Wilderness Run Read Online Free PDF Page A

play a few tunes on the piano. Can’t you, girls?”
    â€œI think that’s a wonderful idea,” interrupted Faustina. “Perhaps she could paint all our portraits one day.”
    Hoping to avoid further notice, Bel shrank back in her seat, one of the eight oak and velvet thrones that rounded the table. These, too, had come from Germany, a wedding gift from Faustina’s father. They possessed the curious power both to raise and diminish their occupants, so that down at the other end of the table, her twitching cousin looked as if he were trying to swim up from a dark sea of cloth.
    Now the adults were talking about something else, which had to do with the price of paper and how it might affect the lumber trade, and George was saying that soon there would be no trees left in Vermont and it was best if they didn’t rely on them. Her uncle’s main passion in life was business, what would make his family and his city rich. Although both he and her father frequently traveled to Boston, they loved their native state, and remained devoutly loyal to all the generations that had come before them. Bel’s grandfather Lindsey had made his fortune breeding the merino sheep given to him by the ambassador to Lisbon. And Faustina’s father, the lumber baron Henry Gale, had worked in concert with Mr. Lindsey to tame the wild forests of Vermont to pastures and stone walls.
    Bel saw Laurence jerk his head, signaling his impatience—but he had promised that they would include her mother, and Faustina seemed not at all inclined to leave the table. When Bel didn’t respond, he pushed his chair back with a scrape.
    â€œMay we be excused?” Laurence said, interrupting his father’s lecture on the superiority of the American train stations to those of Europe, the latter of which lay on the outskirts of town rather than in its center.
    â€œIn England, the passengers arrive at the dismal, swampy limits of the city. In New England, they disembark in the middle of it all,” said George, glaring at his son as he concluded.
    â€œI suppose you may,” Daniel said mildly, looking at Laurence. He sat like a strung bow opposite his wife, his long spine arched toward the table.
    â€œI want dessert,” Bel said, obstinate. Her mother still showed no signs of getting up; Faustina had fixed two sad eyes on the window, as if some wintry creature out there were the cause of all suffering.
    â€œAs I was saying”—George searched the table for someone still interested in his tirade—“the centralized station just proves that the railroad has become the vibrant heart of our culture, every track an artery—”
    â€œYour father would hate to hear it,” Faustina broke in. “He adored his Morgans. He thought they were the heart of our culture.”
    â€œHe adored horses because he didn’t know any better,” said George. His gray hair wagged in agreement to his words. “But who would want to trade the smooth ride of the railroad for the bumpy, ditch-ridden conveyance of a wagon?”
    â€œWhat about the canals and steamships?” Daniel protested. Bel’s father had once dreamed of being a ship captain. He could stand all day watching the boats move up and down the lake. In the summers, he often crept off at dawn to swim, something only the young boys did, daring one another in races across Lake Champlain’s scattered coves. “You seem to have forgotten how our fathers sent the lumber south.”
    â€œMiasmal, winding little waterways.” George drew a curve into the tablecloth with his knife, then crossed it with a straight line. The fabric furrowed around his knife. “Railroads can take a man right to the desert, to the mountains, and someday all the way across our country, Allenton to San Francisco. Why long for the soggy steamship or the lame horse when you can ride in a fast, dry, comfortable car?”
    â€œBecause a man