Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog

New Neighbors At Ponkapog, by
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23360]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NEIGHBORS AT PONKAPOG ***

Produced by David Widger

OUR NEW NEIGHBORS AT PONKAPOG
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
When I saw the little house building, an eighth of a mile beyond my
own, on the Old Bay Road, I wondered who were to be the tenants. The
modest structure was set well back from the road, among the trees, as if
the inmates were to care nothing whatever for a view of the stylish
equipages which sweep by during the summer season. For my part, I
like to see the passing, in town or country; but each has his own
unaccountable taste. The proprietor, who seemed to be also the
architect of the new house, superintended the various details of the
work with an assiduity that gave me a high opinion of his intelligence
and executive ability, and I congratulated myself on the prospect of
having some very agreeable neighbors.
It was quite early in the spring, if I remember, when they moved into
the cottage--a newly married couple, evidently: the wife very young,
pretty, and with the air of a lady; the husband somewhat older, but still
in the first flush of manhood. It was understood in the village that they
came from Baltimore; but no one knew them personally, and they
brought no letters of introduction. (For obvious reasons I refrain from
mentioning names.) It was clear that, for the present at least, their own
company was entirely sufficient for them. They made no advances
toward the acquaintance of any of the families in the neighborhood, and
consequently were left to themselves. That, apparently, was what they
desired, and why they came to Ponkapog. For after its black bass and
wild duck and teal, solitude is the chief staple of Ponkapog. Perhaps its
perfect rural loveliness should be included. Lying high up under the
wing of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous breath of pines and cedars, it
chances to be the most enchanting bit of unlaced dishevelled country
within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half
an hour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven be
praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw.
Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day would render the place
uninhabitable.
The village--it looks like a compact village at a distance, but unravels
and disappears the moment you drive into it--has quite a large floating

population. I do not allude to the perch and pickerel in Ponk-apog Pond.
Along the Old Bay Road, a highway even in the colonial days, there are
a number of attractive villas and cottages straggling off towards Milton,
which are occupied for the summer by people from the city. These
birds of passage are a distinct class from the permanent inhabitants, and
the two seldom closely assimilate unless there has been some previous
connection. It seemed to me that our new neighbors were to come
under the head of permanent inhabitants; they had built their own house,
and had the air of intending to live in it all the year round.
"Are you not going to call on them?" I asked my wife one morning.
"When they call on us," she replied lightly.
"But it is our place to call first, they being strangers."
This was said as seriously as the circumstance demanded; but my wife
turned it off with a laugh, and I said no more, always trusting to her
intuitions in these matters.
She was right. She would not have been received, and a cool "Not at
home" would have been a bitter social pill to us if we had gone out of
our way to be courteous.
I saw a great deal of our neighbors, nevertheless. Their cottage lay
between us and the post-office--where he was never to be met with by
any chance--and I caught frequent glimpses of the two working in the
garden, floriculture did not appear so much an object as exercise.
Possibly it was neither; may be they were engaged in digging for
specimens of those arrowheads and flint hatchets which are continually
coming to the surface hereabouts. There