grandma Bisnette came from Canada to work for the Browers. She was a big, cheerful woman, with a dialect, an amiable disposition and a swarthy, wrinkled face. She had a loose fr...

'Dear! no!' said she. 'The poor thing is in bed with a headache.' If Hope had been ill at home I should have felt free to go and sit by her as I had done more than once. It seem...

If I were writing a novel merely I should try to fill it with merriment and good cheer. I should thrust no sorrow upon the reader save that he might feel for having wasted his t...

Those were great days in mid autumn. The Republic was in grave peril of dissolution. Liberty that had hymned her birth in the last century now hymned her destiny in the voices o...

Not much in my life at college is essential to this history--save the training. The students came mostly from other and remote parts of the north country--some even from other s...

New York was a crowded city, even then, but I never felt so lonely anywhere outside a camp in the big woods, The last day of the first week came, but no letter from Hope. To mak...

I was soon near out of money and at my wit's end, but my will was unconquered. In this plight I ran upon Fogarty, the policeman who had been the good angel of my one hopeful day...

The horse played a part of no small importance in that country. He was the coin of the realm, a medium of exchange, a standard of value, an exponent of moral character. The man...

I ought to say that I have had and shall have to chronicle herein much that would seem to indicate a mighty conceit of myself. Unfortunately the little word 'I' throws a big sha...

Tip Taylor was, in the main, a serious-minded man. A cross eye enhanced the natural solemnity of his countenance. He was little given to talk or laughter unless he were on a hun...

Hope and Uncle Eb and I went away in a coach with Mrs Fuller. There was a great crowd in the church that covered, with sweeping arches, an interior more vast than any I had ever...

We have our secrets, but, guard them as we may, it is not long before others have them also. We do much talking without words. I once knew a man who did his drinking secretly an...

Nehemiah, whom I had known as John Trumbull, sat a long time between his father and mother, holding a hand of each, and talking in a low tone, while Hope and I were in the kitch...

Late in August Uncle Eb and I took our Black Hawk stallion to the fair in Hillsborough and showed him for a prize. He was fit for the eye of a king when we had finished grooming...

Here I shall quote you again from the diary of Uncle Eb. 'It was so dark I couldn't see a han' before me. “Don't p'int yer gun at me,” the man whispered. Thought 'twas funny he...

The lone pine stood in Brower's pasture, just clear of the woods. When the sun rose, one could see its taper shadow stretching away to the foot of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it...

Hope's love of music became a passion after that night. Young Mr Livingstone, 'the city chap' we had met at the church, came over next day. His enthusiasm for her voice gave us...

'You mus' take 'er,' said Uncle Eb, the day she came. 'She's a purty dancer as a man ever see. Prance right up an' tell 'er she mus' go. Don' want 'O let anyone git ahead O' ye.'

I took a walk in the long twilight of that evening. As it began to grow dark I passed the Fuller house and looked up at its windows. Standing under a tree on the opposite side o...

That very night, I looked in at the little shop beneath us and met Riggs. It was no small blessing, just as I was entering upon dark and unknown ways of life, to meet this hoary...

Uncle Eb and David were away buying cattle, half the week, but Elizabeth Brower was always at home to look after my comfort. She was up betimes in the morning and singing at her...

For every man he knew and loved Mr Greeley had a kindness that filled him to the fingertips. When I returned he smote me on the breast--an unfailing mark of his favour--and doub...

Gerald Brower, who was a baby when I came to live at Faraway, and was now eleven, had caught a cold in seed time, and he had never quite recovered. His coughing had begun to kee...

We went back to our work again shortly, the sweetness and the bitterness of life fresh in our remembrance. When we came back, 'hook an' line', for another vacation, the fields w...

As soon as Lincoln was elected the attitude of the South showed clearly that 'the irrepressible conflict', of Mr Seward's naming, had only just begun. The Herald gave columns ev...

David Brower had prospered, as I have said before, and now he was chiefly concerned in the welfare of his children. So, that he might give us the advantages of the town, he deci...

We are now the old folks--Margaret and Nehemiah and Hope and I. Those others, with their rugged strength, their simple ways, their undying youth, are of the past. The young folk...

The fifth summer was passing since we came down Paradise Road--the dog, Uncle Eb and I. Times innumerable I had heard my good old friend tell the story of our coming west until...

I got a warm welcome on Monkey Hill. John Trumbull came to dine with us at the chalet the evening of my arrival. McGlingan had become editor-in-chief of a new daily newspaper. S...