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Show 132 Early Western Travels [ Vol. 36 X " It is a goodly sight to see What Heaven hath done for this delicious land! What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree! What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand 1" Chiide Harold. " GOOD- EVENING, sir; a good- evening to ye, sir; pleased with our village, sir!" This was the frank and free salutation a genteel, farmer- looking personage, with a broad face, a broad- brimmed hat, and a broad- skirted coat, addressed to me as I stood before the inn door at Peoria, looking out upon her beautiful lake. On learning, in reply to his inquiry, " Whence do ye come, stranger? " that my birth spot was north of the Potomac, he hailed me with hearty greeting and warm grasp as a brother. " I am a Yankee, sir; yes, sir, I am a genuine export of the old ' Bay State.' Many years have gone since I left her soil; but I remember well the ' Mistress of the North,' with her green islands and blue waters. In my young days, sir, I wandered all over the six states, and I have not forgotten the valley of the Connecticut. I have seen the ' Emporium' with her Neapolitan bay, and I have looked on the ' city of the monuments and fountains;' but in all my journeyings, stranger, I have not found a spot so pleasant as this little quiet Peoria of the Western wilderness!" Whether to smile in admiration [ 105] or to smile at the oddity of this singular compound of truth and exaggeration, propounded, withal, in such grandiloquent style and language, I was at a loss; and so, just as every prudent man would have acted under the circumstances, neither was done; and the quiet remark, " You are an enthusiast, sir," was all that betrayed to the worthy man the emotions of the sublime and ridiculous of which he had been the unwitting cause. |