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Riverside Cpition
THE WRITINGS OF
JOHN BURROUGHS
VOLUME II
-
Chis dition is limited to One Chougany Acts
fi
THE WRITINGS OF |, ae
JOHN BURROUGHS,
Ribergune Edition
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO
WINTER SUNSHINE
BY
JOHN BURROUGHS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Che Viverside Press, Cambridge
1895
ye
Copyright, 1875, 1895,
By JOHN BURROUGHS.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. 8. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
PREFATORY
Tue only part of my book I wish to preface is
the last part, — the foreign sketches, — and it is not
much matter about these, since, if they do not con-
tain their own proof, I shall not attempt to supply
it here.
I have been told that De Lolme, who wrote a no-
table book on the English Constitution, said that
after he had been in England a few weeks, he fully
made up his mind to write a book on that country ;
after he had lived there a year, he still thought of
writing a book, but was not so certain about it, but
that after a residence of ten years he abandoned his
first design altogether. Instead of furnishing an ar-
gument against writing out one’s first impressions of
a country, I think the experience of the Frenchman
shows the importance of doing it at once. The sen-
sations of the first day are what we want, — the first
flush of the traveler’s thought and feeling, before
his perception and sensibilities become cloyed or
blunted, or before he in any way becomes a part of
that which he would observe and describe. Then
the American in England is just enough at home to
enable him to discriminate subtle shades and differ-
vi PREFATORY
ences at first sight which might escape a traveler of
another and antagonistic race. He has brought with
him, but little modified or impaired, his whole in-
heritance of English ideas and predilections, and
much of what he sees affects him like a memory.
It is his own past, his ante-natal life, and his long-
buried ancestors look through his eyes and perceive
with his sense.
I have attempted only the surface, and to express
my own first day’s uncloyed and unalloyed satisfac-
tion. Of course I have put these things through my
own processes and given them my own coloring (as
who would not), and if other travelers do not find
what I did, it is no fault of mine; or if the “ Brit
ishers ”’ do not deserve all the pleasant things I say
of them, why then so much the worse for them.
In fact, if it shall appear that I have treated this
part in the same spirit that I have the themes in the
other chapters, reporting only such things as im-
pressed me and stuck to me and tasted good, I shall
be satisfied.
Esorus-on-Hupson, November, 1875.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Winter SuNsHINE . ‘ . F ‘ 1
II. Toe EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD . a 23
Ill. Tue SNow-WaALKERS a ‘i i * , 41
IV. Tue Fox . ‘ z é F e f . 67
Vv. A Marcu CHRonIcie ¥ z . ‘ . » 85
VI. Autumn TIDEs 5 “ F ; ‘i ‘ 97
VII. Tur Aprie . ‘ . é ‘ ‘ a - 1183
VIII. Aw Ocroprer ABROAD:
1. Mellow England. ; * ‘ é « 181
ut. English Characteristics . é : - 170
ur. A Glimpse of France ‘ . : r - 185
iv. From London to New York e i i 204
INDEX . i é . . , . ‘ ‘i . 237
The frontispiece and vignette were etched by W. H. W. Bick-
nell.
WINTER SUNSHINE
I
WINTER SUNSHINE
A® American resident in England is reported as
saying that the English have an atmosphere
but no climate. The reverse of this remark would
apply pretty accurately to our own case. We cer-
tainly have a climate, a two-edged one that cuts
both ways, threatening us with sun-stroke on the
one hand and with frost-stroke on the other; but
we have no atmosphere to speak of in New York
and New England, except now and then during the
dog-days, or the fitful and uncertain Indian Sum-
mer. An atmosphere, the quality of tone and mel-
lowness in the near distance, is the product of a
more humid climate. Hence, as we go south from
New York, the atmospheric effects become more
rich and varied, until on reaching the Potomac you
find an atmosphere as well as a climate. The lat-
ter is still on the vehement American scale, full of
sharp and violent changes and contrasts, baking and
blistering in summer, and nipping and blighting in
winter, but the spaces are not so purged and bare;
2 WINTER SUNSHINE
the horizon wall does not so often have the appear-
ance of having just been washed and scrubbed down.
There is more depth and visibility to the open air,
a stronger infusion of the Indian Summer element
throughout the year, than is found farther north.
The days are softer and more brooding, and the
nights more enchanting. It is here that Walt
Whitman saw the full moon
“Pour down Night’s nimbus floods,”
as any one may see her, during her full, from Octo-
ber to May. ‘There is more haze and vapor in the
atmosphere during that period, and every particle
seems to collect and hold the pure radiance until
the world swims with the lunar outpouring. Is
not the full moon always on the side of fair weather ?
I think it is Sir William Herschel who says her
influence tends to dispel the clouds. Certain it is
her beauty is seldom lost or even veiled in this
southern or semi-southern clime.
It is here also the poet speaks of the
“Floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous,
Indolent sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,”’
a description that would not apply with the same
force farther north, where the air seems thinner and
less capable of absorbing and holding the sunlight,
Indeed, the opulence and splendor of our climate,
at least the climate of our Atlantic seaboard, cannot
be fully appreciated by the dweller north of the
thirty-ninth parallel. It seemed as if I had never
seen but a second-rate article of sunlight or moon-
light until I had taken up my abode in the National
WINTER SUNSHINE 3
Capital. It may be, perhaps, because we have such
splendid specimens of both at that period of the year
when one values such things highest, namely, in
the fall and winter and early spring. Sunlight is
good any time, but a bright, evenly tempered day
is certainly more engrossing to the attention in
winter than in summer, and such days seem the
tule, and not the exception, in the Washington
winter. The deep snows keep to the north, the
heavy rains to the south, leaving a blue space cen-
tral over the border States. And there is not one
of the winter months but wears this blue zone as
a girdle.
I am not thinking especially of the Indian Sum-
mer, that charming but uncertain second youth of
the New England year, but of regularly recurring
lucid intervals in the weather system of the Virginia
fall and winter, when the best our climate is capable
of stands revealed, — southern days with northern
blood in their veins, exhilarating, elastic, full of
action, the hyperborean oxygen of the North tem-
pered by the dazzling sun of the South, a little bit-
ter in winter to all travelers but the pedestrian, —
to him sweet and warming, —but in autumn a
vintage that intoxicates all lovers of the open air.
It is impossible not to dilate and expand under
such skies. One breathes deeply and steps proudly,
and if he have any of the eagle nature in him it
comes to the surface then. There is a sense of
altitude about these dazzling November and Decem-
ber days, of mountain tops and pure ether. The
4 WINTER SUNSHINE
earth in passing through the fire of summer seems
to have lost all its dross, and life all its impedi-
ments.
But what does not the dweller in the National
Capital endure in reaching these days! Think of
the agonies of the heated term, the ragings of the
dog-star, the purgatory of heat and dust, of baking,
blistering pavements, of cracked and powdered
fields, of dead, stifling night air, from which every
tonic and antiseptic quality seems eliminated, leav-
ing a residuum of sultry malaria and all-diffusing
privy and sewer gases, that lasts from the first of
July to near the middle of September! But when
October is reached, the memory of these things is
afar off, and the glory of the days is a perpetual
surprise.
I sally out in the morning with the ostensible
purpose of gathering chestnuts, or autumn leaves,
or persimmons, or exploring some run or branch.
It is, say, the last of October or the first of Novem-
ber. The air is not balmy, but tart and pungent,
like the flavor of the red-cheeked apples by the
roadside. In the sky not a cloud, not a speck; a
vast dome of blue ether lightly suspended above the
world. The woods are heaped with color like a
painter’s palette, — great splashes of red and orange
and gold. The ponds and streams bear upon their
bosoms leaves of all tints, from the deep maroon of
the oak to the pale yellow of the chestnut. In the
glens and nooks it is so still that the chirp of a
solitary cricket is noticeable. ‘The red berries of
WINTER SUNSHINE 5
the dogwood and spice-bush and other shrubs shine
in the sun like rubies and coral. The crows fly
high above the earth, as they do only on such days,
forms of ebony floating across the azure, and the
buzzards look like kingly birds, sailing round and
round.
Or it may be later in the season, well into De-
cember. The days are equally bright, but a little
more rugged. The mornings are ushered in by an
immense spectrum thrown upon the eastern sky.
A broad bar of red and orange lies along the low
horizon, surmounted by an expanse of color in
which green struggles with yellow and blue with
green half the way to the zenith. By and by the
red and orange spread upward and grow dim, the
spectrum fades, and the sky becomes suffused with
yellow white light, and in a moment the fiery scin-
tillations of the sun begin to break across the Mary-
land hills. Then before long the mists and vapors
uprise like the breath of a giant army, and for an
hour or two one is reminded of a November morn-
ing in England. But by mid-forenoon the only
trace of the obscurity that remains is a slight haze,
and the day is indeed a summons and a challenge
to come forth. If the October days were a cordial
like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the
wine of iron. Drink deep, or be careful how you
taste this December vintage. The first sip may
chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates.
No loitering by the brooks or in the woods now,
but spirited, rugged walking along the public high-
6 WINTER SUNSHINE
way. The sunbeams are welcome now. They seem
like pure electricity, —like friendly and recuperating
lightning. Are we led to think electricity abounds
only in summer when we see in the storm-clouds, as
it were, the veins and ore-beds of it? JI imagine it
is equally abundant in winter, and more equable
and better tempered. Who ever breasted a snow-
storm without being excited and exhilarated, as if
this meteor had come charged with latent aurore of
the North, as doubtless it has? It is like being
pelted with sparks from a battery. Behold the
frostwork on the pane, —the wild, fantastic lim-
nings and etchings! can there be any doubt but this
subtle agent has been here? Where is it not? It
is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake,
the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This
crisp winter air is full of it. When I come in at
night after an all-day tramp I am charged like a
Leyden jar; my hair crackles and snaps beneath the
comb like a cat’s back, and a strange, new glow
diffuses itself through my system.
It is a spur that one feels at this season more
than at any other. How nimbly you step forth!
The woods roar, the waters shine, and the hills
look invitingly near. You do not miss the flowers
and the songsters, or wish the trees or the fields
any different, or heavens any nearer. Every object
pleases. A rail fence, running athwart the hills,
now in sunshine and now in shadow, — how the eye
lingers upon it! Or the straight, light-gray trunks
of the trees, where the woods have recently been
WINTER SUNSHINE 7
laid open by a road or a clearing, — how curious they
look, and as if surprised in undress! Next year
they will begin to shoot out branches and make
themselves a screen. Or the farm scenes, —the
winter barnyards littered with husks and straw, the
rough-coated horses, the cattle sunning themselves
or walking down to the spring to drink, the domes-
tic fowls moving about, — there is a touch of sweet,
homely life in these things that the winter sun
enhances and brings out. Every sign of life is
welcome at this season. I love to hear dogs bark,
hens cackle, and boys shout; one has no privacy
with Nature now, and does not wish to seek her in
nooks and hidden ways. She is not at home if he
goes there; her house is shut up and her hearth
cold; only the sun and sky, and perchance the
waters, wear the old look, and to-day we will make
love to them, and they shall abundantly return it.
Even the crows and the buzzards draw the eye
fondly. The National Capital is a great’ place for
buzzards, and I make the remark in no double or
allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are
black and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly
dovelike in their tastes. My vulture is also a bird
of leisure, and sails through the ether on long flex-
ible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his
life. Some birds have wings, others have “ pinions,”
The buzzard enjoys this latter distinction. There
is something in the sound of the word that suggests
that easy, dignified, undulatory movement. He
does not propel himself along by sheer force of
8 WINTER SUNSHINE
muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow for
instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirec-
tion that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter
day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as
ever, rising and falling as he comes up toward you,
carving his way through the resisting currents by a
slight oscillation to the right and left, but never
once beating the air openly.
This superabundance of wing power is very un-
equally distributed among the feathered races, the
hawks and vultures having by far the greater share
of it. They cannot command the most speed, but
their apparatus seems the most delicate and consum-
mate. Apparently a fine play of muscle, a subtle
shifting of the power along the outstretched wings,
a perpetual loss and a perpetual recovery of the
equipoise, sustains them and bears them along.
With them flying is a luxury, a fine art, not merely
a quicker and safer means of transit from one point
to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that
work becomes leisure and movement rest. They
are not so much going somewhere, from this perch
to that, as they are abandoning themselves to the
mere pleasure of riding upon the air.
And it is beneath such grace and high-bred leis-
ure that Nature hides in her creatures the occupation
of scavenger and carrion-eater!
But the worst thing about the buzzard is his
silence. The crow caws, the hawk screams, the
eagle barks, but the buzzard says not a word. So
far as I have observed, he has no vocal powers what-
WINTER SUNSHINE 9
ever. Nature dare not trust him to speak. In his
case she preserves a discreet silence.
The crow may not have the sweet voice which
the fox in his flattery attributed to him, but he has
a good, strong, native speech nevertheless. How
much character there is in it! How much thrift
and independence! Of course his plumage is firm,
his color decided, his wit quick. He understands
you at once and tells you so; so does the hawk by
his scornful, defiant whir-r-r-r-r. Hardy, happy
outlaws, the crows, how I love them! Alert, social,
republican, always able to look out for themselves,
not afraid of the cold and the snow, fishing when
flesh is scarce, and stealing when other resources
fail, the crow is a character I would not willingly /
miss from the landscape. I love to see his track in
the snow or the mud, and his graceful pedestrianism
about the brown fields.
He is no interloper, but has the air and manner
of being thoroughly at home, and in rightful posses-
sion of the land. He is no sentimentalist like some
of the plaining, disconsolate song-birds, but appar-
ently is always in good health and good spirits.
No matter who is sick, or dejected, or unsatisfied,
or what the weather is, or what the price of corn,
the crow is well and finds life sweet. He is the
dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom and prudence.
Then he is one of Nature’s self-appointed constables
and greatly magnifies his office. He would fain
arrest every hawk or owl or grimalkin that ventures
abroad. I have known a posse of them to beset the
10 WINTER SUNSHINE
fox and cry “Thief!” till Reynard hid himself for
shame. Do J say the fox flattered the crow when
he told him he had a sweet voice? Yet one of the
most musical sounds in nature proceeds from the
crow. All the crow tribe, from the blue jay up, are
capable of certain low ventriloquial notes that have
peculiar cadence and charm. I often hear the crow
indulging in his in winter, and am reminded of the
sound of the dulcimer. The bird stretches up and
exerts himself like a cock in the act of crowing and
gives forth a peculiarly clear, vitreous sound that is
sure to arrest and reward your attention. This is
no doubt the song the fox begged to be favored
with, as in delivering it the crow must inevitably
let drop the piece of meat.
The crow in his purity, I believe, is seen and
heard only in the North. Before you reach the
Potomac there is an infusion of a weaker element,
the fish crow, whose helpless feminine call contrasts
strongly with the hearty masculine caw of the origi-
nal Simon.
In passing from crows to colored men, I hope I
am not guilty of any disrespect toward the latter.
In my walks about Washington, both winter and
summer, colored men are about the only pedestrians
I meet; and I meet them everywhere, in the fields
and in the woods and in the public road, swinging
along with that peculiar, rambling, elastic gait, tak-
ing advantage of the short cuts and threading the
country with paths and byways. I doubt if the
colored man can compete with his white brother as
WINTER SUNSHINE 11
a walker; his foot is too flat and the calves of his
legs too small, but he is certainly the most pic-
turesque traveler to be seen on the road. He bends
his knees more than the white man, and oscillates
more to and fro, or from side to side. The imagi-
nary line which his head describes is full of deep
and long undulations. Even the boys and young
men sway as if bearing a burden.
Along the fences and by the woods I come upon
their snares, dead-falls, and rude box-traps. The
freedman is a successful trapper and hunter, and
has by nature an insight into these things. I fre-
quently see him in market or on his way thither
with a tame ’possum clinging timidly to his shoul-
ders, or a young coon or fox led by a chain. In-
deed, the colored man behaves precisely like the
rude unsophisticated peasant that he is, and there
is fully as much virtue in him, using the word in
its true sense, as in the white peasant; indeed,
much more than in the poor whites who grew up
by his side; while there is often a benignity and a
depth of human experience and sympathy about
some of these dark faces that comes home to one
like the best one sees in art of reads in books.
One touch of nature makes all the world akin,
and there is certainly a touch of nature about the
colored man; indeed, I had almost said, of Anglo-
Saxon nature. They have the quaintness and home-
liness of the simple English stock. I seem to see
my grandfather and grandmother in the ways and
doings of these old “uncles” and “aunties;” in-
12 WINTER SUNSHINE
deed, the lesson comes nearer home than even that,
for I seem to see myself in them, and, what is more,
I see that they see themselves in me, and that
neither party has much to boast of.
The negro is a plastic human creature, and is
thoroughly domesticated and thoroughly anglicized.
The same cannot be said of the Indian for instance,
between us and whom there can never exist any
fellowship, any community of feeling or interest;
or is there any doubt but the Chinaman will always
remain to us the same impenetrable mystery he has
been from the first ?
But there is no mystery about the negro, and he
touches the Anglo-Saxon at more points than the
latter is always willing to own, taking as kindly
and naturally to all his customs and usages, yea, to
all his prejudices and superstitions, as if to the
manor born. ‘The colored population in very many
respects occupies the same position as that occupied
by our rural populations a generation or two ago,
seeing signs and wonders, haunted by the fear of
ghosts and hobgoblins, believing in witchcraft,
charms, the evil eye, etc. In religious matters,
also, they are on the same level, and about the only
genuine shouting Methodists that remain are to be
found in the colored churches. Indeed, I fear the
negro tries to ignore or forget himself as far as pos-
sible, and that he would deem it felicity enough to
play second fiddle to the white man all his days.
He liked his master, but he likes the Yankee bet-
ter, not because he regards him as his deliverer, but
WINTER SUNSHINE 13
mainly because the two-handed thrift of the North-
erner, his varied and wonderful ability, completely
captivates the imagination of the black man, just
learning to shift for himself.
How far he has caught or is capable of being
imbued with the Yankee spirit of enterprise and
industry, remains to be seen. In some things he
has already shown himself an apt scholar. I no-
tice, for instance, he is about as industrious an
office-seeker as the most patriotic among us, and
that he learns with amazing ease and rapidity all
the arts and wiles of the politicians. He is versed
in parades, mass meetings, caucuses, and will soon
shine on the stump. I observe, also, that he is not
far behind us in the observance of the fashions, and
that he is as good a church-goer, theatre-goer, and
pleasure-seeker generally, as his means will allow.
As a bootblack or newsboy, he is an adept in all
the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man
about town among his kind, he is worthy his white
prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the
coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best
style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street
corners of a Sunday afternoon, he has taken his
degree.
On the other hand, I know cases among our col-
ored brethren, plenty of them, of conscientious and
well-directed effort and industry in the worthiest
fields, in agriculture, in trade, in the mechanic arts,
that show the colored man has in him all the best
rudiments of a citizen of the States.
14 WINTER SUNSHINE
Lest my winter sunshine appear to have too
many dark rays in it, — buzzards, crows, and colored
men, —I hasten to add the brown and neutral tints,
and may be a red ray can be extracted from some
of these hard, smooth, sharp-gritted roads that radi-
ate from the National Capital. Leading out of
Washington there are several good roads that invite
the pedestrian. There is the road that leads west
or northwest from Georgetown, the Tenallytown
road, the very sight of which, on a sharp, lustrous
winter Sunday, makes the feet tingle. Where it
‘euts through a hill or high knoll, it is so red it
fairly glows in the sunlight. Ill warrant you will
kindle, and your own color will mount, if you resign
yourself to it. It will conduct you to the wild and
rocky scenery of the upper Potomac, to Great Falls,
and on to Harper’s Ferry, if your courage holds
out. Then there is the road that leads north over
Meridian Hill, across Piny Branch, and on through
the wood of Crystal Springs to Fort Stevens, and
so into Maryland. This is the proper route for an
excursion in the spring to gather wild flowers, or in
the fall for a nutting expedition, as it lays open
some noble woods and a great variety of charming
scenery; or for a musing moonlight saunter, say in
December, when the Enchantress has folded and
folded the world in her web, it is by all means the
course to take. Your staff rings on the hard
ground; the road, a misty white belt, gleams and
vanishes before you; the woods are cavernous and
still; the fields lie in a lunar trance, and you will
WINTER SUNSHINE 15
yourself return fairly mesmerized by the beauty of
the scene.
Or you can bend your steps eastward over the
Eastern Branch, up Good Hope Hill, and on till
you strike the Marlborough pike, as a trio of us did
that cold February Sunday we walked from Wash-
ington to Pumpkintown and back.
A short sketch of this pilgrimage is a fair sample
of these winter walks,
The delight I experienced in making this new
acquisition to my geography was of itself sufficient
to atone for any aches or weariness I may have felt.
The mere fact that one may walk from Washington
to Pumpkintown was a discovery I had been all
these years in making. I had walked to Sligo, and
to the Northwest Branch, and had made the Falls
of the Potomac in a circuitous route of ten miles,
coming suddenly upon the river in one of its wildest
passes; but I little dreamed all the while that there,
in a wrinkle (or shall I say furrow?) of the Mary-
land hills, almost visible from the outlook of the
bronze squaw on the dome of the Capitol, and just
around the head of Oxen Run, lay Pumpkintown.
The day was cold but the sun was bright, and
the foot took hold of those hard, dry, gritty Mary-
land roads with the keenest relish. How the leaves
of the laurel glistened! The distant oak woods
suggested gray-blue smoke, while the recesses of the
pines looked like the lair of Night. Beyond the
District limits we struck the Marlborough pike,
which, round and hard and white, held squarely to
16 WINTER SUNSHINE
the east and was visible a mile ahead. Its friction
brought up the temperature amazingly and spurred
the pedestrians into their best time. As I trudged
along, Thoreau’s lines came naturally to mind: —
“When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct of travel,
I can get enough gravel
On the old Marlborough road.’
Cold as the day was (many degrees below freez-
ing), I heard and saw bluebirds, and as we passed
along every sheltered tangle and overgrown field or
lane swarmed with snowbirds and sparrows, — the
latter mainly Canada or tree sparrows, with a sprink-
ling of the song, and, maybe, one or two other
varieties. The birds are all social and gregarious
in winter, and seem drawn together by common in-
stinct. Where you find one, you will not only find
others of the same kind, but also several different
kinds. The regular winter residents go in little
bands, like a well-organized pioneer corps, — the
jays and woodpeckers in advance, doing the heavier
work; the nuthatches next, more lightly armed;
and the creepers and kinglets, with their slender
beaks and microscopic eyes, last of all.?
Now and then, among the gray and brown tints,
there was a dash of scarlet, — the cardinal grosbeak,
whose presence was sufficient to enliven any scene.
In the leafless trees, as a ray of sunshine fell upon
him, he was visible a long way off, glowing like a
1 It seems to me this is a borrowed observation, but I do not
know whom to credit it to.
WINTER SUNSHINE 17
crimson spar, — the only bit of color in the whole
landscape.
Maryland is here rather a level, unpicturesque
country, —the gaze of the traveler bounded, at no
great distance, by oak woods, with here and there
a dark line of pine. We saw few travelers, passed
a ragged squad or two of colored boys and girls, and
met some colored women on their way to or from
church, perhaps. Never ask a colored person — at
least the crude, rustic specimens—any question
that involves a memory of names, or any arbitrary
signs; you will rarely get a satisfactory answer. If
you could speak to them in their own dialect, or
touch the right spring in their minds, you would,
no doubt, get the desired information. They are as
local in their notions and habits as the animals, and
go on much the same principles, as no doubt we all
do, more or less. I saw a colored boy come into
a public office one day, and ask to see a man with
red hair; the name was utterly gone from him.
The man had red whiskers, which was as near as he
had come to the mark. Ask your washerwoman
what street she lives on, or where such a one has
moved to, and the chances are that she cannot tell
you, except that it is a “right smart distance” this
way or that, or near Mr. So-and-so, or by such and
such a place, describing some local feature. I love
to amuse myself, when walking through the market,
by asking the old aunties, and the young aunties,
too, the names of their various “yarbs.” It seems
as if they must trip on the simplest names. Blood-
18 WINTER SUNSHINE
root they generally call “grubroot;” trailing ar-
butus goes by the names of “troling” arbutus,
“training arbuty-flower,” and ground “ivory;” in
Virginia they call woodchucks “moonacks.”
On entering Pumpkintown —a cluster of five or
six small, whitewashed blockhouses, toeing squarely
on the highway —the only inhabitant we saw was
a small boy, who was as frank and simple as if he
had lived on pumpkins and marrow squashes all his
days.
Half a mile farther on, we turned to the right
into a characteristic Southern road, —a way entirely
unkempt, and wandering free as the wind; now
fading out into a broad field; now contracting into
a narrow track between hedges; anon roaming with
delightful abandon through swamps and woods, ask-
ing no leave and keeping no bounds. About two
o’clock we stopped in an opening in a pine wood
and ate our lunch. We had the good fortune to
hit upon a charming place. A wood-chopper had
been there, and let in the sunlight full and strong;
and the white chips, the newly-piled wood, and the
mounds of green boughs, were welcome features,
and helped also to keep off the wind that would
creep through under the pines. The ground was
soft and dry, with a carpet an inch thick of pine-
needles, and with a fire, less for warmth than to
make the picture complete, we ate our bread and
beans with the keenest satisfaction, and with a rel-
ish that only the open air can give.
A fire, of course, —an encampment in the woods
WINTER SUNSHINE 19
at this season without a fire would be like leaving
Hamlet out of the play. A smoke is your stand-
ard, your flag; it defines and locates your camp at
once; you are an interloper until you have made a
fire; then you take possession; then the trees and
rocks seem to look upon you more kindly, and you
look more kindly upon them. As one opens his
budget, so he opens his heart by a fire. Already
something has gone out from you, and comes back
as a faint reminiscence and home feeling in the air
and place. One looks out upon the crow or the
buzzard that sails by as from his own fireside. It
is not I that am a wanderer and a stranger now;
it is the crow and the buzzard. The chickadees
were silent at first, but now they approach by little
journeys, as if to make our acquaintance. The
nuthatches, also, cry “Yank! yank!” in no inhos-
pitable tones; and those purple finches there in
the cedars, — are they not stealing our berries?
How one lingers about a fire under such circum-
stances, loath to leave it, poking up the sticks,
throwing in the burnt ends, adding another branch
and yet another, and looking back as he turns to
go to catch one more glimpse of the smoke going
up through the trees! I reckon it is some remnant
of the primitive man, which we all carry about with
us. He has not yet forgotten his wild, free life,
his arboreal habitations, and the sweet-bitter times
he had in those long-gone ages. With me, he
wakes up directly at the smell of smoke, of burning
branches in the open air; and all his old love of
20 WINTER SUNSHINE
fire and dependence upon it, in the camp or the
cave, comes freshly to mind.
On resuming our march, we filed off along a
charming wood-path, — a regular little tunnel through
the dense pines, carpeted with silence, and allowing
us to look nearly the whole length of it through its
soft green twilight out into the open sunshine of
the fields beyond. A pine wood in Maryland or in
Virginia is quite a different thing from a pine wood
in Maine or Minnesota, —the difference, in fact,
between yellow pine and white. The former, as it
grows hereabout, is short and scrubby, with branches
nearly to the ground, and looks like the dwindling
remnant of a greater race.
Beyond the woods, the path led us by a colored
man’s habitation, —a little, low frame house, on a
knoll, surrounded by the quaint devices and rude
makeshifts of these quaint and rude people. A
few poles stuck in the ground, clapboarded with
cedar-boughs and cornstalks, and supporting a roof
of the same, gave shelter to a rickety one-horse
wagon and some farm implements. Wear this there
was a large, compact tent, made entirely of corn-
stalks, with, for door, a bundle of the same, in the
dry, warm, nest-like interior of which the husking
of the corn crop seemed to have taken place. A
few rods farther on, we passed through another
humble dooryard, musical with dogs and dusky
with children. We crossed here the outlying fields
of a large, thrifty, well-kept-looking farm with a
showy, highly ornamental frame house in the centre.
WINTER SUNSHINE 21
There was even a park with deer, and among the
gayly painted outbuildings I noticed a fancy dove-
cote, with an immense flock of doves circling above
it; some whiskey-dealer from the city, we were told,
trying to take the poison out of his money by agri-
culture.
We next passed through some woods, when we
emerged into a broad, sunlit, fertile-looking valley,
called Oxen Run. We stooped down and drank of
its clear white-pebbled stream, in the veritable spot,
I suspect, where the oxen do. There were clouds
of birds here on the warm slopes, with the usual
sprinkling along the bushy margin of the stream of
scarlet grosbeaks. The valley of Oxen Run has
many good-looking farms, with old picturesque
houses, and loose rambling barns, such as artists
loye to put into pictures.
But it is a little awkward to go east. It always
seems left-handed. I think this is the feeling of
all walkers, and that Thoreau’s experience in this
respect was not singular. The great magnet is the
sun, and we follow him. I notice that people lost
in the woods work to the westward. When one
comes out of his house and asks himself, “Which
way shall I walk?” and looks up and down and
around for a sign or a token, does he not nine times
out of ten turn to the west? Me inclines this way
as surely as the willow wand bends toward the
water. There is something more genial and friendly
in this direction.
Occasionally in winter I experience a southern
22 WINTER SUNSHINE
inclination, and cross Long Bridge and rendezvous
for the day in some old earthwork on the Virginia
hills. The roads are not so inviting in this direc-
tion, but the line of old forts with rabbits burrowing
in the bomb-proofs, and a magazine, or officers’
quarters turned into a cow stable by colored squat-
ters, form an interesting feature. But, whichever
way I go, I am glad Icame. All roads lead up to
the Jerusalem the walker seeks. There is every-
where the vigorous and masculine winter air, and
the impalpable sustenance the mind draws from all
natural forms.
II
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.
Wart WHITMAN.
CCASIONALLY on the sidewalk, amid the
dapper, swiftly-moving, high-heeled boots and
gaiters, I catch a glimpse of the naked human foot.
Nimbly it scuffs along, the toes spread, the sides
flatten, the heel protrudes; it grasps the curbing,
or bends to the form of the uneven surfaces, —a
thing sensuous and alive, that seems to take cogni-
zance of whatever it touches or passes. How primi-
tive and uncivil it looks in such company, —a real
barbarian in the parlor! We are so unused to the
human anatomy, to simple, unadorned nature, that
it looks a little repulsive; but it is beautiful for all
that. Though it be a black foot and an unwashed
foot, it shall be exalted. It is a thing of life amid
leather, a free spirit amid cramped, a wild bird
amid caged, an athlete amid consumptives. It is
the symbol of my order, the Order of Walkers“
That unhampered, vitally playing piece of anatomy
is the type of the pedestrian, man returned to first
principles, in direct contact and intercourse with
the earth and the elements, his faculties unsheathed,
7
24 WINTER SUNSHINE
his mind plastic, his body toughened, his heart
light, his soul dilated; while those cramped and
distorted members in the calf and kid are the unfor-
tunate wretches doomed to carriages and cushions.
I am not going to advocate the disuse of boots
and shoes, or the abandoning of the improved modes
of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can
on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the
shining angels second and accompany the man who
goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever look-
ing out for a chance to ride.
When I see the discomforts that able-bodied
American men will put up with rather than go a
mile or half a mile on foot, the abuses they will
tolerate and encourage, crowding the street car on
a little fall in the temperature or the appearance of
an inch or two of snow, packing up to overflowing,
dangling to the straps, treading on each other’s
toes, breathing each other’s breaths, crushing the
women and children, hanging by tooth and nail to
a square inch of the platform, imperiling their limbs
and killing the horses, —JI think the commonest
tramp in the street has good reason to felicitate
himself on his rare privilege of going afoot. f Tne
deed, a race that neglects or despises this primitive
gift, that fears the touch of the soil, that has no
footpaths, no community of ownership in the land
which they imply, that warns off the walker as a
trespasser, that knows no way but the highway,
the carriage-way, that forgets the stile, the foot-
bridge, that even ignores the rights of the pedes-
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 25
trian in the public road, providing no escape for
him but in the ditch or up the bank, is in a fair
way to far more serious degeneracy.
Shakespeare makes the chief qualification of the
walker a merry heart: —
“Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.”’
The human body is a steed that goes freest and
longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all
riders is a cheerful heart. Your sad, or morose, or
embittered, or preoccupied heart settles heavily into
the saddle, and the poor beast, the body, breaks
down the first mile. Indeed, the heaviest thing in
the world is a heavy heart. Next to that, the most
burdensome to the walker is a heart not in perfect
sympathy and accord with the body, —a reluctant
or unwilling heart. The horse and rider must not
only both be willing to go the same way, but the
rider must lead the way and infuse his own light-
ness and eagerness into the steed. Herein is no
doubt our trouble, and one reason of the decay of
the noble art in this country. We are unwilling
walkers. We are not innocent and simple-hearted
enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen from that
state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk im-
plies. It cannot be said that as a people we are so
positively sad, or morose, or melancholic as that we
are vacant of that sportiveness and surplusage of
animal spirits that characterized our ancestors, and
26 WINTER SUNSHINE
that springs from full and harmonious life, —a
sound heart in accord with a sound body. ,A man
must invest himself near at hand and in common
things, and be content with a steady and moderate
return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheer-
ful heart and the sweetness of a walk over the round
earth, This is a lesson the American has yet to
learn, — capability of amusement on a low key. He
expects rapid and extraordinary returns. He would
make the very elemental laws pay usury. He has
nothing to invest in a walk; it is too slow, too
cheap. We crave the astonishing, the exciting, the
far away, and do not know the highways of the gods
when we see them, — always a sign of the decay of
the faith and simplicity of man.
If I say to my neighbor, ‘Come with me, I have
great wonders to show you,” he pricks up his ears
and comes forthwith; but when I take him on the
hills under the full blaze of the sun, or along the
country road, our footsteps lighted by the moon and
stars, and say to him, “Behold, these are the won-
ders, these are the circuits of the gods, this we now
tread is a morning star,” he feels defrauded, and as
if I had played him a trick. And yet nothing less
than dilatation and enthusiasm like this is the badge
of the master walker.
If we are not sad, we are careworn, hurried, dis-
contented, mortgaging the present for the promise
of the future. If we take a walk, it is as we
take a prescription, with about the same relish and
with about the same purpose; and the more the
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 27
fatigue the greater our faith in the virtue of the
medicine.
Of these gleesome saunters over the hills in
spring, or those sallies of the body in winter, those
excursions into space when the foot strikes fire at
every step, when the air tastes like a new and finer
mixture, when we accumulate force and gladness as
we go along, when the sight of objects by the road-
side and of the fields and woods pleases more than
pictures or than all the art in the world, — those
ten or twelve mile dashes that are but the wit and
effluence of the corporeal powers, —of such diver-
sion and open road entertainment, I say, most of us
know very little.
I notice with astonishment that at our fashionable
watering-places nobody walks; that, of all those vast
crowds of health-seekers and lovers of country air,
you can never catch one in the fields or woods, or
guilty of trudging along the country road with dust
on his shoes and sun-tan on his hands and face.
The sole amusement seems to be to eat and dress
and sit about the hotels and glare at each other.
The men look bored, the women look tired, and all
seem to sigh, “O Lord! what shall we do to be
happy and not be vulgar?” Quite different from
our British cousins across the water, who have
plenty of amusement and hilarity, spending most
of the time at their watering-places in the open
air, strolling, picnicking, boating, climbing, briskly
walking, apparently with little fear of sun-tan or of
compromising their “ gentility.”
28 WINTER SUNSHINE
It is indeed astonishing with what ease and hilar-
ity the English walk. To an American it seems a
kind of infatuation. When Dickens was in this
country, I imagine the aspirants to the honor of a
walk with him were not numerous. In a pedestrian
tour of England by an American, I read that, ‘after
breakfast with the Independent minister, he walked
with us for six miles out of town upon our road.
Three little boys and girls, the youngest six years
old, also accompanied us. They were romping and
rambling about all the while, and their morning
walk must have been as much as fifteen miles; but
they thought nothing of it, and when we parted
were apparently as fresh as when they started, and
very loath to return.”
I fear, also, the American is becoming disquali-
fied for the manly art of walking by a falling off in
the size of his foot. He cherishes and cultivates
this part of his anatomy, and apparently thinks his
taste and good breeding are to be inferred from its
diminutive size. A small, trim foot, well booted
or gaitered, is the national vanity. How we stare
at the big feet of foreigners, and wonder what may
be the price of leather in those countries, and where
all the aristocratic blood is, that these plebeian ex-
tremities so predominate! If we were admitted to
the confidences of the shoemaker to Her Majesty or
to His Royal Highness, no doubt we would modify
our views upon this latter point, for a truly large
and royal nature is never stunted in the extremities;
a little foot never yet supported a great character.
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 29
It is said that Englishmen when they first come
to this country are for some time under the impres-
sion that American women all have deformed feet,
they are so coy of them and so studiously careful to
keep them hid. That there is an astonishing differ-
ence between the women of the two countries in
this respect, every traveler can testify; and that
there is a difference equally astonishing between the
pedestrian habits and capabilities of the rival sisters,
is also certain.
The English pedestrian, no doubt, has the advan-
tage of us in the matter of climate; for, notwith-
standing the traditional gloom and moroseness of
English skies, they have in that country none of
those relaxing, sinking, enervating days, of which
we have so many here, and which seem especially
trying to the female constitution, — days which
withdraw all support from the back and loins, and
render walking of all things burdensome. Theirs is
a climate of which it has been said that “‘it invites
men abroad more days in the year and more hours
in the day than that of any other country.”
Then their land is threaded with paths which
invite the walker, and which are scarcely less im-
portant than the highways. I heard of a surly
nobleman near London who took it into his head
to close a footpath that passed through his estate
near his house, and open another one a little farther
off. The pedestrians objected; the matter got into
the courts, and after protracted litigation the aristo-
crat was beaten. The path could not be closed or
80 WINTER SUNSHINE
moved. The memory of man ran not to the time
when there was not a footpath there, and every
pedestrian should have the right of way there still.
I remember the pleasure I had in the path that
connects Stratford-on-Avon with Shottery, Shake-
speare’s path when he went courting Anne Hatha-
way. By the king’s highway the distance is some
farther, so there is a well-worn path along the hedge-
rows and through the meadows and turnip patches,
The traveler in it has the privilege of crossing the
railroad track, an unusual privilege in England, and
one denied to the lord in his carriage, who must
either go over or under it. (It is a privilege, is it
not, to be allowed the forbidden, even if it be the
privilege of being run over by the engine?) In
strolling over the South Downs, too, I was delighted
to find that where the hill was steepest some bene-
factor of the order of walkers had made notches in
the sward, so that the foot could bite the better and
firmer; the path became a kind of stairway, which
I have no doubt the plowman respected.
When you see an English country church with-
drawn, secluded, out of the reach of wheels, stand-
ing amid grassy graves and surrounded by noble
trees, approached by paths and shaded lanes, you
appreciate more than ever this beautiful habit of
the people. Only a race that knows how to use its
feet, and holds footpaths sacred, could put such a
charm of privacy and humility into such a structure.
I think I should be tempted to go to church myself
if I saw all my neighbors starting off across the
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 31
fields or along paths that led to such charmed spots,
and was sure | would not be jostled or run over by
the rival chariots of the worshipers at the temple
doors. I think this is what ails our religion; humil-
ity and devoutness of heart leave one-when he lays
by his walking shoes and walking clothes, and sets
out for church drawn by something.
Indeed, I think it would be tantamount to an
astonishing revival of religion if the people would
all walk to church on Sunday and walk home again.
Think how the stones would preach to them by the
wayside; how their benumbed minds would warm
up beneath the friction of the gravel; how their
vain and foolish thoughts, their desponding thoughts,
their besetting demons of one kind and another,
would drop behind them, unable to keep up or to
endure the fresh air! They would walk away from
their ennut, their worldly cares, their uncharitable-
ness, their pride of dress; for these devils always
want to ride, while the simple virtues are never so
happy as when on foot. Let us walk by all means;
but if we will ride, get an ass.
Then the English claim that they are a more
hearty and robust people than we are. It is certain
they are a plainer people, have plainer tastes, dress
plainer, build plainer, speak plainer, keep closer to
facts, wear broader shoes and coarser clothes, place
a lower estimate on themselves, etc., —all of which
traits favor pedestrian habits. The English grandee
is not confined to his carriage; but if the American
aristocrat leaves his, he is ruined. Oh the weari-
32 WINTER SUNSHINE
ness, the emptiness, the plotting, the seeking rest
and finding none, that goes by in the carriages!
while your pedestrian is always cheerful, alert, re-
freshed, with his heart in his hand and his hand
free to all. He looks down upon nobody; he is on
the common level. His pores are all open, his cir-
culation is active, his digestion good. His heart is
not cold, nor his faculties asleep. He is the only
real traveler; he alone tastes the “gay, fresh senti-
ment of the road.” He is not isolated, but one with
things, with the farms and industries on either
hand. ‘The vital, universal currents play through
him. He knows the ground is alive; he feels the
pulses of the wind, and reads the mute language of
things. His sympathies are all aroused; his senses
are continually reporting messages to his mind.
Wind, frost, rain, heat, cold, are something to him.
He is not merely a spectator of the panorama of
nature, but a participator in it. He experiences
the country he passes through, — tastes it, feels it,
absorbs it; the traveler in his fine carriage sees it
merely. This gives the fresh charm to that class
of books that may be called “Views Afoot,” and to
the narratives of hunters, naturalists, exploring par-
ties, etc. The walker does not need a large terri-
tory. When you get into a railway car you want
a continent, the man in his carriage requires a town-
ship; but a walker like Thoreau finds as much and
more along the shores of Walden Pond. The for-
mer, as it were, has merely time to glance at the
headings of the chapters, while the latter need not
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 33
miss a line, and Thoreau reads between the lines.
Then the walker has the privilege of the fields, the
woods, the hills, the byways. The apples by the
roadside are for him, and the berries, and the spring
of water, and the friendly shelter; and if the weather
is cold, he eats the frost grapes and the persimmons,
or even the white-meated turnip, snatched from the
field he passed through, with incredible relish.
Afoot and in the open road, one has a fair start
in life at last. There is no hindrance now. Let
him put his best foot forward. He is on the broad-
est human plane. This is on the level of all the
great laws and heroic deeds. From this platform
he is eligible to any good fortune. He was sighing
for the golden age; let him walk to it. Every step
brings him nearer. The youth of the world is but
a few days’ journey distant. Indeed, I know per-
sons who think they have walked back to that fresh
aforetime of a single bright Sunday in autumn or
early spring. Before noon they felt its airs upon
their cheeks, and by nightfall, on the banks of some
quiet stream, or along some path in the wood, or on
some hilltop, aver they have heard the voices and
felt the wonder and the mystery that so enchanted
the early races of men.
I think if I could walk through a country I
should not only see many things and have adven-
tures that I should otherwise miss, but that I should
come into relations with that country at first hand,
and with the men and women in it, in a way that
would afford the deepest satisfaction. Hence I envy
34 WINTER SUNSHINE
the good fortune of all walkers, and feel like join-
ing myself to every tramp that comes along. JI am
jealous of the clergyman I read about the other day
who footed it from Edinburgh to London, as poor
Effie Deans did, carrying her shoes in her hand most
of the way, and over the ground that rugged Ben
Jonson strode, larking it to Scotland, so long ago.
I read with longing of the pedestrian feats of college
youths, so gay and light-hearted, with their coarse
shoes on their feet and their knapsacks on their
backs. It would have been a good draught of the
rugged cup to have walked with Wilson the orni-
thologist, deserted by his companions, from Niagara
to Philadelphia through the snows of winter. I
almost wish that I had been born to the career of a
German mechanic, that I might have had that de-
licious adventurous year of wandering over my coun-
try before I settled down to work. I think how
much richer and firmer-grained life would be to me
if I could journey afoot through Florida and Texas,
or follow the windings of the Platte or the Yellow-
stone, or stroll through Oregon, or browse for a sea-
son about Canada./” In the bright inspiring days of
autumn I only want the time and the companion to
walk back to the natal spot, the family nest, across
two States and into the mountains of a third.
What adventures we would have by the way, what
hard pulls, what prospects from hills, what specta-
cles we would behold of night and day, what pas-
sages with dogs, what glances, what peeps into win-
dows, what characters we should fall in with, and
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 35
how seasoned and hardy we should arrive at our
destination! ra
For compariion I should want a veteran of the
war! Those marches put something into him I
like. Even at this distance his mettle is but little
softened. As soon as he gets warmed up it all
comes back to him. He catches your step and away
you go, a gay, adventurous, half-predatory couple.
How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest and
anecdote and song! You may have known him for
years without having heard him hum an air, or more
than casually revert to the subject of his experience
during the war. You have even questioned and
cross-questioned him without firing the train you
wished. But get him out on a vacation tramp, and
you can walk it all out of him. By the camp-fire at
night, or swinging along the streams by day, song,
anecdote, adventure, come to the surface, and you
wonder how your companion has kept silent so long.
It is another proof of how walking brings out the
true character of aman. The devil never yet asked
his victims to take a walk with him. You will not
be long in finding your companion out. All dis-
guises will fall away from him. As his pores open
his character is laid bare. His deepest and most
private self will come to the top. It matters little
whom you ride with, so he be not a pickpocket; for
both of you will, very likely, settle down closer and
firmer in your reserve, shaken down like a measure
of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds.“ But
walking is a more vital copartnership; the relation
36 WINTER SUNSHINE
is a closer and more sympathetic one, and you do
not feel like walking ten paces with a stranger with-
out speaking to him.
Hence the fastidiousness of the professional walker
in choosing or admitting a companion, and hence
the truth of a remark of Emerson that you will gen-
erally fare better to take your dog than to invite
your neighbor. Your cur-dog is a true pedestrian,
and your neighbor is very likely a small politician.
The dog enters thoroughly into the spirit of the
enterprise; he is not indifferent or preoccupied; he
is constantly sniffing adventure, laps at every spring,
looks upon every field and wood as a new world to
be explored, is ever on some fresh trail, knows some-
thing important will happen a little farther on, gazes
with the true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot
or whatever the road finds it good to be there, —in
short, is just that happy, delicious, excursive vaga-
bond that touches one at so many points, and whose
human prototype in a companion robs miles and
leagues of half their power to fatigue. /
Persons who find themselves spent in a short
walk to the market or the post-office, or to do a
little shopping, wonder how it is that their pedes-
trian friends can compass so many weary miles and
not fall down from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of
the fact that the walker is a kind of projectile that
drops far or near according to the expansive force
of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is
easy enough to regulate the charge according to the
distance to be traversed. If I am loaded to carry
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 37
only one mile and am compelled to walk three, I
generally feel more fatigue than if I had walked six
under the proper impetus of preadjusted resolution.
In other words, the will or corporeal mainspring,
whatever it be, is capable of being wound up to
different degrees of tension, so that one may walk
all day nearly as easy as half that time if he is pre-
pared beforehand. He knows his task, and he
measures and distributes his powers accordingly. It
is for this reason that an unknown road is aways a
long road. We cannot cast the mental eye along it
and see the end from the beginning. We are fight-
ing in the dark, and cannot take the measure of our
foe. Every step must be preordained and provided
for in the mind. Hence also the fact that to van-
quish one mile in the woods seems equal to compass-
ing three in the open country. The furlongs are
ambushed, and we magnify them.
Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only
five miles to the next place when it is really eight
or ten! We fall short nearly half the distance, and
are compelled to urge and roll the spent ball the
rest of the way. In such a case walking degener-
ates from a fine art to a mechanic art; we walk
merely; to get over the ground becomes the one
serious and engrossing thought; whereas success in
walking is not to let your right foot know what
your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish such
music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry
you around the globe without knowing it. The
walker I would describe takes no note of distance;
38 WINTER SUNSHINE
his walk is a sally, a donmot, an unspoken jeu
d’esprit ; the ground is his butt, his provocation ;
it furnishes him the resistance his body craves; he
rebounds upon it, he glances off and returns again,
and uses it gayly as his tool.
I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the
charms of pedestrianism, or our need as a people to
cultivate the art. I think it would tend to soften
the national manners, to teach us the meaning of
leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open
air, to strengthen and foster the tie between the
race and the land. No one else looks out upon the
world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian;
no one else gives and takes so much from the coun-
try he passes through. Next to the laborer in the
fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the
soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation
to nature because he is freer and his mind more at
leisure.
Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no
more than a potted plant in his house or carriage
till he has established communication with the soil
by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it.
Then the tie of association is born; then spring
those invisible fibres and rootlets through which
character comes to smack of the soil, and which
make a man kindred to the spot of earth he inhabits.
The roads and paths you have walked along in
summer and winter weather, the fields and hills
which you have looked upon in lightness and glad-
ness of heart, where fresh thoughts have come into
THE EXHILARATIONS OF THE ROAD 39
your mind, or some noble prospect has opened be-
fore you, and especially the quiet ways where you
have walked in sweet converse with your friend,
pausing under the trees, drinking at the spring, —
henceforth they are not the same; a new charm is
added; those thoughts spring there perennial, your
friend walks there forever.
We have produced some good walkers and saun-
terers, and some noted climbers; but as a staple
recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the peo-
ple dislike and despise walking. Thoreau said he
was a good horse, but a poor roadster. I chant the
virtues of the roadster as well. I sing of the sweet-
ness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit. It is the
proper condiment for the sterner seasons, and many
a human gizzard would be cured of half its ills by
a suitable daily allowance of it. I think Thoreau
himself would have profited immensely by it. His
diet was too exclusively vegetable. A man cannot
live on grass alone. If one has been a lotus-eater
all summer, he must turn gravel-eater in the fall
and winter. Those who have tried it know that
gravel possesses an equal though an opposite charm.
It spurs to action. The foot tastes it and hence-
forth rests not. The joy of moving and surmount-
ing, of attrition and progression, the thirst for
space, for miles and leagues of distance, for sights
and prospects, to cross mountains and thread rivers,
and defy frost, heat, snow, danger, difficulties,
seizes it; and from that day forth its possessor is
enrolled in the noble army of walkers.
Til
THE SNOW-—WALKERS
: | | E who marvels at the beauty of the world in
summer will find equal cause for wonder and
admiration in winter. It is true the pomp and the
pageantry are swept away, but the essential elements
remain, — the day and the night, the mountain and
the valley, the elemental play and succession and
the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In win-
ter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the
moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens
wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer
is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and
human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments,
and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is
of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect.
The severe studies and disciplines come easier in
winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself,
and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses.
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is
more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer.
I should say winter had given the bone and sinew
to Literature, summer the tissues and blood. i
The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The
return of nature, after such a career of splendor and
42 WINTER SUNSHINE
prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not
lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the
philosopher coming back from the banquet and the
wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.
And then this beautiful masquerade of the ele-
ments, — the novel disguises our nearest friends put
on! Here is another rain and another dew, water
that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of
an unclean vessel. And if we see truly, the same
old beneficence and willingness to serve lurk be-
neath all.
Look up at the miracle of the falling snow, —
the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes,
noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite
crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising
in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon
which they fall. How novel and fine the first
drifts! The old, dilapidated fence is suddenly set
off with the most fantastic ruffles, scalloped and
fluted after an unheard-of fashion! Looking down
a long line of decrepit stone wall, in the trimming
of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for
the first time, what a severe yet master artist old
Winter is. Ah, a severe artist! How stern the
woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the
horizon as iron!
All life and action upon the snow have an added
emphasis and significance. Livery expression is un-
derscored. Summer has few finer pictures than this
winter one of the farmer foddering his cattle from
a stack upon the clean snow, —the movement, the
THE SNOW-WALKERS 43
sharply-defined figures, the great green flakes of
hay, the long file of patient cows, the advance just
arriving and pressing eagerly for the choicest mor-
sels, and the bounty and providence it suggests.
Or the chopper in the woods, —the prostrate tree,
the white new chips scattered about, his easy tri-
umph over the cold, coat hanging to a limb, and
the clear, sharp ring of his axe. The woods are
rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost, and resound
like a stringed instrument. Or/the road-breakers,
sallying forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white
world, the day after the storm, to restore the lost
track and demolish the beleaguering drifts.“
All sounds are sharper in winter; the air trans-
mits better. At night I hear more distincly the
steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it
is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke
down its sides; but in winter always the same low,
sullen growl.
A severe artist! No longer the canvas and the
pigments, but the marble and the chisel. When
the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to
gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight
and the snow. The air is full of latent fire, and
the cold warms me— after a different fashion from
that of the kitchen stove. The world lies about me
in a “trance of snow.” The clouds are pearly and
iridescent, and seem the farthest possible remove
from the condition of a storm, —the ghosts of
clouds, the indwelling beauty freed from all dross.
I see the hills, bulging with great drifts, lift them-
44 WINTER SUNSHINE
selves up cold and white against the sky, the black
lines of fences here and there obliterated by the
depth of the snow. Presently a fox barks away up
next the mountain, and I imagine I can almost see
him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated
surface, and looking down in my direction, As I
listen, one answers him from behind the woods in
the valley. What a wild winter sound, wild and
weird, up among the ghostly hills! Since the wolf
has ceased to howl upon these mountains, and the
panther to scream, there is nothing to be compared
with it. So wild! I get up in the middle of the
night to hear it. It is refreshing to the ear, and
one delights to know that such wild creatures are
among us. At this season Nature makes the most
of every throb of life that can withstand her sever-
ity. How heartily she indorses this fox! ‘In what
bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the
snow! The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as
effectually as it obliterates. I go into the woods,
and know all that has happened. I cross the fields,
and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor the
fact is chronicled.
The red fox is the only species that abounds in
my locality; the little gray fox seems to prefer a
more rocky and precipitous country, and a less rigor-
ous climate; the cross fox is occasionally seen, and
there are traditions of the silver gray among the
oldest hunters. But the red fox is the sportsman’s
prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in
these mountains.t I go out in the morning, after
1 A spur of the Catskills.
THE SNOW—WALKERS 45
a fresh fall of snow, and see at all points where he
has crossed the road. Here he has leisurely passed
within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoi-
tring the premises with an eye to the hen-roost.
(Chat clear, sharp track, —there is no mistaking it
for the clumsy footprint of a little dog. All his
wildness and agility are photographed in it. Here
he has taken fright, or suddenly recollected an en-
gagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely touch-
ing the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet
as the wind.
The wild, buoyant creature, how beautiful he is!
I had often seen his dead carcass, and at a distance
had witnessed the hounds drive him across the upper
fields; but the thrill and excitement of meeting him
in his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to
me till, one cold winter day, drawn thither by the
baying of a hound, I stood near the summit of the
mountain, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I
might determine the course of the dog and choose
my position, —stimulated by the ambition of all
young Nimrods to bag some notable game. Long
I waited, and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed,
I was about to turn back, when, hearing a slight
noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox,
loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evi-
dently disturbed, but not pursued by the hound,
and so absorbed in his private meditations that he
failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with
amazement and admiration, not ten yards distant.
I took his measure at a glance, —a large male, with
46 WINTER SUNSHINE
dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white, —a
most magnificent creature; but so astonished and
fascinated was I by this sudden appearance and
matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the last
’ glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did
I awake to my duty as a sportsman, and realize
what an opportunity to distinguish myself I had
unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half
angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out
of humor with myself and all fox-kind. But I
have since thought better of the experience, and
concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best
part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more
valuable than his fur, without his knowledge.
This is thoroughly a winter sound, —this voice
of the hound upon the mountain, — and one that is
music to many ears. The long trumpet-like bay,
heard for a mile or more, — now faintly back to the
deep recesses of the mountain, — now distinct, but
still faint, as the hound comes over some prominent
point and the wind favors, —anon entirely lost in
the gully, —then breaking out again much nearer,
and growing more and more pronounced as the dog
approaches, till, when he comes around the brow of
the mountain, directly above you, the barking is
loud and sharp. On he goes along the northern
spur, his voice rising and sinking as the wind and
lay of the ground modify it, till lost to hearing.
The fox usually keeps half a mile ahead, regulat-
ing his speed by that of the hound, occasionally
pausing a moment to divert himself with a mouse,
THE SNOW-WALKERS 47
or to contemplate the landscape, or to listen for his
pursuer. If the hound press him too closely, he
leads off from mountain to mountain, and so gen-
erally escapes the hunter; but if the pursuit be
slow, he plays about some ridge or peak, and falls
a prey, though not an easy one, to the experienced
sportsman.
A most spirited and exciting chase occurs when the
farm-dog gets close upon one in the open field, as
sometimes happens in the early morning. The fox
relies so confidently upon his superior speed, that I
imagine he half tempts the dog to the race. But if
the dog be a smart one, and their course lies down
hill, over smooth ground, Reynard must put his
best foot forward, and then sometimes suffer the
ignominy of being run over by his pursuer, who,
however, is quite unable to pick him up, owing to
the speed. But when they mount the hill, or enter
the woods, the superior nimbleness and agility of the
fox tell at once, and he easily leaves the dog far in
his rear. For a cur less than his own size he mani-
fests little fear, especially if the two meet alone,
remote from the house. In such cases, I have seen
first one turn tail, then the other.
A novel spectacle often occurs in summer, when
the female has young. You are rambling on the
mountain, accompanied by your dog, when you are
startled by that wild, half-threatening squall, and
in a moment perceive your dog, with inverted tail,
and shame and confusion in his looks, sneaking
toward you, the old fox but a few rods in his rear.
48 WINTER SUNSHINE
You speak to him sharply, when he bristles up,
turns about, and, barking, starts off vigorously, as
if to wipe out the dishonor; but in a moment comes
sneaking back more abashed than ever, and owns
himself unworthy to be called a dog. The fox fairly
shames him out of the woods. The secret of the
matter is her sex, though her conduct, for the honor
of the fox be it said, seems to be prompted only by
solicitude for the safety of her young.
One of the most notable features of the fox is his
large and massive tail. Seen running on the snow
at a distance, his tail is quite as conspicuous as his
body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems
to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It
softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or
continues to the eye the ease and poise of his car-
riage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy
day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to
prove a serious inconvenience, and compels him to
take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this;
both his pride and the traditions of his race stimu-
late him to run it out, and win by fair superiority
of wind and speed; and only a wound or a heavy
and moppish tail will drive him to avoid the issue
in this manner.
To learn his surpassing shrewdness and cunning,
attempt to take him with a trap. Rogue that he
is, he always suspects some trick, and one must be
more of a fox than he is himself to overreach him.
At first sight it would appear easy enough. With
apparent indifference he crosses your path, or walks
THE SNOW-—WALKERS 49
in your footsteps in the field, or travels along the
beaten highway, or lingers in the vicinity of stacks
and remote barns. Carry the carcass of a pig, or a
fowl, or a dog, to a distant field in midwinter, and
in a few nights his tracks cover the snow about it.
The inexperienced country youth, misled by this
seeming carelessness of Reynard, suddenly conceives
a project to enrich himself with fur, and wonders
that the idea has not occurred to him before, and to
others. I knew a youthful yeoman of this kind,
who imagined he had found a mine of wealth on
discovering on a remote side-hill, between two woods,
a dead porker, upon which it appeared all the foxes
of the neighborhood had nightly banqueted. The
clouds were burdened with snow; and as the first
flakes commenced to eddy down, he set out, trap
and broom in hand, already counting over in imagi-
nation the silver quarters he would receive for his
first fox-skin. With the utmost care, and with a
palpitating heart, he removed enough of the trodden
snow to allow the trap to sink below the surface.
Then, carefully sifting the light element over it
and sweeping his tracks full, he quickly withdrew,
laughing exultingly over the little surprise he had
prepared for the cunning rogue. The elements con-
spired to aid him, and the falling snow rapidly oblit-
erated all vestiges of his work. The next morning
at dawn he was on his way to bring in his fur.
The snow had done its work effectually, and, he
believed, had kept his secret well. Arrived in sight
of the locality, he strained his vision to make out
\
50 WINTER SUNSHINE
his prize lodged against the fence at the foot of the
hill. Approaching nearer, the surface was unbroken,
and doubt usurped the place of certainty in his
mind. A slight mound marked the site of the
porker, but there was no footprint near it. Look-
ing up the hill, he saw where Reynard had walked
leisurely down toward his wonted bacon till within
a few yards of it, when he had wheeled, and with
prodigious strides disappeared in the woods. The
young trapper saw at a glance what a comment this
was upon his skill in the art, and, indignantly ex-
huming the iron, he walked home with it, the stream
of silver quarters suddenly setting in another direc-
tion.
The successful trapper commences in the fall, or
before the first deep snow. In a field not too re-
mote, with an old axe he cuts a small place, say
ten inches by fourteen, in the frozen ground, and
removes the earth to the depth of three or four
inches, then fills the cavity with dry ashes, in
which are placed bits of roasted cheese. Reynard
is very suspicious at first, and gives the place a
wide berth. It looks like design, and he will see
how the thing behaves before he approaches too
near. But the cheese is savory and the cold severe.
He ventures a little closer every night, until he
can reach and pick a piece from the surface. Em-
boldened by success, like other mortals, he pres-
ently digs freely among the ashes, and, finding a
fresh supply of the delectable morsels every night,
is soon thrown off his guard and his suspicions quite
THE SNOW-WALKERS 51
lulled. After a week of baiting in this manner,
and on the eve of a light fall of snow, the trapper
carefully conceals his trap in the bed, first smoking
it thoroughly with hemlock boughs to kill or neu-
tralize all smell of the iron. If the weather favors
and the proper precautions have been taken, he
may succeed, though the chances are still greatly
against him.
Reynard is usually caught very lightly, seldom
more than the ends of his toes being between the
jaws. He sometimes works so cautiously as to
spring the trap without injury even to his toes, or
may remove the cheese night after night without
even springing it. JI knew an old trapper who, on
finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit
of cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor
Reynard by the jaw. The trap is not fastened, but
only incumbered with a clog, and is all the more
sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of the
animal to extricate himself.
When Reynard sees his captor approaching, he
would fain drop into a mouse-hole to render himself
invisible. He crouches to the ground and remains
perfectly motionless until he perceives himself dis-
covered, when he makes one desperate and final
effort to escape, but ceases all struggling as you
come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him
a very timid warrior, — cowering to the earth with
a mingled look of shame, guilt, and abject fear. A
young farmer told me of tracing one with his trap
to the border of a wood, where he discovered the
52 WINTER SUNSHINE
cunning rogue trying to hide by embracing a small
tree. Most animals, when taken in a trap, show
fight; but Reynard has more faith in the nimble-
ness of his feet than in the terror of his teeth.
Entering the woods, the number and variety of
the tracks contrast strongly with the rigid, frozen
aspect of things. Warm jets of life still shoot and
play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are
far less numerous than in the fields; but those of
hares, skunks, partridges, squirrels, and mice abound.
The mice tracks are very pretty, and look like a
sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the
snow. One is curious to know what brings these
tiny creatures from their retreats; they do not seem
to be in quest of food, but rather to be traveling
about for pleasure or sociability, though always going
post-haste, and linking stump with stump and tree
with tree by fine, hurried strides. That is when
they travel openly; but they have hidden passages
and winding galleries under the snow, which un-
doubtedly are their main avenues of communication.
Here and there these passages rise so near the sur-
face as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow,
and a slight ridge betrays their course to the eye,
I know him well. He is known to the farmer as
the “deer mouse,” to the naturalist as the white-
footed mouse, —a very beautiful creature, nocturnal
in his habits, with large ears, and large, fine eyes,
full of a wild, harmless look. He is daintily
marked, with white feet and a white belly. When
disturbed by day he is very easily captured, having
THE SNOW—-WALKERS 53
none of the cunning or viciousness of the common
Old World mouse.
It is he who, high in the hollow trunk of some
tree, lays by a store of beechnuts for winter use.
Every nut is carefully shelled, and the cavity that
serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves.
The wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious
store. I have seen half a peck taken from one
tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
delicate hands, —as they were: How long it must
have taken the little creature to collect this quan-
tity, to hull them one by one, and convey them
up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined
to the woods, but is quite as common in the fields,
particularly in the fall, amid the corn and potatoes.
When routed by the plow, I have seen the old one
take flight with half a dozen young hanging to her
teats, and with such reckless speed that some of the
young would lose their hold and fly off amid the
weeds. Taking refuge in a stump with the rest of
her family, the anxious mother would presently
come back and hunt up the missing ones.
The snow-walkers are mostly night-walkers also,
and the record they leave upon the snow is the main
clew one has to their life and doings. The hare is
nocturnal in its habits, and though a very lively
creature at night, with regular courses and run-ways
through the wood, is entirely quiet by day. Timid
as he is, he makes little effort to conceal himself,
usually squatting beside a log, stump, or tree, and
seeming to avoid rocks and ledges where he might
54 WINTER SUNSHINE
be partially housed from the cold and the snow, but
where also—and this consideration undoubtedly
determines his choice —he would be more apt to
fall a prey to his enemies. In this, as well as in
many other respects, he differs from the rabbit
proper: he never burrows in the ground, or takes
refuge in a den or hole, when pursued. If caught
in the open fields, he is much confused and easily
overtaken by the dog; but in the woods, he leaves
him at a bound. In summer, when first disturbed,
he beats the ground violently with his feet, by
which means he would express to you his surprise
or displeasure; it is a dumb way he has of scolding.
After leaping a few yards, he pauses an instant, as
if to determine the degree of danger, and then hur-
ries away with a much lighter tread.
His feet are like great pads, and his track has
little of the sharp, articulated expression of Rey-
nard’s, or of animals that climb or dig. Yet it is
very pretty like all the rest, and tells its own tale.
There is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it,
and his timid, harmless character is published at
every leap. He abounds in dense woods, preferring
localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech
and birch, upon the bark of which he feeds. Nature
is rather partial to him, and matches his extreme
local habits and character with a suit that corre-
sponds with his surroundings, — reddish gray in
summer and white in winter.
The sharp-rayed track of the partridge adds an-
other figure to this fantastic embroidery upon the
THE SNOW-—WALKERS 55
winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line,
sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct,
steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,
—leading you over logs and through brush, alert
and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few
yards from you, and goes humming through the
trees, —the complete triumph of endurance and
vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks never
be fewer, or your visits to the birch-tree less fre-
quent!
The squirrel tracks— sharp, nervous, and wiry
—have their histories also. But who ever saw
squirrels in winter? The naturalists say they are
mostly torpid; yet evidently that little pocket-faced
depredator, the chipmunk, was not carrying buck-
wheat for so many days to his hole for nothing:
was he anticipating a state of torpidity, or providing
against the demands of a very active appetite? Red
and gray squirrels are more or less active all winter,
though very shy, and, I am inclined to think, par-
tially nocturnal in their habits. Here a gray one
has just passed, —came down that tree and went
up this; there he dug for a beechnut, and left the
burr on the snow. How did he know where to dig?
During an unusually severe winter I have known
him to make long journeys to a barn, in a remote
field, where wheat was stored. How did he know
there was wheat there? In attempting to return,
the adventurous creature was frequently run down
and caught in the deep snow.
His home is in the trunk of some old birch or
56 WINTER SUNSHINE
maple, with an entrance far up amid the branches.
In the spring he builds himself a summer-house of
small leafy twigs in the top of a neighboring beech,
where the young are reared and much of the time
passed. But the safer retreat in the maple is not
abandoned, and both old and young resort thither
in the fall, or when danger threatens. Whether
this temporary residence amid the branches is for
elegance or pleasure, or for sanitary reasons or do-
mestic convenience, the naturalist has forgotten to
mention.
The elegant creature, so cleanly in its habits, so
graceful in its carriage, so nimble and daring in its
movements, excites feelings of admiration akin to
those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of
nature. His passage through the trees is almost a
flight. Indeed, the flying squirrel has little or no
advantage over him, and in speed and nimbleness
cannot compare with him at all. If he miss his
footing and fall, he is sure to catch on the next
branch; if the connection be broken, he leaps reck-
lessly for the nearest spray or limb, and secures his
hold, even if it be by the aid of his teeth.
His career of frolic and festivity begins in the
fall, after the birds have left us and the holiday
spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How
absorbing the pastime of the sportsman who goes
to the woods in the still October morning in quest
of him! You step lightly across the threshold of
the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock
to await the signals. It is so still that the ear sud-
THE SNOW—WALKERS 57
denly seems to have acquired new powers, and there
is no movement to confuse the eye. Presently you
hear the rustling of a branch, and see it sway or
spring as the squirrel leaps from or to it; or else
you hear a disturbance in the dry leaves, and mark
one running upon the ground. He has probably
seen the intruder, and, not liking his stealthy move-
ments, desires to avoid a nearer acquaintance. Now
he mounts a stump to see if the way is clear, then
pauses a moment at the foot of a tree to take his
bearings, his tail, as he skims along, undulating be-
hind him, and adding to the easy grace and dignity
of his movements. Or else you are first advised of
his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the
fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves.
Or, again, after contemplating you a while unob-
served, and making up his mind that you are not
dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and
commences to quack and bark, with an accompany-
ing movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon,
when the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are
repeated. There is a black variety, quite rare, but
mating freely with the gray, from which he seems
to be distinguished only in color.
The track of the red squirrel may be known by
its smaller size. He is more common and less dig-
nified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty lar-
ceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most
abundant in old barkpeelings, and low, dilapidated
hemlocks, from which he makes excursions to the
fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the
58 WINTER SUNSHINE
fences, which afford not only convenient lines of
communication, but a safe retreat if danger threat-
ens. He loves to linger about the orchard; and,
sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or
on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an
apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve
of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple,
he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance
atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in
the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious.
The appearance of anything unusual, if, after con-
templating it a moment, he concludes it not dan-
gerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ridicule,
and he snickers and chatters, hardly able to contain
himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and
squealing in derision, then hopping into position
on a limb and dancing to the music of his own
cackle, and all for your special benefit.
There is something very human in this apparent
mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to
be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-con-
scious pride and exultation in the laughter. ‘‘ What
a ridiculous thing you are, to be sure!” he seems to
say; “how clumsy and awkward, and what a poor
show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!” —and
he capers about in his best style. Again, he would.
seem to tease you and provoke your attention; then
suddenly assumes a tone of good-natured, childlike
defiance and derision. That pretty little imp, the
chipmunk, will sit on the stone above his den and
defy you, as plainly as if he said so, to catch him
THE SNOW-WALKERS 59
before he can get into his hole if youcan. You
hurl a stone at him, and “No you didn’t!” comes
up from the depth of his retreat.
In February another track appears upon the
snow, slender and delicate, about a third larger than
that of the gray squirrel, indicating no haste or
speed, but, on the contrary, denoting the most im-
perturbable ease and leisure, the footprints so close
together that the trail appears like a chain of curi-
ously carved links., Sir Mephitis mephitica, or,
in plain English, the skunk, has woke up from his
six weeks’ nap, and come out into society again.
He is a nocturnal traveler, very bold and impudent,
coming quite up to the barn and outbuildings, and
sometimes taking up his quarters for the season un-
der the haymow. There is no such word as hurry
in his dictionary, as you may see by his path upon
the snow. He has a very sneaking, insinuating
way, and goes creeping about the fields and woods,
never once in a perceptible degree altering his gait,
and, if a fence crosses his course, steers for a break
or opening to avoid climbing. He is too indolent
even to dig his own hole, but appropriates that of
a woodchuck, or hunts out a crevice in the rocks,
from which he extends his rambling in all direc-
tions, preferring damp, thawy weather. He has
very little discretion or cunning, and holds a trap
in utter contempt, stepping into it as soon as beside
it, relying implicitly for defense against all forms of
danger upon the unsavory punishment he is capable
of inflicting. He is quite indifferent to both man
60 WINTER SUNSHINE
and beast, and will not hurry himself to get out of
the way of either. Walking through the summer
fields at twilight, I have come near stepping upon
him, and was much the more disturbed of the two.
When attacked in the open fields he confounds the
plans of his enemies by the unheard-of tactics of
exposing his rear rather than his front. ‘Come if
you dare,” he says, and his attitude makes even
the farm-dog pause. After a few encounters of
this kind, and if you entertain the usual hostility
towards him, your mode of attack will speedily re-
solve itself into moving about him in a circle, the
radius of which will be the exact distance at which
you can hurl a stone with accuracy and effect.
He has a secret to keep and knows it, and is
careful not to betray himself until he can do so with
the most telling effect. I have known him to pre-
serve his serenity even when caught in a steel trap,
and look the very picture of injured innocence,
manceuvring carefully and deliberately to extricate
his foot from the grasp of the naughty jaws. Do
not by any means take pity on him, and lend a
helping hand!
How pretty his face and head! How fine and
delicate his teeth, like a weasel’s or cat’s! When
about a third grown, he looks so well that one coy-
ets him fora pet. He is quite precocious, however,
and capable, even at this tender age, of making a
very strong appeal to your sense of smell.
No animal is more cleanly in its habits than he.
He is not an awkward boy who cuts his own face
THE SNOW-WALKERS 61
with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his fur
hints the weapon with which he is armed. The
most silent creature known to me, he makes no
sound, so far as I have observed, save a diffuse,
impatient noise, like that produced by beating your
hand with a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has
discovered his retreat in the stone fence. He
renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his par-
tiality for hens’ eggs and young poultry. Heisa
confirmed epicure, and at plundering hen-roosts an
expert. Not the full-grown fowls are his victims,
but the youngest and most tender. At night Mother
Hen receives under her maternal wings a dozen
newly hatched chickens, and with much pride and
satisfaction feels them all safely tucked away in her
feathers. In the morning she is walking about dis-
consolately, attended by only two or three of all
that pretty brood. What has happened? Where
are they gone? That pickpocket, Sir Mephitis,
could solve the mystery. Quietly has he approached,
under cover of darkness, and one by one relieved
her of her precious charge. Look closely and you
will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part
of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or,
before the hen has hatched, he may find her out,
and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg,
leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to wit-
ness against him. The birds, especially the ground-
builders, suffer in like manner from his plundering
propensities.
=-«"he secretion upon which he relies for defense,
62 WINTER SUNSHINE
and which is the chief source of his unpopularity,
while it affords good reasons against cultivating him
as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by
no means the greatest indignity that can be offered
to anose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none
of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction.
Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most
refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and
makes the nose tingle. Itis tonic and bracing, and,
I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities.
I do not recommend its use as eyewater, though an
old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when
thus applied. Hearing, one night, a disturbance
among his hens, he rushed suddenly out to catch
the thief, when Sir Mephitis, taken by surprise, and
no doubt much annoyed at being interrupted, dis-
charged the vials of his wrath full in the farmer’s
face, and with such admirable effect that, for a few
moments, he was completely blinded, and powerless
to revenge himself upon the rogue, who embraced
the opportunity to make good his escape; but he
declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged
by fire, and his sight was much clearer. “
(In March that brief summary of a bear, the rac-
coon, comes out of his den in the ledges, and leaves
his sharp digitigrade track upon the snow, — travel-
ing not unfrequently in pairs, —a lean, hungry
couple, bent on pillage and plunder. They have
an unenviable time of it, — feasting in the summer
and fall, hibernating in winter, and starving in
spring. In April I have found the young of tas
THE SNOW-WALKERS 63
previous year creeping about the fields, so reduced
by starvation as to be quite helpless, and offering
no resistance to my taking them up by the tail and
carrying them home.
The old ones also become very much emaciated,
and come boldly up to the barn or other outbuild-
ings in quest of food. I remember, one morning in
early spring, of hearing old Cuff, the farm-dog, bark-
ing vociferously before it was yet light. When we
got up we discovered him, at the foot of an ash-tree
standing about thirty rods from the house, looking
up at some gray object in the leafless branches, and
by his manners and his voice evincing great impa-
tience that we were so tardy in coming to his assist-
ance. Arrived on the spot, we saw in the tree a
coon of unusual size. One bold climber proposed
to go up and shake him down. This was what old
Cuff wanted, and he fairly bounded with delight as
he saw his young master shinning up the tree.
Approaching within eight or ten feet of the coon,
he seized the branch to which it clung and shook
long and fiercely. But the coon was in no danger
of losing its hold, and, when the climber paused to
renew his hold, it turned toward him with a growl,
and showed very clearly a purpose to advance to the
attack. This caused his pursuer to descend to the
ground again with all speed. When the coon was
finally brought down with a gun, he fought the dog,
which was a large, powerful animal, with great fury,
returning bite for bite for some moments; and after
a quarter of an hour had elapsed and his unequal
64 WINTER SUNSHINE
antagonist had shaken him as a terrier does a rat,
making his teeth meet through the small of his
back, the coon still showed fight.
They are very tenacious of life, and like the
badger will always whip a dog of their own size and
weight. A woodchuck can bite severely, having
teeth that cut like chisels, but a coon has agility
and power of limb as well.
They are only considered game in the fall, or
towards the close of summer, when they become fat
and their flesh sweet. At this time, cooning in the
remote interior is a famous pastime. As this animal
is entirely nocturnal in its habits, it is hunted only
at night. A piece of corn on some remote side-hill
near the mountain, or between two pieces of woods,
is most apt to be frequented by them. While the
corn is yet green they pull the ears down like hogs,
and, tearing open the sheathing of husks, eat the
tender, succulent kernels, bruising and destroying
much more than they devour. Sometimes their
ravages are a matter of serious concern to the farmer.
But every such neighborhood has its coon-dog, and
the boys and young men dearly love the sport.
The party sets out about eight or nine o’clock of a
dark, moonless night, and stealthily approach the
cornfield. The dog knows his business, and when
he is put into a patch of corn and told to “hunt them
up” he makes a thorough search, and will not be
misled by any other scent. You hear him rattling
through the corn, hither and yon, with great speed.
The coons prick up their ears, and leave on the
THE SNOW—WALKERS 65
opposite side of the field. In the stillness you may
sometimes hear a single stone rattle on the wall as
they hurry toward the woods. If the dog finds
nothing he comes back to his master in a short time,
and says in his dumb way, ‘No coon there.” But
if he strikes a trail you presently hear a louder rat-
tling on the stone wall, and then a hurried bark as
he enters the woods, followed in a few minutes by
loud and repeated barking as he reaches the foot of
the tree in which the coon has taken refuge. Then
follows a pellmell rush of the cooning party up the
hill, into the woods, through the brush and the
darkness, falling over prostrate trees, pitching into
gullies and hollows, losing hats and tearing clothes,
till finally, guided by the baying of the faithful dog,
the tree is reached. The first thing now in order
is to kindle a fire, and, if its light reveals the coon,
to shoot him; if not, to fell the tree with an axe.
If this happens to be too great a sacrifice of timber
and of strength, to sit down at the foot of the tree
till morning.
But with March our interest in these phases of
animal life, which winter has so emphasized and
brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are
afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We
are eager for Winter to be gone, since he, too, is
fugitive and cannot keep his place. Invisible hands
deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its cun-
ning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now
earth-stained and weather-worn, —the flutes and
scallops, and fine, firm lines, all gone; and what
66 WINTER SUNSHINE
was a grace and an ornament to the hills is now a
disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen ap-
pear the remains of that spotless robe with which
he clothed the world as his bride.
But he will not abdicate without a struggle. Day
after day he rallies his scattered forces, and night
after night pitches his white tents on the hills, and
would fain regain his lost ground; but the young
prince in every encounter prevails. Slowly and
reluctantly the gray old hero retreats up the moun-
tain, till finally the south rain comes in earnest, and
in a night he is dead.
IV
THE FOX
HAVE already spoken of the fox at some
length, but it will take a chapter by itself to do
half justice to his portrait.
He furnishes, perhaps, the only instance that can
be cited of a fur-bearing animal that not only holds
its own, but that actually increases in the face of
the means that are used for its extermination. The
beaver, for instance, was gone before the earliest
settlers could get a sight of him; and even the mink
and marten are now only rarely seen, or not seen at
all, in places where they were once abundant.
But the fox has survived civilization, and in
some localities is no doubt more abundant now than
in the time of the Revolution. For half a century
at least he has been almost the only prize, in the
way of fur, that was to be found on our mountains,
and he has been hunted and trapped and waylaid,
sought for as game and pursued in enmity, taken by
fair means and by foul, and yet there seems not the
slightest danger of the species becoming extinct.
One would think that a single hound in a neigh-
borhood, filling the mountains with his bayings, and
leaving no nook or byway of them unexplored, was
68 WINTER SUNSHINE
enough to drive and scare every fox from the coun-
try. But not so. Indeed, I am almost tempted to
say, the more hounds, the more foxes.
I recently spent a summer month in a mountain-
ous district in the State of New York, where, from
its earliest settlement, the red fox has been the
standing prize for skill in the use of the trap and
gun. At the house where I was stopping were two
foxhounds, and a neighbor half a mile distant had
a third. There were many others in the township,
and in season they were well employed, too; but
the three spoken of, attended by their owners, held
high carnival on the mountains in the immediate
vicinity. And many were the foxes that, winter
after winter, fell before them, twenty-five having
been shot, the season before my visit, on one small
range alone. And yet the foxes were apparently
never more abundant than they were that summer,
and never bolder, coming at night within a few rods
of the house, and of the unchained alert hounds,
and making havoc among the poultry.
One morning a large, fat goose was found minus
her head and otherwise mangled. Both hounds had
disappeared, and, as they did not come back till near
night, it was inferred that they had cut short Rey-
nard’s repast, and given him a good chase into the
bargain. But next night he was back again, and
this time got safely off with the goose. A couple
of nights after he must have come with recruits, for
next morning three large goslings were reported
missing. The silly geese now got it through their
THE FOX 69
noddles that there was danger about, and every
night thereafter came close up to the house to
roost.
A brood of turkeys, the old one tied to a tree a
few rods to the rear of the house, were the next
objects of attack. The predaceous rascal came, as
usual, in the latter half of the night. I happened
to be awake, and heard the helpless turkey cry
“Quit,” “quit,” with great emphasis. Another
sleeper, on the floor above me, who, it seems, had
been sleeping with one ear awake for several nights
in apprehension for the safety of his turkeys, heard
the sound also, and instantly divined its cause. I
heard the window open and a voice summon the
dogs. A loud bellow was the response, which
caused Reynard to take himself off ina hurry. A
moment more, and the mother turkey would have
shared the fate of the geese. There she lay at the
end of her tether, with extended wings, bitten and
rumpled. The young ones roosted in a row on the
fence near by, and had taken flight on the first
alarm.
Turkeys, retaining many of their wild instincts,
are less easily captured by the fox than any other
of our domestic fowls. On the slightest show of
danger they take to wing, and it is not unusual, in
the locality of which I speak, to find them in the
morning perched in the most unwonted places, as on
the peak of the barn or hay-shed, or on the tops of
the apple-trees, their tails spread and their manners
showing much excitement. Perchance one turkey
70 WINTER SUNSHINE
is minus her tail, the fox having succeeded in get-
ting only a mouthful of quills.
As the brood grows and their wings develop, they
wander far from the house in quest of grasshoppers.
At such times they are all watchfulness and suspi-
cion. Crossing the fields one day, attended by a
dog that much resembled a fox, I came suddenly
upon a brood about one third grown, which were
feeding in a pasture just beyond a wood. It so
happened that they caught sight of the dog without
seeing me, when instantly, with the celerity of wild
game, they launched into the air, and, while the
old one perched upon a treetop, as if to keep an
eye on the supposed enemy, the young went sailing
over the trees toward home.
The two hounds above referred to, accompanied
by a cur-dog, whose business it was to mind the
farm, but who took as much delight in running away
from prosy duty as if he had been a schoolboy,
would frequently steal off and have a good hunt all
by themselves, just for the fun of the thing, I sup-
pose. JI more than half suspect that it was as a
kind of taunt or retaliation, that Reynard came and
took the geese from under their very noses. One
morning they went off and stayed till the afternoon
of the next day; they ran the fox all day and all
night, the hounds baying at every jump, the cur-
dog silent and tenacious. When the trio returned
they came dragging themselves along, stiff, foot-
sore, gaunt, and hungry. For a day or two after-
ward they lay about the kennels, seeming to dread
THE FOX 71
nothing so much as the having to move. The
stolen hunt was their “spree,” their “bender,” and
of course they must take time to get over it.
Some old hunters think the fox enjoys the chase
as much as the hound, especially when the latter
runs slow, as the best hounds do. The fox will
wait for the hound, will sit down and listen, or play
about, crossing and recrossing and doubling upon
his track, as if enjoying a mischievous consciousness
of the perplexity he would presently cause his pur-
suer. It is evident, however, that the fox does not
always have his share of the fun: before a swift
dog, or in a deep snow, or on a wet day when his
tail gets heavy, he must put his best foot forward.
As a last resort he “holes up.” Sometimes he
resorts to numerous devices to mislead and escape
the dog altogether. He will walk in the bed of a
small creek, or on a rail-fence. I heard of an in-
stance of a fox, hard and long pressed, that took to
a rail-fence, and, after walking some distance, made
a leap to one side to a hollow stump, in the cavity
of which he snugly stowed himself. The ruse suc-
ceeded, and the dogs lost the trail; but the hunter,
coming up, passed by chance near the stump, when
out bounded the fox, his cunning availing him less
than he deserved. On another occasion the fox
took to the public road, and stepped with great care
and precision into a sleigh-track. The hard, pol-
ished snow took no imprint of the light foot, and
the scent was no doubt less than it would have been
on a rougher surface. Maybe, also, the rogue had
72 WINTER SUNSHINE
considered the chances of another sleigh coming
along, before the hound, and obliterating the trail
entirely.
Audubon relates of a certain fox, which, when
started by the hounds, always managed to elude
them at a certain point. Finally the hunter con-
cealed himself in the locality, to discover, if possi-
ble, the trick. Presently along came the fox, and,
making a leap to one side, ran up the trunk of a
fallen tree which had lodged some feet from the
ground, and concealed himself in the top. In a
few minutes the hounds came up, and in their eager-
ness passed some distance beyond the point, and
then went still farther, looking for the lost trail.
Then the fox hastened down, and, taking his back-
track, fooled the dogs completely.
I was told of a silver-gray fox in northern New
York, which, when pursued by the hounds, would
run till it had hunted up another fox, or the fresh
trail of one, when it would so manceuvre that the
hound would invariably be switched off on the sec-
ond track.
In cold, dry weather the fox will sometimes
elude the hound, at least delay him much, by tak-
ing to a bare, plowed field. The hard dry earth
seems not to retain a particle of the scent, and the
hound gives a loud, long, peculiar bark, to signify
he has trouble. It is now his turn to show his wit,
which he often does by passing completely around
the field, and resuming the trail again where it
crosses the fence or a strip of snow.
THE FOX 73
The fact that any dry, hard surface is unfavorable
to the hound, suggests, in a measure, the explana-
tion of the wonderful faculty that all dogs in a
degree possess i om an animal by the scent of
the foot alone. id you ever think why a dog’s
nose is always wet? THxamine the nose of a fox-
hound, for instance; how very moist and sensitive!
Cause this moisture to dry up, and the dog would
be as powerless to track an animal as you are! The
nose of the cat, you may observe, is but a little
moist, and, as you know, her sense of smell is far
inferior to that of the dog. Moisten your own nos-
trils and lips, and this sense is plainly sharpened. /
The sweat of a dog’s nose, therefore, is no doubt a
vital element in its power, and, without taking a
very long logical stride, we may infer how a damp,
rough surface aids him in tracking game.
A fox hunt in this country is, of course, quite a
different thing from what it is in England, where
all the squires and noblemen of a borough, superbly
mounted, go riding over the country, guided by the
yelling hounds, till the fox is literally run down
and murdered. Here the hunter prefers a rough,
mountainous country, and, as probably most persons
know, takes advantage of the disposition of the fox,
when pursued by the hound, to play or circle around
a ridge or bold point, and, taking his stand near the
run-way shoots him down.
I recently had the pleasure of a turn with some
experienced hunters. As we ascended the ridge
toward the mountain, keeping in our ears the uncer-
74 WINTER SUNSHINE
tain baying of the hounds as they slowly unraveled
an old trail, my companions pointed out to me the
different run-ways, —a gap in the fence here, a rock
just below the brow of the hill there, that tree yon-
der near the corner of the woods, or the end of that
stone wall looking down the side-hill, or command-
ing a cow path, or the outlet of a wood-road. A
half wild apple orchard near a cross road was pointed
out as an invariable run-way, where the fox turned
toward the mountain again, after having been driven
down the ridge. There appeared to be no reason
why the foxes should habitually pass any particular
point, yet the hunters told me that year after year
they took about the same turns, each generation of
foxes running through the upper corner of that
field, or crossing the valley near yonder stone wall,
when pursued by the dog. It seems the fox when
he finds himself followed is perpetually tempted to
turn in his course, to deflect from a right line, as ,
a person would undoubtedly be under similar cir-
cumstances. If he is on this side of the ridge,
when he hears the dog break around on his trail he
speedily crosses to the other side; if he is in the
fields he takes again to the woods; if in the valley
he hastens to the high land, and evidently enjoys
running along the ridge and listening to the dogs,
slowly tracing out his course in the fields below.
At such times he appears to have but one sense,
hearing, and that reverted toward his pursuers. He
is constantly pausing, looking back and listening,
and will almost run over the hunter if he stands
still, even though not at all concealed.
THE FOX 75
Animals of this class depend far less upon their
sight than upon their hearing and sense of smell.
Neither: the fox nor the dog is capable of much dis-
crimination with the eye; they seem to see things
only in the mass; but with the nose they can ana-
lyze and define, and get at the most subtle shades
of difference. The fox will not read a man from a
stump or a rock, unless he gets his scent, and the
dog does not know his master in a crowd until he
has smelled him.
On the occasion to which I refer, it was not many
minutes after the dogs entered the woods on the
side of the mountain before they gave out sharp
and eager, and we knew at once that the fox was
started. We were then near a point that had been
designated as a sure run-way, and hastened to get
into position with all speed. For my part I was so
taken with the music of the hounds, as it swelled up
over the ridge, that I quite forgot the game. I saw
one of my companions leveling his gun, and, looking
a few rods to the right, saw the fox coming right
on to us. I had barely time to note the silly and
abashed expression that came over him as he saw us
in his path, when he was cut down as by a flash of
lightning. The rogue did not appear frightened,
but ashamed and out of countenance, as one does
when some trick has been played upon him, or when
detected in some mischief.
Late in the afternoon, as we were passing through
a piece of woods in the valley below, another fox,
the third that day, broke from his cover in an old
76 WINTER SUNSHINE
treetop, under our very noses, and drew the fire of
three of our party, myself among the number, but,
thanks to the interposing trees and limbs, escaped
unhurt. Then the dogs took up the trail and there
was lively music again. The fox steered through
the fields direct for the ridge where we had passed
up in the morning. We knew he would take a turn
here and then point for the mountain, and two of
us, with the hope of cutting him off by the old
orchard, through which we were again assured he
would surely pass, made a precipitous rush for that
point. It was nearly half a mile distant, most of
the way up a steep side-hill, and if the fox took the
circuit indicated he would probably be there in
twelve or fifteen minutes. Running up an angle of
45° seems quite easy work for a four-footed beast
like a dog or fox, but to a two-legged animal like a
man it is very heavy and awkward. Before I got
half way up there seemed to be a vacuum all about
me, so labored was my breathing, and when I
reached the summit my head swam and my knees
were about giving out; but pressing on, I had barely
time to reach a point in the road abreast of the
orchard, when I heard the hounds, and, looking
under the trees, saw the fox, leaping high above the
weeds and grass, coming straight toward me. He
evidently had not got over the first scare, which our
haphazard fusillade had given him, and was making
unusually quick time. I was armed with a rifle,
and said to myself now was the time to win the
laurels I had coveted. ‘For half a day previous I
THE FOX 77
had been practicing on a pumpkin which a patient
youth had rolled down a hill for me, and had im-
proved my shot considerably. Now a yellow pump-
kin was coming which was not a pumpkin, and for
the first time during the day opportunity favored
me. I expected the fox to cross the road a few
yards below me, but just then I heard him whisk
through the grass, and he bounded upon the fence
a few yards above. He seemed to cringe as he saw
his old enemy, and to depress his fur to half his
former dimensions. Three bounds and he had
cleared the road, when my bullet tore up the sod
beside him, but to this hour I do not know whether |
I looked at the fox without seeing my gun, or
whether I did sight him across its barrel. I only
know that I did not distinguish myself in the use
of the rifle on that occasion, and went home to
wreak my revenge upon another pumpkin; but
without much improvement of my skill, for, a few
days after, another fox ran under my very nose with
perfect impunity. There is something so fascinat-
ing in the sudden appearance of the fox that the
eye is quite mastered, and, unless the instinct of the
sportsman is very strong and quick, the prey will
slip through his grasp.
A still hunt rarely brings you in sight of a fox,
as his ears are much sharper than yours, and his
tread much lighter. But if the fox is mousing in
the fields, and you discover him before he does
you, you may, the wind favoring, call him within
a few paces of you. Secrete yourself behind the
78 WINTER SUNSHINE
fence, or some other object, and squeak as nearly
like a mouse as possible. Reynard will hear the
sound at an incredible distance. Pricking up his
ears, he gets the direction, and comes trotting
along as unsuspiciously as can be. I have never
had an opportunity to try the experiment, but I
know perfectly reliable persons who have. One
man, in the pasture getting his cows, called a fox
which was too busy mousing to get the first sight,
till it jumped upon the wall just over where he
sat secreted. Giving a loud whoop and jumping
up at the same time, the fox came as near being
frightened out of his skin as I suspect a fox ever
was.
In trapping for the fox, you get perhaps about as
much “fun” and as little fur as in any trapping
amusement you can engage in. The one feeling
that ever seems present to the mind of Reynard is
suspicion. He does not need experience to teach
him, but seems to know from the jump that there is
such a thing as a trap, and that a trap has a way of
grasping a fox’s paw that is more frank than friendly.
Cornered in a hole or den, a trap can be set so that
the poor creature has the desperate alternative of
being caught or starve. He is generally caught,
though not till he has braved hunger for a good
many days.
But to know all his cunning and shrewdness, bait
him in the field, or set your trap by some carcass
where he is wont to come. In some cases he will
uncover the trap, and leave the marks of his con-
THE FOX 79
tempt for it in a way you cannot mistake, or else
he will not approach within a rod of it. Occasion-
ally, however, he finds in a trapper more than his
match, and is fairly caught. When this happens,
the trap, which must be of the finest make, is never
touched with the bare hand, but, after being thor-
oughly smoked and greased, is set in a bed of dry
ashes or chaff in a remote field, where the fox has
been emboldened to dig for several successive nights
for morsels of toasted cheese.
A light fall of snow aids the trapper’s art and
conspires to Reynard’s ruin. But how lightly he
is caught, when caught at all! barely the end of his
toes, or at most a spike through the middle of his
foot. I once saw a large painting of a fox strug-
gling with a trap which held him by the hind leg,
above the gambrel-joint! A painting alongside of
it represented a peasant driving an ox-team from
the off-side! A fox would be as likely to be caught
above the gambrel-joint as a farmer would to drive
his team from the off-side. J knew one that was
caught by the tip of the lower jaw. He came
nightly, and took the morsel of cheese from the pan
of the trap without springing it. A piece was then
secured to the pan by a thread, with the result as
above stated.
I have never been able to see clearly why the
mother fox generally selects a burrow or hole in the
open field in which to have her young, except it be,
as some hunters maintain, for better security. The
young foxes are wont to come out on a warm day,
80 WINTER SUNSHINE
and play like puppies in front of the den. The
view being unobstructed on all sides by trees or
bushes, in the cover of which danger might ap-
proach, they are less liable to surprise and capture.
On the slightest sound they disappear in the hole.
Those who have watched the gambols of the young
foxes speak of them as very amusing, even more
arch and playful than those of kittens, while a spirit
profoundly wise and cunning seems to look out of
their young eyes. The parent fox can never be
caught in the den with them, but is hovering near
the woods, which are always at hand, and by her
warning cry or bark telling them when to be on
their guard. She usually has at least three dens,
at no great distance apart, and moves stealthily in
the night with her charge from one to the other, so
as to mislead her enemies. Many a party of boys,
and of men, too, discovering the whereabouts of a
litter, have gone with shovels and picks, and, after
digging away vigorously for several hours, have
found only an empty hole for their pains. The old
fox, finding her secret had been found out, had
waited for darkness, in the cover of which to trans-
fer her household to new quarters; or else some old
fox-hunter, jealous of the preservation of his game,
and getting word of the intended destruction of the
litter, had gone at dusk the night before, and made
some disturbance about the den, perhaps flashed
some powder in its mouth,—a hint which the
shrewd animal knew how to interpret.
The more scientific aspects of the question may
THE FOX 81
not be without interest to some of my readers.
The fox belongs to the great order of flesh-eating
animals called Carnivora, and of the family called
Canide, or dogs. The wolf is a kind of wild dog,
and the fox is a kind of wolf. Foxes, unlike wolves,
however, never go in packs or companies, but hunt
singly. The fox has a kind of bark, which suggests
the dog, as have all the members of this family.
The kinship is further shown by the fact that dur-
ing certain periods, for the most part in the sum-
mer, the dog cannot be made to attack or even pur-
sue the female fox, but will run from her in the
most shamefaced manner, which he will not do in
the case of any other animal except a wolf. Many
of the ways and manners of the fox, when tamed,
are also like the dog’s. I once saw a young red
fox exposed for sale in the market in Washington.
A colored man had him, and said he had caught him
out in Virginia. He led him by a small chain, as
he would a puppy, and the innocent young rascal
would lie on his side and bask and sleep in the sun-
shine, amid all the noise and chaffering around him,
precisely like a dog. He was about the size of a
full-grown cat, and there was a bewitching beauty
about him that I could hardly resist. On another
occasion, I saw a gray fox, about two thirds grown,
playing with a dog, about the same size, and by
nothing in the manners of either could you tell
which was the dog and which was the fox.
Some naturalists think there are but two perma-
nent species of the fox in the United States, namely,
82 WINTER SUNSHINE
the gray fox and the red fox, though there are five
or six varieties. The gray fox, which is much
smaller and less valuable than the red, is the South-
ern species, and is said to be rarely found north of
Maryland, though in certain rocky localities along
the Hudson they are common.
In the Southern States this fox is often hunted
in the English fashion, namely, on horseback, the
riders tearing through the country in pursuit till the
animal is run down and caught. This is the only
fox that will tree. When too closely pressed, in-
stead of taking to a den or hole, it climbs beyond
the reach of the dogs in some small tree.
The red fox is the Northern species, and is rarely
found farther south than the mountainous districts
of Virginia. In the Arctic regions he gives place
to the Arctic fox, which most of the season is white.
The prairie fox, the cross fox, and the black or
silver-gray fox, seem only varieties of the red fox,
as the black squirrel breeds from the gray, and the
black woodchuck is found with. the brown. There
is little to distinguish them from the red, except
the color, though the prairie fox is said to be the
larger of the two.
The cross fox is dark brown on its muzzle and
extremities, with a cross of red and black on its
shoulders and breast, which peculiarity of coloring,
and not any trait in its character, gives it its name.
They are very rare, and few hunters have ever seen
one. The American Fur Company used to obtain
annually from fifty to one hundred skins. The
THE FOX 83
skins formerly sold for twenty-five dollars, though
I believe they now bring only about five dollars.
The black or silver-gray fox is the rarest of all,
and its skin the most valuable. The Indians used
to estimate it equal to forty beaver skins. The
great fur companies seldom collect in a single season
more than four or five skins at any one post. Most
of those of the American Fur Company come from
the head-waters of the Mississippi. One of the
younger Audubons shot one in northern New York.
The fox had been seen and fired at many times by
the hunters of the neighborhood, and had come to
have the reputation of leading a charmed life, and
of being invulnerable to anything but a silver bul-
let. But Audubon brought her down (for it was
a female) on the second trial. She had a litter of
young in the vicinity, which he also dug out, and
found the nest to hold three black and four red
ones, which fact settled the question with him that
black and red often have the same parentage, and
are in truth the same species.
The color of this fox, in a point-blank view, is
black, but viewed at an angle it is a dark silver-
gray, whence has arisen the notion that the black
and the silver-gray are distinct varieties. The tip
of the tail is always white.
In almost every neighborhood there are traditions
of this fox, and it is the dream of young sportsmen;
but I have yet to meet the person who has seen
one. I should go well to the north, into the British
Possessions, if I were bent on obtaining a specimen,
84 WINTER SUNSHINE
One more item from the books. From the fact
that in the bone caves in this country skulls of the
gray fox are found, but none of the red, it is in-
ferred by some naturalists that the red fox is a
descendant from the European species, which it
resembles in form but surpasses in beauty, and its
appearance on this continent comparatively of re-
cent date.
Vv
A MARCH CHRONICLE
ON THE POTOMAC
MAS 1.—The first day of spring and the
first spring day! I felt the change the mo-
ment I put my head out of doors in the morning.
A fitful, gusty south wind was blowing, though the
sky was clear. But the sunlight was not the same.
There was an interfusion of a new element. Not
ten days since there had been a day just as bright,
—even brighter and warmer, —a clear, crystalline
day of February, with nothing vernal in it; but
this day was opaline; there was a film, a sentiment
in it, a nearer approach to life. Then there was
that fresh, indescribable odor, a breath from the
Gulf, or from Florida and the Carolinas, —a subtle,
persuasive influence that thrilled the sense. Lvery
root and rootlet under ground must have felt it;
the buds of the soft maple and silver poplar felt
it, and swelled perceptibly during the day. The
robins knew it, and were here that morning; so
were the crow blackbirds. The shad must have
known it, down deep in their marine retreats, and
leaped and sported about the mouths of the rivers,
86 WINTER SUNSHINE
ready to dart up them if the genial influence con-
tinued. ‘The bees in the hive also, or in the old
tree in the woods, no doubt awoke to new life; and
the hibernating animals, the bears and woodchucks,
rolled up in their subterranean dens, —I imagine
the warmth reached even them, and quickened their
sluggish circulation.
Then in the afternoon there was the smell of
smoke, — the first spring fires in the open air. The
Virginia farmer is raking together the rubbish in his
garden, or in the field he is preparing for the plow,
and burning it up. In imagination I am there to
help him. I see the children playing about, de-
lighted with the sport and the resumption of work;
the smoke goes up through the shining haze; the
farmhouse door stands open, and lets in the after-
noon sun; the cow lows for her calf, or hides it in
the woods; and in the morning the geese, sporting
in the spring sun, answer the call of the wild flock
steering northward above them.
As I stroll through the market I see the signs
here. That old colored woman has brought spring
in her basket in those great green flakes of moss,
with arbutus showing the pink; and her old man
is just in good time with his fruit-trees and goose-
berry bushes. Various bulbs and roots are also
being brought out and offered, and the onions are
sprouting on the stands. I see bunches of robins
and cedar-birds also, —so much melody and beauty
cut off from the supply going north. The fish mar-
ket is beginning to be bright with perch and bass,
A MARCH CHRONICLE 87
and with shad from the Southern rivers, and wild
ducks are taking the place of prairie hens and quails.
In the Carolinas, no doubt, the fruit-trees are in
bloom, and the rice land is being prepared for the
seed, In the mountains of Virginia and in Ohio
they are making maple sugar; in Kentucky and
Tennessee they are sowing oats; in Illinois they
are, perchance, husking the corn which has remained
on the stalk in the field all winter. Wild geese
and ducks are streaming across the sky from the
lower Mississippi toward the great lakes, pausing a
while on the prairies, or alighting in the great corn-
fields, making the air resound with the noise of
their wings upon the stalks and dry shucks as they
resume their journey. About this time, or a little
later, in the still spring morning, the prairie hens
or prairie cocks set up that low, musical cooing or
crowing that defies the ear to trace or locate. The
air is filled with that soft, mysterious undertone;
and, save that a bird is seen here and there flitting
low over the ground, the sportsman walks for hours
without coming any nearer the source of the elusive
sound,
All over a certain belt of the country the rivers
and streams are roily, and chafe their banks. There
is a movement of the soils. The capacity of the
water to take up and hold in solution the salt and
earths seemed never so great before. The frost has
relinquished its hold, and turned everything over to
the water. Mud is the mother now; and out of it
creep the frogs, the turtles, the crawfish.
88 WINTER SUNSHINE
In the North how goes the season? The winter
is perchance just breaking up. The old frost king
is just striking, or preparing to strike, his tents.
The ice is going out of the rivers, and the first
steamboat on the Hudson is picking its way through
the blue lanes and channels. The white gulls are
making excursions up from the bay, to see what the
prospects are. In the lumber countries, along the
upper Kennebec and Penobscot, and along the north-
ern Hudson, starters are at work with their pikes
and hooks starting out the pine logs on the first
spring freshet. All winter, through the deep snows,
they have been hauling them to the bank of the
stream, or placing them where the tide would reach
them. Now, in countless numbers, beaten and
bruised, the trunks of the noble trees come, borne
by the angry flood. The snow that furnishes the
smooth bed over which they were drawn, now melted,
furnishes the power that carries them down to the
mills. On the Delaware the raftsmen are at work
running out their rafts. Floating islands of logs
and lumber go down the swollen stream, bending
over the dams, shooting through the rapids, and
bringing up at last in Philadelphia or beyond.
In the inland farming districts what are the signs?
Few and faint, but very suggestive. The sun has
power to melt the snow; and in the meadows all
the knolls are bare, and the sheep are gnawing them
industriously. The drifts on the side-hills also
begin to have a worn and dirty look, and, where
they cross the highway, to become soft, letting the
A MARCH CHRONICLE 89
teams in up to their bellies. The oxen labor and
grunt, or patiently wait for the shovel to release
them; but the spirited horse leaps and flounders,
and is determined not to give up. In the woods
the snow is melted around the trees, and the burrs
and pieces of bark have absorbed the heat till they
have sunk half way through to the ground. The
snow is melting on the under side; the frost is going
out of the ground: now comes the trial of your
foundations.
About the farm buildings there awakens the old
familiar chorus, the bleating of calves and lambs,
and the answering bass of their distressed mothers;
while the hens are cackling in the hay-loft, and the
geese are noisy in the spring run. But the most
delightful of all farm work, or of all rural occupa-
tions, is at hand, namely, sugar-making. In New
York and northern New England the beginning of
this season varies from the first to the middle of
March, sometimes even holding off till April. The
moment the contest between the sun and frost fairly
begins, sugar weather begins; and the more even
the contest, the more the sweet. JI do not know
what the philosophy of it is, but it seems a kind of
see-saw, as if the sun drew the sap up and the
frost drew it down; and an excess of either stops
the flow. Before the sun has got power to unlock
the frost, there is no sap; and after the frost has
lost its power to lock wp again the work of the sun,
there is no sap. But when it freezes soundly at
night, with a bright, warm sun next day, wind in
90 WINTER SUNSHINE
the west, and no signs of a storm, the veins of the
maples fairly thrill. Pierce the bark anywhere, and
out gushes the clear, sweet liquid. But let the
wind change to the south and blow moist and warm,
destroying that crispness of the air, and the flow
slackens at once, unless there be a deep snow in the
woods to counteract or neutralize the warmth, in
which case the run may continue till the rain sets
in. The rough-coated old trees, —one would not
think they could scent a change so quickly through
that wrapper of dead, dry bark an inch or more
thick. I have to wait till I put my head out of
doors, and feel the air on my bare cheek, and sniff
it with my nose; but their nerves of taste and smell
are no doubt under ground, imbedded in the moist-
ure, and if there is anything that responds quickly
to atmospheric changes it is water. Do not the
fish, think you, down deep in the streams, feel
every wind that blows, whether it be hot or cold?
Do not the frogs and newts and turtles under the
mud feel the warmth, though the water still seems
like ice? As the springs begin to rise in advance
of the rain, so the intelligence of every change seems
to travel ahead under ground and forewarn things.
A “sap-run” seldom lasts more than two or
three days. By that time there is a change in the
weather, perhaps a rainstorm, which takes the frost
nearly all out of the ground. ‘Then, before there
can be another run, the trees must be wound up
again, the storm must have a white tail, and “come
off” cold. Presently the sun rises clear again, and
A MARCH CHRONICLE 91
cuts the snow or softens the hard-frozen ground
with his beams, and the trees take a fresh start.
The boys go through the wood, emptying out the
buckets or the pans, and reclaiming those that have
blown away, and the delightful work is resumed.
But the first run, like first love, is always the best,
always the fullest, always the sweetest; while there
is a purity and delicacy of flavor about the sugar
that far surpasses any subsequent yield.
Trees differ much in the quantity as well as in
the quality of sap produced in a given season. In-
deed, in a bush or orchard of fifty or one hundred
trees, as wide a difference may be observed in this
respect as among that number of cows in regard to
the milk they yield. I have in my mind now a
“sugar-bush” nestled in the lap of a spur of the
Catskills, every tree of which is known to me, and
assumes a distinct individuality in my thought. I
know the look and quality of the whole two hun-
dred; and when on my annual visit to the old home-
stead I find one has perished, or fallen before the
axe, I feel a personal loss. They are all veterans,
and have yielded up their life’s blood for the profit
of two or three generations. They stand in little
groups or couples. One stands at the head of a
spring run, and lifts a large dry branch high above
the woods, where hawks and crows love to alight.
Half a dozen are climbing a little hill; while others
stand far out in the field, as if they had come out
to get the sun. A file of five or six worthies sentry
the woods on the northwest, and confront a steep
92 WINTER SUNSHINE
side-hill where sheep and cattle graze. An equal
number crowd up to the line on the east; and their
gray, stately trunks are seen across meadows or
fields of grain. Then there is a pair of Siamese
twins, with heavy, bushy tops; while in the forks
of a wood-road stand the two brothers, with their
arms around each other’s neck, and their bodies in
gentle contact for a distance of thirty feet.
One immense maple, known as the “old-cream-
pan-tree,” stands, or did stand, quite alone among
a thick growth of birches and beeches. But it kept
its end up, and did the work of two or three ordi-
nary trees, as its name denotes. Next to it the
best milcher in the lot was a shaggy-barked tree in
the edge of the field, that must have been badly
crushed or broken when it was little, for it had an
ugly crook near the ground, and seemed to struggle
all the way up to get in an upright attitude, but
never quite succeeded; yet it could outrun all its
neighbors nevertheless. The poorest tree in the lot
was a short-bodied, heavy-topped tree that stood in
the edge of a spring-run. It seldom produced half
a gallon of sap during the whole season; but this
half gallon was very sweet, — three or four times as
sweet as the ordinary article. In the production of
sap, top seems far less important than body. It is
not length of limb that wins in this race, but length
of trunk. after there has been a frost. The burrs will not
4,open much before that. A man’s thinking, I take
it, is a kind of combustion, as is the ripening of
fruits and leaves, and he wants plenty of oxygen in
the air.
Then the earth seems to have become a positive
magnet in the fall; the forge and anvil of the sun
have had their effect. In the spring it is negative
to all intellectual conditions, and drains one of his
lightning. , :
To-day,’ October 21st, I found the air in the
104 WINTER SUNSHINE
bushy fields and lanes under the woods loaded with
the perfume of the witch-hazel, —a sweetish, sick-
ening odor. With the blooming of this bush, Na-
ture says, “Positively the last.” It isa kind of
birth in death, of spring in fall, that impresses one
as a little uncanny. All trees and shrubs form
their flower-buds in the fall, and keep the secret
till spring. How comes the witch-hazel to be the
one exception, and to celebrate its floral nuptials on
the funeral day of its foliage? No doubt it will
be found that the spirit of some lovelorn squaw has
passed into this bush, and that this is why it blooms
in the Indian summer rather than in the white
man’s spring.
But it makes the floral series of the woods com-
plete. Between it and the shad-blow of earliest
spring lies the mountain of bloom; the latter at the
base on one side, this at the base on the other, with
the chestnut blossoms at the top in midsummer.
A peculiar feature of our fall may sometimes be
seen of a clear afternoon late in the season. Look-
ing athwart the fields under the sinking sun, the
ground appears covered with a shining veil of gos-
samer. A fairy net, invisible at midday and which
the position of the sun now reveals, rests upon the
stubble and upon the spears of grass, covering acres
in extent, —the work of innumerable little spi-
ders. The cattle walk through it, but do not seem
to break it. Perhaps a fly would make his mark
upon it. At the same time, stretching from the
tops of the trees, or from the top of a stake in the
AUTUMN TIDES 105
fence, and leading off toward the sky, may be seen
the cables of the flying spider, —a fairy bridge from
the visible to the invisible. Occasionally seen
against a deep mass of shadow, and perhaps enlarged
by clinging particles of dust, they show quite plainly
and sag down like a stretched rope, or sway and
undulate like a hawser in the tide.
They recall a verse of our rugged poet, Walt
Whitman: —
“A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where, in a little promontory, it stood isolated:
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself ;
Ever unreeling them — ever tirelessly spreading them.
“ And you, O my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, —
Seeking the spheres to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need be formed — till the ductile anchor
hold ;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my
soul.”
To return a little, September may be described
as the month of tall weeds. Where they have been
suffered to stand, along fences, by roadsides, and
in forgotten corners, — red-root, pig-weed, rag-weed,
vervain, goldenrod, burdock, elecampane, thistles,
teasels, nettles, asters, etc., —how they lift them-
selves up as if not afraid to be seen now! They
are all outlaws; every man’s hand is against them;
yet how surely they hold their own! They love
the roadside, because here they are comparatively
safe; and ragged and dusty, like the common
106 WINTER SUNSHINE
tramps that they are, they form one of the charac-
teristic features of early fall.
I have often noticed in what haste certain weeds
are at times to produce their seeds. Red-root will
grow three or four feet high when it has the whole
season before it; but let it get a late start, let it
come up in August, and it scarcely gets above the
ground before it heads out, and apparently goes to
work with all its might and main to mature its
seed. In the growth of most plants or weeds,
April and May represent their root, June and July
their stalk, and August and September their flower
and seed. Hence, when the stalk months are stricken
out, as in the present case, there is only time for a
shallow root and a foreshortened head. I think
most weeds that get a late start show this curtail-
ment of stalk, and this solicitude to reproduce them-
selves. But Ihave not observed that any of the
cereals are so worldly wise. They have not had to
think and shift for themselves as the weeds have.
It does indeed look like a kind of forethought in the
red-root. It is killed by the first frost, and hence
knows the danger of delay.
How rich in color, before the big show of the
tree foliage has commenced, our roadsides are in
places in early autumn, —rich to the eye that goes
hurriedly by and does not look too closely, — with
the profusion of goldenrod and blue and purple
asters dashed in upon here and there with the crim-
son leaves of the dwarf sumac; and at intervals,
rising out of the fence corner or crowning a ledge
AUTUMN TIDES 107
of rocks, the dark green of the cedars with the still
fire of the woodbine at its heart. I wonder if the
waysides of other lands present any analogous spec-
tacles at this season.
Then, when the maples have burst out into color,
showing like great bonfires along the hills, there is
indeed a feast for the eye. A maple before your
windows in October, when the sun shines upon it,
will make up for a good deal of the light it has
excluded; it fills the room with a soft golden glow.
Thoreau, I believe, was the first to remark upon
the individuality of trees of the same species with
respect to their foliage,——-some maples ripening
their leaves early and some late, and some being of
one tint and some of another; and, moreover, that
each tree held to the same characteristics, year after
year. There is, indeed, as great a variety among the
maples as among the trees of an apple orchard; some
are harvest apples, some are fall apples, and some
are winter apples, each with a tint of its own.
Those late ripeners are the winter varieties, — the
Rhode Island greenings or swaars of their kind.
The red maple is the early astrachan. Then comes
the red-streak, the yellow-sweet, and others. There
are windfalls among them, too, as among the apples,
and one side or hemisphere of the leaf is usually
brighter than the other.
The ash has been less noticed for its autumnal
foliage than it deserves. The richest shades of
plum-color to be seen — becoming by and by, or in
certain lights, a deep maroon —are afforded by this
108 WINTER SUNSHINE
tree. Then at a distance there seems to be sort of
bloom on it, as upon the grape or plum. Amida
grove of yellow maple, it makes a most pleasing
contrast.
By mid-October, most of the Rip Van Winkles
among our brute creatures have lain down for their
winter nap. The toads and turtles have buried
themselves in the earth. The woodchuck is in his
hibernaculum, the skunk in his, the mole in his;
and the black bear has his selected, and will go in
when the snow comes. He does not like the looks
of his big tracks in the snow. ‘They publish his
goings and comings too plainly. The coon retires
about the same time. The provident wood-mice
and the chipmunk are laying by a winter supply of
nuts or grain, the former usually in decayed trees,
the latter in the ground. I have observed that any
unusual disturbance in the woods, near where the
chipmunk has his den, will cause him to shift his
quarters. One October, for many successive days,
I saw one carrying into his hole buckwheat which
he had stolen from a near field. The hole was only
a few rods from where we were getting out stone,
and as our work progressed, and the racket and up-
roar increased, the chipmunk became alarmed. He
ceased carrying in, and after much hesitating and
darting about, and some prolonged absences, he
began to carry out; he had determined to move; if
the mountain fell, he, at least, would be away in
time. So, by mouthfuls or cheekfuls, the grain
was transferred to a new place. He did not make
AUTUMN TIDES 109
a “bee” to get it done, but carried it all himself,
occupying several days, and making a trip about
every ten minutes.
The red and gray squirrels do not lay by winter
stores; their cheeks are made without pockets, and
whatever they transport is carried in the teeth.
They are more or less active all winter, but October
and November are their festal months. Invade
some butternut or hickory-nut grove on a frosty
October morning, and hear the red squirrel beat the
“juba” on a horizontal branch. It is a most lively
jig, what the boys call a “regular break-down,”
interspersed with squeals and snickers and derisive
laughter. The most noticeable peculiarity about the
vocal part of it is the fact that it is a kind of duet.
In other words, by some ventriloquial tricks, he ap-
pears to accompany himself, as if his voice split up,
a part forming a low guttural sound, and a part a
(shrill nasal sound.
~The distant bark of the more wary gray squirrel
may be heard about the same time. There is a
teasing and ironical tone in it also, but the gray
squirrel is not the Puck the red is.
Insects also go into winter-quarters by or before
this time; the bumble-bee, hornet, and wasp. But
here only royalty escapes; the queen-mother alone
foresees the night of winter coming and the morning
of spring beyond. The rest of the tribe try gypsy-
ing for a while, but perish in the first frosts. The
present October I surprised the queen of the yellow-
jackets in the woods looking out a suitable retreat.
110 WINTER SUNSHINE
The royal dame was house-hunting, and, on being
disturbed by my inquisitive poking among the
leaves, she got up and flew away with a slow, deep
hum. Her body was unusually distended, whether
with fat or eggs Iam unable to say. In Septem-
ber I took down the nest of the black hornet and
found several large queens in it, but the workers
had all gone. The queens were evidently weather-
ing the first frosts and storms here, and waiting for
the Indian summer to go forth and seek a permanent
winter abode. If the covers could be taken off the
fields and woods at this season, how many interest-
ing facts of natural history would be revealed! — the
crickets, ants, bees, reptiles, animals, and, for aught
I know, the spiders and flies asleep or getting ready
to sleep in their winter dormitories; the fires of life
banked up, and burning just enough to keep the
spark over till spring.
The fish all run down the stream in the fall ex-
cept the trout; it runs up or stays up and spawns
in November, the male becoming as brilliantly tinted
as the deepest-dyed maple leaf. I have often won-
dered why the trout spawns in the fall, instead of
in the spring like other fish. Is it not because a
full supply of clear spring water can be counted on
at that season more than at any other? The brooks
are not so liable to be suddenly muddied by heavy
showers, and defiled with the washings of the roads
and fields, as they are in spring and summer. The
artificial breeder finds that absolute purity of water
AUTUMN TIDES 111
is necessary to hatch the spawn; also that shade and
a low temperature are indispensable.
Our Northern November day itself is like spring
water. It is melted frost, dissolved snow. There
is a chill in it and an exhilaration also. The fore-
noon is all morning and the afternoon all evening.
The shadows seem to come forth and to revenge
themselves upon the day. The sunlight is diluted
with darkness. The colors fade from the landscape,
and only the sheen of the river lights up the gray
and brown distance.
VII
THE APPLE
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in silent autumn night.
TENNYSON.
OT a little of the sunshine of our Northern
winters is surely wrapped up in the apple.
How could we winter over without it! How is life
sweetened by its mild acids! A cellar well filled with
apples is more valuable than a chamber filled with
flax and wool. So much sound, ruddy life to draw
upon, to strike one’s roots down into, as it were.
Especially to those whose soil of life is inclined
to be a little clayey and heavy, is the apple a win-
ter necessity. It is the natural antidote of most of
the ills the flesh is heir to. Full of vegetable acids
and aromatics, qualities which act as refrigerants
and antiseptics, what an enemy it is to jaundice,
indigestion, torpidity of liver, ete.! It is a gentle
spur and tonic to the whole biliary system. Then
I have read that it has been found by analysis to
contain more phosphorus than any other vegetable.
This makes it the proper food of the scholar and
the sedentary man; it feeds his brain and it stimu-
114 WINTER SUNSHINE
lates his liver. Neither is this all. Beside its
hygienic properties, the apple is full of sugar and
mucilage, which make it highly nutritious. It is
said “the operators of Cornwall, England, consider
ripe apples nearly as nourishing as bread, and far
more so than potatoes. In the year 1801 — which
was a year of much scarcity —apples, instead of
being converted into cider, were sold to the poor,
and the laborers asserted that they could ‘ stand their
work’ on baked apples without meat; whereas a
potato diet required either meat or some other sub-
stantial nutriment. The French and Germans use
apples extensively ; so do the inhabitants of all Eu-
ropean nations. The laborers depend upon them as
an article of food, and frequently make a dinner of
sliced apples and bread.”
Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair,
compared with the intense, sun-colored, and sun-
steeped fruit our orchards yield. The English have
no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element
apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature
in that sour and chilly climate than in our own.
It is well known that the European maple yields
no sugar, while both our birch and hickory have
sweet in their veins. Perhaps this fact accounts for
our excessive love of sweets, which may be said to
be a national trait.
The Russian apple has a lovely complexion,
smooth and transparent, but the Cossack is not yet
all eliminated from it. The only one I have seen
— the Duchess of Oldenburg — is as beautiful as a
THE APPLE 115
Tartar princess, with a distracting odor, but it is
the least bit puckery to the taste.
The best thing I know about Chili is, not its
guano beds, but this fact which I learn from Dar-
win’s “Voyage,” namely, that the apple thrives well
there. Darwin saw a town there so completely
buried in a wood of apple-trees, that its streets were
merely paths in an orchard. The tree, indeed,
thrives so well, that large branches cut off in the
spring and planted two or three feet deep in the
ground send out roots and develop into fine, full-
bearing trees by the third year. The people know
the value of the apple, too. ‘They make cider and
wine of it, and then from the refuse a white and
finely flavored spirit; then, by another process, a
sweet treacle is obtained, called honey. The chil-
dren and pigs ate little or no other food. He does
not add that the people are healthy and temperate,
but I have no doubt they are. We knew the apple
had many virtues, but these Chilians have really
opened a deep beneath a deep. We had found out
the cider and the spirits, but who guessed the wine
and the honey, except it were the bees? There is
a variety in our orchards called the winesap, a
doubly liquid name that suggests what might be
done with this fruit.
The apple is the commonest and yet the most
varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is
as becoming to the centre-table in winter as was the
vase of flowers in the summer, — a bouquet of spitz-
zenburgs and greenings and northern spies. A
116 WINTER SUNSHINE
rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose when it
ripens. It pleases every sense to which it can be
addressed, the touch, the smell, the sight, the taste;
and when it falls, in the still October days, it pleases
the ear. It is a call to a banquet, it is a signal
that the feast is ready. The bough would fain hold
it, but it can now assert its independence; it can
now live a life of its own.
Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets
go completely and down comes the painted sphere
with a mellow thump to the earth, toward which it
has been nodding so long. It bounds away to seek
its bed, to hide under a leaf, or in a tuft of grass.
It will now take time to meditate and ripen! What
delicious thoughts it has there nestled with its fel-
lows under the fence, turning acid into sugar, and
sugar into wine!
How pleasing to the touch! I love to stroke its
polished rondure with my hand, to carry it in my
pocket on my tramp over the winter hills, or through
the early spring woods. You are company, you
ted-cheeked spitz, or you salmon-fleshed greening!
I toy with you; press your face to mine, toss you
in the air, roll you on the ground, see you shine
out where you lie amid the moss and dry leaves and
sticks. You are so alive! You glow like a ruddy
flower. You look so animated I almost expect to
see you move! I postpone the eating of you, you
are so beautiful! How compact; how exquisitely
tinted! Stained by the sun and varnished against
the rains. An independent vegetable existence,
THE APPLE 117
alive and vascular as my own flesh; capable of being
wounded, bleeding, wasting away, or almost repair-
ing damages!
How they resist the cold! holding out almost as
long as the red cheeks of the boys do. A frost that
destroys the potatoes and other roots only makes
the apple more crisp and vigorous; they peep out
from the chance November snows unscathed. When
I see the fruit-vender on the street corner stamping
his feet and beating his hands to keep them warm,
and his naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I
wonder if they do not ache, too, to clap their hands
and enliven their circulation. But they can stand
it nearly as long as the vender can.
Noble common fruit, best friend of man and most
loved by him, following him, like his dog or his
cow, whetever he goes! His homestead is not
planted till you are planted, your roots intertwine
with his; thriving best where he thrives best, lov-
ing 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.
Temperate, chaste fruit! you mean neither luxury
nor sloth, neither satiety nor indolence, neither
enervating heats nor the frigid zones. Uncloying
fruit, — fruit whose best sauce is the open air, whose
finest flavors only he whose taste is sharpened by
brisk work or walking knows; winter fruit, when
the fire of life burns brightest; fruit always a little
hyperborean, leaning toward the cold; bracing, sub-
acid, active fruit! I think you must come from the
118 WINTER SUNSHINE
north, you are so frank and honest, so sturdy and
appetizing. You are stocky and homely like the
northern races. Your quality is Saxon. Surely
the fiery and impetuous south is not akin to thee.
Not spices or olives, or the sumptuous liquid fruits,
but the grass, the snow, the grains, the coolness, is
akin to thee. I think if I could subsist on you,
or the like of you, I should never have an intem-
perate or ignoble thought, never be feverish or
despondent. So far as I could absorb or transmute
your quality, I should be cheerful, continent, equi-
table, sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed
warmth and contentment around.
Is there any other fruit that has so much facial
expression as the apple? What boy does not more
than half believe they can see with that single eye
of theirs? Do they not look and nod to him from
the bough? The swaar has one look, the rambo
another, the spy another. The youth recognizes
the seek-no-further, buried beneath a dozen other
varieties, the moment he catches a glance of its eye,
or the bonny-cheeked Newtown pippin, or the gentle
but sharp-nosed gillyflower. He goes to the great
bin in the cellar, and sinks his shafts here and there
in the garnered wealth of the orchards, mining for
his favorites, sometimes coming plump upon them,
sometimes catching a glimpse of them to the right
or left, or uncovering them as keystones in an arch
made up of many varieties.
In the dark he can usually tell them by the sense
of touch. There is not only the size and shape,
THE APPLE 119
but there is the texture and polish. Some apples
are coarse-grained and some are fine; some are thin-
skinned and some are thick. One variety is quick
and vigorous beneath the touch, another gentle and
yielding. The pinnock has a thick skin with a
spongy lining; a bruise in it becomes like a piece of
cork. The tallow apple has an unctuous feel, as its
name suggests. It sheds water like a duck. What
apple is that with a fat curved stem that blends
so prettily with its own flesh,—the wine apple?
Some varieties impress me as masculine, — weather-
stained, freckled, lasting, and rugged; others are
indeed lady apples, fair, delicate, shining, mild-
flavored, white-meated, like the egg-drop and lady-
finger. The practiced hand knows each kind by the
touch.
“Do you remember the apple hole in the garden or
back of the house, Ben Bolt? In the fall, after the
bins in the cellar had been well stocked, we exca-
vated a circular pit in the warm mellow earth, and,
covering the bottom with clean rye straw, emptied
in basketful after basketful of hardy choice varieties,
till there was a tent-shaped mound several feet high
of shining variegated fruit. Then, wrapping it about
with a thick layer of long rye straw, and tucking it
up snug and warm, the mound was covered with a
thin coating of earth, a flat stone on the top holding
down the straw. As winter set in, another coating
of earth was put upon it, with perhaps an overcoat
of coarse dry stable manure, and the precious pile
was left in silence and darkness till spring~~No
120 WINTER SUNSHINE
marmot, hibernating under ground in his nest of
leaves and dry grass, more cosy and warm. No
frost, no wet, but fragrant privacy and quiet. Then
how the earth tempers and flavors the apples! It
draws out all the acrid unripe qualities, and infuses
into them a subtle refreshing taste of the soil. Some
varieties perish, but the ranker, hardier kinds, like
the northern spy, the greening, or the black apple,
or the russet, or the pinnock, how they ripen and
grow in grace, how the green becomes gold, and the
bitter becomes sweet!
As the supply in the bins and barrels gets low
and spring approaches, the buried treasures in the
garden are remembered. With spade and axe we go
out and penetrate through the snow and frozen earth
till the inner dressing of straw is laid bare. It is
not quite as clear and bright as when we placed it
there last fall, but the fruit beneath, which the hand
soon exposes, is just as bright and far more luscious.
Then, as day after day you resort to the hole, and,
removing the straw and earth from the opening,
thrust your arm into the fragrant pit, you have a
better chance than ever before to become acquainted
with your favorites by the sense of touch. How
you feel for them, reaching to the right and left!
Now you have got a Talman sweet; you imagine
you can feel that single meridian line that divides it
into two hemispheres. Now a greening fills your
hand; you feel its fine quality beneath its rough
coat. Now you have hooked a swaar, you recognize
its full face; now a Vandevere or a King rolls down
THE APPLE 121
from the apex above and you bag it at once. When
you were a schoolboy you stowed these away in
your pockets, and ate them along the road and at
recess, and again at noontime; and they, in a mea-
sure, corrected the effects of the cake and pie with
which your indulgent mother filled your lunch-_
basket.
The boy is indeed the true apple-eater, and is not |
to be questioned how he came by the fruit with
which his pockets are filled. It belongs to him, and
he may steal it if it cannot be had in any other way.
His own juicy flesh craves the juicy flesh of the
apple. Sap draws sap. His fruit-eating has little
reference to the state of his appetite. Whether he
be full of meat or empty of meat, he wants the apple
just the same. Before meal or after meal it never
comes amiss. The farm-boy munches apples all day
long. He has nests of them in the haymow, mel-
lowing, to which he makes frequent visits. Some-
times old Brindle, having access through the open
door, smells them out and makes short work of
them.
Pi In some countries the custom remains of placing
a rosy apple in the hand of the dead, that they may
find it when they enter paradise. In northern my-
thology the giants eat apples to keep off old age.
The apple is indeed the fruit of youth. As we
grow old we crave apples less. Jt is an ominous
sign. When you are ashamed to be seen eating
them on the street; when you can carry them in your
pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to
122 WINTER SUNSHINE
them; when your neighbor has apples and you
have none, and you make no nocturnal visits to his
orchard; when your lunch-basket is without them,
and you can pass a winter’s night by the fireside
with no thought of the fruit at your elbow, — then
be assured you are no longer a boy, either in heart
or in years.
The genuine apple-eater comforts himself with an
apple in their season, as others with a pipe or cigar.
When he has nothing else to do, or is bored, he eats
an apple. While he is waiting for the train he
eats an apple, sometimes several of them. When
he takes a walk he arms himself with apples. His
traveling bag is full of apples. He offers an apple
to his companion, and takes one himself. They are
his chief solace when on the road. He sows their
seed all along the route. He tosses the core from
the car window and from the top of the stage-coach.
He would, in time, make the land one vast orchard.
He dispenses with a knife. He prefers that his
teeth shall have the first taste. Then he knows the
best flavor is immediately beneath the skin, and that
in a pared apple this is lost. If you will stew the
apple, he says, instead of baking it, by all means
leave the skin on. It improves the color and vastly
heightens the flavor of the dish.
The apple is a masculine fruit; hence women are
poor apple-eaters. It belongs to the open air, and
requires an open-air taste and relish.
I instantly sympathized with that clergyman I
read of, who, on pulling out his pocket-handkerchief
THE APPLE 123
in the midst of his discourse, pulled out two boun-
cing apples with it that went rolling across the pul-
pit floor and down the pulpit stairs. These apples
were, no doubt, to be eaten after the sermon, on his
way home, or to his next appointment. They would
take the taste of it out of his mouth. Then, would
a minister be apt to grow tiresome with two big
apples in his coat-tail pockets? Would he not nat-
urally hasten along to “lastly” and the big apples?
If they were the dominie apples, and it was April
or May, ‘he certainly would.
How the early settlers prized the apple! When
their trees broke down or were split asunder by the
storms, the neighbors turned out, the divided tree
was put together again and fastened with iron bolts.
In some of the oldest orchards one may still occa-
sionally see a large dilapidated tree with the rusty
iron bolt yet visible. Poor, sour fruit, too, but
sweet in those early pioneer days. My grandfa-
ther, who was one of these heroes of the stump, used
every fall to make a journey of forty miles for a few
apples, which he brought home in a bag on horse-
back. He frequently started from home by two or
three o’clock in the morning, and at one time both
himself and his horse were much frightened by the
screaming of panthers in a narrow pass in the moun-
tains through which the road led.
Emerson, I believe, has spoken of the apple as
the social fruit of New England. Indeed, what a
promoter or abettor of social intercourse among our
rural population the apple has been, the company
124 WINTER SUNSHINE
growing more merry and unrestrained as soon as the
basket of apples was passed round! ‘When the
cider followed, the introduction and good under-
standing were complete. Then those rural gatherings
that enlivened the autumn in the country, known
as ‘“‘apple-cuts,” now, alas! nearly obsolete, where
so many things were cut and dried besides apples!
The larger and more loaded the orchard, the more
frequently the invitations went round and the higher
the social and convivial spirit ran. Ours is emi-
nently a country of the orchard. Horace Greeley
said he had seen no land in which the orchard
formed such a prominent feature in the rural and
agricultural districts. Nearly every farmhouse in
the Eastern and Northern States has its setting or
its background of apple-trees, which generally date
back to the first settlement of the farm. Indeed,
the orchard, more than almost any other thing, tends
to soften and humanize the country, and give the
place of which it is an adjunct a settled, domestic
look. The apple-tree takes the rawness and wild-
ness off any scene. On the top of a mountain, or
in remote pastures, it sheds the sentiment of home.
It never loses its domestic air, or lapses into a wild
state. And in planting a homestead, or in choosing
a building site for the new house, what a help it is
to have a few old, maternal apple-trees near by, —
regular old grandmothers, who have seen trouble,
who have been sad and glad through so many win-
ters and summers, who have blossomed till the air
about them is sweeter than elsewhere, and borne
THE APPLE 125
fruit till the grass beneath them has become thick and
soft from human contact, and who have nourished
robins and finches in their branches till they have a
tender, brooding look! The ground, the turf, the
atmosphere of an old orchard, seem several stages
nearer to man than that of the adjoining field, as if
the trees had given back to the soil more than they
had taken from it; as if they had tempered the ele-
ments, and attracted all the genial and beneficent
influences in the landscape around.
An apple orchard is sure to bear you several
crops beside the apple. There is the crop of sweet
and tender reminiscences, dating from childhood
and spanning the seasons from May to October, and
making the orchard a sort of outlying part of the
household. You have played there as a child,
mused there as a youth or lover, strolled there as
a thoughtful, sad-eyed man. Your father, perhaps,
planted the trees, or reared them from the seed, and
you yourself have pruned and grafted them, and
worked among them, till every separate tree has a
peculiar history and meaning in your mind. Then
there is the never-failing crop of birds, —robins,
goldfinches, kingbirds, cedar-birds, hairbirds, ori-
oles, starlings, —all nesting and breeding in its
branches, and fitly described by Wilson Flagg as
“Birds of the Garden and Orchard.” Whether the
pippin and sweet bough bear or not, the ‘ punctual
birds” can always be depended on. Indeed, there
are few better places to study ornithology than in
the orchard. Besides its regular occupants, many of
126 WINTER SUNSHINE
the birds of the deeper forest find occasion to visit
it during the season. The cuckoo comes for the
tent-caterpillar, the jay for frozen apples, the ruffed
grouse for buds, the crow foraging for birds’ eggs,
the woodpecker and chickadees for their food, and
the high-hole for ants. The redbird comes, too, if
only to see what a friendly covert its branches form ;
and the wood thrush now and then comes out of the
grove near by, and nests alongside of its cousin, the
robin. The smaller hawks know that this is a
most likely spot for their prey, and in spring the
shy northern warblers may be studied as they pause
to feed on the fine insects amid its branches. The
mice love to dwell here also, and hither come from
the near woods the squirrel and the rabbit. The
latter will put his head through the boy’s slipper-
noose any time for a taste of the sweet apple, and
the red squirrel and chipmunk esteem its seeds a
great rarity.
All the domestic animals love the apple, but none
so much so as the cow. The taste of it wakes her
up as few other things do, and bars and fences must
be well looked after. No need to assort them or
pick out the ripe ones for her. An apple is an
apple, and there is no best about it. I heard of a
quick-witted old cow that learned to shake them
down from the tree. While rubbing herself she
had observed that an apple sometimes fell. This
stimulated her to rub a little harder, when more
apples fell. She then took the hint and rubbed her
shoulder with such vigor that the farmer had to
THE APPLE 127
check her, and keep an eye on her to save his
fruit.
But the cow is the friend of the apple. How
many trees she has planted about the farm, in the
edge of the woods, and in remote fields and pas-
tures! The wild apples, celebrated by Thoreau, are
mostly of her planting. She browses them down,
to be sure, but they are hers, and why should she
not?
What an individuality the apple-tree has, each
variety being nearly as marked by its form as by its
fruit. What a vigorous grower, for instance, is the
Ribston pippin, an English apple, — wide-branching
like the oak; its large ridgy fruit, in late fall or
early winter, is one of my favorites. Or the thick
and more pendent top of the bellflower, with its
equally rich, sprightly, wneloying fruit.
Sweet apples are perhaps the most nutritious,
and when baked are a feast of themselves. With a
tree of the Jersey sweet or of the Talman sweet in
bearing, no man’s table need be devoid of luxuries
and one of the most wholesome of all desserts. Or
the red astrachan, an August apple, — what a gap may
be filled in the culinary department of a household
at this season by a single tree of this fruit! And
what a feast is its shining crimson coat to the eye
before its snow-white flesh has reached the tongue!
But the apple of apples for the household is the
spitzenburg. In this casket Pomona has put her
highest flavors. It can stand the ordeal of cooking,
and still remain a spitz. I recently saw a barrel of
128 WINTER SUNSHINE
these apples from the orchard of a fruit-grower in
the northern part of New York, who has devoted
especial attention to this variety. They were per-
fect gems. Not large,— that had not been the aim,
—but small, fair, uniform, and red to the core.
How intense, how spicy and aromatic!
But all the excellences of the apple are not con-
fined to the cultivated fruit. Occasionally a seed-
ling springs up about the farm that produces fruit
of rare beauty and worth. In sections peculiarly
adapted to the apple, like a certain belt along the
Hudson River, I have noticed that most of the wild,
unbidden trees bear good, edible fruit. In cold and
ungenial districts the seedlings are mostly sour and
crabbed, but in more favorable soils they are oftener
mild and sweet. I know wild apples that ripen in
August, and that do not need, if it could be had,
Thoreau’s sauce of sharp, November air to be eaten
with. At the foot of a hill near me, and striking
its roots deep in the shale, is a giant specimen of
native tree that bears an apple that has about the
clearest, waxiest, most transparent complexion I ever
saw. It is of good size, and the color of a tea rose.
Its quality is best appreciated in the kitchen. I
know another seedling of excellent quality, and so
remarkable for its firmness and density that it is
known on the farm where it grows as the “heavy
apple.”
I have alluded to Thoreau, to whom all lovers of
the apple and its tree are under obligation. His
chapter on Wild Apples is a most delicious piece of
THE APPLE 129
writing. It has a “tang and smack” like the fruit
it celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color
in the same manner. It has the hue and perfume
of the crab, and the richness and raciness of the
pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the
wild sorts, and was obliged to confess that his favor-
ites could not be eaten indoors. Late in Novem-
ber he found a blue-pearmain tree growing within
the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. “You
would not suppose,” he says, “that 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 blooming 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 pry 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 cemented
to it (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monas-
tery’s mouldy 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
130 WINTER SUNSHINE
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,—TI 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.”
VIII
AN OCTOBER ABROAD
I
MELLOW ENGLAND
J WILL say at the outset, as I believe some one
else has said on a like occasion, that in this
narrative I shall probably describe myself more than
the objects I look upon. The facts and particulars
of the case have already been set down in the guide-
books and in innumerable books of travel. I shall
only attempt to give an account of the pleasure and
satisfaction I had in coming face to face with things
in the mother country, seeing them as I did with
kindred and sympathizing eyes.
The ocean was a dread fascination to me,— a world
whose dominion I had never entered; but I proved
‘to be such a wretched sailor that I am obliged to
confess, Hibernian fashion, that the happiest mo-
ment I spent upon the sea was when I set my foot
upon the land.
It is a wide and fearful gulf that separates the
two worlds. The landsman can know little of the
wildness, savageness, and mercilessness of nature till
he has been upon the sea. It is as if he had taken a
182 WINTER SUNSHINE
leap off into the interstellar spaces. In voyaging to
Mars or Jupiter, he might cross such a desert,—
might confront such awful purity and coldness, An
astronomic solitariness and remoteness encompass the
sea. The earth and all remembrance of it is blotted
out; there is no hint of it anywhere. This is not
water, this cold, blue-black, vitreous liquid. It sug-
gests, not life, but death. Indeed, the regions of
everlasting ice and snow are not more cold and in-
human than is the sea.
Almost the only thing about my first sea voyage
that I remember with pleasure is the circumstance
of the little birds that, during the first few days out,
took refuge on the steamer. The first afternoon,
just as we were losing sight of land, a delicate little
wood-bird, the black and white creeping warbler, —
having lost its reckoning in making perhaps its first
southern voyage, —came aboard. It was much fa-
tigued, and had a disheartened, demoralized look.
After an hour or two it disappeared, having, I fear,
a hard pull to reach the land in the face of the wind
that was blowing, if indeed it reached it at all.
The next day, just at night, I observed a small
hawk sailing about conveniently near the vessel,
but with a very lofty, independent mien, as if he
had just happened that way on his travels, and was
only lingering to take a good view of us. It was
amusing to observe his coolness and haughty uncon-
cern in that sad plight he was in; by nothing in his
manner betraying that he was several hundred miles
at sea, and did not know how he was going to get
AN OCTOBER ABROAD 133
back to land. But presently I noticed he found it
not inconsistent with his dignity to alight on the
rigging under friendly cover of the tops’l, where I
saw his feathers rudely ruffled by the wind, till
darkness set in. If the sailors did not disturb him
during the night, he certainly needed all his fortitude
in the morning to put a cheerful face on his situa-
tion.
The third day, when we were perhaps off Nova
Scotia or Newfoundland, the American pipit or tit-
lark, from the far north, a brown bird about the size
of a sparrow, dropped upon the deck of the ship, so
nearly exhausted that one of the sailors was on the
point of covering it with his hat. It stayed about
the vessel nearly all day, flitting from point to
point, or hopping along a few feet in front of the
promenaders, and prying into every crack and crev-
ice for food. Time after time I saw it start off with
a reassuring chirp, as if determined to seek the land;
but before it had got many rods from the ship its
heart would seem to fail it, and, after circling about
for a few moments, back it would come, more dis-
couraged than ever.
These little waifs from the shore! I gazed upon
them with a strange, sad interest. They were
friends in distress ; but the sea-birds, skimming along
indifferent to us, or darting in and out among those
watery hills, I seemed to look upon as my natural
enemies. They were the nurslings and favorites of
the sea, and I had no sympathy with them.
No doubt the number of our land-birds that
184 WINTER SUNSHINE
actually perish in the sea during their autumn mi-
gration, being carried far out of their course by
the prevailing westerly winds of this season, is very
great. Occasionally one makes the passage to Great
Britain by following the ships, and finding them at
convenient distances along the route; and I have
been told that over fifty different species of our more
common birds, such as robins, starlings, grosbeaks,
thrushes, etc., have been found in Ireland, having,
of course, crossed in this way. What numbers of
these little navigators of the air are misled and
wrecked, during those dark and stormy nights, on
the lighthouses alone that line the Atlantic coast?
Is it Celia Thaxter who tells of having picked up
her apron full of sparrows, warblers, flycatchers, etc.,
at the foot of the lighthouse on the Isles of Shoals,
one morning after a storm, the ground being still
strewn with birds of all kinds that had dashed them-
selves against the beacon, bewildered and fascinated
by its tremendous light?
If a land-bird perishes at sea, a sea-bird is equally
cast away upon the land; and I have known the
sooty tern, with its almost omnipotent wing, to fall
down, utterly famished and exhausted, two hundred
miles from salt water.
But my interest in these things did not last be-
yond the third day. About this time we entered
what the sailors call the “devil’s hole,” and a very
respectably-sized hole it is, extending from the banks
of Newfoundland to Ireland, and in all seasons and
weathers it seems to be well stirred up.
AN OCTOBER ABROAD 135
Amidst the tossing and rolling, the groaning of
penitent travelers, and the laboring of the vessel as
she climbed those dark unstable mountains, my
mind reverted feebly to Huxley’s statement, that the
bottom of this sea, for over a thousand miles, pre-
sents to the eye of science a vast chalk plain, over
which one might drive as over a floor, and I tried
to solace myself by dwelling upon the spectacle of a
solitary traveler whipping up his steed across it.
The imaginary rattle of his wagon was like the
sound of lutes and harps, and I would rather have
clung to his axletree than been rocked in the best
berth in the ship.
LAND
On the tenth day, about four o’clock in the after-
noon, we sighted Ireland. The ship came up from
behind the horizon, where for so many days she had
been buffeting with the winds and the waves, but
had never lost the clew, bearing straight as an arrow
for the mark. I think, if she had been aimed at a
fair-sized artillery target, she would have crossed
the ocean and struck the bull’s-eye.
In Ireland, instead of an emerald isle rising out
of the sea, I beheld a succession of cold, purplish
mountains, stretching along the northeastern horizon,
but I am bound to say that no tints of bloom or ver-
dure were ever half so welcome to me as were those
dark, heather-clad ranges. It is a feeling which a
man can have but once in his life, when he first sets
eyes upon a foreign land; and in my case, to this
136 WINTER SUNSHINE
feeling was added the delightful thought that the
“devil’s hole” would soon be cleared and my long
fast over.
Presently, after the darkness had set in, signal
rockets were let off from the stern of the vessel,
writing their burning messages upon the night; and
when answering rockets rose slowly up far ahead, I
suppose we all felt that the voyage was essentially
done, and no doubt a message flashed back under
the ocean that the Scotia had arrived.
The sight of the land had been such medicine to
me that I could now hold up my head and walk
about, and so went down for the first time and took
a look at the engines, —those twin monsters that
had not stopped once, or apparently varied their
stroke at all, since leaving Sandy Hook; I felt like
patting their enormous cranks and shafts with my
hand,— then at the coal bunks, vast cavernous re-
cesses in the belly of the ship, like the chambers of
the original mine in the mountains, and saw the
men and firemen at work in a sort of purgatory of
heat and dust. When it is remembered that one of
these ocean steamers consumes about one hundred
tons of coal per day, it is easy to imagine what a
burden the coal for a voyage alone must be, and one
is not at all disposed to laugh at Dr. Lardner, who
proved so convincingly that no steamship could ever
cross the ocean, because it could not carry coal enough
to enable it to make the passage.
On the morrow, a calm lustrous day, we steamed
at our leisure up the Channel and across the Irish
AN OCTOBER ABROAD 137
Sea, the coast of Wales, and her groups of lofty
mountains, in full view nearly all day. The moun-
tains were in profile like the Catskills viewed from
the Hudson below, only it was evident there were
no trees or shrubbery upon them, and their summits,
on this last day of September, were white with the
snow.
ASHORE
The first day or half day ashore is, of course, the
most novel and exciting; but who, as Mr. Higgin-
son says, can describe his sensations and emotions
this first half day? It is a page of travel that has
not yet been written. Paradoxical as it may seem,
one generally comes out of pickle much fresher than
he went in. The sea has given him an enormous
appetite for the land. Every one of his senses is
like a hungry wolf clamorous to be fed. For my
part, I had suddenly emerged from a condition bor-
dering on «that of the hibernating animals —a con-
dition in which I had neither eaten, nor slept, nor
thought, nor moved, when I could help it —into
not only a full, but a keen and joyous, possession of
my health and faculties. It was almost a metamor-
phosis. JI was no longer the clod I had been, but a
bird exulting in the earth and air, and in the liberty
of motion. Then to remember it was a new earth
and a new sky that I was beholding,— that it was
England, the old mother at last, no longer a faith
or a fable, but an actual fact there before my eyes
and under my feet,— why should I not exult? Go
to! I will be indulged. These trees, those fields,
138 WINTER SUNSHINE
that bird darting along the hedge-rows, those men
and boys picking blackberries in October, those Eng-
lish flowers by the roadside (stop the carriage while
I leap out and pluck them), the homely, domestic
looks of things, those houses, those queer vehicles,
those thick-coated horses, those big-footed, coarsely-
clad, clear-skinned men and women, this massive,
homely, compact architecture,—let me have a good
look, for this is my first hour in England, and I am
drunk with the joy of seeing! This house-fly even,
let me inspect it;1 and that swallow skimming along
so familiarly,—is he the same I saw trying to cling
to the sails of the vessel the third day out? or is
the swallow the swallow the world over? This grass
I certainly have seen before, and this red and white
clover, but this daisy and dandelion are not the
same; and I have come three thousand miles to see
the mullein cultivated in a garden, and christened
the velvet plant.
As we sped through the land, the heart of Eng-
land, toward London, I thought my eyes would
never get their fill of the landscape, and that I
would lose them out of my head by their eagerness
to catch every object as we rushed along! How
they reveled, how they followed the birds and the
game, how they glanced ahead on the track — that
marvelous track!—or shot off over the fields and
downs, finding their delight in the streams, the
roads, the bridges, the splendid breeds of cattle and
1 The English house-fly actually seemed coarser and more
hairy than ours.
AN OCTOBER ABROAD 139
sheep in the fields, the superb husbandry, the rich
mellow soil, the drainage, the hedges,—in the in-
conspicuousness of any given feature, and the mel-
low tone and homely sincerity of all; now dwelling
fondly upon the groups of neatly modeled stacks,
then upon the field occupations, the gathering of
turnips and cabbages, or the digging of potatoes, —
how I longed to turn up the historic soil, into which
had passed the sweat and virtue of so many genera-
tions, with my own spade, —then upon the quaint,
old, thatched houses, or the cluster of tiled roofs,
then catching at a church spire across a meadow
(and it is all meadow), or at the remains of tower or
wall overrun with ivy.
Here, something almost human looks out at you
from the landscape; Nature here has been so long
under the dominion of man, has been taken up and
laid down by him so many times, worked over and
over with his hands, fed and fattened by his toil
and industry, and, on the whole, has proved herself
so willing and tractable, that she has taken on some-
thing of his image, and seems to radiate his pres-
ence. She is completely domesticated, and no doubt
loves the titivation of the harrow and plow. The
fields look half conscious; and if ever the cattle
have “great and tranquil thoughts,” as Emerson
suggests they do, it must be when lying upon these
lawns and meadows. I noticed that the trees, the
oaks and elms, looked like fruit-trees, or as if they
had felt the humanizing influences of so many gen-
erations of men, and were betaking themselves from
140 WINTER SUNSHINE
the woods to the orchard. The game is more than
half tame, and one could easily understand that it
had a keeper.
But the look of those fields and parks went
straight to my heart. It is not merely that they
were so smooth and cultivated, but that they were
so benign and maternal, so redolent of cattle and
sheep and of patient, homely farm labor. One gets
only here and there a glimpse of such in this coun-
try. I-see occasionally about our farms a patch of
an acre or half acre upon which has settled this at-
mosphere of ripe and loving husbandry; a choice
bit of meadow about the barn or orchard, or near
the house, which has had some special fattening,
perhaps been the site of some former garden, or barn,
or homestead, or which has had the wash of some
building, where the feet of children have played for
generations, and the flocks and herds have been fed
in winter, and where they love to lie and ruminate
at night, —a piece of sward thick and smooth, and
full of warmth and nutriment, where the grass is
greenest and freshest in spring, and the hay finest
and thickest in summer.
This is the character of the whole of England that
I saw. I had been told I should see a garden, but
I did not know before to what an extent the earth
could become a living repository of the virtues of so
many generations of gardeners. The tendency to
run to weeds and wild growths seems to have been
utterly eradicated from the soil; and if anything
were to spring up spontaneously, I think it would
be cabbage and turnips, or grass and grain.
AN OCTOBER ABROAD 141
And yet, to American eyes, the country seems
quite uninhabited, there are so few dwellings and
so few people. Such a landscape at home would be
dotted all over with thrifty farmhouses, each with
its group of painted outbuildings, and along every
road and highway would be seen the well-to-do turn-
outs of the independent freeholders. But in Eng-
land the dwellings of the poor people, the farmers,
are so humble and inconspicuous and are really so
far apart, and the halls and the country-seats of the
aristocracy are so hidden in the midst of vast estates,
that the landscape seems almost deserted, and it is
not till you see the towns and great cities that you
can understand where so vast a population keeps
itself.
Another thing that would be quite sure to strike
my eye on this my first ride across British soil, and
on all subsequent rides, was the enormous number
of birds and fowls of various kinds that swarmed in
the air or covered the ground. It was truly amaz-
ing. It seemed as if the feathered life of a whole
continent must have been concentrated on this island.
Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the
birds of the United States into any two of the
largest States would people the earth and air more
fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a
rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square
yard of ground. They know the value of birds in
Britain, — that they are the friends, not the enemies,
of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows
and rooks. It did me good to see them so much at
142 WINTER SUNSHINE
home about the fields andeven in the towns. I was
glad also to see that the British crow was not a
stranger to me, and that he differed from his bro-
ther on the American side of the Atlantic only in
being less alert and cautious, having less use for
these qualities.
Now and then the train would start up some more
tempting game.