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Weary of boarding at seashore and mountain, tired of traveling in search of comfort, hating hotel life, I visited a country friend at Gooseville, Conn.
I learned that <i>that</i> horse had never before been driven by a woman. He evidently was not pleased. Soon the following appeared among the local items of interest in the Gooseville Clarion: Uriel Snooks, who has been working in the cheese factory at Frogville, is now to preside over chair number four in Baldwin's Tonsorial Establishment on Main Street. Kate Sanborn is trying another horse.
I am glad of the custom, it proved of invaluable service to me, and the mortality among old people was quite phenomenal at Gooseville and thereabouts last year. While I deeply regretted the demise of each and all, still this general taking off was opportune for my needs. There were seventeen auctions last season, and all but two were attended by me or my representatives.
Everything there but MEN they are wise enough to keep far away. Before leaving this haven of rest, I heard that the old-fashioned farm-house just opposite was for sale. And, as purchasers of real estate were infrequent at Gooseville, it would be rented for forty dollars a year to any responsible tenant who would "keep it up."
That opinion of my earnest efforts to effect a renaissance at Gooseville to show how a happy farm home should look to the passer-by in short, my struggle to "live up to" the peacocks revealed, as does a lightning flash on a dark night, much that I had not perceived. I had made as great a mistake as the farmer who abjures flowers and despises "fixin' up."
If wit is, as has been averred, the "juxtaposition of dissimilar ideas," then from "Gotham to Gooseville" is the most scintillating epigram ever achieved. Nothing was going on at Gooseville except time and the milk wagon collecting for the creamery. The latter came rumbling along every morning at 4.30 precisely, with a clatter of cans that never failed to arouse the soundest sleeper.
It is now nearly a year since that little adventure, but it is still a subject of mirth, even in other towns. A friend calling yesterday told me the version he had just heard at Gillford, ten miles away! "You bet they have comical goings-on at that woman's farm by the Gooseville depot! She got a regular menagerie, fust off everything she see or could hear of.
So, after a little study, I found that the inhabitants of Gooseville and its outlying hamlets were neither dead nor sleeping. It was only by contrast that they appeared comatose and moribund. Indeed, the degree of gayety was quite startling. There was also a "crazy party" at Way-back, the next village.
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