We stopped at the Cove
Brook to hear the cat-birds sing, and at Mingo's Beach to revel
in the sudden surprise of the open sea, and to listen to the
chant of the waves, always stronger and grander there than
anywhere along the shore. We passed under dark wooded cliffs out
into sunny openings, the last of which held under its skirting
pines the secret of the prettiest woodpath to us in all the
world, the path to the ancestral farmhouse.
We found children enough to play with there,--as numerous a
family as our own. We were sometimes, I fancy, the added drop too
much of already overflowing juvenility. Farther down the road,
where the cousins were all grown-up men and women, Aunt Betsey's
cordial, old-fashioned hospitality sometimes detained us a day or
two. We watched the milking, and fed the chickens, and fared
gloriously. Aunt Betsey could not have done more to entertain us,
had we been the President's children.
I have always cherished the memory of a certain pair of large-
bowed spectacles that she wore, and of the green calash, held by
a ribbon bridle, that sheltered her head, when she walked up from
the shore to see us, as she often did.
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