The first day brought us through woods rich in the moccasin flower and
lupine, and plains whose soft expanse was continually touched with
expression by the slow moving clouds which
"Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges,"
to the banks of the Fox river, a sweet and graceful stream. We reached
Geneva just in time to escape being drenched by a violent thunder
shower, whose rise and disappearance threw expression into all the
features of the scene.
Geneva reminds me of a New England village, as indeed there, and in the
neighborhood, are many New Englanders of an excellent stamp, generous,
intelligent, discreet, and seeking to win from life its true values.
Such are much wanted, and seem like points of light among the swarms of
settlers, whose aims are sordid, whose habits thoughtless and slovenly.
With great pleasure we heard, with his attentive and affectionate
congregation, the Unitarian clergyman, Mr. Conant, and afterward visited
him in his house, where almost everything bore traces of his own handy
work or that of his father. He is just such a teacher as is wanted in
this region, familiar enough with the habits of those he addresses to
come home to their experience and their wants; earnest and enlightened
enough to draw the important inferences from the life of every day.
A day or two we remained here, and passed some happy hours in the woods
that fringe the stream, where the gentlemen found a rich booty of fish.
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