We have a wish, also, that this name should be pronounced properly.  It is not called Oyster Pond, as the uninitiated would be very apt to get it, but Oyster Pund, the last word having a sound similar to that of the cockney’s ‘pound,’ in his “two pund two.”  This discrepancy between the spelling and the pronunciation of proper names is agreeable to us, for it shows that a people are not put in leading strings by pedagogues, and that they make use of their own, in their own way.  We remember how great was our satisfaction once, on entering Holmes’ Hole, a well-known bay in this very vicinity, in our youth, to hear a boatman call the port, ’Hum’ses Hull.’  It is getting to be so rare to meet with an American, below the higher classes, who will consent to cast this species of veil before his school-day acquisitions, that we acknowledge it gives us pleasure to hear such good, homely, old-fashioned English as “Gar’ner’s Island,” “Hum’ses Hull,” and “Oyster Pund.”

This plainness of speech was not the only proof of the simplicity of former days that was to be found in Suffolk, in the first quarter of the century.  The eastern end of Long Island lies so much out of the track of the rest of the world, that even the new railroad cannot make much impression on its inhabitants, who get their pigs and poultry, butter and eggs, a little earlier to market, than in the days of the stage-wagons, it is true, but they fortunately, as yet, bring little back except it be the dross that sets every thing in motion, whether it be by rail, or through the sands, in the former toilsome mode.

The season, at the precise moment when we desire to take the reader with us to Oyster Pond, was in the delightful month of September, when the earlier promises of the year are fast maturing into performance.  Although Suffolk, as a whole, can scarcely be deemed a productive county, being generally of a thin, light soil, and still covered with a growth of small wood, it possesses, nevertheless, spots of exceeding fertility.  A considerable portion of the northern prong of the fork has this latter character, and Oyster Pond is a sort of garden compared with much of the sterility that prevails around it.  Plain, but respectable dwellings, with numerous out-buildings, orchards and fruit-trees, fences carefully preserved, a pains-taking tillage, good roads, and here and there a “meeting-house,” gave the fork an air of rural and moral beauty that, aided by the water by which it was so nearly surrounded, contributed greatly to relieve the monotony of so dead a level.  There were heights in view, on Shelter Island, and bluffs towards Riverhead, which, if they would not attract much attention in Switzerland, were by no means overlooked in Suffolk.  In a word, both the season and the place were charming, though most of the flowers had already faded; and the apple, and the pear, and the peach, were taking the places of the inviting cherry.  Fruit abounded, notwithstanding the close vicinity of the district to salt water, the airs from the sea being broken, or somewhat tempered, by the land that lay to the southward.