LIBRARY ANNEX 2 BOUGHT WITH THE ] FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMEl THE GIFT OF 1891 Ahxm^ ^COME \T FUND A...^H^l.^i LAJl _ Cornell University Library PS 3027.R6 1886 The round year 3 1924 022 189 223 Cornell University Library The original of tinis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022189223 Copyright, 1886, By EDITH M. THOMAS. AU rights reserved. The Riverside Press j Cambridge: Electrotyped aad Fri&ted by H. 0. Houghton & Oo* TO THE MEMORY OP HELEN HUNT JACKSON. Great heart of many loves ! while earth was thine, Thou didst We Nature and her every mood : Beneath thine eye the frail flower of the wood Uplifted not in vain its fleeting sign, And on thy hearth the mast-tree's blaze benign, With all its sylvan lore, was understood ! Seems homely Nature's mother-face less good, Spirit down-gazing from the Kelds Divine ? Oh, let me bring these gathered leaves of mine, Praising the common earth, the rural year, And consecrate them to thy memory dear, — Thought's pilgrim to thy mortal body's shrine. Beneath soft sheddings of the mountain pine And trailing mountain heath untouched with sere ! CONTENTS. PAOE NatUBB AMD THE NATIVE 5 A SPKiifG Opening 13 Undek the Sky 3^ The Rain and the Fine Weath2:b . . 50 The Sensitive Pbant 67 Grass: A Rcmination 73 The Flt-Tkappek 85 Ecnning-Watbb Notes 89 Along an Inland Beach 107 A Summer Holinight 133 In Praise of the Blackberry .... 150 mondamin 155 The Solitary Bee 172 The Return of a Native .... 177 Autumn and the Muse 201 Gossamer 218 Thistle-Down and Silver-Rod .... 224 Where it Listeth 230 Ember Days 242 Flake White 265 Frost and Moonshine 278 Hearth-Firb 282 NATURE AND THE NATIVE. Wise Autochthon, bid thy rootB Grapple firmer yet the soil, That assures thee bread and olL Wandering life thy scheme ill suits, Strengthen every connate tie. Thou art held within a coil : Free thou art, ii thou comply ; Bond, the moment thou wouldst fly. Nature becomes genial and communica- tive only when assurance is given that yon have come to stay, to " locate," and make a focus (or fireside) on your own account ; but should it appear that you are only touching, on your way to some more distant point, she gives the genii of the place explicn; orders not to induct you into any of their choicer ' mysteries : the mere spy is tolerated, but not encouraged. You come, eager and aggres- sive, on your specialist's errand, whatever it may be, — botany, ornithology, or other; you may take hence, perforce, a large number and variety of specimens, press the flower, embalm the bird ; but a " dry garden " and a case of still-life are poor showings for the 6 NATURE AND THE NATIVE. true natural history of flower or bird. This can be obtained only by remaining, and be- coming naturalized in that Queen's Domin- ion, of which your specimens were loyal sub- jects. Distrustful Nature! jealous aboriginals! It is plain no confidential relations can be established, as a basis for profitable inter- course, until it is thoroughly understood by the court and the commonalty that you in- tend remaining, and will take a citizen's in- terest in the smallest municipal affairs. A native of the level country had long regret- ted being shut out from the communion of the mountains. At length, it came in this native's way to perform the prophet's mirar cle, and he went to the mountains ; but the mountains received him not : vows and obla- tions h^lfailed not to pay at their altars, but to no avail. He came and went, frequenting their solemn deliberations. Something he heard of what was uttered by their granite lips, but it bore little significance to his mind, for he had never acquired the vernac- ular, and could find no one to act as inter- preter in his behalf. Besides, it soon seemed to him he would like these grave eminences to stand from between him and his philoso- NATURE AND THE NATIVE^ 7 pher's sunlight, for unquestionably they de- layed the morning, and hurried on the even- ing shade. Taking train for home, he watched with half-eonscious satisfaction the mountains lapsing to hills, the hiUs to gentle undulations, — like waves of the sea quiet- ing after a storm ; and when at sundown the wide, open country, with its liberal har- vest fields and its frequent jutting penin- sulas of dark woodland, came in sight, sweet content and tranquil pleasure entered his heart, through his eyes. The scene ap- pealed ; he could respond ; he could not mistake its purport, having been thus ad- dressed since childhood. Removed from home, it is curious what a congeries of foregone delights our memory finds to bemoan ; the loss of the least thing afBicts us. Unless we can hear that distant Homeric alarum, the cawing of crows be- yond the still, autumnal woods ; unless our step threshes out the wild incense of penny- royal as we go through the fields ; unless we can see the scraggy trident of the old three- cleft apple-tree, thrust up sharply against the evening pallor, — we feel a sense of strangeness and deprivation altogether dis- proportioned to the significance of the poor 8 NATURE AND THE NATIVE. things we prize. The Land of the Stranger — it is well situated under heaven, pleas- antly diversified, prompt and generous with the husbandman ; yet ask us not to sit in judgment upon its excellences, for we must confess to prejudice and a preoccupation of love. The face of the Stranger's Land is fair, but, to us, it lacks spiritual beauty; good soil it is, but our own stubborn glebe will produce more for us. We owe to travel this, at least, that it sends us back to our own with increased esteem and affection for the homely and familiar surrounding. Remove a race, or an individual of a race, from its habitat, and we shall see with what fond ingenuity it strives to make the foster- land take on the semblance of the mother- country's face. The new country presents a horticultural hodge-podge, — a vast, unf enced field, gardened according to the home -re- flecting custom of how many and diverse nationalities. Their works do always follow them ; their grains, their trees, their flowers, and (more's the pity!) their weeds, until only the botanical adept can safely say what is indigenous and what introduced. Wher- ever he goes, though only from section to section, the settler brings some traditional NATURE AND THE NATIVE. 9 notion or other, which he recommends virgin Nature to adopt. Early in the pioneer days of the Western Reserve, a certain township blossomed out with mayweed, in whose hardy and prolific stock the tender slip of trans- planted civilization encountered a stubborn combatant. Without doubt, maruta cotula, smuggling itself in with other botanical su- pernumeraries, would have followed the emi- grants, at no distant day ; but its immediate •generation, in this particular neighborhood, was due to the broadcast sowings of one of the settlers, who, holding by the remedial virtues of mayweed, and fearing lest it might not abound in the new country, had taken care to bring from his eastern home a goodly supply of seed ! Henceforth, among the neighbors, the weed was sarcastically mentioned as the " Deacon's medicinal herb ; " but I venture to believe even they were often gratefully reminded of the look and aroma of the home roads. The binding strength of the claim which Nature — the limited Natui-e surrounding the spot of our nativity — fixes upon us, was never better illustrated than in the pathetic story told of the Esquimau, who, mortally iU, was being conveyed to his native land. 10 NATURE AND THE NATIVE. As the voyage progressed, he was constantly inquiring of those on the lookout : " Do you see ice ? Do you see ice ? " Surely, if he did not live to reach the frozen coast of his mortal desire, his spirit could never have rested until it found an Elysian field of trackless snow and an unmelting palace built from quarryings of the glacier. It is possible we do not yet understand the true pathology of home-sickness. Who knows whether soul or body pines more for the- familiar envelopment ? Have wood, field, rock, and stream vested in us something of theirs ? or have we so parted our spirit among them, that separation touches us so sorely ? It is as though the lowly elemental life, inalienably connected with us on our Mother-Earth's side, cried out with one ac- cord : " O dear Native, stay with us in the place where you were bom ! We faithfully serve you while you speak and act among your mobile kind ; and we, when you cease from speech and action altogether, will re- ceive and disperse your worn-out substance more gently than it could ever happen to you elsewhere." This lowly elemental life insists upon its kinship with us. Wherever man is bom, he finds himself, in large de- NATURE AND THE NATIVE. 11 gree, " bounded by the nature of the place." He may be reckoned outlandish or inlandish, according to the topography of his country. If he be of the highlands, he develops an- other set of muscles than that habitually exercised by the lowlander. As surely as Nature grows dwarfs or giants where she • pleases, coloring them white, black, red, or yellow, curling their hair or brushing it straight and lank, she has a cooperative hand upon the temperamental qualities of the race. The countenance she turns to- ward us is, in a measure, reflected in our physiognomy, pictured small in the eye, so that frequently it may be inferred whether hiU, prairie, or the watery plain fills our natural perspective. We read that the blood of certain marine crustaceans has the same pungent bitterness as the sea itself ; is there not, perhaps, a salty tang in the arterial cir- culation of a people dwelling on the sea- coast ? A samething insular in the disposi- tion of an island people (we are not, in particular, thinking of the " snug little isl- and " ) ? Do we not expect an Alpine race will be good climbers, natural aspirers? that a forest race wiU be shy, mysterious, dru- idic ? We must not be too hard upon Boeo- 12 NATURE AND THE NATIVE. tians if we find them sluggish and inapt, but remember how heavy and sleep-inducing is the atmosphere that overlies their province. We must pardon in the dweller of the trop- ics a tropical luxuriousness in habit and feel- ing, and condone austerity in the pensioner of a hard-bound soil ; mindful that where plant growths are rapid and quickly ma- ■ tured humanity is physically precocious, and that where Nature takes a century to rear an oak, making it strong as a mediseval cas- tle, man's upbuilding progresses as slowly and surely. A SPRING OPENING. When does the spring begin? In No- vember, if we credit the mtch - hazel ; for no sooner has this Ternal - hearted creature stripped off her last summer's raiment than she decks herself out in yellow gimps and fringes, seeming to say, through the ominous rustle of falling leaves, " Neighbors, you are all mistaken in giving up and going to sleep. See how thrifty and courageous I am ! " Indeed, throughout the winter, nature's active and crescent principle seems never held wholly in abeyance. From time to time, some precocious member of a dormant fam- ily, plant or animal, may be observed awake and stirring, as one who, having much on hand to accomplish, makes an early start by candle-light. The groujid-hog is not the only cave-dwelling worthy gifted with mete- orological second-sight. The sleeping earth divines. I have always wondered at the remarkable presumption of the almanac-makers in fur- 14 A SPRING OPENING. nishing us with a time-table showing the ar- rivals and departures of the seasons. They quarter the year by means of equinoxes and solstices, and we good-humoredly accept the arbitrary divisions. The only difficulty is the great number and frequency of Nature's movable festivals, which no statistician can tabulate, the order being completely changed from year to year. It takes the united skill and experience of Old Probabilities, the nat- uralist, and the poet, to run the line of sur- vey exact between winter and spring. The frontier is constantly shifting. A few days of sunshine push it forward many leagues in favor of spring ; but the north wind, making a brisk assault from behind its icy intrench- ments, repels the invasion, and reconquers the disputed territory for winter. It is still February. You may treat it as Dies Fehniatus, time of purification and sacrifice ; or, as the merry month of Sprout Kele, following the faintly hopefid sugges- tion of the old Saxon calendar. The long snow has retreated under-ground, or is fast being carried off by numerous plethoric streams, yellow and seething as torrents of lava lately spilled from some volcanic crater. The earth everywhere looks shriveled and A SPRING OPENING. 15 mummy-like, giving us the impression that the cerements have been folded back prema^ turely, or that the miracle of resurrection lags far behind the hour appointed. Last year's crisp leaves take spasmodic flight, like bits of paper blown about in the electric current. They sail so high, one might fancy they drifted into the folds and creases of the ragged, low -lying clouds that characterize February's sky. In yonder corn-fields the pumpkin vines lie scattered about in withered festoons ; suggesting that the Lemean snake may have been captured there, dispatched, and left to dry away in the sunshine. Some trees in the orchard still bear a remnant of their last year's fruitage: there are your cold, frost - baked apples ; there your cider, well mulled and'warranted not to intoxicate. Here are black walnuts, fantastically mined out by the squirrels, reminding one of the in- genious knick-knacks carved of bone or other material by prisoners or idlers. These shells would now do to string for a rustic rosary, on which to bead our prayers to the sylvan deity. Here is a goldfinch's nest, plucked from its branch and thrown away by the wind as a thing capable of no more service. It interests us as some abandoned cabin on 16 A SPUING OPENING. the edge of the wilderness might. Any ten- ement that has once sheltered a family, bird's brood or man's brood, has a certain pathetic suggestiveness ; we hate to see the old home- stead given over to destruction. This " cot- tage in a tree," on examination, proves to have been built almost entirely of thistle down, strengthened by a few long, tough grasses, answering for king -posts and tie- beams. As soon as the snow is off, I find in the orchard evidence of extensive agricultural operations that have been carried on all win- ter under cover of the deep snow-drifts. I know the husbandman who scooped out these primitive looking furrows. He is, in him- self, a most curious piece of combination machinery, his nose being a natural plow- share, and his fore-arm a natural spade. He may be characterized as the original Autoch- thon, being earth of the earth, — a clod, with a little instinct superadded. He is known by hearsay as the mole. Rare are the glimpses one may have of this shy groimdling ! The field of his operations is scarcely less ambi- tious than that which Kubla Khan inclosed for the site of his pleasure-house : — " Twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round." A SPSING OPENING. 17 If you lay open the soil, thinking to follow his trail, you will be surprised at the great number of turns he has made, — to the right, to the left, back again upon his traces, — un- til you find one deep bore which descends, apparently, to the nadir. If your excavating tools are good enough, and your patience is also good, you may come upon him comfort- ably dozing in the penetralia of the earth. His neighbor, the field-mouse, is the pro- prietor of that low grass thatch, looking pre- cisely like the geographical picture of a Hot- tentot house. Thrust your fingers through the front door and gently lift off the roof, and you will see as cosy a domicile as ever sheltered a feathered biped. It would seem that this obscure citizen of the earth had sometime been to school to the wren or spar- row, so nest -like are the structure and ap- pointments of his sleeping - chamber. I never found much in his larder beside a few apple seeds, — small indication, indeed, of riotous living. A good many well -riddled apples lying in the path of his explorations suggested that he had been living on the veg- etarian plan through the winter. The season advances. The day is length- ened " perceptibly. Yesterday, this meadow 18 A SPRING OPENING. was Winter's camping-ground. To-day, a few barracks, shreds of canvas, and broken bits of ammunition (frozen drifts in fence comers and hollows) remain to speak of his occupancy. The sun and the south wind have been this way together, and after them comes the rain, obliterating these last vestiges of the flying winter. A few days more of gen- tle weather, and we see little irregular paths of green winding everywhere about the pas- tures ; these paths mark the route taken by Spring on her first stolen, invisible round. After a while there will be no spot of ground her quickening feet have not touched. Strip off the sodden leaves, which are the patchwork quUt Nature spreads over her babes in the wood. A legion seedlings stretch their whitish-green arms above the mould. Vegetable crustaceans they are, ex- tending their tentacles in search of food. Great mother ! if these bantlings of the oajt, the beech, and the maple squirm and twist, and find their cradles too short and too nar- row, what will become of them by and by, when they require more room for exercise and more abundant nutrition ? Wherewithal will you feed and clothe them? Think of the vast prairies, where you have nt the A SPRING OPENING. 19 shadow of a tree ! Consider if you cannot transplant some of this surplus population in its infancy. Last autumn I observed, with speculative interest, the great amount of spurious mast which the oak-tree discharged along with its natural fruitage. It seemed not unlikely that, if a count could be made, the numbers of this spurious mast would be found to ex- ceed those of the acorns. Inside of one of these mock nuts, round in shape and of the size of a pea, a kernel not vegetable is found : this is the sleeping-chamber of a lazy white grub, — suggestive type of the earthling, buried in fat content in its own little terres- trial ball. A strange servitude is this of the oak to the cynips, or gall-fly, in thus contrib- uting of his substance to the housing and nourishment of his enemy's offspring. The mischievous sylph selects sometimes the vein of a leaf, sometimes a stem, which she stings, depositing a minute egg in the wounded tis- sues. As soon, at least, as the egg hatches, the gall begins to form about the larva, simulating a fruity thriftiness, remaining green through the sunmier, but assuming at length the rus- set of autumn. The innocent acorn Nature puts to bed as early as possible, that it may 20 A SPRING OPENING. make a healthy, wealthy, and wise beginning on a spring morning ; but the cradle that holds the gaU-fly's child she carelessly rocks above ground all winter. I should suppose that more than one hunger - bitten forager, four-footed or feathered, would resort to a larder so convenient and so well stocked with plump tidbits. When I visit my old favorite oak in spring, I notice that the nut-galls are emulating the acorns in emancipating their imprisoned germs of life. Most of the former are al- ready empty, their brown-papery tissues rid- dled like fire-crackers whose use is past. In some few the grub is still enjoying a slug- gard's slumber ; others show a later stage of metamorphosis, — the small bronze and blue- . green fly, with its wings folded about it, like a queen in the tomb of the Pharaohs. Some- times, when I open the gall, the inmate is al- ready mobile, and flies away as soon as light and air reach it. For the moment, the inci- dent has a symbolical significance : I fancy myself an enchanter, — the reviver of a smouldering spark of vital fire. Perhaps it was Psyche herself whom I wafted to the en- joyment of ethereal pleasures. The old trees have recorded another year. A SPRING OPENING. 21 letting out their tough bark girdles to accom- modate the new layer of muscle and adipose. The sap now takes to its capillary ladders, climbing slowly, slowly ; encouraged if the sun shine, faltering and retreating with every relapse of keen weather. What an Odyssey it has to accomplish from the roots of the tree to the last bud on the outermost twig ! South America possesses the MUk Tree, India the Bread Tree, but it is reserved, as a sort of climatic paradox, for our Temper- ate North to furnish the very top of luxury ■in the shape of the Sugar Tree. A man who could persuade these three staple produ- cers to grow on his plantation could thence- forth live independent of the milkman, the baker, and the grocer. It would be easy work to gather the yield of the two tropical trees, but the sweet mi the maple would still have to be gained by the sweat of the brow. Beside its delicious sweetness, there is a rich, almost oleaginous, quality in maple syrup which suggests what the maple nut wpuld have been if Nature had said, " Consider the ways of the hickory, beech, and chestnut, how thrifty and hospitable ! Their boimty keeps my birds and my four-footed groundlings all winter through. Do thou ripen a kernel of 22 A SPRING OPENING. thine own, more toothsome than theirs." What Nature did say was, briefly and prac- tically, " Invest in sugar," More cold, more sweet, seems to be the law governing the sac- charine supply, as though there were warmth and food in the sugar principle, and as though it were excited by keen weather to greater activity in order to meet the needs of the tree. The sap of all wood in early spring is perceptibly sweet. If the discharge of sap from other trees were as free as from the maple, it might be profitable to tap them also, as the butternut, for example. It is plain that Nature drops a little sugar in the milk on which she rears her nursery. All young ones love sweets, even to the baby leaves on the old trees. Who will read us the idyl of The Sugar Bush ? Let us hear no more of the honey of Hybla, or the cates that Hebe and Gany- mede serve up to the Olympians! Shake- speare may have meant the spring harvest of the maple when he said, — " Why then comes in the sweet o' the year. And the red blood reigns in the winter's pale ! " This is the only tree we have that " sweats honey." Into its veins, as into the veins of heroes, the gods have infused ambrosia. Had A SPRING OPENING. 23 the maple been indigenous in Greece, there would have been a special myth regarding it, a special custodian appointed to watch over the sacred grove. Perhaps Pan would have figured as the first sap-gatherer, the first re- finer of sugar. The legend would then have run thus : Pan taught the Arcadians to pierce the forest maple, opening its veins with sharp steel, and in the mouth of the wound insert- ing the reed which he was wont to blow upon ; through this the immortal ichor of the tree distilled, drop by drop, into a pitcher ■ of wreathen gold and silver, lent by the won- dering Bacchantes, who stood near with SHe- nus, nearly astonished into soberness. Pan then built a fire of sere wood, and having poured the immortal ichor into a vessel of iron steeped it for many hours, obtaining a honey-sweet, heart -easing cordial, of which many goas and mortals partook with great delight. There is telegraphy in the air nowadays ; hourly, momentary messages flying between the busy rural genii. These messages may be "taken off " at any station along the route where there is a practiced operator, an intel- ligent and sympathetic ear. One hears of the mysterious trysts kept between botany 24 A SPRING OPENING. and zoology, — of plants waking up by alarm- clocks, and of birds traveling by midnight express, on receipt of expected despatches from head-quarters. I occasionally hear Flora and Fauna exchanging the compliments of the season, and such pleasant gossip as nat- urally results from their near-neighborly re- lations : — Fauna. I have just sent a minnow up the creek. Flora. I 've been blossoming out a pussy wiUow there by the bank. [And after an interval :] Fauna. I venture a bluebird. Flora. Good. I 'U risk a blue violet in the south meadow. [And stiU later : J Fauna. If you listen, this evening, you will hear a frog in the marsh. Flora. To-morrow I shall send you a bas- ket of cowslips. Fauna. Thanks. I am just starting out a hive of bees. Would you like them to scatter pollen ? There is no cessation of this correspond- ence throughout the season. The mutual consent and joint plannings of the two •friendly goddesses are everywhere observe^ A SPRING OPENING. 25 ble. It is to be noticed that for every bird that becomes whist and moping, after the height of summer is passed, some plant will be found putting on sackcloth and ashes, and absenting itself from Flora's court for the rest of the year. Severe and protracted as the winter may have been, the three chief pioneer birds, robin, song -sparrow, and bluebird, do not vary a week in their arrivals, spring after spring. How curiously elate the first robin is ! Qui vive f Qui vive .^-he whistles from the maple tops, on the morning following his return. His song is the same as the thrush sang to the poet Keats, on a spring morning : — " Oh, fret not after knowledge I I have none, And yet my song conies native "with the -warmth. Oh, fret not after knowledge ! I have none, And yet the evening listens." He seems as one prepared to take all weather risks. His weU-feathered plump- ness readily suggests that he has made it a point to build up a good physique against the initial hardships of a spring campaign. Does he return to his quarters of last year, — his substantial adobe house in the fork of the apple-tree? A friend of mine reports 26 A SPRING OPENING. finding a robin's nest with basement, ground- floor, and chamber, three successive stories of good solid mason-work, built in as many successive springs, the last story only being tenanted the current season. Whether this stronghold was in the possession of the orig- inal line of builders could not be deter- mined. Ah, the bluebird's warble ! If any bird is specially commissioned by Heaven to spread the spring evangel, it is he. Yet, like the Ariel spirit that he is, there is, at first, a touch of ventriloquism in his voice. To fix his whereabouts, we look not only "before and after," but overhead, and in the bushes, and along the grass, and see him not — at first. If he bears the sky on his back, as Thoreau thought, it must be the sky of Italy ; the heavens are never so blue over this region of the earth. There is red enough on his breast to have distin- guished him as a red-breast, had it not been for the more pronounced azure of his wings. I hear the song -sparrow practicing his first matins for the year. No wonder his song has been compared to the tinkling of bells! A more vibrating, resonant quality there is not in the whole choir of native- A SPRING OPENING. 27 bird voices. His ditty consists of three short introductory notes (embodying the theme or motive, perhaps) ; these three notes translating themselves, to my ear, in the syllables " sweet, sweet, sweet," with a draw- ing in of the breath each time, followed by a bewildering succession of delicious tintin- nabulations. From the song-sparrow's man- ner of perching and addressing himself as to the auditorium, I cannot help thinking that he has been in training for the lyric stage. Not long since, I was present at a musical duel, — not between the poet and nightin- gale, but between two song - sparrows, dis- tinguished professionals. One I could both see and hear to good advantage. When he had sung through his part, he stopped, and, with head cunningly askance, listened to his rival's performance ; paying the most jeal- ous attention, and, meanwhile, revolving some new felicity of his own. Each time he slightly varied the cadence, winding up with a piquant little crotchet, as who should say, " Can you outdo that, I wonder? " The duel grew more animated with every bout, until the performers, forgetting the etiquette of competition, sung the "rests," ineffectu- ally trying to put each other out. A third 28 A SPRING OPENING. voice could then be distinguished, — prob- ably that of the moderator, or judge, who held the wager. That long, clear, cool note, like the arc described by a bright new sickle, — that's the meadow-lark ! I know well the springy pasture where he hunts his breakfast, the wind-crisped pools where he sometimes dips his bill. His coming is not long delayed after the middle of March. The blackbird is his contemporary. I saw a whole flock of daring blackbirds careering above the gusty woods in the March gale. They seemed to be exercising their speed and agility in one of the heroic games of the air. When they reached a goal, or station, in the top of some high tree, they disposed them- selves about the branches like so many- weather-vanes, all facing in the same direc- tion, and all indicating the south-southwest. This was practically " trimming to the wind." This April has some lovely exotic days, borrowed from the Indian summer, and ap- plied on account of some April weather in last October. The fall and spring have many meteorological phases in common. We have now the same luminous white A SPRING OPENING. 29 skies, the same drowsy luxury in the atmos- phere with heat waves over the distant fields, that were characteristic of the Indian summer. The tawny and crimson inflores- cence of maples and other early - budding trees contributes to the autumnal glamour of the picture. Except for the greenness of the grass and a certain verve and freshness within our hearts, we might imagine we were drifting past the source of the year, to find the summer by way of October and September. But the spring is here. There is nothing dead or inorganic to be seen. The maple brush left by the choppers last winter is bourgeoning out, in cheerful un- consciousness that its veins are cut off from the. arterial supply. The log rotting in the woods, if it puts forth no new life in kind, at least supports a lusty growth of ferns and mosses. Who knows how much stub- born rock went to mill, last winter, to be ground up into good fertile soil? Who knows but the very stones are softening, continually growing more yielding to the feet of such poor humble plants as are disposed to take up their abode with them ? I should not be surprised to hear that Nature herself was the Pyrrha who, surviving the deluge, 30 A SPRING OPENING. and casting stones behind her to repeople the earth, saw them assume organic life and form. The earth breathes freely once more, respiring vapor and gnats from the fresh- turned soil. Now if I owned Pegasus and a few acres of good upland, not too cold and dry, I would go plowing; and as I shaped the course and depth of the furrow, grasping the stilts with firm hands, I would siag a paean for the plow. Every great plowman, from the founder of Rome to the finder of the mountain daisyi crushed by the share, should be celebrated in my song ; and I would teach that there is stiU something sar cred about the furrow, as there was when Romulus marked out the walls of his city and lifted the share over the places designed for gateways. The heroic-romantic interest which some attach to an old, dismantled, peace-enduring cannon I find in the plow during its winter vacation. All its features, if I may so speak, express the idea of enforced idleness: the out-thrust handles assert its impatience to be taken afield; the share and the mould- board, though they have gathered rust, sig- nify their readiness and avidity. A SPRING OPENING. 31 I would like to see again certain plowed fields of my childhood's haunting, — fields next the woods, slowly, by repeated grubbing and burning, won over from wild nature. Here and there are beds of ashes; also, charred stumps, out of whose hollow centres dart occasional slender flames, pale in the sunshine : one might fancy that these are some species of harmless small snake native in such places. The plow works its way among the stumps, and leaves untouched many a defiant oasis of weeds and wild grass. Would it not be well to remodel the verse which represents the soil as "patient of the bending plow " ? Here, the bending plow, or rather the plowman, must be patient of the soil. But the scent of the fresh-turned earth, of baked clods and charred wood, with now and again whiffs of smoke brought along by the moist wind, is, memory declares, in- cense- most grateful to the rural deities. To some extent, new-uncovered land satis- fies my desire to visit new-discovered land. The plowed field which I visit to-day was a meadow last year. Such turning and re- shaping of the old garment of the soil should give this spot of earth span-new attractive- ness in my eyes. As I listen to the snapping 32 A SPRING OPENING. of grass roots (stout stitches in the old gar- ment !), as small stones tinkle against the plowshare, and as I see the turf quickly and cleanly turned by the invisible iron or steel toothed rodent, I am ready to applaud : "Well said, old mole! Canst work i' the earth so fast ? A worthy pioneer ! " The furrow-slice, — does it not look appe- tizing to a hungry eye ? And the field, when it is plowed, — does it not somehow suggest a giant brown-loaf, or gingerbread, method- ically cut in impartial pieces ? How cordi- ally the earth invites the husbandman ! It is either, " Ho ! here is your racy soil for corn ; " or, " Here is your choice land for wheat ; " else, " Why seek you further for a vegetable garden plot ? " As this dry-land keel pursues its course, lifting the brown waves around it and leav- ing a permanent wake, scores of adventurers flock hither. What bird of the air spread the news among his kind that this field was to be plowed to-day? Before one furrow's length is completed the farmer has a follow- ing of blackbirds and robins ready to share the toils and profits of tillage. Say what you will, this is cooperation : the birds have man to thank for to-day's entertainment, A SPRING OFENING. 33 and man has the birds to thank for their services in behalf of future harvests. Down these feathered throats, almost too much en- grossed with the pleasures of the palate to exchange the civilities of the day, goes the angleworm, with all its knots and kinks ; item, cutworm, slug, beetle, and mischievous larvae unnumbered. Some one with a turn for numerical statistics has by calculation ascertained that " a redbreast requires daily an amount of food equal to an earthworm fourteen feet long." Consider, O man of toil, how greatly thy own welfare depends upon this surprising appetite : if the red- breast should be out of health but for a single season, what ill fortune might befaU thee and thine ! The ground that was broken this morning is, long before sunset, disputed over by wan- dering clans of gnats. These fretful chil- dren of the earth have not yet learned that their air privilege extends beyond the limits of the furrow whence they come. Flies lazily sail hither and thither, their 'wings glimmering in the sunshine ; fireflies of the daytime, I see, carrying sparks of argent light and leading fancy along the sylph traU. In a few hours after the plowing the 34 A SPRING OPENING. ground is often covered with fine webs; delicate springes, perhaps, with which to catch the swarming gnats and flies. Cannot you. read yonder furrowed field ? If the early Greeks wrote their language from right to left and from left to right, alternately, the system resembling, as they thought, the turnings made by the oxen in plowing (^Boustrophedon), why should not the plowshare be likened to an immense pen or style, and the field which it traverses to a written page, — or at least to a ruled page, in which sundry themes of great antiquity are copied in endless repetition ? A plowed field is a writing of the palimpsest sort, in which year after year one theme is erased to give place to another, not a trace of the earlier hieroglyphic remaining. In the " ro- tation of crops," the order is, commonly, corn, oats, wheat, grass or clover, to which procession the plow fixes the period. To me, there is something of poetic justice in the precedence given, in this agricultural series', to the red man's plant : it is as though the virgin soil refused to be propi- tiated, or tamed to other use, until Indian Mondamin had been commemorated in the plumed and pennoned ranks of the maize. A SPRING OPENING. 35 At any rate, it is recognized as good farm- ing strategy to set the native plant to sub- due the soil for the adoptive cereals. Not all the fields which I have seen plowed this season are to be sown or planted. Some must run a course of dis- cipline under the harrow, to rid them of the weeds they have gathered. Some worn fields, for good service done, are granted a time for rest, to lie in the sunshine and mel- low during the longest days of the year ; though no harvests be ripened here, this season, the soil itself is ripening. With these seemingly idle fields I have great sym- pathy. Pegasus plows for summer fallow. How luxurious the feeling of the dew in the first April nights! How winding and insinuating the April zephyr, kissing with moist infantine lips ! The sharp-eyed win- ter stars are all gone under the west. No more hurling of frost javelins and jagged meteor lances, but, instead, the soft de- scent of humid beams that have been fil- tered through the same sieve that strains the dew. If you require an additional proof of the season's settled good faith, if you would have the spring well indorsed, walk under the trees this evening, and observe if 36 A SPRING OPENING. anything forbids your progress. Notliing but a slight ticklish thread stretched across your eyelids, like the gentlest premonition of sleep. That will do. That is the spider's indorsement of the spring. When she har- nesses her loom, and begins her season's weaving, you may be sure she has had fa- vorable advices from the head weather-clerk. But now the spring comes on only too rap- idly ; we cannot stay the delicious imma- turity and tenderness of the year, though we deplore their passing, as mothers do the " growing up " of their children. Out come the leaves, limp and weak at first (like but- terflies just escaped from the pupa*ase) ; not yet green but amber-colored, it would appear that they have known nothing of the winter's siege, but have come from a dream- world of sunshine, steeped in its warm light. A new sound is in the air, — the fluttering, uncertain speech of the young leaves. UNDER THE SKY. In the ancient poets the supreme deity is often put for the sky, the recognized empire of that deity. There was not only a fair- weather Jove but a foul -weather Jove, a rainy Jupiter and an arid Jupiter ; besides, a cloud -driver and a lightener; in every phase of the weather, a god present and reg- nant. Somehow, in all ages, spiritual heaven has been confusedly associated with the phys- ical heavens. That intuitive religion fixes the home of the Supreme and the Unknown in regions far supramundane is shown in the natural ritual of the eyes and hands in prayer. There was a fine and high symbolism ex- pressed in the architecture of the old hypse- thral temples, built as they were without roof, and open to the light and breath of heaven, to the storm as well as to the serene azure. Who could not have worshiped there without compromise to his faith ? And yet such a temple would hardly have been hypsethral enough for our devouter mo- 38 UNDER TEE SKY. meuts ; nothing less than all out - of - doors would have satisfied. Would you for a while shut out the earth and fill your eye with the heavens, lie down, some summer day, on the great mother's lap, with a soft grass pillow under your head; then look around and above you, and see how slight, apparently, is your terrestrial environment, how foreshortened has become the foreground, — only a few nodding bents of blossomed grass, a spray of clover with a bumble-bee probing for honey, and in the distance, perhaps, the billowy outline of the diminished woods. What else you see is the blue of heaven Ulimitably stretched above and around you. . You seem to be lying not so much on the surface of earth as at the bottom of the sky. Under this still, transparent sea, " deeper than did ever plummet sound," your own thoughts and imaginings have become a treasure-trove of inestimable wealth and rarity. You do not care to move, lest in so doing you break the deep sky charm, and your treasure-trove van- ish. An interval of sky-gazing might well be recommended as a palliative in exagger- ated cases of irritability. Let the patient bathe his fevered or lacerated soul in the UNDER THE SKY. 39 third and highest heaven, and see what ob- livious comfort he will experience. No indi- vidual grievance, crying lustily at the earth's surface, but if it turn its face upward, the serenity of heaven will smile it out of coun- tenance, and send it away shrunken and abashed. A child once assured me that " blue eyes come from looking at the sky a great deal, — until your eyes get full of the sky." Few are the blue -eyed people who are so from much visual communion with the open heavens. We can scarcely believe that any mortal lives under fairer skies than ours. On the Atlantic coast they cannot see more orient sunrises, or on the Pacific sunsets more occi- dental. Nowhere else does the winter zenith, untracked by the low sun, show a wilder and lovelier depth of azure. We might have had a satiety of fair-weather skies, if there had not been interspersed with these a thrilling variety of inclement skies. Nowhere else have been seen sublimer confusions of storm- clouds cut by more trenchant and beautiful lightnings. If we do not live on the sea- coast, we are at least admirably situated on the sky-coast. The airy and the azure sea everywhere flows in. Projecting into it, the 40 UNDER THE SKT. mountains may be reckoned as bold head- lands and promontories, on which the cloud armadas drive and go to pieces; the hills are gently curving capes, and aU hollow in- tervals are the gulfs, bays, and inlets of heaven. All is sky-coast ; no inland, unless it be in earth, — the mine and the cavern. Entering the latter, with a lighted torch in hand, you are likely to discover in the roof an illusory heaven, a crystal-studded coun- terfeit of night and the stars. Each season — it might almost be said each month — has its peculiar sky-and-cloud scene. The time of year is kept in the heavens as well as upon the earth. These shifting, semi -lucent, many -tinted clouds (pale rose, amber, lilac, and even greenish) belong unmistakably to the skies of April. There we read tender and delicate prophecy of the earliest flowers, arbutus, anemone, cress, and violet, and the light, cold leafage with which they are mingled in forest ways. The June sky shows the least admixture of red. Is it not possible that the common at- mosphere has become so diaphanous that we look through it into very ether ? How quickly the clouds dissolve in it, even as flakes of snow dissolve in some still and UNDER THE SKY. 41 dark mountain spring! Those vanishing flecks and films of white give fitting body to the poet's dream of " Spirits that lie In the azare sky When they love, but live no more." After the month of June the atmosphere loses much of its marvelous purity and transparency. It is another sky which bends over the shorn and sheaved fields than that which hung above green meadows and grain -fields in fragrant blossom. In July the noon heavens are a realization of white heat. If there is ripeness in the fields of earth, there is also ripeness in the fields of air ; the opulence of harvest is matched by rich, warm, and tremulous skies, by sunsets more lavish in pageantry. At night the moon rolls up her disk, large and fervid, as though rising from regions of perpetual sum- mer midday. The skies of autumn, when not veiled in mist, and when foiled by the crimsons, russets, and yellows of the frost- bitten woodlands, show a deeper and intenser blue than the skies of June. Deeper still are those glimpses of blue seen through rag- ged cracks in the dun and gray dLouds in midwinter ; narrow and devious rivers they 42 UNDER TBE SKY. seem, lost between frowning cafion-walls. I remember a wild sky at the breaking up of winter, in which the clouds lay in serried masses of uniform curve and shading ; the whole heavens, thus masked, presenting the appearance of a " chopped sea " whose waves were held in frozen abeyance. Sometimes the cloud -work of the winter sky suggests medallions of ivory or agate carved upon lapis lazuli, so vivid is the contrast between cloud and sky ; and sometimes, watching the frail clouds that swiftly cross the face of the winter moon, and for an instant kindle with iridescent light, I am reminded of these lines from " The Blessed Damozel " : — '• And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames." No weather observations are so likely to be casually and carelessly made as those which ^ refer to the sky, The chronicler of a per- fect day usually begins with the specification that " there was not a cloud to be seen ; " but it is highly probable that, if he had searched the horizon, he would have detected some nebulous straw sufficient to show the drift of the wind. Sometimes there wiU be formed in the upper regions of the sky a thin, nnobvious scarf of vapor, not unlike UNDER THE SKY. 43 the magnified texture of crape, or the finest and softest rolls of wool. The clouds of night take the posture of rest, stretching themselves out along the ho- rizon, as though to make earth their couch. The clouds of the daytime are rolling and augmentative, erecting themselves in dome- like masses. A favorite harborage for the great cumulus fleets is just above the south- eastern horizon. There they remain half a . sultry summer day, often threatening with harmless lightning - flashes the rain which does not come. These clouds are fuU of pic- torial and sculptural suggestion. There may be seen the plump cherubs in which the old masters delighted, the confused tumblings of Phaethon and his horses, or the gods and he- roes of the Elgin marbles in aU their muti- lated and pathetic grandeur. We see in the clouds whatever our own imagination, or that of another, bids us see ; some new semblance unfolding itself with every alteration of the vapory outline. " Do you see yonder cloud that 's almost in shape of a camel ? " " By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed." " Methinks it is like a weasel." " It is backed like a weasel." " Or like a whale ? " " Very like a whale." Ten to one, the eye 44 UNDER THE SKY. of old Polonius sympathetically verified the successive images suggested by the skipping fancy of Hamlet. Once attempting to sketch a glittering cumulus dome, as it slowly built itself up from the horizon, I found I had upon my drawing-paper not a bad represen- tation of the rolling lines of foliage, — an argentine forest of the sky. As the cloud continued rising, it seemed at length to have turned round in some degree, one side reced- ing while the other came into fuUer display. Thus it was suggested that clouds may have thickness as well as mere surface, and that, could one sail the heavens, the farther coast of many a nubilous land would invite him with its havens. Having piled Ossa upon Pelion, the cumulus cloud usually topples over, and lies in giantesque confusion along the horizon, or it falls to rise again some- --■where along the extended line of its base. The sailor, of necessity, has a more inti- mate acquaintance than the landsman with the physical signs of heaven. How shall he be advised of approaching danger if not by reading the bulletins of the sky and the clouds ? On the barren plain around him are no trees to hint of rain by showing the white under-side of their leaves ; no bare- UNDER THE SKT. 45 metrical flowers, like the dandelion and chickweed, to give warning with their quick- closing eyelids. The mariner may be pre- sumed to know the tonnage of every cloud sighted on the upper deep, whether the cargo be wind, rain, or rattling hail. The com- plexion of the cloud also advises him of its friendliness or its hostility, just as the colors run up on the mast of a passing vessel would indicate the home port and nationality of the crew. The sailor may well keep a keen outlook on the sky and its forces of cloud : he sails the sea, but he sails by the heavens. The great element, in whose mercy he di- rectly lies, is itself at the mercy of a wider and more potential element ; for the sea, vast body of inanity as it is, is incapable of in- jury except at the instigation of Euroclydon and his fellows. " There comes that gang again," a veteran admiral was in the habit of saying when the winds rose, and a great storm was upon his track. It is seldom that with high winds we have a bright and cloudless sky. The wind does not hunt for nothing. Sometimes it seems to be routing and dispersing the clouds for no other purpose than to accomplish their fright and discomfiture ; to compare great 46 UNDER TEE SKY. things with small, it takes them in its teeth, and gives them the terrier grip, shaking and tearing them into a thousand tatters. Other times, with what one might imagine a herd- ing instinct, it gently but forcibly drives to- gether the stragglers froni all quarters of the sky, collecting them in close ranks along the horizon. Then, often, we see " The cloudy ra^sk slow journeying in the west, Like herded elephants.'' Science has been charged with many deeds of vandalism and desecration. " There was an awful rainbow once in heaven," the poet tells us ; but in the next line we learn that its strands have been unbraided, and that now it is mentioned " in the dull catalogue of common things." The last time the rain- bow showed herself in our heavens, I was satisfied that science might be acquitted ; that nothing had ever been subtracted from the mysterious and unsearchable beauty of the seven-tinted arch. Old as the flood, it is the same brilliant new wonder to us as to the children of Noah. If they construed it for a promise, we may interpret it as a rec- ord. Hanging aloft is the palette with the ranged and graded colors which were used in the painting of the world : the red and UNDER TBE SKT. 47 the yellow of tlie adust and tawny sands and of the earth's volcanic heart-fires ; next, the green, from which were laid on the drap- ery tints worn by the fields, the woods, and the smooth shoulders of the hills ; last of all, the blue and cool amethystine shades of the distant ocean, of the high, airy mountains, and the sky itself. Though reserved as the pendant of the summer rain -cloud, we not infrequently see, in other phases of the weather, fugitive gleams and traces of the messenger sprite. In winter, a bank of clouds will often be overshot with a flicker- ing iridescence, whence the " mother o' pearl flocks " that some one has so aptly noted. Lunar halos and those spectral ap- pearances observed near the sun (familiarly spoken of as " sun dogs ") all wear, in some degree, the livery of the rainbow.. While we traverse the sky in vision and fancy only, we are aware that more practi- cal voyagers are abroad. Yonder hawk, floating about like a pennon detached from the staff, seems to keep aloft not so much by his own exertions as by his being lighter than the element in which he moves. Eap- torial and cruel as he is known to be, he still embodies, as no other winged creatute 48 ' UNDER THE SKT. can, the serene vitality and elasticity of the air. If not the bird of Jove, he must be- long to some of the Immortals. Is not a bird amphibious, a creature of two lives, one upon the earth and another in the sky? Its nidification in the tree-top or on the crag, on the very hem or fringe of the eartb, bespeaks it more an aerial than a terrestrial citizen. The finding of a dead bird is al- ways, to me, something of a surprise and painful shock. It had wings ; then why did it not get safely but of the way of mor- tal calamity ? I should like to credit that old myth of the phoenix and its fiery reju- venation. A bird should not die, but be translated : the eagle to the storm cloud, the brilliant tanager and oriole to the flame of the evening sky, and the bluebird to its na- tive cerulean. At sunrise and sunset the imagination be- comes more venturous. The horizon gates being open for the passage of the sun, it slips through, steals his skiff, and sets sail for the shores of fable. Does the sun go down, great-sphered and cloudless, through a field of clear, gold, imagination pursues, and sees him traversing the Pacific, lighting to-morrow as he goes. UNDER THE SKY. * 49 " Here sunset ; sunrise on Catimyan strand . . . And now, day springs to Himalaya's crest . . . Now, wakes the lotus on old Nilus' breast : Yon orb6d portal opes on Morning Land, — The East beyond the West." From what point of view do we observe that the sun goes under the cloud ? Strange inversion of fact ! With our heads to the nadir, our feet to the zenith, there would be pertinence in such an observation. It is some cheer to know that, in spite of our topsy-turvy notions of cosmos, the sun never does go under, but always over, the clouds. We alone are under the clouds, — " under the weather." 4 THE RAIN A]!fD THE FINE WEATHER. In looking over my year-book, I find no entry recording a holiday spoiled by the rain, while numerous instances are noted of holidays gained from that source. Where- fore "la pluie et le beau temps" of the sweeping Gallic phrase are in my version freely rendered as equivalents ; or, at least, the rain is regarded as one phase of that fine weather which we enjoy the whole year round. How can I entirely sympathize with those who reckon their time by a sun- dial, and boast it as a virtue that they " count the bright hours only " ? The sun- dial and the bright hours are well, but I should be loath to repudiate those gray and lowering hours in which the countenance of our thoughts so easily outshines that of the weather, — some of the more radiant days being, perhaps, a trifle too vivid for our or- dinary spiritual habit. If I keep a sun-dial, I have also a tower of the winds and a mu- TBE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. 51 sical clepsydra, the latter propelled directly by the cascade from heaven; thus I think to deal equitably by all hours and seasons. Our roof-trees grow dense and dark above us, every year more and more shutting off the prospect skyward. Thanks to the rain that we are occasionally called out to inspect the " brave o'erhanging firmament ; " for who is not concerned to watch the arrival and unlading of the great galleys which bring us our fresh and soft water supplies ? Frowns and corrugations on the face of heaven shall succeed in commanding our at- tention, where ten days together of ethereal smiles and tenderness shall fail. There is one pleasure in the rain itself, and another in anticipating it by predictions. Distant be the day when the spectroscope, with its '^ain band " indicator, shall come into gen- eral use, superseding oral prognostication. When this day arrives, it will be to the grief and confusion of those clever meteor- ologists who are found in every neighbor- hood. After all, will the gain in scientific certitude compensate for the loss of pleasure to be derived from pure speculation ? Not- withstanding the superior skepticism with which we meet the dicta of our familiar 52 TEE RAIN AND TBE FINE WEATHER. weather oracle, there is commoiily a kernel of natural philosophy as well as natural po- etry within the absurd envelope of vulgar tradition. Most of the twelve cardinal rain signs enumerated in the Georgics are stiU in good repute. " Never hath a shower hurt any person unforewamed." It took me some time to probe to the probable or- igin of the saying with regard to the new moon and the Indian's powder-horn. Why, indeed, should that aboriginal worthy hang the powder-horn upon a dry rather than a wet moon? The mystery was cleared up for me on my hearing a hunter express his preference for wet weather, as then the leaves on the forest floor, being moist, would not rustle under foot, and betray his pres- ence to the game. Of course, the wood- crafty Indian knew this fact, and took a^ vantage of it ; he would, therefore, have his powder-horn in use during a wet time, but in the dry would naturally suspend it on the convenient lunar peg 1 True, there are those who have no respect for this trite omen, having from their own experience evolved a more likely system of prognostics. I have a neighbor who asks no stronger ar- gument in favor of rain than to see his dog THE. BAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. .53 eat grass. Another observer is specially in the confidence of the " line storm " agent, and has been assured that the direction of the wind during this period " pretty nearly " determines the direction in which we are to look for all the storms of the season follow- ing. Still another, unconsciously verifying the Emersonian maxim, hitches the wagon of his weather, faith to a shooting-star. A transcendental farmer he, whose vane is the meteor's dart shot into the teeth of the ap- proaching but yet invisible storm ; where the star falls, from that quarter he antici- pates the next rough weather. This is the farmer who plants his apple-trees at a slight deflection from the vertical, so that their tops shall exactly indicate the " two o'clock sun." The trees are thus, as he argues, given a westing, so that all the strong . pre- vailing winds from that quarter can do is to lift them to a perpendicular position, by the time they are full-grown. This system of planting, though it may be good arbori- culture, would go far towards doing away with the picturesque .wryness of the apple orchard. It may be questioned whether the clouds of heaven have their favorite lanes and by- 54 THE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. ways marked out on the map of the coun- try over which they pass, yet I frequently hear that the rain " follows the river." H this be true, the rain has a sufficiently puz- zling route, as the river in question abhors a right line, and delights to double upon it- self as often as it can. It is to be remarked that the Lake (Erie), but a few miles dis- tant, is not popularly held to have such a following as is claimed for its humble trib- utary. No local savant can satisfactorily apologize for the slight. I am assured by one living near the river that lightning strikes in its vicinity more frequently than elsewhere ; that the chestnut oftener than any other tree, except the hemlock, is the mark of the thunderbolt ; and that the beech enjoys a singular immunity from dan- ger, — so much so that my informant would not believe, on report, that a beech had been struck, but would require to see the mischief with his own eyes. It would be an entertaining, and perhaps not unprofitable, task to edit the science and pseudo-science in common circulation within the area of a single county, township, or district. * " The former and the latter rains " play the same part in the year's tillage as they THE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. 55 did when the first furrows were drawn in the earth. The spring still comes riding in on the moist surges of the south wind, and the departing summer, also, goes by water, embarking on the tumbling flood of the big September storm. Though one season in- dulges in a reckless expenditure of moisture' and another pinches us with drought, we are pretty sure that the account balances. If any region, formerly well supplied with rain, has come to suffer from aridity, it is probably because the forests, those natural well -sweeps connecting with the heavenly cisterns, have been cut down, A pity it is that their hydraulic action is not visible in some such way as the sun and his specious water-buckets, so that man should be ad- vised by self-interest to stay ^is inroads upon the sylvan territory. Is the rain sent alike upon the just and the unjust? There is one class of the unjust, namely, the tim- ber destructionists, who are likely to bring about a reversal of the old benevolent de- cree. It is a little strange that the poets, while so free to praise the summer rain, should have nothing to say about rain in winter. Have they not heard the wild hunter, who. 66 TBE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. with his rattling shot, brings down the cov- eys of the frost, — the headlong charioteer cracking his thousand whips in the vacant air, unintercepted by leafy branches ? How his lashes score and lacerate the earth's false cuticle of ice and snow, until the quick "is reached, and dormant vitality excited ! In every February rain faint vernal rumors are heard, and cipher despatches are sent to the initiated. The rain in March brings overbold declaration for spring, afterwards diplomatically offset by an occasional dem- onstration in honor of winter. I am sorry for those who fail to perceive the honest stuff there is in March, who can never get along with his chaff and swagger. It must be that Nature relishes the extravagant im- personaticps of this actor, else he would not be encouraged to remain so long upon the scene, or be so frequently recalled, — " With hey, ho, the wind and the rain ! " As yet,' the skies are not blue, but only blue-eyed, the azure seen in glimpses through the clouds as through rough eye-sockets. The fields present an imfamiliar topography, all depressions having been filled up by the rain. A pool thus formed is a kaleidoscope of color and motion : the wind produces on TEE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. 67 its surface a veiny arabesque, and at one side of the margin the breaking of the ocean surf is imitated. Every gust darkens it most wonderfully, as though there had b^n thrown into the water some instantly dis- solving pigment. This sudden depth of shade is due to the bulk of the water having been swept aside, thus destroying the glaze of reflected light, and revealing the dark bottom of the pool. "The river is bluer than the sky" is good painting. Heayen, as seen in the watery mirror, is always deeper in hue than the actual sky. Whence is the mordant used to set this dye? If there be any hair-line rift in the clouds through which a blue ray can fall, trust the rain-pool to detect and report it with liberal exaggeration. One will often be baffled in his search for the zenith to match the smil- ing under-heaven laid open in the transient perspective-glass at his feet. With no small speculative delight have I seen the village, after an abundant rain, apparently built over a celestial abysm, and threatening every moment to fall and disappear over the frail earth-verge. The more frequent the pools, the more extensive is the downward aerial prospect, and the more exquisite the 68 THE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. sense of suspension between two infinities. To my surprise, the passers-by seemed wholly oblivious to the fine peril which threatened, as they plodded their way through the unsolid streets, grumbling at the inefficiency of the road supervisor. April comes, "With howeriness and showeriness And rare delights of rain." Mantling in the sun's warmth, and daily re- plenished, the pasture pools are now, at the surface, rinks for the nimble gyrations of various water-flies, while below swarm the fairy shrimps, simulating the fin-waving life of the fish. In their green translucency they look not unlike animated bits of some pulpy, aquatic plant, so that the name of the order, phyllopoda, is well illustrated by this species. In one season of unusual mild- ness, I knew these creatures to make their appearance as early as the middle of Feb- ruary. Eain in April I Who knows not the ca- pricious, partial shower that runs out in shining array under review of the sun, ad- vancing a furlong or so, then stopping short, as though recalled by solar command ? Not a yard further will the precious moisture go. TBE RAIN AND TBE FINE WEATHER. 59 however the mouth of Nature may water in expectation. I hear the ever-thirsty grass, with a slight, tremulous sigh, express its disappointment and sense of neglect. There is a copious drinker! I almost think to measure the depth of the rainfall by ascer- taining the liquid contents in the brimming tube of a blade of grass. In the space be- tween morning and evening, it has plainly lifted itself higher, and acquired a livelier color. After a parched interval, with what alert- ness we look and listen for indications of rain ! — not, however, forgetting to remind each other that " all signs fail in dry weather." We are fain to credit the " more wet " of the quail, the ceaseless trilling of the tree-frog, the chuckle of the cuckoo, and the shutting of various sunny eyes in the grass. We also take fresh hope when the trees that have so long stood sultrily immo- bile begin swaying tumultuously, uttering hoarse, delirious murmurs of anticipation. Yet we have often before seen this majes- tically looming cloud break and dissolve in gusty sighs, without showing any prac- tical benevolence. We do not expect much from these sparse, loud-clicking drops, sown 60 THE BAIN AND TEE FINE WEATHER. broadcast, like a handful of pluvial " small change," or beggars' pence, just to test Na- ture's alacrity in picking up alms. Falling in the fine dust of the road, they are at once absorbed, curiously dotting or stippling the powdery surface ; falling on the leaves, which the drought has rendered tense and crisp, like a sort of drum parchment, they beat a brisk, urgent tattoo ; the grass blades seem to dodge the sharp fusillade. The looming cloud, for once, does not disappoint us, but ascends, and spreads rapidly a gray, uniform canopy. When the lightning flashes, it advises us there is brilliant repar- tee in the heavens. What a keen jeu cC es- prit was this last ! In the soul is a spark of venturous, fiery wit, which, in spite of the mortal body's fear, starts up to fence with the lightning, singing, as the shaft flies past, " Strike me, and I strike back ! " Now comes the rain, a celestial ocean at flood- tide. It has its surges and billows, its mighty "third waves," its momentary lulls and recessions. How far is it through this liquid obscurity up to the azure and the sun- beam? We wiU walk abroad under the rain, like divers in the pearl gulfs ; we will take a surf bath, where nothing is lacking THE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. 61 but the saline taste : for, if this be not a true sea in which we disport, it is at least the returning wave of sublimated lakes and rivers, the refunded tribute of the naiads and of the earth. Even in this temperate latitude we fre- quently have, at the beginning of a summer storm, an interval of elemental chaos that would do credit to a Central American tem- poral. The trees rock and bend, leaning to the leeward, with aU. their foliage blown out, like a garment, in one direction, reveal- ing their lithe and robust anatomy. "What admirable elasticity and dexterous trimming to the storm are seen among these hardy, long-disciplined Spartans of Nature ! Oc- casionally a young tree, deficient in athletic training, is snapped off at the ankle; and as though the storm carried a pruning-knife, and this were the month for pruning, nu- merous small branches, twigs, and single leaves are remorselessly shorn away and scattered to the winds. After a continued rain, such as in June lodges the crops, the infinite rank growth of leafage seems com- pletely to muffle up the world. " The boweriness and flowermesa Make one abundant heap." 62 THE RAIN AND TEE FINE WEATHER. The trees are heavy and torpid with mois- ture ; there is no motion . in the foliage, ex- cept as some terminal leaf twinkles in dis- charging a drop larger than usual. The rain trickles down the rough, swollen bark, finding its way by casual channels, as the water frpm a spring drips through the loose black clods of a shaded hill-side. A momen- tary jet rises wherever a drop falls on a hard surface. WeU-washed stones become dark and semi - reflective, showing, like a roiled stream, distorted and indistinct im- ages of surrounding objects. The long un- dulation of meadows and grain -fields, the liquescent greens pf the landscape, faintly seen through the waving veil of the rain, suggest a submarine vegetation swept by a gale of waters. When there is no wind, the rain is of such temper that we charac- terize it as "gentle ; " it then comes serenely down by a direct path ; when set on by the wind, it drives in keen oblique splinters. Sometimes there is a crossing of lances, as . though two rain armies were in the field. If the eye is rejoiced at the descending shower, the ear also has its share of pleas- ure. From all sides comes up the whispered acclamation of a million grateful leaves. THE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. 63 We infer their gratitude, as in any human crowd we understand the drift of communi- cation, though unable to distinguish individ- ual voices. After listening a while to this comfortable susurrus of the leaves, we seem to hear a monotonous rhythm, to which we readily set symphonious words, or syllables, without meaning. Whatever the style of parley the rain may hold with the sea or with the open prairie, its loquacity must al- ways be sweetest in a wooded country. The senses of sight and hearing are not the only ones regaled at this time. Before the rain comes the breath of the rain, bringing fla- vorous news from all lush places in the woods and pastures. Virgil's farmer knew what it meant when he saw his cattle " snuff the air with wide-open nostrils." In the first rain of autumn, after intense summer heat, the leaves of the maple give out a subtle aroma, as if the essential principle of the sap and tissues had been volatilized ; though already burnt in the summer's censer, their ashes are fragrant when put into solution by the rain. Nature is on good terms with her children on a rainy day, seeming to treat it as a dies non, giving herself up to their amusement. 64 TEE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. If we are not afraid of a wetting, we may meet some very pretty gossips abroad, since we are not alone in our enjoyment of the rain and fine weather. The robin shows himself preeminently a rain-bird. He takes a position- as nearly vertical as possible, so as to shed the water, his plumage growing darker for the drenching. He has mois- tened his whistle (as the flute-player mois- tens his flute), and is now blowing out the superfluous drops in a series of mellow dis- syllabic notes, somewhat more pensive and refined than his ordinary efforts. He sings the lyric of the rain. A " sprinkle " en- courages rather than interrupts the chim- ney-swifts in their airy pursuit of food ; and the more familiar sparrows dart under the eaves, into porches, even alighting on win- dow-sills, in quest of insects that have sought shelter in these places. In the orchard the wren is on the alert, scrambling along the leaning trunk with the dexterity of the wood- pecker or the creeper, and peering into every nook and cranny of the bark. He, too, is foraging, yet — that he may not be accused of being wholly absorbed in this sordid occupation- — from time to time pipes a moist and rippling stave, whose " expres- TBE RAIN AND TBE FINE WEATHER. 65 sion mark " might be allegretto grazioso. At the first report of rain, our. old doorside friend, the toad, exhibits all the delight pos- sible to an organization so cold and phleg- matic. His yellow sides and throat seem to throb with excitement, as he comes out of his hei-mitage in the mould of a neglected flower-pot. As soon as wet, his spotted mo- saic coat becomes brighter, resembling in color and markings some freaked pebble washed up by the waves. With an eye to business (he is possibly something of a sa- vant, and counts upon the present atmos- pheric condition as favorable to his fly- catching enterprise), he gathers himself up and hurries into the grass, looping himself along by his long, ridiculous legs. While these visible rillets of the rain are making their way, with much frothing and bubbling, to some permanent vein of water, one imagines the streams underground re- joicing, in their own dark, voiceless way, at the reinforcement they receive. For hours afterward I taste the river of heaven in wa- ter from the well. Some time ago I made the discovery of a music-box or whispering gallery of the rain, which I had passed a hundred times without suspecting its mu- 5 66 TEE RAIN AND THE FINE WEATHER. sical capacity. It is entirely subterranean, with a tube or shaft connecting it with the surface. Laying my ear to this, I hear a succession of delicious melodies, abounding in trills, turns, grace -notes, and broken chords, in which the last fine high note is followed by an echo. It is Nicor, chief of water-sprites, sitting in a cavern and play- ing liquid chimes, laughing to himself dur- ing the rests ! The mason who constructed this music -box with bricks and mortar thought only to produce a cistern, not dreaming of the acoustic luxury that should result from his labors. This is the clepsy- dra that keeps the' rainy hours, dropping the minutes and seconds in a silver or crystal coinage of sound. After the rain, fine weather indeed! With the sun shining and the wind blow- ing, the drenched trees simulate a showery heaven, and sprinkle the ground beneath them. Our eyes go searching among the glistening leaves to see if there be not an embowered rainbow. If it clears off late in the day, a certain wistful beauty in the freshened landscape speaks of the "green afternoon " that " Turns toward sunset, and is loth to die." THE SENSITIVE PLANT. A ciiEious and beautiful little plant is the mimosa, but if it could be rendered spontaneous in my garden I would not en- courage its growing there ; to be continually offending so delicate a creature would be far from pleasant. The same consideration might warrant one's hesitating to cultivate in his garden of choice acquaintances many human counterparts of the genus mimosa. These sensitive plants, by reason of the ten- der, irritable surface they present, always manage to convince us, while we are with them, that our moral touch is exceptionally harsh and clumsy. "We are not aware of having given offense until we see the recoil of the sensitive plant, — its leaves shrink- ing and folding together, retiring about the stem ; until we meet, instead of genial reciprocity, a precipitate withdrawing of our friend's personality into itself, all kindly mu- tualities being temporarily suspended. How much patient adroitness it takes to bring 68 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. back in statu quo our relations with the wounded, only those know who have had to deal with the plant. We have referred, casually, to some contemporaneous instance, or have passed criticism upon remote affairs or persons, or have drawn a harmless, hu- morous characterization, when, presto, our listener feels a hand laid upon him. He never "gives away the sermon," but takes all to himself ; and the humorous character- ization, also, he contrives to carry o£P, to his own discomfiture. And we are left to plead guilty to an ugly gaucherie I If the sensi- tive plant would only consider of what mis- ery it is the cause ! But that is rarely the nature of the plant; it has little power to exchange places with another, little imagina- tion where itself is not immediately con- cerned. After some not unuseful experience of its peculiarities, it has dawned upon us that selfishness is the big tap-root which feeds the germination and morbid growth of such sensitiveness. We have found the ten- derness of the plant to be directly increased by any access of tenderness in the care be- stowed upon it ; on the other hand, we have seen plants rendered wonderfully hardy through a little salutary neglect on the part THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 69 of tlie gardener. What, indeed, can you expect of a tenderling that is kept sheltered as much as possible from all vexing contact, — that the noon sun and stormy elements are not allowed to reach? Perceiving that you expect it to shrink at your touch, while you cry out with admiration of its extreme delicacy, the plant determines never to dis- appoint your expectation. If its phenomena were uniformly passed by unremarked, such treatment, we believe, would go far towards modifying its unhappy nature. This is one of the instances in which clemency is cru- elty ; since to humor your sensitive friend is to help confirm him in the error of his ways. If you foUow our advice, when the plant ex- hibits signs of agitation you wiU not protest that you spoke or acted with the best inten- tion in the world ; you will not dweU. upon the fact of your continued esteem and affec- tion for the injured one, nor will you de- nounce yourself for a miserable blunderer. On the contrary, if you can bring yourself to the point of behaving with crispness, — nay, even with some barbarity, — do so, and deserve credit for your courage and candid benevolence. Tell your friend that he is not a sensitive plant, but a nettle, whose ir- 70 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. ritable papilUe both wound and are wounded by whoever ventures near. If your patient has a right constitution, he will thrive under this heroic treatment, and be grateful, by and by, for the rigor practiced by his physi- cian. The man who labored under the de- lusion that he was glass, on being restored to sanity ought not to grumble over the contusions given him in order to dispel his vitreous theory. It might not be amiss to lay down a rule : Doubt those persons who are frequently given to the confession that they are sensi- tive, — far too sensitive for their own good;- (The latter half of the statement is true enough, but not in the sense intended by them.) If they were indeed as sensitive as they would have us believe, the fact would have to be ascertained in some other way than through oral acknowledgment. Having to deal with them, we probably find that what they mistake in themselves for fine spiritual acumen and sensibility is something very akin to jealousy, — an ungenerous distrust- fulness of nature. " To cherish good hopes, and to believe I am loved by my friends," — recommended by no less authority than Marcus Antoninus, — is an excellent specific THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 71 in these aggravated cases. Who that main- tains continual bivouac, lest at some un- guarded moment he fall victim to Punic faith, is a suitable candidate for any of the ingenuous of&ces of friendship ? He is un- doubtedly too wary and suspicious (not sen- sitive) for his own good. The only admirar ble order of sensitiveness is that to which the Apostle's definition of charity is applica- ble. Like that Christian virtue, it suffers long, is patient, vaunteth not itself. It has a shy " elvish face," and is not to be met with upon the street. It so sedulously hides itself that the kindest house-mate impinges on it unawares. It has a rare aptitude for vicarious suffering, and every day immolates itself, unthanked, for some one. It sup- poses every one it meets to be endowed with as thin a skin as its own, and is therefore constantly on its guard to commit no cruelty. Often it absurdly overrates the tender sus- ceptibility of others ; takes superfluous pains to direct its eye-shot well above any physical or moral imperfection of its neighbor, and in any company is always "heading off" the conversation, lest it range over the opinions and prejudices of those present. So vivid is its dramatic imagination that it is some- 72 TBE SENSITIVE PLANT. times perilously near sympathizing with de- pravity, its manners becoming infected with the neighboring baseness. Then its behavior is not unlike that of Christabel, who uncon- sciously narrowed her eye, and repeated the vicious glance of the serpent-lady. Not only does it throw itself for a shield before pachy- derms, but it would outdo its lovers in kind offices. It bears not to be overpraised, dreading unjust eulogy more than unjust censure. To be sensitive ! 'T is to have all the senses keenly alive to report to the spirit the nature of all ^iritual contacts. Genuine sensitiveness parries discovery by a variety of ingenious methods, one of which is to announce its complete imperviousness ; it bids you feel the rhinoceros rings and bosses it has put on, intending to pass them for its natural habit. To conclude, we give the testimony with which a sensitive plant lately favored us : " It is the frank and ego- tistic behavior I have adopted, of late years, that makes it seem easy to lay hands upon my heart and life ; but I find the device protective, and the hurts I receive are far less painful than they used to be." GEASS: A EUMINATION. I guesB it is the haudjzerchief of the Lord, A Bcented gift and lemembrancer, designedly dropped, Bearing the owner's name someway in the comers, Tliat we may see and remark, and say. Whose f Walt 'Whitmas. The eye and the ear are inveterate hobby- ists. This peculiarity in his perceptive facul- ties the observer of nature and the seasons must frequently have occasion to remark: one phase of growing life, one set of objects in the landscape, shall often so engage his attention as to render him comparatively dull to other impressions. The new season comes, clothing with wonder the whole woodland ; but, for some unassignable rea- son, the observer finds nothing so salutary and pleasing to his eye as willow-green ; or, among aU the surprises of vernation, he has regard only toward the hickory's richly col- ored buds, which seem to promise not mere leaves, but a blossom of royal dyes and di- mensions ; or, from among the various deli- cacies of vernal bloom in field and wood, his 74 GRASS: A RUMINATION. eye curiously singles out and visits with fa- vor a flower with no more pretensions to beauty than the little pale starveling, plan- tain-leaved everlasting. " No doubt the blue . and the yellow violets are abundant, but I happen to have seen only the white, fragrant kind, this spring," remarked one who looked with a loving prejudice. I do not account for these prepossessions and partialities ; if I could account for them, I should under- stand why, during the season past. Nature's great commoner, the Grass, shoidd have spoken with such unusual eloquence, con- vincing me that never before had I seen half its graces and virtues. "Something, then, I have lately learned regarding " tlie hour Of splendor in the grass " (supposed indeed to have been lost with our earlier Intimations of Immortality), and I may venture to corroborate the Orphic strain which bids us believe that " the poor grass shall plot and plan What it shall do when it is man." Being advised of this plotting and planning, it seemed possible to equal such foresight and sagacity by entertaining some specula- tions as to what poor man shall do when he GBASS: A RUMINATION. 75 is grass (if the road of this metempsychosis were traversable in both directions). That which all our lives we have under our feet is at length set above our heads, — the softly moving janitor, that follows us and shuts the gate opened for our mortal passing — the light touch soon removing all traces of the wound received by earth, when our sleeping chamber was delved. In fine, still weather you may lie close to the low gate, and, so lying, feel peace and comfort gliding in upon every sense ; but do not venture, in any form, to repeat the old prayer, " Leeve moder, let me in ! " lest the grass should hear, and, un- derstanding the mother's sign, gather around, and quickly close over your repining human- ity. Plainly, the grass has its secrets ; and subtlety and evasiveness characterize aU its behavior. It trembles at the slightest soli- citation of the breeze, yet is there no sound arising from its agitation ; herein it differs from the frank loquacity of the leaves of a tree. The stridulous gossip of the myr- iads that shelter among its blades only ac- centuates the silence of the grass. What busy trafBc, what ecumenical gatherings, what cabals of the insect world, it could re- 76 GRASS: A RUMINATION. port! Probably no pageant in fairy-land, could we obtain a pass into that jealous Chi- nese precinct, would be so well worth our ad- miration as would the hourly life of the in- habitants of this small plot of grass, when once we were inducted into its mysteries. The spirit of the greensward ! Of what were the Greek poets thinking when, having assigned a naiad to every stream and a dryad to every tree, they forgot to give the grass its deity ? If the goddess Ceres ever held this position, she has since forfeited it by her partiality towards the grain-bearing grasses, she having bestowed her name upon these ; whence cereals they still remain. The. grasses carry a free lance in all parts of the globe. In temperate climates alone are found those by nature fitted to unite in close, caespitous communities ; weavers, they, of the rich, seamless garment which Earth loves to have spread over her old shoulders. When turf is transplanted, with what apt- ness of brotherly love do root and root has- ten to knit themselves together, as though with the grass had originated the maxim, In union is strength I If I lived in the builded desert called city, I would give myself the luxury of an oasis ; and if this were a scant 6£ASS: A RUMINATION. 77 one (perhaps a window-garden), and if lim- ited to a single kind of vegetation, I would choose a strip of green turf ; sure, so long as this flourished, that my connection with the country would not be wholly lost. If the city's poor and depraved might but have the gospel as preached by the grass ! A family of the utmost benevolence is that of the GramineoB. Out of its nearly four thousand known species only a single indi- vidual (darnel) sustains the charge of being unwholesome. The grasses are a royal soci- ety of food - purveyors, extending over the whole earth, and affording such plenitude and variety that man should not fare mea- grely, even if confined for his sjistenance to this one group of plants. Flour from the cereal, sugar from the cane, — strength and sweetness ; with these left, what should for- bid to the children of the earth their bread and treacle? And not, only man, but his serviceable dumb allies, the most patient, in- nocent, and intelligent of the brute creation, are nourished by the bounty of the grasses. In a different sense from that intended by the Hebrew prophet might it be affirmed that " aU. flesh is grass," — tissue and fibre remotely spun from this stout, durable 78 GRASS: A RUMINATION. thread. Some poor children living in a vil- lage suburb were asked what they had done at times when there had been no food in the house. "Oh, we went out -doors and ate grass," they replied, making no marvel of the case. Necessity, with a grain of salt (if necessity could afford the condiment), might perhaps manage a repast off the tenderer portions of the grass stem. A pity that Nebuchadnezzar left no record of the im- pressions gained during the time in which he "did eat grass as oxen, and his body was vret vdth the dew of heaven." While the rest of the Babylonians ate grass at a re- move, by eating the ox that ate the grass, their king was getting down very close to first principles. If, by this simple gramin- eal diet, he did not acquire a curious rumi- nating knowledge which let him into the feelings and cogitations of the gentle graz- ing beasts, his neighbors, then the lesson of vrisdom and humility must have been but imperfectly learned. Whatever the etymological affinities of grass, cresco, and grow, the plant itself may be taken as the readiest and most univer- sal type imder which to represent Nature's vital, unwearying energy. The year around, GRASS: A RUMINATION. 79 it cherishes good hopes, and continues to speak them when other plant-life is wholly silent. " The trees look like winter, but the grass is like the spring." It had hardy nur- ture from the beginniHg, the snow having cradled its seed; for the farmer thinks no time more acceptable for sowing than early in the spring, after a light snowfall. Sum- mer's swarthy dame, and that kind of white heat which we name ivo^t may cut off growth above ground, but such is the recuperative power at the root that but one abundant rain or but one sunshine holiday is needed to start again the " star-ypointing " spear of the grass. There is no better economist of its resources than the grass. Says Thoreau, in " Walden : " " It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost iden- tical with that ; for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream." Although it is so dry to the touch, the veins of the grass are not drained. A drop of moisture collects at the base of a culm, on its being pressed between thumb and finger ; and children, for sport, pit one such stem against another, to see which will carry away 80 GRASS: A RUMINATION. its own and the other's glistening bead, — drops of the life-blood of the grass. But here I have a good calendar to advise me whether the year runs high or low ; to indicate not only the season, but the month also. It is March. I should not mistake the time, seeing those piebald locks which the earth wears: here a thread or tress of forward green, there a shock of the old dead gray or brown. It is April, — witnessed by the wild mob-rule conduct of the grass, its pushing emulousness, in which, for no plain reason, one blade outstrips by half its near- est neighbor, and no two blades show the same length. It is May (the Anglo-Saxon Month of Three Milkings), and the grass moves on, a banded strength, the inequali- ties it had in April having disappeared. Now, who are you, so light and expeditious, that you boast you '11 not let the grass grow under your feet? Let it! Take care, for it grows between your steps, sUently mirth- ful, triumphant Without vaunting. On a summer morning, with copious dew, the grass has its exultation. Innumerable caps of liquid hyaline I see, poised aloft on the points of innumerable bayonets. Some sud- den, wild enthusiasm has seized these bladed GRASS: A RUMINATION: 81 myrmidons; what this may be I have to fancy, and also what rallying word or note of huzza would best accord with their ani- mated mood. June, the Month of Roses, Meadow Month, — which shaU it be ? The latter, if respect be had to numbers ; since what are all the roses of the world as compared with the infinite flowerage of the grasses, which this month fulfills? Think what bloom is represented by one panicle of June grass, or by one stately spire of timothy or herd's grass, with its delicate purple anthers flung out each way, like so many pennons from the windows of a tower ! To the flower of the grass was given a recondite loveliness, — prize only of the faithful, refined, and loving eye, patient to investigate. Fair Science takes her little learners into the country, and there teaches M;hem by a parable : " Con- sider the lilies of the field." " But," return the little learners, " we can't see any lilies." Then says smiling Science, "They are all around you ; " and, gathering a stalk of blos- soming grass, or, yet better, of wheat, she proceeds to divulge in its obscure and cu- rious inflorescence vanishing traces of an ancient lily-resembling type, from which the 82 GRASS: A RUMINATION. grasses have descended.^ It appears that while one branch of a great botanical family rose to vie with Solomon (by their bright colors winning the admiration and friendly offices of the insect world), another branch of the family eschewed such ambitions, and ob- tained the wind as a lover. Science dissects the miremembering flower, and shows us by what "crowding together of its parts and gradual suppressions the liliacebns form has been lost save to the nice eye of the special- ist. Had not the grasses practiced humility, or had they not stooped to conquer, it might have come to pass that man had asked for bread and been given a lily. In much the same way as he forecasts the profit he wDl have from the woolly flock does the farmer count upon the fleeces grown by his fields (whose shearing-time, also, is in June). There are hay-scales in his mind, and such calculation is in his eye that he can foretell with considerably accuracy and very definite cheer what will be the yield of this or that " piece," — whether a ton, ton and a half, or two tons to the acre. Lovely and pleasant all its life, it foUows ^ See the admiratle essay, " The Origin of Wheat," in Mr. Grant Allen's Flowers arid their Pedigrees. GRASS: A RUMINATION. 83 that the grass rejoices in a fragrant memory. Whether spread to dry in the field, or al- ready gathered, the " goodliness thereof " goes never to waste. I think sleeping on the haymow will yet be recommended as therapeutic for any that may be " sick or melancholious ; " the breath of the hay being every whit as efftcacious as that Chaucerian tree whose leaves were "so very good and vertuous." Needless to gather those special herbs so much esteemed as remedies, when the barn is full of more excellent simples that cure with their aroma. You can teU the time of year by an in- spection of the barns ; nor is it always nec- essary to see the interior. As you rode swiftly by one of these old harvest store- houses, you saw the setting sun shoot arrows of gold through the building from side to side between the warped boards. That was an evening in spring ; now, in autumn, the garrison is quite impervious to all such arch- ery, every chink and cranny being caulked with the hay, which reaches even to the high beam on which the swallows had their nests. By the soft reminiscential eye of the cow as she stands at the manger, I know that she 84 GRASS: A RUMmATION. finds in her winter repast the flavor of the loved pasture. The yield of the summer meadows has not all been stored under roof. In the midst of the field where sunburnt Labor conquered with scythe, rake, and fork, is raised a monument of the victory. The great cone of the haystack, rightly viewed, is no less interesting than are the Pyramids' themselves. If I mistake not, clear-seeing Morning " opes with haste her lids " to gaze upon this record of human enterprise, lifted from the home plains. THE FLY-TRAPPER. In speaking of a %-trapper rather than of a fly-trap, I do so advisedly; since the object I wish to describe acts from its own volition, possesses rational intelligence, has articulate speech, is capable of handling tools, laughs, — in short, displays all the faculties and traits characteristic of the highest order of animal life. I sometimes think that my friend the fly-trapper, in view of the singular use he serves in the economy of nature, should be set off in a genus by himself ; at least, he should be accounted as sui generis, in the fullest acceptation of that convenient term. Your first impression re- garding him would doubtless be: Here is one laboring under mania ; he sees what I cannot see ; he grasps in the air at impalpa- ble nothings. You would be much relieved upon discovering that he was catching flies, — an action with him as sane and normal as any harmless idiosyncrasy in your own be- havior. With the exception of this peculiar 86 THE FLY-TRAPPER. habit, the fly-trapper is very much like other rural folk with whom we are acquainted: hard-working, rheumatism-plagued, weather- forecasting, one-newspaper-reading, politics- and-theology-debating. The last-named trait is, in his case, rather more strongly devel- oped than is usual, and I have known him, when he had a good listener, to stretch most unthriftily the harvest noon hour, in order that he might fully define " the ground I take," on any given question of a political or religious nature. At such times he is more than ever expert at the practice for which he is so justly distinguished in his own neighborhood. It is indeed wonderful, — the double presence of mind by which he is enabled to carry on argumentative dis- course and at the same time attend to the flies. If one of those insects alights on the wall, or the table, anywhere within arm range, it is to the grief of that insect, for the hand of its fate is relentless and unerr- ing. The trapper is also a good marksman, and can take a fly upon the wing as well as in any other situation ; apparently, he knows just how long the insect will be in moving from a given point over a given space. Of- ten have I watched the slow, pendulum-like THE FLY-TRAPPER. 87 swing of his arm, bringing up, at length, with fingers shut upon the palm and the un- lucky fly. I feel sure that this timely and triumphant gesture serves the speaker as well as would exact logic and verbal force. It is a little strange, however, that the coup de grace always falls at the right instant to clinch the argument. I own to a feeling of fascination, while listening to his exposition of Foreknowledge and Foreordination, — the doctrines are so capitally illustrated ; the flies figuring as wretched humanity, and the fly-trapper as the dread Predestinator. From the twinkle in his eye, when a success- ful sweep has been made, and the hapless victim crumpled between thumb and finger, I infer perfectly well the satisfaction a su- preme being must take in dooming its ab- ject creatures. I have been assured by those who have excellent opportunities for observation that a little circle of the slain is always to be found upon the floor around the chair occupied by the trapper. There can be no reasonable doubt that, like the great little tailor in the German fairy tale, our hero has killed his " seven at one stroke," though it has never occurred to his modest spirit to vaunt itself on that account. To 88 THE FLY-TRAPPER. compare him with Domitian, who also was an adept in this line, would be to do an injustice to a very humane character; for, when you have excepted the fly -catching propensity, you, as the representative of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, can find no stajn upon our friend's record. I cannot *say how long the subject of this notice has been in practice (he is now in his sixtieth year), yet probably for more than half a century, from the time when he sat an urchin on the high seat in the dis- trict school, he has served in the humble but useful way described. I know how strong is the force of habit, and forbear to laugh when occasionally I see him at his fly-catch- ing after the fly season is past. Is it that his deft hand cannot forget its cunning, or was its dexterity always a vain show, — no real fly in the case ? Peradventure here is an instance of muscce volitantes in a mild but incurable form. RUNNING-WATER NOTES. I DOUBT if it were a magic bird, as told in the legend, that sang Saint Felix out of the memory of his generation : it is quite as likely that, having traced some river or small stream to its head-waters, he lingered listening to the drop that wears away the stone, and so fell into a half-century rev- erie. Running water is the only true flow- ing philosopher, — the smoothest arguer of the perpetual flux and transition of all cre- ated things, saying, -^ " All things are as they seem to all, And all things flow as a stream." It is itself a current paradox. It is now here at your feet, gossiping over sand and pebble ; it is there, slipping softly around a rushy cape ; and it is yonder, just blending with the crisp spray of the last wave on the beach of the lake. Its form and color are but circumstances : the one due to marginal accident and the momentary caprice of the wind ; the other, to the complexion of the 90 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. sky or to overhanging umbrage. Who can say but that its beginning and its ending are one, — the water-drop in the bosom of the cloud ? We readily consent that the Muses had their birth and rearing in the neighborhood of certain springs and streams. This was a wise provision for their subsequent musical education, since it was intended, no doubt, that they should gather the rudiments from such congenial sources. The Greeks left us no account (as they well might have done) of the technical driU pursued by the nine sisters. However, we may suppose that they wrote off their scores from the fluent dicta^ tion of their favorite cascades and streams, and that they scanned, or " sang," all such exercises by the laws of liquid quantity and accent. Perhaps at the same time, the bet- ter to measure the feet and mark the csesu- ral pauses, they danced, as they sang, over the rippled surface of the stream. Nor did the Muses alone love springs and running water, but it woidd seem that the philhar- monic societies of their descendants have had their haunts in like localities : or was it mere chance that Homer should have lived by the river Meles (hence Melesigenes) 5 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 91 that Plato should, have had his retirement where " Ilissus rolls His whispering stream ; " or that Shakespeare, to all time, should be " the Sweet Swan of Avon " ? Consider the vocality and vocabulary of the water : it has its open vowels, its mutes, labials, and sub-vocals, and, if one listen at- tentively, its little repetend of favorite syl- lables and alliterations. Like Demosthenes, it knows the use and advantage of pebbles, and has, by this simple experiment, so puri- fied its utterance that nowhere else is Na- ture's idiom spoken so finely. What a list of onomatopoetic words we have caught from its talkative -lips ! Babbling, purling, mur- muring, gurgling, are some 6f the adjectives borrowed from this vernacular; and some have even heard the " chuckling brooks," — an expression which well describes a certain confidential, sotto voce gayety and self-con- tent I have often heard in the parley of the water. From time to time musical virtuosos and. composers, fancying they had discovered the key-note of Niagara, have given us sympho- nious snatches of its eternal organ harmo- 92 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. nies. Some time it may be that all these scattered arias, with many more which have never been pablished, wiU be collected and edited as the complete opera of the great cataract ! Less ambitious, I have often tried to unravel the melodious vagaries of a sum- mer stream ; to classify its sounds, and re- port their sequence and recurrence. I shall not forget how once, when I was thus occu- pied, a small bird flew far out on a branch overhanging the water, turned its arch eye on me, then on the dancing notes of my music lesson, and poured out a rippling si- militude of song that was plainly meant as an seolian rendition of the theme, or motive, running through the water. I was under double obligation to the little musician, since, in addition to its sweet and clever charity, it put me in possession of the dis- covery that aU ' of Nature's minstrels are under the same orchestra driU, and capable, at pleasure, of exchanging parts. There was once a naiad (own daughter of celestial Aquarius), who, as often as the rain fell and the eaves-spouts frothed and overran, used to come and dance under a poet's roof. It was a part of her pretty jugglery to imitate the liquid warble of the wood-thrush, bobo- RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 93 link, and other pleasing wild-bird notes. No matter how far inland, any one who lives by the " great deep " of a dense wood may hear the roar of the sea when the tide of the wind sweeps in on his coast. Shutting my eyes, I could always readily hear, in the crackling of a brush fire in the garden, the quick and sharp accentuation of rain on the roof. There are certain English and Old Eng-- lish appellatives of running water which one would fain transplant to local usage on this . side of the Atlantic. How suitable that a swift, boiling stream, surcharged with spring rain, should be called a brawl, or a fine sun- lit thread of a rill embroidering green mea^ dows a floss, or any other small, unconsid- ered stream a heck ! In New England you shall hear only of the brook, and past an indeterminate meridian westward, only of the creek (colloquially deformed into " crick "). Indian Creek is a sort of John Smith in the nomenclature of Western streams. Eocky Rivers and Epcky Runs are also frequent enough. Where streams abound, there, for the most part, will be found sylvan amenity and kindly, cultivated soil. The Nile alone saves 94 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. Egypt from being an extension of Sahara. Without some water-power at hand, cities may not be buUt, nor industries and arts be pushed forward : I should say that no site is hopelessly inland if there runs past it a stream of sufficient current to carry a raft. There is maritime promise in the smallest rivulet: trust it; in time it will bear your wares and commodities to the sea and the , highways of commerce. The course of a river, or of a river tributary, suggests a journey of pleasure. Notice how it selects the choicest neighborhoods in its course, the richest fields, the suavest parts of the woods. If it winds about a country village with picturesque white spire and houses hid to the roof in greenery, it seems to have made this deflection out of its own affable and social spirit. The dam and the miU-wheel it understands as a challenge of its speed and agility, and so leaps and dances nim- bly over them. All bridges under which it passes it takes as wickets set up in sport. The motion of water, whether of the ocean billow or of the brook's ripple, is only an endless prolongation or reproduction of the line of beauty. There are no right angles in the profile of the sea-coast or river-margin ; RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 95 no rectangular pebbles on the beach or in the bed of a stream. The hollow chamber in which the oyster is lodged might have been formed by the union of two waves, magically hardened at the moment of contact ; colored without like the ooze of the earth, within like the deep-sea pearl. The fish conforms in shape and symmetry to its living element, and is, in this respect, scarcely more than a wave, or combination of waves. It moves in curves and ripples, in little whirls and eddies, faithfully repeating all the inflections of the water. Even in the least detail it is homo- geneous ; else, why should the scale of the fish be scalloped rather than serrate? As to color, has it not the vanishing tints of the rainbow? or might it not be thought the thin- nest lamina pared away from a pearl, a trans- parent rose-petal, the finger-nail of Venus ? It is not improbable that the fish furnished the first shipwright with some excellent sug- gestions about nautical architecture. This shipwright, who was both idealist and utili- tarian, had observed the length and slender- ness of the fish ; its curved sides and taper- ing extremities, corresponding with the stern and prow of his subsequent invention ; also, the fins, which he at first reproduced in rough- 96 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. hewn paddles, prototypical of genuine oars. Then, perhaps, a paradoxical notion dawn- ing upon his mind that aerial swimming and aquatic flying were much the same things, he added to his floating craft the wings of the bird as well as the fins of the fish ; and soon thereafter began to take the winds into ac- count, to venture out on the broad seas ; and finally discovered " India and the golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle, Tapiobane." The scaly appearance of a sheet of water wrinkled by the wind has already been no- ticed by Thoreau. It needed only a slight suggestion to point out to me the glistening broadside of an old gray dragon sunning himself between the banks. Do dolphins inhabit fresh water? Just under the sur- face, at the bend of the creek, I see a quiv- ering opalescent or iridescent mass, which I take to be a specimen of this rare fish, unless, indeed, it should prove only a large flat stone, veined and mottled by sunbeams shot through the thin veil of hurrying waters. Equally suggestive are those luminous reflections of ripples cast on a smooth clay bank. Nar- row shimmering lines, in constant wavy mo- tion, they seem the web which some spider RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 97 is vainly trying to pin to the bank. They are, properly, "netted sunbeams." Water oozing from between two obstructing stones, and slowly spreading out into the current, has the appearance of a tress of some color- less water-grass floating under the surface. I was once pleased to see how a drift of soft brown sand gently sloping to the water's edge, with its reflection directly beneath, presented the perfect figure of a tight-shut clam-sheU, — a design peculiarly suited to the locality. In cooler and deeper retirement, on lan- guid summer afternoons, this flowing philos- opher sometimes geometrizes. It is always of circles, — circles intersecting, tangent, or inclusive. A fish darting to the surface affords the central starting-point of a circle whose radius and circumference are incalcu- lable, since the eye faUs to detect where it fades into nothingness. Multiplied intersec- tions there may be, but without one curve marring the smooth expansion of another. There are hints of infinity to be gathered from this transient water ring, as well as from the orb of the horizon at sea. Sometimes I bait the fish, but without rod or hook, and merely to coax them together in 7 98 RVNNING-WATER NOTES. small inquisitive schools, that I may study their behavior and their medium of commu- nication. In this way I enjoy the same op- portunities for reverie and speculation as the angler, without indulging in his cruelty or forerelish of the table. I discover that the amusements of the minnows and those of the small birds are similar, with only this difference : that the former, in darting and girding at one another, make their retreats behind stones and under little sand-bars, in- stead of hiding among the bushes and tUting over thistle tops. It would seem that fish are no less quick in the senses of hearing and seeing than the birds themselves. They start at your shadow thrown over the bank, at your voice, or at the slightest agitation of the water. " If you but scantily hold out the hand, That very instant not one will remain; But turn your eyes, and they are there again." When they first came up in the spring, I thought they looked unusually lean and shad- owy, as though having struggled through a hungry hibernation. They were readily vo- racious of anything I might throw to them. There were fish taken under my observar tion, though not by line or net. I did not RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 99 fish, yet I felt warranted in sharing the tri- umphs of the sport when, for the space of ten minutes or more, I had maintained most cau- tious silence, while that accomplished angler, the kingfisher, perched on a sightly elm branch over the water, was patiently waiting the chance of an eligible haul. I had, mean- while, a good opportunity for observing this to me wholly wild and unrelated adventurous bird. Its great head and mobile crest, like a helmet of feathers, its dark-blue glossy coat and white neck-cloth, make it a suffi- ciently striking individual anywhere. No wonder the kingfisher is specially honored by poetic legend. I must admit that when- ever I chanced to see this bird about the stream it was faultless, halcyon weather. I occasionally saw a sandpiper (familiarly, " walk-up-the-ereek ") hunting a solitary meal along the margin. I had good reason, also, to suspect that even the blackbird now and then helped himself to a honne houche from the water. Also, did I not see the fish, acting on the " law of talons," come to the surface, and take their prey from the life of the air ? This was the fate in store for many a luxurious water -fly skimming about the sunshiny pools like a drop or bead 100 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. of animated quicksilver. The insect races bom of the water, and leading a hovering existence above it, had always a curious in- terest for me. What, for instance, can be more piquing to a speculative eye than to watch the ceaseless shiftings or pourings of a swarm of gnats? Is there any rallying point or centre in this filmy system ? Appar- ently there are no odds between the attrac- tion and repulsion governing the movements of the midget nebula, and I could never be satisfied as to whether unanimity or dissent were implied. There is a large species of mosquito (not the common pest), which I should think might some time have enjoyed religious hon- ors, since, when it drinks, it falls upon its knees ! A flight of these gauzy - winged creatures through a shaft of sunlight- might conjure up for any fanciful eye the vision of " pert fairies and dapper elves." Of the dragon-fly (which might be the unlaid phantasm of some insect that flourished summers ago), I know of no description so delicately apt as the following : — " A 'wiiid-1)om blossom, Uown about, Drops qaiTeringly down aa though to die ; Then lifts and wavers on, as if in doubt Whether to fan its wings or fly without." RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 101 Where is the stream so hunted down by civilization that it cannot afford hospitality to at least one hermit musk-rat ? The only water animal extant of the wild fauna that was here in the red man's day, he wiU event- ually have to follow in the oblivious wake of the beaver and otter. It is no small satisfac- tion that I am occasionally favored with a glimpse of this now rare " oldest inhabitant." Swimming leisurely with the current, and carrying in his mouth a ted of grass for thatching purposes, or a bunch of greens for dinner, he disappears under the bank. So unwieldy are his motions, and so lazily does the water draw after him, that I am half inclined to believe him a pygmean copy of some long extinct river mammoth. Oftener at night I hear him splashing about in the dark and cool stream, safe from discovery and molestation. Hot, white days of drought there were in the middle of the summer, when, in places, the bed of the creek was as dry as the high- way ; vacant, except for a ghostly semblance of ripples running above its yellow clay and stones. The fountain of this stream was in the sun and heated air. Walking along the abandoned water -road, I speculated idly 102 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. about the fate of the minnows and trout. Had they been able, in season, to take a short cut to the lake or to deeper streams, as is related, in a pretty but apocryphal story, of a species of fish in China, fitted by nature to take short overland journeys ? Much might justly be said in praise of the willow. Its graceful, undulating lines show that it has not in vain been associated with the stream. It practices and poses over its glass as though it hoped some time to become a water nymph. Summer heat cannot impair its fresh and vivid green, — only the sharp edge of the frost can do that ; and even when the leaves have fallen away there remains a beautiful anatomy of stems and branches, whose warm brown affords a pleasing relief to November grayness. At intervals I met the genius of decora- tive art (a fine, mincing lady) hunting about the weedy margin for botanical patterns suitable for reproduction in aesthetic fabrics and paper hangings. She chose willow cat- kins, cat-tail flag, the flowers and feathery after-bloom of the clematis, golden-rod, and aster, and showed great anxiety to procure some lily pads and buds that grew in a slug- gish cove ; but for some reason, unknown to RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 103 me as well as to the genii loci, she slighted a host of plants as suggestive for ornate de- signs as any she accepted. She took no no- tice of the jewel weed (which the stream was not ashamed to reflect, in its velvet, leopard-like magnificence) ; nor had she any eyes for the roving intricacies of the green- brier and wild-balsam apple. She also left untouched whole families of curious beaked grasses and sedges, with spindles full of flax or silk unwinding to the breeze. It is nothing strange that the earlier races of men should have believed in loreleis and undines, nixies and kelpies. I cannot say that I have not, myself, had glimpses of all these water-spirits. But the green watered silk in which the lorelei and the undine were dressed was almost indistinguishable in color and texture from the willow's reflection ; and the nixie was so often hidden under a crumbling bank and net-work of black roots that I could not be sure whether I caught the gleam of his malicious eye, or whether it was only a fleck of sunshine I saw explor- ing the watery shade. About the kelpie I am more positive. When the creek was high and wrathfid under the scourge of the " line storm," it could have been nothing 104 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. else than the kelpie's wild, shaggy mane that I beheld; nothing else that I heard but his hoarse, ill-boding roar. In this season of the year, I became aware that our stream, like the Nile, had its mys- terious floating islands, luxuriant plots set with grass and fern and mint (instead of lo- tus and papyrus), and lodged upon pieces of drift washed down by the spring floods. All summer securely moored in the shallow water, they were now rent up by the roots, and swept out of all geographical account. Snow-like accumulations of whipped-up foam gathered in lee-side nooks where the current ran less strong, remaining there for many hours together, like some fairy fleet riding at anchor. When the stream had fallen, I often found this accumulation deposited on the sand in a grayish-white drift, dry and volatile as ashes, dispersing at the slightest gust. It suggested that some strange, un- witnessed rite of incineration had been per- formed there. A beautiful form of aquatic life was lately seen upon our creek. To my eye, it was the most conspicuous object in sight ; with its presence it honored and ideal- ized the stream, and made the moment in which it was seen seem worthy of remem- RUNNING-WATER NOTES. 105 brance. A figure all curves and grace, as befits whatever lives in the smooth commu- nion of waters ; pure white, like a drift of new-fallen snow kept by enchantment from melting, it moved without starting a ripple or leaving the slightest wake, while itself and its mirrored image " floated double." I may have wished it would rise from the water, that I might see the spread of its wings and the manner of its flight, but in this I was not to be gratified. It had the appearance of sleep ; and as neither head nor neck could be seen, these were, doubt- less, folded under its wing. If it had come as a migrant from distant regions, it was now resting oblivious of its long voyage. Fancy suggested that the poetry of its mo- tion be set to the music of a swan-song. To what island of rushes, or to what bare sandy margin, would it at last come to die, — to dissolve in the sun and the wind, leaving only a pinch of yeUow-white dust, which the least breath might scatter away? Was I perhaps mistaken as to the species of this water-fowl? I looked again, and saw that it was one of the brood fledged in storm at the foot of the milldam. Air and water were its parents, and its whole substance 106 RUNNING-WATER NOTES. but a drift o£ foam. A wild, white swan it was (such as no fowler ever snared or shot), sailing solitary and beautifvd down the am- ber-colored stream. ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. Of all those who extended and widened the path of Columbus, I have always thought that Vasco Nunez, " silent upon a peak in Darien," fronting an unknown ocean, was the most favored. I can only wonder at the sordid presence of mind with which he hastened to inform the new-found sea of its vassalage to the crown of Castile. It would seem that in such elemental pros- pect there could be small suggestion of hu- man supremacy. No configuration of the land, neither the majesty of mountains nor the airy spaciousness of plains, so moves us as does the sea, with its sublime unity and its unresting motion. What is true of the sea, as regards this exalted first impression, may as justly be claimed for any body of water which the vision is unable to span, — may be claimed for Erie, which, as well as its companion Great Lakes, fully deserves to be called a " fresh-water sea." For the hundredth time beholding it, I feel the thrill 108 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. of discovery, and drink in the refreshing prospect as with thirsty Old World eyes. " Who poured all that water out there ? " a child's question on first seeing the Lake, best embodies the primitive wonderment and pleasure which the sight still retains for me. I am not chagrined as I reflect that, of this inland water system, this Broad Eiver trav- eling under many aliases, Erie is reckoned the shallowest : if its depth were greater, would it not hinder the present experiment ? It is already deeper than my sounding-line is long. I fall on paradox in saying that ordina- rily I am not within sight of the Lake, though quite constantly residing upon one of its beaches. It is proper to state that this beach is at present four good miles from highest water-mark; that at a very early period it was abandoned by the Lake ; was dry land, clothed with sward and forest, a very long time before any red settlement, to say nothing of the white, was established hereabouts. A great stone bowl or basin the master mechanic Glacier originally scooped out to hold this remnant of the ancient con- tinental sea. Its successive shrinkings are plainly marked on the sides of the bowl in ALONa AN INLAND BEACH. 109 continuous lines of relievo, which, according as they are slight or bold, the geologist terms ridges or terraces. That these are the Lake's old beaches is now generally ac- cepted. That this region was once swept by the waves is evident from the frequency of sand and gravel beds and other earthy de- posits, which may be reckoned the impedi- menta dropped and left behind in the Re- treat of Erie's Ten Thousand. East and west roads follow the ridges ; from which at various points the traveler most fitly sights the far-retired water. In approaching the Lake, long before the blue ribbon that binds the northern horizon appears above the land verge, you should know by the quick, springing breeze that you are nearing some great gathering of waters. You should infer who holds sway yonder by that three-forked sceptre thrust sharply up against the sky, — though it is possible that you may see nothing but the crabbed form of a tall dead tree : from long familiarity I have learned its true purport. Observe how the landscape avails itself of the Lake as a favorable foil. This field of ripe wheat, — how red is its gold when dis- played against the azure distance! Never 110 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. looked Indian corn more beautiful than here, floating its green blades on the wind, and holding whispered parley with the water. If we walk along, having this field be- tween us and the Lake, we shall still catch glimpses of its heavenly face down aU the vistas formed by the rows. Thus, we play hide and seek a while before coming face to face with our friend. The characteristic summer coloring of the Lake is, for some distance out, a tawny white or pale lava tint ; midway, green with slashes of deep purple, which one might fancy to be narrow rifts opening into a pro- founder, sunless deep; beyond, the pure ultramarine of' farthest eye-range, in which the ridging of the waves becomes indistin- guishable. The clarity and the swift inter- change of these purples and greens have often reminded me of the same colors sport- ing in a particularly choice soap-bubble. Sometimes I look, and behold ! a multiform animate jewel, liquid sapphire and emerald, cut in a hundred transient facets, over which seethes and sparkles a deflagrating diamond. The term " glassy sea " should be in good acceptation. This faithful looking-glass, this old friend of the sky, gives instant ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. Ill warning of every flaw or beauty-spot of a passing cloud seen upon its face. The Lake reflects itself, also, and in this wise: the white foam vertex of each wave is mirrored in the porcelain blue of the concave, floor between it and the preceding wave. The prevailing summer wind is from the west ; hence, oftenest from that quarter, as from illimitable watery pampas or Tartary plains, comes the stampede of wild white horses. Fancy makes her choice, and throws a lasso, determined to bring a steed to shore ; but the protean creature so changes, each in- stant raising a new head and tossing mane, that there is no singling it out from the com- mon drove, no telling when it reaches the beach. It is not a difficult matter, any morning, to take the Lake napping (for it holds no arrogant views on the subject of early ris- ing). At sunrise, its only sound is the soft lapping of the ripples along the sand, a sweet and careless lip-service. One would say that the kildeer's sharp wing left a dis- tinct mark upon the surface. As the bird rises higher, its shadow, slim and elongated in the water, seems to be diving, — a shad- owy bird striking at shadowy fish. The 112 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. interval between the faint swells has the gloss and smoothness of the mill-stream slip- ping over the edge of the dam. While in this slumberous condition, the Lake well merits the characterization of The Big Pond, given it by one who is frequently with me upon the beach. " Often 't is in such gentle temper found That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it some time fell When last the winds of heaven were nnbonnd." At evening, when the Lake breeze is drop- ping off to sleep, this wide spread of misty blue looks not unlike a fine lawny curtain, or tent-cloth, tacked at the horizon, free at the shore, and here and there lifted by a light wind underneath. At such time, to cast in a pebble were, seemingly, at the risk of making an irreparable rent in an exqui- site fabric. Where, inland, does the day so graciously take leave? Not that the color pageant is here especially remarkable, but that the water has the effect of a supple- mental heaven, repeating and emphasizing the tenderness and beauty of the evening sky. On these two canvases, how many pic- tures, both lovely and grotesque, have been painted! How often the trail of crimson ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 113 light over a moderately rough surface showed me the outline of a monstrous lake- serpent, whose head was at the down-going of the sun, and whose tail reached to the oozy sand at my feet, — that tail, sure to writhe till the very last beam had departed ! Once watching the sun sink through a light mist, I saw what appeared a globe slowly filling with water, as though the Lake had risen in it by force of capillary attraction. At another time, a strip of dark cloud, lying across the sun, threw up the profile of a tropical island, palm grove, coral reef, and lagoon : a graven land of the sun, with the golden disk for a sunset background. One memorable evening there was a rainbow, of which one base rested upon the Lake. The seven-hued seal laid upon that spot hinted that the traditional treasure coffer of the heavenly arc had been sunk in the water for greater security. Far away from land, might not a rainbow, with its shadow upon the waves, vaguely indicate a prismatic circle, through which a sailing ship might seem to pass to unimagined regions of romance ? If you have time to kill, try this chloro- forming process : Sit on the beach, or the turfy bank above, and watch the passing of 114 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. ships. Hours will have elapsed before the saU, which dawned red with the sunrise, will have traversed the rim of this liquid cres- cent and disappeared at its western tip. Often a steamer stands in so near that with the naked eye you can distinguish the fig- ures of the crew and their movements. Or you see the clue which binds the toilsome, fuming steam-tug with its listless followers. In bright, still weather, whatever goes over the deep is unwontedly etherealized. That distant ship, with motionless sunny sails, might be an angel galaxy, — wings drawn together above some happy spirit of mortal ripe for translation. For you or me, the beach is a place of idleness, but for another it is a field of busiest enterprise. Might we not have more confidential relations with the Lake, more official knowledge, if we tried to get our living therefrom ? The sand-piper has this advantage over us. He runs like a fly along the wet sand, his line of travel a series of scallops bounded by the coming and reced- ing of the waves. Sometimes, "for fun," he lets the water overtake and wash around his slender legs. He runs well, but cannot maintain a graceful standing position; for ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 115 he seems to have the centre of gravity mis- placed, always nodding and swaying (tip-up, teeter), as though shaken by the wind, or troubled with a St. Vitus's dance. He fre- quently visits inland, up the marsh stream, when, by his phantomy, noiseless flight as well as by his colors, mixed black, white, and brown, I am put in mind of the dragon- fly. Should we not know something worth knowing of the Lake if we fished from its waters — not with line or seine, as the man- ner of some is, but as the eagle ! That bird's flight ! it is subdued exaltation ; steady sails, with the least use of the oars ; no petty movement, nothing for gymnastic display. This aquiline old inhabitant — such surprise to me as the roc to Siubad — has his habi- tation in a high tree-top overlooking the water; a feudal castle, no doubt, in eagle annals. By contrast with the sound and motion of the waves, the land sinks to inanition before our eyes. It no longer looks to be terra firma, but an illusory coast, a painted piece of summer mirage. The breeze maybe bend- ing the grain and swaying forest branches, but no report is brought to our ears ; the ineffectual soughing is lost in the manifold 116 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. noise of waters. A little distance back in the fields or woods, and all is changed : the land wakes ; the Lake is a dream ; its voice comes soothingly, like the pleasant sound of a storm gone by. From the bank, listening in the direction of a certain shallow bay, I can always hear a faint canorous vibration, distinct from the hoUow murmur of the waves. What wonder if I come to think that the " singing sands " are to be found not so very far away ? Or if I credit the sweet air to a shoal of dolphin, lying in the hazy sunlight and humming over some old Arion melody, may I not be pardoned the vagary ? The succession of breaking waves is an endless verse, yet not without the ictus and csesural pause ; for all waves do not beat with like emphasis, and the interval varies. Listening to the pulses of any great water, the final impression gained is not of incon- stancy, but of changelessness throughout all change. When was it otherwise than now? When were these waves not coursing their way to the shore, or when shall they cease coming ? If any one understands the anat- omy of the melancholy which overtakes us here, it is not I. After the novelty has worn off, there is something haunting and burden- ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 117 some in this cry of the waves. I cannot think it morbidity that opens this sombre vein ; for the most healthful souls have not remained unaffected. Some time or other, every walker on the beach has heard the " eternal note of sadness ; " and " Sophocles long ago Heard it on the ^gean. " In this melancholy, hearing is reinforced by sight : we see the wave approach and break upon the shore ; see it spent and refluent, lost in the vast unindividual body. It is no comforting parable we hear spoken upon the beach. The hurl and headiness of our endeavors are mocked at, apparently. Are we such broken and refluent waves along the shore of the eternities ? It is doubtless well known that the level of the Lake is not uniform from year to year, or even from season to season. Early emigrants from Buffalo to Cleveland were favored somewhat as were the ancient Isra- elites : the water was unusually low, permit- ting them to travel by the beach, with the advantage of a free macadamized road. From the record of observations made at in- tervals during the present century, it ap- pears that the Lake was at its lowest level 118 ALONG AN INLAND BEACB. in 1819, at its highest in 1838, —the differ- ence in level amounting to six feet, eight inches. The greatest inconstancy noted as occurring between seasons is two feet, though the average difference is considerably less. The Lake attains its greatest annual height during the month of June, its volume hav- ing been steadily increased by the discharge of its tributaries, swollen with the spring rains. Some of Erie's old neighbors — who live next door, and might be thought to be best acquainted with his incomings and out- goings, who have a notched stick in their memories — maintain that seven years, al- ternately, see the Lake at its minimum and maximum height. Seven is a prepotent number. Seven is climacteric: everybody knows that within this period the human system undergoes a complete change. Pos- sibly, the Lake's being is governed by a sim- ilar law. While these secular and annual variations are accounted for with little diffi- culty, there is another class of oscillations which offers a perennial problem to the men of science as well as to the old neighbors. I speak of the remarkable changes of level, the rapid advances and recessions of the water, for which apparently the wind cannot ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 119 be held to account. These inconstancies have suggested to some the hypothesis of a lake-tide, however careless and indefinite in keeping its appointments. But the tide theory, it has reasonably been objected, does not elucidate that prime mystery of the Great Lakes, — the so-called " tidal wave." By how much is Erie wilder and freer than ocean itself ! Unlike the servile sea, it ob- serves no stated periods of ebb and flood, performs no dances up the beach under the nod and beck of the moon ; but when it list- eth (not frequently, for peace and law-abid- ingness are its normal mood), it throws up a great billow, like, but mightier than, that with which Scamander signaled his brother river. Out of a calm lake, without other warning than a sudden shifting of the gentle breeze and a low, thundery rumbling, rises a moving ridge of water, ten, fifteen, or even twenty feet in height. It hurls itself upon the shore, very sea-like and outrageous in its action ; rushing over piers, snapping the hawsers of vessels at dock, and dashing up the mouths of its astonished tributaries. Almost immediately it retires, sometimes to be followed by one or two minor surges ; after which all is tranquil as before, and the 120 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. gentle breeze epiloguizes, having resumed its former post. The most striking instances of these tidal waves occurred in 1830, 1845, and the last as late as 1882. The theory now generally received is that " unequal at- mospheric pressure" is the causal force in these strange agitations of the water. There are those who, in the tidal wave of the last year, saw an effort made by the Lake to swallow a cyclone. This it most certainly achieved, if there was any cyclone in the case, since no violence of wind was felt upon the land. Another theory, until now pri- vately entertained, is, that these great waves are the Lake's sudden, wrathy resolutions to strike once more for its ancient beaches, and sink the innovating land forever. If that be the intention, the outcome, I grant, is wholly insignificant. Yet it may be that Erie will become the great real-estate owner, land speculator and devourer, hereabouts. The tidal wave may be nothing to the point, but this slow, patient erosion under the banks, very perceptible in its effects after the lapse of a generation, — does it count for nothing ? The places where the gnawing is most furious may be protected by " cribs " (rectangular framework of heavy timbers ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 121 ballasted with stones) ; but the security thus afforded is only temporary. The road used by the early inhabitants of the shore is not now practicable : it is indeed a lost road, lying either in air or upon the water be- neath ; and many a homestead and garden have slid off into the bosom of the Lake. Of the last to go some vestiges yet remain : tufts of dooryard shrubs and plants, lilac bushes, or a gay knot of corn lilies flaunting light farewell before disappearing over the crumbling verge. As we walk along the gagged bank, we might sketch the wasted landscape upon the airy void, filling it in with visionary lines, like the faint dotted lines of hypothesis in a geometric diagram. Whether the Lake henceforth will advance or retreat, who can tell ? Once — so runs a fairy tale of science — this Erie communi- cated with La Belle Riviere, Ohio the Beau- tiful (but that was loag before the stormy Niagara path had been beaten out) ; if at some time it should decide to renew its southern acquaintance, would it be able to find its way through the old " water gaps," which have been choked up with drift dur- ing unknown cycles ? From its softening influence upon the cli- 122 ALONG AN 'INLAND BEACH. mate, the Lake might be characterized as an inland gulf-stream. In smumer it is a well-spring of grateful coolness ; a constant breeze by day flowing landward, replaced at night by a breeze from the land. In the winter its effect is — to compare great things to small — like that of the tub of water set in the cellar to take the edge off the frost. At this season, the mercury stands several degrees higher in shore thermometers than in those some miles inland. If the ice, with which the Lake parts so slowly, churning back and forth between its shores, retards the spring, the disadvantage is fully atoned for in the prolonged fine weather of autumn. One might venture to set up the claim that Indian Summer is here seen at its brightest and best. Such is the quiet geniality beam- ing in the face of this water during the fall months that I half expect to see " birds of calm" brooding upon its surface, their in- violable nests placed somewhere under the dry, warm bank. To have come a long journey, to have ar- rived within sight of home, and then to suf- fer detention, — this is what has happened to our creek of many windings. Here it halts, scarcely two rods from the tossing ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 123 spray, a bar of sand across its mouth. It has not force enough to overcome the diffi- culty, and so it settles back in sleek, sun- shiny contentment, toying with Nymphaea and Nuphar ; beloved of the pickerel-weed, the arrow-head, and the floating utricularia. It settles back into a dense field of sedge and cat-tail, over whose soldierly lances the rosy oriflamme of the marsh-mallow holds sway. Late in the summer noisy flocks of blackbirds assemble here. Like an enter- tainment planned by a wizard are the two prospects : on one hand the hurrying " white caps " and shouting waves ; on the other, the still indifference of the halted stream. How shall we regard this considerable piece of unfenced common, with the un- claimed properties we may chance to find upon it? If Neptune write us a letter in substantial sort, shall it be lawful for any to intercept the contents ? Having consigned to us certain flotsam and jetsam, thus writes Neptune : " That which I send you, scruple not to accept ; it has been so long in my pos- session that all previous right and title there- to are annulled." The dwellers on any coast are always receiving such letters from the blue-haired autocrat ; and it is scarcely to 124 ALONG AN INLAND BEACB. be wondered at if they accept his gifts and assurances without questioning his authority. It would seem that a sort of wrecking epi- demic is bred from every large body of water, whether salt or fresh. I confess to a feeling of expectancy, when on the beach, that the Lake will bring me something, al- though I do not imagine it will be in any solid merchantable shape, or that you would care to dispute the prize, or that the owner would think it worth while to redeem the property by paying me salvage. I do not go.so far as do some, who trustingly regard the Lake as a kind of sub-Providence acting in their behalf. In winter, the rescue of lumber sent adrift by the fall freshets re- ceives considerable attention along shore, and is carried on at whatever risk of frozen extremities or rheumatic retribution. The wrecking laws are sometimes sharply dis- puted. Doubtless, there is more need of stringency now than formerly, when the lum- ber traffic was less extensive. The waves work in the interest of the shore, yet they were not always to be depended upon. There was the case of the old - time inhabitant, — faithful patroUer of the beach in the early mornings after nights of storm : to one who ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 125 asked him why he had not " built on an ad- dition," he replied that he had intended to do so ; but, somehow, the Lake had n't been kind to him that year, — had not furnished the requisite timbers. There was also a good dame to whom Neptune sent a quilt ; a not incomprehensible -present, when we re- flect that it must have seen service upon the " cradle of the deep." Many years ago, a vessel making a last voyage for the season was kept out of port, and finally hemmed in by the fast-forming ice ; her captain and crew going ashore in Canada. Though she was a long distance out, the people of the southern coast spied her, and proceeded over the solid ice to visit her. She carried a miscellaneous cargo of unusual value. Firmly held in abey- ance, she was in no immediate danger ; but the landsmen did not see the situation in this light, — on the contrary, resolving to give the benefit of their wrecking services. Accordingly they lightened the ^ip as fast as possible, each taking what seemed to him the most valuable. Silks, velvets, and broad- cloths were the chief objects of rescue, though I have heard that one man selected a sheaf of umbrellas (that article which on all occa- sions invites sequestration), while another 126 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. devoted himself to the safe transportation of an " elegant family Bible," the character of the freight perhaps giving a religious color to the proceeding. My chronicler records that, while engaged in this salvation of prop- erty, the participants sustained life by mak- ing free use of the ship's provisions. On their return journey, the ice parting com- pelled some to remain out over night, ex- posed to very bitter cold ; others were ex- tremely glad to reach shore empty-handed, having consigned their booty to the Lake, which was afterwards seen flaunting in silks and velvets. The impromptu colporteur was of all the company most unfortunate ; both his feet having been frozen in their evangel- ical progress, and permanent lameness re- sulting. He is reported to have made the following plaintive statement of his case : " Always went in the very best society, be- fore I got my feet froze ; but now it 's dif- ferent, and I 'm sure I don't see whyi" The owners of the vessel subsequently brought suit against these misguided wreckers, who constantly maintained that their sole purpose in the expedition had been to save property. The moral of this coastwise episode is to be found in the fact that the actors were pos- ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 127 sessed of the average probity, or, at least, while on land would never have committed the smallest larceny. Nothing but the the- ory of a wrecking epidemic can account for their deflection from the right line of con- duct. A few winters since, a schooner with iron ore from the upper lakes foundered off our coast. The water washing upon the ore acquired for some distance a dark red flush, — as though a mighty libation of wine had been offered. Of this wreck a farmer on the shore preserves a relic most absurdly framed, " Jane Bell " (the name of the sunken ves- sel) now serving as a legend over his barn door. It strikes me he ought not to com- plain if, having thus dedicated his property to the nautical powers, he should some morn- ing find it had deserted its site, and gone arsailing, from barn converted into ark. Tame as this shore appears, it has never- theless received its tragic depositions from the waves. Voyagers, whose bearings were forever lost, have lain on its pebble-strewn beach ; it has even happened to them to be manacled with ice, — as though their estate were not already cold and sure enough. In my wrecking experience, such as it has been, nothing ever came more serviceable than the 128 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. finding of a piece of ship timber, half sunken in the sand, but still displaying the horse- shoe which had been nailed upon it, — for luck ! What luck had , they met with, who had so striven to procure the good -will of fate? Surely, here was the most effective silent sermon ever preached against the use of charms and phylacteries ! If we closely observe the sand left bare by the receding wave, we shall see occasional perforations, from which the escaping air drives a little jet of water, — minute pattern of a geyser. Such perforations are probably caused by the sinking of fine gravel. If we have no business more pressing, it may be worth OUT while to make an inventory of the various articles that lie on this curiosity shelf, the beach. There is, first, the driftwood : judging from the bone-like shape and white- ness of the ligneous fragments with which the Lake strews its margins, we might sup- pose it to have a taste for palaeontology. More than one fossil - resembling model of nameless ancient beast, as well as the origi- nals of all the nondescripts in heraldry, shall we rescue from the sand. It would be curi- ously interesting to follow the varying for- tunes of yonder tree, which, lately uprooted ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. 129 by the wind, lies prone upon the water, its leafage unconscious of destiny, still being nourished with sap ; how long will it take the great planer and turner to convert this tree into effects as fantastic as those we have noted in the drift ? This artificer, the Lake, abhors angles, and strives to present the line of beauty in whatever it turns out of its lab- oratory. Here, among those least bowlders, crystalline pebbles from the far north, is a lump of coal, worn to an oval contour, weU. polished, and hinting of cousinship with the diamond. Here, beside the abundant peri- winkle, are thin flakes of clam-shell, iridea- cent and beautiful ; trinkets made from the spines of fish; the horny gauntlets of the crab ; a dragon - fly ; the blue and bronze plates of large, beetles not seen inland ; and the fluttering, chaffy shells of the " Canada soldiers," short-lived myrmidons of the shore. And here is a tithe of last year's hickory and butternut mast; the burs of various rough marsh plants ; a lock of a lake-maid's hair (or is it only a wisp of blanched rootlets from some distant stream side ?) ; an ear of corn, half buried, its kernels, with mustard-seed faith, pushing up green blades through the lifeless, unstable sands. Now and then you 9 130 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. see the feather of a gull or other water- haunting bird — a plume in your cap if you find the quUl of an eagle ! I have just picked up an arrow-head, which I would fain believe has lain here ever since an Indian hunter shot it at a stag that had come down to drink at sunrise. Heaven saved the mark and frustrated the hunter ; for which I can- not be sorry. This missile may have been carved out at the arrow-head armory, the site of which a farmer thinks he has f oimd in one of his fields. This is a piece of rising ground, where, before successive plowings had entirely changed the surface, the spring yield of flints was unusually large. As most of these were imperfect, and mixed with a great proportion of shapeless chippings, they were supposed to be waste and rejected material, such as always accumulates around a workman's bench. Here, then, in the days that have no histo- rian, sat a swarthy Mulciber, plying his trade with the clumsiest tools, either alone, or the centre of a group of idle braves and story-teUing ancients. More verifiable is the tradition of an aged and solitary Indian, liv- ing at some distance back in the forest ; a red man of destiny, by his tribe doomed to perpetual exile for some capital offense, of which he had been found guilty. Of the ALONG AN INLAND BEACB. 131 great nation whose name is borne by this water (Lake Erie, Wildcat Lake !) only the meagrest account has been transmitted. The Eries were gone long enough before this re- gion owned the touch of civilization. We frequently speak of the Lake as "frozen over," but this is a mistake ; there is always a central channel of free water. The glassy quay that builds out from shore remains unchanged the entire winter, but the ice bordering that open mid-stream is greatly subject to the pleasure of the wind, — sometimes driven southward, sometimes far to the north; in the latter case, the dark line of moving waters is visible from our coast. Frozen, the Lake seems possessed of a still but strenuous power, as though after the habit of water on a cold winter night it might crack the great bowl in which it was left standing. The arrested waves are raised against the shore as if in act to strike : the blow will never be dealt ; they will not lower all at once, but, as the winter relaxes, the sun will turn away their wrath and they will go down from the shore assuaged. It is no miracle to walk the waves, when the waves are firm as marble ; yet in so doing you feel a strong sense of novelty. Along their pro- jecting edges, rows of icicles, like the stalao- 132 ALONG AN INLAND BEACH. tite trimmings of a cave, are formed. In the thawing weather of early spring, it is rather strange and decidedly pleasing to hear the tinkling fall of the little streams that are crannying the ice. For the moment you might think it a place of rocks abound- ing in springs, being helped to that fancy by the masses of frozen gravel as weU as by the musical sounds from the melting ice. The charm to the ear is in the contrast drawn between this slender melody and the remembered din of the waves. What we hear is the old Lake waking up with infan- tine prattle and prettiness, not yet alive with the consciousness of power. I am aware that the Lake is not the ocean : its waves are shorter, rimning not so high ; and though it is occasionally heard to boom, it has not the deep, oracular voice of the sea. Its beach is not the spacious beach of ocean, yet, — and I note the fact with in- terest, — its sands support the sea - rocket and the beach-pea, plants that will thrive under kisses more pimgent than those of fresh-water spray. When I am praising the Lake, I should not forget that, after tarry- ing long upon its shore, I become conscious of a serious lack in its nature : can it be salt that is wanting ? A SUMMER HOLINIGHT. " lente lente ciirrite noctis equi 1 " We are accustomed to speak of darkness as negation, of the night as a usurper ; but a fair arbitration never yet gave the award of priority to day. Our mortality deals with the day ; our immortality with the night. Why not try to regain some of the privi- leges of citizenship in this oldest of Satur- nian kingdoms? Night will be friendly to thee : ask a boon. There is a flavor of nov- elty in the idea of holding a vigil which shall be neither penitential nor scientific, nor yet in the nature of a municipal watch or military bivouac — a vigil to spy out the mysterious ways of the Night, to listen, as an eavesdropper, at the door of her council- chamber. I recall with pleasure certain nights of the past summer spent in this un- secular enterprise. The day springs ; so also does the night. Our common expression, nightfall, is an in- version of the truth. The chalice of the 134 A SUMMER HOLINIGBT. evening air has its marked degrees showing the gradual rise of the shadow. Already the forest hedge of the horizon is sub- merged ; the low-lying strata of sunset va- pors are changed to the color of a smoulder- ing ember; but directly overhead there is still a region of unmingled daylight — fluid sapphire with some few dissolving pearls of floating cloud. Through this translucent element the latest lingering birds take their flight, dropping down into some convenient tree when finally overtaken by dusk. In- numerable happy hints and allusions occur to the imagination during the long reign of the summer twilight. Given a bright sun- set field to work upon, what heraldic con- ceits, what compositions of the Dor6 order, can be traced in the old Earth's irregular profile ! Every evening I observe yonder, on the brow of the hill, a devout Benedic- tine leaning on his staff, repeating what aves and pater-nosters I know not. Who- ever intrudes upon the ghostly father's ori- sons discovers for his pains only the torso of an old tree in a hood and capote of ivy. Along the hill-slope a hobbledehoy dance of gnarled saplings is in progress. The feath- ery crowns of the dandelion rising above A SUMMER BOLINIGET. 135 the cropped grass of the pasture figure, in this crepuscular comedy, as a service of as- tral lamps set to light the midsummer-night frolics of the little people. They have also the small, uncertain taper of the firefly. This taper, as though held in the invisible hand of some spirit of the underwood, goes searching along the grass, up through the trees, and now into the sky, as if piqued to discover what relationship the stars bear to its own phosphorescent atom. Nature is tender of fireflies, and only on fit nights al- lows them to be on parade. If the air has any asperity about it, not a firefly is to be seen. In the nights bordering on the summer solstice, the boundaries of twilight are not easily defined. There is always a faint flush, or aurora, above the northern horizon, and by a little past two o'clock there is a very perceptible hint of dawn. It might be said that the after-glow of yesterday min- gles with the " forlorn hope " of to-morrow. This scarcely intermittent twilight serves to remind us of our distance from the equator, and suggests, too, that our next neighbor under the Pole Star is the Land of the Mid- night Sun. Those who have lived in trop- 136 A SUMMER aOLINIGRT. ical countries say that the gloom, or opacity, there observable in the northern heavens often gave them a strange feeling of isola- tion and homesickness. Who, though never so v^atchful, could see the appearing of a star ? Without the least premonitory sparkle, a " new planet swims into his ken," but the exact instant of dis- covery can never be gauged. Once seen, it seems to have been shining from eternity. Equally elusive is the vanishment of a star. It would seem an easy task to mark when that pale fluttering mote, smitten with ap- prehension of the day -god, shall succumb before his beams; yet to one that has not tried the experiment, it is almost incredible how long the star may be discerned — even after the sun has risen, if his brightness be partially veiled by clouds. In thus watch- ing a diminishing star, the eye seems as though looking through a dense stream at a precious stone reposing upon the stream's bed. There are instants of visual relaxa- tion when the star appears overswept by a wave of light, but is again recovered to the sight. Finally no eyebeam has power to draw it up from the ether gulf; it was there, it is gone ; we cannot claitu that we A SUMMER HOLINIGUT. 137 saw its farewell twinkle. After such a vigil, however, we possess a kind of new experi- mental faith, that the stars are above us all day, seeing though unseen. 'T is as though witnessing the death of some beloved per- son should but the more impress us with be- lief in the spirit's deathlessness. Perhaps early man read a first lesson in immortality from the stars. Observing that, although they were blotted out by day, night returned them to their places, and that a familiar constellation, for a season lost to the early evening, might be found in the morning sky, — observing perpetuity subtending all changes, he well might have inferred a like- ness between the fate of the heavenly lights and that of the " soul that rises with us, our life's star." Have the stars aught to do with human destiny ? We have seen them consenting, denying, admonitory?^reminis- cent, prophetic. They so lend themselves to any vagary in the mind of the gazer, that no certain conclusion can be drawn as to their independent " influence." " They fought from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," sung the Is- raelitish prophetess. But hearken what Jes- sica learned from her lover's lips on a sum- mer night : — 138 A SUMMER HOLINIGBT. " There 's not the smallest orb which thou hehold'st, Bnt in his motion like an angel sings, Still qniring to the yonng-eyed oherubins." Yonder planet, " the beauty crest of sum- mer weather," seems bright and near enough, if but hung at the proper angle, to reflect the Earth's image upon its disk. Then should the Earth know that she was beloved, seeing herself in miniature within that bright planetary eye! There are poets' stars, haunts and retirements among the constellations, that have almost an histor- ical fame. One such haunt is Ariadne's Crown. In the old drama, the hero, expect- ing immediate execution at the hand of the tyrant, takes this leave of his wife : — "My Dorigen, Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's Crown, My spirit shall hover for thee." Nearly in the zenith at twilight is a bright star dear for its association with home, as in these lines : — " Arctnrus sees what I cannot. The conntry town where I was horn, The light within my mother's cot, The field that lately waved with com."- By night the concavity of the sky is much more pronounced than by day. The heav- ens are spread above us as a vast dome, A SUMMER HOLINIGHT. 139 gallery on gallery, transept and arch, and recesses for the choirs of silence, sunk in the mysterious mid - distances of the firma- ment. It is no wonder the fanciful speak of the windows of heaven. So many crystal- line openings in the dark wall, through which stream showers of radiance as from the reservoir or fountain-head of all light ! At first the celestial perspective appears overcrowded, star jostles star, beams are in- terknit and involved in a sort of metropoli- tan maze. Gradually the eye recovers from its perplexity, and becomes a measurer of interstellar space, a resolver of nebulae, a connoisseur of infinitudes ; nor are delicate details unobserved, such as the two small flickering stars in the face of Taurus, that seem engaged in a teasing, butterfly play. Thank Heaven the stars never grow less. The hills of our childhood have shrunk to hillocks, the river has narrowed between its banks, the sea is no longer a type of infinity since we have crossed it, — all things on earth diminish as the eye grows old in its regard. Not so the stars. If they some- time spoke to the youth, they companion age. Science and hard fact can never re- duce them. Waning faith rekindles, imagi- 140 A SUMMER HOLINIGBT. nation mends its broken fortunes, at this source. Any allusion to the stars, whether it be on printed page or in the text of the orator, wakens a sense of freedom and sub- limity. The sun is a despotism, the stars are a republic, of light : it is better to live under a republic than under a despotism. Any nation that claims to enjoy their tute- lary regard, and borrows from them its em- blem, has an heroic task to mak€ good its boast of liberty. The moon should be tried for witchcraft, as possibly she has been at some crazy as- size of mediaeval judicature. That she "has undergone an auto dafe, — has been burned for her necromancies, — has not lessened her wizard potentiality. The present night is as full of her enchantments as when Medea gathered the herbs "that did renew old JEson." What blame to the husbandman, if, suspecting that there is " something in the moon," he should plant, or should with- hold his hand, according to her instructions ? These slopes were never pastnred by our flocks, Yon forests ne'er shook ont their thick hlaek locks To hreezes of the day, but silent stand, The loyal outpost of enchanted land. Lo, this is Night's strange realm! All things are strange, A SUMMER nOLINIGHT. 141 A sorceress in heaven liath wrought the change. Her face doth front the sun ; the light she stored In long-lapsed ages on this eve is poured. Therefore the world looks shadowy and old, A silver dew o'erlays the grain-sheaves' gold, The glow of fruited hills she hath replaced With soft oblivious sheen ; in the pale waste Of southern sky she sits alone, supreme. Pours draughts for sleep, and sends the elGu dream. If she be arbitress of ocean's tide. Shall not the meadow water smoother glide, And feel her orbfid mastery no less ? — It smoother glides and laps the floating cress. But if we admit a tidal impulse in the world of waters, why not admit as well that the clod feels a similar drawing moonward ? There is a tremulous agitation of the leaves, a wilder rumor in the air, when late in the night the rim of the moon gleams above the dark horizon, the east blushing faintly ere her rising. " Moon ! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees Feel palpitations when thou lookest in : Moon ! old boughs lisp forth a holier din, The while they feel thine airy fellowship. Thou dost bless everywhere with silver lip. Kissing dead things to life." I do not find the night as devoid of color as is frequently represented ; nor will we have our nocturne a monochromatic piece. " Brown " is the adjective most commonly 142 A SUMMER HOLINIGHT. pressed into service by the old-time poets to characterize the complexion of the night. But the night is not brown ; at least, we recognize the umber medium, and looking through and beyond it receive from all ob- jects distinct notice of their local daylight color — Nature still plainly wearing the green mantle. A difference, however, is to be noted in the unlike effects of moonlight on various leaf surfaces. The foliage of the maple and the elm shows little definition of masses, seeming rather to absorb than to ra- diate the light, while that of the peach and the pear-tree presents a fine polished sur- face and outline. The leaves of the poplar, stirred by a breath imperceptible elsewhere, look like innumerable small, oval mirrors, constantly shifting to reflect at all angles the lunar majesty. The corn-field seems the repository of all the scythes and sickles that have reaped the summer meadows, — lodged here to be reanuealed in moonbeams and whetted into new keenness. The moon is shorn of half her pageantry on the earth if the dew is not there to cooperate. Is there, or do we only fancy it, an iridescence aris- ing from their union ? I am loth to tread on the grass, lest I should destroy the starry A SUMMER HOLINIGHT. 143 system suspended on its blades. The wagon tracks and hoof -prints in the road shine as though they had been traced by a style or pencil dipped in moonlight? and what is the true color of moonlight ? not silver, not golden, but something between the two, — argent-aureate. At night the air carries a heavier freight of woody and vegetable odors than during the hours of sunlight ; the breeze advises us of a new Orient, or Spice Islands, discovered in the familiar latitude of our fields, bring- ing the scent of blossoming clover and grain. Brushing along some tangled border, we guess " in embalmed darkness " that the milkweed is in bloom, though its perfume bears a reminder of spring and the hyacinth. Here also is the evening primrose, whose flower ought to be as dear to the night as the daisy is to the day ; and why should there not be a night's-eye on the floral rec- ords? Nor is the night as silent as it is com- monly reported, unless it be so accepted on the principle that where there is no ear there is no sound. Even then, one wakeful exception in a universe of sleepers ought to be sufficient to give acoustic character to 144 A SUMMER HOLINIGHT. the nocturnal void. I found the night, like the cup of Comus, " mixed with many mur- murs." First, and the nearest at hand, the lively orchestration of the crickets (the later summer adds the fife of a grasshopper and the castanets of the katydid) ; then, in the distance, the regular, sonorous, or snoring antiphonies of the frogs at different points along the winding course of the creek. It would not surprise me to learn that these night musicians are systematically governed by the baton and metronome, so well do they keep time in the perplexing fugue movement which they are performing. That note from the thicket is the whip-poor-will's. What in all the vocalities of Nature is there to compare with this voice of the cool and the dusk, this cloistered melodist, who was never yet heard in the profane courts of Day ? It is " most musical, most melancholy," — a not unworthy rival of the English nightin- gale. Yet close by the whip-poor-will's cov- ert one hears what might be called the mechanical process of his song — a harsh, unlubricated whir, or rattle, which suggests a laryngean ailment of some sort, as, in the same way, the wild dove's note, heard close by, suggests asthmatic breathing. As to A SUMMER HOLINWHT. 145 the beetle, though I am not quite sure of having heard his " small but sullen horn," I shall not omit him from the category of noc- turnal noise - makers. Like the clumsy, heavy-mailed hoplite that he is, he " sounds as he falls," and crackles in the grass in his efforts to right himself. Under the eaves the boring bee still carries on its carpentry. Rarely a half hour passes that some bird does not sing in its sleep; the swallows twitter in their sooty chimney corner; the robin at intervals declares for morning with a loud vivacious whistle, and the wood pe- wee sends a long note of inquiry. Greece would have told a tragic tale of the kiUdeer and its haunting, quavering cry uttered on the wing, — for this bird is always abroad in bright moonlight. The falling of an apple in the orchard seems to emphasize the law of gravitation. I notice that any sound of the human voice, any unwonted noise, dropped in the deep well of nightly quiet, produces a rapidly widening circle of mur- murous responses and expostulations. From the poultry-yard the night-watch there blows a drowsy mot, which is repeated successively by all the chanticleers of the neighborhood ; the cow lows discontentedly from her Para/- 10 146 A BUMMER EOLINIGHT. dise of June pasturage ; and even the crick- ets grow more strident. From which I in- fer that the night keeps a police force in her pay. How do I know what invisible patrols supplement this audible and stationary pick- et-guard ? There are fitful stirrings of the leaves, — a sighing as of aura veni, — a sudden rustling, as of a jealous hidden. Pro- cris. Beyond all accountable sounds there is always the shadow of a sound, — " neither here nor there," — a sound which may be the stir of atmospheric particles, or the hum of noonday activities at the capital of Ca- thay, or a reminiscence in air of planetary music, or the motion of our own terrestrial car, driving through space — or anything else that fancy pleases to say ! There were some cloudy nights in our cal- endar, but they were not without suggestion. One such night I remember in June, when the play of heat-lightning was almost con- tinuous. These flashes, or, as they seemed,- gusts of light, blowing across dark clouds banked in the horizon, momentarily opened up a magnificent aerial architecture, courts, and corridors, and vistaed interiors, such as Vulcan built for the gods of Olympus. Now and then a star glanced through some loop- A SUMMER HOLINIGHT. 147 hole in the flying clouds that filled the ze- nith. A singular interchange of chiaroscuro between cloud and clear sky was produced by the lightning : in the flash, the former stood out in bright relief, while during the interval the sky appeared lightest. Sometimes I extended my walk along the bank of the creek, where, looking into the water, I could see another Cassiopeia's Chair gently rocking in the nether heavens ; or I saw the whole blazing constellation of the Scorpion, with red Antares in its centre, reflected in the profound shallow of the stream. What of pearl gulfs, of rivers that yield the diamond ? It seemed to me that one might dive or dredge for treasure much nearer home. I listened to the musical fall- ing of the water, and thought how they ma- lign the naiad who say the brook " bab- bles " : to me it uttered only eternal, liquid numbers, eloquently arguing that all streams, no matter through what country they flow, have their common rise in Castaly or Heli- con. Would you characterize the suave, de- ceitful flight of time ? It cannot be better compared than to a stream slipping away through the night, unseen, cheating with its ever-present voice. 148 A SUMMER BOLINIGHT. Sometimes during these night researches of mine, I seemed to be traversing the com- etary matter of some mortal's dream. I then flattered myself the dreams I enter- tained were such as have their entrance by the gate of transparencies. It is true, I surveyed for the equatorial line dividing darkness and light, for the occult and fate- ful "turn of the night," held in religious awe by familiar tradition, — the Hour of the Passing of Souls ; but I perceived it would be necessary to return again and again, in order to ascertain the place, or rather the time, passed through by this imaginary par- allel. However, I often marked this of the " turn of the night," that in the dark hour before dawn, the temper of the night changes to something of an opposite charac- ter ; from rough and blustering it frequently calms down to an ominous stillness, or from tranquillity and silence there grows up a kind of murmuring exultation and delirium. " Day unto day uttereth speech," but " night unto night showeth knowledge," — explicit speech on the lips of day; tacit, in- tuitional revelation by night. Who can ever fuUy recall in the daytime that which he thought in the night? He must wait A SUMMER nOLINIGHT. 149 for the sympathetic darkness to quicken his memory. Night thoughts, like some plants, come to perfection of bloom only in the ab- sence of daylight. As I remember, though but defectively, the mid-watch of the night, there was an impression made on the imagi- nation that time was superseded by eternity. Patient lay the earth, forgetful of the sun's light ; 't was an uncomputed period since the last nightfall, and 'twas yet twilight ages to the next dawn. In this interregnum of nothing (of nothing in human history or interest, at least) one sole person waking and watchful comes to fancy that it were easy, unaided, to take a whole city of the sleeping ; also it is suggested, that, if sleep had not been a necessity of nature, we had not been doomed to die. He seems to him- self the only inheritor of earthly immortal- ity ; the rest of tbe great family are dead, — buried in slumber, and the stars are sown over their graves. IN PEAISE OF THE BLACKBEERY. A DAINTY dish is the strawberry as served np with the delicate cream of praise by those who make rural nature their theme. The Muse smacks her lips, descanting upon the virtues of Fragarian juices, but is silent as regards the pleasant gift of the bramble — the glossy, Ethiop - skinned, white -hearted blackberry! Perhaps the latter's unkempt haunts and its truculent setting do not in- vite her. Perhaps her objection is upon chromatic grounds ; having so long used her fine eyes to admire the strawberry's ver- milion hue, it is quite likely that nothing less brilliant can please her. Let her re- member that the blackberry too was red — in its unripe youth • — but did not choose to remain so, since, as quickly as it might, it donned this royal sobriety of coloring. To its true lover, this dusky child of the bram- ble speaks the language of Canticles: "I am black, but comely." There is no reason why these jetty racemes — jewel-drops cut IN PRAISE OF THE BLACKBERRY. 151 in many rounded, polished facets, or berries compounded, each one, of many lesser ber- ries — should not be as favorite a subject for decorative art as is the strawberry. It is strange that more is not said about the beauty of blackberry blossoms, when these so strongly exhibit the rosaceous family like- ness. " Bramble-roses faint and pale " is a verse that recurs as often as I see the snowy sprays of the blackberry flower flung over the rank green wilderness beloved by the briery kind. Also, the autumnal phase of the bramble deserves admiration, its leaves under the touch of frost assuming a deep maroon color, as though they had been steeped in wine a whole season through. Come, whether the Muse wiU go with us or prefers to remain in tamer fields, come away to the " slashing," where the Maryland yellow-throat warns the visitor with "Witches here ! witches here ! " where the geometric spider constructs her silken theorems on the largest scale, where poke and silkweed make prodigious growth, and where a not mythic Briareus holds out in his hundred scraggy hands a sweet and spicy lure. In order to prize the blackberry at its full worth it must be wrested from the ogreish genius by sin- 152 IN PRAISE OF THE BLACKBERRY, gle-handed contest. Nature made t^ie straw- berry defenseless, but hedged the blackberry about with prickles, as though she especially prized it, in effect saying to the gatherer, " These so-called small gains you shall not have without great pains." It is a wide dis- tribution — Europe, Asia, and North Amer- ica — which the genus Eubus enjoys ; so we may suppose that the simile " As thick as blackberries " has its equivalent in other vernaculars. The charge of insipidity is frequently brought against the blackberry ; but those who thus accuse it might do well to sharpen their palate. Any sagacious taster knows that there are as many flavors in the black- berry as there are varieties of meat in the turtle ! This fruit, I would say, is a kind of edible record or rSsumi of the year's weather, embodying both its clemencies and its as- perities. Here is one specimen that is all luscious kindness, — you feel sure that it could have been reared only by the sun and the south ; here is another, so crudely sour and acrid as to suggest that the east wind warped it in its infancy. This contrariety of flavors lends piquancy to the subject. Perhaps your blackberry is, after all, your IN PRAISE OF THE BLACKBERRY. 153 true bitter-sweet berry. — There are bram- bles and brambles, some of high, some of low degree ; else we will count the dewberry as only the common blackberry fallen into ways of sweet humility, traveling along the ground with its winy, well-flavored lading. A fine breakfast fruit, no doubt — invigorat- ing and cheering, if taken while the bead is upon it. The dewberry and the cloudberry (rare Alpine cousin of the bramble) were, surely, fit entertainment for one who jour- neyed by the high morning road. As a mat- ter of fact, the only accepted time in which to go berrying is the morning. Then you have as table-companions the birds, who take the ripest and best with loud conviviality among themselves and many a witty jest at your inability to teach them good manners. You can scarcely come to the " berry patch " so early that you will not find children here before you ; nor, either because you have long been out of practice, or were never in practice, will the rough briers let down their purple-black fruitage as readily for you as to the nimble brown fingers of the children. I take into account only the amenities of blackberrying ; perhaps you would also 154 IN PRAISE OF THE BLACKBERRY. reckon in the walk home under the hot sun, and the extreme probability that the tapes- tries of sleep will be figured with glimmer- ing " worlds of blackberries." MONDAMIN. " First the blade, then the «ar, after that the full com in the ear." The original habit of maize, or Indian corn, was long a vexed question among nat- uralists, many of whom regarded this use- ful cereal as the gift of the Orient. Some maintained that it is identical with the corn of the Scriptures ; others, relying on the testimony afforded by some drawings in an ancient Chinese work on natural history, in- ferred that the plant is of Chinese origin ; still others were deceived by an ingenious forgery purporting to be a thirteenth-cen- tury document, the so-called Charter of In- cisa, in which mention is made of a " kind of seed of a golden color and partly white," brought from Anatolia by Crusaders. The theory of an Egyptian origin was fortified by the finding of an ear of maize in a Theban sarcophagus (since ascertained ■ to have been surreptitiously placed there by an Arab). The distinguished naturalist, Al- 156 MONDAUIN. phonse de CandoUe, reviewing the subject in Ms " Origin of Cultivated Plants," is sat- isfied that maize did not proceed from the East. On the confusion of names which have been applied to this plant, he observes that " maize is called in Loraine and in the Vosges Roman corn ; in Tuscany, Sicilian corn ; in Sicily, Indian corn ; in the Pyre- nees, Spanish corn ; in Provence, Barbary or Guinea com. The Turks call it Egypt- ian corn, and the Egyptian Syrian dourra." The French name, Turkish wheat, he sup- poses to have been fostered by the fancied resemblance of the tufted ears to the beard of the Turk, or " by the vigor of the plant, which may have given rise to an expression similar to the French /bri comme un turc." He is convinced that maize is of American origin, and assigns, as its possible earliest home, the table-land of Bogota, anciently in- habited by a people of considerable agricul- tural civilization, from whom the plant may have been derived by both Peruvian and Mexican. Certain it is that the tombs of these people frequently contain ears of maize, a fact which indicates that' the plant was closely connected with the religious ceremo- nials of ancient America. Added to this MONO AM IN. 157 evidence, Darwin found ears of Indian corn buried in the sand of the Peruvian coast eighty-five feet above sea-level. Our national escutcheon displays an eagle. Now, if it were required to choose an emblem from the vegetable kingdom to bespeak the hope and hai-dihood of the New World, where would the selection fall ? The plant to be promoted to the place of honor must possess the virtue of accommodation, grow- ing readily north, south, east, and west ; be notable for its fruitfulness ; a right-hand re- liance of the pioneer ; above all, it must be an immemorial occupant of the soil. The Western continent has produced the potato, the pumpkin, and the tobacco plant; also maize. The first, prone in its ways, and fruiting subterraneously, would do wrong to our national genius ; the second, a golden braggart, with its earth-embracing habits, — afar be its suggestion ! The third would but conjure up a vision of Columbia, lapped in nicotian haze and vagaries, inviting the nations to smoke with her ! There remains only the maize, and how can we do better than to adopt as our armorial device the Indian's own plant? Behold the blonde plume-waving stranger, whom first the fast- 158 MONDAMIN. ing Hiawatha wrestled with, overcame, and gave due rites of burial, — Mondamin, fort comme un turc, yet noble in his bearing ; urbane and gentle, though a savage ! No other species in the list of cultivated cereals appears to such good advantage, in the isolated individual. ~ A single f uU - grown plant of Indian ^ corn, though but a fleeting, annual growth, possesses presence and dig- nity no less than does the oak itself. It stands erect, poised, sufficient, its green blades sweeping right and left in the curve of beauty, and ready at the wind's excitation to engage in a mock battle of scythes with its neighbors. But we are over-hasty. Mondamin must first be laid under ground. Yearly we bury the handsome youth, who soon springs up and helps to make the yet unwritten history of the rural summer. Though we have made undoubted improvements in this direc- tion, it is not uninteresting to learn how his obsequies were conducted in remote times. " The Indian method of planting corn was to make a conical hillock, in the top of which the com was placed ; and being used repeat- edly for the same purpose, these hills became so hard that they have, in some old fields. MONDAMIN. 159 • lasted till to-day. In some places in Michi- gan a heavy growth of maple has sprung up since, and yet the old corn-hiUs are clearly marked." Still Mondamin enjoins it upon his conquerors to watch his grave. As of old, the body-snatchers are abroad, — " Kah- gahgee, the King of Ravens," and his " black marauders ! " Nor does that connecting link between genus homo and hobgoblin, the scarecrow, avail to stay the miscreants ; even making an example of Kahgahgee, by sus- pending his dead body from a pole in the midst of the field, scarcely checks the piUage. That which was planted one day frequently comes up by the next. Nor are the crow and the blackbird alone in evil-doing, but are reinforced by the chipmunk, a brownie that harvests untimely. Tame ducks, also, have been known to exercise a stealthy in- genuity, with their bills probing the groimd diagonally until the kernel was reached and snapped off, leaving the tender shoot above ground to wither without apparent cause. The farmer's best resort against the horde of feathered trespassers seems to be a boy with a shot-gun. Unless it were Minne- haha's magic circle, no way of blessing the corn-fields so effectual as this! 160 MONDAMIN. ARGUMENTUM AD COEVUM. Hither wing, yon ehon knavei ! East and west the scarecrows wave Their wild panic arms to fright yon From the f nrrows that delight yon, Where the tender shoots of com Take the greeting kiss of mom, — Hither wing, and if yon can. Plead your cause 'gainst wrathful man. You prefer the germ and blade To the sheaf with ripeness weighed ! Canny robber, sophist shrewd. Bird of MachiaTelian mood. Poor in valor, braggart still. Hoot at scarecrow if you will, Mock and gibe, but turn your eye On this felon posted high. Not a plume of him is stirred. Not a gibe from him is heard ; If your jolly life you 'd save, Shun this field, yon black-coat knave ! Though 't were foUy to protect yon. Half I scorn and half respect you — Laughing while your wings you flap At this rusty flint-lock's snap. First the blade. It must be an eye in- different to contrast in color that wiU not take distinct delight in those little pennons of sunshiny green, fluttering above the rich umber of the soil, and signaling the wel- come intelligence, "Corn is up." Every stage of its growth, as in the life of some MONO AM IN. 161 lovely child, is interesting and repays atten- tion, from the time when its blades, clasping the stalk, first form chalices to hold the rain, to its midsummer pride of twofold flowerage, yellow or brownish tassel above, and flowing silk below. What strides of growth it makes from evening to the next day's light ! A sly, silent bacchanal, it gets drunk upon the dew every blessed night. By and by, it is seen standing on tiptoe ; toes white, or, sometimes, prettily roseate. (The farmer, I am bound to say, sees only " brace-roots," the botanist only "aerial roots," extending from the first joint of the stalk downward until they fasten themselves in the soil : yet it will be evident to one who makes corn a sympathetic study, that it stands a^tiptoe, out of pure good spirits and valiance.) Its leaf, closely scanned, shows, not one imif orm green, but streakings of paler and deeper color. . Hold the blade between you and the light, and you will see on each side of the strong, straight midrib an equal number of lucid hair-line channelings. The upper sur- face is roughish, being set with minute hairs ; the under surface is of a cool smoothness. A day of " ninety in the shade "' tells upon the leaves, causing them to curl their mar- 10 162 MONDAMIN. gins upward, as though to shut out the glare of the sun ; but the night does not fail to bring restoration. I listen to the whisper of corn-blades, and seem to receive hint of a mysterious council held by Mondamin and his fellow-braves. In what idiom of Cherokee, or Chippeway, or Sioux, do they converse ? Or, for utmost secrecy, do they employ some of the Indian dead languages? If we studiously attend to their conversation, we shall perhaps learn some word or phrase to which even the learned Eliot did not possess the key. On stm, hot days, when not a lisp of sound pro- ceeds from these balanced sickle blades, a musical contralto murmur goes through the field, reminding one of the orchard's audible reverie in May. The bees are humming at their work among the tassels, or staminate flowers, of the corn. Each laborer flies away with a good packful of yellow. poUen, the substance of bee-bread, or, more prop- erly speaking, of bee johnny-cake, sweet and wholesome, made from the fine bolted meal of the flower, whereas, later on, our own cake will be made of the coarser grist of the kernel. Perhaps it is the scent of the blos- soms which attracts the bees, for the corn- MONDAMIN. 163 blossom possesses a fragrance as character- istic as that of the clover-bloom, — a homely, hearty sweetness, food-promising. We shall scarcely find a fairer midsum- mer picture, more of the spirit which broods in the midsummer fields, or more of the temper which contemplation of their tran- quil beauty inspires, than in Sidney Lanier's poem, " The Waving of the Corn," from which I quote the last stanza : — " From here to where the louder passions dwell, Green leagues of hilly separation roll ; Trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell. Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trembling soul That, craftless all to buy, or hoard, or sell, From out your deadly complex quarrel stole To company with large amiable trees, Sucks summer honey with unjealous bees. And takes Time's strokes as softly as this mom Takes waving of the com." It is noticeable that the primitive signifi- cance of the word corn, stiU. retained in Great Britain, is almost entirely lost in this country. Here, wheat is not com, but " wheat " or " grain," and your farmer would stare at a proposition so absurd as that of " reaping the corn." It is too late in the day to recover the word to its original wider use, and substitute for its present ap- 164 MONDAMIN. plication the term Indian corn, or simply maize ; but since maize was the earliest corn of America, why object to its carrying off the titulary honors ? It is no mean victor. If the dusky planter of old time could re- visit the site of his corn-hills, he might weU start in amazement at the stature which his favorite plant has reached under the pale- face's persuasive treatment. In the centre and raciest soil of the " corn belt," it is not uncommon for corn to stand at more than twice a tall man's height ; at fifteen feet or more, in some instances. Like Cotton Ma- ther, in some matter of information regard- ing the workings of witchcraft, I am the ear- witness of one who was an eye-witness in the measuring of a stalk of maize which fell no inch short of nineteen feet 1 The farmer of such rich fields, when he goes through the corn, is scarcely able to touch the ear with his upreached hand. Beside these Brobding- nagian legions wearing the green, how squat and insignificant had appeared the Prussian Emperor's famous tall regiment! From forty to fifty bushels (shelled corn) is the common production to the acre, while eighty and even one hundred bushels are the. rate of return from most favorable soUs, the ag- MONDAMIN. 165 gregate corn crop of the United States yearly mounting into the hundred million bushels. We may be pardoned some " tall talk " about that which has to commend it not only tall- ness, but a generous amplitude as well. At the New Orleans Exposition it was Nebras- ka's emblazoned boast, " Corn is King," — a boast which wins ready consent when one reflects upon the royal beneficence of maize. On the occasion of the last great freshets of the Ohio River, two counties in the State of Kansas (mindful of a good turn they had, received after a scourge of grasshoppers) freighted a long train of cars with com, and forwarded golden plenty to their needy neighbors in the East. When we go to Sybaris, if the time be midsummer, I know not how they can enter- tain us better than to set before us dishes of boiled corn, — ay, sweet corn, tender, milky, — the full corn in the ear, requiring nothing more than the grace of a little salt. And if we go to Sparta, and their storehouse hap- pens to afford only some ears of field com, cannot we manage to do with these, provided the grinders are not too few, or our hardy friends have a little fire, so that they can serve us the kernels parched ? But we are 166 MONDAMIN. forgetting that Indian com, Zea Mays, was not known to ^ybaris and Sparta. An expression of a somewhat scurrilous import is current. We have heard of " corn- fed Westerners." But why resent an epithet which has an Homeric breadth of sugges- tion in it, as when in the Iliad, we read of " The renowned milk-nourished men, the Hippemolgians, Long-liyed, most just, and innocent." Milk-nourished are they who make their re- pasts off sweet com. From 54° north to 40° south latitude, in- clusive, should not be thought a meagre garden-plot. Such, at all events, Indian com enjoys in the Western continent. If the various peoples inhabiting between the two oceans should determine to celebrate, on a certain day, a feast of brotherly love, some preparation of maize, as being most conven- ient to all, would probably be fixed upon as the symbolic comestible. So, in tropical America, the inhabitants would observe the rite by partaking of tortilla and pinole; in our own South pone and hoecake, in the North brown bread and johnny-cake, would occupy the pious consideration of the cele- brants ; while here and there would rise the steam of various polentas of savory name. MONDAMIN. 167 hominy, samp, mush, or hasty-pudding, — the last duly honored in song by a warm- hearted muse of New England yore. In some parts of the West, where wood is scarce and corn most abundant, the latter is sometimes used to feed the hearth-fire. Dil- igent creature of the earth, and servant of man's comfort, furnishing both food and the fagot with which to cook it ! A novel idea this, — to provide one's fuel by annual spring-time plantings, gathering the thrift thereof each autumn. Every last fibre of the maize has its use, as becomes a native plant. If the ear gives food, the stalk fur- nishes fodder for the keeping of our domes- tic animals. Baskets may be made of the stalks, and mats braided of the husks, of which, also, a very good quality of paper has been made. Many a "corn-fed Westerner," though he may not indulge in sleep upon the sheaves in after-harvest idleness, does not scorn a couch of husks, even preferring it to the ancestral feather-bed. I have lost the ear, with other zests, of childhood, so that I cannot now decide which of three, dandelion pipe, bass-wood whistle, corn-stalk fiddle, makes the best music. I incline to think that the last-named instrument requires 168 MONDAUIN. a degree of skill in its construction not less than that which went to the notching of a reed by the streams of Arcady, since our rustic violin must be fashioned entire from one piece of stalk, the golden strings thereof subtly carven from the body of the instru- ment, then critically raised upon a bridge ; in which delicate operations much choice material has been spoiled. But the corn-husking should not pass un- mentioned, whether this merry rite be accom- plished under barn-roof or in the open field. Afield, poetic suggestion is more rife. How is it that, surveying the long lines of au- tumnal shocks, we are reminded of the ab- original no less than when the summer field asserted its plumed chieftaincy? The In- dian's com and the Indian's summer! In this fine brief season named for him, his wigwam villages dot many a sunny field, dwelt in by what friendly tribe, plying, if invisibly, what arts of peace a savage may ! With half-shut eyes looking through the quivering hazy air upon the further fields, fancy helping, you seem to receive intima- tions of their village fires ; almost, a slight film of smoke can be detected stealing up- ward from the tufted tops of the wigwams. MONDAMIN. 169 No sooner are the shocks disturbed than the humble lodgers — not Indians, but a race whose ancestors were probably here contem- poraneous with the Indian — scatter, panic- stricken, leaving their ruined granaries be- hind them. Usually, there is not wanting some worthless farm-house dog, some Skip, or Bounce, or Towser, who, animated by the prospect of a cheap hunt, stands by when the shock is thrown down, ready to give the miserable fugitives death-gripe. I own to small compassion for a bread-and-eheese-fed rodent in the cat's clutches, but I have a tender interest for the wild mice of the shock, in their hour of peril. Taken into hand, they remain quite motionless, only the small warm body throbbing with its volume of fear. The physiognomy of the field-mouse lacks the sophistry which characterizes the expression of the domestic species, and its thick, soft fur is as agreeable to the touch as that of the other is repugnant. This maizy tgxt has for punctuation marks the fruit of the pumpkin distributed here and there as colons and periods. Very like- ly the goldfinches are gathering seed-harvest in the weedy purlieus of the field, keeping up the while a constant flow of silvery " small 170 MONDAMIN. talk." At this time of the year all toil has a flavor of indolence, — is half play. So, as we sit among the corn shocks, in the tem- pered warmth of the south-going sun, we find something very pleasant in this task of removing garment after garment of the elab- orate suit in which Nature has chosen to clothe the ear of the maize. Off come the sunburnt and rusty outer husks, which are as a sort of rough-and-ready great-coat ; un- der this the vesture is of increasing fineness until the innermost husk is reached ; this is of a tissuey or crape-like delicacy, the edges minutely hirsute or downy. Methinks when the stout husks are parted, the ear, with aU its ivory well-set kernels, smiles broadly, de- claring there 's luck in even numbers, if you will believe its testimony, since the number of rows on all the ears in all the corn-fields of the land is, invariably, some multiple of the number two, as eight and twelve, and even as high as twenty-four and thirty-two, or more. Rarely, the husker finds an ear which has the blush of the peach or the crimson of the ripe maple leaf. Has the botanist an ex- planation of this anomaly ? We might im- agine that maize, far back in its history, had MONDAMIN. 171 an erubescent ancestor, or that the maize-ear of the future will wear brighter colers than at present; or we might suspect that this familiar crop unconsciously emulates the chromatic splendors of the season, and so occasionally produces a red ear. To what- ever conclusion we come, the rustic lovers of the old-time husking doubtless knew more than we do about the matter. " And whene'er some lucky maiden Found a red ear in the husking, Found a maize-ear red as hlood is, ' Kushka ! ' cried they altogether, ' Nushka ! you shall have a sweetheart ! ' " THE SOLITAEY BEE. A VERT slight and fugacious hint from Nature is enough to excite expectation in one who cultivates her friendship and favor. Fancy starts up, and follows the foot-marks along the earth, or the wing-prints in air, — unless, indeed, it be a very dull and jaded fancy. Not long ago, as I was reading in the open air, I became conscious that some musical insect was busy in a rose-bush near by. On looking up, I saw a bee just hover- ing in departure, a portion of green leaf folded in its embrace. In an instant the creature was gone, with a mellow touch of the "flying harp." At that moment the whole visible world seemed to pertain to the ingenious bee : I had been singularly fa- vored that I had seen the insect at all, and a glimpse of the queen of fays and her " lit- tle team of atomies" could scarcely have surprised or pleased me more. However, I began to regret that I had not seen the leaf- cutter plying her keen-edged scissors, and to THE SOLITARY BEE. 173 wish that I might find where she went with her plunder. I examined the leaves o£ the rose-bush, and was surprised to notice how many of them had been subjected to the scis- sors. The snipping had been done in two patterns, — deep, nearly circular scallops, and oblong segments v^jth the corners rounded. The edges were left quite smooth, from which it was evident that the operant was no crude prentice hand. After this chance introduction to the leaf- cutter (who I found bore the burdensome name Megachile), I watched the ways of my distinguished new acquaintance, and made sundry attempts to trace her from the rose- bush to the laboratory in which she worked up the raw material of the leaves : this, I fancied, would be either an excavation in old wood or a burrow underground ; it proved, in the case of my acquaintance, to be neither of these. My quest met with no success, until, one day in the vegetable garden, I observed a thick -set, dusky bee, with narrow yellow bands, entering the hollow of an onion-top, two or three inches of which had been cut off. No wonder my curiosity ran high : could this be the residence of the aristocratic 174 THE SOLITARY BEE. leaf -cutter ? Could it be, that one whom I had mentally associated with Titania herself should have no finer perception of elegant congruity than to set up housekeeping with- in walls of garlic, bringing thereto rose-leaf appointments ? If so, I thought it would be no slander to report the hymenopterous tribe as deficient in the sense of smell. I waited for the bee to come out, which she presently did, and then I peeped into the onion-top, where I discovered a ceU in process of con- struction. As there were other cut or broken tops, I examined those also, and found several that were similarly occupied. Some stalks contained one, others two cylin- drical cells about an inch long, the sides formed by overlapping oblong bits of rose- leaves, while the top and bottom were closed with circular pieces, the whole structure held together as though it had been pressed in a mould. The inner layers were united by means of a substance that acted as cement. Afterward, when I compared the pieces of which these cells were composed with the notches in the rose-leaves, it seemed not im- possible that, with time and patience, the cut-out portions might be fitted in their orig- inal places. In some cases, as I split the THE SOLITARY BEE. 175 onion stalk, the bee was still at work storing bee-bread for the support of her offspring, and could not be induced to leave until all but the inner walls of her laboratory had been torn away. Some cells were already closed, and within was the large waxen-look- ing larva, feeding on the provision laid up by its solicitous parent, its appetite unimpaired by the garlicky character of the flavoring. I have yet to learn that a community of leaf-cutters (in an onion bed, too !) is a mat- ter of ordinary occurrence ; certainly, it will cause me some surprise if the novelty should be repeated another season. To speak of a community of solitary bees would be to speak in paradox ; and it should be added that these insects, though occupying the same neighborhood, apparently exchanged no social civilities. I remember to have questioned one of these independents very closely on the subject, — to have questioned and to have been answered in some such way as the following : — Lone leaf-cutter in thy cell, Where the green leaves of the rose Thee, as in a hud, enclose, — Solitary, do thou teE Why thou choosest thus to dwell, Helping hnild no amher comh. Sharing no rich harvest-home I 176 TEE SOLITARY BEE. Hummed iihe recluse at her task: " Though an idle thii^ thou ask, I -will freely answer thee, If thou, first, wilt clearly show Something I have wished to know, - How the hiv^d honey-bee Can forego sweet privacy 1 " THE EETUEN OF A NATIVE. It was never distinctly understood by his compatriots how Truesdale had earned the title of filibuster. The blending of reproach and glory implied in this term he bore with dignity and good-humor, and, it was some- times suspected, with inner complacency. He touched but~ lightly upon the sequence of events which in his adventurous young man- hood had turned the current of his life away from the ordinary channels. For many years he had been as complete an alien as it is possible for one to be who still at intervals stands on his country's threshold to dis- charge some errand of merely commercial interest. He had made his home in an old Spanish city in that portion of our continent which the geographies designate Central, but which, viewed in the light of all that is char- acteristically American, has more than a European remoteness and indifEerency. An- other language had become more ready to his thought than his mother-tongue, and in 12 178 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. employing the latter his phrases were tinged with an unconscious euphuism, the natural effect produced by a Latin graft upon the long-neglected stock of the vernacular. A few months previous to the incidents here to be narrated Truesdale had arrived in New York, with the vague purpose of re- newing an acquaintance with his country- men, and of studying the social conditions in his native land, about which he had almost a foreigner's curiosity. What happened soon after his return — how in him society joy- fully recognized a genuine specimen from the remote regions in its charts marked Hie sunt leones — it is not within the province of this sketch to relate. Perhaps he had not disdained the rdle of splendid barbarian ; he may not have been altogether unwilling to " grace my own triumph," as he had charac- terized his acquiescence with the schemes of his exhibitors : yet, in his serious reflections, he felt that he had made but small progress in the study which he had proposed to him- self ; he had been stripping layer after layer off the social nut, and yet so far had not reached the kernel of essential sweetness. It was at this point in the experiment that he spoke often, albeit somewhat floridly, of TBE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 179 the " dear old sylvan life of the West ; " his boyhood's home ; the tender associations it held for him ; the idyllic and grotesque char- acters, the homely worth, which had flour- ished there. As it was with the lotos-eaters, so with himself ; he, too, knew how sweet it is " To muse, and brood, and lire in memory With those old faces of our infancy, Heaped over with a mound of grass." Oftenest, in his reverie, he saw the small chamber that had been his, in his mother's house : the whitewashed walls, the slant ceil- ing, the one window opening towards the morning. There, what dreams he had en- tertained ! — surely not of frontier adventure and the cruelties of war, but of a life dear to Apollo and the Muses. It was when this retrospective mood was upon him that he was wont to show his metropolitan friends an old ambrotype portrait of a youth, with pensive, Antinous face, framed with loose ringlets of dark hair, these falling over a wide, rolling collar of the fashion known as Byronic. The portrait having elicited the usual romantic and speculative comments, Truesdale would observe in a careless, rem- iniscential tone, " A most unfortunate young 180 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. fellow I knew years ago. Wrote poetry ; thought he had the divine afflatus. Check- ered career, — gold-mining, fighting greas- ers, and what not ; dead long ago, if reports are to be trusted." Rumors of his own de- mise had more than once reached Truesdale ; and on one occasion he had been charged with imposture, when personating himself supposed deceased. Previous to this unlooked-for attack of nostalgia, it had been in vain to urge Trues- dale's revisitation of his old home, though frequent pressing invitations had been sent him by the remnant of his family residing there. He had not believed in your senti- mental pilgrimage. " When you are dis- posed to go back and touch the shrine with your hands, don't do it ; keep at a discreet, worshiping distance," had been his precept. But he had not been a day in " old HiUs- boro' " before his objection to the sentimen- tal pilgrimage was dispelled. He blessed the lazy immutability of the times and man- ners illustrated in the lives of his old friends and neighbors. As he looked on the sum- mer fields, it seemed to him that they were still waving the unshorn harvests of twenty years ago. He was please^ to see above him TBE RETUBN OF A NATIVE. 181 the same " low, Hillsboro' sky," held up at the horizon by tail. Atlas-shouldered woods, — the sky that had shut down too close, the woods that had presented a hostile phalanx, to his impatient youth. Chiefly was he pleased that he could be thus pleased with the old scenes and associations. Did it not argue, he asked himself, that his heart was still warm and impressionable, open to all gentle influences, as is the soil to the minis- trations of sun and dew ? He had visited the'village burying-ground, given over to the care of blooming sweet- brier and wild strawberry in early summer, and later to aster, golden-rod, and life-ever- lasting. A long time he had stood, with un- covered head, beside his mother's grave, and then had moved but a few steps away, where a low headstone bore the legend, " Eosalie Graham. Aged twenty-one. ' There the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' " A strange scripture for her, it seemed to him. When had the wicked troubled her tranquil and innocent life ? He, at least, had gone away, and had not spoken aught to vex her. "Weary ? He could not believe it, with her fresh young face still blooming in his memory. 182 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. He had not neglected to attend the Sab- bath morning service in the little, lonesome, white-painted, sun-beaten xhurch, that stood at one side of the village green. He could not enough praise the devout faith and abounding good works of those whom he curiously denominated "Apostolic Metho- dists." In them he recognized the stuff of the Huguenots, of the Covenanters, and the Puritans. Their prayers and exhortations, he demonstrated, were as replete with nat- ural poetry as with fervent piety. " A well- spring in a desert land," " stately steppings of the Almighty," " abundant entrance into the kingdom," — where could you find more lively imagery, more vigorous English, than in these and like expressions contained in the unwritten ritual of this earnest, faithful people ? Indeed, he now gave himself, both by observation and practice, to recover the short, stout, Anglo-Saxon vocables, which so many years' use of a foreign language had wrested from his command. He had been freshly convinced of the great resources af- forded in the vernacular, by hearing an old neighbor, noted for her aUocutive energy, remark that she had " just given the hired man a good tongue-banging " ! THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 183 As a matter of course, Truesdale had called upon Uncle Gail Hartwell, now in his ninety-second year, and mentally dwelling among the events of the early portion of the century. Truesdale, sentimentally moved by the sight of the worthy patriarch and the generations gathered around him, had re- peated the " seven ages of man." " And did old Bony write that you 've been a-say- in' ? " asked the patriarch, who had listened with misty attention. " Ah, yes," Trues- dale had observed in an aside, " Bony was a sweet poet." In this bronzed, foreign-appearing man, this stranger so anxious to be treated as a native, HiUsboro' people had at first found it difficult to recognize the youth they had known in times past. Afterwards, all were desirous to substantiate the great truth that the boy is father of the man. One testified that Truesdale had once, in the coldest Jan- uary weather, walked ten miles to borrow a book owned by deponent's uncle. Another, surveying the hero's imposing height and muscularity, affirmed that he " always told 'em there was pluck enough in Jim Trues- dale to stock a nation." StiU. another re- membered that when they went to " dees- 184 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. trick " sctool " Jimmy was always A No. 1 in geography. P'int to South Afriky, an' he knew all about it, 'cause he was goin' there some day to shoot lions ; p'int to Bray- zU, an' he was goin' there to clean outthem di'mon's in the big river ; an' he said he 'd go over them Alps, if he had to pour vine- gar on 'em, as Hannybil did ! " Whatever desperate passages there may have been in Truesdale's history, no trucu- lent indices appeared in his countenance, its expression being uniformly one of serene self-reliance. Yet there were those who no- ticed that his eyes had a habit of masked » watchfulness, while others saw in the same eyes something of elate expectancy. Cer- tain it was, if, looking up the tame coimtry road, he remarked, " What is that coming yonder? It has the appearance of an In- dian on horseback," the observation was sufficient to stir the imagination of any youthful hearer. Also, in the summer even- ings spent at the farm-house of his relatives, when he would pace up and down the floor, occasionally pausing at the open door and peering into the twilight scene without, the action suggested that at some time in his life such sentinel-like vigilance had been^ habit- THE RETURN OF A NATIVE;, 185 ual. While there was little in his present appearance that could be construed as indi- cating a bellicose element in his past, it is true that if the glossy locks of his dark hair (just touched with a first frost) had been parted at a certain place, a long white mark, the scar of an old sabre-eut, would have been disclosed. He carried a cane, but with such adroitness as to make its use appear a whim- sicality of taste, rather than a necessity. None would have suspected that an old hip wound, still troublesome at intervals, strongly recommended the services of a walking-stick. Some good Hillsboro' souls kindly pre- scribed for his supposed rheumatism, — that malady being perennially prevalent in the community. At a picnic, as he had anticipated, Trues- dale had a rare opportunity to taste the half- forgotten flavor of rural social life. At this picnic (the holiday confluence of two neigh- boring schools) were present, besides the de- mure young school-mistresses and their small summer flocks, the parents of the children and many friends of education. Among these last, most of them old acquaintances of Truesdale, was Squire Jerrold, a person of authority in Hillsboro', as became one con- 186 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. nected with the Jerrolds in the East. Had Colonel Truesdale (HUlsboro' etiquette had decided that this prefix was suitable) ever seen the Genealogy of the Jerrold Family ? No ? Then he must see it. Squire Jerrold was troubled with headache and dizziness, but had been much comforted by the perusal of the ancestral record : aU the Jerrolds, so far as he could gather, had had " something the matter with their heads," especially those who had been eminent in professional life. In politics the squire was a staunch Dem- ocrat, and an adorer of that canonized pa^ triot. General Jackson. Though not pro- fane in his habits of speech, he was known sometimes, in vehement debate, to employ the favorite oath of his political idol. When he did so, with an effort- to dilate his small frame and to clinch his short, soft fingers into a forcible fist, the effect was most laugh- able, or pathetic, according to the character or the mood of the spectator. Next to the squire, on the temporary seat- ing arranged for those who were to listen to the children's exercises, sat Elder Doolittle. He was a large, vigorous man, a powerful preacher, so called by those who sat under his Boanergic ministration of gospel truth. THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 187 His massive head was rendered larger in ap- pearance by the abundance of iron-gray hair which it bore, and which its owner, by the unconscious working of some curious cranial muscle, could bring down over his forehead to within an inch and a half of his bushy eyebrows. Had his scalp been of India rub- ber, its elasticity and recoil could scarcely have been greater. Whether this agitation of the outer integument was related to the inner act of cerebration might have been a fit subject for scientific investigation. The elder exchanged hearty greetings with Trues- dale, who, he felt sure, had been sent to his charge to be rescued as a brand from the burning. Among the friends of education before mentioned was old Sammy Upson, the cooper. With no drop of Celtic blood in his veins, nevertheless he could scarcely open his mouth without an Irish bull issuing there- from. In relating his experience in the class-meeting, a few Sundays before, he had most feelingly referred to the time " when I lay on my death-bed." On being nudged by his grand-daughter, who sat beside him, he had added, "my death-bed, as it were, though the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, saw 188 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. fit to spare me for a few more fleetin' years ! " His latest felicity of this sort had been uttered while on the witness-stand, in a suit being tried at the coimty-seat. Such and such things had happened so and so, he attested, as sure as he held up his hand betwixt God and heaven ! Between old Sammy Upson and Moffitt Herkimer sat Hollering Clapp, whose sten- torian voice, in the old days, could be heard as far as any farm-house noon-beU could send its summons. Many a time had Truesdale listened to the musical storms awakened in the West Woods by Clapp's singing of his favorite hymns, while his axe rang in unison. It was touching now to observe how thin and piping had become that phenomenal voice, confessing to its own disabilities. " Could n't holler now worth a cent. All used up with coughin'. S'pose I 've got the long lingerin' consumption." Truesdale remembered Moffitt Herkimer as having excelled in every department of woodcraft ; never a bee-tree but Moffitt Her- kimer was informed as to its exact locality ; never a ^coon-hunt in which his sagacity and agility were not exercised ; never a well to be dug, on anybody's farm, but the witch- THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 189 hazel in his canny hand must be consulted. He had also been the best runner in five • townships. On Truesdale's asking whether he could now get over the ground as rapidly, he replied, " Wall, I cal'late I could, mebbe. Give me a smooth road, an' if my soles wa'n't too tender from wearin' shoes so much, in these days, I cal'late I could run to the Cen- tre inside of three minutes and a half." " No, you could n't, you ole fool," inter- posed Mrs. Herkimer, whose remarkably hard common sense never dealt in euphe- mism, " you could n't, and you know you could n't, — all stiffened up with the rheu- matiz as you be. Had to have a chair to get up into the buggy with, last Sunday! " Very refreshing to Truesdale's eye was the scene before him. The green recesses of the wood ; the slight motion of the leaves ; the lights and shadows that played over the little stage, changef uUy brocading the white dresses of the two girlish teachers ; the happy children, in their holiday attire, now " coming to order " at a word from her who acted as mistress of ceremonies, — all pleased the returned native more than any pageant of civic prosperity he had ever witnessed. Where under heaven were the 190 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. children so favored, so well clothed, so well mannered, so intelligent, and apt withal, as here in his own country? During the opening exercises, — in part performed by a melodeon, which seemed to express astonishment at its own presumption in trying to fill so vast an auditorium, — a singular arrival was noticed. This might have been some grotesque genius of the wood, — some lusus, called into existence by Nature in her most rollicking mood. Ad- vancing slowly, the new comer threw himself upon an inviting bed of moss under a tree,- and there stretched out his rotund propor- tions, while he surveyed the holiday com- pany with an air of lazy enjoyment. " Fatty Wheaton," whispered one of Truesdale's ju- venile friends. " He 's fat, like that, because his folks let hinn eat so much pork when he was a baby. He 's been asked to go with a circus, but his folks won't let him." The opening exercises over, a pale-faced, tow-haired boy came upon the stage, and in shrill-pitched voice announced that he was trying to climb the HUl of Science, and that Truth was his guide and sure reliance. The young pilgrim had much difficulty in mak- ing the ascent, having several times to be THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 191 prompted. " That boy must be a Hackett, and that accounts for his perplexities," thought Truesdale. " No Hackett was ever known to climb the slight elevation he speaks of." Next, a gypsy maiden, with sunburnt hair of many shades, and lips and cheeks red as the fruit of the wild rose, ex- tolled, in rapid sing-song, the advantages and pleasures to be found in country life. Then, a tall boy came forward with a tem- perance piece, depicting in Miltonic blank verse the envious strife stirred up in Pande- monium by a certain peregrinating fiend, who boasted of the mischief he had accom- plished upon the earth : — " But tell me first, mighty spirit, thy name. ' My name,' the fiend replied, ' is Alcohol ! ' " After this, a bevy of girls filled the little stage, and a dialogue entitled " Gossip " was acted. Each gossip had sewing or knitting work in her hands ; there was frequent lay- ing together of shrewd heads, much myste- rious whispering, much lifting of the eye- brows in scandalized amazement, while many promises of secrecy were exacted. The exercises went forward, but Truesdale had dropped into a reverie. As he bent his eyes upon the ground, a plant with deli- 192 TffE RETURN OF A NATIVE. cate green leaves and small yellow flowers arrested his attention. It seemed bending forward to say, " I know you, but I see you have forgotten me." Its name did not at once come to his mind, but when it did he was pleased, recognizing an old acquaint- ance. Wood - sorrel ? — of course it was ; and he tried his memory with other plants around him, and had soon added cohosh, milkweed, and lobelia to the list of his bo- tanical recollections. The grass, — how fat and sleek it grew in one place, shining with prosperity ? What would he not have given for such a grass-plot transferred to his gar- den in Ihe tropics ! Did anybody know how good it was to see the grass growing, after living under a sun too fervid for this tem- perate, cool-blooded plant? Would it not be SYeet to take up his life anew under these old trees that had shaded the home of his childhood? Enough had he seen of the cocoa and the orange-tree ; these had been weU; but now give him an apple-orchard and a title to the West Woods of HUls- boro'. What better could he do, perhaps, than return here for good, buy a little farm, and live the " gentle life " ? Perhaps some daughter of Arcadia — TUK RETURN OF A NATIVE. 193 But a daughter of Arcadia was even now sweetly smiling, sweetly speaking; and her words, addressed to him, were these : — " We would be pleased to listen to some remarks from Colonel Truesdale." There was a hush of expectation in which all eyes were turned towards the colonel, who slowly rose to his feet. I pretend to no clairvoyant cleverness ; the account of what passed through his mind is based upon his own affidavit. He rose to his feet, because it was expected that he should do so. The events of his life drifted before him, as in the retrospect of a drowning man. Now, now, do these good people think to reach the heart of his mystery. Now must he show them his scars, and they will give him their most sweet voices. He takes a step forward. Something to interest the chil- dren, of course. Then, they would, perhaps, like to hear how a jaguar — a bold, bad beast, dear children — met his death in his own den. Two balls of fire in the dark were the mark of the dare-devil fellow. . . . Or take this: Four riders, hotly pursued. They spur their horses, and bid fair to es- cape. But a chasm is reached. Leap it, or fall into the hands of the enemy. Three go 194 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. over safely. The fourth tries to follow. Adios, mundo! — good-by, world! and down. ... Or this : Evening, after a red day of battle. On this side, the moon rising over the long mountain wall ; on that, the ocean and the sunset. A band of soldiers, a couple of prisoners, halt before a small village. The vesper hymn, — chanted prayer for par- don and peace, — sweet and solemn. The younger prisoner joins in the singing, though to-morrow — who knows ? His voice rings out clear. When the hymn is done, the dark -eyed women of the village gather around him. " El es muy suave, — he is very gentle. Soldiers, don't kill him." . . . Good heavens ! what tales are these to pour into the ears of these innocent children ! There must be another way, thus : My dear young friends, you are to-day assembled here in the capacity of — a picnic. It rejoices my heart to be permitted to mingle with you here, for I was once as you are. I once roved through these sylvan aisles, warbling my wood-notes wild. Just as you do now, I set traps for the squirrels, and fished out of Crooked Crick. Like you, I went to school, loved my books and teacher dear. As I grew up I increased in virtue and wisdom, THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 195 and became a bright and shining — filibus- ter. Fought, bled, and died, times without number. Returning to the home of my youth, the elders arise and call me Colonel, and you all listen, enraptured, to the mellif- luous accents of this chin-music of mine. Up to this point in his unmouthed elo- quence, the face of the filibuster had worn an expression of dreamy abstraction, now changing rapidly to one of bewilderment and appeal. Helpi him, ye woodland powers ! How very stUl it is ! — so stiU that he hears distinctly the hum of bees at work in the blossoms of yonder basswood. He also hears the snufBngs and pawings of some ca- nine zealot (doubtless Tige Herkimer) bent upon unearthing a woodchuck. But what evil spell is this? Vox faucihus hcesit. Stage-fright, aha ! Had he not harangued and subdued the myrmidons of war ? Had he not overruled, in secret juntos, by the crafty persuasiveness of his voice and speech ? Had he not, like another Othello, held so- ciety, like another Desdemona, entranced by the moving and pictorial quality of his lan- guage ? And should he now quail before a handful of country children ? No ! and yet it seemed inevitable. What a merciful de- 196 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. liverance if lie could but see a charge of greasers breaking through the thicket on his right ! Single-handed he would defend his people ! He was so taken with this idea that he actually bent a faint smile of scrutiny in the direction of the wished-for raid. He knew not how long he had stood thus. He perceived that his friends were growing solicitous on his account. Elder Doolittle evinced his sympathetic distres£(^ by an un- usually violent twitching of his movable scalp, bringing his hair and eyebrows much nearer together than had ever been observed before. The sufferer from long lingerin' consumption was inspired to a paroxysm of coughing, which succeeded in attracting con- siderable attention away from the spell-bound orator. Old Sammy Upson puckered his dry lips, ready for a prolonged whistle of amazement; while Dave Hackett, who had always owed Jim Truesdale a grudge for the latter's " fine - haired notions," smiled with derisive satisfaction. The younger of the two pretty school-teachers, at this trying juncture losing her self-control, tittered audi- bly. At length, a friend of our hero, per- ceiving the hopelessness of the situation, came to the rescue. " I would suggest, with THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 197 Colonel Truesdale's concurrence," said this friend, " that further remarks be deferred until the children, who are getting rather impatient, have had refreshments." The colonel, with a grave smile and inflec- tion of his head, signified his concurrence. The children, considering themselves dis- missed, deserted their hard seats, and were soon expectantly ranged on each side of the long table, which groaned (if table ever groaned) under its feastful burden. De- licious proclamation of this plenty went abroad on the air. Some bees left their mealy labor in the basswood-tree, and came over to the table, where they behaved them- selves like true Sybarites. As the festivity proceeded, Fatty Wheaton was not forgot- ten. Whether from shyness or an indispo- sition towards leaving his mossy couch, he had refused to take his place with the other children ; but the good women who dispensed the feast plied him with every sort of deli- cacy which the table afforded. It appeared to them that, by such attentions, the weight of his obese misery might be lessened. With but one exception, all were prepared to do justice to the bountiful dinner. This exception was not to be found among the 198 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. children ; nor could it have been Moffitt Herkimer, who declared himself keen enough to eat a woodchuck. (Who, if not he, knew the flavor of woodchuck?) The exception could not have been Squire Jerrold. With a school-boy fondness for sweetmeats, which led him to keep a jar of candies in the closet at home, as also to have his pockets supplied with some sort of "drops" for his hoarse- ness, he was now engaged in abstracting the raisins from his pudding and the icing from his cake. Elder Doolittle, with the earnestness that characterized all his actions, gave himself to the full enjoyment of the " creature benefits " referred to in the grace pronounced by him. No one had lost an ap- petite unless it was the filibuster. Verily, dead-sea apples could not have been bit- terer to his taste than was the wholesome and delicious food with which his injured friends insisted upon heaping his plate. How could he partake of their kind hospi- tality, when he had failed to perform the paltry part assigned to him in the day's ex- ercises ? He was grimly amused, sitting between the squire and the elder, to note their efforts to restore his spirits by relating embarrassments similar to his own, which had happened in their experience. THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. 199 " D' I ever tell you, elder, about the fix I got into down at Plainfield, once when I tried to make a p'litical speech there, just before 'lection ? I 'd committed every word of it to memory, and then, to make a dead- sure thing of it, I copied it to take with me. Well, I 'd been going on swimmingly for about five minutes, when I came up stump. Recollect the very sentence I stuck on : ' Let us, who cherish the star-bright palladium of our rights, secured to us by him who, inflex- ible in his patriotism, was fitly styled " Old Hickory," — let us ' — I said that ' let us ' over and over, until some young peppersass in the back part of the room put in, ' Go right ahead ; we '11 let ye.' Searched my pockets, and pulled out a paper ; but by the Eternal ! it wa'n't my speech at all, — only a stack of old letters 1 'd put in by mistake." " That reminds me. Squire Jerrold, of how I got bushed, when I first entered the ministry. I had to preach before the pre- siding elder at Copenhagen. I took for my text, " Tekel : thou art weighed in the bal- ances, and art found wanting." Of course the sermon was extempore ; preaching with notes was n't approved of then. I got through Tekel aU right, and then I broke 200 THE RETURN OF A NATIVE. down completely, — in fact had to sit down ; and Elder Woolever had to continue the exercises. As I was subject to palpitation in those days, the cong;regation took it for granted that I had had one of my bad turns." Thus, in the goodness of their hearts, Masters Slender and Shallow strove to com- fort and cheer Master Silence. He, how- ever, refused to be comforted, and as soon as he coidd without giving offense took his way home by a cross-cut through the West Woods ; whipping with his cane the innocent herbage in his path, and not stopping, as he had thought to do, to see if certain old land- marks were still remaining. Sylvan things had lost their charm. To this day, Truesdale counts " that dis- graceful fiasco of mine at the picnic " as among the serious chagrins of a lifetime. " But what could I do ? " he asks. " To do the least thing well, a man must have had practice. I could not ' make remarks ' to the school, because my training in that direction had been neglected." AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. Very neighborly and obliging are the four seasons, readily lending their effects to each other in a way most confusing to the careful annalist who tries to keep the score. It is to be presumed that, if an exact record were kept of all these lendings and borrow- ings, the account would be found to balance at the end of the year ; meanwhile, it is a source of perplexity to see October occasion- ally wearing apple-blossoms in his crown, or December spreading over his rough tent- poles the ethereal canopy of June, or merry May personating November, with a presence so chill and forbidding that all the courtiers tremble and forget their honeyed speeches. Long before the autumn is openly pro- claimed I perceive its emissaries and diplo- mats are with us. At the very height of summer's supremacy there is secret defec- tion ; bribes have been given and taken ; treason is brewing. Under its dull green cloak, the apple-tree hides a bright golden 202 AVTVMN AND THE MUSE. bough, that surely would win for its bearer the favor of Proserpine. In the deepest retired places of the woods sedition has been busy ; that false-hearted tree, the pepperidge, has been transferring its allegiance to the enemy, strewing the dark mosses with its pied red and yellow leafage. No arts em- ployed by Summer, no spectacles intended to show her power and prosperity, can make me forget the ominous handwriting I have seen in the forest temple. Also, when in August I find and taste that pleasant, quasi- tropical fruit, the mandrake apple (in the botany described as " slightly acid, mawkish, eaten by pigs and boys "), I seem to acquire additional knowledge of the plans and move- ments of autumn. It is always with some surprise that I mark the reappearance of the small floral star that moves in the front of the season ; can it again be time for the aster ? With the aster the golden-rod. The two set out for a long ramble through the country. Their association is of mutual advantage, inasmuch as each affords a chro- matic foil for the other. The complementary colors are very grati- fying to the eye ; and it is certainly no won- der if they suggest the purple and gold of royalty. AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 203 " And like proud lovers bent In regal courtesy, as kings might woo, Tall goldenrods, bareheaded in the dew, Above the asters leant. ' ' Perhaps no other members of our native flora are so often celebrated by the native muse as these two autumn ramblers. Their comeliness and home-breeding ought suffi- ciently to endear them. Yet it is to be sus- pected there is something else which equally recommends them to our poets, namely, their musical and pictorial names. For instance, there is metrical suggestion in Golden-rod and aster — a smooth start for a trochaic verse ; or, if you prefer the measure of " fatal facility," take this : — The aster and the golden-rod. It is a matter of regret that the Eupato- rium tribe have not more euphonious com- mon names to entitle them to a place in the poet's flora. The beautiful E. ageratoides, powdering open woodlands as with early snow, deserves, but seldom, if ever, receives, mention. As for boneset and joe-pye weed, they are out of the question while retaining these appellations. There is more reason for regret that the iron-weed ( Vernonia') has 204 ' AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. not a finer name, since it is one of the richest adornments of early autumn. Its sombre purple is a pleasing relief from the gaudy yellows of the season — a bit of Tyre in the prevailing Eldorado of color. Yet the aster and the golden-rod tribes must be the ones specially beloved by Nature, for she makes their days long in the land — even longer than those of her spring-time favorites, the violet and the dandelion. As though she regretted having turned the tide of the sea- son, and would now hold it from ebbing away, she determines " To set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells." The bees, indeed, make the most of the prolonged indulgence ; and not only bees but flocks of white butterflies (like scattered petals of some white flower) coUect on the golden-rod. I miss the birds, and yet more I miss their songs, as the season advances ; for such as still remain about the door-yards and trees are ordinarily quite silent. " As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops her pipe in growth of riper days,'' AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 206 SO do the feathered musicians of our ac- quaintance ; the singing spirit has already migrated, or the vocalists seem to feel that they have exhausted their lyrical powers, and must take a vacation. So early there is suggestion of the old sentimental text respecting " last year's birds'-nests." The last broods have been reared, and whole families are now gipsying in the fields and by the small streams, enjoying themselves irresponsibly, having laid aside domestic care. The robins, in particular, flock to- gether as though holding a perpetual granger picnic. The rare whistle of a bluebird — a skyward and vanishing sound, lost like the bird's own color in the soft autumnal blue — affects us as a momentary revisitation of spring. Perhaps the most characteristic bird-note in these days is that of the gold- finch (^Chrysomitris tristis). The trisfis is a touch of poetic justice, since there could be nothing more pensive and haunting, and nothing more pleasing in its pensiveness, than this quivering aspen note, which may be likened to the sound produced on a whistle when the opening is repeatedly and rapidly stopped by the finger-tips. The goldfinch's movements in air are as though 206 AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. it were tossed along, now rising, now falling, with the swell and lapse of invisible waves. Its notes are uttered at each downward inflection of flight, its wings then being brought close to its sides. , Despite the nat- uralist's tristis, these jet-and-gold aristocrats among finches are a very joUy company. Their gay dress, to be sure, has begun to look somewhat dingy; but that's no mat- ter ! The seediness of autumn provides their harvest-home, which they mean to make the most of, tilting among the thistles and other rusty weed-tops. Tell it not to the farmer, publish it not in his journal of agriculture — yet it is to be feared the oriole is no better than the " lit- tle foxes that spoil the vines." Perhaps, though, the evidence I once had does not argue his being a confirmed vineyard thief. Let us give him all the benefit of the doubt. There came a rush of wings ; a streak of orange-colored flame settled in the vine over my head ; sharp eyes peered this way and that ; discovering nobody but me, who must have looked accompliceship, the adventurer quickly thrust his long bill into the plump grapes, probing one after another with all the deftness of a humming-bird rifling a AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 207 honeysuckle. This winged, bright-eyed bac- chant, drinking of the year's new wine — shall I forbid a creature like this and per- haps draw upon me the anger of its guardian deity ? No ; I will connive at the oriole's stolen enjoyment, even though I find suspi- cious puncturings in the grapes of more than one cluster. How do I know there was not intended and actual benevolence in slitting these purple-skinned wine-sacks — to the end that the bees might come by a little grape honey, without having to sting the fruit for themselves ? During the late summer and early autumn life and affairs at Chimneyburg are well worth observing. This village within a vil- lage, having a population loosely estimated at one-fourth that of the village itself, may be said to be a walled town, though on a small scale. Its houses are doubtless very densely built, with perhaps not the best ad- vantages for lighting and ventilation, though it is true no health officer has investigated in this direction. Half the year Chimney- burg is a deserted vUlage, the inhabitants going south in October and returning in May. During the summer occupancy it is most of the day a very quiet place, the 208 AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. affairs of the citizens taking them outside the walls ; but the evenings, between sunset and dusk, are given over to recreation and amusement. This is the time when the chimney-swifts (for so the walled-town tribe is called) hold a grand review or general training — an interesting sight when the young broods have joined the adults toward the end of summer. On their return at evening, the whole population, upward of five hundred (exact enumeration would be impossible) spend some time in food-gather- ing and promiscuous flight, after which they gradually collect in a circle or ellipse, hav- ing for its centre the old factory chimney. It is now the business of the flock to get into sleeping quarters. As all cannot enter at once, something like military stratagem must be employed. Round and round goes the chirping, fluttering company, always being diminished where the inner rank ap- proaches the chimney, the birds dropping through the opening by twos and threes, or so rapidly as not to be counted. They fall inertly, as in a vacuum. The motion of the circle may be compared to that of a mael- strom, its vortex at the chimney ; or one is reminded of grain descending through a AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 209 hopper. Sometimes a counter-current will be formed, and before one is aware the whole company wiU be moving in the oppo- site direction, perhaps to correct the giddi- ness acquired by circular movement. One would like to know how many revolutions had been made by those individuals last to retire. When it has grown too dusk for their motions to be easily followed, there are still a few wakeful swallows remaining outside. The very last of these darts hither and thither in a wide eccentric path, sug- gesting that it is in an ecstasy of delight to find itself solitary and in full possession of the emptied air. Though such late retir- ers, one must be early if he would witness the morning exodus of these birds. Like sparks and cinders from a chimney on fire, they dart into the daylight. It is perhaps as notable a sight as the flock of birds — whatever they were — that flew from Mem- non's funeral pyre. Our chimney-dwgUers are Memnon-like in their response to morn- ing. Yet, upon one occasion at least, they were sadly disappointing in this respect, since no sooner had they made their saluta- tions than they began a downward retreat, as though repenting their early rising. 14 210 AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. The chimney-swallows, or swifts, are some years with us as late as mid-October, though in decimated numbers. Those delaying are, perhaps, the feeble and the injured, or else cases in which the love of locality persists. By what legerdemain do birds take them- selves away in autumn ? They were here but last night ; this morning there is none to be seen. Why wiU not our friends give us the signal, so well understood among themselves? We would try to be present at their departure, no matter at what strange hour of the night or of the lonesome dawn they choose to go. The first frost is usually so light, so soon fleeting, that none but the earliest riser sees its traces upon the grass. It only slightly freaks the leaves of those maples most sus- ceptible of change ; yet new salubrity is in the air. This gelid fire, secretly spreading by night, is kindled to chasten and purify the luxurious season ; this tingling antidote, dropped in the enchanter's cup, quickly counteracts the fatal languor that but now was stealing over us. In timely frost there should be nothing to provoke melancholy reflections. As welcome as sunshine and •plentiful mild rain in spring, or as the abun- AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 211 dant dews of June, is this white, granulated dew of the later year, and for this Nature seems to have been waiting with no less an- ticipation than for sun and showers in their season. I do not see how one bred in the North, and afterward living in tropic lati- tudes, could be otherwise than homesick for the flavor of frost. But a short time since the trees were alike green. Now they are being tried, as by the touchstone, and begin to show characteristic differences. How many carats fine is the gold of the beech, the walnut, the chestnut ? The oaks are red or maroon, and the ma- ples run the whole scale of xauthic colors. As in landscape painting, this diffusion of warm hues has the effect of diminishing dis- tance. Yonder blazing woodland, for in- stance, sharply contrasted with the blue of the sky, seems making for the foreground. For the eye's relief, you would fain add a little neutral tint ; and you find that a hazy or humid gray atmosphere agreeably tones down the fierce coloring. Any one who has carefully noted the au- tumnal traits of the maple would have no great difficulty in distinguishing among sev- eral others the leaf of any particular tree in 212 AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. his neighborhood. The wind will bring me, this year as before, complimentary cards from the lemon-yellow maple ; from the brindled; from the scarlet; from the scar- let - and - gold, and from the sober russet. " By these presents " I shall recognize each individual. Each remains not only loyal to the colors, but displays also the distinctive markings of previous autumns. Falling leaves, when there is little or no wind to influence their course, have their stems vertical and foremost, spinning round and round like so many teetotums twirled in some game of invisible sprites. It is singu- lar how soon the fallen leaf has changed its color ; scarlet becoming madder, yellow a dull umber. While the leaf remains upon the tree, however it be frost-plagued, it seems to draw vital rations ; once off, decay pro- gresses rapidly. Picking up the leaf of a Cottonwood growing in the yard, I am struck with the sketch I see upon it ; the mid-vein and veinlets together producing a fairly ac- curate delineation of the tree's naked anat- omy. A thousand leaves, and each bearing a small copy of the tree ; each showing the in- scription of its Caesar ! This fanciful prin- ciple of correspondence does not appear in AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 213 all leaves, though those of the beech and the maple somewhat illustrate it. Unless we have an earnest desire toward frost-grapes and chestnuts, we shall not be able to prove ourselves true natives and loyal to the sweet country tradition. The sylvan table is spread, and we are awaited there. You have not forgotten, surely, the ragged gipsy vine that travels along the edge of the woods, reaching up and locking arms with the trees, whether they condescend or not ? This vine, having absolutely nothing else to do, has, for purposes of sport, ripened a goodly number of fine, dark, amethystine clusters. For purposes of sport, indeed ! for now it contrives so to hang those clusters among neighboring boughs that the fruit appears to belong to the tree rather than to the vine. You would say,. How is this? the maple bears grapes ; the hickory bears grapes ; the hobble-bush and the witch-hazel bear grapes! Frost -grapes are these, and well named. A bloom like morning rime hides the purple. It may be added, the " tongue " that tastes these has a " tang." And chestnuts — why not, by compliment, frost-nuts, since we hold ourselves indebted to the frost for opening the perilous bur? 214 AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. By their growing in a bur, we may guess that Nature prizes chestnuts more than other mast, and means that they shall ripen in peace, protected from all untimely investiga- tion. If you think to go nutting, and would at the same time avoid having company, you have not counted upon the chipmunks. They are already on the field of enterprise, vehe- mently asserting the priority of their claim. I am convinced they have the right on their side, else I would not have acted in their in- terests, as I once did, ignoring those of the youthful human. One still morning, at the height of the nutting season, as I came under the trees, I heard a great stir, seeming to proceed from something moving the fallen leaves. After some scrutiny I discovered a chipmunk rushing from side to side of an old rusty wire - trap. Its bright, wild eyes were unspeakably pathetic. No use to an- nounce to the captive that a warrant of lib- erty had been issued in its behalf ; T knew, as I pulled up the slide of the trap, there would be DO thanks to the humble servant of the law ; but I did hope to see whither the prisoner went. A bullet's course among the dry leaves could have been as easily followed with the eye. I dare say some juvenile AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 215 trapper was sadly disappointed; the chip- munk, I trust, was not too late to lay in sup- plies for the winter. The " season of mists and mellow fruitful- ness " has never been better painted than in the rich ode of which I have here quoted the opening line. Though breathing of the Eng- lish fields and air, there is scarcely a verse of this poem which would not serve equally weU in a description of our autumn. We, too, feel how the season conspires with the sun " To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel-shells With a sweet kernel : ' ' though, mentally, to give the picture a more familiar touch, we substitute for these the golden pumpkin and the chestnut. We, too, may have seen the spirit of the season " sit- ting careless on a granary floor," though not upon a " half -reaped furrow sound asleep" — not " drowsed with the fumes of poppies ; " for our grain gives no ground to the poppy ; but we may yet see the autumn spirit by the cider-press, with patient look watching the last oozings, hours by hours. The bleating of full-grown lambs; the chirping of crickets ; the treble soft of the redbreast (albeit not the English redbreast), 216 AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. are all in the sounds of our own autumn. But the last line comes the most near : — " And gatiiering swallows twitter in the skies." Komance and reminiscence are in the air. Who has not been dreamily pleased, listen- ing to the wind that " Sets in with the autninn that hlows from the region of stories — Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories be- loved from a boy " — the same wind that " Wanders on to make That soft, uneasy sound By distant wood and lake." Who has not sometimes been calmed or com- forted by the sight of " autumn suns, Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves." To-night, the sun, sinking past amber-col- ored clouds, throwing wide shafts abroad, presented the figure of a luminous windmill, its spokes all at rest, on some breathless plain of heaven. The falling of the leaves has always been employed as an object-lesson to illustrate man's mortality. Says Glaucus, on exchang- ing arms with Diomed: "Why, O son of Tydeus, do you question me about my race ? AUTUMN AND THE MUSE. 217 The race of men is just like the race of leaves." But it is good to hear Shelley's invocation of the West Wind : — ■ " Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth." The use of the leaves is not ended when they drop from the boughs. They go to make new wood -mold, but not until they have helped the children of the wood to weather the cold season. ** I never knew before what beds, Fragrant to smell, and soft to touch. The forest sifts and shapes and spreads. . . . " Ea^h day I find new coverlids Tucked in, and more sweet eyes shut tight. Sometimes the viewless mother bids Her ferns kneel down full in my sight ; I hear their chorus of ' Good-night ; ' And half 1 smile, and half I weep, Listening whUe they lie down to sleep." There was once a magician who could shelter a whole army beneath his tent, or could fold the canvas within a fan's dimen- sion. But with summer's broad leafage and winter's close-wrapped bud, every year sees this miracle wrought. GOSSAMER. I HAVE made the discovery that, in addi- tion to the Indian summer, we are favored with a gossamer summer. During this sea- son, which includes all Octoher and the pleasant early days of November, miles on miles of hazy filament (if it could be meas- ured linearly) are floating about in the soft, indolent air. Especially, late in the after- noon, with a level and glowing sun, do these mysterious threads flash out along the ground, horizontally between shrubs, slant- wise from grass to tree, or else cut adrift, and sailing as the wind wills. Numberless fancies, as subtle and airy -light, are sug- gested. What now ? , As the sunbeam plays along this shining length of web, and the gen- tle breeze gives it motion, but does not break it, might it not be taken for a sudden shaft from the golden bow of the far-darter him- self ; or for a string of the golden lyre, just now touched into toneless melody ; a fairy telegraph line, flashing with its electric mes- GOS8AMER. 219 sage ; a zigzag of harmless heat-lightning ? Here a glistening clew has been dipped in the color fount of Iris, — may even be a stray raveling from the fringes of some cast- away rainbow. It shows the same prismatic changes that are seen in the wing tissue of the locust or the dragon-fly. Now the lazy wind wafts this way the tangled cordage and tackle of an air-ship, whose sails, deck, and hull are invisible, — said to be a pleasure yacht carrying a company of sylphs and syl- phids, the heau monde of the air. It takes nothing from the poetry that lies in the weft of the gossamer when it is known to be the work of an imconsidered spider, and that it serves some practical purpose (not yet satisfactorily explained) of the producer. By some it is claimed that this floating web is not spread with predacious intent, but rather as a means of aerial navi- gation ; indeed, these vague and indetermi- nate threads would hardly disturb a gnats' cotillon, if blown in~-their path. Hitherto we have regarded the spider as an humble, plodding creature of the earth, an unaspiring, stay-at-home citizen, but this new aeronautic hypothesis hints that the poor insect is a very transcendentalist, an ideal voyager. Its 220 GOSSAMER. journey may not be as sublime as the flight of the skylark, but it is not a whit less witch- ing and elusive. It seems scarcely credible that this sailing spider should be able, as some have supposed, to direct the course of its filmy parachute, having neither rudder, ballast, nor canvas. Doubtless, the wind often carries up both web and weaver, the latter in the predicament of a balloonist clinging to the ropes of his runaway car. Some naturalists assert that the gossamer spider instinctively takes advantage of the levity of the atmosphere, thrusting out its threads until they reach a current of warmer and rarer air, which draws them upward, the spider going along with the imcompleted web. Whether it is capable of cutting short its journey and casting anchor at pleasure is indeed questionable. However, it would seem that there are acrobatic or leaping spiders, that use their webs as buoys in traversing short dis- tances by air ; else, how come those fine gluey flosses morning and evening, stretched straight as a surveyor's line between neigh- boring trees ? It is not likely that the spi- der, after fastening its clew in one tree, de- scended and reached the other terminus by GOSSAMER. 221 a tedious detour along the ground. It must have bridged the intervening space by some rapid and dexterous method, to which the exploits of a Sam Patch or a Blondin were absolutely tame and ventureless. If it could be proven that this sagacious insect is really possessed of navigating instinct and habits, why not suppose it extends its journeys, traveling from one latitude to another? Those phantom navies of the gossamer sum- mer sky were perhaps going the same way as the autumn birds of passage. Are Spi- ders Migratory in their Habits? may, at some future time, be the subject of serious inquiry and discussion. I was never in luck to find the gossamer weaver at home from its voyages, but more than once have " spoken " its craft on the high sea, and received service- able weather hints. Even in midwinter I have seen occasional shimmering filaments among the dry twigs and grasses, but could never decide whether they were the fresh work of some enterprising spider, tempted out by a brief " spell o' sunshine," or merely the remnants of last autumn's spinning, un- accountably spared by the besom of the wind. It has been suggested that the thick webs which are spread over the fields on a sum- 222 GOSSAMER. mer morning are there produced for tte pur- pose of collecting the moisture that falls dur- ing the night. This theory is sustained by the known fact, that the spider is an ex- tremely thirsty creature. Is the spider, then, a disciple of hydropathy as well as an exper- imenter in aeronautics ? The poets have not, usually, condescended to take much notice of the spider, though mythology (which is a kind of anonymous poetry deceived from the ancients) relates how a young lady of Lydia impiously invited Pallas to try a spinning race with her ; and how, on being vanquished by the immortal spinster of Olympus, the poor foolish girl was about to hang herself in a rope of her own twisting, when lo ! she was changed into a spider, in which humble and despised shape she remains to this day. Gavin Doug- las, the " Scottish Chaucer," in his descrip- tion of a May morning, does not forget to mention that — " In comers and clear fenestres of glass, Full busily Arachne weavand was To knit her nettes and her webbes slie, Therewith to catch the little midge or flie.'' The poetic and nimble -tongued Mercutio tells us that the wagon-spokes of fairy Mab's chariot are GOSSAMER. 223 "made of long spinners' legs, The coTer of the -wings of grasshoppers, The traces of the very smallest spider's web," etc. Nor must we forget the obliging Cavalero Cobweb, one of the elfin gentlemen whom Titania posted to wait on the wants of her long-eared lover : " Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur Cobweb, get your weapons in your hand, and kiU me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle ; and, good Monsieur Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag." THISTLE-DOWN AND SILVER- KOD. A CEKTAIN not uncommon, but for ob- vious reasons seldom gathered, flower of the field and wayside possesses for me a singu- lar attraction. It commands my admiration even in its tender infancy, then a little ro- sette-like emerald patch on the old turf, — a kind of Legion of Honor decoration worn by the veteran field. At this stage of its ex- istence I touch its leaves with something of the feeling I should have if playing with the leopard's kitten. By and by, it is " Hands off ! " or, " Touch me at your peril ! " free and blunt translation of the legend which the Scottish king stamped upon his coinage (Nemo me impune lacessit). But I love the thistle none the less for its truculent defi- ance. I am tempted to gather the flower and wear it, as one might snatch a sweet- heart across feudal barriers, or run away with the lovely daughter of a saviage sachem. The blossom itself — its purple heart of THISTLE-DOWN AND SILVER^ROD. 225 hearts — is all delicacy and suavity; a honey- sweet aura breathes therefrom. I ask, How long since the bumble-bee was here ? for I can never decide whether it is the thistle blossom that smells of the bumble-bee, or the bumble-bee of the thistle blossom, each suggesting the peculiar redolence of the other. In some respects the thistle prepares a Barmecide's feast for my eyes. The large bowl-like calyx looks as though it might be ripening a luscious fruit, to correspond with the ambrosial purple of the flower ; (figs from thistles !) also, the involucre being set with spines, I am reminded of the chestnut burr, and am half persuaded to look within for an edible kernel. The thistle is an idealist among plants. Its dreams would be worth recording. Anon you shall see that it was never content with tenure of the earth alone, but it had also its designs upon the kingdom of the air. When its season of bloom is past, its leaf-lances rusted and broken ; when, seemingly, its fortunes are at lowest ebb, then look out for the shining fleets of its seeds. Through all the fine weather of autumn, these cruise about, above the fields, over the village IS 226 THISTLE-DOWN AND SILVER-ROD. streets, even entering tte houses through open doors and windows. (Once, indeed, a thistle -ball allowed its filmy asterisk for a moment to rest opposite the last sentence of the page I was writing, — a flattery which I was not slow to seize upon and enjoy.) " Have you seen the thistle-down, this morn- ing ? " I am on the point of asking the neigh- bors, since, in my observation, nothing is " going on about town " to match the solemn, deliberate enterprise of these sailing spheres. Each, perhaps, has its guiding spirit, its Uriel, and is steered hither or thither at pleasure. I almost forget that the delicate traveler had its origin from the earth, How would this do, poet, for your coat of .arms : Thistle-ball, argent, volant, on a field azure ; motto, semper errans ! The days of the thistle-down fleet are those of the white butterfly also. Wherever you may look, one or the other is always crossing the path of vision. A white butterfly met a thistle-baU on the airy highway. Expres- sions of mutual surprise were exchanged. " Halloo ! I thought you were one of us," said the butterfly. "And I," returned the thistle-ball, " took you for a white pea^blos- som." THISTLE-DOWN AND SILVER-ROD. 227 On goes the winged hope of the thistle ; flashing-white in the sunshine, but dark at night, when its little globe is seen gliding across the disk of the moon. Peradventuj^e, some of these voyaging seeds never return to earth. What shall I say, but that I suspect the thistle flourishes in heaven^! There, di- vested of its irritability, etherealized, having in truth become a Blessed Thistle, it grows innocently by all the celestial waysides, is hummed about by the bumble-bee and lisped over by the goldfinch, — for these, too, have been translated. As a rule, the floral necropolis styled her- barium is to me the least interesting of scientific collections : I have no more use for the dead peers of flowerdom lying in faded state than I have for mummified Egyptian royalty. But I would make an exception to the rule, remembering that there is one dry garden which never fails to offer instruction and enjoyment. This garden rambles widely, including wood borders, pastures, and stream- sides. The plants with which it is adorned are either dead or dying, yet it is not easy to regard them merely as dried specimens ; on the contrary, they are scarcely less beauti- ful than when they moved in the train of the 228 THISTLE-DOWN AND SILVER-ROD. varicolored and Sybaritic summer. Fore- most in this wild herbarium stands Silver- E.od. Who knows not Silver-Rod, the lovely and reverend old age of Golden-Rod, — else Golden-Rod beatified aud sainted, looking moonlit and misty even in the sunshine ! In this soft, caneseent after-bloom, beginning at the apex of the flower cluster and gradually spreading downward, the eye finds an agree- able relief from the recent dazzle of yellow splendor. I almost forget that the herb is not literally in bloom, that it is no longer ministered to by sunshine and dew. Is there not, perhaps, some kind of bee that loves to work among these plumy blossoms, gather- ing a concentrated form of nectar, pulveru- lent flower of honey ? I gently stir this tufted stafp, and away floats a little cloud of pappus, in which I recognize the golden and silver-rods of another year, if the feathery seeds shall find hospitable lodgment in the earth. Two other plants in the wild her- barium deserve to be ranked with my sub- ject, for the grace and dignity with which they wear their seedy fortunes : iron-weed, with its pretty, daisy-shaped involucres ; and life-everlasting, which, having provided its own cerements and spices, now rests em- THISTLE-DOWN AND SILVER-ROD. 229 balmed in all the pastures ; it is still pleas- antly odoEDus, and, as often as I meet it, puts me in mind of an old-fashioned verse which speaks of the " actions of the just " and their lasting bloom and sweetness. On a chill November day I fancy that the air is a little softer in places where Silver-Rod holds sway, and that there spirits of peace and patience have their special haunts ; also, passing my thoughts under that rod for discipline, I record a gain in content and serenity. WHEKE IT LISTETH. There is, on a certain sylvan estate of my thought, a little area where oialy the anemone grows, year after year holding the ground in undisturbed tenure. Whenever the wind blows, though never so rudely, bloom runs rife over the anemone bank ; then I mark a swift unfolding and buoyant stirring of petals on which the sun shone and the rain dropped gentle persuasion in vain. I gather at random a handful of these blossoms, well pleased if any lover of the wild-garden recognize a familiar species. I remember a kinship we have with the wind : Anima, the wind ; also the breath or life of man. Sometimes, on a listless sum- mer day, a sudden gust sweeps the dust of the road into vertical form, bears it along for a few seconds, then mysteriously dis- perses it. When this happens, it seems to me that I have seen a vague type or sem- blance of humanity, — dust and spirit im- perfectly compounded, by some unimagina- WHERE IT LISTETH. 231 ble ambition in the earthy atoms goEided into momentary, troubled activity. Air in motion, says the old standing defi- nition. The sailor, who surely should know best, recognizes twelve phases of the wind, of which the first in the series is called '" faint air," the last " storm." Science in- forms us as to the traveling record made by each : the hurricane's speed ranges from eighty to one hundred miles an hour, while even gentle air, whose rate is but seven mUes an hour, more than keeps up with your av- erage roadster. Elizabethan Davies, whose verse has a touch both of the savant and the transcen- dentalist, inquires, — " Lastly, where keep the Winds their revelry, Their yiolent turnings, and mid "whirling hays, But in the Air's translucent gallery ? Where she herself is turned a hundred ways While with those maskers wantonly she plays." We may thank what we call "poetic li- cense " for the permission it gives us to make the vowel long in the word " wind : " this pronunciation admirably preserves the prime idea of the sinuous and subtle force exerted by the wandering air. Homer men- tions a river, called Ocean, encircling the 232 WHERE IT LISTETH. earth. The true Ocean River, — what is it but the mad stream of the winds forever beating the terrestrial shore ? Homer's epi- thets descriptive of the sea instantly come into the mind: the wind, too, is an earth- shaker, is many-sounding ; fuU of sea tones, hungry-voiced as the sea itself. Here its current may be running with halcyon smooth- ness, spreading out in a gentle lake or pool of despond ; elsewhere, at the same moment, it courses in rapids, spins cyclones, and buf- fets the heavens with its huge billows. It may almost be said to have its tides, like the sea ; to encroach upon one coast, erod- ing it by stealthy pinches, while it temporal rUy builds up another. This ujJper ocean stream moulds as it wiU the under watery plain, and its crafty deity completely over- rules the bulky Neptune. Upon sand and snow the wind leaves an imprint of its wave-like motion, with record of the direction in which it traveled. This invisible swift stream furrows the level snow, and carves a drift as a river does its banks. I almost forget that the wind is not palpable to the eye, so evident is the motion which it everywhere imparts. As a medium of expression, a deep meadow in the month WHERE IT LISTETH. 233 of June will do. Once walking along the edge of such a field, I experienced a slight giddiness, as though I had been lookiag down on water from a ship's deck. As the fresh breeze swept over the luxuriant meadow, the long swell and endless succes- sion of waves seemed to me excellent coim- terfeit of the sea's surging ; even spray was not lacking, for such I counted the gray bloom of the grass marking the crest of each wave. The birds that flew over the field, or dipped under its blossom-spray, by an easy hyperbole of vision, became searbirds, and something in their free, abandoned flight gave the fancy countenance. When I hear the wind in the tops of great trees, my first impression is that if I look up I shall see its strong current drawing through them, and, far above their leafy periphery, the broken crests and white caps of the airy sea, — flecks of light, detached cloud driving on or past some shrouded island or main shore, cloud also, but denser, and slower in its drifting. As a child, I thought the stars and the wind were associated; the higher the wind, the brighter shone the stars. Still, on a breezy night, I find it easy to imagine that their brilliance comes and goes with 234 WHERE IT LISTETH. the wind, like so many bickering flames of torch or candle. As a description of the long flow and re- fluence of the wind, the air's voice with the circumflex accent, I know of no combination of words surpassing in beauty this passage from Hyperion : — "As when, npon a tranced smmner night, Those green-rohed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, hianch-charmed hy the earnest stars. Dream, and so dream aJl night without a stir. Save from one gradual solitary gnst Which comes upon the silence, and dies off. As if the ebbing air had but one wave." This is the breathing of enchanted solitude, but immeasurable desolation finds a voice in these lines from Morte d' Arthur : — "An agony Of lamentation, like the wind, that shrills All night in a waste land where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world." The tumult of sound, half heroic prophesy- ing, half mournful reminiscence, that runs through the forest roof at the beginning of a storm is heard in the following : — " A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild woods together." Something stormy in the soul rises to WHERE IT LISTETB. 235 applaud the storm without, and cheer on the combatants, with a " Blow, blow, thou win- ter wind," or a " Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks ! rage ! blow ! " As I listen, on a December night, to this traveler from the uttermost west, — whose wing, for aught I know, carries sittings from the old snow of Mount Hood or St. Helen, — I am put in mind, now of the claps and shocks of great sea waves, of the panting breath of wild herds driven by prairie fire, of the whizzing of legion arrows ; but softly ! now, by a magical decrescendo, the sound is reported to my ear as merely a mighty rustling of silken garments, — audible proof of invisible Sclat at this state levee of the elements. I know how the trees thrill with excitement, swaying to and fro and nodding deliriously, as though the tunes of Amphion were even now tickling their sense for music and dancing. Espe- cially I figure the ecstasy of the pine and the hemlock, whose rocking motion suggests that of a skiff moored in unquiet waters : they would perhaps like to snap their rooty cables, and go reeling away on the vast wind- sea ! If there is anything in heredity, the pine-tree must have an instinct for maritime life ; so, I fancy, it foresees and sings a time 236 WHERE IT LIBTETH. when it shall become the " mast of some tall ammiral." Each wind has its own weather signifi- cance quite constant in value. " When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower ; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat ; and it cometh to pass," — prognostics that still hold good. The world around, the east wind is known as a malicious dispenser both of physical and spiritual ill. Beyond question, he would be hailed as the benefactor of his race who should invent some method of hermetically sealing the east wind ; yet, could this be done, immediately some one of the other three would undertake the discharge of its suppressed neighbor's duties. It is said that at Buenos Ayres the wind from the north is the most dreaded. During its continuance, citizens who are compelled to be out-of-doors wear split beans upon their temples to re- lieve the headache which it causes, and a special increase of crime is noted. Why does the world's literature teem with fond reference to the south and the south wind's amenity ? The poets are all in the northern hemisphere ! Had there been WHERE IT LISTETH. 237 bards in Patagonia and New Zealand, it is safe to say that the balmy north wind would have wandered through the gardens of their rhetoric, or the nipping and eager south wind would have scathed their flowers. Who is quite able to fancy that the weather of the South Pole is every whit as frosty as that of the North? Formerly the winds were thought to be amenable to the wiU of magicians, or of other mortals superhumanly favored. Not to go back so far as ^olus Hippotades and his gifts to Ulysses, we may find in " The An- atomy of Melancholy " an interesting ac- count of a certain king of Sweden, who had an " enchanted cap, by virtue of which, and some magical murmur or whispering terms, he could command spirits, trouble the air, and make the wind stand which way he would ; insomuch that when there was any great wind or storm the common people were wont to say the king now had on his conjur- ing cap." Once the credulous vanity of man could be persuaded that the elements were agitated at the approach of calamity to him- self. On the 19th of May, 1663, Sir Samuel Pepys made the following entry in his immortal Diary : " Waked with a very 238 WBERE IT LISTETB. high wind, and said to my wife, * I pray God I hear not the death of any great person, this wind is so high ! ' fearing that the queen might be dead. So up and by coach to St. James's, and hear that Sir W. Compton died yesterday." It would be edifying to know something more about the wind-gauge used by old Pepys in making his necrological cal- culations ; for instance, the exact volume of disturbed air corresponding with the demise of a person in any given rank of the nobility. Presumably, an English yeoman might have died, and not so much as a zephyr have troubled the good old chronicler's slumbers with intelligence of the fact. The idle wind? How so sure that it is idle ? Though it pipes in the key-hole and soughs in the boughs of the roof-tree, that is not its main employ. The brown-study- ing mortal, who hums or whistles a tune while engaged with the solution of some vast mechanical or ideal problem, I should not call idle. Because I am unadvised of its affairs, shall I presume to caU the west wind a vagrant ? Though I lack the conjuring cap, as also knowledge of the whispering terms by means of which I could make the wind stand ac- WHERE IT LISTETE. 239 cording to my pleasure, perhaps I can induce it to do me a good turn. Given a small crevice between the two sashes of a window ; a couple of wedges (of pine let them'be) ; a waxed thread of silk stretched between them in the crevice, through which the stream of the wind glides, as water in a race to serve some skillful enterprise of man : and now I have a musical instrument, simpler in its construction, and yet not unlike that from which " the God of winds drew sounds of deep delight," to charm the dwellers of Cas- tle Indolence. It is pleasing to know that the last of the minstrels stiU lives, and may be won to come and play at your casement, if you wiU but provide a harp for his use. As soon as the thread is stretched in the crevice, and the wind comes upon it, I seem to listen to the smooth continuation of an' old-time or old-eternity music which I have not heard before, only because my ear lacked the true sense of hearing. The wind blow- eth where it listeth ; and these sounds, breathed through a trivial instrument, are always coming and going between earth and heaven, free, elemental, mysterious, born of a spirit unsearchable. Yet they seem to ad- mit of human interpretation, and I hear in 240 WBES.E IT LISTETB. them both requiem and jubilate, the canticle of comforted sorrow and the voice of hope. Sometimes, with the ebbing of the wind, a cadence just fails of completion, — like a bright gossamer, that, running through the sunshine, presently dips into shade and be- comes invisible. But the inner ear keeps a vibration, and imagination fills up the inter- val until the wind returns. Then I prove that " Heard melodies are sweet, but those nnheaTd Are sweeter." This harp of the wind is also, by turns, flute and shriU fife, silver bells and the " horns of elflaud faintly blowing." Occa- sionally it emits a strain of exquisite purity, resembling the highest and clearest of violin tones prolonged under the bow of a master. The minstrel strikes many varying notes of the music of nature, — the faint tinkling of a small brook, the far-away cheer of migrat- ing birds, the summer-afternoon droning of bees in the hive, and even the guttural trem- olo of frogs heard in the distance. Under a sudden violent stress of the wind the strings of the harp (for I sometimes add a second string) shriek with dissonant agony. Each discordant sound, I imagine, is but the WHERE IT LISTETH. 241 strayed and mismated fragment of some harmonious whole, of which nothing now remains except this solitary wandering clamor. All these remnants of wrecked musical unities, perhaps forced together by secret compulsion, seem bewailing in un- known tongues their perpetual alienation from harmony. Of such character might all discord be said to be. Following the slim thread of this JEolian rivulet I find the way to sleep. My dreams are mingled and tempered sweetly by the bland spirit of the harp, that through the dark, oblivious hours plays on, unweaving all evil spells of the night. " Be not afeard ; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears ; and sometimes Toices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep. Will make me sleep again." To which may be added the pleasant con- sideration that I " have my music for noth- ing." 16 EMBER DAYS. Not the specified Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of ecclesiastical observance. The Ember Days we note date back of any calendar, Christian or Pagan. They are ushered in by a series of brief-lighted, half- hearted, jaundiced days, post-autumnal in their temper, and yet not due winter. The fire of the year slowly smoulders out, drop- ping into corroded brands and ashes on the earth, and escaping upwards in smoke and vapor of fog. The vital spark in man's heart and brain suffers by sympathy with the season, and needs some fanning to keep it in genial play. Premonitions of winter sleep steal over us, urging the propriety of looking about for a snug hibemacvlum. The Muse has nothing to say, unless to clap approval at the sentiment pronounced by the pleasant balladist : — " When the ways are heavy -with mire and rut, In November fogs, in December snows ; When the north wind howls, and the doors are shnt, There is place, and enough, for the pains of prose !" EMBER DATS. 243 To distinguish the month of November, we would call it a mSlange of aU ill weath- ers. It contains days borrowed from Feb- ruary and March, days of fickle variety, like a shrewd and imbittered AprU. By the fall- ing of the leaves, after much miserable tem- porizing, we are brought face to face with the austere heavens and a long reckoning of inclemencies. This is the November which some one has rightly named " Eat-heart." It is wonderful how the grass contrives to double the season. It has two spring-times, and grows bravely up to the very threshold of winter, both on the vernal and autumnal side. In some places, it may have commu- nicated its courageous spirit to neighboring plants. This November blue violet, does it not sweetly and acceptably apologize for the absence of blue overhead ? Here and there the dandelion stiU contributes its pennyworth of sunshine. These signs of nature's vernal feeling in the dead of the year affect us with some such surprise as we have at seeing the summer - time constellations rising before dawn of a winter day. But the pushing thriftiness of the grass cannot mask the pre- vailing soberness of the season. In pas- tures, and about the fence corners, weeds of 244 EMBER DAYS. rank flowerage during the autumn now stand with hoary or black tops, like a row of snuffed-out candles, once used for an iUu- mination. Here is the milkweed, with its pods set so as to represent a bevy of birds ; but the wind is plucking off their silken white plumage, and sending it wastefully adrift through the field. Here, a shabby thistle is putting out a last purple pretense of decayed royalty. " Poverty grass," with its straight, wispy bents, bleached white, and standing in even parallels, looks like the threads of a warp in the loom. But there is not so much as a spider to put in a gossamer filling. I sometimes hear a faint, thin note in the grass, much like the rattling of small seeds in a dry husk : this, I fancy, may be the lay of the last cricket. Once in a long interval, my foot starts up a decrepit grass- hopper, frost - bitten and rheumatic, — pos- sibly the old immortal Tithonus of the fable. Here a puff-baU, grown to prodigious size, and torn or burst open at the top, is sifting its fine, snuff-colored dust into the wind. It suggests diablerie ; indeed, the brown elves must use it as a censer in their unhallowed midnight incantations. Weird and eldritch suggestions are plenty on every side. If you EMBER DAYS. 245 walk in the woods, you are startled by mys- terious small sounds, — Panic noises, which you cannot readily trace to an origin. That old rustic practical joker, who in his day has frightened so many a solitary traveler, was never more alive and maliciously inventive than now. He it is, undoubtedly, who sends the partridge detonating through the dry leaves directly in our path ; who sets the wood- pecker to dispatching telegraphic messages, with a hollow tap, tap, on some sonorous trunk close by ; who makes the trees groan humanly among their upper branches, and the dry leaves on the scrub oak discourse gibberish. Sometimes, where the fallen leaves are glued together with mUdew, one detaches itself from the sodden company, and turns deliberately over, with a beckon- ing motion. Then I see the brown, charm- weaving hand of some ancient earth sibyl. On a hard-bound December evening, the low, faint shudder running through the crisp leaves and grasses brings to mind a certain awesome scripture : " Thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust." 246 EMBER DATS. I notice that a white bloom has gathered on the raspberry briers, modifying their burnt-sienna color to a delicate flesh-tint ; indeed, it would seem that all vegetable life, designing to brave the winter through, had grown, for that purpose, a kind of tough, unsensitive scarf-skin. Even the trees ap- pear to have gained a thicker rind, and their upper branches and whole stem system look, in the sunshine, as though they had been brushed over with some preservative lubri- cant or varnish. On every hand, Nature strengthens her position, or, if forced to yield ground, covers safely her retreat. Let none be uneasy on her account. " Young buds sleep at the root's white core," and the future leaf rocks securely in its cradle on the tree-top. Now, before the deep snow flings to the door, I would like to visit the winter dormitory of every hibernating creature, — would foUow home the chipmunk which I caught yesterday filling his impudent cheeks with corn from the crib ; I have a natural curiosity to know how his granary is planned. What lodgings have been engaged by the bull-frog and his meUower-voiced rival, the hyla ? Are there any " birds of a feather " tiunbled together at the bottom of some old EMBER DATS. 247 chestnut stump, for the astonished farmer to exhume about Candlemas Day ? Above all, I would like to know whether there are any swallows done up in clay at the bed of the stream, as White' of Selborne was so desir- ous of proving, some time ago ; and whether the cricket has laid in a good supply of fod- der, or merely chews over his summer cud. I am the more concerned to push investigar tion in this quarter since I have read that the insect has the same number and arrange- ment of stomachs enjoyed by the Order Bu- minantia ! Frequently, in the early morning, at this time of the year, one hears the high, shrLU clamor of the blue jay, spreading his wings on the stream of the north wind and crying a defiance ; it is the very voice of winter. Until late in the season, and occasionally during the milder winter weather, I hear the coarse guffaw of the crow at a long distance through the woods. Is there not a true sar- donic inflection in the note of the crow? What lazy contempt and derision it ex- presses ! He is called Jaques, in our For- est of Arden. How ridiculously he carica- tures the gait of human kind. I remember to have seen a man chasing a lamed crow 248 EMBER DAYS. over a plowed field, and to have been im- pressed by the ludicrous similarity of their motions. The black-coated man, by a ruse of fancy, became a larger species of crow, while his corvine thiefship appeared as a smart little personage in black broadcloth. It is worthy of remark that each bird- voice is by us mentally referred to some particular season or date in the year. The apple-blossom and the oriole are as indisso- lubly wedded as are the rose and the night- ingale in poetic tradition; the chipping- bird's rapid trill is hot weather vocalized ; the pewee's note belongs to the somnolent depths of the summer ; and for years, as it seems to me, a solitary killdeer, on its vernal migration, has kept its appointment on a certain mild Sabbath day of March, soimd- ing its hasty, querulous cry as it passes over the village. As the soft aerial whistle of the bluebird (no matter in what season we hear it) wakes spring in the heart, so on hearing the chickadee the air swarms with snowflakes, the trees stand stark and bare, and icicles trim the eaves — in fancy's per- spective. He affects to resent our intrusion upon his woodland territory. He and his comrade black -caps come down into the EMBER DATS. 249 lower branches and begin their crisp inter- rogations, " Dee ! dee ! dee ! " which I inter- pret thus : " Quick ! make known your busi- ness here ! " promising all the rigors of their LUiputian law if our explanations should not be satisfactory. I am acquainted with a youth- ful archer who is ambitious to make a mark of the chickadee. " Why, what have you got against our friend ? " I ask. " Don't like his brag," is the laconic reply. But the chickadee has other notes at his com- mand besides the one from which his famil- iar name is derived. To the sylvan lodge by Walden Pond the chickadee was wont to come " with faint, flitting, lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day, day, day, or more rarely, in springlike days, a wiry, summery phe~be from the woodside." It is amusing to watch his calisthenic practice as he lights, for a moment, upon some swinging branch. One is reminded of the grotesque motions of a parrot. Or, as he arches his fine neck and curbs in his head, I am tempted to compare small things to great — to call him a spir- ited little war-steed of the air. His flight is a succession of curvets, or leaps, as though his body were elastic, and rebounded as 260 EMBER DAYS. often as it smote the air. His oddly marked plumage suggests to me that here is a fan- tastic masker just come from some carnival frolic of the feathered beau monde. With the chickadee comes the nuthatch. For the latter the school-boy has a name ready fitted, derived from the bird's most characteristic note. " We call 'em yaks," said the disci- ple of Robin Hood whom I have before men- tioned. Besides the yah, yah (or yaK), of this note, expressive of irony and petulance quite at variance with the demure and gen- tle behavior of this bird, the nuthatch has another idiom. When, with a comrade or two, he is making the tour of a tree-trunk, in quest of insect food, he converses in fine, confidential, mouselike squeaks, which a lis- tener finds decidedly humorous. The nut- hatch is said to be in the habit of cracking nuts by wedging them into some convenient crevice and then hammering them with his bill ; whence the name. In searching for insects lodged in the bark of trees, the nut- hatch is able to descend the trunk with head downward, an accomplishment which distin- guishes our interesting friend from aU other birds that earn a livelihood by wood-pecking. Though not possessing the chickadee's in- EMBER DAYS. 251 quisitive loquacity, the nuthatch is scarcely less fearless and familiar. I have some- times imagined that he is not without a fine sense of humor and a penchant for jesting. Once or twice I have engaged him in a game of " bo-peep " (for I thus construed our mu- tual positions and manoeuvres). Nuthatch upon one side of the tree, I on the other; I think to move cautiously around until I have the nuthatch in sight, but the nuthatch shifts his position, little by little ; and this is repeated untU we have made the circuit of the tree. Meanwhile I have had only the merest glimpses of his bill and mischievous eye. Though I suppose this brave chUd of winter cares not a grub for compliments of any sort, I have thought of posting the fol- lowing lines upon some tree where he would be apt to come upon them in his daily avo- cations : — TO A NUTHATCH. Shrewd little haunter of woods all gray, Whom I meet on my walk, of a winter day. You 're busy inspecting each cranny and hole In the ragged hark of yon hickory bole ; You intent on your task, and I on the law Of your wonderful head and gymnast claw I The woodpecker well may despair of this feat — Only the fly with you can compete ! 262 EMBER DAYS. So mucli is clear ; liut I fain would know How you so reckless, and fearless go, Head upward, head downward, all one to yon, Zenith or nadir the same in your view ! Perhaps you woiild answer {with wisdom true) " Why do you wonder ? You mortals too. All , in the whirl of the day and the night, Change nether deep for ether height." Each spring, I am grieved to note the in- road that has been made upon the timber during the fall and winter previous. It seems to me that the nobUitj is first to go, and I wonder how it is that the woodman's axe refuses to taste of aught less than the fairest and tallest-grown of the forest. Is there no penalty attached to arboricide ? If I were in the chopper's place, I should fear that Sylvan woxdd hurl the falling shaft my way, and crush me beneath it. Down go the beech, the oak, and the ash ; down goes the maple, notwithstanding its veins of kindness. The ground is scattered over with splinters and chips, white or pinkish, clean and sweet- smeUing. What further destiny is in store for this deposed and mutilated majesty? The oracle of Dodona could not have fore- told. Part, sound sleepers under the tracks of the last new railway ; part to be floated down the Lakes, out through the Gulf of St. EMBER DAYS. 253 Lawrence, and over the " road of the bold " to England ; part to remain here, and be- come a patient power in the lands, converted to tools in the hands of the farmer ; still an- other part to be consumed on our hearths, — an extravagant and guilty luxury, we are inclined to think. Occasionally the axe dis- closes the fact that a great and flourishing tree was quite corrupt at the core ; that it lived for years with a heart of sawdust. Nature has her laugh at us, and propounds the following : Pray, how will this fact fit into your object-lessons, my little philoso- pher? Will you teach your pupils that even from hearts unsound right growths may sometimes proceed? But when we have wrinkled our brows over the embar- rassing problem long enough, she will teU us, most likely, that a tree's heart is where a man's heart should be, all abroad in free cir- culation, in branches, stems, and leaves, — in radiating sympathies and enthusiasm, if we look upon the human side of the question. He has hardly become acquainted with the whole tree who has known it only in its sum- mer phases. He is no true lover of the woods who ceases to go to them when the leaves have dropped away, and the garrulous dryad 254 EMBER DATS. has retired to sleep. I would know my friends in their adversity and hardihood. Some invaluable intimations are reached down on that lichened north or northeast side of a sage, weather-beaten old tree, which looks so much alive that one might expect to find it as- vocal as the trees in Dante's mournful forest, — only if one should cut the bark or break a branch, one would not hear groans and outcries, but the overflow of continual good spirits and complaisance ! To him who enjoys their winter society each tree of the forest has its distinct individuality, no less now than when it flourished under the sign of the leaf. There are all degrees of muscu- larity, all shades between grayness and brownness, besides delicate differences in pose and deportment, to pronounce the tree. This is the " builder oak, " that throws such energy into its strong, upreaching arms ; this, the beech, distinguished by the lateral pre- cision of its branches ; this, the soft maple, recognizable by its poised lightness and round contoiir. Who knows not the " vine- prop " elm, with its lofty grace and slight benedictive droop, the oriole's nest still swinging from the end of some branch? Bring us the nest of the bird, and we will EMBER DATS. 255 do our best to tell you what tree afforded the site. We dare to do this, because we chanced, last spring, to be present at a con- gress convened by the birds, to discuss the comparative advantages for nest - building presented by various trees. The smooth, gray stem of the beech looks not unlike an old church-yard slab, with here and there a frUl of lichen, or a patch of moss. The bark of the cucumber - tree is arranged in fine scales, as though the tree had put on an hi- bernal coat of mail, while that of the white ash suggests pigeon tracks in wet clay, the tracks pointing up the stem. " The Dorian column of the sycamore " stands out in white relief against the dark background of the deeper woods. This tree casts its bark as well as its leaves. Are you a skilled archae- ologist ? Read what is written on that scrap of parchment, — a true Saxon book, direct from the bark of the tree. It is thought to contain the tree's esoteric doctrines, its notes and comments, thrown off in its summer lei- sure. Even the pine and the hemlock are deciduous, though they manage to shift the old garment for the new so adroitly that none of their neighbors discover the sleight. The west wind, in summer time a deli- 256 EMBER DATS. cious boon, becomes at this season a scourge, with a threefold lash of sleet, hail, and snow; for the most of our heavy winter storms rise from this quarter. Our trees have wrestled so long with this wind that they are permanently warped towards the east, as may be seen by running the eye over their profiles ; there is even a percepti- ble scantiness in the growth of their branches on the side exposed to the prevailing wind. What mighty battles have I seen and heard waged between the trees and the west wind, — an Iliad fought in fields of the air. I cannot understand, when I hear the wind characterized as " lonesome " and " melan- choly." It is the great traveler, who not only has been around the earth, but has circumnavigated some of the nearer stars, returning with a traveler's zest for story-tell- ing. There is heraldry in the wind, myste- rious errantry. It is possible that our snow- topped pine, gently nodding to its black shadow in the moonlight, has just received advices from that tropical palm, its legen- dary love. A high wind calls the imagina- tion to come up higher. What has the poet of nature to do with the island valley of Avilion, — with a region EMBER DATS. 257 " Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly " ? If we have neither mountains, trees, streams, nor the sea in our prospect, we have at least the sky and the wind: the one, with its clouds, to paint pictures for us, the other to sing us songs. The morning was bound in blue and gold. Wherever the long shafts of the sun fell, a gold-stone sparkle followed ; but the shad- ows had the tint of the lilac, or of an aeri- fied amethyst. The children of Aurora per- ceived that manna had fallen in the night, and went forth to gather it ; but they wisely carried neither scrip nor basket, knowing they could lay none by for the ,morrow. In May we indeed believed, with the Rosicru- cians, that there might be an immortal vir- tue in May-dew ; in December we discover it is lodged in the frost. Every blade of grass is shot full of minute crystalline ar- row-heads, which might be drawn out entire, could there be found for the task a hand of sufficient coldness and delicacy. In this smooth, frozen ground are seen numerous fine, branching lines, which suggest a tracery of some straggling lycopodium, or that a clumsy Gothic artisan has attempted to 258 EMBER DAYS. draw on an earthy tablet certain theorems in Crystallization — else that sachem, Frost, and his band made it their amusement, while the clay was stiU. soft, to hack it with their tomahawks. Inside the weU-curb flourishes a garden of colorless lichens and mosses, of various coralline and arborescent patterns ; hardy, save under the rays of the sun. On first waking we drew aside the curtain, and found on the window-pane a glorious emblaz- onry of summer trees, flowers, and tangled thickets. How was this ? Had we dreamed of summer? And then, did the spirit of cold and the breath of a sleeper convey the phantasmal dream to the pane, and there leave it to crystallize under the keen sur- veillance of the stars? I was shown the photograph of a singularly beautiful frost- piece, and required to name the original. Before I hit the truth, I was successively re- minded of a fern plot in the woods, a gar- den of deep-sea plants, and an imprint of fossil vegetation. This seemed to me ad- ditional proof that Nature has only a few fine forms, which she works over and over, with unwearying delight. We read that a whole tropical flora lies buried under the Greenland glacier. It is this fact, perhaps, EMBER DAYS. 259 that is whitely hinted at in all the works of the frost. Living not far from a great lake, locked in its winter sleep, I sometimes fall into the impression that our coast line runs coincident with the arctic circle, and that Wrangel Land, and the icy mausoleum of so much brave polar research, might be reached by an hour's journey due north- ward. Yonder is the frozen deep ; for aught I know, it is the limit of discovery. Instead of the " unmeasured laughter of the waves," there is dead silence, or only the as- tonished whistle of the north wind, as it sweeps over surges it cannot drive, — " white caps " that sparkle, but are without power to burst into spray. The voicelessness of the lake is the first impression obtained ; the next is of the vast sunken perspective it presents. It vividly suggests the crater of a burnt -out volcano. Frequent drifts of snow and caked ice, mixed with sand sifted in from the beach, answer to the lava and ashes of bygone volcanic eruptions. If the lake has frozen under a stiff norther, our beach will be filled with a wUd arabesque architecture. Here are ice-caves and nar- row cloister walks, niches and shrines ; and here (by a bold upward fling of the tor- 260 UMBER DAYS. tured water in freezing) is a veritable wig- wam, a piece of poetic justice in the ele- ments, commemorating the far-away Indian occupancy of the shore. In the offing there will be one or more jagged ramparts of ice, and beyond, at the furthest reach of the eye, a dark, steel-blue hint of free waters, though frequently no such channel is visible from the shore. This irregular fence of ice, of which I have spoken, suggests the Giant's Causeway, or the fantastic desolation of the Dakota Bad Lands. The frozen drift along the shore has, in rigorous seasons, consider- able permanency. The sun is the mildest- mannered iconoclast (a lesson to those who believe in the sledge-hammer). He rarely takes by storm the enemy's stronghold. His method is gradually and almost impercepti- bly to create angles, thus multiplying the points of attack ; to girdle the shaft with strategic beams, so that when it falls, it seems to have toppled by reason of its own unbalanced gravity. I have sometimes im- agined there is a sunny flaw in the ice it- self, a surreptitious spark of inclosed caloric, which, no less than the outward ray, works towards dissolution. Can we discover any correlation existing between the icicle and EMBER DATS. 261 the iceberg? Only tliis: that the form of the icicle follows that of the stalactite, while the iceberg is a kind of immense movable stalagmite. I watch with interest the first tendency towards solidification in a stream of water. Notice how sluggishly the current drags along; how dark and mantling it looks, like some dense liquid slowly cooling off. Large bubbles coUect on the surface. Next, fine crystal bayonets and spears are thrust out from the margin, as though they would impale and hold the unwilling cur- rent. Dipping reeds and wiUow whips are soon glazed over, and made the nuclei of small glacial reefs; the web spreads, and the stream is firmly woven under. Windows of ground glass are these shallow, translu- cent ice-pools scattered about the tufty pas- ture. Here are fantastic panes, irregularly shaped, no larger than my hand ; and here (two pools divided by a narrow strip of turf) a long mullioned window, curiously engraved and jJictured, somewhat obscure in design, when seen from the outside, but doubtless legible and distinct could we ob- tain an interior view. Ribs and bars of brittle white ice cross each other simulating lattice-work ; the underside of these pictured 262 EMBER DATS. panes will be found covered with rough hoar-frost vegetation, which accounts for the appearance of ground glass. Impris- oned leaves, brown as mummy, are here em- balmed in crystal, overlaid with leaves of glistening filigree. Freezing must have be- gun at the margins of these pools, which are most grotesque wherever the g^ass lent it- self to the whimsey of the moment. The edges of the pool are corrugated, as though the water frowned at the advances of the cold, and even resisted the creeping torpor. In the smoother and clearer middle are two or three imperfectly elliptical lines, resem- bling the forms which the liquid in a spirit- level takes when coming to an equilibrium. Whether the water was entirely converted into ice or the ground absorbed it, there is frequently not a drop under the pretentious ice. I break into this crystal palace in search of the winter elves who built it, and find not a sprite at home ; all airy, dry, and deserted. Such ice breaks with a musical resonance and slight local echo. Where there has been no considerable pool, but only a thimbleful of moisture here and there in the turf, beautiful freaks of conge- lation are revealed. I am reminded of the EMBER DAYS. 263 thick webs hung ■with shimmering beads of dews, that coTered this field on a June morning; now the webs are as spun glass and the big glittering beads which they mesh tremble to no wind. Along this slow thread of free water the dipping grass is strung with gypsy trinkets. A silver pen- dulum swung from a wiUow twig, and barely touching the water in its oscillations, keeps the time of day here. I can even hear the ticking of this time-piece, which, if the cold increases, will stop altogether. At sunset 1 do not fail to note the red lamp that burns in each of these translucent windows ; I then imagine them to open into little shrines or oratories, to which the field-spirit retires for meditation and worship. It is past the solstice, — close upon the crumbling verge of the year. At last, there falls a snow, the fibre of which has been well tested in yonder laboratory of the heavens. No " sugar-snow " this, to melt in our cup ! It has come to stay. Its siege win not be so long as in New England, nor will its depth be so great or so uniform in this locality ; but it suffices. The houses, muffled at foundation and eaves, look low as pictures of Swiss chalets, — so low that it 264 EMBER DATS. seems possible to rest one's elbow on the roof, and look about on the village beneath. The woods in the distance are mere hedge- rows, and there are no longer fences to di- vide claims. Imagination adds a good rod to the breadth of an untracked road in win- ter. The storm has isolated us, but not un- kindly. There is no misanthropy in our re- tirement ; on the contrary, we seem to have withdrawn ourselves for the sole purpose of considering how we may love our neighbor stiU better. We fancy him engaged in the same benevolent meditations. There is even an expression of good-will toward us in the affable curve of the smoke that comes from his chimney. At night our fireside and that meUow star, our evening lamp, can scarcely be contained within doors ; at least, looking out at the window, we see their charitable image, constant and bright, under the rock- ing trees in the blue winter dusk. If we spoke of " the dead of the year," it was a mistake. The embers are well covered over. FLAKiE WHITE. It has just fallen upon my tablets, and with it a voice saying, Write. But how to handle a subject so delicate! Surely the touch should be at once tender and cold. Even as I speak of Flake White, it is no longer called by that name, but has become vague moisture. I would dwell upon the stainless purity of the snow, but Fancy be- ing so careless in her chemistry, the prob- abilities are that the chromatic unity which I seek will be decomposed ; whence violet, amber, or even rose-tinted snow may result. Then, if my experiment be accused of fail- ure, I will summon, to be my apologist, not the snow-flake, but the more ingenuous snow crystal, with the rainbow twinkle in its face. Memorable are the verses beginning thus : — •' Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow." Yet the heraldry of a snow-storm is not al- ways to the ear, with flourish of the sky 266 FLAKE WHITE. trumpets. To Jupiter Pluvius belong noisy pomp and circumstance, — the clattering chariot and the hurtling bolt ; Jupiter Ni- veus more often walks the heavens shod with silence, gray of countenance, yet be- nign, softening the austere air with the gifts of his right hand. The first flakes of the year, — how doubtful, wavering, tenta- tive, as though there were as yet no beaten path for them to follow in their journey from the clouds to earth, or as though they were unwUling to desert the goodly society of their kindred in the sky ! The blades of tender autumnal grass look very cold, hfted through the scant coverlet spread by a first snow ; one shivers seeing them, and wishes that their retirement might be has- tened. The wanderings of the dead leaves are brought to an end by the snow, to which 'they impart a stain from the colorrag mat- ter not yet leached from their tissues. By this circumstance the age of the season might be gauged, approximately; at least, the snows of the later winter suffer no such discoloration from contact with the leaf- strewn ground. When the snow is damp and clinging, as it not unfrequently is at the beginning and FLAKE WHITE. 267 end of the winter, a wonderful white spring- time comes upon the earth. Behold, the or- chards bloom again almost in the similitude of May ; the dry stalks in the garden un- dergo the miracle that befell the bishop's staff in the legend, and deck themselves with beauty. Last summer's nests are again ten- anted, brooded by doves of peace descended from heaven. Every cobweb which the wind has spared, under the eaves or in the porch, displays a fluttering increment of snow. What a deal of wool-gathering there has been ! The rough bark of the trees, the roofs and clap-boards of the houses, are hung with soft shreds and tatters ; the " finger of heaven " has put on a white cot. If we walk abroad in this new creation, it shall seem that we have been suddenly let into some magnified frost picture ; nor can we be quite sure that we ourselves are not of the same frail, ethereal texture as the exquis- ite work around us, and like it destined to glide into naught, under the arrows of the sun. When such damp snow freezes upon the branches, and afterwards falls in crusted fragments, the perforations made in the snow beneath resemble the tracks of many small, cushion-footed animals; one would like to 268 FLAKE WHITE. know what JEsopian council, or palaver, was held under the dooryard trees in the sly mid- dle of the night. There is great variety in the quality and fibre of the snow as it falls at different tem- peratures, in quiet, or ceaselessly worried by the wind. "Hail is the coldest corn," de- clares an ancient rune. However that may be, by the chaff that is driven in our faces we know that they are threshing up yonder this afternoon. At some other time it is not chaff, but heavenly grain (such as the horses of the Homeric deities may have munched), that is lavishly scattered abroad. To walk upon such snow is very like attempting to walk in a bin of wheat, and a dry, craimch- ing sound attends each footstep. Sometimes it snows not flakes, but little fasces of crys- talline fagots; sometimes, also, miniature snow-balls, well packed, ready made for the sport of the invisible sprites of the storm. Again, by the fineness and softness of the flake, it appears that the old traditional goose- wife, who lives in the clouds, is plucking only the down from under the wings of her flock ; she is not so painstaking and fastidious at all times. Occasionally I am reminded that there is a lapidary in heaven, who takes the FLAKE WHITE. 269 rough gem of the snow, and by secret dex- terity — cutting, polishing, and engraving — causes it to wear a thousand lovely forms and devices. Perhaps these are the " Beautiful things made new, for the surprise Of the sky children," which Saturn promised there should be on his regaining the empire of the skies. Or it may be that these crystal stars and wheels, in aU curious and fantastic varia- tions, are experiments in pyrotechnics — frozen fire-works, in which the rockets are made to take only descending curves. I sometimes please myself with imagining that when these exquisite fragments come to a common resting-place on earth, by some rec- ondite law of attraction or correspondence they fit themselves together, point locking into angle and side matching side. Might not an ear divinely gifted detect a faint musical report when these morning-stars of the snow celebrate their union ? " And they all sing, melting as they sing, of the myste- ries of the number six, six, six." Six petals hag the lily stainless white. And six the wandering blossom of the snow ; If these their constant order could forego, Sun, moon, and stars would break their sacred plight. 270 FLAKE WHITE. The snow wliich falls in these obvious crys- talline patterns is of the lightest and most diaphanous quality. A broken branch lies upon the ground, completely covered with this delicate counterpane, yet every twig and bud is still plainly defined. I have a fancy that I would like to see half-blown crimson roses inclosed, but not concealed, in such a cool white shrine. The season which most regard as forbiddingly ascetic, — has it not its touches of refinement and luxury ? Some- ' times, for several nights in succession, there will fall a light film of snow, not adding, practically, to that already upon the ground, yet sufficing to remove all stains and blem- ishes of the day. Thus Nature has care of her complexion in winter, so renewing it, from morning to morning, that it still pre- sents an infantine softness and smoothness of texture. Be quick to take suggestion. You do not know but that this gentle snow which fell in the night — winter's dew — possesses the excellence attributed to the dew of May. With your hand skim off the cream of it, and bathe your face therewith, not for- getting her who melted pearls in her cup, — whose extravagance was naught in compari- son with that which we practice, dissolving FLAKE WHITE. 271 the jewels of the sky for a lotion ! The fa- ble of a shower of gold was substantiated, on a,J)right and still day of last winter, when the air became filled with glittering motes of finest snow or frost, visible only in the sunshine. I am not sure that the display should have been called a shower, since the golden atoms, owing to their buoyancy, were kept floating in the air. Where the flake falls, there it would fain rest in peace ; but the wind will not have it so. Even in serene weather, whoever looks out on the open field is likely to see an oc- casional skirmish of gentle zephyrs puffing the dust of snow at each other in sport. Snow that has been fretted by the wind for some time at last has the appearance of a flaked and crannied bed of a stream in dry weather. Yonder lies the garden, marked with smooth, shallow furrows trending north and south. Well I know what share has been plowing there. These furrows are not permanent, but with every returning blast of the west wind are moved forward, as waves are driven towards the shore. "Out of an unseen quarry, evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Carves his white bastions with projected roof 272 FLAKE WHITE. Bound every windward stake, or tree, or door ; Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work So fanciful, so savage ; naught cares he For number or proportion." " But for me it is the West, and not the North Wind that so astonishes Art with the result of his night-work. In every drifting storm from the west a huge recumbent figure occu- pies the porch in front of my door. I think that this quiet giant has on helmet, haber- geon, and greaves, and that at an instant's warning he would be ready for assault or de- fense. Is it strange that I wish to know by what name he goes in his own native Nifl- heim, and why my portal enjoys such guar- dianship ? Also, as I look out of the window and observe the great North American sloth, white and lazy, stretched at full length upon the rocking bough of the evergreens, I ques- tion how long it will continue pasturing there. It will be, perhaps, several days be- fore the shaggy creature loosens its hold and falls to the ground : sun, and not wind, is its chief natural enemy. A great snow-fall inspires a novel feeling of adventure and hardihood: Our familiar fields, with their pretty boimds, have disap- peared, and in their place lies a spacious FLAKE WHITE. 273 ■wilderness, of wMcli, if we please, we may be the first pioneers. How suggestive is the solitary track in a wide snow ! What quest was this ? What Crusoe has gone about his forlorn insular affairs ? Yet, should we too go upon the quest, taken in lead by these , venturous solitary tracks, they become al- most companionable, communicating good- will and courage. " FoUow, foUow, thou shalt win." A long siege of snow and a voyage at. sea have something in common. Steadily lift around us the surges of this fruitless, lifeless white sea. Farewell the good brown earth. It may be that we shall not behold it again for the space of time which we would consume if sailing around Cape Horn. Something like the joy of the returned sea-voyager is ours, when, at the breaking-up of winter, we land, and feel the kindly soil once more under our feet. I am disposed to credit the rumor I have heard that Mght and Winter exchanged vows at the beginning of time. I perceive what 'close bosom friends they are, and doubt that they wiU admit a third into their com- munion ; nevertheless, their comity encour- ages my overtures. No winter day, as it seems to me, was ever so fair as the winter 18 274 FLAKE WHITE. night with the moon presiding. Not for the eye of the sun are the finer, subtler wonders of the snow ; these are reserved for the ce- lestial wanderer " with white fire laden." So well pleased is she with the faithful cold- ness and purity of the snow that she is con- stantly visiting it with favors. Therefore are her nameless gem-bearing mountains and her treasure-houses laid under contribution for the adornment of her terrestrial love, in the folds of whose garments a myriad jewels sparkle. These, one may guess, are the only genuine moonstones. On a summer night the occasional flickering of the dew is expli- cable by the coming and going of the light breeze over the grass, or by the stir of insects among the blades ; but the continual and ubiquitous sparkle of the frost-glazed snow, where there is neither life nor motion, car- ries an elfin fascination. Sometimes I liken these keen, restless scintillations to the sparks of electricity excited in the furry coat of some animal : soft and warm, indeed, to the sleep- ing earth is this ample pelage — as of a mam- moth polar bear — spread comfortably over hill and valley. As I walk under the trees I notice that their shadows, printed smoothly on the moonlit snow, produce the effect of a FLAKE WBITE. 275 dark blue veining in marble. If I knew how to command their services, a troop of genii shoidd even now be at work, cutting and dressing blocks of this veined marble, to build me a palace that should rival Alad- din's. Carving the face of a snow image to please some young friends of mine, I became fasci- nated with the work. The charm of simu- lating the most permanent of all materials with the most fleeting was impressed upon me. An artist might mould what he pleased of snow, and never fear that the creature of his hands woidd demand of him a soul at the judgment day I It also seemed to me that one might acquire such skiU in this line of art as that some munificent citizens would be glad to employ him to fill their yards with beautiful sculpture, though it were but the pride of one moonlight night or the wonder of a single morning. On a stormy evening, when the air is thick with flying snow, I have received charming suggestion from the village lights. Walls, roofs, bounding lines generally, are lost in the snowy obscurity ; but the hospitable win- dows remain, curtained, meUow-tinted panes, or curtainless pictures of fireside comfort, 276 FLAKE WHITE. framed, apparently, by mist and cloud. At a little distance it were easy to imagine that these windows belonged to the ground-floor of heaven, rather than to any houses made with hands. Though the trumpets of the sky may have been blown in its van, the snow, when it ar- rives on earth, abhors and annihilates all loud noise. How muffled and remote are the sounds in a village during a great snow- fall ! — aU mutes and subvocals. Stamping of feet in the porch across the way is re- ported distantly sonorous, as though the noise had been made ia a subterranean chamber. Across the high, smooth fields comes the faint pealing of a bell, mysteriously sweet. The bell hangs in the church of a neighbor- ing village; I have often heard it before, but not with the same impression as now. So might have sounded the chimes in the buried church of the legend, on a Christmas morning. The snow has a mediatorial character. Wherever this earth approaches nearest to heaven, on all loftiest summits of the globe, there stands the white altar, perpetually : nor is the religion to which the altar is reared one of pure abstraction, colorless mysticism. . FLAKE WHITE. 277 Sunrise, sunset, and the winds, with the snow, bring out on the tops of our Western mountains (if current descriptions do not exaggerate) such surprises of form and color, whirling column and waving banner, as were never dreamed of in the pageants beheld by the initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries. FROST AXD MOONSHINE. One night in winter I gradually became aware that conversation was being carried on in my room. I listened with no such un- easiness as is usually inspired by a noctur- nal disturbance ; on the contrary, the fine, clear, musical tones proceeding from near the window were particularly pleasing to my ear and fancy. I could not see the speakers (two in number), but supposed them to be concealed by the curtain that hung before the window. As I afterwards fell asleep, my recollection of what I heard is not very complete, but the dialogue, as I remember it, was in the following vein : — " Come, come, old friend and feUow, you have been in Arcadia ; I have not, you know. Now tell me, does my picture appeal to you ? Are these trees, sedges, and flowers like those you have seen in that blessed country ? But wait a moment. I will just poise a butterfly on the foremost blossom of my nymph's wild-rose crown, and I will put a FROST AND MOONSHINE. 279 wreath of pomegranate flowers around the neck of the lamb which the shepherd is pre- senting her. There ! all these light touches help to tell the story. But you are silent." " My dear Jack, what shall I say ? The form of beauty is indeed here, the drawing is faultless, and many a sweet thought wor- thy of your elfin genius appears in the de- tails ; but " — " But what ? " " Color, warmth, life, — these are not here ! " " Alas, I know they are not : but re- member my sca,nt opportunities. I was never in Arcadia." " But you are in Thule : is there nothing here to paint ? " " There might be for another ; for me there is not. I paint from my dreams, and my dreams are all of the summer and the South. I am forbidden those happy regions, kept here in rigorous exile ; so I set my im- ag^ation to work to compensate me for the deprivation I am doomed to suffer. You, who can range where you will, should not deny me the pleasures of imagination." " A pine-tree loved a palm " — " Ah, how well I know that pine-tree and 280 FROST AND MOONSHINE. that palm ! I know all those who sing the songs of this human world, now sleeping. They and I are close kin, though they may not choose to recognize the tie. I feel for them, but they do not think of me." " You speak of the poets. In what respect do you find they resemble you ? " " In this : they, too, have dreamed of Par- adise, and all their care is to reproduce their lovely visions ; they, too, bring their themes from far, spuming the near-at-hand and the familiar. Whatever they lack and most de- sire, that they strive to supply by methods not unlike my own. I have not seen the summer streams, the flowers, and the grass, the winged creatures that live and rejoice in the sunshine ; but out of my longing to visit the world which they adorn, out of my fancy, and with the aid of the hearsay that is always abroad in the air, I have produced these pale and transient semblances. Do you think I am satisfied with what I have done ? Neither are those other artificers satisfied with their work." " I wonder you do not address a sympar thetic message to them." " I have already done so ; and if you will bring ydur taper a little nearer you may FROST AND MOONSHINE. 281 read for yourself. The writing is inter- woven with the grass blades at the feet of the nymph. Thou mortal, who mayst scan this picture sheen, Scorn not the artist, though thou blame his art : His touch is cold, but white fire warms his heart ; Thou, too — " Hush ! I think we are overheard." The voices ceasing, I soon fell asleep. In the morning, drawing back the curtain with purpose to read the interrupted verse, to my great disappointment I found the window- panes were like plain ground-glass ; not a trace of nymph and shepherd, not a hint of glyphic writing. Shrewd pair, — Frost and Moonshine ! HEAKTH-FIRE. Is not the prejudice in favor of summer greatly diminished at the coming of weather sufficiently cold to recommend the kindling of fires in grate and stove? With what cheerful readiness we obey the Horatian in- junction, — " Dissolve fiigns, ligna super foco, Large reponens." Only natives of the temperate or the frozen zone can estimate the virtues residing in this element. To southern races warmed by the vertical sun, the significance of fire must be chiefly mechanical ; it is Mulciber's bound apprentice, a bliad annealer of metals, work- ing without boon or hire. A northern peo- ple, on the contrary, bring it home, cherish it upon the hearth, and learn to love it for its sociability. A Scandinavian Prometheus (had there been such a deity) would have employed at once his stolen fire in estab- lishing greater comfort in the domiciles of mortals, in teaching them how to convert the HEARTH-FIRE. 283 slain wild boar into delicious crackling, how broil their venison, and how to bake the pre -historic journey - cake. Wherever iire goes, there go both the symbol and practical embodiment of civilization. A trapper or a miner in the western wilderness leaves behind him in the smouldered remains of his camp- fire the site of a temporary holding and do- mesticity. While he warmed, ate, and slept by the fire, he lived there, though only over night. That spot of earth became hearth, by his act. The savage solitude was aware of an innovation, the wild beasts kept aloof ; for the fire, defensive and humane, sur- rounded the sleeper as with a magic envi- ronment. Methinks the repeated kindling of a fire iipon the same ground, for domestic uses, even though a roof-tree were a long time lacking, ought to be admitted as a valid way of proving claim. The Grecian colo- nists, carrying with themi into their new home some of the fire from the altar of their na- tive city, doubtless, in this custom, felt a stronger bond with those whom they left be- hind them. As time goes on, the human race more and more puts out of its communion the social spirit Fire, now from the fire-place confin- 284 HEARTH-FIRE. ing it in a stove, now from the stove chasing it to the cellar. A house warmed by fur- nace-heat, be the hospitality never so liberal, lacks one most cordial appointment not want- ing to many a humble domicile. How we miss in the furnace-heated house that bright converging of all the household benevolences, the true focus of domestic life, the fireside. When one sees, as occasionally one may see, the device of imitative coals, or wood, with an uncommunicated flame behind them, it is suggested that there is yet a lurking wistf ul- ness in the human kind towards the once familiar friend and servitor. Surely we have come a long way since the reign of King Log in the ample fire-place, when the children of the house roasted chestnuts and apples on the hearth, when the knitting nee- dles clicked and gleamed from the place of age and hpnor by the fire, while the winter- ing cricket sent up a superannuated yet cheery note from his cranny on the brick hearth, or the floor of the oven — the oven, whence, in their due season, ripe issued the brown loaf and the white. The malicious demon of the South Sea islander's superstition, spitting flame out of the wood, is in our more intimate experi- HEARTH-FIRE. 285 ence a very powerful genius, whom we are able to invoke to a friendly alliance by means of friction and a little phosphorus at the point of a pine sliver. Only those who possess the knack of " building " a fire are to be reckoned among the genuine fire- worshipers ; to those only the genius deigns to exhibit his cunningest sorceries. When the trains of kindlings have all been laid, the proper nooks and crannies planned to secure draught and invite ambuscade, and when the match has been applied, and the nimble flames rush out to reconnoitre, the successful fire-builder may well look upon himself as a professor, not of the black, but the bright art. I speak of a wood-fire. On reflection, I am tempted to say that there are none but wood fires. I burn the tree which was felled, chopped, and corded up in the timber-lot last autumn, — heart of beech or maple, fifty or a hundred years old, by the registration of its rings. But my neigh- bor bums the bodies of trees of an imme- morial growth, prostrated by ancient storms, and laid by to season in the depths of the ' earth ; and with these trees he burns the leaves, flowers, and turf of primeval sum- mers. The fuel thus stored up almost since 286 UEARTH-FIBE. the settling of chaos, may well be imagined to contain the true Promethean heat, may well be said to have been hidden away from the consuming influence of the atmosphere by some kindly divinity with forethought of the present and coming time. The coal miners may be reckoned as woodmen, and the mine itself as a vast Hercynian or Black Forest, stretching millions of acres under our feet. When the superficial forests have been quite stripped away by the careless generations, men wiU draw yet more exten- sively upon this unsunned and unsurveyed timber reservation. When this is finally exhausted, the glacial period will have re- curred, most probably, when all heating agen- cies will be wholly at a discount. Mean- while, Science bids some forward pupil of hers to sing the Odyssey of a coal-fire — to praise the coal as the black first-cousin of the diamond ! And who shall say that in burning it does not give out as fine a brill- iance, as cheerful play of colors, as does its~ inestimable relative? You must, at least, account coal as the casket of flame, which last deserves to be reckoned among the true gems. I have just laid on the coals a billet of EEARTE-FIRE. 287 well - seasoned wood — a Meleager's brand, perhaps, for it burns as though a hot young life were in it, and the very heart had taken fire already. Yet I reflect that, whether the tree comes to consumption upon the hearth, or, living out its full time, falls and lies along the ground, to the condition of fuel it must at last arrive^ A slow fire is no less a sure fire; so the log of old chestnut, si- enna-colored, and of the quality of sawdust, burning or smouldering away in the woods for long years, may now be said to be re- duced to ashes. But who was warmed by this fire ? How shall we measure the volume of the lost caloric, or guess at the end it served in the eternal utility of creation? The fueling of a universe makes no reckon- ing of petty waste. The earth is well on fire;" the sun, perhaps, is burning past his prime, while the moon is already a cinder. A long time ago this conflagration began ; who knows how many planets have been devoured ? Kumor occasionally brings word that the prairies of the west, or the pine woods of the north, are wasting under the ravages of wild- fire. Now I have, sometimes imagined there is no wilder wildfire than the one which has 288 HEARTH-FIRE. yielded me its delectable savage society aU the nights of the winter. It has' its sudden advances, retreats, and momentary truces, of which I do not understand the scheme or provocation, though I suspect that the tactics displayed in a great conflagration are at all essential points followed out by this housed and fettered hearth blaze. It requires little stretch of the imagination to attribute live and visible personality to a destructive fire. Watch it at its work of unbuilding an edifice to which it has laid siege, the dislodging and swaying of beams, the curtains of flame shaken out at the windows j the savagery and rudeness here; the delicacy and device- fulness there ; the tumbling down of walls, the breaking through of flooring ; then the following, with artful coquetting delays, some inviting train of combustible stuff, or, when the fire has been driven off from some quarter of a building, the sudden springing up of a little flower-garden of white and red flame in a niche of the blackened wall. Consider, too, the clamor of the great devas- tator, the roaring, hissing, whispering, sigh- ing, heard from out the conflagration. My hearth-fire, likewise, is not without a certain degree of vocality, semi-articulate speech. HEARTH-FIRE. 289 It has its soft and its rough breathings, its undertones, and its notes of triumph, as it drives a lambent wedge between the bark and body of the wood, or makes a spiral es- calade up through some knot-hole. Now it gives out a fine staccato click, not unlike the snapping of frost on the panes ; or now it utters itself in a still small voice, a tone above the highest pitch of the violin — the next degree to the shrill no-tone where the ideal gamut begins. This I do not hear ex- cept when the woody fibre is entirely disin- tegrated, and the fire considerably spent. It is some released Ariel singing its way to the free air ; and I may have seen the sprite vanishing up a seven-tinted ladder of flame. Is it not a little strange that while the un- substantial inhabitants of the air, earth, and waters have been classified (sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and undines), fire should remain an unpeopled element — fancy not having the hardihood to penetrate its fervid laby- rinths? The only creature said to reside therein is the crooked and malicious sala- mander, an undesirable visitor to have pop out upon one's hearth on a wild winter night when the witches' brooms are brushing the black air. I have never had the ill luck to 19 290 EEARTB-FIRE. see this monster, nor, indeed, anght more ominous than a lively representation of the phoenix, pluming for his long flight to Heli- opolis. When the wood has burned down to an ember, I delight to stir the brands so that the structure of the glowing mass is laid open to the very core or heart. Here are lightnings playing back and forth among the coals, like the heat lightnings of summer- evening skies. This darting glow is the fire's arterial circulation, fed by that ele- ment in the air most grateful to its eager necessity; or, these keen fugitive jets of white and yeUow flame may be understood as the repartee, equivocations, and conceits of the flre, — its pyrotechnic " small talk." It is all things to all men. To the philoso- pher it win be a philosopher, to the poet or any other artificer it will be f uU of images and inventions to match those in his brain. To the weather-wise it is as good as a vane and barometer, the volatility of the flame and the volume of the draught indicating the direction of the wind and the weight of the atmosphere. For myself, I think it no won- der if, conversing night after night with this eloquent advocate on the hearth, my thought HEABTH-FIRE. 291 sometimes catches fire, — gets a taste of caus- tic. Hail, mighty magician, patient bond- slave, acute companion, live kaleidoscope, of wonderful colors and forms, indestructible archives of martyrology, bible of the Parsee mysteries, illuminated missal of all ancient faith and fable ! Teach me of thy body, soul, and spirit, — thy seen flame, thy felt fervor, thine invisible light breathing ! To the evening hearth one may bring all the briery gatherings of the day's cares, and dispose of them utterly, may bury chagrin past blushing, and burn all enmity in effigy. The secretive virtue of the fire ! You may lodge your treasure or trouble with the earth ; in a convulsive fit she may sometime lay it bare. The sea is not always a safe custodian — witness how a fish was sent ashore with the king's ring, cast as a votive offering to the gods forever ! But any fire is deeper than the sea. Feed it with the merchandise and opulence of the whole world, yet can you never feed up to the surface. You cannot dredge or fathom it, you cannot dive in any manner of machine to bring up what, by chance or design, has been thrown into this Ked Sea. 'T is the best preservative from moth and rust that make siieh havoc 292 HEARTH-FIRE. among the sacred things in our reliquaries ; 't is the only strict preventive known against the curious or the careless hands of strangers in the after -time. Undoubtedly, the best "fire-proof safe " is the fire itself. Besides, the more we consign to this royal conserva- tor the greater the credit and confidence it yields us. What does Vesta write to me ? A glowing risumS of those sparkling letters from my friend, which I resolutely sacrificed but a moment since. The paper on which they were traced has fallen into ashes, but the subject-matter reappears in a magnificent red-line and red-letter edition. Sometimes, as I watch the burning of such offerings, I read a ghostly leaf, charred or wholly con- sumed, yet, for an instant, buoyed up by the breath of the fire, while my glance runs over the unviolated charactery. One might col- lect the ashes of any precious writing thus reduced to compendious form, and preserve them with reference to a future restoration, if one might credit the plan of palingenesis which Sir Kenelm Digby lays down in his " Treatise on the Vegetation of Plants : " — " Quercetanus, the famous physician of King Henry the Fourth, tells us a wonderful story of a Polonian doctor, that showed him a dozen BEARTB-FIBE. 293 glasses hermetically sealed, in each of which was a different plant ; for example, a rose in one, a tulip in another, a clove gillyflower in a third, and so of the rest. When he offered these glasses to your first view, you saw nothing in them but a heap of ashes in the bottom. As soon as he held some gentle heat under any of them, presently there arose out of the ashes the idea of a flower and the stalk belonging to those ashes, and it would shoot up and spread abroad to the due. height and just dimensions of such a flower, and had perfect colors, shape, magnitude, and dfl other accidents, as if it really were that very flower. But whenever you drew the heat from it, would this flower sink down by little and little, till at length it would bury itself in its bed of ashes. And thus it would do as often as you exposed it to moderate heat, or withdrew it from it. I confess it would be no small delight to me to see this experiment, with all the circumstances that Quercetan sets down. Athanasius Kirchar rns, at Eome, assured me that he had done it ; and gave me the process of it. But no industry of mine could effect it." It is aways go ; the little phial of ashes of roses, notwithstanding all our " industry," refuses to yield to the charm. A portion of earth, wrapping up a jet of fire, typifies mortality as well as might any 294 HEARTH-FIRE. other figure. When this uneasy and revo- lutionary inmate has spread and burned up its lodge, life has expired, we say. But be- fore this event, innumerable accidents may arrest its free current, and distort the sym- metry of its flame ; too often, indeed, we are made sensible of the cloddish masonry of the hearth. At its brightest and best our fire is communicative and social, throwing off such scintillations as benevolence, friendship, gJatitude, enthusiasm, and generous rivalry. There is a fine passage in Homer touching the preservation of the vital flame. Ulysses, just escaped from the anger of the sea, naked, and lacerated with beating against the rocks, has only strength enough to crawl to the friendly shelter of an olive grove. "Dead -weary was he." There he covers himself with dry leaves, and cherishes with sleep his spent powers, — just as some coun- tryman living far from neighbors carefully buries his fire at night, that he may revive it when needed. If the hunter or explorer, encamped in some " lion-haunted inland," owes to fire his preservation from wild beasts, the solitary by his own hearth has the same charmed de- fense against the jungle inhabitants of his EEABTH-FIRE. 295 thought. The ethical symbolism of -fire is ordeal and purification. What flame burns, and yet bums not to the refining of that which was committed to it for trial ? There shoidd be hope for those flame - enveloped spirits in the Inferno, that their dross shall at length be purged away, something fire- proof and indestructible remaining behind. When I remember that the soul is an au- thentic spark of Promethean heat, I am far on the way of dropping the doctrine of hell- fire, and adopting that of heaven-fire ! The coals have lost the incandescent lights that lately played through them, and now resemble a heap of stones on which lichens are beginning to grow. I note a curious thing; here is the gray tissue that held a portion of fire no longer to be seen. This delicate cast-off fabric is just the bulk and shape of the coal once contained within it, but is lighter than the frailest breath, — an abandoned. chrysalis-case. The fire has gone out. Come, tell me where it has gone, and on what errand. I have heard that it re- ports in the Empyrean, source and home of the wide-wandering element. There is some countenance for the theory. Study the flame of a candle, of a furnace, or of a conflagra- 296 HEARTH-FIRE. tion; in each case its general tendency is toward the zenith ; it is always struggling to free itself from the substance on which it feeds, twisting, writhing, recoiling, like a Laocoon group endowed with color and mo- tion ! Finally, when it has gnawed off its gyves, up and away it goes with a valedic- tion of scattered sparks. It is the "flight of the unknown to the unknown." What more fit, seeing this carrier spirit never loi- ters on its errand, than that our well-beloved dead should be committed to its light and tireless wing? Spirit to spirit, and ashes to ashes. Poetry and utility join hands over the rite of incineration. OUT-DOOR BOOKS Selected from the Pablications of Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 4 Park St., Boston ; 11 East 17th St., New York. A Week on the Concord^ and Merrimack Kivers. By Henht D. TnoREAn. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. Birds and Poets, with Other Papers. By John BVRSOUGHS. 16mo, $1.50. CoNTEHTB : Birds and Poets ; April ; Touches of Nature ; A Bird Medley ; Spring Poems ; Our Rural Divinity ; Emer- son ; The Flight of the Eagle (Walt Whitman) ; Before Gen- ius ; Before Beauty. Bird-Ways. By Olive Thoene Miller. 16mo, $1.25. 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This volume contains nearly all the pieces included in the former editions of " Poems " and " May-Day," beside other f)oems not hitherto published. The collection includes a very arge number of poems devoted to nature and natural scenery. Poems. By Celia Thaxter. Small 4to, full gilt, 51.50. They are nniqne in many respects. Our bleak and rocky New England sea-coast, all the wonders of atmospherical and sea-change, hare, I think, never before been so musically or tenderly sung about. — Jobn G. Whittieb. Poetic Interpretation of Nature. By Principal J. C. Shaikp. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. Full of learning and genuine appreciation of the poetry of Nature. — Portland Press. Seaside Studies in Natural History. By Alex- ander Agassiz and Elizabeth C. Agassiz. Dlustrated. 8vo, $3.00. The scene of these " Studies " is Massachusetts Bay. Summer. Selections from the Journals of H. D. Thoreau. With a Map of Concord. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. He was the one great observer of external nature whom America has yet produced, a most subtle portrayer of his owq personal thoughts and life, a tribune of the people, a man whq joined the strongest powers of thought with an absolute love of liberty and a perfect fearlessness of mind. — The Indepen^ dent (New York). The Gsnpsies. By Charles G. Leland. With Sketches of the English, Welsh, Russian, and Austrian Komany ; and papers on the Gypsy Language. Crown 8vo, $2.00. We have no hesitation in saying that this is the most de. lightf al Gypsy book with which we are acquainted. — The Spec- tator (London). The Maine Woods. By Henry D. Thoeeau. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. Wake-Robin. By John Burroughs. Revised and enlarged edition, illustrated. 16mo, $1.50. Contents : The Return of the Birds ; In the Hemlocks ; Adirondac; Birds'-Nests ; Spring at the Capital; Birch Brow- sings ; The Bluebird ; The Invitation. WaJden ; or, Life in the Woods. By Henet D. Thoread. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50. Birds ii\ the Bush. By Bradford Torret. 16mo. Contents : On Boston Common ; Bird-Songs ; Character in Feathers ; In the White Mountains ; Fhillida and Coridon ; Scraping Acquaintance ; Minor Songsters ; Winter Birds about Boston ; A Bird-Lover's April ; An Owl's Head Holiday ; A Month's Music. Winter Sunshine. By John Burroughs. New edition, revised and enlarged, with frontispiece illustration. 16mo, $1.50. The minuteness of his observation, the keenness of his per- ception, give him a real originality, and his sketches have a delightful oddity, vivacity, and freshness. — The Nation (New York). *j,* For sale hy all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Publishers, HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston, Mass. 'W