Chapter 5

A Meadow Mud-Hole.

The least suggestive spot in the world to most people is a mud-hole. The common impression seems to be that fish avoid it, that frogs and birds pass it by, and plants decline to cover its nakedness. This, like a great many other common impressions, is really very wide of themark. If the water be not unutterably filthy, fish will condescend to tenant the shallow depths, frogs will thrive therein, bitterns and the little rail-bird find such a spot attractive, and many an aquatic plant grows nowhere else so vigorously.

There are, as all know, mud-holes that are but blotchy remnants of man’s interference—mere accidents, as it were, which do not concern us; and also those deeper scars where the fair face of the landscape has been wounded severely, as when the ice-gorged river bursts its proper bounds, leaving a shallow pool in my pasture meadow: such as these are never beneath the notice of a contemplative rambler. The truth is, in the valley of the Delaware the average mud-hole is eminently respectable. Giving the matter a sober second thought, one will see that mud is not necessarily offensive. That of the meadows, if analyzed, proves to be compounded of very worthy entities—water, clay, sand, and leaf-mold. Why, because they are associated, should they be so studiously shunned? No chemical change has taken place resulting in the formation of a dangerous mixture. Mud is unlovable only when you are made its prisoner; but even a fool knows it is best to remain outside the bars when he comes to a lion’s cage. The lily loves the mud from which it springs,and who in the wide world loves not the lily? Let us accept her as an authority that this mud has merit.

There is a typical earth scar of the worthier sort within easy reach of my dooryard. I chanced upon it one February morning when the surrounding meadows were frost-bound, but the water was free, sparkling, and full of aquatic life; and there is not a month that it has not its growth of green, if not a wealth of blossoms. Even the plant life of the preceding summer serves as a covering in winter, and a January thaw starts the hardier grasses as surely as it quickens the sheltered upland dandelions into bloom. And on this bleak February day, when the meadows were like smooth rock, the river a glacier, and with scarce a trace of green to be seen on the hillside, the expanding spathe of the fetid cabbage—a plant full worthy of a better name—was well above the ground, darkly green and beautifully streaked with purple and gold; and a foot or more below the surface of the water were even greener growths, tangles of thread-like vine that quivered whenever a frightened fish rushed by. Indeed, these delicate growths are a delight to our many hardy fishes that, scorning to hibernate when food and shelter are so accessible, must laugh, I think, at the darting ice-crystals that gather and grow stronguntil they shut out the sun, but never reach their weed-grown habitations.

It was greener still in March; but in April, when the meadow ditches are being decked with splatter-dock and calla, arrow-head and sweet-flag, golden-club and equisetum, then from the bottom of more than one small pond spring up sharp, spear-pointed rolls of rank green leaves, growing until the water’s quiet surface is pierced, and a stout stem bears into view two parallel rolls of delicate leaf tissue. I refer to the rare yellow lotus. Perhaps not for all time a native, but it has long since earned its right to a place in our flora.

Most interesting is the beautiful adaptation of the leaf to its surroundings at the outset of its growth. Tightly twisted and pointed obliquely upward, it meets with no resistance from the water, and runs no risk of entanglement with other growths. Once at the surface, the unrolling is rapidly effected, and a bronze chalice with an emerald lining is ready to catch the dew as it falls. The circular perfected leaf, often twenty inches in diameter, is usually supported on a foot-stalk five or six feet in height, and among them often many floating leaves. Certainly no other of our aquatic plants has so striking an appearance, not even the wild-rice at its best—

That tangled, trackless, wind-tossed waste,Above a watery wilderness.

That tangled, trackless, wind-tossed waste,

Above a watery wilderness.

Gray gives as the range of the American species the “waters of the Western and Southern States; rare in the Middle States; introduced into the Delaware below Philadelphia.” Introduced by whom? The Indians are said to have carried it to the Connecticut Valley, where it still flourishes in circumscribed localities, and this I find is the impression in southern New Jersey and in the neighborhood of a little lake in the northern part of the State, where also the native lotus is found growing, but I have not yet found a positive statement to that effect. Rafinesque in 1830 remarked, “As it is scarce in the Atlantic States, it is said to have been planted in some ponds by the Indians.”

The fact that the Southern and Western Indians valued the plant is significant. Nuttall records that “the Osages and other Western natives employ the roots of this plant, which is of common occurrence, for food, preparing them by boiling. When fully ripe, after a considerable boiling they become as farinaceous, agreeable, and wholesome as the potato. This same species ... is everywhere made use of by the natives, who collect both the nuts and the roots.”

Early in the century it was growing in the meadows of the Delaware below Philadelphia, and Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton considered it indigenous. He says also that “efforts at cultivatingthis plant and multiplying its sites of growth have been unsuccessfully made in the neighborhood.”

It is curious that Kalm, who gave so much attention to the food plants of our Indians, should not mention the lotus. It certainly could not have been at the time of his visit here (1748) a common plant, yet the lower Delaware, where a half-century later it was still found, was a locality about which he botanized with much industry. It is hard to believe that, had he once caught sight of its enormous leaves, often thirty inches in diameter, or seen the bright yellow blossoms on their towering stems, he would have omitted to make mention of such an experience. Kalm spent a considerable part of his time among his countrymen at Raccoon, now Swedesboro; and at Woodstown, but a few miles away, the native lotus grows luxuriantly, a relic, it is believed, of Indian water-farming.

There is no improbability in the opinion that the Indians cultivated the plant. They were certainly practical horticulturists as well as growers of field crops. It was of an Indian orchard that the pioneer settler of a New Jersey town wrote when he stated, in 1680, that peaches were “in such plenty that some people took their carts a peach-gathering. I could not but smile at the conceit of it. They are a very delicatefruit, and hang almost like our onions that are tied on ropes.” The peach was probably introduced into Florida by the Spaniards, and in about a century or less its cultivation by the Indians had reached northward as far as New Jersey. The nuts and roots of the lotus could as readily be transported as the pits of the peach, so no obstacle was in the way. Intertribal intercourse was very far-reaching, as shown by the occurrence of peculiar forms of stone implements common in distant localities, and Mexican obsidian and Minnesota red pipe-clay along our eastern Atlantic seaboard.

While yet we have the Indian in mind it is well to refer also to the very significant fact that these people took the golden-club (Orontium aquaticum) from the tide-waters and planted it in upland sink-holes, miles from the nearest spot where it grew naturally.

Perhaps we can never be positive about the matter. If a fiction, it is so pleasing a one I trust it will never be overthrown. To stand upon the bank of a pond and see in it traces of both an aboriginal flower-garden and a farm certainly adds to the interest that surrounds the plant.

We have it on the authority of Emerson that Thoreau expected to find theVictoria regiaabout Concord. It was but an extravagantmethod of expressing his opinion of the merits of that region; but I am not so sure that the Victoria is the most beautiful of all aquatic plants. Finding it growing and blooming every summer in an open field near by, I have surely the right to express my preference for another. It and the lotus grow in the same waters, and I love the lotus more, give it the first place among flowers, although there floats upon the surface of these same waters royal red lilies of India, tooth-leaved white lilies from Sierra Leone, the golden one of Florida, and, perhaps more magnificent than all, the splendid purple lily of Zanzibar. I can start across-lots and quickly come upon them all in an open field; but it is the lotus that holds me.

I can not rid myself of the thought that with the Victoria, as with all its attendant lilies, the hand of the care-taker is necessary. A very Amazon itself, it needs an Amazonian setting. We look for a naked baby on the largest pad, and the infant’s mother in a canoe gathering Victorian seed-vessels. These, with a troop of scarlet ibises, spur-winged jacanas, and chattering macaws, are all needed to complete the picture. With them, the world has perhaps nothing more striking to offer; without them, the plant is too bizarre, too like the eagle when shorn of its priceless gift of liberty. Not so with the lotus;it accords well with the unpretending valley of the Delaware, is not a thing apart, but the culmination, as it were, of Nature’s vigor here, and seemingly not out of place even when it fills a meadow mud-hole.

One species is, as we have seen, truly American, native and to the manner born, even if introduced and cared for by the Indian along our Eastern seaboard; but now, where the wildness of the Indians’ day has been long lost to us, and novelty is sweet, we rejoice to find the lotus of the East is no longer a stranger in the land.

In a now nameless little stream, filling the narrow interval between low hills, till within a few years there grew little but the yellow dock, white arrow-leaf, blue pickerel-weed, and here and there a lily. It was simply a typical muddy brook, such as is found everywhere in the “drift” areas of the State. Every plant was commonplace; but far be it from me to infer that any one was mean or meritless. Not a flower named but is really beautiful; yet, save the lily, none would be gathered for nosegays. Why, as is so common, speak disparagingly of the yellow nuphar, our familiar splatter-dock? Let it be gathered with care, with no fleck of tide-borne mud upon its petals, and see how rich the coloring, and with what grace the flower has been molded. I doubt not, were the nupharfragrant, it would be extolled as it deserves, as, were the rose fetid, it would be despised. Thus one writer remarks, “From its filthy habits it has been called, with some justice, the frog-lily.” But wherein lies its filthiness it is hard to determine. It has no decided preference for waters too stagnant for its fairer cousin the white nymphæa; and then smirched lilies are no novelties. A pond may be too muddy for even them to preserve their purity, yet they will grow as luxuriantly as their unstained sisters. That the nuphar may remain longer in the polluted waters than will the nymphæa does not argue that it prefers such conditions, and never a frog but loved clean water better than foul. Botanists should not speak slightingly of the animal world; it too has its beauties. And the reference to the frog shows a woful ignorance of that creature.

How many have held the flower-stalk of the arrow-head—a sea-green staff studded with ivory? They, at least, will admit its beauty. Nor will the spike of violet-blue flowers of the pickerel-weed fail to be admired even if gathered; and what flower when torn from its stem but loses grace? No shrub so sprawling but fills its niche fittingly.

Where these native aquatic plants grow they complete the little landscape. Each would bequickly missed were it absent; they are part and parcel of an evolved microcosm, needing nothing. Such was this little creek.

Into the deep mud of the stream, widened here by a dam to a pond of several acres, a single tuber of the Egyptian lotus was placed eight years ago, and the result awaited with much curiosity, if not anxiety. That same year it sprouted and grew luxuriantly. It was soon too prominent a feature of the landscape for its own good—the cows came, saw, and tasted, but did not fatally wound. It withstood the summer’s heat, but would it withstand the winter’s cold? The pond that before was like all other ponds is so no longer. The native growths that seemed so firmly rooted have disappeared, and the lotus has taken all their places—so completely, indeed, that now even the water is shut from view for more than an acre’s space. As the spot is approached from the neighboring hill-top we get a bird’s-eye view, the effect of which is striking and thoroughly un-native, so far as plant life is concerned, and in a measure disappointing. Recall some rainy day in a crowded city when from an upper window you have looked down upon the street. No sidewalk and but little wagon-way to be seen—nothing but a waving expanse of upraised umbrellas. Hence the disappointment, if you have read travelers’ tales of the lotusbloom. But worthier thoughts well up as you draw nearer.

One has but to glance over Gray’s Botany to notice how many plants have been introduced from Europe, and are now so firmly established that native species are forced to retire before them. The pond before me exhibits another, and so recent an instance it has not yet been recorded. What radical changes this Egyptian plant will work are yet to be determined; that we can foresee one of them—the crowding out of the nuphar—is unquestionable. That any change will be one to be regretted is highly improbable. To introduce the lotus is not to repeat the blunder of the English sparrow. It is certain not to oust other plants that are more valuable, for as yet we have found little if any value in the products of our marshes. Since the country’s settlement it has been the aim of the thrifty to convert them into dry land whenever practicable. Thanks to whomsoever thanks are due, many are irreclaimable.

Seeing how forcibly this wonderful flower of the lotus impresses itself upon the minds of the ancient Egyptians and the East generally, how prominently it figures in Eastern religions—“all idols of Buddha are made to rest upon opened lotus-flowers”—it is safe to conclude that when familiar to all, even in this utilitarian age, it willnot be merely ranked as one of many flowering plants; it is of too commanding an appearance for this, and to literature will prove a boon. Asters, golden-rods, and buttercups can have a well-earned rest.

Years ago the cultivation of the American species proved a failure, and those who are now best capable of judging still record the curious fact that the native lotus is much more difficult to establish in our waters than the Eastern, and does not grow with quite the same luxuriance. Its introduction by the aborigines along our Eastern seaboard has been mentioned; perhaps it has lost vigor since it lost their care, and has disappeared excepting where its environment was peculiarly favorable. And the question arises, after all, Is it in the strict sense a native? May it not, indeed, have been brought hither in prehistoric times? The question of a superlatively ancient communication between the continents is a tempting subject for study, and how appropriate when resting in the shade of the Eastern lotus! Such a train of thought need not stir up any ghost of a mythical lost Atlantis. Still, the American form has certain marked peculiarities. The mature torus has a decided constriction some distance from the insertion of the stem, wanting in the foreign species, and the seeds of the former are globular instead of distinctlyoval. Whatever the history of the American form, that of the Eastern, or Egyptian, as it is usually called, is too well known to need repeating, however briefly, and yet the plant is still wrapped in mystery. A word, however, concerning the term Egyptian in connection with it. At present it is a plant of India, of China and Japan, Australia, the Malay Archipelago, and the Caspian Sea—an enormous range; but it is no longer found in the valley of the Nile. The use of the name rests upon the fact that it was once there, not only a cultivated plant, but held sacred by the people of that country, as it is by the Hindoos. Egyptologists, however, are not of one mind as to the relation of the lotus to the antiquities of the Nile region, some questioning the matter altogether, and considering the sculpturing to represent the lily of the Nile, one of the grandest of the white nymphæas. Quite recently, too, it has been ably argued to be the renowned rose of Sharon. “Of such a kingly flower Solomon might well have said, ‘I am the rose of Sharon.’”

Perhaps we should be contented with our splendid native flora, but surely there is room in waste places, our unappreciated marshes and mud-holes, for the lotus—

“a flower delicious as the rose,And stately as the lily in her pride.”

“a flower delicious as the rose,

And stately as the lily in her pride.”

A treasure in other lands, why should it not be in ours? If he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before is a public benefactor, so he who adds the lotus to our meadows must likewise be so accounted. “A piece of color is as useful as a piece of bread.”

With the blooming lotus within reach, let us come now to a few plain statistics. In the little mill-pond it has been exposed to precisely the same conditions as the native plants, and now flourishes in absolute perfection. Mingled with the fully expanded blossoms may always be seen the buds in every stage of growth, and this from early summer until frost. Happily there is not, as is so often the case, a magnificent but brief display, then nothing but leaves. If not a joy forever, it is at least one of a protracted season. Buds or blossoms, they are alike beautiful. Among many that are pale yet distinctively tinted there often stands out one or more with the loosening petals tipped with deepest crimson. Far more are like gigantic tea-rose buds, that soon open like a tulip, creamy white and rosy at the tips. Often these glorious flowers measure ten inches across when fully open, and are supported by stems extending far beyond the tallest leaves. One such that I measured was more than eight feet high.

When the flower is fully expanded, the hugeseed-pod, or torus, is a prominent object. Herodotus likened it aptly to the nest of a wasp. It is of the richest yellow, and surrounded by a delicate fringe of the same color. The seeds are seen imbedded in the flat upper surface, gems in a golden setting so lavish that their own beauty is obscured. After the petals have fallen—they are miniature boats of a beautiful pattern, that, catching the breeze, sail with all the grace of model yachts—this great seed-pod continues to grow, and is a curious funnel-shaped structure, holding the many seeds securely, yet not concealing any. The latter become as large as hazel-nuts, and are quite as palatable. And so, here in New Jersey, one can be a lotus-eater, can float in his canoe and pluck fruit from giant lilies. But be not too free to do so. It is not the fabled lotus, after all, and one’s digestion may be more disturbed than his mind pleasantly affected.

In this isolated pond, seen by but few, and unknown to hundreds living near it, a bit of a far Eastern landscape is reproduced—a forest of graceful lotus, with its strange leaves, matchless blossoms, and wonderful seed-pods; and what has been here effected is being repeated in the mud-hole of my pasture meadow.

Less than a year ago, when spring was well advanced, I placed a root in the mud, and left it to battle with the crowding native growths.Certainly the advantage was all upon one side, but it did not lose heart at being pitted against such heavy odds. Now it overshadows them all. For a time they are permitted to be co-occupants, but not for long. The lusty lotus is even now reaching out to a wide stretch of marshy meadow; and there too, I doubt not, it will flourish as at my neighbor’s. It is a rightful ambition to be able to sit down beneath one’s own vine and fig-tree. Let me add the lotus, for it has come to stay.

For how long have water-lilies been on sale in our streets and at our railway stations, auguring well for the love of aquatic plants? And that strange and scarcely known lily, alas! of almost mephitic odor, the xerophyllum, is hawked about Philadelphia streets in early June, loved for its beauty despite the unfragrance; and so too this famous flower of other lands must soon appear, but not to sink to the level of a mere pretty blossom: it is too suggestive a plant to meet with such a fate. What Margaret Fuller once wrote to Thoreau well bears repeating: “Seek the lotus, and take a draught of rapture.”

An Open Well.

It is none of my business, but I feel a twinge of indignation when, as is frequently the case, I meet with a pump-maker. His long wagon, with its load of wooden tubes and other fixtures of the latest patterns of simple or compound pumps, is a positive eyesore; for, labor-saving as this may all be, it means, nevertheless, the obliteration of the open well, and for the old windlass, or still older sweep, a hideously painted post of wood or iron. He who has drunk, at midday in July, from an old oaken bucket, knows how great a loss one suffers by the change. Not even Hawthorne’s rills from the town pump can quite reconcile one. Perhaps it is a fool’s errand, but I have walked a mile out of my way, scores of times, for no other purpose than the pleasure of hearing the bucket splash in the waters of a deep well and to draw it up, by means of the well-poised sweep, “dripping with coolness.”

It may be fancy, but even modern well-diggers are a different and prosy folk compared with the old masters of the art—for art it was, they held, to locate with the divining-rod just where the never-failing spring was “bubbling” far beneath their feet. Was a well to be dug? Then Ezek Sureshot must do the work; and not until yearsafter did it occur to any one that Ezek never failed to learn the wishes of the women-folk before he took up the forked witch-hazel and quartered the ground. The result was always the same: that mysterious switch never failed to point within an inch of the desired spot. Ezek was never known to disappoint his customers, so not one suspected his duplicity or lacked faith in the divining-rod. Ay! and there are yet hosts of people who still uphold its power to locate not only water, but lost articles. A wheat stubble was recently gone over, crossed and criss-crossed, with a divining-rod, to recover a piece of metal. As the field was divided by the man into square yards, it is not strange the bit of iron was found, but the credit was given to the rod, which pointed earthward at the moment the man’s foot struck the missing object. “In spite of what people say, there’s something very curious about it,” was the remark of one of the “head men” of the village. But this is a digression.

Happily, there are yet a few open wells scattered over the country, and one of these, with its sweep, is within my range. Of itself, perhaps, not a great deal can be said; but not every hole in the ground has such surroundings. How seldom do we find still standing, and in good repair, houses that were built early in the preceding century! Looking west from my study windows,there may be seen a substantial stone mansion, built in 1708. Woe betide the tall man that enters it carelessly in the dark! The ceilings are unaccountably low. Evidently there were few giants in those days, at least among the early Quakers. And, looking east, can be seen yet another house, nearly as old, built of huge oak logs, the ceilings of which likewise threaten the careless six-footer. Surely, if my ancestors were tall, they must have been painfully stoop-shouldered! By the kitchen doors of all the original houses there were open wells; and the sweep appears to have been the first apparatus in use for drawing water. From the doorstep to the well-curb extended a rude pavement of flat stones, and, if all poetry was not smothered in the old-time peoples’ breasts, there was an elm, or drooping birch, casting a delightful shade in summer over all. Later the weeping-willow became the favorite tree. Such was the pretty picture seen upon every farm; compare it with the ugly windmills that now rear their hideous nakedness against the sky.

From the general to the particular, from the past to the present. There still stands a cottage, off a by-road, mossy as a prostrate oaken tree, hedged with gooseberry-bushes and a clump of lilacs; and, better than all else, there is the well and its sweep. I could never learn when thecottage was built, but it was many a year ago, and its present occupants may have commenced housekeeping as far back in time, to judge from appearances. May they and the cottage last forever! Nowhere else can so much wood-lore and wise weather-saws be had at first hands. Nowhere else is there, at least for me, “the moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well.” There are many features of primitive country life that are fascinating, yet why they are so can not readily be explained. To linger by this open well is one of these, yet why even hours can be spent at such a spot one can not tell. Has it to do with a love of retrospection common to all past fifty?—let this go for an explanation, whether one or not. Stay! can it be that, after quaffing a gourdful of the sweet waters, I recall many an invitation to the cottage, and hope? Even yet I am as ready to respond when the old lady’s kindly face beams from the open door, for straightway there are visions of cakes and beer, the liking for which has never been even dulled. Ginger-cakes merely, but such ginger-cakes! Spicewood beer only, but what sparkle, what tingling spiciness! The very essence of the wild woods about the cottage, the brilliant glistening of the old well’s brightest drops, here are combined in a beady, golden draught that quickly inebriates—makesdrunken with a love of old-time cottage days.

The old lady’s gossip of the days gone by adds to the very sparkle of her beer; yet her whole life for more than half a century seems centered upon her one adventure, the coming and going of her children passing as too prosaic to mention. Not so that one great fright and its results. The now almost forgotten Camden and Amboy Railroad was then in operation; but though scarcely more than a mile distant, it was as nothing to her. She knew neither what nor where it was. But where the best whortleberries grew in the back swamp, that was knowledge worth possessing. Although her cousin Abijah had killed a bear during the winter, she did not think of it then, and started for berries where few men would care to follow. She knew every crooked path in the sprout-lands, and could find her way through them in the dark, she boasted. And so, with a light heart, she gathered berries. But at last an ominous screeching fell upon her ears. She stopped her work to listen. Louder and more angry, ay, and nearer, too, was that portentous scream. “Could it be another bear?” she thought, and at once turned her face homeward. The big basket was not quite full, and there were such loads of fruit within easy reach! It was tantalizing; but all doubt vanished withthe second, shriller, more unearthly scream. The path was no longer plain, nor she sure-footed. Pitching recklessly forward, the berries were bounced by handfuls from the basket, and it finally, as a dragging weight, was thrown aside. And, still sounding through the swamp, the terrible screeching of that angry bear! The cottage at last was seen through the thick-set trees, but not so plainly the tortuous path. The frightened woman was moved by but one thought—to reach her home; and, escaping until now all other dangers, she took one misstep, almost at her journey’s end, and sank waist-deep in yielding mud. There was strength left for but one despairing cry, which fortunately fell not upon deaf ears. In a moment her husband came to her rescue. Such was her story, but by no means as she told it—a quaint narrative that invariably concluded with the pathetic remark, “And to think I lost all them beautiful berries!” The old lady had heard the first screech of a locomotive that awoke the echoes in the Nottingham swamps.

All the while her patient husband sits by the fire, giving vent to his feelings by a vicious poke at the smouldering back-log. For fifty years he has been her audience, and the story is now a trifle monotonous—so much so that, no sooner has she finished, at least when I was present, than he remarks, “If you tell the lad that story any more,I’ll a-wished you’d stayed stuck in the swamp.” And then we have another cup of beer, and, followed by the old man, I start for home.

And—isn’t it funny?—the old man tells me, as he has never failed to do for many a year as I pause by the open well, where we part, how he found gold, as he thought, when he dug the well, and kept the mighty secret until his plans were laid; and it proved to be nothing but lumps of iron and brimstone!

If old ladies prove, at times, to be a bit garrulous, what of the old men who are so prone to criticise?

PART III.IN SUMMER.

PART III.

IN SUMMER.

A Noisome Weed.

The whispering breeze that at sunrise calls me out of doors is laden now with the matchless odor of the blooming grape. Every draught of the vinous air intoxicates and the eye rests upon the brilliant landscape, but is scarce content. A curious feeling of indecision meets me at the very outset. Meadow and upland are alike urgent; field and forest offer their choicest gifts; rugged rocks and sparkling river both beckon to me. Whither, then, of a bright June morning, should the rambler stroll? For is it not true that beauty, when in bewildering confusion, ceases to be beautiful? When a thousand birds, as a great cloud, shut out the sun, they are but a cloud; but a single one, perched upon a tree, is a marvel of grace and beauty. So, the sloping hillside and the weedy meadows, brilliant withevery shade of freshest green and starred with a hundred tints, roseate, golden, and white, call for an infinite power of contemplation, and leave the wanderer dazed.

Shutting my eyes to the wealth of bloom about me, closing my ears to the melody of every nesting bird, I start upon the doubtful quest of the commonplace, hoping to chance upon some neglected spot, that happily generous June has overlooked.

As has happened so frequently before, where I least expected it, there stood the object of my search—a gem in a setting not so elaborate that its beauties were obscured. In a long-neglected pasture, a wide meadow torn by freshets, foul with noisome weeds, and strown with the wreckage left by winter’s storms, grew many a graceful vine that few have heeded; for it is not enough that the botanist should long ago have named it and that others should have besmirched its proper fame by calling it “carrion-flower.” Can we not forgive the offense to the nostril, when the eye is captivated? Does it go for nothing that a plant beautifies the waste places and invites you to contemplate it as the acme of grace, because in self-defense it warns you to keep at a respectful distance?

Sitting in the pleasant shade of clustering thorns, I see nothing now that attracts me morethan the leafy bowers of this curious vine. Every one has sprung boldly from the sod in full faith of finding the support it needs; at least, I see none that are standing quite alone. Two, it may be, but oftener three or four, have started at convenient distances, and, when well above the tallest grass, each has sought out the tendrils of its nearest neighbor and these have closely intertwined. So, here and there, we have a leafy arch, and scattered among them many a pretty bower. These may well have given the Indian a clew to wigwam-building. Had ever, in the distant past, a savage seen his child creep beneath the overarching branches of the despised “carrion-flower,” he would have seen how easily a summer shelter might be made. Perhaps upon some such hint the stuffy caves and rock-shelters were abandoned, for the time surely was when even a more primitive dwelling than a tent was man’s protection against the summer’s sun.

And may not these mutually supporting vines have struck the fancy of some Indian poet? In the wigwams of these people, who but two centuries ago peopled these meadows and the surrounding hills, may not many a pretty tale have been told of these same despised carrion-flowers? Dyer states, in his charming Folk-Lore of Plants, how, “in the Servian folk-song, theregrows out of the youth’s body a green fir, out of the maiden’s a red rose, which entwine together.” I should not wonder at learning that so too the Indian believed that from the bodies of braves, who had fallen together, fighting for the same cause, had sprung these intertwining vines that cling now so firmly to each other. Why, indeed, should not the tragedy of Tristram and Ysonde have been re-enacted on the Delaware meadows?

But, though despised by man, this vigorous plant has hosts of other friends. The summer long, scores of bugs, butterflies, and beetles crowd about. Whether when in leaf only, or later when in bloom, or in autumn, when laden with its wealth of blue-black berries, it is never quite alone, and many of its attendants are fully as curious as the plant itself. One or more minute beetles prefer it to all other plants, yet not because of the peculiar odor. At least, the same creatures do not crowd decaying flesh. On the other hand, the dainty flies that linger about the ruddy phlox, the blue iris, and purple pentstemon tarry likewise about the carrion-flower and find it a pleasant place, if one may judge by the length of time they stay.

I was somewhat surprised to find this to be the case, as I looked for a repetition on a small scale of what is recorded of those strange plants,theRafflesiaceæfound in the tropics. Forbes, in his Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, records that once he “nearly trampled on a fine, new species of that curious family...; it smelt powerfully of putrid flesh, and was infested with a crowd of flies, which followed me all the way as I carried it home, and was besides overrun with ants.”

So far my own observation. What say others?

Let us turn, however, to a more savory subject. Undeterred by possible whiffs of sickening scent, I followed the example of my friend the meadow-mouse, and crept into the largest smilax wigwam I could find. It was sufficiently roomy for all my needs, and shed the sun’s rays better than it would have done the drops of a summer shower. The east wind brought the rank odor of the marshes, and more fitfully the tinkling notes of the marsh-wrens that now crowd the rank growths of typha; but sweeter songs soon rang out near by, as the nervous Maryland yellow-throat, thinking me gone, perched within arm’s length and sang with all its energy. The power of that wee creature’s voice was absolutely startling. We seldom realize how far off many a bird may be, when we hear it sing; often looking immediately about us when a strange note falls upon ourears. Certainly this yellow-throat’s utterance might have been distinctly heard a quarter of a mile away. Such shrill whistling is no child’s play, either. Every feather of the bird was rumpled, the tail slightly spread, the wings partly uplifted, and the body swayed up and down as the notes, seven of them, were screeched—I can think of no more expressive word. It was not musical; and yet this bird has long been ranked, to my mind, as one of our most pleasing songsters. It needs a few rods’ distance however, to smooth away the rough edges.

But the great point gained in the day’s outing was to find that even the carrion-flower could be put to such good use. It makes a capital observatory, wherein and wherefrom to study the life of the open meadows. To these Nature-built shelters you are always welcome; the latch-string is always hanging out, and if perchance you do not share its single room with many a creature that loves the shade at noontide, and, so while away many an hour in choicest company, you may lie at its open door and watch the strange procession that forever passes by. It may be a mink, a mouse, or a musk-rat may hurry by, bound on some errand that piques your curiosity. A lazy turtle may waddle to your den and gaze in blank astonishment at you; and, better than all else, the pretty garter snakeswill come and go, salute you with a graceful darting of their forked tongues and then pass on, perhaps to tell their neighbor what strange sights they have seen. And as the day draws to a close, what myriad songs rise from every blade of grass! Hosts of unseen musicians pipe to the passing breeze; and crickets everywhere chirp so shrilly that the house about me trembles.

The day is done; but the night brings no end of novelty. The moping herons are no longer stupid; the blinking owls are all activity. Afar off the whip-poor-will calls—who knows why?—and the marsh-owl protests, as well it may, at such unseemly clatter. How quickly into a new world has the familiar meadow grown! Through the half-naked beam and rafters of my leafy tent I watch the night-prowling birds go hurrying by, and follow their shadows as the weird bats flit before me, for the moon has risen, and in its pallid light every familiar tree and shrub and all the night-loving wild-life of the meadows is wrapped in uncanny garbs. It is fitting now that a filmy mist should rise as a curtain and shut out the view. “He is none of us,” seems to shout every creature in my ear, and, taking the hint, I pick my way homeward through the dripping grass.

A Wayside Brook.

It is not that I may indulge in mock heroics that I champion the so-called waste-places, but out of pure love for the merits of even the least of Nature’s work. A single cedar casts sufficient shade for me, and, resting full length on a bed of yarrow, I have, at once the breath of the tropics and the aroma of the Spice Islands wherewith to while away these July days. From such a spot there is pleasure too in watching the shifting scenes of the sunlit world beyond—a pleasure greater than peering into the depths of a dark, monotonous swamp or pathless wood. But if this is simplifying matters beyond reasonable limits, then let us to a wayside brook, and to the shade and spiciness add the music of rippling waters. Surely this should suffice the idle saunterer at midsummer. When it is ninety in the shade, it is wiser to watch the minnows in a brook than to battle with pickerel in the mill-pond. Nor should such contemplation be too trivial for one’s fancy. Even little fishes have their ups and downs, although everything goes swimmingly with them. As has been said somewhere, if my memory plays me no tricks, the fish-world is diversified by other occurrences than feeding or going to feed others. In otherwords, they have impressions, vague though they may be, of the world about them, and existence is something more than—

“A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves,Quickened with touches of transporting fear.”

“A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves,

Quickened with touches of transporting fear.”

The brook need not be deep nor wide, and may wander through many a rod of dusty fields, scarcely covering the pebbles that bestrew its bed, and yet contain fishes. I have often been surprised to find many small minnows in brooks that were scarcely more than damp, except here and there a spring-hole, or pool, about the roots of a tree. Such places are noble hunting-grounds if the rambler is an enthusiastic naturalist, and many a chapter might be written concerning our smallest fishes. Except to very few, they are wholly unknown.

On the bank of a little wayside brook I tarried for half a day recently, with minnows, birds, and dragon-flies to keep me company, and what a royal time we had! At first the fish were shy, and took refuge under flat pebbles but I coaxed them forth at last by tossing crumbs before them. At ease, so far as I was concerned, they commenced their beautiful game of chasing sunbeams, the largest stone in the stream being the base from which they ceaselessly darted to and fro. The flashing of the fishes’ silvery sides, the dartingrays of sunlight, the sparkle of the great bubbles that danced on every ripple, proved a very carnival of light and color, the soul of which was this company of fun-loving minnows. In saying this, I intend to convey all the meaning that such a phrase comprehends—in other words, to ascribe to these small fishes a pronounced degree of intelligence.

Their life proved not without its shadows, however, as very often their merriment was changed to terror in a twinkling. It happened that a gorgeous dragon-fly came with a sudden onset to the little brook and filled these fish with fear while it hovered above them. I leave it to others to say why the minnows should have been afraid. Has any person ever seen a dragon-fly catch a fish?

Prof. Seeley, writing of a European cyprinoid, remarks, “Probably every person who has ever looked into a small stream has been surprised by the singular way in which minnows constantly arrange themselves in circles like the petals of a flower, with their heads nearly meeting in the center, and tails diverging at equal distances.” I looked for this, but our Jersey minnows were not so methodically inclined, and all kept their heads in one direction, up-stream, until at a certain point, when, as if on signal given, they would, right about face, and dart down-streamfor a yard or two, re-form, and as a company make their way to the dispersing point, a thin slab of stone that barred their further passage.

So, in this most unpromising spot I found no end of entertainment, and, except in midsummer, would not have tired of any single feature; but study, even studies a-field, are irksome in July, and I forgot the minnows as my eyes fell upon a large slab of stone near where I was lying. It was one of four broad stepping-stones that nearly two centuries ago were placed here. Then, there flowed, through a thick woods, a broad stream, and near here the first house was built. Upon these stones had stepped the grave elders and loitered the light-hearted children of three generations; and now not a trace of house, garden, barn, woods, or pasture remains. Everything has given way to more pretentious structures, broader fields, and painfully angular highways. The one-time winding lane, shaded by noble oaks, is now not even to be traced across the fields; and, instead thereof, a narrow sunny strip of yellow sand leads to the public road. “What an improvement!” once remarked a neighbor, when the change was made. What an improvement, indeed! where once was beauty, one finds, save this little remnant of a creek, an endless array of fields, with scarcely a tree along the division fences. Doubtless, could the brookhave been obliterated, the work would have been undertaken. As it is, the narrow strip is all that Nature can call her own, and so, whatever of her charms can find a place, here she sets them down; and so here a rambler may be happy, or fairly content at least, if he does not raise his eyes continually to scan the horizon. I, for one, on the half-loaf principle, accept the wayside brooks with thankfulness, and now after long years have found that in many an essential feature they do not suffer so greatly as one might suppose when compared with Nature’s more pretentious waterways. Let Nature, on however small a scale, have the upper hand, and at such a spot the rambler can afford to tarry. But perhaps I am partial, for this was my playground, forty years ago; still, I would say—

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