PS 2303 .H72 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^'% o « o ^ ^ 4.0 -n*.. nl^ "-^.^'- ..-i- rO,%f .♦^ ^ ^>^^ ^-..^^ ."^ .<^' * « K o ' ^0 ,.^ ^XiV^„ ^ /f^t^'.. ^„ ^^ _.>^ ' . - s * •>" sr'\ ^o ^^ "-.,<-^ 0> •"■'"* "o -oV^ , ^* aV "^^0^ V^ w\ 4 o 40, \ '»^P-" 4.^% ,,.,.,.v /v ii„. tE^e KiijewiDc iLiteratuw ^etits A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL u / WITH NOTES HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 86 Fifth Avenue Chicago : S7S-388 Wabash Avenue -p i 5 Z36^ CONTENTS ' . ^'y^ Page A MoosEHEAD Journal 1 My Garden Acquaintance 43 A Good Word for Winter 73 Notes Ill UBBKRYofOONdRESS Two Copies ffeceive4 MAR 2 \d07 (. «««rrtfW Eirtnr 9U^ A m^t Hi YB, COPYRIGHT 1871 BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL COPYRIGHT 1S99 BY MABEL LOWELL BURNETT COPYRIGHT 1902 AND I907 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED A MOOSEHEAD JOUKNAL A MOOSEHEAD JOUKNAL 1853 ADDRESSED TO THE EDELMANN STORG AT THE BAGNI DI LUCCA. Thursday, 11th August. — I knew as little yes- terday of the interior of Maine as tlie least pene- trating person knows of the inside of that great social millstone which, driven by the river Time, sets imperatively agoing the several wheels of our individual activities. Born while Maine was still a province of native Massachusetts, I was as much a foreigner to it as yourself, my dear Storg. I had seen many lakes, ranging from that of Virgil's Cumaean to that of Scott's Caledonian Lady ; but Moosehead, within two days of me, had never en- joyed the profit of being mirrored in my retina. At the sound of the name, no reminiscential atoms (according to Kenelm Digby's Theory of Associ- ation, — as good as any) stirred and marshalled themselves in my brain. The truth is, we think lightly of Nature's penny shows, and estimate what we see by the cost of the ticket. Empedocles gave 2 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL his life for a pit-entrance to ^tna, and no doubt found his account in it. Accordingly, the clean face of Cousin Bull is imaged patronizingly in Lake George, and Loch Lomond glasses the hur- ried countenance of Jonathan, diving deeper in the streams of European association (and coming up drier) than any other man. Or is the cause of our not caring to see what is equally within the reach of aU our neighbors to be sought in that aristo- cratic principle so deeply implanted in human nature ? I knew a pauper graduate who always borrowed a black coat, and came to eat the Com- mencement dinner, — not that it was better than the one which daily graced the board of the pub- lic institution in which he hibernated (so to speak) during the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, save in this one particular, that none of his eleemosynary fellow-commoners could eat it. If there are unhappy men who wish that they were as the Babe Unborn, there are more who would aspire to the lonely distinction of being that other figurative personage, the Oldest Inhabitant. You remember the charming irresolution of our dear Esthwaite, (like Macheath between his two doxies,) divided between his theory that he is un- der thirty, and his pride at being the only one of us who witnessed the September gale and the re- joicings at the Peace ? Nineteen years ago I was walking through the Franconia Notch, and stopped to chat with a hermit, who fed with gradual logs the unwearied teeth of a saw-mill. As the strident steel slit off the slabs of the log, so did the less willing A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 3 machine of talk, acquiring a steadier up-and-down motion, pare away that outward bark of conversa- tion which protects the core, and which, like other bark, has naturally most to do with the weather, the season, and the heat of the day. At length I asked him the best point of view for the Old Man of the Mountain. " Dunno, — never see it." Too young and too happy either to feel or affect the Horatian indifference, I was sincerely aston- ished, and I expressed it. The log-compelling man attempted no justifi- cation, but after a little asked, " Come from Baws'n?'' " Yes " (with peninsular pride). " Goodie to see in the vycinity o' Baws'n." " Oh, yes ! '* I said ; and I thought, — see Bos- ton and die ! see the State-Houses, old and new, the caterpillar wooden bridges crawling with innu- merable legs across the flats of Charles ; see the Common, — largest park, doubtless, in the world, — with its files of trees planted as if by a drill- sergeant, and then for your nunc dimittis ! " I should like, 'awl, I should like to stan' on Bunker Hill. You 've ben there off en, likely ? " " N-o-o," unwillingly, seeing the little end of the horn in clear vision at the terminus of this Socratic perspective. " 'Awl, my young frien', you 've larned neow thet wut a man kin see any day for nawthin', chil- dern haff price, he never doos see. Nawthin' pay, nawthin' vally." 4 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL With this modern instance of a wise saw, I de- parted, deeply revolving these things with myself, and convinced that, whatever the ratio of popula- tion, the average amount of human nature to the square mile differs little the world over. I thought of it when I saw people upon the Pincian wonder- ing at the alchemist sun, as if he never burned the leaden clouds to gold in sight of Charles Street. I thought of it when I found eyes first discovering at Mont Blanc how beautiful snow was. As I walked on, I said to myself, There is one exception, wise hermit, — it is just these gratis pictures which the poet puts in his show-box, and which we all gladly pay Wordsworth and the rest for a peep at. The divine faculty is to see what everybody can look at. While every well-informed man in Europe, from the barber down to the diplomatist, has his view of the Eastern Question, why should I not go person- ally down East and see for myseK? Why not, like Tancred, attempt my own solution of the Mystery of the Orient, — doubly mysterious when you begin the two words with capitals? You know my way of doing things, to let them simmer in my mind gently for months, and at last do them im- promptu in a kind of desperation, driven by the Eumenides of unfulfilled purpose. So, after talk- ing about Moosehead till nobody believed me capa- ble of going thither, I found myself at the Eastern Railway station. The only event of the journey hither (I am now at Waterville) was a boy hawk- ing exhilaratingly the last great railroad smash, — A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 6 thirteen lives lost, — and no doubt devoutly wish- ing there had been fifty. This having a mercantile interest in horrors, holding stock, as it were, in murder, misfortune, and pestilence, must have an odd effect on the human mind. The birds of ill- omen, at whose sombre flight the rest of the world turn pale, are the ravens which bring food to this little outcast in the wilderness. If this lad give thanks for daily bread, it would be curious to inquire what that phrase represents to his under- standing. If there ever be a plum in it, it is Sin or Death that puts it in. Other details of my dreadful ride I will spare you. Suffice it that I arrived here in safety, — in complexion like an Ethiopian serenader half got-up, and so broiled and peppered that I was more like a devilled kid- ney than anything else I can think of. 10 P. M. — The civil landlord and neat chamber at the " Elm wood House " were very grateful, and after tea I set forth to explore the town. It has a good chance of being pretty: but, like most American towns, it is in a hobbledehoy age, grow- ing yet, and one cannot tell what may happen. A child with great promise of beauty is often spoiled by its second teeth. There is something agreeable in the sense of completeness which a waUed town gives one. It is entire, like a crystal, — a work which man has succeeded in finishing. I think the human mind pines more or less where every- thing is new, and is better for a diet of stale bread. The number of Americans who visit the Old World, and the deep inspirations with which they breathe 6 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL the air of antiquity, as if their mental lungs had been starved with too thin an atmosphere, is be- ginning to afford matter of speculation to obser- vant Europeans. For my own part, I never saw a house which I thought old enough to be torn down. It is too like that Scythian fashion of knocking old people on the head. I cannot help thinking that the indefinable something which we call character is cumulative, — that the influence of the same climate, scenery, and associations for several gen- erations is necessary to its gathering head, and that the process is disturbed by continual change of place. The American is nomadic in religion, in ideas, in morals, and leaves his faith and opinions with as much indifference as the house in which he was born. However, v/e need not bother : Nature takes care not to leave out of the great heart of society either of its two ventricles of hold-back and go-ahead. It seems as if every considerable American town must have its one specimen of everything, and so there is a college in Waterville, the buildings of which are three in number, of brick, and quite up to the average ugliness which seems essential in edifices of this description. Unhappily, they do not reach that extreme of ugliness where it and beauty come together in the clasp of fascination. We erect handsomer factories for cottons, woollens, and steam-engines, than for doctors, lawyers, and parsons. The truth is, that, till our struggle with nature is over, till this shaggy hemisphere is tamed and subjugated, the workshop wiU be the college A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 7 whose degrees will be most valued. Moreover, steam has made travel so easy that the great uni- versity of the world is open to all comers, and the old cloister system is falling astern. Perhaps it is only the more needed, and, were I rich, I should like to found a few lazyships in my Alma Mater as a kind of counterpoise. The Anglo-Saxon race has accepted the primal curse as a blessing, has deified work, and would not have thanked Adam for abstaining from the apple. They would have dammed the four rivers of Paradise, substituted cotton for fig-leaves among the antediluvian popu- lations, and commended man's first disobedience as a wise measure of political economy. But to re- turn to our college. We cannot have fine buildings till we are less in a hurry. We snatch an educa- tion like a meal at a railroad-station. Just in time to make us dyspeptic, the whistle shrieks, and we must rush, or lose our places in the great train of life. Yet noble architecture is one element of patriotism, and an eminent one of culture, the finer portions of which are taken in by unconscious ab- sorption through the pores of the mind from the surrounding atmosphere. I suppose we must wait, for we are a great bivouac as yet, rather than a na- tion on the march from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and pitch tents instead of building houses. Our very villages seem to be in motion, following west- ward the bewitching music of some Pied Piper of Hamelin. We still feel the great push toward sundown given to the peoples somewhere in the gray dawn of history. The cliff-swallow alone o£ all animated nature emigrates eastward. 8 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL Friday^ 12th. — The coach leaves Waterville at five o'clock in the morning, and one must break- fast in the dark at a quarter past four, because a train starts at twenty minutes before five, — the passengers by both conveyances being pastured gregariously. So one must be up at half past three. The primary geological formations contain no trace of man, and it seems to me that these eocene periods of the day are not fitted for sustain- ing the human forms of life. One of the Fathers held that the sun was created to be worshipped at his rising by the Gentiles. The more reason that Christians (except, perhaps, early Christians) should abstain from these heathenish ceremonials. As one arriving by an early train is welcomed by a drowsy maid with the sleep scarce brushed out of her hair, and finds empty grates and polished mahogany, on whose arid plains the pioneers of breakfast have not yet encamped, so a person waked thus unsea- sonably is sent into the world before his faculties are up and dressed to serve him. It might have been for this reason that my stomach resented for several hours a piece of fried beefsteak which I forced upon it, or, more properly speaking, a piece of that leathern conveniency which in these regions assumes the name. You will find it as Lard to believe, my dear Storg, as that quarrel of the Borbonists, whether one should say ego amat or no, that the use of the gridiron is unknown here- about, and so near a river named after St. Law- rence, too ! To-day has been the hottest day of the season. A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 9 yet our drive has not been unpleasant. For a con- siderable distance we followed the course of the Sebasticook River, a pretty stream with alterna- tions of dark brown pools and wine-colored rapids. On each side of the road the land had been cleared, and little one-story farm-houses were scattered at intervals. But the stumps still held out in most of the fields, and the tangled wilderness closed in be- hind, striped here and there with the slim white trunks of the elm. As yet only the edges of the great forest have been nibbled away. Sometimes a root-fence stretched up its bleaching antlers, like the trophies of a giant hunter. Now and then the houses thickened into an unsocial-looking village, and we drove up to the grocery to leave and take a mail-bag, stopping again presently to water the horses at some pallid little tavern, whose one red- curtained eye (the bar-room) had been put out by the inexorable thrust of Maine Law. Had Shen- stone travelled this road, he would never have writ- ten that famous stanza of his ; had Johnson, he would never have quoted it. They are to real inns as the skull of Yorick to his face. Where these villages occurred at a distance from the river, it was difficult to account for them. On the river- bank, a saw-mill or a tannery served as a logical premise, and saved them from total inconsequen- tiality. As we trailed along, at the rate of about four miles an hour, it was discovered that one of our mail-bags was missing. " Guess somebody '11 pick it up," said the driver coolly; " 't any rate, likely there's nothin' in it." Who knows how 10 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL lonar it took some Elam D. or Zebulon K. to com- pose the missive intrusted to that vagrant bag, and how much longer to persuade Pamela Grace or Sophronia Melissa that it had really and truly been written ? The discovery of our loss was made by a tall man who sat next to me on the top of the coach, every one of whose senses seemed to be prosecuting its several investigation as we went along. Presently, sniffing gently, he remarked : " 'Pears to me 's though I smelt sunthin'. Ain't the aix het, think ? " The driver pulled up, and, sure enough, the off fore-wheel was found to be smoking. In three minutes he had snatched a rail from the fence, made a lever, raised the coach, and taken off the wheel, bathing the hot axle and box with water from the river. It was a pretty spot, and I was not sorry to lie under a beech-tree (Tityrus-like, meditating over my pipe) and watch the operations of the fire-annihilator. I could not help contrasting the ready helpfulness of our driver, all of whose wits were about him, current, and redeemable in the specie of action on emergency, with an incident of travel in Italy, where, under a somewhat similar stress of circumstances, our vetturino had nothing for it but to dash his hat on the ground and call on Sant' Antonio, the Italian Hercules. There being four passengers for the Lake, a veliicle called a mud-wagon was detailed at New- port for our accommodation. In this we jolted and rattled along at a livelier pace than in the coach. As we got farther north, the country (especially A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 11 the hills) gave evidence of longer cultivation. About the thriving town of Dexter we saw fine farms and crops. The houses, too, became pret- tier ; hop-vines were trained about the doors, and hung their clustering thyrsi over the open win- dov/s. A kind of wild rose (called by the country folk the primrose) and asters were planted about the door-yards, and orchards, commonly of natural fruit, added to the pleasant home-look. But every- where we could see that the war between the white man and the forest was still fierce, and that it would be a long while yet before the axe was buried. The haying being over, fires blazed or smouldered against the stumps in the fields, and the blue smoke widened slowly upward through the quiet August atmosphere. It seemed to me that I could hear a sigh now and then from the imme- morial pines, as they stood watching these camp- fires of the inexorable invader. Evening set in, and, as we crunched and crawled up the long gravelly hills, I sometimes began to fancy that Nature had forgotten to make the corresponding descent on the other side. But erelong we were rushing down at full speed ; and, inspired by the dactylic beat of the horses' hoofs, I essayed to re- peat the opening lines of Evangeline. At the mo- ment I was beginning, we plunged into a hollow, where the soft clay had been overcome by a road of unhewn logs. I got through one line to this cor- duroy accompaniment, somewhat as a country choir stretches a short metre on the Procrustean rack of a long-drawn tune. The result was like this : — 12 A MOOSE HE AD JOURNAL ** Thihis ihis thebe f ohorest prihihimeheval ; thehe murhurmuring pihines hahand thehe hehemlohocks ! " At a quarter past eleven, p. M., we reached Greenville, (a little village which looks as if it had dripped down from the hills, and settled in the hol- low at the foot of the lake,) having accomplished seventy-two miles in eighteen hours. The tavern was totally extinguished. The driver rapped upon the bar-room window, and after a while we saw heat-lightnings of unsuccessful matches followed by a low grumble of vocal thunder, which I am afraid took the form of imprecation. Presently there was a great success, and the steady blur of lighted tal- low succeeded the fugitive brilliance of the pine. A hostler fumbled the door open, and stood staring at but not seeing us, with the sleep sticking out all over him. We at last contrived to launch him, more like an insensible missile than an intelligent or intelligible being, at the slumbering landlord, who came out wide-awake, and welcomed us as so many half-dollars, — twenty-five cents each for bed, ditto breakfast. O Shenstone, Shenstone ! The only roost was in the garret, which had been made into a single room, and contained eleven double- beds, ranged along the walls. It was like sleeping in a hospital. However, nice customs curtsy to eighteen-hour rides, and we slept. Saturday, ISth. — This morning I performed my toilet in the bar-room, where there was an abundant supply of water, and a halo of interested spectators. After a sufficient breakfast, we em- barked on the little steamer Moosehead, and were A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 13 soon throbbing up the lake. The boat, it appeared, had been chartered by a party, this not being one of her regular trips. Accordingly we were mulcted in twice the usual fee, the philosophy of which I could not understand. However, it always comes easier to us to comprehend why we receive than why we pay. I dare say it was quite clear to the captain. There were three or four clearings on the western shore ; but after passing these, the lake became wholly primeval, and looked to us as it did to the first adventurous Frenchman who paddled across it. Sometimes a cleared point would be pink with the blossoming willow-herb, " a cheap and excellent substitute " for heather, and, like all such, not quite so good as the real thing. On all sides rose deep-blue mountains, of remarkably graceful outline, and more fortunate than common in their names. There were the Big and Little Squaw, the Spencer and Lily-bay Mountains. It was de- bated whether we saw Katahdin or not, (perhaps more useful as an intellectual exercise than the assured vision would have been), and presently Mount Kineo rose abruptly before us, in shape not unlike the island of Capri. Mountains are called great natural features, and why they should not retain their names long enough for these also to become naturalized, it is hard to say. Why should every new surveyor rechristen them with the guber- natorial patronymics of the current year? They are geological noses, and as they are aquiline or pug, indicate terrestrial idiosyncrasies. A cos- mical physiognomist, after a glance at them, will 14 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL draw no vague inference as to the character of the country. The word nose is no better than any- other word ; but since the organ has got that name, it is convenient to keep it. Suppose we had to label our facial prominences every season with the name of our provincial governor, how should we like it ? If the old names have no other meaning, they have that of age ; and, after all, meaning is a plant of slow growth, as every reader of Shake- speare knows. It is well enough to call mountains after their discoverers, for Nature has a knack of throwing doublets, and somehow contrives it that discoverers have good names. Pike's Peak is a cu- rious hit in this way. But these surveyors' names have no natural stick in them. They remind one of the epithets of poetasters, which peel oif like a badly gummed postage-stamp. The early settlers did better, and there is something pleasant in the sound of Graylock, Saddleback, and Great Hay- stack. " I love those names Wbere-with the exiled farmer tames Nature down to companionship With his old world's more homely mood, And strives the shag-g-y wild to clip In the arms of familiar habitude." It is possible that Mount Marcy and Mount Hitchcock may sound as well hereafter as Helles- pont and Peloponnesus, when the heroes, their namesakes, have become mythic with antiquity. But that is to look forward a great way. I am no fanatic for Indian nomenclature, — -the name of my native district having been Pigsgusset, — but let us at least agree on names for ten years. A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 15 There were a couple of loggers on board, in red flannel shirts, and with rifles. They were the first I had seen, and I was interested in their appear- ance. They were tall, well-knit men, straight as Robin Hood, and with a quiet, self-contained look that pleased me. I fell into talk with one of them. '* Is there a good market for the farmers here in the woods ? " I asked. " None better. They can sell what they raise at their doors, and for the best of prices. The lum- berers want it all, and more." " It must be a lonely life. But then we all have to pay more or less life for a living." "Well, it is lonesome. Shouldn't like it. After all, the best crop a man can raise is a good crop of society. We don't live none too long, any- how ; and without society a fellow could n't tell more 'n half the time whether he was alive or not." This speech gave me a glimpse into the life of the lumberers' camp. It was plain that there a man would soon find out how much alive he was, — there he could learn to estimate his quality, weighed in the nicest self-adjusting balance. The best arm at the axe or the paddle, the surest eye for a road or for the weak point of a Jam, the steadiest foot upon the squirming log, the most persuasive voice to the tugging oxen, — all these things are rapidly settled, and so an aristocracy is evolved from this democracy of the woods, for good old mother Nature speaks Saxon still, and with her either Canning: or Kenning means King. 16 A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL A string of five loons was flying back and forth in long, irregular zigzags, uttering at intervals their wild, tremulous cry, which always seems far away, like the last faint pulse of echo dying among the hills, and which is one of those few sounds that, instead of disturbing solitude, only deepen and confirm it. On our inland ponds they are usually seen in pairs, and I asked if it were com- mon to meet five together. My question was an- swered by a queer-looking old man, chiefly remark- able for a pair of enormous cowhide boots, over which large blue trousers of f rocking strove in vain to crowd themselves. " Wahl, 't ain't ushil," said he, "and it's called a sign o' rain comin', that is." " Do you think it will rain ? " With the caution of a veteran auspex^ he evaded a direct reply. " Wahl, they du say it 's a sign o' rain comin'," said he. I discovered afterward that my interlocutor was Uncle Zeb. Formerly, every New England town had its representative uncle. He was not a pawn- broker, but some elderly man who, for want of more defined family ties, had gradually assumed this avuncular relation to the community, inhabiting the border-land between respectability and the alms- house, with no regular calling, but ready for odd jobs at haying, wood-sawing, whitewashing, associ- ated with the demise of pigs and the ailments of cattle, and possessing as much patriotism as might be implied in a devoted attachment to " New Eng- land " — with a good deal of sugar and very little A MOOSEHEAD JOURNAL 17 water in it. Uncle Zeb was a good specimen of this palaeozoic class, extinct among us for the most part, or surviving, like the Dodo, in the Botany Bays of society. He was ready to contribute (somewhat muddily) to all general conversation ; but his chief topics were his boots and the 'Roostick war. Upon the lowlands and levels of ordinary palaver he would make rapid and unlooked-for incursions; but, provision failing, he would retreat to these two fastnesses, whence it was impossible to dislodge him, and to which he knew innmnerable passes and short cuts quite beyond the conjecture of com- mon woodcraft. His mind opened naturally to these two subjects, like a book to some favorite passage. As the ear accustoms itself to any sound recurring regularly, such as the ticking of a clock, and, without a conscious effort of attention, takes no impression from it whatever, so does the mind find a natural safeguard against this pendulum species of discourse, and performs its duties in the parliament by an unconscious reflex action, like the beating of the heart or the movement of the lungs. If talk seemed to be flagging, our Uncle would put the heel of one boot upon the toe of the other, to bring it within point-blank range, and say, " Wald, I stump the Devil himself to make that 'ere boot hurt my foot," leaving us in doubt whether it were the virtue of the foot or its case which set at naught the wiles of the adversary ; or, looking up suddenly, he would exclaim, " Walil, we eat some beans to the 'Roostick war, I tell you ! " When his poor old clay was wet with gin, 18 A MOOSEHEAD JOVRXAL Ins tiioagiits aixd words aeqnired a rank flanv fnisi it, u &am too stzo^ a fratifapr. At sodi tines* too, Ids fasuBf eanmonlf revetted to a prdartane peciod of his lifie,idieB he sii^jhad settied all tiie smromdi]^ cuuniiy, snhdned the In jmiB and other wild amsals, and mned an liie towns. We talked of Ihe winter-camps and Ihe life these. «" The hest; thing k,"" said our Unde, ^ to hear a log sqfoeal thin the snow. Git a good, eal\ itostf moinin% in FdwDy sa^^, an' take an' hiteh the erittns on to a log that H scale seren thoiKan', an"* itH sipKal as pooty as an'^thin' yoa ever ItdlyoK.'' Apanse. ^ Le9see,^seen Gal HntehiiB laldt^? " ^ Saons to ne's fhoo«^ I hedn^t the "Boosti^ war. WaM,''