WAIFS.WAIFS.
Another jutting corner, and we confront a swaying mass of gold and purple—that magnificent regal combination of graceful golden-rod and asters that glorifies our autumn from September to the falling leaf. There are a number of species of golden-rod, varying as much in their intensity of color as in their time of bloom. The earliest appear in the heart of summer, in wood and meadow; while others, larger and more stately, lift up in their midst their plumy, undeveloped tips, and wait until their predecessors are old and gray ere they roll out their wreaths of gold. For weeks the roads and by-ways have been lit up with their brilliant glow, that parting sunset gleam that lingers with the closing year. This splendid cluster is full six feet in height, and towers above the highest rail, or rather where the rail ought to be, for it is lost from sight beneath a dense fret-work of prickly smilax—and such brilliant, polished leaves! how they glitter in the sun! almost as though wet with dew.
And to think how those prickly canes, denuded of their leaves, are sold upon our city thoroughfares as “Spanish rose-trees” to the unsuspecting passer-by! Those guileless venders, too! I remember one that sought to enrich my store of botanical knowledge by telling me they “bloomed in winter!” and had a flower as “big as a saucer,” and “kinder like a holy hawk!!!?” I looked him straight in the eye, but he was the picture of innocence. “Can you tell me the botanical name,” I asked. “Oh yes,” he glibly replied, “I think they call it theRubus epistaxis.” Eheu! but this wastoo much, and he saw it, and with a wink of his foxy eye and a shrewd grin, he whispered along the palm of his hand, “Got to git a livin’somehow, boss; nowdon’tgive me away.” “Here you are, lady, Spanish roses, lady, fresh from the steamer.” I never see a thicket of green-brier without thinking of its “winter blossom;” and, by-the-way, did you ever notice a thicket of this shrub, what a defiant, arbitrary tyrant it is—shutting out the very life-breath and light of day from its encumbered victims, monopolizing everything within its power, and even reaching out for more with searching tips in mid-air, and a couple of greedy tendrils at every leaf? And did you ever notice along the road that delicious whiff that comes to you every now and then, that pungent breath of the sweet-fern? We get it now; the air is laden with it from the dark-green beds across the road. The sweet-fern, as I remember it, was the simpler’s panacea and the small boy’s joy—an aromatic shrub, whose inhaled fumes, together with its corn-silk rival, seem destined by an all-wise Providence as a preparatory tonic to the more ambitious fumigation of after-years. Many a time have I sat upon this bank and tried to imagine in my domestic product the racy flavor of the famed Havana!
Between old Aunt Huldy, with her mania for the simples, and the demand of the village boys, I wonder there is any of it left. But Aunt Huldy has long since died; all her “yarbs,” and “yarrer tea,” and “paowerful gud stimmilants” could not give her the lease of eternal earthly life which she said lurked in the “everlastin’ flaowers;” and after she had reached the age of one hundred and three, her tansy decoctions and boneset potions ceased in their efficacy—the feeble pulse grew feebler, and one winter’s eve, sitting in her rocker by her kettle and andirons, she fell into a deep sleep, from which she never awoke. Aunt Huldy was as strange and eccentric a character as one rarely meets in the walks of life. Somesaid she was crazy; others said she was a witch; but whatever she may have been, this aged dame was picturesque with her bent figure, her long white hair and scarlet hood. And who shall describe the ancient withered face that looked out from the shadow of that hood, the small gray eyes and heavy white eyebrows, the toothless jaws and receding lips, and massive chin that made its appalling ascent across the face? But I cannot describe that face: think of how a witch should look, and old Huldy’s features will rise up before you. She knew every herb that grew, but her great stand-by was “sweet-fern:” she smoked it, she chewed it, she drank it, and even wore a little bag of it around her neck, “to charm away the rheumatiz.”
IN THE CORNFIELD.IN THE CORNFIELD.
Since her time, however, the sweet-fern has had a chance to recuperate, and, as far as we can see along the road, the banks are covered with it; and there’s a clump of teazles in its midst! I wonder if that old carding-mill still stands. You also, perhaps, will wonder what relation can existbetween the two, that should make my thoughts jump half a mile at the sight of a roadside weed. But that old woollen-mill offered a premium on the extermination of one weed at least, for all the teasels of the neighborhood were required to keep its cloth brushes in thorough repair; but I fear its buzzing wheels are silent, for in olden times no such splendid clump as this could have remained to go to seed upon the highway. This old mill lies right upon our path, only a short walk down the road beyond. It nestles among a bower of willows in a picturesque ravine known as the “Devil’s Hollow”—an umbrageous, rocky glen, by far too cool and comfortable a place to justify the name it bears.
Following the road, we now descend into a long, low stretch, hedged in between two tall banks of alder, overtopped with interwoven tangles of clematis, with its cloudy autumn clusters—that graceful vine which, like the dandelion, is even more beautiful in death than in the fulness of its bloom. And so, indeed, are nearly all those plants whose final state is thus endowed by nature with feathery wings to lift them from the earth.
When has this swamp milk-weed by the roadside looked so fair as now, with its bursting pods and silky seeds—those little waifs thrown out upon the world with every passing breeze. How tenderly they seem to cling to the little cosy home where they have been so snugly cradled and protected; and see how they sail away, two or three together, loth to part, until some rude gust shall separate them forever.
And here’s the great spiny thistle, too, that armed highwayman with florid face and pompon in his cap. But he has had his day, and now we see him old and seedy; his spears are broken, and his silvery gray hairs are floating everywhere and glistening in the sun.
Now we leave the alders, and another roadside mosaic of rich color opens up before us, where the old half-wall fence, with its overtopping rails, is luminous with a crimson glow of ampelopsis. It covers all the stones for yards and yards; it swings from every jutting rail; it clambers up the tree trunks and envelops them in fire, and hangs its waving fringe from all the branches.
Above the wall, like an encampment of thatched wigwams, the corn-shocks lift their heads; a prospecting colony encamped among a field rich with outcroppings of gold—a wealth of great round nuggets all in sight. And were we to tear away that thatch, we might see where they have stowed away their accumulated grains of wealth. We hear their rustling whispers: “Hush! hush!” they seem to say to each other as weapproach; but their wariness is gratuitous, for a tell-tale vine is creeping away upon the fence near-by, and has stopped to rest its golden burden on the summit of the wall, half hiding among the scarlet creepers.
Here yellow brakes abound, spreading their broad, triangular fronds on every side amid the brilliant berries of wild-rose, and pink leaves of blueberry. And here are thickets of black-alder, where every twig is studded with scarlet beads, that cling so close that even winter’s bluster cannot shake them off. No matter where we look in these October days, nature is burning itself away in a blaze of color that dazzles the eyes; and now we approach its very crowning touch.
I wish every one might see this gorgeous combination of oak and maples; see it and go no farther, for a further search were fruitless in finding its equal. It is the pride of the entire community; towns-people and visitors ride from miles around to see its final flush—a magnificent climax in the way of concentration of vivid color, in which nature seems to have grouped with distinct purpose and design, producing a piece of natural landscape-gardening such as no art could have approached. The background is a massive precipice of rock towering to the height of eighty feet, itself a perfect medley of tone.
The group is composed of eight maples, each a distinct contrast of pure color. In their midst a superb large oak presents one massive breadth of deep purple green; and spreading up one side like a flood of yellow light, a rock-maple lifts its splendid array of foliage. These two trees concentrate the effect, and the others are arranged around them like colors on a palette: one is a flaming scarlet, another beside it is always a rich green, even to the falling leaf—with only a single branch, that every year, even as early as August, persists in turning to a peculiar salmon pink; another, a red-maple, is so deep a red as to appear almost maroon, and its branches intermingle with the pale-pink verdure of another growing by its side. There is one that combines every intermediate color, from deep crimson to the palest saffron; while its neighbor flutters in the wind with every leaf a brilliant butterfly of pure green, with spots and splashes of deep carmine.
This whole assemblage of color fairly blazes in the landscape, and even from the top of Mount Pisgah, a half a mile away, it looks like a glowing coal dropped down upon a bed of smouldering ashes in the valley; for the surrounding meadow is thick-set with great gray rocks and crimson viburnum, as though it had caught fire from the flamingtrees. What other country can boast the glory of a tree which, taken all in all, can hold its own beside our lovely maple? From the time when first it hangs its silken tassels to the awakening spring breeze until its autumn fire has burned away its leaves, it presents an everchanging phase that lends a distinct expression to American landscape. It affords us grateful shade in summer; and with its trickling bounty in the spring we can all unite in a hearty toast, “A health to the glorious maple.”
THE ROAD TO THE MILL.THE ROAD TO THE MILL.
But there is another tree which should not be forgotten, and if once seen in a New England autumn landscape there is little danger of its escaping from the memory. Of course, I refer to the pepperidge, or tupelo, that nondescript among trees; for who ever saw two pepperidge-trees alike? They seem to scorn a reputation for symmetry, or even the idea of establishing among themselves the recognition of a type of character. Novelty or grotesqueness is their only aim, and they hit the bull’s-eye every time. There is one I have in mind that has always been a perfect curiosity. Its height is fully seventy feet, and its crown is as flat as though cut off with a mammoth pair of pruning-shears. The central trunk runs straight up to the summit, from which it squirms off into six or seven snake-like branches, that dip downward and writhe among the other limbs, all falling in the same direction. One gets the impression,on looking at it, that originally it might have been a respectable-looking tree, but that in some rude storm in its early days it had been struck by lightning, torn up by the roots, and afterward had taken root at the top. The tupelo, whenever seen, is always one of our most picturesque trees, and a never-failing source of surprise, twisting and turning into some unheard-of shape, and seeming always to say, “There! beat that if you can!” Near the coast it assumes the form of a crazy Italian pine, with spindling trunk and massive head of foliage. Sometimes it divides in the middle, like an hour-glass, and again mimics a fir-tree in caricature; but he who would keep track of the acrobatic capers of the tupelo would have his hands full. Whatever its shape, however, its brilliant, glossy crimson foliage forms one of the most striking features of our October landscape.
But I believe we were on the road to that carding-mill. We had almost forgotten it; and now, as we look ahead, we see the old lumber-shed that marks the upper ledge of Devil’s Hollow. From this old shed a trout-brook plunges through a series of rocky terraces, now winding among prostrate moss-grown trunks, now gurgling through the bare roots of great white birches, or spreading in a swift, glassy sheet as it pours across some broad shelving rock, and plunges from its edge in a filmy water-fall. It roars pent up in narrow cañons, and out again it swirls in a smooth basin worn in the solid rock. At almost every rod or two along its precipitous course there is a mill somewhere hid among the trees—queer, quaint little mills, some built up on high stone walls, others fed with trickling flumes which span from rock to rock, supporting on every beam a rounded cushion of velvety green moss, and hanging a fringe of ferns from almost every crevice. And one there is in ruins, fallen from its lofty perch, and piled in chaos in the stream. There are saw-mills, and shook-mills, and carding-mills, seven altogether in this one descent of about three hundred feet. The water enters the ravine as pure as crystal; but in its wild booming through race-ways, dams, and water-wheels, it gradually assumes a rich sienna hue from thedébrisof sawdust everywhere along its course. The interior of the ravine is musical with the trebles of the falling water and the accompaniment of the rumbling mills. Tiny rainbows gleam beneath the water-falls, and swarms of glistening bubbles and little islands of saffron-colored foam float away upon the dark-brown eddies.
At last we reach the carding-mill, which is the lowest of them all—inevery sense, it seems, for it is as I had feared: the flume is but a pile of brown and mouldy timbers in the bed of the stream, and the old box-wheel has rotted and fallen from its spokes, almost obscured beneath a rank growth of weeds. No sound of buzzing teasels, no rumbling of the water-wheel, no happy carder singing at his work:nothing—but a couple of boys, kneeling in a corner, sucking cider through a straw. Yes, the old mill has fallen from grace; but what else might one expect from a mill in “Devil’s Hollow,” where all its neighbors are engaged in making hogshead staves, and the very water has turned to ruddy wine?
THE CIDER MILL.THE CIDER MILL.
The carding-machine is gone, and has given place to a rustic cider-press. A temporary undershot-wheel has been rigged beneath the floor, and a rude trough, patched up with sods, conducts the water from the stream.
It is the same old cider-press we all remember, and with the same accessories. Here are casks of all sizes waiting to be filled, and the piles of party-colored apples spilled upon the floor from the farmers’ wagons that every now and then back up to the open door. There is the same rustic harangue on leading agricultural topics, among which we hear a variety of opinions about that imaginary “line storm.”
“Seems to gi’n the slip this year,” remarks one old long-limbed settler with a slope-roofed straw hat, “’n’ I don’t know zactly what tomakeon’t; but I ain’t so sartin nuther”—he now takes a wise observation of a small patch of blue sky through the trees overhead. “I cal’late we’ll git a leetle tetch on’t yit.”
“Likenuff, likenuff,” responds another, with a squeaky voice; “the ar’s gittin’ ruther dampish, ’n’ my woman hez got the rheumatiz ag’in. She kin alluz tell when we’re goin’ to git a spell o’ weather; it’s sure to fetch her all along her spine. But I laymoststore on them ar pesky tree-tuds. I heern um singin’ like all possessed ez I wuz comin’ through the woods yender; ’n’ it’s a sartin sign o’ rain when them ar critters gits agoin’, you kin depend on’t.”
And now we hear all about the pumpkin and the corn crop, the potato yield, and the regular list of other subjects so dear to the rural heart.
In a corner by themselves we see the pile of “vinegar nubbins”—a tanned and soft variety of apple—in all stages of variegation. The “hopper” receives the shovelfuls of fruit for the crushing “smasher,” which again supplies the straw-laid press. We hear the creaking turn of the lever screw, the yielding of the timbers, and a fresh burst of the trickling beverage flowing from the surrounding trough into the great wooden tub below. Here, too, is the swarm of eager urchins, with heads together, like a troop of flies around a grain of sugar. Ah! what unalloyed bliss is reflected from their countenances as they absorb the amber nectar through the intermediate straw—that golden link that I have missed for many a year!
Outside upon the logs the refuse “pumice-cheese” has brought together all the yellow-jackets and late butterflies of the neighborhood—butterflies so tipsy that you can pick them up between your fingers. I never went so far with the yellow-jackets, for they have a hotter temper, and don’t like to be fooled with. Black hornets, too, are here, and they find a feast spread at their very door; for overhead, upon the beech, theyhave hung their paper house, like a gray balloon caught among the branches.
“THE LINE STORM.”“THE LINE STORM.”
Now we hear a chatter and a scratching on the roof, where a pair of lively squirrels hold a game of tag; and ascending the rickety stairs into the loft above, we find the floor strewn with hickory-nuts, with neat roundholes cut through on either side, and numberless shaggy butternuts, too, with daylight let into their recesses also. The boards and beams are covered with cobweb trimmings, laden with wool-dust; and as we approach a pile of rusty iron near the murky window, we hear a scraping of sharp claws, the dropping of a nut between the rafters, and now a wild scampering on the roof overhead. Before we have fairly recovered from our surprise, we notice a sudden darkening of a hole in the shingles close by, where, still and motionless, two inquisitive black eyes look down at us. We have intruded upon private property, for this is the home of the squirrels. No one can dispute their title, for these little squatters have occupied the premises and held the fort for nearly twenty years.
They, too, have found forage close at hand, from the nut-grove upon the hill-side yonder—a yellow bank of foliage of clustered hickories and beeches, and rounded domes of chestnuts—a grove whose every rock and bush is my old-time friend; where there are “sermons in stones,” and every tree speaks volumes.
Here is the low thicket of weeds and hazel-bushes where we always flushed that flock of quail, or started up some lively white-tailed hare that jumped away among the quivering brakes and golden-rod. Here are soft beds of rich green moss, studded with scarlet berries of winter-green and partridge-vine. Now we come upon a creeping mat of princess-pine, and here among the leaves we had almost stepped upon a spreading chestnut-burr—that same burr I have so often seen before, that same fuzzy, open palm holding out its tempting bait to lure the eagerness of youth; an eagerness which always invested a neighbor’s chestnuts with a peculiar charm too tempting to resist; “take one,” it seems to say, as it did in years ago; and its hedge of thorny prickles truly typifies the dangers which surrounded such an undertaking, for these trees belong to Deacon Turney, and he prizes them as though their yellow autumn leaves were so much gold. He guards them with an eagle’s eye, and he gathers all their harvest; no single nut is ever known to sprout in Turney’s woods ifheknows it.
This pointed reminder among the leaves fairly pricks my conscience as I recall the many October escapades in which it formed the chief attraction. I remember one occasion in particular, for it is indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was on this very spot. A party of adventurous lads, myself among the number, were out for a glorious holiday. Each had his canvas bag across his shoulder, and we stole along thestone wall yonder, and entered the woods beneath that group of chestnuts. Two of us acted as outposts on picket guard; and another, young Teddy Shoopegg by name, the best climber in the village, did the shaking. He prided himself on being able to “shin up any tree in the caounty,” and after he had once got up among those chestnut-trees we stood from under, and in a very short space of time no single burr was left among their branches. There were five busy pairs of hands beneath those trees, I can tell you, for each one of us fully realized the necessity of making the most of his time, not knowing how soon the warning cry from our outposts might put us all to headlong flight; for the alarm, “Turney’s coming!” was enough to lift the hair of any boy in town.
A POINTED REMINDER.A POINTED REMINDER.
But luck seemed to favor us on that day; we “cleaned out” six big chestnut-trees, and then turned our attention to the hickories. There was a splendid tall shagbark close by, with branches fairly loaded with thewhite nuts in their open shucks. They were all ready to drop, and when the shaking once commenced, the nuts came down like a shower of hail, bounding from the rocks, rattling among the dry leaves, and keeping up a clatter all around. We scrambled on all fours, and gathered them by quarts and quarts. There was no need of poking over the leaves for them, the ground was covered with them in plain sight. While busily engaged, we noticed an ominous lull among the branches overhead.
“’Sst! ’sst!” whispered Shoopegg up above; “I see old Turney on his white horse daown the road yender.”
“Coming this way?” also in a whisper, from below.
“I dunno yit, but I jest guess you’d better be gittin’ reddy to leg it, fer he’s hitchin’ his old nag ’t the side o’ the road.Yis, sir, I bleeve he’s a-cummin’. Shoopegg, you’d better be gittin’ aout o’ this,” and he commenced to drop hap-hazard from his lofty perch. In a moment, however, he seemed to change his mind, and paused, once more upon the watch. “Say, fellers,” he again broke in, as we were preparing for a retreat, “he’s gone off to’rd the cedars; he ain’t cummin’ this way atall.” So he again ascended into the tree-top, and finished his shaking in peace, and we our picking also. There was still another tree, with elegant large nuts, that we had all concluded to “finish up on.” It would not do to leave it. They were the largest and thinnest-shelled nuts in town, and there were over a bushel in sight on the branch tips. Shoopegg was up among them in two minutes, and they were showered down in torrents as before. And what splendid, perfect nuts they were! We bagged them with eager hands, picked the ground all clean, and, with jolly chuckles at our luck, were just about thinking of starting for home with our well-rounded sacks, when a change came over the spirit of our dreams. There was a suspicious noise in the shrubbery near by, and in a moment more we heard our doom.
“Jest yeu lookeeah, yeu boys!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the neighboring shrubbery, accompanied by the form of Deacon Turney, approaching at a brisk pace, hardly thirty feet away. “Don’t yeu think yeu’ve got jest abaoutenuffo’ them nuts?”
Of course a wild panic ensued, in which we made for the bags and dear life; but Turney was prepared and ready for the emergency, and, raising a huge old shot-gun, he levelled it, and yelled, “Don’t any on ye stir ner move, or by Christopher I’ll blow the heels clean off’n the hullpileon ye. I’dshootye quicker’nlightni’.”
And we believed him, for his aim was true, and his whole expression was not that of a man who was trifling. I never shall forget the uncomfortable sensation that I experienced as I looked into the muzzle of that double-barrelled shot-gun, and saw both hammers fully raised too. And I can clearly see now the squint and the glaring eye that glanced along those barrels. There was a wonderfully persuasive power lurking in those horizontal tubes; so I at once hastened to inform the deacon that we were “not going to run.”
“Wa’al,” he drawled, “it looked a leetle thetway, I thort, a spellago;” and he still kept us in the field of his weapon, till at length I exclaimed, in desperation.
“For gracious sake! point that gun in some otherway, will you?”
“Wa’al,no! I’m not fer pintin’ it ennywhar else jestyit—not until you’ve sot them arbagsdaown agin, jist whar yegot’em, everyoneon ye.” The bags were speedily replaced, and he slowly lowered his gun.
AFTER THE SHELL-BARKSAFTER THE SHELL-BARKS
“Wa’al, naow,” he continued, as he came up in our midst, “this is putty bizniss,ain’tit? Bin havin’ a putty likely sort o’ time teu, I sh’d jedge from the looks o’ these ’erebags. One—two—sixon ’em; an’ I vaow they must be nigh on teu a half bushel in every pleggyoneon ’em. Wa’al, naow”—with his peculiar drawl—“look eeah: you’re aputty ondustrious lot o’thieves, I’mblestif ye ain’t.” But the deacon did all the talking, for his manœuvres were such as to render us speechless. “Putty likely place teu cum a-nuttin’, ain’t it?” Pause. “Putty nice mess o’ shell-barks ye got thar, I tell ye naow.—Quite a sight o’chestnutsinyourn, ain’t they?”
There was only one spoken side to this dialogue, but the pauses were eloquent on both sides, and we boys kept up a deal of tall thinking as we watched the deacon alternate his glib remarks by the gradual removal of the bags to the foot of a neighboring tree. This done, he seated himself upon a rock beside them.
“Thar!” he exclaimed, removing his tall hat and wiping his white-fringed forehead with a red bandanna handkerchief. “I’m muchobleeged. I’ve been a-watchin’ on ye gittin’ these ’ere nuts the hull arternoon. I thort ez haow yeu might like to know on’t.” And then, as though a happy thought had struck him, what should he do but deliberately spit on his hands and grasp his gun. “Lookeeah”—a pause, in which he cocked both barrels—“yeu boys wuz paowerful anxyis teu gitawayfromeeah a spell ago. Naow yeu kingitez lively ez yeu pleze; your chores is done fer to-day.” And bang! went one of the gun-barrels directly over our heads.
Wegot, and when once out of gun-range we paid the deacon a wealth of those rare compliments for both eye and ear that always swell the boys’ vocabulary.
“All right,” he yelled back in answer, as he transported the bags across the field. “Cum agin next year—cum agin. Alluz welcome! alluz welcome!”
As I have already said, the deacon gathered all his nut harvest—sometimes by a very novel method.
Who does not remember some such episode of the old jolly days? If it was not a Deacon Turney, it was some one else. I am sure his counterpart exists in every country town, and in the memory of every boyhood experience.
We remember, perhaps, the sweet hazel-nuts which we gathered in their brown husks and spread to dry upon the garret floor, and how those mischievous mice avenged the deacon’s wrongs as they invaded our treasured store, and transported it to the nooks and kinks among the rafters and beneath the floor. Then there were those rambles after “fox-grapes,” and the “gunning” tramps, when we stole with cautious step upon theunseen “Bob White” whistling for us among the brush near by, when the startlingwhirrof the ruffed grouse from almost under our feet sent an electric thrill up our backs and along our arms, even touching off the powder in our barrels unawares. There were box-traps in the woods, and snares among the copses, and lots of other mischief of which we would not care to tell.
A CORNER OF THE FARM.A CORNER OF THE FARM.
There was another little three-cornered nut that fell among the beech-trees where we held our October picnics, and the autumn beech forest I remember as a lovely woodland parlor. We sit upon a painted rock, in the shadow of a drooping hemlock, perhaps. Beyond, we look across among the smooth gray tree-trunks, where sidelong shadows softly stripe the matted leaves, with here and there a shining shaft of sunbeam lighting up the carpet, or a glinting spray of sun-tipped leaves that flicker above their shadows. The woods are filled with a luminous glow such as no summer forest ever knew—an all-pervading light which seems almost independent of the sunshine, as though living in the leaf itself. It floods the mottled bark, and transforms its ashy tints to softened autumn grays. It searches out the shadows of the evergreens, and throwsits mellow glow upon the rocks among their recesses. It permeates the whole interior as though it were transfigured through a golden-colored glass.
A quick, sharp whistle surprises you from the herbage near by, and a striped chickaree skips across the leaves and dives into his burrow at the foot of an old stump not far away. There are various other sounds that come to you if you sit quietly in a beech wood. Now it is a tiny footfall, a pat-pat upon the leaves, and a little brown bird is seen, hopping in and out among the undergrowth, scratching and pecking like a little hen among the leaf mould. Then comes a galloping sound, and you know there is a scampering hare somewhere about. And at last a peeping frog gains confidence, and starts up a trill somewhere behind you. He is soon joined by another, and still others, until a chorus of the shrill voices echoes among the trees, some from the around, some from the limbs overhead; and if you only sit perfectly still, you may hear a venturesome voice, perhaps, at your very elbow; for these little peepers are capricious songsters, and only sing before a quiet, attentive audience. Now a silly green katydid flits by, like an animated gauzy leaf; and quick as thought a kingbird darts out from the leaves overhead, hovers in mid-air for a second, and is away again; and luckless katydid wishes shehadn’t.
See the variety of beeches, too! Here are slender, dappled stems, clean and trim; and others, great giants with fluted trunks and gnarled roots, and with eccentric limbs reaching out in most fantastic angles; but all spreading above in a graceful, airy screen of intermingled tracery and sunlight, where slender branches bend and sway beneath the agile squirrel as he leaps from tree to tree, and the leaves clatter with the falling nuts. Behind us a soft fluttering of many wings betrays a slender mountain-ash, with its drooping clusters of berries, growing in an open, rocky space near by—where a flock of cedar birds assemble among the fruit, or scatter away amid the evergreens at your slightest movement. Turning your head in another direction, you can follow the course of an old farm-road that leads out upon a bright clearing, thick-set with light-green, feathery ferns. A few rods beyond, it makes a sudden downward turn through a dense grove of lofty pines and hemlocks. Here are “dim aisles” where dwell perpetual twilight—where no ray of sun has entered for well-nigh a century—only, perhaps, as it is brought down in a glistening sunbeam within the crystal bead of balsam upon some dropping cone. There is asolemn stillness in these stately halls, in which your very footfall is proscribed and hushed in the depths of the brown and silent carpet. There are old, venerable gray-beards here, and fallen monarchs lying prostrate among the rugged rocks; and here and there among the brown debris a fungus lifts its head, to tell of other generations that lie crumbling beneath the mould. Now among the lofty columns, like a magnificent illuminated window in some vast cathedral, comes a glimpse of the outer world with its autumn colors; and here the vaulted aisle soon leads us. We find a dazzling contrast; for in the sombre shadows of the pine-forest one readily forgets the month, or even the season. Here we approach a rippling trout-stream, and as we stop to rest upon its tottering bridge we look across a long brook meadow, where the asters screen the ground in mid-air in a purple sea—one of the rarest spectacles of autumn. But in this swamp lot there are presented a continual series of just such rich displays from spring-time till the winter.
I know of no other place in which the progress of the year is so readily traced as in these swampy fallow lands. They are a living calendar, not merely of the seasons alone, but of every month successively; and its record is almost unmistakably disclosed. It is whispered in the fragrant breath of flowers, and of the aromatic herbage you crush beneath your feet. It floats about on filmy wings of dragon-fly and butterfly, or glistens in the air on silky seeds. It skips upon the surface of the water, or swims among the weeds beneath; and is noised about in myriads of tell-tale songs among the reeds and sedges. The swallows and the starlings proclaim it in their flight, and the very absence of these living features is as eloquent as life itself. Even in the simple story of the leaf, the bud, the blossom, and the downy seed, it is told as plainly as though written in prosaic words and strewn among the herbage.
In the early, blustering days of March, there is a stir beneath the thawing ground, and the swamp cabbage-root sends up a well protected scout to explore among the bogs; but so dismal are the tidings which he brings, that for weeks no other venturing sprout dares lift its head. He braves alone the stormy month—the solitary sign of spring, save, perhaps, the lengthening of the alder catkins that loosen in the wind. April woos the yellow cowslips into bloom along the water’s edge, and the golden willow twigs shake out their perfumed tassels. In May the prickly carex blossoms among the tussocks, and the calamus buds burst forth among their flat, green blades. June is heralded on right and left by the unfurling ofblue-flags, and the eyebright blue winks and blinks as it awakens in the dazzling July sun.
BEECH-NUTTING.BEECH-NUTTING.
Then follows brimful August, with the summer’s consummation of luxuriance and bloom; with flowers in dense profusion in bouquets of iron-weed and thoroughworts, of cardinal flowers and fragrant clethra, with their host of blossoming companions. The milk-weed pods fray out their early floss upon September breezes, and the blue petals of the gentian first unfold their fringes. October overwhelms us with the friendly tokens of burr marigolds and bidens; while its thickets of black-alder lose their autumn verdure, andleave November with a “burning bush” of scarlet berries hitherto half-hidden in the leafage. Now, too, the copses of witch-hazel bedeck themselves, and are yellow with their tiny ribbons. December’s name is written in wreaths of snow upon the withered stalks of slender weeds and rushes, which soon lie bent and broken in the lap of January, crushed beneath their winter weight. And in fulfilment of the cycle, February sees the swelling buds of willow, with their restless pussies eager for the spring, half creeping from their winter cells.
The October day is a dream, bright and beautiful as the rainbow, and as brief and fugitive. The same clouds and the same sun may be with us on the morrow, but the rainbow will have gone. There is a destroyer that goes abroad by night; he fastens upon every leaf, and freezes out its last drop of life, and leaves it on the parent stem, pale, withered, and dying.
Then come those closing days of dissolution, the saddest of the year, when all nature is filled with phantoms, and the gaunt and naked trees moan in the wind—every leaf a mockery, every breeze a sigh. The air seems weighed with a premonition of the dreariness to come. The landscape is darkened in a melancholy monotone, and death is written everywhere. You may walk the woods and fields for hours without a gleam of comfort or a cheering sound. We hear, perhaps, the hollow roll of the woodpecker upon some neighboring tree; but even he is clad in mourning: it is a muffled drum, and the resounding limb is dead. You sit beneath the old oak-tree, but it is a lifeless rustle that grates upon your ear, while you listen half beseechingly for some cheering note from the robins in the thicket near; but they are coy and silent now, and their flight is toward the southern hills. A villanous shrike must needs come upon the scene: he alights upon a limb near by, with blood upon his beak. Murder is in his eye, and his mission here is death. And now we hear a noisy crow o’erhead: he perches upon a neighboring tree in hungry scrutiny. And what is he but carrion’s bird, that revels in decay and death, with raiment black as a funeral pall? In the cold gray sky we see their scattered flocks blowing in the wind with sidelong flight, and in the field below that mocking cadaver, the man of straw, shaking his flimsy arms at them in wild contortions.
There is a hopeless despondency abroad in all the air, in which the summer medleys of the birds taunt us with their memories. We yearn for one such joyful sound to break the gloomy reverie. But what birdcould swell his throat in song amidst such cheerlessness? No, Nature does not thus defeat her purpose. The hopefulness of Spring, the joyful consummation of Summer, have fled; their mission is fulfilled, and these are days for meditation on the past and future. All nature speaks of death; and there are voices of despair, and others eloquent with hope and trust. There are dead leaves that crumble into dust beneath our feet; but, if we look higher, there are others that conceal the promise of eternal life, where the undeveloped being, that perfect symbol,weaves his silken shroud, and awaits the coming of his day of full perfection. In the ground beneath he seeks his sepulchre, and he knows that at the appointed time he will burst his cerements and fly away. These are inobtrusive, silent testimonies; but they are here, and need only to be sought to unfold their prophecies.
THE NORTH WIND.THE NORTH WIND.
But there comes a respite even in these late gloomy days. There is a lull in the work of devastation, in which the sunny skies and magic haze of October come back to us in the charming dreaminess of the Indian summer. A brief farewell—perhaps a day, perhaps a week; but however long, it is a parting smile that we love to recall in the dreariness that follows. The sky is luminous with soft sun-lit clouds, and the hazy air is laden with spring-like breezes, with now and then a welcome cricket-song or light-hearted bird-note, for, although long upon their way, the birds have not yet all departed. They twitter cheerily among the trees and thickets, and should you listen quietly you perhaps might hear an echo of spring again in the warble of the robin upon the dog-wood-tree. Here they have loitered by the way among the scarlet berries. Not only robins, but cedar-birds and thrushes are here, in successive flocks, from morn till night.
The fields are dull with faded golden-rods and asters, among whose downy seeds the frolicking chickadees and snow-birds hold a jubilee. The maze of twigs and branches in the distant hills has enveloped them in a smoky gray, and the sound of rustling leaves follows your footsteps in your woodland rambles. The fringe of yellow petals is unfolding on the witch-hazel boughs, and if you only knew the place, you might discover in some forsaken nook a solitary pale-blue lamp of fringed gentian still flickering among the withered leaves. Now a lively twittering and a hum of wings surprises you, and before you can turn your head a happy little troop of birds sweep across your path, and are away among the evergreens. They are white buntings, and their presence here is like a chill, for they come from the icy regions of the North, and they bring the snow upon their wings. The Indian summer is soon a thing of the past. Perhaps before another daybreak it will have flown. There is no dawn upon that morning. The night runs into a day of dismal, cheerless twilight, and the sky is overcast with ominous darkness. That angry cloud that left us, driven away before the conquering Spring, now lowers above the northward mountain; we see its livid face and feel its blighting breath—“a hard, dull bitterness of cold,” that sweeps along the moorin noisy triumph, that howls and tears among the trembling trees, and smothers out the last smouldering flame of faded Autumn.
The final leaf is torn from the tree. The lingering birds depart the desolation for scenes more tranquil, and I too with them, for nothing here invites my tarrying. The Autumn days are gone, grim Winter is at our door, and the covering snow will soon enshroud the earth, subdued and silent in its winter sleep.
A WINTER IDYL—Prologue—A chill sad ending of a dreary day.The waning light in stillness dies away.Bequeaths no ray of hope the void to fillBut lends to gloomy thoughts more sadness still.All nature hushed beneath a snowy shroudDarkness and death their sovereign rule decreeO, reign of dread, of cruel blasts that killThy cycle brings a heavy heart to me.How many thus their Winter’s advent viewWhose darkened faith no daylight ever knew.Alas for him who thinks the grave his doomOr sees the sun go down behind the tomb.“Seek and ye shall find”. On every handMute prophecies their mission tell.Yield but a listening ear and they shall say‘The dead but sleep, they do not pass away’Else why mid earth and heaven on yonder treeThat type of life in death, the living tomb?Why the imago from dark cerements freeWinging its upward flight from earthly gloom?Why this device supreme unless a prophecyOf resurrected life and immortality.Oh thou whose downcast eyes refuse to seekSee! even at the grave the sign is given.The snow-clad evergreen, eternal lifeClothed in celestial purity from heaven.Even thus life’s Winter should be blestNot dark and dead but full of peace and rest.
A WINTER IDYL—Prologue—
A chill sad ending of a dreary day.The waning light in stillness dies away.Bequeaths no ray of hope the void to fillBut lends to gloomy thoughts more sadness still.All nature hushed beneath a snowy shroudDarkness and death their sovereign rule decreeO, reign of dread, of cruel blasts that killThy cycle brings a heavy heart to me.How many thus their Winter’s advent viewWhose darkened faith no daylight ever knew.Alas for him who thinks the grave his doomOr sees the sun go down behind the tomb.“Seek and ye shall find”. On every handMute prophecies their mission tell.Yield but a listening ear and they shall say‘The dead but sleep, they do not pass away’Else why mid earth and heaven on yonder treeThat type of life in death, the living tomb?Why the imago from dark cerements freeWinging its upward flight from earthly gloom?Why this device supreme unless a prophecyOf resurrected life and immortality.Oh thou whose downcast eyes refuse to seekSee! even at the grave the sign is given.The snow-clad evergreen, eternal lifeClothed in celestial purity from heaven.Even thus life’s Winter should be blestNot dark and dead but full of peace and rest.
SILENTLY, like thoughts that come and go, the snow-flakes fall, each one a gem. The whitened air conceals all earthly trace, and leaves tomemory the space to fill. I look upon a blank, whereon my fancy paints, as could no hand of mine, the pictures and the poems of a boyhood life; and even as the undertone of a painting, be it warm or cool, shall modify or change the color laid upon it, so this cold and frosty background through the window transfigures all my thoughts, and forms them into winter memories legion like the snow. Oh that I could translate for other eyes the winter idyl painted there! I see a living past whose counterpart I well could wish might be a common fortune. I see in all its joyous phases the gladsome winter in New England, the snow-clad hills with bare and shivering trees, the homestead dear, the old gray barn hemmed in with peaked drifts. I see the skating-pond, and hear the ringing, intermingled shouts of the noisy, shuffling game, the black ice written full with testimony of the winter’s brisk hilarity. Down the hard-packed road with glancing sled I speed, past frightened team and startled way-side groups; o’er “thank you, marms,” I fly in clear mid-air, and crouching low, with sidelong spurts of snowy spray, I sweep the sliding curve. Now past the village church and cosy parsonage. Now scudding close beneath the hemlocks, hanging low with their piled and tufted weight of snow. The way-side bits like dizzy streaks whiz by, the old rail fence becomes a quivering tint of gray. The road-side weeds bow after me, and in the swirling eddy chasing close upon my feet, sway to and fro. Soon, like an arrow from the bow, I shoot across the “Town Brook” bridge, and, jumping out beyond, skip the sinking ground, and with an anxious eye and careful poise I “trim the ship,” and, hoping, leave the rest to fate.
Perhaps I land on both runners, perhaps I don’t; that depends. I’ve tried both ways I know, and if I remember rightly, I always found it royal jolly fun; for what cared I at a bruise, or a pint of snow down my back, when I got it there myself?
The average New England boy is hard to kill, and I was one of that kind. Any boy who could brave the hidden mysteries and capricious favoritism of those fifteen dislocating “thank you, marms,” andhang togetherthrough it all, and, having so done, finish that experience with a plunging double somersault into a crusted snow-bank, or, perchance, into a stone wall—if he can do this, I say, and survive the fun, then there is no reason why he should not live to tell of it in old age, for never in the flesh will he go through a rougher ordeal. I’ve known a boy who “hatedthe old district school because the hard benches hurt him so,” and who would rest his aching limbs for hours together in this gentle sort of exercise. “The fine print made his eyes ache, and he couldn’t study;” and yet when one day he comes home with one eye all colors of the rainbow, “it’snothing.” “Consistency is a jewel.” Boys don’t generally wear jewels. But they are all alike. Boys will be boys, and if they only live through it, they will some day look back and wonder at their good fortune.
At the foot of that long hill the “Town Brook” gurgles on its winding way, and passing beneath the weather-beaten bridge, it makes a sudden turn, and spreads into a glassy pond behind the bulwarks of the saw-mill dam. In summer, were we as near as this, we would hear the intermittent ring of the whizzing saw, the clanking cogs, and the tuneful sounds of the falling bark-bound slabs; but now, like its bare willows that were wont to wave their leafy boughs with caressing touch upon the mossy roof, the old mill shows no sign of life. Its pulse is frozen, and the silent wheel is resting from its labors beneath a coverlet of snow. Who is there who has not in some recess of the memory a dear old haunt like this, some such sleeping pond radiant with reflections of the scenes of early life? Thither in those winter days we came, our numbers swelled from right and left with eager volunteers for the game, till at last, almost a hundred strong, we rally on the smooth black ice.