These
relieved the monotony of the shanty-like shops which bordered the
main street. The town had sprung up with a mushroom-rapidity, and
there was no attempt at veiling the newness of its bricks and
mortar, its boards and paint.
But there were buildings that had their own individuality, and
asserted it. One of these was a mud-cabin with a thatched roof,
that looked as if it had emigrated bodily from the bogs of
Ireland. It had settled itself down into a green hollow by the
roadside, and it looked as much at home with the lilac-tinted
crane's-bill and yellow buttercups as if it had never lost sight
of the shamrocks of Erin.
Now, too, my childish desire to see a real beggar was gratified.
Straggling petitioners for "cold victuals" hung around our back
yard, always of Hibernian extraction; and a slice of bread was
rewarded with a shower of benedictions that lost itself upon us
in the flood of its own incomprehensible brogue.
Some time every summer a fleet of canoes would glide noiselessly
up the river, and a company of Penobscot Indians would land at a
green point almost in sight from our windows.
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