AKIN BY MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER I.
The railway traveller, journeying between Springfield and Hartford along
the banks of the fair Connecticut, sees from the car window, far away to
the eastward, across the broad level of intervening plains, a chain of
purple hills, whose undulating crest-line meets the bending sky and forms
the distant horizon. Just beyond the loftiest hummock of this range a
fertile valley lies concealed; and near its centre, upon the smooth summit
of a gently swelling ridge, which, extending north and south for miles,
divides the valley lengthwise, stands Belfield, the shire town of the rural
county of Hillsdale. Its fourscore white dwellings, scattered unevenly
along the shady margins of a straight and ample street, are mostly large,
substantial granges, each with its little suburb of dependencies making
a hamlet by itself. But where the broad avenue, at midway, spreads still
wider, forming a spacious square, are thickly clustered the public
buildings of the town and county,--together with the meeting-houses, the
taverns, the bank, the shops, and a few handsome dwellings, whose large
dimensions and ornate style show them to be the abodes of people of wealth
and consideration.
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