I think I should soon become strongly attached to our way of life, so
independent and untroubled by the forms and restrictions of society. The
house is very pleasantly situated,--half a mile distant from where the
town begins to be thickly settled, and on a swell of land, with the
road running at a distance of fifty yards, and a grassy tract and a
gravel-walk between. Beyond the road rolls the Kennebec, here two or
three hundred yards wide. Putting my head out of the window, I can see
it flowing steadily along straightway between wooded banks; but arriving
nearly opposite the house, there is a large and level sand island in the
middle of the stream; and just below the island the current is further
interrupted by the works of the mill-dam, which is perhaps half finished,
yet still in so rude a state that it looks as much like the ruins of a
dam destroyed by the spring freshets as like the foundations of a dam yet
to be. Irishmen and Canadians toil at work on it, and the echoes of
their hammering and of the voices come across the river and up to this
window.
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