Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/559

A NEIGHBORLY CALL. 553 A NEIGHBORLY CALL. WHEN we were all young and lived at home in the country in the green, flower- bestrown, ever-changing, sunshiny country, vital with myriad forms of life, musical with incessant buzz, and chirp, and whir, and song, thick-thronged with childhood's im- portant and imperious business sometimes the hens would fly out of their coops un- timely into the flower-beds or the kitchen- garden, because a, careless hand had left the slide-door open; or the pigs would crowd out of a too fragile pen and root in among the beets, and strawberries, and sweet com. And when the " hired man" had rushed to the rescue, armed with hoe, rake, pitchfork, or any improvised instrument of war what- ever, and had scattered the scared hens, fluttering frantic with divided minds, squawk- ing wild terror, in every direction but the right one : and the pigs, slowly startled, had first grunted remonstrance, and then, hard pressed, had torn across the careful borders with unexpected, ungraceful and destructive agility, beyond reach of hoe or pitchfork then it was that Achilles, with the dew of battle on his martial brow and the grip of fate in his tense, muscular fingers, gave one vain, final lunge with his domestic broad- side, and muttered, under breath : Go to ffatifax I " Such was our first introduction to the lit- tle smoky, provincial city of the sea, and it was not, perhaps, till we came to man's estate that we began to mistrust these child- ish associations and suspect that our way- ward younger brethren of the garden-walks were not recommended to Halifax as a benevolent city of refuge for fugitives from justice ; but, that the saving virtue of its last two syllables is what commends it to the tongues of muscular and angry young Chris- tians. If you would see Nova Scotia aright, go I visit it by the pale moonlight of early No- .vember. The summers of Northern New ^England are so long that their sweetness rather cloys on the senses, and it is a relief to escape from the heats of the middle- autumn into the tempered warmth of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Then the scenery between Bangor and Bedford Basin is remarkably varied and picturesque ; and Iwhen all the evergreens are glittering with November dew, and the warm, spicy breath 'of November gales has swept over the fields, or the blessings of Heaven are descending in a six days' rain, a comfortable Pullman car, pleasant company and an absorbing novel, make the journey one of unique inter- est. There is certainly no form of dead pine or wilted hackmatack, or sodden field or spongy road, that can ever be unfamiliar to the eyes of him who has journeyed to Hali- fax in that Dead Sea of the seasons, the placid if insipid November. So then, if you are of a scientific turn, and devoured with desire to know whether the waves in the Bay of Fundy do run mountain- high, whether the hungry tides do rush up from the sea to swallow the swine feeding on shell-fish along the shore, and, worse still, whether even the friendly rivers turn them- selves into immense bores and plunge insane- ly inland to engulf the unwary cattle feeding tranquilly on the rich meadow-grass there is no surer way than to go down yourself to the Bay of Fundy and take an observation. My opinion, founded on careful research, may be best expressed in the fine feminine formula regarding the proportion of unhappy marriages : " there are more that are that ain't than ain't that are." The devotees of science appear often to suppose that when they have rode, lance in rest, against some popular opinion, they have not only demolished the opinion, but the fact on which it was based ; and have thereby approved themselves good soldiers of sci- ence. They seem not to have considered that popular opinion is itself a fact, and to be accounted for. If the tides in the Bay of Fundy are not mountain-high and arid feeders upon ambushed flocks, how came they to have such a reputation ? No one ever accused Wenham Pond of charging upon Beverly Shore. There come in also the necessities of the case. Here is a long, deep, narrow gully, hollowed in between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with all the sea behind it, sink- ing and swelling under the influence of sun, and moon, and star. When that sea is lashed into storm and stress, there is nothing for it to do but push into the Bay of Fundy, raging up its gorges, choking against every rocky bank too high for overflow, foaming up the rivers and submerging every level low enough to afford relief. Given a deep cut with the ocean outside, and the tides that cannot spread must rise. Notwith-