He sealed and directed his letter, walked about with the plaintive
airs of old melodies running and running through his head, and sang
snatches and verses of sad old ballads, going over and over with some
touching line, or complaining strain, till he was saturated with its
tender melancholy, and so he came back to ordinary life.




CHAPTER III.

NEWBURY.


Newbury was one of the twenty-odd townships, five miles square, that
then made up the county of Geauga, and a part of the Western Reserve,
the Yankee-doodledom of Ohio, settled exclusively by emigrants from
New England. It was so much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont,
etc., translated into the broader and freer West. It has been
said that the Yankee, like a certain vegetable, heads best when
transplanted. It was the old thing over, under new and trying
circumstances. The same old ideas and notions, habits of thought and
life; poor, economical and thrifty folk, with the same reverence
for religion and law, love of education, and restless desire for
improvement, and to better the present condition. In the West the
Yankee developed his best qualities in the second generation. He
became a little straighter and less angular, and wider between the
eyes. In the first generation he lived out his life scarcely refracted
by the new atmosphere. This crop still stood firm and hardy on the