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AROUND AN
OLD HOMESTEAD

A look of ilftttomB

"By
PAUL GRISWOLD HUSTON

Author of
"An Old-Fashioned Sugar Camp
AND Other Dreams of the Woods"

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM
NEW YORK; EATON AND MAINS

PREFACE

THE BARNYARD GATE.

jHIS is but a small sheaf among many
others; for, as the floor of the woods
is covered with fallen leaves and pieces
of detached bark, so the little wood-
land of my thoughts is strewn over with
these rough fragments and memories.
Yet the old homestead still stands as
I have written it. There is no latch-
string. It is always open to receive us.
I wish I could say that I have in this
book made some distinct contribution
of my own to the appreciation and enjoyment of the
beauty of life. But it has at least expressed my trying,
and the intent perforce must be taken for the deed.

We can not all realize in our individual experiences
the life-thoughts of many diverse minds. We can
have but one attitude toward the world. I should feel,
then, at least repaid, if these pages, written at odd
moments among the fields and in the woods and be-
fore the open fireplace, and again beside the waters of
remembrance, could join some other pilgrim with my-
self, at this wayside shrine, in the worship of what we
shall call Nature, the beautiful, and the things of the
spirit.

PAUL GRISWOLD HUSTON.

Bevis, Ohio,

August, 1906.

The Old Homestead, . . . .

The Open Wood Fire,

The Old Muzzle- loading Rifle,

The Barn, . . . . .

The Woods,

Squirrels and Squirrel Hunting,

Some Thoughts about My Dog,

The Orchard, -----

Harvest, ------

The Papaw Thicket, - - - -

Nature and the City, - - - -

Nature and the Problem of Suffering,
The Wood Thrush : A Sonnet, -
A Prayer,

Page

39
71
76

113
190
228
241
265
286
306
333
3^3
364

NOTE

Nearly all of the illustrations are from amateur photo-
graphs taken expressly for this book by Mr. George N. Jen-
nings, Mr. James W. Young, and the author, but of these
Mr. Jennings has contributed by far the greatest number. I
am indebted, however, to Mr. Alexander Thomson for the
picture entitled "Man's Best Friend," to Mr. Lee Harris
Huston for "The Squirrel Hunter," and to Mr. Ernest Har-
old Baynesior "The Gray Squirrel." Of professional pho-
tographers, Mr. Paul Fleur has given his assistance with the
frontispiece, "Old Spot and Her Owner," and "A Country
Lane," and Mr. A. E. Rosebaum with "The Old Fire-
place." The illustrations are believed to reproduce faithfully
many of the typical scenes and occupations around the old
homestead.

LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS

The Old Homestead. Frontispiece.

Page

A Grapevine Festoon, 3

The Barnyard Gate, - 5

The Front Entrance, 7

A Grapevine Swing, - - 9

The Porch by the Well, 15

The Rockery, 21

"Wild Flowers and Ferns,'' 22

The Bed of Red Lilies, 23

"Westward Ho'" 27

The Parlor in Summer, 29

"The Old Oaken Bucket," 32

"The Decent Church that Topped the Neighboring Hill," 34

A Gable, 36

The Old Fireplace, 38

The Old Sugar Kettle, 39

Split Wood Ranked Up in the Woods, 48

The Woodshed, 51

The Embers. - 69

The Old Muzzle-loader, 71

lO LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page

The Henry. 72

Antlers and Powder-horn, 75

Old Dollie, 76

The Barn, -11

The Shadow of a Cloud (A View from the Barn Door), - 81
The Smokehouse, ---------- 84

The Old Saddlebags, 85

A Drink at the Trough, -------- 87

"The Cows are Coming Home," ------ 89

Old Spot and Her Owner, - - - ----- 91

Pitchfork and Flail, - - -110

A Stretch of the Woods, -- 112

A Mossy Log, - - - 113

"The Vast Cathedral of God's Trees," - - - - - 115

The Road Through the Woods, ------- 121

"An Abandoned Path," -------- 127

The Old Rail Fence, -------- 133

" Yonder . . . We Can See the Sugar Cami'," - - - . 141

A Prostrate Monarch, 146

A Seat in the Forest, --------- 147

Twisied Trees, ....-----. 150

United Sycamores, -..-----. 151

"Along the Brooks '• ..------ 153

"The Old Home Tree," -------- 156

A Veteran of Three Hundred, ------ 153

"Wreathed Pillars of Living Green," ----- 1(35

Twin Sisters, ---------- 167

"The Eyelashes of the Forest," ...... jgg

Iniiialsand Hieroglyphics, ------- i/x

"The Sunshine Mottling the Leaves," ----- 177

Staghorns, ----------- 189

The Squirrel Hunter, --------- 190

The Gray Squirrel, - - - - 191

A Suuirrel's Home, --------- 227

Man's Best Friend. --------- 228

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. II

Pagb

Mac's Collar, - 238

The Orchard: With the Vineyard and Farm Buildings in the

Distance, - 240

Apple Blossoms, 241

Picking Apples, 243

The Tulpehocken, - - 247

The Cider Press, - - 249

"We Can Hang Our Scythe Conveniently in Some of the

Gnarled and Crinkled Crotches, 255

A Bough of Apples, " ■ 264

Sickles, '" 265

In the Hayfield, " " 267

After the Load, - "" 271

" Little Brown Jug, Don't I Love Thee!" - - - -274

Cradling Wheat, 275

The Old-time Way, -..- 276

Modern Harvesting, - - 277

" What Shall THE Harvest Be ?" 278

The Harvest, 285

Papaws, with a Spray of Leaves, 286

A Papaw Woods, 287

Quite a Cluster ! 290

" The Wigwams OF THE Forest," 293

Papaw Blossoms, - - - - 296

A Clump of Papaw Leaves and Fruit, - - - - 305

A Country Lane, - 306

Country Pastimes, -------- - 307

" Where are the Flowers, and Where is the Grass?" - 317

Under the Blue, - - - .-.--- 332

A Plundered Nest, - - - 333

" The Lilies OF THE Field," 362

The Wood Thrush, - - ------- 363

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD

"Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plent>' cheered the laboring swain,
Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting Summer's lingerings blooms delayed!
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease —
Seats of my youth, when everj' sport could please !
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!"

— Goldsmith.

U

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

"There is an appearance of comfort and freedom about this old house
that renders it a pleasing: object to almost every eye. . . . The charm of
these old houses, which are marked by neatness and plainness, and by an
absence of all pretension, is founded on the natural yearning of every
human soul after freedom and simplicity.

—Wilson Flagg.

"But I 'warrant you 'd find the old as snug as the new did you lift the latch.
For the human heart keeps no whit more w^arm under slate than beneath
the thatch."

— Alfred Austin.

I HE RE are few more picturesque spots
than the gently rolling country of south-
western Ohio. The old homestead of
which I write nestles quietly among its
hills. It is not far distant from the his-
toric Fort Colerain, or Dunlap's Station,
as it was sometimes called, on the bluffs
of the Great Miami, where, in the winter
of 1790-91, an attack was made on the
garrison by Indians, led by the renegade
Simon Girty, and a detachment of soldiers had to be
sent out from Fort Washington, on the Ohio, to their
aid. The old earthworks of the fort can yet be dis-
tinguished in outline from the highway along the river.
The upward slopes across the stream can be seen very
plainly from our vantage point; and it is one of the
diversions on clear days to observe that part of the
country through a field glass, and pick out the various
farms, and speculate upon the buildings and fields that
are too obscure to determine definitely.
2 IS

THE PORCH BY THE WELL.

l6 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

An old log cabin, double-roomed, once stood near
the site of the present homestead, in pioneer days, and
still another, for temporary occupancy, while the farm-
stead was in building. It was in the former of these
that grandfather kept all his money, hid behind a loose
chunk, or board, in the attic. There was a little square
hole left in the logs, on the ground floor, and through
this the children used to peep at the travelers along
the highway. A path led out to the road, and they
crossed the fence by means of a stile. I have recon-
structed the old cabin in my thought, surrounded with
roses, and with its clapboard roof, its plowed-and-
grooved board floor, and its old-time windows (some
of the pioneer cabins boasted puncheon floors, and had
tanned deerskins for the panes), and I know of one
old man who was born in it who has since become a
lawyer and judge in a great city, and whose practice
has extended to the highest tribunal in the land, the
Supreme Court of the United States at Washington.

Most of these log cabins of the early settlers have
long ago been superseded by more substantial struc-
tures; but the attachment of their descendants to these
old homesteads has generally kept them in possession
of the family line, and each has its legends that go back
to the Indians. My grandfather's was located in a
region evidently once a favorite haunt of the red man.
Flints, even now, are plowed up nearly every year.
Indeed, one field used to be so strewn with arrowheads
that we thought it must have been the scene of a battle,
or at least the site of an encampment.

Starting from his father's farm, some few miles
away, on horseback, with his money in silver in the

THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 17

saddlebags, my grandfather came to this, his final home,
in January, 1822, almost blazing his way through the
woods; and here he began the hard life of a pioneer,
felling trees and opening up the land for cultivation.
His father had settled near the homestead in 1795,
not long after Mad Anthony Wayne had gone through
these parts after the Indians, having come from Penn-
sylvania to the Western frontier with just one hundred
and fifty dollars In silver, which he had saved from the
wreck of the Continental currency; and his father had
been a soldier in the Revolution, and gave his life at
the battle of the Brandywine. He (grandfather's
father) simply followed Wayne's trail, or the old mili-
tary road, until he found the situation he wished, and
there settled. The homestead was a gift to his son,
for the old gentleman managed to leave a large farm
to each of the seven children that survived him; and
grandfather, having the choice of two, between one in
the bottoms and one on the hills, chose this on the up-
land. In later years grandfather added to his original
patrimony by purchases of adjoining tracts, until finally
he footed up the grand total of some three hundred
and sixty solid acres of some of the best farming land
in the county — one hundred acres of woodland, and the
rest in pastures and tilled ground.

Grandmother herself had in 1820, at the age of
seventeen, along with others, made the long trip in a
prairie schooner from far-off New Jersey, in the dead
of winter, cooking her meals, as did the rest, by open-
air fires all through the snow-clad Alleghanies. She
came with memories of how her mother, when once
in attendance as a young girl at Commencement Day

1 8 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

at the College of New Jersey, at Princeton, had been
assisted up the steps of Nassau Hall by no less a per-
sonage than General George Washington himself, who
was present on the occasion, and whom the ladies had
honored with garlands of roses; reaching here finally.
In the frontier West, to become the wife of a pioneer
farmer. Far back there in New Jersey, too, shortly
after the War of i8 12, at a tavern where grandmother
was once visiting, a coach had stopped before the door,
and a lady had alighted from it for her dinner — a lady
who was on her way to Philadelphia to meet her hus-
band, General Winfield Scott, who had just acquired
fame at the battle of Lundy's Lane, near Niagara.
The family had come West four years before grand-
mother came, but her mother had missed the girl, and
so sent her brother and a neighbor far back towards
the ocean, for her to leave home and kindred and join
fortunes with them in the West beyond the mountains.
And it was that same girl who, years afterward, once
stood a whole squad of soldiers at bay, while she pro-
tected her property and demanded back the young horse
which they had taken, because it belonged to her son,
who was fighting for the Union in the war.

Now grandfather himself was quite a hero-wor-
shiper. They would flatboat their grain and other
produce to New Orleans in pioneer days, imd be gone
a month or over; and on the return on horseback
overland through the Indian nations, and through Mis-
sissippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, grandfather once
saw, just below the city of Nashville, General Andrew
Jackson, who bowed and spoke to him on the wayside.
Jackson had a colored servant with him. When the
party reached Nashville and learned it was actually

THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 1 9

Jackson they had seen, they felt like going back to
meet him again; for no mere passing salutation would
have sufficed to show their loyalty to the general.

There is no doubt that hordes of Indians have
threaded the woods that once covered all the land on
which the old homestead now stands. It has been one
of the traditions hereabouts that an old Indian, of the
Miamis, and not so many years ago at that, used to
come back and visit certain families — especially those
of hunting proclivities — and stay again for a while
among the scenes and hills that he had loved so well.

After the wedding, on January 15, 18^22, grand-
father took his wife in front of him on horseback, and
they thus made their honeymoon together to the cabin ;
and there, and in the homestead, they lived together
for over fifty years. My father, when a lad but eight
or ten years old, until the country was opened up, fol-
lowed, in company with his sister, a blazed trail made
by grandfather through a woods three miles to school ;
and it was a dark and lonesome trip, with the experi-
ence, too, of occasionally getting lost, while the reports
of panthers traveling westward at the time made the
danger seem much greater. Mush and milk was a
common diet; and the boys' clothes in grandfather's
time used to be homespun, made of wool sheared from
his own sheep, which he drove down and washed in
the river, four miles away. The fleece was made into
rolls at the carding mill down by the river, and then
spun into thread by grandmother at the homestead, and
finally woven into patterned cloth for them at the
fuller's. Grandmother used to spin flax also, and
trousers and coats were made of the tow for the boys.
All the blankets on the farm were of home manufac-

20 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

ture, and she knitted their own socks. Grandmother
herself would ply the wheel, with its distaff and spindle,
and sing the ballad of "Barbara Allen" and the other
tunes of long ago. It is not often that an old-time
spinning wheel is seen nowadays, at least in operation.
The one used by grandmother is still kept at the home-
stead, as a sort of relic, or reminder, of the days that
have gone. Their life seems free and beautiful, as we
look at it, in those olden days. I think of Priscilla
and John Alden. Yet theirs was but one of numerous
other such pioneer experiences out here in the Western
wilderness.

The house — like "Clovernook," and not far from
it — was built of bricks made from clay dug on grand-
father's own land, a stone's throw from the site of the
building. Oxen turned the great poles and wheels In
the mixing. They were large bricks, of the old-fash-
ioned kind; and the foundation walls, too, came from
the farm, and the lumber for the woodwork, and the
big rough stones that flag the porches' entrances.
Grandfather had his own lime kiln, and burnt the
stones from the brook for the lime for his mortar.
The date of the erection, 1834, was graven on the
lintel, above the doorway — not so very ancient, it is
true, but still far enough back to leave an atmosphere
of romance and old-time ways lingering about the place
and curling up in the fragrant wood-smoke from the
chimneys. Threads of poetry twine about it with the
woodbine which clambers over the walls and waves its
sprays across the windows. Within Its Ivy-mantled
sides one may get a glimpse of the older generations
and their life, now almost passed away. The old home-
stead Itself seems almost a thing of the past, so linked

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

21

are all its associations with the times of sixty years
ago. There is an atmosphere of age about it which
makes it exceedingly restful in these rushing times of
to-day. It is like a cool, mossy spring beside a dusty
road.

We can see it, as we approach, by the tops of the
spruces, or the big black walnut out by the gate. The
place is surrounded with evergreens and maples, and
there was a large hemlock at one time near a summer-
house bowered in roses. Two enormous Mayduke
sweet cherry-trees formerly grew in the front yard, one
with great expanding limbs, like an oak, and with a
trunk diameter of close to thirty inches — the wonder,
and, in cherry time, the envy, of all who saw it.
Myrtle spreads beneath the spruces; two dogwoods,
planted years ago, blow masses of white in springtime;
petunias and roses paint the walks; hollyhocks border
the buildings; nasturtiums nod and sprangle in the
rockery; wild flowers and ferns from the woods droop
and play in under the cedars; and a bed of red lilies
colors the way to the garden. With its broad open

THE ROCKERY.

22

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

lawn, 'tis a place for archery; a spot, too, for box-
wood hedges and a sundial. Croquet, however, has
had its innings as the favorite outdoor amusement, and

"wild flowers and ferns.'

many a stiff game of quoits has been pitched across
the sward with horseshoes.

Waxwings build their nests amid the cedar boughs
that brush the house; a bluebird yearly has its home in
the hollow limb of a dead sweet cherry; the little nests
of song sparrows are well concealed there among the
blackberries; and English sparrows chirp and twitter
about the eaves, and long straws from their nests hang
from the corners. In the days cardinals and robins
and many other beautifully colored birds come whis-
ling and fluting about it; toward nightfall swallows
dart and soar above, and bats flutter and girate to and
fro, while katydids rasp away in the maples, and the
crickets drone out in the fields; and later, in the dusky
places, the whip-poor-wills and screech owls cry, while
round about whispers the never-ending soughing of the
pines and spruces.

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

23

Formerly great flocks of wild pigeons used to fly
over the farm, sometimes even darkening the sun in
their flight — pigeons, pigeons everywhere, as far as
the eye could reach. Wild turkeys piped through the
woods, and wolves came up back of the barn at night
and howled. But these have all gone, and it is a rare
thing nowadays to see even a single little flock of a
dozen wild pigeons, and the people remember the year
when they see them.

Around upon the estate are various orchards —
apples, pears, quinces, apricots, peaches, cherries, plums;
and many kinds of berries — strawberries (of which,
't was said, so tells old Izaak Walton, that "doubtless
God could have made a better berry, but doubtless
God never did"), red and black raspberries, black-
berries, and, some time past, a patch of dewberries

THE BED OF RED LILIES.

24 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and one of currants. On a hillside gently sloping from
the house innumerable clusters of white and purple
grapes hang, luscious and sweet, beneath the sheltering
shade of the broad green leaves of the vineyard. Pas-
tures flank the roadsides, and fields of clover, wheat,
and corn, where golden pumpkins dot the brown earth
Nin the autumn. A large woods serves as a wind-break
/' toward the West, and its masses of dark foliage and
, the antlered tips intensify and prolong the beauty and
\ mystery of the slow-dying sunsets.

I think of Horace on his Sabine farm. Sometimes,
too, as I look at it, I think of Hawthorne and the old
manse. 'T is an ideal life — otium cum dignitate.
What more could one wish?

The homestead is one of the few old places now
left in this vicinity. Almost all the others have become
too modernized. But it is not like our modern houses.
It has never been rented; and the people who live in
it have never moved. So, although not far from the
city, the homestead is suggestive always of old-time
memories and old-time customs, and affords one of the
unusual opportunities, nowadays, where we can see
old-time ways still practiced, the wheat cradled, the
maple sap boiled in kettles, soft soap made from the
wood ashes, and the open fire in the sitting-room.

During one season ("befo' de wah") as many as
one hundred and fifty thousand hogs were driven past
along the turnpike down to the city of Cincinnati, at
that time the great pork market of the country. The
old homestead became a sort of tavern at such times,
and the drovers used to stop over night. The road
would become all ruts and wallows. But all that has

THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 25

changed, too, with the years, and the extension of rail-
road facilities and the opening of the many other
Western packing-houses have sadly diminished the great
droves of hogs; yet even I can remember more than
once seeing the turnpike black with droves containing
several hundred, and great herds of lowing cattle, and
flocks of hundreds of sheep as well, panting and bleat-
ing along on their way to the stockyards.

How many memories there are that thus cluster
about an old house ! The customs and loves of years
ago are there — 1834. The old people now living in
it can tell of incidents that occurred in the first cam-
paign of Martin Van Buren ; and the recollections of
the aunts go back even further, to a time when, as little
girls, they had listened to the tales of a neighbor, an
old woman then, who was the daughter of a soldier
of the Revolution. She had, as a child in New Jersey,
baked loaves of bread, very long, large loaves, for the
American soldiers; and once, when fired upon by the
British, she had jumped over a fence, and had fallen
as if dead, and had then been left there by them. The
old homestead, as I have said, is also itself practically
on the site of a log cabin built in pioneer days, and the
well in the yard dates back to the earliest settlements
in the Miami Valley, It has never been rewalled, and
its moss-covered stone sides still contain the sweetest,
best of sparkling water in the world. When we hear
these tales, and think of these associations with the past,
it stirs our blood, and it is almost as if we were our-
selves thus joined in a way, and link by link, to the
very origin of the Republic.

Afar off, at certain times, I used to (and can yet)

26 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

hear faintly, floating up in sweet mellow tones, the
deep whistles of the big river steamers on the Ohio,
fifteen miles away; and in the distance, again, across
the rolling hills, on still days, could be heard the rumble
and tooting of the train on its way toward the North.
I used to think it one of the wildest places possible
upon such occasions. It seemed as if we were remote
and isolated from the whole world, and I enjoyed it.

There is a large picture in the sitting-room, which
long ago excited my imagination, entitled "Westward
Ho!" A pioneer has just returned from a hunt, and,
coming into his lean-to hut with his game — a deer
slung over his pony's back, and a raccoon and opossum
and some wild turkeys lying on the ground — stands
leaning on his long muzzle-loading rifle surveying the
scene, while his wife looks up admiringly into his eyes.
His oldest boy is taking the deer from the horse; the
children are playing about a spring of water; and
supper simmers over the open fire beside the spring.
A river winds its way not far distant among the hills.
An improvised shack is the home, with a roof of bark.
The whole picture set the wild blood and love of ad-
venture aglow in me, and I quivered for the life of
the forest. It seemed to me then, in my young boy-
hood days, and still seems, as I look upon it, the sym-
bol of all that is independent and adventuresome and
truly American. It speaks of the wild life that used
to be when the forests were here upon every hill, and
when Audubon could stop for the night and kill a wild
turkey for supper at almost any point along the Ohio.

There used to be another picture, in the dining-
room, which not only excited my imagination, but

w
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C

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THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

29

aroused all my patriotism when still young. It repre-
sented the early Revolutionary days. A soldier on
horseback, with a drum, had hurriedly come to a settler
in the fields, to announce the war and to ask. for volun-
teers. The farmer was leaving his team and his plow
at the call of his country, and one or two others were
hurrying up also with their guns. I suppose it was
meant to suggest Lexington times, but I used secretly

THE PARLOR IN SUMMER.

to hope also that perhaps the patriotic farmer was
really General Putnam himself.

The big, cool double parlor, as well as the sitting-
room, has a huge open fireplace at each end, In front
of which, when unused, lie deer horns and various
shells. Heavy wide-opening doors separate the two
rooms in the parlor from each other when wished.
Grandfather and grandmother celebrated their golden
wedding in this room, and on its walls are the family

30 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

portraits, all in a frame together, taken at the time of
the golden wedding, no one yet having passed over the
border, and the oldest of the ten being then within a
year of fifty.

Beneath the parlor is the cool brick cellar, with its
tables set with crocks of milk and cream, and, in their
season, bins of apples and potatoes, pumpkins and
squashes, barrels of cider, and demijohns of wine fresh-
crushed from the grape.

Old-fashioned silhouettes hang on the walls, or rest
on the bureaus, along with several mottoes. The pic-
ture frames and mantelpieces are adorned with branches
of beautiful scarlet leaves in autumn, and perhaps a
short twig with a humming-bird's nest will be laid on
a bracket. A tall clock used to stand in the corner
of the sitting-room, by the stairway.

In the rooms above are family trees, made in
wreaths from the hair of the different members for
generations, taken from the locks of every relative,
far and near. In one of the front chambers are still
to be seen four large iron hooks in the beams of the
ceiling, on which hung the quilting frames of years
ago. Here, during the days, were held merry quilting
parties; and at night the frames were again pulled up
and fastened to the hooks, so that the beds underneath
could be used. The piles of brightly patched quilts,
in their old-fashioned patterns (such as Rising Sun,
Jacob's Ladder, Log Cabin, Irish Chain, and Path in
the Wilderness — all pioneer names), folded away in
the closets, attest the frequent use of these hooks.

The old well is on the crest of a ridge, and that
ridge, a very wide one, where also stands the home-

THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 3 1

stead, is the highest point of land in a stretch of forty
miles. The well curb has been banked up on the out-
side somewhat, making a little rise in the ground, so
that there is a slight slope on all sides from the open-
ing. This and the fact of its having been dug on the
top of a ridge prevent any surface water from filter-
ing through immediately into the well, except in very
heavy rains; and it consequently has. In summer and
winter, autumn and spring, the same sweetness and
purity of taste — the very best water I have ever drunk,
from wells, springs, brooks, or rivers, in all the six-
teen States in which it has been my fortune to drink
water. I have never found any water even at all
approaching it except at a well some miles away, and
that must have come from the same vein; and when
the water is drawn from the northeast corner of the
old well, in a genuine "old oaken bucket," I believe
nothing on earth can equal It.

This well Is known to be at least one hundred years
old. It was here when grandfather first saw the place,
and the land had changed hands twice before that.
The walls have never been renewed — It has never been
necessary to rewall It — and the stones are covered with
rich green mosses, dripping and sparkling and beau-
tiful. Grandfather thought he would make a new wall
some time, but It is left, nevertheless, with its curiously
curved sides, just as It was in the eighteenth century,
except that we have a new well curb. It is about
twenty-five feet deep, and many a cup, or bucket, or
hat, let fall by young or careless hands, has had to
be dragged out of it with the grappling hooks.. I lov-e
to look down into its cool, black depths. A drop from
3

32

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

a spray of moss falls with a bell-like tinkle, and con-
centric rings spread from its center, causing the surface
of the water to shiver and dance in diminutive wavelets
rippling lightly from one side to another. Here, at
least, whether in harvest-time or when snow is drift-
ing, one can always have a cup of the water of life
(shall we say?), clear as crystal, icy-cold, and as sweet
as the sap which falls from the maples. One end of
the windlass, which is nearly as old as the well, is as
smooth as glass, worn through long years, and showing
the grain of the wood as if oiled, where we have held
our hands, as a sort of brake, in letting the bucket
descend rapidly, instead of slowly turning the handle,
thus causing it to plunge at last with a ketchunk! below
the surface, to rise again in a shower of spray. Many
a stranger, staying for a time to rest in the shade, has
been grateful for the refreshing draught it gives. It
has become quite famous for its
water, having been there during the
cabin days, and travelers always
have stopped beside it.

Sparrows sit on the edges of the
long carrying trough (made out of
a tree) that leads from the well,
and dip their bills in the water as it
courses past them, while in the big
receiving watering trough at the
other end the horses, cows, calves,
and chickens, and all the animals
on the farm except the hogs slake
their thirst, and plunge their noses
deep into the crystal pool, or
'the old oaken bucket."

THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 33

cool themselves by letting the stream come gushing
against their chops as they drink. How they love it !
I have heard that horsehairs, plucked from the horses'
tails without others' knowledge, have been turned (curi-
ously!) into long, thin, wriggling snakes, if allowed
to remain in the big trough for a certain secret period.
There was always something about the old trough that
had considerable mystery to it.

Samuel Woodworth has immortalized himself in
but one well-known poem, "The Old Oaken Bucket,"
but that sweet and rustic refrain has made many a heart
happier and better in the memory of the delicious
draughts of childhood. Who, too, that ever lived in
the country, can not repeat the lines with Woodworth,
and say,

" How sweet from the green, mossy rim to receive it,
As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips!
Not a full, blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
The brightest that beauty or revelry sips."

I think that no better poem was ever written upon
country life.

Indeed, the favorite songs of the place have always
been after the order of "The Old Oaken Bucket,"
itself perhaps the most enjoyed; such as "My Old
Kentucky Home," "Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," "Annie
Laurie," and "Auld Lang Syne," with "Old Folks at
Home," "Blue Bells of Scotland," "Dixie," and "Robin
Adair" as close seconds. In the olden days four of
the seven boys of the family (there were three girls
also) formed a drum corps of their own — two fifes,
a rattling tenor drum, and a booming bass — and strolled
the country round about at times as the peerless and

34 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

envied rivals of every other band of wandering min-
strels.

The old homestead and the hamlet remind me of
Goldsmith's poem,

" Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain."

Ah, so it is! Yet I am reminded also of the "Elegy"
by the myrtle covered cemetery amid the evergreens,
where,

" Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep " —

and by the barn, and the swallows, and the beautiful
evenings, and many other things as well, of that fine
old inspiration of Gray's. But things have changed.
The village does not now have quite the old-time aspect
that once it had. The old families have nearly all
passed away, new ones have come in with their modern
houses, the woods have pretty well been cut down, even
the familiar faces have become altered. Only a mem-
ory remains (but 'twill linger for aye) of what the
village once so poetically stood for in my boyhood.
The spirit of reminiscence comes upon me. I see

"the decent church that topped the neighboring hill."

THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 35

the old place as I loved it years ago, surrounded with
its evergreens and maples, in its rural simplicity ex-
pressive of all that is good in life. I think of the cool
water as it courses down the long trough. I carve my
initials on the barn door. I am a boy again, happy and
free, and the squirrels are playing and barking In the
trees, calling me to them. Ah, I loved the old place!
Yet I can not see that I love it any the less now. I
think of it as of no other spot. It has changed, asV
have all things, in the years ; but, within its ivy-entwined
walls — ^where the good old mottoes, "Live and let
live" and "Make friends and keep them," are prac-
ticed in the every-day hospitality of life, and where
plain living and high thinking are not the exception, but
the general rule — here, then, still dwell happiness and
old-time living. The atmosphere of the place is one
of rest, and quietness, and simple ways. Here one
may live in comfort and seclusion, and at peace with
the world.

Alice Cary has a beautiful poem entitled "The
Old Homestead," and I shall give a stanza or two of
it, as, in her fine poetic gift, she has expressed what
can best be said in verse, after all, and is therefore
a fit tribute to that halo of love and of mystery which
still surrounds the homestead of these memories:

" When skies are growing warm and bright.

And in the woodland bowers
The Spring-time in her pale, faint robes

Is calling up the flowers,
When all with naked little feet

The children in the mom
Go forth, and in the furrows drop

The seeds of yellow com ;

36 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

What a beautiful embodiment

Of ease devoid of pride
Is the good old-fashioned homestead,

With its doors set open wide !

*' When home the woodsman plods with ax

Upon his shoulders swung,
And in the knotted apple-tree

Are scythe and sickle hung ;
When low about her clay-built nest

The mother swallow trills,
And decorously slow, the cows

Are wending down the hills ;
What a blessed picture of comfort,

In the evening shadows red.
Is the good, old-fashioned homestead,

With its bounteous table spread !

** But whether the brooks be fringed with flowers,

Or whether the dead leaves fall.
And whether the air be full of songs,

Or never a song at all,
And whether the vines of the strawberries

Or frosts through the grasses run,
And whether it rain or whether it shine

Is all to me as one.
For bright as brightest sunshine

The light of memorj' streams
Round the old-fashioned homestead.

Where I dreamed my dream of dreams !"

THE OLD FIREPLACE.

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE.

"Mankind has never \villing:ly relinquished the camp-fire. It is not
preference, but necessity, that has driven him indoors. Even there he car-
ried and rekindled its embers, and it became the hearth-fire : a flame, sister
to the flame of love. So much he rescued from the loss of Paradise."

— William Cunningham Gray.

"Then leave that buzzing hive, the city mart;
Come, while my gnarl'd oaks hold their wreath of snows.
Come to a country hearth, and let your heart —
Mellow^ed by midnight, w^hile the back-logr glows-
Touch on the themes most dear."

-Lloyd Mifflin.

I HE RE is nothing like a wood fire.
The blaze crackles out good cheer
in truly royal fashion. It is one
of the real privileges of country
life, a rightly venerated luxury.
How clean the wood fire is, and
how fragrant and suggestive the
perfume of the smoke ! There is
practically no soot, and the ashes
are easily taken away. It 's like
having a regular outdoor fire in
the house, and gives us a chance
to live as we ought to, in an at-
mosphere of mingled coziness and native enjoyment.
The fireplace itself is four feet wide and nearly
three deep, and the entrance is three feet high and is
slightly arched. That will hold a good-sized log,
you see, and many a heavy one have I hoisted and
flung into it, in constructing the fire, across the dogs.

39

THE OLD SUGAR KF.TTI.H.

40 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

The floor is of oak, and has never been renewed, and
the hearth is made of large bricks. We can see, in
under the edges of the carpet, the ends of the old oak
planks, still sound, next to the hearth. A couple of
andirons, a foot or so apart, stretch out toward the
back of the chimney. The slender iron rods that span
the hearth, as parallel supports for the wood, are each
elevated a few inches at the rear by a small leg, or
pin, which is simply a bent-over extension of the hori-
zontal cross-piece itself; and they are raised at the
front to an equal height by two side-projecting feet,
or stems, apiece, attached to the framework. Above
these fore bases are two large metal uprights, which
serve to keep the wood from spreading too far, and
to uphold the backlog, should it ever fall forward.
These erect and prominent standards are generally of
brass (or, rarely, of hand-forged bronze), formed into
bosses, or scrollwork, or other studded and armor-like
devices, which are sometimes very curiously artistic
and ornamental; and, when well burnished, they reflect
in a dancing flicker the light of the fire. In pioneer
days they were used to sustain the ends of the spits in
cooking, and answered the purpose as a sort of trevet.
Those in front of the old fireplace before us date from
close to the eighteenth century, and are composed of a
series of brass knobs one above another, and the braces
beneath them are also of brass. The fire irons, too,
are often wrought in relief, with very attractive designs
in the antique.

It is always interesting to observe the different
sizes and kinds of wood thrown on a fire in the making
of it. There are few pleasures equal to the building

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 4 1

of one. First, of course, comes the huge backlog itself,
perhaps half a log of sugar maple, preferably green,
pounded and riven in two with maul and wedges, and
with moss, and shreds of bark, and lichens still hanging
to it; and now slung, back of the andirons and propped
up by them, against the chimney, as the reflector and
mainstay of the fire and the protection of the chimney
walls. Then a good-sized forestick will be placed
down in front, close to the uprights and on the trans-
verse shafts; and perhaps that is part of an old dead
oak, cut and split up now into wood. A few dry beech
leaves, or bean pods, or shucks, may be used as kind-
lings to start a blaze with, down in between the irons,
among the ashes, and set afire by a few live coals raked
and poked out from within the embers; and on top of
these we shall put a handful of shavings, or some chips,
or fragments of an old board or shingle, or a few
picked-up splinters from a dilapidated fence rail; while,
still further, upon these materials, and resting on the
bars, between the forestick and the backlog, we shall
lay several smaller pieces of wood similar to the fore-
stick — one, say, of ash, another of beech, a stick or
two pruned from the limb of an apple-tree, and some
dead leafy twigs of an oak, — and in and out betwixt
them all we shall insert some long dry slivers of hickory
bark, with perhaps a thick roll from the rind of a
beech left standing up against the backlog, or above it,
surmounting the whole : — and then we shall have a fire
worthy the name! We shall enjoy it, then, through
the day, and with our fire shovel at night we shall cover
the remaining coals, and the ashes will keep the embers
until the morning.

42 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Hickory bark makes the hottest fire, and for this
reason, if obtainable, is always to be preferred in sugar-
making to put under the kettles. But, as a rule, an
apple-wood fire is the best for the house, for apple
does n't snap, but burns with a steady, beautiful flame;
though I like a good sugar fire also. For general pur-
poses as fuel, however, there is practically no wood
superior to maple or hickory, though there is almost
as much heat given out by the sycamore. I like to use
a little of oak and beech, too, if I have it, to add to
the variety. Buckeye and sour gum make the best back-
logs, outlasting any other kind of wood used for the
purpose; but they are not always to be had. Whole
sticks — limbs, or sections of saplings — are better than
split wood for fuel ; for the heart wood is the most com-
pact, while that in the outer circles of growth is more
porous and full of sap, and is thus less fibrous and
radiates less heat. Soft maple makes, in point of qual-
ity, the best charcoal of all the trees, but an ash-tree
gives the greatest percentage ; willow, too, is much used
for the purpose. A maple generally turns out about
twenty-three per cent of its bulk in charcoal, and an
ash twenty-five per cent. Water-soaked or porous wood
(like ash and oak) always snaps, as also do hickory
and locust. Gas imprisoned there will suddenly ex-
plode and send out sparks scattering all over a room,
to the sudden discomfiture of the terriers perchance
stretched out before the fire, who will start up and
scramble back with remarkable activity. A coal fire
may give out a greater heat for its size, but I will ven-
ture to say that, if I have a wide enough fireplace, I
can muster up a wood fire sufficiently hot for the most

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 43

exacting. The big huge wood fire of pioneer days
would heat quite a large room, as the living room gen-
erally was; and the same Is true of the few open fire-
places still left remaining in the old-time homesteads.
There is no need of a stove, if wood is plentiful.

How I love to watch the fire! How it curls and
laps around the wood, and licks its way in and out
among the foresticks ! Sometimes the big backlog itself
becomes a mass of red coals, with blue flames playing
and hovering above it, or peeping behind the flaky
bark that is perhaps still clinging to it. I love to see
it, and to dream before it in midnight fancies. As a
child I liked nothing better than to watch the endless
flocks of pigeons soaring away In the soot on the chim-
ney's back. The rosy-and-yellow spirals creep and
wrap about the burning brands, and over them, and
finally leap into beautiful pointed tongues above lap-
ping the chimney, or changing mayhap into sharp fangs,
entering and darting up the very funnel, or fleshing
their teeth fiercely against the chimney sides. And as
the logs hiss and crackle, and send out their heat and
steam, I seem to hear in them the music of the woods.
It Is the orchestra of the oaks and maples and the
others together on the hearth there that we hear again
now indoors, In the great fire chorus of the trees.

It is a rare enjoyment to poke and tend the fire.
Lots of people put a fire out by fixing it. They do n't
know how. It is quite an art to know how to stir up
a fire aright, and requires a certain instinct which can
not be cultivated. A fire-poker, like a. turkey-carver,
is born, not made.

The evemng circle about the fireplace is the occa-

44 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

slon for reminiscences without number of former days.
It is the time, too, for many a solemn thought and ten-
der recollection. We warm our toes before ascending
to the less hospitable sheets of winter nights, and the
little ones go to sleep counting the flocks of pigeons
which the flames have started up back there on the
bricks among the soot. Yarns — unspeakable for their
quaintness and cheerful exaggeration — hunting tales of
deer and 'coons, beech and hickory nuts and walnuts,
mulled cider and apples, mince and pumpkin pies, and
popcorn : — what a time we have of it ! There is sure
to be a ghost story, and there is generally one at hand
right in the neighborhood; but the ghost usually turns
out to be the trunk of a tree, with bare arms extended,
though frequently the younger hearers are left in an
uncomfortable mystery, the thought of which is by no
means reassuring when they take at dusk the long tramp
through the woods for the cows. Perhaps, on occa-
sion, a few sweet potatoes will be roasted In the ashes,
in the old American way, to be whisked out with a
turkey wing as a besom ; and then, the f amilar incident
of his offering the British officer a mess of baked sweet
potatoes served on bark furnishing the theme, exten-
slv^e morallzlngs will be entered Into upon the valor of
Francis Marion's men, with the inevitable conclusion
always finally reached that no one will ever be able to
whip America. Or It may be that we shall have a
fiddle during the evening, and shall laugh once more at
"The Arkansaw Traveler;" or a flute may play for us
"Robin Adair."

Every hearthslde is the place of immemorial family
tradition. How many such farmsteads dot the country

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 45

over, each with its threads of ancestry taking the in-
habitants back to their predecessors in New England,
or again tracing the generations across to old England,
or binding the family ties with Scotland, or possibly
other parts of Europe.

A crane, with its trammels, used to stretch out from
the jamb into the old fireplace, and a brass kettle hung
at its end, over the fire; and there was cooked on the
hearth the perennial mush for the evening meal in
pioneer days. Why, even after he had graduated
from the log cabin, father was still brought up on in-
numerable bowls of yellow cornmeal mush from the
begrimed and blackened old kettle. I have not eaten
mush boiled at the end of the crane, but I have helped
to boil down maple syrup in that fireplace, in the same
old kettle, after the sap had been reduced to a winy
consistency in the big caldrons at the camp, whence
it was brought up to simmer down still further into
thick, golden molasses in the open fireplace ; and I have^
never felt so full of happiness and romance and poetry
as when, amid all these old associations, I made maple
syrup that year alone among the trees. The old crane
is still about the farm. The brass kettles are still used,
and the big iron ones do their duty annually either at
the sugar camp or in boiling potatoes for the hogs.
Longfellow's poem, "The Hanging of the Crane,"
celebrates the beginning of household life, in a sort
of house-warming,

*' As in the chimney, burning bright,
We hung the iron crane to-night.
And merry was the feast and long."

46 AROUND. AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

There was a big brick oven built against the back
of the chimney, in the kitchen, in pioneer days, and
there were baked the many loaves of bread, and mince
and pumpkin pies; and it was no common baking, for
a family of twelve. They had a long wooden paddle,
broadly flattened at one end, with which they would
reach in at the door and lift and draw out the pies.

Things broiled or roasted before an open fireplace,
or even cooked on a wood stove, are the sweetest in
the world. I recollect serving an apprenticeship in the
art when deer hunting one autumn on Lookout Moun-
tain with some Georgia mountaineers; and I remember
how at night we would build a big roaring fire in our
crude and faulty, but spacious and unceremonious,
hearth (we slept in an old cabin), a veritable burning
pyre of pine bark piercing the stars, and would then
broil bacon over the coals, when the fire had died down.
We twisted the bacon onto the peeled and sharpened
ends of long, slim branches of beech, broken from the
trees near at hand, and thus kept at a distance from the
heat; and we sometimes broiled two or more pieces on
one stick. Now, after this introduction to, and ac-
quaintance with, that primitive and time-honored
method of cookery, I have never followed any other
when alone in the woods (except to roast things in the
ashes, such as potatoes, or ears of sweet corn with the
shucks still on them, or a quail rolled in mud), and I
find that It serves well for squirrel, rabbit, or venison,
the only disadvantage being that the meat, if not cooked
aright, becomes rather dry from the lack of basting
which roasting in an oven affords. But take a young
squirrel, in the fall of the year, after he has lived for a

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 47

time on the mast, or a rabbit well fattened In the fields,
and broil it carefully over a bed of wood coals In the
forest, delicately turning it and watching it, till the
skin becomes brown and crisp and the tender pink flesh
cracks apart slightly as it sizzles — and then. If It be
properly prepared, If this juicy morsel Is not the best
thing you ever tasted, and fit food for kings or the
gods — well, sir, then you are no epicure, and I will
have none of you !

Richard Jefferies has forever Immortalized country
cooking in this unrivaled description of a leg of mutton
roasted before an open fireplace. In his "Amaryllis at
the Fair:"

"That day they had a leg of mutton — a special occasion —
a joint to be looked on reverently. . . . The meat was dark
brown,. as mutton should be, for if it is the least bit white it
is sure to be poor; the grain was short, and ate like bread
and butter, firm, and yet almost crumbling to the touch; it
was full of juicy red gravy, and cut pleasantly, the knife went
through it nicely; you can tell good meat directly you touch
it with a knife. It, was cooked to a turn, and had been done
at a wood fire on a hearth ; no oven taste, no taint of coal gas
or carbon ; the pure flame of wood had browned it. Such
emanations as there may be from burning logs are odorous of
the woodland, of the sunshine, of the fields and fresh air; the
wood simply gives out as it burns the sweetness it has im-
bibed through its leaves from the atmosphere which floats
above grass and flowers. Essences of this odor, if they do
penetrate the fibers of the meat, add to its flavor a delicate
aroma. Grass-fed meat, cooked at a wood fire, for me."

"Better a dinner of herbs where love Is, than a
stalled ox and hatred therewith." The privilege of the
4

48

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

wood hearth endears to our hearts the thoughts of
home, as the dinner of herbs makes it more real to
those who prepare and partake of it. Here, before our
rousing fire — as if still nomads a-wandering in some
primeval paradise — here, we may take our ease in an
unrestrained, unconventional, natural happiness: Robin

SPLIT WOOD RANKED UP IN THE WOODS.

Hood and his merry men again, roasting a haunch of
venison, home from the chase, under the trees.

Each variety of wood, too, like each flower, has
its own delicate and separate scent when burning, as
the freshly cut logs have also when lying in the woods.
It is no wonder that the perfume of the smoke is so
delightful, formed, as it is, from all the influences of
the woods, and the air, and the flowers and grass, ab-
sorbed and floated away now in beautiful wreaths. The
aroma of the vapor from a wood fire is filled with all

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 49

sorts of romance and poetic suggestion. When I see
smoke issuing from a chimney, and can smell the fra-
grance from a wood fire, I always feel that I really
am once more in the country. It Is a perfume which
one finds only there. It has the genuine flavor of the
woods and meadows.

Whitman speaks of his enjoyment of this feature
of the country upon one of his rambles near the Hud-
son ("Prose Works:" "Days at J. B's.— Turf Fires-
Spring Songs") :

"As I go along the roads I like to see the farmers' fires in
patches, burning the dry brush, turf, debris. How the smoke
crawls along, flat to the ground, slanting, slowly rising, reach-
ing away, and at last dissipating! I like its acrid smell — ^whiffs
just reaching me — welcomer than French perfume."

The smoke, therefore, as it comes rolling and puff-
ing in clouds and fumes from the flue, and vanishes
into nothingness finally in thin feathery shreds and
whitish films, is always a symbol of home and has a
human interest. Do you recall Thoreau's poem upon
smoke, and what he says of it, in "Walden?" —

"When the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the
horizon, I too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of
Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I
was awake. —

" Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,

Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, the messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest ;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts ;

50 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun ;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame."

Elsewhere, in his journals, he writes more lengthily
of the ideal suggestiveness of smoke, as it is seen at a
distance about a cottage or farmhouse. Cooper, too,
I remember, in his novels, frequently speaks of the
human significance and associations of smoke when it
is observed through the forest. Why? Because it
rises from the camp-fire or the hearthstone.

And then what does n't the wood fire suggest of
the days spent in cutting the wood beneath the autumn
leaves, with cant hook, and saw and ax, and maul and
wedges ! Occasionally we get a reminder of those days
by a few ants seen crawling out from beneath the bark
of a backlog — to perish, poor things, in the fire; and
we recollect the times when we have discovered bees
and wasps in the trees that we brought low. We re-
member the crash of the tree as it fell; and how, when
split open, it disclosed an army of grubs and borers:
finally to repose, piled in tiers, in the woodshed, sea-
soned and ripe for the dogs. Ah, I am cutting it again
among the trees, and hauling it in to the woodshed
in sled and wagon loads in winter. Often, in loading
a lot of firewood which had been ranked up against a
stump or a sapling, I have found a rabbit concealed in
under the wood; and lizards have darted away, when
those sticks closest to the ground were removed; and
little wood mice would scatter in all directions at the
stack's dismemberment. But men are of more value,
after all, than many mice, and these "small deer" can

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE.

51

find a home again in under the innumerable leaves,
or beneath a stump, or in a hollow root. Poor little
fellows ! how they are in terror of a dog, and how
cruelly a dog snaps them in his jaws and cracks their
fragile little ribs! I have even had them crawl up
on the outside of my trouser's leg in fear when my
dog was after them, and their mute appeal has never
failed of a right answer.

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THE WOODSHED.

It used to be the custom in the early days to build
some of the log cabins with fireplaces in them so large
that a regular log, or section of an entire prostrate
tree, could be used as a backlog. In that case there
was a door at each end of the fireplace (which ex-
tended, practically, completely across one side of the
cabin), and a horse would be driven in dragging the
log by a chain ; the chain would be unhooked, the horse
would go out by the other door, and the great log

52 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

would be rolled over back into the deep fireplace, where
it would last for several days.

I have seen many open fireplaces in cabins in the
South, built in irregularly of stones taken from the
creek or gathered at the clearing, with their sooty
corners jutting out every which way in a picturesque
fashion into the flames, and with a great wide open
hearth, large enough for a small whole log to enter.
The chimneys were made of crossed sticks cemented
together with mud — stack chimneys, as they are called.
I have often sat beside them, and there have heard
related stories of the great war between the States,
fought so long ago, as it seems to us now, and have
listened to the tales of slaves and slave-owners, with
mayhap the barrel of an old army musket, or a bayonet,
picked up or captured on some battlefield, as our poker
and tongs.

I remember once being also in the study of an emi-
nent college professor, whose glory it was that he had
a large fireplace and an open wood fire. He had a
very comfortable divan arranged in front of it, and
a lamp convenient; and I suppose that a good many of
the problems of earth and heaven were solv^ed there
before the logs. I recollect also the study of another
professor, who, as a lover of books, could scarcely
have found a more fitting environment in which to
interpret the real spirit of literature than the atmos-
phere of his large open fireplace, with his setters
stretched before it, in his beautiful old house of the
Revolutionary days. It was, too, my good fortune to
be one of a group of young men who once pursued a
course in poetry in the library of another professor,

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 53

before his cheerful wood fire. My mind goes back
also to a few glimpses that I was privileged to take
of the study of the president of a great university,
where a wood fire burned on the hearth, beside the
books; and, again, to a brief midnight visit to the
spacious and magnificent library of another and most
profound scholar, world-renowned indeed for his eru-
dition, who rejoiced, apparently, even in his theology,
in the inspiration of his lovely wood fire and in the
comfort of having his easy-chair drawn close to it.
(The hired man gave me the opportunity, with a lan-
tern to guide us; and a weird, almost mystical, feeling
it was that came upon me to be there, in the dimness,
among the interminable tomes of the great dead.)
But, of all my college memories, the one that I cherish
perhaps most, or at least equally with any of the others,
is the thought of a delightful evening which I spent
in the fellowship of a great philosopher, when, as we
talked together through the hours before the logs and
watched the glowing coals die away into the midnight
embers, he spoke to me of God, and of the reality of
truth, and of the exceeding beauty of life.

No one who has ever stood before the old-time,
spacious fireplace at Mount Vernon, with its crane and
trammels and all the cooking utensils, can have failed
to feel a thrill in the experience. Why, here Wash-
ington lived! And this is the kind of fire he had!
And so with all the other colonial mansions, when the
forests were plenty — old andirons, old bellows, old
tongs, old inglenooks. What an atmosphere of old-
time ways and old-time living — the very heart of the
republic, even now, to my thinking!

54 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

The old-fashioned fireplace is roomy, and one does
not feel cramped, as he frequently does even in the
better city residences. Few things are more delightful
to the memory than late afternoons and evenings spent
with a book before the crackling hearth in the twilight.
'T is then we appreciate the value, in Cowper's lines, of

*' Homebom happiness,
Fireside employments, intimate delights.
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know."

The fire is especially cheerful in cold weather, when
the snow is swirling and drifting outside, and silting a
little under the doorsill, or perhaps a flake or two fall-
ing down the great black chimney. Emerson speaks
of it in "The Snow-Storm:"

" The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."

And again, in his "May-Day," he says:

Back to books and sheltered home,
And wood-fire flickering on the walls.
To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games,
Without the baffled north-wind calls."

There is a painting by David Neal (I have seen
but the wood engravings of it), in which the artist
has placed James Watt beside an old-fashioned fire-
place, watching the steam come whistling from a kettle,
as it hangs over the logs from a crane. Many a book,
too, has been read in the firelight by tow-headed boy
lying before it.

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 55

How many fancies circle about the wood fire —
thoughts of the squirrel twitch-ups and the quail traps,
and of the halcyon days of long ago when as many as
a dozen quail could be caught in a figure four, and of
the many squirrel and quail and rabbit hunts; aye, and
dreams, too, dreams of what might have been, and of
what still may be, in the opportunities of life. But let
Keats tell us of the mood in his "Fancy:"

" O sweet Fancy ! let her loose ;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring •*

Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipped fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting. What do then ?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright.
Spirit of a winter's night ;
When the soundless earth is muffled.
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the plowboy's heavy shoon ;
When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy
To banish Even from her sky.
Sit thee there and send abroad
With a mind self-overaw'd,
Fancy high-commission'd : — send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spit of frost.
Beauties that the earth hath lost ;
She will bring thee, all together.
All delights of summer weather ;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray ;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth.
With a still, mysterious stealth :
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup.

56 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

And thou shah quaff it: — thou shalt hear
Distant harvest carols clear ;
Rustle of the reaped corn ;
Sweet birds antheming the morn ;
And, in the same moment — hark !
'Tis the early April lark,
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw."

I believe, too, with Emerson, that the farmer has
to encounter the same problems of life, while seated
before the open wood fire on his hearth, that the phi-
losopher meets with in his study, and reaches a solution
perhaps just as satisfactory; that it requires the same
struggle to do so, and the solving has with each the
same ultimate and fundamental truth and good in It:
just as the private soldier can know as much of courage
and patriotism and true love of country as the general.

There is yet one thing further I will say. I have
made fires of poplar and tacamahac on the prairies of
Minnesota for my noontide; I have heard the bacon
sizzle over a roaring blaze of pine bark in a lone hun-
ter's cabin far back on Lookout Mountain; I have
warmed myself by the flames of the cottonwood along
the Cumberland and Ohio; I have broiled a rabbit for
my meal over the coals of the loblolly pine, far away in
central Arkansas; I have gazed across toward the
Catskills beside a fire of spruce in the Berkshires; I
have roasted venison for my lunch before a fiery mass
of birch deep in the forests of the Adirondacks; I have
cooked pickerel on a grating of stones heated by flames
of maple on the shores of Lake Superior; I have
watched the flickering blue flare of a driftwood fire
along the beach of the Atlantic; and I have found a

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 57

companion for myself in the light of beech and oak
and hickory in many and many a woody dingle, and
perchance have broiled a squirrel or a bird for break-
fast: but never, and nowhere else, have I enjoyed the
real and genuine and lasting comfort of a wood fire
so thoroughly as right back here at the old homestead,
before the huge old mossy backlog and flaming fore-
sticks. Ah, how the delight of it lingers — and lingers !

Homer tells us, in a realistic picture, in the
"Odyssey," that, when Hermes reached Calypso's cave,
"on the hearth was a great fire burning, and from afar
through the isles was smelt the fragrance of cleft cedar
blazing, and of sandal wood." Theocritus, too, that
old Greek lover of the open air and the best things life
has for us, loved the charm of the wood fire. It was
beside such a hearth that Menalcas, the shepherd, re-
clined, in his song in the ninth idyl, with fleeces from
his ewes and goats beneath him, in his cave:

"In the fire of oak-faggots puddings are hissing-hot, and
dry beech-nuts roast therein, in the wintry weather, and, truly,
for the winter season I care not even so much as a toothless
man does for walnuts, when rich pottage is beside him."

And for this, his song, he received from iEtna the
gift of a horn made of a spiral shell.

iEsop saw fit to make the hearth the scene of one
of his fables, in which a countryman finds a freezing
snake and brings it in before the fire; upon which the
snake, at its recovery, attacks the villager's wife and
children, and is summarily dispatched for its ingrati-

58 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

tude. Cinderella, too, in the fairy tale, busies herself
before the hearth.

Shakespeare evidently knew of the wood fire, and
we perhaps get hints of his own poaching experiences
in what few glimpses we have from him of the log fire
of those days. The song of Winter, in "Love's La-
bour's Lost," is an example in point:

" When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl.

Tu-whoo ;
Tu-whit, tu-whoo, a merry note.
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

And again, in "Romeo and Juliet," Capulet orders:

" Sirrah, fetch drier logs ;
Call Peter, he will show thee where they are."

Implying, one might think, that there was a lot of them
heaped up ready for the fireplace. Further, in "The
Tempest," when Caliban says that he '11 no longer
"fetch in firing" for his master, Prospero requires it
of Ferdinand; and thereby hangs the tale, in one of
the prettiest of love matches :

'^ Entir Ferdinand, bearing a log.
Ferdinand. — ' There be some sports are painful, and their labor
Delight in them sets off:

I must remove
Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up.
Upon a sore injunction.'
Miranda. — ' Alas ! now, pray you,

Work not so hard : I would the lightning had
Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin 'd to pile !

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 59

Pray, set it down, and rest you : when this bums,
'Twill weep for having wearied you. . . .
If you 'II sit down,
I '11 bear your logs the while. Pray, give me that ;
I 'II carry it to the pile.*

Ferdinand. — 'Hear my soul speak :

The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service : there resides,
To make me slave to it : and for your sake
Am I this patient log-man.' "

And finally, In "All's Well that Ends Well," the
clown says to the Lord Lafeu, "I am a woodland fel-
low, sir, that always loved a great fire;" such a fire,
one might infer, as is a common sight in our wooded
America.

It was beside a neatherd's hearth, according to the
story, that Alfred the Great had the mortification of
letting his cakes burn. I think, too, of the spacious
hall in the mansion of Cedric the Saxon, with Its roar-
ing, yawning fireplaces, as pictured in "Iv-anhoe," and
of the other wild hearths that Scott has described.
Leigh Hunt has a pleasant essay entitled "A Day by
the Fire," but I have always thought It would have
been better if his had been an open wood hearth instead
of a grate of coal. It Is beside a coal fire, however,
that Dickens places his cricket, with the kettle above
it, and tells us in its chirpings that the reason the hearth
is so dear and sweet is because it is the symbol of home
and happiness. "To have a cricket on the hearth is the
luckiest thing In the world."

That Is a pretty picture which Burns drew In "The
Cotter's Saturday Night," when the laborer returns

6o AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

after the toll of the week to his cottage at the close
of day. —

"At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ;
Th' expectant wee things, todlin', stacher thro*

To meet their dad wi' flichterin' noise and glee.
His wee bit ingle blinkin' bonnilie,

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary, carking cares beguile,

An' makes him quite forget his labor and his toil."

And, later,

"The cheerful' supper done, wi' serious face
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big Ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride:"

and hymns are sung, and the Scriptures read, and
prayers are offered, in the firelight.

It was around the logs on winter nights, according
to Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," that the cus-
tom was, in the old Roman days, to relate the story
of Horatius and his brave defense of the bridge. The
hearth was consecrated to Vesta, and the Lares and
Penates were the household gods.

The Yule log was a great institution In old England.
It was a huge affair, sometimes a full, unsplit trunk
of a tree, brought to the door by horses, or a large
tree-root whole; and It was always lit from a chunk
of the old log, saved from last year's burning and kept
carefully preserved for that purpose. A great deal
of the romance attached to the open fireplace clusters
about the Yule log and Its association of the mistletoe
and Christmas-tide. Says old Drayton:

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 6 1

"And at each pause they kiss ; was never seen such rule
In any place but here, at bonfire, or at Yule."

Tennyson mentions it in his line,

"The Yule-log sparkled keen with frost,"

and gives this picture of the Christmas festivities, in
"In Memoriam :"

"Again at Christmas did we weave

The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess'd the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve."

Washington Irving was naturally attracted by such a
scene, and writes of the log in his "Sketch-Book."
Lowell, too, in "The Vision of Sir Launfal," has left
a charming description :

"Within the hall are song and laughter.

The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly,
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter

With lightsome green of ivy and holly;
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide,
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind;
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,

Hunted to death in its galleries blind;
And swift little troops of silent sparks,

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks

Like herds of startled deer."

And, again, our American poetess, Celia Thaxter, in
her poem "The Yule Log," has, among others perhaps
its equal, this beautiful stanza:

"Come, share the Yule-log's glorious heat!
For many a year the grand old tree
Stood garnering up the sunshine sweet,
To keep for our festivity."

62 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

But, as I sit before the logs, I am reminded espe-
cially of that delightful book, of our own country,
which most men have read somewhere in their early
twenties, or before it, "The Reveries of a Bachelor,"
by Ik Marvel, for it was beside such a fire, you re-
member, that the first of the reveries was dreamed;
and in "Dream Life," too, there is mention of the open
wood hearth.

Indeed, there have been a few books named from
the fire — Lowell's "Fireside Studies," Mabie's "My
Study Fire," Gray's "Camp-fire Musings." But Charles
Dudley Warner's "Backlog Studies" is the classic of
the old-time fireplace. His books are always delight-
ful, and to quote from it with any satisfaction would
be to give it all. Warner deprecated the loss of the
open wood fire of our ancestors, and defended it with
very zealous partisanship. He says that the supreme
achievement of woman, and the most convincing evi-
dence of her claims to the title of housewife, is for her
to maintain the supremacy of the open wood fire.

It is to our own American Whittier, also, that we
are indebted for what are, so far as I have read or can
recall, perhaps the best lines written upon the old-
fashioned fireplace of the forefathers, in this familiar
picture, in his beautiful idyl "Snow-Bound:"

"As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick.
And on its top the stout back-stick ;
The knotty fore-stick laid apart.
And filled between with curious art

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 63

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam.
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ;

Shut in from all the world without.
We sat the clean-winged hearth about.
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door.
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head.
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet.
Between the andirons' straddling feet
The mug of cider simmered slow.
The apples sputtered in a row.
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood."

Ah, Whittier knew that kind of a fire !

From one of our living American poets, too, Mr.
Lloyd Mifflin, I shall select the following very beautiful
and flowing sonnet, entitled "Upon the Hearth" (from
"At the Gates of Song"), as expressing better than
any of us can do the real poetic significance of the
blazing logs and the old-time open fireplace :

"A tree will prove a blessing all life long;
From birth to death it brings us naught but good;
Its shade will make a pleasant solitude.
For one who lies and dreams the grass among;
c What golden globes upon its limbs are hung

64 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

In summer; and when dead, its burning wood

Will foster sweetness in the poet's mood,

And hum upon his hearth, and help his song.

Its death is like the day's, for still it throws

Its roseate light lingering around our rooms;

As slow the fire its last of life consumes,

It sinks to embers like to sunset snows,

And dying, even in its ashes, glows

With bright remembrance of its spring-time blooms."

The open hearth, of course, suggests the camp-fire
of out-doors. Dr. W. C. Gray and Mr. John Bur-
roughs both think — and is it a mere fancy? — that we
have carried the wood fire indoors with us from our
primeval, open-air life of ages past. Mr. Burroughs
says that the "primitive man" in him wakes up at once
at the smell of smoke, "and all his old love of fire, and
dependence upon it, in the camp or the cave, comes
freshly to mind." Mr. Bradford Torrey, too, believes
that, since we "have not always lived in houses," our
feeling of attraction for a fire "is but part of an an-
cestral inheritance. We have come by it honestly, as
the phrase is." Nor, as we, in our time, with our fire
in the woods, look and observe the flames dart heaven-
ward in aspiration, can we but rejoice that there have
been at least some fire-worshipers among the pagan,
for it brought them to the beginnings of mystery and
of adoration.

The camp-fire, of course, brings instinctively to
mind the curl of smoke from wigwam or tepee, and
is the symbol of the life of the plains — the council, the
pipe of peace, the feast of buffalo and venison — in the
native home of the American Indian. I bethink me
also of the countless camp-fires of the armies of the
earth, in the long history of war; and no man who

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 65

has ever bivouacked as a soldier but will gladly jour-
ney back again on the march to watch once more on
the battlefields of memory.

The camp-fires of literature are many. They began
with Abel and the sacrifice. And in the Bible story,
too, are other wood fires: Sarah and her cakes; Abra-
ham and Isaac; the roasting of the Passover; Jehoiakim
the king before the hearth. Peter it was who warmed
himself in indolence before a fire while his Lord was
buffeted; but it was the same impulsive Peter who was
the first to reach the land when the Master called the
fishermen to the shore of Galilee, and "they saw a fire
of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread" — and
Henry van Dyke says that he would rather have been
at that camp-fire than at any other in history.

Homer and Virgil make frequent mention of the
camp-fire, and the roasting thereon of venison and the
flesh of bulls and goats, pierced through with spits.
Theocritus also loved it, as well as the domestic hearth.

George Borrow, in his peculiarly wild and adven-
turous gypsy tales, has much to say of the open fire be-
side his tent; confessing, in "Lavengro," in a most
singular and pathetic love story, that it was in Mum-
per's Dingle, beside the camp-fire of their gypsy taber-
nacle, that he wooed, and lost, the fine-natured, true-
hearted Isopel Berners. In few passages, also, of Bor-
row's books is his real character revealed so delight-
fully as in these apparently chance remarks with the
Welsh preacher's wife in their encampment by the oaks
under the stars:

"'Excuse me, young man [she asked], but do you know
anything of God?'

66 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

"'Very little [he replied], but I should say he must, be a
wondrous strong person, if he made all those big bright things
up above there, to say nothing of the ground on which we stand,
which bears beings like these oaks, each of which is fifty times
as strong as myself, and will last fifty times as long.' "

Kinglake also, in his "Eothen," relates a romantic ex-
perience of his making a bivouac near the Jordan.

Thoreau enjoyed a camp-fire as few ever did. I
recollect especially his accounts of camp-fires in "The
Maine Woods," and this characteristic passage in par-
ticular:

"It was interesting, when awakened at midnight, to watch
the grotesque and fiend-like forms and motions of some one
of the party, who, not being able to sleep, had got up silently
to arouse the fire, and add fresh fuel, for a change; now
stealthily lugging a dead tree from out the dark, and heaving
it on, now stirring up the embers with his fork, or tiptoeing
about to observe the stars, watched, perchance, by half the
prostrate party in breathless silence ; eo much the more intense
because they were awake, while each supposed his neighbor
sound asleep."

Mr. Richard Watson Gilder has sun^ of the camp-
fire, and its light upon the trees in the forest, in "The
Voice of the Pine:"

" 'T is night upon the lake. Our bed of boughs
Is built where, high above, the pine tree soughs.
'T is stiil — and yet what woody noise^ loom
Against the background of the silent gloom !

"Long had we lain beside our pine-wood fire,
From things of sport our talk had risen higher.
How frank and intimate the words of men
When tented lonely in some forest glen!

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 67

" And as we talked, the intense and resinous fire
Lit up the towering boles, till nigh and nigher
They gather round, a ghostly company,
Like beasts who seek to know what men may be."

That was quite a fire which Shingebis, the diver,
had in his lodge, in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," and I
question whether it has ever been equaled :

" Four great logs had he for fire-wood,
One for each moon of the winter."

Dr. W. C. Gray avers that he was able to hear
the music of the spheres beside his camp-fire in the
Northern woods; and elsewhere in his "Musings by
Camp-fire and Wayside" has that stanch old lover of
the wild led us into many an attractive train of moral-
izings by the firelight. Rowland E. Robinson has
written pleasantly of his thoughts beside it; Mr. John
Burroughs is a warm enthusiast in its mellowing light;
Mr. John Muir has told us of his camp-fires in the
Sierras; and quite recently, also, Mr. Stewart Edward
White, in "The Forest," has delighted many with his
camp-fire descriptions.

Mr. Henry van Dyke, however, is its most loyal
defender, his sketch on "The Open Fire," in "Fisher-
man's Luck," being as readable a paper upon the sub-
ject as one could wish. Mr. van Dyke (I may remark,
in passing) speaks of using his lunch paper to start his
camp-fire with, but, in making our fires, in boyhood
days, we used to scorn the use of paper, as belonging
more to the usages of civilization, and so always started
ours with leaves and twigs, in true woodcraft style.
We wanted to be more primitive and savage, and to
lie at the side of our "dim religious light" with some
sort of sense of fatherhood. 'T was the old wild in-

68 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

stinct cropping out in us, you know; and our greatest
regret was that we were always unable to kindle a blaze
by twirling one stick against another, which would thus
have obviated entirely the obnoxious necessity of
matches. But then, anyway, savages did not need a
fire so much as we.

But to return to our own hearth. Here centered
the life of grandfather's family. Around it they lived,
and here the boys and girls were brought up. It was
the home fire. Consequently, to one who has lived in
such an atmosphere, and especially to one whose whole
early life was surrounded with the influences of the
wood fire on the hearth, and whose memories are all
of that, nothing stands for the real meaning of home
and family quite so well as does the old-time open wood
fireplace. Nothing can take its place — no coal grate,
or stove, or registers, or steam heaters — nothing has
the same pioneer-like atmosphere.

Yes, my heart lies back among the old quail traps
and rabbit twitch-ups. I love the simple ways of the
open wood fire of long ago. All the conventional,
modernized life is gone as I sit before it, all gone away
into the smoke of the chimney. But it comes back
again, and will not leave me; and the glow of the back-
log dies away with my thoughts, just as the older life
is passing, never to be produced or lived again — nay,
has almost vanished now even from our memories.

The backlog topples over. Thut ! A spark or two
ascend the chimney. There is a last pale flicker. The
old fire is out. . . . Let us bank it up for the night.

THE OLD MUZZLE-LOADING RIFLE.

"There could be no greater pleasure to me than to ■wander -with a
matchlock through one of the great forests or wild tracts that still remain
in England . . . The Aveapon itself, whether matchlock, w^heel-lock, or
even a cross-bow^, would be a delight. . . .

" An imperfect weapon^yes ; but the imperfect weapon Avould accord

with the great oaks, the beech trees fuU of knot-holes, the tall fern, the

silence and the solitude. The chase would become a real chase : not, as

now^, a foregone conclusion. And there would be time for

f pondering and dreaming."

—Richard Jefferies.

THERE used to be (and still Is) an old muzzle-
loading rifle about the farm, hanging generally
in the lobby, which is just around the corner from
the fireplace, on two forks of saplings that had
been nailed against the wall as hooks to support it.
It had curious curvatures on the stock, on which to
rest the chin and cheek, and the butt was curved so
as exactly to fit the shoulder. Its barrel was octagonal
in shape, and full-stocked — that is, wii-h wood from
the stock extending all the way beneath the barrel up
to the muzzle — and was very long, the full length
from butt to muzzle being fifty-eight inches;
thus making the gun, stock and all, as tall
as the tallest boy thereabouts, almost. It
had a very long ramrod, too, that slipped down into the
stock in a groove under the barrel, and we used to
wonder how we could ever replace it, if it got broken.
The caliber was about .38. The shoulder plate and
trigger guard were of brass, and there was a silver
shield-like plate on the small of the stock for the
owner's name.

71

THE OLD MUZZLE
LOADER.

72 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

There was an old powder-horn hanging there also,
which belonged to the rifle. It we were allowed to take
when out with the shotgun — that, too, a muzzle-loader
— to carry our powder in. The shot we generally took
m a bottle, the old shot belt hav-
ing been lost, though we still had
the brass shot measure that was for-
merly attached to it. Besides these, three
other rifles were in the lobby. One was a
THE HENRY. .56 Caliber, an old army gun, which had
doubtless been used in the war, and which
had killed deer also ; another was an old Henry .44
cahber rim fire, with all mountings of brass, and it had
also done duty with reference to deer : and the third
was a small .22 Flobert, used to annihilate sparrows
or rats, or occasionally to kill a chicken that was
refractory and refused to be caught. There were
also, home from the war, and now reposing peace-
fully on nails and pegs, an old army holster and a
brace of Colt's muzzle-loading pistols — curiously
wrought on the revolving chamber with odd engravings
illustrating the value of such firearms in case of high-
way robbery — and a cavalryman's helmet, with plume
still waving. Quaint old lobby!

The old muzzle-loading rifle had belonged to grand-
father, and had been shot by all his sons and by almost
all their sons, but had become so rusty from disuse
that to shoot it again some thought the rifling would
have to be bored out once more. But we did n't care
for that, and at spare moments at noon or In the even-
ings we would stealthily take the old gun down and
out onto the porch, and, raising It slowly and steadily,

THE OLD MUZZLE-LOADING RIFLE. 73

would pull the trigger. The trigger was a hair trigger,
and the point was to get the aim accurate at some
famihar object of the barnyard or some tree in the
woods, and then pull at once, while on the level. But
our powder was smokeless, and our bullets were never
dug out of the trees we shot into. Yet it is curious
that there were few things in the immediate vicinity
of the old homestead that escaped being killed or
stricken down by our deadly aim. We would deliber-
ately point at the best rooster on the farm and fire,
and then coolly say, as the innocent fowl kept on peck-
ing, "There, he 's done for." I have even known us
to fire at the horses or the pigs and cattle, and occa-
sionally a buggy or an unoffending farm wagon on the
turnpike beyond was the object of our marksmanship.
"Yes, I think I hit him," we would say. We never
missed with that old gun. It was a heavy old gun,
and it took all our strength in younger days, and not
much less in maturer age, to lift it to a level and main-
tain it there. Generally we sought a rest against a
porch pillar or held It muzzle-upward to the sky, so
that the weight came upon our shoulders, and then
proved experts with swallows and buzzards.

The old muzzle-loader, with its cap and ball, has
had its day. Like the flint-lock, It is now but a relic,
and has been replaced by the better rapid-firing and
repeating breech-loading guns of all sorts. But the
thought of it lingers lovingly with many people, for it
was the association of their childhood, and they first
learned the art of "drawing a bead" from its long,
octagonal barrel and good sights. It brings back to

74 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the memory the many, many squirrel hunts of years
ago, and is the symbol of all that is picturesque and
pioneer-like and romantic in the past.

The boys of late have taken the old rifle down and
soaked it in coal-oil and cleaned it thoroughly, and
have got out the old bullet mold and made a lot of
bullets ; and it again does duty, they tell me, and shoots
pretty nearly where you want it to, although, like a
veteran, it is old and tottering and outnumbered. I
have not heard of many of the wild creatures of the
woods losing their lives from it in the hands of its
present marksmen, but then that is not the fault of the
old rifle. It is ready still for the hand that knows its
cunning.

Yes! let us take down the old rifle and be always
among the trees. Let us seek contentment in the seclu-
sion and wildness of the forest, and let us ever keep
alive in us the old hunting instinct, which in youth
would rise up in our hearts at the first whiff of autumn,
and which in old age will bring back the days of youth;
and, with rifle on shoulder and powder-horn slung at
our sides, let us seek again the old perfect life which
still lurks somewhere in the great woods, and in the
beautiful eyes of the doe and gray squirrel, and in the
mystery and romance about the camp-fire.

Thoughts of the old times come back upon me in
a flood of vaguest suggestion and sadness — thoughts of
grandfather and grandmother, of the old-fashioned
sugar camps, and of the great fields of wheat and the
old reaping sickles; and I seem to live again in the
past — the past, with its distaff and spindle. Its home-

THE OLD MUZZLE-LOADING RIFLE. 75

spun, its pioneer-like independence and adventure and
simplicity of life. I again shoulder the old muzzle-
loader and shoot a brace of squirrels before breakfast.
The older generation, tottering and wrinkled, is
passing into a loving remembrance and is giving way
to the new. The past, with its inimitably beautiful
romance and its things of pathos and love, has given
place in a large measure, except in memory, to the
present, with its energy, glowing life, hopes, and its
own romance and poetry — that, too, soon to be a tale
and perhaps to be forgotten. The hills in the distance,
as seen from the old homestead, seem to me in their
sunset glory to be the symbol of the great West, the
West that was filled with romance and adventure, and
of which we all dreamed, and for which we longed,
in childhood. A good deal of the old woods has been
cleared away now, and the green hills beyond can be
seen more plainly. The pioneer has left the old home-
stead, and has gone far beyond into the regions of the
prairie and the great forest; and with him
the older, aye, and perhaps the better,
because the more simple, life — with all
its ennobling and precious and endur-
ing associations, still so dear to
many hearts — has gone now forever,
never to return, brushed aside like a
cobweb by the relentless onward march
of progress. But the memory of it clings
and will linger and cling through the
years, for from such beginnings sprang
the bone and sinew of the nation.

ANTLERS AND

POWDER-HORN

THE BARN.

"An old bam is near: and the flocks and the poultry seem to enjoy
an amount of comfort which we might look for in vain, in the vicinity of
a more ornate dwelling-house."

— Wilson Flagg,

"And she wrapped Him in sw^addling clothes, and
laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for
them in the inn."

—St. Luke.

I HE barn Is not far from the homestead,
thirty steps or so beyond the trough
where the cows and horses drink; and
the trough is near the well. It is quite
a large building, well constructed of
great hewn timbers; and it is an old
structure, covered with the initials of
two or three generations. The im-
OLD DOLLiE. mcnsc beams in its framework, came

from the woods, and one can still see the score marks of
the ax, made originally in chopping in along the logs, to
facilitate the hewing off of the big posts and slabs with
the broadax, and thus, after all, to assist the laborer in
his work. To build a barn served two purposes in those
days, for to get out logs helped to clear the land as
well as to erect a shelter for the stock and the hay.
The bark still clings to some of the beams and rafters.
The weatherboarding is of pine, from the State of
New York, flatboated down the Ohio from Pittsburg,
and costing. In those days, but eight dollars a thou-
sand. It still protects and preserves the great interior
from the storms.

76

THE BARN. 79

It was the custom of the neighbors to assemble and
help a settler in the building of his barn; yet even then
it was quite a task in pioneer days to put up the big
beams, and a dangerous one, for the beams might fall.
It took an even hundred men to do the work for grand-
father. That was a "barn raising" worthy the name.
Pot-pies after pot-pies — pot-pies galore for the men —
were boiled out in the open in a big iron kettle, and
innumerable biscuits and loaves of bread, and apple
and mince pies, and what not; for a "barn raising,"
like a "husking bee," along with the fun, meant plenty
of hard work and a commensurate amount of good
things to eat. And when, toward evening, the bam
was all done and the men were resting, grandfather
stood on the very crest of the ridge-pole and threw the
bottle that christened it.

The barn, especially in harvest, is always filled,
sometimes with clov^er and timothy and rustling fodder,
or, again, bursting with yellow wheat and oats just
garnered, or stored with bins of potatoes and pumpkins
in their season. Wisps of hay and grain, and straw
and crackling corn leaves, hang from the mows in strag-
gling bunches about the beams and rafters. It is on
Its broad floor, with doors flung wide, that the "husk-
ing bees" of former days took place, when the neigh-
borhood would drop in for a frolic; and In these later
times it Is still the scene of threshing, either with the
burly, roaring machine, which soon has a heap of the
golden grains pouring upon the boards and a straw
stack rapidly mounting behind the barn, whither its
long elevator extends through the wide open doors,
while the sheaves are thrown from the lofts above; or

8o AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

perhaps with horses, who patiently tread round and
round upon the bundles, the grain and chaff from
which, left after the straw has been raked off, are then
run through an old-time fanning mill, and the wheat
thus winnowed from the refuse; or, possibly, the beat-
ing is done in the primitive way with a flail at odd
times through the winter, and marks of the swipple are
to be seen on the boards. The corn-crib, stuffed with
the yellow ears, is just outside the barn.

Instead of the dense woods which formerly stood
back of it, all is open, tillable land, an extent of many
miles; and the view that we have from its open doors,
a long, peaceful stretch of country, out across the roll-
ing hills and far beyond the Miami, is one that is not
often afforded. Barn swallows dart in and out of the
great doors, and their nests of mud and straw are
plastered against the roof and rafters. Chickens peck
about for chance bits of grain, and the hens lay their
eggs beneath the mangers or stow them away in dark
nests hollowed out in the mows, concealed amid the
hay or straw.

I spoke of the initials. Two generations, at least,
have left their marks upon it, and possibly three, or
even four, so far as I know. It has always been such
a repository, and the whole barn is to-day a veritable
mosaic of letters and dates. We can find them inside
and outside, on the doors, on the weather-boarding
(these are getting a little faint now, being so old and
exposed to the storms), on the rafters and beams (dug
into the hard oak with heroic perseverance, with a
barrel to stand on), on the big supporting posts, on the
feed box, on the manger, and then again spreading to
the barnyard, and finally on the water trough out by the

THE BARN. 83

well. I remember once getting on top of the big straw
stack back of the barn after threshing time, and scram-
bling up the long, sloping, mossy roof, and there carv-
ing my initials upon the shingles, for the enlightenment
of balloonists and other aeronauts and of the heavens
generally; but I do not suppose many ever saw them,
for we had to climb up on a short ladder to reach the
roof from the stack, and then afterwards we jumped
off into the straw. I wonder if the men ever noticed
them who tore the shingles off when they put on the
new tin roof some years ago. I shall never forget the
look of astonishment and appalling fear upon the faces
of my aunts, who happened to be looking out of the
doorway of the homestead just at the time we peered
above the ridge-pole of the barn, while at our labors,
to see the surrounding country, and who therefore at
once saw us, much to their dire consternation. We,
however, immediately ducked our heads, and when we
again ventured to peek over, they had disappeared, to
our great relief.

At a short distance west of the homestead (the
barn is to the north) stands the carriage house, filled
with many a curious relic of the past, and the place
for the cider press and the great sugar kettles. Below
it a few paces are the cow house and the pig pen; the
former of these the daily scene of a tug at the udders,
and the latter the annual scene of what Whitman
calls "the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing,"
which, however, to my thinking, is more work than
poetry. Close to the corner of the homestead, to the
south, near the kitchen, is the smokehouse, covered
with great waving plumes of trumpet-vine, which has
grown up about it. Just west of it, and adjoining, is

84

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the open woodshed; and beyond that a little, across to
the south from the carriage house, is the chicken yard,
where, in the fruit season, the unhappy fowls must
repose with clipped wings, and take their dust baths
beneath the shade of sunflowers, whose seeds later on
they will devour with the greatest relish.

The smokehouse once a year is the place for smok-
ing the hams and bacons, when films and threads of
white slowly issue from every crack and fissure between
the boards and shingles, so that it looks from a dis-
tance as if the structure were on fire. The blaze be-
neath, the hanging hams, which are suspended from
hooks nailed on the cross-beams, is generally made
of green hickory and corncobs, and these give a sort
of tang to the taste. It is sometimes also the repository
of the big camp kettles, when unused, during the year.
The woodshed is filled with all the store of fuel for

the stove and fireplace —
great backlogs of beech and
maple, foresticks of these
also, and of hickory, apple,
ash, and wood of every de-
scription gathered about the
farm. Above the tiers of
wood, on a framework of
boards, are piled the hun-
dred or more buckets of the
sugar camp. Here, too, in
a corner, is a barrel of sour
milk and other delicacies
for the hogs.

The carriage house shel-

THE SMOKEHOUSE.

THE BARN. 85

ters the buggy, the buckboard, and the mower. Upon
its walls are old-time portraits of Jackson and Polk,
and the bills of races trotted just after the Civil War,
and pictures of setters. An old pronged reaping cradle
hangs on a peg (the large beams were all put together
with wooden pins, and great seams of bark still cling
to the posts), and hoes and scythes and other imple-
ments are similarly suspended. The rifles are occasion-
ally leaned in a corner after a hunt. An old pair of
dusty saddlebags, for many years unused, are astride a
long peg. In the loft will be found the spin-
ning-wheel of former generations.

Here come the buckets for the hogs, and
we shall follow them ! The hogs are a little
restricted in their wanderings now, being
confined to a half-acre lot, comprising the
apricot and plum orchards, whose enemies
they delight to honor with their snouts,
brass rings have been inserted into their noses,
however, to prevent their rooting propensities

^ . , II- I 'T-l THE OLD SADDLEBAGS.

from gettmg beyond their control. 1 hey are
great fellows. I like to lean over as I feed them, and
scratch their backs, and they reciprocate my affection
with the most appreciative grunts. I imagine, after
being fattened up pretty well with corn, some of them
will go as high as three hundred dressed. I have seen
some hogs with veritable tusks jutting from beneath
their lips, and raising them slightly. They looked then
like the dinosaurs and pterodactyls of eld, through
whose remarkable efforts we have all been descended —
so they say. *^

86 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

In grandfather's time the hogs were allowed to
range at will in the woods, where they would roam and
root and grunt around after acorns and nuts; and hogs
that have the privilege of a mast diet invariably de-
velop a superior quality of ham and bacon. I used
to like to listen to the men calling them in at dusk —
"Poo-ee, Poo-ee, Poo-ee!" And shortly there would
be heard a scuffling and snorting down in the edge of
the woods, and here they would come in a scrambling,
squealing rabble — shoats, sows, and the old boar all
together, soon to be gormandizing knee-deep in the
nectar of swill, or crunching with amazing rapidity
the grains of corn. They are genuine lovers of life.

But let us look at the cows. We shall find them in
their yard, or perhaps already penned up in the cow
house itself. 'T is there, in Whittier's lines, that

" sharply clashing horn on horn
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows."

But I am not afraid of them. I like to scratch their
heads and stroke their sleek necks, and sometimes I
grapple them by the horns and wrestle with them in a
sort of rough play. They seem to enjoy it.

I like to call them in at evening — "So, boss! So,
boss! So/ So!" I pull out the pasture bars at one
end, from the holes in the posts in which they are in-
serted, and one by one let them drop; and they give
forth, as they fall, a sort of rude musical sound, vary-
ing with their thickness and the kind of wood the rails
are made of, from a dull thumping thud to the light
tank of the top one, which echoes in the recesses of

THE BARN.

89

the woods. This is one of the poetic and enjoyable
features of country life. Then I call again for them.
And soon they come trooping along over the hills, tak-
ing a last bite of grass or nibbling off the tips of vines
or the tall sweet clover. Each herd has its "boss," or
leader, among them, and she invariably takes the head
in their homeward journey, the others following ac-

"the cows are coming home."

cording, I suppose, to seniority in appointment, or at
least each giving way in precedence to the one next
qualified to oust her. Now kine, I am told, are gre-
garious animals; but, when a young heifer suddenly
bounds away from the herd and runs scampering and
kicking up her heels through the orchard and over the
strawberries, one is not so thoroughly convinced of it;
and, when a calf that is patiently being fed all at once

90 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

draws back and bucks Into the milk and splatters it
every which way, one is tempted to follow the example
of the exasperated old deacon, who is reported to have
indulged in considerable profanity upon a similar occa-
sion. I recollect an old cow that we had, old Whitle,
who would always precede the others quite a distance
on the way home from pasture, solitary and unap-
proachable, evidently, like Newton in Wordsworth's
line,

" Voyaging in strange seas of thought, alone,"

while Spottie, and Roxie, and Fawnie, and Dimple all
ambled along behind in gregarious security; but then,
she had been brought in from another herd, and so
never affiliated very well with the others. But old Spot
is my favorite — a lovely old cow. She has a good dis-
position toward mankind, and apparently toward the
world in general, and is always content if she has but
plenty of grass and clover. Yet is she "boss" of the
herd, though ruling in great meekness. She has a
crumpled horn, like the celebrated cow in "the house
that Jack built," and she likes ^o have me scratch her
head just back of the horns, where she can't reach it
very conveniently. I always liked her. She would
have made some fellow a pretty good wife, if she
had n't been a cow.

I enjoy watching them graze also in the fields, as
they pluck off the tufts of rich green grass with a twist
of their rough tongue. Then, too, see them lift their
heads among the low hanging branches of the trees,
and browse on the leaves and tender tips. Ah, how
they love the greenery of the woods and meadows!

>
z
o

X

w
c

z

w

THE BARN. 93

They seem especially to relish the new leaflets on the
locusts and the rough foliage of the hackberry; but
they will not refuse a branch of maple, or of ash, or
even of wild cherry, though the boughs of the last, if
separate from the tree and the leaves withered, secrete
a poison which sometimes kills cattle, while there is
no harm in their feeding on the fresh live twigs. They
strip the vines of the Virginia creeper eagerly of their
whorls of young leaves, and do not mind a taste of the
poison three-leaf, or the new sprays of smilax and the
wild grape. They will eat certain kinds of weeds also,
and seem to like immensely to spice their grass with a
bunch or two of white top. And there they stand con-
tentedly chewing for a moment or two, with perhaps
a sprig of fresh leaves left caught upon their horns.
Cows, however, are very discriminating in the selection
of their food. It takes something good to satisfy a
cow. Sheep are not so particular, but will gladly de-
vour almost all kinds of weeds and grasses. It is inter-
esting to know that cows, in common with sheep and
all ruminants, have no front upper teeth, but only a
lower set, biting against a sort of plate of cartilage
above; and that they actually have four stomachs — an
apparatus far ahead of man's, but quite necessary for
them, in order to take care of the chlorophyll, and so
eventually to get anything worth while out of all that
green stuff which they appropriate for themselves.

I like to watch the cows in winter crunching the
succulent, fragrant millet, or feeding upon clover hay,
or eating their corn fodder. Sometimes snow gets
mingled with it from the stacks. But how they love
it! How they toss it, and put their noses down into

94 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the wisps and stalks, and slash the great corn leaves
about! The milking is generally attended to while
they eat, and that, too, is always an interesting proc-
ess— that is, to outsiders. Szvish, swoshi swish, swosh!
swish, swosh! goes the milk into the buckets, in a kind
of rough purring rhythm. In summer it is not quite
so pleasant, on account of the flies that bother us.
Homer compares the thronging Greeks, in their eager-
ness to get to the Trojans, to the swarms of flies that
buzz and hover about the full milk pails in the spring
and summer evenings. Theocritus, though, goes even
further, atid says that the laborers in his time had to
fasten "guards of wood, with shapely thongs, about
the feet of the kine," so that they could draw near
enough to milk them in safety. Nowadays, however,
men are getting more merciful, and so spray their cows
with a sort of fly preventive to give peace while they
milk; although I have heard of an ingenious fellow
who had an apparatus which tied the cow's tail to the
ceiling during his period of torture, and I have seen
another take a long loop of rope and chain (using the
fastener in the stanchion for the purpose) and fling it
over the cow's hind-quarters at milking time, this prov-
ing an effectual barrier to the switch of her tail. But
watch them chew their cud in the cow-yard afterwards.
Don n't you wish you could look so contented?

There is much difference in tKe yield of each indi-
vidual cow, and a still greater difference in the quality
and quantity of milk from the different breeds. The
Jerseys are by far the best cows for butter; indeed, their
rich yellow milk would seem to be almost all butter fat.
But for a "general purpose" cow, to furnish butter,

THE BARN.

95

cream for the table, and milk for the hogs, give me a
cow that Is at least part Holstein. They are big eaters,
because they are big-bodied; but they are big milkers,
too, and old Spot, when she is fresh, will give a couple
of pails brimful twice a day. Of course, sometimes the
Holstein's milk does not come up to the test; it has
been said that the Lord has already watered the milk
of the Holstein for the dairyman. Yet are they very
beautiful animals, with their white, clean background,
flecked with delicate strands or flakes of black, or irreg-
ularly striped or spotted, or broadly banded.

I have seen it stated that cows do not care for their
young after a certain period, and finally so forget them
as not to recognize them any longer when they become
older members of the herd. This is a point whereon
my experience has shown differently. Our old Spot,
for example, had a calf that was raised and brought
into the herd, in due time having a calf of her own;
and lo ! this grand-calf, as we may call it, was old Spot's
special guardianship; for she hooked the other calves
away, but played with this one, while its mother stood
admiring by.

Old Spot Is part Holstein, and so, in her streaked,
spotted appearance, she sometimes reminds me of what
Thoreau said, in a beautiful random passage in his
journal, of a heifer that he fed with an apple :^

"One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did
by degrees approach as if to take some morsel from our hands,
while our hearts leaped to our mouths with expectation and

^ See "Thoreau: the Poet-Naturalist," by William Ellery Channing;
pp. 65, 66.

7

96 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

delight. She by degree's drew near with her fair limbs (pro-
gressive), making pretense of browsing; nearer and nearer,
till there was wafted to us the bovine fragrance, — cream of all
the dairies that ever were or ever will be: and then she raised
her gentle muzzle towards us, and snuffed an honest recogni-
tion within hand's reach. I saw it was possible for his herd
to inspire with love the herdsman. She was as delicately
featured as a hind. Her hide was mingled white and fawn
color, and on her muzzle's tip there was a white spot not
bigger than a daisy ; and on her side turned toward me, the
map of Asia plain to see.

"Farewell, dear heifer! Though thou forgettest me, my
prayer to heaven shall be that thou mayest not forget thyself.
There was a whole bucolic in her snuff. I saw her name was
Sumac. And by the kindred spots I knew her mother, more
sedate and matronly with full-grown bag, and on her sides
was Asia great and small, the plains of Tartary, even to the
pole; while on her daughter's was Asia Minor. She was not
disposed to wanton with the herdsman. And as I walked she
followed me, and took an apple from my hand, and seemed
to care more for the hand than the apple. So innocent a face
as I have rarely seen on any creature, and I have looked in the
face of many heifers. And as she took the apple from my hand
I caught the apple of her eye. She smelled as sweet as the
clethra blossom. There was no sinister expression. And for
horns, though she had them, they were so well disposed in the
right place, but neither up nor down, I do not now remember
she had any. No horn was held towards me."

Mr. John Burroughs, too, has written an attractive
paper upon the cow, which he has called "Our Rural
Divinity," and which is quite bucolic and certainly very
enjoyable.

Besides Trowbridge's well-known "Farm-Yard

THE BARN.

97

Song," there are not many poems upon cows; but there
is one, entitled "When the cows come home," by Mrs.
Agnes E. Mitchell, which is so full of sweet breaths
from the pasture that I shall leave a few stanzas of it
with you, as presenting, in a better form than I ever
shall be able to do the real, abiding poetry of our
friends the cows, and their life among the grasses:

" With a klingle, klangle, klingle,
'Way down the dusty dingle,
The cows are coming home ;
Now sweet and clear, and faint and low.
The airy tinklings come and go,
Like chimings from some far-off tower,
Or patterings from an April shower

That makes the daises grow.
Ko-kling, ko-klang, koklinglelingle,
'Way down the darkening dingle
The cows come slowly home.
And old-time friends, and twilight plays,
And starry nights and sunny days
Come trooping up the misty ways

When the cows come home.

" With a tinkle, tankle, tinkle.
Through fern and periwinkle.
The cows are coming home ;
A-Ioitering in the checkered stream,
Where the sun-rays glance and gleam,
Starine, Peachbloom, and Phoebe Phyllis
Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies.
In a drowsy dream.
To-link, to-link, tolinklinkle,
O'er banks with buttercups a-twinkle
The cows come slowly home ;
And up through memory s deep ravine
Come the brook's old song and its old-time sheen,
And the crescent of the silver queen.
When the cows ccme home.

98 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD

" With a kllngle, klangle, klingle,

With a loo-oo, and moo-00, and jingle,
The cows are coming home ;
And over there on Merlin Hill,
Hear the plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will;
The dew-drops lie on the tangled vines,
And over the poplars Venus shines,
And over the silent mill.
Ko-ling, ko-lang, kolinglelingle,
With a ting-a-ling and jingle.
The cows come slowly home.
Let down the bars ; let in the train
Of long-gone songs, and flowers, and rain ;
For dear old times come back again

When the cows come home."

It Is indeed a pleasure to be with animals, and to
observe their ways. Animals are franker and more
direct than men are in expressing themselv^es. You can
tell what an animal means, but you can't tell much
about men. I have met with few horses or dogs that
would make good politicians.

What a difference between the eyes of animals and
those of human beings ! How open, how transparent
the nature of a horse is, or of a dog or a cow, as seen
in their beautiful eyes! The eyes of a man or a woman
are not always so. I can not see into their souls and
know their real character as I can when I look into the
eyes of my little dog. Homer's favorite epithet, in-
deed, the best compliment that the old Greeks of the
"Iliad" could think of for their lady loves, was "bo-
opis," or ox-eyed.

Some animals are naturally neat, while others are,
like some men, naturally filthy. Some, that is, one
might well say, are positively brutal, while others are
not. Squirrels are the cleanest, perhaps, of all the ani-

THE BARN. 99

mals, and the nicest in their habits. Some cows seem
to delight in being clean, in picking out nice places to
lie down in, and so keep their udders and sides free
from dirt; while others, in the same herd, will invari-
ably be about as unclean and reeking as wallowing
could make them. It is the same with horses, some
requiring two or three times more currying than others.
Even pigs have their preferences and selective natures,
and I think I could actually make friends of some hogs.
Indeed, I have taught one occasionally to stand on his
hind feet, and take an apple from my hand.

Animals are the best woodsmen in the world.
Emerson, I believe, said that cows were the best sur-
veyors for a railroad (indeed, the streets of Boston are
said to succeed the cow paths), and I have noticed
in following the paths of deer in the woods that their
trails were about the shortest road to water or to the
lake shore, and always went by the easiest descent.
I could not but observe also how the deer would follow
up a blazed line. Quite frequently their tracks led for
some distance straight along from blazed tree to
blazed tree. Whether they thought that other deer
had perhaps bitten the bark, and so followed the blazes
as deer "sign," and thus, by keeping along them in this
way, found the walking gradually better and the ground
harder along the old lines, or whether they had at first
stepped from tree to tree merely from curiosity, to
learn perchance what had slashed the tree and broken
the twigs, I do not know; but their well-beaten paths
have followed many a section line in my woods-work,
and have diverged only to lead to water or to better
forage. Deer know the glades and dingles that are

lOO AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

most free from mosquitoes, and you will find their
yards and haunts good camping places for that reason.

A sheep path, too. Is the best route for a railroad.
Sheep are the surest of weather prophets, and know
the difference between a real and an apparent storm.
If the sheep stay out during a storm and cast their
weather eye upwards with disdain and go on browsing,
you may know there will be no bad weather, that It will
be only a passing local shower. But if they come in
toward the barn and cower behind the stacks, then you
had better come in with them.

Grandfather used to have sheep, and a great time
they had of It in shearing time, when they drove the
flock down to the river, four miles away, and washed
the fleece. There are few more delightful occupations
than the raising of sheep. Even their care, and the
actual handling and feeding, are poetic. They are the
most beautiful, to my notion, of all God's domestic
animals. There are few spots In my memory so green
as the hours I have spent in the tending of sheep and
lambs.

Animals, too, depend upon the sense of smell to
help them much more than does man. They can tell
their own young by this sense, and where they them-
selves have lain last, and whether they are in their own
or an alien flock or herd.

The gregarious instinct in animals begets colonies
of ants, schools of fishes, swarms of bees, broods and
flocks of chickens, coveys of quail, flocks and bands of
sheep, herds of cattle, droves of hogs, litters of pup-
pies, packs of hounds, bevies of girls, crowds of boys,
and communities of men and women.

THE BARN. loi

I sometimes wonder whether the animals ever con-
ceive of themselves as being like others of their species
whom they recognize so easily. Does a horse, for
example, realize that he is like the nag in the lot that
whinnered at him as he passed, or is it true of him,
as of men, that, as he drinks, he looketh into the mirror
of the pool and straightway forgetteth what manner of
horse he was? Can it be that chickens have an indi-
viduality, so that one should say unto the other, "How
can I be without thee, Scragly?" and the other should
say unto the one, "How can I be without thee. Top-
knot?" I have seen roosters and hens so attached as
to have seemingly an affection for one another. It is
well known that chicks of the same hatching will roost
side by side and stay together long after they have
been weaned; and I have noticed two young ones, of
different broods, taking walks together, and forming an
acquaintanceship which, let us hope, lasted through life,
for they kept together day by day and evidently enjoyed
one another's companionship.

Chickens, for some reason, besides foraging on
everything else they can lay their bills on, are exceed-
ingly fond of the berries of the poison ivy, and I have
seen them clamber all over a vine in order to get the
last berry. Animals, too, will devour the new fresh
leaves of its tips with apparent relish. They are dif-
ferently constituted from us, you know.

There is no tenderer passage in the Bible than that
in which Jesus compares His own willingness to forgive
Jerusalem with the anxiety of the common barnyard
fowl for her younglings, in these words :

I02 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,
and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth
her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"

Curiously, that is the one instance in the Bible
where the hen is mentioned. Job propounded the
question w^hether there was any taste in the white of
an egg, and other birds are spoken of in the Scrip-
tures; but it remained for the Master to remember
the common hen. Aye, but even more than by that,
has He sanctified the barn unto us: He was first laid
in a manger, while round about Him on the hillsides
shepherds watched their flocks by night.

I like to watch the chickens as they drink. How
they lift their little heads, and let the cool drops trickle
down their throats, in evident pleasure at it! Truly
they, too, are lovers of life.

Do animals think and ponder? I see no reason
why they should not. The force of habit certainly
becomes very strong upon them. I know that calvary
horses get so used to the bugle that they obey the calls
as readily as the men. And I believe that an old farm
horse knows whether he is going to town, or to the
field, or just down to the post-office, by the different
sets of harness we put on him. Perhaps he will look
forward to the long ride and wonder how heavy the
load w'ill be. A horse used to a certain route certainly
knows where to stop, and a loose horse, even out on a
prairie, can generally find his way home if he wants to.
A horse familiar with the road is frequently a safer

THE BARN. IO3

guide than a man not well acquainted with it. I have
had a horse take me safely to where I wanted to go
when I myself was somewhat bewildered; I simply let
him have the lines to himself, and guided him only
when he turned of his own accord. I believe they
think. They are perhaps not so different from human
beings. But they can not tell us.

Now no man can serv'e two masters, nor can a
horse, or a dog, or any other animal; for either he
will love the one and hate the other, or else he will
hate the one and love the other. So much for the
training of them.

But let us go back to the barn. The barn itself is
the special repository of the horses; and 'tis here the
thralls clean the Augean stables. The wagons are in
it, too, and the plows and harrows ; and all the harness
is hung on pegs behind the stalls.

Horses are really exceedingly intelligent. They
know as well as a man that rain water slakes the thirst
better than any other. Like cows, they will frequently
prefer pools of rain to even freshly drawn buckets
from the well ; and in spring, when it is still cold enough
to freeze in the nights, I have seen them break the
ice in the pasture lowlands with their forefeet in order
to get at the water beneath, although they had just
been offered a trough full at the barn. We once had
an old mare, who, though she could n't speak, was a
smart old lady, and used to cross one foreleg over the
other to brush the flies away, thus killing two birds
with one stone, as we say. Most horses have much
more intelligence than men and women commonly think
they have. As they grow older their eyes assume a

I04 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

wise and knowing look, much different from the eager
stare of a colt unused to new impressions.

It is a great experience to have made friends with
an animal. They know all our individual ways as
much as we know each other. They know who will
give them an apple, or who a beat on the head. Horses
have their moments of peace and joy and sorrow; they
have their pensive and playful moods; and they have
their fits of anger and waywardness, like men and
women. It takes a good deal of sense to understand
animals, and to be able to care intelligently for their
wants; and there are more of these, and much more
sense is required, than city people generally think. A
man can learn much from the animals. A well-bred
dog is very much of a gentleman, and a faithful and
good-natured old horse is an inspiration to better serv-
ice In the world.

Bill is about the most common name for a horse.
There is always a Bill in every barnyard, or a Frank,
or a Jim. I know of one old farm where the name
Billy had been such a favorite as to have variously been
applied to as many as three of the horses by their
owners. Dollle, among the gentler sex, is perhaps the
name most generally given, or Flossie, or Jennie, or
Queen.

It is surprising, the real courtesy shown by the
males toward the females by our horse friends. This
Is no mere fancy. I have seen It In more than one in-
stance, but I recollect one old horse In particular, with
whom I had to do at that time, old George, who would
always persistently refuse to come out of the pasture,
when we opened the gate, ahead of Lizzie, his mate

THE BARN. 105

on the team. No matter how far behind she was, or
how much we urged him, no, sir! he would not go
through the gate until she came. 'T was against all
precedent and decency! But when the mare finally
sauntered up, old George would lift his head proudly
for her to pass first, in genuine heroic deference and
with a touch of true chivalry. I always liked the old
fellow for that, and sometimes he got a handful more
of oats than I was told to give him.

Horses always know one another, and frequently
two or three will become great cronies, will drive well
together, and will enjoy one another's presence. The
mere appearance of strangers will cause heels to project
forcibly behind and other symptoms of displeasure to
become noticeable. But I have in mind two old com-
rades, Billy and Dandy, who had been driven together
for years, and had got so that they understood each
other's ways and whims, and liked them — yes, they
seemed to be very fond of each other. Billy was lazy
and Dandy did the work, and perhaps that was the
reason why Billy liked Dandy; yet Billy was really of
an affectionate nature, and we all liked him, notwith-
standing his "cussedness," and perhaps that was why
Dandy liked him too. One spring they were separated
in the teams, and were driven with other horses. Some
weeks after the separation I was standing with my
team getting ready for the field, when Billy spied
Dandy, and came up to him, and evinced all possible
signs of appreciation toward him, and rubbed noses
with him — kissing him, perhaps, as we should say —
and then stood in the ranks beside him, ready and
eager to be hitched up with him as they used to be;

Io6 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and then, when I drove away leaving him alone, he
looked so forlorn and disappointed that I was sorry
I had n't him with me. But another teamster came,
and he was led away with some others. Dear old Billy
and Dandy! I wonder where they are now, and
whether they are yet alive, and who feeds and beds
them. It will not be long before they will die, and be
taken out to the fields they had loved and been in so
much. I should like to be there to soothe their last
moments with whatever of alleviation my human aid
could give. Surely, if a good horse does not go to
horse-Heaven — well, if he does not go there, then I say
that he should go there, and that It 's a shame that he
does not ! But our better natures tell us that he does.

Animals have many ways of expressing their feel-
ings and of communicating with one another that we
do not always observe. Different modulations of the
voice — of the baa of a sheep, or the moo of a cow,
or the whinner of a horse, or the bark of a dog, or
even the grunt of a pig — express different shades of
temper, such as fear, anxiety, comfort. My dog can
tell me more by a sudden movement of his ears than
if he had spoken. Animals are more observant than
men. A horse will notice a wagon across a field long
before a man will. And so are animals better weather
prophets than men. They know the lee side of a hay-
stack; and the caw of the crow and sudden hurrying
of the sheep mean the storm is at hand.

We say that man is the highest of animals, and has
dominion over the rest of creation ; and we are right.
Yet let us put ourselves in the others' places. Man
builds suspension bridges, houses, barns, fences. Now

THE BARN. 1 07

horses do n't do these things, and the presumption is
therefore that they can not. But if we had only four
big hoofs, and could eat nothing but hay and oats,
and whinner, could we act much differently from our
horses, no matter how magnificent a brain we might
have concealed beneath our great long ears and coat
of hair? Is it not man's superior equipment which
gives him his power, and which has developed his
brain? If we should become horses and dogs, would
we, I wonder, be as intelligent as they?

If we could only know, doubtless we should find
in these great dumb beasts — dumb, so far as our speech
is concerned — with their soft lips and great coats of
hair and waving manes and sensitive nostrils — I say
doubtless, if we could only know, we should find a rich
soul life there; associated, as their life is, with all the
influences of Nature, the water, the dewy grass, the
fresh earth, the sky — all those facts that we account
most beautiful and sacred and uplifting in our own
lives. And why not in theirs?

Books do n't teach a man everything. There is a
great deal that can, and ought to be, learned outside
of books in the school of life, among men and animals,
and with the flowers and grass under the blue sky. I
can not give any other interpretation to certain things
I have noticed among my dumb animal friends and
companions through this world than that the animals,
however vaguely or dimly, share with us the same feel-
ings and sensations and, so far as I know, the same
thoughts, that the varied experiences of life give rise
to and intensify in our own minds. They certainly
have a sense of mystery, and, rudimentary though their

Io8 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

mental apprehension may be, as compared with our
own supposedly superior make-up, I fondly believe that
they find life as we find it, and perhaps have, in their
own way, the same perplexities and the same solace.

I think we should treat our beasts well. As I
have had the care of horses in various places, I have
noticed how evident was their appreciation of any little
kindness done to them, as the gift of an apple; and
I have never found that I could manage them any
the less easily for it. The command to observe the
Sabbath is just as binding upon the horse as upon his
master. None of the ten is more openly broken than
that. I have been glad to observe many exceptions
to it, but it is not all of our beasts of burden that have
their Sabbaths. Yet the command went out: "Remem-
ber the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy . . . in it
thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor
thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy
gates." A love for animals, a sense of our kinship
with all the animate world, is one of the most refining
influences of life. "The merciful man is merciful to
his beast."

When one looks upon the proud form and bearing,
the beautiful eyes, the erect carriage, and the superb
mane and tail of a horse, one is moved to the greatest
admiration. It is no wonder that the author of the
Book of Job loved the horse. I like to see them roll
and kick up their heels, and then start to graze at
once on the grass and clover. A horse that can roll
over and back again is, according to the old saying,
worth a clean hundred any day.

This noblest beast of burden, the horse, has re-

THE BARN. 109

cently been written of by Mr. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, in
his "Jess," with such tenderness and affection that no
one with any heart, and especially no one who has had
the care of animals, can fail, by the reading of it, to be
made more humane to these beautiful forms of life, so
winsome, so loyal when their service is appreciated, so
appreciative themselves, everywhere about us. Burns's
poem, "The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salu-
tation to his Auld Mare Maggie," expresses this same
affection of a man for his horse and of the horse for
his master. I think, too, of "Black Beauty."

I have a sermon that I have much enjoyed, "Christ
among the Cattle," by Frederic R. Marvin, which I
wish could find a very wide circulation, teaching, as it
does, our responsibility for these dependent fellow-
beings, and the pleasure that we should have in sharing
their lives.

A man is rewarded in more ways than one for good
care of his horses, but it is enough to see them happy
and enjoying themselves. There is a poem by Mr.
Hamlin Garland, in his "Prairie Songs," entitled
"Horses Chawin' Hay," these few stanzas of which
give the best expression that I know of to that feeling
of genuine satisfaction which a man has in a barn,
while hearing his horses crunch out their appreciation
of his generosity:

" I tell yeh whiit! The chankin'

W^hich the tired horses makes
When you 've slipped the harness off 'm

An' shoved the hay in flakes
From the hay-mow overhead,

Is jest about the equal of any pi-any ;
They's nothin' soun's s' cumftabul

As horses chawin' hay.

no

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

"I love t' hear 'em chankin',

Jest a-grindin' slow and low,
With their snoots a-rootin' clover

Deep as their ol' heads '11 go.
It 's kind o' sort o' restin'

To a feller's bones, I say.
It soun's s' mighty cumftabul —

The horses chawin' hay.

" Gra-onk, gra-onk, gra-onk!

In a stiddy kind o' tone,
Not a tail a-waggin' to 'um,

N'r another sound 'r groan —
Fer the flies is gone a-snoozin'.
Then I loaf around an' watch 'em

In a sleepy kind o' way,
F'r they soun' so mighty cumftabul

As they rewt and chaw their hay."

And so the barn has brought out among our friends
and humble servants, the animals. There is a pleas-
ing sketch upon "An Old Barn," by Dr. C. C. Ab-
bott, in which he tells us of all the birds and other
forms of wild life still lingering beneath its
abandoned, loosened roof. Wilson Flagg also
wrote upon barns, and Thoreau said he was
glad Flagg had chosen for one of his themes
such a subject, for it smacked a little of wild
Nature, and recognized Nature "squarely."
Let us throw down some hay, then, and
some straw; and let us milk the cows, and
slop the pigs, and curry the horses; and then
let us feed and bed them for the night.

PITCHFORK

AND FLAIL.

THE WOODS.

"This is the forest primeval."

—Longfellow.

A MObSY LOG.

HE greater part of the woods stood, origi-
nally, back of the barn. There the trees
had reared their massive stems for cen-
turies upon the knolls and along the
brooks ; useful to the pioneer, in his day,
and much more valuable, those that have
come down still standing, to later genera-
tions. Stumps can occasionally yet be
seen where the old trees were; and what
little of the vast tract is now remaining is
one of the last bits left of the magnificent
primeval forest of virgin timber which once covered
all these hills.

The barn was new then, and its great beams and
rafters were hewn by the broadax in the very woods
which sheltered it, and from trees cut, in those early
times, freely, to make clearings — the straightest and
finest trunks being selected for the buildings, and the
others rolled and piled together, logs and branches, and
burned, to open up the forest for the fields of wheat.
So it happens that the houses and barns erected then
have in them the most durable of lumber — oak, black
walnut, hard maple, hickory — as commonly as now we
find the pine, and outlasting, for that reason, the more
recent edifices.

113

1 14 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

The old place — a half section — primarily extended
for more than a mile along the turnpike. The woods
then was of immense extent, and was overrun with
squirrels and 'coons; and many a tale of prowess has
been related of shooting 'coons by starlight only, or
even in absolute darkness, so keen was the eyesight of
our forefathers. Even I can recollect when the old
woods was so big that from any point near its center
I could not see cleared land anywhere ahead through
the trees. It was an easy matter to get lost in it. It
seemed then, in my boyhood days, to be an absolutely
endless forest, a gigantic stretch of waving, majestic
monarchs, nothing but trunks and tree-tops everywhere
I gazed, filled with all the enchantment of the snare and
still hunt, and hallowed with illimitable beauty and
mystery. And it has not lost all of its beauty by the
removal of the trees; for, although there is more light
under them, some of the trees are there yet, and the
old woods still looks quite familiar and much as it
used to appear.

There was a certain portion of it, near the high-
way, where the growth was more open, and where,
consequently, gypsy caravans used regularly to encamp.
I well recollect how my boyish fancy thrilled at the
first sight of them, as their dusky figures moved to
and fro beside the crane and the kettles in the weird,
dancing firelight, while gypsy dogs barked warningly
at us newcomers. Surely here was the long-lost happi-
ness, I thought; or, at least, a little of pure romantic
wildness, inclosed among the dim trees, under the stars.

Let us ramble, then, together for a while beneath
the leaves on this fair afternoon, and see if perchance

"THE VAST CATHEDRAL OF GOD'S TREES."

THE WOODS. 117

we shall not find a friendship with the old monarchs,
or a hint of by-gone days and the life of the frontier.
Entering beneath the low-hanging, drooping
branches of a beech, we find ourselves at once in the
vast cathedral of God's trees — long reaches of leafy
solitude, airy vistas, beautiful depths of shade, all odor-
ous with the scent of blossoms, of decaying forest litter,
and of the many other perfumes of the woods. The
floor is carpeted with wild flowers, ferns, grasses, and
innumerable leaves, with downy couches of moldering
veterans as our resting places; the ceiling is of leaf
sprays, composing a living, interlacing greenery, soft-
ened in the days by dappled flecks and broad bands
of mellowing sunlight falling as through stained glass
windows among the shadows, and at night mingling
with the pale stars and the subdued, gray light of the
moon; the walls are of the rough bark of trees, many-
colored, differing in hue as the trees are separately
tinted, mottled with exquisite lichens, and variegated
with equally delicate and beautiful vines coiling about
the trunks, all combining thus into the rare old tapes-
tries and mural paintings of the woods; the aged boles
themselves being the pillars, the supports for this roof-
canopy of Nature's architecture, and, springing from
them, many tough, strong arches spanning the heavens,
upholding in their outspread arms a fine fretwork of
twigs; the aisles, the old wood roads, strewn with
leaves. What a delightful place it is ! We are ushered
in by the praise of many wood voices and the lisping
of leaves. Afar off, as in some sylvan cloister, in the
dim recesses, one can hear the faintly modulated song
of a bird, like a thin, attenuated shred of a human

Il8 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

soul, in the forest — as It were the voice of a priest
deep in the distance chanting the litany.

There is an abandoned path yonder winding its
way leisurely into the woods. The old paths — whither
do they lead? If we could but trace them, and knew
the feet that had passed over them ! How they twine
in and out among long-forgotten fields of golden-rod,
in under drooping boughs, or perchance through a
small belt of timber, where the paths are scarcely dis-
cernible now on account of the saplings that have
sprung up in or near them. Every now and then they
cross little stretches of open grass, to disappear again
into the thickets and the dimness. Perhaps the one
now ahead of us was once used as a cow or a sheep
path, or led to the spring for water from a cabin, and
it may have served at times as a gypsy patteran. How
many memories cluster about it ! The old path re-
mains hard, and consequently no grass grows upon it
to obliterate it. Even where the underbrush comes up
and obscures it, the meandering footway is still ap-
parent, a long line running through the forest, covered
with matted fallen leaves. As we follow it, though
often the trail becomes uncertain close at hand and
dwindles because of the myriad leaves that have drifted
about and filled it, we can see that it borders an old
rail fence and leads far beyond across the brook —
whither? — and why?

These old zigzag, stake-and-rider, snake fences are
the only ones that have any poetry to them, but they
have; and as I have pulled them apart and loaded up
the old lichened rails, useless now except for firewood,
I have wondered who first split them long ago, and

THE WOODS. 119

who made the notches, still visible even in their decay,
in which the upper ones rested. It is interesting to
notice the different kinds of timber used for rails in
those days. Some are of walnut, actually fine black
walnut that split, and used for rails; some are of elm,
or of black locust, and perhaps there are a few oak
rails among them; but not many other kinds of wood
will last so long, for these fences were built over fifty
years ago, and yet serve their purpose to mark out
the limits. Generally just the best were employed, and
those only that split. Hickory, ash, and poplar, how-
ever, were also used for rails — anything that split
easily — and only the straightest of those.

Do you hear it — that sweet, clear whistle from the
brush? There is something very romantic in the call
of the quail. I remember how as a boy I used to listen
to it with a thrill of delight. It seemed the very em-
bodiment of all the wild life of the woods — Bob JFh'ite!
Bob White! Bob, Bob White! And it still inspires
me when I hear it.

As I step quietly among the trees, the frisking and
sudden barking of a squirrel there on the black walnut
set me all a-tremble, and I softly approach closer to
watch him. It seems, at this instant, as if all the ex-
perience of past generations has all at once come upon
me — their pioneer life, their daring, adventurous ex-
ploring of the wilderness, rifle in hand, in search, too,
for a hunt after the game; and perhaps, more than that,
an unconquerable, ineradicable savagery antedating
even their intrepid quests; an untamed, primitive, na-
tive sense of the wild! Is it that, or what is it, that
now surges and surges through my blood? I can not

I20 AROUxND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

resist It, and I would not if I could, for I love it. And
the mournful notes of the dove amongst the branches
of yonder aged hickory — they, too, throb in my spirit,
and bespeak the utter loneliness and solitude of the
forest.

To walk among these trees and ferns, amid the
lisping of leaves, or to lie upon earth's mossy restful-
ness near a tinkling brook — surely, this Is a part of
Paradise ! A place, one might think, at least for
Theocritus, or, In its sterner aspects, even for Dante.

In spring, what? Opening blossoms and greening
wood roads; slopes of spring beauties; birds bubbling
forth their music — warbling, yodeling, caroling — peal-
ing out what not from their little throats. What a
variety in the early spring colors — the pink and light
green of the buds, the myriad hues of the blossoms of
the sod and the trees, the redbud and the dogwood!
And the old woods boasts, besides the Claytonia, the
pepper-and-salt, blue, yellow, and white violets, wood
sorrel, sweet William, Jack-in-the-pulpit, sweet cicely,
wild ginseng, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, wake-
robin, the true and false Solomon's seal, and many other
wild flowers, each In Its day, while ferns of graceful
forms — the maidenhair, evergreen, woodsia, polypody,
rattlesnake fern — come pushing up their curiously
curled fronds, and along the brooks the wild ginger
spreads abroad Its wide leaves.

In summer? The great trees canopied with their
green coronals, the long, droning hum of the forest,
the rich scent of mint and pennyroyal. The green-
brier and climbing sarsaparilla, wild morning-glories,
the poison three-leafed Ivy, and the true five-pointed

M*^

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Wim

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THE ROAD THROUGH THE WOODS.

THE WOODS. 123

woodbine all form bowers of shade above some bend-
ing saplings, or impede our path by their intrepid
growth. And the blackberries, big ebony fellows, look-
ing sweet and delicious there beneath some vines; while
mulberries hang from the trees, and the ground is
dotted with them as they have fallen and silted among
the leaves and grasses.

Toward the autumn? Color, and the instinct for
the chase. The old wood roads and fence corners are
fringed with a maze of yellow golden-rod and purple
iron weed. Then, too, closing the summer, come the
long racemes of wild black cherries; and, later, or
along with them, the pendent clusters of wild grapes;
and the papaws yellow with the year, and fall and
tumble and roll to their secret hiding places among the
weeds, there to await the culminating touch of a hard
black frost before their final rich flavor can be appre-
ciated. The many kinds of nuts, maturing and enlarg-
ing in their green hulls during the long hot months of
summer, now, in these cool days, in the fall of the leaf,
are filling the old woods with a rare, exquisite fra-
grance, while squirrels frisk among them in the branches
and send their shucks pattering to the earth as they
gnaw and munch the sweet kernels. What wonderful
little pieces of architecture the acorns are — miniature
mosques in themselves ! They strew the ground every-
where beneath the oaks, and bits of nibbled shells, too,
almost a snowstorm of them, where the squirrels have
been eating. What a delight to work beneath the
many-colored trees in their autumn glory! The great
leafy tents and the stray branches beneath them are a
wonderful harmony of color — golden, golden ! — one of

124 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

those artistic effects in Nature which men have always
attempted to copy, but have only succeeded in suggest-
ing— the yellow of the leaves casting a beautiful glow
through the woods in this season of the year, a sub-
dued, mellow light, as of the reflected splendor of a
sunset — the twilight of the dying year.

In winter? Bare boughs, except now and then a
branch of dead beech leaves or of oak; snow marked
with tracks; evergreen trees seen at a distance among
the hardwoods; and the smoke from the sugar camp
toward the early year.

In all the seasons, in these dingles and nooks in the
woods, one may perhaps get glimpses of a too soon
forgotten Eden. How beautiful it all is, as I think
of it!

I have seen at least these birds flitting among the
trees or perched on their staghorn tops — the robin and
chewink, wood thrush and brown thrasher, cardinal and
scarlet tanager, common bluebird and indigo bluebird,
yellow-breasted chat and wild canary, chippy and song
sparrow, ruby-throated humming bird, Carolina wren,
blue jay, cedar bird, chickadee, flicker, red-headed
woodpecker, big sap sucker, little sap sucker, blackbird,
chicken hawk, crow, mourning dove, meadow lark,
woodcock, quail. In the day turkey buzzards soar and
soar above the trees, and in the night whip-poor-wills
and screech owls cry and whinner. Great flocks of wild
pigeons used to roost in the woods when they, like the
buffalo, had life, and had it abundantly.

And I have noticed, at different times, raccoons,
opossums, skunks, weasels, gray squirrels, big fox squir-
rels, the little striped ground squirrel, rabbits, mice.

THE WOODS. 125

and moles among its wild inhabitants, while horses,
cows, sheep, and hogs have browsed and fed beneath
its cooling shade. Formerly wolves used to howl at
its edge, foxes crept stealthily through it, and wild cats
crouched on the limbs; and no doubt deer have nipped
the leaves in pioneer times, while wild turkeys fed on
the nuts.' Among the reptiles, black snakes, blue racers,
and the harmless garter snakes glide and wriggle about
or writhe and fold among the stumps; small lizards
and the larger ones, more fish-like in their scaly coats,
may be seen occasionally slipping about in the leaves
and over the logs; and the slow, solemn, checkered
turtles are to be found in the wet places of the brooks,
or rarely may be met with taking a deliberate course
across the woods. Snails of various sizes slowly make
their slimy way about the leaves or up along the trunks,
and the ground is covered in places with their shells.

The old woods is thus the home and the sustaining
nourishment of many fellow mortals, of whose inter-
esting lives we might know more could w^e but disarm
their fears by disarming ourselves and cultivating a
friendly familiarity with them.

I think, too, that few areas of its size will be found
to have quite so many varieties of trees, not only in
species but also in genera, as this little remaining strip
of perhaps some twenty acres of woodland. Here they
are according to families, in the order of their abun-
dance :

Aceracea — Sugar (abundant) and black maple (a tree
or so). Many of these are "curly" maples, it seems, as it
turns out in the felling.

126 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Fagaca — Beech (plentiful). White, red, and yellow chest-
nut oak (a few left of each).

Juglandacea — Black walnut (frequent). Shagbark and
pignut hickory^ (a dozen or so together, but with many sap-
lings).

Leguminosa — Redbud, honey locust, black locust, coffee-
tree (quite a number of each).

JJlmaceee — ^White and slippery elm (both well represented).

Oleaceee — Blue and green ash (not uncommon).

Rosacea- — Shad bush (one little sapling). Wild plum
(two thickets). Wild red cherrj' (a small tree). Wild black
cherr}' (some beauties).

Moraceo" — Red mulberrj^ (two big trees, and a few small
groves ) .

Cornaceo' — Flowering dogwood (quite noticeable in the
spring). Sour gum (one solitary specimen).

Betulace^e — Ironwood, or hornbeam (some big enough for
wagon hubs). Blue, or water, beech (one tree only).

Celastracea — Waahoo, or burning bush (along the old
wood roads).

AnnoTiacece — Some scattering thickets of papaws.

Lauraceo" — A clump of sassafras.

Magnoliacea — Tulip-tree, or yellow poplar (two speci-
mens).

Tiliacea — Basswood (one lone medium-sized fellow, per-
sisting tranquilly near some giant maples).

And then, besides these, just across the road are a
couple of sycamores; along a brook only a few rods
away, in a field which originally was a part of the
woods, but which was long since cleared off, is a wil-
low; still farther off. In a former pasture, where also
blossoms the wild rose, are some buckeyes; the common
elderberry and staghorn sumac skirt the hollows and

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»Sfc* •'■-

'AN ABANDONED PATH."

THE WOODS. 129

roadsides; and, to be seen at times amongst these older
generations, are, finally, a few young saplings of com-
mon juniper and red cedar, sprung from seeds dropped
by birds that had carried them from trees planted years
ago about the homestead. Why, the old woods has in
and about it nearly forty kinds of trees, with more
merchantable varieties among them than are to be
found in the entire Adirondack forest. Of the smaller
shrubs, wild currants, gooseberries, blackberries, and
red and black raspberries grow profusely in spots. Of
trees not native to the region, but placed for ornamental
purposes about the farm, are yet to be seen the red
cedar, pitch pine, and Norway spruqe, a couple of gray
birches, and a young persimmon-tree, while formerly
two Carolina poplars bordered the well, and a fine,
broad-leaved catalpa shaded the trough.

Each tree, having seed in itself, as the Scriptures
say, erects Itself from Infancy predestined, as It were,
to a certain type, contour, shape, individuality; yet this
resemblance of the species may be much altered in occa-
sional single instances, by external circumstances, by Its
closeness to other trees, for example, and by the vari-
eties of these surrounding trees, some being more favor-
able to its growth than others, as they screen or admit
the light — so that a maple in one part of the woods
may appear but little like one in another, and even
totally different in outline from a brother in the open
field.

Of these many varieties of trees not a few resemble
each other in bark and structure, though each yet re-
maining different and preserving distinct Its own unique-
ness. As a rule, everywhere, trees of the same family

130 AROUND .AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

will have bark, which Is at least similar (as with the
birches), and is in some cases almost identical (as with
the young red and silver maples, or the hard and red
maples when very old, or the slippery and white elms —
and it takes a schoolboy to tell a slippery elm from the
others) ; but it is not uncommon to find species that
are sap relations, and yet clothed in bark which is
totally different (as, for example, the ironwood and
blue beech), or which is at least noticeably so (as with
the white and red oaks). On the other hand, the bark
of that noble beech yonder is so much like the grayish
bark of the little blue beech on the slope there that they
seem the same species, even though the bark of the
latter Is somewhat fluted and wavy in appearance; and
the leaves, too, are quite similar. Yet are they totally
different, in family and genus (the one Fagus, the other
Carpinus), In quality of wood fiber (the blue beech
being sometimes known as Ironwood), In their prefer-
ences of soil and situation, and in their seed pods (those
of the latter being like hops, whence one of its common
names, the hop hornbeam). And so with the white
elms and this true little Ironwood beside us. How
alike the leaves and bark, and yet how unlike, after
all ; for the leaves of the elm are rough to the touch
and thick In texture, and, if we cut through it. Its bark
Is seen to be much thicker than the Ironwood's, and the
wood much softer. I have frequently mistaken these
two kinds for one another at a distance, and especially
when my eyes hav^e been busied with a multitude of
other trees, but on cutting Into the wood one can soon
detect the species, for the wood of the elm Is ring-
porous in Its nature, while that of the Ironwood Is very

THE WOODS. 131

hard and is diffuse-porous, and the bark Is quite thin.
The sweet gum and hackberry, on the other hand,
although of entirely different families, yet have a
crinkled, alligator-like bark which at times is not at
all unlike. Elsewhere in the forests I have noticed,
too, that the bark of the balsam and young white pine
is similar, and that of the red and white cedar, that of
the tamarack and red spruce, and that of the shad bush
and young red maple, or of the hard maple saplings
and mature mountain maples.

All these can be distinguished as separate varieties.
I am speaking only of their general exterior to one first
observing them in the woods. The bark of the trees
in these chance resemblances is a most interesting and
delightful study, as are the leaves; for these singular
similarities in appearance exist also frequently with the
leaves of trees. I used to consider the basswood the
male mulberry, so alike seemed their leaves; and the
sycamore and tulip tree at a distance have foliage not
at all dissimilar, which is true also of the papaw and
magnolia. The trees thus superficially are sometimes
very much alike; and yet each species preserves intact
its own little points of identity, and retains forever
inviolate its own uniqueness among the trees.

The bark of the trees is most pronounced in color
and appearance in early spring, when the sap seems
almost to show through it, even through the rough
outside flakes. In summer the real character of the
bark is somewhat obscured by the shade and the foli-
age. In autumn the bark "sets," as woodmen say; that
is, the growth of the tree having been practically com-
pleted for the year, the bark hardens and grows close

132 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

to the wood as the work of the sap is finished, and is
then not so easy to peel. In winter the woody jacket
forms almost the sole means of a ready identification
of the trees, and the study of it hence becomes then a
genuine necessity as well as a pleasure. It is when still
wet and dripping with rain that the trees are most evi-
dently alive; the mottled lichened trunks of some of
them, as, for instance, those especially of young soft
maples, looking like huge sleek snakes, with the spots
and striped markings left slippery and fresh and clean,
as after shedding their skins.

The distinction between the different orders of trees
can not absolutely be determined in any other way than
by the inflorescence. This is the only hard-and-fast
line. The separation of trees into hardwoods and soft-
woods, including all the Conifera, and these only, under
the latter term, and placing all other kinds under the
former heading, is not a satisfactory classification, for
many of these so-called hardwoods, such as basswood
and poplar, are as soft as the conifers; it is only in
lumbering that such terms should be used, and in lum-
bering the term softwoods comprises many that are
not among the Conifera. Nor are the words decidu-
ous and evergreen much more decisive; for it is inter-
esting to observe that three of the coniferous species,
namely, the tamarack and cypress, and the exotic gingko,
shed their leaves annually, and that the flowering and
shiny magnolias, the American and English hollies,
boxwood, the live oak (and the holm oak of Europe),
and the laurel are all evergreens, though not conifers.
The word evergreen, however descriptive, is, too, in
itself almost a misnomer; for all trees, even those not

THE OLD RAIL FENCE.

THE WOODS. 135

deciduous, do shed all of their leaves eventually —
rotating in a series of years, dropping some of them
one year and some another, as the conifers do — even
if they do not cast them annually. For all popular
usage the division of trees into narrow-leaf and broad-
leaf species, or the sword-leaved and shield-leaved, as
Ruskin called them, is the most accurate and conven-
ient; for no tree outside of the Conifera has narrow
leaves or needles, and there is but one of the Conifera
that has broad leaves, namely, the gingko, and this is
not a native variety, but an importation from Japan.
It is an interesting fact, however, that some of our trees
bear cones, but yet are not among the Conifera; such
as the birches, alders, and the tulip-tree. Trees, too,
whose flowers and fruit are similar, and which there-
fore belong to the same order, may have leaves of an
entirely different formation ; as, for example, the red
maple and box elder, both of the Aceracea, or the
apple and mountain ash, of the Rosacea, or the white,
red, and laurel oaks. It is also possible, as has been
pointed out, to find in the same genus both evergreen
and deciduous species; as, for instance, the live oak is
an evergreen broad-leaf among a host of deciduous
brethren. The inflorescence is the only court of final
resort.

The full crown of that fine hard maple yonder indi-
cates, perhaps, that the tree is beside a spring or a water
course, and is in an opening of light; which are indeed
the case. The little grove of beeches there on the ridge
is, as plainly as day, a reproduction from an older tree
whose nuts had fallen at times and rolled some distance
away on either side, yet not so far but that we can dis-

136 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

tlnguish this separate clump from the rest of the
younger growth. These thrifty hickory saplings have
sprung from the fruit of a majestic shagbark above us,
and the two farther down the slope near the brook
evidently came from a couple of nuts that bounded off
down the side of the ridge. The reproduction is thicker
on the south side of the ridges, where the sun reaches
the seeds. If these smaller saplings could only be
judiciously thinned out, what a magnificent forest there
would be here in the years, trees with glorious old tops
to them and without a dead limb, whose lumber would
be straight-grained and clean of knots; whereas, if left
to grow too crowded in this way, some will surely die,
being choked by the others, and those remaining will
not always be the best trees or the most desirable.
These little hickories, and those ironwoods and dog-
woods yonder, ought especially to be watched; for the
hickories will make good maul or ax handles, the iron-
woods will make first-class beetle heads, and the dog-
woods will make the best of light wedges or gluts, if
seasoned or burnt properly in the fire. And, besides,
young trees make excellent firewood, better than that
split from the sap wood of the old dead trees; for the
saplings are in part heart wood, which is more solid
and gives out a greater heat. That would be another
advantage in thinning out the woods.

There is much difference between the growth of a
tree under forestal conditions and that of one unhin-
dered in the open. The former, unless it be a shade-
endurer, like the beech, is forced because of the dense
stand to shoot up at the top for its life. See, how those
massive boles have struggled up into the light! The

THE WOODS. 137

lower limbs of long ago have all died and fallen, be-
cause existence was denied them In the darkness beneath
the thick crowns, these under branches thus decaying
aside In a well-ordered system of natural pruning, so
essential (this removal of the superfluous limbs) for
producing the long, clear trunks suitable for lumber,
and minimizing, too, the number of knots In the wood.
The other, our brother of the meadow, is afforded its
native expansion, develops a full crown and limbs close
to the ground, and Is therefore of no value except as
a shade-tree or for firewood. Yet the tree In the
forest — though sometimes distorted because of other
trees having fallen upon It, or because its roots do not
have a fair hold, growing upon the edge of a depres-
sion, and hence leaning and bending, or for similar
causes — has a wlldness to it, an appearance of age and
of moss-clad austerity, which is likely to be lacking in
its neighbor of the fields. The old trees, even in their
nearness to each other, seem to stand, after all, apart,
in silent, unapproachable, lofty dignity, time-worn land-
marks, the grandeur of the virgin forest.

What a place, therefore, the old woods is for light
on the trees' individual histories. That young elm
yonder, still alive but bent to the ground, and with Its
tip buried In the earth, was evidently brought thus low
by a larger tree in Its downward fall, so fastening the
sapling's top that it was never released. The dead log
there testifies to that. From whatever cause the old
tree fell, its descent has caused new shoots to spring up
all over the deflected sapling, which finally will detach
itself from its rotting tip and partially erect Itself again.
But its trunk, when it grows into a tree, will be crooked

138 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and curved to the point where one of the present shoots
takes the place of the main stem, but from there up-
ward will be as straight as a new tree, unless some
similar chance should befall it later. The same thing
can frequently be observed near streams. The bow-
like trunks of those overhanging beeches near the brook
have plainly been caused by the constant washing away
of the soil from about their roots, with the consequent
leaning of the tree in the direction of the water. A
middle-sized maple near by is also bowed over, at a
notch made by hunters. Perhaps its hollow interior
had been the refuge of a rabbit or squirrel in a hasty
retreat, and the game had then been cut out from above,
and the tree had at that point been weakened. A larger
ash, farther along, with the base of its trunk crushed
and distorted, apparently shows the effect of a heavy
weight of snow, or of a dead limb, which perhaps had
fallen from a larger tree, and accidentally lodged upon
its tender stem, in its early seedling life.

And what an interesting bit of curious history the
face of the cross-section of a tree is, as we look at the
old stumps and the ends of the fresh logs, just cut and
lying in the woods: — the first early growth; the remains
of old dead branches left in the dark hard knots; the
age of the tree in its rings; the double heart signifying
a breakage at one time of the original stem; the effect
of varying degrees of heat and cold, of climatic con-
ditions, and of severe or more propitious seasons, as
evidenced by the broad, expanded rings and the narrow,
compressed, less visible ones. It is only the approxi-
mate age that we find. A tree is at least as old as the
number of its rings, but I have reckoned the age of tiny

THE WOODS. 139

suppressed balsam seedlings, for example, with the
microscope, and found that it had taken thirty years
for their tips to reach the level of a two foot stump,
so that, the shape of the stems being of course conical,
the rings below the height at which the saw was entered
would therefore not show on the tree's cross-section.
This unknown quantity will vary, of course, with the
different species, and with the location and exposure;
we must know our tree before we can judge it. Then,
again, if the crown is scragly in old age, or narrow,
and hence in an unfavorable season might not be able
to assimilate enough material to form a new encircling
woody sheath extending along the entire length of the
tree below, the actual age would perhaps be a few years
greater than the number of rings at the stump. Thus,
in one Instance, I personally counted the rings at both
ends of a fourteen foot log and found them at each
end the same (214 years), which would ordinarily in-
dicate that the tree had shot up in a single season more
than fourteen feet In height, a presumption on Its face
absurd, and still more impossible considering the evi-
dent slow growth of the tree, the rings being so closely
crowded that I had to use a microscope to see the
separate lines. Then, too, there is frequently decay
in the center at the butt, and that (no matter how
little) will have depleted the years it has reached. If
the growth, too, Is greater on one side than the other
(and it will generally be to the south, on account of
the entrance of more sunlight from that quarter), there
will often be two woody layers, close together, for but
one year's Increase, the first attempt having perhaps
been retarded by a cold snap later in the season. I

I40 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

have often noticed this peculiar tendency in the birches,
especially where a large root has had exceptional mois-
ture, but it will also occasionally be met with in the
case of apple-trees in orchards. Rings crowded closely
together may indicate also unusually hard winters, or
the lack of sufficient rainfall for several continued sea-
sons (and this has often been tested from the rings by
the memories of the oldest inhabitants, and the story
of the trees has been found a true one), or the denud-
ing of the foliage by fire or insects, in which cases it
would of course take the tree some years to restore its
normal annual increase through the leaves. A scar in
the interior of a tree, say on a ring eighty years from
the bark, may be an old blaze from the trails of the
frontier, or, if it is continued throughout the successive
log sections at the same ring (as I have seen it), is per-
haps the tale of a lightning streak, or another tree, in
falling, may have broken a branch from this one and
stripped a long streamer of the bark off with it, this
wound of former days having long since been shut in
and healed over by the newer growth. If the tree be
a maple, we may perhaps find a small cavity inclosed
far in the wood, an evidence of some old-time tapping
of years ago, which had been grown over and left there,
yet even now to witness of its origin by the spiral ribs
of the auger. It brings along with it all the long train
of memories of the sugar camp, and of the humor and
"sparking" of the best times in the world, the hours
spent about the fire when the sap is boiling. And so
these disks of the logs, can we but Interpret them, are
a record of the tree's life, invisible and burled while

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THE WOODS. 143

the tree stands, but ineffaceable and permanent as long
as the wood lasts and is not decayed.

Yonder, near the light of a clearing, we can see
the sugar camp now. It is the most romantic nook in
the woods. A path leads to it from tree to tree, issuing
at last in the camp, and a sled road winds about through
the bush. The camp harmonizes well with the woods,
being made largely of logs and poles with the bark still
on, picturesquely put together by supporting crotches
with the fine instinct and art of the true woodsman.
Beneath its sheltering roof each year are put to test in
the right season all the old-time, and the best, ways
of making maple syrup, and the great kettles boil and
simmer many a long night, while merry are the laughter
and sport under the stars.

I have chopped into trees at the sides of old blazes,
in order to see how many years of growth it had taken
to cover them, and it is always an interesting experi-
ment. Some that I investigated had been there over
fifty years, and were yet discernible ; some, less. I have
heard of a tree in a well-known locality that was cut
into for this very purpose, in order to ascertain the age
of old blazes supposed to hav'e been made upon it and
to be shut in within the wood, and marks of the ax
were found two hundred years back, gashed there long
ago by Indians, as the traditions of the place asserted.
Lauder, in one of his notes to Gilpin's "Forest Scenery,"
says that there are also on record instances of "curious
discoveries" made in the felling of some trees in Eng-
land toward the close of the eighteenth century, such as
the marks of the cyphers of James I, William and
Mary, and King John (thus denoting the reign when

144 AROUND AN OLD HOxMESTEAD.

the letters were stamped), far on the inside, a foot,
nine inches, and eighteen inches respectively within the
trees, and dating, of course, long before their downfall.
I have also followed up the old lines of some of the
first government surveys in the West, the blazes of
which were forty-five years of age and over; and it was
not always easy to distinguish the scars of the bruises
and scrapings, left perhaps by one tree falling against
another, from the original blazes, so indistinct had
these become in the years. In many cases the only way
by which we could with certainty recognize the blaze
from a scar was by the faint score marks of the ax
still visible in the wood, or by the fact that the edges of
the blaze on the bark, would always be smooth where
the ax had shaved into the tree, and not rough and
uneven, as in a scar. A line tree, too, will almost al-
ways be blazed on both sides, and there will be others
in a continuous direction near it, whereas a tree is sel-
dom similarly bruised on both sides, and there are in
any event not many such in a straight course. It was
very interesting to rediscover and restore these lines
through the woods. The figures of the section, range,
and township could still be seen on the corner trees,
half a foot or more inside the tree, on the face of the
old blaze, almost hidden now by bark and the increase
of new wood bulging in at the sides. I have also traced
and reblazed with fresh slashes of the ax, for my own
use, old trails through the forest, made by the Indians
who had lived there or by hunters and trappers. I
think a beech holds a blaze the longest of any of the
trees, and is the best to use on that account, if on the
line, and the easiest for the ax. It is the one most fre-

THE WOODS. 145

quently blazed by old woodsmen. A beech, however,
for some reason, has, singularly, more bruises and dis-
torted growths on its bark than any other tree, and
these curious distortions frequently resemble a blaze;
but the bark ordinarily is smooth, while the maple,
which otherwise shows the blaze quite well, has such
rough, flaky, uneven bark that after some years' growth
the old strokes of the ax become too indistinct for a
ready sight. It is decidedly an exhilarating experience
to blaze one's way into the wilderness, and then to
retrace the line of yellow patches through the darken-
ing forest; and you will have done your work well if
you shall not at some time behind the leaves lose sight
of the trail for an instant before you reach camp.

What a tangle a big tree is that has fallen by the
wind or from decay ! Great weeds grow up among the
dead limbs and branches, and sough in the wind's wild
requiem ; and the whole of it has a look of age. The
bark scales off, and the old wood beneath it is filled
with ants and borers, and Its surface is furrowed and
scrawled over and criss-crossed with the wandering
paths of Insects worn In channels into it — the familiar
hieroglyphics of Nature.

And the old logs — how long have they been there,
lying in the sunlight and shadow and under the snow,
decaying through the years, and enriching the soil with
the best of fertility? What chance of wind or storm
or old age brought them to the ground? Or perhaps
the misfortune of being a bee or a 'coon tree was the
cause of their downfall, or a fellow monarch, in the
felling, may have brought another with itself to the
earth. Hunters, perhaps, have rested upon it, with a

146

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

fire close at hand and a brace of squirrels hung on a
sapling, or it may have been the retreat for children on
a picnic. And now, finally, mosses and lichens encircle
it with a mantle of green and velvet, and ferns — the
tresses of the wilderness — are springing from it and
beautifying the woods with their delicate fringes and
graceful, tender lacework.

A PROSTRATE MONARCH.

There Is no sound In Nature more majestic and
impressive than the fall of one of these massive mon-
archs of the forest. One can get a hint of its tottering
by the swaying of the tops. Soon — in a moment — a
deep shriek Is heard as it splits from the stump, and Is
wrenched away finally, cut off perchance by the ax or
saw; and a loud cr-r-rash, as it tears its way with a re-
luctant swish through the branches of those trees near-
est it, and rushes toward the ground, losing some of its

- ■■•'^-r**'

A SEAT IN THE FOREST.

THE WOODS. 149

own limbs perhaps in the descent; and then, at last,
plunges headlong to the earth, with a thud and a great
muffled boom heard miles away ! Homer felt the maj-
esty of it centuries ago, and one of his finest similes
likens the death of Hector to the downfall of an oak.
A man can, it is true, in this way, by a few strokes of
the ax, undo forever the long, slow work of a hundred
years. Yet, in its place and within decent restriction,
there is no pleasanter labor than work in the woods,
especially beneath the leaves of autumn, in the cool of
the year; and there is no rude music more attractive to
the ear than the echoed chopping of an ax and the ring
and rasp of the crosscut saw.

Thoreau, in "The Maine Woods," speaks of the
sound of a tree falling in a dense forest on a still night
as being "singularly grand and impressive," and thus
describes it:

"Once, when Joe had called again, and we were listening
for moose, we heard, come faintly echoing, or creeping from
afar, through the moss-clad aisles, a dull, dry, rushing sound,
with a solid core to it, yet as if half smothered under the grasp
of the luxuriant and fungus-like forest, like the shutting of
a door in some distant entry of the damp and shaggy wilder-
ness. If we had not been there, no mortal had heard it. When
we asked Joe in a whisper what it was, he answered, 'Tree
fall.' "

Sometimes stones, even large rocks, will be found
almost totally concealed within the trees, having been
lodged there somehow in the past and been grown over
by the steady accretion of the years. I have seen rocks
of some size absolutely imbedded among the roots of
a great oak, which had wound its huge roots around

I50

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and around their mossy surfaces until they were en-
twined within a very network of the woody veins. Or
perhaps a seed has fallen into a
crevice or onto a little ledge of
rock, and has there sent out its
roots into the air, and these, reach-
ing down toward the moist earth,
have encircled the rock, and gripped
it, and at last have wrapped about it
with all the strength of the years,
while the stem of the tree towers
above and the rock is completely
Imprisoned and enfolded within the
giant arms. I have known of boys
who have placed stones of consider-
able dimension in the crotches of
trees, some feet from the ground,
and then have watched with delight
the gradual but none the less firm
encroachment of the bark about
them as they finally became set in
the wood, much to the wonder and
astonishment of those not ac-
quainted with this mysterious work-
ing of Nature. I have known also
of others, and these not always so
young, who have taken especial de-
light in the twisting, or braiding, of
two small adjoining saplings with
each other, so that they might be-
come in the future a veritable mystery among the
growths of Nature; and I have seen trees of a good
girth which had so been entwined in their youth, and

TWISTED TREES.

UNITED SYCAMORES.

THE WOODS.

153

in their old age were not divided. If, too, in a dense
thicket of growth, one branch shall closely press against
another, by the constant rubbing and scarifying of the
bark by the wind and the consequent irritating stimulus
toward a bulging of the bark at the wound, trees of the
same species will rarely join their arms together, twin-
like, thus singularly
uniting themselves
into one tree, but I
have never seen the
cicatrix completed
with trees of a dif-
ferent sap.

I know of a row
of great elms,
planted in memory
of a Revolutionary
soldier, in whose
sides large iron
staples were driven,
with rings in them,
for the hitching of
horses; and these
have now altogether
been enmeshed
within the trees, a

few eyes, or dents, in the bark being the only external
indication of their presence.

Perhaps you will come across in your work an old
fire scar at the butt of a tree, now healed over by the
slow process of the rings, pretty well covered by the
newer growth and well hidden from the outside, and
yet showing that some one had been there years ago,

ALONG THE BROOKS.

154 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

perhaps an Indian burning the forest for game, or a
solitary hunter or trapper, or an emigrant who had
camped for the night. Rarely a deer lick may yet be
found in the pastures, and the cattle resort thither in
springtime to get, as best they can, the last lingering
vestiges of the original salty flavor. Old flint arrow-
heads, too, concealed beneath the matted leaves, but
found occasionally on the slopes, tell the tale of the
red man, while along the brooks, amongst the limestone
shelving ledges, brachiopods and the various shells
speak to us of a still more distant past.

There used to be a big hollow tree, so runs tra-
dition, somewhere in the woods in this region of the
Great Miami, in which wild turkeys held carnival and
had their nests ; and the pioneer would follow the sound
of their calling, and perhaps find his concealment in
the tree, and with his pipestem whistle the game back
to him. There is an old story, too, still extant, that an
Indian used to hide in this tree and imitate the notes
of the bird, by this allurement decoying settlers some-
times to their death; but that the savage himself met a
bullet in his ambush from some pioneer rifleman hid
in the brush, and, leaping out from his concealment,
fell dead to the ground below.

It was not so far away, in another woods, that a
farmer, while cutting his fuel, found a number of bul-
lets imbedded in a mass in the very center of a limb,
having been shot there, as he supposed, at a knot or a
squirrel, and then covered over by the new growth of
the later years. Doubtless pounds of lead might be
found in the branches and trunks of the trees here-
abouts, could we but dig it out, sent there by generation
after generation of hunters.

THE WOODS. 155

A good many familiar trees have disappeared from
the old woods. I was out the other day, and could not
but notice the absence of some of those most fondly
cherished — gone forever; as

" when some fond and spiritual bell
Tolled in the memory, ceases."

The big pignut is gone, the tallest tree in the woods,
together with some of the largest hickories and oaks,
and the beeches with initials cut upon them long ago, —
all made over into saw logs, or blown down by the
storms, or cut into wood for the winter fire. Some
of the big black walnuts, however, under which
the boys studied their lessons in former days, have now
been made into valued furniture: as into decorative
mantels; or into polished tables, at one of which I
daily break my fast; but one, especially, that I think of,
into an exquisitely hand-carved Shakespeare cabinet,
adorned, in delicately wrought relief, upon its doors,
with carvings of the hawthorne and a sprig of oak
from Windsor Woods, and its sides modeled with
Puck's and Perdita's flowers, with a scrolled inscription
of Ophelia's saying, ''There's rosemary, that's for re-
membrance; . . . there is pansies, that 's for
thoughts," in surface work upon its face, and paintings
of Touchstone and Audrey in the Forest of Arden on
its panels — the whole surmounted with Shakespeare's
bust, and the cabinet itself being the repository of
valued Shakespearean relics, with many sets of his
plays, and various books and lives relating to his work.
Thus the old woods has contributed to the refinements
and aesthetics and amenities of life, as well as to the
living necessities of lumber and fuel.

156

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Many a pedestrian, also, in a stroll through it, has
cut for himself a handsome staff or a cane. The hick-
ories have always been with us the favorites for this
purpose, for their strength and the nice, straight char-
acter of the saplings, and because
of the undeviating adherence of the
household to the tenets of Andrew
Jackson — "Old Hickory" himself.
Some of the trees, too, have died,
but are yet standing, and still others
have leafless, dying branches at
their tops (killed perhaps by the
bullets), and these spikes and
spreading staghorns of dead limbs
jutting up above the green crowns
are an unfailing sign of the begin-
ning of the death of the trees. First
the tops decay, and then the larger
branches and limbs, and finally the
trunk; and it is not so many years
after these stagheads first appear
when you will find the tree dead and
vines twining in a living wreath
about it. I felt the saddest when I
found that there were staghorns on
"the old home tree." It was a fine
large hickory in the very center of
the woods, which seemed to be a
never-failing rendezvous for squir-
rels; for, whenever squirrels were
not to be seen or heard anywhere
else in the whole woods, if we would

THE OLD HOME TREE.

THE WOODS. 157

only repair to it we would always find them on "the
old home tree." It apparently led a charmed life,
however, like General Washington, for I never could
get a squirrel from it, though I have shot them in all
the other trees around it. The older trees will not
last more than a hundred years longer, at the utmost;
but the woods will renew itself, for the undergrowth
of saplings is enough for a forest. Innumerable tiny
seedlings — of maple, beech, oak, ash, and all the other
trees in the woods — dot the ground everywhither be-
neath their elder brothers, themselves also in time to
grow into magnificent tossing veterans, and finally to
lie a-moldering in the sod. But a part of the virgin
woods remains, at any rate, and the beauty and lurking
wonder of its paths are even more precious in these
days of ruthless destruction. There are still sufficient
sugar-trees left to make maple syrup for this genera-
tion.

The old woods, in its way, helps along the rainfall
by its constant diffusion of moisture; instead of letting
it run off immediately into the brooks and thus swell
and flood the rivers, it retains the wet in the soil, as it
percolates through the fallen leaves and among the
roots; it acts as a splendid wind-break for the home-
stead; in spring it shields innumerable wild flowers; in
the summer bees drone away about the trunks; in au-
tumn it sheds abroad the yellow and scarlet of its
frosted leaves, and squirrels frisk among the hickories;
and in winter its carpet of snow is dotted with the
tracks of rabbits that have nestled in its logs, while
the farmer drives his sled up the pathway piled high
with seasoned wood for the great fireplace. New sap-

IS8

AROUND AX OLD HOMESTEAD.

lings arc growing up everywhere, and shoots from the
old stiimps are alwa\-s sprouting up into the light, to
perpetuate its usefulness and to form another forest,
when this shall ha\-e gone into de-
cay or shall have l>een cut down for
man's utility. What would we do
without the old woods? WTiat a
\-ast product the forest is — ^these
immense tree growths, and their
tough, fibrous stems and leafy can-
opies— made over into a ser\nceable
form by the lumberman, and to be
preserved and studied by the for-
ester; and yet existing, after all, not
- :-.'s enjoyment alone, but for
: ig of all the life about

jes not this old woods,
usefulness to us, typify
c-i- ..-_:" - :s of timber every-

- : "< broad land?

- " . -i with the age of
J rs it has taken to

elevate ther. r proud position,

-ind some w:.. -itury longer,

even when c.:: . . _:;J made over

into useful ..:;: : rr. Some of the

big oaks lateiv felled in the woods

were over three hundred years of

age. One of the large elms was

nearLy as old. And I have been in the Adirondacks,

and tn some of the great oak and pine forests of

the South and West, and have found the trees even

'rrS5l.\.N O? THKiJ HTL'NDiJD.

THE WO(M)6L 159

older dim dus, and stifl sonod. The U^^AnA* cspc-
dallj, wiien dbc giowdi had been vrrf g^adsal, dK tiee
hairii^ been soppfcsBcd bf die pRpondefawc <if alude
cm die poit of die laiger grades :dMHit it, were sdD pcr-
fecdj hcald^; while die -^fMinl trees
wbidi had, on aj-taiiil of dieir mdtmdtn
of figltf, realized a modi giculn hc^^ aad a
wider (fiameter imxcasc, had cidbcr bc;euB to decaj
zfttr dieir maluniy had cnne, or, their nii ilii|niii^
bfancfaes having been rjiigln in die winds, had bcem
Uown down to make TOtxa far odicrs jiwifji ■ Bnt
dierc it is, die lecDfd erf die fcais, in the hig&. There
thcjr have stood for hondreds of yean, these woodf
orgnusms, while gi'miJlKt alter grneijlion oi men,
from the In^an to the pioneer, and from the setdcr
to the mamifactiirer, have passed beneath their sheher-
ii^ roof and made use of the best: of them. Behold
them in their ai^iist: majesty, as they sway, and
the trees! — those serried, farrowed,
with their cnocmoas waves of lowing, billowy green!
I have coonted the rings of trees whidi woe here, and
woe of fair size, when Cofamdms iist: came to the Xnr
WofM, and the seqnoias of the West are as old as the
pynmnds and have seen m their wild forest fife the
whole ImtiMV of the Cluistiin era.

Bryant's Encs in ""A Forest Hvnm^ have come to
my diOD§jbL Let OS read them:

l6o AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Lo ! all grow old and die — but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms."

A woods suggests everything that is poetic. It is
teeming with all sorts of life; it gives forth the purest
oxygen; it is a bower of greenness in summer, and of
beautiful darker colors in autumn. One feels always
in health when in the woods, and to be able to feel a
love for the woods is a pretty sure indication of a sound
and healthy life.

Yet there Is much difference in the attitude of men
toward trees and toward a forest. The worth of a tree
to some men is its commercial value in merchantable
lumber, and a forest therefore is to be considered in
the light of finance; to others a tree Is an object merely
of scientific investigation as a part of the progress of
natural selection; to still others It Is of intense interest
as a preserver of shade and health, and its growth is to
be studied, and the growth and variation of forests
also, with a view to the preservation of our timber and
the Introduction of suitable tree plantations, and thus
the conservation of our water supply and the better-
ment of life; to the farmer It Is of Immediate utility
for all the usages of his farm; by the hunter it is re-
garded with mystery and constant observation as the
probable lurking place of game; to many it is an object
of wonderful natural beauty, and a spot for all sorts
of legends and associations; while to others still it is
an emblem of the tree of life, and of the river which
forever floweth in the City of God.

The farmer, especially, gathers his firewood and
gets his maple syrup and sugar from the trees, handles

THE WOODS. i6l

for his mauls and axes, fence rails, stakes, posts, poles
for odd uses generally, beech leaves for his bed ticks,
nuts and bright leaves in autumn, and wild flowers
almost all the year round. Indeed, a farm without a
wood lot is deprived of much that makes country life
attractive and possible.

The most majestic living organism is a tree. Did
you ever think how large a tree is? We seldom think
of them as being very large; and yet the wood con-
tained in the trunk and branches of a single beech or
maple takes up vastly more space than does the body
of a man, and their green leaves, if placed side by side,
would occupy half an acre. It has been estimated that
a good-sized maple with thick tops will put forth over
four hundred thousand leaves in a single year. Yet we
do not fear the trees, but we enjoy their shade and
color in their lives, gather their fruit in its season, and,
when they die, or even before, little man, with his
powerful mind, saws and chops them up for fuel and
lumber, and sends them into all parts of the world and
for all purposes.

A tree, too, is always graceful. Even when some
of its branches are stripped off or broken, it will not
submit to such a deformity, but will send out new
shoots to take their place, which will soon grow and
thrive in towering masses of green or depend in droop-
ing, delicate sprays, thus even in its misfortune shaping
to itself again a characteristic symmetry of form. So
each one also, and especially when in leaf, displays
its natural qualities of contour, from the tented, pagoda-
like appearance of the horse-chestnuts on the lawn to
the plume-like, feathery ferns of the elms.

1 62 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

A tree ! — Its mossy roots and taproots buttressing
that part of It above the ground; Its tiny rootlets and
root hairs penetrating Into the Interstices of the soil and
there finding life, almost feeling their way, one might
think, with a sense of touch, and pushing aside the
diminutive clods to make a place for it to absorb and
assimilate moisture for its growth; the great tough
woody stem, or trunk, acting as a support for the
whole and spreading aloft Into God's sunlight and air,
covered with rough bark, the home of myriads of In-
sects and of other animal and plant life, and finally
expanding into a multitude of strong arms and an In-
finite, fern-like, fingery penciling of branches and twigs;
these clothed in a beautiful canopy of green leaves, with
the most delicate and exquisite venation, toying with
the air, breathing in life for the tree and exhaling life
for us — ah ! surely Ruskin was right when he said,
"What a wonderful thought of God was that when
He thought a tree!"

How much there is In a tree that Is of Interest and
perennial delight ! What caused those little scratches
on the bark? Birds, or squirrels? Or perhaps 'coons?
And where have they gone, or do they still live In the
old tree? Where are the innumerable ants going, and
is the old tree a regular honeycomb of their tunnels
and trails? How furrowed the bark is, and how aged
It looks ! Its branches, too, doubtless have a few birds
in them now, that we can not see because of the leaves,
and perhaps more than one nest is concealed amid Its
great growth of twigs. A large tree, in its time, may
have been the home of two or three kinds of squirrels,
say of a dozen families of birds, of 'possums and 'coons,

THE WOODS. 163

of lizards, of snakes and ants at its roots, and with per-
haps a screech owl In a hollow limb. It will also have
been the life of fungi and of mosses, and the home of
many Insects, and of old grubs and borers. A tree
which is at all old is a veritable mine for speculation.
And, when it dies, it is cut down, and gives warmth to
the farmhouse in the winter fire, after perhaps a hun-
dred years or more of useful existence to the living
world.

I am reminded, in this connection, of a passage that
Thoreau has written, words that are among the most
beautiful in the literature of Nature, at the close of his
"Walden:"

"Ever>^ one has heard the story which has gone the rounds
of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came
out of the dr)' leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which
had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first In Con-
necticut, and afterwards In Massachusetts — from an egg de-
posited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared
by counting the annual layers beyond It; which was heard
gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat
of an urn. Who does not feel his faith In a resurrection and
Immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows
what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for
ages under many concentric layers of woodenness In the dead,
dry life of society, deposited at first In the alburnum of the
green and living tree, which has been gradually converted Into
the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb — heard perchance
gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man,
as they sat round the festive board — may unexpectedly come
forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furni-
ture, to enjoy Its perfect summer life at last!"

164 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Does the tree enjoy its life? I have wondered.
Some of the scientists tell us that its whole individuality
is the result of external forces, over which, of course,
it has no control, and by which it is molded. But yet
they fail to account for the presence of life there, and
where life is I think joy is also. I believe that the vine
creeping up yon beech is alive, and that as it attaches
itself to the bark with its feelers and tendrils it has a
joy in existence. I believe that it loves the caresses
and kisses of the air. Oh, it has no mind, I know, and
hence, I suppose, no self-consciousness; but in the coil-
ing spiral of the vine, so pliant, so responsive, so joy-
ously obedient to the least influences of wind or tree,
there surely resides an identity which is at once unique
and soul-like, and it is fair and comely because it de-
lights to be so. So far as it goes, in the scale of being,
the life of plant and tree, bird, animal, and the forms
of the ocean is just the same (do you not certainly
think?) as is ours — only, of course, our life is much
more perfect, more complex, more adaptable, and more
appreciative. That there is a vast and real unity in
Nature is not to be questioned. We, too, have a spir-
itual affinity with bird, beast, and flower. Thoreau,
in his admiration, said of the pine-tree: "It is as im-
mortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a
heaven, there to tower above me still."

There are few things in the woods more beautiful
and graceful than a fresh spray of Virginia creeper,
clasping close to an old rail fence or twining and hang-
ing about an elm. In autumn, with its dense masses
and its whorls of dark red leaves, it is one of Nature's
master pictures. The old woods is full of it. In a few

"WREATHED PILLARS OF LIVING GREEN.

THE WOODS.

167

spots great beeches are wreathed pillars of living green,
very picturesque indeed if seen at a distance through
openings of vista between the trunks, like the ivied bat-
tlements of ancient ruins; elsewhere
the vine trails along the ground,
snake-like, across the matted leaves,
or cushions the remains of some
old prostrate veteran; in still other
moods it clambers industriously
over a young maple or a broad-
leaved mulberry, seeking even the
outermost twigs everywhither, and
nodding airly above them, in a can-
opy that affords a lovely, shady sol-
itude, like the bowers formed by
the wild grape.

The beeches are the most inter-
esting of the trees. What huge
limbs they have, sometimes all
twisted and bent and gnarled to-
gether, and yet spreading and
drooping finally into long, low-
trailing, fan-like sprays — the eye
lashes of the forest. Was it Thor-
eau who said that no tree had "so
fine a bole or so fair an instep as
the beech?" Gilpin, in describing
the beech, says of its bark: "It is
naturally of a dingy olive; but it is
always overspread in patches with a variety of mosses
and lichens, which are commonly of a lighter tint, In

TWIN SISTERS.

1 68 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the upper parts, and of a deep velvet green toward the
root." Somehow I always feel as if I were actually In
a forest if there are only a few beeches. I used to
enjoy in boyhood days swinging upon their great arms,
the tips of which often would sweep the very earth,
and to scramble amongst their branches, like a squirrel,
after the nuts; yet I think nowadays it would be one
of the hardest trees in the world to climb.

What is it that possesses men to carve their initials
upon every suitable tree? Is it merely to record the
fact of their presence on that spot, or a desire that
their names shall be writ there for eternity? Or does
the smoothness of the bark attract them? Whatever
the reason, certain it is that he is an extraordinary man
who with a jack-knife in his pocket will pass a good
beech without first trying the blade, and leaving at
least a part of his name as a witness to posterity of
his having passed that way.

'T was not an uncommon propensity, it seems, cen-
turies ago. Ev^en as far back as the old Roman days
do we find mention of this singular trait in human
nature as being a characteristic of the Latin race.
Hamerton quotes Vergil on the custom. In the tenth
eclogue Gallus says:

" Certum est in silvis, inter spelaea ferarum
Malie pati, tenerisque meos incldere amores
Arboribus : crescent iliae ; crescetis, amores."

(''My mind is made up to prefer to suffer in the for-
ests, among the dens of wild beasts, and to cut my lov^es
upon the young trees : these will grow ; ye will grow, too.

THE WOODS.

169

ye loves" [i. e., the let-
ters will increase with
the size of the tree, as
his feelings].) It has
long been a means of
letter-writing with
savages. In his "His-
tory of Virginia, in
Four Parts," pub-
lished (second edi-
tion) in 1722, Thomas
Beverley remarks, too,
that it was learned by
the next settlers " by
Letters on the Trees,"
scratched there by
earlier arrivals, that
the latter had removed
to Croatan, an island.
Orlando you remem-
ber, in "As You Like

It," was so persistent in carving sweet Rosalind's
name upon the trees and hanging verses from their
boughs (" There is a man haunts the forest," said
she to him) that Jaques was moved to remonstrate :
"I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love-
songs in their barks." Sir Roger de Coverley, too,
confessed that he "had been fool enough" to carve
"the perverse widow's" name on several of his trees;
"so unhappy is the condition of men in love, to attempt
the removing of their passion by the methods which
serve only to imprint it deeper." And here are some

THE EYELASHES OF THE FOREST.

170 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

lines from an old poem, "The Beech Tree's Lament,"
by Thomas Campbell, uttered by the beech:

" Thrice twenty summers I have seen
The sky grow bright, the forest green ;
And many a wintry wind have stood
In bloomless, fruitless solitude,
Since childhood in my pleasant bower
First spent its sweet and sportive hour ;
Since youthful lovers in my shade
Their vows of truth and rapture made ;
And on my trunk's surviving frame
Carved many a long-forgotten name."

Who shall, asks Bryant also, speaking of his future
forest,

" Who grave, as was the wont
Of simple, pastoral ages, on the rind
Of my smooth beeches some beloved name?"

A beech is the best, and the tree most frequently
chosen, on account of its smooth, easily-cut bark. It
is the pleasantest and most yielding to the knife; and
initials carved on a beech, if they have been dug deep
into the sap wood beneath the bark, are retained much
longer than on any other tree. "No bark," says Gilpin,
"tempts the lover so much to make it the depository
of his mistress's name." I have seen old beeches
deeply scarred with the hieroglyphics of visitors, curi-
ously crude, like Indian picture-writing, interwoven
with the initials. In our boyhood enthusiasm, however,
we did not restrict ourselves to beeches, nor even to
trees, but our names were cut upon every available
object around the farm — the well curb, trough, the tim-
bers in the barn, the door, the beams, the feed-box, the

THE WOODS.

171

big catalpa-tree, and the gate posts — and even a maple-
tree bears in its branches aloft somewhere the initials
of two youngsters who one memorable night perched
for hours among them in order to get the last glimpse
of an eclipse as the moon went down toward the western
horizon. Sycamores
and poplars may
sometimes be made
to serve the purpose
quite well, in lieu of
a beech, if the pas-
sion is upon one; and
I have seen whole
names shaped dili-
gently into the rough,
uneven bark of oaks
and elms.

I like to look at
these initials carved
on the trees. The
old inscriptions are
in their way filled
with the very spirit
of the past. Many
of those who put
them here have gone
far beyond into still
happier hunting
grounds ; but they
once lived here be-
low, and whether from
affection or mere

INITIALS AND HIEROGLYPHICS.

172 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

whim, or for premeditated fame, they hav^e left their
names recorded. I have seen the date 1853 upon
a beech, yet plain after fifty years. I recall also
one other tree — this, too, a beech — with weather-
worn initials upon it and the date 1864, the letters
being not quite legible and the figures just barely
discernible as such; and two other trees, with the years
1866 and 1867 upon them, still distinguishable, though
the bark was cracked and spread apart, and the letter-
ing consequently badly checkered. Mr. John Bur-
roughs, in his essay on "Nature in England," in "Fresh
Fields," speaks of the soft stones of the bridges and
churches in England as being all carved up with
initials, some of them over a century old. On Look-
out Mountain an old mountaineer with whom I went
deer hunting told me of a place a few miles from the
road where the trees were literally lined and tattooed
with bullets and initials put there by soldiers in the
Civil War. They had camped on that spot for a
time, and had left their names on many of the trees,
and had used the trunks as a backstop in target practice;
and, of course, one can frequently see evidences of the
soldiers' presence in the old splintered stumps on other
parts of the mountain, in which cannon-balls sometimes
found their final lodgment.

But decidedly the most interesting script that I have
yet seen anywhere in any woods is the writing of an
English schoolmaster of this village, who lived for a
time at the homestead, and whose wood-carving on
the trees is therefore known to have been cut there long
"befo' de wah." There were two fine large beeches
in this woods which he chose as his favorites, to be the
recording recipients of his feelings. Upon one of

THE WOODS. 173

them, graven deeply in capitals, ran the following,
which shows the pedagogue to have sighed like a fur-
nace in his day as a lover:

" VALETE ARBORES.
VALETE AVES.
VALETE FLORES.
VALETE AMORESI"

("Farewell, trees. Farewell, birds. Farewell, flowers.
Farewell, loves!") And so the man had had his heart-
strings touched by the little god, and had his loves
to bid farewell to, as well as the trees, the birds, and
the flowers; and this time, too, it was farewell forever.
He was a singular man, and, although he taught in an
obscure country district, he was well educated, and
there was something of the real scholar to the man, as
all testify who knew him. It was always thought, in
surmise, that he had a history which he did not dis-
close— was perhaps a writer at work upon some book.
It was his habit to wander through the old woods by
the hour, reciting aloud stanzas and quotations in
Latin, and nearer the homestead he himself had worn
a path alone, up and down which he would take his
endless beats and make his orations, casting meanwhile
lance-like at some mark a few stiff stems of iron weed
which he had collected. The other inscription, which
encircled the tree in script, rings with patriotic senti-
ment, and suggests that perhaps the teacher even then
felt a premonition of the impending war between the
States; and so it reads:

"Cominus pugnamus pro patria et Ubertate et tion
moriemur iniilti."
("Together we fight for country and liberty, and

174 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

we shall not die unavenged.") I have looked upon
these quaint old Latin inscriptions with mingled feel-
ings of kindliness and pathos. Written in the early
'40's, they were still legible in 1897, though the letters
were somewhat grown over with new bark, and thus
made distorted and spread apart and quite indistinct,
and it was with some difficulty that I could make them
out. But both trees were finally cut down, and sawed
into lumber or split up for firewood, and the singular
old schoolmaster and his strange ways are now only
a memory, coming dimly through the trees out of the
far-away past.

Traps? The old woods was full of them. All
sorts of snares were cunningly devised with which to
beguile the unsuspecting forest cr-:^atures. And the
necessity to make the rounds of the traps daily was fre-
quently the occasion of a somewhat prolonged absence
from the fields in corn-cutting or potato-digging time.
No, we never caught anything in these twitch-ups, that
I recall. But they were very excellent traps, and were
constructed, somewhat after the manner of Izaak Wal-
ton's flies for fishing, of horsehair, cord, pieces of wire,
and twine. We frequently found them sprung, and
once there were actually a few hairs from a gray squir-
rel's tail left caught in a noose. The horsehairs we
pulled and twitched from the tails of our humble beasts
of burden, and their long silky tassels grew noticeably
shaggy and ragged after part had been impressed into
our service. As many as twenty-one quail at once
were caught years ago, so the saying goes, in a big
figure four trap, made by a Nimrod of the day, who
has now grown into a gray-haired hunter and lover of
the woods.

THE WOODS. 175

Near by was the orchard. The trees were large
and had a comfortable look to them, and the varieties
were all the good, old-fashioned kinds which no new
apples take the place of. We used to purloin the
orchard occasionally on our squirrel hunts, and, with
a few "roasting ears" from the cornfield and some
hunks of bread from the pantry, we would feel like
veritable kings of old beside our fire in the woods,
munching our bread and apples, and watching the ears
of corn smoke in the ashes, with a shy, proud glance
now and then at the brace of squirrels lying on the
log beside us and our faithful rifles leaning against the
nearest tree. Leatherstocking, I know, never had such
feelings of serene and absolute self-contentment and
enjoyment of life as we at those early breakfasts under
the hickories. We had found the thing worth living
for. We were rivals of Robin Hood. Why, Daniel
Boone himself had hunted and lived not more than a
hundred miles away! I wish I could leav^e it in lan-
guage, the wildness I have felt on those fresh mornings,
in moist dingles among the waving grass and the beau-
tiful swaying trees, while the gun barrel was beaded
with dew; or in the late afternoons, when the great
trunks were painted with the sunset lights and shadows;
or again, when looking for 'coons beneath the stars
and under the hunter's midnight moon.

The old woods — how I have loved it! The sweet-
est memories of life are entwined back there among
the grasses and the grapevines and the oaks and beeches.
Its beauty and silence and the wild life in it were
the unsolved mystery of boyhood, and its deeper study

176 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

in later years has been a very great delight and in-
spiration. I think I gain, by familiarity with its life,
something of its vitality, at least in spirit. The long
vista of the great trees, the sunshine mottling the leaves
and filling the open spaces beneath with beautiful light,
the immeasurable canopy and the shade, the birds sing-
ing their loves and their joys, the squirrels frisking
among the acorns, and the atmosphere of age which
pervades it, all have filled my mind with never-to-be-
forgotten impressions of the beauty and loveliness of
the old woods, and a memory abides that is a per-
petual dream.

I hear the low moo of a cow, feeding on the near-by
blue grass. The silence echoes it. The flute-like notes
of a wood thrush fall from the branches of a maple.
As I listen, the sweet tones of Sabbath chimes come
floating through the aisles of the trees. Fainter, fainter
— as they wind through the forest and die away-^so
the sounds bring back past memories, which themselves
drift and weave about the trunks, like mist, at last also
to fade, far beyond, into the haze of a dim, happy, ■
fond long-ago.

Adam was the first forester. "The Lord God took
the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress
it and to keep it," even with the rude stone implements
of those days of primitive man. Indeed, it would
seem as if the care of trees, their pruning, culture, and
fostering, was a divinely intended and natural occu-
pation of mankind (as, too, it has always been one
of the most congenial), man, besides, to subsist on the
native fruits and nuts of the groves. Thus far have

"THE SUNSHINE MOTTLING THE LEAVES."

THE WOODS. 179

we fallen and wandered, m that the herbs and fruits are
no longer the only things that are "to us for food,"
and that man no longer spends all of his time amid
the trees, nor does he always protect and preserve the
virgin forests. Alas ! the desire for money has in this
instance as well as others been the root of all kinds of
evil. Commercialism and poetry do not often agree;
we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. Yet, thus
nurtured in his infancy in the forest, man has ever
loved it, and has walked among these giant fern-like
forms always, if involuntarily, with veneration — as if
with the experiences and memories of past centuries
still within him.

It is not for many of us to be like the barons of
eld, and to behold deer cropping the grass in our own
demesnes, or to look about our walls upon rows of
mounted antlers, trophies of the chase. Nor shall we
often feast royally upon venison before the logs in
spacious manor halls, as is the picture in "Ivanhoe."
Yet we all turn to the wild at times instinctively; and,
can we but release for a moment this noble savagery
from the surfeit of the too intricate and over-studied
culture beneath which it now lies smothered, the woods
shall still be unto us a home and an abiding place, and
we shall again rejoice with Robin Hood and Little John
to hear the bow twang and see the stag leap in Sher-
wood Forest.

For the forest, because of man's long joy of it, has
found its way into literature. 'T is there, at least, we
may all seek it, and betake ourselves thither to rest in
its shadows. Homer loved it; so did Vergil; and there
are passages of forest description in the Bible which are

l8o AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

magnificent for their language and beauty, such as occa-
sional verses in Ezekiel and Isaiah, in which the trees
are used as examples in the most exalted prophecies.
Jehovah, through Isaiah (chapter Iv, 12; Ix, 13), says
that "all the trees of the field shall clap their hands"
at the return of the wicked, and thus portrays the
future of Zion :

"The glon- of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree,
the pine, and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of
My sanctuarj' ; and I will make the place of My feet glorious."

The description of the cedar in Ezekiel (chapter
xxxi, 3-9) is especially to be noticed:

"Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair
branches, and with a forest-like shade, and of high stature;
and its top was among the thick boughs. The waters nour-
ished it, the deep made it grow. . . . Therefore its stature
was exalted above all the trees of the field ; and its boughs
were multiplied, and its branches became long by reason of
many waters, when it shot them forth. All the birds of the
heaven made their nests in its boughs; and under its branches
did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young; and
under its shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was it fair
in its greatness, in the length of its branches ; for its root was
by many waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not
hide it ; the fir-trees were not like its boughs, and the plane-
trees were not as its branches; nor was any tree in the garden
of God like unto it in its beauty."

The cedar of Lebanon figures prominently all
through the Scriptures; Solomon, indeed, had "four-
score thousand hewers in the mountains," felling cedar
and fir for the temple. David, in a comparison, laments

THE WOODS. l8l

the unreasoning destruction of the forests in his day,
when he says (Psalm Ixxiv, 5, 6) of the enemies of
Zion :

"They seemed as men that lifted up axes upon a thicket
of trees. And now all the carved work thereof they break
down with hatchet and hammers."

It was but natural that the singer of the twenty-
third Psalm should have hated to witness the devasta-
tion of the woods. Abraham's tent was pitched be-
neath the oaks of Mamre, in that far-off picture of
Genesis, when he and Sarah refreshed their guests, and
he stood near them as they ate, "under the tree."
Adam first walked beneath the trees; the dove brought
the leaf of an olive-tree to the ark; it was branches of
trees which were strewn before Jesus at His entrance
into Jerusalem; and the leaves of the tree of life, in
John's concluding vision, are for the healing of the
nations.

Even Dante, medlaevalist though he was, felt the
majesty of the forest. Ruskin said that Dante's de-
scription of his entrance into the Earthly Paradise, in
"II Purgatorio,'' was "the sweetest passage of wood
description which exists in literature." Shall we read
some from it?^

"Fain now to search within and round about the divine
forest dense and living, which tempered the new day to my
eyes, without longer waiting I left the bank, taking the level
ground very slowly, over the soil that everywhere breathes
fragrance. A sweet breeze that had no variation in itself

' Using Norton's translation.

1 82 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

struck me on the brow, not with heavier blow than a soft
wind ; at v.'hich the branches, readily trembling, all of them
were bending to the quarter where the holy mountain casts
its first shadow ; yet not so far parted from their straightness,
that the little birds among the tops would leave the practice
of their every art ; but with full joy singing they received the
early breezes among the leaves, which kept a burden to their
rhymes, such as gathers from bough to bough through the
pine forest upon the shores of Chiassi, when iEolus lets forth
Sirocco.

"Now had my slow steps carried me within the ancient
wood so far that I could not see back to where I had entered
it: and lo, a stream took from me further progress, w^hich
toward the left with its little waves was bending the grass
that sprang upon its bank. . . .

"With feet I stayed, and with my eyes I passed to the
other side of the streamlet, to gaze at the great variety of the
fresh may; and there appeared to me, even as a thing appears
suddenly which turns aside through wonder every other thought,
a solitary lady, who was going along, singing, and culling
flower from flower, wherewith all her path was painted."

Beautiful, indeed, Is it not for those times?

The forest has been the scene of fairy revelry, of
loves, of many a fight and kingly hunt. It was in a
forest where Puck ran, and with Bottom created con-
sternation, in "A jVIidsummer Night's Dream;" and,
again, it was beneath the trees where "the melancholy
Jaques" propounded his discourse on the seven ages.
Shakespeare's forests are all historic — Falstafif and
Heme's Oak; Touchstone and Audrey, and Rosalind,
in the Forest of Arden; Alacbeth and Birnam Wood.
Spenser, too, knew the forest of his day, and rever-
enced it. No trees had yet died in Spenser's forest to

THE WOODS. 183

let in the light for the seedlings to grow. Philip Gil-
bert Hamerton, who also loved a forest, speaks thus of
him, in "The Sylvan Year:"

"Think what was Spenser's conception of a forest, and
what in our time is too often the uninteresting reality! He
thought of it as a country shaded by a great roof of green
foliage, which was carried on massive stems always so far
apart that one or several knights could ride everywhere with-
out inconvenience; but we find the reality to be for the most
part an impenetrable jungle of young trees, that will be cut
down in a year or two for firewood."

Milton's imaginative Eden, too, is a very delight-
ful forest picture:

" So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her inclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque, and wild,
Access denied ; and overhead up grew
Insuperable heights of loftiest shade.
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm."

But do you know William Gilpin's "Forest Scen-
ery?" 'T is a rare old book, and one for the forest.
I well recollect the time I first read it. It was in a
woods which bespoke great age, beneath the gnarled,
wide-spreading beech that I spoke of, upon the trunk
of which had been carved the initials, and the dates
inscribed, one 1864, and another 1869, very rough and
irregular now, almost like the seams and cracks of the
old tree itself, yet still discernible from those days of
long ago. I could scarcely have found a more fitting

184 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

environment in which to peruse and think, over the
quaint, and sometimes delightfully interesting, "pictur-
esque remarks" of the old Nature lover. There were
keepers of the forest, it seems, whose offices included
that of ranger and bow-bearer (come down to them),
and underkeepers, in smaller dwellings. "The under-
keeper feeds the deer in winter — browses them in sum-
mer— knows where to find a fat buck — executes the
King's warrants for venison — presents offences in the
forest-courts — and prevents the destruction of game."
Another of his duties was "to drive the forest" and
mark the cattle. Who would not have been one? But
Gilpin's picture of a certain Mr. Henry Hastings, one
of the keepers of New Forest, and his lodge ('tis
almost a den, like the lair of a wild beast), is especially
attractive, surcharged, as it is, with the very atmos-
phere of the ancient, historic wood, savory of game,
and redolent of many things archaic, and antique, and
forest-like :

"Mr. Hastings was low of stature, but strong and active;
of a ruddy complexion, with flaxen hair. His cloaths were
always of green cloth. His house was of the old fashion; in
the midst of a large park, well stocked with deer, rabbits, and
fish-ponds. He had a bowling-green in it ; and used to play
with round sand-bowls. Here, too, he had a banqueting-room
built, like a stand, in a large tree. He kept all sorts of hounds,
that ran buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger; and had hawks of
all kinds, both long, and short winged. His great hall was
commonly strewed with marrow-bones; and full of hawk-
perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers. The upper end was
hung with fox-skins of this^ and the last year's killing. Here,
and there a pole-cat was intermixed ; and hunter's poles in great

THE WOODS. 185

abundance. The parlour was a large room, completely fur-
nished in the same style. On a broad hearth, paved with
brick, lay some of the choicest terriers, hounds, and spaniels.
One or two of the great chairs, had litters of cats in them, which
were not to be disturbed. Of these three or four always attended
him at dinner ; and a little white wand lay by his trencher, to de-
fend it, if they were too troublesome. In the windows, which were
very large, lay his arrows, cross-bows, and other accoutrements.
The corners of the room were filled with his best hunting,
and hawking poles. His oister-table stood at the lowered end
of the room, which was in constant use twice a day, all the
year round ; for he never failed to eat oysters both at dinner
and supper, with which the neighboring town of Pool supplied
him. At the upper end of the room stood a small table with
a double desk ; one side of which held a Church Bible ; the
other, the book of martyrs. On different tables in the room
lay hawk's-hoods ; bells; old hats, with their crowns thrust
in, full of pheasant eggs; tables; dice; cards; and store of
tobacco-pipes. At one end of this room was a door, which
opened into a closet, where stood bottles of strong beer, and
wine; which never came out but in single glasses, which was
the rule of the house ; for he never exceeded himself, nor per-
mitted others to exceed. Answering to this closet, was a door
into an old chapel ; which had long been disused for devotion ;
but in the pulpit, as the safest place, was always to be found a
cold chine of beef, a venison-pasty, a gammon of bacon, or a
great apple-pye, with thick crust, well-baked. His table cost
him not much, tho it was good to eat at. His sports supplied
all but beef and mutton ; except on fridays, when he had the
best of fish. He never wanted a London pudding; and he
always sang it in with, 'My part lies therein-a.' He drank a
glass or two of wine at meals; put syrup of gilly-flowers into
his sack; and always had a tun-glass of small-beer standing
by him, which he often stirred about with rosemary. He lived

1 86 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

to be an hundred; and never lost his eye-sight, nor used
spectacles. He got on horseback without help; and rode to
the death of the stag, till he was past fourscore."

That, gentlemen, certainly smacks of the chase !
And, with the type set in the old-time f-shaped s's, as in
the first edition, the effect of this passage is greatly in-
creased. What a singular character he was; a sports-
man. Epicurean to the core, and yet temperate, and
observing the laws of the Church, even though he did
keep "a great apple-pye" in the pulpit; and how he
loved and enjoyed the things of the wild! I think I
should have liked to know him.

Thoreau's "Walden; or. Life in the Woods" — one
must not pass that by, nor "The Maine Woods," nor
the many other chance descriptions of the forest from
the pen of that strange, wild lover of the woods. Nor
should we forget some of the pages in Whitman's
"Specimen Days;" nor the forest poems of Longfellow,
Emerson, and Bryant; nor the forest scenes in the
"Scarlet Letter;" nor, in England, the work of Scott,
Ruskin, Richard Jefferies, and Mr, George Meredith.
Wilson Flagg has written an interesting account of the
intensity of his boyhood impressions upon first entering
a virgin forest, how he watched the scenes as he rode
through them — "the immense pillars that rose out of
a level plain, strewed with brown foliage, and inter-
spersed with a few branches and straggling vines; the
dark summits of the white pines that rose above the
round heads of the other species which were the pre-
vailing timber; the twilight that pervaded the woods
even at high noon; and I thought of their seemingly
boundless extent, of their mysterious solitude, and their

THE WOODS. 187

unspeakable beauty." I am reminded, too, of "The
Marshes of Glynn," the

" Gloom of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,"

— ah, Lanier was a poet ! Nor must I neglect to men-
tion Dr. W. C. Gray's forest musings, nor Mr. John
Muir's vivid inspirations on the trees of the Western
Sierras, nor the chapter on "The Hills," in "The
Forest," by Mr. Stewart Edward White. And the
time would fail me to tell as I ought of the travels of
Parkman, and the explorations of Stanley in the Congo,
and of the "Silva" of Evelyn, and Michaux, and the
monumental work of Sargent.

I have enjoyed these forest descriptions in liter-
ature. There are many more such passages, of our
day and before it ; I have presented but a few of them.
Some of the earliest are among the best. Vergil writes
in his imagination, you remember, of how the spears
of Polydorus grew into trees which shed blood upon
being broken. Dante also, in his great vision, saw that
the twigs ran blood, and were alive. And so is the
forest indeed, in its way, full of beautiful life and joy,
which rebuke us at their wanton destruction.

I leave the old woods with awe and reverence. It
has served its purpose. Most of the best trees have
been felled, and the oldest of those remaining have
staghorns of dead branches at their tops — the minarets,
as it were, of a place of worship. The young growth
is thick, however, and in time a new forest will spring
up in its place, and will no doubt fill the same useful-

1 88 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

ness. But the old woods, the woods of the Indian and
early settler, has nearly all of it gone its way with the
pioneer and trapper and the former life of years ago,
the rugged life of the hunter and rail-splitter in the
days of solid homespun clothes. New conditions have
confronted us, and we must meet them. The trees
have ripened, and it is for our interest and that of
others that they should fulfill their intended usefulness
as lumber before decay renders the wood unfit. Some
of the old oaks, as I have said, were over three hundred
years of age. It was time they went. They have
helped us by their beauty and shade, and it is not a
profanation to have them go, but they fall rather in
the fullness of their maturity, as veritable patriarchs of
the forest.

And then, too, the view that we have, now that
part of it has been cut away, is so restful and beautiful
that we think that perhaps, after all, it is really better
that the woods has partly been lumbered off. We can
see from the old homestead the lovely hills across the
Miami. It is like a pastoral. We could not see them
before; indeed, we hardly knew they were there. In
winter these hills present white fields bordered with
brush, seen through the old trees' penciled tops; in
spring these same sloping ridges become again fresh in
their green and purple and furrowed brown; in sum-
mer we can see the golden harvest and the reapers;
in autumn the many-colored hues of the fall of the leaf
beautify and once more vary the color of the landscape
and the strips of woodland: — winter, and the snowy
covering.

THE WOODS.

189

As we stand again near the path leading into It,
with the woods in its full panoply of green, and the
wild melody of the wood thrush sounding, toward the
twilight, at the entrance to this minster of the beau-
tiful old forest, with the crosses and antlered spires
above it piercing the sunset sky, and with its dingles
beckoning back to us so that we can not leave it, we
feel ourselves influenced anew, and spiritually uplifted,
by the strange, mystic druidism of the trees.

There recur to memory the opening lines of Bryant's
familiar ode. We, too, say that

" The groves were God's first temples."

8TAGHORNS.

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING.

" We can not but pity the boy w^ho has never fired a gun ; he is no
more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected."

—Thoreau.

"I have entered many woods just for the purpose of creeping through
the brake and the thickets. Destruction in itself was not the motive ; it was
an overpowering instinct for woods and fields. Yet woods and fields lose
half their interest without a gun— I like the power to shoot, even though I
may not use it."

— Richard Jefferies.

" Gayly chattering to the clattering
Of the brow^n nuts' dow^nward pattering.
Leap the squirrels, red and gray."

— Whittier.

HAVE always been attracted to squirrels
with an uncontrollable impulse. I must
be on the hunt, away to the woods and to
their haunts. Squirrel hunting was the
favorite pastime of Rip Van Winkle. Why
should it not be ours also?

The best kind of a day in which to
hunt squirrels is on a still morning, quite
early, when there has been a rain on the
day before, and the woods are yet a little
wet, and the leaves perhaps not through
their dripping; or on a late afternoon,
when the wind has died down and they are out for their
supper among the branches. Any quiet dawn or even-
ing will do, but after a rain is the most favorable time,
for they will be out then in full force, if the trees are
not too wet for them. In the middle of the day they

190

THE SQUIRREL HUNTER

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SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 193

are either in their holes, or lying stretched out on some
limb sunning themselves, where you will not perceive
them. On windy days they scarcely come out at all on
the trees, but will stay on the ground, and you will not
be so likely to see them unobserved.

The right season of the year is, of course, the
autumn, and for several reasons. In the first place,
they are then at work among the nuts, and so their
whereabouts can easily be detected by the shucks patter-
ing and dropping through the leaves to the earth; in
the second place, they are then past the breeding season,
and it is more humane to hunt them; in the third place,
their flesh is very delicious in the fall, juicy, and tasting
of the nuts which they have eaten; and in the fourth
place, their skins will not shed the hair after the sum-
mer is past, and so can be kept and enjoyed, if you wish
to tan or dry them. I have heard of robes made of
squirrel skins, and they must have been very warm and
comfortable; a real feeling of woods life must come
upon one when beneath the squirrel fur.

Spring, however, is a good time to get the young
ones. Young squirrels in springtime are so innocent
and so approachable. Having never been hunted, they
are very tame. They have not yet learned the differ-
ence between good and evil. Their flesh is very sweet
and tender then, and almost melts in your mouth.
Nothing, however, could be better than a well-broiled
squirrel which has been killed on a hickory on a frosty
morning in the autumn. I have hunted them at all
seasons of the year, before the present restrictive game
laws were in force, and I well recollect one winter
shooting one from the very top of a bare, leafless

194 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

maple, where it looked like a piece of bark caught and
swinging in the air.

Some men seem not to know how to keep still when
in the woods, and not to know what noise is. I have
taken friends out to hunt, and they have splashed
through the woods like hippopotamuses, and then were
always wondering where the squirrels were. Squirrels,
however, can walk among the driest of dry leaves
without making the noise of scarcely a patter. I have
seen them creep along logs or on the ground among
a thick fall of leaves, where it seemed to me impossible
that they could go so noiselessly, and yet at but ten
paces distant I have not been able to detect a scratch
or a rustle. It is not always that they are silent, for
I have seen them running and rustling and leaping
and playing among the fallen leaves as if with a real,
genuine joy at the woods' wildness; and I have seen
them in a game of tag circle round and round the trunk
of a shagbark until the woods was dinned with the
rattle of the strips of bark and with their chucklings.
Sometimes — though rarely — squirrels will mistake a
man's swish among the leav^es for the jump and crash
of one of their own species, and I have had them make
directly toward me at such times, when I had made a
sudden misstep or had stumbled. As a rule they do
not seem to scrutinize the woods very carefully in
search of an enemy, but to depend more upon their
sense of hearing; for I hav^e walked quietly round and
round a tree in wet weather, in order to get a good
shot, and they seemed totally oblivious of my presence.
But let me once tread on a twig and snap it, or let me
rustle and crackle the leaves injudiciously in dry

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 1 95

weather, and — plunge! down comes the nut, and —
splash! there he goes like a twinkling Into the beech — •
splash! over into the oak, there to twirl around chuck-
ling down into his hole for the rest of the day. The
little fellows always chuckle in the greatest glee when
they thus escape you and find refuge in their hollow
limbs, snickering away at you from their safe old
strongholds with the most taunting derision and self-
assurance.

I have seen them make their summer nests. Once
I was especially fortunate. I had gone to the woods
to sleep beneath the trees; and, upon awaking, as I
was lying upon the moss and gazing at the leaves above
me, I was suddenly further aroused by the splash of a
large gray squirrel in the branches — then another — and
another, from various directions, until five had come
to the rendezvous. They were in a walnut-tree of
moderate size, just across the brook from my resting
place, and I could see them very distinctly. They
would bite off leafy sprays from the outstretching
boughs, and then run up the tree, and each would fasten
his own sprig and twist it in some way with the other
twigs of the nest. It did not take them very long,
for they worked quite hard at it, and in less than an
hour they had made quite a comfortable home, appar-
ently, for they left off work, and three of them leaped
away and sought other employment. The two remain-
ing may have been a pair, and this may have been their
housewarming, or a barn-raising on the part of their
neighbors. They soon went up into their leafy cocoon,
and did not come out again while I was there. Thoreau
used to climb the trees and look into their hiding places,

196 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

to see what their nests were made of, and how they
curled themselves up in them.

Wilson Flagg rightly placed the squirrel among the
picturesque animals in a scene; for, surely, with the
exception of an antlered stag, a large gray or fox squir-
rel is the most picturesque feature to be found in any
woods, so graceful is he, so alert, so associated with all
wildness and with nutting-time. I like to be with them,
and to observe them in their arboreal habits. Watch
a sleek gray squirrel when the hickory nuts first ripen,
as he twines around among the thick foliage in search
of a nut, finally to pluck one off, and then to run back
to a favorite crotch or branch, and curl his tail over
him and begin work. The green hulls fall in bits all
around you, and soon also pieces of the inside shells,
as he digs in with his long teeth after the rich kernel;
or perhaps the whole nut may slip from his grasp, and
fall through the leaves with a loud plunge to the
ground. He has many such losses, however, and ac-
cepts them philosophically, as not to be too deeply in-
quired into. He is "content with the quia," as Dante
advised the human race to be; and forthwith, after a
little pause of bewilderment, runs out to another twig
and finds another nut. There does not seem to be much
method in the way squirrels pick the nuts, running up
and down at random, everywhere and anywhere, as
they do; but they generally manage to strip the tree.

The squirrel is the symbol of autumn. The way
to tell a squirrel's presence in the fall is simply to wait
for the patter and splash of the nutshells falling among
the leaves. You will frequently be aided also in de-
termining their local habitation by the new scratches

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 1 97

of their paws upon the bark of the trees or along the
top rails of the fences. Listen! Yes, he is surely
there, and eagerly at work, and he will not notice you
unless you make too much noise; for a squirrel likes
his meals as much as we do. But shake a sapling, and
he will go to the other side of the tree, where John can
hav'e a crack at him. I have seen as many as five in a
single tree, all of them seated on different limbs, with
their tails over their heads, and nuts in their paws, nib-
bling away for dear life. I have heard of as many as
twenty being seen in a single tree, in the autumn, mak-
ing havoc among the nuts; but I rather suspect the
multiplication table was used in that story, or the mag-
nifying glass, or some other agency that Increased the
number. It is a common adventure, this, however, in
autumn, to find several at work in one well-stocked
hickory or beech — and then what a pattering there is
of the shucks, the ground being covered with the
gnawed bits. If these dropped pieces beneath the trees
are fresh, then you may know the squirrels have not
left their feeding ground, and you can bide your time
for them presently to appear. But, if they are browned
over and evidently a few days old. It is likely the squir-
rels have either been killed or have sought new and
better mast. They will not always desert their tree, if
the nuts are plentiful, even though they know you are
below, and hear you; but they will perhaps simply
scamper up to the top and there conceal themselves for
a time, perhaps reaching for another nut and eating
it there amid the branchlets, the numerous leaves them-
selves being indeed an empalement for them, so that
you will scarcely discern them except by the tossing or

198 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

shaking of the foliage. Frequently I have been misled
by the sudden lurching or swaying of boughs by the
wind into believing that a squirrel was among them,
but I never like to risk a shot until I am sure of it.

Gray squirrels do not have a pouch on each side of
their jaws, like the little ground squirrels; but I have
often seen them come down a tree with their cheeks so
distended and puffed out that it seemed as if they must
have something in them, part of a nut, perhaps, tucked
away on each side, making them appear curiously de-
formed. But their deformity will vanish when they
reach their holes or trysting places. Often one will
carry a large walnut, hull and all, in his mouth to a
neighboring tree, or to some fence post, or a top rail,
or a stump, or a prominent rock, or some other favorite
place, before beginning operations; and there he will
sit and eat. Shells can frequently be seen in spots re-
mote from trees, the nut having been carried thither by
some squirrel. I have often seen them bury nuts, as
I crouched among the saplings; and I could not bring
myself to shoot them at such times, but would watch
them closely, and would soon become more Interested in
rheir habits than I was In my gun. Sometimes It would
seem as if a whole family were at it (which is, indeed,
very likely the case), each one making a little dive into
the leaves, then putting the nut In, and covering it or
not as the whim seized him. And yet nearly every one
of these hiding places Is known, and, if their furry lives
are spared, will be found again with remarkably unerr-
ing precision In winter through a foot of snow. I have
seen holes In the snow where the squirrels have dug at
once to their store of nuts, but I am Inclined to think

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 199

that they may search about beneath the snow sometimes
before they find what they are after; though, so far
as my own observation goes, they seem to know the
approximate location, and do not have to go very far
when they have once delved beneath the white cover-
ing. By what instinct of location that is done it is
probable that neither you nor I can ever completely
know, though their sense of smell undoubtedly helps
them. Perhaps, however, if we were squirrels, we
should recognize the little hummocks and hollows of a
few rods square as familiarly as we do the slopes and
ridges of our fields. The accurate and intimate knowl-
edge of the topography of their diminutive tract, which
life for some months or years among the trees has
given them, may be the real explanation of their ap-
parently mysterious intuitions.

Squirrels evidently select certain spots as their feed-
ing grounds. I have seen the projecting ends of old
logs, or the knot of a fallen limb jutting out from
amongst the leaves, completely surrounded by a pile
of walnut hulls, cast aside by the squirrel as he gnawed
into the kernels. They are beautiful little animals,
and it is interesting to see them seated in the crotch of
a tree or on a fence rail, munching away at a nut for
dear life, and sending the pieces of hull and shell scat-
tering in every direction. Sometimes, if disturbed —
no doubt, as he thinks, rudely — a squirrel will not give
up his half-gnawed nut, but will carry it with him
between his teeth to a safer vantage point, and there
finish his meal. I can hear their light pattering among
the leaves, as they pick their way along the ground
and jump from place to place; though sometimes, if a

200 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

squirrel is suddenly scared, one will make as much noise
as a dog or a large animal, in his leaps down the hill-
side. They can, if necessary, however, as I have said,
be very wary, and can slide along among the dry fallen
leaves with scarcely a sound to betray them.

The word squirrel means, from its Greek derivation,
shadow-tailed; that is, the squirrel is enabled to use its
tail for a shadow, which was a conception character-
istic of the poetic mind of the Greeks. Thoreau, how-
ever, was not quite satisfied with that, and made the
following whimsical suggestion: "Squirr, 'to throw with
a jerk,' seems to have quite as much to do with the
name as the Greek 'skia,' 'oura,' shadow and tail."
Yet the philologists are right, and the historic deriva-
tion will have to stand, no matter how well the little
animal may happen to fulfill in its motions the meaning
of this other dialect word that Is spelt so much like
its rightful name.

I do not believe that squirrels see distinctly, unless
their attention Is drawn to an object through fear or
some other cause. Then they rivet their gaze on It
with something of a ferret-like intensity of look in their
little black eyes, to crawl toward it, perhaps, by short
leaps along a branch, or by coming down gradually on
the trunk, or perhaps, and more likely, to scamper away
with a little "chuck! chuck!" I remember one morn-
ing sitting at the bottom of a hickory, after setting a
twItch-up, and being nearly startled out of my skin by
suddenly hearing stealthy scratchings on the bark just
at my side. Keeping as motlonles and still as death,
I hesitatingly and slowly turned my eyeballs sideways,
and there, within two feet of me, on the tree trunk.

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 20I

Mas the largest and most beautiful wild gray squirrel
that I have ever seen. My elbows were resting on my
knees and my hands clasped between them, and by turn-
ing my left forearm around on its elbow I could have
stroked him. He seemed, and doubtless was, wholly
unconscious of my presence, thinking me an old, moss-
covered stump, perhaps, and, after a moment's pause,
leaped quietly to a little maple sapling a few feet away,
and then down among the leaves and off toward the
brook. I suppose he never knew how near he came
to making friends with a boy that day. On three other
times also have squirrels been within my reach. I
would have felt like a murderer if I had shot them
then, or at least had not given them a good chance for
their lives.

The most provoking experience, however, that I
ever had was on a similar occasion, one fine, brisk morn-
ing when I had been out to a woods on a squirrel hunt
and had been lucky enough to get one big gray fellow.
I had him hanging from my suspenders, as all boys do,
by the thongs of his hind legs, piercing between the
ligaments and the bone with my knife, close to the
joint, and then inserting a slender but stout stick, or
twig, some few inches long and with a crotch at one
end, and supporting that stick at each end by the button
flaps of one side of my suspenders, letting the squirrel
hang and flop against me as I walked — prouder than
any king, and feeling as if I had sprouted fringes of
buckskin along the seams of my corduroys, and were
wearing beaded moccasins. It began to get far past
the sunrise and I turned toward home, giving up any
further luck for the day, and, seeing a large hawk in

202 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the crotch of a tree, I thoughtlessly shot all the cart-
ridges remaining in my magazine at the bird, which
still stayed perched there. But further up the ridge,
as I was eating my breakfast, lo ! a big gray squirrel
came out on a branch directly above me not six feet
away. Now if there was one thing I detested it was
to go home with only one squirrel; I always wanted at
least two, and to see three squirrel tails hanging and
swinging together seemed something like success and
roused my pride. Yet I had no cartridges, not even
one, and he was going away! I did not want to see
him go, so, with great recklessness, I threw away all
that I possessed and could collect at him, — potatoes,
stones, sticks, walnuts, — but all without avail, for, after
jumping to a young hickory sapling at once and pro-
tecting himself for a time amid its twigs, he finally
leaped to the ground and scampered up an oak. On
another occasion, after a long hunt, and only one squir-
rel to show for it, as it was late in the morning and the
squirrels seemed to have all gone on a journey, I whiled
away a few moments before cooking breakfast by
shooting the few cartridges I had left at a white
splinter on a tree, with such gratifying success as to
assuage a little my solitary squirrel. I evidently could
have hit another, I argued, could I only have seen him.
At another time we "cornered" a fine big fox squirrel
in the crotch of a walnut, some forty feet from the
ground, on the slope of a steep ridge, and as we were
shooting at the spot trying to drive him out, what
should he do but go out, and actually run up to the
end of the limb, and deliberately leap off into mid-air,
and, apparently by flattening and stretching himself

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 203

out as much as possible, like a flying squirrel, soar
gradually to the bottom of the ravine and skip up
an oak into his hole. It was the bravest thing I have
ever seen done in the woods, for the leap was at least
fifty feet; and the little fellow was evidently a bit afraid
of it, for he hesitated an instant before taking It. But
things were getting too warm for him, and so off he
went. He certainly was the General Putnam among
the squirrels, and should have been in the charge at
Balaklava. I hope he still lives (but doubt it), or at
least that he was not hurt by his long aeronautic ex-
pedition.

I remember once being out with my dog. I had
arisen before daybreak, and had tramped through the
dewy grass and weeds far Into the woods after squir-
rels. It was a clear, beautiful morning. It had rained
the day before, and I hoped thus to step noiselessly
and stealthily up to within a few feet of them. Cob-
webs and mosquitoes were thick and annoying, but a
large bunch of pennyroyal was a check for the latter,
and the hunting passion was too strong upon me to
mind the cobwebs, which I merely brushed aside with
the barrel of my rifle. I had not intended to have the
dog go, for he would sometimes race among the leaves
and scare the squirrels, and so I had driven him back.
I always liked to "still hunt" best for squirrels, anyway.
Suddenly, however, when pretty well in the woods,
listening for the earliest barking chuckle or the first
splash in the branches, I was startled by the v^ery
slightest movement in the path behind me; and, turn-
ing, there was my dog. He had followed me, even
after my refusal, bound to come. He looked up Into

204 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

my face with the most beseeching appeal, and I could
not resist such language as that. So he stayed, and
was even more quiet than I was, following in my steps
like an Indian. But there ! the gray had heard us.
Three big leaps ! In the last he sprang from the hickory
toward a large branch of a maple, some thirty feet
away, but missed his judgment, and passed beyond
to the trunk, to which he clung, and disappeared around
on the other side in safety in a twinkling. I have
killed squirrels on the run, and that with a rifle, but
I do not care ordinarily to risk the shot with a single
ball, and so I let him go. The dog leaped and barked
and became perfectly wild with desire, so strong is the
dog's instinct for hunting and wild life. He took a
run, with a short, passionate bark, and leaped up on
the tree trunk nearly ten feet, dug into the bark with
his nails, and strained every fiber to reach the squirrel,
who long ago was safe away in his hole and chuckling.
But it was a vain struggle ; he was made to be a runner,
not a climber. In justice to the dog, however, it should
be said that in the end we did not return home empty-
handed, and that he had his full share of the spoils.
I used sometimes also to divide with the cat, and
he certainly did enjoy my hospitality. More than milk,
more than scraps of any description, did that old Mal-
tese like to eat squirrels — even the fur, — crunching it
down as if he recognized their relationship to the
mouse, and so, in a sort of penance, in lieu of the little
mice, made greater havoc by proxy. But he got so
that he would follow me to the woods, and yowl and
skip and scratch about among the leaves, and so I
desisted, and remanded him to the milder effects of his
previous diet of bread and milk.

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 205

How the squirrels twine in wild grace among the
limbs, frisking their tails and chuckling, or perhaps
giving a sudden start and bursting out into a regular
landslide of barks and all sorts of queer, drawling
innuendoes and exultations ! One will sometimes hug
a branch and become almost a part of it, so that at a
distance he will not look much bigger than a knot,
although at the right view the branch can be seen to
swell out a little where the squirrel is. One will, if
hard pressed, after taking refuge, put out his head
comically on one side of the limb, and there take his
bearings. I remember one fellow's hiding from me
in the crotch of a tree. He was totally concealed, and
would have remained safe, except that in congratulat-
ing himself at his escape he would every now and then
quirk up his tail with a little jerk, and it would wag
and wave in an indubitable revelation of his where-
abouts. Like the ostrich, he failed to realize he had
other than his head to hide. Sometimes one will lie
for hours stretched on the top of a limb of his size,
the only indication of his presence being his tail hang-
ing and swaying with each breath of wind.

Mulberries are a very substantial part of the squir-
rels' food in summer, but I have not seen them eat the
wild black cherries in the autumn, though deer will
browse upon the cherry sprays and pick up the fallen
fruit with the greatest relish. I have killed squirrels
also while munching the seeds of the black gum-tree
and winding among its masses of berries. But in our
Northern country their main dependence is the various
nuts, and they apparently enjoy the buckeyes as well,
some buckeye-trees being a regular rendezvous for

2o6 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

them. Which kind of nut do they like best? I do
not know. They apparently have no preference, but
attack all Indiscriminately and with equal ferocity; and
yet I have noticed that the hickories are the first to go.

I like to hear the squirrels bark. It Is a sound of
wild Nature. The bark, or call, of the gray or fox
squirrel is a curious Intermixture of squeals, and snlcker-
ings, and chucklings, as If he were congratulating him-
self on some extra good fortune. How one will sud-
denly spring round the trunk of a tree, and give vent
to his feelings in a rollicking challenge of these
chuckles, following one after another as fast as pos-
sible— and then a long, drawn-out squeal — then an-
other series of rapidly issuing chuckles — and then an-
other long squeal ! Or perhaps he will run up the tree
a little, barking as he goes; or, breaking off, will
scamper quickly to a crotch, and finish his bark there;
or perchance will make two or three stops before he is
through with his statement. It is one of the sounds
to listen for In the mornings; for he Is always inclined
to open the day with this joking announcement of his
presence on the arena, and he usually closes the twilight
with this same queer drollery of the woods.

Squirrel hunting in my boyhood was the most en-
joyable thing we ev^er did. We entered Into It with a
real zest for the woods. We watched the sunsets
according to the Scriptures, and, If the morrow looked
favorable and the wind was dying, we would arrange
for a hunt. Each would take a separate ridge as his
special game preserve, but we had a way of signaling
to one another with the Bob IVhite! of the quail,
thinking the squirrels would not notice that familiar

SQUIRRELS Ax\D SQUIRREL HUNTING. 207

whistle; one call and its answer merely getting our
bearings, two calls repeated from one of us meaning
danger over in the other direction (when perchance
one perceived a squirrel which his fellow on the next
slope might not see), and three Bob fVhites! in succes-
sion being a summons to get together, for a squirrel
was in limbo and we must concentrate forces.

I used to like to listen to the hum of insects in
the woods while waiting for the squirrels. The hunt-
ing was not 2i\\ of it. I liked to think of the older
days, the days of midnight country serenades, of the
old-time and real negro minstrels, of Colt's revolvers,
and of "The Arkansaw Traveler." And my boyish
dreams were no mere fanciful or passing visions, but
were, in their way, the symbols of convictions about
life. 'T is a priceless heritage, the love for the coun-
try, and, once neglected and lost, it can not soon be
recovered.

So, during my hunts, I have not only shot squir-
rels at all seasons of the year, among the buds of
springtime, amidst the mulberries in the summer, up
in the hickories in the autumn, and even on the icy
boughs of winter, but also have killed them with more
than one kind of firearm— with a .22 Flobert-Rem-
ington, with a .44 Henry, with a .56 Spencer, and
with muzzle and breech loading shotguns, both single
and double barreled — and have tried my hand with the
old cap and ball rifle, and have gone out breathing
forth slaughter with the more primitive weapons of
slings and stones. I have shot them while seated in
crotches scattering their nutshells below; and on the
sides of the shagbarks or maples, while they listened

14

2o8 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

intently for suspicious noises; or up among the tossing
sprays, as they leaped from one bough to another;
and, again, on the ground, as they played among the
fallen leaves or perched on the stumps and logs. But
the crowning triumph of all was one day when with
the big .44 I shot one while on the run at full speed
along the outspread limb of a beech, some fifty yards
away. I have since killed them with shotguns while
running, but never again have I got one on the "wing,"
so to speak, with a rifle. For the boy to learn first to
shoot with a rifle is better than to begin with a shot-
gun. Any one can hit a squirrel with a shotgun, but
it requires considerable accuracy of aim and steadiness
of nerve to bring one down from the top of a hickory
with but a single bullet, and there Is more satisfaction
in getting him then, and more real sportsmanship in
the hunting. It gives a squirrel at least some chance
for his life to hunt him with a rifle. Target practice
of some kind is essential to keep up one's accuracy of
aim, and some of the old beeches in the woods are
marked and well stocked with lead from my Henry,
where I practiced; and I never found that it hindered
my hunting with a shotgun to have attained some skill
beforehand, where it was necessary, in the use of the
rifle. I used to consider it, and It was, one of the
greatest pleasures I could have to bring a squirrel down
with one shot from my Henry from the top of a tall
shagbark or a beech, to see him fall and to hear him
splash through the branches, and then finally come with
a plunge and a thud to the ground at my feet. That
was a real achievement !

Sometimes a wounded squirrel will manage to crawl

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 209

away beneath the leaves or into some hollow log, before
you can reach him when he has fallen, or perhaps may
scratch a three-legged way back, up to his tree again;
and there he will die, in a lingering agony, alone in
his beautiful coat of hair, upon the matted and bloody
leaves.

Have you ever had the "buck fever" when in the
woods? Every deer hunter knows what that is. I
have at times been taken with it when squirrel hunting,
and my rifle would sway most unsteadily as I aimed,
while my arms were trembling in the excitement like
those of a man with ague, and beads of perspiration
stood on my brow. One does not frequently hit the
mark when in such a condition; he either pulls the
trigger too soon or too late, or in some way misses.
Men do not have it ordinarily in mere target prac-
tice, but the presence of real, live game at the end of
the sights curiously affects a man.

To hear the crack of a rifle in the woods always
stirs my blood. The boom of a shotgun does not have
the same music to it, nor does it signify so much; for
the rifle speaks to us of the deer, and of a wilder life
than shooting on the meadows. I could always tell the
sharp report of my Henry from among the many other
sounds of the guns, if I heard it from a distance when
the boys had borrowed it for the day. I loved the
sound of it. Indeed, a man's trusty rifle is almost as
much a favorite and as good a friend as his faithful
dog. Leatherstocking, you remember, carved his
"marks" upon his, and notched the stock whenever he
killed a deer. So, I have sometimes seen names and
emblematic devices cut upon the wood, perhaps while

2IO AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the owner was resting on a log, and I imagine, if I had
followed Leatherstocking and notched my Henry for
every squirrel, it would now be checkered like a pistol
grip.

I once bagged a squirrel with only half a tail. It
is very possible that I myself had been the cause of
his loss, for I did not hit all the squirrels I shot at,
and might merely have cut through his brush. It had
undoubtedly been shot off, but the little fellow was at
last to be brought low, even after that escape — like
many a soldier who, after numerous battles, finally
falls, shot in the head. I recollect also killing two
squirrels whose stomachs were simply bursting with
dry, chewed nuts. Whether there had been a lack of
water for them, and so their food had become too
dry to digest, or why they were so distended, I do not
know, unless they had almost been starving, and had
suddenly come across a tree full of fruit and had
gorged themselves to the utmost.

The boys could take a whole day for squirrel hunt-
ing in pioneer times, and never go out of the woods.
They had a certain plan, by which they would simply
saunter along from one wood lot through another until
they reached the bluffs of the river, there eat their
lunch, and then spend the afternoon on the stroll home
again, with perhaps a dozen squirrels to show for
their trip.

I have heard some fairly good yarns about squir-
rels. One old man, I remember, who was nothing
loath to see the eyes of his nephews distend almost to
bursting at his tales, related to me one time a long,
rather rambling story of a celebrated hunt in which

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTINC}. 211

he and some fellow Xlmrods took part, In the days
when squirrels were as thick as flies, and deer as thick
as squirrels are now, sir. They took the old muzzle-
loader and went out for the day, when work was slack,
to see which one could kill the most squirrels, in a kind
of contest. No rabbits were to be taken under any
consideration. Now it chanced that the lot fell to
him to begin the contest; and he went at it leisurely,
he said, picking off one or two occasionally as he came
to them, and shooting them each one, as the rule was,
in the head, a miss of any sort (it was understood)
at once forfeiting the old cap and ball to the next in
line. The victims began to pile up by the dozen with
his unerring aim, and finally by scores, until he had at
last shot sixty-two, and all in the head. Just at that
moment a squirrel was seen at a short distance and he
leveled and took aim, but, the sunlight or some other
objectionable object striking his eye at the time, he
pulled trigger just a bit too soon, to see the squirrel
fall, of course, but — alas, this time, shot in the neck!
Disgraceful ! And so he was barred out, and the gun
passed to the next competitor. How long the contest
lasted, or how many he might have killed, if he had
only hit that last one in the head, or how many squir-
rels they actually brought home, deponent sayeth not,
although there was doubtless some foundation to the
story. I think he once said that the number might
have been forty-two, instead of sixty-two, that he got;
he could n't exactly remember, it was such a common
occurrence in those days.

In Franklin County, Ohio, whose population at
present is nearly one hundred thousand and whose

212 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

county seat is Columbus, there is the tradition of a
squirrel hunt in the fall of 1822 which surely eclipses
all previous or subsequent records. The squirrels hav-
ing become quite numerous and threatening the farm-
ers' crops, and therefore a pest, a bounty was offered
for every scalp of a squirrel brought in; with the result
that a general ''hunting caucus" was called for in all
the various townships and a mighty hunt planned to last
for several days, the astonishing total of nineteen thou-
sand six hundred and sixty scalps being the outcome of
the slaughter; nor was this really all, for many of the
hunters did not put in an appearance at the close, and
consequently made no returns. I think, after this, there
need be no further questioning as to the truthfulness
of the phenomenal hunting stories of the early settlers.
It is a fact, however, that in pioneer times squir-
rels— and big gray ones, too — were killed by the hun-
dred where now only one is seen. It was an every-day
thing in grandfather's day to go out with no other
weapon but a club, and no trouble at all to bring in a
few rabbits or squirrels with it for breakfast. There
are traditions hereabouts of an old farm hand, in the
halcyon days when the woods were well filled with
game, who could throw a stone from his hand with
about as unerring and fatal an aim as any fair shot
with a rifle. He never even took a sling, not to speak
of a gun, but would, like David, pick a few smooth
stones out of the brook, and stroll beneath the hickories
armed cap-a-pie; and he never failed to bring back
enough squirrels for supper. He could hit three crows
out of every five in the top of a big oak. And what
is more, these facts are pretty generally authenticated

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 213

by the corroborations of all who knew him. Such a
wild strain as that is not found nowadays. It Is rare,
and truly native, and smacks a little of the old primeval
forest life and of genuine woodcraft. He was like
the hero in Bulwer's "A Strange Story," who would
even climb the trees and capture the squirrels among
the branches.

One can frequently detect the presence of squirrels
by the scent in the woods. Rowland E. Robinson
speaks of that in his "New England Fields and
Woods," and tells how, with the other odors in spring,
you are made aware "by an undescribed, generally un-
recognized, pungency in the air that a gray squirrel
lives in your neighborhood." It is true, however, of
the other seasons as well as of spring, for there is
always a peculiarly woodsy and wild, animal-like smell
in the haunts of squirrels. One can get a hint, when
a faint whiff reaches him, of the many things that
dogs know which we have but rarely even suggested
to us.

Squirrels make very beautiful and winsome pets.
In parks they sometimes become so used to people that
they lose their fear, and will take peanuts and other
morsels from their hands. They can be tamed, and
have become loving and trusting companions of men,
as human as dogs even, and very cleanly, and much less
destructive than puppies. They w^ill, however, some-
times bite those whom they do not know. The late
W. J. Stillman once wrote a very touching account
of his delight in some squirrels, Billy and Hans, that
he had as pets, and of the remorse that he felt, after
his intimacy with these captives, that he had ever killed

214 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

or hunted any in the woods. Such reflections, how-
ever, come later in Hfe, and are not apt to suggest
themselves to the boy in the woods with a gun on his
shoulder. But, surely, these few sentences from his
paper will commend themselves to every lover of the
squirrels :^

"I feel so keenly their winsome grace when I can watch
them in freedom that I can not draw the line between them
and myself, except that they are worthier of life than I am.
The evolutionists tell us that we are descended from some
common ancestor of the monkey. It may be so; and if, as has
been conjectured by one scientist, that was the lemur, which
is the link between the monkey and the squirrel, I should not
object; but I hope that we branched out at the Sciurus, for I
would willingly be the far-off cousin of my little pets."^

There are many varieties of squirrels in this coun-
try. The old woods boasts at least three, the gray,,
the fox, and the little striped ground squirrels, and
there were formerly many flying squirrels. The com-

' "Billy and Hans," by W. J. Stillman. "Century Magazine,"
February, 1897; page 623.

^In a more recent paper, entitled " Squirrel Land " (" Century Mag-
azine," August, 1905,) Mr. Stillman gives it as his opinion that it is the
sense of smell which is the real secret of the mystery of the squirrel's gath-
ering of the hidden nuts among the leaves. "They evidently smell them
in the ground, for I myself have buried them at the depth the squirrels use,
and they were always dug up at once." Stillman also refutes the charge
that squirrels are depredators of bird's nests or destroyers of trees, and says
that the only animal food that he has ever known his pet ones to take was
a taste of bacon, which he offered them. Surely Stillman had a genuine,
sympathetic understanding of the squirrels. Had he but been more familiar
with our own gray squirrel of the American forests, instead of the European
species, it is possible that we might have had some still more attractive
studies of squirrel life from his pen.

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 215

mon red squirrel of the East is not found here, and
I am glad of it; for they and the grays do not often
agree, and the red fellows drive their big gray brothers
out, and I like the gray squirrels better. The red
squirrel snickers and chirrups, whence doubtless his
name, the chickaree; the gray squirrel barks and
chuckles, and I like him for it. The red squirrel is a
ubiquitous scold, and ought to be gagged or put on
,the ducking stool. I have sometimes killed big fox
squirrels whose fur had almost a tinge of black, thus
suggesting that possibly they were a cross between a
fox and the black variety of the gray, but I have never
seen a genuine black squirrel in the woods, though they
are found at times farther up in the State. The South-
ern fox squirrels have, however, frequently a darker
coat than our more rusty fellows, and It is possible
that one of them may have strayed up North.

The ground squirrel, or chipmunk (its Indian
name). Is a curious little fellow. He gives a sharp
chirp, something like a cricket's, but more Intense,
whence one of his names, the hackee. He is valueless
for food, being so little, though his flesh is not bad
to the taste. I have had him sit perched at one end
of a log while I was seated at the other, and so long
as I was motionless he would observe me with apparent
Indifference, but just as soon as I made the slightest
motion his sharp squeak would strike my ear, and
whisk! away he would flit under the log. This was
the first kind of squirrel that I ever saw, when but a
little child, and I can well remember the thrill that
went through my being when I realized that I had
actually seen a real wild creature of the forest playing

2l6 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

about the roots of an elm. Lowell, in "An Indian
Summer Reverie," thus very correctly describes the little
ground squirrel's capering:

" The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark's bough,
Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear,
Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound
Whisks to his winding fastness underground."

It is commonly supposed that the chipmunk lives
almost wholly upon the ground, but I have seen him
crawl up into some pretty tall beeches, and there eat
the nuts, though of course as a rule his habits are of
the earth, earthy. It was Robert Louis Stevenson, I
believe, who first suggested that the gray squirrel was
an idealist, always living in the upper air and climb-
ing the trees to the heights.

The flying squirrel is another curious little creature,
with its large dark eyes and singular parachute habit
of soaring away from one tree to another, half animal,
half bird. It is the bat among the squirrels. Every
one knows of Thoreau's experience in capturing and
bringing home a flying squirrel in his pocket, and then,
from pity, the next day taking it back to the stump
where he had caught it, and letting it loose again.

Squirrels will apparently migrate in feeding time
from one woods to another; for, all of a sudden, in a
grove which has been tenantless there will some day
be heard the cheerful barking of the squirrels in num-
bers on the boughs. They swim, too, and years ago,
when squirrels were more plentiful, a great drove of
them crossed the Miami, and the boys got on the
opposite side of the river and gathered in with clubs
as many as they wanted for their respective dining
tables.

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 217

I do not know to what extent squirrels are in-
sectivorous, and yet I have seen the old ones clamber
slowly along on the dead top branches of a tree and
gnaw frequently at the bark. I know that they eat the
bark of live maples in the spring, but why should they
nibble at this dead wood? Could they be sharpening
or cleaning their teeth? It was on a maple that I saw
them in this instance, however, early in spring, before
breeding time, and it may be that they had just come
from tasting the fresh sap of the lower limbs and were
now, simply from curiosity, testing the leafless upper
ones. However, it is well known that they eat many
birds' eggs and the suspended chrysalids of certain
butterflies.

It is not so often that squirrels have been written
of at length in literature or with any great appreci-
ation, nor so frequently as one would think, notwith-
standing the great mass of natural history books upon
them. I have often wondered that Thoreau was n't
fascinated by squirrels more than he seems to have
been. He liked them, and they frisked about the
ridgepole of his house, and I have just spoken of the
flying squirrel that he captured. But scarcely any one
that I have read seems to do full justice to the beau-
tiful, graceful, wild gray squirrel of our hardwood
forests. Mr. Burroughs has written pleasantly about
them, and in one of his papers he quotes from a West-
ern correspondent who was quite enthusiastic over them.
Wilson Flagg certainly appreciated them, and I have
already made mention of Stillman's sensitive and ten-
der tribute. Mr. Charles D. Lanier has also written

2l8 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

very beautifully of the squirrels; Mr. Ernest Ingersoll
has shown himself a true lover of them, and has made
them a delightful study; Mr. John Muir has told some
interesting facts about the Western Douglas squirrel in
his book on "The Mountains of California;" there is
a good imitation of the gray squirrel's bark in Mrs.
Olive Thorne Miller's "Little Brothers of the Air;"
and do you remember the squirrels which delighted
Mr. Jenkin Lloyd Jones when, with his Jess, he rested
in the park of a small Western town?

In a recent novel, too, Mr. Irving Bacheller's
"Eben Holden," old Uncle Eben trees a squirrel with
the help of his dog, and then brings him "down out
of the tree by hurling stones at him" — a method which
some others of us have tried, but have not always been
able to make successful. There is also a quaint story
by Uncle Eben of Squirreltown and Frog Harbor; and
the wild man of the woods used to trap squirrels for
his food. One of Frank Stockton's stories is "The
Squirrel Inn."

In England Edward Jesse has written of the squir-
rel with much appreciation in his "Scenes and Occu-
pations of Country Life" and "Gleanings in Natural
History." Richard Jefferies also speaks of the squirrel
more than once in his novels, as in "After London"
and "Wood-Magic," and has this passage in his essay
on "Marlborough Forest:"

"High over head in the beech-tree the squirrel peeps down
from behind a bough — his long, bushy tail curved up over his
back, and his bright eyes full of mischievous cunning."

But perhaps it will pay us to turn from these
jnodern writers on the squirrel and see what has been

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 219

said by the older naturalists and lovers of the woods.
Part of the instruction for fly-making, as given by
Izaak Walton, included the fur from a squirrel's tail.
I have happened, too, upon some quaint observations
on squirrels in two old and long-forgotten writers of
the sixteenth century, and, besides being curious and
unmodern in style and point of view, they really show
quite a correct knowledge of our little furry brothers.
Linschoten, a traveler, says of the gray squirrels in
India that, besides being destructive, they "have a taile
like the penner of an ink-horne, and grayish speckled
haire : they are pretie beasts to keep and to passe the
time withall." And old Topsell, quite an observer for
his day, speaking of their nests, says:

"In summer time they gather together abundance of fruits
and nuttes for winter, even so much as their litde dray [old
word for nest] will holde and containe, which they carrie in
their mouthes, and they lodge manie times two together, a
male and a female (as I suppose). They sleep a great part
of the winter like the Alpine mouse, and very soundly, for I
have seen when no noise of hunters could wake them with
their cries, beating their nests on the outside, and shooting
boltes and arrowes through it, until it were pulled asunder,
wherein many times they are found before they be awaked.
They growe exceeding tame and familiar to men if they be
accustomed and taken when they are young, for they runne up
to mens shoulders, and they will oftentimes sit upon their
handes, creep into their pockets for nuttes, goe out of doores,
and returne home againe; but if they be taken alive, being
olde, when once they get loose, they will never return home
againe. They are very harmefull, and will eat all manner of
woolen garments, and if it were not for that discommodity,

220 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

they were sweete-sportful-beastes, and are very pleasant play-
fellows in a house."

William Gilpin, the hermit of New Forest, in his
"Picturesque Remarks on Forest Scenery," has written
of the squirrel, but his book was published before the
forests were much cut off in England. Gilpin was not
like Flagg, for, singularly, in his account of the animals
that inhabited the forest, he did not think the squirrel
of great picturesque importance among them ; yet is his
description of one well worth reading:

"In the same class [hares and rabbits] we rank the squir-
rel. He is not of consequence to be numbered among the pic-
turesque ornaments of a scene: but his form, and manners;
his activity, and feats of dexterity, are very amusing. On
extraordinarj' occasions, when he is agitated by love, or anger,
his muscles acquire tenfold elasticity. He descends a tree in
a rapid spiral, as quick as thought — darts up another in an
opposite direction — flings himself from tree to tree with amazing
exactness — and pursues his mate, or his rival, among the mazy
branches of an oak, with a velocity that eludes the sight."

I myself have seen them quarrel, in these later days,
one driving another away from a nut-tree.

Nor has the squirrel been overlooked by the poets
;my more than by the naturalists. It is but to be ex-
pected that poets should like the squirrels, and I think
they do them better justice. To old Shakespeare let
us go ! For, if squirrels act not according to his word,
there Is no health in them. And, sure enough, we find
that the squirrel had not escaped the notice of Shakes-
peare, but Is associated, like an elf, with all forest

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 221

witchery. Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet," says of
Queen Alab that

' Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach m akers :"

and in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Titania says to
Bottom, in the wood,

" I have a venturous fairy that shall seek

The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee thence new nuts.'

William Browne, too, an old poet of the earlier
seventeenth century, has left, in his "Brittania's Pas-
torals," such a really modern and realistic picture of a
squirrel hunt that I give it here entire. It is the best,
and only poetic, description of a squirrel hunt that I
know of in literature:

" As a nimble squirrel from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filbert-food.
Sits pertly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking,
Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys.
To share with him, come with so great a noise
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leap to a neighbor oak.
Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes ;
Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes
The boys run dabbling thorough thick and thin.
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin,
This, torn and tatter'd, hath with much ado
Got by the briars ; and that hath lost his shoe :
This drops his bands; and that headlong falls for haste ;
Another cries behind for being last :
With sticks and stones, and many a sounding hollow.
The little fool with no small sport they follow,
Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray.
Gets to the wood, and hides him in his dray."

222 AROUND AX OLD HOMESTEAD.

Surely he was a fine poet who wrote that. And he
loved Nature otherwise equally as Intimately. He was
the John Burroughs of the seventeenth century.

Cowper writes of the squirrel In an Interesting way
in "The Winter Walk at Noon," In "The Task:"

" Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm,
That age or injury has hollow'd deep,
Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves.
He has outslept the winter, ventures forth
To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun,
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play.
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird.
Ascends the neighb'ring beech ; there whisks his brush,
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud.
With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm.
And anger insufficiently fierce."

There are many other references to the squirrel in
poetry. I shall give a few of those that have come
across my notice. Mrs. Browning has this passage,
In "The Lost Bower:"

" For you hearken on your right hand,

How the birds do leap and call

In the greenwood, out of sight and

Out of reach and fear of all ;

And the squirrels crack the filberts through their cheerful madrigal."

Coventry Patmore also. In "The Angel In the House,"
has noted the squirrel's love of solitude:

Upon the spray the squirrel swung,
And careless songsters, six or seven.

Sang lofty songs the leaves among,
Fit for their only listener, Heaven."

The present poet laureate, too, Mr. Alfred Austin,
in "At the Gate of the Convent," has the squirrel seek-
ing the forest cover :

The russet squirrel frisked and leapt

F'rom breadth of sheen to breadth of shade."

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 223

Shelley says, in "Alastor," that his solitary poet
dwelt in the wild so long that the doves and squirrels
would partake of his food and the antelope stay her
steps in admiration. Would it be possible nowadays
for many of us so to cultivate the friendships of the
forest? Must we always think of it as merely a poetic
fancy? It is said of William Hamilton Gibson that
he had such an influence over the wild inhabitants of
the woods, was so en rapport with their life, and had
so won their confidence and trust, that, if he would but
hollow his hands and hold them up with a cooing
whistle toward a branch, the birds would nestle in their
cup, and the squirrels would come down the great tree
trunks and let him stroke them as they gazed wonder-
Ingly at him. And how beautifully he has written
of the secrets of the squirrels and all the life of the
woods, and with what perfect art in illustration has
he sympathetically drawn their homes and faces.

In our American poetry, besides my preliminary
quotation from Whittier, I recall a few allusions to
the squirrel in some of Bryant's poems. He says, in
his apostrophe "Among the Trees," that the kings of
the earth are not arrayed as are the forest-trees in
autumn,

" While, swaying on the sudden breeze, ye fling
Your nuts to earth, and the brisk squirrel comes
To gather them, and barks with childish glee,
And scampers with them to his hollow oak."

He says that "the squirrel in the forest seeks his hollow
tree" in time of storm; that, while the birds are sing-
ing in the tree-tops,

" Below
The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect,
Chirps merrily."
15

224 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Bryant also Is correct In having the squirrel about in
winter, as in the following, from "A Winter Piece:"

" From his hollow tree
The squirrel was abroad, gathering the nuts
Just fallen, that asked the winter cold and sway
Of winter blast, to shake them from their hold."

Longfellow speaks of the squirrel frequently, but
especially in this familiar passage :

" Up the oak-tree, close beside him,
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches.
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
'Do not shoot me, Hiawatha !' "

In our recent verse I have met with nothing better
than these lines from a short poem entitled "When
Chestnuts Fall," by Mr. Joel Benton:

" The squirrel now, half-ambushed, sees
His longed-for largess in the trees ;
A keen frost chills each breeze that blows, —

The squirrel starts, alert with joy ;
An allied frenzy stirs the boy ;
Marauders born they both agree
To burglarize each bounteous tree ;
And to their separate comrades call.
When, urged by frost, the chesnuts fall."

I have not shot a squirrel for several years, and I
do not know that I ever shall do so again, though the
hunting instinct is very strong, and one does not know
what he will do when it suddenly comes upon him with
a whiff of autumn. But I shall not soon forget my
feelings at my last hunt. Bang! — splash ! — thud ! I
ran quickly over to the spot. There he lay, down

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 22$

among the nuts and leav^es that he had loved so well,
with a few bright spots of his life-blood on them.
Poor little beauty ! He had thought me his best friend,
perhaps, and I had turned out to be his worst, his
fatal, foe. As he twitched his last death spasm, the
poor little fellow turned his liquid eyes upon me with
tearful, unutterable, most pitiful remonstrance. Yes,
I had killed him; I had destroyed his life — life that
was once so happy and graceful and beautiful among
the leafy branches, but now to be swaying, leaping,
and chasing, and playing tag among them no more
forever. The look of sad reproach in the eyes of a
dying squirrel, the death look, as he languishes and
quivers in pain, is enough to fill the stoutest heart
with the deepest remorse. No eyes among the wild
creatures, to my notion, of those I have seen, are so
wondrously beautiful as those of the doe and the squir-
rel, and none are so frank in their expressions. What
beautiful creatures the gray squirrels are! Their eyes,
their sleek coat of fur, their sensitive ears and alert
body, full of life, teeming and pulsating with living
blood — all animals are like them, all constant wonders,
perpetual miracles! I do not know that we ought to
kill them.

Yet hunting is one of the most humanizing, if not
the most so, of all pursuits that a man can do in the
open air. Most of the hunters whom I have known
have had natures brimful of the milk of human kind-
ness toward all the animals. Old William Cobbett,
who was a good friend of the four-footed, argued very
strongly in favor of the ethics of hunting, and believed
thoroughly in its value. Why, we kill, by proxy, thou-

226 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

sands of cattle daily for the food of the human race;
and sheep and oxen, after all, as Thoreau said, "are
but larger squirrels." The majority of wild animals
that are killed by man die more or less instantaneously;
and it is true at least of some of them that they would
otherwise have a lingering, painful death from star-
vation, or sickness, or old age, alone, deserted, or mal-
treated by even their own families.

I can not refrain from closing this paper with two
selections on hunting from Thoreau and Dr. W. C.
Gray. Thoreau thought that his having witnessed the
killing of a moose up in Maine, the destruction of one
of "God's own horses," had lowered him, and expresses
his regret in these beautiful and inspiring words:

"I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the
coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was re-
minded that our life should be lived as tenderly and daintily
as one would pluck a flower. . . . Nature looked scernly
upon me on account of the murder of the moose."

Dr. Gray likewise, though in his time more of a
hunter, had at last his final hunt, when, stricken by
remorse, he gave up the practice. He had just shot
a deer, but had not hit it fatally, and tells the conclud-
ing story thus (and may it be ours also) :

''He was helplessly wounded, not killed. As I advanced
upon him, he fixed his large, lustrous, frightened eyes upon
me, and I ended his life with another shot. There he lay in
all his purity and beauty. I was smitten to the heart with
remorse. I considered that he had lived the pure and innocent

SQUIRRELS AND SQUIRREL HUNTING. 22/

life of Nature, had never harmed any one or anythin<i. and
there he lay, the victim of an invader and murderer.

"This ended my hunting, a favorite sport of more than
half a century, and which had the double attraction that it led
me deep into the solitudes of Nature, with their unfading
freshness and unfailing charms."

A SQUIRREL S HOME.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY DOG.

MAX S BEST FRIEND.

"I humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented dogs, and I
regard that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless life."

—Philip Gilbert Hamerton.

EN like dogs, and always have liked
them, from the time when Ulysses re-
turned from his long voyage and was
recognized by his old dog Argos.
Dogs are generally so open, frank, and
sincere in their natures and actions,
and so receptive and eager to learn,
. and so intelligent, that men find them,
the best of companions by the fireside
or in the woods. They are naturally
cleanly, too, and can be taught to be a great deal more
decent than thousands upon thousands of men are,
and they like to be so. A well-bred dog is very much
of a gentleman; and he quite consistently selects a
true man as his highest ideal, and is always content
when in his presence.

How beautiful is the head of a dog! How liquid
and winsome the eyes, and how wonderingly they look
up into ours ! The dog is man's most faithful friend.
He has become much nearer to man in his life than
has any other animal. He eats to a great extent the
same food: often lives under the same roof; learns to

228

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY DOG. 229

understand more of our words than any other animal;
and frequently shows his intelligence and appreciation
in ways that reveal unmistakably real affection and
character. He has more of humanity to him than any
other animal. He protects us and watches over us at
night; saves us when in danger; cries and whines with
us in sympathy when in pain; and plays with us in mad
joy when we condescend to notice and to laugh with
him. Yes, the dog is a little man!

The dog has found an enduring place in our liter-
ature in the poetry of Shakespeare and Scott and Mrs.
Browning, and in the beautiful and well-known story,
and the most exquisite bit of pathos in all English
literature, too, "Rab and His Friends," by Dr. John
Brown. There have been a number of books written
about the dog. Edward Jesse's "Anecdotes of Dogs"
is a very interesting compilation bearing on the intelli-
gence and affection of these animals. There lately also
appeared an anthology entitled "Praise of the Dog,"
by Ethel E. Bicknell. More recently, his heroism and
prowess have again been celebrated in "Bob, Son of
Battle," by Mr. Alfred Ollivant, "The Call of the
Wild," by Mr. Jack London, and "The Bar Sinister,"
by Mr. Richard Harding Davis. There are two other
books worth mentioning — "Diomed: The Life, Trav-
els, and Adventures of a Dog," by Mr. J. S. Wise,
and Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton's volume upon "Our
Devoted Friend the Dog." Of the many magazine
articles relating to the dog I recollect especially Mr.
John Muir's account of his adventures among the gla-
ciers with Stickeen, and Mark Twain's protest against
the prevalent vivisection entitled "A Dog's Tale."

230 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Mr. Henry van Dyke, too, has written a good story
of a dog called "A Friend of Justice," in "The Ruling
Passion." When his master first patted him on the
head, runs the tale, "the dog looked up in the man's
face as if he had found his God." His master put
a cross over his grave. "Being French," said he, "I
suppose he was a Catholic. But I '11 swear he was a
Christian."

Shakespeare speaks of the baying of the dog as in
itself music; and who that has ever heard it can forget
the deep, bell-like, echoing tones of a hound in the dis-
tance as he scents his game in a chase among the hills?
We find the dog remembered in many of the finest
paintings and hunting pictures, in numberless photo-
graphs, and in occasional dog statuary. Indeed, there
can be few more inspiring subjects for an artist who
loves animals than a well-formed, healthy dog in a
graceful, eager poise.

In the chase or in the library the dog will always
be close to man's heart.

n.

"Tears are in my eyes to feel
Thou art made so straitly."
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "To Flush, my Dog."

Lord Bacox said that man was the god of the
dog; and if it be not true, it ought to be true. For no
dependent creature so well deserves man's good inten-
tions and care, or should have so fine an example set
before him, as the dog.

We make companions of dogs; we enjoy their
being with us and our being with them. And yet we

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY DOG. 23 1

do not know all of their life; we can not enter the
source of their thoughts or impulses any more than
we can penetrate to the inner personality of a fellow-
man, and see with his eyes, and think with his mind.
I suppose that there will always be a certain sphere
of existence wherein every being lives absolutely alone,
unrevealed, save by outward tokens, in the citadel of
his own soul. This I believe to be true of dogs and
horses and the other animals. We know something
of them, but it is not a great deal, and perhaps they
know as much of us as we do of them. It was Dr.
McCosh, I believe, who, when asked whether a dog,
in baying at the moon, actually conceived of the moon
as a separate mass of matter in the skies, or merely
perceived its shining face coming up across the great
dome and barked at it in a sort of superstition, re-
plied, with his characteristic Scotch humor, "I do not
know; I have never been a dog."

We can not, we do not, know all that passes in a
dog's mind, his memories, his thoughts, if he has any,
or whether he lives only in the present, after all. That
they have dreams, we know. I have seen my little dog
lying in deep, snoring sleep, when suddenly he would
begin wagging his tail up and down against the floor,
or would paw with his forefeet as if digging; and,
when awakened, he would look about him in a dazed
way in the most amazed fashion — just like a human
being, with the memory of a dream. And I remember
once, out at a farm where the dog's chief master and
companion had been away for a time, when T by chance
put on his master's old canvas coat one morning, the
dog, when he first saw me, bounded toward me with a

232 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD

look of recognition and with eyes bright, only to calm
down considerably when he found who it was wear-
ing the coat. He had always liked me, but it was the
old coat which he had recognized, and I believe it had
brought back to him somehow the memory of his
master whom he had loved so well. Many instances
similar to this have come to my notice of the memory
of dogs. I have had a dog friend recognize me at
once after a long absence of months. I have seen a
dog pine and howl in dismal grief at the memory of
a dead master. Dogs are very human, after all.
Could they but tell us — well, they could tell much!
I have had dogs come to me, and endeavor with the
most singular gulps and queer little sounds of the
throat to tell me (as I supposed) some tale of their
own, which I did not know. They can, and do, in-
dicate many things to us very readily by their actions,
but their physical make-up is such that they can not
tell us all they might. We can only judge them im-
perfectly by human analogy, and so do not know the
whole truth about them. They have, too, a range
of life which is all their own, and which we do not
experience. If we but had the keen scent of the dog,
the quick hearing of the deer, and the eyesight of the
eagle, what would we not enjoy in our walks through
the woods and meadows !

A man was watching my dog one day, and com-
menting upon his intelligence. "Well, sir," said he,
"they 're good companions, T tell you. I Ve never yet
seen one that was n't." And I could heartily agree
with him that, for the right man, there is no better
friend than a dog, nor one more appreciative of man's

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY DOG. 233

kindness. The possibility of real companionship with
a dog is well illustrated in Philip Gilbert Hamerton's
account of his etching voyage, entitled "The Unknown
River," on which Tom, the dog, had "the satisfaction
of dining with his master on terms of something like
equality." The sharing of his meals with his dog has
from time immemorial been the sworn motto of every
true sportsman. Nay, furthermore, so says Mr. Jen-
kin Lloyd Jones, in his "Jess," " 'Love me, love my
dog,' is the chivalrous demand of man upon his brother
man." It was the pathetic lament of Rip Van Winkle,
when he returned to his native hamlet after his long
sleep in the Catskills, "My very dog has forgotten me !"

I like to watch a dog dig after a rabbit, or a wood
mouse, or other "such small deer," as Shakespeare calls
them. How he will tear roots and every obstacle away
in his frenzy to get at his quarry! When he first has
cornered his game In his den he will put his nose care-
fully in and take a good sniff; then a little vigorous
digging; and then another sniff; then still more vigor-
ous digging ; and then he pulls the earth away with his
paws, gets down close to the ground, and takes a good
long smell of the imprisoned game. Yes, he certainly
is there! And then he goes at it with perfect fury,
scattering dirt, stones, leaves, sticks, and the whole of
the obstructing matter to the wild winds. Perhaps he
may have to be called away by his master; but if he
can only get his rabbit or mouse, what a proud dog he
will be, and how his eyes will brighten and his tail wag
as he brings it and lays it at his master's feet!

Many a battle royal do dogs have with snakes,
shaking them and dragging them in triumph, like the

234 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

body of Hector, in the dust. I know of one old shep-
herd who could, so runs tradition, snap the head off
from a snake by n single shake. But dogs are very
wary, and always see to it that they catch the snake by
the tail. One of a dog's chief delights in the country
is to dig out the moles in the garden. There is noth-
ing, however, a dog likes so much as to get after a cat.
Both seem to enjoy the sport. The dog, with all his
tremendous onslaught, will only approach within just
a certain distance, when he will lie down and paw at
her with one forepaw, or eye her intently and wag his
tail vigorously and bark. When, all of a sudden, spit
and spit fire, and she arches her back and growls and
snarls, and up he is like a flash, scared but eager for
the fray; and so they will often keep it up for half a
day. Yet I have seen cats and dogs thoroughly fond
of one another, the cat even lying down and sleeping
against a dog, and resting her head down in among
his thick, glossy coat of hair. Assuredly, they had
cast aside the law of tooth and ravine.

Dogs apparently calculate and judge just about as
we do in similar circumstances. They reach conclusions
pretty rapidly sometimes, just where and when to jump
or pounce after a rat or a mole or a rabbit, and, so
far as their life goes, it seems to me that it is precisely
like our life.

III.

"There is but one dra'wback to a dog's friendship. It does not last
long: enough."

— Henry van Dyke.

Not long since I owned a very intelligent fox ter-
rier, by name McChesney. He was a little four-footed
friend whom I loved, and who loved me. We took

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MV DOG. 235

walks together in the woods and the sweet grass, and
he romped and leaped in health and joy and friendship.
But one morning a few springs ago he darted away
from the house for a few moments, never to be seen
again by me since then. How long it was before I
regained spirits at the loss of the beautiful little fellow
I do not know; but I shall never forget him, for I
have found few men like him. All that is left of
Mac now is an old newspaper advertisement for him,
two scratches on the hardwood floor, his collar, and
a loving and inspiring memory. I have wondered
whether I am never to see this best and most loyal of
earthly friends again. Shall we not look into each
other's eyes once more?

Some of the happiest experiences in my life have
been in the woods with him. He would always dart
away ahead of me deep into the woods, only to peep
suddenly above some little knoll to see if I were still
coming; or, if he caught the scent of a rabbit and
rushed away with a little yelp, it was not long before
he would be dashing past me again, as I walked on,
or, if I sat on a log for a short rest, would come to
me with wagging tail and look up to me with a gulp of
friendliness.

Little IVIac has become to me a symbol — a symbol
of fidelity, trust, loyalty, love, and the innate beauty
and purity of life. Often has he lain in my lap and
looked up at me with wagging tail, or has sat there
and looked straight into my eyes, and when I would
lean my head on my hand often has he laid his little
black-and-tan head next to mine, on my hand, in mute
affection. Yes ! my little four-footed friend, I have

236 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD

learned more from you and your glossy coat of hair
than from many men, more of what life is and should
be; and, if there is to be any heaven for righteousness
of disposition, or any reward hereafter for faith and
forgiveness and loyalty to a master, then I certainly
hope to see you again — somewhere, surely, in dog-
Heaven, wherever that may be !

I believe in the immortality of animals, not only
because they deserve immortality and live the same life
that we do, and because there is nothing whatever in
the Bible against it, but its whole spirit, in all that it
has to say of animals, is decidedly for it, but also be-
cause, if these beautiful forms of life that have been
our friends and neighbors on earth live not again,
existence itself is an anomaly. Their loss, if they perish
forever at death, is an irreparable, a perpetual loss,
and their love and friendship are all the more terrible
in their pathetic cruelty of fate and chance. Why
should the loss of such friends be forever? Is it in
vain that beauty has been created in such forms? Can
it be that the eyes of a dog who loves us now shall look
no more into ours, but be turned forever into dust?
If so, then is grief absolutely inexplicable, and life
utterly blank and hopeless for all living creatures. For
the lower animals are supported by the same life-
principle that we have, and share the same earth that
we enjoy, and, so far as they go, their mental processes
seem to be precisely like ours. Unless it be so that all
the creation shall finally be resolved into annihilation
and no living creature live after death, I can never give
up my hope in the immortality of our dumb animal
friends. But that is a word of despair, and no lover

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY DOG. 237

of life should be without at least a lingering hope in
its perpetuation, which should grow into a practical
certainty the more he sees and knows of all that is in-
cluded in our word Nature.

Do you mean to tell me that, because it says that
we are of more value than sheep and sparrows, Chris-
tianity therefore says that I shall never see my dog
again, and that all the unspeakable beauty and tender-
ness and infinity and mystery of Nature are a mere
phantasm and a delusion? Well, I say that the New
Testament gives us no such message, but that it comes
with a great hope to all lovers of God's beautiful
creation. The untold suffering of all earthly organ-
isms is not to be without compensation, but there shall
be a new heaven and a new earth! I, for one, rejoice
that the Indian buries with him his bows and arrows,
and lies down to dream of the Happy Hunting
Grounds, and

" Thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company."

No, my dog's loss is no new thing under the sun.
There has simply come to him and me what is the
common experience of all the world — grief. It has
occasioned no great surprise, for it is the general lot
of man, nor has it caused any revolution in Nature
as if at the unlooked-for presence of some terrible and
heartless destroyer. Nature remains the same, and
when I go to the woods the beautiful green trees are
as inspiring as ever, the thrushes sing as exquisitely,
and the gray squirrels stir the old hunter in me just as
powerfully. But I miss something in my walks now.
No more does a little black nose sniff among the leaves

238 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and roots, and push itself under my hand, in his dog-
gish ways. No more do I hear his answering little bark
when I whistle.

]Mac did n't amount to a great deal in practical use-
fulness, although he did what he could even in that
line. He never learned to hunt (though how he loved
the woods ! ) , but he was a good watch-dog, and as
fatal a mouse catcher as the best trap. No, I can
never play the traitor to Mac, and say that he had his
blemishes, and that perhaps another dog would take his
place better. It is true, he did have his little stub-
bornnesses; but he really never meant harm to his fellow
dogs (except for self-protection, when he showed the
pluck of a bulldog) or to any living thing, and he won
his way through life by the most winsome and loving
ways, and we were all the better for his little presence.
I have seldom seen in man or beast an instance of
truer, sincerer appreciation of kindnesses and evident
gratitude for them. And so I loved him with my
whole heart.

Mac was my first dog. I taught him all his dozen
tricks; and how he did enjoy and relish their perform-
ance ! He and I understood one another perfectly. I
can not possibly forget him. It is painful to know
grief, even for a dog; and I can never think of him
without a pang. But his — even with the pain — will
always be a pleasant memory. I can only hope that
he has fallen into good hands.

MAC S COLLAR.

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APPI-E BLOSSOMS

THE ORCHARD.

" The apple-boughs enrw-ine
And make a network fine.
Through which the morninK vapours pass.
That rise from off the dewy grass.

" And when the spring-warmth shoots
Along the apple roots.
The gnarled old boughs grow full of buds
That gleam and leaf in multitudes.

"And then, first cold and ^vhite.
Soon flushing with delight.
The blossom-heads come out and blo^v.
And mimic sunset-tinted snow."

—Edmund Gosse.

"Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an
arbor, we 'will eat a last year's pippin of my own gnif-
fing, with a dish of cara^^ays and so forth ; — come.
Cousin Silence."

—2 Henry IV.

Y the orchard we generally mean an
apple orchard, and one toward de-
cay; for somehow, with their great
extending limbs, flaked with straggling
bark and mottled with lichens, the old-
time apple-trees are the most poetic. They
were planted years ago by our forefathers,
and have the picturesque look of age. A
newer orchard may be neater, and means per-
haps more money, but it takes one of the
old-time orchards, with its immense boughs and tall
masses of branches and sprays, rich and luscious with
old-time apples, to arouse sentiment.

The old-time varieties, too, were the best, and can
not always now be reduplicated — the big yellow Bell-

241

242 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

flower, the speckled Fall Pippin, the striped Northern
Spy, the crimson Smith's Cider, the red Baldwin, the
deeper-colored Canada Red, the Rhode Island Green-
ing (for even "Little Rhody" gave a name to a famous
apple) ; and so with all the other kinds — the Rambo,
Astrachan, Seek-no-farther, Winesap, Ben Davis, Rome
Beauty — each has its own distinctive markings and its
own unique taste among its rivals.

There are sweet apples, like the large greenish-
yellow, sheep-nosed Bough Apple, or the Pumpkin
Sweet; there are sour apples, like the Maiden's Blush
and Summer Queen; there are those that are half-and-
half, like the delicious Tulpehocken; and there are the
acrid Siberian Crabs. Some come to maturity early In
summer, like the little Strawberry Apple, some in time
of harvest, like the Harvest Apple and the Cathead;
but most ripen In the fall, though a few hang on even
to the winter, and are best fitted to be eaten in the fol-
lowing spring. The autumn, however, is the typical
season for apples. Then is the time for the picking of
the fruit, or the shaking of the boughs for those that
are to be used for cider. It Is well, if you want to
select and improve your apples, to have a preliminary
thinning out of the inferior ones first (Nature will help
you by some windfalls), leaving the largest and best
fellows to grow into still more tempting dimensions
(which they will do) by appropriating the strength of
the tree thereafter for themselves alone. They must
be handled carefully, so as not to be bruised; a sack
slung about the shoulders is better than a basket. Ah,
I am up in the trees again among them. The bough
is fairly exhausted, bending almost to breaking, with

PICKING APPLES.

THE ORCHARD. 245

their weight. I see them peeping at me from under
every leaf, and hanging In innumerable sphericles,
round shapes everywhere, ripe and ready for the har-
vest. I reach and pull them to me, and, turning one
back a little, it breaks from its twig, dead ripe, and is
soon fulfilling its intended usefulness; or perhaps, upon
being jostled, one falls on my shoulder, in a tap, as
it were, of friendly recognition, bidding its last good-
bye, and then thumps and bounces at my feet. Others
are not quite so mature, and these are the ones for the
market. My sack is soon full, and I step down the
ladder, and gently pour them out into one of the
bushel baskets; another is soon emptying his, and be-
fore long the first basket is heaped and running over.
Later, and these will all be hauled up to the barn, and
there be still further sorted into four distinct classes:
the ripe ones (to eat), the little, knotty, specked ones
(for the hogs), the medium-sized ones (for the can-
ning) , and the large, fine-looking. Imposing fellows
(for the market). Sometimes, indeed, all these last
do not find their way to a market, but go the familiar
road of the kitchen and the evening circle about the
fireplace.

I think if I have a favorite apple it is the fine old
Tulpehocken (the Fallawater). There used to be, and
is still, a moss-grown tree of that variety in the orchard,
close to a dry brook-bed; and the great greenish balls
would fall and slowly roll down the little slope, there
to hide away among the weeds. I used to like to pick
them out from the hollows and burrows which they
had made for themselves amongst the leaves and
grasses. They were sweet, but not too sweet ; and they

246 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

had enough of acid in them to give a rare delicacy to
the taste. I have hid many a one away in the hay to
give it time to ripen, gathering them a little early,
perhaps, to be sure of them; and then right royal was
the feast upon the big mellow globes. I see the teeth
marks in them still; the rich pulp yields like flakes of
snow, and melts as easily; one by one they disappear.
The old tree has suckers all over it, and has been neg-
lected, but it still bears, in my judgment, the finest
apples in the orchard.

Some kinds of apples, like the Ben Davis, have a
thick, leathery skin, almost a hide, to them; others,
and most of them, have quite a thin skin, which
crackles and tears apart easily as we bite it with our
teeth. Some are greasy and sticky, like the Greenings,
while others are almost slippery to the touch.

I like best the kind of trees that were grafted low,
where the branches start to spread not over three feet
from the ground. It is a pleasure to climb into such
trees, and the apples at the ends of the boughs can be
reached without great difficulty by single ladders, in-
stead of necessitating a double ladder, and even then
towering above us, as they frequently do in the older
orchards, nodding away in derision, far up in the
clouds. The older the trees get, in these orchards of
our forefathers, the more inaccessible does the fruit
become, until, as the lower limbs decay and are one by
one lopped off, the only resort by which to obtain those
great shining yellow orbs yonder on the tips is to make
use of stones and clubs. It is said that some of the
orchards until recently in existence hereabouts were
planted by the redoubtable Johnny Appleseed, one of

THE TULPEHOCKEN.

THE ORCHARD. 249

the most singular characters in pioneer history, who
roamed about through much of Ohio; and I have had
such pointed out to me, though I can not verify their
identification.

The cow likes to eat the apples, and she will keep
the branches all browsed off as high as she can reach,
if you put her in the orchard. But give her only sweet
apples, as well as those only to horses also. I have
always enjoyed feeding them to the
animals. I have in mind one orchard
in particular, which bordered a pas-
ture, across whose blue grass hil-
locks the horses would come at a
gallop when they would see me
mount the fence and eye the trees.
We used to bait our twitch-ups withj
tempting pieces of apple, but the
squirrels, I fear, preferred the hick-
ory nuts that ripened about the

. 1 1 1 T 1 '^^ CIDER PRESS.

same time, although 1 have seen

them frisking and eating away among the apple

boughs.

Some apples make better cider than others, but the
Crabs are the best. Still, I would risk cider from al-
most any kind of apple. Cider-making is one of the
most thoroughly enjoyable events of the year. What
glorious fun it is to gather the great heaps of fruit in
the orchard, as we drive the wagon along through the
alleys between the rows of trees, and then to ride home
with them, spreading forth sweetness everywhere as
we pass. Then comes the getting out of the big cider
press, and the dumping of the apples into its feeding-

250 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

box. We begin to turn the handle ; we hear the slicing
of the apples as they are crunched and slivered by the
knives; soon they fall in myriad flaky pieces into the
receiving crate below (a sort of cylindrical rack, box,
crib, or hamper, made of strong oak strips bound with
iron, the ribs in the grating being slightly distanced
from one another in a fine vertical open-work through
whose interspaces the cider can easily gush when forced
from the crushed fruit) ; this crate is removed as soon
as full and placed under the presser, another is substi-
tuted in its place beneath the feeder; and the work
begins afresh. Round and round we turn the screw
that gradually compresses the ground pulp, until we
soon see issuing from between the slats the first sweet
tricklings. Lower and lower presses the block, harder
and harder is the turning, until at last we must substi-
tute for our hands a long stout wooden bar, one end
of it to be inserted between the iron spokes which
project upward from the rim of the hand-wheel on the
screwhead, and the other end, smoothed for the grasp,
to be pushed as a lever round and round and round,
like a handspike in the socket of a capstan. Out comes
the amber nectar, until the little conducting trough is
completely inundated, and then it goes pouring in a
tumultuous, frothy overflow into the foaming pails.
When the last drop has been squeezed out, and it is
impossible to force the block down further on the
cheese, the press is then unscrewed; the dry, useless
pomace now left in the crate is cast out into a wheel-
barrow, and carted off as refuse, or is soaked for a
time, and vinegar or jelly made from it; the fresh crate
under the feeder is slid forward beneath the press ; the

THE ORCHARD. 251

old empty hamper is put again below the cutting box;
then away goes the big rumbling wheel, the screw is
twisted once more, and soon the rich pomade is oozing
and dripping from its conduits as before. Shall we
taste it? Who has the first glassful? 'T is the am-
brosia of the autumn.

I have been at cider-mills where the process was
carried on by machinery on a much larger scale. There
were tons of apples awaiting their demise, and wagon
loads more of them coming; the constant hum of ma-
chfinery was heard; the cider came running out of a
spout in a perpetual stream into barrels; while back of
the shed arose a mountain of the crushed and withered
pomace — "apple chankin's," as they sometimes call
them. In a little shanty in the rear of one of these
mills that I used to enjoy visiting, came slowly drop-
ping, bead by bead, the distilled essence of it all, genu-
ine, transparent, sparkling af.ple brandy. Harmless,
this? Try it, sir!

There is an old refrain, which I am sure most of us
must have heard, with these familiar lines to it:

" The prettiest girl I ever saw

Was sucking cider through a straw."

It is a familiar picture, and I think I shall let it pass
without further comment.

In Josiah Gilbert Holland's "Bitter-Sweet" is a
stanza about the cider barrels which is here worth re-
peating:

' ' Sixteen barrels of cider
Ripening all in a row !
Open the vent-channels wider !
See the froth, drifted like snow, *•

Blown by the tempest below !

252 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Those delectable juices

Flowed through the sinuous sluices

Of sweet springs under the orchard ;

Climbed into fountains that chained them ;

Dripped into cups that retained them,

And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them.

Then they were gathered and tortured

By passage from hopper to vat,

And fell — every apple crushed flat.

Ah ! how the bees gathered round them,

And how delicious they found them 1

In went the pulp by the scoop-full.

Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full, —

Filling the half of a puncheon

While the men swallowed their luncheon.

Pure grew the stream with the stress

Of the lever and screw,

Till the last drops from the press

Were as bright as the dew."

There is but one long poem that I know of whose
subject is wholly the poetry of cider-making; namely,
"Cyder," by John Philips, far back there in the early
eighteenth century — entirely unread nowadays, and yet
standing, in the midst of those artificial, conv^entional,
unnatural days, as a protest, and, even in its didactic,
classical style, expressing an appreciation of country
life. Keats, in his ode "To Autumn," in his imagina-
tion sees, as the crowning image, the spirit of the fall
of the year seated beside a cider-press, as if this were
the most natural, the most satisfactory, and the most
representative picture he could give of the season:

" Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours."

Fresh cider, as it comes straight from the press,
is indeed sweet and delicious. Yet to most people this
wine from the apples tastes best after it has stood for

THE ORCHARD. 253

a while and has fermented a little. It has then a
tang and a sting to the tongue which add a delightful
snap to it, and we drink it to the lees. Hard cider, of
course, is as intoxicating as any other liquor much fer-
mented. It is one of the enjoyments about the old
fireplace to mull the cider — namely, to make a poker
red hot, and then to plunge it in a jug, or pitcher, of
the liquid. This causes it to sizzle mildly, and gives
it a rich, burnt taste; and, when doughnuts are eaten
with the cider, it is a fine treat. It goes along with
nuts for the winter evenings. Our great-grandfathers,
indeed, would have nothing of a common poker, but
used, instead, a regular mulling iron and a flip glass
for it. The iron was like a poker, but with the lower
end greatly enlarged, and hexagonal or round in shape;
and the flip glass, or mug, was very ornamental, and,
tapering toward the bottom, flared out widely at the
top, so as to receive the iron. The glass was warmed
before the fire, and the mulling iron was heated in the
embers; and a pretty, old-time picture it was, with the
large, capacious glasses in rows before the hearth.

There is always something to do in the orchard.
The weeds and briers must be tended to, and the poison
ivy must be killed that so frequently makes its home
among our apple-trees. We can hang our scythe con-
veniently in some of the gnarled and crinkled crotches.
In the fall and spring there is plenty of work in taking
care of the trees, cutting off the suckers, checking the
growth where it has been too rapid, and generally thin-
ning out the dying and superfluous branches; and these
old dead limbs, when lopped off, make the best of fire-
wood. Sound apple-wood, too, is very beautiful when

254 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

polished, and highly prized. Ox yokes were sometimes
made from the limbs. There is something very de-
lightful in pruning. It is not hard labor, and It is
always Interesting to see the shape of a tree improve
by our own trimming. In the spring we shall watch
with solicitude to see whether the prospects for fruit
are the better for it. Yes, we think the trees will blow
well, so much was taken off that was useless; and, when
at last almost every twig is pink, and the season turns
out a good one, and the ripening spheres in autumn
rouse our just pride, we say it pays to take care of the
orchard. It Is quite an art to dress trees well; for
each variety has its own preferences of shape and ways
of growing, and these must be studied in order to clean
the tree to advantage, and so to produce the best crop.
Yet every one can learn it, and it is a pleasure to do
so. Nature will not take care of them very well for
us. She expects aid at our hands, with our shears and
knives and saws; and, unless we give it, she will forth-
with cause such sprouts and tanglegrowth to spring up
that it will be impossible for us to make much head-
way unless we clear them aside; and then, even after
that. If we do not, she will either abandon the race
and the tree will die, or she will bring a new tree from
the old.

Apples attain to their best color when the orchard
is on a hillside with a northern exposure. Then they
paint themselves with the most delicate tints and the
most gorgeous hues that the brush of autumn can
splash upon them. Stained with their native yellow,
they are yet often striped with some of the many vari-
ations of red, or even dashed with a shade of purple.

" We Can Hang Our Scythe Conveniently in Some of the Gnarled and
w Crinkled Crotches."

THE ORCHARD. 257

I have noticed that those color best that have a full
exposure to the sun. The fruit that is concealed too
densely beneath the branches does not seem to have
quite the vigor; the cheeks lack the glow of that which
strings the outside twigs. It is said of the apples raised
mainly by means of irrigation that they are tasteless,
and lack the tang of ours that mature by a natural
rainfall,

I like to cut into them, and to see what we used to
call the "blossom" still evident in the lines and interior
markings. Some apples are actually pink inside; some
are a snowy white; others are the more usual yellow,
or cream color, like the Russet. There Is much differ-
ence, too, in the quality of the pulp, as well as of the
skin. Some are almost brittle to the teeth, and snap off
in flakes; some are soft and firm; still others are almost
mushy when ripe. Some have tough, big cores; some
have practically no cores at all. Some are racy, some
insipid. Some are always small in size, while others
will sometimes weigh a pound.

What a sweet smell comes from the bins of apples
in the cellar, the blending of many odors, as we open
the door to descend! Many a basketful is eaten by
the firelight, with nuts and cake ; and many a fine dish
of fruit for dessert is formed during the autumn
months of apples, and pears, and grapes from the vine-
yard. Apple pies, of every description, are a staple
part of the pantry of every well-ordered household;
apple sauce is a daily relish in its season; and the rich
apple butter reminds us of the year that has gone all
through the long winter.

There Is no fruit so generally useful as the apple,

258 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

or that can be served up in so many ways. It is the
mainstay of fruits, as if to atone for its traditional
tempting quahties in the Garden. Having once un-
fortunately been the apple of discord, it has proved
itself at last in truth to be golden, equal indeed to the
apples of Hesperides. And so we keep it as the apple
of our eye. The tree itself is the most graceful of all
the fruit-trees. Other kinds of fruit, such as peaches,
may be more pleasing at the time, but none stands the
test so well throughout the year.

In early times they used to bury apples for the
winter, and, when finally taken out, they had a peculiar
earthy taste which was not unpleasant. None of the
cold storage apples are so good, and yet none even of
those stored in bins or buried are so sweet as those
fresh from the trees.

Dried apples are also quite an accessory to the
farm. In the old days nearly every farm had its shed,
with its roof covered with split apples drying in the
sun. They get calloused by this method, a sort of hard
skin forming over them, which keeps the moisture in.
For this purpose they used to have "apple cuttings,"
or "apple bees," at which the neighbors would come
on an evening, and the gathering would then divide
into two parties, each with an equal number of persons
and a similar amount of apples, and then go it they
would to see which would pare and slice the most.
These would be strung sometimes on long threads, or
strings, like onion tops, and then hung in great festoons
about the walls. They do very well in winter-time,
but these dried apples are not so good to eat, as such,
as are dried peaches; they must be cooked into some

THE ORCHARD. 259

sort of pie, or prepared in other ways, before they are
palatable. An "apple bee" was different from a "corn
husking," in that the women could more generally take
part; but it was like one in that it usually wound up
with a dance or the Virginia reel. It was always seen
to it that a fiddler was among those asked to attend.
"Bobbing" for apples in a tub of water was a sport
for Hallowe'en.

The orchard is a great place for the birds in the
spring. I see little gleams of yellow, and blue, and
red, with glimpses of the more somber brown, dart
from tree to tree and flit among the branches. It seems
to be the favorite home of the yellow-breasted chat,
as he talks away at us or cooes and warbles from among
his leafy coverts. The robin also homesteads among
its crotches. The bluebird makes her nest in a hollow
limb; or enters by some knot-hole into the dim fast-
nesses of the trunk, and there rears her young. Orioles
hang their abodes from the tips of the branches. The
little chickadees peep about in their endless search
up and down the bark and about the sprays. Wood-
peckers tap th& trees with their bills, and some old
orchards are literally riddled and tattooed from head
to foot with the bullet-like perforations of their drill-
ing. Perhaps a dove will construct her simple dwell-
ing on a bough, and we shall hear the mournful gurgle
of her mate while they select their site. From every-
where, from every tree, and oftentimes apparently from
nearly every bough, comes the tireless and incessant
love-fluting of the birds. And not only while mating,
but also during nesting time, while the female sits on
the nest, does that speckled beauty, the wood thrush,

26o AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

yodel away his bursts of song in the dying day. A
poetic way, this, of nesting in the orchard. The first
brood, perchance, is hatched while blossoms still whiten
the boughs or the ground is strewn with petals, and the
last is reared amongst the golden globes.

Wilson Flagg once 'made an interesting study of
the "Birds of the Garden and Orchard," enumerating
quite a coterie so inclined; and it was in the course of
that series of sketches that he inserted his really in-
imitable poem, "The O'Lincoln Family," on the bobo-
link. Flagg also continued his bird papers in a further
and no less interesting series, upon the "Birds of the
Pasture and Forest," "Birds of the Night," and others.

Sheep like to graze in an orchard upon the orchard
grass, or the blue grass, or red top, or the many weeds
which they think are so succulent. It is a good way
to keep the orchard clean and free from weeds and
briers, to have a small flock of sheep running in it.
They form a pleasing picture as they placidly and con-
tentedly chew their cud beneath the apple-trees.

Butterflies, some large and some small, flutter about
and light on the apples that lie on the ground; bees
buzz among them, and extract the nectar of the bruised
and fallen fruit; insects quickly crawl over them, and
taste their sweetness. I like to lie upon the grass
beneath these trees, even if for no other purpose than
simply to look up at the leaves and the fruit. It was
in an orchard that Sir Isaac Newton discovered the
law of gravitation, as he heard the perpetual thuds of
the great round things as they fell to earth. Richard
Jefiferies wrote his immortal "Pageant of Summer" be-
neath an apple-tree.

THE ORCHARD. 26 1

But the orchard may stand for a group, or a set-
ting, of fruit-trees other than apples. There are sev-
eral other orchards about the homestead. The cherries
ripen the earliest, with their round crimson fruit. Then
come the apricots and peaches, all covered with down;
next the plums, great long ropes of them dangling
there, with the hogs roaming and rooting around be-
neath them for those that fall; along with the plums
come the pears and apples; and, lastly, the fuzzy,
lemon-colored quinces. What a variety there is in these
fruits — sweet and sour cherries ; white and yellow, early
and late, freestone and clingstone peaches; the blue,
green, red, and yellow plums, almost like tropical fruits
in their nature; and all the different kinds of pears —
the juicy Clapp's Favorite, the winy Flemish Beauty,
the sugary Seckel, the luscious Bartlett, and the others.
Now all these belong to the order Rosacea, and yet
what a vast difference in the quality and nature of the
fruit. But there they are, pomes or drupes or what-
ever you wish to call them, each ripening for us in its
season amongst the twigs and leaves.

Mr. John Burroughs has written a paper upon
"The Apple," which is everywhere redolent of the bin
and the orchard. I shall give you the pleasure of these
few sentences from it:

"Noble, common fruit, best friend of man and most loved
by him, following him, like his dog or his cow, wherever he
goes! His homestead is not planted till you are planted, your
roots intertwine with his; thriving best where he thrives best,
loving the limestone and the frost, the plow and the pruning-
knife; you are indeed suggestive of hardy, cheerful industry,
and a healthy life in the open air."

262 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Mr. Burroughs thinks It a sure sign of age when
a man no longer cares for apples, and In another of
his papers says that his old hollow apple-tree, unlike
most persons, always wears "a girdle of perpetual
youth" In the new green ring which annually surrounds
Its trunk.

Bryant has a poem entitled "The Planting of the
Apple-Tree," this stanza of which Is especially sug-
gestive :

" What plant we in this apple-tree?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop, when gentle airs come by,
That fan the blue September sky.

While children come, with cries of glee,
And seek them where the fragrant grass
Betrays their bed to those who pass

At the foot of the apple-tree."

In Holland's "Bitter-Sweet," again. Is another fine
description of the varieties of apples in the bins near
the barrels of cider in the cellar, as follows:

" That is a barrel of russets ;
But we can hardly discuss its

Spheres of frost and flint,
Till, smitten by thoughts of spring,
And the old tree blossoming,

Their bronze takes a yellower tint.

And the pulp grows mellower in 't.
But oh ! when they 're sick w ith the savors

Of sweets that they dream of.
Sure, all the toothsomest flavors

They hold the cream of !

" Those are the Rhode Island greenings ;
Excellent apples for pies :

THE ORCHARD. 263

There are the Baldwins and Flyers,
Wrapped in their beautiful hres !
Color forks up from their stems

As if painted by Flora,
Or as out from the pole stream the flames

Of the northern Aurora.

" Here shall our quest have a close :
Fill up your basket with those ;
Bite through their vesture of flame,

And then you will gather
All that is meant by the name,

'Seek-no-farther.'"

But perhaps Thoreau's essay upon "Wild Apples"
is the best known, as it is also the raciest in its style
and appreciation. How he enjoyed them ! Let him
tell his own story of his gleaning, in a passage justly
famous as perhaps the classic in the literature of the
apple :

"I know a Blue-Pearmain tree, growing within the edge of
a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose
there was any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must
look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite
brown and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one bloom-
ing cheek here and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless,
with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and the
huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices
of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pr\' under the fallen
and decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly
strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen
into hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the
tree itself, — a proper kind of packing. From these lurking
places, anywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw
forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits
and hollowed out by crickets, and perhaps with a leaf or two

264 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

cemented to it (as Curzon an old manuscript from a mon-
astery's moldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and
at least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels,
more crisp and lively than they. If these resources fail to yield
anything, I have learned to look between the bases of the
suckers which spring thickly from some horizontal limb, for
now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-
clump, where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which
may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not
refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and
as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or
five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then
from that, to keep my balance."

And with his words I close my paper, hoping that
we shall all see our bins and barrels full for the winter.

A BOUGH OF APPLES.

HARVEST.

" Flinsr wide the Ki^in ; we give the fields

The ears that nod in summer's gale.
The shining stems that summer gilds.

The harvest that o'erflows the vale.
And SNvells, an amber sea, between
The full-leaved woods, its shores of green.
Hark! from the murmuring clods I hear
Glad voices of the coming year ;
The song of him who binds the grain.
The shout of those that load the wain.
And from the distant grange there comes

The clatter of the thresher's flail.
And steadily the millstone hums

Down in the willowy vale."

—Bryant.

HE term harvest, as it is generally under-
stood in the country, is limited to the
time when the ripened grain is cut and gar-
nered into the barns. Yet the real harvest lasts
longer than that. The berry season and haying
SICKLES. immediately precede and often accompany the
reaping of the grain, and we are surely still getting in
our crops when we pick the last apple of October.
Are not these, then, also a part of the harvest?
Indeed, all summer and autumn, even till the last stalk
of corn is cut and the rustling shocks lie scattered in
corn husking in November, are but the gathering in
of the products from the seeds of the previous fall
and the blossoms of the spring.

Let us turn to the hayfield while the men are there.
It is no wonder the cows love clover. See it turn over,

26S

266 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

with its pink blossoms, as the mower cuts It! Aye,
't were better could we but see more of it. There are
some fine lines in one of Joaquin Miller's poems, "The
Arizonian :"

"And I have said, and I say it ever,
As the years go on and the world goes over,
'T were better to be content and clever.
In the tending of cattle and the tossing of clover,
In the grazing of cattle and growing of grain.
Than a strong man striving for fame or gain,
Be even as kine in the red-tipped clover;

Be even as clover with its crown of blossoms,
Even as blossoms ere the bloom is shed,
Kiss'd by the kine and the brown sweet bee."

Whittier felt the poetry of hay-making. His
"Maud Muller" is probably the best known poem on
the subject, and is familiar to everybody. It is not an
uncommon picture; yet would it were even more com-
mon, and that sunbonnets and torn hats were not going
out of fashion :

"Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

"Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health."

But haying is hard work, and the men benefit by
it only indirectly. Hay is for horses and stock. Yet
the men work the hardest in the fields, while the horses
merely draw the loads, and wait while the men pitch
on the hay or unload it into the mow. It is a case,
in this instance, of the servant being greater than his
master; but the master generally manages to make up

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HARVEST. 269

for it, and gets even in the plowing season. Some-
times hay-making becomes a great frolic, and the chil-
dren climb on the loads, and happy are the long rides
from the field while they nestle among the fragrant
grasses. I have even seen a fiddle go to the field with
the jug, when the meadows were far distant from the
farmhouse; and the laborers would then stay out for
some days, until all was cut and stacked.

Whitman has left a realistic picture of the return
of the load to the barn:

"The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow.

"I am there, I help, I came stretch'd atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps."

You must be careful not to get mixed up in a
bumble-bees' nest in the field. They are very irascible
customers. And yet I knew of no better fun as a boy
than to stir up a nest, and, armed with leafy branches
or a bunch of weeds, to fight my way right among them,
and finally, after the massacre, secure the little egg-
shaped globules, of cocoon-like covering, that contained
the honey. Bumble-bee honey is stronger than the
honey-bee's, but it has a sort of wild taste, and serves
very well to vary the monotony in the haying season.
The big yellow-banded fellows — regular ogres, so cross
are they — seem to choose a clover field above all others
for their domicile. If they sting the horses, you will
have a time of it, and may get the harness all broken

270 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and tangled before you get through, and perhaps the
mowing machine itself will get into bad order.

Sometimes a turtle or two will be found amongst
the clover, or a snake is cut to pieces in the hayfield.
I know of a man who cut off the heads of two big
black snakes in a small field, unintentionally, with the
knife of his mower. They were lying coiled in the
clover, with their heads raised a little, and the Jugger-
naut came along and slivered them. Sometimes a dog
will come too close, as he bounds about after a rabbit,
and perhaps he will be badly mangled, and may have
to be killed.

It is quite a trick to know how to pitch hay, and
to gather all into one bunch clean with a fork, without
the necessity of a hand-rake following; and it is an
ev^en greater trick to load the hay properly, so that it
will not slide off on side-hills; and a still greater one to
form and top off a stack. Mowing away is not such
an art, nor is the boys' job of treading the hay down —
but ah ! brethren, many a drop of genuine sweat has
glistened in the hayfield and the loft. If there is a
time when a man can enjoy a refreshing drink from
the bucket at the well, it is after pitching off a load of
hay. So, sings Woodworth, in the well-known lines:

"That moss-covered vessel I hailed as a treasure;
For often at noon, when returned from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure —
The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.
Kow ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing,
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell!
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing.
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well —
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket, arose from the well."

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HARVEST. 273

And if there is a time when a man can relish a bath,
or, better still, a plunge in a pond or a brook, it is in
the twilight after a day's work with timothy or clover,
when the seeds have simply tattooed him from head
to foot in innumerable, speckled, itching spots of red.
We see wisps of hay hanging from the gateposts
where the wagons have passed through, and strands
cast along the roadside and in the barnyard. Out on
the hillside, in the orchard, they are still cutting.
There will be a good load or two more of it. The
sweet scent of new-mown hay is wafted to us as we lie
in the shade. We can see the mowers bending and
swaying at their work. At times one will rest, and
then the musical whetting of his scythe soon reaches
our ears. Let us go down among them. The erect
grasses, with their slender stems and nodding tops, fall
one by one before the steady slash of the blade, and
at each stroke are bunched by the mower with the heel
of his scythe and laid in a windrow along the swath.
Perhaps, later on, these same long lines of damp green
grass will be tossed and scattered to dry in the wind
and the sun, and then afterwards raked together again
or forked into haycocks to shed the rain. There are
few more interesting things to watch or to do on a
farm than the cutting of grass with a scythe.

"O sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,"

sings Tennyson.

Mr. Andrew Lang's "Scythe Song" gives such a
lovely picture of the mowers, and so perfectly repro-

274

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

duces the sound of the scythe, and interprets It so well,
that I shall here transcribe it :

"Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe,

What is the word' methinks ye know.
Endless over-word that the Scythe

Sings to the blades of the grass below?
Scythes that swing in the grass and clover,

Something, still, they say as they pass;
What is the word that, over and over.

Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass ?

"Hush, ah hush, the Scythes are saying.

Hush, and heed not; and fall asleep;
Hush, they say to the grasses swaying,

Hush, they sing to the clover deep !
Hush, — 't is the lullaby Time is singing —

Hush, and heed not, for all things pass.
Hush, ah hush! and the Scythes are swinging

Over the clover, over the grass !"

No part of the year is more
poetic in the whole round of
farming than haying and grain
harvest. The farm that does
not have its grassy meadows
and fields of wheat, with all
the life and scenes of the har-
vest-time, is no farm at all.
The harvest is the most pic-
turesque work of the year, as
well as the most romantic.
Sugar-making alone can ap-
proach it. It is the delight
of memory to recall the din-
ners brought out in pails to

5ROWN JUG, DO n't I LOVE , r i i i l i • i r

THEE •" the nelds, the cool drmk rrom

HARVEST.

275

the jug, and the hours spent in lying among the
sheaves at rest. There is more poetry in the old-
fashioned ways, in the rasp of the sweeping cradle,
the sheaves bound together with handfuls of the same
wheat straw, the curved hand sickle hook, the swish
and delicate tang of the scythe as it slips through the
tall grass.

That is a pleasant glimpse of old-time custom which

CRADLING WHEAT,

Alice Cary has left to us, in her poem entitled "Harvest
Time," in this opening stanza:

"God's blessing on the reapers! all day long

A quiet sense of peace my spirit fills,
As whistled fragments of untutored song

Blend with the rush of sickles on the hills:
And the blue wild-flowers and green briar-leaves
Are brightly tangled with the yellow sheaves."

276

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Modern improvements, however, have not greatly
lessened the picturesque sides of country life, and they
have vastly diminshed the hard labor. It is almost as
enjoyable to see the mower seated on a machine drawn

by horses as to watch him
swinging the scythe, and the
blades of grass fall more
rapidly than in the older
way. Indeed, not only is
the clover practically all cut
by machinery nowadays, ex-
cept in the few inaccessible
spots where the scythe is
needed or where the stems
are badly matted down, but
it is also generally all raked
together with the aid of
horses and a horse-rake,
while the hand-rake hangs
unused in the barn. I have
even worked in the fields
where almost all pitching
was obviated, and the stack-
ing done with a great toothed bucking beam pulled
by two horses at each end along the windrows ; and,
again, where the hay itself was all mechanically brought
up from the windrows on the carrier of a combined
rake and loader, attached to and trailing after the
wagon, and then spread out upon slings on the rig-
ging, thence afterwards to be hoisted in enormous
flaky masses to the stack by a block-and-tackle and a
derrick.

THE OLD-TIME WAY.

HARVEST.

277

In fields, too, where formerly the harvesting was
all done by hand with the old-time notched and serrated
sickles, or reaping hooks, requiring a dozen men or
over for a single field and necessitating endless hours,
one can hear to-day the click-click-click of the modern
knives in their cutter-bar as the horses draw the reaper,
and can see the arms of a self-
binder turning over and over
and waving above the sea of
wheat, gathering in the golden
spears. Out on the stubble one
by one fall the bundles, sheaves
already tied up with good strong
twine, a much more easy way of
doing it than the old method of
the cradle, a rake, a gavel, and
a wisp of straw.

And then comes the shock-
ing of the grain, either in long or
round shocks as you please, the
bundles being placed regularly
together, a dozen to the shock,

with a couple of straddling riders, or "hudders," on the
top to shed the rain. After drying for a few days in the
shock, the grain is next either hauled to the barn and
mowed away, or else is stacked near the house, where
it goes through a period of "sweating," or thorough
evaporation of the moisture it contains, before thresh-
ing. Sometimes, however, if it is cut when quite
ripe, the grain is hauled direct to the threshing machine
in the field, where, amid a great, thundering, rough
rhythm and a shower of dust, the kernels, or berries.

MODERN HARVESTING.

278

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

of the wheat are separated from the straw and chaff,
and come pouring out in a steady stream from a spout
into the sacks or other measures, while the straw and
chaff is conveyed up on a long elevator and let fall
to the ground at Its end, where men stack it, or else is

blown through a long
movable funnel and is
stacked automatically.

This, then, is the height
of harvest, when the
farmer can see dollars in
sight, and has the final
recompense for all his
long labor. It is the
hardest work of the year,
and the hottest, early
hours and late, and short
noons; but when it is all
over, and the wheat is
stored away in sacks, or
lies in a great brown
heap on the barn floor,
ready for sale, or Is
packed away in a gran-
ary for winter, then It is
with much relief that the farmer can turn to the fall
work, — the plowing for next year's grain, the sowing
of it, the picking of the apples, the cider press, the
pruning of the orchard, the cutting of the tasseled
maize, the gathering of the pumpkins, corn husking,
and the sawing of the winter wood.

Practically the same process is gone through with

" WHAT SHALL THE HARVEST BE ?"

HARVEST. 279

in the case of barley, oats, flax, and rye as with wheat,
only the riddles, or screens, are changed in the thresher.
Sometimes, if the harvest is small, the threshing is de-
layed until perhaps in October, when the machine can
best attend to these lesser jobs; or it is put off still
further till winter, and then the grain is tramped out
of the heads by horses, or beaten out by a flail (we can
hear the dubbing of the swipple as it hits the barn
floor) , and the straw is raked off, and the wheat is win-
nowed and cleaned from the chaff and dust in one of
the old-time hand-turned fanning mills.

It is all of it interesting work to one who loves the
country; and, as I have said of haying, a good swim
in a pond or a brook in the evenings, under the lustrous
harvest moon, after the work is over, to wash off the
perspiration and the pieces of chaff and straw, is equally
pleasurable. But, while enjoyable work, scythes and
cradles and sickles and knives must all be sharpened,
and many a boy has got his start in life turning the
grindstone for his father. The boy will have to be
careful in handling the sheaves, or he may find himself
scratched by a briar which has been bound up with the
wheat; and he must be careful not to get a beard of
barley down his throat, and not to run too swiftly bare-
foot in the stubble. Not many children that have ever
been on a farm in threshing-time have gone through it
without chewing a handful of the grains of wheat into
"wax," which, with gum from the cherry, spruce, and
sweet gum trees, is the country's substitute for the
manufactured "chewing gum" of the city; and few also
but have made oat whistles from a straw, or cornstalk
fiddles from a cane of maize.

7.8o AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

In the early days the farmers occasionally used the
hollow stumps of sycamores as their granaries, boards
being laid across the top as a covering, or roof; and
these hollow stumps, cut high purposely and sometimes
being very wide and deep, held a great deal of grain.
Some of these old sycamores were really giants, and
all generally very hollow at the base; and, when these
big cavernous stumps were filled to the overflowing,
they contained more grain than would ordinarily be
imagined. They served the purpose well, and were
very valuable adjuncts of Nature to the barn. I know
of one still in existence, which Is now up on props and
is used as a corncrlb.

The raising of field corn, or the Indian maize, Is
one of the largely followed branches of farming In the
South and West. Most of the work of harvesting It
on large tracts of land Is all done now by horse-drawn
corn cutters. But it is a pleasure to slash away with a
corn knife among the rustling leaves; and then to pile
your armfuls together slantingly In a shock, around a
"buck" made of the bent-over stems from four adjoin-
ing "hills;" and later to bind the tops together with
a twisted rope of the stalks themselves. "Corn husk-
Ings" and "apple bees" in the old days were great occa-
sions, and lots of fun; and people entered into the
work of it willingly, and with no thought of pay, in
a way they would hardly do nowadays. Nowadays
it Is generally all husked by hand in the field, with the
aid of a stout metal, bone, or wooden peg, bound by
thongs to the fingers, with which the shucks are easily
torn apart to the ear; or is husked, and the fodder
shredded at the same time, by machinery. But in an

HARVEST. 28 1

old-time "husking bee" the ears were all torn off from
the stalks, and were heaped in great piles either on the
barn floor or on a clean plat of grass in the yard. The
neighbors invited would gather in, divide into parties
(as at a spelling match), and see which side could get
the most ears in the husking, the reward for the victors
being the first swig at the jug. In some localities it
was the customary understanding that whenever a girl
happened on a red ear in the husking it was the privi-
lege of all boys present to kiss her; and the correspond-
ing prerogative of whatever boy shucked such an ear
to invade the fair ones, and forthwith to kiss unchal-
lenged the girl he liked the best. Thus the girls had
the best of it in either case; and many a love story has
started from the husking party. Rarer even than red
ears, though, were those having an uneven number of
rows of kernels, which generally are arranged evenly
on the cob in rows of two and two. It was quite an
achievement to have the luck to find such an ear. If
there was a fiddler in the neighborhood (as there was
apt to be), he would always surely be invited; and,
while the girls were in the house, getting the doughnuts
and cake and cider, the men cleared off the barn floor
ready for the dance.

The harvest-home festivals of our generation, when
the choicest fruits, and samples of grain, and stock are
submitted in good-humored competition for premiums,
are but a survival of the old English custom of cele-
brating the homing, or final garnering, of the harvest
with merrymaking and feasting. We in our day, too,
are always glad when the crops have been gathered,
so much so that the countryman does not shrink from

282 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

prolonging the ceremonies with good things the whole
year round. Hamerton, I remember, In "The Sylvan
Year," has left a delightful picture of the harvest-time.^
Ceres was the old Roman goddess of plenty; and it
was fitting that one of the best of Shakespeare's songs
should have been that of Ceres, in "The Tempest," in
blessing Ferdinand and Miranda:

"Earth's increase, foison plenty,
Bams and garners never empty;
Vines with clustering bunches growing;
Plants with goodly burthen bowing;
Spring come to }ou, at the farthest.
In the very end of harvest!
Scarcity and want shall shun you ;
Ceres' blessing so is on you."

Iris, also, in the same play, calls some reapers from the
fields to join in a dance with nymphs in honor of the
same twain :

'You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary.
Come hither from the furrow, and be merry.
Make holiday ; your rye-straw hats put on,
And these fresh nymphs encounter every one
In country footing."

I am reminded, from these thoughts upon the har-
vest, of the most beautiful book in the Bible, the story
of Ruth the Moabitess; of her gleaning after the reap-

' Since writing the above I have come across a very delightful
description of an old-time "husking bee" out in the barn, and the frolic
afterwards in the spacious kitchen, with its apple-hung rafters, in a
charming book of outdoor sketches, upon another "old homestead," this
time in New England, in a sketch entitled "Mist," in Mr. Herbert Milton
Sylvester's "Prose Pastorals."

HARVEST. 283

ers in the field of Boaz, "unto the end of barley
han^est, and of wheat harvest;" of his generosity in
having some of the grain purposely let fall for her;
of her own beating out of the barley she had gath-
ered; of the picture we have of the customs and life
far back there about the town of Bethlehem ("Behold,
he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing floor") ;
and of all the rest of that poetic Hebrew pastoral.
The harvest in Bible times was an important season
of the year, and frequent references are made to it as
designating the time of some occurrence. The reaping
was, of course, all done in the original way, by grasp-
ing a handful of the grain and cutting it off with a
sickle. David describes the process indirectly, by com-
paring the wicked to grass which has withered before
it is grown, "wherewith the mower filleth not his hand,
nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom." Frequent
mention is made also of the threshing floor, where the
grain was winnowed in Nature's own method, by the
fanning and sifting of the driving winds. It was one
of the kindly precepts in the Mosaic law that "thou
shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither
shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest," but they
were to be left "for the poor and for the sojourner."
One of the finest of the parables is that of the sower;
and the harvest, by a figure, is made the end of the
world.

The harvest is thus always associated in our minds
with the pursuits of peace and quiet country life. It
Is a prophecy which men still hold dear that some day,
in "that good time coming," the nations "shall beat

284 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks," and so, in Shakespeare's line old line,

"To reap die harvest of perpetual peace."

And it is another of the promises, and one of the most
beautiful of all in its simplicity, that, with the bow in
the cloud as the token of the covenant,

"While the earth lemaineth, seedtime and harvest, aiid cold
and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall
not cease."

Whittier has left "A Song of Hanest," and I
know of no more fitting sentiment with which to close
these random observations than his beautiful stanzas:

"O Painter of the fruits and flowers!
We thank thee for thy wise design
\\1icrd>y these human hands of ours
In Nature's garden work with thine.

".And thanks that from our daily need
The joy of simple faith is bom:
That be who smites the summer weed
May trust thee for the autunm com.

"Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower.
Or plants a tree is more than alL

For he who blesses most is blest ;

And God and man shall own his worth
Wlio toils to leave as his bequest

An added beautv to the earth.

HARVEST.

285

'And, soon or late, to all that sow
The tinae of harvest shall be given;

The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,
If not on earth, at last in heaven."

THE HARVEST.

THE PAP AW THICKET.

' For thee the ■wild grape glistens

On sunny knoll and tree.
The slim papaya ripens
Its yellow fruit for thee."

—Bryant.

"Tall butternuts and hickories.
The papaw and persimmon trees.
The beech, the chestnut, and the oak."

—Madison Cawein.

'Wild plums and haws and berries, papaws, nuts, grapes, and all the
fruits of unguarded nature, have something in
them to feed originality."

—Maurice Thompson.

GROUP of papaw-trees, with
their long, broad leaves, colored
yellow in the fall of the year, is
one of the most beautiful and
characteristic sights in autumn
in the woods of our Central
States. Doubtless to most
Westerners it is quite familiar,
but perhaps a few facts about
our common papaw may be in-
teresting to people living in the
East, where it is altogether an

unknown fruit, or to others who have never seen or

tasted it.

Like the breadfruit and banana, the papaw, when

very ripe, forms a natural, edible fruit which, although

excessively sweet, is really quite palatable, and is very

286

PAPAWS, WITH A SPRAY OF LEAVES.

THE PAPAW THICKET. 289

nutritious. Negroes and raccoons, and opossums espe-
cially, are exceedingly fond of them, and I have some-
times found the hair of gray squirrels on the branches,
although I do not think that many animals eat them.
Horses and cows will not touch them, nor, so far as
I have observed, will hogs. I know of a dog, how-
ever, who will eat them greedily. Having observed
his master at it one day, and having, as was right, a
simple belief in the infallibility of his master's tastes
and preferences, he, too, has thought it is good for
food, and rolls his eyes, when he eats them, as if to
express ineffable enjoyment.

The fruit, somewhat oval, is shaped like a short,
bulky banana, generally smooth and symmetrical, but
sometimes swelling a little irregularly, or slightly
bumpy, or bulging out unevenly on the surface, and
varying greatly in size, from mere nubbins no bigger
than one's thumb to fine, large specimens that are often
two inches thick and six inches long. They grow at
the ends of thick peduncles,^ sometimes in clusters of
four or five, but more often singly, or with but two or
three in a clump together, these clusters, indeed, not
infrequently thus resembling small bunches of bananas.^
They taste best and are richest when a little over-ripe,
after a severe frost has turned their green skin to a
mottled black and yellow; but, if picked just before
frost, they ripen well in straw or bran. Every boy that
has known of them has had his secret store of papaws

' These peduncles are often covered with rather thick short hairs,
soft to the touch, but are more frequently to be found smooth and green.

*The odor of the banana and the papaw, too, is not unlike, — but
what a difference in the seeds !

290

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

ripening away somewhere in the mows, to be eaten
with great gusto when the time arrived. Picked too
green, however, they wither and decay, and do not
mature; and to taste an unripe papaw
puckers the mouth as badly as does
a green persimmon. Like most all
fruit, papaws are exceedingly enjoy-
able if picked when ripe direct from
the trees. There is then a fresh, de-
licious, creamy flavor which is a little
lacking in those that ripen on the
ground. The sweetish pulp is a
golden orange-and-yellow, like cus-
tard; whence doubtless its other com-
mon name, the custard apple, which
was, however, possibly suggested and
appropriated from the original trop-
ical fruit of the same name. The
seeds, surrounded by pulp, and in-
closed, like those of the date, in a
membranous covering, are large and
flat, sometimes bluntly triangular in
form, but more often resembling
those of the butter bean in size and
shape, and are a glossy brownish black
in color, as if varnished. Their shell
is very hard, almost like horn. In their growth they
are arranged at right angles to the ends of the papaw,
in layers generally of two seeds to the layer, the num-
ber of seeds, of course, depending upon the size of
the fruit, but ranging generally from two or three to
as many as a dozen. These seeds can always be seen.

QUITE A CLUSTER !

THE PAPAW THICKET. 29 1

in numbers on the ground beneath the trees in the
fall of the year.

Papaws have a taste something like that of a
banana, or like a musk-melon, egg-plant, pumpkin, and
squash combined, and yet with a distinct, musty, tangy
flavor all their own. They are very fragrant, and a
dish full of them will scent a whole house with a rich
odor, as from an old wine cellar, like a bunch of
arbutus in spring. The big, soft, mottled fellows are
the best, and are really delicious. Indeed, I know of
a distinguished journalist who is reported to have said
that the banana simply is not to be compared in the
same breath with the papaw.

Our papaw of the States, however, must not be
confounded with the real custard apple of tropical
America and the West Indies. The custard apple fam-
ily botanically resembles the magnolia family, and all
are tropical except the one genus of our common
papaw. Of it, the leaves especially are much like
those of a magnolia, though thinner. A papaw-tree,
also, both in its leaves and in its slate-colored bark,
frequently resembles at a distance a young hickory or
sassafras sapling. The leaves are downy when young,
but a smooth and shiny green when mature. Some of
the papaw leaves are a foot or more in length, and are
especially beautiful in their autumn yellow; fluttering
in the breeze like streaming pennants, or slowly sway-
ing like waving gonfalons, — or mayhap, as in emula-
tion of the banderoles of a lance, drooping in full
showy color from the twigs, like the feathers that hang
from the lock of an Indian. The leaves, consequently,
frequently overlap irregularly, one falling upon an-

292 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

other's edge, like the scales of an inverted cone, the
tips of the upper ones concealing the bases of the
lower leaves, thus giving a peculiar sort of imbricated
appearance to the foliage. The branches, ordinarily
slender, spread upward evenly, when unhindered in the
open, and shape themselves into characteristic pyra-
midal forms (the wigwams of the forest), though
it is not uncommon to find them singularly dis-
torted, with the main stems of the trees a trifle
bow-shaped, as they reach across a streamlet. The
wood is very soft and brittle, and hence practically
worthless for commercial purposes, although, on ac-
count of its lightness, it is not to be despised if used
for a cane or a staff, and many nice straight sticks of
it can be found. The bark, however, though close to
the wood, peels off easily, like that of the slippery elm,
and is very tough and pliant; the inside layers, indeed,
being so strong that, though they are apparently thin
and tender, like raffia, yet, like it also, they can scarcely
be broken by the hardest efforts. Boys therefore often
make whips from long-drawn ribbons of the bark,^
farmers sometimes tie their broken harness together
with thongs of it, and fishermen string their catch on
strips and twisted strands of it;- for, if you cut in
'^''deeply at the base of a tall, smooth sapling, you can
tear the bark off up to the very tips, and then, after
removing the rough, gray outside, there will remain
as strong and pliable a withe as one could wish. The

' "The bark," says Dr. W. C. Gray ("Musings by Camp-fire and
Wayside," page 127), "makes famous whistles and especially fine whips.
We used to make whips, the 'snap' of which could be heard a mile, and
would echo like a rifle-shot."

'See Sargent's "Silva," vol. I, page 24.

>

CO

O

H
S
w

o

THE PAPAW THICKET. 295

name papaw has variously been accredited to an In-
dian, Creole, or Malay origin, but is probably of the
last. The botanical name of our Northern variety is
Asimina triloba;^ the generic term being probably from
the Algonquin, and meaning by derivation "sleeve
fruit," from its shape, and the specific referring to the
three-parted flower. There are also three other shrub-
like species whose fruit is scarcely so edible. In the
United States the papaw is found from Western New
York and Pennsylvania westward to Missouri, north-
ward to Michigan (occasionally even in Ontario and
Wisconsin), and southward to Texas and most of the
Southern States. It is certainly one of the most at-
tractive of the wild fruits of the woods, as it is also
perhaps the largest of those native to the forest, and
the name of "Northern banana" has been suggested
for it."

The axillary flowers, always solitary, precede or
accompany the budding leaves in spring, blossoming
out cup-like in some wild, shady spot in the woods,
sometimes drooping and pendent, like a bell. They

' See the Century Dictionary, under "Asimina."

" Mr. Bradford Torrey relates the following, in a paper "On the
Upper St. John's," in "A Florida Sketch-book" (page 126). He was
carrying in his hand a sprig from one of the papaw shrubs of the region,
just then in full bloom ("large, odd shaped, creamy-white, heavy-
scented blossoms"), when he met a negro.

"'What is this,' I asked. 'I dunno, sir.' 'Isn't it papaw?' 'No,
sir, that ain't no papaw;' and then, as if he had just remembered
something, he added, 'That 's dog banana.' "

I am inclined to think that some of those who depreciate our
Northern variety might even appropriate, in derision, the negro's appel-
lation to our own, although, as I have said, our papaw is ordinarily
not much relished by dogs.

296

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

are at first of a yellowish, greenish tinge, turning later
to a dull, reddish purple or a rusty brown. A light
frost easily shrivels them, and they wither and fall.
A few, perhaps, secluded beneath some protecting
branches, may survive the cold, but
the papaws will be few and far be-
tween that year. These blossoms have
sometimes a singular and slightly un-
pleasant odor to them, like that
which comes from the
leaves or bark, also, when
rubbed, pressed, or

bruised, and similar to ^ll^.:^W ^^^ that of the
offensive ailantus; but^^^H^aBT^^ they are not
unlike those of the jj^^^BH^^ common sweet-
smelling garden J^ ^mgSf shrub (Calycanthiis
floridus) K^^— - 'WS^ V^Hs '^ ^^^^ ^^'^ color, and

quently, when in full
faintly, and not un-
suggestive of the latter's rich
berry fragrance. It is said that
odor will cause sickness, if it is
breathed too long. Yet, notwith-
standing the fetid smell, the larvae of
one of our butterflies ( Iphiclides ajax,
the zebra swallow-tail) prefer the pa-
paw leaf to any other food;^ and, since the first brood
from last year's chrysalids is out before the papaw leaves
appear, the females have the opportunity to lay their
eggs upon them, many of which, howev^er, are discov-
ered and eaten by Insects and spiders. What instinct

PAPAW BLOSSOMS.

See the \vorks on "Butterflies" by Edwards, Scudder, and Denton.

THE PAPAW THICKE'I'. 297

is it that teaches them this preference of their off-
spring? Can It be the memory of past experiences of
their own, now become an intuition through the prac-
tice of long generations? And why should they like
the papaw?

Papaw thickets are frequently to be seen in open
clumps on hillsides, but more often are concealed in
secluded nooks in the woods; though they are seldom
so secluded that some boy or other has not discovered
their whereabouts, and I have generally found that
others have been there besides myself. They will
stand shade, and may sometimes be found growing
beneath their larger forest brethren along the banks
of woodland brooks; but I have noticed that they
relish an open exposure to the sunlight also. The
papaw-tree is ordinarily on the order and size of a
shrub, but I have not seldom seen specimens fifteen
or twenty feet in height, and well proportioned, with
a trunk diameter of perhaps four Inches. Sargent, in
his "Sllva," says they will sometimes have the diam-
eter of a foot and reach a height of some thirty or
forty feet. I am inclined to think that the trees bear
a larger and better tasting fruit, and more of it, when
comparatively young, in the form of a dense shrub,
than they do when they have grown taller, though I
have found good papaws on fair-sized trees.

There would seem to be, of Asim'ina triloba, really
two kinds, an early papaw and a later variety. The
fruit of the former Is somewhat larger, and of a deep
chrome yellow inside; and I have noticed that the
leaves are a deeper green, and remain on the tree
longer, and do not turn so soon; and the papaws on

298 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

these trees will all be on the ground many days before
those on the others. The late variety is smaller and
more irregular in shape, and its pulp is a whitish cream
color. The flavor of this later variety is perhaps a
little more delicate than that of the earlier, v/hich is
coarser in fiber. Many of these later papaws will be
hanging in clumps in October, and will still be hard
and firm, while those of their earlier neighbors will
all lie rotting on the ground. Yet the leaves turn
sooner than those of the earlier variety, and frequently
will be falling while the fruit is yet clinging to the
twigs. These peculiarities may perhaps be partly ac-
counted for by the situation of the individual trees,
but I think not wholly so. I have noticed, however,
that those in deep forest shade are usually of the ear-
lier type, and retain their leaves the longest.

Papaw gathering is one of the delights of the
autumn, and the eating of them one of the feasts of
the year. I like to pick them, and to collect them from
the ground, where they have been shaken off by the
wind, or have fallen in their maturity. As I look at
them, these long, pod-like shapes, ripening through the
summer and autumn, I seem to feel a sort of primeval
instinct coming upon me; I feel an intuition that these
are unlike the other seed-vessels of the wild vines, and
I say, "Ha, man, here is something edible ! You need
no longer starve by the wayside."

The papaw prospers best in its wild state, in rich
soil along the banks of woodland brooks, and the
thickets are sometimes so crowded together as fre-
quently to occupy the land almost to the exclusion of
the seedlings of the other surrounding varieties of

THE PAPAW THICKET. 299

veterans that have protected these, their foster chil-
dren. For some reason the tree is seldom successfully
transplanted; but the seeds, if planted in the fall, as
Nature sows them, will sprout in a year, and soon
thrive as strong and healthy little trees, although they
require generally eight or ten years of sapling prepa-
ration before they begin to bear fruit. My great-
grandfather's woods, in southwestern Ohio (not far
from the homestead), now cut down, at one time had
so many papaw-trees in its underbrush that it was
known ev^erywhere as "the papaw woods." The
clumps of papaw bushes in it used to be so dense and
the papaws themselves so numerous that bushel basket-
fuls have been gathered there, and wagons have been
driven in to take them away, the ground being literally
covered with the fallen fruit, I know, too, of more
than one other woods that might well be called "the
papaw woods," so dense in them are the thickets of
papaw-trees, almost like groves of them, with the great
greenish-yellow, esculent, fleshy, pod-like forms hang-
ing in the air, or lying among the drifted leaves of
their own parents, nibbled perchance by a rabbit or
eaten into by insects.

The papaw in the early days was more of a feature
of the woods than it is now, and the fruit was more
generally eaten. I know of one singular old character
who would gather a basketful of luscious papaws and
then trudge twelve miles to the city with it to sell,
along with some hickory nuts and walnuts, as his stock
in trade; and he never had any trouble in getting rid
of them. Papaws can still be seen for sale in the stalls
of the Cincinnati markets in the fall of the year, and

3CX) AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

have their customers; for It is quite a cherished weak-
ness In some people to like them.

The papaw, perhaps because of Its puckery taste
when green, is always connected In my mind with per-
simmons, although the persimmon comes later, and Is
best relished after Thanksgiving. I know of but one
wild persimmon-tree In this township (though there
are others in the county), but I will wager It has the
true metal to it. I have come upon groves of wild
persimmons In the woods of central Arkansas, where
the trees are thirty feet high and over, whose fruit
was nearly as large as a walnut, and as luscious and
sweet as sugar. We would gather tree huckleberries
with them, too, and a feast of these two wild fruits
of the forest was a rare treat indeed as we ate our
lunch at noon beside a brook,

Papaws are also associated to me with the finding
of arrow-heads and the rising up of that spirit of rov-
ing and hunting which comes to us all at nuttlng-time.
A papaw-tree, with Its graceful yellow foliage, seems
to me to be filled with the very spirit of the autumn
woods. A woods without papaws lacks something, or,
rather, would be more of a woods, would have more
of the true forest flavor, if there were only an occa-
sional clump of papaws on a ridgeslde or in some pic-
turesque dingle beside a brook. The scent of a gray
squirrel or the whiff of a deer might then fill our nos-
trils, and the glimpse of a wigwam near the spring
would only complete the papaw thicket's native wlld-
ness.

It is entertaining to read the accounts of the pio-
neer botanists in this country, and of their enthusiasm

THE PAPAW THICKET. 30 1

in the discovery and preserv^ation of our trees and
flowers.' It was but natural that the papaw, being an
unknown variety of the New World, should not escape
them. "A jar of papaw flowers and fruit" (along
with specimens and seeds of others of our trees, at that
time quite rare and curious) was consequently sent over
by John Bartram, the traveler, to Peter Collinson in
England in 1738 (acknowledged in April, 1739),
which is one of the first instances of any attempt at
its introduction abroad; and Lord Petre's similar ef-
forts, it is gratifying to know, met with great success,
as appears from Collinson's later letters. Collinson
was very inquisitive about the tree, and asked for all
the details as to its flowers, fruit, foliage, growth, soil
preferred, size of the tree, etc., that Bartram could
give, to enable Lord Petre to identify it among his
shrubs and plants, he having neglected to draw it when
in Virginia, and relying solely for its propagation on
the seeds; and, Collinson adds, in a postscript, "If it
has any virtues, pray mention them:" — information
which we fear, howev^er, Bartram was never able to
give, — for it has no virtues; it is only edible and beau-
tiful." Theodore Mason Harris, too, In his "Journal
of a Tour over the Alleghany Mountains into Ohio"
(Boston, 1805; pages 61, 97), made in the spring of

' I am indebted to the Librarian of Congress for an extended bib-
liography on the papaw ; in particular, I am under obligation to him
for my references to Collinson, Bartram, Harris, Mr. Mather, and Miss
Murfree.

^ See William Darlington's "Memorials of John Bartram and
Humphry Marshall," Philadelphia, 1849. Pages 100, ixi, izx, laS,
129, 145, 365-

302 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

1803, mentions the papaw as growing in the greatest
abundance, along with the dogwood and other kinds
of trees, "on the sides of creeks, and near the river" —
just as it does to-day — and enumerates it among the
wild fruit-trees of that region, with the cherry, mul-
berry, persimmon, and plum. Others, too, of the early
explorers and students of our forests, like Michaux,
have given their descriptions of the papaw. How
interested they were in these discoveries and obser-
vations among the trees, and how eager we should
have been also to find new varieties, and how delighted
we are in these days when perchance we do !

Outside of the many books on trees, however (and
even in the best of these the accounts are not very
extended), the papaw has not found a conspicuous
place in our literature. Dr. Gray places it among the
trees that he loved in "This Paradise of Ours."
Bryant speaks of "the slim papaya" ripening "its yel-
low fruit," and, since he puts it in company with the
wild grape of the West, I have supposed that he means
by it our common papaw. Mr. Madison Cawein also
enumerates the papaw among the forest-trees of his
native Kentucky, where it is, of course, quite common.
Fosdick mentions the blossoms in a couplet.

There is one amusing passage which I must
quote, in Mr. Fred Mather's humorous book of
reminiscences, "Men I Have Fished With," in a chap-
ter on "Fish, 'Coons, and Papaws" (pages 264, 265),
which doubtless voices the sentiments of many who
have tried to like the papaw, but who could never
acquire the taste :

THE PAPAW THICKET. 303

"As the summer waned and the first chill days of September
approached Frank asked me: 'Did you ever cat a papaw?'

" 'No; what is a papaw?'

" 'They are a fine fruit, and grow on a small tree. They
are shaped like a cucumber and are like custard. There is a
papaw grove down by the river. They 'II be ripe now in a
few days, and we '11 make up a party and go 'coon hunting.
'Coons like 'em, and you can always start one in the papaws
when they 're ripe."

"I had seen the trees when out after wild plums, which
were plenty in that part of Wisconsin, and were large and
excellent, but the papaws were merely wondered at and passed.
I think there were a dozen in our party when we started for
'coons on a moonlight night. Except Frank and Henry,
Charley Guyon, John Clark, and Bill Patterson, the names
are forgotten. Half a dozen dogs, some of no particular breed
and others that seemed to be of all breeds mixed without re-
gard to proportion, went along as a necessary part of the outfit.

'*I tasted my first papaw, but have yet to taste the second.
The others ate them with a relish. All I remember is that the
fruit was shaped something like a banana, but shorter, and
had the taste of a raw potato ground into a paste; its seeds
were as large as a lima bean. Of course, I might learn to like
them, but Potosi boys acquired the taste in infancy."

It is altogether likely that this "first papaw" of
Mr. Mather's was one in the unripe, milky state, when
it is decidedly unpleasant and disagreeable, or else he
would hardly so have humiliated the noble fruit by
characterizing the delicious pulp as "raw potato ground
into a paste." His tree, too, was from one of those
rare groves which have wandered as far north as Wis-
consin, and the papaw never attains to a fine develop-

304 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

merit or has much of a flavor farther north than the
Central States or, at the outpost, Michigan,^ and is at
its best in the fertile valleys along the Ohio.

It is refreshing to find at least one literary man
who was a genuine worshiper at this wayside shrine.
After speaking of the wild muscadine grapes of the
South, the late Maurice Thompson remarks, in his
"By-Ways and Bird-Notes" (pp. 100, loi):

"Next to the muscadine among wild fruit I rate the papaw
as best. It is genuinely wild, rich, racy, and, to me, palatable
and digestible. I once sent a box of papaws to a great Boston
author, whose friendship I chanced to possess, and was much
disappointed to learn that the musty odor of the fruit was very
distasteful to him. He fancied that the papaws v/ere rotten!
I dare say he never tasted them; and if he had, their flavor
would have been too rank and savage for his endurance."

Miss Murfree mentions the papaw in at least two
instances in her stories of the Great Smoky Mountains.
She places it with the laurel along the banks of the
Solacutta River, in "In the Clouds" (page 64) ; and it
was a pole trimmed there from a papaw-tree which
Mink Lorey used as a lever to raise the mill gate with.
In "The Despot of Broomsedge Cove," too (pages 9
and 12), she has a locust shrilling in a papaw-tree,
and it was against a papaw-tree that Eli Strove, the
constable, leaned as he sat upon a bowlder. These
are, of course, simply incidental touches of local color

' The papaw, however, has for all time been immortalized in
being perpetuated as the name of the Paw Paw River, of Michigan,
and of some half-dozen municipalities called Pawpaw, in as many
different States, one of which, in Michigan, has reached the dignity of
becoming a county seat, with a population of nearly fifteen hundred
inhabitants.

THE PAP AW THICKET.

305

which indicate the well-known character of that region
in Tennessee, where papaw-trees abound.

In "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" also
(page 7), by Mr. John Fox, Jr., is this sentence, upon
Chad and old Nance, showing that the papaw is in
favor among the Cumberland Mountain folk as well
as in the Great Smokies:

"With his Barlow knife, he s\Aiftly stripped a bark string
from a papaw bush near by, folded and tied his blanket, and
was swinging the little pack to his shoulder, when the tinkle
of a cow-bell came through the bushes, close at hand."

This glimpse of a picture of the cow feeding among
the papaw bushes is, too, a familiar one to any one
acquainted with our papaw-covered pastures.

But, other than these, and perhaps some few other
chance references, the papaw does not seem greatly
to have been celebrated in either song or story. Its
really beautiful and flowing foliage, rippling away in
its autumn yellow, with the fruit amidst the leaves, and
the flowers and bark, have all indeed been too little
appreciated.

NATURE AND THE CITY.

" Now from the town,
Buried in smoke and sleep and noisome damps.
Oft let me wander o'er the de^vy fields.
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling: drops
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweetbriar hedges I pursue my walk ;
Or taste the smell of dairy."

—Thomson.

LIKE the cheery greeting one gets In the
country. Every one always speaks to every
one else, as if in acknowledgment of some
world-old mark of blue blood that shines
from the eyes of every human being. How
different from the hasty, heartless nod of
recognition one gets in cities, even from
the best acquaintances! Democracy is
greatness; most people are aristocrats.

Among country people we come into
contact with simple, elementary impres-
sions. They are, I think, happier than
city people, more wholesomely happy. There is
less attention paid to the whims of fastidious fash-
ion, there is less conventional life, there is more
freedom in the country than in the city. There Is an
essential directness and frankness of character and
speech in all people who live In the country. The very
outdoors Itself, their nearness to Nature, their sim-
plicity of life, and their self-reliance may make them
so. Pure air and the best of food contribute to It.

306

A COUNTRY LANE

NATURE AND THE CITY. 309

Most city people seem to be diametrically opposite.
They do not know what the natural life is. Theirs is
the artificial, conventional manner, and one who is
unskillful enough to be ingenuous is not seldom con-
sidered a numskull. Yet the men of cities are much
more effeminate and altogether less stalwart than their
countrymen of the fields. Almost all the unhealthful
life of cities is entirely lost out in the open, where life
is pure and sweet, and the mind uncontaminated and
natural. The farmer notices the wind and the signs of
the weather. He is closer to Nature than most men,
more dependent upon Nature. What city people, except
the weather observer, ever know the direction of the
wind, or can tell whether it is likely to rain or not?

There is a dignity in tilling God's soil which no
other avocation in life possesses. Adam's original oc-
cupation was to care for the trees in the garden, "to
dress it and to keep it;" but, after the fall, the first
work that was given him, that which the Lord decided
was then most fit, was the tilling of the ground and
the tending of sheep, as if by these (even though in
the sweat of his face he should eat bread, and should
labor under the disadvantages of thorns and thistles
to gain the herb of the field) so to keep his mind, as
far as possible, from the baser and more ignoble sides
of man's life, as it has now come to be. Little they
knew in those days of the modern meaning of civil-
ization. The Lord God, who placed him in the gar-
den, is wise in His selections. Shall we not live like-
wise as He wished our forefather?

Farming and shepherding — these have been the
life work of some of the noblest of mankind from the

3IO AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

beginning. Tilling the soil was not the curse. The
curse was the expulsion from the presence of God.
And so, as If with the memory of thousands of years
within him, farming — a means of livelihood, of some
kind, in the open air — is not only the most primitive
occupation known to man, but is the fundamental basis
of procedure upon which all great business enterprises
are conducted. The farm is the type in the study of
political economy.

So that our poetic appreciations of Nature are per-
force in time translated into terms of industry. The
lover of the woods becomes a forester or lumberman;
the lover of animals a shepherd, cattle raiser, stock
breeder; the lover of open country life, such as Virgil
depicts in his "Georgics," becomes the bee keeper,
poultry raiser, fruit grower, and general cultivator of
the soil for wheat and corn and garden produce.

We were made to work and to earn our bread, and
the man or woman who does not labor, and work
earnestly and with interest, is a parasite upon his fel-
lows. Yet not only to work; but to enjoy our work
and others' work, to have the satisfaction of some
repose after work well done, the opportunity of study-
ing and comparing life and the methods of life, and
of reading the literature of other men's labors. We
were made to work, but not to slave. Rest and quiet
are as much a part of life as the work of the day, and
almost as essential to the real spiritual return of the
work as the toil is itself.

Yet does the farmer, when he turns the wheat over
In his hand, look admiringly at the beautiful grains?
Not a bit of it. He is scrutinizing them to see whether

NATURE AND THE CITY. 3 1 1

the wheat Is well threshed, Is full-bodied or thin; in
short, whether it will sell well. Farmers, as a rule,
are too literal disciples of Emerson in their philosophy
of the beautiful. The beautiful to them is too fre-
quently the useful. Beautiful fields! Why? Because
they will raise good crops of wheat. I am reminded,
in this connection, of a quaint and characteristic anec-
dote by Thoreau in his journal ("Autumn," October
7, i860) :

"Remarking to old Mr. the other day on the abun-
dance of apples, 'Yes,' says he, 'and fair as dollars, too.' That 's
the kind of beauty they see in apples."

Poetry vanishes somewhat when we make money
out of Nature ; and farming, followed solely as a scheme
for riches, has as much as any other occupation a tend-
ency to make men sordid. Yet even as a business it
is the nicest of any, and is the most largely practiced;
and the reason it is not often more remunerative is
that the farmers themselves do not always use good
sense. But as a pleasure it is always a profitable
pastime.

It takes considerable intelligence to manage a farm
well, and the old supposition that any body can farm
is as baseless in reasoning as it is without foundation
in fact. The increasing number and importance of our
agricultural courses in higher and more elementary edu-
cation is the strongest possible testimony to the large
part which the successful cultivation of the soil holds
in our national life.

I remember telling an old farmer once how a man
whom I had visited was feeding his pigs with soap-

312 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. "

suds. "Well, sir," said the old gentleman, "there jest
ain't no use in talkin' ; soapsuds hain't no 'count for
hogs." Now there was a farmer who had some intel-
ligence. And he practiced what he preached; for his
pigs, as I happen to know, always had the best of milk
and corn, and plenty of it.

It is from such surroundings that some of the
greatest poets and writers upon Nature have sprung —
Burns, Jefferies, Whitman, Thoreau, Flagg, Burroughs
— and they have not infrequently remained farmers.
Our great statesmen and Presidents have, as a rule,
been brought up on farms. It was there they learned
self-reliance and independence, and laid the foundation
for all their future careers; and it has been to the
country that they have returned to pass their declining
years. President Arthur is the one notable exception
among our Presidents of one who was born and bred
in the city. It is as if, in the old myth of Antaeus, a
touch of Mother Earth adds strength to character, and
furnishes a never-failing source of vigor and manliness.

The farm is the best place on earth in. which to
bring up the boy. Mr. Murat Halstead, whose early
years were passed not far from the homestead, has
spoken of his final relinquishment of the life of a farm
boy, even though journalism brought greater success,
with genuine feeling:

"I have never since walked between plow handles, the
more 's the pit}', it sometimes seems, for the nlow carves a path
of independence that should be more highly considered than
it is as a walk of life."

Cobbett's "Rural Rides" reveal the unmistakable
charm of the outdoors to one whose life was spent

NATURE AND THE CITY. 313

largely in cities. Yet Cobbett lived when young in
the country; and that is the only way, after all, to learn
to love Nature — to become familiar with her in one's
childhood. "Youth is the only season for enjoyment,"
says George Borrow (that genuine lover of the coun-
try), in "The Romany Rye," "and the first twenty-five
years of one's life are worth all the rest of the longest
life of man." Do you remember how Jefferies, when
forced to live in London, longed for the country? A
recent American writer, too, Mr. Charles M. Skinner,
in his "Nature in a City Yard," laments that he is
forced to live in the city. "I would live in the coun-
try," he says, "but I am compelled to live in the city."

The great men of the world have, with but rare
exceptions, always loved the country. Most of the
permanent and beautiful literature in every language
is upon Nature and the country life. These are the
masterpieces that live. The Bible is full of outdoors;
Homer and Virgil would be nothing but a babble
about the gods were it noif for their perennial inspira-
tion from the things of earth and sky (and these, the
phenomena of creation, change not, nor our poetic ap-
preciation of them, in all the centuries) ; Dante is
nearly as replete with natural comparisons as are the
Greeks and Romans; Shakespeare uses Nature as a
background for his human drama.

Do you recollect this saying in the recently discov-
ered "Logia" of Jesus?

"Raise the stone and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the
wood and there I am."

Well, the man of the cities has never felt that, for
he has never known that particular phase of life.

314 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

Every experience in Nature is worth something.
I like to observe the methods of Nature, and to follow
them in my farming. Nature is a great teacher. She
invites us to her complicity, to be in league with her.
If we take an exotic and bring it to our country, we
shall have to study artificial surroundings for it, and
not leave it to the ways of Nature here ; but in the case
of native plants and trees we shall find it best to leave
them to Nature's keeping, or at least to prune and
protect them according to Nature's evident intentions.
It is from Nature that we learn to mulch our shrubs
and berries, and the value of leaf litter for soil enrich-
ment; for the wind blows the falling leaves of autumn
everywhither, till they lodge about the thorns or the
lower network of the shrub, caught by design in the
thicket for its wintry protection, or are left to strew
the forest floor for future generations, or to stray to
the outlying fields beyond.

I can not sympathize with that view of life which
would sell the old homesteads or see old landmarks
brought low. It is only the materialistic spirit which
will drive surveyors' stakes through a woods. The
country is God's home. Why not ours? Yet men, in
their impertinence, must needs have luxurious living;
and exist, as it were, apart from Nature, separate from
it, not enjoying it. But the old nomadic life is the
most natural, after all, like the gypsies', with the stars
above and a bed of greensward. I envied that gypsy
queen I read of who had never yet slept under a roof,
and who said she would feel unnatural and smothered
to be deprived of the sight of the stars from her pillow.
Hosea, the Hebrew prophet, gave a picture of the

NATURE AND THE CITY. 315

effects of too great ease upon the men of his gener-
ation.

The mediaeval ideal still lingers amongst us. We
are afraid of Nature. I suppose there are still people
who would not care to study the trees and flowers
except conventionally, in a city park, and who certainly
would not remain long in a woods for fear of some
intangible sort of lurking danger. But there is noth-
ing to be afraid of in Nature. The ordinary snake is
as much afraid of you as you are of him. Yet many
city people seem to have really a shrinking fear of
Nature and the country. I have seen little boys cry
in terror when taken away from the road on a stroll
to the fields or woods. A friend of mine, quite an
intelligent man upon other matters, was openly much
disgusted when I told him one day that I was going to
the country with a book, and that I liked to lie among
the grasses and read there and think, and sometimes
slept beneath the trees. "Why," said he, "you 're
crazy; you '11 get bugs and worms in your ears." Yet
none ever bothered me, but were rather, what few there
were of them, a very interesting study in their curious,
beautifully colored forms and evident intelligence; and
those that by mishap did crawl upon me scuttled off in
short order when they found where they were.

But, of course, to be in the woods much is to ap-
preciate wild life all the more. Then the whole world
of Nature seems thoroughly remote from man's do-
minion. And everything in Nature is wild. Even the
little weed that grows up between the planks of the
city street is wild, distinct, different from the city, so
separate in its life from man's life, so suggestive of the

3l6 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

woods and fields and the far-away forest life, whence
It sprang.

What is a city? A city Is an assemblage of houses
close together, with bad air in between them and similar
lives Inside of them, I ought perhaps to add that the
lives are not always so bad as the air. But here is
nothing but rows of brick houses, dirty children play-
ing in dirty streets, dust, smoke, grime, soot. Where
are the flowers, and where Is the grass? As I have
gone down Into the city from the hills on foggy morn-
ings. It has seemed as if I were entering into the very
darkness of Dante's "Inferno" — down, down! — smoke,
smoke everywhere; dense Indistinctness; the horrible
smells of slaughter-house and brewery; vapors of what
not Issuing from every alley; lights seen dimly glimmer-
ing through the murky atmosphere; cries and noise
and the rumbling sound of Innumerable wheels — surely,
this is a part of Hades !

What a picture, that of a city. In Carlyle's "Sartor
Resartus!" Teufelsdrockh Is speaking, viewing from
his watch-tower the great community about him:

"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive, and
witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brew-
ing, and choking by sulphur. . . . That living flood, pour-
ing through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest
thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? . . . These
fringes of lamp-light, struggling up through smoke and thou-
sand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of
Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting
Dogs over the Zenith, in their leash of sidereal fire? That
stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest;

a:
w

o

>

NATURE AND THE CITY. 319

and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there
through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in
and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery
are abroad : that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber
of sick Life, is heard in Heaven. Oh, under that hideous
coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases,
what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful
and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are
being born : men are praying, — on the other side of a brick
partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast,
void Night."

Readers of Richard Jefferies will remember the
terrible experience that Felix underwent in his unin-
tended journey toward the Imaginary extinct city of
London; how he found that all life had disappeared
in the limits of Its site, that gloom and dense vapor
surrounded everything, that the atmosphere suffocated
with its loathsome gases whatever living creature might
helplessly stray thither, that the stars could not be seen
because of the lurid, Impenetrable canopy of smoke;
and the joy, too, with which, after his canoe had
drifted onward and through and past the miasma, he
awoke from his stupor, powerless and tottering from
the effects of the stagnation, and heard a thrush, and
Fistened to the moorhens and whitethroats again, and
watched the swallows tracing their beautiful curves In
the pure air, and at last once more lay stretched upon
the grass. Well, Is that not an allegory of the influ-
ence of the city upon the natural life of man? The
story of "After London" Is perhaps not so imaginative,
after all, but is rather the symbolic presentation of a pro-

31

320 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

found spiritual truth. The city is indeed a great dismal
miasma. Fear, distrust, disease, evil, pride — these, and
many things more, alas! I find in the country; but I
do not find them so intense, or so evident, or so plenti-
fully abundant, or so openly pleasurable, as in the city.
Pale, sallow complexions, bad food, physical languish-
ment, spiritual stagnation, — fresh skin, with a peach
bloom to it, pure food, health, and a free, clear life
of the soul : — look upon this picture, and then on this !
Ah, Whittier was right when he sang:

"Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheeks of tan !

Outward sunshine, inward joj';
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!"

Why is it that people will congregate into such tre-
mendous settlements as some of our cities are? The
whirl of the world and the energy of our American
life have made our cities absolute hydras of society.
I think of Bryant's phrase — "the vast and helpless
city." To many city people the word country is a
symbol for the wild and desolate, the unhuman, every-
thing that is devoid of sympathetic companionship;
and so men gather into cities, for the satisfaction of an
increased social life and the nearness of human kind.
Yet Thoreau was perhaps right in his cynicism upon
the shallowness of much of it. "What men call social
virtues, good fellowship," he says, "is commonly noth-
ing but the virtue of pigs in a litter to keep each other
warm." And the Duke was also right, when he said,
of the country, in "As You Like It:"

NATURE AND THE CITY. 32 1

"And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

One can not say the same for the city. The beautiful
influences of Nature are to be received quite "far from
the madding crowd's ignoble strife."

What a fine thing it is to have violets around you
at your work ! Was it William Morris who said that
it was a sad contrast between the fields where the beasts
live and the cities where men live? Cowper, indeed,
spoke the truth, in his well-known line:

"God made the countrj', and man made the town."

I can sympathize with Christ when He wept over
Jerusalem; but I can not follow Him into the city.
It is not for every one to follow Him into the city.
Some there are whose greatest joy and service is to live
among the slums, and there to show forth the life of
Nazareth. I will rather live apart, outside the limits,
that so by telling of the sky and the green grass and
the trees I may perhaps bring the vision home to those
who see it not.

There are, of course, advantages which one finds
in a city and not in the country; but it is not because
it is the city that one finds them in. There is no reason
why there should not be in the country all the advan-
tages that cities have, and more. Most country people
look upon cities as a veritable Mecca of all that is de-
sirable, an El Dorado of gigantic proportions, in which
one is caught into the whirl of all the social and intel-
lectual life of the world. Yet good schools abound
outside the cities nowadays, and it is possible to have

322 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

art in the country, and music, and the literature which
is the boast of cities, and to live, moreover, surrounded
with all the perpetual beauty of sky and earth, with
pure air and pure food and sweet, clear water, with
opportunities for refreshing labor and for companion-
ship with the animals and with all the life of God's
world. Art museums might just as well flourish out
in the open air, amid the scenes which inspired their
paintings, as in the smoke of factories; and culture
ought no less to be advocated and pursued in the fields
than in the paved streets. Indeed, the pictures in the
galleries do but afford a glimpse of that which lies
on every hand beyond their walls. The dangers of life
in the country lie in the sordidness which is found in
many farmers, and which absence from the refining
social influences of the city encourages. Then, too,
when farming becomes too absorbingly a business its
poetry is lost. But its decided advantages are the inde-
pendence and self-reliance it develops; and he would be
a thick-skinned fellow who did not see some poetry in
his fields of wheat. And the power to do good, too,
lies with the countryman ; for were it not for the farmer
men could not live. Yet women especially (and not
altogether without reason, as many farms are man-
aged) regard life in the country, on a farm, as they
would life-imprisonment, as an existence absolutely de-
void of any pleasure, or beauty, or society — nothing
but a routine of perpetual drudgery : anything but that,
they say. Yet are the social advantages of cities so
absorbing as all that? Could not a little mite of them
be introduced Into the country? Many women there
be after the order of Mrs. Hardcastle, in "She Stoops

NATURE AND THE CTIT. 323

to Conquer," who says to Hastings, in reply to his
flattery :

"We countrj- persons can have no manner at all. I 'm in
love with the town, and that serves to raise me above some of
pur neighboring rustics."

Yet is there not a charm in an informal gathering
in the country, where old songs are sung, and old poems
read, and anecdotes brought forward of old times and
former days, with a taste, perchance, of honey or of
cider, which one will seek for in vain in the city?
When Mrs. Hardcastle objects to her old-fashioned
mansion and her husband's predilections for old stories,
and says that she hates such trumpery, Mr. Hardcastle
doughtily replies, and well :

"And I love it. I love everything that 's old : old friends,
old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and, I believe,
Dorothy {taking her hand), you '11 own, I 'v« been pretty fond
of an old wife."

One of the most refined and cultivated, and yet
hardest working, women I have known, and one who
has liv^ed in a city, once said to me : "When I see the
life in the cities, I am always thankful that I have had
the opportunity to bring my children up in the coun-
try." It was the wish of the poet Coleridge that his
boy Hartley should be "Nature's playmate," and he
so expresses this desire in his "Frost at Midnight," in
these lines; and it is a satisfaction to know that, with
all his weaknesses. Hartley retained a love for Nature
all his life:

324 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

"My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds.
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags. So shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mold
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.'

Things that are really quite expensive luxuries in the
city — genuine, rich cream, for example — are commonly
ev^ery-day affairs in the country. Any one who has
eaten strawberries from a cut-glass dish in the city,
even with the best of cream, and then at another time
has plucked them himself from the vines, fresh and
sweet and juicy, and had the cream and sugar of the
country with them, will not hesitate to say which is the
more delightful, which the more natural to the taste.
Even in a railroad dining car, when skimming across
the country meadows, I have eaten corn on the cob
which, notwithstanding its silver handles, many a
farmer would have been ashamed to have on his table,
much less to offer to a guest.

What a long succession of pleasurable delicacies
is to be had in the country throughout the year: begin-
ning with maple syrup and sugar, then the garden and
the early strawberries and raspberries, wild blackberries,

NATURE AND THE CITY. 325

cherries, peaches, apricots, the early apples, plums,
pears, the fall and winter apples — and all still lapping
over from one season to another, the maple syrup often
doing duty even in winter, a year from its making,
along with the berries of last summer and the apples
of the fall. There have been known such prosperous
years on the old homestead that the old promise to
Israel seemed to have been fulfilled especially for us,
that the "threshing shall reach into the vintage, and
the vintage shall reach into the sowing time." On
those memorable, happy years, the last run of the sap
at sugar-making would lap over on to the spring plow-
ing and the pruning, the early vegetables would still
be palatable when the later garden was well under way,
haying and harvest would extend until the apples were
ripe, threshing would occupy us up to cider-making,
and the corn husking and hauling in of the winter
wood and the other fall work would keep us busy until
the hogs were fattened — and by that time the sap was
in the trees again and the camp opened. But they have
not all been such years ; for sometimes the sugar season
was a short one, frost nipped the fruit buds, rain spoiled
the hay and flattened the grain, worms and insects got
in the garden patch, wasps stung the grapes, and some-
how the winter wood was water-soaked and doty.

In many city yards, cut up for a subdivision, last
remnants of the country still linger where not dis-
turbed. An occasional stray violet may yet stay to
bloom by the wayside, golden-rod and iron weed shake
their tassels in a fence-corner, or a clump of elderberry
bushes hold aloft their glistening cymes of jet black
berries. But, when pent-up perforce for a time between

326 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

brick rows and asphalt, my heart has always longed for
a sight of God's meadows and the open sunshine among
the grass.

My instincts for wild life are so strong that had
I been a primitive man I imagine I would have helped
the race along considerably. I like to walk through
the parks whenever I am in cities, for the waving of the
trees' leafy branches in the breeze brings thoughts of
the wide, sweet freedom of the country beyond. Espe-
cially is the dark mystery of trees to be felt in a city
in the gloom of night, even though the trees are sur-
rounded by wire railings and their poor roots suffocated
under hot pavements.

"But this you may know, that as long as they grow,
Whatever change may be,
You never can teach either oak or beech
To be aught but a greenwood tree."

There is much truth to those lines of Peacock's. There
is always a little of primitive, natural grace, with a
smack of pure wildness to it, still to be seen, even in
city parks. Such experiences as this in Shelley's "Epi-
psychidion" are perhaps not common now to dwellers in
cities, but are none the less enviable :

"The spotted deer bask in the fresh moon-light
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep."

Lines like these, we say, thrill us in the reading, and
we lament the departure of the old wild forest life.
But, happily, if we seek it, something of that fresh life
of Nature can yet be seen in the busy cities, atrophied
and bloodless as life is there, life that was once so true

NATURE AND THE CITY. 327

and pure in the youth of the world, and that still is
throbbing and swelling with the old savage strain be-
neath. The glimpse of a gray squirrel in a park, late
on some afternoon, frisking and leaping among the
beeches, even though he be tame and not afraid of the
hoof-beats of horses and the rough tramp of heels on
the walks, or the sight of the first birds of spring, or
to hear a robin's twilight carol, still has power to make
the heart rise in wonder, and even now, as Emerson
sang it,

"Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs."

In winter, too, the snow falls on the city streets as well
as on the fields, and in spring the sweet country wild
flowers can be found in the market stalls by those who
wish for them.

Yet it does men incalculable spiritual harm to re-
main so close to one another as our cities demand. Let
us at least walk out to the roadsides and the woods
occasionally, and refresh and purify our minds in the
quietness and joy of the beautiful world. While down
in man's crowded dwelling-places all is excitement and
intensity and unnaturally forgetful, out in the open the
wind is tossing the tree-tops and sweeping to us odors
and scents of green meadows and quiet wood-dingles,
of lake and river, of prairie and forest, of sea and
mountain, and of the broad life and health of Nature
everywhere. Men in cities should listen to its voice
whispering among the leaves. It brings the message
of peace to them.

As I think of the contrast between it and these dis-
tant green upland pastures, quiet, grazed on by sheep,

328 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

with bells tinkling, the city seems to be a horrible mael-
strom. Why is it that men should live thus, aroused
to an abnormal energy, and enveloped in great clouds
of smoke and dust? Sometimes, when a south wind
strikes the city, there comes floating out across the hills
what appears to be a dark fog. It is the smoke from
the city. Viewed in our clear, pure air, it is seen in its
real density and murky blackness, as if just belched
from the pit. Yet in the city it is the normal atmos-
phere which men breathe, and they do not know it.
And so we turn from the sordid, restless, nervous life
of the great city to the calm and beautiful quietness of
the fields; and we have found peace, and are ashamed
that we have known the city.

The tinkling of sheep bells, the bark of a dog, the
neigh of a horse, the moo of a cow, the crowing of
old chanticleer — why, morning in the country is the
"Pastoral Symphony" in dally repetition. Do you re-
member how the sounds of the country are so pleasingly
and wonderfully reproduced in that piece of music?

Give me the country, with an open hearth, and
you can have an entire city in exchange, with all the
intricate and over-studied refinements and complexities
In it, and you will not be half so happy. I can, here
in the country, before an open wood fire, with but one
or two utensils, and with vegetables and fruit fresh
from the garden, prepare in a few moments a meal fit
for the gods : you, at your hotel or luxurious residence
(and surely not in a hovel), will not have one a whit
better, and you will have paid a dozen prices for it,
and the china and the service will have cost you no
little. Men go to the cities to escape the so-called

NATURE AND THE CITY.

329

drudgery of living; but behold! they find themselves
enmeshed in a much greater entanglement than they
had suspected, and some get still further ensnared into
failure. They miss the very freedom and relief which
they had hoped to find, and end by losing what fine old
natural instincts they had, so that their last state is
much worse than the first. Men pay pretty dearly for
their refinements, in the loss of that for which, after
all, the refinements are, and can be, no substitute. And
so, because of the limitations of each kind of life, we
have the strange spectacle of country people aping the
ways of city people, and losing the very simplicity they
were supposed to have, and city people constantly re-
verting to the country to find it. 'T is the old story of
Maud Muller and the Judge which is daily enacted
before our eyes.

I do not say what is the remedy for all this. Each
one of us most solve that for himself. We are not
necessarily clumsy ignoramuses because we live in the
country, nor are we all conventionalized hypocrites
whose lot has fallen in the city. But decentralization,
and the gradual increase of a semi-rural population,
made possible by the introduction of the trolley car,
with its cheap fares, must by every one be regarded as a
force for good, and for good only.

Yet I would voluntarily narrow my life if I might
only know more of Nature. T can not tell you with
what feelings I regard Nature, I regard her so sacredly.
I wish that others could enter into my life, and see
the beauty. T would share the loveliness of the earth.
It is not mine only, but all may see it, if they enter
the fields with receptive mind and heart, equally with

330 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the open air. And all Is so exquisite in workmanship,
so wonderful in its growth, so beautiful in its drapery!
Surely here in the stillness God is, if He is anywhere
on earth. Men can not understand the miracles of
Christ, they say, and yet are they dead to the constantly
recurring miracles of sunrise and sunset, and spring
and autumn, and the growth of the year; but then, that
is every day, and they do not see the miracle. There
is so much variety in Nature, so much profusion of
beautiful scenery — grand contours of mountain wild-
ness, illimitable extent of prairie, long, winding sea
coasts, quiet slopes and dells, stretches of peaceful
woodland: — carpeted with flowers and grasses, covered
with towering trees of living green, an endless harmony
of color, with the blue sky above, fleecy clouds, the
broad light of day, and the majesty and silence of night
and the dew ! What can we say?

Thus to be surrounded with all the influences of
Nature, the fresh wild flowers in spring, the great blue
sky in summer, the turning leaves in autumn, and in
winter the snow; to live in daily communion with the
growing earth; to see the seasons change; and to be
in constant response to the beauty and miracle of wild
Nature: — if there is anything more to be desired in life
than this I do not know it. Just the joy of living in
the open air — that is enough in life.

Mr. Norman Gale has written a prayer, to be
found in his "Orchard Songs," which, in its aspiration,
exhales the very breath from the grass and the dew.
Doubtless it languages the attitude of every lover of
the country:

NATURE AND THE CITY. 331

"Tend me my birds, and bring again
The brotherhood of woodland life,
So shall I wear the seasons round,
A friend to need, a foe to strife.

"Keep me my heritage of lawn.
And grant me, Father, till I die,
The fine sincerity of light
And luxury of open sky.

"So, learning always, may I find

My heaven around me everywhere.
And go in hope from this to Thee,
The pupil of Thy country air."

It was the fond belief of Richard Jefferies that
some day Nature should have perpetual, constant in-
fluence upon the life of man, that man's life should
always be becoming like Nature's. The sooner men
learn to love the simplicities of the country the healthier
will their own lives become, and the better and more
wholesome influence, therefore, will they themselves
have in the world. In turning from the distraction of
a life of artificial stimulus to the revelation of the fields,
what do we find, says Jefferies? "To be beautiful and
to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of
Nature."

So, in the city, I live over again the old life of the
fields, wandering among the pastures, and by the side
of clear, rippling brooks, and under the beeches. And
in the dust and rumble and whirl of the city I can
remember the ideals of life that I found out there,
among the mullein stalks and sweet green grass, and
I can live better for them, and can try to have Nature
transformed into my human life. Like Jefferies, I may

332

AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

never realize the ideal that I found there; but I can
approach it, and I can tell others that it is there.

It is as David, the psalmist of Israel, sang cen-
turies ago:

"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow
a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine
altars, O Lord of hosts."

And from those altars rises under the sun the incense
of the flowers and fields into the beautiful blue.

"THE LORD IS IN HIS HOLY TEMPLE;
LET ALL THE EARTH KEEP SILENCE BEFORE HIM."

UNDER THE BLUE.

NATURE AND THE PROBLEM OF
SUFFERING.

"Thou see'st, ■we are not all alone unhappy;
This wide and universal theater
Presents more woeful pagreants than the scene
Wherein ■we play in."

-As You Like It.

N assuming that pain is an evidence of evil
which, while in a less degree it is forced
to serve as a good, yet in its more terrible
aspects attains at times to the deeps of
unrelenting tragedy, I am taking a view
which is not uncommon nor irrational, and
which will, I think, be acknowledged as a
fact in life by every one. What shall we
say of King Lear, if tragedy be not a re-
ality, but only a disguise, a mask? I be-
lieve that evil is evil, that it mars life, till it
is not as it should be or was meant to be, that it is not
a good, and can not be. Nor does evil come merely
from the fact of our being finite beings. Adam and
Eve were created finite, and yet were supremely happy
in the Garden. We all know the old story of the
clown at the games, who, when a pigeon was pierced
and fell, said, "Ah, you might have spared the arrow !
The fall would have killed him." So, to say that pain
serves ultimately to bring about good is but a relative,
a partial view; we might have had the good without

333

A PLUNDERED NEST.

334 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the pain. For not all pain brings with it joy, nor is all
joy derived from pain. The thrusts of tragedy are
not necessary to happiness.

The world, that is, is diseased, and its natural in-
tentions perverted and distorted. "The time is out of
joint," as Hamlet said. It is a fact which does not
need much repetition to gain acceptance. The apostle
was not so far wrong when he insisted upon our de-
pravity. Humanity has had its golden age in the past,
and looks forward to another golden age in the future.
We have not been made glad that sin has entered into
the world. We might have lived without the sin —
else why the vision of the golden age? And will sin
otherwise always be? Explain its existence as we may
— perhaps as the result, as the philosophers say, of our
mutability, that is, of the possibilities and contingencies
incident to imperfection — the sharp accusation yet rests
upon the universe of the presence of evil in its midst,
with all its concurrent manifestations of moral and
physical disorder and pain.

The problem of suffering is not a pleasant one, and
the acknowledgment of pain among the lower animals
does not make us happy. The "weight of all this un-
intelligible world" is assuredly a weary burden. Yet
most of the brutes that are killed by man die an easier
death and are really more humanely killed than when
they die naturally, of wounds, or starvation, or old
age. It is evidently not the purpose of Nature to
avoid pain. When Whitman, In one of his rare con-
ceptions, addressed the sea as "the passionless wet" he
spoke a true philosophy. There is no mercy in Nature.
The ocean swallows up those unfortunately wrecked

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 335

upon Its billows without distinction and Indiscrimi-
nately; the tornado sweeps away with no exceptions
all that happens within Its path; and the bursting vol-
cano destroys whatever city lies at Its base. The great
Juggernaut of Nature Is uncompromisingly cruel and
impartial. Even the relief and soothing of uncon-
sciousness, if we awake, does but for a time benumb our
sufferings, and comes usually, Indeed, from a shock,
and only as a greater revelation of our helplessness.
Aye, even when we use her own-born remedies, 't is
but for the bruises and lacerations of her own-caused
misery. Nature, Indeed, herself is forced to be the
main Instrument of pain, and we are consequently face
to face with the paradox on all sides of tragedy exist-
ing rampant even while the swallows soar the sunset
skies.

Life is very full of tragedies. Pain Is not so ab-
normal a condition In Nature (as we know It) as we
sometimes think. Turn anywhither we will, and we
are everywhere confronted with the presence and power
of misery and disaster. It Is the lot of every living
being. And by suffering I do not mean mere physical
pain ( for some there be who would deny the body, and
who would repudiate even the testimony of the senses),
nor mental suffering (if so be there Is a mind), nor
anguish of soul (should there be a soul) ; but I mean
pain of any sort, to be experienced In any way what-
soever. If you have no body, possibly you will know
pain In the outlook of the Imagination; if you have no
mind (as is quite likely. If you think you have no
body). It Is possible you will have depression of soul;
and If you have no soul (which God forbid!) it Is

336 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

possible that you, a mere beast, will then have to com-
plete the circle and acknowledge pain again in the body.
But whatever you have, one thing is certain, that,
sooner or later, in some way or another, "in mind,
body, or estate," as the Prayer Book says, you will
have to encounter pain and misery in life. I do not
think that we should try to minimize or evade the fact
of pain. What in so doing do we gain but a make-
shift, in itself a source of displeasure in our perplexity?
Comedy itself is but a mask for tragedy.

Life, I say, is full of tragedies. Perhaps that is
one significance of Christ's ministry, that tragedy Is
what we must expect upon earth : tragedies not only in
human life — greater and consequently capable of more
suffering than any other — but in the animal world, with
the birds and beasts and fishes and all animal life, and
among the plants also, beautiful expressions of plant
life crushed or their growth thwarted by the survival
of stronger neighbors. Tragedy is an ineradicable part
of the experience of living — not falling heavily upon
all alike, but, in greater or less degree, coming to all
living things in the experience of heartless, fateful limi-
tations. It is the saddest part of life, sadder even than
unnecessary pain ; for from such pain one may recover
and have strength again, but tragedy is permanent loss
and failure. Men do their best, they say, but some-
how circumstances are against their achievement; and
If through no fault of theirs they fail, and yet live
courageously and bring success from limitation, the
tragedy but becomes the darker. There has thus been
no profounder disquisition on evil than Hamlet's so-
liloquy :

/

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 337

"To be, or not to be, — that is the question:
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.
And by opposing end them? To die, — to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, — to sleep, —
To sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely.
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of oflice, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life.
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will.
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

The whole of life thus seems to be Interpenetrated
with tragedy, with pain. Man can not escape it: and
get down among the lower animals, live with them,
and be among them, and you will find suffering and
misery there also. Men not infrequently cause tragedy
in their relations with the rest of the animate world,
sometimes knowingly and purposely and remorselessly,
and sometimes unwittingly as undesignedly a partner
of natural law. Tragedy is indeed inwoven into our
very existence. Whenever we mow our lawns the Jug-

338 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

gernaut of the lawn-mower grinds and crushes num-
bers of the tiny inhabitants of the grass, and whenever
we cut our hay or harvest our grain the merciless sickle
slashes and tears them in pieces. It is one of the in-
evitable accompaniments of life, even though we wish
it not, that in many ways, however unconsciously or
unintentionally, we should constantly be causing pain.
It is blinded from our eyes, and we do not see it.

Nature is cruel and merciless, you say. Yes, that
is true. Pain falls, in the realms of Nature, as gener-
ally upon the weak and defenseless as it does in the
case of mankind. But the beautiful and refined lady
who has her horses' tails docked and has the wings of
a tern in her hat — is she so sweet? Is she not cruel
also? That there is cruelty in Nature is true, but
cruelty and the infliction of tragedy are not more absent
from the life of intelligent men and women.

Yet alas! Nature has her tragedies, and has them
relentlessly. Even the mosquito has its parasite. The
laws of Nature are very inexorable; she is no respecter
of persons. Every man — aye, every living being —
receives the penalty for a violation of them. I believe
that the life of the woods is happier than man's, that
there are an unalloyed gladness and a freedom from
fear which man generally does not know; but I be-
lieve— indeed, I have seen it, and I know — that, with
all the coy shyness, real and terrible tragedy is there
also. It is especially heartrending to witness tragedy
among animals that are particularly attractive and win-
some, those that we love. I think of Shakespeare's
fine old line,

"Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and harsh;"

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 339

and 't is appropriate in the case of animals as with men,
when misery and inequality come to them.

It is not a pleasant picture that John Fiske gives,
in his "Through Nature to God," when, in his discus-
sion of the mystery of evil, he speaks of the reality
of the perpetual, unintermittent tragedy and rapine that
underlie the apparent peacefulness of the fields:

"Any summer field, though mantled in softest green, is the
scene of butchery as wholesale as that of Neerwinden and far
more ruthless. The life of its countless tiny denizens is one of
unceasing toil, of crowding and jostling, where the weaker fall
unpitied by the way, of starvation from hunger and cold, of
robbery utterly shameless and murder utterly cruel. That
green sward in taking possession of its territory has extermi-
nated scores of flowering plants of the sort that human eco-
nomics and aesthetics stigmatize as weeds; nor do the blades
of the victorious army dwell side by side in amity, but in their
eagerness to dally with the sunbeams thrust aside and supplant
'one another without the smallest compunction. Of the crawl-
ing insects and those that hum through the air, with the quaint
snail, the burrowing worm, the bloated toad, scarce one in a
hundred but succumbs to the buffets of adverse fortune before
it has achieved maturity and left offspring to replace it. The
early bird, who went forth in quest of the worm, was lucky
if at the close of a day as full of strife and peril as ever knight-
errant encountered, he did not himself serve as meal for some
giant foe in the gloaming. When we think of the hawk's
talons buried in the breast of the wren, wh«le the relentless
beak tears the little wings from the quivering body, our mood
toward Nature is changed, and we feel like recoiling from a
world in which such black injustice, such savage disregard
for others, is part of the general scheme."

340 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

I do not count death in itself as the greatest of
evils; for death, as a necessary part of the life that
now is, and not a calamity, comes rather as a release,
even through the gateway of pain — surely better than
perpetual suffering — in its own time. And the various
and manifold incitements to rapine are, too, I suppose,
necessary in this our world — the birds devouring the
insects, the owl clutching the little wood mouse, the
fox killing the duck, man hunting for game. It is a
law of life as now constituted (I do not say that it is
God's law) that we should live upon even our best
animal friends. So, says the old verse :

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so."

Now I do not think that He did. Evil, that is, to
my mind, has not been a necessary, but a possible,
accompaniment of free will. It did not (and does not)
inhere in the very nature of things; but, having once
been chosen, its effects have so been transmitted into all
life that pain everywhere now is a recognized phase
of existence.

But to particular and concrete cases of tragedy in
the fields. Mr. John Burroughs has an interesting
paper, entitled "The Tragedies of the Nests," in his'
"Signs and Seasons," in which he gives several ex-
amples of the struggle for existence which the young
birds have to go through, and the necessity for constant
watchfulness on the part of the old birds against their
prowling or hooting enemies. Mrs. Olive Thorne
Miller and other writers on birds have also spoken of
the tragedies that frequently interrupt the peaceful

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 341

progress of their nesting. I shall transcribe a few
sentences from Mr. Burroughs's paper :

"The tender households of the birds are not only exposed
to hostile Indians in the shape of cats and collectors, but to
numerous murderous and bloodthirsty animals, against whom
they have no defense but concealment. They lead the darkest
kind of pioneer life, even in our gardens and orchards, and
under the walls of our houses. Not a day or a night passes,
from the time the eggs are laid till the young are flown, when
the chances are not greatly in favor of the nest being rifled
and its contents devoured — by owls, skunks, minks, and 'coons
at night, and by crows, jays, squirrels, weasels, snakes, and
rats during the day. Infancy, we say, is hedged about by
many perils; but the infancy of birds is cradled and pillowed
in peril."

He tells also of the frequent rifling of orioles' and
other birds' nests, of the occasional death of both the
old and young birds by accidental causes (such as en-
tanglement in the hairs of their nests), and of the
maraudings of their many destroyers.

His paper has recalled a few Instances of tragedy
in bird life that have come under my own observation.

One day, while clearing out a thicket, so that the
larger trees would have more light and space, and could
grow better, we cut down a maple sapling, and, as it
fell, two eggs splashed out on the ground beside us.
We found that we had unwittingly, but none the less
absolutely, destroyed a little bird's nest which had been
concealed among the thick foliage. We had not seen
it, although we had noticed a bird or two around there;
but there it was, all torn and bedraggled, and frag-
ments of the speckled egg-shells lay scattered about it.

342 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

It was pitiful to see the little pair, when they came and
found their home ruined and desolate. At first their
attitude was one of alarm and even wild anxiety. They
fluttered from limb to limb in the trees near by, and
peeped and peeped in shrill, high tones of distress; but
when they finally realized what had happened, and
saw the utter loss of all their labor, their little home
destroyed, they flew to an elm a short distance away
and gave vent to the saddest, most pitiful little sounds
that I think I have ever heard. The beautiful little
feathered creatures had lost their home, and it meant
as much to them, doubtless, with what perceptions they
may have, as the loss of our homes would to us, with
our larger life. No longer could they come flying in
happiness through the leaves and peep over the nest to
the speckled eggs, and there was no hope now of a little
brood from that nest. It was certainly, for them, a
tragedy, and it had been caused by man, too; and per-
haps that has made them suspect man. And yet no
one would have been less likely or willing to do such a
thing than either of us. It simply could not have been
helped. Well, after a few minutes of mourning, these
two flew away together, and we never saw them again.
We were not quite certain as to the kind of birds they
were, but their coloring, as I recollect it, was much like
that of the ordinary little chippy, which, however,
usually builds its nest not so high from the ground.
My hope has always been that they built another nest,
and had four more speckled eggs, and finally had the
pleasure of bringing up four naked, scragly little young
ones, and T think they did.

Speaking of birds' eggs, what a passion it is among

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 343

boys to collect them ! It is often overdone, and results
In cruelty and damage to the nests; but not always,
and how It takes the boys out into the woods and
fields ! Indeed, I know of one brown-eyed enthusiast
who was the possessor at one time of some few dozen
varieties of birds' eggs, gathered by long journeyings
from the woods and the pastures, and obtained by dint
of hard scrambling and climbing — but obtained, and
blown, and labeled, and arranged in a box; and what
an interesting collection of the beautiful little spotted
and fragile things it was ! How variously colored and
speckled they were, and how we learned. from his box
of eggs of the habits of the feathered tribe; and how
delightful it was to find out what bird a certain kind
of egg belonged to ! It was one of the beneficent pro-
visions of the Mosaic law that, if a man must gather
birds' eggs or destroy the nests, "thou shalt not take
the dam with the young;" that is, so to speak, if evil
comes upon you, do not let It go too far! But the
rather be kind; let not mercy give place unto wrath.
Pain, be it allowed. Is more real to us, more excru-
ciating to our sensitive natures, more complex and more
intense. Yet suffering — and great pain — Is none the
less an actual fact among animals. So far as I have
been able to observe it, pain with them is not of so
long duration as with us, nor so keen, In proportion
as their blood differs from ours in its consistency. But
the tragedy of a torn nest is no less a tragedy for a
feathered pair, simply because it is of less consequence,
and happens to a lower order of beings, than Is the
burning of a handsome dwelling for a man and his
wife. We rebuild our homes and go to the painful

344 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

toil of making the fireside over again; the birds gather
some hair and bits of moss, and form a new nest on
a bough. But who shall say that the fact of sorrow
was not as real, and proportionately as poignant, in the
one case as in the other? I know that it is, for I have
been among them, and have seen their pitiful grief:
and perhaps, in their brief sorrow and steadfast facing
of the future, they are wiser than we, who brood some-
times for years over our misfortunes. Let us not be-
little their grief because it is little, and because they
are little. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?
and not one of them shall fall on the ground without
your Father." Is that not tragedy which was implied
even there, in that saying of our Lord's of centuries
ago?

Sometimes the nests of birds are not put together
very compactly or securely, and a strong wind or a
storm may loose them from their moorings, and either
dash them to the ground, or so move them from their
supporting network of twigs that the eggs will roll and
fall, or that the raising of a brood becomes a serious
matter and at the least a precarious business. I have
noticed this especially in the case of the flimsy nests of
the turtle dove, which are little more than a few twigs
massed together on a bough.

I once found and prevented what might have been
a very terrible little tragedy by happening to notice
a robin acting rather singularly in the top of a pear-tree
in our yard. It had been fluttering in the tree for two
days, but I had thought it was building its nest, and
that its mate was bringing the bits of straw for it to
weave. But this day it fluttered and acted very piti-

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 345

fully, and I climbed the tree to see what was the mat-
ter. The poor robin had a string, a piece of stout
cord, entangled all around its feet, having evidently
been caught while trying to use the string for its little
home; and the string was all wound around and in
among the twigs of the tree. It had indeed been en-
snared by the fowler. I broke the string, and released
it, and it flew away with its mate, who had been flutter-
ing piteously by its side while I was there. If I had
not freed it, it would have died, because the cord was
quite strong, and was doubled and twined about its
little leg again and again, so that it would have been
impossible for it to escape, and it would have starved
and perished miserably. As it was, it had become very
thin from lack of food, and was almost exhausted from
its exertions. It was not able to fly far when I let it
go, but kept getting gradually closer to the earth until,
a couple of rods away, it lit on a pile of brush, steadied
itself a little rockingly, looked at the mark of white
string on its leg, and settled itself for a thankful rest —
in freedom again, with its mate by its side ! Many
birds have not been so fortunate as this one was, but
have died a slow, lingering death in the woods. Mr.
Burroughs, I recollect especially, relates how a blue-
bird was similiarly entangled with a horsehair of an
oriole's nest, which it had visited; and it was found
dead later, the hair having in some way become inex-
tricably looped about it, and "was yet hanging in Sep-
tember, the outspread wings and plumage showing
nearly as bright as in life" — a pitiful tragedy.

Perhaps the saddest thing, though, that I have yet
seen in Nature was one of these beautiful, soaring

346 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

chimney swallows that had become transfixed on a
lightning rod near a chimney. It had doubtless darted
down toward the chimney, and for some reason — either
because the wind blew suddenly or because it did not
see the rod — had gone straight on to the steel point.
It had pierced its breast through, and there, alone, it
had died, with no one to help it. When I first noticed
It, it had become nothing but skin and bones and a
dangling mass of weather-beaten feathers — dead long
ago.

I recollect also that some of the boys set fire to
an old dead stub one day, and, in so doing, unwittingly
burnt up a young family of bluebirds which had their
home within. The cries and actions of the old ones,
when they saw their house in flames, were pitiful in
the extreme. This, of course, was accidental, and, when
discovered, was too late to rectify. But what shall we
say of those other cases, so many of which are inten-
tional, in which pain and tragedy are purposely and
ruthlessly inflicted upon our feathered and furry
brothers by devilishly inspired mankind? What do
you suppose the dog thinks of the vivisectionist, any-
way?

Birds seem to know man, and sometimes to rely on
him. I have had two bluejays scream loudly and fly
within a foot of my face, and show terror and almost
ask for protection, when a big cat happened to be in a
tree near their nest. He knew where it was, and that
there were young ones in it, and he was making for
the nest. I went to the tree and scared him down, and
as he scuttled away the jays darted at him and followed
him awhile, and then came back to their little home

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERINC . 347

and flitted about, silent again, in perfect peace and
security. Now I think they asked me to do that. To
one who is sympathetically disposed toward animals
there is frequently a very close relationship, almost an
understanding, between them. A pair of wood thrushes
used regularly to build their nest in our yard, sometimes
in a maple, sometimes in a pear or an apple tree, and
the male would select the wildest and most picturesque
little spots in the yard, and there he would sit at twi-
light— in the leafy branches of an elm, say, near the
nest — and sing away his wildwood love-song. They
became accustomed to my presence and seemed to like
me, and used sometimes to approach warily till within
a foot of me, as I sat on the bench and read. One day
in particular I remember, when in a chair on the porch,
that one of the pair came flying toward me, intending
(as I supposed) to alight on my shoulder; but I was
startled (not seeing it in time) and waved it away,
though even then it remained perched on the railing
beside me for a moment. I think that the quiet spotted
wood thrush is my favorite bird. A farmer one day,
in speaking of the birds in his locality, said to me,
"There is one bird that comes a little later than the
others in the spring, and likes the little thickets, and
sings there almost like a flute. I wonder what it is."
I listened one day in the place he had told me, and
soon, as I waited, floating out on the air came the notes
of the bird. It was the song of the wood thrush.

I once found a song sparrow covered with warts,
or excrescences of some sort, which a dozen others were
pursuing and trying to kill. They pecked it and pecked
it, as it made its way along with drooping wings, but

348 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD

I finally captured it, and scared the others away. I took
it home and we tried to help it, but I finally killed it,
after we found it could not be cured. Its wings and
its head and beak were covered with these singular
bumps. I have seen hogs try to kill one among them
that was sick, gouging it and gouging it, as if to get it
out of the way and end its misery; and other animals,
I am told, do the same when one of their number be-
comes helpless.

Walking along one day, I discovered a locust with
one wing off, clumsily flopping about on the planks.
He tried to fly, but could n't, and finally crawled over
to a beech, and made his way up again to the life of
the branches, his old life, where he might die. I have
been much interested in locusts. They have many ene-
mies; birds devour them, and I have seen many a one
flying with a sizzling locust in its beak; cats and even
ants also will eat them. I was quite surprised one time
at the actions of one which had just come out of the
ground in its pupa state, before shedding its shell. I
noticed it in a rather conspicuous place on a walk, and,
fearing that it might be crushed by the passers-by, I
picked it up and placed it at the foot of a little maple.
It was amusing, the avidity with which it took the hint
and began slowly to climb the tree in its unwieldy armor
(what a bother it must be to be a chrysalis, anyway!),
as if having come upon — a little suddenly, and by some
greater providence than his own — the very goal which
he had all along been seeking, and been seeing through
his glassy, scaly eyes.

There are, of course, many other tragedies in Na-
ture. One life feeds upon another, even if that other

THE PROBLExM OF SUFFERING. 349

must be taken by pain and violence. The whole cre-
ation seems to be preying upon itself. Tragedy is the
present law of growth, even of life. The very words
themselves — hawks, owls, weasels, skunks, wolves,
dogs, panthers, etc. — bring up a host of bloody images
and murders. You have simply to watch the barnyard
fowls in their excursions about the farm to see tragedy
on a large scale among the insects and reptiles. Nor
does it stop simply with one instance. The weasel sucks
the blood of the chicken, the hen gobbles down a grass-
hopper or a frog, and so on, so far as I know, ad in-
finitum. Savagery has apparently been very contagious.

I have often disturbed mice in shocks of fodder or
in wood-piles. Farmers frequently plow up young rab-
bits and mice and moles, and find nests of quails' eggs
or those of prairie chickens when mowing. Cattle are
continually trampling down nests when brushing
through briars and bushes. I am constantly reminded
of Burns's poems "To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain
Daisy." Readers of Thomas Hardy will remember his
touching description, in "Jude the Obscure," of the
wounded rabbit crying in the snare. Burns, again,
reveals his sympathetic nature in his poem "On Seeing
a Wounded Hare Limp by Me." Sometimes a snake
is cut all to pieces on the meadow, and I have seen a
dog who, in the exhilaration and joy of life in the fields
and grass, had bounded in front of the mower and had
his legs cut off and mangled. We had to kill him
aftenvards, and it seemed as If he understood what the
old rifle was for, from the look In his eyes.

I remember once finding a little puppy which had
been lost in the woods. I had heard his cries, and had

350 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

thought he hp.d been poisoned or was hurt, and went
to help him. I followed his pitiful sounds, and found
him alone in the most desolate part of the woods. He
had evidently been left there by some man to die, and
had been there now alone for some days. The starv-
ation and thirst had caused him apparently to become
insane, so that he seemed not even to be conscious of
my presence. I brought him home, and on the way he
was taken with a kind of fit, and cast up green pieces
of weeds and grass, which he had eaten out there in
his fever. We fed him on milk and bread, and he ate
it so eagerly. But the next day he was taken again,
and immediately the old wild look came into his eyes,
and he made his way back to the woods, and we heard
his strange cries once more. I took the rifle, and found
him again wandering and moaning in his insanity. He
did not notice my presence any more than that of a
stump, but finally, when I poked at him with my gun
barrel, a gleam of remembrance seemed to come into
his eyes for an instant, and he came up to me and
wagged his tail — only to relapse again into his insane
life. And then I killed him. And as I watched him —
his life-blood trickling, the great ragged wound, the
convulsive gaspings, and final stiffening — out there
alone in the woods bending over his frail little body,
1 felt that I was being taught anew of the terrible but
sublime mystery of death. His was the same death
that you and I are to know, and his red blood had
meant as much to his brief life as yours and mine does
to ours. He had done me no harm, but I felt that in
his case to shoot him was one of those things that we
might call a mercy. Poor little fellow ! He had very
beautiful eyes.

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING.

351

Is not insanity counted a terrible thing with us?
Was not his insanity also a tragedy? He might have
spent life happily among the woods, sniffing the leaves
for the trail; instead, he wandered back to the forest,
instinctively, as to his home, his intelligence lost, crazed
by the pain which his masters, in their cruelty, had
brought upon him. Equally with us, I say unfulfilled
life for any creature is a tragedy, and I do not know
of the remedy in this world.

The most heartless crime that I think a man can
perpetrate upon a fellow mortal is to feed a dog upon
ground glass. This causes a most horrible and painful
and lingering death. We once had a fine, intelligent
shepherd dog who was killed by that method, having
in some way incurred the hatred of some lover of
wickedness. He was in the woods two days before we
learned v/here he was, and there I found him, half
dead, and with his hind legs paralyzed. He still recog-
nized me, but he was dying. His cries, as he lay
stretched upon the leaves, still linger in my ears. Now
how did pain serve to him as a ministry of discipline?
Was it not a supremely heartless tragedy?

I am amused at the sheep ("the silly sheep"), and
at their lambs, as they go rollicking about. Yet even
sheep have their tragedies; and I suppose the culmi-
nating tragedy of their lives, to them, is when they are
driven away down the dusty turnpike to the slaughter
pen by the very shepherd who has fed and cared for
them. One instance especially I shall always remember.
It was lambing time, and we had been with the ewes.
One of them lay in evident misery, and we went to her.
She had suffered great pain, and had hoped to nourish

23

352 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

her offspring; but she turned about her great mother
eyes toward it, only to be disappointed and heartbroken.
Her lamb had been born dead.

Thoreau, in his journal ("Winter," February 5,
1854), once jotted down a few thoughts upon a musk-
rat which are worth reading:

"Shall we not have sympathy with the muskrat, which
gnaws its third leg off, not as pitying its suffering, but through
our kindred mortality, appreciating its majestic pains and its
heroic virtue? Are we not made its brothers by fate? F6r
whom are psalms sung and mass said, if not for such worthies
as these? When I hear the church organ peal, or feel the
trembling tones of the bass-viol, I see in imagination the musk-
rat gnawing off his leg. I offer up a note that his affliction
may be sanctified to each and all of us. . . . When I think of
the tragedies which are constantly permitted in the course of all
animal life, they make the plaintive strain of the universal harp
which elevates us above the trivial. . . . Even as the
worthies of mankind are said to recommend human life by
having lived it, so I could not spare the example of the muskrat."

Dr. W. C. Gray, in a paper upon "The Tragedies
in Nature," in his "Musings by Camp-fire and Way-
side," has also written of the existence of pain in the
animal creation — the owl pursuing the duck, the hawk
after the pigeon, the wolves in chase of the doe — but
sees in these a benign intention and, after all, an allevi-
ation. This is often very beautifully true, and the evil
of pain then ceases in its own existence.

I hate to take the life of a fellow creature; yet I
have. And the dripping, sputtering blood, the eyes
still beautiful, have wrung my heart, while, neverthe-

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING.

353

less, I still went on in the triumph of sport. I am not
inclined, however, to think that hunting and trapping,
are an unmixed evil. Both, it is true, cause pain to the
animals hit and caught; and yet, even then, these same
animals die more quickly and with less suffering than
in the lingering way of Nature. I shall not greatly
encourage these pastimes, though I used to love them
and still do, and think they are beneficial in more than
one way. But shall we not, in every way we can, as
our better instincts prompt and guide us, seek to lessen
and to alleviate the misery, wherever found, in this our
common life, and thus play the part of kindness in our
world in a mission of mercy to our fellows of the wild?
We can at least do that.

I acknowledge that the position of the vegetarians
is impregnable. It is true that the Lord, at the cre-
ation, said that the herb of the field and the fruit of
the trees were to be as meat for our forefathers; that
it is only after the fall that we find man sacrificing the
firstlings of his flock; and that it was not until past the
flood that the Lord openly sanctioned to Noah the eat-
ing of flesh. Yet, and notwithstanding, I find myself,
along with millions of other human beings, so com-
pletely transformed by the heredity of the ages that,
if I find I can get hold of a good piece of beefsteak
or some other savory meat, and am hungry after a day's
hard labor — ^well, I am simply going to eat it! Tend-
encies can not be overcome in a day. That is — to com-
plete my little allegory — evil has become so insistent,
so paramount, so preponderant, so much of a "second
nature," as we say, in life that, do what we will, we can
not escape it. Henceforth, after the fall, pain — and

354 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the infliction of it — was to become the lot of wander-
ing man.

But let us recur to the problem ; and, to borrow the
words of Mr. Le Gallienne, in his treatise on pain in
"The Religion of a Literary Man," it is "the imme-
morial problem of the meaning of evil, the mystery of
pain, the crux of theology, the darkest mystery of life."
We have seen that we are perpetually confronted anew
with the pressure of irresistible, overwhelming evil,
with all its lowering, baneful, malevolent, pernicious
effects, and with sorrow, sadness, woe, distress, agony,
grief, misery, inequality, crime, disease — in a word,
pain — as the fruit of experience. Pain does not pre-
sent itself to the eyes of most men so much as a philo-
sophic mystery as it does as an unavoidable fact. "We
are confronted by a condition, not a theory." And
yet a little as to the theory. Whence all this pain that
is so universal? And why?

Now I do not say that joy is any less a mystery,
or any less universal, than pain. I am confining myself
in this paper strictly to the question of the relation of
Nature to the experience of suffering. The presence
of joy is quite another matter. Nature offers, to all
living beings, an alleviation in constant presentations
of what Walter Pater calls "the intricate omnipres-
ence of beauty" (which in itself is indeed a sign of
promise), and in the manifold possibilities of the en-
joyment of their natures in the exercise of play, the
sense of humor, the pleasures of discovery, and in many
ways other than the paths of pain. There are laws
other than the law of tooth and claw. But it is rather
a utilitarian view of life which would say, "Let us seek.

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 355

pain, because of the pleasure that cometh in self-sacri-
fice." Martyrdom, of course, has always been a most
heroic feature of human life; and yet who will dare to
affirm that the pages of history would not be the
brighter without it? Martyrdom, indeed, is one of
the darkest blots upon civilization. Let us confront
pain bravely, if necessary; but let us not think ourselves
cowards if we avoid it. We were created to live hap-
pily ; and Whitman was not so far wrong when he told
us to seek Happiness and to diffuse it. Yet shall we all
have to meet pain, nevertheless. The way of the cross,
as Thomas a Kempis so profoundly said, is "the royal
way."

But why, after all, should not man and Nature live
without pain? Why should we be compelled to con-
front the spectacle of blasted lives, unfulfilled natures,
premature death in the midst of usefulness and joy in
one's labor? Why should Lincoln and McKinley have
to die by the assassin? Why could not Lincoln have
lived to enact his policy of reconstruction, and McKin-
ley his of reciprocity? There were lessons brought
home to the American people by their deaths that per-
haps could not have been accomplished so well in any
other way; and we have taken the lessons to ourselves,
that they died that we might live. But what shall we
say of the innumerable tragedies all over the world,
except that by these, too, is brought home to us merely
the ever-recurring problem of our destiny? Those who
die thus, while not realizing as perhaps they might the
fullness of their powers, yet have their individual loss,
the evil of their personal sacrifice, translated into terms
of beneficence for the rest of mankind. But what of

356 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

the individuals themselves? How else lies their recom-
pense? And shall we say also of the world of the
lower animals and the rest of Nature that their pain is,
too, but a vicarious suffering? To say that sorrow
brings with it a greater good than would, or could,
exist without it is all well enough as a theory, and may
be true in some cases, but I can not accept it as a uni-
versal fact, applicable alike to all individuals. No, I
find life otherwise. I am confronted with the evidences
of genuine and implacable suffering In all the world of
Nature. I simply have bravely to admit its existence,
and to acknowledge that the presence of pain in the uni-
verse is an ineffaceable reality and an ever-returning,
baffling mystery — in itself a source of pain.

James Hinton's book, "The Mystery of Pain," has
been of much help to me. It is, indeed, "a book for
the sorrowful." His argument seems to me at times
to be somewhat vitiated by his apparent refusal to rec-
ognize the absolute reality of pain In an attempt to ex-
plain it away by showing that individual good comes
from it, which Is by no means universally the case. In
the life that now Is. The joy of sacrifice may under
the circumstances be In many Instances the best possible
compensation for the undergoing of pain (and It is
surely In that spirit that, when necessary, we should
meet it), but It Is not a substitute for the happiness of
innocence; the sting remains, and the memory of evil.
Schopenhauer was right at least In this, that he recog-
nized the undeniable reality of evil as evil, and had per-
haps more than any other philosopher an insight into
its nature.

The only adequate explanation that I have to offer

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 357

of the existence of suffering among the lower animals,
as well as with men, and, consequently, of the deeper
problem of the origin and solution of evil, is that sug-
gested in the Scriptures — in the Book of Job, for ex-
ample— that there is in very truth a spiritual conflict in
the universe between the forces (shall we say?) of
good and evil, and that pain, not only with us but with
the rest of creation, is, and has ever been, perpetrated
(in theological terminology) by our common Adver-
sary. The Lord God brings his aims to naught by
the fruition of love, longsuftering, peace, and gentle-
ness ; but the evil was there, and it was evil, and we have
suffered pain, and I do not say that we could not have
had the higher life without it. There seems to have
been (all things point to it, in my mind) a considerable
catastrophe at some time in the history of the human
race, the effects of which extend even now unto .all
Nature. Man fell; and we have no record that he
was unhappy before the fall. Sin is the transgression
of the law; and with sin has come pain, perhaps only
to be eliminated when we shall have learned, through
the long schooling of the centuries, so to conform our
lives to the indwelling of His presence that evil shall
no longer be amongst us.

The supremacy of evil, however, can be but a tem-
poral triumph. Pain is not an irremediable state of
affairs. No one who has faith can believe that. Every
one who holds serene any scrap of confidence that, after
all, the world was not made to be a failure must believe,
with Tennyson, that, though the vision is blinded from
us by the veil, yet "somehow good will be the final goal
of ill," and that in permitting evil it has not been the

358 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

intention to condone it; but it has been permitted —
shall we say, in a paradox? — that it might eventually
and forever be annihilated. 1 do not say what the
process shall be; but influences, however subtle, are
real, and the very effects of evil may be ultimately to
rid us of it. Yet the final triumph of good must be,
not from any development of evil itself, but in its abso-
lute suppression and destruction, when God shall be
"all in all."

So, sings Tennyson, in his "In Memoriam:"

"O yet I trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of Nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;

"That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed.
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

"That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire.
Or but subserves another's gain.

"Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last — far off — at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring."

Man fell ; but we are told there is to be a restora-
tion to another Paradise, when God shall walk among
men again, and be their God. It is none of our doing.
"God so loved the world." Now I refuse to separate
man from the rest of Nature, to elevate him on a
superior pedestal, and to alienate these, our brethren of

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 359

the fields; and I believe that the promises are applicable
to them also. For evil came not from Nature as she
fell created from the hand of God. Behold, every-
thing was very good ! The thorn is concealed beneath
the rose, but the rose itself is beautiful. Evil came
from the Tempter. I want to see the devil recognized
as responsible for some of the evil that is in me and the
rest of creation. Nature assumes her various forms
of life — and lo! comes "the Fall," as we call it (man's
fall), and enters into them. Man thus is not the only
being that suffers ("the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together"), nor is it to man alone
(surely!) that the promises are given. For if there be
no recompense for undeserved loss in the animal world,
then is there no justice, and life becomes hopelessly
and forever an inscrutable mystery, and the understand-
ing itself becomes darkened. But with this view of an
ultimate release from pain in some final restitution all
becomes clear and hopeful that otherwise is but a sad
despair. We may not see it in our time, but that the
light will come who can doubt? Said Thoreau, at the
close of his "Walden:" "There is more day to dawn.
The sun is but a morning star."

He is a profound thinker, Mr. Henry Mills Alden,
who in his "God in His World" has expressed my
thought in this way:

"If we know not what we shall be, neither do we know
what Nature shall be, in her on-going from strength unto
strength. There is no antagonism between the Natural and
the Spiritual. Humanity has been bound up with Nature
from the beginning, and, through the Incarnation, this bond
has become a sacrament. If we are to suppose that any change

360 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

has passed upon what we call the material world, in conse-
quence of or in sympathy with man's errors, it has not, as we
have seen, been such as to effect the correspondence of its mean-
ings, spiritually interpreted, with those of the kingdom of
heaven, as revealed by our Lord ; and, if there has been any
change due to the perversion of human life, then may we expect
that Nature will in like manner respond unto the renewals
of our life."

Then, too, even in this life, Nature comes as a con-
solation in the very face of evil, and her wildness and
reserve, her buoyancy and free life, her variety and
constant surprises, are the springs of hope and joy to
all earth's myriads of inhabitants; while in her deeper
significance men learn of the truths of tenderness, of
beauty, of mystery, and of far-away infinity, the flute-
notes from wood and meadow Interacting with the
breezes among the trees and the greenness and the blue
sky and the rippling water, to form one world-wide
harmony, and to make existence a dream and a fore-
taste of Immortality. The most beautiful music seems
perfectly In attune with Nature, from the concerts of
an orchestra to the simplest notes of the flageolet. The
coy wood-ways of bird, beast, and flower — what a
world we have !

Instead of a totally supernaturalistic creed shall we
not add to the statement of our beliefs this aflirmatlon:
/ believe in Nature! "I believe In the forest," said
Thoreau, speaking of the necessity of wildness in our
lives and literature, "and In the meadows, and in the
night In which the corn grows." That was part of his
creed, and his religion. Oh, yes ! the world is full of

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 36 1

suffering, even the birds and the wild doe. But Nature
has not therefore altogether been depraved, because of
pain, caused, according to tradition, by the entrance of
a spirit alien to our world. Can we not interpret the
facts of Nature poetically, and shall we not find in them
spiritualizing influences instead of the mere brute
forces? I think we can. I think we do. For, whether
we will it or no, it is in the world that we live, and it
is from the world that we derive most of the qualities
of our better selves.

Pain thus, we may say, after all, should become an
encouragement. It should be the constant reminder
that our liberation Is not so far distant; is, indeed,
growing nearer day by day. And, if we have known
happiness even when evil has been about us, surely,
then, when pain shall have been banished, shall we es-
cape from the beclouded understanding of this life into
the blessedness of perfect peace, taking with us the
things that we love, and leaving behind forever the
things that have marred our progress.

Isaiah prophesies of the reign of righteousness in a
beautiful passage (Isaiah xi, 6-9), which, while figu-
rative, may perhaps some day also (let us hope) see
some sort of a literal fulfillment:

"And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young Hon
and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

And, again, among the passages in the Bible that
are the most stately, and that I hold closest to heart,
are two others also, the one from Paul to the Romans

362 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD.

and the other from the concluding vision of the Reve-
lation. Says the Apostle (Romans viii, 18-23) :

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are
not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be re-
vealed to US-ward. . . . For we know that the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not
only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the
Spirit^ even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."

Says John, In his rhapsody, of the City of God (Reve-
lation xxl, 3, 4) :

"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall
dwell with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Him-
self shall be with them, and be their God : and He shall wipe
away everj' tear from their eyes ; and death shall be no more ;
neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any
more: the first things are passed away."

And we may believe that the beasts of the field, and
the fowls of the air, and all the rest of the loved life
of Earth, will not be forgotten in the realization of
such a Consummation.

THE WOOD THRUSH : A Sonnet.

The shy wood thrush, concealed amid the trees,
Pours forth his even-song unto his mate :
She, seated on the nest, alone in the late

Spring day. With her bright look she, peering, sees

His joy. His woodland strains swell on the breeze,
And trill, and plead, and not a tone abate.
In accents sweet; his liquid eyes dilate;

The bubbling notes strike tinklingly like keys
Together, or, like drops of water, fall ;

His spotted breast heaves, and sends from his throat

Rare native music, lays to her devote.
In his clear, flute-like, warbling call : —

And from these depths, his green-leaved habitude,

It ceases. — Then the twilight solitude.

iFnr tl|0 tttnnhrntta brautg auJj mgatrrg of ltgl|t; far lift
atara ani tl|f matpatg of ntgljt; for ifto-aprinklrii, bapplrb
mormnga an5 goliipn-atrrakph, aloto-bging aunarta; for lift
blur akg anb ita ratn-rrfrraljtng rlouba; for flomrra, birha,
anb trrra; for anomflakra nnh ttjr Ijrartij-aiJJr ; for tt|r frllom-
aliip of antmala, ani for mg own Itfr: — for tl|rar, Horb, 31
tijank ullrrr- ICtft mr tI|rougI| tl^rm abow atn unto tl|r ron-
trmplatton of tijp brat, forgtur mg fratltjj, anb finally rrrritt?
mr into (Ei^rtat'a rrirmptton. Amrn.

' Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court ?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.
The seasons' difference, — as the icy fang
And churlish biting of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
' This is no flattery '—these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt.
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it."

— Js You Like It.

DATE DUE

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